Health Ranger - Mike Adams - Douglas Macgregor Interview: Dollar Collapse, Iran Dominance & Failed U.S. Strategy — PART 2
Aired: 2026-05-04
Duration: 23:58


=== Maneuver Forces vs Strategic Defense (15:22) ===

[00:00:01]  We have forces built for maneuver.
[00:00:04]  Everything is built for the offense.
[00:00:06]  And what we're seeing now, whether we like it or not, is that the strategic advantage lies with the defense.
[00:00:12]  And Iran has demonstrated that you don't need much in the way of a Navy or an Air Force to defeat an attacking enemy.
[00:00:19]  We've got to stop wasting money on these giant capital ships.
[00:00:23]  They're just going to decorate the bottom of the ocean in the future.
[00:00:27]  Welcome to today's interview.
[00:00:28]  We have Colonel Douglas McGregor joining us for part two of our conversation.
[00:00:33]  In part one, if you missed it, we were.
[00:00:36]  Covering the current situation in the Middle East and the economic impact on the world of the lack of fertilizer supplies and oil supplies, and some of the, well, the real ramifications, the humanitarian ramifications of this.
[00:00:50]  And now, here in part two of our interview, I want to ask the Colonel, and thank you again, Colonel, for staying with me here.
[00:00:56]  It's always a pleasure to speak with you.
[00:00:57]  But you and I both share concerns about the future of the American empire or the existence of the Constitutional Republic.
[00:01:05]  You and I both love the founding principles, we are loyal to those founding principles of our nation.
[00:01:11]  And yet, we both share concerns that things may not last.
[00:01:15]  Can you walk us through where you think we're at risk of not making it, or maybe our currency not making it, and what you think needs to be done to put us back on course?
[00:01:26]  Well, remember, President Nixon took us off the gold standard.
[00:01:31]  He said that was temporary.
[00:01:33]  But like so many things that happen in Washington that start out as temporary, they become permanent.
[00:01:38]  His goal was to create the petrodollar, which he did, which is being One of the engines of our prosperity, frankly, as a nation, because people are compelled to do business in dollars when it comes to the oil and other commodities.
[00:01:52]  That's been very helpful to us.
[00:01:54]  The world is now moving away from that.
[00:01:56]  They're moving away from using our dollars.
[00:01:58]  They are gradually de dollarizing.
[00:02:01]  And unfortunately, China now looks like a better safe haven for currency and wealth than the United States.
[00:02:09]  That's something I never thought would occur in my lifetime, but that seems to be underway.
[00:02:13]  But the bigger problem for us at home with going off the gold standard. was very simply that you no longer had to raise taxes in order to pay for military operations.
[00:02:23]  In other words, if you went to war somewhere, you had to raise taxes to pay for what you'd done.
[00:02:29]  Once you took us off the gold standard, you could print as much currency as you liked.
[00:02:33]  So that was number one.
[00:02:34]  Number two, we abandoned the whole idea of national military service or universal military service.
[00:02:40]  So you end up with a fraction of the population, a little less than 1% of the American population, has any relative in the military or knows of anybody in the military.
[00:02:51]  That was not the case 40 or 50 years ago.
[00:02:53]  When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, virtually all of us had fathers that had served in the Second World War, served in the Korean War.
[00:03:03]  In some cases, we had grandfathers that served in the First World War.
[00:03:07]  Vietnam changed all of that because it was a bogus war.
[00:03:10]  It was begun on a lie.
[00:03:12]  It was badly handled.
[00:03:13]  It made no sense.
[00:03:15]  And that took us down a new road in the history of this country.
[00:03:18]  And I think we are now at the end of this process.
[00:03:22]  We have a force structure which was designed to refight World War II.
[00:03:26]  It's the wrong answer for today and for the future.
[00:03:29]  I think that's going to have to change, hopefully sooner rather than later.
[00:03:32]  And that's our problem right now in the Gulf.
[00:03:34]  You go within 500, 600, 700 miles of the Iranian border, and you're going to be targeted from overhead surveillance, either terrestrial or space-based, thanks to Chinese and Russian assistance to the Iranians.
[00:03:49]  And then you're going to be struck by precision-guided missiles or unmanned systems.
[00:03:53]  So, you can't even get close enough to deliver any force, especially ground forces.
[00:03:58]  It's impossible.
[00:03:59]  If you try to do it, you're going to take heavy casualties, which is why I don't think we've seen that done thus far.
[00:04:05]  And then finally, you know, the nation that we live in today is, I think, a very confused place.
[00:04:11]  I don't think Americans are really conscious of what's happening beyond their borders.
[00:04:15]  In many cases, they're only beginning to figure out what's happened here.
[00:04:20]  If you go to Patterson, New Jersey, for instance, there's a sign outside of Patterson, New Jersey announcing that this is America's first Islamic city.
[00:04:30]  Stop and think about that.
[00:04:32]  You have another place called Dearborn, which is effectively the same.
[00:04:36]  What we've had happen with many, many groups coming into the United States, legally and illegally, who are fundamentally alien to the American population, its values, its experience, its history, its culture, its language, is that they are building islands of autonomy and independence within our society.
[00:04:56]  This is not going to end well because whatever a society cannot assimilate, it usually destroys.
[00:05:03]  So, I think we're on a very dangerous path here at home in the midst of all of this.
[00:05:07]  And that's obvious inside the armed forces right now.
[00:05:10]  And many of the people in the armed forces who are very good human beings and they work hard, they serve their country, they do everything that's asked for them are beginning to say, What are we doing?
[00:05:19]  What is this really for?
[00:05:21]  And the answer is nobody's really sure because when this began, President Trump did not go to Congress, he did not make the case.
[00:05:29]  Well, he didn't have to because the Israel lobby and its agents in the United States, the billionaires, Basically, control Congress as well as the White House.
[00:05:39]  So he really didn't have to ask permission.
[00:05:41]  He didn't have to go over there and ask for support, but he should have.
[00:05:45]  He should have made a case.
[00:05:46]  And as a result, there's never been any clarity with regard to what we can actually accomplish.
[00:05:52]  How are we going to do it?
[00:05:53]  And what do we want it to look like when it's over?
[00:05:56]  I can guarantee you that nobody, neither Donald Trump nor anybody else in the White House, ever carefully thought through and expected that the Persian Gulf, which was an international waterway, would suddenly become the property.
[00:06:10]  Of Iran.
[00:06:11]  It is.
[00:06:12]  Yeah.
[00:06:13]  It is.
[00:06:14]  You know, and the British discovered during World War I, when they tried to seize the Dardanelles, they couldn't take it away from the Turks.
[00:06:21]  Eventually, there is this thing called the Montrose Convention, and Turkey was placed in custody of the Dardanelles or the Bosporus.
[00:06:29]  And the Turks have handled it very well.
[00:06:30]  No one's complained.
[00:06:32]  They've done a great job of managing that waterway.
[00:06:35]  I think now, whether we like it or not, whenever this ends, Iran is going to end up in the same position as Turkey is, only it's going to get to the Persian Gulf.
[00:06:44]  Yeah.
[00:06:45]  What did we do this for?
[00:06:46]  We did this because of Israel, because Israel has insisted it cannot live, it cannot survive, it cannot flourish in the Middle East until Iran is destroyed.
[00:06:55]  And there's another, you know, you're mentioning how some of the backlash of this, for example, Iran is probably going to end up in control over the Strait of Hormuz, which means Iran will be able to determine which ships are allowed to sail and also what tolls might be paid, but importantly, in what currency those tolls are.
[00:07:16]  Might be paid, right?
[00:07:17]  So that's probably not going to be the dollar.
[00:07:19]  We already know that.
[00:07:20]  But also, the UAE now leaving OPEC, very likely.
[00:07:23]  I thought I saw an announcement, not sure, it's not confirmed yet, but I think they would be selling additional over 3 million barrels of oil per day.
[00:07:33]  They'd probably go to 4 or 5 million barrels, but they'd be willing to accept yuan for those barrels of oil, not the petrodollar.
[00:07:40]  Now, what I want to ask you, sir, and by the way, let me mention the website of the organization that you're part of here, the National Conversation.
[00:07:49]  Is home for the politically homeless, right?
[00:07:51]  So I want to encourage people to visit your site.
[00:07:53]  It's the national conversation.org, and you can click join right there.
[00:07:57]  You can join the email list or you can click donate if you want to support this organization, which has conversations and thoughts about how we have a true independent party.
[00:08:07]  I'll give you a chance to talk about that a little bit more.
[00:08:09]  So, pardon me for my extended question.
[00:08:12]  Pardon me.
[00:08:12]  But the protection of the petrodollar status has throughout history been provided by the projection of naval power.
[00:08:23]  And that is now the whole world is questioning US naval power projection.
[00:08:29]  Which is, I think, leading to countries saying, Why are we using the petrodollar?
[00:08:33]  Does that make sense?
[00:08:35]  Well, it's not just the Navy.
[00:08:37]  I think it's a fundamental paradigm shift in warfare.
[00:08:42]  I've written about this.
[00:08:43]  I wrote a book called Transformation Under Fire in 2003.
[00:08:48]  And I talked then about what I called the ISR or Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance slash or dash strike complex.
[00:08:58]  In other words, that we were reaching a point.
[00:09:00]  Where we could identify targets from space or even from the seabed, as well as just overhead, anywhere on the world.
[00:09:09]  And we could target that location or the ship or the train or the bus or the tank, whatever it is.
[00:09:18]  And we could target it with precision and deliver a warhead in a very short period of time.
[00:09:25]  Now, since 2003, we now have hypersonic missiles.
[00:09:29]  And the hypersonic missile that flies in excess of Mach 4, Mach 5, Thousands of miles per hour is unstoppable.
[00:09:38]  We can't develop a missile to shoot it down.
[00:09:41]  That is a fundamental change in warfare.
[00:09:44]  What that means is that surface fleets that are restricted in terms of their ability to move just by the water, I mean, you have to deal with how you plow through the water inside a ship.
[00:09:55]  You can only do so much with existing engineering and existing technology.
[00:10:01]  These vessels now, when they fall within range of those batteries ashore of various missiles, they're not going to survive.
[00:10:10]  And so, when you start talking about something like forward presence, which we have bet very heavily on, certainly since the end of the Second World War over the last 80 years, if you put someone forward in an area that can be reached by an opponent's missile batteries, that means that you're going to lose that ground presence or air presence or naval presence in the opening minutes of any conflict.
[00:10:34]  What it means is that no, we cannot go back into the Persian Gulf and promise everybody who lives there that we're going to be able to protect them.
[00:10:41]  We can't.
[00:10:42]  Technology has changed.
[00:10:44]  We now need to look at the structure of our armed forces and where we're putting our money and come to terms with the fact that this is kind of a supranational World War I style battlefield.
[00:10:56]  What do I mean by that?
[00:10:57]  It means that people are immobilized.
[00:11:00]  They can't move very far.
[00:11:01]  If they try to move, they'll be destroyed.
[00:11:04]  And so you end up with a World War I style stalemate.
[00:11:11]  This is not sinking in.
[00:11:12]  We have forces built for maneuver.
[00:11:14]  Everything is built for the offense.
[00:11:16]  And what we're seeing now, whether we like it or not, is that the strategic advantage lies with the defense on a level that we have not seen, certainly since 1916, 1917, 1918.
[00:11:29]  Yeah, this is why every time Trump says, well, we destroyed their Navy, we destroyed their Air Force, and I'm thinking that none of that even matters.
[00:11:36]  It doesn't.
[00:11:36]  That's right.
[00:11:37]  And Iran has demonstrated that you don't need much in the way of a Navy or an Air Force to defeat an attacking enemy.
[00:11:44]  Right.
[00:11:45]  Take notice because it's important and we got to stop wasting money on these giant capital ships.
[00:11:51]  They're just going to decorate the bottom of the ocean in the future.
[00:11:55]  Yeah, decorate the bottom of the ocean.
[00:11:56]  Did you see that China just unveiled a drone carrier?
[00:12:01]  Yeah, sure.
[00:12:01]  And I mean, we could build things.
[00:12:04]  Years ago, a man named Andy Krepanovich talked about an arsenal ship.
[00:12:09]  And it looked sort of like a monitor.
[00:12:10]  If you remember the monitor from the Civil War, it sat very low on the water.
[00:12:15]  It was almost a semi submersible for all intents and purposes.
[00:12:18]  And it was designed to launch missiles.
[00:12:20]  That was it.
[00:12:21]  That's what it did.
[00:12:22]  It showed up in some location at some time.
[00:12:25]  It was very difficult to track and find.
[00:12:28]  And it launched.
[00:12:29]  I think we're going to end up doing that sort of thing.
[00:12:31]  And I think you'll see something very much like drone carriers.
[00:12:35]  The point is that this old aircraft carrier battle group structure, that is the centerpiece of naval power, is ultimately going to change.
[00:12:43]  It's going to go away.
[00:12:44]  You're going to end up with other things.
[00:12:46]  But what I'm trying to get across, and this is something Americans have to understand, is that if you're not careful and you keep doing the things that we have done over the last 80 years with air and sea power, We're going to end up in one after another example of Pickett's Charge.
[00:13:06]  In other words, we're rushing headlong into disaster, and the frontal attack won't work.
[00:13:12]  So, if you're going to have to fight someone in the future, you're going to have to think very carefully about the advantages that the strategic defense confers on that opponent.
[00:13:22]  And it may simply be impossible in the future for us to rapidly reinforce or go anywhere and make any difference quickly.
[00:13:30]  That means that our military dependencies in places like Europe or the Persian Gulf or in Asia are going to have to defend themselves.
[00:13:38]  The good news is, Iran has demonstrated it could be done.
[00:13:43]  And it could be done very effectively at very low cost.
[00:13:47]  And look at the damage to the U.S. military bases in all the Persian Gulf nations, right?
[00:13:52]  And some of which had not been admitted.
[00:13:55]  Some of it's come out.
[00:13:56]  But it looks to me, clearly, there have been billions of dollars of damage.
[00:14:00]  Those bases are largely uninhabited now.
[00:14:03]  Many of them are probably uninhabitable forever at this point.
[00:14:09]  Yeah, I mean, if you're in the Persian Gulf today, what are your chances of stopping hundreds of unmanned systems or missiles from reaching you in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar or Kuwait or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia?
[00:14:24]  The answer is slim to none.
[00:14:26]  Right.
[00:14:28]  This is the other problem.
[00:14:29]  How many missiles does it take to shoot down an incoming missile?
[00:14:33]  And if you go to Raytheon or Northrop Grumman, Uh, any of these places, and you ask that question, they'll say, Well, normally you want to fire two, maybe three missiles at an incoming missile.
[00:14:43]  Well, you're going to go through your inventory of anti missile missiles very rapidly, yes, and that's been the problem.
[00:14:50]  And if you're sitting at sea, uh, you're going to have to reload.
[00:14:54]  How do you reload at sea?
[00:14:55]  Well, reloading at sea right now is not possible in many cases, you've got to go to a port that takes time away from your commitment to the force, and you may lose the port.
[00:15:07]  If they know where the ports are, why not destroy the ports?
[00:15:11]  It's not going to be very difficult.
[00:15:13]  Again, we live in a new world.
[00:15:16]  Now, we have to adapt to it.
[00:15:18]  And I think one of the things we absolutely must do is look at alternatives to the use of force.

=== Political Spending and Immigration Crises (07:30) ===

[00:15:24]  This business of bullying everyone in sight on the grounds, well, I have more explosive at my disposal than you do.
[00:15:31]  Well, that's not working out very well in Iran.
[00:15:34]  I don't think it's going to work out very well in the future almost anywhere.
[00:15:37]  We've got to get out of that business.
[00:15:39]  I don't think that's what we want to do for the future.
[00:15:41]  Yeah.
[00:15:42]  Well, well said.
[00:15:43]  Now, as the last question for you here today, I want to ask you about your organization, the National Conversation.
[00:15:50]  And why do you think this is the right time, or why is this critical for us to have this conversation?
[00:15:57]  And let me just give a little prelude.
[00:16:00]  Increasingly, former MAGA are very disappointed with Trump, and they feel like there's really just a uniparty system that it doesn't matter who you elect, you always get John McCain, right?
[00:16:11]  So, what's your take on your organization here, the national conversation?
[00:16:17]  I think people that are interested in an alternative to two choices are going to be attracted ultimately to the national conversation.
[00:16:25]  What we're trying to do is set up meetings across the country, assemble people from various regions, in various towns and cities in the country, let people express their views, bring in speakers that will talk to them.
[00:16:40]  But ultimately, we're really interested in hearing what Americans think.
[00:16:44]  One of my frustrations has been this sort of insoluble division, whatever you want to call it, or unbridgeable division between Democrats and Republicans.
[00:16:56]  I grew up with Democrats.
[00:16:57]  That's all I knew from the time I was a child until I was in my late teens.
[00:17:02]  Democrats were everywhere.
[00:17:03]  It was Philadelphia.
[00:17:04]  It was a one party city.
[00:17:06]  But the Democrats I grew up with were no less patriotic and no less committed to the country, no less hardworking, no less religious in many cases than the Republicans.
[00:17:18]  And I think there are a lot of Democrats out there who are equally frustrated.
[00:17:22]  And so one of the things we wanted to do is say, what do we build as an alternative?
[00:17:29]  What does this third movement, if we can get it off the ground, really look like?
[00:17:33]  It's been difficult.
[00:17:34]  And everybody that you talk to about this is, oh, forget it.
[00:17:37]  That'll never work.
[00:17:39]  Well, that's what they told the Republicans.
[00:17:41]  And it ultimately took abolition, the abolition of slavery, to make the Republican Party viable.
[00:17:48]  And that's how Lincoln was elected.
[00:17:49]  But until that happened, the Republicans were just an annoyance on the side of the road that nobody paid attention to.
[00:17:55]  So I think now we're going to have some real issues.
[00:17:58]  I think our economy is going to sink.
[00:18:00]  It's going to tank.
[00:18:02]  I think our financial system is going to buckle.
[00:18:04]  Why?
[00:18:05]  Because you can't outspend everyone in the world and produce nothing in response to the spending.
[00:18:12]  In other words, we've got to find a way to be productive.
[00:18:14]  We've got to build new ways forward.
[00:18:17]  We have to reinvigorate our agriculture.
[00:18:20]  We have to look at high end manufacturing.
[00:18:22]  We don't want to go back to making aspirin.
[00:18:24]  Everybody agrees with that.
[00:18:25]  But you do want to build things that the rest of the world needs.
[00:18:29]  I think we can do those things, but nobody's given it much thought lately.
[00:18:33]  And we continue, thanks to a Congress that's very complacent, to just send money where we always have.
[00:18:39]  You know, send it down the same rat hole, put it in the same program.
[00:18:42]  Well, I think we're going to reach a point where we don't have the money to spend that way.
[00:18:46]  And I think in defense, for instance, it's going to have to be cut way back.
[00:18:50]  I don't think you're ever going to see this $1.5 trillion, which on closer inspection looks like more than $2 trillion.
[00:18:57]  We just can't afford it.
[00:18:58]  It won't work.
[00:18:59]  So when you can't spend recklessly, what do you do?
[00:19:03]  You've got to think carefully and move in new directions.
[00:19:06]  I think the whole country is going to go down that road in the future.
[00:19:10]  But we're going to need new leadership because if you think anybody in Washington today is capable of doing this, with one or two exceptions, I'd tell you you're absolutely crazy.
[00:19:19]  They are addicted to spending.
[00:19:21]  If you go to the Hill and you say, What do you do? they'll tell you, Well, we spend.
[00:19:25]  That's our job.
[00:19:26]  Really?
[00:19:28]  Has it your job not to spend?
[00:19:29]  Oh, no, no.
[00:19:29]  If we don't spend, how can we survive?
[00:19:32]  Remember, they're dependent upon donations.
[00:19:35]  From big spending billionaires and others to stay in office.
[00:19:38]  And they're worried about their districts and states, and they don't care where the money goes as long as some of it goes down into the district or the state.
[00:19:46]  I think those days are coming to an end.
[00:19:49]  Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
[00:19:50]  And especially as the suffering kicks in, you know, the suffering that's already on the way because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which still has not been resolved, the suffering of the American people with food inflation and fuel prices increasing, higher prices of transportation, supply chain disruptions from lack of helium, which affects microchip manufacturing, all those things.
[00:20:12]  I think the suffering is going to be.
[00:20:14]  Before we leave it, there's an area that's going to become, I think, a serious point of contention inside the United States, a real catalyst for conflict.
[00:20:23]  And that's immigration.
[00:20:25]  Uncontrolled legal immigration.
[00:20:28]  And I say uncontrolled because it really is.
[00:20:30]  And then, secondly, illegal immigration.
[00:20:33]  We have an estimated 50 million people inside the United States today who were not born here.
[00:20:39]  Now, that's not the end of the world, but that's a huge, huge portion of the population, greater percentage wise than anything in our history.
[00:20:49]  And the thing that we have to keep in mind is that most of these people, not all of them, but most of them, especially those who are illegal, They didn't come here to become Americans.
[00:20:57]  That's not what they're interested in.
[00:20:58]  They've come here because they want a better standard of living.
[00:21:01]  Well, I certainly understand that because they want to get something.
[00:21:05]  And they've learned that if they come here, they can ultimately get things for nothing, things that our own citizens don't have access to.
[00:21:14]  Now, when this economy tanks and we go from this condition of abundance to a condition of scarcity, which is really what we're doing right now, that's the big transition.
[00:21:25]  When things get scarce, Americans are going to say, wait a minute, who is this person?
[00:21:29]  Where did this person come from?
[00:21:31]  Why is he or she getting all these things?
[00:21:33]  They're not citizens.
[00:21:34]  They're not even Americans.
[00:21:36]  It's going to get ugly.
[00:21:38]  Now, we don't normally bring this up, but after 1929, under Herbert Hoover, until he left office and was replaced by FDR, he deported 9 million Mexicans.
[00:21:50]  Not because he disliked Mexicans, because he said, I've got to get these people out of there because they're holding jobs that Americans are going to need.
[00:21:57]  Franklin Roosevelt deported another 3.5 million.
[00:22:01]  And then ultimately, Truman about 2.1 million.
[00:22:05]  Eisenhower, before he left office, 1.2, 1.3 million.
[00:22:08]  It was called Operation Wet Pack.
[00:22:10]  Now, why did we do this?
[00:22:11]  Because we didn't like Mexicans?
[00:22:13]  No, because we were opening up employment for others.
[00:22:17]  And if we look at the employment statistics, most of the people that are getting jobs are non Americans.
[00:22:24]  That doesn't work.
[00:22:26]  That cannot work.
[00:22:27]  Somebody needs to stand up and say until every American who can work has a job, nobody gets in.
[00:22:34]  By the way, that's the law in Austria.
[00:22:37]  That's increasingly the law that's showing up on the books in Scandinavia.
[00:22:40]  Wait a minute.
[00:22:41]  Tell everybody who's really a Dane and really an Austrian, or in my judgment, really an American, has a job if they can do it and they're able.
[00:22:51]  Well, then, damn it, nobody else gets in.

=== Jobs First: The Austrian Model (01:03) ===

[00:22:54]  All right.
[00:22:55]  The website, folks, for you to check out is thenationalconversation.org.
[00:23:01]  And that is going to be, I think, a force to reckon with here in terms of the debates and the philosophical discussion of where we're going.
[00:23:08]  Colonel, thank you so much for your time today.
[00:23:10]  It's always an honor to speak with you.
[00:23:12]  Hey, thank you so much for inviting me.
[00:23:13]  Absolutely.
[00:23:15]  All right, God bless you.
[00:23:16]  Be well.
[00:23:18]  All right, that was Colonel Douglas McGregor there, folks.
[00:23:20]  Hope you enjoyed this.
[00:23:21]  And of course, if you missed part one of this interview where we talk about the actual details of the war in the Middle East, you can also find that at brightvideos.com.
[00:23:30]  I'm Mike Adams, and thank you for watching today.
[00:23:33]  God bless you all.
[00:23:33]  God bless America.
[00:23:35]  We want our country back.
[00:23:36]  All of us do.
[00:23:37]  You watching as well.
[00:23:39]  I think Colonel Douglas McGregor is on the right track here.
[00:23:42]  So thanks for watching.
[00:23:43]  Take care.
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[00:23:49]  It's made with three types of silver, seven powerful essential oils, and lab tested for glyphosate, heavy metals, and microbiology.
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