Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Defense Doctrine, Davos Delusions, and Decline in Plain Sight: Zelensky Overreaches, Europe Balks, Lavrov Audits

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Defense Doctrine, Davos Delusions, and Decline in Plain Sight: Zelensky Overreaches, Europe Balks, Lavrov Audits · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, good morning and welcome.
• 0:02
  It is Monday.
• 0:04
  All day today.
• 0:06
  All day.
• 0:08
  It will be Monday.
• 0:09
  And here I am in the coming to
• 0:12
  you live from the Lake Ozark real estate
• 0:15
  of the art studio.
• 0:17
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:18
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:23
  Um, it's pretty brisk out there, friends and
• 0:26
  neighbors.
• 0:27
  Three farging degrees.
• 0:30
  Three.
• 0:32
  What's all that about?
• 0:34
  I went to Starbucks.
• 0:37
  Closed.
• 0:38
  Now I have to go to the who's
• 0:41
  open and who's closed roster to see if
• 0:44
  I can get a coffee.
• 0:45
  I had to come in and make coffee.
• 0:51
  Now is that depressing or what?
• 0:53
  Anyway, it's pretty farging cold in, uh, misery,
• 0:58
  the state of misery.
• 1:01
  Uh, but not in the Lake Ozark real
• 1:04
  estate of the art studio here.
• 1:06
  It is, uh, you know, warm enough.
• 1:09
  I'm not even wearing a coat, merely my,
• 1:13
  uh, my hat.
• 1:15
  I am wearing a hat because I don't
• 1:17
  like my ears to be cold.
• 1:19
  Uh, lots of news.
• 1:21
  So, excuse me, a, uh, brand new.
• 1:26
  So, so we have a department of war.
• 1:29
  Okay.
• 1:30
  We have a department of war that should
• 1:32
  tell you all you need to know about
• 1:34
  America department of war released a national defense
• 1:39
  strategy.
• 1:41
  Homeland is at the front line, right?
• 1:44
  This came from military.com military.com.
• 1:50
  And, uh, uh, I think there, I don't
• 1:52
  know if they own the air force times
• 1:54
  I'm army times, Navy times.
• 1:56
  I don't know how that works, but, uh,
• 1:58
  I don't know, but let, let's, let's share
• 2:01
  with you this little mini article before I
• 2:05
  get into my other stuff.
• 2:09
  Okay.
• 2:11
  Let us begin at the beginning because we
• 2:14
  like to start at home America first, this
• 2:17
  is the beginning America first peace through strength,
• 2:21
  common sense.
• 2:23
  These bolded words on the first page of
• 2:29
  secretary has Hegseth's memorandum set the tone.
• 2:34
  Now, remember I'm reading this from military.com.
• 2:38
  So this is going to be extremely pro,
• 2:40
  right?
• 2:40
  This is going to be all about how
• 2:42
  wonderful this is.
• 2:43
  And I'm not against it.
• 2:44
  I just, I haven't read it yet.
• 2:46
  I wanted to, uh, to include it in
• 2:48
  there.
• 2:48
  I've seen a lot of commentary about it,
• 2:50
  but I still haven't read it.
• 2:52
  You can find it, the, uh, national defense
• 2:55
  strategy.
• 2:57
  Uh, where is it?
• 3:01
  It, it, no, darn it.
• 3:05
  They keep on shuffling you off to some
• 3:07
  other advertising.
• 3:09
  I assume it's on the, secretary of war's
• 3:12
  website, but so far I haven't gotten there,
• 3:14
  but I will read it and maybe we'll
• 3:16
  go into it a little further tomorrow, uh,
• 3:20
  because I already have a topic for today,
• 3:22
  but I am going to share this article
• 3:23
  because it's not all that long.
• 3:25
  It's a, and then I'm going to share
• 3:27
  an opposing.
• 3:28
  I assume it's opposing viewpoint, uh, because I
• 3:32
  haven't seen that yet either.
• 3:33
  It's changing my plans completely, but we, you
• 3:36
  know, we're all about winging it here.
• 3:38
  I've got some, I want to finish up
• 3:41
  on a, on a couple of things.
• 3:42
  There was plenty of news over the weekend,
• 3:44
  uh, America first, peace or strength, common sense.
• 3:47
  These bold words on the, on the first
• 3:49
  page of secretary head says, memorandum set the
• 3:52
  tone.
• 3:53
  The department of war released its 2026 national
• 3:57
  defense strategy on Friday, outlining a focus approach
• 4:03
  to safeguarding us interests amid evolving global threat
• 4:10
  building on the national security strategy that president
• 4:14
  Trump wrote.
• 4:14
  Remember that one where president Trump described as
• 4:17
  an updated Monroe doctrine is, well, let's call
• 4:21
  it the Trump doctrine.
• 4:22
  The NDS emphasizes practical realism to achieve peace
• 4:28
  through strength that prioritize defending the homeland first
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  followed by in deterring China, enhancing allied contribution
• 4:38
  and revitalizing the defense industrial base, defense industrial
• 4:46
  base code name for military industrial complex, all
• 4:52
  while ensuring the joint force remains ready for
• 4:56
  decisive action.
• 4:58
  This strategy is within the national security strategy
• 5:01
  framework that was released Matt last month calls
• 5:05
  for clear, right assessment of threat and resources
• 5:07
  detailed in our earlier coverage of the national
• 5:10
  security strategy.
• 5:11
  Remember this military.com, the NSS shifts away
• 5:14
  from expensive intervention really toward concrete us priority.
• 5:20
  And though it errs on the side of
• 5:22
  non-intervention, it does make clear that the
• 5:26
  U S will defend its interests as needed.
• 5:29
  The NDS translates that guidance into military terms,
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  directing components to implement changes rapidly and comprehensively
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  strategies broken down first by the security environment
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  followed by strategic approach broken out into lines
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  of effort.
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  The document first surveys, the key threats stay
• 5:49
  starting with homeland and hemispheric challenges like border
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  security, narco terrorism.
• 5:55
  There's that word again, and access to key
• 5:58
  terrain such as the Panama canal and Greenland.
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  We're taking over places.
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  It also addresses major actors, China's rapid military
• 6:06
  buildup, Russia's persistent capability, Iran's weakened and resilient
• 6:11
  position, post midnight hammer and North Korea's nuclear
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  advancement line of effort.
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  Number one topping the list.
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  Homeland defense includes securing the border countering narco
• 6:26
  terrorism line to deter China in the Indo
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  Pacific through strength, not confrontation to counter China's
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  growth.
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  The NDS calls for denial defenses along the
• 6:37
  first island chain, emphasizing engagement for stability while
• 6:41
  building capability to prevent dominance.
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  It aligns with the Marine Corps force design
• 6:48
  2030, where the Marine Corps plays a key
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  part in distributed operations line of effort, three
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  increased birding, sharing bird, Den Sharon with U
• 7:05
  .S. allies and partners.
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  The strategy pushes allies to meet higher spending
• 7:09
  targets like 5% of GDP line of
• 7:14
  effort for supercharged U.S. defense industrial base.
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  This involves expanding production, adopting innovation like a
• 7:23
  I and clearing obstacles to meet demand.
• 7:27
  It supports allies through exports, ensuring scalability for
• 7:32
  munition and systems.
• 7:35
  This ties into the current American industrial revival
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  while enhancing readiness.
• 7:41
  In conclusion, the 2026 NDS charts a path
• 7:45
  by enduring to enduring security by concentrating on
• 7:50
  essentials, leveraging alliance and bolstering capability of positions,
• 7:55
  the military to deter aggression while enabling diplomacy,
• 8:00
  really reflecting a shift toward focused, effective defense.
• 8:06
  Okay.
• 8:06
  Now that is how the military.com channel
• 8:12
  put it.
• 8:13
  Now, if you wish to hear the opinion
• 8:20
  from the other side of the planet, defending
• 8:24
  the homeland shape, shaking up allies and deterring
• 8:28
  China.
• 8:28
  And I haven't read it myself yet.
• 8:30
  So I'm only getting the, uh, the politicized
• 8:33
  version of the U S and now the
• 8:35
  politicized version of, uh, what channel is this?
• 8:39
  R T the Pentagon unveiled its latest planning
• 8:43
  document that signals a significant shift in attitude
• 8:47
  to friend and foe alike by America, friends
• 8:53
  and foe.
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  All shall tremble.
• 8:58
  That is correct.
• 9:00
  You will tremble because I say so the
• 9:05
  department of war and now let's hear their
• 9:08
  take on this as well.
• 9:10
  So it's also pretty short.
• 9:11
  The U S war department unveiled its national
• 9:16
  defense strategy Friday titled the restoring piece through
• 9:19
  strength for a new golden age of America.
• 9:22
  The plan outlines the Pentagon stance toward China,
• 9:28
  Russia, and other quote, cunning adversaries, close quote,
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  as well as its approach to allies and
• 9:36
  main priorities.
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  Here are the key takeaways.
• 9:40
  This is the kid.
• 9:40
  Now remember the key takeaways we just listened
• 9:43
  to here are the key takeaways, blame your
• 9:46
  predecessor.
• 9:47
  The preface of the document goes to great
• 9:50
  lengths to rip into the actions of previous
• 9:53
  us administration, accusing it of steering America into
• 9:57
  one of the most dangerous security environments in
• 10:00
  our nation's history.
• 10:02
  Under president Biden, us allies were encouraged to
• 10:06
  free ride instead of taking their own defenses
• 10:11
  seriously.
• 10:15
  Hmm.
• 10:16
  While America's cunning adversaries were allowed to grow
• 10:20
  bolder.
• 10:21
  The document asserts at home, us borders were
• 10:25
  overrun while narco terrorists and other enemies grew
• 10:30
  more powerful throughout the Western hemisphere.
• 10:33
  The document claims the new strategy focuses on
• 10:37
  defense of the U S homeland and States
• 10:39
  to Pentagon intends to actively and fearlessly defend
• 10:43
  America's interests.
• 10:44
  Well, that's what they're supposed to do throughout
• 10:47
  the entire Western hemisphere.
• 10:49
  I don't necessarily agree with that.
• 10:51
  Uh, we will secure America's borders and maritime
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  approaches.
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  We will defend our nation skies through golden
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  dome for America.
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  The document reads explicitly naming the Panama Canal,
• 11:03
  the Gulf of America known internationally as the
• 11:06
  Gulf of Mexico, according to this article and
• 11:09
  Greenland as key terrain for us military and
• 11:13
  commercial access.
• 11:15
  Now, why is commercial being put in to
• 11:18
  a military document?
• 11:20
  Uh, that's my question.
• 11:21
  That goal is to be achieved through various
• 11:24
  means, including by maintaining a robust and modern
• 11:27
  nuclear deterrent and creating and sustaining formidable cyber
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  defenses and through hunting and neutralizing unspecified Islamic
• 11:36
  terrorists who allegedly have the ability intent to
• 11:39
  strike our homeland.
• 11:41
  Unlike previous defense strategies, the document no longer
• 11:45
  designates China as a strategic threat, proclaiming the
• 11:49
  need to deter Beijing rather than confront it
• 11:52
  directly.
• 11:53
  The document recognizes China's growing regional influence and
• 11:59
  military modernization as serious challenges yet avoid saying
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  that an all out conflict between us and
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  China is looming.
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  Our goal in doing so is not to
• 12:11
  dominate China, nor is it to strangle or
• 12:15
  humiliate them.
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  Rather, our goal is simple, to prevent anyone,
• 12:20
  including China, from being able to dominate us
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  or our allies.
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  This does not require regime change or some
• 12:28
  other existential struggle.
• 12:31
  The new strategy does not mention Taiwan.
• 12:35
  While Beijing considers the self governed island an
• 12:38
  integral part of its territory, Taipei has long
• 12:40
  maintained close security cooperation with Washington, which is
• 12:43
  a source of tension between the two powers.
• 12:47
  The document signals similar shifts in the U
• 12:50
  .S. attitude to Russia, declaring it a persistent
• 12:55
  but manageable threat to NATO's eastern members for
• 12:58
  the foreseeable future.
• 13:00
  The new strategy recognizes that Russia possesses the
• 13:03
  world's largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to
• 13:07
  modernize and diversify.
• 13:08
  While the Ukraine conflict has demonstrated that Moscow
• 13:12
  retains deep reservoirs of military and industrial power,
• 13:15
  despite demographic and economic issues, while the Pentagon
• 13:19
  is still prepared to defend against alleged Russian
• 13:22
  threat to the U.S. homeland, European NATO
• 13:25
  members must take the lead in dealing with
• 13:28
  regional security, including the Ukraine conflict, which is
• 13:33
  Europe's responsibility first and foremost.
• 13:37
  And then they talk a little bit about
• 13:38
  burden sharing, which I don't really care about,
• 13:41
  increasing everybody, you know, everybody has to go
• 13:44
  to 5%.
• 13:44
  And then beefing up the military industrial complex,
• 13:48
  the new strategy proclaims the need to supercharge
• 13:52
  the U.S. defense industrial base and asserts
• 13:55
  that President Trump has been leading a once
• 13:58
  in a century revival of American industry.
• 14:02
  We must return to being the world's premier
• 14:06
  arsenal, one that can produce not only for
• 14:09
  ourselves, but for our allies and partners at
• 14:12
  scale rapidly in the highest level of quality.
• 14:15
  To achieve this goal, the Pentagon plans to
• 14:18
  reinvest in local military production, get rid of
• 14:22
  outdated policies, adopt new technology like AI, and
• 14:26
  simultaneously leverage allied and partner production.
• 14:32
  So for the first part of our show,
• 14:36
  those two contrasting views of Secretary Hague says
• 14:41
  new defense strategy 2026.
• 14:50
  Good read, I do plan on finding it
• 14:53
  and reading it.
• 14:55
  You can find the 2026 national defense strategy
• 15:00
  in its entirety.
• 15:04
  Here it is.
• 15:06
  I have it.
• 15:09
  It is maybe I'll leave it up here.
• 15:12
  It's unclassified.
• 15:13
  It's only how many pages I'm going to
• 15:16
  share it all with you that I'm not
• 15:18
  going to do.
• 15:23
  Son of a nutcracker.
• 15:25
  I will read it overnight.
• 15:26
  How about them apples?
• 15:27
  Okay.
• 15:28
  And we shall see what can be seen
• 15:31
  at that point.
• 15:33
  I think that could be rather entertaining to
• 15:36
  read to us.
• 15:37
  But it has 35 pages, 35 pages.
• 15:44
  And you know, there's several table of contents.
• 15:51
  So by the time you get to actual
• 15:52
  content, you're on page six or seven.
• 15:57
  So perhaps it won't be too bad, but
• 15:59
  I'll read it myself and get back with
• 16:01
  you tomorrow on that.
• 16:03
  I wanted to follow up with some Davos
• 16:05
  from last week because I, by Thursday, well,
• 16:11
  which for me early in the morning, Thursday
• 16:14
  would be late in the evening, Thursday over
• 16:19
  there.
• 16:20
  But there had not yet been any speech
• 16:25
  by the old Z monster, Z monster.
• 16:28
  In fact, they were saying he wasn't even
• 16:30
  going to show up and that he was
• 16:32
  dealing with issues in Kiev, which has no
• 16:35
  power at present.
• 16:37
  There was a video I saw this late
• 16:39
  last night, which is early in the morning
• 16:41
  in Ukraine and, uh, in Kiev and, uh,
• 16:45
  some, some pro Kiev pro Ukraine outlets driving
• 16:50
  down the road.
• 16:51
  The only lights you saw, it was still,
• 16:55
  uh, dark outside.
• 16:56
  There were no streetlights, no any lights anywhere
• 17:00
  except the cars.
• 17:02
  And, uh, there's been some pretty devastating results
• 17:06
  on the, on the heat.
• 17:09
  There is no heat in Kiev right now.
• 17:12
  Um, and the power, the power structure is,
• 17:15
  uh, seriously, uh, hating it.
• 17:18
  And, um, you know, they're not there.
• 17:21
  The Ukraine is not doing well friends and
• 17:25
  neighbors.
• 17:26
  So that was on the news today.
• 17:30
  Um, I saw an analysis done by a
• 17:34
  military, one of the military channels that I
• 17:37
  follow that, that showed a bit of an,
• 17:40
  an analysis on what Russia has been doing.
• 17:44
  So pretty much daily, both sides will publish
• 17:49
  the number of missiles, drones, uh, and, uh,
• 17:57
  what, what do you want to call it?
• 18:00
  Intermediate range.
• 18:01
  I like the, like the smaller, well, the
• 18:04
  larger drones, smaller missile, right.
• 18:07
  And they, they break them down by capability
• 18:09
  and how far they can go.
• 18:12
  And Russia is using, they have three different
• 18:18
  types.
• 18:18
  They have the standard ballistic missile, they have
• 18:21
  drones, they, and then, you know, those are
• 18:23
  the, the, the everyday uses of war.
• 18:26
  They have these things called supersonic missiles, and
• 18:29
  then they have hypersonic missiles and the supersonic
• 18:32
  missiles, uh, right.
• 18:35
  Uh, apparently right now, the air defense of,
• 18:38
  of, of Ukraine is so, I don't know,
• 18:43
  so beat up that the Russians are able
• 18:47
  to shoot from both air, from sea, from,
• 18:52
  from land, they're able to shoot from everywhere.
• 18:56
  These, uh, supersonic types of missiles, the mid
• 19:00
  range ones and, um, hit Kiev and they're
• 19:09
  traveling, call it 300 kilometers, but they're being
• 19:12
  fired from Russia.
• 19:14
  And, uh, you know, like the mid range
• 19:17
  missiles and Ukraine literally has no air defense.
• 19:22
  Uh, their air defense is gone.
• 19:24
  They can't take out their F-16s are
• 19:27
  basically gone.
• 19:29
  We've been talking about that for a while.
• 19:31
  Um, if they have them, they're on the
• 19:34
  Western side and they can't get there fast
• 19:36
  enough.
• 19:36
  And they're not stopping any of the, uh,
• 19:39
  the air defense or while they're not being
• 19:41
  used well as air defense right now.
• 19:43
  And so, uh, over the, over the weekend,
• 19:47
  I watched a, um, uh, an analysis of
• 19:51
  this that says that the are, uh, just
• 19:55
  advancing it at will, especially with the ability
• 20:00
  to fly.
• 20:01
  And they're saying, and this is the key
• 20:02
  key takeaway is that pretty soon Russia will
• 20:06
  be able to fly in the airspace.
• 20:09
  Like right now they're only flying on the
• 20:11
  side of the, uh, their own border in,
• 20:13
  in Russia, they're flying in on their own
• 20:16
  borders or along their own borders within the
• 20:19
  50 to a hundred kilometers of their border
• 20:22
  Northern.
• 20:24
  And that now, uh, the weekend and a
• 20:29
  little bit before that has shown that, uh,
• 20:32
  they can get missiles to Kiev in seconds,
• 20:36
  you know, in, in not very long at
• 20:39
  all, either hypersonic cause they're shooting the hypersonics
• 20:42
  and then they do the supersonics, but that,
• 20:45
  that, that all are capable of reaching there.
• 20:47
  Now, Kyiv published yesterday that, uh, and I
• 20:51
  don't know the exact numbers.
• 20:52
  I don't recall it, but, but it was,
• 20:53
  I want to say 400, 450, something like
• 20:57
  that, or 300 and, and, and of them
• 21:02
  all, all, but 27, 28 missiles were uh,
• 21:09
  brought down by air defense is what they
• 21:12
  are saying in Kyiv.
• 21:14
  Well, I I've talked to you before about
• 21:17
  how they blanket the air defense.
• 21:19
  Like they'll send in all these, uh, decoy
• 21:22
  drones to mess it up and to have
• 21:29
  the systems be busied with, and then they'll
• 21:32
  hit with the big ticket item, like a
• 21:35
  hypersonic missile or something that, that, uh, could,
• 21:38
  could be stopped.
• 21:39
  And so the analysis now says that if
• 21:42
  they can get into the first 50 to
• 21:45
  a hundred kilometers inside of Kyiv, which is
• 21:49
  where they're headed, then it will be, you
• 21:53
  know, ultimately they'll be able to cut down
• 21:56
  even half the time.
• 21:58
  So things aren't going well anyway.
• 22:00
  Uh, just thought I'd point that out and
• 22:03
  say that, you know, that, that's where the,
• 22:05
  the, the war is headed.
• 22:08
  Okay.
• 22:09
  Uh, now I wanted to talk a little
• 22:11
  bit more about Davos because the old Z
• 22:14
  monster showed up.
• 22:15
  Okay.
• 22:16
  And there's been plenty of commentary about his
• 22:19
  discussion.
• 22:21
  Um, and it wasn't, I watched the whole
• 22:25
  thing.
• 22:25
  I think the guy's losing it.
• 22:27
  I, I don't think he's ever been all
• 22:30
  that intelligent anyway, but, but now he's now,
• 22:35
  now he's gone off the deep end.
• 22:37
  Okay.
• 22:37
  Uh, it is what I think, um, his,
• 22:40
  his appearance at Davos.
• 22:43
  Um, basically he was like a salesman.
• 22:49
  He's like a, a worse than a used
• 22:51
  car salesman.
• 22:52
  He's, he's killing all his people.
• 22:53
  It's a moral theater, like always strategic overreach
• 22:58
  and the send us everywhere.
• 23:00
  He wants NATO.
• 23:02
  He wants, he wants to be in NATO
• 23:04
  and he wants to be the army for
• 23:08
  Europe.
• 23:09
  That's what he's saying.
• 23:10
  Send us everywhere.
• 23:13
  Lunacy.
• 23:14
  His appearance was not a statesman.
• 23:18
  You know, he wasn't as a statesman.
• 23:19
  He was putting pressure on everyone and scolding
• 23:25
  everyone.
• 23:25
  The speech is a, you know, familiar Zelinsky
• 23:28
  template.
• 23:30
  Uh, you know, he repeats everything.
• 23:32
  He accuses everyone.
• 23:34
  And then he wants escalation.
• 23:35
  He started with the movie Groundhog Day, which
• 23:39
  is one of my favorite movies, Bill Murray.
• 23:41
  Uh, and, and not, not to reflect on
• 23:44
  diplomatic stagnation, but to shame Europe for failing
• 23:49
  to act as he demands.
• 23:52
  This isn't persuasive.
• 23:54
  You know, I wasn't persuaded at all.
• 23:56
  I thought it was a, a, a, a
• 23:58
  bad opening.
• 23:59
  You know, he was browbeating them.
• 24:01
  His central theme is that Europe is weak
• 24:03
  and decisive fragmented and morally delinquent.
• 24:07
  It's unable to act without American enforcement.
• 24:11
  Uh, this is a, you know, an interesting
• 24:13
  position for a leader whose country survives entirely
• 24:19
  on external financing and weaponry.
• 24:22
  Zelinsky repeatedly insisted that Europe has to become
• 24:25
  a great power.
• 24:27
  Europe has to be a great power.
• 24:29
  But at the same time, he said that
• 24:30
  no European security guarantee would work without Washington.
• 24:34
  Well, if they're a great power, then why
• 24:36
  do you need Washington?
• 24:37
  The contradiction never gets resolved because it's not
• 24:40
  meant to be resolved.
• 24:42
  The speech isn't about European autonomy.
• 24:45
  It's about leverage for Zelinsky.
• 24:47
  How do I get more money?
• 24:49
  He's a used car salesman where the speech
• 24:52
  crosses from aggressive advocacy into lunacy.
• 24:57
  Fantasy is about Greenland.
• 25:00
  Zelinsky says Greenland is a looming battleground against
• 25:05
  Russia and China.
• 25:06
  He grabbed onto this like a, a, a,
• 25:09
  a drowning sailor grabbing a life preserver, right?
• 25:13
  Neither of which neither Russia nor China demonstrate
• 25:18
  any credible military intent in Greenland.
• 25:22
  And then he offers Ukraine as the solution.
• 25:25
  He says, he suggests that Ukraine forces could
• 25:29
  sink Russian ships near Greenland the way they
• 25:32
  do in Crimea.
• 25:34
  And you know, that's nonsense.
• 25:38
  It's reckless rhetoric.
• 25:39
  Crimea is a live war zone involving, you
• 25:42
  know, a belligerent party or two.
• 25:46
  Greenland is Danish territory under NATO protection.
• 25:50
  Mixing the two together, you know, that's not
• 25:53
  apples to apples.
• 25:55
  That's not analysis.
• 25:56
  It's a, it's, you know, escalation rhetoric.
• 25:59
  That's it.
• 26:00
  This is where the offensiveness to me, you
• 26:06
  know, was unavoidable.
• 26:07
  Zelinsky isn't just warning Europe.
• 26:10
  He's volunteering Ukrainian forces for conflicts that have
• 26:14
  nothing to do with Ukraine.
• 26:16
  In regions where Ukraine has zero legal standing,
• 26:20
  no treaty authority, no strategic necessity.
• 26:25
  He just wants to be in more war.
• 26:27
  You know, that's it.
• 26:28
  Call us.
• 26:29
  We, we'll fight for you basically.
• 26:34
  The implicit messages send us anywhere against anyone.
• 26:38
  Keep the money and weapons flowing.
• 26:40
  That's it.
• 26:41
  Keep the money and weapons coming.
• 26:42
  That's it.
• 26:43
  That isn't leadership.
• 26:44
  You know, that's a mercenary.
• 26:47
  You know, that's all he is.
• 26:49
  His attacks on Europe are relentless.
• 26:51
  I mean, he, Europe waits.
• 26:54
  Europe hopes America cools down.
• 26:56
  Europe avoids justice.
• 26:58
  Europe is a kaleidoscope rather than a power.
• 27:02
  Yet in the same sentence, he demands European
• 27:05
  seizure of Russian oil tankers, destruction of Russian
• 27:09
  factories, tighter sanctions, confrontation.
• 27:13
  He wanted, he suggested confrontation with Iran and
• 27:17
  Belarus.
• 27:18
  Belarus.
• 27:20
  These are not policy suggestions.
• 27:22
  They're calls for Europe to assume the risk
• 27:24
  while Ukraine retains the megaphone, you know, that
• 27:28
  gets to blast everybody.
• 27:31
  He's also pretty fixed on frozen Russian assets.
• 27:34
  And, you know, for him, like many in
• 27:41
  the West, law is an instrument to be
• 27:44
  activated upon his personal demand.
• 27:46
  When legal process is slow, he calls it
• 27:49
  cowardice.
• 27:50
  When political constraints, you know, interfere with his
• 27:53
  goals, he calls it betrayal.
• 27:55
  This isn't how international law is supposed to
• 27:58
  work.
• 28:00
  You know, European leaders do know some of
• 28:03
  this, you know, which is precisely why the
• 28:06
  applause, you know, is very loud for Zelensky
• 28:10
  because they know he's just up there.
• 28:13
  He's a performer.
• 28:14
  He's a windup toy.
• 28:16
  That's it.
• 28:18
  But the most revealing part is his admission,
• 28:21
  almost an accidental admission, that everything is still
• 28:25
  dependent on President Trump.
• 28:27
  NATO exists, he says, because of belief in
• 28:31
  American action.
• 28:33
  European leaders maneuver around Trump because they know
• 28:37
  he makes the decisions.
• 28:39
  This undercuts the entire moral architecture that Zelensky
• 28:44
  was trying to create in his own argument.
• 28:47
  So if power, not principle, is decisive, then
• 28:51
  the lecture is pretty much, you know, what
• 28:54
  he was saying is pretty, you know, morality
• 28:55
  and becoming a great power.
• 28:58
  All those are pretty much useless commentary.
• 29:01
  From a Russian analytical perspective, first, Zelensky doesn't
• 29:07
  see the war termination as a negotiated outcome,
• 29:11
  but as an expandable mission.
• 29:14
  He wants to keep on going.
• 29:15
  Second, Ukraine is increasingly positioned not as a
• 29:19
  sovereign state seeking peace, but as the forward
• 29:23
  deployed instrument, the forward deployed force for Western
• 29:28
  confrontation.
• 29:29
  He pretty much is saying it.
• 29:31
  Let us be your army, is what he's
• 29:34
  saying.
• 29:35
  Third, the Greenland remarks validate, you know, any
• 29:40
  other, you know, the longstanding claims that security
• 29:43
  threats are manufactured.
• 29:46
  You know, they're created, you know, send us
• 29:49
  to Greenland.
• 29:50
  Yeah, if there was ever a dispute, you
• 29:53
  know, perhaps we could have their discussion.
• 29:55
  It's also worth noting what he didn't say.
• 29:58
  There's no serious discussion about compromise, neutrality, security
• 30:03
  architecture, no acknowledgement that Russia even has a
• 30:07
  point of view.
• 30:09
  The escalation carries costs for Europe itself, not
• 30:12
  a word.
• 30:13
  No recognition that sanctions as a Western enforcement
• 30:19
  measure are a failure, you know, because the
• 30:23
  Russians and everybody else are working around them
• 30:25
  and it's getting worse.
• 30:27
  Everything is moralized.
• 30:29
  Nothing is to blame.
• 30:33
  You know, he's not to blame.
• 30:34
  He isn't even a part of it.
• 30:36
  In tone and substance, this was the most
• 30:39
  overreaching Davos speech.
• 30:44
  He was there last year too.
• 30:46
  It assumed, you know, our, well, the West's
• 30:51
  unlimited patience, unlimited European risk tolerance, unlimited Ukrainian
• 30:57
  moral credit.
• 30:59
  None of those exist anymore.
• 31:02
  If last week's Davos theme, especially what we've
• 31:07
  covered first with Carney in the beginning of
• 31:09
  the week, remember that?
• 31:10
  Well, Wednesday, sorry, I guess that's not the
• 31:12
  beginning of the week, hump day, was that
• 31:14
  the rules-based order was a sign in
• 31:18
  the window that people pretended to believe in.
• 31:21
  Zelensky's speech treated that sign like, you know,
• 31:25
  a neon sign, turning it on.
• 31:27
  Yeah, yeah.
• 31:29
  You know, the clean part is this.
• 31:32
  Zelensky didn't come to Davos to discuss peace
• 31:35
  or even discuss security.
• 31:37
  He came to broaden the enemy's list, remind
• 31:42
  Europe that he expects, like Trump does, obedience,
• 31:45
  not deliberation.
• 31:47
  You know, I don't know.
• 31:49
  I think he got spanked by a couple
• 31:52
  of people that we're talking about later, Friedrich
• 31:55
  Merz.
• 31:56
  So he's the chancellor, German chancellor.
• 32:03
  Do you remember last week we talked about
• 32:05
  Carney, Canada, and Carney got beat up here
• 32:11
  in the West a little bit for that
• 32:12
  because of what he was saying that, you
• 32:17
  know, the sign in the window metaphor and
• 32:19
  all that stuff that he was talking about.
• 32:21
  It was actually a pretty revealing speech.
• 32:25
  Well, Merz, you know, we talked about last
• 32:29
  week, we talked about Macron, we threw in
• 32:31
  some Ursula von der Leyen for the EU.
• 32:36
  We talked about Stubbe from Finland, and Trump,
• 32:42
  of course, that we put in there.
• 32:44
  And then Le Feng from China, he was
• 32:48
  the vice premier or vice chairman.
• 32:53
  We analyzed all four of those.
• 32:55
  What I wanted to do was now that
• 32:56
  the German guy spoke later in the week,
• 33:00
  he opens with a concession that would have
• 33:03
  been, I don't know, a bit radical, but
• 33:09
  it was like a honest, honestly managerial.
• 33:13
  And unlike Zelensky's sermon, Merz was talking like
• 33:18
  a custodian of a system he knows is
• 33:23
  failing, but still believes he can stabilize it
• 33:26
  through a scale, through spending and increased coordination,
• 33:31
  you know, more reliance on bureaucracy.
• 33:33
  He didn't ignore it like Ursula von der
• 33:36
  Leyen did.
• 33:37
  She just, oh, yeah, things are great.
• 33:40
  She was a cheerleader, and Merz wasn't.
• 33:43
  He started, said that the U.S.-led global
• 33:48
  order is unraveling and great power politics have
• 33:53
  returned.
• 33:54
  That admission is a big deal.
• 33:56
  It aligned him with Carney.
• 33:59
  You know, when what Carney said last week,
• 34:01
  but Merz draws a different conclusion where Carney
• 34:04
  warned that rules are being performed rather than
• 34:07
  believed.
• 34:09
  Merz argued that Europe has to add power
• 34:12
  to preserve those rules, to preserve the fact
• 34:17
  that they applied them as they saw fit
• 34:20
  in the past.
• 34:23
  He would just give us more power.
• 34:26
  He said his core framework was three pillars
• 34:29
  for Germany.
• 34:31
  Security, competitiveness, and unity.
• 34:34
  This isn't ideology.
• 34:36
  It's survival.
• 34:38
  Germany must rearm itself, not because it seeks
• 34:42
  confrontation, but because deterrence has become the price
• 34:46
  of relevance.
• 34:48
  The headline commitment, defense spending to 5%
• 34:51
  of GDP, is an astonishing number by post
• 34:55
  -war German standards.
• 34:56
  But for all this realism, Merz never escapes
• 35:00
  the contradiction.
• 35:02
  He insisted that Europe must be sovereign, but
• 35:05
  repeatedly returned to NATO as an irreplaceable anchor.
• 35:10
  He defended territorial integrity in Greenland, but carefully
• 35:15
  avoided Zelensky's escalation commentary.
• 35:19
  Where Zelensky fantasizes about sinking Russian ships near
• 35:23
  Greenland, Merz talks about process, consultation, sovereignty, alliance
• 35:32
  frameworks.
• 35:33
  So Merz is trying to contain the crisis
• 35:36
  and Zelensky's trying to expand it.
• 35:39
  Merz's Greenland remarks were instructive, especially when you
• 35:45
  put them alongside Zelensky's.
• 35:48
  Merz explicitly rejected force, coercion, including from the
• 35:54
  U.S. He warned that tariffs and territorial
• 35:57
  threats undermine transatlantic relationships.
• 36:01
  He is quietly pushing back on Washington's pressure
• 36:04
  tactics and Kyiv's opportunistic militarization.
• 36:10
  But he never named, did I say that?
• 36:13
  But he didn't name either Zelensky or Trump
• 36:17
  when talking about it.
• 36:19
  On the economy, deregulation, capital markets, industrial AI,
• 36:27
  all the standard stuff, and infrastructure spending.
• 36:30
  This is Germany trying to outrun its own
• 36:33
  decline.
• 36:35
  But it shows the underlying fear.
• 36:38
  Europe cannot afford permanent war without hollowing itself
• 36:43
  out.
• 36:44
  So in short, Merz accepted the world Zelensky
• 36:47
  claimed to describe, but rejected Zelensky's method of
• 36:52
  navigating that world.
• 36:54
  One other thing that came up, this lady
• 36:56
  didn't speak in Davos, but there's a lady
• 36:59
  who's in the AFD party, Alice for Deutschland,
• 37:04
  I can't remember how it goes, but all
• 37:09
  for Deutschland, all for Germany, basically.
• 37:12
  Her name is Alice Weidel, W-E-I
• 37:15
  -D-E-L.
• 37:16
  I'm not sure if I said that right.
• 37:19
  They wouldn't want her speaking inside in Davos,
• 37:24
  no way.
• 37:24
  But she was on the news this week
• 37:27
  because she was beaten up on Zelensky.
• 37:30
  I don't know.
• 37:34
  It wasn't part of the Davos, but it
• 37:36
  came out right around, and she was beaten
• 37:38
  up on Zelensky because of it.
• 37:40
  She made three claims that were radioactive in
• 37:44
  European elitist settings.
• 37:46
  Right?
• 37:48
  First, Germany, well, Germany has an overriding national
• 37:54
  interest of its own, and that's peace, not
• 37:57
  moral crusades.
• 37:58
  That's number one.
• 37:59
  Second, Nord Stream was a strategic act of
• 38:04
  sabotage against Germany and European economic security.
• 38:10
  And third, Germany's silence on Nord Stream reflects
• 38:15
  not prudence, but submission to Washington is what
• 38:20
  she's saying.
• 38:21
  Her accusation that Zelensky, and by extension, Ukraine
• 38:26
  -backed actors who allegedly took it out, Nord
• 38:30
  Stream, they should be financially liable for Nord
• 38:34
  Stream's destruction.
• 38:37
  This reframes the war from a values narrative
• 38:41
  to a balance sheet reality.
• 38:43
  That's what Trump wants, right?
• 38:44
  Cheap energy was destroyed for all of Europe
• 38:47
  by taking out Nord Stream.
• 38:49
  German industry pays the price for that.
• 38:52
  No investigation, no accountability demanded, although Biden admitted
• 38:58
  that he did it.
• 39:00
  He basically, oh, we'll make sure that doesn't
• 39:03
  stick around.
• 39:05
  We'll take it out.
• 39:06
  And then what happened?
• 39:08
  They took it out, and guess who's buying
• 39:09
  liquid natural gas from America in massive quantities
• 39:13
  at double the price?
• 39:15
  Wiedel's point wasn't very subtle.
• 39:17
  She said, a country that destroys your critical
• 39:21
  infrastructure is not your ally.
• 39:24
  She's talking about Ukraine, because they say, you
• 39:28
  know, Ukraine's been blamed for that, of course.
• 39:30
  This directly collides with Zelensky and Davos.
• 39:35
  Zelensky demanded confiscation of Russian assets, seizure of
• 39:39
  oil tankers, escalation in Greenland, and expanded sanctions,
• 39:43
  but he never acknowledged Nord Stream, Europe's largest
• 39:47
  single act of self-harm, probably in history.
• 39:54
  Wiedel also highlighted something that Merz avoids saying
• 39:59
  outright.
• 40:00
  Germany forfeited its role as a mediator.
• 40:04
  Where Merz speaks of unity, Wiedel argues that
• 40:07
  neutrality would have served German interests far better.
• 40:12
  In traditional German foreign policy terms, you know,
• 40:19
  post-Cold War, she's not wrong.
• 40:22
  She's simply saying it a way that cannot,
• 40:24
  you know, be stated in the economic halls
• 40:27
  at Davos for the globalist elites.
• 40:30
  Did you see that Elon Musk was allowed
• 40:33
  to speak there?
• 40:34
  He had a half an hour.
• 40:35
  I thought about adding him in this morning,
• 40:38
  but I didn't have time to listen to
• 40:39
  it all.
• 40:40
  So maybe I'll get to him tomorrow.
• 40:43
  I'm not positive.
• 40:45
  But Zelensky, you know, didn't look much like
• 40:49
  a wartime leader.
• 40:51
  He looked more like, you know, a bottle
• 40:54
  of accelerant.
• 40:58
  He looked like the, what do you put,
• 41:01
  what do you put on your charcoal?
• 41:02
  The lighter fluid.
• 41:03
  He was an accelerant.
• 41:04
  He pressures Europe to move faster than its
• 41:09
  institutions can tolerate and further than the public
• 41:12
  consented to.
• 41:14
  You know, the public doesn't, they don't even
• 41:16
  want to be involved in Ukraine, just like
• 41:18
  us.
• 41:18
  They don't want to be involved in Ukraine.
• 41:20
  What the hell does Ukraine have to do
• 41:21
  with them?
• 41:22
  Very, very little.
• 41:25
  I don't know.
• 41:27
  Interesting times we live in, right?
• 41:30
  Right after that, and one that I did
• 41:32
  pay a great deal of attention to is
• 41:35
  because I knew it was coming.
• 41:37
  Every year you get a couple of things.
• 41:42
  You get a Putin lengthy speech that I
• 41:46
  covered for you, and I can't remember, around
• 41:48
  December 19-ish.
• 41:51
  You get a lengthy Putin end of year
• 41:54
  summary.
• 41:55
  You get a New Year's shorter summary from
• 42:00
  Putin, and then Lavrov, who's been, I think
• 42:04
  he's in his 26th year as foreign secretary.
• 42:08
  He gives an annual address, and that happened
• 42:15
  to be a couple of days ago.
• 42:17
  I think it was Friday, and I did
• 42:23
  watch.
• 42:24
  It's three hours long, but most of that
• 42:28
  was questions at the end.
• 42:29
  I watched about the first hour and 40
• 42:32
  minutes, hour and a half.
• 42:33
  I ran out of time, so I didn't
• 42:35
  get through all of the questions, but what
• 42:37
  I did get through was pretty stark.
• 42:43
  I remember last week when we talked about
• 42:45
  He Le Feng, and He Le Feng was
• 42:47
  just analytical, and he didn't talk, I don't
• 42:55
  know what, right, wrong, democracy, this.
• 42:58
  He spoke real events, where we are, what
• 43:02
  infrastructure, what is this, they were very straight,
• 43:07
  truth, basically, and so I was interested in
• 43:17
  what commentary Lavrov would have, and what he
• 43:23
  would say, and basically, he, and so there
• 43:29
  were two parts.
• 43:29
  The first is his presentation, which went on
• 43:32
  for a good long time.
• 43:34
  I don't remember exactly how long.
• 43:35
  I didn't time it, but then there was
• 43:38
  a question and answer period, and I listened
• 43:41
  to about half of that, so his initial
• 43:46
  address had to be a good 20, 25
• 43:48
  minutes, okay, and it wasn't really a speech.
• 43:53
  It's more like an accounting, an assessment, a,
• 43:58
  what do they call those, annual report, you
• 44:02
  know, for a corporation.
• 44:03
  He's giving an annual report, and, you know,
• 44:07
  that's a distinction that matters, because that's the
• 44:10
  way Le Feng, well, you know, when I
• 44:13
  talked about him last week, that's pretty much
• 44:16
  how he approached it.
• 44:18
  Facts, figures, numbers, you know, this is what
• 44:20
  we talk about.
• 44:21
  This is measuring tools, you know, here's what
• 44:26
  we're measuring.
• 44:27
  Everything else, you hear rhetoric.
• 44:30
  Ursa von der Leyen, like I said, is
• 44:31
  just a cheerleader.
• 44:32
  She's rah, rah for Europe, you know, more
• 44:35
  money, yay, we're, look at us, we're making
• 44:37
  deals, that's it, but no specifics.
• 44:41
  I mean, very short on content, but plenty
• 44:45
  of rhetoric, right, so the distinction, Lavrov is
• 44:50
  more like Le Feng when he was speaking,
• 44:55
  and I still haven't figured out how to
• 44:57
  pronounce that name correctly, so I apologize for
• 45:00
  that, but the vice premier of China that
• 45:03
  spoke last week, and, you know, where Davos
• 45:08
  speeches are, you know, theatric performances for capital
• 45:15
  investors, for media, for donors, remember that.
• 45:19
  The economic forum, or where we talk about
• 45:22
  economic policy going forward, and a virtue signal
• 45:26
  where to spend your money, and people are
• 45:28
  fighting over your money.
• 45:30
  Trump wants your money, and people know that
• 45:32
  for three years, they can count on the
• 45:34
  U.S., three more years, they can count
• 45:37
  on the U.S. spending astronomical numbers of
• 45:41
  dollars on defense, and, you know, Trump's personal
• 45:46
  projects, but not so from China, not so
• 45:51
  from Russia.
• 45:53
  Lavrov's opening remarks were structured like a, I
• 45:57
  don't know, like a, like I said, a
• 46:02
  corporate annual report, you know, what they promised,
• 46:07
  what was done, what failed, why, that kind
• 46:11
  of thing, and one of the most important
• 46:13
  things that he did is to strip away,
• 46:17
  or try to strip away, moral abstractions.
• 46:20
  He doesn't speak in term of values.
• 46:22
  He didn't speak about rules-based order or
• 46:26
  leadership.
• 46:26
  He spoke in terms of treaties violated, promises
• 46:31
  broken, incentives ignored, so if you compare Lavrov
• 46:35
  to Merz, so Friedrich Merz, we just went
• 46:40
  through, but Lavrov, Sergei Viktorovich, his critique is
• 46:45
  surgical rather than emotional.
• 46:48
  Merz acknowledged the collapse of the post-Cold
• 46:50
  War order, but insisted that Europe can preserve
• 46:55
  it by more power, more spending, more NATO,
• 46:59
  more deterrence, you know, more funding, 5%
• 47:03
  from everybody, plus the U.S. keeps on
• 47:06
  trucking.
• 47:07
  Lavrov's response, think about the genius of what
• 47:11
  Trump did, by the way.
• 47:13
  Now he's raised ours another half a trillion.
• 47:16
  Didn't I see something about that a couple
• 47:18
  of weeks ago?
• 47:19
  Now the defense budget is going to go
• 47:21
  up to 1.5 trillion for the coming
• 47:25
  conflicts that we're going to create ourselves.
• 47:29
  So he's got the biggest budget ever on
• 47:33
  the American side, and he's got almost all
• 47:36
  the underlings in Europe to promise to 5%,
• 47:40
  and since they have no industrial base at
• 47:43
  all, where are they going to get their
• 47:45
  weaponry?
• 47:46
  From the U.S. So, you know, the
• 47:50
  genius of that, you know, you want to
• 47:53
  talk about the art of the deal, he's
• 47:55
  got everybody buying from us.
• 47:58
  You can't preserve a legal order, you know,
• 48:03
  without continuing to spend the money if you're
• 48:06
  Merz or Trump, right?
• 48:08
  You have to, you got to spend the
• 48:10
  money on our military industrial complex, right?
• 48:13
  And I'm not, I'm not, I take no
• 48:16
  position on that.
• 48:17
  I'm against global warmongering.
• 48:20
  I'm against it.
• 48:21
  I don't like that that is what we
• 48:23
  are doing.
• 48:24
  I find it to be a bit of
• 48:25
  a waste of money, and always have, you
• 48:29
  know.
• 48:30
  But then again, the Boy Scout in me,
• 48:33
  you know, the be prepared is the motto
• 48:35
  of the Boy Scout, and well, I guess
• 48:39
  now you have to call them scouts.
• 48:40
  They're not Boy Scouts, they're just scouts, because
• 48:43
  girls can be involved.
• 48:46
  I wonder if boys can be in Girl
• 48:48
  Scouts?
• 48:49
  It's a good question.
• 48:50
  Anyway, Lavrov, what he was saying was, you
• 48:55
  cannot preserve a legal order, like international law,
• 48:59
  by violating it selectively, based on your morality,
• 49:05
  and not, you know, the same morality for
• 49:07
  everyone.
• 49:08
  He points out that Germany is speaking about
• 49:11
  its own sovereignty, and territorial integrity, but they
• 49:17
  support economic warfare against Russia, remain silent about
• 49:23
  the Nord Stream sabotage, and who conducted it,
• 49:27
  and they endorse sanctions that have no UN
• 49:30
  authorization.
• 49:32
  This is a factual indictment.
• 49:34
  All of those are true.
• 49:36
  Mertz wants Europe to be stronger inside the
• 49:39
  same old framework.
• 49:42
  Lavrov said that Europe already destroyed the framework,
• 49:46
  and is now pretending that the framework is
• 49:48
  still existing, where Mertz is saying we have
• 49:52
  to repair trust.
• 49:53
  Lavrov's position is blunter.
• 49:56
  Trust was never an issue anyway.
• 49:58
  It wasn't there, and he points to things
• 50:03
  like Minsk 1 and Minsk 2, and how
• 50:06
  they were used to fool people, to gain
• 50:11
  time, to arm Ukraine.
• 50:14
  And if you look at it, if you
• 50:19
  compare Lavrov, what Lavrov said, to what Carney
• 50:22
  said, right?
• 50:24
  This is the interesting part, and I like
• 50:28
  doing this.
• 50:29
  I like doing a whole story, like a
• 50:32
  lawyer would, okay?
• 50:33
  And you're listening to the whole story, because
• 50:35
  everybody should be talking about the same basics,
• 50:37
  right?
• 50:38
  And everybody should be pretty positive, but they're
• 50:41
  not.
• 50:42
  Carney got beat up by Trump and company
• 50:44
  over the weekend, too.
• 50:46
  He got beat up upon, and for his
• 50:49
  commentary that the old, you know, the sign
• 50:52
  in the window that I told you about
• 50:54
  last week, we played his whole speech, and
• 50:57
  if you haven't seen that yet, probably go
• 50:59
  listen to it.
• 50:59
  It was truthful.
• 51:00
  And because it was truthful, here in America,
• 51:03
  we had to beat up on him, because
• 51:05
  he pretty much said, hell, we never did
• 51:09
  follow the rules, you know, and we kind
• 51:11
  of now we're wondering why people are bailing,
• 51:17
  and by the way, Canada's going to bail,
• 51:19
  too.
• 51:20
  We're leaving.
• 51:22
  So, Mark Carney told Davos that the rules
• 51:25
  -based order was always theatrical, you know, a
• 51:31
  sign in the window.
• 51:32
  Lavrov went one step further.
• 51:34
  He said the sign was removed years ago,
• 51:36
  and Western governments are now angry that other
• 51:40
  people noticed first and have been creating their
• 51:42
  own structures.
• 51:44
  Carney is talking about reform, trying to save
• 51:50
  legitimacy somehow, because they've lost it.
• 51:53
  Lavrov watched legitimacy alleged be weaponized, where Carney
• 51:58
  calls for recognizing the value of power.
• 52:02
  Lavrov says Russia already did recognize that power
• 52:06
  was coming, you know, and they got sanctioned
• 52:10
  for it.
• 52:10
  The difference, it depends upon who allows you
• 52:13
  to say those kind of things without punishment,
• 52:17
  and we wonder, I mean, Trump punished everybody
• 52:21
  in his speech.
• 52:22
  You know, we went over that last Thursday.
• 52:24
  He punished them all and just said, ah,
• 52:25
  this is the way it is.
• 52:27
  Have a nice day.
• 52:28
  And he left.
• 52:29
  That was it.
• 52:31
  You know, it's done.
• 52:32
  Um, Lavrov talked a little bit about Trump.
• 52:36
  He talked about Donald Trump different than most
• 52:38
  European leaders.
• 52:40
  He didn't moralize him.
• 52:41
  He analyzed him.
• 52:43
  And, you know, he didn't talk about good,
• 52:45
  bad, and different.
• 52:47
  He recognized Trump, like the rest of us
• 52:50
  do, as transactional, not ideological.
• 52:54
  He said that during Trump's previous term, channels
• 52:58
  always remained open.
• 53:00
  There were no new wars with Russia.
• 53:04
  Rhetoric was often volatile, but, you know, the
• 53:09
  actions were minimal.
• 53:11
  And this sharply contrasts with European leadership, which
• 53:16
  Lavrov, you know, rhetorically, he says they claim
• 53:21
  to be moral, but then they're reckless operationally.
• 53:25
  Um, Trump might be unpredictable, but legible.
• 53:33
  European leaders, by contrast, they hide their escalation
• 53:37
  behind make-believe values, you know, democracy, you
• 53:44
  know, territorial integrity, these type of things.
• 53:47
  So Lavrov didn't spend a whole lot of
• 53:50
  time on Zelensky, because that's a waste of
• 53:53
  time from Moscow's perspective, for sure.
• 53:57
  Mine too, but definitely from Moscow.
• 54:00
  Zelensky isn't the decision maker, so why in
• 54:02
  the hell should we worry about him?
• 54:04
  Lavrov frames Ukraine as an instrument of the
• 54:07
  West, not as an independent strategic actor acting
• 54:10
  on its own.
• 54:11
  It's not an assessment.
• 54:12
  I mean, I'm sorry.
• 54:14
  It is an assessment, not an insult.
• 54:16
  And, you know, he didn't mean it in
• 54:19
  any way, but it's just been obvious.
• 54:21
  You know, Lavrov's emphasis is always on Washington,
• 54:26
  Brussels, and NATO.
• 54:28
  Zelensky only appears because he is proof of
• 54:34
  what decisions the West has already made.
• 54:38
  So, but if you compare him to Le
• 54:40
  Feng, they both are saying similar things.
• 54:44
  Multipolarity is a fact.
• 54:45
  It's not an aspiration.
• 54:47
  Economic cooperation can exist without ideological concern.
• 54:55
  You know, you don't have to, everybody has
• 54:57
  to be, I don't know, waving rainbow flags.
• 55:03
  You know, you don't have to be conditioned
• 55:04
  to accept that just so you can be
• 55:07
  allowed into our market.
• 55:10
  And, you know, I think they do mirror
• 55:13
  a little bit on, you know, they speak
• 55:15
  of process.
• 55:17
  They speak of supply chains, infrastructure, trade corridors,
• 55:21
  finance mechanisms, you know.
• 55:23
  No, I don't know what, no applause bait.
• 55:27
  You know, don't clap for me because I'm
• 55:29
  talking about democracy.
• 55:31
  Clap because I'm building infrastructure.
• 55:35
  So, I don't know.
• 55:36
  He did a press conference afterward for quite
• 55:39
  a while.
• 55:40
  And they had a Q&A, a bunch.
• 55:43
  And I'll share some of those with you.
• 55:48
  Probably not too many.
• 55:51
  But he was asked, one of the interesting
• 55:55
  questions was he was asked whether the West
• 55:58
  had abandoned international law.
• 56:02
  Because when he started his speech, he talked
• 56:05
  quite a bit about who's paying for Iran,
• 56:13
  who's paying for all the, what do you
• 56:19
  call it, protests going on there.
• 56:22
  And they were very open about it.
• 56:24
  Kayakala said said that they had been funding
• 56:28
  some specifically looking for regime change in Iran.
• 56:35
  I think those are dangerous things to be
• 56:37
  saying, you know.
• 56:39
  I don't like regime change anyway.
• 56:42
  Never have.
• 56:43
  You know, that's not our job.
• 56:47
  You know, that's not it.
• 56:49
  And perhaps I'm, I don't know, too accepting
• 56:56
  of other people.
• 57:00
  I don't know what.
• 57:01
  Maybe more of a realist.
• 57:03
  The rest of the world is not America.
• 57:05
  And so, therefore, you know, part of the
• 57:07
  cultural things and the way of culture, you
• 57:10
  can't Americanize everything.
• 57:13
  And I don't know.
• 57:14
  But Lavrov started out, it was kind of
• 57:19
  interesting because he was slow starting out.
• 57:21
  He said that the first 20 days of
• 57:27
  2026 beat 2025 for shock value.
• 57:32
  That's a pretty big statement.
• 57:34
  He said, and he said it on purpose,
• 57:36
  it tells the room that the pace of
• 57:38
  destabilization is accelerating.
• 57:41
  And you can't treat last year's events as
• 57:44
  a closed chapter.
• 57:46
  He then talked about the early year events
• 57:49
  already as evidence of the coercive practices continuing,
• 57:55
  not fading.
• 57:57
  And importantly, he set these as examples of
• 58:00
  the same phenomena.
• 58:02
  Regime change might makes right behavior.
• 58:07
  That's all normal.
• 58:09
  This is according to him.
• 58:11
  This is what Lavrov said.
• 58:12
  Regime change is a normal, you know, this
• 58:14
  is how the West deals with everything.
• 58:16
  They get in a regime change.
• 58:18
  I said it in, you know, about Iran.
• 58:21
  They talked about it with Venezuela.
• 58:24
  Regime change is the organizing concept.
• 58:27
  His most consistent thought process is that the
• 58:30
  West is default.
• 58:32
  Their default setting is interference.
• 58:36
  And he mentioned them all, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran,
• 58:40
  Ukraine, variations of the same playbook.
• 58:44
  He says European officials talking about supporting unrest
• 58:49
  in Iran, Kayakalis, interpreted this as admission of
• 58:53
  regime change intent.
• 58:56
  He said this, this is not promotion of
• 58:58
  democracy.
• 58:59
  It's the mechanical use of internal pressure, fomenting
• 59:05
  riots and stuff like that as a tool
• 59:07
  of foreign policy.
• 59:09
  This is the heart of why, you know,
• 59:12
  he analyzes it in this way.
• 59:15
  It's like, well, here we go again.
• 59:17
  There you go again.
• 59:18
  You're doing it again.
• 59:20
  And Mertz was the tell.
• 59:22
  He said that Mertz, he mentioned him by
• 59:24
  name.
• 59:25
  And then he says something pretty deliberate.
• 59:28
  He said that Mertz's rhetoric was historically loaded
• 59:32
  and strategically reckless because Germany wants to be
• 59:36
  the most powerful military force in Europe once
• 59:39
  again.
• 59:40
  And he, you know, he said that's an
• 59:43
  alarm bell, not just a policy disagreement.
• 59:47
  So this is the only time where he
• 59:50
  was, well, I don't even know if I'd
• 59:52
  say it, not directly against Mertz, but Mertz
• 59:57
  did admit the old world order is collapsing,
• 1:00:02
  you know, but Mertz's remedy is to pour
• 1:00:04
  more fuel onto the same fire that produced
• 1:00:09
  these crises in the first place.
• 1:00:11
  You know, rules-based order is gone.
• 1:00:14
  And now one man gets to write the
• 1:00:17
  rules.
• 1:00:17
  That's Donald Trump.
• 1:00:19
  And so Lavrov, and he said this, his
• 1:00:21
  most interesting concept line is that the West
• 1:00:24
  has spent years pitching the rules-based order
• 1:00:28
  being superior to international law, basically play by
• 1:00:34
  our rules.
• 1:00:35
  And international law doesn't matter because you're not
• 1:00:39
  in the in crowd.
• 1:00:41
  And so therefore, you know, international law, well,
• 1:00:45
  we twist it to our benefit, like always,
• 1:00:48
  because we control the bureaucracy.
• 1:00:51
  And now that phrase is disappearing, this rules
• 1:00:54
  -based order, because the rules are no longer
• 1:00:58
  even marketed as effective or as collective.
• 1:01:03
  Under Trump, the rules are written by one
• 1:01:05
  man of the West rather than a coordinated
• 1:01:08
  bloc.
• 1:01:09
  So in his telling, this is why Europe
• 1:01:12
  is panicking.
• 1:01:14
  It's losing both the moral script and the
• 1:01:18
  managerial control of that script.
• 1:01:21
  Does that make sense?
• 1:01:22
  You know, so no longer are you the
• 1:01:26
  person that's claiming that the moral high ground,
• 1:01:30
  you don't have the ability to write the
• 1:01:32
  moral high ground anymore, because Donald Trump took
• 1:01:34
  it from you.
• 1:01:35
  And he's the one writing it.
• 1:01:38
  So this is what Carney was saying.
• 1:01:40
  You know, the rules, he said they were
• 1:01:44
  always performative.
• 1:01:46
  You had to go along with the biggest
• 1:01:47
  power.
• 1:01:48
  You had to go along to get along.
• 1:01:51
  Lavrov goes even further.
• 1:01:52
  He says that the performance is collapsing into,
• 1:01:55
  you know, the raw hierarchy, you know, take
• 1:01:58
  care of your own country first.
• 1:02:02
  And Europe is discovering it's not even the
• 1:02:05
  author of what, you know, of its own
• 1:02:08
  plan.
• 1:02:09
  Not at all.
• 1:02:11
  His speech was was very interesting.
• 1:02:15
  Lavrov's Trump read, he wasn't admiring Trump and
• 1:02:19
  he wasn't demonizing him.
• 1:02:20
  He was just categorizing him.
• 1:02:23
  He described Trump's approach as competitive, definitely, and
• 1:02:29
  transactional.
• 1:02:30
  Absolutely.
• 1:02:32
  You know, he talked about tariff leverage, deal
• 1:02:35
  making, and contrasted it with Biden and his
• 1:02:39
  ideological framework, you know, border integrity, stuff like
• 1:02:45
  that, democracy.
• 1:02:47
  And then he tied it directly to Ukraine.
• 1:02:50
  He says the current U.S. approach is
• 1:02:52
  the only Western line that even gestures toward
• 1:02:56
  solving the root causes rather than merely discussing
• 1:03:00
  ceasefire theater.
• 1:03:04
  You know, the ceasefire now is all anybody
• 1:03:08
  cares about.
• 1:03:09
  They want a ceasefire because this gives Ukraine
• 1:03:12
  time to regroup and Europe time to rearm
• 1:03:18
  them.
• 1:03:19
  And this is what Russia won't accept.
• 1:03:22
  You know, they got and they have Ukraine
• 1:03:24
  on the run.
• 1:03:25
  You know, this is a critical point because
• 1:03:29
  Lavrov isn't praising what Trump is doing.
• 1:03:32
  He's not praising America.
• 1:03:34
  He's identifying the crack in the globalist consensus.
• 1:03:42
  And he's trying to exploit that crack, trying
• 1:03:45
  to make it wider.
• 1:03:47
  So, why does the Chinese guy, Le Feng,
• 1:03:51
  why does his style matter?
• 1:03:53
  Because those two worldviews are very common worldviews
• 1:04:02
  for both of them.
• 1:04:03
  Both treat the old world as systems, not
• 1:04:06
  as a moral theater.
• 1:04:08
  Lavrov returned to the trade rules being trashed
• 1:04:11
  at the IMF, the World Trade Organization.
• 1:04:14
  They're overridden by sanctions and tariffs, you know,
• 1:04:19
  selectively.
• 1:04:20
  And this mirrors the Chinese critique.
• 1:04:22
  You wrote the globalization rules.
• 1:04:25
  Now you change them mid game because China
• 1:04:28
  was winning by the old rules.
• 1:04:30
  That's what China said.
• 1:04:32
  And, you know, they are analysts and the
• 1:04:38
  rest are propagandists and apologists.
• 1:04:41
  Why it doesn't work.
• 1:04:45
  He talked quite a bit about multipolarity again.
• 1:04:48
  It's not a dream in his questions.
• 1:04:50
  You know, when people were asking questions.
• 1:04:52
  It's not a dream.
• 1:04:53
  It's a reality.
• 1:04:54
  And it's an irreversible fact.
• 1:04:56
  And he spent a lot of time on
• 1:04:59
  a point that the Western elites, especially in
• 1:05:02
  Davos, they refuse to even discuss.
• 1:05:06
  Multipolarity isn't a Russia-China project.
• 1:05:09
  It's a consequence of economic growth centers.
• 1:05:13
  And seriously, it really is.
• 1:05:15
  Where's all the major infrastructure?
• 1:05:18
  China, India, Brazil, Africa.
• 1:05:21
  And he's argued that the West problem isn't
• 1:05:24
  that multipolarity is chaos, but that it ended
• 1:05:27
  the monopoly that the U.S. controlled.
• 1:05:30
  So when critics say multipolarity is disorder, he
• 1:05:34
  says the disorder is generated by the losing
• 1:05:37
  monopolists using dirty tools.
• 1:05:41
  To retain their advantage and their colonialist power.
• 1:05:48
  It was a very interesting take on it.
• 1:05:52
  He talked about the Office of Security and
• 1:05:58
  Cooperation in Europe, OSCE.
• 1:06:02
  He says that it is pretty much on
• 1:06:04
  life support.
• 1:06:07
  There's a word they use called reanimation.
• 1:06:09
  Reanimation is resuscitation or life support.
• 1:06:17
  When you're in reanimation, you're on life support.
• 1:06:20
  So he was saying that his direct quote
• 1:06:23
  was that OSCE is on life support.
• 1:06:27
  It's barely functioning.
• 1:06:32
  But Russia is still involved in it, if
• 1:06:35
  only to support the minority of states of
• 1:06:38
  Europe that are still acting rationally like he's
• 1:06:48
  been asking or they've all been asking from
• 1:06:51
  the Russian side since the start of the
• 1:06:52
  war and before.
• 1:06:55
  You know, 2014 and before.
• 1:06:58
  Lavrov, when he was talking about Ukraine, he
• 1:07:01
  wanted, again, root cause analysis.
• 1:07:05
  How are we going to talk about it?
• 1:07:07
  He said if we can get rid of
• 1:07:11
  the causes that created the crisis, everything would
• 1:07:14
  be fine.
• 1:07:15
  The militarization of Ukraine, the strategic threat on
• 1:07:20
  Russia's border, and now we know what the
• 1:07:22
  threat would do.
• 1:07:25
  Persecution of Russian language, cultural, and the Orthodox
• 1:07:28
  Church.
• 1:07:29
  You can disagree with all these things if
• 1:07:30
  you'd like, but this is how the assessment
• 1:07:34
  has been going.
• 1:07:35
  He talked quite a bit about Iran and
• 1:07:38
  the Middle East, sovereignty, nuclear rights, Palestinian statehood.
• 1:07:43
  He warned about the destabilization attempts against Iran
• 1:07:47
  and said this has to be handled on
• 1:07:50
  the basis of Iran's right to peaceful nuclear
• 1:07:52
  energy.
• 1:07:53
  He linked Middle Eastern stability to implementation of
• 1:07:58
  UN decisions on Palestine.
• 1:08:01
  And that Trump's peace council, that idea, doesn't
• 1:08:08
  remove that requirement.
• 1:08:11
  It's classic Lavrov.
• 1:08:13
  Pull everything back into the UN and then
• 1:08:16
  accuse opponents of selecting rules that are convenient
• 1:08:20
  for it.
• 1:08:21
  And he always does that.
• 1:08:23
  Well, because it's such an easy target.
• 1:08:25
  They never follow the rules.
• 1:08:28
  Rules-based order?
• 1:08:29
  Well, yeah, but there are rules for you
• 1:08:31
  and then different rules for me.
• 1:08:35
  It was a very interesting speech.
• 1:08:37
  Now, a lot of times he goes too
• 1:08:40
  far.
• 1:08:40
  And we have gone through quite a bit.
• 1:08:47
  It still appears that the Greenland, Lavrov said
• 1:08:55
  that Greenland is an example of Western unity,
• 1:09:00
  allegedly, that is just cracking in public.
• 1:09:03
  He says the Greenland debate is so intense
• 1:09:06
  that it raises questions about NATO's cohesion.
• 1:09:09
  If Western countries want to negotiate by understanding,
• 1:09:16
  by an understanding, that's their choice.
• 1:09:22
  And Greenland becomes the symbol.
• 1:09:25
  The alliance argues internally while selling external threats.
• 1:09:30
  And I found that very interesting.
• 1:09:32
  They want to create the understanding that Russia
• 1:09:36
  and China somehow want Greenland and then sell
• 1:09:41
  that as the external threat for America to
• 1:09:45
  take over Greenland.
• 1:09:46
  He says it's weak.
• 1:09:49
  Anyway, very interesting events over the weekend that
• 1:09:54
  I paid quite a bit of attention to.
• 1:09:59
  Zakharova spoke for quite a while.
• 1:10:01
  She gives a three-hour press conference pretty
• 1:10:04
  much every week.
• 1:10:05
  And she's more brutal.
• 1:10:06
  She's the press secretary for Lavrov.
• 1:10:11
  And so she gives a briefing, tells where
• 1:10:14
  he's going to go, what he's going to
• 1:10:15
  do, all these other things, gives his update
• 1:10:18
  for the week.
• 1:10:19
  And she's much more brutal than Lavrov is.
• 1:10:24
  Lavrov's a diplomat.
• 1:10:25
  He doesn't go that far.
• 1:10:27
  But Zakharova, well, she's pretty colorful.
• 1:10:31
  And I find her interesting to watch, for
• 1:10:33
  sure.
• 1:10:34
  And funny, in fact, to where they, you
• 1:10:41
  know, Maria Zakharova, she's just caustic.
• 1:10:45
  She's pointed.
• 1:10:48
  Lavrov is like a prosecutor.
• 1:10:51
  He's methodical.
• 1:10:52
  He's layered, historical, legally framed.
• 1:10:57
  Zakharova, she's more exposure and enforcement.
• 1:11:01
  So where Lavrov might build a case, she
• 1:11:04
  reads the charges out loud and names the
• 1:11:07
  victims, you know, her, you know, the civilian
• 1:11:13
  deaths that she talks about every day, you
• 1:11:15
  know, she talks about, she gives a list
• 1:11:19
  of civilian deaths, you know, and it, you
• 1:11:23
  know, this talk about values and security architecture
• 1:11:27
  and rules.
• 1:11:29
  She, you know, Davos talks in hypotheticals and
• 1:11:32
  Zakharova talks in names, places, dates, body count,
• 1:11:36
  you know.
• 1:11:37
  And so secondly, she gets into, she tore
• 1:11:41
  into Zelensky in Ukraine.
• 1:11:42
  Her framing of the, I don't know, the
• 1:11:52
  stage performer Zelensky in Davos, offering, for example,
• 1:12:01
  Ukrainian forces to defend Greenland against China and
• 1:12:05
  Russia.
• 1:12:07
  She says, Ukraine has no agency.
• 1:12:11
  And she said, it's a disposable instrument.
• 1:12:14
  And her, she, she uses a phrase all
• 1:12:17
  the time.
• 1:12:18
  She talks about it.
• 1:12:19
  They are nothing but expendable material or, you
• 1:12:28
  know, either way, expendable material there.
• 1:12:33
  That's it.
• 1:12:34
  They're just expendable.
• 1:12:35
  And her focus on forced mobilization, deserters being
• 1:12:40
  punished and thrown in prison.
• 1:12:42
  They call them meat assaults.
• 1:12:46
  Meat assaults.
• 1:12:47
  Yuck.
• 1:12:48
  Directly negate Zelensky's heroic, you know, narratives, right?
• 1:12:57
  She's pretty brutal on them.
• 1:13:00
  She talked about Germany in the Nord Stream
• 1:13:02
  and she didn't dwell on it and the
• 1:13:04
  sabotage.
• 1:13:05
  Her segment about Germany was more damning than
• 1:13:10
  anything anybody said at Davos.
• 1:13:12
  Her attack isn't economic, it's moral.
• 1:13:15
  She accuses Berlin of selective memory and, you
• 1:13:20
  know, selective compensation of the Jewish block survivors,
• 1:13:25
  but excluded others, you know.
• 1:13:30
  And she was talking specifically about what Alice
• 1:13:35
  Weydell, the lady I told you about, talking
• 1:13:40
  about Zelensky needs to fund us and pay
• 1:13:43
  for Nord Stream 2 and all the Germans
• 1:13:46
  and all of the people that they have
• 1:13:50
  disadvantaged inside of Germany.
• 1:13:54
  She was pretty brutal too.
• 1:13:55
  That was, there's been a lot of interesting
• 1:13:58
  discussion this week.
• 1:14:00
  And I tell you what, I was certainly
• 1:14:03
  enjoying it.
• 1:14:04
  Germany's moral authority is collapsed, you know.
• 1:14:07
  She doesn't argue that Germany is necessarily wrong.
• 1:14:12
  She says they lost standing to lecture anybody
• 1:14:15
  at all.
• 1:14:16
  You know, who the hell are you, basically?
• 1:14:18
  And it was a pretty good, anyway, there
• 1:14:21
  was so much news to watch.
• 1:14:23
  It was, it was just a bunch of
• 1:14:32
  stellar content this week.
• 1:14:37
  Has anybody else seen this stuff?
• 1:14:39
  This came out on the 25th of January.
• 1:14:46
  So this is a very, very recent article.
• 1:14:49
  Came out yesterday, Sunday.
• 1:14:52
  And apparently Trump has claimed that the U
• 1:14:57
  .S. military used a secret weapon to abduct
• 1:15:02
  Maduro.
• 1:15:03
  That American troops deployed the discombobulator against Venezuelan
• 1:15:11
  missile systems.
• 1:15:12
  I heard this too.
• 1:15:13
  And I didn't know what to make of
• 1:15:15
  it.
• 1:15:15
  But what he said was that the American
• 1:15:18
  military used a new secret weapon to disable
• 1:15:22
  Venezuelan air defense systems during the raid on
• 1:15:27
  Caracas that resulted in the capture of Nicolas
• 1:15:30
  Maduro and his wife.
• 1:15:33
  So this occurred on January 3rd.
• 1:15:35
  You know, they abducted, we were all there.
• 1:15:37
  The Pentagon said that more than 150 planes
• 1:15:40
  and helicopters took part in the operation.
• 1:15:44
  In an interview with the New York Post
• 1:15:46
  published Saturday, Trump said the mysterious weapon made
• 1:15:51
  enemy equipment not work.
• 1:15:54
  The discombobulator, I'm not allowed to talk about
• 1:15:57
  it, Trump said.
• 1:15:58
  They never got their rockets off.
• 1:16:02
  They had Russian and Chinese rockets and they
• 1:16:04
  never got one of them off.
• 1:16:07
  We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing
• 1:16:10
  worked, he said.
• 1:16:13
  Seven U.S. service members were reportedly injured
• 1:16:17
  in the raid.
• 1:16:18
  One helicopter damaged, but operational.
• 1:16:21
  Multiple reports suggest that the U.S. may
• 1:16:24
  have used jamming technology to disable radar or
• 1:16:28
  force them to reveal themselves.
• 1:16:32
  Now, I tell you what, many, many years
• 1:16:35
  ago when I was in the military, we
• 1:16:38
  had some extremely powerful jamming equipment, extremely powerful.
• 1:16:46
  And we could push a button and knock
• 1:16:50
  any radio station offline, fry their transmitters and
• 1:16:55
  take them out.
• 1:16:57
  So it wouldn't surprise me if there was
• 1:16:59
  some new technology that Trump says he can
• 1:17:02
  talk about that's called a discombobulator.
• 1:17:06
  But he says he's not allowed to talk
• 1:17:10
  about it.
• 1:17:11
  But there it is.
• 1:17:15
  It's been a very interesting weekend, right?
• 1:17:22
  There was the Czech Republic.
• 1:17:23
  The Czech Republic was really upset about the
• 1:17:33
  giant Ukrainian flag in Prague.
• 1:17:37
  So the display of a 30-meter Ukrainian
• 1:17:41
  flag on Prague's Charles Bridge was an unnecessary
• 1:17:47
  provocation, said the head of the parliament, lower
• 1:17:53
  house, Tomio Okamura.
• 1:17:56
  The event in the Czech capital on Saturday
• 1:17:59
  was initiated by the Kiev embassy and marked
• 1:18:03
  107-year anniversary of Ukraine's unification.
• 1:18:12
  This is an unnecessary provocation of Ukrainians toward
• 1:18:16
  our citizens who do not agree with their
• 1:18:19
  mass migration to the Czech Republic.
• 1:18:23
  And staging it as one of the country's
• 1:18:25
  most historic sites was not conducive to good
• 1:18:28
  Czech-Ukraine relations.
• 1:18:30
  We are not Ukraine, but the Czech Republic.
• 1:18:34
  Can you imagine Czech immigrants in the past
• 1:18:37
  hanging 30-meter flags on the Eiffel Tower,
• 1:18:40
  Big Ben or elsewhere on October 28th, he
• 1:18:44
  said, referring to Czech Independence Day.
• 1:18:51
  He said he had spoken to the Czech
• 1:18:53
  foreign minister to ensure the event wouldn't be
• 1:18:55
  repeated and noted the government was preparing legislation
• 1:18:59
  to tighten rules on the stays of foreigners,
• 1:19:02
  including Ukrainians.
• 1:19:04
  Several European countries, Germany, Hungary, Norway, have curbed
• 1:19:10
  social programs for Ukrainians, citing the prolonged conflict
• 1:19:14
  and the number of migrants as pressures on
• 1:19:17
  their national budget.
• 1:19:18
  Surveys in Poland show declining public support for
• 1:19:23
  Ukrainian immigrants and the benefits they receive.
• 1:19:28
  I've been against it in America since day
• 1:19:30
  one.
• 1:19:31
  They don't give it to anybody else.
• 1:19:34
  Why would the Ukrainians get it?
• 1:19:36
  It didn't make any sense to me then.
• 1:19:38
  And the Polish, they're trying to say no
• 1:19:43
  to immigration.
• 1:19:46
  So the Polish government approved a draft law
• 1:19:51
  reducing benefits for Ukrainian migrants.
• 1:19:56
  Poland's interior ministry on Tuesday last week said
• 1:20:01
  the proposed legislation would phase out the special
• 1:20:05
  assistance to Ukraine that they got ever since
• 1:20:11
  March of 2022.
• 1:20:12
  So you get to go, if you're a
• 1:20:14
  Ukrainian, you just move to Poland and you
• 1:20:15
  get to stay there for free.
• 1:20:19
  A legal regime that gave them rights equal
• 1:20:22
  to those of Polish citizens and access to
• 1:20:25
  extensive financial and social benefits.
• 1:20:28
  So the new draft law would end this
• 1:20:32
  program and wouldn't be a standard integration system.
• 1:20:40
  They'd be, you know, after four years of
• 1:20:43
  the special law in force and the situation
• 1:20:45
  stabilizing, removing to a systematic equal rules for
• 1:20:51
  all foreigners, not special treatment for Ukrainians.
• 1:20:56
  So there are things coming.
• 1:21:00
  Did you hear that Germany demanded an apology
• 1:21:02
  from Trump?
• 1:21:07
  US president Trump has to apologize for claiming
• 1:21:12
  that Washington's NATO allies avoided frontline fighting in
• 1:21:17
  Afghanistan, said German defense minister Boris Pistorius.
• 1:21:23
  In an interview in Davos last week, Trump
• 1:21:27
  stated that the US never needed any help
• 1:21:30
  and that America's NATO allies had stayed a
• 1:21:32
  little back off of the front lines during
• 1:21:35
  the war in Afghanistan.
• 1:21:38
  And responding in comments to Germany's ARD public
• 1:21:44
  broadcaster Sunday, Pistorius said, that's just not right.
• 1:21:48
  It's disrespectful to talk about the dead of
• 1:21:50
  your allies in that way.
• 1:21:52
  They all stood there too at the side
• 1:21:55
  of the United States to claim something else
• 1:21:57
  today is simply not true.
• 1:22:01
  NATO members joined the invasion of Afghanistan in
• 1:22:04
  2001 when the US invoked article five, the
• 1:22:10
  block's collective defense clause in the aftermath of
• 1:22:14
  9-11.
• 1:22:15
  The war lasted 20 years with the last
• 1:22:18
  foreign troops withdrawn in 2021.
• 1:22:21
  Pistorius said he would raise the issue in
• 1:22:23
  his next talks with US war secretary Hegseth,
• 1:22:28
  adding that an apology from Trump would be
• 1:22:31
  a sign of decency and respect.
• 1:22:35
  Germany sent around 5,000 troops to Afghanistan.
• 1:22:39
  59 were killed during the conflict.
• 1:22:44
  The German defense minister's comments echo criticism from
• 1:22:48
  other European leaders, including Keir Starmer, who accused
• 1:22:52
  Trump of downplaying the contribution of British troops
• 1:22:55
  and described the US president's words as frankly
• 1:23:00
  appalling.
• 1:23:02
  The UK provided the second largest Western contingent
• 1:23:05
  in Afghanistan with troop numbers peaking at 11
• 1:23:10
  ,000 in 2011, according to BBC, and a
• 1:23:13
  total of 457 Brits died over the course
• 1:23:18
  of the conflict.
• 1:23:19
  Trump struck a more conciliatory tone on Saturday,
• 1:23:24
  acknowledging the role of British troops.
• 1:23:26
  Other NATO allies were angered by the president's
• 1:23:29
  remarks as well.
• 1:23:31
  Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney called the comments
• 1:23:34
  unacceptable and said that NATO's role amounted to
• 1:23:38
  an extraordinary act of solidarity towards the United
• 1:23:42
  States.
• 1:24:08
  Nobody else can do anything right.
• 1:24:11
  Nobody can do anything good.
• 1:24:13
  I mean, think about this.
• 1:24:14
  What he said was, and he said this
• 1:24:18
  last week, we never needed any help.
• 1:24:22
  NATO allies stayed back a little bit, a
• 1:24:25
  little off of the front lines.
• 1:24:27
  I mean, think about how offensive that is.
• 1:24:29
  You send your military to support the US
• 1:24:32
  and then the US smacks you.
• 1:24:35
  And it was completely unnecessary.
• 1:24:38
  You know, even if it is true, I'm
• 1:24:40
  not talking about, I don't know who was
• 1:24:41
  standing on the front lines, but everybody loses.
• 1:24:44
  If you're in Afghanistan, trust me, you're on
• 1:24:47
  the front line.
• 1:24:48
  I'm not in Afghanistan and I wouldn't want
• 1:24:51
  to be.
• 1:24:52
  And it just, I don't understand why we
• 1:24:55
  constantly have to have this of me, great
• 1:25:00
  me stuff.
• 1:25:01
  And only America has the good stuff and
• 1:25:05
  everybody else's crap.
• 1:25:06
  Even if you believe that, you don't say
• 1:25:09
  it on the international stage.
• 1:25:12
  You know, a tiny bit of decorum, a
• 1:25:16
  tiny bit of decency goes a hell of
• 1:25:19
  a long way.
• 1:25:20
  But people don't dislike Trump because of his
• 1:25:26
  policies.
• 1:25:27
  They dislike him because of his boasting, his
• 1:25:32
  braggadocio, his attacks against people who don't need
• 1:25:42
  to be attacked.
• 1:25:44
  Why are we attacking people that served in
• 1:25:48
  Afghanistan of any country, even Afghanistan?
• 1:25:54
  You know, if they thought they were fighting
• 1:25:55
  for the right, I mean, you just don't
• 1:25:56
  do that to people that are involved in
• 1:25:58
  a war.
• 1:25:59
  It just makes no sense to me.
• 1:26:00
  So I wanted to share this article because
• 1:26:04
  of that, because there's been a lot of
• 1:26:05
  people pissed off about it.
• 1:26:07
  The same people that were pissed off about
• 1:26:09
  Zelensky and his Europe's a do nothing bunch
• 1:26:12
  of losers.
• 1:26:14
  Because basically that's what he said is, you
• 1:26:19
  know, they don't do anything for us at
• 1:26:23
  all.
• 1:26:24
  And we always got to wait for money.
• 1:26:26
  Well, you know, how come?
• 1:26:32
  If it wasn't for them, you wouldn't be
• 1:26:34
  there at all.
• 1:26:37
  You'd have been overrun long, long, long ago
• 1:26:42
  if it wasn't for other people's money.
• 1:26:46
  You know, somebody else is funding your long
• 1:26:49
  -term war project against Russia and the Ukrainian
• 1:26:54
  people are paying the ultimate price for it.
• 1:26:58
  So it makes not a whole lot of
• 1:27:00
  sense to condemn those that are sending you
• 1:27:05
  the money to make even the minimal amount
• 1:27:10
  of resistance, the massive amount of lives, but
• 1:27:16
  the minimal resistance that you're able to put
• 1:27:19
  up here.
• 1:27:20
  The war is over and people need to
• 1:27:24
  recognize that fact.
• 1:27:27
  So at any rate, that's the show for
• 1:27:30
  today.
• 1:27:31
  My name is Samuel Trapp.
• 1:27:33
  This is International Flavor and I encourage you
• 1:27:39
  to listen daily.
• 1:27:41
  I'm here from 7.30 to 9 every
• 1:27:44
  morning, Monday through Thursday in Lake Ozark, Missouri.
• 1:27:52
  I appreciate you being here and I hope
• 1:27:54
  you have just a fantastic week.