The Duran Podcast - Alaska summit, final off-ramp for Trump w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Alaska summit, final off-ramp for Trump w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

We're going live, Alexander. All right, we are live with Alexander Mercuris, and we have with us the great Robert Bards. Robert, where can people find your work? For any of the political or sports or other prediction markets, I'll be cheering for the Cyprus team today to knock off Diedemokeiv from Ukraine playing there in the Champions League qualifiers. That's at sportspix. dot locals.com for all of the law and politics and geopolitics, including videos we did on Ukraine

all the way back, uh, the way to know all that started. That's at Vibaba Barnes Law dot locals.com. For those interested in the legal cases, uh, concerning financial freedom or food freedom or medical freedom, uh, we're talking about Amish farmers or any, uh, or any of the Roger V or Bitcoin, Jesus, any of those other cases, uh, that's at 1776 law center.com. I will have those. links in the description box down below. And a big shout out to everyone that is watching us on Odyssey and Rockfin Rumble and YouTube and of course our locals community, the durand.com. Hello to all our moderators as well.

T. Jordan is in the house moderating and who else. And Zareel is with us as well. So Robert Alexander, big day coming up this Friday. Let's talk about it. Absolutely. And a big day that was completely unexpected. I don't know how people in Washington managed to keep it so quiet. But suddenly we learn, even as in Europe, they're all salivating at the prospect of massive sanctions, tremendous tariffs.

the bone-crushing sanctions that are going to crush Putin and the United States angry and disappointed with Putin. Suddenly we learned that Witkoff is heading to Moscow and that creates a little tremor. And then we learned that Trump is saying that this is a breakthrough and the tremor is a bit bigger. And then suddenly the real shock, the earthquake announcement that in fact Putin and Trump are going to meet. and then horror of horrors they're going to meet in the united states they're going to meet in alaska uh Putin uh the enemy of all humanity is coming to the united states he's going to be the guest of the president um it cannot one cannot overstate the sense of horror dismay astonishment anger that exists in europe at this time and even as we're speaking

Friedrich Marx is busy assembling the European leaders to talk to Trump, basically to beg him to take a hard line against Putin. Zelensky has been trying to get an invitation to go to Alaska as well, and so far he's been refused. The Europeans are worried about what Trump and Putin are going to say to each other. I've never known, in my lifetime, a superpower summit, which in a kind of a sense this is, take place. place in such an atmosphere in Europe, such an atmosphere of anger, hysteria, dismay and whatever. Anyway, no better person to unpack this all with than Robert Vance. Robert, you have your ear to the ground in the United States. You're able to keep track of a lot of what's going on there.

And of course, this has come to the Europeans like a bolt from the blue. It came to Zelensky like a bolt from the blue. my senses that this has been prepared rather more carefully than many people had realized. Rubio about two weeks ago disclosed that there'd been a secret meeting, a private meeting, between the Americans of the Russians, where they discussed Ukraine issues, which is interesting. And I noticed that the media didn't pick up on that. Lukashenko, the president of Belarus. also disclosed that he'd had a meeting with Americans, he didn't say which Americans,

and that they discussed the possibility of a ceasefire in the sky and that he brought that up with Putin. So there's been contacts and there's been discussions. And in a place like Washington, keeping discussions like that so much, so quiet, really takes something. But it seems to me that this has been under preparation for some time. So first of all, Robert, am I right about that? And secondly, what you think is going on? Let's talk about the generalities of where this is going.

And then maybe we can look at some of the particulars. I think you're absolutely right. Now, I have a secret plan to get the complete piece. What we should do is we should bring special gifts for everybody in the European theatre that is complaining about being excluded from this. For Zelensky, two movie deal. He gets to play Lincoln and he gets to play Churchill. He'll be directed by Sean Penn, soundtrack by U2 and Bono.

And in his trailer, there will be a lifetime supply of cocaine, a shape in the way of he really cares about Ukraine's territory. So the original 1991 Ukraine territorial limits for Starmor, we promised that Elaine Maxwell will not incriminate any other members of the British royalty. For Macron, we will get Candace Owens to retract and quit calling. her his wife a man and a petter ass the and not you know we got to of course have something there for vander crazy the for her a remedial educational course on the history of what happens when europe tries to go to war with russia the hint russia usually wins europe usually

loses so the we can have all that and even for lady lindsay will have a lifetime supply of zolensky look-like prostitutes so he doesn't have to be on the bottom like he usually is the for all of that crowd. But I think you're absolutely right. This was in fact more in motion than even I thought was the case. As you guys pointed out, there were these meetings going on in the shadows that would occasionally pop up in the press, but there was no further explanation or explication of it. And here's evidence that this was, that Trump is serious about at a minimum exiting from this entire Ukraine debacle for the

United States. So if you go all the way back 10 years ago, 2015, 2016, Trump's original plan was, as he kept saying on the campaign trail, when Putin had like a 1% approval rating in the United States, he was, one of his taglines was, wouldn't we be better off if we got along with Putin? Wouldn't we better off if we got along with Russia? This was one of his most dissident views on foreign policy. Indeed, Russia Gate was launched the moment he said that on the campaign trail. That's when they try to set them up. Tell us who are your foreign policy advisors, then to spy on the foreign policy advisors, then to spy on his campaign, then later to smear his campaign, then later to sabotage, not only his campaign, but his presidency. Russiagate commenced with all this.

And think about if this had just been done a month ago. If he had done this summit a month ago, the headline would be, see, we were right. Trump is a Putin agent, Russian agent. Told you, that was the whole thing. Why is that not something they feel comfortable saying? in the American press at the moment or prominent American political figures who said it before. Well, because they're under criminal investigation. So to a degree, Russia Gate was getting exposed by Tulsi Gabbard was essential to this even happening at all in the first place. And you'd have to wonder when you add it with other things, maybe the timing was deliberate.

You've got these secret conversations going on in order to set up a potential summit. you've got the big hurdle, the perception that he has, works for Russia, being removed and scandalized for anyone to even say that at this moment. But not only that, the people involved in it, all under criminal investigation. So Brennan goes out and says anything right now against this, it just reinforces why he should be in prison already. The same with Clapper, the same with the entire military, industrial complex industry and individuals that were associated with this. Indeed, even Adam Schiff, who was one of the key people who promoted the Russia Gate hoax.

Key now in the Senate was in the House. Well, he's under criminal investigation for mortgage fraud. Is it a coincidence if that was announced last week? Or is that a message to him? You got your own issues to worry about. Don't try to sabotage the summit. So a lot of the individual deep state actors that despise this are sidelined because of the Russia Gate investigation or other criminal investigations

that have been announced. Other evidence that this was intended, you look at what Hegsseth had done. Hegsth kind of set this up earlier in the year by saying, you know what, we're out of weapons anyway. We can't send him. We're out of weapons. Eldridge Colby.

And in the administration, the people that have been skeptical of the Ukraine conflict has been Hegsth, Colby, Kennedy, Tulsi, and Vance. That's the five people that, now the, some of them have greater influence in others. Kennedy is more of an advisor because he's in the health department. So, you know, he doesn't have direct power over these policies. though I would know, by the way, where he was last week, maybe coincidentally, he was in Alaska. So just a little tidbit there. But you look at what Hakeseth and Colby do.

They say we've got major weapons shortages. They release the report. Then they try to freeze the weapons to Ukraine. That causes a bunch of backlash as people get insanely mad. And then they say, well, maybe we'll sell it to Ukraine. We still don't have them. So whether we're selling, whether we're given, what we ain't got, we ain't got. and quietly this week,

they pulled back some of the weapons they had previously released to Ukraine. So that's how Hegseth has played this. So you look at how everybody's played a certain role on this. And if you noted, Lady Lindsay was kind of much more mooted, muted than, say,

John Bolton was who was going ballistic. Almost he sounded like the Europeans. Or you could say the Europeans, Alex pointed out, kind of sound like him, who's pulling whose strings here. The, but why was Lady Lillian? Lindsay muted. Well, last week it was announced, Paul Danz is challenging him for the Senate.

Paul Dan's, I know personally, it was a high-ranking Trump administration official, was pushed out by Swampy Susie because of the association with Project 2025. He is, as Lady Lindsay found out last week, due to meetings and some other things, Dan's is a serious challenger, the most serious challenger Graham has ever had. What does that mean? And what is he getting beat over the head with for being a childless, churchless war whore on Ukraine? especially. That's the right now, if the election were held today in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham would lose his renomination for the Senate. That might have something to do with Lady Lindsay. Mitch McConnell's got his own issues. He thought he was going to pick his successor.

He had these two successors running. All of a sudden, Nate Morris comes in the race, runs on a pure Trump issue, running against the wars, running on a different trade policy. And he is surging, which means Mitch McConnell may not be able to pick his successor at all. And last but not least in the middle of all this, who is it that right now could cause the biggest problem to Trump in actual action? Why is Trump rushing this? Why is the fact that he's rushing it? Evidence of his sincerity to want to use this to take Putin's, what, 15th exit ramp he's been given

to actually take it and get the heck out of this thing. The evidence for the is because the Senate is in recess. The Senate is the deep state center of power within the political structure. not within the institutional structure, but within elected bodies. And they were floating $55 billion for Ukraine that they were going to push through. And then they didn't push it through right at the end. And they're like, screw you, Trump, we'll hold these nominees over your head and will not give you 200 nominees, nor will we allow you to recess appoint them. Because they want to use it as leverage on Trump.

But they decided to go on recess. They're not going to be back until after Labor Day. Well, what does that mean? It means Trump's got about a month to get. this done before they can sabotage it. So the ship has sailed and is out of port before anything else. That fact, I think, is a critical factor to why this is going so fast. And Trump kept it very under the hood and under wraps. So that, I mean, most of it, we talked offline that I saw last week right before Wickhoff went over, all of a sudden, J.D. Vance is sharing a Trump

truth post on this on Twitter on X. Pete Hegsith is. Donald Trump. junior is. And they're saying, see, Trump wants peace. And I thought, that's unusual for the three of them to do that. They're signaling something to somebody. And even though I didn't like the post because it had all the fake numbers in it, all the rest. Though there is a good interpretation of Trump truth post, ignore everything except the last sentence. The last sentence usually is actually what matters, about two-thirds of the time. The, in the last sentence was, I want peace. That told me that they thought something was afoot, that Trump had made a choice, that he had decided to abandon the last six months of tried the Kellogg route, tried the Nodd

the Yon-Rout, it's getting me nothing but headaches, getting me nothing but nightmares, getting me nothing but economic risk, political risk, geopolitical risk. You know, the Indians are sky high mad at me because of this. And used to have a great relationship with them. What is this worth? It's not getting me nothing. Putin ain't folding. I clearly talked to Orban. Orban is like, you know, the Russians are really good at one thing, if anything, if they're good at anything, they're definitely really good at war and winning war and sort of had a pragmatic effect on. So I think the timing of this, the sequence of this suggests that in fact, this has been afoot by the people who won us out of Ukraine and that they all did something significant or substantial. And then who's the one making the rounds to Europe to sell what happened?

It's not Kellogg. Who is that they send to Russia? Not Kellogg. They send Whitkoff, who has wanted this exit ramp all along. It was aligned with the Vance Wing on these issues. And with Trump's original instinct, get along with VIII. Russia. Trump's campaign promise, I'm going to get us out of this war. I guarantee you. Day one. He doesn't like having to explain. Well, I was really kind of joking. That's not a good pitch.

So he's got internal domestic issues on the economy. He's got he's got internal domestic issues politically because of the Epstein files and how that's blown back on him because of the Iran strikes. That divided large parts of his base because, you know, BB Netanyahu keeps going full BB in Gaza. that's creating daily nightmares for him and daily headaches for him. So does he really need a conflict with Russia in the middle of all that? So I think Trump is very sincere at wanting an exit ramp. And over the last month, the peace elements brilliantly put the pieces in place for this to happen. So that's what I think you're absolutely right.

This was actually a foot. It's been a foot for more than a month. And Trump was able to outmaneuver the, neo-coms in the deep state for at least this period of time. We'll see if it lasts through Friday. What is extraordinary to me is that the Europeans are working over time to give Trump that exit wrap. It's quite bizarre to watch them because instead of basically trying to join in this process, and it's interesting that Trump kept them well away from Alaska, and he's kept Zelensky, so far well away from Alaska. Anyway, they are, they're working to try to get him back to the position

that he was in before we went to Moscow. Massive sanctions against Russia, massive tariffs. They are saying terrible things about him again in the European media. There's the Financial Times which says today that he should impose massive sanctions and increase arms supplies to Ukraine and make no concessions to Putin at all. There is mouths who's basically saying the same thing. The point is that they are advising Trump to do precisely those things which have been repeatedly tried, which have already failed. It's quite extraordinary to see this,

that whatever Trump does to try and meet with Putin at this time, to try and come to some kind of understanding, the Europeans, the only thing they seem to know is to be as obstructive and as unreasonable and as entitled as possible. I mean, the entitlement is remarkable, the sense that, you know, he somehow has a duty and a responsibility to defer to them on Ukraine-related things. And the other thing, which I again find very extraordinary, is that it's somehow wrong for the United States to talk to Russia, for the President of the United States to talk to Russia. He must have Zelensky there. He must have the Europeans there. Why should the President of the United States not speak to the President of Russia or meet with him if he thinks that it isn't the best? interests of the United States. So I think that I don't know how this is coming across in the United

States. I don't mean now, you know, the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN and NBC and all of those sort of people. But I don't know how this is coming across to people, you know, up and down and across the United States, the real people in the United States, if I can call them that. But to me, as I said, the Europeans are acting here like spoiled children. children who are just incredibly angry that they're not given what they think they should have. And the way that they are approaching this whole business and the United States, I would have thought would harden American attitudes against them and make Trump exiting this war, if that's what he chooses to do easier.

What are your thoughts about that, Robert? Absolutely. I mean, it reminded me of the famous Cossack letter, the painting that hangs in the state museum of St. Petersburg, where after the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire had lost to the Cossacks, you know, this is at least the legend. How much is true? How much is legend you can put in there? But reportedly demanded they immediately surrender and honor him. And this is after they lost.

And this is what Europe is doing. After they keep losing, they're like the money python. a night, you know, he loses four arms and, you know, just, just a scratch, just a scratch. Come here, I'll take you out. That's, I mean, somebody should do a meme and put the Starmor and Macron or, I mean, all people, by the way, who are intensely unpopular, not only in Europe, but in their own countries. Starmor pretty much hated in the UK, Macron pretty much hated in France. Bander crazy's never had a popular base anywhere.

Just to interrupt you, latest opinion polls from Germany, Mautz's popularity is going absolutely south at record speed. He's more unpopular at this stage in his chancellorship than Olaf Schultz was and then saying something. Incredible. It's like, so Trump is supposed to get lectured by people who, by the way, who have historically been hostile to him, people who sabotaged him, critical to all of Russiagate was MI6 and people like Halper and the good professor, Miss Food, and all these other people, many of them, they've never managed to locate somehow in many instances. But, you know, they're still covering for Gina Haspel, who was connected to this through her

London station before she became CIA director, thanks to that corrupt hack, Mike Pompeo, who was a saboteur in Trump's whole first term. Zelensky, of course, set Trump up for that first impeachment, didn't come to his defense and sabotaged him all the way through. All these people did things to try to get him indicted between 2020 and 2024. All of these people did something to try to prevent his president, his election in 2024. So the and if there's anything about Trump, he literally doesn't forget. He does it when it comes to vengeance, he has an elephant's memory.

So the, whereas Putin has very sagely, very wisely managed that whenever Trump had a temperate after him on any issue related to this, didn't take debate, continue to say positive and encouraging things, continue to say supportive and nice things. Even Trump was like he felt baffled by it. He said, he says, no, it's nice on the phone. And then the war continues. Yeah, of course. They're going to win.

That's what they do. I got forfeit. So I don't think, I think all this does is prove JD right. So, you know, JD came in and said, you can't trust Zelensky, you can't trust Europe, we got to get out of this, you can't trust these advisors. Kellogg lied to him for six straight months. And the problem for Kellogg is you've got to be right at some point. You've got to have some short-term predictability accuracy or Trump starts to realize you're a complete fraud.

So the Trump's, you know, good and bad with Trump as he can turn on a dime. So I think as you put it out, Alexander, he has a Houdini ability to escape political risk. All of a sudden, you think he's done for, he's done, he's finished, it's over, bam, he gets out of it one way or another. A little bit of Teflon Don in that regard. But a skill in that regard is he's not ideologically committed to this war. He doesn't have obsessive Russophobia like the Deep State does in America, like Europe does. I mean, I was watching, I was trying to find some useful doctor. documentaries last night on Russia. I was like, yeah, I'll see what's out there. And there's a whole

bunch of stuff from the BBC. And it's all how evil Russia is. Like even the documentaries, it's let's focus on Ivan the Terrible. Let's focus on Stalin. Let's focus on Lenin. It's like, there's no other part of Russian history, apparently other than that. So we've been bombarded in America for 20 years with 25 years with anti-Russian propaganda. If you want to see an enemy in an action film, he's going to be Russian. Surprise, surprise, that sort of thing. The But Trump, for whatever reason, has never bought into that. Never believed it. Never accepted it.

Never thought it. So he played the, he sung to the lyrics of Kellogg's deep state allies for the last six months. But they kept promising him something that was a siren song. They kept saying, if you do this, Russia will fold. Hey, Russia's casualty rate is so high. They have to get out of this. Russia's economy is collapsing. You, Trump, have to be the one to give Putin the exit ramp.

Just put a little more pressure. just squeeze them a little bit longer. The, that they're losing on the battlefield, that the, that if you, that these other countries are weak. If you squeeze India,

they'll fold. If you squeeze China, the fold. If you squeeze Brazil, they'll fold. Even Brazil's not folding. So he sees, okay,

none of this is working like they said it was. And Trump has no ideological commitment to any of it. Now, so if you look at the three different camps that most people are in, you got one camp, the most idealistic camp, is that we actually get a, return to 2015. We get a what Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, we're calling a rapprochement with Russia,

which gives you an idea of what the zeitgeist is for the Maga Populist base that's more informed on the foreign policy side. That's what they want. They want rapprochement with Russia. Now, and there's issues beyond Ukraine. The Ukraine is the big hurdle, the big obstacle. They would like that obstacle removed. And then they would like to have deals on rare earths, because right now China's holding this hostage. We really can't. You know, Trump extended more, 90 more days, tariffs. We can't get China to squeal because we have to squeal because they got a monopoly on rare earth.

Can you imagine building up a U.S. military industry? Yeah, we're going to take on China someday. Yeah, we depend on China to be able to build our planes. What's that? I mean, it's one of the dumbest things ever. But that's the reality there. But who has a lot of rare earth? Who keeps saying he has a lot of rare earth?

Putin and Russia. Who can keep energy prices stable, which is critical to everything Trump is trying to do economically critical to the first term, critical to this term, bringing the cost of living down in the United States, or at least the growth in the cost of living down, is energy cost. Who can control that as much as anybody, Putin and Russia. You see the economic advisor on exit was another reason why I thought something might be really afoot. The Russian economic, I think, I think it's an economic investment.

I forget his exact title, but he's the one that was, you know, walking around the park there in Moscow, here, Whitkoff. This is where Trump, and this is the kind of deal of Trump, loves of course he would love to do a deal on rare earth he would love to do a deal on the arctic circle development which is which is seen is having this huge potential and the only way we get arctic development is we have to do work with russia we really don't have to work with anybody else because of alaska we don't even have to deal with the canadians uh the connect uh we really just have to deal with the rouskis uh but that was that's a great potential it's the kind of deal trump loves

you know it's a greenland type deal it also fits within those people who want geopolitical focal, you know, great regions, great powers, regional control, not global control. That is still the ideological intellectual impetus of the Vance Wing of the party, which is the intellectual version of Trump's instinctual tendencies. And then, you know, I think people in the states are, even people in the people of the Pentagon, for sure, are reconsidering our 2019 exit from start. The, you know, it was, hey, you know, Russians are cheating. there was no evidence to Russia and were cheating, but we thought we had an edge by pulling out of start.

Now it looks like Russia is going to have the edge because of their weapons development by us pulling out of start. So maybe it would be good to get back into the arms control business. And as we've seen what drone warfare can do, as we've seen how AI can play a role, maybe we should get back to the arms control business extended into drones, extended into AI, so that, you know, we don't get a president who sends nuclear submarines to Russia because he didn't like somebody's tweet, right? We need a little de-escalation rather than escalation. So there's so many different ways they can do it. And then the talk from Europe of somehow they can block us, somehow they can, I mean, what are they going to do?

If we come out and say, no, we will veto any NATO, I hope this is right. I think this at a minimum could help achieve our exit from the Ukraine conflict. If we say we will veto, as long as Russia offers this deal to Ukraine, whether they take it or not, a deal of the four territories plus Crimea, basically instantbo plus. Those four territories plus Crimea are, we recognize their de facto Russian. And the two territories that where Russia is currently in, right, there might even be a third, especially now, because they're just going, going, going, going, going as we speak, they pull out of those territories, Sumi, Harkiv, etc. That's, Trump wants to sell it as a territory.

Someone that asks the question of super chat, he wants to sell it as a swap of territory. Yeah. Right. It doesn't matter how much territory is actually swapped. It's just that he can say it. That's all he needs the PR. He goes, look, I got him to the table, got a deal. And he's setting Europe up to do exactly what Europe's doing,

because this allows him to exit with clean PR in the United States. He goes, look, I got Putin to the table. I got Putin to agree to a deal. I got the end of the conflict. And who was it that saying Russia's goal was to take over all of Ukraine? Who was it to say that you were going to use Ukraine to invade the rest of Europe? It was Europe. So he takes that off the table.

Now, some of us never thought that was on the table, but it was Europe that claimed it was on the table. So screw them. They just said, hey, look, I, I solved the big problem you guys were worried about. And the historically Russian, ancestrally Russian, Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine that are historically Russian, that have already voted using the Kosovo precedent. You know, all of a sudden Zelensky cares about its constitution. You can see that irritated Trump.

So you care about your constitution? Did you care about your constitution when you went to war? Did you care about your constitution when you're leading to the mass death of your people? You even have the mayor there, the former heavyweight boxer, the only Ukrainian with any name idea other than Zalindon. in America saying it's time to exit. And is it a coincidence when Gallup, going to your point about something was a foot in advance, somebody may have motivated Gallup to do that survey of Ukraine, knowing what those results were going to be, because Gallup goes into Ukraine and massively by 50-point margin, Ukraine, ordinary people want out of this war. So all these European leaders demanding Trump do

something, Trump's actually delivering what they claim was the greatest risk, which is for Russia, to not have all of Ukraine, for Russia not to be in a position to invade Europe. This was their pretext for our involvement at all. The Kosovo precedent establishes, for those who don't remember, Kosovo probably, Europe loves borders. They have a deep respect for borders. They're a country called Yugoslavia. They broke it up.

And they established Kosovo, Russia objected at the time as the precedent. They said, Kosovo, the old self-determination post-League of Nations 1920s logic. They said, you have a right of self-determination. You have a right to create your own name. Heck, that's how many of these European nations were created, who was going back to that self-determination logic of Woodrow Wilson and grew. And whether there was ulterior agendas there, you know, that's another debate for it today. That was the principle that we established.

And then over Russia's objection, the international courts said, the European court said, yes, indeed, Kosovo has the right, despite Yugoslavia's constitution prohibiting it, to secede and create their own country. That's exactly what Putin is an autist when it comes to the law in certain respects. He's probably the only one in the world these days, actually cares about the rule of law, which is, you know, he's accused of the opposite. But what did he do? All those Russian territories voted in free and fair, full elections,

massive turnout, some of the highest turnout in the history of those provinces in Ukrainian elections, and they voted overwhelmingly each of these regions to join Russia. So he has the Kosovo precedent that establishes its international law. So we can just say the Russian regions are Russian. That's the way it is. That's the military reality on the ground. That's the historical reality. that's the international law that justifies it and rationalizes it.

And we take away what Europe said was the big threat, which was Moscow in Kiev, Moscow in Leviv, Moscow on the borders of Poland, all those things that they said were great risk. We've now taken off the table. So Europe is not in a position to meaningfully object. And if we come out and say, we will veto any effort of Ukraine to join NATO. And we put that in some legally binding manner in some manner. We've said it before, but we haven't said it publicly in a way that. was sort of guaranteed at the summit, and we haven't said it in a way that Russia could really

point to that binds us. Just that by itself can go a long way to getting us out of Ukraine. And then second say, as long as Russia offers these terms to Ukraine, we will know, regardless of what Ukraine does, we will no longer arm Ukraine, we will no longer fund Ukraine. If Europe wants to buy weapons and do what if they want with it, go ahead. Europe doesn't have the money. Europe has no leverage. They don't have the industrial. base to build the weapons themselves. To give you an idea that some people in Europe think this is serious, German defense contracts stocks are going. So they think that the Ukraine conflict is coming to an exit. They think that this is real. And I get for Lectic and other people that there's a big,

there's one skeptic camp that says, look, no politician in America has agency. The permanent state runs America. Nobody can do anything about it. I understand that skepticism, seeing what's happened in the last 70 years, you know, presidents get impeached or indicted or investigated or murdered when they have challenged the permanent state, the deep state. But I think there's a lot more agency there than people give credit to. So I disagree with that premise. And then the same with those that there's some, there's something just like deeply anti-American or deeply anti-Trump, so they can't process this. And I think that that filter limits their ability to be accurate short-term, medium-term predictability. I think Trump wants an exit ramp, and I think if he wants it,

he can get it, he can take it, and Europe can just keep crying in the background. And the Russians will give it to him. I think that's basically what this is all about, ultimately. I think that it's very unclear exactly what Putin and Wickoff said to each other, but all the indications of that the Russians were providing Trump with an exit ramp. And it's that way around as well. Now, coming back to the Europeans, I mean, they probably would, veto all of this. I mean, Zelensky will not agree to this because of course this isn't what Zelensky personally wants for himself. I guess that's an essential thing to understand. What Zelensky wants is that he remains president of Ukraine right up until the moment

when the Russian army enters Kiev. Then he gets his French and British friends. To take him out, he establishes himself in the south of France. He's president in exile for life. He's got vast money that he's managed to bring out with him with all of his various friends. As president in exile for life, he continues to have international recognition, at least in Europe. And that is for Zelensky, I am sure, the optimal outcome. Now, for the Europeans, it makes absolutely no sense what they're doing, because they're going to, because they veto this, they are going to lose.

This brings me to my next point, because not only would this be an exit ramp for the United States if the Europeans say no, could it also be an exit ramp, at least the start of an exit for the United States from Europe itself, by which I don't mean the United States turns completely its back on Europe, all of that nonsense. But this alliance, this collective West thing, which to me has stopped making any sense, either objectively for the Europeans or the Americans for a very, very long time, do we start to see the beginning of the end of that? Because I think that would be in everybody's interests if we did. I think one of the things people have forgot is the other part of Trump's let's get along with Russia. If you want to know what is Trump's true ideological

inclination on Europe instinctually, it's go back to his 2015 and 2016 campaign when he felt the most unfettered. And one part was, let's get along with Putin. Another part was, hey, let's not overthrow governments all over the world. You can see his Saudi Arabia speech on that. No more rules-based order lecturing, no more regime change operations. All of the that. But another big part of it was, let's get out of NATO. People have forgotten that. I mean, the Bolton was going around complaining after 2020, you have to keep Trump out from getting back in because Trump still plans on getting us out of NATO. The, you know, NATO's currently promising, bogus promises. Now, that was a mistake too. I also think the timing of this, Trump didn't want

Europe to know he was planning on this so he could get Vander crazy to sign off on the tariff deal and promise huge amounts of money to him. And then he figured out, I'll square him after that. The, uh, in the Senate, he has no respect for the Europeans. Uh, you, you can see that in his individual interaction. J.D. Vance is very good at being polite, diplomatic. Uh, he has no respect for the Europeans. Uh, the, you know, I get people to say, oh, the, they're trying to use the Europe as an extended version of permanent state policy. That's not the way at least Trump and Vance perceive it. They see Europe as a hurdle, Europe as a obstacle, Europe as a hindrance, Europe as dragging them down.

And that's why Vance highlighted all the things that differentiate us between Europe on cultural, social values, on speech, particularly on interfering in elections. He told them, don't do what they did in Romania, and they went and did it again. So they've had no respect for him. He sees them as a major problem. America was formed in divorce from Europe and divorce from European wars.

We need to return to those American principles. Like John Quincy Adams said, we do my people say well why do you why do you like john quitsy out of speech well it's a great he was also a family cousin so you know like uh Alexander McCores a lot of you know great I ran into a random Greek person by the way uh or a buddy of mine that's great but I'd never talked about it was oh there's this Duran show da da da and he goes oh I'm not sure because he's not very politically active or engaged and I was like oh one of them's Alexander McCorce it was oh mccorce uh so the uh that that that that that let that family name means something there

but it was we do not go abroad searching for monsters to destroy, which is the whole European model. We go find a monster and go destroy it or pretend they're a monster so that you can destroy it and keep the war machine going and going and going and going and going and going. I mean, as you point out, the insanity of what they were even propounding and proposing. They don't have an exit ramp. Their exit ramp is a brick wall.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Let's keep doing exactly what we've been doing for the last three and a half years because sanction policy number 2,226, is going to be. going to be the one that finally breaks Russia. Trump already said publicly. You could tell he didn't want to even go forward with that Kellogg proposal because every time he was asked about he was like, this isn't going to work, by the way, this isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. I guess we'll do it. It's not going to work. The Russians are wily. It's not going to work. Trump doesn't like to do things that he knows are not going to work that can potentially backfire on. So the,

I don't think there's much Europe can do to obstruct it. Now, to Zelensky, there is some other leverage the U.S. can specifically have on beer Zelensky. Zolensky is neck deep in all kinds of criminal corruption and fraud with U.S. money and his buddies and pals are. That's why you tried to get rid of that corruption agency a couple of months back. I do think another thing to this being in motion, I think there was something to the Seymour her story that Trump was trying to push Zelensky out as part of this whole thing. Because we saw the Vogue thing of that other fake Ukrainian leader, etc. I hope we just get out of the fake leader business.

pretending the Shah's son, you know, that dude in Venezuela, he pretended for him as president. But I do think there was something there that that was attempt to leverage on Zelensky. But what was the other leverage point? Corruption investigations that the European globalist funded organizations there were starting to get close to Zelensky on that led him to disband it, then led him to retract when Europe said no more money and to bring him back. People can go look at his first patron. I think it was Kolomoisky. I get his, I mispronounced everyone's name.

So I'm part in advance if I do that. Law School at Wisconsin, a bunch of polls up there. And I was like, first name only, first name only. The is the, is we took him out in the U.S. If you go back and look, why did he disappear from the Ukrainian scene? Now, I think there was some bad faith, deep state actors that wanted to show Zelensky how much they controlled him by being able to take him out. But there were criminal cases pending against them that popped up at different places,

civil forfeiture actions that popped up. Part of the reason why you hop down to Israel, It can't be extradited to the U.S. But one of the things they can offer Zelensky is, here's the non-prosecution agreement for all you and your pals if you sign the peace deal. Sign the peace deal. We have no motivation to audit these funds. We have no motivation to look at all the crimes you and your other deep state pals

were involved in. Because the other thing with Russia gate, you dig in deep. You get to the where else Tulsi Gabbard says she's going. COVID pandemic, 2020 election. What does it bring up? Paya weapons labs in Ukraine. Where does it go? Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the Hunter laptop, all of those things.

They all come back to Ukraine. So there's potential leverage on Ukraine's leaders if they choose to utilize it. But I think Trump's main goal is a cover story for him to exit. And he has that cover story because Russia is going to give it to him at this summit. I think he wants to take it. I think he will take it. The 80% chance, something happens at the summit that signals we're out of this by the end of the year, if not a lot sooner. In ways, and the reason for the time frame is he needs this to, he needs the ship to be out of harbor before the Senate comes back in September.

So that's why this, why is all, like people are like, Russians almost never come to these meetings without a detailed plan. This goes back to the Cold War era. You know, this is being rushed in an incredible. That's why. He wants this ship out of harbor. So that means a lot of people like, oh, it won't go anywhere or it's a trap. No reason for Putin to come here if he thinks that, that's not modus operandi. He doesn't take debate on that.

No reason for Trump to do this knowing that, if that's his goal. His goal is that this summit works so well that he can sell it to everybody. I got peace. I hear it is. And then if Ukraine in Europe blows it up, it's like, see, folks, that's Olensky guy, always unreliable, always untrustworthy. All of a sudden, you're starting to see the kind of news stories you saw the last couple of weeks, which you had never seen in the Western mainstream press, which was what?

Dictators Olensky. They even had the photos right. ready, right? They got the photos of the dark looking, the green goblin, as Alex calls them, looking like the green goblin. You're going to see that a bombard of that from U.S. press. You're going to see a rush of it. And Vance has already seeded it by saying Americans are done. We're out. And people are trying to pretend it doesn't mean what it means. That's exactly what it means. And Vance would not take that risk of saying that if he thought we were going to be back to spending $55 billion to send money to them in September. So it's on the clock, but I think there's in a way above average opportunity for Trump to exit us from this. And if he could achieve real reproachment where we could get back with Russia and not be not force Russia into a hostile Bricks alliance. It's one thing to have a Bricks alliance from a U.S. Trump perspective. It's another thing to have a hostile U.S. Bricks relationship. There's ways in which that can be moderated that can protect American interest as they perceive it without breaking up Bricks.

without harming everybody. Right now, we're forcing them together. And that's what he's seen. The Kellogg strategy was making bricks much, much, not only stronger, but openly adversarial to the United States. No longer just protective, but adversarial affirmatively. We need to take that off the table from if you have a Trump geopolitical perspective. So I think 80% chance, something really significant and substantive happens.

I would love to see a real reproach, Matt, back to the 2015 approach of Trump. I think if Trump could pull that off, it would be better than Nixon going to China. Yeah. Just a good, a fair number of things to say. Firstly, on that last point about Briggs, it reminds me what you just said reminded me of what was said to me, well, written to me by a source who's got access to information in Russia. He's in contact with Alex.

The same source is in contact with Alex as well. He's been a good source. And he said that at one of the meetings with which he's got to be a good source. And he said that at one of the meetings with. Wittgoff, in fact, this is after one of the meetings of Wittgold, one of the earlier meetings. Apparently they did discuss Bricks. And the Russians said, look, why don't you actually work with Bricks? Because ultimately, Bricks is economically vital and has a lot to offer, whilst Europe is more remote and going down.

I remember noticing that then. And as I said, this is a good source, actually. I mean, he's given us a lot of good information over the last, well, year or so. So, you know, what you just said now does make me wonder about that a bit more now, actually. Of course, I wasn't there at that meeting. But anyway, there we are. I mean, the, oh, sorry, that was just going to, I mean, logically, culturally, socially, politically, the U.S. should get along with Russia. That was Trump's great revelatory reveal in 2015 and 2016 on the political stage in the U.S.

He was the first person to meaningfully say it on the presidential stage for anybody since the 90s. And I mean, we had Russians with attitude, a great podcast. You could follow them, Spotify, Patreon, others, you know, cool guys. And at one point, somebody in the chat asked, are you guys commies? And they said, no, no, no, we're good Orthodox Christian boys. In everywhere, I mean, he said, you know, in the heartland of Russia, they love, you know, things like, you know, pick up trucks and guns and, you know, and hanging out with bears, you know, that kind of thing.

The very, like East Tennessee, we used to have a couple of games, you know, one of them was eye-gouging and the other one was bear baiting. And the great about those games, and David Crocker was actually really good at them, which you always knew whether they won or not, right? Apparently Europeans can't get that message because either came back with an eye or they didn't. They survived the bear or they didn't. But the Russian mind, I try to tell people here in the States, Russia's East Tennessee,

just a little more East. Cultural values similar. They would rather eat dirt than forfeit. They're never going to forfeit. Believing they're going to forfeit is insane. Go through, you know, I mean, these are the people that managed to survive the Mongols, managed to survive Napoleon, managed to survive Hitler, and ultimately beat him. As by the way, to Trump's credit, notice it's always been sort of macho-Americanism up until now

in terms of U.S., Russia, World War II, et cetera. He started highlighting again. You start to see where his mind's at. he's like remember you know the russia they beat napoleon they beat hitler and he was you know we helped with that but yeah but that's the most he's ever acknowledged that side of the uh what russia calls the great war so this is where things are moving i get where the skepticism comes from i get where the concern comes from but i think in this instance it's truly misplaced because otherwise this meeting doesn't make if the goal is sabotaged this meeting doesn't make sense it doesn't make

sense for trump it doesn't make sense for put that's exactly what i think as well actually i think actually you took the words out of my mouth because I don't, if this is that kind of deception, then I don't see the logic of this meeting at all. It just doesn't add up that way. Now there's a number of things, a number of further things I wanted to say. Firstly, about Europe and the United States, I think United States has been much too involved with European affairs for much too long. There are lots of Russians who say the same about Russia. that it too has been much too heavily involved in European affairs for far too long. Now, I am unusual in Britain, in that when I was at university, I made a point,

I actually chose to study American history. And of course, it was not something that people taught me, but it became very, very clear to me, very quickly, that 19th century America was profoundly different from Britain, in every conceivable way. Its entire attitudes, systems of government, social organisation,

economic organisation was profoundly different. It was completely structured in a way that wanted to be as different from Britain as possible. And that's something I've never forgotten. And I think one of the great things that when happened over the course,

course of the 20th century is the anglicisation of the American political class. I've said this many times. I'm very probably going on and on about it, but I really believe that this is the case. And I think that a lot of the things that have gone wrong in America since the mid-20th century, especially, is precisely because this anglicisation of the American political class has gone so deep. And, I'm not anti-British at all. I'm very patriotically British in many respects. It's just that I see America and Britain as to very, very different places. So if America can distance itself from Britain, it would be good for the US. It would be good for Britain too. We might actually start addressing some of the problems that we have as well. Anyway, that's a bit of a diversion

from the topics that we've been talking about. Now, there is one particular question I want to ask, because we're talking about Britain, and we mentioning J.D. Vance. I did find it very strange that J.D. Vance chose to come to Britain for his holidays and was in the Cotswills. Now, the Cotswills, people who don't know, is a chain of hills west of Oxford,

where the British elite. or have their country houses. It's reasonably close to London and the communications there are very, very fast. If you knew something big was about to happen, but you wanted to be somewhere where you would be able to talk to everybody who's important in Britain very, very quickly without actually being in London and giving it away by going to London, then I can't imagine a better a place to be actually than the Cotswolds. Am I doing too many conclusions? Am I jumping ahead?

Is it something that, you know, you'd heard about how what a beautiful place the Cotswolds are? They are a beautiful place, by the way. Or was there something a little bit more carefully prepared about it than that? And just to say, and just to repeat a point that I made before we started our programme, I've been hearing many people say that the British, not just the British, the Europeans, were very, very impressed indeed by J.D. Vance. I mean, it's not that they are happy with what he's telling them. It's just that they are impressed by him personally.

They might see him as an adversary in the future, but they see him as a formidable and clever one. Anyway, just about that specific question about J.D. Bance in the courtswolds. Just wondering. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's more mounting evidence when you start to put it all together with Tulsi and Russia Gate, with Hexeth saying there's no weapons and Colby doing a report saying we have a serious shortage with the with J.D. Vance seeding certain things and then showing up at the right places, even Robert Kennedy being in Alaska a week before they announced the summit in Alaska. You start to put all these things together. It's like, you know, Gallup suddenly doing a poll that shows Ukraine what's out of the conflict. News stories leaking by Seymour Hers, no less, that, you know, has a lot of U.S. Intel ties or sources over the years saying they want Zelensky out. and that Trump wants Zelensky out and is Donma Zelensky.

You look at this, it's starting to come together. And you're right. It can't be a coincidence that he happened to be right in the right location to do this conversation right at this point? And at a time when the Senate is in recess, when Graham is being challenged in his own primary, which Trump people knew about a couple months in advance. Well, the McConnell getting her at all of the Russia Gate bad faith actors

that with deep state institutions institutional influence, all calling up lawyers over the last two weeks. It starts to aggregate. in only one direction. Now, there's no question. It only works that way if you achieve something. And there's a lot of focus on the like of the Iran aspect. I always thought that was a cover story. I thought Israel jumped the gun and went in because they didn't want a peace deal. They didn't want to negotiate a nuclear peace. They knew that the meeting was coming Sunday. So they just launched the attack and called up Trump and said we were launching the attack.

I still don't believe Iran was taken by surprise in terms of what Israel was doing. I've never bought that that version. I thought it was a stupid narrative for people to be out there like Clay Travis to be telling. Oh, how genius it was. No, that's utterly idiotic. But I've never kind of bought that story. I thought Trump made a mistake going into Iran. But that was like a lot of people that analysis, they don't give Israel any agency.

Israel is just a tool of the United States. Sorry, that's not something I've agreed. Israel is a constant thorn in political problem more often than not, quite frankly. And especially at the moment, it's one of the reasons. It's one of the reasons why Trump needs this deal. He's got a ticking time bomb in Gaza. I mean, you've got to be almost the entire world saying they're going to recognize Palestine and the two-state solution that used to look to be dead two years ago. Now is really looking maybe more alive than it has in decades. So can he handle all you have to deal with all this at the

same time? He needs to be out of Ukraine. He needs to be with a reproachment with Russia. But I think you're absolutely right. Sometimes when you start adding up coincidences, they quit being coincidences. And I think all of it points to he, but this will only be successful if he actually gets something out of this summit. I think there's much more pressure than a lot of observers are thinking,

much more pressure on Trump to get something out of this on Friday. Does that be something signed? No, but it needs to be something commitment to have the ship out of the harbor to get out of the war. If Trump fails to do that, and it fails to get that in this summit,

then this summit will be a failure for Trump more than anybody. and will put him in great political jeopardy come the fall because then you have the Senate trying to put in money to send in more arms to have the Biden policy on steroids all the way back while we've got issues with China, while we've got issues with trade, while we've got massive issues with Gaza,

while we've got domestic economic risk on energy costs, I think all of that. So I think Trump is committed to getting us out of it. If for his own good, if for no other good. But I think Trump does. has an instinct to want to be at least perceived as the peace president. Whatever people think of that, he loves being in that position. And I much prefer our presidents to want to be peace presidents than want to be war presidents. Yeah. Now, there's just one very last question for me,

and that is this. We have an understanding between Putin and Trump coming out on Friday. And I think there's some reasons to hope that we will do. I mean, talk about the Ukrainians withdrawing from Donbass and a ceasefire, and then there'll be phase two. Next negotiation step, the United States, Russia, talking to each other. I think that the Russians could work with that. And I said that already in one of my programs. I think that this is something that they would be willing to talk about, if provided the Ukrainians withdraw from Donbass,

which they're going to lose anyway. And with the news that's coming from Ukraine, much more quickly, perhaps, than we anticipated just a week ago. What if the Europeans and the Ukrainians continue to say no? We're not going to go along with any of this. Ukraine will not agree to any of this approach. They will not withdraw from Dombas. They're not going to countenance land swaps.

They're not going to do any of the things that Trump and Putin might say to each other, well, you know, we can start working in that direction and moving forward with them. And the war goes on. The United States, presumably, then says to the Europeans, you can go on buying up weapons from us and, you know, Ukraine can go on fighting. What happens when the moment comes when Ukraine visibly starts to collapse? what are people in the United States going to say? Isn't that going to be a very dangerous moment for Trump as well

in the sense that people will say whatever you say you agreed with Putin, whatever instruction the Europeans might have thrown in your way, the fact is Ukraine is collapsing at a time when you're president and you're to blame. it's not going to be a dangerous situation for Trump. Well, that's precisely why he needs to get out before that can come about. Because if Trump is, if this happens on Trump's watch while Trump is supporting Ukraine, while he is funding Ukraine, while he's, I mean, people don't know this in the States. I mean, we're paying the janitor in Ukraine.

I mean, we're paying everybody, number one. Number two, it's all our arms for the most part. the ones they don't launder to foreign to foreign actually. And then third, we're providing the critical military and logistical support. How well are they going to be able to do if we, so if we really pulled out, no military aid,

no monetary aid, no logistical support. We're not providing satellite services. We're not having generals on the ground, direct them, as a lot of Americans don't know, has been functionally happening. It's worse than, you know,

Vietnam with our advisors on the ground, that kind of nonsense. If we're fully out, and the whole world, especially America, believes that we're out. In other words, Trump has staged this so that by the end of August, it's announced the U.S. is out.

The U.S. is no longer involved. U.S. has negotiated a peace deal. It's up to Ukraine to take it or not. But if Ukraine doesn't take it, that's on Ukraine. The key is then if a collapse happens after that, Trump can say, see, I told you. I gave him a peace deal and he refused it. I gave him a peace deal and rejected it.

And Europe said, oh, no, no, no, now look at him. Now, now, the Ruskis are in Kia. All because these folks didn't listen to me. And while he's separately parallel tracking, new START treaty deals, deals with AI and drone warfare, Arctic economic development, keeping energy prices under control, getting independent access to rare earth, creating a detente with Russia that could increase our potential leverage in dealing economically with China, which right now, frankly, we don't have the cards. It's a major problem. Trump thought he had that he didn't have. that's the best situation for Trump because they're absolutely right. If we're still trapped in this war when it's a collapses in October or November or Christmas time or sometime over the next year, building up to the midterms, then he's got the Afghanistan

problem of Biden. You know, the Trump left Afghanistan for Biden. He didn't pull out ultimately. Biden came in, did it in a disastrous way that, you know, became something that Trump could hammer over his head. Trump definitely doesn't want that to happen. He does not want Trump to be seen as well. responsible for the Ukraine war or responsible for Ukraine's inevitable defeat.

And what better way to do that than to say, I came up with the peace solution. They wouldn't take it. And so, you know, we had no choice but to step back from this because we were trying to get the peace deal. And they rejected the peace deal. And look what happened. They lost. If they'd gone with Trump, they would have won, but they didn't.

They lost. That's the best cover story for Trump. That's why I say, if he doesn't get us out, it's a potential disaster. geopolitical disaster for a range of reasons, economic risk because of how secondary sanctions could impact energy prices in the United States that could unravel all the economic development, the reprochement with Russia that's important for a range of economic and national and global security purposes. But he cannot be the author of the Ukraine failure. And the way to not be the author of the Ukraine failure, I mean, you guys are right. Should have done this in January. But, hey, at least do it in August.

And he does have, I would give him credit in this respect. He has more political cover to do it now that he did in January in this sense. in the U.S. because of the Russia gate Tulsi exposure. That they can't just say, oh, look, it was a Putin plant all along. That is no longer credible, and people will be discredited for trying to even say it and affiliated and associated with that massive scandal in the United States. So you're absolutely right. He needs to not be the author of the disaster of this war, and the best way to do that

is to get us out now. Can I just say something? To all of those people who say that this is a massive, you know, deception, and duplicity. I think you've just outlined the logical reasons why Donald Trump would want a genuine understanding

with Putin at this time. For him personally, what is the United States? I think Trump definitely cares about the United States, by the way. I think anybody who thinks he doesn't has completely misunderstood the man. But if only for his own personal self-interest,

he doesn't want to be there when everything comes crashing down as it would if he tried to pull a fast one on Putin on Friday, which Putin would see through like that. Anyway, Robert Barnes,

I think that's absolutely brilliant as a two-de-force, if I could say, as always. Can you stay and we've got some questions, I think? I'm sure we do. Yeah. Yeah.

Guys want to do about 15, 20 minutes of questions? Yes. Sounds good. Okay. A lot of questions about this being a trap. A lot of questions about some sort of trap for Putin going to Alaska. The U.S. will betray Russia.

And perhaps some sort of an assassination attempt on Putin. What do you guys think about that? Extremely low risk of that. And I get, I mean, I often recommend people to see whether someone's filter of the world, how accurate it is. see how successful their short and medium term predictability is. If you can't predict what's going to happen in a short to medium term, then maybe you have some faulty assumptions. This is what unraveled for the deep state in advising Trump over the last six months

because they kept giving him bad information and bad predictions. Oh, if you do this, this will happen. Then it doesn't. And they do this over and over and over and over and over, over and over. So a lot of analysis out there that is. skeptical of the U.S. for a range of reasons, sometimes ideological, sometimes just perception of how power operates here, some rooted in reason and some rooted, I think, in exaggeration. And that perception can't come to terms with this. You saw a lot of what I would call the dissident

community globally, immediately go to a trap because they couldn't perceive of this as Trump being sincere. And they couldn't perceive this as Putin being smart. And I would say, I believe, for all the reason that laid out. Trump, I believe, is absolutely sincere. And that be, that derails the deception trap theory. And also people are greatly underestimating Vladimir Putin. This is a man who does not easily. I think people are confusing Putin's willingness to give Europe multiple chances to create a reasonable security relationship with Russia. Because it was in Russia's interest to have Europe be an ally for a long time. Economically, even the deal with the Germans was a good deal. Good for Germany, good for Russia. And people can criticize Putin and

some in Russia do for what they consider a European-centric approach, as soft on Europe, a soft of a Germany approach, just the opposite of the caricature of here in the United States. But Putin is not a dumb man. And so because I don't think Putin is stupid and I don't think Trump is insincere because Trump's interest all the, well, what benefit does Trump get from a sabotage? We want to be at a war with a nuclear country? No, the most more nuclear weapons, any country in the world? How does that make any sense? And so I think people are so caught up in a certain framework that they can't challenge

their own assumptions that they assume this has to be some great sabotage trap because they're not giving agency to people that have it. And they're not recognizing the diversity of opinion and actions that are there. I think there's a natural tendency in some aspects of political analysis that things are inevitable. And often they're not inevitable at all. So I mean, when you guys were doing your history series, that's what that, you know, shows that choices have consequences, but the choices are there. And I think the choice, the smart choice for Trump is to get out of this, not to further inflame it, not to further blow it up, not to now be at risk of nuclear war with Russia. And I think for Putin,

it is the smart tactical choice. And the idea is he's going to suddenly forfeit now. He's not going to suddenly forfeit now. Whatever happened, Whitkoff convinced him, that Trump was sincere and serious about giving him at least most of Instant Bull Plus. And so that's what he's always wanted. That's what he's there for. And the European caricature of Putin is what allows us to sell this in the U.S. as a peace deal, as a good deal, right? Because those have followed in detail like, oh, this is what Putin has always offered.

But that's now what's been told in the U.S. That's how you have Secretary of State Rubio saying, golly, gee, we just found out what the Russians wanted. They gave a substantive terms for the first time. And be like, how in the world does that spin work? because in America we've been told Russia has no interest in peace wants to conquer all of Ukraine and then invade the rest of Europe. So that's been that narrative has the normian America believes that. So then when Trump says, look, I got him to stop.

It looks like a great peace deal in the U.S. So all the interests align against any kind of sabotage. That doesn't mean the deep state won't try something, but it would be suicidal for them to try something like an actual assassination attempt or anything else. I think very, very low risk of that occurred. I think I would just add two things to that. Firstly, about an assassination attempt. Not only the United States make sure that there is no assassination attempt, but of course Putin will also have his own security people.

But these things are always prepared well in advance. I mean, the FSO, which is the Russian equivalent of the Secret Service, will be talking to the Secret Service and the very security people, will be making absolutely sure that wherever the venue of the Secret Service, some it actually is, it is going to be watertight. And if they go out for a walk, which I hope they do, by the way, because the two leaders going out and walking together and talking is one of the best things that can happen in negotiations. The eyes of the security people will be there keeping watch on every move, on every bush and on every place. I don't myself believe that's

going to happen at all. As for Putin falling into any sort of trap, just want to make one point about Putin, which is that he's very different from European leaders, and even some American, a lot of American leaders as well. And you can see this with the way in which he speaks about Minsk 2. He never, ever excuses his conduct about Minsk 2. He never says, you know, Minsk 2 was a good idea. And, you know, it was the best thing we could do in the circumstances. It's a shame it didn't fully work out. But, you know, I can't really be blamed about it. Nothing that went wrong there was my fault.

That's what he says at all. What Putin says about Minsk, too, is that Merkel tricked me. I was deceived. She lied to me, and I was a fool to believe her. He pretty much says that. Now, that is very unusual, but that is the line he has consistently taken. He's never, never at any time tried to defend Minsk too. Now, a person who talks like that and who is quite open about the fact that he was previously

tricked has learned from his mistake that is not going to be deceived again. at least that's my experience of people who behave in that way. One other component I think that Putin has played well on this, by the way, is I'm sure they are whispering in Trump's here that if Putin lost power, that it would be great. We've had this new liberal democracy in Russia and the other. Medvedev has made that very clear to what the alternative looks like in Russia. So Trump is personally very, very well aware that we are much better off with Putin in control

than who the likely alternatives would be. Exactly. Exactly. Sangeva asks Mr. Barnes, why does Fox News have the ear in access to Trump when News Corp and Rupert Murdoch have been anti-Trump? I know Trump sued him, currently suing Rupert Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal over an Epstein story that accused them of signing and sending a card that was very unlikely to have been signed and sent by him.

It looks like Elaine Maxwell is definitely playing ball as a side point. She got a much more cushy club fed facility after she sang to the right song. book after Todd Blanche, former Trump private counsel, now Deputy Department of Attorney General, went down and chatted with her. I'm sure she pointed the finger of the right places, didn't point in the wrong places. Galane still has a little bit of that. Maxwell political juice flowing in the veins. But it's Trump's a boomer. So the Trump grew up in TV. So for Trump, it's still TV. Like when Tucker Cross was being critical in Iran and somebody asked him a question, where he's like, Tucker doesn't have a TV show. It's one of the weaknesses of Trump. The

That's why I call J.D. Vance, the Trump whisperer. J.D. Vance does not rely on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. He's even, maybe older millennial. He's either young Gen X or older millennial. He follows podcast. He follows this podcast. His staff does. I mean, I've heard from them or repeated occasions. I had a deep conversation about Ukraine with J.D. Vance when he was running for the Senate in 2022. There's a lot of other people that have this certain caricature vance that's out there. You got, these bad faith actors like Nick Fuentes, or is this an old school race grifter. Poor Glenn Greenwald kind of took the bait on who he thought Nick Winthes was. I studied him through his whole career. There's an old history in Americans. Race grifting is its own monetary cash machine. But the Vance is as a deep, if you go to what is the part of America that is the longest anti-war? And to your point, Alexander earlier, the deepest skeptic,

that are almost more, not anglofobes, but more on that side than anglofiles, it is Appalachia in America. You know, only congressmen to refuse to vote for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Eastern Kentucky. You know, the future senator from the state of Tennessee is going to be Tim Burchett, congressman from East Tennessee. Go look up the kind of statements he makes about Ukraine. I mean, just ruthless at criticizing the idiocy of this war.

So where does J.D. Vance come from? He comes from eastern Kentucky, southern Ohio, the heart of Appalachia. You know, you can watch the film that portrays his, you know, Hillbilly Elegie, the things on Netflix, his life story. He comes from a tradition, same as my tradition, the, at least in one generation, way back, you know, old Rhode Islanders and all that. But, you know, anti-work in his own way for a long, long, long time. Old family tradition is Hank William Jr. might sing.

And that's what JD comes from. And so that's another reason why there is sincere and serious effort afoot. And the other thing that helps is J.D. counterbalance is Trump's dependence on Fox News, New York Times, Wall Street Journal by having direct access to podcasts and social media. That's the guise of younger voters in America. That's why it's radically shifting on issues like explain this to Max Blumenthal the other day on Israel, that it's no longer the same. You've got major political shifts, seismic shifts occurring. Trump was the expression. of rebellion. He wasn't the source of the rebellion. And once you understand that, you understand

that what Vance understands where the political zeitgeist is moving in the United States, it is not to endless wars around the world, especially for Europe. Default 862 asks, is Trump manufacturing a law and order emergency in D.C. this week to act as a smoke screen for media regarding outcomes of these negotiations. That's a very smart point. There a few of us was like he could have done this on any given time period. You know, he still talks a lot. But I do recommend watching the Friday and the Monday press conferences. I know George Samueli was covering it in some detail.

There's a lot revealed there. You're seeing the shift in Trump. Like I remember I put out a prediction earlier right before we attacked Iran that we were about to attack Iran that weekend, even though Trump had said two more weeks because of how Trump responded to press questions. That's why I'm now on the opposite, pointing the opposite. direction in this conflict because he's signaling all kinds of different things on Friday and again on Monday. But you're absolutely right. He wanted some other news story to dominate. And this administration has done a much better job at limiting the leaks that, you know, Kellogg goes running around everywhere,

telling him, oh, you know, Zelensky's got to come. It's a non, it's a non-coachable. Slinsky, I mean, Kellogg has got to realize, but we didn't even send you there. So we didn't even send you to Moscow. You're on the outs. Trump has figured out that you're a fraud. and that you're setting him up for complete failure because you're too stupid to even know your way around any of it. His daughter's busy yippin, yippin, yippin in Ukraine on social media, making all these attacks, which sounds a little anti-Trump, by the way, dear General Keller. So the, but I agree. I think this, in the timing of this was absolutely about let's have another front.

He wants to be able to get this deal done before they can stop it. He wants the ship out of the harbor before they can pull it back in. And so you'll see probably him come up with something else on maybe tomorrow just to get enough time, get to Russia, get it done, and make it look like it's a done deal. No, nobody has any choice. It's all over. We're out of Ukraine based on what happens on Friday. Robert Bad Wolf TX asks, how much influence does Lindsey Graham have over Trump? Now it's Lindsay Graham is a representative of deep state powers the best way to think of it.

He's the organizer and orchestrator in the Senate, the leading advocate for deep state power. And that's why, by the way, probably not a coincidence when Paul Danz decided to challenge him. Paul Danz could have waited until September, October, November. Instead, he announced last week that he's challenging him and got a lot of momentum challenging them, including some Charleston money circles that Lindsay Graham was shot to discover. There are plenty of people. These boomers are living in a fantasy world. They think it's still 2002. It's not. That ship has truly sailed already in terms of domestic American political opinion, including some monetary circles. So Graham still represents the dying breaths of a dying

deep state regime of an old American empire that has been fading now. for the better part of a decade plus. You could argue George W. Bush combo of marrying the global financial crisis to the Iraq war debacle killed it forever politically in the United States. But now you got the vampire on its last breath and you just got to finish hammering the steak in. And they will squeal and squeal and squeal like their European vassals are doing as we speak. But they are in their death throws. And so that's where, so Graham has power because he represents the military industrial complex

in the Senate where they have their strongest legislative representation. That's probably why Trump is trying to do this in August while they are in recess, just to screw Trump, by the way. But he doesn't defer to him otherwise. He sees him as who he is. This is the military, industrial complex guy I got to deal with. This is a deep state guy I got to deal with. And I'm now wondering why, I mean, Trump could have taken certain efforts to prevent

Paul Dan's to challenging. It didn't happen. He didn't do it. Just FYI. So the, in fact, is talking about nominating some other people to remove challengers who are going to be problematic for dance. So I think there's an effort afoot in the populace side of Trump represented by Vance and other people to prevent the military industrial complex from dictating our foreign policy in this context.

But that's the best way to understand Graham is it's not Graham's individual power. It's that Graham represents the deep state in the Senate. It should say, you know, Senate and South Carolina, kind of like Mike Johnson should say representative, Jerusalem, because that's where his district, he says going back to his district. It's like, I don't know Jerusalem was in northwest Louisiana. I had no idea. This all time. But for Graham, it should be S-Dash Deep State, not S-S-South Carolina. Yep. Pasha Moyer says, I think all three of you believe in the correlation between the actions of World War I superpowers and today's version. How far can we push this analogy? Well, yeah, I always recommend watching the Duran and Alexander Grant a couple of days ago.

This is the level of incompetency that we saw lead up to World War I. A Austro-Hungarian Empire, centuries of dominance disappears overnight. The Russian Empire, centuries of dominance disappears overnight. The British Empire truly started to go to sleep. The place where the sun never set on the British Empire. At the beginning of its slumber was a disastrous debacle of entering World War And then, to some degree, that version of the German Empire, if you were to call it that, also imploded in ways that brought us fascism and communism.

So the, and you go back and read their internal communications. You guys have covered this in some of the historical series. You go back to ways. It's shocking their incompetency. It is just shocking. As I say, the worst thing in the world isn't having Henry Kissinger be your moral compass for foreign policy. That's our problem. But combine them with Hillary Clinton level.

intelligence. I was explaining to somebody what that, Calla, whatever her name is. I was like, imagine Kamala Harris, but even dumber. And that's what you have in European leadership. Alexander, your thoughts, sir? No, absolutely. I completely agree with that. I mean, I made a bit of stir on one of my live stream, on one of my local live streams, when I said, you know, if you go to a circus and put together a bunch of clowns and make them, put them in charge of all the major states of Europe, we'd be better governed than we actually

currently are, because that is how bad the leadership in Europe is. Since the Second World War, it has never been as bad as this. And it's absolutely atrophy and decay, just as we saw in post-Bismar Europe. I mean, that was what happened. I mean, Bismarck, Titanic figure, reshate Europe, did so very efficiently, always knew when to stop. That was a key point about Bismarck. Always understood the enormous importance of having good relations with Russia. He famously said, the secret of politics, a good treaty with Russia. So he was, and of course he reorganised German industry. He did lots of things.

But the moment he leaves the scene, the people who take over right across Europe, complacent, corrupt in many cases, incompetent, there's no real, turnover of leaders anymore because accountability completely breaks down. And you have what you have, you have a drift into World War. And there's lots and lots of books about the First World War. And whatever you talk, whenever you talk about the causes of the First World War, there are never adequate causes. The reason it happened was because the leaders were so bad that even trivial causes were enough to propel them to take and do stupid things. It turns out of ideological incest does not produce the most intellectual out of course.

Oldslow asks, is the U.S. in a similar position as Russia at the end of the 80s? To a degree, yes. I mean, the unipolar, but not to the same scale. I mean, the U.S. helped ravage and rape Russia after the 80s. to Putin's credit, he has not, he's, you know, held that in part of his geopolitical analysis, but there's, there's other people that would hold that against the U.S. What took place, if you were Russian, what took place in the 90s. So the, we're no longer a unipolar, it's no longer a unipolar world.

And, you know, there's, even Trump at times forgets this. But he's been getting, he's been getting a crash course in it, the last three months, that this is not a unipolar world, that the, you know, he had to, you know, do more negotiation on trade than he thought he was going to have to, on terror policy. He thought the, I mean, the people that folded the most were the Europeans on the guys that we were going to get stuck there forever.

That, you know, okay, well, will trouble continue the Ukraine war and we'll lie to him. By the way, the mistake to lie to him because that got back to him. I mean, in the CNBC interview last week, he realized, oh, so that European deal wasn't that good? They're saying they're not going to give the money. He sees the headlines to everyone else. He was like, hey, that's $600 billion, did me to do whatever I want to do. And they're like, well, you know, actually, we don't even have the $600 billion.

We don't have the $750 billion. We don't have any of the $1.3 trillion. And he was like, well, the tariffs just got 10 foot higher, you know, 35%, etc. But that might have also motivated them further on this, hey, I got to get out of this stupid conflict around. So I don't think we're in, we're not in a perilous position as Russia was in terms of things just fracturing and falling apart like it did for them in the 90s. But we are in a similar position as the empire has ended. The only question is when they wake up in Washington and realize it. Can I just quickly add to that?

Because, of course, this is, again, a period that I know quite well, and I know fairly a lot about Russia from that time. The United States has vitality at a level which Russia in the 1980s did not. There was a level of cynicism and decay in 1980s, Russia, which you still don't find anywhere close to that, actually, in the United States today. So the United States is a lot more space and room for maneuver and more energy to deal with these problems. I also going to repeat what I say. It's got a much very different political system.

It's got the Constitution and the principles that are set out in it, which I believe that most Americans still believe in in 1980s Russia. Nobody believed in anything anymore. And last but not least, to the extent that the comparison is true, remember that Russia came back, it had a massive resurgence. So if America runs into the same problems, why would that not happen to the United States too? In fact, I predict it would on an even bigger scale.

It's still a big population and a lot of resources, same as Russia. Exactly. Lato Moro says, hello, dear gentlemen, are we at all sure that President Trump even can see this off ramp and he won't take it and it's going to be another blunder for him again? Can you see the off ramp? Yeah, the, oh, I think he definitely does. This meeting wouldn't be happening if he didn't. All the statements of Vance affirm that.

All the statements of Trump, the last two press conference. conferences in a complete reversal of direction in tone and tenor about this conflict, signal that. I've never been in the camp that Trump is dumb. I've been in the camp that Trump is fighting a very powerful, established, entrenched, what you call it, permanent state, deep state, dual state, military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about but didn't have the guts when he was president to actually do something about. He just said when he was exiting, by the way, we got all these big problems. See you later. Hope you good luck. So I think that's our big hurdle, is their entrenched influence through the buying off of the thing.

I think you pointed out, Alex, you just go through the litany. It's the think tanks. It's the press. It's the staffers. It's the permanent bureaucracy. It's the U.S. Senate. It's key members of the high-ranking members of the House, that this is the power they have seized and sort of stultified over time. I would say it's less of an obstacle than what Putin had to deal with when he came in.

the power in 1999 in Russia. I mean, the oligarchs and the criminal gangs had completely taken over. He had the old last vestiges of the Soviet bureaucracy. He had these rapacious ravages taking place by Western NGOs and Western corporations and Western ideology. He had NATO marching, marching, marching further right on his border. And yet he turned that on it. I mean, the greatest success in terms of reducing poverty, improving the economy, reducing crime, all of those things. So it's a big obstacle. That's the big question. Can't Trump overcome the deep state in America, at least on this policy? They have other priorities too, though, by the way. So you look at Rubio, he cares about, he comes from Cuba. He cares about Central and Latin America. So is it a coincidence

that we escalated against Brazil during this time period? That might be a gift to that wing of the deep state that's more concerned about Cuba, more concerned about Central America, more concerned about Latin America than they are the rest of the world. He has not pushed back at this point on BB concerning Gaza other than ask him to quit lying about there being no malnutrition in Gaza at a minimum, if not our right, starvation. So that wing of the deep state, he's, you know, kept at bay. So there's different, there's different priorities within the national security the establishment. And he's trying to use that in such a way to leverage a deal. So there's always a risk with Trump that he doesn't ultimately come through, that he doesn't feel he has enough

political capital. He has it within the American public. He set up a great narrative here so that it sounds like a great peace deal by all the Americans, by all the terms American public has been told so that if Europe and Ukraine rejected gives him the easiest exit ramp known to man to get out of that conflict. And he set the stage for that to happen. but whether he takes it is something we'll see but at this point i would bet that Putin knows what he's doing the Trump knows what he's doing and that we do see that exit ramp doesn't guarantee it but i think the odds favorite more than people think armand says i personally think that trump will swap alaska for ukrainian territories he'll give alaska back to russia so that russia has a reason

to give some ukrainian territories back sue me and a few other villages in the vicinity but A serious question that a lot of people are asking as well in the chat is what do you guys think will be the swap that Trump ends and many people keep talking about. I mean, what do you guys think it is? Because Ukraine doesn't have anything to swap when you think about it. Yeah. Well, the only thing, I think that's a selling point. That's the main thing for people to realize. It's not about the realities on the ground.

It's in this sense. This is a narrative structure. He wants to be able to say this is the case. Is their territory more significantly that Russia, he can say, is giving up to say, so why are you recognizing these territories? Well, you could just recognize it because that's what the people in those regions voted for, because that's the language they speak, Russian. That's their ancestry, Russian.

They're historically, their land has been Russian, that they voted to be in Russia. And it's where the Russian military is. So you have all of those reasons, which Matt Whitaker was saying, the ambassador to NATO, who otherwise was saying stupid stuff last week. But you notice how quickly changed his tune? When you see that, that tells me that something at the top happening. He goes from Putin is crazy. You can never deal with him to actually be very reasonable to reflect the realities on the ground and

and recognize these properties as Russia. Within a week, that tells me that came from somebody on top that's pushing that narrative. So the easy switch of, so remember, mostly this is PR in the U.S. to say it's switching territory. To you politically, it's easy. You know, currently the Russian armies in Harkiv, currently they're in the Sumi region. They can give up control of those regions while the other regions get recognized as Russia. Those, that's the, there is some territory.

It's more significant to say, what territory does Russia have that he can claim they've given back to Ukraine? More than Ukraine territory that's giving to Russia. That's just recognizing those four territories plus Crimea as Russia. but how to have a cover story for that. Big cover story. End of war. End of conflict. They're not on the eastern border.

They're not in Libyb. They're not on the border of Poland. They can't invade the U.S. because that's what the U.S. audience has been told. The war is all about. But the secondary pitch is Harkiv and Sumi, they give up. The Russians voluntarily look at, they're even giving up

land that they actually physically control in exchange for these other territories that are constitutionally, we're talking about constitutions are part of Russia now. I'll just quickly add to that what the British is saying that this land swap idea is all about. And the British are horrified by this idea, just to say, which is that Russia gives up the territory and controls in Sumi, Kharkov and Nehpropro region. And in return, Ukraine, surrenders to Russia the remaining parts of Herson and Zaporosia.

Now, of course, Zaporosia and Herson are much more valuable. And they include two big cities. Herson and Zaporosia City. So this would be a very, very difficult swap for the Ukrainians to accept. But it would be a land swap. And I believe if you're talking about territory in terms of, you know, extent, it's about the same. Just saying. That's what the British believe, anyway. Josh asks, do you guys think that Ukraine could be partitioned, the four blasts going to Russia,

a central east Ukraine, neutral or Russian-influenced state based at Kiev and West Ukraine, EU state at LeVov, and the Carpathians to Hungary. I mean, there's a lot of argument for that. I mean, I think that ultimately for a real peace deal to work, Russia is going to want a demilitarized zone all the way up to Kiev between the Russian-recognized regions and, you know, I think 100 kilometers is what they've been talking about. So the, so that would definitely, I mean, I think priority one for Russia is to have a bilateral meeting. The summit itself should not be understated as a huge win. a huge win for peace. It's a huge win for even if we don't get it because it was a critical,

essential predicate step. And it changes, and this is where the negotiation should be taking place. And the number one trigger for all this was NATO. The U.S. can completely control that, regardless of Europe. Say, we veto any inclusion of Ukraine and NATO. And Trump could even double down and say, if Ukraine's ever part of NATO, the U.S. won't be part of NATO. That's the end of NATO. The whole point was to keep Germany down, Russia out, and the U.S. in, as they famously years ago. So the, so yeah, that's, that's my take on it. Elza says, Mr. Barnes, thank you for explaining Trump and brings some sense into his presidency. Watching him is like being on a roller coaster. We'll do a couple. I'll say this. What happens after Trump is gone? I'm a big J.D. Vance fan.

The entertainment value is going to be down. Now, sometimes it's scary entertainment value. So it's a horror film, sometimes a comedy film, sometimes a drama, some of the thriller. But by golly, the entertainment value will be diminished when El Hefe, when, when, uh, when, uh, Donald Trump is off the stage. Yeah. Sparky says, Robert seems like Lula may be hitting his stride again. What do you think about Brazil's relationship with the U.S. and its place in the world these days? Maybe Lula's health has improved.

Two things there. We'll see. I'm not a, I have stories of Lula's political corruption involving cases I was actually personally part of. So from that experience, I'm a skeptic of Lula, the being any of, kind of a real change agent. He tends to be rhetorically a big grandstander. Substantively doesn't tend to deliver. I think the free speech problem in Brazil continues to be a problem. I don't think my word for it. Glenn Greenwald has been highlighting this. He lives in Brazil now for years.

I think Trump is personally irritable about what's happening to Bolsonaro, so that that will keep relationships tense with Brazil. Now, the other came with Trump with any tariffs or any other policy, look for the footnote that has all the exclusions and exemptions in it. That it tends to take out anything that's like recently. They talked about putting tariffs on Swiss gold. And, you know, immediately there was blowbacker's like, oh, okay, I forgot to include the footnote, gold excluded. So the, I'm not, I see, he's not as bad as Erdogan, but I see Lula is more like an Erdogan. Now Erdogan actually causes major issues with all of his little playing around here, playing around there,

was trying to rebuild the Ottawa Empire. But he's rhetorically, more rhetorically significant than he is substantively significant, is my take on Lula. So I don't see him as ultimately a major player. But that's just my take. Sparky says, Robert, will Russians feel cheated if they don't get Odessa? Russians with attitude told me that.

But they're more of the strong Russian mindset. But to them, you know, Odessa needed to be Russian. All the Black Sea lands needed to be Russian. And they may still get what they want, though, because what you may get is Russia agreed to this proposal. The U.S. in exchange agreed to cut off military aid, monetary aid, and affirm that there will never be a Ukraine and NATO, which is still an underappreciated high priority for Russia.

And that's something we can exclusively control. but Ukraine may not take the deal. And if they don't take the deal, by golly, Odessa will be Russian again. So the Trump can say he saved Odessa for the Ukrainians if they take the deal. But we can get out of this, what's being a little bit underappreciated, we can exit this. As you guys have been pointing out since January, we can exit this without a peace deal in Ukraine. In other words, we just need Russia to offer Ukraine a peace deal that Trump can sell to the United States. That's what, so that he can use it to exit if they don't take the deal.

But there'll be some Russians that see it. But my guess is that probably still a majority of Russians would take the end of the war and the protection of these regions as more of a priority than getting Odessa. It'll be the more strongly patriotic group that will feel disappointed that Odessa was not included. Yeah. And we'll do one more from Mitchell LeBluck. And we'll answer all the remaining questions, me and Alexander, in a dedicated video. But we actually got to most of the questions.

today. Mitchell LeBlanc says, what are the odds the U.S. eventually ally join the BRICS. We'll see. I mean, we weaponized everything. Biden administration really crushed. Trump has been told that BRICS is about an alternative currency to take down the dollar that could trigger a bunch of economic issues in the United States. That is false. Bricks walked away from that several years ago, recognized very early on that an alternative currency is not really violent. I highly recommend people watch the Tucker Carlson interview with Richard Werner. He wrote a great book called Princes of the Yan many years ago. He done a lot of great studies.

He explains the Eurodollar system that basically even the U.S. no longer controls the issuance of the dollar in a digital age of ledger-based banking and economics, basically private banks around the world do so. This is how China can issue U.S. dollars. They issue debt in terms of U.S. dollars. So the BRICS is not trying to replace the U.S. dollar. The BRICS is trying to create payment systems, as you guys have been pointing out, and trading systems that are free of sanctions threats, of weaponizing the dollar.

And you can weaponize the dollar, but if you don't control the payment system and you don't control the trading system, you can't do anything with that weaponization. That's what they've recognized. And that's what BRICS is moving to. And that's what BRICS is going to continue to develop. So in that capacity, any country that sees itself as a U.S. ally, if they simply see risk to from the U.S. at some point turning on them and weaponizing their payment system, weaponizing their trade relationship,

then they have every incentive to join BRICS. And I see BRICS continuing to extend and expand. Just don't think of it in terms of an alternative currency. Think of it in terms of an alternative payment system and trading relationship. Bricks is growing and not going anywhere. Alexander, your thoughts and we'll wrap it up. No, absolutely. I completely agree with that. Can I just say something about Odessa, which is, of course, that what the Russians, it will not end, I mean, if there's a deal, if there is this kind of deal,

I mean, that will change Ukraine. If Ukraine loses the four regions, and there's all the other things, it's not going to join NATO, it's not going to militarize all that's happening. Elections. Elections. There's going to be an enormous,

pendulum swing. It's not going to worry or annoy people in the United States in the same way as if the Russians march all the way to Dessa. But, you know, it would not be the end of the situation between Russia and Ukraine, which is a constantly dynamic thing. It would be the end of the fighting, which is something else. Yeah. Fantastic live stream. Robert Barnes, where can people follow your work? the law and politics analysis, including geopolitics. That's at Viva barnslaw.locals.com. For any of the political prediction markets, sports prediction markets, we got some Bolivian election picks that are up, some other things, along with sports, soccer, hopefully the,

the Cypress team beats Dean, Dino-Kiev today. We'll see how that works. That's at sportspicks. Dot locals.com. And for all of the legal issues in the United States, that has to have global ramifications in some cases. Food freedom, financial freedom, political freedom, medical freedom, Roger Veer, the Bitcoin Jesus guy still being wrongfully prosecuted in the United States. Someone asked about the Amish case, actually. Still ongoing. It's still ongoing. So Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture has reached out to me, wants to talk about the case. So you're going to meet with a talk with her, Robert Secretary, Robert Kennedy, and others about ways to heal and end that federal attack on Amish farmer Amos.

Miller, Amos Miller Organic Farm.com. In fact, I had some of his milk to get going before the meeting tonight today. It's as I like to say, it's even better than cocaine. And according to the government, it's as dangerous as cocaine. There's great milk. So I'm hopeful that something happens. We would like to see a global resolution that they reinstate the old farm to table exception to federal law, which was up until 1967, you could buy food directly from the farmer without regard to any federal regulation or restriction, that that was the right of the farmer and use an individual. That was taken away under incorrect legal what they did, but that's a whole other story. But we would like that reinstated as a custom exception that people could do, which the executive

branch could do on its own accord in interpreting the law correctly in my view. So that case still ongoing. Amos Miller, thanks everybody for their good wishes. And if you want good food, no better time to go to Amos Miller Organic Farm.com and get it. before the government tries to shut them down again as the state of Pennsylvania continues to harass him. And now the Infernal Revenue Service is busy harassing him as well. So it never ends, unfortunately.

But hopefully we get a resolution and remedy. There is some hope because Secretary Rollins has said she's interested in looking at resolving this case for other small farmers. So I'm hopeful, but nothing new yet. Well, Pasha has the meme ready for you, Robert, in your local channel. So definitely check that out. Robert Pock is a great meme maker. Yes.

And we will have all of those links as a pinned comment as well. They are in the description box. So definitely follow Robert Barnes. Everyone is following Robert Barnes. I follow Robert Barnes. Absolutely. Alexander. I also follow you as well.

So let's end this live. And we will catch everybody tomorrow. Absolutely. Take care.