The Great America Show - March 21, 2022


WHY UKRAINE WAR NOW？ LEE SMITH ON HOW IT HAPPENED


Episode Stats

Length

37 minutes

Words per Minute

151.06726

Word Count

5,676

Sentence Count

301

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary

As President Biden prepares to attend the NATO Summit in Brussels, Republicans are demanding an investigation of the Biden's own son, Hunter, for his alleged involvement in a cover-up surrounding the disappearance of a laptop belonging to the vice president's son, Joe Biden. Special guest Lee Smith, author of The Coup and the Perpetual Coup, joins Lou Dobbs on the Great America Show.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody, I'm Lou Dobbs. China is now protesting the West's sanctions against Russia.
00:00:07.780 Xi Jinping clearly aligned with his strategic partner, Vladimir Putin. President Biden on his
00:00:14.620 way this week to attend the NATO summit in Brussels, more military aid to Ukraine, more
00:00:20.660 sanctions against Russia on the agenda. And the United Nations now says 10 million Ukrainians
00:00:27.340 have fled their country, a fourth of Ukraine's population. President Biden facing the strongest
00:00:33.680 attacks yet from Republicans who are demanding investigations of the long suppressed laptop
00:00:39.680 and its contents. Its owner, of course, the president's son, Hunter. This is the Great
00:00:46.740 America Show and welcome. Thanks for being with us. Russian forces are consolidating their advances
00:00:53.580 throughout Ukraine. They now have surrounded Maripol and are demanding surrender of the
00:01:00.180 city. While the onslaught and bombardment enter a fourth week, the two sides continue their
00:01:06.400 talks. They're far from achieving anything substantive. Zelensky wants to meet Putin face
00:01:12.340 to face. Putin says he's willing to join the talks personally at some point. He didn't say
00:01:18.260 what his conditions are or what must be done for those face to face talks to actually occur.
00:01:23.760 As President Biden prepares to head for the NATO summit, he finds himself the target of increasingly
00:01:29.940 incensed Republicans, many of whom are calling for full investigations of the Biden family now
00:01:36.760 because of the evidence on Hunter's laptop, because of the intelligence community's complicity
00:01:43.600 in what was without a doubt, a cover up led by corporate news outlets, Facebook, Twitter and
00:01:51.520 big tech. And of course, the FBI that sat on it for two years, a lot to investigate. Our guest today
00:01:59.580 is bestselling author investigative journalist, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Lee Smith,
00:02:05.740 author of the plot to overthrow the president and the permanent coup. Lee, thanks for being with us
00:02:12.180 here on the Great America Show. Lou, thank you again for inviting me on. It's always an enormous
00:02:17.760 pleasure and always great fun to be on with you. So thanks so much again. It's absolutely reciprocal.
00:02:24.300 Thank you. Zelensky, before Congress, speaking alternately Churchillian, and then as some sort of
00:02:36.560 neoliberal early post-World War II, trying to create new institutions globally for the preservation of
00:02:45.280 peace, it was an astounding performance. Your thoughts?
00:02:49.480 Yeah. I mean, looking at what's happening on the ground, I mean, it's sort of like Zelensky is speaking,
00:02:58.380 I wouldn't say against history, but contrary to history, right? And I'm thinking specifically about
00:03:05.140 NATO here. If NATO is intended or was intended through the Cold War to prevent war in Europe,
00:03:16.000 and what we have now is war in Europe, there's something wrong. And it's not just the problem
00:03:23.320 with NATO that it's not just that NATO is a patent failure. It's also that the purpose of NATO and
00:03:33.180 American strategic interest and the very serious interest we have in stability in Europe, including
00:03:41.780 Eastern Europe, needs to be rethought. So the idea that Zelensky is basically speaking to Cold War era
00:03:49.520 America and Cold War era Europe doesn't really make sense, especially when we understand the nature of
00:03:59.460 the nature of the regime now sitting atop the American government.
00:04:06.020 Atop the American government, and it is a regime that defies expectations, it defies description currently,
00:04:16.700 and frankly, I think most of us have very little idea as to where this all ends up.
00:04:22.700 With this hard left, even Marxist administration driving an agenda that is simply designed to crush
00:04:33.760 institutions, to crush traditions, and invert American history, from exceptionalism to dependency,
00:04:43.540 from great achievements to passivity. Your thoughts about the forces that we are contending with
00:04:50.480 as we have the leader of Ukraine, whose country has valiantly held off the Russian army. But at the same
00:05:00.220 time, we're engaged in a great confrontation in this country as well, aren't we?
00:05:06.900 Yes, absolutely. And I think that the real tragedy, I think, unfolding here is I don't think that
00:05:17.040 Zelensky or many of the other forces understand what's going on. I mean, I'm sure you and I will go
00:05:26.080 into some detail here and lay it out. But I'll just say right now on the surface, one of the things that
00:05:31.100 most people appear to be missing is that while Joe Biden and his validators and the press are painting
00:05:39.680 a portrait of a great American president who is calling on NATO to summon all of their powers,
00:05:46.200 and of course, nothing is happening. And I'm not saying that things should be happening. I don't
00:05:50.780 think that the United States should be making war on Russia's border. The reality is, is that while Biden
00:05:58.240 is employing this hortatory rhetoric, and while Zelensky appears to believe this stuff, in fact,
00:06:05.780 the Biden administration intends to flood Vladimir Putin's war chest with more money, as many of your
00:06:17.020 listeners will know, it's the Russians who are negotiating with the Americans in Vienna over
00:06:24.460 the Iran nuclear deal. So what's been going on for several months, and I think this is another way to
00:06:33.500 understand the onset of the Ukrainian war. So you wonder, well, why now, right? What was going on
00:06:40.160 now? Why did Putin decide to launch this invasion now? And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact
00:06:46.680 that Putin understood how important the Iran deal was to the Biden administration. And therefore,
00:06:56.000 as much as the Biden administration would want to respond, would want to start to sanction the
00:07:01.920 Russians, would want to do probably everything short of military force. Putin understood that
00:07:08.840 the Americans were greatly constrained by their own need. And by the way, the particularly foolish need,
00:07:13.720 which is about giving the Iranians a nuclear weapons program. And we can go into that in a little
00:07:19.140 more detail. I just think that, as you said, talking about the nature of this regime, the deceptions,
00:07:26.980 the misdirection. So I mean, you know, they put Volodymyr Zelensky in the middle, and they stage
00:07:32.800 a show in the middle of Washington, D.C. while what's going on in Vienna, not just on the ground
00:07:38.500 in Ukraine, what's going on in Vienna, that's the real show. That tells you who the Biden administration
00:07:45.180 is. That tells you what the regime is like. They want to give a terrorist state the nuclear bomb.
00:07:50.720 And once those sanctions are off the Iranians, they're going to go out and they're going to buy
00:07:55.840 arms from Putin. They're going to buy nuclear expertise from Putin. They're going to flood his
00:08:01.120 war chest. That's the real show that's going on. Not what Joe Biden says on the nightly news or just fake
00:08:11.560 press conferences. And why give Iran? Why would even the often perversely guided Biden administration
00:08:24.900 want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? You know, I still do a fair amount of foreign policy writing
00:08:32.280 and foreign policy analysis. But I know during the Obama years, when we were looking at the
00:08:40.600 Iran deal, we were looking at why Obama wanted to do it. I mean, you know, it appeared that there was
00:08:47.120 a stupid purpose, but there was a strategic rationale for it, which was to try to establish a balance of
00:08:54.740 power in the Middle East between Iran and the other powers, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. Again,
00:09:01.340 I thought it was a very bad idea. I thought it was a foolish idea. But Lou, after the stuff that you
00:09:08.980 and I have been looking at for the last five years, which includes what's been going on here at home,
00:09:14.620 whether this is, whether it was Russiagate, whether it's the impeachment of Donald Trump,
00:09:20.540 whether it's January 6th, whether it's the COVID as an instrument used against Americans,
00:09:32.880 my assessment right now is much starker and much plainer. Barack Obama wanted to give a nuclear bomb
00:09:41.780 to an anti-American regime. It's that everyone that you and I have looked at over the last 15 years
00:09:50.620 and said, you know, I'm not an Obama fan, but that seems to be taking it too far that he just hates
00:09:55.720 America. Those people were right. People, people like me who are trying to come up with some sort of
00:10:02.660 strategic or political rationale. I think we were wrong. I think the fact is, it's an emotional,
00:10:10.240 psychological response. And look, there are plenty of people who hate America. New York City hosts
00:10:16.320 hundreds of thousands of them. So the fact that a person like that is controlling important aspects
00:10:25.860 of the American government probably shouldn't come as that much of a surprise. But certainly what we've
00:10:32.280 seen the last five years domestically here should give us some sort of indication, as you were saying,
00:10:37.260 I mean, these people just want to burn everything down. American institutions, American prestige.
00:10:43.760 So that's what I think, that's what I think is going on. That's what I think is going on with the Iran
00:10:48.760 deal. Why Joe, while Joe Biden is pretending to be a noble and galvanizing force at the head of a
00:10:56.620 pro-Western alliance, there's something else going on, which is about undermining and destroying
00:11:03.440 the values of the West, the values that this country is built on.
00:11:08.640 And within the United States, there was a time in the 20s and 30s and 40s, people talked to fifth
00:11:17.520 columns as enemies built up forces within an enemy's society, economy, and body politic.
00:11:28.620 There isn't a like expression for what is going on here. There is fifth column, but most people can't
00:11:36.400 figure out the, I mean, they just, it doesn't seem relevant to our time as a, as a term, but it's,
00:11:44.500 it's more relevant in my opinion today than ever before, because there is a, an aggregation of aligned
00:11:52.320 interests, whether it's wall street, uh, the corporatists, uh, the, the elites of our country, whether in
00:11:59.180 academia, uh, or in government or politics, uh, that have formed up against, uh, our, our nation's heritage,
00:12:08.260 uh, its culture, uh, and it's, it's history. It's, it's a, to me, uh, an unthinkable, uh, evil, uh, aggregation,
00:12:18.460 but it is an aggregation that can be measured that is present. And it is dangerous. This is, uh, I think
00:12:25.240 this is essential. This is a, this is essential. I think for the, um, for our neighbors, our communities,
00:12:34.840 our fellow Americans to understand, um, you know, when you hear different when, you know, when we hear
00:12:41.580 different people, uh, you know, commentators, uh, you know, on the right, but I prefer to things
00:12:47.520 of pro-American commentators, pro-American journalists, pro-American officials. And they
00:12:53.860 point rightly, I believe they say, well, you know, our real, our real problems are here at home with,
00:12:59.980 with this regime, right? Cause this is the regime that is locking up, uh, locking up Americans for
00:13:06.660 January 6th for people exercising the first amendment rights for issuing these insane, um,
00:13:14.160 vaccine mandates. This is our problem. And I agree that is the priority. However, we should not
00:13:21.100 confuse that with a fact that we do have real adversaries abroad. And those at the here, the,
00:13:28.580 here is the key fact, which is, which is what you were saying that the people who are hounding us here
00:13:35.180 are in fact partnered with our adversaries abroad. That's why they want to give Iran the nuclear bomb.
00:13:43.060 That's why, I mean, right now, I mean, it's just taken for granted. There's nothing we can do
00:13:49.480 about the U S economy being an extricably linked to that of the Chinese communist party. And that's
00:13:58.780 because we hear this messaging because everyone is in bed with the Chinese. It's just, everyone
00:14:05.080 just takes it as a matter of fact, well, there's nothing we can do. So we're just going to keep
00:14:08.300 going on and doing it like this. If you look, I was just checking last night because, you know,
00:14:13.640 if you try to buy anything in this country, especially if you try to buy it on Amazon,
00:14:18.200 you almost, I mean, you're, it's, it's coming from China. It's made in China. So if you're going
00:14:22.840 to make a decent effort to find something not made in China, um, it's hard. So I went and I looked
00:14:29.960 to see these different, um, this one particular item, a Fitbit to see, uh, if this was made in
00:14:36.300 China. And in 2019 and the fall of 2019, October, 2019 Fitbit announced that because of Trump's
00:14:45.920 tariffs and because of Trump's trade war, it was going to start moving its operations out of China.
00:14:50.720 It's manufacturing out of China. And then I went through and I saw all the other different companies.
00:14:55.080 I saw that Apple at a certain point was going to try to move a lot of its operations out of China,
00:15:00.440 other places in Asia. Um, but a whole bunch of different companies were terrified, but what
00:15:05.800 Don by what Donald Trump was doing, right? Saying, no, we've got to get out of China. We've got to
00:15:11.760 decouple ourselves from China. And he was actually doing it. And this is what terrified these people.
00:15:17.960 And Lou, I think, I think if we were to lay out a map, put down a timeline, I think this is a large
00:15:26.480 part of the war on Donald Trump. Donald Trump was threatening the interest of the establishment
00:15:34.480 much, much of which are tied to foreign powers. So again, that's, this is why I think, look,
00:15:43.060 we are right to prioritize and say our problem. Our immediate problem here at home is Biden's DOJ.
00:15:49.380 It's Biden's FBI. That's true. Except Biden's DOJ also gave a pass to Chinese espionage. So again,
00:15:58.620 I think we need to understand that the bad guys abroad, it's not just that they have bad intentions
00:16:03.840 and they hate America, but our domestic opponents are tied to the bad guys abroad.
00:16:10.700 And to that point about China, we know the Chinese have more front companies, more spies in this
00:16:18.280 country than any other nation on earth. They may have more spies in our country than we have spies in
00:16:24.660 our country. It is, it is, it is definitely, it is stupefying to think that the justice department
00:16:33.980 pulled in dissolved, uh, its organization, uh, to, uh, to prosecute, uh, specifically Chinese
00:16:43.660 nationals who were working in this country, but also working for the CCP and the PLA while they're
00:16:50.700 here. And they decided to retire that idea because it was, uh, apparently an affront to the communist
00:16:57.620 Chinese who are spying here and have been doing so for better part of four decades.
00:17:03.600 The Chinese press, after this happened, the Chinese press took credit for it. They said the foreign
00:17:09.920 ministry and the Chinese, uh, embassy in Washington, large complaints for the Biden administration. And
00:17:16.100 that's why the Biden administration moved. It's obscene, but look, the thing is you're right.
00:17:22.040 There are more Chinese spies here than there are American spies. That's, that's absolutely the issue.
00:17:27.240 And it was set up like that. And do you know who did it? It was the academic establishment. It was
00:17:32.520 legislators. It was the business establishment. So they get a whole bunch of cheap foreign labor,
00:17:38.420 right? They get a whole bunch of cheap foreign labor to work, uh, in big tech. Do you know,
00:17:45.300 there are 13,000 FBI agents. And even if they're doing the right thing, even if they're
00:17:51.980 not spying on the Donald Trump campaign, even if they're not targeting parents or, uh, opposition
00:17:59.540 journalists, let's assume let's, let's assume they're all doing the right thing. 13,000 of them
00:18:04.820 compared to the hundreds of thousands of students from the people's Republic of China. I'm not saying
00:18:13.700 they're bad people. I'm sure a lot of these kids come over and they actually want to study,
00:18:17.560 but guess what? They don't have a choice. They only get out of their country. If the government
00:18:22.500 in Beijing says, yes, provided you do this provided to do that, but who set it up? The
00:18:27.380 Chinese didn't force us to have hundreds of thousands of, of, of their students. It was
00:18:32.280 our people who set it up this way. So that's what I mean, what I'm saying, our enemies abroad have
00:18:40.400 partnered with our opponents here in the United States. And that's who's, that's, who's eating at
00:18:46.660 us. And I do believe that's a major reason why they went after Donald Trump. I, I couldn't agree
00:18:53.960 with you more. And it's, it's so obvious to those who will look to see the alignment of, uh, Donald
00:19:00.560 Trump's enemies with the interest of in particular, uh, the CCP and communist China. And it's also
00:19:11.340 interesting to look at the disinformation, the psychological warfare, uh, the propaganda that was
00:19:17.380 constructed, uh, to blunt that relationships between wall street and corporatist elite, uh, business, uh,
00:19:27.080 business round table, uh, chamber, uh, suddenly there was a, a plan in 2016 hatched, as you will know, uh,
00:19:36.900 to, to connect Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin and to portray him as a, uh, as an agent of the, of the,
00:19:47.120 of the Russians, uh, the feared Russians. Well, if point of fact, what we had most to fear were Xi
00:19:55.460 Jinping and communist China, it's, it's, it's, it's just, you watch this and you think, my gosh,
00:20:04.240 if for having laid this all out, not one of our investigators and the justice department, the CIA,
00:20:11.700 the NSA, DIA, uh, you name it, not one of our foreign intelligence agencies, not one of our domestic
00:20:19.700 law enforcement, national security agencies had the capacity to understand through whether it's
00:20:27.540 counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency. Uh, it is amazing to me that we didn't have, first of all,
00:20:34.740 a whistleblower of any kind, but secondly, that we didn't have any talent that could put all of this
00:20:40.380 together and see it for the conspiracy. It was, I mean, you know, you, you, you'll remember the,
00:20:47.380 um, as, uh, John Radcliffe, as you know, as the Trump administration's coming to a close,
00:20:52.260 uh, the director of national intelligence, John Radcliffe produced a memo. It was an inspector,
00:20:58.540 uh, inspector general's report showing that CIA management, meaning at the time, CIA director,
00:21:05.780 Regina Haspel, had pressured different analysts, uh, a report on election interference, uh, in the
00:21:13.860 2020 election on election interference. Many of these analysts believe that China did play a very,
00:21:19.300 uh, a very sizable role. There was pressure coming from Haspel and CIA management to lessen, uh, or, or
00:21:26.840 to, uh, to meliorate that assessment. And why the rationale given was they, they didn't want those
00:21:34.820 assessments used to promote Trump's policies. In other words, they didn't want, they were against
00:21:41.840 Trump going hard on China. It's astonishing that the American intelligence community, it's not just,
00:21:48.120 it's, it's worse than, than them missing it. Many of them missed it. There were some of them who are
00:21:53.820 actively participant, who are actively backing Chinese interest against the United Mark Milley.
00:22:01.180 This is astonishing, but it tells you how far this country has gone or not the country. God,
00:22:08.200 God, God bless our great neighbors and our great fellow Americans, how far the corruption has gone
00:22:13.920 in the beltway. When Mark Milley and, and, and Bob Woodward's book boasts, uh, uh, boast. Oh yeah.
00:22:22.260 You know, things were looking crazy with Donald Trump. So I called my, uh, I called my, uh, People's
00:22:27.340 Liberation Army counterpart. And I said, Hey, if anything bad happens, I'll give you a heads up.
00:22:33.820 And, and, and he, he was celebrated, right? No one said, wait a minute. We have here one of the top
00:22:40.880 military officials in the country who is openly boasting that he would share classified information
00:22:47.320 regarding troop movements with an enemy, with a potential enemy combatant. This guy has to go
00:22:53.260 at the very least. He must be fired. We, we're probably, we probably have to, we probably have
00:22:58.060 to investigate this now. This is a very serious thing, but it just tells you who these people are,
00:23:03.120 that this was actually celebrated instead of people saying, wait a minute, what's happening?
00:23:08.220 What's happened with the people who are supposed to be governing this country? This is madness.
00:23:13.220 It's not just incompetence anymore. It's madness. And, and the, the left, the radical Democrat,
00:23:21.720 the Marxist driven democratic party up against the Republican party is not a fair fight. The Republican
00:23:30.160 party is not gifted intellectually. They are talented in governance and at worst they're cowards.
00:23:42.680 And they're lazy and they're lazy. And I'm talking about principally the leadership of the Republican
00:23:49.580 party, but for, for them to be the countervailing influence in this society of ours, a two-party
00:23:56.420 system, they're barely a quasi party. They're not a semi party, right? They're a quasi party. And
00:24:04.240 this is one of the difficulties they're bought off by actually, if they knew how cheaply they had been
00:24:10.000 bought by comparison to what communist China has invested. I mean, they would be even, even should
00:24:17.580 probably, well, they would be crestfallen, but they, they certainly wouldn't be chagrined at the
00:24:24.900 very least. I mean, you go through, I, I, I, I, um, urge your, your listeners to go through and just
00:24:33.800 look at the amount, uh, for instance, that Pfizer has spent in Washington, how many lobbyists they
00:24:39.920 have. I mean, it, it, it looks like a lot of money and it's a lot of money except compare it to how much
00:24:46.620 Pfizer made, right. To how much Pfizer made through, I mean, the whole thing, right. What people won't say,
00:24:52.560 but as obvious to everyone's like, are you kidding me? So they have the president of the United States, who is
00:24:58.220 basically working for Pfizer, who has controls of the federal government and says, everyone has to,
00:25:03.220 everyone has to get these vaccines or else you can't work. You, uh, you, you can't, uh, you can't do
00:25:08.280 anything. I mean, right. And, and, and the fact that, and, and the fact that the Republican party,
00:25:14.360 which is supposed to be the instrument of the pro America side of American society is totally, uh,
00:25:24.480 bought off as well. And for so little, it's astonishing. And the really dangerous thing
00:25:30.460 about it is this is supposed to be another one of our checks and balances, right? Not just the three
00:25:35.540 branches of government, but Democrats and Republicans. And that's supposed to be an
00:25:39.680 instrument that's supposed to bring about deterrence. And what happens if there is no
00:25:43.780 deterrence that you have, as you say, a radical, insane left doing these things to the American
00:25:50.640 public and no one is protecting them? Well, leadership will arise. Uh, leadership is definitely
00:25:57.340 leadership is definitely coming about. And I certainly hope that that leadership, um, the
00:26:01.660 leadership that is rising will be, um, responsible and will make it, uh, will make its points and
00:26:12.660 will make its arguments through as, as, as peaceful as possible, especially given all of the violence
00:26:19.740 employed against Trump supporters. But I, I think this is a very important thing. If the Republican
00:26:25.620 party cannot establish deterrence, they're pushing us toward a very, very dangerous situation,
00:26:30.160 right? If instead they're going to join with the Democrats to, um, to crush Americans as they often,
00:26:38.400 uh, did during the Trump years, as they often are now, it's a very dangerous situation. We need
00:26:44.800 Republicans. I mean, not just to help defend the country by checking Democrat excesses. It's just
00:26:53.240 madness if they won't, what that will lead to in this country is disaster. And Mitt Romney stepping
00:27:00.440 forward and lining up with the only Republican in the Senate, which is actually something of a small
00:27:07.360 miracle itself, uh, to, to line up with mandates of the Democrats, uh, I guess the Republican party,
00:27:15.400 that's at least beginning to come to its senses on the issue of science, the relationship to public
00:27:21.680 health policy, and the necessity of watching why people are motivated, uh, to, uh, be so energetic
00:27:29.920 in removing public rights, uh, our constitutional rights in the name of public health. Uh, it, this
00:27:37.820 should not happen again, but it's still persisting. It's still, there is a dogged, uh, determination on
00:27:45.560 the part of some local officials, some state officials, some federal officials to focus on COVID still
00:27:53.160 and use it as a, a, a bludgeon, a, a, a hammer, uh, against, uh, citizen rights. And it's, it's ending,
00:28:03.120 but my gosh, people should look around and say, you know what? The so-called dissidents were right
00:28:08.640 the whole time. The conspiracy theories, you know, it was a theory, but the facts and the theory happened
00:28:16.400 to match up. Right. There we are. You talk, you talk about Mitt Romney. I would love to know. I
00:28:24.200 would, I would just love to know who told him that that was a good idea, right? Like who put in a phone
00:28:29.660 call to Senator Mitt Romney's office or, or who grabbed his ear at a certain point, who took him
00:28:34.800 out to dinner and said, you know what? Let's keep forcing people to wear masks on airplanes. That's a
00:28:40.380 real winner. Yeah. That's, you got to stick up to that. It had to be somebody, uh, either, I don't
00:28:46.900 know whether a man or a woman on his staff, but it had to be the same person that said, Hey, why don't
00:28:51.520 we go out there and march with the BLM? Uh, they seem like a nice group of people to be associated
00:28:56.640 with. Another, another genius move, right? Hey, Mitt, you're, you're, you're quite white. I think
00:29:03.300 that we can help you by having you go out there and, and march and, and, and promote a,
00:29:08.520 and promote a violent group. That's really going to help you a lot. Yeah. But again,
00:29:14.460 the nature of the conversations that happen in Washington. And unfortunately this, this brings
00:29:20.080 us back to the, you know, um, you know, president Zelensky speech in front of Congress. What are
00:29:26.760 people talking about inside the beltway? What is it about? What is it about their own constituents?
00:29:34.000 They don't understand which of their constituents, who, um, who among Mitt Romney's constituents
00:29:41.500 is saying, you know, you're right. What's happening in Eastern Europe right now is the most important
00:29:46.320 thing to us. Other things are, are, are, are, are, are not that big a concern. It just, uh, again,
00:29:53.300 the, all these things are reflections of this very small and, and fairly shockingly ignorant place,
00:30:02.320 um, on the East coast of the United States where, um, where, where unfortunately our elected officials
00:30:09.300 and our policymakers work and reside. And you have to wonder, do the, did the good people of Utah
00:30:18.740 really want a democratic Senator? Because that's what they've got, uh, in Mitt Romney. He is a full
00:30:26.540 on Democrat. Uh, but we should have known that from his record. I know, I know we should have known
00:30:36.900 that in 2012. I mean, you know, when, when we go back and think about it, I mean, it's, it's,
00:30:43.660 it's a terrible, but also terrific irony. You know, all of the, the establishment were probably like,
00:30:48.500 oh, Donald Trump, he's an outsider. He's not really a conservative. Doesn't really believe
00:30:52.360 the stuff we believe. And as it turns out, Donald Trump in 2016 gets in there and does conservative
00:30:58.980 things, whether he believed in them or not. But before that, we had all these different people,
00:31:04.580 presidents like George W. Bush, candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney said, oh yeah,
00:31:08.880 we're genuine, authentic conservatives. And at the, at the first moment that they could fold,
00:31:15.260 they fold it. Donald, Donald Trump, Donald Trump stood his ground. And of course, that's another
00:31:22.680 reason why, uh, why he was swarmed. All right. Absolutely. And had to be, uh, uh, expelled,
00:31:30.560 uh, because he, he was, uh, it was a threat, uh, to every quarter of the establishment left, right,
00:31:39.440 uh, North South, uh, every establishment interest was in fact, uh, in the swamp, uh, and he would not
00:31:48.540 go near it, uh, except to try to expunge it. And, uh, as you say, that's why 2020 had to happen and
00:31:56.560 unfold the way it did, uh, because the Democrats knew there was only one way, uh, to get, uh, to get
00:32:03.800 to Donald Trump. I, I, I, I, I just, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, I just wanted to say one thing
00:32:11.700 about Donald Trump. Cause I, I, I imagine that maybe to some listeners, people think it's kind
00:32:16.380 of crazy to talk about the former president, but of course it, it seems more than likely that he'll
00:32:21.240 be running in 2024. But I, I, I think the reason that, you know, I, I know you're, you know, you,
00:32:27.620 that you knew, uh, you've known Mr. Trump for a long time, then you've written about him a lot
00:32:32.600 and spoken with him a lot. And so I don't intend to speak for you. I'll just speak for me. I think
00:32:38.500 that one of the reasons that I refer to Donald Trump so much is because, uh, for all his many
00:32:44.860 flaws, but his flaws are human. We're all human. We're all flawed that it's, it's not just Donald
00:32:50.700 Trump. He represents something. It's not just that he represented. He continues to represent something
00:32:56.960 great, um, and strong and proud and independent about this country. So I think that's one of the
00:33:05.200 reasons that I know I ref that I know I refer to him. I see him as something, you know, not just an
00:33:11.280 interesting character and an important and in many ways, great president, but also as a touchstone.
00:33:16.180 So I think a lot of people, a lot of people are, are, are despondent or rightly so, or upset right now,
00:33:23.060 the different, you know, the, the, the, the unconstitutional, the criminal attacks on Americans
00:33:28.400 coming from this, this regime and in particular, the Biden government at the head of it, it's just
00:33:32.820 disgusting. But to remind people that we are Americans and that we are a people of great
00:33:39.840 resilience and resourcefulness. And, um, and, and again, that, that's why I like talking about
00:33:47.800 and thinking about Donald Trump because he seems to be a touchstone for that to remind, you know,
00:33:53.760 to help remind people that, that our leadership will come from ourselves and our own communities
00:34:02.540 and who we are. And as we stand up, uh, as we stand up for ourselves and our loved ones and our great
00:34:10.280 beloved country. Yeah, I, I, well said. And I, again, I agree with you absolutely, uh, about Donald
00:34:18.320 Trump. It's one of the reasons you were talking about his record, what he accomplished, what he,
00:34:24.480 I think still intends to accomplish. I am one of those who I, I, I can't tell whether this is a
00:34:31.420 judgment or a hope, but I truly believe he is going to run in 2024. Uh, part of that fervent belief
00:34:38.540 is built on my, uh, my, uh, you know, my absolute commitment to this country, because I believe
00:34:44.500 he's the leader that we still need. And I wish so desperately that we had had better judgment
00:34:50.920 and it avoided what transpired on the, um, in 2020. Uh, I, I also think, uh, as you said, uh, he was a
00:35:00.980 specific, uh, he had two words that he uttered that electrified the nation and brought into alignment
00:35:08.440 the thinking of left and right and some opposed and some for, but when he said America first,
00:35:15.580 do you remember how the left-wing media started hooting and howling and praying and, and, and on
00:35:24.140 the, at the center and on the right, people were saying, my God, that has a ring to it.
00:35:31.080 That is, those are the words I've been waiting for. And, uh, they are the, the, the words, I think
00:35:37.640 most patriots, nearly all patriots, I would think, uh, you know, we believe in, uh, we thrive on and
00:35:45.900 we, we understand to our, to our very souls. Uh, Lee Smith, thanks for being with us, sir. You get the
00:35:52.700 last quick word here. And if you, uh, is, is our custom, uh, well, that's really nice. Well, I, well,
00:36:00.220 thanks. I, I, I wanted to thank, uh, thank you again, again, it's always a pleasure and great fun to
00:36:04.820 speak with you, but I'll, yeah, the, the, the idea of America first, why did this become such a strange
00:36:10.180 idea, right? Why did, why did we need to be reminded of this? And you see now what an influence Donald
00:36:16.120 Trump has had on other world figures like Eric Zemmour and France. I mean, this is a, it's very moving. We,
00:36:21.840 we, we believe in nations, right? We believe in nations that, um, nationalism is a good and
00:36:29.760 valuable thing. Patriotism, love of country, love of your community, love of your family. These are
00:36:36.080 all really valuable things. So yeah. So to say like, you know, we live here, so we're going to put this
00:36:42.400 country first. Why, why should that be a strange thing? And it's not. Except, except to the globalist
00:36:50.480 elitist who have an entirely different plan for all of us. Right. It's a strange thing. If you don't
00:36:56.100 love America, that's though, those are the people to whom it's strange. It's like, why would we put
00:37:00.980 America first? We don't like this country. Yeah. Yeah. Lee is always God bless America and God bless
00:37:07.960 you, Lou. Thank you so much for bringing me on. Always really a huge treat. Thank you. God bless you,
00:37:13.120 Lee. Lee Smith. And be with us tomorrow when our guest will be General Michael Flynn. The general
00:37:19.740 and I will be talking about Ukraine, Russia, China, Iran, and the greatest scandal in American history.
00:37:26.820 That's tomorrow right here on the Great America Show. Till then, God bless you and God bless America.