The Duran Podcast - Dangerous Tomahawk game. Trump's 50-day ultimatum

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Dangerous Tomahawk game. Trump's 50-day ultimatum

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Trump's meeting with Mark Ruder and the NATO CEO and his statement about Russia. The big announcement about Russia, 50 days to, I guess to wrap up the Ukraine war to agree to a ceasefire. I'm not really clear as to what the 50 days, the ultimatum really is all about. But Russia has 50 days to dissolve this or to come to some sort of an agreement with Ukraine. And or else, 100% terrorists, maybe, perhaps. Weapons sold to NATO and then NATO will give the weapons to Ukraine. We have some talk about what kind of weapons. these are going to be, but nothing is really definite either with the weapons as well that are going

to be sold to NATO and given to Ukraine. And this is a difficult process as well. I've been reading on the whole process of selling weapons to Ukraine and then giving those weapons to, selling weapons to NATO and then giving them to Ukraine. There are all kinds of obstacles and hurdles to that as well, including the fact that there are no weapons and there is no money. But anyway, Alex had to do your thoughts on everything Trump said yesterday. This is one of the strangers decisions and statements I have ever heard coming from the US government and I've heard some and listened to some very strange decisions in my lifetime is one of those things where, you know, everything looks in the distance, you know, fairly clear. And then you go up close. It all sort of

dissolves. Because none of it, none of it actually makes a huge amount of sense. Let's talk about the weapons first, because that's the one that I think the Russians were most interested in. They were less worried about the sanctions, but they were very well, you know, they had been thinking about the weapons. So Trump, we were given sort of, you know, information leading up to this big announcement that Trump was really furious with Putin, that he was going to announce deliveries of more weapons, that he would actually, for the first time himself exercise, he's drawn down authority, that he'd reverse beat Hegsets. decision to stop and pause supplies of weapons and all of that kind of thing. So then we get a meeting in which Mark Rutter, as you said, is there. And Mark Rutter played the usual role that he always now plays as flatterer in chief. It was really quite, it was, it was grisly watching, I think.

I mean, you know, it really was. Trump himself, I thought, looked rather subdued throughout the whole announcement. But anyway, let's not waste too much time on that. So we're now told that the agreement, that the deal that's being done is that NATO will buy weapons in the United States, which it will supply to Ukraine. But we're not tell which weapons. There's some talk about Patriot missiles and Patriot missile systems. And Trump said that one country is ready to send 17 missile systems, batteries, individual launchers, individual missiles, it's all very big, to Ukraine. And well, and that this agreement has been reached and all is well, and that this is really what this whole business with Pete Hakes-Seth and doing the pause was all about.

It was basically preparing the ground for this decision. The point is, NATO doesn't buy weapons. This has never done so often now. NATO is a bureaucracy that manages an alliance in which the individual members of the alliance, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, they buy their own weapons. They buy their own weapons either from their domestic manufacturers or they buy them from the United States. And increasingly, in fact, they buy them from the United States.

So this is really something quite new. There is no document. There's no signed agreement. We didn't actually have some kind of a contract to sign an agreement here. And so this is all been set up in this way. There's no budget. We're not being given any budget for how much money NATO is going to be provided to buy these weapons. And once the budget is declared, where are the sources of the funding going to come from?

Now, by far the biggest contributor to NATO, and I'm talking about its running costs, is the United States itself. So is it the United States going to give money to NATO to buy weapons from the United States? That would be quite an astonishing thing. One presumes not. So presumably there is going to be a group of European countries that are going to buy these weapons through NATO from the United States. Now, that already looks to me like an extremely complex process. How does that work?

How does it work? As I said, there have to be agreements. There has to be some kind of a bureaucracy or structure to supervise this setup. This is going to take several months at least to work out. And then, as I said, you've got to agree the budget. You've got to agree the funding. You've got to come up with the sources of the funding. We are very far from that.

I mean, this is just Ruta and Trump. Trump talking about doing this, but as I said, until it actually happens, I wonder whether this is even going to work out. And then we've had the US ambassador to NATO, a man called Whitaker, Matthew Whitaker, and he says that the United States will, of course, provide itself with weapons, but it will, anything it has spare, it will then channeled through NATO to Ukraine. paid for by NATO. Now, of course, the problem with that is that that means that if we're talking about Patriot missiles, we already know that the United States is now critically short of Patriot

missiles. So, in effect, what Whitaker is saying, if this is logically correct, is that the United States itself is not going to provide any more Patriot missiles to Ukraine, apart from the 10 interceptors that apparently Trump has authorized. So that then throws it back to the Europeans. Are the Europeans going to sell weapons to NATO for NATO to forward them to Ukraine, in other words, Patriot missile interceptors? Again, it really isn't clear. And Trump talks about 17 missile systems.

If we're talking about 17 complete missile systems, The United States has 50, 50 missile systems. So that would be a third of its entire inventory of Patriot missile systems. I cannot imagine that they're seriously talking about sending that number of Patriot missile systems or selling that number of Patriot missile systems to NATO, to forward to Ukraine. If you're talking about European states, I haven't seen, I don't have any single European state that has 17 complete Patriot missile systems. The one that's closest to having that number is Germany, which is 12. The Germany has said it's not prepared to supply any.

So, I mean, the whole thing, as I said, when you look at it under a magnifying glass, it dissolves into the nothing. We have no budget, no mechanism, no bureaucracy to supervise this, no clear explanation of which weapons are going to be supplied. There's a lot of talk about patriots, but it doesn't seem as if the United States is key to send many more, and the Europeans at the moment are refusing to. So this looks like some kind of an announcement, which on the face of it appears to be an awful lot less than it says and might eventually mean nothing at all. I mean, this is going to take a dozen weeks and perhaps months to iron out. And until we have a idea of what the actual mechanism is going to be, none of this makes any sense to me. Now, there's just one further point I want to make here, which is, of course, if European countries wanted to buy weapons from the United States to transfer to Ukraine, what stopped them doing it? I mean, they could have done that any time over the last three years. Obviously, the United States can restrict the onward sale of weapons to Ukraine, so weapons to Ukraine.

But it's difficult to imagine that the Biden administration would have done that. And I've never heard that the Trump administration would not be willing to do that either, at least in terms of certain categories of weapons. So again, a very complicated and rather nebulous mechanism is apparently going to be set up to do something which the Europeans could have done anyway. at any time for the last three and a half years. Why does it have to go through NATO? The story, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the backstory to this whole NATO arrangement

that Zelensky, under the guidance of Macron and Stammer, approached Trump with this NATO idea and Trump liked this NATO idea? I guess the United States or the European countries. We're not so hot on the idea of buying directly from the United States or there were some complications there of, say, Germany buying weapons from the U.S. and then Germany sending it to Ukraine. So they came up with this NATO scheme and they all got on board with this NATO scheme and they presented it to Trump and Trump went for it. I mean, but I still don't understand what makes this scheme so so appealing?

Why do you need NATO to launder the weapons? That's what it is if this goes through. It's NATO laundering the weapons. Or maybe that is the point to it. Maybe I'm answering my own question. Maybe you need to go through NATO in order to hide certain things from member state parliaments, in order to hide certain approvals, in order to hide things from America First and MAGA. I don't know.

I'm just trying to figure out why you go through NATO for all of this. Well, that's an exit question. And I'm going to make it. I think you've probably answered it because. But logically, if you were going to start sending weapons to Ukraine, the Europeans are going to start buying weapons from the United States to send to Ukraine, they would be doing it directly themselves, as just that they've been always having, always had the option to do since the start of the Special Military Operation back in February 2022.

But they decided that they're not going to do that. They get along to them, as you rightly said, through NATO. Or they could have used the EU. Now, the point is the EU is a much bigger organization than NATO, and it does have the structures in place, which could, in theory, manage a project of this kind. And we know that Ushella is keen to do that sort of thing. So why are they not using the EU? Well, I'm going to suggest it is exactly for the reason that you said.

Firstly, they don't want this to be discussed by their domestic parliaments. They don't want this to be discussed by the increasing number of dissident MPs in the European Parliament. So they are using NATO because there is no parliamentary backstop to NATO. It's not accountable or responsible to any kind of parliamentary body that is directly elected. It is a mere bureaucracy. So that is presumably why it is being done in this way. The opportunities for Gryft for this are just off the scale. How about the America first side of things?

I mean, is Trump going to be able to hide the fact that the U.S. is sending weapons to Ukraine from MAGA America First by utilizing this NATO scheme? That's how he's presenting it. Biden gave weapons, but I'm selling weapons. So I remain true to America first. Actually, I think even David Ignatius in an article that he put out on the Washington Post even said that the Trump strategy is to remain aligned with America First. by saying you're not giving weapons, but you're selling weapons.

That's how they're trying to position this. So they're not breaking from the America First MAGA promises that they made in the campaign. Well, absolutely. But can I just say again, the United States funds NATO. I mean, I think something like 70% of its funding comes from the United States. So if the proportion of funding remains as is, then the United States is going to increase responding from NATO, so as to buy weapons from the United States, which means in effect that the United States will be paying for these weapons that NATO is supplying to Ukraine.

Now, presumably, that isn't going to happen. But it nonetheless remains the case that the weapons are going to continue to be sent to Ukraine through an institution that is closely integrated into the globalist deep state structures in Washington and which much of the MAGA base doesn't like. And they don't like these weapons transfers anyway. And they're making that already very clear. There's been an article about this, by the way, already in the Federalist saying that they are not happy about the fact that there's all this talk of further weapons transfers to Ukraine.

So if this is an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the MAGA base, I think it underestimates them, actually. And I think this has been part of a pattern that we have seen with the Trump White House over the last couple of weeks, actually. They've been drifting. into making all sorts of decisions that they need to try and get round their base to do. So they're coming up with these rather complicated arrangements, which I think are going to arouse suspicion and hostility rather than anything. To repeat again, and we come back to your original point, the United States is short of weapons. Not all weapons, but critically short of the weapons that Ukraine is asking for.

Patriot missiles, for example. And this is, this new arrangement doesn't really address that underlying question. You cannot supply those weapons that are not there. And something really rather to say, because you've brought up David Ignatius. A very, very disturbing piece of information that he's provided is that over the course of the last week or so, and I think this is directly related to the fact that there is a shortage of Patriot missile interceptors. The United States, or at least some people in the United States, Ignatius says it was Trump himself, but it could have been other people, are saying, look, we can't supply Ukraine with more Patriot missile interceptors. We're not giving up on Project Ukraine. We still want to go on hitting back at the Russians.

If we can't defend Ukraine, let's start taking offensive, aggressive action against Russia. So instead of supplying Patriot missile interceptors, which are in short supply, they were now considering sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine instead. Now, Tomahawk cruise missiles, absolutely do have the range to strike at Moscow and indeed to produce locations well to the east of Moscow as well. They could reach from Ukraine all the way to the Urals. So I understand. But this is a strategic system. It is nuclear capable. It would be launched from Ukrainian territory, presumably with American assistance, if you're going to launch missiles, all that distance, the Russians would obviously be concerned that these strategic missiles might carry nuclear warheads.

Probably 99% they would assume that they were not, but there would always be that one percent doubt. These are as a nuclear capable systems. And remember, one of the reasons why, the special military operation was started in the first place was because Putin told Biden, if Ukraine enters NATO, you will be installing long-range missiles like Tomahawk cruise missiles in Ukraine. Biden said to Putin, no, that's not what we are going to do. And then Blinken, called and spoke to Lavrov and walked it all back and said, yes, we will install missiles, long-range missiles in Ukraine. The only thing we're prepared to do is negotiate about limiting the numbers. And that was one of the things that tip the Russians into deciding that they had

no choice but to launch the special military operation. If Tom or war missiles are actually supply to Ukraine during the period of the special military operation. It will confirm for the Russians that all their worst suspicions were true and they will press on. And it would be a massive escalation, which would all but guarantee that the Russians would not stop at the Dombas or the NEPA. They would almost certainly want to cross the NEPA and advance all the way to the Western borders of Ukraine. Now, somebody thankfully rethought that and apparently put a stop to that whole disastrous idea. But we now know that there are discussions within the American government about supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. And that tells us how reckless and desperate

they're becoming, that they should have gone or this way to do something like that, which can only provoke the Russians, and which, by the way, cannot change the military dynamic on the battlefield anyway. The article from Ignatius, it makes it appear as if Trump was ready to green lightness, which is very concerning. That's how Ignatius presents it. Now, Ignatius, of course, he writes for the Washington Post, but I think that's a very Post, but I think it's not controversial to say that when he posts an article, it's basically

the Intel agencies and the CIA speaking through Ignatius. At least that's his reputation as a columnist on the Washington Post. He writes about the CIA's point of view of things. Is that correct? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's not a controversial. It's not controversial. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So he presents it as. As Trump getting very close to greenlighting Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine, we are getting talk about attackums with a longer range or restrictions being lifted on the attackums so that they can hit Russia further into Russia, the range being extended. There's a lot of talk about the J-SAM, which has a longer range being delivered to Ukraine, and of course the tourist missiles as well, even though Pistorius did.

He says there are no tourist missiles. We will never give tourist missiles to Ukraine so that they can be fired into the Russian Federation. But we know that Ukraine and Germany are in some sort of a joint venture and they have this long-range missile, which is very similar, I guess, to the tourists, but we will not call it to tourists and they're going to be delivered by the end of July. So I think it's not difficult to understand that Germany is trying to pull a fast one on Russia and on the world. Exactly.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's not hard to figure out. So, I mean, what is the situation then with the offensive weapons? And what does Russia do? What will Russia do? And what do they do? Because I definitely believe that there is a large group of decision makers in D.C. And backed by neocons who are saying, yes, attack them with a longer range.

yes, tourist missiles, yes, J-sams, and absolutely, yes, Tomahawks, do not worry, Russia will not do anything. We've crossed this red line. We've crossed that red line. We did that red line. And they didn't do anything. So just keep on pushing because we need to hit Russia harder. President Trump, Putin's playing you. He's manipulating you. You need to stick it to him. Peace through strength. You're the strong guy. Even Trump said during the meeting with Ruta, as he was speaking with reporters, he even said that Putin has fooled Obama and he fooled Biden and he fooled Bush and he fooled all of these people, but he'll never fool me, right?

So I mean, there's this type of atmosphere, not from everyone in D.C. or in the White House, but there's this thinking that they need to really hit Russia hard and there's no fear of any type of Russia retaliation, because there hasn't been a Russia retaliation. No. They're not 100% correct, but they do have a point to a certain extent about Russia retaliation. They absolutely are looking at how they've gone after Russia and how they've hit the Russian Federation and how they've coordinated sabotage attacks and other terrorist activities that

have taken place in Russia. And the response from Putin has been pretty much consistent, which is, we're just going to continue with the special military operation as we're doing it. So what are your thoughts on this? Indeed. The first thing to say about this is that going back to the initial point about how this agreement is a very vague one, it doesn't mean that this isn't a very dangerous situation. It is becoming increasingly dangerous. It seems shady, doesn't it? It's shady. The agreement, vague, shady, something feels off. It feels off.

I mean, the agreement itself doesn't, as I said, add up, will make any kind of sense. But the sense of urgency to try to somehow bring this situation under control to hit the Russians, to stop the Russians, is increasing because American arsenals are becoming depleted. There is the sense that this thing is slipping away. There is a military crisis in Ukraine, which we will discuss in a different program. And there is growing alarm and fear that a major American strategic defeat is just over the horizon. So you can see that people are becoming more urgent and more desperate. And yes, the JASMS, which, by the way, the Biden administration said it would send back in August of last year. And we haven't heard much about it since then.

Apparently, it has not been sent, but it could be sent, and it probably will be sent. But it's a stretch whether it can get all the way to Moscow. And I think the Russians would probably have that one under control fairly quickly. The attackers has already been attempted. the Biden administration sent something like 500 of them to Ukraine. They're said to be about 18 left in Ukraine at the moment. Trump were to stop to more attackers launches, but they could be used again.

But I don't think the Russians are particularly worried about the attackers. The tourist missiles, I have no doubt, that they are going to be used. I don't believe what Pistorius is saying. I agree with you that this missile that the Ukrainians are going to start using in a few weeks' time is going to be so similar to the Taurus that it is to all-intense identical to it. And I think that that's exactly what we're going to see. But I don't think it is dangerous in that same way. But we are dealing with very angry, very reckless people, very desperate people,

because they see that they're losing the war. They are realizing that air defense in Ukraine is collapsing and that there is nothing that the US can realistically do to reverse that. So their whole plan now is to hit hard deep inside Russia to try to equalize the situation and to force the Russians to back down. And they have convinced themselves. And as you rightly say, the Russians, because they have acted with extraordinary restraint up to now, have encouraged them to believe that if they do now start supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, then the Russians won't respond. I'm afraid this comes back to the old question, the perennial question of why the Russians have not responded quite as aggressively.

as they might have done. Well, with the attackers and the small storm shadows and the scalps, arguably you could say that there was no need to because those missiles were ineffectual. The Tomahawks would be a different matter because even though I doubt that they would be any more effective than these other missiles have been, they are not just long-range, but they are strategic systems. think the Russians will respond to it. And we now know that the Ahchoknik is in serial production. And I would not be surprised if we start seeing strikes against Tomahawk bases in Europe as well, in Romania, for example, in Poland. And I know that this has been discussed in Russia. Ignatius says that Trump was encouraged with the Tomahawk given the strike in Iran. You see any

truth to that? To use it in Russia. Yeah. That might be what people were telling him, that it was tremendously effective in Iran. They tell him it was effective in Iran. They're not telling him that it was ineffective against the Houthis, which it was. The Tomahawk, can I just say, in its obviously, it's been continuously updated, but it is not the sophisticated system that it was when it was first brought into service in the 70s. The Russians know the Tomahawk very well. Their radars tracked it during the Syrian conflict, for example, when the U.S. Navy launched Tomahawks against Syrian bases.

So the Russians know the Tomahawk, and they would undoubtedly be able to counter it. But to repeat again, it is a strategic system. a nuclear capable strategic system. I think that this is a very dangerous game. If they do this, at the very least, it will push the Russians to drive beyond the NEPA. But I think that they will probably take even stronger countermeasures than that. All right. Why 50 days? Why this 50-day ultimatum? Just one theory, Alexander says that Trump gave this 50-day ultimatum as a way to, let's say, to signal to Putin that he has 50 days to grab whatever he's going to grab and then this has to come to an end. That's one theory. That's one line of thought. Another line of thought is Trump is telling Putin we have 50 days to negotiate a deal or else I'm going to go scorched earth.

and place this 100% tariff. There's another line of thinking which believes that Trump is just trying to kick the can. And after 50 days, it'll become 30 days. And after 30 days, it'll become 70 days. And he's just trying to balance the deal cons and relations with normalization of relations with Russia. And he's trying to balance all these various factions and groups and his own goals of trying to get to some sort of conclusion with this conflict. He's trying to balance all these things out, a Nobel Peace Prize. And so he's just giving himself more time.

And finally, Alexander, there is another line of thinking, which believes that the globalists are trying to slow walk the resolution to this conflict. For economic reasons, they believe that if they can slow walk some sort of a resolution to this conflict, while not sinking the U.S. economy, while not going full speed with 500% tariffs or 100% tariffs, preserve the U.S. economy cause chaos in the global markets, even in the European economy, who cares about the EU, let the EU sink, but also let the Russian economy sink and the U.S. comes out on top. So that's why they do these 50 days and 70 days and 100 days.

And they're trying to create some sort of market chaos, which they hope will bring down the Russian economy. And that will lead Putin to the negotiating table. So, I mean, there's different ideas and analysis as to why the 50 days was put in there, because this wasn't part of Lindsay Graham's 500% bone crushing sanctions. Why do you think Trump put the 50 days? I favor the kicking the can down the road theory. And I'll say straight away.

I mean, first of all, that's what the markets think. I mean, the price of oil fell after the announcement. The ruble strengthened. The ruble, by the way, is much too strong for the Russian economy at this time. and this is creating problems in Russia. Russia needs to start softening the rubble. But that's a topic for another day. The Russian stock market accelerated and is continuing to boom as we're making this program.

Now, of course, all of this may change. But I think what has happened is this. Trump got into, has got himself into an awful mess with Lindsay Graham and Bloom and Toll instead of telling them back in April this bill that you are proposing really is not helpful and I oppose it and that not only will I veto it but I'm going to talk to Johnson in the house and make sure that it doesn't get to the floor of the house which would have killed it. He just dithered and played along because he never wants to say no to Lindsay Graham. And this bill has now acquired an extraordinary life of its own. And, And it's got the support of 80 senators and it's about to be put to the floor of the Senate or was about to be put to the floor of the Senate. And Trump has been trying to get Lindsay Graham and Blumenthal to agree to major amendments,

which would have allowed the president himself to either grant the, to impose these tariffs or not impose these tariffs and to waive them and to do all kinds of things. things with them, you know, reduce them, increase them, all that sort of thing. And Graham and Blumenthal said, yes, fine, but subject to congressional oversight, which is what Trump doesn't want. So what he's done is he's preempted this. He said, look, I've got this power to impose these kind of tariffs and these secondary tariffs anyway.

So I'm going to exercise it based on my own presidential authority. I'm going to impose the 100% tariffs on Russia, which are completely meaningless, and I'm going to impose the 100% secondary tariffs on other countries that trade with Russia. So we don't need this bill at all. And sure enough, Senator Thune, who is the head of the Republican faction in the Senate, says, well, the president is now acting. So this bill is no longer needed. and we can just drop it. So I think this is what this was all about. It was, in fact, Trump trying to get himself out of a problem, which in my opinion is entirely self-created, as I said, if he'd killed this thing back in April,

he wouldn't be here. And unfortunately, and I have to say this again, yes, this gives him 50 days. But it is, If things don't work out, he's going to be under a lot of pressure at the end of those 50 days. People are assuming that this 50-day ultimatum is an ultimatum to Putin, that it's Putin is going to be under pressure to get something done in 50 days. Putin is not going to be under pressure in 50 days.

Lavrov has just had a meeting with Xi Jinping in China. Xi Jinping said, we back China, we back Russia to the health. I mean, that's basically what he's saying. So the Chinese is still going to go on buying a Russian oil. Probably other countries are going to do that too, Endia as well. I can't imagine the UAE cutting off all its economic contacts with Russia. So in 50 days, if the Russians haven't changed their stance and they're saying they're not going to, There's been a very strong statement from Medvedev about this.

What does Trump do? Does he impose, well, he can impose his 100% tariffs on Russia, but everybody knows that is meaningless. There is no trade except in uranium between the United States and Russia, and the United States buys that uranium from Russia because it needs it. So it's more of a problem for the United States if it doesn't buy that uranium from Russia. So what does Trump do in 50 days?

Does he say, well, something's going on? You know, we've got some kind of movement with the Russians so we can slow walk the secondary tariffs with other countries like China and India and all of that. Or is he going to impose tariffs at a lower rate? I don't know. But it seems to me that the pressure in 50 days is going to be on him. because the neocons in Congress, Lindsay Graham and Blumenthal and all of the others are going to come along and say, well, Mr. President, we've put off our bill because you've given us this promise that you're going to impose these secondary sanctions and tariffs on all of these other countries. If Putin doesn't play ball, if he doesn't sign the deal within 50 days, he's not signed the deal within 50 days.

So why don't you do that now? And if you don't, maybe we should go ahead with this bill that we've now put on ice. So I think this actually buys him 50 days, but in the end it's going to put the pressure on him. And it's not an easy situation because, of course, if he puts 100% tariffs on China again, we see that the Chinese nearly, and we're getting more information about this, trickling through. There's a lot of pieces about this in the Financial Times now, that the Chinese stock exports of rare earths, special magnets, and large areas of U.S. industry were on the point apparently of closing down. So you don't want to impose 100% tariffs on China because the Chinese,

have this extraordinary amount of retaliatory leverage with rare earths and probably with other exports as well. I mean, this is a horrible mess that Trump has created for himself. And he's bought himself more time, but he's not given himself a solution. It sounds to me like he's bought himself time, not to negotiate with Russia a solution, not to give Putin 50 days to do whatever he needs to do. That's not the point of the 50 days. It's for Trump and the Trump White House to negotiate something with the neocons, with Graham. Maybe he needs the 50 days to try and tell Graham, just calm down.

Don't keep on pushing these secondary sanctions, these 500 percent secondary sanctions, right? I mean, that's what it seems like he's doing. He has 50 days now to negotiate with the same. That's exactly what it is. Whereas I said, whereas in April, he could have killed it. It's bad management of Congress. And I have to say that straight away. What will the Senate want from him? Will it be something along the lines of Graham saying, okay, I'll pull back, but you need to endorse me? Yeah, well, I'm absolutely. Of course. I mean, could it be stuff like that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can see back in April, I mean, just to wrap up with the video, I can see like back then, you know, Trump's saying support to the big beautiful bill. Yeah. And I'll go along with you, Lindsay, on this 500%.

I can see that type of trade going on back then. But, you know, the BBV has now passed. That's all done and wrapped up. So, I mean, I would imagine that now we're looking at domestic politics. Maybe this 50 days is not really so much about. foreign policies. Maybe it's more about domestic policy and some sort of trade-off with the White House and Graham and all of these senators. That's exactly what it is. That is exactly what I think it is. But yes, no doubt deals can be done and can cut deals with Lindsay Graham and all of those people. But they will come at a political price. And I suspect some of it is going to affect foreign policy. policy and the way foreign policy is conducted as well. I don't think that near cons are

people who are going to give up on their fundamental objectives on in foreign policy, be it over Ukraine or the Middle East or anything. As we say, so many times we're dealing with people who have no reverse gear. Just one quick point to clarify with the 100% tariff that Trump is threatening. The 500% 100% has been paused, not canceled. Lindsay Graham's bill, okay? Does the 100% is it, did Trump say that it's going to be a 100% tariff on Russia? Or is it also like Lindsay Graham's bill where it's going to be a 100% tariff on Russia

and on any countries doing business with Russia, China and India, et cetera? My understanding is it's going to be both. It's going to be both on Russia and secondary tariffs on other countries. And just to finish here, I mean, we go back to the comment that you made in some, you know, two or three programs ago about the fact the tariff policy and sanctions policy has effectively merged. Well, we see that now. I mean, a disastrous thing, and we should not overlook the implications of this.

because the entire trade policy of the United States and this point onwards is identical to US geopolitical policy. I mean, economic policy is now, trade policy has now been, is now been handed over and is controlled by the neocons. This is something that people don't understand and aren't commenting about, but tariff policy, which was all about protection and about supporting US industry, is now clearly being used to pursue geopolitical objectives. And that is disastrous. That's a huge deal. It's a huge thing. And it's going to have disastrous implications for the United States. And by the way, for the global economy in the longer term. So that's that's what that's That is one thing.

But the 100% tariffs on Russia are meaningless. The 100% tariffs on American trading partners who also trade with Russia, those potentially could be disastrous. And the really big ones, the really serious and dangerous ones, are the ones against China. the United States was forced into a retreat when it tried to impose tariffs on China back in March and April. And if they find themselves catapulted again into an economic war with China, well, we've already seen what the effect would be. But never ever give these people, Lindsay Graham, Blum and tell all of them, never give them an inch because they will take a mile. And when they've taken that mile, they'll come back and they'll ask for another mile.

And that is the situation that Trump finds himself in today. All right, we will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitschute, Telegram, Rockfinite, NX. Go to the Duran shop. Pick up some merch, free shipping everywhere in the world with your orders on the Duran shop. So check it out. The link is in the description box down below.

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