The Duran Podcast - Foreign policy shift, Ukraine conflict endgame w/ Jim Webb (Live)

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Foreign policy shift, Ukraine conflict endgame w/ Jim Webb (Live)

All right. We are live with Alexander McCurris. And joining us once again, we are very happy and very honored to have with us, Jim Webb. Jim, thank you for joining us once again on the Duran. It's great to have you here. And how are things going today? And also tell people where they can find you. Yeah, sure. It's great to see you all again. Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be a fun subject again. I'm doing great, doing particularly well. considering, you know, the election results last week. But before we get into that, everybody you can find me at Best Place Find Me is on Twitter. It's James Webb underscore 16. I'm pretty active out there. I want to hear your gripes. I want to hear, you know, your comments, what you think. I love to get involved.

So really, you know, just throw it at me and let's have some fun. But so the election. Yeah, the election. By the way, Jim, just before we start, I have your link to Twitter. in the description box down below. And let's begin, Alexander Jim. And that shirt, Jim is pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Thanks for sending it. I couldn't wait to put it on. All right. Let's begin. Hello to everyone that's watching us. Thank you to our moderators. We've got a lot to cover. So let's just jump right into it.

Alexander, Jim, the election. The election, indeed. What an election it was. A nail-biting finish. We were all there to expect. And then the results started to come in. and it turned out that it was going to be a lot more clear than many people expected. And of course, gloomy faces right across Europe, all of the usual people who want wars

and want extended wars. They didn't seem to be happy at all. But, of course, we've had the election, and now we're waiting to see what comes next. But I think the election itself was a very important event. And one of the things I would say is that it was a bringing together. of many different people who had complementary views with each other. Now, Jim, Jim Webb, who we have the honour to speaking with today, has been an advisor and has a friend, for example, of Robert Kennedy Jr.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is somebody who came to the Democratic Party, who is obviously the son of Robert Kennedy, senior of the early 60s, well, of the 60s, great man. man who was cut down tragically before he could do, I think, extraordinary things. Anyway, he comes from that political tradition in the United States. And of course, we've also seen people who come from a completely different political tradition, a political tradition which is more conservative, more America first and those things. But they all came together. And they did so for a reason, because one of the things that all of these different groups have in common is that they are very, very unhappy with the direction that US foreign policy has been taking at least for the last 25 years.

And this, I think, came across very clearly, not just in what was being said by the people who were backing, Donald Trump, but also from many of the people who voted for Donald Trump when they were asked questions about why they were voting for him. Now, there's a constant thing that said, which is the foreign policy, is not a great interest to American voters. I've never really believed that myself, but I certainly don't think it was true in this election. The American people, in my opinion, made it absolutely clear what it is that they do not want. They do not want more wars. They do not want wars, foreign adventures,

attempting to reshape the world, not in America's interests, but in the opinions of certain political factions and parties in the United States. They want the United States, in effect, to come home and deal with the pressing problems that exists here. that is not isolationism. It's not turning back on the world. It's not rejecting the world or anything like that.

It is a rejection of the specific foreign policy we have seen over the last 25 years. And I think if the new president and his team don't understand that, then there will be serious problems going forward. So the first question I want to ask Jim Webb here, who has been involved in a lot of this, And of course, it's much closer to the events than I am.

I speak, obviously, from a distance here in London. But, Jim, do you agree with my view? I think you are on the money, Alex. It's a foreign policy could go back as a major piece of electoral politics. I mean, you can go back to George Bush. It goes back further than that. It's important to remember that W. ran as a non-interventionist candidate in 2000.

He was, you know, one of his slogans was, we're not going to be, you know, the world's policemen anymore. You know, 2004, it was front and center with the Iraq war again. 2008, Obama ran on getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. 2012, it was, you know, to continue that. And on the other side, you had Mitt Romney, who, you know, wasn't full bore leaning into, you know, it continued America interventionism.

But I mean, you could make an argument he was, although it was not part of his everyday rhetoric. 2016, when Donald Trump ran the one of the big pieces of his campaign that got the most attention was no more stupid wars. And that galvanized a lot of a lot of support behind him. And then once again, 2024. 2020 is kind of an anomaly just because of all of the chaos going on from COVID. you know, most people in this country didn't know up from down. And it was a really just, it was a, it was a really depressing kind of scary time. I've never seen the country like that.

I never want to go back. But this time around, you know, there are so many different data points that point to our foreign policy, not only undermining the American way of life from inflation to the rise of bricks to OPEC plus, to the open everyday debate about our involvement. in Ukraine and contrasting that with the quality of life in the United States. You know, people see tens of hundreds of billions of dollars going to Ukraine. And then you have a Hurricane Helene come through and impact Appalachia really bad, where my family is from.

You know, and it's people, people couldn't be bothered to take a look back there. At the least of leadership level, I think the closest Kamala Harris got was Charlotte on her campaign. You know, so these things, they ripple through the American population. There was a study done in 2016, I believe, following Trump's election about certain pivot counties. And we can get way down into the details about this, but at a top level to illustrate how important foreign policy is, the pivot counties, which were the counties that went Obama, Obama, and then Trump during 2016, were also high casualty counties when it came. to the children of the people who live there being sacrificed in the global war on terrorism. And they were in the Mississippi River Valley. They were in Ohio. They were in Michigan. They were in Wisconsin. And that was of utmost importance because in that election in particular,

it became, you know, they became the counties that flipped the election for Trump. So to say that it's never really been of importance is, I think, erroneous. And today, It is, you know, it is absolutely front and center. And I personally believe that, you know, not only was this election good for domestic politics, having, you know, having Trump effectively blow out Kamala Harris was something that myself and a lot of people who have worked in electoral politics on the campaign side and on Capitol Hill saw coming. I thought the floor in electoral votes for him was 287. I believe he got 315, 312 last count, which is really nice. you know, and that included counties like where I live in Florida now, Brower County. Some of your typical traditional Democrat hotbeds, you know, they went Republican.

And it was, you know, I think foreign policy is front and center, but it's a repudiation of a lot of the policies of Obama and, you know, his new party, if you will. But Kamala Harris is, I like to say, her best foreign policy moment was getting Russia to invade Ukraine. And I say that with the utmost cynicism, standing up there right before the Russians cross the line and saying, you know, effectively on the final day, we will have Ukraine and NATO and ignoring that rhetoric. And people saw how she and Biden failed to manage these different conflicts appropriately, whether it's the, current situation in Gaza or the runaway situation in Ukraine and they wanted a return to stability and a return to logic. Because I'm going to say something which again, I personally very strongly believe, many people don't seem to accept this, but I believe this, which is that everything is connected. If your foreign policy is wrong, if you're tied up in wars all over the place, then that is

going to reshape your foreign policy. If you are spending all your time thinking about what's going on in all sorts of other places, you're not going to have time to think about your own place. And of course, the other thing is the benefits, the supposed benefits of over extension, invariably go to few people, whereas the burdens are carried by the many. Now, I live in Britain. Britain was of course, you know, the empire of the past. I've said this in many programmes. Every day that I live, I see the effect of what having an empire did to British society, how it hollowed out British industry, how it affected the balance of interest within Britain,

how it supported strength in some classes of the expense of others, and how it has left us with a very difficult legacy, which we are very, very far. from escaping. And I think the same could be true in the United States, if it is not careful. It comes from a different place, a completely different tradition, it's a much bigger country, it has a far bigger industrial base, but I can see some of the same problems that I see in Britain starting to arrive in the United States as well. So if you don't get your foreign policy rights, you're not going to succeed in your domestic policy either. The two, go together. Eisenhower understood that back in the 50s. Other presidents have understood it since.

I want to ask you two questions. Firstly, shortly, whether or not you agree with that view, which is a rather big view that I've expressed. But the other is this, and you've worked in Congress, you've been there, you know a lot of these people, you've given a whole list of presidents, all of whom won and campaigned in elections to actually end this constant, involvement and yet that involvement continues. Why is it so? Is it because these people are dishonest when they stand and say these things during elections? Or is it because the pressures on them are so great that they have to change course? And where did those pressures come from? So Alex, yes, your first question. I do agree. And I'm a I studied Europe my entire life from Great Britain to Russia.

and what I've seen happen across the continent, I do not want to have happened here, particularly in Great Britain. It was a beacon of civilization and light for a long time. But invariably, everybody collapses under the weight of empire. It's just the nature of the beast. But to the second part, that is a very complicated question, at least the answer to it is.

I don't believe these people are liars when they come in through the door. The problem is the key foundational problem is that we have not had a real national security strategy since the end of the Cold War. Flatly, you know, the global war on terrorism could be an argument for some sort of, you know, national strategy, but it really was just whackamol when it continues till this day. You know, it's now like the zombie global war on terrorism out there. What a, what a Trump administration needs to do is that on the, on the first day, and I'm hoping they do this, is set the mark. markers for, you know, what American interests look like. They have a, they have a good, you know,

a good piece of rhetoric out there right now, you know, return to peace through strength, which, you know, can be interpreted a lot of ways, but I like to look on the sunny side. And I see, you know, return to deterrence, strategic deterrence, you know, rebuild the conventional combat capabilities of the military, cut down on our interventions overseas and bring our troops home. You know, for example, the army is spread out at the platoon level all over Africa. This makes very little sense. You know, it's, but they're there for a myriad of reasons. You know, it's to deter al-Shabaab, deter ISIS, to help the Somalis, to provide stability

for government acts through training. None of that really bolsters American strength, you know, particularly the deterrent capability that a well-trained 101st airborne or 82nd Airborne Division can do. bringing those folks back, you know, training them up to be at a near peer level, which we are not right now with either the Russians or the Chinese. At the tech level, we probably exceed them in a lot of capabilities, but they now have combat, like real conventional combat experience, which needs to be studied and passed down to our troops. But then after this, like once you get the strategy, right, you need the people to implement it. And I believe Alex and Alex, you've been tracking the personnel moves or the lack thereof, the rumor mill that's out there right now. And, you know, quite frankly, this looks a little bit better than did last time around.

You need to have people who are ideologically committed to the same thing you are. And to identify, I would say the key problem within Washington is that it is, you know, it is the deep state. I hate using that term because you hear it so much, but it's so true. true. You know, and I'll use a simple staffer as, as an example of how this happens. You know, none of these people come to Washington, whether as a staffer or a congressman necessarily wanting to do ill or, you know, further the decline of the American state. But they're looking for a job. They're ideologically charged. Someone can take this 23-year-old staffer's hand and say, hey, you're going to work this issue set for, say, John McCain or Tom

Cotton. And they will do it to the fullest of their ability, you know, having respect for a senior person that is there who has a track record, you know, out in the public space or in the military, too. Then they're rolled into a think tank, you know, or an outside organization. And then perhaps they go over to, you know, to work as a lobbyist for the defense industrial complex to make some money. And you get a furtherance of or a continuity of a perspective, which then this part is ingrained in this person. And then when they graduate to a senior level, it's no surprise that they're, or hawk or in our terms they're a neocon. So those people need to be weeded out.

And it's very difficult to do. But it starts at the top by bringing in people who are, you know, are restrained in nature at a minimum. And then building out from there around that strategy. Sort of the immediate arc on that, I don't know, you know, if we're going to get that, we've got Marco Rubio, being floated as, you know, potential secretary of state. You know, while he's individually hawkish, you know, the individual views can be, in effect,

blocked to a large degree by the president's own perspectives. But what a guy like Rubio will do if he's at state is he's going to further, you know, the last 15 years of, you know, what the State Department has become under Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo. And that's not good. That's not going to return America to a diplomatic footing at all. I think a lot of people are again very surprised that Marker Rubia is being talked about. Now, of course, it may be that by the time this programme is widely circulated, I mean, we're live, obviously.

But I mean, you know, in a couple of hours, we will probably know the answer. So maybe we shouldn't devote an excessive amount of time now about discussing this. But it does still surprise me that someone like that should be talked about. I mean, you know, they're probably domestic political reasons, you know, questions of political balance and that kind of thing, which do explain this too. I mean, a president has to take that into account. But as you correctly say, it's a continuation of policy. He has been, as far as I can see, absolutely a part of a consensus view of foreign policy in the United States, which has consistently failed. I mean, it's not as if we're talking about an approach to foreign policy that has been particularly successful.

But he talks about peace through strength. I agree. Peace through strength. Strength, strong economy, strong industries, strong science, strong military. And I, by the way, support a strong military, and a military which is scattered all over the world in platoon levels, carrying out police functions and doing that kind. of thing, is presumably not a military that's training very much, organizing very much, or thinking about how to properly wage war. It's a military that is very much like, by the way, the British military of the late Victorian era, just to say. So, you know, this is, this is,

if this is who we end up with, which we might do, then I will be disappointed and I'll be saying again to myself, you know, we have all of this. We have people voting. We have the views clearly set out. And we still seem to end up with the default position, which is with people who, you know, I don't know Mr. Rubin personally at all, but, you know, people who on their past, on their past trajectory have taken a certain views, which have turned out to be consistently unsuccessful and which don't seem to me to be consistent with what the president and the people who were most important in getting him elected and were closest to him, have been saying. But anyway, let's perhaps not waste too much time on that because I think we want to talk about

more fundamental things. One other thing, and I think we touched on it in one of our previous programs. I do also feel that the advice of people who know about military things, actual serving soldiers, is not being heeded to anything like the extent that it should be. People on the production side, engineers, people of that kind, but also soldiers. And again, I'm being very, Yeah, I'm repeating myself, but I come back to that article you and George B wrote more than a year ago now, during the summer offensive that the Ukrainians were launching, explaining how this isn't working, how there has to be a rethink. Well, that article proved correct. So surely it is people, I've got to say you specifically, there may be you specifically, but. People who write articles like that, people who think in that way, the genuine experts, the people who have the record, the actual track record of getting it right, they are the

people rather than these 23-year-old congressional staffers who then go through this whole process that you've described and who are not really experts. It is they, the true experts that one should listen to. And the art of successful management is that. actually working, finding out who the real experts are, and listening to them. So it seems to me, any thoughts about that? I'm right there with you, Alex. And also, thank you so much for the kind words about that piece. I'm glad it still has legs.

But yeah, this has been a great personal lamentation of mine and of, I would say, my peer group, generally speaking. I was a Marine for a while, infantryman, NCO type. and then went into defense contracting for a while. And my journey is not unique. And if you look at the reaction, right, to say Kamala Harris running out Liz Cheney, and then the who's who of the Iraq war, one of the things that went a little underreported, but there were a couple of good pieces about it were about the reaction from the global war on terrorism veterans to just go absolutely hard,

the other direction towards Donald Trump. And, you know, this is anecdotal, but I had personal friends who identify as socialists who were voting for Trump based upon that. You know, and so what does that mean, right? It means that there is a large group of people in this country who do not have their views necessarily represented. They're highly intelligent. And they're hitting a glass ceiling when coming into government. You know, they make great cops, great firefighters. They may end up in some agencies, but they're never really given a seat at the table.

And to get back into the election, this is neither here nor there because Mr. Kennedy didn't win. But that was one of my principal pieces to him. It's not necessarily putting me out there. It's that, hey, you've got this bullpen of people who have been out there doing it, who know the score. And they need to be empowered in Washington because you will prevent a lot of these just fantastical ideas. You know, it's to once again, speak anecdotally. I spend a lot of my time with veterans, with special forces guys, with Marines, with infantrymen, with people who are admin clerks in the Air Force.

And to a man, they all find the way that Ukraine is being conducted as absolutely abhorrent. And they would change the policy regardless of their opinions on intervention in other areas. They would change that overnight. And so you have to ask the question, why are these people not being listened to? And I think it's somewhat of a nefarious answer because it would it would take the rice bowl away from people who have gotten rich off this for a very long time at the detriment of the people who go there and do that and their families. So how do you change this? I would love for President Trump to come in and hire a Secretary of Defense who understands that, someone who is a veteran who has done it for a long time, who perhaps has. as ideologically flexible views, you know, more of someone who gets it done rather than somebody

who is trying to jam a political solution down someone's throat. And then empowers, you know, an entire generation, if not coming up on two of people who have fought for this country and understand what works and what doesn't work overseas. And it's, there is an argument, I think that someone could make that would be, you know, you have the military, the military, the military of an empire now running the military and it could you know empire could be get empire and it could be a bad situation but the reality is is that nobody knows better how the global war on terror didn't work in the people who fought it and no one knows better what the capabilities of a Russia or a China are than the people who trained to fight them but ended up going and fighting

goat herders in, you know, in Afghanistan and Iraq. And they understand what a conventional war looks like. The thing that I would really hate to see is to continue the, the theme of the British Empire here is that, you know, us walking into a 1914 because I look at, you know, particularly what's happened, what's been happening in Ukraine, Russia, and now bubbling up in the Middle East, you know, as a very similar scenario where we have a, you know, a, you know, a very highly professional military that's spread thin all around the world that isn't looking at, you know, the freight train coming down the tracks. And it's a smaller force, you know, just like the British Empire outside, right before 1914. And I think the reaction would be, you know,

to say the Germans coming across the border into France where the British expeditionary force was tossed in and ultimately sacrifice to try and slow them down, something like that would be a similar scenario with the U.S. military. We don't have the manpower to fight a near-peer conflict just to put a big enough speed bump up where we could then draft a force and put it in the field, which would ultimately be, it would be the final nail on the coffin for the U.S. Anyways, not to go too negative, I just think there are people out there that can prevent that and would really, really, really benefit the Trump administration going forward. I entirely agree.

I think that is completely correct. Now, can I actually talk about Ukraine? Because, again, I think that there is a great misunderstanding. Now, this is my view about this. Now, I'm not somebody who's been involved in war. I've never actually been in battle myself. I have seen many, much film now, from the Ukraine War of Battle. We have drone footage.

And I have to say, it is completely unlike. anything that you ever see represented in fiction about what war looks like. So that's, I think, the first thing to say. And people who look at this drone footage perhaps can understand that. And that only gives you 1% of the sense of the real thing because you're not getting the noise, the smell, all of the things that must be happening there at the same time. But I can't help the thing that we are now seeing an exceptional. momentum in the war in Ukraine. At least that's how it looks to me. You absolutely write about

what happened in Kusk. I mean, I think that's the first place I would like to say. I mean, because it was going to be an act of folly. It was a trap. Even Robert Gates, who was the Defense Secretary, is now coming out and saying that. He said that the Ukrainians diverted their forces in a completely wrong place and got them trapped there and trapped themselves there. But in the other places, especially in the southern front lines, things are moving now at a far greater speed and pace than we have ever seen. And I think that the quality, the ability of the Ukrainians to resist, to defend themselves, to do that which you were suggesting they should think about doing back in 2020. established fortified lines and the negotiate. It's now looking as if we're past the point when that is possible, or so it seems to me.

And again, I've been reading all these plans, preises of the conflict, ideas of this kind, you know, about, you know, getting the Russians to stop here and telling them that if they don't, you know, we're going to lob some missiles there or give a little bit more healthy than the credit. I just don't think this bears any relation. to the actual reality. It is as remote from the reality of the situation as I've learnt that people were telling,

coming back to Washington and saying to the leadership there, you don't understand what's really going on in Vietnam. I think people don't really understand now what is going on in southwestern Ukraine. Anyway, that is my view. Again, be interested to do what you think on this. I think you're on the money, Alex,

and you are, generally speaking. I agree completely with that statement. You know, I was describing it last night to my wife. You know, it's where this is like we're getting into the fourth quarter of a football game, an American football game. And the Russians just have to keep running the ball. But the difference is, is that every time they hand off the ball, there's one less Ukrainian on the other side.

So they're going from 11 men to 10 to 9 to 8. And so those chunks keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I think what's going on right now in Kursk, you know, there's some speculation out there, some questions about why haven't the Russians just smashed the Ukrainians or the mercenary forces or whatever you want to call them who are inside of Russia. And from a strategic level, it doesn't do them any good. They have the best part or what's left for the best part of the Ukrainian military still trapped, which means Ukrainians want them back and are doing everything they possibly can. to keep them supplied alive and get them off the battlefield, while the rest of the front seemingly collapses around them. And I wanna go to touch on,

I know that there's some speculation about the supposed Trump phone call to Vladimir Putin. I would like to take the position just for the sake of argument for a minute, that this in fact did happen. You know, it's, I don't trust the Washington Post as long as far as I can throw it for a lot of reasons. And I would think that one of the reasons that they floated this story was to try and restart impeachment proceedings against Trump before he's even in office. However, you know, if I was Putin and that call happened, I would completely

categorically deny it because the second that you start talking about an end of the conflict publicly, you may as well begin the negotiating process from that point forward. And he does not need to negotiate right now. He has the complete momentum on the battlefield. And he has three full months, plus the resources built up to push out an offensive to grab whatever he wants to completely smash the Ukrainian regime if he so chooses. And I think he understands that when Trump comes into office, he is going to negotiate. And I think the United States will negotiate with him. But, you know, he wants, he's paid for this in blood, Putin and the Russian people. And they're going to want to have the absolute best deal humanly possible.

And I think they're eyeballing, you know, some, some strategic scenarios on the ground to maximize their position that they have not quite attained yet. And they're going to go get them. You know, kind of what happens in between is a different story. And I know one of the things, I guess, popped out with the floated phone call was, that the Ukrainians were talking about, and I don't, you can correct me if this is completely untrue and didn't happen, talking about a concession of the territory and Kursk, you know, as a first step in this peace process, if you will. So I think that's a, I think that's a tell, if you will. It's, they want out, but they don't know how to do it, that being the Ukrainians.

The Russians have all the cards right now. And they quite, quite frankly, I don't think Putin really wants to talk to the West, you know, in the current situation, because they have shut him out for years. It's cost him tens of thousands of his own citizens in a whole situation that could have been avoided from day one. But that being said, you know, he's going to get as much territory as he possibly can at this point. Not for any type of gain, but I think to create a maximum buffer. between NATO and Moscow. What did you make of Zelensky's victory plan? Because incredible as it may sound,

the German government that we're likely to get in February, because there's going to be elections in Germany in February, seems to be the new person who's going to be chance of Friedrich Mertz, actually thinks that we might actually want to look at this victory plan, invite Ukraine into NATO, and do all of the things that Zelensky, I personally thought the victory plan was borderline madness. This is my own view.

I mean, I can understand why Zelensky proposes, but that we would even consider it, that any Western NATO government should take it seriously, would consider it. What do you think about that? And the Financial Times, just to say, is running a story today that it was drafted with the expectation,

that aspects of it would appeal to Donald Trump himself. Anyway, just want to look into what your thoughts on this. Well, I mean, I think the financial times is probably right in its hopefulness that it would be appealing to Donald Trump. But my gut reaction to the plan, Alex, was it was just hilarious, like darkly, darkly hilarious. They have absolutely no chance of victory whatsoever. But you and I understand that, and we can accept that. So the reality of the plan itself is it's messaging to the West for more money. And if you look at, you know, the fundamental reason as to why the West does not understand,

particularly in America, what's going on on the ground, it's that there is a complete information dominance for lack of better term or propaganda dominance by the Ukrainians. Every single thing that is fed to the U.S. media is done through the Ukrainian state. And Americans don't really grasp that. They view them as our friends. They're told it's a democracy. And in that instant, they completely forget, you know, the whole history of Ukraine during the Soviet Union, you know, their prevalence of the KGB there, all the different pieces.

They're, you know, they're good at what they do. And if you ask an average American on the street, they have absolutely no idea what even the Ukrainian casualty count is. So that being said, there's no understanding of what the ground truth is and you present them a victory plan. And your average citizen is probably going to be like, yeah, read the headline. It's a victory plan. Cool. You know, yeah, let's help them win.

You know, but in terms of Zelensky, like, he is a, it's funny that that guy started off as an actor because he could be the star of a Shakespearean comedy at this point. um it is like a like one of the darkest i don't i don't even think shakespeare wrote one this dark um but to to continue that his hubris about victory and we just need this little piece and that you know our forces will like it we're not winning therefore it's america's fault like just the the whole push of um of how they're doing vice how he knows they're doing is incredibly tragic um And I would hope that, you know, that he would find a way to turn over power to somebody without causing a coup in his own country who would be able to bring, you know, a negotiated settlement between the two parties. Because I think he's so far out there also with all these different plans and lines and rhetoric that he cannot negotiate an end of the conflict himself. What do you think the administration should do about Ukraine?

I'll tell you what we in the Iran have been saying, Alex and myself, we think the best thing that Donald Trump could do is tell the Ukrainians, look, we've given you what we can, we've given you all the money we realistically can, we've given you all the weapons we can, we've now got to a position where if we start giving you even more, we're going to put our own stockpiles at risk. So we can't give you any more of that.

What we advise you to do is sit down and again, We can't help you anymore. And if you don't want to negotiate, well, that's fine. That's for you to sort out then. And what you should also do is tell the Europeans, look, this is our position. The United States has done everything it can. This is your continent.

This is Europe. You say that you really care about this. If you care about it as much as you say, then either you support Ukraine in the way that you're constantly talking about, or you tell the Ukrainians to negotiate. We take the view that it would be a mistake for Donald Trump and his administration to get too deeply involved in the details about all the negotiations, trying to come up with plans, you know, for freezes and here

and drawing the line here or there or wherever, that doing that would, again, draw all the energy, the foreign policy and political energy out of the administration, and conceivably even lead the administration itself and Trump and the United States into all kinds of potential traps and dead ends, which they would be better if they avoided. I mean, that is our view. I'd be very interested to know what your thoughts about this are. Yeah, so two things. Oh, three, really. But I think what you're saying is it's very logical.

It's probably a good pathway. But I also think that the situation in Ukraine is very unique. And it needs a bold stroke of leadership, meaning for Trump to call Putin like he allegedly did, to be the bigger man in this scenario and go and say, hey, we need to get this done. Because point three, the most important question in American foreign policy right now is the war in Ukraine. It's bleeding into everything that America is trying to do overseas. And a lot of it is increasingly because the Russians are finding ways to pressure the U.S. on the periphery. If you remember back, I believe you talked about this. Months ago, you know, everybody was talking about what would the Russian response be to missile attacks into

into Russia 2022, 2023, way back when they first started happening. And there was a lot of speculation that the Russians would react directly. They would attack bases in Poland. They would shoot down U.S. aircraft. And what really ended up happening was pressure on the periphery, particularly in the Middle East. And then you had, you know, most importantly, Russia and China being pushed together into, in effect, a written alliance. We haven't seen the document, but one can assume pretty reasonably that that's happened. And what's driving that is U.S. policy in Ukraine. We need to cut the weapons, like straight out of the gate.

And I would like to see some sort of negotiation between the U.S. and Russia about what it would take to dial down the temperature and possibly, if there's any hope at all, draw the Russians closer to Europe. Because right now, if you look at what's happening in the Middle East, the Iranians have a defense pact with Russia. They're about to get some very advanced weapon systems that they don't already have them. And that puts a ton of pressure on Israel, which sucks us into the region. The Houthis all of a sudden are firing hypersonic and anti-ship missiles. You know, when I worked in the Senate a few years ago, like the Houthi were one of the poorest country, if not the poorest country on Earth with unbelievably low.

literacy rates yet they have hypersonics now. They can hit Israel. That's a big jump in a couple of years. And where do you think that comes from? And then we have, you know, the pacing threat, as DOD calls it, or as I call it, kind of the mess in the Pacific with China. And for better or worse, if these people are serious about that, then they need to actually reorient our force into the Pacific theater. That means pulling all the money out of Europe, you know, the money going to Ukraine. They need to draw down the forces that we have in Europe, draw down the forces we have in the Middle East, in Africa, retrain them and deploy them in a manner, which, you know, defends what they subscribe as the national interest. And that all starts with Ukraine. That all

starts with the United States talking to Putin about how to end this war and finding some sort of solution for it. Now, realistically, I think the pathway that you've laid out is probably the most reasonable one. However, I'm very skeptical about Russia really negotiating anything that is in the interest of the EU or the United States. They've lost tens of thousands of soldiers. They are unstoppable at this point, save a NATO intervention, which nobody wants. So, So that's not a really good place to start a negotiation, unless you're in effect giving them, you know, territory right out of the gate that they fought for. And then certain conditions, perhaps that Ukraine doesn't ever join NATO.

There's very just, just a few points to say. The first thing is that, of course, Putin gave this enormous press conference in Sochi just a few days ago. And going directly to the point of what you, one of the things that you said, I noticed, and it's all, on the Kremlin's website, the Kremlin's own website, of course, is their translation. But he actually referred to the Chinese as allies. Now, there isn't something that the Chinese and the Russians generally do. And it might have been a slip, but there it was. I mean, he called them allies, which is, I mean, it was quite a thing. And you could sense that people in the audience you know, this stiffen. It was something that, you know, was different. But the other thing he did say,

and this is perhaps something which is, you know, the good thing, is that, yes, he's got his positions, he's very firm positions on Ukraine. But he did make it very, very clear that he was prepared to talk with the US about lots of things. And I think that the Russians are also very worried about the international situation. I mean, there is some degree of buoyancy in Russia. I mean, they're winning the war. Their economy has stood up well to the sanctions pressure. They're aware that things are working out well for them

in terms of their various alliances and friendships with all sorts of places. They're very worried about the situation in the Middle East. Putin said that. And I don't think that's fake. I don't think they're pretending not to be worried. I think they are generally very worried about it. It's not just Putin, by the way, who talks like this.

They don't want to see a war in the Pacific. Putin also went out of his way to say to a Japanese journalist that we don't want a conflict with Japan either. I think that the Russians very much would want a dialogue again with the Americans to try and ease tensions and to find some kind of way of talking to the Americans again and sitting down with the Americans and talking about serious problems. So I completely agree with you that when it comes to the wider relationship between Russia

and the United States, of which the Ukraine issue certainly is a part, but it is only a part, however important and however big and however central, the Russians do want to talk to the Americans once more. And on the Middle East, I think that if there was a desire, a genuine desire, serious desire in the United States to try to bring the situation there back to some kind of stability, then the Russians would want to work with that. I mean, they might be keen on testing the Americans in all sorts of ways, but they don't want to see the situation in the Middle East get completely out of control either. At least those are my views.

Again, I'd just be interested to know what you have to think on this. I'm with you on that. You know, it's, I have never thought for a second that, you know, Putin had designs on Paris or wanted a wider war. This is his reaction to Ukraine was, you know, a special military operation. It was a localized conflict to defend his borders for a very, very, very specific set of reasons. within those in particular were missile systems that NATO countries were going to get,

which could have been repurposed and still can be repurposed to be offensive. And then you get into the fact that Ukraine is a hostile state on Russia's border, et cetera, et cetera. But the one underpinning piece of all of this throughout the course of the conflict is that, and as much as I hate to admit this, the senior partner, the adult in the room, has been the Russian decision-making process. they have failed to equal the escalatory measures coming in from greater NATO and the U.S. They've kept the lid on it. They've had plenty of opportunities to justifiably really strike back.

And quite frankly, in a sense that the American military would have done for far less. And just look at any number of air strikes we've done over the last 30, 40 years. So that being said, they don't want a wider war. they want to keep the, you know, the pin on this. They want to keep the lid on. And also that ties into what my view of China is in the Pacific or their view, which is they also do not want war with the United States. There's too much economic overlap. The relationship is too good. And quite frankly, they are not ready to fight the U.S. They may not be ready to fight the U.S. Naval warfare and amphibious warfare is incredibly complicated.

And you don't get good at it unless you really screw it up. And it'll throw in a little historical anecdote. One of the most studied battles for the development of amphibious doctrine is Gallipoli, which was an unbelievable train wreck. But you have one of those and then you get better. But the Chinese don't have a Gallipoli. They don't have any kind of real operational background. So taking Taiwan.

would be a mess. So all that being said, I think the world is in a good spot, you know, particularly with Trump coming into office because he has a mandate from the American people to really calm everything down. I believe that if Harris was elected, it would have been a mandate in the other direction. She ran so hard on the Ukraine campaign or pardon me, well, she ran so hard on Ukraine in her campaign and prior. And she was largely responsible for the campaign, you know, the financial campaign within Ukraine to keep the war going over the years. Removing that from the table hopefully will allow cooler heads to prevail. And, you know, I would absolutely love to see, and I have hope for this for the first time in a long time,

the Department of State, no matter who is in charge of it, led by a strong executive in the White House, who is willing to negotiate, who is willing to engage in diplomacy because, you know, The whole point of peace through strength and having a strong deterrent is underpinned by a strong diplomatic corps, which goes in and negotiates. It does not demand. No, it's like any kind of business dealing or at least it used to be. And if the U.S. can return to a position where we use more economic leverage, not sanctions, but let's get you rich. you know, have access to our market type of thing, much like what the Chinese are doing. I think that will provide not only balance for the world, but it'll fix a lot of the economic problems as well.

This is my very, very last question, because I agree completely. Do you think Trump understands what a strong position potentially he is in? My own view, by the way, is that outside Europe and not all of Europe, some places in Europe, you know, are different. But in the world at large, in most places, there was a sigh of relief at the result of the election. There was a feeling that the administration that we still have had basically created divisions in the international system.

It talked about, you know, the democracies facing against the autocracies. It was asking countries constantly to make choices, which they didn't want to. to make. It was imposing pressures in all kinds of places. It has presided over a chaotic and disastrous situation in the Middle East. And it has completely wrecked foreign policy relations with Russia and it has damaged them considerably with China, where relations have become venomous where before they were merely did eagle. I mean, that's my own view. So people,

around the world governments around the world in moscow in Beijing in many other places are looking to Washington and they're hoping for something different and you think that trump understands that because if he does understand it and he builds on it i think this could in fact be a transformative moment it could be an absolute breakthrough i mean i you know i the closest that i can think of is the time when President Kennedy in 1963 made that speech at was an American university, which basically set the course towards daytance and the relaxation of tensions

then, which ended eventually, resulted eventually in the end of the Cold War and the changes that we all saw. But I think that a president today is a U.S. president today potentially. is in the same position. But do you think Trump understands that? Do you think there are people around him who do? Yes. And the question, though, is what plagued him during his first administration. And I got to watch us up close, which is he didn't understand how to select the right people.

He didn't understand the political game that is played in D.C., the power game, if you will. I think the results domestically, if nothing else, have provided him with the mindset that he has an unequivocal mandate for his America, if you will. And this time he appears to be surrounded by more people who are of that ilk. J.D. Vance was a good pick to solidify that. And then you have Vivek Ramoswamy, Elon Musk. You know, there's an interesting cohort, which is, you know, not only powerful, they're not only thinkers, but they're also independent, largely of the system, if you will. And one of the things that Trump really didn't understand when he came into office last time was that this was, like, to boil it down very simply, this is not a business. You can't just fire your NSA and expect the guy you hire to be, you know, your national security advisor, totally loyal to you.

They have an entire pipeline that they've come through. They have their brunch parties that they like to go to and have to answer to. As odd as that sounds, it's a big DC thing. And there's pulling loyalties all over the place that you don't find in business. You know, you can fire a VP anytime you want and get a new one who's going to want to keep their job and their paycheck. They're not going to try and change the way your entire company runs. But that being said, I hope he gets it right. I think he's off to a pretty decent start.

his tweet the other day or what do you call it on true social? Is it just a post? But yeah, he already said that Pompeo and Nikki Haley would not be working in the administration. He didn't even let them self-select themselves from the process. And I found that amazing. It brought a big smile to my face. But, you know, that's evidence to me that he gets it. And what I hope it translates into is him being.

in effect released from the bureaucracy itself. You know, you're not going to have necessarily, you know, blinking running around the globe or Trump's blinking, if you will, running around the globe in all these different meetings, you know, every time a hot spot pops off, I think a good sign of him fully understanding that is him going to different places, him going to sit down in China or him going to sit down in Russia, you know, and bring the gravitas that he has to the office as the executive and a strong personality to get things done. Or in his terms, like the best negotiator. I can't really do a Trump impression.

But in that line. Jim Webb, thank you again for asking all my questions. I've kept you longer than I think we'd intended. So I apologize for that. But I could not. When I have you here, I always find myself wanted to ask and say more. So thank you very much. I'm going to ask Alex.

I'm sure you've got lots of questions, but you'll just pick a few. If you can find a little time to answer a few, then I think we'll be grateful and so would do this. Thank you so much, Alex. I really appreciate it. And no problem on the time. It's my pleasure. Great, great.

Let's answer, we have a lot of questions. Let's answer a few questions from the viewers. And let's start off with Nikos. Jim, I want your thoughts. I want your thoughts on my comments. Everyone doesn't believe that Trump can bring peace, but for once, I believe he can do it if he is realistic. Your thoughts?

One man bringing peace. So how to break this down? I think he presents the best opportunity for a release from the garbled policies that we have had over the last. I mean, you can take his last four years. It was kind of a pause. I wouldn't say he brought peace, but at least he didn't start any new wars. But you're talking 16, 20, 24 years of continuously bad processes, policies, and overseas interventions.

It reminds me a little bit of the chaos theory from Jurassic Park, if you read the book. But I think he can have a massive impact. His problem is that he only has four years to do this. and he's going to need somebody to carry that torch to continue it, to continue what he starts. And the best thing he can do is not necessarily bring peace to the world. I think that's far too far of a leap. I would love it if it happened. But he can gut Washington of a lot of the institutional rot,

which keeps us, you know, keeps us sanctioning. like kind of wantonly for every little thing that puts boots on the ground in various places, which funds wars. He can put new people in place who are going to resist these as a first or even second reaction and then carry that forward through U.S. foreign policy for the next 10 to 20 years. I think legacy is going to be his big thing, not necessarily, you know, actions right out of the gate. All right. From Ilya Kuryakin. Question. The U.S. is best placed. is to simply walk away and call it a win for Ukraine. What are your thoughts? Well, so this mess is for the Biden administration. I'm just going to pin it on them right now.

And they tried the exact same thing in Afghanistan. And quite frankly, the Trump plan to get us out of Afghanistan and everything I saw inside government prior to the Biden administration coming into office was we were going to do exactly that. We were going to call it a win. and we were going to walk away and it got really screwed up on the way out. And it was definitely not a win. I don't think there's any way that you can call our intervention in Ukraine a win. You know, I'll just point to day one after, you know, when people start to understand the actual human cost of this conflict, there is no way for us to scrub that off of our national honor.

And it really makes me upset for, you know, in particular, the Ukrainian soldiers who have been out there doing it. I don't agree with their war, but I fought as an infantryman for a while. I know how bad that is. And I know that my wars were not anywhere near the level of this one. And I feel for them. So there's going to have to be some very delicate finagling from the administration. I think in order for them to call it a win, they're going to have to get some sort of public concession from the Russians or the Chinese or both about things that benefit us. Maybe it's what I was sort of hinting at earlier where negotiating an end to Ukraine is a bit of a pressure release valve.

And the Russians could maybe take one or two or all aid packages to the Iranians off the table or to the Houthi or whatever or pull out of Syria. you know, something, something where everybody saves face, you know, in this environment. And that's not going to be a win, but it's, you know, pulling the plug and walking away would be an absolute worst case in there for everybody involved. Nicos asks Elbridge Colby on Tucker Carlson, despite saying the right things, still underestimates Russia. It doesn't accept that they are equal to China. What are your thoughts? I'm not exactly a huge student of Elders Colby.

I'm familiar with him. But I think that so I don't think comparing the two, you know, side to side is the correct thing to do. Both have different capabilities. Both have different military histories. They have different doctrines. We have fought the Chinese directly. We fought them in the Korean War and we had our handsful. So I don't know if that's necessarily a very relevant historical marker to throw out there.

But at the same time, we have avoided fighting the Russians as much as possible throughout our entire history. We spent the entire Cold War trying not to go hot with them because of what they can do on the battlefield and their nuclear arsenal. But I don't think, so underestimating either one of them, I mean, it's like six in one hand, half dozen in the other, right? I would not like if I was looking at this if I was president and I had to pick a war I don't ever want to do that and I had to fight either the Russians or the Chinese both would be equally as destructive for completely different reasons you have both have a nuclear capability the Russians have the edge there I would say that particularly coming out of the Ukraine conflict the Russian military capability is far beyond that of the Chinese just in doctrine and the ability to put firepower in the battle space, you know, and throughout their military history. The Chinese fight differently. You know, I think the asymmetrical threat from them would be something we don't want to deal with, such as going after GPS, going after the electrical grid, hacking attacks. And, you know, when it comes down to it, like, there's not really much of a spot to

fight in the Pacific, you know, large landmass or something of that nature. So I would want neither. And I think if somebody's underestimating one of the two, then they should go back and, you know, just take a second read because both of these peer competitors or peer competitors for a reason and can do a lot of the damage to the United States and we don't want to fight either one of them. Right. Let's see here from Sopie SF. Ork says, happy Veterans Day and USMC birth.

I'm a USMA grad and former infantry officer. Your comment on the degradation of the conventional military is true, and worse than people know, make the slide green has been a disaster. What's going on, Sopi? I appreciate that. You know, it's one thing you hear from across the board just to expand on it. I mean, I have a lot of friends who are still in. I have a lot of friends who have moved into sort of the management area

of different defense contractors inside government. And the one thing that the global war on terrorism did better than anything else was destroy the American military's ability to fight a conventional conflict. We even took apart, you know, something really small, air defense units. Air defense artillery used to be an entire branch in the army. And if you look at quite possibly the most important component of the forward operating forces in Ukraine right now, it's ADA. you know, they, they have counter drone folks with them wherever they go. Because that is the new, the new big thing on the battlefield. It's the machine gun of 1914, if you will.

And we need to get back to that. But you can't, it's like, to boil it down. It's like running a race, right? Like if you're training for a marathon, why are you still doing sprints? you know you have to actually get off the track and think about how you're going to do this how you get yourself out to 26 miles you know and we're not doing that and we're still trying to sprint at the same time we're passing out training plans to the military being like oh by the way next week you could run a marathon here's what it kind of sort of looks like on paper and it's not a good situation to be in and one of the big things i'd like to see is a commitment to the ua program within DoD and it's not a you know not in a sense that it's a an expansion of offensive capabilities but I have a soft spot for anybody who picks up a rifle and walks on the ground and I cannot believe what a nightmare it must be to sit there and be hunted by robots

and we got to find a way to protect our people because that's the next conflict sparky asks Jim is trump loading reprobates like like ruby and Stefano and others recommended by Brian Hook. So people will be relieved when he decides against them and won't notice he replaced them with their clones. That's a very interesting question. And I'm glad it was asked because there's a couple of things in there that I wanted to touch on earlier that we just kind of scooted right past. But so the first thing to understand about the process right now is it's not official until it's official. A lot of what you're seeing in terms of names being dropped are, you know, people such as we'll just say Rubio since we've been talking about him.

I'm not saying this is necessarily what he did. But they're talking to their friends in the media and they're getting their names floated, you know, to build their reputation externally. Because if it starts in, you know, if it starts in like the daily caller, not that Rubio really would, but it ends up in the New York Times. you look like you're kind of a big deal. The flip side of that is this could be the transition process, floating names in order to get them killed. Not like literally, but like, you know, you put it out there, you see the public reaction and you make it take care of itself. So I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in anything until it's actually done. You know, for example, and not to go down this rabbit hole, but Grinnell. I know he has a great reputation with a number of senators, including my old boss,

Paul. He has a great reputation with Trump. And he's a, I think he'd be an interesting pick for state. He was the former ambassador to Germany, you know, during Trump's whole push to resize NATO, reallign NATO. But the last piece of that is very important. And it gets to what I was talking about with, in effect, the pipeline in D.C. All of these foreign policy hawks and neocons were nobody's until they were somebody. And they were in the pipeline until they were ready. And, you know, if you don't get a Pompeo, what's to say, you're not getting, you know, Pompeo's minion, for lack of a better term. They're out there. And you need a very, very careful and deliberate process to prevent that. Otherwise, you're just getting the junior version,

and that could be even more aggressive. G.L. 1146 says, Jim, you talked about the power games going on in politics and that this happened to Trump. Are there any resources, books, et cetera, you can recommend about this, about how the game really works? House of Cards. I mean, it's farcical, but it'll give you a flavor. I don't really know any books off the top of my head. This is something I've grown up with.

both my parents worked in D.C. My dad was a Marine, and then he worked Secretary of Navy, and then he was a senator. My mom worked as a nurse, and then in D.C. So it was kind of around the environment, and then I worked there. And you just learn this along the way. The culture, if I was going to write a book about it, it would be very catch-22. You're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Nobody is what they seem.

You know, it's a bunch of very highly intelligent, highly educated, and incredibly motivated individuals for their own personal gain. And it's something that if you've never been around it, like Trump had never been around it, he thought he had campaigns. I've worked campaigns and I've worked, you know, actually in the Senate. They're two completely different worlds. your campaign team is usually very tight. They have your back.

You're all on the same page. And then once you get actually into, shall we say, the political operating environment, everybody's interest. You have a thousand different interests out there. And everybody vying to be number one. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to get done. So I apologize for the kind of non-answer on this. But I would go back and watch House of Cards to get an idea for how this stuff works.

There's a lot of really good lines in there. And then if you want to provide some balance, go watch VEP on HBO. It's a good, good show. But no, I don't think anything can really prepare you for it. You know, other than getting in there and having somebody who's been through the grinder, who can show you what is what and have your back when you need it. All right, from Sancho Relaxo. Russia will stop at Transnistria.

Your thoughts? I mean, they might. I think in their ideal world, they want to cut the Black Sea off. I thought that from day one, that was probably their major military objective, was to prevent it from being a NATO lake. Will they get there? I don't know. We'll have to see, I guess, they have some 50,000 guys masked for a winter offensive.

Is that true? We'll see. How fast can they move? if it's true is another question. But I do believe, foundationally, I believe that they are going to want all of their territorial gains seized, like all their different markers that they want to have before Trump comes into office. Because I think there's an understanding that there's going to be the start of, you know, the wind down negotiation at that point. And this is their window right now. Klaus Watanez says, I heard Trump already is considering neocons, Rubio, Secretary

State, Waltz, Security Advisor, U.N. Ambassador, et cetera, your comments. You've commented quite a bit, but any other thoughts on possible picks, Jim? Yeah. I would just, you know, generally, I would, I would give a little bit of caution to people subscribing a high degree of emotions. One the other to anybody who is picked. You know, Waltz has his faults, but he's also been fairly good on some issues. If you look at Rubio on paper, he voted against the last Ukraine aid bill, whatever that means. I worked alongside him on the Foreign Relations Committee for a number of years.

And, you know, I've never seen a country that he doesn't want to bomb, quite frankly. But if you couple that with the fact that they're going to have a strong personality they're working for in Donald Trump. The man this time is coming in, I believe, with a vision. He didn't really know what he was doing last time. He got taken to the woodshed. He's mad about it. And he's going to correct that. He's a smart guy. So they're going to be adherent to what he wants to get done much more than the last time around, where you had, for example, Ambassador Jeffrey lying about U.S. troops in Syria to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in preserving his own little fiefdom over there and then bragging about it to defense one post fact um they know

there's this whole concept of we can obfuscate the president's wishes as you know as part of the resistance and it's good for the country that that's gone that's dead America doesn't want that there's no confusion this time around um so the last piece about this would be uh I don't know how many people out there watched Donald Trump on on the Joe Rogan podcast right before the election. There was one piece in there where he was talking about John Bolton that I kind of gleaned onto and I would like to believe is the way he's going to do this this time around.

You know, where he said, he said, yeah, basically I'll paraphrases. Bolton's out there. He's crazy. He wants to bomb everything. He, in effect, is my foil. Like he's the guy who goes, stirs up the room. And then I can come in behind him and be, you know, the calmer of chaos, like where I actually have what I want to get done, and he's just the counterweight for the negotiation process. Do I believe him completely on that? Not really. I think he was sold John Bolton and for whatever reason liked him, and then Bolton created a lot of problems. But I think if he understands, you know, that kind of mindset, if that's what he

wants to bring to this administration, then these folks who are not necessarily complete restrainers or are potentially even more on the hawkish side can be kept at bay and used to further the president's objectives. And to put a pin in it, like he's got to come in on day one and establish what the U.S. foreign policy objectives are for this country. And that alone would be huge. You have time for two more, Jim? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Sparky says, Jim, does Trump realize it's no longer time to play good cop, bad cop, the time to openly and notoriously drain the swamp for all the world to see? I hope so. I really do. And we'll see how serious he is about that, quite frankly. I think he is. But if he actually appoints a, you know, whatever they're floating Elon for, like a minister of government efficiency. then we'll know. And I think he does get it. Now, the problem is actually putting those plans into place.

You know, it's one of the strongest unions in America is the government unions, the public sector unions, which is, you know, kind of, it blows my mind on one level, but we won't go down. We won't go there. why somebody working for government, we need a union in the first place. But you have to break through that. And really, like, and this is where I have some hope on my moral libertarian side is that the only way to really affect this and trim the fat is to cut government just generally. You need to cut the budget. You need to basically eliminate those jobs. If you try to go in and fire these people willy-nilly, it's probably not going to work. but, you know, if you reduce the Department of Education by, for example, by, I don't know, 10, 15,000 people in the budget line, then there's no other options.

So we'll see, you know, and we'll really see. And if, like I said, if Elon actually gets a job, then I think he's really serious. Tishab says so much to say, any chance our regime will try peace for change. we are not being threatened by any nation, but have emboldened those whom we've picked at through proxies around the globe, leaving us on a sinking ship. I hope so. I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of a, that's a tough question, because the individual who asked that is completely correct. Actual threats to the homeland have always been minimal. I mean, you have to get across two oceans to get to us in the first place, right? Unless you're firing a nuke,

which is a completely different ballgame. But what we do have out there, and this is the piece which really, which really, really, really needs to get renegotiated, is that we have a series of interests around the globe, which keep us tied in. It's the whole concept of empire. You know, when these interests get threatened, our interests in Iraq, our interests in the Middle East, you know, Ukraine is an interest for whatever reason. And the breakdown is that there doesn't seem to be any kind of governing criteria as to what establishes something as being in America's interest.

Very strong argument that Iraq never was in America's interest. And if oil was the interest, where is it? You know, I'm still waiting for, you know, the oil, all the oil I fought for to bubble up and fill my fuel tank. but it's never going to. So I think a hard audit would actually bring peace. If you could just boil it down, you know, to say, hey, is Somalia, you know, are the U.S. troops in Somalia defending America? Yes or no?

No, okay, bring them home, you know, and just go down the list like that, Syria. What are we doing in the, what are we doing in Eastern Syria? Like, it doesn't make any sense. But yeah. So if we do that and then realign the forces back towards the Pacific, you know, in a method of projecting power and defending the homeland, if you will, I think there's a big chance for peace. Jim, let's say, let's end the segment with a comment from Sophie, which says what Jim said, those who fought hate to these policies most is true. watching the fall of Afghanistan, set me down the path to the Duran and discovering what is actually going on behind the curtain. Thank you, so.

Thank you, Sopi. The fantastic. Tim Webb, thank you so much for joining us on the Duran. You can follow Jim on his Twitter account. I have that on his ex, his ex-Twitter account. I have that as a link in the description box down below, and I will add it as a pinned comment as well. Thank you, Jim, very much. gentlemen.

Jim, Jim, thank you. And we look forward to having you again. Yes, sir. Thanks again, guys. Thank you, Jim. Take care. You too. Take care.

You know, I was thinking when he was describing the power struggles in Washington and, you know, every, all these highly educated people, you know, who are very complicated and scheming all the time. It just suddenly occurred to me that he was describing the typical atmosphere in a large law firm. That is exactly what they're like. So maybe John Grisham, his various novels, which are pretty close, some of them, to what actually does happen in law firms. That could probably give you a fairly good idea of what goes on in Washington. Everybody, ruthless, everybody out for themselves, everybody, highly educated and very manipulative and very, very, very clever and very persuasive and very dangerous.

Well, they're all lawyers, aren't they? Most of the people in Congress working there are lawyer, or at least legal training. I don't know if they're practicing. Well, that probably explains it, doesn't it? We have lawyers coming up the law, reproducing the system. And of course, because they are trained in it themselves, excelling. Was it always people coming from the legal field in the U.S. that were staffing Congress, or was there a shift? Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah. It goes back. It goes back a very long way. I mean, if you go back to the founders, I mean, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, they're all lawyers. Aaron Burr, if you consider him a founder. They were all lawyers.

I mean, not everybody was. Washington wasn't a lawyer. But, you know, the originals, the people who were there originally, they definitely were. Madison and Hamilton, who worked a lot together on drafting the Constitution and the Federalist papers,

were of course both lawyers, even though they were friends and then they became enemies and all kinds of other things. And Aaron Burb was also a lawyer and he was, he had for that reason, for those reasons, also a good reason not to get on with Hamilton. So, you know, lawyers, lawyers at the root of it all, I'm afraid. What is the other thing, just to quickly say, I mean, what he said also, what Jim Webb said also about the United States being way down, tied down by all these interests it has in all sorts of places and that that really did remind me of late imperial britain it's the words i've quoted them before in other programs of the former colonial secretary joseph chamberlain which is that the weary titans staggers under the under the too vast orb of his fate, tied down always, by all of these various interests, which, you know,

they just don't know how to break away free from, and which aren't ultimately that important. But they explain, well, you know, platoons of infantry here and advisors there and the NGOs all over the place. And it's draining energy away from the United States itself, just as it did to be. person yeah i think i think jim's point in in everything that he said to know it's like a general summary is that you need to you need a vision you need a strategy you need a vision you need a vision a vision a vision a vision a strategy and a strategy a mission statement a vision a strategy and you got to audit everything to see does it doesn't fit into my my strategy my vision my mission for what what i want the country to be well and if it doesn't fit you have to you have to you know

remove it. Exactly. What the US needs, in my opinion, it follows logically from this. It needs a route away from empire, which was never natural to it. The British never found it, by the way.

I mean, they gave up their empire, not because they wanted to, but because circumstances forced them to. So they never had, they never developed a real strategy to break away from all of this. The Americans do need to do that. They need to make a clear decision

that this is the past, now we have to go back and look to the future and be a republic again. What was empire ever done right? Was empire ever done right? Empire can be very beneficial to certain groups within a society at the beginning. If you go to Britain, you will find all across Britain, scattered all across Britain, all these enormous houses and stately homes and palaces and things, the dot the countryside, and who are the people who built those things, the beneficiaries of empire in the 18th and 19th century. So it works for some people for a certain amount of time.

It helps you with your industries, you get captive markets, you do all of those things. But ultimately it creates atrophy. Even economists understand it, sociologists understand it, political scientists understand it, political scientists understand. it's too. There is an exhilarating period at the beginning and the power that goes with it is also exhilarating. But in the end, it just doesn't work. It's

bad for the society that has, that inflicts it upon itself. And of course, I'm not saying the victims of the empire have even more and a far greater price also to pay. Yeah. Sparky says in the day of our founders, lawyers were Renaissance men, now in the U.S.

Not London, of course. They're the ones who couldn't do math. They depend on social contacts rather than logic in their cases. London isn't that different, believe me. Having worked in that world, I agree with that, actually. I mean, you know, the world of the early 19th century, which, you know, Lincoln was also a lawyer, remember. Very good one, by the way.

that world, the kind of legal world that existed then, is profoundly different from the one we have today. For one thing, you didn't have these giant law firms that exist now, in which there can be hundreds or thousands of partners, which are something which in the early 19th century would have just been inconceivable. Hamilton, Madison, all of these people, you know, worked.

They were self-employed. They worked by themselves. Hardly anyone does that today. Yeah. And the alkali says lawyers in politics. Stammer says it's not so. Stammer was a lawyer. Stammer's a lawyer, absolutely. Stammer is a very typical example of what you would find in some legal firms.

And you know, you find all these talentless people who rise and rise and rise and they do so because they have other skills, which are perhaps not the traditional, or at least the legal ones that most people imagine. All right. Let's get to the questions, Alexander. Brulaham says, can you have Nima Parvarni on again? His last appearance was excellent. He analyzed the U.S. election very accurately beyond Trump wins.

It would be fascinating to hear about the situation in the UK plus impact of Trump on Europe. That's an excellent idea, actually. We should try and arrange it. We should get him on, yeah. He's a great guest. Let's see here. Sparky says, hashtag no Rubio, hashtag no Stefanik, hashtag no Brian Hook. Nico says, David Pine once said that through its actions, the U.S. is creating a new Soviet Union.

Russia wants to reach the 2.5 million personnel mark in 2025. I looked it up. That's half of the army capacity of the USSR in 1985 with modern weapons and no communism. Putin did it. Russia is a superpower again. I agree with that, actually. I think that is what we've discovered. I mean, it turns out their economy is a lot bigger than anybody thought it was. Their military is much more powerful. Their science and technology is much better organized. So yes, I think they are a superpower again. Not as powerful as the U.S. not as powerful perhaps as China might become, but nonetheless, they are a super power. Sam Holmbach, thank you for joining the brand. Community Brulaham says, Holman is a great mass deportation pick by Trump. He needs to give some meat to his Zionist supporters. Still sad to see the neocons as potential picks. Yes, I am too, but then we'll see what comes. And I think the point that Jim Webb made,

that nothing is official until it's official is a very good one. It's the point. that we've made on our programs as well. Sparky says, fun fact, Pompeo Bolton and Speaker Mike Johnson are all eschatologists. Those are religious fanatics who want to accelerate to the apocalypse in the belief Jesus will return sooner. These reuse war. I didn't know the Johnson held those views. Sparky says, just to reiterate, hashtag no Rubio, hashtag no Stefanik, hashtag no Braddock. Sparky says funny, the MSM rarely, if ever, mentions that Pompeo Bolton and Speaker Mike Johnson are eschatologists.

Normally the MSM can't wait, emphasize a politician or officials religious fanaticism. That's also true, actually. That's a very good point. Alex Businessman says the three-letter agency should follow the Duran to gather intelligence, right, and save time. I've heard someone say that. I won't say who. Displaced says peace through strength that rules out the European Union. Doak, sure enough.

Let's see, we answered Soapie's question and Sparky. We answered that question. Lena A. Zenkova, thank you for that, super sticker. Sparky says, but Jim, in my day, a good newspaper delivery boy could throw the Washington Post a long way even while riding his bicycle. This place says the Ukrainian people have been sold as fodder down to the last man. This explains all their brain dead schemes like the victory plan. I agree with that, actually. I mean, the way Ukraine and the Ukrainian people have been treated, going all the way back to 2000, you know, the orange revolution and all of that, has just been incredible.

I mean, it's been terrible. It's been a, and I blame here the Europeans much more than the Americans, by the way. Yeah, I agree. A sophisticated caveman says, what negotiating leverage does the U.S. have if Russia has total victory in Ukraine? Why not capitulate, blame Biden, and move on? Right. I think the number of things to say here. The Russians, the United States would find, I think, that the Russians would be willing to talk and to make deals about lots of different things,

provided this critical issue of trust could be solved and that will be an enormously difficult problem. We haven't talked about the trust deficit, though Putin also brought that up, by the way, during his Q&A in Sochi. But anyway, I think the Russians would be prepared to discuss and make, you know, cut deals and do all kinds of things on those kind of issues.

about Ukraine, I think that's different. I think the Russians are now coming very much to the queue that they're not interested in deals anymore. They're going to decide the outcome. And that's it. I don't think they are going to agree with the Americans or the Europeans or anyone else, any particular lives. And that's one reason why I think it would be much better

to stay away from getting drawn into a negotiation that cannot lead to any good outcome from an American point of view. Sparky says, I agree with the Duran, leave Ukraine up to Europe to sort out, the establishment of globalists want Trump to get bogged down in the details of Ukraine and distract him from draining the swap. Exactly. Exactly, Sparky. Displaced says empires don't pull back.

They collapse. Well, that has been the consistent history. if the United States is able to break away from that, then it will be the first one. Yeah, let's see here. Bill in PA says there have been two engineers as president, Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover. Neither did well in D.C.

True. Absolutely true. I didn't know Jimmy Carter was an engineer. I believe he was, yeah. Certainly Herbert Hoover was. I mean, that's well known. Sparky says, Jim, keep in mind. Israel has killed many more Americans than Iran. Remember the USS Liberty.

Yeah. Sparky says, why not work problems with China on an individual basis? Do we really need a war with China? If we're to fight on behalf of Taiwan against China, why do we officially recognize Taiwan as China? Well, I think you make absolutely excellent points. And I think, in fact, they're consistent with what Jim was actually saying. I think that just as the Russians, you know, if the issues of trust, which are you know, which are very difficult now, could be resolved, would nonetheless still want to speak to the Americans about all kinds of things, about the Middle East, about strategic weapons, about conflict lines,

about those sort of things. The Chinese is exactly the same. They too do not war or conflict with the United States, but they have their red lines, as they said many times, and they will enforce them. I think anybody who thinks otherwise is simply not being realistic. Enjoyer says Rubio and Stefanik aren't good picks. No, I agree with that.

I mean, I do think they're good picks at all. I have to think Jim thinks they are, by the way. But, you know, first of all, Stefanik is a pick. I don't think that Rubio yet is. And Stefanik, I mean, you know, UN ambassador realistically, what much can she do there? Yeah, I don't think she can do very much. The Secretary of State can do an awful lot

and can do an awful lot of damage. So that's different. And we aren't yet sure that Rubio is going to be appointed to that post. I mean, he has changed. He did change his stance on Ukraine. He did vote against the appropriation in April. True.

So, you know, let's, you know, maybe he's, Maybe he's found his way. I mean, I don't know. I don't believe that myself, but we'll see. Sparky says, Jim, shouldn't Trump not trust Cash Patel, not because he's Roma, but because he wanted to keep Assange locked up

and clearly wants war with China. Well, again, go on, go on. No, I just wanted to add on to what Sparky said. if these picks are true, Waltz, Rubio, we know Stefanik, it does look like a shift towards China in the Middle East.

I mean, Rubio and Waltz, these guys, yeah, they don't like Russia. That's okay, they don't like Russia. They want to escalate in Ukraine, but they are more hawkish towards China. That, that is that, absolutely, I mean, it hasn't yet been published,

but that's exactly the same point that I made in my program, which is going to come out later today on my channel. The point is that Trump seems to be going for anti-China hawks. I mean, those are the people, if these reports are, if these reports are true that he is going for, I still think it's a mistake. I still think that he shouldn't be going for neocons of any strike. But we've discussed it in many programs.

There are anti-Russia neocons or neocons who are prioritized Russia, the Victoria Nuland type neocons, and the Tony Blinken type reneacons. And then there are the other neocons who prioritise China. He seems to be going for more the anti-China and Iran ones. I don't think you should go with any neocons at all. I've made that very clear. But at the moment, maybe, maybe better to. to sort things out with the Russians first and with Ukraine first. And then we'll worry about what the other neocons might do in the Far East.

We'll have to worry about that probably quite soon, but perhaps a little later. Ukraine is the priority now. El Emigranta says once again Trump is swamping the train. He's more of the same. Well, I don't think he is more of the same. I think that he's still finding his way. And, you know, beat again the point that Jim Webb made. We don't definitely know that he's going to pick Rubio for sacrificial state, not at this time.

Yeah. Klaus Batnaz says, talks about Mike Walt as a national security advisor, Rubio, Secretary of State and Stefanik. Those are the key positions in foreign policy, right? Alexander would be the Secretary of State and the NSA. I mean, those two are. Correct. Correct. That's absolutely correct. Those are the two key people. And we'll just have to see. Summer of 1970 says,

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, good. I was going to say, that was an impressive statement. I didn't realize he was from Lincoln himself. Displaced says U.S. is a tyrannical entity. It knows nothing of peace or respect. its main business is in exporting destruction to others. To change this without it collapsing or having World War III doesn't seem likely. Well, this is what the United States has become.

I think you accurately describe the modern United States. It hasn't always been so. I think that is an important thing to say. What was it? I mean, somebody quoted Lincoln. Remember what he said at the end of his second inaugural address, the United States who seek a just and lasting peace between themselves and all nations. Sparky says, I think even though Putin thinks it's a hassle, Russia should absorb all of Ukraine into Russia and not leave a rump state called Ukraine.

That would be the final nail in NATO's coffin. Well, I think that there are lots of people in Russia who would agree. I think that where the Russians are concerned, my own view is I don't think they've yet worked out. I don't think they themselves have come up with a final plan for Ukraine. And I think that they're still going with the flow, which is the flow in the battlefield. Life of Brian says, is there any progress coming out of the discrediting of Pompeo Haley-Cheney Crystal? Any confidence will at least get lighter Reagan neocons? Yes, I think that's true.

I think they are, I mean, given a choice between Pompeo and Rubio, I would go for Rubio for Pompeo. It's a horrible choice, as far as I'm concerned. But I would rather have somebody who wants war, you know, who's confined in his obsessions with some places than who wants to find wars in every place. And I don't think Rubio would want, feels that he can control Trump in the way that Pompeo did.

But, you know, that's, that's, that's, That's all I'd say that. I would say that Pompeo was much more manipulative. Yeah. Yes. And just about anyone who would have been in Trump's cabinet. He's very, very manipulative, yeah. He is absolutely.

Yeah. Sparky says, Jim, the U.S. government needs to realize Putin is pushed by the West to make decisions, which ended up in Russia, China and the rest of breaks his interests. Otherwise, he'd had no such ambition. I think there is a lot of truth in this. When he first became president, his major objective was to position Russia as a friend of the United States and as a part of Europe. Of course, he's ended up in a completely different place. And to his astonishment, he finds us a better place.

I mean, that's not what he aimed to do, however. Yeah, Boa Omega says apologies to Alexander. but you know the joke about what do you call 20,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea, a good start. Sparky says Trump should. You don't need to apologize, by the way. Sparky says Trump should appoint economist Mark Blight of Brown University as Treasury Secretary. He knows that austerity for the masses doesn't work to recover an economy. He sees where the EU went wrong.

Yeah, because it's an interesting choice. Fuzzy Balls says, how long will NATO be able to financially support Ukraine with no financial support from America, considering how bad the financials are in the European Union? You're absolutely right, no time at all. Siyata, who's the Hungarian foreign minister, has said that. But that is not going to prevent them trying. The EU currently is in the process of re-structuring, of reorganizing its structural funds, the structural funds are the monies that the EU gives out to all the various countries to, you know,

build bridges and roads and do all of that kind of thing. In Cyprus, I mean, I'm sure Alex can tell you an awful lot about how the structural funds work there. Anyway, they now want the structural funds to be used to build up defense. It's all over the financial times. It's the big, big story. You know, I've been saying it for a while. I joke around about it. I mean, I'm joking when I say this.

But, you know, Europe, the EU is going to be a, you know, M-I-C, they're going to try their hand at M-I-C spending and tourism. We've been saying it on the Duran. Europe is just going to be a tourist destination and the industry is going to be military. And it's going to fail the military side of things. Absolutely. The tourism side will work out. As it has failed in absolutely everything else.

By the way, they're all bewildered by the euro is collapsing. It's sinking against the dollar. The fact that they're doing all of these things, that that might have. some effects on the fall of the euro is not something that occurs to the it seems yeah it's not going to get better under mertz that's for sure tabernak says will trade between china and the EU increase under MAGA no I think I think that things are going to change significantly there I think I think that the EU its economy is now so stagnant that I think the Chinese who are all

already, by the way, recalibrating their exports to the regions around themselves, to East Asia, in other words, are going to start being less interested in Europe altogether. Sparky says, a lawyer was a sideline for the most part of the olden days. Lawyers were farmers, merchants, engineers, etc. The few who were only lawyers could do so, usually only because they married into money. Absolutely. It was a very, very, very. much something that was done by rich people, usually from members of the aristocracy. The French even had the expression, the noblesse du rob, the lawyers, you know, the legal families who were aristocrats. And that was exactly the case across Europe at one time. From Nikos, I'm going to express my thoughts on the 17th of November next week and give you

my thanks for the impact you had on my life. It's going to get personal. Thank you, Nicholas, for that. Sparky says President Carter was in fact one of the first nuclear engineers. I didn't know that. Interesting. Tabernak says bricks survive from presidency. No NATO, no bricks. Can bricks survive from president?

I think I think bricks will not only survive, it will grow and it will deepen. I mean, we see little things happening. I mean, this is a very, this is in the scale. in the great play of things, a relatively small thing. But on Monday, yesterday, Iran and Russia connected their finance systems so that you can now use mere cards in Iran, and the Iranians can use their shutout cards in Russia. And we're going to see more and more of that all the time.

Yeah. Falvi Polar says, I'm worried about Ukraine resentment for the U.S. when a deal is struck. well i think you're right to i think the ukrainians will be very will feel resentment towards the u.s they will feel much more resentment towards the europeans yeah uh which tulunker says alexander you're trying logic to overstretched empire people often tell say this at me that i approach a vet i approach things with too much with too rational in too rational a way but that's that's that's That's me. I can't do otherwise. I can only do that. I can only advise people to behave in what seems to be irrational way if they don't. Well, what else can I do? Fuzzy Ball says RFK said Trump wants to get troops out of Syria.

Yeah. Well, he did he did before. He actually ordered it. And the neocons sabotaged it. They lied to him about it. Yeah. And the media didn't report any of it, really. That was the crazy part. And when they did report it, they praised it. They said it's absolutely wonderful thing to disobey the legal, the lawful orders of your commanding. Sir Mugge. He's face.

Yeah. Remember that, yeah. We did many videos on that. Absolutely. When it happened, yeah. Sir Mugge's game says the one and only NATO was never good at, that was its ability to raise armies of paranoia. Can't even do that.

The average EU punter doesn't want to kill Russians, Ukrainians, Palestinians, et cetera. Absolutely. I completely agree. I think if you're talking about the vast majority of people, the critical mass of people across Europe, they do not want war. They certainly do not want war with Russia. You will find some people who have accepted and internalized all the propaganda.

There's quite a lot of them. But they're not the kind of people who tend to fight wars. They tend to be people who write articles and the angry letters to newspapers rather than actually join armies and fight battles. The kind of people who do join armies and fight battles have seen right through this. So I agree with that. But there it is. I mean, it's the others. It's the establishment that is in control and which is continuing to run policy in Europe off a cliff.

Klaus says, after all, Trump has done, it's also, are we, are we underestimating their power in directing picks and policies in Trump's admin? Well, obviously, we're not underestimating anybody, but, you know, that these people do wield enormous power. It's obvious. We've never questioned it. Basil says, do you believe Trump will be inaugurated on 120, 2025? Yes, I do. I mean, I don't. think there's any question about the electoral college or anything of that now. I think that's a dumb thing. I think that nobody's disputing the election result. There's no

Russia game redooks or anything of that kind. I mean, obviously there's always the worry that somebody will try to assassinate him. But I'm going to make a guess that now that he's president-elect and now that there's already been

two assassinations, he and his people are going to make absolutely sure this time that nothing like that happens. Fractured 0-1 says, well, I'm late. Suppose I'll see the video. Hope it was a good show. It was a great show and you should see the video. You'll love it. Boa Omega says, don't believe everything you read online, Abraham Lincoln. That's really. That's exactly what he would say, by the way. Basil Beshkov says, if they let him, Trump will run the USA as a CEO of a construction company.

War is the opposite. I think that Trump, when he became president, did think that he could run the U.S. like a CEO. I think he knows better today. And Tapernax says Russia emerged Europe, fell shifting the balance. Yeah, absolutely. That is going to be the great story of the future. You know, there was that book by AJP Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe,

a long ago, I remember, reading it when I was a student. Well, I think one thing that's happened is that Russia has established itself conclusively as the major, the most, by far the most powerful European power. Fuzzy Ball says, power in Europe. Yeah, Fuzzy Ball says Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary of Defense. Yeah. I don't know that I don't know that she'd take it, mind. But yeah.

Alexander, those are all the questions. Your final thoughts as I check. A fantastic, a fantastic live stream. I thought, and Jim Webb is a wonderful guest. And, you know, I come back to what I said, you know, during the program. I mean, he's an expert. He's seen the face of battle. He understands war.

that article I always bring up. I'm making people tired by bringing it up all the time. But the one he wrote back in 2023 with George B. About, you know, this offensive isn't working. Let's stop. Let's rethink what to do. That tells you already that he understands a lot more about war than portrayers or Hodges or any of those breed love or any of those people.

These are the people you should be listening to. And he's absolutely right. There are lots of them out there. If Trump, if I could talk to Trump now, that is what I would advise him to do. Search out the experts, the genuine experts, and look for them in exactly the way that you would look for them in construction. You could find out when you work in the construction industry, who really understands the engineering of buildings, who the real architects are, who really knows how to put materials together and do those sort of things. And that's the kind of approach you need to take, not worry about, you know,

not be influenced by who talks loudest and who's setting up opinions in the most forthright way or who writes the most elegant English or anything of that kind. Ilya Koriakin says P.T. Barnum would have made a great precedent. It's a thought. And Tabernak says the battle for control of ASEAN begins. Yeah, I don't think there's any problem there for the Chinese. They pretty much won it. Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, joining breaks.

I mean, what Indonesia likely to the president of Indonesia should speak to China. I do think that's a contest there actually anymore. Sparky says, by the way, Malay snuck Argentina's gold reserves into the Bank of England, so globalists will have even more leverage over Argentina. He pretended to be like Trump to get elected. He's a globalist stooge. I agree with that, actually.

I briefly was interested in Malay. Within about a week of him being elected, I realize that he's all-mouthed, At least as far as I'm concerned, he is. I know a lot of people still have faith in him, I don't. Summer of 1970 says fantastic show. Thanks, at the Duran. All right, that is everything.

Thank you once again to Jim Webb. I will have his information where you can follow him on X as a pinned comment when the live stream ends. Thank you to everyone that watched us on Rock Finn, on Odyssey, on Rumble, YouTube, the durand.locals.com. And thank you to our moderators. Zareel, Spartan, Warrior Queen, Peter, Brett, Pish,

everyone that helped us moderate this fantastic live stream. I think I got all the moderators. Give a shout out to all the moderators. Thank you so much. And Alexander, let's get some videos up. Fantastic show. Fantastic show. All right.

Take care, everybody. everybody.