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April 18, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
54:05
INSIDE STORY: Our Stonewalled Attempt to Obtain Hidden Nashville Manifesto. Plus: What Is Lula Doing On Ukraine/the Dollar? And Left-Liberal Politics Ignores Personal Actions

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Good evening, it's Monday, April 17th.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, why have we not seen the manifesto left by the person responsible for the massacre at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27th, more than three weeks ago?
Ordinarily, when a mass shooter can be linked to a far-right ideology, the manifesto or other political writings they left take center stage in the media narrative, and for understandable reasons.
Though I strongly oppose efforts to exploit such shootings to place blame at the doorstep of journalists or activists said to have, quote, inspired the shooting with their words, Understanding the motivation of such a horrific act is journalistically important for all sorts of reasons.
To know what influences caused it, to know how to prevent it in the future, to prevent ideologues from exploiting such tragedies for their own unrelated purposes.
Yet, notably, in this case, the media has shown almost no interest in trying to understand whether political ideas motivated the shooter or not.
And that's almost certainly because the murderer, Audrey Hale, identified not as a far-right ideologue, but as a trans activist with a long line of clues suggesting sympathy with left-wing cultural causes of the type the media supports.
As a result, We tried retaining law firms in Nashville, two of them in particular, and after speaking with two quite prominent ones which said they would send a retainer letter to representatives in our efforts to sue the FBI and the Nashville Police Department to obtain the records, each backed out at the last second.
We'll examine everything that is happening here.
Plus, Brazil's President Lula da Silva has provoked and is provoking virulent attacks and the West generally for pursuing policies that he believes benefits the Brazilian people, but that nonetheless conflict with the interests of the United States and its foreign policy community.
Provoking the greatest anger is Lula's refusal to use Brazilian resources to fuel the proxy war in Ukraine, arguing instead that Brazil has no war with Russia, only a war to improve the lives of Brazilians.
He's also pursuing greater trade relations with Beijing because in the past that has spurred economic growth in Brazil.
Now, there's a glaring irony here, namely that the CIA and the Biden administration made no secret of its efforts to help Lula defeat Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election.
But don't we want political leaders, including our own, to use national resources to improve the lives of their own citizens, rather than a tiny sliver of international institutions and fighting endless wars on the other side of the world?
We'll examine what Lula is really doing with Ukraine, and with Russia, and with China, and with the American dollar, and why that's provoking so much American animus.
And then for our last segment, we'll examine the very strange yet common claim, often found in left liberal politics, that the least relevant metric, the least relevant, for judging a person's character and values are the personal actions they take in their lives, the way they live their lives, the way they lead their lives.
Instead, the focus on what hashtag someone posts, or what slogans they chant, or what party they support, takes center stage, and that's often a very convenient excuse for justifying why someone should be able to live their life in a way that completely contradicts their claimed political values without being criticized for it or held accountable.
I know this is a somewhat elusive and ethereal topic described this way, but one we think is very important, so we'll make it as concrete as possible in our last segment.
As a reminder, System Update is available in podcast form 12 hours after it first airs here live on Rumble.
We're available on all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify, Apple, and others.
Simply find us, rate us, and review us to help the show be seen by a wider audience.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
One attribute that has become extremely common every time there is a mass shooting is that the manifesto left by the shooter or other clues about their political ideology is poured over by media outlets, usually to claim that the shooter was motivated by a particular of a right-wing ideology.
And therefore, anybody who shares that ideology, anybody who advocates an ideology at all related to the shooter's political views is also to blame for that shooting.
They try and place the blame for the mass shooting at the doorstep of people who have done nothing more than advocate their political ideology.
And to do that, they typically center the manifesto or the other political writings left by the shooter.
This is something that has become extremely common Whenever there is a mass shooting that seems to be politically motivated.
So just as a couple of examples, here from May of 2022, when a person who identified as a white nationalist deliberately chose a predominantly African American neighborhood in Buffalo and went in and massacred people inside of a grocery store.
Most media outlets took his manifesto and tried to claim that he was in some way the brethren of all sorts of mainstream conservatives in media, beginning with Tucker Carlson, whom they absolutely tried to say was responsible for that Buffalo Massacre, even though Tucker Carlson has never once even implied, let alone explicitly stated, that people should go and murder innocent people or carry out violence in the name of his political views.
And even though, in reality, the political views expressed in this manifesto have very little to do with Tucker Carlson's views, and even though the Buffalo Shooter actually left a long list of people who he said inspired him, and not one of them worked at Fox News, let alone was Tucker Carlson, and even though
There was no evidence that this shooter even watched Fox News or even knew who Tucker Carlson was, let alone was motivated by him, and yet so hell-bent was the media on exploiting the corpses in Buffalo that they constantly disseminated the narrative that Tucker Carlson was to blame.
And to do so, they took this manifesto that the shooter in Buffalo posted shortly before going on his shooting spree, and they dissected every part of it.
They quoted from it.
They showed the public what it said.
All as a way of linking it to their political enemies.
So here you see the NBC News article, which is very illustrative.
We could show you hundreds of these, of similar ones.
The headline was, The Buffalo Supermarket Shooting Suspect Allegedly Posted an Apparent Manifesto, Repeatedly Citing, Quote, Great Replacement Theory.
The manifesto includes dozens of pages of anti-Semitic and racist memes, repeatedly citing the racist, quote, great replacement conspiracy theory frequently pushed by white supremacists.
So by doing this, by highlighting this manifesto, by discussing its contents over and over, that was obviously an implicit admission by these media corporations that they regard the contents of the manifesto left by a mass shooter as relevant, as journalistically relevant.
And although I found the attempt to blame their political adversaries for this violent crime repulsive, and I said so at the time, I certainly agree that the manifesto and the contents of the person's political views are relevant because when an attack of that nature, such an atrocity so extreme, is carried out, we of course want to try and understand what caused it, what motivated it.
And so it's very common for media outlets to highlight the manifesto.
Here's another example from when another white nationalist, this time in New Zealand, went into a mosque and carried out a horrific massacre, killing dozens of Muslims who were praying.
Here is Slate in 2019, quote, what the Christchurch killers manifesto tells us.
Ignore the parts that read like 8chan jokes.
We're facing a global movement of white hate.
And the article delved very deeply into the contents of the manifesto.
This is something that happened over and over and over again.
You can go online and read the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, who was responsible for mail bombings throughout the United States in the 90s, and I actually would recommend that you go and read that manifesto.
It's incredibly provocative and in parts insightful, notwithstanding the violent nature of his crimes.
So the idea that we read manifestos of killers, or even if we don't read them, we report on them, we analyze them, That's extremely common.
That happens all the time.
Now, there may be good reasons for not just simply throwing the manifesto up onto the internet.
There could be things in there that could inspire copycat killings.
Of course, you should have to be responsible and careful with how you treat this material.
It should be treated journalistically and carefully, but the fact that manifestos are in the public interest when somebody goes and carries out a crime this repugnant Aiming at innocent people they don't know and just killing them all in cold blood is not even controversial.
Or at least it wasn't.
Until...
A massacre was carried out three weeks ago on March 27th at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, that resulted in the murder of three young school children, two of them nine years old, the other eight years old, and three personnel at the school, including a teacher, an administrator, and a person who worked in maintenance, a custodian.
The shooter was named Audrey Hale and this person identified as being a trans man in various social media postings and they left clues that suggest that they believe strongly in gender ideology and so we know for certain that they have a manifesto because the Nashville Police Department and the FBI both have confirmed that this is so.
And yet, nobody has seen this manifesto publicly.
Even though, like I said, in every other cases, we don't only see the manifesto, but media outlets pay attention to it.
Now it's true, in those other cases, usually what happens is the killer will themselves post the manifesto, whereas Audrey Hale seems not to have posted their manifesto here, or their other political writings, but we know for sure the FBI has them, the police department has them.
And in those other cases, the fact that the killers post the manifesto doesn't mean media outlets have to pay attention to them, or talk about them, or analyze them, or report them, or quote from them.
And yet media outlets do, as I just showed you, because it's journalistic relevant for understanding that kind of an event.
And yet, even though we know there's a manifesto left by the Nashville shooter, the utter lack of interest in obtaining it is deafening.
It's incredibly conspicuous.
There are FOIA laws that allow media outlets to sue under Freedom of Information Act to get it from the FBI.
There are open records laws in Tennessee that permit residents of Tennessee to sue in order to obtain these records.
And after noticing that no media outlets seemed to be interested in obtaining them, we decided we would retain counsel in Tennessee in order to first request those records, although other people have requested them.
That's the first step.
You have to submit a form.
It's a very simple form, an open records form in Tennessee.
You request it to the Well, local police department and they send you back a letter, a form letter telling you they're not going to give it to you.
So that's what happened.
And then the only recourse is that you sued them in court and you claim, you argue that under the law, you have a right to obtain it as a media outlet, as a journalist.
And so we, as this show, System Update, we're going to use our own resources and still intend to use our own resources in order to litigate and obtain these documents.
Usually large media corporations do that, but in this case, very conspicuously, they have no interest in seeing it.
None.
That massacre has been all but erased from public discourse.
The only interest anybody ever had in it on the kind of left liberal side of the political spectrum, including the White House, House was to go and exploit it for gun control laws and to elevate the members of the Tennessee House who protested and disrupted proceedings, which often is called insurrection if done for other political ends.
And they elevated them into national heroes.
And Kamala Harris went to Nashville.
And she gave a rousing speech, unlike anything I've ever seen her do.
She was so animated, so excited, and yet she had nothing to say at all to the victims of the people who were murdered, to the family members of the victims.
She didn't meet with them.
She barely talked about them.
She was very eager to paper over Who the killer was and what their motives were.
Just like the part of the media that supports Kamala Harris and her ideology is very notably uninterested.
Not just uninterested, they seem actively eager to talk about this in every way except to include what might have motivated this killer.
Were they motivated by particular political activists?
Were they motivated by hate speech against Christians, against people who are conservatives in Tennessee?
It's very common to hear that people who are opposed to every single law that is demanded in the name of new gender ideology is someone who is guilty of genocide, of wanting to exterminate trans people.
So if you really get convinced of that, when you hear that kind of extremist rhetoric, and you yourself are a trans person, it is not unreasonable to carry out violence against people you think are actually committing genocide.
Of course, that kind of speech could inspire someone to go and do something like this.
We don't know if that happened because we haven't seen the manifesto or any other documents pertaining to the motive, but we should.
We should see it for that reason, the reason I just described.
We should know whether that's what inspired this person.
Or if there's somebody who has been in the middle of a transition and taking testosterone or other hormones, which are common for people who are female to male transitioners, people who are reassigning their sex through hormones, people who are reassigning their sex through hormones, those can have side effects of increasing aggression or violence.
Again, we don't know if that happened here.
I'm not speculating.
I want to know, though.
I want to find out, journalistically, what happened in this case.
Why would somebody go to a school and put a gun aimed at the heads of three young children and pull the trigger in a Christian school?
Why did that happen?
I'm not interested in blaming advocates of trans ideology.
My view would be exactly the same, that even people who use extremist rhetoric like saying anyone who questions the new gender ideology is guilty of genocide, I would not have an interest in trying to pin the blame On those people, even though there may be some causal relationship, because to do so is essentially to turn free speech into a crime.
We all, every one of us, may belong to political ideologies or political factions that occasionally have a psychopath who's part of it, somebody who goes out and commits violence in the name of the ideology, and none of us should be held accountable if we're not somebody who advocates violence.
So we don't want to create a framework In which that's done.
The problem is, that is the framework that has been created by the media.
Every time there's a shooting or some violent act carried out in the name of right-wing ideology, they look for every single journalist, politician, pundit, activist on the right, and they try and argue that that is the real murderer, that that is the person who has the blood on their hands.
But that is a framework I oppose when done in that instance and when done here.
My interest is the journalistic one.
I want to find out What societal influences caused this person to go and do this?
I want to understand better why somebody would do this.
Is this going to continue to happen?
Is there a way to prevent it?
The only way to know that is to see the same evidence the FBI and the Nashville Police Department have.
So, in order to do that, we decided that we would contact the best lawyers in Tennessee, knowing that it's a challenge.
Because the reality is under Tennessee law, and here you can see the Supreme Court case that created this precedent, law enforcement agencies have a lot of discretion when there's an open investigation.
They can just say, because there's an open investigation, we're denying disclosure of these records that pertain to this investigation.
They have a lot of discretion.
It was a Supreme Court ruling from the Tennessee Supreme Court in March of 2016, there you see Headline from the Tennessee State Courts, quote, Supreme Court rules that Nashville Police not required to release records in Vanderbilt rape case.
And the article says, quote, the Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that the Metro Nashville Police Department is not required by the Tennessee Public Records Act to release investigation records requested by a group of media organizations in a rape case involving four former Vanderbilt University football players.
The Chancery Court, after privately inspecting the requested records, ruled that some of the records were subject to public disclosure under the Public Records Act.
The Court of Appeals reversed the Chancery Court's ruling, finding that all of the sought after records were exempt from disclosure under Rule 16A-2, as they were all relevant to a pending or contemplated criminal action.
The media organizations appealed to the Senate Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
The Supreme Court ruled that, under the facts of the case, the requested records were exempt from disclosure under Rule 16.
The court held that while the Public Records Act generally provides for access to public records, there are numerous statutory exceptions that protect certain records from disclosure.
One of those exceptions is when state law provides for non-disclosure.
The court noted that Rule 16, which is the rule of discovery between the state and defendants in criminal cases, So, we knew we had an uphill battle.
We know we have an uphill battle in trying to get these documents.
The law enforcement agencies have a lot of discretion, but it's not unlimited.
to the state and the defendants while the criminal cases and any collateral challenges to the criminal convictions are pending.
So we knew we had an uphill battle.
We know we have an uphill battle in trying to get these documents.
The law enforcement agencies have a lot of discretion, but it's not unlimited.
It's not unlimited.
And in this case, there's no valid reason to withhold these records because there can't be an open criminal investigation.
We know who the shooter is.
They're dead.
There's no effort to try and prosecute them, obviously.
There's no suggestion that they acted with any kind of an accomplice.
So it's purely a pretext.
To conceal these documents for obvious political aims.
Tennessee is a red state.
Nashville is a blue city.
And there seems to be a clear effort to cover up and conceal and make us forget about this manifesto.
So knowing it was an uphill battle, we were nonetheless willing to pay law firms to represent us and to litigate through the Tennessee courts, even knowing that there was a good chance we would lose, because we at least wanted to generate publicity over the fact that these records are being concealed.
And we think it's an important cause that we are willing to devote our resources to as a media organization and a media program or a journalistic program to trying to obtain.
So we got on the phone with somebody who was recommended one of the most prominent law firms in Nashville.
And we spoke with the lawyer, and for now I'm not going to use their names because I don't want to necessarily thrust them into some public controversy until I have a better understanding of why this happened.
But it's nonetheless worth noting, because it's very strange to try and hire law firms in a case like this, clearly able and willing to pay, and then to hear back what we heard back, which was at first, Very positive reaction.
This is an important cause.
We think you do good journalism.
We're happy to represent you.
We'll get you the retainer letter very shortly.
And then at the moment of truth, when it was time to get the retainer letter, we got this email.
On April 2023, and it's addressed to one of my colleagues who works here on the show with me, who is the liaison between myself and the law firm, and they said, Harry, I'd give you a call, but it doesn't appear I have your number.
I have been working through logistics with my new firm and won't be able to take the representation.
As you could likely tell from our Zooms, I was really hoping to work with you all and to push for the disclosure of these documents that I think are very important for the public's understanding, if there can be one, of why this event occurred.
I agree.
It is very important.
And they did communicate.
I was on this call.
That they were very eager to try and litigate this case and create better precedent that while law enforcement agencies in general have discretion to withhold records, it's not unreviewable discretion.
It's not unlimited discretion.
When it seems as it seems here that they're abusing that exemption to conceal documents from the public for political or other ends that can't possibly pertain to or prejudice an ongoing investigation, the court should rule that disclosure is required.
And that's the case here.
So that's exactly what we were heard.
But then We heard back that, oh, unfortunately, as it turns out, we're not going to be able to represent you.
And there on the screen you say, you see, while I have not reached out to him, I think that a colleague would be an excellent choice and someone who can assist you in all your efforts to acquire these public records.
The contact information is here.
And they suggested the person was someone who specializes in transparency and press freedom.
We then contacted that person, spoke to them, originally got a reasonably positive response, but then they too said, I'd be happy to chat with you as part of our hotline, which would mean a conversation generally about the legal issues, but would not be a legal engagement or legal advice.
If that is what you are seeking, please let me know some good dates and times to talk and send me a good number to reach you.
So from the beginning, they said, we can't represent you.
And then when we asked for clarification by phone, they said, There's no way we can represent you in this matter.
I think it's extremely strange.
There clearly seems to be at least some political pressure in Nashville not to seek the disclosure of these records.
I think everybody knows whenever it comes to anything relating to the trans debate, people are very eager to just remain far away from it.
But to me, this is not about the trans debate.
This is about the right of journalists to seek public records and to illuminate things we ought to know about a completely horrific killing.
But instead, there seems to be an effort to just paper over it.
To make us move on and forget about the fact that even though usually we hear all about manifestos in this particular case, at least up to now, anyone who's trying to obtain it is running into serious roadblocks.
And thus, three weeks later and counting, no manifesto, no document shedding light on what the political motives were or the influences were.
of this shooter, and there seems to be no short-term likelihood that we will obtain them in any way.
We definitely intend to continue pursuing good law firms, We are convinced we need a prominent Tennessee firm given that it's a Tennessee state court where this will be decided to try and import lawyers from out of state probably would decrease the chances of prevailing.
And even though we know there's a good chance we may not win and are willing to fund the lawsuit anyway, we want to maximize our chances to win.
We actually want these documents.
So we're definitely going to keep trying.
And if there's lawyers in Tennessee who have experience with these kind of lawsuits, or if you know people in Nashville or anywhere in Tennessee who might be willing to be of assistance, by all means have them contact us.
We have a couple of other lawyers with whom we intend to speak, but I suspect very strongly we're going to run into very similar impediments for the same reasons.
So it's very strange, I have to say, to be a journalist, to be a media organization willing to pay a law firm to litigate just basic transparency and press freedom issues and then to be told no two consecutive times after being told They'd be willing to represent you.
Something or someone at the last minute intervened for whatever reasons and caused the answer to turn from yes to no.
So we will definitely continue to pursue that.
We will definitely continue to report on this.
We have no intention of letting this be forgotten.
Because it is journalistically important, and exactly when people are trying to cover up information and evidence is precisely when, as a journalist, you should be even more vigilant about attempting to obtain it.
So that is our first story tonight.
Our second story pertains to Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who is making a lot of waves in the United States and in the West generally.
Where he is being rather virulently attacked as a result of several positions he has taken over the last month or so concerning issues of international relations and foreign policy.
In particular, he is pursuing what he perceives to be the Brazilian national interest and the interest of the Brazilian people.
But because it conflicts with American interests and American foreign policy, there's a lot of anger toward him and attacks on him.
That seems to be premised in the idea that the responsibility of a leader of a South American country is to remain subservient to the United States and pursue the interests of the United States at the expense of his own citizens.
The United States has obviously had the Monroe Doctrine in place for two centuries that basically declares Latin America, South America to be our backyard, that we rule as sovereigns, which is extremely ironic since our fueling of the proxy war in Ukraine is based on the claim that which is extremely ironic since our fueling of the proxy war in Ukraine is based on the claim that Russia has no interest at all in what's
In Ukraine, in fact, the most vulnerable part of its border, where Russia was twice invaded in two world wars in the 20th century through Ukraine by the West.
And now, for the third time in 105 years, German tanks are rolling toward Russia through Ukraine.
And yet, the argument is that Russia has no right at all to be at all concerned about the numerous countries acting in Ukraine right on the other side of its border at the same time the United States continues to claim that all of Latin America is ours to rule.
And that Brazil or any other country in South America pursuing their own interests in a way that is independent of the United States is a cause for not just anger, but threat.
So let's first look at what Lula has said in particular about the war in Ukraine.
Just about a month ago, the German chancellor visited Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, right after Germany had decided to send tanks To Ukraine, which is obviously a very controversial thing to do.
We interviewed the German left-wing politician Saga Wagenknecht about two or three months ago, and she talked about how the trauma for Russia of seeing German troops headed to that region can't be overstated.
Germany's playing a very dangerous game.
But there are very few countries that actually have the munitions needed for these tanks.
Brazil is one of them.
The German Chancellor went to Brazil, asked Lula to fuel the proxy war in the US, in Ukraine rather, by sending munitions and other resources, military resources, and Lula said no.
Lula said we're not going to send munitions for German tanks.
We're not going to send weapons to Ukraine.
That's not our war.
We don't have a war with Russia or with Ukraine.
We have a war with poverty and inequality and a poor standard of living in our own country.
Why would we want to involve ourselves in the war in Ukraine?
That's not our war.
So that, to me, seems like the kind of thing I wish our leaders are saying.
That's not our war.
There's no reason we should involve ourselves in that.
We should be using our resources for the benefit of our own citizens, rather than sending $100 billion to President Zelensky and his cronies in Kiev.
To a country that has long been the most corrupt in Europe.
Who knows where that money is going?
Remember Rand Paul tried to simply attach auditing requirements to where that money was going.
And Mitch McConnell implied he was doing the bidding of the Kremlin and blocked that appendum to the bill just to simply provide some safeguards on where the money was going.
And just this week, there was an interview with the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin's, primary deputy by Jon Stewart, where he asked her about the trillion dollars a year, essentially, that we send to the military, to the Pentagon, and the fact that the Pentagon has only been audited five times in history and has failed the audit each time.
So there's all kinds of reasons to worry about where this money is going.
This huge sum of money we spent on the military and are now spending in Ukraine.
And they want Brazil and Lula to do the same, to send money into that black hole.
And he refuses.
So here he is.
He just visited China, which is Brazil's largest trading partner, and has been the growth of Brazilian economic, has been really the spur of Brazilian economic growth during the first time Lula was president from 2002 to 2010.
And he was asked about his posture toward the war in Ukraine, and this is what he said.
Let's show the video.
We need to be patient to talk to the President of Russia.
We need to be patient to talk to the President of Ukraine.
But above all, we need to convince the countries that are providing weapons in the middle of the war to stop.
I think China has a very important role, and I continue to reiterate that China is possibly the most important role.
Now, another important country is the United States, that is, it is necessary for the United States to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace.
It is necessary for the European Union to start talking about peace, so that we can convince Putin and Zelensky that peace is of interest to everyone and war is only of interest to both for now.
So just to recap, and for those who listen to the show in podcast version who wouldn't have seen the English subtitles on the screen, Lewis is essentially saying that he's trying to do everything possible to work with the President of Russia and the President of Ukraine to forge a peace.
He doesn't want to fuel the war.
He wants to find a diplomatic resolution to stop it.
And then he went on to say the other important country in this equation is the United States because the United States has been from the start and continues to incentivize the war, to encourage the war, by not only sending huge amounts of weaponry into that theater and also by pouring unlimited sums of money onto Zelensky's head, but blocking on several occasions attempted diplomatic Talks in order to resolve the war.
The US doesn't want an end to the war.
It never has.
It wants to weaken Russia as much as possible.
And it's not trying to protect Ukraine or protect Ukrainians.
It's trying to sacrifice Ukraine and Ukrainians at the altar of its geopolitical goal of weakening Russia.
For some reason that I think is very difficult to understand, the prior two presidents President Obama, President Trump had the same view of Russia, which is that Russia is not our enemy, they're not a threat to the United States, there's no reason to try and weaken them.
We do business with Russia, or at least we did.
Trump cooperated with Russia in Syria, so did President Obama.
There's no, Russia hasn't attacked the United States?
Why is it so, why are we so obsessed with weakening Russia?
Especially with billions of dollars being sent.
A hundred billion dollars so far authorized.
So there was Lewis saying, you can't talk about the war in Ukraine without talking about the fact that the United States is there cheering it on, is egging it on, is enabling the war to continue, is basically incentivizing Zelensky not to pursue diplomacy.
Because he's being told by the West and by the most powerful and the wealthiest country in the world, the United States, we will simply arm you and fund you to the end of time.
You don't have to worry.
Just keep fighting.
And obviously when the United States, the most powerful country militarily and financially, tells another country, we will back you until the very end with all the weapons and money you need, that of course is a way of encouraging the war to continue.
And so Lula is saying, why would I do that as President of Brazil?
Why would I send the resources of my people and my country to a war zone that has nothing to do with my country?
And if we are going to end this war, we need the United States also to be on board with wanting the war to end, and yet right now it doesn't.
Now this is something Lula has actually been saying for quite a long time even before he was elected in 2022 when he was running for when he was in the middle of the presidential election.
Here you see from the Guardian in May of 2022 the headline Brazil's ex-president Lula claims Zelensky is equally to blame for war.
Now, I know Lula is a polarizing figure.
A lot of you have probably a lot of strong feelings about him.
For the moment, just put those aside.
Just for the moment.
And let's focus on what he's saying about the war in Ukraine.
Brazil is an important country.
It's the sixth most populous country in the world.
It's the second largest in the hemisphere.
It's geostrategically important.
It has large oil reserves.
It has the most environmental resource in the Amazon.
And Lula carries a lot of weight on the international stage.
So when he was running against Bolsonaro, here you see Lula, who was leading President Bolsonaro in polls, also said Biden and the EU are guilty and could have stated Ukraine would not join NATO.
In other words, Lula was saying this war was easily preventable.
All the United States had to do was say Ukraine's not joining NATO.
Ukraine can want to join NATO.
That's up to Ukraine to want to join NATO.
But the United States and NATO don't have to allow every country that wants to join NATO admission.
Otherwise, every country will belong to NATO.
Why wouldn't you, if you're a country, want to have an agreement with the most powerful country on Earth that it will treat any attack on your soil as an attack on it and protect you and go to war to protect you?
Every country wants that.
So all the United States had to do is say, we promise Ukraine will never join NATO.
They're off limits for NATO.
It will be a neutral country, a buffer zone between East and West.
And Lula's argument is that would have prevented the war.
Putin said similar things.
So here is the Guardian describing Lula's position back then, at a time when almost nobody was willing to say this.
Certainly nobody outside of the pro-Trump, right-wing, populist wing of the Republican Party.
People like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, ironically, were saying this.
Rand Paul was saying this.
A few other people were saying this.
Remember, there were about 70 Republican votes against The $100 billion, the $40 billion authorization that they voted on last May?
Well, every Democrat voted yes, but outside of that circle, in the United States, nobody was saying this.
So the fact that Lula said it was shocking to a lot of people and it angered people in the United States.
This is what he said, quote, Brazilian presidential frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said the Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin bear equal responsibility for the war in Ukraine.
Equal responsibility.
Putting the leftist icon at odds with Western powers.
In an interview with Time Magazine published on Wednesday, the former president said it was irresponsible for Western leaders to celebrate Zelensky because they are encouraging war.
Instead of focusing on closed-door negotiations to stop the fighting.
Quote, I see the president of Ukraine speaking on television, being applauded, getting a standing ovation by all the European parliaments, Lula told the magazine.
This guy, Zelensky, is as responsible as Putin for the war, he added.
Referring to Zelensky's rise to fame as an actor and a comedian, Lula added, quote, we should be having a serious conversation.
Okay, you are a nice comedian, but let us not make war for you to show up on TV.
The veteran leftist said Biden and European Union leaders failed to do enough to negotiate with Russia in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in February.
Quote, The United States has a lot of political clout, and Biden could have avoided war, not incited it, he said.
Biden could have taken a plane to Moscow to talk to Putin.
This is the kind of attitude you expect from a leader.
The US and EU could have avoided the invasion by stating that Ukraine would not join NATO, he said.
Quote, Putin shouldn't have invaded Ukraine, but it's not just Putin who is guilty.
The US and the EU are also guilty, Lewis said.
We've covered many times on our show the provocations that NATO, the United States, and the West made right on the other side of the Russian border in Ukraine.
The United States has all been running Ukraine since 2014 when it succeeded.
led by Victoria Nuland in facilitating a change of the government where the United States toppled the democratically elected government of Ukraine because they perceived it was too close to Moscow and not close enough to the United States and then implemented our own preferred leader as a puppet, a coup that's called.
Imagine if Russia or China had implemented a coup in Mexico and then flooded Mexico with with lethal arms explicitly designed to fight the United States.
Do you think the United States would regard that as a provocation?
I think so.
It would be.
And so that's what happened in Ukraine and that's all Wu is saying.
Now, there's a huge irony here because Those remarks by Lula, as well as other ones that he's making, including pursuing this BRICS alliance that's intended to be a kind of alternative to the United States, which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
And he has now engaged in transaction with China, not using the US dollar as the reserve currency.
So there's a lot of anger now being heaped on Lewis' head because the United States doesn't tolerate countries, especially in South America, independently pursuing its own self-interest in a way that conflicts with the United States.
One of the big ironies is that it was the United States, the CIA, the Biden administration that made very clear that it wanted Lula to win the election over Bolsonaro.
It openly went down to Brazil and made that clear.
Here is a Reuters article from May of 2022, so just about three or four months before the Brazilian presidential election.
There you see the headline, exclusive, CIA chief told Bolsonaro government not to mess with the Brazilian election, sources say.
The CIA director last year told Brazilian officials that President Jair Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on his country's voting system ahead of the October election, sources told Reuters.
The previously unreported comments by CIA Director William Burns came in an intimate closed-door meeting in July, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Burns was and remains the most senior U.S.
official to meet in Brasilia with Bolsonaro's right-wing government since the election of U.S.
President Joe Biden.
Now, the U.S.
government typically does not like left-wing governments, especially in Latin America.
They've overthrown left-wing governments during the Cold War.
But that is in the past.
The thing the U.S.
security state hates and fears more than anything is right-wing populism.
And the fact that Bolsonaro was an ally of Trump meant the US security state, the CIA, absolutely hated Bolsonaro and wanted Bolsonaro to lose.
And it was very bizarre to watch members of the Brazilian left cheer this CIA interference in Brazil's election on behalf of Lula.
Given that it was the CIA that toppled Brazil's center-left democratically elected government in 1964 and then propped up a military regime for the next 21 years, to watch Brazilian leftists cheer the CIA and the Biden administration going down and telling Bolsonaro what to do in the election was a surreal sight.
There were a few leading Brazilian leftists who said, wait a minute, even when they're on our side, we don't want the CIA involved in our politics, but not many.
So having clearly rooted for Lula, at least rooted for him, if not worked to elect him, he's now become a thorn in their side.
And so here you see the blowback for Lula.
Just this article from the Washington Post tells the story.
The headline is, the West hoped Lula would be a partner.
He's got his own plans.
Brazil's new president risks alienating the US and Europe as he hosts Iranian warships, equivocates over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and negotiates with China.
And the whole article is basically a bunch of think tankers and other Western functionaries basically talking about Lula like he's violating his core responsibility, which they understand to be taking directions from the United States and from the EU.
The problem, though, is that in the past, smaller, weaker, poorer countries, like Brazil, like Argentina, like all the countries in South America, had to take orders from the United States because the US was the sole superpower with no one challenging its hegemony.
All of that has changed, and one major reason it's changed is because we are constantly spending our time and energy and focus on these wars that never end.
So while we're obsessed with depleting our own stockpiles in order to fuel the war in Ukraine, and fighting over who's going to rule certain provinces in eastern Ukraine that President Obama always said was not a vital interest to the United States, China waltzes into the Middle East and forges a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
They're all over Africa making investments that accompany with it all kinds of Chinese influence.
And they're establishing growing ties, economic ties, with the largest and most influential country in South America, right in America's backyard, which is Brazil.
So the United States has nobody to blame but itself for this.
And the reality is that with the United States desperate To try and keep Russia isolated, to the point that they finally gave up this illusion that Juan Guaido was the legitimate president of Venezuela, and instead went to Venezuela and begged Nicolas Maduro to sell more oil so that gas prices wouldn't be so high and Russia wouldn't continue to profit, even though they're supposed to be sanctioned.
The United States has weakened itself with these endless obsessions with war, and of course countries like Brazil are gonna pursue their own self-interest, and that means building relations with China, getting out of the power that the United States imposes with the U.S.
as the reserve currency, getting to order every country, who to sanction, who they can do business with, who they can't, and they're gonna develop their own relations.
But I think it's really worth stopping and thinking about the fact that you have here a Brazilian president who essentially is saying what I think our leaders should be saying, particularly when it comes to the war in Ukraine, which is, why would we, with all of our problems?
Lula wants to build his legacy.
He's in his third term.
He's 77 years old, I believe, 76, 77 years old.
He wants to try and reduce Poverty, reduce inequality, reduce starvation in Brazil.
That's what he wants on his legacy.
To create new social programs to enable Brazilians to go to college, to have other opportunities.
Why would he want to take Brazilian resources and pour them into a war in Ukraine over who rules Eastern Donbass?
Doesn't that make a lot of sense?
And what's really amazing, when you think about it, is as the Washington Post said, Lula is a leftist icon.
And yet, in order to hear what Lula is saying about the war in Ukraine in the United States, at least in Washington, you have to go to the right wing of the Republican Party, the pro-Trump populist wing of the Republican Party.
To hear things like, this should not be our war, we should not be pouring our resources into this foreign war, we should be using our resources instead to benefit the lives of our own citizens.
That's what Marjorie Taylor Greene says.
That's what Rand Paul says.
That's what Matt Gaetz says.
That's what Donald Trump says.
And the American left is on such complete lockdown when it comes to the Democratic Party that you don't hear that anywhere except here.
Now, in addition to the issue with Ukraine, as I said, China and Brazil are now doing transactions without the dollar as the reserve currency.
Here from Barron's on March 29, 2023, quote, China and Brazil have reached a deal To ditch dollar for trade.
The article says, quote, China and Brazil have reached a deal to trade in their own currencies, ditching the U.S.
dollar as an intermediary, the Brazilian government said Wednesday, Beijing's latest salvo against the almighty greenback.
The deal will enable China, the top rival to U.S.
economic hegemony, and Brazil, the biggest economy in Latin America, to conduct their massive trade and financial transactions directly.
exchanging yuan for reaix and vice versa instead of going through the dollar.
Quote, the expectation is that this will reduce cost, promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment.
The Brazilian trade and investment promotion agency, Apex Brazil, said in a statement.
China is Brazil's biggest trading partner with a record $150.5 billion in bilateral trade last year.
Now, for a long time, it's been said that de-dollarization is coming, that countries are going to overthrow the dollars, the reserve currency.
A lot of people actually think that would be good.
It's the fact that the dollar is the reserve currency that lets us borrow without end.
That's how we get to spend a trillion dollars a year on our military and send a hundred billion dollars to Ukraine and all kinds of military bases and foreign aid all over the world.
It's what enabled us to impose sanctions on countries like Venezuela and Cuba and Syria.
Where all we do is suffocate the population?
And for what?
Because we want to change their governments?
The reality is though, de-dollarization is very far away.
The dollar is still by far the supreme currency.
I think it's something like 93% of all transactions continue to include the dollar central to the transactions.
It's not as though the dollar is close to being overthrown, but this is obviously an important step toward it.
And when this happens, the West starts attacking the leaders who do it.
Here's The Economist in just this week, where you see the headline, Brazil's foreign policy is hyperactive, ambitious, and naive.
Lula Nassi and Lula da Silva goes to Beijing with grand plans for a, quote, peace club over Ukraine.
And the whole article is basically maligning Lula, attacking him in all kinds of ways, and there are obviously valid criticisms of Lula, but the fact that he's pursuing a foreign policy that's independent of the United States and that he believes is beneficial to his own people is something that our leaders should be doing more of.
So the Economist, the Washington Post, think tankers in the West can attack Lula and other leaders like him for being independent United States, but the reality is the United States, for reasons having to do largely with itself and with the decisions our own leaders make about where our resources go, has really nobody but itself to blame for weakening our country.
So that concludes that second segment.
It's now 9 o'clock p.m., so it's essentially the end of our show.
We have a third segment planned for you that I think will actually be better tomorrow.
For tomorrow, I just want to preview our show.
The former Trump ambassador to Germany and the former acting Director of National Intelligence, or rather Director of National Homeland Security, Richard Grinnell, is somebody who I've reported on in the past, particularly his role in getting Ecuador to withdraw asylum for Julian Assange, which is what allowed the London police to go into the Ecuadorian embassy and arrest him.
Over the weekend, he claims that a statement I made about his role in those events was inaccurate.
The views I have and the reporting I did is based on A lot of conversations I've had over the years with people on the U.S.
and the Ecuadorian side, but I certainly don't want to be making inaccurate statements.
So we talked by email.
I posted his response.
I invited him onto the show, in part to clear the air on that issue, but in part to have a kind of sweeping, wide-ranging conversation on America First, foreign policy, on things like Ukraine, on the role of the United States and the Biden administration in the world.
So we're going to have that interview, I believe, tomorrow night.
And I hope to have at least 30 or 45 minutes with Ambassador Grinnell.
He's a very interesting thinker on foreign policy.
Hope to have it be a wide-ranging interview and discussion.
And then we can leave this segment for tomorrow night's show about the way in which the liberal left has adopted this very convenient Precept that it doesn't actually matter how you live your life or whether your life is aligned with your claim political values because the only thing that matters is collective action.
It's a excuse that allows people on the left to avoid ever sacrificing for their claim political values and I definitely want to dig into some of the things that That issue entails, but because we don't have much time to do it tonight, I will save it for tomorrow night after our discussion with Ambassador Grinnell.
I hope you'll join us for that.
For now, thank you so much for watching.
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