Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Caddy arm Strong
Speaker 1: and and he Armstrong and.
Speaker 2: Brad Studio See see Senior A dimly lit room deep
Speaker 2: with from the fowls of the Armstrong and Getty Communications
Speaker 2: Compound to kick off a brand new week, and today
Speaker 2: we're under the tutelage of our general manager, Voladimir z
Speaker 2: A Lensco.
Speaker 1: No, what happened? Good lord? The spicy Times gets spicier?
Speaker 1: How y'all doing new week, new month? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: pregnant with possibility. It's very exciting. I'm a little hungover
Speaker 1: from a big Oscar party. What a wing ding that was? Wow?
Speaker 2: Well, I had like four different costumes at ordering the night,
Speaker 2: so that was a little stressful and I probably drank
Speaker 2: too much Shardenay and got out a hand. Oscar parties
Speaker 2: used to be a thing. I doubt they are for
Speaker 2: very many people anymore. Seems so incredibly lame. I would
Speaker 2: like to see a documentary studying people who still have
Speaker 2: Oscar parties. Right And by the way, I was lifestyles,
Speaker 2: I believe I was actually thinking. Since we have started
Speaker 2: on a number of new stations recently that are new
Speaker 2: to our product and everything like that brief.
Speaker 1: Description of what we are.
Speaker 2: We are a dramedy about sex workers, if that helps
Speaker 2: exactly explain. One of the most interesting things that's ever
Speaker 2: happened happened like five minutes before our show ended on Friday,
Speaker 2: So that was unfortunate that it couldn't have happened like
Speaker 2: an hour earlier or something like that, so we wouldn't
Speaker 2: miss it for two and a half days. And of course,
Speaker 2: being whatever that was that occurred in the Oval office,
Speaker 2: one of the strangest things anybody's ever seen, right, And
Speaker 2: the more I learned about what went into it in
Speaker 2: the context, the more interesting it becomes. It interrupts some
Speaker 2: of the simplistic shouting at each other narratives, but.
Speaker 1: I wish to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: There was a way to have any conversation ever, that
Speaker 2: wasn't run through the filter of AREU for Trump or
Speaker 2: against him?
Speaker 1: Which dominates every conversation.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, it makes it very difficult to figure out what
Speaker 2: people think well, and for a significant part of America,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure how significant. It's hard to say,
Speaker 2: because social media is such a it's a distorting lens.
Speaker 1: It is a lens. It shows you something.
Speaker 2: But it it distorts the picture in a way that
Speaker 2: it's difficult to quantify. But even more than it becoming
Speaker 2: a just a simple question of whether you like Trump
Speaker 2: or not, it seems like people who hate Trump, for instance,
Speaker 2: can argue A and hate B on Monday, and if
Speaker 2: Trump changes his mind, right, they love B and hate
Speaker 2: A on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Right, That's what I meant. Sides, that's very difficult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have mentioned a couple of times. Mark Alpern
Speaker 2: wrote a paragraph I don't know how many weeks ago
Speaker 2: it was now where he said, the all the talk
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. Is this grand deal that they're
Speaker 2: trying to put together that includes China, Russia, Greenland, Thailand, Ukraine,
Speaker 2: everything coming together in one grand bargain. Aprin said, it's
Speaker 2: all the talk in DC. You can't go anywhere with
Speaker 2: any audio may talk about whish. I find interesting given
Speaker 2: the fact that it hasn't really surfaced anywhere except for
Speaker 2: today in the Wall Street Journal, the editorial board has
Speaker 2: Trump's old World Order? Does he want deals with Russia
Speaker 2: and China to carve up the planet. He should tell
Speaker 2: Americans with the idea that if this is part of
Speaker 2: a grand strategy, maybe we should all be have an
Speaker 2: idea of what's being discussed. Right, right, It's not the
Speaker 2: sort of thing you spring on the world as a surprise.
Speaker 1: Because maybe.
Speaker 2: How belligerent the Trump administration is toward Ukraine would make
Speaker 2: more sense if you were seeing it as part of
Speaker 2: a deal that includes Taiwan, Greenland, China and a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of other things. Correct, correct, Well, here's an indication
Speaker 2: of whether that might hold water. The Russian Vladimir Putin's
Speaker 2: spokesholes set a couple of really interesting things over the weekend. Interesting, troubling, horrifying,
Speaker 2: depending on your perspective. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, quote,
Speaker 2: the new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.
Speaker 2: This largely coincides with our vision. Coincides, I'm sorry. So
Speaker 2: that's interesting to have the Kremlin spokesperson say that the
Speaker 2: Trump policies coincide with our vision, which is crazy. But
Speaker 2: the other thing they said to your point is, and
Speaker 2: this is Russian State TV, now everything is being decided
Speaker 2: inside a big triangle Russia, China, in the US. Within
Speaker 2: this the new construction of the world will come to fruition.
Speaker 2: The EU is a united political force no longer exists.
Speaker 2: So they're talking about the big three way divide up
Speaker 2: of the globe into spheres of influence. Wow, when do
Speaker 2: we all get to find out about this? When are
Speaker 2: people going to tell us how this is going, what
Speaker 2: this is going to be, and then what's the reaction
Speaker 2: to it as it is either announced or just becomes
Speaker 2: more clear bit by bit right.
Speaker 1: Having read.
Speaker 2: Fairly famous book Paris nineteen nineteen from the end of
Speaker 2: World War One, when the major powers, many of the
Speaker 2: same powers got together and carved up the world, which
Speaker 2: has caused many problems.
Speaker 1: That wasn't really discussed with the world either.
Speaker 2: A bunch of important diplomats got together in a room
Speaker 2: and carved up the world and came out and said, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's the way it's going to be for the next.
Speaker 1: Century and a half. Here's your new borders.
Speaker 2: Enjoy them, Enjoy them. And so maybe that's what's going
Speaker 2: to happen here.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean this, I realize this all
Speaker 1: sounds very.
Speaker 2: Lofty or or like it's from Marvel Universe or something
Speaker 2: like that. I got to talk about I went to
Speaker 2: the new Captain America. Boy's that a suck fest? Oh?
Speaker 1: No, God was honorable? Wow? Some Captain America great again? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll make Marvel grade again.
Speaker 2: Just to know they've got they've gone off the rails,
Speaker 2: as many people have pointed out.
Speaker 1: But I was like, I say, oh, just like some there's.
Speaker 2: Some overarching sort of players involved in the structuring the
Speaker 2: world that the rest of the people don't know. I
Speaker 2: feel like that's is that what's going on now? I
Speaker 2: don't know, but but my point being, maybe what the
Speaker 2: the thing with uh, the way Trump's handling Putin and
Speaker 2: everything like that makes sense in that structure.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess we'll find out someday. And again, what's.
Speaker 2: The reaction to that going to be among congressional leaders,
Speaker 2: your your cabinet people, your Marco's Rubio for instance, Because
Speaker 2: I remember from the first Trump term and this one's different. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it's been much discussed that he's figured out who he
Speaker 2: really wants around him, as opposed to just take the
Speaker 2: other people's recommendation for what you know, wise and old
Speaker 2: Washington hand he should hire now it's his people. But
Speaker 2: I remember that folks were with him, and they were
Speaker 2: kind of with him, and then he fired him because
Speaker 2: obviously behind the scenes they were telling him, look, this
Speaker 2: can't happen.
Speaker 1: The list is long, John Bolton and go from there.
Speaker 2: I just wonder how long a Marco Rubio, for instance,
Speaker 2: will hang with this new vision.
Speaker 1: How one he likes it, I don't know.
Speaker 2: He sure seemed all in yesterday on whichever talk show
Speaker 2: I saw him on.
Speaker 1: He seemed all in.
Speaker 2: He mean, he seemed as a forceful a mouthpiece for
Speaker 2: Trump and Vance's view as you could possibly get. Now,
Speaker 2: his old National Security advisor H. R. McMaster, who he
Speaker 2: did get rid of in the way that you just described,
Speaker 2: was on one of the talk shows yesterday, and he's
Speaker 2: not digging what's going on at all.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: So it was a real there's no way that was
Speaker 2: a good thing that happened on Friday. Isn't And it
Speaker 2: wouldn't that had been great to avoid that by everyone
Speaker 2: unless you are in favor of the brave new tripolar
Speaker 2: world order, divide up the globe Thingyn's great?
Speaker 1: Even then wouldn't you rather do that behind closed doors? Uh?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe the A certain chunk of the Magna crowd
Speaker 2: seems very excited now that we can all gang up
Speaker 2: on Zelensky and call him all the bad things that
Speaker 2: some people were two weeks ago. Some of the same
Speaker 2: people who are now jumping on that bandwagon were saying
Speaker 2: the opposite two weeks ago, which is curious. And Rubio again,
Speaker 2: who went from looking like he was going to vomit
Speaker 2: Friday to being more gung ho than anybody on Sunday.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting. But yeah, well maybe he I
Speaker 1: thought he.
Speaker 2: I was reading Rubio through my lens of the way
Speaker 2: I saw the thing at least on Friday, and I
Speaker 2: thought Marco Rubio sinking there in the couch, he was
Speaker 2: fairly well portrayed by Saturday Night Live. I thought it
Speaker 2: was because he was upset, disappointed, horrified by the way
Speaker 2: Trump Advance were acting. Turns out, at least way he's
Speaker 2: portraying it yesterday, he was horrified by the way Zelensky
Speaker 2: was acting, right, and just like, dude, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: You're blowing up this whole thing. Oh my god, is
Speaker 2: the way Marco was thinking sitting there on the couch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that rings true.
Speaker 2: Honestly, if you didn't get some of the contexts, if
Speaker 2: you just jumped in. At the point that it went sideways,
Speaker 2: it looked like Trump and Vance had lost their minds
Speaker 2: and were just being horrific bullies. And there are some
Speaker 2: aspects of what they said and the way they said
Speaker 2: it that seemed very.
Speaker 1: Like schoolyard bully to me, honestly.
Speaker 2: But I was reminded of of the incident in when
Speaker 2: was it twenty eleven something like that, when Net and
Speaker 2: Yahoo came to the White House and lectured Obama. I
Speaker 2: hated that, right, even though we asked that Obama. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a Net Yahoo fan and didn't really like Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: I did not like a foreign leader coming and election.
Speaker 2: The president sitting there in front of the fireplace hated
Speaker 2: that well, right, as did Obama as people, and they
Speaker 2: just beat the crap out of Net Yahoo behind it
Speaker 2: mostly behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: This time is in front of the scenes.
Speaker 2: And as Trump himself famously said, well, let's make for
Speaker 2: good TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say that it is true. We should start
Speaker 1: the show officially.
Speaker 2: We got plenty of time to talk about a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff that's going on in the world. I'm
Speaker 2: Jack Armstrong, he's Joe Getty on this. Oh, it's a
Speaker 2: brand new month. We got a new month going on
Speaker 2: March the third, the year twenty twenty five. We are
Speaker 2: armstrong e gedy, and we approved this program. Okay, let's
Speaker 2: begin that official according the FCC rules regulations.
Speaker 1: Here we go at mark. Before we go any.
Speaker 3: Further, I want you to know we did not use
Speaker 3: AI to make this show. No AI, Yeah, no AI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we would never do that. We use child labor. Hey,
Speaker 1: there's still people.
Speaker 3: Of course, we lost a little billy, but that's sad anyway, WHOA.
Speaker 2: I thought Conan was very charming in a unwinnable situation
Speaker 2: of a four hour telecast for something nobody cares about anymore.
Speaker 2: The Oscars. I forgot it was on. I watched a
Speaker 2: fair amount of it just because I saw. You know,
Speaker 2: I was hoping for my movie, the one movie I
Speaker 2: saw it to do well, and it did not. I
Speaker 2: saw the Bob Dylan movie, and then they ended up
Speaker 2: going to the sex Worker movie, which I did not
Speaker 2: take my kids do. And I only go to movies
Speaker 2: I can take.
Speaker 1: My kids do.
Speaker 2: Should have Bob Dylan, Mary a Russian oligarch apparently from
Speaker 2: that normal something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, I just.
Speaker 2: Feed out the other movies I'd never heard of. To
Speaker 2: win sounds great. I'll bet I'd like it. Made it
Speaker 2: for six million dollars. I love that. I think that's
Speaker 2: really cool. Anyway, Uh so we got Katie's headlines on
Speaker 2: the way. We got to get to some more of
Speaker 2: the analysis of what's going on in the world, because
Speaker 2: it's it's complicated, man, And we got mail bag this
Speaker 2: hour and all kinds of good stuff.
Speaker 1: Hope you can stay here.
Speaker 2: There's no reason to complain about the oscars because you
Speaker 2: didn't watch them or probably even know they were on.
Speaker 2: And America has long since decided they don't care about this,
Speaker 2: so there's no reason to continue shoveling dirt on that. Sure,
Speaker 2: but I watching some of it last night, I continue
Speaker 2: to marvel at how important they think their craft is.
Speaker 2: They think they're curing cancer by making these movies every year,
Speaker 2: the way they talk about them constantly.
Speaker 1: The hottery film plays in American society, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't.
Speaker 2: No one. We're done with work and we're tired. Sometimes
Speaker 2: we watch something to entertain ourselves and then we forget
Speaker 2: about it after it happened. Some of them you're really
Speaker 2: liking you talk about now and then, but they don't
Speaker 2: change the world.
Speaker 1: Get over yourself. Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2: It's fine way to make a living. Go about it quietly,
Speaker 2: which in plays. Hey, let's figure out who's reporting what.
Speaker 1: It's the lead story with Katie Green Katie, thank you, guys.
Speaker 4: Starting with ABC News, Zelenski thanks United States for support
Speaker 4: after a week of tough to play lee and urges
Speaker 4: real peace.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to get sidetrack. We're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about this a lot, so I'll hold
Speaker 2: my tongue now.
Speaker 4: From Breitbart dot com, Van's family moved to quote undisclosed
Speaker 4: location after pro Ukrainian protesters disrupt his ski trip.
Speaker 1: Oh I got hate to have your ski trip disrupted.
Speaker 4: From NPR, Israel stops the delivery of aid to Gaza
Speaker 4: until Hamas accepts us ceasefire extension.
Speaker 2: My only comment on on that is I was listening
Speaker 2: to NPR this morning to punish myself for the bad
Speaker 2: things I've done, and they had quite the report on this,
Speaker 2: and the one thing that struck me was they never
Speaker 2: even suggest that Hamas or the quote unquote Palestinian people
Speaker 2: have any agency whatsoever. Their entire existence is the cruel
Speaker 2: and or merciful things Israel does to them or for them.
Speaker 2: Their actions choices are never discussed as if they're part
Speaker 2: of the.
Speaker 1: Formula of this. It's interesting the lefty point of view
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 4: From the New York Times, Trump turns up trade pressure
Speaker 4: on China in response to inaction on fentanyl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that might fit into the whole carving
Speaker 2: up the world fanging We're gonna get rush on our
Speaker 2: side to counterbalance China and whatever I'm reading about the
Speaker 2: Wall Street.
Speaker 4: Journal from NBC, the Pentagon to send nearly three thousand
Speaker 4: additional active duty troops to the US Mexico border.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 4: From CNN, Adam Sandler's trademark casual wear mocked.
Speaker 1: By Oscars host Conan O'Brien. That was pretty funny. He
Speaker 1: went full.
Speaker 4: Fetterman at the Oscars to tell oh, yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Only thing I can say positively about the Oscars is
Speaker 2: that some of the tuxedos are cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. I mean they go so far.
Speaker 2: I mean some of them are a little over the top,
Speaker 2: especially for a zoftig middle aged man like myself.
Speaker 1: I couldn't pull off those looks.
Speaker 2: But the whole it's not just black and white. You
Speaker 2: can go interesting colors of I like that from.
Speaker 4: The New York Post Texas may rename New York strip
Speaker 4: steak indirect at shot liberal empire state that shouldn't get
Speaker 4: the credit.
Speaker 1: They're going to rename it the Texas strip steak.
Speaker 2: Okay instead of the New York strip, kind of like
Speaker 2: the Gulf of America of steaks exactly.
Speaker 4: And finally from the Babylon Bee, insult to injury. Trump
Speaker 4: changes Netflix password and now Zelensky has to get his
Speaker 4: own account never ends.
Speaker 2: Ah, the lighter side, Oh my god, No, getting the
Speaker 2: lighter side of.
Speaker 1: A horrible, horrible war, I mean, just brutal. Yeah, is ish,
Speaker 1: He's just right.
Speaker 2: My favorite analysis I read let me try that again.
Speaker 2: My favorite analysis I read of this whole thing from
Speaker 2: a great opinion writer at some point this hour, and
Speaker 2: I thought, put it in pretty good perspective. And we
Speaker 2: got a bunch of other stuff. Joe's got mailbag. Mail
Speaker 2: Bag is very interesting and revealing.
Speaker 1: Oh cool. I will just say that.
Speaker 2: I can't wait if you miss a segment to get
Speaker 2: the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty. I think The.
Speaker 5: Last line in the President's truth social post is the
Speaker 5: one to focus in on, and that is will be
Speaker 5: ready to re engage when they're ready to make peace,
Speaker 5: which is clearly what the president's goal is here. He's
Speaker 5: trying to get Russia to the table to see there's
Speaker 5: a way to bring about an end to this conflict.
Speaker 5: That's his goal, that's his only goal, and you know,
Speaker 5: hopefully we'll get to a point where that's possible.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny that clip from Marco Rubio from yesterday.
Speaker 2: I felt like, after watching that whole thing on Friday,
Speaker 2: I finally understood Trump's position, but I hadn't understood it before,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure is Zelensky had understood it before.
Speaker 1: What Trump's trying to say.
Speaker 2: Is, look, we're there to help you if you want
Speaker 2: to end the war, but we're not interested in you
Speaker 2: continuing fighting the war. So you can't just like continue
Speaker 2: to fight the war once we commit to helping you, right,
Speaker 2: And I don't think that was presented in a way
Speaker 2: that President Zlynsky understood or something at some point prior
Speaker 2: to that. There were a number of aspects of that
Speaker 2: that that bothered me, including I think maybe some of
Speaker 2: the subtleties of language that were lost, which turn appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine. Oh man, I made Bernie Sanders sound
Speaker 2: like Pavaratti. Oh my god, one of the Flemish masters there.
Speaker 1: That was rough. I'm getting over whatever I had last week.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, you're in the clearing out the system phase.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2: At about sixty percent I think, But I lived my
Speaker 2: life at about seventy two percent, So right, you know
Speaker 2: I'm close to normal.
Speaker 1: Got it? Just for inflation or something like that. What
Speaker 1: was I gonna say? Oh yeah, I can't imagine.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't speak a second language at all, but
Speaker 2: I can't imagine if I did, getting into a heated
Speaker 2: argument in somebody else's language and trying to keep up
Speaker 2: and not doing great harm by not exactly the right
Speaker 2: words and not exactly the right tone because you don't
Speaker 2: speak the language right, and particularly if people are throwing
Speaker 2: around what are known as idiomatic phrases, meaning slang and expressions.
Speaker 2: We all understand the literal meaning of as native English speakers,
Speaker 2: but somebody learning the language it would be completely lost
Speaker 2: on them. You have no cards. I'm not playing cards?
Speaker 2: Is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. If you don't
Speaker 2: understand that, that means in a negotiation you have few leverages,
Speaker 2: a few levers to use.
Speaker 1: Well, when he said what do you mean by diplomacy? JD?
Speaker 2: Which seemed to really set JD. Vance off, that's when
Speaker 2: things went really crazy. He might have said that completely
Speaker 2: differently or different tone if he was speaking his own language.
Speaker 2: I mean, you don't know anyway, I thought. One of
Speaker 2: the most interesting things I came across over the weekend
Speaker 2: was Ross Douthought's opinion piece in The Wall and the
Speaker 2: New York Times rather now his co conservative using my
Speaker 2: finger quotes in the New York Times, they you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're conservatives are not exactly.
Speaker 1: The same as you get everywhere else.
Speaker 2: But Brett Stevens was His piece was just absolutely this
Speaker 2: was a disaster. Trump is a villain, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Ross Duthought wrote this piece, Trump and Vance are stripping
Speaker 2: away foreign policy illusions, and I thought this was really interesting,
Speaker 2: and we talked.
Speaker 1: A little bit about this last week. Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger remarked in twenty eighteen, maybe one of those
Speaker 2: figures in history who appears from time to time to
Speaker 2: mark the end of an era and force it to
Speaker 2: give up its old pretenses.
Speaker 1: Which I know that i'd ever heard that quote.
Speaker 2: That general first term comment might as well be marching
Speaker 2: orders for Trump's second term foreign policy, from policy and
Speaker 2: speeches to Friday's blow up in the Oval Office. The
Speaker 2: president of Ukraine, everything Trump is doing and saying, and
Speaker 2: everything is Vice President is saying and doing is ruthlessly
Speaker 2: stripping away pretenses in the United States, around the United States,
Speaker 2: and around the world.
Speaker 1: And he gives some examples. Here you go, a pretense.
Speaker 2: The United States is capable of playing the hegemonic role
Speaker 2: that played twenty years ago, fully supporting democratic allies in
Speaker 2: every region, standing ready to fight wars across multiple theaters,
Speaker 2: refusing any compromise with authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: The reality America is overstretched.
Speaker 2: A more multipolar world requires making deals with unpleasant regimes,
Speaker 2: and we need to recalibrate and retrench in ways that
Speaker 2: will require much more of our.
Speaker 1: Allies come in on that.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, I had just read somewhere else, and I
Speaker 2: was trying to find the citation that Ross is somebody
Speaker 2: high in the administration's foreign policy whisperer, and he's very
Speaker 2: big on what he just suggested Trump is doing. He
Speaker 2: is cheerleading in that piece, even as he described well,
Speaker 2: which fit, which fits in the thing we were talking
Speaker 2: about earlier, about this grand bargain that might be working
Speaker 2: behind the scenes with China, Taiwan, Greenland, rushie, all the
Speaker 2: different things at one piece. Here's another pretense, a pretense
Speaker 2: our European allies are strong nations and equal partners and
Speaker 2: protecting the security of the world. The reality Europe has
Speaker 2: been badly misgoverned. Its economic position is perilous, its demographic
Speaker 2: situation is miserable, in its military capacities of atrophied, and
Speaker 2: most of the chest thumping about a revival of European
Speaker 2: power is empty talk and fantasy politics.
Speaker 1: That is correct. Definitely, definitely think that's true.
Speaker 2: You know, even the Rumsfeld way back in the day
Speaker 2: was hinting toward that with his old europe talk.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not what it used to be, all right.
Speaker 2: I've been fairly staunchly in favor of helping Ukraine defeat Russia,
Speaker 2: not the idiotic half measures of the Biden administration. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm on the records having said that, but I was
Speaker 2: reading it might have been a journal I can't remember
Speaker 2: Europe to forge new piece plan, it's going to be
Speaker 2: lean much more heavily on European power and prestige and
Speaker 2: the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And I read that and it just it struck me
Speaker 1: as pathetic.
Speaker 2: I mean, just just sad because they don't have the
Speaker 2: capacity to influence events practically at all. Well that's that's
Speaker 2: an overstatement, but they don't have much capacity to do that.
Speaker 2: It was just it was exactly what ross do thought,
Speaker 2: was just talking about faded powers still shining up their
Speaker 2: metals and putting on their moth edn you know, uniforms
Speaker 2: of significance. And by the way, this end of an
Speaker 2: era and doing away with old pretenses. I've had to
Speaker 2: do it in my own life a few times. It's
Speaker 2: not a pleasant experience. It's not without its bumps. Whenever
Speaker 2: you owed, indeed, whenever you have to do that well.
Speaker 2: And I'm presuming that the people in your personal life
Speaker 2: that you're describing were not armed to the teeth with
Speaker 2: advanced weaponry.
Speaker 1: Right, another pretense.
Speaker 2: With enough military aid and moral support, the Ukrainians can
Speaker 2: roll back the Russians, secure their pre war borders, and
Speaker 2: eventually join NATO.
Speaker 1: The reality the war is stalemated.
Speaker 2: There's no path to the Ukrainian victory short of a
Speaker 2: direct American intervention, which ain't gonna happen. Some kind of
Speaker 2: negotiated settlement is inevitable. NATO membership was never in the cards,
Speaker 2: and there's value in speaking more openly about uncomfortable realities.
Speaker 2: People need to know that the world is not what
Speaker 2: it was in two thousand or even in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: They need to understand that the kind of issues that
Speaker 2: Jade Vance raised in its controversial speech in Europe about
Speaker 2: free speech and how they need to step up to
Speaker 2: the place and their.
Speaker 1: Native support and all that sort of stuff is real.
Speaker 2: And people need to understand that the armiscist that the
Speaker 2: Trump administration seems to want to negotiate with Russia may
Speaker 2: not look all that different from the endgame that would
Speaker 2: have developed on a democratic president. It would just taken longer.
Speaker 2: And I think that's almost certainly true. Yeah, more death
Speaker 2: and destruction.
Speaker 1: I see, I can't.
Speaker 2: I have trouble not getting backtracked to the conversation. I
Speaker 2: don't like the way JD and Trump presented a lot
Speaker 2: of this stuff to you. I think they put Zelensky
Speaker 2: in an impossible position. How could you sit there and
Speaker 2: get lectured about your own people dying?
Speaker 1: I would I might have thrown punches.
Speaker 2: I found that aspect of it sickening, literally sickening. Yes,
Speaker 2: you don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand what's
Speaker 2: going on here. You have many funerals.
Speaker 1: I've been to you. Any mangled children I've seen being
Speaker 1: yelled at? Your people are dying? Yeah, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: where of that. Yeah, there's you know.
Speaker 2: That's that's why I am so annoyed, exhausted by the whole.
Speaker 2: Trump's one hundred percent right all the time in a
Speaker 2: saint or He's the new hitler and a villain. And
Speaker 2: even if he advocates something as clearly good as opening
Speaker 2: the schools, I'm against it. And if he says the
Speaker 2: bat virus came out of Wuhan, I'm going to stand
Speaker 2: up for Chinese communists. I mean, whether trump ophelia or
Speaker 2: Trumpophobia are both just so.
Speaker 1: Dumb wears me out.
Speaker 2: So it is Rossterusat's a column there in the main
Speaker 2: on the button. Is he just you know, is he
Speaker 2: describing reality? And we need to adjust to it and
Speaker 2: realize the old world is moving away, blah blah blah. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, super, but does that mean that that meeting
Speaker 2: was not ugly and unnecessarily just bullying and nasty and
Speaker 2: a bad look. I will close with this couple of
Speaker 2: paragraphs about that, right after we tell you about Simply
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Speaker 2: I'll try to wrap this up fast because I want
Speaker 2: to get to mail bag and hear what people had
Speaker 2: to say about all the stuff that happened over the weekend.
Speaker 2: But so after Ross Duthought just said, you know, Trump's
Speaker 2: just ushering in reality, which I think he agrees with.
Speaker 2: I agree with their here's a little he could have
Speaker 2: handled it better. Pretense in foreign policy is not always
Speaker 2: the same thing as self deception. It's also just a
Speaker 2: form of being polite, of circling uncomfortable subjects and making
Speaker 2: countries that are in your debt or whom you need
Speaker 2: to strong arm feel like they're friends and not just subjects.
Speaker 2: It's a way to give foreign leaders space to do
Speaker 2: what you want them to do while they are also
Speaker 2: handled their own domestic audiences, making sure that you aren't
Speaker 2: accidentally empowering parties hostile to your policies. Most of the
Speaker 2: foreign policy team around Trump, so far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: imagines itself, doing what realist Republican presidents like Dwight Eisenhower
Speaker 2: and Richard Nixon have done in the past, matching means
Speaker 2: and ends, accepting lesser evils to avoid greater ones, and
Speaker 2: delivering necessary shock therapy for a system of alliances that
Speaker 2: needs it. But those realist presidents were also extremely fluent
Speaker 2: in the language of diplomacy. They could wax idealistic when
Speaker 2: the situation called for it, speak smoothly even when they
Speaker 2: are acting ruthlessly, and settle allies down as well as
Speaker 2: trigger them. Trump does not speak diplomatically and never will.
Speaker 2: But his first term foreign policy succeeded with the president
Speaker 2: playing the heavy while his appointees offered normalcy.
Speaker 1: His second term to date needs more of that balance.
Speaker 2: Someone to twist arms and someone to smooth feathers, someone
Speaker 2: to speak frankly, and someone to keep the frankest truth
Speaker 2: telling off camera.
Speaker 1: I would say that is true.
Speaker 2: He did have some well of those kind of diplomats
Speaker 2: that can kind of massage things along with his blunt talk.
Speaker 1: There was no massaging anything on Friday.
Speaker 2: Because in international relations, in the life of a nation,
Speaker 2: the deal today is important, but how people feel of
Speaker 2: and what happens the next time, and the next time
Speaker 2: and the next time really matters. You can't, you know,
Speaker 2: stick a knife in somebody's hand and make them sign
Speaker 2: a document and say, there we go. It's all settled
Speaker 2: down because you're gonna need them or want them or
Speaker 2: something down the road. Yeah, if you've ever have been
Speaker 2: a boss or in a situation like that, walking people
Speaker 2: toward the decision you want them to make is much
Speaker 2: better than just forcing someone to do it, or as
Speaker 2: a parent or a spouse. Yeah, perfect example. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: we got to get the mailbag that's coming up. You
Speaker 2: can always comment anytime you want text line four one,
Speaker 2: two nine five KFTC. Why is it considered a scandal
Speaker 2: if you look disappointed if you didn't win.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the normal? Shouldn't you be hoping you won
Speaker 1: and be disappointed if you didn't win. Oh No, you've
Speaker 1: got to be gracious and happy for the people. I'm
Speaker 1: so happy for you.
Speaker 2: One more reason I hate Hollywood, well pointed out, here's
Speaker 2: your freedom loving quota today, beginning a series from Teddy Roselt.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, nation deserves to exist if it permits
Speaker 2: itself to lose.
Speaker 1: The stern and virile virtues, and this.
Speaker 2: Without regard to whether the loss is due to the
Speaker 2: growth of a heartless and self absorbing commercialism, to prolonged
Speaker 2: indulgence in luxury and soft, effortless ease, or to the
Speaker 2: deification of a warped and twisted sentimentality. In other words,
Speaker 2: if a nation stops being a hard ass, it will crumble.
Speaker 1: If you lose the manly.
Speaker 2: Virtues and womanly of a nation, it does not deserve
Speaker 2: to exist. Speak softly, carry a big stick, center mailbag.
Speaker 1: Drops no mail bag at armstrong and geddy dot com.
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 2: Stacked these emails in any particular order. They are all
Speaker 2: about the explosive White House meeting on Friday, and it's
Speaker 2: not enough data to really form an idea of what
Speaker 2: you good folks think. But I thought it was interesting
Speaker 2: the variety of perspectives. Having said that, Jay and San Jose, California, well,
Speaker 2: it's clear Zlinsky is not a seasoned diplomat. The main
Speaker 2: issue is US security guarantees. He's been willing to trade
Speaker 2: mineral wealth for reconstruction continued arming of his military and security.
Speaker 2: Was a mistake for him to bring up US security
Speaker 2: guarantees in that setting.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The New York Post says that the Democrats, some Democrats put.
Speaker 1: Him up to that. You know, you need to challenge him.
Speaker 2: Don't let them get away with not giving the security guarantees.
Speaker 2: And man, they let him down a bad road. If
Speaker 2: that's what happened, Yeah, we'll dig into that later. Jim says,
Speaker 2: I officially regret my vote. That was a calculated and
Speaker 2: premeditated ambush of Zelensky. It was hard to watch, it
Speaker 2: was painful to watch. It was sad to watch. I
Speaker 2: officially regret my vote because of it. Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: as mentally unfit for office as Joe Biden, but in
Speaker 2: a different way. And he says, we're Americans. We support
Speaker 2: freedom more than anything else. That's who we are and
Speaker 2: that's what makes our country so great. Then he goes
Speaker 2: into some of the horrors of the Ukrainian War, Ukrainian
Speaker 2: men captured or systematically tortured, forced to fight against their
Speaker 2: own countrymen, zero chances survival, thousands of children ripped away
Speaker 2: from their families, now being institutionalized in Russia.
Speaker 1: Goes on and on.
Speaker 2: Man when Trump said to Zelensky, look at the hatred
Speaker 2: he has for putin.
Speaker 1: How can we possibly make a deal with the guy
Speaker 1: has this kind of hatred for Putin? How would you
Speaker 1: not have hatred for Putin?
Speaker 2: I know that's utterly insane to say that, and yet
Speaker 2: on a lot of you know, the other aspects of
Speaker 2: this they've talked about, like Marco Rubio and Ross Duthat's column.
Speaker 2: Just now, Yeah, you're right. Anyway, moving along, Oh, let's
Speaker 2: see uh B Rights guy's Friday's meeting in the White
Speaker 2: House brings to mind the old adage big men are
Speaker 2: hard on themselves, small men are hard on others. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's see John Wrights. I voted for Trump. I don't
Speaker 2: regret it and still support a lot of what he
Speaker 2: wants to do. But watching a man who actively avoided
Speaker 2: the military and a sidekick who had a non combat
Speaker 2: political resume building role in the military both attacking demean
Speaker 2: a president fighting for a goddamn life of his country
Speaker 2: and democracy was disgusting.
Speaker 1: It appeared to me that JD.
Speaker 2: Vance forced a shouting match so that we could score
Speaker 2: bounty brownie points with Trump. I don't get that role
Speaker 2: at all. That's surprising to me. I'm surprised Trump's cool JD.
Speaker 1: Vance like.
Speaker 2: Taking a role in how far things are going to
Speaker 2: go new I'll decide how far we're gonna go.
Speaker 1: You just sit there and watch. You're the vice president.
Speaker 2: If we're gonna brow be to foreign leader on camera,
Speaker 2: that's going to be me doing it and figuring out
Speaker 2: how fight it's gonna go. Yeah, I would agree. At
Speaker 2: the same time, though, as we said earlier, the idea
Speaker 2: of a foreign leader coming and lecturing our president on
Speaker 2: camera is highly improper, highly so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again there's.
Speaker 2: A lot of good and bad, you know, admirable and
Speaker 2: not admirable on all sides. Yeah, there's a great piece
Speaker 2: in the National Review about how Ozelensky should have handled
Speaker 2: this and how he screwed up, and we'll get to
Speaker 2: that later. Yeah, let's see how about this, Jim says,
Speaker 2: I've been with Ukraine from day one, hate the Russians
Speaker 2: in the invasion, but there's been no movement of the
Speaker 2: lines in the war for over a year. Trump's main
Speaker 2: point is that time is now being wasted by Ukraine
Speaker 2: hoping some grand breakthrough will occur.
Speaker 1: It will not.
Speaker 2: Also, Ukraine has a weight on us around our neck,
Speaker 2: and instead we could get dragged into something. I am
Speaker 2: all for the real politic of beating Putin, but Trump
Speaker 2: has his eye on a bigger picture. Yes, Putin's a
Speaker 2: war criminal, but it's all under the bridge at this point.
Speaker 2: In other words, let's stop screwing around and get to
Speaker 2: peace so people stop dying.
Speaker 1: I get that you got a massage that.
Speaker 2: Though I would agree, you know, there are plenty of
Speaker 2: examples in history of the right thing being done in
Speaker 2: the wrong way that happens. That whole thing of Zelensky
Speaker 2: wanting to continue to fight reminds me of a line
Speaker 2: from Gladiator when they about to destroy yet another tribe
Speaker 2: that they want to take their land, and friend of
Speaker 2: Russell Crow says, why don't people understand when they're defeated?
Speaker 2: And Russell Crow says to him, would you would? I? Yeah,
Speaker 2: It's easier said than done.
Speaker 1: Right. We got a lot more on this, and we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: We're getting some interesting texts for one, five, two, nine,
Speaker 2: five KFTC. If you miss a segment, get the podcast
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Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty