Michael Tracey Reports from CPAC: Exclusive Interviews with Liz Truss, Steve Bannon & More
Exclusive from CPAC: Michael Tracey's WWII chat with Steve Bannon, interviews with two former prime ministers, CPAC divisions over AfD, and more
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Hello, this is Michael Tracy filling in for Glenn Greenwald here on System Update.
Glenn is away on another one of his magical mystery trips.
So for now, you are once again stuck with me.
Today we're in Washington, D.C. here at the beautiful Rumble Studio.
As fortune would have it, we have a bevy of interesting content for you, because over the past couple days, I was out covering CPAC, which is the annual conservative confab here in Washington, D.C. And so there I was, busily talking to whomever I thought might have a notable thought to share.
We're going to play some of these notable clips for you, but just by way of introduction, what I found unusually interesting about this year's CPAC, and I have been to CPACs in the past, I don't think, in a number of years, maybe even pre-Trump is the last time I went, but definitely this year, what stood out to me was how international CPAC really has become.
So in the past, it might have been a little bit wearying.
For me to just sit through the standard Republican talking points.
But with so much of an international presence at CPAC now, it kind of makes things a little more spicy.
So now we're talking about potentially how to constitute or not a global conservative or right-wing coalition more so than something that's just rather myopically focused on American domestic or foreign affairs.
And so one of the main points of friction, and you know me, I'm always looking to probe and prod at points of friction, is how a bunch of these right-wing parties that are seeking to endear themselves to Trump and the Trump movement, the ascendant Trump governance in D.C., how they will reconcile some of their pretty striking points of departure.
And so one of the right-wing parties that was at CPAC or had representatives there was the Law and Justice Party in Poland, namely a former prime minister who's also still in the EU government,
who is very pro-Ukraine, very antagonistic toward Russia, drawing on this tendency within much of Eastern Europe, Poland in particular, To continue to look at Russia through the lens of the Soviet Empire and the subjugation, as they would put it or see it, of these Eastern European provinces to Soviet domination.
And they're trying to convince people on the right, including in the United States, who still might be a bit skeptical of the broader antagonism toward Russia, that they must continue up.
Continue with this antipathy.
On the other hand, there are parties like the AFD or Alternative for Germany who were just in the German federal elections yesterday who also had a presence at CPAC and who were seeking to refute the criticisms made of their party by the other right-wing parties in Eastern Europe like in Poland who view the AFD as A very insidious threat.
So I want to show you a clip of first my interviewing the former Polish Prime Minister, his name is Matusz Morawiecki, on how he would characterize the AFD, followed by a member of the European Parliament from the AFD, Christine Anderson, responding...
To those critiques, and this is notable because, again, the German federal election was yesterday.
The AFD came in second place, a little over 20%.
It's looking like the Christian Union Party, run by probably incoming Chancellor Abers, is going to maintain their firewall policy to not bring in the AFD into a governing coalition,
despite J.D. Vance going to the Munich Security Conference recently and seeming to urge the ruling parties in Europe to no longer have this kind of firewall policy where they won't even entertain the idea of bringing in these disliked right-wing parties into some kind of governing structure.
So let's play that first clip for you.
How do you describe the AFD party in Germany ideologically in contrast to...
With your conception of conservatism?
Well, ideologically, I completely disagree with their position vis-a-vis the Second World War and all the Nazi history because I see some attempts to justify some crimes.
And here I'm completely opposing to this.
That's item number one.
Number two is they are two Too much inclined to Russia.
And I think that a significant part of the German elite would like to go back to business as usual.
And they are not an exception, the AFD. Because in CDU, in SPD and all the other parties, maybe with the exception of the Greens, Most of the German economic and business elite would like to go back to business as usual with Russia.
And I hope it's not going to be the case.
So I disagree with all those elements.
Are they far-right?
Are they fascistic?
What label was most apt in terms of how you would describe them?
I describe them as far-right, but I also disagree with all the labeling of the parties which are pro-Russian as the ones which are from my political camp, because we are absolutely very vigilant and very watchful to all the threats coming from the East.
You're a member of the European Parliament for the AFD, Alternative for Germany in English.
German federal election is coming up this weekend.
We spoke yesterday to the former Prime Minister of Poland, Mr. Maroweski, I think.
I'm mispronouncing the name, I'm sorry.
We'll put it in right.
But anyway, we were asking him, what is the difference between your Polish conservatism, as he sees it, and the AFD? And he went on a whole explanation about how he finds the AFD to be dangerous and about how the AFD is not repenting for World War II and maybe even want to change the borders with Poland.
So how do you explain this?
Because we're at a right-wing conference and there seem to be some differences between different factions of the right in terms of how they perceive the AFD. How do you explain that?
Well, it is actually hard to explain, but you might want to look at, you know, we live on this rather small continent in Europe together, and the whole world actually, you know, envies us to live on that small continent with so many different cultures, history, different languages.
And, of course, we all have our national interests and we all have our national pride, whether, you know, some...
Countries might admit to that or not.
That's just a fact.
And that just explains it, right?
But I would want to correct him.
We do not want to change any borders in Europe, right?
We would be totally satisfied with just securing our own border, which would be the right of every country, every nation, to secure its own border.
And that's what we are pretty much fighting for.
How about the claim that...
The AFD does not want to take responsibility for Germany's role in World War II in a way that's offensive to Poles.
No, that's a downright lie.
He did say that, right?
Well, that's a downright lie.
We are taking responsibility.
I'll show you who he is because I mispronounced the name.
I just want to make sure I have it correct.
You know him?
No, I don't even know him.
He was the prime minister of Poland.
And he's the leader of...
The European Conservative Group in the EU Parliament.
No, but it is a downright lie.
We have taken responsibility for the cruel and horrible things that the Nazis actually afflicted upon humanity.
And we have given a promise to never again.
And we've also given a promise to fight the beginnings.
The thing is just this.
How can anyone live up?
To the promise of never again, if they are not even prepared to look at how broad this Nazi regime about, how did it come into power?
What were the incremental steps?
I mean, Nazi Germany did not start out by rounding up Jews and transporting them off to camps.
That was the end point.
But the little incremental steps before that...
How they came into power and how people just looked away and were gaslighted into thinking that the government was looking out for their own good.
That's exactly what we have seen during this whole COVID madness.
And if I'm now, or at that time, spoke up...
Against these little incriminate steps and how they were erecting a totalitarian regime, then I was being slapped with the accusation of trivializing the Holocaust.
I was doing the opposite of that.
I was warning.
This is how the Nazis did it back then.
It was all about public health, by the way.
That's how they ushered it in.
And censorship.
Exactly.
And then to hear this journalist from CBS. Now claiming that the Holocaust was caused by free speech?
I mean, seriously, you know?
I put out that clip, actually, on Sunday that was then shared by J.D. Vance, so yes.
That's just an example.
I subjected myself to watching Face the Nation on CBS. But that's just an example of how totally twisted their minds are at this point.
It wasn't free speech.
It was the lack.
Of free speech that actually brought the Holocaust about.
So we need to fight that and my party is absolutely determined to fight that and we will never stand for having anyone tell us and accuse us that we are not ready to take responsibility for these horrible, atrocious things that the Nazis did.
We are actually the only ones fighting it, to be quite clear.
So that's pretty interesting, right?
The MEP there for the AFD party is actually making the argument that it's only the AFD that is the most stridently opposing the legacy of Nazi Germany to which they are regularly attacked as being The purveyors of or that they are trying to reinvigorate the legacy of National Socialism somehow in Germany.
Now, you could perhaps take issue with certain aspects of that claim, but it is notable that particularly in front of an American audience, the representatives of the AFD are actually rehearsing this idea that they are the most fervent condemners the representatives of the AFD are actually rehearsing this idea that they are the most fervent Meanwhile, you have other right-wing factions like in Poland and elsewhere denouncing them as being too sympathetic to Nazi history.
Now, I want to mention that you can go to the system update channels on Rumble, YouTube and elsewhere, and we're going to post the full interviews of all the ones that we discuss on the show.
And I think they are worth watching in full.
Like I said, the German federal election, this was one day before it.
It took place yesterday, Sunday.
And her party, the AfD, got 20.8%, whereas the CDU, more of like a center-right party, got 28.5%.
So they're going to have their candidate or their representative as the Chancellor of Germany.
And it looks like the AFD will probably still be frozen out unless something unexpected happens, notwithstanding their determination to convince everyone that they are, in fact, opposed to who are claimed to be their historical precedents or antecedents, which is the German-Nazi Party, which I personally don't think they have much that's immediately discernible, that in common with.
It seems like they want to impose some pretty harsh immigration restriction, and maybe they're a little bit more skeptical of imposing sanctions on Russia, which are beliefs that you think could be accommodated within a general political system without everybody having this paranoid resistance to even dealing with them at all.
So I don't know necessarily if I was a German, I would be a member of the AFD or not, I don't know that I would necessarily think it's sensible to impose this ultimate firewall on them so that they cannot have any voice or any role in German governing institutions because people are still so preoccupied with stuff that went on 80 years ago.
So that seems a little odd to me.
One reason why there are so many international right-wing people or conservative people at CPAC, and I spoke also to, unfortunately this wasn't on camera, but members of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, from Estonia, there was somebody from Romania that I noticed before I got a chance to interview them.
One reason why they're sort of circling around CPAC is because Steve Bannon had a big presence there.
With his Real America's voice set up down in the bowels of the CPAC venue.
And I'm proud to announce that I was able to convene a historic Tracy Bannon Summit.
And I had an interesting discussion with him, which will play a choice part here.
And then you can watch the entirety of it.
On our associated channels, but I wanted to play this part, which is me asking Bannon about these sort of factional or internecine disputes that are bubbling up between right-wing elements who have come to CPAC and are, again, trying to kind of insinuate themselves into the broader Trump orbit but have some serious differences amongst themselves.
So here's Steve Bannon and yours truly.
One thing I wanted to ask you about is we've been interviewing a lot of the international representatives here.
My right-wing brethren.
Yes, exactly.
But the Law and Justice Party in Poland, from which the former Prime Minister was here, Murawski, and the woman who was actually on stage with you last night from the AFD, Christine Anderson.
AFD, yeah.
They have some serious ideological problems with one another about...
Polish allegations that the AFD has a revisionist attitude toward World War II. But that's good.
No, but I'm saying, what do you make of that fissure, and how do you bridge it?
Can it be bridged?
I don't know.
Look, populist nationals, we believe in the Westphalian system.
We believe in every nation that's going to have their MAGA move is going to be different.
It's going to have its own characteristics, its own house style.
I think it's great that they have disagreements, and they'll try to figure it out.
I'm not in there to say, oh no, you're right and you're wrong.
I've got my own theories about World War II or my study of World War II. I'm a huge supporter of AFD. I'm a huge supporter of the Polish movement.
And they'll figure it out.
And I realize in that part of the world, this has kind of been the cockpit of the 20th century as far as wars go.
They have big disagreements.
But you're going to see this all over.
I mean, I was Georgia Maloney's biggest backer when she was at 3%.
We raised her up.
There's a documentary made about B.I.M.A. She was in.
I mean, I support her.
Big disappointment in the Ukraine war.
We have been right about the Ukraine war from the beginning.
And I warned the people around it.
And I would go on TV and I'd do interviews in Italy and say, we love you, but you got this one really wrong and you're acting too much like a globalist.
And she's very close to Trump.
And Trump comes in the last 72 hours and really supports what we've been saying for years about this Ukraine situation.
And I think actually you're going to find out much more about Ukraine that's going to get people sick to their stomach.
So those kind of things that happen, they're going to happen.
International and global movement of kind of populist nationalism, but it's going to be different all over.
They have very different attitudes towards Russia, too, as you alluded to.
PIS, very hostile toward Russia.
They invoke the Soviet legacy.
AFD wants more of a reconciliation with Russia, maybe more in line with your preferences.
It's a broad tent, but in terms of solving an acute geopolitical issue right now...
That's not just some thing to kind of argue about in theoretical terms.
That's a pretty pressing, tangible issue.
Yeah, I was just saying, so their differences, their attitude toward Russia right now, that's not just some theoretical thing to hash out.
That could have implications acutely for the resolution of an ongoing...
Geopolitical issue.
Yes, it could.
But I think it's got to be worked out.
Those people have two different attitudes.
The Poles have a very different attitude towards the Russians than at least part of the Germans do, right?
It's one of the things that has to be worked out.
But people ought to understand something.
The Russian people have been our allies in the great war on the Eurasian landmass in the middle of the 20th century.
The Chinese people, Laobajing, and the Russian people.
Not their leaders.
They were our allies.
And the Indian people.
Indian people down in Burma and in Irrawaddy, the Russians lost, I think, 60 million.
People to the war.
The Chinese lost 30, 35 million.
If the Russians hadn't taken so many casualties, the Russian Army, the Red Army at the time, we would have lost 2 or 3 million men in Europe, and we didn't.
Why?
Because they took the brunt of it.
So those people, now, we have fucked them over because we gave Stalin too many arms.
We knew it at the end because the FDR and the State Department was full of frickin' Marxism.
We know that from the KGB files being opened.
We turned over in 1949. General Marshall turned over China.
The Chinese Communist Party was still a small group of guys up in the mountains as almost bandits.
We've turned it over now.
They had...
Chiang Kai-shek was no day at the beach.
My point is, the American people's allies have been the Russian people and have been the Chinese people, okay?
There's not been the CCP, and there's certainly not been the KGB. The KGB and these guys are bad hombres, okay?
Just like the guys in Beijing are.
But it doesn't mean the two people.
people and the last thing we should have ever allowed to happen and I preach this we should have never allowed Ukraine to happen.
Professor Mersheimer is right and I'm telling you Boris Johnson's a fucking war criminal okay for him to go over and stick his dick in this thing at the end and unwind everything was going on is a I asked Liz Truss about that who was the foreign minister at the time when Boris Johnson was prime minister and she denied this fairly long-standing allegation that Boris Johnson as an emissary of Biden perhaps kind of blew up those early stage peace negotiations in Istanbul in March April 2022.
Truss was on your show has that come up in your discussions at all with her?
No.
because I don't even know if she knew what was going on.
This is a Boris Johnson trying to be Churchill.
Boris Johnson's a fantasist, right?
He's a fantasist.
He thinks he's the embodiment of Winston Churchill.
He kept saying this was his moment.
The damn biographer of Churchill, too, very pompously.
Yeah, exactly.
So, look.
We have to face, the American people have to face something that's quite, you know, all the papers there about NATO, everything like that.
And I was a naval officer for four years at sea and, you know, three years in the Pentagon, three and a half in the Pentagon.
Virtually all the elites in NATO didn't fight with us in World War II. This is why I think it's quite impressive for President Trump, if he goes this year to Victory in Europe Day, there's rumors he might actually go to Russia.
And I don't think it's sitting there and saying, you support Putin.
But it's, I think, to honor the Russian people and the sacrifice in World War II that they gave to end World War II. Norway, Sweden was neutral.
Norway was one of the worst of the Germans.
Quisling was terrible.
It was a fascist regime.
Denmark, terrible.
Finland was actually kind of...
But they fought the Soviets at first, right?
The British were a great ally, but let's be honest, a lot of the royal family wanted to make a deal with Hitler to save the empire, right?
It was the working class, the same people that came in and voted in Brexit and saved England and got their sovereignty back were the exact same working class people in Midlands that backed Churchill.
You know, Churchill as a conservative, they backed him to fight the war.
France?
Let's be honest.
You had a small resistance movement.
You had de Gaulle and a handful of troops.
Almost the whole nation just rolled over to the Germans.
Italy was an enemy.
Okay, Eastern Europe.
You know, you had the Poles who were very brave and stood up and got slaughtered for that, okay?
But a lot of Eastern Europe, particularly the leadership, not the people, were not with us.
So NATO, quite frankly, in the leadership, were not a lot of people on our side of the football in World War II. And it's never taught in the United States.
The Russian people, we've never had an argument with the Russian people.
They're our ally.
They've been run by some of the worst people on Earth, and they've been run there with, I think, more than a wink and a nod by the Americans when the KGB, when the Soviets fell.
The Bolsheviks fell with the fall of Berlin Wall in early 1992. What did the West do?
Instead of really trying to constructively help the Russian people.
Did economic shock therapy.
We went over and fucked.
They were stealing with both hands.
Bill Clinton interfered in the 1996 election with Yeltsin.
And the West was overstealing with both hands.
I was in Hollywood at the time.
I had an investment bank.
People would come in and talk about the great studios in St. Petersburg with Eisenstein, you know, the great filmmakers.
They had all the equipment, the capital equipment, the artists, the ballerinas, the music, the orchestra.
It was unbelievable.
In Hollywood, you couldn't recreate what they had for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
And they would come in and say, we can buy this for $25 million.
I said, guys, get out of here.
No more meetings.
I don't want to hear this.
And they said, why?
We're basically getting this for 10 cents on the dollar.
I said, do you think those people are just going to sit there and let you come in and steal their country, steal their assets, and there's not going to be any blowback?
You may take it today and you may close on 10 cents on the dollar, but you'll never hold on to this for that because it's theirs.
So that's just one little snippet of my amusingly long dialogue with Steve Bannon.
Our historic summit where, of course, we had our obligatory tangent on World War II. I'm always down for that, but some people might find it a little bit unnecessary.
But, I mean, you can never give me enough World War II quote-unquote revisionism, although I'm not making any broader statements.
Nobody gets excited about any other hot-button topics.
I just think that, you know, it's one of the historical issues that is perhaps ripe for a little bit of rational re-evaluation in certain respects.
But it is still always invoked, usually to kind of constrain or constrict the range of acceptable opinion, because everybody's always analogizing everything to World War II, including Boris Johnson, who Bannon alluded to and denounced.
But if you notice in that clip, I say that we, or me, We spoke to Liz Truss, who was the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a very brief period in 2022,
and then she was essentially coerced or forced into resigning after she submitted an economic proposal that caused some disruption to the financial markets.
That's the main line narrative about her tenure anyway.
And she succeeded Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.
But now, because she's lost her seat in Parliament as of July of 2024, after that general election, she's now building up a bigger and bigger presence in the United States.
And so she attended Trump's inauguration, she was at the Republican Convention last year, and she was at CPAC this year.
Including gallivanting around with Steve Bannon.
So given Bannon's purportive views on Ukraine, again, because I'm always one to examine some of these underlying tensions, I wanted to ask Bannon, did you ever see fit to bring up the subject of Ukraine with Liz Truss?
Because she has long been an extremely hardcore pro-Russia.
Sorry, no, not pro-Russia.
I take it back.
Pro-Ukraine.
Advocate, meaning always agitating for more and more military provisions to be sent to Ukraine, using some of the most highfalutin language around Ukraine being a struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism or autocracy,
and always basically agitating for the UK to be ahead of the curve in furnishing Ukraine with more and more And so there's a now fateful episode that occurred in
the very early stages of the Ukraine war, which I should mention we are now on the third anniversary of, as of today, February 24th.
So I don't know what I should do to mark the occasion.
Should I say a prayer?
Should I do something else to perform a ritual of acknowledgement?
No, I guess I'll just keep doing the show because that's what I'm here to do.
But anyway, in the early stages of what they called the full-scale Ukraine war, so post-February 24, 2022, there were the beginnings of a negotiation underway between Ukraine and Russia.
Using a framework established in Istanbul under the mediation of Turkey, that it was reported at the time, and it still tends to be widely believed that Boris Johnson, again, then Prime Minister, Liz Truss was his foreign minister, Boris Johnson kind of is accused of blowing up that entire negotiating framework by urging Zelensky to fight on as though this was some Churchillian struggle.
With Boris Johnson being a biographer of Churchill, so he's always fashioning himself as this great man of history who wants to lead the fight for freedom and democracy.
And so the narrative has it that at the urging of Boris Johnson, who was also acting in a sense as an emissary for the Biden administration, Ukraine got more recalcitrant in those negotiations.
Unyielding, unremitting military support was pledged to Ukraine, and so the negotiations fell apart.
And here we are three years later, hundreds of thousands of deaths piling up in the Donbass.
And people, I think, are going to correctly look back on those March to April 2022 negotiations as a potential Pivot point when some of the death and destruction could have potentially been averted if there was more of an appetite for negotiations at the time rather than for just endless supply of weaponry.
And so I've raised this issue actually with Liz Truss during our interview, and you can see what her response was.
So when you were foreign minister and then prime minister, Ukraine was a major topic.
That's back in the news today.
I've reviewed some of your statements over the course of the war.
You called for the defeat of Russia.
You warned against appeasement of Putin.
What would defeat of Russia even look like now militarily?
How would that be achieved?
Would it require the toppling of the Russian government in some form?
How does your previous calls for the defeat of Russia translate to what's going on now?
What my concern is, and always has been, is about Russian expansionism.
That Putin has laid out, and I think it was back in the Munich Security Conference 2007, but he laid out his vision of a greater Russia, which included pretty much everything that was in the Soviet Union.
So my concern is about that expansionism.
So what I want to see is I don't want to see Putin rewarded for his aggression in Ukraine.
And I want to make sure that Russia is not advancing into Europe.
And what would a reward look like?
Would it be recognition of the annexed oblasts pursuant to some peace deal?
Tangibly, what would be a reward that you would be...
First of all, I'm not as I was previously.
Privy to what is actually going on on the ground now.
And I know there's lots of media speculations, lots of reports.
I think unless you're the person actually looking at the intelligence of what's going on.
I remember when I was in the job, lots of stuff that was reported in the media was completely untrue from our intelligence.
So I'm not going to speculate on the current state of the Russian army or the Ukrainian army.
Or the current position.
But the fundamental principle here is Russia should not be rewarded because that just sends a very bad signal to Putin himself, which would result in further incursions, but also a bad signal to presidency.
Why do I support President Trump?
Because I believe in a strong America.
And a strong West.
And what we had under President Biden was a weak America and a weak West.
And he was leading the rest of the West in a very, very negative direction.
And we're still seeing some of that continuing in European countries under left-wing governments in France and Germany and so on.
So what I want to see is I want to see the West win.
And the West winning means that our adversaries don't win.
And Russia is in league with China.
They're in league with Iran.
We don't want them to win.
We want the war to end.
Of course, we all want the war to end.
What's an example from your premiership of the time there were misreported media accounts of what the intelligence services were saying?
Oh, I mean, all the time.
I'm not sure I can remember the precise details or even I'm able to actually reveal them, but it was all the time.
One thing that struck me about British politics is that particularly in the realm of foreign policy, there's more uniformity between the two major parties than may be the case elsewhere, such as in the United States.
Not all the time, but on the issue of Ukraine in particular, labor and the conservatives basically have one mind on that issue, maybe with some marginal differences.
But now, for example...
Keir Starmer has called for the deployment of some European peacekeeping force to Ukraine in league with Macron in France and perhaps others.
And that seems...
Relatively in keeping with what you might support or others, but you can correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm not in favour of British troops on the ground.
You're not?
Okay.
I'm not in favour of that.
I mean, on Ukraine, I think there is more unanimity, and actually it's a reflection of what the British public want.
There's great support from the British public, and people are very fearful of further war and conflict in Europe.
But on the issue of Israel, I think there is a big split between conservatives and Labour.
Labour have been, you know, they put an arms, a partial arms embargo on Israel.
They've accepted the ICC court judgment on Netanyahu, which I think is completely wrong.
They've been appeasing Islamists in Britain.
So on Israel, there's complete disagreement on foreign policy.
Speaking of Israel, Donald Trump, I'm sure, you know, made a rather brash proposal for the United States to, quote, take over Gaza.
We don't really have the full specifics of it.
Maybe they'll rename it Gaza Lago with casinos and hotels or something.
Do you find that to be a plausible proposal to turn Gaza into some sort of US military protectorate?
I think Donald Trump is an out-of-the-box thinker.
And I think in some of these difficult disputes that have been running, The Abraham Accords,
though, in fairness, didn't really address the Palestinian issue, which is now blown up.
Innovative views of foreign policy that are going to achieve different results.
That's what I'm talking about.
Do you think innovative is the right word to describe potentially doing a mass expulsion of 1.8 million people?
That's what Trump called for.
Maybe it's bluster.
We don't know.
But I don't know.
I can maybe think of some other adjectives.
You don't know is the point.
You don't know is the point.
One of Trump's advantages when it comes to diplomacy is his unpredictability.
He's repeated this proposal over and over now, so it's not just some off-the-cuff thought he apparently had.
I mean, he seems to be pushing it cogently.
Do you think it's practicable?
Let's say it were to be implemented.
I just don't think it's the way to think about what he's been saying.
I think you're sort of trying to interpret it in a way that it's not meant.
Okay.
I want to ask you about something that's been a bone of contention for quite a while in terms of the initial stages of Ukraine policy.
You've heard it widely alleged that Boris Johnson, when you were foreign minister, he made a trip to Kiev, and it was in the midst of a stage of potential negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in the Istanbul format, where perhaps and it was in the midst of a stage of potential negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in the Istanbul format, where perhaps there And the theory has it that Boris Johnson...
Perhaps as an emissary of Joe Biden exerted some sort of pressure that discouraged Ukraine from continuing on in those negotiations because they understood that they would get a steady supply of weapons systems and continue the war.
Does that narrative have any truth to it or do you dispute it?
Well, if it is true, I certainly don't know anything about it and I don't particularly think it's true.
Well, you were foreign minister at the time, right?
So you would probably know, right?
Okay.
All right, so there's a list for us denying any knowledge of what has now gone down in the annals of modern history as this effort by Boris Johnson to throw off any of those nascent peace negotiations to stop the Ukraine war from escalating.
And there are multiple ways to interpret that.
Liz Truss maybe doesn't want to have a complete political synergy with Boris Johnson in certain respects.
Like, she wants to have her own identity.
And Boris Johnson also has his own problems with unpopularity.
I don't think it's necessarily in the cards for any of them to necessarily come back to power in Britain anytime soon.
But in terms of forging this International identity.
Liz Truss is kind of more tying herself to the Bannon style of conservatism, whereas I don't even know what Boris Johnson is necessarily trying to tie himself to.
He's basically just this globetrotting pontificator who wants to also be in the good graces of Trump, but reassure everybody that what Trump is doing in Ukraine Is actually great in terms of Boris Johnson's own preferences.
And Boris Johnson is a hardcore perpetual war advocate.
And so that takes us to recent developments around the Trump policy in Ukraine.
Today, a text was released of the draft of a document that is...
Apparently on the cusp of being finalized, whereby the U.S. and Ukraine would have a new bilateral understanding.
And if we could pull up some of the text there, actually, it's on our roster here.
It's worth actually going through and reading this text with some precision.
Very good morning to you, Mr. Johnson.
That's not it.
Anyway, the Ukraine document says that the U.S. will have a long-term financial commitment to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine agreeing to give up a large share of its rare earth mineral resources.
And then the U.S. will also take steps that have yet to be fully fleshed out to secure the sovereignty and security and prosperity of Ukraine.
So this would just be the latest iteration of what had been a succession of U.S. bilateral arrangements with Ukraine.
So the question that I would have as relates to this document...
Is, for example, why are people who have been the most hardcore Ukraine war fanatics this whole time cheering it?
And does it really represent a disengagement of the U.S. with Ukraine, which I would have thought is what a lot of people would have maybe been hoping for, especially if they voted for Trump on what they perceive to be non-interventionists or quote-unquote America first grounds.
It seems like if the U.S. is now setting itself up for a long-term funding commitment to Ukraine, which is exactly what's spelled out in this text, and we'll throw some of that up on the screen, hopefully.
There we go.
This could very well represent an intensification of the U.S. funding commitment to Ukraine, We'll wait and see what the full details are,
but at least in terms of this initial text that's been released, it remains to be seen whether this is going to be at all conducive to a U.S. disengagement from Ukraine or whether the terms will be acceptable to Russia, because my recollection three years ago is that Russia launched its invasion in part because,
Putin was objecting to Ukraine increasingly becoming an outpost of U.S. power, militarily and economically.
And it seems like, per the terms of this text, depending on how it's implemented, depending on a million other factors, per the terms of this text, that fundamental grievance will not have been addressed.
Now, there are further negotiations that could come about, but I want to...
Give you a clip here of none other than Boris Johnson speaking today live from Kiev in Ukraine, where he's there to commemorate the three-year anniversary, urging Ukraine and expressing optimism for Ukraine to sign this bilateral pact under Trump.
So let's go to Boris Johnson.
Good morning to you, Mr Johnson.
This is a bit of a surprise that you've turned up in Kiev.
It's a big day, of course, because world leaders are having this call about what to do about Ukraine.
What do you think should happen?
What do you make of what President Trump has said?
And what would you advise Prime Minister Keir Starmer to say to President Trump this week?
First of all, I think, Don, what you're hearing from the White House and a lot of people in America about the responsibility for the war and blaming Ukraine, saying Ukraine started it.
This is Orwellian, right?
You might as well blame the girl for attacking the shark in the opening reel of Jaws.
It's just total, total rubbish.
Ukraine is the victim.
But if you look at what's actually happening today here in Kiev, there is a very interesting development because I believe that we're very close to getting this.
Now, people will say...
Oh, this deal is extortionate for Ukraine and America is being too rapacious.
But not a penny can flow from this investment fund that is going to be set up unless you have a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine.
And don't forget, a sovereign country is a great, great thing.
A sovereign country can decide which clubs it wants to join, like NATO. A sovereign country can decide which troops it wants to invite onto its soil to help protect it.
And that, to answer your question, Susanna, about my advice to Keir Starmer and the UK, now is the moment for us to step up and do what I think that Trump wants Europe to do, and that is show how we...
We have a plan to help secure Ukraine.
And that's going to mean, I believe, UK troops are going to mean French troops, troops from other European countries.
They won't be there in a warfighting role, but they'll be there to provide a sense of security and reassurance to the Ukrainians in the context of that peace deal.
And that is entirely the right thing for the UK to do.
So there's Boris Johnson, again, one of the most fanatically pro-Ukraine world leaders now for a number of years, was integral in perhaps scuppering some of those initial attempts back in 2022 to achieve a cessation of hostilities and bring forth some kind of negotiated framework so that Ukraine would not now be mired in three years of incredibly destructive conflict.
There's Johnson's urging on Ukraine to go forward with this supposed economic partnership arrangement that is being promoted by the United States.
So I think that's some cause for concern just because really any long-term financial slash security commitment that the United States makes, especially in the context of ongoing hostilities,
Always has the potential for some boomerang effect that will further draw in the United States, even when that agreement might be created under the pretense of ending a war or what have you.
So does the United States want to be bound to Ukraine in terms of security, economic, and other commitments for the indefinite future?
Does that actually address some of the foundational grievances that Russia has been raising all along about not wanting Ukraine to become a bulwark of the United States or other perhaps anti-Russian interests?
It's really difficult to say, and Johnson even specifies that he thinks one reason why Ukraine should hastily sign off on this agreement is that it could allow for the facilitation of the deployment of European troops.
To Ukraine.
So British, French, perhaps others.
Those would be NATO troops.
Maybe they're not there officially under the umbrella of NATO, but NATO is a pretty flexible organization in that respect.
So are we anticipating that Russia is going to countenance the deployment of fundamentally NATO troops to Ukraine, even if they're there supposedly under the auspices of a peacekeeping mission?
I don't know.
In our land of euphemisms, a peacekeeping mission can easily become something that is not entirely peaceable.
And so that's something to be mindful of as this text is going around now on the anniversary of the war.
And luckily for you, I brought this very issue up with Bannon.
Meaning the issue of this...
Economic partnership arrangement that's being forged now between the U.S. and Ukraine.
And he didn't seem particularly thrilled about it.
So let's have a look.
Let me ask you about the Ukraine war resolution because there's this framework now being proposed.
It's a little ambiguous.
An economic partnership agreement.
Besant was in Kiev saying that in exchange for your agreement to this partnership, U.S. aid will continue.
Donald Trump himself said it's kind of haphazardly, but he did say aid could continue under this framework.
It seems like this is going to be a further entanglement of the U.S. in Ukraine, and who's going to extract the rare minerals?
Much of them are under Russian occupation.
My advice...
Is walk the fuck away.
I want to walk away so hard, I'm even prepared to say, okay, maybe we don't even investigate, which I think we have to.
But we have to walk away.
I don't want their minerals, okay?
There's enough minerals in the rest of the world.
What's the reasoning behind this proposal, then?
I think President Trump looks at Iraq and looks at other places in Afghanistan.
And I think as a deal guy, he's sitting there going, look, remember, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the net present value of...
country would be like?
That if the last 20 years we spent $9 trillion in rebuilding America, the factories would have, what would Detroit be like?
What would St. Louis be like?
What would Baltimore be like?
What would the great cities of the East be like?
What would Detroit be like?
If we spent $9 trillion on American citizens, on the soil of the United States of America, this would be a paradise.
We didn't.
We'd piss it away and let people steal it, and so many people dead, and countries ruined, and cultures ruined, and the Christians eviscerated for $9 trillion.
I think it says President Trump, he says, look, if these guys did it, what we should do is at least get something for it.
I mean, that's the way he...
In exchange for a security guarantee, though, which could necessitate or require some kind of U.S. military action.
In fact, speaking of World War II, it reminds me of the British.
Arguably, very foolishly, extending Poland a so-called security guarantee that they didn't have the ability to even uphold.
And then World War II gets declared once Hitler goes into Poland.
Now, that's a very extreme scenario, but a security guarantee, I mean, those don't have a great record throughout history.
No, very few people understand that.
The reason that World War II, which had been building in the same kind of way this is, triggered in September 1939, is because the Germans knew it, and the Germans also knew that the French and the British couldn't stand up to it.
And that would give them every pretext to roll across Western Europe.
They walked into a suckers play.
Look, the United States of America, we're the new world.
Our families were kicked out of these countries, right?
Very few people that came here from anywhere in Europe, right?
Much less Africa or Asia, these other places.
Voluntarily, my family was fucking kicked out of Ireland and then kicked out of Liverpool and came here, right?
Ireland, the only time you got a shot, and I gotta tell you, when I was coming up, different when Mo came up with the Irish dancing and Riverdance, when I came up, I never heard anybody say anything about the old, I wish we were back in the old country.
Because it was a fucking shithole, right?
And we were treated like shit, okay?
And peasants in Italy, too.
That's my point.
Everybody that came here came for a reason.
We were kicked out of every decent country in the world, okay?
We bailed them out in World War I. We went back and bailed him out in World War II. We then hung around and bailed him out in the Cold War.
Third time's the charm.
I totally respect President Trump.
I understand his mindset.
We have to get something for this effort.
But I say, if you get something for the effort, next thing you know, you're going to have to have private companies.
We've got to protect that.
They're going to want a security guarantee.
Plus, they're going to want us part of the reconstruction.
We don't want any of that.
It's all bloodlands.
That is a cursed part of the world, okay?
Those folks are going to have to work it out.
They've been trying to work it out for a couple thousand years.
They're going to be trying to work it out a couple thousand years from now.
It's not our fight, okay?
And the vital national security interest of the United States is not in the Ukraine.
Good God, we had Eisenhower and General Marshall and Field Marshal Montgomery.
We had the greatest military minds of the 20th century.
Under no circumstances will we ever send troops into the Balkans, much less up into Ukraine.
Right now, as we're speaking here, there's a brigade of the 101st Airborne, of boys and girls from the United States of America, on the remaining Ukrainian border, set to go in there.
We have to pull all back.
There should be no security guarantee.
There should be no more assistance whatsoever or anything.
We just even say, just keep the frickin' money, okay?
These horrible people did it.
I've even been able to give on something I've been adamant about.
To get out of there and say no investigation, if you had promised me we would have no security, no investment, nothing, right?
I would say, okay, let them keep the money they stole.
What about this notion of the U.S. taking over Gaza?
I mean, I've heard it speculated that maybe Trump made that proposal as an opening and negotiating gambit, but it doesn't seem like there's very much appetite at all under really any conceivable circumstances for the Arab states to take in 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza.
And for the U.S. to turn Gaza now into like some sort of military protectorate, I know it's not clear if troops would be required or whatever, but, you know, I don't remember many people in 2024 during the campaign agitating for the U.S. to take territorial control of Gaza.
including people who voted for Donald Trump.
So how does that relate to this idea that...
People have an expectation of Trump reducing foreign entanglements if that idea were to come to full fruition.
I think the basic thesis of America First is exactly what we're saying.
We've gotten in a situation around the rim of Eurasian landmass in Western Europe, in the Gulf Emirates, and with Israel, and down straight to Malacca in the South China Sea, and then back around to South Korea and Japan, that those are four nodes of the world where we have...
Huge commercial relationships, trade deals, capital markets, joint capital markets, cultural ties, but it's all underwritten by an American security guarantee.
They're all protectorates of the United States.
It's the reason that with a NDAA at $900 billion, the Pentagon's back over for another $150 billion.
House Republicans wanted up another $100 billion.
Senate Republicans wanted $150 billion, of course.
$150 billion.
So that's over a trillion dollars.
It's really over a trillion today, but now they're just saying it straight out.
We are not an empire.
We are built on a revolutionary idea.
We are, in effect.
We may not want to be or not conceptualize ourselves as.
It's not.
Our roots are anti-colonialism.
Until McKinley, who Trump valorized in his inaugural address, oddly, I guess people forgot about the Philippine War, which is not the prettiest picture.
Spanish-American War.
Got picked up some quick ones.
So President Trump, America First is that.
On Gaza, I will tell you, I think what President Trump is saying is that we've tried the same thing over and over and over again, and he's not going to fall into that.
Now, I believe he's playing five-dimension chess, 5D chess, right?
So, there, I don't...
We could be up to like 75-dimensional chess.
I don't understand, but I'll tell you, I think he's changed the dialogue already.
One thing that people miss, and I think this is very important, Bibi came over to come over to do one thing.
And that's to get a guarantee of American support for military action into Persia, either the nuclear plant or maybe even some sort of land war.
That, my understanding, was barely discussed.
And the reason was Trump had his Gaza plant.
So if the Gaza idea or the Gaza concept takes everybody off of military action in Persia, which I adamantly am opposed to, and I'm pro-Israel, I think it was a good thing.
And I think that might have been what happened.
But other than that, he's playing five-dimension chess.
All right, we'll see.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Steve.
Appreciate it.
All right, so there, interestingly enough, Steve Bannon is expressing his fairly vehement opposition to this economic partnership arrangement that today we finally have seen the latest text of.
He's saying, hell, what he would like is for the United States to just write off All the monies that's dispersed to Ukraine without seeking repayment of some sort so the U.S. can actually disengage itself from what Banning calls that cursed part of the world.
But really, if you look at the details of what this partnership agreement seems to entail, this could be the exact opposite of that.
And the U.S. could now be engrossed in this quasi-colonial Mercantilist situation with Ukraine where, similar to Gaza, Ukraine could become a form of like a U.S. protectorate.
It already functionally is, but maybe this could formalize that on a different level.
So it's interesting to contrast Bannon's preferences with that of Trump administration policy.
As far as we know, Bannon has no formal role in the current Trump White House.
He did serve for, I think it was nine months or so, in the first Trump administration.
But now he's kind of like an outside agitator.
He's trashing Elon Musk.
A lot of the journalists that were coming up to Bannon at CPAC just wanted to get their quote from him castigating Elon Musk.
I mean, I find that to be somewhat interesting.
But I did want to get to other topics with him.
But yeah, Bannon's been on a rampage against Musk, calling him like an illegal immigrant and stuff.
So you have that aspect of this broader tension going on in the right wing or Republican coalition.
How do you reconcile somebody who Bannon regards in the form of Musk as this transhumanist who is really just a...
An incidental right-winger who was just sort of trying to force himself into the coalition as this kingmaker and doesn't have its best interests at heart.
And then also Bannon's view of these foreign policy initiatives, Ukraine, and then as I brought up to him, Gaza, which we're told now is another example of Trump playing, you know, multidimensional chess.
He's either a five-dimensional chess or a 75-dimensional chess.
Liz Truss said that you have to look at it through this certain prism of interpretation where it's just some kind of negotiating gambit, perhaps.
Ben repeated the same logic.
Look, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball.
I can't tell you with any degree of certainty what is ultimately going to come of Gaza.
But it does seem to me that the fact that this proposal is out there kind of complicates Even the maintenance of what is currently a very fragile and tentative ceasefire framework, because the first stage of the ceasefire framework that came into effect just as Trump was taking office is scheduled to expire within a matter of days.
And so does it undermine any further negotiations if Hamas has been told over and over again by Trump, it's not like this was a one-off comment.
Trump read, Prepared remarks when he made the proposal for the Gaza takeover at a joint event with Netanyahu and has repeated it in subsequent statements.
What effect does that have on the continuation of the current ceasefire framework, which, as I said, is going to expire in just a few days?
So the point being, even if we can't know with any certainty whether this...
Gaza takeover plan is going to come to fruition.
The fact that the proposal has been made alone has certain consequences for other live issues going on at the moment.
So it's not just about a future forecast as to whether this is a viable thing.
It could also have real-world implications now.
So last interview, Of the day, I think, is going to be this clip where I was once again told that I guess I don't fully understand the Gaza takeover plan.
Like, apparently it's open to, like, infinite interpretations.
And we have to, like, you know, reread the art of the deal to really get a full grasp of what this whole plan is supposed to be about.
Here is our interview at CPAC with Harriet Hageman, who is a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming.
I raised the Gaza takeover plan with her, and here's what she had to say.
One last question.
So you mentioned that you're not an isolationist.
I think there are a segment of people who supported Donald Trump, voted for Donald Trump, who did so because they want to reduce foreign entanglements.
Or narrow the scope of what the United States is doing abroad.
I'm just curious how you reconcile that with Trump's proposal to take over Gaza.
We don't have the full details over what that would entail.
But it's an extremely volatile area.
If it becomes a U.S. possession or territory in some fashion, you would imagine that that would require some element of U.S. military deployment.
So what do you make of that proposal in terms of the isolationism debate?
I don't think that was his proposal.
I think what he's saying is...
You could say, we're going to take it over.
Well, I'm going to disagree with you and push back on you.
That was his quote.
Okay, I'm going to disagree with you that that's what he meant.
He made very clear we're not putting American boots on the ground.
What he's saying is we need to have an incredible level of urban renewal in this area.
It's been destroyed.
It is absolute lying in tatters.
It's in rubble.
How do we move forward from where we are in 2025 where we have one group, Hamas and Iran, that want to destroy Israel?
They want to wipe them off the face of the earth.
How do we take this segment of land, this area of land, and try to make it into something productive where people can actually live?
That's what I took away from what he was describing.
How do we invest in this area so that it is a place that people can live?
And so I think that there was a lot more nuance to the point that he was making than people are giving him credit for.
And I think that we need to stop taking the most extremist view of everything he says and say, Well, that's what he's going to run with.
We're going to have Las Vegas, Nevada in the Gaza Strip in two years.
That isn't the intent.
But should we do something to try to rebuild that area so that it isn't the hellhole that it is right now?
Probably.
All right.
Well, we have to wrap.
Congresswoman Hagerman, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right.
- All right, thanks. - Okay, so that was a little odd because she would say that she disagreed with my just direct quoting of Trump.
I mean, Trump's the one who's said that he wants to take over Gaza or the U.S. will own it, etc.
So it's not so much that I'm giving my own interpretation there.
I'm just reciting what he said on multiple occasions now.
Again, who knows whether that's going to be translated into policy.
But, you know, I think, as Glenn mentioned on the show a couple of, maybe a week or two ago.
I think now is the time for people to discuss the potential implications of at least the outlines of the policy that have been pronounced rather than just telling everybody to wait around and see what happens because it's a live policy issue that's currently being deliberated and fashioned.
So if you think that there might be an issue with expelling 1.8 million Palestinians from Gaza...
So that it can be rebuilt and commercialized under U.S. control.
What are the implications of that?
Would it require some kind of U.S. military presence?
It's one of the most volatile, if not the most volatile region of the entire world.
So what is it entailed by the U.S. taking that over and turning it into some kind of U.S. territory?
Which is what the proposal, at least as far as we can ascertain, is.
To me, that's notable.
And I just want to let you know that there's plenty more material from CPAC coming.
And so I invite you to tune in tomorrow where we will air some other clips and segments and discuss them.
And that'll basically do it for our first show here from the beautiful Rumble Studio in Washington, D.C. Hope you enjoyed it.
You can follow me at mtracy.net.
Just had a piece went up last week that I'm sure many of you will find interesting on what USAID has been up to in Ukraine funding literal trans activism.
And I don't just say that just to take a cheap swipe at USAID, which has now been effectively shuttered before it gets reorganized into the State Department.
No, it's actually true and documentable that U.S. taxpayers had been effectively subsidizing queer, literally, activism in the Donbass, which sounds almost comical to anybody who is normal who would have that explained to them, but it does happen to be true.
So go to mtracy.net.
That's Tracy with an E if you're interested.
Follow me on X at mtracy.
And check out the system update channels on YouTube and X and Rumble.
For the full version of some of the interviews that we've played that are going to get posted later.
