Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/17/25 Daniel Davis on Ukraine, Gaza, the Taliban and Venezuela

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

Scott brings Daniel Davis back on the show to update us on multiple ongoing conflicts. They start with where things stand in Ukraine before moving on to the situation in Gaza and ending with a quick look at the fighting between factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as Trump’s moves against Venezuela. Discussed on the show: Daniel Davis Deep Dive Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott's full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott's work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visited, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, y'all, welcome the show. I'm Scott Horton. It's the Scott Horton show. And introducing our guest, the great Daniel L. Davis, the Army gave him a bronze star,

but I gave him an anti-war hero of the year award for 2012 when he blew the whistle on David Petraeus, the great American fraud and his horrible lies about his successes, because he didn't dare pretend to even try to say the word victory, but his successes in Afghanistan, which Danny pointed out were no such thing at all. And of course, he is a brilliant analyst, wrote a bunch of great articles before he decided that YouTube's easier. And now he hosts the Daniel Davis Deep Dive, which is really great. It's the most important, uh, world. analysis show on the internet that you can find, I think. And great to have you back on the show.

How are you doing, sir? Very kind of you to say. I appreciate that and I'm always a pleasure to be on your show. Ah, well, that's so kind of you. All right. So first of all, Zelensky is in Washington, D.C. I guess he's meeting with Trump right now. Do you know the latest? Do you have any kind of insight into what is the point of this trip? Did Trump summon him to come here to give him instructions or he just came here to ask for more weapons or what is it? No, timing, timing was not good from Zelensky's perspective. This is something that's been planned for a while. And ever since Trump kind of like did this hard right turn, this 45 degree angle from a

full sprint that said, hey, you know what? I figured out that after looking at the situation, Ukraine can go ahead and win this war, drive Russia all the way back to the 1991 borders and who's no, maybe farther, maybe even into Russian territory. But yeah, I'm good with that. And so Zelensky was, you know, beside himself with happiness. And so from that point forward, he starts really pressing hard to get more weapons, more ammunition from the United States.

President Trump said that he would give like a billion dollars per month, or not give, but sell a billion dollars a month of our stuff to NATO, to hand over to him, et cetera. So he's really happy at that. And then he's like, you know what would be great, though, is some Tomahawk cruise missiles. And so that started a process. And then Trump, I don't know, five, six days ago, said, know what? I might give it to him, as a matter of fact. If Russia doesn't come to the table

and doesn't agree to what I want, then I, yeah, I may give one. And it'd be bad news for Russia if we did. And so he said, yeah, why don't you come over? So Zelensky has been talking to all people in Europe. He came early and was talking to a lot of American arms manufacturers and dealers, et cetera, all the defense industrial base and all these pictures that they show. They actually released a video, which Ukraine often does and these things. And it basically looks like a movie trailer. I mean, they jazzed it up big time. There's music. There's camera angles. There's people shaking hands. Great camera angles. Really good stuff because that's really what it's all about to make money. Well, then just before the meeting is supposed to happen, all of a sudden Trump talks to

Vladimir Putin. And after, I think it was like 24 hours before, Warren, yeah, I might do these and it would be bad news for Russia. Then he gets on the phone with Putin and he says, you know what? We're going to have a meeting. I'm going to send my delegation to to meet with the Russian delegation at a high level at the Secretary of State, foreign minister level, Sergei Labrov and Rubio. And then after that, I'm going to meet with Putin himself in Budapest somewhere, maybe a couple of weeks later. And I think we can get this thing sewed up.

And not a word about the Tomahawk missiles. And then later that same night, which was, I guess, last night, then Trump has asked again about this in the Oval Office. And he says, well, hey, man, we got to keep those for ourselves, man. We got to keep those in case we get into a war with somebody. That's not something I'm going to get into my, you know, lower my stockpiles. And, you know, of course, you're just sitting there listening to you've got to be going, WTF, man, if you're worried about the stockpiles, which I was, I was already saying that

the minute that those even entered the conversation. I said, number one, those aren't going to do anything to change the dynamics on the front line. Number two, they carry an explicit risk because they can also carry nuclear weapons. And the radar signature is the same one way or the other. You're going to have to just hope that the Russians would go, I guess it's conventional. We're just going to wait to find out and not launch countermeasures that could, you know, if it's a nuclear that they say, we're going to assume it's nuclear and do this. I think it's a low chance, but it's not a zero chance.

So that was done. But then the other thing is we don't have that many, and our production rate is quite low. We don't want to be starting sending these things out. And now then, today, here comes Zelensky. So Zelensky, who thought he was coming into town to get permission to use this. all of a sudden gets a rug pulled out from under him because he has to be his head's got to be spinning and according to reports out this morning that's exactly what happened and so now then just before we were on the air here there he is in front of the all the cameras uh trump sitting there on one side of the table he's sitting on the other it's like one of those i guess a working lunch or whatever and man if you're reading his body language he is not happy and he continued to i mean you can see on his face that he's like this is not going where i want and trump several times again talks about how I think this is almost over. I think we're going to get this wrapped up

very soon. Both Zelensky and Putin want this to be over, whatever, and he keeps trying to interrupt and go, well, okay, yeah, we want it over, but on our terms basically, and you can just see on his face that he is just in agony here, because now all of a sudden Tomahawks aren't

on the table. And the question is, Scott, what is on the table? What is going on? Because, look, we just did this in Anchorage, Alaska in August. And Trump came out of that, you may recall really optimistic and saying, I think we got a deal here. And, you know, we're going to have a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky. And then right after that, a trilateral meeting with me.

And then we're going to get this wrapped up by the end of August. And, of course, none of those meetings took place because Russia kind of comes out of their scratch in their head going, we never changed any of our opinions here or any of our positions. They're the same as they've been since not 20, 22. And they're not any change today. so it went nowhere and nothing happened at all. And now Trump is literally saying nearly verbatim the same things. I think we have a deal. I thought we had a deal before, but now I think we do.

But nobody is saying anything about terms. What's different now than it was a week ago or after the Alaska summit? I don't have any idea because they're not saying anything fundamentally different other than that repeating that same phrase over and over. I think we're going to get this solved. So my expectations are pretty low and I think Zelensky's are pretty low. It doesn't look good for a resolution. So to recap a little bit here, it sounds like instead of the art of the deal, we have the stick figure drawing of a deal, which is probably better than I could do.

I don't know. Not much of an artist. But so it would fit in my hypothesis of events here that, of course, Trump was ridiculously bluffing and knew it, probably. he's a pretty transparent guy all this talk about yeah Kellogg convinced me that Ukraine can win the war pretty easily like that was just

a move on the checkers board maybe even if you want to call it that that like okay first I'm going to say that I believe that Ukraine can win so maybe I'll just give them what I think they need to win then I'm going to float maybe I'll even give him Tomahawks then I'll tell Putin

see man we better make a deal now before I go crazy and do something like give him tomahawks and then Putin will deal and then but there had to be you know just making this up from the outside but as we've spoken about in the past he had to have had some real promises to make to them as well you know he can threaten to pour him more weapons but as you say that's a marginal difference and Trump knows that Putin knows that as well that even if you hit his refineries and things so that's going to drive up their costs it's not going to completely destroy their war effort. So there's only so much he can do there. He has to know that and

everybody knows that everybody knows that kind of thing. So then it seems to me like if he's really going to make this stick, what's different than Alaska? It has to be a real promise of normalization with the United States. And it would have to be a list of ways that we're going to implement that normalization. Not only we're going to repeal sanctions, but we're also going to to get back in old treaties, maybe sign some new ones and go out to the ball game and, you know, do something to really change the atmosphere entirely from one thing to another. And then of course, I think as we spoke about on your show that there's a question then back and down on Soprosia and Kurson where they said, eh, maybe we'll draw the lines there.

It seemed like the more crucial distinction in the difference on the ground was who's going to control that last quarter of Donetsk. And I guess I would doubt that Trump has convinced Putin to back down on that, but maybe he thinks he can get Zelensky to back down on that. Yeah, you know, I don't know, obviously we'll wait and see. I mean, everything is going to come and plus whatever is announced after the, the principals meet. But, you know, there's many on the, on the U.S. side that had been crowing about this and saying

the fact that he had this conversation with Putin, Trump did, and then that he's going to have these meetings between the foreign affairs minister's secretary of state and then trump himself is that they're saying well you know what this just shows that trump's uh throwing out those tom hog missiles did it because that drew Putin back into the conversation that threat is what caused him in there now i think on the surface level i think that's absurd but until we hear and i wasn't saying that by the way i was just saying that no i know but there are people who are saying that and they're saying that that would and what you even described there would represent a drawback from Putin. If he even possibly talked about anything in Kirstoan or Zaporizia staying on the Ukraine side,

you know, the administrative borders, that would be a pretty substantial give, even if he, you know, took all the rest of the Donboss up in the Donetska area, which I just can't imagine happening, but we'll have to wait and see. Now, the Kremlin did at first, the first time I heard this, it was like the White House said that the Kremlin said this, but I think the second time I read this, I believe the journal had it from the Kremlin themselves, that maybe we would draw the line in Kersa and Zeprosia where it is now, essentially. You heard that you heard that today?

No, no, no. This would have been back a few weeks ago, what? Maybe at the, around the time. Oh, yeah. I can't speak to that, but everything that I have seen, and certainly any of the Russian sources that I have, just say categorically not even up for debate. So I don't know where that may have came from.

I don't know if that's just we'll talk about it, but we know we're not going to do it. I don't know. But what we have from the Russian readout of this was that, yes, the subject of the phone call, I'm talking to the one yesterday, yes, the subject Tomahawks came up, but President Putin was very clear to tell him that that would not change the effects on the battlefield. Same thing that you said. So I guess you and Putin analysis are pretty much all the same sheet of music.

But it would severely damage, it would severely damage American relations between Russia. So he's like, you can do it if you want to, but there will be a cost to pay. And not that he wants to do anything different because he again reiterated what he has said so many times Putin did that they still want to negotiate. They would rather have this solved on the negotiating table. But as he said in Beijing a month or so ago, but it's one way or the other. It's either on the battlefield or on the negotiating table, but it's our terms. And that's why I doubt that they would actually do that, give up anything in Zaporizia and Kurson, because they have the military wherewithal to compel it to be given or taken from them.

And I just can't imagine if you have the military capacity to take everything that you're asking for, why would you in any kind of a way say we're going to sacrifice it to give together? Because somebody who's on the Russian side was one of the commentary I noticed on my show earlier today. And they said something that I've seen from many other Russian sources. They said Russia is not fighting day just to get this war over with, which would imply that, okay, well, if you give in to those things, the war will be over faster, you'll lose fewer troops. That's not what they're focused on. They're focused on preparing security for the next 10 years, and they say that if they stop short,

they'll be setting up, in their view, they'll be setting up the conditions for the West and Ukraine to just reignite the war again later once they've been rebuilt back up. And that's what they said they won't stop with, because that's the other issue. Aside from the territory is that Russia is saying demilitarization and denotification, because those are the two things that led to the war in their view in the first place. And I just can't imagine any scenario where Russia is going to accept the Zelensky government or any version of it continuing on without change or without a change in the military, which Western Europe is adamantly opposed to. So I just don't see the fundamentals of this

getting resolved. Do you agree with Doug McGregor that ultimately the Russian's goal will be everything east of the Neeper River? I think that if we don't agree to a negotiated settlement on the terms today, which is the administrative borders of those four regions, then that is almost by definition what their default, what they must do, because that's the only way that you can create a natural barrier to provide your security. If you can't get it negotiated, then you have to go military and not to the administrative borders, but to the border of that river where you can provide pretty good flank security as a military perspective.

Yeah. Now, you know, when we talk about Kurson, a third of that is on the other side of the river. so it's pretty easy to imagine that they wouldn't even try to take that until the war's over right they've already the problem is though from the russian side because they've written that into their constitution Putin would be seen as abandoning russian citizens because that's how they view them right now and that's why i just i just can't imagine that's why i said the administrative borders of all four or more when i say go to the or go to the river that means probably all the way to Odessa. Okay, but.

In the South. I mean, not to read too much into it, but for them to even name a city where they're going to have more talks means that somebody must have laid some groundwork for some kind of compromise here. Yeah. Well, or it's Putin saying, we haven't changed it all. And I'm going to give you one more chance to have the easy way, the negotiated way, which is all for areas we've had.

I would be shocked if it happens, but I'm not in there. So I don't know, but I would be shocked if that was the case. Yeah, no, because that would mean that Trump agreed to just read Zelensky the Riot Act and whip him riding the shape and tell him that he's going to lose. It doesn't mean that, though. It doesn't mean that. Let me tell you why. That's what should have happened in Alaska.

Because by all accounts, Russia said exactly what I just did there. And they said, we didn't change anything. We're not willing to give. We will have a negotiated sentiment, which is why after Alaska in Beijing, Putin again, reiterated verbally, directly, unequivocally, we'll get. all of our objectives, either militarily or diplomatically. That's why I can't imagine it's changed. So that's who almost surely was on the table when Putin and Trump met the first time.

And yet Trump went in there thinking he had a deal. So he's saying the same thing now. So I don't know that he thinks that he's going to not get a change in the terms here. He may still think the same thing you did in Alaska, which means we may get the same outcome. Yeah. And importantly, their goals are not just to destroy the Ukrainian army and take whatever land that they've already claimed. to annex but as you say permanent demilitarization denazification neutrality baked into their newly rewritten constitution and all these things and they're not getting that until they just

absolutely have a gun to Kiev's head i don't know if trump could even go right like if trump told Zelensky forget you man i'm just turning my back on you you're on your own well he's still got europe to fight for another while longer something he's still not going to just give in to all the Russia's demands in that way. He should, but I can't imagine him doing it. I agree with you on that point. Yeah, and Trump isn't going to do that anyway. And, you know, I was asked on a show the other day, well, you know, what's the difference here between, or maybe I just made up the distinction myself to point out that calling off Benjamin Netanyahu when he's crushing the helpless Palestinians shooting fish in a barrel there is a completely different question than abandoning your friends on the field, essentially, leaving the Ukrainians high.

and dry to be destroyed and ultimately defeated in a war that we helped get them into, even if it was the previous administration. It was this empire that what provoked it and all of that. And so not that I'm justifying staying there, but I'm just saying politically speaking, I understand why it's a much taller order to ask Trump. Can I just point out there that I hear what you're saying politically and I hear it all the time? But in my view, that is the most immoral thing that he could do because that says that in the name of political expediency, I'm going to continue going down a military path that I know can't succeed and will get more people killed as opposed to doing the hard thing, which is exactly what you said.

You can use the term, walk away and abandon, or you can use the term that says, I'm not going to support a losing effort anymore. You either make a deal or you're on your own because then he can't keep going, and then they have to make some kind of negotiated deal as ugly as it would be, but then the killing stops. This other way, the killing doesn't stop, and they continue to lose more. They're going to lose more territory than they would have. negotiating table and probably hundreds of thousands of more men that's the reality yeah and look i mean it's obvious and everybody's already decided we're three years into this thing

western europe and the usa we're not common we're not putting our troops in there we're not putting our navy and our air force into this fight to reverse this thing and so it's only downhill from here at whatever and stop i just want to i want to expand on that for a minute because all this talk of about the coalition of the willing and this reassurance force that everybody's talking about in Europe and Macron and Mertz and Starmer and all these guys.

That's nonsense. You won't fight for Ukraine now. Who's going to believe that later on you'll fight later and that would be some kind of a meaningful security guarantee. It's not. Right. Yep.

Yeah, I talked about that in the book. What sense does that make that, okay, after you're done losing this war, then we're going to give you all these security guarantees. Then we're going to continue even to bring you on the path towards joining NATO. We're clearly demonstrating in the present tense that we are not willing to fight for this country. Because if we were, wouldn't we be fighting for them now, whether they had ever actually signed a piece of paper getting the Article 5 guarantee or not?

And obviously we got real good reason not to fight for them when the enemy is the Russian Federation, armed of the teeth with H-bombs. So it's, yeah, it is. It's an ugly thing. But, you know, there's the famous clip of Lyndon Johnson on the phone to one of his Republican senator friends. And he says, I can't be the first president to lose a war. And you can just see the public choice theory in it all, right?

That, and this was supposed to be Trump's biggest virtue, is that he was never a senator and none of the, This stuff was his fault. So he could just say, even hell, even after getting thrown out after one term and coming back after four years, he said, and he did say a million times, this is all Joe Biden's fault. This never would have happened if I'd been here. So he's written himself the license right there to say, enough then. We're not going to keep going with this. But, you know, he's essentially.

And by the way, your example there of LBJ saying, I can't be the first one. Well, you were anyway. So instead of doing the political, the courageous thing, the wise thing it ended it when he did, he chose not to. More Americans got killed and he lost anyway. So that's kind of what I think is at stake here. It don't matter if you want to or not. That's just the way the thing set up.

Yeah, just like Afghanistan, which I know you know something about. Like, well, we can pretend longer and then still lose. And of course, well, I'm being redundant, but it's been a few years since I pointed this out since we've been both doing this for so long now. My book, Fools Aaron, which people can see behind me, despite the glare there, this side,

my book Fools Aaron, that title comes from our conversation where I asked you, well, what if instead of the great American fraud, David Petraeus, we had actually talented generals who knew the first thing about,

I don't know, how to fight a war or anything like that? And then on top of that, what if he had 500,000 men? All the men that Michelle Bachman never wanted to go over there and do the job well would it work then or it would still be a fool's errand and you said it would still be a fool's errand because those 500,000 men would just make 500,000 more enemies to fight and et cetera et cetera something very close along those lines that you'd just be

escalating the war rather than doing anything about the problem you'd be making more of the problem to fight et cetera like that and so same situation they were in in Vietnam where you know And I guess you could say the same here, right, where we've seen numerous times where the Americans or the, there are Western allies, for example, helped attack the Kerch Bridge and then the Russians responded by blowing up their electricity or they did a big drone strike inside Russia and then with CIA built drones and all this. And then the Russians respond with massive attacks against civilian targets inside Ukraine and all that. So, you know, for all our help, we're really just forcing the other side to escalate in an equation where they see. still always come out on top in the end yeah man what a crappy way to be an allied country of another country um hey guys scott here for moondos artisan coffees it's the scott horton show flavored coffee breakfast blend it's part ethiopian part samatra it's really good all you do is go

to scott horton dot org slash coffee and it'll forge you on there to moondos artisan coffees get it they hate starbucks because they represent the war party of course and so they're Moondos, and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton Show Coffee is the number one bestselling coffee at Moondos Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Man, if you have any money, you should be buying gold with it. Central Banks are hoarding it up.

And if you need some, you should go to rrbi.c.0.C.O. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. It's my buddy Tim Frye. He's a really great guy, him in this business. They've been over there for a very, very, very. very long time and they will help you get your medals and they will always do you right that's roberts and roberts brokerage inc at r rbi dot ceo all right this episode of scott horton show brought to you by the books i wrote you can see them behind me there enough already fools errand and then

enough already and provoked and then of course one might have fallen down there but i got uh ron paul the great Ron Paul, Scott Horton's show interviews and hotter than the sun. You see that one back there over there that way? Hotted than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons. That's all interviews I did all about nukes and really great stuff. And I bust my ass on these things. And you know, I've gotten a really great reception on all of them. They all have been endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg endorsed two of the three I wrote.

He would have endorsed the third one I know, but he died too soon, unfortunately. Tucker Carlson says that provoked is the definitive account. In fact, that's what Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Matei said about it too. The definitive account of the new Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine. So maybe check that up. Hey, guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian, Daryl Cooper, that is Martyr Made. He's my co-host, and we host a show every Friday night.

We might be switching to two days a week here sometime soon, but for right now we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o'clock Eastern time on the YouTube's checked out our Twitter handle provoked show all right let me change subject to the Palestine there I'll just say my piece

real quick here and then let you go I guess I think on one hand Netanyahu holds all the cards he can do whatever he wants he likes killing people he's failed to destroy Hamas and he's failed to cleanse the strip of the two million

Palestinians he wants rid of there and so I could see him thinking well this is just time out go ahead refresh my troops a little bit and get ready for the next phase what's to stop them and then the only thing I can think of to stop them is not much and that is just Donald Trump's big boastful promises about just how permanent this piece is but this is not some stupid little ceasefire but he really really means it and I guess there are some you know, rumors. I haven't seen anything concrete, but I've seen, I've heard tell that Trump had to really put his foot down and he really did put his foot down and make Netanyahu stop. And so there, I guess then that's really the only thing on the other side of that equation is

how much Trump really meant it, how hard did he put his foot down and does he really mean to see this thing stay on pause at least through the end of his presidency? And then I guess on top of that. If so, then what? Who takes over the strip? Egypt or or still Hamas? And if still Hamas, then can any of the Gulf states rebuild it if Israel won't let them as long as Hamas is still there and in charge of the place, right? Yeah. And listen, I want to start this conversation by tagging off what we're, where we ended the previous conversation here about the Russia, Ukraine stuff. Sure. I said in October, late October, 23, so literal days after, less than two weeks after the original 10-7 strike,

that Israel was on a path to repeat our mistakes in Afghanistan. I said if they go into the strip with overwhelming force and just start blowing a bunch of stuff up, at that time I had no idea that it would be to the catastrophic level that it turned out to be. But even what I knew then, I said, all they're going to end up doing is making more enemies for the same reason that we saw in Afghanistan, the same thing that we just described in the current war or Vietnam, any one of these you want to ask. And that is exactly how it turned out.

And so even after you recall, I want to say it was late 2024, the fall of 2024, I think. Netanyahu said, there's only four battalions of Hamas left down in Rafah. We got to go clean them up. The last four battalions, and then we're done. And, of course, you went into Rafi.

You literally raised it to the ground. and lo and behold Hamas wasn't done and then you went back and you started again back up in the Gaza Strip and then they started this operation I don't know three or four weeks ago where they said we're going back in to get the final ones of Hamas who are holed up in Gaza City whatever and then now then here comes this this ceasefire here and all these guys pop up you've been telling us forever that you're almost got it you've almost won and yet every time you kill people and especially a bunch of innocent people you create more Hamas so according to Manuel Macron, who about three weeks ago in a meeting with Trump, he was livid, and he said, listen, there are as many Hamas fighters today as there were when this thing started on 10-7, because you keep recreating more. There may even be more than that, because how do you actually identify who's Hamas or just somebody who's hostile because they don't like their family getting killed and slaughtered? I mean, who can say what the tags are, but you have plenty of enemies that you've been building up there. So whatever happens here, listen to it, I am 100% all for this, whether it's a ceasefire or end. I've been calling for it from the beginning because it is immoral to allow all these civilians, the entire population to pay for the sins of the Hamas people. And by the way, they are richly deserving of punishment because of the things they've done, not just to the Israeli people on 107, but even to the Palestinian people.

So they're heinous. I got no sympathy for them at all. but I have a great deal of human compassion for the population that did nothing except received bombs and then threats and now even from apparently some assassinations or murders from the Hamas side after the ceasefire. But if you don't recognize that the war can't be won militarily and do something different, then the only thing you're going to be leaving is that you're just going to stop fighting one day and all of these seeds that you had buried and watered with blood of so many Palestinians is one day. going to come up because if the end of this is not simply the failure, the ending of the bombs fall in, but if there's not a legitimate path to a future and a hope for the Palestinian people that they agree is a future and a hope, all you're going to do is just start the countdown clock to the next explosion because there is no chance on this earth after all these

years since 1947 that the Palestinian people are suddenly going to say, all right, well, you killed enough of us and you blew up enough of our houses, we'll just continue. sent ourselves to just fold our shoulders and just exist here in the Gaza Strip at whatever rules you want to put on top of us. They're not going to do that, Scott. So if you want this solved, like Trump claimed it's peace in the Middle East, they haven't even addressed those issues yet, much less solved them. So there's no peace here. There's just this cessation of firing, which I pray to God continues on for a long time, so that at least there's a chance to stop the killing and a chance to maybe create a path for the Palestinian people. Otherwise, nobody's going

have peace yeah um man and you know john meersheimer said that oh trump's a fool if he thinks he can tell net and yahoo what to do net yahu just break the ceasefire and do whatever he wants and relaunch the war when he thinks he's ready and if trump has a problem with it he'll just sit the israel lobby on him that'll be well i i worry that and this is this is subject uh just subjective on my part i don't have any actually evidence to this or haven't heard any notes but i fear from what we do know that I'm concerned that maybe it's not just that Trump put a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to stop. I think he well may have. Reports do say that unlike Netanyahu or unlike Biden, he actually did some because he wanted this thing to work for his own, Trump did for his own

domestic purposes. But I fear that he may have told Netanyahu to get him to do this. He's like, look, just hold off for a while. Let us get the big victory parades and all that. Let me get the Nobel Peace Prize. And then you can do whatever you want to do. Get the hostages. Yeah, get the hostage. You get all the hostages back. And then later on, when it'll look like it's beyond my power, you can do whatever you want to do. I fear that may have been the case, even if it wasn't the idea that Netanyahu is going to just accept all of those things, the failure of all the details and the objectives they set. I just can't even imagine him politically being able to survive with that. And I fear that whether Trump wants to or not, he's going to restart something. Now, if Trump really did want to put some pressure on, then he could tell Netanyahu, if you restart this, you are on your own. There won't be one more American-made bomb.

I don't care what the Israeli lobby says. This is going to hold or you're going to be on your own. I love it if he did that. That's what he should do. But I can't imagine him doing it. Yeah, me either. And, you know, when you look at Gaza and what they've done, to it quite deliberately they've made it so that as nanyahu said it may have destroyed all

their homes so they have no homes to go back to and so what would it take i mean just in your mind's eye what would it take to rebuild gaza to be you know anything anything approaching a livable uh society yeah what i said a second ago there has to be a viable pathway to a future and a hope for the Palestinian people first and foremost so that they're building towards something as opposed to just saying, all right, we're going to start reconstruction. We're going to bring the bulldozers in and clear out all the rubble and then start building your house. I mean, I'm sure they would all like that would be better than living in tents. These friends won't let them anyway, right? These friends are never going to let them bring in the concrete. That was the giant

explosion in Lebanon the other day. They blew up, yesterday, they blew up a giant concrete factory, right? Or concrete distribution point or something. Yeah, but you're asking in my mind's eyes. So I'm not trying to do. This is what would need to happen. You would have to be able to have a viable hope for that. And then they have incentive to want to rebuild and all this kind of stuff. But that would require, I mean, even in my mind's eye, it would require a dramatic change of the Israeli government who is in a position of power, physical and political, to where they could prevent that from happening because most of them don't want it to happen. So in my mind's eye, if you don't change that first, There's no hope to rebuild anything. So it's really kind of grim. Yeah. And even, you know, like the most obvious candidate would be Egypt because they're adjacent and used to rule the strip for a while there and everything.

But it seems like, you know, as far as technical feasibility, who has the actual power to go in there and remake the strip? It would have to be UAE or Saudi Arabia in terms of bringing that much of actual capital to bear construction equipment. Yeah, and I'm sure you'd get plenty of, plenty of help from the European Union. I think that there's a lot of political will to help there in conjunction with the Arab states. Yeah, that also has a lot of motivation. Yeah.

I think the money can be found. It's the political control of the Israeli government that's the roadblock. Yeah, I was going to say, it's going to say you got your mind's eye, but somebody needs Superman laser eyes to keep the IDF at bay while all this happens. That's the 800-pound gorilla. Yeah, man. Well, it's such a tragic, goddamn stupid thing. Let me, oh, you know what? I want to talk Venezuela. But first, man, what about Afghanistan versus Pakistan? Are you watching this? Yeah. Tell me who is bombing who here.

Yeah, that's one of the more ironic and perverse situations. During the time of the Afghanistan war, and certainly when I was there, I saw this first 10. I spent actually a lot of time along the Afghan-Pakistan border. studying classified, you know, observations and operational reports is that the Afghan Taliban was hold up inside Pakistan. And there were always two Taliban, who was the Pakistan Taliban and the Afghan Taliban. And they were related, but they were not uniform. They were not one organization that was just separated. So they had two different political goals. So they were always kind of interdependent.

the Pakistan government had motivation to control the Afghan Taliban and did from their territory for a long time. And then that's where they used safe havens to launch all these attacks against the United States, against the Afghan government and their military forces when we were there, et cetera. Now that is reversed. So now then Pakistan was tired of holding all these people there. They were tired of the mess that they were making in their view. They actually expelled. I heard it was close to two million Afghan people that had been.

hold up there many of them for decades from all the war, all the way going back to the Soviet situation. They just kicked them back into Afghanistan to try to figure that's out. Well, now then the Pakistan government is claiming that the Pakistan Taliban has gone on the Afghan side of the border and is using that as a safe haven controlled by the Afghan Taliban to have terror strikes into the couple of the provinces, Balochistan and Pakhtunwa, I think it's called right near the border here. And Pakistan is suffering tremendous violence in their area. It's no kidding. There were 2,500 people that were killed in terrorist strikes in 2024.

And already this year, they've already exceeded that number. So it is a big, big issue there. And so the Pakistan government doesn't believe the Taliban in Afghanistan. And they said, no, you actually are helping them out. And so then they launched some airstrocks on Afghan territory. Well, the Afghans, they claim they're not helping them, and they didn't take that well. So then they attacked five border patrol posts recently and killed a bunch of Pakistan border patrolmen. And then that, you know, ramped up a lot of concern or whatever.

And then, of course, at the same time, and I think one of these strikes were simultaneous. You had the Indian embassy opened back up in Kabul for the first time. And for the first time since, I think, the Soviet era. So it's been a long, long time. And, of course, Pakistan is terrified in very much concerned. concerned about the much bigger India. And the idea that there's Pakistan friendly, I'm sorry, Indian friendly people on both sides of their borders makes them paranoid.

And so they don't like that. And now you just have this issue where there's, you know, lots of border skirmishes going on. And I don't know how it's supposed to get resolved here until they just get tired of fighting. Neither side has an incentive for this to like turn into some kind of an open war. I'm not sure they even have the capacity to actually wage an interstate war. between the two of them but but Pakistan wants their their border provinces they want to clear out this

this whole problem with the terrorism that's a big issue and I don't blame them at all for wanting to get that under control I don't have enough knowledge to know how much is true that it really is on the Afghan side or not but this seems to be exacerbating so if you're worried about your your province is there on the border the last thing you're going to want to do is be fighting against that still unresolved and now start a border war against your neighbor and then wondering looking over your shoulder is india going to help them out on the other side so i don't think that they'll do that but it is it is continuing the the the immiseration of the people on both sides of that border uh and it's it's no it's no baino man jesus christ you know so for people just

catching up and everything um only a very few years ago the conversation would have been India is backing the Northern Alliance government that the United States is supporting in Kabul to keep the Pakistani-backed Afghan Taliban at bay. And in fact, the story you'd tell in an earlier version in a microcosm is the origin of ISIS-K, where they were Pakistani Taliban who fled to Afghanistan when Obama was helping Pakistan bomb the Swat Valley and the federally administered tribal territory. in 2010 as kind of a bribe for them allowing him to do drone strikes against alleged al-Qaeda targets there.

And then so when those Pakistani Taliban refugees came to Afghanistan, the American-backed government there, the NDS, which is, of course, the CIA ran it, their intelligence, the Afghan national government, their intelligence, they backed these guys and used them for attacks inside Pakistan and also against the Afghan Taliban. And then this was the group that a couple of years later, hoisted the black flag and declared themselves loyal to the Islamic State and are now, these are the guys that did the suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate on the way out of there at the Kabul airport. It wasn't the Taliban that did that. It was ISIS K. And so now it's just

funny because it's almost the same story, only you got to adjust the names of the players around a little bit where now the Pakistanis aren't back in the Afghan Taliban anymore. They're pissed at them and now instead of the American-backed Tajik Uzbek Hazara Northern Alliance Afghan national government regime in Kabul now it's the Taliban regime in Kabul that's backing the Pakistani Taliban against the Pakistani government at least allegedly that's what they claim yeah and causing this to fight and then the Indians are coming in and backing the the Taliban as long as the Pakistanis aren't backing them anymore the Indians see their advantage there what a mess my god Now, so I guess actually the only thing I care about, though, is are there any Arab friends of Osama trying to lead legions of suicide bombers out of there?

Because if not, I don't think I'd give a damn. Well, you know, that was the claim you remember, and I'm afraid I've only got a few minutes left, but that was the claim that, you know, David Petraeus, Jack Keene, Mike Pompeo, I think. They were all livid in that absolutely against the United States ever with. drawing from Afghanistan because otherwise it's going to be used as a platform of terror to come back to the United States again. I don't remember a lot of terrorist attacks coming from Afghanistan. Have you heard of any? Because I think maybe they were wrong. We're right at four years. And nope, not a one. Now, there's this lady Sarah Adams that goes around and claims all this. I need to study up enough on her so I can try to maybe interview her on the show and see exactly

what she's talking about. I am afraid of bin Laden night terrorism in the United States, especially his blowback for what America has helped the Israelis do in Gaza for the last couple of years here. It ain't got out of Afghanistan, though. Yeah, there's a reason to be concerned about it. We should because of our actions and because of the hatred because of what we do abroad. So you should be worried about that. But everybody needs to know it has nothing to do with dirt in Afghanistan. Never did.

And it doesn't now. Yeah. And I'm sorry. I know you're in a hurry. Do you have time to talk about Venezuela at all? One minute. Okay. Give me one minute on Venezuela.

Are we really going to war against Venezuela? over no thing. And it's unbelievable, but it does appear that it's quite possible. We moved a lot of combat power into the region. President Trump keeps talking about it openly, claims that he's allowing the CIA to operate in there. And, of course, we've seen now than six of these lethal strikes against alleged drugboats in the water in the Caribbean Sea,

a lot of questions about who they really are, et cetera, but allegedly we killed a bunch of people. And there is no American vital national interest involved in there. This thought that this is actually. actually making it safer for us for cutting the drug trade is complete fiction. There's none to that. This, I think, is almost certainly by the evidence, we want to get out their oil. And so we want to have a regime change.

So we have a regime that's friendly in there. That's this woman who just won the Nobel Peace Prize from Venezuela. It seems to be willing to participate that, just like Juan Guaido was in 2018. That didn't work. So it looks now we're going to try another one here for his part. Maduro's trying to bypass that by offering. Hey, we'll give you a big. stake in our oil so you don't have to conquer us to get this done we'll actually do it but i guess

trump wants the peace president wants a military victory i don't know i hope that this just stays posturing and it doesn't go newer but so far now every time trump's done that it's actually turned into some kind of military operation like in ira so so there's a big quote going around on twitter where he said that maduro learns he better not f with the united states of america which president shouldn't usually talk like that but the more important part of that quote other than the F bomb that caught everybody's attention was he said why was he saying that he was saying he's learned that he better not F with us and and the first part of it was he's offered everything he's offered everything so this is just like you know we we only learned in hindsight that

Saddam Hussein had offered essentially unconditional surrender before the invasion of O3 here we have in the president's own words he's offered everything so there's not even a shadow of a pretended lie of a pretext for war here. Forget drug boats or anything. The president's already admitted that this guy's on his knees begging us not to attack. So, come on man. The idea that they, but wait, I got to leave you with this, Danny. Okay. And then I got to go because I've got another show I'm late for. Oh, I'm sorry. Wall Street Journal, okay? The U.S. has moved advanced weaponry into the Caribbean and skies, including eight Navy warships, an attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, P8 Poseidon spy planes, and MQ9 reapers.

They sent the special operations, including the 160th special aviation regiment, the night stalkers, the green berets, the Navy SEALs, the Delta Force. What, man, I mean, that sounds like we're going to war right now, right? And if you're not going to use them, then why deploy all that combat power in for what possible advantage to America? I see none. Jesus. Okay, thank you, sir.

Appreciate you a lot. See you. The Scott Horton Show is brought to you by Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom, APS radio news, and dissident media. Subscribe to the show at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, Libertarian Institute.org, YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show, iTunes, Spotify, etc., and check out my books. Fool's errand, enough already, and my latest, provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine at Amazon.com.

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