 So we're going to talk about the Kaka-Putin interview, and let me just say, the interview surprised me. I was surprised by the interview. I find it long, but actually quite interesting, and I'll tell you why in a minute. I learned a few things, I think, but here's the thing. So let me tell you what I expected going in. So I expected basically two things, which would align with one another. I expected Putin to use this as a propaganda opportunity. I expected him to go after the West. I expected him to express how everything that's happening is America's fault, to go after Biden to ridicule the West, to undermine the West, to express his concern about the values of the West, the decadence of the West, he's done this in other talks and stuff, and really just go after the West and use this as an opportunity for anti-Western propaganda. And that, I thought, would completely coincide with Tucker's motivation for the interview, and Tucker's motivation for the interview was completely to get Putin to make MAGA points, to make the points that the new right, that the MAGA right, that the alt-right, however you want to call the new right, is to make the points that the new right is made. This what would have never happened if Trump was in power, this was all caused by NATO, NATO is corrupt, this administration is corrupt, everything would be better if Trump was elected or if Biden was replaced. The whole history of this is NATO's fault, and ultimately Russia's in the right because it was aggressed against by NATO expansion. And those are the make-a-make-a-great-again points, and you would have expected Putin, the other thing was that Tucker, I think, was expecting part of the make-a-make-a-great-again points would be religion is crucial to Russian identity, religion is crucial to the future, religion is part of the West, part of the problem in the West is secularism, what makes Russia superior is its advocacy. So this is kind of the Christian nationalism that is so prevalent today, that is so prevalent today on the right. So religion good, NATO bad, Biden bad, liberal, secular society bad, gaze bad, I don't know, transsexuals bad, all of that stuff that all this meat that kind of in as many of his speeches, Putin throws out that I think Tucker was eager to get this because it was going to make great MAGA new right points for him. So he went in, I think, trying to get this interview to justify all the MAGA talking points. And his primary point was this war is NATO's fault, that was what he wanted, that's what he wanted Putin to say. And I thought Putin was going to come in and play along with that and just give Tucker what he wants and make this about catchy, quick, easy propaganda in the West that's progression. And that's not what happened. Tucker did exactly what I predicted Tucker would do. The entire interview he is trying to get Putin to say certain things. He even frames it for Putin and says, are you saying this in order to get him to make all the MAGA points? He brings up religion, he brings up NATO like 15 times. He constantly is trying to structure the conversation around the new right points that he wants Putin to make, that he wants to be reinforced. And Putin is having none of it. Putin refuses to give Tucker what he wants. And Tucker is super frustrated certainly with the first 30 minutes of the interview. You can tell and Tucker actually in the introduction to the interview says that he's frustrated because he was surprised. It's partially surprised because he hasn't done his homework. He doesn't understand what Putin really cares about. So Putin gives an interview that I think reflects. I mean, it's awful. It's wrong. But Putin gives an interview that I think reflects what Putin really thinks. I think he gives an interview that reflects his views rather than what he thinks will sell in the West. And that was surprising. That was surprising. I did not expect it. And Tucker has blown away. Tucker doesn't know what to do with it. Tucker is frustrated as he knows his laughs, doesn't get the answers he's expecting, keeps trying to angle to get the results that he wants and can't get it. But Putin just lays out what he actually believes. And what he actually believes does not line up with the rhetoric of Tucker and Candace Owen and the rest of the, you know, anti-Ukrainian, anti-American right. And it's fascinating. It's actually, you know, I watched it one and a quarter and then one and a half times speed. I think that's reasonable because Putin is speaking slowly. I actually recommend watching it to gain a little bit of understanding of Putin. Now, Putin's illusional and nuts and obviously lying and deceiving in terms of the concretes that he uses and his complaints. But if you want to understand what this war is about, the first 30 minutes, Putin tells you what the war is about. And he starts, you know, 2000 years ago, basically, a little less. Putin, so Tucker's first question is, basically, why didn't you invade in 2022? Was it because of NATO, you saw NATO as a threat to you? And Putin says, really, no, no, no, no, no, no, let me, let me, let me tell you what this is really about. Let me teach you a little bit of history, right? Maybe 1200 years ago, I forget the starting date. 1654 is important, but the Rus' become Christians. I've got it written down somewhere here. The Rus' become Christians in the, when was it, 800? I think it's around 800 AD. But he starts before 800 AD. He starts before 800 AD, before they convert to Christianity. So it's more than 1200 years ago. It's maybe 1300, 1400 years ago. He starts with the creation of Rus'. Rus' is the people that occupy the Ukrainian area. Kiev is the capital and they convert Christianity to 800 into Orthodox Christianity. But for Putin, basically, he talks about a thousand-year anniversary to statehood. He talks about the centers of gravity within the Russian world, the Rus' world. In ancient times, he talks about all the different peoples, all the different conflicts that evolved. He's really focused on dates. He's really, really wants to make sure we get the dates and we get the sequences of things and we get names of people. And this is what animates him. This is what he's basically giving you, a history lesson in Russian history because for him, for Putin, and I've said this over and over and over again over the last two years, for Putin, the war in Ukraine is all about history. It's about reuniting the Russian people. It's about the Russian soul. It's about the motherland. It's about historical grievances that go back a thousand years. And who gave whom, which piece of land, and who does what land belongs to. At some point, he says, you know, there's a part of Ukraine that's really Hungarian and it was given to Ukraine after World War II by Afghastalin, by the Soviets, and Techa asked him, have you told the obon that he should claim that part for Hungary? And Putin says, no, no, I haven't told the obon any of that. I haven't told him, but he says, but you know, they could. It could be part of Hungary. So for him, it's all about these ancient, you know, whose land is whose, whose ethnic group belongs where. And what I found interesting in all of this, what I found interesting in all of this, is you get a sense of who Putin seizes the enemy, at least from a historical perspective. And the enemy is not Ukraine. And the enemy is not the United States. The United States is too young. The United States is not a player. It's not the British, even though they fought a war with Russia in Crimea. It's not, it's not the Germans. What is really, really, really fascinating about it is that the real enemy that Putin sees when he looks west is Poland. Poland. Poland is the one that incorporated Ukrainian territory. Poland is the one that actually named Ukraine Ukraine. Ukraine means kind of the outskirts of a state. It means kind of the, the, the badlands on the outskirts. And Ukraine was the outskirts of the Polish Lithuanian Empire. The Poles are the bad guy over and over and over again. You know, it's the Poles cooperated with the Nazis. So they're bad. The Poles then wouldn't fully cooperate with the Nazis. So, you know, the Germans, according to Putin, I showed this the other day, that segment of the interview, the Poles, the Nazis had no option but to invade. I mean, it's a post for the World War II started. And then in terms of why Stalin invaded Poland, that was just because, you know, that was just a kind of maintain, you know, maintain the peace in a sense. It wasn't an invasion. It was more taking land. There was historically Russian, you know, and the whole area was going to fall apart because of the Nazis. And plus it was to penalize the Poles for cooperating with the Nazis, even the Nazis invaded Poland. I mean, he has this unbelievably convoluted view of history, completely convoluted. So Putin takes history, nationalism, this idea of ethnicity, the ethnic Russians, and its importance. He takes that super seriously. He takes that super seriously. And if you use the Poles and historical enemy, because they seem to be always there to chop off a piece of Ukraine, a chop off a piece of Russia, and Ukraine is just Russian territory, suddenly everything east of the Naipa is clearly Russian. West of the Naipa, some of it's Hungarian, some of it might be something else, but clearly everything east of the Naipa, Naipa is the river that flows through Kiev, is Russian. So Putin's going through this half-hour history lesson. And Tucker's frustrated. Tucker doesn't know what to do with this. So he keeps pushing, and he keeps trying to interject, and he keeps trying to say, but NATO, and Putin basically keeps pushing it up. He really doesn't get to the NATO question until the very last few minutes of the interview where Tucker is really now insisting, where Tucker's really, really pushing him, and he says something about, yeah, NATO expansionism, it was really bad, and they were asking for it, and they were... But everything else he talks about NATO expansionism is much more about how they promised about his, him being a victim, which we'll get to in a minute, not about NATO expansionism being a threat to Russia. So I think it's, again, fascinating. If you want to get a sense of what motivates him, again, you have to read between the lines a little bit, because he's not very emotional, he's a little flat, he tells it just flat, you don't really get the passion that's involved in his nationalism, but it's all there. It's all really, really, really there. Let me just see. So if you will, that is probably the number one thing to learn from this. And what's shocking, one of the things that's shocking, is that Tucker found this surprising. But if you've read Putin's talks, Putin, and I think I've talked, don't think, I know I've talked about this, both in my talk at OConn, and I also talked about this, I talked about this on one of the shows we did, Putin wrote an essay in, I think it was July of 2021, so I don't know, eight months before the war, maybe it was summer of 2021, in which he basically examines why, you know, why war with Ukraine, why it's coming, and what he thinks about Ukraine. And he lays this case out. He lays the historical case out. He talks about the Ukrainians and the Russians being the same people. He talks about a Russian soul and a Russian spirit, and Ukraine sharing that with it. And he talks about all of that. So if you've done, and if you want to listen to his talks, particularly those talks targeted at Russia, this is what he talks about. He talks about this historical injustice that was committed by Lenin and Stalin, first of all, by creating this political entity called Ukraine under the Soviet Union, and then the great injustice that was created when the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine became an independent country. These are the real grievances, but the grievances really go back to, again, old Rus in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th centuries, when then the Polish and Lithuanians, there was a Polish-Lithuanian empire that took pieces of Ukraine away from Russia. Putin constantly dismisses NATO expansion as a reason for what he did. And this, hopefully, I'm hoping that this will finally sink in and this will stop being kind of the the right's excuse for what is going on, for what is going on. He's clearly motivated and has been about historical concerns. Now people who follow Putin, and this is just psychologically interesting, and I have no first-hand knowledge here, this is just me reading experts who follow Putin, they say he wasn't always like this, that history, he wasn't obsessed with history, that if you go back to the early 2000s, this didn't interest him at all and he'd be much more worried about NATO expansion and things like that, that this whole history thing really came to the forefront in post-2012 when he became president again and was now a lot more paranoid and leading into the 2014 war in Ukraine. And that what it really took off, the whole historical thing, the whole idea of him being, I don't know, it's all grievance politics, grew dramatically during COVID. That during COVID, he isolated himself and he was truly isolated himself. You remember those long tables that he used to have meetings with, so no germ could cross that divide. And during this period of isolation, he became more and more and more obsessed with this historical issue, with these historical grievances. So first, I think what you get from this is this emphasis on history. Now that didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that this was the focus Putin put on it, that he's not playing games here, that he did not put a facade of propaganda onto it, that he actually stuck to it as is. Yeah, let me just note, I'm not reading the chat, too much going on, on the chat, too much going on in my notes and I have to cover this topic. So if you want my attention, you want me to comment, you want me to respond, you're going to have to use the super chat because there's just too much going on for me. So use the super chat, $2 questions, whatever, comments, anything in the super chat actually read, you want to insult me, do it there because I'm not reading the chat itself. Sometimes I do, but today it's just way too much. We've got 180 people watching. Hopefully some of you will both support the show, choose to support the show through the super chat, which is what you do if you're live. Some of you should subscribe. If you're not subscribers yet, I hope you find this interesting enough to subscribe, please subscribe. And then if you want to support the show monthly, there's Patreon and there's you on bookshow.com slash membership, where you can use PayPal to support the show. All right, let's go on. So the first point is history, he's obsessed and he seems sincere. Second point, clearly Putin feels like, I mean, if you think about it, there are three parts to the whole presentation. First part, history, 30 minutes, 30 minutes and he keeps going back to it. He self references to it because that's the heart. That's the important thing. That's what matters to Putin. Second part is again, about an hour, an hour, a Putin is the victim. Putin is aggrieved. He's insulted. He's snubbed by the West, poor Putin. They keep signing deals with them and walking away. They keep promising things. And it doesn't matter what president, they all do it. Clinton did it to him. Bush did it to him. He's insulted for Russia. He's constantly slighted and constantly, they keep coming in, doing things. Why wasn't he invited to NATO? They promised him he would, but then he wasn't. And missile defense, why he wanted to be part of the missile defense scheme vis-a-vis Iran, but they wouldn't let him in. And he's blaming everybody. He doesn't mention Obama, but he goes after Bush, he goes after you know, and he doesn't mention Trump early, but he's basically saying it's everybody. It's everybody. And he really, at every opportunity, he's saying they walked away. It's the West walked away. He insists that in Istanbul in 2022, it was the end of 2020, there was a deal on, well, no, in summer 2020, there's a deal on a table. Everybody was willing to sign a peace deal. He was willing, he doesn't tell us what the deal included. The Ukrainians were willing, everybody was willing to sign a peace deal. And they're not as a gesture of peace, Putin tells us. And I don't know if he believes this, or if he's lying to himself, or this is just a blatant lie, but he says there's a gesture of peace. He withdrew Russian troops from Kiev and from northwestern, northeastern Ukraine. That was his gesture of peace. And then everybody was willing to sign and then Boris Johnson shows up and tells them, don't know, don't sign, keep on going, you can beat them. Hard to tell if he really believes this or not. But he is constantly committed to the idea that the West is constantly undermining him. The West is constantly lying to him, deceiving him. And it's him personally. It's almost all him personally. And he's like, he constantly gives you half of a secret conversation he had with Clinton or half of a conversation he had with Bush. But in Texas, what would Bush say? And he says, well, I can't say. I mean, confidentiality, ultimately, you'd have to ask Bush. It's not fair for me to talk for Bush. I mean, he plays the diplomat here, right? I'm not going to say, you know, so why did Johnson suggest the Ukrainians walk away from the deal? I don't know. You're going to have to ask Johnson. But so the second part of the whole thing is Putin is a victim. Poor Putin is just constantly screwed by the West. He really wants peace. He wants to get along with the United States. He wants to he'd love to be part of NATO. He'd love to have a united missile defense system against Iran, his ally these days. He'd love to do all these things. And the West keeps buffing him. The West keeps turning him away. He is constantly moving forward with peaceful initiatives, trying to establish peace. And the West keeps blowing it. When the Kosovo crisis happened in the late 1990s, Russia really wanted peace. But look, the Syrians are part of their blood. They're part of their people. They had to support the Syrians. And what does America do? It goes and bombs them. And you know, how can you, you know, Russia did its best. They're trying to negotiate something, but America always comes in and spoils it. But it's like the Russia is this, we're not that powerful. We're not that, you know, we'd like to work together. You don't want us to work together fine. But, you know, but we're constantly aggrieved. You guys are constantly screwing us. A third part of the talk is, you know, mistreating Russia hurts you. It's not good for you. If you keep mistreating Russia, bad things happen to you. I mean, people stop using the dollar maybe. Energy costs in Europe go up significantly. You know, you're going to get in trouble with China. The BRICS economies are growing. You know, mistreating China, Russia has consequences and it's not good for you. It's not good for you the West. You should really reconsider. You should be nice to us. And nice to Russia means, I think I understand it as he never says it, giving in to our demands, doing what we would like you to do. So he feels snubbed. And look, he feels snubbed by the other powers going back to 1654, right? Going back to the Polish-Lithuanian thing, going back to the Nazis, going back to post-World War II, even thinks Stalin just did a bad deal. So he, you know, Russia's being screwed. He's just trying to stand up a little bit for Russia. What did Putin not want to do or not do? Not do. I don't know if he thought about it, but what didn't he do? He didn't give Tucker the MAGA talking points. He just didn't. And in this sense, this interview is a complete failure for Tucker. Now, in a sense that he got, I don't know, 100 million views, it's a huge success for him. He's the biggest talk show host in the world. I mean, a number of times, Putin actually says to Tucker, are we going to have a real interview here? Is this just a talk show? Like, I want a real interview. And Tucker laughs, but I want a real interview. And it's like, let's go into depth. It's like, what Putin is almost saying to Tucker Carlson is, I wish you a Lex Friedman. I want a three-hour interview where we delve deep into the issues, cover history and philosophy and stuff like that. Stop trying to get me to say sound bites that appease your audience. I mean, it was humiliating for Tucker. I mean, really humiliating for Tucker. I mean, this should have been a Lex Friedman interview because, given Putin's mood, it fit a Lex Friedman type interview because Putin just wanted to talk. And talk. And he's not interested in sound bites. He's not interested in throwing meat to the American right. He's not interested in throwing meat to the European right. He doesn't really condemn the Europeans. He kind of says, look, I don't understand why Germany's doing what it's doing. I don't get it. He could have really gone after Germany cost of, I mean, he says their economy is floundering because of Ukraine, but he could have really laid into that. He could have really leaned into that point. But it's just like a passing point, all in order to humiliate us, in a sense, all in order to, again, this is the grieved Putin. Putin is basically there to make a particular type of case. It's not the case Tucker wanted to hear. We didn't hear anything about cancer culture in the West. We didn't hear anything about gender ideology. And Tucker at some point asked him, in a sense, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, isn't this all the Biden administration's fault? Wouldn't things be a lot better if we had a change of administration? And Putin says, no. No. All the American presidents are the same. They've all been the same. They've all treated us the same. Nothing special about this administration. And you can see Tucker's face just drops because he's not, he's not getting what he wants. He's so frustrated. Now, I mean, the 2022 negotiations for peace deal keeps coming back because Tucker, I think, thinks that's a way to find a way to blame the West for everything that's happened because that's his agenda. This war is the West's fault. It's not Russia's fault. And Putin keeps repeating himself, but it doesn't come across as, yes, this is the West's fault. It comes across as, oh, at some point, Tucker says, he says this at least twice, maybe three times. He says, do you think Zelensky is allowed to negotiate with you? In other words, do you think the Americans and Europeans will allow Zelensky to negotiate with you? Again, Tucker wants Putin to say, no, it's the West's fault and the West, the Americans and the Europeans won't let Zelensky talk to us. He's just a puppet of the West. And Tucker says, no, Zelensky is the leader of Ukraine. He can negotiate if he wants. He's chosen not to. I don't understand why, but he's chosen not to. Putin keeps saying, look, we can get out of this. We can figure this out. If only everybody's reasonable. If only everybody, you know, sees our point of view. But there's no, again, he's not doing what Tucker wants him to do. He's not out there blaming the West, blaming NATO. Tucker constantly, constantly thought the interview, tries, as I've illustrated a few times, tries to bring up, tries to get everything to fit into his own worldview, tries to get these pro-right wing views, points of view across. So he pushes NATO expansion over and over and over again. Who runs the whole thing? He's trying to get, he asks Putin at some point, who actually, who do you think makes the decisions in the United States? Trying to get him to say something about the elites, right? Trying to say something about the anti-Russian elites or trying to say about something about the decadent, you know, decadent left or anything like that. And Putin says, I don't know who runs the United States. There's the Democrats and there's the Republicans. They run the United States. You know, there are people, there are different forces behind them, but you know, you'll have to ask the Americans who runs the United States. I mean, stunning, stunning in terms of Putin's unwillingness to engage in what Tucker wants him to engage in. It turns out surprising to me, at least, and I think ultimately surprising to Tucker, is that Putin says the same thing to Tucker as he does to the Russian people. And Tucker thought that he would get him to say stuff to Americans that would be consistent with Tucker's view, interpretation of the world, and he didn't. And in that sense, this interview is useless in terms of the new rights attempts to really push this pro-Russia anti-West agenda, because Putin refused to be anti-West. I mean, he hints here and there. Yeah, America has a large deficit. America's economy is fading. Not according to me, Putin says. American economists are saying this. China's economy is growing. He's big on China. But not with any kind of vitriol, not with any kind of passion, not with any kind of, he's not blaming Biden. He's not blaming the left. I mean, Jordan Peterson must be unbelievably disappointed in this interview. This isn't, this isn't the Putin, Jordan, or Tucker, or any of these people on the right expected or wanted that he had an historical opportunity here to really solidify their position about Russia. And he refused to do it. One more question. Let me just find my note on this. One more question that Tucker asked that I thought was also really interesting. Let me just find this. I don't know if we can find it. We'll see. Yeah, I mean, I've got here. No, Tucker tries to get Putin to attack Biden. Putin says it's not about who is leader. It's about the elites. And then Tucker tries to get him to name the elites. And he says, I don't know who they are. Tucker says, who makes the decision in the United States? What are the power centers? And you know, Putin says, I don't know. It's a complex country. Who knows? Tucker then at an hour and 35 minutes in says, you know, he's trying to get Putin to say it was a Biden administration that provoked the war. And Putin doesn't say it. He keeps it turning to men's skin. He keeps it turning to the history and he keeps it turning to the Nazis. Oh, the other big thing Putin keeps talking about. And you got to think maybe this is truly something in his mind that he really thinks this, but it's bizarre. He constantly in the second half constantly talks about the denazification of Ukraine. Ukraine is being run and is overrun by neo-Nazis and nationalists. Neo-Nazis are threat to Russia, but really a threat to the United States as well. So the US should fight them as well. And it's all about neo-Nazis. We got to take the territory back from neo-Nazis. You know, it's on and on and on and on about Nazis. I mean, God, where are these? I mean, yeah, I know there's some neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the neo-Nazis in America too, the neo-Nazis everywhere. But neo-Nazis are they're running Ukraine. And the interesting thing is as you listen to Putin, he's basically equivocating between nationalists, Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis. If you're an Ukrainian Nazi nationalist, you are a Nazi, which is interesting in and of itself. He also throws in there, the US will always support those who antagonize Russia and so on. But let me find this other, oh yeah. So Taka, again, is trying to establish right wing talking points. This certainly is a Jordan Peterson talking point. Jordan Peterson has talked about this quite a bit over the last few years about Putin being a Christian, about religion being really, really, really important for Putin. And this is suggestive to Jordan Peterson that Putin must be a good guy and is virtuous and is better in some fundamental sense than Western leaders. So Taka asked him, he says, what does it mean that you are a Christian leader? And Putin kind of looks surprised and bewildered. And he goes back and he starts talking about the Rus being baptized in 800 and how religion is deeply rooted in the Russian people. But he says, oh, we're very respectful of other religions, particularly Islam, because we have many Islamic minorities. And really what Russia is about is the motherland and family. And we're very, very respectful family. This could have been an opportunity for him to attack the West around gays and stuff like that, which he's done in the past. We didn't. Patriotism is very strong, not saying anything about his own beliefs in Christianity. He talks about the soul and the spirit, but nothing of that. And so Taka's trying to push this, right? Taka's not getting what he wants. This is super frustrating. So Taka says, in the way things are going on in the world right now, do you see God at work? Literally, this is a question Taka asks Putin, do you see in the things going on in the world right now, do you see God at work? And again, you could have expected Putin to say, yes, it's a devil infecting the Europeans and infecting the Americans. And he says, no, I don't think so. I mean, I have to admit that listening to this interview, like on five different occasions, I started laughing aloud. It was, you know, it was so, Taka was so blatantly after a particular narrow agenda, Putin was so blatantly not giving it to him. And it was funny. I mean, you should have seen what Taka do when the guy says, no, I don't think so. And then he goes into another discussion of history, starts giving him a history lesson about the history of Russia. God is not at work here. If you want to find it one hour, 47 minutes in the interview, do you see God at work? I mean, the only part Taka pushed back on, because Putin said a lot of things are just untrue, but the only part that Taka pushed back on. And there were lots of things that you could have asked Putin, what was in the peace agreement? Were you willing to withdraw your troops from Ukraine? You know, what kind of peace do you want? You know, lots of things you could have asked. But the only thing Taka really pushed was on the Wall Street Journal journalist, where Taka was saying, look, he's not a spy, everybody knows he's not a spy. And Putin is like, look, we caught him red handed with classified information. And Taka's going, yeah, but he's not a spy. He's a 32 year old kid. Really? 32? Isn't that kind of the age of spies? Isn't that the age in which you become a spy? Or you maybe peak age of a spy? You have to be physically fit and anyway, and mentally enough. And Taka comes across as just dumb and stupid. And Putin and Taka says, are you willing as a gesture right now to release him into and we can take him home? Right? So Taka wants the prestige of bringing the journalist home. And Putin says, no, no. CIA and basically the equivalent of KGB, they're negotiating, they'll figure out a case. And then he goes into this whole story about this guy who's in jail in Europe and who shouldn't be in jail and he needs to return to Russia, clear that an exchange. And he says, look, there's going to be an exchange. This kid's not going to be in Russia forever. We don't really want him. But we're going to have to exchange. I'm not just going to give him to you. You've got to be kidding me. And then finally, finally, Taka at the very end, he gets, he puts it to say something about, I don't know, NATO, you know, NATO bad or something. And then at the end of the interview, Taka says, you want to settle negotiations, right? You want a negotiated peace with Ukraine. And Putin says, basically, yeah, I mean, look, a lot of those Ukrainians think of themselves as Russian and they want to be united, reunited with Russia and they will be reunited with Russia. We're going to bring together our souls. And he says, bring together our souls. This is the negotiated end. And he says, let's stop here. All I say is thank you. Thank you, Taka, for doing this interview. This interview basically has vindicated everything I've been saying about the war since its beginning. I said since the beginning, it's not about NATO. I said since the beginning, this is about history. I said since the beginning, this is about this spiritual, mystical BS about Russian ethnicity. I've said since the beginning that this is not the West's or US's fault, and that Putin is a nut, that he believes, I think he really believes these lies. He is, he's psychologically damaged. He really, he really, you know, thinks that he is aggrieved and the West is out to get him on a personal level, not on a grand level, that American politicians are lies. He's this honest, beautiful, amazing person. And everybody's just lies to him. Everybody just deceives him. Everybody's just nasty to him. I don't know if he believes that, but I think he does. I think that's how he keeps himself together. And thank you, Taka, for showing the world that this is what this is what he really is. Now, you could have done a better job of showing this by pushing him a little bit, by getting to be a little bit more explicit, by asking more probing questions, by going with it rather than trying constantly to go back to your agenda, an agenda that has nothing to do with the truth, an agenda that has nothing to do with facts, an agenda that has everything to do with a kind of a new right talking points. And in that sense, I thought Taka was an awful interviewer. I mean, he didn't interrupt as much, he interrupted quite a bit, but he didn't interrupt anyways, as much. But Taka let him talk for the most part. But yeah, it was truly, truly fascinating. And I still think it's a mistake I still think it's a mistake to do this interview, but I guess I'm glad he did it because, because I, you know, I learned something and it confirmed my particular beliefs, which is always good, right? When I tell you something and then you get third party confirmation, Iran is not full of it yet. He knows what he's talking about. That's good.