00:00:19.120Shane Gillis has caused outrage by suggesting that women who dress provocatively at the0.99
00:00:24.280gym look like whores in an SNL monologue.0.97
00:00:26.960trans people now have to use the rooms according to their biological sex in the nhs and sally0.99
00:00:34.300rooney has pulled her books from the uk over her support for palestine action those are the four
00:00:40.460stories winston you have got our story about trump's energy ceasefire with russia and ukraine
00:00:45.960take it away yes it has been an eventful week to say the least in the russia ukraine war this
00:00:54.980latest episode I think we can say started last Friday on the 9th when Trump did a deal to buy
00:01:01.7004.8 million tons of diesel from Putin the next day on Saturday Trump then lashed out at Zelensky
00:01:11.400and you know what I suggest I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could
00:01:20.360have made many deals and for some reason he never does and let me go a step further if i were
00:01:25.200president you wouldn't have ever had that war that war would have never started there was no reason
00:01:30.700that that war with ukraine and russia started it started due to incompetence should have never
00:01:37.340started you wouldn't have lost 30 percent of your country already you've lost 30 percent of your
00:01:43.020country and you've had over a million people killed between the two of them over two million
00:01:49.280people killed that's a war that should have never started and i think it's time for ukraine to get
00:01:54.840a new president yeah trump said that the u.s has told zelensky repeatedly he could do whatever he
00:02:03.780wanted in russia but do not hit the refineries because quote that's a world problem and a better
00:02:11.580damn well stop hitting those refineries it escalated on sunday trump announced the energy
00:02:18.760ceasefire that Konstantin pointed out, which Putin ignores. Zelensky abides for three days0.91
00:02:25.640before resuming attacks on the 15th. Meanwhile, Zelensky says he will in fact do elections if
00:02:33.220Putin agrees to a two-month ceasefire. But the story deepens still on Tuesday and Wednesday.
00:02:40.820Starlink and Starshield, which is used by Ukraine, see big disruptions, although they have
00:02:47.940resumed functioning since then and all the while ukraine make great grounds with operation vivaldi
00:02:57.020i say great grounds i think it's considerable given the state of the war over the last couple
00:03:03.140years the latest phase reportedly recaptured 101 square kilometers now before we go into the
00:03:10.860details of what's happened in each of these different parts of the story and before we look
00:03:15.160at the meta stories at play i think it's worth analyzing each of the different sections here
00:03:19.940of course if this was the rest is politics this is not even a conversation this is all because
00:03:25.900trump is of course a stooge of putin russia of course in control of everything conversation over
00:03:32.380but i think things are a little bit more complicated and i suspect my co-panelists will
00:03:37.380agree let's just start talking about diesel because i think this is probably fundamental
00:03:42.520diesel prices are up 115 percent on the year and that is impacting inflation
00:03:51.880ppi is at 6.3 percent and futures of diesel are at record highs so that is a problem constantin
00:04:04.840i have no reason to suspect you have any link to uh ukraine or russia because you're british of
00:04:09.560of course but perhaps you can i'm english get it right you're english you're in your english
00:04:15.480through we're all english do you have an opinion uh what about yeah so look particularly with the
00:04:20.360diesel yeah so we've got to uh first of all just get the facts correct and i spent uh last night
00:04:28.280looking all of this up with venice i getting my the stats correct checking everything and i wrote
00:04:33.280article last night which i released uh which which says trump's uh russia ukraine energy ceasefire is
00:04:40.080fake news which is what it is it's got nothing to do with ukraine it's got nothing to do with
00:04:44.960president zelensky this is about deflecting the blame for the iran war away from the trump
00:04:50.800administration and onto anyone else so that they can at least try to redirect the rage of american
00:04:57.360uh voters away from the fact that the the their gas prices and everything else therefore is going
00:05:04.720up uh why do i say this so uh this month russia has promised to deliver 300 000 metric tons of
00:05:12.160diesel next month that's due to go up to 500 000 up to potentially a million tons in december now
00:05:18.800a million tons of diesel sounds like a hell of a lot of diesel until you recognize and realize that
00:05:24.320global diesel consumption is 115 million tons a month so we are talking in this month less than
00:05:32.8000.3 percent of the diesel that is consumed globally that russia has promised to ship not
00:05:39.840has shipped but has promised to ship and as you talked about in your introduction vladimir putin
00:05:45.600is not somebody who can be trusted this energy ceasefire was violated by him attacking ukrainian
00:05:52.400power stations in direct contravention of whatever ceasefire donald trump thinks he's managed to sign
00:05:58.480now where is you mentioned diesel prices being up 115 this year they're up 115 this year because of
00:06:05.840the war in iran uh the the straight of her moves which has been so badly affected by that war is
00:06:13.600has the the problems there have taken about 5.4 million tons per month out of the global economy
00:06:22.000that is the reason that diesel prices are going up and the reason the futures are going up of
00:06:26.960course is there's clearly no end to it because donald trump has not found a way to end this war
00:06:31.600that he started and the end of my article i quote our conversation with ted cruz which i'm sure
00:06:37.280francis will remember well when he was pressuring him on this very fact in march we were having this
00:06:43.520conversation that come november if gas prices are up if the war is still ongoing you're going to be
00:06:50.800in trouble electorally and the country is going to be in trouble and ted cruz says well look i
00:06:55.920don't think it's i don't believe that's going to happen i believe this is going to be a matter of
00:07:00.560weeks not months but if it does happen we have done something very seriously wrong and this is
00:07:07.280what this is about this is about american electoral politics it's got nothing to do with energy and it
00:07:12.960certainly has nothing to do with russia and ukraine now you mentioned operation vivaldi and i think
00:07:17.920it's worth saying that this comes at the very moment that ukraine is actually starting potentially
00:07:24.400to turn the tide in this conflict ukraine has been under the cosh for for the last three years i would
00:07:29.840argue they had some initial successes pushing russia away from kharkiv in the north liberating
00:07:36.000her son pushing the russians uh out of other parts where they've been able to recapture territory and
00:07:41.760since that time they've been fighting a defensive war which ishan which they are by the virtue of
00:07:47.120the numbers involved guaranteed to lose but what they saw operation vivaldi is not some massive
00:07:52.080strategic success but what it was about was preventing russia from encircling a very
00:07:58.560significant area of ukrainian defenses and what they did is they cut off the one of the pincers
00:08:04.880uh with very well planned and well orchestrated counter-attacks using primarily drones and and
00:08:12.720and other ways of uh remotely attacking them for which they do use starlink and the other systems
00:08:18.960that provide them that functionality uh so this comes at the very time that ukraine is actually
00:08:26.080doing well to say nothing of the fact of course that yes it's true that ukraine has destroyed
00:08:31.680this significant portion of russia's refining capacity somewhere between 20 you know i think
00:08:37.520think the more accurate estimates are 20 percent the ukrainians say up to 50 percent i i don't i'm
00:08:42.020not convinced of that but let's say it's 20 to 30 percent it's significant it's not significant in
00:08:47.280terms of global diesel prices but what it is significant is in terms of russia's war machine
00:08:52.220and russia is now in a very very deleterious position when it comes to its own energy and
00:08:58.560when it comes to the entire war economy which is being very systematically destroyed by ukraine
00:09:05.340which is the only way, actually, that Ukraine can make progress, because killing Russian soldiers
00:09:11.280in the field is not really achieving anything, because Putin doesn't care, and he has plenty0.71
00:09:15.880more men to throw into the meat grinder. There's not going to be any internal rebellion against
00:09:20.220him. He can have World War II, almost, human waves, which they've had at certain points,
00:09:26.900and certain points at the front, continue to attack without any problems at home with his
00:09:32.800popularity. In fact, if you remember the attempted coup by Evgeny Prigozhin, whenever that was,
00:09:38.740which ended in Prigozhin miraculously, his plane accidentally being shot down by Russian
00:09:44.300anti-aircraft missiles, that was a coup from the right, if you like. That was a coup from the
00:09:51.040hardliners who were saying, you are not going hard enough. And so the longer the war goes on,
00:09:57.360actually putin is under pressure to ramp up the the the effort not to not to play it down so uh
00:10:05.040killing russian soldiers in the field is not going to win ukraine a war destroying russia's
00:10:09.520war economy is and so you're left with this situation where i think you have to recognize
00:10:13.920what's happening here is president trump is using president zelensky as a scapegoat to deflect
00:10:21.680attention away from the consequences of his war in iran which he started at the very time that
00:10:29.200ukraine is actually doing well and so you're pulling the the rug out from under ukraine and
00:10:34.320president zelensky and banging on about these elections which have really this is complete
00:10:39.600it's a complete irrelevance for a start it's perfectly normal for countries at war to suspend
00:10:44.240elections this country did it in world war ii secondly zelensky remains very popular with the
00:10:50.160ukrainians and by the way the more he is attacked by president trump the more popular he naturally
00:10:54.080becomes uh so this is a complete red herring and all of this is simply a way to distract
00:11:00.720from the reality which is that the republicans are on course to get absolutely crushed in the
00:11:05.760midterms and trump is trying to find anybody other than himself that he can blame for it
00:11:13.680and it's worth saying that i suppose the the perfidy of the americans in the course of the
00:11:18.960past week extends of course beyond the diesel deal and this phony energy ceasefire which seemed to
00:11:24.080come as a complete surprise uh both to president selensky and vladimir putin didn't even uh
00:11:29.440certainly didn't seem to get the memo because he continued to hit ukrainian energy infrastructure
00:11:33.840as constant was saying there were also these reports that us intelligence sharing was dialed
00:11:39.440down that the starlink and star shield systems which sort of respectively deal with defensive
00:11:46.240operations in ukraine and potentially offensive operations as well as guiding the drones giving
00:11:51.760them that kind of support that that again was dialed down it seems to have recovered to a
00:11:55.680certain extent but nevertheless that's a kind of putting of a thumb on the scale there which is
00:11:59.600really really significant um i don't also if you look at the arguments that trump is making for
00:12:05.040that diesel deal not only does it not stack up in terms of the amounts if he wanted to free up this
00:12:08.960amount of diesel owen matthews and the spectator made this point he could have just kind of deal
00:12:13.040with the canadians if he was talking about that kind of negligible amount um so i think the fact
00:12:17.920that this is primarily for domestic political consumption is pretty clear in terms of what it
00:12:23.200tells us about the u.s president and his stance on the war i think it is inescapable at this point
00:12:29.200that whilst he might not be in putin's pocket that he's not this sort of stooge in the way
00:12:33.440that rory stewart or alistair stewart would make out he has a camel as a campbell sorry alistair
00:12:39.200campbell and uh rory stewart would make out it has come to the you know we can't help but conclude
00:12:45.760that he's nevertheless come to the conclusion that ukraine is kind of the villain of the peace that
00:12:50.080the the main obstacle to there being any kind of peace deal here is not the invaders ceasing to
00:12:57.040invade it's the nation being invaded just putting up with a pretty iniquitous ceasefire a pretty
00:13:05.600iniquitous uh messy piece as it might be and i don't think we can really get away from that now
00:13:11.760i think there has been this sort of anti-ukraine tendency which is it would be one thing if you had
00:13:16.320an american president going around saying that uh this is none of our business um as some of the
00:13:21.840isolationists on the american right might say people can agree or disagree with that particular
00:13:25.760position it's another thing to say ukraine are the problem here um and that is where we've ended up
00:13:31.680i think it's fair to say and and this could extend beyond even america's support for ukraine there
00:13:36.320was also threats that the um procurement system which europe uses to give military aid to ukraine
00:13:43.120this is the prioritize ukraine requirements list pearl as it's called could also be shut down
00:13:48.720um because when europeans say that they're supporting ukraine military armaments what
00:13:51.840they usually mean is that they're paying the american military industrial complex buying
00:13:55.680those weapons and then donating them to ukraine so this could this could hobble even what existing
00:14:00.880support there is for the ukrainians across the across the continent as well so um it's uh this
00:14:05.920is a the whilst one can have arguments about the support the americans have given to ukraine so far
00:14:12.000to remove it at this particular point is a moral choice and one that will um come at the cost of
00:14:17.760the ukrainians at a time when the russians seem to be continuing to pursuing this policy of just
00:14:21.840grinding as many ukrainian cities as it can into the ground and knowing that really there's not
00:14:26.720going to be much pushback from it from the supposed allies in the west and guys i know
00:14:30.720i've worked for a long time can i just add one thing for us it's not analysis but just factual
00:14:35.200things that i think worth saying before we move on um the i i your point tom is very interesting
00:14:41.840about uh ukraine being the villain i don't think that's the case with trump and all of the stuff
00:14:46.560about him being a russian stooge is just frankly silly and people who bang on about this and just
00:14:50.800do my head and because it's not analysis it's just wishful thinking and yeah it's a it's a way of0.82
00:14:55.440condensing all your lack of understanding into one it's like it's like a debt restructuring
00:15:00.400for retardation you sort of package up in one big massive thing that you say
00:15:11.120and then it sort of explains everything yeah right
00:15:17.280the reality is is donald trump doesn't care about ukraine uh because the american global posture
00:15:24.160is they're like russia is not a problem for us the problem for us is china which you might argue
00:15:29.040about right or wrongly it is what it is and i should say just a little bit about what it is
00:15:33.840that trump is trying to get zelensky to do and zelensky is refusing to do so vladimir putin has
00:15:39.600no intention of signing a ceasefire because from his perspective the longer the war goes on the
00:15:44.960better placed he is to get what he actually wants what does he actually want well what he wants is
00:15:50.480fundamentally to permanently undermine ukraine's defense uh and also to have something that he can
00:15:57.040sell to the russian people as a victory what is that well the big fight and the reason that the
00:16:02.080war has become a sort of world war one almost trench warfare with drones situation is they're
00:16:07.440fighting over what's called the fortress belt in the donbass which is this heavily fortified
00:16:13.600naturally very suited to defense area of of ukraine where the ukrainians have rightly made
00:16:20.800an almost final stand if that portion of ukraine is overrun or if as part of a ceasefire it is
00:16:27.040handed to russia then ukraine effectively loses its ability to deter or defend itself against
00:16:32.720any further aggression and so what putin is trying to do is to get ukraine as part of the negotiations
00:16:38.720to give up as much land as possible including that area so that ukraine is permanently left
00:16:45.200vulnerable to further invasion and therefore we'll have to concede lots and lots of things
00:16:50.960in the future whether that's having a russian imposed puppet regime a russian stooge in place
00:16:56.800russian you know secret services being involved in ukrainian the running of ukraine etc so
00:17:02.880So when Donald Trump says Zelensky is harder to deal with than Putin, the reason is that Putin is promising things to Trump and sounding like he is prepared to do a deal, which he then reneges on time and time again, as we've seen over and over.
00:17:18.480uh or you're dealing with zelensky who is saying look you're you you don't care about us but we
00:17:25.580are obviously have to care about our country and what you are asking us to do is to surrender
00:17:30.880the only bit of the country that we can actually credibly defend now or in the future so that you
00:17:37.060can win the midterms and i as the president of ukraine i'm not prepared to sell out my country
00:17:42.340so you can pretend that the diesel prices are high because of us uh that's the only other bit
00:17:48.160I think worth adding. Go ahead, Francis. So Andrew Neill made this point in our wonderful
00:17:53.740interview a couple of weeks back when he was saying, what's the one thing we're not talking
00:17:57.920about that we really should be? And he mentioned this very fact, which has come to the forefront
00:18:02.660of global discussion. And he made the point, which is very interesting, which the rise in
00:18:09.600diesel prices disproportionately affects Trump voters, because diesel is used in haulage
00:18:17.100equipment. It's used in farming equipment. It's used in generators, particularly backup generators.
00:18:23.540And so these rises in prices are affecting Trump's base disproportionately. It affects everyone,
00:18:31.260of course, but it affects his base. So if he doesn't want to see a catastrophic veering off
00:18:40.840towards the Dems during these midterms he really needs to do something about the diesel prices
00:18:48.380and do them sharpish which is why he a couple of weeks ago we talked on the show about him
00:18:55.280pressurizing Europe into releasing their their their previous their stock which they have been
00:19:02.860kept which they have kept back into the market and therefore lowering diesel prices so what you're
00:19:12.060seeing right now is the republicans scrabbling because they're deeply worried that their base
00:19:20.860if i can just add to the argument about trump being a putin's stooge the eu import in the range
00:19:33.780of two to 2.3 billion euros worth of imports from russia each month 30 to 50 percent of that is
00:19:42.920hungary and slovakia but even if you removed hungary and slovakia in comparison the us import
00:19:48.220160 to 410 it's very volatile but it's and it's rarely as high as 410 but even if you remove
00:19:54.780hungary and slovakia the eu are funding the war you know if you if you're going to follow the same
00:20:03.100argument as these people who who say that sort of uh put uh trump's uh supporting putin the the eu
00:20:09.980is funding war to much as you know orders of magnitude higher and we and they don't argue
00:20:14.700that the eu are putin's studio so that's just one sort of absurdity in that that line of argument
00:20:19.580that i keep hearing i i do want to um push on this diesel thing that doesn't quite
00:20:26.460make sense to me from trump's point of view and maybe you guys have insight here so
00:20:33.580i uh whilst france is absolutely right we we discussed it uh in an earlier episode
00:20:41.100trump wanting the eu to release its diesel uh reserves uh it's also that he's removed excise
00:20:49.340tax on diesel in the states and he has uh he uh he's sort of focused on diesel but as constantin
00:21:00.300points out this is a very very small amount of diesel for which the russians are stand to get
00:21:07.660about 4.8 billion dollars worth in payment i don't quite understand why trump thinks that that's a
00:21:16.780good idea because he doesn't it's it doesn't it's about it's about it's about two days worth of of
00:21:23.740of fuel what what this isn't about diesel it's not about diesel it's about being able to say
00:21:34.460the the ukraine war is what's causing the diesel price to go up and the diesel shortages to be
00:21:40.060happening that's what it's about yeah that's the only thing this is about it's about deflecting
00:21:44.540the anger of the american particularly republican voter which francis made a very good point as
00:21:49.500disproportionately affecting trump voters it's about being able to say this is the lenski's fault
00:21:54.860this is ukraine's fault uh if i had been in charge uh this war would never have started by the way
00:22:00.460i have to i have to say this uh president trump said he would end the war when he was elected
00:22:06.860uh and it just i'm i've got to the point where the things that he says i'm just like you know
00:22:11.580what i actually i don't really listen to president trump's statements anymore because i'm like there
00:22:16.780is no point believing anything that you're saying you you know people say well he floods the zone
00:22:21.980and it's 4d chess and maybe it is but taking any of it seriously is completely pointless because
00:22:28.300none of it ever stacks up to reality um and and so what this is about is not about getting a few
00:22:35.900million metric tons of diesel out of russia over the course of many months this is about deflecting
00:22:42.300from the blame so that he can try and lose the midterm slightly less badly than he otherwise
00:22:47.740will no i think that's right and i think i'll return to before um we move on i want to turn
00:22:52.460to winston's point about the eu because i think that is really crucial it's been the eu's dirty
00:22:57.420secret throughout all of this conflict that not only does it continue to purchase oil and gas from
00:23:02.960russia it has been spending more on that than it has been donating to ukraine in terms of the war
00:23:09.560effort this is a phenomenon you can read about in mainstream newspapers there was a report last
00:23:14.360year by something called the center for research on energy and cleaner it was in the guardian made
00:23:18.320this point that again the amount it was giving effectively to the russian war machine outstripped
00:23:22.360the amount that it was giving to the ukrainian defense uh this this has arisen again recently
00:23:28.060because the russians have been pointing this out trump has been pointing this out there's some
00:23:31.560disparity and disagreement over just the amount that they have been spending and they have been
00:23:37.560trying to sort of dial it down their over-reliance on russian hydrocarbons but you know france
00:23:43.040continues to buy russian lng this all kinds of countries have been making um use of these sort
00:23:50.020of opt-outs that exist within the eu sanctions framework in order to continue to fund that so
00:23:54.820it is a reminder that there is a lot of two-facedness on all of this we had andy burnham
00:23:58.940welcoming uh vladimir zelensky to britain with you know the king's guard there ended up looking
00:24:04.900a bit more trumped and then militaristic as it turned out but that was that's the thing about
00:24:09.660the the europeans is that they are really good at having a conference putting out a communique
00:24:14.880putting out tweets that say we stand with ukraine on that level wonderful but when it comes to
00:24:20.720actually properly supporting ukraine it has always been pretty meek it's always been
00:24:26.280overshadowed by the amount that many of those countries are continuing to pass on to russia
00:24:30.880and it's also underwritten by the americans because of the amount that they're essentially
00:24:35.540purchasing from the u.s in order to then give to ukraine i mean of course this has always been
00:24:39.600one of those sort of kind of inescapable paradoxes about the ukraine conflict it is in a fight for
00:24:44.460its own survival but it is of course reliant on some very unreliable allies in order to do that
00:24:50.300but whereas with america that's pretty clear cut we've got trump and his own particular political
00:24:54.620preoccupations uh the fact that he has soured on zelensky certainly and the fact that there are a
00:25:01.580fair amount of people around him let's just say who do have this view of ukraine which is that um
00:25:08.540this this kind of corrupt anti-democratic authoritarian state who is you know essentially
00:25:14.780on the the leadership is essentially on the take as much as anything else all of that of course
00:25:18.220informs the picture a little bit but um when it comes to the european powers i didn't know how
00:25:23.420weak they are and i didn't have how two-faced they are they hardly have a leg to stand on when it
00:25:29.580comes to moments like this and um their supposed support for ukraine because that like i said it's
00:25:34.140That's been their dirty secret all along with one with, you know, with one tweet saying we stand with Ukraine to the end whilst quietly continuing to purchase all that Russian LNG.
00:25:42.940And it's amazing that more people don't recognize that's what's been going on.
00:25:47.560There's one little correction there is I don't think Russian oil is getting to Europe, certainly not directly, but it is a gas and LNG where we're bringing a lot of a lot of it in.
00:25:58.600And I just add to add to that, even though under Trump, too, there is less aid going to Ukraine than under Biden, it is still the case that through various mechanisms, hundreds of millions of US taxpayer money is going to support Ukraine.
00:26:13.380And whether it's Patriot Interceptors and other systems and other military assets, there is still defense and help going from the Americans to Ukraine.
00:26:28.980And I make this point to say that if you want to understand Trump by their fruits, you will know him.
00:26:33.020It might be that he's complimenting Putin. But if you actually look at his actions, it doesn't suggest that.
00:26:38.600which comes to my big question, which maybe you guys have insight into, is what leverage does
00:26:44.700Trump actually have over Putin? So in the conversation about the Ukraine war, if we
00:26:50.900can just ignore the midterms in Iran, I'd like to come back to that. But I see part of me, I'm very
00:26:57.460happy to be told I'm wrong on this. But when I see Trump making these kind of compliments or
00:27:02.600or gestures to verbal gestures towards Putin and very harsh on Zelensky, his actual ally,
00:27:10.940in contrast. The way I see it is that I don't think Trump has any any leverage over Putin,
00:27:15.860so has to do that. Am I am I wrong? Does he have any leverage over Russia?
00:27:20.620He has only one bit of leverage. Well, one is not bit. He has only one lever that he could
00:27:27.100have pulled. And I said this. People who have been watching our show for years will remember
00:27:30.860me saying this before he was even re-elected in 2024 he had a lever that he took away from
00:27:38.660himself with his rhetoric now president trump is very good at you know getting his base to change
00:27:43.840their minds overnight and turn around and go in completely the opposite direction because now it's
00:27:48.640the new truth but the reality is there was only one way that he could have ended this war and i
00:27:55.360was very hopeful that he would have ended this war and that way was to say to vladimir putin
00:28:01.460look either we do a ceasefire now that i've been elected and in that ceasefire you're not going to
00:28:10.400get what you want and neither is ukraine but what you're both going to get is enough that you can
00:28:16.060save face and we can stop the killing and uh you can be secure that you are not going to get nato
00:28:22.060troops and missile bases on your border which is what you claim this was about zelensky will promise
00:28:27.340to have elections blah blah blah blah blah we'll we'll maybe have some kind of european peacekeeping
00:28:32.300force on the border you get the safe face zelensky gets the safe face and then be voted out and
00:28:38.620they'll probably elect someone someone else blah blah blah that's one but that's not leverage
00:28:44.620that's just an offer of an acceptable deal or vladimir if you don't do this i will give the
00:28:53.200ukrainians literally everything i will give them so much weaponry i will give them so much
00:28:59.260intelligence we'll open we'll lift all the restrictions on arms exports we'll lift all
00:29:04.160the restrictions on the types of weapons we give them we will let them off the chain and they will
00:29:09.880be terrorizing inside your country they were going to destroy your war economy they're going to
00:29:14.480destroy your economy you are going to be absolutely screwed and we will ramp up the weapons that we
00:29:20.880give them those that's the typical negotiating position right either you take this or things
00:29:28.400will be really bad and president trump had the ability to do that except he mostly took it away
00:29:34.460from himself by banging on about how much money ukraine's already got and what you've ended up in
00:29:39.240now is actually the most the worst of both worlds as you say the united states is continuing to
00:29:45.400provide aid and support to ukraine while at the same time pulling support away with critical
00:29:52.360points so that the money they're giving to ukrainians is not actually allowing ukraine
00:29:57.480to have the success that it wants to on the battlefield so you're not ending the war the
00:30:02.200war is dragging on people are still dying you're still spending money except you're making sure
00:30:07.720that that money is not effective in the things that it's supposed to achieve
00:30:13.320the problem with option two there is that that this is the classic rejoinder that would have
00:30:19.320led to nuclear war because if the americans had escalated on that scale everyone would
00:30:25.880fear that the russian retaliation and escalation would be to nuclear am i wrong to think that
00:30:32.760what so if the ukrainians get more defensive missiles to shoot down russian ballistic missiles
00:30:38.860putin's going to launch anew i'm not no as you framed as you framed it you framed it
00:30:43.980trump had the second option of being just going max max in on ukraine but if he did that would
00:30:50.660there not have been a fear but that's what i'm saying so i'm reacting to the very point that you
00:30:55.440made so the the the the number of patriot missiles batteries that the ukraine has got and other
00:31:01.300anti-missile systems is minuscule. They're not able to defend their country against Russian
00:31:05.840ballistic missile attacks effectively. He could have given them more of that. He could have given
00:31:10.480them way more defensive capability. He could have given them way more intelligence. And by the way,
00:31:15.000at the time Trump came into power in the second term, Ukraine was not destroying Russia's war
00:31:22.220economy like it is today. And yet, if Trump had threatened that at the time, he would have got
00:31:28.740leverage over russia by saying we will let ukraine destroy your refineries and whatever and we see
00:31:34.900today that when ukraine destroys russian refineries vladimir putin is not launching nuclear weapons
00:31:40.260so of course the threat of escalation and actual escalation creates a higher risk of runaway
00:31:47.220escalation which is why i'm not actually saying trump should have done the escalation i am saying
00:31:53.620he should have come in and made it unequivocally clear that he is prepared to escalate if putin is
00:31:58.980not going to take the deal right and then he would have had the opportunity to see whether that would
00:32:04.980work or not but right now you're correct he has no leverage and so the reason he's sucking up to
00:32:10.020putin and beating up on zelensky is that he has massive leverage over zelensky and no leverage
00:32:15.620over putin if it was the other way around he'd be sucking up to zelensky and having a go at putin
00:32:20.820but my broader point is very simple as long as the united states simultaneously continues to provide
00:32:28.260support to ukraine while pulling it away you're getting the the worst of both worlds i don't even
00:32:34.980i i actually would understand more if they if trump just went all in and said you know what
00:32:40.740uh i so don't care about ukraine uh we're going to pull all support we're not going to sell the
00:32:45.540europeans weapons to give to the ukrainians uh we we we want the war to end by any means necessary
00:32:51.460and if that means putin takes chunks of ukraine then that's absolutely fine uh that would make
00:32:56.740more logical sense but of course trump can't do that because both within the republican party
00:33:02.500and globally that would be seen as caving to putin and so he's he's not actually in a position
00:33:07.460to do that which i believe is what he would do if he could yeah i think just on the term
00:33:14.100terms of the midterms what's implicit in what you're saying just to say out loud is that if
00:33:19.300trump loses the house of representatives that means the second half of his presidential term
00:33:27.620is going to be completely a stalemate that there's just nothing's going to happen so
00:33:32.980i probably differ with you constantin in your emphasis is on the fact that he screwed up over
00:33:39.140iran and i know you guys at trigonometry are big sort of ayatollah fans i don't need to re sort of
00:33:45.140rehash that argument with you uh but my my emphasis is i would say it's on the midterms and i think
00:33:51.840you are right constantin he is trying to make noise about zelensky push the blame make it about
00:33:57.680zelensky so that he it's not his fault that the diesel prices that inflation is up so i see that
00:34:04.040But it was slightly different emphasis there.
00:34:05.920But it is his fault, though, because diesel prices are up.
00:34:09.700And you can look at the graphs of you can look at a graph of diesel prices and point to where the war in Iran starts and then where they are now.
00:34:22.220It is his fault because he chose to invade Iran and shut down the global fuel artery,
00:34:27.960which is why we've lost over 5.4 million tons a month through the Strayer from us in diesel,
00:34:34.260which he's now pretending to try and compensate for by getting minuscule amounts out of Russia.
00:34:38.860So this is, yeah, I disagree because I'd say it's the Ayatollah's fault.
00:34:44.360And it's through their, not just their nuclear enrichment program, but specifically the Iran
00:34:50.560missile shield. But they had, and if they finished building that, then we would never be able to do
00:34:56.800anything about the nuclear enrichment so i i would say that it's it's the fault of iran's escalation
00:35:02.580over years whereas you say it's the fault of trump and perhaps maybe it's it was bad timing
00:35:07.540but i see that's why i think timing might might be the argument you could say you know we definitely
00:35:13.160needed to do something about iran but maybe you should have waited until the midterms and then
00:35:17.820done it if if you were if that was your plan but it seems to me that this was not thought through
00:35:23.160and i say this i come back to our interview with ted cruz ted cruz told us that he sat in the beast
00:35:29.320the limo the presidential limo with president trump and told him mr president go ahead this
00:35:34.540will be a quick get in and out this is how these wars always start with somebody going we're going
00:35:39.620to get in and out we're going to sort it all out it's going to take a couple of months which by
00:35:43.380the way is how is how vladimir putin's ended up in a four and a half year uh war in ukraine
00:35:49.760Because he was told, you're going to go in with paratroopers, you're going to seize Gostomo, you're going to land tanks and infantry, you're going to take Kiev, your Chechen death squads are going to take Adzelensky in a couple of days, job's a good one, two weeks later, the people of Ukraine will rejoice at the return of the Russian brothers.
00:36:09.560this is how this stuff always goes down and so whatever your concerns about the ayatollah etc
00:36:17.080you can't deny that it was president trump's decision to go in and attack iran and you also
00:36:23.360in my opinion can't deny that the reason we are in the energy crisis we're in is because of the
00:36:28.160war in iran and that is what this is all about and winston when you say the ayatollah please say
00:36:34.280afterwards peace be upon him thank you on that delightful note let's let's move on to something
00:36:42.280slightly less geopolitical and this is of course the fact that Shane Gillis did a monologue on
00:36:51.440SNL which has sent some women absolutely mental Francis take it away well thankfully we've now
00:36:59.540moved on to the biggest and dare I say the most important story of the week which is obviously
00:37:04.740Shane Guinness on SNL. So if you don't know anything about SNL it's essentially the biggest
00:37:10.900and most famous satirical sketch show in America. It's an American cultural institution which has
00:37:17.380launched careers of the likes of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Norm Macdonald and so on and
00:37:23.700so forth. Now in 2019 Shane was picked to be a cast member on SNL which even in 2019 was still
00:37:33.620a huge honor and a sign that you are ascending into the comedic stratosphere. However a couple
00:37:40.020of days later an unnamed comedian released a clip from Shane's podcast showing Shane making a joke
00:37:48.460about Chinese people, which used a racial slur. Shane was subsequently cancelled in a matter of
00:37:56.240days from SNL. But because Shane is a singular comedic talent, he doubled down and focused on
00:38:03.740producing comedy. And he has now come to the point through his comedy, through his stand-up,
00:38:09.780through his podcasting, through his Netflix series Tyres, he is now one of the biggest,
00:38:16.420if not the biggest comedian in America at the moment.
00:38:21.940He is a world record holder for selling the largest number of tickets to a comedy show,
00:38:30.760over 76,000 in the arena at Philadelphia.
00:57:12.420I'm going to backtrack. I'm off the fence. I think it's great news. And it's just a shame that we even have to have these conversations in the first place. It's absolutely absurd that this was this was even an argument. And it's great that finally we're moving in a sensible direction.
00:57:29.240i find it very interesting that we you know nobody really talks about this issue anymore
00:57:36.600i think partly it's because it's been resolved quote unquote and i think it's because everybody's
00:57:42.760just moved on to palestine you know what i mean it's like do you remember in the 90s where everybody
00:57:47.980where all the girls had their favorite boy band and then they fell from favor and then they all
00:57:53.380moved on to the next one whatever the next one was and i just kind of think that's how we treat
00:57:58.400these social justice movements you know trans it's like all right it's a bit boring now and you know
00:58:03.960and it gets a bit messy why don't we all just move on to palestine and just scream genocide
00:58:08.480i think that's what everyone's doing now
00:58:10.760all right well uh that is the i think the end of that story and uh tom finally uh the sally
00:58:19.720rooney story and palestine speaking of palestine of course this is something to do with palestine
00:58:24.620action tell us yeah so this is the news this week which sally rooney the very celebrated irish
00:58:31.580novelist has pulled her books for from sale in the uk in agreement with her publisher faber
00:58:37.900following her very vocal support for palestine action there's a lot of kind of moving parts of
00:58:43.420this so if you forgive me i'll just walk us through this sally rooney expresses
00:58:47.980fulsome support for palestine action in a piece for the irish times and she says that she will
00:58:53.020also donate her royalties from her books and from the various adaptations there's a very popular
00:58:58.100hugely popular bbc adaptation one of her novels back in 2020 to this campaign group palestine
00:59:03.640action gets prescribed as a terrorist organization in july of last year so under british terror law
00:59:10.600to fund this organization is a extremely serious offense to even express support for this
00:59:16.340organization is an extremely serious offense and even to walk around with a sign implying support
00:59:21.720for this organisation is something that could land you in prison for six months. So this has
00:59:27.080created a huge row over freedom of speech and whether or not in this case the crackdown on
00:59:31.980Palestine action has led to this kind of wave of censorship. It's worth pointing out that this book
00:59:38.680has not been banned, her books rather, have not been banned in the UK. This is not the Home
00:59:42.160Secretary saying these things can't be published because of Sally Rooney's views on Palestine
00:59:46.760action it very much comes down to that commitment of hers to fund the organization
00:59:51.180which keys into that however it is worth saying that if sally rooney were to simply come to the
00:59:58.780united kingdom and repeat what she has already written in the irish times and can say freely
01:00:03.460in the republic of ireland that she supports palestine action that she herself could be
01:00:08.200criminalized for that and also and this is a story which also cropped up over recent weeks
01:00:13.860the number of arrests which have taken place in the uk purely for people indicating support for
01:00:21.740palestine action has been entirely off the scale so this is a story in the guardian here
01:00:25.320half of all of the terrorism arrests in great britain since 9 11 have been in the past year
01:00:30.820the reason for that is it coincides with the prescription of palestine action as a terror
01:00:34.880group and you have seen thousands upon thousands of people often sort of pensioners there was one
01:00:40.480former aide of king charles who was caught up in this just sitting outside of a court holding signs
01:00:45.980saying i oppose genocide i support palestine action vast majority have been for essentially
01:00:50.600holding signs and indicating support which only comes with a potential prison sentence of about
01:00:54.600six months expressing fulsome support for inviting support for funding that's something that could
01:00:59.760land you in prison for potentially 14 years so essentially what we've got here is a couple of
01:01:04.960things we've got to disaggregate should palestine action have been prescribed as a terror group
01:01:10.420in my mind no for the simple reason that they're not on a par with hamas they're not on a par with
01:01:16.620al-qaeda they're not on a par with isis and also because of our existing terror legislation which0.97
01:01:22.300i think there are problems with it anyway that would mean that even someone some idiot saying0.88
01:01:26.820that they broadly speaking support the organization can be criminalized i think that's a big problem0.96
01:01:31.060for freedom of speech it's also a big problem for feeding the martyr and victim complex of these
01:01:36.980pro-Palestine activists who at the very least don't deserve it all that being said should the
01:01:42.060question of funding is the tricky bit and this is something I think has got a little bit lost in the
01:01:46.060debate even in my more immediate responses to this story earlier this week I sort of missed
01:01:49.900and people rightly pointed it out to me is that I think it's fair to say that if the British state
01:01:55.220wanted to say that Palestine action and we can go into some of the things that it's done which
01:01:59.100goes beyond protest we're talking about destruction of property we're talking about attacks on British
01:02:03.400military assets even though you could legitimately say we don't think anyone should be funding what
01:02:08.140is essentially criminal activity i think that's a perfectly more reasonable area to have an argument
01:02:13.640about should someone be criminalized for doing something like that but the the sheer matter of
01:02:19.340expressing support for i think is the key issue because it's not really about sally rooney she's
01:02:23.060done this i think quite purposely to put palestine action back on the agenda the subject of its
01:02:27.900prescription is back is in the supreme court next month may well be overturned we'll see what
01:02:32.440happens there but it has pointed to this glaring issue in our sort of free speech debate which is
01:02:39.300that we've had these swathes of arrests purely for people expressing support for this organization
01:02:44.480and that for the reasons i say that's a problem for free speech and that's a problem for
01:02:48.240feeding the um the victim complex of the pro-palestine lot so yeah her book hasn't been
01:02:53.760banned but there is a big discussion here about free speech what its limits are and whether or
01:02:57.760pa should be considered a terrorist organization in that sense yeah well at the risk of having
01:03:03.840myself jailed here i will say i didn't agree with them being prescribed as a terrorist organization
01:03:09.920either uh imagine in fact if uh imagine i went to prison for for supporting palestine action that
01:03:16.480would be quite comical uh but anyway uh i totally didn't support it and i think uh the fact like as
01:03:22.800you say pensioners being arrested for basically expressing support for this group it just shows
01:03:27.920that once you start policing people's speech in this way you inevitably end up having to to to
01:03:34.960do something like this and and uh at this point it's a left-wing cause at some point it'll be a
01:03:40.640right-wing cause and we've just got to get to a sensible definition of what terrorism is and in
01:03:45.520fact we just got to get to a sensible definition of words in the first place this is what happens
01:03:49.440when everything's racist everything's fascist everything is you know etc etc um so yeah don't
01:03:56.240agree with them being prescribed at all i think what i take a different view oh sorry go well you
01:04:02.800go winston you go for it go for it frankly no no no well i my point was uh something else entirely
01:04:10.640my point is this is what actually happens when you don't tackle what was rampant support for
01:04:18.940genuine terrorist organizations in these marches and people actually chanting and saying things
01:04:26.060that could be interpreted as genocidal. And, you know, once you've let that get out of hand,
01:04:33.380then you've got to take this draconian approach where you prescribe even organizations like
01:04:40.340Palestine Action, where there is a genuine debate around them, as a terrorist organization.
01:04:46.380and i think what it speaks to is the weakness and the indecision and the fact that the government
01:04:53.480were taken completely by completely unawares by the pro-palestine marches post october 7th
01:05:02.820okay so i'll tell you why i disagree with your general collective view on this i do think
01:05:12.840palestine action should be a prescribed terrorist organization the reason being is because not only
01:05:19.200have they carried out various attacks on sites in britain in the united kingdom from as far back
01:05:28.800including 2022 raid on the thales factory in glasgow there's 2024 was the famous case in
01:05:36.360filton because not only did they do criminal damage to assets but they also attacked someone
01:05:41.500a serious spinal injury to someone there and they are openly a direct action group operating so i do
01:05:49.760think that they are a terrorist group the reason why i think for me the the the fault line is that
01:05:58.740in british terrorism act so the the the law is if you are a prescribed terrorist act you cannot
01:06:07.560be supported either materially or vocally you can't have uh sort of uh support from there which
01:06:15.440is actually different from how the americans do it so the americans is you can't materially support
01:06:19.260them but you can vocally support so there you can't i'm not sure exactly someone will check
01:06:24.340me on this but something like hamas you could you can't materially support hamas but you can say he
01:06:28.020supports hamas here i think the problem is in in that law and i probably would be inclined to say
01:06:34.160that it would be suitable for us the law that you you can't materially support these groups
01:06:40.640like Palestine Action but if you vocally support them it's useful for us to know what people think
01:06:46.340that's one of the arguments for free speech is that I want to know what my neighbors think
01:06:49.360and so I want to know you know if I am in a safe or dangerous situation so I think the problem is
01:06:55.300with the terrorism act law and so perhaps you can tell me if you think it's good that the terrorism
01:07:05.360act means that vocal support not just material support of terrorist organizations is a suitable
01:07:14.500law just one last note is that starma and this current labor government have outlawed palestine
01:07:21.940action as a terrorist organization they have not outlawed the irgc they have not outlawed muslim
01:07:28.740brotherhood those are still not prescribed terrorist organizations in britain they have
01:07:34.660so the uh prescribed palestine action which of course seems very ridiculous when you have
01:07:39.460grandmas in pali square being rounded up by the police nevertheless i still think that they have
01:07:45.540been doing terrorist activity why am i that's exactly my issue well you're my my issue with
01:07:52.260what you're saying is you talked about uh crimes they've committed and you established criminality
01:07:57.700but none of those things meet my definition of terrorism breaking into a factory and destroying
01:08:04.260stuff is not terrorism in my opinion injuring a police officer is bad and wrong and should
01:08:10.500be criminalized and those people should have been punished uh didn't they get off in fact on that
01:08:15.540one tom you you remember the the details of this oh no in terms of that no no no they didn't they
01:08:19.620didn't get off but it was as far as i can remember i would maybe someone can double check that but
01:08:23.780my the last thing i think it got about that that was pretty clear can we please use venice ai to
01:08:29.540check those those facts please yeah so the police woman who had her spine injured uh dean police
01:08:36.020woman had a spine injured samuel what was samuel corner was samuel corner what was the the sentence
01:08:43.300that that they got for doing that uh in any case to my memory is it's seven years yeah but okay
01:08:49.700well i i i guess that's i mean if it was my spine or someone i knew i'd probably want it to be 50
01:08:56.740years but you know within the confines of a fair and partial justice system you probably think
01:09:01.540that's somewhere within the reasonable mark um my point is those things do not meet my definition of
01:09:09.300terrorism um and the direct action part of it well we spent several weeks discussing direct
01:09:15.780action on the south coast of which you know people were ambivalent about whether they support it or
01:09:21.300not to me terrorism is when you are you know engaged in acts of terror what is terror well it's
01:09:29.220massacring violence killing people blowing things up in order to terrify the civilian population of
01:09:35.460a society it's it's the targeting of civilians to create a political outcome is as i understand it
01:09:41.540that's one of the workable definitions of terrorism i think breaking into a factory and even attacking
01:09:48.420a police officer in the process that's criminal and should be treated as a crime but i don't see
01:09:52.580how that's terrorism that's what there's a couple things i'd say out here the the first thing is
01:09:57.140is that i think your distinction winston between words and action between vocal support and material
01:10:02.460support that is should be the fundamental line in any of these conversations um it's the one that
01:10:08.240we don't have in this country much to our detriment so i think that's something that we can sort of
01:10:12.180build any of these arguments on top of the point about terrorism i do agree with constant whatever
01:10:17.700this is and it is despicable what they've been getting up to not just because of the violence
01:10:22.020also some of the targets that they have taken there's obviously a lot of focus on what they did
01:10:26.520at the elbit systems the israeli defense companies placed just outside of bristol and filton and also
01:10:33.520raf bryce norton which they attacked last summer and that was basically the prompt for them to be
01:10:38.960prescribed as an organization but they've also attacked on a jewish landlord business in
01:10:44.320stamford hill which they claimed was linked to elbit systems even though the business itself
01:10:49.220claims there are no such links and what you effectively end up with is a bunch of these
01:10:52.680pro-Palestine activists throwing red paint at a Jewish business, even kind of staining the
01:10:57.220mezuzah on the door outside and smashing glass in a very Jewish area of North London. I mean,
01:11:04.180this is something which is pretty scummy behavior by anyone's reasonable definition.
01:11:09.200Surely that goes over the line into Constantine's terrorism, right?0.99
01:11:14.280No, that crosses the line over into potentially race-based hate or whatever bullshit.0.99