Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / Jamie Miller - Russia, Ukraine, China, MAGA, and Tariffs

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Jamie Miller - Russia, Ukraine, China, MAGA, and Tariffs · World Ablaze with George Fontes

• 0:00
  You are listening to a Fonz Media Network production.
• 0:30
  discuss deportations as well as immigration policies.
• 0:33
  And we also take on some geopolitical relationships as we talk about Russia, Ukraine, China, Iran,
• 0:40
  the EU, and not much is left off the table in this conversation.
• 0:45
  So pour your favorite beverage, sit back and enjoy this episode.
• 0:50
  Jamie, thanks for being on and making the time.
• 0:54
  We're trying to connect here back and forth and you're busy with your show and what you
• 0:59
  do for a living. And then I just been buried myself trying to keep things scheduled. But
• 1:03
  as we were discussing earlier, a little bit of a background, you are a political consultant.
• 1:10
  I believe that's your day job. You're the host of Reasonable Arguments.
• 1:15
  Actually, how long has Reasonable Arguments been on? I just heard your latest episode,
• 1:18
  by the way. I've had a blog or sub stack for over two years and the podcast I do with my wife,
• 1:24
  She's not political at all, so we kind of have this take of breaking it down for the common man or people who are interested in in-depth political commentary because sometimes I go off on tangents.
• 1:40
  So we've been doing that since the beginning of December.
• 1:44
  So we're about 25 or 30 episodes in.
• 1:46
  We do two a week.
• 1:49
  That's a pretty good amount of time to try to even get one episode a week these days.
• 1:54
  I mean, if you don't have that big Spotify contract anyway, right?
• 1:57
  Yeah.
• 1:58
  No, I do not.
• 1:59
  So, you know, from your mouth to God's ears, just like everybody else, right?
• 2:03
  Yeah, we got to work for it.
• 2:05
  Working harder.
• 2:07
  Yeah.
• 2:07
  So, and then briefly before we get moving, because I know that you wanted to touch on
• 2:13
  one of the episodes I did, which was about what does MAGA mean, right?
• 2:18
  Or what does it mean to you?
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  and how does it make you feel versus what the,
• 2:22
  basically what the media is telling you is supposed to mean
• 2:25
  and what the leftist party or Democrat party
• 2:28
  is trying to make you believe MAGA actually means.
• 2:31
  It's like getting away from the meaning of itself.
• 2:33
  And I remember you brought that up
• 2:35
  and it made me think more about it too,
• 2:37
  because it's like, yeah, I have my opinion on it.
• 2:39
  And a lot of people don't understand.
• 2:42
  I think it just got away from the word, right?
• 2:44
  Like make America great again is really what it stood for,
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  yet it just turned into this bad name, right?
• 2:50
  That you just, there's a bad name
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  that you just wear like a badge on your chest
• 2:54
  if you're considered a conservative or Republican.
• 2:57
  And I'm not really sure where you stand on that.
• 3:00
  I know you had an opinion.
• 3:01
  Yeah, to be honest with you, I've kind of,
• 3:04
  it's been a little, like you said,
• 3:05
  it's been a little while,
• 3:06
  but I do think that there's,
• 3:09
  in the Republican Party since Goldwater,
• 3:11
  which was 1964, before I was even born,
• 3:14
  We've, you know, the Republican Party has gone through, I don't want to say a reform or a growth period, like about every 10 to 15 years.
• 3:28
  You have kind of a growth period with Reagan or influx of new people.
• 3:34
  And then you had it again in 1994 with Newt Gingrich, again in 2010 with the Tea Party, a little bit of a shorter period, 2016 with Trump.
• 3:44
  And then again, I think in 2024 with Trump. So and I think the 2016 and 2024 movements were slightly different. And, you know, I don't know if they're MAGA or America First or Republican. I think, you know, we're in this moment where everybody's trying to figure that out.
• 4:02
  you know I don't think that
• 4:06
  me personally I don't think maggot is a negative term
• 4:09
  I think there are people who use it as a slang term
• 4:12
  like people use rhino as a slang term
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  so it's
• 4:17
  you know and I don't like that term either
• 4:20
  you know or people will say oh you're establishment
• 4:24
  or you know and I just look at
• 4:27
  people and say hey listen I've got 30 years
• 4:29
  of my life that I've dedicated to the Republican Party. I believe in what we've done, you know,
• 4:35
  in the conservative movement. You know, I've made it my job so much so that I believe in this so
• 4:43
  much that I've staked my ability to put my kids through college, you know, based upon my political
• 4:49
  beliefs. And to those who are new to the party or movement, whatever you want to call it, I always
• 4:56
  say welcome, just welcome, you know, and I kind of really got involved in 1994. And I was the same
• 5:04
  way I kind of came in, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here to fix it. Now, now it's my way or the highway.
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  And you learn very quickly that in politics, very few things are my way or the highway.
• 5:15
  And if you want to, if you really want to be a part of the change, you figure out how to,
• 5:20
  how to change those things from within. And I feel like I've had a pretty good career of doing
• 5:26
  just that. One example is just Florida elections law. We have probably, and I think this is a good
• 5:38
  word, a good use of the word liberal, we probably have the most liberal ballot access in the world
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  in Florida. It's the easiest state in the nation to get on the ballot. It's the easiest place to
• 5:51
  vote, but it's also the most secure voting that happens in the world. And I've had a small part
• 5:59
  in that transformation over the last 25 years, especially after the recount.
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  So I'll be upfront. I have a long history, not in politics like you. It was never
• 6:13
  public facing or in a position where I had to be in politics, like you were as a consultant or
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  whatnot or working directly for example, the Republican party or whatnot, like you did in
• 6:22
  Florida. But I will say that being in California, you're kind of indoctrinated or pushed into being
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  a Democrat from your youth. And I remember going to school and it was like, every teacher
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  automatically is like, well, you got to vote Democrat. It's just a better way to go. They
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  care about the people, et cetera. And I'll say back in that time, it kind of rang true at one
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  point. And I think the Democrat Party got so far away from what they are that it just pushed people
• 6:49
  towards that sentiment or statement of MAGA. Because what happened is people wanted to get
• 6:56
  America back, period. But just because it's Trump in charge, or it's now the conservative party or
• 7:01
  Republican Party that's in charge of Congress for the most part right now, everybody now hates
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  that word MAGA, and they're trying to make it stand for something else than what it really was,
• 7:11
  which was really getting the country back to its roots and what it really is supposed to be.
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  And if that is considered ultra-conservative these days, then so be it. I think it just wasn't
• 7:21
  making sense for a long time. And the Democratic Party just lost everything. And all they have now
• 7:28
  is just slinging names and insults at the opposing party to try to make themselves relevant.
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  relevant. Not saying that they lost all power in general, they still have connections, but
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  you know, I think this whole thing was a big gut check to America, especially to the Democratic
• 7:41
  Party. And the fact that a statement like make America great again would insult you just never
• 7:47
  made sense to me. I remember talking to one of my friends who was a hardcore leftist and good
• 7:54
  person too. It's just, you know, that's just where they lean, not a problem. But they were offended
• 7:59
  by a hat I was wearing one day because it had an American flag on. It was really wine bottles.
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  So it was from winery.
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  So it was all wine bottles.
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  But it was a fan.
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  She was offended by that, by the heck.
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  Cause it just had the flag.
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  And right away she called me Trumpy.
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  And I'm like, how does the American flag in your mind mean just Trump and not standing
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  for the country in which you live in?
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  Like, why, why would that?
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  I had a similar experience right here in Ruby red, Sarasota, Florida, you know, at breakfast
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  where, you know, a waiter took offense to, I was about to, you know, I went to breakfast
• 8:30
  with my parents and the family and a good number of my wife's family lives here.
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  So, and, you know, I was wearing, going to go out on the boat afterwards and had an American flag
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  baseball cap on and the waiter, you know, mouthed off to me about, you know, well, you have no,
• 8:49
  you have no right to wear that in here. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like what,
• 8:54
  and who are you, who are you to speak to anybody that way? And much, you know, much less a customer
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  of your business to what they're wearing.
• 9:05
  It wasn't like I was wearing curse words.
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  It was a simple red, white, and blue trucker's hat
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  with an American flag on it, and it was bizarre.
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  I get it.
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  It's crazy.
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  So anyway, here we are now,
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  and what people feel to understand is
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  Trump has always been historically a Democrat
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  until he ran for the presidency in 2016.
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  Suddenly all the Democrats hated him.
• 9:31
  And then he leaned more conservative.
• 9:33
  And, you know, you can see in his cabinet alone, like it's a mixture.
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  It's not all just hardcore conservatives, for example.
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  I mean, Tulsi Gabbard came over because she was disappointed in the party at the time.
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  You got RFK, now they're in charge.
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  I mean, so there's a mixture of personalities and beliefs, which I think is a good way to
• 9:52
  balance everything out.
• 9:54
  So there's a method to my madness here and how I'm asking you questions, by the way,
• 9:58
  because I want to try to push things a bit,
• 10:01
  and I just want to get opinions from somebody
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  who's been part of the Conservative Party for a very long time
• 10:07
  that can probably answer some questions and set some things straight.
• 10:11
  One of the things that I don't like, okay, firstly,
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  is everybody now asking, first off,
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  making America great again is a bad thing, which is ridiculous.
• 10:22
  Put America first is a bad thing, whatever.
• 10:25
  We can get to the geopolitical ramifications of some of these decisions
• 10:27
  all we want. And there are those and we can, we can tackle those down the road. But the reality
• 10:32
  is, yeah, we should have been putting our country first a long time ago. Um, so here's the question
• 10:37
  that everybody keeps asking. And I keep thinking about this and I'm, I'm fine with it, but you know,
• 10:41
  you always see on social media, Hey, did you get what you voted for? Are you happy with what,
• 10:46
  with what you got? And I got to ask you, I mean, what, what do you think so far personally?
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  You know, there's some things that you scratch your head about.
• 10:57
  And there's other things that are happening that we've been fighting 30 or 40 or more years for.
• 11:05
  And so, you know, so yes, this is what I voted for.
• 11:10
  You know, I voted for, you know, stopping the slush fund at USAID.
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  That has been a political, I call it the Political Consultants Foreign Travel Act.
• 11:20
  I mean, everybody has known from both sides of the party, both parties, that if you're a mid-level congressional staffer and your congressman dies, gets voted out of office, retires, whatever, you can go over to USAID and get a job to land for 12, 18 months, travel the world, and then come back and find another congressman.
• 11:44
  Or you go over there and you stay 10 years.
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  You know, I encourage people to just go to their own LinkedIn and type in USAID and start looking at the backgrounds of the people who pop up who you may know who somehow are involved with USAID.
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  I did that in the first 10 who popped up.
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  One was a lifelong person, 25 years committed to whatever.
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  and but the other you know there was there was one republican and then there were about eight
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  people from the Obama administration who were just planted over there for over a decade and
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  and so you know we've been paying for these folks to travel the world first class travel
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  you know they they do travel to the hinterlands take pictures with school children and say they're
• 12:29
  carrying democracy to the world. And in a way that is possibly good. But we also have to look at our,
• 12:37
  we have to take a long look in the mirror and say, we're going 2 trillion in debt per year.
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  And 1 trillion of that is just to manage the debt. And so that is unsustainable. We are the
• 12:48
  most debt-ridden country in the world. The only other country that comes close per capita or per,
• 12:54
  you know budget to debt is Germany And you know which is you know the second largest economy in the world But there no other no other country comes close to the amount of debt they carrying
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  with compared to their budget. You know, our, we go 20, we go, our budget is 127% over budget.
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  So we collect 100 coins and we spend 127 every year, year in and year out. We're 27% over budget.
• 13:25
  Yeah, any business would be out of business by now, a long time ago.
• 13:29
  I mean, you know, and the argument is, oh, you can carry some debt, just like, you know, your home mortgage is debt.
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  And yeah, for sure.
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  But you can't continue to not pay off the debt.
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  You have to pay off your house.
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  You have to continue to make payments on it.
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  You don't make zero payments on your debt or put your debt on your credit card.
• 13:51
  You don't put your mortgage payment on your credit card.
• 13:53
  So, and that's what we're doing.
• 13:54
  And everybody's like, oh, we're fine with it. It's fine. And it's not fine. It's not going to be fine. And it's going to be, it's going to, you know, at what point do we tell the Chinese, okay, you can, you can drill for oil in the Everglades or drill for oil in, you know, Yosemite National Park or whatever, Yellowstone, you know, what, how do we pay them off?
• 14:18
  I don't know. It's baffling because people will say, I look at our assets. Our assets are over $6 trillion. If you look at the interstates and bridges and all these other things, I'm like, yeah, great. Are you going to sell off those assets to pay the Chinese when the bill comes due? And the answer is, no, you're not.
• 14:36
  Well, they shouldn't anyway.
• 14:38
  I don't know how you do it.
• 14:39
  I guess you put a toll road everywhere.
• 14:40
  But who's going to want to do – listen, we became a country over tax on T.
• 14:48
  I can't imagine Americans saying, okay, we're going to allow a bunch of toll roads to pay off the Chinese.
• 14:54
  So it doesn't make any sense.
• 14:56
  In California, there's a toll on every freaking road, it seems like, every bridge, lane, you name it.
• 15:00
  It's ridiculous out here.
• 15:02
  okay I mean I'm maybe on over exaggerating but but not necessarily I mean if you're out in the
• 15:08
  Bay Area there's it's literally about that bad now I agree with you and people are shocked about
• 15:14
  the whole USAID thing or USAID because for the most part people have been woefully ignorant like
• 15:21
  this information has not necessarily been secret it's been public people just never looked no one
• 15:26
  care. Well, nobody, as long as things are going well, nobody cares. And so, you know, we're,
• 15:32
  but the truth of the matter is, you know, that's USAID is an easy target because everybody knows
• 15:40
  that that's kind of a slush fund of the political class. And, you know, they, that's just what it is.
• 15:47
  I mean, everybody kind of, not that they're not doing jobs, not that their jobs aren't good things,
• 15:52
  But it's just everybody knows that they're not jobs that have to happen, you know, or or if they had to happen, they would be under a secretary level position.
• 16:02
  And which is what is going to happen is they're going to go under the secretary of state and a U.S. Senate confirmed position.
• 16:10
  And, you know, they're like, oh, well, we need to take.
• 16:12
  So what Democrats would argue is USAID is, you know, kind of a stepchild of the secretary of state.
• 16:19
  Right. But but it's governed by politicians, not by a U.S. Senate confirmed, you know, cabinet level position.
• 16:28
  And so so, you know, who's actually who's actually running it?
• 16:33
  And where's the oversight? Where's the oversight?
• 16:36
  And so it's a way for it's the oversight's not in the executive branch for sure.
• 16:42
  So I think that people are freaking out because say what you will about Trump.
• 16:46
  He's unorthodox.
• 16:47
  He does.
• 16:48
  He does do things.
• 16:49
  He beats to his own drum for sure.
• 16:50
  Now, what you got to realize, well, you do, but most people don't is he's got four years.
• 16:55
  He's intent on getting things done.
• 16:57
  He's not going to be president again.
• 16:59
  This is it for him.
• 17:00
  So he's not holding back this time.
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  First time around, I think it was getting his footing.
• 17:04
  He trusted people.
• 17:05
  Maybe got steered a little wrong.
• 17:07
  And what you said earlier, when we started talking, I agree with like, there's some things
• 17:11
  where I shake my head and I'm like, I get it.
• 17:13
  I understand where you're coming from, what you're trying to do.
• 17:15
  but maybe this isn't the right approach. But I also understand overall what he wants to do,
• 17:19
  and that's trying to turn things around. So his decisions are very sudden. It gave people no time.
• 17:25
  They thought, oh, it's going to be this way forever. And if they do make a change,
• 17:29
  it's not going to be that easy. Well, bullshit. Trump said, yeah, it will be. I'm making it that
• 17:33
  easy. He's right away just going, we're doing this. And people don't know what to do. And
• 17:38
  when it comes to things like USAID, people were living off of that.
• 17:44
  I mean, the money that they were getting for funding for some bullshit operation that they were conducting in some foreign land, which never really existed.
• 17:51
  I mean, they're getting called out on it and they don't like it because their income has just been taken from them.
• 17:57
  For doing what exactly?
• 17:59
  Absolutely nothing.
• 18:00
  You know, any other company, if you're top heavy and you've got too many people doing the same thing, what do you start doing?
• 18:05
  You start cutting them.
• 18:06
  It's like you said, some of these positions should be like secretary level, right?
• 18:09
  Or they should be under positions.
• 18:11
  There's no reason.
• 18:11
  Some of these functions will come back.
• 18:14
  You know, waste functions are things, you know, because if we don't fill the void, the Chinese will.
• 18:20
  And we can't have that either.
• 18:21
  But it should be more strategic.
• 18:23
  It should be part of our overall foreign policy, not just a separate organization that happens to be throwing money around.
• 18:31
  When it comes to global relationships, when we're talking about geopolitical relationships, yes, we can't let the Chinese step in as a superpower.
• 18:37
  But we still can't deny that we need to trim the fat on USAID.
• 18:42
  there was a lot of things going on that absolutely were not being accounted for.
• 18:46
  And we're absolutely being used, as you said, a slush fund for just nobody even knows what,
• 18:53
  to be honest, nobody even knows what.
• 18:56
  So it's shocking everybody right now, but it had to happen.
• 18:59
  It had to happen.
• 19:00
  We're on a downward spiral for the last 12, 13 years minimum.
• 19:04
  You know, I know it goes back even further.
• 19:06
  I'm sure you can recall more than I can.
• 19:07
  Well, for those who, you know, to kind of revisit one of the things that you said, you know, for those who, you know, who had that had that head scratching moment with Donald Trump, I like to say that in 2020, Trump lost the election.
• 19:21
  We can argue whether it was real or not, but he lost the election because he, two things.
• 19:30
  One is he practiced the politics of subtraction.
• 19:33
  And number two, people, voters did not like the fires that he set.
• 19:37
  And you fast forward to 2024 and Donald Trump started practicing the politics of addition.
• 19:44
  And you mentioned Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Elon Musk, Marco Rubio.
• 19:48
  You can go down the list.
• 19:49
  All of those are politics of addition.
• 19:52
  And the second thing is they elected Donald Trump in 2024 because he leads us through fire.
• 19:59
  And they now realize they are willing to accept the fires he sets.
• 20:03
  And this is what Democrats, I don't think, understand, is that they're like, Donald Trump set another fire. And Americans are like, good, good, because you know what? We know he can lead us through.
• 20:17
  And so, you know, he'll either put out the fire or we'll march our asses right through it.
• 20:22
  And so, and that's, I think, a fundamental difference between Donald Trump in his first term and his second term are those two things.
• 20:29
  That the American public has accepted the fires he sets for, but he's also practicing the politics of addition.
• 20:36
  I think, this is what I've been saying about Trump for a while, and what I think people miss is he's not stupid.
• 20:44
  A lot of what he does is intentional.
• 20:46
  And what I think he does is he says outlandish stuff on purpose.
• 20:50
  He knows he's going to get a reaction, but I feel this is what he does.
• 20:54
  He's stress testing the situation.
• 20:56
  He's like pecking at that glass with a pick to see where it starts to fracture.
• 21:01
  And once he sees where that fracture is, that's when he just goes all in on it.
• 21:05
  He's challenging the narrative and he's challenging the way people think.
• 21:09
  I don't think that everything he says, he actually believes.
• 21:11
  I mean, do you really think he wants to take on Greenland?
• 21:13
  Really?
• 21:14
  No, he's being a troll.
• 21:15
  Does he really want to take Canada?
• 21:17
  You know, Harry S. Truman tried to buy Greenland.
• 21:19
  I know that.
• 21:20
  This is not a new piece of political dirt that we've decided is in our best interest to own.
• 21:27
  No, Truman did make an offer, and it was rejected, and Greenland did not want to become part of the U.S.
• 21:32
  And, you know, as of now, they still don't.
• 21:35
  That's fine.
• 21:36
  But the reality is Trump is stress-testing the situation.
• 21:40
  He wants to see what the facts are.
• 21:41
  My only point by bringing up Truman is that it's not some bizarre out of left field idea.
• 21:46
  No, it's not.
• 21:47
  It's been around.
• 21:48
  We've had presidents talk about it, or if they could have done it, they would have, because it's been in our best interest for a long time.
• 21:57
  And like one of our Joint Chiefs of Staff said, we have to make sure that these guys don't try to fight a war with dog sleds.
• 22:07
  And that's, you know, we have shipping lanes that are opening up in that part of the world.
• 22:14
  And there's a lot of American interests that need to be protected.
• 22:19
  And, you know, having some level of strategic defense with Greenland would be beneficial to the United States.
• 22:27
  Absolutely. It's militarily strategic and also strategic in its resources.
• 22:32
  But I think in modern times, look, to me, the lines have been set, borders, drawn, whatever.
• 22:37
  And even Greenland is not entirely independent.
• 22:39
  And they want to be.
• 22:41
  But the reality is, I think, just creating a relationship with them, a close-knit relationship
• 22:44
  is probably the better way to move forward.
• 22:46
  My opinion, I may be wrong, but that's just the way I see it.
• 22:51
  But I still stand by what I said.
• 22:52
  I think Trump is just literally stress testing situations to see how people react before he
• 22:56
  moves forward on something.
• 22:57
  But that's going to take me to two other things.
• 22:59
  Because, you know, first off, just because you did talk about this recently on one of your shows, and I've talked about it also, we both had lawyers, you know, to go over it is the immigration debacle, I call it, you know, the deportations.
• 23:15
  Also, we're learning how immigrants have been taking advantage of the system knowingly, how companies have been taking advantage of the system knowingly.
• 23:22
  what do you have to say to people who are up in arms over the fact that he even mentioned
• 23:29
  deporting people? I don't even understand how you, when you have
• 23:36
  going back to Carter, going back to JFK, have all deported people, especially people who are
• 23:48
  criminals. So there's a baseline, you know, Barack Obama's, you know, deport, you know,
• 23:55
  like it's just ridiculous. It's a ridiculous comment of people who are either don't care
• 24:02
  or unknowledgeable about the past, or they're just so partisan that they're going to be against
• 24:08
  anything President Trump wants to do. You know, Joe Biden, it's all a bunch of horseshit, really.
• 24:17
  I agree with you. And so, you know, it's not a it's just, you know, what not to deport people at all is ridiculous.
• 24:28
  Like that's just every president has deported people. So it's not, you know, the question is and I had somebody on, you know, on my Twitter feed.
• 24:37
  Just I was like, how many is too many to let in? We still let in. We legally allow one point one million people in a year legally.
• 24:44
  That's the legal process. And most people who are experts in immigration would say that number probably needs to be cut in half to five to six hundred thousand per year.
• 24:56
  And yet people on the left will not even give you a number of what it should be.
• 25:01
  I was like, should we allow a billion people in a year?
• 25:03
  Like if we could open up our doors and let a billion people move here, a billion people would move here.
• 25:09
  But that's obviously not sustainable. Just in this last influx under Biden with the
• 25:19
  10 to 20 million, whatever the number ends up being that he let in, we started having
• 25:24
  a housing crisis in every corner of this country, an affordable housing crisis. And it's because we
• 25:31
  let too many people in too fast. And Democrats, quite frankly, don't care. And for them to stand
• 25:36
  and say they care for, you know, working class Americans or poor Americans is just flies in the
• 25:42
  face of anything that is reasonable. When they know that they have caused this problem, they've
• 25:48
  caused this affordable housing problem, they've caused the problem where Americans can't get work
• 25:53
  if they trying they at the if they especially if they at the you know starting level in their career their high school graduate or high school dropout or God forbid somebody been to prison You know we kind of look at felons as gosh you know they just can work anywhere
• 26:11
  Well, 50% of felons never go back to prison.
• 26:15
  So, you know, they committed their crime, they did their time, and now they're back
• 26:20
  out working.
• 26:21
  And so one guest on our podcast said, you know, it's kind of like, you know, how many
• 26:26
  people are in the waiting room to accept the job. If a single mother is like, I need to get off work
• 26:31
  at three and, you know, to pick up my kids from school, if the employer is looking at six other
• 26:40
  people in the waiting room for that same job and that person's willing to work till five, any one
• 26:45
  of them's willing to work till five and they're qualified, the employer is going to choose the
• 26:49
  person who works till five. But if there's nobody in the waiting room, the employer is more likely
• 26:53
  to say you give power to the employee. And Democrats have taken that power away from workers.
• 27:00
  Yeah, the thing that boggles me is that it's okay for every other major country to protect
• 27:06
  their borders except for the United States somehow. I mean, you can't just walk across
• 27:11
  the borders to China. Obviously, not North Korea either. But you can't do that in Russia either.
• 27:18
  They're all going to protect their borders.
• 27:20
  Every country does.
• 27:22
  This open border policy that seems to be like a virus that's spreading across the world, for example,
• 27:28
  because if we look at what we consider the free world or the Western nations, it starts here.
• 27:34
  And it all came from this, I don't know, this bullshit argument of pulling on your moral heartstrings.
• 27:40
  Because, hey, what about the children?
• 27:43
  Oh, you're going to deport the parents but leave the child here.
• 27:46
  or you take the child from the parents.
• 27:48
  It's like, we can have a moral argument all you want,
• 27:52
  but these parents willingly made the decision
• 27:54
  to put their child in that position.
• 27:57
  And that's not even true.
• 27:58
  The children can be deported with their parents.
• 28:00
  It's just a PR gimmick to say,
• 28:03
  oh, I shouldn't deport the parent.
• 28:05
  No, that's not true.
• 28:06
  The child can go with,
• 28:08
  America's not responsible for keeping the family together.
• 28:12
  Think about it this way.
• 28:13
  You know, when single mom goes to prison, we don't send our children with her.
• 28:20
  No, absolutely not.
• 28:21
  Think about that.
• 28:22
  So when, you know, dad goes and robs a bank, we don't send his children to prison with him.
• 28:29
  So these criminals, why would we, it just doesn't make any sense.
• 28:37
  I'm on your side here.
• 28:38
  I'm just, you know, I was just pointing out that argument they always try to make to make
• 28:42
  everybody feel bad about that decision of upholding our law. And it's just propagandist
• 28:46
  bullshit. But, you know, like recently the story that just happened about the kid that needed the
• 28:51
  surgery for her brain cancer. And it's like, oh, wait, the U S is kicking them out when they need
• 28:57
  this care. And they deport them back over to Mexico where they're still getting the care.
• 29:01
  And in that situation, you know, it's, it's, it's a little tricky. It, to me, it's a matter of
• 29:06
  timing. I personally would have said, okay, well, let's give the child the care. But when that
• 29:09
  child's care is done, they're going back, right? It's the way I see it as some kind of a compromise.
• 29:15
  But if we're always going to be upheld to some insane moral argument that they just reach back
• 29:24
  out into this large cave of, well, okay, let me grab this one and throw it at the conservatives
• 29:29
  right now and say, look, you can't do this because little Johnny over here just scraped his knee and
• 29:34
  he's bleeding and we can't move him right now because he doesn't feel good about himself.
• 29:38
  Well, that's a bunch of crap.
• 29:38
  Well, and the, you know, birthright citizenship is bullshit. You know, the jurisdiction whereas clause of the 14th Amendment was interpreted to, in the long case of, I think it was 1898, maybe 1896, that the U.S. Supreme Court case was interpreted to be birthright citizenship.
• 30:01
  And so, you know, any any as we know, any U.S. Supreme, any constitutional or amendment, the Constitution, anytime there's an interpretation through a U.S. Supreme Court case, that interpretation can then be changed.
• 30:17
  And so I hope the U.S. Supreme Court looks at birthright citizenship because we have been invaded and and we have been invaded.
• 30:26
  And everyone's like, oh, it's not an occupying army. The hell it's not.
• 30:30
  These Venezuelan gangs are an army.
• 30:33
  They may not be at war with our government, but they are at war with America.
• 30:37
  They're at war with our way of life.
• 30:39
  And the fact that they came here to do harm, to occupy our land, and to say then that if their children are born here, that they're citizens.
• 30:53
  Nobody would say that if in World War II, if Germany had stormed our land and gotten to the United States and had children, that those children somehow would be U.S. citizens.
• 31:06
  There's not a reasonable person who thinks that's correct.
• 31:10
  And yet somehow people have bought into this belief that just Chinese citizens are flying here to have babies.
• 31:20
  You have this problem in California big time.
• 31:22
  are flying to, especially California, having babies so their babies have dual citizenship
• 31:29
  and flying them back to have them raised as communists so they can then infiltrate our
• 31:35
  country as citizens 20, 30 years from now. And that makes no sense. It makes no sense that we
• 31:42
  would allow that. Yeah, but that's egregiously taken advantage of a law, which has been grossly
• 31:52
  misinterpreted, interpreted, so I don't know why I said dated, but interpreted, because
• 31:58
  if you're a diplomat, for example, for another country, or if you're visiting, you know,
• 32:02
  as a representative of a large company and you're traveling around, if you have, let's
• 32:07
  say you, for example, if you went to France on vacation, you had a kid, is your kid now
• 32:11
  a French citizen?
• 32:12
  Would your kid be a Russian citizen?
• 32:14
  Would it be a Greek citizen?
• 32:15
  No, it doesn't work that way.
• 32:16
  If you happen to have the child in whatever land, it doesn't automatically make you a
• 32:21
  citizen.
• 32:22
  Now, there's a caveat to that.
• 32:23
  You're supposed to be able to live in this country for X amount of years.
• 32:26
  I think it was changed to 14 years or something like that is what it was supposed to be.
• 32:31
  And you have to live here for a certain amount of time.
• 32:34
  You have to prove that you have an allegiance to the United States.
• 32:37
  I mean, it's not just as simple as saying, I had a kid here.
• 32:40
  Thank you very much.
• 32:41
  I now have a city.
• 32:42
  Parents have to be allegiant to the United States.
• 32:44
  Absolutely.
• 32:44
  We can have a debate because I think the debate that is legitimate is around the word allegiant. What does it mean to be allegiant to the United States? Well, it means that you are not allegiant to another country. We have members of Congress who brag that they are more allegiant to other countries than to the United States.
• 33:06
  That should not be.
• 33:07
  That should not be at all.
• 33:09
  They shouldn't be allowed to vote.
• 33:10
  That's someone who should not be a citizen, should not be a voter.
• 33:14
  They damn sure shouldn't be allowed to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• 33:16
  I'll just call it out.
• 33:17
  Like Ilhan Omar should not be in Congress.
• 33:20
  She needs to be removed.
• 33:21
  Absolutely not.
• 33:22
  She is working on behalf of the Somali government.
• 33:23
  She's not.
• 33:24
  She's not.
• 33:24
  If you're not allegiant to the United States, you're not qualified to be a member of Congress.
• 33:29
  You're not qualified to be a voter.
• 33:31
  You're not qualified to be a voter if you are not allegiant to the United States.
• 33:35
  I still can't understand how someone like that was able to even get on the ticket and be considered for public office.
• 33:43
  Well, that's how much immigration, legal and illegal, we've had that have formed in one place.
• 33:53
  Those voters are not allegiant to the United States, quite frankly.
• 33:57
  They're electing someone who is not allegiant, and I don't even understand it.
• 34:01
  It's bizarre that we even have this discussion.
• 34:06
  I'm not going to stick on Ilhound for too long, but I'm just going to say that I did do a deep dive on her in one of my episodes.
• 34:13
  And I know who her father was and who he was serving at the time, who was a known terrorist, authoritarian terrorist, to their own people.
• 34:25
  And she came here and she has since been here, has always gone out of her way to demean the United States, to demean our way of life, our culture, our people.
• 34:36
  and has even been caught on camera multiple times,
• 34:40
  even on her X feed,
• 34:42
  stating how she's working on behalf of the Somali people.
• 34:45
  And how it is that nobody else in Congress
• 34:47
  is taking action against this and holding her?
• 34:50
  I mean, it's just ridiculous.
• 34:52
  It's ridiculous that she's still allowed to serve.
• 34:54
  And I'm just going to leave it there.
• 34:56
  I can go a lot deeper,
• 34:57
  but I just wanted to,
• 34:58
  since her name came up,
• 35:00
  well, I brought it up.
• 35:01
  I just wanted to make that point.
• 35:02
  I may be started up.
• 35:04
  So there you go.
• 35:05
  Yeah.
• 35:06
  It's ridiculous.
• 35:09
  So before we move off this immigration thing, though, you mentioned something about, you
• 35:13
  know, how we're losing jobs to immigration.
• 35:15
  And one of the lawyers I had on, she was very savvy on basically the work visas programs
• 35:21
  like the H-1B, H-2A, et cetera.
• 35:23
  And she explained a lot of that and how that worked and how companies are using that.
• 35:26
  Now, she was really going out of her way to explain it to me.
• 35:31
  And we're trying to keep it objective and non-political because I just wanted to get
• 35:34
  the information.
• 35:36
  And you had a little bit of a similar experience with one of your recent episodes, too.
• 35:40
  I just listened to that one, by the way.
• 35:42
  And that particular lawyer.
• 35:44
  Was that the one with Rosemary or with Mark?
• 35:46
  I believe it was Mark.
• 35:47
  It was the one you just released.
• 35:50
  Mark, okay.
• 35:50
  Yeah, Mark.
• 35:51
  And he made some similar points.
• 35:55
  He didn't dive too deep on the H2Bs and how those work or the H2As.
• 36:00
  But from your understanding, how do you view that these immigrants under these statuses are taking jobs from American citizens?
• 36:12
  So, and I was trying to look at my notes because I wanted to say it correctly because it is, you know, but let's just say the one program that Mark Krikorian, Mark is the founder of the Center of Immigration Studies.
• 36:28
  And if you're looking for immigration information, the Center of Immigration Studies website is a wealth.
• 36:35
  There's so much you can lose yourself for days in there.
• 36:39
  But the way he described it was that, and it's like you can't blame employers, but what we do is we bring people on student visas.
• 36:48
  And then we incentivize the worker, the employer to hire someone who, let's say, in the tech industry.
• 37:01
  So when they graduate from college, the employer will seek out someone who's on a student visa because they don't have to pay Social Security.
• 37:14
  Neither the employee nor the employer pays Social Security tax on that employee for a period of three years.
• 37:24
  And so we are putting all of our students at an immediate disadvantage in every field, engineering, every STEM field, when they're going up against students from other countries.
• 37:38
  Because, you know, they immediately have an advantage because the employers who hire them get a tax advantage.
• 37:44
  So we're saying to our own American, and we're subsidizing not only that student visa, but we're subsidizing the American kids who are in university.
• 37:55
  Then we're saying, oh, not only are we going to subsidize your education, but we're going to put you in a disadvantage to getting a job compared to the foreign worker or the foreign student.
• 38:06
  So, I mean, it's ridiculous some of these tax incentives that we have in place.
• 38:11
  And like Mark said, you really can't blame the employer because that's the system.
• 38:17
  You know, the employer is based on making money.
• 38:20
  And so if I can hire, if they're both equal, I'm going to hire the one who's going to save
• 38:24
  me 10% in taxes or whatever that percentage is in taxes and call it a day.
• 38:29
  And the reasoning behind it, you know, if you want to do devil's advocate, the reason
• 38:35
  behind it is, well, you know, this foreign student is going to do their three years and
• 38:38
  leave.
• 38:39
  and so they're never going to collect Social Security
• 38:44
  so they shouldn't have to pay into it,
• 38:47
  which is all a bunch of horseshit.
• 38:49
  And that's how the student visa works.
• 38:52
  Right.
• 38:53
  And then, how's that contrast to the H-2B visa?
• 38:58
  Well you have to I not you lose me in the acronyms to be honest with you My wife is Oh no worries No worries Yeah It so the thing with the H2B visa is it relates more to professional positions
• 39:10
  So these are no longer necessarily students.
• 39:12
  And what I found fascinating about this one is for, for one in the marketplace, by the
• 39:19
  way, in the market, the company has to, has to prove that there was no reasonably available
• 39:25
  candidates for the position who are already in the United States or who are already citizens.
• 39:30
  They have to make that case. Somehow they're always able to make that case because apparently
• 39:35
  there's not enough professionals here. But anyway, so what-
• 39:38
  So yeah, so this goes back to World War II and when we brought all the nuclear scientists over.
• 39:45
  And so the thought was we would bring the best and brightest from other countries and we would
• 39:49
  have them here and give them some level of status, whether it's screen card or citizenship,
• 39:54
  if they filled certain mostly scientific or whatever, let's just call it STEM degrees that would fill those needs.
• 40:07
  And so one problem with that is that it's almost inhumane.
• 40:15
  Because if you take the top people out of an emerging country, they're no longer there to help their emerging country.
• 40:24
  And so we cannot, and the truth of the matter is we cannot bring enough people here, you know, so it's, there's an incredible, you know, part of the thought process is, you know, we bring people here because they're in poverty and so they can come to America and not be in poverty.
• 40:44
  But we bring 1.1 million people here and they're all not impoverished, but let's even pretend that they all are.
• 40:50
  So every year, there's a net of 20 million people in the country born into poverty.
• 40:58
  So we would have to bring in 20 million a year just to keep our head above water if we were using our immigration system to be humane to other countries in the world.
• 41:09
  And what ends up happening is we end up being inhumane because we're taking the best and brightest from the people who can fix the problems in these emerging economies.
• 41:21
  And we're taking them out of their problem-solving area.
• 41:25
  And so there's an argument that we should leave them there, but give them the tools to be successful in their own countries.
• 41:34
  I understand that argument, and I understand that take, but it's not going to happen or change because the reality is these companies are able to take advantage of these people.
• 41:46
  They are saving money, even in this case where they have to pay the taxes, because they have to sponsor that individual for three years.
• 41:52
  They get a three-year minimum, basically.
• 41:53
  But they can't extend it up to six.
• 41:56
  And then after that, it's supposed to be over.
• 41:59
  The thing with the H2B, though, is the argument is, oh, they have to be offered the same salary
• 42:04
  at market value rate, whatever, which I know is complete bullshit because I've known many
• 42:10
  people in different companies.
• 42:11
  And I'll just say that I know for a fact that a lot of these people are not getting paid
• 42:17
  what the actual market rate is.
• 42:19
  You can go by market statistics based on prevailing wage, for example, for a certain position that is put out there by the government.
• 42:26
  But that doesn't necessarily mean that the market that they are in in particular is exactly what that same prevailing wage is supposed to be.
• 42:34
  Prevailing wage could say $50,000, but that market's supposed to pay $160,000 because of living conditions.
• 42:39
  So a company can easily go, yeah, well, we're meeting the minimum.
• 42:42
  Here you go, $60,000.
• 42:43
  We're going to bring this guy in, save money.
• 42:44
  We don't have to pay this other qualified engineer $120,000 to $160,000.
• 42:49
  And then there you go.
• 42:50
  And that happens all the time.
• 42:53
  So yeah, it's good if it's not being taken advantage of.
• 42:58
  And unfortunately, it's been taken advantage of.
• 43:01
  And so it seems like you and I agree on immigration.
• 43:04
  And I think most of the United States agrees on immigration aside from, well, obviously,
• 43:09
  the Democrat Party for whatever reason.
• 43:12
  But let's move on to the really heated, contested thing going on right now in the world.
• 43:18
  And that's been the Ukraine-Russia war.
• 43:20
  And I'm not sure how far you've dived into this particular situation.
• 43:25
  But just as of today, before we recorded, the Trump phone call with Putin just happened, right?
• 43:32
  And there's supposed to be a temporary ceasefire now.
• 43:35
  But the problem is, the conditions are it's a ceasefire just basically on energy and infrastructure.
• 43:43
  Like you can't destroy those things, which does nothing to stop Russia, for example, from going ahead and just bombing and shooting up the rest of Ukraine.
• 43:54
  And I guess and vice versa, if Zelensky wanted to do the same to Russia, he could, I guess.
• 43:59
  How do you feel about this?
• 44:01
  We're all in a predicament because the world has drawn, I think, a line in the sand saying we don't want Russia to advance.
• 44:12
  you know, we prefer Russia leave. But the truth of the matter is, there's not enough men in
• 44:22
  Ukraine to root out the Russians and push them back. There's just not. And so the question,
• 44:29
  and this was part of the blow up in the Oval Office was, and I actually was on BBC International
• 44:35
  when the news broke, when Michael Waltz, the national security advisor, was speaking at CPAC
• 44:42
  and said that Zelensky had agreed to a minerals deal.
• 44:45
  And so even in that interview,
• 44:48
  which is on YouTube on Reasonable Arguments,
• 44:51
  but even in that interview,
• 44:53
  the reporter kept asking about this word strength.
• 44:58
  You know Donald Trump's going to have to agree
• 45:01
  to secure, not strength, security,
• 45:06
  provide Zelensky and Ukraine with security.
• 45:10
  And at the time, I didn't really realize, but certainly by the time the blow off of the
• 45:16
  Oval Office, Zelensky had used this word security and Trump was offended by it, called it, said,
• 45:23
  you know, threatened Zelensky that he was starting with World War III.
• 45:27
  And the truth of the matter is what Zelensky meant was American boots on the ground.
• 45:32
  And that's what he wanted.
• 45:33
  Yeah, that's true.
• 45:35
  And I actually did a breakdown of that same situation.
• 45:37
  I came to the same conclusion.
• 45:38
  It's exactly what he wanted.
• 45:40
  That's what he's implied the whole time.
• 45:42
  And he got it.
• 45:42
  He got it from the EU and he gets it on day 31 after a ceasefire.
• 45:47
  He gets EU boots on the ground.
• 45:49
  So he was trying to put Americans and the EU in a position where, you know, on day 31,
• 45:55
  if the Russians shoot, now they're shooting at the world and the whole damn thing gets
• 45:59
  escalated, which is why Trump called him out.
• 46:02
  Yeah, but even before this,
• 46:05
  so America's being billed as the big, bad,
• 46:09
  you know, like we're the bad personnel, right?
• 46:12
  We hate democracy.
• 46:13
  We don't want to get involved.
• 46:14
  We don't want to protect freedom.
• 46:16
  It's a bunch of bullshit
• 46:17
  because Europe could have stopped us a long time ago.
• 46:19
  This is in their backyard.
• 46:20
  Now, what is crazy is, you know,
• 46:23
  the first invasion, 2014, they annexed Crimea.
• 46:26
  Russia took it over.
• 46:27
  But if you go back further, 2012,
• 46:29
  people make the argument,
• 46:30
  Yeah, well, but the Ukraine was also shooting missiles at the borders on Russians and et cetera.
• 46:35
  But that wasn't Zelensky.
• 46:37
  So this whole thing is ridiculous because the UK is trying to criticize America, for example.
• 46:45
  And so is France.
• 46:46
  France, I always had a bone to pick with because they're the biggest talkers that do nothing.
• 46:51
  Same thing with Germany.
• 46:52
  They're all just barely starting to get off their ass and do something, which they should have done a long time ago.
• 46:56
  instead of trying to rely on the strength of the United States of America and continuing to get
• 47:00
  money from us. I mean, we fund over 200 something countries, but no one sends anything our way.
• 47:04
  Like literally. And every American, every American should be offended by what Zelensky said.
• 47:10
  Zelensky said, I'm not going to put my grandchildren in debt. And yet we are supposed to
• 47:17
  fund his war with our grandchildren's money. And that's exactly what we've been doing. And it's
• 47:23
  wrong and it needs to stop. You know, and you look at someplace like France, which carries no debt.
• 47:30
  You know, the UK, you know, when we go back to, we're doing 127 percent. Germany's at like 117
• 47:38
  percent of their budget. You know, UK's only deficit spends about 10 percent of their budget,
• 47:43
  over their budget. You know, France is like at three percent. They don't deficit spend at all.
• 47:49
  They have the least amount of debt of all of these countries.
• 47:52
  And then they have the gall to sit there and say that somebody else needs to step up to
• 47:57
  the plate.
• 47:57
  And I'm like, listen, you want my grandchildren to finance your war today.
• 48:02
  Why don't you do some of that?
• 48:03
  Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?
• 48:06
  They don't.
• 48:07
  And, you know, when it comes to contributing to NATO, like everybody wants to compare Europe
• 48:11
  or EU to the United States.
• 48:13
  You can't take a conglomerate of countries and compare it to one singular nation.
• 48:16
  We still pay over 70% of the entire funding for NATO, regardless of how you want to look
• 48:21
  at it.
• 48:22
  Now, getting back to this, what you mentioned about the mineral rights deal that, you know,
• 48:25
  when you heard all that break, that argument, when you, when you were doing that BBC interview,
• 48:29
  the reality is a lot of people didn't talk about it.
• 48:32
  It wasn't in the news or it wasn't reported, but the UK already signed a fricking mineral
• 48:37
  rights deal with Ukraine on January 26th of this year.
• 48:40
  They signed a 100-year deal to bolster up Ukraine's economy using, surprisingly, British banking system.
• 48:49
  Also helped them in commerce by using, of course, British trade partners.
• 48:55
  And they also signed a deal to help them in mining and processing all the minerals for Ukraine.
• 49:02
  And that was only a small snippet.
• 49:04
  That was like only a small section of that large deal that they made signed January 26.
• 49:09
  So when they were trying to criticize Trump for even mentioning the mineral rights deal,
• 49:13
  which actually went in Ukraine's favor, it was a 50-50 split of profits that would have
• 49:17
  put Americans on Ukraine's soil, which in and of itself would have been a deterrent.
• 49:21
  But no, everybody didn't mention that while the UK was trying to say we're there to rape
• 49:27
  the Ukraine and take advantage of them, no one mentioned this 100-year deal that the UK
• 49:31
  signed that you could actually find on their government website.
• 49:33
  Right. Well, at the end of the day, Zelensky was trying to take a deal that was made,
• 49:39
  an economic deal that was made and make it a military deal. And that's, I mean, he tried to
• 49:44
  blur the lines and he got caught. No, we know this. And I agree with you. That statement is
• 49:49
  actually very accurate because that's all he has. All he has is the mineral rights to negotiate
• 49:53
  with everybody, his resources. That is very true. But I'm not going to sit here and take the
• 49:57
  criticism of the UK or France or Europe for things that they themselves are going out of their way to
• 50:01
  make their own nations rich by creating this relationship with Ukraine.
• 50:06
  And they want us, here's the worst part is they want us to finance it.
• 50:09
  Well, yeah.
• 50:10
  So we're financing, we're financing the world's lifestyle, whether it's, we can jump into
• 50:14
  tariffs, like everyone's like, oh, let's not have tariffs.
• 50:17
  Well, somehow we are somehow financing the lifestyle of all these countries by paying
• 50:23
  taxes on the goods that, you know, by not having manufacturing here and not buying American
• 50:30
  and letting their goods flood our markets for free.
• 50:34
  And so in one way or another,
• 50:37
  we've talked about USAID,
• 50:39
  we've talked about the minerals deal,
• 50:41
  you start talking about tariffs.
• 50:43
  What has happened over the last 40, 50 years
• 50:45
  is that we've started financing
• 50:47
  all of these other countries, their lifestyle.
• 50:50
  And quite frankly, we're going broke doing it.
• 50:55
  And at some level, somebody needs to explain to me
• 50:59
  or to somebody that, you know, how we're going to repay nearly $40 trillion worth of debt.
• 51:06
  We can't. We can't. And again, as I said earlier, you know, we're funding over 200 countries every
• 51:12
  year. I mean, just Israel alone, let's just take them out here. We've been paying them three,
• 51:18
  I think it's three or 3.2 billion minimum every single year for a long time. That's the minimum.
• 51:25
  That's not all we pay them, but that's our minimum commitment.
• 51:28
  That's just one example.
• 51:30
  We send money to two, I think it was, I keep saying over 200 because I think it's like 220
• 51:35
  to something.
• 51:36
  And let me clarify.
• 51:38
  I mean, there's like 193, 194 recognized nations, but then you have this large number of what
• 51:45
  they call dependencies.
• 51:46
  I think it's like 55 dependencies, plus there's other independent, let's just call them nations
• 51:54
  that are not necessarily recognized.
• 51:55
  So that's where I'm getting this over 200 number, but we do absolutely fun over 200.
• 52:00
  I'll just say nations instead of countries, whatever, every year.
• 52:04
  ridiculous that that gets overlooked by the rest of the world. And they know this. That's why they're
• 52:09
  scared that Trump is saying, no, no, no, we're not doing this anymore. We're pulling things back
• 52:13
  because they don't want to admit that they've been relying on the funding.
• 52:16
  We owe China money and yet we gave them money and it didn't go towards the debt.
• 52:20
  Yeah.
• 52:20
  Like how does that make sense?
• 52:21
  It doesn't. So when it comes to Ukraine, you know, Europe's being very hypocritical because
• 52:29
  they themselves, look, they're scared of Russia, period. They are. They want to admit it, but they
• 52:34
  are. The only reason other countries started encroaching on their borders, as Putin tries to
• 52:39
  say, with NATO membership is because they were in fear of Russia. If Russia wasn't who they are,
• 52:44
  and they didn't fear Russia as a nation, then they wouldn't have all these other countries
• 52:47
  trying to become NATO members. That's the reality. That's the one point that everyone glosses over.
• 52:52
  They try to use the whole, well, you know, Putin warned, if you have another NATO nation coming
• 52:56
  closer to my border, then things are going to happen. Yeah, but ask yourself why they want to
• 52:59
  become NATO members. Like, what's the real reason they want to become a NATO member?
• 53:04
  They're not gaining financially.
• 53:06
  It's because they want to be protected.
• 53:07
  Protected from whom?
• 53:08
  Russia.
• 53:09
  So at what point should have,
• 53:12
  Trump's trying to be diplomatic
• 53:13
  and state of a large war
• 53:15
  because we know that this will lead
• 53:16
  to World War III
• 53:17
  if it's not handled correctly.
• 53:18
  But should Trump have been
• 53:20
  much more stern with Putin
• 53:22
  from the get-go on this one,
• 53:24
  you think?
• 53:24
  Should we have put our foot down
• 53:26
  and try to step in earlier about this?
• 53:28
  Well, even if you go,
• 53:28
  and we can talk about optics
• 53:30
  because the Oval Office blow up
• 53:33
  maybe was one of those fires that Trump set. But if you look at that whole 29 minutes or whatever
• 53:38
  it was of video footage, you have to go 12 minutes, 13 minutes in before the brouhaha started.
• 53:46
  And during that first 10 or 12 minutes, Donald Trump is like, listen, I've got to be tough on
• 53:51
  both of these guys. I've got to be tough. And he's looking at Zelensky. I got to be tough on him,
• 53:55
  but I got to be tough on Putin too. And he's like, I'm the one who has to be, I have to be the bad
• 54:03
  guy. And so it's for people to say that he was choosing a side there is they just didn't watch
• 54:10
  the whole thing. Now, can you know, the question is, you know, could Trump be tougher on Putin?
• 54:17
  And I'm like, yeah, I guess he could, you know, at the end of the day. But the one thing that we
• 54:22
  cannot, I think you and I agreed on this from a from a maybe a higher level, you know, what the
• 54:28
  world cannot have is Russia, China, and North Korea ally themselves and Iran ally themselves
• 54:36
  in a thought process of global expansion. And so, you know, we already know that North Korea
• 54:45
  has sent more than 10,000 troops at least last October to the Russia-Ukrainian border
• 54:51
  or to battle with Russia.
• 54:55
  And, you know, we don't really know
• 54:57
  whether they've sent more or not,
• 54:59
  but we know that they sent at least 10,000.
• 55:01
  And so, you know, there's a fine balance here
• 55:05
  of what do you, what's a win?
• 55:08
  How do you define a win?
• 55:09
  Is a win pushing Russia all the way out of Ukraine?
• 55:13
  Or is a win not having World War III?
• 55:16
  It is a win having long-term, making long-term, quote, kind of friendships so that we don't allow Russia, China, and North Korea to ally themselves.
• 55:29
  So, I mean, that's a huge problem should that happen.
• 55:32
  And so I'm not sure that anyone in certainly the corporate national media really discusses what is a win.
• 55:43
  No, they don't.
• 55:44
  And so I don't know that I have the answer. I'm not sure I'm going to sit here and say, oh, this is the win and this is how we define it.
• 55:51
  Because I think that depending on what the strategy is, any of those things could be seen as a win.
• 55:57
  But if you're talking about taking Russia and rooting them out of the land that they've taken in Ukraine and pushing them back across the border, that's going to cost a lot of lives.
• 56:08
  And it's going to cost American lives. And I don't think America is up for it. And I don't think we should be.
• 56:14
  Yeah, and I don't think this is kind of a macro view situation.
• 56:20
  You know, that's my opinion.
• 56:21
  This is a big picture solution in terms of how we got to look at this
• 56:25
  because the world is hating that little Ukraine is getting invaded
• 56:30
  by big bad Russia, right?
• 56:32
  And nobody wants to see this little sovereign nation get taken over.
• 56:35
  But look, Putin has been saying for, I can't even, I don't remember
• 56:39
  how many years that he wanted to reunite the old USSR.
• 56:41
  are. And even if we compromise, let's say there's a compromise in this deal and he takes a little
• 56:47
  piece. He already took Crimea. Everyone kind of turned their backs on that one. They're like,
• 56:51
  yeah, well, that happened, whatever. And what's going to stop him from pushing a little bit more
• 56:56
  and more and more? You got to realize that Putin's getting older. This is his legacy.
• 56:59
  So he's not going to stop. But you are correct because I've always said this. It's funny how
• 57:06
  China's been kind of quiet about this whole thing until recently. They're speaking up a little bit,
• 57:11
  but they're speaking up about what?
• 57:13
  Russia and China coming together to bolster Iran and saying, hold on, we can't let the
• 57:20
  United States go in there and try to tell them how to handle their nuclear capabilities
• 57:24
  and et cetera.
• 57:25
  So now all of a sudden they're united and they're speaking together as they're on the
• 57:29
  same front, right?
• 57:30
  And it's exactly what you just said earlier.
• 57:32
  We don't need Iran, Russia, and China to suddenly come together and decide that they're going
• 57:37
  to become the superpower and start to take over territories.
• 57:40
  Well, Russia's already doing it.
• 57:42
  They're not going to stop.
• 57:43
  China has been very, very active in the Asia Pacific over there.
• 57:50
  And they've been going ahead and trolling Taiwan to no end and even the Philippines.
• 57:57
  They're not going to stop.
• 57:58
  They're making it very clear that, look, we know the U.S. is distracted here.
• 58:02
  And oh guess what Now they over here helping Israel again They back over in that situation and they going to continue these maneuvers and continue to test the waters on how far they can get with things It already been assessed and analyzed by many different analysts and someone
• 58:16
  that I know personally that has been in the intelligence community and still is, by the way,
• 58:20
  and offers these services that we are on a collision course. There's no way around it that
• 58:24
  by 2027, we will be fighting China in some way. China has never denied this. And China has been
• 58:30
  has been becoming more and more emboldened in their actions and what they do.
• 58:35
  And the thing is, China has taken American tactics.
• 58:37
  They've gone to countries.
• 58:38
  They've dumped tons of money in to say, hey, you know, we're going to help you.
• 58:41
  We're going to build up your infrastructure.
• 58:43
  Hey, rice, water, food, infrastructure, 100%.
• 58:47
  And that's why they're gaining trust with some of like these African nations and et cetera.
• 58:51
  South America.
• 58:52
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 58:53
  Exactly.
• 58:53
  But the thing that's going on is China's been quiet with the Russia-Ukraine situation until now.
• 59:00
  They're kind of speaking up and coming together with Russia to start to say, wait a minute,
• 59:05
  we're still allies, and now we've got to stand up for Iran.
• 59:09
  China still hasn't said much about the actual situation between Russia and Ukraine, but
• 59:14
  they're popping up their head and saying, yeah, we're still an ally.
• 59:16
  They're letting the world know.
• 59:17
  They're letting them know that, hey, we never backed off being an ally whatsoever.
• 59:22
  We're still here.
• 59:23
  And I think when it comes to Ukraine, I think China is just trying to see how this plays
• 59:28
  out.
• 59:28
  They want to see how far Russia can get with this because that'll set the precedent for how far they can get with Taiwan.
• 59:36
  You're probably dead on correct.
• 59:39
  Probably.
• 59:40
  Right today, wrong tomorrow.
• 59:41
  You know how it goes.
• 59:41
  There's no question.
• 59:42
  Listen, China is, you know, I always say that, you know, the way China acts, the next big war could be fought over fish.
• 59:51
  I mean, they have gotten so good at fishing with satellites and people don't realize that they are pilfering the world's seas on a daily basis for fish, you know, so much so that, you know, people go out into the South China Sea and don't come back.
• 1:00:06
  Yeah.
• 1:00:06
  And because they run across a Russian fishing ship, which also happens to be Russian military.
• 1:00:15
  So it's a very dangerous ship fishing over in.
• 1:00:20
  And I wish we would call it the East Agency for the same reason we changed the Gulf of America to its name.
• 1:00:28
  Because we shouldn't give China ownership over it.
• 1:00:32
  No, we shouldn't.
• 1:00:32
  But that's something I've been arguing for for a decade.
• 1:00:37
  But that's probably not going to happen.
• 1:00:42
  It's a crazy world we live in right now.
• 1:00:44
  I never thought that all this would be happening in my time.
• 1:00:47
  I'm not going to say it is biblical, but it almost kind of feels like those things you read in Revelations.
• 1:00:53
  We already had what?
• 1:00:54
  We had the pandemic, and now we have these crazy wars going on.
• 1:00:59
  It just feels like we're there.
• 1:01:02
  I'm not necessarily a religious person, but it just seems like it's kind of crazy that these things are happening.
• 1:01:06
  And I never thought I'd see this because it's just so much.
• 1:01:09
  It's not like one situation that we can handle and the world gets behind.
• 1:01:14
  It's like, this is happening.
• 1:01:15
  Here's this fire.
• 1:01:16
  And then, by the way, while that's happening, here's another one.
• 1:01:18
  And then it's just nuts.
• 1:01:20
  And I'm not really sure how we're going to get out of this.
• 1:01:22
  I just know that the U.S. has to be stronger and be able to navigate this correctly.
• 1:01:26
  It's like what's going on right now.
• 1:01:29
  Our ships were attacked by the Houthis, period, out there.
• 1:01:33
  And we're striking back.
• 1:01:35
  And we should do that.
• 1:01:36
  But then it also begs the question, well, what happens if Russia happens to attack Ukraine
• 1:01:41
  or happens to kill an American accidentally or whatever the case is?
• 1:01:44
  I think you're exactly right. None of this happens in a vacuum, which is why Donald Trump had to be so careful about this word, you know, security.
• 1:01:55
  And so because, you know, that's if we if he had agreed to that one single word, it would have shown North Korea and China or given them a reason to escalate.
• 1:02:11
  And so, you know, so that's that's the reason why there is a big blow up in the Oval Office over that one single word is that you this none of this happens in a vacuum.
• 1:02:24
  And so, you know, people think, oh, we can just open our border.
• 1:02:27
  That's that doesn't happen in a vacuum.
• 1:02:29
  I mean, you know, look at it.
• 1:02:30
  If we were to have to go to war, how are we going to root these folks who are in our country, these Venezuelan gangs out of our country when all of our men go to young men go to war?
• 1:02:40
  I mean, it's ridiculous to even think about.
• 1:02:43
  And so it's all bizarro, like you said.
• 1:02:50
  It's just bizarre.
• 1:02:51
  It really is.
• 1:02:52
  But I've got to give you a 10-minute warning.
• 1:02:54
  Oh, that's fine.
• 1:02:55
  Yeah, I know you got other things going on.
• 1:02:57
  But before we get out of here, though, the thing is that people don't give Trump credit for.
• 1:03:03
  When we keep talking about that word security, people don't understand that Trump knew exactly what Zelensky meant.
• 1:03:09
  I knew what he meant.
• 1:03:11
  Listen, that whole discussion was actually over 50 minutes.
• 1:03:14
  It was like 52 minutes or whatever.
• 1:03:16
  I watched the entire thing from the beginning because when I saw that clip, I'm like, there
• 1:03:20
  has to always be more to the story.
• 1:03:22
  And I saw what happened.
• 1:03:24
  I saw how many times Zelensky mentioned security and push back on Trump.
• 1:03:27
  And then he offended J.D. Vance by saying, basically, well, what good is your diplomacy?
• 1:03:32
  Which is exactly what he said.
• 1:03:33
  Your diplomacy means nothing.
• 1:03:35
  He didn't say it in those same words, but that's exactly what he said.
• 1:03:38
  That was his intent.
• 1:03:39
  That's what he meant.
• 1:03:40
  And Vance got mad about that.
• 1:03:41
  And then Trump had to stand up for his vice president.
• 1:03:44
  And Vance got upset about the pictures of the dead children that he pulled out.
• 1:03:48
  And nobody talked about it.
• 1:03:50
  The corporate media never talked about him bringing out these pictures of dead children
• 1:03:54
  showing the president of the United States and then trying to show the cameras and all
• 1:03:57
  this other crap that he was trying to pull inside the Oval Office.
• 1:04:01
  I mean, it was a stunt.
• 1:04:03
  It was bad advice.
• 1:04:05
  It was bad advice It was bad advice but this also goes to show that the reality is the world the world knows and Trump knows I mean the world does know because this is why Europe is in such a tizzy right now right
• 1:04:20
  They're in such a fit because they're not getting the immediate response I used to get
• 1:04:24
  from our old presidents.
• 1:04:26
  Like, oh, right away, here we go, rah, rah team, whatever.
• 1:04:29
  Because Trump really understands the power of US involvement and what that means to all
• 1:04:34
  the other conflicts going on in the world right now.
• 1:04:36
  He knows it's a powder keg.
• 1:04:37
  Right.
• 1:04:38
  And no matter what anyone says, he does have good advisors around him.
• 1:04:42
  And he does have to be careful how he handles this situation.
• 1:04:47
  The U.S. still stands for something.
• 1:04:49
  And the military might of the U.S. is still the military might of the United States of
• 1:04:52
  America.
• 1:04:53
  And as you alluded to earlier, actually, what you said earlier when we were talking is very
• 1:04:57
  true.
• 1:04:59
  If he decides to say, yeah, we're going to go get engaged here.
• 1:05:02
  we're just
• 1:05:03
  what's going to stop from China going hey look
• 1:05:05
  they're distracted fighting this war
• 1:05:08
  let us go ahead and move forward on what we want to do
• 1:05:10
  here on Taiwan for example
• 1:05:12
  or Philippines or whatever
• 1:05:13
  and we're not going to be able to react
• 1:05:15
  we can't be split between two
• 1:05:17
  great big powerful
• 1:05:19
  military nations we just can't
• 1:05:22
  so I think the UK
• 1:05:23
  the other thing I've told
• 1:05:26
  people is that
• 1:05:27
  listen I don't like these
• 1:05:30
  facts but the fact is
• 1:05:31
  Russia was our ally during two world wars.
• 1:05:34
  And if we're going to, if these things are going to escalate,
• 1:05:40
  quite frankly, it's more likely that Russia is on our side than China or North Korea.
• 1:05:45
  And so, and history would say we're more likely to have Russia on our side than Germany.
• 1:05:52
  And so, you know, what, you know, so what's a win?
• 1:05:58
  I come back to what is a win today?
• 1:06:02
  What is a win that will be seen as a win 20 years from today?
• 1:06:06
  And I think the only win that is seen when we look back 20 years from today is were we able to keep Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from allying themselves in this global expansion?
• 1:06:20
  And it may be too far, like you suggested.
• 1:06:24
  You didn't suggest this, but like you said, China is already out there building infrastructure, providing water, providing food, you know, to-
• 1:06:34
  Giving countries loans.
• 1:06:34
  Working countries.
• 1:06:35
  So, you know, and yes, we've been there too, but China's no longer sitting on their hands doing nothing.
• 1:06:44
  And these things don't happen in a vacuum.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah, no, I agree.
• 1:06:48
  look, making America great again is going to hurt.
• 1:06:52
  I'm going to bring back, Mag, as we talked about in the beginning,
• 1:06:54
  because that's what Trump is trying to do.
• 1:06:56
  And it's not a negative connotation or statement.
• 1:06:59
  It shouldn't be viewed as something that's negative
• 1:07:01
  for the great United States of America.
• 1:07:05
  I know you got to go.
• 1:07:06
  Do you have like five more minutes to touch on the tariff thing,
• 1:07:08
  or do you have to head out?
• 1:07:10
  Yeah, I can do five.
• 1:07:11
  Yeah, I can do five.
• 1:07:11
  Okay, I'll let you go on the tariff thing,
• 1:07:14
  because you were about to say something.
• 1:07:15
  you want to expand on maybe what was on your mind?
• 1:07:19
  About tariffs?
• 1:07:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:21
  I forget where I was headed with it.
• 1:07:25
  It's another thing where it's important for people to know.
• 1:07:30
  I know that you know this,
• 1:07:31
  but it's important for people to know that it's reciprocal tariffs.
• 1:07:34
  And if you want to have your tariffs of goods coming into the United States zero,
• 1:07:41
  then lower your tariffs of United States products coming into your country to zero.
• 1:07:45
  like and and so what we're what's being exposed here is international hypocrisy and everyone's
• 1:07:52
  now jumping up and down because they know that they've had unfair trade practices towards the
• 1:07:57
  united states on you know it hasn't been broad most of these things are one or two items per
• 1:08:02
  country you know you know milk in canada steel whatever it is and so so it's a couple it's not
• 1:08:09
  everything, but it's oranges from Brazil. It's agriculture products from South Africa
• 1:08:17
  or agriculture products. We get tariffed if we ship them to South Africa. They have zero tariffs
• 1:08:23
  coming our way. And so what the president said is like, this is easy. We're going to have a true
• 1:08:33
  free trade. That's what's happening is if you were going to tariff us at 25%,
• 1:08:38
  we're going to tear a few at 25%. And, you know, if you want to bring it to zero,
• 1:08:44
  lower it to zero and it's all even. And so it's not, it's, I don't want to say it's not
• 1:08:49
  complicated, but the ball is in, is in these other countries courts and, you know, it's up
• 1:08:55
  to them to take action. Yeah. I kind of feel like I'm in a high school drama,
• 1:09:02
  dark situation, right? Like, are we adults? Are we really leaders of the free world? Not us. I'm
• 1:09:08
  just saying the countries in general, right? That were that are doing and China, they're still
• 1:09:12
  dictatorship or whatever, but, or authoritarian government. But the reality is, yeah, the
• 1:09:17
  reciprocal tariffs, I think makes sense on paper. They absolutely do. What I don't agree with is
• 1:09:25
  the speed at which these tariffs are being proposed or enacted because our markets can't
• 1:09:31
  adjust that quickly. We don't have the manufacturing here in America yet like we used to. So if we're
• 1:09:36
  going to lose out on a certain product or a certain commodity. We're not in a position to
• 1:09:43
  make that adjustment quite yet. And I understand why Trump is using it. He's like, hey, if you're
• 1:09:48
  going to do this to me, we're going to do it to you. And hopefully, like you said, it'll create
• 1:09:51
  that free market to where, eh, you know what? It ain't working for either of us. We've got to bring
• 1:09:54
  them back down. Makes sense. He's also using it because what he wants to do is create industry in
• 1:09:59
  the United States anymore. He's been tired of and has spoken about it for many, many years
• 1:10:03
  that we should not be offshoring all of our products.
• 1:10:07
  We shouldn be relying on other countries And this was very prevalent during the COVID pandemic when we found out hey all of our PPE is made by China And guess what We can get any Our medications are made overseas and we can get any And that the reason that he was putting
• 1:10:22
  these tariffs into place. It's not just because he's a crazy guy.
• 1:10:24
  I would only think that you, and I agree with you in the very short term, but I have had,
• 1:10:32
  And this is not my business, but, you know, I've had conversations with a company from Vietnam that wants to relocate to Sarasota.
• 1:10:40
  And I don't know where they heard from me.
• 1:10:42
  I get this call from a site developer, economic development person.
• 1:10:48
  And, hey, I now I say, OK, what does it take?
• 1:10:50
  It takes this amount of land or this building.
• 1:10:53
  If the building exists, we can be operational in four months.
• 1:10:56
  If the building does not exist, we can be operational in eight months.
• 1:10:59
  So it is working. Like you said, you have to turn the ship. But any of these things can be, I think you underestimate the power of American ingenuity and these other countries' willingness to avoid tariffs.
• 1:11:19
  So they're willing to pull up and start to have manufacturing in little old Sarasota, Florida, within eight months, employing about 60 people at about $70,000 per year average.
• 1:11:35
  And that's not a huge, huge manufacturing facility, not even for Sarasota.
• 1:11:40
  But I think it's indicative of probably what is happening with site developers and people all over the country and all over the world.
• 1:11:48
  People are, you know, these companies are thinking, OK, how do I hedge my bet with the United States?
• 1:11:54
  What if, you know, because they have to think long term.
• 1:11:56
  They're like, OK, Trump is Trump's here for four years.
• 1:11:59
  So we have to we have to suck it up for that.
• 1:12:01
  But then what if what if J.D. Vance or Ron DeSantis or another person who wants to continue these Trump policies wins the next election?
• 1:12:09
  So now they have to think eight, 12 years in advance.
• 1:12:13
  And so, of course, they would want to avoid any tariffs, and they want to avoid the political conflict and all those things.
• 1:12:19
  So, I believe it can happen faster than what you predict, but you are correct when you say it can't happen immediately.
• 1:12:28
  Yeah.
• 1:12:29
  Well, we're going to have to define fast because I buy products from manufacturers for my business that are made in Chinese plants and other areas overseas.
• 1:12:40
  and I've already gotten, I couldn't tell you how many price lists increase just within this month
• 1:12:46
  alone, to be honest. So it's going to affect the markets. I got to say that I have to tip my hat
• 1:12:53
  to Apple because once this started getting announced, they already said, hey, we're investing
• 1:12:58
  500 billion. We're going to build a plant here. We're going to bring it back to the United States.
• 1:13:01
  So I agree it will shift. America is very handy. We're very ingenious in what we do and we can make
• 1:13:08
  it work, but it's going to be painful. And I'm not faulting Trump for what he's doing, by the way.
• 1:13:12
  I don't want anybody to hear me say it because I don't think his intent is wrong. I'm just saying
• 1:13:18
  that maybe there should have been a progressive plan to go, look, I'm giving you guys fair warning
• 1:13:23
  here. I'm going to raise it this much now. Six months later, it's going to be even more,
• 1:13:27
  and then it'll be a little bit more later on. I think the markets, I think our stock markets
• 1:13:31
  are reacting to so much happening so fast. I think you're right about that. But there's also
• 1:13:37
  an argument that like, hey, rip the bandaid off and let it adjust. And by summer, you know,
• 1:13:42
  maybe we're back on track. Maybe we're not. Certainly the midterm elections will determine,
• 1:13:48
  you know, I believe that Trump will, the Republicans will either win or lose 30 to 50
• 1:13:52
  seats in the U.S. House. They'll, you know, I think the U.S. Senate's a little bit more stable
• 1:13:57
  both ways. It's one or two seats, one way or the other. You know, a recent report that just came
• 1:14:03
  out recently, as in, I think, a day or two ago, that the favor towards the Democratic Party is
• 1:14:10
  as low as 27% right now. Well, sure. And so either party is going to win or lose by 30. You know,
• 1:14:16
  the Republican Party would win or lose 30 seats. So I want to believe that we'll win 30. And there
• 1:14:24
  will be a mandate for Donald Trump's last two years. But history would suggest that that's not
• 1:14:30
  the case. And, um, and so we'll see. Yeah. Well, there's nothing wrong with having a balanced,
• 1:14:35
  a balanced Congress anyway, to be quite honest. I'd love to come. I'd love to come back sometime.
• 1:14:40
  Yeah, man. I know you got to get going. Well, thanks for your time and you will be back. Um,
• 1:14:45
  I appreciate it. Thank you. Definitely. Well, appreciate it. And, um, tell everybody where
• 1:14:49
  they can find you. People can find me reasonable arguments.com. You can find all my socials,
• 1:14:54
  the book, the schedule speaking, all of that at reasonablearguments.com.
• 1:15:00
  Well, and beyond that, we're going to have your profile on my website and we'll have all your
• 1:15:03
  links and they'll be able to find you there as well. So as soon as this is out, they can find
• 1:15:08
  everything they need to do, find out about you right there and they'll be able to click on it.
• 1:15:11
  I appreciate it, George. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed it.
• 1:15:13
  All right, buddy. Thank you, James.
• 1:15:15
  Yeah, man. We'll see you.
• 1:15:16
  As always, thanks for listening and don't forget to like, subscribe, share the show,
• 1:15:21
  turn on notifications and leave us a five-star review.
• 1:15:26
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• 1:15:32
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• 1:15:51
  Bye.