Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/18/25 Daniel Davis on the Tragic and Unnecessary State of the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Scott brings Daniel Davis back on the show for an update on where things stand in Ukraine right now. Discussed on the show: Daniel Davis Deep Dive “THE END FOR ZELENSKY?” (Seymour Hersh) Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; 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, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archive. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show all right you guys on the line i've got danny davis from the danny davis deep dive and um of course he also wrote the book the 11th hour in 2020 america which is really great about how america

screwed also he fought in iraq war one and rock war two and was the heroic whistleblower of the Afghan war in 2012. Go back and check the record. But right now, he provides just about the best war analysis. You can find anywhere on the YouTube's or the podcast catchers with the deep dive. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing? Hey, I'm doing all right.

By the way, the channel is actually Daniel Davis Deep Dive. If anybody wants to search it, instead of Danny, that's just what I am to you. But to the channel, it's Daniel Davis Deep Dive. I knew that. I just screwed it up. it works hey man how are you doing other than I'm doing good man how are you doing my you know carelessness here I don't know yeah I'm fine hey so listen you know so much about the war in Ukraine and that's what I want to ask you about well I can't decide what to ask you first I guess I'll ask you about the war first the war itself who's who on the ground how much territory is being taken and how quickly are the opposing armies being ground up? And what difference does it make compared to, say, a year ago?

Well, in terms of the war, there's actually a piece out in the economists right now which quantifies how the Russian rate of advance in the current environment right now is the greatest at any time in the last two years. So they are moving forward faster than they have in taken territory and destroying Ukrainian in service members and in, of course, in the air as well. The article didn't talk about that, but you can add that overlay it on top of. And some great channels like Alex had history legends have been quantifying recently. He's got a video out actually on Friday that shows graphically how much territory has been taken

in the key fight of the whole eastern front. And that is in the Percrosk in Constantinivka area, kind of in the middle of the eastern front. and Russia is making more and more progress there. And the combination of what Russia is doing in the air around throughout the entire country, not just in Kiev, but all the way out to the western border at Lviv, and everywhere in between into the port city of Odessa. It continues to just compound the problems at the front by limiting how much ammunition can get there, how hard it is to move reserves around.

Meanwhile, they continue at least having static pressure all along. down in the Zaporizia in the south, the Kupiyansk up in the northern part, and then a new incursion in the Kharkiv area and continued pressure in the Sumi area, though, that has slowed down a lot. The level of fire, though, going in from drones and artillery has remained consistent, which keeps the Ukraine forces pinned down so that they can't redeploy them elsewhere. And, of course, Russia has no shortage of manpower or ammunition so that they can keep all of these up. The Ukraine side doesn't have enough of any of those categories. And so to your bigger questioning what does all this mean it just means that the grinding down is accelerating accelerating

not continuing but uh and it's it's anybody's guess how long it can go before there's a break but i think that we are getting closer to that point because desertions are reportedly also increasing the density of ukraine troops that they have in any uh any of the key areas of the front is is diminishing so that that makes the rush's advance go faster and it's just a matter of math before somewhere there becomes a breaking point and the Ukraine side just can't stop them and then Russia has a breakthrough somewhere

we don't know when that's going to come but it's inevitable and now well I guess there are no good estimates from open source intelligence about just how big of an army Ukraine still has how many men in reserve or

there any kind of projection about how long they'll be able to keep this up publicly they It's around 800,000. I've heard from some sources that have advised me that have a pretty good track record. They say that the actual number is probably closer to 400,000, possibly even a little bit less, so maybe half of that. And that is reasonable given that the Ukraine leadership themselves admitted earlier this year, and I think it was March or April, that they do not have enough forced mobilization to offset losses each month. So we know that they are shrinking by the month.

So the idea that there's still at 800,000 seems pretty implausible to me, but the exact number is to anybody's guess. Only the command probably in Kiev knows the real number. All right. Now, if I was a Democrat, I would say, yeah, but this is all the bad news, is all because Donald Trump got elected and has refused to give Ukraine all the weapons that they need. Is that correct? That's what they would say. but if I was a nonpartisan person, which I am, I would say it was the Biden administration that laid the foundation for this destruction because of their hideous and heinous policy of endorsing and supporting a war that Ukraine never had a chance to win and basically given the Russians no alternative but to continue to escalate and elevate their involvement in this war. And now that we have turned Russia into a regional issue that it was before of moderate capacity.

now that it is much, much bigger, 50% bigger than it was when it attacked. And that's on top of the whatever the number of losses that Russia has had. Some, I think the most plausible ones are about 150 killed and 450,000 wounded. A lot of, there's people are suggesting it's others. But no matter what the numbers are, Russia is now 50% bigger than they were at the beginning of the war, which tells you how many they've actually added on top of that. And their combat capacity is substantially better than it was, far better than anybody in the West,

and that definitely includes the United States on a conventional level. Their industry is just cranking at a high speed, way above, and this is according to even Mark Routche, just days ago, he admitted that Russia produces more artillery shells in three months. Actually, I think the way he said it was three times more in three months than the West does in a year. So thanks Joe Biden for that, for providing that opportunity there. Instead of taking any of the diplomatic off-ramps that were available,

they refuse them all continued to support the war still now than probably many hundreds of thousands of ukraine men are dead far more cities have been turned to rubble more territory lost in russia stronger nice job yeah okay but now is it the case that america has delayed shipments of weapons or they already had the same stuff coming through the pipeline that was appropriated under biden in other words has there been any real change in the amount of material support since Trump was sworn in. He's now announced that he's going to continue it. So I wonder there's even really been a break at all. I think three separate pauses. Some were shorted just a couple of days. One I think might not even been a full 24 hours, but it had no practical impact at all. Everything that the Biden administration had passed and the

last one they passed was that $61 billion in May of 2024. And it was programmed to go. I think there was still seven or eight billion left to continue on down the pipeline once they left office and that has just continued on now then the by trump administration is just saying yeah we're going to add apparently 10 billion on top of that 10 billion worth of equipment which they brag about that nato is it going to pay for but that's really the secondary issue the primary issue is our own stocks which are dangerously low and many officials have been saying so publicly that's really the the bigger consequence to all this for the united states because all this stuff that Biden gave it now that Trump continues to accelerate now that we're getting to the end of

the Biden authorizations, it continues to disperse and deteriorate our own national defense capacity, especially when you overlay that on top of what we've done in the Middle East and the Red Sea with Israel specifically against Iran in 2024, those two rounds where we intercepted a lot of their missiles. And then, of course, the so-called 12-day war, which we were heavily involved with shooting down missiles and stuff. And so you're, you're killing our depleted stocks of interceptor missiles, which by all accounts are in the premium right now. And so Bob Trump continued to do this. He continues to weaken because our national security, because we cannot come even close to manufacturing enough to offset the losses. Now, and then part of that, too,

is just we're shooting down drones and very cheap missiles with extremely expensive ones, right? Trying to shoot down glide bombs with Patriots and this kind of thing where the whole point was. Yeah, there's, it's not just Patriots, but there's also the, see, I think they call them the, well, not the, yeah, some of the jasms and some of the other SM3s that we've been, those are air-to-air missiles. So a lot of those things that we have that can shoot down stuff, they're very expensive, but the bigger issue isn't even the money, say it's the stockpile that we have and our low production quality per year, how many we can make to offset the expenditures. And so every time you keep firing these things at a faster rate than you can produce them, then than naturally, you're going to be weaker because you're not going to have as many if you need them. And that's really the biggest issue. Yeah. Well,

although, you know, it seems like the game was getting given away here a bit when Trump says, So we're going to give them the weapons, but we're going to make the Europeans buy them from us. And then the Europeans said, no, we're not. Nobody checked that with us. You know what we're going to do is we're going to buy them from our own countries and from each other's countries instead of from the United States. And then we're going to ship those weapons. And we already have some Italian anti-aircraft missiles or defensive missiles that we're going to send in this kind of thing where that's really what they're squabbling about is who's crooked, connected companies? and he gets the paycheck rather than, oh, what the poor Ukrainians need to defend their freedom

in the closest amount of time at the cheapest rate, you know? And, you know, on that subject, I actually had William Hartung on my show yesterday, who's just published a piece called Prophets of War, I think, and we were talking about that, and he told me something to know that part of which I knew, part of which I didn't, and the part I didn't was pretty big. He said that the United States, States had contracts of, I think, $18 billion to either provide or backfill Israel in its war since the 23rd or October 2023, and then $65 billion for Ukraine through 2025. But then he said that direct purchases from other countries was at $170 billion.

So the military industrial complex is just making money handover. fist from both foreign and domestic situations. And that's why, of course, they were all about, yeah, having NATO bomb. And they may complain about some of that stuff. But still, and this is actually a feature of the system, which I was told over a year ago by a knowledgeable person within Europe, was that the system had been such that Europe can only manufacture a relatively small percentage. I want to say 30 percent. You can't hold me to that. But it's relatively small. And everything else has to come from the U.S. because there's just not the capacity for anybody else to do it. So they can try some of that stuff, but they don't have,

if Europe had the industrial capacity, they wouldn't even be worrying about us. They'd be doing it straight to give it to Ukraine. But ultimately, it's the defense industrial base that is the big time winner. And you can certainly imagine that they're all for extending this war. I love the way they renamed the military industrial complex, the defense industrial base. And where the former is some either one ridiculous conspiracy. theory or two like an icky negative connotation where defense industrial bases in fact that's why we're here that's why we created a country so that the people can finance the defense industrial base it's wonderful yeah because it's keeping us safe man we're keeping those boogeymen out and

that's why you can sleep safe so don't look at what we're buying just know that we're keeping you safe just don't ask too many questions and and most people go okay you know what we'll do is that's how it works We'll just rename the USA, the D-I-B, because that's the name of the whole goddamn game, I guess. You know what I'm curious about, too, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, is the state of Ukrainian politics. And every once in a while I get a Google alert informing me that Andrew Belletsky is not dead yet. And that, in fact, the third separate infantry division has now been renamed the third Army, core and this guy beletsky has been leading his guys i think mostly in harkeve and whatever in the north of the country for many months now and you know this is the guy who originally

organized and put together the azab battalion out of the nazis who had overthrown the government in february of 2014 and helped to launch the war uh in march and april of 2014 has been leading I don't know about from the front, but leading near the front, at least, all these years for 11 years now. And if he's not killed, he's going to be the dictator someday, him or I don't know what happened to Dimitri Yorash. Somebody finally blew him up or what, but there are some pretty dangerous guys there that are at least waiting in the wings. And, of course, Zelensky canceled all elections. You know, they say he had to because he declared martial law. And as long as he doesn't undeclure martial law, then he has no choice but to not stand for election anymore.

But I just wonder what the hell else is going on in Kiev? Maybe, you know, people in the far west of the country who aren't in it want the war to keep going on. But what about the rest of the society? They must know that they're doomed and that all they're doing is putting off the inevitable at a greater and greater cost all the time. you know i i i struggle with that uh trying to to figure that out i i've one of the things i like to do on my channel is to have voices on all different sides of an issue so we have a good comprehensive understand not just from the u.s side or the ukraine side or the uh russian side western side or american side i i like to have all the voices all they're heard and then people

can make a uh an intelligent informed decision about what they think about this war. And one of the things that I've discovered just of late with some pro-Ukrainian voices, they have admitted to me straight up that they see the math. They understand the battlefield fundamentals and they continue

to fight. And I pressed one I guess maybe it was earlier this week or toward the end of last week. And I said listen, I mean, you see that if you agree to an ugly negotiated deal right now which would absolutely be on Moscow's terms, the war would come to

an end, the loss would stop, and the death and the dying would stop. And they said, yeah, there's no way we're going to agree to that. And I said, yeah, but the alternative, the consequence to not taking that deal is that more people will pointlessly die. You'll lose far more territory, possibly all the way to the Denepper River. It's not out of the question that in some point in the future that Kiev could again come under pressure from physical forces. And I said, and all that can be avoided with the deal now. And they said, we just can't. And I said, okay, but upon what basis, Because, I mean, that's not just suicide, but that's like we're going to make sure the country is worse off. And they say, well, we fight every day in the hope that a miracle will happen.

Something will happen from somewhere. I don't know, Putin will have a heart attack in Russia or there'll be some discovery of some new weapon or the U.S. may come and join us, et cetera. They're looking for some kind of miracle. No rational thought, just maybe something will happen. So let's just keep fighting today. And I mean, the likelihood is that, you know, exactly what I've described there, that they're going to cause themselves to lose profoundly more, but somehow the psychology of war, they just can't stop.

Yeah. Well, and look, I can understand, honestly, like, with the situation, the way it is, as you have explained all these years, that the Russians, I know you're saying they're accelerating now, but you're talking about very recent history here. Essentially, they've been moving very slowly, plotting along, grinding up the Ukrainian military faster

than they're getting their own military ground. up, but then they have officially annexed all of Lujansk, Donetsk, Zabrosia, and Kurson. And I know they control, you know, as we've talked about, virtually all of Lujansk, but they still have, what, like a quarter of Danyetsk is still not under their control. And then, I don't know, I'm just going to say a third each of Zaproja and Kersan that are still not under their control, including in Kurson, they'd have to cross the river. It'd have to, in other words, if you're a Russian military plane, you're going to finish breaking the Ukrainian military before you even try it, because that's such a pain.

We've seen the Ukrainians' losses trying to cross that river and take that territory back from the Russians. It has been just an absolute nightmare for them. So the Russians are just still on the ground, literally far short of their goals, meaning the Ukrainians are still standing on territory that the Russians claim, meaning, again, like you're saying here, the Russian demand is, you boys turn around and, walk away and give up the land that you're still standing on and let us take it instead of fighting for every last inch of it. And they're saying, no, we're just not going to do that. You're going to have to kill every last one of us as you move forward here. And the Russians then are obliging them on that. But it makes sense, though, why they don't want to agree to give in when they're still standing on this territory in these states here. Here's where it doesn't make

sense. You have to not look at just like the last six months or whatever, but look back in the last 10 years. So in early February 2014, Kiev was in control of every inch of Ukrainian territory to include all of Crimea. And then came to the events of the Maidan and the coup that overthrew the government there, et cetera. And as a director of loss from that, they lost Crimea. That's strike number one. Then came the Minsk agreements. And they refused to execute the key component of that, which was to have a constitutional amendment that would protect the rights of the Russian-speaking people in the population. They didn't do that. So now then you have this war that separates it out. And now then just before this war starts, in February 2022, you had the two Oblast-Luhanski and Donets.

They claim that they were independent. And then, of course, they become part of the Russian Federation. Now then there's Crimea and now two provinces that are gone, though they'll still not all of them, just the Russian speaking part of that. In April 2022, you had an opportunity to have a negotiated settlement that would have only ceded the Crimea and would ostensibly have allowed Donetsk and Low Hans to still stay inside of Crimea, I'm sorry, inside of Ukraine, but as an autonomous area. So less good than it would have been under the Minsk agreements, but still ostensibly under Ukraine control. They refuse that. Now then later in 2022, now it's absolute annexed four provinces plus the Crimea. And so now then the offer was only those four plus. But now then there are

fights going on in the Kharki region, in the Nepper-Trovolsk region, and in the Sumi region. So now then the losses keep piling up. So every time you refuse this kind of stuff because you, don't want to give them what they don't already have. They keep taking more as it is. So that's the real problem. When you look at this in context of the whole thing, that attitude has continually stolen away territory from Kiev because of its own actions enabled by us.

So if we continue on, that trend is almost certainly to continue on. And at some point, there will be probably well over a million people will have died because of that and the territory will be lost. that's the big issue. If they think that somehow it's not going to happen, then look back at the previous 10 years and you might want to reconsider. Yeah, I guess what I really meant

was not that it makes sense, but it makes sense why they feel that way when they're standing. Right, and oh, I agree with you. That's not directed at you at all. No, no, I'm just saying. I talk to the folks on the Ukraine side. And the problem is that I say with,

and you can hear my own frustration, is that it only makes sense if you just look at what's happening on the ground right now. And because I see that we still have whatever percent of the southern three provinces, and I don't want to just hand them over. But you've already been in this situation before, and because you didn't take the rational course of action, you've lost this stuff irreparably.

Don't do it again. Yeah. I think part of this, and this goes back to the Maidan too, and all of that is that this isn't rational. like these Nazis are very romantic types right they have these kind of grand poetic visions of creating a greater ukrainian empire in the after in the ashes of the destruction of the vile russian federation or whatever and it's just delusions of grandeur right they're off on they've been saying this the whole time i mean you you mentioned how they did here's the perverted part of that is that they had it It was in their hand as a result of what happened with the mind on stuff and the agreement that Russia had agreed to that they were going to hold elections in just a few months that they would definitely have won. They could have had the entirety of Ukraine to the 1991 borders. But because they were, I don't even know what the right term is going to be greedy.

They were impatient something. They said, no, we're going to take it now. So they're going to drive that out. And then that spawned a civil war in their own country. and because of that, now then they're going to lose half, if not more, of their country. So this ideology, this romantic whatever, was suicidal for their country. Yeah. I mean, and most of those Nazis are dead now, right?

All the guys who were, you know, the vanguard of that far nationalist right. You know, Beletsky's still in charge, but how many of his men have, has he cycled through since then? And, you know, like you mentioned, they didn't implement Minsk, too. Well, that was because the Nazis kept threatening to murder Poroshenko and then later Zelensky, if they dared to negotiate with the Russians. This is back hundreds of thousands of casualties ago. They said, you can't negotiate with the Russians. Otherwise, everybody who's died so far will have died in vain. We're on the sunk cost fallacy now.

And any negotiating with the Russians at all is treason. So forget you, pal. And they said it was Yorosch who said, we'll hang the guy from the tree on Kromatorsk Street or whatever. you pronounce the main drag there in Kiev. And as Andrew Kramer in the New York Times put it, hey, these are credible threats. These guys have overthrown the government twice before

and they have vowed to do it again if these lines are crossed. And so it is exactly the case where like the not necessarily the smallest minority because there are a lot of these guys but an extremely

malcontent basically minority faction among even the Western Ukrainians drove this car off this cliff, right? They prevented even when Poroshenko wasn't a Nazi and Zelenskyy's not a Nazi, but the Nazis had them hemmed in where they didn't have the choice but to continue the direction that they've gone in. I mean, the fact that we're even having this conversation in the summer of 25 is insane, where nobody knows how many Ukrainians have died, but it's in the high hundreds of thousands

at least, right? and so can you talk about like what's left of the society there how many millions of people have been driven out of the country the civilian casualties the overall uh you know decline in the gross domestic product and the rest of this kind of thing i i don't have those numbers handy although and self-evidently they're they're just gashed from what they were before the whole war started uh millions have fled the country of course and and the bleed continues on, especially when they're trying to push through a bill to lower the recruiting slash force mobilization age down to 18. You've got a lot of people trying to get out of the country so that they're, you know, their teenage children don't have a chance to get caught up in that, et cetera. And desertions are just off the charts here, apparently, a couple hundred thousand, if not more. Well, nobody knows a real number of that either, but apparently it's extremely high.

That number is coming from Ukraine. So we'll see about that, but the, you know, the sacrifice of generations of men already in the fleeing of hundreds of thousands of others, if not, well, millions, sorry, then you see that you have a demographic time bomb in the country because, I mean, you're slowly dying right now in the battlefield, but you're also slowly dying as a nation because, you know, whenever this war is over, I mean, it's not like there's going to be a flood of people to come back. so you're already way below the birth what is they called carrying carrying age something like that where they you can replenish your population whatever it's i think it has to be 2.0 per a certain number and it's it's like at 1.0 something so it's like half of that which means you're dying really fast as a nation which that's not something you turn around quick because you lose men so you have to you know have more bored et cetera so this is a generation gash that's that's never going to be filled within our time frame anyway. It's going to take a long, long time to

recover from this damage, if it ever. Yeah, yeah, if ever. Well, those of you who listen to me tell you to listen to Mike Swanson at Wall Street Window and Tim Fry at Robertson, Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. had bought a bunch of gold. Must be doing great right now. And should probably donate to the Libertarian Institute. Robertson Roberts is the best. It's a matter of trust. There's no flashy gimmicks, risky schemes, or bait and switch scams here. Robertson Roberts is here to help you protect your wealth. Any portfolio ought to have a solid percentage in medals. For us Austrian school types, even more.

Go to Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. at rrbi.co to protect yourself for monetary inflation. That's rrbi.co. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart?

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And again, when the American War Party sounds just like your guest the other day, famously, as we've talked about before, you know, mockingly but importantly, right, your debate with the think tank expert ladies there, whereas you're Amir Shimer versus the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the war party. and the lady said but look Danny Davis you might know a lot about infantry warfare and stuff sure but let me tell you something pal the Ukrainians what's going to happen is they're going to

jury rig something and that is going to turn the tie to the war and we're going to win it so I just don't want to hear it again we're going to make a magic wish right something's going to happen that's going to change everything we have no idea what that

thing might be. We concede on every actual point that you're right. We're outmanned and outgunned and outspent and out our show. And the way you say, like, we're going to concede every point, but still. Jury rig, Danny. Jury rig. And that was what she said. And she was right. She knew she was right like Richard Pearl up there. She knew she was right. And so on the basis of those kind of precepts, the war continues, right? I mean, it's just because it's not just Ukraine fighting it's the west putting them up to this and i really worry about the blowback from that where you know the famous phrase from henry kissinger about to be america's enemy is dangerous to be america's friend is fatal and he wasn't just talking about we'll betray you like we'll just turn on you

and attack you like we did saddam hussein or something like that but more like we'll make a in that case i think he was talking about leaving the humong tribesman high and dry or the kurds or one of those that we're betraying and he was talking about america making promises to allies that you do these things and we've got your back we promise and then they go and take steps they otherwise would not have taken and then we go whistling you know walking away whistling with our hands in our pockets and leave them high and try to be slaughtered and so this is like a giant bay of pigs in its own way right and look we're we're trying to expand that to bigger than just a bay of pigs we had uh the new supreme allied commander for nato uh an american general grinkowich

yesterday, or maybe it was today, I can't remember in Europe, it's saying, hey, listen, man, we have to, you know, hugely expand NATO, just like Secretary General Mark Routis said, you know, way up to 5%, but because we have to get ready because there is almost surely the way he put it, a war going to happen between China and Taiwan in maybe as early as 2027. He actually put a date on it, and you can be sure he'll pick up the phone. Xi Jinping will, and he'll call Vladimir Putin and ask him to attack us in the West so that we'll have everybody pinned down. And so we have to get ready for this war right now. And I'm just like, are you out of your mind? I mean, the answer may not be yes, because he may just be saying it, because he just wants to create this big double-headed monster that we, oh my God, we have to support. But I mean, he's telling everybody this, and many people do believe it. And so you just create this self-fulfilling prophecy if you start acting on it because Russia and China aren't going to sit passively by and watch you prepare for a big war. And then you had Ruta days before

talking about how, hey, we have to get ready for war. It could come in three to five to seven years, which is basically tomorrow and the next week. I mean, that's how fast this is coming up. My God, we have to move quickly. I mean, that sounds urgent. And to the ears of anybody that's on the other side of that, when you see what NATO has done for the last three and a half years, no one can ignore those those claims so we are you can't say we're sleepwalking into a potential third world war we're doing it with our eyes wide open running towards it that's the the really perverse part yep and it's something that we talked about for years especially in the case of the pacific but when it comes to russia too where you'd have an entire giant think tank study about how we got to fight these

guys and how we're going to fight them where they don't even mention nuclear weapons anywhere yeah and it doesn't even take it's not even one of the pieces of plastic on the board that they're messing with because well that would ruin the whole thing danny right if we got to worry about h bombs then we can't do it but if we can just have a cool set piece naval battle over taiwan that might be really exciting like world war two and yeah we we lose some sailors but can you imagine how much fun that might be also you know but if you once you start bringing up h bombs and you're talking about wait a minute we're talking about losing Taiwan anyway, but now we also get to lose L.A. and San Diego and Denver and Houston

and Washington, too, you know, and worse. Why? Can you imagine voluntarily giving up our civilization dying by the millions or tens or hundreds of millions over fucking Taiwan? Are you kidding me? Do people even know what Taiwan is? Some tiny, that's like China. fighting us in a nuclear war over Catalina Island off the coast of L.A. Are you kidding? Who cares? Of course it belongs to them sooner or later, one way or the other. And what difference does that make to the people in Peoria?

Nothing. Nothing. You can wish them well. You can wish that they wouldn't do it. But to go to a suicidal war that you can't win and that could literally watch. wipe out your country is insane to the highest degree. And the thing is, I mean, I would say the same thing about Japan or Korea, but at least we'd be having a totally different conversation than Taiwan, of all things,

this tiny little island that U.S. government policy has officially recognized as part of China for 50 years since Nixon. Yeah. The idea we'd fight in a war, give a war guarantee to a. province, a renegade province of a foreign nation? That seems odd, especially when we wouldn't give one to the Ukrainians, even after our promises of an eventual war guarantee to them is half of what caused that war there. And we obviously are not willing to drop the 82nd airborne in there or anything like it, right?

So far, let's hope that continues. Yeah, exactly. Well, okay, so I want to let you go. I know you need to go, but I am worried about. this slippery slope that we're on here because as we discuss the Russians are far short of their goals so Trump is humiliated as predicted he just got inaugurated for a second term at the wrong time he's sincere and won in the war but he can't because the Russians are they are winning but they haven't won yet and so they don't want to quit and so now he looks like a fool so he can only threaten

more weapons and more sanctions which we know aren't going to get him anywhere but then he's an emotional guy. He's going to have to do something. He's just going to give up, throw up his hands, say, well, I guess the Russians are just going to take as much Ukraine as they're going to take, or he's going to have to try to figure out something. Only half a year into the second term here. So where do we go from here politically, you know? Yeah, you know, Scott, he had a golden opportunity, and I thought he was ready to seize it. And I can give you this exact date, April 18th of this year, where he sent Marco Rubio out to cameras on a, trip he was at in front of his plane and he said folks we are days away from walking away from this deal if we can't get these two sides together if they can't narrow their differences we're going to walk away and it's they'll have to figure it out on their own i thought brilliant that's exactly what you should do you should hop up that this was not a war you started not one that you wanted i think it's actually plausible what he said that it wouldn't have started if he'd have been in

office in in 2022 uh but that's neither here nor there but the fact is he had the opportunity right then to do that and walk away like five, six days later when neither side would be willing to give in, which neither did. And then he could have said, okay, I am not going to, to your point that you just made, I am not going to take the resources of the United States and continue to underwrite a war that can only be lost. It is irrational. It is foolish for our country. And I believe it is immoral to prop up a war that can only cause more death for the Ukraine side. So we're going to take all of our equipment. We're going to stop what we're doing now. And it's on you to decide what you want to do. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. You could keep fighting or you can make a deal. You can work with Europe. Whatever you think you should do, we're going to do what we think we should do. I thought he was going to do that. And then that war would almost have had to come to an end. Because now then Ukraine would have a very different calculus and they would be required to have some kind of political accommodation with Russia, which well could have ended the war. But now he didn't do that.

He walked away from walking away, as I think it was J.D. Vance, of all people, said later on. And that's where we are now. So now he's boxed himself into a further corner with his 50-day time limit, although that obviously doesn't mean much to Trump. He's walked away from a bunch of time limits with regards to this war. But when that 50 days comes in it, I suspect that he'll just take the easy way out. He'll throw some more sanctions, which he's already claimed he's going to do. you know, what is it, Lindsey Graham loves to sanctions. He's got a bill in the Senate that's ready to go.

And that gives Trump flexibility. He can try these secondary sanctions, but good luck trying to get China and India to do what we want. That's not going to work out well for our economy. So he's going to be limited there. Probably just have some face-saving way. We'll probably keep up some low level of supply to Ukraine and just say, well, look, we did everything we can. That's the coward's way. way out. So I suspect that's what he's going to do.

Yeah. All right. So one more slippery slope type question of speculation for you. And I said this right after the war started. And I can prove it was in my giant four hour long speech that I gave on March 2nd or whatever it was. I still think this. To me, it only makes sense from a government program point of view that the Russian war is going to continue to expand and expand. And so you take them just at the provinces they've claimed so far, well, then they leave Harkiv and Sumi and Nipro-Provostk. And I forgot if there's one more there. Everybody east of the river, but west of the Donbass, they're leaving them from, of course, the Russian government's point of view, I'm saying here, outside of their protection. These are people

who are, if they're not ethnic Russians as severely as in Donetsk, they're still culturally Russian and Russian speakers mostly. And they're sure to be further persecuted. That's probably true, but definitely from the point of view of Russian politics. These people are sure to be further persecuted when they're now a much smaller minority in what's left of Rump Ukraine after the Russians are done removing the Russian population out of there. So now, of course, we have to protect them too. And so that means everybody east of the river, has got to be absorbed into the Russian Federation at that point. And then, of course, if they're going that far, I'm speculative here,

but if they end up going that far, we're talking about, obviously, at that point, the Ukrainian military has been severely weakened, if not completely destroyed by the time they're done with all of that. And there's Odessa, the jewel of the Black Sea, sitting right there, this important port city, which they could very well want, was historically a Russian city back when is predominantly Russian-speaking city, although not that that means that they want to join the Russian Federation, but that's a claim that they can make, that they're protecting these people from the nationalists of Lviv, right? And then it's also

something that they can deprive the new Ukraine of. So it's a strategic win for them in two ways, right? They want it, but also they want to take it away from the other guys. And plus, they have, of Transnistria there, that strip of land on the Moldovan side of the Nister River in the far west there, which is Russian-controlled territory. And it makes sense that they would create one of these so-called land bridges. Once you've gone to Odessi, you might as well take the whole southern coast there. Oh, yeah. And then now you've left one more mile down our slippery slope. Now you've left Kiev and

Leviv and Evo Friends, whatever the hell you is, say it, in all of these western cities and what's left to vump Ukraine in the hands of ethnic Ukrainians, far right-wingers who absolutely hate Russia and are going to continue to hate Russia

and be now a completely unbalanced enemy of Russia. Whereas before the people who leaned pro-Russia used to win elections. That's why America had to keep overthrowing the government there. because the bad guy kept winning, right? And so now they're going to have what, you know, Reichs Fuhr Beretsky is going to be the new dictator of Rump, Ukraine, and they're going to have to accept that, or they're just going to keep marching to Leviv, right? Or what?

You see what I mean about the trouble that caused? And I've talked to a number of folks that claim to have connections to thinking inside of the Kremlin, and they say that's exactly what they're. they're thinking they're like that's why we want a deal right now because part of the deal that they're offering right now is not just a territory but it's also the denatification the demilitarization so that what's left of ukraine can't pose a threat to russia meaning that the west can't arm them up or whatever so that they can again uh cause harm to the russian speakers inside ukraine or to russia itself absent that then there is a lot of speculation inside the kremlin that they are going to have to go all the way to the border, the meaning take all of it, even if it takes

years to get it done, even though they know that that will create almost certainly an insurgency that they'll have to deal with in the Western part for years to come. Apparently, they're mentally prepared to go that far. I buy it, and it just goes to show not only should Biden have not have done this, but Putin should not have done this either. You know, they did not think this through all the way. I don't, I do not think that's what he wanted. No, no. I'm convinced that Putin thought it was going to be like Hungary in 1956 where the Soviets rolled a bunch of tanks into the country and everybody just gave up and surrendered. I thought that's, I think that's exactly what expected to happen, that they would see that we can't win a war with Russia. That

would be stupid. So we'll just capitulate here and, you know, agree to whatever they want. And then when that didn't happen, now it's like, you're committed. Now he, now he has no choice. but to do what he's done here because if he boxed himself into a corner and we are where we are. But yeah, so there's a lot of blame to go around for a lot of this. But the bottom line is that we need to get this fixed quickly. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll end with this then.

Seymour Hirsch just put out a new one. The end of Zelensky and saying that Trump wants him out and that the White House is putting pressure on Zelensky to make room for Zalunsky to come back. well have to wait and see how that one I haven't seen that or heard about that one yet so I don't know I'm skeptical of anything that Trump is doing that you know has some deeper thought behind it yeah or any follow through to it yeah like it very well may be true but it very well may not be true by dinner time you know right yeah that's my thought yeah all right listen I can't tell you how much I value your expertise on this show as always I watch a show all the time and I'm so glad you that you can be part of mine. Thank you again. Thanks a lot, Scott. Always my pleasure. All right you guys. That is Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, U.S. Army retired. And check out the Daniel Davis deep dive on YouTube and all your favorite podcatchers. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scotthorton.org,

Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org.