Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Mendel Breaks the Zelensky Myth as Washington Doubles Down on War, Sanctions, and China

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Mendel Breaks the Zelensky Myth as Washington Doubles Down on War, Sanctions, and China · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:01
  Hello, good morning.
• 0:02
  Welcome.
• 0:03
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:05
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:09
  You are listening to DAM Radio.
• 0:13
  DAM Radio, that is where we are today.
• 0:15
  damradio.com forward slash live.
• 0:17
  You can go to internationalflavor.com and get
• 0:20
  all the prior episodes of this here show
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  or you can go to damradio.com forward
• 0:26
  slash podcast and get all the genius content
• 0:32
  from this entire station.
• 0:34
  And today just happens to be the greatest,
• 0:39
  longest, most anticipated day in radio history happens
• 0:46
  every Wednesday right here on DAM Radio.
• 0:49
  History.
• 0:50
  Should we say history or history?
• 0:52
  Is the H actually silent?
• 0:56
  Hmm.
• 0:57
  Well, we're gonna find out a little bit
• 1:00
  about Ohio Bridge trolls, a Maryland goat man,
• 1:07
  and something called the devil monkey, which I
• 1:11
  think is very important.
• 1:13
  And should you choose to call in, we
• 1:17
  can answer your dumb questions.
• 1:21
  And we can answer them discreetly.
• 1:23
  So like I always say, stole this from
• 1:26
  the old Mark Twain, get your facts first.
• 1:31
  Then you can distort them as much as
• 1:33
  you please.
• 1:35
  That's what goes on all over America.
• 1:38
  Is America we distort our facts as much
• 1:42
  as we please.
• 1:44
  So let's look at some of these facts.
• 1:47
  Shall we?
• 1:48
  Will coffee stunt your growth?
• 1:51
  We wish to know.
• 1:53
  Will listening to Mozart make my baby smarter?
• 1:58
  Well, I suppose that depends on what your
• 2:01
  definition of smarter is.
• 2:04
  Hmm.
• 2:05
  When studies, when researchers in the 1993 study
• 2:10
  had participants listened to a Mozart sonata, they
• 2:14
  found that those people scored slightly higher on
• 2:18
  spatial reasoning tests for about 10 or 15
• 2:21
  minutes.
• 2:23
  That's what researchers tested.
• 2:25
  That's all they claimed.
• 2:27
  And their methods seemed rather sound.
• 2:30
  But within a year, the New York Times
• 2:32
  wrote an article in which it summarized that
• 2:36
  listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter.
• 2:40
  And we were off to the races.
• 2:42
  In 1997, Don Campbell published a book called
• 2:46
  the Mozart effect, tapping the power of music
• 2:49
  to heal the body, strengthen the mind and
• 2:52
  unlock the creative spirit.
• 2:56
  Then came Campbell's, the Mozart effect for children.
• 3:01
  If the New York Times piece showed the
• 3:03
  suggestive power of media, Campbell's book demonstrated the
• 3:06
  power of parental love.
• 3:09
  Here was a chance for a new generation
• 3:11
  of uber parent to achieve several desirable things
• 3:16
  simultaneously.
• 3:18
  They could help their kids become smarter, give
• 3:21
  them cultural, you know, influence and assuage their
• 3:26
  own residual guilt for having listened to Iron
• 3:29
  Maiden when they were young and impressionable.
• 3:33
  Few separate studies have corroborated these limited findings.
• 3:39
  Other researchers have argued that Mozart doesn't make
• 3:43
  listeners smarter.
• 3:44
  It simply puts them in a better mood,
• 3:46
  which can translate to temporarily better scores on
• 3:50
  certain kinds of tests.
• 3:53
  Mozart's music has also been shown to cause
• 3:55
  significant, though again, temporary, decreases in brain activity
• 4:00
  that leads to epileptic seizure.
• 4:05
  Curious.
• 4:06
  In other words, there's little doubt that Mozart's
• 4:09
  music, considered to be both abstractly complex and
• 4:13
  orally ingratiating, has a fleet that's orally a
• 4:19
  you are not.
• 4:20
  Oh, are a l l no a you
• 4:24
  are.
• 4:24
  Perhaps I should have said which I just
• 4:28
  did.
• 4:29
  And so now we can proceed.
• 4:32
  But does this mean you are smarter for
• 4:35
  listening?
• 4:36
  And is it just Mozart, a composition by
• 4:39
  the Greek composer Yanni, whose cheesy fare you
• 4:42
  may know from infomercials has been shown to
• 4:45
  have a similar effect?
• 4:48
  You'll have trouble finding many scientists who say
• 4:51
  Mozart makes anyone smarter.
• 4:53
  Enjoyment arousal is what one scientist calls it.
• 4:58
  That's certainly a good thing, but it's not
• 5:00
  enough to guarantee your child will go to
• 5:03
  Harvard or will even prefer Mozart to their
• 5:07
  generation's version of Iron Maiden.
• 5:11
  Put them in the Iron Maiden is what
• 5:15
  I recall from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
• 5:20
  So my wife does not understand these necessary
• 5:23
  limitations of a proposition.
• 5:26
  Consequently, she does not understand me.
• 5:29
  For how can a woman expect to appreciate
• 5:31
  a professor of logic when the simplest cloth
• 5:34
  -eared syllogism causes her to flounder?
• 5:38
  Given the premise that all fish live underwater
• 5:45
  and all mackerel are fish, my wife concludes
• 5:48
  not that all mackerel live underwater, but that
• 5:52
  if she buys kippers, it will not rain,
• 5:55
  or that trout live in trees, or even
• 5:57
  that I do not love her anymore.
• 6:00
  This she calls using her intuition.
• 6:02
  I call it crap, and it gets me
• 6:04
  very irritated because it is not logical.
• 6:10
  There will be no supper tonight, she will
• 6:12
  sometimes scream upon my return home.
• 6:15
  Why not, I will say, because I have
• 6:17
  been screwing the milkman all day, she will
• 6:19
  say, quite oblivious of the howling errors she
• 6:22
  has made.
• 6:23
  But I will rarely point out, even given
• 6:25
  that the activities of screwing the milkman and
• 6:28
  making supper are mutually exclusive, surely now that
• 6:32
  the screwing is over, supper may now logically
• 6:35
  be cooked.
• 6:38
  Okay, I have stolen that from Monty Python.
• 6:41
  I had a very bad youth, so perhaps
• 6:44
  I should have listened to a little bit
• 6:47
  more Mozart.
• 6:50
  Isn't that correct?
• 6:52
  Should we hear about the devil monkey?
• 6:58
  Let us talk about the devil monkey briefly
• 7:00
  because this is short.
• 7:02
  Let us talk about far and away some
• 7:04
  of the strangest creatures said to be roaming
• 7:07
  the countryside are the devil monkey.
• 7:11
  Take an adult kangaroo, stick a monkey or
• 7:14
  baboon head on top of it, and you
• 7:16
  have got yourself a devil monkey.
• 7:18
  By most accounts, these creatures can cover hundreds
• 7:21
  of feet in a few quick hops.
• 7:25
  They are nothing to tangle with either.
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  Although devil monkeys have traditionally stuck to attacking
• 7:29
  livestock and the occasional family pet, some reports
• 7:33
  have them attempting to claw their way into
• 7:35
  people's homes.
• 7:36
  Originally spotted in Virginia in the 1950s, devil
• 7:40
  monkeys have now been spotted all across the
• 7:43
  United States.
• 7:45
  On a related note, in May 2001, residents
• 7:47
  in New Delhi, India, were sent into a
• 7:50
  panic when a four-foot-tall, half-monkey,
• 7:53
  half-human creature began attacking them as they
• 7:57
  slept.
• 7:59
  So you wonder if this is true or
• 8:01
  not.
• 8:02
  That came from a reading of General Ignorance.
• 8:08
  There is a lot of it out there.
• 8:13
  History's most backward ideas.
• 8:17
  The answer is not Mount Everest.
• 8:21
  An interesting book full of wild tales.
• 8:27
  At any rate, today, Donald Trump arrived in
• 8:32
  China, as some people call it.
• 8:35
  I don't say that.
• 8:38
  Well, I want to, where are we?
• 8:44
  What are we doing?
• 8:45
  We have a Tucker Carlson video that came
• 8:49
  out yesterday, and he interviewed a woman by
• 8:54
  the name of Yulia Mendo.
• 8:58
  It is all the rage right now, and
• 9:00
  as soon as I heard about it, I
• 9:03
  made sure to listen to the whole thing.
• 9:09
  You know, there's all kinds of activity going
• 9:18
  on in Ukraine, even now, even present.
• 9:23
  Perhaps, it's, I've been told that it is
• 9:26
  one of the topics on the agenda in
• 9:30
  China.
• 9:31
  That could be entertaining.
• 9:33
  We shall see.
• 9:37
  Here's a gross, you want to hear something
• 9:39
  gross?
• 9:39
  Here, I just saw on all these TVs
• 9:42
  in here, Ocasio-Cortez and Rubio topped the
• 9:48
  poll of 2028 presidential contenders.
• 9:52
  What difference is there between them?
• 9:56
  Seriously, I don't want either one of them.
• 10:01
  Time to move to Zimbabwe.
• 10:03
  You'd probably have a better chance of getting
• 10:05
  a human to be in charge of you,
• 10:08
  but I wanted to share with you at
• 10:12
  least the end.
• 10:13
  I'm going to put some commentary on it,
• 10:15
  and I'm on a bit of a roll
• 10:17
  today.
• 10:17
  I watched this entire hour and a half
• 10:26
  of this hour and 23 minutes, whatever it
• 10:30
  was, and watched.
• 10:32
  I listened to, I don't watch, I put
• 10:35
  it on and listen.
• 10:37
  Yesterday, I happened to be driving a ways,
• 10:40
  and so I had some time to do
• 10:42
  so.
• 10:44
  I suppose the part at the end, and
• 10:46
  I'm going to comment on this, and I
• 10:48
  really, this is the reverse order of where
• 10:50
  I wanted to go, because I was going
• 10:55
  to end the show today with Yulia Mendel
• 10:59
  and her abrishenie kuputinu, were words to Vladimir
• 11:04
  Vladimirovich at the end, and she spent an
• 11:08
  hour and a half beating up on the
• 11:16
  Z-monster, the Green Goblin, as some people
• 11:20
  call him.
• 11:20
  I stole that from Alex Christoforou.
• 11:23
  I'm not sure where he got it.
• 11:25
  Perhaps he made that up.
• 11:27
  He also calls him Le Goblin Vert, which
• 11:29
  I believe is French for the Green Goblin,
• 11:33
  I believe, but I'm not positive.
• 11:35
  My French, who was very minimal to try
• 11:38
  to chat with a girl in France, didn't
• 11:44
  take ...
• 11:45
  We were drinking a lot at that time.
• 11:49
  We seemed to be getting along fine, but
• 11:52
  I remember very little of those discussions we
• 11:55
  had for the whole three-day period that
• 11:59
  I spoke with her.
• 12:00
  At any rate, the complete English translation, so
• 12:06
  she spends an hour and 20 minutes beating
• 12:09
  up on Le Goblin and Green in Color,
• 12:14
  and I tell you what, then she jumped
• 12:21
  on and started beating up on Putin instead.
• 12:25
  Here's her translation.
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  Vladimir Vladimirovich is what she said.
• 12:33
  I do not have your life experience.
• 12:36
  I do not understand how you see this
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  world.
• 12:39
  She was very touched.
• 12:40
  She was emotional.
• 12:42
  She was nearly crying at a couple of
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  points in it, but I am not a
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  representative of NATO.
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  I am not a representative of the West.
• 12:52
  I do not work for Zelensky.
• 12:54
  I am not your political opponent.
• 12:57
  I am not a threat to you at
• 12:59
  all.
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  I am a Ukrainian woman from a Ukrainian
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  provincial city in Kherson.
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  You say that you are a man of
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  God, but what is happening in Ukraine has
• 13:10
  nothing to do with God, and it has
• 13:13
  nothing to do with humanity.
• 13:15
  You say that you want peace.
• 13:18
  Peace is the only thing that can be
• 13:20
  done correctly today.
• 13:23
  Peace is the only possible thing that will
• 13:25
  make both Ukraine and Russia winners.
• 13:27
  There is no winner in this war.
• 13:30
  No, both countries are losing, and here was
• 13:33
  an important thing that she said, which I've
• 13:36
  said forever.
• 13:38
  Slavs are killing Slavs.
• 13:40
  Slavic people are killing Slavic people.
• 13:43
  I am from Kherson.
• 13:45
  I think your army tells you only noble
• 13:48
  things, only about victories, but in Kherson, there's
• 13:52
  a drone safari against people.
• 13:55
  Maybe you think this is Western propaganda, but
• 13:57
  it is also people's truth.
• 14:00
  A nurse who worked with my mother was
• 14:02
  coming home from the hospital.
• 14:05
  She was talking on the phone.
• 14:07
  A Russian drone hit her and smashed her
• 14:09
  phone.
• 14:10
  She was bleeding on the side of the
• 14:12
  road.
• 14:13
  This year, another nurse came home to the
• 14:16
  village where I grew up in the Kherson
• 14:18
  region.
• 14:18
  She had come from her grandson's birthday.
• 14:22
  She got out of the car, and a
• 14:24
  Russian drone killed her.
• 14:26
  Recently, we saw video of elderly people being
• 14:29
  evacuated.
• 14:30
  God, how they fell in the snow, frightened
• 14:32
  by explosions, elderly people covered in blood.
• 14:36
  In Kherson, near Ukraine's front line, there are
• 14:40
  elderly people and the most powerless people.
• 14:43
  People have no money to leave.
• 14:46
  Your army itself posts videos showing how it
• 14:49
  hunts people with drones.
• 14:52
  I haven't seen any of those, by the
• 14:53
  way, and I've looked for them.
• 14:55
  The Ukrainian army, on the other hand, I've
• 14:58
  seen quite a few of those.
• 15:00
  Perhaps they are hard to find, but the
• 15:06
  Ukrainian ones were not.
• 15:08
  For the first six months to a year,
• 15:13
  I tell you what, it was, and they
• 15:16
  made jokes about it.
• 15:17
  They showed them doing it.
• 15:20
  Now, I'm sure there's evilness of war on
• 15:22
  both sides, but let's see.
• 15:26
  In Kherson, near Ukraine's front lines, there are
• 15:29
  elder people, the most powerless people.
• 15:32
  There must be some limit of humanity.
• 15:36
  One of your degrees could stop this.
• 15:39
  One word from you would stop this.
• 15:41
  You say you want peace, but if you
• 15:44
  stop this, you will not receive anything for
• 15:46
  it.
• 15:47
  No one will even thank you.
• 15:49
  No one will say anything, but people will
• 15:52
  know when peace comes.
• 15:54
  I hope, I pray every day that peace
• 15:57
  will come.
• 15:57
  When it comes, we will have to restore
• 16:00
  a human face to everyone, so why not
• 16:04
  start doing that now?
• 16:06
  Do you go to church?
• 16:07
  Do you pray?
• 16:08
  Someday, you will have to explain to God
• 16:11
  why your army hunted the powerless, the elderly,
• 16:14
  the poor.
• 16:16
  Is this a war with NATO?
• 16:18
  Is this, excuse me, a war with the
• 16:21
  West?
• 16:22
  What is this?
• 16:23
  How can it be explained?
• 16:26
  If you truly want peace, one word from
• 16:28
  you, one word, and this drone safari will
• 16:31
  stop, and even if no one says thank
• 16:33
  you, people will know.
• 16:35
  Peace is the only possible solution today for
• 16:38
  the strong.
• 16:39
  I do not know whether you can hear
• 16:41
  me, but this must be stopped.
• 16:43
  It has gone too far.
• 16:44
  It is inhuman.
• 16:46
  It is cynical.
• 16:47
  It is disgusting and low.
• 16:50
  You can stop it.
• 16:53
  And that was her statement of what she
• 17:00
  said to Vladimir Vladimirovich at the very end
• 17:06
  of the report.
• 17:11
  And right now, there's a, she talked some
• 17:16
  pretty serious corruption.
• 17:19
  I don't know if you guys have paid
• 17:20
  any attention to this, but AP and Reuters
• 17:23
  reported that Zelensky's prime cohort,
• 17:34
  his entertainment lawyer, who, according to Ms. Mendel,
• 17:44
  started out in a strip club as a
• 17:47
  strip club lawyer.
• 17:49
  I wonder if that's a horrible thing.
• 17:52
  I don't know.
• 17:53
  In Russia, and that he knows all of
• 17:57
  the scams, and he knew all of the
• 18:00
  scams, basically, of the Z Monster, in fact,
• 18:07
  helped to put some of them up, to
• 18:11
  get some of them started himself.
• 18:14
  They reported that he has been named a
• 18:17
  suspect in a money laundering investigation involving about
• 18:21
  $10.5 million connected to luxury real estate
• 18:25
  development near Kiev.
• 18:27
  Reuters notes that Zelensky himself is not under
• 18:31
  investigation and cannot be probed while he is
• 18:34
  in office anyway.
• 18:35
  But the scandal now reaches far closer to
• 18:38
  his inner circle.
• 18:41
  Alex Mercouri's commentary says that the Naboo-linked
• 18:46
  investigation, linked conversations, rumors that it also involves
• 18:51
  Mindik, who ran off to Israel back last
• 18:53
  October, November.
• 18:56
  Umerov and Yermak in Mendel's interview together suggest
• 19:00
  a crisis at the center of power in
• 19:02
  Kiev.
• 19:03
  This crisis has been going on for a
• 19:04
  while.
• 19:06
  And Zelensky eliminates any threat.
• 19:09
  And so, you know, he's, you know, I
• 19:15
  don't know that Mendel herself is part of
• 19:18
  the plot, but he says others can be
• 19:20
  using the timing of her interview and the
• 19:23
  corruption scandal to increase pressure on Zelensky.
• 19:28
  But the important question is not whether every
• 19:31
  allegation can be proven.
• 19:33
  It's the, you know, question of whether Zelensky's,
• 19:39
  I don't know what, protective cover is cracking.
• 19:45
  The Western formula has been pretty simple for
• 19:49
  years.
• 19:50
  Supporting Zelensky equals supporting Ukraine.
• 19:54
  And Mendel attacked that for an hour and
• 19:57
  a half yesterday, just beat the hell up
• 19:59
  on that formula directly.
• 20:02
  And Yermak's, the new scandal, attacks it legally
• 20:05
  and politically.
• 20:07
  And, you know, it's, it's straight on the
• 20:09
  ground.
• 20:10
  I suppose this also could prove that anti
• 20:13
  -corruption institutions are actually functioning over there.
• 20:18
  Now, I don't know that I believe that,
• 20:21
  but the country is under a dictatorship right
• 20:28
  now, but according to many, but could a
• 20:32
  country under a real dictatorship, now they had
• 20:35
  Western pressure put on them to keep this
• 20:37
  NABU, the anti-corruption unit, together.
• 20:43
  Could, if he was in charge, do you
• 20:47
  think he could have protected Yermak?
• 20:53
  I don't know, but the timing, the foreign
• 20:57
  funding connection, this 90 billion showing up, and
• 21:01
  the proximity to the pressure for peace that
• 21:06
  is coming from multiple sources, make it impossible
• 21:10
  to view as, you know, a routine sort
• 21:13
  of commentary.
• 21:18
  If you're interested, you know, find the Tucker
• 21:22
  Carlson video and, or audio and listen
• 21:32
  to it.
• 21:33
  It was quite interesting.
• 21:38
  Now, both of them are a little extreme
• 21:41
  for me, and I feel like Tucker Carlson,
• 21:44
  you know, I started my program in Russian
• 21:48
  after the Tarl, Tucker Carlson interview of Vladimir
• 21:54
  Vladimirovich when he went over to Moscow back
• 21:56
  in February of 2024, and it
• 22:07
  surprised me that he didn't know what Kvartal
• 22:13
  95 is, and that, you know, didn't know
• 22:17
  the basic history of the Green Goblin and
• 22:21
  where he came from, and Kvartal 95 is
• 22:27
  the production company, the Russian production company of
• 22:33
  the Z-Monster, of the Green Goblin, and
• 22:40
  you would think he would know that, where
• 22:45
  it would come from, or at least he
• 22:47
  would have, you know, checked into it to
• 22:48
  have some questions to ask.
• 22:49
  He asked about Zelensky's wife, he asked about
• 22:54
  his drug use, he asked about some of
• 22:56
  those things, and this girl, it didn't take
• 23:01
  much to get her wound up, you know,
• 23:03
  she had some things that she wanted to
• 23:07
  say.
• 23:08
  Now, she can't, there ain't no way she
• 23:10
  can go back to Ukraine after this, she'd
• 23:13
  be dead.
• 23:14
  You know, I'll tell you, they already put
• 23:15
  her on the Miro Tvorits list is what
• 23:17
  I've heard, and the Miro Tvorits list is
• 23:20
  that website that says, it comes from Langley,
• 23:23
  Virginia in Ukraine, allegedly sponsored by CIA, but
• 23:27
  it's a death list, you know, lots of
• 23:29
  people have ended up dead from there, and
• 23:32
  so that is, I wouldn't recommend that she
• 23:40
  go home, and she wasn't very, wasn't very
• 23:43
  forthcoming with where she had run from, but
• 23:47
  she and her husband got out of the
• 23:49
  country, as have the majority.
• 23:52
  Now, she said that they started out with,
• 23:55
  that the population of, the highest I ever
• 23:59
  saw the population of Ukraine was around 42
• 24:04
  million, okay?
• 24:06
  She says that more than 11 million of
• 24:11
  those remaining, and she says right now, you'd
• 24:14
  be lucky if the amount was 25 million,
• 24:19
  so they've lost some 17, 18 million people,
• 24:25
  many to Russia, many to all over the
• 24:29
  other places of Europe, you know, that they've,
• 24:32
  many in America, that they have departed, and
• 24:37
  she talked about how most of the people
• 24:40
  that were there didn't, do not believe that
• 24:43
  they ever should have been in a war
• 24:44
  with Russia, that Zelensky himself didn't believe it,
• 24:49
  that when her, when Crimea was taken, that
• 24:53
  Zelensky in the 2018-2019 was over in
• 24:57
  Crimea, alleged marijuana use over there, you know,
• 25:02
  she, and I don't speak as to the
• 25:05
  truth of anything she said, I don't know,
• 25:07
  she, you know, how the hell are you
• 25:09
  going to independently verify any of it, and,
• 25:13
  but this is what she reported, and so
• 25:17
  the main argument is, is not that this
• 25:21
  is gossip, that this is an insider, and
• 25:24
  of Zelensky's system, and what she witnessed while
• 25:29
  she was there, and she, she, I put
• 25:33
  together a list of, I mean, heck, and
• 25:38
  there were a lot of allegations, and I
• 25:40
  was putting them together, and trying to make
• 25:43
  sure that it was every, you know, just,
• 25:46
  just about every claim that she made, because
• 25:49
  I think it's important to talk about these,
• 25:53
  and where she came from, what she said,
• 25:56
  and clearly, you know, at the end, and
• 25:59
  this, I suppose, when I was listening to
• 26:01
  it, I understood it, didn't agree with some
• 26:05
  of it, some of it I, I immediately
• 26:07
  countered, and said, well, you know, that's not
• 26:09
  accurate, that's, that's, and I'll, I'll, I will
• 26:14
  outline those as we, as I go through
• 26:17
  this rather comprehensive list that she put together,
• 26:21
  of all the allegations that she made against
• 26:23
  her, she wasn't following any notes, she, she
• 26:25
  just wound her up, and off she went,
• 26:29
  and there weren't even a whole lot of
• 26:30
  questions, you know, it was more her opportunity
• 26:33
  to try to get this war over, and
• 26:37
  you know, more, more power to her, I'm
• 26:39
  not, I don't, I am critiquing, but I
• 26:42
  don't mean to be harsh against it, I
• 26:44
  mean, this is a woman who, you know,
• 26:46
  that is, is suffering far more than Zelensky,
• 26:52
  that's for sure, Zelensky isn't suffering at all,
• 26:55
  nor are any connected to him, according to
• 26:57
  her, that these people are, all of them
• 27:02
  are benefiting substantially, except for the retirees, which
• 27:08
  she says, there's some 11 million retirees out
• 27:11
  there, and these retirees make an average, you
• 27:15
  know, of $75 a month, and in Ukraine,
• 27:19
  that, you can't live on that, in Ukraine,
• 27:22
  you know, Ukraine, now, now, I remember talking
• 27:28
  to some retirees inside of Russia, and just
• 27:31
  across the border in Tatarstan, right, in the
• 27:35
  Tatarstan region, southwest Russia, south of Moscow, you
• 27:40
  know, maybe five hours by train, three, four
• 27:45
  hours by train, long ways, and those people,
• 27:49
  the, the earnings were per month in the,
• 27:55
  oh, $300 a month range, $300 a month,
• 28:00
  now, the fact is, you can live on
• 28:03
  $300 a month, just like if you went
• 28:06
  to, I don't know, Cyprus, you went to,
• 28:09
  used to be, you could go to Greece
• 28:11
  and live quite well, you know, on no
• 28:14
  money, but then they joined the European Union,
• 28:16
  and all that went away, and the same
• 28:19
  will happen in, in Ukraine, and people are
• 28:22
  going to be left behind, same has happened
• 28:25
  in a lot of Eastern European countries, they
• 28:27
  want the euro, they want the, the, the
• 28:30
  higher standard of living, and it really is
• 28:34
  not, you know, it, it, it takes a
• 28:37
  long while for it to catch up, and
• 28:40
  that's part of the beef with these kind
• 28:42
  of, of artificial monetary things, like, I
• 28:53
  talk on this channel about purchase power parity,
• 28:56
  like, the, the average person in China makes
• 28:59
  about a third or less of what the
• 29:04
  average American makes, but they can buy a
• 29:09
  hell of a lot more with that money,
• 29:12
  because the production is, it costs so much,
• 29:21
  quite a bit less, a hell of a
• 29:23
  lot less, and so, when you're living in
• 29:25
  a system like that, it's like going from
• 29:27
  here and going to, I don't know, a,
• 29:29
  a country like Colombia, you can live pretty
• 29:34
  well in Colombia, a lot of retirees go,
• 29:36
  do a, do a search for this, and
• 29:39
  a lot of retirees are, are going out
• 29:42
  and retiring to other countries, because they can
• 29:46
  afford to live there, in the sun, number
• 29:48
  one, they don't have to go to Florida
• 29:50
  and pay twice as much, they can go
• 29:53
  to, you know, Belize and pay less, or
• 29:55
  Brazil, you know, for, a, my brother bought
• 30:00
  a house on an island down there, and,
• 30:04
  less than 15,000 bucks, and he bought
• 30:08
  a, he has a car now, I mean,
• 30:10
  he's, he's doing well, and down in Brazil,
• 30:14
  he loves it, he's learned Portuguese, he's having
• 30:16
  a good time, and so, good for him,
• 30:19
  you know, this is, this is good stuff,
• 30:21
  and, and if you like warmth, I mean,
• 30:25
  hey man, find some place to go, anyway,
• 30:28
  the Ukraine part is, you know, these retirees
• 30:33
  are, are losing everything, you know, I've told
• 30:36
  stories on here before about being involved after
• 30:38
  the collapse of the Soviet Union inside of
• 30:41
  Russia, and one of the games that the
• 30:44
  government played on the way out was, they
• 30:47
  changed the currency, I flew into the airport
• 30:51
  in Sheremetyevo, in, Moscow, flew to a, the,
• 30:59
  my final destination, three, four hours away, and
• 31:03
  in the Moscow airport, because it was a
• 31:05
  smaller airport that I was going to, I
• 31:08
  exchanged some currency, exchanged about a thousand dollars,
• 31:12
  and, you know, so I had currency for
• 31:14
  my, my, my trip while I was there,
• 31:17
  and by the time I got to where
• 31:21
  I was going, and they, they canceled all
• 31:25
  the currency that day, and none of my
• 31:27
  currency was any good anymore, they printed new,
• 31:30
  and this cost all of the, well, it
• 31:33
  cost me a thousand dollars, but, you know,
• 31:36
  I got it back from the, from the
• 31:38
  government when I came back from the U
• 31:40
  .S. government, but the, the, the Russian people,
• 31:46
  especially the retirees, this, and, and part of
• 31:49
  it was, they were taking people who had
• 31:51
  stored all their wealth at home, and taking
• 31:54
  all, and they destroyed them, you had to
• 31:56
  exchange your, your money within 24 hours, and
• 32:00
  if you didn't, you didn't get it, and
• 32:02
  so there were runs on banks, runs on
• 32:04
  places to get stuff, and suddenly, you're destitute,
• 32:07
  you could have saved all your money under
• 32:09
  a mattress, and then they changed all the
• 32:10
  money, and you were wiped out, and so
• 32:14
  it served a couple of different purposes, it
• 32:16
  made a new, a new currency, more valuable
• 32:20
  for a short period, and it took everything
• 32:24
  from everyone, and so suddenly, you're living only
• 32:26
  on, it also caused a spending problem, stalls,
• 32:31
  because nobody had any money to spend, of
• 32:33
  course, they weren't spending it anyway, because it
• 32:35
  was stuffed in a mattress under the bed.
• 32:37
  Anyway, these issues, the retirees in Ukraine, I'm
• 32:42
  sure, are quite familiar with, not changing the
• 32:45
  currency, but $75 a month, and not being
• 32:49
  able to live on that.
• 32:53
  So, Ms. Mendel, she alleges, all these are
• 32:56
  not things that I, you know, totally agree
• 33:00
  with, but here's what she said, she said
• 33:02
  she was Zelensky's press secretary from 2019 to
• 33:06
  2021, that checks out, she supported him in
• 33:09
  2022 when Russia upped the scale, although she
• 33:17
  did acknowledge that the war started in 2014,
• 33:20
  and that Ukraine was, you know, killing Russians
• 33:24
  in the Donbass since 2014, and, you know,
• 33:29
  she was, she was grateful that Zelensky, you
• 33:33
  know, came back from the Crimea and stayed
• 33:35
  in Ukraine, he got elected in 2019, and
• 33:38
  she says that now she believes he is
• 33:40
  one of the biggest obstacles to peace, she
• 33:42
  said, you know, talking about Zelensky's personality and
• 33:47
  governing style, she says that he's not the
• 33:50
  person you see on the camera, that he
• 33:52
  changes his mask, and is emotionally uncontrollable, hysterical,
• 33:58
  manipulative, and has no sympathy for common people.
• 34:03
  She says he's an extraordinary actor, which is
• 34:07
  what's made him successful so far, but that
• 34:10
  his acting lacks substance.
• 34:14
  So, she says his public statements are manipulation,
• 34:22
  facts taken out of context only, or flat
• 34:26
  -out lies, and she alleges that he says
• 34:30
  and thinks that people are disposable, and, you
• 34:33
  know, you just use them for whatever you
• 34:36
  need to get.
• 34:37
  She says the West created a hero myth
• 34:40
  around him, and then he fell into his
• 34:44
  own myth, you know, thinking that he's great.
• 34:48
  Talking about democracy, dictatorship, and power accumulation, she
• 34:52
  says what I say, there's no democracy in
• 34:56
  Ukraine, and there is not, and there's no,
• 35:04
  we're not, nobody's fighting over there for democracy,
• 35:07
  no way.
• 35:10
  His, she says, she said that he said
• 35:14
  when he first came to office that this
• 35:16
  is a dictatorship these are my orders, you
• 35:20
  know, this is a dictatorship.
• 35:21
  She says he's accumulated all kinds of power
• 35:25
  over the whole system, eliminating people.
• 35:28
  She told a story about a Bulgarian minister,
• 35:36
  banking minister, or something, that they wanted to
• 35:39
  have openness in banking, and openness in the
• 35:43
  Ukrainian banking system, and this person came over,
• 35:49
  she was there, she saw that they were
• 35:51
  speaking, you know, they spoke Russian together, this
• 35:53
  Bulgarian woman knew Russian, you know, didn't speak
• 35:56
  Ukrainian, and that they spoke together in Russian,
• 36:01
  she and Zelensky, and that after her visit,
• 36:07
  Zelensky went and sacked, got rid of, the
• 36:11
  head of the banking that was appointed by
• 36:13
  the Western, including, by the Western governments, including
• 36:17
  this banking minister, and appointed his own so
• 36:23
  he could control it, and, you know, she
• 36:26
  called and was talking to him, and he
• 36:28
  said, well, this, this person is gone, but
• 36:31
  now, now we'll have control over what they
• 36:34
  say, and not understanding that that was the
• 36:37
  whole point, you know, that this is the
• 36:41
  end of it, and, you know, the whole
• 36:44
  point of the story was that you're not
• 36:47
  supposed to control these people, and so, interesting.
• 36:53
  She says that Zelensky's a dictator because borders
• 36:56
  are closed, elections are suspended, human rights violations
• 37:00
  are severe, and anyone that criticizes him is
• 37:04
  persecuted.
• 37:05
  She says they've been arrested, they've been jailed,
• 37:08
  they've been put away, and, you know, you
• 37:10
  know, I've been saying that forever, now this
• 37:13
  comes to somebody that, that actually saw it.
• 37:16
  She, here are the numbers that she put
• 37:18
  out, Ukraine, Ukraine officially had 40 to 42
• 37:21
  million people, but privately, she says that right
• 37:25
  before the war, she thought it was more
• 37:26
  like 34, perhaps to 37, and she estimates
• 37:32
  that only 25 million or so remain in
• 37:37
  the country, and 11 million of those are
• 37:39
  retirees.
• 37:40
  She says the number of military dead is
• 37:43
  completely unknown, and may be in the hundreds
• 37:46
  of thousands.
• 37:48
  Ukraine is on the verge of extinction, she
• 37:51
  said.
• 37:52
  There's refugees, war, demographic collapse, poverty, and definitely
• 37:57
  brain drain.
• 37:59
  Her discussion of money laundering, I mean, she,
• 38:02
  she went on for a while.
• 38:04
  She says she believes Zelensky stands behind many
• 38:07
  of the money laundering schemes.
• 38:11
  She described a a candidate for a minister
• 38:16
  of social policy being expected to propose money
• 38:20
  laundering schemes through the ministry responsible for pension.
• 38:26
  So she said that was part of his
• 38:28
  job, and that during the interview, he was
• 38:31
  asked, you know, what kind of, what kind
• 38:34
  of programs he could help put into place,
• 38:37
  you know, to, for, so everybody could get
• 38:39
  their percentage, and she says Zelensky abuses both
• 38:43
  Western and Ukrainian trust, and that his reforms
• 38:46
  were pushed until only, until the IMF money
• 38:50
  arrived, and then Zelensky, its International Monetary Fund,
• 38:56
  and then Zelensky immediately violated all of the
• 38:59
  reforms.
• 39:02
  He undermined the National Bank, and the independence,
• 39:05
  and corporate governance.
• 39:07
  The one that is neftogaz, and not, neftigaz
• 39:11
  is, neft is oil, gas is gas, you
• 39:16
  know, but she says that it was targeted
• 39:19
  for political and corrupt control, talking about the
• 39:24
  Mindich who ran off to, that he was
• 39:27
  involved with it, with the laundering in this,
• 39:29
  that 110 million came out of that.
• 39:33
  Isn't that crazy?
• 39:34
  And she said that there was a bag
• 39:37
  of dollars situation where a minister received unofficial
• 39:41
  cash, and cash instead of a higher official
• 39:43
  salary.
• 39:44
  This part was interesting, where she said that
• 39:46
  the guy came in and said he, you
• 39:49
  know, that he would have to, you know,
• 39:51
  live off of a salary of a thousand
• 39:53
  a month, and he lives in Kiev, and
• 39:55
  he said he couldn't live off of that,
• 39:57
  that he needed five thousand a month, and
• 39:59
  they said no, and then he was taking
• 40:02
  the money, and then he was, you know,
• 40:04
  gonna leave because they caught him, or they
• 40:07
  knew that he was taking the money, and
• 40:08
  they said, they just put a bag of
• 40:10
  money on the table, and said you can't,
• 40:12
  you can't, you have to take your thousand
• 40:14
  dollar salary, but here's, you know, we'll just
• 40:16
  give you money this way, privately, and so
• 40:22
  there's bags of dollars, and everybody knows that's
• 40:25
  what's going on.
• 40:26
  I can't tell you how many times I
• 40:28
  ran into people in the Ukrainians that came
• 40:31
  over shortly after the, you know, the war
• 40:37
  started into Florida, and I ran into a
• 40:39
  bunch of them.
• 40:40
  They would pull out wads, a hundred dollar
• 40:42
  bills, like you wouldn't believe, and I'm telling
• 40:46
  you, they lived well, and this money, I
• 40:51
  could go on with some of these stories,
• 40:54
  and I immediately was like, yeah, well, doesn't
• 40:57
  surprise me, I saw what happened in Moldova,
• 40:59
  you know, I saw that personally, you know,
• 41:02
  years ago, with how U.S. Agency for
• 41:05
  International Development, how that worked, and how all
• 41:08
  of the money just goes to, you can't
• 41:11
  verify it, it's all, it's a big freaking
• 41:14
  money laundering scheme.
• 41:15
  Tucker Carlson asked her, how come all these
• 41:17
  people were, why are there so many Americans
• 41:20
  in Ukraine?
• 41:23
  Well, because it's a big money laundering scheme,
• 41:26
  you know, they talked about it, and said,
• 41:30
  you know, this is how you launder money
• 41:32
  from the West, this is how Hunter Biden,
• 41:34
  you know, gets rich, he goes over, works
• 41:37
  for Burisma, you can't even spell nifty guys,
• 41:40
  and he doesn't know anything about anything on
• 41:43
  an international level, but his daddy's vice president,
• 41:47
  well, that's how things are done in the
• 41:49
  world, and we all know it, nobody wants
• 41:52
  to believe it, but that's how it's done,
• 41:56
  and so, trust me, it's no different today,
• 42:01
  it just changed the masters, that's it, and
• 42:04
  so, she talks, you know, illegal percentages from
• 42:09
  government programs, and Zelensky approving or smiling at
• 42:13
  it, and she said, you know, to her
• 42:17
  mind, it was clear what was going on.
• 42:21
  She talked about his Russian past, and I've
• 42:24
  talked about this quite a few times myself,
• 42:27
  so none of this was necessarily newsworthy, but
• 42:30
  that he, maybe it's a different voice coming
• 42:33
  from inside of Ukraine that is telling you
• 42:36
  this, and Zelensky built much of his entertainment
• 42:39
  career in Russia, and he made big money
• 42:42
  in Russia as part of Kvartal 95, and
• 42:47
  he was part of that comedy club, movie
• 42:53
  club, making foolish videos of himself playing a
• 42:59
  piano with his penis, or dancing in high
• 43:03
  heels like a gay boy, you know, or
• 43:06
  playing a woman, and that he did tons
• 43:09
  of that stuff.
• 43:10
  She says he was in Russia in 2014,
• 43:13
  finishing a movie, even after Crimea and Don
• 43:16
  Bass events began, and all that is verifiable.
• 43:21
  She claims he had property in Crimea, spent
• 43:23
  time there after Russian control of Crimea began,
• 43:28
  and that he was there as late as
• 43:29
  2019, right before he became the president.
• 43:33
  He campaigned for peace, everybody knows this, and
• 43:37
  then promised respect for Ukrainian and Russian language
• 43:40
  communities, and he really did that.
• 43:42
  She says he promised Putin directly that Ukraine
• 43:51
  would not join NATO, that it was not
• 43:54
  going to be an issue.
• 43:54
  Now, when he first started, he was a
• 43:57
  hell of a lot more moderate, but he
• 44:00
  was taken over by these Azov types, this
• 44:03
  Azov brigade, and all of these heavy duty
• 44:06
  nationalists.
• 44:07
  She talked about that too, and nobody's wanted
• 44:12
  to believe this stuff ever since everybody was
• 44:16
  blue and yellow flag waving in 2022, and
• 44:20
  before.
• 44:21
  Nobody wanted to believe this stuff, but it
• 44:22
  doesn't mean it's not true, just because you
• 44:25
  refuse to believe it.
• 44:28
  People have been talking about it.
• 44:31
  You've had the opportunity to understand these things,
• 44:34
  and most people chose not to, because it
• 44:37
  didn't fit with the, you know, Russia bad,
• 44:41
  Ukraine good narrative that people wanted to spell
• 44:44
  out.
• 44:45
  And besides, Russia's vast wealth and resources were
• 44:50
  allegedly on the table, and they were just
• 44:52
  going to collapse if you pushed, you know,
• 44:55
  you push them, and they'll collapse like they
• 44:57
  did in 91, you know, and that's that.
• 45:01
  You know, trust but verify, and we're going
• 45:03
  to build Star Wars, and you're not going
• 45:05
  to be able to keep up, and we
• 45:07
  will outspend you.
• 45:08
  That was basically the Reagan argument, and it
• 45:11
  worked to much extent.
• 45:14
  Plus, there was a lot of pro-Western,
• 45:17
  even then, they wanted to be, you know,
• 45:23
  friends with the West, you know.
• 45:27
  Let's see.
• 45:29
  Yeah, she said that he adopted this nationalist
• 45:31
  ideology that was not natural to him or
• 45:35
  his own political platform, that he was kind
• 45:39
  of usurped by them.
• 45:41
  She was present.
• 45:42
  She said, then this is a big deal.
• 45:46
  She said that she, and so this is
• 45:49
  NATO, and she said quite a few things
• 45:52
  about NATO and peace and what was supposed
• 45:55
  to happen.
• 45:56
  She says that she was actually physically present
• 45:59
  at the 2019 Paris meeting between Putin and
• 46:04
  Zelensky, and she claims that Zelensky promised Putin
• 46:08
  that Ukraine would never join NATO at that
• 46:13
  time.
• 46:15
  Now, think about that.
• 46:17
  Putin has been saying this for a long
• 46:19
  time, but she said it now, that she
• 46:25
  was there.
• 46:26
  She says Ukraine was never close to NATO
• 46:29
  anyway, and that NATO membership is an impossible
• 46:33
  agenda because of how corrupt they are, and
• 46:35
  because of all the rules that they say
• 46:37
  they have to follow but never will.
• 46:40
  They're so far away it's never going to
• 46:42
  happen.
• 46:42
  She says Zelensky used impossible demands to justify
• 46:46
  continuing the war now because it's most important
• 46:51
  that he remain president, and, you know, he
• 46:55
  didn't take office to leave.
• 46:58
  He's not leaving.
• 46:59
  He is not leaving voluntarily.
• 47:03
  She says he agreed in 2022 at the
• 47:06
  peace deals to give up the Donbass as
• 47:08
  part of the peace deal and later reversed
• 47:10
  himself and claimed the Donbass couldn't be surrendered.
• 47:16
  Istanbul negotiations were complete around that time, and
• 47:20
  Boris Johnson convinced him to continue fighting.
• 47:25
  I mean, we've heard this stuff.
• 47:27
  Nobody believed it, but we hear it.
• 47:29
  Hopefully, you know, coming from an insider like
• 47:31
  this, perhaps people will know.
• 47:34
  And she seemed like her heart was in
• 47:35
  the right place.
• 47:36
  I mean, at the end, you know, the
• 47:37
  whole thing was that she had said to
• 47:40
  Tucker Carlson at the end, man, maybe you
• 47:43
  could let me, you know, you said you
• 47:45
  would let me say something in the end.
• 47:49
  She says she knows of seven attempts to
• 47:51
  end the war and that Zelensky changed the
• 47:54
  conditions each and every time.
• 47:56
  He does not want to end the war
• 47:57
  because ending the war is political suicide for
• 48:01
  he himself.
• 48:04
  Censorship, prosecution and political fear.
• 48:08
  She says critics of Zelensky are immediately labeled
• 48:11
  pro-Russian, pro-Kremlin, imprisoned, sanctioned or worse.
• 48:17
  She says some critics have been sent to
• 48:18
  the front line as punishment to the to
• 48:21
  the front for war.
• 48:23
  She says bloggers, journalists, artists, churches, writers, public
• 48:27
  figures have been banned.
• 48:30
  Banirovali is the word.
• 48:31
  She's been banned, pressured or targeted.
• 48:35
  She says treason charges are now a political
• 48:38
  weapon.
• 48:40
  And that Zelensky sanctions his own citizens, freezes
• 48:44
  their businesses and accounts if they piss him
• 48:47
  off.
• 48:49
  They were talking about the drug allegations.
• 48:52
  People talk about this drug stuff, open secret,
• 48:56
  you know, the Z monster being you can
• 48:58
  watch his his telegram and his Instagram channels.
• 49:04
  You make that decision yourself.
• 49:07
  He looks lit to me in quite a
• 49:10
  few instances, and he looks like a crazed
• 49:14
  man on something.
• 49:16
  And he's done that for me.
• 49:17
  But she says she's never personally seen him
• 49:20
  take drugs.
• 49:21
  Never.
• 49:22
  But that the his use of drugs is
• 49:24
  an open secret and that she would observe
• 49:27
  him go into the bathroom before interviews and
• 49:29
  come out energized, changed.
• 49:32
  But she has never seen him take drugs.
• 49:36
  And she met a person from Kvartal 95
• 49:39
  who everybody else associated with his drug supply.
• 49:43
  But she was careful that to say that
• 49:45
  she didn't personally see it, but that this
• 49:48
  guy didn't have any other job.
• 49:51
  And he knew the Z man from his
• 49:53
  Kvartal 95 days.
• 49:58
  So I don't know whether that proves anything.
• 50:01
  I have no idea.
• 50:03
  She says she cannot return to Ukraine after
• 50:06
  this interview.
• 50:07
  Well, that's for sure.
• 50:08
  And that people close to the system feel
• 50:11
  fear being jailed or killed.
• 50:13
  She talked about a banker in Milan who,
• 50:16
  quote, fell from a window and the former
• 50:20
  governor of Herson who died of suicide behind
• 50:23
  garages after poisoning himself and that most insiders
• 50:27
  found that death quite suspicious.
• 50:31
  So those are that's a long list of
• 50:34
  facts that I was able to accumulate.
• 50:37
  Does that mean you don't have to watch
• 50:39
  it?
• 50:39
  Maybe so.
• 50:40
  But it's probably worth the watch anyway.
• 50:45
  I suppose my biggest thought process with this
• 50:49
  is at the end.
• 50:55
  And it's not a problem.
• 50:57
  It's just an observation.
• 50:59
  Okay.
• 51:00
  I get why it was emotional for her
• 51:03
  to talk about it.
• 51:04
  She knew the power of what she was
• 51:07
  saying and she was saying, maybe I'm going
• 51:10
  too far.
• 51:11
  Maybe I'm saying too many things, you know,
• 51:14
  but her appeal to Putin at the end
• 51:19
  was quite emotional, but analytically incomplete or just
• 51:27
  dead wrong.
• 51:29
  Okay.
• 51:30
  And I don't mean that to be harsh.
• 51:32
  I mean, it takes a ton of bravery
• 51:34
  for her to come over and do what
• 51:35
  she did.
• 51:36
  I don't mean come over.
• 51:37
  She probably been here for a while.
• 51:39
  But at the same time, I don't understand
• 51:45
  why you would spend an hour and a
• 51:48
  half beaten up on the Z monster and
• 51:53
  saying that he was the biggest obstacle to
• 51:57
  peace and then only make a plea to
• 52:04
  Putin to stop the war.
• 52:08
  That just doesn't add up for me.
• 52:12
  I mean, why wouldn't you at least say,
• 52:17
  listen, uh, Volodya Zelensky, Vladimir Zelensky, I forget
• 52:27
  his middle name, but, uh, you know, she
• 52:29
  knows him well enough having worked for him
• 52:32
  for two years says they left on good
• 52:34
  terms and that it was, you know, she
• 52:36
  had a positive spot with him that she
• 52:38
  got the job out of 4,000 candidates.
• 52:42
  You know, she was well-spoken, good, you
• 52:45
  know, decent English.
• 52:50
  And why then would she not make a
• 52:57
  plea to the green goblin too?
• 53:01
  Maybe because she knows it's, you know, pointless.
• 53:06
  I don't know.
• 53:07
  But she closed her, her deal by saying,
• 53:10
  you know, you told me I could say
• 53:11
  something, you know, can I speak right into
• 53:14
  the camera?
• 53:14
  Do I turn my face over here?
• 53:16
  You know, can I look right into the
• 53:18
  camera?
• 53:19
  Because in an interview, you're generally not staring
• 53:21
  into the lens of the camera, but she
• 53:23
  wanted to people to listen to her.
• 53:25
  And she says, I want to do it
• 53:27
  in Russian.
• 53:27
  I want to say it to, uh, to
• 53:29
  him.
• 53:30
  And, uh, and then she did.
• 53:32
  And she closed by addressing Vladimir Vladimirovich in
• 53:35
  Russian.
• 53:36
  She says she, you know, not NATO, not
• 53:38
  the West, not a political opponent, she just
• 53:42
  a Ukrainian woman from her son.
• 53:45
  And it, you know, it was powerful.
• 53:46
  It was human.
• 53:47
  It was the most emotionally honest part of
• 53:50
  the whole interview.
• 53:52
  But if I was grading, if I was
• 53:56
  her professor or teacher, I'd give her an
• 53:58
  incomplete, you know, it's a, you didn't even
• 54:01
  finish.
• 54:02
  After 90 minutes of saying Zelensky's corrupt, manipulative,
• 54:06
  dictatorial, addicted to war.
• 54:08
  You know, he can't survive without it.
• 54:10
  You know, he's unwilling to hold elections, unwilling
• 54:13
  to be make a piece, unwilling to sacrifice
• 54:16
  his own country or sacrifice for his own
• 54:19
  country on his own.
• 54:21
  She addressed a final plea only to Putin.
• 54:24
  She didn't return to Zelensky and say, Vladimir
• 54:26
  Alexandrovich, stop using your people as a sandbag
• 54:30
  for your career.
• 54:32
  Stop killing them.
• 54:33
  You're Senator of the front, stop using the
• 54:35
  front as a, as a punishment for people
• 54:38
  you don't like and allowing your boosification guys
• 54:42
  to do the same.
• 54:43
  Stop hiding behind impossible demand.
• 54:46
  Stop pretending that NATO membership is a peace
• 54:49
  plan.
• 54:50
  Stop sending Slavs to fight Slavs while you
• 54:55
  defend yourself, hold up in your office or
• 54:59
  worse, touring out in Western Europe, telling different
• 55:03
  stories to different people.
• 55:04
  The truth is, truth is relative, right?
• 55:11
  It only depends upon, I mean, it changes
• 55:13
  depending on who you're talking to.
• 55:17
  So I don't fault her for appealing to
• 55:19
  Putin, not at all.
• 55:21
  Russia is a, you know, 50% of
• 55:25
  this war, you know, clearly Vladimir Vladimirovich could
• 55:30
  stop this if he said, ah, stop, we're
• 55:33
  done, we give up.
• 55:34
  Would that mean that Ukraine doesn't try to
• 55:36
  force him back into what they claim is
• 55:42
  the Russian proper border, the 1991 borders?
• 55:46
  Get out of the Kherson, get out of
• 55:48
  the Zaporizhia, get out of the Donbass regions
• 55:53
  of Lugansk, Donetsk, leave the Crimea.
• 55:57
  Is this ever going to be done?
• 55:59
  They say, no, we can't do that.
• 56:00
  Not going to happen.
• 56:02
  So I don't fault her for appealing to
• 56:04
  Putin.
• 56:05
  You know, Russia is fighting, Russian drones and
• 56:08
  artillery are killing people.
• 56:11
  Don't, don't, you know, she forgets the part
• 56:14
  that didn't mention it, that Ukrainians are doing
• 56:16
  the same thing.
• 56:17
  They aren't even fighting on the border.
• 56:19
  They're just bombing apartment buildings in Moscow or
• 56:25
  oil and gas facilities in Tatarstan or other
• 56:32
  places, you know, where they, where, where they're,
• 56:34
  you know, in Sevastopol or what was it,
• 56:38
  Tuapse, you know, those other cities or St.
• 56:42
  Petersburg.
• 56:43
  And it's outside the port cities, but a
• 56:45
  war doesn't continue because one side issues orders.
• 56:50
  You know, that's it.
• 56:50
  One side, a war continues because political systems
• 56:54
  on both sides have found reasons not to
• 56:57
  stop the war.
• 56:58
  If Mendel's own testimony is true, then Zelensky
• 57:02
  is not an innocent bystander in this strategy
• 57:05
  at all.
• 57:07
  He is a major engine.
• 57:10
  And this is where I believe Tucker Carlson
• 57:12
  was weak.
• 57:14
  Just like I thought he was weak in
• 57:15
  the Vladimir Putin interview.
• 57:17
  He missed some opportunities to dig deeper, to
• 57:21
  do what a journalist is supposed to do.
• 57:25
  He got the story and the story matters.
• 57:27
  You know, he's got the clicks on his
• 57:29
  TCN, Tucker Carlson network.
• 57:33
  And I honor him for doing that, by
• 57:35
  the way, you know, he could have, you
• 57:37
  know, just moved on and not, not done
• 57:40
  anything.
• 57:41
  He was at the height of his popularity.
• 57:43
  You know, YouTube isn't blocking him like they
• 57:46
  are Penchenko, the other Ukrainian woman who was
• 57:51
  telling the truth, you know, but Penchenko's blocked.
• 57:55
  Maybe Penchenko should come over and interview with
• 57:58
  Tucker Carlson.
• 58:00
  I'd try to find her myself.
• 58:02
  I don't know how good her English is,
• 58:05
  but I'd be happy to chat with her
• 58:06
  in Russian.
• 58:08
  He got the story and the story matters,
• 58:11
  did our Tucker Carlson, but he wasn't prepared
• 58:14
  enough on Ukraine.
• 58:16
  Not knowing what Kvartal 95, Kvartal 95 is
• 58:22
  a basic miss that he should have known.
• 58:26
  That's not an obscure footnote.
• 58:28
  This is the entertainment company and political cultural
• 58:31
  machine from which Zelensky was born.
• 58:35
  You know, it was like interviewing somebody about
• 58:37
  Ronald Reagan and not knowing that he was
• 58:39
  an actor in Hollywood, you know, so Tucker
• 58:43
  allowed the emotional frame to end on Putin
• 58:46
  alone, you know, to land only on him
• 58:49
  without saying anything about, you know, war comes
• 58:53
  in, you know, with at least two sides
• 58:57
  and in this one quite a few more.
• 59:01
  A stronger interview might have said, you just
• 59:04
  spent 90 minutes saying Zelensky is the obstacle
• 59:07
  to peace and why aren't you saying something
• 59:09
  that, you know, to him?
• 59:10
  Do you want to say something to the
• 59:12
  Green Goblin here?
• 59:14
  So that question is sitting on a table
• 59:17
  in front of you, wearing a, you know,
• 59:19
  red hat and waving its arms in the
• 59:21
  air and going, hey, ask me, ask me,
• 59:24
  you know, so, I don't know, Mendel's abrashenia
• 59:28
  to Putin wasn't wrong.
• 59:31
  It was, you know, she needed to abrashatsya
• 59:33
  to him.
• 59:34
  She needed to say something to him.
• 59:36
  You know, she wanted to.
• 59:38
  That was probably a key reason that she
• 59:42
  agreed to do the interview.
• 59:45
  Obviously, it was something they agreed upon in
• 59:47
  advance because at the end she asked for
• 59:50
  it.
• 59:51
  And so she got to say something to
• 59:53
  him.
• 59:53
  Why not say something similar to Zelensky?
• 59:57
  You're beating up on him.
• 1:00:00
  Is this a, is there something more to
• 1:00:03
  this story?
• 1:00:04
  Because why now?
• 1:00:07
  Why now?
• 1:00:09
  She's not been serving with, or on behalf
• 1:00:15
  of the Green Goblin since 2022, 2021, I'm
• 1:00:19
  sorry.
• 1:00:20
  She was gone even before this war started.
• 1:00:24
  Why is it only now, some five years
• 1:00:27
  later, that she is willing to say something?
• 1:00:30
  She says she's still in contact with a
• 1:00:33
  bunch of these people, but it just seems
• 1:00:35
  unfinished and it brings up some serious questions
• 1:00:43
  in my mind.
• 1:00:45
  So, it just seems incomplete, old Tucker Carlson.
• 1:00:51
  So, I don't know.
• 1:00:54
  I think that's it for what I wanted
• 1:00:57
  to say about her.
• 1:01:03
  It can help put another brick in the
• 1:01:06
  wall for a lot of us, you know.
• 1:01:09
  All in all, it's just another brick right
• 1:01:12
  in that wall that lets people know that
• 1:01:15
  we've been duped and scammed anyway, which is
• 1:01:18
  typical in American war efforts, especially those we
• 1:01:23
  don't want to admit to later.
• 1:01:25
  We haven't had a valid war effort in
• 1:01:29
  my lifetime, for God's sake.
• 1:01:32
  And everything has been a scam.
• 1:01:35
  You know, weapons of mass destruction, I swear.
• 1:01:37
  Oh, we're going to go over and take
• 1:01:39
  down them terrorizers.
• 1:01:41
  We're going over to Afghanistan, Bananistan, and we're
• 1:01:44
  going to get rid of them.
• 1:01:46
  And who's running the place now?
• 1:01:48
  The same people.
• 1:01:50
  You know, we haven't accomplished anything except spending
• 1:01:56
  butt tons of money.
• 1:01:58
  And I've got another chunk that I'd like
• 1:02:00
  to get to on put me in, coach.
• 1:02:05
  Put me in, coach.
• 1:02:06
  You knew that is Pete Hegseth.
• 1:02:08
  Put me in.
• 1:02:09
  I'm the JV quarterback.
• 1:02:11
  Can I play this week?
• 1:02:13
  Do you remember in Napoleon Dynamite, Uncle Rico?
• 1:02:18
  Uncle Rico, man, I bet I could.
• 1:02:20
  Coach would just put me in back in
• 1:02:22
  83, 84.
• 1:02:23
  We'd have gone to state.
• 1:02:25
  You know, the coach would have put me
• 1:02:26
  in.
• 1:02:27
  Maybe it's Uncle Rico.
• 1:02:28
  Maybe we should start calling Pete old Petey.
• 1:02:35
  We could call him Uncle Rico.
• 1:02:37
  But I like put me in, coach.
• 1:02:40
  Put me in.
• 1:02:40
  Maybe we should look for that song.
• 1:02:43
  Who was that?
• 1:02:46
  Put me in, coach.
• 1:02:50
  I'm ready to play.
• 1:02:55
  It's called center field, but I don't remember.
• 1:02:58
  John Fogarty.
• 1:02:59
  That's right.
• 1:03:01
  The old John Fogarty.
• 1:03:04
  I think we're going to listen to some
• 1:03:06
  put me in, coach.
• 1:03:08
  I think that would fit well right here.
• 1:03:10
  When we move on to Pete Hegseth, we're
• 1:03:13
  going to listen to put me in coach
• 1:03:15
  by Mr. Fogarty.
• 1:03:19
  Why?
• 1:03:20
  Because we like him just like Mickey Mouse.
• 1:03:24
  M-I-C, no, J-O-H-N
• 1:03:28
  -F-O-G-E-R-T-Y.
• 1:03:32
  Now, wasn't that exciting?
• 1:03:35
  That's on behalf of Pete Hegseth.
• 1:03:39
  Put me in, coach.
• 1:03:41
  Of course, that's baseball, and I always see
• 1:03:44
  Hegseth as the JV quarterback.
• 1:03:47
  So he's a JV guy just waiting for
• 1:03:50
  the varsity quarterback to break his ankle or
• 1:03:53
  something or get tackled hard.
• 1:03:55
  Come on, coach.
• 1:03:56
  Let me play.
• 1:03:58
  I'm Uncle Rico.
• 1:03:59
  Let me in.
• 1:04:00
  And so here's what put me in coach
• 1:04:02
  Pete had in store for us yesterday, a
• 1:04:06
  $1.5 trillion budget.
• 1:04:11
  Hegseth's budget testimony exposed him as JV for
• 1:04:16
  sure.
• 1:04:17
  He has Washington disease.
• 1:04:19
  He's confident tactically, but vague strategically.
• 1:04:29
  There's no strategy.
• 1:04:31
  There is no plan.
• 1:04:32
  The official 2027 budget request is quite real.
• 1:04:36
  The White House budget asked for $1.5
• 1:04:39
  trillion in total defense budgetary resource for 2027,
• 1:04:45
  which is an increase.
• 1:04:46
  Now, it wasn't even 900 in 2025.
• 1:04:52
  And it wasn't even 900.
• 1:04:56
  They asked for 200 billion for Iran.
• 1:05:01
  They had 1.5 trillion for 2026.
• 1:05:06
  And he's asked for 1.5 trillion for
• 1:05:09
  2027.
• 1:05:11
  And well, geez, we got to have it.
• 1:05:16
  We got to be ready, right?
• 1:05:18
  We need a 1.1 trillion in base
• 1:05:20
  discretionary authority, massive increase over 2026.
• 1:05:25
  The Department of War, well, because we call
• 1:05:27
  it the Department of War, it is no
• 1:05:32
  longer the Department of Defense.
• 1:05:35
  We aren't on defense.
• 1:05:36
  We're in war.
• 1:05:38
  We create our own war.
• 1:05:40
  If one doesn't exist, hell with it.
• 1:05:42
  We'll create our own, right?
• 1:05:43
  That's what we do.
• 1:05:45
  It's what we live for.
• 1:05:47
  If we are putting me in, please coach.
• 1:05:51
  The Department of War describes it as the
• 1:05:54
  largest request in history.
• 1:05:55
  And I'm famous.
• 1:05:57
  I get to have the largest budget in
• 1:05:59
  military history.
• 1:06:01
  In war history, it's intended to support service
• 1:06:05
  members, secure the homeland, modernize that equipment, rebuild
• 1:06:09
  the defense industrial base.
• 1:06:11
  That's what it's all about.
• 1:06:13
  It's about rebuilding the defense industry and raise
• 1:06:18
  military pay.
• 1:06:20
  But the hearing transcript, this was 20 minutes
• 1:06:23
  of BS.
• 1:06:25
  I mean, it was ridiculous watching this clown.
• 1:06:30
  The hearing transcript is, you know, Hegsis opens
• 1:06:33
  by thanking the committee.
• 1:06:34
  Okay, thank you, committee, for my chance to
• 1:06:37
  support Trump's historic $1.5 trillion 2027 budget.
• 1:06:42
  It was historic.
• 1:06:43
  And I'm the moron that gets to be
• 1:06:45
  up here trying to sell it to you.
• 1:06:47
  And he frames it as necessary for current
• 1:06:50
  and future fights that he's creating.
• 1:06:53
  Then the hearing is pretty revealing.
• 1:06:55
  Members ask how much the Iran war has
• 1:06:57
  cost.
• 1:06:59
  The answer moves from about $25 billion to
• 1:07:01
  $29 billion because of repair replacement.
• 1:07:04
  But he asked for $200 billion a couple
• 1:07:07
  of months ago.
• 1:07:08
  Makes no sense to me.
• 1:07:10
  You know, well, we need another $200 billion
• 1:07:11
  for Iran.
• 1:07:14
  That was in frigging February.
• 1:07:15
  No, early March.
• 1:07:18
  Oh, so they asked him, one of the
• 1:07:21
  guys says, well, oh, by the way, Mitch
• 1:07:24
  McConnell was up there.
• 1:07:25
  Oh, my God, you can barely understand a
• 1:07:27
  word he says now.
• 1:07:28
  He never enunciated in the first place.
• 1:07:30
  And now he can barely open his mouth.
• 1:07:33
  The dude is ancient.
• 1:07:34
  And, you know, I don't I'm not against
• 1:07:36
  people getting old.
• 1:07:37
  It happens to all of us.
• 1:07:38
  But you know, when you can no longer
• 1:07:40
  control your slurring in your words, I believe
• 1:07:42
  it's time to move along from the days
• 1:07:46
  that your daddy, you know, helped you buy
• 1:07:47
  pizzas to get elected to as high school
• 1:07:50
  president.
• 1:07:52
  You know, you invite people over for a
• 1:07:54
  pizza party that taught you valuable lesson, didn't
• 1:07:57
  it?
• 1:07:57
  And now you got some guy coming to
• 1:07:59
  squeeze 1.5 trillion out of you and
• 1:08:02
  you're all for it.
• 1:08:03
  Right.
• 1:08:04
  So somebody asked who is the party to
• 1:08:06
  the ceasefire and if there really are any
• 1:08:09
  parties to the ceasefire and what the ceasefire
• 1:08:11
  terms are and how Congress is supposed to
• 1:08:14
  know whether the war powers clock is being
• 1:08:17
  manipulated.
• 1:08:19
  Well, that was a pretty foggy answer because
• 1:08:21
  there was no answer.
• 1:08:22
  He's the human embodiment of this.
• 1:08:25
  You know, put me in, coach.
• 1:08:26
  I got a plan.
• 1:08:28
  We control the Straits of Hormuz, except we
• 1:08:31
  need hearings to explain why it's still not
• 1:08:36
  open if we control it.
• 1:08:39
  It's still is it open, but by God,
• 1:08:43
  we control it.
• 1:08:44
  And you give me this 1.5 trillion
• 1:08:45
  and I can show you.
• 1:08:48
  He repeatedly treats tactical damage as strategic success.
• 1:08:53
  We've destroyed their army.
• 1:08:54
  Then why in the hell can't you open
• 1:08:56
  the Straits of Hormuz?
• 1:08:58
  Which, by the way, were open before you
• 1:09:00
  ever attacked in the first place.
• 1:09:02
  Mr. War Man, Mr. Put me in the
• 1:09:04
  war, but not put me in the war
• 1:09:07
  from, you know, a building where I can
• 1:09:09
  slick back my hair and pretend that I'm
• 1:09:12
  a soldier.
• 1:09:13
  Right.
• 1:09:15
  Iran's Navy and defense industrial base have been
• 1:09:18
  degraded, but senators pressed him on the actual
• 1:09:21
  strategic problem.
• 1:09:23
  The Strait of Hormuz is blocked by Iran.
• 1:09:29
  Gas prices are hurting Americans.
• 1:09:32
  Iran can has enough capability to keep putting
• 1:09:36
  pressure on shipping, allegedly to blow holes in
• 1:09:39
  the sides of tankers and some say a
• 1:09:47
  couple of destroyers.
• 1:09:51
  Hegseth claims we control what goes in and
• 1:09:53
  out.
• 1:09:54
  Really?
• 1:09:57
  Questioning points out that reopening commercial traffic eludes
• 1:10:01
  the U.S. if Iran still retains cheap
• 1:10:04
  drones and fast boats.
• 1:10:06
  That is the difference between blowing things up
• 1:10:10
  and solving a problem.
• 1:10:12
  It's easy to blow crap up.
• 1:10:14
  Solving problems isn't a strong suit of this
• 1:10:18
  guy.
• 1:10:19
  He he he missed that lesson in school,
• 1:10:24
  you know, when when God was passing out
• 1:10:28
  brains, he thought he said trains and said,
• 1:10:30
  please don't give me a fast one, you
• 1:10:32
  know, and I don't want to go on
• 1:10:34
  those fast ones.
• 1:10:35
  We don't have any high speed rail in
• 1:10:37
  America anyway.
• 1:10:40
  Blowing things up is a tactical act, keeping
• 1:10:44
  oil flowing, preventing escalation and avoiding wider war
• 1:10:49
  while not bankrupting your own citizens.
• 1:10:53
  That requires a strategic mind.
• 1:10:58
  Now, a defender of put me in coach
• 1:11:01
  would say that the budget is necessary because
• 1:11:04
  the U.S. China, Russia, where Trumpster is
• 1:11:08
  today, you know, Iran, cyber threat, missile threat,
• 1:11:16
  hollowed out defense industrial base.
• 1:11:19
  And I suppose it's fair enough.
• 1:11:21
  We have sent everything off to Ukraine to
• 1:11:23
  be destroyed by the Russians.
• 1:11:25
  But the rebuttal is that a giant budget
• 1:11:27
  won't fix any of that.
• 1:11:29
  And it's not really strategic wisdom.
• 1:11:32
  It just proves that failure is very, very
• 1:11:35
  expensive.
• 1:11:37
  And we're certainly failing on many fronts.
• 1:11:42
  So especially financially, these trillions, it's not like
• 1:11:48
  they come back to us that easily, especially
• 1:11:51
  when the world is changing.
• 1:11:53
  So let's get to the Trump gaggle.
• 1:11:57
  You know, this blowhard confidence, you know, before
• 1:12:00
  you go to Beijing, you ever notice how
• 1:12:02
  quiet China is?
• 1:12:06
  Walk softly, carry big stick.
• 1:12:09
  Not in America, baby.
• 1:12:10
  We post everything.
• 1:12:13
  Everything gets posted.
• 1:12:15
  We put it out there.
• 1:12:16
  Trump's going to China talking like a man
• 1:12:18
  that's holding all the cards.
• 1:12:19
  But the fact suggests it's a little bit
• 1:12:23
  on the weaker.
• 1:12:24
  The Trump gaggle, you know, this.
• 1:12:26
  Did you see this yesterday?
• 1:12:27
  He had a before his flight left, he
• 1:12:30
  had a sitting outside or standing outside of
• 1:12:34
  the White House.
• 1:12:36
  There was he took a number of questions
• 1:12:37
  from a porter in this little gaggle.
• 1:12:40
  But he says the Ukraine war is getting
• 1:12:42
  very close to ending.
• 1:12:44
  He must have watched the the Zelensky proponent,
• 1:12:50
  Ms. Mendel, speaking about that with Tucker Carlson.
• 1:12:55
  He says he doesn't think Americans financials.
• 1:12:58
  He he one of the notable thing he
• 1:13:01
  said.
• 1:13:02
  Somebody asked him, you know, how Americans are
• 1:13:05
  are fortunate and what he goes.
• 1:13:07
  He says, I don't think about Americans financial
• 1:13:09
  situation when negotiating with Iran.
• 1:13:12
  Well, first of all, he's not negotiating with
• 1:13:14
  Iran.
• 1:13:15
  He's negotiating if with anybody with Pakistan, only
• 1:13:20
  that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
• 1:13:23
  So Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
• 1:13:24
  You didn't do this for nuclear weapon.
• 1:13:26
  It's not what you said in the beginning.
• 1:13:29
  And that is that is it changed, you
• 1:13:32
  know, according to Rubio.
• 1:13:36
  Israel was going.
• 1:13:38
  We saw it as an opportunity to take
• 1:13:40
  him out and push him over and they
• 1:13:42
  were going to collapse.
• 1:13:44
  So we joined in.
• 1:13:45
  Then it turned into nuclear weapons.
• 1:13:47
  If you blew up all their nuclear capability
• 1:13:50
  a year ago.
• 1:13:52
  Why would we have to do it again?
• 1:13:55
  Makes no sense.
• 1:13:56
  Anyway, he says he doesn't think about Americans
• 1:14:00
  financial situation at all when negotiation with when
• 1:14:04
  negotiating with Iran or about Iran.
• 1:14:07
  He doesn't need China's help with Iran because
• 1:14:10
  Iran has been defeated militarily and will either
• 1:14:15
  do the right thing or we will finish
• 1:14:18
  the job.
• 1:14:25
  Trump is headed over to Beijing and he's
• 1:14:27
  already there now saying he doesn't need China's
• 1:14:29
  help.
• 1:14:29
  Maybe that's true.
• 1:14:31
  But if China is buying Iranian oil, if
• 1:14:34
  China is backing Iran diplomatically, both of those
• 1:14:37
  are true.
• 1:14:38
  If Russia is supplying China, which they are,
• 1:14:41
  if Hormuz is disrupted, which it is, and
• 1:14:45
  American families are paying prices at the pump,
• 1:14:48
  I paid four dollars and 10 cents a
• 1:14:50
  gallon yesterday, then saying we don't need help
• 1:14:55
  from China is also not strategy.
• 1:14:58
  It's performative.
• 1:15:00
  It's you know, we're strong enough to get
• 1:15:02
  there.
• 1:15:03
  His comments on Starmer now, Starmer here, that
• 1:15:06
  poor boy is in trouble and he won't
• 1:15:08
  quit.
• 1:15:09
  He a hundred of his own labor party
• 1:15:11
  guys have asked him to bail and that's
• 1:15:14
  enough.
• 1:15:14
  But they haven't figured out on when they're
• 1:15:16
  going to force him out.
• 1:15:17
  I you know, a lot of people claim
• 1:15:18
  he'll be gone, you know, by the end
• 1:15:21
  of the week.
• 1:15:21
  We'll see what happens.
• 1:15:22
  But he's he's dug in.
• 1:15:24
  He says he ain't leaving.
• 1:15:25
  They've hired me to do a job.
• 1:15:27
  You know, Trump is telling Britain to open
• 1:15:29
  up the North Sea and says that Europe
• 1:15:31
  is being hurt by immigration and energy prices
• 1:15:34
  and energy choices that they have made.
• 1:15:37
  Well, part of that is getting their energy
• 1:15:38
  from America twice the rate it cost them
• 1:15:41
  to get it from Russia.
• 1:15:42
  That actually supports my argument that Europe is
• 1:15:46
  damaging itself through sanctions, ideology on energy and
• 1:15:50
  strategic dependence.
• 1:15:51
  Trump is absolutely right that Europe has windmilled
• 1:15:54
  itself into its own weakness.
• 1:15:57
  But this is the same guy who sees
• 1:15:59
  Europe's energy suicide that somehow can't see that
• 1:16:04
  a prolonged Iran conflict is going to be
• 1:16:06
  America's version of the same disease.
• 1:16:09
  Now, those who argue against what I'm saying
• 1:16:12
  as Trump heads over, and I'm very interested
• 1:16:14
  to see what actually happens when he's over
• 1:16:17
  there, if any sort of positive result comes
• 1:16:22
  out of this.
• 1:16:22
  When he was greeted at the airport, that
• 1:16:24
  was a good a good visit.
• 1:16:29
  It looked like I didn't see that Xi
• 1:16:32
  Jinping met him personally at the airport like
• 1:16:35
  he does when Vladimir Vladimirovich flies in.
• 1:16:40
  They meet each other at the airport.
• 1:16:42
  Those two are friends.
• 1:16:43
  I'm not so sure on the other side.
• 1:16:47
  I think it'll be a little bit more
• 1:16:48
  of a formal deal, although Trump went out
• 1:16:52
  of his way when Putin came to Alaska.
• 1:16:56
  Remember that?
• 1:16:58
  Those who, you know, the the and there's
• 1:17:01
  plenty of support for Trump.
• 1:17:02
  I don't mean to, you know, I'm skeptical.
• 1:17:05
  Let's put it.
• 1:17:06
  We aren't going to see anything come up,
• 1:17:08
  come up what he's doing in China.
• 1:17:09
  We're going to see anything come of what
• 1:17:10
  he's doing in Iran.
• 1:17:12
  Trump is posturing.
• 1:17:15
  Everybody says he postures a lot.
• 1:17:16
  This is the art of the deal.
• 1:17:18
  You know, strong when you're weak.
• 1:17:19
  Blah, blah, blah.
• 1:17:20
  Arts of Sun Tzu said blah, blah, blah.
• 1:17:23
  And that Trump knows all this stuff.
• 1:17:25
  Art of the deal, baby.
• 1:17:26
  Here we are.
• 1:17:27
  And so he's posturing before negotiations.
• 1:17:30
  Everything he does is posturing.
• 1:17:33
  And many people say to me and that
• 1:17:35
  I don't get it.
• 1:17:36
  Well, I prefer a negotiation, a negotiation method
• 1:17:41
  which is far closer to reality, not shooting
• 1:17:45
  for the moon or I'm sorry, shooting for
• 1:17:47
  the stars and settling for the moon.
• 1:17:50
  You know, that's OK.
• 1:17:53
  You know, I've watched this as a lawyer
• 1:17:56
  and otherwise in negotiations.
• 1:17:59
  I prefer the.
• 1:18:02
  Accurate portrayal of the facts when sitting at
• 1:18:07
  a negotiation table and.
• 1:18:11
  Perhaps sometimes things can be resolved because the
• 1:18:14
  facts are misunderstood on one side or the
• 1:18:16
  other, or some people don't know the facts
• 1:18:19
  on one side or the other in the
• 1:18:21
  mediation is the first time that they are
• 1:18:22
  confronted with the facts.
• 1:18:25
  But once confronted with the facts, oh, I
• 1:18:28
  see.
• 1:18:28
  And you have something to resolve.
• 1:18:30
  But it's if it's always posturing and you're
• 1:18:32
  always making shit up as you go along,
• 1:18:34
  then nobody has anything accurate to discuss.
• 1:18:42
  And therefore, the truth doesn't matter.
• 1:18:46
  The truth makes no difference.
• 1:18:48
  So perhaps he is posturing Trump in particular.
• 1:18:53
  Now, many presidents have done this before him
• 1:18:57
  where they posture Mr. Gorbachev tear down that
• 1:19:00
  wall.
• 1:19:00
  You know, that actually happened.
• 1:19:01
  But at the same time, presidents are known
• 1:19:05
  to speak tough before summits.
• 1:19:08
  The defeated militarily language may be meant to
• 1:19:11
  protect a leverage, not reality.
• 1:19:13
  I don't think they're defeated militarily.
• 1:19:15
  If they are, then why aren't you cruising
• 1:19:18
  into Hormuz with your big warships?
• 1:19:21
  Well, because, you know, they're going to get
• 1:19:22
  blown up.
• 1:19:23
  They're going to get attacked.
• 1:19:25
  So it's not describing reality.
• 1:19:27
  It's describing.
• 1:19:29
  You know, it's it's what do you call
• 1:19:32
  it?
• 1:19:33
  Red meat for the for the masses to
• 1:19:37
  keep them on board.
• 1:19:38
  But the danger is that inflated rhetoric traps
• 1:19:42
  him into escalation.
• 1:19:45
  And we've continued to escalate.
• 1:19:48
  You know, the only thing you have left
• 1:19:50
  is escalation.
• 1:19:52
  If they don't give up, we're going to
• 1:19:53
  finish the job.
• 1:19:54
  All right.
• 1:19:55
  Well, if you were going to finish the
• 1:19:56
  job, you would have done it already.
• 1:19:58
  You want another 20 year Afghanistan?
• 1:20:01
  Welcome to Iran.
• 1:20:03
  You know, I don't know, this inflated rhetoric
• 1:20:06
  could trap him into escalation, especially if the
• 1:20:11
  other side refuses to play its assigned role.
• 1:20:14
  And that is what's going on with the
• 1:20:16
  sanctions in China and Iran.
• 1:20:18
  And I'm curious to see how this plays
• 1:20:21
  out.
• 1:20:22
  So China isn't defending Iran.
• 1:20:25
  China's defending its own right to buy energy
• 1:20:27
  from whoever it wants without permission from Washington.
• 1:20:31
  So China, you know, Beijing has ordered entities
• 1:20:35
  inside of China not to comply with U
• 1:20:38
  .S. sanctions targeting Chinese refiners tied to Iranian
• 1:20:41
  crude, which creates a legal collision for banks
• 1:20:45
  and companies caught between the U.S. and
• 1:20:47
  China.
• 1:20:49
  I mean, that's accurate.
• 1:20:51
  That is absolutely true.
• 1:20:53
  Reuters says that China invoked its anti-sanctions
• 1:20:56
  law to counter U.S. blacklisting of Chinese
• 1:20:59
  refiners in the Treasury's own releases say that
• 1:21:02
  Chinese refiners are buying the majority of Iran's
• 1:21:05
  crude and that the Hengli Petrochemical plant in
• 1:21:08
  particular has purchased billions of dollars worth of
• 1:21:11
  Iranian petroleum products.
• 1:21:17
  And China has said, well, tough, you know,
• 1:21:20
  we're going to buy from who we want
• 1:21:22
  to buy from.
• 1:21:23
  And China isn't quite yet blowing up the
• 1:21:25
  dollar system, though.
• 1:21:26
  So some of these reports go and say,
• 1:21:28
  well, China's, you know, if they push this,
• 1:21:30
  the U.S. is just going to collapse.
• 1:21:31
  Not quite.
• 1:21:32
  We're not there.
• 1:21:34
  Not yet.
• 1:21:35
  China isn't blowing up the dollar system yet,
• 1:21:39
  but China is definitely testing a wall.
• 1:21:43
  Beijing is saying inside our jurisdiction, Washington sanctions
• 1:21:48
  do not automatically become law.
• 1:21:50
  And that is a major step all by
• 1:21:52
  itself.
• 1:21:53
  But it isn't yet a full financial divorce.
• 1:21:56
  They're testing the waters.
• 1:21:58
  They're not ready to do it yet.
• 1:21:59
  So Trump says he doesn't need China's help
• 1:22:02
  with Iran.
• 1:22:03
  OK, then why are you there?
• 1:22:05
  China is one of Iran's economic lifelines.
• 1:22:08
  China is one of Russia's strategic partners.
• 1:22:11
  China is the country Washington wants concessions from
• 1:22:14
  on trade.
• 1:22:15
  Taiwan, rare earths, nuclear forces, energy flow.
• 1:22:19
  All of these things are important and have
• 1:22:23
  some.
• 1:22:25
  I'm curious on each one of those things,
• 1:22:27
  what Xi Jinping and Donald Donovan, Donaldovich are
• 1:22:33
  going to be speaking about today.
• 1:22:36
  If you need concessions from somebody, you're not
• 1:22:40
  going to want to begin by pretending that
• 1:22:43
  you don't need them.
• 1:22:46
  I don't know.
• 1:22:47
  Maybe that's a maybe that's a style of
• 1:22:50
  negotiation.
• 1:22:52
  We'll see.
• 1:22:53
  There's supposedly special coverage coming up 10 p
• 1:22:57
  .m. Eastern Time tonight.
• 1:22:59
  I'm interested in seeing what happens.
• 1:23:02
  And we should all be paying attention because
• 1:23:05
  this is the first step where, you know,
• 1:23:13
  these political results, the U.S. pressure system
• 1:23:20
  is real.
• 1:23:22
  You know, the U.S. Iran is under
• 1:23:24
  severe military and economic pressure.
• 1:23:27
  Russia pays real cost for sanctions and war.
• 1:23:30
  China isn't yet willing to throw its major
• 1:23:33
  banks openly into a collision course with the
• 1:23:36
  United States.
• 1:23:37
  Ukraine's corruption investigations show the system is capable
• 1:23:40
  of correction, but just as capable of collapse.
• 1:23:45
  And Hegg says $1.5 trillion budget could
• 1:23:48
  possibly be defended as an answer to a
• 1:23:51
  more dangerous world, not just my belief that
• 1:23:54
  it's lunacy.
• 1:23:55
  It's not a stupid argument.
• 1:23:57
  It has to be acknowledged, you know, that
• 1:23:59
  there could be realistic parts for this.
• 1:24:02
  But pressure hasn't achieved the political results promised
• 1:24:05
  so far, not in Iran, not in Ukraine.
• 1:24:09
  Russia has not collapsed.
• 1:24:10
  Iran hasn't capitulated.
• 1:24:12
  China isn't backing down from buying Iranian oil.
• 1:24:15
  India hasn't backed off of buying Russian petroleum
• 1:24:19
  products.
• 1:24:20
  Ukraine isn't a clean Western democracy.
• 1:24:22
  Europe has taken blowback from Russia's sanctions regime
• 1:24:25
  more powerfully than Russia itself, and Washington is
• 1:24:29
  asking for a $1.5 trillion war budget
• 1:24:32
  while pretending that every problem can be solved
• 1:24:35
  with more force, more debt, more sanctions, and
• 1:24:39
  more speeches from a put me in coach,
• 1:24:42
  I'm ready to play.
• 1:24:44
  You know, tell you what, put me in
• 1:24:48
  coach, I'm reasonable, would be far more palatable
• 1:24:52
  to me.
• 1:24:53
  And these people are not reasonable.
• 1:24:56
  These people are dramatic, they are extreme, all
• 1:25:00
  the way across the board.
• 1:25:02
  And it seems like the more extreme you
• 1:25:04
  are, the more likely people are to listen
• 1:25:09
  to you, not to ignore you, or to
• 1:25:13
  downplay what you're, you know, where they don't
• 1:25:16
  pick up what you're putting down.
• 1:25:18
  I appreciate you being on International Flavor this
• 1:25:21
  morning.
• 1:25:22
  Today is Wednesday, longest day in Damn Radio
• 1:25:25
  history, each and every week, coming to you
• 1:25:29
  live from DamnRadio.com, forward slash live, we
• 1:25:33
  like it.
• 1:25:34
  Join us again tomorrow for the last day
• 1:25:38
  of the week of International Flavor.
• 1:25:40
  And hopefully, we'll have some news on Donald
• 1:25:43
  Javich and what he is doing over in
• 1:25:46
  China, as some people call it.
• 1:25:49
  Thanks for joining us.
• 1:25:51
  Hope you have a wonderful Mid-Missouri day.