 Okay, we're back with Think Tech. We're back with Trump Week. And Tim Appichella, I want to tell you that last night I saw one of four episodes in something called The Spy on Netflix with Sasha Baron Cohen as the actor and producer. Real serious in this piece. The story of a Syrian espionage, espionage in Syria by the Israelis in the year 1965. You've got to see this. It's very good and very instructive about what was going on. It's a window into the Middle East which everyone says and it's true it's complicated. Well Assad's father was very much the power broker of Syria and had a pretty brutal reign during his time. Yeah, I don't know how Assad stays in office except for the Russians. They just gained a third more of their real estate. By the way, Jay, thank you for having me on. Since we're talking about Syria, I don't know if you saw the video of our retreating US forces in the rotten fruit, potatoes, tomatoes being thrown at our troops. What a visual moment for all of us to witness as Americans. It's like the guys climbing up the ladder to the helicopter off the Amazon Saigon. It's just as gross. It's a piece of American history reflecting mistake after mistake. And Trump is the one who made these horrendous mistakes and here we are. You couldn't have said it any better. It was just like them pushing the helicopters off or on top of that roof back in 1973 when we were just exiting as fast as we can from South Vietnam. This one will burn and sear its position in my memory until the day I die. Although there's no graphics about it, they also, I guess it was the Russians or the Turks, somebody bombed our airfields, bombed our bases, bombed our weapons that we left behind. It was humiliating. In 1992, I spent about a month and a half in Turkey and I was in the region where there was a lot of Kurds. And I broke bread with them. I had many opportunities to have tea with them for hours and hours. We would discuss, you know, the United States, their life, fascinating discussions. And one was a dinner. And what struck me about the Kurds was their love for the United States, the principles of freedom, the principles that the United States was such a powerful force for good, for freedom and good in this world to keep at bay dictators and genocide. And I'll never forget those conversations. And now I put that in juxtaposition to how we've stabbed them in the back. We betrayed them. We've opened up our flanks. And, you know, this is hard for me to reconcile because they did have such trust in the United States. They sacrificed 11,000 of their people to fight with us for us at our side. It was an incredible investment, an incredible commitment on their part over decades. Really, really sad. Yeah. It is sad. And, you know, I think about Donald Trump and his recent quotes you would like to share and put that in context to their faith and trust the United States and, you know, what the United States stands for. And certainly, if you're in the military, how you feel about this, whether you're a former veteran that used to serve or you're currently serving in the United States military, it's got to be tough. It's got to be really tough. You like to think you're saving somebody, helping somebody. Then you find your president pulls the rug out on the somebody and then the somebody throwing tomatoes and potatoes at you. And never to forget, never to forget. And never to forget. And the world never to forget. We are a laughing stock yet still again. But what did Trump say about that? Well, he just recently just said that, you know, first off our troops now are there to secure the oil. There's a small number of troops. But the one that gets me is that we never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives. That's one quote. And then there was a, is there a written agreement that we stay in the Middle East for the rest of civilization? So I understand the quotation. I understand the concept that, yeah, the United States never intended to be in the Middle East forever. It was all about oil back in the day and probably not so much today. But here's the deal. There's a difference between a well thought out strategy of exit versus a snap decision over one telephone call with no consultation with anyone and exposing their flanks to an immediate attack from Turkey. You see what I'm getting at is the difference between what Trump thinks is his validation and rationalization for exposing the Kurds for annihilation versus what should have been the case on how we do gracefully exit with honor. I'm not sure we should have exited at all. And I don't think we agreed to spend 1000 years there. But I think our moral issue, our moral mission is to make the world safe. And we were holding together a delicate, a tense, controversial confluence of countries all looking for the wrong reasons to occupy land there. And our presence sort of held it together somehow. And our departure pulled the rug out from under it. It really did. So is it worth it to stay there? You bet it is. It's worth it to be, you know, the greatest nation on earth. It's worth it to, you know, provide our moral leadership, our moral authority. That's what we've gotten along on since World War Two. And now to say we're a bunch of jerks, and we don't break our, we break our promises, we don't stay around. We don't care what happens to them, even though they're our best buddies in the area, is really remarkable. And it teaches the world a lesson. We have lost moral leadership, lost it. And, you know, everybody's, oh, yeah, we'll get it back again. Democratic candidates, yeah, we'll get it back again. I'm not so sure it's something that you can just get back again. I think it may take decades, if at all, history moves forward. We are never going to be where we were. Those visuals of those videos of them throwing and pelting our US vehicles, those are images that will not just go away. They'll be there. They're a part of history and the record of history. Yeah. You know, by the way, just for the record, there were kill, Kurds killed in this incursion from the Turks. There's families. There's fighters. They were killed. We don't have a full body count. But believe me, there are people who died during this. We don't we don't know what's going on. Our troops are essentially out of there. And into Iraq, protecting the oil. Iraq who doesn't want us in Iraq. That's the whole thing is extraordinary. What's happening is he's lying a mile a minute on what it means and what he's doing. And you know, I mean, unless you don't do critical thinking or thinking at all, ultimately, these days, you have to realize that he's lying to us about what's going on about its meaning and effect in his plan. There was no plan. And so this is going to get worse before it gets better. And by that, I mean Assad is going to continue to beat up on the Syrians. The Turks are going to continue to beat up on the Kurds. And the Russians are going to get greater hegemony in the whole area. Bottom line is we're out of the play off the field. And we look like idiots. And we're all our big fancy military. You know, all our money with all our technology and weapons, we're we're idiots. Yeah, we've been out Fox and outplayed by Turkey and Syria. How about that? I don't know if we'll ever recover from this, you know, do we ever buy and said, you know, Turkey of all people Turkey, we've been outplayed by Turkey. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, you know, here's here's the bottom bottom line is, was this just a spur of the moment idea that came across Trump's brain? Or was this a strategy of distraction from the impeachment inquiry? One never knows. Or was it one of those many, many roads that lead to Russia? Because the winner in this deal is always Russia. Yeah, always Russia. And that is a common denominator for Ukraine, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I mean, when she says all roads lead to, you know, Russia, she she's including Ukraine, of course. Yes. And was it yesterday or today? There was an article this morning in the Washington Post about how while Trump has said that he was out there fighting corruption in Ukraine, big point on the agenda. And that's why he made that call. Those eight calls as it were. In fact, around the same time, he defunded $8 billion of American of American aid, which was intended to help the Ukrainians fight corruption, 8 billion, not 391 million, but 8 billion. So how you know, genuine could he be? How sincere could he be about fighting corruption if he took all that money off the table without explaining it. Now his big song and dances that he's, you know, committed to fighting corruption at $8 billion. Incredible. Last comment on Syria. I don't care. What political affiliation you choose. I don't care Republican, independent Democrat. This is a shameful, shameful point for all of us. And I don't care what who your allegiance is to. No one likes this. Well, based us, because the base believes how can they like that, Jay, as I was saying, they buy whatever he says, and he comes up with these lies to cover his, his tracks and his mistakes and his gross errors. And they believe him. And that's because he's got them in this kind of thing where they don't think they accept him as almost a religion. It's a cult personality. Well, then they have to buy his argument that it's okay for us to pull the, you know, the stab the Kurds in the back because they didn't help us in World War Two on the beaches of Normandy. It's not true. I know, but nothing you're telling me that they actually have to believe that to be okay with it. Well, he has cover for that. I mean, yeah. Okay. You know, they believe that they believe anything he says. And the result is that he gets away with more. You know, we had a digression for a moment. There was a piece of the times a couple days ago, for the proposition that one of the reasons that Trump had reversed himself on the Doral, you know, hotel issue, was that the Republicans in Congress were on him about it. And he didn't want to, you know, go head to head with the Republicans. I mean, even Lindsey Graham, who, who manages to walk a fine line and then walk the other side of the fire. We used to call that flip flop. We want to watch him very carefully. We used to call that flip flopping, but that's okay. Anyway, so, okay, so they said that the article said that, you know, this you take this to mean that Trump is Trump is sensitive to the Republican want to lose them. And he doesn't want to do stuff that is that is going to alienate them from him. You know, because he has an election coming up after all, and he's got a he's got a vote coming up. Well, but it's the Senate in Congress. Those are his friends. Yeah, they protect him. They go with him. They like Lindsey Graham, they you know, they continue to protect him over the long haul or the short haul toward the election. The one thing that troubles me and I want to share it with you really, really troubles me is this, if he wins the election, or stays in office by some sleight of hand or false claim, okay, that means that he's in his last, well, presumably his last term. It means that he doesn't need the Republicans anymore. It's not only a mandate if he wins that election, it's a mandate to do whatever he wants to do without regard to any constituency, even the Republicans. So he will do the most bizarre things imaginable, because there'll be no control at all on him. That's my prediction if he wins. Well, this cannot be so. This cannot be so. Is he going to get by this this impeachment thing? Of course, he's going to get by it, but it's going to be a permanent record. And there will be a trial in the Senate. Obviously, there's going to be a House vote, and it will be affirmative that impeachment needs to move forward. That trial take place in the Senate. And do I think they're actually going to vote him out of office? No, I do not. But it'll be a permanent record in history. And Donald Trump, well, he can spin it to be a positive. That's what he'll do for his lawyer, all 38% base that this was actually a positive thing that happened. And, you know, he'll spin it any way he can. Because that's what he does. He'll say that it's unfair. He'll say that the persecution constitutional rights that it's a witch hunt and all that. And people will agree, and including some of these Republicans, maybe most of these Republicans in the Senate, and and then you'll have an acquittal. Okay, and with an acquittal, one of the interesting points is suppose he goes really wild after an acquittal, okay, between an acquittal and the election emboldened, emboldened. Okay, really stuff that absolutely justifies impeachment. Do you think the Congress is going to try a second time? Of course not. Right. It's spent. They they they shot their wad. It's all about. So you know, it's a political thing, they couldn't get the votes. They're not going to try again. I mean, even if it's even grosser next time. So I really worry about that too. They'd better do a good job on this. Now what happened yesterday was was interesting. Yeah, with Taylor. Yeah, extremely interesting. I think he, unlike the Mueller investigation, he was able to dot the I's crossed the T's and put context around all his points of testimony. And for someone to understand it for a change, wasn't convoluted. It was chronic chronologically laid out and very, very succinct terms. I read most of the report. And he did it. He did exactly what you know, we had wished and hope that Mueller could have done, but he couldn't. Yeah. And he's highly credible with a really good career in the military. He was the 101 airborne. Yeah, in Vietnam. Yeah, I mean, he's a graduate from West Point. I mean, this is no slouch, no slouch. And he was a career dedicated employee of the government, right, didn't have a political affiliation, right, was hired by George Bush, you know, back in the day. So I mean, great, but they're trying to throw his, you know, throw his name in his character under the bus. Oh, no. Yeah, of course. I like that. Yeah, of course. Meanwhile, Sunland was trying to cover for Trump. There was no quid pro quo and all that. Sunland who bought his his ambassador's seat. I don't understand how people could be in government with such low credentials and such low moral ethical standards. A couple million dollar campaign campaign contribution goes a long way. Yeah, of course, I don't see how it happens either. But once you, you know, pay the money down in this administration is happening on a regular basis. I think they call that pay for play. Yeah, sorts. Well, you know, here's the big thing that one of the things that Taylor did point out. And that was a direct line from Trump to Melvin to the OMB, yeah, Mulvaney, excuse me, thank you for that. To the office of the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, that that, you know, you just don't have Trump giving orders to people to do his work for him as bidding. This actually went from Trump, right straight to the a direct line to OMB. That's a very significant point there. That was the money was to withhold and not give out to Ukraine with military assistance to believe is this is not wrong. And if he wants to do this kind of thing, he's the president, he can make a call, he can change the way things work. This is just the new normal. And you reach out and you make the government do whatever you want. And this is okay, because the president can do stuff like this. If you can do it, then you're enabled and you do it. That's that's what he's saying. Yeah, well, we have pretty much four people have said, okay, either in intentionally or non intentionally, there is a quick quid pro quo here. There's four people have done that. The question is, is it appropriate to do a quid pro quo when it comes to your advantage of political favors, and using leverage of the United States government that the Congress approved military aid to Ukraine. Remember, Ukraine was being is still being attacked by Russia. And so that's the crux of the argument. Is it okay to do it for your own political game? Yeah, and ignore Congress. Congress appropriated the money you ignore their direct do it for your own gain. Why does this remind me of the wall? Remember how, you know, Congress, you know, said no wall would not house and he did it, which is the money house. The house said no money for that we're not giving you a wall. He did it anyway. He ignored them. Well, he did it anyway by saying, Okay, you've you've pulled up purse strings on me. So I'll declare a national emergency. And then his way that was the way to open up the purse again, and now extract money from the military Department of Defense for funding for the wall. National emergencies that way under proclamation, you know, only exists for so long. And I think it's coming up. And he's going to declare it again. Well, the keep it both the house and the Senate tried to put a kind watch on that. They couldn't get the votes. They couldn't get the vote. They got the votes. They couldn't get the votes to override the veto, the veto. Yeah. So well, the government's coming apart, you know, that's the thing. And if you went back to the time, this is really interesting. If you went back to the time in January, 2017, right after he was elected, right after he was, you know, inaugurated, they had, they had riots, not riots, but protests. You know, the Women's March in Washington, all that, they not my president. And that sort of died down. But the things that he's done since then have been much, much worse and increasingly worse. And we don't see as many protests. There was a columnist in the Times who recently said Trump fatigue, Trump fatigue. Yeah. And he said, you know, this is, this is the most important moment in American history that we can think of. And the impeachment here is the most important moment to protect the Republic. So and Congress needs Congress and the Republicans are going to follow what people have to say. And what he said was get out on the street. This is your big time. You know, we did the Women's March in January, 2017. But now it really matters. Now it's not a question of how many people showed up in inauguration, how you feel about him on a visceral level. Yeah, it's what he did. And then Congress is not going to do anything unless we're all out on the street. So let's get on the street. You know, everyone in the Senate is literally holding their finger to the land. And if they don't hear from their constituents, then it's going to be protection for the president. They're not hearing Tim. Well, you know, the case has not been laid out yet for the American public. And fortunately, I think Nancy Pelosi finally got it, not to complicate it, not to make this thing so expansive that no one's going to understand it. I think it's really clear. And I think they're gonna, I think he didn't think before Thanksgiving, I think they're gonna lay this out before Thanksgiving. That's, that's my, my guess, my best guess, though, they'll vote for vote in the house. They will do a floor vote before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is what three weeks away. Yeah, give them a month. Yeah, I think they're gonna do it. So time will tell. But you know, the testimony of Taylor is really, this is a really big point of, of this impeachment investigation. And I think they got the right guy in to do it. Yeah. So so how many more people do they need now? I don't know. I don't think they need Rudy Giuliani. I don't think it's worth chasing him around, you know, on him you think they'll call back solid again to see if he actually committed perjury on his time around heat on him. Yeah, they might call him back end. But these guys have refused to testify. Imagine the Secretary of State, the Attorney General refusing to testify to provide documents, saying so witch hunt or whatever that is badly motivated. They're politicizing everything. Well, not to take too far of a left term, but this one is worth mentioning because Trump used the term lynching. This was a lynching. And did he set the world on fire with that terminology? And again, there's a tepid kind of response from the Republicans on this one. Some have stood up tall and said, you know, that's wrong terminology. But he really has set a lot of people off on on purpose, probably so I selected a word very carefully. Again, another day for madness for the administration. I mean, you know, here we are. It's a given Wednesday. And fact is there'll be more distractions. Whenever he does, there'll be a distraction. He takes the whole newspaper now, pretty much 80 90% of the articles are about him. And, you know, I think as as you move down away from a bad event, there'll be events that are worse. And so people are distracted from the distractions. And we're in this enormous reality. Well, it was just last last week, we didn't have a McWelvey come up there and reverse himself about the quid pro quo. I mean, so we had all these events just in this last seven days. I mean, it's amazing on the, the velocity and the the amount and you forget, you get confused at this part of the problem. I got all the notes I have in the world, but it's not enough to keep this on track. I want you to look down and give us give us some more from your notes. Okay, well, let's just talk about a little bit. Hey, let's change the subject a little bit. Let's talk about the the $2 billion sanctions from China, 2.4 billion, actually. Interesting stuff, because this is actually an ongoing battle has been going on for quite some time. And that is China is saying, Hey, you know, we want these things removed off our solar panels, our wind, our wind towers, our metal cylinders. We want all those sanctions lifted. So they've, they've appealed to the WTO. And the WTO, most likely is going to uphold their position on this. With the set up with our great trade relationship with China, how they're going to come to a new understanding and agreement with the United States. I think but the sanctions come from a time before Trump certainly was that China hasn't enforced them. Right. So what you get is a tone question. She has a general statement of the relationship. Wasn't it like two weeks ago that Trump said, Don't worry, everybody, we got this one under control. We're negotiating a great deal, the brilliant deal. You're going to love this deal. I'm not going to tell you anything about it. But we're going to love this deal in a few weeks, be able to announce it and you're going to love it. And then, you know, there was no response from China. They didn't say anything. And saying nothing is really saying, Are you kidding? What are you talking about? There is no great negotiation going on. There's no great deal. What's he talking about? And then maybe it's kind of a continuation of that same statement. You know, don't be fooled. We're, we, we're not making any progress. There is no negotiation going on. As a matter of fact, just to show you how ticked off we are, we're going to let the, you know, or seek to impose this $2 billion sanction. And I say to myself, that's a message to the world, isn't it? A, that the US deserves to be sanctioned is what they're saying. And they haven't said that before, you know, they haven't said that before. And B, there's no peace talks going on here. So he lied. And in a few weeks' time, and I hope the press catches this, there won't be any revelation. There won't be any announcement about some, you know, huge wrap around China. On the other hand, Tim, Chinese economy is not doing well. Yeah. And that's probably directly or indirectly the result of Trump's moves. And that, and here's the worst part of it. And that is a harbinger of the possibility of global recession coming soon. A lot of economists feel that it's coming soon. He's holding it together with tissue paper. You know, I guess one comment is, is Wall Street, i.e. the Dow. Are they also in a state of denial? Yes, I think so. I mean, it's this magic word business, you know, he's the business president. And he knows business like how to screw us on the door out. There's some pretty savvy analysts out there. And when you see tone in these kind of stories about the $2.4 billion, you know, protested WTO, a good analyst would say, Hey, you know, maybe things are not going to settle up on this thing. And we've been optimistic in our forecast on buy. And where are the analysts on this? Well, my sense of it. And I do ask analysts, my sense of it is that, you know, if you want to bail, not yet. Yeah, this is this has got a couple, three, four, maybe six months to run. But these things are going to catch up. So be be alert. Because at some point in time, you're going to have to revisit the bail question. Yeah. And when it happens, it's going to be global. Yeah. But there's no saying. Bears, bulls make money, bears make money and pigs get slaughtered. Never, you never wait to the very end of a cycle to get out. You know, you never begin at the beginning of a, you know, a cycle to get in. Oh, I think that's true. So what happens is, if you wait a little too long, just a little, okay, you know, you lose money. Yeah. And I think people, people may not, you know, respect that they may wait a little too long. And then they lose money. And then of course, the thing is always, you know, it's always what's going down. And maybe we'll go up again, you know, it was up yesterday. I'll ride with it. And, and I'll hope that it corrects itself. I mean, it goes up again. And it doesn't. And then the next day, you go through the same process. And by the time you look again, you've lost a lot of money. Yeah, because I think when it goes down, it's going to go down a lot. Well, you know, Donald Trump puts his his basically his administration and his presidency on the buoyancy of the stock market. What a crazy thing to do. But that's what he does. Trump and the stock market are all about unemployment. Unemployment's low. Yeah, they're all about manufacturing numbers of late. Yeah, that's true. And, and then you have, you know, inflation, there's not a lot of inflation. And then you have him pushing the Fed around. I don't know if that helps or see the whole thing is built on public confidence. And he's he's a confidence man. He's a confidence man. So he's playing confidence games with Wall Street, and with the American public and with the base. So it all holds together. One of these days, like in every demo, legs of the chair will be long, Louisiana, one of these days is going to fall apart. Yeah, and we really have to be very Akamai about that. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Well, I don't know what to tell you about the next week. I can only tell you there'll be more distractions. You say that every week. And well, and I wish we're thinking that that the house continues, effectively continues its its inquiry, and that the Republicans think twice about backing him up and that the base begins to wake up somehow. I hope I hope the base listens to our show with the base, please listen to our show. Would they please listen to CNN and MSNBC Well, a couple of the base have listened to the show and we received comments, you know, reflecting that. I don't think they were the most positive comment on the air. What they said, we cannot. Appreciate it very much next week. Next week. Wait. Yep. See you then. Aloha.