Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/7/25 Kyle Anzalone on Ukraine, Nuclear Weapons, Gaza and the West Bank

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Scott brings Kyle Anzalone back on the show to discuss some of the biggest ongoing news stories related to American foreign policy. They start with Trump’s effort to end the war in Ukraine. They also discuss Trump’s recent comments about nuclear weapons and his Oval Office spat with Zelensky. They then move to Gaza where Anzalone says the ceasefire is holding by a thread. They finish by zooming out and looking at all Israel is up to in the region.  Discussed on the show: “Trump: Everybody Should Get Rid of Their Nuclear Weapons” (Libertarian Institute) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com, co-host of Conflicts of Interest and host of The Kyle Anzalone Show. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. 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: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys kyle an zalone of course is the news editor at the institute that's the libertarian institute where it's fun drive time right now so help keep me and him employed libertarian institute dot org slash donate we got matching funds and all that also he's a opinion editor at anti-war.com, and he hosts Conflicts of Interest and the Kyle Anzalone show to great podcasts for your eye and ear holes too. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing,

Kyle? Doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me back on. Very happy to have you here. So I want to start with the big story that I happen to tune in to Trump labelling with the reporters in the Oval Office yesterday. And I noticed that you picked up on this too was that Donald Trump says we got to get rid of nuclear weapons because they're really dangerous and I thought man I really like it when presidents say stuff like that

in fact he's the only president I ever heard say anything like that well I shouldn't say anything like that but it's the best kind of talk along those lines I've heard and he even seemed to have a real proposal that he was musing

what is the story there yeah so Trump you know has said a few using about I guess guess I should have said that was weird. He was musing it, musing about. Never mind. Sorry. Right. Well, this is, this has happened a few times since Trump has returned to the Oval office where he said something really, really positive. And it's just a matter of if we're going to get any follow through. So he actually, right after he took office, I think January 23rd,

was talking about conversations that he had had with Putin during his first term. And he said that he had discussed this with Putin during his first term and getting rid of nuclear weapons abolishing them and getting China in on the deal. And then a few weeks later, he said this thing about entering into a military pat, or not a military pat, some kind of pat with Russia and China where all three countries agreed to cut their military budgets in half. And certainly that would be fantastic. And now he has said this thing the third time where he says nuclear weapons are awful.

We need to get rid of them. they're too destructive. We don't even like to think about it. And yeah, this isn't something that you typically hear from presidents. Certainly it's something is going to be a tad for in the mainstream media. And that's why I think it's so important that people really encourage this line of thinking for Trump because he does say all kinds of different things. And two weeks from now, he could be talking about how we need to build a new nuclear capable bomber. But right now, if this is his idea, we need to tell him that that's a great idea and support it and continue to push forward through it. I will say,

the one downside is whenever he talks about these nuclear deals with Russia, he always includes China. And it gets more complicated because the Chinese arsenal is far smaller to the U.S. Trump says that it's going to be equivalent to the U.S. in four to five years. The Defense Intelligence Agency has said that in 2030, they estimate China will have about a thousand nuclear weapons, which will still be far fewer than the 1,500 that both Russia and China are Russia and the U.S. U.S. have deployed. And so I think including China could ultimately be why this doesn't get done, but it would be great if he entered into bilateral talks with Russia aimed at reducing the nuclear arsenal significantly. Yeah. You know, it's such a shame that as he was going

out of power, he was ready to let new start expire in order to, I guess, I don't know, that's playing real hardball to try to get the both of them to agree. And the Chinese had expressed no. interest in this and in fact disinterest in it right um but then if he means what he's saying then there is a reasonable basis there which would be you guys stop at 1,000 or promise not to go above 1,000 and us in russia will go down to 1,000 and if we can all agree about that let's revisit it in two years and see if we can keep everybody capped at 700 and then you know what I mean and then i guess there obviously there's questions over how many deployed versus how company in reserve. You know, America and Russia both have about 6,000 in reserve. So that's a

separate question or, you know, part, no, not necessarily separate, but, you know, part of the same equation, of course, that would have to be worked out. But, you know, as I like to mention this, he hasn't mentioned this lately, but I think it's worth bringing up all the time for some reason it seems relevant or, you know, interesting to me that, as he used to say, he had this brilliant uncle that taught at MIT was the most brilliant scientist who ever lived, you know, and really tall and rich and handsome too, and taught him all about nuclear weapons and apparently scared the crap out of him, right? Which is totally reasonable. That's the whole thing. If William Perry is terrified, then something's going on that maybe we need to analyze. He looked at just how big

H-bomb goes off and says, geez, we really don't want to ignite these over cities, you know? That would be bad. And most politicians, they just take this stuff for granted. They don't even think about it. You think a Bush or Obama or somebody, they don't have the creativity, Joe Biden, to even consider, you know, changing any of that. Other than should we put multiple warheads on this or that kind of rocket or not or whatever. How much more money should we give the manufacturers and the labs and, and whatever. So to have him even strike what, may I dare say, is this Reaganite pose against

nuclear weapons at all and, you know, publicly, you know, talk about in a very serious way, just getting rid of them all together, which he has said, just get rid of nuclear, you know, the way he says, everything is hyperbolic, but Ronald Reagan thought so too. And it wasn't ever a magic wish the idea then back in 86 at reikovic was first we would everybody would agree to get down to this number and then this number and then this number and go lower and lower and lower until you know hopefully spirits could be raised enough and confidence measures could be built up enough that people would finally be willing at the end of the chain to be willing to go ahead and give up the last of their nuclear weapons so it wasn't supposed to be some so it was Ronald Reagan we're talking about here it wasn't

going to be some utopian magic wish come true where all nukes in the world just go away it would be america and the soviet union this is before three years before the wall even fell down when nobody thought the soviet union was just well very few thought the soviet union was about to just cease to exist um reagan certainly didn't but he thought America and russia if they really in the USSR if we really agreed on that then we could obviously lean on all our friends and allies in the world that they better go along to and really get rid of nuke so it is within the realm of possibility and i think it's maybe at the very least that's the most important thing is he's talking that way brock obama said a couple of things like that but it was so clear he didn't

mean it from the very beginning you know so right and i think you know first of all having a president with a healthy fear of a nuclear war is very important. I mean, just a couple of years ago, Liz Truss was the prime minister of the U.K. And before, you know, she got that seat, she was bragging about how she was ready to use nuclear weapons. And I think that more or less is kind of the consensus among the liberal elite is that, you know, we're brave and tough and we're willing to launch a nuclear war to end the world. That's how brave and tough and pro-democracy we are. where when you listen to Donald Trump, and I think when you get some Trump's most candid statements where he's clearly speaking off the cuff, like in his exchange with Zelensky in the Oval Office, what he says, you're gambling with World War III. And you could tell that Trump is very upset that the Ukrainians are risking nuclear war here.

And so, you know, even if he doesn't get a deal done to eliminate nuclear weapons, even just getting a moratorium on the updating and expanding of nuclear. arsenals among Russia, the U.S. and China will be a huge step in the right direction at this point. I mean, the U.S. is going to invest at least $1.5 trillion over the next few years in upgrading our nuclear arsenal, our ICBMs, our nuclear bombers, and all other kinds of upgrades to our nuclear weapons. And this isn't money that we have to spend. And I'm sure Russia and China would also be willing to freeze or maybe even start to roll back their nuclear programs. But certainly him being afraid of nuclear weapons means that one of the things he's going to prioritize is ending the war in Ukraine. And I'm not sure he's going to be able to do it,

but it certainly seems to be something that he is serious about trying to do. All right. Well, good. So let's talk about that. Now, seems to me what happened in the Oval Office over there, all theatrics aside, was that Zelensky was saying, I'll sign your mineral thing, but I don't want you to make peace with Russia. I don't want you. I don't want a ceasefire because my position is you can't trust a ceasefire on their side anyway. They'll break it anyway. So, you know, free all Ukrainian soil or die, right? And then Trump is saying, well, I don't agree to that.

And I want to make a peace deal with Russia. But Trump's actually, in a way, you know, speaking of cards, he's thrown away his cards with Ukraine by denouncing Kiev right off the bat, denounce. announcing Zelensky as a dictator and an illegitimate authority and all of these things and essentially already implying early that he's going to cut off all military aid and assistance and whatever soon and financial and whatever that so Zelensky did have a card to play which is I don't have to stop fighting if you make a deal with Russia I can keep fighting so you can't make peace without me which puts him in a little bit different position than say for example Ashraf Ghan who was the last president of Kabul, who needed American support and couldn't survive one week without it, you know, as we saw there. Kiev could do better than that. So that's a card he has to play there. I'm not sure.

And obviously, the big variable is how much support he can really get from the Europeans beyond posturing and how committed Trump really is to leaving him high and dry, too. And so what do you think about all those things and whatever else is on your mind on that? subject, sir? Well, you know, certainly to use the analogy, Scott, that's a card Zelensky thinks he has to play. I'm not sure that it's a winning card. As far as military equipment goes, I read this week, I think in the New York Times, that Ukraine does have enough military equipment either right now or at NATO bases in like Poland and Romania to continue fighting for six months. And the Europeans are discussing a, I think, an $840 billion boost to military spending over the next four. years. Now, only a portion of that will be for Ukraine, but they're also getting a little bit more

interested in tapping into those 200 billion in frozen Russian assets that are held by European Union nations and then using that to buy military equipment for Ukraine as well. So I think there's a real possibility on the military equipment end that they could have weapons for months and months to come. And this was a part of the plan of the Biden administration. This is what they are calling Trump-proofing the war in Ukraine by giving Zelensky enough weapons that if Trump shut them off, it's not that Zelensky immediately has to stop fighting. Now, there's a lot of other assistance that the U.S. has been giving to Ukraine that if that shut off, it seems that Ukraine is in much more trouble. And that's particularly the intelligence support. Dave DeKamp has written

a couple articles about this this week at anti-war.com. Explain how the British storm shadows and the American high Mars are now essentially useless to the Ukrainians because they don't have the American satellite intelligence that they need to pick out the targets accurately enough and quickly enough in order to conduct these attacks. And apparently it's going to cut down on Ukraine's ability to carry out attacks in Russia, although they carried out a pretty major attack on Russian oil refineries and pipelines on Tuesday night, which is right around the time the intelligence was being cut off. So I guess it remains to be seen there.

So I think that is significant pressure. I'm not sure how Juan Zelensky is going to be able to go without American assistance. And, of course, there could be a lot of other CIA type of assistance going on in Ukraine that we don't know about that's really, really important to Kiev. And so who knows how Lon Zelensky can last without American support. But ultimately, the Europeans don't seem willing to sink as much. money into the military as the Americans are and so eventually the the weapons are going to run out and there is some kind of timeline although it's going to be months and months and months maybe into the fall or late this year that Ukraine is going to be able to keep fighting without

the American military aid coming in the intelligence supports a different question though yeah well it seems like essentially what he was trying to do was get the Europeans to say well we'll help you if Donald Trump is going to abandon you, then let us posture, which they all did at least posture. And then the question is, how much can he really get out of them? And there's been some pretty belligerent statements, but I don't take them very seriously. I don't think the Europeans are going to Ukraine to fight the Russians. So, well, and the European leaders are always really careful to, they'll, you know, they stand there next to Zelensky and they say, we're willing to put our soldiers in Ukraine and then the Brits will say if there's a peace deal

and the Americans are providing support or the French will say once the war is over. And so it's not quite the commitment. It always sounds like they're making. Right. So, but where does that leave Trump? Because, you know, I understand that the Ukrainians are going to be in a much worse position without American help but it's a big country I don't know I don't think it's the same as uh I guess we'll see I don't think the Kiev regime is is nearly as brittle as the one in

Kabul um just waiting for you know the east uh the population of the east with Russian backing to just walk right in and take over the whole place kind of thing um so the analogy you know clearly breaks down there so he has a card to play that gani never did have as far as but i don't know what he can really do with it try to get the best deal from trump that he can but i don't know i kind of got the idea that he's just in denial that somehow he's just like things that well we'll just keep fighting even though clearly that's a dead end road you know yeah well and there are other political factions in Ukraine that the U.S. could prop up against Zelensky. I saw an article in Politico this week. I think they were talking to officials from Petro Poroshenko's party. And, you know, Poroshenko

was somebody who was clearly acceptable to the United States before. So I won't be surprised if, you know, they just move back over to Poroshenko and get rid of Zelensky that way. But, you know, the U.S. has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine. And a lot of that, tens of billions at least, has been in financial support. And so if that gets shut off, all these bribes that are likely, you know, being doled out from Zelensky to different people through his connection in Washington, if that dries up, his administration could actually be a lot more brittle than we think. Now, one thing you asked me your original question, Scott, that I think is important,

is to realize that Trump, I think, made a pretty major blunder by not taking the same kind of approach with Zelensky that he took with Putin. right? He's not calling Putin a dictator. He's not personally insulting Russia. He's not being belligerent in his threats with Russia, although we could talk about a little bit more about that soon. But with Zelensky, he is. And, you know, I think he doesn't need to make an unnecessary enemy in Kiev. Having Zelensky, you know, thinking that he's Trump's buddy and that he's, you know, sucking up to Trump and that Trump is liking him is probably going to get Zelensky to do what Trump wants more than this current strategy where he's running to the Europeans and they're all kind of uniting in this policy of

army, Ukraine against Trump. I think it's going to make it far harder for Trump to get his ultimate deal done here. Yeah. Well, I guess we'll see how it goes because, you know, ultimately, well, oh, I meant to ask you this, is it really right that he's cut off all the military aid? I know you said that there's so much in the pipeline already, but yeah, I think one of the reports was that even weapons that were on their way. way in transit were in transit were reported to have been turned around. Yeah, so I had some questions about that report because I think Biden had set it up that once the weapons arrived in Europe, they were then officially under NATO command.

And again, this was part of the Trump proofing effort. So I'm not sure how all that works out bureaucratically in NATO. My guess is some of the weapons are probably going to like kind of be in NATO storage facilities and still doled out to Ukraine, where others the U.S. might pull back if they're on like an American base in Germany or something like that. But if they're on a Polish base in Poland where NATO's in command, I'm not sure who gets to decide, you know, if those weapons are sent bad to the U.S. are sent to Ukraine. All right.

And then what's the latest word from the talks in Saudi? And do you have much of an idea about what Trump's guys are proposing to the Russians now? Yeah, so there's been two round of talk so far, the first in Saudi Arabia, and those seem to be fairly productive. Both sides have positive statements at the end, and I think the big step in the right direction was the agreement to restore diplomatic, you know, facilities in each other's capitals. And this really started during the Trump administration where he had spelled, I think, like 50 Russian ambassadors or 50 Russian officials, embassies in the U.S. in one move, but it really continued and strengthened under the Biden administration where they were seizing and shutting down Russian consulates throughout the U.S., preventing the embassies from being able to pay staff members, like through sanctions and things like that.

And the same was the case for the U.S. diplomat facilities in Russia as well. And so now they're going to start to, I think, lift these blots and allow more officials in each other's embassy isn't this is going to allow for more direct diplomatic contact. So that's a huge step in the right direction. There were a second round of tots in Istanbul. And then afterwards, I believe it was Steve Wickhoff, who was, you know, who's nominally Trump's Middle East envoy, but seems to be very involved in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine now. He was the American who went to Russia to get Mark Fogel out of a Russian jail where he was arrested there on pot. He was the one that was at the State of the Union that Trump just gave.

And Wickev said that the current negotiations about ending the war in Ukraine are along the Istanbul framework from 2022, which was, of course, the deal where Russia was going to withdraw from the Dombas, withdrawal from all the territory that they had taken after the invasion in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality, limits on their military, and a few other concessions. And so Russia had made major concessions. and that agreement in that framework. And so it's positive, I think, that they're talking about using that framework again. Yeah, well.

And then so what's the word on the latest politics out of Kiev and what people are saying about the changes here? Well, I mean, I guess the narrative out Kiev is pretty tightly controlled. Zelenskyy apparently sent Trump a letter this week that if you were trying to get back on Trump's good side. I think is exactly what you would want to write. You know, we're ready to sign the mineral deal at Trump's convenience. What happened in the White House was regrettable. These kind of statements, I think Kiev is trying to get a little bit back in Trump's good graces. Then, interestingly, Scott, just before we recorded, Trump put out a new post on his true social

account, and he had threatened big tariffs, large-scale tariffs and sanctions and banking sanctions on Russia if they continue to carry out large-scale attacks on Ukraine, as they did the night before, 250 drones and missiles hit Ukrainian, different Ukrainian targets. That's how many Russia launched. I think Ukraine said about 35 got through, but it apparently did some damage to Ukraine's energy and natural gas infrastructure. And so Trump is now threatening sanctions and telling Russia they have to get to the table. Yeah.

Scott Horton Coffee. It's a thing. It's really great stuff, too. The Scott Horton Show's Supreme Breakfast Blend from Moondose Artisan Coffees at Moondoseartisan coffees.com. I drink a lot of coffee, and I drink a lot of Folgers and things over the years, but I'm never going back now. Moon Doe's is so good. And they have great wholesale deals for all you restaurateurs and Quickey Mart managers out there as well. They're now doing online commercial sales to coffee houses, coffee trailers, restaurants, and bakeries.

So help support this show. Drink anti-war coffee. Click the link in the margin at Scott Horton.org or just go to Scotthorton.org slash coffee. Seriously, buy some. And thanks. Hey, guys. I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety.

I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com. by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scott horton dot org so keep that in mind and don't worry about the mess your wife will clean it up well folks sad to say they lied us into war all of them world war one world war two korea vietnam iraq war one syria afghanistan iraq war two libya syria yemen all of them but now you can get the e-book all the war lies by me for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Well, um, you know, back to the nuke thing, uh, I was just spacing out and

thinking about what Trump was saying about, um, I was because I wasn't spacing. I was paying close attention was what you said about the shooting missiles down um and what trump had said about that he wants to build some sort of iron dome type system for america where the iron dome is for shooting down bottle rockets coming over the prison wall uh it's not for well and i guess they did take out uh incoming Iranian ballistic missiles but they were mid-range missiles i don't think coming in from outer space at mock 18 kind of thing like uh h bomb would um so I don't know exactly what he has in mind for building this system in the United States, but I guess I wondered if there was much more news about that

and also whether there was any news of reaction from the Russians about that because it does potentially tip the balance of mutually assured destruction. Now see if Trump was willing to get rid of all the nukes and just build a great defensive shield, now that would be one thing. But attempting or doing anything that really looks like an attempt to tilt the balance toward a first strike capability and an actual sound defense against retaliation could be escalatory and dangerous and counterproductive to say the least. Yeah, I don't think I've heard Trump make another statement in support of, you know,

forming this missile defense system. And I don't believe I read a Russian response. Of course, it does risk igniting another arms race. But who knows what Trump is talking about? out here. I think there, you know, the missiles that you have to launch to hit the other missiles are just so expensive that for the U.S., like trying to shoot down the Houthi missiles coming out of Yemen has been just a huge cost drain. It's really expensive. And of course, the ships had to constantly go bad to dock, to restock the missile supplies. And so I don't know how serious this proposal is to develop this missile shield that Trump is proposing. Yeah. All right. Well, anyway. All right. So I'm about to talk about Syria with William Van Wagonin himself. So I'll spare you that, my friend, bud, go ahead and tell me all the worst from Gaza and the West Bank and whatever order you find appropriate here, please.

Yeah. So in Gaza, we're now a week past where the ceasefire and hostage deal phase one was supposed to end. That was March. first. And the ceasefire is still holding by a thread. What was supposed to happen in the original agreement is about half of the living Israeli hostages were going to be released during phase one. And this was mostly the hostages that were women or who were in ill health in some way. And so those were released over the course of Sitsweeds as agreed to. And Israel was releasing Palestinians. Now, at the same, time, Israel is supposed to be allowing additional aid into Gaza, including tents and mobile homes, because it's winter in Gaza, the conditions they are really rough. In one week,

since Palestinian infants froze to death. This is because a lot of these people are living in tents, and they have been living in tents for well over a year, intense in a war zone for well over a year. So, you know, they're tattered, water, cold air gets in, and so they need new tents. And Israel isn't allowing the new tents or the mobile homes in, which would allow people to live in some kind of shelter, so at least they don't have to worry about their babies freezing to death in the middle of the night. I mean, it's so horrific what's going on. And then after the end of the ceasefire deal last week, Israel stopped allowing food and

other aid into Gaza. And what they're saying is rather than moving on to phase two of the deal, which is supposed to see a permanent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. in the beginning of rebuilding of Gaza, that Israel and the United States is backing this, they just want to extend phase one and have Hamas release all the living Israeli hostages and two groups, I think like two weeks apart, and Israel will allow in a little bit more aid and allow some Palestinians to be released, but that's it. And so, of course, Hamas isn't going to give up their remaining hostages.

And at the same time, Trump is tweeting out our posting on true social. that they have to give up all the hostages immediately or else, you know, all hell is going to write down upon the people at Gaza and everyone's going to die. And then so I saw a thing, I guess it was in the Wall Street Journal this morning that said that this was part of a response to Whitkoff's discussions with, was it Whitkoff? I think it was, with his discussions with Hamas in Qatar. And that, you know, just like his threats, when he was. still president-elect, that this was part of the negotiation.

Yeah, that was the case. I think the Israelis called the reworking and extending of phase one, the Whitkoff framework for negotiations. And yeah, this is, you know, Trump and Whitkoff going back on the deal that they had really helped to push over the line right before Biden left office. And walking back on it, I think, is going to leave. lead to a resumption of fighting. The Israeli general now in charge of the IDF, the chief of staff there, is talking about just going back in, retaking all the territory, and I'm guessing that means

a massive bombing campaign. They're going to push the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that had returned to their homes in northern Gaza, a bat to the south, displacing them once again. I wonder what's going to happen there. Had they demobilized it, all the IDF, the reserves, and what have you since the pseudo ceasefire here? Well, there was a report in Heretz that said that those plans that were laid out by the new IDF chief of staff are overly ambitious and they will not be able to get enough reservists to come back in order to re-invade Gaza with the divisions that they need because Israel is also occupying southern Lebanon and now a large chunk of southern Syria and they're carrying out major military operations in the West Bank. crazy well i don't know yeah i'm not feeling the whole

just restarting the entire campaign although maybe they will you know i don't know what it seems like at this point i don't know i don't know what it seems like seems like it be just easier for everybody to trade their damn hostages and despite whatever new

restrictions and conditions and just somehow figure out a new compromise and proceed rather than going all the way back to hell here. But then again, it's still ongoing in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, where I guess I had missed the news that Hamas took over the West Bank, necessitating an Israeli invasion there. What's going on there? Well, that's the Israeli claim,

is that they're rooting out armed Palestinian groups in some areas of the West Bank. But I think the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, made pretty clear what they're doing, which is they're gauzifying the West Bank. You know, they've went to Janine and Tolkrum and a few other refugee camps in the northern half of the West Bank, and they're ripping up the roads, they're destroying the homes, they're harassing the hospitals. Time after time, time, Scott, you hear these stories about how the Israeli troops will shoot a Palestinian, including, one, these stories of pregnant women, and the EMTs will arrive

to, you know, take them to the hospital. and the Israelis won't let the EMTs get to the body. Sometimes they'll claim that, oh, their paperwork is improper, but most of the time they'll just sit there and point their guns at the EMTs and not let them go through. And they actually had a pregnant woman over two hours bleed out. She was pregnant enough they could have saved the baby, but the baby died as well.

And just horror after horror like this is stories across the West Bank. They now have a rule the Israelis could fire on any Palestinians. that are what they describe as messing with the ground. That's the actual quote. And apparently this means little seven-year-old boys out, you know, with their little plastic shovel and pail in the backyard, being gunned down by Israeli snipers. There was a little Palestinian girl, I think, three years old,

killed at her family dinner table in the West Bank. And so, I mean, Scott, I think this is pretty clear that this is a policy of trying to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. One of the things that Daryl Cooper does such a good job of going through in his great Israel-Palestine series is how when you could have genocides rarely does it look like what the Nazis did during the Holocaust, you know, just marching people into gas chambers. You just commit atrocity after atrocity, things that make every other Palestinian family say, you know, I can't risk my little girl, my little boy being gunned down by an Israeli sniper who will never face justice and they'll just pick up in. leave where, you know, and that's how they'll take the territory. And I think that's what we're seeing in the West Bank now. Yeah, and I saw where 40,000 people had been expelled from, I thought it said Janine Camp, but then I read another report that said the same thing about a different

camp. So I'm not sure if it was a mistake or two different places where they had expelled that many people into the tens of thousands of people. And we're already saying, you'll never be allowed to come back and moving the wall and this kind of thing. I thought maybe I had read it was the Tolkrum refugee camp, which is right next to Janine. I see. It's like the refugee camp attached to the city. I think that's how it worked in. The Israeli defense minister said that they're not going to be able to return for over a year,

which means the Israelis are going to loot their homes. They're going to vandalize them if they don't just outright burn them down or blow them up. You're move into them. Right. Yeah. Um, all right. Well, so now on Trump's big stupid plan for America to take over the thing, when he first announced it, I says, well, I mean, you can't. There's Palestinians in the way. And I think they've proven that they're very hard to remove. Um, and that the IDF is not up to it. And one can just imagine we have semi recent experience with what it's like to put the army and the Marines. in urban combat in the Arab country. These guys have rifles.

That's all they need is rifles and RPGs and the like, IEDs. Obviously, our army could succeed in cleansing the Gaza Strip the same way they did Baghdad of Shiites, you know, back 20 years ago. But at great cost. And everybody knows that. Now, I didn't know whether Donald Trump knows that or not, I thought, well, somebody's going to explain that to him. You know, like, you can't just, there's not a big magic broom.

We can just shoe them away, right? They're going to be there and fight. So then I thought, well, you know, possibly he knows what he's doing. And he's just trying to get Egypt, obviously, the adjacent Arab country to the Gaza Strip there and former controller of it between 48 and 67 there. And that he was just trying to essentially bully. them and with the help of the Arab states and their oil money to take control and rebuild the thing. And then I saw him talk about it and I thought, nah, geez, he really means it this

crazy stuff he's saying. He doesn't really seem to be suggesting or, you know, maybe Egypt could do it or anything like that, you know? But then the result came true just like I fish my wish anyway sort of thing because it looks like that's the agreement, right, from the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Qatari's is that the Egyptians are going to take over the strip and the Gulf states are going to pay to rebuild it. Only I don't know how finalize that is or who all is in agreement about that or who all needs to be and whether the Trump administration is really going to rubber stamp that and whether they possibly did mean for that to happen in the first place. It's kind of the obvious thing to do. read a great summary of their conference that said that they had agreed that the Egyptians, that is, that they would create a new governing authority for Gaza that would not be based on Fatah or Hamas, although they would not require Hamas to disarm, but I guess they

would politely ask them to stand out of the way for now or something, a kind of temporary fix there while they would try to do this. But overall, I plead ignorance on the subject. I wonder if you know much more about it. Yeah, I mean, I guess the big factor here, Scott, is Will Tel Aviv except that. I think the clear answer is no, that they're, I mean, right now they're not even allowing tents into Gaza. And so they're going to allow, you know, massive construction equipment, all the steel needed to rebuild homes for two million people. I mean, that just seems absolutely crazy to me that Israel is in a position right now where they're going to allow it.

And I think Trump is serious about spelling all the Palestinians from Gaza. And, you know, I think this is a serious plan in Tel Aviv in Washington. And I think it started during the Biden administration. We would hear, you know, Sullivan, Amos Hochstein, and Israeli officials consistently say that there is a historic opportunity right now in the Middle East to remake the area. And I think at least with the Israelis like Netanyahu, Ben-Gabir, Betzel Smaltrich, The new foreign minister, Gideon Tsar, the defense minister, Israel, cats. I think all these people are very serious about spelling all the Palestinians.

Now, once they get into that, is it going to come at too high of a cost? Will the Palestinians be able to resist sufficiently to prevent it? I don't know. Israel has a lot of 2,000-pound bombs right now. And if they start dropping those on Gaza at this point, how long can the population hold out there before they just leave, before every last one of them is blown up. And I think if you look at what the Israeli people are saying right now,

they're all on board with it. About a month ago, when Trump first said that about spelling all the Palestinians from Gaza, a poll came out from Israel. And it said, I think over 90% of the Israelis either supported Trump's plan or thought it was a good idea, but it just wasn't practical. Only 3% of Israelis opposed it. out of it being immoral. And so there's widespread support for this,

not just among the Israeli leadership, but the people. It's just the question of how, I guess, practical it is and if they could actually pull it off. But again, Trump has approved $12 billion in sales to Israel. This is military demolitions equipment like D9 bulldozers, and tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, 1,000-pound bombs, J-DAM kits. I mean, this is meant to level,

large swats of area yeah i mean they certainly can't kill tens of thousands or potentially even hundreds of thousands of people with that i don't think they can do if it be nice if i could speak english i could host a show but i don't think they can defeat an insurgency with their power and i don't think that they have the balls to send their guys in they already withdrew them just like ramsie baroud said right after the war broke out he said israel's already lost And how does he know? Because we saw him try this in 2014. They sent in guys on foot. They withdrew because they were getting shot and blown up. And they're not willing to take that level of casualties that it would take to cleanse the Gaza Strip.

And I can't imagine anything less than B-52s just pouring bombs out of their bellies like Nixon over North Vietnam. People have seen that footage, just absolute carpet bombing. And I don't think even Trump has the stomach for that really. to see them go that far i mean hell i don't know dude god after what joe biden just did and what americans are willing to tolerate i guess maybe there's no ceiling on it but um but it would be hugely controversial i don't know i don't know man um and i i just think it would take sending in the marines and telling them do your worst on foot here to really make it you know to complete it and you'd have to get the Egyptians to be willing to open the border and let everybody

come pouring out which they have a huge disincentive to do letting you know the israeli I mean pardon me letting the Arab Muslims and Christians lose that territory forever is not in Egypt's long-term interests or dealing with their neighbors or their own population so I don't know it's a very tough position i think somebody sold trump a bill of goods here right at some point somebody said listen you know like underpants gnomes we got question marks at the spot about how are we supposed to do this how are we going to remove the palestinians because they'll fight clearly you know from under slabs of concrete they will shoot you with an r pg yeah i i i mean that that's all true, Scott. I just, I think that the political climate right now in Washington and

Tel Aviv is that they have this historic opportunity. I mean, you'll talk about Syria Nets, but just look at the Middle East. It's, you know, 20 something years ago would have been unthinkable that there was not a single group in the Middle East with real standing to stand up to Israel, maybe just the Iranians at this point. But with Trump in office, I mean, what is Tehran willing to trade to stick up for the Palestinians at this point. I, you know, they could lose cities to Israel and the United States if they go to war for the Palestinians. And if they're not willing to pay that cost, then it's essentially just the Houthis in Yemen right now.

And, you know, for Israel, they could, I think, thwart and swat down most of the missiles that the Houthis and drones that the Houthis will fire. Yeah, that's true. And, yeah, and, you know, for people who didn't see it, Trump literally did in his post on truth social and on his Twitter account, he literally did threaten, quote, the people of Gaza, as distinguished from Hamas, who he also talked about in the same paragraph. And he was, it was an explicit threat of mass murder of the entire population, if quote, unquote, they don't give up the hostages. And, of course, they have no control over. Which is pretty crazy stuff to be coming out of the mouth of a president, any president.

George W. Bush sure killed a lot of people, but he didn't talk that way, usually. I don't know, man. It's, yeah, certainly is worrisome times. And then, so I guess we'll leave it at that because my next guess we're going to talk about this, at least to start here in the Wall Street Journal. These Israelis are really worried because somehow Al-Qaeda has taken over in Syria and they don't know what to do. So that'll be the fun start of an interview with William Van Wagonin

and who, of course, wrote a book for us at the Institute and is just back from Syria himself. So we'll see what's up with that. But I'll let you go about the rest of your work this afternoon. Thank you so much for your time, Kyle. I appreciate you, man. Thank you, Scott. All right you guys, check out Kyle Anzalone on YouTube and on Twitter and on all the various social media things where he has these great shows, conflicts of interest and the Kyle Anzalone show.

And he's just Kyle Anzalone underscore over there on X. And of course he's the news editor at antiwar.com. No, at the Institute, an opinion editor at antiwar.com. So check that out and support the Institute, especially you, We're extremely wealthy folks out there who can afford to help run an institute. We got matching funds right now. So check us out at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. But all those fives and tens and twenties really help too.

And we're so appreciative of all that you guys do to support our efforts too. So thanks a lot. And see you on the next interview in one moment. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM. in LA APSradio.com antiwar.com Scotthorton.org

and libertarian institute.org