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April 2, 2025 - MyronGainesX
02:12:54
Scott Ritter Analyzes Russia Ukraine War And Liberation Day Tariffs!
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Time Text
All right, we are live.
What's up, guys?
Welcome to the stream, man.
I got a special guest in the house, Scott Ritter.
We are short on time, guys, so we're going to get like right into it.
Scott, what's up, man?
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Thanks.
Yourself?
Good, good, good.
I think we're live on all the platforms.
Let me just double check here.
Yep, we are live.
Guys, give me ones in the chat if you guys can all hear me.
If you guys can hear me, it's got well.
Give me ones.
Give me ones, chat.
Let's see.
All right, nice.
Thank you here.
So, yeah, guys, so Scott's unlimited time.
So, you know, no Kanye intros yet.
We're going to get right into it.
So, Scott, for those that don't know who you are, can you please introduce yourself to the audience?
I'm a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, and I have experience in arms control.
I did, you know, arms control in the former Soviet Union, and spent seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq, disarming Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Was a critic of U.S. policy and continue to be critical of U.S. policy where it needs to be criticized.
I'm a loyal American, patriotic American who believes that it is our duty to call out the wrongdoing of government because at the end of the day, the government works for us and we must hold them accountable.
I remember our first interview we had, and it was really one of my favorite interviews because I learned so much about the Iraq war because you were there like right on the front lines.
Can you talk a little bit about that experience in the weapons of mass destruction and all that stuff?
Because you're in a very unique position when it came to that conflict.
Well, as I said, I'd spent two and a half years in the former Soviet Union basically writing the book on on-site inspection, implementing the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Prior to that, there had never been on-site inspection, which is humans on the ground doing the compliance verification in accordance with the mandate given to them by the treaty.
I carried that experience into the Gulf War, where people assumed wrongly that because I was a weapons inspector in Vlad Kensen, I was somehow a Scud missile expert.
I'm a Marine.
I'm not really an expert on rockets.
I'm not a rocket scientist.
But I got caught up in the counter-Scud campaign.
And I learned or I figured out early on that we knew that Iraq had 19 mobile launchers.
And by week two, we had killed 66 of them.
And there's a problem because even though I'm a Marine, the math doesn't quite work out.
We're killing something that isn't SCUD, and the Iraqis keep launching.
So I dove in headfirst and I got to work with Special Operations Forces, Navy SEALs, Delta Force, SAS.
I worked with the Air Force to try and target these things.
And at the end of the war, we won that war.
We liberated Kuwait, but the missile war we lost.
It's a reality.
The Iraqis didn't suffer a single launcher casualty, despite the fact that we diverted 40% of the aerial sorties that we flew during the Gulf War.
We put two squadrons of Delta Force on the ground, two squadrons of SAS on the ground.
They didn't kill a single thing.
And that experience, you know, I carried that out and I was invited back.
I was invited to the United Nations because of the combination of my weapons inspection experience and the Scud hunt to help them hunt down Iraqi Scuds.
I was asked to create an intelligence organization within the United Nations to try and account for Iraq's scud missiles.
And I ended up doing that job for seven years.
Fantastic, man.
And I remember you were the first person, because I remember asking this question, why did we go to war in Iraq?
And, you know, you bluntly said we went to war for Israel.
And this was before October 7th.
And man, you know, that comment that you made resonated with me so strongly because I was like, holy crap, our whole Middle Eastern foreign policy is literally run by Israel.
And, you know, this was, what, I think maybe a year into the Ukraine war because it was a few years ago.
But I guess we could start with the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
It's been a minute since we've spoken about it.
I don't think I've spoken to you about it since Trump took office.
Can you kind of give us an overall bird's eye view of what's going on and what you predict is going to happen next?
Well, you might recall when we talked last time.
Yes, I was sitting on several death lists because of what I was saying.
The Ukrainians have put me on three death lists.
And I've been to Russia twice where the Ukrainians have actually tried to kill me.
They don't like what I'm saying.
They accused me of falsehoods.
I called this conflict a proxy war, you know, that Ukraine was just a proxy between NATO, the United States, and Russia.
I said that this was a war that was based upon NATO expansion, that this was a war started by Ukraine.
And people were calling me a Russian propagandist, a stooge for Putin, etc.
Well, gosh, let's see.
Trump has come into office and the politicized Biden administration is no more.
And we now have truths.
The Trump administration says this is a proxy war between the United States and Ukraine.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said this.
It's the truth.
Ukraine is just a proxy.
This is a war between the United States and Russia.
Trump has acknowledged that this is all about NATO expansion, that the expansion of NATO created this.
And Trump has said that if he were Vladimir Putin, he'd be doing the same thing because Ukraine is at fault.
This is the reality that we have to deal with here, that no longer are we playing the games, pretending that we aren't doing what we want.
The New York Times has just published a very long piece that details how the United States was managing this conflict, the true nature of this proxy conflict, how American generals are making decisions on behalf of Ukrainian military action, doing the planning, providing the intelligence, providing the weapons that were used to kill Russians.
I was saying this early on, and again, that when I was saying, I was called a Russian stooge, a shill for Putin.
It's the truth.
And the truth is today that this is a war that was thrust upon Russia, and Russia has responded, and Russia is winning.
I don't think there's anybody that disputes this.
There was a time if I said Russia was winning the war, again, I would be called a Russian propagandist.
But everybody acknowledges now that Russia is winning because it's the truth.
Russia has the military advantage.
By some estimates, they've killed between 700,000 and 1.1 million Ukrainian soldiers.
That's a huge number.
By the way, I just want to remind people that in the fatality of the Second World War, we lost 300,000 men on both theaters.
And here, this conflict, just Ukraine, 700,000 to 1.1 million dead.
And if this war continues, they will probably lose upwards of 200,000 to 500,000 more dead.
Russia is waging a war of attrition.
Their goal isn't to drive big red arrows deep into a Ukrainian map.
Their goal is to kill Ukrainians.
And they're doing a very good job of this.
Russia is suffering casualties as well.
This is high-intensity conflict.
This is the kind of war that the United States should have been preparing for, but instead we spent 20 years in low-intensity conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No one is prepared to fight the war that's being fought in Ukraine today.
NATO's not prepared.
The United States is not prepared.
And Russia is going to get what it wants.
Russia has said that the goals and objectives here are to make sure that Ukraine never is a member of NATO, that Ukraine is demilitarized.
That means that all of the NATO investment in Ukraine will be annulled.
Ukraine will see their military reduced to about 50,000 men.
Denazification means that these right-wing ultra-nationalist political movements in Ukraine will be eradicated.
And eradicated means killed, arrested, or driven out of the country.
This isn't a game.
And the other thing the Russians have said is because Ukraine opted out of a peace deal that Russia was ready to implement in April of 2022, that it's now lost territory.
Not only will Ukraine never get Crimea back, but Russia has run referendum in four additional provinces, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Lugansk.
And these are now constitutionally part of Russia and will forever be part of Russia.
Now, the choice the United States has is, do we recognize the inevitability of the Russian victory and seek to shortcut to the end game, giving Russia what it has won on the battlefield without causing Ukraine to suffer additional hundreds of thousands of dead?
Or do we put unrealistic requirements on Russia where Russia will turn this down and the war will grind on for another year, year and a half, until all the Ukrainians are dead.
Either way, Russia wins this war.
There's nothing the United States could do, nothing NATO could do to stop a Russian victory.
So you said 700,000 to 1.1 million dead for Ukraine, which, you know, obviously they've been trying to keep these numbers close to their chest for years.
Do we know how many Russians have died in this conflict?
The Russians are very reticent about this as well.
But, you know, I've been looking at this and, you know, first of all, counting Russian dead is tricky because there's different categories.
The Ministry of Defense, I believe, will show that Russia has lost around 100,000 dead.
But on top of that, you'll have Wagner, which was a private military contractor in the first part of the war, and they probably suffered another 20 to 30,000 dead.
And then you have different volunteer units and other non-Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior units, and they may have suffered another 10, 15,000 dead.
So, you know, Russia has probably suffered in the area of 140 to 150,000 dead in this fight.
That's a huge number, a huge number.
But again, it's reflective of the reality that what's going on in Ukraine today is high-intensity conflict.
This is the kind of war that nobody in the West is prepared to fight.
You know, we have a history of going into Iraq and Afghanistan and we get in a firefight and we lose two guys here, three guys there, five guys there, and it's a national tragedy.
We have people coming home on aircraft, flags, ceremonies, et cetera.
We are talking a situation where Ukraine could be losing upwards of 1,000 men a day.
Wow.
The Russians could be losing upwards of 200 men a day on a bad day.
The death and destruction is unimaginable.
And it gets to the point where we're just throwing out numbers and the numbers are so big people can't imagine it.
But you step onto this battlefield, you're stepping into a dead zone.
People are dying on both sides.
This is not a walk in the park.
Literally, I mean, some of the Russian forces, as they close in on the battlefield, have to crawl a kilometer and a half to get to their positions because of the drones flying overhead.
You know, this is a drone war.
Nobody is prepared for this kind of conflict, you know, where if you move, a drone spots you and another drone comes in to kill you.
This is literally something out of a science fiction movie.
So, you know, but this is a very bloody war, a very dangerous fight, but it's one that Russia is winning.
You know, and I know, I remember it's crazy because you're vindicated years later.
I remember, you know, when this war first popped off, I was listening to guys like you, Gonzalo Lira, rest in peace.
You know, they killed him.
Ukraine literally killed him.
Jackson Nichol, et cetera, because you guys were some of the few people that were talking about what was really going on.
And now that Trump's taking office, he's vindicated you guys.
He's been saying what Biden's administration and media was scared to say.
Yeah, Ukraine's losing the war.
We can't win this thing.
We need to go ahead and end it.
Obviously, the media gave us a, I guess, their sanitized version of what was going on in this conflict.
What would you say are the top, and for this, for my audience, I might not be as geopolitically inclined.
What would you say were the top two or three things that led to this conflict with Russia and Ukraine?
Well, the first thing is NATO expansion.
That's the big one.
And it's, you know, NATO has been NATO expansion has been an issue since the end of the Soviet Union.
People might not realize it, but the United States and Europe and NATO nations gave the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, assurances that they would not be expanding NATO in the aftermath of the collapse of a Warsaw Pact.
Not one inch eastward was a statement made by James Baker and German politicians.
And yet immediately we began plotting to expand NATO eastward.
And we continued until we came up to Ukraine.
And the Russians said, this is existential.
You can't go into Ukraine.
This is the red line.
In 2008, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Burns, wrote a memorandum, which has gone down in history as the net means nyet, no means no memorandum, where he said the Russians have drawn a red line.
And if we seek to move to expand NATO and Ukraine, there will become a war.
And Russia will go to war for this.
And Ukraine will probably lose the Crimea and the Donbass.
Well, gosh, he said that in 2008, and that's exactly what's happened and more.
Russia isn't playing around here.
This is about their existential survival.
The next thing I would say is that this is about the strategic defeat of Russia.
I mean, the whole purpose of NATO expansion into Ukraine was to create the conditions where through economic sanctions, isolation, and military defeat of Russia, the conditions would be created for the political fall of Vladimir Putin.
This has been about getting rid of Vladimir Putin.
That's been number one on America and Europe's wish list since Putin came into power.
And so there was a real belief in the part of Europe and the United States that through this proxy war in Ukraine, conditions could be created inside Russia that would lead to the collapse of the Putin regime.
Of course, that's not what happened.
The Russians have actually flipped the script, and it's the European economy that's collapsing.
It's NATO and the United States that have been military devastated by this.
Vladimir Putin is stronger than ever.
In an election that took place a year ago, Vladimir Putin won a huge mandate from the Russian people.
We're talking about 76% of them participating in the election.
We don't get those numbers in America.
And of those 76%, over 80% said, we're with Putin.
Putin won his first election back in 2000 with around 52 to 53% of the vote.
And his victories in the Russian presidential election have been in the high 50s, low 60s.
Here we are in the middle of a war that the United States and Europe wanted to turn into a political disaster for Putin.
And instead, he's flipped the script.
He's more popular than ever.
80% approval rating on the part of the people who voted in this election.
And Russia's stronger than ever.
Their economy is booming.
I've been to Russia a couple of times since the war started, and I can tell you that the Russian economy has adapted very well.
They're pretty much sanction-proofed.
Tucker Carlson said the same thing.
For anybody that might say that, oh, Scott's a Russian agent, Tucker Carlson said the same exact thing when he went to go interview Putin.
Yeah, I mean, it's obvious.
I would be willing to bet.
I mean, if people are honest, there's always people who.
Jackson Hinkle told me that it's great.
He told me that it's a bunch of lies when they say that Russia's poor and they don't have, you know, the sanctions are hurting them.
You give me five of those people.
Let's buy them tickets to Moscow and let them go to Moscow.
And I can guarantee you, if they're honest people, they'll come out saying, we were wrong.
Yeah.
Totally about Russia, about everything.
Because it's the propaganda that we have here in the United States.
And the third thing is Ukrainian nationalism.
And what I mean by that is the extreme ultra-nationalism that has embraced the ideology of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists B for Bandera, Step On Bandera, this Nazi who fought on the side of Adolf Hitler, who slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Poles, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.
This murderer is a hero to the Ukrainian people.
They've elevated him to a national hero.
They sing songs to him.
They parade his portrait around as if he's George Washington.
These people literally trained from childhood to hate Russians.
And this contributes to this, because when they carried out the Maidan coup, they call it a revolution, a coup, you know, one man's freedom fighters, another man terrorists.
But, you know, whatever they call it, these people hijacked the Ukrainian political system at that point in time and began a campaign of suppression and oppression against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.
That's why we have this war.
We have this war because Ukraine lost Crimea because they sent a train of these right-wing Nazis to Crimea to seize control.
And the Russian population of Crimea rose up and said no.
And then the Russian government stepped in and said, we'll protect you.
Then they moved into Mariupol, the place where a huge battle in 2022.
But the rape of Mariupol isn't what, you know, the Ukrainian story of the rape of Mariupol is the Russians coming in to capture the city.
That's the liberation of Mariupol.
The rape of Mariupol took place in 2014 when these neo-Nazis took over the city, murdering Russian speakers, raping the Russian women, driving the Russians out of the city, occupying the city.
And they named themselves the Azov Battalion, Azov being the Azov C. And they set their base up in Mariupol to say, We, the Nazis, are in control.
They are literal Nazis in control of the city.
The Russians liberated Mariupol from those Nazis, but these Nazis are still in power.
And it's one of the big problems we face.
This is why when Russia talks about, you know, its objectives in this war, Russia keeps saying denazification.
And in the West, we sort of roll our eyes and go, ah, it's just Russian exaggeration.
No, it isn't.
Ukraine is governed by Nazis.
Everything that happens in Ukraine is dictated to them by Nazis.
They may be a minority in terms of the overall numbers, but they use violence.
These are people that have told President Zelensky to his face that if you do something that we oppose, we will hang you by the neck on the main thoroughfare, which is named Stepan Bandera Avenue.
We will hang you by the neck.
Now, normally, if you threaten the president, a sitting president of a country, bad things happen to you, not to the Nazis, because they're in control.
They're dictating everything.
Wow.
Why does Western media, because I've noticed this, right?
When people like you or Jackson Enkel or Tucker Carlson, you guys have all been to Russia, and it's literally the opposite of what the media says.
Why do they demonize Putin and Russia so much in Western media?
It's crazy.
Well, one of the big problems is that, you know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we created this new industry that was about exploiting Russia.
How can we go to Russia, keep the boot on Russia's neck, and take as much resources out of Russia, which is a resource-rich nation?
How can we rape Russia economically to our benefit?
And we did this for a decade, the decade of the 1990s.
Americans don't understand.
It made the Great Depression in the United States look like a Hawaiian vacation.
Okay.
Millions of Russians lost their lives through a variety of alcoholism, starvation, disease, murder.
I mean, one of the big things that happened in the 1990s is that criminal gangs would prey on the survivors of World War II who were pensioners.
The government had forgotten about them and they were alone in their apartments.
And these gangs would come in, take them out to the edge of the city, kill them, and then bribe the police to file an abandoned property report, take control of the property, and then resell it and making money.
I mean, this happened throughout Russia.
Millions of Russians were murdered in this way.
You had people committing suicide because one minute they were part of the Soviet Union.
They had a job.
They had a profession.
The next minute they're abandoned, unemployed.
Nobody's taking care of them.
And so they're killing their families and they're jumping out of buildings.
This was a devastating period for Russia.
And in the New Year's 1999, of the president that the United States hand-picked to do this, you know, we keep talking about Russian interfering in American elections.
We interfered in Russia's elections.
We kept Boris Yeltsin in there.
We stole an election in 1996 and we kept him in power.
Because we wanted to keep Russia down and we wanted Russia to collapse.
He turned the reins over to this relatively unknown individual named Vladimir Putin.
And Putin basically said, I'm going to lift Russia up.
I'm going to take Russia down from where they are.
I'm going to bring it back up on its feet.
I'm going to get the Russians to believe in Russia again, which is what a patriot does.
I mean, if we had an American that was doing this in the United States, we'd call him the greatest patriot in the world.
For sure.
Vladimir Putin is the greatest Russian patriot there has ever been.
I mean, I'm sure there's people who say, you know, maybe Peter the Great or Catherine the Great or Guthrie.
But for 25 years now, this man has been rebuilding Russia and has made Russia a place where Russians are proud to be Russians.
Russians used to in the 1990s, they abandoned being Russian and they were looking to the West.
They abandoned their culture, their heritage, everything.
And they looked to the West for salvation, but the West wasn't there to help them.
You know, sometimes when you're sheep, you look at your shepherd and you say, the shepherd's here to protect me.
No, the shepherd's simply here to take you to the slaughterhouse.
And the American shepherd was taking Russia to the slaughterhouse.
And Vladimir Putin came in and changed all that.
Today, Russians are extraordinarily proud of being Russian.
They have everything to be proud of.
It's a wonderful country, wonderful people, wonderful heritage.
And fifth-strongest economy, right?
I would say fifth strongest economy in the world at this point?
Fourth.
Fourth, despite the sanctions.
They just bypassed.
Now, that's if we use what's called PPP, which is purchasing power parity.
It's a different calculation, but basically, you know, in the United States, our GDP is very big, and there's another nation with very big GDPs.
But what can you buy for that GDP?
Gotcha.
And so when you make the adjustment for purchasing power parity, the Russian economy becomes number four in the world.
This is despite all of the sanctions that we placed on it.
Yeah.
But Putin, you know, his continued survival is an embarrassment to the United States and Europe who want him to go away so they can replace him with somebody who will be more like Boris Yeltsin to allow the West to dominate Russia, to control Russia.
This is why they hate Vladimir Putin.
You know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that Russia is the perfect democracy.
How can it be when the CIA has subverted any notion of political opposition?
When Vladimir Putin first came into office, he said, I want an opposition.
I want a healthy discussion and dialogue.
I want people to be asking questions, holding me accountable.
But those are Russians who believe in Russia and are asking questions for the benefit of Russia.
What happened is the CIA came in and started putting their own people, you know, Nimtsov, Novalny, Gary Kasparov, the chess player.
He's a CIA-paid asset.
All of these people were there perverting democracy, basically using democracy as a leverage not to strengthen Russia, but to tear Russia down, to bring Putin down.
And as a result, Russia has been denied the opportunity to build viable political opposition parties.
Today, Russia is pretty much a one-party nation, United Russia, Vladimir Putin's party.
Yes, there's a Communist Party that's strong.
There's some other parties, but it's never had the opportunity to build a viable political opposition, not because Putin suppresses everything, but because the CIA has corrupted everything.
And this is what we have to keep in mind when we speak of even Trump trying to improve relations.
Until the CIA is given an order to cease and desist on its several decades-long mission of bringing down Russia, how could Russia ever trust the United States?
Because while Trump may be saying we want to be friends, the CIA is doing something completely different.
That's exactly where we stand with Iran as well, where they don't trust us trying to do a nuclear deal.
Let me ask you this then, Scott, with Russia.
Obviously, we've seen a night and day difference between the Trump administration dealing with Russia versus the Biden administration, right?
Biden didn't talk to him for years.
The Trump administration has had multiple talks.
They're meeting on neutral grounds, trying to make something happen to get some kind of peace.
Where do we stand right now at this particular moment when it comes to negotiations?
And then what do you predict is going to happen?
Well, the problem with negotiations is that Trump came in this with very unrealistic expectations that were driven by the advice given to him by Keith Kellogg, a retired Army Lieutenant General.
Keith Kellogg, with all due respect to his heroism, I'm not denigrating his military, that he knows nothing of Russia.
He's not a Russian area specialist.
He's a pure propagandist.
And the advice he was giving the president was literally written by Ukrainian propagandists and Biden administration, Russophobes.
Gotcha.
And Trump bought into this.
Now, at some point in time, Trump got some good information.
And I still don't know the source of that.
But suddenly he became very realistic about what was going on and what was needed.
so when he sent Steve Wyckoff his special envoy to Moscow to free the American prisoner but also to talk to Putin so I didn't know that Wyckoff is also so Wyckoff is not He's also doing Russia as well.
He's doing Russia for the moment.
He doesn't plan on being the long-term guy, but he's the guy who opened the door in Russia.
He went over there and opened it because Trump trusts him.
And Scott, you're 100% right, because I remember Trump campaign saying, I can get this war done.
You know, obviously he's sensationalizing it on day one.
I'm going to, we're going to have a demilitarized zone.
We're going to let Russia have what they have and then we're going to take the sanctions off.
And they were very confident that they'd be able to end the war off that, but it didn't work.
No, because Russia told them the truth, which is we're winning this war.
We're going to win this war.
We're going to achieve what we want to achieve.
If you want to help us achieve this, we'll be more than happy to have a ceasefire, bring it into the killing.
But we're not freezing this war.
When the ceasefire happens, the Ukrainians have to leave our territory.
They have to shrink their military and they have to get rid of, replace their government.
If that doesn't happen, we're not doing this.
So just so I'm clear, just because again, this never gets put out on Western media.
So the requirements are Ukrainian military small becomes smaller.
They keep what they've taken already, which is most of eastern Ukraine, if I'm not mistaken, right?
And then it's not just keep what they've taken, keep what the referendum gets them.
Right now, there is, you know, Ukraine's holding on to a certain percentage of Kherson and Zaporizhia and even Donetsk.
What the Russians won't tolerate is a freezing of the battlefield where Ukraine gets to keep those.
Russia's saying do you have a map by chance, Scott, so I can show this to the audience?
Do you have a map by chance?
Do I have a map?
A map that shows this.
I don't have one on me.
Okay.
I can try to find a Google one on the side if you.
But sorry, keep going.
My bad.
But the point is, the Russians are saying, we're taking this land.
It's our land.
You can leave voluntarily and live, or you can sit here and try and resist us and die.
But either way, we're not stopping until this is all of ours.
And they told that to the United States.
Trump somehow believes that he can put pressure on Putin to get Putin to back away from this stuff.
There's no pressure you can put on Putin.
And that's the thing that Trump doesn't understand.
So the negotiations have actually stalled right now.
And what Trump is going to find out is that the Russians don't care.
You know, I think he believes that Putin's looking at the American intervention with relief, saying, oh, my God, you've saved us from ourselves.
No, Putin was trying to say, look, we'd love to have good relations with the United States.
And if you can, you know, make this conflict reach its endgame status sooner with fewer casualties, we're all on board.
But we're not going to yield to you the things that we have sacrificed so much.
You don't lose 150,000 men in combat just to give up at the negotiating table when you hold all the cards.
Trump holds no cards.
Right.
So if you look at this map, you see the area in red, that's where the Russians are controlling.
But if you'll notice, for instance, if you go up, see where Bakhmut is.
Okay.
Oh, you can't see it on the line there.
And that line connects up to the top in the red and then goes down around Pokrovsk.
That's Donetsk Republic that continues to be occupied by Ukraine.
And Zaporizhia, and there, that's part of Zaporizhia that's occupied by Ukraine.
And then across at the bottom of the screen, that's the right bank of the Dnieper River, and that's Kherson.
And that's occupied by Ukraine.
All of this territory belongs to Russia.
Russia's held referendum, and they say that this belongs to us.
And they're not going to yield on that.
And if Ukraine doesn't surrender it peacefully, then the Russians will kill them all.
And that's the way this war is going.
It's a huge meat grinder.
Russia, like I said, isn't doing big arrow advances.
Their job is to put the Ukrainians in untenable situations and then the Ukrainians die.
And the Russians are very effective at killing the Ukrainians.
And that's where this war stands.
But they're not going to give that up.
They're not going to let Ukraine.
Remember, I just want to remind your audience that from 2015 to 2022, the United States and NATO rebuilt the Ukrainian army for the sole purpose of attacking the Russians in Crimea and the Donbass.
It was a NATO-style army designed to go to war against the Russians.
The Russians have said that kind of army can't stand.
So Russia will demand that the army be shrunk.
And, you know, people say, well, I mean, I had this conversation earlier.
So, you know, the person said, well, Ukraine's a sovereign state.
Now, with all due respect, Ukraine's a nation that got their ass kicked.
They lost the war.
Can you call Nazi Germany a sovereign state after we won that war after Russia occupied Berlin after we occupied half the country?
No, it's a defeated nation.
There's no sovereignty there.
Japan, no sovereignty.
We won.
And I'm sorry, Ukraine, you lost.
You can lose the easy way, which is to accept your defeat and yield gracefully, or Russia is going to grind you down and kill you all.
But either way, there is no Ukrainian sovereignty that's going to be retained.
And this is what the United States doesn't understand.
Trump is under the belief that there's going to be a Ukrainian government and Zelensky is going to be at the head of that government.
That is not going to happen.
The government that exists in Ukraine today will be removed, just like the Nazis were removed, just like the Imperial Japanese government was removed.
It will be replaced by a government picked by Russia, just like we replaced the government in Germany with a government picked by us.
We replaced the government in Japan with a government picked by us.
To the victor goes the spoils.
And Russia is winning this war and will win this war, and they get to dictate the outcome.
Trump doesn't understand that.
And so these peace talks are not going very well.
I did not know that a contingency was at Zelensky needs to step down.
I didn't know that.
So that's basically a non-negotiable for Russia.
He's got to go.
Well, Russia doesn't even view him as a legitimate president.
Russia says, and they have an argument, although I get in trouble in Russia when I say Russia doesn't have a right to interpret Ukrainian constitution for the Ukrainians.
But the point is, Zelensky's presidency expired.
He hasn't held elections, which he's constitutionally mandated to do.
And so legally speaking, the true leader of Ukraine is the speaker of the parliament, the Rada.
And so Russia says we won't sit at the table with this man because anything he signs doesn't carry the rule of the power of law.
He's not the legitimate leader of Ukraine.
Now, the United States, I guess, believes that this is a facade.
The Russians are bluffing.
The Russians don't bluff.
When the Russians commit to something, they generally have a reason to commit to it, and they're not going to back away from that, especially if they're winning.
I mean, it'd be one thing if the Russians were on their back heels, losing, taking casualties, uncertain of their ability to regain the strategic initiative, then we might have some leverage.
But that's not the case.
The Russians are winning up and down and all around.
Let me ask you this guy.
Let's say that you became the special envoy to Russia relations and you would take, I guess, Steve Woodkov's temporary position here.
What would you advise Trump to do to get this thing done specifically?
Well, the first thing I'd ask Trump is, what is his strategic objective?
What is your end game?
And I mean, for instance, are we looking to continue the policy of strategic defeat?
Because that means that what we're doing is a lie.
What we're doing is creating a facade under which we have a poison pill designed to bring Russia down.
I need to know what his strategic objectives are.
Does he want a genuine restoration of good relations?
Or does he want to fake it to continue the policy of bringing down Russia?
These are important things that I would need to know as the negotiator.
And then I would say if you're serious about peace, et cetera, then I need to also understand before I go in, what is your end game about NATO?
What are you going to do about Europe?
Because Europe is deeply impacted by this.
And so he would have to clarify things.
And then hopefully what he would say is that-Let's say peace and restore,'cause Trump is a businessman.
Let's say peace and restore economic reciprocation, us working together economically.
Then I would tell them that you need to go to NATO and tell them to cease and desist all this nonsense, that if they continue to hold these meetings, they become the enemies of the United States of America, because what they're doing is talking about continuing a war that could go nuclear, and the United States is not in the business of going to nuclear war with Russia.
And I would tell Macron and Kirstarmer to their face, you are threatening us with existential destruction.
You become the enemy if you continue this policy.
Do you want to be the enemy of the United States?
That's your fundamental question.
And if the answer is yes, we will be the worst enemy you've ever had.
If you want to be our friend, then work with us to bring an end to this conflict.
Oh, by the way, Ukraine no longer exists as you know it.
We're going to yield to the Russians and work with the Russians to create a stable Ukraine, one that is not conducive to resurrecting this conflict down the road because everything Europe is doing, everything Ukraine is doing is designed to create a temporary peace so that at some point down the road, when Ukraine is able to rebuild its military, its economy, and Europe can supply them with weapons, they're going to do it all over again.
And Russia says, we're not doing that.
We didn't lose 150,000 men just to let this war happen again.
This war ends now.
Gotcha.
That's right.
Donald Trump.
This war ends now, and there can only be one victor.
There can't be two victors.
One victor, and that victor is Russia.
Now, if you facilitate Russia's victory, which you're going to get no matter what, what you can get is tremendous economic gain, twofold.
One, we can get in the business of investments, et cetera.
There's $300, $400, $500 billion worth of business that can happen overnight inside Russia.
That's big business.
Two, we can create a new European security framework that doesn't trap us into a permanent state of conflict with Russia.
We can de-emphasize our role in NATO, transfer responsibility of European defense to the Europeans, and at the same time, lower the threshold of conflict between Europe and Russia to create the possibilities of peace.
And then, you know, this kind of stability has its own benefit because when you're spending money on weapons and investment in war, your economy does not do well.
Defense industry does well, but your economy is not doing well.
But if you have stability where you're able to focus on sound business decisions, then the overall economic health of the United States, Russia, and Europe improves dramatically.
And if Donald Trump is a businessman, the thing I would say is war is bad business, and we need to bring this war to an end.
But all wars need a victor.
And with all due respect, Mr. President, the United States has lost this war.
You yourself acknowledge that it's a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
We lost.
So why don't we just mitigate the consequences of this defeat and turn it into an economic victory?
You can walk away and say, I didn't lose this war.
Biden lost this war.
I'm the one that brought this war to an end so that you don't suffer political embarrassment.
But the bottom line is all of the objectives the United States had going into this conflict, none of them will be met.
And they're not going to be met.
There's no chance of meeting them.
So that's why you could seal the deal instantly.
That's a very interesting angle.
I never thought of it that way, where the reason why Russia is so reluctant to come to an agreement is because in their eyes, you know, what Europe's looking for is a temporary ceasefire so that they can rearm and re-strengthen versus actually end things versus we basically need damn near the disbandment of NATO for this to work.
Yeah, look, if you and I, I'll put an analogy out here.
Sure.
You and I are in a 12-round boxing match.
All right.
And you've trained for this.
And, you know, you've said, okay, I don't think I'm going to knock Ritter out in the first rounds.
This is going to be an endurance fight.
And I'm going to wear him down.
And I'm going to get him in the later rounds.
And around round eight, I can hardly respond from my corner.
I'm not moving.
You're fresh.
You're beating the crap out of me.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And I suddenly come in and go, wait, wait, you know, what I'd like to do is pause the fight and take about six months off so I can train and all this.
And then we're going to resume the fight later on.
Would you go for that?
Yeah.
No, yeah, that'd be a no.
Yeah, of course not.
Yeah, of course not.
So here's Russia saying, no, we won the fight.
We won the match.
We're taking you down.
We're either going to knock you out or we're going to win by a technical decision.
But either way, our hand's going up at the end of the fight.
And Ukraine's saying, no, no, no, we want to stop this, freeze it, and let us rebuild and retrain.
And then we're going to do it again.
And it's not going to start at round eight.
Ukraine wants to start it at round one.
Russia's not playing that game.
So, I mean, now that we kind of understand what's going on here with these negotiations and what Russia's looking for and what needs to be done, do you think the Trump administration can get this done?
And do you think we can actually end this thing for good?
I'm losing confidence in the Trump administration, to be honest.
The words coming out of Trump's inner circle are not, do not inspire confidence in me.
The realism that I saw embraced in February has been replaced with arrogance, where Trump is talking about, we can impose 500% secondary sanctions on Russian oil.
We can seize the Russian shadow fleet.
We can attack Russia's soft underbelly.
Vladimir Putin doesn't yield to threat.
I just want to remind people, Vladimir Putin's father, Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad during the Second World War, or he was born afterwards, but his father fought in this conflict.
A million Russian Soviets starved to death in Leningrad, starved to death, were killed by the fighting.
27 million died in that conflict.
On May 9th, they're having the 80th anniversary of their victory over Nazi Germany.
Those 27 million are like stars in the heavens looking down, and every Russian looks up to those stars and they hear them say, do not betray that which we have sacrificed for.
Anybody who thinks that Russia is going to yield because you're going to do some stupidity, these are people that have shown the ability to fight to the death.
Don't mess with the Russians.
I mean, literally, don't mess with the Russians.
And yet, I don't know why Trump thinks that he can pull this stunt.
The Russians will tighten their belts.
The Russians will eat grass.
The Russians will do what they have done in the past to ensure the survival of the Russian nation and the survival of the Russian people.
They're not going to yield.
And Vladimir Putin is not a man who yields.
He will not yield.
He has said, and this is, you know, something Americans should reflect on.
A world without Russia is a world not worth living in.
Meaning that if you threaten Russia's existential survival, Russia will take the entire world down with it.
And it has the nuclear arsenal to do that.
So Trump needs to stop playing stupid games and start being realistic and trying to do this.
And I'll say he's missed a golden opportunity.
Had Trump done this right on May 9th, Victory Day, 80th anniversary, we could have had a high-level American delegation there in Moscow, which would have won a huge amount of kudos amongst the Russians.
The Russians would have said, well, this is cool.
We could have sent American troops to march in that parade because it celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany.
But because Trump has messed around, you know who's the guest of honor?
Zhejiang Ping.
Oh, China.
Wow.
And it's a state visit.
This isn't like, hey, come in and simply he will fly in.
The red carpet's going to come out.
The soldiers are coming out.
This will be all about Russia-China relationship, solidifying that, which Trump believes he can split apart.
We have made a huge strategic mistake here by playing games.
We should have exploited the goodwill of Russia, the willingness to reach a conclusion, and we could have had a different outcome.
But instead, we're playing stupid games.
And the Chinese and the Russians, they're not.
Russia doesn't need us.
And that's the other thing I need to emphasize.
Russia doesn't need us.
We need Russia more.
We've proven that over the past few years.
We've been heavily sanctioning them and their economy's gotten stronger.
Yeah.
And one of the reasons why their economy has gotten stronger is because of the economic linkage that they've developed with China, which is now going to be played out even further when Zheji Ping comes.
It's a great.
I was at the May 9th celebration two years ago.
This is a huge deal for the Russians.
Americans have no idea.
We often dismiss it as propaganda.
Russians wake up in the morning and cry tears of remembrance, remembering the 27 million this war resonates with.
This is the patriotic day of patriotic day for the Russians.
They build up to this and it lasts for days afterwards.
It's a moment of immense celebration.
It's how we should celebrate July 4th in America, but we don't.
But the Russians do it right.
And for Zhejinping to now be brought in as a part of the biggest May 9th celebration ever, this is a huge loss for the United States.
We should have been part of that ceremony and we opted out because of Donald Trump's belligerence.
Damn, man.
I got to go because I have to pick up my wife.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No worries.
No worries, man.
I'll bring you back and we'll talk Israel because I don't think we have enough time for it.
I guess, yeah, I guess the last thing is, what do you predict is going to happen last?
And I'll let you go after that.
And then you can tell people where they can find you.
I don't have confidence in the Trump administration bringing a peace.
I hope they do.
This is one of those places where I'd love to be wrong.
I'd love people in the summer to go, Ritter, you were on Myron Gaines and you said that Trump isn't going to be able to pull it off, but he pulled it off.
And I'm like, good, good.
But I don't have faith in that right now.
So I think that this war is going to become bloodier, more violent.
Oh, wow.
You think it'll escalate?
The Russians are just going to turn up the heat and destroy Ukraine.
And if Europe wants to get involved, Russia will destroy Europe as well.
Russia is going to win this war on its terms.
And there's some people who believe that the collapse of Ukraine could come as soon as this summer.
And it's not just the Russians that are saying that.
Ukrainians are saying that, that Ukraine could collapse and cease to exist as a nation state by the summer of 2025.
We'll see.
This war could go on for another six months, another year.
But what we know is that Russia is going to win this war.
People can find me at scottritter.com.
All my information is there, my sub stack, my Telegram channel, my ex-channel.
Every podcast I do, for instance, if you send me a link, I'll put it on there.
So scottritter.com is a one-stop shop.
Bam.
Guys, go show him some love, man.
Join us sub stack.
And Scott, I'll bring you on maybe Friday or next week if you're available.
We could talk Israel.
Sure.
Sure thing.
Thank you so much for coming on, man.
Take it easy.
Okay, Mary.
Thanks a lot.
All right, brother.
Bye.
All right.
Okay, chat.
Let me go ahead and switch off the Zoom.
Give me one sec, guys.
Give me one sec.
What's up, guys?
Welcome, welcome, welcome, man.
Sorry, like that was.
Hope you guys enjoyed that.
Obviously, it's always good to have Scott Ritter in the house.
is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Russia, foreign policy with Russia, modern warfare, et cetera, you know, political and warfare analysts.
So, yeah, because obviously we're on limited time.
So I literally, as soon as he got on, I just started the stream up and got it going.
So what we're going to do here, guys, this is going to be a bit of a shorter stream chat because I'm going to, I definitely want to hit the gym and then we got three shows for you guys today.
So we got right now, Trump unveils worldwide tariffs on Liberation Day.
So let's go ahead and get in here.
And then we're going to bring Homath on later, I think.
And we might be talking also about the fake 911 call.
Local tariffs on imports from more than 60 countries.
And so like I said, businesses around the world are reacting.
Our allies, our friends, countries around the world are reacting as well.
I'm Andrew Kraft.
Thanks so much to my colleague here at LiveNow, Josh Breslow, for guiding you through that really busy last three hours.
I'm going to be doing the same for the next two.
We're going to get all the reaction in from reporters standing by.
They have been speaking to everyday Americans, everyday business owners about how these sweeping tariffs may impact them.
And you remember, just heard from the Australian Prime Minister Albany is there reacting as well.
We have this shot here.
They're in Ottawa in Canada.
We're waiting to see whether or not we're going to get any reaction from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
That shot is what that is right now.
And of course, there on the Senate floor, Senate Democrats are really railing against this new tariff regime here.
The senator from Virginia, the Democrat, Mark Warner, still speaking.
Let's listen briefly.
Folks in Ohio are going to be able to afford $2,000 or $5,000 more per car just because of ill-suited tariffs.
So I hope that folks on both sides of the aisle will actually stand up for America First.
Reject this misguided tariff strategy.
Reject this demonization of Canada.
Recognize that America First doesn't have to be America alone.
The only thing that could make my day absolutely better at this point, beyond that little dose of Kane optimism, if the Senate finally comes to its senses tonight, endorses Tim's resolution, and we put an end to this misguided economic policy.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. President.
Mr. President.
I recognize the senator from Maryland.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I want to start by thanking our colleagues from Virginia, starting with Senator Kane, who brought us to this debate here on the Senate floor today on a very important question.
And to my other colleague from across the Potomac River from Maryland, Senator Warner.
And we sometimes disagree on various issues.
On this, we have solidarity across the Potomac.
And that unity comes from a very simple result, which is we are here to sound the alarm about the trade war that Donald Trump just unleashed today.
He calls it Liberation Day.
If he had made this announcement yesterday on April Fool's Day, people would have thought it was an April Fool's joke.
But this is no joke, and it's not Liberation Day.
It is a national sales tax day, because that will be the result of the president's action.
A sales tax on the American people, a national sales tax.
Because today the president announced he was levying massive across-the-board tariffs on countless goods, making big promises, but at the end of the day, betraying the American people who are going to be hit hard by rising prices.
All right, Senator Chris Van Holland, the Democrat of Maryland, calling these new tariffs a national sales tax on the American people.
We've heard him also say that if this happened yesterday on April the 1st, Americans would have thought it was an April fool's joke.
So that just gives you a sense of how Senate Democrats are responding to these tariff announcements there.
Remember, earlier today, you heard from House Minority Leader, the Democrat Hakeem Jeffery, saying it's not Liberation Day, it's recession day.
I'm Andrew Kraft.
Like I said, we are at the top of the hour.
We want to dive in from across the country to how so many are responding to these new tariffs.
Well, as you know, the president unveiling this new economic plan, placing what's been described as reciprocal tariffs on imports from all countries and businesses around the world are now bracing for a potential trade war.
Remember, we have this shop there live in Ottawa in Canada.
We're waiting for any reaction from the Prime Minister there in Canada, Mark Carney.
We're about to go out to Canada, but also in Houston, Texas, our colleagues, Fox's multimedia reporters, both Caroline Elliott in Montreal, Sarah Allegre in Houston, with all of this reaction.
It's good to see you guys, though.
Caroline, we're going to start with you first.
Who have you been speaking to and what have they told you?
Yeah, Andrew, right now we are standing by waiting for any reaction from the Prime Minister in Canada.
But at the same time, listening into that announcement from the Rose Garden just an hour ago, as President Trump now introducing what he's described as a discounted tariff plan.
As the president put it, it means if they do it to us, then we're going to do it to them.
Now, the White House, again, has charged tariffs anywhere from 10 to 50 percent based on the country.
And again, the president is charging these tariffs based on what the country charges the United States.
The president shared tariff plans for several countries this afternoon, just in the last hour, but some of the United States' largest trading partners were noticeably missing from that list.
Reporting from Canadian media outlet CTV says, quote, a fact sheet from the White House states Canada is exempt from Wednesday's reciprocal tariff announcement.
But, quote, non-compliant CUSMA goods will see a 25% tariff in Canada, and non-compliant CUSMA Energy will see a 10% tariff.
Now, again, we're also hearing from businesses right here in Quebec that say that the auto industry, these auto tariffs, will certainly hurt businesses here across Canada.
But President Trump says the days of the United States being, quote, ripped off are done.
We cannot pay the deficits of Canada, Mexico, and so many other countries.
We used to do it.
We can't do it anymore.
So again, still waiting to hear from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney following this announcement.
But we do know the Prime Minister told Donald Trump in recent days that if the U.S. does move forward with these tariffs, then Canada, in fact, will retaliate with tariffs of their own.
Andrew.
Caroline, thanks so much for bringing us that.
No doubt, so many people talking about this.
We'll talk soon here.
In the meantime, we do have, like I said, Fox News multimedia reporter, Sarah Allegre, standing by there in Houston, Texas with the latest, especially when it comes to some of these tariffs levied against steel products as well.
She has been speaking to so many there at the port of Houston, though.
Some worry that protection comes at a cost.
Sarah joins me.
Sarah, good to see you here.
I'm going to ask the same question to you.
Who have you spoken to?
What have they told you about this?
Andrew, I talked to a local steel distribution company here in Houston, and about half of their supply comes here out of the port.
Now, the CEO I talked to, he says tariffs really aren't affecting his operations quite yet, but he does say mills are holding back more so on those larger shipments, of course, expecting those prices to climb.
They're not wanting to send out large quantities of steel because they send it to you, and then the next week they can raise the price.
So that's what we're fighting.
But I've been doing this 18 years.
We were prepared for it.
We were excited for it.
And so that's why I invested $2 million in raw steel before Trump took office.
Now, if I hadn't done it, that same steel is worth $2.6 million.
And Port Houston, it really plays a big role in this.
The port handled a record 53 million tons of cargo last year.
That's a 6% jump from 2023.
So we've seen growth.
Experts warn tariffs, though, can drive up costs, disrupt trade flows, and slow momentum here at the port.
But not everyone's concerned.
You just heard from that CEO of American Western Steel, Michael Vivian.
He says demand for steel right now is strong, and many of his clients have adjusted in tariffs in the past.
And with Port Houston seeing continued export growth, including an 8% jump from last year, he believes goods will keep on flowing even if those costs go up.
An American business has already before we start work against a foreign company.
We're at a disadvantage, a great disadvantage.
The economy may slow down a little bit, but where I think we're going to see is the money that stays in the United States.
If 10% of our GDP was spent in-house instead of going across, I mean, that's going to be huge, huge for our business, huge for everyone's business.
Yeah, but economists warn, especially with Trump's new sweeping tariffs, I should say that because of just the constant changes that we're seeing and along with that stock market volatility, a lot of these consumers are putting a pause on spending.
In Houston, Texas, Sarah Lake Ray Johnson.
All right, Sarah, thanks so much.
So many are responding to React.
20% in real time.
That's kind of much higher.
Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300% tariff on many of our dairy products.
They do the first can of milk.
They do the first little carton of milk at a very low price.
But after that, it gets bad and then it gets up to 275, 300%.
And China charges American rice farmers an overquote, it's called a tariff rate of 65%.
South Korea charges 50%.
Actually, they charge different from 50% to 513%.
And Japan, our friend, charges us 700%.
Okay, so look, it is true that many companies are, I should say, many countries are hitting us with much higher tariffs than we are charging, you know, companies from their countries as they import products into the United States.
But let's also be real.
America has some pretty big tariffs on other countries as well, even before this announcement from Donald Trump.
So the U.S. has high tariffs on certain products as well, like sugar, footwear, apparel, and peanuts, a legacy of efforts to protect those industries.
The U.S. charges 350% tariffs on tobacco from many countries, 260% tariffs on Irish butter.
That's interesting.
Substitutes.
And 197% tariffs on Chinese stainless steel kitchenware.
And look, guys, I'm actually okay with the reciprocal tariffs because understand what's happening here.
Understand the actual unfairness of the situation.
So basically, we have.
All right, let me read some of these chats.
St. Francis says, did you see a federal judge dismissed NY Mayor Eric's Eric Adams bribery case?
I believe our judicial system should have held him accountable.
We shouldn't allow our political leaders to commit crimes with impunity, especially with a case like this.
Well, okay, so they officially did it.
I knew that this was coming.
I knew he was going to get the pardon.
As soon as I saw that he was becoming buddy buddy with Donald Trump, I knew that.
So let me go ahead real quick.
Let's go to breaking news here, Eric Adams.
But I knew he was going to get a pardon.
It was just a matter of time.
Did they already dismiss it?
Okay.
Not yet.
But Legal Eagle, I know, even though he's a Democrat, he had been talking about this because this is it right here.
I think I reacted to this before, but basically they were pushing Pam Bondi sent a letter to the Department of Justice, South District of New York, a few months ago.
This is what, yeah, a month ago now, almost two months, saying that they need to basically drop the case.
I'll play a little bit of this for you guys.
This is arguably worse than Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.
Open corruption is on fire.
All right, let me finish reading these chats.
We'll play this a little bit.
I'm gonna reach out, play this a little bit, and then go back to the Terra Four.
Let me see here.
We got some rumble rants here.
Shout out to you guys.
Minato says, what's your opinion on the possible Turkey-Israel conflict situation if war breaks out?
We didn't get a chance to talk about Israel with Scott Ritter, but I will bring him back and we will talk about Israel.
I wanted to focus really on Russia-Ukraine.
You guys, we talked quite a bit about Israel the past few days.
So I wanted to really make sure that we get this going.
We got TPC Films, and now shout out to TPC Films.
You guys should see better camera quality right now.
Me and him made some other adjustments.
Matter of fact, we made an adjustment here, right, on this camera, and we also made an adjustment over here.
So you guys should be getting some better camera quality right now on this stuff.
Shout out to TPC Films if you guys like this stuff.
You know, we were up late last night doing this, getting the angles going.
He's in the Orlando area, by the way, guys.
TPC Films, if you guys, you know, need help with this stuff.
But really good stuff.
You guys should see a significant increase in quality between these two side camera angles and obviously this one here in the front, which I just ordered a new lens.
That's going to be better than the one I'm using now.
The one I'm using now is a different lens than which I had yesterday, but the one I'm getting is going to be even better.
So yeah, man, you guys are going to get some better quality stuff.
Just want to say service to your devil dog from FMF Navy Corpsman, Ra.
WStream W Information.
Appreciate that, TPC.
Nightly Wisdom says, W Content, do you think Trump is missing?
It's messing like that because of them boys' influence and agenda.
I think that was a question for Scott.
But we'll, like I said, we'll have one back on, guys.
So, so yeah, but anyway, let's get back to full display at the Department of Justice.
Because acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III appears to have brokered a backroom deal with New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Help push Trump's immigration agenda, and the feds will kill the corruption case against you.
A classic quid pro quo.
And I did a whole breakdown on this, guys, on the Eric Adams case.
Basically, long story short was he got money from the Turkish government to expedite the building of the Turkish embassy.
And he like kind of circumvented fire codes and all this other shit.
And he got like expensive trips and all this other shit to Turkey.
That's basically what he's getting jammed up for.
But when Bove ordered U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to file a motion to dismiss, she refused and instead resigned.
Her letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi set off a mass exodus that will probably be remembered as the Thursday night massacre.
And when Sassoon quit, Bove demanded some other attorney do his dirty work.
No one stepped up.
And one by one, they chose the door instead.
As one said in his resignation letter, quote, I expect you'll find someone foolish or cowardly enough to file your motion, but it was never going to be me.
As the time of this recording, at least seven prosecutors have resigned in protest.
Desperate, Bove and Bondi forced the remaining members of the Public Integrity Unit, or PIN, into a room, squid game style, and gave them one hour to pick who would eventually carry out the order, or they would all be fired en masse.
This is so much worse than Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.
Now, why do I say that?
Well, because we've been here before.
On October 20th, 1973, President Richard Nixon tried to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate affair.
Cox had subpoenaed Nixon's secret Oval Office recordings, which contained crucial evidence of White House misconduct.
Nixon refused to comply and instead offered a compromise.
A summary of the tapes prepared by Democratic Senator John Stennis, a Nixon ally who was basically deaf.
Cox rejected that offer, insisting on the full tapes instead.
In response, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire Cox.
Richardson refused and resigned in protest.
Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelhaus to fire Cox, but he too refused and resigned.
And finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork, who had then become the acting attorney general, complied with Nixon's demand and fired Cox.
Now, that was only a few months before Nixon resigned.
And at the time, this was a historic presidency-ending scandal.
But what a difference 50 years makes.
Now, as we talked about last year, a federal grand jury indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams for accepting bribes, wire fraud, soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and conspiracy.
The indictment alleges that Adams and his staff received hundreds of thousands of dollars in free flights and hotels from the Turkish government and alleges that Adams used straw donors to bypass federal campaign finance laws and misuse the New York City public matching fund system to receive over $10 million in public funds for his 2021 mayoral campaign.
The government alleges that in return, Adams gave political favor, such as overruling the New York City Fire Department's determination that the new Turkish consular building was unsafe.
The FDNY found 60 violations that needed to be handled before the skyscraper could open to the public.
And according to the indictment, Adams intervened, and the FDNY officer who made the recommendations was told he would be fired if he didn't acquiesce.
And the quote, skyscraper opened as requested by the Turkish official.
And in December, prosecutors notified the court that they discovered more illegal conduct by Adams, including destruction of evidence, and that they would probably file a superseding indictment to that effect.
Now, the reporting indicates that Acting Attorney General Bove didn't care about any of this.
He set out to make a deal with Adams that would please Trump and sought to use the criminal allegations to their advantage.
Note that Bove worked diligently on the January 6th prosecutions before leaving the DOJ and defending Trump.
Now, Mayor Adams did not resign when he was indicted, and it seems that he determined that his best chance of political and personal survival was to cozy up to Trump.
And to that effect, Adams' lawyers are William Burke and Alex Spiro.
Spiro also represents Elon Musk, and Burke recently became an ethics advisor to Trump's private companies.
But so basically, as you guys know, more than likely this stuff was going to get dismissed, man.
It really is.
Oh, let's see here.
It was about tariffs.
They took all of our computer chips and semiconductors.
We used to be the king, right?
We were everything.
We had all of it.
Now we have almost none of it, except the biggest company is coming in.
We're going to end up with almost 40%.
Lee Zeldon's working to get their approvals.
And it's an amazing company, Mr. Wei, of one of the great companies of the world, actually.
They're coming in from Taiwan and they're going to build one of the biggest plants in the world, maybe the biggest for that.
But 64%, we're going to charge him 32%.
Japan, very, very tough.
Great people.
And again, I don't blame the people for doing it.
I think they're very smart in doing it.
I blame the people that sat right in that oval office, right over there, right behind the resolute desk or whichever desk they chose.
Japan, 46%.
They would charge us 46% and much higher for certain items like cars, you know, little items like cars.
46%, we're charging them 24%.
India, very, very tough, very, very tough.
The prime minister just left.
He's a great friend of mine, but I said, you're a friend of mine, but you're not treating us right.
They charge us 52%.
You have to understand, we charge them almost nothing for years and years and decades.
And it was only seven years ago when I came in.
We started with China and charged them.
We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China in tariffs.
And they understood, honestly.
President Xi understood.
He said, look, I understand.
And the other countries, and they all understand.
We're going to have to go through a little tough love, maybe, but they all understand.
They're ripping us off and they understood it.
Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo, was Shinzo Abi.
He was a fantastic man.
He was unfortunately taken from us, assassination.
But I went to him and I said, Shinzo, we have to do something.
Trade is not fair.
He said, I know that.
I know that.
And he was a great gentleman.
He was a fantastic man.
But he understood immediately what I was talking about.
I said, Shinzo, we have to do something.
He said, I know that.
And we've worked out a deal, and it would have been a much better deal.
But frankly, there were many years left in the deal that was made previous to my getting there.
But it was something.
If you look at Switzerland, 61% to 31%.
Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia.
Oh, look at Cambodia, 97%.
We're going to bring it down to 49.
They made a fortune with the United States of America.
United Kingdom, 10%, and we'll go 10%.
So we'll do the same thing.
South Africa, oh, 60%, 30%.
And they've got some bad things going on in South Africa.
You know, we're paying them billions of dollars that we cut the funding because a lot of bad things are happening in South Africa.
The fake news ought to be looking at it.
They don't want to report it.
Brazil, 10%, 10%.
Bangladesh is 74%.
So you see what's going on.
Pakistan, 58%.
Sri Lanka, 88%.
So what we're doing is we're taking not the full...
...and Trump with a litany of some of these trade actions against so many countries here.
We do want to stay, though, in Washington as we are getting more and more reaction as well.
We're about to check in with our friend there, Fox News's Caroline Shively.
She has been monitoring the reaction to all of these tariff headlines there from the nation's capital, and she joins me.
Caroline, good to see you here.
What are people saying there in Washington?
Democrats do not like the idea.
Even some Republicans are trying to throw up some roadblocks on this day that President Trump has dubbed Liberation Day while putting new tariffs on America's trading partners.
It's a lot of work.
President Trump laying out his tariff plan in the Rose Garden Wednesday afternoon.
A baseline tariff of 10% is set to go into effect Saturday.
Then a week from today, higher reciprocal rates will be placed on countries who already have tariffs against the U.S. Effective at midnight.
We will impose a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles.
The president says the tariffs will help return manufacturing plants to the U.S. and rebalance the trade deficit.
Last year, the U.S. imported $918 billion more in goods than it exported.
Economists warn U.S. companies will feel the pain first, followed by consumers.
A tariff is a tax.
And regardless of what politicians tell you, a tariff is a tax paid by American companies that import inputs for their production.
While the White House calls this Liberation Day, Democrats have another name for it.
This is not Liberation Day.
It's Recession Day in the United States of America.
That's what the Trump tariffs are going to do.
Crash the economy.
Two things to look out for now.
One is how foreign countries retaliate.
It's in the middle of the night in Europe, but still European leaders are talking with Kier Starmer of the UK saying anything is on the table.
Also, the other thing, how the markets react tomorrow morning.
Andrew?
All right, Caroline Sharley there, live for us in Washington.
Caroline, good to see you.
We'll talk soon.
All right, in the meantime, here we do have this message from Treasury Secretary Scott Besson on X saying this.
President Trump signed the Declaration of Economic Independence for the American people.
For decades, the trade status quo has allowed countries to leverage tariffs and unfair trade practices to get ahead at the expense of hardworking Americans.
The president's historic actions will level the playing field for American workers and usher in a new age of economic strength.
That's from Secretary Besant.
We also have Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
We'll get into his reaction there on social media to see right now.
He is swearing in new Congressman-elect Randy Fine from Florida.
Let's listen.
Okay.
Move the Bible.
Yes.
Thank you again.
Yes, you got it.
I'm going to button my jacket for one picture.
Oh, yeah, we'll do that.
Make it formal.
Thank you.
You're showing so much Florida there.
I'll think that we're not either signed up.
All right, family photo.
Come on, boys.
The bodyguards here, man.
They're big present.
All right, wait, I want to fix your colour.
Thank you.
There we go.
Thank you.
Sure.
Where do you want that?
Where do you want my dad to go?
Come next to Jacob, Dad.
This way.
Sadie.
I'm so glad we got Sadie in the picture.
That's awesome.
She's a hard worker.
True family photo.
All right.
Thank you all so much.
Thank you.
All right.
Congratulations.
Thank you all.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks to you.
Thank you again.
Thanks for getting it.
Oh, I know that.
I know that.
Congratulations.
Thanks, y'all.
Good to see you.
Okay, we're going out.
Thanks to meet you.
You too, absolutely.
Thank you so much.
Happy blessings.
Thank you.
There you go.
Okay, so you see there now Representative Randy Fine, the Republican of Florida, being sworn in there by Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Okay, you also have the other new congressman-elect as well, Jimmy Petronas, there.
He won the special election last night in Florida's first congressional district.
So let's hold on this shot for now as he will be sworn in after beating there the Democrat last night in Florida.
This is Florida's first congressional district.
This was a seat held by Matt Gates.
Let's listen.
Now we look at them.
Great, now y'all think you're great fans.
I'm going to give her this.
All right.
Thank you.
We've done this a few times.
Awesome.
You might as well go on there and join your hands.
All right.
We get a bodyguard on each side.
The thing is, it's hard to but that's why if you're looking to come out ahead in the very end, if you're a long-term investor, and don't be a day trader, be a long-term investor, it's smart to just consistently invest little by little and don't get creeped out or scared when the market dips, because that's actually when you're buying stocks at a discount.
But yeah, they could definitely go down even more.
And honestly, I think this is all done intentionally.
That's my take on it.
Let's go to our super chats.
The stinky stock, stinky stocking full of lies says, sounds like Trump's policies are tariffable.
That's good.
I'm here all week, folks.
Don't forget to tip your waitress.
See, I'm unfair to Jank because if Jenk made that joke, I would totally roll my eyes and I would not even find it funny.
It's all in the delivery, and you delivered it really well.
So thank you.
Christina writes in and says, Happy Wednesday, TYT fam.
I love the hosts and staff for their honesty and hope.
Thank you, love and peace, and blessings to Anna and her mom.
We are with you.
Christina Elsa Brown, thank you so much.
I appreciate you.
Let's get back to the show.
The word grocery is a simple word, but it sort of means like the stomach is speaking.
We're going to protect our workers and we are going to build the strongest economy in the G7.
In a crisis, it's important to come together, and it's essential to act with purpose and with force.
And that's what we will do.
Hello, in French, siju pee.
Monsieur de President Trump, I wiened a service of measures that changed the system of international systems in fundamental.
we do that, we do that.
He preserved some great aspects of the Canadian relations, very importants.
But in the same time, The terrifies justified and aluminium rest in place.
And this terrifies in the sector will be in vicarious.
And administration American administration that idiots des terrifies in the sector strategic sector, for the sector of the sector des semiconductor sector.
All right, Canadian Prime Minister there, Mark Carney, going there in French, as you would imagine, but he did make English comments right off the top there.
A little bit later on, we will re-rack that.
We will replay that for you.
In the meantime, though, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is getting asked some questions about some of these tariffs.
Let's listen.
Congratulations, sir.
We're very close, yes.
Yes, talking to Anna Paulina Luna and the other parties, and we feel like we'll find a path through it.
Thank you all.
Stay tuned.
You open up Wednesday.
Thank you all for being here.
Good to see you.
All right.
So barely caught Speaker Johnson there.
I know we're kind of ping-ponging between some of these live events, but you heard him there.
He was asked a question about the fight right now within the Republican Party about this idea brought about by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican of Florida, to institute proxy voting for new mothers, for new fathers, for expectant mothers there in the House.
This has really kind of split some divisions among some of these House Republicans, so much so that Luna stepped down as a member of the House Freedom Caucus earlier this week here.
So, in the meantime, we're at the bottom of the hour.
That was quite the sprint over the last 30 minutes here.
We're going to keep it going.
We do want to bring into the conversation right now, though, our friend there, Ed Behrens, Al Root, reporter who covers all of this.
He's going to help us make sense of what President Trump did today.
What did he levy?
What is the nature and the impact going to be of this new tariff regime?
Al joins me.
Al, good to see you here.
You've been watching all the reaction there from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Australian Prime Minister Albanese, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and so many.
Before it gets into it, guys, do me a favor, like the video.
I'm going to stay on air probably like another 45 minutes or so.
I want to go get a workout in before we go live at 8.
I think we're going to have HomeAth on.
And we can talk about, I think, some of this stuff as well.
Um.
hold on i'm talking with him now and also guys just you know um tomorrow there will be no debrief i'm I am going to be tomorrow's not going to be any, there's going to be no debrief tomorrow, guys.
I'm going to be in Austin, Texas.
I'm going to go and be on InfoWars.
So, you guys are going to see me there with Alex Jones and Owen Schroyer.
I think I'm going to go at 1 p.m. with Alex and then Owen, I think around 5 or 6 p.m.
Okay.
So, I will be live there.
If you guys don't follow me on X, follow me on X now so that you guys know what's going on.
X is like my main thing nowadays.
So, make sure that you guys check me out over there.
What's going on with my Twitter's acting crazy, I think?
Let me see here.
YouTube fine, I think.
Yep, YouTube's fine.
Rumble's fine.
Sorry, guys.
I'm fixing my Twitter right now.
I don't know what the fuck's going on here.
Hmm, interesting.
All right, whatever.
some kind of fucking setting.
That's.
Whatever.
Anyway.
The point is, guys, is yeah, that'll be tomorrow.
1 p.m.
Eastern, I think Eastern Standard Time.
But I'll just follow me on Twitter because I'm going to tweet out when I go live and shit like that.
So don't worry.
So no debrief tomorrow is the main thing I wanted to tell you guys.
No debrief tomorrow.
And we are going to have all math on tonight.
Then we're going to have after hours.
And then we are going to do, and then tomorrow's Thursday.
No debrief.
And then I should be back Friday.
I'll be back Friday morning.
Okay.
You guys will probably get a debrief on Friday.
Depends on, you know, what's going on in news and what time I actually get in.
You guys know planes always delay.
And then this weekend, I will be able to do Fed Reacts and I'll probably travel on Monday and go to Penn State and have that debate stuff over there.
It's going to be a fun time.
And then I will come back or I might go from Penn State actually to London because we have some stuff set up there for April 9th and 10th or whatever where we're going to be doing some collabs over there in the UK.
And then we might stay abroad a little bit longer.
Depends.
I'm still finalizing some stuff behind the scenes, which I don't want to talk about yet.
But yeah, basically, we've got an action-packed week, guys, is what I'm trying to tell you guys.
The next two weeks are going to be very crazy.
You guys might not see me on the debrief as much or fresh and fit, but understand that, you know, we're going to be traveling, doing some collabs.
So again, tomorrow, Austin, Texas, InfoWars.
Okay?
1 p.m. and 6 p.m. or 5 and 6 p.m.
One of those times.
Follow me on Twitter.
I'm going to tweet it out for you guys.
Then I'll be back on Friday.
We'll give you guys fresh info on Friday.
I'll probably do an episode of the debrief depending on what time I come in.
Sunday, I'll more than likely, I'm thinking like 90% chance we're going to do Fed Reacts.
Then Penn State, from Penn State to the UK.
And then from the UK, either back to the United States or some other stuff we got kind of going on.
All right.
So that's kind of where we are with the traveling and what we got planned for today.
Obviously, today we had Scott Ritter on.
We talked about Russia-Ukraine.
Didn't get a chance to talk about Israel.
I didn't have enough time, but that's fine.
I'll bring him back again.
You know, me and Scott, you know, talk, you know, somewhat, you know, have a good line of communication.
And right now we're covering the tariff war because you guys know it's Liberation Day.
And look, I've spoken about terrorists before.
This is my take on it.
Basically, as a businessman, Trump looks at it like, yo, these guys get all these benefits from us doing trade with them and we're getting ripped off.
This is bullshit.
We are going to go ahead and start imposing higher tariffs on these guys.
And really what it's about, guys, it's about, think of it as like taking a step backward to take two eventual steps forward.
It's to stimulate more American industry, right?
The problem is that we used to make things and we don't make things anymore.
And that's the main reason why Trump has this gripe.
And yes, is it true that the increase, because what tariffs do is it penalizes the importer and they have to pay more money to get their product, right?
And then what the importer does, aka these businesses, they don't want to lose their margins of profit.
So what they do is they pass that cost on to the consumer.
So the end consumer pays more for said product.
And a lot of people are like, yo, this is bullshit.
Why?
Well, though there is some tightening in the beginning, what it does is it puts pressure on the importer to utilize American industry versus importing it in.
If I am importing something from China and I have to pay more money to get this product into China, I can only increase the price so much before American consumers start saying, fuck this shit.
I'm not going to buy your stuff anymore.
Because what's going to happen is they are going to pass it on to the consumer.
Make no mistake about it, Chad.
I'm not saying they're not going to pass it on.
They will.
Okay?
But instead of passing it on to the consumer and potentially losing sales because there's other competitors there, what that does is one of two things.
Either the person that imports is going to say, damn, I might as well just use an American company, which is good for the country, or the consumer is going to say, fuck this.
I'm going to go to the guy that sells a cheap brew who probably is using an hold on.
Too much fire.
Sorry, guys, camera turned off.
We're spending too much heat there.
Or I'm going to go to another person that's going to give me a better price who probably is using an American distributor.
So that's kind of what it is.
All right?
That's kind of what the benefit becomes.
Excuse me.
That's what the benefit becomes when it comes to the tariff situation.
It's basically a long-term strategy to keep industry here, prevent using foreign countries and their manufacturers, and motivate businesses to start building things again.
That's one of the biggest problems that we made, guys, was we stopped building things.
We started outsourcing it to other places, which is kind of an inevitable reality when it comes to capitalism because the companies want to increase their private margins, increase their profit margins.
They bring the cost of labor down, bring the cost of labor down.
You can only do it so much in the United States.
You have to go ahead and move that labor to other countries, which will pay, which you pay far less to do.
But what Trump is trying to do is get some of that leverage back and say, okay, you guys want this cheap labor?
You guys want to experience these margins that you guys have been experiencing?
Cool.
We're going to cut those margins in half now.
Now, you have two choices.
Either employ Americans that don't import this shit or use American companies to get the stuff that you're importing.
It's going to be one of those two.
Either way, long term, this does help the economy.
Yes, it is going to cost more in the beginning.
Yes, it does suck in the beginning.
Yes, it does blow.
But anytime you have to go through any type of change, you have to deal with the level of discomfort up front.
When you go to the gym, right, and you train, it sucks when you're in there training, of course.
But when you go home, you eat properly, drink water, et cetera, that muscle that got broken down grows bigger and stronger later on.
And that's kind of what the tariffs are, guys.
Okay?
That's kind of the whole concept with it.
Obviously, I'm grossly oversimplifying it.
I'm not an economist, right?
Or someone who, you know, is an expert at this stuff, like Aaron Clary or whatever.
But that is a very simplified version of what the goal is here with this tariff strategy.
So let me go back to this.
The others, this is a minimum baseline tariff of 10% on all of these countries.
It's about 60 plus countries here.
The rate is higher for our top trading partners.
Now, President Trump said this, Al.
We can no longer commit economic surrender with these huge trade deficits between these countries here.
Will the tariffs reduce our trade deficit with some of these countries that the president is talking about?
Theoretically, good to be back, Hay Andrew.
Interesting day.
Theoretically, over time, sure, you will reduce your trade deficit.
Some of that will be at the cost of overall economic growth.
And again, so if you sort of take politics out of it, you know, we've organized the world post-World War II that free trade was a good thing.
You know, getting ripped off in terms of Canada is like getting oil and electricity from Ontario and wood from BC.
So ripped off is sort of an interesting way to think about it.
Now, he seems, President Trump seems to equate trade deficits with like, you know, somehow being ripped off.
Most economists would disagree with that.
But the one thing we learned today in terms of all of these messages is he is very serious about these tariffs.
And then, like you see from Canada, we'll get into the second derivative effects now with watching people, you know, do tariffs on us and just an escalation.
And then we have to see where it ends.
So, I mean, Al, the president is talking about returning to this pre-World War I, pre-Federal Reserve, pre-federal income tax U.S. economy.
And he says that essentially was the United States' golden age when it comes to wealth accrual.
What is he talking about?
What does he mean by that when he wants to return the U.S. economy to that?
What is that?
So, you know, back in the good old days, mercantilists, you know, before, you know, mercantilists was like, you go and you sort of take resources and you bring them home and you make stuff here and you put up tariff walls and domestic manufacturing is great.
And then somebody had the good idea of like, well, if we trade with you, you make this, we make this, you know, we're all both better off.
It's sort of basic economic theory 101.
You know, if you go, so it's almost like a weird debate, right?
It's kind of like when you bring up something that nobody understands or has thought about for 100 years, you have to go, huh?
But, you know, tariffs versus income taxes and things like this in the golden age.
So, you know, I know for a fact they didn't have heated seats in their Toyota Corolla in 1887.
I know for a fact they didn't have avocados 100% of the time.
So these wealth estimates are, you know, Coke was in nickel, but that was two weeks of, you know, two weeks of your wage.
So it's very difficult.
We are richer now.
Now, there's a separate question of fairness and what sorts of has globalization gone too far.
I sort of get all that.
But, you know, just to sort of use 1887, you know, or, you know, pre-World War I as the justification for it feels a little odd to me.
Okay.
And if it feels a little odd to everybody else, it's because it's a little odd.
So I want to talk about the word reciprocal, because you can make the argument that this was not a one-to-one reciprocal binary match.
You know, 20% on the U.S., 20% on everyone else.
Yes, there is going to be a baseline tariff of 10%.
But you heard there, President Trump say, we're going to be kind.
We're going to charge some of them half so it's not fully reciprocal here.
Why are they still being called reciprocal then?
You know, that's a good question.
I would answer it.
To make Trump look bad.
That's why.
That's why, man.
So yeah.
Also, guys, how is the quality here?
Shout out to TPC Films.
Again, he's helping me out here.
We are streaming right now at fucking 2160, I think.
I think we are streaming at 2160.
I'm going to double check here.
But you guys should see a significant increase in quality on the stream right now versus yesterday.
Because I think we're almost at like full on 4K streaming right now, which is fucking wild to me.
I never thought this day would be able to fucking be able to do that shit.
On YouTube, especially, yeah, there's literally 2160 here.
2160's working quality is fine.
It's not lagging for you guys or anything.
Because I made some camera setting switches yesterday and then YouTube here is telling me the bit rate is a bit lower.
So I might have to increase it.
But I just want to make sure you guys aren't getting lagged.
Obviously, on Rumble, I'm going 1080p.
X, I'm going 1080p.
Calculum, I'm going 1080p because I don't think you can stream 4K on these platforms.
Rumble, I think you can, but you have to use a certain thing.
But yeah.
But I can't use Rumble Studio, which Rumble Studio is obviously where it's at.
So I just want to make sure that there's no lag or anything like that.
Because obviously these settings are brand new.
We just adjusted this stuff.
Okay, cool.
Okay, so I see on YouTube, you guys are saying it's really good.
Fine on YouTube, bro.
Appreciate that, man.
Yeah, 2160 is the only reason to be on YouTube.
If Rumble had it, it would be a 10 out of 10.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you guys this.
Rumble, Rumble's 1080p or 1920 is better than YouTube's by far.
Like, if you guys watch me on Rumble and you go to the highest, the 1920 setting, it looks damn near 4K.
It's really good.
So, but yeah, I just wanted to double check with you guys and make sure shit's good here and it's not lagging or anything like that because it is telling me on the YouTube studio keyframe frequency or four like, I don't know what the fuck these shit.
So I just want to make sure that it's all good.
So cool.
Awesome.
Sorry for the late.
Let's get back into this thing.
I'm going to get another Gonna get a drink here and then we're gonna go for another 30, 40 minutes or so.
And then I did, I am thinking about getting reacting to this.
Ben Shapiro talked about JFK today.
Right here.
Who shot JFK?
Someone super chatted this in.
Quagmire Giggity Giggity says, Hey, Myron, you hear that Candice got served on her for her phone?
Yeah, I did hear about that yesterday.
So that's wild.
And then I also saw, let me see here.
Hold on.
And then right here, quality is good.
I appreciate that way of Vic.
Nightly Wisdom.
Yes.
First question about the strategic mistake Trump did, but I guess I can still ask the question about this topic.
What would be the outcome of the tariff employment if we pretty much give everything to them boys anyway?
What do you think, Myron?
Well, you got to remember, man, that 408 is still a small percentage of the American tax payer percentage.
Hey, Myron, why would Trump increase tariffs on us Australians?
We are pretty much an extension of the U.S. with multiple military bases.
And especially Pine Gap being critical for U.S. defense.
Well, at the end of the day, we got the leverage, bro.
We own you guys.
That's why.
To be honest with you, bro.
Earlier this morning, Ben Shapiro broke his sounds about who killed JFK.
He stated there's no zero evidence of Israel's involvement in the form of residents.
Bro, and this is why people don't fuck with Ben Shapiro anymore, bro.
You know what I mean?
This is why so many people just don't take him seriously anymore.
Like, he runs cover for Israel so goddamn hard that it's starting to get ridiculous now at this point.
I mean, hold on, one sec, Chad.
It's really starting to get to the point now where, God damn it, where he's starting to become like a straight-up Israeli propagandist is what it's coming down to.
So, hold on, Chad, I'm fixing this.
Yeah, I don't know why the fuck it was all the way over there.
There we go.
Sorry, Chad.
Fucking always fixing little things here.
I'll tell you guys this, man.
It's there.
You go.
I think that's better.
Okay, sorry about that.
Let me lock that so it doesn't move again.
All right.
Let's get back to this.
This way, right?
So the countries with the largest trade deficits, China for one, seem to be Taiwan, seem to be getting shit.
Yes, the 4K on YouTube is good.
But yeah, sorry.
To finish what I was saying with Ben Shapiro, I got distracted in their chat.
Yeah, man, the guy just runs cover for Israel.
And him running cover for Israel has been one of the main reasons why the Daily Wire has taken such a fucking hit, man.
That is a big reason why.
Why they've lost so much credibility.
You know?
They are not an American first, an America first conservative media outlet.
That's the problem hit relatively harder.
You know, I think reciprocal to some extent is this idea of fairness.
So, you know, he talked about milk tariffs in Canada and things like this.
Like, there's not a lot of milk trade.
It's a sort of small industry.
So it's always very difficult.
So, like, you know, I do think that the Canadian milk tariff is too high, but I'm not sure what that matters.
So, this idea of sort of resetting the bar for fairness and then on those, you know, we'll be fair.
I think that is like a little carrot to people, like investors looking at the stock market reaction, hoping that, okay, there's room for negotiation.
So, if you do something, then I can do something, then we can reset the bar maybe lower, a little more fair.
Um, but you know, just the idea of reciprocal, I think that's fine.
And then I think that you know, we'll be fair is like the softest language he said today that maybe negotiation is still a possibility.
I mean, in his view, though, some countries did get some type of reprieve today because it wasn't one-to-one reciprocally.
Yeah, I mean, I'd have to go country by country, but like the tariffs on China and Taiwan very, you know, worse than Wall Street expected, that's for sure.
If you look at Apple stock, Apple stock is down seven, right?
Wow.
I mean, because, you know, they get all their iPhone.
I mean, they essentially make all their iPhones in China.
So, so that was definitely like, whoa, I think that the total tariff on China is going to be in the range of 50% if you sort of add it all up.
Okay.
And then we have to like, okay, is that actually what's going to happen?
So that was like, oh, my goodness.
And then on like EU and places like this, you just have to sort of go down the list.
I think as we held up that chart and then people sort of zoomed in on the chart and then started looking at the reciprocal tariffs, they were like, wow, some of these are actually pretty severe.
Maybe it's because we didn't really realize how we were treated like with India or Taiwan or things like this because they're not really large trade partners.
But it was a bit of a surprise.
So Al, I want to ask, because some Democrats are characterizing this as not Liberation Day as recession day.
Chris Van Holland there from Maryland on the Senate floor just last hour said that what essentially happened today was a national sales tax was instituted on the American people.
So is all of this a tax hike that President Trump just did last hour?
Or do you think industries knowing this was coming?
I'm talking about domestic industries knowing that this was coming today prepared and absorbed as best they could what this was today.
Yeah.
So a couple of things.
So we can debate whether globalization has gone too far and where we should be and all this sort of thing.
Barron's position, Wall Street Journal's position, most hey guys, let's get to 1.5k likes.
What is it?
654?
Yeah, as much as I want to talk about JFK and Ben Shapiro, this is going to probably, because he spent what, 20, yeah, he spent almost an hour talking about JFK.
So I kind of want to react to this and do it on its own day.
Because that's going to take longer.
And obviously today we're a bit shorter for time.
Maybe I'll do it on Friday now that I think about it.
What do you guys think?
Do a debrief on this on Friday?
Maybe Friday.
Hey, Jack Jackson, shut the fuck up in YouTube chat.
How about that?
Please shut the fuck up.
How about that one?
Yeah, guys.
Yeah, I might do this on Friday.
Because today's limited time, guys, we got to do a first at eight.
So that's why.
And I want to hit the gym.
yeah i think i might have to do it friday kind of suspicious this will raise prices right in the And then it's just, so like the most immediate price increases are the things that turn the fastest.
So you would see this in theory fastest at like the grocery store.
So, you know, some of the produce that's imported, especially in the winter, yes, that would get more expensive.
That'll get more expensive almost immediately.
You look at Lululemon's stock, that's down.
You know, they're importing things from overseas on the textiles front.
You know, there's a supply chain there.
But within six to nine months, cars close food, there should be some inflationary pressure on those.
Again, like let's take cars.
How much automakers will push back against their parts suppliers on price increases?
They will cut costs to try and avoid raising prices.
So I can't tell you like that disastrous scenario.
People like to publish like imported car up $10,000.
Probably won't be that big, but there will be inflationary pressure all the way through the economy for like six to nine months while this unfolds.
Okay.
If things stay as exactly as they are now.
I see.
So Anderson Economic Group released its analysis today of these new tariffs, how they will impact the auto industry for consumers here.
Tariffs are expected to cost an additional $2,500 to $5,000 for the lowest cost American cars and up to $20,000 more for some of these imported models.
So I thought that was interesting here.
So what about when President Trump says this?
There is no tariff if you build here in America.
Will industry respond to that?
Have they already?
So the problem is-And that's the main bottom line here is to penalize these importers for, you know, trying to use foreign labor to increase their profit margins.
That's the whole purpose of these tariffs, guys.
Okay.
The whole purpose of these tariffs is to basically get America back to building things.
That's really what this boils down to.
And the tariffs are a deterrence to businesses to avoid bringing in foreign products that are made via foreign labor.
That's what it is.
It's not so much as an, oh, let's go ahead and mess with these countries' economies rather than let's simulate our own and incentivize our American businesses to use stuff from America.
Employ American companies to give them the products that they need versus relying on foreign countries with cheaper labor so that they can increase their profit margins.
Now, again, like I said before, does that increase the price to the consumer?
Because the companies don't want to deal with the loss.
Of course, it does short term.
But the goal here is to kind of let capitalism work its way out.
And people say, oh, now this shit's more expensive.
I'm going to go to somebody else who probably does use American labor.
It's basically giving American labor or companies that utilize American labor a fighting chance against these companies that use foreign labor.
Again, I'm grossly oversimplifying this because I'm not an economist, but that's the general stance on things.
Now, we could go ahead and, you know, doomsday plan and say, well, this country's going to do that.
This country's going to go do that.
You know, it's improbable here.
Actually, I think that this is going to happen.
We could say all that.
But I'm sure Trump has a team of advisors that are economists that literally can go into the most minutiae of detail as to what could potentially happen with putting tariffs on certain countries, consequences, ramifications, how long it would take for this to fix, because obviously there's going to be a few months or a year of destabilized prices, but things almost always correct themselves.
So that's the goal here.
It's more of a deterrence objective versus a long-term strategy to attack other countries.
That makes sense.
So, yes, it's true, right?
We have a few problems.
One is we actually, like, if you just, we don't have endless workers.
Actually, unemployment's relatively low.
And from a manufacturing perspective, people have trouble getting enough people versus having too many people.
Problem number one.
Problem number two is these are, you know, Ford broke ground on its blue oval.
So they're building a battery plant.
They're building a manufacturing facility in Tennessee, right?
They're spending tens of billions of dollars.
They broke ground in 2022.
They're looking to open that in 2026.
Even if you go at rocket speed, you know, siting permits, building.
Yeah, I was going to say, Camille's a jeep.
Camille says, Mario, don't understand Terror's very well.
USA manufacturer provides a little economic value.
Bro, you're probably a Jeep.
Shut the fuck up.
Thank you.
Come again.
You're talking about two to three year programs to reorient your footprint.
So it's very slow.
There are no sort of empty factories that we will turn on and we will start making things here.
It's a very difficult process.
So, you know, President Trump's goal is to bring more manufacturing here.
This will do it.
It might not be the most efficient way to do it.
And it will do it probably a little more slowly than you would expect.
Okay.
But it, you know, it will happen eventually.
Al, last question for you, though.
Where should we look next?
I mean, what indices will you be looking at about how these tariffs are being received?
You know what?
It's an interesting.
You can look at everything.
So that's a terrible answer, right?
I would start to look at jobs.
So over six to nine months, you would start to look at inflation, just broad inflation data to see if it is.
But I'm talking like tomorrow.
What should we look at?
Tomorrow, I mean, goodness gracious.
Look at the SP 500, right?
And I think it'll be a push and pull, right?
So the SP 500 futures are down about 2%.
Like I said, Apple, some of the tech stocks that use these chips, down five to seven percent.
Watch how they trade.
Or do they trade?
Do they close off the lows, which is like, oh, maybe it's not so bad.
We're going to negotiate.
Maybe I'm overreacting.
Do they, you know, does the Dow drop a thousand points or two and a half percent?
Is it one of those four-digit days?
You just watch the initial stock market.
The market is good.
Sometimes it's overreacty, but especially now that futures are down one to two percent.
See how it closes.
Do we close off the lows?
Okay.
We see what's happening here.
Maybe negotiation, maybe not as bad as fear.
But if sentiment starts to really slide and you sort of close at the lows, that's sort of like bad news.
All right.
Al Root, can't thank you enough.
I think that was easily digestible enough for viewers because this was.
This dude says, Myron, I'll debate you right now.
Look, look, look, Pajit.
Number one, you're using an anon anime profile.
Number two, nobody knows or gives a fuck about you.
Okay, nobody, you're a nobody.
All right.
Number three, you can go ahead and continue to argue with people in the chat about tariffs, bro.
Go ahead.
Just do that.
But at the end of the day, Sanjeev.
Nah, I'm never gonna keep cooking you, bro.
You're going to cry.
I'm going to stop roasting this nigga, bro.
So I really start going in on your fucking 7-Eleven ass.
It's not going to be a good day for you.
Quite impactful.
Very sweeping.
That's how it's being described.
Al we'll talk soon.
All right.
In the meantime, here, let's take a quick commercial break.
A lot more where that came from in these two minutes.
Words there.
Back out live to New York City.
We have our vantage points there.
Niggas are chatting.
Go back to tech support.
See, the chat can just go ahead and roast you, bro.
I don't got to say shit, man.
Niggas said, go back to tech support, bro.
I want to show you the shot we have of the Statue of Liberty.
It's a little grainy, a little pixelated.
We usually have a great shot.
Unfortunately, at the moment, we do not.
So we also have, let's go to Washington now.
They're on the Senate floor.
Many senators, including and especially Senate Democrats, have been railing against what President Trump did earlier this afternoon in the Rose Garden with the new tariff regime policy in place.
Romo Chat is calling them poop jeep.
We have a live picture outside the U.S. Capitol as well.
Take a look at this.
This so we do want to take a quick commercial break very, very soon here.
And when we come back, we're going to be highlighting some of the election results in states like Florida and Wisconsin from last night.
We're going to be going over some of those results.
We're going to be showing you some of the statements put out.
Let me read some of these chats.
Let's see here.
We got Ben started to produce their vehicles in the U.S. and is cheaper than their German counterparts, BMW and Audi, by roughly 10 to 15%.
This will also make getting car parts from Benz easier for repairs.
Fair.
Quality is good.
Appreciate that.
Albo A says, I didn't even realize Israel had tariffs on the U.S. until today.
Unbelievable after all the aid we give them.
And Trump put a reciprocal 17% tariff on them as well.
They're about a JFK this nigga, probably.
St. Francis says, Do you believe Americans can outsource a lot of the commodities that we rely from foreign countries?
It depends.
It depends which countries, bro.
That's a good question, though.
But it really does depend.
Let's see here.
I don't know why this fucking shit is not.
Sorry, guys, my Stream Labs is like acting stupid.
Let me refresh the page over here.
I got another browser open.
Damn, you guys made fucking Camille leave, bro.
Y'all roasted him that bad.
That nigga gone.
Once I started calling him tech support, that nigga dipped.
Oh, man.
Let's see here.
Softlife said, he says, where do quote them boys get the money to buy people like Trump to put on their agenda?
Bro, this is so poorly fucking worded, man.
Two, how much money do these people have and why aren't they listed in the household income?
Yeah, every other race is.
It depends on which chart you look at.
Sometimes Jewish families are listed on there.
Did you see that the owner of OnlyFans wants to buy TikTok?
I think he put her offer and you can't make this up SMH Oive.
Well, for those that are wondering...
That is the owner of OnlyFans.
you know Leonid Redvinsky.
So, yeah, he's trying to buy TikTok.
I'm not surprised that he would want to buy TikTok because as you guys know, TikTok is basically, to keep it honest with y'all, TikTok is a huge fucking OnlyFans funnel.
That's what TikTok is.
TikTok has a huge OnlyFans funnel.
That's why thoughts just get on there and dance and do the stupid shit that they do.
So they go ahead and say, oh, Lincoln bio.
You know, Instagram too.
Instagram and TikTok are quite literally porn feeds.
That's what they are.
If we're going to be honest here.
So I have no, I am not surprised whatsoever that this dude Leonid is trying to buy TikTok.
Because you guys know, TikTok is supposed to shut down this weekend, I think, if I'm not mistaken.
Trump saved it, gave them an extension.
But at this point, man, fuck TikTok.
If TikTok got banned, I wouldn't even care, bro.
I used to have sympathy for TikTok, but now I'm like, fuck that platform, bro.
It is so fucking ridiculous how they are so anti-conservative viewpoints, bro.
It's fucking wild.
It's wild.
If you're a stupid thought doing dances on there, you're fine.
But if you're a political commentator on the right, whatever, bro, you're cooked.
You are absolutely cooked.
They banned Tim Caz, they banned me, they banned everybody, bro.
They're like Twitch, but worse.
So yeah, I'm not surprised it's this fucking guy over here who runs up...
Because let's be honest, what is OnlyFans...
OnlyFans a porn company, bro.
I'm not surprised that this guy wants to buy it because that would give him the ability to literally control one of the biggest funnels to his other website.
So not surprised that he's trying to buy it whatsoever.
Yeah, we talked about the federal judge dismissing his case.
Yeah.
All right, let's...
Again, shorter show today, guys.
Yes.
We got a very busy day today.
And also, we've got a busy day today, as well as over the next week or so.
And
then, we've got a busy day.
Let's see here.
So yeah.
Let's see here.
Shout out to all you guys watching, man.
We got some haters in the chat, which is good.
That's always good to have haters.
That means you're reaching people that otherwise don't know you or don't know your content or whatever.
For obviously, people knew that people that are new here, they might consider me extreme, which is fine.
Last night by those in the know, and also you're going to be hearing the inaugural speech there on the House floor that happened just last hour by freshman congressman now, the Republican from Florida, Randy Fine.
So, we're going to keep it political with these headlines when we come back rehashing, recapping election night last night.
We'll see you in two minutes.
Hey, guys, don't mute the haters, bro.
Let them say what they want to say in the chat, bro.
Don't mute them, man.
Let them say what they want to say, chat.
Mods, let them talk.
I'd rather you like, let them talk their shit, and then you guys could just roast them.
It's actually funny to watch you guys go back and forth to call these niggas tech support and shit.
That's funny.
So don't mute them.
Fine had Donald Trump on his side.
Trump won the presidential race with more than twice the margin Fine did.
And the Florida Democratic Party says they'll keep chipping away at those numbers.
One election at a time, one force vote at a time.
Murray Edinger Fox, 35 meetings.
Wow.
Marie, thanks so much.
That was the Orlando vantage point.
Let's get the Tampa vantage point on these elections last night.
Box 13's Regina Gonzalez.
Hey there.
Yeah, Republicans will hold on to two seats in their narrow House majority after former Florida State Senator Randy Fine won the special election for an open U.S. House seat in Florida's 6th congressional district, and Republican Jimmy Petronas won Florida's first congressional district.
Petronas fended off a challenge from Democrat Gay Vallamont, even though she far outraised and outspent him.
He will fill the Northwest Florida 1st District seat vacated by former Representative Matt Gates, who was chosen to be Trump's attorney general, but withdrew from consideration amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has denied.
In North Florida's 6th District, Fine won against Democratic challenger Josh Wheel for a seat vacated by Mike Waltz when he was tapped to become Trump's national security advisor.
Both Fine and Petronas relied heavily on President Donald Trump's support to win the races and were vocal about their support for the president's agenda during their victory speeches.
And I'm looking forward to working with him to help reach.
Hey guys, we got 1,284, 1,284 likes, guys.
Let's get to get to 2K ninjas.
Let's get to almost 100% engagement.
We build our military to close the border, to keep men out of women's sports, and to get our country back on track to drop this record-high inflation and our national debt that is crippling the complete world.
They still stand with you because they're proud that he closed the border.
They are excited to see you demand fair trade around the world.
They are hopeful that Donald Trump has the yellow pin.
Donald Trump will bring peace.
And they are thrilled to see President Trump and Elon Musk take the act to a bloated deep state whose spending is an insult to every American who goes to work and struggles to make ends meet.
With the outcomes of these two races, there will now be 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the chamber.
You know, remember, my buddy Dave is a dual commissioned army officer, former FBI no longer welcome in America.
Please get him on so he can spread awareness.
How is he not welcome in America?
He's a U.S. citizen.
You can't not be welcomed in your own home country.
They can't deny you to come in.
Martin, whoever goes to modern-day Jay is actually originated from Kazarian Empire and history behind it, bro, that's that, bro.
That's that's like again, that's like basic stuff, bro.
Like Kazarians, Frankis, all this shit.
That's like retard level shit, bro.
It's easy, bro.
Stem boys.
Two vacancies.
There's really no difference.
Still to be filled in.
All of that is a distraction from what the fuck is really going on.
Kazarian, Frankis, Sebadias.
Arizona and Texas.
Something interesting to note, too.
Republican concerns about their narrow margin of control in the House and about Randy Fine's race expected to be close grew to the point that President Trump asked Representative Elise Stefanik of New York to withdraw her name from consideration to be ambassador to the United Nations and to remain in Congress instead.
That happened last week.
We know Randy Fine...
That chick is fucking Israel first to the max.
...says he is getting on a plane to Washington, D.C. today so he can get right to work.
We'll send it back to you.
Regina, thanks so much.
And to Regina's point, you just saw that live last hour.
Both Randy Fine and Jimmy Petronas sworn in as new House members by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Well, Fine took the opportunity to address his colleagues for the first time on the House floor.
Let's listen to what he had to say.
Thirty-five years ago, a 16-year-old boy walked through those doors and he marveled in this room at this temple of democracy as he watched people who gave up their lives, who gave up time with their families, who gave up their careers in order to serve their country.
When I spent a year working here as a House page, I learned from so many people, five of whom, by the way, are still serving today, what it meant to serve America, what it meant to put the needs of the country before yourself.
I want to recognize my family because when I did this opportunity, being a good Jewish boy, my family would not send me alone.
My mother, my father...
I was going to do an early life check, but he did it for me.
...father, my sister, they moved to Washington.
And my mom, who I'll talk about in a little bit, used to sit where Wendy, my father...
I want to recognize them.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
My sons, who are over there.
But my mom used to sit up there and she used to watch me every day.
And she used to tell me, Randy, that God has a plan.
Now, I believe that when Donald Trump's life was saved in Butler, Pennsylvania, it was so that he could save the world.
And it is an honor of a lifetime that God's plan for me is to come and help all of you implement that plan.
But today is also a sad day for me.
Because the person I most wish could be here to watch this can't be here.
I will tell you a story about...
First, the dog said, Randy Fine, an early lifer.
He did it for us.
He did it for us, guys.
She was my biggest champion.
She was the one who taught me how to fight.
And if you don't know me and if you haven't followed me, fighter will be the word that you know soon enough.
But one day when I was 16 years old, my mother came with me.
We went to the stationery store, which is still in the same place that it is today.
And we went...
All right.
So, guys, it's 720.
We're going to be live with Home Math at 8.
I'm going to go hit the gym.
All right.
I've been fucking...
I feel like a crack at heaven.
Went.
So, I need to go.
I hope you guys like the...
Like I said, the new quality.
We're going to keep doing it, making it better.
I'm actually going to fix...
Get a new lens for this one.
It's going to be even better than what you guys see right now.
And we're just going to keep improving the show, guys.
The quality is going up.
Views are going up.
Subscribers are going up.
You guys are really enjoying this stuff.
be back doing a debrief on friday we're gonna cover jFK and Ben Shapiro I think that's gonna be the topic for Friday today we covered a great interview with Scott Ritter we went over the Russia conflict Russia Ukraine conflict got an update I did not know that many you know Ukrainians uh Ukrainian soldiers are uh were killed man 700,000
1.1 million is crazy so but it makes sense it does make sense um obviously they've been trying to keep these numbers from us for obvious reasons um so so yeah so um home at tonight 8 p.m after hours Info wars tomorrow.
I'll be back Friday morning.
And then we're going to go ahead and give y'all some more Fresh of Fit.
And then, yeah, it's going to be fun.
It's going to be fun, guys.
I'm off.
I'm going to go hit the gym.
But before I hit the gym, since we didn't get to do this before, I got to get you guys out on the right path, man.
You know?
I couldn't do it earlier.
We're going to do it now.
Love you guys, man.
Enjoy the tune.
I'm going to be out.
Be back at about eight o'clock.
Fresh of it for you guys.
Wahomath.
Let's go.
Why, god damn it.
Let me go ahead and get the whole chat in here.
Let me fucking get this shit going.
Let's get the Castle Club niggas in here.
All right.
I want to see that chat fly, baby.
Five minutes or so with Homath on Fresh Africa go over there right now, guys.
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