Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/7/22 Joe Kent on his Journey from Green Beret to Congressional Candidate

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Scott talks with congressional candidate Joe Kent about his career, worldview and stances on the foreign policy issues of the day. Kent spent two decades in the army and was deployed all over the middle east. He talks Scott through his career and how his view of America’s wars evolved. Scott then presses Kent on some of his beliefs and statements about China.  Discussed on the show: Joe Kent Campaign Website Joe Kent is a retired Army Special Forces soldier who is running for Congress in Washington State’s 3rd District. Follow him on Twitter @joekent16jan19 This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, sorry, I don't mean to go all FDR on you or anything, but here's the new deal. All the interviews are now going up first at Scott Horton's show.substack.com. Of course, they'll all be going up at Scott Horton.org the next day, and the archives going back to 1999. We'll still be free for you there at Scott Horton.org. But I've got to generate revenue, you know. All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already.

Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you. at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up for the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right, you guys,

introducing Joe Kent. He's running for Congress in the 3rd District in Washington State, former CIA officer and former Green Beret and famously widower

of his wife who was killed in the Dirty War in Syria and self-identified America Firster. Welcome to the show. Joe, how are you doing? Very well. Thanks a much for having me. I really appreciate you joining us here. Now, I'm really tied up in nonprofits, so I'm not really interested in a lot of electioneering stuff. I'm just want to talk about the issues with you here. And obviously, first and foremost, foreign policy. So can we start with what you, I saw.

saw you a few months ago on the Tucker Carlson show. Explain how you went from being a green beret to being part of the anti-war right. And I wonder if you could kind of take us through that story here a little bit to start. Yeah, I mean, it's been quite the journey. You know, I growing up, all I ever wanted to do was join the Army and go do Commando stuff. That was kind of my goal as a kid, you know, watching GIGO. And then as I got older reading history, seeing that there was always people that went forward and fought for our country. I mean, I was a true believer.

I still believe we need people to step forward and defend our nation. So I enlisted right away in 1998, there was no wars going on, went right to second Ranger battalion, and then was actually in the process of becoming a Green Beret when the attacks September 11th happened. So that pretty much set the course for the rest of my career. I did 11 combat deployments. I kind of had my, I would say my awakening, probably on my first Iraq, well, I just started my awakening on my first Iraq deployment.

we could see very early on that there really wasn't any WMDs. I mean, by 2004, it was really painfully evident. There wasn't any WMDs. And the more we got to know the Iraqis, that's one of the big jobs you do as a Green Beret, is you work heavily of local populations. The more I got to know Iraqis, I realized that our entire plan of occupying that country, firing pretty much anybody who knew how to run the nation that was associated with the Bath Party, which was most people who really understood how to do anything as far as civil

society went. We did that with a blanket statement of debathification. I was on the ground level when that happened. We were in the midst of trying to demobilize anti-Sadom militias into an Iraqi army. And we actually had a lot of former Iraqi army officers there. But when Paul Mermer and those clowns set the whole, hey, if you were in the bath party, you can't be part of the government anymore. Me and a lot of my friends and comrades on the ground, we sent up reports to hire saying, like, hey, this is a really bad idea. But, you know, I figured, hey, what do I know? I'm just some Sergeant Green Beret. I'm sure the Pentagon and the CIA and all these of their smart people have a have a bigger plan that I'm just not seeing. And as the years went on, I saw that we really just

didn't have a plan. But it became very clear to me. I was always puzzled as to why we were trying to build a enduring presence over there. I thought the mission was simple that we were going to take out Saddam because Saddam was a bad guy. And as that, I mean, Saddam was a bad guy, but the links to Al-Qaeda and the WMD, as that all faded away, it became clear to me that the whole the whole idea was just to stay in Iraq because this was a great way for the military industrial complex and for our politicians to make a lot of money and and to really retain power and to constantly have this narrative of war and crisis. So I got pretty disenfranchised with obviously Bush. I was a Republican. I voted for Bush twice. And then I really kind of

found Ron Paul and really his, the way the stances that he took really appealed to me as far as foreign policy went. I wasn't, I don't think I was fully in with, hey, we don't need to be intervening anywhere because I was still in the midst of, you know, trying to run down terrorists on my deployments. But the longer that that went on, it always seemed like even if we had a legitimate reason for going after a terrorist in country X, the overall goal was to get us to stay there even longer. And, you know, Trump was the first politician I saw that really started to call this out. So that's kind of my evolution really has been, I wish I could come on your show and defend the wars and say, hey, like, no, you just don't understand the big picture. We

were really defending the country, had we not done these things, America would have been attacked multiple times over. I wish I could say that. But at the end of the day, when I look back at what we did and how much we lost and just the impact that had on the region and our country, I can't say that. So for me, it's just a, it's coming from a stance of just realism that we never benefit from these wars. Our nation never benefits from these wars. Yeah. All right. Now, so take me through your career a little bit here. So you're a green beret. I think you're pretty much. much implied you were in Afghanistan and Iraq War II there, clearly Iraq War II. But then, what about Syria? Were you there during that time, or only your wife was there? And at what time

are you leaving the Army and joining the CIA? And in what capacity there? You're like special activities division paramilitary for CIA? And doing what? So I was a paramilitary operations officer. So I went through the formal training of, you know, the farm to be an operations officer. But then with my background and special operations, I was special activities center, ground branch. So I was only there for about a year. That was going to be my second career.

I retired from the military in 2018 and then went, like, so retired on a Friday and swore in on a Monday. Pretty, I mean, it sounds, I think, kind of unique. But for guys with my resume, it's actually pretty standard. So went over there. I deployed to Northern Africa real, real briefly. It takes a while to get through the training for, for paramilitaries and actually be selected for it.

So my career was definitely cut short after my wife was in Syria. During the, I guess, whatever you want to call the counter-IS mission. So I spent a lot of time in Iraq. I actually, despite spending six months learning Pashtun, I never went to Afghanistan despite my best efforts. I did about nine Iraq tours. I did twice. I went to Yemen twice and then some stuff in Northern Africa.

And what years were you in Yemen, by the way? I was in him in 2010 and in early 2011 so I was there right before the Sala regime fell and then I went back in 2017 briefly and then well not to get too far diverted on to that but in 2017 you're there at that point you're killing Houthis or you're doing limited missions against AQAP guys still so we were heavily monitoring the Houthi fight the you know the the the UAE and the coalition the UAE had built was probably doing the most heavy lifting against the Houthis with the whatever you want to call the Yemeni government that was cobbled together. But it was really the Emirates that were doing the vast majority of that.

So we were monitoring that, providing limited intelligence. But the AQAP was still, I would say, the biggest mission focus in 2017. Same thing, 2010, 2011, the Houthi thing. Unfortunately, blindsided a lot of folks in D.C., although those of us that were there on the ground, we kind of we saw that that uh kind of take uh really gain a lot of traction so then i guess this must have been right before the uae went ahead and integrated aqap into their militia and renamed them the giants brigade right yeah i mean there was always a lot of that i mean it was hard to tell the difference between uh there was so many different groups there was answer al sharia

there was a QAP. ISIS at the time was a very popular brand name from how successful they had been, you know, 2014 through 2016, 2017. So there was like a group of guys out there calling themselves ISIS, but I sort of think that they were just aspirationally ISIS because it was a neat name. But yeah, I mean, Yemen is a, Yemen like a lot of the Middle East. It's a bunch of different warring tribes that will switch allegiances pretty quickly. the only good thing about the Emirates is they understood this because they understood the culture better than we did and so yeah did they they most certainly integrated elements of al-Qaeda because those al-Qaeda guys probably saw that they were on the losing side and so they wanted to hedge their bets I mean just we saw this with the Ambar awakening in Iraq as well so the same the same old story okay so back to Syria for a second and I don't want to like dwell on your personal tragedy here but I think it's important to your story right is by the time is am I correct by the time your wife was deployed to syria it was already the war at iraq war three essentially against the caliphate rather than yeah during the time of building up the caliphate

before they changed their mind yeah exactly so i was deployed uh to iraq in 2016 as part of the counter counter-isis fight under obama like it was it was a horrible deployment like we were over there we lost people we were getting shot at but we didn't have uh the authority are really the initiative to go and take out ISIS. It was kind of a just you're sort of there deployment, which is the hallmark of Obama deployments, really. Trump came in and Trump said, let's drop the hammer on ISIS. We basically eliminated the ISIS threat throughout most of 2017 in Iraq. By 2018, they were on the run in Syria. My late wife, she was a Navy cryptologist. She spoke Arabic fluently, several dialects. This was her fifth combat deployment of the special

operations. So she was deployed right after Thanksgiving of 2018. Now, at the time, ISIS only control a handful of villages. They were on the ropes. So she was over there and her task force, the task force she was a part of. They captured the last couple villages from ISIS. And that's when Trump said, hey, I ran on getting us out of these endless wars after we crushed ISIS. We just took away all the ground that ISIS controls. This is a great time to pack it up and fulfill my commitment to the American people. And so he released, he released official formal orders. I mean, I saw those. I was in the CIA at the time. But then he also put out a series of tweets saying that, hey, we're done. We met our objective. And now we're getting out of Syria, which I thought was

very remarkable because, you know, I watched the Syria drama unfold basically from 2014 on. And there was, yeah, there was the ISIS threat. But the military industrial complex, the national security state, they for some reason really wanted to use this as a reason to stay in Syria and to do another regime change war against Assad. Because these people just love failure. I mean, we had just gotten done with Saddam and Gaddafi and all that. But that was the goal. And so when Trump gave those orders, I mean, I was in the CIA.

I had access to all the classified systems. And I saw just the uproar from mid to senior level officials in the intelligence community, State Department, DOD. They were furious at Trump. And unfortunately, Trump didn't have enough loyal people and his national security staff to really make those orders happen. And so they were, my wife and her element, they had orders to get on a plane and be out of there by Christmas Eve 2018. Bureaucratic slow roll left them there, really kind of without a mission.

And so she, tragically, ultimately, her and three other Americans were killed in January by a suicide bomber, you know, just because we didn't have the will to get out of the country and because we wanted to continue to make it look like there was some huge need for us to continue to be in Syria. And that, and that mission unfortunately continues to this day. Well, isn't it the case that the true mission now is keeping wheat and oil out of the hands of the national government there? Yeah, you know, I mean, that'd be a mission. I maybe, but I think really we're just there and we're trying to, every now and again you see Centcom put out a press release that we, you know, us and our partners killed Abu whoever, who is like the number four guy and like what now is ISIS. It just seems like the military is really good at doing what it knows how to do. And for the last 20 years, we've been doing these like, we go. and build a little partner force of Kurds and some other guys, and then we go run intelligence

networks and we kill low-level terrorists. So I think that's the overall what's happening there is that the military just continues this cycle of rotations, and it's very valuable because it's the only combat rotation right now. And so people are making their careers there. But yeah, there still is, I mean, you're probably correct. I'm definitely not going to argue if you're there. There probably is an element that's still trying to make Assad's life as difficult as possible

because there's deeply entrenched people, like I said, that are, unfortunately. in love with this whole idea of getting rid of Assad. All right. Now, I know you already said, and it's on the record. It's on your website, how bad you wanted it out of Afghanistan. And boy, do I agree. I opposed it all along from the first day before the invasion. I wrote a book about why I'd get the hell out.

But I also said, hey, hey, hey, I am not saying get out so we can pivot to Eastern Europe or to Eastern Asia. I'm saying come home. And there were a lot of people who said, yeah, let's get out of Afghanistan so we can free up our resources to make worse trouble elsewhere. So let's start with Eastern Europe, because I know I pretty much like your point of view on that from what I've heard so far. And I want to hear, you know, what your position is and what you think the Republican Party's position is. I mean, frankly, if you are elected, you could be a very influential and powerful member of the House. And, you know, as a veteran especially, leading the way in saying, forget tough, let's be smart, and not do all this stuff.

You know, like only Nixon can go to China. Only Reagan can negotiate an end of the Cold War with the commies. Only a guy like you can say, enough of this already. from a point of view I've been there and back a bunch of times as we're talking about here but so let's start with Russia because this is obviously the one

that we're in the middle of a proxy war with them right now and I would like to know your take I know everybody like to hear your take yeah I mean we've the way that we've gone about this we've taken away so many options because we've gone so all in

on pushing a conflict with Russia now when this whole thing started. I mean, I think we had a lot of options. We could have done mild sanctions against Russia. We could have given the Ukrainians a limited amount of aid, but we didn't do that. We just immediately said, hey, we're going to go all in with this proxy war. We're essentially, I mean, I feel like, yeah, it's a proxy war, but when you have the president of the United States saying that this man, Vladimir Putin, can't remain in power, you've got Lindsey Graham saying, wouldn't it be nice if somebody assassinated Putin, members of Congress saying that

we're at war. I mean, you can only conclude that we are at war with Russia and the amount of money that we've thrown at this problem. I mean, I think we're over $100 billion by now. Len Lease going over there, allowing them to have access to whatever military equipment they want. The fact that the intelligence community is bragging that our targeting data is going to kill Russian generals. I mean, at that point, once you're declaring these things, you're basically not even in a proxy war anymore. So I think things are going horrible. by all accounts, really. I mean, the only person that's benefiting from any of this is Zelensky and probably his inner circle and then, of course, the U.S. military industrial complex. We really haven't made Putin much worse for the wear if that was our goal in the first place, which I mean, I would disagree with that goal. But the thing is, we need to be using every bit of leverage that we have right now to get Zelensky and to get Putin to the negotiating table. And I think we have a limited window to make that happen. Now, the more rhetoric that comes from D.C., about how under no circumstances will we negotiate and then we pressure Zelensky to say the

exact same thing. Or I'm not sure if we're, there's people that debate and say that we didn't actually make Zelensky step away from the negotiating table. I mean, that's a, that's an interesting discussion to have. But at the end of the day, Zelensky just loves this tough guy talk. But we have, I think we still are the senior partner in our relationship with Ukraine. And this is a point where I'd like to say to Zelensky, look, man, we've given you enough. I was against giving you a lot of it. But if you want, if you want the hope of getting one more penny from us, you will sit down at the negotiating table with Vladimir Putin. And I think Putin, as long as we approach it right, I think he'd be willing to sit down the negotiating table too, because he's

done so before. But also because, look, the war is just not going well for Vladimir Putin. It's funny, you know, you hear from the regime media that, like, Putin is both at the same time. He's about ready to take over all of Europe's. We have to fight him right now in Eastern Ukraine because any minute now he's going to march on France. But then at the same time, we hear he's just like an incompetent buffoon. I think by all the data we've seen from how the Russian military is performing, it's not going very well for them. So I think the whole like we have to fight them right now rhetoric, it just lacks any kind of data. So I think Putin is looking for an off ramp. If we extend him an off ramp that he can get honorably, I think he'll

take it. I think if we say you get at the negotiating table two and we can start giving you some some degree of sanctions relief, we can guarantee that Ukraine will never become part of NATO. What do you say? Sit down. Let's talk at the table because what we need to do right now is alleviate the killing and then stop any of these tensions that are going on right now. Because by Biden's own description, we're closer now to a nuclear war than we've been since the Cuban missile crisis. So we really, at this moment of crisis, we just need sober people whose goal is to not have a nuclear exchange. Yeah. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc.

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by Mike Swanson. All right now, but so there's this huge moral panic going on here. You understand that Putin is Adolf Hitler and you cannot appease him or you're Neville Chamberlain giving into evil and it's unconditional surrender. That's the American way. And don't tell me you're on Putin's side and this kind of thing. It's just exactly like it was 20 years ago with, I mean, imagine how absurd it is to pretend that Americans, any of them, are partisans of Saddam Hussein or are partisans of Vladimir Putin. But that's the argument. You must be on his side if he disagree with the Twitter swarm, as John Robb calls it. So how are you going to handle that?

How are you handling that? And how do you plan on handling that? If you have a role in the decision making here, it's clear that the Republican Party is going to win the House of Representatives, that's for sure. Yeah, I mean, at this point, like, I just ignore it. I've been called it already so much because I dared question, number one, our continued presence in the Middle East. but then I also questioned, especially do we need to be risking a nuclear war for the Russian-speaking eastern border of Ukraine? So I mostly just ignore it. If I get pressed on it, I do, you know, present my bona fides that, hey, I've gone and I fought for these things.

And most of the people that are very, very vocal about sending people like me off to go fight and die, they never bother to go risk their lives. They never hear shots fired and anger. And they most certainly don't send their kids off to go fight in these wars. So I can usually present that Trump card. And of course, you know, if you're a veteran and you have my opinion, then if you have my opinion in Tulsi Gabbard's opinion, then our service doesn't matter. But that's just that's just the way it is. Really, I think we have a unique opportunity right now because I do think there's a lot of buyer's remorse with elected officials, Republicans and Democrats for how all in we went with this war. If for no other reason that we're in economic dire straits right now in our own country and the American people who frankly don't follow war or foreign policy, they are.

saying, hey, why in the hell are you idiots sending billions of dollars to some place? I can't find on a map that I don't care about when our own southern border isn't secure. And we can't get enough baby formula on the shelf. And so I think there's a lot of elected officials that have had to actually start to answer for that. Which is a very good thing. And it's an opportunity to say, hey, look, let's figure a way out of this, number one, to prevent a nuclear war. But I was encouraged, you know, maybe it was only, I was only encouraged for about four hours. but when the House Progressive Caucus put forward that letter, basically, and the letter was great.

I mean, I think they outlined the case perfectly as to why we need to start moving towards a ceasefire and really limiting a lot of the aid that we're sending Zelensky. But then unfortunately, they chickened out and Biden or somebody yelled at them and they had to rescind that letter. But if we take the majority, I do really want to reach out to the House Progressive Caucus and say, hey, look, I know you guys don't agree with me probably on 99% of issues. But this is important and you know it's important. Like, you guys wrote that and you're right. and you know you're right. So let me let us work together. Let's let let's make this a actual bipartisan like a real true bipartisan effort that I think potentially someday will be looked on in history that we prevented a, you know, a nuclear conflict. And I can't think of anything

more important to be bipartisan about. All right. Well, look, so now we have to squabble a little bit here because as well, the editorial director of anti-war.com, for one thing, my most important job in life really is to try to get right wingers to be anti-war and you know you mentioned ron paul earlier and that's a good way to butter me up make me feel like i like it because i'm like the number two leader of the ron paul fan club after dammecadams or something um and maybe number three including you know his wife um so that's all nice and everything but you know you know Donald Trump never even knew what America First meant. That goes back to the America First Committee that hated FDR and wanted to stay out of World War II.

And they're smeared, of course, because Charles Lindberg had said some pretty horrible anti-Semitic things, which reflected bad on the whole group unfairly. And, of course, after Pearl Harbor, that was the end of that. The only reason Donald Trump ever talked about it is because David Sanger at the New York Times suggested it to him because he was trying to hang Charles Lindberg around his neck like some Albatron. and make a fool out of Trump. But the problem was for David Sanger, no one ever heard of Charles Lindberg,

not even the famous aviator, never mind the anti-Semitic comments that he had made in opposition to entry into World War II. And so it didn't have that effect on anyone of making Trump look like a pro-Hitler guy or some kind of thing, which is what David Sanger was trying to do. But the point is that to Donald Trump,

there was no heritage here that he was building this philosophy off. of. He got the term from his enemy, David Sanger, the liar in the New York Times, who's been claiming for 20 years that the Ayatoll is about to make a nuke or something, among a lot of other things. So now there's a whole generation of America first, conservative Republicans. But, you know, I think you must have noticed. In a lot of cases, that just means you're good on Russia but bad on China. Or maybe you're good on Syria, but you're bad on Iran. Or maybe Maybe America Firster just means Tea Party, and Tea Party just means Republicans.

And at the end of the day, you're all a bunch of George W. Bushes when it comes down to it. Now, I'll cut you a little slack here because on your website, you say a bunch of horrible stuff about China. Absolutely just unforgivable errors. But at the same time, you say, I really think we need to get out of Afghanistan. So then I think, well, maybe you just have. haven't updated your website in a while, and you must have thought hard about it and thought better of we should have an absolute trade war with China, that we should outlaw American corporations doing business with China, that we should essentially have a nuclear war with

China instead of with Russia, which is the way I read your website right now. Yeah, well, I mean, I think China's exploiting, you know, our economy. So I do think China's the number one existential threat as far as foreign countries go. to us right now. I mean, they're involved in a trade war. And really, how's the trade war is an existential threat? Well, I mean, they control the vast majority of U.S. manufacturing. They have deep ties into Wall Street. Well, they have the potential right now of crashing our economy by challenging our status as a prime reserve currency holder. Now, a lot of that's self-inflicted because of our horrible fiscal policies. But I don't think we have any

business allowing China to actively, you know, compete. in our markets. I just think we need to be self-sufficient and not reliant on China and not allowing foreign labor, especially from China, to undercut U.S. labor. Yeah, but don't you see how by completely cutting off economic interdependence with China, we're destroying the major incentive for keeping the peace for the long term. You're talking about a sixth of the population of the world. This plan is not big enough for them and us at the same time. That's crazy. We made peace with them 50 years ago, Joe, 50 years ago. Now, you want to start a fight? I just want us to restore the balance. And I want us to have fair trade, not free trade, but that relationship is just

completely off balance right now. I mean, fair trade. That's what the commies say. Let the government decide who's allowed to trade with who. What the hell are you talking about fair trade? Come on. Well, you have to know that this is bogus, man. China is not a threat to the United States of America. deeply intertwined with our elite. I mean, the way that China is able to exploit our trade system, our so-called free market, I mean, we essentially shipped the vast majority of our manufacturing base over there. China is the dominant, I'd say, they essentially run global trade. And that's because of, and we pay for global trade. We are the security guarantors for it. We're underwriting this entire global system. But the funny thing is, we're the ones that need it the least here in this country. We could be 100% self-sufficient. put our people and our workers first, but instead we have this off-balance system where we rely on China, but our elite benefit from China, but yet the working class getting absolutely nothing out of this whole exchange other than cheap crap from Walmart. Yeah, but you're conflating totally different things. I mean, you're talking about there's

corruption in American politics and possibly unbalanced trade deals that could be rewritten versus we should just have autarky and be and not have global trade at all or what should we do the same thing with Europe and with Canada no because Canada and Europe

they don't behave in the way that the Chinese Communist Party does between currency manipulation intellectual property theft like look if China can behave better then certainly we can have trade with them but we shouldn't be beholden to them they shouldn't have as much power as they do because they control, you know, the manufacturing of so many critical things that we need.

And that capability needs to be onshore back here, not just for our national security, but also to provide jobs for our people. Yeah. You also have, you include on your website here the bogus claim that the Chinese have been inflicting genocide against their people, clearly a reference to the hoax perpetrated by Adrian Zenz and the China lobby that the people of this. the Xinjiang province are being murdered, being sterilized en masse and all these things, when he's already had to retract that crap.

You know what they said? They said that, oh, look at the statistics. 87% of all the IUDs being implanted in Chinese women are all being implanted in the Uighur women. See, they're sterilizing them all. But then they had to admit that, nope, their math problem was done incorrectly. and it's actually 8% in other words in no indication of any

sterilization program against those people what so effing ever this is exactly like Saddam Hussein's giant human shredder that he throws all his opponents in babies on bayonets and

babies on the floor and all the stolen incubators show me the mass graves from a genocide in Western China. There ain't no such thing. It's a bunch of war propaganda, and it's used essentially, and look what you're doing. This is part of the exact narrative

that they use against David Koresh or Saddam Hussein or Omar Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad or against Vladimir Putin. Look at the unmitigated evil of this horrible Communist Party and Chairman Xi and all the claims about their sins that are always so far out of proportion to the reality of a situation. And you're turning what you describe as like a trade imbalance problem,

a intellectual property problem, all of a sudden is now a national security threat against a genocidal hedgeman bestriding the world, which is comic book nonsense. It's America's Navy, as you well know, that rules the seven seas, not China. it's America that has the dominant trade relationship with all of the other major powers of the world, like in Europe, for example, not China.

Isn't that right? No, China, China has the dominant trade relationship with us, and we are paying for security on the high seas, and we don't necessarily need that because we get produced things here. Now, look, China with their, whatever there was, the one-child policy, I mean, look, China does bad things. I'm not trying to come up with a justification for us doing some sort of a, an intervention, I would like to prevent that. China's fighting us at an economic level, and it's just simply time for us to fight back

and to put our country first. That's my only beef with China. I am very much against any kind of military conflict with China. They're fighting us economically. We need to strengthen our dollar to make sure they can't take down our status as the Prime Reserve currency holder. Everything we've done in Russia is just driving the consolidation of the Eurasian landmass, Russia and China to make our dollar even weaker, and that's mostly self-inflicted by us.

So I do think it's a trade war, but I do think it is an existential national security threat, how deeply intertwined we are with China. Well, what about Taiwan? Well, with Taiwan, I mean, the biggest, the reason why Taiwan is a big deal is because, again, globalization, we allowed the manufacturing and production of advanced microchips and semiconductors to go to Taiwan. I mean, Silicon Valley West, the only reason Taiwan is important to the world is because of that factor right there. So I think we need to aggressively onshore that capability as fast as possible. And then look, there's a lot of regional actors. There's a lot of other countries there that don't, they're not comfortable with China being aggressive.

We can give them a limited amount of support so that China would think there's, hey, there's going to be a cost if we go over here and take out Taiwan. But I do think the main fight is economic against China. China's smart. I don't think China wants to fight us in a kinetic way. Biden's made us weak enough on the world stage that maybe he will take a swipe at at Taiwan again I don't think that's worth risking a you know a conflict over I but I I do believe that the fight's going to be economic China is getting essentially everything they want right now

while we shoot ourselves in the foot with this rapid transition to green energy while we stay beholden to their manufacturing lines while we throw these buffoonish sanctions at Russia consolidating the the Eurasian landmassus economy I mean the petro dollars at risk right now because they see how weak we are and China's not starting to buy Petro with Yuan again like Why do we even need OPEC? Why do we even need OPEC at all? We should be pumping our own oil and natural gas here in America. Well, listen, I think especially it's smart what you say about it doesn't make sense for the U.S. Navy to be subsidizing the security needs of every other nation's trade on Earth. And that's part of American hegemony, but I agree with you that that's a hell of a lot of cost for very little return that we get from that other than essentially that the threat that in the future we could shut off trade to our enemies and friends alike, you know, if it comes down to it and that kind of thing. But that's the kind of power of the United States of America shouldn't be wielding in the first place.

So I really think, and for that matter, I would agree with you too that they shouldn't even be. I think you're essentially implying to. The Navy shouldn't be providing security for Walmart to offshore all of their crap to China either. Walmart and American corporations, they should have to pay for their own damn security and not socialize their costs on to others. It could be right there that that margin alone

of them just having to hire some Merck's to keep the pirates off would be enough for them to go ahead and keep rubber made here instead of shipping it there. So anything like that where we're making it, the government is making it easier for corporations to offshore at the expense of good American jobs, something like that, then I'm definitely for stopping doing those things, subsidizing them to do that. Restricting them is another matter, but I'll leave it at that. But, you know, I think it's important that, you know, just from kind of the big picture expense here,

Joe, that you understand, you know, especially, and it looks, I haven't checked all polls but seems pretty likely you're going to be a congressman here that we haven't had a ron paul up there even rand in uh we haven't had ron there since 2012 and that's somebody who has a courage to sit there and say no all of this is wrong and of course the genius of ron paul's that he's a conservative texas republican and he says you don't have to believe in this stuff man come on everybody knows that the truth is this sound economics austrian school economics and non-interventionist foreign policy and making it all okay. Now, Ron was a flight surgeon in the Air Force in his day.

You're, as you say, 11 times deployed special operations officer here, been to the war, and then some, and back. Please do what you can to make the most of that in the best anti-war sense. that forget anything you thought about the anti-war movement had to come from the left, had to be associated with hippies or with Jane Fonda and Michael Moore and all of that old thinking stuff. It has to be led by guys like you,

the guys like damn at Night at Bring Our Troops Home, but it's very difficult for us regular folks out here to be able to really count on a guy like you to say, you know, on former CIA too you know I know they're saying you still work for the CIA come on I'm not challenging you on that but I'm just saying that um you know don't let us down man we need you to stand up to the military industrial complex in the kind of way that a guy pretty much only a guy with your background can and get away with it no absolutely I fully agree and I will not let

you guys down I mean I have my my strong convictions from experience so I'm I'm looking forward to going and fighting on behalf of the American people and not not continuing to double and triple down on the failures that we've been a part of for the last at least two three decades great and by the way the Iranians ain't making nuclear weapons and anytime you need a good briefing on that I'll explain it to you so you'll never have to feel pressure to fall for that propaganda all right sounds good okay great thank you for your time Joe I'm only hard on you because I think that you're in a really great position to do a lot of important stuff and I just trying to have whatever small amount of influence for the positive that I can hear.

I really appreciate it, Scott. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Good luck to you. Yep, take care. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.