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Speaker 1: There is a choice ahead, and it will not be

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Speaker 1: a perfect one, but it will be clear. There is

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Speaker 1: catastrophe ahead for a generation of Americans who have never

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Speaker 1: truly had a bad day. This is the warning, and

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Speaker 1: there are two hundred and sixty seven days until the

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Speaker 1: presidential election that will decide America's future. This past Super

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Speaker 1: Bowl weekend, Donald Trump held a political rally. It was

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Speaker 1: a deranged affair. His crowd chanted over and over and

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Speaker 1: over again, Fuck Joe Biden, while Trump denounced NATO, the longest,

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Speaker 1: historically most effective peace keeping treaty organization in world history,

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Speaker 1: and rooted for Russia under Vladimir Putin to attack NATO

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Speaker 1: allies if, according to Trump, they don't spend enough money

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Speaker 1: on their national defense full stop. This edition of the

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Speaker 1: Warning will be a bit of a history lesson about NATO.

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Speaker 1: What is it and why does it matter to you? Well, first,

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Speaker 1: think about the Super Bowl yesterday. Look at these pictures

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Speaker 1: from the halftime show or the postgame championship celebration. This

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Speaker 1: is what a free society looks like. Or you could

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Speaker 1: look at a soccer match in Paris or London or

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Speaker 1: Berlin or anywhere across the free nations of Europe. This

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Speaker 1: is what a slave society looks like. This is North Korea.

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Speaker 1: This is a place where there is no freedom, where

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Speaker 1: there is a cult of personality that controls everything. And

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Speaker 1: there are other lesser examples where people can't sing We're danced,

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Speaker 1: where women are beaten because they won't wear a cover

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Speaker 1: over their head, or stoned to death by male relatives

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Speaker 1: with impunity. There are places where speaking against the leader

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Speaker 1: gets you killed, poisoned, thrown out a window, or locked up.

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Speaker 1: The free societies of Earth came very, very close to

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Speaker 1: losing their freedom within a human lifetime, in a terrible,

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Speaker 1: terrible war that was fought all over the world and

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Speaker 1: killed so many people that historians argue what the number was.

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Speaker 1: Did the Russians lose forty million, thirty million, twenty eight

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Speaker 1: million people? Nobody really knows for sure. What everybody knew

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Speaker 1: by the time the Second World War ended was that

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Speaker 1: civilization itself had come to the edge of collapse, at

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Speaker 1: the dawn of a new age where human beings possessed

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Speaker 1: the power of the gods, the ability to extinguish societies

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Speaker 1: that were built in thousands of years. A blinding light

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Speaker 1: that prefaces the mushroom cloud. In that era, political leaders

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Speaker 1: understood their business was life and death. They understood the

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Speaker 1: seriousness of the times. But so did the citizens of

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Speaker 1: the United States, the men and women who survived the war,

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Speaker 1: who fought in the war, who lost a brother in

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Speaker 1: the war, a father in the war, a friend in

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Speaker 1: the war. There was no place in America that was

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Speaker 1: untouched by the sacrifices in the total whole society commitment

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Speaker 1: it took to keep slavery, fascism, Nazism from consuming the

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Speaker 1: whole world. And so in victory a great alliance was formed.

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Speaker 1: In the first commander of the NATO Alliance was an

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Speaker 1: American general of the Army, the former Supreme Allied Commander

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Speaker 1: of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, Dwight David Eisenhower. Here's what

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Speaker 1: Eisenhower as President said in nineteen fifty eight at the

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Speaker 1: first meeting of NATO where heads of government came in,

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Speaker 1: the former Supreme Commander, who accepted the German surrender of

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Speaker 1: the Dad, the man who first commanded NATO and was

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Speaker 1: now Commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the

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Speaker 1: United States, said this, I'm here to continue with you

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Speaker 1: NATO's work for a just peace. This meeting is unique

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Speaker 1: in NATO history. For the first time it is attended

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Speaker 1: by heads of governments. We meet not under a chilling

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Speaker 1: fear that each nation among us, acting separately and alone,

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Speaker 1: might fail to match the aggressive power that could be

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Speaker 1: brought against any That was once true. We meet not

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Speaker 1: in any dreadful knowledge that our cities are again by conflict,

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Speaker 1: scarred and painfully marked, our economy strained, our people warned

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Speaker 1: from a war against deutulitarianism. Again that was once true.

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Speaker 1: Most certainly, we do not meet in a mood of

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Speaker 1: nationalistic self assertion, pursuing selfish interests at the expense of

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Speaker 1: our sister nations. That has never been true of NATO.

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Speaker 1: We are here to rededicate ourselves to the task of

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Speaker 1: dispelling the shadows that are being passed upon the free world.

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Speaker 1: We are here to take store of our great assets

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Speaker 1: in men, in minds, and in materials. We are here

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Speaker 1: to find ways and means to apply our undoubted strengths

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Speaker 1: to the building of an ample and safer home for

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Speaker 1: mankind here on earth. This is a time for greatness.

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Speaker 1: But what was it that Eisenhower was talking about? What

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Speaker 1: is NATO? The North Atlantic Treaty organization. What does it

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Speaker 1: stand for, Well, it's a military alliance and let's read

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Speaker 1: from its charter. The parties to this treaty reaffirm their

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Speaker 1: faith and the purposes and principles of the Charter of

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Speaker 1: the u United Nations, and their desire to live in

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Speaker 1: peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined

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Speaker 1: to safeguard the freedom, common heritage, and civilization of their peoples,

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Speaker 1: founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the

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Speaker 1: rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well

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Speaker 1: being in the North Atlantic area. They are resolved to

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Speaker 1: unite their efforts for collective defense and for the preservation

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Speaker 1: of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North

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Speaker 1: Atlantic Treaty. The NATO nations comprise almost half of the

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Speaker 1: world's GDP. They are the bulwark against an access of

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Speaker 1: nations that include Iran, which is waging proxy war in

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Speaker 1: the Middle East against the United States and against Israel, Russia,

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Speaker 1: which is waging war against Ukraine and Europe, and menacing Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,

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Speaker 1: and China, which is building a navy big enough to

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Speaker 1: fight the United States navy in the Pacific, menacing Taiwan,

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Speaker 1: within a long human lifetime, a lot can happen. President

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt was the architect of the world that gave birth

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Speaker 1: to NATO. He foresaw an era of peace, and he

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Speaker 1: talked about it laid into the night with the Canadian

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Speaker 1: Prime Minister. He foresaw all of the institutions that have

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Speaker 1: kept global peace and prevented World War three for eighty years.

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Speaker 1: He talked about the institutions that he foresaw coming into

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Speaker 1: being that have preserved global peace and prevented World War

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Speaker 1: three for eighty years that Donald Trump routinely trashes and

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Speaker 1: diminishes and threatens. What Roosevelt said to his friend, the

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Speaker 1: Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King was that his vision for peace,

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Speaker 1: for stability, for an American led era did not last forever.

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Speaker 1: He just hoped it would last for his long ass.

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Speaker 1: Everybody who was alive on the day that war was

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Speaker 1: won was still alive, and the youngest of those people

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Speaker 1: will be seventy nine years old this year. We have

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Speaker 1: come to the edge of a new era. There is

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Speaker 1: a rising malevs. Around the world and at home. And

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Speaker 1: when you look at these pictures from Las Vegas, from

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Speaker 1: the Super Bowl, the joy in Kansas City wherever you

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Speaker 1: see free people know this. There are no celebrations like

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Speaker 1: this during times of global war and conflict. How do

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Speaker 1: those conflicts start? How do they begin? Every person in

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Speaker 1: America should understand that there is no more important question

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Speaker 1: for anybody who has a son who's fifteen to twenty

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Speaker 1: five years old. In America, it includes anybody who has

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Speaker 1: a daughter serving in the military. Peace is being threatened

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Speaker 1: by that maniacal crowd of people who have succumbed to

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Speaker 1: a group euphoria. I don't understand what is so weak

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Speaker 1: in their character that they would be so indecent to

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Speaker 1: chant over and over again in unison, like a crowd

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Speaker 1: in Nuremberg in nineteen thirty eight for their leader degrading

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Speaker 1: and disrespected the office of President of the United States,

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Speaker 1: cheering for the dissolution of relationships and alliances that are

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Speaker 1: bonded by blood and fire and sacrifice all over the

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Speaker 1: world to keep the peace. But they are doing it.

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Speaker 1: They are cheering for Russia, they are cheering for China.

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Speaker 1: They are cheering for Iran. They are cheering for an

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Speaker 1: access that hates us, that hates freedom. They are cheering

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Speaker 1: for weakness. They are cheering for a fantasy and a

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Speaker 1: dangerous delusion. There is a choice ahead, and it will

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Speaker 1: not be a perfect one, but it will be clear.

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Speaker 1: There is catastrophe ahead for a generation of Americans who

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Speaker 1: have never truly had a bad day. There is catastrophe

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Speaker 1: ahead for the world that has not known the horror

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Speaker 1: of global war for eighty years. But there is a

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Speaker 1: poison bubbling to the surface that is the opposite of paytriotism.

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Speaker 1: It is nationalism. Nationalism is rising in America, in France,

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Speaker 1: in Germany, and it will weaken an alliance that saved

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Speaker 1: the world for eighty years. And there's something important to remember.

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Speaker 1: Two hundred and sixty seven days before the choice, every

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Speaker 1: century in human history has been deadlier than the last.

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Speaker 1: The seventeenth was deadlier than the sixteenth, the nineteenth deadlier

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Speaker 1: than the eighteenth. And in the twentieth century, killing became

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Speaker 1: wholesale industrialized. There were weapons that could destroy cities in

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Speaker 1: an instant built over eons, and then there was a

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Speaker 1: pause not in the killing, but in its epic scale.

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Speaker 1: And that pause has lasted for eighty years, in part

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Speaker 1: because of NATO. Because the United States and NATO together

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Speaker 1: are the most powerful military alliance on Earth, and no

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Speaker 1: set of enemies will dare attack if they believe NATO

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Speaker 1: remains real. But is it real anymore? Weakness is what

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Speaker 1: Trump is talking about. Betrayal is what he is doing,

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Speaker 1: betraying our values, our history, betraying our ideals, like he

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Speaker 1: betrayed his oath, like he betrayed the Constitution of the

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Speaker 1: United States, like he betrayed every single American born and unborn,

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Speaker 1: every American who has ever lived, from the very first

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Speaker 1: who were born at the moment of our independence. NATO

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Speaker 1: makes us strong. Trump makes us weak. Weakness brings danger,

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Speaker 1: and danger brings death in the real world. This is

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Speaker 1: fundamental to citizenship. And when you look at that crowd

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Speaker 1: cheering Trump, understand the magnitude of both its danger and

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Speaker 1: its disgrace. Do not be angry at those people. Do

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Speaker 1: not have hate for them, but have absolutely firm resolved

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Speaker 1: that they will not have their way. They will not

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Speaker 1: take control over you and I, They will not take

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Speaker 1: control of America. They will not rewrite our story, they

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Speaker 1: will not author our future. No way get involved. Two

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty seven days together. Thank you for listening

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Speaker 1: to my political commentary. If you like what you heard today,

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Speaker 1: please also consider subscribing to The Warning daily newsletter on Substack.

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Speaker 1: Our democracy hangs in the balance. The twenty twenty four

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Speaker 1: presidential election is the most consequential in America's history. It's

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Speaker 1: not hyperbole, it's a fact. That is why the mission

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Speaker 1: of The Warning with Steve Schmidt is to help readers

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Speaker 1: orient to the currents that are shaping our times and

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Speaker 1: the unseen forces driving politics that are very rarely discussed

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Speaker 1: on cable news. Please sign up at Steve Schmidt S T,

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Speaker 1: E V E, S C, H M I d T

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Speaker 1: dot substack dot com again Steve Schmidt dot substack dot com,

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Speaker 1: or at the link in the show notes section below.

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Speaker 1: Thank you to each and every one of you for

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Speaker 1: listening and watching.