- il y a 3 mois
La décision de la Russie de mobiliser 500 000 soldats constitue l'une des escalades militaires les plus lourdes de conséquences depuis le début de la guerre en Ukraine, et ses implications dépassent largement le cadre du champ de bataille. Dans cette vidéo, nous examinons ce qu'une mobilisation de cette ampleur signifie concrètement pour la posture militaire à long terme de la Russie, sa capacité économique à soutenir un conflit prolongé et ses calculs stratégiques vis-à-vis de l'OTAN et de l'Occident. Nous explorons les précédents historiques de mobilisation de masse dans la doctrine militaire russe et soviétique, et nous analysons si cette mesure signale un passage d'opérations limitées à une guerre totale. Nous décortiquons les défis logistiques, industriels et humains auxquels la Russie est confrontée pour équiper et déployer une force de cette taille, et nous étudions comment cette mobilisation pourrait redessiner l'équilibre des pouvoirs en Europe de l'Est. Nous allons également au-delà des gros titres pour examiner comment l'Ukraine, l'OTAN et les services de renseignement occidentaux interprètent probablement cette évolution, et quelles contre-mesures pourraient en découler. Cette mobilisation est-elle un signe de confiance stratégique ou une réponse à une pression croissante sur de multiples fronts ? Nous posons la question essentielle : s’agit-il d’un tournant dans la guerre, ou du premier pas vers une confrontation bien plus longue ? La suite des événements déterminera peut-être la prochaine phase de ce conflit.
Catégorie
🗞
NewsTranscription
00:00The war between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for four and a half long and bloody and inconclusive
00:07years so far.
00:08One may think that the Ukrainian side is going to do everything it can to get this war over with
00:13because of the profound cost to itself and to its people, especially its fighting men.
00:19But you would be wrong if that's what you thought.
00:21As a matter of fact, President Zelensky is not just looking to try to win its war against Russia,
00:25but he's looking to expand it into additional fronts.
00:31That may sound a little crazy.
00:33Well, the reason is because it is crazy, and we're going to look at what he's trying to do anyway,
00:37and there's literally nobody better we could have to express this than Scott Ritter,
00:42who is a veteran Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations weapons inspector,
00:46and continues to be one of the most sought-after military analysts in the business,
00:49but especially on the Russia-Ukraine war because of his extensive knowledge into the Russian military
00:55and to the Russian mindset and to what's going on in Ukraine.
00:58Scott, welcome back to our show.
01:01Thank you very much for having me.
01:02Well, look, let's just get into the first part of this expansion.
01:07Ukraine is trying to expand the war deeper into Russia.
01:12This has been something going on for a bit of time now to where,
01:15especially with Western intelligence aid, physical supplies, weapons, long-range missiles, drones, you name it,
01:22to help Ukraine fire deeper into Russia, and that by itself has been a problem.
01:27But here of late, the Ukraine side has spread into additional targets,
01:32and now they've been hitting an Amazon-type wildberries in Russia
01:36and some pretty spectacular video that's been coming out of these makes a lot of great video
01:42and looks really, really bad.
01:44The Ukraine side has said, hey, this is not just an Amazon-type delivery service.
01:48This was a military process here because they secretly hid military goods around.
01:54What can you tell us about, first of all, what is the objective here?
01:57What is Zelensky trying to accomplish by expanding into these targets,
02:03and why are they being successful hitting them?
02:06Well, first of all, Ukraine has been losing the war with Russia for a significant period of time.
02:15Actually, one could say that they've lost the war the moment the war started.
02:19But thanks to billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars of Western financial assistance,
02:26military equipment, training, Ukraine's been able to prolong the agony of a nation,
02:32the nation being Ukraine.
02:37They've been actively working to disguise the fact that they don't have a solution to the military problem.
02:44Look, you remember June 2023, the great summer counteroffensive.
02:50I mean, hyped up.
02:51General Zaluzian himself sold it to the public in December of 2022.
02:56Exactly what they were going to do, launch a massive attack using NATO-trained forces,
03:01using NATO tactics to split the land bridge and to compel Russia into surrendering.
03:09Then they tried to hide it with a propaganda campaign where everybody was going,
03:12but don't talk about the offensive too late.
03:14And the offensive was slaughtered.
03:16Do you remember the imagery of, you know, M2 Bradleys and M1 Abrams and British tanks
03:24and the German leopards burning on the battlefield as they were unable to penetrate Russian defenses?
03:30Since that time, Ukraine has been struggling to regain the imagination of the West
03:35because only through capturing the imagination of the West can Ukraine continue to receive the largesse of the West.
03:44You know, the West isn't going to give money and resources away to a lost cause.
03:49Because the West will only prop Ukraine up so long as Ukraine maintains the fiction that they are in this
03:57fight.
03:57Now, they'll be in this fight until the last Ukrainian, apparently.
04:01But, you know, the bottom line is they're losing and losing badly.
04:05So, in January of this year, Zelensky replaced the Minister of Defense with somebody new, Mikhailo Fedorov.
04:17Fedorov, just to show you, he was the social media manager of Zelensky during his 2019 presidential campaign.
04:28Then he went on to be the first Minister of Digital Information.
04:31He helped create the e-portal used by the Ukrainian government.
04:35So, he's a wordsmith.
04:37He's a propagandist.
04:39He's not a military leader.
04:41And yet, he came in and spoke of innovation.
04:44He said, I will liberate Ukraine from the meat grinder of the front line,
04:50where General Siersky, the commander, was saying, I need more brigades.
04:54I need to fill in the gaps.
04:55I need to launch counterattacks to maintain his perception of Ukrainian victory.
05:00But it was costing Ukraine everything.
05:02They were running out of men.
05:04And so, Fedorov went to Zelensky and said, we can do this differently.
05:08And this is something that was pushed by the West, using technology, drones, artificial intelligence,
05:15to create the perception of Ukrainian victory.
05:18And this began the long-range sanctions, the long-range drone strikes into Russia.
05:25You know, in May, Zelensky said, this is going to be the summer of the drone.
05:30I'm going to be launching 6,000 drones a month against Russia.
05:35And in June 25th, Zelensky announced a 40-day drone war against Russia.
05:42Straight up said, I am 40 days.
05:45We're going to be blowing the hell out of Russia using long-range drones,
05:49the goal of which is to drive Russia to the negotiating table, to create a new reality.
05:55And then this long-range drone war became fodder for Western media,
06:02for the social media platforms that were sympathetic to Ukraine.
06:06You mentioned, you know, videos of seeing things burning, smoke.
06:11Yes, they take a drone hitting a warehouse, setting the warehouse on fire,
06:16and they play that over and over and over and over again.
06:19They hit a refinery and get some smoke over and over and over again.
06:23A drone flying across the Russian sky over and over and over again,
06:28as if by replaying the same event over again.
06:33Ukraine, Ukraine's won the war, but this isn't what happened.
06:37You see, Ukraine is losing the war, and this became manifest on July 15th when Fedorov was fired.
06:44You see, you can only play video so long, but the key thing to creating deterrence
06:50is to actually have something that prompts the other side to say, wait a minute.
06:56Ukraine is trying to create the perception of the ability to project pain.
07:03You know, this is something that Thomas Schelling talks about in his War Game Theories,
07:08you know, the ability to project pain, to bring pain to the enemy.
07:14Ukraine's not bringing pain to Russia.
07:16I mean, something's hurt.
07:18There's no doubt about it.
07:19I'm, you know, on very good terms with many of the people in the Donbass region,
07:24in Zaporozhia, Kerson, I personally know the governor of Kerson.
07:28I've interviewed him.
07:30And, you know, and we're being told that he's all but surrendering.
07:33Now, Gilbert Doctorow is professing that, you know, that the governor is somehow saying that
07:40Kerson is unlivable, unlivable.
07:43Tell that to the people who live there every day, who continue to struggle, continue to live.
07:48There's no surrender here.
07:49This is this Western perception manufacturing.
07:53And on July 15th, the reality of what was happening in the front line where the brigades didn't go to
07:58Sierski at home.
08:00And Sierski said, give me the brigades or we lose everything.
08:04Fedorov said, keep me giving the drones.
08:05I got this.
08:06But you don't have it because, you see, you try to project pain to Russia.
08:10But all those little beautiful things burning, all it did is get Russia to project real pain to Ukraine.
08:18Ukraine is popping off an oil refinery capability here.
08:23Russia is destroying several factories here.
08:25Ukraine takes out a truck here.
08:27Russia destroys 100 UAV operators a day in Ukraine.
08:31Russia is projecting real pain on Ukraine.
08:34Real pain, destroying the totality of Ukraine.
08:37And this is the reality.
08:39And Sierski's forces were being annihilated at the front line.
08:43He needed the brigades.
08:44So Zelensky fired Fedorov.
08:46Now, he replaced him with an intelligence service head who the next day or two days later, three days later,
08:52made the decision that they were going to expand the drone campaign, but, you know, not in an expensive way.
08:58They said, we're going to start striking wild berries.
09:00Why?
09:01Because they want to bring the pain home to the Russian people.
09:04And so now they start sending their drones and they hit some wild berries distribution centers.
09:09And, man, they light up really good.
09:11A lot of cardboard boxes in there with nothing but civilian goods.
09:14The idea that wild berries being used as a military logistics front is a straight-up fabrication of Western intelligence,
09:19projected by Zelensky and, you know, echoed by social media and Western media platforms.
09:26Wild berries, I know it.
09:27Everybody knows it.
09:28It's an Amazon-like online retailer.
09:32And now he's blowing it up.
09:33What has this done?
09:35I mean, for a while, there's some imagery and people are going, my God, this has to hurt the Russians.
09:40There's some jobs that are lost.
09:42I mean, the pain is there.
09:44This isn't real pain.
09:45The real pain is what Russia is doing to Ukraine instead.
09:48Because now Russia is taking out the totality of Ukraine's commercial enterprise.
09:53Warehouses, shopping centers, storage facilities, distribution centers are being hit.
09:59You take out one wild berry, Russia takes out 20 distribution centers.
10:03There will be nothing left of Ukraine's infrastructure when winter comes.
10:08Russia has destroyed Ukraine's ability to distribute goods.
10:11This means foods.
10:12This means clothing.
10:13This means everything.
10:14The Ukrainian people have been abandoned by their government and left at the mercy of a nation that can deliver
10:19real pain,
10:20which is what Russia is doing right now.
10:22Russia, meanwhile, continues to destroy the totality of Ukraine's industrial infrastructure.
10:26Ukraine will be producing no drones by the time Russia is done.
10:29And Ukraine will be producing no power.
10:32Russia has destroyed the thermal power generating facilities.
10:37And they're destroying every gas station in Ukraine.
10:41They're starting at the front line.
10:43They're working their way backwards.
10:44By the time Russia is done, there will be no ability to distribute gas.
10:49Because, you know, the Ukrainians, they do clever things.
10:52Like they strike the refinery in Samara.
10:55And then they show that video.
10:57And it gets people like Gilbert Doctro to, oh, my God, they hit Samara.
11:01Yeah.
11:02They know that Samara is run by, I think, Rosneft.
11:05And they know that Rosneft takes the refined product there and they deliver it to certain gas stations.
11:10And they know by hitting this refinery, Rosneft will have a disruption in deliveries.
11:14And so then they park themselves outside.
11:16They get some people to take videos of the cars lining up for gas.
11:20Well, there ain't no gas.
11:21Rosneft's ability to refine has been disrupted.
11:25But what they don't show is three days later.
11:28They don't show the fact that Rosneft is repairing this refinery.
11:31But in the meantime, the Russian government has gone to Luke Oil, who has a reserve of gasoline,
11:36and said redistribute it to the Rosneft gas stations.
11:39And there are no more gas lines.
11:41People are showing up and they're getting their gasoline on time, on target.
11:46That's the reality of Russia.
11:48Meanwhile, in Ukraine, there are no gas stations for people to line up to.
11:52No gas stations, no gas, no nothing, no life.
11:55This is the reality of what's going on.
11:57And it's a huge failure on the part of Zelensky.
12:00He's supposed to be setting himself up for the meeting tomorrow with Trump or the meeting this week with Trump.
12:05I think he comes tomorrow for Graham's funeral, and then he meets with Trump, where he's going to be saying,
12:09give us everything, give us everything, give us everything.
12:12But Trump now has to acknowledge the fact that Ukraine has lost everything, that this war is not going well,
12:19that they're being destroyed on the front lines, and that this drone war that Ukraine is trying to, you know,
12:25use to create the perception of Ukrainian victory has backfired.
12:28And it's confronting the West with the inevitability of Ukraine's termination as a modern nation state.
12:35Winter will come.
12:37And when winter comes, there will be no heat.
12:39There will be no energy.
12:40There will be no water.
12:41There will be no food.
12:43There will be nothing in Ukraine.
12:44Ukraine laughed about how they drove Russia out of the Black Sea.
12:47Who's driven out of the Black Sea today?
12:49It ain't Russia.
12:51Russia is taking over the Black Sea, shutting down Odessa.
12:53And then if you listen to what Vladimir Putin has recently said, he recently said that there will be no
13:00Ukraine.
13:01He said maybe it's time to give Western Ukraine to the Poles, let the Romanians come in and take their
13:06land,
13:06and let Hungary come in and take their land.
13:08There will be no access to the sea because Odessa is a Russian city.
13:14In fact, if I could ask you a little bit, what has been going on in Odessa?
13:19Because from what I saw, and you correct me if I'm wrong on the timing and sequencing here,
13:24but it looked like Zelensky also, prior to all of this, expanded into the sea of Vazov
13:30and was hitting a lot of commercial Russian vessels that they called the so-called shadow fleet.
13:35But they were commercial vessels.
13:36And then Russia started striking back.
13:38And now it looks like that Russia, kind of to your point a second ago,
13:42that the Russian response has been a lot worse than the damage to Russia
13:45and that the port of Odessa has effectively been shut down.
13:48Is that accurate?
13:50Yeah.
13:51You know, the Azov Sea, yes, the Ukrainians sent drones into the Sea of Azov,
13:55and they basically struck a number of ships.
13:59Ukraine, you know, claimed that they were taking out dozens of ships.
14:02I think the real number struck is between 8 and 15, of which only a handful were seriously.
14:08Remember, Ukraine is striking with 60-kilogram, you know, firecrackers.
14:15They come in and they go, pop.
14:16That's it.
14:18You're not going to sink a ship with 60 kilograms of high explosive.
14:21You may punch a hole in it.
14:22You may cause some smoke.
14:24That's it.
14:24Russia's responding with 1,000 pounds of high explosive that goes boom.
14:29And Russia is now sinking ships in the Black Sea, shutting down ports.
14:33There is no port activity taking place in Odessa and Nikolaev.
14:38They're moving up to close to, you know, Ismail near Romania.
14:42Russia's shutting it down.
14:45Ukraine is now complaining.
14:47They can't get their grain to market.
14:49You shouldn't have started a war with Russia, striking Russian ships.
14:52Russia, this is the thing people don't understand.
14:54Russia has not been at war with Ukraine.
14:57Russia has treated Ukraine with kid gloves.
15:00They are focused on doing what they do at the front line and they pay a heavy price for this
15:06because as a result of Russia's kid glove treatment, Ukraine has built a safe zone in Ukraine and in Europe
15:12that allows them to sustain this conflict.
15:15Russia's been, we're not at war with Ukraine, so we're not going to treat Ukraine as a wartime target.
15:21But Ukraine has decided that they want to play stupid games.
15:24And when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.
15:27So now Russia is at war with Ukraine, matching everything the Ukrainians do.
15:32The Black Sea is denied to Ukraine right now, functionally, and soon when Russia takes Odessa, permanently.
15:39This is the price you pay for stupidity.
15:42And Donald Trump is waking up to this reality.
15:45I mean, Marco Rubio had a meeting with Sergei Lavrov a few days ago, I think in Singapore, on the
15:54wings of the ASEAN meetings.
15:55And, you know, he basically said that Anchorage is dead.
15:58We need new ideas.
16:00And the Russians are like, we got some new ideas for you.
16:03How about we say we destroy everything, we occupy everything, and you get nothing?
16:09How's that for an idea?
16:10Because that's basically the idea that is there right now on the table.
16:15Some other things of interest are happening.
16:20You know, one of the great propaganda campaigns that's going on right now is to try and replicate the, you
16:27know,
16:28the intelligence services efforts in 2011 to cause Vladimir Putin a defeat in the parliament,
16:37denying, you know, United Russia its majority in an effort to derail Putin's prospects as president.
16:46Well, today we see the same thing.
16:47The effort now is to see if United Russia could be kicked out of the parliament or reduced and the
16:53parliament loses its majority on September 20th.
16:55And in doing so, then create the conditions for the collapse of Vladimir Putin.
17:01I mean, past patterns repeat themselves.
17:03And the intelligence services activities in 2010, 2011 are playing out today.
17:07Same goals, same objectives.
17:10Vladimir Putin met with, on Navy Day, and he met with sailors, and he also met with members of parliament.
17:18And he gave a speech where he told the parliament, you know, would you like us to go faster?
17:25And they literally shout, yes.
17:27And he says, but to do this, there has to be changes.
17:31Because so far, we've been very moderate in what we're doing.
17:34And we don't, any acceleration you speak of will not only cost lives, but will cost resources, will impact the
17:41economy.
17:42And the parliament said, yes.
17:45So there's a good chance that after the September election, and when United Russia cements its majority,
17:53that the parliament will be demanding the mobilization of 300,000 to 500,000 Russian soldiers.
18:00That's the number needed for Russia to take Odessa, to take Kartikov, to take Sumy, to end this conflict forever.
18:08Wow, that's actually a big deal.
18:10I'd seen that mentioned in a number of publications here that there was, in fact, I saw it in some
18:15Ukraine publications
18:16that said that Russia could mobilize up to half a million troops.
18:19But I wasn't sure if that was just because they've been accusing Russia of doing all kinds of things.
18:23But you say that that is, is that something that's being discussed in open press on the Russian side, that
18:29potential?
18:30Discussed in open press.
18:31Vladimir Putin said it.
18:33Okay.
18:33Discussed in open press.
18:35The president of Russia is basically saying, this is what we will do then.
18:40And the other interesting thing he did is he gave a presentation where, you know, he said, I listen to
18:46everything.
18:46I don't just get official sources.
18:47I listen to, you know, the bloggers.
18:51I listen to, you know, the pundits.
18:53And he says, some of them get it right.
18:55Some of them get it very wrong.
18:56But I listen to everything, which, again, means that even though the Russian government isn't putting out certain thematics or
19:04narratives,
19:05Vladimir Putin is open to, you know, to listening to ideas that resonate with him.
19:11And, you know, look, there's just a certain reality.
19:15I just ask the people who hate on me, just look at a map.
19:21I mean, don't believe me.
19:22The hell was Scott Ritter?
19:24I mean, after all, I'm a Putin's puppet.
19:26Look at a map.
19:29And draw a line on the map of where the front line is right now.
19:33Now imagine 700 plus thousand Russian soldiers populating the line of contact.
19:38All right?
19:39Because that's the number out there.
19:40Everybody acknowledges that's the number, plus or minus 10,000.
19:43Now imagine for a moment, project it out.
19:46Go through Kerasone, through Nikolaev, up through Odessa to the border with Transnisteria,
19:53which is what would happen if Russia was to take Odessa.
19:56Now look at that new frontage there.
19:59Just use basic military math.
20:01I'm just asking you to work with me here.
20:03It's not that hard.
20:03The extension of the front line, basic military math,
20:06math means in order to do that, you're going to need 300,000 to 500,000 additional troops.
20:14So this is what's happening, ladies and gentlemen.
20:17Vladimir Putin has said that Odessa is a Russian city.
20:20The consolidation of the line, once they take the rest of the Donbass, will extend up through Kharkov.
20:26It'll allow another couple hundred thousand troops to be freed up for redistribution down south.
20:32This is the war that's happening around.
20:34The Ukrainian army is being eviscerated as we speak.
20:37They have no ability to replace them.
20:39There's no manpower left.
20:41There's no equipment left.
20:43There is no defense of Ukraine.
20:45Zelensky is begging for air defense because he has no air defense.
20:48But where's this air defense going to come from?
20:50The saving grace is supposed to be his ability to produce Patriot missiles under license.
20:55Even in peacetime conditions, he wouldn't get a single Patriot assembled for at least two to four years, probably four.
21:02Under wartime, he will never get a Patriot assembled.
21:05There is no ability to give him additional Patriots.
21:08So, you know, this is just the reality.
21:12People want to ignore it, but it's just the reality of what's going on.
21:17Ukraine has lost this war.
21:19You know, when they finally surrender, I don't know, but they will surrender.
21:24It will be unconditional surrender.
21:26Ukraine had an opportunity to have a peace that would have preserved its integrity as a sovereign nation state.
21:32They've lost that opportunity because of Vladimir Zelensky and his Western backers.
21:37Gary, could I ask you to put that headline you had just up there a second ago that Putin was
21:40considering mobilizing half a million people?
21:45I want to put that up there because that's something you just said a second ago, but there was an
21:49additional comment in there.
21:50I'd like your view on what that what that means and how you interpret it.
21:56So let's see.
21:57There we go.
21:57So Putin public as public.
22:01What's the word there?
22:02Public opinion plummets.
22:04But when you actually look at the approval rating, this is this is the most recent one here.
22:11Plummet is a relative term.
22:13The last one that's on a list here.
22:15By the way, this is the same in both U.S.
22:17and Russian sources approval is 74 percent, disapproval of 21 percent.
22:23No Western leader has ever had that much.
22:25So if that's a plummet, I'm not sure what that's telling you, but that almost seems contradictory.
22:30If the the the the public opinion was plummeting, that'd be the worst time to try and mobilize somebody.
22:37How do you view those two apparent claims?
22:39First of all, there's no plummeting, as you said.
22:42I mean, this is a downward dip.
22:44If you put that chart back up, you'll see that President Putin's, you know, approval ratings are not a single
22:52straight line that they are.
22:53There are fluctuations.
22:55I mean, he's even gone down below that.
22:57And on some occasions, a lot of that's economic, economic driven.
23:02The war has brought unprecedented levels of support.
23:05But now it's not that the Russian people are anti-war.
23:11It's just the opposite.
23:13People just aren't reading this right.
23:14The Russian people want this war to end with a complete and total absolute Russian victory.
23:20They will they will accept nothing less than that.
23:22Nothing less than that.
23:24The reason why we have a dip here is because Vladimir Putin was embracing the Anchorage summit.
23:31He was embracing the potential of compromise, the three plus two arrangement that was put on the table for Rubio.
23:37And the Russian people said, hell no.
23:39No way, pal.
23:40You don't send us to war.
23:42You don't sacrifice our sons.
23:44You don't sacrifice our husbands.
23:45And then say compromise.
23:47There will be no compromise.
23:49And now Vladimir Putin, in perfect timing for the upcoming September elections, by the way, is saying, maybe it's time
23:57for us to take the gloves off.
23:59They're doing it right now by blowing Ukraine to hell.
24:02And now he's telling the Duma shouted, mobilize.
24:06They shouted it.
24:08Mobilize.
24:08And the president went, I hear you.
24:10Do you do you not understand what's happening?
24:13His approval rating is going to skyrocket on the eve of the September 20th elections.
24:18United Russia will sweep through this.
24:21All the parliament, any other party will be there and survive only by saying they support Vladimir Putin.
24:26And game, set, match.
24:28It's over.
24:29That's it.
24:31Now, you mentioned some things that President Putin has said in the last couple of days.
24:34Tell me how you think this ties in with this dynamic you're seeing heading into September.
24:39I think it was yesterday.
24:41He said, listen, he's going back to how this started, like to saying, hey, this is not our fault.
24:45We did not start this war.
24:47There is no aggression on the part of Russia.
24:49Now, many in the West think, well, that's absurd.
24:51Obviously, you invaded on February 24th, 2022.
24:56So, you know, has he lost his mind?
24:58Is he senile, et cetera?
25:00But then yesterday, or I'm sorry, no, this morning, I think, at least a video released this morning,
25:05President Putin put that into context, what he means when the war actually started.
25:12We have long faced illegal restrictions and attempts to restrain and pressure, both after the Russian spring of 2014 and
25:20before that.
25:21But since 2022, the West has launched a Russophobic machine at full speed.
25:28It simply sets world records on two criteria at once, on the number of so-called sanctions and on their
25:35uselessness,
25:36on the damage that these sanctions cause primarily to their authors and initiators, the peoples of some European and other
25:44states.
25:46I wish to shake the Russian state to provoke a social split in our country.
25:51They have tried to strangle our economy, the financial system, the banking sector, to undermine the potential of science, industry
25:59and education.
26:01Moreover, they do not have the strength to defeat Russia on the battlefield and are betting on, frankly, terrorist methods
26:07of fighting our people.
26:16So he seems to be saying that, I interpret this, and you're much better aligned than I am,
26:22that he's like speaking to these people that you just described a minute ago, whether it's the doom or the
26:27people saying, no, don't back this down.
26:29It's like saying our cause is just because this started in 2014.
26:32Now, I would ask you to examine the rather radical difference in interpretation of these events.
26:39I don't think that Putin is trying to convince anybody in the West of anything, but he does seem to
26:44be trying to maybe not convince,
26:46but align with the view in the Russia that this is actually foisted on them from a long time in
26:52the past.
26:54Well, first of all, this is, it's actually a breath of fresh air to hear Vladimir Putin say this,
27:02because, you know, there has been an ongoing, if you take a look, the West in the decade of the
27:0790s,
27:08after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West went into Russia and basically sought to tear Russia apart.
27:13Don't take my word for it again for all the Ritter haters out there.
27:16Go to the, you know, the man who ran political affairs in the U.S. Embassy in 1993, 1994.
27:24He published the second long telegram in 94, where he talks about how the United States is simply destroying any
27:33possibility of Russia functioning as a modern Western-style democracy.
27:38We're destroying the institutions of democracy by blindly supporting a brutal dictator named Boris Yeltsin.
27:44Wait a minute, Boris Yeltsin wasn't a dictator?
27:47October 1993, tanks in the streets, going to war against the Parliament.
27:51Dictator dude.
27:53He certainly wasn't a democratically elected president.
27:56You know, the United States bought his re-election.
28:00We bragged about it on a Time magazine cover.
28:03And the author of this warned, I think his name was Mary,
28:07and he warned that the consequences will be, you know, a resurrection of Russian nationalism,
28:14which will manifest itself in a unique form of Russian governance,
28:19which will work for Russia but won't be what we want.
28:22Well, guess what that was?
28:23That was called Vladimir Putin.
28:25Now, Bill Clinton didn't know what to do with Vladimir Putin when he first came in,
28:29because he sort of arrived on the scene.
28:30Nobody predicted this.
28:31We were going for our own horses.
28:33that the CIA was funding.
28:35George W. Bush thought that he would look in Vladimir Putin's eyes and could see his soul.
28:40But this was a, you know, he just didn't understand any aspect of it.
28:46But the real problem came in, you know, because during that time,
28:50while Bush was looking at his soul, Vladimir Putin was trying to make peace with the West.
28:54Wanted to become a partner for peace with NATO?
28:56Wanted to join NATO.
28:57NATO said no.
28:58And so now we get Barack Obama.
29:02Barack Obama had an advisor named Michael McFaul.
29:06Michael McFaul is a Stanford professor today.
29:08He came in and he convinced Barack Obama that the way we defeat,
29:12we being the United States, defeat Vladimir Putin is through regime change.
29:16And we began to promote a series of policies seeking to undermine Vladimir Putin
29:21and promote, you know, a replacement.
29:24In this case, Dmitry Medvedev was the replacement.
29:27It was a straight up open regime change.
29:30But at that time, again, because you talked about, you know, you just played Putin's speech.
29:36It doesn't come out of nowhere.
29:37Joe Biden, sound familiar, guys?
29:40At the time, he was the vice president of the United States,
29:42traveled to Russia in March of 2011 and held a meeting with the Russian opposition.
29:50I just want to say that Gilbert Doctorow identifies as a member of the Russian opposition during this time frame.
29:55I'm not making it up.
29:57He says it and says to them,
30:01if you reelect Vladimir Putin, that'll be bad for Vladimir Putin and bad for you.
30:06That's a threat.
30:07He said, now we can offer you this hope.
30:10You keep somebody in like Medvedev, keep him in,
30:13and then we will bring in Western investors, Western investors who invest in you.
30:18But in order for you to receive the investments, you have to change everything.
30:21You have to change your total government.
30:23Basically, you have to go back to the 1990s and replicate the corrupt system that we dominated.
30:30And Vladimir Putin wouldn't accept that.
30:33The Russian people didn't accept that.
30:34They have voted, and we've been resentful ever since.
30:36We've been seeking to remove Vladimir Putin from office since 2008, straight up.
30:42And Vladimir Putin now is acknowledging it.
30:44But prior to that, Putin had a problem because the West through the 90s had deeply invested itself in it.
30:50I mean, hell, all the oligarchs got their money by robbing Russia and selling it for profit.
30:57That's how they made their money.
30:58If you say you're the aluminum king, you got it by stealing the aluminum from Russia and selling it to
31:05the West for billions of dollars.
31:07Russia wasn't generating cash.
31:09Russia was throwing away resources, selling to the West at basement prices.
31:15And these oligarchs got rich off of the literal economic rape of Russia.
31:19And they became very powerful, very powerful.
31:23Vladimir Putin's been struggling against these oligarchs from the very moment he became president.
31:27But you can't undermine them without undermining the totality of the Russian economy.
31:31So it's a gradual process of confronting corruption in a gradual basis.
31:37But the West has always had its hooks in there.
31:40And in doing so, the West has always had the ability to potentially corrupt Russia from within.
31:46This is what Joe Biden tried to do in 2011.
31:49And this is what Vladimir Putin has accurately said is happening now,
31:52where voices are talking about the potential of economic engagement with the West,
31:58the ability of the West to come back with their resources.
32:01But look at what Scott Bessett and Donald Trump are offering the Russians.
32:05The same package Joe Biden was offering the Russians in 2011.
32:10The same package that the United States sold the Russians in the 1990s.
32:14Now, up until now, Vladimir Putin has kept open the possibility of having normalized relations with the United States and
32:20the West.
32:21I mean, the anchorage was the ultimate expression of that.
32:24Because against the will of the Russian people, Vladimir Putin said, I will seek a compromise.
32:30I will try to bring this war to an end.
32:32I will try to keep the bridge open of relations, sound relations between Russia and the West.
32:39It now appears, and the Russians have finally woken up to this, the West has no intention of having peace
32:44with Russia.
32:45Well, Scott, if I could just kind of pile on there, Vladimir Putin in that speech that we just played
32:52there talked about the Russophobia in the West.
32:55And if there was any more poignant and timely example of that, over the weekend, here is the U.S.
33:03Senator White House kind of confirming what President Putin says.
33:08I have faulted and will continue to fault Biden for indecision around Ukraine.
33:14I think they could have done more earlier.
33:17They always ended up coming to the right decision about javelins, about tanks, about funding, but always six months too
33:24late.
33:24And I think that was a grievous mistake, but it's nothing compared to Trump's taking the side of the war
33:37criminal aggressor Putin against the beleaguered Ukrainians, which is, I think, the most vile and amoral foreign policy decision I've
33:48seen in my lifetime.
33:49Now, aside from the fact that Marco Rubio last month said that we picked the side and the side was
33:54Ukraine, I'm not sure what he's talking about, but you see this just visceral hatred of Russia.
34:00I mean, it just was saturated in his words, words there at the end.
34:05How can there be any kind of cooperation if that is one of your leading U.S. senators?
34:10There can't be.
34:12And finally, Russia's waking up to this.
34:14You know, there was a recognition in Russia that the American political system was infected with Russophobia.
34:22This is where, you know, Sergei Lavrov said the Americans are agreement incapable.
34:26But there was always the hope that there could be some sort of gap and that Trump as a businessman
34:32could gap over the deep state and the Russophobic attitude of the deep state and get engaged with American businesses.
34:40And this was the promise of the Alaska summit to bring about a ceasefire and then bring about the investments
34:46that would, you know, supercharge the Russian and American economies.
34:51But the Russians now have come to the realization that Anchorage was nothing more than a facade, a charade to
34:57buy time to rearm Ukraine and get them to where they are today.
35:02And so the Russians now have totally abandoned and to have Vladimir Putin.
35:08Look, I'm not going to say Vladimir Putin reads Scott Ritter, but what he wrote there is literally a word
35:14for word recitation of articles that I've published last year and earlier this year.
35:19You know, warning the Russians that you can't you can't engage with the West because the West only seeks your
35:25destruction.
35:26And until the West changes its fundamental approach, the United States needs to change its declared strategy towards Russia.
35:34The strategic objectives of the United States is the is the defeat of Russia, the strategic defeat of Russia, which
35:40means not just defeating the military, but collapsing the economy, collapsing the society to remove Vladimir Putin from power.
35:46And now Vladimir Putin has articulated the understanding, the comprehension that that is indeed the focus of the West.
35:55And so now he is once and for all driving a stake through the heart.
35:58This is absolutely necessary.
36:00There is a man named Andrei Ilnitsky.
36:02I would advise all of your listeners to go Google his name.
36:06He's a former retired lieutenant general, worked as a senior advisor to Sergei Shoigu.
36:10I've interviewed him several times and I have deep respect for him.
36:13He has come up with a concept called mental war.
36:18The mental war is using ideas, you know, false ideas and planting them inside a society and then germinating them
36:28through the echoing of false information.
36:30So it gets planted in the minds of people, people buy into a concept and they eat the society from
36:35within causing its collapse.
36:37Mental warfare in Russia is done by people saying you can achieve greatness only through involvement of the West.
36:45You need Western capital to make your economy work.
36:48You need Western culture to make your your society worthwhile.
36:51And they bring it in there and then you get this echo chamber in Western social media that blasts in
36:58there and it starts resonating inside Russia and tearing it down.
37:01Ilnitsky has been worrying about this for a long time.
37:04And you see Dmitry Kirillov, the advisor to President Putin, talking about there's the potential of good relations.
37:11All we need is a tunnel, a tunnel between Alaska and Siberia.
37:14And everything will be great.
37:16And they send over Kushner and they send over Witkoff who talk about the promise of, man, if you just
37:21give us all of your rare earth minerals, things will be good.
37:24And this is the kind of stupidity that people in Russia, the pro-Western people have latched on to.
37:30Vladimir Putin just threw through a stake through that heart of that vampire.
37:34That speech you just said is one of the most important speeches Vladimir Putin has given.
37:38It will be ignored in the West.
37:40And there he is, Ilnitsky.
37:41Guys, if you want to understand what I'm saying, read this man, listen to this man.
37:47Because when you do, you'll get an insight into what the West is trying to do to Russia and why,
37:55you know, here in the West we talk about the need, I've talked about all the time, the need for
37:58debate, discussion, and dialogue.
38:00I have no problem with people with opposing point of views.
38:03I think it's, if I disagree with an idea, come up with a better idea.
38:06Debate it out.
38:07Let the audience decide for themselves.
38:09But what's happening with mental warfare is it's not about a debate, dialogue, and discussion.
38:14It's about planting lies and then fermenting those lies and then letting those lies eat a society from within.
38:20And that's what's happening right now with this Western-based Russophobic propaganda.
38:25Yeah, and that's one of the things we're against.
38:26Gary, if you could put the link to that in the description below, that would be great so people can
38:30go and actually watch that interview, one of which will probably be me.
38:34I want to shift gears here.
38:36We've been looking at basically the issues between the United States and Russia and how that's impacting the war, et
38:42cetera.
38:42But as I said at the outset of this, Zelensky is expanding the war, not just by firing deeper into
38:47wild berries and that kind of economic targets in Russia,
38:50but he's actually expanding it geographically as he, and many people may be surprised by this,
38:57he struck an Iranian vessel in the Kalpian Sea over the weekend, accusing, or Tehran has accused Kiev of a
39:04hostile criminal act.
39:06And in fact, Abbas Araksi, the foreign minister from Iran, made this interesting statement here.
39:13He said that Zelensky has attacked an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor.
39:18And he calls on the EU high representative Kalas and certainly Lavrov to make clear what the freeloader in Kiev
39:25did, cannot go unanswered.
39:27So what in the heck is going on with Zelensky here that he's going to try and expand this by
39:32attacking?
39:33Well, actually, let me answer part of that question.
39:35Let me show you what Zelensky has said into why he's going here.
39:39If Iran, from the first year of the war, gave new page, new technology to Russia, it was Shekhi drones.
39:52They gave thousands of these drones first year of the war.
39:57Then they gave licenses.
40:00What did they do?
40:02Did they attack us?
40:03I think, yes.
40:05So they already did it.
40:07But we have to be honest.
40:09Iranians and North Korea already attacked us.
40:14Okay, so we're four and a half years into this.
40:17Why did he, if he said in the first year of war, why did he just now attack and destroy,
40:23or at least attack and disable, an Iranian commercial vessel for that justification?
40:28Well, to be honest, we don't, I don't know if that was done deliberately, because initially the report was that
40:34they, they struck a Russian ship sending goods to Iran.
40:37So I think your Ukrainian intelligence actually got this one wrong, but then when it became apparent that it was
40:43an Iranian ship, you know, Zelensky, remember who was giving that interview, Laura Loomer, who's, you know, we'll just leave
40:53it at that.
40:54Sort of a self-parody, you know, it's a self-parody of a journalist.
41:00The, once became, you know, this is a man who's desperate, desperate to spin anything in a way that's seen
41:07positive.
41:08The United States right now is having an extraordinarily difficult time with Iran.
41:13Donald Trump had to cease hostilities at a moment when he's saying he was going to bring the hammer down
41:17because we're out of ammunition.
41:19And now there's a growing recognition that we've got nothing left, it's over, there's literally nothing we can do, and
41:26there's frustration.
41:27And so Zelensky is now basically hitting that button before he comes to talk to Trump.
41:33And he's saying, Iran is a problem here too.
41:36We're doing you a favor, America, we hit an Iranian ship.
41:39I don't think he knew he was hitting an Iranian ship when they struck him, but now he's taking credit
41:42for it.
41:43And then he's throwing in North Korea.
41:45I mean, because there's rumors now, possibly true.
41:48That the North Koreans are going to provide up to 30,000 troops who are going to defend, you know,
41:54part of the, you know, the Russian borders.
41:56The North Korean troops do not fight in the Donbass, Zaporozhye, Kersom.
42:00It's purely a Russian operation, but they'll come up and take a sector.
42:04They helped with the liberation of Kursk, and they'll now defend a sector, freeing up 30,000 Russian troops to
42:11come down and, oh, yeah, do that thing we were talking about in Odessa.
42:15And so now he's going to be putting that marker out there too.
42:20You know, this is just a sign of Zelensky's desperation.
42:23This is the same thing with Europe.
42:26Basically, declare war on the world in order to, you know, go down with the Ukrainian ship.
42:33You know, because, guys, the Ukraine is the Titanic.
42:39It's hit the iceberg.
42:41Ain't nothing going to save it.
42:42You can put the band on there.
42:44They can play all the music you want.
42:45You can have guys running around on top, and it looks good for a while.
42:50The ship's going down.
42:51How long it's going to take for it to sink?
42:53Don't know.
42:54But I do know this.
42:56It's sinking, and it ain't going to recover.
42:59And Zelensky's trying to pretend that somehow we can patch the hole and keep the Titanic on course.
43:05We can't.
43:05Does he think, though, that by whether it was an accident or intentional, he certainly is now saying it's an
43:10intentional.
43:11So he says, yeah, they're at war with us, and so we sink that ship.
43:14Does he think that somehow that that can spawn additional support for him, that somebody will say, well, let's do
43:20more for Ukraine?
43:21Because I can't really come up with a good reason why he would want to do that.
43:26Again, I don't think that this was pre-planned, so I think we're seeing reaction here.
43:31And so it's reactive.
43:32So he's saying things that he think will resonate well with Trump.
43:37Iran provided weapons to Russia.
43:41Right now, there's a Ukrainian theme of Russia providing weapons and intelligence to Iran to bring harm to America.
43:48I think Marco Rubio dispelled that.
43:51But, you know, this is part of the Ukraine.
43:54This is a propaganda war.
43:55That's what people need to understand.
43:56We are in the midst of an information war where, you know, things are being blown out of proportion.
44:03Anything that is sympathetic to the Russian cause, the reality of Russia is suppressed.
44:10Anything that magnifies the potential of Ukrainian victory or the, you know, the legitimacy of the Ukrainian cause is magnified.
44:19And so here we have a situation where, you know, Iran did provide a Shaheed drone technology to the Russians
44:26when they needed it.
44:27In 2022, 2023, Russia has licensed it.
44:30So he's not wrong here.
44:32And now he's paying the price.
44:33And so he's trying to use this as a way of getting Donald Trump to have even more sympathy for
44:40Ukraine to commit more resources.
44:41I think he's going to run into a brick wall.
44:44I'll just give you my prediction of what's going to happen.
44:47You remember the dressing down Zelensky got the last time he went to the White House?
44:51I think Zelensky is about to get slapped hard by Trump because Trump is not a stable man right now.
44:58One only has to look at the deal he did with Saudi Arabia.
45:01And we're talking about a six-month negotiation to bring nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia finally concluded.
45:07And then Donald Trump blows a fuse and says, none of this happens unless you agree to the Abrams Accords,
45:13which were never part of the negotiations.
45:15And the Saudis said, pound sand.
45:17I mean, you know, so now that agreement's done.
45:20This is Donald Trump.
45:21He promised to license Patriot Technology.
45:24Zelensky's going to come in and overplay his hand.
45:27And Donald Trump, I think, is going to snap, and I think you're going to see Zelensky get tossed out
45:31of the White House.
45:32That's my prediction.
45:34Well, there's certainly some history there.
45:36I want to go down a path to one other thing you said regarding the Iran War.
45:40You talked about our problem with ammunition and how that has been expended during the war and what we have
45:47left to continue prosecuting the war.
45:49And the other thing you mentioned about the propaganda war.
45:52It turns out that some of the victims of the or the targets, maybe, of this propaganda war are the
45:59American people.
46:00Here is Mike Waltz over the weekend trying to dismiss that.
46:04Gary, let's play the one here.
46:05It's called Waltz Weapons.
46:07A lot of stockpiles were depleted, not only from what we gave Ukraine over the last however many years, four
46:15or five years.
46:16And the administration inherited a depleted situation from not only Ukraine, but also the ongoing fight with the Houthis under
46:24the Biden administration and a depleted military under the Biden administration.
46:28So they have decided, one, they're going to new types of munitions, cheaper munitions, new technologies, but also with these
46:37new defense budgets, rebuilding our great military.
46:40The U.S. military, and I've verified this every which way, has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign
46:49as effectively as it needs to be.
46:51And I have to tell you, the people that are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail.
46:57Okay, so apparently, I guess that's Vice President Vance and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Cain, who
47:03I guess he'd need to be in jail because they are definitely saying there's some big issues here.
47:08So what do we need to make of what apparently the Vice President and the Chairman are saying, vice what
47:12Ambassador Waltz is saying regarding how much ammunition we have to keep fighting?
47:17Well, remember, Waltz is the public face.
47:20He's not a policymaker.
47:21He's the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
47:24So his job is to serve as a sounding board for American policy to project it into the international community.
47:31One of the ways that you, again, we come back to, you know, Thomas Schelling's war game theory, you know,
47:39the ability to, you know, project pain.
47:42That if you have that ability to project pain, it brings with you a certain deterrence value because people say,
47:48I don't want that pain projected onto me.
47:50So I am now deterred.
47:52And Mike Waltz's job is to, you know, basically use the perception of American power in this international forum to
48:02bully nations into compliance.
48:04This is his job.
48:04That's all his job is.
48:05He's literally a mafia strong-armed man.
48:09He's going around, you know, collecting the payouts from the various, you know, bar owners and store owners.
48:17He's a thug.
48:18He's a straight-up thug.
48:20But it's hard to be a thug when suddenly it turns out that the, you know, because the thug's only
48:26good if people think that the big boys are coming through to break your neck.
48:30You know, as long as you're afraid of the big boys, you're going to pay the payout.
48:33But now Waltz is confronted with the fact that there are no big boys.
48:38There's a bunch of old men with bad knees, arthritis in the hands, limp along, torn rotator cuff, you know,
48:45and nobody's afraid of these people anymore.
48:48America's been shown to just be this empty shell of the power.
48:52You know, we can't beat Iran.
48:55Let's just let that sink in for a second.
48:57We can't beat Iran.
48:59Not only that, Iran is beating us.
49:03Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we're losing this war.
49:05We lost this war.
49:06Iran hits us, hits us hard.
49:08We're blowing up empty buildings.
49:10We don't know what we're hitting at all.
49:13And we don't have the ability to go deep anymore.
49:16We used all that in the first 39 days of conflict.
49:18We didn't suddenly magically wave a magic wand and have all of our defense industry wake up and go,
49:23we're going to produce a whole bunch more missiles in a very short period of time.
49:27We're producing nothing, ladies and gentlemen, the money that's been allocated hasn't reached there.
49:30We aren't increasing our production yet.
49:32We may down the road, but it'll take years for this to happen.
49:36Years for this to happen.
49:37Meanwhile, Donald Trump reengaged saying, I want more intense conflict.
49:43It hasn't been more intense.
49:44It was more intense the first 39 days.
49:46Why?
49:46We don't have the ammunition, nothing.
49:48And here you are.
49:49Look at the time.
49:52It takes 64 months to build an SM-3 missile, but we've blown through two-thirds of our SM-3.
49:57Thad, 80% of the Thad missiles are gone, 53 months.
50:01SM-6, JASMs, Tomahawks.
50:04We only had 90 of these precision strike munitions.
50:08It takes 46 months.
50:10We had 90.
50:10We used 80.
50:11We got 10 left.
50:13Guys, it's over.
50:14We have no ammunition.
50:16What we're using are HIMARS and ATACMS missiles on Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE to strike
50:22targets along the coastline, and that creates a perception of power.
50:27We use these J-DAMs, which is basically the standoff bombs, but they're not powered, so
50:33that your airplanes have to go high, drop, satellite guides them in on the target.
50:37Well, one of the problems with J-DAMs is they get jammed.
50:40I mean, people, go look at what the Russians are doing to the J-DAMs by the Ukrainians.
50:45They're jammed.
50:46They get shot down, all that.
50:49We're not hitting anything.
50:50And what we go in with deep, we're bombing empty buildings.
50:54We don't know what we're striking, and we're just burning through ammunition.
50:57And Donald Trump said, I really want to put the pressure up.
50:59And the military came to him and said, we can't.
51:01We don't have anything left.
51:03And if we continue this, we'll be totally defenseless right now.
51:06All of our air defense is stripped away.
51:08And the Iranians have ballistic missiles that will never end.
51:12And right now, they're doing a lot of harm to us.
51:14They're taking out hangars that they shouldn't be taking out, but they're taking them out.
51:18And if we continue this war, they'll take out all of the hangars.
51:21We'll have nothing left.
51:22We've lost this war, so we stop the war.
51:25Now, he hasn't declared a formal seat.
51:27We just stopped bombing.
51:28And now the Iranians went out and said, when you stop bombing, we'll stop our missiles.
51:32So there's a ceasefire that isn't a ceasefire.
51:35And this is the reality right now.
51:38We can't win this war now.
51:40So Waltz is out there saying these things.
51:42Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Trump is being briefed on the reality by J.D. Vance, by General
51:46Cain, by others.
51:47And there are people who are leaking this to the press.
51:50And here I agree with Waltz.
51:52I believe in the free press.
51:53Absolutely.
51:54It's our responsibility as journalists to speak openly.
51:59And if we gain access to information, I mean, we use our own due diligence to say, are we
52:03bringing harm, true harm to the country?
52:05But as the New York Times in the New York Times versus the United States decided in the
52:11during the Pentagon Papers case, they said the government can't hide lies behind a wall
52:17of secrecy.
52:18And that's the responsibility of the press to expose these lies so the American people can
52:23make a decision, especially when the consequences of the lies are American soldiers dying in a
52:27foreign land.
52:28Literally, that's what that Supreme Court case was all about.
52:32And so we have the responsibility to do this.
52:34So, yes, if I receive information that says we're running out of ammunition and we have
52:39the president trying to promote a war contingent upon the availability of ammunition, that puts
52:44American lives at risk in a foreign land.
52:46We have a due responsibility to bring this to the American people so they can act accordingly.
52:49That's our job.
52:51But if I'm in government and I signed a nondisclosure agreement and I have a class, I'm not allowed
52:56to leak it to the press.
52:57And so I do agree with Mike Waltz.
52:59The people who leak this to the press, they need to be found out and prosecuted or else
53:03there's no reason to have secrecy.
53:05So he's not wrong there.
53:06But, you know, thankfully, there are people who have the courage to call out lies when they
53:12do and it's someday, I think, not now, but someday the judiciary will recognize the intent of
53:20that Supreme Court finding, New York Times versus the United States.
53:26When the government is using secrets to hide the truth and the consequences of this is dead
53:33American soldiers, you have a responsibility to talk about it.
53:39And it isn't a crime, therefore, to leak this information.
53:41I think we need to get to that point.
53:43Yeah, 100% agree with you on that.
53:45And then the last few minutes here we have, I'd like you a real quick take on, there was
53:50a, before Senator Graham suddenly passed away from whatever source.
53:55So we're not going to worry about that at the moment.
53:57But obviously we used to have him on here a lot with his crazy statements and we'd have
54:00that weird, you know, here comes a crazy statement, whatever, well, that's over.
54:04So he's gone now.
54:05But they were, there was a group that was in the middle of doing a documentary on him.
54:09And they released some of that before they released the whole thing here.
54:13And I thought this one clip here was really interesting because it shows the mentality almost
54:18of like children that were playing at war and not serious statesmen trying to find it
54:26into a war and a benefit to our country.
54:27Watch this.
54:33Virtually everything they have has been knocked out now.
54:36Their missile count is going way down.
54:40Amazingly, they're in the country except for him.
54:43Look what we've done here.
54:45I know.
54:45I almost cried.
54:46Yeah.
54:47I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this?
54:50Well, you've been pushing this for years, right?
54:52Right.
54:53It's here.
54:53I talked to Trump this morning.
54:55Well, he's Jack.
54:57It's the best thing I've ever done.
54:59He loves blowing stuff up.
55:04So, you know, there are a lot of people inside that didn't want to do it.
55:08So I've had my challenges.
55:10But President Trump, when he gets into the zone, he listens.
55:18He asks good questions.
55:19You know, no tweeting.
55:21He hasn't tweeted much at all.
55:24No drama.
55:25He's been a great wartime president.
55:27I said last night that Trump and B.B. are like Roosevelt and Churchill.
55:33I mean, they're the right two guys to confront this evil.
55:38Roosevelt and Churchill, what say you?
55:42First of all, I think we need to be honest and open here.
55:45These weren't spontaneous comments made by the perfume princess in charge,
55:50you know, the former perfume princess, Lindsey Graham,
55:53who I openly despise and will always despise.
55:56There's a documentary film crew there.
55:59He's saying this for posterity.
56:02He's saying this, and this is carefully scripted.
56:05They can shut off the camera until he gets his act together or whatever.
56:08He knows what he's saying here.
56:10This is part of the Lindsey Graham propaganda machine that he's been propagating for some time now.
56:15Now, understand the open hypocrisy of this man,
56:19because on occasion, Lindsey Graham could be articulate and say things that were honest,
56:23such as Donald Trump is a liar, the worst man in the world who should never be president of the
56:28United States.
56:28He said that back in 2016.
56:30Now, nothing's changed about Donald Trump,
56:32except the fact that now Lindsey Graham finds Donald Trump convenient to promote his warmongering policies.
56:37that, you know, just can make me sick to my stomach as somebody, you know,
56:44this is a man who was, you know, using Iwo Jima as an excuse to invade Karg Island.
56:50I'm like, wait a minute, Lindsey, sort of a Marine thing.
56:55You know, we made a decision in the 1980s to stop building memorials to dead Marines
57:01that we thought maybe it'd be better to fight smarter, maneuver warfare, things of that nature.
57:05And whatever happened to diplomacy, this is a man who's never been in armed combat in his life.
57:11He's a lawyer who's been there.
57:13He, you know, he went to Afghanistan, stayed in air conditioned office,
57:16never got near the fighting that wouldn't know.
57:18He would puke if blood splattered on his boots or his uniform.
57:22And he's out there promoting the death of people, the death of people.
57:25He's the most disgusting human being in the world.
57:28And if there's a place in hell for him, I hope he's roasting there right now,
57:32like the fat overstuffed pig that he is.
57:34And I apologize, but I despise the man.
57:36He is responsible for the deaths of millions of people.
57:39Moreover, he's responsible for the death of America.
57:42If the Americans don't understand that we are dead, read the Constitution,
57:47understand what's happening in this country right now.
57:49Look at everything that's happening in its totality.
57:52We no longer function as a constitutional republic.
57:55And a large reason out of the policies have been espoused and promoted by Lindsey Graham
57:59since he became a U.S. senator in 2003.
58:02Well, well, that's an arguable position and a defendable one.
58:07And that stands on its own.
58:10Your views are what you say they are.
58:12And there's a lot to go through with that.
58:14So anyway, thank you very much for coming on today.
58:16Sorry to cut it a little bit short, but we have about one minute
58:19before we have Trita Parsi on who's going to give us some views on the Iranian side
58:23and what is going on with that war there.
58:25That'll be in just one minute at 12 o'clock here on the channel.
58:28But Scott, as always, I'm delighted to have you on and really appreciate your views.
58:32Thank you.
58:33Thanks, sir.