Health Ranger - Mike Adams - Scott Ritter Interview: Empire Collapse, Hormuz Control & The End of U.S. Dominance (PART 2)
Aired: 2026-04-14
Duration: 34:14


=== Empire Terminating Event (04:58) ===

[00:00:01]  This war with Iran could be categorized in what I would call an empire terminating event because it exposes the weaknesses and frailties of the entire system.
[00:00:12]  What leader is more effective?
[00:00:14]  The guy that kicks down the door and starts screaming at you from day one on everything, yelling, yelling, yelling, my way, only my way.
[00:00:20]  There's a lot of resentment that comes from that.
[00:00:22]  Not too much gets accomplished.
[00:00:25]  Or the guy that comes in and says, hey, talk to me.
[00:00:28]  We could have been that leader.
[00:00:30]  We chose to be the one who screams and yells and shouts.
[00:00:33]  And the problem with that is.
[00:00:35]  People just stop listening.
[00:00:37]  You bully people, but you don't lead people.
[00:00:39]  You don't motivate people.
[00:00:41]  All right, welcome back to my part two of my interview with Scott Ritter, who's just an extraordinarily courageous and insightful person, former UN weapons inspector, United States Marine, intelligence analyst, and so much more.
[00:00:55]  He's got a wealth of experience that's highly relevant to what's happening in the world today.
[00:00:59]  And if you missed part one of our interview, that's available at brightvideos.com.
[00:01:03]  Scott's website is found at scottritter.com, and he does.
[00:01:08]  I don't know, 50 interviews a week or something.
[00:01:10]  It seems like it.
[00:01:11]  It's a lot.
[00:01:12]  Welcome back, Scott Ritter.
[00:01:14]  It's an honor to have you back on the show.
[00:01:15]  Thanks for sticking with me here.
[00:01:17]  Thanks for having me.
[00:01:19]  So, you kind of heard my intro there.
[00:01:21]  I'd like to get your take on what happens when the U.S. is no longer able to project power in the Middle East.
[00:01:27]  The U.S. military bases in the region have been largely destroyed or abandoned.
[00:01:32]  Clearly, Iran is going to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz, giving Iran.
[00:01:38]  Direct control over essentially 20% of the world's oil and energy and gas, et cetera.
[00:01:44]  I mean, that's a rough number.
[00:01:46]  That puts Iran in control of more oil than the United States itself.
[00:01:50]  I mean, it's extraordinary.
[00:01:51]  So, what happens in your view with the US empire if this reconfiguration goes in that direction that we've just talked about?
[00:02:01]  Well, I think that this war with Iran could be categorized as what I would call an empire terminating event because it exposes the weaknesses and frailties of the entire system.
[00:02:15]  The United States has been struggling to sustain its global hegemony that it's enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when it became the sole remaining superpower.
[00:02:28]  But we have behaved.
[00:02:32]  In an egregious fashion, we had an opportunity to reconfigure the world in a realistic manner, one that recognized that the United States is a major power, but that the United States is not the singular power, that other nations matter, other peoples matter, and other opinions matter, and that we could have taken advantage of our.
[00:03:02]  You know, singularly strong position and create a new world order where we would be listened to because we were listening to people.
[00:03:10]  I mean, I just ask people to reflect on leadership, just basic day to day leader.
[00:03:15]  What leader is more effective?
[00:03:17]  The guy that kicks down the door and starts screaming at you from day one on everything, yelling, yelling, yelling, my way, only my way.
[00:03:23]  There's a lot of resentment that comes from that.
[00:03:25]  Not too much gets accomplished.
[00:03:28]  Or the guy that comes in and says, hey, talk to me.
[00:03:32]  What's on your mind?
[00:03:33]  We've got this problem.
[00:03:34]  How do you think it?
[00:03:34]  It should be so.
[00:03:35]  What would be a good outcome for you?
[00:03:37]  Let me tell you where I'm coming from.
[00:03:38]  Maybe we can come together and work on this.
[00:03:40]  The next thing you know, you have a solution.
[00:03:41]  Everybody's happy and everybody's working together as a team.
[00:03:44]  We could have been that leader.
[00:03:46]  We chose to be the one who screams and yells and shouts.
[00:03:49]  And the problem with that is people just stop listening.
[00:03:52]  You bully people, but you don't lead people.
[00:03:55]  You don't motivate people.
[00:03:56]  And at some point in time, you're no longer the strapping man that you were with the broad shoulders and the narrow waist and the granite jaw that people fear.
[00:04:06]  Age catches up with you.
[00:04:08]  You start to get a belly, and maybe you don't go to the gym as much as you used to, and the muscles start to atrophy, but all you got is a big mouth.
[00:04:17]  That's the United States right now.
[00:04:20]  We are somebody who's already gone through a middle age crisis and we didn't recognize it.
[00:04:25]  We're past middle age.
[00:04:26]  We have arthritic knees.
[00:04:27]  I'm starting to describe myself a belly that isn't going to go away.
[00:04:32]  And you can go to the gym and lift all you want.
[00:04:36]  You're just going to get weaker because you're at that point where your body just isn't. building mass anymore.
[00:04:42]  Normally when you get to that age, you'd rely upon wisdom to lead.
[00:04:46]  Yeah, you don't, you know, you're not going to go out there and bench press 315 pounds.
[00:04:51]  You don't need to.
[00:04:52]  You're going to go out there and be smart.
[00:04:54]  You have wisdom, but we're not even smart and wise.
[00:04:56]  We can't bench press.
[00:04:57]  We can't lead.
[00:04:58]  And this is where we're at today.

=== Wisdom vs Arthritic Knees (15:26) ===

[00:05:00]  We bit off more than we could chew.
[00:05:01]  We've been telling the world that we are the unsurpassed military power.
[00:05:06]  And the world, for the most part, believed it because we used to be the unsurpassed military power.
[00:05:11]  But what happens when your bluff gets called and then suddenly they realize that the emperor has no clothes?
[00:05:17]  And this is what's happened here with Iran.
[00:05:19]  If we were the unsurpassed military power, we should have won this war in a matter of days.
[00:05:23]  We would have struck with extreme force, with extreme precision, and we would have manifested the conditions that we wanted for victory, we would have collapsed the regime.
[00:05:33]  We would have had something to replace it.
[00:05:36]  We would have suppressed their missiles and.
[00:05:38]  We would have had a plan.
[00:05:40]  We didn't have a plan.
[00:05:41]  What we know now is that this war was thrust upon us by Israel, that Bibi Netanyahu and his head of the Mossad got a one on one with Donald Trump in the White House where they convinced him that with precision guided strikes, we could end their regime.
[00:05:54]  People would rise up in the streets, overthrow, and we didn't need to worry about anything else because now we own Iran and everything's hunky dory.
[00:06:01]  And Trump bought into that.
[00:06:02]  Everybody in his cabinet, without exception, disagreed.
[00:06:06]  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Israelis oversell.
[00:06:10]  We shouldn't buy into their optimism.
[00:06:12]  Marco Rubio and the director of the CIA said this regime change is fantasy.
[00:06:19]  It's not going to happen.
[00:06:20]  They didn't even invite Tulsi Gabbard there, the chief, you know, the director of national intelligence.
[00:06:24]  JD Vance said, I'm just dead set against this war.
[00:06:27]  I think it's wrong.
[00:06:27]  We shouldn't be doing this.
[00:06:28]  And Donald Trump went, that's okay.
[00:06:31]  We're going to do what the Israelis said.
[00:06:32]  And it turned out to be unattainable.
[00:06:35]  And now we're humiliated.
[00:06:38]  We went at them with everything we had except nuclear weapons.
[00:06:42]  We used the most advanced weapons, the most advanced fighters, the most advanced bombers.
[00:06:46]  Pummeled them.
[00:06:46]  I mean, we're so proud of ourselves blowing up these buildings.
[00:06:49]  Hell, we even got a girls' school.
[00:06:51]  That's how good we are.
[00:06:52]  175 dead girls, ages of six to 12.
[00:06:55]  Good job, America.
[00:06:57]  But, you know, Pete Ketch says the same lethality, lethality.
[00:07:00]  No rule book, just lethality.
[00:07:02]  And now we've done the lethality thing.
[00:07:05]  And what have we accomplished?
[00:07:07]  Nothing.
[00:07:07]  The regime's stronger than ever.
[00:07:09]  We didn't sink their Navy.
[00:07:10]  Again, I'm just reminding the American public that their Navy just mined the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:07:17]  Right.
[00:07:18]  All right.
[00:07:18]  The Navy we destroyed just mined the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:07:24]  We control the Iranian airspace, except they shoot down our airplanes and humiliate us because they just waited till we used all of our standoff weapons.
[00:07:33]  And now we have to come in closer to them.
[00:07:34]  And they come out and say, bring it on, baby.
[00:07:37]  We got you.
[00:07:38]  Boom, boom, boom.
[00:07:39]  But I want to get into the currency consequences of this.
[00:07:43]  And I know you're not an economist, and I'm not either.
[00:07:47]  It's very clear that Iran has already set conditions of allowing certain ships to pass.
[00:07:53]  For example, allowing one tanker to pass because they paid for their oil in Chinese yuan currency.
[00:08:00]  And also the so called toll, which has been rumored to be maybe $2 million per vessel, with $1 million going to Iran, $1 million going to Oman.
[00:08:10]  At least that seems to be part of the last round of so called ceasefire terms.
[00:08:15]  But clearly, that's not going to be payable in dollars.
[00:08:19]  That's going to be crypto or gold or yuan or rubles or something.
[00:08:24]  And it seems to me that, I mean, you know the history, Scott.
[00:08:27]  You're very well schooled on this that it was the U.S. presence in the area that forced or at least pressured Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Kuwait, et cetera, to sell all their energy in dollars, creating global demand for the petrodollar that gave the backing for the U.S. to print unlimited currency.
[00:08:46]  Seems to me that that's ending because of Iran's.
[00:08:50]  Assertion of the control over the strait.
[00:08:52]  Iran can say to any country, if you sell your oil in dollars, that oil's not passing through the strait.
[00:08:59]  Couldn't they?
[00:09:01]  They could.
[00:09:02]  Look, Iran can get away with a lot right now because it's war.
[00:09:07]  You know who's not going to be happy about Iran insisting on yuan payments?
[00:09:12]  China.
[00:09:14]  They're not ready to become the petro yuan.
[00:09:16]  Yeah, good point.
[00:09:18]  There's no currency out there that can match the dollar.
[00:09:21]  So, again, if Donald Trump had functioning brain cells and he had people around him, you know, what I would be telling Donald Trump is that we concede the toll.
[00:09:35]  We don't articulate too much about long term ownership, but what we say is that.
[00:09:41]  There is a need for reconstruction.
[00:09:44]  A lot of damage has been done in Iran and in the Gulf Arab states.
[00:09:48]  So part of our peace proposal is that Iran, together with a Gulf Arab conglomerate, maybe with the Americans involved to oversee, you know, I don't know how far we can push that one, but why not try?
[00:10:07]  Trump's already trying.
[00:10:08]  We'll collect a toll.
[00:10:10]  And then that money will go into a pool that then will be allocated to every nation to rebuild.
[00:10:18]  You know, based upon the damage done, a percentage will go to each nation, and that we will collect this money until which time reconstruction has been done.
[00:10:29]  It's like, you know, the throughway.
[00:10:31]  You build the throughway in New York, you put up a toll booth, and you're supposed to collect tolls until which time you've paid off the cost of the throughway, and then the toll booth goes away.
[00:10:41]  But no one would trust the U.S. to be the toll collector, clearly, right?
[00:10:47]  I said there would be, A body that does it, not the United States.
[00:10:51]  Okay, yeah, right, right.
[00:10:53]  Yeah, I didn't mean to misrepresent what you said.
[00:10:55]  I'm just asking.
[00:10:57]  I'm just spitballing right here.
[00:10:59]  But what I'm saying is that if you have good negotiators, I can save the dollar because there is no alternative to the dollar right now.
[00:11:09]  So what you do is you yield to the Iranians that which should be yielded and can be yielded, but you retain enough leverage to keep the dollar in play.
[00:11:19]  And China would support this because China's not ready.
[00:11:22]  To print yuan like we print dollars.
[00:11:24]  That's right.
[00:11:26]  That would be very damaging to China's current ecosystem.
[00:11:30]  Yeah.
[00:11:30]  And so, you know, I again, I think that we could salvage the dollar, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the only thing that can be done at this point in time, because there is no alternative to the dollar.
[00:11:48]  You know, so yeah, I mean, currency is an issue, but it's a card that the Iranians are just playing to irritate us right now.
[00:11:54]  It's not.
[00:11:55]  It's not going to be part of their long term solution.
[00:11:56]  It can't be part of their long term solution because the Chinese aren't ready to jump up and say, Yeah, we're ready to underwrite the global oil energy market with our currency.
[00:12:05]  The dollar is the reserve currency of the world, and it will be that way until an alternative comes up.
[00:12:11]  And as long as the dollar is linked to petroleum, that means that it is the natural choice for this.
[00:12:20]  If Trump keeps screwing around with the deficit and everything else and the dollar devalues, who knows where the world will come?
[00:12:25]  Maybe they'll have no choice but to come up with an alternative.
[00:12:28]  This juncture, I don't think I'm not as afraid of losing the petrodollar as I am of.
[00:12:36]  You know, first of all, the United States has to resize.
[00:12:40]  I think the American people need to understand this.
[00:12:42]  We can't be what we were 20 years ago.
[00:12:46]  You know, we can't be the global policeman because to be the policeman, you have to have a body of law that you respect and the world recognizes.
[00:12:54]  We, you know, we've never really respected the United Nations in the charter, but we've played that game.
[00:13:01]  But what we did is we created something called the rules based international order.
[00:13:05]  And that, I mean, you know, The Biden administration just straight up said that's what makes America the rules based international order, not the United Nations Charter, not anything.
[00:13:14]  This system of rules and entities, organizations that are beholden to the United States, act on behalf of the United States, that we link the world in, that's gone.
[00:13:28]  The rules based international order is dead.
[00:13:31]  So the question now is what replaces it?
[00:13:32]  And we don't have a vision for that.
[00:13:34]  What Trump wants to replace it with is bullying.
[00:13:38]  Right.
[00:13:39]  That there's no rules.
[00:13:40]  We just come in and we're going to kick your butt.
[00:13:42]  You know, well, gosh, the first guy he picked on in the schoolyard kicked his butt.
[00:13:47]  And so that's the end of bullying.
[00:13:48]  We're not going to bully anybody.
[00:13:50]  As I said before, the Pacific, our national security strategy document dated November of last year, articulated a policy posture in the Pacific that said that we must have conventional military overmatch with the Chinese, that the Chinese must be convinced that they can't win a war against us.
[00:14:11]  Well, we haven't achieved that at all.
[00:14:14]  Just the opposite.
[00:14:15]  Because what we, even though, I mean, any real military analyst went, Oh, we don't have that right now, boss.
[00:14:20]  I don't know how you're going to get it.
[00:14:21]  But, you know, you can bluster, you can walk the walk and, you know, make people think.
[00:14:26]  But we just got beat by Iran.
[00:14:29]  We can't control the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:14:31]  What makes us think we can control the Strait of Malacca in Indonesia, a critical choke point?
[00:14:36]  We can't.
[00:14:37]  What makes us think we can control the South Chinese Sea where the Chinese have installed military bases?
[00:14:42]  We can't.
[00:14:43]  We can't control anything, which means around the world, everybody has their hand on the throat of the United States and its allies.
[00:14:52]  We need to adjust to this reality.
[00:14:54]  We have to start changing our expectations of how the world responds to us.
[00:15:00]  Yes.
[00:15:02]  And so I'm really glad you brought us to this point of the discussion because you, for several years, you've offered really outstanding commentary about the Russia Ukraine conflict, and you've visited Russia.
[00:15:15]  You know, you've extensively Traveled through Russia to promote your book, I believe, and other things.
[00:15:21]  And the US failed to topple Putin.
[00:15:25]  The US failed to rape and pillage Russia.
[00:15:27]  The US military, through the proxy of Ukraine and NATO, really failed there.
[00:15:32]  And now it has failed again with the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:15:35]  So this is actually two strikes, two failures back to back.
[00:15:40]  And I mean, what are your thoughts on the pattern that's emerging here?
[00:15:43]  The world is noticing, obviously.
[00:15:46]  But I call it an empire terminating event.
[00:15:48]  You know, as we speak, NATO is going through its final death throes, which I think is a great thing because NATO, in my opinion, has no right to exist after the Cold War and has been sort of the source of much of the problems we face today, especially in Ukraine.
[00:16:05]  But, you know, Marco Rubio has just articulated that we are probably going to withdraw 100,000 troops from Europe in the near future and that we're going to view NATO now on a case by case basis based upon the membership.
[00:16:20]  That's not how an alliance works.
[00:16:22]  It's a collective.
[00:16:24]  Article 5 is supposed to apply to everybody.
[00:16:26]  And what we're saying is no, if you didn't come to our assistance in the Strait of Hormuz, we won't come to your assistance.
[00:16:32]  So it's the end of NATO.
[00:16:33]  It's the death of NATO.
[00:16:35]  And this is a wonderful thing.
[00:16:37]  I literally think we should be ringing the bell, singing Ding Dog, the witch is dead, the wicked witch, because NATO is a horrible organization.
[00:16:45]  It only represents, it's literally an organization that exists outside the framework of law.
[00:16:51]  And they've acknowledged that.
[00:16:52]  They've acknowledged that NATO.
[00:16:53]  Functions independent of the United Nations Charter.
[00:16:57]  They proved that with Kosovo.
[00:16:59]  And they're now, you know, their approach towards Russia and Ukraine is the same way.
[00:17:03]  So this is a good thing.
[00:17:05]  It's also a good thing that the tripartite pact that we had with South Korea and Japan, which actually increased the possibility of nuclear war in North Korea, that's going to collapse as well.
[00:17:17]  The Japanese and the North Koreans can no longer hide behind the artifice of American security guarantees, and they will have to learn to engage diplomatically with North Korea.
[00:17:27]  This is a good thing.
[00:17:27]  They'll have to engage diplomatically with China and Russia.
[00:17:32]  AUKUS, the American, the Australia, United Kingdom, US, a little three way going there.
[00:17:42]  Australia is done with us.
[00:17:45]  They don't have any diesel right now.
[00:17:47]  They're rationing gas.
[00:17:48]  Their stores are empty because of us.
[00:17:50]  And they recognize that the United States provides zero security whatsoever.
[00:17:55]  The nation that's going to resolve Australia's energy crisis.
[00:17:58]  Crisis isn't the United States, it's China.
[00:18:00]  And so you're going to see Australia recognizing the reality that America's bad, China is good, and they're going to go that way.
[00:18:06]  India, likewise.
[00:18:07]  And Taiwan.
[00:18:08]  I mean, couldn't that very easily happen with Taiwan?
[00:18:11]  Yeah, it's over.
[00:18:13]  If I were Kuomintang right now, I would just basically tell the Taiwanese people in the next election, you have to push out this government in there, bring us in, and we're going to solve the problem with China, that our future is with China.
[00:18:29]  The thing about losing this war.
[00:18:30]  Against Iran, is that nobody views their futures being good with the United States?
[00:18:36]  Everybody's going to be looking to renegotiate or just walk away.
[00:18:40]  And, you know, it's up to the U.S. government to resize.
[00:18:45]  If we continue to insist that we are King Arthur and you are nothing but knights around my round table, at some point in time, we're going to be sitting at a round table all by ourselves and everybody else is going to be off in the cool boys' table with Putin and Xi Jinping and Modi and the people that matter, all sitting around together.
[00:19:04]  Working out problems.
[00:19:06]  We have to stop being arrogant.
[00:19:08]  That means not just our government.
[00:19:09]  Our government is a reflection of who we are as a people.
[00:19:13]  We're not exceptional.
[00:19:15]  People, Americans need to understand that there's nothing exceptional about us.
[00:19:19]  And I want to add that you're not, this isn't just you talking.
[00:19:21]  This is actually happening.
[00:19:22]  A high level official of the Kuomintang in Taiwan is actually meeting with President Xi of China.
[00:19:28]  And you can bet what they're discussing like, how can we get diesel?
[00:19:32]  How can we get gasoline?
[00:19:33]  How can we get natural gas?
[00:19:35]  Because you're exactly right, Scott.
[00:19:37]  The U.S. umbrella of protection, even over Israel and Japan and South Korea and the Persian Gulf states, that umbrella has been disintegrated.
[00:19:48]  It's gone.
[00:19:48]  It's finished.
[00:19:49]  Look, and just think of the arrogance of the United States for a second.
[00:19:52]  I mean, Marco Rubio, who's currently the Secretary of State, at one time was talking about Brazil when he was a senator.
[00:19:59]  And Brazil was talking about not trading in the dollar.
[00:20:03]  And he said, We can't allow that to happen because if they stop trading in the dollar, that means we are not going to be able to impose sanctions on them.
[00:20:11]  And then how will we control their economy?
[00:20:12]  He did say that, yeah.
[00:20:14]  And I'm like, Oh, that's refreshingly honest there, Marco.
[00:20:17]  I appreciate that.
[00:20:19]  But that's the arrogance that we have.
[00:20:22]  We.
[00:20:23]  Again, I'm an American.

=== Maintaining Superiority with Chips (04:10) ===

[00:20:26]  I'm as patriotic as it gets.
[00:20:28]  And you attack my country, you put down my country without purpose, and you'll get a fist or a headbutt or worse.
[00:20:37]  I just, I love my country.
[00:20:39]  But I'm also a realist here.
[00:20:41]  I don't believe in arrogance, I believe in being humble and humility.
[00:20:47]  We think we can control the chip market.
[00:20:53]  And that we can prevent China from having access to advanced microchip manufacturing technology.
[00:21:01]  And we actually impose sanctions on China saying you can't have access to the chips that are built in Taiwan, that we're going to relocate to the United States because we don't want you to have access to it.
[00:21:12]  And the Chinese are like, hmm, let's think about this.
[00:21:17]  We got a population of, you know, one point something billion.
[00:21:21]  Why don't we just get, oh, I don't know, a couple 30 million?
[00:21:26]  Scientists to work this issue.
[00:21:28]  And today they build advanced chips.
[00:21:32]  They solve the problem.
[00:21:33]  Our arrogance never once factored in the fact that the Chinese can solve this problem themselves.
[00:21:39]  We keep saying we're going to deny you access to this, deny you access.
[00:21:42]  That's the wrong move.
[00:21:43]  The right move is to say, hey, China, we got great chips.
[00:21:48]  Want some?
[00:21:49]  Invite us in.
[00:21:50]  We'll come in and we'll set up a joint production facility.
[00:21:52]  Yeah, then they wouldn't have developed their own UV lithography technology, Huawei microchips.
[00:21:58]  And we've been from their economy.
[00:22:01]  We have good relations.
[00:22:03]  We can get access to the chips we need in the quantities we need.
[00:22:08]  We're tied into their rare earth metal and rare earth materials that we can get their permanent magnets.
[00:22:17]  Wow, that's what happens when you extend the hand of friendship.
[00:22:21]  But instead, we are arrogant and we say, We are exceptional and you can't be like us.
[00:22:28]  You're inferior to us.
[00:22:30]  We have to maintain our superiority.
[00:22:33]  Drive around your average American city than drive around your average Chinese city and compare and contrast.
[00:22:37]  Get on a high speed train in America.
[00:22:39]  The Acela train connects New York City with Washington, D.C.
[00:22:43]  I travel it frequently.
[00:22:44]  It's supposed to be a high speed train.
[00:22:46]  I just know that we go around South Philly, we have to slow down very slow and the train's rocking back and forth as if it's a rail because of the quality of the rail.
[00:22:54]  Meanwhile, I can get on, I haven't done it yet, but I plan on it.
[00:22:57]  Get on a high speed train in China, and I can, you know, put a glass of wine on a pencil and it's just going to stay that way because it's a smooth ride all the way.
[00:23:10]  Or visit a Russian city for that matter, right?
[00:23:13]  I just came back from Russia and I'm just here to tell you guys for all the people that are like, oh, the Russian economy is collapsing and all that.
[00:23:20]  Look, the Russians aren't happy.
[00:23:23]  There are things happening on the periphery, but restaurants are full, stores are full, people.
[00:23:30]  Make money, they earn a living, they have a high standard of living, and they are happy.
[00:23:37]  It's a happy nation.
[00:23:40]  The war, of course, is preventing them from being able to explode economically.
[00:23:45]  God forbid this war ends, and you're going to just see Russia go off the rails in terms of positive things happening.
[00:23:54]  But the American people who buy into the notion, Joe Biden, the ruble is rubble.
[00:24:01]  Really?
[00:24:03]  Right, right.
[00:24:04]  It's dollar trouble, baby.
[00:24:07]  Instead of being able to compete with the world, it seems like the American empire just wants to destroy everybody else's economy, bring them down to where we can assert control.
[00:24:17]  And I'm like you.
[00:24:19]  I love America.
[00:24:19]  I love the founding vision of America.
[00:24:21]  I'm incredibly frustrated with who's running it right now and how they're twisting the original founding intent.
[00:24:28]  But I will fight for the founding principles of America.
[00:24:31]  Absolutely.
[00:24:32]  Absolutely.
[00:24:34]  Even though I'm disgusted with my current government.

=== Fuel on Demand Media (06:22) ===

[00:24:36]  But Scott, we're almost out of time.
[00:24:37]  I want to be respectful of your time.
[00:24:39]  Let me give out your website again.
[00:24:40]  It's scottritter.com.
[00:24:42]  We'll take you to Scott's Substack page where you can find all kinds of good stuff there, all the videos.
[00:24:48]  And of course, you can follow Scott on numerous channels.
[00:24:50]  Hey, Scott, real quick, what are you doing?
[00:24:53]  I know you go on Judge Napolitano's show quite a lot.
[00:24:56]  You've been on many shows.
[00:24:57]  What are some of the shows that you go on?
[00:25:00]  Oh, I mean, I do Judge Napolitano quite a bit.
[00:25:04]  I do Nima Rostrami.
[00:25:06]  He's a great show.
[00:25:07]  Yeah, Dialogue Works is a fantastic show.
[00:25:11]  Danny Haifong.
[00:25:12]  Yep.
[00:25:12]  I go on his program.
[00:25:13]  Garland Nixon.
[00:25:14]  Yep.
[00:25:15]  I've had him on that.
[00:25:17]  And then I basically have to learn to stop saying yes because it's problematic to my work.
[00:25:26]  But, you know, I today, one, two, three, this is my sixth show today.
[00:25:34]  Wow.
[00:25:35]  And tomorrow, if I have discipline, I might only get away with three.
[00:25:40]  I want to drop it to two a week.
[00:25:42]  But here's my thing I don't wake up every morning and go, I need to be on the internet.
[00:25:51]  In fact, my whole approach is I need to be writing.
[00:25:54]  I have a book that I need to finish, I have articles that I need to do.
[00:25:57]  I'm a writer.
[00:25:59]  I have a movie I'm making.
[00:26:00]  I just got back from Russia where I did the filming for a documentary film that I'm doing about Chechnya.
[00:26:06]  And that's a very intensive project.
[00:26:08]  So I need to be doing all that.
[00:26:10]  My problem is that I get people calling me.
[00:26:14]  I mean, I get 12 invitations a day to do stuff.
[00:26:18]  And my approach is that if somebody has taken the time to reach out and say, we think that what you have to say is valuable to the overall discussion, who am I to say you're wrong?
[00:26:32]  I mean, for instance, you're the one who called me.
[00:26:33]  I didn't call you.
[00:26:34]  And you said, or your producer said, we want you to come on the show.
[00:26:38]  Yes.
[00:26:39]  Who am I to sit there and go, man, I'm not going to do that?
[00:26:42]  Because you made a decision.
[00:26:43]  That your audience needs to be engaged with a specific kind of thing.
[00:26:48]  And so, this is like a duty and responsibility right now to do this.
[00:26:53]  I pray for the day where I don't get a call, where people say, Nah, we don't want to hear from Scott Ritter today.
[00:26:59]  Because you know what?
[00:27:00]  I get to work then.
[00:27:01]  I get to write.
[00:27:02]  I get to relax.
[00:27:04]  I get to play with my dogs.
[00:27:06]  I get to do things that make life enjoyable.
[00:27:09]  But we live in very troubling times right now where the principles of debate, the dialogue, and discussion are so absolutely important.
[00:27:16]  And if I can contribute, To a debate, dialogue, and discussion about these issues, then that's sort of what I need to be doing right now.
[00:27:23]  Well, Scott, you and I share actually a lot in common on that.
[00:27:26]  And yesterday, for example, I got wound up into this really important AI project I'm working on for humanity, for knowledge.
[00:27:35]  And I thought, I got to cancel my interviews today.
[00:27:38]  And so I talked to my producer.
[00:27:40]  I said, I'm really thinking of just canceling.
[00:27:42]  Who do we have?
[00:27:43]  And she said, Scott Ritter.
[00:27:44]  I'm like, oh, shit, I can't cancel Scott Ritter.
[00:27:48]  So I'm here, buddy.
[00:27:50]  I mean, I'm here because of you.
[00:27:52]  Otherwise, I would have canceled.
[00:27:54]  So that happens to both of us.
[00:27:57]  No, but this is, and here's the other thing that I want to make a pitch for.
[00:28:02]  You know, mainstream media is horrible right now.
[00:28:06]  It's actually a poison pill for American society because it promotes ignorance.
[00:28:12]  The antidote to this poison is what people call alternative media.
[00:28:17]  I don't like that term, I'd like to call it independent media, where, you know, people who have the desire and have the expertise are able to provide, you know, Their own vision of what's going on, fact based, different analysis.
[00:28:35]  This is the fuel that makes democracy work.
[00:28:40]  That's true.
[00:28:41]  I can't.
[00:28:43]  Another reason why I do this is because, you know, trust me, I'd love somebody else to be the diesel in this engine.
[00:28:51]  But right now, you know, this is fuel on demand.
[00:28:54]  If people are saying, you're the diesel, we need you to keep this engine running right now, then we have to do that.
[00:29:01]  But this is how we save America.
[00:29:03]  Because America gets saved by overcoming ignorance.
[00:29:06]  Half the policies our government promotes out there are policies that are sold to the American by exploiting their fears.
[00:29:12]  And their fears are a byproduct of their ignorance.
[00:29:15]  We empower people through knowledge and information.
[00:29:18]  When you are equipped with knowledge and information, you are no longer ignorant, you're no longer afraid, and you can stand up and hold your elected representatives accountable by saying, I disagree with you, and this is why.
[00:29:29]  Shows like yours, shows like Judge and others, this is.
[00:29:37]  The juju that makes America work, that's going to save the American Constitutional Republic.
[00:29:42]  Because the Constitutional Republic doesn't work without an informed electorate to hold people who otherwise would transition into tyranny accountable for what they do in our name.
[00:29:52]  So I applaud the work that you do, and I would encourage your audience to continue to support you as much as they can.
[00:29:59]  Well, God bless you, Scott Ritter.
[00:30:01]  Thank you for all of that and for your time today.
[00:30:03]  And I wish you well.
[00:30:04]  I'll give out your website one more time again, scottritter.com, which forwards you to the Substack site.
[00:30:10]  And Scott, thank you again for all that you do.
[00:30:13]  Please keep doing what you do and find that balance in your life as we're all trying to do so that we can, you know, we can still, you know, do the things that are important to us personally.
[00:30:23]  But thank you for your time today.
[00:30:25]  Thank you very much for having me.
[00:30:26]  All right.
[00:30:27]  Take care.
[00:30:28]  That was Scott Ritter, everybody.
[00:30:30]  What an extraordinary American and a United States Marine as well.
[00:30:35]  Wish we had more Scott Ridders out there who just have the courage to stand up and tell it like it is.
[00:30:41]  If you missed part one of our interview, that's available at brightvideos.com.
[00:30:45]  And as always, you are free to share this interview and you can repost this anywhere that you think it might not get banned.
[00:30:53]  I mean, isn't it crazy we get banned for telling the truth, but it's been that way for a decade now in America.

=== Vitamin D3 for Optimal Health (03:15) ===

[00:30:58]  That's why I launched brightvideos.com, which is completely uncensored.
[00:31:03]  So check it out there.
[00:31:03]  And thank you for watching today.
[00:31:04]  I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
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[00:33:57]  Thank you for supporting us because we need your support in order to fund our platform.
[00:34:01]  And so we can keep bringing you amazing interviews and content and free AI tools for knowledge and so much more.
[00:34:09]  So thank you for supporting us.
[00:34:10]  I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, for healthrangerstore.com.