Lionel Nation - Col. Douglas Macgregor’s Dire Warning: America Is Patient Zero

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Sept. 9, 2025 - Lionel Nation

56:45

Col. Douglas Macgregor’s Dire Warning: America Is Patient Zero

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	Well, you know, there's an old line, Colonel McGregor, that says, I bet you've heard every two-bit plot it and every two-bit encomium and two-bit peeing there is in the world regarding how great you are.
	Well, one more is not going to kill you.
	Uh, I am so honored that you are with us.
	And for those who have been in a coma or who have been in some kind of a parallel universe, Colonel Douglas McGregor is a decorated U.S. Army combat veteran, strategist, and one of the most outspoken voices for truth in American foreign policy, a West Point graduate, and uh PhD.
	He he led troops with distinction in the Gulf War, advised the Pentagon at the highest levels, and has become a fierce critic of endless wars and Washington's failed establishment, known for his candor and clarity.
	He cuts through the noise.
	And uh I and by the way, the best party stands for America First, National Sovereignty, and a strong belief in what is in an anti-UNI party and what is America first, and Colonel McGregor again, it's an honor to have you, sir.
	Thank you.
	Hey, it's good to be with you, Lionel.
	Thank you for inviting me.
	Oh, are you kidding me?
	You're you're the hottest ticket in town.
	Let me also uh mention which is something you're doing, which is I think very, very good, very, very critical.
	And you are going to be, you are a part of a very uh important uh effort.
	And that is on October the 4th in Dallas, it's the national conversation with Colonel Douglas McGregor.
	What is that, sir, exactly?
	You know, after uh after I departed uh our country, our choice, because I'd been there for two and a half years.
	I thought it was time for some new leadership.
	I got together with several people and uh we said, What are we going to do?
	You know, I'm not satisfied with where things are going.
	I know you aren't.
	And the idea came up with a nonprofit, call it the national conversation, and we'll try to hold sessions around the country.
	We we decided to start with Dallas on the 4th of October, but we eventually want to try and do this once a quarter if we can.
	It all depends upon money and contributions, obviously.
	But the idea is that it's we bring in some people.
	Judge Napolitano will be with me on the fourth, along with Natalie Brunell.
	She's a very, very astute analyst.
	The judge, of course, is his grasp of uh legalities is unsurpassed, and and especially constitutional law.
	So here, here.
	We think we have a good group there.
	And the idea is that Dr. Olga Rivazi, she's gonna be moderating the panel.
	She'll be part of it as well, but she's got a moderate.
	She will begin by answer asking questions, and these questions will range from finance to politics to uh immigration, criminality, you you name it, health care.
	We'll try to cover the gamut, and for two hours, uh we will sit there, we will answer these questions as are asked, but after we answer them, and sometimes it may be only one of us that answers, depending upon the expertise.
	We're then gonna turn to the audience.
	And the audience will have the mic.
	The audience, uh people in the audience can stand up and say, Well, listen, this is my view.
	I understand what was asked, but this this is my answer.
	In some cases, they may challenge the answers that we provide.
	That's fine.
	Because what we want to do is we want to get around the country and listen to what people say is important to them, what their needs are, what their opinions are.
	Absolutely.
	And the idea is that if we if we do this right, or we do it well at any rate, uh, we can begin building the foundation for a third way.
	Everybody is uh upset with the uniparty.
	You know, I don't know how many times people send me notes.
	We vote for so-and-so and so-and-so, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, and it ends up being John uh, you know, uh John McCain.
	Yes.
	We want we want a different way forward, and we're unhappy with certain things that President Trump is doing.
	We liked him, we supported him, but he doesn't seem to be doing what we thought should be done.
	We're frustrated.
	So we took all of this in and we said, let's have this national conversation.
	We don't know where it will lead.
	We hope it leads to that foundation I was talking about, because I really think the the two parties are no longer viable alternatives for us.
	Two sides of the same coin, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, whatever you want to call it.
	Uh, you know, it's funny, it's almost like what you're doing is it reminds me of the post-Vietnam, the the Russell tribunals, in essence, where where it's like a I like to call that a citizen grand jury, where you go around and you call witnesses and you and you put people on.
	So I'm gonna have all of that information in the description.
	I herald you, thank you for that.
	May I start off with one thought, which completely, of course, is going to be most probably just discursive, desultory, and a complete and total waste of time.
	So humor me.
	Uh the first is I I have nothing but respect for the art of war.
	You are a I I look at what you have studied your adult life and and so much of your time, the study of war, which is a a blending, it's kind of a I love the idea of it, it's kind of like an embarkation like overlapping concatenation of history and strategy,
	and you have to know history and you have to, but there is a fetishization, I think, sometimes that we Americans do, where we we we do this and we and we love planes and flyovers.
	And again, we I think mistake that for respect.
	The first question is if is President Trump my commander in chief, or is he my president?
	I don't mean sound stupid.
	He he might be your commander in chief when you're in the in the military.
	But this term, is it is it incorrectly applied, do you think, sir?
	Well, I think that he's commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
	He does not command the American people.
	Uh, you know, that's very clear.
	Uh I imagine some people get confused on that point, but we are a republic.
	And that one of the the keystone in the edifice of the republic was always civilian control of the military.
	And the reason we picked uh George Washington, he or the reason he's ultimately the first president is that Washington was seen as someone who firmly believed in that principle.
	And a lot of people don't realize it, but there was a rebellion at the end of the revolutionary war because the Continental Army had not been paid.
	And that's not a small matter.
	You know, the there were four or five thousand of them up in Newburgh, New York, in a cantonment there north of West Point.
	And the officers and the soldiers got together and said, We we have to be paid.
	And they decided they were gonna basically march, uh march on Philadelphia where the Congress was and uh take over the government until somebody paid them.
	And Washington was their commander, and he stood there in front of them.
	And uh, you know, they all went silent immediately because everybody, even if you didn't like Washington, you revered him, you respected him.
	And uh he said, I have some things that I need to say to you, and and you need to understand.
	And he gave this address that's very famous, and he reached into his pocket, he pulled out his spectacles, and he said, You'll have to excuse me.
	I have grown old in the service to my country.
	Well, imagine that statement had a profoundly positive impact on the audience, and the audience suddenly said, Yeah, we we we appreciate that.
	And he uh explained to them why this rebellion could not occur and what the essential principles of of leadership and government were that had to be followed, and these eventually end up being enshrined in the Constitution.
	So I think the answer is very clearly commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces is different from uh you know, chief and law enforcement officer, which is also his title.
	He is the chief law enforcement officer.
	Uh, but he is ultimately the president of the United States and the leader of the American people.
	There's a difference between leading and commanding.
	Exactly.
	That's what I wanted to say.
	I don't want to say the old he works for me.
	And second, and I'll just get off of this point.
	I will never forget, right after Ronald Reagan was doing this, doing this salute.
	Salute, salute, salute, salute, salute.
	And Ike, I remember it was Gary Willer, somebody a while back, wrote this article, wrote this piece that art that um that uh uh Ike, like General Eisenhower said, I think he knew something about protocol.
	He said, they said, why don't you salute?
	He said, I'm not in uniform.
	He said, What do you he said?
	When you civilians play soldier, it's it's insulting to me.
	I've spent years.
	This is I am a civilian, I'm the civilian leadership.
	Not only that, our forebears were extremely cherry, dare I say, of of uh of uh standing armies.
	So just one one just one mention because Trump loves it more than he he salutes statues.
	I mean, he he he's he loves this.
	What is the correct protocol, sir?
	Well, there's what's correct and what is now authorized.
	I mean, there's some laws that have been changed, regulations are being changed that enable him in his role as commander of chief to take a salute and and return the salute.
	Now against the law.
	You brought up something very important, though.
	You know that when FDR was president of the United States, and for that matter, when uh his predecessors were president, and members of the military at that time we called it the war department, remember, or the Department of the Navy.
	War department really meant Army, Department of the Navy.
	When they came to testify on the hill, they came in civilian clothes.
	So if you watch uh Marshall during the war, yes, he comes to the hill.
	You can he's got a suit and tie on.
	Now people said, Well, isn't that odd?
	Today people think that's odd, but at the time, there was this view that military men who showed up in uniform, depending upon whether or not they had decorations, doesn't make any difference.
	But the fact that they were in uniform and had these stars on their shoulders could be intimidating to members of the Congress, the House or the Senate, most of whom historically did not serve.
	I mean, we we act as though, you know, well, what's wrong with this man?
	He didn't serve.
	But historically, in the history of our country, very few people served in the military.
	We just didn't have a very large one.
	And so people were sensitive to this thing because you know, newspapers always made heroes or villains out of military men, depending upon what happened.
	Uh and they they wanted to divorce the political business and the decision making and policy from the appearance of power, the appearance of authority.
	I happen to think that was a good thing.
	In fact, during the second world war, I would say that more than half of the people in Washington who were working in the military were not wearing uniforms.
	Uh and one I, you know, I had a maternal grandfather, he was in the military during the second war.
	He'd been in during the first war.
	And he told me he said if everybody had worn a uniform that was in Washington, D.C. under FDR, they'd have thought that the government had been taken over by the military.
	We didn't want that.
	So people did not wear uniforms in most cases when they were involved in policy discussions or testimony or anything else.
	I think it would be a good thing to go back to that.
	I'm opposed to this, especially now when you look at some of the general officers that we have, and you ask what did most of these people do while they were on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, and the vast majority didn't do anything.
	They were not under fire, they didn't pull any triggers and kill anybody under fire.
	There are exceptions to be sure, but the majority did not, and yet uh they wore more, they weigh or wear more decorations than a Christmas tree.
	I mean, it's kind of outrageous.
	It's funny you say that.
	I'm I'm I'm sorry.
	No, it's funny, right?
	Just I was gonna say we have a lot of decorations that are not terribly meaningful, uh, to be frank with you.
	I mean, you wear them for service, you you get awards for doing good things in peacetime.
	But I wear one award, it's a bronze star with a V device for valor.
	That basically was created because people wanted to give you a silver star, but for whatever reason they didn't, so you got a V device for valor on your bronze star.
	But that to do that, you had to be under fire.
	Right now, that regulation is being changed.
	So they give generals who happen to be in combat zones, bronze stars with V devices now.
	Uh I mean, we it's it's kind of ridiculous.
	Uh and we're we're probably the worst defender.
	We used to joke about uh South South American generals, you know, right, right.
	Or North Korean generals that looked like they were gonna fall over.
	I had so much metal on them.
	Right.
	We've become that now.
	I think it's untoward and bad for it.
	This is not some kind of sartorial priggishness.
	We're not being punctilious or whatever.
	One of my heroes, in fact, might be my absolute, is George Marshall.
	I don't think there was anything like it.
	Just his steel.
	Then there's Ike.
	Ike walks around with a little button.
	They even Patton was considered garish.
	He was nothing compared to Petraeus.
	I'm not trying to moan.
	The thing I'm trying to tell you, Colonel, is that you bring up, and I hope you talk about this.
	We mentioned posse comitatus.
	I want people to understand there's civilian, there's military, and that while we show honor, there's a fine line between honor and fetishization and this lauding.
	It's almost like it's sexual, idolatry.
	I don't know what the word is.
	It's weird.
	And I think you cheapen the sanctity of service by this garishness, by having civilians who go out of their way always flying over.
	And it's, it's, put it this way, the military, what you did is to the military service, what amputation is to the surgeon.
	It's there, but they don't go up every day and say, are we ready?
	Do we have any, you know, it's, it's something war and destruction are two things you want to use minimally.
	Anyway, enough of that.
	Well, at the, at the end of the second world war, the general rule in the army was that you wore the first three rows of your decorations, starting at the top, working your way down.
	And that was it.
	So when you look at the generals you're referring to, even MacArthur, after the second world war, he had so many decorations from so many sources.
	I mean, the man probably saw more direct fire combat in world war one than any of us have.
	And, but by the time you get to the point where he's a five star, you see maybe three rows.
	And with, you pointed out with Eisenhower, the same thing was true for Arnold.
	You start going through, you see these people are not in, not in the character category that you're describing.
	It's not overly garish or anything else, but remember that those generals and admirals did not expect to go into very high paying jobs in the defense industry.
	They did not to end up on the boards of banks.
	I mean, this, this, all of this comes after the second world war.
	This is what Eisenhower talked about at the end of his, where he was very worried about this.
	integration that has taken place between the Hill industry and the military.
	And in fact, his original speech, he talked about the defense industrial congressional complex.
	And the speech writer sat with him and he said, you know, sir, we're, we're already making enough enemies.
	Why don't we drop out Congress?
	So grudgingly, he said, okay.
	And he took Congress out, but that was always in there.
	And that's not a new development either.
	you know, it's unfortunate because it's the triumph of form over substance today.
	Oh yeah.
	You know, I'll give you an example from my life.
	I'll, that may be useful.
	When I was at the Supreme quarters, Supreme headquarters, allied powers, Europe, we call it shape.
	This is a leftover from the second war.
	And you had the Supreme command.
	Remember during world war two, that was Eisenhower.
	It was the Supreme commander NATO afterwards.
	And then eventually we got Montgomery briefly.
	And then we went back and we've had all Americans ever since.
	When I was there, Clark was the Supreme Commander Europe and we had an agreement that if he was traveling I had to be in the headquarters in the joint operation center.
	But if he were there I could travel with the other two four stars because at the top of the headquarters we had three four stars one was of course General Clark then you had a British four star who was the deputy supreme commander and then you had a German four star who was the chief of the staff at shape.
	What was really interesting is of course General Clark like all of the four stars have elaborate uh aircraft uh They either larger than normal or they have the same thing as the look looks like the president's Air Force One.
	And I I would travel when I did go with either the German or the British four star.
	And whenever General Clark went anywhere, or any of our four stars, they usually had 40 or 50 people in their staff going with them, plus the so-called press pool.
	Well, when I traveled with the British four star, I showed up to get on the plane.
	It was a small lear jet.
	He had one aid, and then he had one security guard, and that was it.
	The same thing was true for the German.
	And you know, I I asked, well, you know, this is kind of unusual.
	You are, after all, four stars, you're in very critical positions.
	Uh, I'm surprised you don't have a larger aircraft.
	And uh they they sort of said, Well, we're not comfortable with that.
	And I don't think our people, the Germans or the British people would be comfortable with that.
	There's no reason for us to have a large entourage.
	We're supposed to do a job, not stage an event.
	Uh so I uh I liked that.
	Uh I thought that was very good.
	And and they never were uh unable to conduct business or do anything.
	And now, General Clark, obviously, he did have to have a substantial number of people, usually two or three that just operated communications for him.
	But you know, this giant aircraft was never, in my judgment, really necessary.
	And I think it actually detracted to some extent from uh from him.
	And I think we still have that problem right now with too many of the senior people.
	We have too many headquarters, too many four stars.
	And it's interesting.
	I listened to, I think it was Hag Seth who said, Well, we're gonna reduce this, we're gonna reduce it.
	Everybody said, Well, isn't that what you've been arguing for?
	And I said, Well, not entirely.
	They said, Well, what do you mean?
	I said, the way you get at this rank structure is through structure.
	In other words, if all you do is say, Well, you're no longer needed, or you're now going to be a three, or you're gonna be a three.
	You don't you don't get at the problem.
	You need a new strategy, right?
	A real strategy.
	Then you need to structure your forces to support that strategy.
	Then you make a decision about how many how many strategic headquarters do we need?
	Well, right now we have 43 four stars organized into multiple four star commands.
	Uh we don't need all these commands.
	But you see, the argument for global military hegemony and the spending to support that depends upon this open-ended strategy that says you must be everywhere all the time to deal with anything.
	But we don't need to be.
	We haven't needed to be for a very long time.
	And the argument it was, well, if we're not over here, you know, the Chinese they'll do this, or the Russians will do this, the Iranians will do this.
	So, well, wait a minute.
	The Chinese haven't invaded anybody for hundreds of years.
	Yeah, excuse me.
	Well, yeah, but I mean the truth is that you know, when they were under the Mongolian rule, definitely invaded people.
	I don't forget that.
	It was in all the papers.
	I mean, I still I still threw those bastards, right?
	Yeah, right, right.
	And the same thing is true, uh, you know, for us today.
	We don't need to be everywhere.
	And communications technology has reached the point where you can control more with less, and you don't have to have all of these headquarters spread all over the world so that they can communicate with each other all the way back to Washington, you know.
	It it's it's kind of out of control.
	You could save a lot of money.
	I think we looked at every headquarters that has a four-star as costing several million dollars a year.
	Uh, that doesn't seem like much, but if you take the soldier slots, marine slots, sailors, airmen, you put them into forces that actually do something, then not only have you cut waste and abuse at the top, but you've created more people who can actually deploy and do something.
	But nobody thinks in those terms.
	So we're if you go back to 91, let me just finish real quick.
	Sure, sure, surely, sorry.
	At the end of 91, I watched the U.S. Army leadership make decisions of what they were going to do with the army.
	We we sent 163,000 combat soldiers from the army.
	These were good soldiers, most of them had experience now in combat in some form.
	And we said, go home, we don't want you anymore.
	Just get out.
	And we paid them to leave.
	the first question I had is, well, why are you sending all these people away who actually did something?
	Then the next thing was, well, we went from an army of almost 800,000 down to about 550,000.
	But we didn't change any of the headquarters.
	We still had the same number of generals, particularly at the four-star level and the three-star level.
	So ultimately what happens is that the numbers of people that you have that can actually deploy and fight goes to this, but the generals continue to increase the numbers.
	That is the rot when you have the opposite.
	You want a force that can do something, and you structure it to do something, whatever it is, the mission and so forth.
	Then you create the command and control to move and operate and conduct that force.
	Reduced the thing.
	I had a general who said to me, Doug, you have to understand it's like a tire.
	If they don't give you enough money, then you just let air out of the tire.
	And when they give you more money, you pump the tire back up.
	And my answer was, well, first of all, I think we need to get rid of the old tire.
	It's the wrong answer.
	Right.
	Well, there, young man.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	Right.
	So that's where we are.
	The tire is deflated a little and then it gets reinflated, but you keep all the generals, all the headquarters, all the unnecessary accoutrements, and then you lose the people that do something.
	So we got to get rid of the tire.
	But that means real change.
	And if there's one thing nobody wants in Washington, as far as I can tell, it's real change.
	Because real change puts money at jeopardy.
	In other words, what about the money I'm getting in my district for my people?
	What about the money that's coming to the state?
	And by the way, what about the money in my reelection campaign fund?
	And by the way, there are a lot of other people.
	I mean, there's an investigation that nobody knows about right now.
	I don't know if anybody ever will, into how many millions of dollars people in the Senate and the House have uh ended up with as a result of the war in Ukraine.
	No.
	Oh, oh, no, I can tell you that.
	No.
	And there won't be any money, any investigation as far as big pharma or how that goes.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	And by the way, he's been retired.
	RFK Jr., how he was mercilessly attacked in front of the Senate.
	Did you by the way look at the people that are attacking him and look at who's donating millions of dollars to their uh campaigns and keeping them in office?
	And did you see what President Trump did?
	President President Trump.
	He said he's backing off.
	You know, Bobby, sometimes they what are you doing?
	Listen, I I will never be uh Colonel McGregor, one of these people, these who who portend to doom for the Kennedys, but listen, do you know what you're up against?
	Your father and your uncle never had this.
	You they were just up against the CIA or Carlos Martello or whoever that was.
	This makes the mafia and the mob look like the junior league.
	And you know, so so I that's another story.
	Uh Colonel, do you think the president knows what he's doing?
	Clearly, just plainly.
	I think he understands uh what he wants to achieve domestically, you know.
	That I think he understands.
	I don't think he understands the international system.
	I don't think he understands the limits of American military power, particularly now.
	We're much more limited than we were 30, 40 years ago.
	I don't think he understands how profoundly the rest of the world has changed.
	Oh today, today the competition that uh has emerged between China, Russia, Iran, uh India, name whomever you want, doesn't matter.
	And us, it's not military.
	It isn't, it's economic and financial.
	And whether he understands it or not, with all of the the tariff war and the threats that he has issued to various people that that failed to sign up for whatever he wants them to do.
	If you if you buy oil from Russia, 50% punishment tariff, and the president of India says, thank you very much.
	I'm going to Shanghai and Beijing.
	So he walks away.
	I don't think he understands that we're no longer the only game in town economically.
	We aren't far from it.
	The other thing is I don't think he understands that there's nobody out there really interested in going to war with us.
	They would like to do business with us, but they're not going to do business with us on terms that we insist.
	They're not going to align their interests with ours.
	And you know, Washington said something when he was president.
	It's very important that I tell this to people all the time, because they complain.
	They said, Well, you know, the French supported us on this, now they won't do this and so forth.
	And he said, no nation state can be expected to move beyond the limits of its own interests.
	Ah.
	So his point was look, you know, we want we want to do business with everybody, but be reasonable.
	They're going to do things we don't like.
	We have to do business with the rest of the world, one way or the other.
	And I don't think we understand that.
	We we think we're the sort of uh school mom in second grade that is got a ruler in her hand and she smacks down uh boys sitting in the front row that don't do what she tells them to do.
	That's not the world now.
	What would you tell the president if he said, Colonel, I don't give a damn what the world thinks.
	We're the United States, we tell the world what to think.
	I don't care what what Ukraine, Russia, Putin, the SEO, BRICS, the hell with these people.
	We're the United States.
	It's our way or the highway.
	Your response?
	Well, that may have worked 80 years ago when the world was in ruins and had no choice.
	But the world's not in ruins anymore.
	And you're dealing, you're not dealing with the rest of the world as though you're the lone superpower.
	That sort of, what do they call it?
	The uh unitary or unipolar moment.
	That's over.
	We live in a world with many great powers.
	It's in our interest to respect the interests of other countries.
	You know, one of the things that President Trump will tell you is we have legitimate security interests in Mexico.
	We have legitimate security interests in the Caribbean and the Caribbean basin.
	Well, I agree with him.
	He's right.
	But suddenly Russia has no legitimate security interests in Ukraine.
	Right.
	Doesn't make any sense, does it?
	In other words, the Russians and the Chinese would would immediately grant us that we have legitimate security interests in the Caribbean and Central America that outweigh their own.
	No question about it.
	But we will not grant them a similar uh interest in their own areas.
	Don't they have a Monroe doctrine?
	Don't they have their own Monroe Doctrine?
	I mean, doesn't it?
	Well, the Monroe Doctrine is overblown.
	I mean, we talk about that, but it was never really enforced.
	And uh no, I I don't think that's the issue.
	I just think before you walk into a room with anybody to talk to them, you need to understand what are their interests.
	You know, now Putin is very straightforward.
	He is not, he is not opaque.
	He's not hiding anything.
	You meet with him, he'll tell you right up front, these are our interests.
	In fact, Putin just talked the other day, and they said, well, President Trump now is threatening to collapse the Russian economy.
	He says he's going to collapse it because he's going to ensure that everybody doing business with Russia is punished.
	And that if he can get all of his European allies and strategic partners around the world to stop buying oil and gas, then that will collapse the Russian economy.
	Well, the first question I had is that sounds a lot like Joe Biden.
	Why are you saying that, President Trump?
	What what how is it in our interest to collapse the Russian economy?
	Is it because they refuse to do what we have demanded that they do in Ukraine?
	Well, they have interests in Ukraine, just as we have interests in Mexico.
	We would not allow things to get out of hand in Mexico with a foreign force on the ground there that threatens us, they're in the same boat.
	So I I think the problem that he has is he doesn't understand what Washington said.
	You have to live in the larger community of nations.
	Understand what everybody's interests are.
	Then you maneuver through the ocean or sea of changing interests.
	But the overriding objective that Washington had, that Eisenhower had, was war avoidance.
	Avoid a war.
	War, the use of military power is the last option.
	It's not number one or number two on the list.
	That's exactly right.
	And I think there's a part of President Trump that likes to feel I'm Trump.
	I'm Trump.
	I'm the guy.
	I'm the godfather.
	I'm in charge.
	And you do what I say, or you've had it.
	You know, the Venezuelans are talking about I was just going to.
	I can't believe you said that, by the way.
	And oh and let's let's not forget the Department of War, sir.
	The Department of War.
	You must you must like that, Colonel, don't you?
	After all, we're about war, aren't we?
	I you know, I hope we're about national defense.
	And uh I I log whatever we can do to defend the United States and the Western Hemisphere and our territories.
	But no, uh, war is the last option, and that's why we got rid of Department of War.
	By the way, if you resurrected everybody who fought in the Second World War and told them we were going back to that, they'd be horrified.
	Let me uh do two things.
	First of all, you remember President uh Kennedy and President uh Nixon, both of them served in the United States Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
	I think Reagan did too, but I'm not sure.
	Uh you know, you'd have to go back and check that.
	But Single Corps.
	Whatever.
	But Nixon and Kennedy were both in the Pacific in the Navy during the war.
	And they came out of that with a feeling that my God, look at what we did.
	Thousands of ships and tens of thousands of aircraft, airplanes.
	We're the most powerful force on the planet.
	And they were very enamored of all of that.
	Well, Eisenhower, who becomes president in the 1950s, he saw the second world war.
	He saw a very different war.
	He saw hundreds of thousands of killed dead American servicemen, hundreds of thousands who were wounded.
	And he remembered the carnage of the war.
	And one of the things that he concluded after the second world war was over, is that we must never do this again.
	We we are not suited to this.
	He looked at the Soviets, he looked at the Nazis, and he said, These people lost millions, and they had a different culture, a different nation, a different way of life.
	We can't do that.
	And so Eisenhower recounted how he called or sent a note to Marshall, and this was in early January 1945, because we were still in the middle of the bulge, you know, which shocked everybody.
	No one expected the Germans to build a an army of old men and boys and a handful of veterans and throw them at us.
	And people don't understand.
	We lied about all the casualty figures.
	We now know the real casualties.
	And uh the real casualties are not pretty.
	Uh we said the Germans had 200,000 casualties.
	No, they didn't.
	They had 68,000.
	We, on the other hand, other hand, had over 120,000 casualties.
	How many Germans were killed?
	11,000.
	We said that we killed 50 or 60,000.
	How many did we lose?
	We were somewhere between 25 and 30,000 dead on top of the over 120,000 casualties.
	We were taking 90,000 casualties a month up until the bulge.
	Then we took 100,000 a month.
	Now, Eisenhower went through this.
	And Eisenhower said, he wrote this note to Marshall, he said, I'm going to need more divisions if we're going to cross the Rhine and end this war.
	And Marshall said, You've got all of the divisions you are going to get.
	There is nothing more to send.
	You need to end this war with what you have.
	That was also because Marshall and FDR had had a conversation.
	FDR said, you better explain this to that man.
	We're we're tapped out.
	We can't do any more.
	How many times have you heard anybody say that who was at lower levels like Nixon and Kennedy?
	They had a very narrow picture.
	What they saw was very virtuous and Good, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't the big picture.
	Eisenhower had the big picture.
	Today, Trump needs a big picture.
	If you'll listen, and that big picture says, don't dare challenge anybody to a major war anywhere right now.
	Our economy is weak.
	Our financial system, depending upon who you want to listen to, is on its on the road to collapse.
	The world is de dollarizing.
	You know, we're not in a position, a healthy position to fight.
	And our armed forces are remarkably small for all of the missions all over the world that they've been assigned.
	And the armed forces we have are legacy forces.
	They're a tribute to the second world war.
	The forces we would face are very different.
	They're contemporaneous.
	Everybody saw these new weapon systems rolling around in Beijing.
	We're watching new weapon systems that the Russians are employing in Ukraine.
	They employed uh something called a flamethrower.
	It's not really a flamethrower, it's a kind of uh rocket artillery with thermal barrack warheads.
	And that thing devastated the central headquarters inside Western Ukraine that guides all of the uh drones and rockets and missiles.
	It was obliterated in 15 minutes by this massive attack from these weapons.
	We don't have anything like that.
	We're not even close.
	So the the point is somebody needs to give him the big picture.
	A certain amount of humility right now would do us a lot of good on the world stage.
	Two things, sir.
	Um, when I when you know, when I say this, people say, Oh, you're some Russo file, some Putin fan.
	Putin has a countenance.
	I'm sorry, uh, a demeanor, uh, um uh uh a mien that he exudes, which is completely scary.
	But when the B-2 or whatever the you know, the bomber flew over, they said, Did you see the look of his face?
	He was that what?
	You don't think he's ever seen he knows about this?
	He just looked up because he heard a noise.
	And he said, Oh, and that they've they've got hypersonic bones, but yet our media said, Boy, they've the way they flew over it, that was perfect.
	And and that that that's the first thing which you can comment on.
	And the second before I forget, what did you think about us blowing a ship out of the water with from Venezuela?
	Because it's TVA associated, and we're we're like again, this this psycho sexual fetish about this.
	Anyway, any order you want, sir.
	Well, or neither.
	The thing I would say about the meeting in Alaska is that I think it turned into tragically a large nothing burger.
	It was another episode in Donald Trump uh reality TV.
	And it was a it was the ideal Trump event because he got to posture uh as the great man who commands this great arsenal.
	The Russians know what we have.
	The Russians are not afraid.
	We need to understand that.
	They are not afraid or intimidated.
	And and Putin looked up and he smiled.
	You know, who are we kidding?
	We're kidding ourselves.
	So Trump thought he was going to stave something and that the power of his personality was going to overwhelm Putin.
	I've sat and listened to Putin for three hours with simultaneous translation, talk about a whole range of subjects involving Russia, international relations, economics, industrial policy, scientific development.
	You go down the list, general health and welfare of the Russian people, education, all without notes.
	The man is brilliant.
	And he answered questions in an open forum, and the people answer asking the questions were in many cases foreign.
	Nothing, nobody was rehearsing anything.
	He just took the questions and answered them.
	This is a very formidable person.
	Now you can stand around and you can say, well, I don't like him.
	He was KGB or something.
	Okay.
	You know, that's like saying uh, I don't like his debt because he was in the FBI or something.
	Right.
	And they call him a war criminal.
	I listened to this man Merz in Berlin said, well, he's vicious.
	He's a there's no evidence for any of that crap.
	And saying that is so destructive and so unnecessary.
	I mean, clearly, Stalin, probably the world's greatest mass murderer after Mao, killed 20 to 25 million, maybe more of his own population long before the second world war broke out.
	And without him, there would have been no second world war because he signed the deal with Hitler, gave Hitler everything he needed to attack the West.
	He thought he was smart, that Hitler would get bogged down in a long war with France and Britain.
	Well, he was wrong.
	But the point is that we did business with him.
	We harbored no illusions about him.
	And there's a certain thing in public, particularly in international relations that says you behave politely.
	You treat people with respect.
	Right.
	Protocol.
	Putin has always done that.
	He's never treated anybody badly.
	Yet he's been, he's had buckets of filth and abuse all over him.
	None of this is helpful.
	And it's not helpful for President Trump to now say publicly, my goal is to collapse the Russian economy.
	What is he?
	Crazy?
	It's not going to happen.
	I mean, these people are almost vulnerable, invincible, immune to these things.
	The biggest problem with Russia that we've we missed is that how do you defeat a country, not just on the basis of its size, but look at the resources at its disposal?
	Mineral resources, energy resources, grain, wheat, food.
	I mean, quite frankly, you can close all the borders, and the Russians are going to survive.
	But now they don't have to do that because they have friends on their borders that are going to help them and work with them and buy from them.
	India, China, two of the biggest countries in the world.
	Shouldn't be we be a little concerned about developing a rapport and a relationship with two countries in the world who have populations over 1.1, 1.2 billion.
	I mean, this doesn't make any sense to me.
	You look at bricks.
	I hate bricks.
	I'm going to crush bricks.
	They already represent 40 to 50% of the world's.
	Yes.
	And the SCO and SCO recently, you I'm uh look at these cable news.
	They never talked about it.
	And my my question also, sir, very quickly in the in the wany moments here, uh, in in deference to your time schedule.
	Venezuela.
	You know, there was a put it this way, the the great Gerald Salenti one time said, What would be the chances of our invading Iraq if their main export was broccoli?
	And so it just so happens that Venezuela is this font of oil, minerals, it is it is a tragedy, and we just so have oh, and it's trendy arawa, TDA, and that's gonna be our entree.
	That's gonna be the protectual, and let us see this night vision goggle.
	That disgusted me.
	I is there something wrong with me, sir, where I don't glee like a little boy and say, ooh, bombs.
	What is the matter?
	How do we look to the world?
	What if Putin did this?
	If Putin gathered people around and said, hey, watch this, keep an eye on.
	We would say, you savage when we do it.
	Well, from the vantage point of the rest of the world, we have become patient zero.
	We're at the end of the hospital hallway in our own room.
	Everyone is working to stay away from us.
	Nobody wants to contract our diseases.
	Wow.
	And right now that's why everybody wants to get rid of the dollar, because the dollar simply uh exports our debt to others.
	Uh, it's easier to do business in other currencies and other ways.
	We've brought this on ourselves, but as far as Venezuela is concerned, there was a tweet earlier today.
	I don't have it in front of me, but it was talking about the fact that the Chinese are signing an agreement with the Venezuelans uh to buy 60% of their oil and gas, in return for which the Chinese will go in there and repair the oil and gas infrastructure, which is in poor condition.
	Now, there are other things involved.
	They also have gold, they have emeralds.
	I mean, obviously, these are all important things.
	And we're angry over that.
	Well, no one ever bothered to bring up the possibility that you know we could have offered that deal.
	We could have said to Maduro, look, you know, Hugo Chavez is gone now.
	You're the new man in town.
	Uh, we know that uh things are hard in Venezuela, the economy is poor.
	There are people uh scratching a living out of garbage cans in your streets.
	So why don't you do the following?
	We'll come down with engineers and technicians, we'll bring, they need about, I think the last count was about 1,600.
	We'll send them down there, we'll repair all the gas and oil infrastructure.
	But we'd like a couple of things.
	First of all, we know your main export is not drugs.
	In fact, very few illicit drugs come out of uh Venezuela, and the ones that do come out of Colombia but it's uh there are some generals in the Venezuelan army who are profiting, lining their pockets by transporting drugs through Venezuela and out of the country.
	We'd like that to stop, you know, and we'll help you get rid of them if you want if you want, because right now the truth is that just like the president of Mexico has no control over the Mexican army, the drug cartels control the Mexican army.
	The same thing is true, Dan of Venezuela.
	The generals aren't very responsive to Maduro, he doesn't really control them.
	So we can say we can help you with that, we can help you with the gas and so forth, but we want to deal with you in order to profit from your oil and gas, we'll buy it, and there may be some other things where we can do business, but we've taken the position, no, he's not a liberal democrat.
	We think he's really a communist, uh, you know, and he deals in drugs.
	No, he doesn't.
	That's not his, that's not his uh activity at all.
	That's a lot of nonsense.
	In other words, we're turning him into another Saddam Hussein.
	And then President Trump says this is not about regime change.
	And I said, Well, that's wonderful.
	If it isn't, then we don't need to go, do we?
	We can do business with Maduro.
	In other words, we've got to get out of this business of saying either you have a society and a government that we approve of, or we don't do business with you.
	But what are you gonna do with Lindsey Graham?
	What are you gonna do with I and we have not mentioned anything about the Middle East?
	We have we haven't even touched that one.
	But final point, sir.
	I'm here in New York City, and we have somebody who is going to be the next mayor.
	And I hear people say he's gonna, he's a socialist, he's a Marxist, he's a communist, he's uh he's uh he's a this and that.
	And they couldn't define socialism if they bit him on the arse.
	And so not only what you must do, I hope in your Russell tribunal-esque uh movements and these wonderful events, which by the way, I'm putting up the national conversation with Colonel Douglas McGregor, October the 4th in uh Dallas at the National Conversation.org.
	There was a time, sir, I remember where where we had this class called Civics, and it was mandatory.
	And I was I they had told me communism is this socialism is this Marxist, this.
	I have friends of mine who were socialists, and one, I think a full-blown tummy, but he says, I'm not a member, and they are they are insulted that you would dare take this this welfare state charlatan.
	So we've we don't even know what we're what what Maduro is, what Badzoran Mamdani is.
	We don't know the rudiments of socialism from a hole in the ground.
	At so many levels, sir, you name it, our intellectual educational infrastructure, we are we are devoid of the uh I don't know how you're a couple of quick observations.
	Number one, we we shut down general immigration in 1924.
	We stopped it because we said we were not getting the people we wanted.
	But we passed a new act.
	It was called the Exceptional Skills Act.
	And it said, you know, if there are people out there who who bring extraordinary expertise, competence to the country, we will consider them for entry into the United States.
	That's how we got Albert Einstein.
	Now he's the tip of the iceberg because a lot of other very talented people like Albert Einstein came into the country until we reopened general immigration after World War II.
	If you don't like the mayor of New York City, who's responsible for his admission to the United States?
	Who who developed Well he was born here?
	But but the point is, who developed the guidelines for the immigration?
	People complain to me all the time, said, Well, there are now more Muslims than Jews in America.
	I said, And your point?
	Yes.
	You voted for the people in Congress.
	They opened immigration to all of these people.
	I heard no one stand up over the last 50 years and say we need we need to re-examine what we're doing.
	We need to look at these people.
	Somebody said to me, uh, are you opposed to Mexican immigration?
	I said, Of course not.
	But you sound like you're uncomfortable with open immigration.
	I said, Well, I'd like to have all the Mexicans that have degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and science who also speak English.
	Well, don't you think that's unreasonable?
	I said, No, not at all.
	Not in the world today.
	There are more people in China who speak English than live in the United States.
	And I don't want to bring up Operation Paper Clip, which is another thing.
	But sometimes we've learned that you're gonna kind of say, do we want this raw talent?
	And let me just leave you with this one thing, sir, which is I think the hottest issue.
	We are politically schizophrenic.
	We had this young, beautiful young Ukrainian girl who is trying to seek the American dream, who's sitting there doing nothing, and this American man, not somebody, decides to ambush her bushwhacker, slice her, gut her, like and caught on on video, and yet you would think she's Ukrainian, we're gonna run.
	The media are silent.
	And I don't want to get into a racial thing, maybe that's not here.
	But you know, and I know what this is about.
	I I at so many I will leave you with this, sir.
	What is the best part about America right now?
	What are we really good at?
	Whether from Trump, local, domestic, what are we what are we excelling at?
	What?
	I don't know.
	Pizza.
	Well, yeah, well, remember the person that that committed that crime had been arrested 14 times.
	Yes, and now they call him homeless.
	He's also homeless, witless, toothless, and worthless.
	What do we do well?
	Well, potentially we do two things very, very well: energy and agriculture.
	Now, I don't think we do them well enough.
	We we have a third of the oil rigs operating today that we had 10 years ago.
	Uh, there are a lot of problems in the energy sector that have that have occurred over many years because of the damage many administrations did to energy, not just uh, by the way, oil and gas, also coal and other things.
	We have rare earths, enormous quantities in Canada, and we have them in the United States.
	We have never built a rare earth refinery.
	So if we extract any rare earths, we have to ship that to China to be refined, or we can send it to Kazakhstan, where there's a rare earth refinery.
	So, what I'm trying to tell you is that this organization called Congress has been on its ass for decades, busy counting its money, figuring out how to make themselves rich while the rest of the country was neglected.
	Now, the third thing that we used to do very well was high-end manufacturing.
	But here's the other aspect of the problem.
	When the gentleman that owns the uh microcircuitry factory in Taiwan that everybody obsesses over because both the Chinese, the well, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese, and we all buy the microcircuitry that comes out of this factory.
	President Trump in his first term tried to persuade the owner to build a factory in Arizona or Nevada, somewhere in there.
	Good idea.
	Ultimately, it never happened.
	He left office, the whole thing fell apart.
	But more important, the owner said something privately that should concern all of us.
	He said, You don't have the human capital that you need to man this manufacturing base.
	Precisely.
	What has happened to education?
	Precisely.
	We plow more and more and more and more money into education.
	we get less and less and less out.
	Who has stood up and said, look, this it obviously doesn't work.
	So let's devise a new system that can work.
	Nobody ever says that.
	No, no, no.
	Give us more money.
	You have the same problem in health care.
	You know, we spend more money than anybody else in the world on health care.
	But you can go to Finland.
	You can go even to Italy right now.
	Any number of European countries and other countries of the world get a hell of a lot more uh bang for your buck in health care than you're going to get here.
	It's wrong.
	But we have to invade Venezuela.
	That's a critical mission for us.
	We have to engage.
	Ukraine.
	And we have to help prepare Israel for the next round in the war with Iran.
	No, we don't.
	We don't have to bankroll anybody that wants to murder everybody in Gaza.
	We can say, listen, thanks very much.
	We love you, but we're not going to support that.
	I say that all the time.
	My Israeli friends are angry with me.
	I said, look, I support Israel, but I'm not going to support what you're doing in Gaza.
	Well, well, why not?
	Because it's inhumane.
	It's something we as Americans can't do.
	I wouldn't support the Japanese that wanted to murder everybody in Shanghai or Nanking that was Chinese.
	I mean, I don't care what they are.
	If it were a bunch of Jews, for God's sakes, and they wanted to murder them, I would say no.
	So there are certain things that you know, you you as a nation, you talked about reputation.
	Uh what does it matter?
	Well, our reputation does matter.
	Absolutely.
	We're not perfect.
	We're far from it.
	Have we made mistakes?
	Of course.
	But on a on an issue like that, we can be very straightforward.
	And the president of the United States can say, can't support that.
	Colonel McGregor, you have you have gone on and and I'm afraid I'm going to incur the wrath of someone that we have break coming up.
	I do not want to do that.
	When you run for officer, let me know.
	Colonel Doug, Colonel Colonel Douglas McGregor, thank you.
	I'm going to put the information regarding your your Dallas event.
	I thank you, sir.
	I I could listen to you forever.
	When you want to run for anything, Ombudsman, Prelate, Pate, Puba, Pen Gendrum, anything, let me know.
	We're behind you, sir.
	You are a treasure.
	And I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say thank you, sir, for your service and for your your incredible intellect and your bravery and your wisdom.
	Thank you, sir.
	Lionel, you're making me blush.
	I'm leaving.
	Thank you, sir.
	Thanks, but have a good day, sir.

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