In this episode, Admiral Mark Collet-Serious talks about the relationship between the U.S. and China, including the Chinese spy airship that flew over the continental United States, and the decision to shoot down some of those planes.
00:05:48.000Right now, our priority is debris recovery so that we can get a better sense of what these objects are.
00:05:55.000We're working closely with the rest of the federal government, including the FAA, the FBI, NASA, and others to work through what we might be seeing.
00:06:07.000We, of course, know that a range of entities, including countries, companies, research organizations,
00:06:16.000operate in these altitudes or at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research.
00:06:26.000That said, because we've not been able to definitively assess what these recent objects are,
00:06:33.000we've acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our security and interests.
00:06:40.000That's why we have teams working hard to track down the debris from over the weekend.
00:06:45.000We have extensive efforts in South Carolina, Alaska, and Lake Huron,
00:06:50.000and we're supporting our Canadian partners in their efforts there.
00:06:56.000Each of these recoveries are unique, and each pose their own challenges.
00:08:52.000Then the last, you've got Austin is in Brussels stirring the pot on the Third World War we got over in Ukraine on the same day that the U.S. government tells all American citizens to leave Russia immediately.
00:09:13.000And the chyron for our podcast and radio audience, and this is why you're in the podcast radio, you've got to get our email and get the clips.
00:09:24.000The chyron, which are the words underneath it, for the entire interview, which he's doing in kind of a rainstorm on a wet tarmac, says the Defense Department shoots down three more, wait for it, unidentified flying objects.
00:09:40.000They don't even use the new terminology.
00:09:43.000Shoots down three more unidentified flying objects.
00:11:25.000We are in a state right now where the Chinese military, the only way they're operating independently from Xi Jinping, just won't talk to us.
00:11:36.000Okay, so they just file that away when the F hits the fan, you know, in Taiwan or whatever.
00:11:42.000Now, the really big thing here, Steve, is when Kirby said he's going to find a lot about in the debris recovery, debris recovery.
00:11:54.000Why are we using F-22s and sidewinder missiles to shoot down balloons?
00:12:00.000Is there not a more elegant way to capture these flying objects in a way where we don't have to scavenge for the debris and we can find out exactly what is going on?
00:12:14.000And, you know, it's the next Hollywood movie.
00:18:58.000It's on the Apple and Google Podcast, Taking Back Trump's America.
00:19:02.000Six episodes explaining why the Republican red wave never materialized in November within the context of how Biden and the Democrats have turned MAGA into a four-letter word,
00:19:18.000something we have to rectify before the 2024 cycle, Steve.
00:19:23.000And that's what the documentary is dedicated towards.
00:19:27.000Well, if you look at, you call it a four-letter word, he's out there with all the MAGA policies.
00:19:33.000I thought Peter Navarro wrote that part of the speech.
00:19:35.000I can go back and play the three minutes.
00:19:37.000But I want to go back to the, don't bury the lead here.
00:19:50.000Well, I'm going to talk about this in my Thinking About Trump's American book.
00:19:53.000I'm sitting on the beach in Laguna Beach, talking to Stephen Miller as we're going over the last draft of the famous jobs plan speech in Pittsburgh,
00:20:05.000where we laid out essentially all the basic promises that Trump would keep on the economy.
00:20:12.000And it's like Biden basically cribbed the whole damn thing.
00:20:17.000I mean, who's buying what he's selling?
00:20:20.000One of the points I make in the documentary, Steve, the Republican red wave that never happened,
00:20:26.000is that we're not taking Biden seriously enough.
00:20:30.000We look at that guy, and then I go, God, that guy's a feeble, demented guy.
00:20:36.000But people on that, you know, the persuadable voters are somehow buying some of the crap he's trying to sell.
00:20:45.000We've got to explain to people what MAGA stands for.
00:20:48.000And to me, you and I go back to your chalkboard in your office, in the West Wing, all the things you wanted to do.
00:20:56.000It's what I call the Iron Triangle of Populist Economic Nationalism.
00:21:01.000It's strengthen American manufacturing to things like tariffs and new trade deals that secure our southern borders in an end-to-endless war.
00:21:10.000Everything else that MAGA believes in, right, is secondary to that triangle because that triangle is the key to peace and prosperity.
00:21:21.000Strong manufacturing to cure borders in an end-to-endless war.
00:21:25.000And, you know, I'm trying with this podcast and documentary to explain to people kind of what MAGA means so that we, the posses, can go out and explain it to their friends and associates and the other thing so they can't get away with calling us, you know, whacked-out right-wing extremists, which they're doing.
00:21:49.000You and me and Cartag, the guys who called the fall of the markets in 2022, six months before Jim Cramer and CNBC.
00:21:57.000By the way, I didn't realize you had such tender feelings.
00:22:02.000This upsets you, doesn't it, when they call you a MAGA extremist?
00:22:06.000Well, look, I mean, Mark, partly, you know, Steve, you go back and play your show the day after Joe Biden gave that blood-red speech with that medieval background, calling MAGA a bunch of domestic terrorists, and you laughed at it.
00:22:26.500You mocked it, and MSNBC mocked it, and Tucker Carlson, everybody mocked it, but you look at the polling data, and it showed, you know, a week, 10 days later, that MAGA, people think, that the Republicans who aren't MAGA think we're, you know, we're extremists.
00:22:44.700Okay, but you're going to show this, you're going to show, I don't think your evidence will show that, because I think it's a Republican establishment vote, but I'm open, because I love you like a brother, and I know your analytics are always great.
00:22:56.980I'm going to watch, I'm going to watch your podcast, I will deconstruct it, show you, I'll show you the area of your ways, but that's okay.
00:23:03.420Yes, I want to get out, every day we'll get on, you can be the critic, man.
00:23:33.520Don't bury the lead, don't bury the lead.
00:23:35.420Today I want to riff on the billionaires, it's kind of gone viral.
00:23:38.620No, about, the Wall Street crowd is breaking out, they're all leaving early for drinks, because the market's up sharply at the end of the day.
00:24:09.580If we don't understand on this day alone that Wall Street does not have anybody's back, that they're globalists who care about profits, mainstream is getting screwed.
00:24:23.520They're getting screwed by the cruelest tax, which is inflation.
00:24:27.180They're getting screwed by the debt trap that they're putting us in.
00:24:31.540And, you know, if we don't win that debt-stealing battle, hear me, Kevin McCarthy, you hold fast, brother.
00:24:37.360If we don't win that and roll back some of that crazy spending, it's just going to be more of this.
00:24:42.780But, you know, maybe Wall Street will rally on all of that.
00:24:45.960Okay, of your three pillars, of your three pillars, you broke on this story, nobody had done the work, you broke it that one million illegal aliens are in the workforce.
00:24:56.340This is the reason that wages are coming down.
00:24:59.380They're proving their case, are they not, that they can break the back of inflation by breaking the back of working-class people.
00:25:06.680I was astonished that the government itself printed that.
00:29:57.780I'm glad you ended there because that's where I wanted to start.
00:30:01.460This is not new guidance that we are providing to the American people.
00:30:06.280We have been warning the American people for months now that they should not travel to Russia.
00:30:11.980And we've been warning Americans who may have been in Russia that now is not the time to be in Russia and that they should depart immediately.
00:30:20.640What we did do, and we often reissue what is known as our travel advisories for countries around the world.
00:30:28.080But we reissued our travel advisory for Russia with several updates, and that includes information regarding dual national military conscription, martial law in Russian areas bordering Ukraine, limitations on MSC Moscow staff use of airlines, and Russian legislative changes permitting prosecution of those who, quote, unquote, discredit Russia or advocate for the rights of LGBTQI plus persons and consular services in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine.
00:30:57.080So these are changes that are material to the American citizen community in Russia.
00:31:02.220But again, our message should be that Americans – our message is that Americans should depart Russia.
00:31:08.200They should depart Russia immediately owing to a number of risks that are spelled out in much greater detail in that broader travel advisory.
00:31:15.800How real is the threat of them being drafted or forced to serve in the Russian army?
00:31:21.160Well, again, it's going to be based on the individual, but it is a concern we have to the extent that we thought it prudent to reissue our travel advisory, warning against the possibility of conscription for dual nationals.
00:31:36.060This is not something that we want Americans to consider precisely because we want them to leave Russia.
00:31:45.580We do not want them to leave themselves subject to these or any other measures that could put them in grave danger.
00:31:52.480You know, this is not a typical Monday.
00:31:58.480They're – and particularly when you look at how people are supposed to kind of be so precise and their words are so thoughtful before they do these things.
00:32:07.120I just want to make sure people understand.
00:32:10.280In the White House, you had a rear admiral, John Kirby, who is, I think, a very good spokesman.
00:32:15.680I don't agree with any of his politics.
00:32:17.560He's slippery, but he knows how to be a comms guy because he can sit there for an hour, hour and a half and not really answer a question, but not so blatantly like Zen master Jean-Pierre.
00:32:54.860So here we have – here we have – and they say in the Chiron, UFO, unidentified flying objects, shot down – Pentagon shoots down three more unidentified flying objects.
00:33:13.240The day we broke her in the show, as soon as it came across the wire at Reuters and they didn't have all the information, calling for all American citizens to leave Russia immediately.
00:33:23.940And there you gave some background and some gobbledygook and, you know, who knows, a little imprecise, couldn't quite follow all of it.
00:33:34.720Now, how many times are we telling countries to leave the country immediately?
00:33:39.980When you say that, you've got something that – he's not up, it fell off.
00:33:46.000There's something that comes up that is like you're on the path to war.
00:33:52.020And they're saying they can conscript guys, they can arrest people, all this.
00:33:57.260My point, they know it's going to get a lot darker.
00:34:00.280Now, you've been told – do we have the Ukraine piece?
00:34:03.640I don't know if we've got it yet, maybe for the next hour.
00:34:06.880We're going to have Rebecca Koffler on here.
00:34:10.400The editor for all foreign affairs for NBC News came on – well, maybe we'll hold that to six.
00:34:19.720He came on and said he basically admitted – well, if we have it, let me know what we'll play.
00:34:25.760He came on and admitted just an hour ago of what we've been saying here for a couple weeks that Bakhmut is going to – let's go ahead and play this.
00:34:34.760It's because you haven't heard this from MSNBC or CNN and The New York Times.
00:34:39.980Now, finally, NBC catches up with the war room and gives it to you straight with the bark on.
00:37:53.440They think that Bahmut, this city that has been a tug of war between Russia and Ukraine for months, could fall, that it could fall imminently.
00:38:02.900In fact, just today, Ukrainian officials called for aid workers who are trying to help the people in Bahmut to leave the city,
00:38:10.060that it is no longer safe enough for them to go there.
00:38:13.040It has become very difficult for journalists to go inside the city.
00:38:17.300The government is not encouraging journalists to go in.
00:38:20.080So, the city is facing a very dire situation.
00:38:24.460It might not be able to hold out much longer.
00:38:26.960And that is just one city along the front line.
00:38:29.880The front line stretches for about 800 miles from the north all the way to the south.
00:38:35.720And because the Russians are sending in so many reinforcements, willing to take so many casualties, firing so much artillery,
00:38:43.620we're talking about tens of thousands of rounds fired by the Russians every single week,
00:38:47.580that front line in a very destructive move is moving slightly forward.
00:38:53.260And it does look like the Russians want to capture the city of Bahmut perhaps before the anniversary of the war at the end of next week.
00:39:02.320Not that the city is so important, not that it's so strategically important.
00:39:06.560It would be more of a symbolic victory for Russia after so many losses over the course of this year.
00:41:44.200And as most people, right, in that region do, we've got family completely across borders.
00:41:49.120So, and that's part of the reason that this whole disaster has been so heartbreaking and such a mess.
00:41:56.820And I've spoken about that for the last year since the first day when proudly on this program I said that this was a mistake by Putin to go into Ukraine because it's effectively a civil war, which is what it is.
00:42:08.940So it's a huge deal now that Americans, that the State Department has issued that warning for all Americans to leave, leave Russia.
00:42:17.880It shows that the situation is absolutely deteriorating.
00:42:23.480And the fact is that there's no leadership.
00:42:25.920America has absolutely failed, has fully failed in this festering fire surrounded by nuclear reactors in Ukraine and continues to fail.
00:42:36.460I'm sending a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, which is continue to send money, continue to send ammunition, continue to send weapons.
00:42:46.000And let's be honest, continue to send actual military, quote-unquote, instructors, which is how these quagmires have started throughout history and have gotten worse and worse and worse.
00:42:56.760And again, for those who don't know, look up the genesis of World War I and World War II and U.S.T., that they're in a tiny radius from this location.
00:43:05.960This is not a place where a war, a conflict, can be allowed to continue.
00:43:10.840As President Trump has said, this has to end in 24 hours.
00:43:14.500But unfortunately for the world right now, only President Trump can do it.
00:43:18.660And Joe Biden is too short-sighted to ask him to do so.
00:45:37.560Look, you're not going to wage this battle successfully unless you're prepared to take down the obstacle that's in your way.
00:45:46.800And you've got to figure out how you do that and at least hold some of that base together for a general election and even to support you in the primary.
00:45:59.160It is tactically difficult, strategically complicated, but at the end of the day, you've got to be prepared, as I put it, to sacrifice your bid for the presidency in the effort to get there.
00:46:15.160You've got to be willing to say, OK, I'm ready to go in this and potentially lose this battle.
00:46:20.320But this is important because you may be able to create a lane or a pathway for someone else who could then finish the job.
00:46:27.680Maybe all those candidates can come together like unlike they did in 2016 to to sort of block and tackle Trump.
00:46:36.280But someone has got to leave that charge.