The Duran Podcast
Elections and the War Machine w/ Daniel McAdams
OK, we are live with Alexandra Berkorus in London. How are you doing, Alexandra? I'm doing very well and very delighted to be with Daniel McAdams at an absolutely key moment in modern history. And I'm going to say U.S. history as well. We're at a crossroads or so it seems to me and there's so much we can talk about with Daniel and it's a great pleasure to have him again on our show. We have the always excellent Daniel McAdams. Daniel, thank you for joining us once again on the Duran. I have your information where people can find you in the description box down below. But any other places that people can follow you, there's Twitter, there's Ron Paul, he did the show Ron Paul in any other places where people can find your work. Before we do the Daily Show on Rumble, you probably have that live at noon Eastern Time, Monday through Thursday and Friday as economics. Awesome. And we've got a lot of news to get to. Today is a big day. So let's jump into the news and before we do that I have to say a quick hello to everyone that's watching us on. Rock Finn, on Odyssey, on Rumble and on YouTube and hello to everyone in the chat on Locals. How's everyone in the Locals community doing? Good to see everyone in Locals and hello to our moderators. I'm Fish M, Zareo and the dog, I think someone's like the dog, I'm going to just jump into a remote because he's barking rather loudly. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. If you want, if you want, go ahead and shut the door. It's up to you, Alex. Okay, so hello to our moderators. Where was I, Fish M, Zareo? I think it's just just you guys and myself. We'll be moderating. All right, Alex, Andrew, Daniel, lots going on in the world, lots going on in the United States. Happy victory day to everyone that is watching us. Happy victory day as well, Alex, Andrew, Daniel, because it's a victory day for all of us all around the world, for all the allies that fought in World War II against the Nazis and Bashism. So, Alexander, Daniel, let's get to it. Absolutely. And, you know, who better to speak with on victory day than actually Daniel? Because we had big celebrations in Moscow. Russians appear to be in a very, very confident mood at the moment. But those who have been following us on the Duran closely over the last couple of days will know that the Russians have been engaged in a very high-stakes poker game, principally with the British and the French, but the Americans are now there in the background. And the latest word is that after all kinds of Russian warnings to the British and the French get to the British especially launching missile strikes against Britain, potentially, if British missiles hit Russia. But anyway, there's now word coming, swirling around, that NATO is going to say in July, they're going to issue a Britain public statement that there are not going to be any NATO or Western boots on the ground in Ukraine. So, that looks like the end of strategic ambiguity, as far as I can see, which is what Macron was talking about. I think that, you know, the Russians have basically maneuvered the West into this position. This is really where we're going. And, and, Daniel, it looks to me like that's because of the election, because I don't think the Biden administration would have wanted to make a statement like this, a written statement like this at the NATO summit, unless there'd been real pressure on them to do so from the Europeans, or at least from some of the Europeans, the Italians first and foremost. But does this reflect opinion in the United States? I get the sense Americans do not want to go to war against Russia and Ukraine. I think that if this story about the US sending troops to Ukraine got out in a big way before the election, Biden would be in very serious electoral trouble, indeed. And is this what's happened? I mean, how has the US has, rather, to be more precise, as the Biden administration, be maneuvered into perhaps agreeing to a statement that they would not otherwise have made because of the general mood and feeling in the United States? Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. You know, I would say that Americans not only are not interested in putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, they're not interested in sending any more money to Ukraine. And the polls have solidly reflected that across party lines for the last several months. The only thing that allowed this 61 billion to be passed was the fact that former President Trump caved at the end of the day and gave Speaker Mike Johnson what he wanted. He, if he had vocally opposed that 61 billion dollars, you would not have seen Republicans in the House fall over themselves, not in the majority, but close to the majority in voting for that 61 billion. So ironically, I would say it's candidate Donald Trump who pulled Joe Biden's chestnuts out of the fire to get this final funding for Ukraine. But I think the mood in the United States is very, very clear. There are very few Americans who are interested in getting more involved in Ukraine. And that doesn't mean we've all of a sudden started embracing peace or a non intervention as foreign policy. I would say there's a chunk of Republicans who are looking over and saying, Oh, China, we have a war coming there. You've got a good chunk of the political class thinking about escalation in the Middle East. So it's not like Yankee is going to go home, but they're tired of this war. It made it's because they're losing. And I just say, I mean, Trump hasn't just got the 61 billion dollars across the, you know, the line. He's also just saved Mike Johnson. So it seems to me because Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed forward her proposal to remove him as speaker. Trump has weighed in and he's weighed in very strongly on Mike Johnson's behalf. So we had a vote. I mean, I've had this astonishing Democrats voting to keep Mike Johnson, the McConnell establishment Republicans voting obviously to keep Mike Johnson. But then most of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives also voting to keep Mike Johnson and presumably doing that because they've been given the lead by Donald Trump. I mean, am I correct in this? Yeah, I mean, I do think it's this is more of a nuanced vote that was taken yesterday than a lot of people understand. And I went to Politico to check it out because they're very providing and I'm going to see their take on it. And it was that a victory for Mike Johnson, he was able to survive this very, very bad showing on the 11 Republicans voted against tabling the motion to vacate the chair. But I really don't see it that way. I think it's more complicated than that. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene has put down a marker that there are 11 Republicans and it may well grow. If Johnson keeps doing what he has been doing to annoy the safe for lack of better word, the conservative wing of the Republican Party, that marker is down. The motion of vacate can be revisited at any point coming up. But also, as you very well point out, Alexander, the other most important takeaway from this is that now speaker Mike Johnson is the speaker of the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. And the House Minority Leader, Hakim Jeffries, pointed it out bluntly. He said, "Well, our party's in the minority in the House, but we're governing like we're the majority." And that is a fact. And so that is hanging over Mike Johnson's head. Trump, I think he knows how to get people on the hook. And I think he knows that Johnson, in a vulnerable position, he reaches out a hand of friendship to him. He's going to be able to call him that shit later if he needs it. I mean, I've never heard of a situation where a Republican speaker is backed by the Democrats. Has this ever happened before? I mean, it seems to me, especially in these times when we're hearing about this enormous divide and partisanship in America, that this is extraordinary. And of course, it does make a lot of questions about how real those divisions and partisanship really are because we're in lots of people talking about the uni party now. And I didn't feel sometimes that what we're just saying is the uni party in action. And Johnson isn't really a Republican speaker anymore. He's a uni party speaker now. It's the welfare warfare state. The both parties love warfare. They both love welfare. They like it a little bit differently. The Republicans tend to like corporate welfare for the rich and the Democrats pretend to like welfare for the poor. Of course, they also like welfare for the rich because that's them as well. But it is extraordinary. I actually read the motion. I read the bill that Marjorie Taylor Greene put out last night and again this morning. And it's a fascinating bill of particulars against Mike Johnson. I think it's absolutely damning because it goes down the line starting starting from when he became speaker and they wasted an entire week going after George Santos, who was a pretty kooky member of Congress. But he was a Republican and he was a reliable Republican vote. And he was pro MAGA. They spent an entire week getting rid of him kicking him out of the house, reducing their majority by one seat. And the guy hasn't even been convicted of a crime at all. It's never happened in history that you would kick someone from your party out of Congress without being convicted of a crime. So this is how they spend their time. And when it comes down to doing a regular order, doing the appropriations bills on time, they couldn't get it done twice, three times, however many times. So if you go down, that was the first thing on Marjorie Taylor Greene's list. And I think it was a good first. But he goes down and talks about the omnibus and the minibuses and how ever at every single turn, Mike Johnson has given the Democrats everything they've wanted. He colluded with Chuck Schumer to give them everything they wanted, abandoned his pledge to focus on the border. So it really is a it's an excellent marker in time of everything that Mike Johnson has done to betray what he claims are the ideals as a conservative Republican. What do you think of Marjorie Taylor Greene? I mean, from my perspective, I don't have very much about her, but she seems to me to have come into her own over the last year or so. And I find it rather impressive. I mean, that's my own, my own date, that is the more or less to her than I see. I think, I mean, there are plenty of things to disagree with her on. I mean, I think she's probably pretty bad on money for Israel and a few other things. And certainly her style is quite crude. She uses crude language. But again, I follow what you're saying. I mean, I admire the fact that she's an attack dog. She stands for something which sets her apart from probably 90% of the members of the US House of Representatives. She stands for something and she's not afraid to put her political future on the line. And even her difficult relationship with Donald Trump, I mean, she's mega-maga, she's super pro-Trump, but she wasn't afraid to cross him when it came to this vote for the $91 billion in foreign military aid. So she's got a lot of guts. She's a pretty wild lady. Let's talk about the welfare state, because that is what is happening. Now, Ron Paul has been making comments about this. Others think like him have been making comments about this. The United States has never fought a war for the last 30 years, which wasn't fought on borrowed money. This is a point that was made, by the way, to Glenn Deeson and myself. We can start a video on the Duran, I think, with Jack Matlock and Batter to Jack Matlock. I can't help but think, by the way, that he probably got that from Ron Paul, just saying. But, you know, I may be wrong. But I mean, the point is, the United States is funding wars when it has this massive debt and deficit problem. And one has had lots of history here. You know, you can go back and look at 16th century Spain, 18th century France. These stories don't end well. And why is it only Ron Paul and Rand Paul and a few others who say this? Well, because they don't want to talk about the reason they're able to do this, which is the Federal Reserve Bank. You know, the Federal Reserve Bank creates money out of thin air. It enables the government to hide spending on the back of the middle and working classes. And that's exactly who pays for these wars. The well-connected classes profit from the wars. I mean, if you look at the details and you gentlemen have covered it very well on the Duran, if you look at the details of this $91 billion that we've just sent overseas, the majority of it goes to the military industrial complex and to various connected think tanks, et cetera, et cetera, indirectly in DC. So all the wars are fought on the backs of the middle and working classes. And they do that by the inflation tax. You know, if they were forced to pay for the wars beforehand, hey, guys, we're going to take, we're going to take up a collection. We've got to defend our democracy in Ukraine, that plucky little democracy where freedom is struggling to break out. We need every family to cop about $50,000 to pay for it. Nobody would vote for it at all, zero. So they can hide it on the backs of the working class by the inflation tax. You know, but we were told yesterday by Joe Biden in a CNN interview when he was asked about inflation and how hard it is for families to buy things at the store, he said, well, Americans have the money to spend. So I guess we're just complaining for no reason. But more seriously, that's how they do what they hide. And that's, I mean, I think that's the, you know, for me at least as an anti war person, I think that's a critical point is to somehow get through, somehow connect with the working and middle classes to let them understand that you're the fall guys on this, your futures being mortgaged for the benefit of the well connected. It's an absolutely corrupt system. Can I just draw a historical parallel, which is one I like to do, because of course I was a historian once upon a time long ago, I, I, one of the countries I started very, very closely was Imperial Spain, 16th century, 17th century Spain. What people don't know is that the Spanish were able to build their empire and expand it and keep endless wars going, because they had this unlimited supply of silver from America, which is like effectively the Fed printing money. They just flooded Spain with silver. And it did exactly the same thing. It created in the end a massive inflation in Spain. It completely destroyed the Spanish middle class. It completely destabilized the Spanish economy, which never didn't recover, didn't start to recover until perhaps the mid 20th century, just saying. I mean, it goes enormous devastation, but it did for a long time enable the Spanish court and the Spanish aristocracy who were in control of this process to wage lots and lots and lots of wars and to expand Spanish powers of they thought they did until eventually the whole thing came crashing and imploding down, which it did very suddenly and very spectacularly. So as I said, this, this has happened before. This isn't the first time. It's unusual this time in that the Fed it seems to me is just creating money out of nothing, which is not something that anybody has ever done on this scale before. But as I said, this is, this is something that has happened previously. And there are huge numbers of academic books about it, just saying. Well, Americans don't do history, right? We can't even remember what happened in 2014, you know, in Ukraine, you know, as who was his name, the famous advisor to President George W. Bush, who said, you know, we reinvent ourselves every day, you know, we create our own realities. And that goes on for a while. But as you as you well put out with Spain, it crashes suddenly, slowly, then suddenly, slowly, then suddenly, yeah, indeed, the Spanish brown went bankrupt, by the way, that is exactly what happened. They went bankrupt slowly, and then suddenly, and as I said, it all collapsed like a, like, like a souffle, very dramatically. And by the way, with rebellions right across Spain, and the king was almost opposed. But anyway, let's, let's turn back to events in the United States. Can this be turned round? Because there are people in the United States who are pushing back. There weren't really people in the political system in Spain who were pushing back. But in the United States, there are, a wrongful gets a lot of attention, people listen to him. But a lot of us who were looking at the situation, they've been very, very disappointed over the last few weeks by Donald Trump, who you've alluded to. We did think maybe he might be a person who might change course here. And yet he seems to have joined the bandwagon. Why has he done that? And is there a chance that if he's elected in November, he'll start listening to other people, people like, well, Ron Paul, and you, and us, and others like us? Well, I think the thing to understand about Donald Trump is that he, he has no, he has no functioning ideology. You know, he, he doesn't, he doesn't base what he does on sort of a set of principles. And that can be good or can be bad. I mean, if he does something good, which is very possible, it'll be more by accident than anything else. So, I mean, with him, there's a chance that something good may happen. And I think a good example is some, a few weeks ago, when he gave the interview to the Israeli newspaper, and he said, you know, Netanyahu really messed up. He did a terrible job. You guys, you're looking bad. The whole world's against you. You got to wrap this thing up and shut it down. And people were astonished. I mean, because he's considered the most pro-Israel candidate in history. And so, so he does something like this, and people scratch their head and say, well, that sounds pretty good. This sounds a little different. But now, of course, this week he's talking about he's furious that Biden reportedly is holding back some weapons shipments from Israel. They need to get everything they need immediately. So it's this inconsistency. There's not a set of operating principles. In a way, he sort of has the, the problem that a lot of politicians have, which is that it's the last person he talked to that sets the agenda. So that can be difficult when you surround yourself with the John Bolton's of the world. Two people in the United States understand that the power of the United States is itself. That is to say a strong economy, a prosperous middle class, prices that people can afford to pay a functioning constitutional system, that sort of thing. Because I get the sense very often that especially in Congress, people think that the power of the United States is its basis, its services basis, its commitments to all sorts of places, its network of alliances. The lesson from countries that have run empire, as Britain being won, is that all that benefits of few people in the home country, but the burden of it is borne by everybody else. And eventually the burden becomes unbearable. I mean, the US used to have the stupidest empire in history because there really isn't, we're not stealing silver from the US. We're not colonizing Africa to our advantage for raw materials. It's basically everywhere we go, it's a money sink. It's an incredible thing. I mean, it certainly does benefit a particular class though. I mean, anyone who goes and looks at the investments, and they're all public, but the investments of every member of US Congress, it's astonishing. They completely beat the S&P, they completely beat the Dow. I mean, it's astonishing. I was just looking at a peak the other day that over the last week or so, Nancy Pelosi has made on her investments a million dollars a day. She's worth a half a billion dollars. That's not bad for a public servant. Why does this not get talked about more in the US? I mean, when we have in Britain political MPs who clearly are doing very well from being MPs, people do talk about it. Maybe not as much as they should, but they do. I mean, it gets talked about in the media. People don't like the fact, for example, the top prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is obviously a member of the billionaire class. It's held against it all the time. But I get in the sense in the US that doesn't seem to matter. It is a winner. What Pelosi does doesn't seem to worry people very much. Does it not occur to people that there is a connection between the fact that somebody like that is making a million dollars a day and is a public servant? Just saying. I mean, there's an incredible superficiality and I think infantelism in American politics. It's here on Team Red or Team Blue. And that's it. No matter what Trump does, if you're on Team Red, it's an amazing thing. The same as if you're on Team Biden. I mean, there is no thought going to it. And I forget which member it was. I had it in my mind a second ago, but just before the TikTok ban vote a couple of days before this senator or a member, I forget the name. It'll come to me. I bought a ton of meta stock. Just before he voted to ban TikTok, knowing that the meta stock would increase significantly, a meta being Facebook and Instagram and all these sorts of things. So there's no rule against insider trading for members of Congress. And it is astonishing. Why aren't Americans up in arms? Why are there no populist politicians running on such a thing? You think it would be a real winner with the American middle class. Afro-populism was an American phenomenon. It was considered to be a good thing at one time. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt bragged about the fact that he was a populist. I mean, it seems suddenly to become a bad word in the United States. Well, Trump does it. He did it well in 2016, though. I mean, he went to the Rust Belt. He has a way of connecting with working class people. He speaks their language across racial lines, which is interesting. I mean, I think he did best among blacks in Hispanics than a Republican has in decades, maybe forever, and probably will do better this time. So he's very good at it, but you have to wonder whether he really takes it to heart. I mean, we've had politicians in the United States who can be volatile and who can take strange positions. But nonetheless, do you think that if Trump wins, which is something that I get the sense the establishment absolutely doesn't want, even despite all his recent maneuvers, that that will still provide an opening and that it will expand the debate level. So will we have, again, more hysteria and anger and panic and attempts to close them down once more? I think there will be that. And I think he'll be, again, powerless to stop it because I don't think he understands what he can do. He doesn't understand. And maybe there is no power in the office. Maybe the so-called deep state has the power, the machinations in the 2016 to 2020 era were legendary. I mean, they were behind all of the lies that he was colluding with the Russians, et cetera. But I think if Trump is elected, there's a chance that from our shared perspective, something good might happen occasionally. If Biden is reelected, there is zero chance that anything good will happen. And you can see it, by the way, Biden is freely selling out his own base for his Middle East policy. He just doesn't care. It's going to be this about the House of Representatives because to the extent that there is opposition and dissent within the palace centers in the United States, it does seem to happen mostly. So far, as I can see in the House of Representatives, is that because of the way it's elected, the fact that representatives are elected every two years, that they have to be closer to the electoral base, to people in the United States, that they are more aware, therefore, of the pressures that people are under? Or is this, for some other functional reason about the way in which the party picks candidates for office in the House of Representatives, the uni party is less concerned about controlling people? Why do we get more dissent in the House than in the Senate, for example? I mean, I think to a degree, that's how the framers of the Constitution, the founders of our country, designed it. The Senate was the deliberative body. The Senate has many more subtle tools that can be used. An individual senator in a body of 100 has a significant amount of power. I think we see it very often where senator can block a bill. Bernie Sanders apparently has blocked the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act bill, although I'm not sure, or a similar bill. I think it was coming to the Senate. So, they have the ability slowly and carefully to do things like this. In the House, it's more of a, it's designed to be more scrappy. And in fact, it was much more scrappy way back when I was there. And I think it certainly devolved into a very concentrated power base. Now, each member used to have a lot more power. For example, when we were doing appropriations bills, it used to be an open rule. As long as it was a money amendment, an amendment to the funding, any member could come down and claim five minutes and introduce an amendment to strike funding for certain aspects of it. And that engendered an enormous debate. You could go down and claim your five minutes, and any other member could support you and claim five minutes in support of your amendment. And that gave individual members an enormous amount of power to not only affect the appropriations bills, but to affect the debate. Now, when we've moved away from a regular order, when we don't do individual appropriations bills, everything is prearranged. You get a huge omnibus bill like we did just a few weeks ago, a huge omnibus bill of over a thousand pages. And this was on Marjorie Taylor Green's bill of particulars against Johnson. He ignored even the seven to our rule, which you couldn't read thousand pages in 72 hours, even with unlimited espresso, right? But even that he brought it up within 24 hours, there's literally no way anybody read this bill. And we've only found out later all the poison pills in it. So each individual member now becomes this sort of just a symbolic representative of his 600,000 person constituency. So I think that's why you see a lot of misbehavior. They basically, they have nothing else to do. They're not part of the process anymore. I mean, how did the house let that happen? Again, I speak as a British person. The major constitutional battle that took place in England, as everybody knows, was for the House of Commons to gain control of appropriations. And obviously that is gradually receded as well because government has become so powerful now. But in the 16th, 17th century, you know, members fought very hard to maintain control of appropriations, to be able to speak out and talk about them. And there were all the famous legal cases that evolved this. And of course, there was ultimately a civil war on this very precise topic. They were given this power. How have they let it slip away? I mean, because this ultimately takes away from the House of Representatives is primary function. Or so it seems to me, you don't control the money. What do you control? And that's the only tool the Constitution gave them, you know, to run the country. I mean, they have the power, the purse. Thomas Masu, I think is an exception. He is the absolute best member of the House of Representatives right now. But he recalled a recently on Twitter, actually a gentleman may have seen it, he recalled a breakfast that he had with deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, where he was, they were talking. And the crux of the matter is Scalia said, I don't understand why Congress doesn't exercise the one real power it has. Now, you know, you look to the Supreme Court to adjudicate whether legislation is unconstitutional. That's not our job. It's your job as legislators with the power of the purse to defund things that you think are inappropriate. You have all the power. Why don't you use it? And I think it's an excellent question. And I don't know the answer other than, you know, our representatives in D.C. reflect the character of the people. And I would say right now, maybe particularly post COVID, something strange happened to this country in those two years. And it's changed a lot of the way I think Americans think. But something has happened, there's something deeply wrong with the U.S. and it's reflected in our representatives, I think at least. I mean, to me, actually looking back again on English history, it's like the battle between the House and the King. The King is winning. He's actually getting control of the House. The House is giving up powers to him, which ultimately their ancestors thought they'd give them. And it's a very bad thing. And surely, that also relates to other things that have happened. So the House voted impeachment articles against Mr. New Yorkers. I'm not going to go into the right or wrongs of that. But, you know, those are articles of impeachment against official, senior official of the government. Again, the power of impeachment is a very important one in English history as well, by the way. And yet the Senate just throws it out. It's tossed. There's not even consideration of it. Has that ever happened before? Would that even have been conceivable before? Well, the whole impeachment issue in the U.S. has been cheapened by the two impeachments of President Trump. You know, it's used to be something astonishing. And I think even the impeachment of Bill Clinton started it off. It was over, you know, as you well know, deception over a sexual affair that he had. And it seemed to lower the debate. And I've talked to Ron Paul about it. He voted for impeachment. And I wondered about it. And he said, well, if you look at every president we've had, they probably all should be impeached for something. So may as well impeach him for that. But the, but obviously the two frivolous impeachments of President Trump, I think lowered the bar so much. What I couldn't understand is the impeachment of Mayorkas. It maybe things have changed a lot, but I remember when we were in the house, you had canvassed for votes. They spent a lot of time whipping votes. They spent a lot of time making sure they at least had a good showing before you had launched something like this. And now it seems to be launched without a second thought. You just want with just impeach him. It's, it's, it's just throwing your, you know, you're dropping an atom bomb on an ad or something. Well, it did. And if you do that, of course, you're in this kind of thing, beyond a certain point, it ceases to be an atom bomb. It becomes just another procedural device, which as you absolutely rightly say, nobody takes seriously anymore. So that you impeach a president after he's left office, which can also to me makes absolutely no sense at all. But it was done. Letting the door hit you on the way out. And the door hit you on exactly the first, I was just, I was just going to say the first impeachment is so absurd. I know you've all gone over, but we're talking about giving up powers and taking powers you don't have. Well, the first impeachment was about Congress trying to assume powers it doesn't have, which is the power to make foreign policy. Because if you remember the big beef against President Trump was that he ignored the interagency consensus on Ukraine, as if the president has no foreign policy power. So it's sort of like our entire government is cross-dressing. How can this be changed? Because again, you spoke at the beginning of the program about how most Americans, for example, do not want to have any part in any war in Ukraine. Most Americans do not want to see boots on the ground in Ukraine. They don't want to see funding for the war in Ukraine, and yet it happens. And we see this with issue after issue now. It looks as if the political class in Washington just does what he likes. Is there a way that people can take this back? I'm not talking about people in Congress, but outside in the country that people can actually start to put up candidates? Or is the two-party lock so strong that it is very difficult to do that? Or even impossible to do that? I think formally it's almost impossible, but informally it's possible. And that's why I think, for example, before Marjorie Taylor Greene entered her motion to vacate the chair, she had a meeting with Speaker Johnson, and she gave him five areas, five sort of demands, or four demands, four demands. And they were actually very good. The first one is to return to the Hastert rule. The Hastert rule is that any legislation introduced by the Republican Speaker must be backed in the majority by Republicans before it goes to the floor. And that's a very good rule, and it builds a good morale among the party. The other one is defunding Ukraine, not another penny for Ukraine. The other one is no money for this insane law fair against President Trump, this special prosecutor that has no legal authority to do anything. And the fourth one is the MASSI rule, which is that if you cannot follow regular order and pass each appropriations bill, and you have to resort to an omnibus or mini-bus, there's an automatic across-the-board 1% cut in funding. So those are all very good things that would build strength within the party, particularly the Hastert rule, because if you have to have a majority among Republicans to get a bill to the floor, and you have just these 11 who voted against tabling the motion to vacate, then you have a situation where you have a de facto third party. And it may ebb and flow, you may have different members, but a de facto third party that can hold the feet to the fire, to the rhinos, these types, the establishment Republicans, so you can have that if you would adopt some change like this, especially because it's so close, there's a 1C majority. But in the longer term of electing better people, that's a long-term project. And Dr. Paul has endorsed plenty of candidates who looked very good until they got into office, and they said to them, "Listen, Powell, if you want to get into leadership, you've got to learn how to follow," and that's all she wrote. Why is it so difficult in the United States for third parties to make an impact? I mean, it's difficult in Britain, and we do have in some ways an electoral system that looks not so different from yours, but it seems to be particularly difficult in the United States. I mean, there's the Libertarian Party, for example, which I often I find meant much what it says, very attractive, and I would have thought appealing to Americans, and yet it can't really break through, as one would expect that it might do. It's very difficult for me today to imagine something similar to what happened in the 1850s, for example, when the Republican Party broke through the system at that time. Why has it become so much more difficult now? I think the money issue is a big issue for a new party. The Libertarian Party is in good shape because they have ballot access in 50 states, and hopefully they'll keep it, but the problem is if you want to start a new party, and if you remember back in '92, the reform party started up, but you had a backer who was very, very wealthy and was able to, but if you don't have that, the majority of the money you raised is spent trying to get ballot access on all 50 states, which is a very honorous task, very difficult to do, and then you have the collusion of the two main parties. You can have Biden and Trump saying, "Well, I'm not going to debate the Libertarian candidate. I don't care about him. He's not a threat. I'm not going to debate RFK Jew, and you're who cares?" And they can do that. It almost seems insurmountable, and I think it's because money plays a much bigger role in politics than it did in the 1850s. It sounds almost like an oligarchy, an oligarchy that benefits from keeping things as they are, not so different from the sort of aristocracy of Spain and Britain, in some ways, the imperial aristocracy of that time. And this in America, which is, of course, founded as a democracy, just saying. No, absolutely. Look at the balance sheet of each person who goes in and out of Congress. I mean, the people who are free, the people who are not bound by the system are people like Thomas Massey. Thomas Massey was a very successful businessman. He went to MIT. He has several patents under his belt. So he came as what I think our founders intended a different kind of aristocracy, where you actually believe in public service. You don't go there to make your fortune. You're already successful in one way or the other, and you have nothing to prove. So you can be yourself. If Thomas Massey loses this next time, I'm sure he'll be disappointed, but he won't be devastated. He'll just go back to his beautiful home that he built with his bare hands off the grid and live the rest of his life out. Maybe write some books, which is, of course, the best kind of representative that you wanted. I mean, that was partly what I think the center was supposed to be about. You know, that you have people like that in the Senate and certainly in other parliamentary institutions. So is it all hopeless? Have we no chance of turning things around? Are we going to move forward relentlessly with wars and ultimate national bankruptcy? Is there something going to come to happen that is going to pull us back? Well, I tend to be the depressive in my partnership with Dr. Paul. He's the optimist, but I do think there are areas, I think, where we have hope in the US particularly. And one is in polling. I mean, a new poll just came out clearly showing that Democrats believe that genocide is being committed in Israel, even though the leader of their party is not going to say it. You have a majority of all Americans. I think it's something like 70% who want to have a ceasefire. And this includes a majority of Republicans. I think 83 or so percent of Democrats want to see a ceasefire. The public opinion against further funding for Ukraine is enormously against it. So you're seeing, I think, the ruling class is a trailing edge of popular opinion. I think that's kind of how it always goes. So in that, there's something to be optimistic about. And the other thing is, when we see a vote that is, I would consider anti-war, there are many more members, including Republicans. Remember when Dr. Paul was on the floor and he would be involved in a vote to cut funding for the Iraq War or anything that was considered anti-war. You'd get one or two sheepish Republicans, maybe three or four. But now you're seeing 100. I mean, they lost the vote on Ukraine if you count for Republicans. So I looked to those two items, particularly as optimistic. But at the same time, remember that I think Americans are among the most propagandized people on Earth. And the tools of propaganda are strong. They're weakening. Hence, the attacks on TikTok, the attacks on Twitter X and others, especially the younger generation, is not getting its news from the mainstream to legacy media. So that is shifting as well. But they are still powerful. Absolutely. And can I just say, I mean, going back to history, sometimes also you get galvanizing moments, events which cause people to sort of wake up and become angry. But just to give an example, I think this is my own view that if the United States, if Biden, assuming he's reelected, suddenly announced that he's getting the same troops to Ukraine, I think that would provoke a storm in the United States. I think a lot of people would come out and oppose it. I might be wrong about that. But I mean, I can imagine how that might be a galvanizing moment, how that might make people stand up and say, no, this has gone too far. This can't continue in the way that it has. And that can open up debate very certainly in a very dramatic way. Do you think that's possible? Yeah, I think you can. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. You know, no, no, Carol, please. I was going to say Ukraine, but also certainly Israel. I mean, we saw news this week that the U.S. apparently reportedly will be using a private military contractor to guard the border at Rafa. That's sort of a twofold purpose. One is to the President Biden can say, well, there are no American boots on the ground. But the other is that they can be used as a tripwire. And I think that's not by accident. You know, there's a desperation among the more extreme people in the U.S. to get the U.S. militarily more involved than it is currently in the war over Gaza. So I think, but I think the we're seeing now the pushback and the pushback is happening on college campuses across the world, but certainly across the U.S. And you're seeing the mischaracterization of the protests. You're seeing the desperation, I think, among the elites in trying to mischaracterize these as somehow not only anti-Semitic, but pro-terrorist. But you can't put the little missing. The genie is out of the bottle. Youth in America, as they did in '68, have risen up and said, we do not want this. We're sick of it. The injustice that's happening there is so blatantly clear to all of us. You can't hide it because we don't watch MSNBC anymore. We don't watch Fox News anymore. We're getting our info elsewhere. And I think that's where you could probably see more of an uprising, more sort of a joining of this kind of protest across the country. I agree. I think you're absolutely right. I agree with you about the protests. I think they're an important crystallizing moment. And I think that they may shape things to come. I'm going to stop, Daniel. I think you've answered wonderfully all the questions and points that I've made to you. I'm going to go over to Alex and Alex may have some questions too. Yeah, I think Daniel, we have to do a hard stop in about 10 minutes, but do you have time to take a couple of questions? Sure. I'll do my best. Awesome. Awesome. From Latimerow. Hello, gentlemen. My question for Daniel. What is his opinion of JD Vance? Does he have a future in the Republican party? Yeah, I'm very optimistic about JD Vance. I don't always agree with everything he stands for, but he's taken some very tough coming out of Ohio. I mean, there aren't a lot of Mavericks, you know, my good friend Dennis Kucinich was a Maverick from Ohio. But JD Vance is a different kind of Maverick. He gives me hope. He along with Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and a couple of others in the Senate, the thing is you don't need 51 senators to make things happen. That's why the Senate is so unique. You just need a few people with clever staffers who know how to manipulate and how to work with the system, work with the tools that the founders gave them and amazing things can be done. So I'm very optimistic about JD Vance. Tish M says, "As an American, we've been fed so much propaganda to fear and hate this for that notion time after time, that today the masses still believe in red first blue. They won't awaken until it's too late." I hope that she's wrong. In my dark days, which are usually every day, I fear that she's right. But I do think there is a disgust. And I think you saw that with the groundswell of interest in RFK Juniors campaign at first. In my opinion, he blew it because of his position. His unnecessarily hawkish position on Israel destroyed his candidacy for the presidency. But he could have been a real uniting force beyond the red and the blue, beyond the ours and the D's. And it's unfortunate that it worked that way. But I think the fact that he did was able to catalyze so much interest in just simply being a little bit different than the others. In some places, very different than the others, I think it shows an opening for a future RFK junior that's a little bit more politically savvy with his fingers, a little bit more on the pulse of America. Sparky says, "Because of the petrodollar, American-sponsored wars are also thought on the back of the world until now demand for US dollars trended up as the world developed, offsetting inflation in the dollar." Yeah, it's a little bit like diplomatic immunity. You never want to have to use it because you're not sure if it'll work. It doesn't always work. So we had this neutron bomb called the Global Currency. And when it kind of flexed that, the neutron bomb against Russia, it fell flat. Russia just simply developed new synapses. We tried to cut off the head, and it developed new synapses. New gentlemen have talked about it forever to all of our benefit on the Duran, so you know it very well. So we kind of shot our best shot, and it didn't work. So now comes the consequences, I think. Yeah, mama Alaska asked, "Will Congress betray the oath of office and pass HR 6090?" Oh, that's the antisemitism awareness. Yeah, well the house already passed it. Interestingly enough, I was just reading this morning that 700 Jewish professors in American University sent a letter to President Biden asking that he not signed the bill if it gets to his desk because of the definition that's included. It's actually not even included in the bill. It makes reference to an outside definition of antisemitism from the Holocaust Remembrance Association, the author of which said this was never meant to be codified in legislation. Don't do it, the guy who wrote it. So it's an absolutely terrible anti-American bill for a number of reasons, and I can see it passing, I can see it being signed, but hopefully as with the Scottish hate crime law, it'll just be ignored. But you never know, if it's around the bill, you know, it's like the Soviet constitution, there's a lot of freedom there, but in reality, politics can take over, but it's an absolutely odious, odious bill, and it's disgusting and repulsive as antisemitism is to every sensible person. It's not illegal in the US and shouldn't be illegal in the US. As many people have said, the cure for hate speech is more speech, not restricted speech. That's exactly right. Have you guys seen the research showing that whenever there is a difference between what the common people want and what the wealthy want in American politics, the rich always win? Well, they have the power up to a point, you know, and they can, to the extent that they can keep people disorganized and fighting against each other. Now, you see that a lot, especially with the Republican Party, they basically do what the Democratic elite wants, but they will sprinkle in some culture war issues to make it sound like they're not part of the elites themselves. You know, it's a kind of, again, kind of a cross-dressing. We're with you guys. We're, one of you, we're populist, but in fact, it's not that at all. You know, it's the uni party increasingly. From Tish M, Daniel, rumors are that Biden will be stepping down after the down for the likes of Michelle Obama. Who's on the list of candidates? Question mark. Who's on the list of candidates? I've heard those rumors. I don't know if you've heard those rumors, Daniel. Yeah, absolutely. And I was just asked that in an interview yesterday. I don't know, but I mean, we saw what happened to Johnson in the '68 campaign. The parallels are eerie. You know, both conventions will be held in Chicago amid student uprisings against the war. We're doomed to repeat history, I guess, in this case. But Michelle Obama, I think, brings with her a sense of the nostalgia for the Barack Obama era. And as horrific as I thought it was, I kind of share some of that nostalgia because things have gotten so much worse with the Biden era. I mean, Obama was a monster. He was a bloodthirsty beast. But people are going to remember at least he was able to talk sweet and talk nice. He wasn't, you know, falling off the stage. Same crazy things all the time. As entertaining as Biden can be, if you don't take it seriously. But I think, and maybe, maybe you gentlemen have mentioned, but I know that I've read that Gavin Newsom's star was on the ascendants. But that seems to have faded significantly, very unpopular in California. He doesn't look like the future of the party. I don't think, I mean, as entertaining as a president Kamala Harris might be, for those of us who are cynical, I don't see her stepping into that role. So that would leave maybe someone like Michelle Obama, who said that she's not interested in it many, many times. But there's an allure of the presidency. So you never know. Plus, he has the advantage of all of her husband's foreign policy advisors are now in the executive branch. So there wouldn't be much of a shift. Yeah, great. Sparky says structure of the US government causes it to always settle to two parties. So instead of third parties, they should be called replacement parties. For instance, Republicans replaced the wigs. Yeah, and the policies live on. I mean, we haven't had, as Alexander mentioned, you know, since the 1850s, we've not seen a real shift. We, you know, there was the rise of the foremost party in all the these minor things. But at this point, but, you know, slowly, then suddenly, I mean, you could see a massive shift. Anything could happen. I get a sense, I don't know how you generally, I get a sense that something big is on the horizon. I'm not sure exactly what it is, you know, this ferment is palpable. Yes. I agree with that. Actually, you have it. Sparky wants to know rank choice of voting to change the two party system. It's an interesting idea, you know, and I spend a lot of time in Hungary, and I monitor elections there and Hungary has sort of a modified German system. I'm not an expert on the German system, but I know in Hungary, they're kind of ranked choice. It wasn't exactly ranked choice, but it had some aspects to it. And I think it can be successful. I just don't know that if it's in our DNA to make such a shift in the way that we vote, it would be, it would be difficult, I think, to introduce, but it's, you know, it'd be a possibility. You have time for one more, Daniel? Sure. All right. From life of Brian, the US left is leveraging Palestine to push control, to the Democratic Party communists. This might complicate its alliance with the deep state. Well, look at our former CIA director Brennan. He was in the Communist Party, so he voted Communist as he admitted. So I mean, I think these are all about power. So I think the deep state is all about power as well. Daniel McAdams, thank you very much for joining us. Very much a pretty fantastic live. Thank you. It's been a fantastic live outstanding live, and a great pleasure, Daniel always. I have all of Daniel's information in the description box down below, but now all that, it has a pinned comment as well. Thank you very much, Daniel. Thanks. All right. Great show. Let's answer some more questions, Alexander. The remaining questions. Let's see here. Sophia, welcome to the Duran community. Tom says, hey, guys, great to see Daniel on. Another vote here to speak to Nema Parvini at some point. Keep up the good work. Yeah, we'll we're working on that. Thank you for that. Super chat. Let's see. Sparky says, build a better world with bricks. Thank you. Speaking of the truth, says, congrats to Russia on its victory day, may you night? Yeah. A huge event there, massively celebrated in snow, even the Russians. Snow is awesome, absolutely. It looks amazing. Jeff Pickford, think of a super sticker. I read here, oligarch says, Daniel is twice as politically knowledgeable as Robert Barnes, and notably not a genocide. Okay. Well, Daniel also understands how Congress works. And as I've said many, many times, I find trying to understand Congress and how it works very difficult, because this is from the outside, it is such a complicated system. You really need somebody who's seen it from the inside to really get a true feel for it as well. Cuplex says your dedication and hard work is appreciated. Sparky says, most blacks in the US were Republican since Lincoln was Republican until FDR when over half were Democrats with JFK nine out of 10 Democrats. This is absolutely correct. That is absolutely right. I mean, they supported the Republican Party because of course, Lincoln gave them, gave them a black people freedom. I mean, he ended slavery, and then FDR came, and he'd made all kinds of changes, and he reoriented the Democratic Party, changed its direction, and they became Democrats. And then with JFK, they became even more Democrats and the civil rights movements and all that. So these are shifts. They can't, the idea that anything is forever, and that black voters will always vote for Democrat candidates is not borne out by history. Jamila says, thank you, gentlemen, for your work. If Trump becomes president, what can we do on Africa? He hates Africa. Can you all give us advice even if he doesn't like Europe? I don't think Donald Trump himself knows what he's going to do when he becomes president. I still think, actually, in the spine of everything, in the spine of everything that's happened over the last two or three weeks, that if Donald Trump is reelected, that will, will in itself be a major event. And it could have outcomes that none of us expect. It might open up the debate. It might change things in all kinds of unpredictable ways. So don't discount it. NGS says, have you been demonetized? Never commercials now. Okay. Let's see. Barkey, now we answered that. Tisham says, question, would you consider interviewing Satsa Fadeon? Amis is an internationally best-selling economist and author in 2018. Amis authored. Yes. In 2018, Amis authored, the Bitcoin standard, the decentralized alternative to central banking. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. We will be able to do some interesting. Yeah. RD Patterson thinks that's super sticker. Matthew says, fantastic as always. Where are we now with NATO sending troops? Has Cameron backed away from missile strikes? Yes. I think they have, actually. And you can sense that they're embarrassed and angry because they've just expelled the Russian defense tashay without saying that he's actually done anything that deserved it. And you get the sense that the British have been humiliated and been left very angry. Now there's a story in Coriérrez de la Serra, which is an Italian newspaper, sort of the Italian paper of records that there's going to be a public declaration by NATO, a statement at the July NATO summit that there will be no boots on the ground in Ukraine. Now that hasn't happened yet. And I don't know that NATO, that everybody in NATO has agreed with that. And it could be that this is an Italian initiative. But if it happens, that will be a watershed moment because it will mean that there won't, at least at the time, be a chance of NATO intervention in Ukraine, which will give the Russians an open pathway to end the war on their terms. So it's looking as if the danger of that is receding. The West has been, again, outplayed in the poker game. What do we more precise? Macron has. Putin versus Macron in poker. Does that surprise you? Sparky says Newsome Kushner, 24. Martin says there must be what it was in Seoul. That would be an interesting ticket, Sparky. Martin says there must be 500,000 soldiers at V-Day. The big offensive can't occur until after. Well, we'll see. I mean, I'm not going to get into the discussions about all of this. We don't know what the Russians are planning. They seem to be doing perfectly well with what they've got. So, you know, we mustn't make plans for them because we don't know what their plans are. No, she slinks says, "Forget RFK vote to Cornel West in 2024." I don't know who this person is. You know, oh, you know, I do know, I do know. Sorry, yeah. Elza says, "This week, Newsweek wrote that Putin does not want to invade NATO. Is that also connected to the exercises with nuclear weapons in Russia?" Well, he's always said that. I mean, he's saying, "Your Newsweek is telling us something, but we've always known." He has repeatedly said that he has no plans. The Russians, not just Putin, repeatedly said, "There is no Russian threat to any country that is currently a member of NATO." For the Russians, this is a defensive war, as they've pointed out many, many times. They sort of compromised. They said, "We do not want Ukraine, NATO. We do not want NATO bases in Ukraine. We certainly do not want nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and we do not want Donbass attacked and subjugated." The West paid no attention to any of that, and that's why we've got a war. But the Russians have never said that they want to conquer Finland or Estonia or Poland or any of these places. And I mean, the fantasy that that is what they plan to do has no basis in reality. Sophisticated cavemen says, "Hungarian Serbian railway, is it possible for China to win over the Balkans, Italy and southern Europe, Mediterranean belt and road?" They might do. I mean, the sea has had a very successful trip to Serbia, where he was always bound to have a good reception there. And of course, he's going on to Hungary. And yes, they might, the Chinese might have those plans. What I will say is that if the Chinese start working on something like that, that is going to provoke the Western powers and the EU even more, and it will only cause them to intensify their attacks on all these countries. Because at that point, it will become the West protecting its own little sphere of influence in southern and eastern Europe from what they will see as Chinese encroachment. So, bear in mind, it will take a very long time for the Chinese to be able to do that. And there will be enormous countermeasures from the West. It also says, "Happy Europe Day, just kidding. Happy Victory Day." Matthew says, "Will NATO use Lithuania as nuclear litmus test?" Well, I hope not, actually. I mean, I hope not. Lithuania is going to send a couple of soldiers to Ukraine in order to train the Ukraine. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous idea, as you're right. Lithuania is just looking crazy when they come out with these statements. That's it. William says, "If Trump makes anything worse, I'll be amazed. At worst, I'd expect some things will get better and at best, a lot better." Well, you may be right. I mean, I still think, as I said, that there might be a positive change in the event of a Trump election. I mean, also, bear in mind that all the worst people don't want to see him back. And that's a reason in itself, I think, for wanting to see him back, just so. "Gift of the Gap" says, "limited edition apparel at the Durand shop looks great." Yes, it does. "Gift of the Gap." Vladimirosis, "Happy Victory Day, indeed." Absolutely, "Happy Victory Day." And Martin says, "After the Putin invades London, which will be the next dominoes." Oh, who knows? I mean, he's obviously got him. He's obviously on the march, so maybe the moon. Just saying. All right, Alexei, I've already filed off the arts, as I do. It's a great program, and it's easy to become pessimistic about things. But as I said, I still think and believe that there are enough forces of sanity and risk left to pull us back. And this has been an important week. As I said, we've said this many times in several programs, but the forces of war have actually been pushed back this week. They've been now played, which will make them very angry, and you can see that from the reaction in London. But they're not getting his all their own way at all, not even domestically. And the fact that people in the US are so unhappy with what has happened over the last three weeks, well, that in itself is a good sign. Yeah, my info says, NATO has blinked, meaning the US, NATO will formally adopt a resolution to refuse to intervene directly in the conflict in Ukraine at the summit in July, and NATO will also formally take over the coordination and military assistance to Ukraine. Agreed. Exactly. All very important, very significant, a breakthrough, if it happens. It will be the moment when the really dangerous part of this crisis has been passed, and a massive defeat for the New England faction, and all of those. But of course, as Daniel correctly said, they will then switch their attention elsewhere, maybe the Middle East, more likely China. Who knows? China. They're demonizing China. They're killing, killing, killing. All right, that's, that's everything. Thank you to everyone that watched us on the Rockfin, Odyssey, rumble, YouTube, and media. And locals.com. Big shout out to our moderators. Give to the gab, reckless abandon, Zariel, Tish M, and Valley, yes. Thank you to our moderators. And that's, that's the live stream. Let's get some videos up. Indeed. Take care. [BLANK_AUDIO]