The Legal and Political Implications of Trump's Conviction by a Manhattan Jury; Prof. John Mearsheimer on Israeli Escalations, Ukraine's Losses and More
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Trump Guilty Verdict (3:17)
Interview with Professor John Mearsheimer (30:25)
Outro (1:18:55)
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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, no matter what one thinks of the felony charges brought against Donald Trump by a Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan, and we covered our views on the legal issues many times, including last night, where we said, and I continue to believe, that this is the most dubious of all the cases, there is no denying That today's verdict, finding Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts he faced, is a historic moment in American history.
It is the first time ever that an American president, current or former, has been convicted of felonies, has become a felon.
To begin with, Trump's sentencing date is now set for July 11th, which is just a couple of weeks after or close to the Republican National Convention, and only three and a half months until the November election.
There is a very plausible chance, maybe not probable, but definitely plausible, That Trump will be sentenced to some amount of jail time for this conviction.
He just got convicted after all of what is technically 34 felonies.
And the judge who sentenced him has, as we talked at length about last night, has been extremely hostile to Donald Trump.
That means that Trump may spend some or all of the campaign in jail and will have to run there from president as a felon and as a prisoner.
There is also, of course, the looming political question of whether this will affect the outcome of the election, and if so, in whose favor.
We will examine all of these issues, the legal issues and more, as we break down this remarkable verdict.
Then, we will spend the rest of our time on the show with one of our most popular regular guests, if not the most popular, he's the distinguished political scientist and professor of international relations at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer.
We will discuss all of the most recent developments and escalations in the two US-funded wars, the one being waged by Israel in Gaza and the other war in Ukraine with Russia, as well as the conflict between the EU and Georgia over that country's new transparency law, and much more.
Whatever we have time to cover with him once we're done discussing the Trump trial.
We will do so.
The reason Professor Mearsheimer is so popular with our audience, and now many people online and offline, is that he's one of the most informed and independent-minded voices on issues of war, foreign policy, and international relations, and has proved so often to be prescient in his pronouncements about these topics.
We have usually, this is where we give our programming notes about the fact that System Update is available on Podcastform, on Spotify and Apple, the fact that there's a Rumble app that we hope you will download because it enables you to do a whole variety of things, and that every Tuesday and Thursday night we have our live interactive after show on Locals, which is available only to local subscribers.
But given the fact that we want to spend as much time as we can, Diving into this verdict and what the implications are and then have as much time as possible with Professor Mearsheimer, I will give you that abbreviated version of those announcements.
So for now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Donald Trump currently faces four criminal proceedings, four separate criminal proceedings.
One in South Florida brought by the Biden Justice Department through Special Counsel Prosecutor Jack Smith, which is the case that charges him with mishandling or pilfering without authorization, top secret, and other classified documents, and he's charged there under the Espionage Act.
There are two cases that deal with Trump's post-election conduct that claim that he was essentially attempting to subvert democracy, a federal case in Washington, D.C., also with Jack Smith in the Biden Justice Department, and then one in Atlanta with an obviously Democratic Party prosecutor who has her own problems.
Those cases, to the extent that you compare them, do assert serious charges if there were convictions.
Trump could be convicted, for example, under the Espionage Act of taking classified material on purpose that he wasn't authorized to take and then refusing to give them back.
Or he could be convicted of subverting democracy and therefore attempting to launch a coup.
Those are serious charges to be convicted of.
We've gone over many times the weaknesses, the severe weaknesses in those cases, but at least if you were to talk about convictions of that sort, you could see them having a very consequential impact on how many Americans perceive Donald Trump.
I don't think that's the case for this criminal proceeding, in part because I think the perception will be that it's about nothing more than Donald Trump's relationship with Stormy Daniels and the attempt to cover that up.
And I think in the 1990s, showed when they continued to support Bill Clinton by fairly large amounts and even gave the Democratic Party the victory in 1998 in the midterms at the height of the Monaco Winski and Paula Jones scandal that American voters don't really care that much about what they perceive to be personal or private lives.
They don't care about that with their fellow citizens.
They don't really care about it in their leaders.
What they really care about most is that The president or people who are elected actually do things to improve their lives, material improvement of their lives is by far the thing that drives them when they go to the ballot box.
We've seen that over and over.
But because of that, precisely because of that, we know that the American media is going to engage in endless efforts And depicting this in the most melodramatic way to talk about Donald Trump as a serious felon, as somebody who now faces jail time.
They'll emphasize over and over that this is the first time in American history that he has been, that an American president has been convicted in all of American history.
So let's look at this ABC News graphic of the trial, which will give you a sense of already how dramatic the media is being.
Now, it is true that There were 34 felonies, 34 counts, separate counts, and you see here all the red bars showing that the jury found him guilty on all of them.
So you look at this and you think, oh my that's really overwhelming.
The jury found him guilty 34 times.
In reality, It's all the same crime.
It's just that each different time that this entry was made into the bookkeeping of the Trump Organization, the prosecutor charged him with either two or three different crimes, but it's the same crime just reoccurring every month.
In reality, he's been convicted of one, act that the jury found him guilty for.
And that is the act of purposely manipulating the internal documents of the Trump Organization by hiding what the payments were to Michael Cohen, what they were for.
And secondarily, the jury found that they were being hidden for some sort of a legal or corrupt motive.
That's what the jury really found.
Now, Trump obviously has the right to appeal, but I think there's very little chance, And I've worked in the Manhattan legal system for 13 years.
I know how these courts function, how they work.
I can't imagine an appellate court, let alone the Supreme Court in New York, assessing this trial and issuing decisions about whether the jury verdict and the conviction should be overruled before the 2024 election.
We're just already a few months away from that.
So it seems very likely that Trump will head into the 2024 election as a convicted felon.
The other question, though, that really looms large here is whether Trump will receive any prison time from Judge Mershon, who has presided over this trial, in a very transparent, politically politicized way.
We talked about this last night, that Manhattan is one of the most anti-Trump, pro-Democratic Party enclaves that you can find anywhere in the country.
I live in Manhattan and worked in Manhattan for almost 15 years, went to law school there for another three, and finding a Republican in Manhattan is almost as difficult as finding a Democrat in, say, Alabama.
But it's even worse because it's just a small enclave and the difference in Manhattan is something like 85 to 15 when they vote in federal elections.
And so you're talking about a place that had a jury poll overwhelmingly of Trump haters and Democratic Party supporters.
That's one of the weaknesses politically of this case.
Now, I want to show you Trump's reaction to The guilty verdict that was handed down by the jury in Manhattan, because it's the message I presume that the Trump campaign is going to use.
They're going to try and not just defensively insist that Trump hasn't really done anything meaningfully wrong or wrong at all, but they're going to affirmatively exploit this or they're going to try to to demonstrate that there is a massive and fundamental corruption in our justice system, that Democrats are using the justice but they're going to affirmatively exploit this or they're going to try to to demonstrate that there is a massive and fundamental corruption in our justice system, that Democrats are using the justice system that Joe Biden has in his hands,
Before the election, in other words, to abuse the justice system for political ends.
So let's just remember that Donald Trump has spent five decades in New York real estate and New Jersey real estate and ultimately national building and national entertainment.
And the world of New York real estate is not a pristine world.
It is a world where people constantly walk right up to the line of legality and often cross it.
I'm not saying Donald Trump ever crossed it, But it is very notable that in 50 years with all kinds of business transactions of every sort, contracts with television networks to appear on television, contracts with all kinds of companies that he had his name on, oftentimes it ended up in civil litigation, which is very common for businesses, but never once, he went through his entire life, never once having been charged with a crime of any kind.
And then suddenly Donald Trump becomes president.
And now, by every poll, he is leading Joe Biden.
Not necessarily by a large amount, but in every poll consistently, he is the leader of the polls, and there's a lot of concern that Trump will beat Joe Biden.
Suddenly now, he gets indicted in four separate proceedings, all under the control of Democrats, and he now becomes a convicted felon for the first time at the age of 77.
Here is Trump's own response, which as I said, I'm sure part of this is just anger.
He had just walked out of the courtroom where he heard guilty verdict read 34 times.
He has expressed all kinds of anger toward and criticisms of the judge who has presided over the case, who has become a liberal folk hero, as we showed you last night, precisely because he's been so vehemently anti-Trump In his treatment of the parties and the decisions he made and his comportment in the courtroom, because of course he's a Democrat in his bones.
Nobody becomes a state court judge in Manhattan unless you have done a lot of work within the Democratic Party machine.
It's a one party town, not just New York City, but Manhattan.
And it's obviously true.
He has a daughter who's very active in the Democratic Party as well, but I don't even think you need to go there to understand what this judge is.
He proved it and demonstrated it over and over, and it's the reason why liberals adore him and love him so much.
They even talk about him in terms of sexualizing him, as we showed you last night, the way they did with Robert Mueller and Michael Avenatti and Jack Smith.
Anyone who they believe is Eager to stop Trump and punish Trump, liberals turn into heroes, folk heroes, and start venerating them.
It's just that it's very odd, at least in those other cases you're talking about prosecutors or political activists.
Here you're talking about a judge whose primary duty is to be partial and neutral.
And unbiased and this judge has become a hero among liberals and a hated figure among conservatives because that everyone knows the way in which he presided over this trial.
So here's Trump and he talks a lot about this judge even though Trump knows that in about two months this judge will have to decide what his sentence should be and that this judge has the power to send him to prison under the law, send him to jail under the law.
He absolutely has that discretion, that autonomy.
There's no question about that.
And yet here's what Trump had to say, as obviously a lot of people were watching.
Are you worried about the video?
This was a disgrace.
This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
It's a rigged trial, a disgrace.
They wouldn't give us a venue change.
We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area.
This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.
The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.
And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
You have a sole respect DA and the whole thing.
We didn't do a thing wrong.
I'm a very innocent man and it's okay.
I'm fighting for our country.
I'm fighting for our constitution.
Our whole country is being rigged right now.
This was done by the Biden administration.
In order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent.
And I think it's just a disgrace.
And we'll keep fighting.
We'll fight till the end and we'll win.
Because our country's gone to hell.
We don't have the same country anymore.
We have a divided mess.
We're nation in decline.
Serious decline.
Millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now.
From prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists, and they're taking over our country.
We have a country that's in big trouble.
But this was a rigged decision right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case.
Never.
And we will fight for our Constitution.
This is long from over.
Thank you very much.
So that's clearly going to be their message.
And I think it's a very effective message.
As I said, for one thing, it was only when Trump was leading Joe Biden in all of the polls did Democrats start plotting to charge him with crimes, with felonies all over the country, even though he went his entire life, 50 or 60 years in all kinds of industries, including major New York real estate, without ever being charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one.
And we talk all the time about how our enemy countries, how the bad countries, one of the things they do is they try and imprison their opponents and dissidents.
How much did we hear about Vladimir Putin purposely imprisoning his leading political opponents, including Alexei Navalny, and he was even accused of having him murdered?
So when we start talking about political leaders being imprisoned by their opposing government, by a government they oppose, we already have this sense that that is not something that really happens in the United States.
Now, I'm not a believer in the idea that presidents or former presidents should be immunized from the law.
In fact, I wrote a book in 2011 called Liberty and Justice for Some Where I at length critique the way in which we have a two-tier justice system where the rich and the powerful are often immunized from prison sentences while we have the largest prison population in the country and was documenting a lot of crimes that were committed as part of the war on terror and other crimes by leaders and it was never, they were never prosecuted.
Because we have a kind of unspoken rule in the United States that we don't prosecute former presidents or current presidents.
And that's been the way it's been in American politics.
So suddenly we have an aberration, a very radical aberration.
And the question is going to be whether Americans perceive this route of collaboration as an abuse of the justice system by an extremely liberal prosecutor in Manhattan who did win in large part because a PAC was supporting him that received a massive donation from George Soros.
Knowing that that PAC would then try and elect Alvin Bragg as the District Attorney for Manhattan.
That's just a true statement.
And they did it in the place that has the most liberals, the most Democrats, the most animosity toward Trump.
In fact, I want to show you this breakdown.
from the Gotham Gazette in December of 2020.
It's the final breakdown of the New York City vote tallies in the general election.
And here you can see, it says at the borough level, New York City is composed of five boroughs, one of which is Manhattan.
Biden won all in all except for Staten Island, where turnout increased by about 36,000 votes or roughly 20%.
And then it says this, Biden won Over Trump, by 84.5% to 14.5%.
And in the Bronx, by 82 to 17.
In Brooklyn, by 74 to 25.
Now, I don't know if you can find many places of the size of Manhattan.
It's much bigger and more populous than many American states that is this lopsided in terms of its propensity to be composed almost entirely of Democratic Party loyalists.
And obviously, that's where they brought the case.
Knowing that the jury pool would be composed of that, knowing that the judge would come from the Democratic Party machine, and then you add on to that the fact that So many other people.
The U.S.
Justice Department looked at these charges and said they're not going to bring the case.
The prior district attorney, Cyrus Vance, looked at these charges and said he wouldn't bring the case.
Alvin Bragg originally said this case can't be brought as felony charges, and he only changed his mind when prosecutors underneath him began screaming in public that he should do it, and they politically pressured him to do it, and then he finally brought it.
And ultimately, the case is really about nothing other than hush payments to a porn star who alleges she had an affair with Donald Trump, even though previously she denied that, and a claim that in the books, in the internal books of the Trump Organization, those payments to Michael Cohen, which then went to Stormy Daniels, were misclassified.
So the case itself is just trivial, especially as a felony.
And so, although I've always been a believer in trying to lift and eliminate this two-tier justice system where political elites and financial elites really are exempt in so many ways, not obviously absolutely, but overwhelmingly, I would be applauding this if I thought that this were fairly applied.
The reality is there's only one person in all of the United States who would have been charged with 34 felonies, or even one felony, for having done this, and that person's name is Donald Trump.
Democrats have been explicit about how they know that their best chance for winning is to ensure that Donald Trump becomes a felon before the election.
Just to give you a sense for the absurdity of trying to suggest this was sort of the rule of law being applied equally, Here from the New York Post in March 2020, and you can, 2022 rather, you can mock the New York Post if you want, the story that they did on Hunter Biden's laptop turned out to be completely true, even though big tech and the media and the CIA all united to say it was Russian disinformation, and the facts that they're describing here are very easily verifiable.
The headline is, the Clinton campaign, the DNC, was fined by the Federal Election Commission for lying about the Steele dossier payments.
Quote, the Federal Election Commission has fined both Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee for lying about how they spent money used to fund the now-debunked Steele dossier on former President Donald Trump.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC will be forced to pay $8,000 and $105,000 respectively for mislabeling payments.
That ultimately went to Fusion GPS, the consulting firm that commissioned the dossier, according to FEC documents viewed by The Post.
The fine stems from a complaint originally filed in 2018 by the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which was informed of the outcome on Tuesday.
Now obviously, that seems extremely similar.
to what Trump has been accused of.
They wanted those payments to be hidden because they wanted to claim that they weren't the ones funding and instigating this fraudulent Steele dossier, and it turns out they absolutely were, and the intent was obviously to shield Hillary Clinton from damaging revelations, which is exactly the theory that they just convicted Trump on the basis of.
Now, there's been polling done That essentially asks whether people would change their vote if Donald Trump ended up being convicted.
And it's a little bit uninformative because people might have been thinking about the documents case or thinking about the post-2020 election.
But nonetheless, this polling data does show that there could be a significant impact on Trump voters when they hear that he's been convicted of a crime here.
Here from ABC News on May 5th, 2024, quote, 80% of Trump supporters said they would stick with him even if he's convicted of a felony in this case, but that leaves 20% of Trump voters Who say they'd either reconsider their support, which was 16%, or withdraw at 4%, easily enough to matter in a close race.
Now here is a chart that the ABC tried to dramatize.
which you can see at the top, support for Trump, even if he's convicted among Trump supporters.
80% said, even if he's convicted of crimes, I'm still going to support him because they obviously perceive correctly that these are all politically motivated charges.
But 16% said that they would reconsider supporting him, and 4% said that they wouldn't.
Now, I don't think this is very informative for the reason I said I also think it's often the case that after primary elections that are very bitterly fought, And there was Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and a bunch of other Republicans trying to bash Trump.
It's very easy to say after people are a little bit embittered that their candidate doesn't win, oh yeah, I might consider not voting for them in the general election, but it's almost always the case that Republicans will vote for the Republican presidential candidate.
The question that I have Is whether people are going to perceive this as a corrupt abuse of the criminal justice system and that this could all backfire on the Democratic Party.
I think that's very possible.
Just to give you one more poll, this is from the BBC at the end of May 2024, what Trump's conviction means for election.
Polls indicate he is in a statistical dead heat with President Joe Biden and maintains a slight edge in many key swing states that will decide the election.
But those surveys also provide evidence that this conviction might change all of that.
In exit polls conducted during the Republican primaries this winter, double digit numbers of voters said they would not vote for the former president.
If he were convicted of a felony, 32% of Republican voters in North Carolina's March primary said Trump would not be fit for the presidency if convicted.
Now, again, they didn't specify convicted of what.
And this is clearly the most trivial, the kind of most sleazy case that seems more than anything to be about Trump's personal life, which Americans have proven over and over they don't care about in political leaders.
And it was also in the middle of a primary where Republicans who don't vote for Donald Trump feel some animosity toward him that they don't feel once he becomes the nominee, as he now has become.
But the reason You can say with certainty that these prosecutions were politically motivated is that Democrats
Both in Congress and on Democratic Party channels have said over and over that they believe it's urgent that these cases go to trial before the election because they realize that their best chance to get Joe Biden reelected, to drag him over the finish line, is to try and turn Donald Trump into a felon.
This has been the strategy all along.
Here, just as one of countless examples, is a CNN segment from December 16th of 2023.
Do you agree with me that Smith and Judge Chutkin are acting based on the election schedule?
I do agree with you, Michael, and I think any fair-minded observer has to agree with that as well.
Just look at Jack Smith's conduct in this case.
The motivating principle behind every procedural request he's made has been speed, has been getting this trial in before the election.
Let's take a couple examples.
The trial date, the average federal conspiracy and fraud trial takes about a year and a half to two years between indictment and trial.
In this case, we have dozens, hundreds of January 6th rioters caught on video, straightforward cases.
They too were given about a year and a half to two years between indictment and trial.
Jack Smith originally requested a trial date for Donald Trump, a far more complex case five months out.
He wanted a January trial.
It was set for two months later.
So just to be clear about what's happening here, and we have a bunch of videos where these kind of liberal pundits are saying it's crucial to convict Donald Trump before the election because they're relying on those polls we just showed you and putting their hope in the fact that people who are primed to vote for Trump won't do it because they believe the legal system is so sacred and honorable and reliable that if they find him guilty it means he's not fit for the presidency
but in this case Jack Smith's political motivations were so overt.
That CNN's very pro-democratic party and anti-Trump commentator, the former prosecutor Eli Honig, and others, went on CNN and said, this is unseemly what Jack Smith is doing.
He so clearly is desperate to get these verdicts and trials into a court far more quickly than an average case would take because he's looking at the Election Day and the impact that these convictions could have on Election Day, which obviously, to put it mildly, it shouldn't even be required to say it, is totally inappropriate for a prosecutor to be thinking about.
And yet, even for some of these liberal lawyers who go on these liberal networks and usually read right from the DNC script, The way in which these prosecutions were so overtly politicized, offended, basically lawyers who practice in these courts, including prosecutors, they understand exactly how these cases normally work and the speed with which Jack Smith was trying to bring these trials to a verdict before election day is almost unheard of.
And that's why he's been unsuccessful.
It's almost certain that those two trials that he is prosecuting will not come to a verdict, will not be tried and finished before election day, nor will the documents case in Florida.
This is the only verdict of any of those four cases that we are likely to have before election day.
Again, legally, we've gone over many times why this case is preposterous and so dubious.
And Trump obviously has an appeal, and it's not all that uncommon for the New York appellate courts to overturn a conviction.
They just overturned Harvey Weinstein's conviction and his trial.
So it happens.
They are very different courts, but that almost certainly won't happen before Election Day.
And so the real question is, how will this be politically perceived?
Will those polls turn out to be right that even Republican voters, at least in small numbers, We'll abandon Trump if he's a convicted felon or will they have the view that I have and that many other people have that what this really is is a politicized abuse of the criminal justice system to bring a case as a felony that has no right to be brought as a felony.
For which there's no precedent, this theory that the prosecutors used to turn this into a felony, and that ultimately it's a trivial case that won't impact how Americans see Trump, but they very well might have an impact on how they look at the Biden administration.
Because of the very common view that we often enunciate about other countries, that one of the hallmarks of tyranny or abuse of power is when a current political leader tries to prosecute and imprison his political opponent.
I think there's a lot of facts surrounding this verdict that make that perspective very viable, if not most convincing.
We are excited to have one of our most common guests, one of our most popular guests, if not the most popular guest.
He is a political scientist and professor of international relations at the University of Chicago, has written many books on international relations, has proven particularly prescient in his views on Ukraine and Russia and the war that the West has been supporting there when very few people were saying what he was saying.
He was saying it very loudly and I think a lot of people will acknowledge that he's been We always love having you on our show.
He's very, very informed and provides a lot of clarity into some of the most important issues that we're facing.
Welcome, Professor Mearsheimer, to System Update.
It's always great to see you.
Glad to be here, Glenn.
So, as you know, I can't wait to talk about other things than current wars.
But we have to keep talking about these current wars because the United States is financing them and arming them and using its standing in the world.
to keep them going.
So let's start with the war in Gaza that Israel is prosecuting and has already been prosecuting for eight months, killed 35,000 people.
Certainly, that's a conservative number, given how many people are under the rubble that they can't remove and can't count.
But we just had a situation where the world watched dozens of women and children being incinerated in a fire and having no working healthcare system because their hospitals have been bombed.
And now Israel says that this war will continue until at least the end of the year for another six or seven months at least.
So I think you can look at that in two ways.
One is you can say this shows that Israel is really determined to eliminate Hamas even if it means destroying the entire population of Gaza and Gazans themselves.
Well, I think it's important, Glenn, to understand what Israel's main goal here is.
It's not to defeat Hamas, and it's not to get the prisoners back.
that they just want to keep the war going.
How do you view the announcement by Israel that they will keep this war going until at least the end of this year?
Well, I think it's important, Glenn, to understand what Israel's main goal here is.
It's not to defeat Hamas, and it's not to get the prisoners back.
The main goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
And what they're doing is, number one, killing large numbers of people.
And number two, making Gaza unlivable.
If you just sort of look at what the Israelis have done, destroying hospitals, destroying schools, destroying administrative buildings, destroying the homes, or badly damaging the homes of, you know, 75 plus percent of the population, they're making the place unlivable.
I would also note to you that a lot of people are dissatisfied that Benjamin Netanyahu does not have a plan for the day after.
My view is the reason he doesn't have a plan for the day after is he doesn't expect the Palestinians to be there.
So it's important to understand That what the Israelis want to do is keep the pressure on the Palestinians and see if they can cleanse Gaza.
So that's what's going on.
And I think that for that reason, this war will continue for a long time to come.
And the Israelis will do very little to help the Palestinians get back to some sense of a normal life.
So what you're describing as the real goal of the Israelis in this war, and I want to make clear that it's not just you saying this, but top Israeli officials, part of the government, have often admitted that their goal is to take back both the West Bank and Gaza, to flatten Gaza, to make it essentially a place where no Arabs can live, and then the Israelis can go in, clean it up, and rebuild it, and then it will be theirs.
What you're describing, what those Israeli officials have said they're trying to accomplish, is clearly the core definition of genocide.
It's the cleansing of a certain group of people based on ethnicity or religion from a place regardless of the motives.
You have the International Court of Justice that just ordered Israel not to conduct a military operation inside Rafah because of the view that this will be a crime against humanity.
Far too many civilians will die.
And they have a pending question of whether Israel is guilty of genocide and war crimes, which is supported not just by South Africa, but by many other countries.
And then you have the United States, which is the main country funding and arming this war and protecting it, obviously being complicit in aiding and abetting it in every way.
Do you think that the world now watching the International Court of Justice issue orders only for Israel to say, we don't care about that, we're going to ignore it, and for Joe Biden to say, and for other members of Congress to say, we might actually punish the International Court of Justice if they impede Israel?
What effect will that have on how Israel is perceived and how the United States is perceived in the world?
Well, you want to remember, Glenn, it's not just the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, although it is playing an immensely important role here.
It's also the ICC, right?
It's the ICC that is trying to get arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Galant.
So there's sort of a one-two punch here.
My view is that this is going to do enormous damage to Israel's reputation over time.
What's happening here is the ICJ and the ICC are creating facts.
They're writing lengthy reports.
They're issuing judgments.
And these reports and judgments will be in the historical record forever.
And they are a black mark.
on Israel's reputation that is never going to go away.
It's also going to be a black mark on our reputation as well, because as you said, we are complicit in what has become a genocide.
Rhetoric that the United States used when it came to Vladimir Putin into that war and the war in Ukraine was that their goal was to reestablish or to affirm and preserve what they called a rules-based international order.
They heaped praise on the International Court of Justice when it concluded that Putin and other Russian officials were guilty of war crimes.
And now you have this scenario where when you have a BRICS summit, In South Africa, South Africa says we want Putin on our soil, but we're obligated by this convention, of which we're a signatory, to turn him over to the court because he is now deemed a war criminal.
And yet at the same time, the U.S.
lost in the 1980s in the same court and then immediately withdrew and proclaimed itself immune, even enacted a law saying it had the right to use military force to remove any American officials being held in the Hague.
This seems to me to be a kind of turning point, because as you've pointed out many times, we're not in a world any longer where the U.S.
is the sole superpower.
It is now a multipolar world where you do have China exploiting this argument that the U.S.
isn't just a hypocrite, but the biggest threat to a rules-based international order.
Do you think that there's real damage, not just to Israel, but to the United States from everything the world is seeing in this?
Sure.
I mean, the United States went to great lengths to create the liberal international order or the rules-based order.
And we did it because it was in our interest.
And we've now ended up taking a number of very public steps that show that we don't I mean, we're protecting Israel at every point.
We veto UN Security Council resolutions.
We're putting pressure on the ICC to rule in ways that are favorable to Israel.
And so forth and so on.
And this can only make us look like giant hypocrites who don't really take the rules-based order seriously unless the rules favor us.
If the rules don't favor us, we disobey them.
Or we rewrite the rules.
That's the way a lot of people around the world think about how the United States deals with the rule-based order.
And as you said, when you're in a multipolar world, this is problematical, because the other two great powers in the system have quite a bit of weight and can do all sorts of things to undermine the rules-based order.
And if you look at the Chinese, what they're doing is they're creating institutions of their own.
They're trying to create an order of their own with things like the AIIB and so forth and so on.
And this is bad news for us.
One of the topics on which you most focus as an academic and a scholar is the question of great powers and how they behave in the world, what motivates them.
And And I think central to that is this idea that if you want to be a great power, there needs to be credibility to your statements.
When you issue warnings, when you make statements about your intentions, you have to follow up on those.
Otherwise, you will be perceived as at least unreliable, if not in some way weak.
Here we have Joe Biden over the past eight months Inflicting on himself, accepting a series of humiliations.
He called the Israeli invasion of Rafa a quote, red line, which is president speak for if you do this, there will be serious consequences.
The Israelis immediately said, we're going to violate that and ignore it.
We don't care about your red lines.
And they invaded Rafa.
And now the White House is left to try and say why it's not a full invasion.
He didn't totally disobey Biden.
At the same time, you have The Americans saying they wanted to bring aid into Gaza because the population is facing famine and malnourishment by land, and the Israelis basically said no.
And so Biden was forced to build a pier because our own ally, whose word we're funding, said, we're not going to allow you to bring this aid in by land.
And so we had to go build a pier.
And now it's a pier that the minute some rain came, broke up into small little pieces and floated away.
In all of the studying that you've done, Have you seen the willingness of the United States government to accept one humiliation after the next the way they've done over the last eight months in service of Israel?
No, I have never seen anything like this before.
Look, as a good realist, I believe that material power, hard power, matters the most.
But like any sophisticated realist, I fully understand that soft power, diplomacy, your reputation, your credibility, all of these things also matter.
It can't be pure hard power.
And the truth is that the United States has always actually been very good at exercising soft power.
We were very good at putting a velvet glove over the male fist, to put it in simplistic terms.
And when it comes to what the Biden administration has been doing, we're not showing any evidence that we maintain our ability to exercise soft power.
It looks like we've lost the magic touch, so to speak, and the consequences of this are grave.
Now, you wrote a very consequential book with your colleague Professor Stephen Wald in 2006 entitled Israel Lobby, which sought to document, for me it was a real piece of not just scholarship, but journalism, to document the power of this lobby inside the United States, the reason why we always defend Israel, why we feed Israel more money than any other country.
There have been a couple times in the past where Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 wanted to confront Israel and had some acts of resistance, but they were met with a lot of accusations of anti-Semitism and other things.
And since then, no one's really done it.
And your book sought to explain why.
Why is the United States so afraid to confront Israel?
It seems to me that in addition to the Israel lobby, as you described it in your book, we now have a growing sector of the Republican Party who will acknowledge very explicitly that the reason they regard as vital and paramount to support and defend we now have a growing sector of the Republican Party who will acknowledge very explicitly that the reason they regard as vital and paramount to support and defend Israel is because their religious ideology, their theology, compels them to see Israel as a blessed nation by God, as
How?
How important was that in 2006, that motivation, and how important is it now when you look at just how much time Congress spends holding hearings on Israel and talking about Israel and enacting policies to Israel, going to Israel, speaking to the Israeli Knesset?
How do you see that motive in Washington?
Well, there's really two things that have happened here, Glenn.
One is that Israel's behavior has become more outrageous with the passage of time.
And that means that the lobby has to work harder and harder each year to defend Israel.
They push politicians harder each year.
And the end result is that politicians have to dance to the lobby's tunes today in ways they didn't when we wrote the book.
I think that the lobby is more powerful today than it was when we wrote the book.
Of course, we wrote the article in 2006 and the book in 2007.
But that's one part of the story.
The other part of the story is that the Republicans understand that the Democratic Party is basically split on Israel.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, broadly defined, is quite hostile to Israel at this point in time, and thinks Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
And the Republicans see this as an opportunity To get full support from the lobby and to turn the lobby against the Democratic Party.
So almost every Republican in the land is going to Great Lakes and trying to kiss up to the lobby.
And Joe Biden is really in a very difficult position as a result of this, because he's deeply fearful that he will alienate the lobby if he plays hardball with Israel.
But at the same time, he understands if he doesn't do something to show that he can get semi-tough with the Israelis, he doesn't have to do much, but just a little bit, He can then win over the progressives who are abandoning him in droves.
But the fact is, he's caught between a rock and a hard place, and there's not much he can do to win.
And the Republicans fully understand this, and for that reason, the Republicans have embraced the lobby in ways that we have not seen in the past.
It is really amazing.
All over the democratic world, all over the world entirely, people are increasingly opposed to the Israeli war in Gaza.
They are increasingly horrified by the things they're seeing there.
They want this war over.
They've been cutting diplomatic ties with Israel, recognizing the Palestinian state.
And yet here in the United States, we're about to have a presidential campaign and a presidential debate where the two primary candidates are just going to be arguing with one another about who is more pro-Israel.
There will be no debate at all about this incredibly consequential and polarizing and costly policy.
They'll both be fighting with one another over who can be more pro-Israel.
And I guess that, in a sense, has been what American politics has been for the last Several decades and I do want to just push a little bit or not push but just kind of re-ask the question about Obviously there's a finance pro-Israel lobby.
There are American Jews who feel a connection to Israel the way lots of minority groups feel a connection to the country of their origin, whether it's the place they come from when they immigrate, or Italy, or Ireland, whatever.
People have these kinds of connections.
But you do now have an extremely vocal, and I think increasing, in the Republican Party primarily that has caused this defense of Israel to become even more fortified and almost absolute, which is this evangelical and theological motivation.
Do you think that that is a significant or non-trivial factor now and why there's so much congressional support for Israel?
It's non-trivial for sure, but I don't think it's the key.
I think that most of the people who feel that way are Christian Zionists, and I think the Christian Zionists are an important part of the Israel lobby, as Steve and I articulated in our book.
But I think that it's American Jews who are deeply committed to Israel and want the United States to support Israel unconditionally who are really driving the train.
And a lot of this has to do with campaign contributions.
There's just no getting around that.
You notice that the other day, Donald Trump visited a group of rich donors, many of whom were Jewish, and he told them that he would basically deport The protesters, he'd arrest them and deport them.
That's how he'd deal with all the unrest on campuses.
I mean, this is hard to believe that he said that in a serious way, but he did.
And the question you want to ask yourself is, why did he say that?
And the point is, he wanted campaign contributions.
And that's why he was meeting with these rich donors.
So that is an important part of the story, for sure.
And just to underscore the point, within, I think, 48 hours, it was announced that Sheldon Adelson's widow, Sheldon Adelson, was a multi-billionaire who said his big issue was Israel, who refunded the Republican Party to keep it very pro-Israel.
She announced, or someone announced on her behalf, that they were going to create a pro-Trump PAC and that she would finance it on a level never previously seen in presidential politics.
So the Adelsons, who's Primary issue by far is Israel obviously was responding to those statements by Trump where he said what you said as well as I will be the most pro-Israel politician in our history.
But you want to remember, Glenn, as I said before, and you have been saying in the conversation here, Israel is in real trouble.
And these donors and these staunch supporters of Israel, these people in the lobby, these institutions in the lobby, they all understand that Israel is in deep trouble.
So they're willing to find politicians who will support Israel hook, line, and sinker, and give them all the support that they need to win.
And that's what's going on here.
And the Republicans, again, understand that the Democrats are in trouble on this issue.
From a political point of view, because you have a huge number of Democrats Who believe that Israel is committing genocide.
A huge number of Democrats believe that Israel is committing genocide and that the United States should move to cause a ceasefire right away.
And these rich donors do not want to hear that.
So they're willing to support people like Trump or make it clear to Biden that he better change his tune or else they'll go to great lengths to defeat him in the fall.
When you say Israel is in deep trouble, that these pro-Israel donors and activists understand that, what do you mean by Israel is in deep trouble?
Is it that they're involved in a war for which they have no ultimate outcome or plan?
Is it that they're more isolated than ever on the world stage and the international community?
Or is it something else?
What kind of deep trouble do you consider them to be in?
I'd make two arguments.
One is, Israel is an apartheid state.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B'Tselem, which is the leading human rights organization in Israel, have made clear, all three of those human rights organizations have made clear in extensive reports, that Israel is an apartheid state.
So have many top Israeli officials, including the former head of the Mossad chosen by Bibi Netanyahu in 2015, who the month prior to October 7 published an article in The Guardian saying Israel is now either very close to, on the brink of, or has become an apartheid state.
Yes, but that's very important, Glenn, because that's just evidence that leaders in Israel understand this phenomenon, right?
They understand that Israel is an apartheid state.
And we all know what happened to South Africa.
And the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you think this is sustainable over the long term.
And the answer is no.
And I think that Israeli leaders are looking for a way out.
To go back to what I was saying about ethnic cleansing before, I believe that one of the principal reasons that the Israelis favor ethnic cleansing is because it solves the apartheid problem.
If you drive the Palestinians out of Gaza, and then you drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, you have a clear majority of Israeli Jews running greater Israel, and you don't have an apartheid state.
The problem you have now, Glenn, is that there are about 7.3 million Palestinians and 7.3 million Israeli Jews.
And the Israeli Jews dominate the Palestinians.
They oppress the Palestinians.
That's why it's an apartheid state.
And that is a huge problem for Israel moving forward.
But that's only one dimension of the trouble that they face.
The other dimension that they face, the other problem that they face, is they're involved in a war Where they are being accused of genocide and where lots of people believe they're committing genocide.
This is a huge problem and the problem in very important ways is not going to go away.
Why is that the case?
You remember that in 2005, Ariel Sharon, who was no shrinking violet, And why did he do that?
Because he knew the place was a hornet's nest, and the last thing he wanted to do was stay in that hornet's nest.
open air prison.
And why did he do that?
Because he knew the place was a hornet's nest, and the last thing he wanted to do was stay in that hornet's nest.
He wanted to get out, which he did.
Well, if you look at what's happened, the Israelis are back in the hornet's nest.
And is there any way of getting out?
I don't see it.
If they don't successfully ethnically cleanse Gaza, and let's certainly hope that they don't, that means the Israelis are going to have to run the place.
They're going to be in the place for the foreseeable future.
This is a disaster for them.
The public relations dimension of that alone is going to be a disaster.
This problem is not going to go away.
There'll be more protests on campuses in the fall.
And for as far as the eye can see, as long as the Israelis are in Gaza doing terrible things to the Palestinians.
Can you tell me how they're going to get out of there anytime soon?
I don't think so.
That means they're in deep trouble.
When you marry that to the apartheid problem, Israel's future does not look rosy.
Yeah, just on that Palestinian point, the South Africa point, and the concern about being labeled an apartheid state because it brought down the minority rule government of South Africa, in part that really did happen because of this activist movement Which found expression in large part on campuses in the West and in the United States demanding the divestment and sanctioning and boycotting of South Africa.
And you've seen, and I think a lot of people didn't realize it at the time, a lot of pro-Israel Journalists and activists and politicians have been very, very focused on American colleges for a long time.
They've been talking about what's going on there.
They've made it a priority.
They were celebrated when they forced out the presidents of Harvard and Penn for insufficiently cracking down on anti-Israel speech.
They've enacted all kinds of laws banning Supporters of the boycott movement of Israel this has been something that they've been concerned about for a very long time and ironically the effort to crack down over all these many years is now spawning the opposite outcome that they wanted where you have these college students who a lot of them never even thought about Israel before this is the first time they're getting a look at The reality of Israel and its relationship to the United States.
And it seems very, very difficult to imagine how this is going to get reversed, especially if Israel is going to continue this war at least through the end of this year.
Let me make two points just to back up what you're saying.
First of all, when I was young, and I think this is probably true when you were young too, the mainstream media basically controlled the discourse about Israel.
And the lobby and Israel supporters had huge influence on how Israel was portrayed in the mainstream media.
We now have an alternative media where people speak in an honest way about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
You're a manifestation of this phenomenon.
And there are lots of other outlets that people can go to where they can get a sense of what really has happened over time in greater Israel and what's happening today.
And this causes huge problems for Israel.
And this problem wasn't present in the past.
The second thing you don't want to lose sight of is, again, when I was young, and it was probably true when you were young, if you came to a university like the University of Chicago or Georgetown University, most of the students were white.
Right, there were a smattering of black students for sure, but it was a very white campus.
There hadn't been a lot of immigration, and furthermore, there were not that many international students on campus.
What's happened over time is, as a result of immigration, The United States has become a much more heterogeneous society.
And you have all sorts of people who come from countries where there's no real sympathy for Israel.
And you also have lots of international students.
And very importantly, you have lots of students from the Arab and Islamic world.
Who come, who get educated and who write books of their own, who become professors, who become the heads of Middle East centers at universities, right?
So they're in a position to tell a story, right?
Excuse me, Glenn, that contradicts the basic Israeli story about the creation of Israel and what's going on today.
And that message that those people are sending out gets picked up by people like you.
And people like me don't have to worry about being called by NPR or the New York Times who have no interest in talking to me because I know that people like you will call me up and we can come on this show.
We can talk about these things and millions of people can listen to us discuss the issue in a rational, legal way.
This is a huge problem for the lobby.
And by the way, one final point, this is why the lobby is going after TikTok.
Exactly.
I just wanted to.
And it is interesting because, you know, I've been I've known you for a long time.
We've been talking for a long time, but I have absolutely noticed that in the past two years, because of Ukraine, now Israel, that you have a massive online following when you go and appear on these shows.
A lot of people are very interested in what you're saying, and just that alone didn't exist even 10 or 15 years ago, aside from the fact that people can now watch what is happening in Gaza because it's no longer centralized in the hands of a few tiny corporations who show you only what they want you to see or the government wants you to see.
I think the point about TikTok is so important because, and we cover this a lot on our show, The proposed ban on TikTok has been lingering in Washington for years and it couldn't get passed.
It was based on the argument that it gives China too much influence to our youth and what the reason why it suddenly got passed very quickly over in a bipartisan way within a couple of months after October 7th and the sponsors of the bill and the people who voted yes will tell you this is because they became convinced That the reason so many young people have turned against Israel is because TikTok allows too much information to circulate about the realities of what's going on in Gaza.
It allows too much information to circulate that makes people anti-Israel.
And they went and they banned it, like an incredible act of censorship to ban an app that a third of the American population voluntarily chooses to use.
And I just want to make one other point about the campus issue as well, in addition to all the ones that you made, which is
I also think that an extremely damaging trend for Israel in this regard is that there is a clear generational shift among younger Jews, 40 and younger, 30 and younger, that not only don't feel a very strong connection to Israel, but have become very alienated by it, especially by its right-wing tilt, by the kind of extremism, the lack of plurality, and at
A lot of these protests, as you all know, there also are a lot of Jews, a lot of anti-Israel Jews and pro-Palestinian Jews who have become part of this movement as well.
And it makes it, as you said, much more difficult to demonize these movements and demonize people who are critical of Israel's anti-Semites.
You know, I remember back in 2007, you and Professor Wald They really set out to destroy your career and all of media was calling you anti-Semitic and your book anti-Semitic.
And that's why I think a free internet is so crucial because you now have a counter to that that is by no means small and trivial.
There are millions of people who get their knowledge and their news from independent media that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago.
And I think that has changed the dynamics so much.
Clint, I want to make two points.
One is, when Steve and I wrote the article and the book, virtually all of our defenders were Jewish.
Virtually all of our defenders were Jewish.
Including me at the time.
Including you, that's correct.
Right.
Second point I want to make is, I think that as a result of the fact that the lobby defends Israel successfully at almost every turn has led the Israelis to become careless.
And as a result of this, they've gotten themselves into a heap of a lot of trouble when you factor in the internet.
Now, what exactly am I saying there?
First of all, with regard to the leaders, you remember in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, the Israeli leaders said some absolutely horrible things about the Palestinians and what they planned to do to the Palestinians.
They were calling them animals, they were talking about Killing all of them, and so forth and so on.
Starving them, starving them.
Starving them, exactly.
And these were not low-level officials.
This was the top tier of leaders in the Israeli government.
The things they were saying, it's just hard to believe that anyone would say those things publicly.
Maybe privately, but publicly.
And I remember there was a piece in Hararetz, There was talking about the ICJ deliberations in The Hague and the Haaretz headline said, the road to The Hague is paved with comments by Israeli leaders because they were in genocidal intent.
So that's one dimension.
The second dimension is, Israeli soldiers have been taking videos of themselves doing horrible things to the Palestinians and ransacking Palestinian houses and so forth and so on, and then posting those videos on the internet.
And of course, they're ricocheting all over the world.
And you say to yourself, why would you do this?
You know, I think it's absolutely horrible that they would even do these things to begin with, but to film yourself doing these horrible things and then post them somewhere on the internet is a prescription for really serious trouble.
So the Israelis are documenting their own gross misbehavior.
And making it possible for people to see what they're doing.
And unsurprisingly, given that we have all these outlets, these alternative media outlets like your show, it's no surprise that Israel is in really deep trouble.
And this again is why the lobby is working overtime these days.
So I definitely need to get to Ukraine.
I have a couple questions for you there.
It's always changing, and it still is.
But before we get to that, I just want to have one final question about the Israeli-Gaza war, which is, recently there was a kind of border scuffle between Israel and the Egyptian military, where one member of the Egyptian military was killed.
And we also had this act where the Israelis bombed the consulate in Iran, in Damascus, and then the Iranians launched a kind of retaliation that ended up, and I think predictably so and deliberately so, Barely having any kind of damage done to Israel.
So clearly the people in that region, the countries in that region, have not wanted to have the war escalate.
And I think that's the reason it hasn't.
But I have two questions about that.
One is, is there a danger to this Israeli-Egypt, this tension that's obviously going to keep growing?
And two, now that we know the war is going to go on for a lot longer, Are these leaders in the Gulf States and other ones in the Arab world going to start feeling more and more pressure from their populations to take more aggressive and acrimonious steps against Israel?
Well, they're already feeling enormous pressure.
It may grow with the passage of time.
A lot depends on what the Israelis do.
But the pressure from down below, especially in a place like Jordan, where you have a huge Palestinian population, is a problem for the king.
So I think that will happen for sure.
With regard to a conflict breaking out between Egypt and Israel, I don't think that's going to happen.
And the reason is the United States has huge leverage over Egypt.
It's very important to understand.
I haven't looked at the numbers for a while, but a few years ago, the number one recipient of American aid was Israel, the number two recipient was Egypt, and the number three recipient was Jordan.
And the fact that Egypt and Jordan were two and three, and I would imagine it's still the case today if you leave Ukraine out.
The reason that's the case is the deal was related to Israel.
Once they signed peace treaties with Israel and had good relations with Israel, we gave Egypt and Jordan huge amounts of money.
We were bribing them to behave themselves towards Israel, and they have done that.
And the fact is they are heavily dependent on that money.
That's especially true of Egypt.
Egypt does not want to cross the United States.
The United States would bring it to its knees, bring Egypt to its knees economically.
So I think the Egyptians will bark a lot, but they're not going to get into a war with Israel.
Furthermore, if they got into a fight with Israel, this is a Bambi versus Godzilla situation, the Israelis would clean their clocks, and they fully understand that.
So I don't see much trouble there.
I would just say a word or two about the Iran case.
You remember it was on April 1st that the Israelis bombed The Iranian embassy in Damascus.
And this led Iran to retaliate against Israel and actually against the United States as well, because we got into the fight on April 14th.
And then, of course, the Israelis retaliated against Israel with a minor retaliatory attack on April 19th.
It's very clear that neither the United States nor Iran wanted a conflict.
It was the Israelis who started it all on April 1st, and it was the Israelis who wanted a precipitated conflict between the United States and Iran, and neither the United States nor Iran wanted that fight.
So we went to great lengths to work with the Iranians.
We worked with the Iranians All right, let's move to Ukraine.
We just have a little bit of time left, but I do want to get your thoughts on that, because basically from the very beginning of the war, you were saying that this war is so misguided for the West to be encouraging and fueling.
Because there's simply no way that Ukraine can defeat a power as great as Russia.
The population difference alone, let alone all the other disadvantages with Ukraine, even if it has NATO funding, made it almost certain that eventually Russia would win or at least never get expelled from Ukrainian territory, which is what the Americans and NATO defined as victory.
And at the time, very few other people were willing to say it either because they didn't see it or believe it or because they were so scared of saying anything against Ukraine because of the media accusation that you are a Kremlin apologist or propagandist or whatever.
I think everybody now acknowledges that you've been vindicated in this.
Even the Western media is now admitting that The Ukrainian war effort is on the verge of collapse.
The Russians are advancing in all sorts of ways.
There's all kinds of challenges and problems that Ukraine faces.
Just in terms of the battlefield itself, like the war itself, what do you now make of that?
I think your description is apt.
I think that the balance of power has shifted over the past two years.
The Ukrainians looked like they were doing quite well in 2022.
You remember the war started in February of 2022, and for the rest of that year, The Ukrainians looked like they were on a roll.
And we thought at the time that sanctions were going to work.
And we thought that we could defeat the Russians.
But the Russians mobilized their forces in late 2022.
And over the course of 2023, the balance of power shifted.
And it's now shifted much more in 2024.
So the Russians have a significant advantage in manpower.
I would guess they have a two to one advantage in manpower.
And furthermore, the Ukrainian forces are worn out.
They get very little rest and relaxation.
They don't get pulled off the front lines and get a chance to recharge their batteries.
The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is said to be 43 years old.
This is an army, when you look at its manpower levels and the quality of the manpower, is in really deep trouble.
Then when you look at the weaponry on both sides, the Russians probably have about a 10 to 1 advantage in artillery.
The Ukrainians are forming new brigades, and instead of forming armored brigades or mechanized brigades, They're forming pure infantry brigades because they don't have enough tanks and armored vehicles to create mechanized or armored brigades.
The Russians, on the other hand, are pumping out tanks and artillery rounds and artillery pieces like crazy.
So the balance of weaponry is decisively in favor of the Russians, and that balance is growing more and more favorable for the Russians.
And then the final factor regarding the battlefield has to do with air power.
What the Russians did is they had this huge inventory of dumb bombs.
These are bombs that, you know, don't come that close to hitting the target when you drop them.
But they created these little packages that you could put on the bomb, each bomb, that made it a smart bomb.
And in effect, what you could do with that bomb then is put it in the pickle barrel.
So the Russians have these big bombs that they're dropping from the sky because the Russians control the air.
And these bombs are deadly effective.
They're big and they're accurate.
So when you marry all these things together, the balance of manpower, the balance of weaponry on the ground, and the balance of air power, It's clear that the Ukrainians are doomed.
So one of the, and this is my last question for you, just because actually I have a lot more questions for you, but just in the respecting our time, yours and the show's, I'll just ask one more, which is, one of the consistent themes you have voiced since the beginning, and I remember, I think I've asked you this every time you've been on, is
You know, the US and NATO set a definition of victory that seemed almost impossible to achieve, which was we're going to expel the Russians from every inch of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.
And so anything short of that.
The Russians keeping Crimea, the Russians occupying any part of the eastern provinces of Ukraine, would automatically be defined as a defeat of NATO and the U.S.
by Russia.
Something that is a humiliation that NATO and the United States, I think, will do everything to avoid.
So that brings us to this kind of escalatory language we're now hearing.
Not just President Macron's musing about the possibility of deploying NATO troops, And having them fight directly alongside the Ukrainians against Russia, which would be World War III.
But also, there's a lot of pressure on Biden and he's now doing it in part to lift the restriction that has been on the use of American weapons since the beginning of the war that American weapons cannot be used to bomb inside Russia, to bomb targets inside of Russia.
Do you think that is there any scenario in which the US or NATO will accept defeat as they defined it?
Or will they do increasingly escalatory things to try and prevent it?
I mean, what is the danger here?
Well, I think your description of how we painted ourselves into a corner is correct.
And we show no evidence of backing off.
I mean, the really smart thing for us to do at this point in time, not only from our own point of view, but from Ukraine's The question is, what are we going to do as the situation on the battlefield continues to deteriorate?
some sort of settlement right now before more Ukrainians die and before they lose more territory.
But if you look at what we're doing, we're going in exactly the opposite direction as you described it.
So the question is, what are we going to do as the situation on the battlefield continues to deteriorate?
It's now clear that we basically have given the Ukrainians a green light to hit Russian territory, the Russian homeland, with these missiles like the Atakums missile that we've given to the Ukrainians.
I actually think the Russians will counter those missiles.
And I think it will end up not being that big a deal.
But I may be wrong.
And if I'm wrong, the Russians have made it clear, Putin has recently made it clear, That the retaliation from Russia will be significant.
And who knows what that means.
It could mean that the Russians will attack bases or storage sites in Poland or somewhere in the Baltic states, who knows for sure.
But the Russians will play hardball if those attack the missiles and scalp missiles that they get from the French.
Are really having an effect.
So I'm actually hoping that those missiles don't work so we don't have escalation.
But it's hard for me to see where this one all ends, given that we're committed to winning, and the Russians are winning, which means we're losing.
I would imagine that at some point, we're going to get a frozen conflict, right?
That's what's going to happen.
It's going to look like The 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula.
But even if you get a frozen conflict, Glenn, I think both sides will continue to go after each other.
Not in terms of a hot war, but in terms of looking for opportunities to undermine each other's position.
The Ukrainians and the Americans will go to great lengths to cause the Russians problems in those areas of Ukraine that they annex to Russia.
And the Russians will go to great lengths to sow dissension in Europe and to cause trouble in terms of transatlantic relations.
So I think as far as Europe is concerned, you see nothing, you can see nothing but trouble for as far as the eye can see.
All of this tells me that that decision on April 8th to bring Ukraine into NATO, who was really a catastrophic decision.
The consequences of that, the negative consequences of that, cannot be underestimated.
If that decision had not been made and Ukraine had not moved to become a member of NATO, it had remained a neutral state, Ukraine would be intact today and we wouldn't be talking about a possible escalation involving a great power war.
We wouldn't even be talking about a war in Ukraine.
We made a catastrophic decision, and the Americans are principally responsible.
And in fact, it was the Bush administration that is principally responsible for this disastrous decision.
Professor Mayer Scheimer, it is always a pleasure to have you on the show, even though oftentimes, maybe almost always, the message is not necessarily uplifting.
I'm thrilled that you've developed this sort of rock star status online, where more and more people are hearing you.
I think that is only a positive thing, and I know you're heavily in demand, so we always appreciate when you take the time to come on our show.
Thanks very much and have a great evening.
My pleasure.
Always good to see you.
Bye-bye.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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