Speaker 1: Joining me now is my friend David Sachs.
Speaker 2: He's the venture capitalist at Craft Ventures and host of
Speaker 2: the All In podcast.
Speaker 1: David, it's great to step in person, my friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good to be here.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So, David, you were the Cassandra on Ukraine. You have
Speaker 2: been now for two years, far before it was in vogue.
Speaker 2: So day one, the Ukraine War is happening you all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I mean, in some people's estimation, I think,
Speaker 2: especially for the Neoconzi come out of nowhere and you're
Speaker 2: very counter narrative.
Speaker 1: So where did that come from? Just give us some
Speaker 1: of the background as.
Speaker 2: To why you decide to speak out on the conflict
Speaker 2: from very very early days and really be intimately involved
Speaker 2: in trying to help shape the narrative away from the
Speaker 2: mainstream on Ukraine eight, on how the Ukrainians were doing,
Speaker 2: and on some of the historical background of the conflict.
Speaker 4: Well, I started paying attention to it in January of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two because we covered it on our podcast. So,
Speaker 4: like you mentioned, All In as a weekly podcast, we
Speaker 4: do current events, a lot of business and markets. We
Speaker 4: also do geopolitics and politics at any event. In January
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty two, the media star reporting that there
Speaker 4: was this conflict that could even become a war, And
Speaker 4: you know, I was a little bit familiar with the
Speaker 4: conflict and with the idea that NATO expansion was something
Speaker 4: that the Russians really didn't like, and so I started
Speaker 4: advocating on the pod that just we should just take
Speaker 4: NATO expansion off the table. That's clearly a huge irritant
Speaker 4: here in the situation. And even if you believe that
Speaker 4: Putin is just using that as a pretext for whatever
Speaker 4: he's going to do, we should rob him of that
Speaker 4: pretext by just saying that, you know, EU Craine's not
Speaker 4: going to become part of NATO. So I started saying
Speaker 4: that on the pod before the war broke out, and
Speaker 4: then when the war broke out, I gave a talk
Speaker 4: here at an American Moment reiterating that position. And the
Speaker 4: more I kind of got into it and the more
Speaker 4: I sort of researched it, the more I realized that
Speaker 4: this was all kind of the result of a deliberate
Speaker 4: US policy, kind of a Neocon policy that either wanted
Speaker 4: this war or certainly wasn't willing to avoid this war.
Speaker 4: That NATO expansion they weren't willing to take no expansion
Speaker 4: off the table to avoid the war. So so yeah,
Speaker 4: I just started speaking out about it, I guess, using
Speaker 4: my channels to talk about it, and the more resistance
Speaker 4: I got, I'd say, the more hysterical resistance I got,
Speaker 4: the more that kind of encouraged me. I guess I'm
Speaker 4: just kind of stupid that way. And so here we
Speaker 4: are two years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you, in particularly, you drive these people crazy in
Speaker 2: a way that I honestly aspired to.
Speaker 1: I wish I could be in their heads.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the criticism that I often see
Speaker 2: is like this guy is a sass adventure capitalist.
Speaker 1: I doesn't even know what he's talking about.
Speaker 2: But I mean, in my estimation, youment far more correct
Speaker 2: on the conflict than they have.
Speaker 1: So then where are getting your information from?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a question that we get to
Speaker 2: here all the time, like where do you guys get
Speaker 2: this information we talked previously, I know about like Advika others.
Speaker 1: You know, we're looking at open source channels.
Speaker 2: Why and where can you look to get the real
Speaker 2: information you can help our audience maybe look in the
Speaker 2: same places.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's a very interesting question. So what you
Speaker 4: do when you're an investor or. When you're an investor,
Speaker 4: you have a track record. It's very easy to size
Speaker 4: up an investor based on their track record. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's all you really have to do with these information
Speaker 4: channels is what do they say was going to happen
Speaker 4: and then what actually happened. Nobody ever does that in
Speaker 4: the information space, So you know, I figured out pretty
Speaker 4: early which channels were sort of telling the truth and
Speaker 4: which ones weren't. And the mainstream media in ISW, they
Speaker 4: were always really shading the truth or not telling us
Speaker 4: what was really happening in the war, and independent channels
Speaker 4: were the ones that were giving the information that turned
Speaker 4: out to be accurate. And I think the Battle of
Speaker 4: Bachmot was really a turning point where I could clearly
Speaker 4: see you had the independent channels I really came to
Speaker 4: rely on saying that the Russians were actually winning, whereas
Speaker 4: IW and the mainstream media were saying that the Russian
Speaker 4: attack had culminated, that was the big word. The independent
Speaker 4: channels were saying, actually, the Russians they created a cauldron,
Speaker 4: so it's sort of culmination versus cauldron. Turned out the
Speaker 4: cauldron was exactly correct. That the Ukrainians basically destroyed themselves
Speaker 4: by pouring all these resources in and then with the
Speaker 4: Summer account offensive same thing. So in terms of like
Speaker 4: who do I respect, who do I listen to? I
Speaker 4: mean the Duran as a geopolitics podcast where they summarized
Speaker 4: the war virtually daily. They've turned out to be much
Speaker 4: more accurate than other sources. Stephen Bryan, who's a columnist
Speaker 4: for I think Asia Times, who's a former Undersecuary Defense
Speaker 4: so as a weekly call him, he's been very accurate. Daniel,
Speaker 4: Colonel Daniel Davis has been very good. There's a Twitter
Speaker 4: account called Aiden who has a podcast called Calibrated with
Speaker 4: Scott I think is his actual name, and he's turned
Speaker 4: out to be pretty accurate. I'm probably forgetting there's other
Speaker 4: ones to but yeah, this.
Speaker 1: Is because people ask us the same thing.
Speaker 2: And this is you know, you're someone that I really
Speaker 2: look to, you know, for my information, which I'm sure
Speaker 2: people will call me out on. But I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess it gets back to the track rider question and
Speaker 2: what you're talking about with the conflict. But at the
Speaker 2: base like passion level, I mean I can assume I
Speaker 2: know I personally, I mean I've spoken out on BLM,
Speaker 2: I'm spoken on COVID a lot of things. I have
Speaker 2: never seen any more pushback, and on NATO expansion on
Speaker 2: Ukraine specifically, it might be the single most controversial topic.
Speaker 2: So why do you feel passionate about it? Like, why
Speaker 2: do you even care? You know, you've got this investment
Speaker 2: thing going on. I would assume this is probably not
Speaker 2: the best thing for that, you know, in terms of
Speaker 2: some of the people, the milliu that you surround yourself with.
Speaker 1: So why do you care?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I just can't believe what a big blunder the United
Speaker 4: States is making. I mean, this was a horrible policy decision.
Speaker 4: This is easily the biggest foreign policy mistake by the
Speaker 4: US since the Iraq War. It might end up being
Speaker 4: a bigger mistake than the Iraq War. It was entirely avoidable,
Speaker 4: and yet you have the whole mainstream media stampeding us
Speaker 4: into this policy and the sort of the taboo they're
Speaker 4: trying to create around it, where a lot like the
Speaker 4: Iraq War, where anyone who opposed it was considered unpatriotic
Speaker 4: or sort of treasonous. That's the argument that you're making
Speaker 4: that is made today. In fact, I think it's even
Speaker 4: worse the sort of the consensus that they're trying to
Speaker 4: manufacture around this. So I think that I guess I
Speaker 4: wouldn't speak out as much about it if I thought
Speaker 4: that the issue is being covered accurately, and it is
Speaker 4: such an important issue. I mean, this could lead to
Speaker 4: World War three, or what I call woke War three,
Speaker 4: if we're not careful. So I think that, you know,
Speaker 4: just again, the magnitude of the policy mistake and the
Speaker 4: importance of the issue relative to how inaccurately it's been
Speaker 4: covered sort of encourages me to kind of keep posting
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by world War three? Dig into
Speaker 1: that a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, one of the things I noticed early on
Speaker 4: in this war is that there's been a fusion of
Speaker 4: the woke left and the neocon right in supporting this war,
Speaker 4: and they both support the same cancelation tactics. They've both
Speaker 4: tried to make it unacceptable to support the idea of
Speaker 4: a negotiated settlement. Apparently any kind of peaceful resolution in
Speaker 4: the conflict other than total Ukrainian victory is pro Russian
Speaker 4: in their view, And you know, and it's you saw
Speaker 4: this actually, remember when Elon came out pretty early in
Speaker 4: the war with his peace proposal. I think this is
Speaker 4: in I think this must have been around September of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: That sounds right, Yeah, it was in the height of
Speaker 2: the ukn't craze.
Speaker 4: Right right, exactly, yeah, And it is a craze. And
Speaker 4: Zelenski himself came out to denounce that Elon's proposal as
Speaker 4: pro Russian and there was this huge pylon. But that
Speaker 4: and that's just one example. But the point is just
Speaker 4: anyone who has contracted the official narrative basically gets demonized
Speaker 4: as as pro putin, a puppet for the outside, what
Speaker 4: have you. And the problem with this is that it
Speaker 4: creates a one way ratchet because there's only one acceptable position,
Speaker 4: which is to keep escalating the war. And that is
Speaker 4: in fact what we've seen. I mean, the administration has
Speaker 4: continuously escalated the type of support they're going to provide.
Speaker 4: In the beginning, Biden said that providing things like F
Speaker 4: sixteen's or Abram's tanks or long range missiles could start
Speaker 4: World War three. Now they've done all those things. So
Speaker 4: we've seen this pattern where the thing that initially was
Speaker 4: considered to be too risky eventually you know, it becomes normalized.
Speaker 4: And the discussion we're having right now, led by European
Speaker 4: leaders like Macron, is what we send in ground troops.
Speaker 4: And again this has been dismissed now, but the pattern
Speaker 4: we've seen is this thing starts to get kind of
Speaker 4: normalized by talking about it, the fearor sort of dies down,
Speaker 4: and then the deep sate kind of does what they want.
Speaker 4: So I think it's very important that there is actually
Speaker 4: like a healthy public debate about this question because it
Speaker 4: could lead somewhere even more disastrous than it's already led.
Speaker 1: I totally agree.
Speaker 2: So give us the kind of the forks of the
Speaker 2: decisions where for where we go from here? So as
Speaker 2: you said, you know, we've Macrone and Germany kind of
Speaker 2: in a spat here, and so it's like Macrone and
Speaker 2: the Brits and then Germany kind of weirdly in the
Speaker 2: middle somewhere where do the Europeans do?
Speaker 1: What do you think that they're going to do? What
Speaker 1: do you think the US is going to do?
Speaker 2: Let's say we have two forks here some aid, no aid,
Speaker 2: and then finally the Ukrainians kind of in this question,
Speaker 2: where are some possible like decision trees.
Speaker 1: We could see the conflict going well.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting the debate you're seeing in Europe. The
Speaker 4: pressure is really on o Love Schultz right now to
Speaker 4: deliver these these Taurists missiles, these long range missiles. Jen Stoltenberg,
Speaker 4: the Secretary of General of Natives, already said that it's
Speaker 4: now acceptable for the Ukrainians to hit targets inside of Russia.
Speaker 4: And then you've got Macron saying that that he's trying
Speaker 4: to normalize the idea of ground troops. So where all
Speaker 4: of this is headed is World War three if we
Speaker 4: go for it. It's kind of ironic that Macron's the
Speaker 4: one pushing this because he's the one in the past
Speaker 4: he's always talked about strategic autonomy for Europe, that you're
Speaker 4: atuet making its own decisions. Apparently what he means by
Speaker 4: that is that Europe should be even more hawkish than
Speaker 4: the United States, that Europe should adopt the American position,
Speaker 4: but actually push it even further. It's not that Europe
Speaker 4: should rethink whether the American position on this war is
Speaker 4: actually good for them. The American position on this ward
Speaker 4: has been disastrous for Europe. It's basically, especially Germany has
Speaker 4: plunged the europe tribes exactly.
Speaker 3: So in any of.
Speaker 4: That that that's sort of the debate that's been set
Speaker 4: up in terms of where this goes from here. We
Speaker 4: will either escalate or the Ukraine will lose. It's very simple.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's nothing really we can do any more
Speaker 4: to help them. And whether this sixty billion or not
Speaker 4: past this doesn't matter. We're out of ammunition to give them.
Speaker 4: I mean, uless we're going to deplete the stock policy
Speaker 4: at a reserved for our own readiness, which would be
Speaker 4: very dangerous. I would though, yes, it is possible, but
Speaker 4: the bottom line is we don't have the ammunition and
Speaker 4: they don't have the manpower anymore so, and they wasted
Speaker 4: a lot of time when they should have been building
Speaker 4: defensive fortifications. They were sort of charging headlong into the
Speaker 4: minefields and during the sum counter offensive. So it's entirely
Speaker 4: too late now I think for Ukraine to be building
Speaker 4: the proper kinds of defensive fortifications that they need. So
Speaker 4: the simple reality is what you're seeing right now is
Speaker 4: it's not a stalemate. It's never been a stale mat
Speaker 4: It's always been a war of attrition. The Ukrainians have
Speaker 4: been at treated the Russians are getting more powerful. They
Speaker 4: have more soldiers, are enlisting, more coming out of training,
Speaker 4: and their industrial capacity is really ramping up. They have
Speaker 4: this huge industrial war machine that they inherited from the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union east of the Urals. It's now been fully
Speaker 4: ramped up and is producing more of everything, more of artillery, shells, drones, tanks, planes, everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know it's interesting because you go back
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty two, I think it fell out for
Speaker 2: some of those two. You're like, man, these Russians, you
Speaker 2: can't even beat the Ukrainians, right, And it's like, wow,
Speaker 2: three years later, you've replaced every single one of these
Speaker 2: dead people with conscripts. Doesn't seem to be that much
Speaker 2: consternation Domestically. You produce in four and a half million shells.
Speaker 2: Europe can barely deliver half a million. If we were
Speaker 2: to get into some port of prolonged conflict Russia, China.
Speaker 1: Whatever, do you think America?
Speaker 2: How long do you think it would take America to
Speaker 2: actually reach full readiness? Because I fear, a truly fear,
Speaker 2: that this war has only exposed and then further depleted
Speaker 2: us to the point where it could take years to
Speaker 2: be able to ramp up production, even if we were
Speaker 2: to really be in a situation where we had a
Speaker 2: genuine strategic interest in front of us and we may
Speaker 2: have to make some serious concessions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the war has really exposed the extent
Speaker 4: to which we've deindustrialized ourselves and how we've hallowed out
Speaker 4: our defense industrial base. If you look at artillery ammunition,
Speaker 4: for example, at the beginning of the war, we were
Speaker 4: producing about fourteen thousand shells a month. We're now what
Speaker 4: two years into it, and they've only as of a
Speaker 4: few months ago, what I saw publicly reported was that
Speaker 4: they had roughly doubled production to twenty eight thousand a month.
Speaker 4: That's still only what is that about three hundred thousand
Speaker 4: a year. It's one tenth what the Russians can do.
Speaker 4: It's pathetic, And what the Pentagon has said is that
Speaker 4: we're going to double it this year and then double
Speaker 4: it next year. That's still only gets you to generously
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand a month, which is a quarter to
Speaker 4: a third maybe of what the Russians can do now,
Speaker 4: never mind what they're going to be able to do
Speaker 4: in two years.
Speaker 3: So we have figured out or learned.
Speaker 4: I think just how pathetic our dib or has become.
Speaker 4: And the other thing we've learned is that it is
Speaker 4: how inefficient it is. So the Newer Times reported that
Speaker 4: the cost to the United States are producing one artillery
Speaker 4: shells in the five to six thousand dollars range, it
Speaker 4: costs the Russians six hundred dollars. So now, at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the war, You're right, the Russians were accused
Speaker 4: of being this incredibly inept kleptocracy. The idea is that
Speaker 4: their military was hollow colass because you know, their kleptocracy
Speaker 4: had stolen everything. Well, as it turns out, we're ten
Speaker 4: times more inefficient than they are. So what does that
Speaker 4: make us If they're a acocracy oligarchic kleptocracy, we just
Speaker 4: have a different kind of kleptocracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's say.
Speaker 2: And that's the fascinating part is you know, in many
Speaker 2: ways people part of the case for Ukraine is we
Speaker 2: got to weeken Russia. And I'm like, well, it seems
Speaker 2: as if every step that we've made and by par
Speaker 2: attracting the conflict, you blood the army. It's very key
Speaker 2: if we go in the history of military conflict. We've
Speaker 2: rapidly increased their industrialization for their defense capacity. They have
Speaker 2: become more sanctioned proofd today than ever before. I mean,
Speaker 2: they seem better capable of mounting even more arrest of
Speaker 2: action against the West. I'm not shaying that they want
Speaker 2: to necessarily that before the war had happened. On top
Speaker 2: of adding some eight hundred miles to our NATO border
Speaker 2: with the expansion, which goes to the root of the
Speaker 2: conflict that we began this interview with.
Speaker 3: So I call this Biden's big backfire.
Speaker 4: If you look at all of his claims at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the war, they've all come true in reverse.
Speaker 4: He said that we would weaken Russia in order to
Speaker 4: prevent them from waging this type of war again. In fact,
Speaker 4: we've made the Russian military stronger. It's larger, it's larger
Speaker 4: than it was before. It's produced far more weapons, the
Speaker 4: industrial base is ramped up. Plus it's now battle tested
Speaker 4: on battle hardened, especially against Western weapons. So it's a
Speaker 4: much more formidable military Biden has created on the part
Speaker 4: of the Russians than when we started. Meanwhile, it's the
Speaker 4: United States that has seen in stockpiles depleted and hollowed out.
Speaker 4: Then you look at the economic claims that Biden made.
Speaker 4: He said that sanctions would crush the Russian economy. In fact,
Speaker 4: the Russian economy is growing faster than any of the
Speaker 4: G seven economies.
Speaker 3: It's really booming.
Speaker 4: And it's our European allies economies that have been crushed
Speaker 4: by the sanctions. So you know this policy that he's
Speaker 4: pursued has really boomeranged and again come true in reversed.
Speaker 4: Then you take the humanitarian claims he said that we
Speaker 4: would help ease the suffering of the Ukrainians. In fact,
Speaker 4: we've led to I think our support of this proxy
Speaker 4: war and our willingness to fight to the last Ukrainian,
Speaker 4: like Lindsay Graham said, this is the best way we've
Speaker 4: ever spent, using Ukrainians to kill Russians. This has led
Speaker 4: to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine, where something like
Speaker 4: ten million plus people, mostly women and children, have left
Speaker 4: the country. I think at least half million casualties killed,
Speaker 4: are seriously wounded, and the population of the country has
Speaker 4: reduced from something like forty four million to twenty eight million. Yes,
Speaker 4: and if you look at the demographic pyramid, something like
Speaker 4: ten to twelve million or pensioners.
Speaker 3: They can't really work.
Speaker 4: So what we've done is really leading to the demographic
Speaker 4: death in this country.
Speaker 1: So I want to shift gears a little bit.
Speaker 2: In the early days of the war in Gaza, you
Speaker 2: and I, as many others were warning about expanded war
Speaker 2: in the Middle East. So we're several hundred days now
Speaker 2: or whatever into the conflict of Gaza.
Speaker 1: Do you still worry about that?
Speaker 2: In President Biden's handling, how would you rate the handling
Speaker 2: of the conflicts so far?
Speaker 4: Well, what I said about in the wake of October seventh,
Speaker 4: the first thing I said was that it's a little
Speaker 4: bit of reminiscent of nine to eleven, that the purpose
Speaker 4: of an outrageous terrorist attack is usually provoking overreaction. Yes,
Speaker 4: and I hope that the Israelis would react wisely and
Speaker 4: not in the nine to eleven manner like the United
Speaker 4: States did. It's safe to say now that the Israeli
Speaker 4: reaction is exactly it has to be exactly what a
Speaker 4: moas wanted, because they've created this humanitarian crisis in Gaza,
Speaker 4: and it's basically turned the whole Middle East and most
Speaker 4: of the world against israel I mean that I'm actually
Speaker 4: shocked by some of the arguments that I'm seeing now
Speaker 4: that this this sort of decolonization narrative that used to
Speaker 4: really just be in academic circles has now kind of
Speaker 4: gone mainstream, and you're seeing lots of people on social
Speaker 4: media take the position that that that the Israel doesn't
Speaker 4: have a right to exist, you know, which I strongly
Speaker 4: disagree with. But I think this has been that reaction
Speaker 4: has been caused by the way that Israel has reacted
Speaker 4: to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously every reaction is an eco operation, right exactly.
Speaker 4: Well, I think Biden made a huge mistake of basically
Speaker 4: going to the Middle East initially and hugging.
Speaker 3: And Yahoo and giving him a carte blanche.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you look at the history of the
Speaker 4: relationship between American presidents and you know, Israel the prime
Speaker 4: ministers in war, it's usually the American role to pull
Speaker 4: the Israelis back from going too far. Yes, so you know,
Speaker 4: Eisenhower stopped these release from going too far with Suez.
Speaker 4: Let's see, it was Kissinger and Nixon who stoped from
Speaker 4: going too far. In nine seventy three, Reagan called up
Speaker 4: Knock and began in nineteen eighty two and said that
Speaker 4: stop bombing Lebanon, you're creating a holocaust, actually use that word.
Speaker 4: So it's historically been the American role not to encourage
Speaker 4: the Israelis to basically go to the limit, but to
Speaker 4: kind of pull them back before they do something that
Speaker 4: frankly is not in their own interests, never mind ours.
Speaker 4: And Biden kind of missed the opportunity to do that,
Speaker 4: to kind of set some boundaries on what America is
Speaker 4: willing to support. And I think it's been disastrous for
Speaker 4: the Israelis. I don't think that what they're doing is
Speaker 4: in their own interest. When they started bombing Gaza, I
Speaker 4: basically tweeted that I also got ratio for this, that yeah,
Speaker 4: Israel has a right to defend itself. What happened on
Speaker 4: October seventh was an outrage and an atrocity. And yet
Speaker 4: it's pretty obvious that indiscriminately bombing a civilian population in
Speaker 4: Gauza is going to backfire horribly on them, right, And
Speaker 4: that's what I see you happening.
Speaker 2: So I said that the most controversial thing I've spoken
Speaker 2: out on is Ukraine. I think the discussion you and
Speaker 2: I have had, why is this so difficult. So you
Speaker 2: and I swim in right wing circles. I think it's
Speaker 2: fair to say, or at least you have, you know,
Speaker 2: much longer than I have. What you and I are
Speaker 2: saying right here is anathema for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but it's self evidently obvious, especially if you're going to
Speaker 2: in play, if you were going to embrace a restraint
Speaker 2: philosophy whenever it comes to Ukraine. It equally applies to
Speaker 2: the enmeshment that we've had over some twenty some years
Speaker 2: in the Middle East with respect Israel, and you can
Speaker 2: say that we should, as you said, take a leading
Speaker 2: role and we should try to at least concur some
Speaker 2: restraints for our own sake, if not for you know,
Speaker 2: the survival of the Israeli state. But I don't see
Speaker 2: a lot of the discussion, David, amongst the right wing
Speaker 2: politicians that I am. What explains that?
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 4: Well, I think a lot of people think that the
Speaker 4: way to be quote pro Israel is just to support
Speaker 4: Israel no matter what they do, ye And I guess
Speaker 4: I don't think that's intellectually honest. I mean, look, I
Speaker 4: want Israel to survive and thrive. I just don't see
Speaker 4: how the current strategy that they're pursuing is in their
Speaker 4: long term interest. I mean, at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: here there's going to be what two million plus Palestinians
Speaker 4: in Gaza. There's another three million plus in the West Bank.
Speaker 4: Where are they going to go? What are you going
Speaker 4: to do with them? I mean, it seems to me
Speaker 4: that you're radicalizing that population even more. I mean by
Speaker 4: again by indiscriminately killing civilians, which I don't think you
Speaker 4: can argue that they're not.
Speaker 3: At this point.
Speaker 4: That you know, again you're turning this whole population, you're
Speaker 4: radicalizing them against you, and then again you're losing the
Speaker 4: support of the world, which you know may not matter
Speaker 4: in the next month or two, but eventually it seems
Speaker 4: like it's going to matter. It seems like you look
Speaker 4: at you look at polling of young people in America,
Speaker 4: like eighteen to twenty four year olds, really crazy poor
Speaker 4: result that of eighteen to twenty four year olds, the
Speaker 4: majority belief that Israel's just be handed over to Hamas. Yeah,
Speaker 4: now I think that's an insane view. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't score anything like that. But Israel's actions are because
Speaker 4: they're going so far are going to fement that type
Speaker 4: of backlash.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, we saw so much of a different
Speaker 2: after the Iraq War as well, in terms of backlash
Speaker 2: against the United States. It seems again so self evidently obvious.
Speaker 2: And yet, you know, we come back to this restraint
Speaker 2: is philosophy. That's actually something I wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: you a little bit about. I've noticed you. You're one
Speaker 2: of the few people I view as actually principled within
Speaker 2: this discussion. I think a lot of people are very,
Speaker 2: you know, less selectively restrained dis whenever they want to
Speaker 2: be and then not. So who are the people what
Speaker 2: help formed your views? So I've seen you've been attacked previously.
Speaker 2: I think you were on c SPAN in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two advocating for the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: So give us some political philosophy.
Speaker 2: Background of yourself. I you're involved with the teal folks
Speaker 2: and all of that. So what did you read for
Speaker 2: you to arrive at the place that you are today,
Speaker 2: which I think is very unique for a lot of
Speaker 2: people in your position.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so I think the two intellectual giants for
Speaker 4: me are John Meerscheimer and Pappy Buchanan. Yes, absolutely, So,
Speaker 4: you know, pat sort of represents this isolationist school of thought,
Speaker 4: and then Meersteim represents this realist school of thought. When
Speaker 4: the two of them agree, I think you can take
Speaker 4: that to the bank like one hundred percent accurate, and
Speaker 4: then when they disagree, you have to think a little
Speaker 4: bit harder about Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, well, so what were some of
Speaker 2: the big breaking points for you post Iraq?
Speaker 1: Like what happened? Just take us back to that time
Speaker 1: as somebody who was kind of involved in the discourse.
Speaker 4: Well, I wasn't really involved in the discourse around Iraq.
Speaker 4: I mean, some people doing OPO on me discovered some
Speaker 4: clts that that where I was really promoting a book
Speaker 4: about about political correctness at Stanford at the time, and
Speaker 4: then I got a question by Iraq, and really I
Speaker 4: just repeated the conventional wisdom at the time. And I
Speaker 4: think that when I saw the result of the Iraq
Speaker 4: War and that we had been led into it, I
Speaker 4: mean so egregiously, and I don't think there's any other
Speaker 4: word for the untruth that we were told about it,
Speaker 4: that started to really change my point of view on
Speaker 4: this Neokon forum policy. I mean, are going into Iraq
Speaker 4: and the and I mean it wasn't just Iraq who
Speaker 4: was also staying in Afghanistan for twenty years. It was
Speaker 4: the you know, the covert war we waged against Syria,
Speaker 4: what we did in Libya. I mean, these things were
Speaker 4: it was a total fiasco. We unleashed you know, incredible
Speaker 4: amounts of death and destruction, created this huge refugee problem.
Speaker 3: In any event, I.
Speaker 4: Don't need to recite all of that, but yeah, I
Speaker 4: think anybody who lived through that and didn't reconsider American's
Speaker 4: foreign policy and to really start asking questions about the
Speaker 4: foreign policy establishment that gave us those wars, Yes, hasn't
Speaker 4: been paying attention.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. Libya was a big one for me.
Speaker 2: I will say just you know, personally, I want to,
Speaker 2: you know, just shift gears a little bit.
Speaker 1: You talk a lot about free speech.
Speaker 2: You've helped Elon, you know, kind of with the takeover
Speaker 2: of Twitter. So we've been more than a year or
Speaker 2: so in that. Now what's your assessment. Do you think
Speaker 2: free speech is better on Twitter?
Speaker 1: Is it worse? What do you think?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's much better. I mean, thank goodness Elon did that.
Speaker 4: It's the only the fact or the fact that Elon
Speaker 4: decided to acquire Twitter. I think it's the only reason
Speaker 4: we have meaningful free speech online anymore. You have to remember,
Speaker 4: it's not just about the fact that he rolled back,
Speaker 4: you know what Twitter was doing. It's also the fact
Speaker 4: that that censorship movement had a momentum to it, and
Speaker 4: they kept adding new categories of thought and opinion that
Speaker 4: you couldn't you couldn't say. I mean, imagine if we
Speaker 4: had this Ukraine war under the old Twitter management.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, remember, like during COVID, there were all sorts of
Speaker 4: positions that we now know are true that you couldn't
Speaker 4: say without getting censored exactly. Look, it's the censorship, it's
Speaker 4: protein and morphs in order to protect official narratives. At
Speaker 4: least that's what it was doing and still does in
Speaker 4: other major tech companies. And so I think that it
Speaker 4: would problem had gotten worse and worse if Elon hadn't
Speaker 4: essentially pulled an intervention by buying Twitter.
Speaker 2: So the other thing is, I know e've ben more
Speaker 2: recently involved in electoral politics. You did this the launch
Speaker 2: with Governor DeSantis, and I know you supported him, or
Speaker 2: at least I think you have something for him.
Speaker 1: So what's your s of what went wrong for that campaign?
Speaker 1: Are you talking a little bit about it?
Speaker 2: But I mean a lot of people pointing to the
Speaker 2: x space that you guys launched on.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was a miss? I mean, not
Speaker 1: your fault. It was good to do, but on his part,
Speaker 1: you know, was it a mistake for him to do that?
Speaker 1: Do you think he was too online? What went wrong
Speaker 1: for him? What do you think?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think that that Twitter space was
Speaker 4: that big deal. We got started fifteen minutes late, and
Speaker 4: then the people people are always looking for something to
Speaker 4: some fault. Fine, Look, I just think that desantss's main
Speaker 4: problem is that the party wasn't willing or ready to
Speaker 4: move on from Trump. And you know, Trump would have
Speaker 4: to like absolutely botch his campaign, and then the answer
Speaker 4: would be have to be absolutely perfect in order to
Speaker 4: have a chance, and or maybe maybe it might may
Speaker 4: not even work. And the reality is is that Trump
Speaker 4: is still pretty much, you know, at or near the
Speaker 4: top of his game. I mean, I think that when
Speaker 4: Trump did that CNN town hall and he kind of
Speaker 4: walked into the lions Den and he kind of pulled
Speaker 4: out of his pocket the tweets that he said, look,
Speaker 4: I'm January sixth, I tweeted this, this, this.
Speaker 3: He was ready for them, That's yeah, he was. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Kitlyn Collins had the whole C and N studio inter
Speaker 4: ear piece trying to get Trump and they couldn't get him.
Speaker 4: And I think everyone's like, Okay, this guy still on
Speaker 4: the top of his game. I think that was it.
Speaker 4: And and you know, look, Justsances didn't run a perfect campaign,
Speaker 4: but I don't think it mattered. I mean, the reality
Speaker 4: is the Republican Party is still likes Trump.
Speaker 2: So then politically, what do you think is going to
Speaker 2: happen in this election? What's your assessment?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, if you believe the polling right now,
Speaker 4: Trump's gonna win. So it's gonna be Trump versus Biden.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a you.
Speaker 2: And I are talking onesdays. It's definitely good to be
Speaker 2: Trump versus b controversy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's funny how we've been talking for
Speaker 4: months and months and months about whether it's going to
Speaker 4: be Trump. You know, it was, it was always inevitable.
Speaker 4: It was sort of unthinkable and yet inevitable at the
Speaker 4: same time. So, you know, I think we really need
Speaker 4: a change an administration in Washington. I get really worried
Speaker 4: about this administration about whether about how objective they can
Speaker 4: be on what our next steps in Ukraine are, because
Speaker 4: just some cost fallacy that they may feel the need
Speaker 4: to protect their previous policy choices avoid having egg on
Speaker 4: their face by continually escalating the situation in Ukraine, and
Speaker 4: Bind by no means has been the craziest on the
Speaker 4: Ukraine War. I mean, there are people in Washington, like
Speaker 4: Lindsey Graham, even like Mitch McConnell who wanted more escalations sooner,
Speaker 4: or like McCrone in Europe. So you know there are
Speaker 4: forces pulling him in a direction of even more escalation.
Speaker 4: And then you know, since he got us into this war,
Speaker 4: this proxy war, he may his administration may have the
Speaker 4: incentive to really keep doubling down. So I think it's
Speaker 4: really important to have a change administration.
Speaker 2: My worry with the Trump administration is I covered it
Speaker 2: extensively at the time. I interviewed him four times at
Speaker 2: that time, as you could always see that he didn't
Speaker 2: particularly care about what was going on. He outsourced, I mean,
Speaker 2: he cared about a few things. We would outsource things.
Speaker 1: John Bolton or you know, whoever was running at h
Speaker 1: r McMaster and these people were nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pompeia, I mean, these people are more psychotic than
Speaker 2: many of the people in the Biden administration. Do you
Speaker 2: think that Trump has learned his lesson? Do you think
Speaker 2: that things will be different in the Trump too kind
Speaker 2: of policy? Because that's the biggest question to me when
Speaker 2: I want to change the administration two one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: But with him, it genuinely is like I never know
Speaker 2: which way he's going to go.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the biggest knock on the first Trump
Speaker 4: term was personnel, and that Trump ended up choosing a
Speaker 4: lot of people who didn't support either his policy or
Speaker 4: at least his policy instincts, right, And my suspicion is
Speaker 4: he's learned his lesson, if for no other reason than
Speaker 4: all those people betrayed him. So I think that he
Speaker 4: hopefully he's done with all those people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well I hope So, David, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me, my friend.
Speaker 2: Really appreciate it all in podcasts, you can go and subscribe,
Speaker 2: highly recommend it, and we'll have a link down to
Speaker 2: his Twitter as well where you can go and check
Speaker 2: him out.
Speaker 1: So thank you, David, Thanks for taking the time here.
Speaker 5: Hey, Guys, if you like that video, go to Breakingpoints
Speaker 5: dot com, become a premium subscriber, and help us build
Speaker 5: the best independent media organization on the planet.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're subscriber funded. We're building something new. We
Speaker 2: want to replace these failing mainstream media organizations
Speaker 5: So again to subscribe its Breakingpoints dot com