Part Of The Problem - Scott Horton: Provoked

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave is joined by Scott Horton to discuss his new book Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine including his experience with writing this book, the war with Russia and Ukraine, the terror wars, and more.https://www.scotthortonshow.com/Support Our Sponsors:Better Help - https://Betterhelp.com/problem for 10% off your first monthEntera Skincare - https://www.enteraskincare.com/ Use promo code problem for 10% OffMonetary Metals - https://bit.ly/4eoich3YoKratom - https://yokratom.com/Part Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!Get your tickets to Porch Tour Herehttps://porchtour.comFind Run Your Mouth here:YouTube - http://youtube.com/@RunYourMouthiTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-your-mouth-podcast/id1211469807Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4ka50RAKTxFTxbtyPP8AHmFollow the show on social media:X:http://x.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://x.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefire#libertarianSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is YoCradom. YoCradom.com, longtime sponsors of the part of the Problem podcast. This is for adults over the age of 21 who are already enjoying kratom. If you don't use kratom, I'm not telling you to go try it, but if you love kratom, you got to get it at YoCradom.com. It's all lab tested, it's delivered right to your door and it's the best price you're going to find anywhere. $60 for a kilo, which by the way has been the price since they've been advertising on this show. It's been many years now of them being a sponsor and I think it is the only price that has not raised in the world over the last few years.

It's still just $60 for a kilo at YoCradom.com. All right, let's start today's show. What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am very excited for this episode. Thrilled to be joined by the great Scott Horton This is the this is the one we've talked about this a bunch of times Over the last few years that as soon as the books out we're gonna have to do You know an episode talking all about it and the book is out. It is right here I got a copy in my hand. I have the advanced copy still in my hand, but a provoked page numbers for you Smith

Well, that's well I got I have a few more coming and a few more that I've sent out to, uh, to other people. So I'm doing the best I can to, uh, uh, get this book in as many people's hands as possible because it really is. It's, it's a masterpiece, dude. Congratulations. I mean, it really is, you know, for people, um, who, who I've read Scott's other books. It is as much as enough already is like just the best book on the terror wars, provoked is just the absolute best book on the new Cold War and the history of post,

after the collapse of the Soviet Union and everything that led up to the disastrous war that's going on in Ukraine right now. I'll ask, I'll start this way. Me and you are close friends. We talk on the phone quite a bit. Every time I've talked to you over the last few years, I mean, I always just reflexively say,

hey, what are you up to when we start a conversation? And every single time the answer has been working on the book, working on the book. What's it like before we get into the substance of it? But just to, obviously, Fools Errand and Enough Already were big projects, but I mean, this one really does dwarf it in terms of the work that you put into it,

in terms of the size of the book. How does it feel to be done with this thing? How do you feel looking back on it and, you know, just producing something, uh, uh, with that had this much information in it. What was the experience like? Yeah, well, it's nice to be done with it. I mean, quite frankly, I'm not a writer. I'm a radio host. I'm not really smart enough to write well. Like if you compare

what I do to say Justin Ramimondo, for example, he was my mentor basically at antiwar.com and closest analog to what I'm doing, I guess. He could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs telling you stuff that he thinks and you should also think or whatever. Eh, I really just have a stack of 8,000 note cards for you that I tried my very best to Put in order for you to sort of tell the story just through facts And that was actually my job working for Justin was filling his articles with links. So that's my thing

It's just the information guy. So But it's but that also means it's a miserable task. I'm not a gifted writer at all And it's a terrible chore, but I guess I feel like I have a bit of a comparative advantage because I'm a radio host, frankly, because I've been doing this for so long in a row and explaining this stuff on the radio for so long in a row that just like in the case of Eastern Europe, or sorry, just like in the case of the Middle East, it's the same with Eastern Europe where I think I do have a comparative advantage in being able to tell the whole story going back, at least to a certain amount of time, and really filling

in the gaps for you. There's a lot of stuff that you know about this already. I tell you that George Bush sponsored the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 03. You may well know all about that, but I'm just going to put that in context with a lot of other stuff for you too. And also give you a version of that story that you can really stand on. I hope. And so the same kind of thing I tried to do with enough already, right, is I guess when

I hear other people tell the story, I'm always like, yeah, but the key to the whole thing is the Shiite uprising of 1991 that Bush encouraged and then betrayed. But why? It was because Iran was coming to lead the thing. And so then that was the status quo that held and that was why the Bill Clinton bomb, the thing that caused the terror attack. So it's a huge part of the story. If you don't talk about the Shiite uprising, you're kind of missing the whole kind of key to the 1990s and the advent of the terror war, for example. Right. So the same kind

of thing here where I'm just trying to tell the story and not leave anything out. And so I did get a little bit carried away. Maybe the book is it's about a half a million words. but But yeah, I try to you know If there's a color-coded revolution out there and you want to know about it, I have a section on there for you You sure do Well, it's you know, so me and you of course have as people who listen to the show know well, we've been we've been doing podcasts together for many years and podcast together for many years. And we I mean, I know, I remember we met the first time we met I think was in 2016 or 2017. But we had been doing podcasts together for a couple

years before that. So around 2014 2015, me and you started like, you know, became friends and started doing regular shows together. And this would be this topic would be something that you wanted to talk about a lot. Like this is well before the, you know, the war in Ukraine. And there's right around the time of the of the Maidan revolution. But this would always be, you know, you would go through this. In fact, I remember where was it at a I think it was at a Ron Paul event, when the that you were giving a speech about this topic, years ago, maybe in 2019, or something like that. Yeah, that's right. Huh?

just kind of blew this amazing opportunity with the fall of the Soviet Union. So this has kind of been like something that you had researched a lot and really cared about well before the war took off. So I'm sure it must have been, you know, frustrating for you as it was for me, as when the war first starts, it's like all of this history is just supposed to be buried. We're not even supposed to discuss any of it, let alone put this into context. And of course, obviously, your title, provoked is, you know, refuting the propaganda, which was it was wild to see when the war first started that everybody, everyone used the term unprovoked like this, like some type of religious dogma or

something like that. Like that is the only way you are allowed. That has to be the starting point that we agree that absolutely nothing happened, which by the way is just is just absurd. I mean, you know what that reminds me of? The first time I remember that in my life was white separatist Randy Weaver. You could never just say Randy. Right. Right. For all I know, the guy's middle name was Wayne, like a serial killer, but you're not allowed to just call the guy Mr. Weaver or the, the accused alleged criminal. No, he has to be white separatist Randy Weaver,

which just means he lived in the woods with his wife and his kids. But meanwhile, actually, his job was he worked as a mechanic at the garage in town. His boss was a black guy. They got along just fine. He was no Nazi. He just lived in Idaho. But you're supposed to hate him. You have to hate him.

White separatist Randy Weaver. And so, and then of course, they've done that to a million things since then. But it really is something, isn't it, to see how they can do that. Just stick an adjective on the front of an actual like noun or a verb that you want to talk about. You have to use their weird little adjective that they coined first. And to me, I swear to God, don't ever take me out of context that I used this word in the way that the people use the word. I mean, in a very specific way, it offends my sense of like reason. You know what I mean?

I don't like, I don't like when people try to manipulate me. I kind of rebel right against it You call him white separatist Randy Weaver. It must be because you murdered his son and his wife, huh? Oh, I get it. You guys are murderers and he's innocent. Oh, I see Yeah well And by the way for people who don't know a lot about the story which we're not gonna Dive into right now cuz Scott will talk to us for three hours about I could do it then yes that Ruby Ridge but yeah no he totally was not a white separatist too by the way I think he like the the closest they had is that he knew some people who were and like they wanted him to saw off a shotgun

and he refused to or something like that like it's to anyway whatever he might have subscribed to some of those beliefs but he's certainly never acted negatively toward any other people or any kind of thing the whole thing was they tried to frame him just so they could extort him into being an informant against somebody else. Right? They are the criminals. Full story. That's the one with with as it relates to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the thing that I always found so funny, like the example that I used not sure if you can explain the thing that I

always found so funny like the example that I used to use when I was mocking it was saying like, uh, it's almost like if uh, if a dog bit like a neighborhood kid or something. And you came out and you were like, Hey, what happened? The

dog? The dog just bit this kid and all of the kids were like, uh, I'll tell you what happened. We weren't throwing rocks at the dog. And then this dog just bit this kid, and I just want to let you know that we weren't throwing rocks at the dog and then this dog just bit this kid and I just want to let you know that we weren't throwing rocks at him and all the dogs that we were not throwing rocks at this dog and then he just bit any right after we weren't throwing rocks at him and you kind of be like, why do you keep saying that part? I'm starting to think maybe you were throwing rocks at this dog and that's why he bit you and it is just even like what if Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked? Why do you need to keep saying unprovoked?

Like then wouldn't it just be a given? Why do you have to? What is every single public official and every person in the corporate media, every single time they talk about this conflict, have to use this word? And then it's like, if you study, if you study the history of it at all,

it turns out this whole goddamn thing is just provocation after provocation, undeniably. Even look, even if you support the policy, you'd still have to admit, well, yeah, it's clearly a provocation. I mean, this is clearly provoking the Russians. I mean, even if you're for native expansion, let's say in the 90s or where or up to today, you'd still have to admit that like, yeah, Shore don't like this and they have feelings about it

But again, it's one of the things that's been really eye-opening to me Over the last few years has just been how much? There isn't a counter argument like I don't I don't know if I could recall any other conflict in my lifetime where there actually isn't a counter to any of this. There's all you'll get is NAFO retards on Twitter saying you're a Putin propagandist or something or that dummy who you were on Piers Morgan with the other day who goes when you say that the US overthrew the government in Ukraine, that means you don't believe it's possible to have democratic revolutions, which, as I said to you on the phone, separate conversation, I don't think it is. But regardless of that,

it's like the logic of it would be like if you were to say that woman was murdered, and he goes, Oh, so I guess you just don't believe people die of natural causes. You're right. What are you talking like what and so there is no counter. Nobody really is nobody out there is going to be like, I've found flaws in Scott Horton's book. He's got this wrong and this wrong and this wrong. Half the thing is freaking footnotes. So I don't know how they're going to. But it does just seem that there is no, there is no coherent argument that Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked into this invasion.

And it's in all of their own words. I'm afraid that's true. And look, I try my best to steal me on the thing. You know, I have no need to be sensational here because I'm already right anyway. So, you know, I give the other guy's side of the story, not meaning the Russians, by mean the American Warhawks side of the story as much as I can. I link directly to their arguments. I show, look, this is what the Daily Beast would have you believe. You can follow the link. And in the Kindle version, there are links to all, well, there's 7,800 citations.

Some of them are books, but anything that is online will have a hot link in it. And we're going to have a PDF file very soon at scothorton.org slash provoked or provokedbook.com will forge you over there. And it's gonna be the PDF file of all 6,600 something footnotes with all active links for you there for everybody to check the work. Cause that I show my work the whole time. And at the bottom of the page where you can double check,

come on, that can't be true. And then you look and go, oh, wrote that in his diary. Huh? Okay. Well, you know, or state department document or whatever the quotes from. So yeah. And look, I think, pardon me if I'm being redundant, I think I may have said this to you on your show last time, but it is true. I promise I did not go searching Google for Clinton and Bush

and Obama era officials using the word provoke when it comes to talking about Russia. Okay. I did not do that. I did a hell of a lot of research and what happened was it just came up these quotations come up over and over and over again. That's their word for it. Man, we better be careful. We don't provoke the Russians with this. Well, you know that's going to provoke them. And it just comes up

over and over and over. That's what they all say because that's what they were doing. And that was what they knew they were doing. And they said over and over again, yeah, but what are they going to do about it? And that kind of crap because they, they had no argument even against themselves. You know, Fiona Hill, who I pick on, she's one of many characters that I pick on mercilessly throughout the book for her horrible sins. Rightfully so. Yeah. And she will say, Oh, you've been brainwashed by Russia propaganda in the same New York Times article, where she again, for the 10th time, boasts that she told W. Bush on behalf of the entire intelligence community and all of the

Russia experts on the national security council, don't offer the membership action plan to Ukraine and Georgia in Budapest in April 2008 You are going to cause a conflict there will invade they will destroy these countries before you let them Before they let you bring them into NATO. That was what the CIA told Bush That was what the National Intelligence Council told Bush. That was what Fiona Hill told Bush now if you quote Fiona Hill She'll tell you you're the victim of a Psy-op. No, that's just the reality of it. And why did Bush do it?

Now, I quoted in the book. Come on, I'm sorry to say this. I hate to say this to you, Dave. I hate to, but I, mm. It was legacy building for W. Bush, right? Simple, stupid public choice theory. Had nothing to do with America's national interest. If we're going to go with America's national interest, we'd have to listen to Angela Merkel

saying this is a bridge too far. Don't do it. Because I love you. Listen to me, was what she said. Now, this was because W. Bush's legacy was supposed to be Iraq War II. Oops. Yeah, it turned out he'd bought that one to get Baghdad to Tehran and Mosul

to Osama bin Laden and company. So yeah, that didn't really work out that well, but I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll offer membership action plans to Ukraine and Georgia and start to bring them into NATO. And that'll be Bush's legacy for going out in his last year in 2008. And of course, he's the same W. Bush that did Iraq War II, the same W. Bush that tore

up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the same W. Bush who didn't have the slightest idea what he was doing, but was always malevolent in his intentions and certainly in his behavior. And so, of course course it was a wreck, just as all of his best advisors told him. And we talk about the yet means yet memo, that was at the same time. Fiona Hill was talking about that same consensus. This was William Burns, who's our current CIA director

under Biden, who's a career foreign service guy from the state department. He's not a spy or a military guy. He's a diplomat. He was stationed in the embassy over there since the 90s off and on and was the ambassador to Russia during W. Bush. And he told Condoleezza Rice, man, don't do this. Please don't do this. Anyone can read it at WikiLeaks. Nyet means nyet. And there are also, and I have many more quotes in the book from his memoirs as well and whatever, I guess, other articles and interviews. I guess, no, mostly it would be his memoirs and then he's quoting his own emails in his memoirs and things like this.

Or he says, Madam Secretary, look, if you're not already with me, you could just stop reading right now. That's what he says in a private email to her. You might as well just stop reading right now because essentially, like, I don't know what to do with you. I'm telling you, this is a bad idea. Don't do it and Um and so, you know, I don't know what one more here's the CIA says there's a guy that writes for Yahoo news Zack oh, oh

Oh, it's right on the tip of my tongue But instead I thought of that other horrible guy from Vox.com's name instead. And it screwed me. Zach. I'm sorry. But Zach at Yahoo News and he he Tango, that's going to bother me. He quotes the CIA guy. He had this great investigative series at the start of the war. And I mean, he quotes the CIA guys, Dave, He had this great investigative series at the start of the war.

He quotes the CIA guys, Dave, who were in charge of bringing in the weapons in the Obama and Trump years. They say to him, man, we tried to tell him, you should stop doing this. We're not deterring Russia. We're provoking them. We're giving Ukraine enough weapons that the Russians see it now as a threat that they better do something about rather than a threat that they better not mess with. And he says, but the politicians, they don't listen.

The bosses, they don't listen. They only see one shipment at a time. They don't understand that from the Russian point of view, this is cumulative. That's the CIA talking on the eve of war, Dave. That's the guys in charge of bringing in the weapons saying they try to tell their bosses to tell the elected officials, this is stupid, man. We should stop doing this. So therefore that's it.

I'm right. Hell, even Robert Kagan admits that I'm right because I am. And you can call that confirmation bias, but no, it's just the one time that Robert Kagan was right about something when he says Horton is right about everything. That's it. All right, guys. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is monetary metals. I love this company. They are revolutionizing the precious metal space. They offer something different than anybody else in the game.

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in the western United States click the link in the episode description or go to monetary dash metals comm for more information on how to participate monetary dash metals comm all right let's get back into the show. Well, the in terms of the the yet means yet memo, which of course, you know, this is one of the things that you would bring up all the time back in the back in the day in 2015 and 2016. You would talk about this all the time. But the the at least in my opinion, probably the the, the, at least in my opinion, probably the, the words, the seven or eight words that stick out the most from that document is Burns saying, and I think I'm quoting this correct is he says a choice the Russians do not want to have to face or something like right. That

may not be intervened. Yes. But he's talking about how if you do this, they're very concerned about a civil war breaking out, which did end up happening. They're very concerned about, you know what I mean? Like the, the country falling back and they're very concerned that they might have to intervene and they're going to have to face this choice. A decision Russia does not want to have to do. So he's, he's telling them, and this is, it's really amazing to think that the guy who wrote that was the sitting CIA director through this entire war So like our top the head of the Central Intelligence Agency is on record

Knowing that this was not what they wanted now listen again People can caricature what we're saying or straw man or do whatever you want We are me and Scott are radical libertarians. We don't like governments. We don't like leaders of governments. And we're no fans of Vladimir Putin, who there is no question as a certainly violated international law in this war has certainly more importantly violated our libertarian principles has killed a lot of people is is a thug essentially we're not fans of Vladimir Putin he has a conscript army yes that's right he's enslaving his army he's killing other people who have been conscripted in an army who are

enslaved by the Ukrainians oh just a lot of horrible stuff but isn't it a pretty big detail like a pretty important piece of information that even our CIA chief has said he didn't want to fight this war. And like, as soon as you know that, you're like, oh, oh, all right, well, that's it. Oh, maybe that's what he's been trying to negotiate this whole time. It's like, that's a pretty interesting piece of information about this war. The big bad wolf, the Adolf Hitler in this case, actually doesn't want this. He doesn't want this He doesn't want this policy and of course not He's not an idiot and the other side you mentioned the other side of the story. That's it Well, Putin just wants to retake everything

Well, look, he's been in power since the year 2000 since the first day of the year 2000, right midnight. He took over so How come he waited till 2014 to seize Crimea? And how come even after the horrible civil war did break out in 2014, completely backed by the West on Kiev's side? How come he only sent in deniable special operations forces twice in August of 14 and February of 15 and otherwise essentially stayed out other than sending quote-unquote volunteers and advisors and this kind of crap and some weapons but he did not take responsibility for occupying the Donbass and protecting those people for eight years for eight years so was he waiting for even plenty of men even after the plebiscites he didn't take which you know like whatever people can argue about the legitimacy or whatever. I know in the case of Crimea, I believe there's been independent polling

done, right? That pretty much came very, very close to the same results as those. But let's say- Including Pew and Gallup, by the way, American polling firms said, yes, no, this is fine. But let's just- And the Germans and whoever else. But let's just say for the sake of argument is Kathy Newman It would not Kathy Newman Kathy Young, you know when you debated her on this topic and just absolutely destroyed her it was quite enjoyable watching But as she she kind of mocked you for even mentioning the oh you believe these please Vladimir Putin doesn't have honest You know the elections this this is all nonsense. Okay, let's say that's true mentioning the oh you believe these please Vladimir Putin doesn't have honest, you know

Elections this this is all nonsense. Okay, let's say that's true. Let's say every single You know like it's just complete completely fake still that's not the point if Vladimir Putin was hell-bent on recreating the Soviet Union and Obviously he can take Crimea. He can take the Donbass. Nobody's gonna be able to stop him, why would he not do that when he had the perfect opportunity where he could look and say, oh no no no I'm not even annexing them, they democratically decided that they'd rather be part of the Russian Federation than part of Ukraine. If that was his goal he obviously would have done that, it otherwise makes no sense.

Right. And meanwhile he waited eight years while the West armed his enemies up to fight him and resist them. And which was effective when he finally did invade and they busted out their shoulder fired anti-tank missiles and you know, severely crippled his invasion in the original plan in there. And but yeah, I say that in there, like, look, there's no reason to, why would a Texan have faith in some election the Russians held in the Don Bass brought? I don't care about that.

I'm just telling you like whose fault it is, which is Joe Biden. Like you can, there, you don't have to presume the legitimacy of anything that the Russians are doing. Uh, and neat thing, like quite quite literally, take my word at that. I mean it, I don't care. I'm not rationalizing what they've done or excusing it in any way. Any more than enough already,

I'm excusing the attack on the towers. I'm just telling you what causes these enemies to fight the United States. And ain't that America is a nice boy minding its own business, and just these implacable enemies keep turning up. And by the way, as everyone in your audience knows and has known their whole life,

well, at least since 1989, we're number one. America is the global superpower. There used to be another, now there's not. Now there's one global superpower. There used to be another. Now there's not. Now there's one global superpower. And the European Union and China have big economies, but they're not global superpowers. They don't have political and military and dominance in other people's countries on other continents the way the United States does. The United States has the greatest world empire that's ever been created

right now. And so how could it be that just all this stuff keeps happening to us? Come on, man. Everybody knows better than that. Like, what is this, son, you know, 11th grade civics, cause by 12th grade, you should be over it and know that like, you know, these wars, they know all their cracked up to be a lot of the times. Remember the main to turn a phrase there. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's right. And somehow it's,

it's fascinating to watch, um, just from doing, you know, like doing a lot of shows and a lot of debates over the last few years, how much people compartmentalize the atrocities that their own government commits and that somehow, and, and even when they'll kind of grant, or mentalize the atrocities that their own government commits. And that somehow, and even when they'll kind of grant, you know, like nobody, when I go, if I go on Piers Morgan's show, or if I do a debate or anything like that, I never catch anyone who's like defending the terror wars still. Everybody basically concedes like, yeah, we shouldn't have fought in Iraq,

and we shouldn't have tried to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan, because how could you not at this point, you know, just look at it and be like, yeah, we shouldn't have fought in Iraq and we shouldn't have tried to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Because how could you not at this point, you know, just look at it and be like, well, yeah, sure, that did not work out. That was not wise policy. And yet, though, still, if you bring up Vladimir Putin, you know, to someone like Piers Morgan, well, immediately the first thing that comes to the front of your mind is all the crimes that he's committed. And fair enough, like, I think that's okay, you know your mind is all the crimes that he's committed and and fair enough like I think that's

Okay, you know you bring up Vladimir Putin. It's like he imprisons journalists. He does this he does that you know, whatever Okay, fair enough and yet what why should that not be the first thing that comes up when you bring up any of our political Leaders like okay. I'm fine with that. Let's go with their crimes Here's the crimes of our government. And even you'll admit, right? We just started this war off lies and just slaughtered all these people. And then to turn around and somehow it's like, yeah, that was a mistake. It didn't exactly work, but we're still the force for good. That like that, that's just not questioned in the next, you know, encounter. And at the same time, you'll be like, well, look, I mean, if you know anything about George W. Bush's disastrous

wars, it's like, okay, well, who were the people in the upper echelons of power in George W. Bush's administration? Well, it's these neoconservatives. Okay. Well, the neoconservatives also had this plan for expanding NATO. It's like, okay, so the same people who are managing our foreign policy were managing our foreign policy at that time. And it's not just in the Middle East. We also have a foreign policy in Europe.

And so if you'll all concede that not just like they got it wrong in the Middle East, you're conceding like, they got it wrong to catastrophic consequences with hundreds of thousands to millions of innocent people slaughtered by that. It's like, okay, then why is it such a big leap to say they also got it all wrong in Europe? And they also were not concerned with protecting innocent life or something like that. This show is sponsored by Better Help. As I've told you before, guys, I have personally benefited from therapy in the past,

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problem for 10% off your first month. Alright, let's get back into the show. And seriously, before W. Bush was Bill Clinton, the face-fighting rapist, the guy that burned the Branch Davidians to death. The guy that lied you into war with Serbia. The guy who caused September 11th by backing Al Qaeda terrorists for 10 years at the same time that he's provoking them by bombing Iraq from bases in Saudi Arabia, site of the two most holy places in Islam, Mecca Medina, and helping the Israelis to mercilessly slaughter the Palestinians and steal the third most important site in Islam,

the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Muslims there. And doing absolutely nothing to protect the United States from the terrorists that he had emboldened and provoked. So oh yeah, and you're telling me what, like he didn't have the soundest, most well thought through policy toward Latvia? Yeah. Why would he? Why would you think that he would do the right thing ever? He burned those little babies and Waco to death and called it a suicide. He said those people poured gasoline on their own kids and set their own kids on fire when he did it. He did it him and the hostage rescue team and the army's combat applications group aka the Delta

force. They murder those people, the national government, the United States of America and held back the fire trucks while the building burned. Yeah. Oh no, that guy, he couldn't. Hey, how dare you talk bad about America, Dave. Yeah. It really is. So you criticize William Jefferson, Clinton, Osama bin Laden's, I don't know, mentor patron sponsor. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it is wild. I remember there was one time I had a, like a Twitter exchange with Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe over there, which was kind of wild to me, even though like there's this weird thing where like nobody really watches the corporate media anymore.

And so many people watch podcasts now. And like I'm regularly on much, much, much bigger shows than Morning morning Joe like that's that would if I was invite I would go on morning Joe if they invited me on tomorrow, but I wouldn't be like I wouldn't be calling you Scott Like I got my big break, dude I'm going on morning Joe like it wouldn't even be a big thing yet I was just really surprised that he knew who I was like, you know Like so I tweeted something about him being an elitist. And he, he replied back to me and he goes,

oh yeah, the guy who says that Putin was provoked and that Osama bin Laden was provoked into 911. You know, he thinks that blah. And I was like, oh, you like know me and know what I think about this, which was kind of weird. And then I

remember I said to him at one point, he stopped replying to me after this one, we went back and forth a few times, but I was like, okay, fine. You don't agree that we provoked Osama bin Laden into attacking us on 9-11. Fine. But can we all at least come together and admit that it was probably a mistake for your wife's father to bankroll him? And like, it's just like, this is the big new Brzezinski's daughter's husband is like Oh the the idea that we had any hand in this is absurd. Like what are you talking about, dude?

You know, you don't pretend like you don't fucking know like you and it's just oh anyway That's why the book is so important and why people really got to read it because it's like they do they rely on you not knowing anything about history and When you actually look at the history of the thing, it's just again, it's not that and it's not What they cartoonishly try to say it's not oh you come away from this book realizing that Vladimir Putin is the good guy He's not a good guy, but you you do come away from this book Realizing that the American foreign policy foreign policy establishment is just they're not they sure as hell aren't the good guys either. And not only

that, but just that the profound recklessness of the policy literally from 1992 today is just it's even for people like me and you who live in this world of constantly focusing on how evil and corrupt the government is. As you read the book, you're just like, like my jaws on the ground the whole time. I just can't believe it. I still, even even just the news over the last couple of weeks, I can't believe it's just, you know, reckless.

Look, I mean, I'm a horrible, hateful person. I wrote the book. The book is a collection of things that piss me off. Like, what are you going to do? Like, that's what it is. But the thing and a lot of it when I read it, I just think, God, these people, you know, especially Bill Clinton and Bush, those are the ones I. May this is just because that was when I was younger or whatever. Those are the ones I just hate the most, those two. But

see, I got off on a tangent about how much I hate them. I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, I know the part of the book that, you know, because I had to reread the book a hundred times to finish the writing and get it all edited and straight and everything is not fun. But the part that no matter how many times I read it just drives me absolutely up the wall is Russiaiagate. And Russiagate, reading about Russiagate is like reading about Waco or something. It's just like,

I don't want to. It's like reading about what's happening in Gaza. Oh, God. Oh, so ugliest thing. And here, it's not mass murder. I mean, they're framing a president that I don't really favor that much. But like,, like really dude, if they did the same thing to Obama or Bernie Sanders or whoever, I still would be this upset just because I hate all lies this much. You know what I mean? But like the list of things that the FBI pretended to not know yet as they continued to pursue that case or pretend to, like just that. Even when I say it that way, it doesn't sound like that big of a deal.

You know what I mean? But like, no, it's such a big deal. Oh no. It really is. What they pretended to not know for three years about how fake that whole thing was is just incredible to me. And it's funny. I've noticed on Twitter, nobody said a word about Russiagate yet.

Nobody's that far in the book yet. Right? Like nobody said anything about Bill Clinton back in the terrace in Chechnya yet. Nobody said anything about the Boston bombing. I got all this stuff in there. Let me say anything about the Kyrgyzstan revolution and, but Russiagate's toward the end. Like that's Trump. So it's going to be like a few weeks before those reviews start coming in. You know what I mean? But, and, and again, I'm not the best writer. So it's really, it's just subject by subject by subject by subject under the Russia gate outline there. But it's just, I don't know, I get it. I freak out just thinking about it now. Like it bothers me. They would dare. Well, look, I'll say this about Russia gate, because, you know,

aside from my kind of claim to fame or whatever, is, you know, there's, there's several issues that have kind of like come to define my public, you know, persona or whatever. And like being anti war is obviously like a big one of them, particularly with, you know, Gaza and Ukraine over the last right on the term. Well, that's another one that the COVID stuff that I, you know, did really well through that. But before that, it was Russiagate. Like Russiagate was the, if there was a topic that was at the center of this show for people who listen through

the years know well, I mean, in 2016, 17, eight, really 2017, 18, 19, that was because it was like the biggest story going on. And it was, you know, and it was so obviously bullshit from the very beginning. And so I've been reading the the Russia Gate chapter in this book, I got by the way, I got an advanced copy. So I'm a little ahead of the general public who just got this thing a few days ago. But yeah, it's interesting, because I obviously haven't been talking about it as much but but just so everybody listening understands when Scott says how much the FBI pretended not to know it's that like an example for that is like that Carter Page wasn't A Russian spy that they knew this from the very beginning They had the boss is by the CIA Then the boss working with them the bosses refused to let the agents interview him for seven months Right to make sure that they couldn't just say, this is completely ridiculous boss and this kind of thing. And that's just one example, but then there's a hundred of them.

And I can say, by the way, major things like that. I've actually wanted to say this for months now. And finally I have a chance. I'm really mad at John Durham, the special prosecutor who did not a perfect, but a really, really great job of his report. And he tried to prosecute a couple of the liars behind the dossier and the alpha bank hoax and this kind of thing, which he failed to win his prosecutions, but he was right. And his defendants were guilty, so screw them.

But anyway, I'm really mad at him, dude, because I did so much work that then when his report finally came out, it just completely like washed away two thirds of the research that I had done. Well, I had all of these notes, I had all of this stuff. And then here comes a special prosecutor, is like, no, I'm telling you, this is what happened.

And then so the way he puts it is just superior to whatever I had. And so whatever I had had to get canceled and replaced with what he had. So now you read my Russiagate section, you're like, okay, Horton, so I guess you can read the Durham report. And I'm like, screw you, man. I had all of this stuff. I had done such a good job. This book took me forever to write. And man, I had done, I spent a lot of the early part of the book working on Russiagate. Then this guy Durham comes

and I'm just plagiarizing his ass now, but it's okay because he's a government employee and so he's got no copyright protection, so screw him. Yeah, there you go. There you found a nice libertarian justification for it. Yeah. I mean, the Durham report was, I mean, a scathing indictment. Oh, I beg your audience to read it. I beg your people to read it. Everyone read it. I mean, it's a stupid, horrible government report. But you read that thing. This is a federal prosecutor writing about

the FBI and the in the Department of Justice. And you know, he's the same guy who let Bush get away with torturing people to death. You know that? He's the one that they brought in to be the narrow it down, narrow it down, narrow it down until it's nothing and drop the case guy. Same guy. Which is what we all assume. Although he's the same guy who prosecuted the FBI for employing Whitey Bolger all those years too. So kind of a mixed bag there. But he did a hell of a job on that one. It could have been worse. But well, I assumed it was going to be much, I I assumed it was going to be much worse. I assumed it was going to be another.

He was coming in to do the same thing that he did under the Bush torture regime and that it was going to be to downplay it. And then when you actually read the report, you're like, oh, no, he gave a pretty good report, actually. It's like, yep, here's what happened. And I say this all the time on on shows because I'm always trying to provoke somebody to to fight with me about it where I always say it's like the intelligence agencies framed the sitting president for treason simple actually what happened anyone want to argue about that

because that's a pretty bold claim I just made there so if anyone wants to argue go ahead but then when no one ever does want to argue because they all know this whole thing is bullshit it's like okay but take that in now. Like that if you're not going to argue with me, then you must incorporate that into your worldview now. And that does it just understanding Russiagate. It's like this narrative shattering understanding, because almost everything that's talked about in say like the corporate news All of its shattered now all of it like whenever you're talking about Donald Trump whenever you're talking about America whenever you're talking about Democracy where all of these things you must you through right and particularly this war

You must view all of this through a different lens now, because we already know what's going on here. So, like, wait a minute, because now the other half, which I'll admit I did not focus on nearly enough during those years when I was talking about Russiagate all the time, which you did focus on. I give you a lot of credit for that. I also, as I mentioned the other day on Glenn Greenwald's show, she certainly is not perfect on foreign

policy and there's some areas where she's really, really bad. But Tulsi Gabbard deserves a lot of credit for this too. You know, when Tulsi Gabbard was running for president in – well, it was the 2020 campaign, but I guess it was in 2019 when she was still in the Democratic primary. Every single time they asked her what her number one issue is, she would always say nuclear war, nuclear war. And I remember I, at the time, I kind of would cringe when she would do that, and I would kind of, I was like, I kind of wish she didn't say that,

because it does sound a little bit like, I don't know, like you're kind of catastrophizing things. No one really thinks we're on the verge of nuclear war right now or whatever. It's like talk about the wars that we are fighting and why we should be against those. But man, she was right. You were right. And I was really wrong to not focus more on the Russiagate narrative, because really framing Donald Trump was only 50% of it.

The other 50% is that they were framing Vladimir Putin. And right, this is, you know, well, fast forward a minute now, Dave. So look at, you know, they sort of kind of dropped Russia gate a little bit, but then it came right back with the laptop thing. They all immediately jumped to say, Oh, see is just like the last chapter in Russia gate, in a sense. Oh, it was all true anyway, because see, now they're doing it again. Right. By introducing this fake laptop, which of course that was completely fake. And I have a whole treatment on that in the book too. The accusation that it was right. Yeah. So that that reinforced it. Well, that was just right on the eve of Biden's election.

Biden was sworn in two months after that, three months, three, four months after that. So then and then we spent, you know, just one year in the, in the lead up to war there. So it could be hard for somebody like you or me who are not Democrats and don't think that way to put ourselves in the shoe of a Democrat in the shoes of a Democrat who never stopped believing in Russiagate really. And the war in Ukraine could really be seen as one more thing that Russia did in a row after inflicting Donald Trump on us and trying to rig the election against Biden by introducing this fake Russian laptop and all of these things. Right. So now Glenn Greenwald pointed this out to me the other day, and I, I think a friend reassured me that, nah, the implication is in there.

But I think, I wonder if I say it strongly enough, I wonder if I, I should have brought it up when we get to the war, that you see, you have to wonder what role the fake Russiagate hoax scandal played in the minds of America's Democrats in the lead up to the war in Ukraine. That this is the same implacable enemy that you've been grappling with since 2015 when he launched this coup d'etat to overthrow Duchess Hillary and usurp her rightful throne for their secret agent Trump. That's a lot of stress from a foreign enemy.

And remember, they weren't lying. They were expressing themselves when they compared it to September 11th, Pearl Harbor, Kristallnacht, Lady on MSNBC said this is like that time when the Holocaust started in Germany Talking about Russia gate. Yeah, and But the thing is that was how they really felt about it. They were terrified They were terrified that Russia had done this to us and it's hard to take that away

Even after the report was a dud Rachel Maddow took the night off and then they just talked about something else after that. They never said, geez guys, this we really were barking up the wrong tree here. Turns out Carter Page was a loyal CIA asset who debriefed the agency every time he ever met an important Russian in his entire life. Oops, we really got that wrong here. No, they didn't do that. They never had to say they were wrong. Just like with the Republicans in Iraq, they didn't do that. They never had to say they were wrong. Just like with the Republicans in Iraq, they just sort of let it go and stop defending it anymore. Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, and another element to it is that Donald Trump, despite being the best ever at putting on a show and making things entertaining, which just undeniably he is the greatest ever at doing.

He's just the best self-promoter who's ever lived. But he is not good at making that argument. Like he never really stood up for himself and in a clear, concise way, which is something, by the way, I was very critical of him during this campaign, which I gotta say, like again, he didn't even run a very good campaign. He did, he put on a great show, which is what he always does, so that element of it was good. But, you know, Donald Trump does this thing, the example I always use,

it's like a perfect microcosm of Donald Trump, when he's at the debate with Kamala Harris, and she starts talking, questions about immigration so she immediately pivots to insulting his crowd sizes and he of course can't not take the bait so he just starts going off on how great his crowds are but it's like the opportunity that's right in front of him like it's right there it writes itself dude like no don't start defending your rallies point out that she's only bringing up your rallies, because she doesn't want to talk about immigration. And like, how easy is it to say, Hey, guys, I made this the central issue of

my campaign in 2016. And they all said I was a Nazi for doing it. They reversed my policies. Look what a disaster this is. Now they're all pretending they're immigration hawks and just like make the devastating case instead He goes and he goes my rallies are tremendous blah blah blah defending his rallies And then he goes they're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats and like okay if you are following that story Maybe you get the thing he's referencing but if you're not he just comes off like a total loon.

And similarly, in this moment, which is really what the whole Hunter Biden laptop, the Russia gate accusation, the Russia accusation about it was designed to do, is that when Donald Trump brings it up in the debate with Joe Biden, Joe Biden can say, 51 top intelligence people all signed a letter saying this was Russia. And then Donald Trump has this opportunity to respond. And he goes, you're telling me it's another Russia, Russia, Russia. And it was just like, okay, yeah, if you already knew, you kind of get what he's saying. But he if you didn't know that that didn't really explain it to you ever.

You know what I mean like he never just coherently said ever once listen the intelligence agencies are framing me for this and here's how we know this and here's the best reporting on this like he's not capable of doing that and so yeah this did this lingered on I mean look and by the way I have to say where the hell was Stephen Miller? And where the hell was Hope Hicks? And these people who were like the most loyal staff to him. You're telling me Stephen Miller can't read Twitter and see that Aaron Matei just debunked Russiagate today in The Nation magazine. Mr. President, Mr. President, you gotta see this.

This Democrat magazine says sorry, but it's just not true. All about it today. Tweet that in all capital letters, sir. Nobody, so never even mind his incompetence, but what about all of his people, dude? Nobody handed him that and said, man, look at this. He debunks all of these things.

And of course, for people not familiar, Aaron Matei was 100% on it. He was never wrong when he debunked the Russiagate lie. I mean, when he put out a feature article in the Nation magazine, you could have beat an FBI director right out of his job with it if he'd wielded it right. You know, it was huge. So that's on them too. an FBI director right out of his job with it, if you'd wielded it right.

It was huge. So that's on them too. Seriously, that lady Hope Hicks, who was supposed to be his number one confidant, Trump whisperer, what's going on in the world, what's going on in the media, what's happening today, and what are we gonna do about it, and all of that stuff. Boy, did they drop the ball on that, especially when you had Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Matei,

Matt Taibbi, at first Robert Perry, but then he died, but still Joe Loria, Ray McGovern, and Michael Tracy. I'm sorry, but I'm leaving out, but those are some of the most prominent leftists and progressives who were good on Russiagate. Never mind Chuck Ross and Mario Hemingway and Miranda Devine and whoever else on the right who were also great on it. But I'm just talking about the liberals. If you were working for Trump, you wouldn't make sure that he knows that he can say, look,

even these leftists say that I'm innocent because I am like, God, I would have, oh man, what a weird time. And when you think about it, you know, it's, it's a theme that I talk about a lot on, on the show is that human beings, all of us, um, we just listen, we outsource knowledge. It's the reason why we don't live in hunter gatherer communities, and we get to live in these advanced sophisticated societies is because of specialization, you know,

the division of labor, and people have expertise in very limited fields, if they have any at all. And if there is somebody who has expertise in like two or three fields, they're considered a genius Like that's so rare that anybody has like expertise across multiple fields And do you think this happens all the time in your life? like you know my freaking hot water heater just broke and I had to hire a guy to come here and he said a lot of

Words to me that I didn't understand and then said, I owe him 500 bucks, you know? And I'm like, all right, I guess I do. I have no idea. You could have just been making all of it up, but I reasonably assume like probably that's and I have hot water again. So like it ended up working. And for most people, like, you know, there, if everybody obsessed over politics, the way me and you do, we would all starve to death.

It's a very good thing that other people are specializing in other areas. But I just don't think that people can, like you can't blame regular people for this. But when you got, you know, look man, I don't know, all the people in suits and ties on CNN are telling me there's really something here. They say Trump-Russia collusion all day long, every single day. And then I just heard from the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and he tells me he's seen the evidence. And I'm not privy to this evidence yet, but he sure is. And he's seen it. And he tells me when the Mueller report comes out, there's going to be mass arrests of Donald Trump. The former CIA director, Brennan, just said there's going to be that Donald Trump is going to be put on handcuffs on national television.

He wouldn't say that if they had nothing. That's a reasonable conclusion for an average American who doesn't pay that much attention to this. It's a reasonable conclusion to go like, unless this whole system is completely evil and based on lies, then obviously they got something or they wouldn't be saying this. Now, the answer is that it is a system based on lies, but like it's understandable why people believe that there's never a coherent objection coming from out of Donald Trump's mouth. And then, yeah, like you what they're think about the claim, think about how huge it is. They were claiming that the big it was the biggest scandal in the history of the United States of America by far that Vladimir Putin pulled off something that the British Empire couldn't that Adolf Hitler couldn't that Joseph Stalin couldn't that that Osama bin Laden couldn't like all the great enemies of the United States of America

None of them ever overthrew our democracy and installed their puppet as the president. And that's the claim. And so, yeah, to look at that, so on one hand, you go, you can't downplay how much that would affect the views that people have in terms of a war involving Russia only a couple years after that. And then the other flip side to that,

to go back to this idea that it was unprovoked. I've literally had this argument before with people where they've said that the war was unprovoked. And I just asked them if they believe in Russiagate. Like, do you do you actually believe that Vladimir Putin overthrew our election and installed Donald Trump? And they're like, well, no, of course. And you're like, OK, well, that's provocation. Sorry, that already proved that right there already proves the title of your book. Think about that from Vladimir Putin's perspective,

that the most war hungry country in the world, who's fought in seven wars over the last 25 years and just slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people and left countries in piles of rubble, that they, not like some random guy on CNN, but the head of the war machine itself, the heads of the war machine are claiming are laying down the justification for attacking you. They're claiming you started a war with them off complete lies. Yep. And look, man, this, I forget if we talked about this before, but there's a new book

out that came out this year by Annie Jacobson called nuclear war, a scenario, and it's a fictional scenario about what would happen if nuclear war broke out. And but it's based on her interviews with all of the very top guys from the Strategic Air Command, former defense secretaries and CIA directors and strategic nuclear war planners. She did real research. You check the footnotes in that book, it's something else. These first-hand interviews that she did with America's absolute greatest experts on our nuclear war policy.

And she would be right at home at the New Yorker magazine or something. She's absolutely like within that center left liberal of that generation, kind of older baby boomer generation type, or maybe younger boomer. But anyway, um So point is in her scenario and I'm ruining the book for you So put your fingers in yours if you don't want to hear it. Um North Korea nukes America. Nobody knows why but that's how it starts and they nuke us twice and that means uh-oh Now we got a nuke them off the face of the earth or we can expect them to just keep nuking us and nuking us to nuke them off the face of the earth or we can expect them to just keep nuking us and nuking us. So the president launches 50 H bombs at North Korea to wipe them off the face of the earth and

the threat. Well, the Russians see the missiles coming and part of the loophole is that unfortunately America can't really nuke North Korea without sailing our ICBMs over Russia to get there. We hit them from subs in the Pacific. But in this case, I guess they use land-based missiles in the Dakotas and Montana or whatever. And so the Russians now have to decide whether these missiles coming in are directed at them or at North Korea. And the fictional Putin in the book decides that, oh, I see what they're doing. Doesn't matter that it was North Korea that nuked them.

The US government, they're ruthless, dude, they don't care. They're just gonna lie. They're just gonna tell the American people that it was us that did it. And they're already launching a surprise nuclear attack on us, even though we had nothing to do with it. They see those incoming nukes, they immediately think of Iraq. They immediately think, I don't know if she was thinking this, of Russiagate. They'll tell any lie against me. Here, they would even, after getting nuked by Korea,

they'd even blame it on me just as an excuse to launch a preemptive strike. So then he launches all of his nukes and America dies. And something that the North Koreans could never do to us would be to erase our whole civilization. They've got a couple dozen nukes at most and they couldn't fire them off before we killed them. But the Russians, they can hit about a thousand points at once in America, about a thousand

targets at once and likewise on this side there and then be the end of everything. And based on what you just said, the Americans do nothing but lie. They do nothing and come up with pretext for war. And not just against Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad and helpless Muammar Qaddafi, but against Russia. And yeah, like you say, and it's years later and so stupid and silly now, Russia gate, people forget that like, yeah, no, this was way worse than McCarthyism. I mean, maybe that was worse in the sense of like innocent people were getting accused of like, oh, you were a commie in the thirties.

Like whatever, dude, you know, a lot of people were commies in the thirties and a lot of that was like embellished beyond what was fair. But here the whole thing is directed against the elected president of the United States. You know, there's a clip of John Laughlin, who had been the acting director of CIA, and he's at the CSIS or something like this, and they say, Oh, Donald Trump says that there's a deep state that's out to get him. And he goes, well, let me tell you something. Thank God for the deep state. And then he says, because the problem is not the Justice Department, it's not the CIA is not at the NSA. It's at

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's the problem. So here he's just outright and I'm sorry, he gives the addresses of the Justice Department. It's not the Hoover building. It's not at Fort Meade. Yeah. Oh, did I lose you? I think I lost your audio there. Oh, sorry. Oh, my mistake there. I hit the button when I do that all the time. No, no, we played. I know. I was just going to say we played the clip on the show. Yeah, it was, it was pretty incredible.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but the thing of it is this is like, okay, well, you could imagine a scenario where, yeah, that's right. Thank God that these guys took their oath before God to defend our constitution from the Russian installed coup d'etat guy who usurped the rightful elected throne of Duchess Clinton there, except that that wasn't right. The whole thing was a lie.

They were the ones who were out of line and they were so far out of line. Oh my God, man. None of these agencies are constitutional in their existence at all. This is all post World War II national security state garbage. Harry Truman's National Security Act of 47 and so forth. They had no legitimacy at all. You know, the FBI maybe or, you know, as a bureau of the Department of Justice would have some constitutional legitimacy. If NSA was wholly under the Pentagon, maybe. But anyway, who in the hell are they? A bunch of unelected and acting as secret police, right? They are

completely protected. We're talking about the FBI counterintelligence division and central intelligence agency going up against the elected president of the United States of America. So yeah, if he was guilty, then boy, nail him to the wall, guys. And you're all get a bunch of medals and you're all heroes. But boy, if this isn't true, then man, are you guys out of line. You know, it's completely crazy for them to have gone that far. And there's just no mistaking here

that John Brennan and Jim Comey really thought so. They were lying and we know they're lying. John Durham proved that they're lying and Matt Taibbi proved that John Brennan is the one who cooked the whole damn thing up in the first place. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is enterra skincare. If you're the type of person who's forgetting sometimes to buy the special someone in your life, something that they're really going to enjoy, we'll help them unlock the secret to

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entereskincare.com slash problem promo code problem for 10% off. All right, let's get back into the show. Of course. Then, of course, the the important question then, you know, once you understand this is why? Why would they do this? To the cold war? That's Well, that's right. And so then that's kind of the whole you know, like this is the thing that I was trying for so many years to pound into

people's heads, that it's like, listen, left winger who hates Donald Trump, fine, fine. Hate Donald Trump. And I do think it's a bit irrational. And the fact that he was, for so many, this seems to have gone away a little bit, which is an interesting dynamic. But for years, I mean, the way that just like your average left-wing person or liberal person

would get so worked up over Donald Trump, so out of proportion compared to how much they hate any other political figure, that never made sense. It was never rational. But at least go, okay, you hate him because he's a racist or whatever. Do you really think that's why the CIA hates him? Do you really believe that they are just so profoundly appalled by his insensitivity toward Mexicans or something like that? And one of the best parts of your glorious debate with Bill Kristol, which if anybody listening to this has not seen you really should go go watch. I mean, it's just just just a delicious moment in an anti war history. But nobody ever got to say this to like one of these neocons faces before. And I was so glad that you led with it in your opening statement was that it was

like, don't get I mean, I'm paraphrasing my words, not yours. You said it in a much more articulate way. But but it was like don't give me this bullshit about how you guys hate bigotry and nationalism this was your whole schtick and I'm sorry I'm just not maybe a 20 year old you could pull this on but I'm in my 40s and I remember it quite well I was an adult as you did it so like you're not gonna convince me it didn't happen Islamophobia Are you kidding me? You guys tried for because they were opening like a little mosque a few blocks away from the old world trade center

every right wing radio host in america made this out to be Armageddon and sharia law is being spread to Kansas or something crystal himself too. Yeah, crystal himself was in on that one the most ridiculous So no, no, don't give me any of that shit. You don't have a problem with bigotry go listen to the way they talk about Palestinians they do not have a problem with bigotry. They have a problem with bigotry being used to sell in isolationist position, that's for sure, which I think, you know, we unfairly get smeared as isolationists. I do think calling Donald Trump his rhetoric isolationist is not like, I think that's somewhat accurate. I mean,

he's talking about closing the borders, cutting off trade and not militarily intervening in the world. But like, yes, if you're if you're using bigotry in order to argue for detente with Russia or something like that, then they have a problem with it. If you're using bigotry to sell the next war, they delight in that. So like, don't give. So, OK, so that's so this is the heart of it. And this is like, I understand this doesn't fit neatly into a bumper sticker, but I think this is what people have to understand. It's like, even if you are highly critical of Donald Trump, as both me and you have been over the years, you can also understand that they don't hate him for the same reasons we do.

And that's what, like, liberals need to understand. Even if you hate this guy, and even maybe you're justified in some of your reasons for hating the guy. That's not why they're framing him for treason. They're framing him for treason for other reasons. And the major one is that they saw him as a threat to the war machine. And for good reason. Yeah. Hey, look at the I cited in in here in the impeachment over Ukrainegate, son of Russiagate, actually got the guy impeached for the third time in American history. And just go and look at the testimony of Alexander Vindman, the rat on the National Security

Council who turned him in to his CIA buddy, Eric Cherimella, who wrote up the big so-called whistleblower report and kicked the whole thing off. He wrote an article in the Atlantic, essentially elaborating on the same point. And he's just as on a bash as could be. They just put his brother Yevgeny in the House of Representatives representing the great state of Virginia, if you can believe it. They call him Eugene, so you don't recognize that. These people are Ukrainian nationals.

And Donald Trump, of course, here's how lazy Donald Trump is. Well, he's watching with bated breath, just dying to find out what the absolute idiot blonde lady is going to say about him next on CNN. Right. He's got Ukrainian nationals sitting on the national security council down the hall who hate his guts and want to kill him or at least overthrow him and He has no idea None anyway, so this guy bin man

He explains to the Congress and he explained in his Atlantic article Donald Trump was trying to change our Russia policy our Russia policy says lieutenant Colonel bin man says Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. And he explains that look the interagency, meaning like a meeting of the deputies of the National Security Council, we decided what we're doing with Russia and Ukraine. Who the hell does this guy think he is to change our Ukraine policy? Says the Ukrainian national on the US National Security Council. And so if Donald Trump thinks that he's going to change our Ukraine policy,

he's going to threaten our arm shipments to Ukraine, well, we're just not going to stand for that. Who the hell does this guy think he is? We at the interagency have our consensus. And there's just no sense whatsoever that this guy won an election to be the president of the United States and you didn't, Mr. Lieutenant Colonel. And so you don't have a say at all. The interagency serves him, the chief executive of the government departments. That's it. Right. Unless he's, you know, demanding that you break the law, then you have no say here.

But, and look, I mean, we're watching this right now. Donald Trump is higher, is surrounding himself with enemies right now. They're all gonna stab him in the back and he's gonna be like, it too, everybody. Well, that's what you get for being too damn lazy to just read and find out who actually agrees with you and likes you. You surround yourself with a bunch of warhawks who hate your guts.

That's what you're going to get. I don't know why he doesn't make John Bolton national security advisor again. Yeah, well, it's like, you know, we, I had a brief window of optimism. When we, we kind of launched our never Pompeo campaign, and then Donald Trump came out and put out a statement that Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo wouldn't be in the new administration. And you're like, Oh, all right, we're doing it. You know, it was just a coincidence. And then, well, I mean, it's like the issue is, I mean, there's just so many of them in DC, and they're all the same exact thing. Like,

it's like, does it make any difference? If you're if I was talking about any foreign policy post, any foreign policy post, and I said, said Scott do you have a preference because either Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley or John Bolton or Hillary Clinton or like just list them on and on and you'd go no they're all the same like you got the same person no matter what so unless you really recognize why you don't want Pompeo and why you don't want Nikki Haley just scratching their names off the list does nothing because then White House or in the State Department Or the Defense Department. I'm not talking about like me and my boys at the Institute maybe Ted Carpenter, but sure, you know, otherwise But anyway, I have a whole list. I don't want to get anybody in trouble

I had a whole giant list of guys who absolutely could staff the National Security Council As well as the top three or four spots at state and defense intelligence and, and what have you. And, and, but they don't get the time of day, man. They don't have a say. And we all know why it's because Miriam Adelson wrote a check for a hundred million dollars. So she gets to decide who's in the cabinet. Yeah.

That's what she bought million dollars. And who's she? She's an Israeli who inherited money from her dead husband, whom who ran a casino in China. That's who American conservatives obey. That's who's in charge. That's the leader of the American conservative movement, Dave, the widow heiress of a Chinese communist gambling casino line up and click your heels American Christian conservatives obey your master I believe she's a actually a Palestinian from being which Donald Trump likes to use as a slur against other people but I'm not double-check me on this but I believe she was born before the state of Israel oh and so I think I think I could technically say that just like just as he accuses everybody

else of being you got a Palestinian working for you, Trump, you got to take care of this problem. Well, I'm not always the best at predicting the future, but I did say I'm on record. I did say on Patrick David show on election day before any of the polls had closed or any votes were counted I did predict with certainty that the winner of the 2024 presidential election would be Israel and I was right. I got that one, right? It was a safe safe bet if ever there was one. All right. Listen Scott. I had a plan in my mind

that on the show today because there's just so much great information in the book. And so I was like, I really wanted to spend the podcast talking about shock therapy and colored revolutions. We did not get to either of those. So let's just do let's I know you're doing this with Tom already, but let's just make this like, we'll do several podcasts on the book, because there really are like so many different parts of it that I wanted to kind of, you know, there's this stuff that I talk about a lot that I know pretty well. But then there's so much stuff that I learned for the first time from from reading this book. So let's we'll get you back on in the next few days and go over some of that stuff. I do have to cut this. I do have to cut this short now. But let people not cut this short, but end the show. Let people know one more time where they can buy the book and where they can find your other fantastic work. Okay. So the book is at Amazon and you can go to scothorton.org or libertarianistute.org.

We got the links for you there. It's out in paperback and Kindle so far working on the hardback version. That company is a little bit slower, but we're in that together. I'm already recording the audiobook. I'm done with Clinton. No, no, pardon me. I'm done with HW Bush and I'm through Clinton up to the Bosnian War. I was just about to start the Bosnian War. That is going to be a substack series. So if people go to scothortonshow.com, that's different than scothortonshow.org, go to scothortonshow.com and subscribe to the substack there. That is going to be hopefully beginning pretty soon here. That is going to be a very long forum podcast series.

Just on the back of the envelope, it's going to be like 48 hours long, double Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem by a order made there at least. And maybe more than that. It's, it's a long book. No one gets it. The only human being I know who could make Daryl Cooper seem not long winded. This is so concise with his telling of history now. So yeah, no, this is what you get with me, man. I had Tom Woods' figurative sort of Damocles hanging over my head when I was doing enough already.

I absolutely have to keep this thing at 300 pages, Iron Law of the Universe. On this book, I blew past three, I blew past four, I blew past five, and I said, what the hell? I actually got up to 1,400 pages before I finally stopped and started whittling it back down again. So it is what is. I'm sorry. What was I supposed to leave stuff out? No, no, it's anyway, there's nothing that I could point to in the book and go, Oh, you should have cut that chapter out or you should. Right. I just so it's also important to the to the narrative to the story to understanding what really happened here. Oh, you know what though, there is an excise

chapter nuclear war. I had the second to the last chapter was going to be all about nukes. And so that is now going to be a separate PDF file. It's not quite ready yet. But very, very soon, you'll be able to if you sign up for the email list at the Libertarian Institute or at scotthorton.org, then you'll get a free PDF of the ebook of the excised chapter, Nuclear War. Save me about 30 pages there. But then I do a show, I do a podcast. I've done 6,000 something interviews since 2003. They're all at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash scotthorton show. And I'm the editorial director of antiwar.com, which is the most important project on the internet and I am the director of the libertarian Institute, which is the second most important project on the internet And I've got a great bunch of writers and podcasters and thinkers and journalists and philosophers and just killers over there at the libertarian

Institute. I hope everyone will check it out. We've published 15 books so far We got another one coming up here very shortly about obama's dirty war in syria by the great william van wagonen and i just couldn't be prouder of the team we put together at the institute and so i guess that's about all i got to say about that day thank you uh thank you scott and um you know listen i've heaped a lot of praise on you over the years, but you deserve it all, man. I mean, you've really, your work has been invaluable to me personally. Your research is so thorough

and the case that you make is so overwhelming. And you've really helped me understand the world and understand what's going on. And I know you've done that for a lot of other people too. I cannot, to the audience listening, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is you read this and you're going to understand what's going on in this conflict better than 99.9999%

of people out there. And of course, by the way, just cause you mentioned, I do want to say the other thing that you've done that I really think is incredible is that, um, you have really built up this this team of like kind of the next generation of our guys, and they really are incredible. I mean, all your whole team of, uh, of course, obviously, Keith Knight people know because I've had him on the show a bunch of times and Connor and Kyle Dave Dave DeCamp, the guys are really incredible. It actually leaves me with a little bit of optimism for the future that we got some really smart, compelling people who are actually like, also, not social retards. Yeah, kind of nice to like they're also just regular

guys who like are kind of appealing and not you know, like what some of some of our Libertarian types end up being but anyway, thank you so much for the book. Thank you so much for coming on the show we'll do another episode and get into the Shock therapy and color revolutions and other stuff that I want to talk to you about and thanks everybody for listening We'll catch you next time. Peace Peace.