 of his own capabilities and of his administration's capabilities and of America's capabilities. And that's the primary reason, I believe, that he keeps entangling us in all these disastrous foreign adventures, right? He's gotten us into a disaster in Ukraine, which has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainians just a completely unnecessary war. He has put America right in the middle of the Israel versus Arab conflict. And he's been overly provocative with regard to Taiwan. And so we are on the edge of all these disastrous conflicts. And I think I get the primary reason, all right? And because I share some of these same problems, these same tendencies, and that's this vastly exaggerated sense of what's own abilities, all right? Now I do have abilities, right? There are some areas where I'm top 1%, all right? I'm probably better read than 99% of people. I'm probably, there are some areas where I'm better writer than 99% of people. But I've consistently gone through life with a vastly exaggerated sense of my own abilities. And Joe Biden, for whatever reason, he thinks he's some major foreign policy thinker. And in some ways, he's right in that with regard to Afghanistan, Joe Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan. And I believe that was the right policy to follow. Joe Biden counseled Barack Obama against surging in Afghanistan back in 2009. Again, I think that was correct. So Joe Biden has been right at times. But now it is disastrous involvement of us in Ukraine and in Israel in the fight with Hamas. And now Hezbollah, the probably the most important news article that I've read in the last 48 hours is from the Financial Times talking about how Israel warns it can no longer accept Hezbollah on his border. Right? Hezbollah is this Iranian-backed Shia militia that is 10 times as capable, 10 times as disciplined, 10 times as formidable, a force as Hamas. And now Financial Times reports Israel's national security adviser warned that Israel can no longer accept the presence of Hezbollah forces on its northern border and said it will have to act if they continue to pose a threat. Now Hezbollah's got about 150,000 rockets, thousands of which can reach anywhere in Israel. So if Hezbollah decides to let its rockets go, you know, hundreds if not thousands of Israelis will die within hours. So tensions between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese militant group have been running high since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago. Now Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, but it has its own agency. It does not solely take direction from Iran. It's an interesting question, given that the United States has moved such considerable military force to the Middle East, why we have not already attacked Iran, but it does appear that the Biden administration is very eager for a direct war with Iran. So far despite the frequent exchanges which have led to casualties on both sides, Israel Hezbollah has so far avoided being drawn into a full-blown conflict. But Israel's foreign minister said yesterday that Israel could not accept the situation in which residents of Israel's north who evacuated in the early weeks of the war were afraid to return to their homes as they feared Hezbollah's elite Rwandan force could launch a cross-border attack on the north of Israel as a mast did in the south. That's correct. So Israel's had to evacuate about 200,000 of its citizens from the south and the north of the country because it does not feel that it can adequately protect them and no nation state would sit back and allow a powerful threat on its borders, particularly a powerful threat that has repeatedly attacked it like Hezbollah. So here's the exact wording from Israel's foreign minister. We can no longer accept the Rwandan force sitting on the border, the Israeli public understand the situation, the north needs to change and it will change. Hezbollah agrees to change it diplomatically. It's good. If not, we will have to act. We will have to ensure that the situation in the north is different. Wow. So Israel right now is cleaning up. Hamas seems to be making considerable advances. Dozens of Hamas fighters have recently surrendered. Eventually, though, Israel is going to turn its primary attention not to the south and to Gaza, but to the north and Hezbollah. And it may well be forced into a two-front war. Let's get a little theory here from the Duran. Let's talk about a tweet from Tucker Carlson, connected to Project Ukraine and Lloyd Austin and the funding to Project Ukraine. Let me read you what Tucker Carlson posted on Twitter X. The Biden administration is openly threatening Americans over Ukraine in a classified briefing in the House yesterday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin informed members that if they don't appropriate more money for Zelensky, quote, we'll send your uncles, cousins, and sons to fight Russia," end quote. Then Tucker says, pay the oligarchs or we'll kill your kids. And this tweet has received quite a lot of attention. Elon Musk replied, he really said this, question mark. Vidic Ramaswamy also chimed in on this post from Tucker Carlson. I have no doubt that this is true. This absolutely sounds like something the Biden White House or Lloyd Austin would do or say to Congress, because there is just a general freakout, a general panic that is gripping the Biden White House from Biden, Austin to Blinken to Kirby. So I have no doubt that Austin told Congress, if you don't give money to Project Ukraine, then our sons and daughters and cousins, they're going to have to fight the Russians. Because the narrative is that once Russia wins in Ukraine, then they're going to invade all of Europe, all of NATO. That's the narrative. And they've actually said this in the past. They've kind of circled back around to this narrative about Russia invading Europe and recreating the Tsar Empire or the Soviet Union or even going beyond that, capturing France or something like that. So this is a narrative that they've recycled. I have no doubt that this is true. But I don't think it's a shocking revelation. It sounds like something Lloyd Austin would absolutely say to Congress in order to try and get them to deport money to Project Ukraine. Just one final note, three, four days ago, Austin was saying that Congress should give money to Ukraine because it would be good for American jobs. So we've gone from good to American jobs to invading Europe. Anyway, what are your thoughts? I mean, we've had some indirect confirmations about the kind of things that he was saying. I mean, there's one of the people who was there, who was House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCall. He said that Austin said to the Congress people that it was very likely if they didn't fast funding for Ukraine, very likely that it would lead to U.S. troops fighting a war in Europe. If this is a direct quote now, if Vladimir Putin takes over Ukraine, he'll get mold over Georgia and maybe the Baltics. And a couple of days ago, there was an article in The Financial Times that a number of connected journalists said that people in the U.S., in the government, in the U.S. government, in the offices in the U.S. government are now worried that by the end of 2024, Putin might be threatening the Baltic states. And then we had John Kirby also talking about these flesh-creeping things, you know, that Putin's appetite will grow with the eating. It can take Ukraine and he'll be able to move on and advance into all kinds of other places. So, you know, Austin Schackelford has a good question in the chat. I wonder what the world would look like if the United States would have a more distant, more normal relationship with Israel. I don't think we would have invaded Iraq in 2003. We would not have occupied Afghanistan, possibly not even invaded Afghanistan in 2001. So I think the United States would have saved trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives and be in a much safer and stronger position in the world if there was not this formidable neo-conservative lobby. I think that Austin did say it and I think it's also very much of a piece. I mean, if you watch that program that we did with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who was Colin Powell's chief of staff and we did on the DRAN Wilkerson said he gave a sense of what these people are like to deal with interpersonal reactions when they're thwarted. They become extremely angry. There is no health, no fury if I can say it like that. So I think this is exactly what happened. What it tells me is that the administration's narrative is coming up against a lot of resistance and that, as you might expect, given that he's a neo-con, he lost his temper and I think other people in the administration are losing their temper. But it's clear now that this is becoming an issue in American domestic politics that there's a strong group of people in the Republican Party who are outright opposed to further funding from Ukraine. The Republicans may very well hold their ground and refuse further funding of Ukraine which even a couple of weeks ago seemed unthinkable. The two sides were basically similarly supportive of funding Ukraine but now, because of Biden's blunders, meaning because he's not willing to at least allocate some money to defending our own southern border, Republicans may well dig in their heels and not fund Ukraine, which will probably bring a very swift end to the conflict and I think Republicans are seeing how disastrously all this is playing out for Biden's domestic political fortunes. Refuse to move forward with a procedural motion for funding for Ukraine. One senator who's generally aligned with the Democrat he's an independent from Vermont voted with the Republicans against further funding for Ukraine. I personally believe that eventually because to be straightforward about it most people in Congress are either outright neocons or people who generally accept neocon narratives. They will authorize some funding for you. And Rustin adds, although Wilsonian referring to the President during World War I the American President during World War I Wilsonian wars for democracy has been a feeling in our at least for the last 100 years. Yeah, but a lot of that is rhetoric. The United States was late entering both World War I and World War II and they had massive gains in power with relatively little sacrifice compared to what the starting nations in these conflicts had to pay. And so America has often conducted itself ruthlessly while using pro-democracy rhetoric. So rhetoric is one thing actions are another. What makes neoconservatives different from just Wilsonians is that they propose more wars more use of American force overseas than even Wilsonians wanting to promote democracy. A lot of Wilsonians wanting to promote Woodrow Wilson was the President during World War I. A lot of Wilsonian talk about promoting democracy is not nearly as reckless as the neoconservative agenda to fight multiple wars at the same time. But what it shows is that there is a huge amount of resistance now within Congress to this issue. And of course when we see this new version of the domino theory discredited when the Russians win in Ukraine and as everybody now expects when the Russians finally defeat Ukraine and none of these terrifying things that we're hearing about actually happens. Well then at that point all of these people will try and forget the fact that they ever said these things. The other thing I would say about this particular episode is that to my mind the really big thing that we are in the administration more even than the fall of Ukraine is the fear of what will happen in the election. And again going back to that article by Gideon Raab. Right, so the Biden administration wants to be re-elected and so a lot of our showy support for Ukraine and for Taiwan and for Israel is based on the Biden administration's theories and what Joe Biden needs to do to become more popular and get re-elected even though these interventions are not in America's best interests. There was apparently people telling him from within the Democratic Party within the DNC that they're worried that unless this funding gets through then in January people will be starting to talk about Joe Biden as the man who lost Ukraine and that's what they really want to avoid. Right, we didn't need a war in Ukraine to begin with if we hadn't been arming Ukraine the last few years trying to bring it into NATO de facto in addition to the jure we wouldn't be in this situation. Alexander Mukura's on his show last night had some additional thoughts. Be prepared to attack. It's clear that despite being asked by members of the House of Representatives from the Republican caucus Lloyd Austin however was unable to come up with any strategy for a potential victory in Ukraine and it seems that the meeting became increasingly acrimonious and this comment that Lloyd Austin made and it seems he did make appears to have been made in exhaust and the comment was that if we don't subsidize Ukraine that American boys will have to go fight Russia in Europe. An anger and of course it's only effect was to make the Republican congresspeople angry as well and of course when people start to become angry they become more stubborn and my sense is that the administration's attempts to try to persuade the congresspeople to change their stance on aid for Ukraine it might have misfired it might have made that opposition stronger and just an extraordinary comment here from Joe Biden. Good afternoon everyone. I'd like to speak to you today about an urgent responsibility the congress has to uphold the national security needs and quite frankly of our partners as well this cannot wait congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday resources as simple as that frankly I think it's stunning that we've gotten to this point in the first place while congressmen republics and congresses are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership not just in Ukraine beyond that if Putin takes Ukraine he won't stop there it's important to see the long run here he's going to keep going he's made that pretty clear if Putin attacks the NATO ally then we'll have something that we don't seek and that we don't have today American troops fighting Russian troops American troops fighting Russian troops if he moves into other parts of NATO extreme republicans are playing chicken with our national security holding Ukraine's funding hostages are extreme partisan border policies and now they're willing to literally kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield and damage our national security in the process look I know we have our divisions at home let's get past them this is critical petty partisan angry politics can't get in the way of our responsibilities we can't let Putin win say it again we can't let Putin win it's in our overwhelming national interest and international interest of all our friends yeah just absurd comments there's no evidence that Putin is planning to take all of Ukraine let alone to go into other nations including NATO nations it's the discredited domino theory which of course calls into doubt the entire enterprise we know that weekend there's going to be five working days left before congress rises on Friday of course that's always assuming that Mike Johnson sticks to his position that congress will indeed rise next Friday the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said that a week is a long time in politics so when we heard about the domino theory before that was an argument used to support our intervention in Vietnam now I think our intervention in South Korea may very well have been in America's best interest America does have an interest in maintaining alliances probably the most vulnerable we ever got vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was when we let our defense spending go after about 1946 until about 1950 the invasion of South Korea woke us up to a renewed defensive commitment and so I think repelling that invasion preserving South Korea is probably in America's best interest it was probably worth the 50,000 plus American lives to preserve that country South Korea that ally instead of allowing the Soviet communists through their proxies to keep pushing for more and more territory and I think the Vietnam intervention was miscalculated and it was in part sought on domino theory that if we allow the communists to take Vietnam the next they'll take Thailand and they'll just keep marching in reality as a regime over extends itself alright it gets into trouble and it malfunctions and it is not in their own best interest to infinitely extend itself because when you extend yourself too far you become by definition overextended and you become more vulnerable we see the Soviet Union falling into that trap where they invaded Afghanistan that became an enormous debacle that played a large role in the destruction of both the Soviet Union and Russia as a great power so it's possible that there might be a big turnaround in thinking on the part of Republican congresspeople over the course of this week but I have to say at the moment we don't see why that shift on the part of congress Republicans should take place from their perspective which is ultimately I would have assumed an electoral one things for the moment appear to be going their way the president's ratings are falling the position the republican congresspeople are taking seems to be generally supported amongst the American people and the president has just suffered a major personal blow and a sign of how serious for him it is is provided by the fact that the media I notice is largely ignoring it except for Fox News where it's the dominant story of the past few days pretending that they're acting as if it didn't happen or as if it isn't particularly important and that blow is that the president's son has now been invited there's apparently four nine different charges they appear to be so far as I can tell essentially about tax evasion and fraud I'm not going to analyse the charges in detail certainly not in this program I'm not going to discuss the outcome of any possible legal proceedings I would simply say that the president's son like everyone else who is the subject of an indictment is entitled to the presumption of innocence and that kind of situation when do we still have troops in South Korea who act as a tripwire to deter China's aggression because as China let's say China becomes a regional hegemon the United States is a hegemon in the Americas there is no other great power with military base in the Americas that allows America then to feel free to roam all over the globe if China became a regional hegemon then China would feel free to roam and that's why the United States wants to contain the rise of China part of that strategy is maintaining an independent South Korea and enlisting South Korea and Japan Vietnam, Philippines, Australia in efforts to try to control the rise and expansion of China should be but of course we're not here talking about about about simple legal process because the person indicted is the president's son there have been claims that the president himself is connected to his son's business activities there have been reports in the media you can find a lot of detail about all of this by the way on Jonathan Turley's blog there's reports that some of the funds that the son was handling found their way to the president himself which is indicative even if it is not definitive of anything very much but I can't imagine that this isn't going to play badly for the president in the forthcoming election and beyond that of course there is the issue of what personal effect it will have on the president that his son is now being indicted in this particular way it will be okay Josh Randall raises a very strong challenge because I disavow Luke's choice of stream time formal disavowal he's raising his disavowal to the formal level in fact formidable, formidable challenge this is what happened I woke up about midnight and I was thinking about historian Robert Kagan and I'm sure we all here have had the experience of like waking up in the middle of the night concerned about historian Robert Kagan so Robert Kagan has been publishing essays warning about Trump will become a dictator if he is re-elected in 2024 and I woke up at midnight and I thought wait wasn't Victoria isn't Victoria Newland his wife and then I got up and I wrote down, investigate isn't Victoria Newland his wife, Victoria Newland was the American diplomat who was largely overseeing the 2013-2014 Ukraine rebellion against its democratically elected pro-russian president and she was taped on a phone call making all sorts of remarks about how Ukraine should operate and she said F-D-E-U and I thought isn't Robert isn't isn't Robert Kagan isn't he some major neocont, yeah and let's see what the diplomatic efforts in Ukraine the last thing you want to do is drop your guard so that would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN help glue it and you know, F-D-E-U but that is exactly what reportedly happened between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Newland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt the exchange has since surfaced online including the crude swipe at the European Union a video clip of a woman and man said to be Newland and Pyatt here's them discussing strategies to work with the three main opposition figures I don't think Kleech should go into the government, I don't think it's necessary I don't think it's a good idea in terms of him not going into the government just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff I'm just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate Democrats together the problem is going to be you know, I'm sure that's part of what Yanukovic is calculating on all of this I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience he's the guy, you know what he needs is Kleech and Tony Book on the outside he needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know I just think Kleech going in, he's going to be at that level working for Yats and you it's just not going to work There is a suggestion for Newland to contact Klitschko directly to play to his top dog sensibilities Okay, so just disastrous audio probably orchestrated by the Russians from this phone call, this is Victoria Newland husband Robert Keegan and by 3.15 this morning I said I'm getting up, I've got to go investigate this and I looked it up and Robert Keegan is indeed this major neocon agitator and his wife is now under secretary to Anthony Blinken the secretary of state and so she's just been all over this Ukraine mess for approximately 10 years now though she resigned during the Trump administration and so I thought I got to get up, I got a stream about this and I just couldn't wait for a more polite hour, let's have a look at the chat there's a comment, it wasn't a good idea to ban Japan from having a Navy, Japan has an incredible Navy right, Japan's deep water Navy is far more formidable and efficient and effective than China's, so I'm not sure where I got the idea that we banned Japan from having a Navy, Japan has an incredible Navy and Josh says did Lee Harvey Oswood act alone has working me up at midnight many times I assure you Lee Harvey Oswood acted alone, the many bases I have for that is that any group would ever hire someone as mentally unstable as Lee Harvey Oswood to act for them that would just be that would be just a level of recklessness that I don't think the CIA or the mafia would or any group would ever engage in okay a little bit more here from Alexander McCurris a major distraction for him at the very least and to my way of thinking by the way it further causes the question whether he should be standing for the presidency in this in these sort of circumstances at all but anyway that's another topic for another day so given given that this is so given that the military situation in Ukraine is becoming increasingly bad given that politically so I've just discovered the Duran and Alexander McCurris about a month ago because I heard John Jay Mirsheimer say that he listens to this guy Alexander McCurris every day now I notice an archives of their podcast that they have some you know quite nutty figures on so there could be some absolutely devastating critiques of this man in particular Alexander McCurris or of the Duran podcast in general that I'm simply unaware of at this point but right now I just find him a refreshing voice articulating points of view that I don't hear much in the mainstream media and that I think deserve an airing later today I might find you know devastating decoding information about these guys but for now I appreciate their perspective. The administration seems to be in deep difficulties and worsening difficulties given that Speaker Johnson has again been talking about possible impeachment proceedings against the President himself given that the stance the Republicans in Congress are taking seem to be generally supported by the American people why would the Republicans over the next five days want to change their stance now I'm not saying that they won't in politics as I said many things happen but I'm starting to think especially after the reports that I've seen of what actually happened in Congress last week the Lloyd Austin exchange in particular I'm starting to think that Republican hostility to the further funding of this war has now hardened and that it is becoming it's becoming. So chat says if Japan has a formidable Navy then let Japan use it to contain China's projection eastward well we are Japan's the most important American ally so Australia is America's closest ally but Japan is America's most important ally particularly with regard to defending Taiwan so there is a window of American weakness and Chinese strength to attack and take over Taiwan and extend itself past the first island chain and keep extending itself into the Pacific Ocean and keep dominating its area so right now China is kind of bottled up by Taiwan and American alliances if China takes Taiwan it will show many American allies that America is a paper tiger and they won't be nearly as likely to form alliances and sacrifice for an alliance with the United States if the US allows Taiwan to be taken down so there is a window of vulnerability right now and we badly need Japan in the fight to try to protect Taiwan for the next 10 years Irresistible that in turn ought to ring alarm bells in Kiev and the political leadership there means to start thinking very carefully something which I admit they've shown little sign of being able to do about their own prospects if US aid is indeed cut off, if Ukraine ceases to receive the weapons and equipment that they have been receiving from the United States and already that has been the amount of that has been declining it's apparently now reduced to a trickle and the same is the case from Europe if the So I'm basing that analysis on this book which I just finished reading came out last year, danger zone the coming conflict with China by Albrands and Michael Beckley Aid from the United States the military aid is cut off if the economic aid is cut off also and that is also starting to look like a real possibility the United States seems most unlikely to continue to fund Ukraine in any form if military aid is cut off and as for the European Union they're having real difficulties at the moment agreeing on their 50 billion euro package for Ukraine for next year the Hungarians and the Slovaks having made clear their own essential opposition to this well if that is indeed so then it becomes increasingly clear that their prospects already bleak are going to become more bleak still without financial support from the West how do they keep their army their police force, their civil service the pensioners, the people on welfare systems the university professors the teachers yes, very tough times coming up for Ukraine but probably best for the United States to get out of this conflict if that is at all possible is a little bit more on Gaza predicting for months we have seen another battle at the UN Security Council over the Gaza situation and importantly on this occasion this demand that the Security Council heard yesterday, last night came not from a member state but from the UN Secretary General he made a request that the Security Council meet under chapter 99 of the UN Charter on the basis that he as UN Secretary General now perceives a threat to peace from the situation in Gaza and the Middle East that opened the way for the United Arab Emirates to propose a draft resolution calling for an immediate and extended humanitarian cause in other words a ceasefire the draft resolution also demanded immediate and unconditional release of all hostages as well as humanitarian access to Gaza the Security Council meeting was dominated by a passionate submission by UN Secretary General Guterres who spoke about a catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza and however perhaps the most important comments of all were made by the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates Mohammad Issa Abu Shahab who noted that the resolution that his country had proposed the one that sought a ceasefire received co-sponsorship from at least 97 member states UN member states within 24 hours gives us a sense of the extent to which international opinion is now building and the United States vetoed the resolution and in doing so it was abandoned by all its allies Britain abstained citing the fact that the resolution didn't criticise Hamas an extremely weak speech by the way by the British representative all of the other countries who are allies of the United States Japan, Albania, France Ecuador they all voted Switzerland they all voted to support this resolution and the United States was left alone vetoing it now that of course has happened many times before in the past but already there are criticisms that by vetoing resolutions of this nature the United States is becoming an accessory to the war crimes that many states are now saying are taking So right now it looks to the world whatever Israel does in Gaza the United States is held accountable that Israel are essentially regarded by much of the world as cobaligerants in Gaza and so if Israel kills too many civilians if Israel gets stuck down into some kind of quagmire if there's just a bloody mess in Gaza the United States is held equally responsible in the eyes of much of the world as Israel the actual active party because the United States is providing moral support financial support arms support to Israel and Joe Biden went over there hugged BB Netanyahu so unnecessary US involvement just a disastrous trip by Biden to Israel the more support that America gives Israel then the more Israel's actions will reflect on America and different countries have different interests the interests of Israel are not identical to the interests of the United States there is some sympathy for the argument hey Israel is the one democracy in the Middle East we should support it against the see our dictatorships that surround it and I think there's something to that but there are varying levels of support and the ham-fisted blatant unnecessarily provocative way that the United States is not serving the US well in the eyes of much of the world precipitating who knows how many more 9-11 style attacks on the United States of America and why have we so far abstained from bombing Iran because the US has shifted such significant military assets to the Middle East I think in part we have those assets there if Hezbollah goes into an all-out attack on Israel and Israel is forced to fight a war the Biden administration wants to have American military assets and aircraft carriers there to protect Israel and to fight against Hezbollah so that's one way the United States could get directly militarily involved in this conflict the other way and I think much of the Biden administration is leaning in this direction as much of the neoconservative movements have wandered for decades there is considerable support within the Biden administration from all out direct attack on Iran why has it not happened yet this is the best explanation I've heard yet this is from the Duran podcast once again three days ago they found that the Saudis were not going to shift their policies they were not going to support this strike right so I think the Biden administration was eager for a direct attack on Iran but then Iran is here Saudi Arabia has been a long time enemy of Iran it is Sunni and so the Biden administration thought that they could gather considerable Sunni support for a direct attack on Iran's Shia regime and they've been disappointed he says about how they were planning seven wars he was serving in the government and how rude and impossible they are to deal with on a personal basis so these are the people who are still there in the administration they completely misjudged the international reaction they found that the Saudis were not going to shift their policies they were not going to support this strike on Iran that they are committed to the rapprochement with Iran they found that the Egyptians were not prepared to play along nor was the king of Jordan they found the Arab world uniting against these disastrous plans and they also found that the international community was the global south everyone else was uniting against these plans also and last but not least they found that the Democratic parties coalition within the United States was fracturing so they had to stop they had to stop their planning even as all the pieces that they sort of deployed on the chess board were still in motion so we still get all of these massive military deployments taking place but increasingly looking as if they are really serving no actual purpose anymore and of course we also see the Israelis pressing on with their campaigning guards over to get reiterated again they were giving the green light to do and the U.S. government the administration is now having switched this on is fighting it all but impossible without experiencing significant political damage in the U.S. to simply switching off again so this is why they are caught exactly in the way that you describe yeah and we are already getting reports of the damage on okay that strikes me as a good explanation as any for why the United States hasn't already directly started bombing Iran interesting article in the New York Times yesterday talk of a Trump dictatorship charges the American political debate former president Donald J. Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts if anything they seem to be leaning into the predictions Peter Baker writes when a historian wrote an essay the other day explaining that the election the former president Donald J. Trump next year could lead to a dictatorship when Mr. Trump's allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison almost sounds like a parody the response to concerns about dictatorship is to prosecute the author but Mr. Trump and his allies are not going out of their way to reassure those worried about what a new term would bring by firmly rejecting the dictatorship charge if anything they seem to be leaning into it and I just have a hard time taking these dictatorship charges seriously just like my mind would be unable to pay attention for long to the Russia gate charges that dominated American news media between January 2017 and midway point of 2019 I could whenever I read about Russia gate I'd start to get a headache it just didn't make much sense and we finally realized that there was never an absence to these accusations that many of the details were correct but the overall idea that millions of Americans believe that Russia hacked our election in 2016 is absurd the idea that Donald J. Trump is a Russian asset is absurd so the media was usually careful in its reporting of details but the influence that it would promote for two and a half years essentially that Trump was a Russian asset or that Putin hacked our 2016 election were absolutely absurd and so who's this historian who wrote an essay warning that the election of Trump could lead to dictatorship well it's Robert Kagan who I would describe more as a neocon propaganda so in 1997 he co-founded the now defunct neoconservative think tank project for the new American Century with William Crystal which envisaged about seven different American wars Kagan was an early strong advocate of American military action in Syria, Iran Afghanistan and Iraq right from 1998 onward after the 1998 bombing of Iraq was announced Kagan said bombing Iraq isn't enough remember sanctions against Iraq may well have cost the lives of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children right Robert Kagan in 1998 was calling on President Clinton to send ground troops to Iraq January 2002 Robert Kagan and Irving Crystal falsely claimed in a weekly standard article that Saddam Hussein was supporting the existence of a terrorist training camp in Iraq complete with a Boeing 707 for practicing hijackings and filled with non-Iraqi radical Muslims then they further alleged that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official several months before the attack these allegations were shown to be false I remember Dennis Prager on his radio show talking to an editor at the weekly standard about these charges and Prager kept saying why aren't these charges being reported in the rest of the news media? because these charges were false 2008 Robert Kagan wrote an article called neocondition neoconservatism for world affairs describing the main components of American neoconservatism as a belief in the rectitude meaning the rightness the morality of applying US moralism to the world stage support for US to act alone the promotion of American style, liberty and democracy countries the belief in American hegemony and the confidence in US military power and a distrust of international institutions and Kagan has been referred to as the chief neoconservative foreign policy theorist in July 2000 Robert Kagan wrote that the problem with Colin Powell is his political and strategic judgment is not aggressive enough that's my interpretation Colin Powell doesn't believe the United States should enter into conflicts without strong public support he also doesn't believe that the public will support anything that kind of iron logic rules out almost every conceivable post Cold War intervention when he talks intervention here he means US military intervention in 2003 Robert Kagan's book Paradise and Power American Europe in the New World Order published on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq created a sensation through its assertion that Europeans tended to favor peaceful resolutions of international disputes where the Americans take a more resilient view in which many kinds of disagreements can only be settled by force or as Kagan puts it Americans are from Mars Europeans are from Venus in 2016 February Robert Kagan publicly left the Republican Party that's referring to himself as a former Republican Democrat Hillary Clinton for president because he was so afraid of what he saw as an isolationist. Now there is one area where I support Biden's foreign policy over Donald Trump's foreign policy in that I believe that Donald Trump was consistently careless reckless and destructive of our relationships with our allies and so I think Joe Biden has done a better job building our alliances right we are more powerful through alliances it's like getting matching donations I don't know how you raise money in your church or synagogue but often in in synagogues that I attend someone will put up an offer to match any donations over the next two weeks or month all right and that's a way to you know multiply donations and you can multiply power by forming alliances and I think the Biden administration has done a better job than the Trump administration in working with our allies but I think the way that the Biden has worked with our allies to subsidize and instigate the war in Ukraine has been an absolute disaster and September 2021 Robert Kagan wrote an opinion essay published in the Washington Post our constitutional crisis is already here because of Donald Trump and then last week he published another essay Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable we should start pretending and so this guy is married to Victoria Newland who is the under secretary of state for political affairs under secretary of state Anthony Blinken so she made appearances supporting protesters in Ukraine back in 2013-2014 during the uprisings against the democratically elected pro-russian president of Ukraine she said that the US has spent $5 billion building democracy in Ukraine since 1991 Russia did not take well to this statement they claim the US was orchestrating a revolution Russia's interests which is probably true then I played earlier that phone call where she talked about who would be the best prime minister of Ukraine and we should FEEU so to me people like Robert Kagan and Victoria Newland they embodied the worst of the US foreign policy establishment because they consistently push for unnecessary American military intervention overseas now my primary response the charge that Donald Trump wants to become a leader is that he has never shown much ability nor interest at running things he wants attention and the more conflict he engenders the more attention he gets Paul Gottfried back in 2012 had pretty short sweet analysis of Robert Kagan says Robert Kagan who seems to relish every world the US has been in it regrets we haven't fought more of them even longer so now he's selling himself as some kind of foreign policy realist or the realist he admires of people like himself who support all of America's past military adventures presumably would favor lots more military intervention in the future and I like Steve Saylor's analysis about these wild charges regarding Donald Trump wanting to be a dictator so November 6th 2020 Steve Saylor tweeted Donald Trump is just about the least authoritarian president since say Calvin Coolidge those who obsess about Trump's authoritarianism are projecting their own dark anti-democracy urges on Trump so both right and left at times are anti-democratic so the left wants to overturn populist measures such as the Prop 187 passed in California to restrict government welfare to illegal immigrants that was overturned by judges so the left generally speaking likes judicial intervention that nullifies Republican legislation or Republican populist referendums and then the right in its own various ways is quite willing to go against popular opinion so both sides don't tend to see democracy as an unalloyed good and we don't live just simply in a democracy the system we have contains elements of democracy, elements of dictatorship in that the US president has all the foreign policy powers of King George III at the time of the American Revolution the American president can essentially send us to war without the approval of Congress and then we have ways that we're an oligopoly where just a few people have an outsized amount of power though it's not as severe as it was in the past so Jeff Bezos has something like 0.06% of the total American GNP while who was the great oil baron from the late 19th century but anyway at his height he alone controlled 2% of America's GNP so America was probably much more of an oligopoly back in the late 19th century Ceasela wrote October 9, 2018 yeah Republicans just on the verge of rounding up dissidents into soccer stadiums that's why the stock market has hammered down Jeff Bezos net worth down well that's not the point alright so if we're on the verge of a stock of a Trump dictatorship the stock market would be plunging because in a dictatorship wealth can just be arbitrarily confiscated the reason so much of the world's wealth pours into the United States is faith in American institutions of the rule of law and democratic procedures and American enforcement of laws and that America's comparatively low in corruption compared to other countries it would be really worse staring down the face of a Trump dictatorship the stock market would be absolutely crashing and foreigners would be withdrawing hundreds of billions of dollars from America that's not happening so words are easy saying that Trump could be a dictator effortless to say that but if there was any reality to these charges you'd see hundreds of billions trillions eventually dollars fleeing out of the United States the American stock market crashing the American dollar crashing none of that's happening because the people with real skin in the game the people with billions and trillions of dollars in the game do not take seriously these accusations that Donald Trump is going to be some kind of nasty dictator and I agree with Sailor here he says Trump would be bored about the second hour of a full authoritarian regime he'd let his critics out of the soccer stadiums to give him somebody to fight with I don't think there's anybody in American public life in the conflict of democratic politics more than Trump authoritarianism in the European sense that brought to power both Hitler and Charles de Gaulle was connected to the feeling that partisan debate was unseemly Donald Trump does not regard debate as unseemly Donald Trump loves conflict his enemies typically hate Trump because they fight his love of conflict unseemly they long for a philosopher king like Obama under whom they could serve as PR flax crafting conversations the citizenry's job is to shut up and to listen to their better talking points so Trump is kind of the second coming of his role model, George Steinbrenner so Sailor I think quite accurately views Donald Trump through the lens of the 1977 81 World Series rivalry of George Steinbrenner's New York Yankees and the O'Malley family's Los Angeles Dodgers so the O'Malley's ran a superb authoritarian corporation in the Dodgers where everybody had to follow the corporate PR line that everything was co-versedic and the Dodgers were extremely opaque and largely co-opted the media into going along with their strategy by contrast the early Steinbrenner Yankees were the most public controversy friendly baseball team of all time with George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson Thurman Munson engaged in a war of all against all carried out on the back cover of the tabloids and that's kind of Donald Trump's ways so the Joe Biden regime seems so much more cohesive just like the O'Malley regime seems so much more cohesive than the New York Yankee regime but even though the Biden administration generally speaking does not leak against itself it does not carry out its fights in public there's not all these unseemly conflicts between various members of the Biden administration as there was during the Trump administration on the other hand the Joe Biden administration is the most reckless, dangerous incompetent foreign policy administration we've had in 80 plus years January 2018 Steve Saylor wrote, it's comical that so many have denounced Donald Trump as an authoritarian whose election threatens that democracy dies in the dark as Jeff Bezos Washington post claims, in reality Trump's administration is the most public in memory, right? The Biden administration doesn't leak the Trump administration constantly leaked comics making jokes about the president for the first time since 2008 Americans are enthusiastically arguing over politics Trump love him or hate him and we've vitalized our democracy the authoritarian Bezos runs his Amazon company very much along the closed manipulative Mali Maliite lines rather than the Trump white open brawling Steinbrandist principles and Jeff Bezos under the supposedly authoritarian dictatorial Donald Trump became the richest man in the history of the world while fighting with Donald Trump October 8, 2021, Steve Saylor noted Donald Trump's extraordinary effort to overturn the 2020 election result didn't take much thwarting Trump told various officials to do something, they said we'll resign, Trump responded okay, you win right? So I think it was a disaster, a terrible thing that Donald Trump tried to fight the overwhelming election results against him in 2020 I think that Donald Trump bears some moral responsibility for the ugly January 6 riots I wish that Trump had followed protocol and shown up for the inauguration of Joe Biden but I don't think