Germany's Repressive Speech Crackdown Intensifies; U.S. & Russia Meet in Saudi Arabia and Open Cooperation; Plus: An Amazing Hate Crime in Florida is Buried
As Germany's repressive hate speech laws continue to intensify, journalist James Jackson explains how these laws target Pro-Palestinian activists. Then: the Trump administration opens up communication with Russia, ending the Biden administration's foreign policy of not speaking with the powerful country, even when it could have led the U.S. to nuclear war.
PLUS: Glenn covers a bizarre hate crime in Florida exclusively on Locals.
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday, obviously, except on Sacred Presidents Day when we're commemorating the presidents at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube tonight.
When Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to the Munich Security Conference last week and denounced growing and increasingly repressive censorship in Europe, especially Germany, many began paying far more attention to this serious problem than they did previously.
In documenting the attack on core rights of free expression in Europe, Vance listed many disturbing incidents where citizens were punished by the state for political views that various European capitals have grown to view as unacceptable.
For a variety of reasons, Vance neglected to mention the primary target of censorship punishments and repression, namely those who are critical of Israel and particularly its war on Gaza.
For more than a year, EU countries led by Germany and then closely behind by the UK have become more and more aggressive.
about simply shutting down pro-Palestinian speech and punishing those who are critical of or engage in activism against Israel.
Much of this culminated today in an ugly incident in Berlin where the police forcibly harassed a film festival because one of the directors of the film accused Israel of, quote, genocide.
While the event also featured the U.N. rapporteur Francisco Albanese, who has become very controversial because of how critical she is of Israel's actions in Gaza.
The German-based journalist James Jackson has been covering these free speech attacks in Germany extensively, and he will be here with us tonight to explain them all.
Several top national security officials of the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump Envoy Steve Witkoff, met today in Saudi Arabia with senior Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
It was the first real dialogue between high-level officials of both countries, the world's, by the way, two largest nuclear superpowers, that took place in many years.
And there's every reason to celebrate, indeed, to breathe a sigh of relief.
Over the fact that these two countries are now agreeing to maintain open dialogue and work together cooperatively, not only to end the devastating war in Ukraine, but on numerous issues of common interest beyond Ukraine as well.
And then finally, there was a bizarre and extraordinary hate crime that took place in Miami over the weekend that you likely heard very little about, and there's a reason for that.
A Jewish American man who identifies as an ardent Zionist shot and tried to kill two people Solely because he thought they were Palestinian.
This was in Miami.
The shooter was mistaken.
The two men he shot were actually Israeli.
For their part, the two Israeli victims also mistook the ethnic background of their shooter.
They announced on social media that he was Arab and that he tried to kill them just for being Israelis and then added on their social media accounts, quote, death to Arabs.
There's a lot to say about this incident and especially the reaction to it or more accurately the very Subdued lack of reaction.
We will analyze it all and will likely do so due to time constraints primarily on our locals after show.
We'll start the segment here.
And then move to Locals in the middle of this segment, and we're streaming live on Locals as well for our members who can watch the show there and then immediately and seamlessly watch the show, that third segment on Locals.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting after this message from our sponsor.
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The issue on which our show has most focused over the last year or so has been the relentless assault on free speech after October 7th.
It resulted in all sorts of executive orders in the United States purporting to ban criticism of Israel or activism against it, the shutting of Palestinian groups on campuses, even the shutting of TikTok, as one very prominent senator admitted over the weekend that was the true impetus for shutting down TikTok in the United States was that it was perceived to permit too many criticisms of Israel.
Meanwhile, throughout Europe, The targeting of Israel critics and pro-Palestinian activists, particularly people engaged in activism against the Israeli war in Gaza, has been even more severe.
And while it's taken place throughout Europe, undoubtedly the country where it has been most extreme is Germany, which has furnished immense amounts of arms to Israel that it used to bomb and destroy Gaza and therefore has a very...
Intent motive to prevent anyone from claiming that those are war crimes or genocide because it would make Germany complicit and there's been all sorts of attacks on free speech.
As J.D. Vance mentioned when he went to the Munich Security Conference, that we didn't mention this particular strain, even though it's the most common.
And James Jackson is an independent journalist and broadcaster from the United Kingdom who is based in Berlin.
He hosts Mad in Germany, a current affairs podcast.
He has previously covered news and business and culture in Germany and Central Eastern Europe for publications like the BBC, Sunday Times, and Time Magazine.
And he has really become one of my top two or three go-to sources for understanding events in Germany and particularly these assaults on free speech.
And we are very delighted to welcome him to his debut appearance on System Update.
James, it's great to see you.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
I know it's late there.
Hi, Glenn.
Thanks so much for having me on here.
You know, longtime reader and follower of yours.
So really great that you've picked up the free speech cause in Germany, particularly because it's not something that has got very much attention until, of course, the vice president of the United States brought it and 60 Minutes as well brought it to the world's attention.
But it's been something I've been trying to get the message out on for a while.
So I'm happy that...
It's gone global.
But as you said, the most egregious attacks on free speech, J.D. Vance did not mention, and that is the assault in Israel.
I think we understand why, you know, politics plays a very important role in this.
Right.
Sometimes politicians do constructive or positive acts, take constructive and positive steps, even if it's always not for the best motives.
And who knows, you know, J.D. Vance is politically constrained.
I've never heard him defend or demand censorship of pro-Palestinian activism, but in any event, he certainly did end up generating a lot more attention to this issue.
Now, I want to just step back for a minute from current events taking place in Germany, which we'll get to in a minute, including what happened today at this film festival.
I think one of the very first articles I ever wrote...
When I became a journalist or a blogger back in 2005, 2006 was precisely about the fact that there is a vastly different tradition in Western Europe when it comes to perceptions of free speech than there is in the United States.
Sort of like one of the few unifying views in the United States was, at least until recently, the idea that even the most horrendous political views are permitted to be expressed.
The state can't punish you for them.
And I remember what prompted my article was a Conviction in Austria of the British historian David Irving for having engaged in revisionism and denial of the Holocaust.
He was criminally convicted, sentenced to a prison term.
And I essentially wrote that, you know, these things are unimaginable in the United States, but they're common in Europe and in Germany in particular.
After World War II, you could even say for understandable reasons, there emerged these restrictions on speech, particularly when it came to denying the reality of the Holocaust, its magnitude, trying to revise what happened, as well as praise for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party and the Nazi ideology.
And so you started off with this kind of exception to free speech, justified by these extreme events of World War II, and they've obviously, as we're seeing now, have expanded aggressively, as censorship usually does.
That's its trajectory.
It starts off justified by some extreme event that people can get on board with, and then before you know it, it's a power that is being used all over the place.
So can you describe the evolution of censorship powers in Germany after World War II and kind of how they ended up being so expansive?
Well, I mean, absolutely, you're right.
The tradition here is quite different.
And, you know, I'm pro-free speech.
I'm not, maybe not quite as strong on that.
You know, I don't really like the idea of people denying the Holocaust.
But then, you know, you're right that it expands.
And so just to give you an example, because I was last weekend in Dresden.
It was the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden.
And there were all kinds of problematic things there.
There were people shouting Heil.
There was the Nazi anthem sung.
People were talking about the bombing Holocaust the Allies supposedly did against Dresden.
And so I think what's actually even stranger in Germany is that they brought in these laws to supposedly stop the Nazis and the neo-Nazis and revisionism and all of these terrible things.
But they haven't used it against them because the Nazis have realized It's very easy to avoid.
They know the trigger words.
They know what they can avoid saying.
And they just adapt their message.
So these laws don't work.
It does stop some of the most egregious stuff.
But actually, it's crazy that really it's been much more about stopping pro-Palestinian speech in the last few years.
So the history of it goes back to after the Second World War.
Effectively, there is a ban on Not saying that you're a Nazi, you are allowed to say, I am a national socialist, but it's actually the symbols of what they call Verfassungswidrige Organisationen in German, which means people opposed to the Constitution.
Now, that basically means you can't show the swastika, whatever you think of that.
But then they've expanded that in recent years to include...
Hamas as an anti-constitutional organization.
And what they've done, legally, they've said that the slogan, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, is a Hamas slogan, so that it's...
Actually prosecuted under the same laws as showing the swastika.
So the thing is, it's not a Hamas slogan.
Multiple reports, multiple courts have said it's not a Hamas slogan, but the police still treat it as a Hamas slogan in Berlin, especially, which has been like a kind of burning point for this issue because there's such a big...
It's the German capital, and there's also a huge Palestinian population.
I think the biggest outside of the Middle East.
The Nazis have realised, or the neo-Nazis have realised, you know, they can play the game, they can test the waters every so often, but actually they're quite happy with how things are because ultimately, and I'm working on a long piece about this at the moment, which should be released before the election, they've realised they can use the laws which initially came in to stop neo-Nazism against Muslim groups, Muslim minorities, effectively, you know...
Promoting the agenda of the Nazis of excluding Muslims and supporters of Palestine, many of whom are Jewish, leftists, exactly the kind of people that the Nazis don't like.
They can use the anti-Nazi laws for them.
And I don't think it's just them.
The entire center, you know, much of the center and even the left of German society has gone along with these attacks.
I mean, we're in the middle of an election campaign to bring it to...
Current events, all of these events at film festivals, activists, events have happened.
And the left party, which is surging right now, has said nothing about it.
At least the leadership, at least the people in Berlin.
We've had some minor politicians from it.
But really, free speech is not an issue for the left here.
It's an issue for the center-right.
But even then, it's not about Palestine.
There's this big, gaping Palestine-shaped exception.
Well, I want to delve into that a little bit because...
I suppose, in a way, there's always been an irony to the fact that after World War II, Europeans decided that the way they would make amends for the Holocaust would be by vehemently supporting the State of Israel because the whole idea of the State of Israel was we have all these Jews here.
They are stateless.
They're refugees.
We need some place for them to go.
And they need to go somewhere to be safe and to their own place.
And so we're not going to give them any part of Europe as compensation.
We're just going to send them to the Middle East, take the land from The Palestinians who are there and create the State of Israel and then vehemently support it, and that's what Germany has done.
So I suppose, and I'm interested in hearing your views on this, that one of the ways Germany in particular thought they were making penance to Jews for the treatment in World War II and the Holocaust was by becoming vehement supporters of the State of Israel.
And yet now what you see, and you alluded to this in your answer, is there are huge numbers of Jews all over the world and in Germany.
Who are among the leading critics of the state of Israel here in the US with all these campus protests.
A lot of the leaders and the participants were Jewish students, despite how they got depicted as kind of anti-Semitic mobs.
There were all sorts of Jews throughout these protests.
And one of the warped things to watch in Germany has been watching Jewish critics of Israel, German Jews on the left, being Attacked or arrested or harassed by the German police because of the expression of their views.
How is this reconciled in Germany that somehow the penance for World War II and the Holocaust to support the state of Israel and sometimes that might even manifest in harassing or arresting German Jews for saying what they believe?
You know, it's a really good question.
I think it's a shame, really, that the lessons of the Holocaust for Germany seem to have become we need to give the Jews a state and arm it heavily.
You know, out of all of the lessons you could learn, it seems like that's the one that stuck.
But a lot of it actually, I think, comes down to this.
Reconciliation, this question of shame for the Germans, or what's commonly referred to as guilt, obviously I think that causes some kind of bizarre psychological issues.
You know, you have many cases of Germans where they convert to Judaism coming from a Nazi family, and then they go into the synagogue and they try and reorganize the synagogue.
So there's definitely some kind of psychodrama in there.
And that's what I talk about a lot on my podcast, Mad in Germany Mad, because it's a really mad country in some ways with a lot to offer the world and teach the world.
But sometimes they really need to step back and think, what's going on?
What makes me, as a German, feel like I can defame a Jewish person who may have ran away and escaped, you know, maybe descended from Holocaust survivors as an anti-Semite?
And this word carries weight in Germany, for good reason.
And yet, police, government officials, and, of course, Zionist actors, many of whom are funded by the state of Germany, Throw it around with abandon.
And they just say, well, Jews can be anti-Semitic.
I think it's a very proud intellectual culture with a lot of the best philosophers in the world come from Germany.
And so they can almost talk themselves into anything.
And so they can talk themselves into believing that, you know.
Jews are anti-Semitic, but Germans are not.
And it's almost a redemption tale.
It has some very Protestant religious elements, which is strange because it's not that a religious society.
But I think it's given an easy answer.
Germans want to feel like they're the most loyal to Israel, more loyal than the Jews themselves.
And that, of course, is really perverse when you're watching it.
I mean, just to give an example of this sort of legalism.
And how Jewish activists have been harassed and arrested, less than Arab and Palestinian activists, it has to be said, but still.
Very sweet older Israeli women go to the protests.
Berlin is actually a bit of a hub for leftist Israelis.
You know, they run away from what they see as probably fascism in their own country.
They come here, they might complain about, you know, what they see as a genocide happening in their name.
They hold a sign up that says, another Jew for a free Palestine, which is...
Pretty innocuous, if you ask me.
And the police will come up to them and take that from them, detain them, question them.
And you ask why?
And it's like, well, they think that another Jew for a free Palestine coming from this nice old Jewish lady could mean we will kill another Jew to free Palestine.
So it's just this obsessive, bad faith interpretation of, you know, the worst interpretation possible.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, for example, as a quote.
And you'll notice that I keep doing this quotation marks because I don't want to be arrested.
For saying this phrase, which has been really the focal point for most of the censorship in Germany.
You know, I'm a journalist.
I don't say slogans anyway.
But really, this slogan has become, for Germans, almost a new Auschwitz.
You can't say that because you're saying you want to kill every Jew between the land of Israel, between the Mediterranean Sea and the River of Jordan.
It's like, no, that's not what people mean.
They mean a variety of different things, as the courts have thankfully found here.
But it's this obsessive, bad faith interpretation of the worst way of interpreting everything that you use to argue.
So, to talk about Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Reporter for the Palestinian Territories...
Let me stop you there, because I do want to get to what happened today, but I just want to spend a little bit more time on...
The context and the understanding of German history and politics that led us to this point, because as I think you know, I think I mentioned to you, I became very enamored of German culture and German intellectual history in college.
I intensively studied German.
I was obsessed with German philosophy and German writers, like a lot of people have become.
I spent a lot of time in Germany, especially in Austria, for a variety of reasons.
And sometimes I think about, you know, how amazing it would be to just travel back for, you know, 60 years in time and tell German Jews that shortly into the future the German police are going to come and arrest you and accuse you of being anti-Semitic and say that they're acting in defense of world Jewry by Assuming that they are even more stalwart defenders of the Jewish people than Jews themselves,
who I guess have become dissidents in the German state, and that's exactly, in a sense, what has happened.
But let me ask you, because you alluded to this earlier, there's a lot of focus, especially on the left, about the AFD and the dangers they pose.
But one of the ideas that you described that has led to this kind of censorship and this obsessive devotion to the state of Israel is this idea that, well, we have so much shame in our past, we have so much reason for needing redemption, and it's still working out this kind of psychodrama in German society across the political spectrum.
And yet, one of the things that I hear most from AFD... Spokespeople and adherents is this idea that, well, we need to lose that historical shame, that it's been enough time, we can't spend the rest of eternity being ashamed of our history and our culture.
We have a beautiful culture, a beautiful history, and we can't keep driving ourselves through decision-making based on the shame of what none of us actually did 80 years ago.
Are there any factions in Germany that are raising concerns about this censorship attack on Israel critics and pro-Palestinian activists?
And what has been the AFD's view on that?
Well, to answer the first part of your question, I think the only political grouping that has even slightly raised this is the Bundesarwagenknecht.
Sarah Wagenknecht, of course, quite an interesting formation.
I believe she's been on your show a few times.
They're also really trying to break out of the sort of mainstream left-right divide.
They're running for the first time in the election.
Let's see whether they make it past the 5% hurdle.
But otherwise, including from the left, it's been complete silence.
And the AFD were actually, and I argue this consistently, they created the impetus.
And it was actually the AFD who...
Wanted to censor pro-Palestinian activists first.
So in 2019, they introduced the BDS resolution in the Bundestag, which I believe was following a US resolution at the time.
And they said, you know, we want to ban BDS because it's anti-Semitic.
And they explicitly said this in the proposed law or proposed resolution because it comes from anti-Israel and anti-Semitic Arab groups.
So they really had...
The Arabs in their crosshairs from the beginning with that.
And what happened was a freakout among the German political class because they all scrambled around and they said, we can't have the AFD doing more to fight anti-Semitism than us.
So what happened then is every single party except the AFD and the left, which then Sarah Wagner-Kanesh was a senior member of.
They got together and they drafted a slightly watered-down resolution, which didn't explicitly mention the anti-Arab racism part.
And since then, it's been almost impossible.
It's technically a non-binding resolution, but there's something in the German character where they want to not just follow the rules to the letter, but sort of embody the spirit as well and take it to the furthest.
And I think you can see that throughout history, sadly.
Take it as far as possible.
And so then they brought in the BDS resolution in 2019 with all party, cross-party support, except the AFD and the left.
So the sort of far right and far left, if you want to think about it in those terms.
But since then, the AFD have sort of joined the consensus.
Now, since you speak German, I'm going to drop another couple of German words in there for you.
What Merkel declared was that the state of Israel, the security and its security is the Staatsräson.
This is a word that comes up a lot in discussions of the topic.
It means reason of state.
It's actually a word that comes from Machiavelli.
It doesn't have much use in modern politics.
She said it in 2008 in the Knesset, the first time that a foreign head of government had spoken to the Knesset and effectively just...
Thought it sounded quite grand.
But then this word took on like a life of its own and influenced German politics.
And they really thought, you know, we've got this grand word.
It's not just that we support Israel.
They're not just our ally.
Their security is almost the reason for our existence.
So, you know, in the world of diplomacy or foreign policy, having another state as the reason for your state is very strange, very unique.
And it didn't actually mean anything legal.
Same with this BDS resolution.
But then fast forward, you know, until last year and there was an anti-Semitism resolution put through the Bundestag called Never Again is Now.
So very manipulative kind of wording that how could you oppose that?
Never again war, never again genocide, never again is now.
We need to protect the Jews.
Very manipulative, as I said.
And in that case, actually, all the parties voted with the AFD, which is a bit of a taboo.
And then the left party abstained, and the only party that voted against was Sarah Wagner.
Yeah, similar to the United States Congress, they don't actually describe the purpose in the terms that Merkel did, but effectively, sometimes it seems like they do.
And similar to Germany, it's the one thing that can unify.
Every part of American political culture.
All right, let's get to the events of today.
In the last couple days, there was this film festival that was originally scheduled to be at a venue where the venue owners or managers were pressured to cancel it, ended up being held at a smaller venue, but with a lot of police presence and kind of harassment.
Describe what happened here as kind of an illustration of the trends in Germany.
So, you know, there were actually two film festivals.
There's the Berlin Ali, which is huge.
It's the Berlin Film Festival.
And there is a free speech issue there as well.
One person boycotted the Berlin Ali because of this censorship.
An Iranian actor and the director from their film, Jun Li, I believe is their name, read a speech about why they were boycotting it.
In that speech, they said Israel is committing a genocide.
And they said from the river to the sea.
Palestine will be free.
Now, after that happened, it came out that the state protection service called the Staatsschutz, which, you know, those two letters, those two initials, kind of scary when you look at German history.
Especially when they're raiding film festivals and punishing people for ideas and speech.
Yeah, that's the irony, is that for all the sensitivity about this history, sometimes they seem very...
Reckless about replicating some of its worst ethos.
It's really zealous.
There's no other way to describe it.
It's like we have learned so much from our past that we will become similar to that, head in that direction to stop it from happening again.
But then the focus isn't on the neo-Nazis.
It's not even really on the AFT. It's on...
Leftists, religious minorities, you know, the same kind of people that were targeted last time.
So I really have a hard time with understanding it.
And then what happened today was this other event, which was...
With the UN's Francesca Albanese, and there was so much pressure put on this event.
It's impressive that it even took place, to be honest.
Initially, they were supposed to be at the free university.
Again, notice the irony, because the free university actually cancelled on them.
And then they said at the bottom of the email to press people, including myself, like...
Of course, and this is where the university is where these debates should happen.
It's just a shameless irony that they would put that in there in an email.
You know, announcing that they were cancelling it, there was political pressure from the mayor of Berlin.
And Francesca Albanese, she said to me in an interview today, you know, I haven't seen anywhere where universities, where there's been so much pressure on universities, and there's been so much, you know, and they've given in.
No university has given in to censorship.
But I think she doesn't understand.
It's not just about the amount of pressure.
Of course, having the mayor, who is also like a state leader, very senior.
Wanting it to cancel, yeah, it is pressure.
But if you're a university, and especially one called the Free University, then you should be standing up for academic freedom, freedom of speech.
And they don't do that.
And I think there's a real moral cowardice, sadly, in Germany on these issues.
You know, they're not willing to stand up for what they're there for.
So what's the point of these institutions?
So then it moved space to another private venue, which was then smeared with Francesca, you're an anti-Semite, and UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee organization, kills Jews or hates Jews or something like that.
And so then they cancelled there again.
And in the end, it took place in the meeting room of a, like...
Old communist newspaper, the Junge Welt, which was much smaller than initially planned.
And the police kept turning up to the Junge Welt office and saying, listen, so what are you going to do?
I spoke to the editor-in-chief.
What are you going to do?
Are you sure you want to do this?
But they're polite.
They're not threatening you.
But then they say, OK, so you're live streaming.
OK, we can watch the live stream.
And then actually they said, no, the live stream is not good enough.
We need to send our heavily armed police.
Into this place, very small and surrounded by activists who for the last year and a half have been heavily criminalized, who are traumatized and brutalized.
Of course, there was another case a few weeks ago where a whole protest was broken up and declared illegal because of the use of the Arabic language.
If you're an Arabic speaker, imagine how that feels, having your language banned.
And ironically, Hebrew was banned at the same event.
You know, to prevent antisemitism and breaches of the peace, we have to ban Hebrew.
How crazy is that?
And back to today, there was...
The police were there, and there was another film by the Palestinian-American journalist, Heba Jamal, who reports on a lot of the same stuff as I do.
Of course, as a Palestinian, she has a different perspective, and she's worked on a very good documentary called The Reason of State about the censorship and about herself and her life and being Palestinian in times of what she calls this genocide.
And they said, you have to cut this bit out.
You have to cut this bit out at a film festival.
And, you know, there's no irony and there's no sense of historical responsibility in fighting for free speech in what was a totalitarian society, not once, but twice.
In East Berlin, where that was, we had 45 years of a communist dictatorship where they did similar stuff.
And they just haven't woken up from it, I'm afraid.
Yeah, I think it's a matter of time before we see the stock shots invading bookstores and putting a bunch of books that are pro-Palestinian into a pile and burning them on the streets of Berlin without any sense of irony there either.
Well, James, I really wanted a lot from your reporting.
I'm very grateful for it.
We're going to put up the link both to your Twitter account and your podcast where people can and I hope will follow your reporting and follow your work.
It's been very enlightening for me.
We'd love to have you back on.
Really appreciate your staying up late to talk to us tonight.
Thanks so much, Glenn.
Really great to speak to you, and yeah, I've been following you for a long time.
Thank you very much.
Keep up the great work.
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So I mentioned at the top of the show that I actually wrote an article today, a news report that has breaking news in it that concerns the United States and Brazil. a news report that has breaking news in it that I can't really say much more about it because it's an article that's ready to go, which will be published in Brazil's largest newspaper in Folia, and then the English version will be published on our local site.
We thought we would cover that tonight.
If it was ready, we thought it would be.
It's not quite yet, so look for that on Locals, and then when it happens, we'll probably do a separate show, live show.
To talk about it tomorrow when it happens.
But it does actually, the fact that we're not going to talk about that gives us the opportunity to talk about something that I think is extremely important that I actually really want to talk about as well, which is the fact that earlier today in Saudi Arabia, a very high-level delegation of Trump officials led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz,
as well as Trump's all-purpose Negotiating Envoy Steve Witkoff, who many credit, I think justifiably so, for being the leading force ushering in the ceasefire in Gaza, met today with senior Russian national security officials, diplomats led by the foreign minister, the very experienced, long-serving foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and they were there to talk.
Obviously about attempts to end the destructive and horrific war in Ukraine that the United States has led the way in financing and arming under the Biden administration, but also to talk in general about U.S.-Russian relations, something that's pretty important given...
The massive militaries each country has, but also the fact that they still remain the two largest nuclear powers in the world with thousands of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, pointed at one of their cities.
And so the dangers of not having open dialogue between the Americans and the Russians can't be overstated.
And yet, essentially since 2016, because of Russiagate, And the hysteria created by the Clinton campaign and the CIA and the FBI and the corporate media in pushing that fictitious scandal, even giving themselves Pulitzers for doing so, the New York Times and the Washington Post did in 2018, created a climate in which essentially any attempts by American officials to communicate with Russian officials...
Was deemed traitorous or criminal, and so it froze out the ability for the two countries to even maintain open communications, even as they're buzzing around each other with all sorts of high-level military activity, including we're on the opposite side of a proxy war in Ukraine.
As you may recall, and I think this has really been forgotten in the hysteria of Russiagate, but I once did a 90-minute documentary on this where I just broke down this whole case, so I know it pretty well.
Michael Flynn, General Michael Flynn, was named in 2016 after Trump won the election to be his national security advisor.
The purpose of a transition is to allow the transfer of power from the prior administration to the new one.
That's why the new president doesn't get inaugurated the day after the election, but roughly two months later.
And in the transition, Mike Flynn did exactly what you would want an incoming national security advisor to do.
He picked up the phone.
And he called senior Russian officials, including the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sadek Kislyak, and others in Moscow, to essentially say, look, we want to take a different approach to U.S.-Russian relations.
We want it to be less confrontational, more cooperative.
And the NSA was eavesdropping on this call.
Because they were obviously monitoring the phone calls of Kislyak and other Russian officials and heard what Michael Flynn said.
That's what FISA 702 is about, is you can now eavesdrop on the calls of American citizens about getting warrants, and that's what they did.
And the NSA decided that this was some sort of sinister call and gave it to the FBI, which then questioned Michael Flynn about the conversations he had with Russian officials.
And Flynn went, of course, when the FBI called and said, we'd like to talk to you, he said, of course.
He never dreamed he did anything wrong by picking the phone and calling Russian officials as the incoming national security advisor.
But they treated it like a criminal investigation.
And they asked him for the details of what he said, which they knew because they had the tape in the transcripts.
And when they felt like Michael Flynn didn't perfectly describe what his conversation was, somebody leaked that transcript to the Washington Post.
which reported on it and published it, even though publishing intercepted calls is the most illegal type of leak.
Obviously, nobody was prosecuted for that.
That was a leak done by the CIA or the U.S. security state for their own purposes, and that never gets punished.
The only kind of leaks that get punished are ones that expose their wrongdoing.
And then Michael Flynn was charged with perjury.
They ended up charging his son as well and threatening to prosecute his son unless he pled guilty, which he did.
And his crime, at the end of the day, Was speaking to Russians, to his counterparts in Moscow.
And the same thing happened with Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing as Attorney General.
They raised the fact that he was at an event where he had conversations with Russians in passing and he didn't remember exactly what happened because senators have those all the time in Washington.
And they tried to suggest that he was traitorous or on the side of the Russians or controlled by the Kremlin.
That's the insanity that emerged.
And it only intensified.
Over time, because when two sides refuse to speak to one another and start using accusatory language, the acrimony grows.
And obviously with the war in Ukraine and the U.S. funding a massive war right on the other side of the Russian border, the relations between the two countries have never been worse, despite how dangerous that is.
They barely have talked to each other for years because the U.S. refused to under the Biden administration.
And under the Trump administration, the media, the FBI, the Congress made it basically an act of treason to even try to talk to Russians, and so they essentially didn't.
Now that Trump feels like he has a mandate to do the things that not only he thinks should be done, but that he promised to do during the campaign, including in the ending the war in Ukraine, he's aggressively and quickly opened up relations with and communications with Russia, including having already spoke on the phone to his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin.
And earlier today, excuse me, in Saudi Arabia, the top level of the Trump national security team met with the top level of the Russian national security team.
Here you see a photo of them, an official photo taken in Riyadh.
There you see Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov sitting across from each other.
And the New York Times Headline reads, U.S. and Russia pursue partnership in a headspinning shift in relations.
Headspinning, designed to suggest that it's radical to talk to the Russians.
Let me just say, at the height of the Cold War, when the two sides thought the other side was an existential threat to their survival, when they almost came close to nuclear war, when they were fighting proxy wars all around the world, Americans and the Russians spoke constantly.
There was the iconic red phone on the president's desk designed to have an open dialogue to speak immediately to the Russians to avoid misperceptions of the kind that almost led the world to nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But given how many conflicts there were around the world where the two sides were the proxy fighters and Nixon and Reagan met with the Soviet leaders all the time.
They came to the United States.
They spoke on TV. The American presidents did the same in Moscow.
That was during the Cold War.
Obviously, if you can do that during the Cold War, you can do it now where the two sides are nowhere near as acrimonious and aggressive and bellicose of one another, or at least should be.
Here's the text of The New York Times, quote, We weren't just listening to each other, but we heard each other.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said, quote, I have reason to believe that the American side started to better understand our positions.
The meetings, the most extensive negotiations in more than three years between the two global powers, was the latest swerve by the Trump administration in abandoning Western efforts to punish Russia for starting Europe's most destructive war in generations.
Can you, do you see, this is a New York Times news article, there's not an op-ed, and every sentence and the headline is oozing with opinion and judgment.
Trump ran on a platform of talking to the Russians and negotiating and using diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.
And people voted for that.
And the New York Times depicts it as though it's some kind of grave moral failing.
It's head spinning.
He's abandoning Western efforts to punish Russia.
It goes on, quote, quote, goes on, quote, quote, goes on, quote, quote, goes on,
facts of any of the key subjects.
Any decisions he added cannot be imposed on Ukraine." Okay.
First of all, the reality is, although that sounds nice, is that Ukraine is a tiny little powerless impotent country that depends on the largest of the United States.
And secondly, Ukraine has followed American dictates and American directives constantly.
The U.S., after all, facilitated a coup in 2014 where the elected president of Ukraine was forcibly removed from office one year before his term was supposed to end constitutionally because, in the perception of the West, he had become too pro-Moscow, too anti-EU, and the U.S. imposed a government on Ukraine.
We all heard that.
Audio tape of Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine at the time plotting who they wanted in that government.
And then at the start of the war, when Ukraine was negotiating with Russia actively to reach an agreement to avert the need for war, Boris Johnson and Victoria Nuland told the Ukrainians they are not permitted to do that.
They have to keep fighting the war.
That was not a negotiation they should pursue and they obeyed.
So this idea, oh, Ukraine has its own autonomy, we have to decide what's best for us, that is not the reality, nor is it the history of Ukraine's behavior when it comes to the United States.
Marco Rubio spoke today after his meeting, sitting with Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, and Steve Woodcoff, the negotiating envoy.
And it's really interesting because this is what we were trying to say throughout the transition when Trump kept appointing People who had a history of neoconservatism, of war advocacy, including Marco Rubio, that, look, I don't like these appointments, but I believe that there's a good possibility that Trump means it this time when he says that the only requirement he has in the people who work for him this time is that they follow his agenda and not sabotage it, as happened in the first administration.
I'm not going to make judgments about what the Trump administration will be before it's even inaugurated based on who he's selecting.
And I think Marco Rubio is a really good example of this.
He's been an ardent, vocal advocate of arming and supporting Ukraine.
He was critical of the Biden administration for not doing enough.
And yet, listen to him now.
For three and a half years while this conflict has raged, or three years while it's raged, no one else has been able to bring something together like what we saw today.
Because Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that can.
So no one is being sidelined here.
But President Trump is in a position that he campaigned on to initiate a process that could bring about an end to this conflict.
And from that could emerge some very positive things for the United States, for Europe, for Ukraine, for the world.
But first it begins by the end of this conflict.
And so the only thing President Trump's trying to do is bring about peace.
It's what he campaigned on.
It's something the world should be thanking President Trump for doing.
He's been able to achieve what for two and a half, three years no one else has been able to achieve, which is to begin this process, a serious process.
Obviously a lot of work remains before we have a result.
But President Trump's the only one that can do it.
You know, it's hard to argue with that, given that we sat there for four years under the Biden administration and never saw any attempts to have real dialogue with the Russians.
And once the war in Ukraine started, the idea was we're not even interested in diplomacy.
In fact, a dozen or so members of the Democratic Party in Congress once issued a letter calling very tepidly, very politely, very deferentially for some degree of diplomacy to see if there was a possibility of ending the war.
They were immediately vilified as Kremlin agents and Kremlin assets, and they were forced to withdraw the letter saying, oh, no, we don't really mean this.
We are fully behind Ukraine.
Trump created the space single-handedly to have the U.S. talk to Russia.
And it wasn't just about Ukraine.
Here's Tammy Bruce, the US State Department spokesperson who issued a readout.
what's called a readout summary, essentially, of the communications between Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov.
Quote, President Trump wants to stop the killing.
The United States wants peace and is using its strength in the world to bring countries together.
President Trump is the only leader in the world who can get Ukraine and Russia to agree to that.
We agreed to establish a consultation mechanism to address an irritant to our bilateral relationship with the objective of taking steps necessary to normalize the operation of our respective diplomatic missions.
Think how basic that is.
All it's saying is, look, when we have some kind of a conflict that arises in our relationship, we should be able to address it through a consultation mechanism, meaning speaking to one another, with the objective of taking whatever steps are needed to normalize How our diplomatic missions interact with one another.
When we have a problem with you we're going to pick up the phone and call you or meet with you and when you have a problem with us do the same.
That's normal diplomacy that has been suspended for years in Washington to the great danger of the world.
They also agreed to quote appoint retroactive Sorry, appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.
Precisely what Trump agreed on, this war is going to its fourth full year.
It has killed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly soldiers.
It's wrecked large parts of Ukraine.
It has cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars.
A hundred billion more or so?
It's a senseless, pointless, horrific war that as President Trump earlier today said could have been avoided, would have been avoided, had Victoria Nuland and Boris Johnson not intervened and demanded the war continue.
They also agreed, quote, That said, that's what the New York Times calls a head-spinning radical departure, abandoning Europeans' efforts to punish Russia.
Talking to the Russians and pledging to continue to keep dialogue flowing with the intent to end the war, but also to resolve other future conflicts that could also result in very high level tensions, if not military confrontation.
Any sane person wants to avoid that.
NBC News today said U.S. and Russia agreed to restore embassy staffing in high-level talks on the Ukraine war.
Quote, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both countries had agreed to reestablish, quote, the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow, and that Washington would create a high-level team to work on a path to ending the war in Ukraine.
Here is Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, talking about how he saw the meeting.
The first and probably the most difficult thing is to ensure the earliest possible appointment of Russian ambassadors to the United States and the United States to Russia.
Just to be clear, there's no presence, diplomatic presence, of the United States and Moscow or Russia in Washington.
That is insane.
Lavrov went on.
Second, to remove the obstacles that have been built for many years, primarily by the Biden administration over the past four years, on the direction of our diplomatic missions, seriously complicating their work,
the endless expulsion of our diplomats to which we were forced to respond, The ongoing problems, the arrest of our real estate, and many, many more.
The second agreement we agreed that a process for Ukrainian settlement will be formed in the near future.
The American side will announce who will represent Washington.
Within the framework of this work, and as soon as we know the name and position of the relevant representatives, we as President Putin poll President Trump will immediately designate our participant in this process.
I hate the phrase in politics, oh, the adults are in the room, the adults have returned, whatever.
I hate it.
The Democrats constantly describe themselves that way.
Oh, we're the adults in the room.
What has been done between the United States and Russia since 2016, the narratives about the United States and Russia, the cutting off of diplomatic relations, the seizure of Russian assets all over the world, has been childish, pathetic, dangerous, reckless.
And it is very refreshing to see the restoration of just basic diplomatic dialogue and communication between these two big, very powerful countries.
Here is Kirill Dmitriev, who is the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, who said today that U.S.-Russia cooperation is, quote, very important for the world.
I think the discussion today with the U.S. team are very important.
And we've been consistently saying that good U.S.-Russia relations are very important for the whole world.
Only jointly can Russia and U.S. address lots of world problems, resolve global conflicts and offer solutions.
We can do a lot in economic area.
It's very important to understand that U.S. businesses lost around 300 billion dollars from leaving Russia.
So there is huge economic toll on many countries from...
You know, what's happening right now.
And we believe the way forward is through solutions, through problem solving.
And we really see that President Trump and his team is a team of problem solvers.
People who have already addressed a number of big challenges very swiftly, very efficiently and very successfully.
And we believe that this problem solving approach is very important to address issues that the world is facing now.
These things are so basic.
They shouldn't even need to be stated, let alone depicted as a head-spinning departure, as the New York Times put it, and yet that's exactly what it has been because we've had bellicose children throwing tantrums in lieu of foreign policy.
Here, speaking of the attempt to Reintroduce a sort of seriousness into foreign policy.
Here is Trump today speaking earlier about the meeting in Saudi Arabia.
We're hearing that Russia wants to force Ukraine to hold new elections in order to sign any kind of a peace deal.
Is that something that the US would ever support?
By the way, one of the things that the Russians asked for at this meeting was to hold elections in Ukraine.
As you may recall, Zelensky suspended all elections, imposed martial law, and basically said, I'm going to be president into the indefinite future.
So while we're justifying the NATO role, the U.S. role in Ukraine on the grounds that we have to defend democracy, there are no elections in Ukraine.
Opposition media has been shut.
Churches perceived to be unsupportive of Kiev have been shut.
Even prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky closed Opposition television statements and churches alleging that they were too pro-Russian to permit to exist.
And so now you hear Russia saying, we'd like to have elections to see if the Ukrainians really want Zelensky in power, because there's a lot of opposition to Zelensky, a lot of anger toward him.
But without an election, who knows?
Maybe he's still supported by a majority of Ukrainians.
But there's only one way to find out.
And that's elections.
And yet, the American media, the Europeans, acted as though the demand for elections in a war that we're told is fought in favor of democracy to preserve democracy and advance democracy was some sort of sinister, malicious, and even anti-democratic demand.
So here you see this reporter asking Trump, you would never support something like that, would you?
Elections in Ukraine?
Sounds bizarre.
How could you possibly even talk about that?
And here's what he said.
Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens.
You've got most of the cities are laying on their sides.
The buildings are collapsed.
It looks like a massive demolition site.
The whole...
I mean, so many of the cities.
I mean, they haven't done it in Kiev because I guess they don't want to shoot too many rockets in there.
They've done it 20%, but they haven't done it 100%.
If they wanted to do it 100%, it would probably happen very quickly.
But you have cities that are absolutely decimated.
And yeah, I would say that, you know, when they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to...
Wouldn't the people of Ukraine have to say, like...
You know, it's been a long time since we've had an election.
That's not a Russia thing.
That's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.
I just, I cannot tell you how bizarre I find it.
That people find it problematic, the idea that, hey, we should find out whether the Ukrainians are happy with Zelensky as their leader before we start making deals and saying they're at the table, like, let's find out who the Ukrainians want as their leader.
And yes, Russia is occupying part of Ukraine.
They were since 2014 with Crimea.
They are now in eastern Ukraine.
But those are the parts of the country that have been pro-Russian that identify as Russian-speaking ethnic Russians anyway.
We are told that we hear polls that Western think tank analysts promote all the time, so apparently it's possible to survey in a legitimate way Ukrainian public opinion, according to them, despite the Russian occupation.
How can anyone object to the idea that before there's a resolution, Ukrainians should speak about who their leader should be?
Now, speaking of childish tantrums and pouting, Zelensky himself today spoke about the meeting between the Americans and the Russians in Saudi Arabia, and here's what he said.
The Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia was a surprise for us, just like to many others.
Yes, we saw all this information from the media.
I don't know who will stay there, who will leave, who is going where.
To be honest, I don't care.
What I care about is for the partners to overthink something about us.
We are completely honest and open.
That's why I don't want any, quote, coincidences.
That's why I won't go to Saudi Arabia.
We reached out to our partners in Saudi Arabia.
I have a very good relationship with His Royal Highness Muhammad.
We have spoken just now and agreed that I will pay an official visit on March 10th.
As for the United States, we are expecting them in Kiev.
So, he's thrown all caution to the wind.
He's clearly believing that The United States won't fight for Ukraine anymore, given that Trump ran on that commitment and Americans ratified it in the election.
He's probably right about that.
And I guess there's really nothing left for him to do but to pout or to try and pressure the Europeans to step up and defend Ukraine, though they're Europe.
They can't, which is a major part of the problem.
Here, Newsweek reported yesterday, Ukraine, quote, won't recognize Russia-US talks in Saudi Arabia, says Zelensky.
And again, you can recognize or not recognize whatever you want, but the fact is that the United States, or rather that Ukraine, is in fact dependent on the United States and European leaders, despite wanting to sound tough and talk tough, having to face that reality as well.
From ABC News yesterday, European leaders gather for an emergency meeting.
...
...
Three hours of emergency talks of the presidential palace in Paris left leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, NATO, and the European Union without a common view on possible peacekeeping troops.
After a U.S. diplomatic blitz on Ukraine last week through a once-solid transatlantic alliance into turmoil, French President Emmanuel Macron, who has long championed a stronger European defense, said their stinging rebukes and threats of non-cooperation in the face of military danger felt like a shock to the system.
The tipping point came when Trump decided to upend years of U.S. policy by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In hopes of ending the Russian-Ukraine war, yes.
Oh, sorry that Trump, who was newly elected by the American public in our democratic election, decided to reverse the last four years of a policy by an administration in a party that he defeated.
That's kind of what elections are for.
Think about how disrespectful and anti-democratic it would be if Trump ran on a platform of ending the war in Ukraine, got into office after he convinced Americans he would do that, and then decided to just keep supporting Biden's policy of funding the Ukrainians endlessly.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters a possible peace agreement with Russia cannot be forced on Ukraine.
Okay, quote, "For us, it must be and is clear this does not mean that peace can be dictated and that Ukraine must accept what is presented to it," he insisted.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that any peace agreement would need to have the active involvement of the EU and Ukraine so as not to be a false end to the war, quote, as has happened in the past.
He went on, quote, what cannot be is that the aggression is rewarded.
The aggressor is rewarded.
Sorry, the aggressor has been rewarded.
They won the war, as many of us predicted.
Was inevitable, despite being called Russian agents three years ago, just based on the superior military force and the size of Russia alone.
Sir Keir Starmer, the very unpopular labor leader of the UK, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, went around saying, we the British are going to send troops to Ukraine and we're going to keep the peace and protect Ukraine with France.
And then he had to backtrack because, as The Guardian reported yesterday, the U.S., quote, backstop is vital to deter future Russian attacks on Ukraine, says Starmer.
In other words, they don't have the capability to do any of that without U.S. involvement.
British Prime Minister says that force would need protections such as air cover that only the U.S. can provide.
If the Europeans want to talk tough, if they want to talk about protecting Ukraine, fighting Russia, whatever, Then they should find the money to build up their military and go do that if that's what their citizens actually want.
I don't think it is.
Macron is incredibly weak and unpopular, especially after that ridiculous debacle that happened with the EU elections where Marine Le Pen's party won and then he immediately dissolved the French parliament and called new elections.
The leftist coalition won.
His party could not even get a majority in the French parliament and doesn't have that anymore.
Keir Starmer is incredibly unpopular.
European economies are hurting.
There's little economic growth.
It's very sluggish.
Their budgets are overstretched.
How are they going to find the money to build up to 5% of GDP and present a credible fighting force against Russia?
Their view has been, we're going to build up our welfare state.
We're going to give our citizens a nice life.
Because we don't have to spend money on our defense.
The United States is going to do that for us.
And that has been the deal, not just after World War II, but even with the fall of the Soviet Union, that for whatever reason, the bipartisan administrations in Washington, eager to serve the U.S. security state and the military-industrial complex, have continued to pursue.
And Trump, for years now, has said, why do we have NATO again?
What do we get out of that?
We spent a lot of money to protect Europe.
What do we get for that?
And the Europeans are scandalized and indignant. .
But the reality of the world is that Ukraine and the EU cannot sustain a war against Russia.
Only the United States can do that.
And Americans have decided democratically that they don't do so anymore.
And that's the end of the story.
All right.
So as I mentioned at the top of this show, we are going to have a third segment occasionally, periodically on this show.
And given time constraints and the need to wrap up our show on Rumble, these third segments will generally appear exclusively on our Locals platform, which, as I indicated previously, was a platform where we used to have twice a week aftershows that were live and interactive.
The problem with it was it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to set up, and so it was asking too much of our members to be able to Wait for those, and so what we're going to do instead is have exclusive segments of the kind that I'm about to do about an incredible hate crime that took place over the weekend in Miami that would be getting enormous attention if the identity of those involved were different than what they are.
Essentially, an American Jewish man who identifies as an ardent Zionist and supporter of Israel.
Was driving and drove by a car that he thought contained two Arabs in it, two Palestinians in it.
And he used a semi-automatic rifle to shoot at them 17 times.
And when he was arrested by the police, he said, oh, I just killed two Arabs.
The police said, did they do anything to you?
He said, no, I just killed them because they were Arabs.
It turned out they weren't Arabs, they were Israelis.
And the two Israelis who were shot...
Had a similar case of mistaken identity.
They thought the person who was shooting them was also Arab.
And they went on their social media accounts and claimed that they were shot by an Arab simply because they were Israeli Jews and posted as a result death to Arabs only for them to then discover that in fact the shooter was Israeli.
Just take a minute and imagine what the reaction would be if the shooter had been Arab or Palestinian and actually did shoot those two men.
Solely because they were Israelis or solely because they were Jews.
But because that didn't happen, because the shooter was himself an American Jew and a Zionist, it's basically been ignored.
So we want to break down this case and analyze the implication, and we will do that solely on our Locals platform.
As I've said before, our Locals community is a place that you can join.
We offer a lot of different features, interactive features, exclusive video content.
Transcripts of each show, but most of all, it's the community on which we rely to support the independent journalism that we do here every night.
So if you would like to join, you just simply click the Join button right below the video player on the Rumble page.
Immediately you can then go to the Locals community and watch this third segment and the rest of the content that we will have from now on that's exclusively on Locals as well as the other features and you will at the same time enable us to continue our independent journalism.
For those of you who are unable to do that or don't desire to do that, of course we're very appreciative of you watching The Rumble Show.
We're always going to be here every night.
To listen to the rest of this segment and the rest of this show, please go to greenwald.locals.com where you can become a member of our Locals community.
