Colonel Doug McGregor is a decorated combat veteran, the author of five books, a PhD, and a defense and foreign policy consultant who was commissioned in the regular army in 1976. After a year at the Virginia Military Institute and four years at West Point, Colonel McGregor retired in 2004. In 2020, the President appointed Colonel McGregor to serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense. He holds an MA in Comparative Politics and a PhD in International Relations from the University of Virginia and is a regular contributor to publications such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and The Daily Beast. He is married to the former First Lady, Anne Hathaway, and they have a son, a daughter and a son-in-law, all of whom are members of the First Lady s security team. He is also a frequent guest on CNN and other media outlets, and served as the Vice President of the French Foreign Legion from 2007-2009. He has served as an adviser to the French President, Emmanuel Macron, and has been a member of the Legion of Honor, the French National Guard, and the French Intelligence Service, among other things. This episode was produced in response to the ongoing unrest in France, and features Colonel McGregor s updates from his holiday in Marseilles, France. It was edited and produced by David Axelrod and Sarah Abdurrahmaneau, with additional help from Peter Kuchta, a contributing editor at The Daily Mail and The New Statesman, and additional reporting by Matthew Boll, a former British correspondent for The Telegraph, and Alex Blumberg, a freelance journalist for The Independent, and an editor at the Daily Mail, and his wife, Natalie Barbier, a friend of the New York Post and The Telegraph. Thank you for joining us on our holiday. We really appreciate it. -- Thank you so much for your support, and we really appreciate the support you're listening to us, too, we really really do appreciate it, too much of it, really appreciate you, really really really means it, we appreciate you. -- -- -- and we'll see you back next week, bye, bye bye. -- Yours Truly, Rory Mcgregor, -- Cheers, John Murog -- RIP, Rory Bruenig -- EJ McCARTHY -- MURDERER -- THE PODCAST AND KELLY PENARDO -- VOTER MODE -- AND KAVAN CHEERTER
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, we have Colonel Doug McGregor back.
00:00:02.000Colonel McGregor is a decorated combat veteran, the author of five books, a PhD, and a defense and foreign policy consultant who was commissioned in the regular army in 1976 after a year at the Virginia Military Institute and four years at West Point.
00:00:47.000Well, the last count that I heard was unrest in 40 cities, with the worst unrest in Marseille.
00:00:54.000And Marseille, of course, as a city, has a much higher population of North Africans, Africans, Muslims, if you will, than almost any other city in Europe.
00:01:08.000But we don't have too much information.
00:01:11.000President Macron, other than committing additional policemen to contain the violence, really hasn't said very much or made any sweeping decisions.
00:01:18.000And I think everyone is waiting for some sort of definitive statement from the President of the Republic about what he plans to do.
00:01:26.000And the rioting began with a young man who was killed, I believe, at a traffic stop.
00:01:34.000And, you know, the circumstances are not clear.
00:01:37.000The policeman apologized, but, you know, that doesn't mean a great deal.
00:01:42.000It doesn't necessarily mean he did anything wrong.
00:01:44.000And it's one of these situations where the single action became a catalyst for apparently violence that was waiting to happen.
00:01:53.000I mean, the level of destruction and the degree of violence aimed at Frenchmen, France, the French society, the French Republic is really quite enormous.
00:02:04.000And so one has to ask, were they waiting for something like this to happen?
00:02:08.000Or is this just a spontaneous outburst of anger and frustration and violence against France?
00:02:18.000And one of the things that we've seen is that President Macron is blaming the social media sites, which is likely to sort of lead to greater censorship probably in Europe, I would imagine.
00:02:35.000At this point, probably the next step is for him to declare a state of emergency, which he has not done.
00:02:42.000Yes, and we also haven't heard anything from the French military.
00:02:45.000And remember, a couple of years ago, you had a thousand French officers, including a substantial number of retired general officers, sign a document imploring him to recognize the danger inside France of the kinds of things we're seeing today.
00:03:01.000And then it was kind of put to bed again.
00:03:04.000Remember, since 1968, we've had several bouts of this kind of thing.
00:03:08.000But this is arguably the worst, with more damage than we've seen before and more danger to people.
00:03:16.000But I think the French army is waiting for some sort of direction from him, because I think their view is that this cannot be solved without their participation.
00:03:25.000And what do you think his hesitation is about declaring a state of emergency?
00:03:31.000I think he doesn't want to face the reality that he has a very divided nation.
00:04:04.000I think the whole Wagner incident is being largely misinterpreted in the West.
00:04:10.000I think there were lots of wishful thinkers in Washington and London in particular that hoped that this was some sort of direct challenge to Vladimir Putin.
00:04:43.000Secondly, Wagner is an organization that under Russian law was only supposed to be employed beyond Russia's borders.
00:04:52.000In other words, it was not to be used inside Russia.
00:04:54.000This man, Purgosian, has obviously become very wealthy as a result of it.
00:04:58.000Incidentally, Colonel McGregor, as the audience knows, the Russian Constitution actually prohibits the presence of mercenary forces on Russian soil.
00:05:11.000Yeah, you know, my view is I don't like to use the word mercenary.
00:05:15.000I think they're analogous to the French Foreign Legion.
00:05:18.000And of course, the French Foreign Legion is always external to France, except under special circumstances.
00:05:25.000So as soon as World War I began, they brought the French Foreign Legion back to help fight.
00:05:29.000As soon as the war ended, the French Foreign Legion returned to North Africa.
00:05:33.000Same thing was true in World War II. So I think that's a better analog because everyone in the Wagner Group It's not going to happen.
00:05:50.000But this issue had really concerned, particularly the Minister of Defense, Shoigu.
00:05:56.000Shoigu had said, look, this can't go on.
00:05:59.000We have to make some provisions, arrangements.
00:06:02.000And then I think Garazimov, who doesn't like Prigozhin, said, you know, that's right.
00:06:16.000And I think he was also quite angry with what he perceives to be the slow, deliberate approach to everything that the Russian high command has taken.
00:06:25.000And so his effort was to alert Putin to his displeasure, make that clear, and then also to try and get Putin's ear about the generals in the Russian army, that he doesn't think they're doing what they should.
00:06:41.000We know that Wagner, at least a small contingent of approximately 4,000, 5,000 that approached Moscow, was stopped by helicopters and aircraft.
00:06:52.000We also know that that was not ordered by Putin.
00:06:55.000That was done independent of his orders.
00:06:58.000So once this occurred, Prigozhin immediately halted everything.
00:07:02.000It turns out, the contrary to popular belief, he actually did speak to Putin over the quote-unquote phone, agreed to stop it immediately.
00:07:12.000And then this deal was cut to send him and some number of Wagner soldiers to I don't think there was a genuine uprising.
00:07:31.000Putin is stronger than he's ever been.
00:07:35.000If you believe the polls that we can take in Russia through various sources, his approval rating is about 89%, which is certainly infinitely better than the 30% we give to President Biden.
00:08:12.000I have no idea, but we do know a new commander in the theater is supposed to take over.
00:08:17.000That man is the commander of Russian Airborne Forces.
00:08:20.000I know nothing about him, and I've seen no official confirmation of it, but there are numerous outlets that continue to insist there's going to be a new commander and that General Gerasimov is going to go back to doing what he did before and act as the chief of the general staff.
00:08:35.000And was Gerasimov the cause of the slow movement or the defensive posture of the Russian forces?
00:09:17.000Now we've got about 750,000 troops in Western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, Russian troops.
00:09:25.000They're trained, they're ready, they can move, they can attack.
00:09:28.000Will he attack or is he going to continue to sit?
00:09:32.000Now, clearly, Putin is watching what's happening in the West.
00:09:36.000Seeing what's happening in France has definitely had an impact.
00:09:40.000I think he knows that we have our own problems and that we are much weaker internally than he is.
00:09:47.000Russian cohesion is at an all-time high.
00:09:49.000He has no trouble with support inside Russia whatsoever.
00:09:53.000But I think we have serious questions now in the European electorates, much more so than in the United States, about the wisdom of continuing this policy.
00:10:02.000So I think he's waiting to see as well whether or not there's any change in any of the governments in Europe.
00:10:11.000I'm not suggesting that there is one, but do you see any link between the discontent on the street in France and what's happening in the Ukraine, or are they completely disconnected from each other?
00:10:27.000I think there are multiple complaints in France.
00:10:30.000And I think the one in France right now is the significant truth.
00:10:34.000I mean, you've got millions of people who don't necessarily sign on for French law, French legal institutions, the French police, the French military.
00:10:58.000Those are the two biggest economies in the European Union.
00:11:01.000So I think all of these things are on Putin's mind, and that may have some impact on him.
00:11:07.000Now, as far as the war is concerned, I don't see much evidence, to be perfectly blunt, that anyone in Western Europe is interested in fighting in Eastern Ukraine.
00:12:30.000Probably 300,000 dead, could be 350,000 dead, and we're not even addressing the terrible, terrible wounds that people have sustained and the inability to ever return most of the wounded to active duty.
00:12:43.000I think they're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
00:12:46.000And is President Zelenskyy's popularity holding up in the Ukraine, or are people beginning to question some of that leadership?
00:12:55.000I think his leadership is widely questioned, and I think people are very afraid of the Ukrainian secret police.
00:13:01.000They're afraid of ending up in jail or much worse.
00:13:05.000We have all sorts of videos being posted by Ukrainian soldiers showing Ukrainian officers killing Ukrainian soldiers who refuse to fight.
00:13:14.000We also know that we've had a lot of desertions.
00:13:17.000Platoon size and company size elements, that's anywhere from 30 up to 150 people, have come across and surrendered to the Russians.
00:13:26.000And from the very beginning, the Russians have always treated the Ukrainians that surrendered very, very well.
00:13:31.000So they know they're not going to be mistreated.
00:13:33.000They know they're going to be fed and cared for.
00:13:35.000And several times, people have surrendered, saying, I've got a lot of wounded here.
00:13:39.000My Ukrainian superiors refuse to evacuate these people.
00:13:42.000They tell me I've got to fight on, but if I do, all of these men will die, and I don't want them to die.
00:13:46.000So they've been told, well, then come on over.
00:13:54.000Ukrainian effort on life support, frankly, is the United States.
00:13:58.000Primarily, we're sending in the cash, we're sending in equipment, we're sending ammunition, whatever we can, and we're pushing our lives to do the same thing.
00:14:05.000Cut that off and this tragedy will end.
00:14:09.000You are a warfighter, Colonel McGregor, and probably the greatest hero during the Iraq War.
00:15:28.000How many of them are around and how effective they are, I don't know.
00:15:31.000I'm told that a group of these radicals surrounds Zelensky and his government, and probably to ensure that no one there considers seriously negotiating with Moscow.
00:15:42.000And what is your impression or do you have any kind of polling data or intuition or anecdotal data about the attitude towards Zelensky among the expatriate community of Ukrainians in Europe and in the United States?
00:15:59.000The further away you get from Ukraine, the further away you are from the war zone, the more Ukrainians you will find that support Zelensky.
00:16:08.000The closer you get to Ukraine, and when you move into the war zone, that's where you begin to discover his support is largely gone.
00:16:16.000Without the secret police, without the threat of violence against individuals, I don't think he would stay in power for very long.
00:16:23.000Colonel McGregor, thank you so much for taking some time off from your 4th of July weekend to join us.
00:16:29.000Keep making your speeches and talking out there.