Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / 64 - Russia Peace Talks, JD Vance Scolds Europe, and Trump's Gaza Plan with Kervin Aucoin

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64 - Russia Peace Talks, JD Vance Scolds Europe, and Trump's Gaza Plan with Kervin Aucoin · World Ablaze with George Fontes

• 0:00
  You are listening to a Fonz Media Network production.
• 0:11
  Hello, World of Blaze listeners.
• 0:13
  On today's episode, I welcome back Kirvan Oakwin,
• 0:17
  host of This Week Explain and owner of Oakwin Analytics.
• 0:23
  Kirvan gives us his assessment and insight
• 0:26
  on what's going on with the peace negotiations between Trump and Putin
• 0:31
  and what that means for the war in Ukraine.
• 0:34
  We then move our attention on to comments made by J.D. Vance to the EU
• 0:38
  and how that affects our relationships,
• 0:40
  as well as Trump's statement about America owning Gaza.
• 0:45
  This is a very insightful conversation.
• 0:50
  Okay, so now we're recording.
• 0:52
  And welcome back, Irvin.
• 0:55
  Hey, thank you.
• 0:57
  This is our second time starting this recording
• 1:00
  because Riverside just didn't like us for some reason.
• 1:05
  No jab at Riverside, but maybe our hardware or mine isn't up to snuff, I guess, but whatever.
• 1:11
  Anyway, we're on Zoom, and you had a lot to say on everything that's going on recently,
• 1:16
  and I needed to hit you up on what's happening because we need clarity, right?
• 1:21
  So we got Trump saying, I'm making a deal with Putin and Vladimir Zelensky saying, I'm not going to be involved with that or they're not letting him be involved with it.
• 1:33
  And then he's saying that, well, I'm not sure I agree to a peace deal.
• 1:37
  You have Trump saying that we're going to own Gaza and run it, whatever that means.
• 1:42
  And I mean, what else?
• 1:43
  Oh, and J.D. Vance telling the EU that they need to step up and basically protect themselves and then calls them out on whether or not they're democratic enough for their own citizens.
• 1:53
  So, yeah, there's a lot to be said just on that.
• 1:56
  I'm sure that you want to start.
• 1:59
  I'm going to let you start because I know that you have definitely insight and opinions as well as data, I'm sure, just off the top of your head to present on all of this.
• 2:10
  Actually, you know what?
• 2:11
  Let's do this, Kerbin.
• 2:11
  Let's start with the Ukraine peace deal or the alleged peace deal that's happening.
• 2:19
  What is your overall thoughts on that?
• 2:23
  Is Trump taking the right approach?
• 2:27
  And also, he's a businessman and he's really big on, we're giving you X amount of money,
• 2:33
  so now you're going to have to use your mineral rights as collateral and give us those rights
• 2:38
  so that we can be paid back on everything we invested into Ukraine.
• 2:41
  What do you think?
• 2:44
  Yeah, I think you absolutely said it correct at the very beginning.
• 2:49
  He's a businessman.
• 2:50
  He's not a politician.
• 2:51
  And that's why people love him and that's why people hate him.
• 2:54
  So starting off with the Ukraine piece still is the perfect way to do this because I think that is what is getting the most play in the media and on social media.
• 3:05
  And it's that first that he admitted he talked to Vladimir Putin.
• 3:10
  And people are getting upset about that. I get Vladimir Putin is the aggressor in this, but you have to talk to both sides. Biden's issue, his entire administration since the war kicked off in Ukraine, or re-kicked off, some would say, in 2022, in February of 2022, is that there was no dialogue with Putin after that.
• 3:36
  It was only dialogue with Zelensky. And so if you are a mediator and you're only having conversations with one side, you're not going to come to a deal.
• 3:49
  So I don't get this uproar about, oh, you know, I mean, I get it, yes, but I do get it. Trump's a puppet for Russia and Putin. That's what everybody on the left believes, everyone who dislikes and believes he's just some Putin puppet.
• 4:06
  having worked within the Department of Defense
• 4:11
  in overt anti-Russian aggression
• 4:14
  during the Trump administration.
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  I can tell you he's not a puppet for Putin.
• 4:21
  Yes, the things that he says in public
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  or through the media in open dialogue
• 4:26
  are usually things that are discussed in private.
• 4:32
  I brought this up with somebody recently
• 4:34
  who was wondering about the Hamas
• 4:36
  situation and how Trump said publicly in an open interview that if Hamas doesn't release all of the
• 4:43
  hostages, not just the three hostages agreed upon during the ceasefire, that the ceasefire is going
• 4:51
  to be null and void and Israel's going to be able to do everything that they want. And the purpose
• 4:56
  like the person said, he can't say that. Why would he do that? And my response to that was,
• 5:03
  these are the exact conversations that every administration has during these situations,
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  but it's done behind closed doors. It's done face-to-face to whoever, right? If you're saying
• 5:16
  it to Benjamin Netanyahu, you would say behind closed doors to Benjamin Netanyahu's face.
• 5:21
  That's the difference with Trump. And the reason he does that is because he understands
• 5:27
  that the only way to hold people accountable
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  is by publicly,
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  either publicly shaming them
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  or publicly identifying
• 5:38
  the left and right modes of the deal.
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  And that's what he did publicly.
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  Look, Barack Obama
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  would have said the exact same thing
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  behind closed doors
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  to the leadership
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  in Hamas to the leadership of Iran,
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  that's what he would have said.
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  And you can love or hate Obama
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  for whatever kind of actions he did.
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  Publicly, he was very diplomatic about things.
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  And I can tell you when having worked
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  in that administration
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  from a special operations standpoint,
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  that behind the scenes
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  was a completely different person.
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  Behind the scenes,
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  he would hold people accountable
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  to their face. So what we're seeing is somebody who does that in a public sphere. And a lot of
• 6:32
  people around the world, leaders from around the world, do not like that. They do not like
• 6:38
  their dirty laundry to be aired out. And Trump doesn't care. And that's what he's going to do.
• 6:44
  I think that's an excellent point because what you said about him negotiating and holding people
• 6:50
  accountable. He's using the public to hold world leaders and other leaders, even in our own country
• 6:56
  in America accountable. And that's never been done. I talked about this with my brother on
• 7:01
  one of our shows we do. And I'm so glad you're saying it because nobody is saying this. They're
• 7:07
  not understanding what he's doing. I'm not saying he's perfect. Believe me, Trump is a wild card
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  for sure. But the way he's going about this, you got to say or admit it's pretty smart of him to do
• 7:19
  because it's getting things done.
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  You know, before in behind closed doors,
• 7:24
  most of these situations would never,
• 7:27
  we wouldn't see any progress.
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  We just wouldn't.
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  And I'm not, I can't understand his tactic
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  other than it is all about negotiations.
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  I also can't understand,
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  going back to what you said,
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  as to why are people so upset
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  that he's engaging Putin
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  and trying to have a conversation
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  to see if we can come to a deal.
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  And then Zelensky's going out
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  publicly saying, I'm not going to support any peace deal. And I'm trying to understand that
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  and why the EU is now hating the America for even having Trump even mention Putin's name.
• 8:02
  Oh, he's the enemy. You shouldn't be talking or negotiating with him at all. But then all of a
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  sudden they backtrack and now they want to negotiate themselves with Putin for getting
• 8:09
  the energy back from Russia because it's more robust and reliable than what they're trying to
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  do now. It's like there's way too many contradictions going on right now with what's
• 8:20
  happening with Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. It's like, I'm trying to cut through the noise.
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  It's like you were talking about social media earlier offline before we started recording.
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  It's like, it's so hard to vet the information because our mainstream media isn't doing a good
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  job of it. A lot of people turn to social media because a lot of investigative journalists and
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  And people on the inside are now just using their platforms to get the info out.
• 8:45
  But it is really still really hard to cut through the noise.
• 8:47
  I want to go back to why would Zelensky say the things that he's saying?
• 8:52
  Why does the EU say what they're...
• 8:53
  This is all leverage.
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  And that, in any negotiation, that's what you want.
• 9:00
  You want to have the leverage in the negotiation to get what you want.
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  Now, on the EU side, when they talk about you cannot talk to Putin, you cannot have a conversation with Putin, that is more telling about themselves than it is about Vladimir Putin.
• 9:18
  And here's the reason I say that. And I say that on a personal level as well, when I talk to people who have an emotional response to something, and the Stoics say this as well.
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  Your immediate response to what somebody tells you says more about yourself than it does the person that you're responding to.
• 9:39
  And I think that's what we have with the EU right now. The EU, the European Union or Europe as a whole, and I'll put Canada in this as well. They're getting dragged through the mud. So why don't I do that as well?
• 9:53
  They were lied to by Putin for months leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.
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  There is that very famous photo of Macron from France on the other side of a hundred foot table with Putin.
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  And they came away from that. So they had a discussion. That was Macron and Putin having a discussion.
• 10:15
  Macron came away from that and said, I have talked to the guy. I looked him in the eyes. I trust him.
• 10:20
  He says he's not going to invade.
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  Two weeks later, he invades Ukraine.
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  I think some of that is a trust issue with Europe because they were wrong.
• 10:31
  This is the whole reason I started my podcast,
• 10:34
  was to call out Russia for their aggressive actions on Ukraine
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  because I saw the war coming and I was trying to prevent it.
• 10:42
  I was trying to get enough information out there that people would listen
• 10:45
  and maybe prevent this special military operation in Ukraine.
• 10:51
  And it didn't happen because European leaders said they thought they were smarter than everybody else.
• 10:57
  They sat in a room with Putin and he lied to them.
• 11:00
  He said, I'm not looking to invade Ukraine.
• 11:03
  I'm just trying to stop NATO from further expansion.
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  At that point, NATO had no desire to expand.
• 11:10
  Sweden, Finland, Ukraine
• 11:13
  Yeah, they talked about
• 11:15
  Oh, maybe we would invite them
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  But none of those countries
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  Had publicly put up
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  And offered themselves
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  To be invited into NATO
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  And that's how NATO works
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  If anybody is listening
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  And you don't know how NATO works
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  NATO doesn't just pick a country
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  And then vote and say
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  Now you are officially in NATO
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  And you have
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  You can't agree or disagree with that
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  So what happens is a country like Sweden and Finland, which we just saw, will ask to be invited into NATO. NATO will have a debate about it and say, does this country spend enough in defense? Are they not corrupt enough to be involved in NATO?
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  and then every single country has to approve it.
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  Every single country, 100% of the countries
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  have to approve NATO membership.
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  That's how it works.
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  NATO doesn't get to just go, now you're a part of it.
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  Because if they could, they would have just gone,
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  Russia, now you're a part of NATO
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  and Putin, you're out as president.
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  That, I do believe, has some Russians worried
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  because they think that is how it works.
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  That's not how it works.
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  I don't think Ukraine will ever, I'm not going to say never because I don't work in absolutes. You know that. It would take decades to get Ukraine into NATO because it's corrupt. Their military spending is not enough. Their economy isn't stable enough. They just wouldn't be allowed into NATO.
• 12:55
  Well let talk about that NATO Peaceful Festival Okay Even with that being said because this is a great explanation of NATO membership It not just suddenly one person goes hey we going to make this country a part of NATO and use it as a weaponization method against another country a way to defend or weaponize against another country
• 13:14
  But did you feel or did you know if Russia was looking at NATO as slowly encroaching closer and closer in on their territories?
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  Is that a truth or was that just a talking point made up to just steer the public towards whatever support that the administration wanted at the time?
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  Yeah, look, so I think two things can be true at the same time.
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  I do think that Russia as a whole is very nervous about NATO encroachment. They saw it in Bosnia whenever they were asked to come in and defend with the war between the Bosnians and the Serbs.
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  I do think that was a legitimate fear
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  And I also think the other thing is true
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  That Putin used that fear
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  To invade Ukraine
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  Under the auspice of him saying
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  Well we just want to protect ourselves
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  And we're going to bring back the
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  Russian speaking portions of Ukraine
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  Back into Russia where they belong
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  Where Ukrainian citizens actually feel more Russian
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  than they do Ukrainian.
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  Oh, but wait, if that's true,
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  why in the first few weeks
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  did you try to take over Kiev
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  and install your government into Kiev?
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  And they failed miserably.
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  And we cannot forget about that
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  because I do think Putin wants,
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  he's got the Russian people forgetting about it,
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  but I think on the global stage,
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  we can't forget about that.
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  He made a move for Kiev.
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  Anyone who tells you he had no desire
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  to go to the capital of Ukraine,
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  he made a move.
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  I know personally, I sat into meetings. This has got to be declassified now. If it's not, come at me, bro. I can put this stuff out. There were three contingency plans that the U.S. already knew.
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  as the invasion was going to start these were the three opportunities that putin was going to make
• 15:21
  to go to to go to into kiev one was going to use the dnipro river that's what we all thought
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  the most logical thing to do was capture that portion by the dnipro river go from the south
• 15:33
  to the north into it and and then take kiev at that point the other option was just a land grab
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  and just keep continuing west as you're fighting on the ground from the border,
• 15:46
  from Ukraine and Russia's border into Kiev.
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  And then the third one, which, I mean, even I did at this point,
• 15:52
  reading up on it and being in these meetings with high-ranking officials
• 15:59
  saying the third thing he could do and the one that's going to fail
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  and it would be dumb if he did it, is to fly from Belarus
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  through military avenues into Kyiv
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  and try to take over the capital of Kyiv.
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  And the way to do that is you have to do,
• 16:18
  just like the U.S. did with Iraq,
• 16:20
  as we're moving into Baghdad,
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  U.S. troops take over
• 16:25
  a Baghdad International Airport.
• 16:27
  They cordon off the airport
• 16:29
  to allow military flights into the airport.
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  And then you've kind of taken over the capital
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  at that point.
• 16:36
  that's what Putin tried to do. I think he saw what the U.S. did and how it took weeks instead of
• 16:44
  months to take Baghdad in Iraq. And he said, that seems like the most viable position for me.
• 16:52
  It was a miscalculation and he failed on that. But I said all that just to let everyone know,
• 17:00
  if you're listening to this, that was the intent and he tried to do it. And you can go back and
• 17:06
  You can read anything, military strategy and articles from February of 2022, and it talks about it.
• 17:15
  It was a complete failure.
• 17:16
  Putin doesn't want anybody to know about that.
• 17:20
  But right now, everybody's just trying to get leverage in this.
• 17:25
  And absolutely, that's what you're going to want to do in a peace deal or any negotiation.
• 17:29
  You want a ceasefire negotiation that you know, because this war isn't won or lost right now.
• 17:37
  We're at a stalemate.
• 17:39
  A peace deal signed today should be even for both sides because that's what we're seeing on the ground.
• 17:48
  The problem is...
• 17:49
  I'm sorry.
• 17:50
  Go for it.
• 17:51
  Before you finish your point, I think that surprised everybody.
• 17:56
  uh what surprised the world is ukraine's ability to fend russia off and i think the i think people
• 18:05
  underestimate how strongly the people that land have that connection to being autonomous and
• 18:09
  independent and wanting to live free within their land and we could debate you know their politics
• 18:14
  and whether democratic it does that doesn't matter but they were steadfast in defending themselves
• 18:20
  nobody thought that they would they would be able to even stand up to big bad russia this large
• 18:25
  military that is seen as such a huge world power.
• 18:30
  And little old Ukraine is holding Putin off.
• 18:34
  Now, it could be argued that Russia's not really unleashing their full abilities and
• 18:39
  capabilities.
• 18:41
  They're not launching that against Ukraine.
• 18:43
  But at the same time, as far as it comes to the land battle, it's really amazing how Ukraine's
• 18:48
  been able to hold up, which is nuts.
• 18:51
  And you said this is a stalemate because it is right now.
• 18:54
  It's a stalemate.
• 18:54
  what else were you going to say about that stalemate
• 18:57
  before I cut you off?
• 18:59
  Oh, yeah. So, there's just
• 19:01
  so much commentary on all of
• 19:03
  this that if you say
• 19:05
  this is a stalemate, you
• 19:07
  are either so pro-Ukraine
• 19:09
  or so pro-Russia.
• 19:12
  And I
• 19:13
  always try to tell people, it's like, no,
• 19:15
  you are the one that's biased towards one side
• 19:17
  or the other. This is legitimately a
• 19:19
  stalemate. Nothing has moved. The borders
• 19:21
  have not moved since the
• 19:23
  annexation in September of 2023, I believe, was the official annexation of the eastern portion
• 19:31
  of Ukraine. As we see it today, as the lines are drawn right now, and there's a very popular video
• 19:43
  of the Korean War, and it shows you how the borders of North and South Korea were created.
• 19:52
  That pretty much was a stalemate war as well. And they drew the borders in half between North and South Korea. That's what we're seeing right here. The borders now are redrawn. Now, the global community doesn't accept how Russia has redrawn those. I will tell you, absolutely, Russia redrew those borders.
• 20:12
  but they're there and they have that land right now there is no way that putin in in a ceasefire
• 20:22
  deal or a peace deal will accept anything less than what russia has recently annexed so you can
• 20:30
  forget about that eastern portion this is i mean george come on you know me i am a staunch supporter
• 20:36
  of Ukraine. I really am.
• 20:38
  I don't care what anybody else says.
• 20:40
  I think what Putin did invading
• 20:42
  Ukraine was wrong.
• 20:44
  But I'm also pragmatic
• 20:46
  and I'm practical and I'm logical.
• 20:49
  You're not going to get him to
• 20:50
  agree to moving those borders back.
• 20:52
  No. I think what's really
• 20:54
  interesting, though,
• 20:55
  is that, hey,
• 20:58
  here's a smart
• 21:00
  way for Ukraine and Europe
• 21:02
  to
• 21:03
  debate the ceasefire.
• 21:06
  right now Ukraine holds a portion of Russia and that's the Kursk region.
• 21:12
  They have that.
• 21:14
  They can use that as leverage because Ukraine doesn't want to hold Kursk.
• 21:19
  I guarantee you they don't want it.
• 21:22
  The people there don't want them there.
• 21:24
  It would just be like,
• 21:25
  you know,
• 21:26
  Iraq for the United States for 10 years.
• 21:29
  It's going to be insurgency and fighting.
• 21:32
  And that's something Ukraine can't,
• 21:34
  can't back in the long run.
• 21:35
  No,
• 21:36
  Absolutely not.
• 21:37
  But you can use that as leverage to say, okay, we will remove our forces from Kursk.
• 21:43
  We don't want that area.
• 21:44
  But you have to give us something that's comparable to Kursk.
• 21:49
  I think Ukraine needs to do that.
• 21:52
  What about, though, I agree with everything you're saying.
• 21:56
  Because I see it the same way, even though I don't have the inside info you do.
• 21:59
  But I see it the same way, even from the outside looking in.
• 22:02
  but what do you think of
• 22:06
  Zelensky's statements about
• 22:07
  saying that he's not going to agree to a peace deal
• 22:10
  I think we have to take everything that people say
• 22:16
  that world leaders say in public
• 22:18
  with a grain of salt
• 22:19
  and what I'm saying here is
• 22:22
  publicly these are the things they have to say
• 22:25
  goes back to leverage
• 22:27
  you lose your leverage if you go out in front of the media
• 22:30
  and say, I've read the peace deal and I like this, this, and this, and then leave it at that.
• 22:38
  That means your adversaries who are watching that and absolutely watching what you're saying
• 22:44
  on a day-to-day basis go, okay, here are the things that we know for a fact that they are
• 22:51
  going to accept. So you can check those off. What more do we think they are going to be willing
• 23:00
  to accept. And now
• 23:02
  we can present
• 23:03
  everything that we know
• 23:05
  that they said publicly that they're willing to accept
• 23:08
  plus these other things. And when
• 23:10
  they push back, we go,
• 23:12
  yeah, but you already said
• 23:14
  you were willing to accept this stuff.
• 23:16
  So we know where you stand.
• 23:18
  You're going to have to
• 23:19
  come to an agreement. You're going to have to meet us
• 23:22
  in the middle
• 23:23
  with all of this. So
• 23:26
  Zelensky's just being
• 23:27
  very political and diplomatic about it.
• 23:30
  Ukraine at this point, because we talked about it being a stalemate,
• 23:36
  Ukraine does not have to accept a peace deal.
• 23:38
  They absolutely do not.
• 23:39
  No.
• 23:40
  They can keep fighting.
• 23:42
  They can keep throwing bodies at this.
• 23:46
  There's now leverage with the Trump administration and with Putin
• 23:49
  that if they don't accept it,
• 23:52
  that there's possibly something that comes out of that
• 23:55
  where Russia says, okay, well, if you're not going to accept it,
• 23:59
  then just like in Gaza with Israel,
• 24:02
  we're going to go scorched earth on you.
• 24:04
  And you were very astute in saying that Russia did not put,
• 24:08
  they didn't put the full force of the Russian military against Ukraine.
• 24:12
  And I think people need to understand this.
• 24:14
  We laugh at Russia because they can't fend off
• 24:17
  this small, tiny Ukrainian military,
• 24:21
  but they have not put the full force of their military behind it.
• 24:25
  They really haven't.
• 24:26
  Um, they've really, it's been mostly a ground war.
• 24:31
  They have not really used their air force.
• 24:34
  They have not used their naval forces.
• 24:36
  Yeah, no.
• 24:37
  And the full force of the Russian military would crush Ukraine.
• 24:42
  I think with strategic air strikes alone, that would decimate most of Ukraine's military force.
• 24:48
  Yeah.
• 24:49
  And, but it would overplay Putin's hand, I think.
• 24:53
  True.
• 24:53
  Yeah.
• 24:54
  No, no disagreement there.
• 24:55
  It's just crazy how people don't see that Russia hasn't gone full on in this.
• 25:00
  There's reasons Putin's holding back, but I want to leave this and go to another subject
• 25:05
  here in a minute.
• 25:07
  But the big question, especially after Trump's statements, after he became elected and even
• 25:16
  currently, is this.
• 25:19
  If there isn't a peace deal, is the US really going to step in militarily at this point?
• 25:24
  That's a very interesting question
• 25:27
  I don't want to take Trump
• 25:29
  Out of the equation here
• 25:30
  Because for all
• 25:33
  Of the bluff and bluster
• 25:34
  And oh he's just pro
• 25:37
  Russia he has stated if Russia
• 25:39
  Doesn't agree to
• 25:41
  A ceasefire or they're not willing
• 25:43
  To come to the table
• 25:44
  He is going to put troops on the ground
• 25:47
  In Ukraine
• 25:47
  So that's all part of it do I think US troops
• 25:51
  Are going to be on the ground
• 25:53
  in Ukraine fighting side by side
• 25:55
  with Ukrainians against Russia in this particular phase of the conflict Absolutely not Are U forces in Ukraine helping the Ukrainians in a sort of an assist measure Yes absolutely That the only way
• 26:16
  you can get U.S. munitions into Ukraine is by showing them how to use it. What does the U.S.
• 26:23
  get out of that. We get lessons learned from that. The U.S. is not engaged in a peer-on-peer
• 26:32
  conflict since World War II. True. We're talking almost, so what are we talking about, 75 years ago?
• 26:42
  No one living right now, no one working in the Department of Defense.
• 26:49
  there might be a couple of people in Congress, but no one working in the Department of Defense
• 26:55
  has ever fought in a peer-peer conflict in the United States.
• 27:03
  And you know my assessment, in the next two to three years, the United States will be engaged
• 27:10
  in a conflict with a peer, and we need to figure out what that's going to look like.
• 27:17
  And do our munitions, do our equipment, does our military understand how to do that?
• 27:25
  And so we get lessons learned from the equipment that we give to Ukraine on how that battle will play out in a near-peer or a peer-peer conflict.
• 27:35
  That's an interesting assessment, but makes a lot of sense.
• 27:40
  But even our peers, for example, haven't been in a peer-to-peer conflict.
• 27:44
  Except for Russia now.
• 27:45
  Well, okay.
• 27:46
  Russia does see this as a peer-to-peer conflict because of the munitions that NATO has given Ukraine.
• 27:52
  Got it.
• 27:53
  So in their mind, they feel this is a peer-to-peer conflict.
• 27:56
  Yes.
• 27:57
  But you're absolutely right.
• 27:58
  China is the same, right?
• 28:01
  We'll talk about the last time we were at war with China was the Korean War.
• 28:07
  Yes.
• 28:07
  So it's a little bit after World War II.
• 28:09
  The Korean War was fought between the communists in China and that Northern Korean portion.
• 28:18
  Now, it was the full Korean Peninsula.
• 28:21
  Now, what we know as South Korea, those forces were battling against China and communism.
• 28:28
  And so, the U.S. stepped in and helped.
• 28:31
  And it was kind of a stalemate, like I talked about.
• 28:34
  That border is now drawn 50-50 right there.
• 28:37
  and that conflict has never ended.
• 28:40
  There was a ceasefire deal
• 28:42
  and that's still where we stand at this point.
• 28:46
  So that's something also to have in the back of your mind
• 28:50
  when you see these reports of a ceasefire
• 28:53
  and even when it's agreed to
• 28:54
  and you go, we have a peace deal.
• 28:57
  No, we have a ceasefire.
• 28:58
  There's a big difference.
• 29:00
  Conflict is still going on.
• 29:02
  People are still on edge.
• 29:04
  It's a ceasefire.
• 29:05
  the moment.
• 29:07
  So, okay.
• 29:08
  I'm trying not to ramble
• 29:10
  and go all over the place here.
• 29:12
  Too much caffeine.
• 29:13
  You're not rambling.
• 29:14
  No, you're not rambling.
• 29:15
  And I think it's important
• 29:16
  people understand
• 29:17
  the difference between
• 29:18
  a ceasefire and a peace deal.
• 29:20
  A ceasefire is just giving
• 29:20
  everybody a chance
• 29:21
  to back away,
• 29:22
  reassess things,
• 29:24
  come to the table.
• 29:25
  It doesn't mean
• 29:25
  that there's an agreement.
• 29:26
  Right.
• 29:26
  And people confuse the two
• 29:29
  and try to say,
• 29:31
  oh, ceasefire,
• 29:32
  we've got a peace.
• 29:33
  It's not peace yet.
• 29:34
  We're not there yet.
• 29:34
  you're not going to hear about a bunch of conflict.
• 29:38
  Right.
• 29:39
  But if you get on the ground
• 29:41
  at the border of Russia and Ukraine,
• 29:44
  you're going to feel it.
• 29:45
  You're going to know this is not peace.
• 29:48
  Everyone is on edge.
• 29:51
  So what do I think a ceasefire should look like?
• 29:56
  If we're really talking about a stalemate here
• 29:58
  and both sides should be sitting at the table
• 30:01
  and I think Europe should be at the table.
• 30:05
  It is their continent.
• 30:07
  They need to be there.
• 30:10
  Trump is there.
• 30:11
  And I said this on the podcast
• 30:13
  and Tiana and I both agreed with this
• 30:17
  just this past week
• 30:17
  that the U.S. is getting laughed at
• 30:21
  in certain areas, right?
• 30:24
  Whether you agree,
• 30:25
  whether you're staunchly right-wing
• 30:27
  or left-wing and you say one thing or another,
• 30:30
  It is an abject reality that in some places the U.S. is being laughed at.
• 30:37
  I said, you can't laugh at the U.S. and then have the United States paying for 90% of the defense of Europe and negotiating ceasefire deals all across the world.
• 30:51
  we're either the laughing stock of the world
• 30:54
  or we are the country that has looked
• 30:57
  the shining light on a hill that Reagan talked about
• 31:01
  that this is what freedom looks like
• 31:04
  I think we're somewhere in the middle there
• 31:08
  yeah there are some things that even I laugh at
• 31:11
  in regards to the United States
• 31:13
  and there are things that I do know
• 31:18
  wholeheartedly the US is the shining light
• 31:21
  on a hill of freedom.
• 31:23
  So what do I think the ceasefire should look like?
• 31:26
  Should it be even for both sides?
• 31:28
  That's relative.
• 31:29
  I couldn't tell you what is even.
• 31:32
  Does Russia get those annexed regions?
• 31:35
  You have to.
• 31:36
  They're there.
• 31:38
  They fought it.
• 31:39
  This is a war.
• 31:39
  I get they're the aggressor.
• 31:42
  The problem here is,
• 31:44
  how does the international community
• 31:47
  keep this from happening again?
• 31:51
  And that's where the Minsk 2 agreement, so Russia invaded Crimea, they took over all of that. They had a ceasefire deal that was Minsk 2. There was also Minsk 1 when Russia did it before. That took nukes out.
• 32:07
  So the Minsk-1 took nuclear weapons out of Ukraine. That gave Russia an opportunity, without fear of retaliation through nuclear weapons, to invade Ukraine for Crimea. Minsk-2 was, and this was the Obama administration, Minsk-2 agreed very pro-Russia that they get to keep Crimea and that security guarantees.
• 32:37
  for Ukraine were taken off the table.
• 32:41
  This is when the conversation from Ukraine was,
• 32:44
  we really want to join NATO.
• 32:45
  We want those security measures in place.
• 32:47
  And the international community told them,
• 32:49
  no, you're corrupt.
• 32:51
  We don't really care about Crimea.
• 32:53
  I also think, this is the international community talking,
• 32:56
  I also think Crimea is really Russian anyway,
• 32:59
  so we should have that.
• 33:01
  Some people may forget that Obama
• 33:03
  had a very good relationship with Putin,
• 33:06
  very good relationship.
• 33:07
  with Russia. He basically allowed Crimea to happen. So if you want to talk about Trump and
• 33:13
  Trump being some Putin puppet, go back to Obama. This is a guy that when Mitt Romney was running
• 33:19
  for president and said, Russia is one of our biggest adversaries and we need to push back on
• 33:24
  what Putin is doing. Obama said the 80s are calling. They want their foreign policy back.
• 33:29
  Everybody laughed. We voted for Obama again. Look where we are now between Russia and Ukraine.
• 33:36
  So what I say is, offer Ukraine security guarantees this time around. That being, okay, they can't join NATO. That doesn't mean you can't offer them Article 5 protection.
• 33:49
  Vladimir Putin
• 33:52
  If you are very
• 33:53
  If you are that nervous
• 33:54
  About NATO on your doorstep
• 33:57
  First of all why would you take over Ukraine
• 33:59
  Because do you know what borders Ukraine?
• 34:03
  Poland
• 34:03
  It's a NATO country
• 34:05
  It's a country I was
• 34:06
  I talk about in the Trump administration
• 34:09
  I was sent
• 34:10
  To Poland
• 34:12
  To do overt anti-Russian aggression
• 34:15
  With the Polish military
• 34:16
  So
• 34:17
  if you're really scared about NATO, why would you push your border to NATO?
• 34:23
  And that's because in my assessment, he's not really worried about NATO.
• 34:28
  He wants Poland back and he's trying to get as close to that border as he can to make a push for it.
• 34:35
  And then whenever he feels like it's the right time, he will go to war with NATO.
• 34:42
  That's a future thing. That's five to 10 years from now, maybe.
• 34:45
  maybe even further than that,
• 34:47
  but he might not even be alive anymore.
• 34:50
  Putin's in his 70s.
• 34:51
  Who knows how long he's going to stay alive?
• 34:54
  I think the situation,
• 34:57
  some of what you said, by the way,
• 34:59
  you weren't rambling
• 34:59
  because it's actually going to lead into
• 35:00
  where we're going to go next.
• 35:01
  Okay, good.
• 35:01
  Because I still feel like I'm rambling.
• 35:03
  No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 35:04
  You're kind of saying a few things
• 35:06
  that I was wanting to touch on anyway.
• 35:09
  I want to just kind of add a little bit more to this.
• 35:13
  What's your statement right now?
• 35:14
  as far as Russia's concerned, I think a lot of this could have been avoided if we literally
• 35:18
  did take Russia serious and try to bring them into the EU in general years ago when Putin was
• 35:24
  trying to make that move. He wanted to interact with everybody and feel as part of the community,
• 35:30
  but we kept shutting them down. So after you keep telling such a strong, powerful nation,
• 35:36
  no, no, no, no all the time, I mean, I think we kind of got what we got at this point.
• 35:40
  but we can't ignore having a good relationship with them,
• 35:46
  regardless of if they're corrupt,
• 35:47
  because the way I see it is Ukraine was considered
• 35:51
  the most corrupt country in the world, literally.
• 35:53
  And everybody forgets that.
• 35:55
  Nobody wanted to deal with them, you know?
• 35:57
  But yet everybody wants to jump to their aid
• 35:59
  because, oh, look at this small country
• 36:00
  and look at big, bad Russia.
• 36:01
  It's like, it's just such a bunch of hypocritical bullshit
• 36:06
  by our world leaders.
• 36:07
  This could have been avoided from day one.
• 36:09
  And a lot of it starts to me,
• 36:10
  and I may be wrong because you do this for a living.
• 36:14
  But from my perspective, the EU or Europe should have taken the reins of this situation
• 36:20
  a long time ago to maintain these relationships and set the boundaries.
• 36:24
  And they just didn't.
• 36:25
  It's exactly what you said.
• 36:27
  They seem to wash their hands of things until America goes, wait a minute, we got to start
• 36:32
  stepping in now.
• 36:33
  And then all of a sudden, everybody has a fucking opinion.
• 36:36
  It's ridiculous.
• 36:37
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:37
  And so I don't see the problem.
• 36:41
  There's a lot of uproar now.
• 36:43
  And there's two sides of this, but I'll get on the first side of it.
• 36:48
  So there is a requirement that NATO countries have to spend 2% of their GDP on defense spending.
• 36:57
  Trump wants to, has mentioned, not wants to, I got to keep going back to Trump verbally.
• 37:02
  He has mentioned telling Europe, you need to ratchet that up to 5%. Well, the US doesn't even do 5% GDP towards defense spending. It's 4.2% now, I think.
• 37:14
  No, but I do have a graph here because I was going to go into this.
• 37:19
  Yes.
• 37:19
  Finish your statement. Finish your statement first.
• 37:22
  I'm glad you have a graph of this so we can go through it.
• 37:25
  Because I don't see the problem with even 5% spending of GDP onto defense spending.
• 37:32
  If you think that the country on your continent, Russia, Belarus, is an existential threat to the country, to all of the other countries on the continent.
• 37:43
  If you really believe that, why would you spend less of your GDP on defense spending and then get mad at people who tell you you need to spend more?
• 37:53
  jd vance pete hexef who's the the secretary of defense i should say sec def um or defense
• 38:01
  secretary hexef and donald trump have all mentioned that this war is on the european continent
• 38:08
  and that europe needs to defend its own borders and stop relying on the united states
• 38:14
  i don't care where you stand that is an ab that is just the truth it is a factual statement
• 38:21
  if Mexico invaded the United States
• 38:24
  and the United States asked NATO
• 38:28
  to spend 90% more funding
• 38:32
  than the United States is spending
• 38:34
  to defend itself,
• 38:35
  the entire European Union
• 38:38
  would laugh in the face of every American.
• 38:41
  They would say,
• 38:42
  why do we need to control your borders
• 38:44
  when you can't control your borders?
• 38:46
  That's what they would say.
• 38:48
  And so, yes,
• 38:49
  If you think it's an existential threat, defend yourself for it.
• 38:54
  Right.
• 38:55
  So let talk about NATO because this isn all countries but I going to start with this here And for example Poland as far as defense spending percentage of GDP they spent about 3
• 39:09
  Poland is the greatest NATO country, in my opinion.
• 39:13
  And in fact, this chart here is as of, I think it was the end of 23.
• 39:18
  So it might have shifted a bit.
• 39:19
  But from what I understand, most countries, everything kind of seems consistent.
• 39:24
  According to this, at that time, the U.S. actually spent less than Poland.
• 39:27
  I think we're at 3.5%, almost 4%, like you said, but we weren't quite there.
• 39:31
  And then Greece is behind us.
• 39:32
  Then Estonia, then Lithuania, Finland.
• 39:36
  And then it falls off in France.
• 39:37
  Now, here's the thing.
• 39:38
  France has always been very vocal about everything, but they're spending less than 2% of their GDP.
• 39:43
  Canada is less than 2%.
• 39:44
  Right.
• 39:45
  Norway as well.
• 39:45
  Denmark also less than 2%.
• 39:47
  So is Germany.
• 39:49
  So these are-
• 39:50
  It's very telling.
• 39:52
  Say again, I already knew this.
• 39:54
  I knew these countries.
• 39:55
  but say again the countries who are spending the most,
• 39:59
  and then we'll go over who borders those countries.
• 40:04
  Right, right.
• 40:05
  Take the U.S. out of it, right?
• 40:07
  Because we just...
• 40:07
  Well, right now we're looking at like Poland.
• 40:09
  Yep.
• 40:10
  Estonia.
• 40:11
  Yep.
• 40:12
  Lithuania.
• 40:13
  Yep.
• 40:14
  Finland.
• 40:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:15
  Romania, actually.
• 40:16
  They're 2.4%.
• 40:17
  And who are all those countries scared of?
• 40:20
  Russia.
• 40:21
  Russia.
• 40:22
  Absolutely.
• 40:22
  Their spending is a direct reflection of how they feel about Russia.
• 40:28
  Interesting point, actually.
• 40:29
  So France, Germany, I think your spending should be a direct reflection of how you feel about the security of the continent.
• 40:37
  Those countries are allowing the other countries that border Russia to spend on their own defense without coming to their defense.
• 40:47
  That's how I view it.
• 40:49
  Interesting take, actually.
• 40:51
  Yeah, that's an interesting take.
• 40:53
  I mean, it tracks when you look at the spending percentage of GDP
• 40:57
  because even up there as one of the top nations,
• 40:59
  I mean, it's 2%, 2.1 or so is United Kingdom or the UK.
• 41:04
  But I just bring up France because they've been so vocal.
• 41:07
  Germany's been so vocal.
• 41:08
  And none of these countries do enough, I think,
• 41:11
  for being as vocal as they are.
• 41:13
  It's like if you really care, then step up.
• 41:15
  I mean, now they're sending, like you said earlier,
• 41:17
  munitions and whatnot to Ukraine.
• 41:18
  But for a while, they weren't doing anything until the US did.
• 41:20
  And it's like, this is Europe.
• 41:23
  You should be handling the situation,
• 41:25
  not waiting on the United States to take care of things for you
• 41:29
  or wait for them to raise their hand and say,
• 41:31
  hey, I'm stepping in, then suddenly now it's okay.
• 41:33
  I don't think that's the right approach.
• 41:35
  Or have Canada say, I think you should do more, America,
• 41:39
  and go, why?
• 41:41
  Why should?
• 41:42
  And then we talk about, so we're just talking in percentages, right?
• 41:46
  Yeah, and I got another one to go over with you
• 41:48
  after you make this point here.
• 41:49
  Okay. So we're just talking about percentages.
• 41:52
  Yes.
• 41:53
  Then go on your Google machine, everybody who's listening, and go look at sheer numbers.
• 42:00
  So the United States will be number one in all that because it's $840 billion a year in defense spending.
• 42:09
  The UK is at what?
• 42:10
  One point, what?
• 42:11
  Two point, what did you say?
• 42:13
  2.3, 2.4?
• 42:15
  It's 2.1.
• 42:17
  as of this data that was released.
• 42:19
  2023.
• 42:20
  Yeah, end of 23.
• 42:21
  So that's going to be in the hundreds of billions as well.
• 42:26
  Poland, who spends the most with GDP,
• 42:30
  according to GDP.
• 42:31
  Yes, they do.
• 42:32
  About 4%.
• 42:32
  Is probably not even in the top 10 in sheer numbers
• 42:37
  just because their GDP is not as high as other countries.
• 42:43
  I don't think, and fact check me on this,
• 42:47
  I don't think that Canada, who's a bigger economy than Poland, even in sheer numbers, spends more than Poland does. So you can lose me, Canada, on trying to tell the United States what they should be doing when you're not really doing enough.
• 43:03
  And you have told NATO that you can't even get to that, the number that's required to be a NATO country.
• 43:10
  Say this again.
• 43:12
  These are numbers that are required by NATO to be a NATO country.
• 43:17
  And you're not even living up to it.
• 43:19
  And listen, France is less than two, or they were.
• 43:22
  I don't know.
• 43:23
  I'd have to check current numbers, but for years they were behind.
• 43:27
  Norway is less than 2%.
• 43:29
  Denmark, Germany, Portugal.
• 43:32
  whatever
• 43:34
  Italy
• 43:35
  but
• 43:35
  no one wants to talk about Portugal
• 43:37
  well I'm half Portuguese too
• 43:39
  which is weird
• 43:39
  but
• 43:39
  they don't really get involved in anything
• 43:41
  no they got the
• 43:43
  they got the coast
• 43:44
  they're living right on the beach
• 43:45
  but Canada
• 43:47
  to your point
• 43:48
  as of
• 43:49
  as of this information
• 43:50
  which was end of 23
• 43:52
  Canada was at 1.4%
• 43:54
  and there's a 2% requirement
• 43:55
  there's a 2%
• 43:57
  I mean I'm looking at 1, 2, 3
• 43:58
  let me see
• 43:59
  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• 44:02
  9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 countries that are members of NATO that don't
• 44:09
  even meet the 2% requirement.
• 44:10
  That's over half of NATO countries.
• 44:12
  Yeah.
• 44:13
  That don't reach the requirement.
• 44:17
  Now, going to your point about percentages, because people look at percentages, right?
• 44:21
  And they're saying, well, percentage GDP, it doesn't translate to actual money though,
• 44:27
  because now we're talking about how large that piece of that GDP actually is.
• 44:31
  What's that number represent?
• 44:32
  Is it 1 million, 2 million, 3 trillion, infinity, whatever?
• 44:38
  And I have this other graph that's talking about,
• 44:40
  this is a more recent graph, by the way.
• 44:42
  It's NATO member states spending as a percentage of combined.
• 44:46
  Okay.
• 44:46
  And this is the amount of money being paid into NATO,
• 44:50
  not just percentage of GDP.
• 44:51
  The U.S. makes up over 70%.
• 44:54
  We all know.
• 44:54
  Yeah, I was going to stop you right there.
• 44:56
  We know who number one is.
• 44:57
  You don't even have to talk about that.
• 44:58
  I'm just saying, but people forget that.
• 45:01
  And the reason I brought that up, Curvin, like, you're right.
• 45:03
  People know that, but they're not correlating that as to why Trump keeps saying you need
• 45:08
  to pay your fair share.
• 45:09
  I don't think Trump expects anybody to put in as much as the U.S. is because we're just
• 45:14
  such a large economy.
• 45:15
  But I think he's looking for people like, look, if you're going to be a part of this
• 45:19
  and you're going to want the help, you need to kind of step up a bit.
• 45:23
  Yeah, it's a bunch of freeloaders.
• 45:25
  Absolutely.
• 45:25
  The UK is contributing 5.4% of total spending into NATO.
• 45:31
  That's a big gap.
• 45:33
  France is 4.7%.
• 45:34
  So while their number of GDP look low, when it comes to total spending, they're at 4.7%
• 45:40
  of total funding.
• 45:41
  And then Germany is around the same.
• 45:43
  And after that, it falls off.
• 45:44
  You got Italy at 2.6%.
• 45:45
  Canada, 2.1%.
• 45:47
  So they edged up a little there.
• 45:51
  But Poland-
• 45:51
  Say again, what's the US at?
• 45:53
  The percentage?
• 45:54
  A 70.5.
• 45:57
  Almost 71.
• 45:58
  70.
• 45:59
  Let's go down.
• 46:01
  70.5, you would usually round up.
• 46:04
  Let's round down.
• 46:05
  70% of funding comes from the United States.
• 46:10
  Yeah.
• 46:11
  Yeah.
• 46:12
  70.
• 46:13
  Way more than half.
• 46:14
  That's a majority.
• 46:15
  With asking for the U.S. to do more.
• 46:19
  I'm telling you, man.
• 46:20
  Look, if this was a board of directors, we have full say.
• 46:23
  yeah we have full say america's full say and i don't think we should be that person but at the
• 46:29
  same time you can't deny so this goes back to the emotional response that people get when someone
• 46:36
  like trump says or you know secretary of defense has said and vice president vance said this exact
• 46:42
  same thing. When asked, will the U.S. remove themselves from NATO? And they say, if Europe,
• 46:56
  if NATO was not doing enough, and it is no longer a mutually beneficial organization,
• 47:02
  the U.S. is going to have to consider getting out of NATO. And everybody has an emotional response
• 47:08
  to it. European leaders within NATO have an emotional response to them saying that. Why do
• 47:13
  they have that emotional response to it? It's because all of that money from the United States
• 47:21
  goes away from NATO. Does that then mean Putin has a green light to then attack NATO? Absolutely.
• 47:33
  But it's not because the U.S. got out of NATO. It's because you, NATO, have not done enough to fund yourself.
• 47:43
  I agree, man.
• 47:43
  That's the situation we're in right now. And I'll go back again, just if anybody has caught this in the middle of this podcast.
• 47:52
  George will tell you this. I have been a staunch supporter of Ukraine and what they're doing to push back against Russian aggression since the moment this happened.
• 48:02
  this is not an anti-Ukraine discussion
• 48:04
  no it's not
• 48:06
  this is a
• 48:06
  you have to do
• 48:09
  you have to pay for your own things
• 48:11
  these are your borders
• 48:13
  I agree
• 48:15
  pay to secure your own borders
• 48:16
  and people were up in arms about what J.D. Vance said
• 48:19
  when he was at the
• 48:21
  yeah it's the Munich summit
• 48:23
  yeah I'm sorry
• 48:23
  my brain
• 48:25
  I'm trying to look something up at the same time
• 48:27
  but yeah everybody was up in arms about what he said
• 48:30
  and it's like look
• 48:31
  to paraphrase, Europe, you need to step up and defend yourself and stop relying on America to
• 48:39
  do it for you. Paraphrasing it, but that's what he said. And I think his main point really was
• 48:45
  to the NATO countries, to the European Union, you are starting to see the United States and
• 48:52
  saying things like the United States has gone against free speech. The United States is going
• 48:58
  against the free movement of the world and against democracy.
• 49:05
  And he astutely pointed out, no, Europe, you are against free speech.
• 49:11
  You are against the free movement.
• 49:15
  You are against protecting your own borders.
• 49:20
  And he said that, and people got up in arms.
• 49:23
  And I saw one post, a thread of somebody saying everything that J.D. Vance claimed happened, didn't happen. And yet in that thread, it actually said that what J.D. Vance, it was basically trying to nitpick at things that he was saying like, oh, the government of the UK put someone in jail because they prayed.
• 49:48
  and the guy was nitpicking and he was like,
• 49:51
  well, it wasn't the government that did it.
• 49:53
  It was the police.
• 49:54
  And I'm like, are you, this is really
• 49:55
  what we're going to say here?
• 49:57
  Like you're talking about just grasping for things.
• 50:01
  What is the police?
• 50:03
  What the police does in every country
• 50:06
  is it abides by the laws set by the government.
• 50:10
  When the government makes a law,
• 50:12
  the police enforce that law.
• 50:15
  So if the police arrest someone
• 50:17
  or fined someone for doing something that is vis-a-vis the government.
• 50:24
  Otherwise, they wouldn't do it.
• 50:27
  It's true.
• 50:27
  And people, you know, actually, well, news outlets were right away going,
• 50:32
  well, how dare J.D. Vance stand up there and tell Europe how to run their own countries
• 50:38
  and what they should stand for?
• 50:39
  But he made perfect sense, aside from the NATO element,
• 50:42
  and also them defending themselves, where he said,
• 50:45
  look, you guys were going through the same things we were with mass migration and immigration
• 50:50
  coming into your countries.
• 50:52
  And your own citizens are up in arms and complaining about it, but you're not doing anything from
• 50:58
  a governmental perspective to look out for their own interests.
• 51:01
  He basically said, look, you got yourselves here.
• 51:04
  Why did you not get ahead of this?
• 51:05
  Why did you not look out for your own people?
• 51:08
  Why did you put the interests of foreign entities and migrants ahead of your own people?
• 51:16
  And it's a legitimate question.
• 51:18
  It was a legitimate question that a world leader hasn't really asked other world leaders publicly on top of that.
• 51:25
  I also think it's very telling that when something like that happens, when it's called out in that, especially publicly like that,
• 51:35
  that the, and we'll go back to what the Stoics say,
• 51:38
  the emotional response that you have to that
• 51:40
  says more about you than it does
• 51:43
  about the person you're reacting to
• 51:45
  or the statement that you're reacting to.
• 51:47
  And so what does that mean in this context?
• 51:49
  It means Europe, I do believe,
• 51:51
  understands that they didn't do enough
• 51:54
  and that they were freeloading off of the United States.
• 51:57
  And now that it's come to a head,
• 52:00
  it's just like, so this was my frustration with COVID
• 52:03
  whenever we did the lockdowns.
• 52:04
  And I very much agreed with two weeks to flatten the curve. That seemed very logical to me. If we just separated ourselves from everybody for a disease that spread very quickly in open air in close quarters, two weeks, get away from everybody. Nobody do anything. You're good. Two weeks to flatten the curve.
• 52:27
  After the two weeks, the state governments and federal governments said, well, we're just, you know, we're not ready to open up right now.
• 52:38
  And I said, well, what have you been doing for two weeks?
• 52:41
  And basically, they were doing nothing for two weeks.
• 52:45
  They said, well, you told me to go home and not do anything.
• 52:47
  No, that's not what we told you.
• 52:50
  And that's a whole part of this discussion with teleworking and working from home and stuff like that.
• 52:55
  It was, no, we didn't tell you to go home and don't do anything. Go bake bread and watch Netflix. Go watch Tiger King. We told you to go home, figure this out, and in two weeks, come back with a plan and let's open this back up.
• 53:11
  this is the same thing that's going on with Europe.
• 53:14
  The United States has said, Russia's an aggressor.
• 53:18
  They're going to invade Ukraine.
• 53:20
  You're going to need to figure out how to deter that.
• 53:23
  And they said, first, no, it's never going to happen.
• 53:27
  That's not going to happen.
• 53:28
  I was reading an article from a conservative think tank, Reason Magazine,
• 53:33
  if you've ever heard of Reason Magazine.
• 53:35
  I haven't.
• 53:35
  So this was all because I was doing research on Mitt Romney
• 53:39
  and his campaigns for the presidency,
• 53:42
  which I think is a catalyst for the Trump campaign
• 53:44
  and how Trump got elected in 2016.
• 53:48
  And the reason I say that is because a lot
• 53:50
  of the conversations we have about Trump,
• 53:53
  they were having about Mitt Romney
• 53:55
  when he was running against Barack Obama.
• 53:58
  We're talking about the most vanilla guy you'll ever meet.
• 54:01
  Now a pariah of the conservative movement
• 54:04
  because of things that he said against Trump.
• 54:07
  it was the same things they're saying about trump they said about mit romney they said it about trump
• 54:13
  and it was the boy who cried wolf people said well you've told me the republicans are nazis for so
• 54:20
  long and they've turned out to not be nazis you say this guy's a nazi i'm gonna vote for him anyway
• 54:26
  and we're just gonna cross our fingers on this now that's not a perspective of how i feel about
• 54:32
  Trump and whether he's a Nazi or not, I can tell you wholeheartedly, I don't think he's a Nazi. I
• 54:37
  really don't. I also don't think he's the mouthpiece of Putin. So I put both of those
• 54:42
  out there. But I'm reading this stuff. So Mitt Romney did a European tour.
• 54:47
  And a lot of what he said during this European tour about what Europe needs to do to protect the
• 54:53
  borders is what you're now hearing with the, is, well, it's a far cry from what you're hearing
• 55:00
  from the Trump administration. Mitt Romney was saying the U.S. should still support NATO,
• 55:06
  but Europe needs to, like there's no reason to get out of NATO, but NATO needs to do more
• 55:13
  in funding than the United States. And what was very interesting is Reason Magazine
• 55:17
  put this full article promoting Mitt Romney and what he's saying, but then saying Europe is
• 55:25
  worried about a war, there's never going to be another war in Europe because who would invade
• 55:30
  a European country? What European country would invade another European country? And they use
• 55:36
  things like Romania, this is before Crimea when Russia invaded Ukraine and Crimea.
• 55:44
  And so it was very telling to me of people that didn't have the foresight to see.
• 55:49
  so this was 2012 this is a year where obama was very friendly with putin he made a very
• 55:59
  this got a lot of play in conservative media during the election he is sitting with i believe
• 56:07
  sergey labrov and he has a conversation that got picked up off of a hot mic back to our conversation
• 56:13
  of things that are talked about in closed doors that we don't usually hear but now that we have
• 56:19
  Trump. We get to hear it. There's more transparency. But he told Lavrov, I believe it's Lavrov,
• 56:25
  somebody will fact check me on that one, that, listen, tell Putin that whenever the election's
• 56:33
  over and I win, I'm going to have more leverage to do things for Russia than I would right now.
• 56:42
  That's the Democratic Party. That is what some people would call the far left. Some people
• 56:46
  consider Obama the far left of the Democratic
• 56:48
  Party. He
• 56:50
  was very much making pro-Putin
• 56:52
  statements in back doors.
• 56:55
  Kind of the conversations.
• 56:57
  It was
• 56:57
  Lavrov. Okay. My memory
• 57:01
  hasn't stopped.
• 57:02
  It hasn't failed me today.
• 57:05
  I just looked that up.
• 57:07
  Yeah. There was
• 57:08
  a very friendly relationship. I
• 57:10
  was in St. Petersburg in
• 57:12
  2016. I think St. Petersburg,
• 57:14
  Russia.
• 57:15
  and I just have this very funny story of being there.
• 57:19
  I know my driver was KGB
• 57:21
  because of the kind of his background
• 57:23
  and the things he was allowed to do.
• 57:25
  One of the things he was allowed to do
• 57:27
  that no one else on our tour that we purchased
• 57:30
  was allowed to do was go to Putin's house
• 57:33
  in St. Petersburg.
• 57:37
  Interesting.
• 57:37
  And we got to go there because he wanted to show us.
• 57:40
  We ingratiated ourselves to him
• 57:42
  in the fact that we didn't talk crap about Russia.
• 57:46
  It's 2016.
• 57:48
  Remember, this is Putin and Trump
• 57:51
  and how bad Russia is
• 57:52
  because Trump likes Russia for some reason.
• 57:56
  The collusion hoax.
• 57:57
  Yes, the whole collusion.
• 58:00
  And so the fact that-
• 58:01
  But Schiff still has not presented any evidence of.
• 58:03
  He always has these secret sources
• 58:07
  that he can't reveal.
• 58:09
  And that's always been my problem.
• 58:11
  When you go, I can't reveal who my sources are.
• 58:15
  I get it for a lot of things where I don't want to reveal who I am because then that's going to put me at a target.
• 58:24
  Away from that.
• 58:25
  So we got to go by Putin's house and it was like, oh, look, that's where Obama and Putin met on the roof and had a summit.
• 58:35
  This is 20.
• 58:36
  So that was 2013, 2014 timeframe.
• 58:39
  we're in 2025 and now look look at how the world views russia so very quickly it moved
• 58:47
  and i believe it really moved in 2016 with the the russia collusion that you talked about
• 58:53
  um and if you actually want to know because of things that i was working with did russia
• 59:00
  involve themselves in the u.s election yes did they do it in 2012 yes did they do it in 20 2008
• 59:10
  Yes.
• 59:11
  Did they do it in 2004?
• 59:13
  Yes.
• 59:13
  Do you hear a pattern here?
• 59:15
  Do you want me to keep going back?
• 59:18
  2000.
• 59:19
  Yes.
• 59:20
  96.
• 59:21
  Yes.
• 59:22
  But your point's made because every world power, if they could, wants to influence our election.
• 59:29
  Yes.
• 59:29
  Like, why wouldn't they?
• 59:30
  Even China.
• 59:31
  Absolutely.
• 59:32
  China's doing it right now.
• 59:34
  Yeah, it's ridiculous to think that they wouldn't.
• 59:35
  I mean, and it's also naive to think that the U.S., you know, ourselves wouldn't do the same.
• 59:41
  We have.
• 59:43
  So, this, yes.
• 59:47
  I hope you didn't think I was going to say, push back and go, the U.S. has never done that.
• 59:52
  The U.S. is world famous for regime change.
• 59:57
  Absolutely.
• 59:57
  It's kind of our calling.
• 59:58
  It's kind of what we do.
• 59:59
  It's what we do poorly, I will say.
• 1:00:03
  We don't stop trying, though.
• 1:00:04
  We are the worst.
• 1:00:07
  And look at Syria, right?
• 1:00:11
  Bashar Assad is gone.
• 1:00:12
  I think he should be gone.
• 1:00:13
  He was killing his own people.
• 1:00:16
  But now we have what he would say is former Islamist extremist looking to be the leader of Syria.
• 1:00:26
  And it is being backed by the United States for him to take over.
• 1:00:30
  Yeah, we're going to actually go that direction in the Middle East here in a minute.
• 1:00:34
  but let's try to wrap this NATO slash JD Vance comment up a bit
• 1:00:41
  because what you said about what your initial reaction says more about you, right?
• 1:00:48
  Yeah.
• 1:00:48
  When I was watching that speech, after he made that statement and a few others,
• 1:00:53
  when the camera panned, I don't care who you were, what country you're from,
• 1:00:57
  everyone's face just kind of went from, yeah, this guy, let's see what he says,
• 1:01:02
  to like, oh, shit.
• 1:01:03
  Yeah.
• 1:01:03
  Like you just saw their face melt.
• 1:01:05
  It was ridiculous.
• 1:01:07
  And it was, as you said, it was so telling.
• 1:01:11
  Like they all realized, hold on, what they've been telling us for this long is really going to happen.
• 1:01:18
  Yeah, it's here.
• 1:01:19
  What are we going to do?
• 1:01:21
  And they didn't go back to the COVID thing.
• 1:01:24
  They weren't planning for it, even though they were told it was going to happen.
• 1:01:28
  They weren't planning for it.
• 1:01:29
  So now it looks like they're blindsided, but they're really not.
• 1:01:32
  They were just trying to freeload.
• 1:01:35
  But is it wrong for J.D. Vance to make the statement, for our administration to say, hey, Europe, you kind of need to figure this out?
• 1:01:43
  It's not wrong.
• 1:01:44
  Is that wrong?
• 1:01:45
  It is wrong to say to allies that, hey, we're leaving.
• 1:01:53
  We're not doing anything more.
• 1:01:54
  I think some of the stuff that Secretary of Defense Hegseth said about removing the U.S. from Europe was wrong because these are allies we're talking about.
• 1:02:05
  I agree with you on that.
• 1:02:05
  When you don't have allies to come to your support, we'll take this back to the L.A. wildfires and that discussion that happened during the L.A. wildfires.
• 1:02:15
  And Canada helped and Mexico helped.
• 1:02:17
  Why?
• 1:02:18
  Because they're allies to the United States.
• 1:02:20
  And so when you isolate yourself so much that your allies no longer trust you, there will come a time where you're going to need your allies and they're not going to be there.
• 1:02:33
  And so I think it a fine line that everyone needs to kind of traverse here And I don know that some of the people who have been put in their positions understand how to walk that tightrope And they still learning That doesn mean that they not going to learn and that it not going to get better I just don know how it looks right now
• 1:03:00
  I think SecDef, Hexeth, and Vance, the statements regarding pulling out should have been more,
• 1:03:11
  look, we want you to step up your abilities in defending yourselves, and we're going to
• 1:03:17
  reduce our presence, not pull out. We still need to be there. We still need to have a presence.
• 1:03:23
  And you're right. Like I said, I agree with you. We can't turn our back on our allies. That is
• 1:03:27
  just ridiculous. I also think that the way to present it is, listen, we appreciate what you're
• 1:03:36
  doing, Europe, in aligning yourself with the United States, but this does not seem like a reciprocal
• 1:03:44
  alliance. It looks to us and you're going to have to show us how it's different,
• 1:03:50
  that the U.S. is doing everything for you and you're doing nothing for us. And this is a
• 1:03:56
  conversation that's going to come up with Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence.
• 1:04:02
  I know you got a lot to say on that one.
• 1:04:05
  And honestly, I have maybe 20 more minutes. I know we got started late.
• 1:04:10
  I'm going to steer this into our final
• 1:04:12
  because the other thing I wanted to talk about,
• 1:04:16
  you and I are going to connect again.
• 1:04:17
  I'm not worried about...
• 1:04:18
  Yeah, get me back on to talk about national intelligence.
• 1:04:21
  I want to talk about Gaza.
• 1:04:23
  I want to talk about what you just were touching on earlier with Syria.
• 1:04:27
  So my whole thing was I wanted to go over Russia, Ukraine with you,
• 1:04:31
  NATO, we kind of touched on,
• 1:04:32
  and our European relationship there
• 1:04:35
  after the statements made by Hexeth and Vance.
• 1:04:37
  But now the biggest one to me is Trump's statements on owning Gaza, displacing a bunch of people, and then telling the rest of the Middle East to figure it out.
• 1:04:49
  And you have experience there.
• 1:04:51
  So I want to know what your thoughts are.
• 1:04:54
  And I can also say I'm not trying to be shady or elusive or aloof here.
• 1:05:01
  I do know some things that have gone on behind the scenes that I really can't talk about in a public avenue. I can't talk about at all because of national security and things like that.
• 1:05:17
  So I'm not being shady on that.
• 1:05:19
  So if I talk in what seems like not absolutes or in verifiable data, just know that there are things that I can't talk about.
• 1:05:29
  And this is how I know it.
• 1:05:32
  Now I can say.
• 1:05:33
  But that's fine because when it comes to Middle East, there's never been anything that was defined in absolutes anyway.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:05:39
  So it's okay for you to make that statement.
• 1:05:42
  but I know that you can at least give your take on comments,
• 1:05:45
  you know,
• 1:05:46
  basically the history of the area,
• 1:05:48
  what's going on and how,
• 1:05:49
  how that's going to affect and impact the area in general.
• 1:05:52
  Because even when you were talking about Syria,
• 1:05:54
  reality is now the,
• 1:05:57
  the de facto leader literally is a terrorist,
• 1:06:00
  was part of a terrorist organization involved with ISIS,
• 1:06:03
  Al Qaeda.
• 1:06:03
  He has a history.
• 1:06:04
  I did a whole show on this.
• 1:06:05
  I deep dived on this guy and you know,
• 1:06:08
  this better than I,
• 1:06:09
  because you,
• 1:06:09
  you know,
• 1:06:10
  you're involved in certain things where you have to,
• 1:06:11
  monitor. Because I track this guy? Yeah.
• 1:06:16
  Just saying. And so, let's start with Gaza. Let's just start with Trump's statement and Trump's
• 1:06:23
  position on Gaza. What are your thoughts on him saying? Because Netanyahu's face in that
• 1:06:31
  conference when Trump said, we are going to own Gaza and we're going to make it an economic
• 1:06:35
  land of prosperity, et cetera. Netanyahu just kind of looked at him like,
• 1:06:40
  I didn't know this was happening.
• 1:06:44
  Yeah, it goes back to what I was saying.
• 1:06:45
  These are things that happen behind closed doors
• 1:06:47
  in conversations with world leaders, right?
• 1:06:50
  But we're getting to see it on the world stage.
• 1:06:54
  Whether that's good or bad,
• 1:06:55
  we'll find out in 10 years
• 1:06:57
  whether this was a good idea or a bad idea.
• 1:06:59
  This will definitely be a period
• 1:07:01
  to be talked about in history for sure.
• 1:07:03
  I am going to apologize.
• 1:07:06
  So if you're listening to this 100 years from now,
• 1:07:09
  I apologize for your history lessons and how long you have to spend on the U.S. history from 2000 to 2025.
• 1:07:19
  Actually, 2000 to 2035 is what I'm going to say here.
• 1:07:23
  And world history from 2000.
• 1:07:27
  Actually, world history from 1989 to 2035.
• 1:07:31
  I apologize to you.
• 1:07:32
  I have no idea what they're going to label this period, but it's going to be interesting.
• 1:07:35
  It will be.
• 1:07:36
  Well, some scholar will figure it out.
• 1:07:38
  That's not for us to figure out.
• 1:07:40
  But the whole Gaza conversation here.
• 1:07:44
  So these are conversations that would happen behind the scenes.
• 1:07:46
  So Trump and Netanyahu would have this conversation of,
• 1:07:51
  hey, look, I've talked to people in my administration
• 1:07:53
  and we think the U.S. should have control over Gaza.
• 1:07:57
  We've put a lot of money into helping Israel defend against Hamas.
• 1:08:03
  You completely wiped out Gaza.
• 1:08:06
  Um, so since we gave you that money, a reciprocal, we want to have that area because it's oceanfront property. And I think a Trump Tower in Gaza would be really nice and give the US a lot of money. This is all a business deal.
• 1:08:20
  That didn't get to happen behind the scenes
• 1:08:23
  Because it happened in the public
• 1:08:25
  Trump is going off of the top of his head
• 1:08:27
  I don't know for certain
• 1:08:30
  This is how I assess how Trump's mind works
• 1:08:34
  He's getting the president's daily brief every day
• 1:08:37
  He hears certain things come out from the intelligence community
• 1:08:42
  From his staff
• 1:08:43
  On what could these things look like
• 1:08:47
  What should we be doing in Gaza?
• 1:08:50
  Here's one contingency.
• 1:08:53
  Here's a second contingency.
• 1:08:54
  Here's a third contingency.
• 1:08:55
  And he latches on to one of the contingencies, this being the United States take over Gaza.
• 1:09:00
  And he goes, oh, that's very interesting.
• 1:09:03
  Let me think on that.
• 1:09:05
  And then he regurgitates it in the public.
• 1:09:08
  He did, go back to COVID.
• 1:09:09
  He did this for COVID.
• 1:09:10
  If you remember the bleach, using bleach.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah, I do.
• 1:09:15
  The media took it as him saying, Trump wants to inject bleach.
• 1:09:20
  Physically put bleach in your vans
• 1:09:22
  Right, and this is where I go back to Trump
• 1:09:24
  And the media has got to stop doing this
• 1:09:26
  And the reaction has got to stop being
• 1:09:29
  Trump wants to do this
• 1:09:31
  I don't think Trump
• 1:09:32
  I honestly don't think Trump wants the US
• 1:09:35
  Involved in Gaza at all
• 1:09:36
  But he heard it as one of the contingencies
• 1:09:39
  He thought it was interesting
• 1:09:40
  Just like with bleach
• 1:09:42
  He goes, yeah, bleach does kind of kill
• 1:09:44
  These things
• 1:09:47
  I wonder what would happen
• 1:09:48
  if we did that. If we had some kind of method, right?
• 1:09:51
  And I do this on a podcast all the time. And I think people listen to me and go,
• 1:09:55
  whoa, that dude's crazy. What did he just say? Because I'm just having a conversation.
• 1:09:59
  And I go, well, that's an interesting theory. I wonder if we did do that.
• 1:10:05
  Right. Well, here's, without getting off topic, because I want to get a little more into this,
• 1:10:11
  but this is my take on Trump and why he says what he does publicly, especially with world leaders.
• 1:10:17
  and I talked about this with my brother on one of the shows we did previously.
• 1:10:21
  I think Trump, what he does, his tactic is, is, is he likes to, he's stress testing the
• 1:10:27
  situation.
• 1:10:28
  Yes.
• 1:10:28
  Got this.
• 1:10:29
  He's got this long, sharp metal pick and he's tapping the glass and all these different
• 1:10:34
  areas to see where it fractures.
• 1:10:36
  And I think that's exactly what he's doing.
• 1:10:38
  I don't, I don't think he really, I think it's ridiculous for him to make a statement
• 1:10:41
  that we're going to take over Gaza and manage it.
• 1:10:43
  But I also think that maybe he was trying to create a buffer, a de facto buffer to say,
• 1:10:48
  hey, let's separate the kids from fighting.
• 1:10:51
  And I'm not trying to downplay the situation.
• 1:10:52
  I'm just saying, as an example, let's separate them for a bit.
• 1:10:55
  Let's get in the middle of this and make sure that there's some kind of a buffer zone so
• 1:10:58
  that we can get a handle on things.
• 1:11:02
  I think people took what he said way out of context and over the top.
• 1:11:07
  I mean, like you said, a lot of people take what he says literally.
• 1:11:09
  Yeah, but that's the plan that's in place.
• 1:11:13
  Right.
• 1:11:13
  And it's not.
• 1:11:16
  And so I'm going to agree with you on this.
• 1:11:18
  I want to agree with you real quick with things that I know that I can't talk about and how
• 1:11:23
  what he did was very effective.
• 1:11:28
  And the reason I say that is because he said these things.
• 1:11:33
  And I really think, just like you said, don't take him literally on it.
• 1:11:36
  He's trying to stress test it.
• 1:11:38
  He's also trying to get a reaction from certain other avenues.
• 1:11:43
  Those other avenues being Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iran.
• 1:11:50
  I was literally just going to bring them up.
• 1:11:51
  Okay, sorry.
• 1:11:52
  So then we're going to lead into that.
• 1:11:55
  I'll let you steer this.
• 1:11:57
  Go ahead.
• 1:11:57
  Since that statement, what has happened?
• 1:12:01
  Egypt has directed, at the end of this month of February,
• 1:12:05
  They have directed a summit to come to an agreement on what to do with the Palestinian people.
• 1:12:13
  That's what this was all about.
• 1:12:16
  It was about what are you going to do with all these refugees, millions of people?
• 1:12:21
  You can't have them all return.
• 1:12:25
  So Trump, this is another thing he said, I don't think they want to return.
• 1:12:29
  Their house is gone.
• 1:12:30
  I don't think they want to return.
• 1:12:32
  I don't think that's true.
• 1:12:33
  I think if my house was burned down here in DC and I had to leave in a few months later, they go, so what do you want to do?
• 1:12:41
  I go, I want to go back to where I was living because that's where I was living.
• 1:12:46
  I think he was just trying to point out the severity of the situation.
• 1:12:48
  Exactly.
• 1:12:48
  He made that statement.
• 1:12:49
  Yes.
• 1:12:49
  pointing out the severity and the understanding that in the near future, those people cannot come
• 1:12:57
  back. There is just no way unless they want to live in the streets for 10 years while it gets
• 1:13:04
  rebuilt. You can't. So there are going to be refugees and you can make fun of being compassionate
• 1:13:13
  or humanitarian. You have to do something with these people. These are families that were
• 1:13:17
  uprooted because of what Hamas decided to do on October of 2023. They were uprooted from their
• 1:13:24
  homes because Israel had to retaliate. They can't come back right now. So they have to be held
• 1:13:31
  somewhere Well you can put them in a tent city in Gaza and just let Hamas reestablish itself So Trump was saying Egypt needs to deal with it Jordan needs to deal with it Saudi Arabia
• 1:13:46
  And with all of that,
• 1:13:47
  we need to come to an agreement
• 1:13:49
  on what we need to do with Iran.
• 1:13:51
  That's the country that no one wants
• 1:13:52
  to be talking about right now.
• 1:13:54
  I was just going to bring them up to it.
• 1:13:55
  Man, you're way ahead of me.
• 1:13:56
  We kind of really think alike.
• 1:13:57
  We do.
• 1:13:58
  You should see our text messages
• 1:14:00
  because it's pretty much the same thing.
• 1:14:03
  No, keep going.
• 1:14:03
  Go ahead.
• 1:14:04
  just keep going down this road because you're basically just going to reveal or talk about
• 1:14:08
  everything I was going to ask anyway. So just, just go for it. Yeah. So, so who we don't want
• 1:14:11
  to talk about or who people are trying not to talk about, I'm talking about people who are
• 1:14:14
  pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas, trying not to group the two together. Who you're not talking about is
• 1:14:21
  Iran. And, and Iran, Hamas is a proxy of Iran. I say Hamas is Iran. It's just the long arm of
• 1:14:30
  Iran. And Trump is very bullish on the regime, on the IRGC and the Iranian regime. He's very
• 1:14:38
  hawkish on them. And he understands that a nuclear-capable Iran is a threat. It's an
• 1:14:50
  existential threat to not just the Middle East, but certain parts of Europe and Asia. And with that,
• 1:14:56
  It means they're also a threat to the United States because they're a threat to U.S. allies.
• 1:15:02
  And so Iran has to be dealt with.
• 1:15:05
  And then if that's the case and none of these other countries, Egypt, Jordan, want to take in these Palestinian refugees and hold on to them until we can establish something on Gaza, the U.S. is going to have to get involved.
• 1:15:20
  because Iran is a threat to the United States and they are a major threat, the biggest threat
• 1:15:26
  to the number one ally of the United States, and that's Israel. And so that has to be dealt with.
• 1:15:34
  And so that's why I, when I was assessing everything with Trump talking about a US presence,
• 1:15:40
  but that's not going to be a military presence, I pushed back on that because it is going to be a
• 1:15:45
  military presence because Iran is going to take advantage of that.
• 1:15:50
  And they are going to,
• 1:15:51
  something is going to happen where you will have to put,
• 1:15:54
  because if you're going to have U.S.
• 1:15:55
  people in Gaza,
• 1:15:58
  on the beaches of Gaza,
• 1:16:01
  Iran is going to attack it.
• 1:16:03
  And then the U.S.
• 1:16:04
  military is going to have to protect its people.
• 1:16:07
  That means putting troops on the ground in Gaza.
• 1:16:09
  So that was very cautious about that.
• 1:16:11
  but these sound clips or these sound bites that Trump says doesn't,
• 1:16:19
  it doesn't allow for this full nuance to be understood.
• 1:16:23
  And then the media jumps and puts a headline out like U.S. troops in Gaza.
• 1:16:28
  Yeah, probably, but that's not what he said.
• 1:16:31
  He didn't say he's going to put U.S. troops.
• 1:16:33
  Is that what it's going to lead to?
• 1:16:35
  Maybe.
• 1:16:36
  It's a probability, but that's not what he said.
• 1:16:39
  So that's another aspect we have to get away from is headlines that don't say what actually is occurring in the world.
• 1:16:50
  And we got to get away from people just only reading the damn headline and taking steps out of context.
• 1:16:54
  Yeah.
• 1:16:55
  And Iran, that's very important because they will take advantage of the situation.
• 1:17:00
  And then outside of that, you also have Syria, which is unstable.
• 1:17:03
  As much as they're trying to make it look like, hey, we're trying to be the good guys.
• 1:17:07
  I've renounced my evil ways, whatever.
• 1:17:12
  We got to keep an eye on that.
• 1:17:14
  We got to keep an eye on that.
• 1:17:16
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:17:17
  This is part of a conversation that I had on the podcast for this most recent episode
• 1:17:23
  that we released of This Week Explained.
• 1:17:25
  It was this trust issue.
• 1:17:26
  So the biggest issue between Israel and Hamas is trust.
• 1:17:30
  so when you say well okay why does why is israel not removing themselves from the west bank well
• 1:17:38
  because they don't trust hamas to not reinforce their defensive posture make it into an offensive
• 1:17:45
  posture and then go across israel's borders again in another october 2023 effort to kidnap people
• 1:17:52
  and then you go so then why is hamas reacting in the way that they do because they see an israeli
• 1:18:00
  presence, not in places that they're at, but along those buffer zones that were built up.
• 1:18:06
  And it goes, well, it's because Hamas doesn't trust Israel not to fire rockets into their
• 1:18:11
  locations, which inevitably, because Hamas uses human shields, kills civilians. So there's a trust
• 1:18:18
  issue. How do you get back from that trust issue? Go listen to that episode because Tiana actually
• 1:18:25
  makes a fabulous analogy for it. And I can't think of it right now and I wouldn't do it justice.
• 1:18:31
  So I don't want to paraphrase it right now, but it is about trust and how long you can accept
• 1:18:38
  not trusting someone, but still giving them the opportunity to do the things that they're doing.
• 1:18:47
  She makes a very good point. Go check that out.
• 1:18:50
  There's a trust issue, but we also can't ignore the patterns of behavior
• 1:18:53
  over time.
• 1:18:55
  Absolutely.
• 1:18:56
  And every time there has been an opportunity
• 1:18:58
  to gain trust,
• 1:19:00
  you know,
• 1:19:00
  someone goes out of their way
• 1:19:02
  to screw it all up again,
• 1:19:04
  unfortunately.
• 1:19:04
  So this goes back to,
• 1:19:06
  and we go,
• 1:19:07
  well, let's go back to give it
• 1:19:08
  to whose land this is.
• 1:19:11
  And people go,
• 1:19:12
  it's the Palestinian.
• 1:19:13
  Yeah, I know.
• 1:19:14
  I don't have much time.
• 1:19:15
  No, I know.
• 1:19:16
  Neither do I.
• 1:19:17
  I wanted to say it to this,
• 1:19:18
  to this point,
• 1:19:19
  and I was listening to,
• 1:19:21
  I think this was the 70s.
• 1:19:22
  It was the Israeli prime minister at the time who was talking about Palestinians.
• 1:19:30
  And they were told, they said, or they were asked by a journalist, so what about the Palestinian plight?
• 1:19:35
  Don't you understand the Palestinian plight?
• 1:19:37
  And then she said, but what are you talking about Palestinian?
• 1:19:43
  Because we don't even know what Palestinian is.
• 1:19:46
  Is it what are the borders now with Palestine?
• 1:19:49
  Because that's not what the initial borders were set.
• 1:19:52
  It was actually set further east into what was called Transjordan.
• 1:19:56
  Yes.
• 1:19:57
  And now it's Jordan.
• 1:19:58
  That was Palestinian land, Syria.
• 1:20:00
  So do we give the Palestinians that land?
• 1:20:03
  Jordan wouldn't accept that.
• 1:20:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:05
  And that's why I said on one of the episodes I did about this situation,
• 1:20:09
  I kind of went down a little historic, well, condensed historical rabbit hole.
• 1:20:14
  It's like a 30-hour history.
• 1:20:16
  But the reality is, that's why when Trump made the statement about Gaza, right away you have Jordan going, no, screw that.
• 1:20:24
  We're not going to take these people.
• 1:20:25
  I'm like, but originally they were your people.
• 1:20:27
  Yep.
• 1:20:29
  They were a part of it.
• 1:20:31
  Sorry, I just had to throw that in there.
• 1:20:33
  No, it's absolutely correct because that should be what people are arguing.
• 1:20:37
  You know, if you were on the side of Israeli sovereignty, and I think everybody should be, we should all be on the side of sovereign land, that if you were talking about sovereign borders, and then you go, we'll give the Palestinians all of Palestine because that was theirs historically.
• 1:20:59
  No, in fact, it wasn't.
• 1:21:01
  They should actually take over Jordan and Syria and east of the river.
• 1:21:09
  And no one wants to have that conversation because it just, it goes into too much nuance.
• 1:21:15
  And I understand that.
• 1:21:17
  We can't, we very much can't comprehend it.
• 1:21:19
  It's not for us as common people.
• 1:21:22
  And I put myself in that as a common person to understand all of this stuff.
• 1:21:27
  and so where do you put the the Palestinian people there was a two-state solution that was put up in
• 1:21:34
  the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and there was a country that agreed to the two-state solution
• 1:21:40
  Israel there were multiple countries who didn't agree with the two-state solution
• 1:21:46
  Egypt Palestine and Jordan why they knew Egypt and Jordan especially knew
• 1:21:55
  If you remove Israel
• 1:21:58
  From this area
• 1:22:01
  And you put
• 1:22:02
  All of this as Palestine
• 1:22:04
  The country will collapse
• 1:22:06
  And Egypt and Jordan are going to have to deal with that
• 1:22:09
  And so it's going to cross over
• 1:22:11
  To their borders
• 1:22:12
  And so they didn't agree
• 1:22:14
  To a two state solution
• 1:22:16
  The other aspect to it is
• 1:22:18
  They don't trust the Jews
• 1:22:19
  And I want to say that not Israel
• 1:22:21
  They don't trust the Jews
• 1:22:23
  This is someone who is an Arab linguist. I have done Islamic culture, Islamic history. I am very astute into their thinking. The Jews are evil. That is the thinking.
• 1:22:38
  So a lot of times I have a conversation about Israel and I say the Jews and it's because they don't like the Jews and people will push back and say, no, it's Israel. They don't like Israel. Those aren't really Jews. And I go, no, they are the Jews. And whenever Egypt talks about the state of Israel, there's very famous, not famously, but I remember this vividly in 2006 or 2007, there was an earthquake that happened in Egypt and we're watching it through Arab media because I'm going through the Arabic course.
• 1:23:08
  and the Egyptian media is saying,
• 1:23:12
  not that Israel caused this earthquake,
• 1:23:17
  but that all the Jews across the world,
• 1:23:19
  this is mainstream Egyptian media,
• 1:23:21
  all the Jews across the world decided to jump at the same time
• 1:23:25
  and land, and it caused an earthquake in Egypt.
• 1:23:30
  That's the amount of distrust that they have for a singular religion.
• 1:23:36
  I want to point something out about that two-state solution.
• 1:23:38
  It was actually thrown out through discuss as far back as 1914, 1916, but then actually
• 1:23:45
  had an official statement of a two-state solution in 1920 or so, and then just kept going from
• 1:23:50
  there all the way into the 2000s, which was in the 2000s was when it was talking about
• 1:23:55
  the most almost year after year after year up until 2023.
• 1:24:00
  And here we are.
• 1:24:00
  And you're right.
• 1:24:01
  I don't know what the solution is there.
• 1:24:03
  I don't think any major world leader is ever going to have a solution for that area.
• 1:24:06
  I think the people are just going to have to realize that they have to share
• 1:24:10
  that area, that land and come up with a way to where each,
• 1:24:14
  each people can,
• 1:24:16
  can autonomously live according to their cultures and beliefs.
• 1:24:20
  And then maybe just figure out a way to come together when it comes to you know trade you know trading goods And I not sure why we can never get there I mean you do you understand because you did a deep dive history and you
• 1:24:32
  you're educated in that, but I think it's ridiculous.
• 1:24:37
  And I, and I hate that we keep getting dragged into it.
• 1:24:40
  Although there are times that we put ourselves in there and I'm not sure why
• 1:24:43
  we needed to, but it's, I just think it's sad for those people.
• 1:24:48
  You know, you can't throw a blanket statement on Palestinians.
• 1:24:52
  It's lost in it.
• 1:24:53
  Yeah.
• 1:24:53
  You can't.
• 1:24:54
  This is people.
• 1:24:56
  Hamas, they are a terrorist organization.
• 1:24:59
  I'm not going to, we're not going to throw that out.
• 1:25:02
  Hamas is a terrorist organization.
• 1:25:03
  They are evil.
• 1:25:04
  They use the Palestinian people to hide and cover themselves, right?
• 1:25:09
  And make sure that they're not, it's hard to decipher who they are, basically, because
• 1:25:13
  they're doing it under the guise of supporting the Palestinian people, basically.
• 1:25:17
  You just have to be a cruel person to see a baby crying in Gaza and go, yeah, I don't give a shit. No, my heart goes out to that family.
• 1:25:29
  You can't be human if that's who you are.
• 1:25:30
  It was a tough situation. Now, I can disagree with the solutions for that situation, or I can disagree with saying that it was wrong for Israel to defend itself. I do think it was right for Israel to defend itself. But to see a mother and child out in the open crying and suffering, and you're just going to say, I don't give a shit, that's inhumane to me.
• 1:25:57
  I agree. So that's not what we're saying at all. We have to come to a solution that is good for all people. And the problem is that's not how society works.
• 1:26:09
  Well, let's start wrapping up. But before we do, have you observed anything, anything out of the White House in terms of a statement or some kind of plan involving Gaza in that area? Or is it still kind of Trump made the statement and people are still like, well, wait, what do we do?
• 1:26:25
  So I'll go back to things that I can't talk about publicly. Those statements from the White House have made other countries react to it in a way that's going to be positive in the future. That's all I'll say on that.
• 1:26:39
  Okay. Fair enough.
• 1:26:41
  I don't. So I'm going to say right now, my assessment is it is unlikely the U.S. is going to be involved with people on the ground in Gaza because of the pressure that's being put on right now by the Trump administration for other countries to do something about it.
• 1:26:59
  As it should be, in my opinion.
• 1:27:00
  Yeah.
• 1:27:00
  All right. Well, I think we're at the end of our time for you. And thanks for all the info and assessment.
• 1:27:09
  I like having you on because you're able to set things straight and give informed answers, not just clickbait headlines just to get attention.
• 1:27:20
  I think that's my problem sometimes.
• 1:27:22
  I've had this debate with myself about why my morals and ethics are so important to me that I can't just go on Twitter and be like a Jack Posabeck or whatever that just says ridiculous stuff.
• 1:27:36
  just because you don't need people to like it.
• 1:27:40
  You just need people to engage with it.
• 1:27:42
  That's not what I'm here for.
• 1:27:43
  And honestly, if you don't like what I'm saying,
• 1:27:46
  please engage with me and tell me where I'm wrong.
• 1:27:49
  George knows this.
• 1:27:50
  I'm open to being wrong.
• 1:27:52
  If you're going to tell me I'm wrong
• 1:27:53
  and show me where I'm wrong,
• 1:27:54
  I'm going to admit to being wrong,
• 1:27:56
  unlike some other people
• 1:27:57
  that we've had on our podcasts before.
• 1:28:01
  I hear you, but listen,
• 1:28:02
  here's what I want people to take away from this.
• 1:28:05
  and you've been on here three times on this show,
• 1:28:07
  and the reality is this.
• 1:28:08
  You're talking from a perspective of someone
• 1:28:10
  who's still in the intelligence community.
• 1:28:11
  So you're getting information that,
• 1:28:13
  while you can't divulge everything
• 1:28:15
  because there's ongoing investigations
• 1:28:18
  or missions, et cetera,
• 1:28:20
  you are coming from a place of having firsthand knowledge.
• 1:28:24
  And I think that's important for people to realize.
• 1:28:26
  It's like, I'm not having you here
• 1:28:28
  just because you're some popular guy
• 1:28:29
  or some guy on the news or whatever.
• 1:28:31
  It's because you actually have insight
• 1:28:34
  on what's really happening.
• 1:28:35
  And you tend to give it to people objectively, which is a hard thing to find these days.
• 1:28:40
  Everybody has some kind of objective when it comes to delivering information.
• 1:28:45
  And you tend to try to stay in the middle of all that, which is exactly the way it should be.
• 1:28:50
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:28:51
  That's what I always say.
• 1:28:52
  The reason I listen to two extremes is because I do feel that the truth is somewhere in the middle.
• 1:28:59
  and so I want to know what those extremes are saying
• 1:29:02
  so that I can actually understand
• 1:29:03
  what's legitimately happening in the world.
• 1:29:06
  And I think everyone should do that.
• 1:29:08
  If you're a conservative and say,
• 1:29:09
  I don't watch MSNBC because I think they're stupid,
• 1:29:12
  I would say you're wrong.
• 1:29:13
  You should listen to it so that you know their feelings
• 1:29:16
  about things that you feel
• 1:29:19
  or the way that's going on in the world.
• 1:29:22
  It, first of all, helps you strengthen your own arguments
• 1:29:26
  for what your worldview and what you believe
• 1:29:28
  is truly going on.
• 1:29:30
  But then it also helps you appreciate
• 1:29:32
  how others feel about your beliefs
• 1:29:36
  and your worldview.
• 1:29:38
  And so then you can have
• 1:29:40
  legitimate conversations with them.
• 1:29:41
  And those legitimate conversations say,
• 1:29:43
  I understand where you're coming from
• 1:29:45
  because I've heard it,
• 1:29:47
  but here is why I think it's different.
• 1:29:50
  And I think we need to get back
• 1:29:51
  to having those type of discussions
• 1:29:53
  in this world.
• 1:29:54
  Two things I'll say on that.
• 1:29:56
  One, you're right,
• 1:29:57
  because I do digest unwillingly sometimes,
• 1:30:00
  but I make myself listen to Pod Save America almost a while.
• 1:30:04
  And two, I think people just need to have these conversations.
• 1:30:09
  Like when you're at the bar, you're at a pub, whatever, man,
• 1:30:11
  don't be afraid to just talk.
• 1:30:12
  I had this experience recently with someone who was basically a hardcore leftist,
• 1:30:17
  but he was the bartender.
• 1:30:18
  By the time we were done discussing,
• 1:30:20
  hey, look, I stayed back, held back,
• 1:30:23
  just because I wanted to know and understand
• 1:30:25
  why do you think the way you do
• 1:30:27
  and where you're coming from.
• 1:30:28
  And people need to be able to do more of that.
• 1:30:31
  And whether you disagree with someone,
• 1:30:33
  it doesn't matter.
• 1:30:34
  You still have to understand why they got there.
• 1:30:36
  You still have to have an idea
• 1:30:38
  of why they feel the way they do
• 1:30:39
  so that you can make a better argument
• 1:30:41
  or be understanding.
• 1:30:42
  Just be understanding.
• 1:30:43
  Yeah, I agree with that.
• 1:30:45
  That was the first thing I was going to say
• 1:30:48
  after you were talking about
• 1:30:50
  when you're at a bar or at a pub
• 1:30:51
  and have a conversation with people.
• 1:30:53
  Come at it.
• 1:30:54
  Don't be disingenuous about it.
• 1:30:57
  Meaning, don't identify that person's bias
• 1:31:01
  and then go, I'm only going to interject myself
• 1:31:04
  to call them out where I believe that they're wrong.
• 1:31:07
  I think that's the wrong approach.
• 1:31:08
  Come at it from the perspective of,
• 1:31:11
  I'm going to engage with this person
• 1:31:12
  because I want to hear their point of view.
• 1:31:14
  And then I want to let them know what my point of view is
• 1:31:18
  and have a conversation about it.
• 1:31:21
  Yeah, that or just walk away with the knowledge.
• 1:31:24
  just walk away with the knowledge.
• 1:31:26
  All right.
• 1:31:27
  Well,
• 1:31:27
  you want to wrap it up?
• 1:31:29
  Yeah,
• 1:31:29
  man.
• 1:31:29
  Yeah.
• 1:31:30
  You got like a minute left,
• 1:31:32
  but yeah,
• 1:31:33
  it's okay.
• 1:31:33
  We're good.
• 1:31:33
  We're good.
• 1:31:35
  Let's just end the show.
• 1:31:36
  Thanks for coming on,
• 1:31:36
  man.
• 1:31:37
  And you and I will connect after this anyway.
• 1:31:40
  I'm sure.
• 1:31:41
  Obviously.
• 1:31:41
  There's just way too much going on in the world,
• 1:31:43
  but thanks for giving us all the info and giving,
• 1:31:46
  giving your take on things and,
• 1:31:48
  and kind of just clarifying all of this,
• 1:31:50
  because again,
• 1:31:50
  it's really hard to,
• 1:31:51
  to,
• 1:31:52
  to basically cut out the noise
• 1:31:55
  of everything that's going on.
• 1:31:56
  It really is.
• 1:31:57
  So appreciate it.
• 1:31:59
  And just, I mean, listen, everybody,
• 1:32:01
  listen to This Week Explain, please.
• 1:32:04
  It's good stuff, great information.
• 1:32:06
  You have to listen to it.
• 1:32:07
  If you like what I do,
• 1:32:09
  you're going to like what Kervin does better.
• 1:32:10
  I guarantee it.
• 1:32:11
  I don't know about that,
• 1:32:13
  but so what I want to say on that is
• 1:32:14
  if you listen to This Week Explain,
• 1:32:16
  listen to World of Blaze.
• 1:32:18
  And if you listen to World of Blaze,
• 1:32:19
  listen to This Week Explain.
• 1:32:20
  Oh, geez, here we go.
• 1:32:21
  Because we differ.
• 1:32:23
  Maybe you don't hear it in this podcast,
• 1:32:25
  but listen to the first one that I did with George here.
• 1:32:29
  And he pushed back on a few things that I was saying.
• 1:32:32
  And we actually came to an understanding of,
• 1:32:36
  I don't know if we agree with the different perspectives,
• 1:32:39
  but we can agree that something's wrong.
• 1:32:43
  And we just don't agree with the solution.
• 1:32:45
  Those are the conversations to have.
• 1:32:48
  And so listen to both.
• 1:32:50
  put them both on your rotation. For me, it's an hour a week. That's all I'm asking. One hour a
• 1:32:56
  week. I believe you can do up to three or four hours at a time. At times, yeah.
• 1:33:03
  And one day when I have a full 24 hours to just do nothing, I want to come on and we can see how
• 1:33:10
  long we can talk for. But... Oh, wow.
• 1:33:14
  I'm not talking about two hours a day every day.
• 1:33:19
  I think at that point, I'm either going to have to fly you here or whatever, and we're just going to have to throw a barbecue, turn on the record button, have a few beers, and just see how it comes out.
• 1:33:28
  Yeah, I absolutely think that that's what we should be doing.
• 1:33:33
  I just want to, again, thank you for inviting me on, letting me do this.
• 1:33:38
  And I say a lot of things, and I ramble a lot.
• 1:33:41
  Anybody who gets to know me knows that's my personality because I'm trying to not lose the information that I have.
• 1:33:47
  and so I want to get it out there
• 1:33:49
  and I love people that push back
• 1:33:52
  on what I'm thinking.
• 1:33:53
  It gives me a chance to stop
• 1:33:54
  like Jordan Peterson would say,
• 1:33:56
  stop,
• 1:33:57
  think about the response
• 1:33:58
  and then respond to it.
• 1:34:02
  I try to do that a lot more
• 1:34:03
  in my day-to-day engagements
• 1:34:05
  with people.
• 1:34:07
  So thanks again.
• 1:34:09
  Honestly, from the bottom of my heart,
• 1:34:10
  thank you for having me.
• 1:34:11
  Come on, you know you're always welcome.
• 1:34:13
  You just need to reach out too
• 1:34:14
  if you wanted to have a talk.
• 1:34:15
  Absolutely.
• 1:34:15
  I have a tough time doing that as well.
• 1:34:17
  No, just, you got my number.
• 1:34:19
  Just do it.
• 1:34:20
  All right, man, let me let you go.
• 1:34:21
  That way you can get on with your day.
• 1:34:23
  And again, thanks again.
• 1:34:26
  Sounds good.
• 1:34:27
  We'll do this again.
• 1:34:28
  As always, thank you for listening.
• 1:34:29
  And don't forget to like, subscribe, and share the show with others.
• 1:34:33
  Turn on notifications and please visit us online at www.worldablazepodcast.com.
• 1:34:42
  And please follow me on X at Fonts Ablaze.
• 1:34:47
  It's a one-way gate to hell