The Duran Podcast - World Order In Disorder w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

World Order In Disorder w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

Okay, we are live, and we have with us, Alexander Mercuris, and the great Robert Barnes. Mr. Barnes, looking very good today. Where can people find you? Well, if they like this beautiful merchandise, they can still get here in the States. They're Thanksgiving gifts at the Duran Shop, because that's where I got the hat and the great sweater, sweatshirt. the uh otherwise you can find all the content at viva barns law dot locals dot com. And I have that in the description box down below and I will have that link as a pinned comment as well. The best channel on locals and a quick hello before we get started because we are going to be going pretty much around the globe today.

We will start out, I guess, in Argentina and work our way way up. then East. So a quick hello to everybody watching us on locals on Rockfin, Odyssey, Rumble, YouTube, and telegram and a big hello and a big thanks to our amazing moderators. Thank you very much for everything you do. Alexander, Robert, because we have so much news to get to. Should we start in Argentina? I guess that's kind of the big story. What do you say? Alexander Roberts. Talk about Mr. Javier Milley.

It's certainly a big story. I mean, it's not trotting a huge amount of attention in the British media, but people are talking about it. And of course, the fact that Millet is a friend, or at least, I know whether he's a friend, but somebody who is, you know, an ally, a political ally of Donald Trump, already makes him in the eyes of some people here,

a dangerous man and a suspect and all sorts of things like that. You get lots of things that are being said about him. Now, I'm going to give my, I mean, Talbotten's work. I've been following Argentina all my life in a kind of a way, but never very deeply. This country has gone from one financial crisis to another. Political system there seems to be very dysfunctional. The country ought to be extremely rich.

It's got a wonderful agricultural land. It's got a wonderful beef industry, cattle industry. It's got good cuisine, by the way, if you like steak, which I do, by the way, I should say. I've never been there, but Buenos Aires, I'm told it's an extraordinary place. The people are educated. It's got an industrial base, or at least it did. And yet it's never really worked, as far as I can see. It just goes from one period of hyperinflation and debt default to another.

And we are in another one now. We have another crisis of that nature going on at the moment. I mean, all of the commentary that I've been reading, one of the things none of them admit to, at least in Britain, is that the current government has failed. I mean, it's failed completely, 120% inflation, a deficit that is completely out of control, a big recession. who did they put forward the current government as the man they say should be president? And that is the finance minister who has presided over this mess. Now, it's completely unsurprising that Milley, therefore, has won. And he is at least offering a solution.

Now, I'm not sure that it is a long-term solution. probably it isn't. Probably over time it will create more problems. But at least it's a solution. It's at least it's an alternative to what they have at this moment in time. And, you know, he says, you know, dollarize the economy. At least that gives you a stable currency. At least that will possibly get the economy working again and people investing. I can see, as I said, over time, perhaps not over very much time, things will begin to go wrong. But if you are living with a hundred and 20% inflation. You're not worrying about five years ahead. You're worrying about now. You're going to say to yourself, how am I going to pay the bills? How am I going to buy things in the shops?

What is going to happen to my salary? That's what worries you. So I am not surprised that they voted for him. And, you know, maybe, at least in the short term, it will succeed. And if it succeeds, it wouldn't surprise me because as I said, you're substituting a disastrous currency for an actual one. And if his political ally Donald Trump does get elected next year, who knows?

Maybe, just maybe going forward, it might work. It is a gamble. But in this kind of situation, why not gamble? What do you have to lose? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, he's very much a Trumpish figure. comes from the populist right that has a strong backing in Latin America and Central America, though historically the populism has been on the left. What is fascinating to me is seeing so many contemporary commentators,

particularly on the right in America, describe Perron as a leftist. And it's like Peron was a much more complicated guy than just that. Actually, many within my introduction at Yale to, I know Papa Popper, exist outside of America. Well, it's a Latin American populism was, of course, on Latin American populism by a professor or associate professor was actually inclined towards it. Unlike every other professor of Yale who thought populism was an evil word, the sign of the second, you know, the next disaster, was Peron. And so we did this deep dive on Peron and Argentina. And I was fascinated by it. Now, you know, Peron had some other components to, I mean, it was both a pro-labor regime, but also conservative on a lot of things. don't cry for me, Argentina. You know, his famous wife, Evita Peron,

who had her own following, her own persona. She was kind of like Winnie Mandela before Winnie Mandela, except without some of Winnie's excesses, which we don't need to be getting into detail on. You know, she had a different definition of necklacing than a lot of other people. The same as some of the Haitian gangs, you know, as it turned out. But the, so, you know, a much more complicated history than post-parone,

a lot of it moved in a much more statist direction. and more what you can identify as a left direction on certain financial and economic policy. And you're right, Alex, but the left and the right have failed in Argentina at different times. Argentina's had economic collapse under right-leaning neoliberal governments. It's had collapsing under left-leaning quasi-socialistic governments. In fact, the only time they had a stable and really good economy was almost a century ago. And during the period of time thereafter, when it was when Buenos Aires, was the Paris of South America.

And that's, you know, around the time, Peron was in control. I mean, it was so attractive that there were some Germans after World War II decided to go there and live there for a little while. You know, they might have had other reasons for wanting to visit the beautiful shores of Argentina. But so it's not a surprise to me that someone like Malay,

he fits, he doesn't fit the conventional filters and frameworks of the American, Western neoliberal elite, the State Department types. They don't understand the guy at all. They think this guy's clearly crazy. Look at him. He's wacky. He's weird.

He dresses weird. He says things that they can't understand. I don't think the people in the State Department have ever studied Austrian economics. So, I mean, they don't know what that mean. Like, what in the world is this guy doing? Given some of his funny analogies and the rest. But he engaged social media well. He's from totally outside the political system there in Argentina, which, as you note,

has failed repeatedly by both parties. He's more like the El Salvadoran president. than not. And it was, you have the El Salvadoran president, a populist president. It came from the left. He came from the old left party. And they both parties conspired against him. And then both of those parties collapsed. And now he's one of the most popular leaders in the world. I mean, I'm a guy with high 80, low 90 approval rating. Some controversies along the way. But that fits that Latin style. Like, you know, the, I always said Trump was more of a Latin politician in some respects than an American politician. He's a, you know, the, the, the machete.

the over-the-top persona. It's like their magic realism of their literature. There's something over-the-top and surreal about it. And their politics is naturally inclined. And so Malay was a natural fit, impressive, that he was able to win in the runoff. It is also interesting. America, the other thing they pointed out in the Argentinian election was, it's amazing that they could get all their votes counted in the same night.

How is it a country that can't figure out how to count their currency, keeps inflating like 133% every other day, can figure out how to count their votes, but we can't. So the, now I think from a, the state department in the states won't know what to do with them. They'll just kind of pretend he doesn't exist like Bolsonaro, like how the Biden administration treated it.

You're right, if, if and when Trump is back in, Trump will love the guy. I mean, the guy loves Trump. So, I mean, Tucker Carlson was down there promoting it. and help stage and platform him in the United States and in the West. So the, and I think some of the things that confuse people about them, it wouldn't confuse people if they understood the long right-leaning populist streak. He's a libertarian, no doubt, but not a pure libertarian.

He's more of a populist right figure than a pure libertarian. And so, hey, like, they'll be thrown off by him being pro-Israel. I mean, the prone regime was known for helping other people escaping the World War II, not necessarily Jews, but the nature of the Argentine regime. But that fits within large aspects of the populace right in Latin American tradition. Bolsonaro was a very pro-Israel. So that really shouldn't surprise people that much. That he'll love Trump shouldn't really surprise people.

same with Bolsonaro. And the currency one will probably throw people off the most. But that's why I recommend people, for me at least, it was a revolutionary perspective that changed everything I understood about global finance that helped forecast what would happen both of the U.S. dollar, whether Bricks was a challenge or not in the current environment and the rest. And that's, you know, Jeffrey Snyder's work on the Eurodollar system. That he's facing a situation as you identify.

that his, Argentine central bank has been a complete disaster. And there's nothing, as you guys have talked about repeatedly, nothing destabilizes the government quicker or easier than a collapsing currency. So it's literally the face of the government. And when it has no value or you have no idea what its value is going to be from one day to the next,

then that changes the dynamic entirely. And he's got to fix that. And the U.S. dollar is a easy, stable currency that allows him to get rid of the, Argentine currency problem and get rid of the Argentine central bank that he despises, that he sees behind a lot of the problem. So I agree, and I think he wouldn't disagree that there needs to be a longer-term solution

than the U.S. dollar. And Jeffrey Snyder's point on the Eurodollar is that it's a reality of people I know in Argentina that have been reporting on this. The dollar is the real currency anyway. And in the currency they want to save in, the currency they want to exchange in, the currency they want to deal in is the U.S. dollar. This is the main thing that a lot of the bricks and other people haven't quite wrapped their heads around.

And Snyder does a great job explaining this is really a euro dollar. And what he means by that is that these are U.S. dollars that have never been issued by the Federal Reserve of the United States or the U.S. Treasury. They're just balanced. They're in an age of digital transformation of finance. They're just entries on a balance of a bank. And they can create them themselves. They actually help start it all.

after World War II, the 1950s in Europe, mostly in London, by the way, as a way to deal with a lack of liquidity, that there wasn't enough dollars when those tied to the gold, tied to gold in at least some respect. And that ended up leading to all kinds of problems, Bretton Woods and so forth. But I think he's trying to solve the problem that's in front of him, which is complete mismanagement of a state professional bureaucratic class. It's another example of EU-style governance that continues to,

fail anywhere in the world that it's present. And it failed in El Salvador with the rise of El Salvador and populist president. It's failed in Argentina. Arguably, it's failing in other places in the United States as well. And he's just the latest public reaction to the inescapable reality of its failure. And it's not necessarily an embrace of Austrian economics. My guess is if you ask the average Argentine voter, they wouldn't be able to give you a doctoral dissertation on Austrian economics. Though he does as good a job as anyone in the history of that economic school thought of popularizing it with colloquial proverbs, which most of those guys, God bless them, can't, you know, I love Peter Schiff and some of the others. But sometimes they don't have an easy way to make that accessible, you know, the Ludwig von Mises and the rest. there's people that are better at propagating their ideas and better and people that are too

esoteric, too academic, too arcane, too caught up in other things. And so, but yeah, I think now what he can get done, that's a big, big, big question. I don't know if there's much he can get done beyond some symbolic things he can do as president. And the Argentine president is a powerful institution. I don't see why the Brazilian, why Brazil is overreacting the way they are. I mean, I guess the Brazil president's talking about not having people meet with him or something. It's like, I just saw the headline. So I didn't see anything beyond that.

But I think he fits within a longstanding tradition in Latin American politics and represents the continued failure of the professional managerial class across the, across the globe. And it'll be interesting to see how he's able to experiment with public policy in ways that might challenge and counter the institutional control of central bankers. So I'm all in favor of that. I welcome his election, just for nothing else for pure entertainment value. Yeah, I mean, lots of interesting things. Can I just clarify a few points? I mean, the thing about Peron,

because Peron's about the one thing about in Argentina that I do know about, because I should say lots of Greek people emigrated to Argentina, including some members of my family way back in the 19th century. We've lost long since lost touch with them, but they were familiar with Paran. Iran was a very strange thing. He was both populist left and populist right at one at the same time.

He was able to look in all kinds of directions simultaneously. And one of the things people don't know is this. Yes, he did. He was a fan of Mussolini. He did allow all sorts of interesting people from Central Europe to come to Argentina after the war. He worked with the Vatican to get the passports. They ended up there. And, you know, we've all heard about that.

we all know about. What most people don't know about is that he was also somebody who worked, and this Peron was personally very interested in, he was very keen to get Jewish people to Argentina during the 1930s and 40s. And he made Argentina a major refuge for large numbers of people, Jewish people from Europe. They went to Argentina at that time. There isn't widely known, but it was one of the great places that people were able to escape to. And he welcomed them and he made it possible for them to come. And Argentine diplomatic missions played a role in facilitating that. So that's just one thing to say.

The second thing about Ferrani is very complicated, domestic policy, very complicated, foreign policy. It was a time, it was also his time was when Argentina peaked. It was lending money to France. It was richer at that time than most of Europe was. It was comparable in some ways in terms of its affluence to parts of North America. Now, that was not because of Peron. Argentina had already been becoming an increasingly prosperous country throughout, you know, before Peron became leader,

but it sort of peaked under Peron. Problems really began after he was overthrown. He came to power through a coup. He was overthrown as a result of a military coup. And he went into exile, and then he eventually did return for a short time as president of Argentina in the 1970s. One of the things people discovered that at their surprise is that the Peronist party had moved significantly to the left

whilst he was himself in exile, I think in Spain mostly. And of course, what they discovered when he came back was that without having a very clear strategy or policy, he himself was actually quite far to the right. So there was already this tension within Perrinism, which was visible at that time. And then he died in office, and his wife, Isabella, tried to take over,

and she made an even bigger mess. And then, well, made a huge mess. And then the military stepped in, and that was a very brutal dictatorship. And then the military was overthrown in the early 80s, or rather fell in the early 80s at the time of the Balklands War. And we've had endless civilian government since then, and none has worked. And this is, as I said, this is where my points with Robert's points basically converge.

You have a completely broken political system, a completely broken bureaucratic system. The governmental systems that have been created have never really worked at any point since. And it's unsurprising that people want to try something new. Two last points, two important last points. One, Argentina completely cut off from Europe, a very interesting place. I am, as is well known, something of the film buff. What isn't widely known was until about 1960. Metropolis, the famous film by Fritz Lang,

which has been widely known at just 90 minutes. The whole 150 minute version of the film was uniquely being shown in Argentina. I'd have to about 1960, and absolutely nobody knew about it, until the last copy was found a couple of years ago in a Buenos Aires museum and it's been restored. And that's the first time since then

that we can actually see the whole of Metropolis and it's completely changed most people's understanding of that film. That's one thing. I've even written about that myself actually. So that's one thing. The second thing that I wanted to say is about Brazil and why Brazil has reacted so badly about this and why Lula is reacting so badly about this.

Well, Lula moved heaven. and us to try to protect the current leftist government in Argentina, with which he has some kind of ideological affinity. He was working towards creating some kind of, you know, European Union type set up, if you like, between Brazil and Argentina. He also lobbied very, very intensively for Argentina to enter the bricks. And though there were many people in the bricks who were very skeptical about whether a country with 120% inflation and yawning budget deficits should be admitted into the bricks, it was Lula's influence which persuaded the bricks in August to make the invitation to Argentina. Along comes to me a little bit of

no common market, no European type union with Brazil. And Argentina is not going to join the Briggs. And that's a big blow to Lula. He's politically very embarrassed in front of his Briggs allies. As I said, he persuaded them to get the invitation to Argentina. It's now going to be reversed by Argentina. They're probably annoyed with Lula. So it's unsurprising that he is angry.

But, you know, he's going to have to accept it because it is Argentina's decision. And I think some people in the Bricks are going to breathe a sigh of relief. Now, Brazil, Argentina have been South America's two big giants until, you know, fairly recently. And they've been rivals and, you know, they're football rivals amongst other things. So unsurprising that, you know, despite what Lula was trying to do, there were the underlined tensions. He's been listening to what Millet has been saying. He doesn't want to have anything to do with Lula. He doesn't want to have anything to do with Brazil.

He's very anti-communist. He doesn't like the government of China at all. About Russia, he has nothing unfriendly that I know of to say. So you could see that there is actually a distinction there. I think he'll get on with the Russians. They're not big and particularly important with him, but this isn't an important matter for him. Relations with Russia have been close between Argentina and Russia for quite a long time.

The Russians got on with the Kitcheners, they got on with the Macri government, they got on with the government that's just been gone. They'll probably get on with Millet as well. This isn't an issue for them. Brazil, China, it's a different story. And what's interesting to me is like some people were thrown off by by his being anti-Cuba, anti-Venezuela.

And it was like, that's an old Latin American populist right tradition. They were never on the communist side, the equation. So it was intriguing to me. It was a recognition that, you know, while populism in Latin America has generally had a hue in the last century. It's not only had a leftist hue. In fact, quite the contrary. I mean, in Columbia, it was between a left candidate and a populist right candidate, the sort of mini-Trump that was running there. And it's not a surprise. What it does reflect, I think, is the popularity of Trumpish-style politics in Central and Latin America of personalities. And we're seeing more

candidates like that, more people speak like that, talk like that, etc., reflects the same reason why Trump over time has only grown in his approval amongst Latino voters in the United States of Mexican and Central American ancestry. And that's only going to continue in Caribbean ancestry. He's like in the Republican primaries. That's, you know, amazing, these things are still happening. But in places like in Florida, he crushes DeSantis in Miami more than any other place. Nationally, while he's beating Biden for the first time ever in the modern media polls or beating any Democrat, because they never had him ahead in 2016.

They didn't have him within shooting distance of winning. That's why he was such a big underdog when I went over to London and placed all those bets in Dublin on Trump. And the same with the 2020 election. They never had them close. I mean, the median, Biden was expected to win by a bigger margin than Barack Obama won in 2008 by eight points or more. So now every media poll has Trump ahead, which means from an electoral college perspective, Trump has an insurmountable lead. He has a lead outside of what some might call the margin of fraud.

but where a lot of that comes from in parts of the country, particularly Florida, particularly the southwest, is the huge inroads he began making in 2020 amongst Latin vote, Latin American, Central American voters, voters of that ancestry. Hispanic voters,

as they're typically identified in the United States. It doesn't make any sense because most of them don't speak Spanish. But the, you know, that's the, and it's the same kind of thing. Like the Mexican cowboy, image in West Texas

easily blends with Trump's Uber Makizmo New York City style approach and so you're seeing like the, what's interesting to me is that somebody like Malay, just like the El Salvadoran president who's been wildly

popular, looks at what Trump did successfully and imitates it in ways that other politicians around the world really aren't. I get it in Europe. Europe imagines it Europe's still snob continent, basically. You know, the,

Trump is too beneath them to imitate those kind of tactics and techniques. But I've been surprised in places like most of the United States. People haven't looked at what Trump has done and emulated. And you look at Malay, he went from 2% in the polls. Nobody knew who the guy was to now the president of a major country in Latin America and in the world in Argentina because mostly he emulated Trump, over the top rhetoric, over the top language. Like he did that board with all the different ministers.

And he was like, this minister out, throw him in the trash. This minister out, throw him in the trash, right? Now, you could have seen, you could imagine like Burroughsconi in Italy doing something like that. But, you know, tactically or in terms of marketing. But not as much elsewhere. And I wonder to what degree are those parts of the world. We've seen, you know, in Philippines, we've seen it parts of Asia. Whether other parts, maybe Africa, and whether ever Europe at any level,

adopts Trump's style, even if not Trump's policies or Trump's approach, but the marketing tactics of Trump, or is that going to be something that's limited to the Americas? What do you think? Well, I think it might, and I can just make one important point, which is that Donald Trump, as a political figure, as president of the United States, was a popular figure in much of the world outside Europe. People get this very wrong about Trump because, of course, perspective about the international, many people of the United States still get the sense, still behave as if foreign opinion is European opinion. The European political class didn't like Donald Trump, period. They didn't like anything about him. They found him unpredictable. They didn't like what

they sensed his politics were. They didn't like what they sensed his views of them was. And they didn't like him. But that doesn't mean that the rest of the world didn't. Trump was popular and successful in the Far East. He got on well with lots of Far East leaders. I remember when he went to, you know, on an Asian tour right at the beginning, they were warm to him. They liked him. The Arab leaders light him. I can easily imagine the African leaders and the Latin American leaders liking him too. And it could translate very well, possibly conceivably, amongst people as well, provided, you know, the sort of media control, which is pervasive around the world, breaks through. The more people saw of Donald Trump around the world, I'm not talking about Europe, but elsewhere around the world,

the more they warned to him. The more they see of Joe Biden and before that of Barack Obama, the less they like them. That's the thing that people don't understand. So just say, now, if you're talking about Europe, one country where one political leader did to some extent, to certain extent, try and copy Donald Trump

and did succeed was Georgia Maloney in Italy. And I mean, you know, if you look at the Maloney style, which a lot of people found populist and unusual in European terms, it did succeed. But I think one of the problems is that increasingly now a lot of people in Italy and in Europe are starting to think that that was a sham all along and that she borrowed the style but not the substance and that she promised in Italy more than she's delivered. Now she's trying to do various things with family-friendly policies, family-friendly tax,

policies. But of course, she's trying to do that within the straitjacket of the European Union and its fiscal and legal structures. And the two are now increasingly colliding. And we've had this decision now by the German Constitutional Court, which has outlawed a budget maneuver that the German government, the current German government tried to carry out. And that's going to make the fiscal landscape in Europe tighter still. And I think a lot of people in Italy were willing to back Maloney in a battle with the European Union. And I think that some of the enthusiasm for her, I mean, they would still vote for her now

because they look at the alternatives and they say what alternatives. But I think some of the enthusiasm, some of the excitement that was. there when she was first elected has probably faded away because she has so worked so hard to come across as this loyal EU team player. I mean, there was a story I read about her that she turned up at the first meeting with the EU officials with a cake and she said, look, I've got this nice cake for you. I'm not a bad person. I'm on your side. And, you know, as Alex and I can say, you give these people an inch. If you try to be friends with them, they will take you over.

There is no meeting. There is no way you can meet with them on sort of equal terms. You're either with them 100%, or they're against you, 100%. there is just no middle way. And it's a bit like what Donald Trump tried to do when he was elected, after he was elected, when he came in in 2017. He tried to get the people he was up against to like him and to work with him. And he found that they weren't interested in liking or working him.

And Maloney, to some extent, has made the same mistake in Europe. But that's the only place in Europe, where I could, in Europe, where perhaps again, because of the history, the traditions, some kind of more populist policies have been successful. In Britain, you look at the situation, and here it's a complete political desert. We've discussed this many times. We now have the unipathy fully in control.

People are very angry. The economy is a very bad place. And the things are not going well. And coming back to Donald Trump, which is a topic we're going to have to come back to. many times, I suspect, but coming back to Donald Trump, the media here in Britain are absolutely furious and terrified at the prospect of Trump's return. So articles about him with the economist, he is the greatest threat to world peace, apparently, in 2024. I mean, you know,

what's, you know, war in the Middle East, collapse in Ukraine, threats of an economic crisis, All of that, that's not important. I mean, if Donald Trump wins the election in 2024, he doesn't even become president until 2025, but even if he wins the election in 2024 and wins it, let's be clear, constitutionally, lawfully and democratically, that is the greatest threat to world peace. That's the economist for you.

The financial times, even worse, if you read pieces by people like Martin Wolf and Gideon Ratman and people like that, the lead leader writers, article writers, opinion writers, and the financial times. I mean, the way they talk about Trump, I mean, you know, this is the, their perspective of him is that he's Mussolini on steroids. I mean, that's their vision of him. And you see the same thing repeated itself, even somebody like Gerard Baker in the London Times who had a certain type of well he was prepared to give the

Trump the benefit of the doubt from time to time he talks about this vengeful Trump who's coming in he's going to purge everybody he's going to transform the US government he's going to go after you know everything that we care for and value in the United States and I have to say I find all of this very troubling I look myself at what has happened in the United States

States over the last, well, six years since Donald Trump first appeared on the sea. And I get to say it again. I said it many times. The danger is not from Donald Trump. It's from his political opponents. They have burnt through every conceivable legal thing. They've becoming increasingly, they've been using the legal system in incredibly dangerous ways. They pursued force claims against him. People talk about theories of a certain kind. They never admit that Russiagate was one.

I mean, there's never been any kind of accountability for Russia Gate, any kind of admission that Russia Gate was a load of nonsense which it was. You look at all of that story. He asked yourself, who is the

real person, the real people who are in putting US democracy, and ultimately world peace in danger. And it's not Donald Trump, it's his adversaries. And he finally does what he said back in 2016 that he would do, which is drain the swamp by clearing out all kinds of people. Well, bring it on as far as I'm concerned.

It's necessary. It's necessary in order to make the political system in the United States work properly it loss. Yeah, it's fascinating in the states that the original of that Donald Trump presents that others have some successfully, some unsuccessfully

tried to emulate or imitate. You know, the Malay-Maloney difference is exposed, and Malay was like, you have to crush these people. You can't give them an inch, you give an inch, you'll get crushed. You know, that's a very Trumpish position that, as you note, he himself

inconsistently kept as in his first term to his own detriment ultimately. But there's no question that the Trump election is inevitable at this point, outside of the hopes of the lawfare being weaponized by the Biden administration at an unprecedented pace and at an unprecedented level, period. And so the reason for American people's support of Trump at the moment is simple that when Trump was president, there was peace, there was more

peace abroad, not perfect peace, but more peace abroad. No new war started. First one since Jimmy Carter to avoid that. You could say Reagan avoided war for the most part, depending on how you interpret some of the covert wars that were fought. But the

definitely more so than the Bush, the regime of Bushes and Clintons and Obama, I mean, who are happy and eager to get into a new war every other year. So you you had meaningfully peace abroad for four years, meaningful efforts at peace in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords and moving more in that direction, you had less Israeli Hamas, Israeli-Hazbullah conflict during Trump's term than you did during Obama's term or W's term or

Clinton's term. And that, you know, there was less talk from Israel of let's bomb Iran under Trump than there was under Obama when Netanyahu and Obama went right at it on that topic and others. And then of course, Ukraine. We never went into Ukraine under Trump, that Trump was trying to do a detente with Russia that was derailed by the Russia gate false allegations and accusations. But he was on the absolutely right path in terms of understanding Putin and Russia's role from a geopolitical perspective. He's the guy who was in the process of getting a peace deal with North Korea before Sean Hannity's placement of John Bolton inside the administration sidetracked. Now, you can be fairly critical of Trump for allowing some of these nitwits around him.

But it was, as Alex noted, the belief or hope or idea that he could work with these people when, in fact, he needs to do what he's now talking about. He needs to crush him. It's what Huey Long said, the famous American populist governor, when he was first elected governor in Louisiana, he said, you know, I used to try to negotiate with him. He goes now, and then they tried to impeach him and remove him by a couple of different illicit means, the Rockefeller machine there in Louisiana, and other. corrupt aspects of that political machine in Louisiana. And he says, now I just crush him.

Now, of course, they ultimately killed him, but, you know, that's another story for another day. Geopolitically, realistically, there's no other choice, as you know, that the, Trump isn't on a revenge to her because Trump is motivated personally, entirely by revenge. Now, he's someone who believes in revenge. He has said so his entire life. And I'm from East Tennessee.

of the Hatfields in McCoy. So I think there's great virtue in revenge. But it's simply a practical matter. The only way America is going to escape the last half century, at least, of compromised global and domestic politics that has been corrupted by an elite that doesn't care about America, doesn't care about the American people, doesn't care about the American way of life, such as constitutional liberties and freedoms, restrictions and restraints on the state. I mean, we're one of the first countries built on the principle of no standing army.

And now we have, what, 450 or whatever it is, military bases around the world? This is anti-American what is taking place. And that's where Trump is absolutely right, that there needs to be a purge. But as they see all their efforts to derail his electability, electability failed. They thought the lawfare would work. They thought the law fair. They thought the January 6th committee would educate the people that this is a dangerous

insurrectionist hanging out with militia types out in the woods in Idaho and Montana who can't wait to overthrow the government and install white supremacy or whatever their latest languages. And it completely failed because it was completely false. It was a complete fabrication from day one. January 6th was filled with infiltrators, instigators and informants. It was a Fed

urrection, not an insurrection. 90% of the people were just taking an unauthorized tour of the Capitol and stayed right between the lines. It was the most peaceful riot if we want to call it a riot in the history of the Capitol.

Especially just compare it to six months before with the BLM riots in Washington, D.C., where real injuries took place, real attacks took place, real property damage, place. Those people receive checks rather than indictments. So the nature of it, and then of course all the charges, as you know, Alex are bogus. None of them have any credibility. In the court of public opinion,

for a criminal case or civil case to stick, you need a victim, a real literal victim. When they're trying to propagate war, the reason why Democrats are so much better than Republicans at getting us involved in stupid wars around the world is because when they, wage war. It's not for oil. Of course not. It's not for money. It's not for power. It's not for currency. It's it's it's for the women and the children and the refugees and the four freedoms and the apple pie and whatever else. The you know, they understand how to wage war effectively. That's why, you know, wag the dog at perfectly captures the democratic strategy to get you involved in a stupid war someplace. the same sort of underlying dynamics, it applies the Court of Public Opinion. If you want a case to be persuasive that you had to breach all historic precedent

and arguably violate the Constitution in order to bring these indictments and civil suits against them that are trying to bankrupt him and imprison them for life, then you better have real victims that people can feel empathy with. There's literally no victims. The victim in these cases is the deep state. The victim is some corrupt politician, some corrupt hack. That's the supposed victim. In New York, the fraud allegations are that he was more sophisticated than the banks and got a good deal than the biggest Wall Street banks in the world.

Nobody is sympathetic with the Wall Street banks. That doesn't exist. And of course, none of those banks are complaining. They all got paid back in full. Insurance companies got paid back in full. Nobody was defrauded. People got jobs. People got services. People got benefits. In the criminal case in New York, another completely bogus allegation that he tricked himself about how he paid something. I mean, it's just ludicrous. he's the victim of his own crime and then of course you have the Georgia State case that raising challenging election is somehow now a crime who's the victim? The only victim is Donald Trump and the American people who didn't get an honest election. Same thing in D.C. Same thing in Florida. The Florida federal judge is picking up on some of this

insanity and now the case is getting more and more delayed unlikely to occur before election day. The Georgia prosecutor is not very bright. She never was very bright, Fannie Willis. the probability that case gets there before election day is very, very low. So the New York criminal case, we've seen how the New York civil case is going. That judge has embarrassed himself on a national stage. Embarrassed the rule of law out of America, the credibility of our judicial institutions globally,

look like a joke. We will never have the same reputation in some circles around the world that we used to about the integrity, impartiality, intelligence of our judicial system. I mean, we're supposed to be the model for the world. I mean, we were pushing that to Putin 10 years ago. You know, model the Russian justice system after the American justice system, incorporated jury trial system. And Putin actually tried to do so in many respects.

You know, jury trials are foreign to Russian history. You know, now there are, you know, seven, eight percent of trials were becoming jury trial. You know, but the, now we've damaged that in ways that, you know, it's like the Cuban show trials, right? you know, if they had done those trials differently, like they did those trials for domestic consumption, domestic propaganda, but much of the rest of the world watching that, that might have had some sympathy on what you could call the liberal labor left, towards the Castro regime, we're like, okay, hold on a second, this doesn't quite look like what we were thinking. A justice system would look like. This looks more like the French Revolution.

But now where they're seeing the same in America, they're seeing Stasi-Soviet-style show trials. They're seeing political partisan hacks with judges who are having unelected officials like their clerks run actually co-judge the case and then tell the world nobody can talk about it. Find President Trump for exposing her partisan bias. Threaten the lawyers in front of them with sanctions and worse. Threatened President Trump that he would imprison him if he kept talking about it. These are gag orders that are patently unconstitutional. The D.C. judge issued a lunatic gag order. but of course it's somehow magically three Democrats that get on the panel that's going to over uh that's

going to decide whether to overturn it if they're smart they'll invalidate that gag order because if they're dumb enough to keep it there then the Supreme court is more likely to get involved sooner or later the Supreme court probably has to get involved because they're trying to take him off the ballot which is patently unconstitutional there's no constitutional precedent for that whatsoever to take it of some of the American people want from the ballot and uh and and And even liberal Democratic judges who hate him are acknowledging they don't have that power in Michigan, in Minnesota, in Colorado. But all of this political, what the goal was not to lock Trump up so much. The goal was to discredit Trump in the court of public opinion to such a degree that he was no longer a viable political threat.

And the problem is the American people seen through it. There's no victim here. That these aren't real fraud cases. These aren't real crime cases. These aren't that they're trying to punish Trump for being a dissident. And in the process, they've changed and revolutionized his image amongst constituencies that previously were hostile or skeptical of Trump. Trump went from being this caricature of old money, rich white guy, New York wealth,

to being the ultimate underdog outsider, like for those constituencies and communities that have experienced that harassment before, like parts of the Hispanic and African-American communities in the United States. And amongst younger voters, he went from being a cultural symbol of sort of cartoonish evil to the ultimate outsider, the ultimate underdog, the ultimate beleaguered individual. They couldn't have written a script better for him than by all of these fake cases and all of these bogus charges and all this misuse and abuse of judicial power. But they're so inbubbled that they don't see how the rest of the world in their own country is responding beyond these polls and surveys. And then, of course, they have an additional problem.

Once Robert Kennedy announced he was going to run as an independent for the presidency, if they really did try to take Trump off the ballot, if they really try to take Trump out in some manner, then the probable result will not be the re-election of Joe Biden, will not be the election of some other late substitute Democrat. It will not be Nikki Haley, Neo-Conn, Nikki, war-carin, Nikki, which is my favorite new war phrase, war-carin. She's really earned it very well. It won't be heel-wearing DeSantis. It'll be Robert Kennedy.

And then they've got the same level of problem. And some would say on the deep state apparatus side, they have a bigger problem because Kennedy is even more determined to take them out than some people wonder whether Trump will follow through, given his first administration, try to work with these people. rather than crush him. Kennedy is committed to crushing them. Now, of course, some of my friends on the left are busy burning their bridges with Kennedy

because they disagree with them on Israel, which I find self-destructive and unwise on their part. But hey, you know, political suicide is a long tradition in parts of the American left. God bless them and the anti-war movement. But yeah, I think right now they've thrown everything at Trump. Nothing has worked. Nothing has stuck.

Nothing has succeeded. And the only question is, what bridges are they willing to burn to try to keep Trump out of the White House? And are they willing to gamble that the beneficiary of that is Robert Kennedy? Or are they going to try to take both out? You know, I mean, they did assassinate Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Sr. in the same year. So, I mean, it's not unfortunately impossible to foresee. But I think that the, what I shocked the, the, the, deep state and the, where you call them, national security,

establishment, whatever military industrial complex, use whatever language you want to, is our intelligence community so out of touch and so disconnected and the Washington think tank so out of touch and so disconnected that they didn't realize the American people would see through this charade. And the only people right now being very harmed is the American judicial system, which has people second guessing them, questioning them, doubting them, their integrity, their impartiality, their independence, their intelligence, in ways that has never happened in American legal history, political history before. And that is why I'm hopeful, there's no guarantee, that the Supreme Court of the United

States at some point steps into some of these cases and ends the charade once and for all, rather than have to deal with the embarrassment of what if you have a criminally convicted, they're attempting to jail Trump when he's elected president of the United States. I mean, the judge presiding over that case is the granddaughter and great niece of Jamaican communists that were so hard left. The socialist kicked them out of the party. So, you know, it's like, the fact that these are the judges presiding over some of these cases is to some of us, not the best sign of where America's rule of law is currently or America's political institutions are.

But they see Trump as an existential threat. They see Robert Kennedy Jr. as an existential threat. They have to choose between one of those two poisons or try to completely obliterate American constitutional democracy. Sadly, the latter is at real risk because of how insane and delusional these people are. Well, can I say lots of things again, Robert? You always bring up things. Let's start with revenge in politics. There was a quote of Robert Kennedy Seniors that my aunt always used to remind me of

when talking about politics and revenge. And by the way, she always claimed that she met him. I've never been completely sure that she did, but maybe she did. She often claimed me all kinds of interesting people. But anyway, I think this is a genuine quote of Robert Kennedy's. I always forgive my enemies, but I always remember their names. And I think this is exactly what you should do. You should always forgive people, by all means, in politics, you can do that.

But never forget who they are and don't trust them. Because have they shafted you once, they're absolutely capable of shafting you again. It's not a question of, you know, coming after people, you know, Alcapone style, behaving that kind of way. It's simply the reality of how the political system, of politics works anywhere. You just cannot work with people who have come after you before and trying to become friends with them, to win them around. It never works. It's a waste of time. you're just wasting political energy and political capital when you try to do it.

Just do exactly what Milley is talking about. Get rid of them all. Push them aside. If you win, if you win, win, go forward, act out what you want to do. Be utterly ruthless. Lincoln was ruthless, by the way. Roosevelt was ruthless. Franklin Roosevelt was completely ruthless.

Just push them aside. do what you want to do and call it revenge if you like, but that's how you should act in politics. That's the first thing. Second, about populism. I mean, the idea that populism should have a bad name in the United States of places is incredible. I mean, do these people not understand what America, was created to be. Do they not know its history?

Do they not know the history of American politics? Do they not know about Andrew Jackson, for example, who some people think was the founder of the Democratic Party? Do they not know about how the Republican Party got itself going? You know, about the people going out in the prairies and those sort of places and having the meetings and talking and incredibly excited, no doubt, impassioned ways. That's what, that's, that's actually the whole point at essence of American democracy. You read people like, you know, Tockville, whom I've always found an absolutely hilarious

writing myself. I've never understood why Americans taking them seriously that they do. But you know, Tollpville goes off to America and he comes back to Europe and he says, you know, there's one problem with America is you can't tell who the sentence. Because everybody, talks politics. They're all, everybody considers that their opinions carry equal weight. Dockville didn't like American democracy. He wrote about it. He didn't like it. He was a French aristocrat. And for him, this was a very, very, very strange, subversive and rather scary thing. America, that, that, when people say that they are against populism, what they are really against as democracy. It's about people talking straightforwardly in the language of people,

the real great mass of the people of the United States. Once upon a time, that was how American democracy function. And not so long ago, by the way, those people who are against democracy, Populism, ultimately, they don't like democracy. They want an aristocratic, controlled political system. And you can see that in their language. The cliché-ridden, formulaic language that they use, totally contrary to the American political tradition. And when people talk in that stilted, Soviet-style way,

because that's what it is, that's when you can tell who are the friends of democracy and who are its enemies. If they talk in that kind of stilted way, they are not friends of democracy. And the other thing, populism and American democracy always functioned within a system or a proper system of law. Now, a properly impartial system of law. And you could see that. You could see, I mean, you know, Abraham Lincoln, born in the log cabin, self-educated man, these speeches saturated with biblical language, because of course that was a profoundly Christian country in those days. And he spoke, again, the language that people knew, and he knew how to use the language of the Bible to convey his ideas. Again, it's something people don't talk about. He was also, of course, a trained lawyer.

And you could see in his speeches how he uses the legal, the structure of legal. argument and it's the structure of legal argument he uses to convince juries. You know, the people who are, you know, ordinary people, the people of the United States, they are there in juries. And he knows exactly how to talk to the American people. But fundamentally, even when he violates the law and the constitution, he knows it and he's guilty about it and he's ashamed of it. He's always trying to find ways to go back. And that is the name. And that is the nature again of the American system. You keep the legal system out of politics. That was the American way. And I am horrified by what has happened in New York. Now, once upon a time, you know, a long time ago,

when I used to deal with legal things, where I used to work in the World Courts of Justice, the New York system, the commercial court system in the United States, was always considered the alternative, the big alternative place to the commercial legal system in London, the commercial courts in London. American commercial judges used to get cited in British courts informing precedence. That's a pretty extraordinary thing because the British High Court, by the way, likes to think that in common law matters and in commercial matters, you know, they're the absolute. absolute, you know, Naples, ultra, you can't go, but, you know, they, even they, cited American judges.

I mean, was it Cardozo? Was he an American New York judge? Yeah, absolutely. They got a hand. Absolutely. Absolutely. All of these people, they got cited there. And I see this absolute shambles in New York now.

This is the system I always looked up to who's, you know, you know, I used to remember when I used to do. sort of drafts and there's a look up and say, well, you know, we don't have a clear view. What did the Americans say? And I'd go to the people in New York. And now we have gag orders. You can't criticize the judge. And this is in a civil case, mind you. There isn't even a jury there. This is a civil case and the judges are throwing out gag orders. This is insane. This is ridiculous. This is absurd. How can you possibly be doing something like this in New York and in America? And when Robert says, when you say Robert that this is trashing the reputation of the New York system, of the American legal system, well, that has to be right. It's a legal system. I've always admired. I've always felt they were way ahead of us in understanding

constitutional law. After all, they invented constitutional law. There was no such thing as constitutional law until the Americans came along and set up their own constitution and had it written out in clear, lucid, simple English that everybody can understand, starting with those immortal words, we the people. it's and you're going in for gag orders? I mean, it is ridiculous. It is absurd. This undermines the essence of America. Now, you know, if I carry on like this,

I will begin to get really, really angry, which is not what I want to do. I always try to keep my feelings, emotions under control in discussing programs of this kind. And you can see the airphones, coming out of my ears, if you like. But, I mean, that is the reality of the United States today. If we have a situation where the legal system is used to prevent someone like Donald Trump,

and you're absolutely correct, my way, all these cases are bogus, they're completely phony. I mean, they're obviously so. The Supreme Court should definitely intervene at some point. I don't know what the procedural mechanics are, but they should definitely intervene to put a stop to this whole thing. But if God help us, this succeeds, we're not in the world of the United States. We're not in the world of American jurisprudence and American jurism. Wyshinsky is now in charge. He was Stalin's prosecutor.

He once said famously, you know, when assessing guilt or innocence, don't look at the evidence, consider instead the class position of the defendant. That's what you should think about. Well, that's essentially where we are. It's not whether or not somebody is innocent or guilty. You're not applying due process. You're not applying legal principles. You're not applying, you know, proper standards of guilt or innocence. you're instead applying, you know, Vichensky in thinking, which is, of course, what these gag orders are all about. In the land of Tompagne, the place where Tompain actually eventually settled,

you know, the French nearly executed him, the English prescribed him. He ended up in the United States. He became a journalist there. He ran the kind of newspaper, which clearly wouldn't be tolerated in the U.S. today. But anyway, in the land of Tompain, judges, judges protect themselves with gag orders? I mean, this is absolutely unbelievable. It is astonishing. And if by any possible chance, the terrible thing that Robert spoke about at the very end happened, if people like Trump or RFK, and I don't want to talk about this, because

talking about it, I find an ominous thing in itself. But if anything like that happens, well, then God save America, because frankly, I'm not sure how the American Republic survives that. The way I compare it to people is that the Biden administration and their allies and the various state governments have weaponized the American legal system in the same way that they weaponize the American financial system. against Russia. And that backfired badly. Not only did it not work in achieving any meaningful or consequential detrimental action on Russia. In fact, as Vivek and others that have pointed out,

all it did is push Russia and China closer together so that it was geopolitically ill-advised from whatever perspective you take on Russia. But more importantly, it terrified the entire rest of the world who recognized, oh, I shouldn't have my money in Western banks. I shouldn't have my investments in Western companies. I shouldn't have my property tied up under the control of Western jurisdictions. And all of a sudden, because the whole, it was the liquidity, the ease and the certainty of the global financial system that America had helped establish it that lent it its credibility and broad utility around the world. Once you politically weaponize that power, you destroy the whole point and purpose of its utility and benefit. You now make it an imminent

risk, a imminent threat, whether you're a politician or you're just a disfavored millionaire or billionaire. I mean, here you have the former president of the United States who they're trying to bankrupt his entire business, ban him as an entire family from ever engaging in business. fire all of his employees, destroy all kinds of services and tax base to the New York people that would otherwise benefit them simply because he's a political opponent

of the administration. And once people realize that, then it's like, what person still takes the gamble to invest in real estate in New York or set up business in New York? Like a case pending before the Supreme Court of the United States

is the long abuse of selective prosecution that the courts have tolerated too long. That, you know, First Amendment says you can't use the weaponized, the judicial system to punish someone for their political association, their expression, their beliefs, their activities, their opinions, their religious affiliations, associations, expressions, or opinions. And yet that's clearly precisely what happened. The case that the Supreme Court took up was a pre-Trump case.

It was when the state of New York went after the National Rifleman's Association, the the NRA, which is a boogeyman on the anti-gun left. And they targeted them deliberately. Here, I mean, to me, it was always an outrage. The courts didn't step in from the get-go. You had someone who you couldn't have the more compelling selective prosecution case than every single case against Trump. This is an attorney general who won her election saying, vote for me. I'll prosecute Donald Trump. Not because of anything he did. I'll find something he did. I mean, she ran on the Berea plan. Show me the man and I'll find you the crime.

Elect me and I'll find you the crime. I'll find you the bad act. And then the New York DA did the exact same thing. I mean, I had a case before the prior New York DA, the famous Amy Cooper case, so-called Central Park Karen case. I got that case resolved and all charges dismissed before the new DA came in because I could tell he was going to be so political, all bets would be off.

You would have no rational thought. You'd have to fight everything. in one of the most corrupt court systems in the world, unfortunately. I represented Wesley Snipes against the New York court system, sued the entire court system in federal court because they were so abusing their power on behalf of social welfare officials out of the state of Indiana making up allegations against him that were ludicrous of paternity and trying to issue Interpol arrest warrants for him.

Can you imagine some of the little hearing examiner in the New York family court system, which is a Byzantine bizarre court system to begin with, is getting Interpol to issue arrest more. I had to be on the phone with airport officials around the globe saying you better not because I was telling him it was a bogus warrant that they could be arrested. They themselves could be sued for it because of the snipes. They decided not to enforce it.

But he almost ended up arrested all around the world because of the insanity of it. But what the court system did well is it hid its parochialism. It hit its prejudice. it hit its corruption to minority groups, dissident groups. So like I always said, the brilliance of the American criminal justice system is it only goes after about 5% of the American population. So consequently, 95% of the population doesn't really understand its faults,

its frailties, its meaningful, material weaknesses. When we went after people before, it was during the Civil War, during a Civil War, so that's going to have a different political dynamic during World War I. J. Edgar Hoover came to power. We weaponized the legal system against Eugene v. Debs, the socialist candidate. And for people out there, Debs was convicted of sedition in a federal prison. He was still on the ballot in whatever state he wanted to be on the 1920 presidential election. This is why they can't, this is this long history prevents them from really prohibiting Trump from being on the ballot without being completely dishonest. And so the net

the collateral side effect of their hatred of Trump. I mean, one has been that whatever you think of Trump, whether you like them or not, Trump has exposed the corruption of the system, expose the duplicity of the deep state, expose the national security apparatus, exposed the media prejudices, exposed how bad, how a trophy our institutions of influence have become, even our FBI, even our intelligence apparatus, even our legal system, all the way down to the state law clerk level. Like that state law clerk in the New York case

that's literally sitting next to the judge. I mean, I've never seen this in my life. I mean, and he's talking to her throughout before he makes a single decision. It's obvious. I mean, this is a guy who sends out notices to his alumnus, alumni, bragging about how he's screwing Trump in between posting photos of his 73-year-old abs. It's like, this guy is gone, right? I mean, this is a judge, New York.

You know, big New York law and order, New York. You know, where you get the famous steps in the courthouse and all the TV shows and all the celebrity evidence. You know, the, I mean, film after film after film portraying that the great noble justice system of New York. But this clerk, she ran for herself or judge. She ran on how she was targeting Trump. She just referred to it as a real estate company. So she disguised it. But everybody knew what she was talking about.

She's like, hey, elect me. I'm busy screwing over Trump. And she explicitly stated, well, you're talking about Alexander in terms of the Soviet mindset, the Stasi mindset, that the justice system is here to obtain political objectives, not to enforce law, not to find truth, not to discover fact. And she said it explicitly. She said, I believe precedents should be established to support the people who vote for you, not for any other reason. It's like, that's not what precedent is supposed to mean in the Anglo-American legal tradition. This is an attack on the principles of the Enlightenment itself that were best reflected and represented in the American rule of law and the legal institutions. And what they've done is they've jeopardized it because you're right.

Like people forget, number one money laundering capital of the world is really not any foreign nation. It's the United States of America. But the part of that is we get a lot of foreign investment. And why do we get that foreign investment? Because people trust that our legal system will be impartial, that our legal system has set rules that are predictable. So that you know if I do business here, this is the likely consequence. If this happens or this happens, I'll get remedy here, I'll get relief there. I won't be targeted because somebody tomorrow doesn't like my politics or doesn't like my Twitter post or something like that.

I mean, you have Elon Musk for X filing suit against Media Matters because Media Matters was fabricating Twitter results to try to run advertising boycott campaigns based on disfavored opinions. You have Elon Musk being targeted by the Biden administration, and that's escalating ever since he bought X, using its powers at the SEC to go after him, using powers in other places to go after him. Using the lawyers, the lawyers that went after Alex Jones are now going after Elon Musk in the same Austin court system that was also a political embarrassment to the rule of law and its institutions. So in the end, as I tell people, this isn't whether Trump wins or not. This isn't whether what happens in 2025. This is whether or not America survives as a constitutional, republic, democracy, rule of law, governed country that cares about respects and recognizes each individual and the sort of universal humanitarian principles rooted in the American

revolution that said each person has value, each person has rights, and that we are going to respect and recognize those rights. and we're going to bind ourselves by a set of principles that we will impartially administer in these institutions that we call law. And will the rule of law survive? Will the American perception abroad survive? Because they're so nuts about going after Trump. Just like they went after Russia with everything. And all it did was backfired, not just in failed effort in Ukraine, but in the fact that the entire global South woke up

to not only the Global South, every billionaire in the world realized, oh, I don't want to be like the Russian owner of Chelsea, of Romovich. And overnight, I lose everything I've put my money in, everything I've put my investments in, everything I've relied upon. So the, and so I want alternative, I mean, Bricks is really about an alternative financial system, not so much, not necessarily just an alternative currency, but an alternative means of getting money around the world outside. the control of the West, which wasn't an obsession until they did this action. What happens when you

can't trust the American legal system anymore? You're going to have problems with foreign investment. You're going to have problems with where people store their capital. You're going to have problems with where people put confidence in the banks and in the financial system. You can have all kinds of devastating collateral consequences that are just as devastating as an out-of-control inflationary currency or anything else. So, but. But it tells us something about where we are. They're willing to jeopardize the entire thing just to stop Donald Trump from being president of the United States, number 47.

Absolutely, which reflects the fact that this is ultimately about political power in the United States. It's not really about government, administration, the welfare of the American people, the position of the United States and the world, the state of the U.S. economy, or any of these things. It's ultimately an extremely raw battle about political power. And that again, by the way, to some extent, reflects Soviet practice. I mean, everybody in the Soviet Union, all the political, there was constant power struggle. There was really actually about substantive things. Sometimes it was, but usually it wasn't. And it was all about who is going to be the top dog. And you use whatever

tools and mechanisms there are to hand to push the other person down and basically to eliminate them from the system. And that's, it seems to me, where we're heading in the United States. And I think the other thing to say about this is you've mentioned Vivek, you've mentioned Musk, you've mentioned all of these people, and you've mentioned the weaponization of the system of finance, the effect that is having. Of course, the point to understand about the people who make decisions today in the political system is that they are not business people. They're not people who handle money. They're not even, to a great extent, people who have come up through the legal system as such. I mean, some of them are lawyers, but one gets the sense that law practice is,

their conception of law practice is really more about, you know, what Hunter, people like him have been doing as lawyers, if I have to be honest about this. So I don't think they're really even lawyers in any sense that I would understand. And they don't understand, therefore, both the importance of these things and their potential fragility, if they're misused. They assume that these things can be weaponised and used in the way that they want them to be used, and that it will advance their own interests in the political system, and that somehow afterwards the system itself will just continue, as it always has, with them in control and that you know that they can turn a switch and the system will work perfectly as it always

did before and then you just pull another switch and then you can use it to get rid of your personal opponents also and it doesn't work like that that is not how the financial system works that is not how the legal system works because all of these systems ultimately are anchored on trust people have to believe in the legal system in order for it to work properly. People have to believe in the financial system in order for it to function at all. If the trust in it is gone, if people see it instead as simply a mechanism that people control, certain people control to their advantage, then the trust disappears and the system multivoli. collapses with it.

Now, you mentioned what's happened with the sanctions. I just have to bring this up because, of course, Putin is now laughing in some ways. We've had these two very interesting people, Friedman

and Avent, the people who ran Alpha Bank. This is one of the few private banks still left functioning in Russia now, because Putin has basically brought the entire banking system under state control. I mean, you know, there used to be lots of private banks in Russia.

Now they're very few, but Alpha Bank was there. Friedman and Alpha Bank are always referred to in the British media, and it's Britain that has really come hard after them as Putin allies. They are no such thing. They are Putin critics, except, of course, perhaps I should use the past tense, because that is what they were. They'd been driven out of Britain. They've had everything they had there seized.

Abramovich obviously lost Chelsea, but Friedman lost all his investments. They went part of the way they went to Israel. They both ended up back in Russia. And they both made statements, and they said, what idiots were we? What fools we were to trust all those promises we were given when we put our money in the West, in Britain specifically.

We should have listened to the advice of our great leader, Vladimir Putin, who always told us that we should continue and remain in Russia and invest our money there. And this is the message that has been communicated right across Russia at the moment. Now, Russia is in the throes of a massive investment boom. the economy is currently growing at around, well, at around 5.5% a month. I mean, that's the sort of rate of growth is going. It'll probably achieve an overall rate of growth of around 3.3% this year.

But that's over the whole year. At the moment, it's growing much faster than that. The central bank is worried because it is growing so fast. The reason it is going so fast, the reason that, that there is an investment boom is not, it's partly because the government has been spending a lot and it can afford to because revenues have been high, revenues from across the system have been high as well. The deficit is going to be less than 1% of GDP and it might even be in surplus the budget deficit I meant to say. But the other reason why there is an investment boom is because

all this money is flying back into Russia and is now being used there. And people, people are investing. I mean, the word I'm getting, and I've had contacts of some people in Russia, is that they say that for the first time, there is no longer a shortage of money to, you know, for investment in things. We can suddenly do things that we've been wanting to do for a very, very long time. And we can find loans and credit lines and entrepreneurs who will provide us with the money in ways that just hasn't been the case before. So Putin is laughing. It's worked out perfectly for him and that, you know, people like Yellen and our former chancellor, now Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, couldn't see this. I mean, it's

a collapse in economic understanding. And also, I have to say this in the quality of intelligence collection that is taking place in Russia today. Yeah, we had history legends on. It was a great YouTube channel. And they've done a lot of great predictive breakdowns of what has taken place in the Ukrainian conflict. He gave a great analysis before the great so-called summer counteroffensive where he said Russia is just going to sit there and allow these to just churn up

the entire Ukrainian military. such that they're left with, I think there was a later, there was a photo recently released of some get together and the new conscriptees looked like an average age of 50, you know, I was like, and none of them look happy to be there. So, and he predicted that was going to take place. So I recommend his channel to people out there. But a lot of this was, what's fascinating, I see it sometimes in the Israeli conflict and other conflicts.

I see it in the U.S. politics discussed about Trump, is a lot of the analysis out of the West concerning Russia and Ukraine substituted wishful thinking for strategic analysis. What they called geopolitics, what they called military analysis, was just wishful thinking. The other part was so much confession

through projection that was going on. Basically, whatever the Russians did well, the Ukrainians claim they were doing. And whatever horrible things were happening to Ukraine or by Ukraine, they attributed to the Russians instead. I used to say if you watch the Ukrainian

Russian count of Russian casualties because they're going to be confessing the number of Ukrainian casualties. And now we're seeing more confirmation of that. A whole waste of a whole generation of an entire population. For what? For literally nothing.

But it was amazing. It was the day before of Eva and I talked to history legends, one of these popular YouTube channels in the West, it was like either infographics or it's one of those, had this whole thing about it was just a matter of time before Putin had to give up. I was like, how can I mean, just read the New York Times. I mean, read the Washington Post.

The intelligence community is begging for an exit ramp from Putin. They're hoping that maybe Putin will be nice to them and let them get out cheap. And they don't have to give up Odessa. They don't have to give up all that land. They've been promising BlackRock and all those resources. They've been promising U.S. companies that in all the loans to Ukraine were, you know, about shifting money back to a lot of big Western Wall Street companies. They were just going to ravage Ukraine the way they ravaged Russia in the 1990s.

But it was an inevitable and an escapable conclusion from the inception, as you guys discussed. I mean, the only big question to me was always, could they survive the economic war? They're always going to win the military war. I mean, they're four times larger. If you look at the collective aggregate value of the Russian military, which has to include the stocks back to the Soviet Union, I mean, from a replacement value perspective, you're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. The West didn't have enough ammunition to match that. And Russia could scale up quickly.

And there's a reason why we'd ever built a lot of Ukrainian war manufacturing companies. Right. You know, the point of the Ukrainian war was to feed money into the U.S. and Western military industrial complex. For that, you can't have those. Congressmen aren't voting for it if it's being made in Kiev. they're voting for it if the weapon is being made in their backyard by people donating to their campaigns and aligning with their interest. But, of course, that had a downside to it. It meant Ukraine couldn't scale up in ways that Russia could.

So, I mean, you look at it. Now, what do you think? The interesting thing is Russia has gone so sort of slow and steady. They've now built up their troops pretty substantially. but there's always this anticipation in some communities that they're just about to go full scale. But this feels more like aspects of World War II that it's, you know, a foot a day, a foot, you know, a foot, maybe a mile a day at most, that we're not going to see necessarily a quick resolution within, you know, may take another year. But do you think Russia goes, I still don't believe Russia goes east of the river and goes to Western Ukraine?

I don't think he wants, I think he wants to stick Poland with that. You know, I mean, that worked out really great for Poland back after World War I. You know, before they were killing Jews, the, that group of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and actual Nazis, you know, were busy killing the Poles. I mean, that was their favorite thing to do after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So I'm sure Putin wants to, used to joke about it. Well, how have you put it? He's like, hey, you guys want the Western Ukraine back? I'll give it to you.

But I could see him going into Odessa because it's part of the Black Sea. It would allow control of the Black Sea. It's a very geographic, it's a rich region in terms of resources and farmland. And there's a lot of historical ancestral ties. And in his very first ever speech about going in, he talked about they're going to hold the Ukrainian, the people in Odessa responsible for what happened after the Maidan coup

in terms of burning people alive that were protesting the Maidon, etc. And I was like, well, how's he going to do that unless he plans out going there? I could see him going that further, but I don't see him going all of Ukraine. I don't see him going even into Kiev, really. But also there's the question of how long this is going to take, because there's been a slow, you know, inch by inch by inch. I mean, they've allowed the Ukrainians to exhaust their resources. So at some point it becomes a lot easier to move forward a lot quicker. but as long as he's operated within certain restraints, try to limit collateral damage,

try to engage in old school World War II, everybody, all the civilians out and the armies battle each other, you know, from ditch to ditch. Ukrainians are clearly running out of resources. They're clearly running out of people, clearly running out of weapons. And, you know, they never really had much political support for money in the United States.

That's all entirely gone now. And the only question is how much money they can divert and how much corrupt politicians are willing to send even a little bit more money down the pipeline. But that cash line is running out pretty quickly. What do you think the end game is over the next year for Ukraine and Russia? It's very interesting. Now, actually, Putin has been speaking about things, and he said some very, very interesting things recently.

And they're not getting the amount of attention that they should do. But he made some comments right at the start of this month. in fact he made two sets of comments one he made on the fourth of november and this is the ones that to some extent people have talked about he's also made some other comments too the earlier comments that he made he said a very interesting thing he said our relations with europe are finished there's no way within our lifetimes that we're going to repair those with the united states we will at some point make a deal. We will find a way to get our relationships,

our relationship with the United States back on track. Now, it may not be the kind of relationship that we once thought we would have with the Americans. They won't be our partners. It might be adversarial, but we will come to an understanding with the Americans. The Europeans, it's important. possible. We've tried. We've made everything we can do. That's hopeless. With the Americans,

we will eventually come to some kind of understanding. And the second thing that he said, which was equally interesting, is that he actually did finally talk territories about Ukraine. And he were absolutely right. He mentioned, look, there are the territories that were given to Ukraine, the Bolsheviks, the Russian cities created by Catherine the Great. He didn't name Odessa, but Odessa obviously is one of those places. Now, he made it absolutely clear to me, at least, that he sees those as coming back under Russian control, under either direct Russian control or about Russia having some kind of role there. He said that if you talk about Ukraine, what was Ukraine, the real Ukraine, the original Ukraine of the 17th century.

He basically said it was just three areas. Kiev, Chernigov and Jetermir. Those are in the centre. And he referenced a letter that was sent by people from those regions then to Moscow, to the Tsar, in which they referred to themselves as Russian Orthodox people. Now, I didn't read that as saying that he would annex, Russia was looking to annex these places. But he did say that this is a fraternal region. We will probably have to find some kind of strong arrangement with them there.

He did not mention. He said absolutely nothing about Lavalph or Western Ukraine. He left that completely out. And he's, you know, political. deputy Medvedev. He then, you know, when I think Rostoltenberg, was it Rasmussen, said, you know, that Ukraine can enter

NATO, but, you know, shown in various parts. Well, basically Medvedev was saying, well, you know, what bits of Ukraine are you going to get? And he said rhetorically, are you talking about Galizia? About the Western Ukraine.

He spoke rather dismissively of Lvov. He used the Habsburg name for it. He called Lemberg, which is the name it had at the time of the Habsburg Empire. The overall message I got from all of that is that the Russians have absolutely no intention of moving to Western Ukraine. They're getting to see that they have control, or at least, if not positive, direct control, at least exercise predominant influence in all the Russian-speaking areas.

They see Kiev-Jetumil-Lvov, perhaps as a kind of... ramp Ukraine, but potentially aligned with Russia itself. Galicia, it can go where it wants, it can go to the West, it's not our concern. That's basically what they were saying. And you have that from Putin himself, and he said that this month. He said that on the 4th of November, which, by the way, is a very important day. It's a public holiday in Russia. It celebrates the liberation of Moscow from the Poles, the Poles briefly occupied Moscow in the early 17th century, and it was actually liberated by the Russians then. So you could see the imagery is also being played up as well. So that's about the political objectives. Now about the running of the war.

Now the thing to understand about Russians is that the one thing they're always good at, and this is a thing people always need to remember and never do is that the one thing you should never do with the Russians is take them on in a war. It's something that historically they've always been very good at and which they always run in their own way. I don't think that the Russians are aiming for a single knockout blow in Ukraine. I don't think we're going to see a big arrow offensive this year. What we are seeing is this huge Russian military that is now being built up. Our

420,000 men have joined the army or are in the process of joining the army this year. These are volunteers. They're not conscripts. They're people who are choosing to join the army. 1,600 a day, partly

because they're being paid well to join the army, partly because of course it's the defence of the motherland, which if you know Russians, that is an important thing. The military industries are working full tilt. They're cranking out every conceivable weapon, artillery piece, whatever that they can get. So I think the military strategy is fairly clear now. They're going to go on grinding the Ukrainian army down. They're going to continue to pursue this policy of demilitarization. They're going to let the Ukrainians

come to them. They're going to grind them down. That may take a while, but that's what they're going to do. They're going to conserve their own forces. They're going to conserve their ammunition. They're going to adapt their army increasingly to modern war conditions. They're developing all kinds of new weapon systems, all sorts of reconnaissance systems. Lloyd Austin spoke about how he was going to use the war to bleed and weaken Russia militarily. What is happening is the diametric opposite. So they're going to grind Ukraine down. They're going to push steadily, incrementally, step by step further west. They're going to take all the major fortified lines. They're going to go to the deeper. They might conceivably, I think they might push across the

NEPA if they feel they have to in order to bring the war to a close. They're going to push on and they're going to wait for an administration in the United States with which they can do a deal. and which will settle the situation in Europe. There are already articles apparently appearing in the media in Russia talking about the fact that we are heading towards a new Yalta. Now, for the Russians, the words Yalta, the discussions that took place in Yalta, in Crimea, by the way, between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill,

have a different resonance than what they do with people in the West. In the West, we see it as a great betrayal. With the Russians, Yalta means the agreements that were then reached, which brought about the stabilization of the situation on Russia's western borders and a long period of security from war from the West for Russia. And I think that is the Russian objective. Now, whether they will achieve that, I don't know, whether there will ever be that kind of administration

that they can come to those kind of deals with in Washington. I don't know either. I don't know whether they themselves fully know. But, of course, by taking their time, they weaken Ukraine even more. they expose the weaknesses in the American military industrial system, which to be clear is not the same as the US economy, which is a different thing.

It's a part of the US economy. They expose the weaknesses of the military industrial system, and they position themselves better. So that global deal, which won't just be about Ukraine in the Russian mind, but will be about security in Europe, that that is advanced, that they reach that point eventually when they come to that kind of, that they reach that kind of arrangement with the United States. It won't be with the Europeans.

It will be directly with the United States, that its agency and which they hope will finally come to understand what its own interests in Europe really are. Yeah, and if Trump gets elected, that'd be the kind of deal that Trump, Trump would like to do. Trump would like credit for that deal, but also he wants peace. It would be very achievable. It would make sense for Putin to see if Trump can get elected or someone of that mindset, but that particularly Trump, who will be in a position to cut that deal and rushing

the rest, and the restraining or restricting him in ways that I think now he regrets that it restricted and restrained him in his first term, as we've seen the disaster in the Ukrainian conflict. It also explains why the neoliberals and neocons are shifting to the Middle East. I mean, the bitterness of that wing of the State Department and the military industrial complex and the intelligence community. I mean, some of the war people don't mind because they can find another war to sell their weapons.

The Ukrainian conflict has not been a great advertiser for defense manufacturers in the West. There's a lot of weapons that are game-changer. that turned out not to change much of the game at all. And that's not good advertising. If that's your product, you're selling to countries and nations around the world. But for the state, you know, the certain people are just going to go absolutely berserk at the idea of a Trump-Buton global deal that's Yalta too. That will drive them sort of insane. The neo-connickies of the world.

So the war carins But it explains why some of them shift to the Middle East The thing in the Middle East is in the State Department And the Democrats, they have kind of a split. There's the domestic political split on the issue But the Though that's always going to generally come out pro-Israel over time But in the state department

You have the old Arabist influence The neoliberals They go back to the Brits You know, they go back to Kim Filby's father I thought he was going to be, you know, leading the greater Arabia the number one ally right next to the the king there in the post-Ottoman Empire world.

The, you know, they all, you know, they all read Lawrence of a rate. A lot of your like Kermit Roosevelt's, your young CIA guys, they were all a lot like the MI6 guys, you know, for whom old, you know, the post-Koo pre-Iatola, Iran, was their ideal government in the Middle East, right? You know, they thought that was,

they thought the Shah was the greatest thing ever. I mean, they helped put them. there helped keep them there for a while. You know, tricked them to think, and the Queen wanted them to stay. And some other things that have become famous stories over time. But you have that and it confuses the heck out of American

political observers. Because they don't know. It's like, why is there this perceived sympathy with Iran mixed in with hawkishness towards Iran? It doesn't quite make sense. And that's because there is this neoliberal Arabist wing that has been

within the State Department and the CIA and the intelligence apparatus, actually anti-Israel from the very inception. You read some of the British mandate stuff. I mean, they went back and forth on who they were going to side with. One minute, they're going to side the Jewish population. Next minute, they're going to side with the Arabs and they're siding with the Jews, and they're siding with the Arabs. All kinds of conspiracy allegations about them, their participation in instigating

conflicts between the two in the region. So there's that State Department split between the neo-who are skeptical of Israel, who are very strong in the Biden administration. And then you have the traditional more neocons that are very pro-Israel. Some of them are more you want to use Israel as a wedge in the Middle Eastern world to be able to conquer the rest of Arabia on their own way. Not so much always with the alignment of Arabian interests, but often without those interests being present.

politically, politically, the anti-Israeli vote in America is always going to be pretty small. So you've got a small Arab Palestinian population, mostly in Dearborn, Michigan, Rashid Talib's congressional district. But otherwise, you know, and Michigan's a swing state. But otherwise, the Jewish vote is about double what the Arab or Muslim vote is in the United States. There is the old Jewish left that was anti-Zionist from day one. And so consequently to this day, some of the... the biggest anti-Israeli voices or Jewish voices, which also confuses people down there.

But that's the old Jewish left from the beginning of Zionism that was opposed to the idea of an Israel existence. That's part of it. And some of it comes from their hard left associations to various degrees. But people like Chomsky have been anti-Israel pretty much as soon as he, the Israel chose the U.S. in the Cold War. And then you got the hard left, the activist left. mostly your Zimmers, some millennials on college campuses that have been anti-Israel since they

rejected the Soviet Union from an ancestral ideological perspective. But they have influence on college campuses. They have influences in some places. Their voice is represented in the Jimmy Doors and others to a degree. I mean, he's not as extreme as some of them are. but you know the aaron mattes the max bloomenthal's the a lot of them represent that ideological strain on the left of being anti-Israel and then or if you want to call it pro-Palestinian label it however you want the uh and then but that voting group is tiny and in representative power is tiny uh the on the other side you have uh jewish voters for whom the issue of israel is existential uh particularly amongst uh orthodox Jews who are minority of Jews in America, but amongst a lot of moderate to liberal Democratic Jews, for whom of older generations, boomers and Gen X in particular, for whom Israel is an existential

question. And then you have evangelical Christians who I get a kick out, you know, Michael Tracy and Glenn Greenwald, God bless them. They're always trying to understand where does this evangelical, and they come up with some crazy theories. Like, oh, it's a prophetic theory. There's a small strain with an evangelical Christianity that believes Israel is beginning of the second coming and so on and so forth. That has almost nothing to do with Israel's support amongst evangelical Christians politically in America.

Having grown up in that community, it is simply because Israel has done, it goes very politically smart. Well, whatever you like, dislike about Israel, politically, when they took over, they have protected evangelical Christian access to what Christians consider their holy land. I mean, there's a

reason for the crusades, right? I mean, historically, I understand. and crusades in today's politically correct terminology, you know, the imperial, colonial, whatever. I did love the British fans who showed up at the World Cup in Qatar and didn't realize that wearing crusade outfits might not be the appropriate outfit in the

setting. But the but it's because historically when the, what Christians understand is the Holy Land has been under the jurisdiction of Muslim powers, they have not had the same degree of access that they have had under Israel.

Indeed, to be quite frank, Israel was more generous to Christian access to Israeli properties and land that are affiliated with the Christian tradition, then Christians have historically been towards the Jewish population if you go back over a longer time period. So there's strong sympathy within the evangelical Christian community with Israel for that reason. And you have some older generations that like Israel because they sided with the U.S. read in the Soviet Union in the Cold War. I mean, it was probably one of the most brilliant tactical political decisions made. People forget Soviet Union was the first to recognize Israel.

I mean, Stalin really believed Israel was going to be on their side, or at least not aligned in the way that the rest of the Arab countries became part of the unaligned and so forth later. But, you know, that decision built them a lot of good faith in a lot of communities in the United States. And then you have what I would call the geopolitical realist. Now, Israel is the one topic that I have found that it's almost 90% of people lose their minds because they're either so pro-Israel or so anti-political. to Israel that people that you otherwise are like, hey, I'll get an honest objective geopolitical analysis from this person. Whatever they think about, you know, I won't get so much filters that I get wishful thinking substituting for strategic analysis like we got on the western side about almost every place in the West on Ukraine. But God bless him, like even Colonel McGregor,

you know, he's talking about Iran and Turkey are going to get together and they're going to wage war or Israel. I'm like, as you pointed out, Alexander, nobody who follows Erdogan, actually takes his words, you know, like he's going to, you know, he's going to do do, but, you know, he wants little skirmishes. In Iran, whatever you think of them, is not, is not that level of insanity that they actually want to direct conflict right now with Israel. They're not in a position for that for a range of reasons. They don't mind what, you know, has happened in terms of derailing certain Israeli-Saudi efforts quite clearly, but that's quite different than actually going to war with. So, I mean, Mearsheimer and the, and then you have like people like Scott Horton, you know,

who, like I think the anti-war, anti-establishment left in America that's very anti-Israel is elevating Israel to such, that issue, to such a degree that they're burning bridges with the best anti-establishment populist left candidate, anti-war, anti-deep state left in the history of the United States, or at least the modern history, and Robert Kennedy. So you have like Scott Horton running around saying that Robert Kennedy has lost his entire field team because he's pro-Israel. And I'm like, well, since I'm working with a lot of those people because they're going to try to keep Robert Kennedy off the ballot. There's a long history of that in American trying to keep independent candidates off the ballot. They tend to change the rules

right after an independent succeeds in the name of keeping frivolous candidates off the ballot. I've won a lot of those cases and we'll win them for the same for Robert Kennedy. But I knew that like almost nobody had left. I was like, I know there were a couple of people that were anti-Israel who are no longer part, but they're tiny percentage. I was like, why is Horton saying this? And then he's like anything about Israel. It's like, whoa. It's like, whoa. It's like, You either got to be Ben Shapiro crazy or you got to be, you know, all of a sudden explaining why Ben Laden's letter is a very understandable and explain. Some of these TikTok are doing. I was like, I'm going to tell you, if you're on the Palestinian side, just word of the wise.

Don't be citing Ben Laden as your source if you want to get people in America to like it. Just an idea, just a thought. So in the American political parlance, it's not because there's some secret Israeli lobby and all that. I mean, I'm sure the live chat's going to fill up with people asking me when I'm going to get my Jew check. I'll check in the mail and see when they're sending me the cash. But just the nature of American politics is the Palestinian cause was not likely to ever be popular in a broader range of the American public than Israel. Now, that does not mean you have people who want to get involved in the conflict. There's two very big differences between, okay, if you ask me, Israel or Hamas with nuclear weapons, who do I prefer?

It's not going to be Hamas. Sorry. But on the flip side, if you ask me, do I want U.S. trips there? That doesn't even make sense. All that's going to do is cause more collateral problems. It's not going necessarily help Israel whatsoever. That doesn't mean that going in and just like, I'm skeptical of this whole reoccupation of Gaza. I mean, with a political regime that lives off of what I call victim porn in the case of Hamas,

then you give them what you want, what they want by going in there and attacking the places they're attacking. I don't think they can achieve militarily the political objective that they seek. In fact, they're going to give Hamas what they want by giving them the things that on every Arab and Muslim media TV station can have little people. kids suffering horrible things. And I understand there's legal justifications and rationalizations within the war structure about, yes, can you target something that has dual use? Russia has done

so in Ukraine. Ukraine has done so to Russia. I'm not disputing that, but I'm disputing whether or not it's smart tactically to choose those particular paths, given that you have a large part of the Arab Muslim world and large parts of the global south

that are looking for an excuse to be anti-Israel at this precise moment. So I'm hoping they're more restrained than they've been so far. But when people ask me, what do I think is going to be the domestic political fallout? It's mostly that the neoliberal and the neocons can't agree on Israel within the Biden administration. That'll be a constant source of tension and conflict. You'll see him like on China. One day, one way, next day another way. One day, one way, they'll go back and forth with contradictory messages out of the Biden administration. It'll be a disaster, like everything else has been a disaster. But domestically,

politically outside of your hardcore democratic activist communities and some influencers who are willing to burn bridges with Robert Kennedy over Israel. I mean, the Kennedy support to Israel goes back to his father, goes back to his uncle. I mean, the Kennedy liberal embrace of Israel is very simple. They saw it as a religiously tolerant place for victims of the Holocaust to recreate a sanctuary in the modern world. And they've respected the way Israel operates and governed ever since. The Kennedys are deeply aligned with Israel. And my question of those people that are anti-Israel is, are you willing to burn bridges to a guy whose voice is up,

like you agree with them on 90% of the issues on anti-war, anti-deep state, anti-national security state, all those things over Israel. Why is it that, is Israel the one issue worth destroying those coalitions over? I don't think it is in the United States. But politically, the pro-Israel side will almost always prevail for those reasons, whether people like it or dislike it. The question is whether Trump could put together, it's easy to see what his path could be to recreate peace in Russia and Ukraine is.

He already knows what Putin wants. He's already willing to accept most of it. So he could put back into the train the operation he had with North Korea that could lead to different resolutions in terms of de-escalation of China. He's never been for military conflict with China. been for protecting America's economic orders with China. And China's got its own internal real estate domestic issues that it's trying to fix economically in the middle of all this anyway.

I don't know. I thought the Abraham Accord strategy was a smart strategy. You know, to use appeal to the royals in the Middle East who want to create investment for their countries, want to create tourism for their countries, that, hey, you don't want to be a so, you don't want Allah Akbar to be a line in a movie that comes right before something blows up, right? You want it to be a much more positive symbol. And one way to achieve that is to achieve a peace accord with Israel.

That's obviously blown up by all of this. I don't know how easy it will be to put back together what he thought he could achieve in the Middle East if he gets back in. Though it depends on what happens between now and election day in terms of the risk of the U.S. Biden administration just almost accidentally escalates. somewhere in the Middle East because I don't think I think you're right Alexander I don't see Turkey or Iran escalating at this juncture absolutely not now lots of things again Robert lots of things to go through let's let Alexander I'll address discuss all of all of the issues that Robert brought up and after this Robert Alexander Spain yes let's pivot to Spain as well

because a lot of people want to talk about Spain absolutely can I just go ahead I I have a lot of bring it up. Before we close out, the show. I have a personal beef on the subject of Spain. So I'm particularly. Go ahead. Yeah. But anyway, let's go through these things.

Let's take them off one by one. Now, let's, well, not take them all off one, but let's just talk a few things. Let's start with Robert Kennedy. First of all, you're absolutely correct. I, my very earliest memories, political memories, as I've said to many people, many times, especially of events outside Greece. I was a little boy then, was a Robert Kennedy. I mean, he was somebody I remember.

I can remember the day that he was assassinated and the effect it had on people in Greece and the sort of sense of depression and shock that people had. And one of the things I already knew about Robert Kennedy at that time, this is, you know, a little little boy was that he was pro-Israel. Here is something everybody knew. I mean, it was something that everybody took granted. This was, you know, just after the 1967, Six-Day War,

he was supporting delivery of fashion. fighter jets to Israel because France had imposed an arms embargo on Israel. You're absolutely correct. This is the tradition in the Kennedy family and RFK Jr. is simply following in that tradition. Now, all my political life, I have known people do this. My aunt has always, again, I go back to her because she was the most astute politician. I have ever known, and she instructed me a lot about politics, then you will always find somebody who will say to you, I will vote for you. I agree with you on absolutely everything,

but there's one thing I don't agree with you on, and for that reason, I'm not going to vote for you. Now, if you do that, if you do that with every single political leader that you come across by a process of elimination, you're not going to end up with none, because it is impossible for two human beings. beings to agree with each other on absolutely everything. If people feel so strongly about Robert Kennedy's views on Israel, it's very simple. They don't want to vote for him. That's their business.

Why don't they go and stand for election themselves and see where that takes them? Because that's how the reality is, and I just want to say this, what the position people are taking, you agree with somebody on absolutely everything, you agree with their economic policy, their foreign policy, you think that the state of the world, the condition of world peace is so important that you're going to support this person, only you're not because you disagree with him with one thing. That is not politics. That is not a mature political position. That is what my aunt always used to tell me. If you are in that kind of mindset, then you are not being serious.

about how politics is conducted. You have to put aside your own feelings. Look at the larger picture. Say to yourself, is this somebody I trust to follow my particular agenda, to advance my interests, to secure the interests of my country and my nation, and to secure the peace of the world?

If you think that, then you think that, then you vote for him. If you're going to argue with him on some particular topic, and it may be any one of a number of things that you feel very strongly about, well, then you're obviously going to be in a minority. And perhaps, as my aunt always used to tell me, well, in that case, perhaps you should stand for election yourself.

Because there is, you're not going to find, you're not going to find any other way to advance your cause than by doing that. So I think, as I said, this is ridiculous. And by the way, I've been looking at the opinion of the opinion polls and the United States, and I can't see myself. And I have to say this. I mean, you know, I'm not perhaps an expert in examining,

but I haven't seen that this is so far made any dent in Robert Kennedy's standing at all. And the reason is I'm sure that there are people who disagree with Robert. Kennedy about this issue, but who still support him because as far as they're concerned, he is the person who they trust to move the things that they, to advance the other things, the very important other things that they care about. Now, about the Middle East, this has been a problem that has existed all my lifetime. It's not going to be solved any time soon.

My own view about this is well known. I have never for one moment believed. that Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia were ever going to do any of the dramatic and drastic things that people talked about. I've always said that Erdogan, in my opinion, he talks, he blasters all this time. I think it's actually working against his interests, actually. I think he's gone too far. I think he's opening himself up to criticism in Turkey from people who say, well, you're talking this way, but where's the action? And I think it's, it's actually probably done Erdogan some damage, but I never thought the Turkey was going to go to war.

I think that's a fantastic idea. I don't know where that idea has come from. The Iranians are absolutely not going to go to war. I said this in a program on X spaces, where there was Vivek, by the way, and Elon Musk, and Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. It was right at the start of this conflict. They were all worried and they were saying, you know, is this thing going to escalate or all these Arab and Muslim countries going to take all this dramatic action?

I said they are not. They don't want to get involved in a war. They are concerned to prevent this situation escalating out of control. And they're going to look for diplomatic steps that they can take forward, which will advance their interests. the only people who want war in the Middle East, that big regional, all expansive war in the Middle East, who want to set the whole of the Middle East in flames. They're not in, well, there may be some people in Tehran,

but they're not primarily in Tehran. They're not even with Hezbollah. They're certainly not to be found in Ankara, whereas as I said, Erdogan's words are all bluff. they're to be found amongst a very powerful, very dangerous neocon faction in Washington, that wants war wherever it can find it and wants to expand war wherever he can. And I, for one, personally, am very worried about all these massive American military deployments in the Middle East. They are beyond anything that you would need to deter. I don't believe

that that kind of deterrence anyway is necessary. And I think that there are very, dangerous temptation for some very dangerous people in Washington that they might be looking for excuses to use it. Anyway, that's what I want to say about that. Secondly, thirdly, the thing I want to say is this. In my opinion, we come back to the problems with the current administration. They have not handled the diplomacy of this crisis at all well. We've had blink and wondering around the Middle East, having the door slammed in his face. We've had Biden wandering around the Middle East. And the Arab leaders don't want to speak to him. It's been very difficult for him to even speak to Arab leaders over the front, which is perhaps not a bad thing, actually, given how he conducts

himself when he is in summit meetings. But anyway, they don't want to talk with him. And instead, Instead, because the United States is not getting ahead, is not looking for practical, viable solutions to this particular crisis or indeed to the long-term crisis, they're opening a space for others to step in. And we see that the Chinese and in this case the Russians who are working with the Chinese on this matter, they are beginning to get ahead of the United States in the diplomacy in the Middle East. And that might be a good thing. It may not be a bad thing at all. But if you are concerned about America's position of power, the influence of the United States in the Middle East, that perhaps you're entitled to be concerned that you're losing the diplomatic

game to the Chinese and the Russians. Now, that brings me to the next point. And this is again something which I think most people outside the Middle East have not understood about this crisis at all. Yes, people in the Muslim world are very angry about what is going on in Gaza. And there's lots and lots of complaints about that. But when you go to the level of governments, they, one, do not like Hamas. You won't find a single Arab government, apart, perhaps to some extent for Qatar that likes Hamas. Egypt is fighting the Muslim Brotherhood

inside Egypt itself. Saudi Arabia hates the Muslim Brotherhood. They know perfectly well that it is connected to Hamas. Syria, the Syrian government fought Hamas in Syria. They were supporting the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah

fought these people in Syria. Putin hates Muslim insurgents. He fought them in the northern Caucasus. The Chinese hate Muslim insurgents. They're fighting them in their own country also. None of these people like, you know, what Hamas represents. And if you're talking about Iran, they are absolutely furious because Hamas did this thing on the 7th of October and people have been extremely unwilling to face up to what Hamas did of the 7th of October, by the way.

But anyway, Hamas did that without consulting Iran. So Iran's found itself facing this enormous crisis and they weren't told. They weren't asked, you know, they were asked in advance, do you think we should do this thing? Now, a clever administration,

a skillful administration, one attuned to the reality, of the Middle East, understanding these feelings amongst the Arab and Muslim leaders, would have built on that and would have succeeded in taking it forward and would have addressed the concerns that exist, both about Gaza and about the security of Israel, and by the way, about, you know, the security that Jewish people feel around the world also, which is not be overlooked. they would have addressed this thing, they would have capitalised on this fact about, you know,

this general unpopularity of Hamas, the massive embarrassment that, and anger with it, that Iran and Qatar, its financial backer feel, and they would have found a way. But of course, this had been, and I've discussed on many channels in our programs on the Duran, what that way, sort of things that they might have done. and the kind of things that they could have done, which would have worked out better. But of course, they didn't understand that. They didn't have any grasp of this. Expecting the Blinken, Sullivan, Biden, grouping to conduct this kind of nimble diplomacy in the Middle East, attuned to the realities of the Middle East is a completely hopeless and worthless exercise.

I think Donald Trump would have been a lot better at it, actually, in spite of what people say. And, I mean, after all, he gets on with the Arab leaders. He likes the Saudis. They like him. He likes the Egyptians. They like him. I actually think that Robert Kennedy, who comes in a family with a long tradition in diplomacy, would probably have handled it better also, a lot better, given his background, he's experienced.

his knowledge of the world which he possesses. He speaks foreign languages. He knows Europe. He knows how to conduct diplomacy. I think he'd have done a much better job in spite of the things that he has said, which people have taken umbrage about, and which, to be frank,

I think they're, you know, as you correctly said, they're missing the picture over them. So that's my view. That is my overall view about this particular crisis. It could have been handled much more skillfully. It could have been done in a way that would have enhanced the position of the Middle East. And that didn't happen. And the result is that all sorts of players are now moving in.

The Chinese who do understand diplomacy are moving in. The Russians, of course, are always there. Remember the Russians, they talk to the Israelis as well. Putin has been speaking with Netanyahu. Lavrov has been speaking with early Eli Cohen. There may be strong words exchanged between them at the Security Council, but they keep the communication lines open, and that should not be underestimated.

So they're able to talk, everybody's able to talk. The Americans, for the moment, are not. And that's one of the reasons, by the way, that you're getting all of these different factions within the State Department, within the DNC and all of that, they're beginning to, you know, appear and fight for their various positions

because they're not getting a convincing and strongly from the President and from his administration. You asked me once upon a time, Robert, whether there was any administration I could think of any US administration, worse than this one. I can now conclusively, and definitely answer that question. No, I cannot. You have to go back to Patrick Buchanan, perhaps, on the eve of the American Civil War to find an administration that is as bad. I wouldn't say

that even that administration was worse. Now, speaking of geopolitical bad tactics, I remember years ago when the whole, I was familiar with the Basque Revolution. you know, independence movement. I mean, they have a whole DNA history that's totally distinct from everybody around them, fascinating little part of the world. I've had some clients that hung out in Indora for a range of reasons to certain benefits to Indora that don't need more detail here. But the, but I was unaware of until some years ago, the whole Catalonian independence. You know, I'd been to Barcelona, been to Madrid. You know, I figured out, I figured out that where all of Franco's ex-soldiers went to, they become waiters in Spanish high-end restaurants.

my brother once asked for coffee midday and explained that was wrong and the waiter was like, no, no, you cannot have it. No. But I didn't know his whole Catalonian independence movement. And then you get like suddenly a referendum. And you're like, hold on a second. So you can just hold a referendum and declare yourself a new country? How is this going to work out?

And I remember Julian Assange was covering it and I guess got in trouble with the Ecuadorians, in part because of him covering the Catalonian independence movement. And that seemed to create this bridge where people on the way would call the anti-establishment, anti-war laughter, for some reason, embraced the Catalonian cause, which I found kind of odd. But, you know, and then now it's culminated six years later. A lot of what you said all the way back has come to fruition. That that was not a tactically geopolitically smart move to make, that it's now backfired. But the socialist or the left loses the. election. And so they have to cut a deal to pardon everybody connected to it. And it's now perceived

in parts of the Western press and in Spain as a coup because they lost the election yet they're going to be back in power because they're given a sweetheart deal to the former Catalonian rebels who had to flee the country because of their illicit activities. The Tucker Carlson, once again, he shows up with Malay in Argentina. Now he's showing up over in the middle of the Spanish protest. These are things he probably couldn't have fully platformed if he was still stuck at Fox. If he could be siloed by Paul Ryan in ways that, you know, he's more free now than he was before, especially facilitated by Musk owning X.

But what are your thoughts on all of this? I mean, I haven't followed anywhere near in detail as you have. And the, and a lot of the things you said then have come to fruition. But what struck me about all of it was the lack of geopolitical realism by people who substituted wishful thinking for good strategy. Like we saw in bad Ukrainian analysis, like we've seen in both sides of the Israeli conflict, seem like that's part of what really happened here. People made tactically bad decisions because they wanted something to be so that wasn't so. And now we're getting all the political fallout from it. But what leads to, I mean, is Spain going to be able to establish this government?

Is there going to be a popular overthrow? What do you think is going to happen? I think it's going to be a major political and a legitimacy crisis in Spain for the very simple reason of what you said. This is a government that lost the election. The socialist party lost the election in Spain. And nonetheless, they have kept themselves in power by cutting a deal with people who tried, well, who acted illegally contrary to the constitution. of Spain and sought to secede a part of Spain from Spain. Now, this is an astonishing thing. This is a terrible thing to happen. And of course, people are angry. And many of the people who voted

for the socialists are also angry because during the election, Sanchez, the current Spanish Prime Minister, promised the Spanish people, including many of the people who voted for him. that he would never do the very thing that he has just done. I mean, it is difficult to convey how ugly this is. If he cannot form a coalition, because he can't get the votes without going into alliance with Pugmont and his group, which is one of a tiny group now in Catalonia, that he should not make form a government.

I mean, this would be a situation where the right thing to do would be to call a new election. It defies reason and logic and Spanish interests and democratic interests for the government of Spain to do this thing. And, of course, people in Spain are extremely angry. And this is a country which has worked very, very hard since Franco's death to build up political stability. and it's probably still to some extent a work in progress, and this creates lots of problems and tensions in Spain. And I would not personally be surprised if before long, it becomes clear that this is unsustainable,

that the protests begin to gain some degree of political, a critical mass. There are concerns then expressed within the government that this is simply not possible. and in which case the government collapses, and we will get an election in Spain, at which point there will be presumably a landslide for the right-wing parties, which many people expected would in fact reforming the government in Spain now. Anyway, that's where we are today.

I just wanted to say a few things about the situation in Catalonia. I think one of the great problems is that a lot of people understand the issues of Spain very much still, taking them from this sort of framework, the romantic view of the Spanish Civil War, and also the fact that Barcelona, as you absolutely rightly says, an extremely attractive, very cultural place, very attractive place, it's a wonderful place if you've been there. And, you know, they've all read George Orwell's book, or many of them in the left have done, George Orwell's book, homage to Catalonia and all of this.

The reality was that this piece, this grouping, this group of people, this party that gained power in Catalonia and which held that referendum acted entirely unconstitutionally and illegally. They did it without agreeing this with the Spanish government. They were trying to organize a secession. knowing full well that the Spanish government at that time was strongly opposed to it,

knowing also that there was by no means overwhelming support within Catalonia itself for secession. And the way they conducted that referendum risked very considerable political violence in Catalonia itself. Now, I made that point at the time. was strongly opposed at the time to the moves that this particular party was making. And again, I came from all the same kind of criticism from all the same sort of people that, you know, criticise these things because, as I said, they think that, you know, Catalonia should be independent. Perhaps one day it should be independent. But this is, this is absolutely not the correct way to do it. And certainly not led

by people like this, strong-arming independence in that kind of way. And what has happened since then is that the Spanish government acted decisively to break the power of this party. They brought legal action against the leaders, which under the Spanish law, they were entitled. They need under duty to take. the people in Catalonia themselves understood that what had been done by this party was wrong and its support collapsed so we are talking about a relatively small group

within Catalonia that Sanchez has now given an amnesty to and in effect anchored his coalition upon against the will of the Spanish people I think this is an unbelievably reckless thing. And it tells us once again that when people talk about populists, because of course much of the criticism of the right in Spain, the right-wing parties in Spain that were seeking to win the election and to establish a new government,

when people talk about populists being the people who threaten democracy, it's those who oppose the populists more often than not, who are democracy's real enemies, because there is nothing democratic about what we have just seen. Is it fair to conclude that Biden will not be coming to the rescue anytime soon? Well, I think if he does come to the rescue, then all I can say is, poor Spain. Yeah, exactly. Spain will be broken.

up then. I mean, Sanchez, if I may say so, is a complete pillar of the European EU establishment. That is what this is all about. There are critics of that establishment on the political right in Spain. The party, Piedmont and his group, by the way, are fervid supporters of the EU. I mean, one of their ideas was we split away from Spain. and we join the EU as Catalonia. And there were people, I remember there was a time

where the EU itself was talking about, you know, the EU being supporting the regions. They never really like sovereign states or governments. So, you know, supporting the regions. And you could see the connections that were happening. Spain's influence and the influence of other countries, like France, for example, which also has, does not want to see these.

sort of policies be enacted meant that in the end the EU had to swerve course. But the commission, the bureaucracy in Brussels, at one point was sort of edging towards being rather supportive of what was going on in Catalonia, as I will remember. But anyway, that's another story. Sanchez is a fervid supporter of the EU system. The EU does not want to see various right-wing parties come to power in Spain. And that is what this is all about. They would rather see a deal done with Catalonian separatists

and risk the political stability of Spain than allow an opening to anti-EU forces in Spain itself. Well, fellas, what do you say? Let's wrap this one up. We covered a lot of ground. Two hours and 22 minutes. It'd be a perfect time, people who ask that Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail from

1972 is the book behind me. I was thinking that it feels like a fear and loathing era. If Hunter Thompson, this time was tailor made for Hunter Thompson to write about, it seems. I mean, there's so many topics, so many ways, so many means, so many methods. The only question is, you know, does basic humanitarian principles survive this assault from these professional managerial class bureaucracies, whether in the EU, whether the State Department, whether the American Deep State, whether in parts of Britain,

wherever it may be, at least the hopeful part of the Argentine election, however people perceive him is that it showed the power of the people to overthrow a corrupt administration in at least the hope that maybe something different can come about. We'll see if the, I mean, the American public wants the same thing to happen with Trump. So we'll see if, but if we can make it to 2025 will be the question in the interim. Absolutely. A lot of elections in 2020. Yeah. I miss Hunter Thompson. I should say blue sky says I read that book back in the day. Wow, maybe time to read it again. Yeah.

Fantastic. All right. The great Robert Barnes, where can people find you, Mr. Barnes? Yeah, if they want a late Thanksgiving gift other than the Duran Shop where I got this, they can also go to Viva Barneslaw.com, pin towards the top. The great Amish farmer, Amos Miller, if you live in the United States. You can get some of his great apple butter. It's being used as a fundraiser for Free America Law Center that supports.

Amos Miller's right to farm outside of the FDA and USDA trying to shut it down. Brooke Jackson's big case against Pfizer and the COVID vaccine and how dangerous it is has been disclosed about the Astrozenica vaccine, so-called vaccine in Europe. So that you can support those kind of cases. And if you just want any in all the content, or if you just want a troll, you just have to pay the toll. You can do so at viva Barneslaw.orgals.com. I will have that as a pinned comment down below. Robert Barnes, Alexander Mercuris, to all our moderators,

thank you very much and everyone that was watching us on the durand.com, rockfin, odyssey, rumble, and YouTube. Take care, everybody.