Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / The Man Is Gone, but Will Lindsey Graham’s Eternal War Doctrine Survive?

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The Man Is Gone, but Will Lindsey Graham’s Eternal War Doctrine Survive? · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, happy Monday to you.
• 0:02
  It is, of course, Monday, and I am
• 0:05
  Samuel Trapp.
• 0:06
  Usually I remain Samuel Trapp, even though the
• 0:10
  weekend has occurred.
• 0:12
  And I tell you what, I'm coming to
• 0:16
  you live from the Lake Gozark real estate
• 0:18
  of the art studio, and I'm probably going
• 0:20
  to provide some, depending on who you are,
• 0:25
  offensive material for you today.
• 0:28
  And, you know, I think that I have
• 0:32
  a new theme that I'd like to get
• 0:34
  to before I get there, because I think
• 0:36
  it's very important to be politically motivated and
• 0:40
  politically correct.
• 0:42
  And I know I played this last week,
• 0:43
  but I'm going to do it again.
• 0:45
  We're going to have the commentary and debate
• 0:48
  from the gallery, the people that I'm going
• 0:51
  to question.
• 0:52
  Let's see if we can get that done
• 0:54
  here.
• 0:55
  I think all right-thinking people in this
• 0:57
  country are sick and tired of being told
• 1:00
  that ordinary decent people are fed up in
• 1:01
  this country with being sick and tired.
• 1:03
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04
  I'm certainly not, but I'm sick and tired
• 1:06
  being told that I am.
• 1:08
  Lady Hadley-Jones?
• 1:09
  Well, I meet a lot of people, and
• 1:11
  I'm convinced that the vast majority of wrong
• 1:14
  -thinking people are right.
• 1:16
  Well, we seem to have a consensus there.
• 1:18
  Could we have the next question, please?
• 1:20
  I would like to ask the team what
• 1:22
  changes they would make if they were Hitler.
• 1:26
  Gerald?
• 1:27
  Well, speaking personally, I'd annex the Sudetenland.
• 1:31
  Norman?
• 1:33
  I think I'd pay some Dutchman to set
• 1:36
  fire to Lord Snowden.
• 1:37
  Liberal rubbish!
• 1:39
  Liberal rubbish.
• 1:41
  Liberal rubbish!
• 1:42
  We have to play that, because it's very
• 1:45
  good stuff.
• 1:46
  That, of course, Monty Python.
• 1:49
  And I'm going to provide you some rubbish
• 1:52
  today, but maybe not of the liberal variety.
• 1:56
  The big news over the weekend are a
• 1:59
  couple of deaths that occurred.
• 2:01
  I'll give you the first one first, because
• 2:03
  he was always a favorite actor of mine,
• 2:06
  and he passed away.
• 2:08
  Sam Neill, who was 78.
• 2:12
  When he passed away, he was of Jurassic
• 2:15
  Park fame, the scientist, you know, and that
• 2:19
  was him.
• 2:21
  And he was a decent actor.
• 2:22
  I liked, you know, watching his stuff.
• 2:25
  Politically, don't get me started.
• 2:26
  I don't like looking at actors and their
• 2:28
  political things.
• 2:29
  I have a couple of brothers and sisters
• 2:31
  who don't watch particular actors because of their
• 2:35
  politics.
• 2:36
  And, well, I don't pay as much attention
• 2:41
  to their politics.
• 2:43
  I don't give a rip, you know, I
• 2:44
  don't listen to them.
• 2:46
  And anyway, I watch their movies, but I
• 2:48
  don't listen to them.
• 2:49
  I don't go out and seek their political
• 2:51
  views.
• 2:52
  By the way, I saw an interesting movie
• 2:54
  last week, and it's not very Keanu Reeves
• 2:58
  -ish of a movie.
• 3:01
  He's been in some great movies, and I
• 3:03
  truly like him as an actor anyway.
• 3:07
  And he was in one called Siberia, and
• 3:10
  it was kind of on the brutal side.
• 3:15
  You know, it was a pretty rough movie,
• 3:18
  and certainly not very Keanu Reeves-ish.
• 3:20
  Still a good movie and worth the watch,
• 3:23
  but atypical, let's put it that way.
• 3:28
  Anyway, if you get a chance, go have
• 3:29
  a look at it.
• 3:30
  But Keanu Reeves doesn't talk politics that I'm
• 3:32
  aware of.
• 3:33
  He just seems to be a nice guy,
• 3:34
  is what everybody says.
• 3:36
  I'm going to share with you about this
• 3:39
  other death.
• 3:40
  And later in the show, I am going
• 3:42
  to read to you, not my own article,
• 3:45
  but an article that I read about him,
• 3:51
  and it's brutal.
• 3:53
  And I'm going to share it with you,
• 3:55
  but not until I get through my own
• 3:59
  critique.
• 4:00
  And what I did, because he died on
• 4:03
  the 11th, Lindsey Graham.
• 4:06
  And he passed away unexpectedly.
• 4:13
  And I am and have been always an
• 4:18
  extreme.
• 4:18
  You know, I went back, and I pulled
• 4:22
  all my transcript, and I ran them through
• 4:25
  AI and found 198 or something references to
• 4:32
  when I said things about Lindsey Graham.
• 4:37
  And then I went, and it gave me
• 4:39
  some, and it said, these are the more
• 4:40
  volatile, you know, it looked for.
• 4:43
  And I found these volatile ones and pulled
• 4:46
  them out.
• 4:46
  And I said I hate him, that we
• 4:49
  all hate him.
• 4:50
  You know, I'd say stuff like that many
• 4:53
  times, and I shouldn't be laughing.
• 4:54
  And I don't mean to, because I really
• 4:59
  don't, you know, dislike of somebody, you know,
• 5:03
  doesn't mean I want them to die, you
• 5:05
  know.
• 5:05
  And I have some serious problems with the
• 5:10
  world as it is, and some of the
• 5:14
  things that I want to talk about.
• 5:15
  But I kind of wanted to put together
• 5:17
  more of a thought process on this than
• 5:20
  anything else, is what I, you know, bad
• 5:26
  man, good man, you know, whatever.
• 5:28
  I don't think he was, embodies what I
• 5:32
  like in politics remotely and, you know, not
• 5:38
  remotely.
• 5:39
  But Lindsey Graham died Saturday evening, July 11th,
• 5:44
  at the age of 71.
• 5:45
  A preliminary medical examiner says that he suffered
• 5:49
  from an aortic dissection, which is a tear
• 5:53
  in the wall of the aorta associated with
• 5:57
  hardening of the arteries, which occurs when you
• 6:01
  get older with some people, right?
• 6:03
  And he's hopefully not me.
• 6:05
  You know, I'm not interested, and I keep
• 6:07
  getting older, you know, when your days are
• 6:10
  shorter than the ones you've passed, you know,
• 6:14
  or even if you die at the reasonable
• 6:16
  age and you don't get crushed by a
• 6:18
  20,000 pound weight dropping out of the
• 6:20
  sky, you know, random death, you know, it's
• 6:24
  tough enough.
• 6:26
  And so we don't, we try not to
• 6:28
  harp on the bad of people, especially after
• 6:34
  they pass away.
• 6:34
  And I feel for his family regardless.
• 6:36
  You know, he had people that loved him,
• 6:38
  that he was close to and all of
• 6:39
  that.
• 6:40
  So the official cause remains preliminary, you know,
• 6:45
  and preliminarily while the toxicology and microscopic testing
• 6:50
  are being completed.
• 6:52
  Because they're, you know, why would you complete
• 6:55
  microscopic testing?
• 6:57
  Is that something that happens typically?
• 6:59
  We don't know.
• 7:00
  But the sudden timing has created some speculation
• 7:03
  around the internet.
• 7:05
  He just came back from Kiev.
• 7:06
  But I say to that, he's always just
• 7:09
  coming back from Kiev.
• 7:11
  What?
• 7:11
  That's nothing.
• 7:12
  He's always just come back from, he spends
• 7:15
  more time in Kiev than he does in
• 7:17
  the United States.
• 7:18
  And he was discussing his new sanctions on
• 7:21
  Russia, his bone crushing Lindsey Graham, 500%
• 7:25
  sanctions, not against Russia, but against anybody who
• 7:29
  deals with Russia.
• 7:30
  He's ready to destroy other people.
• 7:33
  500% tariffs is what he's after and
• 7:38
  sanctions, you know.
• 7:40
  You know, Ukraine is taken to blowing up
• 7:43
  because they started in the Mediterranean Sea and
• 7:45
  they're not doing it anymore.
• 7:46
  And I think people bitched about that.
• 7:49
  And so over the last, there are reports
• 7:51
  that between 28 and 90 tanker ships, the
• 7:58
  Ukrainians have blown up in the ocean in
• 8:02
  the Azov Sea, which is surrounded by Russia.
• 8:07
  That's an ocean, but it's all Russia all
• 8:11
  the way around it.
• 8:13
  And I don't agree with that type of
• 8:18
  warfare.
• 8:19
  I don't agree with it.
• 8:20
  So Russia has started blowing up their port
• 8:22
  infrastructure and blowing up all of their shipping
• 8:26
  inside of the Black Sea.
• 8:28
  And it's another form of escalation.
• 8:32
  So that has occurred.
• 8:33
  But the, you know, Graham just returning from
• 8:37
  Kiev, there's, you know, people are talking about
• 8:41
  any connections that they had had.
• 8:43
  You know, there was also, he had allegedly
• 8:49
  had an Iranian threat against him as well.
• 8:54
  And he drew threats connected with Iran and
• 8:57
  he appeared publicly, you know, immediately before his
• 9:00
  death.
• 9:01
  But there's no current publicly established evidence of
• 9:05
  any assassination or anything like that.
• 9:07
  Even whatever forensic experts have been looking at
• 9:12
  the materials, because you can download and spot
• 9:14
  on the internet the ME's report and people
• 9:18
  are looking at that and saying this and
• 9:20
  claiming to be some kind of an expert.
• 9:22
  But they all conclude that assassination is unlikely.
• 9:27
  No specific evidence supporting it.
• 9:31
  And but they're collecting these theories from all
• 9:34
  over from these commentators.
• 9:36
  And they're repeatedly saying that zero medical examiners,
• 9:41
  zero law enforcement agencies, and zero government officials
• 9:46
  have identified any poisoning or any of these
• 9:50
  little things that you can install in somebody's
• 9:53
  drink to give them a heart attack or
• 9:55
  anything like that have not occurred.
• 9:57
  So the timing kind of makes you ask
• 10:00
  the question.
• 10:01
  And the fact that he was so active
• 10:03
  in the last couple of days, you know,
• 10:06
  and it's not embarrassing to ask the question,
• 10:08
  but asking the question is as far from
• 10:10
  proving any sort of accusation.
• 10:13
  And so at present, all of the available
• 10:16
  evidence, the only available evidence points toward a
• 10:20
  catastrophe for him and his family and a
• 10:23
  natural cardiovascular event.
• 10:26
  And there's no evidence to say that anything
• 10:29
  other than that occurred.
• 10:32
  Now, just because I feel for his family
• 10:36
  and I feel for the fact that he
• 10:38
  passed away, you know, there are several things.
• 10:41
  And I have quite a few points that
• 10:43
  I want to make on this that represent
• 10:45
  Lindsey Graham.
• 10:47
  And one of them is the personification, in
• 10:52
  my view, of escalation and the continual escalation,
• 10:59
  the continual bully.
• 11:01
  That was Lindsey Graham.
• 11:03
  He's a bully and he's an escalation proponent,
• 11:08
  always.
• 11:10
  I'd be happy to listen to somebody who
• 11:11
  said, you know, I remember the time when
• 11:15
  Lindsey Graham said, no, perhaps we should sit
• 11:18
  on that for a little while and ponder
• 11:21
  it.
• 11:21
  And maybe diplomacy would would work here.
• 11:27
  That's not it.
• 11:28
  The guy's all threats, all escalation, all beat
• 11:35
  up on people, all let everyone else die
• 11:39
  for us.
• 11:39
  Or, you know, if other people die, he
• 11:42
  had no respect for those type of people.
• 11:44
  He I mean, he was pretty blunt about
• 11:47
  it.
• 11:47
  You know, well, no, Americans are dying.
• 11:49
  What do we care if Ukraine's going to
• 11:51
  do it?
• 11:51
  We'll just keep funding it because every person
• 11:54
  that they that they kill in Russia, you
• 11:56
  know, doesn't matter how many they die matters
• 11:59
  is how many they kill off while dying,
• 12:01
  basically.
• 12:03
  And it's nonsense.
• 12:04
  The guy was all about escalation, all about
• 12:08
  funding, funding, whatever, you know, against whatever enemy,
• 12:16
  you know, you didn't care where the funding
• 12:18
  came from.
• 12:19
  If it meant escalation, he was in.
• 12:21
  If it was military industrial complex plus one,
• 12:25
  he was in.
• 12:26
  And so he personified escalation.
• 12:30
  And my consistent view, I've talked about it.
• 12:33
  And these are only things that I've said,
• 12:35
  you know, and I'm telling you the seven
• 12:36
  themes that I've always had about Lindsey Graham.
• 12:40
  You can go back and listen to me
• 12:41
  for the last year and a half.
• 12:43
  And I've I've not well, my entire life,
• 12:45
  in fact, because I've always been anti Graham
• 12:49
  since he came into office.
• 12:50
  He's just one of those, you know, shucking
• 12:53
  and jiving.
• 12:55
  Well, you know, I think we need to
• 12:57
  just blow him up.
• 12:58
  You know, that'll take it.
• 13:00
  That'll teach him would blow him up.
• 13:02
  You know, that's his answer.
• 13:03
  You know, and I really you know, I
• 13:06
  don't you know, I said I was going
• 13:07
  to be harsh about him.
• 13:09
  I always have been.
• 13:10
  And but that don't mean, you know, I
• 13:12
  don't feel for him and his family.
• 13:14
  I do.
• 13:15
  But I mean, he didn't I don't believe
• 13:20
  he personally enjoyed other people suffering, you know,
• 13:24
  financially, economically.
• 13:25
  Sure.
• 13:26
  But I don't think he wanted people tortured
• 13:28
  or want to do anything.
• 13:29
  I don't know him well.
• 13:30
  And I never knew the guy.
• 13:31
  His entire strategic framework always assumed that American
• 13:37
  credibility, credibility depends upon demonstrating power always.
• 13:43
  It's only power.
• 13:45
  It's only bullying, more weapons, more military pressure,
• 13:50
  more sanctions, more threats, more escalation.
• 13:53
  And the only thing you don't accept is
• 13:57
  any outcome that Washington doesn't control.
• 14:00
  And he didn't create this doctrine.
• 14:02
  You know, he didn't create it, but he's
• 14:04
  one of the clearest and most aggressive public
• 14:08
  representations of this globalist, elitist doctrine.
• 14:15
  He's it.
• 14:17
  Well, and Blumenthal, you know, on the other
• 14:19
  side.
• 14:20
  So Lindsey Graham wasn't the whole American war
• 14:23
  machine, but he was definitely its most reliable
• 14:26
  spokesperson.
• 14:27
  And, you know, that's that's part one.
• 14:31
  He's always escalation.
• 14:34
  And number two, sanctions is economic warfare against
• 14:39
  the world.
• 14:39
  He's so believes in this or did believed
• 14:43
  in this sanctions.
• 14:44
  And that is economic warfare is fine.
• 14:47
  We don't have any trouble with economic warfare.
• 14:49
  Fine.
• 14:50
  Let's let's do economic warfare.
• 14:52
  His original Russian legislation proposed 500 percent tariffs
• 14:57
  on goods imported from countries that purchase Russian
• 15:01
  oil, gas, uranium and other products.
• 15:04
  So it doesn't target Russia.
• 15:07
  It targets China, India, India, Brazil and other
• 15:09
  states that refuse to let Washington determine their
• 15:15
  trading relationships with the rest of the world.
• 15:18
  And so I've always been against this.
• 15:20
  Washington has converted the dollar and Lindsey Graham,
• 15:25
  too.
• 15:25
  He's all for this.
• 15:27
  You know, this is doctrine that he completely
• 15:31
  supports.
• 15:32
  And, you know, he browbeats anybody who disagrees
• 15:34
  with him.
• 15:35
  Just because what don't don't you like American
• 15:37
  exceptionalism?
• 15:38
  That's it.
• 15:39
  You know, it's because we're America.
• 15:41
  We're supposed to, you know, the belief that
• 15:44
  America must do this because the rest of
• 15:47
  the world is incapable of doing it.
• 15:50
  And that's nuts.
• 15:52
  You know, that's just not right.
• 15:54
  And if you believe that, well, I suggest
• 15:56
  you broaden your horizons and find out some
• 16:00
  stuff about what other countries really are capable
• 16:03
  of and what they're doing, you know, and
• 16:06
  because that ain't true.
• 16:07
  It's just not true.
• 16:09
  And that leads to more war, more escalation.
• 16:12
  That's what we got right now.
• 16:13
  And he's a huge proponent of the continued
• 16:17
  and eternal war.
• 16:19
  And so there you have it.
• 16:23
  You know, Washington has converted it all into
• 16:27
  weapons, the whole American market, the banking system,
• 16:32
  the petrodollar, the well, hell, anything, you know,
• 16:37
  any economic warfare, we have turned it into
• 16:41
  a weapon.
• 16:42
  And countries are told that their sovereignty ends
• 16:47
  whenever America's sanctions begin.
• 16:51
  And he represented American hegemony almost more than
• 16:56
  anyone else.
• 16:58
  And so it's not simply we're not going
• 17:01
  to buy Russian energy.
• 17:02
  It is you will not buy it either
• 17:05
  or we will punish you.
• 17:08
  So he's very imperial.
• 17:09
  And the imperialistic economic discipline presented as international
• 17:16
  morality.
• 17:17
  He's the morality police.
• 17:19
  You know, I don't like the morality police
• 17:21
  in my house.
• 17:22
  I don't like the morality police in my
• 17:25
  schools or anywhere else, including internationally in claiming
• 17:30
  that just because you belong in this country,
• 17:32
  you're immoral or your leaders are all immoral.
• 17:35
  Who are the hell are you to determine
• 17:37
  that?
• 17:38
  You know, I don't need church leaders to
• 17:40
  decide who's moral and who's not.
• 17:44
  I've been well, I won't I won't tell
• 17:47
  you that story.
• 17:47
  That's probably a little too personal on that.
• 17:49
  I won't do it.
• 17:51
  But, you know, he imperial economic discipline, you
• 17:58
  know, it's he was an imperialist and a
• 18:01
  globalist.
• 18:02
  And that's that's depressing, but true.
• 18:05
  A point three.
• 18:09
  It's an entitlement of America.
• 18:13
  To have recurring regime change as a theme
• 18:20
  wherever you want to go.
• 18:22
  Regime change is a method to be employed
• 18:27
  by America through whatever source material they want
• 18:33
  or whatever process they want.
• 18:36
  CIA backing of of foreign, I don't know,
• 18:43
  opposition groups, you know, kill shots, decapitation strikes,
• 18:50
  you know, these all for them.
• 18:52
  You know, he is all for them.
• 18:54
  Decapitation strikes.
• 18:55
  Well, if decapitation strikes are now a default
• 19:04
  of the world, that leaves those in the
• 19:12
  United States vulnerable to the same thing, to
• 19:16
  assassinations, to stuff like that.
• 19:18
  And you could argue that that's all that
• 19:21
  they have always been present in global politics
• 19:26
  and that there's there's there's something going on
• 19:28
  about a British lady right now.
• 19:33
  I forget her name.
• 19:34
  I can't get so long last name and
• 19:36
  I don't remember it.
• 19:37
  It'll probably show up again here in one
• 19:39
  of the feeds I'm watching anyway, but that
• 19:42
  they're saying that that her death is, you
• 19:44
  know, looking at terrorism for that.
• 19:46
  And but regime change is an entitlement in
• 19:50
  America.
• 19:51
  Oh, geez, what are you talking about?
• 19:52
  Of course we can regime change.
• 19:54
  Let me think about it.
• 19:55
  He's always supportive of always your next Cuba.
• 19:59
  You know, he's supportive of it in Russia
• 20:01
  and Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Russia, where
• 20:08
  different countries with different histories.
• 20:11
  But Graham's response is always the same, the
• 20:15
  same old formula.
• 20:18
  Declare the government intolerable.
• 20:21
  Apply sanctions in a supposed isolation.
• 20:25
  Support the opposition forces.
• 20:27
  Threaten your own military action.
• 20:29
  Predict that the population will welcome the outcome.
• 20:33
  Your belief.
• 20:35
  And then when the country disintegrates, yeah, well,
• 20:38
  you forget about move on.
• 20:41
  You go on to other places.
• 20:43
  Afghanistan.
• 20:44
  Oh, geez, I didn't have anything to do
• 20:45
  with that.
• 20:46
  You know, you're so regime change is not
• 20:50
  just an extraordinary measure, but an ordinary American
• 20:54
  policy option.
• 20:55
  And he represented a political culture in which
• 20:59
  Washington assumes that it has the wisdom that
• 21:03
  doesn't and the right.
• 21:06
  And I don't believe it has that either
• 21:08
  to select acceptable governments for other civilizations.
• 21:13
  The hell is that?
• 21:15
  That is so non-democratic that I don't
• 21:18
  I do not support that remotely.
• 21:21
  We the people.
• 21:22
  Well, what about we, the people of other
• 21:24
  countries that get to support their own?
• 21:27
  We don't get to determine that for them.
• 21:29
  That's crap.
• 21:31
  And so, you know, we're going to go
• 21:33
  into Venezuela and go, well, we don't like
• 21:35
  that and so therefore you guys are all
• 21:38
  idiots.
• 21:39
  You know, you can't do that.
• 21:41
  Yeah, but they can't do it on their
• 21:42
  own.
• 21:43
  They needed us.
• 21:43
  They didn't need us.
• 21:46
  We did that.
• 21:48
  That was us.
• 21:50
  And so talk about Iran presently and in
• 21:54
  the war presented as an opportunity.
• 21:57
  It's an opportunity.
• 21:58
  It's always an opportunity.
• 22:00
  Israel presents it as an opportunity.
• 22:02
  And there's old Graham, of course.
• 22:05
  On Iran, always.
• 22:09
  It combines military, combines all this militarism, regime
• 22:13
  change, Israel policy, where he put Israel above
• 22:17
  us.
• 22:18
  It's always Israel first.
• 22:19
  And then whatever financial language I've always objected
• 22:23
  to the speaking of overthrowing Iran as if
• 22:26
  it were a business opportunity.
• 22:29
  I've always been against that.
• 22:30
  And all right, peeping, think thinking people are
• 22:34
  wrong.
• 22:34
  I might have to play that again.
• 22:38
  It's pretty good stuff.
• 22:40
  It's a branding exercise, right?
• 22:42
  It's all a war of branding.
• 22:45
  You know, we have 90 million people in
• 22:47
  Iran.
• 22:49
  It's not branding.
• 22:51
  They believe what they believe.
• 22:54
  And we want to believe over here that
• 22:56
  every other country believes exactly like we do.
• 23:00
  And they're just waiting for the opportunity to
• 23:02
  get rid of their leaders and want to
• 23:04
  be us.
• 23:05
  And so that's why we support the Zelensky
• 23:08
  goblins of the world, is because we believe
• 23:13
  we don't believe that.
• 23:14
  But our government convinces us that, that all
• 23:18
  these other people, Russia bad, Ukraine good, Ukraine
• 23:21
  not good, not remotely good.
• 23:25
  And so this is bad news.
• 23:31
  I don't know.
• 23:32
  My position isn't that Iran or any other
• 23:34
  country is some kind of virtuous country.
• 23:38
  My position is that American power doesn't confer,
• 23:42
  I don't know, omnipresence.
• 23:47
  You know, I get to be the god
• 23:49
  emperor.
• 23:50
  Why?
• 23:51
  Because I'm right and they're not.
• 23:54
  Well, I've been right about a lot of
• 23:55
  crap.
• 23:56
  Hasn't done me a lot of good.
• 23:58
  You know, I'm right.
• 23:59
  Government's wrong.
• 24:00
  People are wrong.
• 24:01
  Governments are wrong all the time.
• 24:04
  You know, they bomb schools, you know, by
• 24:06
  accident, right?
• 24:07
  And so there's some bad stuff.
• 24:10
  You don't get a claim, even as me,
• 24:13
  that these other countries are virtuous.
• 24:17
  You're just saying that, you know, they're their
• 24:19
  own country.
• 24:20
  That's what I'm saying.
• 24:22
  And we shouldn't be enabling them.
• 24:26
  Remember the enablization.
• 24:27
  Okay.
• 24:28
  Ukrainian lives, this is a critique five that
• 24:33
  I've consistently given about him, is that Ukrainian
• 24:37
  lives are not instruments of American strategy.
• 24:41
  He thinks they are.
• 24:43
  And morally, this is a mess.
• 24:45
  And he was, this is not moral on
• 24:48
  his part.
• 24:49
  American foreign policy establishment and Graham described the
• 24:54
  Ukraine war as a bargain.
• 24:56
  This is a good deal for us.
• 24:59
  This is a bargain because Ukrainians are doing
• 25:01
  the fighting and the dying.
• 25:03
  And all we got to do is supply
• 25:05
  weapons and weaken Russia.
• 25:06
  And then, you know, they're weakening Russia.
• 25:08
  And we can come in and mop them
• 25:10
  up after it's all over.
• 25:12
  But other people's children's, in my view, are
• 25:16
  not strategic assets.
• 25:19
  Send your own kids.
• 25:20
  You go, you want to, you know, fight
• 25:22
  Russia.
• 25:23
  Ukrainian deaths are accepted because they're not American.
• 25:26
  That's it.
• 25:26
  So his defenders, you know, of course, say,
• 25:29
  oh, he's to create and you can defend
• 25:31
  in Ukrainian sovereignty, right?
• 25:34
  It's all about Ukrainian sovereignty and Russia's invasion.
• 25:39
  Yeah.
• 25:39
  Russia invaded.
• 25:41
  No, they didn't.
• 25:42
  Just like we never invaded Serbia, did we?
• 25:47
  I mean, come on.
• 25:48
  How do you equate that?
• 25:51
  Oh, no, they had a referendum.
• 25:54
  Oh, yeah.
• 25:54
  We can't believe other people's referendums.
• 25:57
  They don't exist.
• 25:57
  You know, it's the same old arguments.
• 25:59
  And that's and this guy just embodied that.
• 26:02
  And you have to acknowledge the fact that,
• 26:10
  you know, people do say that he's trying
• 26:12
  to defend Ukraine.
• 26:14
  Right.
• 26:14
  But I don't believe that, first of all.
• 26:16
  But other people say that.
• 26:17
  But genuine concern for a Ukrainian would require
• 26:21
  a serious consideration.
• 26:23
  And it's never been a serious consideration for
• 26:26
  him or anyone like him of negotiation, of
• 26:30
  escalation risks of territorial reality and the consequence
• 26:35
  of encouraging objectives that you can't achieve.
• 26:41
  You can't defeat Russia.
• 26:43
  It's not going to happen.
• 26:44
  And Ukraine cannot defeat them.
• 26:47
  America, maybe.
• 26:48
  But if we got involved in that, you
• 26:51
  might as well, you know, line up World
• 26:53
  War Three.
• 26:53
  Here we go.
• 26:55
  And it's not a guarantee that we win.
• 26:59
  Ukraine themselves regarded Graham as unusually important precisely
• 27:05
  because he had access to Trump recently.
• 27:09
  Yep.
• 27:10
  And I think he somehow flipped the switch
• 27:12
  on Trump and turned him is what I
• 27:14
  think, because Trump was not always so positive
• 27:16
  about Graham.
• 27:17
  And now he's, oh, geez, he's just a
• 27:20
  God's gift to the planet.
• 27:21
  Great.
• 27:22
  I don't believe that.
• 27:23
  And, you know, this sanctions, advocating further weapons,
• 27:30
  NATO relationships and hard lines against Russia had
• 27:34
  Trump's ear for the last year, at least.
• 27:38
  And Ukraine, in Ukraine, there's been several reports
• 27:42
  since his death that say his death will
• 27:46
  weaken Kiv's influence with Trump.
• 27:50
  And I don't know.
• 27:52
  He did have unusual personal power because of
• 27:54
  some other stuff.
• 27:57
  Number six, Israel.
• 28:00
  I've always bitched about Graham and his Israel
• 28:05
  commentary.
• 28:07
  Graham treated Israeli military demands as automatically synonymous
• 28:12
  with American interests and wishes.
• 28:16
  I don't say that this is personal loyalty
• 28:18
  to Netanyahu.
• 28:19
  The bigger issue is the institutional nature of
• 28:23
  it all.
• 28:24
  Congressional funding, constant weapons transfer, constant diplomatic
• 28:30
  protection, constant.
• 28:32
  They never, ever say anything negative, even about
• 28:36
  the ICC stuff.
• 28:39
  Nothing.
• 28:39
  They don't.
• 28:40
  I mean, zip.
• 28:42
  They will find me a time that the
• 28:44
  U.S. has done anything anti-Israel ever.
• 28:48
  And I'll, you know, be happy to, you
• 28:50
  know, rethink my position.
• 28:52
  Any sanctions against any of Israel's adversaries are
• 28:56
  a gimme.
• 28:56
  That's going to happen.
• 28:58
  Any military threat against Iran is, of course,
• 29:02
  there.
• 29:02
  All Israel's got to do is go.
• 29:04
  Yeah, but someday they might have nuclear weapons.
• 29:06
  Well, shit, bomb the hell out of them.
• 29:08
  Let's go.
• 29:09
  That's Graham's position.
• 29:11
  Let's go get them.
• 29:12
  And then there's no accountability for any consequences
• 29:16
  at all, ever.
• 29:18
  Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iranians, none of them matter
• 29:23
  at all.
• 29:24
  Why?
• 29:24
  Because they're not Israel.
• 29:26
  And that's his point.
• 29:30
  America first government frequently behaves as though American
• 29:34
  policy has to satisfy Israel, even before the
• 29:39
  America first part.
• 29:42
  And Grant embodies that or did embodied that
• 29:45
  contradiction.
• 29:46
  He called himself an American nationalist, but he
• 29:49
  repeatedly advocated policies that exposed the United States
• 29:54
  to war on behalf of Israel.
• 29:57
  And those their interests are not identical to
• 30:00
  ours and never have been.
• 30:03
  Apparently, they supersede ours.
• 30:05
  You know that that's true.
• 30:08
  But the biggest one is number seven for
• 30:10
  me is the structure, the large Graham, the
• 30:15
  larger Graham system.
• 30:18
  And I've spoken about this a lot is
• 30:22
  hegemony, incumbency, and political permanency.
• 30:29
  And this is what gets me the most.
• 30:32
  He served in Congress for more than three
• 30:35
  decades.
• 30:37
  It gave him access, committee influence, media authority,
• 30:43
  institutional knowledge, and the ability to pressure those
• 30:47
  that are less confident than him.
• 30:49
  And he didn't vote for policy.
• 30:52
  He bulldozed policy.
• 30:54
  He was the bulldozer.
• 30:57
  Hesitation is weakness if it's anybody else.
• 31:00
  Military power, he equated with seriousness.
• 31:03
  Military power doesn't mean your positions are right.
• 31:08
  He pushed presidents constantly, continually toward escalation and
• 31:15
  confrontation.
• 31:16
  He supplied, along with Blumenthal recently, bipartisan respectability
• 31:23
  to intervention.
• 31:24
  He always had it.
• 31:26
  And he helped preserve the pre-Trump foreign
• 31:29
  policy establishment that Trump, before Trump, all the
• 31:36
  foreign policy establishment BS that Trump was allegedly
• 31:40
  gonna fight.
• 31:42
  Lindsey Graham preserved and, in fact, advocated and
• 31:48
  saved inside the Trump movement.
• 31:51
  Now the same people that didn't want any
• 31:53
  war are all for war.
• 31:55
  All the MAGA folks are out there rattling
• 31:58
  their sabers for, blow him up, get him,
• 32:00
  Trump.
• 32:01
  That's not what Trump ran on.
• 32:03
  That's not what we wanted.
• 32:05
  That's not what people said.
• 32:08
  But Lindsey Graham helped him come up with
• 32:10
  that.
• 32:11
  And he's gone from, I mean, a peace
• 32:13
  president, that guy's gone, long gone.
• 32:17
  And the deep state, if you explain it
• 32:21
  carefully or in the terms that I believe,
• 32:25
  the deep state is the constant war military
• 32:28
  industrial complex types.
• 32:31
  And I think it's a permanent governing consensus
• 32:36
  that survives elections, party changes, it absorbs political
• 32:43
  outsiders, it sucks them in, and it continues
• 32:47
  substantially the same imperialist, colonist foreign policy, regardless
• 32:55
  of what voters thought they were getting changing.
• 33:00
  And that's true.
• 33:02
  It's not American regime change.
• 33:07
  I say, and this is rough.
• 33:10
  America has created a political class so entrenched
• 33:16
  that age, incapacity, retirement, or death, this is
• 33:25
  sad, age, incapacity, retirement, or death produces more
• 33:30
  change than any election ever will.
• 33:33
  Now, think about that.
• 33:36
  We don't, I mean, it's because these people
• 33:38
  are untouchables.
• 33:41
  And that's a powerful argument for term limits.
• 33:45
  Nobody will do it, you know, but term
• 33:48
  limits aren't a complete solution.
• 33:51
  The bureaucracy, the donor system, the defense industry,
• 33:55
  the lobbying institutions, the think tanks, the media
• 33:59
  culture, all reproduce the same policies in younger
• 34:04
  politicians.
• 34:05
  Younger politician comes up.
• 34:08
  What are they forced to do?
• 34:10
  Kiss the ass of those ahead of them.
• 34:14
  And kiss the asses of the powerful, of
• 34:17
  the Lindsey Graham types.
• 34:18
  We all know it.
• 34:19
  They have to.
• 34:21
  Or next time they run, they won't get
• 34:23
  the funding because it's controlled by the Grams.
• 34:25
  And they won't get to be the next
• 34:27
  one.
• 34:28
  So the junior ones, unless they have a
• 34:30
  populist movement of some sort, they aren't going
• 34:33
  to change it.
• 34:34
  You know, it'll never change.
• 34:36
  And by the way, it's not going to
• 34:39
  change.
• 34:39
  You know, everybody wants to say that Trump's
• 34:42
  going to change stuff.
• 34:43
  No, good luck with that theory.
• 34:45
  It's not changing.
• 34:47
  So we have powerful arguments for term limits,
• 34:50
  but they never ever are even discussed, let
• 34:53
  alone implemented.
• 34:55
  And they're not a complete system anyway, unless
• 34:58
  you talk about the bureaucracy, you know, the
• 35:01
  donor systems and all the stuff that, you
• 35:04
  know, we've gone through before.
• 35:07
  You know, there was a, on January 7th,
• 35:14
  Graham announced that Trump had, in his word,
• 35:19
  green lit the bipartisan sanctions bill.
• 35:22
  He said the bill would give Trump leverage
• 35:25
  against China, India, and Brazil over their purchases
• 35:29
  of Russian energy.
• 35:30
  Then on July 10th, the day before he
• 35:33
  died, Graham, Richard Blumenthal, Jean Shaheen, and Roger
• 35:41
  Wicker announced that they had reached an agreement
• 35:44
  with Trump to move an updated version forward.
• 35:47
  And the revised text had not yet been
• 35:50
  publicly rolled out.
• 35:52
  So, you know, we don't know what this
• 35:55
  bill has for sure.
• 35:57
  I had it pulled, but I haven't had
• 35:59
  a chance to read it yet.
• 36:01
  And Trump, you know, had already agreed to
• 36:06
  advance a revised bill.
• 36:08
  And now it might be some kind of
• 36:11
  additional emotional and political pressure to pass it
• 36:14
  because he died.
• 36:16
  And Blumenthal has already described passage of the
• 36:20
  bill would be a fitting tribute to Graham,
• 36:24
  you know, but this is, you know, a
• 36:27
  political question that people should be answering.
• 36:30
  I'm completely against it, you know, across the
• 36:33
  board.
• 36:34
  Should legislation capable of reshaping trade with China,
• 36:38
  India, Brazil, and much of the developing world
• 36:41
  be considered on its merits or passed just
• 36:45
  because Senator Graham wanted it passed?
• 36:48
  And that's not disrespectful to him.
• 36:50
  It's disrespect to the rest of the people
• 36:52
  if they do that without paying attention to
• 36:56
  the constitutional process.
• 36:57
  I don't think they do anyway.
• 36:58
  They all, you know, trade stuff off and
• 37:00
  do it.
• 37:01
  But a death should not turn a deeply
• 37:04
  consequential economic war proposal into a commemorative album
• 37:09
  for a guy who passed away.
• 37:11
  So I just, I have issues with that.
• 37:15
  And I don't like it.
• 37:18
  And so I don't know, maybe I could
• 37:21
  pull up some more information about it.
• 37:26
  I did want to share with you a
• 37:27
  really harsh article on this.
• 37:32
  And but before I get to that, that
• 37:34
  harsh one, um, the Green Goblin put out
• 37:39
  his commentary on whatever it was, Instagram or
• 37:44
  whatever channel he has out there.
• 37:46
  And Zelensky said that Graham visited Ukraine 10
• 37:52
  times during the war.
• 37:55
  He also said they met twice this past
• 37:57
  week, once at the NATO summit and then
• 38:00
  in Kyiv.
• 38:00
  And they had remained in constant dialogue.
• 38:05
  This is an extraordinary level of personal access
• 38:08
  for a senator.
• 38:10
  I mean, truthfully.
• 38:12
  And I don't know who owned who.
• 38:16
  Did Zelensky own Graham or was it the
• 38:18
  other way around?
• 38:19
  Or was Graham literally in Zelensky's pocket?
• 38:22
  We don't know.
• 38:22
  There's no evidence of personal corruption between the
• 38:25
  two of them or secret control.
• 38:27
  I'm not saying anything like that.
• 38:28
  I'm just saying that each one was politically
• 38:31
  useful to the other.
• 38:34
  Definitely.
• 38:35
  And Zelensky needed Graham because Graham could give
• 38:39
  him direct access to Trump, some kind of
• 38:43
  credibility among interventionist Republicans, a close working relationship
• 38:50
  with Democrats such as Richard Blumenthal, and influence
• 38:55
  over sanctions and military policy.
• 38:57
  That's definitely true.
• 38:59
  And the willingness to attack any Republican who
• 39:05
  questioned support for Ukraine.
• 39:08
  A Ukrainian lawmaker yesterday described Graham as the
• 39:13
  closest link between Ukraine, Zelensky and Trump.
• 39:17
  Another one said that Ukraine's standing in Trump's
• 39:22
  circle will now be weakened.
• 39:24
  And Graham needed Ukraine for different reasons.
• 39:29
  Ukraine is the ideal proving ground for his
• 39:32
  foreign policy worldview.
• 39:35
  Russians can be weakened without American soldiers officially
• 39:38
  having to fight.
• 39:40
  American weapon manufacturers receive more orders.
• 39:45
  NATO can be funded.
• 39:47
  Europe is more dependent upon Washington.
• 39:51
  Russia's trading partners can be threatened with sanctions.
• 39:54
  Graham can present or could present escalation as
• 39:58
  both morally righteous and economically efficient.
• 40:03
  At the Munich Security Conference, Graham praised Zelensky
• 40:07
  as the ally he wanted throughout his life
• 40:12
  and emphasized that no Americans had died defending
• 40:16
  Ukraine.
• 40:17
  That remark alone was a moral objection that
• 40:20
  I've had forever.
• 40:22
  The policy is attractive in Washington precisely because
• 40:25
  somebody else is providing the bodies.
• 40:28
  You know, you don't have to worry about
• 40:30
  bodies.
• 40:30
  They're not ours.
• 40:31
  And basically he goes, well, at least no
• 40:33
  Americans are dying over it.
• 40:34
  You know, let them fight.
• 40:35
  And, you know, think about this.
• 40:37
  You know, it doesn't prove Graham wanted Ukrainians
• 40:40
  to die.
• 40:41
  His, you know, he, people do believe that
• 40:44
  he was sincere in this.
• 40:46
  Frankly, I don't.
• 40:48
  But I don't think he was sincere about
• 40:51
  anything he did.
• 40:51
  It was all power all the time.
• 40:54
  But it does, I mean, it certainly shows
• 40:56
  how Washington calculated this war.
• 41:00
  Weakening Russia is acceptable even if it costs,
• 41:03
  you know, especially because it doesn't cost American
• 41:06
  lives, you know, long as casualties are not
• 41:09
  American, great.
• 41:11
  So in his final visit, this is what's
• 41:13
  given people the speculation anyway.
• 41:16
  He focused, which is July 10th, he came
• 41:19
  back.
• 41:20
  It was the next day he passed away.
• 41:21
  He focused on additional air defense missiles, the
• 41:25
  Patriot production in Ukraine, sanctions against Russia and
• 41:31
  its partners, and moving that sanctions legislation through
• 41:36
  Congress.
• 41:37
  So the Ukrainian president said Graham believed Ukrainian
• 41:41
  battlefield successes.
• 41:43
  Where are they?
• 41:44
  I haven't seen any.
• 41:45
  That's not battlefield success.
• 41:47
  It's destruction of civilian things inside Russia, blowing
• 41:51
  up of tankers out on the ocean.
• 41:53
  That's not hard.
• 41:54
  They don't even have any defense.
• 41:56
  They're tankers.
• 41:57
  They're commercial tankers.
• 41:59
  You know, you go out in the ocean,
• 42:00
  blow them up.
• 42:01
  We shouldn't be supporting that.
• 42:04
  And they're destroying grain ships, by the way.
• 42:07
  They're not oil tankers.
• 42:09
  The bulk of them are grain.
• 42:11
  They're trying to create a food crisis in
• 42:13
  the world.
• 42:14
  And all the stuff that Russia ships out
• 42:16
  of there, virtually 60, 80 percent of it
• 42:20
  is grain, not oil, through the Azov Sea.
• 42:26
  Ukrainian president said Graham believed those successes and
• 42:30
  he believed in them.
• 42:31
  So it wasn't a ceremonial sort of visit.
• 42:34
  He was helping to coordinate military needs, legislative
• 42:38
  pressure, sanctions, more relations with Trump, and the
• 42:44
  next phase of escalation and American involvement therein.
• 42:51
  So Ukraine didn't just lose a sympathetic senator.
• 42:55
  It lost a highly active Washington proponent in
• 43:01
  Ukraine.
• 43:02
  Will it change anything?
• 43:04
  I don't know.
• 43:05
  The Graham and Blumenthal bipartisan war policy in
• 43:11
  Ukraine, you know, the franchise, if you will,
• 43:15
  you know, Richard Blumenthal doesn't disappear.
• 43:18
  But those two functioned as kind of a
• 43:20
  bipartisan team.
• 43:22
  So Graham supplied Republican and Trump world credibility.
• 43:28
  Blumenthal supplied Democratic policy.
• 43:32
  And they've all, you know, the continued Biden
• 43:35
  stuff.
• 43:36
  But Graham was Biden, you know, as far
• 43:41
  as Ukraine goes.
• 43:43
  And Graham would be with anybody who advocated
• 43:46
  further war.
• 43:48
  Together, though, Blumenthal and Graham presented the same
• 43:53
  policy, not as party position, but as the
• 43:56
  supposedly unquestionable center of responsible American government.
• 44:02
  We're the center.
• 44:03
  Look, we're working together.
• 44:04
  By August of 2024, Graham and Blumenthal described
• 44:09
  their repeated trips.
• 44:10
  This was the sixth one back in August
• 44:13
  of 2024.
• 44:14
  They described that, you know, sixth trip and
• 44:18
  their continued returning, meeting Zelensky, providing massive military
• 44:24
  support and further sanctions.
• 44:26
  If a Republican and Democrat stand beside another
• 44:30
  in beside, you know, each other, actually, and
• 44:34
  demand escalation, the public is going to be
• 44:37
  encouraged to believe that escalation isn't an ideological
• 44:40
  choice.
• 44:41
  It's a consensus.
• 44:43
  Therefore, we need to support it.
• 44:45
  But they're both they're both to say, well,
• 44:48
  it's all unit party, you know, as partisan
• 44:51
  consensus in Washington means the public is offered
• 44:54
  two parties, but only one foreign policy that's
• 44:56
  constant.
• 44:57
  Who are they going to fill?
• 44:58
  Who are they going to fix that?
• 45:00
  And so Blumenthal's immediate suggestion that the sanctions
• 45:04
  bill should now pass as tribute to Graham
• 45:07
  is the danger, you know, a sanctions package
• 45:10
  affecting relations with Russia, China, India, Brazil, and
• 45:14
  the entire world shouldn't become a sympathy vote.
• 45:18
  So I don't know, you know, if obviously
• 45:23
  Graham wasn't controlled by Zelensky, you know, and
• 45:27
  I'm not, you know, I don't know how
• 45:31
  to say this in final.
• 45:33
  Well, on my part, anyway, I am glad
• 45:39
  that Lindsey Graham's political power has ended.
• 45:42
  It's over.
• 45:44
  I am not glad that his life ended.
• 45:46
  I don't wish that upon anybody.
• 45:48
  And, you know, I did want Lindsey Graham
• 45:50
  out of the Senate.
• 45:51
  I don't want him dead.
• 45:52
  You know, I think a lot of those
• 45:54
  people need to be recycled, you know, through
• 45:57
  out of the Senate, but not recycled out
• 46:00
  of life.
• 46:01
  So political relief isn't the same thing as
• 46:04
  a celebration.
• 46:05
  You know, politically, I think, geez, it's sad
• 46:09
  that regime change in America only comes through
• 46:14
  death of those who were entrenched in power
• 46:17
  for 40 years.
• 46:19
  Well, 30-something on his.
• 46:21
  And speaking of that, you know, we'll get
• 46:23
  to Mitch McConnell afterward.
• 46:24
  And then I am going to share with
• 46:26
  you that pretty harsh article by, I forget
• 46:35
  his name, Tariq Amar.
• 46:36
  I can't remember.
• 46:37
  But I want to play a clip for
• 46:41
  you and take a break here for a
• 46:44
  minute.
• 46:45
  And I will return.
• 46:48
  One of my favorites from long, long ago.
• 46:51
  You could listen to this and go jogging
• 46:53
  down the road and just put it on
• 46:54
  replay.
• 46:56
  Or bicycling.
• 46:57
  Good bicycling music.
• 52:00
  I wanted to continue with, I'm going to
• 52:05
  share with you that article on Lindsey Graham.
• 52:12
  And these are not my words, OK?
• 52:14
  This is harsh.
• 52:16
  And I don't mind the harsh.
• 52:18
  You know, like I told you before, I
• 52:21
  repeatedly said, you know, man, I hate this
• 52:25
  guy.
• 52:27
  Or we hate him.
• 52:28
  You know, I'd collective it.
• 52:31
  Well, we all hate Lindsey Graham.
• 52:32
  We're supposed to.
• 52:33
  But I hate what he represents.
• 52:35
  You know, I never met him.
• 52:36
  I didn't.
• 52:37
  You know, maybe he's a nice guy.
• 52:39
  Maybe be somebody fun to go party with.
• 52:42
  I doubt it.
• 52:43
  But you never know.
• 52:45
  So here's an article by a guy named
• 52:48
  Tariq Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany.
• 52:52
  Lindsey Graham was a monster, but not exceptional.
• 52:57
  Normal people would be ashamed to be seen
• 53:00
  with him dead or alive.
• 53:02
  Western elites are now boasting of how close
• 53:06
  to him they were.
• 53:10
  Lindsey Graham is dead.
• 53:12
  And if we were to apply the old
• 53:14
  Spartan and then Roman adage, quote, about the
• 53:19
  dead, nothing but the good, close quote, then
• 53:23
  this is where the text would have to
• 53:25
  end.
• 53:26
  Some readers may find this shocking or unkind,
• 53:30
  but it is a fact that there is
• 53:32
  no way to write about the intriguingly sudden
• 53:35
  end of the long term U.S. senator
• 53:39
  from South Carolina in a balanced manner and
• 53:43
  stay honest.
• 53:45
  Graham was an almost cartoonishly evil man.
• 53:49
  And since he was also very powerful, his
• 53:52
  moral depravity made a big difference in the
• 53:54
  lives of all too many.
• 53:56
  Downplaying that fact out of misplaced piety would
• 54:00
  be perverse.
• 54:02
  It would mean to disrespect the many victims
• 54:04
  of perfidious and brutal U.S. and, in
• 54:07
  fact, Israeli policies of vicious violence and outrageous
• 54:12
  injustice that Graham promoted with every fiber of
• 54:16
  his being for his whole political life.
• 54:19
  During the Gaza genocide, when challenged specifically about
• 54:25
  the Israeli mass killings of civilians, including women
• 54:29
  and children, Graham launched into what can only
• 54:34
  be called a psychopathic rant, comparing the Israeli
• 54:38
  genocide of the Palestinians with American warfare against
• 54:43
  Germany and Japan in World War II, an
• 54:48
  intriguing comparison.
• 54:49
  In and of itself.
• 54:51
  But that is another matter.
• 54:53
  And drawing the conclusion that Gaza should be
• 54:56
  flattened, including with nuclear weapons, Gaza has been
• 55:01
  flattened.
• 55:02
  And to his dying day, Graham never showed
• 55:05
  an ounce of compassion for those slaughtered by
• 55:09
  his Israeli friends and did everything he could
• 55:12
  do to support that slaughter.
• 55:16
  That is, of course, why internationally wanted war
• 55:20
  criminal, really genocide-er, that's a word, Benjamin
• 55:26
  Netanyahu, rushed to offer his public condolences.
• 55:30
  Speaking of Graham's obvious subservience to Israel, the
• 55:36
  senator was unsurprisingly also a great fan of
• 55:40
  going to war with Iran, timelessly calling for
• 55:44
  attacking it as violently as possible.
• 55:48
  He has spread the Orwellian lies that Iran
• 55:51
  was about to pose a nuclear threat to
• 55:54
  the U.S. and that its ballistic missile
• 55:56
  arsenal was a tool of reckless aggression, all
• 56:00
  to produce domestic support for yet another criminal
• 56:04
  American war.
• 56:06
  Himself addicted to hiding his foul character behind
• 56:10
  a bigoted and utterly fake Christian piety, Graham
• 56:14
  compared Iran's leaders to Hitler and called them
• 56:18
  religious Nazis, thereby not merely defending brave men
• 56:22
  towering above him in moral and intellectual terms,
• 56:26
  but also helping to drum up propaganda for
• 56:29
  murdering them.
• 56:31
  It is an irony of history, or maybe
• 56:34
  divine justice, that he lived just long enough
• 56:37
  to see the U.S. follow his insane
• 56:40
  and corrupt advice and suffer a geopolitically catastrophic
• 56:44
  defeat.
• 56:45
  Yet Graham was a monster long before the
• 56:48
  Gaza genocide and the U.S.-Israeli war against
• 56:51
  Iran.
• 56:52
  He was obsessed with brutalizing as many other
• 56:55
  countries and societies as possible.
• 56:57
  He could not see an opportunity for a
• 57:00
  war and not do his worst to make
• 57:03
  it happen.
• 57:05
  That I strongly believe.
• 57:08
  Graham's record of warmongering is so extensive that
• 57:12
  it is hard to reproduce it in its
• 57:14
  entirety.
• 57:15
  Just shortly before his end, he had called
• 57:18
  for more U.S. violence in Cuba, Lebanon,
• 57:22
  Nigeria, Venezuela, and Yemen, apart, obviously, from his
• 57:27
  eternal compulsion to scream for, in effect, more
• 57:32
  dead Palestinians and Iranians.
• 57:35
  In true American fashion, if being Graham's target
• 57:40
  was terrible, being his friend was no better.
• 57:44
  Ukraine has come to stand for that experience,
• 57:47
  even while pretending to be its ardent supporter,
• 57:49
  Graham was always among those most brutally open
• 57:53
  about using Ukraine and its people for the
• 57:56
  geopolitical and commercial interests of the United States.
• 58:00
  He praised opportunities to rob Ukraine of crucial
• 58:03
  raw materials and he clearly considered pumping money
• 58:07
  into its ultra-corrupt Zelensky regime a great
• 58:11
  deal as it produced dead Russians and he
• 58:14
  failed to mention Ukrainians too, of course.
• 58:18
  There is no other way of putting it.
• 58:21
  Lindsey Graham was an infernally bad man and
• 58:25
  he was a revolting man.
• 58:27
  His viciousness was glaringly obvious.
• 58:30
  Graham was not a complicated case, a conflicted
• 58:34
  character, a man of light and dark.
• 58:37
  He was among the closest to pure, unadulterated,
• 58:42
  and shamelessly brazen evil many of us will
• 58:45
  never lay eyes on.
• 58:47
  That is why it is telling, but not
• 58:50
  surprising, to see who is lining up to
• 58:53
  let us know how much they'll miss him,
• 58:56
  that they were buddies with him, or what
• 58:58
  a wonderful person he was.
• 59:01
  Apart from Netanyahu, for instance, German Chancellor Friedrich
• 59:05
  Merz, NATO's Trump bell boy Mark Rutte, Ukraine's
• 59:10
  authoritarian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and of course, AIPAC.
• 59:15
  What these often abject condolences show is not
• 59:19
  merely the moral failure, a polite term, of
• 59:23
  those who offer them.
• 59:25
  There is a more general and in ways
• 59:28
  worse point.
• 59:29
  Horrible as Graham was, he was also representative
• 59:33
  of the elites of the US and the
• 59:36
  West.
• 59:37
  Normal people would be ashamed to be seen
• 59:39
  with Graham dead or alive.
• 59:42
  Western elites are now boasting of their intimacy
• 59:44
  with him.
• 59:46
  Graham was explicit in displaying his genuine, sick
• 59:50
  joy in inflicting pain and misery on as
• 59:54
  much of the world as he could.
• 59:56
  Indeed, one way to describe him would be
• 59:59
  as an openly, enthusiastically, sadistic imperialist.
• 1:00:04
  Graham was a depraved pervert of power who
• 1:00:08
  let it all hang out.
• 1:00:09
  But apart from his lack of filter, he
• 1:00:12
  was not an exception, but typical.
• 1:00:16
  Graham was the ugly and all too realistic
• 1:00:19
  face of much of the West and its
• 1:00:21
  leaders in Washington.
• 1:00:23
  He is gone.
• 1:00:25
  Everyone and everything else is still in place.
• 1:00:29
  So those statements, views, and opinions of this
• 1:00:33
  columnist are not my own, and I'm only
• 1:00:36
  sharing them.
• 1:00:37
  You know, they don't necessarily represent me.
• 1:00:40
  I'm just sharing them because of the contrast
• 1:00:42
  it provides, you know, and that was Tariq
• 1:00:46
  Cyril Amar published yesterday on the 12th, a
• 1:00:52
  day later.
• 1:00:53
  So maybe he had it pre-written.
• 1:00:54
  I don't know.
• 1:00:55
  Maybe he's got them written for all of
• 1:00:56
  us.
• 1:00:57
  Who can tell?
• 1:00:59
  But I agree with a lot of the
• 1:01:02
  principles in there.
• 1:01:04
  You know, Graham never met a war he
• 1:01:05
  didn't like.
• 1:01:06
  I can't tell you how many times I
• 1:01:07
  said that.
• 1:01:08
  He loved, you know, he could support any
• 1:01:09
  war.
• 1:01:11
  No problem.
• 1:01:12
  I'm in.
• 1:01:13
  You know, it's war.
• 1:01:14
  I'm there.
• 1:01:15
  You know, it doesn't matter who we fighting
• 1:01:17
  today.
• 1:01:18
  You know, bring it on.
• 1:01:19
  And how can we get more money for
• 1:01:21
  South Carolina?
• 1:01:23
  And, you know, what are we doing?
• 1:01:27
  What are we doing?
• 1:01:29
  That's a terrible, terrible scenario.
• 1:01:34
  Um, I wanted to go to a similar
• 1:01:37
  sort of theory here, because Mitch McConnell is
• 1:01:42
  who we all expected to have died.
• 1:01:44
  And he disappeared for a month.
• 1:01:47
  OK, so my my discussion about the fact
• 1:01:50
  that our government rewards, you know, those who
• 1:01:56
  our system, let's say, not our government rewards
• 1:01:59
  those who stay forever with massive power that
• 1:02:04
  is, you know, untouchable.
• 1:02:07
  These people are not touchable.
• 1:02:10
  They can't be taken down.
• 1:02:12
  And it's it's sad.
• 1:02:15
  Let's talk about Mitch McConnell for a minute.
• 1:02:18
  He's not dead, according to the presently available
• 1:02:21
  evidence.
• 1:02:22
  Anyway, he is not dead.
• 1:02:24
  He is 84.
• 1:02:27
  And on July 12th, after the death of
• 1:02:31
  nobody could find him for a month, basically,
• 1:02:34
  and after the death of Lindsey Graham, these
• 1:02:38
  these are the two that I've bitched about
• 1:02:40
  the most.
• 1:02:41
  You know, these are the clowns of the
• 1:02:43
  of the Senate, basically.
• 1:02:45
  And Mitch McConnell is 84.
• 1:02:50
  And on July 12th, after weeks of limited
• 1:02:53
  information and public speculation, he said that he
• 1:02:57
  had fallen on June 14, was briefly unconscious
• 1:03:01
  and was hospitalized.
• 1:03:03
  I wonder what briefly means.
• 1:03:07
  You know, did anybody define that?
• 1:03:09
  He said testing found no stroke, heart attack,
• 1:03:11
  broken bone or other major injury, but that
• 1:03:14
  he had developed mild pneumonia.
• 1:03:16
  He has now moved to a rehab facility
• 1:03:18
  and has not yet returned to Senate voting.
• 1:03:28
  Before that disclosure, there was controversy surrounding emergency
• 1:03:33
  dispatch, you know, crew language referring to a
• 1:03:39
  possible cardiac arrest at his residence.
• 1:03:42
  At that time, the identity of the patient
• 1:03:46
  described by the dispatcher had not been officially
• 1:03:48
  established, and his office has released few details.
• 1:03:54
  So there are two separate matters, the death
• 1:03:56
  rumors, which were unsupported by current evidence and
• 1:04:01
  the transparency issue, which is entirely legitimate.
• 1:04:05
  McConnell's office allowed an 84 year old senator
• 1:04:08
  to remain out of public view for a
• 1:04:11
  month while his constituents, colleagues in the country
• 1:04:15
  got little meaningful information a month.
• 1:04:21
  That is not merely private medical business.
• 1:04:24
  When his physical presence affects votes, committee activity
• 1:04:27
  and the balance of the U.S. Senate.
• 1:04:31
  McConnell has served continuously since 19 freaking 85.
• 1:04:38
  This is crap.
• 1:04:40
  And he plans to remain until his term
• 1:04:43
  expires in January of 2027.
• 1:04:46
  And that's going to be 42 years in
• 1:04:51
  one Senate seat, which I strongly object to.
• 1:04:58
  Nancy Pelosi, same structural problem, different party.
• 1:05:03
  Nancy Pelosi is now 86.
• 1:05:06
  She has represented San Francisco since 1987 and
• 1:05:12
  has announced that she will retire on January
• 1:05:15
  3, 2027.
• 1:05:18
  She isn't ideologically interchangeable with Graham or McConnell.
• 1:05:22
  That's not the point.
• 1:05:23
  But the three of them together demonstrate how
• 1:05:27
  the American system rewards longevity.
• 1:05:31
  Graham served for roughly 31 years.
• 1:05:35
  McConnell, 42 and Pelosi, 40.
• 1:05:39
  They accumulated power because of their length of
• 1:05:43
  service.
• 1:05:43
  Committee seniority, donor relationships, command of procedure, control
• 1:05:51
  of the party machinery, access to presidents, power
• 1:05:57
  over younger members, relationships with foreign governments and
• 1:06:03
  institutional memory unavailable to any sort of newcomer.
• 1:06:07
  And that's some kind of a weird form
• 1:06:11
  of, I don't know, gerontocratic entrenchment.
• 1:06:17
  Political authority concentrated in people who entered Washington
• 1:06:21
  when the country was vastly different and the
• 1:06:24
  world looked entirely different.
• 1:06:28
  So I don't know.
• 1:06:29
  I've always talked about policy or term limits.
• 1:06:34
  I mean, term limits.
• 1:06:35
  I want a policy of term limits.
• 1:06:38
  And I've always wanted that.
• 1:06:39
  We're never going to get it, but I've
• 1:06:40
  always wanted it.
• 1:06:42
  But there's an age limit that also sounds
• 1:06:45
  attractive when you watch, like, Joe Biden in
• 1:06:49
  a visibly declining state.
• 1:06:52
  He gave a speech a couple of weeks
• 1:06:53
  ago.
• 1:06:54
  Oh, boy.
• 1:06:56
  Same thing, you know, you can drag him
• 1:06:58
  out, but at least now you don't have
• 1:06:59
  to worry about him running the country, you
• 1:07:02
  know.
• 1:07:03
  But age alone is not the central problem.
• 1:07:07
  Lindsey Graham was only 71.
• 1:07:11
  He died at 71.
• 1:07:13
  A retirement age of 75 wouldn't have removed
• 1:07:17
  him.
• 1:07:17
  You know, if somebody said, well, when you
• 1:07:19
  turn 75, you know, you got to retire,
• 1:07:22
  you know, do something.
• 1:07:24
  But 75 wouldn't have got rid of him.
• 1:07:28
  His power came from three decades of being
• 1:07:31
  in Congress, not from being old.
• 1:07:34
  A capable 78-year-old can serve better
• 1:07:37
  than an incompetent or corrupt 48-year-old.
• 1:07:40
  Age is an imperfect measure of whatever your
• 1:07:43
  capacity is, you know.
• 1:07:48
  What about a term limit that would directly
• 1:07:52
  address entrenched power?
• 1:07:54
  So I've been thinking about this for years.
• 1:07:56
  Nobody will ever do it, but I've thought
• 1:07:58
  about it and I've had shells of things
• 1:08:00
  that I've put together ages ago.
• 1:08:03
  One of them was no more than 12
• 1:08:05
  years in either the House or the Senate
• 1:08:07
  and no more than, I don't know, 18
• 1:08:10
  years maybe total in Congress, maybe something like
• 1:08:15
  that.
• 1:08:16
  And then do it prospectively so it only
• 1:08:19
  applies to new people elected after whatever for
• 1:08:22
  the first time.
• 1:08:23
  And that way, you could ease them into
• 1:08:26
  it, you know, something like that.
• 1:08:28
  And then maybe a separate incapacity procedure for
• 1:08:32
  people who have prolonged inability to perform legislative
• 1:08:36
  duties and maybe a health transparency rule after
• 1:08:40
  McConnell, you know.
• 1:08:42
  When a member is medically absent for 30
• 1:08:46
  days or some period of time, the public
• 1:08:49
  should receive a physician statement addressing whether that
• 1:08:52
  member can communicate, understand the proceedings, you know,
• 1:08:56
  stuff like that.
• 1:08:58
  The public doesn't need every diagnosis, it needs
• 1:09:02
  to know whether its representatives are really representing
• 1:09:06
  them.
• 1:09:09
  Let's see here.
• 1:09:11
  All right, caller, can you speak?
• 1:09:15
  Yep.
• 1:09:16
  Holy smokes, I can hear you.
• 1:09:18
  What's happening?
• 1:09:20
  A global energy crisis.
• 1:09:24
  Yeah, I'm sad about Lady Lindsay too, but
• 1:09:27
  he doesn't deserve all this attention.
• 1:09:32
  I want to know how you feel about
• 1:09:35
  if Russia has up to 40% of
• 1:09:39
  their refineries taken offline and they've hit other
• 1:09:43
  refineries in the Middle East and we're out
• 1:09:46
  of strategic petroleum reserves.
• 1:09:49
  I'm not sure how they're cooking the numbers
• 1:09:52
  to keep the crude low like they are,
• 1:09:55
  but I don't, I can't foresee it continuing.
• 1:10:00
  Me neither.
• 1:10:01
  I'm with you.
• 1:10:03
  That's more important.
• 1:10:05
  I think that's a more important topic than
• 1:10:07
  how senators lodge themselves and never leave.
• 1:10:14
  How do you figure, I think that Trump
• 1:10:18
  thinks that somehow this will all just work
• 1:10:21
  out.
• 1:10:21
  He's got this thing and he says, I
• 1:10:25
  don't know, but it always works out for
• 1:10:27
  me.
• 1:10:29
  He's manipulating the numbers every weekend, you know.
• 1:10:34
  There's an article last week that said that
• 1:10:37
  he didn't announce the bombing on Iran until
• 1:10:43
  after the stock market closed on Friday afternoon.
• 1:10:48
  And then by the time Sunday rolls around,
• 1:10:51
  you know, everybody has moved all their positions
• 1:10:54
  around and he can redo something, some new
• 1:10:58
  news on Monday morning.
• 1:10:59
  There's so much speculation on this because he's
• 1:11:02
  making, what was it, $2 billion or something?
• 1:11:04
  He's making all kinds of money up there
• 1:11:06
  and that he's done more trades, more trades
• 1:11:10
  than any other president.
• 1:11:12
  He's done more stock trades, like thousands that
• 1:11:15
  he has done since taking office, the second
• 1:11:17
  term.
• 1:11:18
  And I'm not for it.
• 1:11:20
  And I'm worried about the state of global
• 1:11:24
  energy also, because, you know, this is all
• 1:11:29
  driven by U.S. policy, every bit of
• 1:11:32
  it.
• 1:11:34
  Yeah, on his profit and he made that
• 1:11:38
  money, that $2 billion.
• 1:11:39
  Most of that was made from a rug
• 1:11:42
  pull on his MAGA.
• 1:11:44
  Well, yeah, I've heard about that, too.
• 1:11:47
  I don't know enough about it, but I
• 1:11:49
  do know that there's some people talking about
• 1:11:52
  the crypto.
• 1:11:53
  If you listen to me pretty frequently, I've
• 1:11:55
  said something about JR and I had a
• 1:11:59
  dispute several months ago.
• 1:12:02
  It was a while ago.
• 1:12:03
  He said to me that all the U
• 1:12:07
  .S. debt would be liquidated by the end
• 1:12:11
  of Trump's term.
• 1:12:13
  And I told him, you know, you're full
• 1:12:15
  of it and that ain't gonna happen and
• 1:12:19
  there's no way unless there's some kind of
• 1:12:23
  a shenanigan of some sort.
• 1:12:24
  Well, there was an analysis put out and
• 1:12:28
  it had nothing to do with JR and
• 1:12:29
  JR could ultimately end up being right, but
• 1:12:32
  for a different reason.
• 1:12:32
  Right.
• 1:12:35
  And well, not because Trump improved.
• 1:12:38
  You would figure that Trump is improving the
• 1:12:40
  economy somehow and that everything is fantastic and
• 1:12:43
  we've got trillions being invested in the United
• 1:12:46
  States and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:12:47
  But what the article I read was, and
• 1:12:50
  I wish I could find it, but I
• 1:12:52
  can't.
• 1:12:53
  Well, I could, but I'm not going to
• 1:12:55
  do it on the screen here while I'm
• 1:12:57
  trying to talk.
• 1:12:58
  But what it said was basically the United
• 1:13:01
  States has three or four times reset its
• 1:13:10
  U.S. policy now.
• 1:13:12
  Now, I'm not saying I believe it completely,
• 1:13:15
  but peripherally, preliminarily, it made sense to want
• 1:13:19
  to look into it further.
• 1:13:21
  And the first time was after World War
• 1:13:25
  I.
• 1:13:25
  The second time was after World War II
• 1:13:27
  with the Bretton Woods and the reset for
• 1:13:31
  there.
• 1:13:31
  The third time was with the gold standard
• 1:13:38
  with Nixon in 71, 72.
• 1:13:42
  There was argument about a mini reset in
• 1:13:45
  79, again with oil and stuff like that.
• 1:13:48
  And then now they're arguing that the biggest
• 1:13:52
  reset is going to be Trump generated, putting
• 1:13:56
  everything into this new Bitcoin, and it will
• 1:13:59
  pull the rug out from under the entire
• 1:14:03
  world based upon Bitcoin because the U.S.
• 1:14:07
  is taking control of all, and I don't
• 1:14:10
  mean Bitcoin, I mean cryptocurrency, is taking control
• 1:14:13
  of all the transfers and creating the transfer
• 1:14:16
  house for cryptocurrency inside the United States financial
• 1:14:22
  structure, and that immediately when they do, just
• 1:14:27
  like after they took all the gold in
• 1:14:30
  the Nixon years, they revalued it immediately and
• 1:14:34
  doubled the price of it, meaning the gold
• 1:14:36
  went up, but the people who had it
• 1:14:37
  lost all the money.
• 1:14:39
  And so it took advantage of all the
• 1:14:42
  people that held the asset and converted it
• 1:14:47
  all into the U.S. So now they
• 1:14:49
  want to take all the U.S. debt
• 1:14:51
  and revalue it and say you got to
• 1:14:53
  buy it through Bitcoin is the preliminaries of
• 1:14:56
  what it is.
• 1:14:57
  And I'm not explaining it as well as
• 1:14:58
  the article did, and I wouldn't have time
• 1:15:00
  to read the article anyway.
• 1:15:01
  Well, I could on the air, I suppose.
• 1:15:04
  But it was an interesting concept to think
• 1:15:08
  about as yet another reset, and that that
• 1:15:12
  reset may liquidate U.S. debt and basically
• 1:15:16
  transfer from China back to America all of
• 1:15:22
  the money that we've helped them make industrially
• 1:15:27
  and otherwise, and all of the major debt
• 1:15:29
  holders.
• 1:15:30
  Now, China has been unloading its debt at
• 1:15:33
  the tune of $60 billion a quarter, as
• 1:15:36
  has Japan and a couple other of the
• 1:15:38
  big ones.
• 1:15:39
  People are unloading this debt.
• 1:15:41
  So the crisis is coming, or Trump just
• 1:15:44
  solved it with this cryptocurrency stuff.
• 1:15:48
  But I'm no expert on that.
• 1:15:50
  So I mean, I don't know anything.
• 1:15:52
  Just this is what I heard.
• 1:15:53
  But I think bad news is coming on
• 1:15:55
  the energy end anyway.
• 1:16:02
  Yeah, sure is.
• 1:16:03
  That doesn't seem to be very high on
• 1:16:07
  anybody's list, like they're tired of talking about
• 1:16:10
  it.
• 1:16:11
  Well, it's useful to bomb the shit out
• 1:16:15
  of Iran and bomb the shit out of
• 1:16:17
  Russia through somebody else's hands and blow up
• 1:16:21
  90 tankers inside the Azov Sea.
• 1:16:25
  You know, they just blow them up.
• 1:16:27
  You don't hear a word about it.
• 1:16:28
  Nobody's saying anything.
• 1:16:29
  And it's going to create problems.
• 1:16:35
  And more than half of them are grain
• 1:16:38
  ships, not oil ships.
• 1:16:41
  And Ukraine's now they're blowing up grain.
• 1:16:43
  Why is grain being attacked?
• 1:16:46
  That doesn't make any sense.
• 1:16:47
  And nobody's saying a word about it.
• 1:16:49
  Well, why?
• 1:16:50
  Because it's Russian grain.
• 1:16:52
  Going to Africa or going to, you know,
• 1:16:54
  they're one of the largest suppliers of grain
• 1:16:57
  to the global south.
• 1:17:00
  So there's big problems coming.
• 1:17:06
  There's a conspiracy theory that they're all, you
• 1:17:11
  notice how the wars are all measured?
• 1:17:14
  You know, it's not all out war.
• 1:17:19
  They don't immediately go for infrastructure.
• 1:17:21
  And it's, like I said, just piecemeal stuff.
• 1:17:29
  And they keep saying that we could go
• 1:17:34
  into Iran and finish them, but we don't
• 1:17:36
  want to be cruel or whatever.
• 1:17:38
  We couldn't go into Iran and finish them.
• 1:17:40
  It would be just like Afghanistan.
• 1:17:44
  Well, I know that.
• 1:17:45
  But the right wing talking point is we
• 1:17:51
  have them because we're benevolent.
• 1:17:54
  My ass, benevolent.
• 1:17:56
  That is nonsense.
• 1:17:59
  That's people who have no idea what they're
• 1:18:01
  talking about.
• 1:18:04
  That's what Trump says.
• 1:18:06
  Well, yeah, he thinks he can bomb them
• 1:18:09
  into submission.
• 1:18:10
  He's just making it worse.
• 1:18:14
  Exactly.
• 1:18:15
  That's what I'm saying.
• 1:18:16
  But I'm saying this is, they didn't shut
• 1:18:20
  down, they don't have no problem with them
• 1:18:22
  picking off everybody in Yemen, Somalia, Palestine in
• 1:18:32
  general, Russia, Ukraine.
• 1:18:39
  The conspiracy theory is that the rich people
• 1:18:42
  are fine with starving the poor people.
• 1:18:45
  And sending them to war is part of
• 1:18:48
  getting another herd, calling the herd.
• 1:18:52
  Well, that may be true.
• 1:18:54
  You know, it's certainly the rich guys' kids
• 1:18:57
  go in a much smaller percentage than the
• 1:19:00
  poor folks' kids.
• 1:19:03
  And, you know.
• 1:19:04
  But you still like Trump.
• 1:19:06
  You still think Trump was the best choice.
• 1:19:10
  Better than what's your nuts, no matter how
• 1:19:13
  you slice it.
• 1:19:16
  That's crazy, man.
• 1:19:18
  Because of what?
• 1:19:19
  What has he done?
• 1:19:21
  She was dumber than a bag of hammers.
• 1:19:25
  And he's not.
• 1:19:26
  Did you see him point to Zelensky and
• 1:19:29
  say, does anybody have any questions for President
• 1:19:31
  Putin?
• 1:19:32
  Yeah, I remember that.
• 1:19:34
  That was funny.
• 1:19:35
  That fucking Zelensky.
• 1:19:37
  He goes, yeah, I know it's Zelensky.
• 1:19:38
  I'm asking you any questions for Putin.
• 1:19:41
  But Putin is stupid, man.
• 1:19:44
  Well, he recovered well, see.
• 1:19:48
  I think that he's losing it the older
• 1:19:50
  he gets.
• 1:19:51
  I'm watching him.
• 1:19:52
  And I've talked about it for a couple
• 1:19:53
  of weeks now.
• 1:19:54
  I'm watching him.
• 1:19:55
  And I think he's.
• 1:19:58
  He never had it.
• 1:20:00
  I never, ever said he did have it.
• 1:20:02
  I said, of the choices back in 2016.
• 1:20:07
  Back in 2016, when they had like 17
• 1:20:09
  people standing on the stage at the debate
• 1:20:12
  for the Republican president or whatever, they were
• 1:20:15
  all crap.
• 1:20:17
  And and the least crap was Donald Trump.
• 1:20:21
  The rest of them are all the same.
• 1:20:23
  Donald Trump represented, at least to me then,
• 1:20:27
  and to some extent, an outsider.
• 1:20:30
  He doesn't he doesn't represent that to me
• 1:20:33
  anymore.
• 1:20:35
  And at least he makes his own decisions.
• 1:20:38
  Like them, don't like them.
• 1:20:40
  They're his decisions.
• 1:20:41
  There's no question that he is in charge.
• 1:20:44
  Well, no, the bigger problem is the fact
• 1:20:48
  that what's her name would be completely controlled
• 1:20:51
  by somebody else.
• 1:20:53
  And they picked her because she could be
• 1:20:57
  controlled by somebody else, which is the exact
• 1:20:59
  same problem that I had with all the
• 1:21:02
  other Republicans.
• 1:21:03
  They're all controlled by the donors.
• 1:21:06
  Trump, not so much.
• 1:21:08
  And so I was willing to give him
• 1:21:10
  a pass for a lot of stuff.
• 1:21:14
  Trump isn't doing this for for profit.
• 1:21:22
  Well, I think he is.
• 1:21:23
  But I think I think initially he wanted
• 1:21:26
  his legacy and his legacy was supposed to
• 1:21:29
  be about peace.
• 1:21:30
  And I was for that.
• 1:21:31
  And I was like, you know, I'm going
• 1:21:33
  to I'm not going to start new wars.
• 1:21:35
  I'm not doing my ass.
• 1:21:37
  What have we done since for the last
• 1:21:39
  year and a half?
• 1:21:40
  We've started wars.
• 1:21:41
  I've been very critical of that.
• 1:21:42
  And, you know, I have.
• 1:21:46
  Yeah, I don't understand how you don't you
• 1:21:48
  don't.
• 1:21:49
  That doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly go
• 1:21:50
  to, you know, oh, gee, let's maybe it
• 1:21:53
  maybe I should.
• 1:21:55
  I'm distraught now.
• 1:21:56
  Maybe I should have voted for Kamala Harris.
• 1:22:00
  Oh, my God.
• 1:22:01
  No, never.
• 1:22:04
  Yeah, it would have been way worse.
• 1:22:05
  How much worse could it have been?
• 1:22:07
  Well, I've said that before, too.
• 1:22:10
  The president doesn't matter.
• 1:22:12
  It doesn't matter who he is or she
• 1:22:14
  is.
• 1:22:15
  As much as much as it does that
• 1:22:18
  they get the hell out of the way.
• 1:22:19
  That's why I'm talking about term limits right
• 1:22:22
  now for these other assholes, because they're it's
• 1:22:24
  the exact same.
• 1:22:26
  I think there ought to be term limits
• 1:22:27
  for the friggin Supreme Court, for the federal
• 1:22:29
  court system.
• 1:22:31
  What a joke that there isn't.
• 1:22:34
  The president does kind of matter, especially if
• 1:22:37
  he has control over if he's intimidating, not
• 1:22:40
  long term.
• 1:22:41
  And not long term.
• 1:22:45
  He's only he's only four to eight years
• 1:22:47
  long term.
• 1:22:48
  He's a blip and he don't matter.
• 1:22:50
  And nothing will change.
• 1:22:52
  That's another dispute that I have with Jay
• 1:22:56
  are fairly frequently is that unfortunately permanent change.
• 1:23:01
  I mean, is the only constant is that
• 1:23:04
  it's going to change and it will always
• 1:23:06
  change.
• 1:23:06
  And so everything that a president does is
• 1:23:10
  is necessarily temporary anyway.
• 1:23:13
  Nothing's going to change.
• 1:23:15
  And neither is the deep state.
• 1:23:18
  Neither is who's in control.
• 1:23:21
  Well, it isn't going to change.
• 1:23:22
  You think it's going to change if Kamala
• 1:23:25
  Harris gets put in?
• 1:23:27
  Is she going to run this time?
• 1:23:28
  Tell me that.
• 1:23:29
  Riddle me that, Batman.
• 1:23:30
  Is she going to be is she going
• 1:23:32
  to run this time?
• 1:23:34
  If she's so worthy, will she run?
• 1:23:37
  I've never said she was worthy.
• 1:23:39
  I'm just saying that she I highly doubt
• 1:23:44
  she could be any worse than Trump if
• 1:23:46
  she tried.
• 1:23:47
  Would she have been better than Biden?
• 1:23:51
  Yeah.
• 1:23:51
  Oh, my God.
• 1:23:53
  Really?
• 1:23:54
  They they they.
• 1:23:55
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:23:57
  I mean, they're they're just Democratic.
• 1:24:00
  Like you said, they're going to they're going
• 1:24:01
  to listen to all their people.
• 1:24:03
  Split the middle.
• 1:24:05
  Do do what's what's normal.
• 1:24:08
  You know, screw us.
• 1:24:10
  Screw the screw the public and more power
• 1:24:14
  for us.
• 1:24:14
  Exactly.
• 1:24:15
  They normally do.
• 1:24:16
  That's right.
• 1:24:17
  The way Trump just just straight rapes with
• 1:24:19
  no lube.
• 1:24:20
  Oh, that's true.
• 1:24:21
  That's true, too.
• 1:24:24
  You could at least you could at least
• 1:24:25
  give me a reach around or something.
• 1:24:27
  Come on.
• 1:24:29
  Well, why?
• 1:24:30
  Why are you going to?
• 1:24:31
  It's fun when you.
• 1:24:32
  It's fun when you talk about it like
• 1:24:34
  that.
• 1:24:36
  It's fun when you talk about like that,
• 1:24:39
  if you're going to bone me.
• 1:24:41
  I had a friend who had a T
• 1:24:43
  -shirt that I had a friend who had
• 1:24:45
  a T-shirt that said that he said,
• 1:24:47
  if you're going to ride me, at least
• 1:24:49
  give me a reach around.
• 1:24:54
  So we were we were oddballs in the
• 1:24:57
  army.
• 1:24:58
  So there you have it.
• 1:25:00
  At any rate, I appreciate your call.
• 1:25:02
  I only got a few minutes left.
• 1:25:04
  I'm going to wrap it up and see
• 1:25:07
  if I can tie up my end thoughts.
• 1:25:09
  I appreciate your call.
• 1:25:10
  You have a very nice day.
• 1:25:15
  And there he goes.
• 1:25:18
  I wanted to finalize by saying something about
• 1:25:21
  the constitutional problem.
• 1:25:25
  Congress can't just pass an ordinary statute imposing
• 1:25:30
  any sort of maximum age or a term
• 1:25:32
  limit or anything like that.
• 1:25:34
  The Constitution presently sets a minimum age, 25
• 1:25:39
  for the House representatives, 30 for the Senate,
• 1:25:42
  but no maximum age or no term cap.
• 1:25:45
  The Supreme Court has held that the constitutional
• 1:25:47
  qualifications for congressional service cannot be supplemented by
• 1:25:55
  Congress or the states.
• 1:25:57
  Therefore, congressional term limits or an age ceiling
• 1:26:01
  would require a constitutional amendment, and that amendment
• 1:26:06
  would require either two thirds approval in both
• 1:26:10
  houses of Congress or an amendment convention called
• 1:26:14
  by two thirds of the states, following in
• 1:26:19
  either case by ratification from three fourths of
• 1:26:22
  the states.
• 1:26:23
  So there's no congressional equivalent to the 25th
• 1:26:27
  Amendment's presidential disability process.
• 1:26:30
  A Senate seat is vacant only through death,
• 1:26:33
  resignation, expulsion, prolonged illness doesn't produce a temporary
• 1:26:37
  replacement.
• 1:26:39
  So it's a genuine defect in the system.
• 1:26:41
  A senator can be unable to appear or
• 1:26:44
  vote for an extended period, and the seat
• 1:26:47
  will just remain unoccupied.
• 1:26:50
  So the larger argument is in the legislature,
• 1:26:56
  biological succession substitutes for any renewal of political
• 1:27:01
  will, or we condemn foreign systems in which
• 1:27:06
  leaders remain until death.
• 1:27:09
  We condemn them all the time.
• 1:27:12
  But we have built the same thing.
• 1:27:14
  We've built a Congress where death, incapacity, extreme
• 1:27:19
  old age, or just absence affect the process,
• 1:27:24
  and they accomplish what elections fail to accomplish,
• 1:27:28
  right?
• 1:27:30
  It's, you know, America changes presidents.
• 1:27:34
  It doesn't necessarily change the permanent governing class.
• 1:27:45
  And hello there, caller.
• 1:27:46
  It's going to have to be quick.
• 1:27:47
  I only got like two minutes.
• 1:27:49
  It's very, very, very quick.
• 1:27:52
  Okay.
• 1:27:52
  I don't know if you mentioned this, but
• 1:27:54
  when Mitch McConnell went to the hospital, do
• 1:27:56
  you notice that his wife, I don't know,
• 1:27:58
  did you mention this, that his wife is
• 1:28:00
  Chinese and directly went to China?
• 1:28:04
  I didn't know that.
• 1:28:05
  That was something I did not know.
• 1:28:06
  All I know is that he was out
• 1:28:08
  of the picture going.
• 1:28:10
  Okay.
• 1:28:11
  Well, she's been in meetings in China with
• 1:28:14
  Chinese officials.
• 1:28:15
  First of all, first of all, isn't it
• 1:28:18
  interesting that one of our political leaders is
• 1:28:22
  literally in bed with the enemy?
• 1:28:25
  Well, they all are.
• 1:28:26
  And I really got to let you go.
• 1:28:28
  You'll have to call me and talk about
• 1:28:30
  that tomorrow, but I'll have a look and
• 1:28:31
  see what I can find out.
• 1:28:32
  You have a nice day.
• 1:28:35
  Oh, interesting.
• 1:28:36
  I might have to figure that out and
• 1:28:38
  see about his wife being Chinese.
• 1:28:40
  I had no idea.
• 1:28:41
  I don't usually keep track of their wives.
• 1:28:43
  I can't keep track of my own.
• 1:28:45
  Let's see.
• 1:28:48
  Well, Trump arrived promising to reject endless war.
• 1:28:52
  Graham gradually became one of his closest foreign
• 1:28:55
  policy advisors.
• 1:28:57
  And so the deeper question, did Trump defeat
• 1:29:00
  the old Republican establishment or did the old
• 1:29:04
  Republican establishment absorb the old Trumpster?
• 1:29:09
  That's a question we will expand upon tomorrow,
• 1:29:13
  perhaps or not.
• 1:29:14
  It could be that we get into the
• 1:29:16
  Chinese and Mitch McConnell.
• 1:29:18
  Anyway, we are International Flavor.
• 1:29:22
  You can listen to us every day.
• 1:29:24
  You can download our shows at internationalflavor.com
• 1:29:27
  or you can go to damradio.com forward
• 1:29:29
  slash podcast and get all of these hilarious
• 1:29:32
  moments relived in the privacy of your own
• 1:29:35
  sitting room.
• 1:29:36
  There you have it or your own car,
• 1:29:39
  however you choose to do so.
• 1:29:40
  I appreciate you being here.
• 1:29:42
  Hope you have a wonderful mid-Missouri day.