00:00:14.000Remember, he emptied the strategic petroleum reserves to try to limit economic fallout for the midterm elections.
00:00:20.000Well, now President Trump is doing the same thing, but he's really focusing in on Ukraine.
00:00:25.000So all of this is rooted in the fact that the oil prices have spiked and that is bleeding over into broader inflation, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:00:32.000Consumer prices were up 3.7% in September from a year earlier.
00:00:36.000That is hotter than August's gain of 3.4%.
00:00:39.000And it was above the 3.6% increase expected by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal.
00:00:44.000Prices excluding food and energy rose 2.6%.
00:00:53.000So the president is using apparently a variety of measures to try to crack down on diesel prices in particular.
00:01:01.000Reuters says that the Trump administration is now considering easing sanctions on so-called shadow fleet vessels.
00:01:06.000That have transported oil and petroleum products from countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela in an effort to reduce record high global freight rates.
00:01:15.000Meanwhile, there's news that the United States is threatening Ukraine over and over and over again to withhold intelligence or even shut down Starlink to get them to stop hitting oil refineries in Russia.
00:01:26.000According to CBS News, the U.S. may have intentionally withheld early warnings this week of Russian strikes on Ukraine.
00:01:32.000President Vladimir Zelensky said that Ukraine received no advance warning from our partners when Russia launched a ballistic missile barrage at Kyiv and other locations early on Tuesday.
00:01:41.000American officials said this happened because of bad weather.
00:01:43.000Ukrainian officials said they didn't believe the excuse and believed that the systems were being played around with.
00:01:48.000According to the Washington Post, the U.S. had threatened to withhold intelligence from Ukraine on Monday, saying that if the Ukrainians hit Russian energy sites, the U.S. would immediately halt all intelligence sharing.
00:02:03.000Again, it's anonymous sourcing, so we'll see if it's true or not.
00:02:05.000The person said the warnings were so widespread, anyone with the Ukrainian sending last name got a call.
00:02:10.000And Zelensky confirmed Ukrainian military officials had received such warnings.
00:02:19.000Ukraine's 7th Corps of the Air Assault Forces on Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, said it had begun experiencing connectivity issues with Starshield and had to cancel submissions because of unreliable connectivity.
00:02:30.000So that complicated Ukrainian logistics.
00:02:32.000It also made it difficult to actually activate the air defense systems over Kyiv.
00:02:38.000And so you started to see again, Russia has not stopped firing for one single second here.
00:02:42.000Here's video from yesterday of a Russian attack drone hitting a supermarket in Odessa.
00:02:49.000And says the supermarket, five people injured in this.
00:03:24.000The Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Mikhailo Fedorov, says Starlink is now being restored.0.52
00:03:30.000But it appears, again, that the United States is putting heavy, heavy, heavy pressure on the Ukrainians not to strike Russian oil resources, oil refineries, and such.
00:03:40.000This prompted Vladimir Zelensky to go on Piers Morgan's show, he was in London, and talk about President Trump in some pretty colorful ways.
00:03:48.000It's a pity that we are losing, we are losing strong partners.
00:04:10.000Look, guys, it's not about business for us, it's just our life, and this is our country, it's our body, so our home, our children, and this is very important for us.
00:04:22.000That's why it's painful when President Trump chooses one side, not our side, but we are okay that he's in the middle, but.
00:04:32.000If you're in the middle, you have to stay in the middle, not on the wrong side.
00:04:38.000I don't know who is pushing him not to the right side.
00:04:42.000This is not the right side of history.
00:04:46.000Okay, so first of all, we should just point out that if the tactic is to get the Ukrainians to stop attacking the Russians so that the oil prices will drop, that is likely to not be successful.0.57
00:04:55.000Okay, less than 3 to 5% of Americans use diesel every week, right?
00:05:00.000The idea is to bring diesel prices down.
00:05:01.000Very few Americans use diesel every week.
00:05:03.000Now, there are some spillover effects at the margins because of diesel prices.
00:05:07.000But when you fill up your car at the gas station, you're not typically taking your Honda and putting some diesel in it.
00:05:13.000The United States overall generally produces enough diesel to fulfill our domestic needs.
00:05:18.000Also, even if you free up Russian diesel, everybody sort of knows that the clamp is going to go back on after the election.
00:05:24.000And so a lot of places aren't going to be taking the Russian diesel.
00:05:27.000Now, presumably, President Trump is doing this because the reason oil and gas have been spiking is because of Iran, not really because of Russia, Ukraine.0.53
00:05:34.000And Iran continues to jack up the prices by mobilizing the Houthis to attack Saudi targets, which they've been doing pretty successfully.
00:05:42.000The problem is, again, this tactic has some long term effects.0.83
00:05:46.000Russia, Iran, China, they work together.
00:06:21.000What you ought to do to lower oil and gas prices, pump and drill, as the president has very successfully done, and we ought to focus in the mid term on defeating our geopolitical enemies and freeing up global choke points.
00:06:33.000We want oil to be permanently cheap, not intermittently cheap, not when our enemies decide to choke it off, just permanently cheaper.0.61
00:06:39.000Work with our allies to crumble the Iranian regime from within, strangle them, safeguard our allies from pipeline attacks, generate new alliances in the Middle East, and allow them to defend themselves, and the oil prices will drop.0.80
00:06:51.000That is the mid and long term solution, which is, again, why I've been arguing since April that the president should not have done an MOU with Iran and instead accelerated action against Iran instead of waiting it out.0.94
00:07:02.000Heighten the pain against the Iranian regime.0.79
00:07:26.000The truth is that by the statistics, Russia is now more Islamist than Christian.0.73
00:07:31.000The church rating among Russians who self identify as Orthodox is somewhere between 6 and 14%.
00:07:36.000If you look at the total population of Russia, it's like 2 to 8%.
00:07:41.000Meanwhile, 14 to 20% of the population is Islamic.1.00
00:07:47.000And they're reproducing faster than the Russian national average, which is extraordinarily, extraordinarily low.1.00
00:07:51.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:08:02.000Nobody's going to like jack it up on wheels and take it somewhere.
00:08:04.000But the way that criminals gain access to the asset value of your home is they forge your name on a signature sheet.
00:08:11.000And then they basically steal your home title and they start borrowing against it.
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00:09:32.000But the sad thing is that we have had, I want everyone to remember if you go back and look at the headlines, In the first half of 2026, so many people in the West were saying, Ukraine is winning.
00:09:46.000And, you know, because it was true.0.89
00:09:48.000And at the front line, thanks to Ukraine's drone innovations, and then very importantly, in the Russian rear, you know, deep in the Russian Federation, Ukrainians were picking apart the oil refineries that fuel the Russian war machine.0.78
00:10:03.000And so everyone was getting complacent in the West.0.73
00:10:21.000One, they concentrated their resources on attacking Kyiv because they don't have enough resources to destroy all of Ukraine, but they can concentrate on Kyiv and they can generate headlines and they can make the West afraid.
00:10:35.000And secondly, they went to President Trump and they got President Trump to put pressure on Ukrainians.
00:10:42.000To try to get Ukrainians to stop hitting Russian oil.
00:10:45.000And I want to share with you, because I think that mystifies me about President Trump's actions in the past week.
00:10:51.000In August of 2025, on Truth Social, President Trump posted these words.
00:10:57.000He said, It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader's country.
00:11:03.000Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine fight back, only defend.
00:11:10.000And I wish that someone in the White House press corps Would ask Trump to compare his actions now with what's happening today.
00:11:17.000Because the only way, the reason why Ukraine was succeeding is because they had finally developed a homegrown capacity to attack Russian oil infrastructure.0.56
00:11:29.000And now that ability is what Trump is trying to take away from Ukrainians.
00:11:34.000And if something doesn't change on this, I mean, Zelensky said today here, he was in London yesterday, he said that Ukraine is going to restart its attacks on Russian oil.
00:11:43.000But if something doesn't change, I think we're going to see almost the destruction of Kyiv in the next weeks and months.0.63
00:11:52.000And what I would say to people is that is Russian warfare.0.88
00:12:02.000Eve might be destroyed, but Ukraine is the largest after being there for four years.0.68
00:12:06.000They'll continue to fight, but we're facing an absolutely horrible situation.0.99
00:12:11.000And people are feeling that the United States of America is now full.
00:12:19.000So, JP, when you look at the situation from a sort of American or outsider perspective, the easy thing to do is say this thing is going to last forever.
00:12:27.000It's having an impact on our oil prices, on our gas prices, on our diesel prices.
00:12:30.000This is something that the president has been focused very much on, obviously, in the lead up to the midterms.
00:12:35.000The truth is that it has had an impact on our diesel and our oil, but only in a very indirect and marginal way.
00:12:40.000The truth is what's going on in the Middle East with the attacks on Saudi pipelines by the Houthis, the attacks in the Straits of Hormuz, that's having more of an impact on oil and gas prices than what's going on between Russia and Ukraine.
00:12:50.000With that said, if the American public are saying, listen, what does an end here look like?
00:12:54.000What would a successful end of this war look like for Ukraine?
00:12:57.000How do they see You know, let's blue sky this thing.
00:13:01.000What does victory look like for Ukraine in a realistic way?
00:13:08.000Well, you know, I mean, I've been since I left Ukraine temporarily in May, I've been traveling around Europe, and everyone with whom I meet wants a 30 second answer to this question.
00:13:17.000And they all ask me the same question What does victory look like?
00:13:20.000And what my time in Ukraine taught me is that victory is about opening up possibilities.0.79
00:13:25.000So, you know, in 2022, in February 2022, when Russia launched the full scale invasion, Victory meant just trying to kind of stay alive to keep the Russians out of key.0.74
00:13:34.000It meant people making Molotov cocktails to keep the Russians from coming down their street.0.89
00:13:39.000And now look at how far we've advanced.0.98
00:13:40.000Ukrainians have retaken territory.0.67
00:13:42.000Ukrainian drone and AI technology and anti drone tech and electronic warfare is now helping America.
00:13:49.000And so victory now is a new type of possibility than what we imagined before.
00:13:53.000And so I think, you know, we let the media, people who are unschooled in warfare, kind of set the terms of how we talk about this.
00:14:00.000And that's why we have a hard time talking about victory.
00:14:03.000But if you look at, you know, When, according to the media, Ukraine is either at a stalemate or it's an escalation.
00:14:10.000And this is an unhelpful way to talk about it.
00:14:12.000Every time Ukraine is starting to get the advantage, to get momentum, so for example, to take half of Russia's oil refining capacity, it's called an escalation.
00:14:26.000And so our language doesn't make sense.
00:14:28.000And we're always going to be stuck in this.
00:14:30.000The only way one side can win is with an escalation of some sort.0.67
00:14:34.000And right now, the Russians are very good with their cognitive escalation.0.67
00:14:37.000The Russians have been so severely weakened.0.78
00:14:40.000And so all they had to do, they said, we need to change the headlines.
00:14:44.000We need to change the narrative away from Ukraine as winning.
00:14:46.000And they successfully have done that really throughout the summer and now.
00:14:51.000And so I think, firstly, I'd say, you know, everything I know about Ukrainians, they're not going to surrender, even to the death, as we see.
00:15:00.000I think the world kind of misses that point.
00:15:02.000I think a lot of people who talk about freedom in America and Europe don't really know what that is.
00:15:08.000And they're not really sure if they would actually die for it.
00:15:10.000They think it's Crazy that people stay in Kyiv, for example.
00:15:14.000And so they really don't understand this.
00:15:16.000And that's, I mean, I think a huge problem is that people close to Trump, except for Laura Loomer, perhaps, have not spent time in Ukraine.
00:15:24.000I mean, it doesn't count to go there for a couple of hours.
00:15:27.000Like, you know, you actually know the people.
00:15:30.000And Ben, I remember I was in Kyiv, I was in Lviv when the Russian full scale invasion started.
00:15:37.000And the American intelligence was right that Russia was going to invade.0.63
00:15:41.000But no one talks about the catastrophic failure.
00:15:44.000Of American intel in February of 2022.
00:15:47.000American intel and European intel all thought that Ukraine would surrender because they knew nothing about Ukraine, because CIA agents didn't leave Kyiv, because they didn't talk to people.
00:15:57.000But I had been reporting in the country and I knew that they were not going to surrender.
00:16:07.000I think President Trump is unaware of that aspect.
00:16:10.000He only sees the politicians and the elites, which is ironic because that's not really what he claims to be about.
00:16:15.000And so if people can understand Ukrainians will not surrender, I think that can change the picture.
00:16:21.000And then we see that, again, let's not forget the first half of this year, Ukrainians had Russia in a very bad spot, and Russia had to find a way out of it.
00:16:31.000And, you know, as I talk to experts, some people disagree, but most people say, you know, if Ukraine cannot hit Russian oil infrastructure, then there's no way out of this.0.58
00:16:40.000It's going to continue, and the nation in Kyiv will get destroyed, and then some other city and some other.
00:16:45.000And we'll be talking about this in five or 10 years.
00:16:48.000And so the question is go back to that Trump tweet for 2025.
00:16:57.000We've heard conflicting reports about the availability of Starlink.
00:17:00.000First, there was a report that Starlink had essentially been cut off for military purposes.
00:17:04.000Then there was a report that that was not true.
00:17:06.000The administration kind of quasi denied it.
00:17:07.000What have you been hearing from your sources on the ground about what happened with Starlink?
00:17:11.000And has the United States actually shut down its intelligence sharing or the capacity of the Ukrainians to use Starlink at this point?
00:17:21.000Well, personally, regarding Starlink, it does seem that Starlink was limited in a way with the intention. to prevent Ukrainians from hitting Russian oil.
00:17:30.000So Ukrainians are now, they've been able to develop homegrown drones and even missiles now that can go deep into the Russian Federation.0.61
00:18:04.000The past days, when the Russians are sending drones and missiles every hour almost to Kyiv, the Ukrainian drone interceptors could not meet the Russians.
00:18:15.000They couldn't take off or they couldn't go on course because they also had no access to Starlink.
00:18:20.000And so someone didn't think it through or they did it intentionally.
00:18:50.000There's no straight answer on it on any side.
00:18:54.000But we do know from talking to people in Kyiv that for the first time on a regular basis, missiles are coming before the air raid alarm sounds.