TRIGGERnometry - ＂Biden Presidency is Just More Failed Neo-Liberalism＂ - Aaron Maté

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:09.180 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.520 Our brilliant guest today is a US journalist, Aaron Mate. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:19.060 Thanks for having me.

00:00:20.440 It's great to have you. Listen, a lot of our viewers we were just talking before won't know

00:00:24.960 who you are, but we feel that you've got a very interesting voice to add to the mix.

00:00:29.480 Tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how are you, where you are,

00:00:32.880 what has been the journey that brings you here talking to us?

00:00:36.280 Well, I'm a journalist, I'm a leftist,

00:00:40.320 and I work for an outlet in the U.S. called The Gray Zone,

00:00:44.580 and I also write for The Nation magazine.

00:00:47.620 And my focus for the last few years has been primarily this Russiagate obsession in the U.S.

00:00:56.720 and how Russia was blamed for basically all of America's domestic problems, including

00:01:02.060 the election of Donald Trump, and how I think that feeds into a very dangerous dynamic of

00:01:07.100 encouraging a Cold War militarism between the West and Russia and also excusing failed

00:01:14.640 neoliberals for their own failures on many other bad outcomes.

00:01:20.000 And that's take up a lot of my time.

00:01:22.620 But I also cover generally foreign policy and particularly the, you know, how the U.S. undermines governments abroad that it doesn't like for reasons coming back to the fact that these governments stand in the way of U.S. hegemony.

00:01:38.940 So that's pretty much the focus of my work.

00:01:41.680 And that's, you know, I can go through my long life story, but I'll save that maybe for later.

00:01:46.660 yeah well so you basically it would it be fair to say you represent the anti-imperialist left

00:01:53.120 would that be about right certainly people would associate me with that i i try to avoid terms like

00:02:01.000 that personally just because i just think i represent factuality and uh but uh sure yeah

00:02:07.220 in terms of if you want to assign a category absolutely i'm definitely a part of the anti-imperialist

00:02:12.000 left. I don't believe in the self-appointed right of strong states to interfere in the affairs of

00:02:19.620 others. Well, we'll probably get into more of that. But the first question I wanted to ask you

00:02:24.640 relates probably more to the media landscape than anything else, because Russiagate has obviously

00:02:29.240 been a big part of your work. And the way it seems to work nowadays, if you oppose essentially lies

00:02:35.680 about someone like Donald Trump, which is what we're talking about, that automatically means

00:02:41.600 you're a huge fan of his and you're secretly, you know, it's Trump adjacent and all the rest of it.

00:02:47.340 Are you secretly Trump adjacent, Aaron? I am not secretly Trump adjacent. No, no, I'm not. No,

00:02:54.160 I really, when he won, that was a very dark couple of weeks to process that. And his presidency,

00:03:02.500 I think, was a disaster for the US and for the world. And I really did not want him to win

00:03:09.460 re-election. The problem, though, is that I also don't think that Joe Biden and the part of the

00:03:16.000 party, of the Democratic Party that he represents, were really a better alternative,

00:03:25.300 except for the fact that I just think they're less worse. So I'm not a big fan of Joe Biden or

00:03:29.700 anything he does. I just think that the Trump and the people around him were so dangerous.

00:03:34.260 And part of the reason why I opposed Russiagate from the start was not only because I thought it was based on a lie and a lot of deception and that there was this key pieces of evidence were missing on all these core claims.

00:03:48.620 But also because I thought it was actually a big gift to Trump, because if you're Trump, would you rather have your opposition focused on your policies like, you know, this tax heist in which Trump's tax cuts transferred a massive amount of wealth upwards to the top 1% or pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal or pulling out of a bunch of arms control accords with Russia or tearing up environmental treaties?

00:04:15.600 or would you rather have them focused on this crazy conspiracy theory that you're really

00:04:21.320 a puppet of Vladimir Putin and there's this secret conspiracy going on and as soon as we find all the

00:04:28.560 as soon as we find out the smoking gun your presidency will be over well if I'm Trump it's 0.84

00:04:33.120 an easy choice I'd much rather have my opposition turning into crazy conspiracy fanatics and that

00:04:40.440 unfortunately what the democratic party was for pretty much the bulk of Trump's presidency

00:04:45.120 It was Blue Anon, as I call it. 0.61

00:04:47.660 We've heard of QAnon.

00:04:49.320 The Democratic Party was Blue Anon. 0.69

00:04:50.940 Literally every single day, liberals being bombarded with conspiracy theories about Trump and his associates conspiring with Russians.

00:04:58.760 And it was all a scam.

00:05:00.520 And we saw that when at the end of the Mueller investigation, they came up with nothing.

00:05:05.100 And the only reason some people thought they might have found something is because there was more deception and more disingenuous rhetoric to make people think that there was something there when really there was nothing.

00:05:14.880 And I think it was a disaster for the opposition to Trump and a disaster for the world, because another impact of all this was to encourage increased confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, which I think for many reasons is a very bad thing.

00:05:29.220 And Aaron, why was it that they were so focused on Russiagate when it comes to Trump?

00:05:34.540 Because let's be fair, if you if you've got a target, I mean, if there's a lot to criticize on the bloke, why is it that they were so focused on Russia?

00:05:43.300 Well, let's start with how the Democrats lost in 2016. So you have Hillary Clinton, who is the embodiment of this neoliberal warmongering establishment. Hillary Clinton, who supported the war on Iraq, who supported the dirty war in Syria, who supported the destruction of Libya, who supported so-called free trade policies that decimated the U.S. working class. 0.88

00:06:10.860 so she comes along and she's the candidate for the democratic party she faces this clown in trump

00:06:17.660 a reality tv show host who is able to convince people because of his rhetoric on the campaign

00:06:24.800 trail that he is some kind of working class champion who is going to take on the establishment

00:06:30.640 and drain the swamp and enough people in enough states were so disgusted by the 0.97

00:06:38.300 Clinton-Obama legacy, that they were willing to take a chance on this clown, Trump, who was saying 0.85

00:06:45.760 things like, you know, I'm going to bring back jobs and bring back our factories. And he also 0.88

00:06:50.940 was criticizing the foreign wars that Hillary Clinton had supported. And that worked. And I

00:06:57.620 think there are many people who probably didn't believe Trump, but I think they were so contemptuous

00:07:02.120 of what Clinton represented that they figured, why not go with this guy? He's at least saying

00:07:06.640 the right things. And it worked. So for Democrats, if they want to do honest self-reflection on such

00:07:14.360 a humiliating defeat to this clown, then that means that they have to reflect on their actual 0.54

00:07:20.240 positions, which would require them to come up with a genuine anti-establishment alternative 0.98

00:07:26.020 to Trump to challenge him on. So instead of Trump's fake populist anti-establishment rhetoric

00:07:31.800 for Democrats to learn from 2016 and then challenge him, defeat him, they would have to come up with

00:07:36.280 the genuine anti-establishment alternative. But the problem with that is that that would mean

00:07:40.820 undermining their own power and privilege within the failed system that let Trump become president.

00:07:48.520 And they couldn't do that. So they had to come up with a bunch of excuses for their defeat

00:07:52.760 and in a very classic dynamic, find external enemies to blame. And very early on, that became

00:07:59.860 Russia. So Russia was now at fault for Trump. Russia was the reason that we had Trump because

00:08:06.200 Russia brainwashed millions of Americans with their sophisticated social media posts and their 0.94

00:08:11.560 hacked emails. And moreover, there was even a conspiracy between Trump and Russia. And that is

00:08:18.440 how Trump got to the White House, not because of our failed policies. So I think that at its core

00:08:23.700 explains it. And then you have a convergence of factors and other privileged sectors beyond the

00:08:27.800 Democratic Party leadership. You have a media that gave Trump billions of dollars worth of free

00:08:33.320 airtime. So they also don't want to do some honest self-reflection. And moreover, if your focus is on

00:08:40.020 Russia and you're blaming Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska for Trump, then that means you can 0.86

00:08:46.520 avoid scrutiny of American oligarchs, people like Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer and all the

00:08:52.280 other billionaires who preside over a rigged system, frustration with which Trump was able

00:08:59.400 to exploit. So for a media that serves these same powerful interests, blaming this external enemy

00:09:04.860 serves a very useful purpose. And finally, you also have elements of the national security state

00:09:10.280 who also tried to undermine Trump. That's very obvious now with all the false leaks that they

00:09:15.000 put out, falsely suggesting that there was evidence for a Trump Russia conspiracy.

00:09:18.900 they didn't like trump not because they don't like his racism but because they didn't see him 0.99

00:09:24.980 as a suitable steward of the u.s war machine he's a buffoon and he says the wrong things 0.95

00:09:30.620 he's actually honest sometimes and when he talks about what the u.s really does around the world

00:09:35.080 so for example in syria when he kept u.s troops there he said very openly we're there to take

00:09:40.800 the oil yeah barack obama or joe biden would never say that they'll say we're there to confront isis

00:09:46.120 or to protect our strategic interests,

00:09:48.920 they wouldn't be so blunt like Trump

00:09:50.920 as to say, yeah, we're there for the oil.

00:09:52.920 So that's not good when you have a president

00:09:55.100 who was being honest

00:09:56.120 and who was pulling the mask off of the empire.

00:09:59.920 And plus, there's another very important factor here.

00:10:03.880 Trump on the campaign trail was successful

00:10:06.720 in criticizing the foreign wars

00:10:09.880 that the national security state survives on, basically.

00:10:13.540 He was criticizing the war in Libya

00:10:15.520 and the dirty war in Syria.

00:10:17.200 And so that's not good

00:10:18.300 when you see that having appeal

00:10:20.180 amongst a large base of people.

00:10:22.280 So ascribing all that to Russian influence

00:10:25.000 was a good way to stigmatize it

00:10:27.360 and a good way to say

00:10:28.340 that this is not how we talk in the US.

00:10:30.220 This is all Russian influence. 0.94

00:10:31.440 So it's bad and it has to be taken down.

00:10:34.160 So I think all those factors

00:10:35.680 are what explain why we got

00:10:37.360 four years of Russiagate madness.

00:10:40.940 You raise a lot of really interesting issues there,

00:10:43.840 Aaron, which we'll dig into.

00:10:45.380 But you obviously talk about the 2016 election.

00:10:48.240 If we move forward a little bit to the election that's just happened.

00:10:52.600 First of all, let me just a quick fire question.

00:10:54.660 Do you think if there's no COVID, Trump gets elected again?

00:10:58.820 I do think Trump would have gotten elected.

00:11:00.360 Yes, I think there would have been at least a much stronger chance that Trump would have gotten elected.

00:11:04.100 And in fact, there's a new book by a couple of reporters, Jonathan Allen and Annie Parnes.

00:11:13.380 It's called Lucky. The book is called Lucky. And it's about Joe Biden's election. And it quotes one of his advisors who says that COVID was the best thing that ever happened to Biden. So even from inside the Biden camp, there's a recognition that if not for COVID, Trump would have been in a much stronger position because, look, the economy, at least on paper, was doing pretty good.

00:11:37.040 And again, going back to Russiagate, what had the Democrats offered the public for four years?

00:11:43.120 Insane Russia conspiracy theories and basically the fact that they're not Trump.

00:11:49.900 So that was the sum of their opposition pretty much was that we're not Trump.

00:11:53.680 Oh, and also Russia is at fault for everything that's going on in the US, including Donald Trump.

00:11:57.920 So Democrats had not offered voters very much.

00:12:00.320 They hadn't really put up a very robust opposition to Trump's actual policies.

00:12:05.080 So I don't think Democrats had given the voters enough of a case to win back the people they lost in 2016.

00:12:13.300 And so I think it's very plausible to speculate that if not for COVID, which Trump handled so terribly, that he would have been in a much stronger position.

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00:12:50.500 And, Aaron, we, after the 2020 election, you know, everybody was using the phrase,

00:12:58.400 the adults are back in the room, the left's back in charge.

00:13:02.440 You get a little smile from you there, you see.

00:13:04.760 Still haven't lost the old comedic charm.

00:13:07.020 Aaron, what is your opinion, he's already laughing, about Biden?

00:13:10.800 What does Biden represent to you?

00:13:13.460 biden represents the same neoliberal establishment of the democratic party that lost to trump in

00:13:21.820 2016 that under obama presided over a massive loss of power at all levels of government except

00:13:29.480 for the white house until 2016 when they also lost the white house as well and you know he

00:13:35.400 supported every hawkish foreign policy position over the course of his career for pretty much

00:13:42.480 everyone there are some exceptions uh he authored the infamous crime bill which led to a massive

00:13:49.680 increase in imprisoning people of color he has been a longtime friend of wall street especially 0.95

00:13:57.520 the credit card industry so biden to me is just a you know a figurehead for the same old

00:14:04.960 neoliberal elite who didn't offer voters much this year except the fact that he wasn't trump 0.96

00:14:11.600 And I think enough happened for people to just get sick of Trump and how much of a clown he was that that was enough to push Biden over the top.

00:14:19.940 But will that be enough to hold on to power? 0.84

00:14:23.280 On the domestic front, you know, he's not been terrible.

00:14:27.360 I think he's been better than Obama, although that's not hard.

00:14:29.800 He just passed this stimulus bill that will cut child poverty in half.

00:14:35.480 It will increase subsidies to parents with children.

00:14:39.320 It will expand Medicaid.

00:14:40.620 Those are all good things.

00:14:41.600 At the same time, did he fight for a $15 minimum wage when Joe Manchin blocked it?

00:14:48.540 No, he didn't.

00:14:49.340 He could have actually pushed that through, but he caved on that.

00:14:52.160 So he, I think, has learned some lessons from Obama's failure.

00:14:57.560 Obama, who I think was a very tepid leader, but not that much.

00:15:00.840 And to really make effective change, you have to have a movement of people behind you.

00:15:05.780 But Biden and his circle, I don't think, are interested in that.

00:15:08.220 They just want to work with the Republicans that they can and centrist Democrats and push through incremental reforms that do a little bit but don't do that much.

00:15:18.380 That, for example, can't even get to the level of giving people a livable wage, like $15 an hour, and can't even give everybody health care, which is just a global scandal that the U.S., this supposed, you know, civilized country, can't guarantee health care to all of its citizens, especially during a pandemic.

00:15:36.500 So do I think Biden will be able to overcome the corruption and dysfunction of the neoliberal

00:15:45.820 wing that he represents to win again in 2024 if he runs again?

00:15:50.060 I'm not very confident of that.

00:15:52.500 Aaron, it's really interesting having this conversation because of all the criticisms

00:15:55.720 that have been made about Trump over the last four years, five years now.

00:16:00.200 We didn't really hear from the mainstream much of what you're saying.

00:16:03.760 You criticize his tax policy.

00:16:05.560 which there's a lot to criticize I very very rarely did we on certainly on this side of the

00:16:10.620 pond hear any of that and many of the other things you're talking about and at the core of what you're

00:16:15.380 saying is you talk about Biden being a neoliberal and you call yourself a leftist can you explain

00:16:22.640 to people who may be unfamiliar with the technical terms what you're talking about when you say him

00:16:27.700 and Clinton represent neoliberalism and what you mean when you talk about being a leftist and I

00:16:32.860 I get a sense that that is largely economic in your case,

00:16:35.680 but break that down for us.

00:16:38.040 Yeah, well, basically, ever since, I'd say,

00:16:40.860 around the Jimmy Carter administration,

00:16:43.260 the Democratic Party has consciously abandoned the working class,

00:16:48.640 consciously undermined unions,

00:16:50.820 with which they used to be very closely tied,

00:16:53.120 and instead gone for an alliance, a voter base,

00:16:58.480 based on the professional class.

00:17:02.860 And relying on the donations of Wall Street, which became infinitely more power with the in the 1980s with the deregulation policies overseen by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, when he ran, pretty much ran with similar policies economically as Reagan.

00:17:20.940 So it's pretty much instead of a Democratic Party that is, you know, champions workers, it's one that is tied instead to massive corporations and Wall Street and sees deregulation and unfettered finance as sort of the vehicles for growth, allowing for worker protections and worker rights to be consistently undermined.

00:17:48.800 And that's been the direction of the Democratic Party since pretty much the Carter administration.

00:17:52.960 And if you look at how what Clinton did with NAFTA, the so-called free trade deal, which moved a whole bunch of jobs abroad, completely decimated U.S. manufacturing, deregulating the telecommunications industry, which led to a greater consolidation of corporations owning the media.

00:18:13.300 And then his foreign policy have also continued hawkishness, which is not that much different than the Republicans.

00:18:18.800 You see basically a one-party system in the U.S. between involving the Democrats and the Republicans.

00:18:26.300 They only differ slightly on social issues.

00:18:28.420 So where Democrats differ is culturally they're more evolved.

00:18:32.320 So they believe eventually – it took them a long time actually.

00:18:36.140 It only took them – it actually took them until the Obama administration to even recognize gay marriage.

00:18:40.740 But basically they start recognizing cultural and social rights a bit earlier than the Republicans do.

00:18:47.160 That's basically the essential difference between Democrats and Republicans.

00:18:52.340 And that's what defines a neoliberal is pretty much the same economic policies and foreign

00:18:57.420 policies of Republicans, but on cultural social issues like gay marriage and the separation

00:19:03.680 of church and state there, you know, they come along with a more, I think, evolved position

00:19:08.700 a bit earlier.

00:19:10.260 And what about you?

00:19:11.260 When you talk about you being a leftist, what is it that you want to see the US government

00:19:16.720 doing?

00:19:17.160 well at home i'd like to see the u.s government provide for its people's basic needs

00:19:22.340 so for example health care it's just a scandal that this country supposedly the wealthiest in

00:19:28.380 the world does not guarantee health care for all its citizens unlike every other industrialized 0.99

00:19:33.260 country um and abroad i like to see the u.s stop terrorizing the world which it has done

00:19:39.220 for over a century especially since coming out incredibly powerful after the second world war

00:19:46.740 So today, you know, the fact that under Trump, you have an attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela and you have an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria and overthrow the government of Iran.

00:19:58.900 And to illustrate just how bipartisan this is, Biden comes into office and he's essentially continuing all of Trump's policies.

00:20:06.260 He's keeping the sanctions in place on Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, which deprive those governments of much-needed revenue and are helping to weaken the states of those countries, and most importantly, are impacting, as they're designed, the civilian populations of these countries, which have a harder time importing medicine, which plunge a lot more people into poverty, and all because the U.S. doesn't want their governments in power.

00:20:32.740 So, you know, because I oppose all these things, I, you know, you can call me a leftist, and I've just always identified with any effort to challenge illegitimate power and any imperial power that is interfering in the affairs of other countries, while meanwhile depriving its own citizens of their basic needs.

00:20:51.260 And Aaron, don't you think that the Democratic Party lost, how can I put this, any legitimacy with the fiasco with what happened with Bernie Sanders

00:21:04.020 And it looked like he won the Democratic candidate and then it then disappeared into the ether and Hillary was elected 0.94

00:21:12.460 Despite the fact that most people didn't even want her as a candidate 0.99

00:21:15.400 right well look i i have no uh affection at all for hillary clinton and i certainly think that

00:21:25.460 what they did to bernie sanders was a complete scandal and yeah they don't have any legitimacy

00:21:30.000 in my eyes but you know look she did still get more votes than him and you can argue that he 0.73

00:21:36.000 would have won if not for the dnc rigging the primary against them it's possible but we don't

00:21:40.840 know that for sure. We don't. And look, Bernie ran again in 2020 and he didn't win. And it's just

00:21:48.340 a fact that while certainly, of course, there is bias and even efforts to sabotage Bernie Sanders

00:21:55.220 by the DNC. And in fact, there are probably people in the DNC who would rather have Trump

00:21:59.980 win re-election than Bernie Sanders if he'd been the candidate. It's still a fact that it's very

00:22:05.620 hard to mobilize leftist candidates in this country and and leftist sentiment because there's

00:22:12.280 so much against it and it's just quite possible that we haven't arrived there yet with Bernie

00:22:16.100 Sanders that even without the rigging of him that it just might not have happened so but yes

00:22:20.980 to answer your question shortly of course they were biased against him and of course they tried

00:22:25.500 to undermine him and it speaks to the obstacles that leftists face in trying to build power the

00:22:30.340 same thing we saw in the uk with jeremy corbyn who came very close to winning uh the entire

00:22:37.180 election in 2017 i believe but we saw we saw from leaked emails that members of his own party

00:22:43.240 sabotaged him and worked against him and then after that we saw a coordinated effort to sabotage

00:22:49.260 him with these fake allegations of anti-semitism and cornering him on brexit which i think all of

00:22:56.280 which was designed to undermine him because neoliberals I think possibly hate progressives

00:23:01.700 more than they hate the right wing because they have a lot more in common with the right wing

00:23:06.700 than they do with progressives like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. I mean I would say too just

00:23:11.240 from a UK perspective Jeremy Corbyn was not the best candidate too. He had some issues in terms

00:23:18.060 of likability with the general public but let's not get into that actually. He almost well look

00:23:22.360 he he came closer than any other labor leader that i can think of to winning the prime minister's

00:23:27.560 office in 2017 it was a few thousand votes shy he did uh he did at that point but his policy on

00:23:34.900 brexit completely ruined uh ruined his uh the perception of him with the general public right

00:23:41.500 but what i'm arguing there it's my look i haven't followed as closely maybe as you have but it's my

00:23:45.940 understanding that he was boxed in by the elite of his own party which did not want to accept

00:23:50.760 the result of Brexit so Jeremy Corbyn tried to basically and I think he made a mistake from

00:23:56.400 from my reading of it although again it's limited and trying to appease both the results trying to

00:24:02.220 trying to recognize both the result but also appease the elite of his own party by saying that

00:24:06.860 you know we're going to hold a new vote on whether to accept the terms of Brexit right that's how it

00:24:12.020 went down which I think was a mistake I think he should have said no there was a vote we accept the

00:24:16.020 outcome, but he faced a huge amount of pressure from within his own party. And I think that

00:24:21.340 pressure was consciously aimed at undermining him, of putting him in an impossible position.

00:24:26.020 And I think it did play a factor in him ultimately losing.

00:24:29.380 Well, what I would say to you, Aaron, I think you're right in your analysis. What I would add

00:24:32.480 is you were right earlier when you talked about the change in the Democratic Party in the United

00:24:36.520 States. The same thing happened to the Labour Party, where they ceased to be the representative

00:24:40.740 of the working class in this country.

00:24:43.140 And so the reason Jeremy Corbyn was so torn

00:24:45.900 between supporting the vote that had happened,

00:24:49.320 which, by the way, he probably voted to leave in,

00:24:52.000 and, you know, the other people in his party,

00:24:55.380 it was because the bulk of the party

00:24:57.100 was now the middle class sort of metropolitan elite.

00:25:01.180 And so it wasn't so much those people undermining him

00:25:04.740 as the fact that his party wasn't really the party

00:25:07.040 that it used to be.

00:25:10.740 Hey, Konstantin, do you like success?

00:25:13.740 Well, I'm working with you, so clearly not.

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00:25:23.320 Have they taken our strapline? 0.99

00:25:24.920 Because if they have, I'm going to sue the f***ing motherf***ers back. 0.99

00:25:27.800 No, no, no. 0.99

00:25:29.100 I wrote that bit.

00:25:30.560 Ah, okay.

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00:25:34.900 They interview some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world.

00:25:38.320 My personal favourite was with Huel founder Julian Hearn, who explains how to become a food and drink millionaire.

00:25:45.520 Yeah, you listened to that one because it's all about food, didn't you?

00:25:48.440 Yeah, I knew it. Who else have they interviewed then?

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00:25:52.760 Joking aside, though, they've talked to the founders of pioneering startups like BrewDog, Monzo and Joe Malone.

00:25:59.300 My favourite episode actually was with Alex Stephanie, the CEO of Beam,

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00:26:11.300 Where do I go to listen to secret leaders?

00:26:13.700 Just download it right now from wherever you get your podcasts.

00:26:17.680 All you need to do is search for secret leaders.

00:26:20.260 Easy.

00:26:22.960 But anyway, let's not get stuck into that.

00:26:26.040 If anything is worth pushing back on is probably the conversation about foreign policy with you

00:26:30.380 because some people might argue, you know, I'm from Russia.

00:26:33.800 I'm no fan of the Russian regime.

00:26:35.240 Some people might argue, well, the United States is the beacon of light in the world.

00:26:39.180 It's the one place that's created democracy.

00:26:42.320 Surely the United States has not only a right, but a duty to offer a bulwark against, you

00:26:48.680 know, Vladimir Putin's dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party, etc.

00:26:53.460 What would you say to that?

00:26:56.740 Imperial states always believe that they have the right and the duty to impose their

00:27:03.780 system on foreign countries and it's always cloaked in beneficent language like we're doing

00:27:09.980 this for the good of the world the nazis said the same thing but what's the evidence for it

00:27:13.700 the u.s has uh repeatedly overthrown governments around the world including democratically

00:27:20.120 elected governments uh for the crime of either standing in the way of u.s hegemony or being a

00:27:28.480 socialist government that wants to use your resources for your own people so you can find

00:27:33.260 a million examples. Iran in 1953 elected a nationalist government that wanted to use Iran's

00:27:39.860 oil for its own people while still actually sharing with the Western oil interests that

00:27:45.820 were in Iran. But that wasn't enough for the U.S. and Britain who overthrew it. And that set off 0.61

00:27:50.560 actually the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran that continues today and has caused a

00:27:57.300 lot of suffering for the people of Iran. You can go to Nicaragua in the 1980s where the U.S. waged

00:28:03.080 a terror war to undermine the Sandinista movement, which tried to use the country's meager resources

00:28:11.300 for its own people instead of the traditional elite.

00:28:13.580 And you have that pattern repeated across Central America, where the U.S. has consistently

00:28:17.600 waged dirty wars to overthrow socialist governments and undermine socialist movements.

00:28:23.120 It's still happening today in Venezuela, where you had a government that came in after years

00:28:28.320 of rule by the country's, you know, light-skinned elite. Hugo Chavez in the late 1990s coming in

00:28:35.060 presides over a massive increase in quality of life for his people because for the first time

00:28:39.980 Venezuela's oil reserves are being spent on its population, not just going to a tiny

00:28:44.720 sector of the elite. And the U.S., starting with a coup in 2002, has tried to repeatedly undermine

00:28:50.540 that, continuing today under the Trump-Biden sanctions that are destroying Venezuela's

00:28:56.100 economy so for anyone who thinks that the u.s is a beacon of light onto the world and has brought

00:29:00.480 democracy to the world i ask you to show me where and in response i can show you countless examples

00:29:06.840 where they've done the exact opposite i mean the the question with venezuela and hands up i'm half

00:29:13.620 venezuelan is slightly more complex than that with uh with chavez with you know the rampant

00:29:20.620 corruption, the suppression of human rights, his targeting of journalists, many of whom in my

00:29:26.400 family have had to literally flee for their lives. So I accept your point that whether the US should

00:29:31.960 be involved in that. But when it comes to Venezuela itself, it's slightly more complex than that.

00:29:36.940 Would you not agree, Aaron? I refuse to discuss Venezuela without acknowledging the context of

00:29:43.880 the U.S. waging a 20-year campaign to overthrow its government. And of course, I'm not denying

00:29:50.940 that there is corruption in Venezuela or human rights abuses, but there is corruption in human

00:29:55.800 rights abuses in every single country. The question is, what is the role of the U.S.,

00:29:59.760 this outside power, which has no business doing anything in Venezuela without the permission of

00:30:05.560 its sovereign government? What is the role of the U.S. in fomenting all this? And the role is

00:30:09.460 actually pretty strong it has funneled tens of millions of dollars into the venezuelan opposition

00:30:15.200 it tried a coup in 2002 under starting under obama continuing under trump and now continuing under

00:30:22.620 biden it's imposed murderous sanctions that are aimed specifically at starving the population

00:30:29.300 so that there is enough unrest to overthrow the government to basically undermine support for

00:30:35.120 the government. So I don't doubt for a second that there is corruption in Venezuela. People

00:30:41.340 have been treated unfairly. But that to me is a Venezuelan issue. That's for Venezuelans to work

00:30:46.380 out for themselves. If I see my government terrorizing Venezuela by literally trying to

00:30:51.840 orchestrating a coup, this coup involving Juan Guaido would not have happened if not for

00:30:56.820 dedicated U.S. planning and support. There's just no way. There's even documents that have

00:31:02.640 come out showing how much, how instrumental the US has been in funding Guaido's operation. So

00:31:09.340 that's what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned with what my country is doing to another country

00:31:15.180 where it has no business doing anything at all, except leaving it alone.

00:31:19.320 Aaron, actually, you know, obviously there's areas of agreement, areas of disagreement,

00:31:23.000 but on the principle, I agree with you. I don't think the United States should be going around

00:31:27.160 the world, throwing its weight around. My, suppose the counter argument I'm trying to

00:31:31.880 explore with you in my head is what should the united states do if anything about something like

00:31:37.600 the chinese communist party china and let's say the uyghurs should we just go well that's an 1.00

00:31:42.740 internal chinese problem let them get on with putting people in concentration camps well first 1.00

00:31:47.440 of all the question presumes is if we have some kind of moral authority and we have some

00:31:53.260 right to act against another government now notice how the question is never asked what

00:31:59.760 should the chinese communist party do against the u.s which is supporting a genocide in yemen 0.59

00:32:05.840 without u.s support the saudi-led genocide in yemen would not be happening so the u.s is

00:32:11.640 supporting genocide in yemen it supported a dirty war in syria that i'm sorry to interrupt hold on 0.96

00:32:17.180 those things aren't fair equivalents because that isn't happening in the united states if the if

00:32:21.780 the united states was imprisoning i don't know latinos en masse and putting them in camps and

00:32:27.600 re-educating them then that would be a fair comparison uh do you see what i'm saying the

00:32:32.060 the u.s actually has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the u.s doesn't doesn't

00:32:36.500 doesn't actually give health care to its own people so there's there's even things internally

00:32:40.400 the u.s is doing to its own people which i think uh under the standards with concentration camps

00:32:45.960 under these standards established by the u.s would actually would actually legitimate foreign

00:32:50.620 intervention but i don't uh i don't accept the principle of foreign intervention i first of all

00:32:55.240 I start with the premise that everybody's equal.

00:32:57.460 The U.S. is not some enlightened higher society.

00:33:02.040 That's a Nazi way of thinking. 0.83

00:33:03.680 I don't accept that.

00:33:04.420 We're not better than China or anybody else.

00:33:06.300 We're exactly the same.

00:33:07.400 And in some ways, we're actually a lot more backward in that we have foreign military occupations going on around the world and bases around the world and sanctions around the world that nobody else is doing.

00:33:20.420 so i don't accept the premise that we have some duty or some right to act that we don't grant to

00:33:26.960 other other states but isn't that the argument that would say we had no reason the united states

00:33:32.620 shouldn't have intervened in world war ii for example well that's different because that's when

00:33:36.800 you have a nazi army that is invading foreign states and overseeing extermination and other 0.87

00:33:44.980 states that are being attacked by the nazis have asked the u.s to come to their defense

00:33:49.400 so the U.S. was asked for help but that's different than say Vietnam where you know

00:33:54.880 no nobody asked the U.S. to come into Vietnam no sovereign government said please come in

00:34:00.240 to Vietnam or you know the Nicaragua the no no sovereign Nicaraguan said please come in

00:34:06.380 and destroy our country and uh the same it's and you can repeat that everywhere Yemenis didn't say 0.94

00:34:12.980 please give Saudi Arabia please arm Saudi Arabia and give them intelligence so you can bomb our 1.00

00:34:18.660 countries bomb our weddings bomb our water plants so world war ii is a unique case i think and the

00:34:25.160 only you know if the u.s did anything wrong there it's that it came in way too late it let the nazis

00:34:29.820 actually take far too much territory and cause far too much death before it finally came in

00:34:35.520 and look and by the way on the issue of the uyghurs um that's worth addressing because

00:34:41.820 you know it's interesting we've only seen rhetoric around the uyghurs come up in recent years

00:34:46.720 When meanwhile, the conflict there has been going on for a long time.

00:34:49.900 There is undoubtedly repression in Xinjiang.

00:34:53.540 I think that's that that's undoubtable.

00:34:55.660 And there's a massive surveillance state inside of China.

00:34:58.660 But we've only seen talk about a genocide happen in recent years.

00:35:03.420 And I think it's important to look at why.

00:35:06.360 In recent years, China has become more of a target of the bipartisan U.S. establishment because it's a rising economic power.

00:35:13.980 Its economic success threatens U.S. hegemony

00:35:19.320 And that's why I think China is now in the U.S. crosshairs 0.98

00:35:22.380 And that's why I think we're hearing more accusations against China of genocide

00:35:26.500 Which, by the way, is a very strong term

00:35:28.640 Which I do not use when it comes to the Uyghurs 0.99

00:35:32.860 Genocide means mass extermination

00:35:34.960 There is repression there

00:35:37.000 I haven't been there, but I would bet strongly that all the allegations of repression are true

00:35:42.300 But genocide means mass extermination. And anybody who wants to argue that Uyghurs in China are treated worse than, say, Palestinians in Gaza who are being occupied with U.S. support is wrong. It's just a falsehood.

00:35:59.820 So there's, I think, a very familiar playbook of weaponizing humanitarian rhetoric to actually justify the real aims of basically demonizing China and waging a cold war against it, which I do not support.

00:36:15.800 Hey, Francis, do you like Martians?

00:36:18.720 Well, I work with one, don't I?

00:36:20.460 Would you like to have an immersive experience with a Martian? 0.99

00:36:23.840 Are you going to get me drunk on the vodka and f***ing in my f***ing b***h sight last time? 0.99

00:36:28.480 You wish. 0.98

00:36:29.820 No, there's this great new immersive experience in London based on Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds.

00:36:35.940 I've heard about this. The audience reviews have been incredible.

00:36:39.440 It was rated one of the top 20 things to do in London at night and 98% of guests recommend it.

00:36:46.320 The experience features a cast of 17 characters, 12 live actors, plus a mix of holograms, projections and VR of West End stars.

00:36:55.740 You feel all your senses fired as you crawl, slide and weave your way through 22,000 feet of immersive action,

00:37:04.220 including 24 extraordinary scenes and having to escape 300-foot Martian machines and the evacuation of London.

00:37:12.940 It is fully compliant with COVID regulations and they're offering up to £10 off standard weekday tickets with our promo code, which is, of course, Trigger.

00:37:22.240 All you need to do to take advantage of this fantastic offer is go to thewaroftheworldsimmersive.com.

00:37:30.460 That's thewaroftheworldsimmersive.com, and experience a world where we're being invaded by Martians, 1.00

00:37:37.780 which is still better than being in lockdown.

00:37:40.240 Follow the link in the description, and I'll see you there.

00:37:44.820 And do not worry what will happen, Aaron, if, as you wish, and correct me if I'm wrong,

00:37:51.300 that the U.S. retreats from the world stage, that it just focuses on its own problems and

00:37:57.340 health care, whatever it is. What will happen to the world stage if countries like China and Russia 1.00

00:38:03.280 are allowed free reign? That to me is like asking what, you know, in Star Wars, if the Death Star

00:38:11.220 was dismantled, what would that mean for the world? The U.S. is a global empire. Show me

00:38:18.420 another country that has bases in hundreds of countries around the world that is waging

00:38:22.780 simultaneous military occupations, that is imposing a sanctions regime that cuts off

00:38:29.360 massive countries from the rest of the world and denies their civilians food and medicine.

00:38:34.280 That's the case in every single major target of U.S. regime change.

00:38:37.620 There's just no parallel.

00:38:38.740 All these governments are corrupt. 0.92

00:38:41.560 They repress their own people. 0.99

00:38:43.940 And I'm not a fan of pretty much any government.

00:38:47.080 But I don't believe that the system of this one global hegemon that is constantly invading other countries, destroying other countries, blockading other countries, is better than a system where there's not this one empire.

00:39:02.260 I think that would be a wonderful thing if there was not this one hegemon controlling everything because it would mean that we have no more – or at least it would reduce the chances of this one bully invading and blockading every country that it doesn't like.

00:39:15.220 Do you think that's really true though, Aaron? I mean, the system with no one power is inherently unstable, I would argue. And what you'd probably end up with is Russia or China becoming that superpower instead. And would that be a better world?

00:39:29.760 for russia and china to become a superpower on the level of the u.s that would require them

00:39:37.920 building up bases around the world invading other countries i don't see that happening

00:39:43.980 and when you talk about being less stable well what is stable about the current situation

00:39:49.140 where you have countries like iran venezuela cuba syria you can go down the list starving

00:39:57.680 under U.S. sanctions and you have this U.S. government that, you know, pretty much with

00:40:04.100 every administration invades somebody else. You know, look at the last 20 years. The U.S. invaded

00:40:09.580 Iraq, destroyed Iraq. Look at the impact of Iraq, what that's done, not just to Iraq, 0.95

00:40:13.940 but to the whole region. ISIS then goes into Syria, takes over a large part of Syria. Look

00:40:21.440 at Afghanistan, the invasion of Afghanistan. Back then, Al-Qaeda was concentrated to a very

00:40:25.740 small part of afghanistan and neighboring pakistan look where they are now now they're

00:40:30.200 around the world they're everywhere they're in syria they're in somalia they're in yemen

00:40:34.160 that's a result of u.s policy of the invasion of afghanistan and also of iraq then look at libya

00:40:39.920 the destruction of libya slavery returning there the dirty war in syria hundreds of thousands of 1.00

00:40:46.720 people killed millions displaced the country destroyed now it can't even rebuild because

00:40:51.500 of u.s sanctions iran people you know there was just a an article that came out in foreign affairs

00:40:58.100 talking about how millions of iranians have been plunged from the middle class to below the poverty

00:41:04.520 line because of u.s sanctions you can look everywhere around the world so what is stable

00:41:09.260 about that for these million tens of millions of people there's nothing stable about living under

00:41:14.260 you know the threat of war the impact of the u.s invading and now being surrounded by extremist

00:41:20.760 militias like isis and living under medieval sanctions that prevent them from importing their

00:41:25.660 basic goods like food and medicine well look on on afghanistan iraq and all that stuff we we're

00:41:31.660 completely with you and libya uh and to a large extent syria i mean some of the points you're

00:41:36.860 making are hard to disagree with no matter how much i'd like to uh but aaron i i was going to

00:41:41.480 ask you something a topic that we cover on on this show quite a bit is you know francis is

00:41:47.040 very much old school lefty. I used to be on the left. I'm very much sort of in the center now,

00:41:52.700 I think. But one of the things we talk about a lot, and maybe it's our background as comedians

00:41:57.720 who are concerned about increasing restrictions around speech, people being, you know, cancelled

00:42:03.360 for the wrong comment or whatever, that sort of thing, which does happen quite a lot in our

00:42:08.860 experience. As someone who's on the left and cares about foreign policy, cares about economics,

00:42:14.880 what do you make of what they what they sort of call woke stuff or woke culture woke politics

00:42:21.540 how do you feel that's useful or is it a distraction from the main issues the left

00:42:26.360 should focus on what do you make of it to the extent woke refers to how i see its original

00:42:36.980 intention which is just to expand consciousness about the world be conscious of subconscious

00:42:44.300 biases that we inherit as a result of living in an unequal, racist system, I think that

00:42:51.060 is good, you know, and I'm on board with it.

00:42:54.020 Of course, like everything, it's been exploited to distract us from the important issues like

00:43:00.320 the ones I've been talking about and to sort of silo politics into this very narrow thing

00:43:05.760 where it's no longer about improving people's material well-being, meeting their basic needs,

00:43:11.320 opposing things like imperialism and war, but instead very much focused solely on identity

00:43:17.740 at the exclusion of everything else. There's nothing wrong, I think, with recognizing the

00:43:22.220 role of identity in our biases and trying to correct that. But when you do that at the expense

00:43:29.720 and in fact in opposition to everything else, I think it's a very real problem. And the attempts

00:43:35.360 to cancel people for saying the wrong things is I think a part of this where it's this like

00:43:39.020 effort to push us further and further away from focusing on the things that matter that impact

00:43:43.940 people's lives and instead on these semantic narrow concerns that I just don't really

00:43:51.940 resonate with the vast majority of people and that's certainly an issue on the left that I

00:43:57.840 think is worrying that you know I'm all for focusing on identity issues and you know for

00:44:05.540 calling people by the right pronouns i think we have to respect however someone wants to be you

00:44:11.240 know uh described we have to respect it but the problem is when people try to make these things

00:44:16.700 the sole issue uh at the exclusion and in opposition everything else that's a problem

00:44:21.340 and you see that especially now with the democratic party leadership the dnc they love this talk

00:44:26.220 because instead of talking about you know the working class the minimum wage uh or the impact

00:44:32.720 of sanctioning and bombing foreign countries, they can brag about how diverse the cabinet

00:44:38.180 of officials is that is carrying out these same awful policies.

00:44:41.980 So sometimes this becomes a smokescreen to continue the very same policies, the very

00:44:48.300 same racist policies of old.

00:44:50.680 So that's where I stand on that.

00:44:52.520 And I'm certainly not comfortable with the incredible amount of suppression of free speech

00:44:56.980 that's gone on recently.

00:44:58.780 And, you know, we saw that here in the U.S. before the election where there was this article on the New York Post about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and Hunter's corrupt business dealings abroad.

00:45:09.320 And literally, when you wanted to share that on Twitter, you couldn't.

00:45:13.440 Twitter blocked people from sharing that.

00:45:15.620 And that is a manifestation of this increased policing and censorship of speech.

00:45:21.020 and it's you know uh and in the case of of this hunter biden story one way in which they justified

00:45:27.080 is they said that this might be russian disinformation and that's another way all

00:45:30.700 this has happened is that anything that offends u.s elites gets labeled russian disinformation

00:45:35.460 and that way we can bury it so you know all this i think is is concerning and aaron don't you see

00:45:42.280 that when it comes to leftist parties this identitarian politics is slowly tearing it

00:45:49.920 apart because it's making them less and less electable and less and less relevant to working

00:45:55.560 class people who they're meant to be serving i think there is truth to that yes i do i do i do

00:46:02.700 now i that doesn't mean that i think leftists shouldn't talk about identity and prioritize

00:46:10.840 addressing racism and any other form of discrimination but when it's done at the

00:46:16.960 exclusion of everything else. And again, in opposition to improving people's material

00:46:22.240 interests, that's when I think it's a problem. And unfortunately, I think that trend of solely

00:46:27.360 focusing on identity while still advancing policies that in fact hurt people of color,

00:46:33.420 hurt marginalized communities, like, you know, for example, not being able to fight for a $15

00:46:38.280 minimum wage as the Democratic Party just showed us. I think that is a real problem and it will

00:46:44.320 cost the democrats and other liberals around the world votes because when things are rough you know

00:46:51.400 when there's no economic alternative and there's no party offering you any hope and any sort of

00:46:58.000 means to improve your your economic condition it becomes much easier to scapegoat other people so

00:47:04.280 whether it's people of color or immigrants those things become a lot people become a lot more

00:47:10.700 susceptible to demagogues like Trump blaming immigrants for their problems instead of being

00:47:16.060 willing to look at U.S. elites, U.S. corporations that are causing the problems. And Democrats that

00:47:21.580 refuse to call out those corporations and instead try to pretend that they're woke simply because

00:47:26.300 they have a diverse group of people in their cabinet or they use the right pronouns, it's not

00:47:31.580 going to work. Right. And the thing as well is if you target your efforts at working class people,

00:47:37.580 You will inevitably disproportionately help people who are from ethnic and other minorities because they tend to be overrepresented in that group.

00:47:45.740 Anyway, Aaron, I'm just wary that we have to let you go because you've got another thing to run to.

00:47:51.280 So I just want to say thank you very much for appearing on the show.

00:47:54.680 It's been a pleasure chatting with you. We had a nice bit of back and forth.

00:47:58.000 And we've got one more question for you, which is always what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be.

00:48:03.240 well politically to me i think the dirty war on syria has not gotten nearly enough attention and

00:48:13.420 the way it's been described in the western media especially in the british media and the u.s media

00:48:17.760 is a scandal the u.s and its allies spent billions of dollars on a dirty war in syria which in the 0.64

00:48:24.820 words of joe biden ultimately benefited al-qaeda and isis he blurted this out in a comment in 2014

00:48:31.040 which he later had to apologize for, but he was telling the truth. And the picture we got in the

00:48:37.520 Western media was just not accurate as to what was actually going on. We really helped destroy

00:48:42.320 the country. And now Syrians cannot rebuild their country because the U.S. is overseeing what's

00:48:47.080 called the Caesar sanctions, which explicitly targets Syria's reconstruction. The U.S. openly

00:48:52.180 brags that it's destroying Syria's economy through these sanctions and preventing it from rebuilding.

00:48:57.060 And meanwhile, this is in parallel with the U.S. occupying still militarily a third of Syria, which also does not get very much attention.

00:49:04.420 So I think the U.S. efforts to destroy Syria along with its allies, including the U.K., should get far more attention. 0.71

00:49:10.440 And at minimum, we should be lifting these murderous sanctions that are preventing a country that we help destroy from rebuilding.

00:49:17.900 And I hope people give that much more attention, along with a scandal that I've been covering very closely at the Gray Zone and the Nation magazine,

00:49:25.620 which is that as a part of this dirty war, to impose sanctions on Syria and to justify foreign aggression against it.

00:49:34.220 Syria has been accused of carrying out these chemical weapons attacks.

00:49:37.400 And you can go through every incident and there's sketchy evidence in all the big cases.

00:49:42.880 But the most glaring one is the case of Duma in 2018, April 2018, where Syria was accused of chemical weapons attack.

00:49:51.100 The U.S., Britain and France bombed Syria.

00:49:52.860 But then there's been this scandal in the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which actually went to Duma, to Syria, to investigate this.

00:50:04.080 And a whole series of leaks show that internally, the inspectors who went to Duma did not find evidence of a chemical weapons attack.

00:50:12.340 But their evidence was suppressed.

00:50:14.260 Their initial report was doctored, and the OPCW put out a report that was completely misleading and contradicted what its own inspectors had found.

00:50:25.500 And this coincided with a U.S. effort to pressure the OPCW to come to a conclusion that happened to match the U.S. narrative that Syria was guilty of a chlorine attack.

00:50:36.140 So that is a global scandal where basically, similar to what we saw before the Iraq war, the U.S. is compromising the OPCW to basically doctor claims that justify U.S. warmongering, that justify a bombing of Syria and now justify sanctions.

00:50:53.660 And there are whistleblowers inside the OPCW who have challenged this, who deserve our support and certainly our attention because try to find a reference to this in U.S. or U.K. media and it's very, very hard to find.

00:51:05.660 A few people have covered it. Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail has covered it. I've covered it at the Gray Zone. Jonathan Steele, the veteran British correspondent, has covered it. But aside from that, it does not get very much attention.

00:51:17.660 And there was finally there was just a new development where there was an open letter just published. It's available at the Courage Foundation, couragefound.org. And it's a statement by a whole bunch of signatories, including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as the chief of staff to Colin Powell, Tulsi Gabbard, as well as five former OPCW officials voicing support for the whistleblowers and urging the OPCW to stop silence.

00:51:47.660 them and to let them air the suppressed scientific findings from their own investigation. So I hope

00:51:54.600 people pay attention to that story. And if they're interested, there's a lot more they can find about

00:51:58.440 it at thegrayzone.com. Fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the show. We absolutely

00:52:05.280 loved it. If people want to find you, where is the best place to do that? Thegrayzone.com.

00:52:11.820 Thegrayzone.com. Thank you very, very much. He already told you, mate. Come on, pay attention.

00:52:15.140 Well, yeah, you can get it in a second time.

00:52:17.500 You can get it in a second time.

00:52:19.060 Aaron, listen, it's been great.

00:52:20.480 It's a really valuable perspective to add.

00:52:23.040 You are, as I said at the beginning, you're a voice that's very different.

00:52:26.220 There'll be plenty of things for people to agree and disagree on,

00:52:28.620 but that's what we love.

00:52:29.480 And, you know, it's great for us who really love speaking to people

00:52:33.820 who are on the left because that's kind of where we've come from.

00:52:36.900 It's so increasingly rare now to get people on

00:52:39.620 who actually believe in having conversations and disagreeing and free speech.

00:52:43.580 so you know

00:52:44.640 all props to you

00:52:45.320 for coming on the show

00:52:46.060 we really appreciate it

00:52:46.980 all the best

00:52:47.520 and we encourage everyone

00:52:48.920 to check out your work

00:52:49.800 particularly

00:52:50.220 the story you mentioned

00:52:51.600 about Syria

00:52:52.160 thank you everyone

00:52:53.000 for watching

00:52:53.500 we'll see you

00:52:54.320 at 7pm

00:52:55.280 with another interview

00:52:56.180 or live stream

00:52:57.340 take care

00:52:58.180 and they always go out

00:52:59.180 at 7pm UK time

00:53:00.460 I just said that again

00:53:01.260 well done

00:53:01.620 it doesn't matter

00:53:02.200 this is the level of

00:53:03.280 professionalism you get

00:53:04.180 on the show

00:53:04.600 this is what happens

00:53:05.520 when you involve

00:53:06.100 comedians in anything

00:53:07.060 alright

00:53:07.460 thanks

00:53:13.580 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - April 04, 2021

＂Biden Presidency is Just More Failed Neo-Liberalism＂ - Aaron Maté

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