The Duran Podcast
Biden White House, Failing On All Fronts w/ David Sacks (Live)
We are live with Alexander Mercuris and we are very honored to have a man that probably doesn't need any introductions, but I will introduce Mr. David Sacks with Craft Ventures and at least for this show, one of the best political and geopolitical analysts out there. If you are not following David on Twitter, Twitter X, definitely follow David on Twitter X because he puts out some of the best commentary on politics, on geopolitics. And David, thank you very, very much for joining us on the direct today. Well, thanks for having me. That's high price from you guys. I think I learned a lot from watching your pod. So, you know, you guys are the kind of the top of the influencer food chain and then I'm kind of lower down and just try to help get the message up. Your stop is against it. I was going to say the same and can I just say also that I strongly urge anybody who doesn't follow David on X to just do so because not only will you learn an awful lot from going there, but I mean, the way that David puts things very clearly and very powerfully and incredibly impressive. I mean, speaking as somebody who's married an academic and English literature academic who's always a critic for how things are expressed. I mean, she is a great admirer of the sort of forcefulness and clarity with which these things are said and I learned huge amounts from them. Well, thank you. It's very kind. Fantastic. So let's get started. Let me just say a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on rock bin on Odyssey on rumble on YouTube and on the duran.locals.com and a big shout out to our great amazing moderators. And I have David's information in the description box down below and I will add it as a pinned comment as well when the show is over, Alexander, David, let's talk politics. Let's talk geopolitics. Maybe we start things off with Biden maybe by economics. I don't know. What do you think? Now, let's actually definitely start with Biden by economics because it may sound extraordinary to say this, in my opinion, he is at the centre of everything. He is the president of the United States. Whatever people say, the United States still makes the weather. What happens in the United States determines whatever happens everywhere else and the personality, the policies of the president of the United States and his administration is crucial. And what I also, again, say is that the days when the United States could absorb an administration that wasn't particularly strong are gone, the United States more than ever now needs a strong purposeful president in charge, not only in my opinion is that not the situation we have with the president, but I think, in fact, all sorts of things are being done at many different levels, economics, legal, political, and, of course, foreign policy and security policy, which we're going to spend a lot of time on, by the administration, which are affecting the whole world, but also, and especially the United States in an extremely negative way. And who better to discuss this all with than David Sachs? So, David, first of all, your thoughts about the administration and about its role. I mean, am I overstating things about how important it is, both for the United States and for the world? I know a lot of people say it doesn't matter who is in charge, doesn't matter what kind of administration you have, things always turn out much the same. I don't agree, I think what the administration is matters. What are your thoughts about this? I think it matters usually, and I think this president has managed to be much more consequential than I think people thought, and not in a good way. You really get the feeling now of an administration that has lost control of events, things seem to be careening out of control in, I count about five different areas, first, Ukraine. Obviously, Ukraine is being defeated on the battlefield, it's being destroyed. Now you have this terrorist attack on Crocus, the Russians are pointing the finger at not just the Ukrainians, but the CIA and MI6 behind them. If those allegations can be proven, it costs us a bad life for World War III. So this whole thing just seems to be spiraling out of control. You already have European leaders explicitly calling for World War III for inserting troops in Ukraine. So, I think the administration had this idea at the beginning that they could fine-tune this outcome, that they could turn up the heat on Russia, that they could weaken it, they could crush its economy, and again, it was just this hubris that they could engineer the outcome they wanted in a fine-tune way, and I think what we're seeing is the war is escalating and it continues to escalate, and it's very dangerous. There's a lot more we can say about that. I think the second area that just feels out of control is Gaza. The administration's policy on this just seems incoherent. On the one hand, they say that the Israelis are bombing Gaza indiscriminately, they're saying the Israelis have gone too far, they're saying the Israelis shouldn't go into Rafa, and yet they're providing the bombs for Israel to do all those things. Now, whether you are pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian in this conflict, I think that both sides can agree that the administration's actions don't match up with their words, and it's an incoherent policy, and that's why I think that the Biden administration is sort of gradually losing the support of both sides amazingly. The third area, destroying domestic politics, is the border. I mean, the U.S. border is open, it's sort of festering wound, thousands of people are streaming across every day, millions every year. We don't know who they are. They could be a security threat to the U.S., they could be criminal gangs. Already, our cities seem to be overrun, they can't keep up. Even the mayors of Democrat cities like Chicago and New York have warned that they cannot keep up at the social cost, social burden of all these migrants, and yet Biden doesn't do anything about it. He told us for three years that the problem didn't exist. Now he's finally acknowledged it, but he blames it on the guy who tried to build a wall. This is not a credible message. Fourth area is the fiscal situation. We have a $2 trillion deficit. We've got multi-trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and that is priming the pump. It is stimulating the economy. In nominal terms, the economy seems to be doing well, but we still have this persistent inflation problem. No less an economist, a Democrat economist, like Larry Summers, said the inflation problem is actually much worse than people think. It peaked last year at 18%, not 9%, he said, once you include the cost of borrowing. Biden insists as late as budget keeps increasing government spending. There's just no recognition of that problem. I think finally, I guess the fifth one I would put is the whole law fair situation. It just feels completely out of control. It's unprecedented for a president to try and imprison and bankrupt his main opponent in the election. I mean, this is a new low in American politics, we don't see anything like this before. It was Biden himself who instigated this when he, there was a leak to the New York Times that he thought that Merrick Garland was being too meek and indecisive, and he wanted to see Trump prosecuted and after that, you know, the Garland got Jack Smith to invent a holy new crime of fraud against the American people that's never been even charged before. And then the local DAs like Alvin Bragg and Fawney Willis took their cues from Washington and have begun this law fair campaign. And of course, it's not just against Trump, but we've seen now this political retaliation against Elon Musk as well. I think it's motivated by the fact that he's opened up free speech on the X platform. And it was Biden himself from the White House podium and said, this guy needs to be looked into. And sure enough, the agencies of the US government have looked into him. We've got a ridiculous government investigation against Tesla for building a class house supposedly against SpaceX for not hiring enough illegal immigrants. Amazing. I mean, it's just ludicrous. His compensation package was voided despite the fact that no one thought he could achieve those numbers. You get the sense that just retaliation is just part of the bag of tricks that this administration thinks is OK. I mean, I don't think Nixon and his wildest dreams would have thought of pursuing tactics like this against his enemies list. I mean, the most I thought he did was get people audited. So you know, again, this just feels like a fifth area to me that just feels out of control. The overall picture is, again, of an administration that just feels like it's losing its grip on events. And why don't I stop there and we can talk about any of those areas? Well, let's start with the last because the law fair is, I think, extremely disturbing. And of course, it can affect everybody because if you contaminate and disrupt the legal system, then everything becomes increasingly unstable and out of control. I've never known anything like this. I mean, I remember Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon worked within strong American institutions. He could not launch law fair like this against his opponents. The courts would have refused to cooperate with him. He had to resort to creating his own so-called intelligence agency, his own private intelligence agency, basically the plumbers, small group of detectives and ex-cuberant intelligence officers, people of that kind, to do his dirty work for him. And they did it in an utterly clumsy, chaotic, disorganized work. This by contrast uses the entire structure of the American government, the legal side of the American government, to go after your opponents. Now, I come from a country, Greece, where that was common, and I can tell you how incredibly disruptive that is and how that can contaminate everything. I would not have believed it possible in the United States, yet it has happened. And it seems to me exactly as you say, it is getting out of control. The cases against Donald Trump or dubious, the cases against Elon Musk are completely absurd. They are completely absurd. And Elon Musk is not even the president's political opponent. So what is this all for, and why is this even happening, and why don't people come out in the United States and speak out more strongly against it? I think that's a great question. I think the sad reality is that the mainstream media is all in favor of it. And so they defend it. They carry water for it. They are the leading cheerleaders for censorship and weaponization. And so when the media isn't holding the politicians accountable, the politicians are free to go as far as they want to go. And I think that so the media has been a critical enabler of this. I mean, Nixon, by contrast, obviously couldn't get away with anything because he had such a hostile media. But in this case, it's all out in the open. And I mean, you're right. You look at the details of some of these cases, the documents case against Trump, Biden did the same thing. He had the documents in the Corvette or around the Corvette in his garage, Trump is charged with a crime, Biden's it's an accident. Again, you've got the whole January 6 prosecution where the DOJ wrote a memo researching whether Trump could be prosecuted for an incitement and they determined that he couldn't be. The case wouldn't work, but that wasn't good enough for Biden. So they invented the fraud against American people charge. You've got Fawnee, Willis, and Georgia turning a Rico statute, which was created to target organized crime against the Trump campaign, including its lawyers who were acting under attorney-client privilege. I'm forgetting one, Alvin Brack. He's turned a bookkeeping misdemeanor into, was it, 43 felony counts based on a yet to be disclosed legal theory? So you have these prosecutors pushing the limits in a way that's never been seen before. My own view is that prosecutors should never be creative. They should enforce the law. Everyone should know what the law is. You don't want them inventing novel charges after the fact, certainly not to get people. But again, if the media is not going to hold these prosecutors accountable, in fact, if they're going to celebrate them, then this will continue. And I'm sad to say that I think if Biden is elected, you'll see these types of tactics continue to be pursued in a second term against a much greater range of people. I mean, I think Trump and Ilana are the big fish, and if the Biden administration gets away with this, they're going to start going after smaller fish. And that would be chaotic. By the way, I completely agree with your point, as somebody who's worked in the legal system. Absolutely, you should never be creative if you are prosecuting. That is a recipe for total disaster. You should be conservative, very conservative, you should follow precedent and follow the law. That's what you're there for. Let's talk about the fiscal side and the economic policies of the United, of the administration. Now, in Europe, they're widely praised in Britain. People come and tell us, why don't we do the same here? If Biden can, you know, expand the economy in the way that he is, we have this enormous dynamic economy in the United States, whereas our economy stands still. What we need to do is put the break on the fiscal accelerator and all will be wealth. This is Keynesianism. Is it even Keynesianism? I think Keynes would not agree with that, by the way. I think you would look at this and that term, white with law. Well, Keynes said you should stimulate the economy in a recession, not when it's already doing well. That would lead to overheating, actually. Well, that's exactly right. And that's exactly what happened is that's why inflation came. So I think Keynes would have been very much against it. No, by dynamics is a policy of pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into a growing economy. It's an experiment that's never been tried before. I mean, the Keynesians believed, again, that you would use government spending as a stabilizer, that when the economy is doing poorly, government spends maybe on welfare, things like that to help balance things out. When the economy is doing well, you can cut back. Of course, the cutbacks never happened. That's just part of the political process. So government spending ends up being a one-way ratchet. But anyway, that was sort of the traditional Keynesian view. I think what's new about by economics is, again, we had a recovery in the first quarter of 2021 when Biden took office. His first act was to pass that $2 trillion COVID relief bill, the so-called American Rescue Plan, even though COVID was completely winding down. And that was passed along straight party lines. And Larry Summers, again, he warned that this could lead to inflation. Inflation was really low. It was only 2%. He said that this could lead to inflation. And lo and behold, the inflation came. It was 5% that summer. And then it grew to the 9% official number by the next year. And then that caused the Fed to jack up interest rates from 0 to 5.5% in one year in the fastest rate tightening cycle we've ever had. And that's caused a whole bunch of whipsawing effects in the banking system. And it's made people feel a lot worse off because their cost of borrowing has gone up. So if you want to buy a house, you can't do that anymore. If you want to buy a car and have a car payment, that's more expensive. And so on. So I think one of the reasons why the American people don't feel like the economy is that great, even though the unemployment numbers are very low and the GDP growth numbers are still good in the stock markets. And an all-time high is because there's some sense in which this whole thing's been artificially juiced. And it's unsustainable. I mean, we can't continue to run $2 trillion deaths every year in peacetime--I guess that's debatable now--but without us being directly in a war, let's put it that way, without us being in a recession. And we're up to, what, $34, $35 trillion in debt. And our interest expense is now over a trillion a year. Everyone knows this isn't sustainable. And yet, there's no effort made to combat it. In fact, the latest budget would increase spending by 18%. So again, you just have this feeling that things are just careening. Do you feel, as an entrepreneur, that this is distorting the economy, that there's a lot of malinvestment going on? Because that's also my own feeling. Of course, I'm looking at this from a distance. I mean, London. But how does it feel to you, because again, when there's this kind of enormous fiscal acceleration, in my experience, that is what tends to happen. Money flows around. It's not going where it should be going. In fact, it creates all kinds of distortions and imbalances, which actually weaken the economy rather than strengthen it. Yeah, and that's what happened, I think, in 2020 and 2021, especially 2021, we had an asset super bubble, and a lot of money flowed into, let's call it risk assets. So we saw tons of money pouring into Silicon Valley from crossover investors, public hedge funds, non-traditional Silicon Valley investors. Sometimes they're dismissively called tourist investors here, because they tend to come and go, and most of them have now left. And then, of course, there was just a lot of very speculative investment. And that was driven, I think, by ZIRP, the zero interest rate policy, combined with this kind of a air dropping of all the stimulus related to COVID. I think that now that has somewhat subsided, because interest rates are so high. So if you can get a five and a half percent return, risk-free, the hurdle rate on investment really goes up. And the new money that's pouring in now, I think, has slowed down. So the interest rates have combated that. But at a cost, which is just that the ordinary Americans borrowing costs has now gone way up. So, again, we're being whipsawed here from, you know, a interest rate policy, a fiscal policy that was way too loose, then it got very tight. Neither one was ideal, but even better if we just kind of pursued a more normal strategy. But I was just going back to your point about why doesn't Britain try it. I mean, the U.S. has tremendous room to pursue a policy like this because it's the world's reserve currency. And so it can get away with things that other countries can't. And there's a lot of ruin. What was the Adam Smith line? There's a lot of ruin in a nation. There's a lot of ruin in a reserve currency. The U.S. can just keep doing this until we can't. And no one knows where that point is. No one knows where it's going to break. But so I don't think it would work for other countries. And I don't even think it's going to work for the U.S. long term, but no one knows exactly where the breaking point is. No, I think you're muted. I am. Sorry. It does seem to me, as I said, we have a fiscal situation, which exactly, as you said, the government is losing control. You cannot run budgets like this indefinitely, and you cannot allow a situation like the one we have on the border to continue indefinitely. That is an absolute loss of control. One of the functions of governments is to control borders. The government doesn't control the border. What sort of a government is it at the end of the day? I mean, that is one of the key functions of what a government is supposed to be. Yeah, absolutely. I say this as an immigrant. I moved to America with my family when I was five years old. I became a citizen when I was 10. Elon Similar came later, was an immigrant. This has nothing to do with legal immigration. This is basically uncontrolled mass migration being allowed in the United States. We just don't know who these people are. Many of them are destitute. They put a huge burden on our social services, and they pose a national security threat and potentially a crime threat, and virtually every week now, there's some new horror story about an American citizen who has been killed by an illegal immigrant, and I mean, it's anecdotal, but none of these things should be happening, and it is a core government responsibility. You have to wonder why the administration is allowing this. What they claim is they need new legislative authority in order to take action on the problem, and I just don't see how that's credible. I mean, Trump was able to stop this or at least have one-tenth the amount. I mean, I think under Trump, there are about 400,000 encounters of these so-called encounters every year. Now, we're up to close to something like 4 million under Biden, and of course, that's the ones that they know about, those are the people they intercept. So the real number is probably much higher than that. In any event, Trump, through executive orders, was able to take action on this problem. On Biden's first day in office, he repealed all those executive orders. And it's so dysfunctional now that you have to wonder why are they doing this? And there's a lot of people speculate that they're trying to import future voters to the Democratic Party. I think even if that's true, it would be crazy because this could cost them the election. So you would think that if they cared about the election, they would just stop it at least for now, and then maybe they returned to this policy in the second term, but I think they're so locked in on this policy. I think that they came in wanting to undo everything Trump did, no matter whether it was right or wrong. And they repealed all of his executive orders, and I think the reason they can't do anything now is because if they were to reinstate the executive orders need to fix the problem, people would notice that Trump was right. And so I think this creates this lock-in where they have to just, I guess, try and fudge their way through this problem until the election. I should say I too am an immigrant. I'm an immigrant to Britain. I came here when I was seven. And of course, I went through a legal process, all of us support legal immigration. Legal immigration is something completely different, because exactly as you said, by definition, it is not something you control. And I find some of the things that are happening in the United States now, I mean, not only is illegal immigration allowed, but if I'm hearing things correctly, people who are coming into the United States illegally are acquiring positions, which one is surprised that they can possibly be acquiring. They're being recruited into the military, for example, if this is correct and police services. I even heard a story. I don't know whether this is true, that one of them has been appointed to an electoral commission somewhere. I don't know whether this is true, by the way, perhaps you've heard of this. But I mean, these are astonishing things. And it doesn't just erode the difference between legal and illegal immigration, which is already a serious thing, but of course, it also ultimately undervalues the concept of citizenship, which is what legal immigration is supposed to lead to, if you want to immigrate into a country in a lawful way. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. And we know this is a deliberate policy because the migrants are being ushered in. All they have to do is say a secret word, or a magical word, asylum, that the cartels or whoever's ushering them in tells them to. And they're given a ticket to base the appearance court in three years, four years, five years, whatever, and they're just allowed into the country. And then there's buses or even plane flights that will take them all around the country and there's a story in New York about how they're being given debit cards and with preloaded cash amounts on it and phones and all sorts of things. So this is a deliberate policy. It's just, I don't understand how the administration can defend it. It just seems completely infensible to me. Let's go to one of the other topics you mentioned, which is Gaza. You mentioned how things are out of control and how incoherent they are. Well, how much more incoherent can you get than this? You are in the Security Council. You allow a ceasefire resolution to pass. You say that, you know, well, this you're abstaining on it, but you know, you're letting it pass. Then the next day you walk it back, you then pretend that this resolution isn't legally binding, which, by the way, it is. You say that, you know, you're angry with President Prime Minister Netanyahu. You even suggest that you want him to step down. You get one of your senators, Chuck Schumer, to say that he shouldn't step down. Something which, by the way, I'm concerned about, I mean, I don't personally agree with Prime Minister Netanyahu, but I don't think it's America's job to tell him to tell Israel who should be its Prime Minister. That's my own. Perhaps I'm passionate about you. But anyway, you do all of these things, and at the same time, you continue to provide arms to Israel and support Israel in whatever it is that it's doing. Again, it seems very incoherent, and I can say definitely because we are at Iran in contact with people from that region. It is eroding support in the region for the United States, and it is isolating Israel. It is achieving the opposite of whatever policy, whatever the policy, is supposed to be achieving, which presumably is to strengthen the positions of the United States and increase the security of Israel. Or am I getting this wrong in some way? No, I agree with you. I think that Israel's policy has completely backfired. I mean, I basically tweeted that and got ratioed for it as soon as the bombing of Gaza began. Let me preface this by saying that I'm a supporter of Israel in the sense that I believe that Israel is a right to exist, and I want to see it survive and thrive. I feel like I'm a moderate on this question. I think ultimately the right solution here would have been some sort of two-state solution ideally done 20 years ago. But as soon as this bombing began, I said that what Hamas did was an atrocity, was unconscionable Israel's right to defend itself. Obviously it's going to want to take action against Hamas, and yet bombing a civilian population in Gaza that really can't go anywhere is obviously going to backfire horribly. And you see that Israel is losing the support of virtually the entire world. And I think within the US, Israel is really losing the support of young people. I think that there's still, I think there's a huge generation gap on this issue. I just don't see how this is good for Israel long term. I don't see how this is in its interest, as well as the fact that it's creating a humanitarian catastrophe. And I feel sorry for the Palestinian people as well. And I think that Biden could have played a much more constructive role here. You know, I think the Israeli mentality was summed up by their famed General Moshe Diane, who said that Israel must be like a mad dog too dangerous to be touched. That sort of the Israeli mentality is that they're surrounded on all sides by enemies. And so they must essentially overreact in order to create deterrence. I think this is sort of the Israeli mindset. And so I think American presidents understanding this have always played a role in restraining Israel and making sure they didn't go too far. Eisenhower made sure that the Israelis didn't go too far at Suez in 1956. Kissinger and Nixon made sure that the Israelis didn't go too far in 1973. Reagan called up in Akhen Begin in 1982 and told him to stop bombing Lebanon, he was creating Holocaust. So American presidents have sort of understood that the American role here while being a friend to Israel is also to make sure they don't go too far and do something that's not in their own interest, never mind the interests of the United States. And I think Biden just didn't understand that, kind of missed that opportunity, went to Israel early, gave Netanyahu the bear hug and gave him carp launch effectively. And now he's behind the eight ball trying to reign in Netanyahu. And this is just entirely too late. And he needed to figure out what the American strategy was, what the American position was and what American red lines were with respect to Israel's invasion of Gaza at the very beginning. And then as opposed to reacting in the face of the sort of steady cascade of atrocities. I can particularly agree, I mean, I would say that one of the fundamental strategic errors or rather acts of strategic ignorance that the administration made at the beginning was that they didn't understand one very simple fact, which is that Arab governments before 7 October disliked Hamas, they are all already deeply hostile to it. The Saudis don't like them. The other Gulf states don't like them except for Qatar, which has particular reasons to support them, Egypt and Jordan, loathe them. If they worked with the Arab states, perhaps if they'd sought with the Arab states, resolutions against Hamas from the Security Council, the UN Security Council, right at the outset, they would have got them. They would have had action against Hamas leaders under chapter 7. They would have had actions against Hamas's funding. They could have had demands that these people be referred to the International Criminal Court. Lots of things could have been done then. And it could have been done with the support of the Arab countries. They could have accelerated the process of diplomatic recognition for Israel by countries like Saudi Arabia. And this pressure, this is what I believe, cumulatively, could have succeeded. It would ultimately have broken Hamas because Hamas has to function within an Arab world which doesn't like it, but now obviously supports it. If you isolated in that kind of way, it would have broken and Israel's position could have been made much stronger because Arab leaders, Arab countries, were sympathetic to Israel as most of the world was on the 7th of October. All that sympathy has been thrown away. It has been one of the most extraordinary state, failures, statesmanship that I have ever seen and you mentioned various previous US presidents and how much more intelligently they handled this situation. And again, this administration, far from handling this situation at all, as far as I could see, they gave up a gay Netanyahu, a blank check, which is something you should never do. Yeah. I mean, so I agree completely and I heard you make this case at the very beginning in the wake of October 7th about the diplomatic course that Israel could have pursued. They could have restored security. I mean, they could have reinstated or fixed the wall around Gaza. They could have stopped the tunnels coming out of Gaza and then pursued this diplomatic strategy. I think it would have taken incredible restraint and forbearance on the part of the Israeli public and politicians. Maybe that level of restraint was unrealistic, but I agree with you that it would have been better for them because what is the end result of the current strategy? It's a war with no end in sight. It looks like a quagmire, the Palestinian population has been completely radicalized. I don't see how this is going to create fewer terrorists. And then, of course, the whole Middle East now, not to mention, the world has really turned against Israel. And I think this is going to ensure support for Hamas for years and years to come. So it just feels like this policy is backfired. And I think the Israeli point of view on this is what we're just going to destroy Hamas. But how? I mean, there was an article just in the Washington Post this morning where as they're bombing Rafa, Hamas pop back up in the north. So they're playing whack-a-mole now. How are they actually going to destroy all of Hamas? I mean, they completely blend in with the population. So unless you're willing to destroy the kill the entire civilian population, I don't think Israel would -- hopefully, we're not talking about that. So although I think a lot of people do believe that, you know, there is a genocide going on. But in any event, the point is just that they're pursuing this objective that seems militarily unobtainable. And in the process, they're creating a much worse situation. So I mean, look, I think this is mostly an Israeli problem. But the problem is that, you know, as I've heard Mayor Shimer say on your program, we're joined at the hip and America is. And so it becomes our problem as well. And yeah, at this point, I don't know what the way out of it is. I agree. I don't know what the way out of it is now. I think we have to work through it and hope for the best. Well, hope for the best on that even bigger crisis. I think it was in the Washington Post that they were now admitting that a debacle on, you know, well, actually much worse than Afghanistan is now looming. A war in Ukraine, which has gone horribly wrong at almost every level. And one of the things, again, that I don't understand about that war, I have been asking various people who were experts on things about the war, about Ukraine, about Russia, about Russian economy, about military affairs. People who've been to Russian factories have some knowledge of how Russia works. They all tell me one and the same thing. None of them have been consulted. None of them have been spoken to. I don't mean the expert community in Washington, the Fiona Hills and the Michael McFools and people like that. I mean, the real ones, the real experts who've actually done work in Russia, who worked on the oil fields and in the factories, who have had contacts with the military, I met an ex-spy who actually went to Ukraine for the British, met lots of people there in the military, actually got befriended by the military, very strange story. But I mean, none of them were consulted and a whole set of decisions were made. And well, where is it all leading? Well, that's, we said many times, don't know a lot about Ukraine, David, maybe you can tell us your views about overall situation in Ukraine. Well, I think my views are similar to yours and I've learned a lot from your podcasts over the past year. By the way, I think I discovered your podcast as the Battle of Bachmut was going on. I think it was about a year ago and it hadn't concluded yet, but I remember very clearly that you guys were describing the situation as a cauldron where the Ukrainians were continuing to pour in more troops and they were getting destroyed and the Russians were very happy with the situation. And then the mainstream media and their think tanks like ISW were describing the situation as a culmination of the Russian attack. The Russian attack was culminating, it was cauldron versus culmination. And I remember thinking that, well, like what these guys are saying is so 180 degree different than everything else I'm hearing that if they end up being right about this, then I'll know that they're legit and they've figured this thing out. And that is exactly what happened. And then of course, we had the counter offensive where you guys reported right from the beginning that the thing was a debacle. We all should, as soon as the tanks ran into minefields and they had no solution for that, we should have known, but it went on for months and months and months and you guys accurately reported it. So in any event, you know, being an investor, I look at track record, you know, like who's track record is good? No one seems to do this. They never asked for McFall, well, did the things he predicted come true? No, he just moves on to the next fantasy or hoax or whatever. In any event, that's how I became acquainted with your shows. And in any event, I've learned a lot. I mean, I think the situation now is that everything that Biden claimed about this war has not only come true, it's come true and reverse. He said that he would crush the Russian economy. The Russian economy is doing fine. It's actually outperforming the G7. It's the European economies that are in recession and it's our allies who've been crushed. He said that, or it was the Secretary of Defense, Austin said that we would weaken the Russian military. In fact, the Russian military has become stronger. They've ramped up their massive industrial production. They're making more of everything, as you've reported, drones, planes, bombs, artillery shells, and their military is much bigger. They've got huge numbers of people volunteering. It's not conscription. The Russian people seem to be behind this war and they're volunteering and then they're getting proper training. They're not sent to the front lines right away. And they're getting battle tested and battle hardened, especially against Western weapons. So the Russian military has only gotten stronger and it's our own American and NATO stockpiles that have been emptied out. So we're the ones who've been weakened by this. Then you've got diplomatic. Biden said that this war would isolate Putin. In fact, Putin and the Russians, the rest of the world doesn't seem to be buying into this. Putin just did a trip to the Middle East where he was greeted like a conquering hero by that, MBZ and MBS and UAE and Saudi Arabia, the Indians, the Brazilians. It's not just quote authoritarian countries that have not accepted our view of the war. It's also democracies like Indian, Brazil, and other countries. So the rest of the world has not necessarily gone along with us on this. And in fact, you mentioned Fiona Hill, despite being a massive Russia hawk, she said that the war was basically backfiring, that it was causing the rest of the world to resist American leadership. She declared Pax Americana was over. So Biden thought that he would strengthen the West. He was constantly talking about unity, resolve, leadership. In fact, even liberal interventionists like Fiona Hill or like Joseph Burrell, they're not talking about the end of Pax Americana. This thing is backfire massively and then, of course, you've got the humanitarian dimension of this. Where Biden said that he would ease the suffering of the Ukrainian people through this policy. Instead, it looks like the country is facing demographic collapse with all the people who have left, you know, over 10 million, all the women and children, the men who can afford to bribe their way out of the country have left, and of course, you know, at least half a million casualties. And then, you know, you see all these videos of people being rounded up off the streets at gunpoint in order to be conscripted. I mean, they've run out of volunteers. They don't want to fight anymore, at least the majority of people don't. And this is what American appropriations will be funding is if we appropriate another 60 billion or 20 billion or whatever, it's going to be used to round up hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians who are hiding in their homes who do not want to fight, who have bribed their way out of the country if they didn't, if they had money, but they're too poor to do so. And these people will be rounded up at gunpoint to fight a doomed war. I think this is one of the worst things the United States has ever done. Why doesn't the administration change policy? This is failing disastrously, I think even they understand it at some level, people in Europe do. I mean, you know, this is, you know, the art of statesmanship is, you know, if you see something going wrong and catastrophically wrong like this is, well, then you change your policy. Perhaps you contact the other side, you come to some kind of an agreement, Putin is the kind of man who in the past has shown a certain willingness to engage in diplomacy. He said, I mean, he's very critical of himself now, it's going to make it very difficult. But anyway, that's his track record. He always still says he's up for negotiations, despite all of that. Why did you do it? Why did they try? Because they control the narrative. There's no reason for them to admit that they've got egg all over their face. I mean, this administration, they not only have egg on their face, I mean, they basically went to the, the, a fay line, you know, with the trays of scrambled eggs and stuck their head all the way in it. They've got, I mean, it is, it's a really extreme case, but, but they don't have to admit it. Because again, they control the narrative. And so who says that Ukraine is losing the war? I mean, they've maintained that they were winning. They would evict the Russians in this counter offensive. Oh, the counter offensive didn't work. Well, it's a stalemate. Don't worry. They're not losing. Oh wait, it's not a stalemate. They're losing territory. The strategy is hold and build. I mean, there's always some new answer. And I mean, the reality is that as with any foreign policy issue, the American people, you know, it's, it's not first and foremost on, on their minds if Americans are not fighting. And so the administration just has wide latitude to pursue the policy that they want. I think people are, at least in the Republican party have woken up to the, the risk of this war and the cost of it. And I think the vast majority of Republicans have no interest in funding another 60 billion. But it's become a highly partisan issue now. And I think Democrats are even more invested in it if possible because it's an election year issue. And of course, they're the establishment GOP, which is filled with war hawks is willing to continue funding it. And the mainstream media will spend the best in error about it. And so there's no reason really. There's no price for the administration in, in, that they're paying right now that they need to change course and acknowledge the failure. So they're going to keep going with the policy until they can, until events force them not to, until they can't continue with it. And so I think that this policy will continue until Ukraine collapses, basically. One last comment, and then I'm done, which is this briefly, that it all ties in together, because you've explained, you, you mentioned at the beginning how the administration is able to control the map and the narrative, the media basically covers for it, whatever they do, be it the fiscal policy, the, the collapse of the situation in the border, all of those things. And of course, Ukraine, and of course, the Middle East. The law fair as well, they're able to do all of these things because they're protected, because they are immune from criticism as a, because of them. And I'm going to suggest that's also why they're going after Elon Musk at the end of the day, because he's trying to open up Twitter to X, I should say sorry, not Twitter, X, he's trying to open up X so that they can actually be discussion as, of course, was the, is the American principle, the idea of open debate, where information is properly exchanged, where people are properly informed about what is happening, so that there is an informed citizenry. I think that's the language of the First Amendment or, or, or, or, or the rules, able to make decisions, and of course, if you don't have information, you can't make proper decisions. So by preventing criticism, through applying this sort of media control, they're ensuring that decisions, which they make, which are bad, get perpetuated. That's not so much a question, it's just a. No, I think you're right, it's, it seems like, you know, this is not democracy. I mean, you're right. Democracy requires a well-educated population, but if, if the information that we're getting is somehow tainted, then it undermines the ability of the, of the population to make informed decisions. And I was there at Twitter, you know, now X, when the Twitter files were opened up. And what did we learn? We learned that the FBI had 80 agents reviewing posts on Twitter to be taken down, that they were meeting with the trust and safety team, basically the censorship team at Twitter on a weekly basis, and that the FBI was acting as the, the, the belly button, that was the word of the, the FBI office chief, I think his name was Elvis Chan. It was, the FBI was acting as the belly button, the central conduit for the entire intelligence community. I mean, this was, I think, an unprecedented set of revelations about how the government was interfering in speech in, I mean, an utterly unprecedented way. And yet the, the mainstream media just refused to cover it. They kept calling it a nothing burger. And then when the Republicans managed to do a hearing about it on Capitol Hill, they somehow turned it into a story about, I think, a Twitter spat that Trump had with Chrissy Teigen or something. So you know, we can, you know, it's the whole thing was sort of covered up. But you know, we, we, we learned about this, this interaction. We also learned that the whole Hamilton 68 dashboard, which was used as a basis for thousands of stories over the last several years, claiming that the Russians were influencing our public debate. It was all a total hoax. It was all a total and complete fraud. Have any of those thousands of stories been retracted, not to my knowledge. In any event, you know, I, I agree with you. I think this is the heart of why Elon's become persona non grata is that he opened up extra free speech. And, and we learned through the Twitter files that it wasn't just happening at Twitter that these government agencies were coordinating with all the big tech companies. And so they were in the process of asserting total information control. There was a momentum to this. Remember, it wasn't just about hate speech. I mean, during COVID, they censored true medical opinions like J about Acharya about, about COVID, about where the virus came from, about even the, you know, this facts like the case fatality rate or infection fatality rate about the efficacy of lockdowns, certainly about the efficacy of vaccines. All these topics were prohibited. And there was a momentum to the censorship where it felt like every, every month, a new category of thought and opinion was being walled off and you couldn't express a dissenting opinion. And that ultimately reaffirmed the official narrative. And, and, and I think that, that galloping censorship would have continued. It's in many more categories. I really shudder to think about what would happen with this war in Ukraine. If Elon hadn't bought Twitter, would we even be able to talk about the things that we're talking about today and have them be disseminated? I, I doubt it. So I think that, you know, Elon was sort of, it was definitely the thing they didn't plan on to have this. It was a fluke. I mean, you had this billionaire, the world's richest man decide to pull an intervention because as a America, as an immigrant to America, it became a citizen believes in free speech so much that he was willing to risk and lose tens of billions of dollars to restore free speech in America. I mean, that definitely was not on the regime's bingo card. And that is what has made him, you know, an enemy and, and he's being targeted. And this is why I think that, you know, I, I hope that we have a change in, in administration in November, because I think that this will continue if they're allowed to get away with it. I entirely agree. I should say it also means shows that, you know, Musk is a much fewer American than most of his critics are than his critics are, as, as, as legal immigrants often are, you know, they appreciate the freedoms that we have here. Exactly. David Sachs, this has been a wonderful program for me. I'm going to hand over to Alex, but I have finished. Thank you for your clear and, clear and straightforward answers to my questions. David, we have some questions for you. Okay. Before we get to those questions, if you have time to answer a few questions. Yeah. I'm good. This is fun. We're, I mean, fantastic. Fantastic. We have gotten a lot over the past week is TikTok. Oh, yeah. Talk about the, the legislation for, for TikTok and it's much more than just TikTok. Right. Okay. Well, let me first describe what the bill does because I read it very carefully. And even proponents of the bill have acknowledged that I, that I understand it. So it's, it's not just a TikTok band. Yes, it would target TikTok and bite dance and force bite dance to divest ownership of, of TikTok within six months or the app would be banned completely. So it does that, but in addition to that, it bans or prohibits any of what they call foreign adversary controlled applications, or it's called a FACA for short, from operating in the United States and a FACA, again, a foreign adversary controlled application is not just an app and it's not just a foreign owned company. It can be any American owned website or application that is in the, let's call it content sharing space that has a million monthly active users. So it applies to all of those. So every social network certainly would be covered under this. And when you look under the language, which is buried in the definitions of what it means to be controlled by a foreign adversary, it says that you're subject to the direction or control of, of basically a person than a foreign adversary or a, or a group of investors. Oops. How do we get rid of the, do you guys see the thumb? Oh, there it goes, okay, good. You're subject to the direction of a person in one of these foreign adversary countries. So this is where I, my alarm bills start going off is what, what is subject to the direction of me? Now I know that proponents of the bill say this is well understood legal language, like look at securities laws, precedents, they, they define it, it's actually a narrow definition. I'm like, oh, really? Well, did, did, did Fawnee Willis care about the definition of Rico when she brought her lawsuit? Did Alvin Bragg care about the definition of a misdemeanor and statute of limitations when he brought his 43 felonies, did, I could go on. I mean, did Jack Smith care about hundreds of law years of fraud precedent when he invented his novel crime? No, of course not. You could live in an age of weaponization and any ambiguity or discretion that you create in these laws will absolutely be used by a future creative attorney general, just like the Patriot Act was weaponized against the American people. This will be two. It's pretty obvious, I think, to see where this leads. Would a future attorney general, maybe in a second Biden administration, somebody tougher, someone who Biden likes better than Merrick Garland, maybe Jack Smith, could he say that Elon is subject to the direction of the Chinese Communist Party because he has a factory and Shanghai and therefore they have leverage over him and therefore he must divest ownership of Twitter? Why couldn't they make that case? Why wouldn't it be extremely damaging for him just to be in for the just department just to open that investigation and harass him and vex him with costly litigation, which this bill would now create? And of course they could do this to to others. I mean, Trump owns true social on virtually a daily basis. He is accused of being an agent of Vladimir Putin. That makes him subject to the direction of a foreign adversary. So why can't they force him to divest ownership of true social? And if you won't do that, well, there's a bayonet. I mean, this is what we're talking about here. This will create the powers to do that. So I would say that at a minimum, this legislation needs to remove all the wiggle room around this language. They should not be covering American owned websites and applications. And really, quite frankly, this whole issue should be dealt with in a trade bill, not in some sort of, you know, in terms of a reciprocal trade agreement between the U.S. and China. That would be the way to deal with this. It should not be dealt with in legislation that, again, could target American companies. Right, yeah, telegram, they could go up to telegram. What do you say, David, to the argument that people make who are for this legislation, the few people that are for this legislation who say, well, China blocks our social networks and our apps? Well, yeah, that's a reciprocity argument. So I think that if you want to make trade reciprocal between the U.S. and China, then like I said, let's do it in a trade bill. And we can say, OK, if China won't open its markets to our social networks, we don't need to open our markets to their social networks. And at least then, the blast area, the blast radius of this legislation will be tightly controlled. That would be the way to deal with reciprocity. But look, I think that reciprocity is good, but I don't know that I would do it for its own sake. I mean, I think that America, we have a more open. We have a First Amendment. We have a more open marketplace of ideas here, and China doesn't, and the same China hawks would say that's why we're morally superior to China. So whether you believe that or not, the point is just that we don't have to have reciprocity in every aspect. But if we do, then do it as a trade bill. Great. All right. Let's get to some questions. Joanna says, David, thoughts on the stock market over the next year? Not financial advice, but if you were to have any thoughts on the stock market, what would you say? You know, this is so hard to predict. I mean, I've predicted 10 of the last three recessions. So, you know, I thought we'd already be in a recession by now, and I've been proven wrong. You know, look, I think that right now, the stock market is driven by the performance of companies, which seems to be pretty good right now, and then it's driven by interest rate policy. And right now, I think the market is pricing in three rate cuts this year with 70% probability. So, you know, if the Fed does that, then things will stay on track, at least with respect to rate expectations, and if inflation for some reason is higher and the Fed doesn't feel like it can do that, then there could be an adjustment. So that would be like the one framework to look at it. I don't want to predict which way it's actually going to go. Right. Sparky says, poor border security in the US is still mainly due. Keep wages down, correction, keep labor costs in general, not just wages, your thoughts. I think that is one motivation, and the economic motivation to have cheap labor in the US. So this actually goes back all the way to the Wall Street Journal in the 1980s, I'm going way back here, but under Bob Bartley's fame sort of neo-con editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, it was a kind of neo-con view that you would have open trade, open borders, open movement of labor and capital. And in fact, the Wall Street Journal at one point suggested that we should have a constitutional amendment saying that a border should be open. And I think there was a huge economic motivation to that. I think that it was kind of a view that the world is flat type idea. And I think that what we've discovered over the last few decades is obviously the world doesn't work like that. It's just not that simple. And I actually don't think that's the main rationale for it anymore. I actually think that – I'm not sure there is a – I don't think there is a good policy reason for it, but I think that Democrats at various times have acknowledged that mass migration benefits them. So that seems like a stronger motivation at this point, but I don't know exactly. I think perhaps it's not necessary to get into the motivations of the people who are pursuing this policy. It's just enough to say that the policy doesn't make sense. Yeah. Joe Public says mass migration into Western countries are all part of the UN Agenda 2030 and the NWO in order to dilute national identity. What do you think about that argument? Is dilute national identity? Yeah, I think the indigenous peoples of Europe are up in arms about this unlimited mass migration. It does change the culture of their country. I mean, if you're going to be a democracy, you have to care about the population of your country, because if the majority changes to people with radically different views or values or attitudes, then obviously it has a huge impact on the way the country is governed. So yeah, look, I think this sort of globalist idea of unrestricted immigration and open borders, it just feels anachronistic to me. And the people have spoken, I think, throughout the West, I think this is one of the major reasons why populists are on the rise. Is this policy does not benefit the people currently living in these countries? By the way, this is true, even in the US, if you look at Hispanic voters in the US, there's been a pretty decent movement of Hispanic voters in the Republican Party. They do not favor these open border policies either. So if you're a legal resident of one of these countries, it does not benefit you to have this unrestricted mass migration. And it doesn't really matter what race you are. This is not a racial thing. A lot of questions. Let's do two or three more, two more. Commando Crossfire says Russia has as much STEM graduates as the US despite half the population. If democracy depends on education and inform public, which one is a democracy? Which one is democratic? Sorry, which one is democratic is the question? Well, I think we're kind of mixing up a couple of concepts there, right? So there's no question Russia has an educated population. It's always been good at math, chess, things like that. A lot of engineers, Russia's good at building things. As you guys have talked about on your show, it's not just a gas station with nukes. It's kind of an antiquated view. The Russians have proved that they have a modern economy that's capable of producing a lot of things. Now, I think with respect to the US, where the US really has an advantage, I think, is in startup innovation. The US is very-- I mean, this is my world. And the US is very good at swarming a new technology platform in a completely decentralized way. And I have, for example, with AI, open AI launches this chat GPT product in-- was it November of 2022? And in the last, call it year and a half, there's been an absolute explosion of AI startups. And that's not because there was any central directive to make that happen. It's because the talent, the founders, the VCs who write the checks, all kind of gravitate towards this area. And then they run hundreds or thousands of experiments. And most of them fail, but a few of them pay off in a huge way. And this is-- I think this is the heart of what has made the American economy dynamic. I'm still very bullish about that part of the American economy. Let's call it the micro economy. I've got all these concerns about the macro economy, our unsustainable fiscal picture that deaths it's in the debt. And I just don't know how those two things reconcile each other. I mean, I go back and forth on this about whether I should be optimistic or pessimistic. I'm pessimistic about the macro and optimistic about the micros. So yeah. Interesting. All right. One more. One more. David. I'm from Sparky. David, what do you think of the 1996 telecom act? It only allowed news media consolidation, and not only allowed news media consolidation, it removed logistical barriers between government and telecoms, allowing limitless electronic surveillance. You know, I didn't know that. So that's just not-- sorry, I'm just not deep on that topic. I'm not sure what the answer is. OK. And why can't we have-- from TNT, why can't we have David Sachs as president? You want to add to that or? Well, I wasn't born in the United States, so it's not even a fantasy of mine. But I have no interest in doing politics that way by pot. I mean, I do support candidates who I like, but that's the extent of it. But no, even if I was delusional and narcissistic enough to even entertain that idea, I would not be eligible. So it's just not even something that's a fantasy. So, Sparky says, "All the money the US spends trying to start a war with China could be spent working on the regulation and enforcement of free and fair trade." Yeah, that's a longer conversation. I think it'd be interesting, by the way, if you've got Mayor Shimer and Jeffrey Sachs to debate that topic on your show, because they agree completely on Ukraine, but then they have a difference on China, and I think it's very interesting. Yeah, that would be very interesting. And we were interested in one of the good friends, by the way, despite their disagreements. Seahud says, "Thanks for all the info. It's hard to find truth and sense these days. Cheers, Chaps." Thank you for that. David Sachs, thank you for joining us. We've gone an hour, five minutes. We really appreciate your time. You can find and follow David on Twitter X. I have the link in the description box down below, and it will be added as a pinned comment comment. Well, thanks to you guys for all the work that you do. I know that you work very hard. I mean, you guys put out content every day. I don't think you miss, and so, and, you know, I know you have to do a lot of research before you do those shows, so, you know, you guys, I can tell that you guys work really hard. I really appreciate what you do, and I'm a fan of your podcast, so you know the great work. Thank you very much, David, David, for those words and for coming on our show. Absolutely. Anytime. Thank you very much, David. Take care. Great show. There was, there was a very great show. He's very clear. You know, you can see that he's a busy, why he's a successful businessman because his mind is so clear and very, very direct. Yeah. Yep. We have some questions to answer, but going off of what you said, yeah, I think the reason he's able to analyze the geopolitical, I mean, he said it during the live stream, the reason he's able to correctly analyze the geopolitical is because he takes the approach of analyzing businesses and startups. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, let's just get through whatever questions of comments we have, because we do have some more questions of comments, and we will wrap it up for this evening, maybe it's evening time. So, let's see, part two, thank you for joining the direct community. Death dealer 1341 says, is Poland going to war with Russia on Easter Sunday? No. That they are already sending their troops there, there's reports that one of their generals has just been killed in Czechoslovakia, until they get to go to war. Yeah. Sparky says, "Dina to my Israel," Elza says, "The Biden administration said that the Crocus attack, it was ISIS, period." Isn't that proof enough? It's conclusive proof. What more information do you need? He says, "Has Russia reported you create war crimes to the UN ICC?" No, they're not part of the ICC, they don't want to have anything to do with the ICC. So, which remember is indicting Putin and is coming after other Russians and all of that. None of the Russians are not going to have any dealings with the ICC, not forever, I think. Sir Mugg's game says, "Tokerville, the greatest of America lies in her ability to repair her faults." Can she still repair her faults? Or is that a bridge too far? Well, this is the great question. This is the great unanswered question. I don't know. I used to be optimistic, I'm less optimistic now, but we'll see. Well, Sparky says, "Is Garland Nixon working with Keybridge recovery? He's retired Maryland police, was just a big bay, hovercraft pilot, and his father was a local longshoreman, haven't seen Garland since the collapse." Oh. No, I'm sure Garland's fine. I'm sure he's okay, yes, I think I have seen him actually, just saying. He should be on a show soon as well, by the way. The mental crossfire says Putin said last month that Russia was one step away from cancer vaccines. Now the head of the medical biology agency, Vasili Lazarev, said the main remaining obstacles are regulatory and budgetary. Have you been following the story? Yes. I saw the comment from Putin, I'll just wait and see what comes, because this does seem a bit way out to me, to be honest. Putin has been working very hard and very intensely to build up Russia's pharmaceutical industry. The Soviet pharmaceutical industry completely collapsed, they were importing all their medicines from the west, and he's really wanted to build it up, and apparently they're now covered for about half of the medicines that they have, but I think he's perhaps getting a bit overexcited and is anticipating successful products that we just don't know about yet. And I hope that this is some big mistake, but anyway, we'll see. Nikos says, "Everything that's wrong today, whether it's Marxist wokeness in our culture or global wars, can be summed up in two words, arrogance and narcissism." And Nikos follow up to that super chat, and Nikos says, "The West today doesn't have democracy. Our ancestors and Athens invented. What we have is oligarchy, just like Sparta. They are laughing now, saying, "We won." Well, I think that's probably true, actually, I mean, I think there's a strong point being made there, actually. We do have oligarchy, and that inevitably follows when free debate is restricted, because if you know anything at all about Athenian democracy, its most important principle was that they'd be completely open discussion. Yeah. One second. Alexander. Tish M says, "I'll say it again, Julian is my litmus test, and let's not forget that both parties of the US regime have their boot prints all over him, aside." Indeed. Indeed, absolutely. I mean, I'm sure you all know that there's been a legal decision in his case. We're going to do a program perhaps, I'm sure we are, but I am not happy with this decision. The High Court said that he had arguable grounds for appeal from the earlier decision to extradite him. I think that's absolutely right, but then they give with one hand, and they take away with the other because they're giving the American government, the US government, the Biden administration, in other words, an opportunity to provide assurances. When that happens, alarm bells start ringing loudly with me. Yeah. Johan, thank you for that. Super chat. Sparky says, "For a one word, 'smugner'ance." Interesting. Sparky says, "Build a better world with bricks." Let's see here. The GI 1416 says, "Why do you think the mainstream media got the invasion day narrative at the start of the 'SMO' somewhat right?" I remember thinking it was fake. I thought it was fake, up to pretty much the last moment. I began, as I've said many times, to think that something was really going to turn out horribly wrong at the time of the Munich Security Conference. I still have this view that they got it right because they willed it. They intended it to happen at that time. There was the shelling of Donbass, which many people deny happened, which did happen. I think that you perfectly welded at that point. The Russians would have no real option but to intervene because that is what they always said they would do. Yeah, I would just say GI 1416, "Go to the livestream we did yesterday with Jot's body." He talks about the very point that you made, Alexander. Exactly. He gets into it in detail as well, so just check out that livestream. OMG Puppy says, "Uncontrolled immigration may be a democratic party up," but that doesn't explain why it is also happening in Europe, UN involvement in Central America, et cetera. I think David touched on that as well in his answer. I should say that it is noticed we are not talking about in Europe a tidal wave as big yet as the one in the United States. I mean 4 million people, I believe a year. I have never heard of anything like that. Sir Mugg's game says a plain, closed invasion is enacted because the idea of a family wage puts all of Congress in rage. Sparky says, "Remove Israel's economic and military aid and they'll soon learn to get along with their neighbors or else dissolve into the region." Well, I think that going back to our earlier discussion, I mean, you know, when you could perhaps understand what Moshe Dayan was saying, you know, about Israel needing to be like a man, a rabid dog that you needed to keep away from when it was first established, you know, in the 40s and 50s and 60s. I'm not saying, by the way, that it was the right strategy even then, but there was a kind of logic to it, but now when it's been around for a long time, a decade, it's a well-established state. Do they really need to behave like that? If you behave like that, what you're doing is you're isolating yourself in your own region. I mean, you're not going to make any kind of stable relationships with any body. And I think the sooner they drop that type of strategy, the better it will be for them. MF-71 from Rumbel says, "After the Moscow terrorist attack, we'll Putin delete Newland." Well, I don't think so. I don't think this is his style, actually. I mean, this isn't absolutely not his style. But if they do satisfy themselves that there is a Ukrainian trace, they will go after the people in Ukraine. That I do think, but I don't think he will ever go after someone like Newland or any of the official people in the United States. That isn't at all what Putin does or what the Russians do. MF-71, just remember that when it comes to poisoning, Putin is the world's worst poisoner. Yeah, that's true enough. It's the worst. Let's see here. Sir Mugg's game says, "The treasures of Sierra Russia drove the British, the French, and the Germans to madness and defeat. Now the Americanos have followed suit." Well, it's like the treasure chest at the end of the rainbow. You try and go there, and you find that you never get there, because that's what's going to happen. And it is driving on that. I think this is more the Europeans, actually, than the Americans in truth. I think the Americans, the Neocons, have been playing a geopolitical game. The Europeans have been playing what they think of as a more neocolonial, old-style imperialist game. Yeah. Richard Hall, welcome to the direct community. Huge ass welcome to the direct community. Jeff Beckford, thank you for that super-sticker. Ellen says, "All else aside, when our rulers in D.C. see the tens of thousands of innocent deaths and maimed, they are funding, is there not a bit of human conscience or guilt?" I don't see it. I do get any sense of that at all, to be honest. Yeah, I don't get a sense of guilt at all. Sparky says, "Newland and her anti-ZI minions don't necessarily need to work with the CIA to pull off terror attacks like the recent one. The State Department has their own spooks and affiliates, if need be." I have no doubt that if Newland had wanted to get in touch with some bad sorts of people, she could do so. I think I said that recently in a program that I did, but I've no doubt that they can be done. They could have done it. Whether she did is, of course, another matter. I mean, I don't know. I mean, this would be an extreme wild thing, even from Newland to do, but then who knows? Well, Stapha says, "European's claiming Russia is a war machine and not going to stop on Ukraine." What do you think about this claim? No, I don't think so at all. I think that if you look at Russian history, they'd be saying this ever since the 18th century. I mean, they have. You follow European history. You read what people are saying about the Russians. They're always saying that the Russians are out to conquer the whole of Europe. Napoleon said it. He did. It never happens. I did think the Russians are about that at all. I think what they are overwhelmingly concerned about is their own security. They have many, many things they want to do within their own country. I think they are overwhelmingly focused on that. What they want from us is that we leave them alone, which is something we never seem to understand or want to do. Chris H says, Garland Nixon said in his last podcast with Jodie Brere that he would be traveling for a week. Oh, thank you. Let me have it. Let's see here. Give me one sec. Alexander Valias. Thank you for that. Superstick. And from Sir Mugg's game, Bravo to the Alex's for keeping a lid on their passions while analyzing Gaza, while most ran screaming into traffic, the Duran, the professionals, the body and Doyle of geopolitics, if you remember the TV show. Of course I do. I remember him very, very well from long ago, the professionals. Back in the 1970s, it was indispensable television. Thank you very much for your very kind words. Sir Mugg's game says, Alexander, what about Mabba make America British again? They seem ripe for the plucking. I think that in Britain, we have enough problems. You don't will the United States upon us. Sparky says, bipartisan telecommunications act of 1996 should be repealed. I was a phone company engineer and recognized its major problems back then, but thought I'd be it begun by the time it manifested itself. David should look at the Telecommunications Act to brush up the Telecommunications Act 1996. It's important. Isn't it? I think it is. Yeah. Go on. I was going to say, isn't that the Bill Clinton act? Yes, I think it is. I think it is that act. I think it's the act which, as we know, gave the exemptions to the social media companies and all of those things. I've consolidated the media into six companies. Company is exactly. Yes. I've opened all kinds of things. I think it is an important act, but I'm not going to pretend that I know for sure. I don't want to talk about such an important topic off the top of my head. Sparky says Kamala drove Putin over the edge at the Munich Security Conference leading to the SMO. I've never forgotten that speech that she did then. I mean, it was absolutely wild. I mean, she was absolutely intoxicated with this sort of sense of euphoria that was already there in the room, but she wasn't the only one. I mean, Bearbok was speaking and she was absolutely crazy. And, of course, Zelensky himself made one of the most astonishing speeches I've ever seen. And they were all doing it. Johnson was there, Boris Johnson too. Alexander says, don't let Sparky fund the whole thing. Get out these cards, patriots. These guys, the Alexander's, are doing God's work. Thank you, Alexander, for that. Ricardo says, mad dog strategy isn't such a good idea when one considers what is done to mad dogs. Good point. Sparky says Israel's pumped up way beyond itself with US money. Well, I think that what needs to happen in the Middle East is for the Israelis to take a good hard look at their situation and ask themselves, what is all this money, all this war, all this fighting, all this expansion of settlements, what is actually providing them? What they need to do is to make peace, not seek an elusive victory, which simply ends in more war all the time. Now, Samuel says, what is the current state of relations between Russia and Georgia? Now, it seems to me that Georgia has abandoned the idea of joining NATO. I think it has. I think this is a much better relationship. Of course, there's lots of tensions within Georgia and there are people in Georgia who would like to return to those old policies. But the government seems stable. It seems being successful in seeing off challenges. And I think relations between Russia and Georgia are not close. I believe they still don't have diplomatic relations, but they are nonetheless able to communicate and coexist reasonably well with each other. Sarayel says, "Newland doesn't have to get in touch with bad people. All she needs to do is look in the mirror." That's the case. Thank you, Sarayel. So that Ricardo says, the US can use the Ukraine IS connection to walk away from Project Ukraine, just a suggestion. I was thinking about that as well. They could be a way to pivot. Yeah, they weren't, though. I mean, that's the trouble. We give the opportunity after opportunity to do it. Even if this one were to come forward, they wouldn't do it. Brett Ferguson, thank you for that, Super Chat. Valerie V.V. says, "Is the Russian oligarchy substantial or a leftover belief from the 90s? How to put an influence this? Would love an in-depth video?" I think the key thing to understand is that the Russian oligarchy never ultimately managed to get full control of Russian society. They gained control of a lot of the big industrial groups. But in a country such as that of Russia in the 1990s, there was nothing legitimate about their ownership of all of these assets. So in the end, they were only powerful because of the fact that they had the backing at that time of the Kremlin, of Yeltsin and of the government. When power in the Kremlin changed, their weakness, their underlying weakness, was exposed. And they were rolled back extremely fast, much faster than I think people in the West ever expected or thought they would be. Yeah, Brett says if Ola was right, I think it's ride the tiger time. Alexander, I think that's everything I've got. I've got my question, which is just the final question, and then we'll wrap it up. In my video, I think I made a mistake in my video or I misinterpreted the resolution, the UN Security Council resolution. And you mentioned that it is legally binding. I read when I did my report, I said it's non-binding. I was reading a US, the US comments which state that it's non-binding. It's definitely not enforceable or it won't be enforced unless it goes to a chapter seven. Is that a correct assessment of the UN Security Council resolution legally binding to the majority? Yes, not legally, not binding to the US and difficult, if not impossible to enforce now until it gets to a chapter seven. Yes, there is a spectrum of how security council resolutions can work. So if you go to the text of this resolution, now, if it had called for a immediate ceasefire, that would not have been binding because it's just a request, it calls for, if it had ordered, which you can do, by the way, a immediate ceasefire, that would absolutely be binding. What the word that's used is demands. It decides exactly. It demands, now that I think 99% of lawyers, international lawyers would say is binding, makes it binding. There is a little wriggle room and the Americans are using it. But if you go to the rest of the resolution, there is one particular paragraph that is there, which to my mind makes it conclusive that it is, in fact, intended to be binding. And that is the last paragraph, which is that the Security Council remains seized of the matter. Now, that is a standard clause that the Security Council uses in binding resolutions, because they say that if this, what it means is, if the resolution is not adhered to, the Security Council can return to the subject and make further decisions, which is the enforcement point that you were making. In other words, it can impose sanctions proceed to authorize military action or do all of those things. Of course, this is where the Americans are certain to impose their veto. They will never agree to a Security Council resolution that imposes sanctions on Israel, or I mean, authorizing military action is out of the question. But they will never agree to that kind of resolution by the Security Council, the Chapter 7 resolution. But this is, in my opinion, opening up the way to something like that. So if this resolution is flouted, there will be more resolutions coming down the line, saying that, you know, Israel is a non-compliant, the United States will try to argue that it's not binding, other states will insist that it is. That, as I said, is the prevalent view. And of course, always behind it all, there is the nuclear auction taking it to the general assembly under the United for Peace formula. Okay, so Nigel says, enforcing the, he asks, enforcing the resolution. Would a general, my final question, and then we'll wrap it up. Will the general, if it goes to the general assembly and they vote on it, does that make it enforceable? Right. Like sanctions, etc. Or like a Chapter 7 sanctions, etc. Or like, right, bear in mind, I'm not an expert on this, myself. And I know that there, I know that there's a lot of confusion about the text in this resolution. Right. Right. What I want to say is this, if it goes to the United Nations General Assembly, in general, UN General Assembly resolutions are non-binding. But there is a formula created, by the way, by the United States in the 1950s, to override Soviet vetoes, which is called the United for Peace formula. Now, I think it needs at least a two-thirds majority of states to support this. But if the general assembly decides to adopt this formula, and they have to agree to that, and they pass a uniting for peace resolution, then I understand that they have the same kind of powers that the Security Council does, and that could involve sanctions, or it could involve authorizing military action. As I understand it, when the United States got the United Nations to engage in the Korean War, it's not widely known, but the US forces that were fighting in South Korea during the Korean War were technically the UN forces. That was how they were referred to. That was done through the mechanism of a UNiting for Peace resolution. Okay, Alfred, thank you for joining the direct community. Alexandra, thank you for joining the direct community. Eric Hatchet, thank you. Super chat, Alexandra, we are finished. Thank you to everyone that joined us on this live stream. Thank you to David Sacks for a fantastic show, and thank you to everyone that watched us on Rockefeller Odyssey. Rumble, YouTube, the Durant.logs.com, and of course, our amazing awesome moderators, Valias, Zaraiel, Tish, Tish M, who else? Peter is with us. Did I see reckless abandon as well in the chat? I'm not sure, but thank you to our moderators for everything that you do. Alexander, let's call it an evening. Absolutely, thank you to everybody. Wonderful live stream. Take care. [BLANK_AUDIO]