Episode 150 LIVE: Ukraine Impeachment Trap (feat. Curt Mills) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Summary
Join us live from the rumble studio in Washington, DC, as we discuss the latest report from special counsel Robert Mueller's office on the Borr Hilse v. President Donald J. Trump investigation, and whether or not this is a good or bad thing.
Transcript
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matt gates the biggest firebrand inside of the house of representatives you're not taking matt
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gates off the board okay because matt gates is an american patriot and matt gates is an american
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hero we will not continue to allow the uniparty to run this town without a fight i want to thank
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you matt gates for holding the line matt gates is a courageous man if we had hundreds of matt gates
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in dc the country turns around it's that simple he's so tough he's so strong he's smart and he
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loves this country matt gates it is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you
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we will save america it's choose your fighter time send in the firebrands
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welcome back to firebrand we are broadcasting again live out of the rumble studio
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brand new here in washington dc an excellent opportunity for us to get our message directly
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to you and make sure that you have got the rumble app downloaded with notifications turned on
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that is the best way to be able to watch firebrand to be able to get the updates up front you got to
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have the app downloaded you hit the bell then every time we've got something important to share with you
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like right now you'll be added to the conversation and right here for that live discussion and today
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i have with me my good friend one of the smartest foreign policy thinkers here in washington he's the
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editor-in-chief of the american conservative kurt mills kurt was one of the first folks i met
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actually when i came to dc and i followed his scholarship and his journalism and i guess you
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followed a little bit about what we've been doing on the hill and we've got a lot to talk about in the
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american conservative today the big piece that is setting capitol hill on fire is the jd vance piece
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on how the mcconnell strategy on ukraine is actually an impeachment trap for president trump
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were he to be elected in the upcoming presidential contest but kurt we haven't talked in a while
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i can't believe we're living in a time where uh on this records matter trump is facing down hearings and
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criminal process we get a special counsel report from rob her and i know rob her i've had to work on
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matters where rob her was working on the same matters and the beginning of this report is that
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joe biden essentially committed the criminal offense that is laid out that trump's being charged with
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that the he had the intent to commit that offense that he shared the information but that he won't be
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charged for two principal reasons first that he cooperated fully with the investigation upon the
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discovery of these classified documents and second that he's too senile to be held responsible so
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what was your take when you saw this report yeah i mean my view is that uh the takeaway will be the
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opposite in the american mind so you have the democrats who are willing to prosecute mr trump for
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almost a hundred different felonies i think the last i checked um and they've only seen his political
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appeal objectively explode at least if we believe polling um the opposite occurred with the case of mr her
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which is they declined uh to indict um which i think uh in fairness honorably doesn't further
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politicize uh politics or further criminalize politics um but mr herr opined uh negatively on the
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one key vulnerability that mr biden has his age his mental fitness um i i think it's i think it's
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going to go down in the history books as as intently clever that he were to utilize this
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political vulnerability of biden i guess 86 percent of americans now believing joe biden's too too old
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to be president uh using that as a feature of criminal process to unlink himself from a prosecution
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uh is that applying the facts in the law or is that like a political operative utilizing his role
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of special counsel to max uh to max political effect i mean i think if you actually score it here
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i mean indicting the the standard bearer of the republican party for a number of felonies during a
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presidential year i think is is greater political abuse i think it makes the republicans look like
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straight shooters which is that they aren't going to indict you for a crime if you're in the political
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arena uh but they're going to call it straight and i think that'll be important to a pretty wide
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swath of the electorate as like these questions of democracy and chaos start to form there's actually
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a good portion of that electorate who looks and says well who's been playing fair now i know her
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i remember working with uh with her when we were trying to get jeff sessions kind of off the mark
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uh and and getting us a little more transparency on where things were going on the hillary clinton
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investigations and her was the guy working at justice standing right alongside rod rosenstein
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blocking and tackling uh for jeff sessions when when i think hillary clinton got off without having
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to face accountability because sessions got stockholm syndrome with the folks over at the
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department of justice so that that was what her did here here's my theory of the case if her is like
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a capo in the deep state right what if they just decided they're not riding with biden like if the
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deep state is not republican versus democrat right but it's institutionalist versus outsider and trump's
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going to represent an outsider view on foreign policy on the administrative state and if they
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look at where biden is historically low poll numbers and think well we got to take this guy out
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and there was no mechanism to do that really in the primaries of the caucuses with how centralized
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his power is as the sitting president of the democratic party once you have to take him out like this
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with some sort of damning report that results in biden pardoning himself pardoning hunter getting out
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before the convention but not yet not until after any any sort of like democratic process could occur
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in the primary or caucuses then lo and behold you have a convention and in ride who knows michelle
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obama gavin newsom gretchen whitmer jb pritzker any you give any any prospect to that uh i i'm more
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contrarian on this okay i know that people want to gravitate towards this i think look i'm not going to
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tell you you you have uh combated the deep state in congress probably perhaps more than any member
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um but in some ways i think what we just saw over the last week was evidence of a lack of a conspiracy
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which is that the president of the united states actually does have some authority and actually
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does make some decisions so like the decision to call a 7 45 p.m eastern time press conference
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be 10 minutes late to it and then claim you're not senile while demonstrating that you have memory
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lapses i think is evidence that he's actually in charge and he seems like he wants to fight it to
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the end and i think there's there's it's just a lot even nobody's gonna tell senile grandpa that he
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can't drive anymore like that's basically i mean i think he's gonna keep driving yeah yeah you know
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when i was a state representative this was a huge amount of my casework is that people were trying to
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get their parents who lived with them as driver's license revoked and somehow wanted me as a state
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lawmaker like to go do that when they didn't want to have that uncomfortable discussion in the
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family that grandpa shouldn't be driving anymore but do you say the fact that he grabbed the keys
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and got behind the steering wheel even if he ran over a few mailboxes in that press conference
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shows grandpa's still going to be behind the wheel for for the foreseeable future but i gotta sell
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magazines and i and so the the easiest way for me to sell magazines is to say there's going to be an
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imminent 25th amendment you know meeting where kamala harris coos him and she's going to be the
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president or something like that i just think like it's they they don't have it and you could view
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harris's unpopularity as an insurance policy for biden and then next up is johnson but she says
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she's ready go to sasha go to that hill article harris says she's ready to serve amid questions of
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biden's age so right on cue vice president harris says she's ready for the presidency in an interview
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last week amid concerns about biden's age i'm ready to serve there's no question about that harris
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told the wall street journal when asked about the challenge of convincing voters that she is up for the
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job those who see her work are quote fully aware of her quote capacity to lead harris said in the
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interview just days before the special counsel report stoked renewed questions about biden's age
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and mental aptitude is she checking his pulse every time they're shaking hands uh maybe probably
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probably uh how would you jump her in a convention like do you see any world in which i'm i'm i'm i'm
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the big uh harris bull i i think it's going to be very very difficult like to use a stock market
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phrase i i think it's it's it's very it's gonna be very hard to dislodge her if she wants it it's
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the same thing with biden i think it's gonna be very hard to dislodge him if he wants it and and and
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that may be the reason why we get biden because her her own uh persona is viewed as pretty frail
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politically as well yeah and so that you know what having the having the wrong number two might
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have been the right choice for biden i mean 2020 was the was the identity election right which is like
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you know miss harris has to be on the vp ticket because she's the black female and i think that
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made sort of a more political sense in 2020 and it's it's actually a vice grip in 2024 i think they
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are very stuck with biden harris i mean if they actually do replace them so let's say they replace
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them with gavin newsom or gretchen whitmer or any of these names that we're we're having so how do you
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find another black woman to be vp this is like what they have to do and then secondly newsom is utterly
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untested in terms of is he going to have turnout problems you know turning out the inner city vote
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in milwaukee philadelphia atlanta phoenix like i understand this sounds like las vegas i understand
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this sounds very good on paper uh but he might actually be weaker than biden like so much of the
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key uh element of the democratic appeal right now is that you have a fairly far left administration
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in my view and the idea is that biden is a guy from the 90s and is kind of senile so how radical
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could it really be replace them with the actual governor of california or someone further left
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of newsom all of a sudden that appeal is stripped down i know it sounds totally bizarre but i actually
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think biden is probably the strongest nominee of them to have which is really saying something about
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how poor their position is yeah i just don't know that they care about the ideology as much as
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the fitness at this point because there's so many people who probably don't really spend a lot
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of time thinking about their own ideology but they know what it's like when someone is still
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insisting that they can do something that they no longer have the capability to do kurt mills is the
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editor-in-chief of the american conservative and that is where we saw this amazing piece by jd vance
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platform it's what i want to talk to you about next first of all before we get into the substance of
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that piece readers at the american conservative what are they learning about this conflict in ukraine
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oh i mean i think look tack uh was a lonely voice two years ago when the war started that raised
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questions about unending support uh for the i think what is now laid bare a controversial government
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uh in kiev or whether it makes sense for the u.s to spend blood and treasure uh and military hardware
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and support on basically defending the fringe regions of a country very very far away uh we've
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continued to bang the drum on that and i think the american public has come around to our perspective
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um i think this is an elective war as far as america is concerned in europe um and it is the kind of
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thing that we will never extricate ourselves from if we don't make a firm decision what are we trying
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to win there because when these ukrainian officials come over and talk to u.s lawmakers they're talking
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about getting back every inch of their territory including crimea i i i really do wonder what the
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attainable objective is there or is the objective really to turn into another afghanistan obviously
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very different dynamics but just in terms of having a place to be engaging in perpetual low-yield war
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no i mean i think you have an objectively irrational government in kiev and i i i think there actually
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are historical parallels here i would signal out the korean war so if if the u.s ever actually wanted
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to negotiate with russia or lead in negotiations you would you would be in a position where the ukrainian
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government might not actually be a party to the negotiations themselves the armistice which is
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still in effect from 1953 with koreans the south koreans never formally signed on it onto it that's
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how fanatical that government was i think it's very similar with zelinski if biden i've argued in the
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press elsewhere he might make a ceasefire deal to just get this off his plate this year or if trump
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when he wins in november uh tries to negotiate with them i think we're setting up to actually have a
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situation where zelinski won't negotiate and will be able to save face internally while the u.s cuts
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and runs mike lee put out a memo recently where he talked about how the cia had to directly confront
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zelinski about zelinski's corruption now the big memo circulated by jd vance makes this argument mitch
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mcconnell is currently crafting a national security uh omnibus bill that would lash together israel ukraine
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taiwan refilling of american stockpiles and as i've said frequently however you feel about any of
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those questions they definitely deserve their own dignity and their own vote and they should be
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subject to itemized review and amendment so that i don't know you're not funding some other countries
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r&d for the next 15 years based on a state of affairs that may be temporary it may be resolvable
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maybe getting resolved we may be the factor that's causing some of these circumstances to not be
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resolved and so i think that um as that's going on you've got to ask yourself what are the specifics
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jd vance finds tied into the ukraine provisions a requirement to continue this ukraine assistance
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program and vance argues that the requirement in law that mitch mcconnell is trying to get in law right
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now is actually an impeachment trap because if trump does what he did previously and pauses any aid to
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ukraine that would then function as a basis for some sort of impeachment effort so uh i thought it
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was it was very uh well put together i think it's moving a lot of folks i wanted to hear from you
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what are how are your readers reacting to jd vance's essay on on that memo yeah so i think senator vance's
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argument is is actually likely to be the argument that's going to be most effective uh in the whole
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history of this conflict so far so going back 24 months uh the argument about ammunition that was
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made last year i think is all true uh the us has expended and has dangerously depleted ammunition as
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a result of its support uh for the zelinski government um but that's kind of nebulous and
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academic for a lot of people like it's not actually a problem until like china invades taiwan
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or something you know very cute happens uh this is hyper uh acute and immediate which is uh trump's
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essential pitch uh to the american public is that he was a private citizen who thought there was
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problems with the government and that there were uh you know booby traps and landmines all over the
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place and he didn't feel like he could govern and he feels like he can maybe do a better job the second
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time this is the kind of thing that he has been uh demonizing and attacking in the press which is that
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you would have a provision that would precede his tenure uh that would give congress legal pretext
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to impeach him if he did not do uh what this legislation would say and so while i think you
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know a lot of people on the republican side should come around to what i believe is our shared perspective
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here the reality is that there still is a lot of residual support for some sort of fundraising or some
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sort of financing of ukraine if that financing is then tied to uh essentially i think an illegitimate
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pretext to remove trump i think that that shuts down the conversation so i think we're going to
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see is vance and company in the senate stall this thing out it'll eventually come to the house where
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people like you are going to have to kill it i read the vance argument also to be that like if there
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is a financing structure for a certain period of time that functions as a ballast against any peace
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negotiations for sure for sure i mean i mean that's essentially the argument with they want to
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stop uh trump's negotiating style and so this is this is not a bill to like fund ukraine so much as to
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to clear any peace process between now and well into trump's term no and look it's an escalation
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so like you know in the vietnam period there was something that was introduced called the war powers
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act which has actually never been i believe uh tested the supreme court it is a well documented
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50-year phenomenon of the legislature abdicating its responsibility to the executive and so what
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the executive has principally tried to do is start most of these endless wars which haven't worked since
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the 90s uh this is actually an escalation in the other direction which is congress is potentially poised
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to enact legislation that stops the president from stopping the wars is profound well i think we're
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getting better at it and i'm actually getting the blame according to the washington examiner
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the washington examiner out with a piece ukraine would have aid by now if democrats had not voted with
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gates and the argument the washington examiner makes is that kevin mccarthy was going to fast
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track any ukraine aid that that was a priority that he was going to muscle the republicans into
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and that if democrats had not voted with me to replace mccarthy and if mike johnson who for whatever
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flaws folks may see in him certainly has been more skeptical on ukraine aid than kevin mccarthy has that
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but for that there would have been another endless authorization so i don't know if i deserve the credit
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for it but i will take it if uh if they'll give me the credit for it um why do you think it is
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that you have so many republicans that are just unquestioning because i wouldn't even view mike
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johnson as like anti-ukraine aid i would look at him and say you know this is a guy who wanted to know
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like is does crimea have to be part of the deal at the end and he asked some pretty basic questions
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just about the tactics and about the strategy and the white house hasn't gotten back to him but
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why do you think people are afraid to ask those questions in your in your long covering of this
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well look first as a quick comment to what you just said sure um i i do think this episode and
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this article particularly lays bare a lot of the criticisms of trumpism and also your actions last
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year which is that they were essentially substance free nihilism there was nothing but personal vendetta
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between you and mccarthy and there's nothing but a personal vendetta between trump and a whole litany
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of characters this is a concrete example of if there was a different leadership in the house
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we would not be having this discussion so i mean i i it's just unimaginable if trump's not
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on the field and you had not taken the actions that we would even be having this debate so the
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idea that this is all personal i think has been contradicted by events uh in terms of uh what the
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ukraine position is look i mean they have taken a maximal position which is that uh any recognition of
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reality which is that you know the russians have taken control of crimea for over a decade now um
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and that essentially there isn't the moral political and military and financial support to die over
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donetsk uh and the rest of the east um any recognition of that is somehow highly immoral or highly immoral
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um and i think we're just sort of trapped in this sort of you know endless uh debate and it's actually
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it is quite redolent of world war one where like it was very clear that the battle lines were frozen
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and alsace and in the eastern part of france you know at the beginning of the war and they wasted
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untold blood and treasure delaying the inevitable and eventually collapsed a lot of governments in
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europe and i think you potentially literally could collapse the biden government it it it has such a risk
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for like the the accident and the escalation that's what worries me so much is that you you could have
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some sort of downstream power some sort of missed signal i mean my goodness evidence seems to suggest
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that we lost americans because of some signaling malfunction on a drone coming in that otherwise
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we would have had the ability to intercept but there was a there was a malfunction and how we would
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normally approach that you get to a situation in uh rising tensions with nuclear powers i just worry
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about that a lot more than i worry about some broke down russian tank in the donbas region look i mean
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you saw the carlson interview with with mr yeah that's where i'm going i i gotta i gotta get your
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take i know you and i are both like tucker files yeah what did you think of that yeah i mean look i
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think you saw with putin uh uh somebody who was fundamentally rational um but also you know he's there
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was a there's a gangster ruthlessness to him for sure um you know i think that mr putin uh isn't
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going to be trigger happy to use a nuclear weapon however i mean we do know if you look at uh what the
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kremlin has been commissioning who they're talking to there are people within the russian sphere who
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make the moral and uh military case for a nuclear first strike that's pretty frightening um and if
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the russians feel that they are endlessly isolated and you know up against a wall on this this is
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something that they're going to consider and like look a 10 20 chance for a nuclear war is way too way
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too high for my blood and critically the russians have signaled their willingness to negotiate the
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russians love to negotiate they love to have these talks and like i just see very little downside to
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getting them started the american conservative is really founded on foreign policy realism and has
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been willing to be a contrarian voice in an era of neoconservatism uh one of your founders pat
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buchanan i think effectively made that argument in the media on the campaign trail and certainly in his in
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his journalism now with trump ascendant in republican politics coming in uh saying he's going to resolve
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the ukraine war immediately that his presence alone is going to deter china uh i i know your readers must
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be interested in how the trump government is going to take shape and form i don't know that we'll have
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to go through the like boltonista phase and like the mike pompeo phase is there i have optimism that in a
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second trump term you would have more foreign policy realists in positions to effectuate the trump
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agenda is that optimism shared by your readers uh yeah and it's shared by me i mean look look the
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reality is uh this is we have an imperial presidency for for good or ill the president can do a ton on
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foreign policy and if trump were to win we don't actually know what the lay is going to be like i think
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it probably means center gop control but the house you can attest to it more it's probably going to be
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pretty close unless it's an absolute blowout for trump so the reality is his governing agenda might
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actually be heavy on foreign policy where assuming this bill doesn't pass there are very very very
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little of any checks on his authority and so he could totally reshape the map and i think his
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unpredictability is one of the virtues you know with with biden and jake sullivan it just always feels like
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every um everything is some georgetown school of foreign service essay exam and it it telegraphs
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punches it shows adversaries where they can play up to it shows allies what they can get away with
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and with trump that air of unpredictability kept the dictators on their best behaviors it kept our allies
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on on their best behavior and he actually liked doing it that's why you know there there are other
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areas of the government i'm sure at the department of labor the department of education that the agency
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would take on the role of the secretary or the leader but in foreign policy i i think trump took
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such a great interest in it and and in a way he kind of views the world as a real estate transaction
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he doesn't understand why gaza is is poor because it is beautiful he doesn't understand you know why
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why we can't uh seduce you know people like him uh in north korea to capitalism with opportunity and um
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there's something to that that i think we've really been missing and i think there's there's even more
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potential in the second term because you don't have to go through the phase of some of the people
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who uh who stabbed him in the back and we've talked a lot about how if you trace the people
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who stabbed trump in the back and those who didn't it almost has a perfect overlay as like the neocons
00:24:20.860
he trusted versus the non-neocons no i mean it's it's it's clearly a neoconservative thing i mean look
00:24:26.060
i mean if trump had had all of the behavior that he he exhibits had all the policy preferences had all
00:24:32.540
the characteristics which we know about him and he had had neocon foreign policy i do not think
00:24:38.060
he would have seen this massive rejiggering of the republican party i also don't think he would have
00:24:41.580
won and i think he was absolutely central to his appeal uh that he had argued that the foreign policy
00:24:48.220
of the post-war of of since since the 90s have been this abject failure and and i think that ukraine
00:24:54.140
shows that this is a durable change that he's led right because at the beginning of the ukraine
00:24:59.500
conflict i think it was massey gates and marjorie taylor green who were who were standing up against
00:25:05.180
these and continued provocations with russia and we've seen the congress come to us uh as a lagging
00:25:12.220
indicator of where the people in the republican party are and republican primary voting voters in
00:25:17.660
particular are anti-war they don't want to see us entangled and they oftentimes have lived out the
00:25:24.220
consequence of that entanglement and that actually gives me hope that trumpism is about more than
00:25:29.340
trump it's not just his own vision or his own um his own proclivity on foreign policy it's that
00:25:35.260
truly this is where our people are and we fix the divide that occurred previously uh before i let you
00:25:41.260
go kurt i got to talk to you about what's going on on the border sure this big axios piece out uh that uh
00:25:47.260
that details uh biden exploding with rage on air force one about the border susan rice called hhs secretary
00:25:56.060
an idiot the vice president tried to constrain her responsibility to the root causes of migration
00:26:02.860
mayorkas disagreeing with biden's hundred-day halt on deportations just a full autopsy on the biden
00:26:09.740
border decisions um what are the things that you guys are covering what are you finding people interested
00:26:14.460
in as uh as we just see the border surrendered no i mean the immigration is the biggest issue in the
00:26:19.420
election and um bigger than the economy bigger than crime it's number one i i think i think it is uh i
00:26:26.460
think i mean if the economy were actually to go into like a real recession uh that would potentially
00:26:32.540
change it you know like in the 2008 way but right now immigration is the most acute issue i mean we see
00:26:37.900
in all the polling um i think and i think there's just there is a great anxiety about you know what kind
00:26:43.820
of country this is becoming um whether or not we've had too much immigration too fast that's been
00:26:47.980
unassimilated over the last 30 to 50 years um and i think you see this all borne out um in the the
00:26:54.380
border crisis and i think there's a grander recognition of of democratic cynicism uh which is
00:26:59.420
that uh biden both attracted and allowed uh this to occur and it really is quite astonishing is it really
00:27:07.180
is it is legit dangerous it's not just like crank quack stuff to say an open border is dangerous i think
00:27:14.540
that was always castigated as as zealot fringe stuff um turns out it's shared by the median american
00:27:21.180
yeah i i sense it's going to be a voting issue because it is so visible visible and real uh you
00:27:27.660
know inflation also though something people are feeling in the pocketbook right now and there was
00:27:32.220
this theory of the case politically on capitol hill that we had to have the bill that we were demanding
00:27:36.780
right the bill was the most important thing and now i think there's a realization that
00:27:41.020
that biden has to own his own departures from the trump policies right i mean when he went and bragged
00:27:47.500
on day one about getting rid of all these trump policies he really owned the border the media is
00:27:52.780
trying to say now we own the border because we didn't like langford's amnesty bill i i just don't
00:27:58.300
see that working i think the people are going to assign the blame appropriately to joe biden
00:28:03.100
no no i mean i think people can can sense that this is this is a major a major shift and then i
00:28:09.340
think people also sense that the that the reality is that this is actually quite different i think
00:28:13.580
people are aware that this is not just mexican immigration the majority of it is not mexican
00:28:17.580
information so far as we understand i mean i don't really know how much we trust any of these
00:28:21.020
statistics and uh i think people understand that the world has gotten a lot more dangerous than it
00:28:25.580
was in the 90s and we don't have the full picture here because we're not even trying to get the full
00:28:29.580
picture yeah i mean that what really got me is when i met with the inspector general of the
00:28:34.700
department of homeland security and of the eight million people we've paroled into the country
00:28:39.740
six million of them we don't know who they are or where they are because they just put down a fake
00:28:45.340
name there were like thousands of people registered at a mcdonald's uh in one town and uh that has just
00:28:52.220
allowed people to fall between the cracks which is inhumane because oftentimes they're falling right back
00:28:57.180
into the hands of the card hells operating within our country and uh you know it's uh it's remarkable
00:29:03.900
the raw numbers the trips we've taken to the border like you say you just see the waves of humanity
00:29:09.180
coming over and over and people are feeling it in every community and uh you know it'll be interesting
00:29:14.940
to see how it plays out i mean i think something's very key from our magazine's approach is that
00:29:19.740
actually immigration and trade are parts of foreign policy and i mean you you've seen uh i think
00:29:26.140
you know so the neoconservative line the country changed the entire way it did business patriot act
00:29:31.660
nsa every time an american goes to the airport because of one attack that was horrendous and bad
00:29:39.020
and then versus an ongoing day-by-day thing that nobody really understands uh nothing no no changes
00:29:47.260
other than the ones that were started in the first trump term awesome well kurt mills please let folks
00:29:53.340
know how they can subscribe to the american conservative a great source of not only a great
00:29:58.220
foreign policy analysis but really a lot of the stuff going on on capitol hill and impacting the
00:30:02.380
american economy sure yeah uh www.theamericanconservative.com also amconmag.com my twitter is at kurt mills
00:30:10.060
c-u-r-t-m-i-l-l-s um great website check it out all right thanks so much for joining us and
00:30:16.380
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00:30:19.900
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