Scott Ritter Extra: Ask the Inspector
Ask the Inspector Ep. 172
Scott Ritter answers questions from the audience with host Jeff Norman most Friday nights at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET/1 AM GMT and most Tuesdays at noon PT/3PM ET/8PM GMT.
Submit your question in advance and donate to Waging Peace, Scott's campaign for nuclear disarmament, at https://ScottRitter.com.
Opening music by Ed Kliman https://texasmusicforge.com/, Brian Pothier https://www.facebook.com/pothierproductions and ShortBusMusic https://hearthis.at/shortbusmusic-6e/.
- Duration:
- 2h 2m
- Broadcast on:
- 29 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers. President Trump? I really don't know what he said at the end of this sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. Look. Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth. An F.U. if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I've known him for years. The presentees have known him for 50 years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it. Well, that was from March. That was right when Nikki Haley was dropping out. But I wanted to play that too because all these propagandists who have been pretending Biden is in a basket case can hardly say, oh, what a revelation now. Last night was really something else. And I don't know what was worse, Scott, when Biden was talking or when he was watching Trump with his mouth agape, nodding out or whatever was going on with him. It was worse than expected, wasn't it? Well, no, I expected it. How could you not? You saw him wander off at the G7. You've seen him wander off at Normandy. You've seen him freeze repeatedly in making presentations. This is elder abuse. That's literally what it is. This is a man who can't function without people surrounding him. He gets lost at speeches. He wanders off. You know, I despise Joe Biden. I think everybody knows why. He's just a useless politician, a liar. A man who got us involved in a war in Iraq that he could have stopped, but he didn't stop because he's a warm, warm, green son of a bitch. I loathe him. I don't wish anything good for him. But the man that was on stage last night is not Joe Biden. That's a man who has dementia. That's a man who is diminished. He's a man that, frankly speaking, should be taken care of. Some of you should be good in a retirement home and have attendance around him to make sure he doesn't hurt himself, wander off, clean up after him. You know, I don't know what explains his momentary lucidity. You know, I don't have evidence of any medicinal boost. I know Donald Trump has spoken about that. Others have. It's a reasonable guess, wouldn't you agree? I don't know. I mean, at this level, no. I mean, I think it's irresponsible, to be honest, because we don't know. You know, there are people who are cyclical and their dementia have good days, bad days, good moments, bad moments. We don't know. What we do know is that he has a lot of bad moments, a lot of bad moments. And when you're the president of the United States, the commander in chief, you can have no bad moments. You need to be on 24/7. It's one of the most demanding jobs in the world. There's a reason why people go into the presidency looking young and vibrant and exit the presidency four or eight years later, gray and looking old and haggard, because it's a hard job. You literally have the weight of the world on your shoulders. You have to make life and death decisions. And right now, as we are moving towards a potential nuclear conflict with Russia, we are talking about not just life and death decisions about Americans, but about the world. The man that was on the stage last night is incapable of being considered ready to make those decisions at a moment's notice. There's that old ad I think Hillary Clinton put it out there. Who's going to be ready at three in the morning? Not real night. He's not going to be ready at three in the afternoon. He's not ready. We don't know. It's a crapshoot. It's a crapshoot if he's ready. This was a dangerous moment for America to see this man up on that stage and realize that A, he's the president and B, he wants to continue to be president. We deserve options. And frankly speaking, we deserve options because of his opponent. That is not an acceptable option either. But I'll tell you what, when you compare and contrast the two, I'll take lucidity over that. At least we can talk to Donald Trump and he can understand what we're saying. We might be able to appeal to his inner rationality to do the right thing. You can't appeal to a man whose brain isn't working. Joe Biden's brain was not working the way it needs to be working all the time. This is bad for America. It's a bad look, a bad look, but it's also bad. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, I'm done. I understand why you're saying that you weren't really surprised. I guess what I'm thinking about are the people on team Biden. Did they expect him to do better or do you think he was set up? Well, I mean, I put out a tweet afterwards and I've talked about. I think the evidence can sustain an allegation of a setup. I called it a political assassination. CNN was too ready. John King's phone was too charged, precharged. I don't know if you saw after the discussion, John King. My phone has never done this before in the 33 years and I've been covering politics. It's gone crazy with Democrats calling in people from the White House, the insiders telling me it. It's a setup. This was CNN working with the DNC because CNN and DNC have been making this whole fiction about how good Joe Biden is, even when he's not. I mean, I don't know how many times you have to look. I have seen dementia of people. I have seen people with Alzheimer's. I've looked in their eyes and that's the look I get from Joe Biden on occasion. The total he's not with. Those weren't cold symptoms, in other words. No, the man is ill. The man has dementia. The man has Alzheimer's. There's something with his brain that causes a lack of cognitive. Well, another thing that I watched it on CBS, which I think CNN and the DNC staged this event so that the DNC can legitimately begin the process of looking for an alternative. And now we see a civil war in the DNC because the people who weren't in on it now are working with CNN to create the alternative narrative and all this kind of stuff. But it's too late. The cat's out of the bag. We know that the man on stage last night cannot continue to be president. I watched the debate on CBS, which I think has the same parent company as CNN. And they said, you know, they were doing this texting with the Biden people saying, "What's wrong with him? What's wrong with him?" And a considerable amount of time went by where there was no answer at all. And then finally, they got back, "Oh, he has a cold." And it's like, you didn't know that before? I mean, I think that's very suspicious. And I think that speaks to what you just said. Some people were in on it. Maverick was clearly not in on it. He's very upset right now. We're talking about his commander in chief this way. Anyway, this is not how democracy is supposed to work, ladies and gentlemen. This isn't -- we're supposed to be the beacon of democracy. We're supposed to be the -- and we're not. We know that. We know how fundamentally flawed America is. But we should at least be aspiring to be something, something better than what we are. What was -- what happened last night is just -- it's an embarrassment to our nation. It's an embarrassment to the notion of democracy. Again, a man who has autocratic tendencies, a man who many people fear, you know, could, if elected deviate from constitutional rule, looked better than Joe Biden. I mean, that's how bad Joe Biden's performance was, is that he actually made Donald Trump look attractive as a candidate. And Donald Trump's not attractive as a candidate. That might be. I see in the comments that were not on rumble. Is that correct, Ryan? Can you verify that? That's correct. I wonder why that would be -- It's looping there, and I'm directing people to auticity. It's always something. And is it working on telegram? It is for me, but not for others. Others are in Russia, I think so. I get it. All right. Well, anyway, we just published before we started tonight's episode, and it is episode 172 of Ask the Inspector on June 28, 2024. We just published a new post, the Democracy Report card. Interesting take on it, Scott, you must be the only one to compare it to the election in Iran. I don't know where these ideas come to you. You allegedly don't eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, but you are extremely inventive. Well, you don't have to invent. There's an election in Iran today for president. There's poor candidates who didn't have to find donors to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars to make their candidacy attractive. They've been campaigning since June 12th, from June 12th to June 27th. That's like two weeks of campaigning. There were five debates in that period of time, five televised debates, moderated events where issues were put out that people had to respond to the questions. The voters got to see their candidates, and then today they're going to the polls. So many people were going to the polls that they extended the voting until midnight, but at midnight, the polls will close. And then they're going to count the votes, and we should know very soon what the results are. If you don't win over 50% of the vote, the two closest candidates move on to a runoff election, which will take place in a week, and then they'll vote and somebody will become president. Amazing how it works. That's how democracy is supposed to work. Well, Scott, you're talking about Iran. They're not a democracy. They're a hell of a lot more effective democracy than we are. Proof in the pudding last night. What a disgrace. What a disgusting, despicable, you know, whatever you want to call it. I have to watch my language. We're on a PG rated show, but it was bad. And remember, we've been doing this presidential race since, gosh, what? November of 2022 is when Donald Trump denounced. Other people announced, I think Biden announced in April of 2023. We are in June 2024. What the hell is going on here? How do we have a system that you have to be a billionaire or backed by billionaires to put your hat in the ring? That is stupidity persona. That's not democracy, ladies and gentlemen. That's an elite anointing themselves as candidates. In Iran, there is no money. Oh, wait a minute. There is a litmus test. They have to go through the Guardian Council. It's a constitutional body. We in America don't like it, you see, because Iran's an Islamic Republic. Oh, my God. It's an Islamic Republic. And the Guardian Council ensures that whatever candidates are running for president are genuine in their embrace of Islam. Imagine that. You're an Islamic Republic, embrace of it. Imagine if we called ourselves a Democratic Republic here in America. I don't know. Let's just fake it for a minute. That was based upon a Constitution that defined who we are and what we are. And we held our candidates to that, that we tested them on the Constitution. Constitutional purity, we could call it. Do you understand the Constitution? Do you know the Constitution? You cite examples of Supreme Court precedent to back up your interpretation of the Constitution. That would be interesting. And imagine if anybody who met that criteria could move forward without money, without special interests, that it was just you. That's not what we work. I can guarantee you right now, guarantee you. Because Joe Biden, I was a constitutional professor, went back in my day. Yeah, he was. He was an adjunct professor teaching a course at, I don't know, Georgetown or something like that. He couldn't pass a test on the Constitution today. Donald Trump has admitted, he doesn't even know the Constitution. Straight up said, I don't know it. That's why I have smart people around me. Okay, so our litmus test isn't about democracy, about the Republic or about the Constitution. Things that should be, if we call ourselves a Democratic Republic based upon a Constitution. Our litmus test is money, pure and simple. If you got the money, you get to run for office. If you don't have the money, you don't get to come to the table. And then once you get in there, it's all about who's your supporters. I saw that. I don't, I mean, you can talk about Citizens United any time you want, but you'll never convince me, ever convince me that money doesn't corrupt the American system. It does. And if you recognize that, then you recognize why we have to get money out of it and any Supreme Court ruling that allows money to stay in politics, just ruins America, destroys America, America is over, finished because of the money. Because of the money, corporations have more influence on the outcome of elections than the citizens who are supposed to be voting. Well, wait a minute, Scott, everybody gets to vote. You only get to vote for the people that the corporations fund. Keep the money out of politics, purify American democracy, and maybe we'll have something that could stand toe to toe with Iranian democracy in terms of, you know, maintaining integrity to the principles of democracy. And that's why I wrote this article. Iran embarrassed us, has humiliated us. Now, we'll never acknowledge it because we're America, USA. The Iranians kicked our ass when it comes to democracy. They just held a real election, a real election with real candidates, and the people are participating. Jeff, they have to show up and show ID. They have to physically go to the poll and show ID. And then they vote, and then their votes counted immediately. There's no machines. There's no secret system. There's no written truck showing up with ballots going here, there, and everywhere. There's no call of pause in the counting. We don't know what's going on. None of that's going on in Iran. They show up. They prove that they're who they say they are. They cast a vote, and that vote's counted. Amazing. We can't do that. And we're the greatest democracy in the world. We're not a democracy. We're not a democracy or a plutocracy. So we can come up with any other names, but we don't function as a democracy. That day's over. Maybe never. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but since Stefan asked, let me just briefly say that I agree with Scott as far as what the problem is with money in politics. I just don't think that anybody has presented a solution that would actually work. And the main reason I agree with the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case is because we just don't know where the lines would be drawn. We're talking about people and organizations, whatever, spending money on their own to influence the election. And that just happens in too many different ways for it to be workable to say, well, we're going to restrict it in some circumstances, and then just leave us wondering what the circumstances are. So... But Iran solved that, Jeff. Nobody's spending money on anything in Iran except the election organizations. There's no private citizen saying, I have a right under free speech to do this now. No. You don't. You have a right to listen to the candidates and vote. We need to stop having people announce for election. We really need to change what you want to take money out? Take out the opportunity for money. If we instead said, if you want to run for election, you have to announce, let's see, though, the election is going to be in November. Imagine if we said you have to announce in May of 2024 that you're running for election. And then in June, the election board will pick the people that meet the qualifications, they'll certify them. And then they'll say you have July, August, September, October, four months where you get to participate in four debates, once, one a month. You get no fricking advertisement. None. Nobody advertises. If you advertise, you're arrested and you go to jail. What about free speech? I'm sorry, we can limit free speech in certain things. And when it comes to presidential elections, we should limit free speech. We should allow the candidates to sell themselves with no money whatsoever. If we did that, we'd clean this thing up in a heartbeat. But we're not going to do that because of free speech. It ain't free speech. When billionaires buy it and own it, it's not free. We are so corrupted by money. But I'm not a constitutional scholar, Jeff. I know that there was a five-four decision on Citizens United for justices disagreed. Five justices said, yes, that's the way we work. Five-four. And now we have something that allows corporations to spend all unlimited amounts of money to support the entire process. And the proof and the pudding are the two morons that were on stage last night. The best morons money can buy. We didn't have a single qualified candidate on stage last night. They are not qualified to be President of the United States. None of them are qualified to be dog catchers. These are horrible people, horrible politicians, and yet one of them is going to be President of the United States. One of them is President of the United States. One of them was President of the United States. 340 million people, and that's what we get. Thank you, Citizens United. Thanks a lot. But you know, in that Citizens United film, Scott, they never said explicitly who to vote for, who to not vote for. They just criticized Hillary Clinton heavily. And people talk about who they like and don't like all the time. And they talk about issues of the day all the time. And this influences the election. So that's why I said, I don't know what you want to stop or what you think is stopable. It's not just like advertising per se in like one specific way where you say vote for vote against. It's criticizing people and praising them and so forth and so on. Talk about issues. If you want to sit around a table and talk with your friends front. If you spend one got, I almost said a bad word, if you spend one dollar making a film that you've broken the law, that's how it should be. If you spend a penny supporting a candidate or criticizing a candidate during the period of prohibition, you've broken the law. If you want to sit there and drink beer with your friends and talk about it and talk, that's free speech. Do it. But no advertising. What about the press? How was the press supposed to cover the election? They cover the debates. They cover the, they cover what the candidates are saying about themselves. They can report what the candidates say about the other candidates. But if you noticed in Iran, you didn't have a candidate ripping each other apart. Because you don't have enough time to play that stupid game. You have to sell people on your merits. You have a very, you have two weeks to sell the Iranian people on your merits. Anytime you spend going, he sucks. He slept with a porn star. He did that. The Iranian people are like, we don't care. What we know is that you can't articulate anything that represents the policies that we care about. The system cures itself if you eliminate stupidity from the system. When we have people talking about porn stars who slept with whom, who did what, who did that, that's not, that's not democracy. That's stupidity. That's a cheap ass game, cheap game. This should be about people's ideas on how they're going to make the country better. That's what it should be about. And the press should be covering that. And I would have to say that if the press oversteps the bounce, I'm all for an election board that rains them in. People in Iran, if the press publishes things that they want to publish, but if they get crazy, they get rained in. In Iran, you have the press, you have press supporting, that criticizes certain candidates. So there is a role for that. But there is no role for money to come in and corrupt this part. And I do believe that we have to set, if we want to save America, we have to set up clearly defined rules that take money the hell out of it. And if you, is any question, go in favor of no money. I didn't think, shut up, you're out, no money, no money, no money whatsoever. The only money they get spent is the money that the federal election committee allocates to each candidate equal amount of money for everybody. And that's it. And if you spend money beyond that, you're disqualified, you're out. And if somebody else is spending money, you go to jail for corrupting democracy. Scott, that's so fundamentally violates the freedoms of America. Ladies and gentlemen, our freedoms have been violated right now. We don't have democracy, which saw APAC by a Congress congressional seat. I'm not a big fan of Bowman, you know, the, the, the gentleman from a, well, it was a six district or 16th district or something in New York, not a fan of his law. I mean, I think he's a criminal, he pulled the fire alarm, he dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But the decision to elect him should be the decision of his constituents. When you have APAC come in and they spent, what, 24 million dollars, Jeff, that destroys American democracy, it's finished, gone, done. That seat should be terminated, finished, eliminated, disqualified. Imagine if we disqualified all congressional seats when corrupt money puts a card, we'd have no Congress because there's not a single seat in Congress that isn't corrupted by money like that, 24 million dollars bought a Congressman in who's going to jail, no one. No, and you can't even do that. You can't even criticize it now because aren't anti-Semitic. What do you mean? It wasn't Jewish money, the hell it wasn't, it was APAC, APAC's bragging about it right now. They've lined up all the people, none of the people we supported lost, why? Because you poured money into it. Is that democracy? No, it's not, it's not democracy, not at all. This country sucks. It really does. Well, you won't get any argument from me on that, but do you trust the government to decide which candidates would be funded? And I trust that once candidates are selected, the government will fund them equally. Once they're selected by voters, do you mean in primaries or voters? Whatever the process, yeah, usually by voters, nominated, selected, voted, throw your hat in the ring, something of that nature. But the point is, no money, Jeff. No money. And some amount of money just to communicate with the voters, right? You have to reach them. No, no, no. How do you reach them? With the budget the government gives you on the airwaves that you get equal time, equal access to the airwaves. No frickin' way, do you get to roll in with a million dollars of somebody's money and buy time that nobody else gets? If you get a minute on TV, everybody gets a minute on TV. That's the way it has to work. All right, but I thought you said based on who's selected after the primaries, they have to spend money before they're selected, right? Or they have to reach the public somehow, before it's decided which candidate would be funded. Isn't that what you said? What I'm saying is that when you, the bottom line is at any problem, when you announce that you want to be president or you're considering it, you go into a zero money thing. You now get funded. The moment you qualify, if you can get certain number of signatures or whatever it is, but the signatures have to be done in a way that there's no, for, look, Diane Sarah does it very well. She goes out there and all this kind of stuff. She didn't hire, I forget that, you know, RFK apparently failed to get on the New York ballot because, but he spent, I don't know, an ungodly amount of money hiring people to go out and get signatures and all that. That can't, no. You go out, you get, you get your volunteers to go out walking, I don't, I don't care. But once you qualify as a candidate, whatever the qualification is, no money is spent, but the money allocated by the government through the election council that is equal to everybody. It has to be a level playing field because if it's not, then it's corrupt. All right. You sent me photos of what looks to me like a very lovely family, but I don't know. What the circumstances are? Well, this, this is Alina of gosh, I put it up there because I have horrible memory. Atala, that's her family, that's her husband, Zaid, and that's her lovely daughter. They, Alina is a supporter of our show, Jeff, and she lives in Lebanon and Beirut. Her mother is from Lugan, Sporussia. Her mother met her father in Kiev, where her father went through medical school and Alina married her wonderful husband, Zaid, and they live in Beirut. They have two wonderful daughters. She heard that that was going to hold an anti-nuclear demonstration in New York City's Central Park in June, and she immediately pressured her husband to buy tickets to get because it's a whole process. You have to get visas. You have to get the tickets. You have to do everything. You have to get your work schedule lined up, and they went all out to get everybody to come to New York to be in this thing, and she was sending me, and this is where I feel pretty guilty. We have that system, the ELF, something system, where people send in requests, and when it first happened, I would click it and read it. The problem is, I wake up in the morning and there's like 100 new ELF site things, and then my phone starts ringing, the schedule starts happening, and then the next thing I know, I look at my emails like right now. If I look at my emails, I have -- I mean, I already purge my emails once today. I have 772 unread emails right now. By the time the show is done, it will be over 1,000, and if I don't purge it, it just gets out of control. So normally to purge it, I screen them, and I hit the ones -- I open the ones that I want to save, and they go to my opened email, and then I can go back in my leisure. But every once in a while, I just get overwhelmed, and I say, screw it. If it's really important, they'll get back to me, and I delete everything. She was sending me these requests saying, hey, what's going on about New York, the thing? Just so people know, there are a number of reasons why New York City didn't happen. One is absolutely no interest on the part of the anti-war movement. There was nobody calling up saying, we want to be part of this, we want to do this. Two, the reality is getting the permits for New York City were damn near impossible and required a budget beyond our capacity and organizational. We needed people to step up, and it just wasn't going to happen. And three, the Russia trip came up, and I made a strategic decision that it was more important to go to Russia, gain access to the information about Russia, bring it back to the United States, and continue the process of waging peace. But poor Alina and her family had bought their tickets. As you're saying this, I think I forwarded that to you. That's the only reason why we met, because you sat there and you said, Scott, this lady bought tickets, she brought her family to New York, and she just wants to know what's going on, and then I think it was, if possible, could they meet you? And I'm like, totally guilty, I'm just like, good God, what did I do here? Apparently, I deleted it multiple times, and I deleted it multiple times. And I was going to New York City anyways, I was going to make a day trip and day trip out, but I said, okay, I feel really bad about this, so I stayed the night in New York City, and I met Alina and her family for lunch the next day. What a wonderful family. I mean, what a great group of people they are, I mean, they gave me this wonderful hat, that's the Lebanese cedar tree, but you notice the name on it? I do notice the name. Yeah, that means that they actually went through, but now the attention to detail though goes further, because I got two shot glasses with the Lebanese cedar on it, and these glasses are supposed to be up again, hold up again, so we can see. There we go. And so I, next time I go to either Defender of the Fatherland Day or something, I have to bring these so that when I do my shots with the Russian officers, we can do it with the Lebanese glasses. But wonderful people, totally, I mean, it was a great thing, I'll just tell two stories about her, because she's a fanatic, her husband said, Scott, when I wake up in the morning, I hear your voice. When I go to bed at night, I hear your voice, and every moment during the day, I hear your voice, when she's putting on makeup, I hear your voice, and I look how cozy you're getting with her now too. Oh, now, now, now, now, now, her husband was there the whole time, and she's a wonderful lady, a proper lady, but she's, he totally knows everything. So I'm sitting there as I want to do, trying to make a meeting with me interesting. So I'm, I'm starting to tell some of my stories, you know, stories about vodka and all this stuff. And so I start this story, and she turns to her husband, and she hits him on the leg, she goes, this is a good one. This is a good, she knows all the stories. I'm sitting there going, God, I don't have any new stories. I'm starting to tell when she goes, oh, yeah, this is a good one. Oh, yeah. I know it again, it's like a song, you know, if you're the favorite song, it doesn't matter that you've already heard it, you want to hear it again. I mean, but the thing is, it was wonderful, it was fun, again, what a great family, good people. And I'm so happy that I took the time to meet them. But as I walked away, and I, and I got on the train, I'm driving, I'm reflecting on this. Yeah, if we have a huge responsibility here, because this isn't a lark what you and I are doing. People listen to us, and they listen to what we say, and they rely upon what we say. They, you know, they trust us to be telling them things that are accurate, things that they can rely upon. It's a huge burden, that's a huge responsibility. And I, I, I'm so happy that I met with Alina and her family because it, you know, it recharged my batteries, I'll say. You can get a little, a little, you know, weary, a little jaundiced, maybe a little cynical. When you're detached from the audience, you know, you're sitting at home, it's not the same thing. I'm sure that if, when you're face to face with them, you really feel it. It's more powerful. Well, I, I always do a much better face to face with people than I do on things like because you're right, it's detached. But again, when you, when I thought her husband was good to shoot me, he's like, when she wakes up to the morning, I hear your voice, I'm like, dude, no, but no, they were great. And he also, you know, is, and then I found out, Jeff, we have a support, a hang group or a support group in Lebanon, that's considerable, considerable size. And, you know, and apparently, I guess we're global, man, we're around the world. Well, I'm flattered that you say we, but I think it's you, they listen to, I'm just the eye. No, no, you don't understand. I mean, I can't say something. They love you. They love you too. What do you mean, you can't say it? I can't give away something, but, um, tell me, tell me later than no, no, it'll happen if it's meant to happen. Jeff, if it's meant to happen. I candy. I candy. Jeff is I candy. Yeah, they, so, but no, it was, it was just a wonderful lunch with a wonderful group of people. I mean, yes, their daughter has it. How old is her daughter? Their daughter? Yeah. Two daughters. One is a 25. The other one's, uh, be ready to go to college. Um, the one, the one daughter we had lunch with, um, she runs the cloud for Amazon. Oh my God. That's one of the daughters. One of the daughters has a crush on me. Is that what you can? Oh, you may be as you are too sexy for your clothes. Um, but, uh, I K, but no, the, the one daughter just got accepted into Columbia University. Smarter than me. And the other daughter runs the cloud for Amazon smarter than me. Um, and in this case, the apples didn't fall too far from the tree because Alina and Zaid are wonderful people, intelligent people, um, thoroughly briefed on all of the issues. Um, and, uh, I tell you, if that's the kind of following we have, makes me happy because that's a quality following. Those are the kind of people you, you want to, you know, have, have listening to you. I don't like the word following, but you know, listening, uh, participating in the, uh, in the broader dialogue family, our beloved audience. And I'm glad that you, you mentioned how many emails you get. I don't get nearly as many emails as you get, but I see all those messages that come in through the elf site is just the name of the app where people send us messages by the form on the website. And I see all those messages too. And it's overwhelming. You know, and I hope people understand that between just the two of us, it's really impossible to take it all in and still get word. It's, it's, it's, it's, I tried to explain to a lean, I said, I don't have a, I mean, I don't know what you guys think if you saw my office, it's literally, I mean, the corner of a room, I have a piano over here, you know, dogs over there. Um, this is a tiny little corner. This is it. This is where the magic takes place. Um, but it's a one man shop. Um, I mean, I get support from Siri as, as needed, but, you know, I don't have a secretary show. I wake up in the morning and it's literally, I open the emails and 1000 there and, and I'm just sitting here. I, I go through them. If I, and then next thing I know, I look at the cloud, damn, I got to do a, I got, I got to do a podcast or I got a, I'm on deadline for an article. So the emails get pushed to the side. And then when I finally get back to them, they, it's like putting rabbits together just tripled in size, like, ah, and eventually I just get so tired of it. I basically, I hit delete and Alina, I think I deleted all your, because I apologize and it makes me feel horrible because now I'm wondering what other communications I didn't read. I see. I always felt you never know. You never know. I'm so glad that one happened to have caught my eye, but yeah, you never know, no, that was a good catch, but I, I just assumed that the majority of them come from, um, well, this is why if you remember I asked Ryan and everybody else, I said, you know, people are now submitting these pin pal requests on that. So if somebody could go through them and, and segregate those and do that to pick, because I can't. I don't have time to do that. So I figured it was pin pals are journalists and journalists. I mean, I like them, but, um, team, team, team Paula is helping us with those too. Right. And with the pin help, but journalists, I figured if they're persistent enough and they, they hit me up enough, eventually, I'll respond. Um, I didn't realize that it'll lean up by tickets to come to New York and go to. Did you write a check to cover the travel costs? I sent her to you, Jeff, you're supposed to, uh, know, they were, they, they have family here. They were, they were visiting family. So they, they double dipped, but, um, no, they, they made their, they made their plans based upon the intent to be at that rally. And, um, we got to do, not we, but, uh, I guess I got to do a better job, um, making sure that you should, you know, you should have taken them into central park and taken out a bullhorn and given them a speech for just the family. I tried. I tried doing that. We met at the, uh, Father Duffy statue in Times Square. And when I first got there, I didn't see them. So I was tempted to get up there and just begin pontificate. Yeah. And, um, fortunately, Alina showed up and saved me from that embarrassment. But, uh, and again, it was just a wonderful, uh, you know, we, we, we, we met at 12 and I had a train to catch it, um, 315 and I just, I was like, yeah, you know, you'll meet what it'd be like an hour or so. So we're in the middle of just, I mean, and I, and I, like fortunately I looked at my watch or my phone. It was 2 30. I'm like, holy cow, I got to catch a train. And I'm like, where the hell did two and a half hours go? I mean, it was such a great meeting, such great conversation that it's, the time just went that quick. Um, you know, so it's good people, good people. All right. Well, speaking of our beloved audience, maybe we should take some questions from them. Oh, hell no. It's really audience. We don't care about it. Okay. A lot of people in Ireland, I've been noticing lately, here's Claire Rehill somewhere in Ireland. Who is actually running the USA? It's clearly not Joe Biden. How is this man still president? Now that is a very good question. Well, he's still president because he was, he was elected president. Well, the first part is a very good question is who is running the USA? Well, you know, here's the thing about that. We have a hint Joe Biden, when he ran for election in 2020, ran on a, um, a platform of reforming America's nuclear posture away from the Bush era, um, a posture of nuclear preemption that was continued by Obama, even though Obama ran and said, no, I don't like this. We're going to change that Obama didn't eight years didn't change it. And then Trump became president and he doubled down on it. I mean, a lot of people don't realize how dangerous Donald Trump is under his administration. He had a senior arms control official speak to the arms control association and say it's the goal of the Trump administration that every morning, we want Chinese and government officials to wake up, not knowing whether or not this is the day America nukes them. Okay, that's a sincerity, but it's real and that was Trump and Trump should have fired that guy. I've Trump didn't agree with it, but I think Trump liked that crazy thing. I'm crazy. Nuclear weapons aren't a game. And he's the one who made, you know, the usable nuclear weapon, put it on a tried and some marine, the W 76 dash to low yield nuclear weapon and then practice scenarios where he talked about where the United States said, Oh, we're, we're, we're practicing nuking Russian soldiers, insanity, total insanity. And Biden said, Nah, when I run soul, soul purpose, soul use, the soul purpose of America's nuclear arsenal will be to deter against nuclear attack. And the only time we will ever use nuclear weapons is if somebody uses nuclear weapons against us and then we will eliminate them. And what we will do to them will be so horrible that they'll never want to attack us. And so that's the purpose of it. He became president and, you know, halfway through, you know, he published a new, he published a new nuclear posture, posture review, and we, we, we doubled down on preemption. So I was at an INF treaty reunion in Washington, DC surrounded by arms control experts, people like me who implemented treaties got rid of nuclear weapons, understand the negotiating process, understand how policies made, understand how policies implemented. And one of these veterans stood up and asked the, the keynote speaker who was an official from the Biden administration who dealt with arms control, very senior official, a policy maker. And said, what happened? Biden ran on this and now there's no, you guys kept with preemption, you doubled down on it. And this individual responded, well, the interagency wasn't ready for that. And everybody went, what do you talk about, interagency? See, we all know what the interagency is back when I was doing this business. The interagency was a process. You see, the president is the executive. The president says, I want X, Y, and Z to happen. Then the national security advisor calls together the, they hold, the president might say this is what they call the principles meeting. That's in the White House situation room and you have the principles, the cabinet members and the president will say, I want this to happen. Then the national security advisor convenes what they call the deputies meeting and the deputies meeting is where the deputies of the principles come together and the national security barrier says, I want to convene an interagency working group. That means all of you guys need to designate somebody who will come together as part of a regular meeting group to figure out how you're going to implement the will of the executive. That's the interagency process. It's normal. It's how the government's supposed to work. What's happened is that that process has become a system, a system of unelected officials. There's now a permanent body, a lava, not just of the deputies and their directed people, but now those directed people have links to think tanks because they have to go back. They have links to university where they have revolving doors. They have links to corporations like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin where they have revolving doors. Everything has become a system that's called the interagency. We can call it other things. We can call it the establishment. We can call it the swamp. We can call it the deep state, the blob, whatever, but it exists. It's real and that's what's running America today and a senior by administration official admitted it. The president said, this is what I want to do when I become elected and yet when he tried to implement that policy, he was told that the interagency isn't ready for it. Did you vote for the interagency, Jeff? I didn't know. Nobody voted for them. Nobody knows who they are. They just exist and this is the problem. These are the people that are doing this now. Who's working with Joe Biden? We know how the Constitution works. If the president is incapable of doing this, the 25th Amendment kicks in and the vice president can step in and take over if you get a certain number of cabinet officials to agree. But that's not happening. The president is still called the president, but clearly, he can't think anymore. Who's running the show? Who's writing? You see, he has these little cheat sheets, these notes to tell them what to do, what to think, how to behave. Who writes that? The interagency? Do they write it? What makes the decision? What goes on? Because normally when you elect somebody, you want the decision made between this earlobe and this earlobe. You want that brain to go, that brain doesn't work anymore, earlobes hold nothing. So who's making it happen? Who's writing that? Who's propping this president up? Who's making the decisions? It can't be the vice president because the vice president has had the constitutional authority to do that so long as the president's healthy. Who's making the decisions? And we don't know. Is it Joe Biden? Did we vote for Joe Biden? Did we vote for Joe Biden? Did we vote for Joe Biden? Did we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? No. Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden? Do we vote for Joe Biden?