Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:9 - Ukraine Chessboard : The Art of Losing Slowly - Special Guest Comic Dave Smith

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Darryl is traveling this week. So Scott invited a good friend of both to join the show! ENJOY! (prod. chris did a lot censoring to keep YT happy! :) ) # # The war in Ukraine grinds on with no end in sight as peace negotiations repeatedly fail due to poison pills disguised as compromise. Scott Horton and GUEST host - Comic Dave Smith dissect the recent talks in Alaska, where "security guarantees" for Ukraine functioned as NATO membership by another name—a non-starter for Russia and likely designed to be rejected. Russia continues making steady territorial gains, now controlling approximately three-quarters of Donetsk and two-thirds of both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. This slow-motion advance strengthens Putin's negotiating position while depleting Ukrainian resources. The fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict's origins—demonstrated even by Donald Trump's belief that "Obama gave Ukraine to Putin" rather than recognizing NATO expansion as the core issue—makes meaningful resolution nearly impossible. Perhaps most concerning is the rising influence of Ukraine's far-right nationalist elements, particularly the Azov Battalion. What began as a volunteer militia in 2014 has evolved into an official military unit with explicit neo-Nazi connections. Recent reporting reveals Azov leader Andrei Beletsky is positioning himself for political power in post-war Ukraine, envisioning a militarized state modeled after Israel. Western defense contractors reportedly prefer working with Azov units because they operate outside normal Ukrainian military command structures without demanding kickbacks. The conversation shifts to examining how Israel's campaign in Gaza has fundamentally altered media dynamics in the United States. Prominent right-wing commentators like Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk find themselves caught between establishment pressure to maintain unwavering support for Israel and audiences increasingly troubled by civilian casualties. This represents a significant crack in what was once the most controlled topic in American political discourse, potentially reshaping foreign policy debates for years to come. Chapters: 0:00 Welcome to Provoked 2:11 Ukraine Peace Talks in Alaska 13:43 Russia's Territorial Gains 24:40 Understanding Ukrainian Nazism 43:17 The Human Cost of War 55:07 Israel's Gaza Campaign and Media Shifts 1:07:31 Shifting Tides in Political Commentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ALEEN SULLIV. WERE. WERE. WERE. All right, All right, y'all. I'm Scott Horton from the Libertarian Institute, and filling in for Daryl Cooper tonight is Dave Smith hey Dave what's going on

dude thank you for for having me it's cool to be on what has become my favorite new show oh thank you very much too bad Daryl's out this this episode but it's good to be here with you that's right he has other obligations and featuring tonight Ruby and see her nose at the bottom of the screen there hopefully she won't be breathing heavily into the mic too badly uh this evening but it's better than whimpering out in the hallway so she's but yeah so i'm scott and he's david and we're going to talk about some stuff uh for you as per your want hey let's hope so that's right um so uh lots of big news um it was funny i did this interview with larry johnson the former cia officer who's a real expert on the rush ukraine stuff

and i talked to him on the show last thursday and uh no it was friday morning before the big meeting So he was like, gee, Larry Johnson, you think I might be wrong? And they actually could make a deal? And he's like, no. And then they didn't. Yeah, of course. So anyway, what was your take on the talks there in Alaska? Well, I don't know.

I mean, it seemed like, you know, it kind of reminded me of the, when Trump was in the negotiating stage with Iran and all the hawks were flipping out about how there was any enrichment, you know, involved in the being, to be allowed in the negotiating. and that Donald Trump's red line must be zero enrichment whatsoever and Mark Levin and all these people are freaking out about it. And it is kind of this interesting dynamic. It's kind of like part of how the Warhawks operate is through the peacemaking also. So in the negotiations and it was obvious in that case, much more obvious, I think in that case that the whole point was to not make the deal. The whole point was to put a poison pill in so that the deal, there is no option for a deal. And it's hard, you know, when you hear Zelensky just harp on security guarantees, security guarantees to go, okay, you could kind of understand like, okay, maybe that's genuine from his, like, hey, I'll give up some territory, but when you hear all the Europeans harping on security guarantees, it's like this just feels like you're obviously trying to insert the thing that you know will guarantee that Putin won't make this deal, which obviously, and Donald Trump doesn't seem to know enough to know that that's actually what the whole thing was about the whole time. And I have the advantage of Donald. Trump because I've read your book, which the title of this show provoked, which lays it out that

this is what the whole thing was about to begin with. Yeah. And, you know, what's a security guarantee if it's not Article 5 membership in NATO in the first place is, you know, people like to cite the Budapest memorandum of 1994 where everybody promises to respect Ukraine sovereignty. And they try to pretend that that's a treaty of alliance and that we promise to come. to help them in case anyone violates, but that's not what it said. Right, right.

People want to try to read it that expansively. In fact, even the NATO tree, Article 5 says that if any member stays attacked, then the other nations will then have to decide what to do about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Article 5, a lot of people think Article 5 means we're at war, if someone's at war with a NATO allied country, but that's not technically what it says. It's, in fact, one of the things that's interesting, right, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, But it's not clear, at least, like what we've done for Ukraine, you certainly could argue would have met Article 5 requirements, like just doing what we're doing right now for Ukraine. Oh, sure.

Like if they had done that to Lithuania or Estonia or whatever, yes. Then what we've done, you could say, hey, we ate it in the defense. We didn't just allow it to happen. But anyway, but yes, it's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, man, so it is frustrating, though, because I know that I'm not exactly certain why other than, you know, whatever Donald Trump's conception of the future development of the Arctic or whatever he has in mind here, trying to split Russia away from China as best he can, that he wants to see this thing over, and yet he just can't. It's just such bad timing on his part when the Russians are winning, but slowly, and they're not done winning yet. they have no real reason to quit they're saying well look if the ukrainians will just drop their guns

and turn around and walk off of the territory they still control in donyazs of prussia and kurson well then and then declare their neutrality forever and kick all the nazis out of the cover right then that'd be fine but otherwise no we're going to keep going but then it's going to take them a while apparently i don't know how long it'll be the skeptics keep saying the ukraine armies just their lines are going to break and it's going to fall apart they're going to have to turn around or run at some point i don't know when that point is but at the rate they're going it's going to take them a long time to finish takens of proser and cursone which they've already officially annexed i mean they've made major gains in provost in western donyisk which they say is

you know a major strategic kind of hub there so you know perhaps they'll finish consolidating all of Donetsk by the end of the year. And what do they have? They have like two thirds of it or something like that now or something? Yeah, I'd say more than that, I think, probably three quarters or more of Doniesk now. And then, but they only have about two thirds of Ziproja and Kurson. Right. Those are my rough estimates and including like major cities outside of their control

in those areas. And then plus these, Harkiv is right there and Odessa is right there. And once you got Odessa, Transnistria, which is this little strip of land, as you know, know on the Moldovan side of the river, on the Moldovan Ukrainian border there, which is stripling control by Russia. So now that they have Crimea, hell, they can see Transnistria from there anyway, proverbially speaking, especially from Odessa, it's just a hop, skipping a jump right there to take it. So it would take, I don't know what promises Trump could ever make to get Russia to stop

short of their goals. And never even mind Odessa and Harkiv, because maybe they haven't officially annexed those areas. Putin has said belligerent things about both before about, you know, the potential for oh yeah, you know, like somebody asked him and he goes, oh, the weather in Odesta is very nice and this kind of thing, you know.

So they could stop short of that, but are they going to stop short as a progen? And see, a solid third occurs on the part of it they don't control is on the other side of the river, on the right bank of the river, the western side. So they're not going to take that until they've smashed the Ukrainian army and they can just go there. Right. You know, and the Ukrainian Marines have tried to take and cross that river and have a beachhead on the Russian side and have gotten completely green and lost.

Did nothing but lose guys and finally give up on an attempt to wage an offensive down there. So, yeah, it's just, it's a really bad time to be. a president try to end a war it's it's such a slow motion more the way that the russians are fighting it um and you know they're not like sending in the heavy bombers you know i mean they kind of are but they're hitting them you know one at a time not like richard nixon carpet bombing or whatever and um so uh so i don't know what the hell i think trump you know assuming trump and his guys have game this out it makes sense that they would would be saying that they essentially be setting Ukraine up and saying, look, we came up with

a deal. They wouldn't take it. But we have other business to attend to. So we're going to go ahead. And like, for example, I think we could all agree. We would rather develop the Arctic trade routes with Russia rather than in some strategic competition with them that ends up like threatening violent conflict over freaking trade routes in the Arctic. Forget that. Let's make a joint condominium up there with the Chinese too. What the hell? all help each other trade because this is a big deal the northwest passage which they were seeking you know coming here to the americas back when which they never found because there was canada in the way um the thing is it's open now right but the thing is there's another northwest

passage that's also open now which is north of asia north of russia so that there's a trade route from china around north of russia to europe that way instead of having to go all the way around India and through Suez and all of that mess, right? So it's a huge potential trade zone up there. So it could be that Trump is setting, is setting himself up to argue, look, I did my best, but neither side wants to quit. And what the hell? We're not just going to put off getting along with Russia forever, even while they're fighting this war, which is, I don't know if he's going to be able to do that or not, but it could be what he has in mind. It sounds like the type of thing that might excite Donald Trump, you know, but I will say, I don't know, did you see,

I played this on my, on my last show, but I don't know if you saw Trump, Trump called in to Fox News, I guess it was Fox and Friends or whatever, one of those shows where there's three of them on a couch. I don't even know, like, who all the people on cable news are. Like I used to, I don't know, like you used to know everyone. Kind of recognize their faces sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that lady from before, yeah. But, you know, I know the thing with Donald Trump is always, you know, you know, he says a million crazy things and everyone jumps on every latest crazy thing and half of them he doesn't even mean or whatever but i really don't think i'm doing that but he's just it's just him explaining the war and and he just has no idea what he's talking about man and it's just

totally this like it's like a um a sean hanity rudy juliani minus 20 IQ points like way of like conceiving of the whole thing where he's explaining like he doesn't doesn't even get, he goes, he goes, this all started in 2014. And at first you're like, ah, okay, he goes, Putin took Crimea and Obama just gave it to him. He just gave him Ukraine. That's what Obama did. Never would happen under me, but Obama gave him Ukraine. And so he still fundamentally thinks the problem was that we gave Ukraine to the Russians and doesn't realize that the problem is actually that we took Ukraine away from the Russians and that that Putin taking Crimea was his snap was the snap back to that and so

like when you don't even get that and you're you're talking about solving this war which I think you know even as you're indicating now solving this war right now is actually much tougher than just diagnosing what caused the war you know like it's it's actually a much tougher challenge to solve it than it was to start it which is also is quite often the case with catastrophes like in your personal life in general it's much easier to start one than it is to put it all back together but like if you don't even understand the very first thing about how it started what hope do you have to being up to this challenge don't worry because marco rubio is there right yeah yeah right this is why they say personnel is policy you know because it is like

all right guys tell me what's going on here and then you're only going to get so good of a perspective you know what I mean so and especially no president from either party I mean potentially Trump could

if he had his ducks in a row blame it on the other guys but when it comes to foreign policy it's like you know they say politics stops at the water's edge and we're all united against whoever foreign thing so like

blaming Biden himself is one thing blaming policy for the last 25 years and all of this kind of thing which he doesn't have to be that specific but it would be nice if you understood it looked like oh there's a long train of abuses and usurpations here but yeah well even if he just

even if he just got the basics of it the basics of what the beef is about what led to the conflict I mean because it's you know if you don't get that then you're fundamentally you're kind of just feeling in the dark about what the potential solution might be and then it's very

easy to get you know it's like when when Donald Trump he instead instinctually on some business level knows all these wars are bad and he does and he does seem to not like people dying like that seems to be part of it too which is refreshing you know in a way that he's also like yeah they're dying they should stop dying but when you just go i like this is bad business you know we're losing all this then it's easy to pivot to oh well like since you don't actually understand the the core of the issue instead of coming to the conclusion that we shouldn't be in nato anymore or that nato shouldn't exist anymore you go oh they're ponying up their money okay so we solved it that way Oh, we got some oil. Okay, well, then we solved it that way. Oh, we got a mineral deal. We solved it that way.

So when it's just a gut, you know, aversion to this is bad business, it's actually a lot easier to come to a really bad solution. Why are we even talking about security guarantees or mineral deals? This is the whole fucking problem. How do you not come to? At best, Ukraine has to just be neutral. That's like, that should at least be, obviously everyone should accept that at this point. And so now also I got to think the other thing, because it was, look, I don't.

know, obviously, dude, you know, you know the shit a lot better than I do, and you wrote the book on it. But, you know, so I was reading, um, perhaps at your recommendation, but I was reading, Aaron Matei had a piece about this on Substack a few days ago, which was very good. And, you know, he's talking about how, like, look, there have been some signals coming out of Moscow. Uh, you know, who knows, but there's some signals coming out that they're like, they might be open to like, all right, you get the, you get the, you get the, you get the fuck out of Dunnask, like you give us the 100% of the Donbass region, obviously Crimea, that's all annexed and has to be

recognized as Russian territory. They wanted a corridor to Crimea from the south there. And that they might think about with no and guarantees of no NATO or whatever, the few things that want, that they might be open to that deal. So like, look, who knows, maybe that's not the case. And even if they were offered that, they wouldn't take it. But when you hear they might be open to that, and then you start saying literally what was reported in Axios, what they called it was article 5 like security guarantees is what they're sitting there to go so as soon as you broadcast well the rest of ukraine is going to be in nato essentially which is right with like de facto at least once you broadcast that well then that totally changes the incentives

of vladimir putin to go okay so you're telling me whatever i don't take right now right is part of nata is that the threat now so okay well in that case i so it just it just seems like you know like if it seems to me that a lot of their goal is not to end the war it's to keep the going as has been the goal for a while and as you've done some good reporting on this in the book at least for some of them they seem to not really give a if ukraine collapsed and it was an insurgency i think that was kind of the plan at the very beginning so they don't actually really give a fuck at all they think it keeps bleeding russia dry and our austrian economic training would tell us there probably is a lot of truth to that yeah and so they want to keep it going

but the problem is if you're Donald Trump and you actually do want to end the thing it's like now you don't even see that you're flying into these poison pills that are going to defeat the whole effort well and the logical inconsistency of it all just shows the cynicism of it all

that you know and this was true during Biden too that they made it very clear that we're not going to fight for Ukraine we would never risk war with Russia fight for Ukraine so then in other words you would never bring them into NATO because that's bringing them into NATO means is that you would fight for them.

Right. But you're saying now you're going to end the war and then, but you're going to give them a security guarantee after they're done losing? And then you promised to fight for them in the next one? What the hell is that any of this makes no sense at all? Right. And it's really what they're admitting is what you just said. They don't give a damn about Ukraine. They're just extras in our movie and their lives are worth no more to Washington than the lives of the Afghans in the 1980s, that they're props and they're here. They're, their pawns. on the board to be used to weaken the Russians. Well, and this is where, this is where people on our side or people in our camp can at times

get sloppy and it's easy, it's easy to because it is like, you know, you tend to think of this thing of like, oh, this is the state's motivation, this is the regime's motivation. But actually, like, there's different players and there's different periods, right? So like, then you cover this very well in the book. It's very interesting, right? that when, so when in, uh, in 2008 and George W. Bush's last year as president in the, at the Bucharest summit, when they announce Ukraine and Georgia are coming into NATO. Well, that was because George W. Bush really wanted them to be in NATO.

He, for his own legacy building purposes, wanted to have these countries added to NATO. Then Merkel's giving him pushback, so he doesn't end up getting a full map, but he does get an announcement that there. So at that point, I think the goal really was to bring Ukraine into NATO, because this would be great for George W. Bush's legacy. But after that point, none of them really seemed serious about bringing Ukraine into NATO. Like, they all kind of knew,

ah, you can't really do that. This is crazy. Like, I mean, before 2014, like after 2008, after the war in Georgia and all that, they're kind of like, but they just keep floating it out anyway. And then it does make you wonder,

well, what the hell was the goal of that? Like, if you're not, if you're not serious about ever actually incorporating them, I think it's, it really, it comes down to public choice between the different people involved. Right. I think, like, Newland was so heavily involved in pushing the Bucharest summit in the vice president's office in the first place. And, and Cheney was involved in pushing that.

And then I think you had probably in the Obama years, I mean, there's Newland again, right? Although she came in later, but I think you may have had more reluctance in the beginning. Although, so like you've got to go back I'm trying to remember the timeline and all the WikiLeaks because there are a lot of WikiLeaks documents about this where they talk about the crisis,

there's at least two or three different state department documents about this. They talk about how the people of Ukraine don't support NATO membership. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How to wage a propaganda campaign to get them on board and how to change the influence

to get at least be able to claim that we have enough. Yeah, and that was, those were published in the Washington Post. I remember actually you sending me these articles about the, yeah, where they're literally going. The Ukrainian population, it's so unpopular to this idea

of NATO membership. And they're spending a lot of money on trying to change minds about it. Which is funny because they have a mandate. You know, they talk about, of course, in the context of Maidon, they talk about, like, always like the will of the Ukrainian people. By the way, for people listening to the podcast, I was not saying, shh, honey, to

Dave, I have a dog in the room here. Sorry, go ahead, dude. I didn't want people to take that out of context. Thank you, honey. No, but so, like, they all talk about when it comes to Maidon, which, again, I think was never really demonstrated that it was actually popular. I think it was very closely split, like, during all of Maidon, like, the opinion polling was, like, very, I think it was like, Janukovych was unpopular, but he was still the

most popular of the political figures or something like that. It's like, the country was very divided on the whole thing. Obviously, there are huge, huge crowds out in the streets, but they'll go, it's the will of the Ukrainian people. You're denying their agency. But the thing is back just a few years before when our State Department is finding out that their agency says they don't want to be a part of NATO. They go, okay, well, then we got to pump money in there to change what the will of the Ukrainian people is. So, you know, maybe it's they were the ones who were denying their agency. And meanwhile, like imagine any other circumstance.

Like, just say, for example, like anyone listening, like it was people you disagreed with. And there was a big crowd of them. And they said, look, see, it's the will of the big crowd of people. Like, come on. I saw, I don't know, 50 or 60,000 people march against the Iraq war in downtown Austin. Right, right. You think they were representative, even of Travis County. Yeah, yeah, right.

I mean, maybe. But not Williamson and certainly not the rest of this stage. Forget it. And sorry, folks, we were right about that one. Yeah. And I was there February and March 15th of 03, by the way. Thank you very much. My sign said, no more UN wars, because I thought it was all about empowering the UN still because I was stupid.

This is kind of funny. But I think there were pictures of that somewhere. The future. Yeah, we talked about that. I think Ukraine is really screwed, man. I think, I guess I'm kind of being redundant. I'm not sure when and where I keep repeat myself saying this. But I think the Russians really put them.

themselves in a bind by doing this. By removing the Russian population out of Ukraine, I mean, they used to win elections. That's why we had to keep overthrowing the government there, right? Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, so now they've got anybody who liked them, they've now drawn a line around them, and they've left a country behind that is going to be run by right-wing nationalists from the far west of the country and who absolutely despise Russia. who are the survivors of those who just

fought and died in the war. Hate them more than ever, I'm sure. And there's going to be no balance to it at all. And I want to highlight, you know, of course, in the book, I, um, Ruby, honey. Okay, you just hear me. The Ukraine talk is exciting. She's asking like we just got home, you know.

You just left the room for one minute, baby. We're still here. It's okay. Dang, all, in the book, I beat the dead horse about the Nazis because, I mean, look, the book is obviously very thick. But I don't really belabor any one point too much. It's just a lot of different subjects in there because it covers a long period of time.

But the two subjects I really beat a dead horse over the most would be the promises over NATO expansion and the Nazis. And I go back, I explain the commies and the Holodomor, and I explain the right-wing reaction to that. and then the coming of the Germans and the war and then their defeat and then the CIA support for them and the rise of the Nazis no honey we can't play ball now

I'm sorry the rise of the Nazis again with the fall of the Soviet Union they came home from Canada and the United States where they'd been living in exile and they came home and built up these movements again and you know with all their rewriting of history and all of this stuff

and um so i go on and on about that because of course it's the worst thing that you could say about the ukrainians is that man there really are Nazis of influence in their country in a way that we just don't have uh elsewhere certainly in europe or really anywhere that you could think of um and and so then of course therefore the russians like pointing that out and then the americans like crying that that's not true that's just something that the russians say so i'm not going to tolerate anybody saying about me that I said something because it's something that the Russians say. I would only say something if it was true. And so I got plenty of sources, very few of them Russian, on all of this story. And part of it is about the group Patriot of Ukraine

the National Corps. And this was the group that was one of the major facets of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the Maidan Revolution, where they were part. part of what became right sector, which was like the coalition of the Steppenbender's Trident, Whitehammer, and the Patriot of Ukraine group. And then this other one called Ukrainian National Assembly, Ukrainian self-defense. All of these are tied directly back to the Nazis of the Second World War era through their fathers and even their mothers sometimes in some cases where it would be like the chairwoman of the board over the thing. So these are the groups that really spearheaded the overthrow.

Spoboda is another one, which had been called the Social National Party. I saw a funny comment on Twitter where I had posted a thing about one of these Nazis. I said, yeah, he's from the Social National Party. And the guy goes, yeah, see, that's the exact opposite of the National Socialist, Scott. What's your problem? The exact opposite? Social nationalist. not to be confused.

Yeah, not at all the same thing. Which, you know, he was joshing around having fun. Which, me too. And so, but here's the thing about it is after the revolution, when the leader of Jabat al-Nusra, John Brennan, came to town and insisted that the acting president, Turchinov, launched the anti-terrorist operation, i.e. the civil war. in the east of the country the military was severely unprepared and some of their best units

were loyal to the other side and defected to the other side which is where the other side got all their military equipment not from the russians it was from the soviets right who had left it behind back when right and and it was part of the ukrainian national force that they got well so when the ukrainian military was so unprepared the azov battalion stepped into the breach and those were the guys who essentially were right sector now beletsky himself, this guy, Andrew Boleski, he had been in prison on, I thought it was

kind of funny, the charge was a terrorist attack for blowing up a statue of Vladimir Lenin, and I'm like, I don't know, I can look the other way. But the guy is still a Hitler-loving lunatic, and so they let him out of prison. Well, that is the nice thing about Nazi. They don't like Lenin. Yeah, what are you going to do? It's one of their

only good qualities. I remember years ago, looking at Ukraine and seeing this story where gang of thugs beat up this old woman. And I'm like, God, these Nazis over there, what in the world? And it's like, well, she did come to lay flowers at the feet of a statue of Joseph Stalin.

So, like, these things do happen. You know, I don't know. But anyway, people are crazy. Over there, they call each other commie Nazi. Over there, they're commies and Nazis. You know, there's a lot of that. Right. Right. But so,

this guy, Andrew Beletsky, he got out of prison and then, like, just pulled rank, I guess, and got the, essentially the leaders of right sector and C-14, which was another militia of the Swaboda Party, or, you know,

the social nationalist, renamed Spoboda Party. And they'll join together, and they created what became called the Azov Battalion. And the first thing they did was, not the first thing. There was some assassinations, I think, at a protest in Harkiv. I remember, right?

But then they ended up liberating, very importantly, they liberated Maripole. and then Marupo, however, and drove the pro-Russian rebels out of control of that town then. So that was their first big victory and cemented their legend and all of that. So then they went from Azov Battalion to then by the, I guess, November or whatever, late 14, they were officially integrated into the National Guard and called the Azov Regiment. And they were still called the Azov Regiment until, I guess, sometime during the war, they actually split it and part of them became the 12th separate National Guard division

and then the rest followed Beletsky and became the third separate infantry division and they've been fighting mostly in the north of the country for the last three years he's now Colonel Beletsky and they've now promoted the group again they're now called the Third Army Corps that's the Azab Battalion and the thing is about it is it's not just the Azab Battalion, it's the Azab Movement. And especially, you know, we haven't heard that much about it since the worst part of the war in 2022, except at the very start. And I may have just overlooked some things.

But certainly from all through the Civil War from 2014 through 22 and into the beginning of the start of the war, at least, is, yeah, this massive neo-Nazi movement unparalleled. anywhere in Europe. There's just nothing like it. You look at like Gie Wilders or like Marine Le Pen or, you know, any of these guys. What was that guy in Austria that Justin Romando liked so much back years ago? Like none of these guys, these guys are, they're like nationalists, but they're not Nazis. They're not. Yeah. And it's a real different. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, look, right-wing nationalism has been with humans for, you know, thousands of years. Naziism is a very particular thing. And this literally is. is nazi yeah yeah and it is and they're recruiting white supremacists from all across europe and from even you know america and brazil and wherever italy that's part of europe uh all over the place to come and is and they had you know fight clubs and death metal concerts and big recruitment events and whatever all across europe for years and um and so then i don't know how close we are to the end of the war but i've been saying for a while and

working on an article right now like this because I want it on the record that I told you so about this because I think that this guy, Baletsky, is probably the most dangerous of him. And now there's a bunch of them whose names I don't know. You know, I know Dmitri Yoros and Andrew Perubi. Andrew Perubi was, you know, one of the major leaders of the social national parties, Foboda, who then became the Speaker of the Parliament for like nine years or something, seven, eight years. So, And a lot of these guys, you know, a guy named Troyan became the deputy head of the national police for a while. I think the Americans maybe after 22, possibly the Biden government insisted that they get rid of some of these guys or demote them or whatever. But they're far from gone.

And I think. Well, yes, this was a bit of a PR problem. If people remember early in the war, they did have a little bit of an issue with too many of these guys swastikas were showing out of their military uniform or whatever. So they were trying to... Getting sent home from Germany because they're like... One of them went... An official in the government

went and laid flowers at the tomb of Steppen Banderah and the Germans kicked them out of the country. And then the Ukraine's promised we will have our guys remove all their swastika insignia from their uniforms before we send them to train in Germany from here on out, you know? We really are serious about that. Don't worry.

And so listen, so... Anybody's ever heard much of the, you know, the anti-war argument on this stuff and are familiar with it at all and the accusations about the Ukrainian Nazis. The most familiar quote that you will hear is that this guy saying that we must lead the white crusade against the Semetic-led untermension, right? That's the, and that means subhumans, right? To the German Nazis, where the Uber mentioned, they're the unter mention, right? so um and this was a speech that he gave and it's funny because uh well it's not funny the thing is um it's your boilerplate you know typical not nazi fanaticism um you know it's crazy stuff it's essentially what you would think a nazi would say um about the the single being that is

the ukrainian state and how all must serve it for the greater glory of the way things used to be whatever you know how it goes and for and for all the Aryan virtues which I wasn't sure that included the Slavs you know but like I don't know if that's what you're calling them now I don't I don't know how that's supposed to work really about that the Aryans were Indians I don't know how they can be white if they're from India but I think if it's a bunch of made-up crap then it's not supposed to really be consistent you know yeah I don't think you can't get lost in the details there but but yeah so the thing is um the good old London times has a thing about Andrew Beletsky

and who Putin fears him and he's a tough guy. Look at him everybody and they're rehabilitating the guy. Like turning Al Jolani into Al-Sharah. They're like, yeah, we're turning this guy from Steppin Bandera and I don't know Benjamin Franklin or something. And so

he maybe went to the same like Turkish finishing school where they sent Al-Jolani from Al-Qaeda in Syria. And so he's like acting like a normal guy and he goes, man, I never said that Nazi stuff. Why? that's a Russian forgery. I immediately thought of Joy Reed. That's a Russian forgery.

Dude, I never said that stuff. And it's like, but that's funny, because I got the source from the Wayback Machine archive of the Azov Regiment website. And there it is. And yeah, and I published a whole thing on the anti-war.com blog.

And I forgot I was going to email it to myself so I could show it to you here. But in fact, here. Ukrainian radical social national by Andrew Belitsky and anybody can find this at anti-war.com slash blog

and again it's your boilerplate Nazi lunacy and so but I think that look there's it's almost certain this guy's going to be the future leader of this country they'll probably call him El Presente

instead of furor or whatever because bad PR like they told Jolani stop getting people's heads off dude there's cameras rolling but otherwise you can have the power just don't do that right same thing here chill with the sea guiles and then you can have your chair yeah i heard um throughout the war or maybe it was kind of earlier in the war i mean i remember hearing from a few of the hawks

that were basically arguing and i never saw any of this substantiated anywhere but they were arguing that um you know because this would come up as a kind of black eye on their undying support for ukraine and if you remember of this you do well but you're the listener if you remember, you know, in 22 and 23, before, you know, when the initial wave of Ukraine propaganda came, I was like, you know, change your profile to their flag. And these guys are great. A beacon of democracy. What a hero, ghost of Kiev. You know, we were in that, like, time. And this was kind of a black eye on that like, well, there's a lot of Hitler-loving Nazis in the middle of this wonderful country that you're describing. And I remember a bunch of the hawks used to say, yeah, but all those

guys got sent to the front lines. You know, essentially like they all, that's a lot. That problem took care of itself. Cross your fingers, pal. And I think a lot of them were the first to enlist. I mean, these are the toughest guys. But it's interesting that, of course, just, you know, like so many of these things, the wars that are supposed to eliminate these groups, then you see them popping up. And, you know, it's a, look, you think about even, say, in America, we still have, you know, groups in this country who quite passionately defend the South in the South. In the South, we still have. Civil War and call it the War of Northern Aggression. Now, most, your average

Joe 6-pack may not know about this at all, but cooks like us in our world. We do know people who like refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern aggression and still have a... No, listen, they've got an argument. Like, I'm not and I, honestly, this is a topic for

another show, but I think me and you maybe would like split the difference with them and the other side on it. Like maybe it wouldn't be... But there's an argument. I mean, they're like, you know, and as is the case always with wars, right? I mean, like, if you're a southerner, like, your perspective on this is like a whole bunch of innocent Southern people getting fucked up, and that's not fair. And that's right, you know, and like from your perspective, that's not wrong, no matter what the meta

beef was, you were just living next to your aunt's place or whatever. But you, the point anyway I was just making is that it's like, these old, they don't die so easily, you know? And when you have something like, and I'm talking about a conflict in the 1860s, that there's still people today talking you know arguing about that and still very upset about it and this is really much much more recent than that and so it's like there's it's not easy i remember jeff dice had a big uh speech about this where he was just like banishing politically defeated groups is not as easy as you think like there's still people in russia who supports Stalin there's still people and the other kind of forgotten chapter of the rest of europe post world war two is that it's not like

the Nazism just went away. Like it was forcefully suppressed and is still illegal in large parts of Europe. And so it does seem like the two points you're making there are pretty interesting. And for the first part of it,

anybody hasn't seen there's that John Mearsheimer had a big lecture on this that went super, super rival and has like 20 million views on it. But when he actually starts breaking down like I think he goes through on a slide there, like the election results in 2010 and then in 20, whatever the years,

the elections were, whatever. Yanukovych was it, 2012? He was a... 2010. 2010 was the one he was, okay. So, but they go, and I mean, you can see it where essentially, like, Russia has now taken the balance of this country away. What's left there isn't, no matter what you call it, it's not neutral anymore.

The country, Ukraine, was neutral because the kind of eastern half of it wanted to be pro-Russian and the western half of it wanted to be pro-Western, and so that gave you, this neutral kind of political dance where Yanukovych is trying to be like, I'm cool with you, but I'm also cool with you, and we could kind of just be in the middle. That's gone now, and you have these guys as the most powerful fighting force and in many ways

have a lot of energy. Yeah, this could be the future. Yeah, so that leaves the Russians, then they take the Donbass is a projean Kurson, but they leave Harkiv and Sumi and DeNapuro Pravask and I think there's one more there east of the river where people still speak Russian are basically culturally Russian

from the Russian government's point of view well those people need protection still they're now a much smaller minority in a much more radicalized yeah much more radicalized right wing nationalist country based out of what was never really part of Ukraine was part of Austro-Hungarian Empire and then Poland

is what's you know Volina and and Galicia you know in far western Ukraine and so only makes sense then and then this is the other thing is you get to Kiev

and I was thinking well and then Kiev's on the other side of the river but no I was just talking with Larry Johnson he's like no Kiev is like Kansas City Kansas and Kansas City of Missouri is right across the river it's two things so they're going to own half the city and then the other

and then the capital of the enemy country is now right there across the river line of sight and they absolutely hate you and they're led by fanatical Nazis who say we got to keep dying or else the guys who already died died in vain and so get them everybody and then kind of thing and then it only makes sense that this war

just keeps going for years until the Nazis are completely look and I'm just extrapolating a slippery slope kind of dirty snowball sort of argument here I don't know like I might be missing things I'm assuming that that Baletsky and his guys oh I'm not just assuming

see this is the other thing is there are a couple of more articles about Balitsky here. One of them is a Ukrainian news story, and it's about him saying how the new Ukraine after the war is going to have to be like Israel, a militarized state, ready for war at all times, with Israel as the model,

which is funny to hear national socialists, you know, talking about that. Well, it's more politically correct than saying, like, Nazi Germany these days. Yeah, our model is Germany. Our model is Israel. That's just more like that. Nice substitute. You know, it works.

National Socialists, too. So there was that. But in other words, though, like, he's planning ahead for, like, this is going to be the shape of our economy and governance going forward kind of thing. He's not just a colonel in the Army. He's planning on being a boss. And there's this brand new thing. The article is in Intelligence Online, which is apparently very old and I've never heard of before. And I had to give them my email address to get free access to this great article.

But it's really good article. I can tell that it's not BS. and I invited the guy on the show. And it's called The Saga of the Third Azov Brigade from the trenches of Dombas to the corridors of power. And then, no longer content with just fighting. The Third Azov Brigade is shaping public opinion, uniting disaffected youth,

attracting Western military firms and officers, and imposing its vision of a post-war Ukraine. Behind the military unit, a planned rise to power is steadily taking shape. So some of the major points of the article are about the broader Azov movement that they've been cultivating the civilian side of this thing

this whole time and the broad networks and he cites a lot of people that I talk about in the book from pre-22 days of being leaders including this lady Ola Seminaka and all of these cooks

I don't know there's a bunch of them and they also talk about I thought it was really interesting I was telling you there's a part in there where they're saying that I guess the reporter himself

talk to the defense firms and the defense firms say they really like the azob battalion not because they're Nazis but just because they actually operate on an entire separate chain of command from the central military regime so they have the official imprimatur or whatever of the Ukrainian state but they're still an independent military force it's not that they hate Jews it's just that their trains run on time and so that's just really nice to work with yeah exactly right And so these guys, when they order weapons, they don't demand a kickback. They don't demand a bribe. They give you feedback as to whether this weapon system is working for the intended use

or whether there's some more that they could do or what. And they're like great partners to work with, man. They don't. You get tired of delays and kickbacks, man. You just want to kill some people, you know? Well, when you were just mentioning before we started recording, what's his name, the C-14 guy who said it would have been the gay pride parade in that talk. Yeah, Biz Karras.

Right. So he's saying that, but he kind of said almost like the same thing. Or he said something, because he said something. I can't remember exactly. You go say, like us because we have fun killing. And he was like, first of off, he was like, we don't fuck like the West. The West doesn't like us. They like us because they know.

And essentially, I mean, these are my words, not his, but he was like, they know. You want to put pressure on Yanukovych. Well, who's going to do that? I mean, who's actually going to go kick ass for you here? And so it was like, it does, it becomes that type of thing, right? where those that's always it was uh darrell uh whose seat i guess i'm sitting in uh today um he made this point i thought was great in um what was it must have been in the fear and loathing uh series or maybe it was in the follow-up to that but where he was talking about yeah yeah you know

it was in the follow-up piece to that war all the time right i think is what it was called um where he's that's a great poison idea album by the way oh yeah well there that's also it's also a great follow-up series to fear and loathing in the new jerusalem him. I highly recommend all of that, but I guess this audience doesn't need to hear that. But, no, he's talking about the people, which kind of also applies to, like, the settlers in the West Bank, say, today. But he was talking about the, like, right after the formation of Israel. So this is like when Gaza is still under Egyptian territory, you know, this is 48 to 67, somewhere in there. I was talking about, like, hey, who do you think is going to go live in southern Israel?

Keep in mind back then, this is 1952. There's no wall. There's no, you know, whatever, facial recognition technology. There's no nothing. There's them right there and you right there. And you better have someone to go occupy this territory if you're Israel because otherwise, they'll just start seeping back in and you lose your, there's not lines on the ground. There's not a wall there. There's not this technology.

You're just putting everything together. And so who do you get to go occupy that? The craziest motherfuck who are looking for a fight in the same thing, like amongst Israeli society right now, who's volunteering to go be another settler on the West Bank. It's not just your average random Israeli. It's the most fanatical, most like, I'm on this mission because God promised us Judea and Samaria and these people have no... And I'm willing to put myself at risk to go to...

So like, it just, when you get these situations, it ends up like it snowballs because of course the most radical, craziest motherfuck are always the ones who are going to be what you need in a situation. like this. Like, if you're the West looking for someone to support here, well, who are you going to do? You know, it's like the moderate rebels in Syria, as you say, right? A bunch of Chechens and Uyghurs willing to travel halfway across the world to blow themselves up. You tell me, I mean, you say it, you know, enough already, you cover this in real great detail,

but it's like, when you just sit there and you go, okay, so you're telling me, you found a group who's going to go into Syria in 2013, and they're going to stand with, you know, al-Qaeda and ISIS on this side and Bashar al-Assad and the Russians on this side and defeat both of them out of their moderate nature for not-licking conflict with all of their

de-escalatory policies they're going to defeat both like no like that's just not how this works unfortunately it always was the bin Laden nights from the very beginning of that thing yep okay so hey guys I just want to tell you a little bit more about Scott Horton brand coffee I know I've

seen like a shill but I pay my dues, let me alone. And this is really good coffee. It's made by Moon Doze Artisan Coffee. Get it. They hate Starbucks, too, so it's Moon Doze. But it's really good. It's part Ethiopian, blended with Sumatra.

And I talked about it on the show last week, and got a bunch of sales and already a bunch of great feedback. Also got rid of some at the Ron Paul birthday event down in Houston, and already got a lot of great response from that in the email, talking about, oh, great, now I can never drink any other coffee ever again. Yeah, welcome my world. I'm enslaved. to this guy, basically Phil Pepin and his wonderful coffee at Mundo's Artisan Coffee. And what you do is you go Scott Horton.org slash coffee and it'll forge you right on to the correct thing. Or just go to my website, Scotthorton.org, and there's a logo in the right-hand margin. You click on that and you'll get this stuff and I'll get a kickback and it'll be great.

So wake up in the morning by drinking this stuff. Thank you. It's funny because when you talk about, you know, Chechen Jehattis and Kosovo, jihadists and Uyghur jihadists all traveling to Syria to fight you're like okay i mean that makes sense right we seen this before that's how they do it and all of this and then you're like wow and then you really do have these jihadists going to ukraine to help the Nazis fight the russians there and i don't want to say that because now that sounds silly but no i'm sorry i got it from like a couple of different reports from the new york times plus a really in-depth series by a guy at The Intercept, Marson Mammon, I believe, was his name, who did like a three or four part thing

about this. And then I have something too from like, was it the telegraph or something? Where the CIA and the Ukrainians raided a jihadist who'd been hiding out in Kiev for a while. But he'd been there for a while. And then the expert people that they were talking to, like consultants to the police were saying that like only the real committed ones get this far. It really raises questions like how many more of these guys are there? Right, right.

There have been reports of them out there fighting in the east. And then when there was that terrorist attack in Moscow and the Russians claim that they were heading back to Ukraine before they nabbed him and that that was who was behind it, it was like, dude, that is possible. You know, like they said that they were ISIS K. I don't know who they were. And whoever gave them money and told them, point your gun that way and shoot it, probably lied to them about who they were anyway and, and, what you know what i mean who knows who hired who hired the guy who hired the guy who hired the gun you know whatever but like they could have come from ukraine like essentially straight there because we got multiple reports of jihadis because look they got whooped in syria they're

back on top now for a while they were all whole up in the idlin province with nothing to do and nowhere to go and so they were going to ukraine to fight well and you see this um you know i guess all over the place. I mean, even, you know, you hear the story from our boys who are back home here where even the ones who, you know, by and large, have turned against the mission and turned against, you know, wanting to fight in wars, one of the things you hear when you talk to like the soldiers, you know, the combat vets who are really struggling is that they do kind of wish they were back out there. And there is this thing, even when they were like, don't, they know they got conned into war and they're still like there's just you know and like obviously this is not

something i've experienced or you have but you hear it from these guys where they're like yeah but but dude just that you're you'll never be at that again in your life you know what i mean like you were in this thing where it's like a life or death you your but your life is in your buddy's hand your buddy's life is in your hand the stakes are so goddamn high and that level of excitement is and then you see this all throughout the world where it is these guys they get battle tested somewhere and then they're looking for the next battle. Like, they're looking to not... This is the story of all the early Zionists, you know?

Where it's like all those guys were like fighting in Eastern Europe and then would come over to keep the fight going here. And then it's like you come home from battle. And also, you know, you get these young men, because for the most part, that's what you're talking about, are young men who if you spent, let's say, you know, let's say you spent years fighting in Ukraine or something like that. Or let's say the guys who, you know, you covered it enough already, who are fighting in the, you know, in Iraq and then went over to fight in Libya or then went over to fight in Syria or all of this.

You're an 18 to 25 year old guy who spent a few years doing that. That is your skill now. Right. Like, what is it you bring to the table? What is it that you can do? Well, I'm a, yeah, like, this is what I do. And I'm pretty good at it. I've gotten pretty good at it by this point.

I've survived four years of war, you know? Yeah. And they're looking for another one. It's like another ripple effect of the cost of starting these wars that don't need to be start or not de-escalating them when you can. Then you got all these international mercenaries now, which will will pop up in the next conflict. Yeah. And look, there were only hundreds of these guys until Iraq War II. Right.

And then there were thousands of them. But then the locals murdered them all. Which is like a magic wish came true. But then Barack Obama gave him $4 billion, him and all of his allies. including Benjamin Netanyahu and, of course, res of Peridouan and the rest. So that was what brought him back to life

and created the caliphate. And so you think about, you know, a lot of those people are just regular Iraqi schmucks who got, you know, rounded up and conscripted a lot of the rest. But for the people who volunteered to be part of the bin Ladenite movement

in Al Nusra and ISIS in those Syrian days, that's only 15 years ago. And there's a lot of guys left over from that. There's bin Laden's. We don't know of. some of them are under the control of Saudi intelligence, some of them surely not, you know, and I am really concerned about that.

I think I was even saying before maybe on your show, I really want Tulsi Gabbard to only, I want her to declassify everything in the world on the Russiagate thing, and then I want her to go back to work with Joe Kent, keeping Al-Qaeda guys off our shores. Because I know Al-Qaeda mostly works for America and Israel again these days. that does come and go and America was backing them in Chechnya

during September 11th and 10 of those guys have fought in Chechnya or Bosnia and they came and hit us anyway we're supporting the Saudis support for them at that time and hit us anyway so I know people think well that just shows that we were behind it all

our government was behind it all along but I don't think it's that simple no it's not it's not because look I mean and this is why people people really should read enough already they should like if if you want to believe in any of this shit at least just like learn some of the facts of it but like look the thing

I'll say this right like you just cannot convince me there is absolutely no way that it was their plan for ISIS to invade Iraq that was not their plan their plan was to use ISIS to put pressure on Assad even John Kerry on that uh that hot mic he says it himself he's like and I

he's not lying when he says that he's not their plan wasn't to humiliate the army they had just been backing and then have to reinvade the country and have to like that was not part of the plan the thing is though you could think is your little pet project but they're not they're ISIS and they don't so like under the control of intelligence agencies isn't a magical spell where you're like puppeteering these people these are still head shoppers with oozy is running around a country and you don't know what they're going to do and oftentimes if there's nothing else we've learn is that like the people in the intelligence agencies have just like this tremendous hubris

about what they are capable of accomplishing without even without even giving any thought to like the obvious other four possibilities here of what could happen right then you see this all the time I mean freaking like it's happening right now even like obviously yes Israel has some type of loose agreement worked out with Syrians right now right but But they're still fighting them, and they're still, they still have these radicals right next door to them. You don't know where that's going to go in the next few years. By the way, speaking of which, dude, we've got to talk about this. Oh, yeah.

I just got my copy. Oh, good. Did you? Too much glare. Creative Chaos by William Van Wagon. It's our 17th book we published at the Libertarian Institute. I announced it two weeks ago's show. But I got the hard copy of my hand last week and have it here again to tell everybody about.

So, you know, with 400 pages, it's good, man. This is the best guy. I've read a lot of books about the dirty war in Syria. This is the very best guy on it. He wrote these incredible, long form, like 10,000 word articles for us at the Institute before, like a bunch of them, on all different aspects of the thing. And this is not the entire dirty war there. It's the origins of it. But it's, you know, so like the first three years of it, I guess maybe leading right up to the invasion of Iraq by the Islamic State.

Don't quote me on that. it's not the entire thing but what it is though is it's all about america saudi turkey israel and the rest all working together to support these cooks and no one good and well like how dangerous it is to do so and doing it anyway and um and how from the beginning the whole portrayal that this was you know Assad was cracking down on a protest movement and that's what turned it into a civil war and all that is totally belied he just shows that no it was terror sniping cops from the beginning that's the game plan they did the same thing in serbia in 99 was the KLA sniping cops

in order to provoke the National Guard to or military to crack down and then they go, aha, and then they say, oh, there was an organic uprising, and they cracked down on it, right. So, and, oh, no, we're victims, save us Bill Clinton kind of thing, you know, so there's

there's some to that. So anyways, and then, yeah, it did grow up into the caliphate and then Iraq War III to destroy it again and all of the rest of that horror show and then You know, we were sleeping on it. They were hole up in there in that Idlib province,

just like it was the Gaza Strip up there in northwest Syria, all that time, Biden, their time, at Biden, their time. There you go, yeah. And then Biden was like, okay, activate, plan al-Qaeda again, or somebody informed him. That's what we're doing. And they, and they sacked Damascus. They sacked Hamahams, Aleppo, and Damascus in 10 days last December,

late November, early December, and took over that country. and I don't know what the hell is going to happen there I'm still predicting the worst I don't know if eventually we're going to have to go to war there or what I'm not advocating that but I think it's a real problem the population of bin Ladenites who are being made ministers in police

and military forces and what used to be Syria right now okay hey guys um this October 10 through 12 mikhail thorup is doing the expat money summit again he's a really great guy I actually went and toured Mayan pyramids with him down in Mexico when I was on the Tom Woods cruise he's a really great dude and he's a brilliant genius who's mastered the laws all over the world about citizenship and property ownership and how you can protect your wealth and from taxes no cheating it's all extremely legal he's a brilliant guy knows exactly what he's doing the conference this year is

about Latin America and how you can protect yourself with citizenship and property ownership whatever things down there and the actual conference itself is online and it's free at expatmoney summit.com but if you use the promo code provoked you get 20% off lifetime free replays of all the different seminars and all that and it's really substantive stuff it's not just you know some guy talking about things it's a concrete step-by-step of things that you can take a real education in if you have some wealth how you can protect it before uncle sam's done destroying it all for you there so that's expatmoneysummit.com oh and by the way i'm sorry i was going to say one thing about what you're saying about how exciting it is to go to war and all that there's a book about that by a guy who you might

think is a pencil neck geek chris hedges which he is like kind of a progressive liberal type and whenever he knows him as a new york times reporter but he covered 14 wars right he'd been shot at and dodged a bunch of bullets before a lot of time i've seen a lot of dead bodies and knows for real what speaks about like cover the Balkan wars and all kinds of things um and uh so he wrote a book it's kind of a clunky title but you see why i call that it's just called war is a force that gives us meaning and it's all about how god dang exciting it is to go to war for reporters and for fighting men and for the survivors of the atrocities and for everybody else it's a level of endorphins and adrenaline and stress and brotherhood and kinship and fear and love and loving and

every where else oh sorry that's just uh i was like god juice is moving you'll never have it well isn't it like you feel uh i i think you know i've i've thought this a lot of times i've heard other people articulate this better than i could but it's something about

having kids that i felt like um there's one of the best things about having kids is that it um it like immediately gives your life purpose You don't really have to, like, wait, too long to go, like, wait, what am I doing here? What am I? It's like, oh, okay, well, this. This is the thing. And whether that's, that's gameful employment or having kids or having a marriage or

having friendships, it's like, men really need that. They need this feeling of, like, what's my purpose? What's my role? What am I doing? And, you know, war is probably like, there's probably no better example of something that gives you immediate clarity. It's like, here's your purpose. In fact, it's written a mission, you know, right here.

This is what you do. And it's a, you know, we're kind of made to respond to that type of stuff. Essentially, all of us descended from successful warriors. Right. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here. So, yeah, it's part of how it goes. And so, yeah, speaking of barbarianism, let's wrap up here with a little bit of Israel. I wanted to point out that maybe I say this every week or what, I don't know.

but it's like somewhere right around I don't do like the mean and medium and average I just look at the front headlines on anti-war dot com every day but it's like a bare minimum of 70 people are killed every day and then usually it's like 120

so I don't know I measure these in Waco massacres is that's how I count them fair enough right so it's like that's a Waco massacre a day sometimes too every day but Dave I'm still pissed off about that now is 32 years ago

and then I think of them doing that every day for three years and then I see some of the pictures too I try not to look at them too much but I think that it really it's Ramondo would say it's the great clarifier where it really goes to show who's on whose side

and what they really care about and what really matters and it makes people change sides very quickly when they realize things that they thought were true aren't after all and all kinds of stuff, you know, comes into play. It all gets tossed up in the air kind of. So, obviously, like, a major facet of that

is the absolute, I'm not saying this is what's important about it. I'm just saying it's an interesting, important facet, is the absolute Hasbara catastrophe that is this war for Israel and from now on. So like another example, another little waco of mine is a Rock War II. And I carry that chip on my shoulder, even though that was 20 years ago. I'm never getting over that either.

And particularly the role that Israel played in lying us into the thing and having their agents in America lie us into that war. Most people don't know about that. So I got to be angry enough for everybody just for that one thing kind of thing. But this thing, man, everybody can see what's going on. Right. It's not that they tricked America to do it. It's the Israelis slaughtering the Ghazans, but everybody knows it's on our dime and in our name with our weapons. And, you know, same thing for the Iran thing, heightening the risk, dragging us into a war that they know they can't win without us to finish it for them, launch an war potentially without permission to drag us into a thing like that. It gets real dangerous and it's so obvious and so abrupt. especially it's Gaza more than Iran. Well, I don't know. Maybe it's Iran because that really is where it involves us a lot.

But in Gaza, you see just the abject cruelty and the relishing in the cruelty, you know, murdering some woman and then dressing up in her underwear and parading around and all of this stuff and like killing all these kids. There was a new thing that just came out that supposedly is a leak from Israeli intelligence where they say they say they've only killed 8,000 members of Hamas this whole time. leave in 52,000 civilians plus all the missing bodies that aren't counted that everyone knows they're dead but can't find them because they got buried alive in the thing or just crushed to death if they're lucky um and so like whatever that ratio is is completely insane and and thousands of of minors I mean children under 12 and and thousands of of minors under 18 as well and uh it's just the ugliest damn thing in the world so then what happened is what used to just kind of be the minority report where you would have anti-war folk all know this

we'll talk about this the israel lobby and the wars and the occupation of palestine and all this mostly that's been considered in american politics to be a hippie issue right that's something left wingers care about college kids care about whatever but more and more you have important people of influence on the right washing their hands of this thing like for the example stephen Bannon, right? Like, that's a guy who, yeah, he was very pro-Israel up until he wasn't anymore. And, you know, I don't know how to measure exactly his power and influence, but I know he really played a major role in stopping the war in Syria in 2013. Remember that? It was brightbart.com said, hey, talk radio, we're all against this. And they were like, yeah, everybody,

we're all against this. Big time. And, like, I'm sure. played the major role probably in stopping that. So you got Candace Owens talking about she'd rather saw her own foot off than support Israel ever again. And she might do it. And yeah, she means it when she says that.

So hopefully they won't make her choose. But so then I actually saw a short of Candace Owens talking about Megan Kelly and Megan Kelly was interviewing Margaret Taylor Green and going, what's okay to talk about this, right? A little bit. Now Megan Kelly is the lady from Fox News, do she's i don't want to say she's bill o'reilly or whatever like she's not that bit but she's just

very conventional roger ails wants you to say this today type of a lady that's what her character's like pretty republican lady right that's her whole shtick the entirety of it so she goes well i don't know like whatever it was somebody said israel in the wrong tone of voice or something and then she got all this pressure on her and so candace owens was like oh she was like being sarcastic that's right we love you Meg Kelly we're your best friends we care so much about you and that's why we will absolutely destroy you if you don't fall in line right now you're going to go to Auschwitz and pose for the picture you're going to go pray at the wall and and do the thing and like or you're and then Candace goes I'll never forget where I was when

that happened to me and she says there i was sitting on an airplane you can tell it's like when you um when you like uh smell the smell or hear a song and you remember where you were or whatever candace is like there i was sitting in my airplane seat and my phone went ding ding geez candis you better back down or i don't know if i can protect you the zionist on my phone said and i was like way what protect me like i'm not afraid of you and then she says the next morning I woke up and hell was raining down. It was on. And like, that's

what it's like. So get ready. You're either going to get on your plane straight to the wailing wall or welcome to the club of, you know, this is not me talking, Candace, ex-Israel supporters who are now,

you kind of have no choice. But to be with us now, because they won't have you. And then within a day, of course, they're already attacking her and there's this guy, it sounds stupid but there's apparently some real influence with this stupid Twitter account, awesome Jew, that goes around picking

fights with people, smearing people and getting retweets and getting you know, making headway in smearing people's reputations and stuff. Yeah, I saw it just posting that. Megan Kelly is taking money from the terror. Megan Kelly is run by the terrorists. Like that's where we are.

That's where you guys are. That's where you guys are. Yes. Protocols of the learned elders of Mecca. you know where they're like they control everything dude yeah right oh man it's so funny um but you know right it's like you guys are you're the caricature of the most deranged the jews did it guy except he at least has a plausible theory like yours is just too ridiculous um but no there is you know there's something really interesting it's been interesting to be in this world as it's happening

um both of us have been and there's there's a snowball effect right There's like this thing where, so you have, first of all, right, so say, let's say the old media apparatus, like the old mainstream media, whatever that consists of, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and then some networks and some cable networks or whatever. And, okay, so it's like, it's the most controlled environment. And then this is the most controlled issue in the most controlled environment. Like, this was the issue that, like, you know, there were always a few little crows. There were people like Pat Buchanan or Francis or guys like this, you know, who like made a comment here or there about like, you know, Pat Buchanan made one joke, if you remember on the McLaughlin group one time about, uh, Capitol Hill being Israeli occupied territory. And they all flip out about that. So there'd be one, if you remember, there was a, um, there was that guy Rick Sanchez, who was at CNN. I'm going to do his show soon. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, he, I think reached out to, I think we had email. back and forth with them or something, that's great that you're doing it. But so he had, if you remember what he said,

he was talking about, they were saying something about, he was talking about minorities, because, you know, he's Sanchez, he's a Hispanic guy. He was talking about the minorities or something. And they went, well, John Stewart is a minority too. And he goes, yeah, being a Jew is a real minority or something. And then he went like, he goes, yeah, I'm sure all the people who own CNN are all minorities. So he said that, and he was fire the next day, but he was just gone. So there was, this was like the thing that you could never, so now, right,

they had so the support for Israel relied on this control because if you had this control then most people can never really see what was going on and the mechanism for control was like ruining people or threatening to ruin people right so then you lose your control the things decentralized now all of a sudden you don't have the control people aren't supporting Israel because you needed control now they can look at this and once you look at it you can't unsee it like no matter what angle, you go, what the fuck the relationship between... But they can't adapt their model is...

Just keep cracking down. But there's the snowball effect is that now you're threatening to ruin people but it's not working. It's missing. And then those same people are going, hey, you just tried to ruin my life. And like, that's kind of personal. You know, it's hard to not like...

And so now it's this thing where they're literally... I mean, I saw it both with Charlie Kirk, with Megan Kelly, with the people who are there and they're going... Now they have an audience where... Look, I'm just saying, I'm not even trying to, I'm really grateful to Charlie Kirk for having me at that event and hosting me and stuff. And he didn't back down or apologize for it when he was getting a lot of shit for it. I give him credit for that.

But at the same time, I also recognize it's like, Charlie Kirk's not having me there out of the kindness of his heart. He's having me there because he's got an audience. He's got to keep too. And your audience at this point, a right-wing audience, you got to have someone representing the America First critic of Israel side. Otherwise, they just don't buy it. And so, like, now these guys are in a situation where they're like, look, this is the day after. the debate, everyone noticing that Joe Biden is old. I can't go to my audience and tell them, we don't notice this anymore. Even MSNBC had to go to their audience after that and

say, yes, we need a new candidate. We're all for Kamala Harris now, right? Like, Megan Kelly and Charlie Kirk, they're like, what am I supposed to say? I'm getting killed out here with your Hasbara bull-that doesn't work anymore. So what am I going to do? And now, because they're just going like, yeah, okay. And then look how easy it's going to be for Megan Kelly to just make the shift and say, you know what, Tucker Carlson's still plenty successful. They haven't been able to ice him out. They haven't been able to destroy Candace Owens. And so maybe it's in Megan Kelly's interest to just finally figure out and say that, well, maybe I just need to learn about Israel and what's all the controversy about anyway.

You know what I mean? She'll be just one of us in no time, you know? It's just like I always say about Donald Trump. Once you figure out that it makes no sense to pacify Afghanistan, you're never going to get that wrong. anymore same thing here man you same thing with joe biden being too old or israel being this criminal degenerate regime that our politicians all day long that our politicians must praise above their own country it's just too crazy and go pray at their special wall on all this crap yeah all of it yeah no i said to you on the phone the other day it's as if we lost a war that israel won and now

we're living under their rule like but we didn't but we're the superpower they're the ones who need us it's too crazy that's it so it is it's a new day and i think it well let's let's jot this down right it's um mid to late august of 2025 let's see how long it takes before megan kelly is just down with us and writing anti-word.com every day there you go all right we should wrap that's been our time i'm scott i do a show and um i wrote some books and i'm the director most importantly of libertarian institute i got a new project called the scott horton academy coming out you might want to look into that he's dave smith he hosts part of the problem and it's too late for you to buy tickets,

but he's doing stand-up comedy here in town this weekend. So maybe next time. Absolutely. And that's it for Provoked. You know,