Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Trump Meets Xi as Rubio Becomes Marco Liu and the Zelensky Myth Cracks Further

Transcript

Trump Meets Xi as Rubio Becomes Marco Liu and the Zelensky Myth Cracks Further · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, good morning, welcome.
• 0:01
  This is DAMn Radio continuing on in the
• 0:05
  voice of Samuel Trapp and International Flavor, coming
• 0:10
  to you live just about every morning, except
• 0:13
  when I don't feel like it, from the
• 0:16
  Lake Ozark real estate of the art studio.
• 0:19
  You can listen live at in past tense
• 0:29
  to things that have already been recorded.
• 0:32
  Should you choose to go to damnradio.com
• 0:35
  forward slash podcast or even to internationalflavor.com
• 0:40
  and feel free, I often ignore, but feel
• 0:46
  free to phone in 573-746-8020 and
• 0:51
  discuss the events of the day or anything
• 0:53
  that flips your switch.
• 0:57
  How about that?
• 0:58
  Something flips your switch and you want to
• 1:00
  chat about it?
• 1:00
  Give me a call.
• 1:02
  I got some funny and some not so
• 1:05
  funny things to, oh, I don't know, opine
• 1:10
  about today in this world of trouble and
• 1:15
  gloom when passing ruffians can shout at old
• 1:19
  women.
• 1:20
  I think it is sometimes entertaining to focus
• 1:25
  on the funnier parts of life.
• 1:29
  And there's one, a very serious Marco Rubio
• 1:33
  deal that, I don't know, what's that guy
• 1:37
  I listen to?
• 1:38
  I listen to a guy named Alex Christoforou
• 1:41
  and he's always coming from Nicosia, Cyprus, or
• 1:45
  he's coming from Greek islands every once in
• 1:48
  a while.
• 1:49
  He's from Moscow.
• 1:50
  He goes to Moskva.
• 1:52
  And I was interviewed on his show once.
• 1:55
  That was entertaining.
• 1:56
  I enjoyed it.
• 1:57
  And I happened to be in Kazan at
• 1:59
  the time, but I listened to him.
• 2:02
  And what does he have?
• 2:03
  He calls a portion of his show the
• 2:07
  clown world.
• 2:08
  And he gets to the clown world at
• 2:10
  the end of it.
• 2:11
  And I think he's got a pretty good
• 2:14
  show.
• 2:14
  I like listening to his opinions on the
• 2:17
  events of the day.
• 2:19
  Alex Christoforou, he is half of the Duran,
• 2:22
  which is another Alex, Alex Mercoulis, I believe
• 2:26
  is how you say his last name.
• 2:28
  He's British.
• 2:29
  And at least he lives in Britain, far
• 2:32
  as I'm aware.
• 2:32
  And I was interviewed by those two gentlemen
• 2:35
  whilst I was in Kazan, Russia, back a
• 2:40
  couple of years ago.
• 2:43
  At any rate, what I thought I would
• 2:46
  do was start with some fallout, see if
• 2:51
  there's any fallout.
• 2:53
  Because what I've been waiting for is fallout
• 2:57
  from Yulia Mendo and her Tucker Carlson, I
• 3:04
  don't know, expose, I suppose you could call
• 3:09
  it, when she was interviewed by him and
• 3:17
  shined the light upon the old Green Goblin.
• 3:23
  And so I wanted to talk a little
• 3:25
  bit about that, see if there were any
• 3:27
  real effects that came up from it, share
• 3:29
  some news with you in that respect.
• 3:32
  There has been, you know, Yermak is being
• 3:36
  corruption linked.
• 3:38
  And yeah, like that's a surprise to anybody.
• 3:41
  I mean, seriously, Yermak, come on, that guy
• 3:45
  as corrupt as the day is long, at
• 3:48
  least as far as anyone from the outside
• 3:51
  looking in.
• 3:52
  And how do you get things done in
• 3:55
  the country of Ukraine?
• 3:56
  You better be corrupt or you ain't getting
• 3:58
  anything done.
• 3:59
  That's the system over there.
• 4:01
  You got to learn how to grease the
• 4:04
  palm, as it were.
• 4:06
  And trust me, those palms over there are
• 4:09
  quite greasy.
• 4:10
  And we got plenty of slobbering going on
• 4:13
  over here on the western half of the
• 4:17
  good guy club as, you know, they like
• 4:21
  to think of it.
• 4:22
  So what I did was I went out
• 4:25
  and I was actually looking for two things.
• 4:27
  I wanted to see if there's any fallout
• 4:29
  on Ukraine over the past two days since
• 4:34
  her interview came out.
• 4:39
  And what events or interesting, I don't know
• 4:45
  what situations or resulting slants
• 4:55
  point of view come from the old Trumpster
• 4:59
  heading off to his summit with in China
• 5:04
  for the Trump-Xi summit.
• 5:08
  And a lot of people got me thinking
• 5:11
  yesterday afternoon, sent me some some ex post
• 5:14
  on there that, you know, I'm how do
• 5:20
  I want to say this and try to
• 5:21
  sound diplomatic about it?
• 5:23
  There's a lot of people who think who
• 5:26
  are putting rose colored glasses on something trying
• 5:32
  to be accomplished here.
• 5:34
  I don't see it that way.
• 5:35
  I think there are too many personalities involved,
• 5:38
  too many huge egos involved, which is always
• 5:43
  a problem.
• 5:44
  And I'll give a little analysis of that
• 5:47
  toward the end.
• 5:47
  But for now, let's look at some resulting
• 5:51
  news perspectives from when I when I show
• 5:56
  prep, I try to get it from three,
• 5:58
  four points of view and sometimes a little
• 6:01
  more.
• 6:01
  It depends if there's a particular country like
• 6:04
  if if if Ukraine is on the table,
• 6:06
  I'll go through the Kiev Independent or a
• 6:09
  couple of papers over there in the in
• 6:12
  Kiev and try to get what the political
• 6:14
  crowd in Kiev is saying.
• 6:16
  My main focus is usually has to be
• 6:20
  U.S. news, number one, Russian news, number
• 6:24
  two, especially Moscow.
• 6:27
  And I try to, you know, listen to
• 6:29
  Zakharova and on once a week and get
• 6:32
  kind of a prep for the week.
• 6:35
  It's actually at the end of the week.
• 6:36
  So by the time my show is done,
• 6:38
  it's the end of the week.
• 6:39
  And she's given more of a summary in
• 6:40
  past tense.
• 6:41
  And I tend to take it for the
• 6:43
  day and then solid fuel on Sunday evenings
• 6:45
  and try to get the solid fuel fangle
• 6:49
  from the from the Russian side.
• 6:50
  But I also follow a lot of Russian
• 6:53
  news channels, either either not Ruska more in
• 6:57
  English.
• 6:57
  And it gives a little bit.
• 7:01
  But I also go into India and I
• 7:05
  either I forget her name, Palki Sharma.
• 7:09
  I think her name is I like listening
• 7:11
  to she has a a daily a daily
• 7:14
  program on YouTube.
• 7:16
  That's an hour, hour and a half.
• 7:18
  And I like the Indian perspective.
• 7:21
  And then Al Jazeera English.
• 7:23
  I'll pick one of the ones either from
• 7:25
  Qatar or from Saudi Arabia, UAE, some someplace
• 7:31
  a little more Western leaning that you'll listen
• 7:35
  to Al Jazeera, you know, Al Jazeera Arabic,
• 7:40
  you know, obviously, I'm unfamiliar with my choices
• 7:44
  when I went to the Defense Language Institute
• 7:46
  were Arabic or Russian.
• 7:49
  And I opted for the Russian, although in
• 7:52
  today's world, you'd have probably been better off
• 7:54
  with Arabic.
• 7:56
  And but the bonus was the same for
• 7:59
  either one.
• 8:01
  You got an eight thousand dollar bonus to
• 8:03
  learn the language.
• 8:04
  If you, you know, you and back then,
• 8:07
  that's double your salary basically for a year.
• 8:10
  I mean, we didn't make any money back
• 8:12
  then and just poor.
• 8:14
  So eight thousand bucks all at once was
• 8:15
  a big freaking deal.
• 8:17
  And then when I reenlisted, I got 20
• 8:19
  and hell, they almost paid me 40 to
• 8:21
  get out under the Clinton monster trying to
• 8:25
  get rid of him because I made rank
• 8:27
  real quick and they were getting rid of
• 8:28
  higher rank and paper, higher, higher ranking people.
• 8:31
  But I missed it by a week, naturally.
• 8:33
  Anyway, that's not the point of today's show
• 8:35
  is, you know, the screwings of the past.
• 8:39
  I like to look at the points of
• 8:40
  view of three, four different places.
• 8:42
  So what I did was go and have
• 8:45
  a look at what Al Jazeera is saying,
• 8:48
  what Times of India is saying or Palki
• 8:50
  Sharma, what Russia is saying, what the US
• 8:52
  is saying and what China is saying.
• 8:55
  So I added in and I usually go
• 8:57
  China as well.
• 8:58
  But they're how do I want to put
• 9:00
  this?
• 9:03
  Chinese news and China in general isn't in
• 9:06
  the business of.
• 9:09
  Of.
• 9:11
  I don't know what posting everything on X,
• 9:15
  you know, posting every putting everything out on
• 9:18
  true social and advertising, you know, the positivity
• 9:23
  of it all and selling you something, they
• 9:27
  might ultimately be selling you something as well,
• 9:30
  but it doesn't change.
• 9:32
  They aren't trying to get your buy in.
• 9:35
  They're just acting.
• 9:37
  And frankly, I'd respect Western politics more if
• 9:41
  that's what they were doing.
• 9:43
  You know, quit trying to sell me crap
• 9:45
  and tell me that you're acting in my
• 9:48
  interests.
• 9:49
  You'd probably be better off being silent, truthfully,
• 9:53
  you know, no matter what you think of
• 9:56
  China over the last 50, 100 years.
• 9:58
  And that's too far.
• 9:59
  Hundreds too far.
• 10:00
  Call it 50.
• 10:01
  Call it from the 60s, 70s.
• 10:04
  Call it from when Nixon went to China,
• 10:07
  right?
• 10:07
  That's 70 or 50 years, 1970s sometime when
• 10:11
  he went over and they started real change,
• 10:14
  right?
• 10:16
  50 years.
• 10:19
  You know, over here we advertise how, oh,
• 10:21
  geez, they're, you know, sending all our manufacturing
• 10:23
  over China, which we were.
• 10:25
  China just did what they were doing the
• 10:28
  whole time.
• 10:28
  They did what they were doing.
• 10:30
  And they've done what they were doing.
• 10:33
  They aren't asking permission.
• 10:35
  You know, they aren't advertising.
• 10:38
  You know, you could consider them the evil
• 10:40
  empire.
• 10:40
  Fine.
• 10:41
  But we're over here trying to convince people
• 10:45
  that they have a say in what's going
• 10:49
  on.
• 10:50
  China's not doing that.
• 10:51
  You know what?
• 10:53
  We're acting on behalf of the country.
• 10:55
  That's our job.
• 10:56
  You know, it's what we do.
• 10:57
  You may agree.
• 10:58
  You may disagree.
• 10:59
  Fact is, we're in charge.
• 11:00
  We're doing this.
• 11:01
  And we believe it's best for the long
• 11:03
  term for the people.
• 11:04
  It's a different cultural bent, different cultural focus.
• 11:10
  Same in India.
• 11:12
  Same in Russia.
• 11:13
  They think differently.
• 11:15
  We're not trying to convince people that we
• 11:17
  got their best interests at heart.
• 11:19
  Although, ultimately, they may.
• 11:23
  I think, anyway, in looking at this, I
• 11:26
  wanted to see if there was, you know,
• 11:29
  Palki Sharma from First Post and Vantage.
• 11:32
  She didn't have anything real fresh about what
• 11:34
  they did have.
• 11:35
  But I did go through Times of India,
• 11:37
  Hindustan Times, Reuters, AP, U.S. Reporting, Al
• 11:41
  Jazeera, RT, Global Times, Xinhua, and the Chinese
• 11:44
  Foreign Ministry readouts.
• 11:46
  And the bottom line is this.
• 11:50
  This is not a world changing summit.
• 11:54
  There's nothing grand that is going to change
• 11:58
  the world because Donald Trump deigned to go
• 12:01
  to China and visit Xi Jinping.
• 12:05
  They could do something.
• 12:08
  But the focus is different.
• 12:10
  But it's more like it might possibly be
• 12:13
  an attempt to stabilize the world.
• 12:16
  And I would honor that approach.
• 12:18
  At least it appears like it might be
• 12:20
  an attempt to create that sort of thing.
• 12:23
  It appears to be built around a public
• 12:25
  posture of warmth and cooperation.
• 12:27
  And I tried to go back and find
• 12:29
  out if Xi Jinping, you know, showed up
• 12:32
  on the red carpet.
• 12:33
  Didn't see that.
• 12:34
  Maybe somebody else has it.
• 12:36
  But he does for Putin.
• 12:38
  And he didn't for the old Trumpster.
• 12:41
  But underneath of all of this warmth, cooperation,
• 12:46
  and everything they're trying to do, including sneaking
• 12:48
  Marco Rubio into the country.
• 12:51
  That's hilarious, by the way.
• 12:53
  We'll get to that in a minute.
• 12:54
  Is a hard geopolitical arithmetic.
• 12:59
  Taiwan, Iran, Hormuz, rare earths, AI chips, agriculture,
• 13:09
  fertilizer, Boeing, oil, sanctions, and over it all,
• 13:16
  the question of whether the United States and
• 13:20
  China can manage a global rivalry without stumbling
• 13:26
  into yet another conflict.
• 13:30
  Now, that's all I care about.
• 13:34
  I don't want another conflict.
• 13:36
  I don't need to be friends with China.
• 13:39
  Okay?
• 13:40
  I don't want to be enemies with China.
• 13:42
  I think it's bullshit.
• 13:43
  But I don't need to have them as
• 13:46
  friends.
• 13:47
  You know, I'd like to be able to
• 13:48
  go there and travel there safely and without
• 13:50
  worrying about, you know, I don't know, getting
• 13:52
  captured and have my head cut off, you
• 13:54
  know, like I would in some other country,
• 13:56
  you know, because we're who we are, you
• 14:01
  know.
• 14:01
  And I'm not who we are.
• 14:03
  I'm who I am.
• 14:04
  And you're who you are.
• 14:05
  But I should have the God-given right
• 14:09
  to see the world.
• 14:10
  And I can't see the world because fools
• 14:12
  and idiots are sitting on too many triggers.
• 14:16
  So the world didn't change overnight, friends and
• 14:19
  neighbors, because Donald Trump went to Beijing and
• 14:22
  brought along Marco Liu.
• 14:24
  But the meeting, it tells us about who
• 14:27
  understands the moment and who is still performing
• 14:30
  for cameras.
• 14:31
  Xi Jinping came to define the boundaries of
• 14:34
  the new relationship.
• 14:37
  Donald Trump came to sell the appearance of
• 14:39
  victory.
• 14:40
  That's all that matters is he's got to
• 14:42
  show that he won.
• 14:43
  And Russia wasn't in the room.
• 14:45
  But Russia's energy, weapons and far better partnership
• 14:50
  with China than what America has.
• 14:53
  That was in the room.
• 14:55
  That was sitting at the table.
• 14:57
  And India wasn't in the room either.
• 15:00
  But Narendra Modi's India is one of the
• 15:03
  countries most affected, most affected by whether Washington
• 15:07
  and Beijing fight, bargain or divide the field.
• 15:12
  That's basically the big picture.
• 15:16
  So Trump's there from May 13th.
• 15:18
  We're halfway through to the 15th state visit,
• 15:21
  his first China visit as a U.S.
• 15:24
  president in nine years.
• 15:27
  He was welcomed by Vice President Hang Jing
• 15:30
  at the airport before meeting Xi at the
• 15:33
  Great Hall of the People.
• 15:37
  The Global Times emphasized the symbolism of a
• 15:40
  U.S. presidential visit after a decade and
• 15:43
  presented the summit as an opportunity for China
• 15:46
  and the U.S. to manage their differences
• 15:49
  through equality, respect and mutual benefit.
• 15:56
  The formal Chinese readout says that Xi and
• 15:59
  Trump held talks on May 14 at the
• 16:01
  Great Hall of the People.
• 16:02
  Xi framed the meeting around whether China and
• 16:04
  the can avoid the Thucydides trap, manage global
• 16:11
  turbulence and create a new paradigm for major
• 16:14
  country relations.
• 16:16
  They say that Xi and Trump agreed on
• 16:18
  a new vision for a constructive China-
• 16:22
  U.S. relationship of strategic stability with cooperation
• 16:26
  as a mainstay, competition kept within limits, differences
• 16:31
  made manageable and peace becoming more predictable.
• 16:38
  Now watch this phrase, keep an eye on
• 16:41
  this, constructive strategic stability.
• 16:45
  That isn't Trump language.
• 16:46
  Trump doesn't talk like that.
• 16:48
  You know, Trump's going to talk about, we
• 16:50
  kicked your butt and sit down and shut
• 16:53
  up.
• 16:54
  We'll keep on doing it.
• 16:56
  And so this constructive strategic stability is not
• 17:00
  a Trumpism, not remotely.
• 17:02
  That isn't Trump language.
• 17:05
  That's Beijing language.
• 17:07
  That is multi-polarity language.
• 17:10
  It means China wants the U.S. to
• 17:13
  treat it as a peer power, not, as
• 17:18
  always, a misbehaving subordinate.
• 17:22
  And I don't believe anybody's gonna, gonna, I
• 17:27
  don't think enough has been put on the
• 17:29
  optics of all of this, in my humble
• 17:32
  opinion.
• 17:33
  Xi Jinping was clear.
• 17:34
  The foreign ministry says that Xi told Trump
• 17:37
  that Taiwan is the most important issue in
• 17:40
  China-U.S. relations, and that if it
• 17:43
  is handled properly, the relationship will stay stable.
• 17:46
  But if handled improperly, the two countries could
• 17:50
  have clashes or even conflict.
• 17:53
  He also said, Taiwan independence and cross-strait
• 17:59
  peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water.
• 18:05
  That's a quote.
• 18:07
  Taiwan independence and cross-strait peace are irreconcilable
• 18:14
  as, just like fire and water.
• 18:17
  Reuters reports the same core point and notes
• 18:19
  that the U.S. summary of the talks
• 18:21
  made no mention of Taiwan, while China readout
• 18:25
  puts Taiwan front and center.
• 18:27
  Reuters reports that the U.S. remains legally
• 18:30
  bound to provide Taiwan with defensive means, despite
• 18:33
  having no formal diplomatic ties with Taipei.
• 18:38
  China has had a one-China policy forever.
• 18:43
  So the Russian side of that little dispute
• 18:46
  is cleaner and more direct.
• 18:48
  Xi warned Trump, this is what the Russians
• 18:50
  say, she warned Trump that a standoff over
• 18:53
  Taiwan would put the relationship in a very
• 18:55
  dangerous situation.
• 18:57
  And RT highlights Taiwan as a single most
• 19:00
  important issue in bilateral relations, just like China
• 19:03
  did.
• 19:04
  The American readout, all we want to talk
• 19:07
  about is Hormuz oil trade business deals.
• 19:10
  China readout wants Taiwan front page.
• 19:13
  What does that tell you?
• 19:14
  Washington wants deliverables.
• 19:17
  Beijing wants boundaries.
• 19:18
  Trump's making a deal and, you know, there's
• 19:24
  no deal if it comes to Taiwan.
• 19:27
  So let's go to Iran, Hormuz and oil.
• 19:31
  Reuters says the U.S. summary focuses heavily
• 19:34
  on shared desire to reopen the Strait of
• 19:37
  Hormuz, which is effectively closed or heavily disrupted
• 19:42
  because of the U.S.'s war in Iran.
• 19:46
  And on Xi's apparent interest in buying American
• 19:49
  oil to reduce China's dependence on Middle East
• 19:53
  supplies.
• 19:54
  Reuters says the leaders discuss Middle East, Ukraine
• 19:57
  and the Korean Peninsula.
• 20:02
  Hmm, a Pakistani framing is also useful here
• 20:06
  because it puts the Iran war at the
• 20:08
  center.
• 20:09
  Dawn says that the Iran war trade tension
• 20:13
  in Taiwan are looming over the summit and
• 20:17
  notes that Trump arrived while the U.S.
• 20:19
  is embroiled in a months long war with
• 20:22
  Iran that has rattled energy markets and has
• 20:25
  cost Washington more than 29 billion.
• 20:28
  I think it's cost a hell of a
• 20:30
  lot more than that.
• 20:31
  I think that put me in coach like
• 20:33
  we talked yesterday, needing the 1.5 trillion
• 20:36
  and needing the, needing the, you know, more,
• 20:43
  more.
• 20:45
  Do you remember?
• 20:47
  That's who we should equate Hegseth to.
• 20:50
  We should put him in.
• 20:50
  My hair, my hair.
• 20:52
  When George Clooney is talking about it.
• 20:54
  Oh, brother, where art thou?
• 20:55
  My hair, my hair.
• 20:57
  Let's get a little smell him in our
• 20:59
  hair and he could be put me in
• 21:01
  coach.
• 21:01
  You know, those two could be the same
• 21:04
  guy.
• 21:05
  We don't want Hegseth worried about his hair.
• 21:08
  And so the pre-summit explainer from the
• 21:11
  Russian side said the talks were expected to
• 21:14
  resolve around Iran, AI rivalry, Taiwan trade frictions,
• 21:20
  and noted that U.S. officials expected Trump
• 21:23
  to pressure China over their purchase of Iranian
• 21:27
  oil and dual use component supplies of Tehran.
• 21:34
  So Trump says he doesn't need China's help
• 21:37
  with Iran.
• 21:38
  All right, fine.
• 21:39
  But China buys Iranian oil.
• 21:41
  China has leverage with Tehran.
• 21:43
  China sits next to Russia in the broad
• 21:46
  anti-sanction architecture.
• 21:48
  So saying you don't need China's help is
• 21:50
  like saying you don't need the bank while
• 21:53
  asking for a loan.
• 21:55
  You know, that means you get Guido in
• 21:57
  a, in a leather jacket.
• 22:00
  You know what I mean?
• 22:01
  Issuing you note that comes due, you know,
• 22:04
  whether it's money or your left testicle in,
• 22:09
  in, in one year.
• 22:11
  Don't miss your payments.
• 22:13
  It's not the bank, though.
• 22:16
  There will be no bankruptcy here, folks.
• 22:19
  Al Jazeera says that more than a dozen
• 22:21
  U.S. business leaders joined Trump in China.
• 22:25
  Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Goldman Sachs, David Solomon,
• 22:29
  Blackrock, good old Blackrock Fink, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman,
• 22:35
  Boeing's Kelly Ortberg, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and representatives
• 22:41
  from Meda, Cargill, Visa, Cisco, Qualcomm, Micron, GE
• 22:44
  Aerospace, Illumina, and MasterCard.
• 22:48
  Al Jazeera frames the CEOs as having direct
• 22:51
  business interests in better relations with China, especially
• 22:55
  given China's role in technology, supply chains, and
• 22:59
  rare earth processing, that they are holding over
• 23:05
  Western heads even as we speak.
• 23:10
  So Reuters reports that the summit included CEOs
• 23:14
  seeking progress with China, and Washington is looking
• 23:17
  to sell China Boeing aircraft, farm goods, and
• 23:22
  energy, but Beijing once eased U.S. tension
• 23:25
  on chip-making and advanced semiconductors.
• 23:29
  I think they're holding a lot of cards.
• 23:31
  So this wasn't just a diplomatic summit.
• 23:34
  This is a boardroom with, you know, carrying
• 23:36
  two flags, Musk, Cook, Nvidia, Boeing, Blackrock.
• 23:39
  That's not decorative.
• 23:41
  That's the American delegation for real.
• 23:45
  You know, Trump, you know, he brought these
• 23:48
  businessmen because he needs something out of this.
• 23:51
  He needs a deal, and he wants to
• 23:55
  be the guy to claim to have made
• 23:57
  those deals.
• 23:59
  We got a trillion dollars.
• 24:00
  When I flew to Middle East, we came
• 24:03
  back with a trillion dollars.
• 24:04
  He wants to do the exact same thing.
• 24:07
  That's all that matters to him, is the
• 24:09
  sales when he comes back.
• 24:11
  Okay.
• 24:12
  So Xi Jinping received them because China wants
• 24:16
  the recognition.
• 24:17
  They want to be the indispensable party, and
• 24:19
  by the way, they already know they are.
• 24:22
  So let's get to the comic opera of
• 24:26
  Marco Liu slash Marco Rubio.
• 24:32
  Let's see.
• 24:34
  Rubio and the comic opera sanctions problem is
• 24:38
  what I've chosen to call this.
• 24:40
  Al Jazeera has a funny and useful side
• 24:43
  angle when you read it.
• 24:45
  Marco Rubio is under Chinese sanctions, so he
• 24:50
  can't go to China, right?
• 24:53
  And he traveled under a different Chinese transliteration
• 24:58
  of his name.
• 24:59
  So he's not Marco Rubio.
• 25:01
  He's Marco Liu, and this allowed Beijing to
• 25:05
  receive him without formally lifting sanctions on him.
• 25:11
  Al Jazeera calls it a linguistic workaround and
• 25:15
  a diplomatic protocol maneuver, and that leads me
• 25:18
  to a small story of my own from
• 25:20
  when I had a diplomatic passport, and the
• 25:22
  idiots at the State Department didn't get my
• 25:25
  visa correct, and I'm on my trip to
• 25:27
  Russia.
• 25:27
  When they gave me my visa, they got
• 25:30
  me a one-time and not a two
• 25:36
  -time, and I had already used it, you
• 25:38
  know, a month or two before when I
• 25:41
  went over there for, I don't know, equipment
• 25:42
  verification or something.
• 25:44
  So I'm headed back, and it's a team
• 25:46
  of six of us.
• 25:47
  We fly into, I can't remember if it
• 25:49
  was Domodedovo or Sheremetyevo, but we flew in,
• 25:53
  and we're getting in line, and there's a
• 25:55
  separate line for diplomats, and me and Tom,
• 25:57
  my buddy, were in the aircraft.
• 26:02
  Delta flew to Moscow at the time, and
• 26:05
  we were on a Delta flight from Frankfurt
• 26:07
  to Moscow, and we were getting ready to,
• 26:12
  you know, we're descending, and we're getting ready
• 26:15
  looking at the plane, so I had about
• 26:17
  15 minutes to figure this out, and I
• 26:19
  look at my visa, and I noticed that
• 26:21
  my visa says, and I was like, wait,
• 26:25
  wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 26:27
  I've already used this.
• 26:28
  I can't get in.
• 26:30
  You know, I'm suddenly flying into Moscow with
• 26:33
  a diplomatic passport, and I can't get in,
• 26:36
  and I'm in charge of the team, except,
• 26:38
  I mean, there's an officer there, but he
• 26:40
  don't speak Russian, and so basically, I'm in
• 26:42
  charge of the team, and so it's my
• 26:46
  team, 10 people.
• 26:47
  We're going there, and he's a major.
• 26:52
  Major Lindsey.
• 26:53
  He was awesome, dude, and he was an
• 26:55
  African-American guy.
• 26:56
  Cool as hell, and we fly in, and
• 26:59
  I didn't tell him.
• 27:00
  I didn't tell him we had problems.
• 27:02
  He was a guy.
• 27:03
  Back in those days, the Russians wouldn't talk
• 27:05
  to, they never gave him the time of
• 27:08
  day.
• 27:08
  He was not a person to them, and
• 27:10
  sad to say, but true, and I always
• 27:13
  wondered why, you know, well, it doesn't matter.
• 27:16
  Back to the story, so I fly in
• 27:18
  into Moscow at the time, and the only
• 27:22
  people that knew I had a one-time
• 27:23
  visa were me and Tom, and I said,
• 27:26
  Tom, you go first.
• 27:27
  You take everybody through, including Major Lindsey.
• 27:29
  Take him through and get everybody through.
• 27:31
  Get all the stuff.
• 27:32
  I'll bring up the rear, and he says,
• 27:34
  what if they don't let you in?
• 27:35
  I said, well, they don't let me in.
• 27:36
  I'm going back to Frankfurt, and you're in
• 27:38
  charge, you know, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna
• 27:40
  try to swing this.
• 27:41
  How much cash you got on you?
• 27:43
  And we pulled together some cash, put it
• 27:46
  in my pocket, and we go up through
• 27:48
  this deal.
• 27:51
  I, okay, now I've never done this.
• 27:53
  I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
• 27:54
  I feel like a fraud completely, and I
• 27:57
  slid a hundred bucks into my passport, and,
• 28:01
  you know, put it on the visa page.
• 28:04
  A hundred bucks, which, what does that mean?
• 28:07
  It means I've recognized the problem that I
• 28:10
  don't have a visa, and I'm on a
• 28:11
  diplomatic freaking mission that we don't need any
• 28:14
  problems at the time.
• 28:15
  Around that time, there were a couple of
• 28:17
  very bad incidents that had occurred between, with
• 28:20
  US, US military folks coming over and really
• 28:26
  engaging in very poor behavior, and reflecting very
• 28:31
  poorly on America at the time, and what
• 28:34
  was going on.
• 28:35
  You know, guys were going over there and
• 28:37
  picking up hookers, getting wives, you know, chasing
• 28:40
  girls at the universities.
• 28:42
  I mean, it was crazy times, and I,
• 28:45
  we didn't need any more problems, and I
• 28:47
  didn't want it to happen on my watch.
• 28:49
  So, what, I go up, and I slid
• 28:52
  this hundred bucks in, and this young kid
• 28:55
  from the security service is standing there flipping
• 28:58
  through, and he notices that everybody's gone, and
• 29:01
  he looks up at me, and he gives
• 29:03
  me this look.
• 29:04
  He gave me this pretty sly look, and
• 29:10
  he hands me back this hundred dollars, and
• 29:13
  he goes, you left this in your passport,
• 29:16
  and that hundred bucks to him was, you
• 29:17
  know, several months pay at the time, and
• 29:20
  he left it in there, and I was
• 29:23
  like, he goes, you know, you got to
• 29:26
  turn around.
• 29:27
  He goes, you got to, you can't come
• 29:29
  in.
• 29:29
  He says, there's a lounge over there.
• 29:31
  You can go wait for the flight back
• 29:33
  to Frankfurt.
• 29:34
  You're going to have to get a visa,
• 29:35
  and I said, well, who can I talk
• 29:37
  to?
• 29:37
  He said, there's somebody I can talk to,
• 29:39
  and he, he says, I said, who's in,
• 29:42
  you know, who's in charge of security at
• 29:43
  the airport, and he, I said, I'm on
• 29:45
  a diplomatic deal.
• 29:47
  I can't do this.
• 29:47
  Meanwhile, Major Lindsey's freaking out down the other
• 29:50
  end, and Tom's like trying to collect him
• 29:52
  off.
• 29:52
  Sam's just taking care of some stuff, and
• 29:54
  they pull me off, and they take me
• 29:56
  up into the upper, upper floor of the,
• 30:00
  of the airport up there.
• 30:01
  I think it was Sheremetyevo now that I
• 30:04
  come to think about it, and so I
• 30:06
  was at Sheremetyevo Airport, which now is freaking
• 30:08
  fantastic.
• 30:09
  Back then, it was a pretty much a
• 30:11
  shit show, but it's a beautiful airport now,
• 30:14
  outstanding, and, but back then, I go up
• 30:17
  into these cheesy old 1960s offices, and there
• 30:21
  are these two fantastically attractive young Russian girls,
• 30:25
  and hell, I couldn't have been 30.
• 30:27
  I think I was maybe 26, 27 at
• 30:31
  the time.
• 30:32
  I was young, and I was in a
• 30:35
  position I didn't deserve.
• 30:38
  Well, it's not true.
• 30:39
  I deserved it.
• 30:40
  I was doing very well, and, and I
• 30:42
  get up there, and I'm in front of
• 30:43
  these, in front of these girls, and they're
• 30:46
  flirting with me, and they're, they're speaking in
• 30:48
  Russian to me, and, oh, he's cute, you
• 30:50
  know, and they didn't know I spoke Russian.
• 30:51
  Well, I started speaking Russian to them, and
• 30:53
  so their boss comes out, and he's this
• 30:55
  big, dumpy-looking middle-aged dude, and he
• 30:58
  comes out, and he goes, look, you know,
• 31:01
  they told me what's going on with you,
• 31:02
  and we can't help you, and I said,
• 31:04
  man, you got to help, and the two
• 31:05
  girls start going, you know, I'd been there
• 31:07
  about 10 minutes chatting them up, and they'd
• 31:10
  go, oh, come on, see if you can
• 31:11
  help him.
• 31:11
  Take him, take him in the office, see
• 31:13
  what you can work out, and so we
• 31:15
  go back into his office, and we're sitting
• 31:18
  there talking, he goes, look, I really, I
• 31:19
  can't help you, you know, you have a
• 31:21
  diplomatic passport.
• 31:22
  I said, look, here's, and I'm thinking, I'm,
• 31:26
  you know, I didn't have much time to
• 31:27
  put this scam together, and I said to
• 31:30
  him, I said, listen, in America, I said,
• 31:34
  here, here's what we have, and I have
• 31:35
  no idea if we have this or not,
• 31:37
  but I knew there were procedures, but I
• 31:39
  didn't know exactly what they were, and I
• 31:40
  said, I said, here's what we have in
• 31:42
  America.
• 31:42
  In America, if something happened, and one of
• 31:44
  your guys came in, and their visa was
• 31:46
  a mistake, it wasn't their fault, and you
• 31:48
  know, everybody knew I was coming, geez, we
• 31:50
  had to announce this a month ago, you
• 31:52
  know, that I was coming, and so surely,
• 31:55
  I mean, I'm supposed to be here, this
• 31:56
  is administrative, I said, so in America, you
• 31:59
  have this visa process, and by the way,
• 32:02
  I just did this last week, I just
• 32:03
  told you about it, I got a new
• 32:04
  passport, same day, processed on Monday, this past
• 32:08
  week, and because of my passport, I couldn't
• 32:10
  get a Russian visa, same old crap, so
• 32:12
  there I was in the airport, and I
• 32:15
  go in, and I'm sitting here chatting with
• 32:19
  this guy, I go, look, in America, you
• 32:21
  know, the State Department or the State Department
• 32:24
  will issue you a visa, and if a
• 32:26
  Russian guy came in, and he didn't, and
• 32:28
  he, I said, the normal procedure is, he
• 32:31
  informs people a month in advance, sends in
• 32:33
  his application, and all of his paperwork, and
• 32:37
  he pays $100, and you know, they'll format
• 32:41
  his visa, and they'll send it back in
• 32:44
  30 days, six weeks, but there are also
• 32:49
  times when you have an emergency, and you've
• 32:52
  got to go sooner, and I said, and
• 32:53
  there's a 10-day version, and you can
• 32:55
  take that 10-day version, and for more
• 32:57
  money, for paying $250, and I'm making these
• 33:02
  numbers up today, I don't, I remember the
• 33:04
  amount I paid him, for $250, you can
• 33:08
  send it out, and you could get a
• 33:09
  visa in two weeks, you know, you can
• 33:12
  have it in two weeks, and you can
• 33:13
  do it, and you know, then there's a
• 33:15
  procedure for getting it in three days, and
• 33:18
  that three-day procedure costs you $500, and
• 33:21
  you got to go walk it through, and
• 33:23
  you got to do things, but if you
• 33:24
  need something right now, you got to have
• 33:26
  it today, that costs you $750, and you
• 33:30
  got to walk it through, surely, surely, a
• 33:34
  country as important as the Soviet Union has
• 33:36
  a similar process, and you know, meanwhile, I'm
• 33:40
  pulling out this wad of $100 bills, and
• 33:44
  I said, surely, you have some sort of
• 33:46
  process, and the guy goes, he goes, he
• 33:49
  looks at me for, and all this is
• 33:50
  in Russian, by the way, and he looks
• 33:52
  at me, and he goes, he said, your
• 33:53
  Russian is very good, and I said, well,
• 33:56
  you know, thank you, it better be, you
• 33:57
  know, and he goes, he goes, well, you
• 34:01
  know, in Russia, he said, here in the
• 34:04
  Soviet Union, we have a very similar sort
• 34:06
  of process, I said, oh really, in the
• 34:09
  end, that's, that's amazing, it's just fantastic, it's
• 34:14
  amazing, and he goes, and I said, well,
• 34:17
  I said, I've got $750 here, and you
• 34:20
  know, that's, that's what it costs, oh, surprise,
• 34:23
  surprise, and I gave him $750, I get
• 34:26
  a stamp on my passport after he walked
• 34:28
  me back down to the, to the same
• 34:30
  kid that wouldn't take my $100, I wonder
• 34:33
  if that kid ever got any of the
• 34:34
  $100, I doubt it, or any of the
• 34:36
  $750, but, but that $750 was a life
• 34:39
  changer for people back then, and, and I'm
• 34:42
  not saying that's a positive story necessarily, I
• 34:45
  was just trying to not get in trouble
• 34:47
  by going back, and by the way, after
• 34:50
  I came through and told Lindsay about that,
• 34:55
  Major Lindsay, his name was Lawrence, but after,
• 34:58
  after I told him about that, he, he
• 35:02
  said, well, I'll make sure you get that
• 35:03
  money back, I said, that's good, because it's
• 35:06
  mine and Tom's, you know, we kind of
• 35:08
  want that money back, and he says, man,
• 35:11
  I don't know how you pulled that off,
• 35:12
  I said, I don't know how I pulled
• 35:13
  it off, I just didn't want to go
• 35:15
  back, he goes, man, you did me a
• 35:16
  favor, he goes, we're, we were supposed to
• 35:19
  be there, I don't remember, it was, it
• 35:21
  was a couple, three months we were going
• 35:24
  to be there, and I, you know, I
• 35:25
  could have fixed it, gone back to Frankfurt,
• 35:28
  gone through the U.S. consulate there and
• 35:30
  got something, or maybe even gone to the
• 35:32
  consulate in Moscow, but Russia wouldn't let me
• 35:34
  in to do it, you know, no way
• 35:37
  that's happening, not, not with the shit that
• 35:38
  had been going on, anyway, Marco Rubio, Marco
• 35:41
  Liu had a serious problem, sorry to digress
• 35:44
  with that, that horror story of the 90s
• 35:47
  for you, from, from personal experience, but, but
• 35:51
  that's, every word of it's true, and at
• 35:54
  any rate, the, the major issue was Marco
• 35:57
  Rubio is under sanctions, so Marco Rubio can't
• 36:01
  go to China, now how do you have
• 36:03
  a secretary of state, a guy who's supposed
• 36:05
  to tour the planet, and make deals on
• 36:08
  behalf, and he can't go to friggin' China,
• 36:11
  so first of all, that's a hilarious joke
• 36:13
  in and of itself, and second is that
• 36:16
  Al Jazeera, you know, Arabic news, stated that,
• 36:22
  you know, under sanctions, he, he traveled under
• 36:25
  a different name, they changed his name, the
• 36:27
  Chinese government changed his name, just a, just
• 36:31
  a letter changed his name to Marco Liu,
• 36:34
  which allowed Beijing to receive him without lifting
• 36:36
  sanctions, so it's a linguistic workaround, kind of
• 36:39
  like my, you know, structural, cultural workaround that
• 36:44
  I had to do way back in the
• 36:46
  day, and that's a small item, but it,
• 36:48
  but it's diplomacy that shows how it really
• 36:52
  works, every country has rules, everybody has pride
• 36:57
  in their country, the kid who blocked me
• 36:59
  at the, you know, you're not bribing me
• 37:02
  for a hundred bucks, you know, I may
• 37:04
  get a hundred bucks, but what if I
• 37:06
  lose this job, this is a killer freaking
• 37:08
  job, you know, I ain't losing that because
• 37:10
  you, your government didn't get you a visa,
• 37:14
  you know, that's a proud kid that ain't,
• 37:16
  you know, he, probably my age at the
• 37:18
  time, I was a kid for sure, but
• 37:20
  everybody has this pride, everybody has this pride
• 37:23
  in their own country, and, you know, everybody
• 37:25
  has to find a workaround when you're a
• 37:27
  big boy and you need for a meeting
• 37:29
  to happen, you try to come up with
• 37:31
  an, I mean, what was I doing, I
• 37:32
  was negotiating, and it cost me $750 to
• 37:36
  negotiate a cessation of my own personal hostility
• 37:41
  and, and make the U.S. look less
• 37:45
  idiotic, you know, I mean, how foolish is
• 37:48
  it that we don't, we don't even have
• 37:49
  a visa department for the State Department that
• 37:53
  works and, and sends people over, now, you
• 37:56
  could say that I didn't, you know, I
• 37:58
  should have checked my documents before we left,
• 38:00
  but we had a whole, whole team for
• 38:01
  that, they wouldn't give you your documents until
• 38:04
  they were correct, and we didn't have to
• 38:06
  look at them, we picked up our diplomatic
• 38:08
  passport, you know, it was our passport, but
• 38:12
  we picked up our visa documents, we went
• 38:14
  in and the State Department did all that,
• 38:16
  that's who we worked for, so diplomacy and
• 38:18
  miniature is each one of us, and we
• 38:20
  go over there, and you see the ugly
• 38:22
  American being an idiot, being foolish in other
• 38:25
  countries, it happens, trust me, and so Rubio's
• 38:28
  been sanctioned, but we'll just change his name
• 38:31
  to Marco Liu, and he gets to walk
• 38:32
  through the door, so much for absolutism, right,
• 38:36
  when the meeting matters, even sanctions can get
• 38:40
  a, you know, Marco Rubio's nickname is Marco
• 38:42
  Liu, Marco Liu, let's see if I, I
• 38:47
  think I had some more details on that
• 38:49
  story, and how it happened, because I wanted
• 38:52
  to talk about his certain sanctions, where is
• 38:58
  he, because I pulled the story, and it's
• 39:02
  pretty funny, let's see, I think I pulled
• 39:06
  the whole story, the name change farce, the
• 39:10
  Al Jazeera piece is, it says that China
• 39:13
  let Rubio enter using a different Chinese transliteration
• 39:19
  of his surname, the deeper story is even
• 39:23
  better, China did not literally change Marco Rubio's
• 39:26
  English name, all it changed was the Chinese
• 39:30
  character used to render part of Rubio phonetically,
• 39:36
  the older Chinese rendering was apparently tied to
• 39:41
  the sanctions designation, the newer rendering can give
• 39:45
  Beijing a face-saving technical path to say
• 39:48
  the old anti-China senator is sanctioned, the
• 39:53
  old anti-China senator has been sanctioned, but
• 39:57
  the current secretary of state accompanying the president
• 39:59
  is being received, so the Washington Post reported
• 40:03
  that the new name plate using a different
• 40:05
  Chinese spelling, and that Chinese state media and
• 40:08
  official records began using the new character after
• 40:11
  Trump named Rubio the secretary of state, the
• 40:14
  Chinese foreign ministry already laid the groundwork back
• 40:18
  in March, when asked whether Rubio sanctions would
• 40:20
  affect a possible Chinese visit, spokesman Lin Zhuan
• 40:23
  said the sanctions targeted Rubio's words and deeds
• 40:27
  while he was a US senator, more negotiation,
• 40:31
  that's the key bureaucratic door they left open,
• 40:34
  the sanctions remain in theory, but his role
• 40:37
  has changed, so Rubio is sanctioned, Rubio enters
• 40:42
  China, China says ah, but that was senator
• 40:45
  Rubio, this is secretary Rubio, and besides look
• 40:49
  the Chinese character is different, it's spelled different,
• 40:53
  that's not law, this is the management of
• 40:56
  a face, it's also exactly how great powers
• 40:59
  behave, when they need to climb down without
• 41:01
  admitting they did so, the Washington Post adds
• 41:04
  a detail, the older Chinese character was more
• 41:07
  neutral, while the newer character carries more meaning
• 41:10
  along the lines of rash, rude, or clumsy,
• 41:14
  so Beijing may have let him in quietly,
• 41:17
  giving him a Chinese name that amounts to
• 41:19
  Marco Clumsio, Marco Clumsio, and that may be
• 41:25
  petty, but it's a bully playground out there,
• 41:30
  and this is just a playground that has
• 41:34
  silverware, tableware, instead of
• 41:43
  Walmart 89 cents when you buy four, so
• 41:51
  it exposes something a little larger as well,
• 41:54
  sanctions are theater anyway, until power requires some
• 41:59
  sort of flexibility, China sanctioned Rubio when he
• 42:02
  was allowed anti-China senator over Xinhuang, Hong
• 42:07
  Kong, and human rights, the Guardian says that
• 42:09
  Rubio was sanctioned twice as a senator, was
• 42:13
  key author of legislation targeting China over forced
• 42:17
  labor, but now Rubio is secretary of state,
• 42:20
  Trump is visiting Xi Jinping, talk about trade
• 42:22
  and Iran are on the table, and suddenly
• 42:24
  China discovers a magic phonetic solution, so that's
• 42:29
  not weakness, it's pragmatism, China wanted the summit,
• 42:32
  China wanted to preserve dignity, China didn't want
• 42:35
  to formally revoke sanctions, so it used language
• 42:39
  as a diplomatic escape hatch, so the counter
• 42:43
  argument to that would be that transliteration of
• 42:46
  foreign names aren't always standardized, and the Guardian
• 42:49
  says that western figures have multiple Chinese names,
• 42:52
  and even Trump has more than one Chinese
• 42:55
  name, so Beijing can plausibly say this wasn't
• 42:58
  a fake legal trip, but a routine naming
• 43:01
  variation and an effort at diplomacy, but the
• 43:04
  argument's the same, Chinese characters are phonetic approximations
• 43:09
  when they render foreign names, anyway, same in
• 43:13
  Russian by the way, you know, am I
• 43:15
  or am I, and does the P have
• 43:19
  two Ps, or is it like it does
• 43:21
  in English, or is it just because it
• 43:23
  doesn't sound that way when you say it
• 43:25
  in Russian, sounds different, and when I was
• 43:29
  one of my visas several years ago, I
• 43:33
  was going over to Russia, and I forget
• 43:35
  which airport I was flying into, I think
• 43:37
  that one was Kazan also in Tatarstan, and
• 43:41
  I was flying in, and we were going
• 43:42
  to go to Bashkortostan, and when I was
• 43:46
  there, my visa at the time was incorrect,
• 43:51
  and so if you ever listen to a
• 43:54
  female name like Vladimir Putin, his
• 44:03
  son would be, if his name was Samuel,
• 44:08
  it'd be Samuel Vladimirovich, the second, your middle
• 44:13
  name is your father's first name, okay, and
• 44:16
  so he would be, and Vladimir Vladimirovich means
• 44:21
  that he's Vladimir, the son of Vladimir, Vladimir,
• 44:24
  son of Vladimir Putin, and he's from the
• 44:27
  family of Putin, and so, but for women,
• 44:30
  it'd be whatever her name, call it Svetlana,
• 44:34
  and Svetlana would be, if it was the
• 44:37
  daughter of Vladimir, it'd be Svetlana Vladimirovna, because
• 44:43
  it has to end with an A, it
• 44:44
  wouldn't be Vladimirovich, which it would be for
• 44:47
  a man, it'd be Vladimirovna, and so the
• 44:52
  funny part was, another, this time from the
• 44:58
  Russian consulate, when I went to get my
• 45:01
  visa, and they put it in my passport,
• 45:04
  and this was a one-time visa entry
• 45:06
  in 2020, maybe during COVID, I can't remember,
• 45:10
  I think it was during COVID, might have
• 45:13
  been the year after, and I went over
• 45:16
  to Russia during that time, and got my
• 45:21
  visa, drove to Washington, D.C., oh, this
• 45:24
  is the time I drove to Washington, D
• 45:25
  .C. and saw the concertina wire surrounding the
• 45:29
  Capitol and the Supreme Court, it was horrifying,
• 45:33
  seriously, from a guy who lived in Washington,
• 45:35
  D.C. as long as I did, and
• 45:37
  it was just ugly and nasty, and I
• 45:40
  went to the Russian consulate to get a
• 45:43
  visa, and then I didn't notice, never paid
• 45:45
  attention, until I was filing my trip report
• 45:49
  to go there, you have to let, when
• 45:52
  you buy a ticket, you gotta have a
• 45:54
  visa to buy the ticket, because they don't
• 45:57
  want you to buy a ticket when you
• 45:58
  don't have the visa, maybe that was corrected
• 46:00
  because of me years before, getting a ticket,
• 46:04
  but that was all government done anyway, but
• 46:07
  when I flew in, my name was on
• 46:10
  my visa, was Samuel, instead of Edwardovich, which
• 46:16
  by the way, my father's name was Clifford,
• 46:18
  so if anything, I'd be Samuel Cliffordovich, and
• 46:22
  instead I was Samuel Edward, Edward being my
• 46:25
  middle name, but that name doesn't mean anything,
• 46:28
  your parents picks one, everybody has the same
• 46:30
  middle name, if dad was, if you have
• 46:32
  three kids in the family in Russia, and
• 46:34
  all of them are the same, are the
• 46:36
  son of the same father, they would all
• 46:38
  be Vladimirovich, you know, or Vladimirovna, it would
• 46:42
  be what it would be, if it's a
• 46:43
  girl or a boy, anyway, my visa says
• 46:46
  Samuel Edwardovna, I was, I wasn't even Edwardovich,
• 46:52
  I was Edwardovna, they took my middle name
• 46:55
  and transliterated it as if it was a
• 46:57
  female middle name, and boy, we had some
• 47:00
  serious laughs over that, you know, made sure
• 47:03
  to show it everywhere, and even the border
• 47:06
  patrol checked me out, started laughing, Edwardovna, and
• 47:11
  I was like, yeah, I know, it's a
• 47:13
  welcome to the Russian consulate, I guess, so
• 47:17
  those type of things do occur in international
• 47:20
  travel, and so, you know, changing Marco Rubio
• 47:26
  to Marco Clumsio is kind of a, you
• 47:29
  know, good stuff, so Marco Rubio didn't defeat
• 47:33
  the Chinese sanctions against him, he got transliterated,
• 47:37
  he's transliterated all the way around them, Beijing
• 47:40
  didn't surrender, Washington didn't win, China didn't win,
• 47:44
  everybody just agreed to pretend that Senator Rubio
• 47:48
  and Secretary Rubio are actually two different animals,
• 47:52
  and he's not Marco Edwardovna, he's Marco Clumsio,
• 47:59
  which may be the most honest thing diplomacy
• 48:03
  produces in that entire debacle over there, and
• 48:08
  this is what great powers do when pride
• 48:11
  and necessity collide, they don't apologize, they don't
• 48:14
  reverse themselves, they change the spelling and move
• 48:17
  on, or they pay a $750 visa fee
• 48:22
  and move on, the Marco Rubio name change
• 48:26
  episode is more than funny, it just proves
• 48:29
  that sanctions are sacred right up until the
• 48:32
  time they become inconvenient, and they have, at
• 48:39
  least for today's purposes, they may put them
• 48:42
  back in there, and later on we shall
• 48:45
  see, right?
• 48:48
  Let's see, I think that I want to
• 48:53
  talk about a little bit more about these
• 48:57
  people, you know, in these business delegation, and
• 49:03
  Trump, right, all these important people, and, you
• 49:09
  know, and then talk about, you know, why
• 49:14
  they are there from other points of view.
• 49:18
  India, meanwhile, Palki Sharma and company and Times
• 49:22
  of India, their live coverage highlighted a lot
• 49:26
  of the same major points from a different
• 49:28
  perspective, the talks lasted two hours.
• 49:32
  Now, I would, when Vladimir Putin goes over
• 49:38
  there, I tell you what, these guys meet
• 49:41
  together from morning until night, they eat together,
• 49:43
  they do everything together, they are together, when
• 49:47
  Xi Jinping goes to Russia, he stays at
• 49:50
  Vladimir Putin's house out in, oh geez, the
• 49:55
  place that they bombed, the Ukrainians bombed last
• 49:57
  year, I forget the area it's in outside
• 50:00
  of Moscow, but it's private residence, private presidential
• 50:03
  palace, and he stays there with them, they
• 50:06
  dine together a couple, three times a day,
• 50:09
  they have meetings that go on for the
• 50:12
  whole day when they are there on both
• 50:15
  ways, and they spend two, three days a
• 50:17
  piece there each year, developing this thing, developing
• 50:22
  what they got.
• 50:23
  India talks about Modi not being in the
• 50:26
  room, Trump and Xi Jinping talking about the
• 50:30
  Middle East, Ukraine, Korean Peninsula, China presents four
• 50:34
  red lines, Taiwan, democracy and human rights, China's
• 50:39
  development right, Xi Jinping told the U.S.
• 50:42
  business leaders that China's doors can open wider,
• 50:46
  Hindustan Times gives an Indian angle, a guy
• 50:52
  named Hapimond Jacob, argues that India benefits from
• 50:56
  U.S. China rivalry, and India has benefited
• 50:59
  for the past decade because both sides had
• 51:03
  reasons to court New Delhi, but major U
• 51:07
  .S. China accommodations between each other will reduce
• 51:12
  India's strategic premium, he argues that outright U
• 51:16
  .S. China confrontation would be very bad for
• 51:19
  India because it creates a choice-forcing pressure
• 51:22
  related to energy, banking, and trade, and what
• 51:27
  India really wants is inclusion in the world
• 51:29
  market and a managed rivalry, and so Xi
• 51:35
  Jinping, Trump, and Putin allegedly can change the
• 51:39
  world, I think that's only partly right, I
• 51:41
  always add Modi because India is a swing
• 51:45
  civilization state, they are larger than all, they're
• 51:51
  larger than China, they're developing very quickly, their
• 51:56
  technology is above, I mean why do you
• 51:59
  think Microsoft buys all the people from India
• 52:02
  to answer your phones, and I'm sorry to
• 52:05
  pick on Microsoft, but anybody, they all go
• 52:08
  to India and buy these people for a
• 52:11
  tenth of what it would cost here, and
• 52:13
  they create an entire phone service from over
• 52:18
  there, Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping can change
• 52:22
  the world, I think that's only partly right,
• 52:25
  you know, I think you got to add
• 52:27
  Modi, they're a buyer of Russian oil, they're
• 52:31
  a rival of China, they have an inter
• 52:34
  -border conflict with China that they're resolving well,
• 52:38
  they're a partner of the U.S., but
• 52:40
  they're also a BRICS participant, they're the voice
• 52:44
  of the global south, they're the biggest of
• 52:47
  all these developing countries, and they're still independent
• 52:51
  enough through Jaishankar to irritate everybody, well Modi
• 52:57
  too, so people that say that Xi Jinping,
• 53:01
  Trump, and Putin are changing the world, they're
• 53:03
  not wrong, but I think they're missing a
• 53:06
  fourth chair, Narendra Modi isn't sitting in Beijing
• 53:10
  today, but India is living between all three
• 53:14
  of these people, India wants American technology, Russian
• 53:18
  energy, dreams of Chinese stability, and strategic independence,
• 53:26
  so whatever circus comes out of this, there's
• 53:30
  going to be four elephants in the ring,
• 53:33
  and not, you know, two, you're not going
• 53:37
  to get this done, the major players, China,
• 53:41
  U.S., Pakistan, right next door, Pakistan, Pakistan
• 53:48
  Dawn, the paper, that's, Beijing isn't just a
• 53:51
  bilateral U.S.-China story, it's tied to Iran,
• 53:55
  to the west, and I mean the immediate
• 53:58
  west, which is Pakistan, which is Iran, which
• 54:01
  is the Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, all those
• 54:08
  countries that I talk about in that area,
• 54:10
  Mongolia, the power of Siberia too, coming through
• 54:16
  Mongolia is going to be a huge cross
• 54:19
  -land increase in gas and oil technology availability,
• 54:28
  energy availability for Russia, and for China, and
• 54:33
  frankly for India and Mongolia, as it goes
• 54:35
  through for the whole area, so everything is
• 54:40
  tied to Iran, energy markets, wider Asian balance
• 54:44
  in the most populous area of the world,
• 54:48
  and the fastest developing, and by the way,
• 54:51
  extremely beautiful, and cultural, and fantastic, and modern
• 54:56
  by the way, and I'm hoping to get
• 54:59
  to India this year for the for the
• 55:02
  BRICS summit coming up in September, and I'm
• 55:08
  exploring that even as we speak, and they
• 55:11
  want wider Asian balance, that whole area, and
• 55:15
  the Pakistani reporters also say that she's Taiwan
• 55:20
  warning in Trump's optimistic public language that U
• 55:24
  .S.-China relationships could become better than ever before,
• 55:29
  Pakistan's interest is obvious, China is Pakistan's strategic
• 55:33
  partner, U.S. is a military financial actor,
• 55:37
  they're still living in the past, the U
• 55:39
  .S., we dictate, we militarily and financially enforce,
• 55:46
  Iran is next door, and India is next
• 55:49
  door to Pakistan, so for Pakistan, none of
• 55:52
  this is abstract, China is a strategic patron,
• 55:56
  Iran is its neighbor, and by the way,
• 55:59
  they've had serious impact from lack of availability
• 56:03
  of oil, and the price is going up,
• 56:07
  and shortages, and what do you call it
• 56:10
  when they limit how much you can take?
• 56:14
  A quota, all you can take is a
• 56:16
  small amount of gas per day, per week,
• 56:19
  whatever it is.
• 56:22
  India's arrival to Pakistan, Pakistan is, you know,
• 56:26
  every, how many hotels here in America end
• 56:30
  in the last name Khan?
• 56:31
  All the hotel owners, or Patel, they're all
• 56:36
  owned by a Khan, I mean seriously, and
• 56:39
  I don't mean that badly, I don't care,
• 56:41
  it's good for them, they come over here,
• 56:45
  they buy hotels, and they own hotels, and
• 56:47
  all of them are owned by people from
• 56:50
  India, from Pakistan, and they're good people, you
• 56:53
  know, they're Muslim, which is okay by me,
• 56:55
  I don't have a problem with that, you
• 56:57
  just have to understand it when you're working
• 56:59
  with them.
• 57:00
  India's arrival to Pakistan, Washington is the power
• 57:04
  that can make life easier, miserable for the
• 57:07
  whole world, so Islamabad is watching Beijing the
• 57:11
  way a chess player, you know, watches and
• 57:15
  hopes that nobody knocks all the pieces off
• 57:19
  the board, you know, and they don't even
• 57:20
  get a play.
• 57:21
  Russia, Putin's not there, but he sure as
• 57:24
  hell isn't absent either.
• 57:26
  Russia is not physically in the room, but
• 57:28
  Russia is the most important absent party.
• 57:32
  The summit is happening after the US attack
• 57:34
  on Iran, after Chinese sanctions pushed back over
• 57:38
  Iranian oil, because remember, China says it's illegal
• 57:42
  to have these Iranian oil purchasers inside of
• 57:48
  China not able to buy, you know, from
• 57:51
  who they feel like they want to, and
• 57:53
  Russia and China are continuing to develop their
• 57:55
  strategic partnership, so the framing from the Russian
• 57:58
  side is that the visit sits at the
• 58:00
  crossroads defined by Iran war, friction and trade,
• 58:04
  rival in technology, and Taiwan.
• 58:07
  Washington tries to pressure Iran, squeeze China for
• 58:11
  energy access, keep Ukraine alive, we need that
• 58:14
  to be out there, and preserve this sanctions
• 58:18
  BS, meanwhile wanting Marco Columbo to be forgiven
• 58:26
  his indiscretions as a young senator, anti-Chinese
• 58:30
  in nature.
• 58:32
  Instead, Trump has to go to Beijing asking
• 58:35
  for stability, energy cooperation, trying to show some
• 58:38
  business deals, and restraint, which has got to
• 58:43
  be extremely difficult for the Trumpster trying to
• 58:46
  show restraint.
• 58:47
  I don't think he's in a position to
• 58:49
  be imperially dominant either.
• 58:52
  He's not surrendering, that's obvious, nor would I
• 58:54
  want him to.
• 58:55
  You know, I think it's very positive.
• 58:58
  I hope that something positive comes of it.
• 59:00
  I'd love to see it.
• 59:01
  I'd love to see the world get along.
• 59:03
  It's BS that we don't, and we create
• 59:06
  wars that don't need to exist, and I
• 59:08
  blame a lot of that on the past
• 59:11
  30 years, and the idiocy that we have
• 59:16
  done post-collapse of the Soviet Union, and
• 59:18
  refusing to recognize that the world is changing,
• 59:21
  because it's changing.
• 59:23
  You know, we'd like to be present at
• 59:26
  the table instead of trying to create our
• 59:28
  own table, and pretty soon everybody, you know,
• 59:30
  well we didn't want you sitting with us
• 59:32
  anyway.
• 59:33
  We'd rather not have that.
• 59:35
  So Putin didn't need to be at the
• 59:37
  table to be present.
• 59:38
  Russian oil, Russian gas, Russian weapons, Russian diplomacy,
• 59:42
  Russian partnership with China are all in the
• 59:46
  room.
• 59:47
  The chair might be empty, but the Russian
• 59:49
  shadow is definitely present.
• 59:53
  What are the Chinese saying about all of
• 59:55
  this?
• 59:56
  China wants the meeting to signal that it
• 1:00:00
  is no longer just reacting to American pressure.
• 1:00:04
  Beijing, just literally a week ago, said your
• 1:00:08
  sanctions, how about you take those and stuff
• 1:00:11
  them?
• 1:00:12
  We aren't going to honor them.
• 1:00:13
  Now, financially, their banks, they've kind of eased
• 1:00:18
  off a little bit, like we talked about
• 1:00:19
  yesterday with the bank saying some things.
• 1:00:22
  So the official readout says that Xi Jinping
• 1:00:24
  wants China and the U.S. to answer
• 1:00:26
  the questions of our times.
• 1:00:29
  In other words, quit living in this past
• 1:00:31
  dominance, you know, where you think you control
• 1:00:34
  the world, when you really don't anymore.
• 1:00:37
  They want to stabilize relationships, expand cooperation on
• 1:00:41
  trade, health, agriculture, tourism, people-to-people ties,
• 1:00:46
  law enforcement, and military-to-military communication.
• 1:00:49
  The Global Times adds that the expected Chinese
• 1:00:53
  angle, the visit is delicate and consequential.
• 1:00:59
  Business participation has been signaled with great cooperation
• 1:01:04
  potential.
• 1:01:06
  Unilateral U.S. activities and restrictions actually tend
• 1:01:11
  to hurt American interests.
• 1:01:13
  That's a jibe.
• 1:01:17
  That's an older brother sort of thing.
• 1:01:19
  Your approach to the world probably isn't even
• 1:01:25
  in the best of interest, not only for
• 1:01:29
  us, but not for you.
• 1:01:31
  It's a bad interest because rational engagement is
• 1:01:36
  a sustainable choice for all sides.
• 1:01:39
  Rational people that aren't, you know, killing people
• 1:01:43
  are, you know, far more likely to be
• 1:01:48
  listened to.
• 1:01:49
  That's true, by the way.
• 1:01:50
  China's message isn't we love America.
• 1:01:53
  China's message is you have to deal with
• 1:01:56
  us as a civilization-sized peer.
• 1:01:58
  You can compete with us, but you don't
• 1:02:01
  get to command us, just like India said.
• 1:02:04
  You can negotiate with us, but you can't
• 1:02:08
  sanction us into obedience.
• 1:02:10
  It's not gonna happen.
• 1:02:13
  U.S. perspective.
• 1:02:15
  Let's talk about what the U.S. is
• 1:02:16
  saying.
• 1:02:16
  Now, the U.S. is never real friendly
• 1:02:18
  to Trump, and I understand that.
• 1:02:21
  So, from when you get this point of
• 1:02:23
  view, you know, Reuters, they aren't a fan
• 1:02:26
  of Trump.
• 1:02:27
  I mean, come on.
• 1:02:27
  They never are.
• 1:02:28
  If you can twist it anti-Trump, you
• 1:02:30
  will.
• 1:02:32
  But Reuters is useful because it says bluntly
• 1:02:35
  that Trump is entering with his own weakened,
• 1:02:40
  you know, everybody talks about playing cards, with
• 1:02:42
  his own weakened hand.
• 1:02:45
  The U.S. courts have limited his tariff
• 1:02:47
  power.
• 1:02:48
  The Iran war has boosted inflation.
• 1:02:52
  People like us are paying $4.10 a
• 1:02:55
  gallon for friggin' gasoline.
• 1:02:57
  When back in February, I paid $2.50.
• 1:03:02
  Nonsense.
• 1:03:03
  And the risk of domestic political loss in
• 1:03:06
  the midterms, even if you can have some
• 1:03:09
  short-term victories on the gerrymandering and creating
• 1:03:14
  your own maps, which, you know, the Democrats
• 1:03:18
  do it too.
• 1:03:19
  So, maybe the Republicans have taken control for
• 1:03:23
  a while.
• 1:03:24
  And maybe, with all that in line, maybe
• 1:03:29
  we won't lose what forward advances we've taken.
• 1:03:36
  And maybe Trump won't lose in November, won't
• 1:03:39
  lose the Senate, won't lose the House.
• 1:03:43
  I don't know.
• 1:03:44
  I think something's different.
• 1:03:48
  Trump isn't, Trump is looking for a headline.
• 1:03:50
  Trump is looking for a headline victory.
• 1:03:52
  That's what he needs, and he needs it
• 1:03:55
  now.
• 1:03:56
  He needs a headline victory.
• 1:03:59
  He wants beef.
• 1:04:00
  He wants soybeans.
• 1:04:01
  He wants Boeing.
• 1:04:03
  He wants oil.
• 1:04:04
  He wants chips.
• 1:04:05
  He wants all of these CEOs smiling.
• 1:04:09
  He wants to say he's the man that's
• 1:04:11
  the art of the deal.
• 1:04:12
  He's the only man on the planet who
• 1:04:14
  can talk to Xi Jinping, Putin, and maybe
• 1:04:19
  Iran.
• 1:04:19
  Of course, he can't talk to Iran.
• 1:04:23
  It's not automatically a bad point of view,
• 1:04:26
  but it's very, very Trump.
• 1:04:27
  Trump's victory has to be his own first,
• 1:04:30
  and then he's got to sell it to
• 1:04:32
  everybody, you know, to you, that, you know,
• 1:04:33
  he's God's gift to the planet.
• 1:04:35
  So, expect him to come back with all
• 1:04:37
  these positives of what he personally did to
• 1:04:41
  make sure that Marco Clumsio got to accompany
• 1:04:44
  him, and that that was his idea.
• 1:04:47
  And, you know, it wasn't Marco Clumsio putting
• 1:04:51
  his own Chinese symbol in there different than
• 1:04:54
  what it was.
• 1:04:55
  Trump wants the big picture.
• 1:04:59
  Trump wants a big video of him, a
• 1:05:02
  big picture of himself in a big room
• 1:05:05
  with a big leader making big deals, and
• 1:05:09
  that's not always useless.
• 1:05:12
  Sometimes ego gets people to the table, and,
• 1:05:18
  you know, a lot of times their ego
• 1:05:20
  arrives first, but ego is no substitute for
• 1:05:24
  strategy.
• 1:05:25
  I hope he has a pretty good strategy.
• 1:05:30
  I received, and I thank JR for it,
• 1:05:36
  sent it out to me, that I got
• 1:05:39
  a X post that talked about some of
• 1:05:43
  these things and creating a new multipolar world
• 1:05:47
  and all of that.
• 1:05:48
  Frankly, I thought it was a very good
• 1:05:51
  indication of what the desire should be.
• 1:05:55
  It was a little optimistic for me that
• 1:05:58
  saying that this is actually what the U
• 1:05:59
  .S. is trying to accomplish.
• 1:06:01
  I don't see that.
• 1:06:02
  I don't see the U.S. I see
• 1:06:04
  it as the U.S. is very much,
• 1:06:09
  you know, this summit is all about Trump.
• 1:06:14
  Trump's theatrical, if he can reduce friction with
• 1:06:18
  China, if he can get Hormuz open, and
• 1:06:22
  the easy way to do that is just
• 1:06:24
  quit engaging.
• 1:06:26
  You know, I don't understand why it would
• 1:06:28
  be seen as a loss if you just
• 1:06:30
  backed off and quit.
• 1:06:32
  He said a week ago the war was
• 1:06:33
  over.
• 1:06:33
  Remember that?
• 1:06:34
  If the war is over, why are we
• 1:06:36
  hanging out, blocking shipping?
• 1:06:42
  Unless you're going to do it in every
• 1:06:44
  other straight that everybody else is charging for,
• 1:06:48
  I don't see a problem with it.
• 1:06:50
  It's a financial thing.
• 1:06:52
  So what if the $100 a barrel comes
• 1:06:56
  from the fact that it costs you that
• 1:07:02
  to get three tankers through a day instead
• 1:07:07
  of 30?
• 1:07:09
  Why not pay, you know, the price would
• 1:07:11
  be the same, and the supply would go
• 1:07:13
  way up, which would eventually bring the prices
• 1:07:16
  down.
• 1:07:16
  If you just let them charge the money,
• 1:07:18
  let them make the money.
• 1:07:19
  Who gives a rip?
• 1:07:21
  Let them do it.
• 1:07:22
  Let them make the money.
• 1:07:23
  Let them control the straight.
• 1:07:24
  It's theirs under international law anyway.
• 1:07:28
  Admit reality, and treat them like humans.
• 1:07:32
  You may disagree that they're human.
• 1:07:34
  That's your own affair.
• 1:07:35
  I think it's a mistake.
• 1:07:37
  You know, people are people.
• 1:07:38
  Whether they think the same as you or
• 1:07:40
  not, that doesn't mean they deserve to die
• 1:07:43
  because they don't think like you.
• 1:07:45
  And it doesn't mean that you need to
• 1:07:47
  put them under the eternal thumb forever.
• 1:07:51
  Or just say they're evil.
• 1:07:53
  Trust me, there are people that say the
• 1:07:55
  opposite in the opposite direction.
• 1:07:57
  Say we're evil.
• 1:07:58
  Those type of people need to understand reality.
• 1:08:01
  You're never going to change the impressions of
• 1:08:04
  other people unless you start to act with
• 1:08:07
  calm and deliberate behavior instead of irrational posturing
• 1:08:14
  of being in charge, you know.
• 1:08:18
  Trump needs the win more than Xi Jinping
• 1:08:21
  does.
• 1:08:23
  Trump has domestic political pressure here from people
• 1:08:27
  like me.
• 1:08:28
  We got inflation out the window.
• 1:08:30
  We got tariff constraints, midterm risk might be
• 1:08:35
  going down.
• 1:08:37
  But Xi Jinping doesn't face those pressures.
• 1:08:41
  China put Taiwan at the center of its
• 1:08:44
  paper while the U.S. doesn't even talk
• 1:08:47
  about it, ignores it completely.
• 1:08:50
  If we ignore it, does it not exist?
• 1:08:53
  Hmm.
• 1:08:54
  If a tree falls in the forest, will,
• 1:08:58
  does it still make a noise?
• 1:09:00
  Not will anybody hear it, but will it
• 1:09:02
  still make a noise?
• 1:09:03
  If we ignore Taiwan or say in the
• 1:09:05
  West that it wasn't even on the table,
• 1:09:08
  does that mean it wasn't or just that
• 1:09:12
  we ignored it?
• 1:09:14
  U.S. is emphasizing Hormuz trade and business.
• 1:09:18
  So Beijing is defining a red line and
• 1:09:22
  Washington is seriously shopping for deliverables.
• 1:09:26
  They want business.
• 1:09:27
  Trump wants to come out with business victory.
• 1:09:30
  You can't assume that Xi wins this round
• 1:09:34
  because he looks more disciplined.
• 1:09:36
  We don't know yet the real private commitments
• 1:09:38
  or the communications that took place in a
• 1:09:40
  whole two-hour meeting and what's going to
• 1:09:43
  happen today.
• 1:09:44
  But if China agrees to a meaningful energy
• 1:09:46
  purchase from the United States, they agree to
• 1:09:50
  trade access, they agree to tariff accommodation, fentanyl
• 1:09:55
  precursor restrictions or quietly pressure Iran, Trump can
• 1:10:00
  come home with more than just, oh, I
• 1:10:03
  got another trillion dollars invested in the U
• 1:10:06
  .S. So if tomorrow produces a concrete U
• 1:10:10
  .S.-China trade package, Boeing orders, which you're going
• 1:10:15
  to get some of this, those businessmen aren't
• 1:10:17
  going over there to get nothing, you know,
• 1:10:19
  some of them are going to be successful,
• 1:10:21
  maybe all of them.
• 1:10:22
  So Trump can win if he tells them,
• 1:10:24
  I don't give a shit what you're bargaining
• 1:10:26
  for.
• 1:10:27
  You're making a deal.
• 1:10:28
  You're making a deal and you're going to
• 1:10:29
  give me a list so that I get
• 1:10:31
  to say all of this as soon as
• 1:10:33
  I get on the plane and I have
• 1:10:34
  this gaggle that gets to hang outside the
• 1:10:37
  private door and I get to stick my
• 1:10:38
  head out and tell them how grand I
• 1:10:41
  am.
• 1:10:42
  That has to happen.
• 1:10:43
  It keeps the red meat flowing for the
• 1:10:45
  people who need to chew, right?
• 1:10:49
  And so if tomorrow produces such a trade
• 1:10:53
  package, you know, Boeing, soybeans, beef, oil, semiconductor,
• 1:10:59
  Chinese pressure on Iran, then Trump claims a
• 1:11:02
  real win.
• 1:11:03
  If the visit ends with a ceremony, some
• 1:11:05
  kind of a vague language and no concrete
• 1:11:08
  movement at all, then the show's over and
• 1:11:12
  Beijing gave Trump a pageant with some fan
• 1:11:16
  waving by beautiful women but preserved its strategic
• 1:11:21
  position, right?
• 1:11:23
  So I don't know.
• 1:11:24
  It's a managed rivalry.
• 1:11:26
  It's not peace, not surrender, not yet a
• 1:11:29
  new world order, but an attempt to manage
• 1:11:32
  a rivalry, right?
• 1:11:35
  Xi Jinping set some red lines.
• 1:11:37
  Trump wants to make some deals.
• 1:11:39
  Iran and Hormuz and Russia are all at
• 1:11:42
  the table.
• 1:11:43
  Putin and Modi are really not, but trust
• 1:11:45
  me, they are and should be.
• 1:11:47
  And how does success look?
• 1:11:49
  We don't really know.
• 1:11:51
  And the real question isn't whether Trump and
• 1:11:54
  Xi Jinping smile a lot.
• 1:11:56
  They were always going to smile.
• 1:11:57
  The question is whether the U.S. negotiates
• 1:12:00
  from a command position or whether it's negotiating
• 1:12:04
  from necessity.
• 1:12:06
  China understands that distinction and I'm not sure
• 1:12:09
  they're willing to listen to dictatorial rhetoric any
• 1:12:13
  longer.
• 1:12:14
  Russia gets it.
• 1:12:15
  India understands it.
• 1:12:17
  You know, the BRICS countries all get it
• 1:12:19
  and that's still in the sidelines.
• 1:12:21
  You can, you know, they haven't made a
• 1:12:23
  lot of public commentary recently, but it still
• 1:12:26
  exists.
• 1:12:28
  The Shanghai Cooperation, what is it called, SCO,
• 1:12:33
  Shanghai Cooperation Organization, also exists with all those
• 1:12:37
  major players over there and the U.S.
• 1:12:41
  is not a part of it.
• 1:12:42
  These regional actors are very important and China's
• 1:12:45
  at the head of quite a few of
• 1:12:47
  them, including in the West.
• 1:12:51
  And I think there's been quite a bit
• 1:12:53
  of pissing off China or peeing in their
• 1:12:56
  Cheerios by the Trump side in Venezuela and
• 1:13:00
  now in Iran that I think he wanted
• 1:13:03
  that position, you know, he put this off
• 1:13:05
  for a month, remember, at least a month,
• 1:13:08
  and he wanted to go over and be
• 1:13:10
  able to force Xi Jinping to command Xi
• 1:13:16
  Jinping by saying, look what we did in
• 1:13:18
  Iran.
• 1:13:19
  And I still don't think that that happened.
• 1:13:23
  He doesn't have it.
• 1:13:25
  You know, that doesn't mean he hasn't created
• 1:13:26
  problems for the world.
• 1:13:28
  You know, our posture in the Middle East
• 1:13:31
  has created quite a bit of problems.
• 1:13:35
  So I don't know that, you know, the
• 1:13:40
  ex-post that JR shared with me about
• 1:13:43
  clarity for 100 years argues that Trump brought
• 1:13:47
  this constellation of CEOs to China because the
• 1:13:51
  real negotiation is larger than trade.
• 1:13:55
  I tend to disagree with it.
• 1:13:58
  I think it's too optimistic to think that
• 1:14:00
  it's a clean redesign of the world by
• 1:14:03
  having some form of enlightened executive or a
• 1:14:07
  wise president.
• 1:14:08
  I don't think that's it at all.
• 1:14:10
  The realistic read is far more ugly.
• 1:14:13
  This isn't peace through prosperity yet.
• 1:14:16
  It's pressure.
• 1:14:18
  It's management of a summit where a corporation
• 1:14:21
  is trying to protect their own access.
• 1:14:25
  The governments are trying to preserve their own
• 1:14:28
  leverage as Trump is trying to manufacture a
• 1:14:32
  win that he can sell at home.
• 1:14:34
  And all he knows is to do it
• 1:14:36
  by talking about money and about how great
• 1:14:39
  he is.
• 1:14:40
  So bring all these CEOs over, invite them
• 1:14:43
  along.
• 1:14:43
  Who wouldn't go?
• 1:14:45
  You're going to be in the room with
• 1:14:46
  the most powerful people on the planet and
• 1:14:50
  you're going to make a deal.
• 1:14:52
  You're not leaving without having some ties and
• 1:14:54
  at least some follow-ups.
• 1:14:55
  If Trump gets to come out and say
• 1:14:57
  this is good, it's positive by the way.
• 1:14:59
  I don't mean to make it negative.
• 1:15:01
  I'm just saying these are self-interests, not
• 1:15:05
  world interests.
• 1:15:06
  Sometimes self-interest and self-ego filters down
• 1:15:10
  to the rest of us and a lot
• 1:15:11
  of times it doesn't.
• 1:15:13
  We don't get any of that.
• 1:15:16
  Trickle-down economy from the Reagan and Bush
• 1:15:20
  era, people have made fun of that forever.
• 1:15:25
  I tend to agree with it because I
• 1:15:27
  believe in capitalism and I believe in the
• 1:15:30
  strength of individual people acting in their own
• 1:15:34
  individual interest actually raises the supply-demand curve
• 1:15:38
  a hell of a lot more than a
• 1:15:40
  place like communism where everybody's supposed to act
• 1:15:43
  in some artificial playing field where everybody's interests
• 1:15:46
  are the same and they're just not.
• 1:15:49
  That's why communism didn't work, at least not
• 1:15:53
  the Russian version.
• 1:15:55
  I've done some exploratory angling in this for
• 1:15:58
  you here on this channel even before where
• 1:16:01
  I've talked about the study of economics.
• 1:16:05
  People like Mikhail Khazin in Russia and other
• 1:16:09
  good economists from the Soviet world understand economics
• 1:16:14
  differently because they understand a strong state structure
• 1:16:18
  just like China and in China you're watching
• 1:16:22
  the powerful capitalist sort of industry controlled by
• 1:16:30
  state actors just like you do in Russia
• 1:16:33
  and it's been a little...
• 1:16:35
  Russia's getting better at it but under the
• 1:16:37
  Soviet Union it never worked and it's a
• 1:16:39
  hybrid sort of a nature.
• 1:16:42
  State-run infrastructure, state-run massive technologies controlling
• 1:16:48
  the resources of the entire country.
• 1:16:51
  Imagine if America had a resource and all
• 1:16:56
  we have are bureaucrats, you know, people who
• 1:16:58
  want to pretend they're in charge or whatever
• 1:17:00
  but we can't create a a national infrastructure.
• 1:17:07
  It just won't work.
• 1:17:08
  Why?
• 1:17:09
  Because Trump needs 12 different CEOs or 16
• 1:17:13
  or whatever it was to join in so
• 1:17:15
  that each one of them can get a
• 1:17:17
  deal so he can come back and say
• 1:17:19
  it's all for America.
• 1:17:20
  China and Russia make a deal for oil
• 1:17:23
  and guess what?
• 1:17:24
  It's two guys control the whole architecture and
• 1:17:28
  everybody below is acting on what they say
• 1:17:31
  is best for the country.
• 1:17:32
  You don't have to agree with that but
• 1:17:34
  that's reality, you know.
• 1:17:35
  So it's the American corporate state has gone
• 1:17:39
  to Beijing because it can't decouple from China
• 1:17:43
  without the bad bleeding that is occurring and
• 1:17:47
  it is occurring.
• 1:17:49
  So, you know, the weak part of that
• 1:17:52
  ex-post is the rosy idea that the
• 1:17:55
  room represents a coming of age of neutral
• 1:17:57
  interoperability, transparent ledgers, peaceful tokenization, sovereign
• 1:18:03
  cooperation without financial hostage taking.
• 1:18:07
  Maybe someday in a Star Trek world but
• 1:18:10
  not today.
• 1:18:11
  Today the dominant facts are still Taiwan, sanctions,
• 1:18:15
  Iran, Hormuz, rare earth, AI chips, military to
• 1:18:19
  military risk and the question of whether China
• 1:18:22
  and the U.S. can avoid direct confrontation.
• 1:18:27
  That's it.
• 1:18:28
  And Trump will sell it by we made
• 1:18:30
  a bunch of business deals.
• 1:18:31
  They're gonna make them anyway.
• 1:18:33
  It's in their own personal interests and in
• 1:18:35
  Trump's interest to have that.
• 1:18:37
  But don't think that that resolves the other
• 1:18:39
  bigger global pressure points of Iran, of multi
• 1:18:44
  -polarity or any of these world changing.
• 1:18:47
  Trump still wants to dominate with a dollar,
• 1:18:49
  with the petrodollar, with the IMF, with all
• 1:18:53
  the things that we ignore when convenient, we
• 1:18:56
  the West, and not we Sam and JR,
• 1:18:59
  but we the West ignore because they're inconvenient
• 1:19:03
  for us.
• 1:19:04
  Just like it's inconvenient to call Marco Rubio
• 1:19:09
  instead, call him Marco Rubio instead of Marco
• 1:19:12
  Clumsio.
• 1:19:14
  So I wanted to do, and I think
• 1:19:17
  I wanted to, I don't know, I'll give
• 1:19:20
  you one final comment on that.
• 1:19:22
  Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
• 1:19:26
  may be able to change the world.
• 1:19:29
  Modi may decide whether the changed world becomes
• 1:19:33
  a two-block cold war, a multipolar marketplace,
• 1:19:38
  or a diplomatic food fight where everybody buys
• 1:19:42
  oil from one side, chips from another, and
• 1:19:45
  weapons from whoever answers the phone.
• 1:19:48
  You know, and that's unfortunately the world we're
• 1:19:51
  in right now isn't some kind of grand
• 1:19:54
  Star Trek, you know, everybody has everything that
• 1:20:00
  they need to survive and they can focus
• 1:20:02
  on art if they wish to, or can
• 1:20:04
  focus on being a nuclear engineer if that's
• 1:20:07
  what floats their boat, and it doesn't depend
• 1:20:10
  upon the money they make to do so,
• 1:20:12
  but we're not there.
• 1:20:14
  Sure as hell not there.
• 1:20:16
  There are limitations all around.
• 1:20:18
  We got about 10 minutes left in the
• 1:20:20
  show and I wanted to get back to
• 1:20:23
  see if there was any real fallout from
• 1:20:25
  this, I don't know, the comedy of the
• 1:20:32
  Tucker Carlson, Yulia Mendel interview.
• 1:20:35
  So there was some real fallout, but it's
• 1:20:38
  still mostly, you know, media and political, nothing
• 1:20:42
  yet institutionalized.
• 1:20:44
  Yermak has been started to be investigated, arrested,
• 1:20:52
  you know, but her interview hasn't produced any
• 1:20:56
  formal legal proceedings, no resignations, no parliament move,
• 1:21:01
  or any verified U.S. policy shift, but
• 1:21:04
  it has certainly cracked the narrative wall, and
• 1:21:07
  that helped because this narrative that Ukraine's always
• 1:21:10
  in on the good boy, no, that ain't
• 1:21:13
  it.
• 1:21:13
  So she's been attacked by the Ukrainian media
• 1:21:18
  hard.
• 1:21:20
  The new voice of Ukraine framed the interview
• 1:21:23
  as Mendel, here he goes, standard stuff, echoing
• 1:21:27
  Russian propaganda narratives, and said Ukrainian media professionals
• 1:21:31
  reacted with shock and anger.
• 1:21:35
  New voice highlighted her claim that Zelensky is
• 1:21:38
  an obstacle to peace, that he had allegedly
• 1:21:42
  agreed to give up Donbass in 2022, and
• 1:21:45
  promised Putin in 2019 that Ukraine would not
• 1:21:49
  join NATO.
• 1:21:50
  That's the new voice.
• 1:21:52
  Glavnaya, which means important, most important, summarizing the
• 1:21:58
  Ukrainian reaction, reported that Ukrainian journalists and communication
• 1:22:03
  specialists call her remarks harmful, especially because she
• 1:22:08
  placed moral blame on Putin and Zelensky, and
• 1:22:12
  said the war had lost meaning for Ukrainians.
• 1:22:17
  So what's the Ukrainian media line?
• 1:22:20
  It's very, very predictable, same old crap, the
• 1:22:24
  propaganda war is coming.
• 1:22:26
  She's helping Russia, she's spreading Kremlin narratives, she
• 1:22:30
  was not in the negotiations, and she is
• 1:22:33
  unreliable.
• 1:22:35
  That's not surprising, a wartime state doesn't thank
• 1:22:38
  former insiders for going on Tucker Carlson and
• 1:22:41
  calling a wartime president a dictator.
• 1:22:45
  Zelensky, his office, presidential office response was blunt.
• 1:22:50
  Dmitry Litvin, a communication advisor, said Mendel did
• 1:22:54
  not participate in any Istanbul negotiation, didn't participate
• 1:22:58
  in decision making, hasn't worked on Zelensky's team
• 1:23:02
  for a long time, and that her claims
• 1:23:05
  are not worthy of serious comment.
• 1:23:09
  That's an official pushback, and the strongest counter
• 1:23:13
  -argument would be she may have been close
• 1:23:15
  to Zelensky, just like I said, from 2019
• 1:23:18
  to 2021, but she's not part of the
• 1:23:20
  2022 Istanbul team, therefore her claims about what
• 1:23:23
  Zelensky agreed to in Istanbul are definitely secondhand,
• 1:23:27
  unless she produces sources, documents, witnesses.
• 1:23:31
  Russia and Russia-aligned media, of course, amplified
• 1:23:35
  her comments immediately.
• 1:23:37
  Medusa, which is not a Kremlin outlet, noted
• 1:23:40
  that Russian state and pro-government media, along
• 1:23:43
  with Z authors, rapidly began citing the interview
• 1:23:48
  because Mendel's comments fit the Russian narrative about
• 1:23:51
  Zelensky being a dictator, being corrupt, being a
• 1:23:54
  hypocrite, and being a drug addict.
• 1:23:57
  Belarus state, their outlet ONT, reported that Mendel
• 1:24:04
  was added to the Ukrainian Miratorets database immediately
• 1:24:07
  after the interview, and summarized her allegations
• 1:24:17
  against Zelensky like I did yesterday, including his
• 1:24:20
  emotional instability, his manipulation, his drug use, his
• 1:24:23
  corruption, and the claim that Zelensky personally agreed
• 1:24:26
  to give up Donbass.
• 1:24:27
  I don't know about the Miratorets claim, it's
• 1:24:30
  independently verified, I got on there to try
• 1:24:32
  to find it, but I haven't had time
• 1:24:34
  to go through it.
• 1:24:34
  Go to Miratorets.com, but right now, the
• 1:24:42
  site itself isn't accessible, so you're having a
• 1:24:47
  hard time getting on there.
• 1:24:48
  So the Ukrainian counter-narrative has been organized.
• 1:24:52
  The Ukrainian counter-attack has three prongs.
• 1:24:54
  First, she's not in Istanbul, so she can't
• 1:24:57
  know the Donbass concession.
• 1:24:59
  Second, her statements are Russian propaganda.
• 1:25:02
  Third, Tucker Carlson is a hostile or manipulative
• 1:25:05
  platform because of his prior interviews of Putin
• 1:25:09
  and Lavrov, and his criticism of US-NATO
• 1:25:11
  -Ukraine policy.
• 1:25:13
  UA.News explicitly framed Carlson in that context,
• 1:25:18
  and repeated the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation,
• 1:25:23
  then its response that the issue of abandoning
• 1:25:26
  territory has never been on the table.
• 1:25:29
  So, the Ukrainian establishment didn't answer Mendel by
• 1:25:32
  opening its books, it answered by attacking standing.
• 1:25:35
  She wasn't in the room, she's repeating propaganda,
• 1:25:38
  and Tucker's on the wrong platform.
• 1:25:40
  Some of that is fair, but some of
• 1:25:41
  it is deflection, but it tells us they
• 1:25:43
  understand the interview was quite damaging to them.
• 1:25:47
  So the real effect is that the myth,
• 1:25:50
  the Zelensky myth, is weaker, and it should
• 1:25:53
  be.
• 1:25:54
  The guy is not on the side of
• 1:25:56
  good, not remotely.
• 1:25:58
  Now, you don't have to believe my opinion,
• 1:26:00
  make your own impressions after all this, but
• 1:26:03
  he never has been.
• 1:26:04
  This is not the good guy.
• 1:26:07
  He's not the man of the people from
• 1:26:09
  his TV show.
• 1:26:11
  That's not him becoming the man of the
• 1:26:14
  people and creating a car party called the
• 1:26:16
  man of the people is a farce, and
• 1:26:20
  it has been.
• 1:26:21
  You've taken this guy and, you know, this,
• 1:26:24
  what do you think of our actors in
• 1:26:28
  the United States?
• 1:26:29
  Seriously, what do you think of ours?
• 1:26:31
  Well, why would you think of Zelensky any
• 1:26:33
  different than you think of ours?
• 1:26:35
  So the interview didn't topple him.
• 1:26:37
  It didn't prove every allegation, hasn't converted Western
• 1:26:41
  media from blue and yellow to red, white
• 1:26:44
  and blue, or blue, white and red, but
• 1:26:47
  it has done one serious thing.
• 1:26:49
  The ANSI Zelensky argument has an insider face
• 1:26:52
  now, so critics could be dismissed previously as
• 1:26:55
  a Russian propagandist, a fringe dissident, a right
• 1:27:00
  -wing American, or a war-weary outside.
• 1:27:03
  Mendel is harder to dismiss because she worked
• 1:27:06
  for the guy.
• 1:27:06
  That doesn't make her right on every fact,
• 1:27:09
  but it does make her harder to erase.
• 1:27:12
  The fallout isn't Zelensky falls tomorrow.
• 1:27:15
  The fallout is that the old sentence support
• 1:27:18
  and Zelensky equals support for Ukraine, that needed
• 1:27:23
  to go long ago anyway.
• 1:27:25
  The guy's been two years over and no
• 1:27:29
  sign of leaving over his presidential thing, which
• 1:27:32
  is anti-constitutional.
• 1:27:34
  There's been no new leaders elected in allegedly
• 1:27:38
  democratic Ukraine.
• 1:27:40
  That place isn't democratic, never has been.
• 1:27:45
  So supporting Zelensky equals supporting Ukraine, that's BS.
• 1:27:50
  Of course, it always has been, but now
• 1:27:52
  it has taken, now it actually is a
• 1:27:56
  little stronger on the Western side.
• 1:27:58
  Mendel's interview put a former insider on the
• 1:28:01
  record saying the opposite of that, and supporting
• 1:28:05
  Ukraine might require pushing Zelensky out.
• 1:28:10
  That's it.
• 1:28:11
  Now, you don't want to lean too heavily
• 1:28:13
  on Mendel, you know, for making some of
• 1:28:16
  the claims that are secondhand, impression-based, not
• 1:28:19
  independently verified.
• 1:28:21
  Her strongest claims are about her direct observations
• 1:28:23
  from 2019 to 2021.
• 1:28:26
  Her weak claims about 2022 negotiations, current corruption,
• 1:28:31
  current drug use, suspicious deaths, and internal wartime
• 1:28:35
  decision-making after she left are far weaker.
• 1:28:39
  And frankly, Tucker Carlson could have been a
• 1:28:45
  little more harsh in that.
• 1:28:46
  But her interview does matter because it's a
• 1:28:49
  broader visible problem.
• 1:28:51
  Martial law, no election, corruption scandals abound in
• 1:28:55
  Ukraine.
• 1:28:56
  Zelensky is a collapsing heroic image.
• 1:29:00
  Yermak is now being investigated, his right-hand
• 1:29:03
  man.
• 1:29:04
  And there's a huge fatigue with the war
• 1:29:06
  that no realistic NATO or territorial restoration god
• 1:29:12
  can, you know, overcome.
• 1:29:15
  Her paths are not all proven, but they
• 1:29:18
  fit a pattern many people already suspect.
• 1:29:21
  My name is Samuel Trapp.
• 1:29:24
  Glad you were here today.
• 1:29:25
  We'll be back on Monday.
• 1:29:28
  Tomorrow morning, we have Civic Outlaws starting at
• 1:29:31
  7 a.m. until 8 30.
• 1:29:33
  And I'll be happy if you join us.
• 1:29:36
  Have a very good mid-Missouri day.
• 1:29:38
  Thanks for joining us.