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March 14, 2022 - Sebastian Gorka
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Sebastian Gorka FULL SHOW: Iran shells US consulate in Iraq.
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This could lead, by the way, this could lead to World War III.
I see what's happening.
Because if you think Putin's going to stop, it's going to get worse and worse.
He's not going to accept it.
And we don't have anybody to talk to him.
You had somebody to talk to him with me.
Nobody was ever tougher on Russia than me.
I'm the one that stopped the pipeline.
I had it stopped.
I'm the one that put all the sanctions on.
And I'm the one that he didn't attack during our administration.
Everyone's asking about that now.
Even the radical left reporters up there.
The only president this century not to witness Russia invade a neighbor.
That was, of course, President Trump this weekend in South Carolina.
What has happened in the last few days?
What will happen in the next few weeks to come?
Let's talk to somebody who is more qualified than most to talk about it.
He is my rabbi at Salem.
He is Dennis Prager, the founder of Prager University, most recently the author of The Rational Passover Haggadah.
Dennis, welcome back to America First.
Great to be with you.
That was a powerful excerpt.
When did he just say that?
At a rally?
Saturday night.
Saturday night.
Yeah, Saturday night.
And it was quite the rally.
It was 25 degrees.
It was freezing.
He only spoke for 45 minutes.
It shocked everybody, but I think he didn't want anybody to catch pneumonia.
But he stated this three weeks ago at CPAC, the only president to not have Russia invade under his watch, under George Bush it was Georgia, under Obama it was Crimea, and now again we are witnessing it.
Dennis, you are supremely qualified to help us understand what Churchill once called a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
For those who aren't familiar with the way you spent your early 20s, will you tell, and thank you for joining us for our first hour here, On America First, I know you're so, so very busy.
Tell us what you did as a young man during the height of the Cold War.
I was in my very early 20s.
I was a graduate student at Columbia University at the School of International Affairs and it had a number of affiliated institutes.
Russian Institute, Middle East Institute, East Asian Institute, African Institute.
I was a member of Middle East and Russian I studied Russian, and on a visit to Israel in my third year in college, so it's even before that, I was asked by someone I knew in Israel, an Israeli friend, would I be prepared to be sent into the Soviet Union to smuggle in religious items to Jews?
Because they were not allowed to have them, like Christians were not.
And to bring out, smuggle out the names of Jews who wanted to leave.
And they thought that I would be the ideal candidate, being an American, so I'd be somewhat protected by my passport, and knowing Hebrew and Russian.
So I was sent for a month.
And it was obviously a tense month.
That was followed most of the time.
Where did you travel in Russia, in the Soviet Union?
Moscow, what was called then Leningrad, which is back again to St.
Petersburg, and then Baku, Azerbaijan.
The first Westerner to visit the synagogue there in decades.
It was literally underground.
And the stories, I'm not going to get into now, but obviously they were life-forming.
The effect that it had to see a young Western Jew who knew the religion, and who could... I was always called up to do something to show my knowledge of the liturgy, because they had been told that the Jews of the Soviet Union were told that Judaism is dead.
And they shouldn't even bother thinking about it, because Jews outside of Russia, or outside of the Soviet Union, no longer practice it, and have assimilated.
And here I am, 21 years old, and I'm able to lead the prayers, and read from the Torah.
People gathered around me.
I'll just tell you one story.
Please.
So, in Leningrad, I made a very big impact.
that I could do all this stuff.
People just stared in amazement.
And I have the chills telling you this story.
These are not stories I tell easily, because they were very emotionally powerful.
Anyway, so listen, the reason I'm telling you is the denouement of all of this.
I'll tell you exactly.
Thirty-five years later, On a trip with my listeners on the Baltic, we went to St.
Petersburg, and two couples friends of mine went with me to that same synagogue that, at 21 years of age, I had led the prayers.
And I walked in, and a man looked at me, and he goes, You're the kid.
You're the kid.
You have to understand, this was 35 years later.
I didn't look at all the same.
I had white hair.
And he goes, you're the kid!
And I just, all I could say was, all I could do was hug him.
That he remembered that kid.
Dennis, that's a beautiful story and we could spend the rest of the show just discussing your trips behind the Iron Curtain.
Could you help?
Because now it's as if the Cold War never happened.
There are generations who think that a KGB colonel can become some great champion of the Western Christianity.
Can you give a little bit of insight into why Russia is different.
It's a liminal position on the Eurasian continent.
And this concept of, whether it's Peter the Great, whether it's the Tsars or the Secretary's General, why the great man or the strong man concept still has such sway amongst the Russian people?
So you've really asked the 64,000 ruble question.
I have been torn on this issue much of my life.
Why Was communism imposed on the Russian people, or did it well up from the Russian people?
This is a debate that people who study Russia and the Soviet Union have had for decades.
In other words, is there a Russian proclivity to tyranny?
Or was tyranny imposed on them?
I mean, it's not critical, but it is not insignificant, as well, that Stalin was not Russian.
Stalin was Georgian.
Yes.
So, it's an interesting fact.
I don't know if it's dispositive.
I was of the belief, despite the fact that their whole past was czars, which is tyranny, nevertheless there were real movements toward what we used to call liberalism in Russia under the Tsars.
And there was Dostoevsky, of course, and there was Pushkin, and there was Tchaikovsky, and so on.
So you start to think, gee, had there not been the imposition of communism, then the Russians might have developed in a much more open society way.
I was of that belief through much of my life.
However, I have changed because of the popularity of Putin.
And even more telling, from every poll, most Russians look at Stalin positively.
Incredible.
Incredible is the perfect description, Sebastian, because He murdered 20 to 40 million of their fellow citizens.
Including at least 6 million Ukrainians.
Yes, I talk about the Holodomor all the time.
People don't know about it, Sam.
We will discuss the Holodomor and so much more.
We're talking to the founder of Prager University.
Support it today.
PragerU.com.
Follow him on Twitter, Dennis Prager.
The latest book is The Rational Passover Haggadah.
If you enjoy our one-on-one discussions, and Dennis is going to be with us for the whole hour, make sure you never miss an episode.
Go to Spotify right now.
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Subscribe.
It's absolutely free.
This is the Salem Radio Network.
Stay on this channel. Stay on this channel.
By the way, it's Holodomor.
Holodomor.
I go to Hungary and people still talk about 1956 and the fact that America promised paratroopers and you betrayed us.
So this has to be a burning issue even now, 80 years later for Ukrainians, does it not?
You know, ask me that on the air.
I've talked about that.
How could it not be?
I'll talk about that.
I'll talk about the moral equivalency argument.
Those who are trying to make excuses for Putin.
I've got a long list here.
Yes, that's very important.
Because here is a division with some of our fellow conservatives.
I know, and it truly disturbs me.
It's disturbing.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of it because it's far worse than isolation.
I can understand the Tucker Carlson isolationist stance.
There's a long history of that in America.
But when you're saying a KGB colonel is the good guy, it beggars belief.
Do you know who is saying that?
Yeah!
People on my bloody social media every day!
Every day!
Why, because he's against woke?
Because he's against woke and the number one thing is he's fighting the globalists, he's fighting Klaus Schwab, he's fighting the World Economic Forum.
I get it, I get it.
And when I did a post saying, you know, he's actually a globalist himself, it's a different kind of globalism, it's his globalism.
Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, that's an odd argument.
You could say, why oppose Hitler?
Hitler was against globalists.
He was fighting communism.
But that's noble.
The lack of just a scintilla of sophistication.
Well, it's moral clarity.
It's conscience.
I mean, it should be elementary.
Good.
I'm glad we're on the same page on this, because it gets depressing when your allies aren't.
Find a picture of Otto.
I need a picture of Otto, Eric.
Otto... The dog!
I need Otto the dog.
The most famous dog on radio.
On radio?
In America?
In America!
Sorry.
On radio.
Give me a break.
The new Lassie.
Slightly less energy levels than Lassie.
That's correct.
Rin Tin Tin.
Yes.
Exactly right.
We're getting a little bit of feedback.
From his headphones, I think.
I think it's Dennis' headphones.
Wait, you're getting feedback from me?
We're hearing my voice come back a little bit.
Even though it's going into my ear?
Alright, I'll make you lower then.
I'll lower your volume.
I need to know what's in your thermos, Dennis.
My wife's.
Chicken soup?
No, iced coffee.
Sweetened or unsweetened?
No, unsweetened, but it's got a lot of oat milk.
Oh, I can't stand that.
I love it.
Really?
You like the taste of oat milk?
I love it, yes.
I drink it plain.
I think this picture suffices.
If you put that up, I need to tell Sue...
Is that going to go up?
Yes, that's going to go up.
All right, I need to tell Sue right now.
She's got to watch this.
It'll be up in two minutes.
I'll do my Israel read and then we'll come to it.
20 seconds.
All right, Israel, stand by.
Are you enjoying yourself, Stephen?
No.
No.
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We are back with the founder of Prager University, the author most recently of The Rational Passover Haggadah, and the owner of the most famous canine in America, a canine who has accounts on all the social media channels.
He is, of course, Otto.
There you go, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram.
On Tinder?
How strange.
Dennis Prager, welcome back to America First!
That was a funny line on Tinder.
By the way, if you haven't seen his Fireside Chats, you need to see his unrehearsed Fireside Chats.
Dennis takes a topic of the day, takes questions from his listeners, and then as he's smoking a rather large stogie, Otto's taking a little nap by his side.
That's why Otto is the most famous dog in America.
Dennis, we've been talking in the break, if you're not familiar, the video feed of the show continues on Rumble, so we broadcast across the nation, but if you subscribe, it's free, to our Rumble account, rumble.com, slash, Seb Gorka, that's rumble.com, slash, S-E-B-G-O-R-K-A.
You can see the behind the scenes of what we talk about in the break.
So here's, look, I never thought that what my parents experienced, tanks on the streets of a nation's capital, in the case of my parents it was Budapest, I thought that was ancient history, that was what our parents, our grandparents had to suffer through.
It's happening right now as we speak in Europe.
And I am shocked by the lack of moral clarity on the conservative side.
I'm a little bit surprised by how suddenly liberals hate Russia, which wasn't the case from Durante on down for about 70 years.
But when we have people who say they're conservatives, Dennis, who say, well, you know what?
This was provoked by the West.
Bioweapons labs, Nazi genocide, Putin is encircled by NATO, and by the way, he's a champion of the West and Christendom.
How did that happen in less than 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact that we've completely lost moral clarity?
Look, you're speaking to a kindred spirit.
And my lament about the loss of moral clarity has been my life's work.
I frankly don't have an answer.
The man has led the decimation, invasion, decimation of a country, of an independent country, that in no way, shape, or form threatened it.
It is as blatant an example of international aggression as one can have.
He doesn't believe that Ukraine has a right to exist.
It never existed in his view.
It was always part of Russia.
And there are conservatives who agree with him or find that sympathetic.
That is why you have to ask in life, what is your standard of judgment?
What is your yardstick?
And I've always said, my yardstick is moral.
That is the first question I always ask, is it right or is it wrong?
So for example, I believe totally in America first, but I don't believe in America only.
America only is not conservative.
America first is conservative, but not America only.
God, or nature, or luck, or our ingenuity, whatever you wish to ascribe it to, has made us the strongest nation on earth.
People look to us when they are invaded by bad guys.
Isn't that a good thing that they look to us?
Why would we want to shirk that responsibility and say only if New York or San Francisco is attacked should it concern us?
And when you see one of the responses that I received every single day since the war started and I said the Ukrainians are the party that has been aggrieved and aggressed is this idea that Putin is an anti-globalist, whatever that means, Dennis.
Could you address that?
In some perverse sense, bombing hospitals is somehow attacking Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
As we noted during the break, not on the air, I said, you might as well have said, and some people did, well look, Hitler was anti-communist.
Communism is a mass murder machine, that is all it is.
It is nothing else but a mass murder machine and a system of pure totalitarian tyranny.
But that doesn't justify Hitler.
I don't know why people can't chew gum and walk at the same time, morally.
The Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum is an enemy of liberty, and what Putin did in the Ukraine is pure evil.
I don't know why you can't say both.
So you have no theory as to why we have people on allegedly our side who are saying that our sympathy should lie with the former KGB colonels?
I remember a time not too long ago, Dennis, when all conservatives thought that KGB colonels were bad guys who were actually persecuting Christians, not representatives of Christendom.
That was the factor that led me away from the Democratic Party.
It only happened under Reagan, but it was in high school that I realized there's something wrong with the left, that they can't hold anti-communism to be the only moral stance one can have vis-a-vis communism.
People who don't see evil are a problem.
And since you and I are both Bible-oriented, the Bible-based, I want to tell people my favorite, literally my favorite line in the Bible is in Psalms.
Those of you who love God must hate evil.
It is a command.
Hebrew has a command form.
We don't have one in English.
And in the command form is hate.
You must hate evil if you love God.
Yeah.
It is the idea that somebody thinks after listening to my show they'll post a list of nations that America has bombed, that somehow when I comment on the bombing of a hospital there is moral equivalency with Korea, with Vietnam, with
Syria or elsewhere means that you think there is no qualitative difference between this nation and the Russian Federation or anyone else.
We're talking to Dennis Prager, the founder of Prager University.
Please support this organization, one of the most important in America today that is fighting for the principles of our founding.
PragerU.com.
His new book that you must check out is The Rational Passover Haggadah.
I'm Sebastian Gorka.
This is the Salem Radio Network.
work wherever you are whatever you're doing don't touch that dial but for staying in uh today dennis after your show No, it's a delight.
It's a total delight.
You know, this is the thing I find the most... I mean, truly, it has...
He's so concerned that they're Americans.
I know I have my baggage, my parents, Hungary, 1956.
Why is that baggage?
Well, a perspective, what have you.
But to have free people who are born free, who think Putin could be justified, it gives me shivers.
So I have an interesting thought to tie that in with my Passover Haggadah thing.
I'll mention the book and then you can jump off that.
You'll be amazed at how perfectly it ties in.
And it just came out, correct?
That's right.
Just the last two weeks.
So what was I going to say to you?
Oh damn.
Oh yeah, it has nothing to do with any of this.
Do you have a favorite cigar?
Right now I really, they're too small for me because I like 60 ring gauge and you know long cigars, but anything by Oliva.
Oliva is really good.
Ah, Oliva, okay.
They don't make a really large cigar.
My local smoke shop makes a huge 66-gauge cigar, which is great and long.
Why do you like such thick cigars?
Because I smoke ridiculously quickly.
Last night I had one of those cigars.
You were smoking one of the Melanias and I finished mine before you got, you finished half.
Yeah, no, I really smoke very far.
So, and then do you go to the next cigar?
Yes, then I go to the next.
Okay, yeah, I do too, right.
I'll have two or three in one sitting.
Yeah, no, no, I have that.
I also smoke a pipe, so I alternate.
Between, oh, between cigar and pipe?
Yep.
Interesting.
I love tobacco.
I love the taste of tobacco.
I don't care.
The only form I hate it in is cigarettes.
And what type of pipe tobacco?
Generally English blends.
I don't like aromatic at all.
Yeah, I tried it in cottage.
I just didn't have the patience.
Yeah, it takes patience.
I agree.
And do you use wood or ceramic or Mersham?
What kind of pipes?
No, only regular briar.
And some of them Smoke are twice as tasty as others.
The pipe is half the importance.
Tobacco is half, and pipe is half.
Interesting.
Yes, it is interesting.
Like, I find Italian pipes delicious, and I find English pipes unbearable.
And what kind of storks?
Are they metal storks?
Are they plastic storks?
Usually, I don't remember the... Bakelite?
They come in very different forms.
I don't care about the part that touches my lips.
It doesn't matter to me.
I care about the briar of the pipe itself.
Large bowl?
Small bowl?
Medium.
Large bowl is just too large for me.
Small bowl, your smoking experience is over in 10 minutes.
Right.
30 seconds.
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A reputation risk?
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We are back with Dennis Prager.
His latest book is The Rational Passover Haggadah.
Dennis, will you explain to us why this Exegetical work on the oldest holiday that is still being kept has relevance, talks to the moral challenge of what we are witnessing on the Eurasian continent today.
Well, there's the obvious issue that it celebrates the liberation of a people from slavery.
Yes.
So it's unfortunately as germane as ever.
But I want to point out something that I point out in the book that exactly deals with an issue you raised in the last segment.
So, you were talking about your baggage of being the child of people who suffered terribly under communism in Hungary, and which saw Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956.
And now there are Russian tanks in Ukraine in 2022.
So there is a line in this ancient text, and the book is for people of all faiths, like my Rational Bible series.
This is the Rational Passover Haggadah series.
It's for Jews, non-Jews, and atheists.
So there is a line in this ancient text, and the whole ancient text is there, in Hebrew and translation.
And there's a famous line, it's famous among Jews who've been to Passover seders, in every generation they arise to annihilate us.
Someone arises to annihilate the Jews.
And I deal with that question, how did they know this 1800 years ago?
And it's still true, it's amazing.
You know, we went from Hitler to Khomeini, and then Khomeini.
Your question, I just realized, you can almost say, in every generation, there are Russian tanks in some city.
Yeah.
And as Ronald Reagan taught us, the loss of liberty, the extinction of liberty is always but one generation away, Dennis.
God, is that true?
And that leads to another one of my realizations in the recent past.
Liberty is not a natural yearning in the human species.
It is a value.
People yearn... Can I interrupt you here?
I mean, this is what should have been so obvious, I thought, to the neoconservatives who said that we're going to go to war to liberate people because everybody shares our love of liberty, Dennis.
How asinine is that?
Well, it's naive.
Look, half of America doesn't yearn to be free.
Forget abroad.
Half of America, like the rest of humanity, yearns to be taken care of.
And that is the opposite of free.
You're not free.
The more you're taken care of, the less free you are.
That's definitional.
And yet people are totally okay with that.
You pay my child care, you pay my kids lunches and breakfasts, you pay my school bill, you pay my college tuition, you pay my health care, and I'll still be free?
Absolutely.
It is not a universal value.
Not all civilizations are the same.
We had a discussion here with Jim Hansen, former Green Beret, in which we talked about the different value put on life in Russia and somebody at the Brookings Institution.
Oh, the Atlantic Council took umbrage and tweeted, how dare you say that there is a different sense or value to life in Russia?
Well, I'm sure that lady appreciates living here in America and rather than under the heel of Vladimir Putin.
We're talking to the host of the Dennis Prager Show, the founder of Prager University, PragerU.com, and the author of the Rational Bible series.
The latest is the Rational Passover Haggadah.
I'm Sebastian Gorka.
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Do you carve out a certain time every day?
No.
I'm not disciplined at all.
I get all my work done.
I get a lot of work done, but I'm not disciplined.
I actually have a philosophical approach or psychological approach.
I must play sometime in the day.
I must tune out And do one of my hobbies, or just listen to music, or... What are your hobbies?
How do you switch off?
Beyond cigars?
Well, the cigars, obviously.
I'm very much into fountain pens.
Oh, my father, he was a graphomaniac.
He loved his Montblancs, he loved his old fountain pens.
Yes, so... That and clocks and watches.
Fountain pens and clocks and watches.
I don't have clocks, but watches and fountain pens almost always go together.
That is correct.
And during the war, he made pocket money fixing everybody's clocks in Budapest.
Oh, he was able?
That's fascinating.
Yeah, as a 13-year-old kid.
I assume he was an autodidact.
I don't assume... Yeah, he didn't study under a watchmaker.
Exactly.
That's fascinating.
Your father went to England or not?
Yes, so he was liberated from the political prison in 56 at the age of 16 and a fellow prison mate, an older gentleman, said would you take my daughters out of the country and he took a 17 year old young Susan across the minefield They ended up in a refugee camp in Austria.
He didn't realize, my father, when he was being processed by the refugee officer, that he'd been betrayed by Kim Philby.
So he said, where would you like to go?
Canada, Australia, America and the UK are taking in refugees.
And my father said, UK.
And so both of them ended up in the UK.
She finished college.
He finished architecture school.
And they got married.
And those are my parents.
Wait, so what does that have to do with Philby?
My father was betrayed by Kim Philby.
Oh, I thought that was connected in some way to his going to the UK.
When did you find that out?
No, no, he went to the UK because he had no idea that he had been blown.
His secret student's association, the Christian Patriots, had been betrayed out of the UK and he didn't know that in 1956.
So I think it would have played into his calculations if he had known.
Yes, that's right.
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He is Dennis Prager, the founder of Prager University.
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The latest is the Rational Passahaggadah.
Dennis, as somebody who's, you know, traveled behind the Iron Curtain, And saw the reality of Russia back then.
Why is anybody, as if we have no sense of history, why is anybody surprised that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine?
It's not like he thought of this three weeks ago, is it?
Apparently not.
I like to level with people, because credibility is everything.
I did not expect him to invade Ukraine, to be honest.
And the truth is, from his perspective, from the perspective of Russia, I think it was a spectacular blunder.
I think it set back his country decades.
I think that the identity of Russia has been sullied tremendously Not to mention the economic consequences, the cultural consequences.
He has done more to unite NATO.
He has done more to change Germany.
Yes.
This alone is a spectacular achievement.
Even Donald Trump couldn't achieve this.
Germany is actually, for the first time since World War II, giving combatants weapons.
It is part of their constitution.
I don't mean written, but the constitution of the German mentality.
We will not give anybody arms who is in a fight, whether they're right or they're wrong.
And they have changed that.
They have changed their position on the amount they will spend on military, the military budget percentage of their of their annual budget.
All of this has been done.
Finland and Sweden are thinking of joining NATO.
It is astonishing.
He has been defeated in every possible way.
His army has lost its threatening nature to people.
The only threatening thing he has is nuclear weapons, which obviously is threatening.
I did not expect this to happen.
When you look at a nation that really is not well understood, or at least hasn't been the focus of American foreign policy on national security for 30 years, with your experience in Russia, what is the thing that you think is perhaps least understood by Americans which they should understand when it comes to this nation?
It's a very hard question to answer.
Russians are a very complex people.
I mean, you could say that every people are complex, but I don't think they're equally complex.
See, I think Russia has both a superiority and an inferiority complex.
It's a duality that's very tough to live with.
It causes a certain schizophrenic behavior.
On the one hand, they basically know that they can't compete in achievements with the West.
I mean, it's just a fact.
But it doesn't matter.
I mean, people in the West are not going around thinking, "Gee, who hasn't succeeded like me in Denmark?" I mean, it's not the way – people are not thinking that way.
But they do.
So there is that, but there is also the sense we are the deepest people in the world.
We know human nature.
We are deep.
We have Dostoevsky to say, to live is to suffer, a famous line from Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov.
So they have both.
And there's also a tremendous sense of, we were once feared and significant, and then with the demise of the Soviet Union, we became just a poor country in the Eurasian continent.
Of course, had they embraced You know, Western freedoms, including obviously economic freedom, they could have thrived much more, but they have no experience with freedom.
So they went from the czars to the commissars to thugs.
You know, these people with these half-billion-dollar yachts.
Because solely because they were at the right place at the right time to make the connections to take over what the Soviet government had owned.
Now a bunch of oligarchs own it.
So it's a mess.
It's a true mess.
Yeah.
Plus ça change, plus ça même chose.
Nothing really has changed still.
The greatest threat to Russia from the perspective of the Kremlin is the threat of Democracy and representative government.
His latest work is the rational Passover Haggadah.
He is Dennis Prager, host of the Dennis Prager Show here on the Salem Radio Network and the founder of Prager University, PragerU.com.
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What the White House said?
Consequences?
The White House has said, starting World War III is not in our interests.
Good to know that.
The level of strategic acumen demonstrated is quite stunning.
Did you see Elon Musk's tweet?
Yeah.
Which one?
The one about Netflix.
The last four?
No.
I don't think President Trump has ever had a tweet which has been liked, listen to this, 621,000 times.
What was it?
It's a picture of a morbidly obese gentleman on a swing with the following words.
I'll send it to you, Dennis.
This is Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black Ukrainian guy who falls in love with a transgender Russian soldier.
621,000 likes!
That man has testicles.
The one right before that was great, too.
What was that one?
It was the... I support it right here.
The I support everything.
Oh, I haven't seen it!
The current thing.
Send that to me.
You see it already, though, with the media.
Like, you see how many media headlines talk about, oh, the real victims are black Ukrainians that aren't being allowed into Poland and stuff like that.
What?
Yeah, they're all black Ukrainians.
The front page of the LA Times last week was the plight of LGBTQ Ukrainians.
Oh, that!
Yes, I saw that.
All right, 20 seconds.
Stand by.
Can you come in with Trevor Noah?
Cut 13.
Coming in with Cut 13.
Good night.
Portions of America First are brought to you by Food for the Poor.
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There is no denying that Saudi Arabia isn't playing ball with Joe Biden.
And you know what?
You can say what you want, but this...
That's Trevor Noah saying that Biden wished he could hire President Trump to stop the war in Europe.
wild card.
That's Trevor Noah saying that Biden wished he could hire President Trump to stop the war in Europe.
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Third hour today.
You don't want to miss it.
Victor Davis Hanson With us for the whole hour, but right now we're wrapping up with Salem's very own Dennis Prager.
Dennis, a couple of minutes left.
What is the most important message you have for our millions of listeners across the Salem stations when it comes to moral clarity, not just at home, in personal affairs, but when it comes to what we are witnessing 8,000 miles away?
If you take morality seriously, and I don't know what competes with that for the number one priority in people's thinking, then the first question people have to ask is, is it good or bad?
Is it right or wrong?
And I ask, I'm a big supporter of America first, but as I said earlier, that's not the same as America only.
I am for my family first.
I know you're for your family first.
But neither of us is only for our family.
If you're only for your family, you're not a good human being.
If you're only for America, you're not a good human being.
America is first, but not America only.
And if we have been blessed with the power that we have to do good on Earth, we have to do good.
That doesn't mean that we send in troops.
There are many ways, but I do believe, and I didn't a week ago, I do believe that we should enable Poland to give jets.
To the Ukrainians.
I do not believe that that will lead to a nuclear war.
Yeah.
It's a very simple message, but it is a message of moral clarity needed now more than ever.
We believe it is in fact the name of this show.
America First, but not America alone.
The latest book is the Rational Passover Haggadah.
Follow him, Dennis Prager, on Twitter DennisPrager.com and PragerU.com.
I'm Sebastian Gawker.
This is America First coming to you live from the ReliefFactor.com studios.
Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, make sure you stay on this channel.
The latest analysis next hour.
We're going to focus on the events occurring in Iraq, the involvement of Iran, China and Russia together in this new geopolitical shaping of the world.
The World
He knew that you liked Yes I'll send you the name Pirello.
Oh God, it's a famous name.
It was delicious, huh?
I have so many gifts I get to experiment with everything because people give me when I like it I then put it on the wish list on Cigar International and Then eventually if I go under 200 cigars orders He always loves to rub it in.
He cannot come on my show without rubbing in how many cigars he gets for free.
It really is.
So, Sue unpacks my stash every time I come home from a speech.
I am not allowed to buy cigars anymore.
My wife says, you've got enough.
You can buy guns, but not cigars.
No, no, no.
Wait a minute.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
I have to speak to her.
Please.
Please do.
There is no such thing as enough.
It's like enough water.
We don't have enough water.
It's like dollar bills.
You know, it can never happen.
All right.
Yeah, that's right.
Basically.
Yes.
All right.
And by the way, one other thing.
I'm crazy about lighters, as I told you.
And you're a lighter.
I'm still using it.
Isn't it great?
That's why I love my cigars.
Yes!
It's fantastic.
It's elegant.
It's chic.
And it has a serious jet.
Yes.
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right, my friend.
Thank you.
Best of soon.
It was a joy.
Scratch Otto's head for us.
Will do.
Just an unsafe head.
Hey, that's not right.
It's not Victor Davis Hanson next hour.
Oh.
Oh, that's right.
That's the third hour.
Third hour.
See?
Even Dennis knows.
Right.
See?
Thank you.
All right, guys.
Be well.
Right.
And God bless.
Bye-bye.
How long until you guys finally do just a whole hour on cigars?
I don't know.
Could be Boris, could be Boris.
We're allowed to smoke cigars in the new studio, right?
That's confirmed.
Did you enjoy that, Stevie boy?
Very educational.
Edumacational.
Okay, mic two is now hot.
Alright, so it's in the box.
So where is it?
Oh, yeah.
So this is what you've got to fix for me, Steve.
What is best in life?
The open steppe, fleet whores, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Wrong!
Conan, what is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
New version?
Conan, what is best in life?
To crush the Democrats.
To see them driven before you.
To hear the lamentation of Nancy Pelosi.
Okay, that is perfect.
That is perfect.
I thought he was gonna go for like, hear the lamentations of their gender-neutral children or something.
Oh, man.
That's a good Arnold.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Not overstated.
And he's such a nice chap.
Did you know that?
He's such a nice chap.
Arnold.
So I've heard.
Yeah.
Do you want to do that read real quick?
Hang on a second.
All right.
Is it printed out?
Yeah, you have it.
It's the picture of a read you have.
Oh, the one I did?
Yeah.
Okay.
Where is it?
Where is it?
Where's the... I had it here.
Oh, here's a good one.
Get to the chopper!
Where's the Arnold?
Which one?
Screw your freedom.
Where is it?
We had it on here.
I think you took it off.
No, did I?
I think you took it off for Geoff's hug.
Oh, baby, I was so angry for it.
Oh, with Geoff hugs.
We love that.
I love this.
This was Geoff.
I'm not a big hugger, though.
I never understood hugging.
Geoff doesn't do hugs.
He never understood hugging.
As a little child, I said, get away from me, Grandma!
No!
You're not hugging me!
Who do you think you are?
Jeff's nightmare, hugging in the snow.
No, while watching Star Wars.
He hates, he doesn't understand science fiction.
Do you know what I've done for this man today?
You know what I did for him?
What's that?
I've rented out a movie theater.
Tomorrow night, the two of us are going to watch Empire Strikes Back.
Oh, that's tremendous.
That's what buddies do.
Am I right, Stevie?
You are right.
Thank you.
Jeff wants an invite, man.
I'm not invited to that?
You're only invited.
You're only invited.
But you're gonna have to be bound and dragged.
You'll be ready by then.
You'll be ready by then.
You'll be ready.
I want to double check everything.
Got any titles in mind for Wilkie and or Reagan?
For Prager, what he said at the end.
America first, not America alone.
Alright, what should we do in 101?
Oh yes, that's what I wanted to do in 101.
The Iraq thing, right?
No, no, we'll save that for Waleed.
Oh yeah, I found Waleed's latest book.
It was the one on Trump.
Um... And, uh, anything in mind for Wilkie?
Um, hang on a second.
Just gonna pick some news items.
You automatically print off everything Geoff sends, don't you?
Uh, that is kind of my default at this point.
Do not do that.
Alright, no problem.
Which one did you not want?
The 87-year-old being beaten up.
It's interesting.
Why?
It's New York.
It's like a 30-year-old woman.
It happens like every day.
Yeah, but it's not news in New York.
It's just more.
That's a statement of the state of America.
It's a sad statement of fame.
Yeah.
Okay, 30 seconds.
Yep.
We are doing food in A as well.
Okay.
You ready?
Ready? 20 seconds.
Stand by.
Ready? 20 seconds.
This is America First, and here's your host, Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
We shook things up there a little bit.
We rarely do that, have a full hour guest for the first hour.
What do we think of that, John?
Oh, I loved it.
I think the conversation was fantastic.
Two great, great, deep voices together.
Oh, but there were no cigars.
There was a distinct lack of cigars.
We're going to have to sort that out.
Thank you.
Eric, how did you enjoy the rabbi?
Yeah, two great Salem hosts together, and I thought Dennis had a lot of insight that we haven't quite heard yet on the show before.
And I think Jeff loved it because he walked out of his studio chair.
Thank you, Jeff.
I get the message.
We have to talk about what is going on in the world, give you my take.
Last chance for a monologue before we get Waleed Faddis, Dr. Faddis in studio, and Victor Davis Hanson for the whole third hour.
So here's, I'm always obliged, Phil, Phil, I'm doing it, okay?
I'm doing the news update.
And then I'm going to have to talk a little bit about the geopolitics of everything.
So, as of yesterday, I think, Instagram is inaccessible in Russia.
I bet parents are sad about that.
U.S.
officials have confirmed that Russia is seeking military aid from China, which is interesting.
If that's the case, does that mean that China is at war with us?
Because didn't Putin say that if we aided Ukraine, that's an act of war?
Huh.
I wonder if there's anyone on our side that has comments to make about China aiding Russia.
Iran, this is what we'll be discussing with Professor Farris.
It wasn't some rogue actor that shelled or launched missiles against our consulate in Erbil, Iraq.
It has been confirmed by the AP that Iran Tehran has claimed responsibility for that missile attack.
Somebody asked me, who was it?
Oh, Jeff asked me the weekend.
Why would the Iranians bomb our consulate in Iraq now?
Very easy.
The fourth round of talks between Ukraine and Russia have collapsed at the weekend, and of course we have the increasing price of oil and gas.
Average prices have soared 22% in two weeks to a record average 4.4, 4.43 per gallon in the United States, of course, in California, elsewhere, it is much, much more.
And then we have the big earth shattering news.
Obama has COVID.
And he tweeted about now it's really important for everybody to get vaccinated.
Democrat logic.
I'm vaccinated, caught Covid, therefore you need to get vaccinated.
Only a Democrat can make a statement that asinine.
And then this headline, just want to share this with you.
It's not news, but it kind of gives you an indication of how these people think.
The Atlantic has written an article about how World War 3 and nuclear weapons exchanges would be bad for the climate.
I'm not sure that's the problem.
I'm not sure that if nuclear missiles are launched, that the climate is exactly what people would be worrying about.
Okay.
In 1991, As the Soviet Union was collapsing, as the Warsaw Pact was dissolving, There was, I wouldn't say confusion, there was malaise in the national security foreign policy commentariat.
The talking heads, the think tankers, the professors of international relations about what happens now since the Berlin airlift of 1948-49.
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Christmas Day, what a Christmas present, 1991.
For 41 years, what did we have?
We had bipolarity.
We didn't have peace across the globe, there were lots of proxy wars in Africa and elsewhere, but there was a balance of power between two blocks.
On the one side, The good guys.
Us.
Yes.
And we are, we were, and we remain the good guys.
No arguments of moral relativity here.
Or moral equivalency.
Just because sometimes we've done bad things doesn't mean America is bad.
Quite the contrary, because we know when we've done bad things.
Other regimes know and want to do the bad things.
They have no compunction, they have no conscience when they do them, because that's part of their gene code politically.
So, whilst we had more than 20,000 nuclear warheads on either side, that juxtaposition of two blocks, the Soviets, America, the Warsaw Pact and NATO, provided, ironically, a certain modicum of stability.
Why?
Because of the concept of mutually assured destruction, of MAD.
The strange catch-22 of nuclear weapons is they are the most powerful weapon man has ever, ever invented.
However, their utility in practice is greatly restricted.
Why?
You can't deploy them easily without ending the world.
It is the ultimate military act of violence.
So the idea that we knew What the Russians were capable of.
They knew what we were capable of.
And if they press that button, within minutes there would be a retaliatory strike against the urban centers such as Moscow and Leningrad.
So what happens when one side disappears?
When 15 Soviet republics break out of the Soviet Union and become independent nations again, like the Baltic States, or completely new nations that have never existed before, like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan.
Well, there is no bipolarity.
The Soviet Union is up for grabs.
There's privatization, there's political choice, there's rising international crime, crime cartels inside the country, drug smuggling, you name it, counterfeiting.
So who's the threat?
What happens to the international system?
The 1990s were a confusing time for people who made their money out of commentating on geopolitics.
However, there were two, two seminal authors who wrote two seminal articles that turned into books.
And this is when I started my career in national security.
One of them was Samuel Huntington, who wrote The Seminal Soldier in the State, and then Francis Fukuyama, The Rabid Neocon.
These two gentlemen wrote articles.
Samuel wrote one called The Clash of Civilization that became books.
And Fukuyama wrote one called The End of History and the Last Man.
Samuel Huntington's argument was that with the loss of the Cold War by polarity, we would return to civilizational identities as being the most important factor in conflict, meaning Chinese civilization against non-Chinese, Muslim against Christian, Orthodox versus Catholic.
And he said the area for these conflicts would be the liminal borderlines where civilizations and cultures touched up against each other.
It was very influential, especially when you look at what happened in the Balkans.
In the Balkans, Samuel Huntington was right with Bosnian versus Serb, Serb versus Croat, His prediction came to life.
But it was quite limited in context.
Elsewhere you didn't see a massive intra or inter-civilizational conflict.
Francis Fukuyama had a very different argument.
The fact that he's still on Twitter tweeting away, making pronouncements this weekend, instead of hiding in shame, is rather telling.
Francis' article said, with the loss of the Soviet Union, that's it!
Democracy has won.
It is the end of history and the future of mankind.
It's like, for those of you of a certain age, you know what a stereo system had in terms of a graphic equalizer.
The future of mankind would be tinkering with the slides, with the fine adjustments of market economies and democracy, because fascism is gone and communism is dead.
Democracy's won forever!
He was wrong in 1991.
He was wrong on September the 11th, 2001.
And you're still wrong today.
Ideology is back.
It's not communism of Stalin or even Brezhnev.
But it is great power politics.
And the sooner everyone understands that, the better.
It is the revenge and the return of history and the revivification, the resuscitation of realpolitik.
Not the world as you wish it to be, but the world as it is.
I'm Sebastian Gorka.
This is America First.
As a nut...
That was really good.
Thank you.
I was curious if you had any thoughts on Huntington's works, because I've read some of his works.
Yeah, his Soldier in the State is seminal, and the Clash of Civilizations is interesting as a kind of thought-provoking read, but the only thing it really got right was the Balkans.
Right.
Can you post that without the stuff at the beginning?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, gotcha.
Yes, yes, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you. - Are you playing Erbil in Iran and everything today?
- Yes, yes.
We'll do the whole thing.
- Okay, good.
And let me endorse what you said.
Give me an opportunity to say what you said.
I haven't used any cuts, so what is an important cut we can use with the professor?
You want to use cuts of Trump?
Well, let's see what's applicable.
We've had We used one for the pre-record.
We've used Noah.
We used 11, right?
We have not, I don't think.
Yeah, we did.
We came in with that one at the top.
We came in with that one.
Yeah, we did.
Mm-mm-mm.
Oh, can you play me eight?
Eight.
The reason Putin didn't invade Ukraine when Donald Trump was president is because he respected and feared Donald Trump.
That's why deterrence.
Trump increased the military spending.
He talked NATO into increasing their spending even though he was attacked as a Russian, you know, operative who was undermining NATO.
No, he was fed up with NATO because they wouldn't spend the money they needed to defend themselves.
Iran?
Iran didn't In a pot, if you get my drift, because they feared Trump, because Trump was destroying Iran.
He choked Iran.
Oh, that's good.
Missile man.
That's good.
All right.
All right.
I'll do Israel, then I'll tee up Levin, and then we'll go straight to the professor.
Israel, then Levin, then the professor.
Yeah.
All right.
We got a minute 20.
20.
Okay.
How late did you stay at the ball?
As long as my wife wanted.
I like your pictures.
You posted one.
Yes, with the students.
Very good.
Hopefully next year we'll go back to the OAS Palace.
I hope so.
And to the real patisserie.
Because that was good.
We just had the Viennese waltz last weekend.
Last weekend?
Or the weekend before last?
No, the weekend before last.
The 29th?
Viennese waltz.
Where's Carafano?
I don't know.
That's not Heritage.
Is he travelling?
No wonder.
Alright, we've got 25 seconds.
He was in Colorado Friday.
Oh, I was with him.
Alright, 20 seconds to stand by.
We are going to do this with a time here.
Let's go.
Let's go.
are brought to you by Food for the Poor.
Let's talk about something fun.
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How did we get where we are today?
If you look at the world in flames.
Mark Levin had a superb segment on his show at the weekend.
Cut eight.
The reason Putin didn't invade Ukraine when Donald Trump was president is because he respected and feared Donald Trump.
That's why deterrence.
Trump increased the military spending.
He talked NATO into increasing their spending even though he was attacked as a Russian, you know, operative who was undermining NATO.
No, he was fed up with NATO because they wouldn't spend the money they needed to defend themselves.
Iran?
Iran didn't, in a pot, If you get my drift, because they feared Trump, because Trump was destroying Iran.
He choked Iran.
Missile man, little rocket man over there in North Korea, he was behaving himself too.
We can go on and on and on.
For all the attacks on Donald Trump, the man was a foreign policy genius, was he not?
Sorry John Bolton, you really blew it.
Yes, John Bolton, you blew it.
He was feared and he was respected.
How fast that has all changed.
We're going to unpack all of it, especially the events in Iraq over the weekend with the author of The Choice, Trump versus Obama, Biden, Professor Waleed Faris.
Welcome back to America First.
Thank you, Professor.
Always a pleasure to be with you.
The title of your book, The Choice, Trump vs. Obama-Biden, can I give you a new title for your book?
Please do.
The Choice, Peace vs. War.
I mean, is there not a better summary?
I mean, the president said this is the first time in this century that Russia, the first time that they didn't invade a neighbor was under his watch.
And now we have... You are the expert.
You've written books on jihadism, on the Middle East, now the difference choices between left and right when it comes to foreign policy.
Explain what the significance is.
If the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Emir of UAE do not return the phone calls of any American president, how big is that?
That's a huge benchmark.
We have not seen anything like that even in the past decades where there were disagreements between those countries and other countries, Egypt, Israel.
And any administration, at least in the form, I mean, there will be respect.
What is missing now is disrespect.
Unfortunately, it's built over months.
And that is the beginning of the Biden administration.
But let me go back to what you said in your intro, which is historic, because I lived it.
I mean, both of us came from countries that experienced the Soviet experiment or allied to it.
When we arrived here we saw that the American academics... Explain where you came from.
Tell our millions of listeners.
I was born and raised in Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon.
I lived through the Lebanese war.
15 years we faced the Syrian occupation which was a pro-Soviet satellite in the Middle East.
Everything the Ukrainians are experiencing right now we went through.
One of the reasons why I came to begin with to a free land was the ending of that war where the Syrian Assad regime occupied Lebanon.
When we got here, we saw that American academia was presenting two cases.
One was the book of Fukuyama.
The end of history.
Yeah, the end of history.
We've won.
Yes.
And I said, wait a minute.
Guys, you don't understand.
I'm coming from where it's going to be a major problem.
Fortunately, that was the book of Samuel Huntington.
As you said, it's not complete, but it was the beginning of showing us what is ahead of us.
This clash of civilizations, regions, nationalism, and here we are living it.
I mean, what are they fighting about in Ukraine?
It's Donetsk.
It's Crimea.
You would feel you are not in the Cold War but in the 19th century with the Cossacks advancing and the Russians and Napoleon.
That's where we are and unfortunately our academia did a bad job in the 90s and this created the elites that went to the executive branches that did not understand where international relations were.
And still don't understand.
And still do not understand.
Look, we are both immigrants to this country.
We love America.
And I don't want this to be a session where we just bash people, our fellow American citizens.
But I am troubled by this because it's not difficult to learn from history because it's written down.
You have to open a book and read.
What you just said, that we are back in the 19th century or the 18th century, seems to be so obvious.
Why is that not understood amongst the quote-unquote learned elites in America?
You're not building a rocket to go to Mars.
This is open a book about Bismarck, open a book about Napoleon and you'll see the same forces in play today.
Well look, Professor, you taught as much as I did in this country.
We are good Americans and want the interests of this country.
We know that the textbooks that were prepared by this academic elite, they are responsible for how the classroom was diseducated, miseducated.
And you know, graduates will go from where?
They'll go from the classroom, to the courtroom, to the war room, to the newsroom.
So basically that's where the problem we are facing right now.
We're talking to the author of many books, Global Jihad and on and on and on.
That was a core reading for my students when I was still teaching.
The most recent is The Choice, Trump versus Obama, Biden in US foreign policy.
Waleed Faris, follow him on Twitter, Waleed Faris, it's P-H-A-R-E-S.
Contrast this, if you will, you have, it's very difficult to recover From people not returning your call if you're the president.
Unless the president changes, it's very hard to win back that respect.
Contrast that if you will.
You mentioned Syria, you mentioned Lebanon.
President Trump had more than 200 officers, operatives of the Wagner Group, who are really Russian operatives.
killed in Syria because they were destabilizing Syria.
And Putin did nothing, Professor.
Isn't that stunning?
One person doesn't get his calls returned.
The other one can deal with a threat and the thug does nothing.
You know, you're absolutely right.
But on top of it, on top of it.
So President Trump gives orders to our military and our strategic forces to act on the ground.
They did in Syria.
Nobody was able to get close to the eastern part of Syria where we are in charge or nobody was able to get close to us in Iraq and elsewhere.
At the same time, President Trump We'll talk to Putin and we'll say, this is what I want.
That's what we lack right now.
In this crisis at this point in time, you deploy on the ground, you show signals, and then you speak with the other side.
That's the Cold War.
That's the language of the Cold War.
These guys went back to the Cold Wars or to the 19th century.
We need to go and, you know, speak the same language while keeping our values.
That's the big equation that was not done before.
Yes.
Crucially important.
Did you hear what Professor Faris said?
Our actions must comport with our values.
That's why we are America.
But relax, dear friends.
The update has been announced from the White House.
Not a joke.
This isn't SNL.
This isn't Monty Python.
But they have released a statement to the following effect.
This is from the White House.
Starting World War III is not in our interests.
The great geopolitical minds have spoken.
World War III is not a good thing.
Thank you, Jen Psaki.
Thank you, Joe, if you're still taking a nap.
I'm Sebastian Gawker.
We're talking to Professor Walid Fares.
This is America First on the Salem Radio Network with your host, Sebastian Gawker, member of the National Security Education Board, former strategist of President Trump.
Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, stay on this channel.
Are you shot, Stephen? Stephen?
Absolutely shot. - Nice one.
Do you have a title in mind for that monologue?
Mm-hmm.
Um...
What shall we call it?
So we have one or two seconds?
One more.
One more.
Yeah.
Let's unpack.
The end of history question mark or something like that?
The revenge of history.
Okay, so we missed food in A there.
Oh, we did!
We have podcast here.
I'll do food first.
But I'll do food in D. I'll have Steve on mic in D, and I'll just do podcast now.
Okay, podcast title lock here.
Yeah, okay, title lock.
Did you see the video of the Ukrainian picking up the anti-tank mine?
No.
Anti-tank mine like a big dish this big and he's clearing the road and he's got a fag sticking out of his mouth.
He's got a cigarette and he's picking up the thing and walking it off the thing off to a safe place.
It's just so East European.
I've seen this in the Middle East.
I mean, yeah, I'm handling explosives, but I'm not gonna put my cigarette down.
Come on.
priorities seriously if you guys want to come tomorrow night Tomorrow night?
Uh-huh.
6 o'clock.
Alright.
Empire Strikes Back?
Best one.
You can't see it on a big screen.
Line one's ringing.
Uh, yeah.
American folks, please hold.
Okay.
Three, four, two.
Are you working on your book?
Yeah.
Oh, good!
Theme?
Topic?
Iran, the whole thing.
Maybe that's the title.
Iran, the whole thing.
Which I have postponed many times.
But every time I finish a manuscript, then things will happen.
Yeah.
So I think this is the ultimate now.
Tell us when you're ready.
We'll do you for an hour.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Okay, 45 seconds.
And we're gonna do podcast at the top here.
Do you want any other audio?
No, we'll save it.
You don't need it.
Okay, then.
20 seconds, stand by.
Oh, come in with five.
Five.
Podcast technology.
Sounds good.
Stand by.
All right.
Portions of America First are brought to you in part by Stand With Israel Tour.
You see what they're doing here with having Russia try to negotiate a new Iran deal.
And we don't want a new Iran deal.
And the thing is, we already have said no more Russian oil into our supply chain.
But now they're trying to say, OK, let's go deal with Iran and make buying Iranian oil a part of our solution.
It just sounds like common sense, and that's why we love Senator Marsha Blackburn.
I'm Sebastian Gorka.
If you enjoy our radio show as much as we love making it, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Like Spotify, go to Spotify, punch in my name, Sebastian Gorka, America First.
Never miss a thing.
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We are back with Professor Waleed Farris, most recently the author of The Choice, Trump vs. Obama-Biden.
Professor, you wanted to react to the White House statement today that World War III shock, horror, breaking news is not in our interests.
It's just amazing because there's a confusion between a journalist position and a decision-maker.
A journalist can write an op-ed and say, you know, anything they want.
It's not the time for... But a decision-maker, a president or a leadership should not telegraph their ideas to the other side.
This is classical.
They could send their intelligence services talking to the other side intelligence services and tell them this is the line where we're not going to work.
But the principle should be We are going to do everything we can.
Let me explain for those who don't know why the professor is saying this.
If a nation says that it has nuclear weapons, nuclear war is not in our interest.
What does the bad guy do?
He precipitates A situation where nuclear war is the only response, but you've already said I can't do it, therefore what happens?
You capitulate.
Yes.
It's like in Bosnia in 1995.
Clinton says no air cover, no ground troops, so what do the Serbs do?
They go house-to-house ethnic cleansing.
Why?
Because they know if you're not gonna send troops in, well we can do whatever we want.
Yes.
Don't tell the bad guys what you're going to do.
It's not complicated.
OK, I called you urgently today to get you in studio because of what happened in Erbil in northern Iraq at the weekend.
My producer said, why are the Iranians bombing US facilities?
And I said, well, because Joe Biden is president.
Explain what happened in the weekend and why it's significant.
It could be as simple as that.
That the Iranian leadership have discovered as we are handling Ukraine and making statements that no, we're not going to do anything, we're not going to go inside.
Remember that the Biden administration is saying, no matter what is the price, I'm going to sign the Iran deal.
So that's even another worse mistake.
Signing the Iran deal, meaning you're not going to act against Iran.
So Iran lobbing missiles or ballistic missiles on our bases is basically telling us that Iran can do anything it wants.
That we lost the deterrence in the Middle East.
And that is not just Northern Iraq.
Wait a few weeks, you're going to see Southern Iraq in the desert on the borders with Saudi Arabia.
And then you're going to look at what's going to happen from Yemen into Saudi Arabia.
Iran at this point in time is on steroids.
Because they're waiting for the new Iran deal.
They are waiting for the Iran deal, they're waiting for the money, and they saw how we acted in Europe and how we didn't act in the Middle East.
So that's for them the day to act.
And when the Russian interlocutor says on camera, I am shocked by what the Iranians are managing to get out of the Biden administration, How do we respond to that?
Well, that was something we thought was a secret, but now the Russians are talking about it.
On camera?
On camera.
This is, I would say, the politics of too much.
I mean, we did not even expect that this could happen.
Yeah.
The book is The Choice, Trump vs. Obama-Biden.
I think we have to get the good professor back for a much longer discussion on the ramifications of not only what we are witnessing in Iraq, but also China.
China supporting Russia, what is happening still in Syria, kind of black box nobody's reporting about, and of course the fate of Lebanon, the land where the professor came from.
I'm Sebastian Gawker.
Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast.
Go to Spotify, look for my name, Sebastian Gawker, America First.
This is the Salem Radio Network.
It is an opportunity.
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Then the hacker forges your signature, removes you from the home's title, and then takes loans out on the property and leaves you with the debt.
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It's just smart to do this.
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Your time has come.
- Mom.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, the car's here now.
- Switch over a little bit.
- It's one minute away.
- There you go.
- Probably about the time you get done.
- You want to prep me?
- There's the prep.
Just be you, Steven.
All right, so we're doing Food for the Poor here.
Yes.
Okay, then we can do my pillow as well.
All right, put the camera on me first because I'll play a couple of cuts.
I'll take a call in and I'll surprise everybody.
And I got his name right, right?
Yes.
Awesome.
All right.
Any descriptor to go below his name?
Childhood best friend.
Voice actor.
Voice... Voice talent extraordinaire.
Extraordinaire.
Extraordinaire.
All right, best cuts.
Oh boy.
Jeff?
Oh, um... New pair.
Kind of all over the place.
We're gonna have some DJT.
Oh, of course.
Okay, 15 seconds.
Stand by.
Oh, and cut 9.
I'm going to tee up cut 9.
That's amazing.
But we'll go to President Trump first.
Not coming in with anything?
Nope.
All right.
Stand by.
Foot foot foot foot.
You're listening to America First with Dr. G.
Amen.
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We haven't played enough We could take the five worst presidents in American history and put them together and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done in just 13 months.
We have a president representing our country at the most important time in history who is physically and mentally challenged.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a terrible atrocity that should never have been allowed to happen.
It would have never happened.
I know I speak for everyone here tonight when I say we are praying for the proud people of Ukraine.
They are going through hell.
They are fighters, and God bless them all.
Make no mistake, however, that Russia would not have dared to annex one inch of territory if I was in the White House.
In fact, they never did it when I was there.
So strange, they did it under George W. Bush, they did it under Obama, but for four years the Russians didn't invade anybody when my former boss was in the White House.
Let's squeeze in a call before we get to Victor Davis Hanson, a special in-guest studio.
Steve, line one, welcome to America First.
Thank you, Dr. Gorka.
You know, when Russia took Crimea, peninsula, Ukraine didn't think much of it.
And now that they're going after Ukraine, NATO doesn't think much of it.
So why is NATO so stupid not to learn from the lessons of Crimea?
They're after Europe.
They picked the largest country in Europe, which wedges right in there like Putin's PUD, ready to take them on.
Why is NATO a...
That's a great, great question.
Why?
I think many of them just convince themselves that there's some kind of new political order, we can make nice, war is something historic, and we can just buy gasoline, we can buy oil from Russia.
They convinced themselves that we're living in some paradisical new world that doesn't require, you know, rough men to secure our borders.
So I wish I knew.
As the child of those who suffered under fascism and communism, I have no idea how these people are as naive as they are.
Thank you, Steve.
From one Steve on the phone, let's go to Steve in studio.
We've been trying to get him in country for three years now.
We tried to get him here for my 50th birthday party.
My good buddy now for 41 years.
Is that possible, Steve?
Steve Galvin, 41 years.
That's far too long.
Thank you for that vote of confidence.
You're such a delightful chap.
He's an individual you may know, you may recognize his mellifluous Welsh sonorous half Irish tones because he's very good at doing voice recordings for us liners.
We have this famous one that we use here from a certain Austrian who doesn't like your freedom and Steve's come up with a new variety.
So here's the original from a certain movie by John Milius.
What is best in life?
The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Wrong!
Conan, what is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
With all due respect to the great John Milius, we have to update that what-is-the-new-Arnold-version, Steve.
Conan, what is best in life?
To crush the Democrats.
To see them threatened before you.
To hear the lamentation of Nancy Pelosi.
See, that's why Stevie is always welcome here at America First.
We're going to keep him here chained to that chair after the show to read us lots of new liners, make up some special clips that we're going to share with you through the year.
Tell us what's going on in Blighty in the UK.
You went to the Airport ready.
Ticket in hand with your suitcases.
A year ago and you were told you're not allowed to come here because the borders closed.
You can't come to America.
Covid this, Covid that.
Things are a lot better in the UK.
You're here now clearly.
Talk to us about what happened in the last few weeks.
How's Boris doing and how free are the Brits again Stevie?
They're gradually beginning to relax restrictions.
So for example, if you if you if you're traveling abroad, you don't then have to get a PCR test on return, you don't have to get a COVID test, you can just come back and fly with when the country was in full lockdown, you couldn't even travel.
But beyond that, you were limited in how often you could go out of the house, whether you were allowed to exercise.
I mean, it was insanity for a while, wasn't it?
That's right, yes.
You were limited at various periods to one member of your family.
then maybe three members you could go out on certain days to specific areas but there was a time limit on that and if if you breach that time limit the police would appear and they would find you on the spot sheer insanity back to normal what about masks are people still wearing masks in the high street It's gradually becoming less, but there are still certain people who feel the need to wear it.
Either to show because, hey, I'm wearing a mask, therefore I'm the good guy.
But I think it's beginning to relax.
And I think eventually it'll just become like getting the flu virus every year.
And when the lights were dimmed on your aircraft yesterday, what happened to your mask, Stephen Galvin?
I pulled it down and nobody noticed.
He's such a rebel.
We're going to continue our conversation.
Stay with us here, America First, the whole third hour with Victor Davis Hanson.
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I'm so looking forward to a curry.
Um, Eric?
I am such a gentleman and a scholar.
Yes?
I'm so looking forward to a curry.
Eric, how many chapters have you got?
We are good up to Thursday.
That's chapter 16 end of Mark.
Okay.
And what, what have I done?
I've done, I've done Matthew.
Mark.
I think just, or, oh, you did John as well.
So Luke's left.
Yes.
Okay.
Oh, what were, cut nine is so good.
Can you, can you ask Casio to do nine, Jeff?
Yeah.
And, and 10.
What else should we do?
Oh, will you get him to do Kevin Durant?
Yeah.
Thank you.
The Marr one is good.
I had no idea Marr was on the show.
I just hate giving Marr oxygen.
I might listen to that after work today.
What?
The whole thing?
Last time I watched one of those long forms.
Hey Eric, I know I've got it somewhere I can dig it out, but will you just text me the video of the president on that podcast last week?
Oh, full send.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
30 seconds here, and we're going to do merch.
Yeah, and then I'm going to tee out nine.
Okay, tee out nine.
I'm going to wear my Kevin Durant jersey into work tomorrow.
After that kind of comment.
20 seconds.
All right.
Stand by.
Stand by.
Thank you.
From the ReliefFactor.com studios, this is America First with Sebastian Gorka.
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Fabulous.
I love it when the mainstream decent media, as much of Fox that remains it as decent, actually talks to real people.
These are Pipe, Line workers who lost their job when Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline.
What do they think?
Cut 9!
What do we need to do right now?
Put us to work.
Right now.
Put us to work.
And you will see not only the fuel prices go down, but you will see the price of everything else go down with it.
These gas prices affect everything on the market.
Everything.
Because of transportation.
Yeah.
Everything has to be transported.
He's blocking the Probably the biggest contributor to energy in the United States right now.
He's pushing for solar and wind power, but it's been proven over and over that's just not as efficient as burning natural gas, refining crude.
Get out all the politics.
You know, we're sick of hearing, you know, this is Putin's price hike.
Yeah, those are the Americans that can make us great again.
Thank you for that interview.
Let's talk to our correspondent from over the Atlantic, who just happens to be in the swamp right now, Stephen Galvin.
That common sense understanding of what's happening in this White House, do the Brits understand just how feckless and senile the old git in the White House is?
I mean, did you spend time, is it reported, the weakness of the White House?
No, I don't think it is, to be honest.
The media in the UK And it's been getting worse, really, for the last four or five years.
It seems to be deliberately taking a leftist view of things.
For example, I've noticed with an organization like the BBC, they will deliberately interview liberal players first, as opposed to conservative, and then sometimes not even interviewing conservatives at all in order to cement a specific agenda which they want to portray.
And that's becoming prevalent now in more and more stations in the UK.
What about the newspapers?
Is the Telegraph still good?
Telegraph is still good, but the Independent, for example... Oh, forget the Independent.
I used to read the Independent a lot when I was younger, but I've noticed now, especially online, that it has just become so... It's a rag.
It's a left-wing rag.
And God bless the people like our buddy Mike Graham on Talk Radio and the great people like Calvin Robinson on GB News.
So there is a pushback.
It's happening here.
It's happening there.
We've been talking to voice talent extraordinaire Stephen Galvin.
Next, Victor Davis Hanson one-on-one here on America First.
The End
The End He recently spoke with the mayor of the largest border town, who told him that the refugee system is essentially not set up for this, that it will collapse.
It's an improvised system that can work for maybe two weeks, but not indefinitely.
And I'm wondering what the United States is going to do more specifically to set up a permanent infrastructure, and relatedly, is the United States willing to make a specific allocation for Ukrainian refugees?
And for President Duda, I wanted to know if you think and if you asked the United States to specifically accept more refugees.
Okay.
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Okay, so this time...
Stunning!
Truly stunning!
Two million refugees from the war in Ukraine arriving in Poland alone and she is there in Poland and she thinks it is something to laugh at.
I'm trying to remember the last time an issue of such magnitude was a cause for hilarity for a Western politician and I I simply can't recall.
Maybe our special guest for America First one-on-one can recall.
He's the senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, author of a library of superlative books, every single one of them worth your time.
The most recent one is the bestseller, The Dying Citizen.
How progressive elites, tribalism and globalization are destroying the idea of America.
It has a five-star rating with only 2,200 reviews on Amazon.
Professor Victor Davis Hanson, welcome back to One on One.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a serious question.
Can you recall in modern history, pick some geopolitical catastrophe, whether the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Balkan cleansing, the outbreak of Ebola in Africa.
I'm trying to recall, was there a Western leader who had a public press conference joint with another nation?
laughed when asked a question about that crisis?
I'm not trying to make a political point.
I'm trying to, you know, historically recall if there was such an instance.
Well, there's been a lot of casual mistakes.
I mean, there were people in the British Parliament that said, you know, why would we want to go all the way and defend the Falklands?
And that green light at General Galtieri, or we had our ambassador April Glaspie said, you know, we don't get involved in Saddam's inner State-Middle East rivalries that at and we had Dean Atchison said I don't think Realistically Korea's and our orbit nuclear shield, but more Privately maybe Jennifer Grisham.
Remember the other day when asked about pumping more she burst out in the same laughter Yes crazy.
What could I do?
And then of course now she's a tin cup in hand begging the reviled oil companies that she was made it has made a career of of ridiculing to beg them to pump more to save them before the midterm.
Yeah, that peculiar moment where she's asked about the price of oil before the invasion.
She laughs.
This is the Secretary of Energy for the Biden administration laughing and saying, do you think I have any control over oil prices?
Well, if you don't, why do we have a Secretary of Energy You mentioned that.
Let's talk about the peculiar rewriting of history.
I did the math on the way to the studio.
There has been a $1.94 increase of gas prices since January the 20th, since the inauguration, and only 70 cents of that has occurred since the invasion of Ukraine.
Yet we are supposed to believe that the White House narrative is that the price in oil, inflation and everything else is a function of Vladimir Putin.
In California, does that resonate?
Do people believe that everything can be blamed on the last three weeks, Professor?
No, nobody believes that.
California, you know, is much worse.
I'm in a very poor area of California.
It's got the lowest per capita income of anywhere in the state.
This town that I live near is about $16,000 per annual income per individual, but the price right now, Seb, is about $5,000.
$5.10 for gasoline and $6.05 for diesel fuel.
Diesel and gas used to be comparable, but for some reason in California, they've got a wide gap now.
We're $6.00.
So if you're a trucker going down the 99 all day long and into Arizona, a thousand mile trip, you're going to lose $200 to $300 of your income just to pay for additional diesel fuel that's more than doubled in price.
That's where we are and everybody understands that.
But remember that Nate, you understand this is only the latest narrative.
That Putin did it, before it was the greedy oil companies did it, and then before that it was all the people who didn't want to use these beautiful productive leases that they just ignored as if an oil executive has ever ignored a lease that has sizable deposits upon it.
So we've heard all of these excuses, and I think a lot of people feel that They're crying crocodile tears about the high prices, but they feel that, well, we might take a short-term hit in the mid-term, but this is Stephen Chu's dream come true.
Another Californian that we can get, you know, $7 or $8 a gallon gas, and we can make what is otherwise uneconomical alternate energy a reality.
So I don't think they're too upset about it.
It falls on somebody else, not themselves.
They don't really drive that much along the coastal corridor or the wealthy people that enact these policies are always shed from the consequences of their ideology.
And the geopolitical consequences of seeing the most powerful man in the world.
Not having his phone calls returned from the Emir of the UAE or the King of Saudi Arabia, or having State Department officials go cap in hand to Russian ally Venezuela to try and get cheaper gas or oil from them.
This has brought repercussions geopolitically, doesn't it?
Well, absolutely.
I think they're very upset.
The left is that we are asking the House of Saud Or Putin, as we did right before the war.
But I don't think they're upset that we are now asking Venezuela and Iran, because they have been advocates for reopening negotiations.
We have a Russian interlocutor, you know, that's dealing on our behalf, supposedly, with Iran.
And so, I don't think that bothers them, that the Iranians and Venezuelans will have pressure.
I mean, if you distill it all down, Seb, it's basically this administration said, We're not going to ask our fellow Americans in Alaska and North Dakota and Texas who willingly want to take on the burden of fracking and horizontal drilling to help other Americans.
We would rather rely on people that hate our guts.
And that's what they're doing.
And it's so bizarre that, you know, that Wall Street Journal poll came out and shows you that for all the left glee that he got a big bump at Ukraine, he didn't.
And the margin is still 15 or 16 points.
between approval and disapproval.
And that's because, I think, not just the high oil price, but the sense that he doesn't care.
He just takes off on weekends to his home in Delaware.
He doesn't really address things.
He makes fun of people.
He denies reality.
And people think, you know, it really begs the question, Seb, is it more pernicious and deleterious for the United States to have somebody who's cognitively challenged Who's failing at a geometric, not just an arithmetic, rate every month, or to have someone who appears to be cognizant, like Kamala Harris, but is so ignorant of foreign policy that she's actually dangerous when she picks up the slack of a non-compulsamentist president.
But we can't just narrow it down to them, sadly, because we have members of the cabinet, like the transport secretary, we have one of the chief economic advisors on cable television say, you should buy an electric car and our goal is to have zero fossil fuels.
So it seems as if the whole administration has been taken hostage by this environmentalist extremism.
Yeah, as long as we remember that the hostage takers, as you point out, are very numerous.
So it's not just Pete Buttigieg But it's the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
If that is even if that's even an accurate term, I think it's all the Democratic Party.
Now, Elizabeth Warren, the Obamas, all of these people, I think, if you were to ask them, feel that they had a great moment with Obama in power with a supermajority in the Congress and they blew it.
They weren't bold enough.
And now Joe Biden, who was always the understudy and sort of ridiculed is screws everything up.
He touches.
I think he feels that to the degree he can, he's cognizant.
He feels this is our moment.
We're going to out Obama, Obama, and they're going to go full blast into the midterm.
I don't even think that.
If you ask them, well, you're going to alienate all the American people and you're going to lose the midterms and you're going to wipe out your fellow Democrats, they're going to say, so what?
We have three more years and we can get a lot more damage done in that time.
Yeah, I'm afraid you might be right.
The author of the latest bestseller, The Dying Citizen, you must order it right now.
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We are back with Professor Victor Davis Hanson.
Professor, I'm going to do something a little bit different.
We'll get back to the situation in Europe, the latest press conference given by Zelensky in English, which was very interesting.
But I'd like to recruit you.
I need your assistance.
So last week, I think it was on Thursday or Wednesday, I posted photographs of the shelled-out hospital in Mariupol.
I made some statements about the KGB background of Vladimir Putin.
And I was mercilessly, mercilessly attacked on one social media platform as a neocon and as a member of the Deep State, despite having been subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee, which is quite a strange situation to be in.
And I was told by those who were quote-unquote trolling me on Instagram that, don't I understand?
Why am I promoting this propaganda?
Vladimir Putin is an anti-globalist, pro-Christian, and he's saving the West.
Where does this come from?
Should we have a response to this?
Because allegedly these are putative conservatives, but I find it mind-chilling that somebody can believe a former KGB colonel who persecuted Christians is somehow now saving the West and Christendom.
Well, he's surely not a sermon on the mountain person Putin, but you know, if you look at polls, 75% of Republicans want a strong muscular response and slightly more than Democrats 73.
So it's not the majority of people.
And I think that what they don't understand is that Putin is like a tiger in the zoo.
He's a predator and he's an opportunist.
And if somebody puts his hand in there.
He's going to get it taken off or if the zoo cage is poorly designed, bad things will happen.
But that doesn't mean that we don't blame the tiger.
We just assume that he's opportunistic and he'll always try to devour anybody he can.
So I think they miss that.
And so what I'm getting at, yes, we appeased him.
Yes.
We had a very dangerous energy policies.
Yes.
Reset was a disaster.
Yes.
Georgia, Ukraine and Crimea deserved a stronger response.
But the idea that we are to blame or that we have an ally in him is crazy.
He is a carnivore, a raptor.
He will always take advantage of us when oil prices are high, when NATO's in disarray, and when American president is weak and provocatively weak.
And so that's just a reality.
We can't change that.
It's just the way it is.
You know, there were a lot of people said the same thing, Seb, about Mussolini.
They thought, you know what?
He weathered the Great Depression so much better than we did.
He built new train terminals.
He is creating a new Roman civilization of enlightenment around the shores of the Mediterranean.
And they didn't really care that he was a thug and a murderer.
And, uh, history really showed them to be wrong.
I mean, there were people like Ezra Pound praise Mussolini got mad at anybody who criticized him.
So I wish the conservative movement would, if, if it's perfectly legitimate to say the left appeased him and created an adventurous Putin, they did.
And they unfairly characterized Donald Trump as a collider, a colluder with Putin, which was terrible.
We aggravated Putin, that's true, but that does not disguise the central truth of this catastrophe.
That Vladimir Putin saw an opening and he tried to swallow all of Ukraine.
And right now his fallback position is a Grozny-like, let's destroy As many cities as we can, and then negotiate our way out of, say, getting a third or a half or two-thirds of Ukraine, settle down for a year or two, then swallow the rest of it.
That's the strategy.
It's sort of, I made a desert and I'll call it peace.
Yeah, and what is the correct response to the conspiracy theories that the Soviet era remnant bioweapons or biological defense research facilities that in part were funded thanks to the Nunn-Lugar Act which was sponsored by Senator Obama in 2005, that we have people who allegedly, allegedly again I say are conservatives, saying
Well, Putin is justified because we were going to attack him, the deep states, America, what have you, was going to attack him from these bioweapons labs in Ukraine and he's just going there to save his country.
Is there any reasonable response to that or are we just talking to people with tinfoil hats?
Notice they don't say the same thing about China.
Why don't they say Well, Francis Collins and Fauci rerouted 600,000 to echo health to the Wuhan.
And so why don't they start?
They don't.
They don't blame us for the Wuhan virus.
They can blame us for poor government policies.
But I think it's because of what you mentioned.
There's this feeling that Putin poses.
He gives these speeches that are absolutely Machiavellian when he talks about He's so sorry the West is in decline and doesn't stand up for values anymore.
And it's forgotten its enlightened and religious history.
And he's a man of faith.
And that appeals to a lot of people who feel that there's no hope in the United States.
It shouldn't, but it does.
And I think it's incumbent upon all of us on the conservative side, not to mix the facts that there's culpability for appeasing him, but that is not sympathy for the opportunistic opening that he took.
And it's very hard.
I have the same thing.
If it means anything, I get emails every day from somebody who said, I saw you, I heard an interview, I saw something you write, and you were criticizing, you know, the left, but you don't say anything about Putin had a right to do this.
Or if you criticize the left for appeasing them, that means that we should be behind Putin.
I mean, it's crazy.
And you know what the sad thing about it is?
Seb, right before the midterms, it's feeding a left-wing, gleeful narrative that the entire conservative movement is pro-Putin.
And it's not.
It polls higher anti-Putin than even doctrinaire Democrats.
So that's what's scary about it.
Yeah, my issue with it is just a very simple observation.
All conservatives of every ilk, isolationists, Buchananites or not, neocons, 40 years ago, we understood who KGB colonels were.
We didn't like KGB colonels.
We knew what they did to Christians and what they thought about the West and now it's as if that history has just been memory holding some Orwellian sense and it never happened.
He's a very mellifluous python.
You remember when George Bush, a good conservative, said, I look into his eyes.
And then we had Hillary with that jacuzzi button said, this is the start of a new sort of like a Casablanca.
This is the start of a new beautiful relationship.
And Obama, the hot mic, tell Vladimir, give me some space and I'll be flexible in missile defense.
The only one who didn't.
The irony is the only person who really hurt Putin.
Forget the rhetoric.
Trump did art of the deal rhetoric on occasion.
But who absolutely hurt Putin, whether it was oil or deterrence or upping NATO defense and U.S. defenses or selling javelins or killing mercenaries in Syria or getting out of asymmetrical was Donald J. Trump.
To the extent.
That's bizarre.
Let's be clear, to the extent of killing 200 Russian mercenaries in Syria, which Putin did nothing to respond to because he was afraid of him.
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Professor Hanson, having written seminal works on strategy before The Dying Citizen, I would recommend The Second World Wars by Professor Hanson.
How do you rate the performance strategically of Vladimir Zelensky, the strategic communications, the use of information operations.
And how significant was it that I think it was on Thursday or yes, Thursday evening, our time, he gave this English language interview in which he said, it is time to speak to Putin.
Is that a bad sign?
No, but whether he speaks to Putin or not will depend on the pulse of the battlefield.
So if he continues to survive and they continue to have these sort of unexpectedly heavy losses at some, and public opinion and world opinion is against Putin, then he'll be in a stronger position.
I think what he'll probably end up saying is, well, we didn't have Crimea anyway.
We were never going to get it back.
We were never going to get these parts of Eastern Ukraine.
So if I can negotiate, and we're never going to get into NATO, no matter what the promises and the wink and nod.
If I can negotiate an independent Ukraine, then I'll take it.
The problem with that though is...
I don't think he's done.
I think he would take, Putin will take that and stop maybe and even leave Kiev out of it, but then he will, you know, digest it.
And three or four years from now, he'll think, well, you know, they made a deal with me, so I'm going to go on and on and do that.
So I don't think, I think maybe he could talk about, he doesn't want to be the person rejecting any discussion of diplomatic solutions when people are dying in hospitals.
So politically he has to be open to it.
But if he's a smart, if he's smart, he'll be like Churchill in the worst hours of the blitz, not discussing things with Hitler.
And I don't think he can ever cut a deal with Putin.
And I hope that he will be in a position of stronger, a position so that he can outright reject that.
But I think he's trying to say to his own people, it's just not my ego that's getting him, getting us killed.
This guy wants to kill us and I'm open to talk to him if he'll get out.
But that's about as far as he should go.
I think the only mistake he's made, Seb, is that we are pouring millions of dollars, billions of dollars, Europe is, and at certain times in his desperation, I understand why he's doing it, he tends to be shrill and says the United States should have a no-fly zone over the whole country.
Well, you know, given the history of our interference and their affairs and their interference, In our affairs, especially the Ukrainian ambassador during the Trump administration, who wrote an op-ed, you know, right before the election.
I don't think that's wise to get into our discussions, especially when, if you have a no-fly zone, then you're asking an American pilot to shoot down a Russian pilot, and they'll shoot down most of them.
And we will be in a very tense situation.
Last week we spoke to an amazing individual, Chuck Holton, former Ranger, who is now the Newsmax war correspondent in Ukraine.
He was filmed carrying a double amputee out of a hospital after a bridge collapsed.
An amazing individual.
And he reported for us, and I've looked this up and confirmed it elsewhere, that the Ukrainian forces have captured intact More than 250 tanks.
That's in less than three weeks of fighting.
Are you surprised by that?
No, I think they're going to be even more sophisticated.
From the people that I've talked to, I think we kind of Missed the real story.
The real story was they only, they had a small number of Javelins and now they're flooded with Javelins.
And these are not the kind of, I was embedded two years, uh, two tours of a week or two each in Iraq.
And I saw those and those are obsolete.
Now, these new Javelins have ranges of two and a half miles fire and forget they lock on the target.
They go straight down on the vulnerable.
They take out a $3 million tank.
And so I think they've denied most of the main highways, maybe not outside of Kiev yet.
And with these shoulder, shoulder fired missiles, the lower airspace, uh, is not being used by Russia as it was.
I mean, I don't think they can bring in helicopters and bring in a lot of food and fuel without getting shot down in major, uh, air air bases.
And so the, the key now is I have high flying, uh, that have smart bombs and they have missile platforms that are probably in Russian territory.
And that's what's doing the damage in some artillery strikes.
But each day that goes on, Putin's got to, I think he loses.
I know a lot of people think the opposite because of the inordinate and asymmetrical advantage he has in numbers.
But in terms of finance and resupply and public opinion and the increasing depots, I mean some of the figures that we hearing are just out.
I mean they're incomprehensible 10 or 15,000.
Javelin launchers are pouring in from all the NATO countries.
Yes, and if you look at footage, the latest footage I looked at last night, it was just a small squad of Ukrainians, maybe recent volunteers, and they were moving to contact every single member of the squad with a javelin on his back.
I mean, that is not the usual way that you actually deploy them.
When every single rifleman has one, That causes problems for anybody's tank regiment.
And they're used for things other than tanks.
They blow up supply buildings.
They can shoot down fuel depots.
You name it.
The website is VictorHansen.com.
The book is The Dying Citizen.
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Professor Hansen, whatever the outcome, whether the fighting continues unabated for months to come, whether there is some kind of negotiated settlement whereby larger parts of ukraine are partitioned off what is the best way to describe the potential scenario afterwards right now it's not a cold war because it's
Civilians are being shelled, thousands of Ukrainians have died, tanks are being blown up.
Is it right to say at this stage that we have re-entered or could be re-entering a new Cold War?
Yeah, I think a lot of it will depend on China and China's attitude toward Russia will depend on how well Russia does.
If Russia becomes an international pariah and it loses Then China feels that it screwed up the paradigm that it wants to use for Taiwan, that there was more international outrage and the people like the Taiwanese might fight like the Ukraines and we might supply the Taiwanese as we did.
And they will blame Russia for that.
And they will try to straddle, they'll be more like India, straddle the fence.
But if Putin wins and he ends up with half of Ukraine and he has a energy and food for cash, from China, then I think it's going to be potentially, and he has 7,200 nukes that might be on the side of China in any showdown, then I think we're headed for something that's pretty dangerous.
Because the thing about the Cold War was the communist system was so inefficient and their GDP was so pathetic that they couldn't sustain a 50-year war.
But China's a communist country, but it's got a proto-capitalist System and it's flush with cash and we never had people in the Cold War that were compromised like they are now with China So many people are making so much money that so if that alliance Materializes, I'm really worried.
So I think that's very important that Putin is humiliated and is seen as an albatross to the Chinese rather than an asset and But whatever occurs, the current marriage can only ever be a marriage of convenience, because the Chinese themselves have the plan to be the dominant hegemonic power.
So, you know, they are making hay while the sun shines.
When Visa pulls out of Russia, then they'll pick up the slack.
But they want to dominate Russia as well.
Oh, absolutely.
It's just the inverse of the Cold War when if the Chinese wanted, Mao wanted to go into Korea, he had to ask Stalin's permission.
And that was an asymmetrical relationship.
And that's how Henry Kissinger tried to leverage China and triangulate, you know, China will never be friendlier to Russia than it is to us, or Russia will never be friendlier to China than it is to us.
And that was sort of the marquee attitude.
So if They enter in this partnership, Russia will be playing the old malice role as the inferior partner and we'll try to, if we're smart, we'll try to leverage one against the other.
But so far we've done the opposite.
We've done things, I think, bring them together, which is unfortunate.
Does the poor performance of the Russian army and the late seriousness evinced by NATO and others mean that China will think twice about Taiwan militarily?
Does the poor performance of Moscow mean that they may delay that or the contrary?
I think if they're wise, they're going to understand something about both China and Russia, that they have indomitable militaries within their own borders.
Yes.
But once the Red Army tried to go into Finland or once the Red Army went into Poland in 1939, it didn't fight nearly as well as the Wehrmacht.
It was November of 39 to April 40.
It was a disaster in Finland.
They didn't really do much for the Spanish people in the Spanish Civil War.
Same thing with China.
It's a very difficult army if you're going to fight in China, but when they went into Korea, The untold story of the Korean War is the American Army, Air Force and artillery killed over a million Chinese, quote-unquote, volunteers in Korea.
And they never, when they went in Vietnam in the 70s, they were not impressive.
Neither one of these superpowers has good expeditionary forces.
And I think maybe China thought, well, maybe we do now.
Maybe Russia does because they've got all the sophisticated petro-fed equipment, but they don't.
And it's very hard to get those people's population to be fired up About going into a foreign country.
They didn't do it very well against Vietnam, as they said, or against us in Korea.
And I don't think the Soviets and the Russians have ever done it well.
If you want to understand more of what the professor is talking about, one of the greatest reasons for the paucity, the weakness of the Russian deployment, Is because the Russian army depends almost exclusively, except for the last 100, 150 kilometers, on railroad systems for its deployment.
And they have a unique wide railroad gauge, which doesn't exist in most parts of Europe and only one or two lines in Poland.
So once you get to the end of the Soviet, the old Soviet train system, that's it.
You've got to have fuel.
You've got to have trucks.
And they don't have enough of it and that's one of the reasons.
Your reaction to these ideas that I think are pie in the sky that there has to be a decapitation of the KGB colonel and there will be some nascent actor inside Moscow who says enough is enough and the Russian Stauffenberg will take action?
No, I don't think so.
I think if they didn't have Putin, you'd have to invent him.
And I don't think it helps us at all to talk about assassinating a leader who's sort of unstable to begin with, with 7200 nukes.
I just don't think it's a wise thing to do.
I don't like this idea that all these people It's not just the right that's doing this, but all these people on the left that appeased this guy and appeased him and appeased him.
Now, it's almost a psychological method of squaring that appeasement circle.
They're now the most strident in talking about, well, we're going to give them warthog planes.
We're going to do the exchange with the F-15s for MiGs.
We're going to have no fly zones.
We're going to have volunteers from NATO to flock it.
You know, when there was a time you wouldn't even conceive that, but we just asked you to pump oil, and we asked you not to have RESET with him, and don't have these hot mics, quid pro quo with him, and don't invent the steel dossier, Alpha Bank, Uh, mythologies about him and they couldn't do that.
Just if Joe Biden had just said, if you hack again and you shut down the colonial pipeline, I can guarantee you we're going to shut down two of yours.
We wouldn't be here.
We wouldn't be here.
If he had said, you know, I'm never going to ask for one drop of oil from you, Vladimir.
If I have an oral shortage, I'm counting on Texas, not you.
But he just did the opposite.
So now as a make-up for that, they sound, you know, they're pounding their chest as if they're George Patton.
Quite something to behold.
He's the co-host of the podcast Scholars and Sense.
His website, you need to subscribe today, is VictorHansen.com and the latest book is The Dying Citizen, how progressive elites, tribalism and globalization are destroying the idea of America.
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Professor, I know you've been very concerned with you, yourself, and you've organized some of your fellow scholars, given the woke-ification of the U.S. military, not just for the last 14 months, but prior to that under the Obama administration, the political correctness, critical but prior to that under the Obama administration, the political correctness, critical race theory that has swept through
It may be early to say, but could this very cold shower of Russian invasion of a neighbouring nation be an antidote or at least an early inoculation for our military that we will have to get back to basics such as learning how to kill our enemy and be real war fighters?
Could this serve a positive trend?
I think it is.
I think it's the military counterpart to the domestic green movement.
The green movement is sort of discredited now because in extremists, what are they talking about?
Oh, this is an occasion where we can push more alternate energy, even though they in some ways are culpable and have blood on their hands for empowering Putin.
So yeah, I think all of these theories vanish when bullets start flying.
So a lot of people are saying, you know, I don't see how diversity and equity and inclusion did anything other than weaken us in Afghanistan to the greatest humiliating defeat since Vietnam in 1975.
And the same thing here.
We lost deterrence that somehow this crazy Putin, I don't think he's crazy, he's evil, but somehow he gauged that the United States would not be a muscular rival and would write off Ukraine.
And probably wouldn't even supply it in the way that Biden had refused, as Obama initially, to send offensive weapons to them.
And so I think, yeah, he thought we were woke.
And I think we are woke.
But when bullets fly, I mean, nobody says, what's the racial composition of the dead?
And when you hit an artillery strike, nobody says, did a man or a woman engineer that strike?
It's just, that's all reduced to superfluousness.
And I think that's what happens in war and you know on the eve of Pearl Harbor America first people were still talking about Hitler was not blameless and 24 hours they were enlisting and that can move really swiftly but Secretary Austin, Mark Milley, a lot of the retired generals they have a lot to answer for because
Um, if you were a cynic, you could say they were all interested in corporate America, either before or after their tenures in the case of Austin.
And, uh, they adopted a woke creed that weakened the military's medical, uh, military readiness.
I'm not sure they all believed in it.
Sincerely.
I think they felt that this was part of the accepted protocol and narrative that one must voice.
From one star to four star to get promoted while in the military and to do well when one leaves the military.
But given his performance for the last 48 years and her performance for the last 20 odd, there is scant chance that we will see actual statecraft and robust leadership from this president or vice president in the next three years.
No, I think this is what's the most worrisome about this entire discussion, that if you look at Joe Biden on Inaugural Day and you look at him now, the decline is, as I said, it's geometric.
Each day he's more impaired and that gives more and more, by necessity, responsibilities To Kamala Harris, it used to be a joke.
Six months ago, she would go to the border or she would talk about some problem that was a lose-lose.
And then there was this laugh, haha, we're going to fix her for trying to be too ambitious before Biden's term.
And there was this tension between their two offices.
Now, I don't think that's active anymore.
What I'm worried about, it's not operative.
I think what's happening now, Seb, is that they're desperate.
And they know that if they sent Joe Biden over there, he would say something or do something in a crisis that would be very dangerous.
And they feel because she's young and she's African-American female, and she has, you know, that She might be more presentable to the world.
And so, but she's not because she knows even less than Joe Biden does on a good day.
So you pick your poison.
It's either somebody who's cognitively in decline or somebody who's not cognitively declined, but knows very little about foreign policy or military affairs.
And both of them are apparently running the policy of the United States in this crisis.
And this was all known.
This was all known.
to the American public.
It was known to the Democratic Party.
They knew that Joe Biden had these cognitive issues and then they knew it was not wise to pick the gender and the race of a vice president nominee rather than on merit.
So ironic because this is the party that lectured us for years about Sarah Palin being unqualified.
Sarah Palin looks like Albert Einstein compared to Kamala Harris.
You're a historian, you're a strategist, so you're not a psychoanalyst, but I have to ask if you have an opinion.
When the Washington Post on Friday writes of the Warsaw press conference that this was amazing, that Kamala Harris' performance was truly, truly impressive, They don't believe this stuff, do they, Professor?
No, it's Baghdad, Bob.
They know that they empowered Biden and they know that Biden, there's, they feel there's a 75% chance that Biden will not fill out his term.
And they look at the bench and there's nobody there.
A 81 year old Nancy Pelosi at speaker.
And they know that the only person with a viable chance of saving them is Kamala Harris.
I mean them.
I mean, not just their congressional seats, but the whole progressive agenda, from the WOC to CRT to alternative energy to the whole stuff.
So it's her or bust, and they're going to create, as I said, they're going to try to create some Clever diplomat, experienced politician, senior statesman, wise woman type of narrative, but it's not going to work because people see her and if she's not cackling and chuckling, Then she's a deer in the headlights saying, you know, where's my friend in need?
I can't answer this question.
So it's sad.
It's sad.
And I blame the politicos in the Democratic Party who were willing to take this risk with the nation's security just to get through an agenda that they felt Pete Buttigieg or Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders had no chance of getting elected and implementing.
I have one last question.
Knowing that my former boss respects you highly, has sought your counsel on long phone conversations, it's an easy yes or no question.
If President Trump were the president today, would the King of Saudi Arabia or the Emir of UAE refuse his phone calls, do you think, Professor Hanson?
No.
I mean, Trump disapproved of some of the things they did, but as he said at the time, They're a player.
No, what would be happening right now is Saudi Arabia would be part of the Abrams Accord and they would recognize Israel and they were both the entire Arab Sunni Middle East and Israel would be gearing up for a deterrent, a greater deterrent against Iran, which probably not even considered being nuclear given the unpredictable response of Donald Trump.
And that's not my view.
If you ask people today if Trump were president, even some of his controversial statements he made, it doesn't matter.
They still say it would have been unlikely that Putin would have gone into Ukraine.
And so they understand that, that he offered a deterrent.
And look how pathetic they've become to explain the quietude between Obama and Biden during the Trump administration.
They say, well, Trump was, he didn't invade during Trump's tenure because Trump gave him everything and you want to ask them.
So Putin was delighted with the mercenary killings.
He loved high defense spending and NATO in the United States.
He just loved crashing oil prices.
He loved us getting out of the treaties.
It's just absurd.
And yet that's the desperation that they're at.
And so, you know, it's kind of tragic because again, I've written that.
I don't know if Donald Trump liked it or not, but he's a tragic figure because he did a lot of very good things that he couldn't get credit for because he was blunt and unpolitical or nonpolitical in the sense he wasn't versed in bipartisan jargon.
So he just said what was going to happen and that was...
That was considered more of a felony than the actual good things he did, even on the left.
So he never got credit for the good things he did, and even today he doesn't.
And I don't know, he's sort of a classical tragic figure, that he cleaned up the town, he got the outlaws out, and then he has to ride off in the sunset apparently, because now that we're safe, we didn't like his methods.
I guess his methods defined as tweeting or something.
It reminds me of that superlative lecture you gave for Hillsdale, the superlative institution on the American Ajax pattern.
A very, very similar case, I do believe.
Senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, co-host of the Scholars and Sense podcast.
Most importantly, historian, strategist extraordinaire.
The latest book is The Dying Citizen.
Prior to that, I recommend all of them, but check out The Second World Wars and the website victorhansen.com.
I'm Sebastian Gawker, you've been listening to One on One.
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