The Duran Podcast - Dismantling regime change machinery

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Dismantling regime change machinery

All right, Alexander, let's talk about USAID. Let's talk about USA. This is a huge topic. And we are definitely getting very strong signals. I would say that they're not even signals anymore. That USAID is either going to be shut down or it will be folded within either the State Department, maybe the CIA, but it looks like the State Department, at least that's what. the mainstream media is going with. But it's not going to be the USAID that we have come to known as, in my opinion, regime change engine. That's how I've always viewed USA. I know it does other things, allegedly, it does all these other wonderful things, but I've always had the viewpoint that when USAID comes knocking on, your door or shows up in your country, then your government is in big trouble.

But anyway, we got signals from Trump. We got signals from Musk, a lot of signals from Musk. He's done spaces. He's talked about USAID. He's talked about how it's going to be shut down or how it's evil. Or I mean, he's saying all kinds of stuff about USAID and he's posting all kinds of information about all the money that USAID was spending all over the place. He's allegedly he's in the Treasury and he's going through all the finances of the Treasury

and all the payments that have been made by the U.S. Treasury. And we're getting a lot of information there as well. Anyway, it is a huge topic. Let's start with USAID because Trump and Musk, they're talking about USAID and everyone's talking about USAID. Maybe other organizations are going to be on the chopping block. Absolutely. I gather the National Endowment for Democracy.

He's also one, apparently. Who's on the board of that? All our usual friends. But this is take, and I think that I understand that there are a lot of people who can't quite believe that this is happening, because it's been USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, all of these things, have been part of the machinery of regime change and color revolution and U.S. interference in internal affairs of all kinds of countries. There's such a long time now, I mean, really extending all the way back to the 1980s, and in the case of USA and even beyond that, that I think it's very difficult for people to believe that all this machinery is actually being dismantled.

However, I'm going to say this, this is a huge attack on that machinery, and I believe that Trump and Musk and all of the other. others are completely serious about this. They wouldn't be doing this if they weren't serious about this. I mean, I don't see why they would need to go after all of these various agencies. If, you know, it was just all a cynical exercise of transferring it from one department to another department and doing it in that kind of way. Besides, I think people don't understand one of the key facts about USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy and all of these other things. Obviously, ultimately, these are part of the deep state of the United States,

and that means that in one respect or another, they're part of the permanent government of the United States. But the very fact that they have been able to function as what the British referred to as next step agencies, in other words, that they're they're normally independent, that they are not part of the bureaucracy itself, that they function somehow outside the bureaucracy. Even if this is to some extent of fiction, it has been a very important part of their character and of their whole method of operation up to now, because they've been able to turn up at your door in whatever country you are and say, you know, we're here to help. We're here to help with your civil society. We're here to help with the various

humanitarian and other economic projects that we know, we know that you need and that we want to do. And we're not really part of the US government, so you don't really need to be worried about us. And again, because they're not part of the US government, they're able to attract outside sources of funding. from all the various donors. We don't want to mention any particular names, because you're going to be very careful, but we know who we mean, not just one donor, but lots of them, all the various donors. The oligarchs. The oligarchs, all the various, the regime change oligarchs that we know exist in the US, and by the way in Europe as well, by the way, and some of their funding also goes to USA. And you know, they run all the various programs. They've run them in places like

Afghanistan and in Ukraine and all of those places, they're able to move the money around because they can. They're not quite as controlled in how they spend money as formal agencies, departments of the US government are. So you give, you give, you know, a billion dollars to USAID and USAID spends it and they've got a significant amount of discretion about. how they spend it. Now, that is maybe legal discretion. It may be that ultimately, you know, your people in the CIA and the State Department know exactly what they're spending the money on.

But you don't have to report it in the same way. It doesn't feature in the accounts. When you go to Congress, you can always, you know, be vague about all of this. So the fact that you are either closing these agencies down, and the way Musk is talking, I mean, he's, you know, he's, you know, He clearly, if it's left to him, would want to close USA down. But even if you don't close it down, even if you subordinate it directly to the State Department or to the CIA, if you fold it within the government bureaucracy, you fundamentally change its character. You bring it back directly under the supervision of the president, the cabinet, the audit,

offices, all of those sort of things. And of course, you also expose it in ways that hasn't been the case up to now, to potential congressional oversight. So this changes it completely. And of course, if it works in that way, if it's folded into the bureaucracy, then the people who work at USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy and all of the others, they become themselves officials, subordinate directly to the president and to his other officials. And that changes their character too. So I do think people should underestimate the importance of this. They will not be able to function in the same way that they have, in the sort of covert way that they have been able to do up to now. And of course, if foreign governments know that they're dealing with an agency that is

part of the State Department and part of the CIA, well, they will also be in a completely different position to respond to them. I mean, bear in mind, USAID is, for example, present in Poland, it's present in Greece, is present in all those sort of places. It's not just hostile countries. It's also present in so-called friendly countries, and it's been able to control or play a significant control in controlling domestic politics in these countries because it comes in with deep pockets and paying all kinds of people. If you're talking about, say, a country like Armenia or Georgia, well, in Georgia, we have seen the huge amount of protests and opposites. that's come from all of these agencies, when these countries start passing foreign agents laws. Now, the Trump administration is in effect passing its own foreign agents law, affecting

all of these agencies for these countries. I mean, if they start taking money from USAID, they are taking money directly from the US government. So, again, it completely changes everything. You remove the plausible deniability in a way. You absolutely didn't. Because you can have a protest, bring it up in Georgia, right? And we can do a show and we could say the U.S. government is behind it.

But the U.S. government could say, we're nothing to do with it. I don't know. Maybe NED, maybe U.S. I don't know. Maybe there are some groups. Who knows? But the U.S. government, we have nothing to do with it. But now if, if it gets folded underneath the State Department, well, then it. is absolutely the U.S. government, not only the U.S. government, the State Department, the foreign ministry that is meddling in a country's affairs directly. Correct. Now, you know, this is not

unimportant. In fact, it marks a revolutionary change in the way in which the United States conducts its foreign policy. It means, in effect, that the regime change community, which is enormous, has been massively undermined. And I'll you. I mean, if this is all followed through, it won't be able to function at all, not in the way that it has done for the last 30, 40, 50 years. So to follow up on that, this would mean that if it were to be folded underneath the State Department, it would mean that if you pay for protesters, that would have to come out from the budget of the State Department, if you pay for flags, for those EU flags and those Ukraine flags you see at the protests, if you pay for posters and flyers and media companies. and all of that stuff. And rock groups. And every stage and everything, all of the things, the tents, the food, the cookies, the

cookies and the bread that get passed out by various people, all of that. Exactly. Yeah, all of that is part of the machinery of the Department of State. Correct. Absolutely correct. And has to be declared as such to Congress in Washington as part of, you know, the various audits and oversights that happen. and of course the government of the host country knows it, and so do the people.

All right, here's a question for you. Talk question, maybe a prediction. Do you think they're going to shut it down, or do you think they're going to fold underneath the government organization? I say this because if you look at Elon Musk, the businessman, you can probably say the same thing about Trump, but if you look at the way he handled X, for example, he came into X, he downsized it big time. He got a lot of criticism for it.

But it turned out that it worked. It was more efficient and better run. Do you think that Elon Musk is sticking along the same lines with USAID? Well, maybe. I mean, the thing to say about USAID is that, of course, normally it is supposed to be an agency to provide humanitarian and economic assistance to various places, which need it. And you could argue that this is a legitimate use of tax dollars and one that most American would support if it's done properly and it's conducted with proper oversight, which is, of course,

exactly what Elon must did with X. I mean, he downsized it. He brought X closer to what it was originally supposed to be. I mean, I know that's a controversial statement. Some people are really going to say, well, he completely distorted what X was. I, Twitter was. I disagree. I mean, Twitter was absolutely a part before of the regime-changed communities. in exactly the same way that you were saying. Business-wise, it seems to be doing well. Exactly. Business-wise, yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. And as you said, Trump and Musk are business people, and they look at this, and they see this huge, vast, shadowy, massively expensive. Because it is, I mean, you know, the regime change business is a hugely expensive business. And we're talking about billions of dollars being spent by the United States through these various agencies. You know, will the money filtered around?

I'm moving around the world in ways that nobody's able to keep track on. Well, you know, if you're a businessman, you don't like that. You want to know where every dollar you spend is being used. No business that doesn't do that can survive for very long. I mean, you've been a businessman yourself. You know that. I've been a bankruptcy lawyer myself. I know that.

So, you know, it's absolutely understandable that Trump and Musk would want to bring it fully under control. In Musk's case, I have to say this, I think he's entirely skeptical about the entire agency and every part of what it does. I think his own instinct would be to shut it down. Now, there might be some bureaucratic resistance to that. There might be some resistance in Congress. There might be that kind of thing. So perhaps more logically, more plausibly, it will be downsized and stripped down and brought under control. But I think that, as I said, Musk's instinct is to say, well, what is this thing?

What does it really do? what value added to the United States does it really provide? I mean, it keeps a lot of people busy and busy meddling and interfering in all kinds of things around the world. But there's this really ultimately benefit the United States. And is this really anyway what the United States should be involved in? I think Musk's instinct would be to close it down. And by the way, Trump, who is a businessman himself, and contrary to what people, some people want to pretend a success,

businessman, you don't have a $14 of $7 billion and survive all these pressures that he's been under for the last four years unless you are a successful businessman. I think he understands this too, and I think he would probably be quite receptive to any proposal for Musk saying, you know, this thing really doesn't make any sense. Let's just close it down. But, you know, we're not just talking about business, we're talking about politics. There might be people in the Republican Party, who Trump needs to keep friendly with, who wouldn't want to see it completely closed down, there might be some pushback from within, you know, the intelligence community or the State Department or that kind of thing. And they may decide,

well, let's just bring it under control, strip it down, make it work, and leave it, leave it still in existence in some form. But this should not be underestimated, just to repeat again. And one should not be cynical about this. It's real. Now, whether ultimately it succeeds, that comes down to whether the whole Trump project succeeds. And just to say, this attack on US aid is emblematic of what is taking place in Washington altogether, which is a revolution.

And again, I think people don't see. it for that, partly because it's a revolution that gives some impression that its time has come, and therefore it is meeting so far with very little resistance, and it is transforming everything. Well, I'll give you a question about the resistance very soon, because something did come up on X, which I think people need to take note of. But before we get there, I want to ask you, How does this affect how the world looks at these NGOs and these think tanks? For example, the Fizos, the Orban's, Georgia, Georgia just successfully fought off a regime change. Syria had a regime change.

That one finally removed Assad. So how do you think the world is going to react now? to this change. I mean, the big, the big dog of regime change players, right? The Michael Jordan of regime of the Manchester United out of the arsenal, the Barcelona, the realm of Madrid of regime change is being dismantled. How is the world going to look at this? Does it mean that we're not going to have any more regime changes by the United States, by other countries anymore? I mean, what does this all mean? Well, I think, I think, I think, governments around the world are going to be very cautious and they're going to wait and see

and they're going to say to themselves, is it really, is it really for real? Is the United States genuinely leaving the regime change, you know, the regime change game behind it? And they'll be extremely cautious about this. If the United States does really put it behind I mean, to say straightforwardly, there will be a major improvement in international relations. Governments around the world are going to be very relieved and very happy in the Middle East, in Africa, in Latin America, wherever it is. But it'll be one thing less for them to worry about. And if we're talking about relations between, say, countries like the US and Russian,

I mean, long before we started getting crises in Ukraine and wherever, the Russians were worried about the fact that the US was interfering in their internal affairs, for example. They were constantly complaining about this. And if that is suddenly switched off, I mean, that will be a major source of tension that will have gone away. But in the meantime, they're going to be looking at all of this. They're going to be extremely cautious. And they're going to say to themselves, well, is this a lot of them.

Is it for real? Is it not? Is there some catch somewhere? It is for real. Even if Trump and Musk really mean what they're doing, will they in the end succeed? Today, in Russia, we're talking about Russia. Medvedev, who's the deputy chair of the Security Council in Russia, there's a very, very senior former president, as we know. He said that, you know, he worries that that the deep state is going to come after Musk and eat him up. So, I mean, you know, they are worried about that. They say to themselves, will it succeed or won't it succeed? But of course, governments have always known what USAID is really about.

It's been difficult to fight it up to now. Now it's going to be a lot easier, regardless of what happens. in the long term. But as I said, they're going to be very cautious. Well, Bill Crystal, going off of what you said with Medvedev, he put out a post on X, saying the deep state is far preferable to the Trump state. We know who Bill Crystal is. We don't need to get into any of the details or background of Bill Crystal. But I read this post on X as Bill Crystal's way of saying, let's push back. Let's fight. fight this.

Yes. Yes. They're not going to go down. Oh, no. The USA, the permanent state, the deep state, they're not just going to go down that easily. We're going to fight this. We are, we are, to go, to come back at this, we are at the start of an attempted revolution in the way in which the United States conducts all of its affairs.

And Trump and Musk, not just Trump and Musk, but a whole lot of other people connected with the Trump team. have come in and they've looked at the way the United States had been run and what it's been doing, and they want radical change. So we've had an incredible interview to Megan Kelly by Marco Rubio. I discussed it recently in our program that, you know, the United States cannot be the global government. The unipolar era is over. It was a aberrant event. The United States need to act purely in its own interests from now on. It needs to embrace the fact that this is a multipolar system that is emerging and it needs to rediscover diplomacy and to conduct proper diplomacy

with the other great powers in the system in order to avoid conflict. Now, that is an almost revolutionary statement compared to what we've been hearing from every other Secretary of State over the last 30 years. It is almost exactly the same. And I made this point on a program I recently did. It's almost exactly, almost exactly follows the advice that Putin gave the Americans in his 2007, Munich's security conference speech, the one which made Senator McCain and other Americans at that time so angry.

and which caused such enormous offense and led to such an intense crisis between the Americans and the Russians. Well, that's Rubio. And he's talking about changing U.S. foreign policy. From Rubio coming from Rubio. Former Neo-Con died in the world near con just to say. So he's saying that. And he's obviously saying that because that's what Trump wants people to say.

We also have a massive program of sacksings and suspensions going on right across the bureaucracy. The FBI has been particularly targeted. The National Security Council, you remember this is where Alexander Vindman used to work. They're being cleaned out, apparently. I understand the State Department is also not being subjected to this same sort of attack. And Trump is unleashing Musk on the core department of all, which is the Treasury Department. Now, the Treasury Department doesn't just run the budget and the finance and collect the taxes and do all of those kind of things. It also proposes and administers the sanctions.

The whole sanctions apparatus is run by the Treasury. And from what I've been able to work out, they've been doing it all by themselves, practically without any real. direct supervision. Most of the sanctions originate with ideas from this team within the Treasury. So Musk is coming after them too. And they're backing all of this by saying that they have this legal theory that everybody in the US government serves at the bidding of the president. So the president has the right to sack or appoint anyone he chooses. And there are no legal restrictions which can be placed upon what the president wants to do. And the New York Times is saying that the Trump people are so confident of this theory

and are so sure that the Supreme Court will uphold it, that they're actually welcoming any lawsuits to try to stop or slow this firing program down because they're confident that the Supreme Court of the United States will back what the president is doing, what Musk and Trump are doing. And that will, of course, enormously increase the president's authority, Trump's authority over the U.S. government. All that is going on. And then, of course, a complete shift in US economic policy, which also affects foreign policy too. So now we have tariffs on Mexico and Canada and China.

And there's talk about massive tariffs being imposed on Europe as well. This is a complete step away from globalization. It is, in effect, the end of the collective West. It takes us back to what we were talking about in another earlier program, about a retreat to the hinterland, a retrenchment. Let's not call it a retreat, a retrenchment around the hinterland and a move back towards spheres of influence. So all of this is a huge, attempted revolution, massively ambitious. Of course, the Bill Crystals and the deep state and all of these people are going to. to oppose it. At the moment, they are in a state of shock. They didn't expect anything on this scale

to hit them in the way that this is doing. But there are lots of them. The entire bureaucracy is full of these people. They have supporters in Congress as well. As we know, the media continues to be basically on their side, sooner or later, sooner rather than later, they're going to start to push back. There's already criticisms, open criticisms of the tariff policies, claims that they're going to result in higher inflation, that they're economically illiterate, that they're going to bring about an economic crisis and a recession and all of those things. So inevitably, at some point, the resistance will appear and it will be very strong.

But we should not underestimate the scale of what has been attempted. And the attack on USA is a part of it. Yeah. Americans need to be ready because the deep state is going to absolutely push back. They're going to push back with all their might. Absolutely. So, you know, Americans should be prepared for this pushback that could have come from the deep state and Crystal signaling it. Yeah, and you're going to use the tax authorities are going to be used in this and part of the judiciary is going to be used.

And all of these various instruments and, you know, things are going to be pulled. The wires are going to be pulled and the levers are going to be pressed. So, as I said, we are on the cusp of an enormous political... conflict in the United States, which is going to play out over the next four years. You know the interesting part to all of this? I was listening to Robert Barnes, and he brought up a good point, saying that all of this change that is going on is huge. You're saying it's huge. I agree with you. It's absolutely huge. But we still don't have two or three of Trump's key pieces in position yet.

Tulsi Gabbard, Patel at the FBI, and of course, RFK Jr. Yes. Health and Human Services. If they get confirmed, this is going to get even bigger this change. On all levels, health, foreign policy, law enforcement. Yes. But of course, they're pulling all the stops to prevent them being confirmed. And Pete, Pete Hegsess only managed to get through on a JD Vance's vote.

So, you know, we're going to have a lot. There's going to be an enormous battle here. And one can't be sure that this is going to succeed. By the way, I'm glad you brought up Robert Barnes because it was Robert Barnes who explained to us on one of the live streams we did with him, this whole legal theory about, you know, the unitary nature of the executive, that it basically works around the president, who is the elected official at the core of the executive. And so that everybody in the executive takes their power from him, and he has the right, therefore, to appoint or sack whomever he chooses.

subject, obviously, to confirmation by Congress, by the Senate in certain positions. So this is, as I said, the doctrine that has now been accepted by the Trump people, and which they're saying to all of these people that they're sacking, you want to bring a case? Make our day. We'll take you all the way to the Supreme Court. will get a precedent there, and that will give us enormous, enormous reach. They're very, very confident about this. And the New York Times did an article which said that the deep state is scared of this, and that they're nervous, therefore, about bringing, you know, head-on challenges,

legal challenges. It's actually deterring people from bringing on head-on legal challenges because they fear that the Supreme Court will indeed uphold this theory if it goes to the Supreme Court with all the implications that that has. So there's an awful lot going on. There's a lot of moving pieces. He's got to try and get people confirmed to fill these important positions in the government. And all those three positions are important. All three. of them matter. And he's also got to prepare beyond that for all kinds of other challenges that are going to happen as soon even after these people are in place. But no one should underestimate the ambition of what is being attempted. And that in itself means that one

shouldn't be cynical about what's just been done with you. I said, it does matter. It is important. And the Trump, Musk, and all of the others are doing all of these things shows that they are serious about what they're doing. It might not succeed. It might be a revolution that fails, but that a revolution is being attempted. That is indisputable. We're going to see how all of this unfolds. Absolutely. I agree with you. And I still think that the fight is yet to begin. And the deep state is going to hit back and they're going to hit back

with all of their might. Absolutely. And if you go back to the live streams that we did with Robert, he was calling all of this as well. So you go back to those live streams, you can see that all of this is unfolding as he was telling our viewers

it was going to unfold. But we're at the beginnings of this fight. No doubt about it. If this does succeed, final question, and say USAID is dissolved, Doors folded under the State Department, NED is next, think tanks, universities abroad that are getting funding, all of this, this, all of this architecture, all of this machinery, if it's dismantled over time. How does this affect, you're in the UK, I'm in Greece, how does this affect the elitist

class that feeds off of these US institutions? I will tell you how it affects. them. We've actually had a precedent for this. It affects the elite class in the West in exactly the same way that the elite class in the Soviet Union was affected when Gorbachev and Yeltsin and all of those people pull the rug from underneath them. They will not survive this. This is for them existential without the machinery that is propping them up, which is, mostly American, without the fact that all of these media outlets, we've seen with USAID that the entire media in Ukraine has basically stopped. I mean, they run out of money because they were 90% owned by USAID and all of these other

various funding agencies from America. Well, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell of you something. The same is true right across Europe. A couple of weeks ago, actually, Putin, obviously, didn't know that this was coming. But he said, if you look at any big media agency, anywhere in Europe, and you go back far enough, you will find American funding. And it's true. I mean, I happen to know that.

It is absolutely true. I know that as a fact as well. I know that as a fact. Exactly. I mean, if this all stops. And the entire apparatus that has been created over the last 50 years starts to gum up and break down. And then without the support of the media, where are people like Schultz, Airbok, Boc, Baccaro, Ursula, Star. All of these guys, all of these guys.

The whole network of agencies and NGOs and civil society, bodies. that prop them up, they start to break down. And at that point, everything changes, we might even start to get a real politics again. Man, it makes you think how much money, you know, the U.S. has spent on all of this over the many, many decades. And it's no surprise that you're looking at $35 trillion in. I mean, when you think about all the decades of all the money that's been going to all of these operations and these organizations and these think tanks and these NGOs and these regime changes.

expenses. And this is, and this is the question that people like Trump and Musk and not just them are now asking, they're saying, you know, well, we've been spending all of this money to achieve all of this to run domestic politics in Andorra. Well, you know, all right, let's not talk about Andorra. Let's talk about Finland, for example. What actual benefit has the United States obtained from this? I mean, what actual concrete, real benefit has it done?

This is, you're looking at it in a business sense. I mean, obviously, you know, we've got this huge empire, which we're running. Some people have been doing very, very, very well out of it. But the United States is just running up debts. These are unsustainable. We can't continue this way indefinitely. we've got to call time whilst we still can. And that's what they're saying.

I'm going to say something else, by the way. I mean, you know, the attack on the cartels, and I want to be very careful what I say here, is part of that too. Anybody who knows the whole story about how the cartels have worked, not just in, you know, the Americas, but in Asia and all of those things, knows that they've only, they too, function.

on the periphery of this world. If this world is closed down, that changes also. This is so huge. Just to wrap up the video, you've always said for a while now, probably going back three years that the United States, the people of the United States, are going to be so much happier when they get this weight of empire off their back. Absolutely.

So much happier, so much richer, so much more prosperous, if they can just get rid of this responsibility of empire. Correct. And I think that's unfolding. If it's going to succeed, once again. We don't know. We're at the beginning of this. Yes.

But you were the one person that has been saying this for, honestly, you've been saying this for probably three years. Yeah. Well, again, I speak for the advantage of being in the capital of the previous empire, which is Britain. By the way, just to say about Britain. But did Britain capitalize on? On it or no?

No, well, the British tried to do something in the early 20th century, not very different in some ways from what the Americans are, what Trump and Musk and the others are trying to do now. As I discussed in a recent program, the key figure here was a man completely forgotten nowadays called Joseph Chamberlain who said, this is unsustainable. We can't continue like this.

We've got to move from free trade to protection. We've got to start retrenching. We've got to consolidate on our hinterland. But ultimately, he failed. The oligarchy that benefited from empire in the United States, in Britain, was far too powerful. And, well, the result is the exhausted country that Britain is today with an industrial base that by the 1960, it had become basically a museum, unable to compete in global terms, an archaic political system that has not been reformed or reorganized properly to this day, and a foreign policy that continues

to be completely detached from reality. So that is the danger that America faces. If it wants to understand where it's going, look at Britain now. Just saying. And Britain is entering a particularly dark period, partly because it still hasn't been able to resolve all of these problems. If the United States, very different country, very different history, it's a republic, not a monarchy, which already makes a big difference, it's got a constitution, Britain doesn't even have a proper constitution. If the United States is able to succeed in carrying up this radical change where Britain failed, then absolutely the burden will be lifted from the American people.

And you will be able to see an economy and a society in America recover in a way that will astonish the world. We'll leave it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitschoo, Telegram, Rockfin, and X. go to the Durand shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. The link is in the description box down below and free shipping on all orders over $70. Also, check out our channels. It's been a while since we've plugged our channels as well.

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