Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/20/25 Matthew Hoh on Trump’s Rumored Ukraine Deal and the Legacy of Dick Cheney

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Scott brings Matthew Hoh back on the show to talk about the rumored deal Trump made with the Russians to end the war in Ukraine, the legacy of Dick Cheney, the ramifications of what Israel accomplished and has failed to accomplish in Gaza and more. Discussed on the show: “Top Army officials visit Kyiv on peace and tech sharing mission” (Politico) Scott’s Twitter thread Matthew Hoh is associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @MatthewPHoh Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app:  https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! 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, you guys, introducing the great Matthew Ho. He was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. Then he went to work for the State Department. He was in Iraq War II. He went to work for the State Department in Afghanistan,

where he was the heroic whistleblower of 2009. If Barack Obama had any courage whatsoever, he would have hid behind Matthew Ho and said, this guy says that, no, man, it's not going to work because he warned in the summer of 2009, don't surge and escalate the war. You're going to make it worse and lose anyway,

and he was 100% vindicated. And it's a hell of a thing in American history. But on top of that, he's part of the Eisenhower Media Network, which is, you know, in the name of Ike Eisenhower and his warnings about the military industrial complex and is mostly veterans like him, doing anti-war stuff as he does now and is a widely renowned analyst on all things foreign

policy so welcome back to the show matthie how you doing but good scots good to see you great man good to have you here so big news on ukraine are kind of breaking right now so i'm sorry i'll have to ask you to speculate a little bit but um and then of course uh there's the situation in gaza as of today to to get caught up on but uh first of all there's a huge story in Politico saying, I think that the Americans think that they got the Russians on board for a compromise, which I got too much to say. I'm going to hold my fire. And then I guess the major thrust of the thing is that this would be delivered to the

Ukrainians as a you better accept it because we are all the way done kind of thing and that they said in the Politico piece that part of the calculation is because of the new corruption scandal where two of Zelensky's top guys are busted stealing $100 million and forced to resign that in his weakness he'll have to accept.

Now that's their calculation in the thing. So there's a lot at play here including the status on the ground, the fall of Pavrosk, the demands as as Politico and I guess Axios had something about it as well. The stipulations in there for the Whitkoff deal. So I guess that's my first question.

Speculate wildly for us, sir, about what you think is going to happen here. Do you think there's a real chance for peace or whether this is just going to be another Alaska or what? Yeah, I mean, my understanding, Scott, from the local story and the Financial Times and Reuters, I believe, had something. And, you know, this is all, you know,

the Russians haven't, I haven't seen the Russians say that this is accurate. The Ukrainians and the Europeans are speaking in the manner in which we'd expect to speak, you know, because this will be, you know, this isn't even really a compromise. This is essentially given Russia a victory. Not to the degree many Russians want, but it certainly is an agreement that provides Moscow with most of what it wants, particularly outside. of the territorial aspects. You know, so this 28-point plan,

which I haven't seen in full yet, only as has been filtered through media stories, but this appears to provide Russia with the control of the Dombos, including areas they have not yet taken, halts the fighting along the line is at Erosia and Kursan and provides the territory there to Russia that they've already taken, seeds essentially Crimea to Russia, at least in terms of the United States' position on Crimea. It says that Kiev doesn't have to recognize this,

but the Americans are essentially saying Crimea is now Russian, which is a pretty big deal, right? As well as then the Ukrainians have to cut back about half of their army, long range, offensive weaponry, so missiles and rockets, presumably drones as well, anything that could strike into Russia, Ukraine wouldn't be allowed to possess. The Americans would back off on providing support for the Ukrainians. You know what I mean? So you're seeing here essentially the Americans giving the Russians a good deal of what they want. I mean, this isn't the denotification that the Russians spoke of. And it's not complete demilitarization. nor is it neutrality, but, you know, you can see that the only way for Ukraine to go forward

then is solely with the support of the Europeans. And, you know, the Americans, that you brought it up, the Americans addressed, at least political article, the Americans referenced this as a fait accompli. So basically saying to the Ukrainians, the jig is up, it's done. This is the deal. And when asked about, what about the Europeans, this official cited it. And the political story said, we don't care about the Europeans. So whatever has occurred over the last few months in Donald Trump's mind regarding Russia, Ukraine, if this story is true, if it's something that will be forced upon the Ukrainians. And again, as you said, we're speculating here because this is 24 hours old and no confirmations yet.

But if this is the case, I think this is what a lot of people have been saying that at some point, Donald Trump, in this administration, we'll reach its limits and say, look, this is the deal. If you don't accept it, we're walking away, and you can figure this out on your own, which is a very real danger that the Ukrainians and the Europeans may actually say that. The Europeans are so, their mania and all this, their hysteria, their lunacy in supporting this war. You know, for many European political leaders, this is all they've got. You know, Europe has got housing issues. It's got cost of living issues.

It's got immigration issues. It's got health care issues. Debt issues. These leaders in Europe are incredibly unpopular, you know, low double digits. I think Merz is the most popular among the major leaders at 25%. You know, I mean, that's how poor off these guys are. And so this identity as standing up to Vladimir Putin, this identity of democracy versus authoritarianism.

You know, this is what Joe Biden wanted to run his real. election campaign on. If you remember the first re-election campaign of the Biden administration in September of 23 was Joe Biden as wartime president, Joe Biden going to Kiev kind of thing. And so if the Europeans give that up, if they give up this unwinnable proxy war, then what do they have? So I think that's a lot of the just the gross base calculations that are going through European leaders' heads right now because they've invested so much of their identity in this war that for them to abandon it now just seemed probably impossible to them.

Oh, you're muted. I always do that. That's the most frustrating part of all this, right? They get so wedded to their own stupid lies that they use to justify the thing. Right. I can't quit now. Don't you remember that we all agreed a minute ago

what a terrible security threat Iraq is? The only question is, do we go now or do we go later? The question is whether we go or not. We already agreed about this giant pile of nonsense. And in this case, all the Europeans agreed with this preposterous narrative that Putin woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and decided to be Joe Stalin and recreate the empire, C.N. Berlin.

And boy, we better stop them. We better do all we can. Can't a piece of Hitler like that? And just, boy, what a bunch of crap. And so, like you're saying, they're so deeply invested in that. They have nothing to show for what they've done. They haven't halted Russia's advance into Eastern Europe that they weren't making. Right.

They've been in shadow boxing this whole time and this whole thing is just anyway. But I guess that means it would be easier for them to quit now, right? You know? Well, the fantasy of it. the fantasy of it has just perverted their sense of reality. These are, if you go back and a big influence on me is, I'm sure you've probably write his stuff too, Scott, see Wright Mills, right? The sociologist, the political scientist from the 50s, he writes to power elite.

You know, he speaks of the crackpot realists, right? These people who act tough, who talk about the real world, talk about having to fight tigers in the world and all those types of illusions that you can't allow another. in Munich, if you appease a dictator, they're going to run right over you, you know, this, this macho, bravado, tough guy, John Wayne, wannabe, statesman, right? And, you know, that's what they are. They're the crack, hot realists. They're just cracked in the head for no other, you know, no more complicated of an

explanation. I mean, you see this about a month ago. Ursa Vandalai gives a press conference. She's the head of the European. Union. And she speaks about how what the EU's priorities are going to be. And again, housing crisis across Europe, cost of living, wage crisis across Europe, immigration crisis, health care, you know, you name it, they're struggling. Their economies are hollowed and shallow. They're getting further and further into debt, right? There are real serious systemic and structural issues across

Europe that need to be addressed. And what does von der Leyen say the two priorities for the EU are building their armies and winning the war in Ukraine? I mean, it's just, just, you know, incredible. And so we can say that, as we were just saying, that some of this is just gross-based political calculation. But there also are elements of this where these are true believers. These are people who really do believe that what they are doing is standing up for democracy against authoritarianism. These are people who live essentially in a fantasy world. They're diluted.

You know, and you see it in other ways, too, people are probably following this story about the $160 billion loan that the EU wants to make to Ukraine, because Ukraine has run out of money, essentially. And the issue for Ukraine is that they don't get $70 billion in the next couple of months, their government is going to collapse, and then their economy is going to collapse. And at that point, who cares about the front lines? And then Europe's really going to realize the folly of what they've been doing

when 5 million or 10 million Ukrainian refugees come into central and Western Europe. But, you know, this idea that they're going to give this $160 billion loan to Ukraine, it's essentially predicated on the Europeans either going further into debt or essentially stealing this money out of a big, bank in Belgium that is holding hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian assets. And, you know, what's so crazy about all this besides the gross illegality of this, essentially that Belgium's saying, look, we can't do this. We'll be sued essentially and lose about a third of our GDP.

That's how big this is. Or the fact that the Russians claim that they hold just as many European assets and the Russians will do the same or retaliate if the Europeans steal theirs, the Russians will. steal theirs. The insanity of this goes even further because when you start to read their speeches and look at their details and try and understand their reasoning here, they're working on these calculations that this won't be an issue because Ukraine's going to win the war and Russia's going to pay all this money back in reparations. When you see the European leaders around the continent speak to the Belgians, they say, what are you worried about? Ukraine's going to win the war

and the Russians are going to pay this back in reparations. I mean, this is so insane that a week ago, the Norwegian parliamentarians say, you know what, don't worry about that. We'll use the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, right? So the money, the trillions of dollars that Norway has to make Norway one of the best places to live in the world, we're going to take that and we'll use that

as the sole guarantee for this EU loan. That's insane just on its face. what's even more ridiculous about it all is Norway's not even a member of the EU. That's how cracked these people are throughout Europe in terms of how wedded, how caught up, how much this war has become part of their identity.

I mean, so the whole thing is just absolutely ridiculous. And so, you know, I know you don't either agree much with what the Trump administration does, but in this sense, kind of giving this ultimatum, of trying to find some way to end this unwinnable war, this unwinnable proxy war, you know, certainly that seems to be the best way forward because otherwise, you know, if the Europeans are willing to destroy Ukraine to save it, you know, where does that go next? Right.

Yeah. Look, honestly, it's the same as if it was Bill Clinton or W. Bush or Barack Obama. If they're willing to do the right thing, then they can be Bush the Great for a day at least. And Donald Trump, if he wants to be a great peacemaker, then all hail that. He's the guy in the chair. There's nothing to fight about. He won the last election. He's sitting there.

It's up to him to make these decisions. There's just nobody else unless you're going to bring Alexander Vindman back to overrule the commander-in-chief here. So, and as I've said all along, that I think he's sincere that he wanted to end the war. He just didn't know how to. He's in a situation where the Russians are winning slowly. and don't want to quit. And the Ukrainians are losing slowly and don't want to quit either.

And so, man, I don't know. Right. And the idea that Ukrainians accepting these terms, that's real hard to see. They're huge, yeah. That's really hard. I mean, that's really hard to see. And you can't, you know, as much as, you know,

for people who haven't read Scott's book provoked, please read it, you know. But, you know, understanding everything about natal encirclement of Russia and Russians, Russia's legitimate security concerns, you know, they still violated international law. You know, they still waged a war of aggression. You know, I mean, like, I know you've been this way. I've been this way.

A pox on both sides for the last decade plus here, basically. But, you know, the reality for the Ukrainians is to accept the deal like this, you can't see how the Zolensky government stays in power, particularly with, as you were bringing up earlier, the continued corruption scandals. I mean, this thing is just, it's just amazing when you, you know, this scandal, it's, it's his business partner and, you know, and they're, they're essentially stealing money out of the energy industry, and this is the fourth winter where Ukrainians are going to be freezing in their homes at night, and these guys are taking bribes and kickbacks as the Ukrainians

freeze at night, right? I mean, like, the scope of this, if Zelensky then takes any deal that undercuts his authority or undercuts or, or, you know, fractures his constituency, how can the guy stay in power? And then who replaces him? You know, I don't, I mean, who's going to replace Zelensky? It's not going to be some small D Democrat that the West thinks it's going to be. It's going to be one of these guys from the far right. It's going to be one of these ultra-nationalists. I know those are the ones who've gained in power

in the last several years. Absolutely. So, yeah, a few things there. I mean, these, I really just don't know what to make of this. And maybe we're just having this interview at just the wrong time where we really just don't know what this means. We don't have confirmation from the Russians that they're going along with this. It seems like a lot to ask, you know, Larry Johnson in his morning email was like,

this is dead on arrival, dude. There's no way that they're going to stop short of 10. taking all of Curzon and Suprosia as they have. Like, it's in the law in Russia that they have officially annexed these territories. That would be a huge climb down. Now, it does make sense to me. They're like, yeah, what the hell? You know what if they get all of Donetsk, they have about two-thirds of Suprosia.

They have the entire Azov Coast and, you know, Militopol there. and then they have all of Kersaun on the east side of the river. Right. You know, on the left bank of the river, as they call it. So, you know, it would actually be kind of a strategic liability to own the other side of Kersan on the other side of the river. You know what I mean at this point, potentially anyway? It's a pretty good place for a border, the Nipur River there, you know.

But, I mean, they're still, they're standing on ground in Sumi, Harkiv as well. The Russians are supposed to turn around and walk away from that. I don't know. They can have what you can be in back, you know? So much of their argument has been about buffer zones, right? So much of their argument has been about having some type of defense against an offensive, aggressive West. You know, one of the criticism we can make, of course, of the Russian plan here, their war overall is that it put themselves, they put themselves in this position. When is enough going to be enough?

Say you do take the rest of those two provinces, you go across the river. Now, as you say, you're overextended across the river. And you've got, I mean, that becomes a whole issue then of how much further do you need to push west to make sure that you can defend that area west of the river in Hirsa provinces. I mean, you know, that's just one one element of how this thing has to, you know, continues to creep forward. And so the farther west, the Russians go, of course, the farthest. they go into non-Russian-speaking territory, you know,

and now they're talking about having an occupation, you know, the farther west they go. And now you're talking about an insurgency. And that just makes everybody throughout the West excited. That's, you know, if we recall, that's what Hillary Clinton was talking about. When this first happened. That was plan A, right? That was exactly.

And we're going to do to them just like we did in Afghanistan, you know, all leafily cackling, you know, like just so unaware of everything. But, you know, I mean, this is this is a thing for the Russians is do they become stuck? If they don't accept this deal, okay, when is enough going to be enough? You know, do they have to go all the way to Kiev? And then if they take Kiev and that, you know, I mean, because what's going to happen in the West then is that it is going to be. The Dumbos, eastern Ukraine, is the Jerusalem for NATO. This gives NATO its purpose.

Or actually, if NATO starts to falter because Donald Trump and his vision, how the American Empire should be laid out, doesn't really include NATO and the way that it once did. Okay, then you have the European Union Army, which is what keeps Ursula Le Vondelian at night awake fantasizing about, right, being the first commander-in-chief of this EU army. You know, and that gives all the rationale for it. That gives all the purpose for it. And this does nothing unless you can strike a larger bargain with the Americans to get the American missile systems out of Europe. So for the Russians, you know, is this enough? And if it's not enough, when is enough going to be enough?

You know, I mean, putting themselves into a position where they're going to be further and further stuck in a morass where they are enduring an occupier or they're carrying out an occupation and as well, too, facing or creating a new creature in this EU army. So, you know, it's, you know, not perfect in any way for anybody, but if it is the means to end this slaughter, you know, what's the, you know, I'm conservative in my estimates of casualties. So I think, but still, it's going to be in the low hundreds of thousands, you know, low hundreds of thousands. I know people understand, there's reason to believe that. Even mid hundreds of thousands. Mid-hundred, yeah, and deaths low hundreds of thousands and a half million, 600,000 wound

on each side, that's conservative, right? You know, that's the conservative. That is the most conservative take. Right, yeah. I mean, so if I'm wrong on that and I'm wrong a lot, you know, I mean, then you're talking about casualties going up into the millions. So whatever we can stop this thing as well as to put a break on the continual escalation, and maybe this would put a break on Europe's militarism, as well as here, the Democrats,

if they get back into power, this will be one of the first things that they want to up end is anything that Donald Trump did, not just with Ukraine, but with Europe. So the acceleration here in terms of the militarism, that if this war doesn't stop, you know, this is scary stuff. Yeah. Hey, you guys know I got a new show. Yeah, it's called Provoked. And it's me and the great Derrick Cooper, martyr made.

And we come on live every Friday night at 8 o'clock Eastern time, 7 o'clock Texas. And, you know, we talk about things. I think you really like it. So check us out over on the YouTube and at provoked dot show. You know, they always said, Scott, you keep drinking that much coffee. You're going to turn into a cup of coffee and then it finally happened. I am coffee now. And if you go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee, you two can get Scott Horton Show flavored coffee.

Branded coffee there. It's Ethiopian mixed with Sumatran blended coffee. It's so good. and I have some of it right here. In fact, I'm drinking my Libertarian Institute mug, you can see. This is how I wake up in the morning, and this is how I stay awake in the afternoon. And if I was a drunk, it would be how I get home from the bar at night. So I sound advice to you guys there, you know, take an Uber.

Moondos, artisan coffee, get it, they hate Starbucks, because Starbucks, well, first of all, it doesn't taste that great. And then also, they support the war. party. But moon do's artisan coffees does not. They support peace. So check us out at Scotthorton.org slash coffee. Man, y'all should check out Tom Woods Liberty Classroom. It's really great. It's like the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. Only is Tom Woods and his guys. Teaching you the history and economics you did not learn in college, but shoulda for the price you paid. But he'll help you make it up. Just click the link in the right hand.

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on the spirit of the whole thing find a way to end it one way or the other But then you compare to the Russians proposed treaties in December of 21. They said, look, you got to get all your equipment out of Eastern Europe like Bill Clinton promised in the Founding Act in 1997, close down the missile stations in Romania and Poland. That's a huge ask. Right. Permanent neutrality in a treaty and in Ukraine's constitution, NATO forever for sworn, right? No Western security guarantees for Ukraine. and then the, I guess, arrest and marginalization of prominent Nazis in the government.

So it doesn't look like this includes any of those things, right? Right. And especially right at the top here, in return for U.S. security guarantees. Well, we're not willing to fight for them now. So what are these security guarantees that we promise to send them more weapons the next time they get attacked to? Right. Yeah, it's, I mean, so these all sound like I'd be really surprised, I guess, if Putin was willing to climb down this far from his stated goals at this point.

I mean, I mentioned this briefly a minute ago, but it's worth, you know, incorporating into the subject matter here. Vavrosk is falling right now, or is being taken by the Russians, and which is, I think, the last major city in Western Donetsk that they had left to take. So there's still quite a bit of land, but it's just countryside out there now. So I think that's right. So, yeah, I don't know.

I'm sorry. Yeah, you know. We're time to host this one. We really just don't know what's happening here. It sounds like, to me, it sounds impossible that this is actually going to be the deal. At the same time, though, like I don't want to undermine it in any way, not that anybody really, you know, that I make that any difference or anything, but just I sure like the spirit of the thing

and I agree with what you said that about how it seems serious in the sense of like the way that they're saying that they are just going to present this to the Ukrainians and tell them, yeah, enough messing around. This is the thing that we are doing and we means you too and I said so, et cetera, like that. I mean, Trump is the emperor of the world after all.

So I don't know, man. I'm very, like, torn between different perspectives on, like, how this could go or how likely it all is. I don't know what to think about it. Yeah. And even from the Russian perspective, you know, for Vladimir Putin, we know that the pressure on him comes from not those who want to end the war, but those in Russia who say you haven't been fighting this war hard enough, right? You haven't been doing enough. You've been too lenient in this war.

So if he takes, as well as the fact, as you said, they wrote these. provinces, he's oblast, into the law. They are, as far as Russia's concerned, officially a part of Russia. And so can Vladimir Putin accept this deal with the pressure and as well as with the status that they've conferred on these lands? Can he do that? Can he get away with it? He's a very popular president.

We all know that, et cetera, et cetera. But is this even too much been asked for him then to accept something that is only maybe 70% of what they want, you know, in totality? Could he, you know, the idea of the Americans walking away, you know, that's, that's, and what that then does to the American-European relationship, and is that then take care of these issues in Romania, of missiles in Romania and in Poland, right? I mean, is that the answer to them for the Russians is if the Americans walk away, that takes care of our higher-level strategic concerns here, right? That could take care of these, you know, the idea of the Americans putting tomahawks into Germany in 2027, okay, now it's moot.

Now it's not going to occur because Donald Trump has essentially divorced the United States from the Europeans over this Ukraine issue. You know, so is that something that the Russians will put into their calculus? I mean, I think the Russians have, I think they would like to have arms control. They've certainly brought that forward a number of times, including what, now almost two months ago when they said, let's extend a new START treaty. It's still no response back from the Americans, but you've also seen the way the Russians have handled this, where they met our positioning of these missile systems of Europe with building whole new classes of weapons, as well as the larger American modernization program, right? So, yeah, you can now, you know, our submarine-launched ballistic missiles, people who aren't aware, they are now first-strike weapons.

You know, up until the end of the Obama administration, submarine-launched ballistic missiles weren't accurate enough to be first-strike weapons. They are. That changed the entire dynamic for in terms of the nuclear relationship between United States and Russia. And so what are the right, as well as putting these weapon systems into Europe that have very short flight times to Moscow. So what the Russians do? They built these whole new classes of weapons systems that, yeah, you might take us out

in a first strike, but are prescient torpedoes in these Brezhnik nuclear cruise missiles that can fly for three weeks or just stay a bear before. forever or whatever they claim they can do, they'll get you in the end. You know, I mean, so the horror that we are looking at here, this is not, I mean, we're roughly the same age. This is not the promised world, man, we were told about in the early 90s.

And the Bushes and the Clintons, Biden and McCain. I mean, man, these are just the most irresponsible people you could have possibly had in charge this whole time. And now I think today is Dick Cheney's funeral, right? Yeah. I just saw a clip of it. My friend who's got a head injury from the war, he tweeted out. He goes, one of the best things about having all this memory loss is I got to discover again that Dick Cheney died.

Well, I'll give a plug for the therapy and the psychiatrist and the psychologist at the VA because when I was walking my dog yesterday, I saw all these flags at half staff. And what the heck is this about, you know, and then Googling it. And, oh, Jesus, you know. Like, oh, it's because we're celebrating Dick Cheney died. I want to give all the credit to my therapist, my psychologist and psychiatrists over the year who allowed me not to have a meltdown on the sidewalk in front of the post office yesterday when I realized the flag was a half staff for Dick Cheney, you know, so I just want to give all the credit out to the VA folks, you know, who helped me over the years.

That's right. Yeah, because the amount of 10 years ago would have lost it. I would have lost it. You know, so. Yeah. No, you're at this time, late date, it was ironic that he lived this long already, right? So it was at this late day, you just have to see like the dark satirical humor kind of thing and the thing at this point, you know. So.

No, I still, you know, I still, when I think of the guy. I hated the war, but I didn't have to go to it like you did, man. Yeah. So, I know, I hope, you know, it's a terrible thing to say, but I hope like he died cold alone and scared. Like even two weeks after his death, like I've still not been able to get through my hatred of the man, you know, and all that he represented, like my anger towards it. Like, it stayed out to be with me. And this is, you know, for a lot of guys, with rest of our lives, you know, because there's no resolution. There's no justice.

Yeah. This is something that disturbs veterans with PTSD and moral injury and traumatic brain injuries. It's this unjust world. You know, we took part in this war, we came back, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Dick Cheney dies is a big state funeral. Flags are at half-mast. You know, it's hard for veterans who have these moral injuries, the PTSD, the traumatic brain injuries, to handle things like that.

So if guys are out there listening who are been out of shape about this, upset, realize circumstances that you're going through with this, why it's happening, and do all the things they've taught you in therapy to do. Yeah, man. Listen, I did a show yesterday with Jay Burden, who's this great young, new right-wing podcaster. I really like him. And he asked me, like, look, all my audience are young guys.

We don't really know Dick Cheney. We heard of them, and we know people don't like them. Well, we don't really know a lot because, I mean, they were little kids then. This was 20 years ago, man. Yeah. So for young people in the audience, who knows, they think of him the way you and I think of Dick Nixon. It was before our time.

We know that people don't like him, but we're, it was, you know what I mean? Even better as Spiro Agnew, you know, like, yeah, exactly. Tell me, tell me about Spiro. So, no, like, obviously you got real hard feelings here, but factually speaking, for what? What Dick Cheney ever do to you, dude? Yeah, so, you know, Dick Chady is actually a pretty, if you can divorce yourself from your feelings and be objective about it, you know. Dick Cheney is pretty impressive figure.

You know, you look at his profile, you look at what he accomplished for himself and for his constituents. He understood how power worked. And he, as an early age, in early age, he is at 34 years old, the chief of staff to the President of the United States, you know, and under the Ford administration,

and then gets himself elected into Congress. And within a few years, he is a senior member of Congress haven't only been there for three or four terms, you know, and he understands how power works and then he's able to ingratiate himself so that he becomes George H.W. Bush's Secretary of Defense. And then he understands where our society is going,

particularly in terms of the privatization of the outsourcing of the U.S. military. So after being Secretary of Defense, with a process where he really, you know, help push this privatization of the military. He goes to work for Halliburton, you know, which also includes Kellogg Brown and Root, although Amators have been Brown and Root at that time. And, you know, these are Halliburton's known for oil, but Brown and Root, or Kelly Brown and Root, is known for government services, particularly instruction and logistics. And he helps

Halliburton and KBR amass a fortune. And then, of course, the Second Iraq War, Dick Cheney is the mastermind behind that. Just to continue the bit about Halliburton, Halliburton earns over $40 billion during that war. Dick Cheney, in deferred payments, received $70 million from Halliburton, from his time as CEO. You know, so everybody, we didn't,

but in terms of his understanding of power also made those who he was representing, and aligned with and had a relationship with, not just powerful, but wealthy. And of course, a second Iraq war where he masterminds this war for, you know, we can speculate as to his reasonings. Certainly there was the issues of oil and energy resources,

but he also was an arched neoconservative. He was one of the founding members of the project for a new American century. He believed in the use of military force to ensure the American, American Empire maintained control, maintained what it possessed, and if possible, gained more. And so Cheney, his understanding of why we had to invade Iraq was certainly influenced by a number of factors, his ideology, as well as, too, the idea that these are resources we can take.

And he supports the torture program, or he effectively orders the torture program that the United States carries out. He is, I'm not sure in terms of how much you can give him credit for things like Stellar Wind, which was the mass spying on the American people by the Bush administration, well known through warrantless wiretaps especially. but the larger Patriot Act. Dick Cheney was a huge proponent of the Patriot Act, which was, you know, Scott, you can talk about this better than I can, but in terms of the assault, the violation of American civil liberties, it's hard to, you know, you've got to go back decades. You've got to go back to World War II

to find that level of assault or violation of civil liberties en masse as we have with the Patriot Act. You know, and so that's who Dick Dick Cheney was. He was someone who famously said, the 9-11 attacks and who realized what the 9-11 attacks allowed. The 9-11 attacks for Dick Cheney and for others, this is the way that we get more authority. This is the reason for more power for us. And he was able to implement that.

He was able to seize that. And he's never remorseful. He's never recalcitrant. He's never regretful. He goes to his grave, believing that he has done the right thing, whether he actually believes it or not, or he's going to continue. that image, you know, and so that's who Dick Cheney was, responsible the deaths of, you know, according to the Brown University Cost of War program, four and a half million people from the war

in Iraq and the larger instability through the region. Four and a half million people dead because of Dick Cheney's decisions to carry out that war in Iraq, you know, and so, yeah, that's who Dick Cheney was. Yep. And let me just add that the torture was so that they could get lies about Saddam Hussein's connections to Osama bin Laden. He would say torture doesn't work. Yeah, it does too. I'm going to keep pulling out your fingernails until you tell me that Saddam Hussein gave you guys money in training.

And then the guy said, okay, okay, Saddam Hussein gave us money in training, right? Yeah, torture works great. And then the other thing is, and this is part of him, you've really taken the lead in launching Iraq War II, although it was W. Bush, of course, sitting in the chair and pulling the trigger on that. But he really let Dick Cheney decide so much of that policy. And a big part of that was hiring all the neo-conservatives, the Lakud Party agents in America that launched that war,

not for American interests at all, but because they had been fooled by the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi into believing that a new Shiite Iraq would force Hezbollah to stop being friends with Iran and suck up to Israel, and they'd build an oil pipeline to Haifa, which is the dumbest couple of lies that any foreign spies ever believed in and took America to war over. That was a huge part of what that was about is their clean and break strategy for Israel,

led by David Wormser, and of course Richard Pearl and Douglas Fythe and Paul Wolfowitz and all these guys. That was what it was all about. Colin Powell himself said that Dick Cheney and the neo-conservists created a separate government inside the government. And in fact, recently there was an interview with David Wormser where he is attempting to debunk Tucker Carlson's 9-11 documentary or whatever and he just reinforces all of these narratives exactly

like, yep, it was us neoconservatives versus Colin Powell and Dick Armitage and Condoleezza Rice and her agents, Blackwill and Zolik and Zellicoat and all this and like, yeah, exactly. These are the battle lines as drawn by Justin Romando at anti-war.com in real time back then 100%. Yeah, you know, they were and how they did it. I was on the Iraq desk at the State Department in 2005, and you could see that this was Dick Cheney's War.

And I say that because in the working groups, you know, which were a level below the deputies. You were at State in 2005? I was a state. Yeah, I was on the Iraq desk at State in 05. Yeah, I might. Okay, I'm sorry. I just had to adjust my brain a little bit. Go ahead.

I'm sorry. Yeah, so, yeah, it was 05. Yeah. So, but you can see that this was Dick Cheney's war. So when you'd have these interagency working groups, you know, it didn't start until the vice president's people were there. The vice president's people were the ones in try. If there was a decision that had to be made, it wasn't like Rice or Rumsfeld or now we need

to see what the vice president is going to say. Like it was at that point, and this is like particularly, I'm thinking about the fall of 05 into the winter, into the winter of 06, you know, really this was still Dick Cheney's war. You could see that just in the authority that his people had over everyone else's people. Yeah. And so I've actually been rereading these articles lately. I have a great collection in a tweet thread. It's how the neo-conservatives lied us into war with Iraq 20 years ago,

a thread of the very best articles on it. And I retweet it from time to time and quote tweet it from time to time. It's just a huge collection of essentially everybody who did good work on the Office of Special Plans and related information about the neocons and how they lied us into the war there. It's about 30, 35 of them or so shows the whole clean break strategy and Wolfowitz and Fyth and Schultzky

and the special plans and the policy counterterrorism evaluation group and all of that stuff and how they laundered all the lies to get us into the war. So I'll tweet that out. In fact, maybe I'll make sure and send the link to Connor

to have that link in the description of this interview for people who want to do a deep dive on that. That's a lot of fun. You know, Jason Vest and Bob Dreyfus, their article, The Lie Factory, like, man, there's some good stuff in there. Yeah, there's so much good stuff. So, you know, Scott, they didn't just lie. And all in conjunction with the Lekud, with Ariel Sharon, had his own little office

in the prime minister's office, manufacturing fake intelligence in English to stovepipe right up to the vice president's office and then for use against the president of the United States to help get us into that war. Oh, you have a great interview with us, is Gary Vogel. who's written the books, how Israel is the real winner of the Iraq War. I can't remember if I'm not going to get the title exactly right, but he talked about that, you know.

And we published a book at the Institute, yeah. You know, and what's telling you in there is that, like, even the people who were at fairly senior levels in terms of planning were being lied to, you know, and I, before the war, so I got to the Pentagon, the fall of 2002, and I was a junior Marine Corps officer on the Secretary of Navy's personal staff.

my friend, I became friends with his aid. And in that fall running into O3 into the invasion, you know, the Secretary of the Navy was being lied to. You know, Lori, his aide would tell me she'd go to the briefing, she'd go into the tank, you know, as they call it, secure conference terms. And, you know, she'd come out of it. She'd say, man, stuff that they've got. You know, this is pretty solid stuff, you know.

I mean, like, so it wasn't that the lies were just outward facing. The lies were also internal. And so it became kind of, this gets back to our point we were talking about whether it's a Joe Biden White House, Blinken, Sullivan, that they're actually really true believers or it's the Europeans that they've become. They're so invested in the storyline and a narrative that they've sold for these years that that's who they've become. You know, I mean, you see this occurring where these lies become real. It's not, they have the purpose of deception, but they also have the purpose of creating a reality. And you have this, I mean, I could talk, you know, even more on a tactical level how this works when you're in Iraq and you're not allowed to use the word occupation. When you see the briefing slides from the intel guys trying to explain the resistance, God forbid you use the word resistance. Finally, we were allowed to use the word insurgency. But God forbid resistance, even right now, I have a tough time saying resistance because that was just not allowed to be set. You know, but you have the briefing slides from the intel guys talking about, you know, trying to explain the resistance, trying to explain the insurgency, who these groups are and everything.

and eventually it'd be like a motivations slide. And they'd have all these motivations. The big one was criminal motivations. And that makes sense because we're the good guys. These are the bad guys, right? We have the white hats on. Of course, the people who are opposing us must just be trying to steal. They just must be criminals.

They just must be bad is what this is all about. You know, I mean, they'd have all these different, you know, reason there'd never be the reason of like, hey, they're occupied and they don't like it. You know, you just didn't, that type of understanding. of what we were in was just not allowed. You couldn't express it. And so if you can't even accept the fundamental reality of the war that you've put yourselves into,

the war that you've created, then what chance do you ever have of winning the thing? And, you know, that's not just the case for Iraq. That was the case in Afghanistan. That was, you know, great. Exactly. Yeah, they're prisoners of their own BS. And it's why I always bring this up,

I guess people are probably tired of me because I have like these daydreams about like, But aren't there like scenes where it's nighttime and everyone's officially off work for the day, but they're just like sitting around having a little whiskey and they turn the lights down a little bit and they can be a little bit honest with themselves and each other? You know what I mean? Like, well, okay. I mean, Robert Kagan's wife is really disgusting and makes a lot of bad calls.

And so like maybe if we had done things a little bit different, you know what I mean? Like any, there's just not that kind of self-reflection, I guess. And I remember, like, because in the context of a Rock War II, you know, they had to lie to us for a year and a half to, one, get the American people upset enough to buy into this thing. And then two, to get the forces built up in Kuwait necessary to do the invasion. So it was this whole year and a half after September 11th of just browbeaten everybody with all the fearmongering about this.

And I was a cab driver at the time. So I'm talking with all random people about their different views on all of this, you know? and a huge objection on the part of pro-war people was that these can't be lies because look at all of the people in government who all agree that they know that this is true. You know, and I know you're not saying cab driver that they're all lying, right?

And then I got to explain how no, but Dick Cheney knows he's lying, and the rest of them, they're like you. They can't imagine that he lies, so they believe it. And then they repeat the lies believing it's true. But like, if you read 1984, all the propaganda is for the members of the party. They don't care about whether the proles pay attention or not because they don't have any power. It's all about the people who work at the Ministry of Truth believing in the new narrative every day.

And that's who the propaganda is for, is the people who identify themselves with the system. And those people swallow a whole. And so, like, every random idiot in Austin, Texas knew better. but every dentist and lawyer thought we have to do this for the national security because they like just through like um social groupings and whatever this is the consensus in their neighborhood is that George Bush is doing this for a good reason or he wouldn't be doing it and whatever while the rest of town is like yeah right like Saddam Hussein had anything to do with attacking us give me a break you know what I mean people just saw right

through it like it was completely ridiculous but anyway there's so much of that built in was the the liars who believe the lies that they're telling in order to get everybody else on board that they're suckers too and then like you're saying this filters all the way down to like hey captain why are we invading iraq because we're getting revenge for the twin tower son and it's like no uh that is not why you know what i mean but that's what the soldiers being told then you're fighting an insurgency? Hey, Captain, why are we fighting an insurgency? Well, they're bad guys. You don't need to know anything more about what's going on behind their motives and their actions when, of course, that might save your ass if you understood, not just that they're from here,

but look, you have chosen one faction against another faction. So this faction feels like they're being treated very unfairly. Well, you might be able to ameliorate that with a handshake and a deal rather than simply fighting if you understand motivations. You know what I mean? Like, so yeah, as you're saying, when the BS filters all the way down to the level, that some guy getting his legs blown off in the backseat of his Humvee is what that really comes down to, you know? And it lasts for years. I mean, there's a Zagby, Zagby group did a poll of Marines and soldiers in Iraq in March, February and March of 06. So three years after the invasion, four and a half years after 9-11. And you had something like 75% of the Marines and soldiers in Iraq three years after the invasion

believing that they were there because Saddam Hussein and Iraq were allied with al-Qaeda and that they had taken apart somehow in 9-11 and that we were there to stop another 9-11 from attacking. That's three years after the invasion. You still have roughly three out of four soldiers and Marines in Iraq thinking that that's the purpose there. Right. I mean, like, that's the, you know, the, the, and for, I think for the civilian or just the general public, the idea we're so caught up in our identity in the present and group think is such a powerful thing. but it's also, you know, there's this dissonance that exists. If you ask people about Vietnam, if they know anything about the banana wars or the Spanish American war or how we, what we did to the Native Americans, you know, they go, oh, yeah,

but the idea that that is still being carried out now, you know, that all these things are separate, that there's not a continuous line of history that we are traveling upon. You know, most people don't think that way, you know, even with these current wars. Why should we believe anything that those in power say when they've been involved in all these separate wars? I mean, you look at the Biden administration. These were the same guys, same men and women who were in the Obama administration. These are the same ones who carried out Libya and Syria, right? They're the same ones who escalated the Afghan war.

They're the same ones who gave all that support to the Saudis as they killed 400,000 people in I mean, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So why should we believe them now when they're talking about Ukraine? It's the same people. Why do we think that they're any different on this issue of war and peace than they are on all the other issues of war and priests where they've clearly shown who they are? But there's sort of dissonance that exists, you know,

maybe you should have some psychologists on to try and explain that, but you see that and it's just something I think that the powers that be, right, the ruling class that they understand and they're able to manipulate and take advantage of, and no one better than, you know, Dick Cheney, who funerals occurring now, and I'm probably going to see a flag of half staff someplace and start cursing, you know. Yeah. The audio book, I know. People are always asking me, when are going to be done with the audio book for provoked?

Well, the fact is, I had to put it on hold for a bit while I'm working on the academy. But the fact of the matter is, I have published the H.W. Bush chapter and the Bill Clinton chapter, which is already, I think, nine or 12 hours, an audiobook worth just right there. And I have finished recording all of W. Bush, all of Obama, and about at least half of Trump won, although I still have a lot of editing to do on all those before I can publish them. But you will be the first to know if you sign up and subscribe at my substack, where I am publishing this audio in pieces until I get the whole thing ready together for Audible eventually. So sign up at Scott Horton's show.com.

That's my substack, Scott Horton's show.com. Hey, you guys should buy my books. You know, my first one was called Fool's Air and Time to End the War in Afghanistan. It was really good and it all came true too. Watch me predict the end right there in the preface of the thing. Also, enough already time to end the war on terrorism. That's all the wars from Jimmy Carter all the way through the first Donald Trump administration. And then my latest is provoke how Washington's,

started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Tucker Carlson says it's the definitive take. Expandesigns.com. That's my friend Harley Abbott's company, and he is the webmaster for the Scott Horton Show, as well as the Libertarian Institute. He is the guy that redesigned the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website. He's done a lot of great work for other friends of mine. And unlike a lot of webmasters and web developers and different,

guys that I have worked with over the years. The thing is about Harley Abbott and his team is they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it and are just extremely reliable and extremely knowledgeable and a hundred percent vouch for the great Harley Abbott over there. You got a website. You need it fixed up. You need a new one. You're setting up a business working on any kind of online project like that. Check out expanddesigns.com. Well, look, I mean, the easiest answer to it is just simple partisanship. You know, on page 950 of Tragedy and Hope, Bill Clinton's professor at Georgetown, Carol Quigley, wrote that the only reason that there should be two parties,

one to broadly supposedly represent the interests of political liberals and the other, the conservatives, is so the American people can, his silly, ironic quotes, throw those rascals out every eight or even four years, if necessary, without ever leading to a substantial shift in policy because the consensus is that the mandate of the national government is to do the following 10 things, none of which are constitutional, all of which are about bolstering the American world empire,

especially in Western Europe, you know, at that time during the Cold War. And so let half the population be frustrated half the time, but then let them have their relief and let them throw the bums out and now they get their guy, in there. And so even right now, like if Donald Trump started carpet bombing Venezuela right now, some substantial number of the America firsters would adapt their ideology to include that being permissible because, and I see this in my feet. Oh, yeah, because you think we'd be

better off with Kamala Harris. Like, it's really that easy. It's really that easy, you know? And so, I mean, look at what, you know, speaking how old I am, look at what an absolute bony George W. Bush was in the 1990s. You know, the guy's from Connecticut. And yeah, he spent some time in West Texas. But like how many Texans are from Connecticut, really? Not many. You know what I mean?

Like this guy's a cousin of the Queen of England. He's George, he's not Ronald Reagan's son. He's George Bush's son. Right? the Rockefeller Republican, not the conservative. He literally in 1999, after he'd already been governor and was in his second term, and now was beginning his run for president. He'd already announced his exploratory committee.

He's now running for president. Then he bought a pig farm in Crawford, Texas, and brought in decrepit old horse stables and rusted old tractors and hay bales. And it was a Hollywood set. And they made it look like he owned a ranch in Crawford, Texas. They put a cowboy hat on him, and you could see him forget half the time to talk in Texan. And he just started talking in regular American or even in Northeastern Yankee again. And it was like, this is the most preposterous hoax in the world that this guy is a conservative at all.

Like on the base level, he is a Rockefeller, liberal, rhino, Ted Kennedy Republican, no child left behind, Medicare Part D. He's Richard Nixon. He's not Ronald Reagan. And what are the Texans and the Americans say, Oh, I like that George W. Bush. He sure is conservative. Why, look at his cowboy boots that Karl Rove dressed him up in.

Like, just, my God, man. You know, the 1990s, right-winger's hated government until Bill Clinton cheated on his wife. And then they decided, oh, you know what's wrong with government? Bill Clinton is of low moral character. But otherwise, government is great. government is good, just wait until George Bush's son comes, and then, boy, are we going to have a regime to fall absolutely gay in love with for the next eight years as they torture people

to death and lie us in a war? I mean, the rejection of the Bush legacy on the right right now is only an inverse reflection of their dedication to the cults of their power 20 years ago. I mean, it was bad. It was really bad, how much they wanted to believe and let themselves believe, you know? Hope it, hope the lesson sticks there, but no, I mean, the lesson that comes out of that is that

buying a pig farm and putting a cowboy hat on works, you know, that's the lesson that comes out of it. Donald Trump has, you know, he's an outlier in many ways, but, you know, his schedict is similar, different.

I mean, he can come down a gold elevator and describe himself as an outsider, right? Or he can be, you know, I mean, be synonymous with wealth and glitz and, you know, casinos, resorts. And Bill Clinton, his good friend. Yeah, exactly. And still be seen as some type of populist who's going to write the wrongs of the elite, right?

I mean, it's, you know, this whole Epstein thing, I mean, this whole Epstein thing, I mean, the, the anger of it in our society and the attention on it by our people. Yeah, I mean, it's sensational. It's pedophilia. It's sex trafficking, very serious stuff, very interesting stuff, right? But overall, I think the real thing is just that larger, the larger morality tale of it, the larger narrative of it about how there are two classes in the United States. There's a ruling class that gets away with what it wants. And then there's the rest of us. You know, You know, it's a George Carlin affirmism, right? It's a big club and you ain't in it.

And I think that's, for me at least, why the interest in the Epstein story has continued. I mean, this has been going on for years now. And I think if it was just confined to issues of sex trafficking and paed failure, however serious they are, this would have come and gone. But I think because it incorporates this larger reality of the ruling class, the elites, being able to do what they want and their depravity because of that, I think that's why it's driving the American people

and their anger, you know, to see something done with it. Yeah. Yeah, it makes you wonder how many other Epstein's are operating the same kind of racket right now. Whatever it is, yeah. Yeah, why would it be that one guy, you know? All right, so speaking of Israeli spies and everything, how about, let's spend the last few minutes here

on getting your appraisal of the current situation in the Gaza Strip. Obviously, it's a hell of a lot better than it was, but they are still being bombed and killed as we cover of anti-war.com every day. They have these yellow lines and red lines

and the UN Security Council has now rubber-stamped the Trump peace plan for the Gaza Strip. I guess maybe I'll add one thing as a premise to the question too, which is that I think overall we'd probably agree

that the Israeli plan for the war really completely failed, right? They did not achieve the destruction of Hamas and they did not achieve the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people out of there. They were not able to find a place to force them to go. And they may have been limited by the Americans

or I'm not sure who told them that, look, just kill like 100, 120 a day max and you can keep going, but don't, you know, keep it. And I guess that just wasn't enough to force all the Palestinians just go drown themselves in the damn sea. So they lost, just as Ramsey Baroud predicted right after the war began, that we already saw how this ends in 2014.

The IDF is not willing to get shot up enough to win this fight on the ground in close quarters combat. And so at the end of the day, Hamas will survive because all the insurgents have to do is not lose. Everybody knows that. So here we are. Trump has finally called something like a ceasefire and has something like a plan for the place. An international force, they've got an American base there now, Matt. They're having

an international force of some description take over the Gaza Strip, at least in name so far. But I don't know what the hell any of it really means or how far any of it's going to go. Of course, there's Netanyahu's dead body there to be gone over if they're actually going to do anything like rebuild the strip for the people of Palestine. So I just, I'm interested. which, God dang, I don't know anything. I mean, you tell me what you think is going on and is going to happen there right now as best you can tell.

Yeah, I'm not, I don't believe Israel lost, I think. You know, it's a zero sum, right? So there's no winners or losers in a definitive sense. But, you know, I see Israel at worst being at the status quo of October 6th. And actually even better because they've shrunk the Gaza Strip to 45% of what it was. And they've pushed everyone into that 45%. And they've taken the best farmland, right?

They've taken some of the best water resources in the strip. And that's what their settlers want. And they've got a commitment from the Trump administration to rebuild that Israeli controlled 55% first. And anyone believes that they're going to rebuild the Palestinian-controlled 45%? percent. Please explain to me why you think that's the case. I think Israeli Israel in the region has increased its dominance. It certainly has been allowed to do as his wish, and it has effectively broken apart the access of resistance. I mean, look at operationally their successes

and strategically their successes in Lebanon and Syria. We can talk about the issue, the war with Iran over the last two years. You know, you can point to things that say the Iranians have an advantage. Others will say the Israelis have an advantage. I think they both effectively deterred each other for the time being. And it's coming back to the mania that exists within Benjamin Netanyahu's mind over whether or not he believes he needs to launch another war against Iran. But I tend to look at this in the sense of what has Israel achieved in terms of objectives. And I think politically, what they've been able to achieve through the, because of the United States

is to put in place this colonization of Gaza by the Americans essentially with a covering of an international force to give it some type of credence, not underneath the control of the United Nations, but underneath the control of this Board of Peace which Donald Trump is going to put Muhammad bin Salman on and Tony Blair, those are the only two people

that seem to have been invited so far to be on the Board of Peace. You know, I mean, so looking at that, you know, the Israelis and the idea that what's so amazing, Scott, you know, like if you were to write a story about this, a novel about this, and to have this abandonment essentially of the Palestinians at the United Security Council on Monday or whenever it was, and then to have this week as well, the entire United General Assembly, with the exception of Israel, the United States, and like the hand full of micro, you know, Pacific Island nations that we effectively control, vote in favor of Palestinian statehood.

I mean, that's just amazing. I mean, and so for the Israelis, if they're looking at this, they say, yeah, you know, we'll continue to fight our Hasbara campaign. We'll put more money into it. We'll continue this propaganda, this information more. But the reality, at the end of the day, the rest of the world wants to move on. They want to get this Palestinian monkey off their backs, and they want to move on. with business as usual.

That's how I read the world's affection or the world's relationship with Palestine right now. They're happy to use the Palestinians as a talking point. They're happy to use the Palestinians to mouth off against the Americans, the hypocrisy of the Americans, whatever. They're also happy to use the Palestinians to justify themselves to their own people

as someone that we are defending, particularly in the global south, but when it comes down to it, you don't see action. And so the Palestinians once again abandoned. So I see Israel actually in a pretty good place as of today in terms of reducing the Gaza Strip down to 45%, getting settlers in there, whatever this fantasy about the Trump Riviera comes to be, but increasing their dominance, increasing their control throughout the region, shattering the axis of resistance. You know, now this has done a lot of harm to the Israelis,

but it's also shown the dedication of the American government. And yeah, there's been some defections. There's issues with public opinion in the United States. I think the Israelis feel that they can get through all of that, that they'll figure out a way to maintain their relationship with the American government so that at the end of the day, if anyone actually says there, it actually follows up on their words with action,

the Americans will always be here for us. This was the whole thing with this uniting for peace idea that we're going to, a protection force is going to be assembled among nations, and they're going to go into Gaza and protect the Palestinians from the Israelis and the Americans. There's always a fantasy. What nations in the world are going to assemble an amphibious landing force to invade Gaza and fight not just the Israelis and the Americans? The Israelis know as long as they have the Americans,

they can do whatever they want. And that includes economically because the United States is never going to let Israel's economy collapse. If the United States is willing to give $50 billion to Ukraine to pay for Ukraine's pensions and to keep their fire departments working and to, you know, keep the lights on in Ukraine essentially, what will we do for Israel? You know, and now we're looking at a 20-year memorandum of understanding that's going to be negotiated.

the last one, the last 10-year deal, Obama gave Israel $3.8 billion a year. What do you think we're going to give the Israelis now? What would be, you know, what makes sense? If we gave them $4 billion before, all said and done, what are we going to give them now? $6 billion, $8 billion, $10 billion a year? None of that's out of the realm of Palsabody, plus the guarantee that whatever happens, we are going to be there. Even to our own detriment, we will be there.

So I see the Israelis in a pretty good position here from their perspective. And they were never going to win in Gaza. They were never going to break the Palestinian resistance. The only way they could have done that is by dropping atom bombs on the place. And they hold out. They hold out hope. And the Americans hold out hope that, as you said, the Palestinians will be so emiserated that they can't even grow,

they're not even able to grow crops, right, to feed themselves. They're going to be so immiscerated in this 45% of, that's what's left of the Gaza Strip, that they will throw themselves into the sea, you know, or that eventually will come up with a bribe large enough for Sisi to allow him to come into Sinai. You know, I mean, that's the, I think the hope of the Americans and the Israelis on this. But otherwise, I think they feel like they're in a pretty good position. Yeah.

Well, and you definitely got a point about, I mean, they certainly have weakened Hamas compared to where they were. They have really, I don't know, decimated, but they've severely weakened Hezbollah by some gigantic percentage by killing their leader and the pager attack and all the missile strikes and everything.

They were severely crippled Hezbollah. They got bin Ladenites ruling Syria instead of the Alawites now, major win. Iraqis are with Iran, but they have no interest in picking any fights with Israel here. You know, they've got a couple.

She-out militias have launched a couple of pot shots, but for the most part, Baghdad has no interest in taking part in any of this. The Houthis can launch some drones and some rockets, but they have no ability to field an army anywhere

or do any kind of thing like that. So you're right. Yeah, everything's more or less coming up Netanyahu and I have to just add here at the end in the Constitution, as I know you know because you took a sacred oath to it and everything, that the Congress is forbidden from appropriating money to the military

for any period longer than two years in order to discourage militarism. But there's nothing in there preventing them from signing a 20-year appropriation deal for money for a foreign nation's military. Guess James Madison never thought of that that we would tolerate anything like that. And so two years for the Pentagon,

20 years for Tel Aviv. Right. Right. All right, man. Well, I have taken up enough of your morning. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You're always full of such great insight, and I really do appreciate you, man.

Well, thank you very much, Scott, and keep doing what you're doing. We didn't even talk about the school that you're running, which I think is such a great idea. You're right. We should talk about that. You want to talk about it? Yeah, because I think it's such a great thing. There's not that many platforms out there, I feel, that kind of teach the stuff that we're talking about, you know, particularly for people as an entry point, you know, for people

who are familiar with history, but they don't understand history, say, as the continuous line. Like when I was getting, when I resigned from Afghanistan and I entered the anti-war movement, something I didn't want to do. I mean, the first time I met with Veterans for Peace, I was like, who are these loons? You know, like, I don't want to deal with these guys. These guys are silly, you know? And then I found out these guys know more about history,

let alone their own experiences in war than I ever will. You know, I mean, and so I think it's, but it's that, like, kind of level of basic understanding of American foreign policy and how it's historical. It's not got to do with whoever won the election and is sitting in the Oval Office. it's got to do with the empire. So, I mean, I think that's what you're trying to accomplish there.

Of course, yeah. I mean, the premise of the thing basically is, as Tom Woods put it, was that every time one of us goes up against a hawk in a public forum, we kick their ass. They got nothing on any of us. I don't know if you saw the recent clip of Max Blumenthal, absolutely breaking out hydrogen bombs against this kook who, I don't know if he was a former ambassador to Venezuela or something.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Max starts telling him the story of his own life. He's got this giant grin about, yeah, right, at the beginning. And boy, he just wipes that smile right off of his face. Oh, I felt bad for the guy. Remind me to knock in a fight with Max Blumenthal. Jesus Christ. Anyway, but then the thing is there's not enough of us.

We just need more of us. So the idea is we have this course. So everybody who's basically hit to the magic. Matthew Ho, Scott Horton, take on the American Empire has a place to go where I walk you through this stuff slowly and really get you up to speed to make a bunch of more Scott Hortons, a bunch of more Matthew Ho's so that, you know, if you and me got to take a week off for a medical emergency, there's always plenty of non-interventionists who have their act together, really know what they're talking about and can get up there and represent our side of the fight

against the war party. And I think right now it's just a matter of like the donors and the owners of the party, the Zionists especially and the other, you know, the military industrial complex firms or whatever, the very elite level versus essentially the entire population of the country who no longer are in favor of any of this. And if they lost the right, well, they lost those who are willing to fight. And so that's it, dude, game up, empire over.

And it's time for the American people to absolutely demand it and insist upon it and have confidence that they know they're right. and get in there and win the fight. So that's what's all about is getting people trained up to replace us. And so it's at Scott Hortonacademy.com. And thanks for mentioning it. I already know people are getting a lot out of it.

People are adding it to their homeschool curriculum. People are, you know, showing it to their friends and family. And I'm getting a lot of great feedback from the thing already. And we've got a lot of great stuff coming up, including I think next week we're going to be adding Adam Francisco in his course, debunking. Christian Zionism, which is going to be absolutely fantastic. So it's a really great thing, man.

It's me and already three other great expert teachers, but then we're going to be adding more and more great stuff all the time. Well, I think, you know, for younger folks too, maybe in high school or going through college or, you know, this resource that's available to them then, you know, something that can cite, right? It's something that, right, they can use because, you know, you could go through the best university,

in this country and never read a critique of the American Empire. I certainly did it. I went to a very good private college, and I didn't read any Chomsky or both barred or anything like that. They might have given you some Zinn, right? People's history. No, I mean, like, not even Zinn, not even Zinn. No, I mean like, so, right?

I mean, like, that that type of a resource, just to compare with, just to, you know, do your due diligence and ensure that you're understanding the entire context, the entire story here. And it is, I mean, for many people, Scott, man, I see this like, it's revelatory for people. I, you know, I was in that film that's on Showtime, bodyguard of all eyes about the Afghan war.

People who had kids who were in that war will say to me like, I didn't know any of that, you know? I mean, and so you could have people whose children were risking life and death in the Afghan war who didn't know that the whole thing was one giant racket, that it was built upon lies, that there was never a chance of success, that the Taliban weren't allied with al-Qaeda, I mean, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, and it's because the information is just not there.

It's not accessible. So I think what you're doing is fantastic. Cool. Well, thank you very much for the vote of confidence there, man. And, you know, we're trying to make something really great out of it. So maybe we'll do a course on great American whistleblowers. all right thank you very much matt appreciate you about all right thanks scott appreciate it the scott horton show is brought to you by roberts and roberts brokerage ink moondos artisan

coffee tom woods liberty classroom ap s radio news and dissident media subscribe to the show at scott horton dot org scott horton show dot com libertarian institute dot org youtube dot com slash scott horton show itunes spotify etc and check out my books fools errand enough already and my lady latest, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine at Amazon.com. And I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at Scott Horton Show.com and patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. See you next time.