Shaun Newman Podcast - #862 - Tom Luongo

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Tom Luongo is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast. We discuss Ubik, the novel by Philip K. Dick, for the first half hour and then move into all things Russia/Ukraine. To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionWebsite: www.BowValleycu.comEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail]

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Well, rooster gunslinger shirt, I should say. Either way, let's get on that tale of the tape. He's a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist, whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goat's and Guns podcast. I'm talking about Tom Luongo, so buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today.

I'm joined by Tom Luongo. Tom, A, it's great to see you. It is. Good to see you. Yeah, it's welcome to Monday. And we don't have the nuclear war yet, but you never know. Like, you know, the day's young. The day.

That is, yeah, true words never been spoken. I know everybody's going to hate me for doing this because they're going to be like, let's talk about Russia, Ukraine. Let's talk about all the things over the weekend. Let's talk about everything. But I just want to start because this whole thing started at Cornerstone. you you uh you had your your keynote speech you talked about ubic and joe chip and i knew like nada i didn't know what that was i just really enjoyed it and i told you that and you're like oh have you ever read ubic

before i'm like uh no and so i just finished ubic i texted you last night i was you know i was sitting there in like chapter 14 or 15 i'm going why does tom love this book so much i'm like i'm not getting it yet i'm like i'm waiting i'm waiting and then i don't know was the last chapter for sure it's the last two chapters all of a sudden sudden it just hits it out of the park. And I'm like, oh, this is why. Yeah. Your thoughts on Ubek before we get into all things madness on the weekend. Sir.

So in case anybody doesn't know what we're talking about, we're talking about the book by Philip K. Dick, which you've seen cribbed in a hundred different movies, unfortunately, at this point to the point where Ubek is one of the few books of his that cannot be translated directly in the film anymore because you've already seen it in the Matrix and Jacob's Ladder and Vanilla Sky. and, you know, there's elements of it all over Battlestar Galactica and everywhere you see, everywhere, you know, it's now become a very common trope. Actually, Inception by Chris Nolan is very much an inubic-inspired film.

And so it's one of the reasons why I don't like Inception because he did a bad job of translating my favorite book. And I feel like he shot a draft. That's what I think of Nolan's that film. I love Nolan generally, but I don't particularly. like that book um that film is so ubeck is one of those it's kind of the thesis statement i was telling sean um before we were we were sort of recording there's a phil pic dick is a is a novelist if you i'm a huge fan and i've i've read one book of his i've read 30 or 35 i've read almost all of his short stories i've read a lot of his exegesis i've been a lifelong fan um and there's about three periods is

the early period, the early novels from like 55 to 62, 61, where he's just kind of like trying to figure out what to be as a writer. And then there's this incredible period between 1962 and 1969 when all the books were published, but they're all written between 61 and 66. Ubeck was the last of those. So he's working through all these basic ideas of reality and redemption and the en way of living in a technocratic society and all of these things. And you see it repeatedly in books like Marx and Timeslip and the Man in High Castle and Du Antweryne and Duranjury Blacker Sheep and the Saracemada, Palmer Eldridge. And eventually we get, again, we get to the thesis statement, which is Ubeck, which takes all

of that together, turns it, looks what looks like a very simple kind of book about corporate espionage and weird and telepathy and turns it on its head into a retelling of the Tibetan book of the dead, which I've not read, but I know that that's what Phil's ultimate goal was because he's talked about it in those terms. And it is, it is in many ways, there are a few, there are a few touchstone pieces of literature of the 20th century that everybody should be intimately aware of. and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and one is the waystland by t s leo the second is the lord of the rings which most people have read and the third in many ways and you can maybe even make the argument that you need to read the anti lord of the rings

which in this case is frank herbert's dune trilogy first dunes and then there's ubeck by philip kitt and then of course we should read like fictions by borhase and a variety of other things Kafka, all these people are very, very important in identifying and understanding where we were headed as a society and how we will be beset by false gods, trying to manipulate our perception and manipulate us into believing things that are not true and take us away from our core being. And again, Ubek is that, this is the distillation of that into, an effective thesis statement. And I really do believe it's one of the most important novels of the 20th century.

Nearly everything in the book, and it's both metaphorically and even textually is coming true. We're living in it now. And I've said many times, yeah, I could be wrong, Tom. We get to the point where I have to pay my microwave to work for me is the day I check

out of the whole fucking thing. And you'll never see me on another podcast and I'm out in the woods somewhere. Like, I'm done. Well, it's, you know, if I'd read that book before we'd met, or let's say day one we'd met, I don't think the ending would have been nearly as profound for me. Because I thought it was, off your speech, I thought it

was going to be about how you had to pay to get out and he eventually takes the door off and says hoop it. And I kind of had this idea going in because I didn't do any research on it. I just, like, read you book. I'm like, okay. And that's just like, that's like a sliver of the book. It's just a sliver. Yeah. Yeah. Now, don't get me wrong. It plays out in different parts. of the book, but that's just a sliver of it. I feel like the most profound thought was at the end. For me, this go-around. Now, you said you read it two or three times.

You're going to get more profound thoughts out of it. But the most profound thought was Joe Chip is saying to the good being and you'll know the names, but basically, maybe I'll beat them. And she goes, maybe you will. And then they just put in a new one. Because in all these different universes, they always have one. they put in and they do the exact same thing they're the evil being they're the malevolent force they come in and i'm like oh man that's profound thought because i'm just you know like as you get to

awake to what's going on yes you start to see things you're like oh man am i going crazy right and i feel like joe chips analysis at the end and then we said well maybe i could beat them i'm going to beat them it's like well that's what we all want that's what we all we want to see happen but even if that were to happen then they're just going to put it in a new one. And it's going to start all over again. Well, that, you're correct. That is one version of the ending. What Ella tells him is that what's more important is that the fight against entropy

and the fight against those who will, who choose to live at the expense of other people, right? The villain in Ubek, regardless of all the fanciful setup is a being that refuses to die. and refuses to accept that he is mortal and will live at the expense of and and and and suck the life out of literally the last drinks of life out of anyone out of anyone that comes into his path and that is a met that's a and that's a timeless metaphor right it's not good this is nothing new in literature there's no there's no new stories here you'll you know the don't Don't ever know anybody ever forget that Philip K. Dick first and foremost was a real Christian, right? But who explored that interface between Gnosticism and Christianity at a very deep level.

That's why it hit me the last, the last like, I mean like the last chapter just like punch me right square in the face because he lays it out in ways that like C.S. Lewis has laid it out where you're just like, wow, that is a lot. God. I did not see that coming because of the way he wrote the entire freaking book. I'm telling you, I'm sitting there in chapter 14 going, what is this going? Where is this going? What is this going? And everybody who thinks they're powerful. What I find fascinating about, you go out and you read some of the, I did this when I was in high school. Like, I was so obsessed with Philip Kedek in high school that like I wrote my high school term paper on him.

I, I research and read and printed out like every piece of literal. criticism that in existence in 1985, 86, which was maybe 12 articles ever written. Most of them were written by Marxist scholars. They were people who were analyzing it from power, you know, they're like analyzing power systems in, in Drandra's Dream Electric Sheep. I can't remember as Patricia. I can't remember her last name now. And, but Michael Bishop, the great Michael Bishop, who's also a great science fiction writer who I absolutely, whose work I absolutely recommend. that he's one of those guys that we have way too much of up on our bookshelf, my wife and I. She's read more Michael Bishop than I have.

But I absolutely recommend from him things like brittle innings, Count Geiger's Blues. He won the Hugo for No One to Beat But Time and a couple other books. Unicorn Mountain is also an excellent book. But he also wrote a love letter to Philip K. Dick called The Secret Assension. It was published in the United States as The Secret Essential, which actually is the subtitle is Philip K. is dead of last. Now let's queue up and kick God's ass. And it's an amazing pastiche of all the worlds of Philip K. Dick brought together and all of his ideas textually where Phil Dick, a dead Phil Dick is the actual main character and one of the main characters in the novel.

It's a brilliant piece of meta fiction. I absolutely recommend, you know, if you're a fan of Philip K.Dick, if you haven't read that book, go find a copy of it that's out there. And like, but Michael Bishop wrote a great article very early on called In Pursuit of Ubeck. And Ubek is all about the chase. Everything in Ubek is about the chase for something and some form of meaning. And everybody's chasing a form of meaning. And so you have all these characters who think they're powerful. Like you have, you have his boss, Glenn, you have his wife, Pat, that they all have,

they all think they have real power. when they don't have real power with their at their pretenders and as reality breaks down and as um and and the false realities are stripped away and you're and and everything reverts to its platonic form which is again another aspect of that's built into ubeck the whole reality um degradation mechanism right it is a reversion everything's reverting to their platonic form right um and um in many ways. And so you have all these things are happening, all in this little 175, 200-page level pop boiler. And it's, it's, it's, it's an amazing piece of, of, it's as dense as a piece of work as you all over. It's an eminently readable. Like, it's not theoretical in any way. It's an eminently

readable corporate espionage. It looks like a piece of corporate espionage until you get to the end. And then everybody, then we all, then we find out what the actual story is. And then, then, the whole thing gets reversed. One of the themes of Phil Dick that he talks about explicitly, and I'll reference now, there was a speech of his that went around right after the election or right after Trump was shot, one or the other in that time between July and November of last year, of him talking about track A, track B, track C. He was talking about how time is not linear and how we choose.

And these are the ideas that were the basis of all. my speech at cornerstone, that we choose the realities that we want to inhabit. That that speech, you know, he lays it out that in every one of his books, what he was trying to explain to everybody is that there are an infinite amount of number of effectively in quantum mechanic terms, eigenstates of being. We can choose to inhabit any of them. And if we and if we apply our will hard enough, we will eventually get there. And if anybody's watched the, the, the Amazon adaptation of the man in high castle, that's the end of that, that moment is the end of season one where Mr. Tagomi breaks through

through meditation into another reality to see a different version of the world that he lives in. And what, and Ubek does all of that as well with the brilliant final, um, the brilliant final scene, which is itself, and from writing perspective, it's fascinating. It's not only is the chapter it's also an act and it's also a massive a massive reversal it is in itself almost its own novel in two pages and um because like i said the last the last probably the last chapter chapter and a half is brilliant it's nothing short i i have to so when i say i'm in chapter 14 folks i'm sitting there talking to ken rutherford and he's going on what are you doing i'm like i'm listening this book called ubick he's like oh should i read it and i'm like

fiction and I don't know exactly I'm basically telling him probably don't read it and he calls back like two hours later and I've done it and he's like oh well so how did the book finish I'm like you it it's profound you should read it you should read it you should read it I'm like you're going 14 chapters of like where is this book going and then it's the final two or three where you're like Oh. You'll find with a lot of Phil's books, and some of his lesser books don't succeed as well. He explores the same ideas over and over again. There are many, many a Phil Dick novel.

Remember, a lot of these he wrote very, very quickly. He was like, he was in permanent writer die mode. I've talked about this when I first started writing, you started doing gold goats and guns. I was like, I need to write as much as possible and seed the universe with as much of my writing as possible. there's a lot of Phil Dix books that are like that. He wrote a lot of these things when he's in writer die mode. So it was get a $750 advance on a book idea and then write it in six weeks and send it in to get the other $750 bucks so he could eat. And he gives a, there's a wonderful speech of his where he talks about having to, you know, shop at the Lucky Dog Pet Food Store in order to buy horse meat in order to get through.

Because being a science fiction writer in the 1950s about the only thing worse than that, lower than that was basically a janitor. Like it was a not a, it was just, it was the one of the lowest of the low brow professions one could engage in back in that, back in that period. So a lot of those novels don't work. And so when I recommend Philip K.Dick to people, I always give them like the seven or eight that I think that have been curated that really are the best. to the best. And if anybody's interested, I have a list of about 10 that I recommend the people.

And usually give also a reading order on them as well. But there are other ones that are, there are secondary books that are interesting from a, that are interesting, but they'll always, they always did the same thing. The first half will like, you'll struggle through the first half because he's assembling all these bits and pieces. And then the midpoint turn happens. And then the novel rushes to conclusion. And Ubek does that. It stretches your, it really will, stretch your patience in that first, you know, 70, but it's funny as I get older, Tommy, I, I, folks, I am not a writer. Now, in saying that, I just finished writing a very, very short paper.

I don't even know if you can call it a paper. Maybe I just call it a thought, but it is a page and a half on the Godfather. Because I watched it for the first time. I've told this story lots since I was like 20 in my first wash it. And I remember thinking, man, the ending was fantastic. Why don't you just fast forward to the ending? Boom, you get it done. Then you get a little older, certainly having your eyes open to how the world works and on and on.

I walked into that movie with different eyes about three months ago, and I watched it. And I wasn't on the edge of my scene the entire time, but I understand what they were doing. And by the time I get to the end, I'm like, man, that right there is maybe one of the greatest, if not the greatest movies I've ever watched in my life. And that is the difference between Sean being 20 and wanting pace, speed, everything, everything that I wanted back then to where Sean sits now and staring at these conversations we have. And I'm sure people are screaming at the radio because they're like, are you guys going to talk Russia, Ukraine? Yes, we are. I just want to point out like when you're talking Ubek, I understood what the author was doing. I was just, it's like watching the Godfather probably for the first time.

You're like, where is this going? like you know because it you know godfors a three-hour movie it it takes two and a half hours to get to the you know to get to where michael corleone finally wipes him off the face of the earth i mean roughly speaking right it's again like when you're when you're again and i and i will cop to the same thing i was reading a lot of this stuff and my as a teenager not understanding a word of it like i'll be honest with you i read all of these books with a with you know with a much you know with a much different set of eyes, certainly not sophisticated eyes, but I knew I was reading something profound or something interesting, but I didn't know what it was. And I would, you know, I read Ubek

over and over. I used to read this only you guys know. I'm just much of a geek, folks. I understood how profound Ubek was when I was 17. And the novel opens on June 5th, 1992, like this morning of 3.30m, the morning of June 5th, 1992, the top telepath in the system falls off them Abbott orns that are associates in New York City. That's sort of the Fit Bones Ring. It's a hilarious, actually, opening line, right? But I would reread Ubek every June 5th. June 5th.

I would set aside the afternoon and I would just spend four hours and I would reread it. Interestingly enough, I was actually on a plane on June 5th, 1992, having a panic attack while flying to New York for, I think, just to go home for the summer or something like that. And I wound up actually writing about my panic attack. as a as a as a as a as a poems actually i have i still that's one of the poems i haven't read at cornerstone yet but i every time i think about that i'm like that's that moment in immortalized i finish the book i'm having a panic attack i pull out my a pencil and a piece of paper and i start working on this particular piece and the and it's really funny how um how you're like this book has

inscribed my life and um in ways that um you know you know, the Lord of the Rings did for my wife when she was a, when she was a kid and what we all have certain things that have certain cries their eyes. For me, you know, this book is that thing that allows me to, that was the jumping off point to become the person that I ended at. For lack of a better term. Yeah, a very pinnical moment, a very pinnacle, uh, uh, work in, for a book.

Yeah. It really, uh, you know, I, I, I've been wanting to pick up the Lord of the Rings because when I started the Lord of the Rings, I was 14 years old, and I read through the Lord of the Rings, and I thought it was amazing. And I'm like, imagine if I go back and read that book, what I'm going to see in it now. Because, you know, like everything I've just said, I've been going back through great literary works and great movies.

I watched Schindler's list a few, a few, a couple weeks ago, and, like, people will argue about the facts on Oscar Schindler and everything going on in the movie. But watch Schindler's arc. it's it is profound right like it's profound it's a profound piece of um movie like artwork it just like the acting's great it's fantastic but at the last scene where he's well towards the last season where he's bawling his eyes out i'm like that is that is that is it's just like i'm like how

where was i 10 years ago what i've never even caught i was good i want to carry on right like Give me an idea. I watched Cindler's List for the first time at a midnight show, three and a half hours. And the movie got finished. And I went with a friend of mine. And it's 3.30 in the morning. And I'm sitting in, you know, my seat. And we can't leave the theater because I'm, I'm still crying 20 minutes later.

It was not just that final scene. Actually, it went every time. I've watched, I've watched Cunelers this once. I watch it eight, nine times. What always gets me every time is, the final scene where all the surviving shindler jews walk through through the great and and put the rocks on the homage and and it's the one little it's the one young it's the one old woman she's the old and frail she puts the rock and she pets is great every fucking time

every time i'm done and um well it's yeah you know we you know we all have these these these these things so i mean there are those types of moments we all have that you know on our head for me it's like you know the death star blew up then i read the randroid dream of electric sheet which is the first philic novel i read and i remember i got to the the end of that book is also profound um it's a that is much different than the film that it blade runner which is what it's based on is a very is a is a spiritual retelling of of of of of of asteroids but it's not the same it's not the same at all. And I would actually absolutely recommend everybody read the book that Blade Runner is based on,

because I will argue as great a movie as Blade Runner is, I still think the book is better. And not because the book is richer or deeper. It's different. But it's very different. It's much more personal. Just sticking on Schindler's list for one second. And then I should really pull us back to where life is at.

But someday you hope you have the balls of Oscar Schindler. Like that guy, that guy on how he, you know, deals with everything going on and how he walks in Auschwitz and nope and knows the system. I'm just like, it is just a brilliant movie.

It's brilliant acting. It's brilliant everything. It is something. And, and his story arc go, you know, like I, I'm telling him my mind.

I'm like, like, he literally has his wife there and goes, yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to have, I'm not going to let, you know, I'm probably going to let the doorman mistake you for another woman, basically. So she leaves right at the start of the film, right? It's pretty, he's pretty sent in his ways. Right. And by the end, he's just, he'll never go back to being the same guy, like ever, right? By the end, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you watch that and you go, that's, that's what separates a great storyteller. from someone who, you know, like it does a cheap knockoff, which I, you know, you rattle off all, you start with you book, that's where we started. And there's a bunch of spinoff movies that have come from that book. You can tell. And there was just some crappy movies. I was telling you when I, when I called you,

I'm like, I'm waiting for the ending. I'm like, I know Tom entirely this book. So I know it's going to have a good ending, but I swear to God, if at the end of this, it's some crappy ending where nothing really happened and it was just, you know, like one of these time reversals because they could see in the, I'm going to be pissed.

If this is like, you know, the stonekeeper could work on time. I could see all the altar and then they just come back to the present moment. I'm like, this is going to really suck. And it was not that. I was very happy about that because you could tell when it's a knockoff to when it's a literal work of genius. It is. And again, I mean, Hollywood has a fascination of Philip you Dick.

I don't think there's any writer whose work has been translated into film more than him. I think the 15, 20 movies have been, you know, and they love the short stories because the short stories are easy to mutts with. And I do believe, I personally believe that there's a certain Dabogian element where they like to take the ideas that he was warning us about and then recast them as operating manuals, to be honest with you, or make great stories into bad films. There are only a handful of adaptations that I think are worth anybody's time. Blade Runner being one of them, Minority Report, another Steven Spielberg film with Tom Cruise. Vanilla Sky is a very interesting retelling of Ubek. Again, Tom Cruise. Dude, like, guys got chops.

Like, he understands story. Then there are a couple of others. But, you know, Total Recoil isn't terrible. But, you know, there's a, they have never been able to crack the code on Ubek directly because they don't how to do it and they don't want to leave and it is i know how to do it i have like multiple i have multiple files of of of screenplay art you know layouts the architecture laid out i know how to do it um it would be a very different it would be a very different but very similar retelling of of of the the book but i don't think anybody could ever make it and that's fine i don't i don't i don't

need to this is not i don't need this to happen in my life it's it's not important because what Ubek has done is this now become a part of our storytelling language at a very foundational level. It's everywhere. When you read Ubek, you'll look and go, oh, this is kind of cliche now. Like, no, no, no, it's cliche because everybody's done it. It's like no one is like, it's like the Terminator films destroyed like half of Phil Dix canon to be turned into film because the Terminator, distilled like so many of these ideas into that singular moment, which is fine, right? And they've tried to make some of those stories into films since then.

They don't work nearly as well. Like these are based on stories like second variety and the father thing and the variety. I can do, I can do two hours on Phil Dick and we wouldn't even like, like scratch the surface. But it's just very interesting how it's all been subsumed into our storytelling. language, which is good for a variety of reasons because what it's done is it's taught us how to be skeptical of that which we're being told. The Truman Show, by the way, is time out of joint, by the way. Like the Truman Show is literally time out of joint.

My last thought on this before we hop to today's events. I mean, like today's what's going on to the world today is, well, I just, I appreciate it because you, talked Ubik on the first one. Oh, sorry, on Cornerstone. And I didn't, I didn't, you know, I didn't know what Ubik is. And so I have to assume a ton of my audience has no idea what Ubik is. I just have to assume that. And you've spurred on a profound thought that I'm going to try, this is what the Godfather did. And I wrestled with the Godfather for three, three months roughly. It's going to come out on Substack here at some point here. I'm going to release it. I might even send it to Tom, see what his thoughts are. But I wrote out this, this thought off, the Godfather.

I'm not a writer. I don't, I don't, but I couldn't get it. I just, it's like every day it was sitting there. And I'm like,

just got to try and get this out. So out it comes. And you, I'm driving in to Calgary last night. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, it just won't leave me alone. I'm like, what a way to end.

I got to go back and listen to the final two chapters again. So I can try and wrestle with what I heard. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to write on this now. Like, you know,

that's what you've done for me. So hopefully that's enough of a sales pitch for people. to go read ubic because i mean obviously if uh tom's been doing this since he was 17 and now i'm sitting here raving about the ending uh chances are you need to go uh set aside a few hours and go read ubic because it was it was that good folks now i want to shift tom to everything oh what it's supposed to be five minutes it's 30 it's supposed to be five minutes but that's way that's way it is i'll put it in the show notes if you want to skip all the ubic chatter you

just go to the 30 minute mark or whatever um you know it's funny like i mean i mean there has been a lot going on in the last. Has it been seven days? Is it two days? I want you to walk me through it from your lens and just brings up to speed on Russia, U.S., Ukraine, Europe, London.

I don't know. You just ain't us a picture. There's a lot to sit through. And I could do, I'm not even sure how to structure it at this point. This is one of those moments where as a writer, you're like, okay, so how do, do I structure this? I struggle with this with every like first issue, the first article for

every month's newsletter, which is like, I've got, I've got to, I've got to put together and like, how do I start this, right? Where do I, what do I start? But I think the best framework at this point is understand that there are across three or four different areas of, of a study, the financial markets, geopolitics, domestic politics, all centering around the United States. and this fight between Europe, old Europe and the United States. Canada is part of this conversation as well. They're all coming to a head in the next six to eight weeks. Let's start with Ukraine.

It's easy. Why are they pushing? Why did the British and the Ukrainians together attack Russia's fleet? It's not like over the weekend. as I was chatting with Dexter White this morning, you know, he said, you know, it was a great operation for thinking about it from the Ukrainian perspective, like what they did

and the other guy, I said, yeah, and they've been planning it for a year and a half. But why this weekend? Well, obviously, they wanted to destroy the possibility of there being any kind of peace accord in Istanbul this morning because no high-level figures are going to show up to this meeting because the threat of assassination was way too high.

So can't bring Labrov in, can't bring Zelensky in, can't bring anybody in there. So everybody's hiding out in a bunker trying to figure out, you know, and so who benefits? And you always have to ask the question, who benefits from that. Well, the people who benefit from now are the people who want to continue the war. Tom, what has, when you talk about the operation, can you walk us through it? Yeah, it's not that difficult. The Ukrainians clearly smuggled in with a lot of help from logistical help. from other people.

I would note most likely, the most likely candidates here are MI6, British intelligence. A whole bunch of drones on 20-foot cargo containers, and they drove them around on, well, to use the British term, lorries around Russia. They coordinated and sent those drones with operators via the cell networks to attack directly, you know, Russian strategic bombers and an aircraft. that are part of its nuclear triad at four different air bases around Russia over the weekend, taking out and from anywhere from 5 to 30 percent of Russia's strategic bomber fleet, depending on who you talk to. I've heard as low as four planes were blown up. I've heard as many

as 30 or 40. The number is probably going to settle somewhere around 12 to 15. a lot, but not that much. And to back off the histrionics here, the aviation part of Russia's nuclear triad is its weakest link. It always has been, meaning at the end of the day, you know, it's bad, but it could be worse. Their subs are far more important. Their ballistic missiles.

encampasers are far more important. And attack, I'm actually more disturbed by the reports of an explosion at one of the sub-bases over the weekend. More worried about that than I am actually what happened with the airplanes. Now, the meeting in Istanbul is already over. Nothing came of it per se. Now I'm going to, that's all the bad stuff. Clearly, this happens five days after German Chancellor Frederick Murs.

comes out and says, there's no limit on what Ukraine can do with our weapons, blah, blah, but we're taking the gloves off. The gloves have been off. Biden signed that order or Biden with scare quotes, sign that order months ago. Trump didn't rescind it because he's in negotiations. And I've been in many ways he's in negotiations with Putin over how to get this done. And at the end of the day, I also think that it's important to realize that both Putin needs a justification to do what needs to be done,

which is to wipe out the Ukrainian army properly and for Trump to walk away from it all because this is no longer his war. And everything you've seen in the media, in, you know, Axios saying that Trump, you know, repeating the lie from Zelensky that Trump knew it was informed about this, which is bullshit.

All of that is designed to try and back Trump into a corner because what everybody who wants this and needs this war is trying to do here is drive a wedge between Trump and Putin so that they cannot execute on the strategy of ending this war. Okay. And Trump is not going to give up any of his leverage over Putin because he doesn't trust Putin any more than Putin is going to give up his leverage against Trump because he doesn't trust Trump. There's an accord between them.

There's a desire for peace, but that doesn't mean that they're going to just like roll over and show their bellies to each other either. That's not the way negotiations at this level have ever been handled or will ever be handled. But kind of everybody, but, you know, dumb people want this because dumb people need to project their anxiety and have their leaders, you know, reassure them through, you know, by giving up their, by showing their ass, which we don't want to, which we don't want to see happen. So there's that part of it. Now, why do, does Europe, need this war. Well, because it's everything that Alex Craneer and I have been speculating about and Martin Armstrong and others have been speculating about forever, which is that Europe's desperate.

They're going to implode. They have a nascent sovereign debt crisis brewing. They have a bank sector crisis that is brewing. And they need a cover story to change to do two things. fundamentally change their monetary system and their political system and try and consolidate power within the EU in Brussels, wiping out nation-state sovereignty on the continent of Europe. And you do that through political and fiscal integration. And what better way to achieve that and to sell that is to start a war with the Russians. and then if the capital, if capital flees the war, then they can collapse everything. They can force the bank,

they can force the pension funds and the banks to buy all of their, their new war spending and, you know, and play that game. This, the, the propaganda is running hot and heavy at every level that the United States is in trouble and is a mess. It's all chaos all the time. Every time you see a headline, it's, doesn't matter who it is. And it's happening all across the financial space.

It's happening all across the political space. And it's designed to rob you of your reason, to create to invoke who a false reality of what's actually going on. When the people who are really weak are the ones who can have to cancel elections in order to keep their political power in places like Romania or, you know, have one country in effect, try to invade another, France versus Italy. All this stuff is happening. Europe is a, is a complete mess.

They have destroyed democracy in Germany in order to defend it. They've destroyed democracy in the UK. They've destroyed the idea that the domestic institutions have any, the, the people have any faith in their domestic institutions. This is also a strategic play because that is their plan. And their plan is to rearm. keep this war running for as long as possible and then fight and still believe that they can fight Russia to the death over the next five to seven years.

Okay. Trump wants no part of this. Putin clearly doesn't want any part of this. And so at the same time, they're trying to back Trump into a corner where he has to, where when they go, when you have a thing like happened over the weekend, that's an escalation that Putin has to respond to. because his biggest threat is being deposed by hardliners inside Russia, which is the British have been trying to get him to go offside and back him into a corner and erode his domestic support for six years now.

Forget the last three years of the war. So that's nothing has changed there. And they continue to end every one of these operations, every time they blow up Nord Stream or they attack the Kirtstraway Bridge or they attack the Moscow Opera House or this or that or blow up a bridge. The whole purpose of this is demoralization. And to say, Putin's not protecting Russians and to remove their political support of him. It hasn't worked yet.

This is a different, this is now another layer of isolation. He's going to respond to this. They're hoping that he responds in such a way that they can then invoke NATO Article 5 and trap Trump in their war. Well, you- which is the same exact playbook that they used against the Kaiser in World War I. And it's the same exact playbook that they used against Hitler in the run up to World War II. If you look at, if you look at Putin's options, right? Like, and the way, you know, like if I go back to when we first started talking, Tom, right?

Like, you know, I was just saying this to Rebecca Coughler. Like, I don't know Putin. I have no, you know, it's not like I shook him. It's not like I, you know, I just watch how the world, you know, I go back to when the Giants fight. This is a thought that you gave. me, you know, we just stay out of the way of the feet as they go back and forth. And I've been watching all these different leaders and how they react. And if you're Russia, like, you've been getting hammered and hammered and hammered. And their only reaction that they can do

is to hit Ukraine because that isn't NATO, even though it is NATO, right? Like, I mean, it's this political game of, you know, what can we actually do? So they go in and hit strategic, nuclear implications, which I'm sitting here and going, that is insane because he has justification right now in Russia to do whatever he wants. I would argue. If you're sitting, and the only thing, the only thing he has to be realized, which he obviously does, is if I do this, there's no coming back, right? There's literally no coming back. Because as soon as I go and hit, take your pick, folks that isn't Ukraine. NATO gets to go with their entire media machine and go, look, Russia bad. They just attacked this everywhere. They provoked it. It was unprovoked, sorry, and we're

going to go Adam Hart. Because right now, anywhere I go, the Canadian population has zero clue this is going on, like zero. And certainly you have followers. I have followers that are paying close attention to this. But they're watching this and the general or the greater Canadian population has zero clue. And if you ask him about it, they have no idea. And I'm watching this and I'm going, okay, so Russia has, you go, they're going to retaliate because they just got hammered. What are they going to do? Well, unless you're telling me something different, the only thing they can do is go after Ukraine, because that is the one thing that media, they can't build the story that they attack NATO, even though NATO's there. Even though in order for this entire operation to be pulled off,

it isn't the Ukrainians by themselves. Who's giving them all the, all, all this stuff. It's all of us. It's all of them. They lie. We know they lie. We know they know they know they and yet they continue to lie. That's where we are and we all know this and um so how does how does Putin and I don't know if this is a question you can answer, but how does Putin over the next is a year is it is it two years heck I you know I have faith I guess you know we talk about these these worlds we choose to we're choosing this path we're choosing that we're not going to nuclear holocaust. How does he create a world where he can attack more than Ukraine and not be justifiably like torn a piece? Or is that world not exist? I don't know. He doesn't, see,

here's the thing. The Russians have no ability to force project into Europe proper other than missiles. They had no ability to force project beyond Ukraine, beyond the borders of Belarus and Ukraine. They don't. Like, they don't have the logistical lift. They don't have the, they don't, their, their military is not designed for that. Their military is designed as a defensive operation. I go back to stuff the Saker used to write back in 2015, 2016 about this. The, you know, a thousand kilometers from the Russian borders as far as they can go. They can force project. And so any not, any possible, which is roughly 600 miles, folks. That, you know, any discussion to the contrary is just histrionics and is people lying

and they're lying through their teeth in order to achieve an agenda. And, you know, so you can ask a question why they're lying. Well, they're lying because they're trying to do something. They're trying to achieve something else. And they're trying to use Putin as the boogeyman in order to get the thing that they want. We all know what this war is about. They want the collateral and they want to destroy Russia. They're angry that they failed to get the control of Russia, you know, back there in the 1990s.

Putin turned the tables on them because they thought they had him. They thought they owned him. They don't. And now they're stuck at a quagmire that they don't know how to get out of. So they have to continue doing what they're doing because their system is failing. Like all their plans are failing, but they don't have any other. What's their fallback plan? Oh, well, we're just going to accept, you know.

subordinate, we're being subordinates to the awful gangs, the vile Russians and the dirty Chinese. Are you kidding? We're insouciate-wise and more valuable Europeans. We're never going to do that. So you have to understand the mindset of the people who you are dealing with, who are the closest thing to Jory Miller you could ask for, the villain from Ubeck. And once you understand what animates them and what and what they're animus, you know, what animates them and what they're animus against humanity actually is. And you realize that they're not going to stop. They live in an echo chamber, the leadership of Europe. Martin Armstrong has talked about this at great length, having been in the room with these people. And, you know, that's where we are. So going back to

my point I was trying to make earlier, Ukraine, Biden's pledged support for Ukraine from the United States runs out roughly at the end of this month. June. Note that Trump put on hold the 50% tariffs on the Europeans. He didn't do so because the trade talks were falling apart. He did so.

He put that announcement out there because they were betraying him and they were escalated. He knew they were trying to escalate the war. So that's on hold until July 9th. you have something else that now you have

there's something else that actually runs out of the same that comes ahead of it's oh you have the funding wall problem that the United States has which you have to roll over all this debt that Janet Ellen left for us and that hits its peak in July so you have all these things happening at the same time so what you have now is a maximum pressure campaign on

Trump to negotiate down and give them what they want. And they are literally blackmailing the world, I think, over using the budget reconciliation bill domestically, they're trying to get Trump to look, Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal and the usual suspects in the Senate would sign off on that bill tomorrow if Trump pledged $40 billion with the worth of support to Ukraine. I know I'm convinced I know I'm convinced of this why do you think Graham and Blumenthal and Mike Pompeo were in Ukraine last weekend like they were there shoring up the troops they were there Mike Pompeo was literally in Odessa violating the Logan Act because he's a private citizen now running around you know what are they doing like how are they why are they negotiating with foreign countries like why are they negotiating with foreign countries like why are they they doing this? So why are they acting on behalf of foreign intelligence services? Any support that the United States gave to this operation was likely done by rogue elements

within the CIA and the DOD. Because we know that Hague Seth and Trump and, you know, Ratcliffe and the rest of them do not want, have been, they're under orders not to do this. So we still have rogue elements within the American administration. We still have. We still have, And the key point about the operation was that it was done with the Russian cell networks. That's how they communicated. So once the operation was happening, it was just a matter of it was going to happen. So this thing was set up well before the Trump administration in many ways was done. It was in place.

Any support that's been that it got over the last four or five months is going to be rogue elements. And now Trump gets like be hung with it because they could have done this at any time they wanted to in the last. six months, nine months, but they waited until the apps, they waited to you to pull this card at this moment in time for this reason, for these reasons. Once you understand that, and you absolutely understand it within the context of how Trump and Putin have been dancing around, you know, trying to give each other off ramps, like they had a two-hour phone call the other days. Anybody heard anything about it?

No. Has Trump spoken in any way about what happened over the weekend? No, why? Because he's on the phone with everybody. He's not going to give shit away at this point. You've got Marco Rubio, let everybody know that he was on the phone with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Good. They're still talking. They're trying to figure out how to de-escalate this thing behind the scenes. Right. But this is a nasty operation.

It is a nasty bit of work by the nastiest people in the world. and I find it really interesting. And something I pointed out yesterday and the market reported for my patrons was that the German finance minister, this is a bit of good news, like counter pressure that's happening here, all these Babogian motherfuckers

who want to get us involved in World War III or basically blackmailing us with nuclear war if they don't get this like remain in charge of the world. That's what they're doing. They're saying, we're going to steal your lives so that we can continue to live because they're vampires. Once you recognize that you're dealing with vampires, right? All of this makes so much more sense.

But the Russian, the German finance minister came out the other day, who's a member of the Social Democrats, the SBD. Remember, German coalition right now is the CDU, Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats with no third party. Kind of a classic Merkel-like grand, what they call grand coalition. The SPD finance minister said, no, I am not sending any, I'm not paying and sending any more terrorist missiles to Ukraine because we can't afford it. That doesn't sound like much on the surface until you understand that Gerhard Trotter, the former SPD Chancellor of Germany, who's also the CEO of the Nord Stream 2 joint venture between Russia, between Gazprom and the five European oil majors that built Nord Stream 2,

understand that he has begun moving back into the political scene in Germany to try and stop the madness. So the way I read that is that Schroeder putting pressure on the German finance minister to stop the escalation. This is point number one, because the Germans are now clearly been put, placed into the role of being the point men for this so that the UK can be left to its own, can be left on the cutting room floor of who actually instigated this. So now we have Frederick Mers playing the part of the crazy German, right? Mers is coming to the White House on Thursday. What has Trump done to every foreign dignitary, foreign leader that he doesn't like? Dressed him down.

He's dressed them down publicly in the White House. Everybody has gotten a struggle session. So you want to know what's been, the German chancellor was just slimmed to the White House. What day is that? Thursday. I'm literally looking at, you know, below my screen, I'm literally looking at the, the note that was posted on 20. He's on his way to the White House on Thursday. Well, you know, like, I just, I go back to like, what moves does Putin have, you know,

Because like, you know, I get it. It's people's lives. I get, like, I get all the things. But if you just look at this as a giant game of chess, and obviously it's more complicated than that because it's more than just Putin and Trump, right? Like you got, I don't know what game to call this. Tom's probably got his thoughts. Seven player game of go or that one right there.

What one are you pointing out right there? Dune. Dune. Dune. Oh, Dune. Oh, Dune. Sorry. The Dune board game models is better than just about any other game.

ever played or diplomacy a variety of games like this but i like so one of one of the one of the things that don't trump keeps doing is bringing people into the oval office right bringing them in and then talking directly to them on national television it's just a move yes it's just something he can pull and i mean thursday is a date everybody's mark that wants to pay attention because you're going to see for 45 minutes exactly what he thinks and he's going to do it in a very public setting that is one of the things he can pull and i look at putin and i just go what other things can he pull that we're not seeing or maybe we don't you have to dig a little bit to see um so what putin is going to do here is it's june all the cards are on the table pretty obvious he's amassed lots of

troops to pressure the ukrainian front lines of multiple places and he's finally going to put troops on the ground they're attacking in the north and sumi they're pressuring and doing maneuver warfare on the south Remember, every year coming out of winter, Ukraine turns into a big mudball. You can't do much, especially the Ombast. You really can't do much with it. So it's an easy way to defend, you know, to stop large-scale operations, which is part of the reason why this war has been fought as a kind of classic siege warfare with artillery and very few people, very few, very little military, very little infantry.

I was talking to Joaqune Forre's the other day from my podcast, and he made the observation based on what he knows. And he's closer to this conflict than I am in many ways. And I trust Joaquin's reporting on this because he's one of the few people who doesn't have an ax to grind. He's very, he has a perspective like I do, but he's not, like he knows he has a preferred outcome and perspective, but he's willing to put all that aside and just look at the facts and just look at the situation as it stands.

because that's what you have to do because that's the way he was trained. He's very, very good at it. And he said, look, at one point, the Russians were running this operation with about an eight to one kill ratio, right? They were killing eight Ukrainians for every Russian they lost. He's like, I brought that up. And he said, no, Tom, it's actually closer to 14 to one. They are running this operation very, very cautiously.

They are conserving as much actual manpower. material and everything else, 155 millimeter shells are cheap. They can make them all day long. Even the Russians are good. Even if you, even if you don't believe anything about Russian industrial capacity and their, their war machine, whatever, even if you're the most, you know, diehard Russia as a gas station with a, you know, with nuclear weapons, argument, you can't argue that they know how to make, they don't know how to make 1505 millimeter artillery shells. They're pretty good at, and they make drones. So they send the drones in, the artillery, and then eventually they send a squad of guys in to clean up the one or two guys are left.

They kill him and they move on to the, and they secure that three or four square kilometers, and then they move on that square mile, and then they move on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. That's what they've been doing. But at some point, the move is going to be significant. And the Russians proved at the beginning of the war that they know how to do maneuver warfare. They know how to catch their opponents with their pants down. And so at some point, does Putin make a move towards, you know,

does he really make a move and start taking a large swaths of territory? Because his best play is to take as much territory from Ukraine as possible outside of the four Oblos that voted to become part of the Russian Federation. Because that's territory that he can, if he has to cede it back to Ukraine in a ceasefire, they're going to have to give it back at a three to one or four to one territorial advantage. It was the whole purpose of the curse invasion, incursion, which was to try and, you know, get a certain number, you get a whole bunch of area of Russia and then hold it and then use it as a negotiating employed to get three times the amount of area given back to Ukraine.

That's generally the way these things work out. Well, now Putin's doing the same thing in suing. Say, hey, oh, by the way, we're going to take 50 to 100 square kilometers a day. and we're going to want 300 square kilometers a day back. And that means we're going to take all of that perisha from you. We're going to take Mikhailaya or whatever it's going to wind up being. Moreover, the Russians are, I think they are committed to completely wiping out the staying on their operational goals. We will wipe out the Ukrainian army.

We will not allow NATO and everything else. And then, you know, it's funny, you say all this, right? I, you know, you saw the, you saw coming out of the meeting this morning, Zelensky's demands are, were as follows, according to Reuters. Ready for this? A 30-day full ceasefire and all for all POW exchange, a Zelensky Putin meeting, no limits on Ukrainian forces, no recognition of Russian territorial gains, Russian repatriation payments, and talks start from the current front line.

like this is the exact same shit that they said at the beginning of the war these are the exact same negotiating terms that they put forth that that led to the war in the first place so there is no negotiation here europe is not negotiating they never negotiate these people steal from you and then offer you at best some of what they stole from you and say well we'll give you this we'll give you some of the money, some of the money or some of the territory or whatever or that that we stole from you. We'll give you some of that back, but we want all this in return. No. We'll fight it on the ground. So there's no at this point, there has no indication whatsoever that there are actual negotiations going on as long as Zelensky is, and the Ukraine regime

in Kiev is backed by Macron, Kierstalin, Ersel Levanta Satan, Frederick Mers, all of it. You know, I, Frederick Mers looks like brain from Peking in the Brain. I can't, like I can't get it out of my head. I haven't come up with a good name for him yet, but, you know, like,

I can't have come up with a good Trumpian name for him yet, but that's where we are. It's Pinky in the brain and Larry. Pinky in the brain and Larry. What are we going to do today? We're going to attempt to take over the world. And the way the German military is set up right now. That was a great show.

That was a great show. That was a great show. If you play out, okay, follow me along here for two seconds, talk. If you play out, okay, they keep attacking Putin. Putin's only option is to attack Ukraine because if he goes anywhere else right now, it's an attack on NATO and possibly Article 5 gets called. And I don't mean possibly in the sense that it, like maybe it gets called. It's possibly countries actually come to the aid of NATO.

Right? Like, I think that's the thing that's hard to understand right now because the populations, from what I can tell, don't want war. That's the sense that I keep hearing from any country I talk to where I get to talk to somebody on the crown. They're like, yeah, nobody wants war. Nobody even thinks it's that close. Like, okay.

So they attack Poland and Article 5 gets called. Do the countries actually show up in, like, force that matters? We can argue about that. So in the meantime, his only, option is to keep taking more and more of Ukraine. Yes. If you play that out to the fullest extents, eventually he has all of Ukraine. Yeah, but I don't think he has the manpower, the material,

the resources to do that. I don't think he wants Rump Ukraine. Yeah, I don't think he wants the part of Ukraine that is rapidly anti-Russian. Who the hell wants to like rule over people who hate you? What he wants are see, let's let's let's let's let's rephrate. Literally literally daffo. response to rule over people who hate them. Right, right, right.

Okay, so let's reframe this because a lot of the people who are out there, like your average Canadian you were talking about, have still have this, this weird, disconnected thing. Like, well, Putin's the aggressor, therefore we should, you know, fight to, we should support Ukraine and trying to push them all. Yeah, but this not, but how? It's a big question. I was talking to a friend of mine last night.

They just had Larry Johnson at a, you know, they had one of their local meetings. and a couple of, you know, women, you know, stood up screaming, we have to do this. And Larry's like very simply, like, how? How many people in this room are willing to put their son and daughter or their granddaughter or grandson or whatever into into the, into the Donbass to be blown up by Russian artillery? Because that's what you're talking about.

What are you willing to do? It's all theoretical in their head. It's all an emotional response, right? And I talk to people. all the time and you see it like on Twitter these ab reactions well Putin could just go the hell home if he doesn't want to lose his nuclear triad he can just leave Ukraine like like no what you're saying is so Putin should just give up his country because strategically that's what we're talking about and that Russia just should just roll over and cease to exist because NATO wants it this way

because you are angry with him for going first in a war that was inevitable because you're having an emotional ab reaction to this because you, you have this, this thing in your head that's not real. So let's reframe this, shall we? So that people understand, how about we reframe this for the average Canadian or American, you know, soccer mom that does not, who is propagandized by literally Dobogian propaganda. Canada, all of the areas of Ukraine that the Russians are fighting in, this is not a war of, this is not an invasion. This is a liberation. From the Russians' perspective, these are dominant, Russian, ethnic Russian dominated areas of that,

of that, of that country that had an arbitrary political border drawn by foreign powers during a time when the Russian Federation was weak, and those people were subject. for 30 years under Ukrainian rule by a bunch of Ukrainians in Kiev who hated them and Russia's liberating them from the evil Ukrainians. Now, is that Putin's narrative? Yeah, it is. So what? You're willing to believe the Western narrative.

Why aren't you willing to give credence to the Russian narrative and realize that the truth lies somewhere in the middle? Because that's their plan. and it's a valid perspective given the history. I mean, I mean, no offense to the Ukrainians in the audience, but nobody from Mariupil is Ukrainian. And if they are, well, you're an exception rather than the norm, and you damn well know it.

But if you're from Kiev or you're from Palo, or, you know, some of the areas on the western side of the Nepper River, fine, no argument. You're different people. and you don't want to be ruled by Russians. Fine. But the people in the Donbas want to be ruled by Russians, period. And they want to be liberated from you people.

And what sticks in your craw is that you don't, that you want to rule them. How about everybody go fuck themselves and shut up and come to an agreement, which is that all the ethnic Russian areas should be seated back. to the Russian Federation. And Ukraine should be left as a rump. And the only, and Ukrainians can then do what they're going to do. And they can live their lives.

But what about all the polls in Lavath? What about all the Hungarians in Transcarpathia? What about all the Romanians in the one area that I don't know the name of? Right. What about all those people that, oh, by the way, the Ukrainians in charge that we put in charge the, this most disgusting Ukrainians, the ones that even Ukrainians don't like, who are the ones in charge of this? have been wiping out the ethnic Hungarians in Transcrapathia.

Are the ones that burned Russians in the trade union building in Holodemar, who have been persecuting Poles, who fled the country and have now, and the polls don't want them all gone. Like, this is insanity. And guess what? You want to support this? That's what you support? Because Putin bad?

Like, how about, no. So why don't you shut up? Because if you're not willing to pledge your life in sacred honor, you know, this isn't a skinner box where you just get to press the button and say punish Putin. Okay. It's not, that's not the way the world works. I mean, and the grievances between Russians and Ukrainians are real. No one's arguing that the Ukrainians don't like the Russians because the Russians

treated them badly during the Soviet Union or whatever. No one's arguing that. I live in the United States. I'm from the South. But I don't even really feel it in my bones because I'm second generation Italian, immigrant. I live in the South. I grew up in New York. I live in the South.

And by the way, Yankees hate Southerners and Southerners hate Yankees. And the Civil War ended 150 years ago, 160 years ago. Got news for you. It's deep. It's old. It's abiding. I get it. How about you all go back to your respective corners and leave each other alone?

Oh, we can't do that. Why? Well, because clearly somebody else wants that territory and they're willing to use you as the useful idiot and kill all your children. What does Putin's move? Continue to do exactly what he's doing. What does Trump's move? Wash his hands of the entire thing and say, okay, fine, NATO, you want this? We don't want to be a part of it. Like, if they're going to blackmail us with nuclear weapons, Putin, Trump's move is to convince the American people, it's time to leave NATO. And then Well, I don't even want to get into what that means for Canada. What does that mean for Canada?

Canada is a NATO member. And we're not. And we're not under that scenario. What does that mean? That means that if Mark Carney decides he wants to, wants to import 30 million people and then turn them all into, all into good soldiers for Davos to go fight in Russia and to destabilize the northern border of the United States, you and I've talked about this.

like it means that Trump's only move then is to invade Canada that's three years down the line obviously but you understand what I'm like like start playing this stuff out and this is where you wind up and but the reality is is that all this could be over in the next six to eight weeks in many ways from the United States perspective once the United States pulls out of the whole arrangement when slash if everybody's

Like, everybody's balls get shrink on an awful lot. Has anybody noticed that Bibi Netanyahu is not attacked Iran, even though he keeps bloviating about it every day? You know why? Because the Americans told him, don't attack Iran. But we control your government. No, you don't. We do.

And who was struggle session twice by Trump so far in the White House? So lots of options on the table, folks. we're still here. It's not Tuesday yet. By the time people are listening to us, it'll be Tuesday. Well, let's hope we get there, right, Sean? Ultimately. Well, I, you know, I just believe in,

you go back to, was it Philip K. Dick, or was it another man you're talking about, I think it was a Philip K. Dick, had went around talking about the different paths and what path we were on. Yeah. Roughly. I'm,

I'm busuring it. That speech from, he gave from, in France in 1977. Can't remember the French. You can look it up on YouTube. It's, it's,

and on, and on, and on Twitter. It's everywhere. Philip Kadeck speech, 1977, track A, track B,

that kind of thing. Yeah. I just, I just believe we're, we're going to wake up tomorrow, right? Like I'm, I look at,

uh, the power, you know, if I go back to our earliest conversations, me, you and Alex, you were the doom and gloom Alex was the piece of hope and I just slowly watch it morph to where I saw you two kind of come closer and closer to where I felt like there's a lot more hope in

where we're at because you know we literally were like a day after Nordstream blowing up or a day up or Nordstream blowing up it was close and I was like this is wild I can't believe this so now you see nuclear bombs being blown up and I just I just I see Putin as Michael Corleone he isn't Sonny. He isn't running up. Don't get me wrong. There's going to be some blowback for this. But in a very strategic way. Yes. Always has been. He's very good at it.

Parallel regression. Parallel aggression is the phrase that you want to have in your head. So, I don't know. Does that mean he blows up the air basin outside of Bucharest that they're building? And creates plausible deniability that wasn't the Russians and forces them into a forces NATO to cockerque some cockamamie cover story, which is what happened when, you know, when,

when the Americans and the Russians forced Netanyahu to accept blame for shooting down the Russian England plane over Syria back in 2019 or whatever, when it was clearly shot down by either the British or the French. And their involvement in that incident has been scrubbed from members. memory. But again, this is, this is, you know, downstream of very, it's a very astute analysis by walking Flores during that incident where the S-200 missile defense, air defense battery that supposedly shot down the plane thinking that it was an Israeli F-16 couldn't have done so because that missile couldn't have traveled that far. So how did that, how did that Russian

Neeland plane get shot down. Well, there were reports of, you know, fire, a missile fire from French or British frigates that were in the area. So the rest of the story that we got told was that Netanyahu, they went with that story that the Syrians shot it down because the the Israelis flew F-16s too close to Syria. The guy panicked and and hit the Russian plane by mistake. It's bullshit. But it kept us out of World War III. The Russians and the Americans have been coordinating behind the scenes, their maneuvers, their air maneuvers and everything else for 10 years over Syria. There are extensive back channels within the militaries over this stuff.

Now, that's not to say it's the only set of back channels that exist. I'd had Rebecca Coughlin. Is it dangerous? Yes, but God knows. I'd had Rebecca Coughler on last week. she's a Russian born grew up in the Soviet Union and then became a US intelligence officer and then got booted out of that and then got booted off Fox just recently and on and on and on and you know she was talking about Putin the

assassination attempt on him and how Trump didn't know do you believe that Trump didn't know or you think he he playing different pieces there no I don't think he knew I think he's got I think he's got I think he's got bad I mean like I think he's got I mean like I think he's a better obstacle than he had the first time, but I don't think it's perfect. Like, I don't think Tulsi Gabbard is like not informing him. Like, I don't think she's like, you know, sabotaging him. Yes. Right.

But I don't think Pete Hakeseth is either. But I can tell you that other people are going to be, you know, you know, do they silo him off? Do they do they do these things when he's like, remember, do they do these things when they know he takes the day off and goes on the golf course to decompress? after the week, which is what he does. Like, he likes to throw out stink bombs on Thursday and Friday to set the Overton window for the weekend, then go play golf

on Saturday and watch and watch everybody light their hair on fire. Then he comes back on Sunday and then plays the and plays the Overton window manipulation game, which he's preternaturally good at. Mind you. And that's going to be his, that's, you know, they used his

modus operandi against him. That's what I think. I mean, And that this kind of thing slipped through the cracks. Even though, yeah, was it everywhere? I was on Twitter. Yeah, but what if Trump is not looking at his Twitter feed? You know, he's not, you know, there are, or there were other things that he was dealing with, right?

That he was in meetings with dissent on, you know, or Bill Pulte. Or he's, remember, he's engaged in a fight against these people and rebuilding the country across five, six, seven different. vectors at the same time. So I don't know about you, but I don't have infinite bandwidth. No, I certainly do not. Right. I certainly do not. Right. And I don't think Donald Trump, and I think assuming that Donald Trump of all people has infinite bandwidth, remember, you can be the smartest guy in the room, but you can't be smarter than the room. You can be the most informed guy in the room, but still not be more informed than the room. Let's put it in those terms. I'm not trying to make, I'm not trying to give cope here or anything. Like, I'm just trying to

remind everybody that the realities that we create for ourselves are different than the realities for any individual that we're dealing with. Like, it's just, you know, and then if you have bad actors trying to alter said reality of particular people, well, then you're going to, you may get moments like this occur. Like, it's, it, you know, I, the, assume that Trump is up on board of everything that's happening at all phases and all facets of this is a bad assumption does he more engaged than joe biden was well obviously a goldfish could be informed and biden but but let's let's if it doesn't matter whoever was running the country which yes yeah yeah but how about this no one was running the country that's the scarier part not that there was one

mastermind behind the scene controlling the auto pen and running, you know, it wasn't just Obama. It was everybody. Everybody had control of the auto pen. When it came to banking, it was a little bit Warren. When it came to foreign policy, it was this guy. When it came to this, you know, the cabinet ran the country and the cabinet secretaries ran the country. And Joe Biden. So. Tom, I appreciate you hopping on and doing this. And I got to get you and Alex back together, I got back together. Sure. But regardless, thanks for hopping on this morning and doing this.

Thanks for the book Suggestion, Ubek. If people want to take a story that is kind of out of this world and have a profound moment at the end, you know, Ubek is sitting there and appreciate you talking about the forum and then pushing on me to read it. And, well, look forward to the next time we cross. pass. Thank you, Sean. What I would remind everybody is that sometimes audiobooks are great, but sometimes you really should read the work itself and have your voice read the work. I think

Phil Dick works. I've tried to listen to many audiobooks of his and I'm not crazy about the audiobook presentations. I think the book should just be read in particular. I think it's to take the time to like absorb them chapter by chapter. I think it's important. So that's my. That's my personal take. And thank you, Sean, for, I'm glad we were able to make this work. You can actually, everybody can thank Vince Launcee for allowing me to be here this morning. So like, because I pushed off, uh, recording with Vince for an hour. Thanks, Vince.

So yeah. So thanks Vince. Thank Vince and, you know, all that. And, you know, might as well thank somebody. So, uh, we're all still here. Isn't it great? Isn't it great? Thanks, Tom.

Take care.