Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #476 - Russia Threatens Military Action Against Sweden And Finland w/Nick Freitas

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

Tim, Ian, and Lydia join VA delegate Nick Freitas to break down Russia's threats to Finland and Sweden, Trump's aggressive posturing toward Putin and Xi, Ukraine's supplying citizens with fully automatic weapons, the government hackers behind taking down Russia sites, the 57% of Democrats who want more protection at Ukraine's borders than America's, and what's been happening in Virginia with Glenn Youngkin at the helm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Things are getting pretty spicy over in Eastern Europe. We now have reports that Russia has threatened military and political consequences, serious military and political consequences, if Finland and Sweden try joining NATO. Finland and Sweden are already having discussions with NATO. They're actually involved in the NATO meetings over the defense of, or I should say the response to the Russian invasion in Ukraine. And while there are some people who are saying, well, that's not explicitly threatening war or military action. If you actually look at

what's been going on for the past several weeks, it is. There's been unidentified drones flying over nuclear plants in Sweden. There has been Russian activity from Kaliningrad into the Baltic Sea. So very much so. Sweden has been on high alert for some time. This statement is basically saying there is going to be some kind of action against you if you go out against us. Not only that, we already heard Vladimir Putin say anyone who interferes in their operation in Ukraine will face consequences never before seen in history. So I think it's fair to say, obviously, everyone's going to try and play some game of how they're

describing things to win PR points. But this is it's a veiled threat at the very least. But I think it's – in my opinion, it's outright overt to say military consequences. So things are absolutely starting to heat up. We'll talk about that. We've got NATO. Apparently it's the – for the first time they're having this defensive meeting. And then I want to talk to you about propaganda because, you know, man, I go on Reddit.

I go on Reddit all the time, you guys know it and it is the lowest of low tier propaganda I've ever seen produced in favor of Ukraine and I like Ukraine and I oppose Russia's actions, I think it's all wrong and I'm just like your propaganda

is garbage but it's just so annoying to see bad propaganda, I'm like guys guys, do better than this. The ghost of Kiev thing, that was cool. The ace fighter pilot took out six Russian fighter jets, cool story. The Snake Island one, go F yourself, I like it, but these memes are just cringe. So we'll talk about that at the same time RT has been taken offline, and I think that's absolutely wrong. If people want to see the Russian perspective on the war or see what Russia is claiming, they should be allowed to do it.

But apparently Anonymous has shut them down. Yeah, I don't know if I believe that. But we'll get into that stuff. Joining us to talk about all of this is Nick Freitas. You want to introduce yourself? Oh, thank you very much for having me on, Tim. Yeah, my name's Nick. Did some time in

the military i'm currently serving the virginia house of delegates but yeah it's kind of an interesting topic because my whole my whole role in the military was unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency and so watching this kind of unfold is is amazing um but yeah i've been serving the last seven years in the virginia house delegates representing the 30th district so thanks for having me on i mean it's it's perfectly pertinent, I suppose, with your military experience, but also you had a viral video recently condemning critical race theory in schools and things like that. And so I think before we even went live, you were giving it all away, talking about school choice and what's going on in these schools.

And I'm like, well, it's fine. You'll just say it twice. Yeah. So that should be fun. Yeah. Yeah. We got Ian. What's up, everybody?

I've been very inspired by all the 20s I've been rolling lately that you've been reminding me about. So I got a couple of 100-sided dice. Oh, snap. It's about time to start rolling hundreds. Yeah. And one of these is for Tim. I'm going to let Tim decide which one you'd like. Here you go, Tim.

A 100-sided dice? One's rainbow-colored and one's blue. That's so cool. That's very heavy. It is. A giant metal ball. Hard metal. All right rainbow-colored and one's blue. That's so cool. That's very heavy. It is a giant metal ball. Hard metal. All right, I'm going to roll it. Oh, my gosh.

That's loud. Yeah, they don't play well in D&D because they take forever to roll. It's just rolling all the way to Nick. Got the wide shot on that. It's in front of Nick now. What do we get? What do we get? 22, 23?

23. 23! That's a prime number. Nice. Better than 20. Good night ahead of us. All right. What's up, everybody?

And I'm also here. I warmed Nick up by talking about anything and everything. I try not to talk about the podcast topics, but sometimes I get into it. It's going to be great. I'm really looking forward to it. You can directly support us over at TimCast.com by clicking sign up, becoming a member. And as a member, you keep our journalists employed. We've got on-the-ground reporters. We've got a team of journalists writing stories every single day.

And we are all grateful that you guys are supporting work. Plus, you'll get access to our exclusive members-only segments that we put up Monday through Thursday around 11 or so p.m. So definitely go to TimCast.com. But don't forget to smash the like button, subscribe to this channel right now, share the show any way you can. Let's read that first story from the Hill. Russia threatens military and political consequences if Finland or Sweden tries joining NATO. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday. Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the

security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences, Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference. The ministry later posted the same threat on its Twitter. Finland and Sweden have given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine since Russia invaded. One pretext Russia has given for attacking Ukraine is that NATO would not give any assurances that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the intergovernmental military alliance. See, I'm going to pause real quick and say a few things. It's hard to believe any of the stuff that's coming out. You know, I mean, this stuff is on Twitter, these videos and these statements.

But a lot of the videos, a lot of the claims, a lot of the propaganda just seems that it seems like attempts to manipulate the public. It's hard to know what's true, but we have had stories coming out for quite some time. This is from France 24. The Russians are coming Sweden on edge as Russia flexes military muscle. It could be a long standing propaganda campaign. I just don't really think so. I think Russia has literally invaded. Russia has said that they're engaged in a military operation. Call it whatever you want. I think the reality is Vladimir Putin feels like he lost.

He lost the influence battle. The US basically bought Ukraine. He couldn't do it. So here we are getting into war. The question is this threat towards Sweden and Finland. Is it legitimate or is Putin just spiraling out of control? Nick, I'm wondering what your thoughts are. I don't you know, I don't see Putin's never struck me as the sort of guy that's like just spirals out of control.

Right. The sort of guy that gets pissed off and just starts, you know, executing generals and things like that. He's always seemed to be again. I don't think he's a good guy. He's a bad dude. But I've also thought he was a fairly calculating guy. I mean, the guy has managed to stay in power this long within Russia, within an environment where it's fairly unstable from a political perspective with a bunch of oligarchs running around. So I don't know. I don't, I don't, I'm not convinced that he's at a point where he's just kind of lost his mind.

I think he's, he's pushing to see how far he can get away with what he's doing. I think he knows he's got a fairly short time to be able to act in order to consolidate gains. And then it's all a question of what are you bringing, right, when it shows up, when inevitably we get to the negotiating table, what does that look like and what are you transferring in order to get what you want? So I don't really understand why he brings sweden and finland into this um but again it's i don't see it as being an unstable guy

what are your thoughts on i mean you were talking about unconventional warfare is that that's where you specialized in when you're in the military yeah so what are your thoughts on everything we're seeing right just to preface this none of us uh here at least thought putin would go this far with Ukraine. And so this seems very much like conventional warfare. But yeah, and it seems like they're saying, while Kiev has some major gains, they've taken down a lot of Russians asset, Russia's assets, they're going to lose. And then there's questions about what they can do in the insurgency phase in the resistance

phase. I don't look, everyone likes to talk about the fact that Russia is not the power the Soviet Union was. That's absolutely true, right? It's got a GDP that's a little bit bigger than Mexico's, right? It's got a population of about 150 million. So not what the Soviet Union was. But when we talk about Russia doesn't have the GDP to fight a sustained war, yeah, you know who also doesn't?

Ukraine. So this isn't about them having to fight a war for years. This is about how quickly can they get their gains, consolidate those gains, and then put themselves in a good position on the negotiating table. And so from Ukraine's perspective, they had to know that you're not going to go toe to toe, especially with the geography of Ukraine. It's not like you can go fighting in the mountains for 10 years like they did in Afghanistan. It is built for tank warfare, and the Russians know a little something about tank warfare, especially in Ukraine.

There's a lot of historical battles there. But what a lot of people don't understand about this is immediately following World War II, the Ukrainians fought like a 10-year insurgency against the Soviets. So there is a history of them fighting over that area. The borders of Ukraine are a little bit weird from an ethnic standpoint. So at this point, this is a question of using the natural geography that you have, right, around the Dynapur and whatnot, in order to slow the major advance. And then it's largely going to be urban battles.

If you can be in an urban environment and you can make them pay, because that's where asymmetric warfare works really well for the defender, for the person that doesn't have the technology. But if you're sitting in a city right now and you've got an AT-4, an RPG, or if you've got really something good like the U.S. gave them like Javelins, okay, you've got a $10,000 or a $15,000 rocket that's taken out a $15,000, $20,000,000 tank. That adds up. And so if they fight the insurgency point in the urban areas, which are kind of behind the lines of the Russian advance, and then they use their military in order to kind of stop them at some of these main

geographical areas, rivers being one of the best, they can drag this out and they can make Russia pay a much higher price for it. And that's what I don't think Russia can afford. I want to pull up this Google map real quick of the Eastern European region. You have Moscow, you got Russia, you've got Ukraine here, you can see it. When Vladimir Putin says he wants assurances that Ukraine won't be joining NATO, I think Tulsi Gabbard came out and she was like,

just give them assurances Ukraine won't join NATO. It's like, have y'all looked, I'm a fan of Tulsi, but have you looked at a map? Right? Estonia and Latvia are EU, I'm sorry, are NATO members. Oh, yeah, they are. They're already on the border. They take it very seriously.

And then if you go up and you look at Sweden, which, you know, look, Russia's got St. Petersburg. They've got Kaliningrad in the Baltic Sea. Sweden, not NATO, but now obviously Russia's threatening. Finland, not NATO, but also Putin. Well, Russia is basically threatening them. They're both in these same meetings with NATO. So when Moscow is like, oh, we don't want NATO on our borders, like they've been there, dude. I mean, I know Sweden and Finland, but to act like this is the line for him now, perhaps it's fair say he i'm not saying he's spiraling out of control

like a madman but he's desperate yeah you know russia is not the power it once was and it's being weakened it's being pressed upon it's already got nato on its borders and now it's going to have sweden finland ukraine putin he's done his only option basically is to bend the knee to the west and say you know how may i serve? And he will. He doesn't want to do that. So he's like, I'll go out with a bang, I suppose. I think he I think he is a I think he's someone that wants to believe in the greatness of Russia, that would love to see the Russian empire once again on a on a global stage as something that's respected as opposed to kind of a second rate power. And again, you're growing up. He was once a KGB officer. Like this was a guy that believed in the greatness of Russia, regardless of whether or not he was a communist.

Right. And I think he sees, again, these countries that used to be in the Russian sphere of influence. He's finding different excuses for Kostas Belli in order to justify why he's going to war. I think some of this, too, has to do with internal dynamics within Russia. I mean, you have a decreasing birth rate. You have records showing that you've got a record number of kids in their teenage years that are alcoholics, right? Look, I don't think any of us are shocked by the fact that there are plenty of times when throughout history, when a domestic leader had problems at home, a war abroad was a great way to you know kickstart your your nation and get them focused on something you know the the again the greatness of of whatever it was

and look our nation hasn't been beyond that sort of enticement in the past um but so yeah i don't buy that it was ukraine potentially joining like would this have happened anyway yeah i don't i don't think nato was the fulcrum i think think NATO made a convenient excuse for Putin to do something that he already wanted to do. They're trying really hard to push this propaganda. It's anti-Trump propaganda. It's so – man, the propaganda is mind-numbing. It's under Trump, Putin did not make these moves. And so the only real response they have – because the first thing I started seeing from these activists was that, oh oh thank heavens trump wasn't president when this happened because we'd be worse off and

i was like for four years putin backed off yeah and they said now they're saying it's because trump gave them everything they wanted because he was he was opposed to nato it's like he got nato to pay them more to pay us more money yeah i mean if anything he was he was stabilizing it in a sense oh No, no. This is the part where – and I was – the other night I was just kind of pissed off. And I said – I said I can't remember how long or way for a bunch of European countries to ask the United States to intervene in the Ukraine only to turn around six months later from now and bitch about the United States intervening in Ukraine. Right? Because they're always willing to fight to the last drop of American blood to sustain their welfare states.

So this idea that when Trump came in and basically told NATO, hey, look, a treaty is an agreement, it's a legal agreement, and you're not living up to your part of it, that lit a fire under their ass, and quite frankly, they needed it. And the other thing was is that Putin also understood that Trump didn't draw, and look, there was things about Trump's policy I didn't necessarily agree with, but Trump didn't do this thing that Obama did,

where it's, we're going to draw a fake line in the sand, and then when you cross it, we're going to draw a different line in the sand. Putin expected that if Trump said, you do this, we're going to do this, that he would do it. And that's a big part of when foreign leaders cannot calculate

what you're going to do it actually and you have the ability to actually make good on your your threats that's a far different dynamic than joe biden ripping everyone out of afghanistan which again i wanted the troops to come home from afghanistan but ripping everyone out the way that he did surrender oh my gosh it's it's gosh. Afghanistan seemed like they botched that on purpose. How you abandoned Bagram, it was just mind-numbingly insane. I cannot, I'm sorry, I know I love to cite Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. But in this instance, I'm like, there's no way you thought abandoning our Air Force Base before evacuating people made sense.

Maybe because Biden's a bureaucrat with no military. I don't think he has any military experience. Does he even have any military knowledge? Well, he surrendered and routed our troops. But the guys advising him certainly did. Now, this is the part where I do think we've seen this trend within politics and some of the rhetoric and the direction the left is going. And I'm not talking about everyone that might be a Democrat, right, or a liberal. I'm talking about the hardcore progressive left.

They honestly believe some of this crap where it's like, oh, we're just going to pull everybody out by September 11th in 2021. And that's going to be our mark and it's going to show that we're dedicated to peace. I honestly think Biden is someone that is making a political calculation based off of photo ops and honestly had no idea it was going to go this badly even though again to your point anybody should have been able to look at that but like you cannot pull out this way but putin is watching things like that let's let's talk about uh let's talk about donald trump and vladimir putin we have this story from the new york post trump talks about putin mocking merkel and more at mar-a-. Boy, did they bury the lead on this one.

The story is about Donald Trump threatening to hit the capitals of Russia and China. I mean, these are bold statements. So you want to know why. Why is it that Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine under Trump? There's this top post on Reddit where they're like, because Russia put bounties on soldiers in Afghanistan and Trump didn't even do anything about it. This story was fake. This is what they believe. No, no, no.

Let me show you exactly what it is. I will scroll down and give you this. There are several other stories making the rounds too. This is from the article. And they are even more provocative. it that Trump, noting that Putin seized land from Georgia when George W. Bush was president and seized the Crimean Peninsula when Barack Obama was president, warned Putin against a land grab on his watch. If you move against Ukraine while I'm president, I will hit Moscow. Putin reportedly scoffed, no way. And Trump said all those beautiful golden turrets will be blown up. He reportedly said the same thing to Xi Jinping, that if he made a move against Taiwan,

it would be met with an attack on Beijing. Xi, like Putin, is said to have been stunned. Though it's possible neither man believed Trump was serious. I kind of don't like the idea of bombing civilian targets immediately as soon as a regional war happens.

But let it be said, Trump was called a madman by his enemies and his supporters and if and and i just want to say i don't i don't believe trump would bomb civilians i mean he's the guy who said we're calling off the airstrike on iran because it would be too many people would die yeah but trump is notorious for the big ask he exaggerates his position and then pulls back to a more reasonable spot that's what he does he says i'll buy that you know i'll you know if i'm doing the job i want a million dollars and they say oh a million that's crazy okay how about half a million now he's getting you to half a million

dollars in this instance he goes to moscow he goes or he goes to uh putin if you invade ukraine i will hit moscow and putin's like no and trump's like yes try me and putin's like okay maybe this guy's this guy's a little off his, you know. And they know that he'll be out in four years. They know that the American democracy, Republicanism. So Putin was like, let the, you know, hold like the Braveheart meme, hold. And then Biden comes in. He's like, we good. Yeah. Well, nobody, nobody thinks. I mean, again, this is also some people think that diplomacy works with everybody because they honestly believe that, well, if we all just sat around the room and we talked and we understood one another. Like I can't remember who it was that said that Israel and Gaza understand each other.

Oh, they do. Yeah, they do. They don't like – They sure do. If we just had a better conversation, I don't think we'd be fine. No, when you're dealing with people that are either dictatorial or quasi-authoritarian or whatnot, what they respect is strength. And that strength has to be backed up with, first of all, the capability to do it. Could you actually make good on these promises? They all know we could.

And then it's the idea of, would he actually do this? And even if they don't think he would, the bottom line is that there's a part of him like, damn, he might actually do it. That is the sort of stuff that can stop a war from ever taking place in the first place and can check aggression. You have to have the capability and the willingness, and you have to be able to negotiate in a way

that your enemies don't know what you're going to do, but know that the wildest crap is still on the table. You ever play poker at all? A little bit. Not very good. Sometimes. Only with my life. When you're playing Holden against somebody who doesn't know how to play poker, there's a certain advantage they have in that it's hard to know what they're doing because they're all over the place.

Oh, yeah. So I remember when I was like 20, I played a game of poker. I had 2-7 off suit. And I went all in on it. And I got a full house. Oh, wow. And I beat a guy who had ace king. It was a good hand.

And he ended up losing thinking you can't have anything. But I got ace king. And I think he ended up with like, I don't know. I don't think he had anything. But I ended up winning. And he got angry. He was like, why did you? I'm like, I don't know.

I won, didn't I? Oh. I have lost more hands with pocket aces than like. That's right. Right. Because you're like, it's a, I mean, it's a fantastic, it's one of the best hands to go in on. Pre-flop.

Pre-flop. Maybe ace king suited. But anyway, the point is with Donald Trump, Putin's like, I don't think he'll bomb Moscow, but I also don't know if he knows what he's doing either. I don't know how he'll respond. That's fair. How can, how can you make a plan for war? What Sun Tzu said, win the war before you actually start it.

How could you plan against a man like Trump? He was like, look, we're going to wait a few years because I don't know what this guy's doing. The other thing, too, that I think shocked a lot of people and one of the things that impressed me most about Trump is how reserved he actually was in foreign policy when it came to actually deploying people into harm's way to get shot at. There's a lot of other, again, Joe Biden, there's the whole Teddy Roosevelt thing, walk softly, carry a big stick. Joe Biden mumbles and carries no stick. And once people get used to that idea, then they know they can walk all over you. And it doesn't matter what your capability is because you don't have the willingness to use it. Now, whereas Trump had the capability,

again, he was actually a lot more reserved. When that whole thing happened in Iran, and it was, no, we're not going to do this because I'm not going to, one, it's immoral to kill a bunch of people that had nothing to do with any of this. Two, it doesn't make sense on a practical level to create a bunch of enemies off of killing civilians.

But when it came to Syria, and there was a legitimate thing to strike, like he struck, he struck hard, he was in there quick. He didn't have any, you know, aspirations to like remake Syria. It was just. This is the weirdest thing about the whole the whole argument about Trump and, you know, what he what, you know, why Putin didn't attack because they're acting like Trump was was favorable to Russia. I guess in some ways you can argue Trump's disdain for NATO, but Trump's disdain for NATO.

There's a video going around of Trump sitting at a meeting table with them saying, why are we paying for your defense against Russia? And then you're negotiating billion dollar gas deals, making you dependent on Russia. Thank you. It was not helping Russia that trump sanctioned nordstream 2 joe biden may 2021 lifted the sanctions on nordstream 2 and all of us were like why are you as he was shutting down the keystone pipe right and then and then it was appeasement is that what it was the idea was well if we give him a little then we can take it away if he does bad it's like he's got nothing to lose then.

He's like, you gave me free stuff so I can invade anyway and lose what I already didn't have. Whatever. And then he did. Putin did. And he also – again, it's this idea. It's incredible to me that there's this honest belief that anybody is capable of sitting down at the table and – no, you have completely different objectives. You have completely different worldviews.

You have completely different capabilities you have completely different world views you you have you know completely different capabilities interests etc now that's not to say that you still can't have a productive conversation someone engage in effective diplomacy but effective diplomacy only takes place when people actually believe that there will be consequences for their actions that they go against you and i i think you know i wonder about vladimir putin's term of mind but i do know we talk a lot about uh strassow generational theory you're familiar with it fourth turning hard times make strong men yeah i think about the motivations of vladimir putin he wants he wants russian greatness he wants that empire back and he knows you know what maybe things will get worse off for the people

of russia but that will be good for them spiritually in the long run. I'm not saying it literally will. I'm saying that's his mentality. And so his idea is, look, we go to war. We are more willing, have less to lose than these Western nations,

and it will harden up our people a little bit. In the long run, maybe he thinks he's planting some seeds. What I don't understand, maybe I'm playing Dev's advocate, America took Iraq, Russia takes Ukraine. China takes Taiwan. Then we're done with it.

Can we just be done with it and move on? Can we trade Iraq for maybe no conquest? How about that? Greenland's going to be super valuable in the 21st century and beyond. How about this? Russia, you can have Ukraine. Who's going to get Greenland? It's Denmark, isn't it?

The kingdom of Denmark. Talk about getting an ally early because in 100 years, they're going to be mega powerful. Like it's going to melt? Yeah, it's going to melt. It's going to be so much oil and lithium and beachfront property. We have Alaska. We do have Alaska. We conquered it, didn't we?

No, we bought it. We bought it. We conquered Hawaii. Senator Seward, yeah. We conquered Hawaii, yeah. Wasn't there like 10 years ago, I think it was, a it. We conquered Hawaii. Senator Seward, yeah. We conquered Hawaii. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Wasn't there like 10 years ago, I think it was, a bunch of native Hawaiians stormed like the state building and occupied it or something? Oh, really? Yeah. They still get pissed about that. A lot of the islanders do. Well, yeah. They're like, we had a king.

Like America came and took it. Well, America wanted a Pacific military operation. It looks like Putin wants the Black Sea. He wants to control the Black Sea. Well, okay. So this is what I think is interesting. I was talking to a buddy of mine, Christian, who works with us, really good historian, and he's done a lot of research on what's going on in Ukraine.

And we were talking about, okay, what are some of the possible angles here, right? Because the most obvious one is, all right, Crimea used to be part of Russia. It actually got worked into the border with Ukraine after Nikita Khrushchev shut down the insurgency that the Ukrainians had launched against the Soviet Union, right? Crimea went from the Russian SSR over to the Ukrainian SSR. It was like, well, it's not a big deal. We're all the USSR. Right. Well, when you have the breakaway republics, now all of a sudden you have these areas which ethnically, culturally, you could even argue historically, are more Russian that are now

not part of it. So, okay. Again, if you're looking for Cosmas Belay, you could even argue historically, are more Russian that are now not part of it. So, okay, again, if you're looking for Cossus Belli, you could say maybe he's interested in getting back parts of Russia that he thinks always belong to Russia and want to be Russian anyways. But as I look at the Black Sea, and as I look at the Belt and Road Initiative by China, and I look at what they're trying to do with respect to their overland trade, I have a feeling that the more access you have to the Caspian Sea, the more access you have to the Black Sea, the more important that that's going to be from a trade and economic perspective. Not to mention the fact that if he gets away with doing this in Ukraine, who the hell is going to stop him when it comes to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan?

Oh, absolutely. And now we're talking about minerals. We're talking about overland routes. We're talking about natural gas. Who's going to stop them then? And look at the strategy he's using. Donald Trump called it genius savvy. And the media has – CNN actually ran an article saying Trump sides with Putin. Oh, my gosh.

Did you – Trump said it was a genius move, it was savvy, and it wouldn't have happened under me. It's sad. So I don't think that's siding with putin i think he's like you know you mentioned acknowledging that your enemy is a genius is can be very good to defeat your enemy that's right yeah and so you mentioned you know in in war the negotiating table people will only respect power respect often people uh people conflate some words with positivity like greatness excitement or respect you can respect someone and despise them. Oh, yeah.

You can be excited and in despair. Not happy, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Excitation. You can be a great man and pure evil. Games con. Great is just of magnitude.

Maybe not evil, but was evil, probably. But we often view greatness in a positive way. Like, he was a great man. It's like, that could just mean a powerful man. A conqueror. Yeah, yeah. Right. Alexander the Great. And what it's funny just mean a powerful man. A conqueror. Right. Right. Alexander the Great.

And what's funny, too, you would think the same left, that whenever – when Trump said make America great again, and they all came out with their little hat, well, make America good again. So you get that there's a difference, right, between the two. And then when he comes out and says, yeah, this was a genius move on his part for these reasons, it could be genius and bad. What was he referencing when he said it was genius specifically so vladimir putin says oh look these regions are independent i'm gonna send in a peacekeeping force to keep the peace and trump was actually being sarcastic it was like oh yeah peacekeeping force look at all those tanks that's a peacekeeping force and they're like he's siding with putin he was he was being he was being sarcastic yeah but it was it was a clever move for putin to be like well you they're independent, so we can go help them.

And it's like, oh. That's how you win a war without, before it begins, basically. But let's talk about, you know, we always do it, the double standards and the hypocrisy of our good Democrat voter and activist friends. Take a look at this story from TimCast.com. Ukraine says they have supplied 18,000 weapons to citizens. Anti-gun leftists celebrate their efforts. My favorite is Occupy Democrats. Let me pull up this image from Defiant L's.

Occupy Democrats first tweeted, No civilian needs an AR-15, regardless of whatever mental gymnastics you do. You are a very special breed of stupid. And they then, you know, about six years later, breaking Ukraine's interior minister announces that 10,000 automatic rifles have been handed out to the civilians of Kiev as they prepared to fight tooth and nail

to defend their homes against Putin's invasion. RT, if you stand with the brave people of Ukraine. Now, hold on, hold on, hold on, everybody. I think Occupy Democrats are right. I think Joe Biden's correct. You know what? I was wrong to criticize the establishment when they said Putin was a very real threat. I stand corrected, you guys.

You're right. I think our government should join in as well and give all of the United States citizens some automatic weapons. Yes. So because Vladimir Putin is such a big threat to all of us. We could be next. Yeah, we could be next. Yeah. Because Vladimir Putin, such a big threat to all of us. We could be next, too. Yeah, we could be next. Yeah, I'm terrified.

And China. You know, oh, but Putin. So I'll take a fully, I'll selectify our Kalashnikov. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, while you're handing him out. Regarding this guy's first tweet,

he's talking to the air and then he says, you're stupid. This is something I think people should avoid. This is a little off topic. When you're using social media and you're complaining towards someone and you start insulting them, if you do it on social media, a lot of people that are unintendedly reading it are going to feel like you're insulting them. So don't do that.

You are a very special breed of stupid. Who are you talking to? Are you talking to me? No, they're talking to themselves. Apparently. Because now they're tweeting that he's – and they actually say civilians. Like, no civilian needs an AR-15. To be fair, they're handing out collision accounts.

Oh, yeah. So keep in mind here. They still think AR stands for automatic rifle. Yes. So what's crazy is they don't think any civilian needs a semi-automatic rifle. But they are thrilled about fully automatic AKs going out to people. That's actually a really good point. Maybe we're being mean to our good friends.

No civilian needs an AR-15. What they're really saying is it's semi-auto. It's not sufficient. No, you need select fire. Correct. Not against tanks. And if one of those selects is not full auto, then Occupy Democrats is not satisfied.

That's right. They start handing out 50 BMG. So maybe what they're really saying is that no civilian needs a semi-auto single shot. Come on. You need full auto. That's right. Only the best. That's what they're getting at the whole time.

Let's talk about the asymmetrical warfare, though, because I mean, it's the reality when when when you try to invade someone else, that the big challenge for Vladimir Putin is going to be demoralized Russian soldiers, a finite amount of them versus the entirety of Ukraine civilians who have remained, who are going to be like, I'm going to fight you. Which is actually surprising. There's a number. I think a lot of people, and I think Putin thought this would be something where, hey, as soon as the armored divisions go rolling across the border, presidents leaving the country, nope. You put on body armor. Yeah. I mean, you got to hand it to them. Boris Shenko took out a gun. Right?

I don't know if I believe it. It's propaganda. But it's good propaganda. I believe it. Yeah. If you're trying to rally, I mean, let's face it. especially when you're engaging in asymmetric warfare, you are the weaker party. Propaganda is one of the key things you're going to... We still got Democrats that think that we lost the Tet Offensive, right? Why? Because Walter Cronkite said we lost the Tet Offensive.

Oh, I thought we lost the Tet Offensive. Didn't people just get rolled over? North Vietnam and all down Vietnam, didn't the Americans get annihilated? No, no. What happened? Are you serious? On the Tet Offensive, what happened? Oh, okay. Real quick segue. Yeah. Go for it. So yeah, in Vietnam the Viet Cong launched a massive attack all throughout the country during Tet which was

supposed to be a ceasefire within the Vietnamese calendar, right? And so they made like some fairly major gains quickly, but in several weeks they had taken massive amounts of calories. We're talking like 20

to 1. At that point, it was after the Tet Offensive that the North Vietnamese army had to start coming in and supporting because we had almost wiped out the Viet Cong after the Tet Offensive. They threw the kitchen sink at it, and they got obliterated. So it looked bad overnight, partly because our own military leaders were saying, oh, yes, they're on their heels.

They can't do anything. Well, they launched this major offensive that was unexpected. They got temporary gains. But they got destroyed. But it didn't matter. The propaganda campaign that went along with it made it look like, one, the military or the government was lying to the people, which is certainly not hard to believe. And then the other two was that this never would have happened if we were actually in the good shape that we were. And as Thomas Sowell likes to say, when a democracy decides you've lost the war, you've lost it.

And so that was the problem. But again, if you look at something like this, the propaganda component for an asymmetric force is critical. Psychology is one of the most important things in a war. It's why we're seeing so much propaganda because making people feel like we can win, we should win, and we have to win is important to keeping people in the fight. So there's a video of Poroshenko throwing a strap over. He's got a rifle of some sort, and he's like, I'm here on the ground. And he's like, here's all the other people I'm fighting with. You've got President Zelensky sort and he's like i'm here on the ground and he's like here's all the you know other people i'm fighting with you've got president zielinski and he's like i'm with the prime minister i'm with the cabinet from this guy we're here on the ground

he's got like a vest on because the people of ukraine they're going to see that and they're being handed out guns yeah and they're and when you see your leader on the battlefield with you they're going to be like it's um like my favorite movie, The Patriot, with Mel Gibson, I often cite. Good movie. When he says, hold the line, and he runs back when they're retreating, and then they pull forward and win. That's the thing. But let me tell you, you mentioned we got into Vietnam.

I got to tell you the story I read. It's fascinating. The U.S. was trying to engage in psychological warfare. It's something I read on the Internet. Perhaps it's not true. And so what they did was they knew that the Vietnamese were very superstitious. So they made these, these creepy recordings of wailing, haunting Vietnamese, like Viet Cong soldiers saying, you know, uh, why did I fight? I should have gone home. They believe, they believe, uh, that if you are not

given a proper burial, you're forced to haunt wherever it was you died. So in the forestry, the jungle or whatever, they're playing in these loudspeakers, wailing Viet Cong voices saying, flee while you still can or you'll be trapped like me. It was so effective, the South Vietnamese fled as well and so they had to stop doing it. I don't know if it's true. It sounds amazing.

It's one of those stories you hear. It's probably apocryphal or something. It's one of those stories that if it's not true, it ought to be, right? Right, right, right. I mean, it's kind of messed up, though, going after people's – it's like a psychic attack on the people. Superstitious cultures tend to get wiped out, I think. Are there any that exist anymore? I don't think so.

There's a lot of superstitious cultures. Like the Christians? Cal Berkeley. There's Christian and Islam, which are both lot of superstitious cultures like like the christians cal berkeley there's christian and islam which are both kind of superstitious there's tons of like americans have tons of superstitions but like it's easy to manipulate someone if they're superstitious go to a casino and you will see oh i did a superstition or a sporting event you'll see it you'll see a guy like tap his coke can five times yeah well that concerns me because superstitious people are easy to manipulate well it's like it's like michael scott that concerns me because superstitious people are easy to manipulate. Well, it's like Michael Scott says.

I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious. Yeah. Yeah, man. So let it be known. They're giving out all these guns to regular people because it works. Yeah. I want to see Biden hitting a speed bag. I need some motivation.

Get on the floor, bro. Yeah, let's go. That's a funny thought. Give me some speed. I'll tell you what will be interesting on this, though, is that – and this is the part where, okay, again, how does Ukraine stall Russia? How does Ukraine capture the press and the media and the propaganda and all of this? And this is going to be interesting because this is the first war we've seen like this where literally everybody has got access to the world to some degree from their phone. Yeah. we've seen like this where literally everybody has got access to the world to some degree from their phone yeah so you imagine uh partisans out there doing this sort of stuff and then making a tick talk about it right that that's going to be that's going to be a fascinating thing to

potentially watch from not just from a propaganda perspective but a sharing information perspective because if you don't think terrorist organizations already use social media in order to coordinate their activities um that there's regardless of what ends up happening here, there's going to be a lot of research and study going into how social media influenced it from a propaganda, from a coordination standpoint. Because there's good ways for partisans to fight and there's really stupid ways for partisans to fight. And partisans should not be taking on a T-90 with their AK-47, right? It's just crazy. I'm trying to figure out why Putin would do this. And the only thing I come up with is it's the last great hoorah of a dying empire.

If they're not part of NATO, if I play Crusader Kings 2, I play a lot of battle, conquest, grand simulation strategy games. And if you have a lot of countries with a defensive pact against you, but one of them isn't in the pact, that's the country you hit. And you take it fast. And then you're done. And then no one complains anymore. It's just back to base zero again. And hopefully no one else signs up for the pact.

And if someone drops out of the pact, they're a meaty target. He's got a war-weary United States, which is the only one that has any teeth. He's got a Europe that's been hit by COVID and doesn't want to deal with this crap. And everyone on the Western side can say Ukraine wasn't a part of NATO. Now, if you do it to Poland, we'll be pissed. Poland's not in NATO right now. Or excuse me, if you do it to Estonia, we'll be pissed. Poland's in NATO.

Yeah, Poland's in NATO. So is Estonia, yeah. Yeah, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Should we get out of NATO? Yeah, what do you think? We've had those conversations here yeah we pull all the weight we do we do pull all the weight it's going to be interesting to see what happens because well nato hasn't been attacked right so it'd be interesting to see well not

that i'm wishing for this um i do think that there's something to be said and this is the part and this is the part where i'm i'll probably get a little bit amped up because, again, I've lost friends overseas fighting wars that I'm not so sure were the best decision on America's part. But one of the things that has maintained the level of peace that we've seen since World War II, and obviously there's been horrible conflicts in Vietnam, in Korea, in other places that we've been involved in and that we haven't been involved in, but nothing like the massive bloodshed we saw in World War I and World War II. And the reason why we have that, and the reason why for the last 30 years we haven't even imagined a conflict like that, the reason why this is surprisingly the living piss head of everybody is because of U.S. military dominance. That's why. The same thing that a lot of our allies are constantly bitching about and coming to the United States and talking about,

oh, you know, they're always throwing their weight around. They're always going, yeah. And because we have and because people know we can, it has kept people at bay. And no one's going to convince me otherwise. It really has. Yeah. And so now we're at a point where you do, you have a war-weary

United States, you have a global pandemic that took place. We have a country that we have no legal obligation to defend. And I think that the kind of the world order post-Cold War is being challenged right now by Putin. And he's probably picked the best possible time to do it. And again, that's why I said that. The same countries that will want the United States to intervene, to do the heavy lifting for them, if we decide to do it, will be bitching about us six months from now.

And so I don't think we should. Now, does that mean we pull out of things like NATO? I think there's value with the United States being the preeminent military power. And I think that does do something to preventing other nations from getting a little bit froggy when they shouldn't. But one of the things, again, that I appreciated about how Trump handled this was he went back to NATO and he made a very real possibility that you might not be able to rely on us because you're not pulling your weight. And that's not the same for allies that we have in like South Korea or Taiwan. They do pull their weight.

They do recognize the threat. They do recognize their responsibility to hold back the threat. And yes, they depend on the United States for support. But they don't have this expectation that they don't got to do the fighting because we got this. And so I think one of the positive things that could come out of this is a lot of these countries that it's become real popular to trash the United States are going to realize that, you know what, what do you think your country would look like, Western Europe,

if it was Putin that had the military and economic power that the United States had? You think we'd be having these conversations? Nope. You think we'd be talking about Eastern Ukraine or you think we'd be talking about the south of France right now? So just remember, as much as the United States may screw up on our foreign policy, as much as we might at a time where we had all the power, all the money, all the military might show me the country that we annexed into the United States in order to expand our own empire

or Iraq. But we didn't. We don't own Iraq. Not on paper. No, no, not at all. I mean, again, the way that you look at Russia, if Russia takes over Ukraine, watch what happens in Ukraine. It's going to be nothing like what happened in Iraq.

Yeah, I was really impressed with the Spanish-American War. What I've read about it is that the Americans basically liberated Cuba, for better or worse. They didn't invade and take it. They kicked the Spanish Empire out, and we're like, now Cuba's free. Yeah, I mean, we didn't do that in the Philippines. Right, we didn't do that in the Philippines or in Wake Island or in Midway. This is not me suggesting that the United States military has not had our own little brush with empire. We've done things that we shouldn't have done.

I mean, go look at what Lincoln was saying about the Mexican American war. Go look at what Grant was saying about the Mexican American war, about how we, we kind of picked a fight with a country where you knew he could kick the crap out of, and then got a lot of territory from it. So like, again,

I'm not saying we're, we're perfect, but if you look at the, the situation in the world, it has been the level of peace and security that has existed in certain parts of the world, especially in Western Europe has been as a direct result of U.S. military dominance. It's the Kissinger limited war doctrine.

He was a big part of creating this idea that we're going to fight proxy wars only so that we don't go to total war. I mean, I'm not a huge Kissinger fan. Me neither. But that was his – Yeah, I'm not a huge Kissinger fan. And I think it's – I don't like to call it the proxy war idea that like, okay, if we just get involved in a bunch of little wars, we'll stop big ones. I do think there's an argument to say that there is such a thing as the Sudetenland moment, right, where there was a point where the French military, the British military, if they had intervened in Sudetenland or if they had intervened when the Nazis were going into Czechoslovakia and just carving it up because they could?

Would that whole scene turn out a lot differently than if they waited all the way till Poland? And I think there's an argument to be made there. I think there's an argument to be made that you identify when someone has larger aspirations, when they have the military capability to do it, and you intervene at a point where they realize that, okay, we're not going to get away with this. You don't let them build up

a certain significant amount of power to where they now can potentially get away with. That's kind of what we've been doing in Iran. Well, like I've heard the Stuxnet, we blew up infrastructure. I think have they targeted them with weapons, blew up weapons depots and stuff? I don't know how hot it's gotten. The Stuxnet was obviously fairly significant, and they've also tried to manage their growth through sanctions. So we could have done that to Germany. Looking back in retrospect, we could have tried to somehow disrupt their rise to power, but it was internal.

It was like, how could we get involved and stop the military machine from creating itself? No, I think it's more of, and again, I am very, I tend to, I always side with non-interventionists. I mean, you need to explain why something is so significant that United States men and women need to bleed for it, right? That's my starting point. Now, when you're talking about something like Germany, again, when you have internal issues, I tend to say, look, you stay out of those. Those are internal issues. Piece of Westophilia, right? But once you start seeing naked aggression, like you did with the Sudetenland with Germany or like you did with Czechoslovakia, then I think there is some argument to say like, okay,

is it appropriate at this point to intervene on some level? Now, there's a big difference. There's a, you know, there's, I'm trying to think of the word now. There's levels of force that you apply, right? There's an escalation of force. Not everything has to be like, you went into the Sudetenland, I'm nuking Berlin, right? It's not that.

It sounds like Trump. Yeah, right. I'll hit Moscow. But that's the thing. There's a difference between, okay, what's going to be your escalation of force, right? That's what you know. That's not what you share with the rest of the world. You want Putin thinking, you send one Russian troop into Ukraine, right, and I'm going into Moscow, right?

It's going to be, I'm going to set up a Trump hotel in downtown Moscow, right? Because he doesn't know if you're actually going to do it. And so that's where there's a difference between, okay, what should be our actual strategy versus what sort of strategy should we project, right? And our enemies don't get to know this one. They just get to know what we're capable of. Biden said recently, you know, the minor incursion, it depends on if it's a minor incursion. That was preemptive appeasement.

Biden should have said outright, we'll go into Moscow. All right, Biden's the Neville Chamberlain of our time. or, I mean, and worse possibly,

the Buchanan. Yeah. But he could have said, we won't tolerate this. Europe won't tolerate this. Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states,

Western Europe, none of it. If Putin makes this move we go into moscow day one try me yeah you get the president of france england you know germany united states the thing is here's what i'll say though if biden had said that he would have flubbed show of hands on who believes i don't buy that he would have been reading a prompt and he would go, come on, man. We're going to Moscow. We're going to Moscow. Look here. Forget it.

Corn pop. I'm going to Moscow. Vladimir Putin's a bad dude who's got some bad boys. Someone called Putin a bad dude yesterday. Or you might have called him a bad dude earlier. I think he was going to say bad mother in the video. You can hear him start to say the word mother and he stops himself and says dude earlier. I think he was going to say bad mother in the video.

You can hear him start to say the word mother, and he stops himself and says dude instead. Biden said that. Dude. Biden, yeah. When he listened to him, he was going to say dude real weird. Bad dude. Bad dude. This is like when Hitler went into Poland to reconquer part of Poland that had been

stripped away after the First World War and give it back because apparently he said there was a genocide of German expats in Poland that they were committing. Putin says the same thing. There's a genocide of Russians in eastern Ukraine that's been going on for eight years. I've heard an inkling of this in the media. I don't know if it's real or complete propaganda, but this was Hitler's reason for invading Poland

or part of it. Probably also to connect more land bridges and stuff. Hitler was ready to take over the world. There's a conflict in the Donbass region. And you've got people saying, yeah, the separatists are dying. You've got people saying Ukrainians are dying. And both sides will use what they can to justify their positions.

I don't know who's more right or more morally right. I don't know. I know that both sides are making those assertions. I think Putin is doing what he wanted to do do and then he found reasons to do it so should we i guess my question and is should we treat this like how we treated hitler invading poland where it's a different time and i'll preempt that i don't i don't either because america took iraq 20 years ago and that that was gave the russians uh no opportunity to match the playing field you can't look two wrongs don't make a right the u.s screwed up with iraq and afghanistan they're screwing up today by still being absolutely it's not like it

happened it's happening right now i'm screwed up miserably screwing up as yeah but we can't be like well russia gets to take a sovereign country because the united states did it too that's that and even then the thing that i go back to is that with Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no point where Iraq became the 51st state or Afghanistan became a territory. Now, again, I think there was huge problems with the way we did a lot of it. Now, I don't think it was wrong to go after the Taliban. I don't think it was wrong to go after terrorism. I don't think any of that was wrong. I think there was something significantly wrong with this idea that we're going to come in here, completely devastate whatever current government is in charge, and then we're going to go ahead and recreate

you on our image. But I think it was Ron Paul who said that when it came to the Taliban after 9-11, we should have issued letters of mark and reprisal, specifically targeting the group, not the country, not going after Taliban. They would have cannibalized each other. It would have been awesome. Instead, it was like, let's nation build for 20 years. Oh, no.

If you look at the initial invasion so again in the military i was army special forces it's better known as green berets green berets focus on unconventional warfare counter-insurgency what does that mean it means when we go into a country we work by through and with local allies the indigenous population you look at the opening days of afghanistan we're talking about you had agency in there, you had several hundred Green Berets working with the Northern Alliance. And within, what, a couple of months, like they had kicked the Taliban out of like Kandahar. And it was all by, through and with the local population. And what would have been fascinating to watch, and who knows what would have happened, what would have fascinated to watch is what and who knows what would happen what a fascinating watch is what sort

of organic solutions people would have come up to and i'm sure it would have been you know ugly and i'm sure it would have been brutal at times everything else but it wouldn't have been the united states saying no no we're not just going to fight the talent we're going to take over the entire country we're going to take over the entire war it's now our war we're going to help you with your infrastructure we're going to help because some of this i don't know if you've ever seen read the book or seen the movie charlie wilson's war a big argument that they made is that we went in there to help the mujahideen against the soviets and then we didn't stand by stay behind in order to help with some of the infrastructure and so it got out of hand

and so this time as well we're not going to repeat that mistake we'll just double down and take over the whole damn thing okay no you're trying to impose certain cultural political social changes on a culture that is not necessarily interested in the social changes that you're trying to affect it doesn't matter whether or not you think it's more moral than what they currently have if you don't have buy-in there then don't expect to be able to do it unless you're willing to stay there for a hundred years that's my concern with iraq they say it's not a state but what's the plan either we're going to be there for 100 years and it may as well be a state. We have no significant military presence in Iraq. It's drawn down substantially.

I just don't believe that. I don't know where that idea comes from, but it's locked down by the United States. Or whoever's there, is it American weapons in the Iraqi puppet's hands? It's a large nation that has been well defended by the United States for two decades. Oh, we have not been a significant military force on the ground in Iraq for, gosh dang, we're probably, I mean, trying to think of the actual, I was last over there in 08. I think by 2013, we were really drawing down significantly. So no, I mean, we have not had a significant military presence in Iraq for I mean it's

getting close to you know yeah I think under Obama he he pulled all trips out of Iraq put him into Afghanistan he moved a lot down there then he reinforced in Afghanistan and by the Trump by the time Trump was in there I mean we have a huge embassy over there there was some military presence but that was one of the big complaints right is that the reason why ISIL was able to come in and do so much was because we didn't have a significant U.S. military presence. It seems like Iraq is a staging ground, and so is Afghanistan for Russian interference. They're surrounding Iran. Yeah, Iranian.

They've got Syria on the border. They're close to Egypt in the south. They've got their eyes poking into Saudi Arabia's north border. Well, that's been – I mean, Saudi Arabia was in the – during the Cold War, Iraq, especially Syria and all that. That was very clearly Soviet sphere of influence. Iraq was a little bit because they were they were taking most of the military equipment. Egypt was Soviet influence at a certain point. And then Saudi Arabia was more U.S. influence.

So it's just been an interesting dynamic. But keep in mind, all those borders were, you know, drawn by British mapmakers. Yeah. After World War I, I want to talk about modern day piracy. Interesting dynamic. But keep in mind, all those borders were drawn by British mapmakers. Yeah, after World War II. I want to talk about modern-day piracy. That's an interesting conversation. So we have this story from Cyber News, Anonymous Leaks database of the Russian Ministry of Defense. We had this report out of NBC that Biden had been presented with U.S. plans for cyber attacks, direct attacks on Russian infrastructure.

My position has been this for some time. The modern day pirate or corsair is going to be the hacker. Governments, because we watched this happen, went back in the, what do they call it? They call it the, what was the time of the colonial, there's a word for it, like the sail.

Oh, the Barbary pirates and the... It's called like the sail era or something like that. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I say the colonial times, but – Age of sail. Age of sail, I think it was. So the crowns would issue letters of marque, which basically would commission a private warship to attack enemies during a time of war. And they could then capture it, bring it in, and get a reward for it.

It was a simple way of being like, we don't got to pay for your repairs. We don't got to pay for the ship. You find your own crew. You bring a ship, we'll pay you for it. We'll make it worth your while. So governments would effectively commission pirates, corsairs, to go and stage these acts. Then the other

country would be like, your ships are taking us. Oh, no, no, no. Those are pirates. Don't look at us. So now we have Anonymous hacking RT and shutting them down, hacking Russian Ministry of Defense. And I don't look at us. So now we have anonymous hacking RT and shutting them down, hacking Russian Ministry of Defense. And I don't buy it. First of all, it's probably just like US cyber warriors.

And if it isn't, it's effectively letters of Mark. The US government saying private hackers, go for it and have fun. Take what you can from Russia. Think about it this way. You've got black hat hackers. These are the people who just want to rip you off and steal what they can. You've got gray hat hackers, hacktivists, politically motivated, and white hat, corporate security types. The government can go to these black hats, effectively pirates.

Heck, some of them are probably pirating software online, literally. And they'll be like, anything you steal from Russia, you will not be prosecuted for. Any information you rip off, any databases, I'm willing to bet these people are being given carte blanche by the U.S. government. So you think they're getting paid through the dark web or something? Not necessarily paid. But I'm willing to bet you've got FBI

going to this black hat hacker and being like, you know, we got that case against you. We're going to drop it if you can hit these Russian targets. Okay, I think that's what they did with Jack Ruby with the Kennedy thing. He was like a mobster, and they gave him – he got off. I don't know about all that. They were killing a suspect. I think it's as simple as we know who you are.

We know you're good. Why don't you use your skills to help the United States, and we'll look the other way. So they're blackmailing criminal hackers in part in addition to maybe other things? Well, blackmail. They're like, we're going to let you have carte blanche to steal whatever you want. We want no repercussions. We'll punish you unless you steal whatever you want, and then we'll turn it off.

That's true. There's not a lot of people talking about this because when people talk about, we've just gotten so used to, oh, the president wants to go to war. I guess we'll go do that now. But there are constitutional ways to deal with certain threats. When is the declaration of war,

which is supposed to be done by Congress? That's a fairly laborious process. The other thing that the president has as a tool, now again, if you're going to engage in major action, you're still supposed to get approval from Congress to do this. It's not like they can do it. But the whole idea of letters of mark and reprisal

and kind of the last president I think we had that issued one was Madison. Wow. And it was, and again, don't quote me on that, but I think, and again, part of that was going after the Barbary Pirate Wars and the United States didn't have a huge Navy or anything like that. And so it made sense to do this.

And I actually think it makes a lot of sense toward non-state actors when you're talking about terrorist organizations. And like you said, the modern day pirates are the hackers, man, they can, they,

they can do more damage with a couple lines of code. Um, then, you know, that's, we're talking about deep fakes. I saw a video of a jet coming in and then it fired two rockets at that building that where the camera guy was.

And then you hear the kids screaming, and it's like, was that fake? Was that deep fake? I can't tell. I saw a deep fake today that really freaked me out. It confused me, and I don't even know what to believe. It's Vladimir Putin fishing, but he has large female breasts. It's got to be fake. It's on the front page of Reddit.

That's real. That's real. American propaganda. That's real. That's been confirmed. That is an image on the front page of reddit that's real that's real american propaganda that's been confirmed that is a that is an image on the front page of reddit putin with large breasts fishing and topless and i'm just like i see that stuff and i'm annoyed by it because it is not it is it is top tier cringe the bear bro

no no no poke them but make make the propaganda good right like watching fighters like there's there's video of like a plane falling from the sky and they're like the ghost of kiev and i'm like wow and then uh it was uh grums he's like on twitter he's like this the the ghost of kiev is like an anime protagonist i'm like well now you got some good problems yeah yeah you know like a new comic book character but here's my question do you think and this is this is interesting the hero's journey masculinity right when you look when you look at uh When you look at social media, there are certain platforms that the better it is, the worse it does. There's other platforms where if it's bad, it does better because it seems more authentic.

People think it's actually real. People think somebody – Yeah, but like when we're talking about – I'm not saying anything cringy. There's a meme on the front page of Reddit, and it's Megamind. And he's got – it says like the size of the hero's balls. And then it says ball size, and it says mega. And I'm like, that's the stupidest thing.

What is this a cultural reference to? Come on, man. Do better. As one of our friends. But who's making memes with Megamind? I mean, what is this? Did someone pull a meme out of the book? That's a boomer.

It's a boomer trying to make a meme because it's propaganda. Some 50-year-old intelligence guy. He's probably listening to this show and he feels all bad now. I worked really hard on it. My grandkids loved it. I love it. Don't worry. Megaballs will come back one day.

Megaballs. I'm just ahead of your time. Yeah, but so this is not the first time we've heard stories like hacking. There's that Chinese hacking group. There was the Syrian Electronic Army. And it turns out I believe it's true because we did this reporting advice that the person who was actually running the Syrian Electronic Army was

in Moscow. So this is somebody who hacked Twitter and then tweeted that Obama had been injured in some kind of attack on the White House. And the stock market in the U.S. dropped substantially before – because the AP got hacked and tweeted it out, and then all of a sudden the market dropped substantially and then bounced back up. But it only returned like 90%.

Hey, RT's back up. Oh, it is? Yeah, we were just talking about RT. RT was down for a long time today. I wonder. And I just got it in. It took a while to load up, but then I was able to load it. They finally figured out I can't load it.

Interesting. Yeah. I just thought that they've been hacked. It's just Tim. Maybe I'm looking at a cached version. You might be. So I like to go to actualidad.rt.com, which is Spanish language RT. That still works.

Spanish, Russian. Yeah, and then you just translate it. It works in English, but I'm getting this message that says, checking your browser while loading RT. You think that they're logging everyone that's going to RT now? No, I don't know. But what I will say is when I heard that Anonymous shut down RT, and I'm like, that does sound like a lot of what Anonymous is.

And I will also stress this point. There is no hacktivist collective called anonymous that's just a it's probably it's a propaganda it's manipulation it's always been if you ask someone who's a hacker what does it mean when anonymous hacks something they'll just look at you and be like it literally means anonymous like like someone signed it anonymous yeah like if you wrote someone a letter, I hate you, signed anonymous. That's literally what it means. There's no secret group conspiring to hate you.

Well, that's what the secret group wants you to think. That's what the secret group wants you to think. That's very Antico. They are typically like they take down websites. They obfuscate. But like you said, there's no they. It's just anyone that wants to become a hacker and say I'm anonymous

can be anonymous and you know when it first started there was a small group who were doing it it's like 500 and there was only a few of them

who were prominent and actually had the skills and then once it got popular press all of a sudden you started getting all of these videos popping up on YouTube

where it was like anonymous declares and the initial like concept was if you have a thousand anonymous individuals and people propose things randomly, whatever is popular rises to the top. So a lot of the actions that were being taken by anonymous was like someone said, you know, Operation this. Let's do it. And people would be like, that's stupid.

And then someone would be like, Operation ABC. And they'd be like, all right. And they all start doing it. And then it gains popular traction. So you still have attempts at making these videos. But for the most part, the movement or whatever of this kind of meritocratic hacktivist operation just doesn't exist anymore. That's what I think now. I think it's government actors.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I think if you get – I mean, not to say that I know a lot of hackers. But the people I do know, let's say that possess a skill set. I don't know that you could get five of them to agree on anything. Probably not. Yeah. The one thing I will say is that the hacker community has gone full cult for the most part.

So I used to hang out. I'd go to DEF CON, Black Hat, hang out at hacker spaces, and they were free speech, anti-establishment, anti-government. And then the last time I went to DEFCON, which is the biggest hacker convention, it's like civilian hacker convention because they have Black Hat, which is the corporate one. There was a guy, I think he was from the NSA or something. And he was giving a presentation and he mentioned how they try and stop Russia. And everyone started clapping and cheering. And he was like, and then he stops and he goes, wow, an applause from DEF CON for a spook.

I'm really surprised things are changing. And I started laughing. It was because the media had been running the narrative of Russia. And I mentioned there was like this semi-open event there. And I had mentioned that RT had offered to pay me money for some of my footage out of Sweden, which I said no to. I said no, because I was like, why do you, my footage is on YouTube for free. You can fair use it. There's literally no reason to give me money for this. It sounds weird. And I got people clapping for me. I was like, so when I was reporting out of Sweden, I got hit up by RT. They asked, they asked if they could pay me. I said, no, they doubled the amount they'd pay me.

I said, no. Then all of a sudden people I knew were like, hey, I'm getting hit up by guys from RT. They're trying to pay you for this. And I was like, no. And people were like, oh, so brave, so honorable. And I'm like, it's weird. It was a weird shift that happened where like the corporate press said Putin bad and everyone just went, you got it. We're going to march in lockstep. Do you think that was just because of Putin or do you think that had something to do with Trump?

Not only that. I mean, let's face it. Putin's not a good guy. I get that. Yeah. But the attention on him. Do you think that was just Putin, or do you think that was a combination of Putin and Trump? Oh, it's Putin.

And fear of the Cold War. There's so much residual fear of the Soviet Union that put that fear onto Russia. It's not the same country at all. It's completely different. It's not communist. It's a federation of states. So it's like an easy target, but it's tickling their amygdala.

I brought that up before. It's like it's enticing their lizard brain to become afraid of some ancient idea. I think ancient evil. Does he still have the ring? Yeah. Or is the ring just destroyed? It is.

The glacier is melting. He's going to be free. I think it's a cult. Wow. We have this story from TimCast.com. Nearly 70% of liberals say it's more important to protect Ukraine's border than our own. What? I don't know if it's 70%. I got to see the poll here.

Did we get an error? I thought it was 57. You have a link to the poll on this one because it might be a thousand people. Okay, that doesn't surprise me. And I think – Yeah, it's 57. The reason it doesn't surprise because there's there's a lot of people that i know again i always make a distinction between liberal and the left but

there's a lot of people on the left and i know that in any other country in the world is better than our own like we are we are uniquely evil in some capacity for which we must pay you know you know i don't know we just need to be sorry all the time and so the the idea that you would ask them, should we protect our border or Ukraine's? Of course it would be Ukraine's because the only way we would protect our border is if we're all a bunch of racists. This defies Jesus' logic. Take the plank out of your own eye first. Did you see that they're calling on CBP to leave the southern border to go to Poland to process Ukrainian refugees? It's remarkably insane.

I'm going to check that up as things that don't surprise me anymore. Yeah, I know. Things that don't surprise me anymore. Wow. So, okay, back to the story for a second. You said it's 57, 58%? 57% of Democrats. So the title was wrong, but we're going to copyright that.

I think the title is wrong. Okay, so somewhere between 57 and 70, but you think it's more close to 57? 49% of them. Well, you've got to log into Resmuse and if you want to get the hard numbers. The idea that we should send our National Guard overseas to fight is completely insane. That's completely insane to me.

Our Custom and Border Protection agents, like our Border Patrol, their job is to run the border and they're like, go to Poland. Oh, yeah. You think it's because they fired so many people for not being vaccinated? No. It actually sounds like they would allocate resources.

Like, we are a border patrol, and there's a border issue in Ukraine. Oh, yeah. That's where you should be. And by the way, does Ukraine have a coast? Because we have a coast guard. We do, yeah. We can use that. Right.

Holy crap. Yeah, they got a coast off the Black Sea. They have a government, so they could use our army. Sure could, yeah. You know, governments need armies. They could have Sea. They have a government, so they could use our army. Sure could, yeah. You know, governments need armies. They could have ours. They have ships. Wow, man.

That's why I was saying the other day, I'm like, I'm ready to just put my feet up and crack open a coconut. No, never. Never. Never give up. Never surrender. Always chance. Always change.

It's not so much give up, but kind of like just glide, you know? Oh, that's good. Like we've fallen off the cliff. Just spread your wings and enjoy it. I do think we need to make entertainment for a while and veer away from the negativity of war and conflict. So I don't think those two, interestingly enough, I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. I like it. Not an either-or proposition.

In fact, I'm willing to say, and again, this is not one of those, you know, George Bush, we just got a tax, so go shopping, right? Like, I'm not saying that um i i do i do think there's a realm for like you know sacrifice when the times call for it but like i as i look at like all the things that are kind of under assault the way things are acting there there is a huge realm right now one of the reasons why we are in the situation we're on right now is because we didn't fight for the cultural space um we we you know we might fight for the political space we didn't fight for the cultural space which is why it is dominated by by a certain perspective or viewpoint and i i tell parents this all the time when they're like well how are we going to fix our schools or how are we going to like well if you think you're going to fix your schools with one election cycle you're out of your mind yeah

because your your child your child is now going to a school which in many cases is pushing a particular worldview or propaganda that might not coincide with your own beliefs about your country or faith or whatever. I said, then they come home and they watch Netflix, right? And chances are whatever they're watching there is going to be pushing a particular worldview. Then they turn on a song which is pushing a worldview. Then they look at the media which is pushing a worldview. And then they go to their a song which is pushing a worldview then they look at the media which is personal worldview and then they go to

their college professor which is personal worldview and then what do you get 30 minutes around the dinner table you think this is sufficient and so any any sort of activity i see which is pushing into that cultural space which is so critical because everything political is downstream from culture is absolutely necessary and one of the most important like fronts that we're in right now but there's two good things to say here some some optimism one is you've got the daily wire ramping up production of cultural uh content they're buying movies yeah they're they're absolutely they absolutely see your point and they're working towards it but then i would say that um when you say we haven't you know gotten gotten involved in the culture or i forgot

exactly how you said it well ian and i uh did not come into this as conservatives yeah so there's a lot of people who were working in some kind of entertainment some kind of media or cultural space and now find themselves in agreement on many core issues of freedom in the united states and our constitution with conservatives and that's giving a big cultural boon. So we talked with the guy from The Daily Wire about how we can expand our cultural content. We have a vlog. We do silly jokes and have fun and we do flips and into beanbags and stuff. But we're talking about things we can do.

We launched a show called Tales from the Inverted World, which is – and we have a book available at invertedworldbook.com. And it's mysteries, mysteries, UFOs, stories, because we've always been involved in that. We actually got a mix of a song that we've been putting together. So we're putting out music. Yeah, it's fantastic stuff. I get goosebumps. So I grew up playing music.

I grew up making skate videos. I grew up making videos with my friends and now what the what the left has kind of screwed up is that they're they're constantly pushing people they're making authoritarian demands of people to give in to their politics and their views or else and a lot of people are saying or else and they're walking away yeah yeah so now there's an opportunity here for conservatives to get back in the game yeah and push back on the left and i think in the long run the left will lose the culture the cultural i was Hollywood acting 2006, 7, 8, kind of. And I was like, I'm going to change the world.

I'm going to become a famous actor and then be able to give the speech at the Oscars that changes everyone. That was my idea. But it was so dirty, that industry. I felt so sexualized. And they were like, you're just so sexy. You need sex, sex. I'm like, you've got to get out of here, man.

I felt their fingers coming at me and I just ran. But I bailed on culture for like a decade. I started building minds, the social network. That's why people get involved in politics, is because we're not pretty enough for Hollywood, and we're too stupid for the private sector. Wow. Yes, case in point.

But it's gotta be done. It's gotta be done. It's one of the most important. I didn't like that top-down pressure in Hollywood of the oligarchs of Hollywood that were these weird sexual deviants. It seemed like they were kind of creating the oligarchs of Hollywood that were these like weird sexual deviants. It seemed like they were kind of creating the feel or the energy of the system.

It was gross. Yeah. Beautiful city though until recently, I guess, because the homeless incursion is terrifying, but beautiful weather, that's for sure, because of the valleys, the mountains, and it's like you got snow-capped peaks to the north an hour. You got the desert to the east in an hour. You got the desert to the east in an hour. You got the ocean to the west in an hour. You got the hills just 20 minutes north of you.

The beautiful valley. It's an incredible city. Oh, yeah. They called it the City of the Angels for a reason. Actually, Los Angeles has a really weird long name. You ever look it up? Yeah. It's like super long.

It's like the River of the Women. I don't know. It sounds like really long. Do you find it? Yeah. I'm looking it up yeah yeah it's it's like super long it's like the river of the women who something like really long i used it yeah i'm looking it up now yeah well you look at california man and uh they say california is our future the california is five years ahead of the rest of the country i know so here's what i think i think california is going to be a wonderful place to live in about 20 years and then texas is going to be the problem place to live in about 20 years. And then Texas is going to be the problem. Yeah, I agree. That's why people were telling us, like, you should go to Austin. I was like, no way. Oh, so I call it the – and I did this once.

And I think it was like Occupy Democrats or Blue Virginia or someone got like fears. Like, I can't believe they called us locusts. Well, it's the locust theory. The locusts have no idea that they're the ones eating all the crops. They're just wondering why all the prosperity is gone. And then they go somewhere else to find more crops. I'm like, okay, so no, I'm not comparing you to people to locusts have no idea that they're the ones eating all the crops they're just wondering why all the prosperity is gone and then they go somewhere else to find more crops i'm like okay so no i'm not comparing you to people to locusts i'm saying that it's this idea that someone will come in see all this prosperity you know use it then destroy it and then when they move they don't

realize that okay you're taking the policies that created the destruction with you maybe don't do that this time yeah what do you think i'm not calling people locusts. I'm calling them a virus. I'm kidding. I think this is the mindset of the World Economic Forum is that people are destroying recklessly without reproducing the environment. So they were like, okay, that's a big problem that we're going to have to-

Yeah, they look at people like a fire. Like animals. Yeah. Just consuming carbon and expanding the growth and just burning things down. And it's fascinating. They never want to take a look at the fact. I can't remember who it was that had the bet, but it was with that – oh, gosh.

It was with one of these guys that was predicting in the 70s that we would be engaged in a series of world famines and like all of our natural resources would be up. Paul – Krugman. Ehrlich. Ehrlich. Good guess, though. Good guess, though. Often wrong.

If you're talking about a guy that makes crappy predictions, Paul Krugman would have been a really, really good pick. But Paul Ehrlich – so this other economist came in and I think he told him, he's like, pick five natural resources and I'll bet that in 20 years they're all cheaper than they are today. Yeah. And Ehrlich engaged in the bet and lost. Yes. Because it's this idea that, no, human beings have this amazing capacity to adapt if they're not being controlled by, oh, I don't know, an authoritarian central government that's trying to control their lives or treating them like they're a virus. But how about we make that bet now?

Do you think things will be getting cheaper? And I would say from this point forward- In Singapore. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're in for a world of hurt. Why in Singapore? If we boot Russia from Swift, then everything's going to get more expensive.

I got a story here. I think that Russia is leaving Swift. I don't think that they're going to wait to get booted. I got a story from Russia-briefing.com. Russia and China to develop Swift avoiding international financial systems. What's that? Of course, of course.

I just don't know about the source. But Russia and China have been trying to get off the dollar for a long time. Yeah, that makes sense. So I think Putin's known. You can't imagine this guy has risen to the level he's risen to without planning for something like this. Yeah, for sure. What would be interesting, we were, again, I was talking with my team about this.

I go, what do we think is the worst case scenario? And what we were talking about was like, okay, he takes Ukraine. He uses that as kind of like a trial balloon, right? Takes Ukraine, doesn't really suffer any major consequences for it. And then you start to look at, you know, incursions into places like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, where we're talking about, again, the Belt and Road Initiative.

And now you start to see this block, this Russian-Chinese block, where you have a massive amount of natural resources. You've solved some of the population issues that Russia's having with expansion. And then you have just these major spheres of influence. And then it becomes almost kind of like a remake of the Cold War on some level. Now, again, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I'm saying it's not science fiction to look at this and be like,

okay, yeah, I can look at a map and I can look at what he's doing and I can look at where resources are at and I can see where spheres of influence would potentially be engaged and then where do we go from there? And to your point, back when it was the West and the Soviet Union, you had people coming off of World War II. You had generations that were familiar with sacrifice, familiar with fighting, that they had a strong sense of patriotism. They had a strong sense of moral responsibility to themselves, their family, their country, et cetera. And now you're talking about a world where I don't think anybody believes that we have that same sense as widespread throughout the population, given some of the things that

we're complaining about right now and some of the things that people honestly believe are really key issues. And so it's weird to look at where the power dynamic is going to be from a cultural standpoint at that point. I think moving forward, if we look back at home and we can see what's going on culturally, I wouldn't – I'm not so convinced the US is going to be a major player in international conflict the same way they are now. Or I think it's obvious that that influence is waning. But let's bring it back home and talk about the – wrap it back to the cultural issues. So you had – we were talking about schools and school choice early on.

So I really want to talk to you about this and get your thoughts on what's going on with Youngkin. You're in Virginia, obviously. Education played a huge role in a Republican victory in Virginia. So I'm wondering if you can just bring us up to speed on what's been going on, how you got involved, and where do you think people are in this critical race theory stuff? So this is what's interesting, right? So I think for the first time I can remember in my lifetime, Republicans won an election in what has been increasingly a blue state on the issue of education. Yes. Right?

Usually, what do Republicans win on? Jobs. We win on taxes, right? We win on regulations. We don't win on education, right? That's always been like a Democrat issue. They always come off as the ones that are more – well, what happened was – and I got to kind of set the scene here. Democrats took control of the House of Delegates, the Virginia Senate, and the governor for the first time in like over 20 years in Virginia.

And there was one Democrat, Delegate Lopez, who represents, I think it's Arlington. And he had told people at this one campaign stop, because if you give us everything, we will accomplish a lifetime's worth of work in an afternoon. And keep in mind, for 20 years, they hadn't had this sort of power. So they got to run on a lot of aspirational things like, we're going to equality and social justice and equity. Like, okay, what does any of that mean? But it sounds good. And we're mad at Republicans right now. So they got into power and they did it.

I mean, he was not lying. They did as far and as fast as they possibly could within a two-year period of time. Then they tried banning guns. Oh, oh, brother. There was a debate between me and Delegate Mark Levine. The same people that said, nobody wants to take your guns. All we want is common sense gun control. And then 52 out of 54 Democrats voted for a bill that would have made you a criminal for owning a 15-round magazine.

So a low-capacity magazine. A 15-round magazine. Wow. That's horribly low capacity. In fact, every single magazine you would have owned, that would have been a class one misdemeanor with up to a year in jail and $2,500. So it wasn't just we're going to get rid of AR-15s. They wanted to

retroactively make people criminals. Yes. Yes. And they voted for this. This is not like, oh, some crazy loon passed this and they killed it in a subcommittee. No, they voted for this. All right. So that's where they're at. And then you saw the same thing. They did this whole like cultural competency training, right? Because who could be against cultural competency? Just like who could be against equity? Who could be against tolerance? And what this did is it set up this

process whereby teachers in Virginia, in order to get their license or renew their license, had to go through cultural competency training. Well, when you go onto the Roadmap to Equity in Virginia Education website, that's where you found out that, oh, wow, there's Ibram X. Kendi. There's Robin DiAngelo. There's Southern Poverty Law Center, like all pushing CRT. Now, what happened was his parents were starting to see this stuff arrive in their classrooms. Their kids are coming home and they're making comments about it. At the same time, Democrats had removed reporting requirements for principals for certain criminal acts happening within a school. And so you have this perfect storm, especially in northern Virginia.

Loudoun County was the hot spot for this, where students are coming home and talking about what's going on, and the parents aren't liking it. And then you had certain equity restrictions that were taking place where now certain students that would have qualified before are not making it into certain schools or certain programs. Then you have a case where now you have a – I don't even know if it was a transgender female. It was a biological male that was wearing a dress, right?

That was going – This person wasn't trans. Yeah. OK. It was just a guy. A guy wearing a dress. Yeah. So that was wearing a dress, right? This person wasn't trans. Yeah, okay. It was just a guy. Guy wearing a dress. Yeah, so that was, real quick, the news was reporting that it was a transgender student, but if you actually read the details, it was just a student who wore a dress and was going

in the girl's bathroom. It was a male student, not transgender. So in the girl's bathroom, so here's the big part that kind of blew up was you had a father that went to a school board meeting and they were mad about a lot of things. CRT was part of it. They were mad about like some of the bathroom issues and stuff like that. And the superintendent got asked, um, or the president school board or whatnot asked about, have there been any assaults in bathrooms? Cause some of the parents were mad about this idea of like, why is a biological male going into a bathroom? And they said, you know, no.

Well, this is the part where people hate politics, and this is the reason why. There was an ongoing investigation about that. So technically nobody had been convicted of something, right? But they sure as hell had had an incident. It was actually like forcible sodomy. And then that student right that student was quietly transferred to a different school so they didn't call the police the parents

were notified but that student was transferred to a different school where that student then re-offended geez wow right and and was actually has now been convicted and is one of the few minors that we have in virginia that has actually been put on the um registry yeah the sexual registry sexual uh offenders registry, the sexual offenders registry. And the judge even said after reading the psych review that it was terrifying. Wow. Right? So again, you have this perfect storm of all this taking place.

But what was incredible was the Democrats' response to it. The Democrats' response to it was at first was CRT is nowhere in our classroom. And then people started to see it. And it was like, well, no, it is in my classroom. My kid just said this. You're a racist. Right? Well, there's stuff going on in my kid's school with respect to the bathroom.

This is not a statement. You're a bigot. And I think what happened, and they weren't saying this to like hardcore conservative parents, right? We've all heard it before. It's not in county. This is Democrat. This is in Fairf parents, right? We've all heard it before. This is not in county. This is Democrat. This is in Fairfax, right? You have now told an Indian immigrant family that they're racist because they're concerned about what's going on in their kid's school.

And real quick, these school boards are like white progressives telling minorities they're the racists. Yes. Or the sexist or the bigot or whatever it is. And I think what happened was that you had a lot of people that they weren't engaged in politics. You know, they probably voted for Joe Biden because they thought, you know, they hated Trump's Twitter account. Right. But they had a real issue that they thought that they could bring up. They bring this up to their elected representatives.

And what they found out was, no, no, no. The moment you ran af foul of the democrat narrative the progressive narrative you're a racist you're a bigot you're a sexist not only that the father of that uh the girl who was attacked was like violently dragged out wasn't he oh yeah no no he was he was arrested at that school board meeting and it was funny because that was one of the events that the department that the school board association right the national school board association wrote a letter to the Department of Justice, and that's where they were trying to use

counterterrorism law in order to crack down at these meetings and school board meetings. And it wasn't until a reporter, I think with the Daily Wire, actually bothered to go to the man, go to the father and say, so why did you do this?

And he goes, because my daughter was raped in a Loudoun school bathroom. And they lied about it and they covered it up and they transferred the kid. Loudoun County is literally 20 seconds from here. Yes. Okay, okay. Figuratively, it's about one minute.

If you're going a million miles an hour, it's like next door. It literally is. It is next door. Time and space are the same thing. It's like a half mile maybe. You drive down the road, you make one left turn. Yep. One left turn from here and you're in Loudoun County.

And so it's big though. It's big though. Yeah, no, it's a big county. It's the wealthiest county in America, right? But you go to, what is it? What is it? Is it Leesburg or what's the? Yeah, Leesburg.

Leesburg. You go down there and I mean, it's Democrat. Yeah. It is DC suburbanite Democrat types. I was surprised to hear this story because I'm like, when I'm hearing parents rising up, I'm like, these aren't Republicans, man. There were. I mean, there were Republicans too. But it wasn't just – if it had been just Republicans, we wouldn't have seen the election results we did.

I just mean to say that, like, the narrative of the only people complaining are republicans this is this was regular suburbanite families yeah you know of many different backgrounds but it wasn't just republicans complaining about something the media was trying to claim the far right was doing it and white supremacists and then uh we went we went to a skate park uh there's a really great skate park down there catoctin and we saw uh like a block away was a bunch of parents holding up signs protesting about this. And I'm like, just regular looking people. But you're in a blue area. So that was what was really surprising to me about the whole fiasco.

So what is that? So Youngkin actually runs on school choice, right? He doesn't just run on the typical thing the politicians are, we're going to increase teacher pay, right? We're going to have more money for education. He said, no, we're going to run on school. We're going to actually give parents more control over their child's education. And he wins on it. And this is like, and so we see a series of bills that come through the Virginia House of Delegates, the Republican controlled House of Delegates. We got education savings accounts. We got

regional charter school bills. We've got lab school bills. We've got, you know, I had a bill. I had a bill called the safer schools bill. And what it did is says we have this grant for scholarship funds, which means if a company wants to donate money for scholarships for students to be able to go to school, they can do it there. They get a tax credit for it, whatever, right? Every state has one. We got one too. I said, okay, I want to make another type of student eligible for this. And the type of student that will be eligible is a student that has been assaulted, beaten up, bullied. You've got to go through a process. Principal's got to investigate.

They've got to sign off on it. But if they sign off on it, we will make funds available through this scholarship fund for the child to go to another public school. Right? I mean, I had some big school choice bills. This was a really minor one. I figured let's do some good for some kids that are getting beat up at school or like this young girl that got raped in a bathroom, right? Let's do some stuff to help them.

Democrats killed that on a straight party line vote. Wow. I can't say I'm surprised though. Oh, well, and that's what we found is that with every single substantive school choice bill that we did this year, it would pass out of the House of Delegates, and then it would go and die in the Senate. Do you think that the Senate needs to be reorganized so that every citizen gets a vote? No. That's just not the Senate.

I'm just so tired of putting all that power in the hands of 400 people. Well, he's talking about the state Senate. How many people are in the state Senate of Virginia? 40. 40 people get to decide the life or death of a Democratic bill. Well, technically, no. People vote for their senators.

I mean, look, I don't think the problem is the Senate. The problem is the senators. It's who we have. I'll just say real quick, make sure you're voting in your local elections. Make sure you're voting in your primaries. Yeah, those senators have a lot of power. So it's 19 Republicans, 21 Democrats, right?

That's the Virginia Senate. But it doesn't matter because when you get to their subcommittees, like in the House of Democrats, let me just explain this process real quick. I know it's kind of boring, but it's important for people to know. Bill comes in, speaker assigns it to a committee, right? Goes to a 70%, like 50 to 70% of the bills that you see die, die in a subcommittee somewhere. It's not debated on the house floor, dies in a subcommittee. And it makes sense because there's a lot of stupid ideas and we don't all need to look at them. But anyways,

so what you get a bill from like some rant, anyone? No, no, no, no. You gotta be a legislator to submit a bill. We submit a bill gets drafted and then we look at all the bills and we say, okay, this bill is for education, education committee. And the subcommittee will be like, this one's not good enough. No, no, no. Subcommittee sits down. So I'm a subcommittee chairman for public safety. All the gun bills come to my subcommittee.

So you have a certain number of Republicans, a certain amount of Democrats on the subcommittee, and we hear the bill first. And if we have a majority of that subcommittee that likes the bill, it goes up to the next level. But in the the house we do proportional representation so we've got 52 republicans 48 democrats so if you look at our committees that's that's reflected in the numbers that we have in the committees the senate 19 republicans 21 democrats you'll go to a senate committee they'll have like nine democrats and three republicans yeah the federal government's like that too so that too. So there's no way you can get... So even though you...

If you make a good enough argument... It's like internal gerrymandering. If you make a good enough argument, you might be able to get something out of a Republican-controlled House committee because we only got a majority of two. On the Senate side, they will stack those committees.

And even if you can get enough votes on the floor of the Senate, they will make sure it goes to a committee where it will never see the light of day. Do you think that they intentionally have senators pick the committees so that there isn't a democratic voice because of the compounding effect of democracy that mob rule can take over? No, it's just part of this is whoever the controlling party is in a particular legislative body, they want to be able to control the outcome for what legislation makes it to the floor and what gets sent over to the other body. But the thing is, is what we did in Virginia on the House of Delegates side, what we said is like, look, there needs to be proportional representation on these committees because it's a more accurate reflection of what the people actually elected.

But you can manipulate that committee process pretty bad. And again, it's not every committee, but it's, it's been frustrating. I think it should be like, I talked with Thomas Massey about this. We got to do that in the federal government as well. It's ridiculous that the Democrats win by 51% and then they pick all the

committee chairs because of that one. And they make sure the ones that matter the most, they have the majority on. Yeah. And then they can shuffle people into the, the, you know, Oh,

the Republicans can have a committee we don't care about. Yeah, it's got to change. So did you guys change it in Virginia? We changed it. So we still select. So the majority party gets the committee chairs. I mean, that just happens. It wouldn't make sense for it to not happen that way.

The difference is that we don't stack our committees. Who picks how they get? The Speaker. Most people don't understand how much power the Speaker of the House has. The Speaker of the House has an enormous amount of power. And the Speaker will say, you have to pick three Republicans and two Democrats for this, so then they look and they decide? In Virginia, yeah.

Again, because we have proportional representation, it's like, okay, you're going to have this many Republicans, this many Democrats, blah, blah, blah. Do you see people change party affiliation on paper so that they can get into a committee when they're actually still the same person? It doesn't work that way. You got to run for the party's nomination, get elected that. You could theoretically try to switch when you're there

but that doesn't happen. Will you propose a bill to pass constitutional carry in Virginia? I carried the bill this year for constitutional carry. And the Democrats... So yeah, we had a House version, we had a Senate version.

The Senators killed the Senate version right away and so ours didn't go forward. Because every once in a while we'll do that. We'll look at bills. No, I carried a lot of gun legislation. I usually do. Virginia's not so bad. Maryland is nightmarish.

The laws up here. But man man constitutional care would be something great because we live in the tri-state and so i i live in west virginia we work in maryland west virginia is fantastic oh yeah you can you can conceal carry you can carry west virginia's past great school choice legislation they've got i mean no they've done a lot of good work some of the pushback i've heard on school choice is that if everyone has the opportunity to send their kid to whatever school they want in the surrounding area, that a lot of people will go to the good school first, and all these other schools that need students for money are going to go out of business or get worse. This is why you should fund students and not a particular building. Again, we've gotten so used to the way education has been monopolized and run by the government that it's hard to imagine another way to do it. But think about, again, think about the way you buy anything else.

You don't have a government store you go to in order to buy something. Let's hear that story about the grocery store story. So the way I've described this before is we all agree education is important. We also agree eating is important. So let's imagine that the government at some point said, you know what? Eating is so important that here's how we're going to do this. We're going to set up thousands of government grocery stores all over the country. And then you're going to be assigned a government grocery store based off of your address.

Now, when you show up to the government grocery store, you're not going to actually shop for your groceries. Your groceries will be decided for you based off of a government board and the caloric intake or the nutritional necessities of your particular family. Now, if you don't like something in the grocery bag, not a big deal. All you have to do is show up to a bunch of board meetings or go and lobby your state legislature in order to get a different product into your grocery bag or out of your grocery bag. Oh, by the way, none of the employees working at this government grocery store will be rewarded based off of creativity, ingenuity, or work ethic. They will only be rewarded based off of seniority. Does anybody think that is a grocery store you would want? Would you want that to be your grocery store option? No. Negative. No. I haven't had a single

person, surprisingly enough, I have not had a single person yet go, oh my gosh, that sounds like a great idea. Utopia. I don't know about Ian, but I'm in favor of single person – surprisingly enough, I have not had a single person yet go, oh my gosh, that sounds like a great idea. But I think – Utopia. I don't know about Ian, but I'm in favor of school choice. I am. I'm interested in learning more about it. But here's the point. I go back and I say, okay, but what I just described is exactly what we did with public education.

You are assigned a government school based off of your address. When you show up to the government school, you don't have any say over the curriculum, over the class, or very, very limited say over what you can do. If you have a problem with what's being taught or with what's not being taught, great. Try to reelect your school board or maybe go to the state legislature and try to get something changed there. And by the way, none of your teachers are rewarded based off of how good a job they do. They're just rewarded off of seniority. Not to mention the fact, now again, everyone can then see in that example that, okay, maybe there is a better way to run education. How would that look? And the thing I say was, okay, well, are you happy with the grocery store options you have? Yeah. Are you happy with the options that you have to buy a smartphone? Are you happy with the options you have to go and do other educational opportunities?

Yeah. Okay. Well then maybe that's because when you as the customer of the product or service have the power, the rest of the world is trying to get you to be their customer. Yeah. Okay. The government doesn't have that incentive. I don't need you to be my customer. I don't need you to like what I'm doing. Would the schools be able to be like, Hey, if you come to our school, it'll be easier to graduate. Or will there be some sort of government oversight? Here's the thing. Is that what a parent wants for their kid? I't know i don't know what they want i don't even know if they they want education i think primarily they want them to understand how to learn they want them to understand how to learn and then really what they want is they want them

to be able to learn the basic you know social and economic skills they're going to need you to be an independent adult right and that's your that's oversight mechanism. It's not to say you can't have some government restrictions or guardrails. You can. But the oversight restriction is, no, I as a customer want the best for my child. And now I have the ability to go find what that looks like. That's on the demand side. On the supply side, now all of a sudden you have this huge world where schooling is no longer based off of a government building you go to. Khan Academy. Yes.

Jordan Peterson. If you could divvy up your $18,000 a year stipend amongst the great creators and educators of our time that are on the internet. Yes. That'd be so great. Did you get to meet Matt Walsh when he came down? I did not. That was great. He rented an apartment because they tried –

Yeah, a basement. They tried stopping him. I know the people he rented from, though. So Matt Walsh was going to speak. They're like, oh, you got to be a resident. So he's like, all right. So he rented a basement, I guess. That was great. Brilliant, brilliant. All right, let's go to Super Chats. If you haven't already, smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, share the show with your friends if you really

want to help out. Become a member at timcast.com. Sign up. Get access to our exclusive members-only segments. And your membership will also keep our journalists funded. We'll now go to your Super Chats. So get your Super Chats in. We'll read what you guys have to say. Oh, here's an interesting name. Trinidad and a Shop of Depression says, Nick Freitas, big fan of yours

from Culpeper, Virginia. Glad to see my rep on one of my favorite shows. Thank you very much. Absolutely. And thanks for saying we're a favorite show. I appreciate it. All right. Joseph LaLiberte says, Nick has two great speeches. One about a green beret and the other about gun control. This dude is awesome.

I love this guy. He's my hero. Wow. I appreciate it. You know Ben Stewart? You have a great audience. I know, right? One day I want to get you and Ben Stewart next to each other and break the internet because I think you guys look so similar. That will break the internet. That will break the internet.

I get told I look like the guy off of Outer Banks that's always trying to steal the gold from the kid. I don't know. Stealing the gold. Yeah. The Bros Durham says, hey, Nick, why don't you come down to Hampton Roads and rep for us? So don't get me wrong.

Hampton Roads, wonderful place. I briefly lived there. But I do enjoy the Piedmont of Virginia. But you've got some good people down there in the Hampton Roads area. You've got A.C. Cardoza. I hung out down there for a few months. Tim Anderson. Yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun.

Hampton Roads, man. Go hang out in Norfolk a little bit. Virginia's a big place. Yeah, it is. Very big. Let's grab some Super Chats. David Sanchez says, fifth time trying to super chat.

Well, I got you now, buddy. In the future, if Biden does nothing substantial to protect, what does that say? To protect the world? I don't know. You think there is anything

the next Congress election can force him to address or aid Taiwan? I don't know. i think there's like a typo in you know you tried five times but there's like a weird typo i can't read what yeah that is strange is there anything the next congress congressional election can force him to address i don't know if so much it's about the congressional election i think it's public pressure and if they see the polls clearly the cdc is now oh, we're going to pull back on the masks and everything.

Yeah, because they know they're spiraling. Oh, yeah. I thought it was funny that it wasn't the medical science that changed on Max. It was the political science with respect to the polling that caused them to finally wake up to the fact that maybe this is not a good idea. Hey, we're going to lose an election, huh? Yeah. All right. Gun Griffin says, for Nick, in Vietnam, we weren't prepared for insurgency warfare with General Westmoreland attempting UW, but mainly it was counterinsurgency.

Now it's getting back into the realm of actually trying to fight a large conventional conflict. And we can see the potential for something like that happening with Russia. I think we can recognize the potential for something like that happening with China as well. So I will say that I know it was a concern that was being addressed. But, I mean, let's face it. The United States military has a track record for fighting the strategy of the previous war. And so there's always going to be a learning curve that takes place when you have an officer corps or an NCO corps that has grown up in kind of one

style of fighting, and then you move into a different style. It can be difficult. The one thing I will say is that while the United States military has not always been the best at predicting the next sort of tactics that will be necessary for the next conflict, it does have a track record of adapting usually very quickly in order to overcome. So here's a good one from Vosh. He says, you and others keep saying Trump would have been better. I need to remind you, Hong Kong fell to China under him, so I'm not so sure. Yes, that is a good point. But I would add that was the UK and China having – it was a negotiation in the 90s, I think it was. And so this was a long set up timeline that we knew was going to happen. And it was all done through a legal process with the UK and China.

And there were protests, but it's not the same as Russia invading a sovereign nation. Yeah, I mean I think it's important to say at that point, Hong Kong was part of China's jurisdiction. There were certain agreements with respect to how their government would be run for like another 50 years. That's a little bit differently than the full-on invasion of a sovereign country. I mean, but again, it still was horrible. Random username says, when Trump says he will bomb the golden turrets, he's talking about bombing churches. Yes.

I should have clarified that. Maybe I assumed people understood. He's talking about the steeples or whatever. The spires and stuff. He's talking about blowing up churches in a civilian city. And maybe Vladimir Putin was like, this guy's nuts. This guy's nuts. Yeah.

Yeah. A little nuts. Yeah. Man. Brooke Harrington says, I have a coworker with family in Russia. I'm told they were bombed by Ukraine first two days ago. Any validity to this? What?

I don't know if that's true. I can tell you this. With RT going down, you better believe in the West they're going to try and restrict information coming out of Russia. Yeah. And you better believe Russia is going to try and manipulate you into believing they're being victimized. I think, yeah, both of those statements are absolutely true. The one thing I would question is I don't know what it gets Ukraine to be the initial aggressor with Russia.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's insane. I do not know what would – yeah. Yeah. All right. Marco says, I am from Norway. Russia has always done military practice outside Nordic Sea for like 20 years. Never been problematic.

Even Russia helped Norway under World War II on the Nordic side of Norway. Interesting. I love the history of Russia and the United States. It's great because it was like we were enemies, but we worked together to defeat a common enemy. And that's what we should be doing today. Gosh, what the heck? Yeah. Well, the story of East and West Germany? Yeah, well, the story of East

and West Germany is... I mean, the story of the Soviet Union. Brutal. You ever hear the story of Tetris, the video game? No. There's an urban legend about the guy. We've all dated ourselves. Basically, there was a game in Russia they were playing where

you would take the Tetris shapes, but just place them. And then some dude made the block-falling version. And it's like, how do game in Russia they were playing where you would take the Tetris shapes but just place them. And then some dude made the block falling version. Yeah. And it's like, how do you in Russia make a product that can be commercialized internationally? How does it even work? Yeah. And so I guess like Russia, it was communist and they were like, it's communist.

So we get, you know. But apparently everyone in the West just ripped them off anyway and they're like lawsuits. Crazy story. Wow. There's a two-player Tetris on the NES that got sued into obliv sued into oblivion it was made by some other company that was always crazy to me like why would anyone respect an international lawsuit during a cold war yeah you know some guys like i made a video game it's like well he won the lawsuit right it's like the bureaucrats are still trying to make money off of it yeah that's what war is for those guys. Let's grab some more Super Chats. Oh, people are saying my camera's blue.

Yeah, I don't know why that happens sometimes. Yeah, well, I am blue. Dab-a-dee-dab-a-die, says Josh. Thanks, Josh. That's the Eiffel 70. Eiffel 77, I think. Is that what it was? Is that it?

Yeah, they wrote that. They brought it back for one of the Iron Mans, right? I love that song. CJ says, when Trump took office, ISIS was the top foreign policy issue. He set aside our differences with Russia to solve that problem, and the deep state hated it. Meanwhile, the Minsk agreement stewed. Yeah, because I think the U.S. was hoping that ISIS would destabilize Syria so that we could get a more favorable regime in, and then we could build our pipeline through Syria. But Trump getting rid of ISIS, while the right thing,

yeah, I think the bureaucrats, the military industrial complex were upset. Weird stuff went down with ISIS and the Syrian rebels. I got to tell you that. Clarify, too. It was Eiffel 65. That song blew. Some number. Great song.

C. Griff says, it's time for the U.S. to leave the U.N. It's nothing but global bureaucracy and sanctions, which never really do anything to determine countries like Russia and China.

So here's where I disagree. The U.N. does a lot. Like, for instance, they will write strong notes of protest. They do, yes. To Israel. And may I just add, before we continue.

I've heard they've wagged their finger about the un relentlessly and shaken their fist quite fiercely stomped their foot perhaps guys guys the un security council revolution uh resolution concerning condemning sorry i can't read russia for the invasion of ukraine has failed due to the russian vote and china has abstained so the un is doing great stuff over there. Oh, no, no. Good work, UN. You think we should get out of the UN? Well, not only have they done great work there, but they have done great work for the parking situation

in New York City as well. Yeah. No, like I honestly, and again, this is someone that I'm all for foreign engagement. I'm all for, I think it should be primarily economic and cultural, you know, as little as possible um but i look at the united nations and what is it doing at this point other than giving an air of legitimacy to brutal dictatorships that don't have genuine democracies are regularly trampling on people's civil liberties and like the number one thing the

un does is pass resolutions condemning Israel. I'm sorry. I have a hard time seeing the point. Are you familiar with the non-aligned movement? No. Isn't this amazing? It's the other UN. It's global.

It's 120 countries are in this non-aligned movement. It's the countries that aren't in the UN, basically. All of Africa, South America. I think Mexico's in it. Iran. It was headquartered in Iran. They're all in the UN. Yeah. Oh, no. They're not's in it. Iran. It was headquartered in Iran. They're all in the UN. Yeah. Yeah.

Mexico. Oh, no. They're not blue. Check them out. This is really the non-aligned movement. And you can get a map of it. Interesting. There's light blue and dark blue.

So Mexico's light blue. Well, I got to read. This is a very, very good super chat here. Turk, say no to war. Longwell says, dude, Biden hitting a speed bag was a total 100. Wow. Critical success. Good stuff. Oh, yeah.

For sure. Thanks, Turk. I got you, B. Critical success. Good stuff. Oh, yeah, for sure. Thanks, Turk. I got you, B. All right. Thrawn says, can't show you Joe Biden hitting a speed bag, but I've seen a few pics of Hunter hitting a speed ball. Oh, that's right. That makes sense. I'd be fine with a deep fake of Biden hitting a speed bag at this point.

I just want to see it happen. A video. Really fast, you know, like you see his muscles twitching in his arms. Good propaganda. Something from Rocky 3 with going up steps. Kevin D. Sturmtruppen says, the Vietnam story you're referring to is

Operation Wandering Soul. There's plenty of uploads of the actual declassified tapes the CIA made to blast on speakers. Supposedly gave U.S. servicemen a bit of a fright too. That would be so cool. I think we should just do that in our woods right outside. We've got big speakers

and just play like wailing sounds. And then just act like you don't know what your neighbors are talking about. Did you hear that thing? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it. People like apologizing to you for what they did and stuff. That would be hilarious. I shouldn't have broken into Tim's house. I'm sorry for betraying him.

He's trapped. Don't drink the water. Oh my gosh. All right. Dragon Lady says, evening y'all. No Cast Castle today? That makes me sad. Need my bucko fix.

Oh gosh, me too. Yeah. Nick was sick. I just hugged him earlier. Yeah. Oh, Nick wasn't feeling well today? Yeah. No, he was sick the other day.

So yeah, go to youtube.com slash castcastle if you want to see what it's like inside the Cast Castle operation, how we make all of the, what is it? How you make the sausage? How the sausage is made. Yeah. All of the sausage. It will shock and devastate you. It's horrible.

Yes. I'm just kidding. And that's why I showed up today. I was told there would be sausage. Oh, yeah. It's true. You were right. He was.

I'm sorry. There's leftover pizza from Papa John's. Oh, yeah. Close enough. There you go. That's good. And a lot of chicken nuggets or whatever. True. Chicken wads. Chicken wads. Yeah, wads of chicken. We buy their wads of chicken. Alright, let's grab some more. Let's grab some more. Uh-oh. People are mad at Ian.

Mitch Marco says, I don't know what's more annoying, Ian claiming to love the art of movies despite not seeing a movie made in the last 20 years or getting caught up on words that have nothing to do with the route word. The root word? The second one's more annoying. The one where I get caught up on words is more annoying.

Here's a good one. Jay Schartzer says, Tim, bring Lex Friedman on when he's back. He went to Russia to talk sense to Putin. Don't know if that will work out, but he's a smart guy, so who knows? Love Lex. I mean, yeah, I'd love to, but Lex is a super busy guy. Yeah.

You know, people who already have shows, you know, you got to work around their schedule, and especially someone like Lex, he's got a big show. But I will say, sometimes it's more important. I think he would come on

and report the conversation and talk about it. Now's the time. Lex is always invited. Of course. Yeah, he hit me up once about, you know, doing something with his show,

and then it never happened. He's too busy. Love him. Well, no, I was. Yeah, because he hit me up once about doing something with his show and then it never happened. He's too busy. Love him. Well, no, I was. Yeah, because he hit me up and I was like, bro, I don't know if I can do it. Tim went with the power play there. I'm sorry, I'm busy. I can't go on your show. No, Alex is fantastic. I'd love to.

I was busy and then I got back to him and I was like, you know what, I think I can do it. And he's like, now I can't. And I'm like, hit me up got back to him, and I was like, you know what? I think I can do it. And he's like, now I can't. Now I can't. You know, hit me up anytime. It would be a great conversation. But I'd love to have him. That would be fantastic.

All right. Adrian says, do you know anything about the Ukrainian-U.S. biolabs that Russia hit? Love the show. Keep up the good work. I don't think they did. There was a meme showing a map saying, like, here's where all the biolabs are, and here's where Russia attacked, but they didn't line up.

We talked about this last night. Yeah, the after show. Yeah, they didn't line up. I'm no fan of Snopes, but Snopes pointed that out, too. Like, the maps aren't the same. Like, the attacks aren't in the same places. That's Ukraine, Pennsylvania.

It's a different place. It's different. Yeah, it's a little different. Yeah, so John Boyce, as Lex Friedman announced today, he's heading to Ukraine to speak to friends and then to Russia to speak to Putin. Don't think it's possible, but if he does, it's crazy. Your thoughts?

I think it's a bad idea. For Lex, I'd say it's a bad idea. Oh, I don't think so. He's been planning it for a while with Putin. They've been – at least he talked about it a couple weeks ago. Well before all this stuff. So he's actually with Vladimir Putin. Yeah.

That's good then. That's absolutely a fantastic idea'm i'm thinking about him going into ukraine because i wouldn't uh you you you gotta you gotta have a certain understanding of urban conflict i mean you know what are your thoughts on war would you recommend i don't i don't know lex's background but i recommend urban out of all the conflicts would you recommend i mean like would you lex friedman's background I don't think is in conflict. I don't know if he has that experience. I personally wouldn't recommend somebody to go into a conflict if they don't have any experience.

No, it's generally a bad idea, especially something like this where it's very fast moving. You're going to have a lot of – again, as the Russian lines move forward and you have like pockets of troops that are in urban areas as as they hand out weapons to their civilian population to be able to fight back, you're going to have a lot of people running around in plain clothes and whatnot just because it's the nature of warfare. So if you're running around in plain clothes, sorry, dude. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, right? Maybe you want to be wearing a t-shirt and shorts or just like a Speedo and nothing else because – no, they're not going to – if they see a guy who looks like a weirdo – Okay. So in that area of the world, running around in a Speedo and nothing else in the winter, it's pretty normal.

I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm guessing east. Well, here's – I'm obviously kidding. Nice try, Speedo. The issue is if you're a regular person in plain clothes wearing a jacket, they're going to kill you. You need like a Hawaiian shirt. Because you could be somebody who's armed.

You could be part of the conflict and they don't know. And no one wants to take the chance. If they don't know you and you're not from their neighborhood, don't expect to be able to walk through there. You can't speak the language either. I mean, that's a huge – I was in Maidan during the protests in 2013 and in 2014. And eventually I got to the point

where they built these massive barricades around Independent Square, whatever they call it. And I was walking around with my British producers from Vice. We walked out. When we came to walk back in, we got surrounded by like 15 Ukrainian guys

who were yelling at us in Ukrainian. And the only thing I had to do was say like, American, speak English. Sorry. And then someone came in and started speaking Ukrainian yelling at us in ukrainian yeah and the only thing i do is they're like american speak english yeah sorry and then someone came in and started speaking ukrainian and backed them off and they were like american journalists and they were like please please please come in come in yeah the guys with me i'm like they're british they're not american but it was cool and actually we actually got to talk to a former soviet general that was super cool but uh when you go into an area you don't speak the language and they're all yelling at you, let me tell you, man.

I was in Turkey and we went to this neighborhood. They call it like the last anarchist neighborhood of Istanbul. We tried – there was a street where the anarchists were throwing molotovs at cops and the cops were holding the line and firing less lethals. So we went around and went on a side street to try and go in. And we've got, it's me and a guy with a camera and another producer. When all of a sudden a whole bunch of Turkish dudes run up to us, holding Molotovs, screaming at us in Turkish. And one guy holds a Molotov cocktail right up to the side of my face. And my response, I put my hands up. I said nothing. And I just nodded. And I slowly turned and started to walk away. The guys I were with were like kind of more excited.

And I was just like, as we walked, I was like, guys, guys, don't try and speak English in an excited way to somebody who doesn't speak English or is not speaking English to you. Because the only thing they hear is you going, back at them and they might think you're aggressive. So just, you know, put your hands up, nod, and then just walk in the direction they point yeah i would just say man uh vice sent me on some uh

vice had sent me out a couple times into conflict with producers who had no conflict experience i just want to say it is it is exciting maybe the most stressful thing i've ever experienced is knowing that i'm responsible for the life of someone yeah because that doesn't know what they're doing and that's putting me in danger yeah man but i but vice is also you know to to to their credit sent me out with people with way more experience than i have and have. And one of the most heartwarming moments was when I was in Ferguson and the first gunshots went out. And I'm already on the ground. And I look to my right. My producer is already on the ground as well.

And this is a guy who had been trained in firearms, been to war because Vice has some good people. They really do. And I was just like, yeah. I look to my left. There's a guy from ABC News standing up looking around. And he goes, those fireworks? And I'm just like, oh, man. I felt bad for the guy. You ain't going to my left. There's a guy from ABC News standing up looking around, and he goes, those fireworks? And I'm just like, oh, man. I felt bad for the guy.

You ain't going to make it. But you know what I say to them? Do you see anyone holding fireworks? Yeah. No. Do you see anyone holding guns? Yeah. Make an assumption.

That's what we call deductive reasoning. That's the deed. It's crazy, though. I've been on the ground with people where the gunshots ring out, and they stand there like it's just fireworks. Yeah. What do you think you are? You know what's kind of an aside of that? It's because a lot of people, again, one of the benefits of especially going up to the United States is most people, not everyone, most people have grown up in an environment where they really haven't had to experience any sort of conflict or deprivation.

Or gunfire. And so it's this idea of, like, well, that can like well that can't be that like no no it actually can be this that's the craziest thing too as much as america is this gun country people are urban liberals have not heard a gun go off they've heard movies where it's like bang bang or silenced and then you hear a 22 and you know someone who's never heard a gun would be like is that a firecracker going off and it's like no that will kill you yeah yeah man who was it who said you can conquer a nation was abandoned you can conquer a nation with a thousand 22 you know right like ruger 10 22s interesting was it banned maybe it wasn't we were talking to someone who's like a thousand ruger 10 22s can take over a small country like this it's a weapon yeah all right let's grab some more

superchats v rise says the ghost of kiev has been proven to be fake yet many left leftist communities online acknowledge and blatantly say they don't care that it's fake they are still going to believe it thoughts i have not seen any evidence saying it's fake i'm not saying i've seen any evidence to say it's real to be completely honest they're like this is the ghost Kiev. And I'm like, that's just a picture of a fighter jet. It's one picture. Yeah. Like, how is it evidence of any of this being true? Sounds like manipulation.

As far as I can tell, it's not been proven or disproven to me. I'm thinking about, like, what's his name from World War II, the British guy. I don't know why I'm blanking on that. Yeah, that does not narrow it down. The British prime minister. Winston Churchill. Yeah, Churchill was like like it was all about morale uh more like mentality propaganda and keeping people sane like giving them giving

them motivation he would like he had no idea if they're going to win or lose but he would tell them they were going to win yeah yeah and here's every night here's a good one from damian simmons in revelations the dragon gives power to the beast The tail of the dragon will rain down on three-fourths of the world. Could China be the dragon and the beast be Russia? Maybe. Interesting. The dragon is humble. I'll tell you that.

I don't know. What do they call China, Russia? The dragon bear? Yeah. The dragon bear. That's what we call them. The bear. Rick Muppet says,

At least one letter of Mark was issued in the Civil War. They are now banned by international treaty, Paris Declaration. U.S. never signed that treaty. Okay. I was thinking of this earlier. If the hackers are the modern day. I didn't realize the Civil War. They are now banned by international treaty, Paris Declaration. U.S. never signed that treaty. Okay. I was thinking of this earlier. If the hackers are the modern day – I didn't realize the Civil War. That's a good – yeah, I thought it was – Madison was the last one.

If the hackers are the modern day pirates being hired with letters of mark, then what about the people that are controlling the algorithms at the top of the companies that are being paid to change the algorithms? Are they also pirates? Are they being hired? ccp is controlling tiktok and in china from this is what i've learned in the last week or so the algorithm is showing like science technology and it's just media they're showing media to the people no no the the analogy here is just that's the media in the united states the media was completely on board with the war effort and the government would go to them be be like, don't report these things.

They'd be like, you've got to cheat. So should we consider them pirates, like for hire? No. If they're doing what they're told? I don't know. We were talking about aggressive action toward – I mean there's a long-term relationship between governments and media where they'll essentially say restrict certain information or they'll classify it a certain way so they can't report it, or they'll just voluntarily self-censor. But letters of mark, that's more – it's like I'm going to take this hacker and I want this organization tracked and the way you're going to do it is

and again, I want you to hack all their bank accounts and if you hack their bank accounts, you can keep some or whatever. Or not even that, be like, here are the targets we want hit and we won't come after you for hitting them. What about like, we want you to show this algorithm here and this algorithm here. But you're talking about massive

corporations that work with government. That's not the same thing. Think of a mark as almost like a bounty. Yes. That's a good way to say it. So if the US government has a bunch of corporations that produce weapons for it, that's just

the crown's bowier or whatever. Probably the most famous privateer in history, Sir Francis Drake. Yeah. I'm concerned that a corporation won't become – go after one of the bounties. I wonder if that will start happening, that governments will pay corporations to take Mark. They don't need to. You have like – you have a group of three dudes hanging out in an apartment in Moscow and the government is just like, oh, won't someone rid me of this priest?

Wink, wink. And they go, you got it, boss. And then they do it. And then Russia says, oh, those pesky hackers. Why would they do this? Can't get mad at us. We'll arrest them if we find out who did it. And then they don't.

Of course they won't. Who did it? Yep. They want to be able to disavow and say we had nothing to do with it. You can't. Don't look at us. Plausible deniability. Well, and there's overt and covert letters of mark.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. You can be overt about it. Like, and there's overt and covert letters of mark. Oh, interesting. Yeah, you can be overt about it. Like, yep, I put a bounty. Which is like, what was that military company that we had hired guns in the Middle East for a long time? Yeah, Blackwater. They changed their name at some point. Well, that wasn't even letter of mark.

Now you're just hiring a company to provide a certain degree of certain set of services that they're permitted to do. And most of it was like security services for like bases or dignitaries or things like that so like that would be more mercenary just mercenary work it's it's interesting because mercenary has like an actual definition and then it also has kind of like a colloquial understanding or like a popular understanding of it um so there there was like a lot of what we think of when we think of mercenaries is like literally like the swiss guards or something like that where you have an element of soldiers or troops that will essentially fight for the highest bidder or whatnot. Then you have people that are paid to provide military services.

But it's not as if they're just going to the higher bidder. It's not like you just go to whoever. It's not like one day we're working for the U.S. government, and the next day, the cartels. Who knows? Right? So I think there's some distinction between the two, if that makes sense. All right. Chris Skenapieko says,

supposedly the former U.K. president, Petro Poroshenko, confirmed the ghost of Kiev is real. But he has a pretty good reason to push the lie if it is a lie. It's propaganda. What's the story of the Ghost of Kiev? It's an ace fighter pilot. Took out six Russian fighter jets in dogfights over Kiev. The videos show there's dogfights happening over Kiev.

And I've just not seen any evidence that this is a single pilot who took out six fighter jets. But a cool story. Oh, yeah. But it's a little bit like I have confirmed the story that I am awesome. Right, right. It's like the Red Baron. But he actually had like locked down 100 kills or something. They need these stories. But you know what?

It just goes to show that the hero's journey, the story of strength and masculinity resonates with people. They're making modern day heroes. I'm all for it, man. I mean, the Ghost of Kiev is a cool story story if this is someone defending their home it's not an invasion it's defensive and and it's it's the underdog fighting back and taking out the aggressive force i'm like it's a cool story yeah and if at the end of the day it's going to inspire

some kids to be better people to defend their families their friends their homes i dig it you know what i don't like about aggression and defense is that you can have a country that is meddling other places with like technology and not sending a troop and then you're basically the aggressor at that point even though you haven't moved a troop and so if you get attacked you can't claim that you're the you're defending yourself if you were out there screwing with people now they're retaliating i don't think ukraine was invading russia i don't know well the u.s has been meddling and I think it's like a proxy. Yeah, but as much as I think Joe Biden's crooked with the deals he's worked and the illegal quid pro quo and all that stuff, trying to buy favors and influence with cash, Vladimir Putin had every opportunity to do the exact same.

He could have gone to the president of Ukraine. I think it was to Poroshenko. He could have gone to any one of these people and said, the US has offered you a billion dollars in loans, I'll give you a billion dollars in loans as well. The problem was, my understanding,

having been on the ground in Ukraine and talked to some of the people, and I still am regular in communication with a friend of mine who's there, is that they don't like Russia. The Holodomor. These people are like, the Soviet Union staged a genocide

and it was it was primarily russia staging a genocide over the ukrainian people stolen you're it's exactly you're not you're it's going to be hard pressed to get popular support across the board and so what was happening was the u.s was playing their influence games russia was playing their influence games but a lot of people in the country were still like we'd rather be in the eu not to mention for a lot of people in Ukraine, they were hoping that getting into the EU meant they could migrate out of the country and go get jobs in higher paying countries. So when you look at what happened with the EU, people from Poland, where the GDP was lower, moved to the UK, where the GDP was higher, and we're making more money now.

People in Ukraine were hoping for the same thing, that getting in the EU would raise up all of their wages and bring in more money. And Russia wanted them to join the trade federation. He didn't have the influence. So what does he do? Like a whiny baby, he invades. Is he going to be out of office soon? What happened?

Because he was prime minister. I don't know about that. Something tells me their government structure doesn't work quite the same as theirs. Yeah, he just keeps bouncing back and forth. I've been kind of defending like, hey, Russia is a federation of states. But like, dude, if the dude seized control of the government, it's a dictatorship now. He's supposedly the richest guy on the planet. Yeah.

Well, my friends, if you haven't already, smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends, and go to TimCast.com and become a member to help support our work. Your membership keeps the show sustained, keeps all of our journalists employed, and you'll get access to our exclusive members-only segments from this show. You can follow us at TimCast IRL basically everywhere. You can follow me at TimCast. Nick, you want to shout anything out? No.

Well, again, lovely meeting all of you, and thank you very much for having me on. Yeah, thanks for coming. We've got a couple of programs that we've been working on. One is Making the Argument with Nick Freitas. One of the things that we do on there is we actually try to equip people to be able to make better arguments for free markets, for individual liberty. One of the things that we do that's kind of unique on that, we actually highlight bad conservative arguments. Because that's one thing that drives me nuts is watching my own side make really bad arguments. And then we've got another program we do called the Why Minutes where we take, you know,

actually one of the issues that we were talking about recently on there is we talk about the environmental policy and stuff like that. And it's always this idea that if only the government intervened more, we'd have better environmental policy. So we like to talk about things like the Aral Sea and how, wow, centralized government power was actually not better for the environment along with all the other things it's not good for. But if you're interested in individual liberty, free markets, all that good stuff, making the argument with Nick Freitas, the Y Minutes. Also, you are Nick for VA on Twitter.

On Twitter. Yeah, we have fun on Twitter and the TikTok too. We got banned from TikTok. So I've been, we went from like all of my, we went from 7,000 followers to 200,000 followers in six months. Whoa. And then all of a sudden, bam, nothing goes to the For You page anymore.

But it is still kind of funny because I like to be able to tell my teenage daughters, hey, how do you feel about the fact that your 42-year-old father has a bigger TikTok? They banned us. I think it was because of Alex Jones. It was. We had Alex on. I don't care. You know, whatever, man.

Yeah, I'm fine with it. Well, hey, I'm Ian Crosland. Check me out at iancrosland.net. I'll see you guys next week. And thank you guys for tuning in this evening. I really enjoyed our talk with Nick Freitas. I forgot to shout out the sign behind me that looks a little crooked. It's actually not.

They made this amazing sign for me. I need to shout out the company that made it. Ian also has one, and then we have the TimCast one. Mine has my cat in the at sign. That's Dip. You can find more of him on my Instagram. Way too much of him on my Instagram. Anyway, I am Sour Patch Lids

on Twitter and Minds.com. We will see all of you over at YouTube.com slash Cast Castle, which will be up tomorrow. And then we'll be back Monday. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you all then.

Bye, guys.