Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - My Father Puts Maduro’s Gangs on Notice — and Sends Them Packing,

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:06:26.000 Happy St. Patrick's Day.

00:06:28.000 And if you had Democrats defending gang members on your bingo card, well, I guess your week is off to a great start.

00:06:38.000 Just like my father said at the State of the Union, whatever he does, literally anything he does...

00:06:44.000 Democrats will be against it.

00:06:46.000 Literally anything. 0.97

00:06:47.000 If he cured cancer, he's a terrible person.

00:06:49.000 If he creates world peace, definitely not getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:06:53.000 It doesn't matter what he does.

00:06:55.000 They will go against it.

00:06:57.000 And by the way, my father says that Biden's auto pen, you know, the auto pen used to fill out the pardons and probably everything else that Joe Biden did, maybe throw out his entire administration, but certainly in the last few weeks are void.

00:07:13.000 What do you think that means for the likes of Shifty Schiff, as many have called him Bull Schiff, Cheney, Fauci, maybe the Bidens themselves, and all the rest?

00:07:26.000 We'll get into all of that coming up shortly.

00:07:30.000 And then later, I'll sit down with Eric Prince to get into a deep dive into all things foreign policy from Ukraine to Venezuela to the Middle East.

00:07:39.000 We'll be covering a lot, so you are not going to want to miss it.

00:07:43.000 Eric Prince, he founded Blackwater, is a former Navy SEAL, a big industrialist.

00:07:48.000 He knows.

00:07:50.000 He's been in those venues, both as a contractor, as a SEAL. He understands what's going on on the ground and what you're probably not being told.

00:07:59.000 So you're not going to want to miss that one, guys.

00:08:01.000 Make sure you're liking, sharing, and subscribing so you never miss one of these major episodes.

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00:08:17.000 For all of the top headlines that we cover here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News, like minute by minute, MXM News, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.

00:08:28.000 And also, guys, don't forget about our incredible sponsors.

00:08:32.000 Joe Biden's so-called Inflation Reduction Act is a disaster for America's seniors.

00:08:39.000 Democrats snuck in a provision to raid Medicare and fund green energy giveaways for their special interest donors.

00:08:46.000 But it gets even worse.

00:08:48.000 The Biden pill penalty is undermining the development of lifesaving pills.

00:08:54.000 We've already seen a 70% drop in the development of pill-based treatments since 2021.

00:09:00.000 The Biden pill penalty is a threat to our fight against everything from cancer to diabetes.

00:09:08.000 Joe Biden broke Medicare, but President Trump can fix it.

00:09:12.000 Call Congress and tell them to end the Biden pill penalty now.

00:09:17.000 Tell Congress to end the Biden pill penalty.

00:09:21.000 Take action and go to seniors4bettercare.com.

00:09:28.000 Again, that's the number four in there instead of the word four.

00:09:31.000 seniors4bettercare.com.

00:09:35.000 And now, guys, let's take a look at some of the top headlines.

00:09:39.000 Over the weekend, the Trump administration flew hundreds of Trendelaragua gang members to El Salvador as part of my father's order to rid our country of violent Venezuelan gangs and other criminal thugs. 0.91

00:09:56.000 These are murderers, rapists, narco-terrorists connected to the Maduro regime. 0.95

00:10:03.000 But while the planes were in midair, over international waters luckily, a far-left activist judge issued a temporary restraining order to try to stop the flight. 0.71

00:10:15.000 And beyond the absurd decision, this judge somehow believed it was possible for the planes to simply make a U-turn midair.

00:10:25.000 Which, just as a matter of physics, you know...

00:10:31.000 Fuel efficiency economy.

00:10:33.000 You can't just change flight plans like that.

00:10:35.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:10:36.000 As a pilot, I know. 0.98

00:10:37.000 It's completely ridiculous. 0.90

00:10:40.000 So the planes landed as scheduled, and the criminals are no longer in the country, despite the left's dirty tricks from left-wing lawfare. 0.95

00:10:50.000 I mean, think about it.

00:10:51.000 A judge is trying to stop us from ridding the country of illegal criminal drug traffickers, murderers, It's literally what the Democrats...

00:11:03.000 They're more about defending the worst criminals in the world than they are Americans. 0.99

00:11:10.000 They want them in this country.

00:11:12.000 They want them destroying our children, our cities.

00:11:15.000 They want the drug traffic, I assume, to continue.

00:11:19.000 Here's my father explaining the situation.

00:11:23.000 I can tell you this.

00:11:24.000 These were bad people.

00:11:26.000 That was a bad group of, as I say, hombres. 1.00

00:11:30.000 That was a bad group.

00:11:32.000 When you look at them and you look at the crimes that they've committed, you take a look.

00:11:37.000 You don't get any tougher, you don't get worse than that.

00:11:40.000 You understand that.

00:11:42.000 Now, guys, the authority for my father to do this is found in the Alien Enemies Act, which he invoked over the weekend.

00:11:52.000 The order read in part, and I quote, is a designated foreign terrorist organization with thousands of members.

00:12:01.000 Trendelaragua operates in conjunction with the Cartel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored narcoterrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human and drug trafficking, and also weapons trafficking.

00:12:21.000 It goes on to say, Trenadera Agua is undertaking hostile action and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States, both directly and at the direction of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

00:12:34.000 That's pretty obvious, guys.

00:12:36.000 These are not their finest people.

00:12:39.000 These are not people that are going to be the next Elon Musk.

00:12:43.000 They're not going to be astronauts or surgeons.

00:12:45.000 They're going to be responsible.

00:12:47.000 For a lot of bad things that happen in America.

00:12:51.000 And yet, the Democrats will go all out to defend those people.

00:12:55.000 They're not worried about the victims.

00:12:58.000 We could list them all.

00:12:59.000 My father did at the State of the Union.

00:13:00.000 We could get into all of that in great detail.

00:13:03.000 They're not worried about defending them, their rights, their lives.

00:13:06.000 They're looking to take care of criminals.

00:13:10.000 Remember when my father called them animals in the first administration and Nancy Pelosi about MS-13 at the time?

00:13:16.000 They're not animals.

00:13:18.000 They're human beings.

00:13:18.000 No, no, no.

00:13:19.000 They're animals, Nancy.

00:13:22.000 It's amazing.

00:13:23.000 Yet another 80-20 issue, probably a 99-1 issue for Democrats, and they're going all in, folks.

00:13:31.000 As Tom Homan revealed this weekend, this gang was sent here by Maduro and welcomed by Biden.

00:13:38.000 What American in their right minds wants these terrorists here?

00:13:43.000 I mean...

00:13:44.000 Who, in their right mind, whether you're a judge or not, wants known public... 0.94

00:13:48.000 TDA, a recognized terrorist organization, sent here by the Maduro regime, to create havoc, to unsettle the United States, to use fentanyl to kill thousands of Americans, violence to American citizens, raping and murdering young women in this country.

00:14:04.000 They are enemies of this country, and President Trump treated them as enemies, and we did exactly what we should have done.

00:14:11.000 Again...

00:14:12.000 President Trump is going to make this country safe again.

00:14:14.000 He's going to do it one illegal alien at a time. 0.52

00:14:17.000 And this weekend, we did 261. So to stop this invasion and these attacks against America, my father invoked the Aliens Enemies Act to get these terrorists out of our country.

00:14:30.000 And he's within his constitutional power to do so.

00:14:33.000 And again, I'll ask, who in their right minds would be against any of this?

00:14:38.000 Here's more from my dad.

00:14:40.000 On why this is so necessary.

00:14:43.000 Criticism that the Alien Enemies Act has only been in both three other times.

00:14:47.000 They were all during times of war.

00:14:49.000 Do you feel that you're using it appropriately right now?

00:14:52.000 Well, this is a time of war because Biden allowed millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level.

00:15:01.000 They emptied jails out.

00:15:02.000 Other nations emptied their jails into the United States.

00:15:05.000 It's an invasion.

00:15:07.000 And these are criminals, many, many criminals. 0.79

00:15:09.000 Murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords, people from mental institutions. 0.88

00:15:17.000 That's an invasion.

00:15:19.000 They invaded our country. 0.99

00:15:21.000 So this is, in that sense, this is war.

00:15:25.000 As I said, the planes did land, as scheduled, in El Salvador.

00:15:30.000 And here is the scene, under the leadership of friend...

00:15:35.000 And great president, Bukele.

00:15:38.000 Check it out. Check it out.

00:16:09.000 Check it out.

00:18:39.000 Guys, that's not all.

00:18:42.000 Earlier today, the White House put out this video of the criminals being shipped out of America.

00:18:48.000 And again, I want to thank President Bukele for taking these animals and putting them where they belong. 1.00

00:18:54.000 And certainly not in America.

00:18:56.000 As Congressman Collins wrote on

00:19:14.000 X, Isn't it ridiculous that a Democrat president can import violent gang members, but some judge claims a Republican president can't deport them?

00:19:28.000 In what universe would that make sense?

00:19:31.000 And he's 100% right.

00:19:33.000 It's very clear that Biden knew.

00:19:36.000 We knew the statistics.

00:19:37.000 Remember, 13,000 murderers let into the country, 16,000 rapists.

00:19:41.000 Joe Biden's ICE statistics.

00:19:44.000 600,000 criminals overall.

00:19:46.000 They knew and they let them in anyway.

00:19:48.000 But Democrats like Jasmine Crockett seem to have an issue with violent criminal gang members and terrorists being removed from the country.

00:19:58.000 But you don't have to take my word for it, guys.

00:20:00.000 Here she is in her own words.

00:20:03.000 To deport undocumented Venezuelans that the administration say are dangerous individuals with ties to the gang Trend Aragua.

00:20:12.000 That gang is obviously associated with a lot of crime, human trafficking, drug dealing, theft, shootings, including in your state of Texas, right outside of your congressional district.

00:20:20.000 Do you agree with this?

00:20:22.000 And if not, what's your issue with the U.S. using any tool at its disposal to remove undocumented, violent people from this country? 0.99

00:20:35.000 We already have tools that are available to remove undocumented, violent people from our country. 1.00

00:20:41.000 And so the idea that you want to go into a zombie law, this is kind of like what we saw in Arizona when they decided to revive a zombie law around abortion.

00:20:50.000 It is the fact that we can't trust this administration to actually use a scalpel, but instead they love to use a butcher knife on things.

00:20:59.000 And so giving them this wide latitude to just kind of go across and just claim that anybody is anything is wrong.

00:21:07.000 And so we do have courts.

00:21:09.000 We do have processes.

00:21:10.000 We do have laws.

00:21:12.000 And we should just go ahead and use those.

00:21:14.000 There's a reason that nobody else has decided to go back into Adams times in order to try to find ways to make sure that we can keep our country safe.

00:21:27.000 Remember, guys, Trindle or Aga gang members killed Blake and Riley.

00:21:31.000 They kill Jocelyn Nungari.

00:21:33.000 Here in America, these murders are attacks against our homeland.

00:21:38.000 How sick do you have to be to be opposed to getting them out of our country? 0.99

00:21:43.000 What greater, clear, and present danger to our country would be than having rampant murderers illegally doing drugs, selling them, fentanyl, killing 100,000 Americans a year, murdering and raping innocent young girls? 0.97

00:21:58.000 These are not the people we want in our country.

00:22:01.000 And guys, the stakes could not be higher.

00:22:04.000 As my father also wrote this weekend, Trendelaraga has engaged and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objective of harming United States citizens, undermining public safety and supporting the Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States. 0.72

00:22:28.000 And he's 100% right.

00:22:30.000 And now, DHS, DOJ, the FBI, and other key government agencies are being tasked with doing everything in their power to bring these terrorists and their enablers to justice.

00:22:43.000 It's a historic shift from the weak leadership of the past, and our country will now be safer because of it.

00:22:53.000 And the Democrats let our country get to the point where we needed such bold action to actually fix their mess.

00:23:01.000 It's totally required.

00:23:02.000 And it's looking like Biden's auto-pen scandal may be backfiring on him big time.

00:23:08.000 because earlier today, my father wrote on True Social, the pardons that sleepy Joe Biden gave to the unselect committee of political thugs and many others are hereby declared void, vacant, and of no further force or effect because of the fact that they were done by auto and of no further force or effect because of the fact

00:23:26.000 So if Joe Biden didn't sign the pardons and didn't know about the signings or know what was happening, then wouldn't it follow that the pardons aren't actually constitutionally valid.

00:23:39.000 And remember, as we were told, and we told you last week, the Oversight Project...

00:23:46.000 Did a full investigation into the auto pen signatures and concluded that all used the same auto pen signature except for the announcement that the former president was dropping out of the race last year.

00:23:59.000 You can see him for yourself.

00:24:01.000 Again, I'll ask.

00:24:02.000 Imagine for one second.

00:24:04.000 Imagine just step back, take a break.

00:24:07.000 Imagine for one second if the roles were reversed.

00:24:10.000 The media would be calling it the biggest scandal in world history.

00:24:15.000 Who was actually in charge?

00:24:17.000 We all have seen Joe Biden.

00:24:18.000 Let's just say he wasn't exactly always there.

00:24:20.000 We all know.

00:24:21.000 But if some random intern is just doing this, if he's not really aware, or if he was made aware but isn't really capable of actually understanding what's in these things, who was running the country?

00:24:32.000 How many of these things were actually his will?

00:24:36.000 But nevertheless, the Trump administration is continuing to rack up one win after another.

00:24:43.000 For example, the nationwide average for gas has declined for four weeks straight, with the majority of states seeing average prices now below $3 a gallon.

00:24:54.000 This is what happens when you have an administration that puts Americans first.

00:24:59.000 And over at the VA, Secretary Doug Collins announced today that the VA is phasing out treatment for gender dysphoria, explaining that the money saved, which is going to be extensive, And shouldn't be going there to begin with.

00:25:14.000 From this change, we'll go towards helping paralyzed veterans and amputees.

00:25:20.000 You know, the people that actually really need our help, really need that care, that we're probably not getting serviced well because we were worried about gender-affirming care and hormone replacement treatments and some of the appendages that...

00:25:35.000 Maybe not really required for life, maybe fun, but for trans members, remember those?

00:25:42.000 Well, now they're going to go to those who need it.

00:25:45.000 Remember, guys, we broke the story on this show about the gender-affirming prosthetics program, okay?

00:25:55.000 It's hard to believe we're having this conversation and it's real, right?

00:25:59.000 It's like...

00:26:00.000 It's like South Park took over the world under the Biden administration and just had their way with it.

00:26:06.000 Well, we broke the story, gender-affirming prosthetics, okay? 0.99

00:26:11.000 I guess that's a strap-on.

00:26:13.000 I don't know.

00:26:13.000 And it's not really my thing, so I don't know.

00:26:16.000 But I'm assuming that's what it is.

00:26:17.000 But they had that program under Biden and how they were putting woke trans madness over actually getting our veterans the care that they need.

00:26:25.000 So massive credit to the leadership of Secretary Doug Collins over at the VA on getting this done.

00:26:33.000 Common sense wins again.

00:26:36.000 None of this happens, though, guys, without strong leadership that actually cares about its citizens.

00:26:41.000 Look what's happening across Western Europe, where leaders are letting their countries crumble under open borders, madness, mass censorship.

00:26:51.000 In fact, Conor McGregor, Conor McGregor, the notorious MMA, was at the White House today.

00:26:57.000 To explain the dire situation going on over in Ireland.

00:27:02.000 Check it out.

00:27:04.000 What is going on in Ireland is a travesty.

00:27:07.000 Our government is the government of zero action with zero accountability.

00:27:11.000 Our money is being spent on overseas issues that has nothing to do with the Irish people.

00:27:17.000 The illegal immigration racket is running ravage on the country. 1.00

00:27:22.000 There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop.

00:27:27.000 So issues need to be addressed.

00:27:29.000 And the 40 million Irish Americans, as I said, need to hear this, because if not, there will be no place to come home and visit.

00:27:36.000 So with that said, guys, we'll get to Eric Prince in just a few moments.

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00:29:46.000 And with that, guys, now my sit down with Eric Prince.

00:29:51.000 All right, guys, joining me now, businessman, author, former Navy SEAL officer, Blackwater founder, and now the co-founder of Unplugged, the one and only Eric Prince.

00:30:02.000 Eric, good to have you back.

00:30:03.000 Nice to be here.

00:30:03.000 Thank you.

00:30:04.000 It was last time I think you were on, you were literally in like the Abu Dhabi airport, like getting yelled at to get on a flight.

00:30:10.000 We had a late start, so it's good to have you actually in studio right now.

00:30:15.000 But maybe to begin, because you have sort of...

00:30:18.000 Such an intimate knowledge of so much of what's going on around the world, just having done that in Iraq and everywhere else with Blackwater.

00:30:27.000 I mean, you probably have a better insight than just about anyone as to what's going on in the world right now as we deal with Russia, Ukraine, all of that insanity. 0.72

00:30:37.000 I'd love to get your thoughts on that in particular, because I think my mindset has been it's hard to get a deal done in Ukraine because the American public have been told that Ukraine's...

00:30:48.000 And, you know, if they shoot a Russian Jeep, it's a major victory. 1.00

00:30:50.000 And if Russia takes, you know, the Donbass, it's like that was a strategic withdrawal.

00:30:55.000 How do you combat that marketing, you know, effort, you know, and get the American people to understand that what they're being told is not the case.

00:31:03.000 So any deal that we come up with is probably a lot better than they'll be told.

00:31:06.000 It is a pointless waste of Ukrainian blood and American treasure that they are not going to retake any of those lands. 0.98

00:31:16.000 Much vaunted offensive that they tried to do last summer was a complete wipeout.

00:31:21.000 They don't have even enough manpower to hardly man their defenses now.

00:31:25.000 So at best, it's a retrograde action.

00:31:28.000 And the sooner the fighting can be brought to an end, the better.

00:31:31.000 The better for Ukraine, the better for its future survival, the better for Western Europe, and actually the better for Russia.

00:31:39.000 And most of all, better for the United States.

00:31:41.000 Because for 100 plus years, It's always been the policy of the United States to try to keep German industry from combining with Russian resources.

00:31:51.000 Now all we've done is, what the Biden administration did, is push Russian resources into a subservient role of the Chinese Communist Party.

00:32:00.000 Not our friends.

00:32:01.000 China and Russia are no longer on a level playing field, right?

00:32:05.000 I mean, China's definitely taking that leadership role.

00:32:09.000 That used to be a fairly solid buffer.

00:32:12.000 You know, the two powers sort of canceled each other out a little bit.

00:32:15.000 I talked to a head of state that had been at every BRICS meeting.

00:32:18.000 And every time, from the beginning, it was always an equal footing between Putin and Xi.

00:32:22.000 At the last one in October, clearly there was a defined difference.

00:32:27.000 And that is definitely not in American interest.

00:32:30.000 So don't listen to the lie of just a little bit more time and, you know, Putin is on his back foot.

00:32:38.000 Putin...

00:32:38.000 If it continues, we'll do a general mobilization and flood the zone with another 350,000 fighters.

00:32:45.000 And the Russian people have a very high tolerance for taking casualties. 0.96

00:32:50.000 Yeah, there's a lot of history.

00:32:51.000 27 million people that they lost in World War II. I think it's important even for perspective of America.

00:32:58.000 You know, we believe our movies, that Americans won, we defeated the Nazis.

00:33:02.000 Not to take away any of the service of U.S. fighting men.

00:33:06.000 We lost 250,000 people in the European Theater of Operations.

00:33:10.000 The Russians lost 27 million people fighting the Nazis.

00:33:13.000 While we were still messing around in North Africa, you know, in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, the Russians raised 1.2 million from the German Order.

00:33:25.000 Sorry, 800,000 from the German Order of Battle.

00:33:29.000 And they lost 1.2 million just at the Battle of Stalingrad.

00:33:34.000 Just orders of magnitude difference in the level of suffering that they will take, and there's absolutely no point in continuing that level of slaughter in Ukraine.

00:33:42.000 Yeah, I mean, at this point, even that mentality has to be ingrained, right?

00:33:46.000 You don't just forget that.

00:33:47.000 I mean, strangely enough, it's not that far off.

00:33:49.000 I mean, this is 70 years ago.

00:33:51.000 Correct.

00:33:51.000 And it's not even about high-tech weapons.

00:33:53.000 They have a supply chain of their own industrial base that's been supplemented by China and even now by North Korea.

00:34:00.000 For the propellants, for more munitions, and of course they bought a lot from the Iranians, it's actually made the Iranian weapons technology better because it's gotten field tested, innovated, and all those people getting smarter and better at fighting is not in America's interest. 0.88

00:34:16.000 If you shot at the Russians three months after that war started, it would take them an hour, hour and a half to shoot back well at you with artillery.

00:34:24.000 Now, it's two or three minutes.

00:34:26.000 So if you shoot, you better be in your vehicle, motor running, Doors open to unask that area or incoming is on the way.

00:34:35.000 Interesting.

00:34:35.000 Now, you know, when you talk about that right now, I mean, it feels like Putin probably, in my mind, didn't go as hard as he probably could have.

00:34:44.000 And I think there's a component of that, you know, certainly the eastern part of Ukraine that definitely did not vote for Zelensky and probably would not ever again.

00:34:53.000 That whole quadrant of the country or half of the country is really ethnic Russian.

00:34:58.000 Do you think he actually held back a little bit because of those similarities?

00:35:01.000 I mean, it doesn't feel like he went as scorched earth as he could have as quickly as he could have.

00:35:06.000 Certainly did not bomb the power and water and the civilian infrastructure nearly as hard as he could have.

00:35:12.000 Yes, there's a lot of it that's been damaged.

00:35:14.000 But no, it was not at the level of the allies going after Dresden when we erased 100,000 Germans in a night with firebombing.

00:35:21.000 Literally targeting civilians in World War II. So, how do you get this to come to a head right now?

00:35:29.000 Because it does feel like the world is looking at this conflict very different than some of the other conflicts that are going on right now.

00:35:37.000 To me, if I'm looking at it fairly objectively, it's like, ah, we can just keep fighting forever because it's just, honestly, European white men dying on either side of the battlefield. 0.62

00:35:46.000 Is that a thing?

00:35:48.000 All the noise about after the kerfuffle in the Oval Office a few days ago, all the statements of support from the European allies, it's such air.

00:36:03.000 I mean, Luxembourg, we support Ukraine with their 800-man army and two unarmed helicopters, right?

00:36:09.000 Well, beyond that, they also said they really support the ongoing efforts in Ukraine, but if you ask those same people, were they willing to sacrifice almost anything, meaning pay for some of it themselves, they're like, oh, no, that's different.

00:36:20.000 It's like, I want to solve world hunger, but I'm not going to sacrifice a meal.

00:36:24.000 Myself.

00:36:25.000 So it does feel like a lot of virtue signaling.

00:36:27.000 Yes.

00:36:28.000 NATO is largely 30% virtue signaling by the NATO so-called allies.

00:36:34.000 70% of the ass of NATO is American, paid for by American taxpayers, provided by American fighting men and women.

00:36:42.000 So it is some kind of different action is necessary as a catalyst to bring this to an end.

00:36:52.000 I don't think the Russians have the appetite to invade more.

00:36:55.000 They were very clear, not Ukraine, not Ukraine, not Ukraine, and the neocons kept pushing, pushing, pushing.

00:37:01.000 This idea that Ukraine is going to be part of NATO, hard no.

00:37:04.000 Yeah, we gave them every excuse they needed.

00:37:07.000 That's not being a Putin apologist, that's just being realistic.

00:37:09.000 They had a 60-, 70-year stalemate buffer zone that was known as the Ukraine, and we moved the borders of NATO, or we're talking about moving the borders of NATO right up onto their border, and that was...

00:37:20.000 Always the red line.

00:37:21.000 And so if you think about Russia as a society, then as the Soviet Union, facing as many unfriendly nations with troops on its borders as they did in May of 1941 when the Nazis invaded, that is, again, pressed into their genetics.

00:37:39.000 And so they're not going to let that happen again and not be in that situation.

00:37:42.000 I mean, literally, in Russia, the railway gauge is different.

00:37:48.000 So if you take rail cars across Western Europe, you have to jack it up and literally change the wheels to carry on into Russia so that an invading force can't use their own railway inside of Russia.

00:38:00.000 So they've been thinking about this for quite some time?

00:38:02.000 Yeah.

00:38:03.000 When you lose 25 million people or 27 million people, it tends to stick with you.

00:38:08.000 And if it wasn't for Putin, if Putin retired tomorrow, That ethos still remains in Russia, right?

00:38:16.000 The next guy is going to be...

00:38:18.000 Be careful that you don't get an even worse Russian nationalist.

00:38:21.000 Because there is a segment of that society that he has to actually placate.

00:38:26.000 So to try to bring this to a close, I think one of the things that the Russians offered was basically a 10-year hiatus of these, call it Donetsk, Lohansk, Mariupol, and I can't think of the fourth one.

00:38:43.000 Obviously, they have Crimea and they've always viewed Crimea as Russian.

00:38:48.000 To have a 10-year pause and then have a vote, a plebiscite, at the end of that, whether those regions want to stay with Russia or go back to Ukraine.

00:38:58.000 I think that's a sound, reasonable approach.

00:39:00.000 It's let it be a competition of governance.

00:39:02.000 Let Kiev clean up the massive corruption and the kleptocracy that is there and compete for people's will to be governed.

00:39:12.000 I mean, it's sort of ironic that the people screaming about preserving democracy, if that's the case, I'm not even aware of it.

00:39:18.000 Like, you know, no one's talking about like, hey, Russia wants to actually allow elections.

00:39:22.000 And I imagine in part of these peace talks, there could be a proper governance of that.

00:39:25.000 So it's not, you know, I imagine elections in Ukraine or Russia were probably never on the up and up, but there could be a structure to make it so.

00:39:32.000 So Russia actually wants to say, hey, let's let's compete for this in a fair way politically.

00:39:37.000 And in 10 years you have election.

00:39:38.000 Meanwhile.

00:39:39.000 Zelensky's in Putin saying, we can't possibly have elections right now.

00:39:43.000 We can't do it.

00:39:43.000 And I understand that the Russians would provide a ceasefire to enable an actual election to happen in Ukraine, because I also think that Putin does not view Zelensky as a valid leader anymore because he's outstayed his mandate by, what, 10 months now?

00:40:00.000 And so for Putin to have a counterparty to negotiate with is somebody that has to bind, right?

00:40:05.000 Just like the CEO of a company has to be able to bind a company for whatever contract it's going to sign.

00:40:10.000 The same for the head of state.

00:40:13.000 And if there's an election held, very unlikely that Zelensky is re-elected.

00:40:20.000 I've read, again, up to about 16% popularity.

00:40:25.000 Yeah.

00:40:26.000 And again, most of that, any of the popular is coming clearly from the western part of the country.

00:40:31.000 So the irony of it is that his greatest chance at actual political survival would be ceding the eastern part of the country that is ethnic Russian and definitely not in favor of him, and never was, even before the war.

00:40:45.000 I mean, they voted for different people.

00:40:46.000 It'll be Zeluzhny, who is the Minister of Defense, or the Chief of the Army, or Budanov, the Head of Military Intelligence, or the...

00:40:55.000 The boxer.

00:40:56.000 Yeah, Klitschko.

00:40:56.000 Klitschko, yes.

00:40:57.000 I guess, mayor of Kiev, right?

00:40:59.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:41:01.000 I would say more of a pro-peace, less corruption candidate.

00:41:05.000 It'd be nice, because I think that's the part.

00:41:07.000 How much of this money, you know, we're in for, you know, my father said during the State of the Union, you know, $350 billion, and that probably doesn't include the $260 billion that the Pentagon can't account for.

00:41:18.000 So I imagine there's a good part of that in that.

00:41:22.000 So let's just call it...

00:41:23.000 Half a trillion dollars.

00:41:25.000 How much of that's been stolen?

00:41:27.000 I mean, you understand how these battlefields work.

00:41:30.000 You've done more of it than anyone.

00:41:31.000 The amount of graft in these purchases is significant.

00:41:38.000 I mean, I have a lot of friends that offered products at an affordable, very bid price, and were all rejected because there's always some expectation of a vague coming.

00:41:52.000 Coming through a very convoluted acquisition structure.

00:41:55.000 Do you think a lot of these arms that we've sent over there also have been sold to other...

00:41:58.000 I've read that they've been sold to, you know, Hamas and other things, and so they're taking arms, selling them to terrorists and...

00:42:04.000 There's always leakage of that kind of stuff in the battlefield.

00:42:08.000 You know, I'm sure sets of...

00:42:12.000 Because we can buy sets of almost anything the Russians field, and corruption goes both ways. 0.92

00:42:18.000 I'm sure the very best of whatever has been provided to Ukraine has made its way to our opponents, literally being evaluated and replicated in Russian and Chinese armaments factories, 100%. 0.65

00:42:30.000 The frightening thing is that our stuff doesn't work very well there now.

00:42:34.000 Why is that?

00:42:35.000 The Russians are very good at electronic warfare, and whether you're sending an anti-tank missile, a ballistic missile, a guided artillery shell, within a couple of months, they figure out how to jam. 0.51

00:42:47.000 The command link or the navigation signal so that instead of hitting precisely, it's hitting off, taking away the whole point of it being.

00:42:53.000 And so when you have a $100,000 copperhead guided 155 shell and now it's hitting 100 or 200 meters off, that's bad.

00:43:07.000 We delude ourselves in thinking that we're making the Russians weaker, right?

00:43:10.000 The neocon wing that says, oh, we're degrading the Russian army.

00:43:15.000 The sanctions raise the price of oil.

00:43:16.000 The price of oil goes through the roofs.

00:43:18.000 I mean, they're net neutral on this war, but they've also built up their manufacturing base.

00:43:22.000 They've become much closer with Saudi.

00:43:24.000 They've become much closer with China.

00:43:26.000 We've empowered them.

00:43:28.000 They've shortened the flash-to-bang synapse of idea, development, testing, revisit.

00:43:37.000 Of loitering munitions, all the rest.

00:43:39.000 And the really frightening thing, right?

00:43:41.000 The first strategic offset of the U.S. military after World War II was nuclear weapons, right?

00:43:46.000 We had them, then the Soviets got them, and then it became a big tonnage competition. 0.91

00:43:49.000 And then it became precision strike.

00:43:52.000 You know, the early version of Gulf War I, you know, with a precision bomb.

00:43:57.000 Now, literally, everyone has that ability to deliver precision with a small drone, with a...

00:44:03.000 With a beer can-sized charge on it, you can clack somebody off 15 kilometers away.

00:44:07.000 So that democratization of precision strike is accelerating the battlefield and the lethality in a way that is frightening, that makes hundreds of billions of dollars of our own stuff kind of obsolete and kind of just expensive targets.

00:44:21.000 Are we advancing in that same technology?

00:44:23.000 I mean, you see it.

00:44:24.000 You see the videos on Rumble.

00:44:26.000 A drone comes in, they see a guy, he takes shelter, goes through the window, drops the bomb, everyone dies.

00:44:32.000 It's a $300 drone that we'd be using hundreds of thousands of dollars of missiles to otherwise take out.

00:44:38.000 I mean, it doesn't seem, it seems very asymmetric that a not all that sophisticated party, then once you get into the jamming technology, that changes, but a not very sophisticated party now can fight.

00:44:48.000 Way above their weight class and would have been able to take on any conventional forces from a few years ago in a disproportionate manner.

00:44:57.000 I've said it before, it's like Genghis Khan putting stirrups on horses, right?

00:45:01.000 So now instead of just riding a horse, you can fight from it.

00:45:04.000 That speed that can come from that level of delivery of precision, you're even seeing it against the Navy with the Iranians providing drones, missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles to the Houthis.

00:45:17.000 And they've been shooting $20,000 to $50,000 drones at our ships, who then shoot it down with a, not one, but two $1 million missiles, because they have to double tap it to make sure it gets knocked down.

00:45:28.000 The Navy says that they've lost, or they've expended a billion dollars worth of missiles shooting down all this incoming.

00:45:35.000 The real number is more like $5 billion, because they're counting the billion dollars at the 1990s cost that they bought it.

00:45:42.000 Kind of your original inventory carrying costs.

00:45:43.000 Now you've got to replace it.

00:45:44.000 Now you've got to replace it.

00:45:46.000 Five times that price.

00:45:47.000 So it's the Pentagon needs massive revision and a hyper-enhancing of competition.

00:45:56.000 Really, the big five defense contractors behave like a cartel.

00:45:59.000 We should probably break them up, almost like an antitrust rule.

00:46:02.000 Yeah, it was always where I see some of these bids or whatever, and we're going to get a new fighter jet.

00:46:05.000 So Lockheed and Boeing team up together to do it because there's no one else that can actually do it, and therefore...

00:46:11.000 Monopoly pricing.

00:46:12.000 There's no competition, there's no cost controls, there's nothing, and we just sort of accept it.

00:46:16.000 And you compare that to what Musk has done with SpaceX, because he said, look, we're going to lower the cost of Lyft by a thousandfold, and he's done it.

00:46:25.000 Yeah.

00:46:26.000 So competition and innovation, there's lots of great new defense tech startups, and I wish them well, but I fear they're going to run smack into a very cumbersome...

00:46:40.000 I wish Pete Hegseth all the best in wrenching defense reform, but Congress has to do that as well, to buy from the small, fast, innovative people instead of the easy button to buying from the bloated cartel.

00:46:56.000 Yeah.

00:46:57.000 I mean, it does seem like there's a bunch of independent guys that are starting up and doing it, and eventually you get there.

00:47:02.000 But you do have to break through that.

00:47:04.000 Sort of monopoly of leadership, because it feels like every general ends up on the board of Raytheon or Boeing, and that's their offering.

00:47:10.000 So they know that's their offering.

00:47:12.000 The only way to keep that job or to get that job is to keep selling missiles and keep buying from those guys, because that's going to be the more lucrative position.

00:47:18.000 So they never bother to try to cut costs.

00:47:21.000 You know, you've heard my father's sort of infamous story with the Air Force One renegotiation.

00:47:25.000 It's two 747s, but they're like, it's $6 billion.

00:47:28.000 He's like, gotta have a three in front of it.

00:47:30.000 He's like, they're like, okay.

00:47:31.000 They're like...

00:47:32.000 Wait, what do you mean?

00:47:33.000 You just took off two billion dollars?

00:47:36.000 It's like, well, you know, we got room to play.

00:47:38.000 And it's like, well, why'd you do it now?

00:47:40.000 It's like, well, if we do this, maybe you won't ask us about all the other things that we're doing.

00:47:43.000 But it was like a 30% discount.

00:47:45.000 And why didn't you do it before?

00:47:47.000 Well, no one asked.

00:47:48.000 Like, of course, two planes, and I understand they have nice communication systems on them, etc.

00:47:52.000 But like, they don't have three billion of communications.

00:47:55.000 What do they sell a 747 to Lufthansa for?

00:47:58.000 Yeah, like 300 million?

00:47:59.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:00.000 You know, like, you know, so yeah, fine.

00:48:02.000 Soup it up.

00:48:03.000 Put straight pipes on it.

00:48:05.000 A little turbocharge it.

00:48:07.000 Some extra communications.

00:48:08.000 But like $4 billion worth?

00:48:10.000 And when you're spending your own money, it's a very different buy cycle.

00:48:15.000 And so that's the divorce of people that have to live with the consequences versus the spending of it is horrific.

00:48:21.000 And that's why government overspends on everything. 0.64

00:48:24.000 Well, I mean, you obviously did this with Blackwater.

00:48:26.000 You guys were able to do things better, cheaper, faster.

00:48:28.000 And without sort of the...

00:48:30.000 The cost, perhaps there are obviously lives at stake, but it feels like there's an optic and political expense to an American army soldier as opposed to a contractor, right?

00:48:41.000 I mean, it's just marketing.

00:48:42.000 It's the same life.

00:48:43.000 But you were able to do that better and cheaper than the government itself.

00:48:48.000 My family's background was manufacturing.

00:48:50.000 And mostly in the automotive industry.

00:48:52.000 It was probably one of the most competitive industries in the world in terms of volume of stuff made and how many competitors you have constantly undercutting you.

00:49:00.000 And so I got out of the Navy and I took over the die-cast machine business my dad started and took it through a lean transformation kind of based on the Toyota production system.

00:49:11.000 And I got to thinking, what does the military do?

00:49:13.000 It recruits, vets, equips, trains, deploys and supports people to do a thing somewhere.

00:49:18.000 And so laying out Blackwater as a vertically integrated entity to do that process really let us focus on cutting costs at every one of those stages.

00:49:27.000 And that's why we could do those things cheaper, better, faster, because we knew what it cost to do the training, to do the vaccination before deployment, or supplying them, or whatever that was.

00:49:38.000 We knew our costs.

00:49:40.000 Government doesn't know their costs.

00:49:41.000 And so we could literally do things for between one-sixth to one-quarter of what government would do.

00:49:47.000 It's wild.

00:49:48.000 I guess I got to ask, because I'm sort of fascinated about when you were talking about sort of the advance in warfare, you know, what the Russians have learned to do, and perhaps what the Ukrainians have learned to do in the last three years.

00:49:57.000 We were in war, felt like almost permanent war, at least a solid chunk of my life in Afghanistan, Iraq, 20 plus years.

00:50:06.000 Did we learn as much during that period of time as these guys have learned in three years?

00:50:11.000 And if not, why?

00:50:12.000 We learned a lot of wrong habits because you had a lot of people that were managing conflict instead of out to just fix it and to solve it.

00:50:19.000 Instead of driving towards a moment of absolute surrender, If you think about how the Taliban were hunted the first six months after 9-11, when you had a few hundred SAF and agency officers with air power and their targeting cycle, those guys on the hill were going now.

00:50:40.000 Minutes, not hours.

00:50:43.000 And then six months into it, when Bagram became a big normal base, when the beards had to go away and starch khakis, when the conventional military came, then it became a...

00:50:55.000 Very conventional planning cycle of days, weeks, months to go target the enemy.

00:50:59.000 And so it was just a 19-year repeat of that nonsense that we learned all the wrong habits and promoted all the wrong people.

00:51:11.000 Because all the commanders...

00:51:13.000 I think of General Milley, and I see him there with his badges.

00:51:18.000 North Korean-level badges.

00:51:20.000 Eisenhower had one.

00:51:22.000 One World War II. You know, this guy's got...

00:51:26.000 It is.

00:51:26.000 It was like North Korea propaganda.

00:51:27.000 And I'm like, I don't know that you've won anything.

00:51:30.000 Why are you here?

00:51:32.000 Why do you have those accolades?

00:51:33.000 And that's my...

00:51:34.000 You've perpetuated death.

00:51:36.000 We went through 19 rotations of commanders in that duration.

00:51:40.000 And all of them were promoted.

00:51:42.000 All of them fully retired.

00:51:44.000 No one called to account to say, you were given almost unlimited funds.

00:51:49.000 And you...

00:51:51.000 Significant casualties and what do you have to show for it?

00:51:54.000 And it's unacceptable.

00:51:55.000 So returning a culture of accountability, I am all in favor of Pete Hegseth bringing accountability and cleaning house.

00:52:03.000 And if we don't do it, then we are truly not ready to fight the next war.

00:52:08.000 Listen, I couldn't agree with you more and I hope they get it done, but it's going to be no small feat because that is...

00:52:12.000 That is entrenched as bureaucracy in any other agency in D.C., and maybe worse.

00:52:18.000 It's not a few dozen officers here and there.

00:52:21.000 It's hundreds and hundreds of flag officers, colonels, staff officers, and tens of thousands of DOD civilians all need to go.

00:52:31.000 Well, it gives me hope that the January recruitment numbers into the Army were the highest in modern history.

00:52:37.000 Yep.

00:52:37.000 After coming out of the Biden administration, where even the last few months of that were the lowest in history.

00:52:42.000 So it gives me hope that young patriots believe that we can fix this, but we're going to actually have to fix it.

00:52:49.000 We can't just...

00:52:49.000 People respond to leadership.

00:52:51.000 Yeah.

00:52:51.000 Hard to believe.

00:52:52.000 Clear rudder orders.

00:52:53.000 So speaking of leadership, I'd love to kind of get your 30,000-foot view of where we are as a country now.

00:53:01.000 What's changed in the few weeks since my father...

00:53:06.000 We, you know, during the State of the Union, he talked a lot about sort of a common sense revolution.

00:53:12.000 Maybe I've called him sort of the 80-20 president, which is he's like really good at latching on to like an 80% issue.

00:53:18.000 Maybe some of those issues now, based on what I saw, again, at the State of the Union, were like 90-10, 95-5 issues.

00:53:25.000 The Trump derangement syndrome.

00:53:26.000 I'm like, we've got to take the five and we've got to defend the indefensible at all costs.

00:53:32.000 Because we think it's great that men beat up little girls in girl sports. 1.00

00:53:37.000 How did they die on that hill?

00:53:39.000 They're outraged that that happened.

00:53:41.000 During the State of the Union, they can't stand up and clap.

00:53:44.000 For a kid who survived cancer, another kid who found out that he got into West Point and was there because his father was killed in the line of duty as an officer of law.

00:53:56.000 They can't even clap for that.

00:54:01.000 It's wild.

00:54:02.000 When I started saying they hate America, I actually believed it, but you didn't necessarily have the hard evidence.

00:54:10.000 Just watching them sit and not even clap for some of the most basic and decent things that America has to offer was both scary and eye-opening.

00:54:19.000 The most successful political party of the 20th century in America is the Socialist Workers' Party.

00:54:24.000 I think their party platform of 1924 has been fully adopted into law and is largely the policy of the Democrat Party today.

00:54:32.000 Big government, remember, we're not...

00:54:35.000 A socialist is just a slightly milder communist.

00:54:38.000 And so that idea of fundamentally transforming America that Obama wanted to do, they want to go much, much, much farther.

00:54:47.000 I think, to me, one of the measurable differences, and I've said that three years ago, long before this campaign, a successful Trump presidency would be a reduction of real estate value in the D.C. area.

00:55:02.000 And you know what?

00:55:03.000 You live in the air, so I apologize.

00:55:04.000 You're doing pretty well on your own.

00:55:05.000 I don't feel that sorry for you.

00:55:07.000 I am in favor.

00:55:08.000 So I think it's already fallen by $145,000, the median value, since January 20. Wow.

00:55:15.000 It's magnificent.

00:55:15.000 That's a big deal.

00:55:16.000 I mean, that's got to be 15%, you know, 15%, 20% of...

00:55:18.000 And I'm sorry for the non-government employee people that are taking that pounding on their house, but it is a sign to...

00:55:26.000 The five highest per capita wealth counties in America surround Washington, D.C. That is an exceedingly unhealthy sign, and bringing that back to normal is absolutely essential.

00:55:37.000 The cessation of funding USAID, or the pause, and I think you'll find it is such a massive grift.

00:55:46.000 Yeah, talk about the depth of that, because again, people, you know, I've gone through the list on the shows, you know, $10 million for...

00:55:55.000 Male circumcision in Mozambique.

00:55:58.000 You know, $5 million for trans Alamo in Guatemala.

00:56:01.000 And so let me tell you what...

00:56:03.000 Trans education in places that they wouldn't even... 0.97

00:56:06.000 You know, I hear about trans education in, like, sub-Saharan African countries.

00:56:10.000 And I've literally been there.

00:56:11.000 You know, as a hunter, I've spent time there.

00:56:13.000 And, like, hey, I'll go to some of the guides and the trackers, and we're having a great time and talking.

00:56:17.000 And I'll even talk about the concept of it.

00:56:19.000 And they're looking at me like...

00:56:21.000 What are you talking about?

00:56:22.000 This can't be real.

00:56:23.000 And yet we're funding programs to aid these things that I imagine no one's even heard of there, let alone are actively combating.

00:56:30.000 And why?

00:56:30.000 Because there's ridiculous programs and there's even programs like drilling wells for water.

00:56:36.000 It's a logical, morally defensible thing.

00:56:39.000 The problem is the NGOs, the overhead that these folks load.

00:56:43.000 So if it's a $10 million contract to do something.

00:56:47.000 70-80% of that gets burned up in overhead.

00:56:50.000 So I think you'll find there's an enormous amount of that money gets recycled back into D.C. politics.

00:56:54.000 And that's all Democrat.

00:56:56.000 Back into D.C. politicians.

00:56:58.000 100%.

00:56:58.000 I mean, it has to be, right?

00:57:01.000 It sort of reminds me.

00:57:02.000 Absolutely.

00:57:03.000 It is a massive drying up of a reservoir of Democrat funding that has been washed through the unhealthy halls of the USAID. It sort of reminds me, like, back in the day when I was, you know, formerly a New Yorker, and you'd go to some of these, you know, like, rubber chicken charity dinners, and they're throwing a wonderful party for themselves.

00:57:22.000 And at the end of the night, they did a great work.

00:57:23.000 They raised $3 million for whatever cause.

00:57:26.000 The problem is the party cost $3.2 million for themselves.

00:57:28.000 Yeah.

00:57:29.000 And it was like, no one ever talked about that.

00:57:31.000 There was never an accountability of the expense side of things.

00:57:34.000 And it's like, we're just making ourselves feel good about it, but what's going to actually cure pediatric cancer?

00:57:41.000 Whatever they were doing.

00:57:43.000 A tiny fraction of the numbers that were raised.

00:57:45.000 And when you look at the actual charity auditing firms, right, they don't really view an overhead load of much 10 or 15% as being acceptable.

00:57:56.000 These USAID contractors were high 50, 60, 70. Clinton Foundation, right?

00:58:03.000 We'll spend $5 billion on this and we'll build exactly zero homes in Haiti.

00:58:06.000 And fund the Clinton lifestyle and travel budget.

00:58:09.000 Yeah.

00:58:10.000 So it is...

00:58:12.000 I'm so glad they did that to USAID first, and there's so many more across so many organizations to just dry it up.

00:58:19.000 The education bureaucracy, which our education standards have continued to plummet since Carter made a Department of Education, and again, that funds so many awful left-wing causes which actually undermine education in the labor space.

00:58:37.000 Here's my wish for housing, okay?

00:58:39.000 What we should do?

00:58:41.000 Is go to everyone that's occupying every unit of public housing and issue them a title to say, this is yours.

00:58:49.000 And it's yours.

00:58:49.000 It's tax-free for the next five years, but it's yours.

00:58:52.000 Form your own homeowners association.

00:58:54.000 It would be the ultimate empowering thing to give those people ownership, not a mortgage, but a title that they can sell if they want to move or if they want to borrow it to start a business.

00:59:04.000 But America should get out of the housing business and give the housing to the people that are in it now and be done.

00:59:11.000 What do you think?

00:59:12.000 I mean, I actually like the idea.

00:59:14.000 I know if that happened to me, I'd probably try to take care of my place, invest it wisely.

00:59:20.000 I imagine the vast majority of people would.

00:59:21.000 What do you do with the people who say, I'm selling it right now and I'm going to Vegas, putting it all on black.

00:59:25.000 And they can do that.

00:59:27.000 And they can live with choices.

00:59:29.000 They can live with consequences.

00:59:30.000 But we have to have a society.

00:59:32.000 Are we at the stage yet where it's like, okay, you made a bad decision.

00:59:35.000 You're on your own now that you don't end up picking up that slack later.

00:59:39.000 I get it.

00:59:40.000 You're not wrong.

00:59:41.000 But it feels like we've created incentive structures for people where the worst actors always get the bailout.

00:59:48.000 And that goes true for banking.

00:59:50.000 That's not a demographic thing.

00:59:53.000 Fair, fair.

00:59:55.000 But okay, you can start to give people opt-out ability to own their homes and live with the consequences.

01:00:01.000 I think that if we want a free and prosperous society, we need to encourage growth.

01:00:06.000 Because I don't think anybody...

01:00:08.000 Sets out that wants their kid to become a ward of the state.

01:00:12.000 I mean, nobody really wants to...

01:00:14.000 People want to breathe free.

01:00:17.000 It's an inherent human desire.

01:00:18.000 And for us to continue that is wrong.

01:00:23.000 And it is wrong for government to subsidize that.

01:00:25.000 Yeah.

01:00:26.000 So, skipping tracks a little bit, I know you're really passionate about what's going on in Venezuela right now.

01:00:32.000 I had the leader of the opposition on here a few weeks ago.

01:00:36.000 She's incredible.

01:00:39.000 Obviously, canceling the Chevron contracts over there.

01:00:43.000 The administration's holding them accountable.

01:00:45.000 30-day transition.

01:00:46.000 Fantastic.

01:00:47.000 Correct.

01:00:48.000 What do you think happens down there?

01:00:51.000 By the way, we got the news of the Chevron license cancellation while I was interviewing Machado.

01:00:59.000 It was sort of amazing.

01:01:01.000 It's like, hey, by the way, this just happened.

01:01:03.000 What do you think happens there?

01:01:05.000 Because it does seem like if someone can win an election by 90 points and still not be able to, is that beyond the point of reform?

01:01:14.000 You know the military side of things better than anything.

01:01:16.000 Those are always sort of interesting powers between the leader and the military leaders, and there's always a struggle.

01:01:21.000 You obviously want to do things peacefully.

01:01:23.000 What happens there?

01:01:24.000 Maria Karina Machado is a brave woman and deserving of our help and our support.

01:01:30.000 And they did to her what they tried to do to your dad.

01:01:34.000 They canceled her candidacy.

01:01:36.000 If she was campaigning, went to stay at a hotel, the next day the tax police would come and close that hotel.

01:01:42.000 If she went to a restaurant, they would close that restaurant. 0.99

01:01:45.000 They locked her off from any aspect of society.

01:01:48.000 And yet, even with her campaigning and Edmundo Gonzalez, the guy who was allowed to run, who was really the surrogate for her, wins the election in...

01:01:58.000 End of July by 70 to 30. It really wins by 40 points.

01:02:03.000 And the Maduro regime, which is effectively a narco state, there's 34 major narcotic and meth production facilities in the country.

01:02:15.000 So it's like Petrometh?

01:02:17.000 Petrometh, exactly.

01:02:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:02:21.000 Really bad people in exporting leftist communist money to all the other political parties all across the continent.

01:02:31.000 There's sanctions.

01:02:32.000 I'm glad they're tightening down on the nonsense of U.S. oil companies there.

01:02:40.000 But it's ultimately going to have to be pushed out.

01:02:43.000 And it doesn't require U.S. military.

01:02:44.000 It can be covert action from the intelligence community or covert action from...

01:02:49.000 Venezuelan patriots helped by outsiders.

01:02:52.000 That's because ultimately the Maduro regime has to know that there are consequences to staying.

01:02:58.000 And it should be U.S. policy because they're an absolute malign, extremely negative influence.

01:03:08.000 And just as recently as like a week ago, they're sending gunboats out to threaten Exxon ships loading oil from Guyana.

01:03:18.000 Again, creating a controversy, creating a conflict, Maduro claims basically 70% of his neighbor on the east side, Guyana.

01:03:28.000 It's the Essequibo area.

01:03:30.000 And why do they want it?

01:03:31.000 Because the largest new oil and gas discovery in the western hemisphere is there.

01:03:39.000 Guyana is the fastest growing economy in the world because of that.

01:03:42.000 And now they're out there even threatening their neighbors, trying to...

01:03:45.000 Take their land. 0.95

01:03:47.000 So again, he's a bully, is a fairly well-funded bully, but their military doesn't really believe him or doesn't really support him. 0.99

01:03:56.000 A few punches to the face and they will go. 0.89

01:04:00.000 So, I mean, that sounds a little bit like what we were talking about, frankly, earlier with like the DRC and then Rwanda, the Congo and Rwanda and these sort of bad actors encroaching on their neighbors that may be resource rich.

01:04:13.000 That seems to be a recurring theme that we're seeing around the world.

01:04:16.000 It's a recurring theme.

01:04:17.000 And I think private sector help, helping countries.

01:04:23.000 Look, we raised some money.

01:04:24.000 I trolled Maduro after they stole the election.

01:04:28.000 And I said, if Biden and Harris actually want to support democracy in Venezuela, they should raise the bounties to $100 million each, sit back and watch the magic happen.

01:04:36.000 Well, that led to a lot of people contacting me saying, please start a GoFundMe.

01:04:42.000 We did that.

01:04:43.000 It's called Yakazi Venezuela, which means almost there, Venezuela.

01:04:47.000 Raised some money for it.

01:04:48.000 And I can assure you, my friends in Venezuela, things are in process to push the Maduro regime out.

01:04:55.000 Look, Maduro is wanted, and the U.S. raised the bounty to $25 million.

01:05:00.000 Okay?

01:05:00.000 That was one last thing.

01:05:01.000 It was one of the few good things the Biden administration did on the way out.

01:05:05.000 And I want the Maduro team to realize all the other people that have had $25 million bounties on them, What is their status today?

01:05:13.000 Not so good.

01:05:14.000 Not so good.

01:05:15.000 They're either six feet under or they're in the bottom of the Indian Ocean, like Osama bin Laden. 0.96

01:05:19.000 So it's not going to end well.

01:05:21.000 Leave now and let the Venezuelan people breathe free. 0.99

01:05:26.000 So, you know, Secretary Rubio, I think he's actually done a great job.

01:05:29.000 He's doing well.

01:05:30.000 And by the way, it's someone who I'm friendly with, but, you know, on a foreign policy standpoint, 10 years ago, we probably wouldn't have agreed on much.

01:05:37.000 I think he's actually sort of...

01:05:39.000 You know, really actually embrace the Trump doctrine, sort of understanding what it is and actually believes that he's not one of those.

01:05:44.000 He does not at all the guy to guy like, well, I'm going to reluctantly do this.

01:05:49.000 He actually genuinely believes that I think he's having a good time actually fixing these problems.

01:05:52.000 But, you know, they they said they're going to go after, you know, sort of these anti-American regimes around the world, that they'll actually, you know, be consequences to that.

01:06:02.000 You know, who are those worst actors in this?

01:06:07.000 How do you effectuate that?

01:06:10.000 To prevent it from happening again.

01:06:13.000 Look, the simple foreign policy should be that our friends love us, our rivals respect us, and our enemies fear us.

01:06:20.000 And so when you have Venezuela or Cuba or Iran continuing to do malpractice and hurting us, there's lots of ways to dial up that pressure. 0.68

01:06:33.000 Economically, of course.

01:06:34.000 And even internally, and lots of people that want to breathe free in those countries, you know, it was a huge missed opportunity within the last four years when the women life freedom protests were on in Iran.

01:06:50.000 Okay, you have millions of women. 1.00

01:06:52.000 If you're looking for an opportunity to regime change, this seems like the window.

01:06:56.000 And it doesn't require external troops or anything like that.

01:07:00.000 You had literally millions of people in the streets, women that just didn't want to have to... 1.00

01:07:04.000 Covered their heads and wanted to be able to dance, drink a beer, be in public, and not have to be subject to religious police. 0.87

01:07:14.000 And so not supporting those people and their desire to be free is a huge mistake.

01:07:20.000 And I kept telling the Israelis, for the cost of one or two F-35s, you could actually get rid of the mullahs. 1.00

01:07:27.000 And it would be an amazing, you know, Iran has...

01:07:31.000 Very smart people, very educated, very hardworking, a significant amount of resources, a traditional return of Iran, of Persia, to its rightful role.

01:07:40.000 It was one of the most like bohemian countries in the world prior to... 0.65

01:07:44.000 Yes, and smart and industrious and all the rest.

01:07:46.000 If you do that, it would drag the rest of the Middle East far forward because it would make them work hard, innovate, and get off of a Muslim Brotherhood line of... 1.00

01:08:00.000 So what do you think happens there right now as they seem to be getting ever closer to actually achieving some sort of nuclear capability?

01:08:08.000 I mean, can Israel really just sit there and just wait for it to happen? 0.96

01:08:13.000 It does not seem like that's plausible to me as a thinking individual.

01:08:19.000 I think it's an exceptionally dangerous position for the entire Middle East for Iran to be nuclear. 0.97

01:08:25.000 But again, I don't think that gets solved best by the U.S. When you look at thousands of years of history, attacking Iran from the outside never ends that well, but almost like a firecracker on the inside of your hand. 0.81

01:08:40.000 I mean, literally, the geography of Iran protects the middle.

01:08:44.000 Yeah, it's like a bowl.

01:08:46.000 There's Zaragoza mountains around the whole southern side.

01:08:49.000 So, again, a little covert action, a little cleverness inside, but the first thing we have to do is make some kind of detente.

01:08:58.000 We can be frenemies with Russia. 0.76

01:08:59.000 We don't have to be enemies.

01:09:00.000 And so pulling Russia away from China towards the West, we have much more in common culturally with Russia than we do with China or India or Japan or Korea.

01:09:12.000 Russia has always been a Western-looking nation.

01:09:16.000 Return it to that role.

01:09:18.000 So first there, that will isolate Iran and make them exceedingly uncomfortable and vulnerable. 0.76

01:09:26.000 And that's next.

01:09:28.000 And the other dirtbag states like Venezuela will fall on their own.

01:09:34.000 Interesting.

01:09:34.000 So, you know, as we talk about sort of broken and or corrupted governments, I think we've experienced plenty of that even here in the United States.

01:09:41.000 Anyone who's been watching for the last nine years gets it.

01:09:43.000 You know, they've done it to you.

01:09:45.000 They've certainly done it to me.

01:09:47.000 Yep.

01:09:48.000 You, in one of your, you know, many ventures, you started a company called Unplugged.

01:09:55.000 Private phone.

01:09:57.000 You know, off the grid.

01:09:58.000 Can you tell us a little bit about that?

01:09:59.000 Because, again, I think, you know, more and more people, you know, if you would have said this, even honestly, even as they were doing it to us, right?

01:10:05.000 When they were doing it to me with Russia, Russia, Russia, and I mean, you and I became friends during that time.

01:10:10.000 I'm like, I don't even know what they're talking about.

01:10:11.000 But, hey, it's the FBI. A for creativity.

01:10:15.000 There must be some sort of truth to this. 1.00

01:10:17.000 It's like, no, it's all bullshit. 1.00

01:10:18.000 It was always all bullshit. 1.00

01:10:19.000 But, you know, privacy. 0.99

01:10:22.000 In your smartphone, in your daily communications, I mean, it's a really big deal.

01:10:27.000 I think people are now far more aware of that again.

01:10:30.000 Maybe we needed to sort of hit rock bottom to understand and appreciate that.

01:10:34.000 Tell us a little bit about Unplugged.

01:10:36.000 Yes, I've felt the heat of the surveillance state coming at me, and it's unnerving.

01:10:42.000 And we decided to do this phone after the 2020 election when...

01:10:46.000 People were getting thrown off platforms and censorship and all the big tech collusion with big government.

01:10:51.000 And I said, we're never going to make big tech better by complaining about it only if we can compete.

01:10:56.000 And so we pivoted a tech team I had and said, we're going to build a competitive phone standalone outside of the Google and Apple universe.

01:11:05.000 And the more I dug into this, I learned about something called surveillance capitalism.

01:11:09.000 Because if you think about what happened after 9-11, USG rightly starts buying advertising information.

01:11:16.000 Looking for more people that fit the profile of the 19 hijackers.

01:11:20.000 And so that creates an entire industry of data collection from advertisers.

01:11:26.000 Then in 2009, when smartphones come out, the apps that are built to sit on that smartphone start collecting all that data and it automatically exports it.

01:11:35.000 It's brutal.

01:11:36.000 I'll sit there, I'll have a conversation about something.

01:11:38.000 My phone's not even on, I'm not even on the app.

01:11:40.000 And like the next 12 ads I see, the next time I open my phone 45 minutes later, it's like...

01:11:44.000 Just inundated.

01:11:45.000 Where you go, what you buy, who you call, what you browse.

01:11:49.000 Constant exporting.

01:11:50.000 The phone makers collect about $180 of ad revenue per user.

01:11:55.000 So that's why they're able to give away the free phones.

01:11:57.000 Exporting your data.

01:11:59.000 Exactly.

01:11:59.000 So our phone doesn't have an advertising ID. The phones that you're used to have a 32-digit alphanumeric code which follows you around.

01:12:10.000 It makes it possible for the apps to extract.

01:12:12.000 And interact and export all that information.

01:12:15.000 Ours doesn't do that.

01:12:16.000 It prevents that at the root level.

01:12:18.000 We have our own secure messenger, our own VPN, our own store.

01:12:22.000 So really our device lets you be in the world but not collected and exported to all of it.

01:12:27.000 And so especially in an era of AI, like the average kid in America has, by the time they reach the age of 13, has 72 million data points collected.

01:12:38.000 Okay?

01:12:39.000 I imagine someone could go many lifetimes a few years ago without getting anywhere near that.

01:12:44.000 But now, when an LLM large language module gets a hold of all that data, now they can effectively digitally groom you to put whatever it is they want you to think about in front of you.

01:12:56.000 And so it's pretty frightening.

01:12:58.000 So, again, our device lets you navigate, bank, communicate, airlines, sports.

01:13:07.000 Video streaming, all the rest, but it's a little different because you're not being digitally groomed for whatever it is you're supposed to see.

01:13:15.000 How does all of this, when you talk about security and privacy, what are your thoughts on crypto?

01:13:22.000 How people should be looking at that?

01:13:26.000 Where are your thoughts there?

01:13:27.000 Because again, it seems like, for me, as I've gotten into that world and getting it, it seems like a great hedge against some of the insanity going on right now.

01:13:35.000 It does seem to have that now.

01:13:38.000 Anybody that uses crypto should have an unplugged phone.

01:13:41.000 Why?

01:13:41.000 Because we don't have an advertising idea.

01:13:43.000 It's hard for a hacker to find which device has a wallet on it.

01:13:47.000 And because our device is very hard to hack, your wallet is significantly safer on our device.

01:13:53.000 I'm in favor of crypto.

01:13:54.000 I'm in favor of alternate currencies because big government and the hegemony that comes with that kind of monopoly is extremely dangerous.

01:14:04.000 Unfortunately, President Trump will not be president for more than the next three and a half years.

01:14:09.000 And we have to be careful of what comes next.

01:14:12.000 And constant vigilance in protecting liberty and restraining the size of government also comes with currency discipline.

01:14:20.000 So I'm in favor of crypto.

01:14:22.000 There will be a shakeout.

01:14:24.000 If you think about when America got independence, there was probably a dozen.

01:14:30.000 Or 20-some different competitive currencies in America.

01:14:33.000 State-level currencies, etc.

01:14:35.000 And so that's kind of what you're seeing in crypto and there'll be a shaking out consolidation.

01:14:42.000 The cream will rise to the top and everything else will go, by the way.

01:14:45.000 It is the capitalist way.

01:14:47.000 Seems to work out pretty well usually here.

01:14:49.000 We'll see what happens.

01:14:50.000 But Eric, thank you so much.

01:14:51.000 Really appreciate you being here.

01:14:52.000 You're welcome.

01:14:53.000 And if people want a phone, they can get it at unplugged.com.

01:14:57.000 And we'll deliver in two days.

01:14:59.000 Very nice.

01:14:59.000 I'll get you one.

01:15:00.000 Appreciate it, man.

01:15:01.000 Thanks as always.

01:15:02.000 - Thanks for having me. - Guys, thanks so much for tuning in.

01:15:07.000 Remember to like, share, subscribe, get the word out.

01:15:10.000 Make sure you never miss one of these major episodes.

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Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - March 17, 2025

My Father Puts Maduro’s Gangs on Notice — and Sends Them Packing,

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