Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - Timcast IRL - Russia Threatens Military Action Against Sweden And Finland w-Nick Freitas

00:00:00.000 Thanks for watching.

00:00:08.000 We now have reports that Russia has threatened military and political consequences, serious military and political consequences, if Finland and Sweden try joining NATO.

00:00:18.000 Finland and Sweden are already having discussions with NATO.

00:00:20.000 They're actually involved in the NATO meetings over the defense of, or I should say, the response to the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

00:00:28.000 And while there are some people who are saying, well, that's not explicitly threatening war or military action, If you actually look at what's been going on for the past several weeks, it is.

00:00:37.000 There's been unidentified drones flying over nuclear plants in Sweden.

00:00:41.000 There has been Russian activity from Kaliningrad into the Baltic Sea.

00:00:45.000 So very much so, Sweden has been on high alert for some time.

00:00:48.000 This statement is basically saying there is going to be some kind of action against you if you go out against us.

00:00:54.000 Not only that, We already heard Vladimir Putin say anyone who interferes in their operation in Ukraine will face consequences never before seen in history.

00:01:03.000 So I think it's fair to say obviously everyone's going to try and play some game of how they're describing things to win PR points, but this is It's a veiled threat at the very least.

00:01:14.000 But I think it's, in my opinion, it's outright overt to say military consequences.

00:01:19.000 So things are absolutely starting to heat up.

00:01:20.000 We'll talk about that.

00:01:21.000 We've got NATO.

00:01:22.000 Apparently, it's for the first time they're having this defensive meeting.

00:01:25.000 And then I want to talk to you about propaganda because, you know, man, I go on Reddit.

00:01:30.000 You guys know it.

00:01:30.000 I go on Reddit all the time.

00:01:31.000 And it is the lowest of low-tier propaganda I've ever seen produced in favor of Ukraine.

00:01:39.000 And I like Ukraine, and I oppose Russia's actions.

00:01:41.000 I think it's all wrong. 0.98

00:01:42.000 And I'm just like, your propaganda is garbage, but it's just so annoying to see bad propaganda. 0.98

00:01:50.000 I'm like, guys, do better than this. 0.99

00:01:51.000 The Ghost of Kiev thing?

00:01:53.000 That was cool.

00:01:54.000 The Ace Fighter pilot took out six Russian fighter jets?

00:01:57.000 Cool story.

00:01:58.000 The Snake Island one?

00:01:59.000 Go F yourself, I like it.

00:02:00.000 But these memes are just cringe.

00:02:04.000 So we'll talk about that.

00:02:05.000 At the same time, RT has been taken offline, and I think that's absolutely wrong.

00:02:10.000 If people want to see the Russian perspective on the war, or see what Russia's claiming, they should be allowed to do it.

00:02:16.000 But apparently Anonymous has shut him down.

00:02:18.000 Yeah, I don't know if I believe that, but we'll get into that stuff.

00:02:20.000 Joining us to talk about all of this is Nick Freitas.

00:02:24.000 You want to introduce yourself?

00:02:25.000 Oh, thank you very much for having me on, Tim.

00:02:27.000 Yeah, my name's Nick.

00:02:29.000 Did some time in the military.

00:02:31.000 I'm currently serving the Virginia House of Delegates.

00:02:33.000 But yeah, it's kind of an interesting topic because my whole role in the military was unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency.

00:02:39.000 And so watching this kind of unfold is amazing.

00:02:43.000 But yeah, I've been serving the last seven years in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing the 30th district, so thanks for having me on.

00:02:49.000 Right on.

00:02:50.000 I think it's perfectly pertinent, I suppose, with your military experience, but also you had a viral video recently condemning, you know, like critical race theory in schools and things like that.

00:02:58.000 And so I think, you know, before we even went live, you were giving it all away, talking about school choice and what's going on in these schools.

00:03:04.000 And I'm like, well, you know, it's fine.

00:03:05.000 You'll just say it twice.

00:03:06.000 Yeah.

00:03:07.000 So that should be fun.

00:03:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:09.000 What's up, everybody?

00:03:09.000 We got Ian.

00:03:11.000 I've been very inspired by all the 20s I've been rolling lately that you've been reminding me about, so I got a couple of hundred-sided dice.

00:03:17.000 Oh, snap. 0.99

00:03:17.000 It's about time to start rolling hundreds. 0.99

00:03:19.000 And one of these is for Tim.

00:03:19.000 Yeah.

00:03:21.000 I'm gonna let Tim decide which one you'd like.

00:03:24.000 Here you go, Tim.

00:03:25.000 A 100-sided dice?

00:03:26.000 Yeah, one's rainbow-colored and one's blue.

00:03:29.000 That's so cool.

00:03:29.000 Wow.

00:03:30.000 That's very heavy.

00:03:31.000 A giant metal ball.

00:03:31.000 It is.

00:03:32.000 Hard metal.

00:03:33.000 All right, I'm gonna roll it.

00:03:35.000 Oh my gosh, that's loud.

00:03:36.000 Yeah, they don't play well in D&D because they take forever to roll.

00:03:38.000 Rolled away from Nick.

00:03:39.000 Got the wide shot on that.

00:03:40.000 It's in front of Nick now.

00:03:41.000 What do we got?

00:03:43.000 What do we got?

00:03:44.000 22, 23?

00:03:45.000 That's a prime number.

00:03:45.000 23!

00:03:46.000 Nice.

00:03:47.000 Better than 20.

00:03:48.000 Good night ahead of us.

00:03:49.000 What's up, everybody?

00:03:49.000 All right.

00:03:51.000 And I'm also here.

00:03:52.000 I warmed Nick up by talking about anything and everything.

00:03:54.000 I try not to talk about the podcast topics, but sometimes we get into it.

00:03:58.000 I'm really looking forward to it.

00:03:58.000 It's going to be great.

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00:06:14.000 Let's read that first story from the hill.

00:06:17.000 Russia threatens military and political consequences if Finland or Sweden tries joining NATO.

00:06:23.000 Russian's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.

00:06:32.000 Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries, and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences, Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference.

00:06:47.000 The ministry later posted the same threat on its Twitter.

00:06:50.000 Finland and Sweden have given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine since Russia invaded.

00:06:55.000 One pretext Russia has given for attacking Ukraine is that NATO would not give any assurances that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the Intergovernmental Military Alliance.

00:07:03.000 See, I'm gonna pause real quick and say a few things.

00:07:07.000 It's hard to believe any of the stuff that's coming out.

00:07:09.000 You know, I mean, this stuff is on Twitter, these videos and these statements, but a lot of the videos, a lot of the claims, a lot of the propaganda just seems that it seems like attempts to manipulate the public.

00:07:19.000 It's hard to know what's true.

00:07:22.000 But, We have had stories coming out for quite some time.

00:07:25.000 This is from France24.

00:07:26.000 The Russians are coming. 1.00

00:07:27.000 Sweden on edge as Russia flexes military muscle.

00:07:30.000 It could be a long-standing propaganda campaign.

00:07:35.000 I just don't really think so.

00:07:36.000 I think Russia has literally invaded. 0.78

00:07:39.000 Russia has said that they're engaged in a military operation.

00:07:43.000 Call it whatever you want.

00:07:44.000 I think the reality is Vladimir Putin feels like he lost.

00:07:47.000 He lost the influence battle.

00:07:48.000 The U.S.

00:07:48.000 basically bought Ukraine.

00:07:50.000 He couldn't do it.

00:07:51.000 So here we are, getting into war.

00:07:53.000 The question is, this threat towards Sweden and Finland, is it legitimate?

00:07:57.000 Or is Putin just spiraling out of control?

00:07:59.000 Nick, I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

00:08:01.000 I don't, you know, I don't see, Putin's never struck me as the sort of guy that like just spirals out of control, right?

00:08:06.000 The sort of guy that gets pissed off and just starts, you know, executing generals and things like that.

00:08:12.000 He's always seemed to be, again, I don't think he's a good guy.

00:08:14.000 I think he's a bad dude.

00:08:15.000 But I've also thought he was a fairly calculating guy.

00:08:17.000 I mean, the guy has managed to stay in power this long within Russia, within an environment where it's fairly unstable from a political perspective with a bunch of oligarchs running around.

00:08:28.000 So, I don't know.

00:08:29.000 I'm not convinced that he's at a point where he's just kind of lost his mind.

00:08:34.000 I think he's pushing to see how far he can get away with what he's doing.

00:08:38.000 I think he knows he's got a fairly short time to be able to act in order to consolidate gains.

00:08:43.000 And then it's all a question of what are you bringing, right?

00:08:47.000 When inevitably we get to the negotiating table, what does that look like and what do you transform in order to get what you want?

00:08:52.000 So I don't really understand why he brings Sweden and Finland into this, but again, I don't see him as being an unstable guy.

00:09:01.000 What are your thoughts on, I mean, you were talking about unconventional warfare, that's where you specialized in when you were in the military?

00:09:07.000 Yeah.

00:09:07.000 So what are your thoughts on everything we're seeing, right?

00:09:10.000 Just to preface this, none of us here at least thought Putin would go this far with Ukraine.

00:09:16.000 And so this seems very much like conventional warfare.

00:09:19.000 And it seems like they're saying, while Kiev has some major gains, they've taken down a lot of Russia's assets, they're going to lose.

00:09:26.000 And then there's questions about what they can do in the insurgency phase, in the resistance phase.

00:09:32.000 I don't, look, everyone likes to talk about the fact that Russia is not the power the Soviet Union was.

00:09:36.000 That's absolutely true, right?

00:09:37.000 It's got a GDP that's a little bit bigger than Mexico's, right?

00:09:40.000 It's got a population of about, you know, 150 million.

00:09:43.000 So not what the Soviet Union was.

00:09:46.000 But when we talk about Russia doesn't have the GDP to fight a sustained war, yeah, you know who also doesn't?

00:09:51.000 Ukraine.

00:09:52.000 So this isn't about them having to fight a war for years.

00:09:55.000 This is about how quickly can they get their gains, consolidate those gains, and then put themselves in a good position on the negotiating table.

00:10:02.000 And so from Ukraine's perspective, they had to know that you're not going to go toe-to-toe, especially with the geography of Ukraine.

00:10:09.000 It's not like you can go fighting in the mountains for 10 years like they did in Afghanistan, right?

00:10:13.000 It is built for tank warfare, and the Russians know a little something about tank warfare.

00:10:18.000 Especially in Ukraine, right?

00:10:19.000 There's a lot of historical battles there.

00:10:21.000 But what a lot of people don't understand about this is immediately following World War II, the Ukrainians fought like a 10-year insurgency against the Soviets.

00:10:31.000 So there is a history of them fighting over that area.

00:10:34.000 The borders of Ukraine are a little bit weird from an ethnic standpoint.

00:10:40.000 So, at this point, this is a question of using the natural geography that you have, right, around the Dinapur and whatnot, in order to slow, like, the major advance.

00:10:47.000 And then, it's largely going to be urban battles.

00:10:50.000 If you can be in an urban environment, and you can make them pay, because that's where asymmetric warfare works really well for the defender, for the person that doesn't have the technology.

00:11:00.000 But if you're sitting in a city right now and you've got an AT4, an RPG, or if you've got really something good like the U.S.

00:11:05.000 gave them like Javelins.

00:11:07.000 Okay, you got a $10,000 or a $15,000 rocket that's taken out a $15, $20 million tank.

00:11:15.000 That adds up.

00:11:16.000 And so if they fight the insurgency point in the urban areas, which are kind of behind the lines of the Russian advance, and then they use their military in order to kind of stop them at some of these main geographical areas, rivers being one of the best, They can drag this out and they can make Russia pay a much higher price for it, and that's what I don't think Russia can afford.

00:11:34.000 I want to pull up this Google map real quick of the, you know, Eastern European region.

00:11:39.000 You have Moscow, you got Russia, you've got Ukraine here, you can see it.

00:11:43.000 When Vladimir Putin says he wants assurances that Ukraine won't be joining NATO, I think Tulsi Gabbard came out and she was like, just give them assurances Ukraine won't join NATO.

00:11:52.000 It's like, have y'all looked, I'm a fan of Tulsi, but have you looked at a map?

00:11:56.000 Yeah.

00:11:57.000 Estonia and Latvia are EU, I'm sorry, are NATO members.

00:11:59.000 Oh yeah, they are.

00:12:00.000 They're already on the border.

00:12:01.000 They take it very seriously.

00:12:03.000 And then if you go up and you look, it's Sweden, which, you know, look, Russia's got St.

00:12:06.000 Petersburg, they've got Kaliningrad in the Baltic Sea.

00:12:09.000 Sweden, not NATO, but now obviously Russia's threatening Finland, not NATO, but also Russia's basically threatening them.

00:12:18.000 They're both in these same meetings with NATO.

00:12:21.000 So when Moscow was like, oh, we don't want NATO on our borders, like they've been there, dude.

00:12:25.000 I mean, I know Sweden and Finland, but to act like this is the line for him now, perhaps it's fair to say, I'm not saying he's spiraling out of control like a madman, but he's desperate.

00:12:38.000 Yeah.

00:12:39.000 You know, Russia is not the power it once was, and it's being weakened.

00:12:42.000 It's being pressed upon.

00:12:44.000 It's already got NATO on its borders, and now it's going to have Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Putin.

00:12:49.000 He's done.

00:12:50.000 His only option basically is to bend the knee to the West and say, you know, how may I serve my leash?

00:12:54.000 And he doesn't want to do that.

00:12:56.000 So he's like, I'll go out with a bang, I suppose.

00:12:57.000 Oh no, I think he's someone that wants to believe in the greatness of Russia, that would love to see the Russian Empire once again on a global stage as something that's respected as opposed to kind of a second-rate power.

00:13:10.000 And again, you're growing up, he was once a KGB officer.

00:13:14.000 This was a guy that believed in the greatness of Russia, regardless of whether or not he was a communist.

00:13:19.000 And I think he sees, again, these countries that used to be in the Russian sphere of influence.

00:13:19.000 Right.

00:13:26.000 He's finding different excuses for Costas Belli in order to justify why he's going to war.

00:13:31.000 I think some of this, too, has to do with internal dynamics within Russia.

00:13:34.000 I mean, you have a decreasing birth rate.

00:13:36.000 You have records showing that you've got a record number of kids in their teenage years that are alcoholics.

00:13:42.000 Right.

00:13:43.000 Look, I don't think any of us are shocked by the fact That there are plenty of times when, throughout history, when a domestic leader had problems at home, a war abroad was a great way to, you know, kickstart your nation and get them focused on something.

00:13:57.000 You know, again, the greatness of whatever it was.

00:14:00.000 And look, our nation hasn't been beyond that sort of enticement in the past.

00:14:06.000 But so yeah, I don't buy that it was Ukraine potentially joining.

00:14:10.000 Would this have happened anyway?

00:14:11.000 I don't think NATO was the fulcrum.

00:14:14.000 I think NATO made a convenient excuse for Putin to do something that he already wanted to do.

00:14:18.000 They're trying really hard to push this propaganda, this anti-Trump propaganda.

00:14:22.000 It's so... Man, the propaganda is mind-numbing.

00:14:25.000 You know, it's under Trump.

00:14:27.000 Putin did not make these moves.

00:14:28.000 No.

00:14:29.000 And so the only real response they have, because the first thing I started seeing from these activists was that, oh, thank heavens Trump wasn't president when this happened, because we'd be worse off.

00:14:39.000 And I was like, for four years, Putin backed off.

00:14:41.000 Yeah.

00:14:42.000 And they said now they're saying it's because Trump gave them everything they wanted, because he was he was opposed to NATO.

00:14:47.000 It's like he got NATO to pay them more to pass.

00:14:49.000 Money.

00:14:49.000 Yeah.

00:14:50.000 Yeah.

00:14:50.000 I mean, if anything, he was he was stabilizing it in a sense.

00:14:53.000 Oh, so.

00:14:54.000 No, no, this is the part where, and the other night I was just kind of pissed off, and I said, you know, I said, I can't remember how far along we were for a bunch of European countries to, you know, ask the United States to intervene in the Ukraine, only to turn around six months later from now and bitch about the United States intervening in Ukraine, right?

00:15:13.000 Because they're always willing to fight to the last drop of American blood to sustain their welfare states. 0.98

00:15:17.000 So this idea that when Trump came in and basically told NATO, hey, look, a treaty is an agreement, it's a legal agreement, and you're not living up to your part of it, that lit a fire under their ass. 0.98

00:15:27.000 And quite frankly, they needed it. 0.60

00:15:29.000 And the other thing was, is that Putin also understood that Trump didn't draw, and look, there was things about Trump's policy I didn't necessarily agree with, but Trump didn't do this thing that Obama did, where it's, we're going to draw a fake line in the sand, and then when you cross it, we're going to draw a different line in the sand.

00:15:46.000 Putin expected that if Trump said, you do this, we're going to do this, that he would do it.

00:15:51.000 And that's a big part of when foreign leaders cannot calculate what you're going to do, And you have the ability to actually make good on your threats.

00:16:02.000 That's a far different dynamic than Joe Biden ripping everyone out of Afghanistan.

00:16:06.000 Which again, I wanted the troops to come home from Afghanistan. 0.91

00:16:08.000 But ripping everyone out the way that he did?

00:16:10.000 Surrender.

00:16:11.000 Oh my gosh.

00:16:13.000 Afghanistan seemed like they botched that on purpose. 0.74

00:16:16.000 How you abandoned Bagram, it was just mind-numbingly insane.

00:16:20.000 I cannot... I'm sorry, I know I love to cite Hanlon's razor.

00:16:24.000 Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

00:16:27.000 But in this instance, I'm like, there's no way you thought abandoning our Air Force Base before evacuating people made sense.

00:16:32.000 Maybe because Biden's a bureaucrat with no military.

00:16:35.000 I don't think he has any military experience.

00:16:36.000 Does he even have any military knowledge?

00:16:39.000 Surrendered and routed our troops?

00:16:41.000 But the guys advising him certainly did.

00:16:43.000 Now, this is the part where I do think we've seen this trend within politics and some of the rhetoric and the direction the left is going.

00:16:52.000 And I'm not talking about everyone that might be a Democrat or a liberal.

00:16:55.000 I'm talking about the hardcore progressive left. 0.53

00:16:58.000 They honestly believe some of this crap where it's like, oh, we're just going to pull everybody out by September 11th in 2021. 0.89

00:17:05.000 And that's going to be that's going to be our market. 0.88

00:17:07.000 It's going to show that we're dedicated to peace.

00:17:08.000 I honestly think Biden is someone that is making a political calculation based off of photo ops and honestly had no idea it was going to go this badly, even though, again, to your point, anybody should have been able to look at that like you cannot pull out this way.

00:17:22.000 But Putin is watching things like that.

00:17:25.000 Let's talk about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

00:17:27.000 We have this story from the New York Post.

00:17:29.000 Trump talks about Putin mocking Merkel and more at Mar-a-Lago.

00:17:33.000 Boy, did they bury the lead on this one.

00:17:36.000 The story is about Donald Trump threatening to hit the capitals of Russia and China.

00:17:42.000 This is, I mean, these are bold statements.

00:17:44.000 So you want to know why?

00:17:46.000 Why is it that Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine under Trump?

00:17:50.000 There are these, there's this, there's this top post on Reddit where they're like, because, you know, Russia put bounties on soldiers in Afghanistan and Trump didn't even do anything about it.

00:17:57.000 The story was fake.

00:17:58.000 Yeah.

00:17:58.000 And this is what they believe.

00:17:59.000 No, no, no.

00:18:00.000 Let me show you exactly what it is.

00:18:02.000 I will scroll down and give you this.

00:18:04.000 There are several other stories making the rounds too, and they are even more provocative.

00:18:09.000 One has it that Trump, noting that Putin seized land from Georgia when George W. Bush was president, and seized the Crimean peninsula when Barack Obama was president, warned Putin against a land grab on his watch.

00:18:21.000 If you move against Ukraine while I'm president, I will hit Moscow.

00:18:25.000 Putin reportedly scoffed, no way.

00:18:27.000 And Trump said all those beautiful golden turrets will be blown up.

00:18:31.000 He reportedly said the same thing to Xi Jinping, that if he made a move against Taiwan, it would be met with an attack on Beijing.

00:18:39.000 Xi, like Putin, is said to have been stunned.

00:18:41.000 It's possible neither man believed Trump was serious.

00:18:44.000 I kind of don't like the idea of bombing civilian targets immediately as soon as a regional war happens. 0.97

00:18:51.000 But let it be said, Trump was called a madman by his enemies and his supporters.

00:18:56.000 And I just want to say, I don't believe Trump would bomb civilians.

00:19:00.000 He's the guy who said, we're calling off the airstrike on Iran because too many people would die.

00:19:05.000 But Trump is notorious for the big ask.

00:19:09.000 He exaggerates his position and then pulls back to a more reasonable spot.

00:19:13.000 That's what he does.

00:19:14.000 He says, I'll buy that off, you know, I'll, you know, if I'm doing the job, I want a million dollars.

00:19:18.000 And they say, Oh, a million.

00:19:18.000 That's crazy.

00:19:19.000 Okay.

00:19:19.000 How about half a million?

00:19:20.000 Now he's getting you to half a million dollars.

00:19:22.000 In this instance, he goes to Moscow.

00:19:24.000 He goes, he goes to Putin.

00:19:26.000 If you invade Ukraine, I will hit Moscow.

00:19:29.000 And Putin's like, no.

00:19:30.000 And Trump's like, yes.

00:19:32.000 And Putin's like, Okay.

00:19:36.000 This guy's a little off his, you know.

00:19:38.000 And they know that he'll be out in four years.

00:19:40.000 They know that the American democracy or republicanism works like that.

00:19:42.000 So Putin was like, let the, you know, hold, like the Braveheart meme, hold.

00:19:46.000 And then Biden comes in, he's like, we good.

00:19:48.000 Yeah.

00:19:49.000 Well, and nobody thinks, I mean, again, this is also, some people think that diplomacy works with everybody because they honestly believe that, well, if we all just sat around the room and we talked and we understood one another, like, I can't remember who it was that said that, you know, Israel and Gaza understand each other.

00:20:06.000 Oh, they do.

00:20:07.000 Yeah, they do.

00:20:08.000 They don't like one another.

00:20:08.000 Sure do.

00:20:09.000 So this idea that if we just had a better conversation, I don't think we'd be fine.

00:20:12.000 No, when you're dealing with people, that are either dictatorial or quasi-authoritarian or

00:20:18.000 whatnot, what they respect is strength.

00:20:20.000 And that strength has to be backed up with the, first of all, the capability to do it.

00:20:25.000 Could you actually make good on these promises? They all know we could.

00:20:28.000 And then it's the idea of, would he actually do this? 0.98

00:20:32.000 And even if they don't think he would, the bottom line is that there's a part of him like, damn, he might actually do it. 0.50

00:20:39.000 That is the sort of stuff that can stop a war from ever taking place in the first place and can check aggression. 0.97

00:20:44.000 You have to have the capability and the willingness, and you have to be able to negotiate in a way that your enemies don't know what you're gonna do, but know that the wildest crap is still on the table.

00:20:54.000 You ever play poker at all? 0.73

00:20:55.000 A little bit, not very good.

00:20:56.000 Only with my life.

00:20:58.000 I'm all in.

00:20:58.000 Only with my life.

00:20:59.000 When you're playing Holden against somebody who doesn't know how to play poker, there's

00:21:03.000 a certain advantage they have in that it's hard to know what they're doing because they're

00:21:06.000 all over the place.

00:21:08.000 So I remember when I was like 20, I played a game of poker.

00:21:13.000 I had two seven off suit.

00:21:15.000 And I went all in on it.

00:21:17.000 And I got a full house.

00:21:18.000 Oh, wow.

00:21:18.000 And I beat a guy who had ace king, you know, it was just it was it was a good hand.

00:21:22.000 And he ended up losing thinking you can't have anything but like I got ace king and I think he ended up with like, I don't know, I don't think he had anything.

00:21:29.000 But I ended up winning and he got angry.

00:21:30.000 He was like, why did you?

00:21:32.000 I'm like, I won, didn't I?

00:21:33.000 Oh.

00:21:34.000 I have lost more hands with pocket aces than legs.

00:21:36.000 That's right, right.

00:21:37.000 Because you're like, it's a, I mean, it's a fantastic, it's one of the best hands to go in on.

00:21:41.000 Pre-flop.

00:21:42.000 Pre-flop.

00:21:42.000 Maybe Ace King suited.

00:21:43.000 But anyway, the point is, with Donald Trump, Putin's like, I don't think he'll bomb Moscow, but I also don't know if he knows what he's doing either.

00:21:52.000 I don't know how he'll respond.

00:21:54.000 How can you make a plan for war?

00:21:55.000 What Sun Tzu said, win the war before, you know, before you actually start it.

00:22:01.000 How could you plan against a man like Trump?

00:22:04.000 He was like, look, we're going to wait a few years because I don't know what this guy's doing.

00:22:07.000 Well, and he was the other thing, too, that I think shocked a lot of people.

00:22:10.000 And one of the things that impressed me most about Trump is that is how reserved he actually was in foreign policy when it came to actually deploying people into harm's way to get shot at.

00:22:19.000 Right.

00:22:19.000 There's a lot of other again, Joe Biden.

00:22:21.000 There's the whole Teddy Roosevelt thing, right?

00:22:23.000 Walk softly, carry a big stick.

00:22:25.000 Joe Biden mumbles and carries no stick.

00:22:28.000 And once people get used to that idea, then they know they can walk all over you.

00:22:31.000 And it doesn't matter what your capability is, because you don't have the willingness to use it.

00:22:35.000 Whereas Trump had the capability.

00:22:38.000 Again, he was actually a lot more reserved.

00:22:40.000 When that whole thing happened in Iran and it was, no, we're not going to do this because I'm not going to... One, it's immoral to kill a bunch of people that had nothing to do with any of this.

00:22:47.000 Two, it doesn't make sense on a practical level to create a bunch of enemies off of killing civilians.

00:22:54.000 But when it came to Syria and then there was a legitimate thing to strike, like he struck, he struck hard. 0.86

00:23:00.000 He was in there quick.

00:23:00.000 He didn't have any, you know, aspirations to like remake Syria.

00:23:04.000 It was just, this is the weirdest thing about the whole, the whole argument about Trump and you know, what he, what, you know, why Putin didn't attack.

00:23:13.000 Because they're acting like Trump was favorable to Russia.

00:23:16.000 I guess in some ways you can argue Trump's disdain for NATO, but Trump's disdain for NATO, there's a video going around of Trump sitting at a meeting table with them saying, why are we paying for your defense against Russia, and then you're negotiating billion-dollar gas deals making you dependent on Russia?

00:23:32.000 Thank you.

00:23:33.000 It was not helping Russia that Trump sanctioned Nord Stream 2.

00:23:37.000 Joe Biden, May 2021, lifted the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, and all of us were like, why?

00:23:43.000 As he was shutting down the Keystone Pipeline.

00:23:45.000 Right!

00:23:46.000 And then it was appeasement.

00:23:48.000 Is that what it was?

00:23:50.000 The idea was, well, if we give him a little, then we can take it away if he does bad.

00:23:53.000 It's like, He's got nothing to lose then.

00:23:56.000 He's like, you gave me free stuff so I can invade anyway and lose what I already didn't have.

00:23:59.000 Whatever.

00:24:00.000 And then he did.

00:24:01.000 Putin did.

00:24:02.000 Well, and he also, again, it's this idea.

00:24:06.000 It's incredible to me that there's this honest belief that anybody's capable of sitting down at the table.

00:24:11.000 No, you have completely different objectives.

00:24:13.000 You have completely different worldviews.

00:24:14.000 You have completely different capabilities, interests, et cetera.

00:24:19.000 Now, that's not to say that you still can't have a productive conversation with someone engaged in effective diplomacy.

00:24:24.000 But effective diplomacy only takes place when people actually believe that there will be consequences for their actions that they go against you.

00:24:31.000 I think, you know, I wonder about Vladimir Putin's term of mind, but I do know we talk a lot about Strassau generational theory.

00:24:38.000 You're familiar with it?

00:24:39.000 Fourth turning?

00:24:40.000 Hard times make strong men.

00:24:42.000 I think about the motivations of Vladimir Putin.

00:24:44.000 He wants Russian greatness.

00:24:46.000 He wants that empire back.

00:24:47.000 And he knows, you know what?

00:24:49.000 Maybe things will get worse off for the people of Russia, but that will be good for them spiritually in the long run.

00:24:55.000 I'm not saying it literally will.

00:24:56.000 I'm saying that's his mentality.

00:24:57.000 And so his idea is, look, we go to war.

00:25:00.000 We are more willing, have less to lose than these Western nations, and it will harden up our people a little bit.

00:25:08.000 In the long run, maybe he thinks he's planting some seeds.

00:25:11.000 What I don't understand, maybe I'm playing Dev's Advocate, America took Iraq, Russia takes Ukraine, China takes Taiwan, then we're done with it.

00:25:18.000 Can we just be done with it and move on?

00:25:19.000 I don't... Can we trade Iraq for... 1.00

00:25:23.000 Yeah, I would love to trade around for maybe no conquest.

00:25:25.000 How about that?

00:25:26.000 Greenland's going to be super valuable in the 21st century.

00:25:28.000 Yeah, Greenland.

00:25:29.000 How about this?

00:25:29.000 And beyond.

00:25:30.000 Russia, you can have Ukraine. 0.89

00:25:31.000 Who's going to get Greenland?

00:25:32.000 It's Denmark, isn't it?

00:25:34.000 The Kingdom of Denmark.

00:25:36.000 Talk about getting an ally early, because in 100 years, they're going to be mega powerful.

00:25:41.000 Unless someone seizes... Yeah, it's gonna melt and it's gonna be so much oil and lithium and beachfront property.

00:25:47.000 We have Alaska.

00:25:48.000 We do have Alaska.

00:25:49.000 We conquered it, didn't we?

00:25:50.000 No, we bought it.

00:25:51.000 We bought it.

00:25:51.000 We conquered Hawaii.

00:25:52.000 Senator Seward, yeah.

00:25:54.000 We conquered Hawaii, yeah.

00:25:56.000 Yeah, wasn't there like 10 years ago, I think it was, a bunch of Native Hawaiians stormed the state building and occupied it or something?

00:26:01.000 Yeah, they still get pissed about that.

00:26:02.000 A lot of the islanders do.

00:26:03.000 Well, yeah, they're like, we had a king.

00:26:06.000 America came and took it while America wanted a Pacific military operation. 0.87

00:26:09.000 It looks like Putin wants the Black Sea.

00:26:11.000 He wants to control the Black Sea.

00:26:13.000 Okay, so this is what I think is interesting.

00:26:15.000 I was talking to a buddy of mine, Christian, who works with us, really good historian, and he's done a lot of research on what's going on in the Ukraine.

00:26:22.000 And we were talking about, okay, what are some of the possible angles here, right?

00:26:25.000 Because the most obvious one is, all right, Crimea used to be part of Russia.

00:26:29.000 It actually got worked into the border with Ukraine after Nikita Khrushchev shut down the insurgency that the Ukrainians had launched against the Soviet Union, right?

00:26:40.000 Crimea went from the Russian SSR over to the Ukrainian SSR.

00:26:43.000 It was like, well, it's not a big deal.

00:26:44.000 We're all the USSR.

00:26:45.000 Well, when you have the breakaway republics, now all of a sudden you have these areas which ethnically, culturally, you could even argue historically are more Russian that are now not part of that.

00:26:45.000 Right.

00:26:54.000 So, OK, again, if you're looking for Cossus Bela, you could say maybe he was he's interested in getting back parts of Russia that he thinks always belong to Russia and want to be Russian anyways. 0.81

00:27:03.000 But as I look at the Black Sea, and as I look at the Belt and Road Initiative by China, and I look at what they're trying to do with respect to their overland trade, I have a feeling that the more access you have to the Caspian Sea, the more access you have to the Black Sea, the more important that that's going to be from a trade and economic perspective.

00:27:23.000 Not to mention the fact that if he gets away with doing this in Ukraine, who the hell is gonna stop him when it comes to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan?

00:27:30.000 And now we're talking about minerals, we're talking about, you know, overland routes, we're talking about natural gas.

00:27:30.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:27:36.000 Who's gonna stop him then?

00:27:37.000 And look at the strategy he's using.

00:27:39.000 Donald Trump called it genius, savvy.

00:27:41.000 And the media has... CNN actually ran an article saying Trump sides with Putin.

00:27:45.000 Oh my god.

00:27:46.000 Did you... Trump said it was a genius move, it was savvy, and it wouldn't have happened under me.

00:27:52.000 It's sad.

00:27:53.000 So I don't think that's siding with Putin.

00:27:55.000 I think he's like, you know, you mentioned.

00:27:57.000 Acknowledging that your enemy is a genius can be very good to defeat your enemy.

00:28:00.000 That's right.

00:28:01.000 And so you mentioned, you know, in war at the negotiating table, people will only respect power.

00:28:06.000 Respect often people, people conflate some words with positivity, like greatness, excitement, or respect.

00:28:14.000 You can respect someone and despise them.

00:28:16.000 You can be excited and in despair.

00:28:16.000 Oh yeah.

00:28:19.000 Not happy.

00:28:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:28:21.000 You can be a great man and pure evil.

00:28:25.000 Great is just a magnitude.

00:28:27.000 But we often view greatness in a positive way.

00:28:30.000 Like, he was a great man.

00:28:31.000 It's like, that could just mean a powerful man.

00:28:33.000 A conqueror.

00:28:33.000 Yeah, right.

00:28:35.000 And when it's funny too, you would think the same left, that whenever, when Trump said, make America great again, and they all came out with their little hat, we'll make America good again.

00:28:44.000 So you get that there's a difference, right, between the two.

00:28:48.000 And then when he comes out and says, yeah, this was a genius move on his part for these reasons, it could be genius at that.

00:28:53.000 What was he referencing when he said it was genius?

00:28:56.000 So Vladimir Putin says, oh, look, these regions are independent.

00:29:00.000 I'm going to send in a peacekeeping force to keep the peace.

00:29:03.000 And Trump was actually being sarcastic.

00:29:04.000 It was like, oh, yeah, peacekeeping force.

00:29:06.000 Look at all those tanks.

00:29:07.000 That's a peacekeeping force.

00:29:09.000 And they're like, he's siding with Putin.

00:29:10.000 He was being sarcastic.

00:29:13.000 But it was, it was a clever move for Putin to be like, well, you know, they're independent, so we can go help them.

00:29:18.000 And it's like, oh, yeah.

00:29:20.000 So you win a war without, before it begins, basically.

00:29:22.000 But let's talk about, you know, we always do it, the double standards and the hypocrisy of our good Democrat voter and activist friends.

00:29:30.000 Take a look at this story from TimCast.com.

00:29:32.000 Ukraine says they have supplied 18,000 weapons to citizens.

00:29:36.000 Anti-gun leftists celebrate their efforts.

00:29:40.000 My favorite is Occupy Democrats.

00:29:43.000 Let me pull up this image from Defiant Elves.

00:29:46.000 Occupy Democrats first tweeted, no civilian needs an AR-15 regardless of whatever mental gymnastics you do. 1.00

00:29:54.000 You are a very special breed of stupid. 1.00

00:29:56.000 And they then, you know, about six years later, breaking, Ukraine's interior minister announces that 10,000 automatic rifles have been handed out to the civilians of Kiev as they prepare to fight tooth and nail to defend their homes against Putin's invasion. 1.00

00:30:10.000 RT if you stand with the brave people of Ukraine.

00:30:12.000 Now hold on, hold on, hold on everybody.

00:30:15.000 I think Occupy Democrats are right.

00:30:17.000 I think Joe Biden's correct.

00:30:18.000 You know what?

00:30:19.000 I was wrong to criticize the establishment when they said Putin was a very real threat.

00:30:24.000 I stand corrected, you guys.

00:30:26.000 You're right.

00:30:26.000 I think our government should join in as well and give all of the United States citizens some automatic weapons.

00:30:31.000 Yes!

00:30:32.000 Because Vladimir Putin's such a big threat to all of us.

00:30:34.000 We could be next.

00:30:35.000 Yeah, we could be next.

00:30:36.000 That's right.

00:30:36.000 I'm terrified.

00:30:37.000 And China.

00:30:39.000 But Putin!

00:30:40.000 So, um, I'll take a, I'll take a fully, I'll, I'll, I'll select fire.

00:30:44.000 Yeah.

00:30:45.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:30:46.000 I mean, while you're handing them out regarding this guy's first tweet, he's talking to the air and then he says, you're stupid. 1.00

00:30:52.000 This is something I think people should avoid. 0.99

00:30:54.000 This is a little off topic when you're, when you're using social media and you're like complaining towards someone and you, they start insulting them.

00:31:00.000 If you do it on social media, a lot of people that are unintendedly reading it are going to feel like you're insulting them.

00:31:06.000 So don't do that. 1.00

00:31:07.000 You are a very special breed of stupid. 1.00

00:31:09.000 Who are you talking to? 1.00

00:31:10.000 Me?

00:31:10.000 No, they're talking to themselves.

00:31:11.000 Apparently.

00:31:12.000 Because now they're tweeting that he's they and they actually say civilians like no civilian needs an AR-15.

00:31:18.000 To be fair, they're handing out collision to cops.

00:31:22.000 Oh, yeah.

00:31:23.000 Keep in mind here.

00:31:24.000 They think a they still think AR stands for automatic rifle.

00:31:27.000 Yes.

00:31:27.000 So what's what's crazy is they don't think any civilian needs a semi automatic rifle.

00:31:32.000 But they are thrilled about fully automatic AKs going out to people.

00:31:35.000 That's actually a really good point.

00:31:36.000 Maybe we're being mean to our good friends.

00:31:40.000 No civilian needs an AR-15.

00:31:42.000 What they're really saying is, it's semi-auto.

00:31:45.000 It's not sufficient.

00:31:46.000 No, you need select fire.

00:31:49.000 Correct.

00:31:50.000 Not against tanks.

00:31:52.000 And if one of those selects is not full-auto, then Occupy Democrats is not satisfied.

00:31:55.000 That's right.

00:31:56.000 50 BMG.

00:31:59.000 So maybe what they're really saying is that no civilian needs a semi-auto single shot.

00:32:06.000 Come on! 0.61

00:32:06.000 You need full auto! 0.61

00:32:07.000 That's right!

00:32:08.000 Only the best!

00:32:08.000 That's what they're getting at the whole time.

00:32:11.000 But let's talk about the asymmetrical warfare, though, because this is the reality.

00:32:16.000 When you try to invade someone else, The big challenge for Vladimir Putin is going to be demoralized Russian soldiers, a finite amount of them, versus the entirety of Ukraine civilians who have remained, who are going to be like, I'm going to fight you.

00:32:31.000 Which is actually surprising.

00:32:32.000 There's a number, I think a lot of people, and I think Putin thought this would be something where, hey, as soon as the armored divisions go rolling across the border, you know, presidents leaving the country, you know, uh, nope.

00:32:43.000 He put on body armor.

00:32:44.000 Yeah.

00:32:45.000 I mean, you gotta hand it to him.

00:32:47.000 Boris Shenko took out a gun.

00:32:48.000 Right?

00:32:49.000 I don't know if I believe it.

00:32:50.000 It's propaganda.

00:32:51.000 But it's good propaganda.

00:32:52.000 I believe it, yeah.

00:32:53.000 If you're trying to rally... I mean, let's face it, especially when you're engaging in asymmetric warfare, you are the weaker party.

00:32:59.000 Propaganda is one of the key things you're going... We still got Democrats that think that we lost the Tet Offensive.

00:33:04.000 Right.

00:33:04.000 Why?

00:33:05.000 Because Walter Cronkite said we lost the Tet Offensive.

00:33:07.000 Oh, I thought we lost the Tet Offensive.

00:33:08.000 Yeah.

00:33:09.000 Didn't people just get rolled over?

00:33:10.000 North Vietnam and all down Vietnam. 0.86

00:33:10.000 Yeah. 0.86

00:33:12.000 Didn't the Americans get annihilated?

00:33:14.000 No, no.

00:33:14.000 Didn't happen.

00:33:15.000 What happened?

00:33:16.000 Are you serious?

00:33:17.000 On the Tet Offensive.

00:33:17.000 What happened?

00:33:18.000 Yeah.

00:33:18.000 Oh, OK.

00:33:19.000 Real quick segue.

00:33:20.000 Yeah.

00:33:21.000 Yeah.

00:33:21.000 OK.

00:33:22.000 Go for it.

00:33:23.000 So yeah, in Vietnam, the Viet Cong launched a massive attack all throughout the country during Tet, which was supposed to be a ceasefire within the Vietnamese calendar.

00:33:30.000 Right.

00:33:31.000 And so they made like some fairly

00:33:35.000 major gains quickly But with like in several weeks

00:33:40.000 They had taken massive amounts of calories. We're like talking like 20 to 1 at that point

00:33:45.000 It was after the Tet Offensive that the North Vietnamese Actual North Vietnamese army had to start coming in and

00:33:50.000 supporting because we'd almost wiped out the Viet Cong After the Tet Offensive they threw they threw the kitchen 1.00

00:33:55.000 sink at it and they got obliterated So it looked bad overnight partly because our own military,

00:34:01.000 you know leaders are saying oh, yes, they're on their heels They can't do anything. Well, they launched this major

00:34:06.000 offensive. That was unexpected. They got temporary gains, but they got destroyed

00:34:10.000 But it didn't matter.

00:34:11.000 The propaganda campaign that went along with it made it look like, one, the military or the government was lying to the people, which is certainly not hard to believe.

00:34:19.000 And then the other two was that this never would have happened if we were actually in the good shape that we were.

00:34:24.000 And as Thomas Sowell likes to say, when a democracy decides you've lost the war, you've lost it.

00:34:29.000 And so that was the problem.

00:34:30.000 But again, if you look at something like this, the propaganda component for an asymmetric force is critical.

00:34:35.000 Psychology is one of the most important things in a war.

00:34:38.000 It's why we're seeing so much propaganda, because making people feel like we can win, we should win, and we have to win is important to keeping people in the fight.

00:34:47.000 So there's a video of Poroshenko, you know, throwing a strap over.

00:34:51.000 He's got a rifle of some sort.

00:34:52.000 And he's like, I'm here on the ground.

00:34:53.000 And he's like, here's all the, you know, other people I'm fighting with.

00:34:56.000 You've got President Zelensky.

00:34:57.000 And he's like, I'm with the prime minister.

00:34:59.000 I'm with the cabinet from this guy.

00:35:00.000 We're here on the ground.

00:35:01.000 He's got like a vest on.

00:35:03.000 Because the people of Ukraine, they're going to see that.

00:35:06.000 And they're being handed out guns.

00:35:08.000 And when you see your leader on the battlefield with you, they're going to be like... It's like my favorite movie, The Patriot, with Mel Gibson, I often say.

00:35:15.000 Good movie.

00:35:15.000 When he says, hold the line, and he runs back when they're retreating, and then they pull forward and win.

00:35:21.000 That's the thing.

00:35:22.000 But let me tell you, you mentioned we got into Vietnam.

00:35:25.000 I got to tell you the story I read.

00:35:26.000 It's fascinating.

00:35:28.000 The US was trying to engage in psychological warfare.

00:35:30.000 It's something I read on the internet.

00:35:32.000 Perhaps it's not true.

00:35:33.000 And so what they did was, they knew that the Vietnamese were very superstitious.

00:35:37.000 So they made these creepy recordings of wailing, haunting Vietnamese, like Vietcong soldiers, saying, you know, why did I fight?

00:35:47.000 I should have gone home.

00:35:48.000 They believe that if you are not given a proper burial, you're forced to haunt wherever it was you died.

00:35:55.000 So in the forestry, the jungle or whatever, they're playing in these loudspeakers, wailing Vietcong voices, saying, flee while you still can or you'll be trapped like me.

00:36:06.000 It was so effective, the South Vietnamese fled as well, and so they had to stop doing it.

00:36:09.000 I don't know if it's true, it sounds amazing.

00:36:12.000 It's black magic.

00:36:12.000 It's one of those stories you hear, you know, it's probably apocryphal or something.

00:36:16.000 Yeah, it's one of those stories that, if it's not true, it ought to be, right?

00:36:19.000 Right, right, right.

00:36:20.000 I mean, it's kind of messed up though, you know, going after people's, it's like a psychic attack on the people.

00:36:25.000 Superstitious cultures tend to get wiped out, I think.

00:36:28.000 Are there any that exist anymore?

00:36:29.000 I don't think so.

00:36:30.000 There's a lot of superstitious cultures.

00:36:32.000 Like the Christians? 1.00

00:36:33.000 Cal Berkeley.

00:36:35.000 There's Christian and Islam, which are both kind of superstitious. 0.76

00:36:37.000 There's tons of, like Americans have tons of superstitions.

00:36:41.000 But like, it's easy to manipulate someone if they're superstitious.

00:36:43.000 Go to a casino and you will see how superstitious everyone is.

00:36:48.000 Or a sporting event.

00:36:49.000 You'll see a guy like tap his Coke can five times before playing.

00:36:52.000 Well, that concerns me because superstitious people are easy to manipulate. 1.00

00:36:54.000 Well, it's like Michael Scott says, I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.

00:37:01.000 Yeah, man.

00:37:02.000 So let it be known.

00:37:03.000 They're giving out all these guns to regular people because it works.

00:37:06.000 I want to see Biden hitting a speed bag.

00:37:08.000 I need some motivation.

00:37:10.000 Get on the floor, bro! 0.85

00:37:11.000 Yeah, let's go!

00:37:13.000 Oh, that's a funny thought.

00:37:14.000 Give me some speed!

00:37:15.000 I'll tell you what'll be interesting on this, though, is that, and this is the part where, okay, again, how does Ukraine stall Russia?

00:37:22.000 How does Ukraine, like, capture the press and the media and the propaganda and all of this?

00:37:27.000 And this is going to be interesting because it's the first war we've seen like this, where literally everybody has got access to the world to some degree from their phone.

00:37:35.000 So you imagine partisans out there doing this sort of stuff and then making a TikTok about it, right?

00:37:42.000 That's going to be a fascinating thing to potentially watch, not just from a propaganda perspective, but a sharing information perspective.

00:37:50.000 Because if you don't think terrorist organizations already use social media in order to coordinate their activities, Regardless of what ends up happening here, there's going to be a lot of research and study going into how social media influenced it from a propaganda, from a coordination standpoint, because there's good ways for partisans to fight, and there's really stupid ways for partisans to fight, and partisans should not be taking on a T-90 with their AK-47, right? 0.80

00:38:15.000 It's just crazy. 0.88

00:38:18.000 I'm trying to figure out why Putin would do this.

00:38:21.000 And the only thing I come up with is, it's the last great hoorah of a dying empire.

00:38:26.000 They're not part of NATO.

00:38:27.000 I play Crusader Kings 2.

00:38:29.000 You know, I play a lot of like battle conquest grand simulation strategy games.

00:38:32.000 And if you have a lot of countries with a defensive pact against you, but one of them isn't in the pact, that's the country you hit.

00:38:38.000 And you take it fast.

00:38:39.000 And then you're done.

00:38:40.000 And then no one complains anymore.

00:38:41.000 It's just back to base zero again.

00:38:43.000 And hopefully no one else signs up for the pact.

00:38:45.000 And if someone drops out of the pact, they're a meaty target.

00:38:48.000 Oh, he's got a war-weary United States, which is the only one that has any teeth. 0.98

00:38:52.000 He's got a Europe that's been hit by COVID and doesn't want to deal with this crap. 0.92

00:38:55.000 And everyone on the Western side can say, Ukraine wasn't a part of NATO. 0.98

00:39:00.000 Now, if you do it to Poland, we'll be pissed. 0.96

00:39:02.000 Poland's not in NATO right now.

00:39:03.000 Or excuse me, if you do it to Estonia, we'll be pissed.

00:39:06.000 Poland's in NATO.

00:39:06.000 Yeah, Poland's in NATO.

00:39:07.000 So is Estonia, yeah.

00:39:08.000 Yeah, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.

00:39:09.000 Should we get out of NATO?

00:39:12.000 Yeah, what do you think?

00:39:12.000 Because we've had those conversations here.

00:39:15.000 Yeah.

00:39:16.000 We pull all the weight.

00:39:17.000 We do.

00:39:18.000 We do pull all the weight.

00:39:18.000 It's going to be interesting to see what happens because, well, NATO hasn't been attacked, right?

00:39:22.000 So it'd be interesting to see.

00:39:23.000 Well, not that I'm wishing for this.

00:39:26.000 I do think that there's something to be said.

00:39:27.000 And this is the part where I'll probably get a little bit amped up.

00:39:34.000 Because again, I've lost friends overseas fighting wars that I'm not so sure were the best decision on America's part.

00:39:43.000 But one of the things that has maintained the level of peace that we've seen since World War II, and obviously there's been horrible conflicts in Vietnam, in Korea, and other places that we've been involved in and that we haven't been involved in, but nothing like the massive bloodshed we saw in World War I and World War II.

00:40:02.000 And the reason why we have that, and the reason why for the last 30 years we haven't even imagined a conflict like that, the reason why this is surprising the living piss out of everybody, is because of US military dominance.

00:40:13.000 That's why.

00:40:14.000 The same thing that a lot of our allies are constantly bitching about, and coming to the United States and talking about, oh, you know, they're always throwing their weight around, they're always going...

00:40:23.000 Yeah, and because we have, and because people know we can, it has kept people at bay, and no one's going to convince me otherwise.

00:40:31.000 It really has.

00:40:32.000 And so now we're at a point where you do, you have a war-weary United States, you have a global pandemic that took place, we have a country that we have no legal obligation to defend, and I think that kind of the world order Post-Cold War is being challenged right now by Putin, and he's probably picked the best possible time to do it. 0.65

00:40:54.000 And again, that's why I said that.

00:40:56.000 The same countries that will want the United States to intervene to do the heavy lifting for them, if we decide to do it, will be bitching about us six months from now.

00:41:06.000 And so, I don't think we should.

00:41:08.000 Now, does that mean we pull out of things like NATO?

00:41:11.000 I think there's value with the United States being the preeminent military power.

00:41:17.000 And I think that does do something to preventing other nations from getting a little bit froggy when they shouldn't.

00:41:24.000 But one of the things, again, that I appreciated about how Trump handled this was he went back to NATO and he made it a very real possibility that you might not be able to rely on us because you're not pulling your weight.

00:41:33.000 And that's not the same for allies that we have in like South Korea or Taiwan.

00:41:38.000 They do pull their weight.

00:41:39.000 They do recognize the threat.

00:41:40.000 They do recognize their responsibility to hold back the threat.

00:41:43.000 And yes, they depend on the United States for support, but they don't have this expectation that they don't got to do the fighting because we got this.

00:41:51.000 And so I think one of the positive things that could come out of this is a lot of these countries that it's become real popular to trash the United States.

00:41:59.000 Nope.

00:41:59.000 are gonna realize that, you know what, what do you think your country would look like,

00:42:04.000 Western Europe, if it was Putin that had the military and economic power that the United States had?

00:42:10.000 You think we'd be having these conversations?

00:42:11.000 Nope.

00:42:12.000 You think we'd be talking about Eastern Ukraine or you think we'd be talking about

00:42:14.000 the South of France right now?

00:42:16.000 So just remember, as much as the United States may screw up on our foreign policy,

00:42:21.000 as much as we might, at a time where we had all the power, all the money, all the military might,

00:42:27.000 show me the country that we annexed into the United States in order to expand our own empire.

00:42:34.000 Iraq.

00:42:35.000 But we didn't.

00:42:37.000 We don't own Iraq.

00:42:39.000 Not on paper.

00:42:40.000 No, no, not, not at all.

00:42:42.000 I mean, again, the way that you look at, you look at Russia, if Russia takes over Ukraine, watch what happens in Ukraine.

00:42:49.000 It's going to be nothing like what happened to me.

00:42:50.000 Yeah.

00:42:51.000 I was really impressed with the Spanish American war.

00:42:53.000 What I've read about it is that the Americans basically liberated Cuba for better or worse.

00:42:57.000 They didn't invade and take it.

00:42:58.000 They get, they kicked the Spanish empire out and were like, now Cuba's free. 0.78

00:43:01.000 Yeah.

00:43:01.000 I mean, we didn't do that in the Philippines, but... Right, we didn't do that in the Philippines, or in Wake Island, or in Midway.

00:43:06.000 This is not me suggesting that the United States military has not had our own little brush with empire where we've done things that we shouldn't have done.

00:43:12.000 I mean, go look at what Lincoln was saying about the Mexican-American War.

00:43:16.000 Go look at what Grant was saying about the Mexican-American War.

00:43:18.000 About how we kind of picked a fight with a country we knew we could kick the crap out of and then got a lot of territory from it. 0.52

00:43:23.000 So again, I'm not saying we're perfect, but if you look at the situation in the world, the level of peace and security that has existed in certain parts of the world, especially in Western Europe, has been as a direct result of U.S. 0.61

00:43:38.000 military dominance.

00:43:38.000 It's the Kissinger limited war doctrine.

00:43:41.000 He was a big part of creating this idea that we're going to fight proxy wars only so that we don't go to total war.

00:43:46.000 I mean, I'm not a huge Kissinger fan.

00:43:47.000 Me neither.

00:43:48.000 But that was his... Yeah, I'm not a huge Kissinger fan.

00:43:51.000 And I think it's... I don't like to call it the proxy war idea that like, okay, if we just get involved in a bunch of little wars, we'll stop big ones.

00:43:57.000 I do think there's an argument to say that there is such a thing as the Sudetenland moment, right?

00:44:03.000 Where there was a point where the French military, the British military, if they had intervened in Sudetenland, or if they'd intervened when, you know, the Nazis were going into Czechoslovakia and just carving it up because they could.

00:44:15.000 Would that whole scene turn out a lot differently than if they waited all the way till Poland?

00:44:20.000 And I think there's an argument to be made there.

00:44:23.000 I think there's an argument to be made that you identify when someone has larger aspirations, when they have the military and capability to do it, and you intervene at a point where they realize that, okay, we're not going to get away with this.

00:44:34.000 You don't let them build up a certain significant amount of power to where they now can potentially get away with it.

00:44:38.000 That's kind of what we've been doing in Iran.

00:44:40.000 Well, like I've heard the Stuxnet, we blew up infrastructure.

00:44:42.000 I think they targeted them with weapons, blew up weapons depots and stuff.

00:44:45.000 I don't know how hot it's gotten.

00:44:47.000 The Stuxnet was obviously, you know, fairly significant and they've also tried to manage their growth through sanctions.

00:44:53.000 So we could have done that to Germany. 0.79

00:44:54.000 Looking back in retrospect, we could have tried to somehow disrupt their rise to power, but it was internal.

00:45:01.000 It was like, how could we get involved and stop the military machine from creating itself?

00:45:04.000 No, I think it's more of, and again, I am very, I tend to, I always side with non-interventionists, and then you need to explain why something is so significant that United States men and women need to bleed for it, right?

00:45:16.000 That's my starting point.

00:45:18.000 Now, when you're talking about something like Germany, again, when you have internal issues, I tend to say, look, you stay out of those, those are internal issues, piece of Westophilia, right? 0.81

00:45:26.000 But once you start seeing naked aggression, like you did with the Sudetenland with Germany, or like you did with Czechoslovakia, Then I think there is some argument to say like, okay, is it appropriate at this point to intervene on some level?

00:45:40.000 Now, there's a big difference.

00:45:41.000 There's levels of force that you apply, right?

00:45:44.000 There's an escalation of force.

00:45:50.000 Not everything has to be like, you went into the Sudetenland, I'm nuking Berlin, right? 0.98

00:45:53.000 It's not that, but- It sounds like Trump.

00:45:55.000 Yeah, right.

00:45:56.000 I'll hit Moscow.

00:45:57.000 But that's the thing.

00:45:58.000 There's a difference between, okay, what's gonna be your escalation of force, right?

00:46:02.000 That's what you know.

00:46:02.000 That's not what you share with the rest of the world.

00:46:05.000 You want Putin thinking, you send one Russian troop into Ukraine, right?

00:46:11.000 And I'm going into Moscow, right?

00:46:14.000 It's gonna be, I'm gonna set up a Trump hotel in downtown Moscow.

00:46:17.000 Right?

00:46:18.000 Because he doesn't know if you're actually going to do it.

00:46:20.000 And so that's where there's a difference between, okay, what should be our actual strategy versus what sort of strategy should we project?

00:46:27.000 Right?

00:46:27.000 And our enemies don't get to know this one.

00:46:29.000 They just get to know what we're capable of.

00:46:31.000 Biden said recently, you know, the minor incursion, it depends on if it's a minor incursion.

00:46:37.000 That was preemptive appeasement.

00:46:39.000 Biden should have said outright, We'll go into Moscow. 1.00

00:46:39.000 That was so stupid. 1.00

00:46:43.000 Biden's the Neville Chamberlain of our time. 1.00

00:46:45.000 Or, I mean, and worse possibly, the Buchanan.

00:46:48.000 But he could have said, we won't tolerate this.

00:46:51.000 Europe won't tolerate this.

00:46:52.000 Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, Western Europe, none of it.

00:46:57.000 If Putin makes this move, we go into Moscow day one.

00:47:00.000 Try me.

00:47:02.000 Yeah, you get the president of France, England, Germany, United States.

00:47:05.000 The thing is, here's what I'll say, though.

00:47:07.000 If Biden had said that, He would have flubbed it.

00:47:09.000 Show of hands on who believes that.

00:47:12.000 I don't buy that.

00:47:13.000 He would have been reading a prompter and he would go, come on man, we're going to Moscow!

00:47:17.000 Look here, corn pop.

00:47:18.000 Whatever. I'm going to Moscow. Look here, Corn Pop. I'm going to Moscow. Vladimir Putin's a bad dude who's got some

00:47:26.000 bad boys. 0.90

00:47:27.000 Someone called Putin a bad dude yesterday.

00:47:29.000 Or you might have called him a bad dude earlier.

00:47:32.000 I think he was going to say bad mother in the video.

00:47:35.000 You can hear him start to say the word mother, and he stops himself and says dude instead.

00:47:39.000 Biden said that.

00:47:40.000 When he listens, he starts to say dude real weird.

00:47:40.000 Dude.

00:47:40.000 Biden, yeah.

00:47:43.000 Bad dude.

00:47:45.000 This is like when Hitler went into Poland to reconquer part of Poland that had been stripped away after the First World War and give it back, because apparently he said there was a genocide of German expats in Poland that they were committing.

00:47:57.000 Putin says the same thing.

00:47:58.000 There's a genocide of Russians in eastern Ukraine that's been going on for eight years.

00:48:02.000 I haven't heard an inkling of this in the media.

00:48:04.000 I don't know if it's real or complete propaganda, but this was Hitler's reason for invading Poland, or part of it.

00:48:10.000 Probably also to connect you know, more land bridges and stuff, because he had

00:48:13.000 Hitler was like ready to take over the world. 0.95

00:48:15.000 There's a conflict in the Donbass region. And you've got people saying, yeah,

00:48:20.000 the separatists are dying. You get people saying Ukrainians are dying.

00:48:23.000 And both sides will use what they can to justify the position. I don't know who's

00:48:27.000 more right or more morally right. I don't know. I know that both sides are making those assertions.

00:48:31.000 I think that I think Putin is doing what he wanted to do.

00:48:34.000 And then he found reasons to do it.

00:48:36.000 So should we I guess my question is, should we treat this like how we treated Hitler invading Poland?

00:48:43.000 It's a different time, and I'll preempt that a little.

00:48:44.000 I don't.

00:48:45.000 I don't either, because America took Iraq 20 years ago, and that gave the Russians an opportunity to match the playing field. 0.90

00:48:53.000 Look, two wrongs don't make a right.

00:48:55.000 screwed up with Iraq and Afghanistan. 1.00

00:48:55.000 The U.S. 1.00

00:48:57.000 They're screwing up today by still being there.

00:48:59.000 It's not like it happened.

00:48:59.000 Absolutely.

00:49:00.000 It's happening right now.

00:49:01.000 Unscrewed up, miserably leaving Afghanistan. 1.00

00:49:04.000 But we can't be like, well, Russia gets to take a sovereign country because the United States did it too.

00:49:10.000 And even then, the thing that I go back to is that with Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no point where Iraq became the 51st state or Afghanistan became a territory.

00:49:20.000 Now, again, I think there was huge problems with the way we did a lot of it.

00:49:24.000 Now, I don't think it was wrong to go after the Taliban. 1.00

00:49:26.000 I don't think it was wrong to go after terrorism. 0.99

00:49:28.000 I don't think any of that was wrong.

00:49:29.000 I think there was something significantly wrong with this idea that we're going to come in here, completely devastate whatever current government is in charge, and then we're going to go ahead and recreate you on our image.

00:49:38.000 But I think it was Ron Paul who said that when it came to the Taliban after 9-11, we should have issued letters of mark and reprisal, specifically targeting the group, not the country, not going after Taliban.

00:49:48.000 They would have cannibalized each other. 0.54

00:49:50.000 It would have been awesome.

00:49:51.000 Instead, it was like, let's nation-build for 20 years.

00:49:53.000 Oh no, if you look at the initial invasion, so again, in the military, I was Army Special Forces, it's better known as Green Berets.

00:50:00.000 Green Berets focus on unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency.

00:50:03.000 What does that mean?

00:50:04.000 It means when we go into a country, we work by, through, and with local allies, the indigenous population.

00:50:09.000 You look at the opening days of Afghanistan, we're talking about, you had agency in there, you had, you know, Several hundred green berets working with the Northern Alliance and within what a couple of months like they had kicked the Taliban out of like Kandahar and It was all by through and with the local population and what would have been fascinating to watch And and and who knows what would have happened would have fascinated watches What sort of organic solutions people would have come up to and I'm sure it would have been you know ugly and I'm sure it would have been brutal at times everything else but 0.82

00:50:43.000 It wouldn't have been the United States saying, no, no, no, we're not just going to fight the Taliban.

00:50:46.000 We're going to take over the entire country.

00:50:48.000 We're going to take over the entire war. 0.94

00:50:49.000 It's now our war. 0.78

00:50:50.000 We're going to help you with your infrastructure.

00:50:51.000 We're going to help, because some of this, I don't know if you've ever seen, read the book or seen the movie, Charlie Wilson's War.

00:50:57.000 A big argument that they made is that we went in there to help the Mujahideen against the Soviets.

00:51:01.000 And then we didn't stand by, stay behind in order to help with some of the infrastructure.

00:51:04.000 And so it got out of hand.

00:51:06.000 And so this time was, well, we're not going to repeat that mistake. 0.98

00:51:08.000 We'll just double down and take over the whole damn thing. 1.00

00:51:10.000 Okay, no, you're trying to impose certain cultural, political, social changes on a culture that is not necessarily interested in the social changes that you're trying to affect. 0.97

00:51:20.000 It doesn't matter whether or not you think it's more moral than what they currently have.

00:51:23.000 If you don't have buy-in there, then don't expect to be able to do it unless you're willing to stay there for a hundred years.

00:51:29.000 That's my concern with Iraq. 1.00

00:51:30.000 They say it's not a state, but what's the plan?

00:51:32.000 Either we're gonna be there for a hundred years and it may as well be a state.

00:51:34.000 But we're not, we have no significant military presence in Iraq.

00:51:36.000 Right, yeah, it's drawn down substantially.

00:51:38.000 I just don't believe that.

00:51:39.000 I don't know where that idea comes from, but it's like locked down by the United States or whoever's there.

00:51:45.000 Is it American weapons in the Iraqi puppets' hands? 0.93

00:51:50.000 It's a large nation that has been well defended by the United States for two decades.

00:51:55.000 Oh, we've been, we have not been a significant military force on the ground in Iraq for, gosh dang, we're probably, I mean, trying to think of the actual, I was last over there in 08.

00:52:07.000 I think by 2013, we were really drawing down significantly.

00:52:11.000 Um, so no, I mean, we have not had a significant military presence in Iraq for, I mean, it's getting close to, you know.

00:52:17.000 Yeah, I think under Obama, he, he, he pulled all troops out of Iraq, put them into Afghanistan.

00:52:22.000 He moved a lot down there, then he reinforced in Afghanistan by the time Trump was in there.

00:52:26.000 I mean, we have a huge embassy over there.

00:52:28.000 There was some military presence, but that was one of the big complaints, right?

00:52:31.000 Is that the reason why ISIL was able to come in and do so much was because we didn't have a significant U.S.

00:52:36.000 military presence.

00:52:37.000 It seems like Iraq is a staging ground, and so is Afghanistan for, like, Russian interference. 0.91

00:52:42.000 For surrounding Iran. 0.75

00:52:43.000 Iranian.

00:52:43.000 Yeah, Iranian.

00:52:44.000 They've got Syria on the border.

00:52:45.000 They're close to Egypt in the south.

00:52:46.000 They've got their eyes poking into Saudi Arabia's north border.

00:52:49.000 Well, that's been... I mean, Saudi Arabia was when the... during the Cold War.

00:52:53.000 Iraq, especially Syria and all that, that was very clearly Soviet sphere of influence.

00:52:59.000 Iraq was a little bit because they were they were taking most of the military equipment.

00:53:02.000 Egypt was Soviet influence at a certain point.

00:53:05.000 And then Saudi Arabia was more U.S. 0.73

00:53:07.000 influence.

00:53:09.000 So it's just been an interesting dynamic.

00:53:10.000 But keep in mind, all those borders were, you know, drawn by British mapmakers.

00:53:14.000 Yeah, after World War II.

00:53:16.000 I want to talk about modern day piracy.

00:53:18.000 That's an interesting conversation.

00:53:19.000 So we have this story from Cyber News, Anonymous Leaks database of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

00:53:25.000 We had this report out of NBC that Biden had been presented with U.S.

00:53:30.000 plans for cyber attacks, direct attacks on Russian infrastructure.

00:53:34.000 My position has been this for some time.

00:53:36.000 The modern-day pirate or corsair is going to be the hacker.

00:53:39.000 Governments... because we watched this happen.

00:53:42.000 Back in the... what do they call it?

00:53:44.000 They call it the... What was the time of the colonial... there's a word for it. 0.68

00:53:49.000 Oh, the Barbary Pirates and the... It's called like the Sale Era or something like that.

00:53:53.000 Oh, yeah.

00:53:54.000 Yeah, I say the colonial times, but... Age of Sale. 0.87

00:53:54.000 I know what you're talking about. 0.87

00:53:57.000 The Age of Sale, I think it was.

00:53:59.000 So, uh, the crowns would issue letters of marque, which basically would commission a private warship to attack enemies during a time of war, and they could then capture it, bring it in, and get a reward for it.

00:54:09.000 It was a simple way of being like, we don't gotta pay for your repairs, we don't gotta pay for the ship, you find your own crew, you bring a ship, we'll pay you for it, we'll make it worth your while.

00:54:18.000 So governments would effectively commission pirates, corsairs, to go and, you know, stage these acts.

00:54:25.000 Then the other country would be like, your ships are taking us.

00:54:29.000 Oh, no, no, no.

00:54:29.000 Those are pirates.

00:54:30.000 Don't look at us.

00:54:31.000 So now we have anonymous.

00:54:33.000 Hacking RT and shutting them down.

00:54:35.000 Hacking Russian Ministry of Defense.

00:54:37.000 And I don't buy it.

00:54:38.000 First of all, it's probably just like U.S.

00:54:41.000 cyber warriors.

00:54:42.000 And if it isn't, it's effectively letters of mark.

00:54:45.000 government saying, private hackers, go for it and have fun.

00:54:45.000 The U.S.

00:54:49.000 Take what you can from Russia. 0.89

00:54:50.000 Think about it this way.

00:54:51.000 You've got black hat hackers.

00:54:53.000 These are the people who just want to rip you off and steal what they can.

00:54:56.000 You got gray hat hackers, activists, politically motivated, and white hat, corporate security types.

00:55:02.000 The government can go to these black hats, effectively pirates.

00:55:06.000 Heck, some of them are probably pirating software online, literally.

00:55:09.000 And they'll be like, anything you steal from Russia, you will not be prosecuted for.

00:55:13.000 Any information you rip off, any databases, I'm willing to bet these people are being given carte blanche by the US government.

00:55:19.000 So you think they're getting paid through the dark web or something?

00:55:21.000 Not necessarily paid, but I'm willing to bet you've got like FBI going to this black hat hacker and being like, you know, we got that case against you. 0.87

00:55:30.000 We're gonna drop it if you can hit these Russian targets. 0.99

00:55:32.000 Okay, I think that's what they did with Jack Ruby with the Kennedy thing.

00:55:35.000 He was like a mobster and they gave him, he got off.

00:55:37.000 I don't know about all that!

00:55:38.000 For killing a suspect.

00:55:40.000 I think it's as simple as, you know, we know who you are, we know you're good, why don't you use your skills to help the United States and we'll look the other way.

00:55:49.000 So they're blackmailing criminal hackers in part in addition to maybe other things?

00:55:54.000 Blackmail, they're like, we're gonna let you have carte blanche to steal whatever you want and we want no repercussions?

00:55:58.000 We'll punish you unless you steal whatever you want, and then we'll turn it off.

00:56:02.000 That's true.

00:56:03.000 And again, there's not a lot of people talking about this because when people talk about, we've just gotten so used to, oh, the president wants to go to war, I guess we'll go do that now.

00:56:12.000 But there are constitutional ways to deal with certain threats.

00:56:16.000 When is the declaration of war, which is supposed to be done by Congress?

00:56:21.000 That's a fairly laborious process. The other thing that the president has as a tool, now again,

00:56:27.000 if you're going to engage in major action, you're still supposed to get approval from Congress to

00:56:30.000 do this. It's not like they can do it. But the whole idea of letters of mark and reprisal and

00:56:34.000 kind of the last president I think we had that issued one was Madison. Wow.

00:56:40.000 And it was, and again, don't quote me on that, but I think, and again, part of that was going after the, you know, the Barbary Pirate Wars and the United States didn't have a, you know, a huge Navy or anything like that.

00:56:49.000 And so it made sense to do this.

00:56:52.000 And I actually think it makes a lot of sense toward non-state actors when you're talking about terrorist organizations.

00:56:57.000 And like you said, the modern day pirates are the Hackers, man.

00:57:01.000 They can do more damage with a couple lines of code than, you know... Dude, they were talking about deep fakes.

00:57:11.000 I saw a video of a jet coming in and then it fired two rockets at that building where the camera guy was.

00:57:16.000 And then you hear the kids screaming and it's like, was that fake?

00:57:19.000 Was that deepfake?

00:57:20.000 I can't tell.

00:57:21.000 I saw a deepfake today that really freaked me out.

00:57:23.000 It confused me.

00:57:24.000 I don't even know what to believe. 1.00

00:57:25.000 It's Vladimir Putin fishing, but he has large female breasts. 1.00

00:57:28.000 It's got to be fake. 0.99

00:57:29.000 It's on the front page of Reddit.

00:57:31.000 That's real.

00:57:31.000 American propaganda.

00:57:34.000 That's been confirmed.

00:57:36.000 That is an image on the front page of Reddit. 0.86

00:57:38.000 Putin with large breasts fishing and topless. 0.72

00:57:40.000 And I'm just like, I see that stuff and I'm annoyed by it. 0.99

00:57:44.000 Now's not the time to poke the bear, bro.

00:57:46.000 The bear bro, we don't know no poke him but make make the propaganda good right like watching fighters

00:57:52.000 Like there's video of like a plane falling from the sky and they're like the ghost of Kiev and I'm like wow and then it

00:57:59.000 was A grums he's like on Twitter. He's like this the the ghost

00:58:02.000 of Kiev is like an anime protagonist I'm like now you got some good problem. Yeah

00:58:05.000 You know a new comic book character, but here's my question Do you think and this is this is interesting the hero's

00:58:12.000 journey masculinity, right?

00:58:13.000 When you look at social media, there are certain platforms that the better it is, the worse it does.

00:58:21.000 And there's other platforms where if it's bad, it does better because it seems more authentic.

00:58:27.000 People think it's actually real.

00:58:30.000 Yeah, but like when we're talking about- I'm not saying anything cringy! 0.95

00:58:33.000 There's a meme on the front page of Reddit, and it's Megamind, and he's got, it says like the size of the hero's balls, and then it says ball size, and it says mega, and I'm like, that's the stupidest thing, like, what is this a cultural reference to? 0.92

00:58:48.000 Like, come on, man, do better! 0.82

00:58:52.000 But who's making memes with Megamind?

00:58:54.000 I mean, what is this? 0.98

00:58:55.000 Did someone pull a meme out of the butt? 0.99

00:58:56.000 That's a boomer. 0.99

00:58:58.000 It's a boomer trying to make a meme because it's propaganda.

00:59:00.000 Some, like, 50-year-old intelligence guy.

00:59:02.000 He's probably listening to this show and he feels all bad now.

00:59:05.000 I worked really hard on it.

00:59:06.000 My grandkids loved it.

00:59:07.000 Don't worry, Megaballs will come back one day.

00:59:10.000 We're just ahead of your time.

00:59:12.000 Yeah, but so this is not the first time we've heard stories like hacking.

00:59:15.000 There's that Chinese hacking group. 0.64

00:59:17.000 There was the Syrian Electronic Army.

00:59:19.000 And it turns out, I believe it's true because we did this reporting advice, that the person who was actually running the Syrian Electronic Army was in Moscow.

00:59:27.000 So this is somebody who hacked Twitter and then tweeted that Obama had been injured in some kind of attack on the White House.

00:59:35.000 And the stock market in the U.S.

00:59:36.000 dropped substantially before, because like the AP got hacked and tweeted it out.

00:59:41.000 And then all of a sudden the market dropped substantially and then bounced back up.

00:59:45.000 But it only returned like 90 percent.

00:59:46.000 RT's back up.

00:59:47.000 Oh, it is?

00:59:48.000 It is.

00:59:48.000 We're just talking about RT.

00:59:49.000 RT was down for a long time today.

00:59:52.000 And I just got it in.

00:59:54.000 It took a while to load up, but then I was able to load it.

00:59:56.000 They finally figured out how to get, I can't, I can't load it.

00:59:58.000 Interesting.

00:59:59.000 Yeah.

01:00:00.000 They've been hacked.

01:00:02.000 Maybe I'm looking at a cash, cashed version.

01:00:06.000 So I like to go to, um, actualidad.rt.com, which is Spanish language RT.

01:00:11.000 That still works.

01:00:12.000 Yeah.

01:00:13.000 And then you just, uh, you just translate it.

01:00:16.000 It works in English, but I'm getting this message that it says checking your browser while loading RT.

01:00:20.000 You think that there's, they're logging everyone that's going to RT now?

01:00:23.000 No, I don't know, but what I will say is, when I heard that Anonymous shut down RT, and I'm like, that does sound like a lot of what Anonymous is.

01:00:32.000 And I will also stress this point, there is no hacktivist collective called Anonymous.

01:00:37.000 That's just, it's a propaganda, it's manipulation, it's always been.

01:00:41.000 If you ask someone who's a hacker, what does it mean when Anonymous hacks something?

01:00:47.000 They'll just look at you and be like, it literally means Anonymous hacked it.

01:00:50.000 Like someone signed it Anonymous.

01:00:52.000 Like if you wrote someone a letter, I hate you, signed Anonymous.

01:00:55.000 That's literally what it means.

01:00:56.000 There's no secret group conspiring to hate you.

01:01:00.000 That's what the secret group wants you to think.

01:01:05.000 That's very antico.

01:01:06.000 They are typically like, you know, they take down websites.

01:01:10.000 They obfuscate.

01:01:11.000 But like you said, there's no they.

01:01:13.000 It's just anyone that wants to become a hacker and say, I'm anonymous can be anonymous.

01:01:17.000 And you know, when it first started, there was a small group who were doing it.

01:01:20.000 It's like 500.

01:01:21.000 And there was only a few of them who are prominent and actually had the skills.

01:01:24.000 And then once it got popular press, all of a sudden you started getting all of these videos popping up on YouTube, where it was like anonymous declares.

01:01:32.000 And the initial concept was if you have a thousand anonymous individuals and people propose things randomly, whatever is popular rises to the top.

01:01:41.000 So a lot of the actions that were being taken by anonymous was like someone said, you know, operation this, let's do it. 0.99

01:01:48.000 And people would be like, that's stupid. 0.93

01:01:50.000 And then someone would be like, operation ABC. 1.00

01:01:52.000 And they'd be like, all right.

01:01:53.000 And they all start doing it.

01:01:54.000 And then it gains popular traction.

01:01:56.000 So you still have attempts at, you know, making these videos, but for the most part, the movement or whatever of like this kind of meritocratic, hacktivist operation just doesn't exist anymore.

01:02:06.000 That's what I think now.

01:02:07.000 I think it's government actors.

01:02:08.000 Yeah.

01:02:09.000 Yeah.

01:02:09.000 Cause I think if you get, I mean, not to say that I know a lot of hackers, but the people that I do know, let's say that possess a skillset.

01:02:17.000 I don't know that you could get five of them to agree on anything.

01:02:21.000 Yeah, the one thing I will say is that the hacker community has gone full cult for the most part.

01:02:26.000 So I used to hang out, I'd go to Defcon, Blackhat, hang out at hacker spaces, and they were free speech, anti-establishment, anti-government.

01:02:35.000 And then the last time I went to Defcon, which is the biggest hacker convention, it's like a civilian hacker convention, because they have Blackhat, which is the corporate one.

01:02:45.000 There was a guy, I think he was from the NSA or something, and he was giving a presentation, and he mentioned how they try and stop Russia, and everyone started clapping and cheering.

01:02:54.000 And then he stops and he goes, wow, an applause from DEF CON for a spook. 1.00

01:02:59.000 I'm really surprised things are changing.

01:03:01.000 And I started laughing.

01:03:02.000 It was because the media had been running the narrative of Russia, And I mentioned there was like this semi-open event there, and I had mentioned that RT had offered to pay me money for some of my footage out of Sweden, which I said no to.

01:03:16.000 I said no because I was like, my footage is on YouTube for free.

01:03:19.000 You can fair use it.

01:03:20.000 There's literally no reason to give me money for this.

01:03:22.000 It sounds weird.

01:03:23.000 And I got people clapping for me.

01:03:25.000 I was like, so when I was reporting out of Sweden, I got hit up by RT.

01:03:29.000 They asked if they could pay me.

01:03:30.000 I said no.

01:03:31.000 They doubled the amount they'd pay me.

01:03:32.000 I said no.

01:03:33.000 Then all of a sudden, people I knew were like, hey, I'm getting hit up by guys from RT.

01:03:36.000 They're trying to pay you for this.

01:03:37.000 And I was like, no.

01:03:39.000 And people were like, oh, so brave, so honorable.

01:03:41.000 And I'm like...

01:03:43.000 It's weird.

01:03:44.000 It was a weird shift that happened where, like, the corporate press said Putin bad, and everyone just went, you got it, we're gonna march in lockstep.

01:03:52.000 Yeah, that was so weird.

01:03:53.000 Do you think that was just because of Putin, or do you think that had something to do with Trump?

01:03:56.000 I mean, not only that.

01:03:57.000 I mean, let's face it, like, Putin's not a good guy, I get that.

01:04:00.000 Yeah.

01:04:01.000 But the attention on him.

01:04:02.000 Do you think that was just Putin, or do you think that was a combination of Putin and Trump?

01:04:05.000 Oh, it's Putin.

01:04:06.000 And fear of the Cold War.

01:04:07.000 There's so much residual fear of the Soviet Union.

01:04:09.000 They put that fear onto Russia.

01:04:10.000 It's not the same country at all.

01:04:12.000 It's completely different.

01:04:13.000 It's not communist.

01:04:14.000 It's a federation of states.

01:04:17.000 So it's like an easy target, but it's tickling their amygdala.

01:04:20.000 I brought that up before.

01:04:21.000 It's enticing their lizard brain to become afraid of some ancient idea.

01:04:27.000 Ancient evil.

01:04:27.000 Like, does he still have the ring?

01:04:29.000 Or is the ring destroyed?

01:04:30.000 The glacier is melting.

01:04:31.000 He's going to be free.

01:04:33.000 I think it's a cult.

01:04:35.000 We have this story from TimCast.com.

01:04:36.000 Nearly 70% of liberals say it's more important to protect Ukraine's border than our own.

01:04:41.000 I don't know if it's 70%.

01:04:44.000 I thought it was 57.

01:04:45.000 You have a link to the poll on this one?

01:04:47.000 Okay, that doesn't surprise me.

01:04:48.000 And I think...

01:04:53.000 Yeah, it's 57.

01:04:53.000 The reason it doesn't surprise me is because there's a lot of people that I know, again, I always make a distinction between liberal and the left, but there's a lot of people on the left that I know that any other country in the world is better than our own.

01:05:04.000 We are uniquely evil in some capacity for which we must pay, I don't know, We just need to be sorry all the time, and so the idea that you would ask them, should we protect our border or Ukraine's? 0.98

01:05:17.000 Of course it would be Ukraine's, because the only way we would protect our border is if, you know, we're all a bunch of racists. 0.87

01:05:22.000 This defies Jesus's logic.

01:05:23.000 Take the plank out of your own eye first.

01:05:26.000 Did you see that they're calling on CBP to leave the southern border to go to Poland to process Ukrainian refugees?

01:05:33.000 It's remarkably insane.

01:05:34.000 I'm going to check that up as things that don't surprise me anymore.

01:05:37.000 Yeah, I know.

01:05:38.000 Things that don't surprise me anymore.

01:05:40.000 Wow.

01:05:41.000 So, okay, back to the story for a second.

01:05:42.000 You said it's 57, 58%?

01:05:44.000 57% of Democrats.

01:05:45.000 So not the title was wrong, but we're going to copyright that.

01:05:47.000 I think the title is wrong.

01:05:48.000 Okay, so somewhere between 57 and 70, but you think it's more close to 57?

01:05:51.000 A majority.

01:05:51.000 49% of them.

01:05:54.000 Well, you gotta log in to Rasmussen if you want to get the hard numbers.

01:05:58.000 The idea that we should send our National Guard overseas to fight is completely insane.

01:06:03.000 That's completely insane to me.

01:06:05.000 Our Custom and Border Protection Agents, like Border Patrol.

01:06:09.000 Our Border Patrol, their job is to run the border and they're like, go to Poland.

01:06:13.000 You think it's because they fired so many people for not being vaccinated?

01:06:17.000 No.

01:06:17.000 It actually sounds like they would allocate resources.

01:06:19.000 Like, we are a border patrol and there's a border issue in Ukraine.

01:06:23.000 Oh yeah, that's where you should be!

01:06:25.000 And by the way, does Ukraine have a coast?

01:06:27.000 Because we have a coast guard.

01:06:30.000 Yeah, they got a coast off the Black Sea.

01:06:33.000 They have a government, so they could use our army.

01:06:35.000 You know, governments need armies.

01:06:36.000 They could have ours.

01:06:38.000 Wow, man.

01:06:38.000 That's why I was saying the other day, I'm like, I'm ready to just put my feet up and crack open a coconut.

01:06:42.000 No, never.

01:06:42.000 Never.

01:06:43.000 Never give up.

01:06:44.000 Never surrender.

01:06:44.000 Always chance.

01:06:45.000 Always change.

01:06:46.000 Not so much give up, but kind of like, just glide.

01:06:48.000 Oh, that's good.

01:06:49.000 We've fallen off the cliff.

01:06:51.000 Just spread your wings and enjoy it.

01:06:52.000 I do think we need to make entertainment for a while and veer away from the negativity of war and conflict.

01:07:00.000 Interestingly enough, I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.

01:07:05.000 Not an either-or proposition.

01:07:07.000 In fact, I'm willing to say, and again, this is not one of those, you know, George Bush, we just got attacked, so go shopping, right?

01:07:13.000 Like, I'm not saying that.

01:07:15.000 I do think there's a realm for, like, you know, sacrifice when the times call for it.

01:07:21.000 But, like, as I look at, like, all the things that are kind of under assault and the way things are acting, there is a huge realm right now.

01:07:29.000 One of the reasons why we are in the situation we are in right now is because we didn't fight for the cultural space.

01:07:36.000 Um, we, we, you know, we might fight for the political space.

01:07:39.000 We didn't fight for the cultural space, which is why it is dominated by, by a certain perspective or viewpoint.

01:07:44.000 And I, I tell parents this all the time when they're at, well, how are we going to fix our schools or how are we going to like, well, if you think you're going to fix your schools with one election cycle.

01:07:52.000 You're out of your mind.

01:07:52.000 Yeah.

01:07:53.000 Because your child is now going to a school, which in many cases is pushing a particular worldview or propaganda that might not coincide with your own beliefs about your country or faith or whatever.

01:08:04.000 Then they come home and they watch Netflix, right?

01:08:08.000 And chances are whatever they're watching there is going to be pushing a particular worldview.

01:08:12.000 Then they turn on a song, which is pushing a worldview.

01:08:14.000 Then they look at the media, which is pushing a worldview.

01:08:15.000 And then they go to their college professor, which is pushing a worldview.

01:08:18.000 And then what do you get?

01:08:18.000 30 minutes around the dinner table?

01:08:21.000 You think this is sufficient?

01:08:22.000 And so any sort of activity I see which is pushing into that cultural space, which is so critical, because everything political is downstream from culture.

01:08:32.000 is absolutely necessary and one of the most important fronts that we're in right now.

01:08:36.000 But there's two good things to say here, some optimism.

01:08:39.000 One is, you've got The Daily Wire ramping up production of cultural content, they're buying movies, they absolutely see your point and they're working towards it.

01:08:49.000 But then I would say that when you say we haven't gotten involved in the culture, or I forgot exactly how you said it, Well, Ian and I did not come into this as conservatives.

01:09:01.000 So there's a lot of people who were working in some kind of entertainment, some kind of media or cultural space, and now find themselves in agreement on many core issues of freedom in the United States and our Constitution with conservatives, and that's giving a big cultural boon.

01:09:15.000 Yeah.

01:09:16.000 So, you know, we talked with the guy from The Daily Wire about, you know, how we can expand our cultural content.

01:09:21.000 We have a vlog, we do silly jokes and have fun, and we do flips and into beanbags and stuff.

01:09:25.000 But we're talking about, you know, things we can do.

01:09:27.000 We launched a show called Tales from the Inverted World.

01:09:29.000 Yeah.

01:09:30.000 Which is, and we have a book available at invertedworldbook.com.

01:09:34.000 And it's mysteries.

01:09:35.000 Mysteries, UFOs, ghost stories.

01:09:37.000 Because, you know, we've always been involved in that.

01:09:40.000 We actually got a mix of a song that we've been putting together.

01:09:44.000 So we're putting out music.

01:09:46.000 Yeah, it's fantastic stuff.

01:09:48.000 I grew up playing music.

01:09:49.000 I grew up making skate videos.

01:09:50.000 I grew up making videos with my friends.

01:09:53.000 And now what the left has kind of screwed up is that they're constantly pushing people They're making authoritarian demands of people to give in to their politics and their views or else.

01:10:05.000 And a lot of people are saying, or else, and they're walking away.

01:10:08.000 So now there's an opportunity here for conservatives to get back in the game and push back on the left.

01:10:12.000 And I think in the long run, the left will lose the culture.

01:10:15.000 I was in Hollywood acting 2006, 7, 8, kind of.

01:10:18.000 And I was like, I'm going to change the world.

01:10:19.000 I'm going to become a famous actor and then be able to give the speech at the Oscars that changes everyone.

01:10:24.000 That was my idea.

01:10:25.000 But it was so dirty, that industry.

01:10:26.000 I felt so sexualized. 0.76

01:10:27.000 And they were like, you're just so sexy. 0.99

01:10:29.000 Sex, sex. 0.99

01:10:30.000 I'm like, I gotta get out of here, man. 0.99

01:10:31.000 I felt their fingers coming at me and I just ran.

01:10:34.000 But I bailed on culture for like a decade.

01:10:36.000 I started building minds, the social network. 1.00

01:10:39.000 That's why people get involved in politics is because we're not pretty enough for Hollywood and we're too stupid for the private sector. 0.99

01:10:44.000 Yes, case in point. 0.99

01:10:46.000 But it's gotta be done.

01:10:47.000 It's gotta be done. 0.97

01:10:49.000 I didn't like that top-down pressure in Hollywood of the oligarchs of Hollywood that were these weird sexual deviants. 1.00

01:10:56.000 It seemed like they were creating the feel or the energy of the system. 0.96

01:11:00.000 It was gross.

01:11:01.000 Beautiful city, though.

01:11:03.000 Until recently, I guess.

01:11:06.000 Incursion, it's terrifying, but beautiful weather, that's for sure.

01:11:09.000 Because of the valley, the mountains, and it's like, you got snow-capped peaks to the north an hour, you got the desert to the east in an hour, you got the ocean to the west in an hour, you got the hills just 20 minutes north of you, the beautiful valley, it's an incredible city.

01:11:22.000 They called it the City of the Angels for a reason.

01:11:25.000 Actually, it says Los Angeles has a really weird long name.

01:11:29.000 You ever look it up?

01:11:31.000 Yeah, it's like super long.

01:11:33.000 It's like the river of the women who, I don't know, something like really long. 0.99

01:11:37.000 Yeah, I'm looking it up now.

01:11:40.000 Yeah, well, you look at California, man, and they say California is our future.

01:11:45.000 That California is five years ahead of the rest of the country.

01:11:48.000 No, so here's what I think.

01:11:49.000 I think California is going to be a wonderful place to live in about 20 years, and then Texas is going to be the problem.

01:11:54.000 Yeah, I agree.

01:11:56.000 That's why people were telling us, like, you should go to Austin.

01:11:58.000 I was like, no way.

01:11:59.000 Oh, so I call it the, and I did this once, and I think it was like, I don't know, Occupy Democrats or Blue Virginia, or someone got, like, fears, like, I can't believe they called us locusts.

01:12:08.000 Well, it's the locust theory.

01:12:10.000 The locusts have no idea that they're the ones eating all the crops.

01:12:13.000 They're just wondering why all the prosperity is gone.

01:12:14.000 And then they go somewhere else to find more crops.

01:12:16.000 I'm like, okay, so no, I'm not comparing you to people to locusts.

01:12:19.000 I'm saying that it's this idea that someone will come and see all this prosperity, you know, use it, then destroy it.

01:12:25.000 And then when they move, they don't realize that, okay, you're taking the policies that created the destruction with you.

01:12:30.000 Maybe don't do that this time.

01:12:32.000 What do you think?

01:12:32.000 I'm not calling people locusts.

01:12:34.000 I'm calling them a virus.

01:12:36.000 I'm kidding.

01:12:37.000 I think this is the mindset of the World Economic Forum is that people are destroying recklessly without reproducing the environment.

01:12:43.000 So they were like, OK, that's a big problem.

01:12:45.000 Yeah, they look they look at people like a fire, like animals.

01:12:47.000 Yeah.

01:12:48.000 Yeah.

01:12:48.000 Just consuming carbon and expanding the growth and just burning things down.

01:12:52.000 It's fascinating.

01:12:53.000 They never want to take a look at the fact.

01:12:55.000 I can't remember who it was that had the bet, but it was with that.

01:12:57.000 Oh, gosh.

01:12:58.000 It was with One of these one of these guys that was predicting in the 70s that we would be engaged in a series of world famines and like all of our natural resources.

01:13:06.000 Paul Krugman.

01:13:08.000 Earl Rick.

01:13:09.000 Earl Rick.

01:13:09.000 Good guess though.

01:13:10.000 Good guess though.

01:13:11.000 If you're talking about a guy that makes crappy predictions, Paul Krugman would have been a really, really good pick.

01:13:16.000 But Paul Earl Rick.

01:13:17.000 And so this other economist came in and I think he told him he's like pick five natural resources and I'll bet that in 20 years they're all cheaper than they are today.

01:13:25.000 Yeah.

01:13:26.000 Yeah.

01:13:26.000 And Earl Rick engaged in the bet and lost.

01:13:28.000 Yes.

01:13:29.000 Because it's this idea that no, human beings have this amazing capacity to adapt if they're not being controlled by, oh, I don't know, an authoritarian central government that's trying to control their lives or treating them like they're a virus.

01:13:39.000 But how about we make that bet now?

01:13:42.000 Do you think things will be getting cheaper?

01:13:44.000 And I would, I would say it from this point forward.

01:13:46.000 In Singapore.

01:13:47.000 Yeah.

01:13:48.000 Yeah.

01:13:48.000 I think, I think we're, we're, we're in for a world of hurt.

01:13:51.000 Why in Singapore?

01:13:52.000 If we boot Russia from SWIFT, Then everything's going to get more expensive. 0.58

01:13:57.000 I got a story here.

01:13:57.000 I think that Russia is leaving SWIFT.

01:13:59.000 I don't think that they're going to wait to get booted.

01:14:01.000 I got a story from Russia-briefing.com.

01:14:04.000 Russia and China to develop SWIFT avoiding international financial systems.

01:14:07.000 What's that?

01:14:07.000 Of course, of course.

01:14:08.000 I just didn't know about the source.

01:14:09.000 No, but Russia and China have been trying to get off the dollar for a long time.

01:14:12.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

01:14:13.000 I think Putin's known.

01:14:15.000 You can't imagine this guy has risen to the level he's risen to without planning for something like this.

01:14:20.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:14:23.000 Again, I was talking with Tim about this.

01:14:24.000 What do we think is the worst case scenario?

01:14:27.000 And what we were talking about was like, okay, he takes Ukraine, he uses that as kind of like a trial balloon, right? 0.51

01:14:32.000 Takes Ukraine, doesn't really suffer any major consequences for it, and then you start to look at incursions into places like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, where we're talking about, again, the Belt and Road Initiative, and now you start to see this block, this Russian-Chinese block, where you have a massive amount of natural resources, you've solved some of the population issues that Russia's having with expansion, and then you have just these major spheres of influence.

01:14:56.000 And then it becomes almost kind of like a remake of the Cold War on some level.

01:14:59.000 Now again, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I'm saying it's not science fiction to look at this and be like, okay, yeah, I can look at a map, and I can look at what he's doing, and I can look at where resources are at, and I can see where spheres of influence would potentially engage, and then where do we go from there?

01:15:16.000 And to your point, back when it was the West and the Soviet Union, you had people coming off of World War II, you had generations that were familiar with sacrifice, familiar with fighting, that they had a strong sense of patriotism, they had a strong sense of moral responsibility to themselves, their family, their country, etc.

01:15:32.000 And now you're talking about a world where I don't think anybody believes that we have that same sense as widespread throughout the population.

01:15:40.000 Given some of the things that we're complaining about right now and some of the things that people honestly believe are really key issues.

01:15:49.000 And so it's weird to look at where the power dynamic is going to be from a cultural standpoint at that level.

01:15:55.000 I think moving forward, if we look back at home and we can see what's going on culturally, I'm not so convinced the U.S.

01:16:03.000 is going to be a major player in international conflict the same way they are now.

01:16:08.000 I think it's obvious that that influence is waning.

01:16:10.000 But let's bring it back home and wrap it back to the cultural issues.

01:16:15.000 We were talking about schools and school choice early on, so I really want to talk to you about this and get your thoughts on what's going on with Youngkin.

01:16:23.000 You're in Virginia, obviously.

01:16:25.000 Education played a huge role in a Republican victory in Virginia.

01:16:29.000 So I'm wondering if you can just bring us up to speed on what's been going on, how you got involved, and where do you think people are in this critical race theory stuff?

01:16:36.000 So this is what's interesting, right?

01:16:38.000 So I think for the first time I can remember in my lifetime, Republicans won an election in what has been increasingly a blue state on the issue of education.

01:16:47.000 Yes.

01:16:48.000 Right, usually, what do Republicans win on?

01:16:49.000 Jobs.

01:16:50.000 We win on, you know, taxes, right?

01:16:52.000 We win on regulations.

01:16:53.000 We don't win on education, right?

01:16:54.000 That's always been, like, a Democrat issue.

01:16:56.000 They always come off as the ones that are more, you know, well, what happened was, and I got to kind of set the scene here, Democrats took control of, you know, the House of Delegates, the Virginia Senate, and the governor for the first time in, like, over 20 years in Virginia.

01:17:11.000 And there was one Democrat, Delegate Lopez, who represents, I think it's Arlington.

01:17:16.000 And he had told people at this one campaign stop, he goes, if you give us everything, we will accomplish a lifetime's worth of work in an afternoon.

01:17:23.000 And keep in mind, for 20 years, they hadn't had this sort of power.

01:17:27.000 So they got to run on a lot of like aspirational things like, oh, we're going to equality and social justice and equity.

01:17:34.000 Like, OK, what does any of that mean?

01:17:35.000 But it sounds good.

01:17:36.000 And we're mad at Republicans right now.

01:17:38.000 So they got into power and they did it.

01:17:40.000 I mean, he was not lying.

01:17:41.000 They did as far and as fast as they possibly could within a two year period of time.

01:17:45.000 Then they tried banning guns.

01:17:47.000 Oh, brother.

01:17:50.000 There was a debate between me and Delegate Mark Levine.

01:17:55.000 The same people that said, nobody wants to take your guns, all we want is common sense gun control.

01:17:59.000 And then 52 out of 54 Democrats voted for a bill that would have made you a criminal for owning a 15-round magazine.

01:18:09.000 So a low-capacity magazine.

01:18:11.000 A 15-round magazine.

01:18:12.000 That's horribly low-capacity.

01:18:12.000 Wow.

01:18:14.000 In fact, every single magazine you would have owned, that would have been a Class 1 misdemeanor with up to a year in jail and $2,500.

01:18:21.000 So it wasn't just, we're going to get rid of AR-15s. 1.00

01:18:23.000 They wanted to retroactively make people criminals.

01:18:25.000 Yes.

01:18:26.000 Yes.

01:18:27.000 And they voted for this. 0.93

01:18:28.000 This is not like, oh, some crazy loon passed this and they killed it in a subcommittee. 0.93

01:18:32.000 No, they voted for this. 0.80

01:18:35.000 All right, so that's where they're at.

01:18:36.000 And then you saw the same thing.

01:18:37.000 They did this whole cultural competency training, right?

01:18:39.000 Because who could be against cultural competency?

01:18:41.000 Just like who could be against equity?

01:18:43.000 Who could be against tolerance?

01:18:45.000 And what this did is it set up this process whereby teachers in Virginia, in order to get their license or renew their license, had to go through cultural competency training.

01:18:53.000 Well, when you go onto the Roadmap to Equity in Virginia Education website, that's where you found out that, oh, wow, there's Ibram X. Kendi, there's Robin DiAngelo, there's Southern Poverty Law Center.

01:19:03.000 Like all pushing CRT.

01:19:05.000 Now, what happened was his parents were starting to see this stuff arrive in their classrooms.

01:19:10.000 Their kids are coming home and they're making comments about it.

01:19:12.000 At the same time, Democrats had removed like reporting requirements for principals for certain like criminal acts happening on within a school.

01:19:21.000 And so you have this perfect storm.

01:19:24.000 Especially in Northern Virginia, Loudoun County was like the hotspot for this.

01:19:28.000 Where students are coming home and talking about what's going on and the parents aren't liking it.

01:19:33.000 And then you had certain like equity restrictions that were taking place where now certain students that would have qualified before are not making it into certain schools or certain programs.

01:19:42.000 Then you have a case where now you have a... I don't even know if it was a transgender female. 1.00

01:19:49.000 It was a biological male that was wearing a dress, right? 0.78

01:19:52.000 This person wasn't trans.

01:19:53.000 Yeah, okay.

01:19:54.000 It was just a guy wearing a dress.

01:19:56.000 Yeah, so that was real quick.

01:19:58.000 The news was reporting that it was a transgender student, but if you actually read the details, it was just a student who wore a dress and was going in the girl's bathroom.

01:20:06.000 It was a male student, not transgender.

01:20:08.000 So the big part that kind of blew up was you had a father that went to a school board meeting, and they were mad about a lot of things.

01:20:17.000 CRT was part of it.

01:20:18.000 They were mad about some of the bathroom issues and stuff like that.

01:20:21.000 And the superintendent got asked, or the president of the school board or whatnot, asked about, have there been any assaults in bathrooms?

01:20:30.000 Because some of the parents were mad about this idea of why is a biological male going into a bathroom?

01:20:34.000 And they said, you know, no.

01:20:36.000 Well, this is the part where people hate politics, and this is the reason why.

01:20:41.000 There was an ongoing investigation about that.

01:20:44.000 So technically, nobody had been convicted of something, right?

01:20:48.000 But they sure as hell had had an incident.

01:20:50.000 It was actually like forcible sodomy.

01:20:55.000 And then that student, right, that student was quietly transferred to a different school.

01:20:59.000 So they did call the police, the parents were notified, but that student was transferred to a different school where that student then re-offended.

01:21:05.000 Jeez.

01:21:06.000 Wow.

01:21:06.000 Right?

01:21:07.000 And was actually, has now been convicted and is one of the few minors that we have in Virginia that has actually been put on the registry.

01:21:14.000 Yeah, the sexual registry, sexual offenders registry.

01:21:17.000 And the judge even said after reading the psych review that it was terrifying.

01:21:20.000 Wow.

01:21:21.000 Right?

01:21:21.000 So, again, you have this perfect storm of all this taking place.

01:21:25.000 But what was incredible was the Democrats' response to it.

01:21:28.000 The Democrats' response to it was, at first, was, CRT is nowhere in our classroom.

01:21:32.000 And then people started to see it.

01:21:33.000 And it was like, well, no, it is in my classroom.

01:21:35.000 My kid just said this. 1.00

01:21:37.000 You're a racist. 1.00

01:21:39.000 Right? 0.99

01:21:39.000 Well, there's stuff going on in my kid's school with respect to the bathroom. 0.99

01:21:43.000 This is not a statement.

01:21:44.000 You're a bigot.

01:21:46.000 And I think what happened and they weren't saying this to like hardcore conservative parents, right?

01:21:51.000 We've all heard it before.

01:21:53.000 This is in Fairfax, right?

01:21:55.000 This is you have now told you have now told an Indian immigrant family that they're racist because they're concerned about what's going on in their kid's school.

01:22:04.000 And real quick, these school boards are like white progressives telling minorities they're the racists.

01:22:10.000 Yes. 0.98

01:22:12.000 Or the sexist or the bigot or whatever it is.

01:22:13.000 And I think what happened was is that you had a lot of you had a lot of people that

01:22:18.000 they weren't engaged in politics.

01:22:20.000 They probably voted for Joe Biden because they thought they hated Trump's Twitter account.

01:22:24.000 But they had a real issue that they thought that they could bring up.

01:22:28.000 They bring this up to their elected representatives.

01:22:31.000 And what they found out was no, no, no.

01:22:32.000 The moment you ran afoul of the Democrat narrative, the progressive narrative. 1.00

01:22:37.000 You're a racist. 1.00

01:22:37.000 You're a bigot. 1.00

01:22:38.000 You're a sexist. 0.99

01:22:39.000 Not only that, the father of that, uh, the girl who was attacked was like violently dragged out, wasn't he? 0.98

01:22:44.000 Oh yeah, no, no.

01:22:45.000 He was, he was arrested at that school-born meeting.

01:22:47.000 And it was funny because that was one of the events that the department, the, that the school board association, right?

01:22:52.000 The national school board association wrote a letter to.

01:22:56.000 The Department of Justice, and that's where they were trying to use counterterrorism law in order to crack down on these meetings and school board meetings.

01:23:03.000 And it wasn't until a reporter, I think with the Daily Wire, actually bothered to go to the man, right?

01:23:09.000 Go to the father and say, so why'd you do this?

01:23:11.000 And he goes, because my daughter was raped in a Loudoun school bathroom.

01:23:14.000 And they lied about it and they covered it up and they transferred the kid? 0.51

01:23:17.000 Yep.

01:23:17.000 Loudoun County is literally 20 seconds from here.

01:23:20.000 Yes.

01:23:21.000 Okay, okay.

01:23:21.000 Figuratively, it's about one minute.

01:23:23.000 If you're going a million miles an hour, it's like next door.

01:23:26.000 It literally is.

01:23:27.000 Time and space are the same thing.

01:23:29.000 It's like a half mile, maybe.

01:23:32.000 You drive down the road, you make one left turn.

01:23:36.000 One left turn from here, and you're in Loudoun County.

01:23:39.000 And so, it's big, though.

01:23:41.000 It's big, though.

01:23:41.000 Yeah, no, it's a big county, the wealthiest county in America, right?

01:23:44.000 But you go to, what is it?

01:23:47.000 Is it Leesburg, or what's the... Yeah, Leesburg.

01:23:50.000 Leesburg.

01:23:50.000 You go down there, and I mean, it's Democrat.

01:23:53.000 It is D.C.

01:23:55.000 suburbanite Democrat types.

01:23:57.000 I was surprised to hear this story, because I'm like, when I'm hearing parents rising up, I'm like, these aren't Republicans, man.

01:24:03.000 I mean, there were.

01:24:05.000 I mean, there were Republicans too, but it wasn't just... If it had been just Republicans, we wouldn't have seen the election results we did.

01:24:11.000 I just mean to say that, like, the narrative of the only people who are complaining are Republicans.

01:24:16.000 This was regular suburbanite families.

01:24:18.000 Yeah.

01:24:19.000 You know, of many different backgrounds.

01:24:21.000 But it wasn't just Republicans complaining about something.

01:24:23.000 No, no.

01:24:23.000 The media was trying to claim the far right was doing it and white supremacists.

01:24:26.000 And then we went to a skate park.

01:24:30.000 There's a really great skate park down there, Catoctin.

01:24:32.000 And we saw, like a block away, was a bunch of parents holding up signs protesting about this.

01:24:38.000 And I'm like, just regular looking people.

01:24:39.000 Yeah.

01:24:40.000 But you're in a blue area.

01:24:41.000 So that was what was really surprising to me about the whole fiasco.

01:24:45.000 So what is it?

01:24:46.000 So Youngkin actually runs on school choice, right?

01:24:49.000 He doesn't just run on the typical thing that politicians are, we're going to increase teacher pay, right?

01:24:53.000 We're going to have more money for education.

01:24:54.000 He said, no, we're going to run on school.

01:24:55.000 We're going to actually give parents more control over their child's education.

01:24:59.000 and he wins on it.

01:25:00.000 And this is like a, and so we see a series of bills

01:25:03.000 that come through the Virginia House of Delegates, the Republican controlled House of Delegates.

01:25:07.000 We got education savings accounts.

01:25:09.000 We got a regional charter school bills.

01:25:11.000 We've got lab school bills.

01:25:13.000 We've got, you know, I had a bill.

01:25:15.000 I had a bill called the Safer Schools Bill.

01:25:17.000 And what it did is says, we have this grant for scholarship funds,

01:25:20.000 which means if a company wants to donate money for scholarships for students to be able to go to school,

01:25:26.000 They get a tax credit for it, whatever, right?

01:25:28.000 Every state has one.

01:25:29.000 We got one too.

01:25:30.000 I said, okay, I want to make another type of student eligible for this.

01:25:34.000 And the type of student that will be eligible is a student that has been assaulted, you know, beaten up, bullied.

01:25:41.000 You got to go through a process.

01:25:42.000 Principals got to investigate.

01:25:43.000 They got to sign off on it.

01:25:44.000 But if they sign off on it, we will make funds available through this scholarship fund for the child to go to another public school.

01:25:52.000 Right.

01:25:53.000 I mean, I had some big school choice bills.

01:25:54.000 This was a really minor one.

01:25:55.000 I figured let's do some good for some kids that are getting beat up at school or like this young girl that got raped in a bathroom.

01:26:02.000 Right.

01:26:02.000 Let's do some stuff to help them.

01:26:04.000 Democrats killed that on a straight party line vote.

01:26:06.000 Wow.

01:26:08.000 I can't say I'm surprised, though.

01:26:09.000 Do you think that the Senate needs to be, like, reorganized so that every citizen gets a vote?

01:26:13.000 school choice bill that we did this year, it would pass out of the House of

01:26:17.000 Delegates and then it would go and die in the Senate. Do you think that the

01:26:20.000 Senate needs to be like reorganized so that every citizen gets a vote? No.

01:26:26.000 I'm just so tired of putting all that power in the hands of 400 people. 0.98

01:26:30.000 It's so ridiculous.

01:26:32.000 How many people are in the state Senate of Virginia? 0.96

01:26:33.000 Forty.

01:26:34.000 Forty people get to decide the life or death of a democratic bill.

01:26:39.000 Well, technically, no.

01:26:40.000 People vote for their senators.

01:26:41.000 Vote for their representatives.

01:26:42.000 I mean, look, I don't think the problem is the Senate.

01:26:44.000 The problem is the senators, right?

01:26:46.000 It's who we have.

01:26:48.000 I'll just say real quick.

01:26:50.000 Make sure you're voting in your local elections.

01:26:51.000 Make sure you're voting in your primaries.

01:26:53.000 Yeah, those senators have a lot of power. 0.99

01:26:55.000 So it's 19 Republicans, 21 Democrats, right?

01:26:58.000 That's the Virginia Senate.

01:26:59.000 But it doesn't matter because when you get to their subcommittees, like in the House, let me just explain this process real quick.

01:27:04.000 I know it's kind of boring, but it's important for people to know.

01:27:07.000 Bill comes in, Speaker assigns it to a committee, right?

01:27:12.000 70%, like 50 to 70% of the bills that you see die, die in a subcommittee somewhere.

01:27:16.000 It's not debated on the House floor, dies in a subcommittee. 0.99

01:27:19.000 And it makes sense because there's a lot of stupid ideas and we don't all need to look at them. 1.00

01:27:22.000 But anyways. 0.99

01:27:23.000 So you get a bill from anyone?

01:27:25.000 No, no, no, no.

01:27:26.000 You've got to be a legislator to submit a bill.

01:27:28.000 We submit a bill, it gets drafted, and then we look at all the bills and we say, okay, this bill is for education, education committee.

01:27:33.000 And the subcommittee will be like, this one's not good enough.

01:27:35.000 No, no, no.

01:27:36.000 Subcommittee sits down.

01:27:37.000 So I'm a subcommittee chairman for public safety.

01:27:39.000 All the gun bills come to my subcommittee.

01:27:42.000 So you have a certain number of Republicans, a certain amount of Democrats on the subcommittee, and we hear the bill first.

01:27:48.000 And if we have a majority of that subcommittee that likes the bill, it goes up to the next level, right?

01:27:52.000 But in the House, we do proportional representation.

01:27:57.000 So we've got 52 Republicans, 48 Democrats.

01:27:59.000 So if you look at our committees, that's reflected in the numbers

01:28:03.000 that we have in the committees.

01:28:04.000 The Senate, 19 Republicans, 21 Democrats.

01:28:07.000 You'll go to a Senate committee, they'll have like nine Democrats and three Republicans.

01:28:12.000 Yeah, the federal government's like that too.

01:28:14.000 They pick.

01:28:14.000 Yeah, so there's no way you can get—so even though you—if you make a good enough argument— It's like internal gerrymandering.

01:28:19.000 If you make a good enough argument, you might be able to get something out of a Republican-controlled House committee, because we only got a majority of two.

01:28:27.000 On the Senate side, they will stack those committees, and even if you could get enough votes on the floor of the Senate, They will make sure it goes to a committee where it will never see the light of day.

01:28:35.000 Do you think that they intentionally have senators pick the committees so that there isn't a democratic voice because of the compounding effect of democracy that mob rule can take over?

01:28:47.000 No, it's just part of this is whoever the controlling party is in a particular legislative body, they want to be able to control the outcome for what legislation makes it to the floor and what gets sent over to the other body.

01:29:00.000 But the thing is, is what we did in Virginia on the House of Delegates side, what we said is like, look, there needs to be proportional representation on these committees because it's a more accurate reflection of what the people actually elected.

01:29:12.000 But you can manipulate that committee process pretty bad.

01:29:14.000 And again, it's not every committee, but it's been frustrating.

01:29:17.000 I think it should be like... I talked with Thomas Massey about this.

01:29:19.000 We've got to do that in the federal government as well.

01:29:21.000 It's ridiculous that the Democrats win by 51% and then they pick all the committee chairs because that one... And they make sure the ones that matter the most, they have the majority on.

01:29:31.000 Yeah, that doesn't seem right.

01:29:32.000 And then they can shuffle people into the, you know... Oh, the Republicans can have a committee we don't care about.

01:29:36.000 Yeah, it's got to change.

01:29:38.000 So did you guys change it in Virginia?

01:29:40.000 So the majority party gets the committee chairs.

01:29:44.000 That just happens.

01:29:45.000 It wouldn't make sense for it to not happen that way.

01:29:48.000 The difference is that we don't stack our committees.

01:29:51.000 Who picks how they get?

01:29:53.000 The speaker.

01:29:54.000 Most people don't understand how much power the Speaker of the House has.

01:29:58.000 The Speaker of the House has an enormous amount of power.

01:30:00.000 And the Speaker will say, you have to pick three Republicans and two Democrats for this?

01:30:03.000 So then they look and they decide?

01:30:05.000 In Virginia, yeah.

01:30:06.000 Again, because we have proportional representation, it's like, okay, you're going to have this many Republicans, this many Democrats, blah, blah, blah.

01:30:12.000 Do you see people change party affiliation on paper so that they can get into a committee when they're actually still the same person?

01:30:17.000 It doesn't work that way.

01:30:19.000 It doesn't work that way.

01:30:21.000 You gotta run for the party's nomination, get elected to that.

01:30:24.000 You could theoretically try to switch when you're there, but that doesn't happen.

01:30:28.000 Will you propose a bill to pass constitutional carry in Virginia?

01:30:32.000 I carried the bill this year for constitutional carry.

01:30:36.000 So we had a House version, we had a Senate version.

01:30:40.000 The Senators killed the Senate version right away and so ours didn't go forward.

01:30:44.000 Because every once in a while we'll do that, we'll look at bills.

01:30:47.000 No, I carried a lot of gun legislation.

01:30:50.000 I usually do.

01:30:52.000 Virginia is not so bad. 0.64

01:30:53.000 Maryland is a nightmarish.

01:30:55.000 The laws up here.

01:30:57.000 But constitutional care would be something great because we live in the tri-state.

01:31:01.000 I live in West Virginia.

01:31:02.000 We work in Maryland.

01:31:03.000 West Virginia is fantastic.

01:31:05.000 You can conceal carry.

01:31:06.000 You can carry open.

01:31:07.000 West Virginia just passed great school choice legislation.

01:31:09.000 They've done a lot of good work.

01:31:12.000 Some of the pushback I've heard on school choice is that if everyone has the opportunity to send their kid to whatever school they want in the surrounding area that a lot of people will go to the good school first and all these other schools that need students for money are going to go out of business or get worse.

01:31:26.000 This is why you should fund students and not a particular building.

01:31:30.000 And again, we've gotten so used to the way education has been monopolized and run by the government that it's hard to imagine another way to do it.

01:31:37.000 But think about, again, think about the way you buy anything else, right?

01:31:42.000 You don't have a government store you go to in order to buy something, right?

01:31:46.000 Let's hear that story about the grocery store story.

01:31:48.000 So the way I've described this before is we all agree education is important.

01:31:52.000 We also agree eating is important.

01:31:54.000 So, let's imagine that the government at some point said, you know what, eating is so important that here's how we're going to do this.

01:32:00.000 We're going to set up thousands of government grocery stores all over the country and then you're going to be assigned a government grocery store based off of your address.

01:32:07.000 Now, when you show up to the government grocery store, you're not going to actually shop for your groceries.

01:32:11.000 Your groceries will be decided for you based off of a government board and the caloric intake or the nutritional necessities of your particular family.

01:32:19.000 Now, if you don't like something in the grocery bag, not a big deal.

01:32:22.000 All you have to do is show up to a bunch of board meetings or go and lobby your state legislature in order to get a different product into your grocery bag or out of your grocery bag.

01:32:31.000 Oh, by the way, none of the employees working at this government grocery store will be rewarded based off of creativity, ingenuity, or work ethic.

01:32:38.000 They will only be rewarded based off of seniority.

01:32:42.000 Does anybody think that is a grocery store you would want?

01:32:46.000 Would you want that to be your grocery store option?

01:32:48.000 No.

01:32:49.000 Negative.

01:32:49.000 No.

01:32:50.000 I haven't had a single person, surprisingly enough, I have not had a single person yet go, oh my gosh, that sounds like a great idea.

01:32:55.000 Utopia.

01:32:56.000 I don't know about Ian, but I'm in favor of school choice.

01:32:58.000 I am.

01:32:59.000 I'm interested in learning more about it.

01:33:01.000 But here's the point.

01:33:02.000 I go back and I say, okay, But what I just described is exactly what we did with public education.

01:33:06.000 You are assigned a government school based off of your address.

01:33:09.000 When you show up to the government school, you don't have any say over the curriculum, over the class, or a very, very limited say over what you can do.

01:33:15.000 If you have a problem with what's being taught or with what's not being taught, great!

01:33:19.000 Try to re-elect your school board or maybe go to the state legislature and try to get something changed there.

01:33:23.000 And by the way, none of your teachers are rewarded based off of how good a job they do.

01:33:27.000 They're just rewarded off of seniority.

01:33:29.000 Not to mention the fact, now again, everyone can then see in that example that, okay, maybe there is a better way to run education.

01:33:37.000 How would that look?

01:33:38.000 And the thing I say is, okay, well, are you happy with the grocery store options you have?

01:33:43.000 Yeah, are you happy with the options that you have to buy a smartphone?

01:33:46.000 Are you happy with the options you have to go and do other educational opportunities?

01:33:51.000 Yeah, okay, well then, maybe that's because when you as the customer of the product or service have the power The rest of the world is trying to get you to be their customer.

01:34:03.000 Yeah.

01:34:04.000 Okay.

01:34:04.000 The government doesn't have that incentive.

01:34:05.000 I don't need you to be my customer.

01:34:07.000 I don't need you to like what I'm doing.

01:34:08.000 Would the schools be able to be like, Hey, if you come to our school, it'll be easier to graduate.

01:34:12.000 Or will there be some sort of government oversight?

01:34:14.000 Here's the thing.

01:34:15.000 Is that what a parent wants for their kid?

01:34:16.000 I don't know.

01:34:17.000 I don't know what they want.

01:34:17.000 I don't even know if they, they want education.

01:34:19.000 I think primarily they want them to understand how to learn.

01:34:22.000 They want them to understand how to learn, and then really what they want is they want them to be able to learn the basic social and economic skills they're gonna need to be an independent adult, right?

01:34:32.000 And that's your oversight mechanism.

01:34:34.000 It's not to say you can't have some government restrictions or guardrails.

01:34:37.000 You can.

01:34:39.000 But the oversight restriction is, no, I as a customer want the best for my child, and now I have the ability to go find what that looks like.

01:34:47.000 That's on the demand side.

01:34:49.000 On the supply side, Now all of a sudden you have this huge world where schooling is no longer based off of a government building you go to.

01:34:57.000 Khan Academy.

01:34:58.000 Jordan Peterson, if you could divvy up your $18,000 a year stipend amongst the great creators and educators of our time that are on the internet, that'd be so great.

01:35:07.000 Did you get to meet Matt Walsh when he came down?

01:35:09.000 I did not.

01:35:09.000 That was great.

01:35:10.000 He rented an apartment because they tried... A basement.

01:35:13.000 Yeah, a basement.

01:35:14.000 They tried stopping him from speaking.

01:35:15.000 I know the people he rented from, though.

01:35:18.000 So Matt Walsh was going to speak.

01:35:19.000 They're like, oh, you got to be a resident.

01:35:20.000 So he's like, all right.

01:35:21.000 So he rented a basement, I guess.

01:35:22.000 That was great.

01:35:23.000 Brilliant, brilliant.

01:35:24.000 All right, let's go to Super Chats.

01:35:25.000 If you haven't already, smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, share the show with your friends if you really want to help out.

01:35:30.000 Become a member at TimCast.com.

01:35:32.000 Sign up, get access to our exclusive members-only segments, and your membership will also keep our journalists funded.

01:35:39.000 We'll now go to your Super Chats.

01:35:40.000 So get your Super Chats in.

01:35:42.000 We'll read what you guys have to say.

01:35:44.000 Oh, here's an interesting name.

01:35:46.000 Trinidad, a shop out of pressure says, Nick Freitas, big fan of yours from Culpeper, Virginia.

01:35:51.000 Glad to see my rep on one of my favorite shows.

01:35:53.000 Thank you very much.

01:35:54.000 Absolutely.

01:35:54.000 And thanks for saying we're a favorite show.

01:35:55.000 I appreciate it.

01:35:57.000 All right.

01:35:58.000 Joseph La Liberté says, Nick has two great speeches.

01:36:02.000 One about a green beret and the other about gun control.

01:36:05.000 This dude is awesome.

01:36:06.000 I love this guy.

01:36:07.000 He's my hero.

01:36:07.000 Wow.

01:36:09.000 You know Ben Stewart?

01:36:11.000 You have a great audience.

01:36:13.000 One day I want to get you and Ben Stewart next to each other and break the internet because I think you guys look so similar.

01:36:18.000 That'll break the internet.

01:36:20.000 I get told I look like the guy off of Outer Banks that's always trying to steal the gold from the kid.

01:36:26.000 Stealing the gold.

01:36:27.000 The Bros Durham says, Hey, Nick, why don't you come down to Hampton Roads and rep for us?

01:36:32.000 So don't get me wrong.

01:36:33.000 Hampton Roads, wonderful place.

01:36:35.000 I briefly live there, but I do.

01:36:37.000 I do enjoy the Piedmont of Virginia, but you've got some good people down there in the Hampton Roads area.

01:36:41.000 My AC Cardoza and I hung out down there for a few months.

01:36:45.000 Hannah Anderson.

01:36:46.000 Yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun.

01:36:48.000 Hampton Roads, man.

01:36:49.000 Go hang out in Norfolk a little bit.

01:36:50.000 Virginia is a big place.

01:36:51.000 Yeah, it is very big.

01:36:53.000 Let's grab some super chats.

01:36:55.000 David Sanchez says, fifth time trying to super chat.

01:36:58.000 Well, I got you now, buddy.

01:36:59.000 In the future, if Biden does nothing substantial to protect, what does that say?

01:37:04.000 To protect the world?

01:37:06.000 I don't know.

01:37:06.000 You think there is anything the next Congress election can force him to address or aid Taiwan?

01:37:15.000 I don't know.

01:37:16.000 I think there's like a typo in, you know, you tried five times, but there's like a weird typo.

01:37:21.000 I can't read what it means.

01:37:22.000 Yeah, that is strange.

01:37:23.000 Is there anything the next congressional election can force him to address?

01:37:28.000 I don't know if so much it's about the congressional election.

01:37:30.000 I think it's public pressure.

01:37:31.000 And if they see the polls, clearly the CDC is now announcing, oh, we're gonna pull back on the masks and everything.

01:37:36.000 Yeah, because they know they're spiraling.

01:37:38.000 Yeah, I thought it was funny that it wasn't the medical science that changed on masks.

01:37:43.000 It was the political science with respect to the polling that caused them to finally wake up to the fact that maybe this is not a good idea.

01:37:49.000 Hey, we're gonna lose an election, huh?

01:37:50.000 Yeah.

01:37:50.000 All right.

01:37:52.000 Gunn Griffin says, for Nick, in Vietnam, we weren't prepared for insurgency warfare with General Westmoreland attempting a conventional war.

01:37:59.000 After 60 years of regular warfare, are we prepared to return to conventional?

01:38:03.000 That's a great, that is a great question, because he's absolutely right.

01:38:07.000 We, for the last 20 years, we built a military around the idea of counterinsurgency and, you know, initially a little bit was was U-Dub, but mainly it was counterinsurgency.

01:38:16.000 Now it's getting back into the realm of actually trying to fight a large conventional conflict.

01:38:21.000 And we can see the potential for something like that happening with Russia.

01:38:24.000 I think we can recognize the potential for something like that happening with China as well.

01:38:28.000 So I will say that I know it was a concern that was being addressed, but I mean, let's face it, the United States military has a track record for fighting the strategy of the previous war.

01:38:38.000 And so there's always going to be a learning curve that takes place when you have an officer corps or an NCO corps that has grown up in kind of one style of fighting and then you move into a different style.

01:38:49.000 It can be difficult.

01:38:49.000 The one thing I will say is that while the United States military has not always been the best at predicting the next sort of tactics that will be necessary for the next conflict, it does have a track record of adapting usually very quickly in order to overcome.

01:39:05.000 Here's a good one from Vashtz.

01:39:06.000 He says, you and others keep saying Trump would have been better.

01:39:09.000 I need to remind you, Hong Kong fell to China under him, so I'm not so sure.

01:39:13.000 Yes, that is a good point.

01:39:14.000 But I would add, that was the UK and China having what was a negotiation in the 90s, I think it was.

01:39:19.000 And so this was a long set up China, like timeline that we knew was going to happen.

01:39:24.000 And it was all done through a legal process with the UK and China.

01:39:29.000 And there were protests.

01:39:31.000 But it's not the same as, you know, Russia invading a sovereign nation.

01:39:35.000 Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to understand at that point, Hong Kong was part of China's jurisdiction.

01:39:39.000 There were certain agreements with respect to how their government would be run for like another 50 years.

01:39:44.000 That's a little bit differently than a full-on invasion of a sovereign country.

01:39:49.000 I mean, but again, it still was horrible.

01:39:51.000 Random username says, when Trump says he will bomb the golden turrets, he's talking about bombing churches.

01:39:57.000 Yes.

01:39:58.000 I don't, I, I should have clarified that.

01:40:00.000 Maybe I assume people understood.

01:40:01.000 He's talking about the, you know, the, the steeples or whatever, the spires and stuff. 0.97

01:40:05.000 He was talking about blowing up churches in a civilian city and maybe Vladimir Putin was like, this guy's nuts. 0.99

01:40:10.000 This guy's nuts. 0.99

01:40:11.000 Yeah, man. 0.99

01:40:16.000 Brooke Harrington says I have a co-worker with family in Russia.

01:40:19.000 I'm told they were bombed by Ukraine first two days ago.

01:40:22.000 Any validity to this?

01:40:24.000 I don't know if that's true.

01:40:26.000 I can tell you this, with RT going down, you better believe in the West, they're going to try and restrict information coming out of Russia, and you better believe Russia is going to try and manipulate you into believing they're being victimized.

01:40:37.000 I think, yeah, both of those statements are absolutely true.

01:40:40.000 The one thing I would question is, I don't know what it gets Ukraine to be the initial aggressor with Russia.

01:40:47.000 Oh, for sure.

01:40:47.000 Yeah, that's insane.

01:40:48.000 I do not know what would...

01:40:50.000 Yeah.

01:40:51.000 Yeah.

01:40:51.000 All right.

01:40:52.000 Marco says, I am from Norway.

01:40:54.000 Russia has always done military practice outside Nordic Sea for like 20 years.

01:40:58.000 Never been problematic.

01:40:59.000 Even Russia helped Norway under World War II on the Nordic side of Norway.

01:41:04.000 Interesting.

01:41:04.000 I love the history of Russia and the United States is great because it was like we were enemies, but we worked together to defeat a common enemy.

01:41:11.000 And that's what we should be doing today.

01:41:13.000 Gosh, what the heck?

01:41:14.000 Yeah, well, the story of East and West Germany is... oof.

01:41:18.000 I mean, the story of the Soviet Union.

01:41:20.000 Brutal.

01:41:20.000 You ever hear the story of Tetris, the video game?

01:41:23.000 Oh my gosh, so long.

01:41:25.000 There's an urban legend about the guy.

01:41:26.000 We've all dated ourselves, go ahead.

01:41:28.000 Basically, there was a...

01:41:30.000 There was a game in Russia they were playing where you would take the Tetris shapes, but just place them.

01:41:35.000 And then some dude made the block falling version. 0.90

01:41:37.000 Yeah.

01:41:38.000 And it's like, how do you in Russia make a product that can be commercialized internationally?

01:41:42.000 How does it even work?

01:41:43.000 Yeah.

01:41:44.000 And so I guess like Russia was communist and they were like, it's communist.

01:41:47.000 So we get, you know, but apparently everyone in the West just ripped them off anyway.

01:41:50.000 And they're like lawsuits.

01:41:51.000 Crazy story.

01:41:52.000 Wow.

01:41:53.000 There's a two player Tetris on the NES that got, that got sued into oblivion.

01:41:57.000 It was made by some other company.

01:41:59.000 That was always crazy to me.

01:42:00.000 Like, why would anyone respect an international lawsuit during a cold war?

01:42:05.000 You know, some guys like I made a video game.

01:42:06.000 It's like, well, he won the lawsuit, right?

01:42:08.000 It's like the bureaucrats are still trying to make money off of it.

01:42:11.000 Yeah.

01:42:11.000 That's what war is for those guys.

01:42:14.000 Let's grab some more Super Chats.

01:42:16.000 Oh, people are saying my camera's blue.

01:42:18.000 Yeah, I don't know why that happens sometimes.

01:42:19.000 It is indeed.

01:42:19.000 I'm aware.

01:42:20.000 Yep, well, I am blue, dabba dee dabba die, says Josh.

01:42:22.000 I think so.

01:42:23.000 Thanks, Josh.

01:42:23.000 That's correct.

01:42:23.000 That's Eiffel 70.

01:42:24.000 Eiffel 77, I think.

01:42:25.000 Is that what it was?

01:42:26.000 Is that it?

01:42:26.000 Yeah, they wrote that.

01:42:28.000 They brought it back for one of the Iron Mans, right?

01:42:30.000 I love that song.

01:42:31.000 Yeah.

01:42:32.000 CJ says when Trump took office, ISIS was the top foreign policy issue.

01:42:36.000 He set aside our differences with Russia to solve that problem, and the deep state hated it.

01:42:40.000 Meanwhile, the Minsk agreement stewed.

01:42:42.000 Yeah, because I think, I think the U.S.

01:42:45.000 was hoping that ISIS would destabilize Syria so that we could get a more favorable regime in, and then we could build our pipeline through Syria.

01:42:53.000 But Trump getting rid of ISIS, while the right thing.

01:42:57.000 Yeah, I think the bureaucrats, the military industrial complex were upset.

01:43:03.000 Weird stuff went down with ISIS and the Syrian rebels.

01:43:06.000 I got to tell you that.

01:43:06.000 Yeah.

01:43:07.000 To clarify, it was Eiffel 65.

01:43:09.000 That song blew.

01:43:11.000 Great song.

01:43:14.000 Sea Griff says, it's time for the U.S.

01:43:16.000 to leave the U.N.

01:43:17.000 It's nothing but global bureaucracy and sanctions, which never really do anything to determine countries like Russia and China.

01:43:25.000 So here's where I disagree.

01:43:26.000 The U.N.

01:43:27.000 does a lot.

01:43:28.000 Like, for instance, they will write strong notes of protest.

01:43:31.000 They do, yes.

01:43:31.000 To Israel.

01:43:33.000 And may I just add, before we continue.

01:43:34.000 I've heard they've wagged their finger.

01:43:36.000 About the UN.

01:43:37.000 Relentlessly.

01:43:38.000 And shaken their fist quite fiercely.

01:43:40.000 Stomped their foot perhaps.

01:43:41.000 Guys, guys, the UN Security Council resolution concerning condemning, sorry I can't read, Russia for the invasion of Ukraine has failed due to the Russian vote and China has abstained.

01:43:52.000 So the UN is doing great stuff over there.

01:43:58.000 Not only have they done great work there, but they have done great work for the parking situation in New York City.

01:44:04.000 I'm all for foreign engagement.

01:44:05.000 Yeah. No, like I honestly and again, this is someone that I'm all for foreign engagement.

01:44:11.000 I'm all for I think it should be primarily economic and cultural, you know, as little as possible.

01:44:15.000 But I look at the United Nations and what is it doing at this point other than giving an air of

01:44:22.000 legitimacy to brutal dictatorships that don't have genuine democracies are regularly trampling on

01:44:28.000 people's civil liberties. And like the number one thing the U.N. does is pass resolutions condemning

01:44:35.000 Like, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't see, I have a hard time seeing the point.

01:44:39.000 Are you familiar with the Non-Aligned Movement?

01:44:42.000 No.

01:44:42.000 Isn't this amazing?

01:44:43.000 It's the other UN.

01:44:44.000 It's global.

01:44:45.000 It's 120 countries are in this non-aligned movement.

01:44:47.000 It's the countries that aren't in the UN, basically.

01:44:49.000 All of Africa, South America, I think Mexico's in it. 0.98

01:44:52.000 Iran, it was headquartered in Iran.

01:44:53.000 They're all in the UN.

01:44:54.000 Yeah.

01:44:55.000 Oh, no, they're not blue.

01:44:57.000 Check them out.

01:44:57.000 This is really the non-aligned movement, and you can get a map of it.

01:45:00.000 Interesting.

01:45:01.000 There's light blue and dark blue, so Mexico's light blue.

01:45:03.000 I gotta read.

01:45:04.000 This is a very, very good super chat here.

01:45:06.000 Turk, say no to war. 0.98

01:45:07.000 Longwell says, dude, Biden hitting a speed bag was a total 100.

01:45:12.000 Wow.

01:45:13.000 Good stuff.

01:45:14.000 Oh, yeah, for sure.

01:45:15.000 Thanks, Turk.

01:45:16.000 I got you, B. All right.

01:45:20.000 Thrawn says, can't show you Joe Biden hitting a speed bag, but I've seen a few pics of Hunter hitting a speedball.

01:45:26.000 Oh, that's right.

01:45:28.000 I'd be fine with a deep fake of Biden hitting a speed bag at this point.

01:45:31.000 I just want to see it happen.

01:45:32.000 A video.

01:45:33.000 Really fast, you know, like you see his muscles twitching in his arms.

01:45:35.000 Good propaganda.

01:45:36.000 Something from Rocky 3.

01:45:37.000 Going up steps.

01:45:38.000 Yeah.

01:45:39.000 Kevin D. Sturmtruppen says, the Vietnam story you're referring to is Operation Wandering

01:45:47.000 Soul.

01:45:48.000 There's plenty of uploads of the actual declassified tapes the CIA made to blast on speakers.

01:45:52.000 Supposedly gave US servicemen a bit of a fright too.

01:45:55.000 Oh, that would be so cool.

01:45:56.000 That would be so creepy as heck.

01:45:57.000 Wow.

01:45:58.000 I think we should just do that in our woods right outside.

01:46:00.000 That's a good idea.

01:46:01.000 We've got big speakers and just play wailing songs.

01:46:03.000 And then just act like you don't know what your neighbors are talking about.

01:46:06.000 I shouldn't have questioned you, Tim.

01:46:06.000 Did you hear that thing?

01:46:07.000 I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it.

01:46:09.000 People apologizing to you for what they did and stuff.

01:46:12.000 That would be hilarious.

01:46:14.000 I shouldn't have broken into Tim's house.

01:46:15.000 I'm sorry for betraying him.

01:46:17.000 I was trapped.

01:46:18.000 Don't drink the water.

01:46:19.000 Oh my gosh.

01:46:23.000 Alright, Dragon Lady says, evening y'all, no Cast Castle today?

01:46:26.000 That makes me sad.

01:46:28.000 Need my bucko fix.

01:46:29.000 Oh my gosh, me too.

01:46:30.000 Yeah, Nick was sick.

01:46:31.000 I just hugged him earlier.

01:46:32.000 Oh, Nick wasn't feeling well today?

01:46:34.000 No, he was sick the other day.

01:46:36.000 So yeah, go to youtube.com slash castcastle if you want to see what it's like inside the Cast Castle operation, how we make all of the, what is it?

01:46:43.000 How the sausage is made.

01:46:46.000 It will shock and devastate you.

01:46:48.000 It's horrible.

01:46:49.000 That's why I showed up today, I was told there would be sausage.

01:46:51.000 Oh yeah, it's true.

01:46:52.000 You were right.

01:46:53.000 He was.

01:46:53.000 I'm sorry.

01:46:53.000 There's leftover pizza from Papa John's.

01:46:55.000 Oh, there you go.

01:46:56.000 That's good.

01:46:57.000 And a lot of chicken nuggets or whatever.

01:46:58.000 True.

01:46:59.000 Chicken wads.

01:47:00.000 Chicken wads.

01:47:01.000 Wads of chicken.

01:47:01.000 We buy their just wads of chicken.

01:47:04.000 All right, let's grab some more.

01:47:05.000 Let's grab some more.

01:47:07.000 Uh oh, people are mad at Ian.

01:47:08.000 Mitch Marco says, I don't know what's more annoying, Ian claiming to love the art of movies despite not seeing a movie made in the last 20 years or getting caught up on words that have nothing to do with the route word.

01:47:19.000 The root word?

01:47:20.000 The second one's more annoying.

01:47:21.000 The one where I get caught up in words is more annoying.

01:47:24.000 I know.

01:47:24.000 Here's a good one.

01:47:26.000 Jay Schartzer says, Tim, bring Lex Friedman on when he's back.

01:47:29.000 He went to Russia to talk sense to Putin.

01:47:30.000 Oh, good.

01:47:31.000 Don't know if that will work out, but he's a smart guy.

01:47:33.000 So who knows?

01:47:34.000 Love Lex.

01:47:35.000 I mean, yeah, I'd love to, but Lex is a super busy guy.

01:47:37.000 Yeah.

01:47:37.000 You know, people who already have shows, you know, you got to work around their schedule and especially someone like Lex.

01:47:42.000 He's got a big show.

01:47:44.000 But I will say sometimes it's more important.

01:47:46.000 I think you would come on and report the conversation and talk about it.

01:47:49.000 That's now's the time.

01:47:50.000 Lex is always invited.

01:47:51.000 Of course.

01:47:51.000 Yeah, he hit me up once about doing something with his show and then never happened.

01:47:56.000 He was too busy.

01:47:56.000 Love him.

01:47:57.000 Well, no, I was.

01:47:58.000 Yeah, because he hit me up and I was like, bro, I don't know if I can do it.

01:48:01.000 Tim went with the power play there.

01:48:03.000 I'm sorry, I'm busy.

01:48:05.000 I can't go on your show.

01:48:06.000 I'm too busy for this.

01:48:07.000 No, Alex is fantastic.

01:48:09.000 I'd love to.

01:48:09.000 But I was busy and then I got back to him and I was like, you know what, I think I can do it.

01:48:13.000 And he's like, now I can't.

01:48:15.000 And I'm like, eh, hit me up at any time.

01:48:17.000 It'll be a great conversation.

01:48:19.000 But I'd love to have him.

01:48:20.000 That'd be fantastic.

01:48:22.000 All right.

01:48:24.000 Adrian says, do you know anything about the Ukrainian U.S.

01:48:27.000 biolabs that Russia hit?

01:48:28.000 Love the show.

01:48:29.000 Keep up the good work.

01:48:30.000 I don't think they did.

01:48:32.000 There was a meme showing a map saying like, here's where all the biolabs are and here's where Russia attacked, but they didn't line up.

01:48:37.000 We talked about this last night.

01:48:39.000 Yeah, on the after show.

01:48:41.000 They didn't line up.

01:48:42.000 I'm no fan of Snopes, but Snopes pointed that out too.

01:48:44.000 The maps aren't the same.

01:48:45.000 The attacks aren't in the same places.

01:48:46.000 That's Ukraine, Pennsylvania.

01:48:47.000 It's a different place.

01:48:48.000 Yeah, it's a little different.

01:48:51.000 Yeah, so John Boyce says, Lex Friedman announced today he's heading to Ukraine to speak to friends and then to Russia to speak to Putin.

01:48:57.000 Don't think it's possible, but if he does, it's crazy.

01:49:00.000 Your thoughts?

01:49:00.000 I think it's a bad idea.

01:49:02.000 For Lex, That's crazy.

01:49:06.000 Oh, I don't think so. He's been planning it for a while with Putin. They've been at least he talked about a couple

01:49:10.000 weeks ago Well before all this actually with Vladimir Putin. Yeah,

01:49:13.000 that's that's good. Then that's absolutely fantastic.

01:49:15.000 Absolutely I'm thinking about him going into Ukraine because I would I

01:49:20.000 You you you got it. You got to have a certain understanding of urban conflict

01:49:25.000 I mean, what are your thoughts on war?

01:49:27.000 Would you recommend, I don't know Lex's background.

01:49:29.000 Would I recommend urban?

01:49:30.000 Out of all the conflicts, would you recommend urban?

01:49:32.000 No, no, I mean like, would you, Lex Freedman's background I don't think is in conflict.

01:49:37.000 I don't know if he has that experience.

01:49:39.000 I personally wouldn't recommend somebody to go into a conflict if they don't have any experience.

01:49:42.000 No, it's generally a bad idea.

01:49:44.000 Especially something like this where it's very fast moving, you're gonna have a lot of, again, As the Russian lines move forward and you have, like, pockets of troops that are in urban areas as they hand out, like, you know, weapons to their civilian population to be able to fight back, you're gonna have a lot of people running around and playing clothes and whatnot just because it's the nature of warfare.

01:50:03.000 So if you're running around and playing clothes, sorry, dude.

01:50:06.000 Like, I don't know what to tell you.

01:50:07.000 Yeah, right?

01:50:08.000 Maybe you want to be wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

01:50:10.000 Yeah.

01:50:10.000 Or just, like, a speedo and nothing else because... No, they're not gonna know.

01:50:14.000 If they see a guy who looks like a weirdo, Okay, so in that area of the world, running around in a Speedo, nothing else in the winter, it's pretty normal, I'm pretty sure.

01:50:22.000 Yeah, I'm guessing that's not good.

01:50:24.000 I'm obviously kidding.

01:50:25.000 Nice try, Speedo. 0.99

01:50:27.000 The issue is, if you're a regular person in plain clothes wearing a jacket, they're gonna kill you.

01:50:32.000 You need like a Hawaiian shirt.

01:50:32.000 Because you could be somebody who's armed, you could be part of the conflict, and they don't know, and no one wants to take the chance.

01:50:38.000 If they don't know you, and you're not from their neighborhood, don't expect to be able to walk through there.

01:50:43.000 If you can't speak the language either, I mean, that's a huge problem.

01:50:46.000 I was in Maidan during the protests that started in 2013 and in 2014, and they eventually got to the point where they built these massive barricades around Independence Square, or whatever they call it.

01:51:00.000 And I was walking around with my British producers from Vice.

01:51:04.000 We walked out, When we came to walk back in, we got surrounded by like 15 Ukrainian guys who were yelling at us in Ukrainian.

01:51:12.000 And the only thing I had to do was say like, American, speak English, sorry.

01:51:17.000 And then someone came in and started speaking Ukrainian and backed them off.

01:51:20.000 And they were like American journalists.

01:51:22.000 And they were like, please, please, please come in, come in.

01:51:23.000 But the guy's with me, I'm like, they're British, they're not American. 1.00

01:51:26.000 But it was cool.

01:51:27.000 And actually, we actually got to talk to a former Soviet general.

01:51:30.000 That was super cool.

01:51:31.000 But when you go into an area, you don't speak the language and they're all yelling at you.

01:51:34.000 Let me tell you man, I was in Turkey and we went to this neighborhood, they call it like the last anarchist neighborhood of Istanbul.

01:51:40.000 There was a street where the anarchists were throwing molotovs at cops and the cops were, you know, holding the line and firing less lethals.

01:51:49.000 So we went around and went on a side street to try and go in, and we've got, it's me and a guy with a camera and another producer, when all of a sudden a whole bunch of Turkish dudes run up to us holding molotovs, screaming at us in Turkish, and one guy holds a molotov cocktail right up to the side of my face.

01:52:05.000 And my response, I put my hands up, I said nothing, and I just nodded, and I slowly turned and started to walk away.

01:52:13.000 The guys I was with were, like, kind of more excited.

01:52:16.000 And I was just like, as we walked, I was like, guys, guys, don't try and speak English in an excited way to somebody who doesn't speak English or is not speaking English to you.

01:52:26.000 Because the only thing they hear is you going, back at them, and they might think you're aggressive.

01:52:32.000 So just, you know, put your hands up, nod, and then just walk in the direction they point.

01:52:38.000 I would just say, man, Vice sent me on some... Vice had sent me out a couple times into conflict with producers who had no conflict experience.

01:52:48.000 Oh boy.

01:52:49.000 And I just want to say, it is... It's exciting.

01:52:53.000 Maybe the most stressful thing I've ever experienced is knowing that I'm responsible for the life of someone because... That doesn't know what they're doing.

01:53:02.000 And that's putting me in danger?

01:53:04.000 Yeah.

01:53:05.000 Man.

01:53:06.000 But Vice is also, you know, to their credit...

01:53:10.000 Sent me out with people with way more experience than I have.

01:53:13.000 And one of the most heartwarming moments was when I was in Ferguson and the first gunshots went out.

01:53:19.000 And I'm already on the ground, and I look to my right, my producer's already on the ground as well.

01:53:23.000 And this is a guy who had been trained in firearms, who had been to war, because Vice has some good people, they really do.

01:53:28.000 And I was just like, yeah.

01:53:30.000 I look to my left, there's a guy from ABC News, standing up, looking around, and he goes, those fireworks?

01:53:35.000 And I'm just like, oh man.

01:53:38.000 I felt bad for the guy.

01:53:38.000 You ain't gonna make it.

01:53:40.000 But you know what I say to them?

01:53:41.000 Do you see anyone holding fireworks?

01:53:44.000 Do you see anyone holding guns?

01:53:47.000 Make an assumption.

01:53:49.000 That's what we call deductive reasoning.

01:53:51.000 It's crazy though, like I've been on the ground with people where the gunshots ring out and they stand there like it's just fireworks.

01:53:58.000 Where do you think you are?

01:53:59.000 You know what's kind of an aside to that?

01:54:02.000 It's because a lot of people, again, one of the benefits of especially growing up in the United States is most people, not everyone, most people have grown up in an environment where they really haven't had to experience any sort of conflict or deprivation.

01:54:12.000 Or gunfire.

01:54:14.000 So it's this idea of like, well, that can't be that.

01:54:17.000 Like, no, no, it actually can be.

01:54:19.000 That's the craziest thing, too.

01:54:21.000 As much as America is this gun country, people, urban liberals have not heard a gun go off.

01:54:27.000 They've heard movies where it's like, bang, bang, pow, pow, pow.

01:54:30.000 Or silenced.

01:54:31.000 And then you hear a .22, and you know, someone who's never heard a gun would be like, is that a firecracker going off? 0.60

01:54:36.000 And it's like, no, that will kill you.

01:54:38.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:54:39.000 Man, who was it who said you can conquer a nation?

01:54:41.000 Was it Bannon?

01:54:41.000 You can conquer a nation with 1,022, you know, rifle, like Ruger 10-22s.

01:54:45.000 Interesting.

01:54:46.000 Was it Bannon?

01:54:46.000 Maybe it wasn't.

01:54:47.000 We were talking to someone who's like, A thousand Ruger 10-22s can take over a small country.

01:54:51.000 I'm like, eh, it's a weapon.

01:54:55.000 Alright, let's grab some more Super Chats.

01:54:58.000 V Rise says the ghost of Kiev has been proven to be fake, yet many leftist communities online acknowledge and blatantly say they don't care that it's fake, they are still going to believe it.

01:55:07.000 Thoughts?

01:55:07.000 I have not seen any evidence saying it's fake.

01:55:10.000 I'm not saying I've seen any evidence to say it's real, to be completely honest.

01:55:13.000 They're like, this is the ghost of Kiev, and I'm like, that's just a picture of a fighter jet.

01:55:16.000 It's one picture.

01:55:18.000 Like, how is it evidence of any of this being true?

01:55:20.000 Sounds like manipulation.

01:55:22.000 As far as I can tell, it's not been proven or disproven to me.

01:55:24.000 Thinking about like, um, uh, what's his name from, uh, World War II, the British guy.

01:55:28.000 I don't know why I'm blanking on that.

01:55:31.000 Yeah.

01:55:31.000 That does not narrow it down.

01:55:32.000 The British prime minister.

01:55:33.000 Winston Churchill.

01:55:33.000 Yeah.

01:55:33.000 Churchill was like, it was all about morale, uh, more like mentality, propaganda and keeping people sane, like giving them, giving them motivation.

01:55:42.000 He would like, he had no idea if they were going to win or lose, but he would tell them they were going to win.

01:55:45.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:55:46.000 Every night.

01:55:47.000 Here's a good one from Damien Simmons.

01:55:49.000 In Revelations, the dragon gives power to the beast.

01:55:52.000 The tale of the dragon will rain down on three-fourths of the world.

01:55:55.000 Could China be the dragon and the beast be Russia? 0.93

01:55:58.000 Maybe.

01:55:59.000 Interesting.

01:56:00.000 The dragon is humble, I'll tell you that.

01:56:01.000 I don't know.

01:56:01.000 What do they call China, Russia, the dragon bear?

01:56:03.000 Yeah, dragon bear.

01:56:04.000 The dragon bear.

01:56:04.000 That's what we call them.

01:56:08.000 Brick Muppet says at least one letter of marque was issued in the Civil War.

01:56:11.000 They are now banned by international treaty, Paris Declaration.

01:56:14.000 U.S.

01:56:14.000 never signed that treaty.

01:56:16.000 Okay, I was thinking of this earlier, if the hackers are the modern day... I didn't realize the Civil War, but that's a good... Yeah, I thought it was Madison was the last one.

01:56:24.000 If the hackers are the modern day pirates being hired with letters of marque, then what about the people that are controlling the algorithms at the top of the companies that are being paid to change the algorithms?

01:56:33.000 Are they also pirates?

01:56:35.000 Are they being hired?

01:56:36.000 Like, CCP is controlling TikTok.

01:56:38.000 And in China, this is what I've learned in the last week or so, the algorithm is showing like science, technology... It's just media.

01:56:45.000 They're showing media to the people?

01:56:46.000 No, no, no.

01:56:48.000 The analogy here is just, that's the media.

01:56:50.000 In the United States, the media was completely on board with the war effort, and the government would go to them and be like, don't report these things.

01:56:55.000 They'd be like, you gotta cheat.

01:56:56.000 So should we consider them pirates, like for hire?

01:56:58.000 No.

01:56:58.000 If they're being, doing what they're told?

01:56:59.000 No.

01:57:00.000 You're talking about aggressive action toward, like, I mean, there's a long time relationship between governments and media where they'll essentially say, you know, restrict certain information, or they'll classify it a certain way so they can't report it, or they'll just voluntarily self-censor.

01:57:12.000 But the letters are marked. That's more, it's like, I'm going to take this hacker,

01:57:15.000 and I want this organization tracked. And the way you're going to do it is,

01:57:18.000 and again, I want you to hack all their bank accounts. And if you hack their bank accounts,

01:57:22.000 you can keep some or whatever. Or not even that, be like, here are the targets we want hit,

01:57:26.000 and we won't come after you for hitting them. Yeah. What about like, we want you to show this

01:57:30.000 algorithm here and this algorithm here. But you're talking about massive

01:57:34.000 corporations that work with government.

01:57:36.000 That's not the same thing.

01:57:39.000 Think of a mark as almost like a bounty.

01:57:41.000 Yes.

01:57:41.000 That's a good way to say it.

01:57:43.000 Yeah.

01:57:43.000 OK.

01:57:44.000 So if the U.S.

01:57:46.000 government has a bunch of corporations that produce weapons for it, that's just the crown's boyar or whatever.

01:57:52.000 Probably the most famous privateer in history, Sir Francis Drake.

01:57:55.000 Yeah.

01:57:56.000 I'm concerned that a corporation won't go after one of the bounties.

01:58:00.000 I wonder if that'll start happening, that governments will pay corporations to take Mark.

01:58:03.000 They don't need to.

01:58:05.000 You have a group of three dudes hanging out in an apartment in Moscow, and the government is just like, oh, won't someone rid me of this priest?

01:58:13.000 Wink, wink.

01:58:14.000 And they go, you got it, boss.

01:58:16.000 And then they do it, and then Russia says, oh, those pesky hackers, why would they do this?

01:58:20.000 Can't get mad at us?

01:58:22.000 We'll arrest them if we find out who did it.

01:58:23.000 And then they don't.

01:58:24.000 Of course they won't.

01:58:25.000 Who did it?

01:58:26.000 Yep.

01:58:27.000 They want to be able to disavow and say we had nothing to do with it.

01:58:29.000 You can't.

01:58:29.000 Don't look at us.

01:58:30.000 Plausible deniability.

01:58:31.000 Well, and there's overt and covert letters of marque.

01:58:35.000 Oh, interesting.

01:58:36.000 Yeah, you can be overt about it.

01:58:37.000 Like, yep, I put a bounty.

01:58:39.000 Which is like, what was that military company that we had hired guns in the Middle East for a long time?

01:58:45.000 Blackwater?

01:58:45.000 Yeah, Blackwater.

01:58:46.000 They changed their name at some point.

01:58:47.000 Well, that wasn't even a letter of remark.

01:58:48.000 Now you're just hiring a company to provide a certain set of services that they're permitted to do.

01:58:53.000 And most of it was security services for bases or dignitaries or things like that.

01:58:58.000 So that would be more mercenary?

01:58:59.000 Just mercenary work?

01:59:02.000 It's interesting because mercenary has like an actual definition and then it also has kind of like a colloquial understanding or like a popular understanding of it.

01:59:09.000 So there was like a lot of what we think of when we think of mercenaries is like literally like the Swiss Guards or something like that where you have an element of soldiers or troops that will essentially fight for the highest bidder or whatnot.

01:59:24.000 Um, then you have people that are paid to provide, you know, military services, but it's, it's not as if they're just going to the higher bid.

01:59:31.000 It's not like you just go to whoever, it's not like one day we're working for the U.S.

01:59:34.000 government and the next day, the cartels, who knows?

01:59:37.000 Right.

01:59:37.000 Um, so I think there's some distinction between the two, if that makes sense.

01:59:42.000 Alright, Chris Skanapieko says, supposedly the former UK President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the ghost of Kiev is real.

01:59:50.000 But he has a pretty good reason to push the lie, if it is a lie.

01:59:53.000 It's propaganda.

01:59:54.000 What's the story of the ghost of Kiev?

01:59:57.000 It's an ace fighter pilot, took out six Russian fighter jets in dogfights over Kiev.

02:00:02.000 The videos show there's dogfights happening over Kiev.

02:00:05.000 And I've just not seen any evidence that this is a single pilot who took out six fighter jets.

02:00:11.000 But a cool story.

02:00:13.000 Oh yeah.

02:00:14.000 But it's a little bit like I have confirmed the story that I am awesome.

02:00:17.000 That's right.

02:00:17.000 It's like the Red Baron.

02:00:19.000 But he actually had like locked down a hundred kills or something.

02:00:21.000 They need these stories.

02:00:23.000 But you know what?

02:00:24.000 You know what?

02:00:25.000 It just goes to show that the hero's journey, the story of strength and masculinity resonates with people.

02:00:32.000 They're making modern day heroes.

02:00:34.000 I'm all for it, man.

02:00:34.000 I mean, the Ghost of Kiev is a cool story.

02:00:36.000 If this is someone defending their home, it's not an invasion, it's defensive.

02:00:40.000 And it's the underdog fighting back and taking out the aggressive force.

02:00:44.000 I'm like, it's a cool story.

02:00:45.000 And at the end of the day, it's going to inspire some kids to be better people, to defend their families, their friends, their homes.

02:00:51.000 I dig it.

02:00:51.000 You know what I don't like about aggression and defense is that you can have a country that is meddling other places with like technology and not sending a troop.

02:00:58.000 And then you're basically the aggressor at that point, even though you haven't moved a troop.

02:01:03.000 And so if you get attacked, you can't claim that you're defending yourself.

02:01:07.000 If you were out there screwing with people and now they're retaliating.

02:01:10.000 I don't think Ukraine was invading Russia.

02:01:13.000 I don't know.

02:01:14.000 Well, the U.S.

02:01:14.000 has been meddling and I think it's like a proxy.

02:01:16.000 Yeah, but as much as I think Joe Biden's crooked with, you know, the deals he's worked and the illegal quid pro quo and all that stuff, trying to buy favors and influence with cash, Vladimir Putin had every opportunity to do the exact same.

02:01:29.000 He could have gone to the president of Ukraine, I think it was Poroshenko, he could have gone to any one of these people and said, the US has offered you a billion dollars in loans, I'll give you a billion dollars in loans as well.

02:01:40.000 The problem was, my understanding, you know, having been on the ground in Ukraine and talked to some of the people, and I still am in regular communication with a friend of mine who's there, is that they don't like Russia.

02:01:51.000 They, they, the Holodomor.

02:01:53.000 These people are like, the Soviet Union staged a genocide and it was, it was primarily Russia staging a genocide over the Ukrainian people.

02:02:01.000 It's Stalin. 0.53

02:02:02.000 You're, it's exactly, you're not, you're, it's going to be hard-pressed to get popular support across the board.

02:02:07.000 And so what was happening was the US was playing their influence games, Russia was playing their influence games, but a lot of people in the country were still like, we'd rather be in the EU.

02:02:14.000 Not to mention, for a lot of people in Ukraine, they were hoping that getting into the EU meant they could migrate out of the country and go get jobs in higher paying countries.

02:02:23.000 So, when you look at what happened with the EU, people from Poland, where the GDP was lower, moved to the UK, where the GDP was higher, and were making more money now.

02:02:30.000 People in Ukraine were hoping for the same thing.

02:02:32.000 That getting in the EU would raise up, you know, all of their wages and bring in more money.

02:02:37.000 And Russia wanted them to join the Trade Federation.

02:02:40.000 He didn't have the influence.

02:02:41.000 So what does he do? 0.52

02:02:42.000 Like a whiny baby, he invades.

02:02:44.000 Is he, like, gonna be out of office soon?

02:02:46.000 What happened?

02:02:47.000 Because he was Prime Minister.

02:02:48.000 You know what is... I don't know about that.

02:02:50.000 Something tells me their government structure doesn't work quite the same as ours.

02:02:54.000 Yeah, he just keeps bouncing back and forth.

02:02:55.000 I've been kind of defending, like, hey, Russia's a federation of states, but, like, dude, if the dude seized control of the government, it's a dictatorship now.

02:03:02.000 He's supposedly the richest guy on the planet.

02:03:04.000 Yeah?

02:03:05.000 Well, my friends, if you haven't already, smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends, and go to TimCast.com and become a member.

02:03:12.000 It helps support our work.

02:03:13.000 Your membership keeps the show sustained, keeps all of our journalists employed, and you'll get access to our exclusive members-only segments from this show.

02:03:20.000 You can follow us at TimCastIRL, basically everywhere.

02:03:23.000 You can follow me at TimCast.

02:03:24.000 Nick, you want to shout anything out?

02:03:25.000 No, well again, lovely meeting all of you and thank you very much for having me on.

02:03:30.000 Yeah, thanks for coming.

02:03:31.000 We've got a couple programs that we've been working on.

02:03:33.000 One is Making the Argument with Nick Freitas.

02:03:35.000 One of the things that we do on there is we actually try to equip people to be able to make better arguments for free markets, for individual liberty.

02:03:42.000 One of the things that we do that's kind of unique on that, we actually highlight bad conservative arguments.

02:03:47.000 Because that's one thing that drives me nuts is watching my own side make really bad arguments.

02:03:51.000 And then we've got another program we do called the Why Minutes where we take, you know, actually one of the issues that we were talking about recently on there is, you know, we talk about the environmental policy and stuff like that.

02:03:59.000 And it's always this idea that if only the government intervened more, we'd have better environmental policy.

02:04:03.000 So we like to talk about things like the Aral Sea and how, wow, centralized government power was actually not better for the environment, along with all the other things it's not good for.

02:04:11.000 But if you're interested in individual liberty, free markets, all that good stuff, making the argument with Nick Freitas, the Why Minutes, Also, you are Nick for VA on Twitter.

02:04:20.000 On Twitter, yeah.

02:04:21.000 Yeah, we have fun on Twitter and the TikTok too.

02:04:24.000 Oh my.

02:04:24.000 We got banned from TikTok.

02:04:25.000 Oh, so I've been, we went from like all of my, we went from 7,000 followers to 200,000 followers in six months.

02:04:32.000 Whoa! 0.71

02:04:33.000 And then all of a sudden, bam, nothing goes to the For You page anymore.

02:04:36.000 But it is still kind of funny because I like to be able to tell my teenage daughters, hey, how do you feel about the fact that your 42-year-old father has a bigger TikTok account than you?

02:04:44.000 Lit.

02:04:45.000 They banned us.

02:04:46.000 I think it was because of Alex Jones.

02:04:47.000 It was.

02:04:48.000 We had Alex on.

02:04:49.000 I don't care.

02:04:49.000 You know, whatever, man.

02:04:50.000 Yeah, I'm fine with it.

02:04:51.000 Well, hey, I'm Ian Crossland.

02:04:52.000 Check me out at iancrossland.net.

02:04:53.000 I'll see you guys next week.

02:04:55.000 And thank you guys for tuning in this evening.

02:04:57.000 I really enjoyed our talk with Nick Freitas.

02:04:58.000 I forgot to shout out the sign behind me that looks a little crooked.

02:05:02.000 It's actually not.

02:05:03.000 They made this amazing sign for me.

02:05:05.000 I need to shout out the company that made it.

02:05:06.000 Ian also has one, and then we have the Timcast one.

02:05:08.000 Mine has my cat in the at sign.

02:05:11.000 That's Dip.

02:05:11.000 You can find more of him on my Instagram.

02:05:13.000 Way too much of him on my Instagram.

02:05:15.000 Anyway, I am Sour Patch Lids on Twitter and Mines.com.

02:05:19.000 We will see all of you over at youtube.com slash castcastle, which will be up tomorrow, and then we'll be back Monday.

02:05:25.000 Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you all then.

Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - February 26, 2022

Timcast IRL - Russia Threatens Military Action Against Sweden And Finland w-Nick Freitas

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