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April 24, 2025 - Jim Fetzer
27:09
Col. Douglas Macgregor "We need 40-60,000 American troops on OUR border ASAP" | Redacted News
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Well, President Trump is pissed that Ukrainian President Zelensky, the dictator, is tanking his peace deal.
Zelensky's army has all but collapsed.
The numbers are at least 1.2 million Ukrainian soldiers dead.
Not casualties, but dead.
And he's actively scuttling this peace plan.
And moments ago this news, President Trump criticizing Zelensky as Ukrainian leader remains opposed to land concessions, specifically around Crimea.
And U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will head to Russia this week to meet with President Putin again to present a peace deal that would include lifting Russian sanctions, a ceasefire, and recognizing Crimea as Russian.
Curious why they're leaving out Donetsk, Luhansk, and Donbass region, which also voted to become part of Russia, but one thing at a time.
One step at a time.
Let's bring in Colonel Douglas McGregor now to talk about this from Our Country, Our Choice.
Great to see you, Colonel, as always.
Welcome back to the show.
Hey, thanks.
Good to be with you.
So what do you make of this Trump slapdown, first of all, of Zelensky?
And it seems like I've seen multiple reports now that Zelensky is continuing to push back on this peace plan.
I'm just confused because Putin said he was not going to sign a peace plan if Zelensky is involved in it anyway, because after all, Zelensky is a dictator and has, I mean, he's suspended elections.
So why are we still talking to this guy?
Well, I'm still wondering why he was not picked up and forcibly removed from the Oval Office when he made a fool out of himself and challenged the President of the United States in front of the American and global public.
I thought the man was insulting and out of touch with reality.
For whatever reason, Donald Trump overlooked that, which is incomprehensible to me, and continued to treat him seriously.
I think we have to understand something.
Donald Trump was never accurately informed about what was happening in Ukraine.
When people tried to tell him, and there were a few of us that did, that this war was going to end disastrously for Ukraine.
And I certainly did in April of 2022.
And that every effort should be made to stop the war as soon as possible.
He was surrounded by legions of brilliant analysts like retired General Kellogg and others.
Who are telling him, oh no, the Ukrainians are winning.
It's just a matter of time.
The Russians are failing miserably.
The Russian military will never do anything.
They're incompetent.
They're corrupt.
They're inadequate, and so forth and so on.
At the same time, insisting, of course, that the Russian military ultimately wants to conquer Eastern Europe and rule Europe.
How you reconcile all this nonsense is beyond me.
But President Trump did not listen.
And he was advised that as soon as he took over, he should essentially say, I didn't start this war.
It's not my war.
I don't want the war.
I am ending all military aid and assistance to Ukraine immediately.
And I'm withdrawing all U.S. personnel, military, civilian, intelligence, everything as soon as possible within 48, 72 hours.
None of that happened.
And I think it's once again, you have to look at the people that he picked.
For cabinet posts who were involved in all of this.
And these people were indistinguishable from their predecessors.
I don't know how you separate Rubio from Blinken.
I just don't see much difference.
Now, maybe somebody will come up with something and explain there really are very different people, but I don't see much evidence for it.
So I think Rubio is just as enthusiastic about bombing Iran.
As anybody else and suppressing and killing and murdering people in Gaza and Lebanon and anywhere else.
In other words, supporting the Greater Israel Project.
I think he is no less anti-Russian, hostile to the Russians.
Now he may have no choice but to change his approach.
I think that's begun.
But, you know, what is wrong with President Trump?
I've got to tell you something.
This is not the man.
I voted for.
This is not an American first president.
I think President Trump is actually very confused and uninformed.
And what's happened is an enormous waste of time, money, and energy.
And ultimately, we once again look ridiculous.
We haven't even talked about the tariff catastrophe, which makes us look foolish and stupid.
I was pleased when Elon Musk referred to Mr. Navarro as Mr. Retardo, because it's not far off.
Pretty damn accurate.
So, you know, I don't know what's going on except to say, I think the administration is in meltdown.
There is no strategy.
Everything is impulse-driven, Clayton.
In other words, whatever the impulse is on a given day, and a lot of that depends on President Trump and what he decides, but no one has sat down and said, this is a course that we're now going to chart.
We have identified our interests.
We're going to get back on track and pursue those interests.
But that hasn't happened.
I see no evidence that it's about to happen.
Everything, again, is impulse.
Well, today I woke up and I decided that I'm going to give Rocketman another chance.
Or I woke up today and I've decided I've had enough of Zelensky.
It's over for him.
You know, that's all fine, well and good.
That's not a strategy.
We need...
A strategic approach.
And this is the thing that is hurting us overseas.
People want stability and predictability from the United States.
They're not getting it.
They hoped for a dramatic change when Biden left because the only predictability there was the wrong course of action at every turn and bankrupt America.
They were hoping that Trump would come in and recognize that we're in a lot of trouble here at home.
Financially, economically, the last thing we need is to be engaged very much overseas.
And the last thing we ought to be doing is promoting conflict, violence, or crisis anywhere.
So I think the whole America first thing has turned out to be a huge disappointment.
It's not there.
You're seeing a lot of that on the right.
People really upset about the promises that have been made about putting America first.
And it seems like that hasn't happened.
I want to play something that J.D. Vance just said, though, This peace agreement and what is going to happen here and why do you think you're hearing this?
We've heard this over the past few days from both President Trump and now J.D. Vance.
Marco Rubio, as you pointed out, also said this the other day about we're ready to walk away.
Take a listen.
We've issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it's time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process.
We've engaged in an extraordinary amount of diplomacy, of on-the-ground work.
We've really tried to understand things from the perspective of both the Ukrainians and the Russians.
What do Ukrainians care the most about?
What do the Russians care the most about?
And I think that we've put together a very fair proposal.
We're going to see if the Europeans, the Russians, and the Ukrainians are ultimately...
We're going to stop the killing.
We're going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.
And we're going to actually put in place the kind of long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace.
So it sounds to me like a good plan.
I mean, we're going to keep the territorial settlements where they are, where the Russian lines are.
But also, I think you've pointed out many times, we have no choice, right?
I mean, Russia's holding all of the cards here, so we can act all tough.
It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.
Russia's going to do what it's going to do.
Russia's holding all the cards here.
Am I reading that wrong?
Well, and keep something else in mind.
These people are all delusional.
Who started the war?
We did.
We did.
This war would never have happened had we not staged the coup back in 2014, had we not invested billions of dollars worth of training and equipment to build up this enormous Ukrainian force whose only purpose, quite clearly, was to attack Russia.
We're the ones that bankrolled all these horrible biolabs that were engaged in all sorts of heinous experiments.
With genetic engineering to find a way to kill large numbers of Eastern Slobs?
Who are we kidding?
We're not impartial.
Okay, so we had an opportunity when President Trump took over to say, that's it, we're out.
We have nothing to do with this.
We do not support it.
But we didn't do that.
We walked in and pretended that we're the superpower and that if we stand in the middle, everyone has to listen to us.
Wrong. We are not the world's superpower.
We are one of several great powers.
We may be more powerful in some areas than others, but right now we are not the lone superpower.
The world doesn't have to obey us anymore.
And that's being routinely demonstrated.
I'm surprised that the Russians have been polite to us at all.
I mean, that's like going up to someone that just hits you in the back of your head with a baseball bat and is now saying, listen here, this person over here has been taking shots at you.
We want to sort this out and bring peace between the two of you.
I mean, you sit there and say, well, you just hit me over the back of the head with a baseball bat.
Where have you become suddenly impartial?
I think this is all delusional nonsense.
I think they're covering their tracks.
Clayton, we are a laughingstock in the world at the moment.
That's the truth.
Americans don't get it.
Because, as you point out, your mainstream media is too busy what?
Curring favor with the administration to get stories so that they can sell papers and sell news and so forth.
The problem is it's all delusional nonsense.
The American people should know where we are right now.
We look ridiculous.
And this administration is melting down.
What direction are we going in?
What are we trying to achieve?
We just threatened everyone in the world with these ridiculous tariffs.
Again, on the assumption that, well...
The world has to come to us.
They'll have to buy our treasury bonds.
They'll have to invest in us.
No, they're not doing that.
They're dumping them.
China's dumping these treasury bonds.
And everybody says, well, China has no choice.
China has to do business with us.
Wrong! They have an enormous opportunity within two regional organizations.
One is regional Duasia and the other is BRICS, which is global.
Everybody is joining it.
Everybody wants to do business.
And their alternative to SWIFT for the first time is doing more business.
In other words, moving more cash through its system than SWIFT does.
We are on the outside looking in at a disaster that we've created.
So how long can this go on?
Well, I guess it goes on until, Clayton, you can't finance the government.
Because no one will buy our bonds.
And we hit 5% on the 10-year Treasury, and it's over.
Then you're finished.
And this trillion-dollar defense budget that people are dreaming about, that goes down the toilet.
What else will go down the toilet?
We can only imagine.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
All of this is coming.
Everybody has told us this, whether it's Luke Grohman, or it's Jeffrey Gundlach, or DiMartino Booth.
Or any number of people.
They have all told us this is where it's going.
These policies are self-destructive.
They're stupid.
And it's all going to take us to the cleaners.
I don't know what the president's going to do.
You know, in the meantime, we say, well, the border is secure.
Well, the optics are pretty good.
Various parts of the border that are between the legal crossing points are relatively unpopulated at the moment.
And the sheriffs are grateful in these counties and the Border Patrol likes it, but everything is still coming through the legal border crossing points because the customs officers and the police are being corrupted.
So the drug trade continues.
The trade in illegal trafficking in children and women continues.
The movement of cash, billions down to Mexico, continues.
Everything is not fixed.
Everything is not getting better.
So at some point...
And I think you deserve a lot of credit because you've been trying to tell the truth.
When the truth is told, people are going to be standing around and say, well, how did this all happen?
Because unless you go to alternative media right now, you're exactly right.
You're listening to fairy tales.
Yeah. I mean, I've been trying to warn people for years.
You know, about making sure that you don't have your family's finances tied to the U.S. dollar, that it is absolutely collapsing.
Every government currency in world history has collapsed.
When you're $36 trillion in debt, if your family's future is tied to the U.S. dollar, you're in deep shit.
You better have some money in gold or silver or some sort of precious metals or, you know, even crypto to be able to protect your family right now.
And you're seeing gold surging.
We have 51 million illegals in the country.
That's the estimate.
51. There may be more.
51. 51 million.
If you're serious about deporting people, then you need to get organized.
You have to have a strategy.
You have to have people in charge.
You have to assign people the mission to go out and find them and set up transportation networks.
And if we do everything right, I would say if we deport 15 to 22,000 people a day by the time Trump leaves office, if he lasts four years, we might have gotten rid of most of them.
But that's not happening.
What's the plan?
What's the strategy?
You know, oh, we're getting the bad guys.
That's what I hear.
Oh, they're really bad people.
We're going to got, okay, that's fine.
Right. Well,
I've been saying...
Where is the Army?
Why can't we have them on our U.S. border?
Why do we have to have 50,000 of them in the Middle East right now?
Why can't they be?
We heard deployments over the past couple of weeks, small deployments by President Trump, 1,500 here, 1,500 there.
I don't know what the total troop number is right now, but how many would you put along the southern border of the United States?
Based upon what I've seen thus far, somewhere is between 40,000 and 60,000.
And you have to divide up the We need to set up panels of judges appointed by the president to hear cases on the spot immediately.
I mean, all of this...
This travesty of allowing people in, giving them a court date, giving them phony social security numbers, sending them off into the interior so they can sustain themselves at great expense to us, that has to be reversed.
It has to be systematically reversed.
We have 100,000-plus troops sitting in Poland, Romania, Lithuania.
To do what?
The Russians aren't interested in those countries.
And the people that live in those countries...
Are beginning to figure it out.
Eventually, they'll get rid of the damn governments that have lied to them.
That's true in London.
That's true in Paris.
It's true in Berlin.
It's true in Warsaw.
We've got to get out of this sort of early 20th century mentality that sees enemies everywhere when, frankly, the biggest enemies we have to deal with are right here inside our country and in Mexico and the Caribbean basin.
And that's where we ought to be fixed.
I mean, we've got a Coast Guard sailing around the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea.
What? What?
What the hell is going on?
What is the Secretary of Defense doing about any of that?
I don't see that he's going to do anything.
And as you say, putting 1,500 men here, 3,000 men here, and putting them in a federal national forest that's along with the border, well, that's nice.
They're 1,800 miles of border.
You're talking about a very, very modest area.
And these people are not stupid.
They're starting to come in through very difficult areas, up through mountains and across mountains.
Well, we have aviation brigades full of helicopters in the Army and the Army National Guard.
What are they doing?
You know, and then we have to have a, in addition to a strategy, we have to have rules of engagement that make sense.
There's no point in having people up there who have to stand there and be shot at or even killed and can't respond.
Because right now, The enemy down there is better armed than the Border Patrol.
Much better armed.
And they have access to great intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance assets.
I mean, I hate to go over this, but it seems like it falls on deaf ears.
Everybody wants to destroy Iran.
Iran is not the enemy.
Of course, all the focus is Iran.
As someone in our chat room just said, yeah, the enemies are here at home.
They're not overseas.
They're right here in our backyard.
That's where they are.
This week, I'll get you out of here on this, Colonel.
This week, we heard rumors rumbling about that President Trump may do what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, suspend the writ of habeas corpus.
So, like, a lot of people on the right were, like, jumping on this.
Like, yeah, or, you know, MAGA supporters and whatever, the people that Trump can do no wrong are like, this is amazing.
Others saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
What are you thinking here?
We have the National Guard.
We have the U.S. Army.
Why would you need to suspend the writ of habeas corpus?
Can you explain what that is and why?
I don't know where you come down on this, to be honest with you, but what do you think?
We get suspended the habeas corpus before the actual Civil War broke out because there were trains carrying equipment and people south into Maryland that were headed to what was obviously going to become the Confederacy.
And so he said, you know, I'm suspending the normal rule of law.
So effectively, it localizes martial law.
And the U.S. Army got in, got control of the trains, removed the supplies, and arrested people without trial, frankly.
Now, do we need to do that at this point?
I don't think so.
And that's not necessary in my judgment.
Again, where's the national strategy to deal with the criminality in our country and the border?
Impulse-driven.
Oh, we'll suspend habeas corpus.
That's what Lincoln did.
Wait a minute.
Do we have to do that?
You know, the words martial law do not exist in the U.S. Constitution.
And the only area of the United States that was under martial law during the Second World War was Hawaii.
And that martial law was established there by the commander of the Pacific Fleet, which he had the authority to do.
We didn't have martial law anywhere else.
And that was in the middle of a war.
So I'm not sure that we need to suspend the habeas corpus.
And I would love to hear what Judge Napolitano says about that.
But what we do need is that we need a larger strategic approach.
So everybody knows this is what we're doing.
You know, one of the things that I urged privately, and many people that are in the administration agreed with it, but he hasn't done it.
First, you tell everyone who's here illegally, look, if you leave voluntarily over the next 90 days or 120 days, whatever you make it, and you register with us on the way out, we'll consider you for legal re-entry in the future,
assuming that, you know, whatever you've done here was not illegal, other than breaking our laws when you entered the country.
We could do that.
No one is offered that.
That should be offered.
Give people an incentive to get out.
And then the second thing is, if you do not leave, then you are going to be arrested and you're going to be subject to the full letter of the law inside the United States.
And that could turn out to be very harsh and unpleasant.
By the way, we will also confiscate all of your property, whatever you own, whatever money you've made.
If you don't leave voluntarily, we'll take it.
But if you leave voluntarily and you've got 120 days to do it, you can leave with all of that.
Now, why haven't we done that?
I mean, it's simple to me.
I mean, President Trump, I know him.
He is not an evil man.
This is not a nasty person.
This is someone who is not interested in harming anybody.
This is someone who really does want peace, doesn't know how the hell to get it, and surrounds himself with dangerous warmongers who misinform him.
That's another problem.
But when it comes to dealing with this illegal alien problem, There are ways to do this that are still humane that will still work.
But you have to distinguish clearly between those that get the message and leave voluntarily and those who don't.
Americans will understand that very well, and I think they'll support it.
I think they would.
That's always been my biggest concern.
Who is he surrounding himself with and getting this advice?
And it drives him to these impulses.
As you've pointed out many times, he often responds to the last person in the room.
Right. So who's giving him the advice?
The last person in the room is how he tends to operate, unfortunately.
And if he's moved in any kind of way...
You and I have not addressed Israel First as a problem.
And let's face it, this is the Israel First administration.
And I've been to Israel several times.
I like the Israelis, but I sure as hell don't like what they're doing.
And I don't see any future for this Greater Israel Project.
I think it's a prescription for a regional war with terrible consequences for the Israelis themselves.
I think that's why the Israelis are on the verge of civil war right now, because I think a lot of them have figured this out.
But we seem to be bankrolling it and pushing it without question, and I don't think we should.
No, I don't think we should either.
We've been incredibly vocal about that here on the show.
If this isn't America First policy, why are we doing the bidding of a foreign country?
And, I mean, you even have, like, Pete Hegseth, who has been incredibly supportive of Israel.
You know, I mean, I think the guy was very, very vocal about his love of Israel.
And here you literally have them undermining him right now, trying to get him thrown out, because according to reports, he was one of the few people who put up their hands and said, we're not going to attack Iran.
So even...
With all due respect to Pete Higgs, Higgs is in a terrible position.
He was not qualified to be Secretary of Defense.
He had no background or experience or depth to go and do that job.
And he was sent into that job for the reasons as you outlined.
This is a Christian Zionist.
Go back and look at this video of Secretary Hegseth and his team, quote-unquote, sitting across from Netanyahu and his team in the Pentagon, in the Secretary of Defense's conference room, which is right across from the Secretary's office.
And he sits there and he tells them, we are here for you.
We will support you.
We will give you whatever you need.
We are on your side.
Okay. That's why he was appointed.
Now, all of a sudden, he begins to see the outline of what could be a genuine strategic catastrophe.
And he says, oops, maybe we ought to reconsider this boss.
Right. And he's in trouble.
And now he's in trouble.
I think he's right to say it.
Yeah, I think he's right to say it.
He's not the only one.
I know that Tulsi Gabbard has expressed reservations about the whole thing, intelligently, of course.
And I'm sure there are others, but the bottom line is that's not apparently up for discussion.
And if you take that position with this bunch, you are out.
So I'll be very interested to see who ultimately comes in.
Yeah, and how long he survives.
I thought by the end of the week, we had Colonel Davis on yesterday.
I said, do you think Hegseth will be out by the end of the week?
Or do you think Trump will double down and say, he's my guy.
We're going to reinstate those three people that were fired.
And we're taking an American first policy.
That's like a huge leap here.
No, that's not going to happen.
I just remember when Bolton finally went away.
And at first, he was reticent about firing Bolton as well.
Until he got to the point and said, listen, don't worry about him.
I make all the decisions.
Well, that sounds great, Mr. President, except that you don't make all of the decisions.
You have this huge bureaucratic structure under you.
You have a lot of people that exercise a lot of authority, whether you like it or not, in your name.
So the notion that all the critical decisions are made by the president, that's just misleading nonsense.
But then eventually he got rid of Bolton, and everybody was very happy.
But nothing really changed very much.
So I'm not sure that whatever happens to Hegseth, that anything is going to change.
And that's my point.
But there are plenty of people in Washington who are willing to step forward and lead the charge to war in the Middle East for Israel.
So I don't think he'll have a problem finding somebody.
Colonel Douglas McGregor, great to see you as always.
Thanks for your insights.
We always appreciate it.
I hope that Natalie and the children recover soon.
That's terrible.
Thank you so much.
It's like a tuberculosis ward around here right now.
Take ivermectin.
That's what I did.
I had influenza A. So I was given ivermectin and I recovered.
All right.
I got to do that.
We've got some in our medicine cabinet.
So I'm going to try that.
Colonel, great to see you.
Thank you so much.
I'm not a medical doctor, so don't sue me or anything else like that.
And I'm not going to be arrested.
Health and Human Services.
But look, I'm telling you the truth.
That's what I did.
It worked.
I don't think this lot's coming after you.
I don't think Robert F. Kennedy's coming after you anytime soon.
Maybe the last administration, they would have come after you for those kind of comments.
You would have been banned on that.
Colonel, great to see you.
Thank you so much.
And we'll touch base soon.
We appreciate it.
Right. Bye-bye.
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