The Duran Podcast
White House Foreign Policy In Disarray w/ Tony Shaffer Live
We are live. Great to have everyone with us on this Thursday, March the 7th. Alexander, how are you doing? I'm doing very well and absolutely delighted. Very excited to have Tony Shaffer with us. Yes, we are very happy, very honored to have the one and only Tony Shaffer. NYT, New York Times, best-selling author, retired DoD Intel operative, and a man who knows a lot of things that he is going to tell us about. Alexander, Tony, before we get started with the show, let me just say a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on Odyssey, on Rockfin, Rumble, and Telegram, and of course, thederan.locals.com, and thank you to our amazing awesome moderators, Peter, Valle S, Zairel, and who else is moderating, and anyone else who joins us in the moderation, thank you very much for everything that you do. Alexander, Tony, there is all kinds of news going on. This was a very big week in news, so Alexander and Tony, they pass it off to you gentlemen. I think this is a very big, not just week of news, but I think it's a very big month of news, and actually, the epicenter, as always, is the US. There's lots of things going on in Ukraine, which we can talk about, lots of things going on in the Middle East. But ultimately, when you actually unpack everything, it's Washington, which remains the place, which is at the centre. Others respond to what the Americans, or at least what people inside the beltway are doing. And it's sometimes very difficult to decipher what's going on, at least for us outsiders, to decipher what is going on in Washington. And I can tell you one thing, the Europeans are freaking out. They are in a state of absolute blind panic. Other like, I have never known before in my lifetime, and I've been following news and politics for a very, very long time. My father used to know the European Union and its institutions very well, so my aunt used to, I have a long background going all the way back to the 1980s, I have never known a week quite as agitated, or at least two weeks, quite as agitated in Europe as the two weeks which have just passed. And I've gone over think again that it is the Americans who are behind this. And let's just, you know, look at some of the things that are going on over the course of this programme. And before I get onto that, let's just say that we are incredibly privileged today to have somebody, Tony Shaffer, who is, as Alex said, former intelligence officer, military man, Lieutenant Colonel. He's served in many places. He's been to some of the locations and the buildings in the beltway that we are going to be discussing. He understands a lot more about this kind of world than we as complete outsiders do. So I want to first of all say how delighted I am that we have Tony Shaffer with us. And Tony, can I now go over to you and just ask you first of all whether you agree with me that there's an awful lot going on, we don't quite understand what is going on, but there's a lot of uncertainty and a very big sea change, or at least so I feel. This, as our title says, "Diss array in foreign policy." And well, do you feel the same way? Does it seem to you the same? Well, thank you for having me, by the way. And since there's two of you, shouldn't you guys be the Duran Duran? I almost expected Nick Rhodes or Simon Lebond to be honest, but I digress. So no, I do. I do echo and feel the unease as do the Americans. But Alexander, part of the reason there's unease is because the American media has been completely ignoring everything you guys talk about. One of the notable features of our media is that they tend to pick up and give great weight and expand the messaging for aspirations, aspirational thinking. And so, you know, and I'll just say it, my partner in crime, Brigadier General Blaine Holt and I try our best to hold a line of truth here. And the way that Washington sets the tone, which I don't dispute, I think they do their best to influence things because Washington writes a lot of checks. Remember, the whole focus of the Ukraine effort, and you both have done a great job. I've watched both of your presentations over the last 24 hours. I feel like I want to pick up a cigar because I'm always smoking a cigar when I'm watching your stuff. So I almost feel naked here without a cigar in my hand as we're talking. But the issue of what you said relating to the fact that the Europeans are going to give any more to you to write a check, you know, it's like, oh, we got some 105s in the warehouse. If you got the money for us, well, the money's stuck in Congress. And Alexander, I think you've correctly picked up on it. And I feel based on the fact, if you guys watch my social media, I'm interacting with a lot of politicians. You guys, you know, this is all public. And I, you know, I talked to my friend Ryan Zinke, Congressman Zinke this past Sunday, our meeting was public. It's all on them. And I can tell you the Republicans I talked to, who are the Reagan guys, we need to have any more of this. There's no plan. There's no ability to to to fund something and think you're going to achieve a viable outcome that benefits someone other than, you know, throwing money in there and hoping for the best. And the Southwest border is an issue. We're going to see tonight, Alexander, to your point, Joe Biden do his best to do a tap dance around everything he's failed to do. And what he wants to write, raise taxes. Oh, people are paying their fair share. So, you know, between spoonfuls of tapioca and whatever happens with his wife, Dr. Joe Biden, and his depends, he's coming up with some sort of semi-lucid set of ideas that somehow we're not taxed enough. And that's going to solve the world's problems. But this is a long way to get to the answer of your question. Much of the subterfuge of the US media is designed to to distract from the real issues and focus on things that are going on. So, I think part of why you you you're you I don't want to please don't take this the wrong way. Why you people are freaking out over there is because they've been so deferential to Washington who's been doing something that has no regard to the reality in which we all live. Does that make any sense? I mean, it makes absolute sense. I mean, they've they've been swept along. And I think this is a point which, you know, I want we want to emphasize over the course of this program. This is not America that has led the Europeans down this crazy path. It is a faction which is in control of the American government. And the Europeans, the Europeans, by the way, understand that very well. They understand that very if you look at the European media, which I am actually much better at reading than I am the American media. If you look at the American, the European media, they are very, very conscious that they have tied themselves to the success in Washington of a particular faction. And what they are worried because they don't understand American politics very well, what they're worried and what they didn't expect is that that faction is now losing. And they've just lost, by the way, the single person that perhaps more than anyone else they interacted with, which is Victoria Newland. Now, Victoria Newland is impossible to overstate how important to the Europeans she is because she was the person who was going to Europe all the time. She's terribly interested in Europe. She's much more focused on what goes on in Europe than I think many American officials are. And her conception of what American grand strategy should be is very focused on Europe. And that is something the Europeans love. And now she has gone and they're all of them. I can say this definitely. They will be worried in Europe. They'll be asking themselves why? Why has Newland gone? Well, she pushed. Did she go? Who are the people who are taking over? And they're going to be looking at the backgrounds of the people who are taking over. And they're not going to like what they see because it seems to me that these are people who are saying over much, too much focus has been given to Europe. The thing in Ukraine, which Newland was so connected to, is not working out. It's time for us to look elsewhere and apparently could gamble her replacement or rather not the replacement, the new Deputy Secretary of State. He's mostly interested in China affairs. So I understand. So you're correctly diagnosing the landscape of what we face here. But again, I don't think you understand the subtleties. I mean, not you. You do. I'm just saying the Europeans in general, there is constantly a battle behind the scenes. And if you simply tell, say someone is a Republican, you completely miss the whole point that there's a lot of flavors of Republicans and you've got the the the progressives on the left. And yet you've got the Hillary Clinton folks. You've got the the folks on our side like Nikki Haley, the combat Barbie doll. You know, Mr. It could have turned her into a doll and had hers like a GI Joe made back in the 60s. Remember the old GI Joe's the real cool ones? Anyway, I digress. But she, those that's a that's the fat nougat layer that's kind of the model part. It's the Nick, the the speaker of McConnell's, the folks who basically make up that the the political you guys, I think call it the political class. And I'm not in there. And I don't want to be a man. A lot of us have recognized that man, it's a mess. And and it's nothing. There's no good there. So so Victoria is part of that. She's part of the Dick Cheney. All the folks who basically believe that somehow using our military might as the first predicate in any national security or foreign policy issue is is what they do. Can I use the word Trotskyites in your show? Am I am I allowed to say that? I think they're all it's it's it's as Blaine Holt and I were talking about it's the parade of Trotskyites is what they are. And a lot of these folks never found a political home. They kind of float back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans. I think they're back going to the Democrats right now, because, you know, the Democrats are, you know, being progressives seem to be most intellectually friendly to their brand of national security foreign policy. So you see them kind of float back and forth. Some of the folks came over during the Reagan years. They floated back, you know, it's it's it's it's like a precancerous node that just can't find a spot in the body policy that keeps keeps floating around. And you can't quite cut it out because it moves fast. And I think that's what we're faced with right now. Most people I talk to, I'm a Reagan guy. I still talk to the Reagan folks. I still see Ed Meece, the former attorney general on a regular basis. The notable thing they keep talking about, Alexander, is that, hey, we bought the Soviets and we didn't have to go to war to do it. We actually won the war. We understood by mapping mapping things out, understanding the whole of the Soviet Union, and understanding if you poke it here, something over here is going to happen. The Neatons don't care. The point that you make often is that you talk about the side effects or detrimental effects of sanctions. Oh, the sanctions haven't worked. Oh, we're going to do more. Really? How did you not see the first ones didn't work? How do you not understand that the very thing that the very actions you take have a have a high order response of failing to achieve your objectives? They're doing just fine. So this is my issue as a national security guy. And I mentioned to Alexander and Alexander and Alex, where I came on, I get accused constantly of being a pro-Russia Putin guy. It's like, I'm just trying to tell you what you're proposing, what you're executing, and the outcomes you're seeking are not related. You will never achieve the outcomes you're seeking based on the fact you don't understand the system. And so we look at this with a great deal of disdain. Those of us who are trying to actually tell people, you're not going to be Putin. And man, they get upset. It's like, yeah, the Victoria Newland thing, and you guys have mentioned her obsession with Crimea. It's like, get over it, girl. You're not going to get it back. And when you set out as an academic, which she basically is, to start playing with guns, tanks, and airplanes, and telling people what to do with them with no understanding of linkages of how the big picture works, the outcome is inevitable to what we're seeing right now. Absolutely. Can I just say, and this is where I think you can help me a great deal, because as somebody who has never been involved in intelligence at all, in any shape or form or military things, I do not understand how it is possible that the United States government has been consistently getting Russia so badly wrong. As you absolutely rightly say, I remember the Cold War. Well, I remember how well informed the US was about Russia at that. You used to get the best understanding about what was going on in the Soviet economy from the CIA. The CIA was reminding incredibly very detailed and very thorough updates about it. I mean, they understood the industrial chains, they understood everything that was going on there. Today, they don't understand Russia at all. They have got that they launched an economic war against Russia with complete lack of understanding of how it would respond and what it would do. How has this happened? Why is today's United States so much less skilled at understanding these things than you say you're one of the Reagan people when you were your people were in your day? Well, Danny Davis and I did a deep dive on this. That's actually a play on his show on this very issue. Right before he linked us up together, if you go back and watch his show, we talk about it. We do an hour of this and the answer is Alexander. The CIA has become an extension of the political party in charge aspirations. That is to say, anything they do will result in an outcome or analysis which benefits your aspirations. It doesn't tell you what the facts are. I mean, I'm a DoD guy. I support the combat guys. If you read my book Operation Darkheart, I'm on an air assault with the Rangers. I'm supporting Ryan Zinke seals, you know, operationally behind the scenes. So we have to deal in really factual, like this is what's really going on because when you start sending people into combat, you really want a good outcome for them. So I like to believe we're more honest in our assessments. And I'm trained by CIA. I was mentioning Alex that I actually spent some time in Williamsburg going to Camp Perry. So my issue is if you, as an intelligence officer, intelligence professional decide to lead the reservation and benefit a political party, then you're not an intelligence officer. And I can list them up. I know Jim Clapper, John Brennan is amongst those. And that's what you, that class of intelligence officer, Alexander, is what is in the CIA. Jim Clapper has a meta political narrative he didn't like, but he wouldn't take an adapt and find the intelligence predicates to support. And so when you have that intelligence, that level of intelligence departure, they're not even intelligence officers. They're reinforcers of narratives. And that's what they do. So there's a huge difference. And that's why, you know, people like us have been behind the scenes, you can go back and run the tapes back when Putin was about to invade. I went on the air, you can Google it. And I said, oh, yeah, he's going to invade. Well, how do you know this? Well, he pulled his, his jocks out of out of Germany. He doesn't want his yachts captured his incidental. And everybody thought, Oh, that's crazy. It's like, no, it's an indicator. It's a factual indicator that something bad's about to happen. And you all have missed it. And so I'm just saying, my job is to call balls and strikes. The people who are in charge, Alexander, that's not their job. Their job essentially is to find any little shred or thread that they can put together, paste over and say, Oh, here, here's your intelligence. And so that's why, and by the way, then going back to our original question, American media, these knuckleheads, the senior level, then feed the American media. They feed ABC NBC CBS, you know, and they fire people like Catherine Herridge, who's a friend, when they get to, Oh, no, no, we don't want you doing reporting. My God, why would you do that? So it's a really vicious cycle. You get these these political elites who have the CIA and form them. And then that political elite structure then feeds them mainstream media. And then that feeding of narrative is what then drives the new cycle, which I'm always like scratch my head like, how did that become an issue? And that's what you all Europeans seem to respond to. But it's a corrupt system that does not validate or support the provision of truth to the public. And it's a very dangerous thing because then people get surprised like Abjefka, it just fell. Really? How did that happen? I thought we were winning. I mean, that's that's what happens in this stuff. And it just is not healthy. I'm sorry if I'm growing on too long, but that's a you're not trying to explain it. So no, it explains something else because it explains how that summer offensive came about. Because I mean, I can remember reading Daniel Davis writing and talking about this. He said, this isn't going to work. And he never's never there. And you say, I mean, you know, your military, your focus is military intelligence. Well, surely, the first thing you do before you launch an invasion like that, or rather an offensive like that, is you work out how strong the other side is. I mean, I would have thought that was absolutely you know, basic. And I mean, I don't know anything about this, but I would have thought that you'd want to know a bit about the generals who are in charge on the other side, their background, you want to know about the units there, you'd want to count the number of tanks, look at the logistical facilities, the fortifications, all of that kind of thing. And only then, after you've got at least some kind of picture of what you're taking on, do you launch this? But the Europeans, can I hit that. So let me let me say as a lieutenant, I enlisted in 1981, I became a commissioned officer as a military intelligence, I was actually counter intelligence in '83. And I can tell you, my training was focused everything on the Soviet Union, everything to the things you're talking about. Let's understand the personalities. We would put together, we were taught to put together massive biographical books on Russian leaders down to the the lieutenant colonel up from the first tank army all the way down to the field. We studied this, we understood their thinking, we'd looked at what happened during World War II, we'd looked at the battles, we looked at Kursk, we looked at all these things of how they fought war. We then studied the terrain in Germany. You wouldn't believe how many times I went through a full gap scenario where we would have to assess what they're going to do to come across and how we would go into an active defense. You always talk about an active defense, Alexander, and what you talk about. We were going to have to go on the active defense. Oh, by the way, we're going to have to hold back the West Germans who wanted to start dropping nukes, the moment they came across. I mean, this is what we came up with. And there's a whole class of, I'm not unique. It's not like I'm the only one who knows this. There's a whole bunch of us that came through the system and understood some of my first operations were undercover against Russia. I actually was part of the INF treaty. Remember the INF treaty in '88? I was one of the guys undercover trying to entice Russians. This is an exclusive. I've never talked about this publicly. I was undercover trying to entice the Russians to defect while they were here in the United States monitoring our destruction of the Pershing twos. So I was undercover as a stuntman for God's sakes trying to get these guys convinced to walk over, come to the light. So I'm just, I'm a little bit over the top here, but I'm trying to make the point, Alexander, to your premise. A lot of us understand this. A lot of us came through the system and understand you must study them to the level of ability to influence them. And nobody has the patience to do that. It's all like it's all in sin. They send constantly, without regard to assessing or understanding what they're trying to do. It's a very arrogant set of leaders who don't seem to be burdened by the facts necessary to achieve victory. The other thing, I mean, you've explained a lot about the intentions, people, the fact that all of these do my best. Well, the leaders now, the Brennan's clappers, clappers, they're basically, they're basically the political apparatics essentially. I mean, that's a good stuff. What about the generals? Because I mean, we're getting all of these generals. The generals. I don't want to name any names, because I can name names. Well, I can name names. All right, General Hodges. I mean, he was telling us, you know, there's all going to be, he's going to be easy. There's some summer. I mean, what did he know? Or what did he think he know? I mean, did he know? Did he know? Did he make any effort to find out what was going on? We see another politician masquerading as a general. I mean, you know, the summary of what you're Yeah, the summary, basically, we have a whole class of generals who have become politicians in uniform. And I have advised at that level, I've not hidden the fact that I was an advisor to several Chairman's of the Joint Chiefs. And for better or for worse, the ones I advised listened. I know Mark Millie, Mark, I was not one of Mark Millie's advisors. Mark and I have been publicly at odds for a while. There's a whole history there that we don't have time to get into. Dave Petraeus, and then Hodges. These guys, I see, and by the way, Lloyd Austin. If you read my book Operation Darkheart, I'm not trying to sell books. I mean, if you guys want to pick it up, it's in there. I worked for Austin when he was a Brigadier General in Afghanistan. Speaking of the guy who was actually served in Afghanistan, by the way, as a footnote, actually oversaw the destruction of it, just saying. But Austin was a politician in uniform. You could see it when he was a Brigadier General. Petraeus became a politician in uniform once they got the goods on him for him, sleeping with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. I can only imagine the amount of dictation going on at night between she and he during their time at Bagram, just saying. But I think the whole issue relating to these guys is that they take a step into the political realm, and they give up any aspirational belief that they're going to be credible generals. Do you think for a minute, Alexander, that Hodges worries about our criticizing of him? No, he doesn't care because he fulfilled his purpose. Petraeus doesn't care. These guys have great studios behind him. I am always amazed at the production quality of Petraeus' videos. It looks like he's living at the Taj Mahal, and look at me because I'm credible. If you've got to actually reinforce the credibility by great production values, there's something wrong. And all these guys have signed up to be an extension of the political parties that they support, which at this point, more or less, it's the Democrats. It's mostly Democrats. I have to say, again, this is something that I've gradually come to see, but it is shocking to someone like me. And I'm sure an awful lot of people outside who haven't been following the users closely as I do. I mean, they assume that these are generals, that they took their oaths, that they take that oath seriously, that they understand that one of the fundamental principles of being a military commander is that you speak truth to power. Isn't that what generals are supposed to do? As you said, dealing with matters of life, life or death? The generals I work with absolutely do. I still correspond. You'd be surprised who calls me during the day. I still correspond and talk to a number of generals who you guys would know by name. By the way, Alexander, one of the notable features of the generals, they don't want to get political. They are behind the scenes trying to actually give people like me, who is basically for better wars of public figure, the right information saying, this is what's really going on. I'm not a brilliant guy. I'm just a knucklehead who used to do intelligence operations, but I am informed by, I believe, some of the best minds who basically don't have a platform and are trying to say, this is what we should be paying attention to. So when I speak of something, I've already checked it by others who were smarter than me. These generals you're talking about, but they don't want to be political. Alexander, the moment you get into the media, you become political. And I think these guys are far too happy with the limelight they get from saying whatever they say. Dave Petraeus, I think, has paid very well for whatever he says. And apparently money talks. It's not that I don't want to have money. I don't care to sell my soul or sell my integrity for whatever they get from Raytheon or other places. By the way, did you hear Raytheon when Nikki Haley fell out of the race yesterday, they lowered their flags to half-staff? I'm just kidding. But anyway, it could have happened. But my point is you have a whole class who are willing to do that. And so there are people honest, but their honesty is preserved by the fact they don't get into the political limelight. That seems like an enigma perhaps, but that's kind of the way it works. So I would actually caution your audience. Buyer beware. All generals are not cut from the same cloth. All individuals who have a public platform do not necessarily speak the truth. And you need to be very discerning of how you look at their comments, because if someone's paying in big bucks, they're going to say whatever they're paid to say. Isn't that going to be pushed back? Because I must assume that there are still people in the Pentagon, especially what who are looking at this and they're looking at this with horror. Tell us a bit about this. I mean, what are they saying to each other? Are they saying, you know, look, things are going horribly wrong in Ukraine, we just pull out? Or are they saying, we've got to pull back in and take charge and swap this out? What are they saying at the moment? I mean, what do you think that they're saying? Well, many people recognize, like you all picked up on without direct knowledge, that Newland was really calling a shot. So one of the frustrations has been the reluctance of senior officers at the Austin level to jump in and say, let's stop Newland and other State Department folks from making the audible calls. Like, who showed up? You've mentioned this a couple of days ago. I think yesterday too, Alexander. Newland shows up to do the refereeing between Zelusni and Zelensky. Yeah, like he's a general. Did you maybe think that Lloyd Austin or someone else may be the one doing that? No, because she's been the one and she's the one who basically makes all these veiled and sometimes unveiled threats. That's not the Pentagon. Yes, State Department. So part of the problem is, and I'm just going to say it, Lloyd Austin is such a weak sister in the process of managing the Pentagon. He's allowed this to happen. This is this is a decision that's based on not only a political set of objectives assigned to the State Department by the Biden administration, by Jake Sullivan. Did you ever notice Jake Sullivan? You guys are old enough to remember the old TV show, The Muppets. You ever notice that he looks like beaker from the Muppets? I just every time I see him, it's like beaker. But anyway, I digress again. So, but I'm just saying that that political plan. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Just carry on, please. Well, it's true. So, but basically you have this unholy alliance of academics who influence battle space activities. And so that's the first rub of the guys of the Pentagon. It's like you're not fighting a war. You're extending military force as a tool of narrative. Extending military force is a tool of narrative. It's not a good idea. It's not going to attain victory. And that's the issue that the people I talk to have. This is not a serious strategy. Come on. Who has ever launched offensive operations without at least some level of air parity, let alone without air dominance? Who does this? And yet portrays and hodges to your point, Alexander, we're right out there. Oh, it's going to work. It was never going to work. And so the people who understand this have been suppressed. We can't talk about it. We can't go out and say it's not going to work. Oh, you're proputen. No, I'm simply stating based on my 30 years of experience and everything I've watched, this is not going to work. And oh, no, no, you're just being negative. So the people I talk to are very frustrated by the fact that they are not allowed to have their voices heard at the very senior level. So they're there, Alexander. They're fighting a good fight. But the moment you stick your head up in this political environment, you're proputen, you're out. So it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, I just want to make a number of points going back to your point about Trotsky. So I have no problem of talking about you saying this, because I have encountered many actual Trotskyists in my time. I could see a lot of the science here. I mean, you know, continuous revolution, expanding the revolution all over the place. The intense factualism, by the way, the dislike of Russia, which Trotsky and his acolytes eventually developed because Russia in its, well, the Soviet Union, as it was, rejected him, all of this. And and the obsessive intrigues, which these people get up to you, which again, is very, very much part of goes with the style. And, you know, I don't know how much of the ideology that they they kept with them, but you could certainly see many, many of the practices repeat themselves. And I'm glad you brought up a bit about, you know, narratives, because my wife is an academic, and of course she's involved. She's in, she's a literature, she's an English literature academic. And she is extremely frustrated at the way in which tools of literary criticism, which were developed in the 50s and 60s, have now come to shape public discourse. And she thinks this is an absolute disaster. And she's absolutely right. I mean, these are tools for examining novels, which were works of fiction and understanding novels, fiction better. And now somehow rather academics and, you know, absolutely right, the number of people with academic backgrounds who are in government today is just, especially the American government is is concerning in some ways type of thinking that they've developed from applying these literary theories is astonishing. And of course, narratives don't make facts. I mean, as I once said, to some, you know, on another program, I mean, you know, you can build all your propaganda that you like. The Germans did it during the Second World War. They were very good at it. It didn't prevent the Red Army reaching Berlin. No, that's what you've got to always remember about this. Well, part of this Alexander is the Reagan, the Reagan guys understood it very well, too. One of the master strokes, but they understood that it's that narrative is a supporting element to overall military global strategy. Reagan, again, I know these guys, I work with them, I've talked to John Lehman, and I actually admire their work. Bud McFarland and I were very close friends before Bud passed, and I learned a lot from them. But they did use narrative, but they used it as a subordinated element to a larger like, yeah, you can't count on this carrying the weight. I'll cite for you one of the most brilliant acts of propaganda ever, the hunt for Red October. Who doesn't love that movie? And by the way, it's a great movie before Alec Baldwin became a knucklehead. I'm just saying, you know, I'm no fan of Alec, but he does a great job. That was all done by the Navy. That was a Navy narrative that was created by, I mean, check the history on this. I'm not telling anything that's already out there. And that was amazing. People love that movie. I love that movie. But that was all done with what they purpose of making the Russians think, Oh, yeah, don't even bother to show up. We're going to kick your ass. So it reinforced a narrative that was backed up by actual planning. Now, could we have done it? I don't know. We'll never know. There's been so many the movie threads. There's been a number of things. Sir John Hackett's World War three. I mean, we've all looked at what could have happened. There's a lot of scenarios, but the big news here, Alexander's, we stopped it didn't happen. We're still here. There was no no nuclear war. There was no tactical exchange of nukes. There was no, you know, we stopped it. And the idea was that the narrative was simply used to reinforce military activities, which were credible. We've done the opposite. We've done the the complete negative of this. It's all narrative with no credible military stuff. And Putin, by the way, Putin and the Russians are probably looking at this like, Are they serious? Are they really serious? And I think that's what the way it is, because the narrative has become the primary driver of policy, not the policy driving the narrative. It's just mind boggling. Now, I just want to talk about this incredible article that appeared about 10 days ago in the New York Times about what the CIA was doing. Now, first of all, I don't I still haven't really understood why that article appeared at all. I would have thought all of this was top secret material. But I mean, there's the other question, which is that what did this all achieve? I mean, we have a situation where the United States doesn't understand, you know, very much about Russia. So, you know, this huge intelligence operation, a lot of activities, which I to be frank, to me, I'll straight out of adjacent form story. I mean, I didn't know that this kind of thing actually happened in the real world. But then, you know, what do I know? But what in the end did it achieve? And secondly, why are we being told about it now? Well, I think Victoria Newland really thought ourselves as a James Bond girl, I think. I think, you know, there's probably a blowfeld out there somewhere that she's, you know, siding up to just saying if we want to use that as a kind of a picture. I mean, I don't know. I can't give you the specific background, but I can tell you my theory. This is what I think happened. In 2013, 2014, a massive amount of natural resources were discovered. Don the Don Boston, the Black Sea, oil, you know, Texas tea. That, that discovery, I think, stimulated the thinking of a lot of folks on our side to think, hey, this is an opportunity. That is not me, but the Neacons. It's the Victoria Newland is like, oh, my God, this is, this is great. We can do it too far. We can grab those resources and turn Ukraine into the energy partner for all of the EU. And at the same time we do that, we can create conditions for a war with Russia and Ukraine, which collapses the Soviet Union, collapses the Russians. So I think that was their aspirational thinking. Let's, let's take this. And then, oh, by the way, if we have a energy partner in Ukraine, we don't need Russian oil or gas. So this, this defunds Russia too. So I think the economic concepts that were presented internally were then presented to businessmen that the Black rocks and others like, hey, here's an opportunity for you guys to invest. And if you go along with our phony baloney war and let us keep poking the bear until something happens, we're going to collapse Russia and you're going to get Ukraine. So I argue much of this on the, the American side, and what CI is talking, the CI was simply the, the access agent for what I'm talking about. And I think CI analysts would go along nodding their head, oh, yes, yes. Oh, yes. We, we agree. This is a great opportunity. Let's figure out how we can do a covert action. So I think the economic aspirations of the political class and collapsing Russia, because I hate Russia, come on Trotsky, Trotskyites hate Russia. Let's be honest here. They do this plan up. And then they put it together and that's why you saw the, the, the Maidan revolution and everything else had nothing to do with politics. It had everything to do with moving Ukraine out from under the sphere of influence of Russia and into the sphere of the EU. And I've argued, I've said this publicly, we should not be involved in what I believe to be a civil war. Ukraine, Ukraine and Russia are, are, it's like West Virginia and Virginia as far as I'm concerned. And I get in a lot of trouble saying it, but I think it is. Anyway, but there was an aspirational, that's what, so that's, so what you see, Alexander, is the plan that came out of that aspiration. And, and so I, you know, anybody can go read the article. I think many of us have seen the bones of it for a long time now. It's just, it's, it's interesting to see the whole thing kind of exposed. My second point then, so fast forward, no need, you know, you can go read that. Why now are they announcing it? Because I think there's about, I think it's all about the collapse. I think they put so much shellac on the plan for so long. You know, the veneer is just, it's just, it's just, you know, it's, it's an inch thin, but it's all coming out. So I just don't see any way they could put a happy face on it anymore. And I think that's what we're about to see. I mean, Victoria Newland leaving as much to do with Donald Trump as her own failure of purpose at this point, because I think they see the writing on the wall. And look, full disclosure, I'm a Trump guy. I was his national, I was a national security advisor to Trump 2020 campaign. You guys know who I, I don't hide who I hang out with publicly. You know, you guys see who I post, I hang out with. So, you know, I think people I talk to, it's like, yeah, there's going to be huge changes if Trump gets elected and this nonsense is still going. So I think, you know, there's, they're starting to look at their exit strategy as far as I can tell. And this is my opinion. I have no, I don't know this. So, you know, I completely agree with that, by the way. I think that this is the fact that Newland has gone and the way in which she has gone. And the people who are taking over from her within the State Department, as I said, that does look to me like a big shift in policy, given what a central figure she has been in for so long. Oh, absolutely central. Can I just say, I mean, this is perhaps the sort of thing that I read and do. I go to, I'm just going to go to Blinken's statement announcing her departure because to a sort of person like myself, there are a number of rather interesting words there. So it says, the title is on the retirement of Under Secretary of State, Victoria Newland. So when you read about retirement, that means firstly that she's not coming back ever. So the door has been once and for all shut on her because of course, well, it's interesting you say it because if you actually go to what she actually said, she said that Victoria, the statement says, Victoria Newland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks. So she intends to step down. It doesn't say that she told him that she wants to retire, but somebody took the statement and introduced that word retirement. Well, she's been, she's left the State Department before and she's come back, but it looks to me as if somebody doesn't want to come back. That's the first thing. And then I noticed other things like we read about how Julia, and what makes truly, Victoria truly exceptional, is the fierce passion she brings to fighting for what she believes in. And then we go on to read that she makes you laugh when you most need it and always be laugh constantly. And it and always has your back and that she always speaks her mind. Now, maybe I'm being too British here. I accept that I perhaps am. But all of these things look to me like what we call in Britain, damning with fake praise. So you, you, you've retired her. She didn't say she was retiring. Well, so it looks to me, but you've decided that she's retiring. She's got fierce passion. So she's somebody who doesn't keep a temper very well. She is. So we call them, we call those hemorrhoids here. Exactly. She's somebody who speaks out very openly and straightforwardly, which means to say that she's rude and impossible. And that she minds your back, meaning that she doesn't. And in fact, that's that's how I would read a statement like this. If this was published in Britain following a bureaucratic maneuver like this, having worked on the fringe of the British government, I could tell you that is how people would read a statement like this. Oh, this was, this was a firing. No, the, the simple fact is, there was no, there was no, like, hey, Tori's not doing well. They're pretty upset with her. Hey, Tori's looking to go do something with the family. Hey, man, those hemorrhoids are out of control, all that bloodness. Well, we know it's all linked to a medical condition, things like that. I'm, I'm sorry, I'm being a wise asset. The other thing, the other thing I did note here, because I'm looking at it as well. My masters are sending me a note about, I got to do TV later, just saying. One of the, I'm looking at the paragraph two here, Alexander. What's interesting is that they did mention that her experiences have armed her to be an encyclopedia of knowledge, which then tells me if you get, if you look, understand that, he's going to be around and still trying to advise people. So they're basically saying, hey, we're showing you the door, but man, you're an encyclopedia, so we're going to come talk to you. So her influences are not going away. It's just her public face is no longer welcome. All the things, all the things you talk about are too obvious. She's become a liability to the narrative is the way I'm looking at it. She'll be around. Absolutely. The other thing that struck me about this statement is that he doesn't provide the reason she's going. I mean, usually if people leave. I think we've talked about the reason. I know, but if people leave in a good way, they say that she's decided exactly as he said, that she wants to be more with the family, that she's got all kinds of plans or all sorts of things that you wish her well for the future in what she undertakes. And there's none of that in this statement here. So that's where I come back to you to the point that I asked you before that is the pushback. And other people starting to push back and say, look, enough's enough. You've led us into this shambles in Ukraine. And when I say you, I mean, Victorian, no, I can't let us into the shambles in Ukraine. So go away and please, and you know, we'll be very polite, friendly to you, but you must go and not. Yeah, there's a song. There's a song called, just don't go away, mad, just go away. I think that's kind of what they're talking about here. And let me be blunt. And I think the American people who include the Republicans would have much more of a stomach for what she's been proposing. If it was competently led, actual objectives were achieved. And you saw some level of return on investment. I mean, come on, we're a capitalist society. We always want to see a return on investment. We do. And there's been no return on investment. Every time they promise something, it's not happened. So people like me have been universally, we've been critical just because it's not a good idea. We shouldn't be poking our eye into Russians. Yeah, Putin's a bad guy, but he's the guy they elect, they love it. Leave it alone. You know, it's not our job to tell the Russian people who to have in charge. And of course, the Neacons love doing that. As you know, I was in a room one time with someone who wanted to pick the replacement for cars eyes, like, shouldn't the Afghan people be picking their replacement for cars? I mean, you know, I was on here with one of their guys talking about this, like, yes, this is that is not an American value. It's not and be people like me is like, no, no, no, no, get out of their nonsense. They have enough nonsense. We don't be involved in their nonsense. But that's what happened here. So if if Alexander, the American people had seen a return, yeah, I think there'd be a lot more support for continued funding. I think I think the gig is up. I think it's like there's no more gas in the tank. Nobody's convinced Joe Biden is one of the worst possible salesmen for the concept. I mean, are you kidding me? The Rumba president? I mean, I don't think he can kind his way to the the resolute desk, let alone actually having to make decisions on how to best sell Tory's nonsense, Tory's nonsense to the American public. I just think it's I think it's just too much. It's a bridge too far for me. Yeah, one very last thing from me, which is this. I mean, how on earth does Victorian Newland was never held elected office? Will the power that she does for so long? I mean, isn't that a sign of how dysfunctional the situation has become in the United States? Each day, dude, I mean, I get into Oh, there's no deep state. There's a deep state. It's the permanent bureaucracy, which has been heavily influenced by and and banned by the lot of the folks who were considered Neacons. Think about it. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Trump had Neacons in there doing stuff. They have established an enclave within the government, the permanent bureaucracy, where they're able to influence things. Look, my friend Joe Dunford, General Dunford Chairman of the Joint Chiefs directed based on President Trump directing it. We need to pull out a Syria. Did we pull out a Syria, Alexander? Did we? No. So who did that? Well, that wasn't Joe Dunford, the chairman, wasn't Donald Trump. Somebody else must have said, ah, we're we're not in the mood to move things out of Syria today. Sorry. So that's what it is. And I I'd like I hope you don't think I'm paranoid, but I'm just telling you there's something else out there that sometimes it takes order. Sometimes it doesn't and often more often than not. That's that's how you get a Tory a Tory a new one, because it has essentially established a process of selecting and enriching those. Hillary Clinton had a lot of folks they put into it. I could go through a number of people, I believe, who are, you know, card-carrying members of the permanent bureaucracy known as the deep state. You kind of see him flash here and there, and I think Tory is, or he's going to go and do some things, you know, based on the fact that she'll retire, but she'll still have huge influence on what's going on. Tony Shaffer, thank you for reading contributions to this program. I hope it helps. I hope it helps. It helps you hugely. Alex, over to you. Tony, you have time for three, four questions. Happy to take it. Great. From Robert, do you see Newlands departure and the fall of Ukraine to be linked? And will the U.S. fall in prestige of its power prerogative along with Frick's accession? So a two-parter. The power and prerogative is long since gone. For the last year, there's been no prestige to speak of. I don't think anybody on the world stage takes anything that Blinken says or Biden says is serious. So I've argued that whatever prestige we had is long since gone. And I think inevitably at this point, you see Z and Putin and the underlying nations coming together very effectively to create this Frick's coalition that's going to be very economically successful, by the way. And I think that's something our leadership here in the United States just don't seem to understand. And I don't know why. I don't think they want to collapse the U.S. currents at this point, but they want it to basically walk back its influence, and they're doing a very good job of it. And the second part of that question, I've gone on record saying that Zelens is going to be gone by the end of this month. Without his protection, I think he's gone. I think they're just figuring out who's going to be the next dupe can come in and high heels and do a great dance number that you can play on YouTube, who's going to be the next leader. So I think that's what's going on. And is it linked? Yeah, I think it's linked. I think they've seen the wording on the wall. I think they have intelligence indicating that what I'm saying and what we're talking about is true, that it's about to happen. Do you think Rushman prefers Zelensky where he is? That's a great question. I've given no thought to that. Alex, I've given no thought to that. I don't even know. The honest answer is, I think Putin would welcome anybody who continues to make the same mistakes that they're making to benefit the militarily is the way I look at it. Right. From Ronald, will Trump, if he's elected, will Trump appoint foreign policy people different from Pompeo and Bolton or will he appoint the same old, old flattering hawks? Again, I'm on the record going against Bolton. I did an editorial right after he left the White House and I wasn't for his appointment and I wasn't advisor back then. So just for the record, I did not advise the appointment of Bolton. With that said, I'd like to believe so. There's several competing efforts right now to look at who goes in to the next administration if Trump wins. One of them is very public. It's called 2025. The Heritage Foundation is running it. They're pretty open. Chris Miller, former Secretary of Defense is kind of running it. I know the people who are running it. I know that not only they're looking at policies, they're looking at people. I can't really comment any further on that at this point based on kind of, but yes. The idea is, is that you would eliminate, sorry, they're installing a new fiber optic cable in my house right now. So next time I'll even be more perdy because I'll have 4K. It'll be great like 3D. Anyway, so no, my point is that the personality is policy. A little behind the scenes back when Reagan, when sorry, back when Trump came in, there was a fight between the Heritage Foundation and Rance Priebus of who was going in. I was a part of that battle. And Priebus won. Priebus, Neacon slash, you know, the guy in the nougat level. You're talking his campaign manager, right? No. Rance Priebus, who was the R&C guy. Rance Priebus. Yes, yes, yes, yes. If you remember Rance, Rance, look at that time. Yeah, you guys are great analysts. So go back and look at that time. So basically we, my team, you know, the Flynn guys, I was part of the Flynn kind of tribe, it said, no, no, let's have a Reagan guy pick the staff. And we had a whole slate of guys that would have come in. They're Reagan guys, you know, I mean, I'm a Reagan guy. We wanted to bring back a lot of Reagan policies. And they were never accepted. So Rance Priebus was the guy who went about trying to remove any Trump loyalists and put in the people we're talking about, the Deep State folks. And that's what happened. So I'd like to, this is a long answer to the question, but I'd like to believe that Trump has learned his lesson. It's like, yeah, don't go with the slate of guys who are in there. They'll just impeach you again. They'll just do the same thing again. So you want to come in. And the recommendation is basically Alex slice out the first three levels of leadership as best you can. It's going to be hard to do, but you got to do it. You got to basically, you know, you've got this, you know, if you're looking at the government is a layers of skin, you got to take that gang greenest level, you know, layer off. And then you're hopefully going to have skin that'll come back and grow after that. But that's, that's kind of the thinking of what they're talking about right now. But people would be, they would not, you would not see that the Neacons like, like Bolton show up. You may have a few Pompeo Mike, Mike, at least would have, you know, I'd buy his mic. Mike would listen some of the time. We, we all each other a couple of times, but I think he, you know, some of those guys aren't totally without the ability to listen. Right. There was a question in here. I can't find it, but it was about Michael Flynn, since you mentioned Michael Flynn. And the question was, could he have a role if Trump were to be elected in the administration or that's out of the question? I just don't see it. Mike and I are friends. I haven't talked to him for like a year, but full, you know, just I want everybody to understand the context. I don't see it. I think Mike is moved on. I think Mike is doing things right now to benefit the political aspirations of many in the MAGA movement. I'm not a MAGA guy. I buys MAGA, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a regular. And so, but I think that he's found a home where he still feels comfortable. I think he got burned really badly. I think we could all agree that some of that nonsense that pinned on him was criminal, literally. And look, I was one of the first guys to go on the air. I went on the air the 5th of March. You guys can Google it's 5th of March of 2020, 2021 and said, it's all, it's all like, we're going to come to find that this was all made up. And, and I stuck with that. And I'm still friends with the people I was on the air with. One of my friends, Ed Henry, you see him on, on Newsmax and into. I still talks about them yelling in his ear. Imagine this. This isn't American media. This is behind the scenes stuff. So I, I get to call it, you know, Fox News. By the way, I'm banned from Fox News now just saying. I get a call like at 5 AM, 5 30 whenever Trump tweeted, it's like, Hey, we have to have you come on the air to talk about this. This is a Saturday. Come on the air. So they send me a limo. There's a limo outside my house. I get in it during the time from, from my house in Springfield, Virginia, to downtown DC. It's about a 25 30 minute drive. I'm checking my sources. Hey, what's going on? And so my sources tell me, yeah, Trump was, there was a wiretap on Trump. Okay, I got it. So I go into the studio, Alex, get on the air and they ask me this question. The video was after you can check this. It's like, Oh, Trump's claiming that he was, he was wiretapped. What do you say? It's like, yeah, it's true. And they freaked out. They were like yelling at the anchors here. You didn't stop him. You didn't stop him. It was like, no, we're going to come to find that that Obama was aware of it. We're going to come to find that the White House had to approve it, that this is all nonsense. And they break down. And it was like, no. And so I was like the guy out there on the limb like, what? I'm just telling him what I know. And it and it freaked people out. And sure enough, years later, it's like, yeah, it was all a thing. So the truth tellers, no matter who you are, always have a challenge. But I'm just saying that the Mike Flint stuff, a lot of us knew what was going on. It's just that we were told, oh, you know, you're pro-Russian. It's like, no, we're not. I'm not pro-Russian. I'm just telling you that what you're accusing the Russians have done it doing didn't they didn't do it. As a matter of fact, the only people who colluded with the Russians was Hillary Clinton, when she was buying this stuff through Christopher Steele. And that was being fed to him by Russian intelligence officer. Was there collusion? Yeah, that's the collusion right there. So. Great story. I can see how Alexander's like you would not you would not believe some of the not behind the scenes stuff that I've seen. And I just get in trouble for just like, yeah, this is what I see, you know, it's like what's going on. Yeah, we did a video on Matt Taibian. He was covering this exact point that you were making about Obama's involvement. Oh, yeah, he was friending and all that stuff. Yeah. That's why Susan Rice did that memo. It's like, we did everything by the book. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. No, it was all no, Obama knew completely. He had the approach. Let me let me let me explain this. I've had to go to the White House in my operations because they were considered you all talk about a black operations, you know, things we don't talk about. Some of the stuff I did when I was an active operative. That's why I know these people because I had to go get that level approval back when I was in my 20s and 30s. Look, I was in, you know, Jim Woolsey once briefed one of my operations to Bill Clinton. And I was in the other room because it was actually an army operation hidden within CI channel. So I had to be there. So that's why I know these. Jim and I are still friends to this day. Anyway, my point being is that knowing how I had to obtain approval to get things done, which basically went against policy and law, the only person who could sign off on it was the president, just saying. Some of those things are heavily regulated and overseen. So to have done what was done to a presidential candidate at a time of an election, you had to have Obama's personal approval period. No one else was going to sign off on it. And I'm going on a record here. We're going to come to find someday there's an artifact that shows Obama was not only briefed, he had to sign off on something. Nobody, nobody would have done this without that level of approval. Nobody. Can I just step in on this? Just to say, because we, this is before we started our, you know, our channel, but we were already a website there. And you'll find an article there, which Alex and I discussed and which I wrote, in which I actually passed what was supposed to be Obama's denial. And remember, Obama's a lawyer. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we pointed out there, look, in this article, it reads like a denial. It looks like a denial. If you actually analyze it closely, it's not a digital. I'm with you. And Obama did this, does this all the time. And it gives you a headache, reading what he says, and understanding that he's telling you one thing, you think he's telling you one thing, but he's actually telling you something completely different. Is exhausting. It's exhausting. But he said, you know, he didn't actually say I didn't order all my attack. He said, you know, this is under the Obama administration, it was all done in this kind of way. Exactly. It actually tells you nothing. Yeah, I'm telling you, I just knew all things work at that level, having had to get approval at that level myself. So just saying. So, well, all right, let's do a couple more questions. And then we will let you go, Tony, from Elena, the CIA didn't understand Russia so well with the ascension with the ascension of Putin after Yeltsin. What do you think happened there? Why did the CIA or the powers that be not see Putin coming? I think they did. I mean, I saw him coming. We talked about this in DoD. Some of the people I advised saw this. So it's one of those things that you have to go back and actually look at the verbiage during the rise of Putin. Some of us saw this. I've said several times he wants to put the band back together. And I'm not saying there's a good or bad thing. It's just he recognized the prestige of the Soviet Union. He has said this. So how would then are we surprised when he starts working to put together a coalition of former Soviet countries that essentially becomes a defacto Soviet Union? So I it's like he's not as this has been a point of policy that he's never deviated from. So except the man of this word, we're the issue. One of the notable features of the way we look at this is that we have people who understand the facts will will ignore them. And I cite for you, Bill Robert Gates. Robert Gates at the time. Remember, let's go back way back machine to the Reagan years. Reagan did a great job, I think, based on everything I watched of of pushing the Soviet Union to the brink of collapse. But yes, we did all the nonsense in Afghanistan. And I know the guys were involved in that. That was a huge chess sucking wound for the Russians, all the stuff going on there. SDI, I've heard great stories of SDI of how Gorbachev was so focused, they believed how likes that we could come up with a bunch of Star Trek-like satellites, and he's going to shoot down, shoot down their missile. I didn't believe it. It was literally 50 years away, but we sold it and they believed it. So that economic expense that we set under Russians to say, yeah, we're not worried. All these things work together. It's kind of pushed it. And so when it came time, when all these things after Reagan had left under Bush, things were the momentum of the effort to essentially outspend or create economic value within the Soviet Union, when that came, Gates didn't see it. All the stuff was going on. All these buttons were pushed by the Reagan folks. Bush 41 comes in and Gates is the director of CIA. I think he says, oh, it's never going to happen. And sure enough, right when Gates, I think within a month of Gates saying, we don't see the Soviet Union falling for decades, it falls. How did you miss that? Well, you missed it because you didn't want to see it. That's why. So I think you have a same set of kind of blinders on like, yeah, I see the facts, but I don't agree with what they tell me. And that's why you need to have people in the system who are steely eyed and willing to just basically say, you know, sorry, Mr. President, I know you want X, but why is the real answer? And I think that often they go with X because, you know, you don't want to upset your boss with the bad news. Gotcha. Okay, one more, one more from getter done 2024. Is it possible that the US government is sending people into the US from South America on planes? And if so, without betting or passports, why and if so, can it be stopped? And I think this is in reference to the Daily Mail article, which came out. And Elon Musk tweeted out that exact article, yeah. So the answer is yes. And this is how it's being done. You have Soros funded nonprofits, non-governmental organizations who are set up in Latin America, they do two things. They organize the convoys, these groups or in these nations acting above and outside the law to set up kind of these waves of migrants coming north. And I think they've discovered that, yeah, we can just do an end round as well by using airplanes. You know, we cut out the coyotes and you just bring them in and you put them into urban areas. And you know, we live in a big country here. You guys have been here. It's a big place. And it's hard, you know, once you get a plane on the ground, you just release people out, they can be out there. And you have other NGOs, non-governmental organizations funded by Soros. By the way, it's not just Soros, Soros organizations get into a country. They figure out the process for getting a non, for getting setting up nonprofits that then live off the government dying. Much of the Soros efforts are hidden here as 501(c)(3)s. I run a couple of 501(c)(1)s, whether it's on trying. We don't get funding for them. We do our best. But you know, they find a way to get government grants then and pick up and do these things. So I think that's how it's being done. Can it be stopped? No, I think Trump comes in. They look at this. They figure out who's involved. Yeah, it'll be stopped. I know for a fact that Trump folks would never support this or continue the policy if it's going on. Fantastic. Tony Schafer, thank you very much for joining us. I have got your Twitter link in the description box down below. I also have a link to Project Sentinel. Would you like to do a couple of words about Project Sentinel? Basically, all the stuff we've talked about today is what we stand for. I mean, I don't believe George Washington, the founding father, our first president, had it right. Let's stay out of foreign entanglements. We've got enough issues here. And I think if we lead by example and create the conditions for prosperity of all Americans, that's the best thing to do is people, you know, I don't believe, do I believe in a strong defense? Absolutely, I'm a Reagan guy. And I don't believe, like Reagan and others, it's like, we don't want to use that unless we absolutely have to. Trump got it. Trump did his best. I was there in the room with life. I said a couple of times, I was in the Pentagon with senior leaders and never saw that Korea new ones show up or talks about strategy. A lot of us feel the same way. So Project Sentinel proposes and pushes the idea of constitutional and founding fathers philosophy of national security. That's what we do. And it's derived out of my old boss. We're shutting down the London Center for Policy Research, named after Dr. Herb London, who was a Manhattan, he was in the Akan, but he saw the light came over, abandoned the effort, became a productive conservative. And so that's what we do. And then on Twitter, you know, Alexander, and Alex, I, you know, I follow you guys, I do my best, you know, I put up the theory, and I didn't say this in the year, because I don't want to get in trouble, but my theory that Victoria Newland is actually leaving, because there's a remake of Apocalypse Now, and I think she's going to play Colonel Kurtz. I think that's what's going to happen. It's on my Twitter. So I didn't want to bring it up, but you know, you forced me into it. So I always say if I was the cast, Victoria Newland, it would be Cathy Bates. I always say that in my programs, that would be who would be if I was the casting. And I, Cathy Bates, is a fantastic guy. Well, I hope I didn't get you in too much trouble with my irreverent comments today. So, you know, it was a fantastic show. I have your links in the description box. I will also add them as a pinned comment as well. Tony Schafer, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Alex. Thank you very much. Thanks. Take care. Thank you. All right. Wow. Great show. Great show, Alexander. Let's answer some of the questions. Let's see here. We still have a few more questions that we can go through, and then we will wrap it up. Elena asks, aren't the Taurus missiles breaking the pot stem or the 6+2 agreement? Right. I'm not sure what agreement they're breaking, but I do know, and I think it might have been again one of those informal agreements that were made during the Cold, at the end of the Cold War, you know, one of the great criticisms of Gorbachev is that he was getting all kinds of assurances and promises and never actually had them set down properly, formally in writing, not that it should make any difference. I mean, if promise is made, you know, you keep it. I mean, that seems to be basic, but I can definitely say the promises were made to the Russians at the end of the Cold War. If Germany unifies, there will be no, there is no possibility of a German attack on Russia ever happening again. And we now have German generals talking quite openly and complacently over open lines about Germany participating in the direct military attack on Russia. It is a astonishing. Yeah. Brakcherd, thank you for that. Super sticker, and Brakcherd also says the European Puppets need to be replaced with leaders. Very true. Very true. From Eric, what do you think the Russians said to the German ambassador when he was summoned to the Kremlin recently? They will have undoubtedly reminded him of what we discussed, what we discussed just now in response to that question. The Germany has previously given absolute concrete promises that Germany will never attack Russia again. And this promise is now being openly violated. And I am sure that the Russians will also have told the German ambassador, Germany involving itself in this kind of thing is an act of wool. And Russia reserves the right in that case to retaliate reciprocally. Now, as to the last, that might sound extreme. But Putin effectively already said that in his presidential address last week. Well, yes, thank you for that. Super sticker, right? This says Zelensky led a Russia intelligence missiles strike. It's true. There's all over the place. I don't, you know, I should say whereas it's true. I says it's been reported widely. It's not absolutely confirmed, but I'm sure it's correct. What apparently happened was this. Zelensky went to Odessa. He met with Prime Minister, Greek Prime Minister Mitzotath is there. That's another story. One of the reasons he went to Odessa was that he wanted to give decorations to the special forces people who are operating these water drones that have just sunk this Russian warship of Crimea. And of course, he went to the secret base where these people have trained and where they operate from. And the Russians were tracking his movements. And that way they found out where this base was. And then he left and they struck the base. And it was the Russian defense ministry has actually confirmed on its telegram channel, the fact of this missile strike, not only on their website, but on the telegram channel, they've confirmed it. And there's all kinds of reports, a lot of important people were killed. And the stories, which I obviously can't confirm, you know, airspace over Romania has been closed and people have been evacuated and taken to the West and all that kind of thing. If this, Zelensky's role is confirmed, then there will be great anger, especially in Western capitals, that he acted in this way. And Jeppe dies the secrecy of this project. Wow. I didn't know that. Zelensky visited that location. I did my video this morning, and I was going through the Greek media, because Mitsotakis was there. And I confirmed that the Russians, or it seemed like the Russians did hit this, this naval drone fitting operation, whatever was going on there. That was confirmed. And that it was confirmed that Zelensky had the meeting with Mitsotakis in around the same area. Didn't know that Zelensky had gone to that. Yes. Well, I don't know. We don't know yet, but I didn't hear that. But it is all over the place. I mean, there are lots of reports about this. That would explain why he was, yeah, why his statements were very, very angry. So let's give him a very very panicky and very angry. Okay, that makes sense. So Saint Mac says, "The DC bubble terrifies me. Sorry world. We are trying to get them out." Paul McDonald, thank you for that. Super chat. Robert, welcome to the Drant community. New two says, "Don't like Biden or Trump. The US will eventually be forced to better as it slides downwards." Cheers, guys. For that, Ted says, "He's right to neo-cons are Trotskyites." Elsa says, "Strange facts." By the way, this is not controversial. If you go back to the '60s and you look at the background of many of the original neo-cons, I mean, it is well established. I mean, it's not, it's not controversial at all, actually. Elsa says, "Strange back." The New York Times reports about 12 CIA bases in Ukraine and sleeper cells inside Russia, but everyone who has been arrested by the Russians was not connected to espionage at all. Do we know that for a fact? I mean, you know, this is the kind of secret world which, you know, Tony Schaffen knows, but I don't. And who's arresting whom and what they're doing, who they are. Maybe the Russians wouldn't want to tell us about it. I mean, you know, this is the kind of world we're talking about. Outsiders, and, you know, we're total outsiders to this. Outsiders like us can't be sure about anything that goes on there. We can try and decipher some of the signals. We can talk to people like Tony Schaffen, who could help us some of the way. But we don't know for a fact that the Russians haven't been catching and arresting people and have all kinds of things haven't been done. If we're talking about the incident, for example, in Crimea, which Badanov was involved in, I remember the incident, actually. I remember the reports about it. I remember the fact that this group of Ukrainian saboteurs and tried to get into Crimea, and there was a huge amount of anger about it from the Russians. And there was this gunfight, and many of them killed. And it turns out now that the Russians had been tipped off about it in advance. At least that's what we learned from the New York Times. So there's all kinds of things about this undercover secret call, which we don't know, and which we'll probably never find out. Filiya, welcome to the Duran community. Summer of 1970 says, "What's not in disarray in the U.S. Free Assange." That Toby Clear says, "Free PDF of the world teacher for all humanity by Benjamin Cream." He's a-k-a-the-mom. Not a religious figure, but books easy to find. Hashtag geopolitics. Hashtag sanity. Thank you for that. Michael, thank you for that super sticker. Trevor says, "Everybody's got a plan until we stab them in the back." Vicky Newland. So she's somebody who, you know, according to Tony Blinken, she watches your back. Well, she does. She watches your back so that she knows exactly where to put the mic. Yeah, Lana, thank you for that super sticker, Cactus Ray. Thank you for that super sticker. Robert says, "Newland's abortion on the U.S. taxpayer." Question mark. Question mark. Thank you for that. Robert, I am Valentina says, "Newland was okay with 500 dead Iraqi children in exchange for Saddam." Elza says, "Toria has your back. Ask a solutiony." Russell Hall says, "Is Putin a bad guy or is that just the narrative?" He is the president of Russia. He's a tough, clever man. He can be pretty ruthless when he has to be, as any world leader does, by the way. You know, let's not be naive about this. But I guess Russians who are the people who are the best to judge him do not think he is a bad man. As far as they're concerned, he's a good man who's done good for Russia. Wade says, "My family is from Slovakia and finds a slaughter of four white Slavic Christian soldiers unconscious." Absolutely. I think that so do all of us. Dan Walden says, "Keep up the good work. Thank you guys." Thank you for that. Dan and Sir Rodney Epping says, "My past due payment for your excellent work." Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. One sec, Alexander. I lost my place, but here we are. Ladda Moreau says, "Putin is not a bad guy. Again, Western propaganda, this, prob, propagandistic belief got said in passing by the guest." Oh, absolutely. Can I just say something about Putin? I mean, you must make a distinction between the cartoon character that you read about every day in the media in the West and the actual person. They are so completely different from each other that it's difficult to bind any overlap between the image, the Western image, crafted image of him and the reality. Of course, you've got a glimpse of the real person in the interview he recently did with Tucker Carlson. You've got an even more extended sense of him from the film, the documentary that Oliver Stone did some years back. Jerry, thank you for that. Super sticker. Rafael says, "Put in said when the SMO started, Russia will not be intimidated. Colonel, I was in US Marine. Can you tell us three military meanings of this please?" Well, I can't answer that question, not having myself been in the military. I think it's fairly straightforward. I think that when Putin says that Russia won't be intimidated, he means what he says. And I think that's exactly right. I mean, this is the kind of policy that he's been following, and we can see it clearly in the way that he's conducted the special military operation. Rafael says, "Best show on the net." Thank you, Rafael, for that. Jeffrey, thank you for that. Super sticker. Robert, welcome to the Durant community. Susan, welcome to the Durant community. Alexander says, "What is it going to take for the neocons to lose influence?" That is an excellent question. I don't know. I mean, they survived every disaster that they've authored up to now. I think there would have to be a major change in the political system in the United States. I mean, they're so embedded in it now that you'd have to do pretty much what Tony Shaffer was saying. You'd have to really go very deep in order to get the gangrene out. Jerry, welcome to the Durant community. Reza says, "Thank you, gentlemen." Jerry asks, "The New York Times exposes CIA bases in Ukraine. Bases get bombed, agents get killed, no prosecution, but the U.S. wants to extradite Assange." Nina, thank you for that. Super sticker. Rafael says, "So are we not going to talk about the amount of Ukraine soldiers who are turning themselves in and turn right back to fight for Russia?" We have talked about it. Each of us, Alex and I, have talked about it in our various programs. There is apparently a growing flow of people who are deserting and who are going over to the other side. I should say, by the way, that I'm very uncomfortable about the fact that some of these people are apparently joining up with the Russian army to fight against their own former army. Given that Russia has no shortage of men, I personally would, I don't think that they should be doing that. That's just my view. Elza says, "Did Putin change his mind about hitting Zelensky?" He's never intended to hit Zelensky, right at the very start of the war. LevTali Bennett, the Israeli Prime Minister, came to him and said, "Look, Zelensky asks me, are you out to get him?" Putin said, "No, absolutely. I'll give you a categorical assurance that we are not looking to take out Zelensky." This was said, right at the beginning of the conflict in early March 2022. The Russians have reduced video footage, apparently. I haven't seen it. One of their drones was sort of following him around and showing Zelensky. They're making absolutely clear, if they wanted to take out Zelensky, it would be very easy for them to do, but they're not doing it. If you want to stay safe from the Russian military, then just stand next to Zelensky for now. I mean, that's how you can be safe from the Russian military. Now, everything else, I don't know. I can't speak for other actors in Ukraine, but as far as the Russian military is concerned, just stand next to Zelensky and they're not going to touch you, because the guy's the gift that keeps on giving, Elza, for the Russian military. He's completely incompetent. Yes. And that's exactly what they want. All right. I think that is everything. Let me just do one final check. Final thoughts, Alexander? Well, it's a fantastic program. We've learned a great deal about how there's been a degeneration, which clearly has been. I know people sometimes push back on this, but whatever you may think about, you know, the way American policy was conducted during the Cold War, they did this with a very high degree of efficiency in those days. And that's gone. That's gone completely. The people who are in charge now don't know what they're doing. And I would simply say this, they've landed us with the president who, well, we'll see how he gets through the state of the union addressed today. If you lose, if you lose his cue cards, for example, what happens? Yeah. JK Frogs has great to talk. Thank you for that, JK Frog. All right. Thank you, everyone, that watched us on Odyssey, Rockfin Rumble, YouTube, and the duran.locals.com. And one more question from Tabernac. In war trivial causes, produced momentous events, Mullen was essentially Paris of Troy, the embodiment of a fetish gone unchecked, crucified the empire. I have to say that the physical difference between Helen of Troy and Victoria Newland is, shall we say, very, very great. But I get the gist of what you mean. Elsa also says, Alex Allegsky keeps on giving, so does Biden. Yeah. Oh, from the Russian point of view, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you to our moderators as well. Valias Tish M Peter, reckless abandoned. And who else? Tish M Peter. I think that is. Yeah. Those are our moderators. Thank you to our moderators for everything that you do. Have a great rest of day and enjoy the state of the union. Should be interesting. All right. Take care, everybody. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]