The Tale of Three Cities is an analysis of what's going on in the country and the world on the first day of the second year of the beginning of the Third World War. In this episode, host Steve Kamb ( ) and Grant Stinchfield ( ) compare and contrast the events in Ukraine and the United States.
00:00:28.720I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:00:34.620Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:00:38.360If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:00:44.740War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.
00:00:50.480Okay, it's Saturday, February 25th, 25 February in the year of our Lord, 2023.
00:00:56.060Here we're doing the Tale of Three Cities.
00:00:58.400We're going to do all the analysis of what's going on in the country and the world on the first day of the second year of the beginning of the Third World War.
00:01:06.760I wanted to start with the evening host of one of the most popular shows around, Grant Stinchfield.
00:01:12.120Grant, I don't think we'd have a better guy than you that could kind of compare and contrast.
00:01:18.300Yuma, Arizona, East Palestine, Ohio, and what's happening in the Ukraine.
00:01:26.320What is happening to our own country at the same time this involvement we've got, this relentless involvement we've got in the beginning of the Third World War?
00:01:34.520You know, it's interesting, Steve, when you brought this up to me and I was thinking of these three cities and I said, you know, you got some real disparities, obviously, between these three cities, but you have some real similarities as well.
00:01:44.920And so, while you talk about the war in Ukraine, I would say that we're in the middle of a war in Yuma, Arizona.
00:01:52.440I mean, our city there and all these border towns are under siege.
00:02:39.340You know, Joe Biden says we're going to give you $500 million to support your pension programs.
00:02:44.020My Lord, the people in Palestine, these poor people, they are insulted by Team Biden.
00:02:51.380Their property values have now just disintegrated before their eyes, not to mention they're afraid to bathe their babies in the water or even drink it.
00:03:16.820But what is it about the establishment, you know, those are the good guys, the conservatives, but the Republican Party overall and McCarthy.
00:03:25.460You know, we had a couple of hearings, things around, but they're taking breaks all the time.
00:03:28.580And you see that when Biden leaves Ukraine with it, with the, you know, the rom-com, he's sitting there with Zelensky.
00:03:37.380Immediately, six more Republican House members come and talk up about it's whatever you need for however long you need it.
00:03:46.880I didn't see a lot of Republicans before Trump really heading out to East Palestine.
00:03:51.900I mean, actually, the local congressman was on Fox the first couple of days and he was, he was, he thanked the Biden administration for what they were doing.
00:04:00.640Where, where's the Republican Party in actually getting down investigations, solutions?
00:04:07.500I mean, right now people are on a, on the knife's edge about this stuff.
00:04:11.620And it doesn't seem like the establishment Republicans or even the great victory we got in 2024 is changing things quickly enough, sir.
00:04:19.700You know, it, it amazes me because it seems to be, to be common sense.
00:04:24.520If you're a member of Congress, you represent everyone in the country.
00:04:27.360Certainly you have your district, but you're making decisions for everyone.
00:04:30.540Why wouldn't you, if you want to go visit and make a difference, go visit someplace else that may be not in your state.
00:04:36.460So I think it comes down to this, Steve.
00:04:39.720Are you beholden to the people of the United States that need real leadership in Washington?
00:04:44.560Or are you beholden to business and industry?
00:04:46.980So in the name of immigration, Republicans have been a big problem with this going way back.
00:04:52.560I mean, you go all the way through administration after administration with Republicans.
00:04:56.260They were chamber of commerce Republicans that actually promoted the idea of illegal immigration.
00:05:01.860And only recently do we see some real strong conservatives coming out against it.
00:05:05.760And then in the name of the war, who are you beholden to?
00:05:08.200I believe it's the military industrial complex.
00:05:10.640These people, they take campaign money from them, and they know that it is big business and big money when they're waging wars overseas like this.
00:05:19.240You take any message from President Trump, end endless wars.
00:05:24.460This Ukraine war, what was Joe Biden's comment?
00:05:27.020He says, we will be here till it ends, till as long as you need.
00:05:31.240Well, the American people are not okay with that.
00:05:33.640We're slowly, slowly losing faith that we should even be over there, much less over there for as long as it needs.
00:05:43.500Janet Yellen just announced yesterday on Friday $10 billion of economic aid, a new package of $10 billion just for economic aid to pay the salaries of their government going forward.
00:05:55.980In addition, it was another $2 billion package, different than the $500 million of Biden on weapons and arms.
00:06:04.340You've seen the CBO report, Grant, where we're going to add $19 trillion to the national debt in the next 10 years on the plan that you and I know is already too optimistic because the inflation numbers came out Friday and blew through whatever his expectation is.
00:06:21.780What doesn't, is the ruling class just so entrenched with the corporate interests and the Wall Street interests that they don't even care anymore what people think about this?
00:06:31.680They're just going to be up in your grill every day with something?
00:06:35.560Yeah, I think they're banking on the fact that most Americans are uninformed of what's going on.
00:06:40.160Clearly not the people watching War Room, not the people watching Real America's Voice, but most Americans are completely unaware.
00:06:57.240If you were a business and you had the amount of cash flow that we have coming into this nation, how we cannot get it under control is beyond me.
00:07:05.460But the reason we can't is because in Washington, as you well know, Steve, the power comes with the purse strings.
00:08:15.000But, you know, we're kind of in receivership.
00:08:18.380But I'm hearing word out of Washington that the Republican House doesn't want to saddle the 24 nominee with any tough spending cuts.
00:08:27.060Because I think you've got to cut $100 billion in defense spending and $100 billion in social spending in this year with this appropriations bill.
00:08:35.980And do you expect this to be anything more than performative?
00:08:38.600Do you think that Republicans are really going to come in with the type of big cuts we need, the systemic cuts we need, not waste, fraud, and abuse?
00:08:46.720But I mean systemic cuts to big programs, including defense, that we need to start a down payment on getting the House in order here?
00:08:55.280You know, you say not waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:08:58.480But the Department of Defense is probably the biggest agency when it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:09:05.200And I think you could cut literally billions of dollars out of that budget if we got to the bottom of that.
00:09:11.720I'd like to get back to the point where we're coming up with a budget every year, not depending on what we spent last year, but what we need this year.
00:09:20.040And I want to have it proven to me every year by those agency and department heads what they need and prove it to me, not just a standard 5%, 10% increase in your budget.
00:09:29.920So it does come down to politics, though.
00:09:31.600I'm not convinced that Republicans in Washington are going to be strong enough to stand firm.
00:10:26.580That's the only way we get it out of control is that coupled with major cuts, systemic cuts, program cuts coming in this appropriations process.
00:10:37.660Let me just pivot, Grant, to the politics of it all.
00:10:40.800Before Trump went to East Palestine, nothing was happening there.
00:10:48.420Just his announcement was the forcing function for the Biden regime.
00:10:51.680Walk me through your assessment of Trump's trip.
00:10:53.320Well, I think, look, I sent a note to the Trump team, as many of my friends did.
00:12:38.020What's your assessment right now – we've got a minute or two – of where we stand in this – as everybody – we're starting to kick off the 24 race.
00:12:44.820Well, there was something to be said when you watched President Trump's motorcade go through there.
00:19:39.140Define for the audience, before I get Harnwell in here, define for the audience, what is sovereignty?
00:19:44.660And when you say they're sovereigntists, we call people here populist, nationalist,
00:19:48.120or whatever, we sometimes use sovereignty, sovereignty for the nation.
00:19:51.500When you say this movement's a sovereigntist movement, this is what they talk about in Europe.
00:19:56.160What would be your definition of that?
00:19:57.720That you feel you have the right to government of the people, by the people, for the people in service of your country.
00:20:08.100So, against globalist forces and against forces that prefer globalist forces over the national interest of your own country.
00:20:19.660And I would say right here, right now, what we are seeing is our very own government absolutely does not have our national interest at heart.
00:20:28.980We see it at every single possible decision that they make from Ohio versus Ukraine, from Yuma, as you were talking about, versus Ukraine.
00:20:38.660And there's much more dedication to globalist ideals than to American ones and to protecting others over protecting ourselves.
00:20:48.660And it all, you know, really, it all kind of makes sense when you realize that they're playing for the other side.
00:20:56.060Our government is playing for the other side.
00:20:57.900So, to me, sovereignty means you have the right to self-govern it without interference by globalist players.
00:21:08.660Ben, let me bring you in here because, Ben, this ties right into the project we've been working on for many years and that the EU, this world war was started really back in 14 by the powers of the anti-sovereigntyists, really the EU that wanted to expand and use Ukraine as an expansionist.
00:21:29.320I mean, these are anti – this is an anti-sovereignty body, right?
00:21:34.220And yet they're really one of the instigators of the – and we're not saying – we're not justifying Putin's invasion, you know, a year ago.
00:21:44.820But this is the project we've worked on, right, about the sovereignty of these individual nations, the sovereignty of these individual people, whether it's in the United States or whether it's in Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, or Great Britain with Brexit.
00:21:58.380And this gets – this EU, this gets down to really the basis of what you call our sociopathic overlords that have been driving this war, sir.
00:22:06.180Yeah. Can I add to what Karen was saying?
00:22:13.800Which is absolutely correct what she was saying.
00:22:16.680I would only add to it that sovereignty, the nationalist movement.
00:22:24.260At its most elemental, it's about a people's right to determine for itself its own destiny.
00:22:31.400Basically, principally, it's that – it's that whatever people you're talking about, whether you're talking about the Italians, the Brits, the Americans, the Ukrainians and the Russians, the Taiwanese, the Chinese, they get as a people.
00:22:49.220They have this right, which really exists when the right of the individual, when that individual comes together and forms a society, that right to determine, to be a protagonist in one's own destiny.
00:23:05.720And that is something that people really never – it's a quirk.
00:23:11.020It's empirically observable that people don't appreciate that right when they have it.
00:23:19.560It's one of the great ironies of human history.
00:23:22.580They appreciate it and they value it when they don't have it.
00:23:26.060And the more they don't have it, the more they yearn for it.
00:23:42.120And as individuals feel that, societies, cultures and peoples feel that.
00:23:47.960It's one of the most strongest forces in human history at the cultural level.
00:23:52.280And that's why I absolutely applaud what Karen was saying when she started off her remarks talking about the Judeo-Christian basis of the West or Christendom or call it what you will.
00:24:06.600And the European Union is a project which strips from its member states, literally strips from member states, that right to determine their own destiny.
00:24:19.840Because it puts at a European level, a European law, which overrides national law.
00:24:27.840Let's say people in their own parliaments cannot determine the laws that will govern themselves because the European Union has law which overrides that.
00:24:38.520And the European Union fundamentally is not a democratic institution.
00:24:42.080That's why Poland right now is being fined a million euros a day because it is insisting.
00:24:51.000And I have to say – I have to say incorrectly, but I absolutely applaud it, what were they – it's doomed to fail because this is exactly the project that they signed up for when they signed the European treaties.
00:25:06.740They say member states literally sign away their sovereignty to join and be a member of the European Union.
00:25:13.920But Poland is being fined a million euros a day because it insists that its law is sovereign over European law.
00:25:22.580This fundamentally, Steve, this is such an important emotional characteristic when it comes to politics.
00:25:32.520This is fundamentally the reason, I would say above and beyond any other reason, that the Brits voted to leave the European Union.
00:25:40.260Because we had this 1,000-year-long progression of parliamentary democracy.
00:25:47.920And whether you're a political theorist or not, people in Great Britain realised at an elemental level that there was no power that could overwrite law that parliament had created.
00:26:01.940And that the monarch could sign, the king in parliament is the expression, or as we used to say, the queen in parliament.
00:26:08.500The king in parliament is sovereign in Great Britain.
00:27:07.680Karen, what is your trips around Europe?
00:27:12.420What is from the Sovereignist movement?
00:27:14.800Because we're starting to see the polling show that 40 or 45 percent of the European people are saying, hey, I don't know about continuing on this Ukraine situation, particularly if we have to start really paying for it, not just with energy dislocations, but also with higher taxes or loss of services, etc.
00:27:32.820What was your take as you go around and talk to the Sovereignist movement in Europe?
00:27:37.460Obviously, anybody in Europe feels this much more acutely than we do.
00:29:14.540The Poles get the closest, but, you know, the Germans, and then when you really look at what they're spending it on, a lot of it's climate change.
00:29:21.540It's women's health services or it's health services for the military.
00:29:26.200It's not really equipment, interoperability, you know, joint exercises, the types of things you need to use as an alliance.
00:29:35.200Do the Europeans, are they comfortable being essentially a national security vassal state?
00:29:40.800Because it's not an alliance, it's a protectorate, yet you have this very aggressive EU element, the non-military part that continues to push and has continued to push Ukraine into membership, which the Russians have kind of said from the beginning, that's in our zone of security.
00:29:58.560And it looks like you're moving, you know, too much.
00:30:00.800It looks like it would be the Chinese cutting a military deal with Mexico.
00:30:05.540Yes, Steve, to answer your question, we in Europe are more than happy with being a protectorate of the United States, and you're very generous consistently with allowing us to indulge in vast social welfare programs in our budget and underfunding on our own defense, because we know that the United States will be there.
00:30:28.800And, you know, and the reason we think that is because you guys constantly tell it to us, apart from that small blip that was the Trump administration.
00:30:41.900One of the reasons that this is the case is because the United States isn't really any more a revolutionary power or a revolutionary republic.
00:30:53.620It's basically a military industrial complex.
00:30:57.160That is what it is primarily with three million, 300 million Americans as a taxpaying base to keep that operation going.
00:31:08.720So you have on the one hand, this imperial militaristic power that wants to spend money to increase what it calls its own influence around the world.
00:31:19.720And we have, in Europe, a vassal mentality, and we're only too happy for Americans to pay for us.
00:31:32.800What does this mean as far as, you know, the CNBC?
00:31:36.040Because one of the things you talk about, the sociopathic overlords, you've mentioned that they really want to feast on not just the destruction part, but more importantly, the rebuilding part.
00:31:47.160Yeah, this is something I have concentrated my beady-eyed cynicism on, Steve, right from the beginning.
00:31:59.120Having said that this war was only a pretext.
00:32:04.720First was the necessary leveling of Ukraine.
00:32:08.580But there's only so much money you can spend to destroy a country.
00:32:12.340The real grift starts on the rebuilding.
00:32:17.080And you pushed out on your, at Steve Bannon, on your getter feed, your superb getter feed, this story from CNBC, which is basically talking about the rebuilding of the reconstruction of Ukraine.
00:32:32.600And I have two excerpts, which I'm going to read.
00:32:37.640And my beady eyes were flickering like a snake when I read this.
00:32:47.080A recent estimate from the Kiev School of Economics put the total damage to Ukrainian infrastructure at $138 billion, while Zelensky has estimated that rebuilding the country could end up costing more than $1 trillion.
00:33:35.300Because all of this money that the global taxpayers were primarily Americans, and I take my hat off to you because you guys are so generous in the rest of the world.
00:33:46.720Very generous in the rest of the world with your tax dollars, right?
00:33:51.500All of this money, as the war room has said for over a year now, all of this money on reinvesting this country is going to be spent via the presidential office.
00:34:01.880Which basically means President Tempersensky himself and all of his oligarch friends are going to be creaming off all of 10%, if not more, of all the money that you guys are pouring into the rebuilding of Ukraine, to the neglect of your own country.
00:34:31.040Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svidvedenko told Politico during an interview that the Reconstruction should start this year, despite there being no immediate end to the conflict in sight.
00:34:48.240It's going to be the biggest Reconstruction since World War II, she said.
00:34:54.540So here are the Ukrainians, and they've been given the green light for this by the Biden regime.
00:35:02.580They now want to start rebuilding a country that is still in the midst of a war, that's still going to be pummeled until they get to the negotiating table.
00:35:14.960Because you guys are paying for it, and the Ukrainian oligarchs are going to be creaming off their percentage, even if what they're rebuilding is going to be reduced to rubble.
00:35:36.420Before we go back to Karen, you've seen this, and I'm going to drill back more on this in the second hour.
00:35:41.000The hesitancy, the split in Italy between Berlusconi and Salvini and even Maloney, and yet she goes to Ukraine, but she demands a photo op where she's the only head of state that's sitting there getting a stink eye across the table.
00:35:55.920Are Europeans, and particularly the sovereigns, because she's supposed to be from the far right in the sovereignty movement, are they starting to see that this is untenable?
00:36:05.840And you don't need to be an ally of Russia, you don't need to love the KGB, you don't need to love Putin, but this entire model right now is not sustainable.
00:36:14.720Eventually, the Americans are going to stop paying for this, and I believe they're going to stop paying for it immediately.
00:36:19.760And that's going to be left to the nations of Europe.
00:36:23.560Are people – is that starting to get down to at least the local politician level?
00:36:28.600It is starting to enter the debate, at least in Italy.
00:36:32.980And the principal reason for this is that Silvio Berlusconi, who's in the – he's the third – he leads the third party, the smallest party now in the coalition government.
00:36:44.480This guy was three times prime minister himself over the last 20 or so years.
00:36:50.080He, whilst he was prime minister, was a strong ally of President Putin and Russia and always maintained a strong personal relationship.
00:37:00.940So he is the only politician of prime ministerial rank in the European Union today who is saying explicitly and openly and unambiguously that Italy should not be supporting Zelensky,
00:37:20.840because Zelensky started this war through his constant bombing of the ethnic Russians in the Donbass from 2014 onwards.
00:37:36.080The New York Times was writing about – this is pre-Zelensky – but about Ukraine's bombardment of the Donbass as early as 2014 and 2015.
00:37:48.500This has all been memory hold, all of it, right?
00:37:52.560All of the trigger points, all of the constant poking the bear has all been memory hold.
00:37:59.900The only person who is talking about this and not backing down, he's digging in.
00:38:37.880Huge sway of the public opinion, positive opinion behind her.
00:38:43.060But the people who voted for this coalition are, by and large, the people who are least happy because they're soventists.
00:38:51.360They're at least happy to see this country's material condition hit the skids because we're supporting a country around which is not a military ally, as you correctly say, around which our actual ally, Italy's actual ally, would more likely, more authentically be considered to be Russia rather than Ukraine.
00:39:17.620So this is the influence of one person, Berlusconi, who is moving the needle, but he's coming under a lot of attack in the Italian press for this.
00:39:33.660AFA, I think you're going to have a spring conference.
00:39:36.040Can you give our audience where they go to find out more about it, where they find out about your conference and about all the great work you're doing?
00:39:49.900We're going to be covering the globalists, of course, Chinese Communist Party, of course, the infiltration of the United States by both of those entities.
00:40:00.380And you can find more information at AmericanFreedomAlliance.org.
00:40:04.560We're on Getter, American Freedom Alliance.
00:40:09.220You can find our videos on YouTube at American Freedom Alliance and more recently on Rumble, of course, where they're not booting us off for speaking the truth.
00:40:23.020And as far as what's going on in Ukraine, I just want to say one of the fault lines, of course, is globalists versus nationalists.
00:40:29.300But the other fault line is, of course, no more endless wars and those who are absolutely all in for endless wars.
00:42:10.440I would argue going back to, well, Korea, perhaps certainly Vietnam, and then more recently Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:42:18.940These have been wars that we've fought, Steve, as you know, against non-peer adversaries who did not have the capability to defeat us decisively on the battlefield,
00:42:30.580and we did not have the will to defeat them decisively, and they just dragged on in various ways to varying degrees at terrible expense to lives of our personnel and national treasure.
00:42:44.060What we're in now, and it is the opening stages, I believe, of World War III, is a totally different deal.
00:42:52.520And whether it is an adversary that is a peer in a number of respects, actually probably more capable than we, with respect to nuclear weapons, namely Russia,
00:43:06.480which is now embroiled in a hot war that it started, I believe, in Ukraine, and is every sign of continuing for the next few years, if it can.
00:43:17.280And then there's, of course, the looming war, second front, if you will, with China.
00:43:25.160Certainly a peer adversary, one that arguably is superior in a number of important respects, both nuclear and in terms of hypersonic missiles,
00:43:35.300in terms of ships, combat vessels now at sea, and more coming, aircraft and a host of exotic technologies.
00:43:45.440These are nations that I believe are intent on destroying our country, and that's a very different thing.
00:43:55.380It's not going to be a voluntary conflict. It's not going to be an open-ended one, I fear.
00:44:01.340It may well be one in which we are decisively defeated, which means two things.
00:44:05.280One, we have got to be about the business of preparing ourselves, getting this country on a war footing,
00:44:12.900much as China is at the moment. We're not doing that.
00:44:16.960It's one of the things we're recommending in the indictment, is an urgent priority.
00:44:22.020The other thing is, I think that we've got to be clear that we must do everything possible to deter that second front from opening up.
00:44:32.980If we continue doing what we're doing now, I think it almost certainly invites Chinese aggression, and not just against Taiwan, by the way.
00:44:42.700I think it will be against, well, other allies of ours in the region, and probably against our assets and personnel,
00:44:50.160and maybe even our territory there, and perhaps closer to home.
00:44:53.500So this is a different deal than anything we've faced since World War II, and we're in it.