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March 1, 2025 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
28:51
Was the press conference from hell a set up?

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Time Text
I'll start talking.
Well, today seemed to be a tempest in a teacup with world historical geopolitical consequences.
That seems like a contradiction of terms in many ways, but I think that's what just happened.
My question is, was it a setup?
Was it planned?
Or are we really changing geopolitical positioning and alignment on the basis of a press conference gone wrong?
Or the fact that J.D. Vance was really, he was just very concerned that Zelensky didn't say thank you.
I'm beginning to think it was a setup.
So just to lay the groundwork here, Zelensky was in town.
He was in Washington, D.C. He's meeting with Trump and company, Rubio Vance.
The big news over the past week to 10 days has been, first off, Trump bad-mouthing Zelensky in ways that are quite surprising.
And second off...
His offering of a deal for rare earth and mineral rights in Ukraine.
Now, I am not a geologist, but I have looked into this, and he's talking about, at least in this instance, or mostly on the east of the country.
Some of these territories are currently occupied by Russia.
Some are not.
It's, you know, it's murky.
It's complex.
Trump is demanding a kind of co-partnership or co-ownership partnership with these mineral rights and to the tune of $5 billion or some otherworldly number like that.
Now, many people look at this as just outright exploitation, and it is to a large degree.
At the same time, facing reality, Ukraine is in a very difficult position.
Maybe if they simply refuse to lose, they've got to make some deals like this.
Desperate times, desperate measures, etc.
My point in analyzing the situation is that even though Trump is bad-mouthing Zelensky and his MAGA followers are just outright at this point anti-Zelensky and anti-Ukraine, That if a rare earth and mineral deal is to take place,
then that would imply a commitment with Ukraine.
That would imply that Trump is in it to win it.
After all, he doesn't want Ukraine to lose because he would also be losing those mineral rights.
Now, Putin has also made an offer of, well, I'll give you the rare earths or something like this.
It's murky to say the least.
But anyway.
Zelensky was in town.
And I watched the entire 50-minute press conference.
And if you watch about the first 30 minutes of it, you would think that everything was hunky-dory.
Now, there were a couple of situations, very similar to Trump's meeting with Macron, where...
He said something to the effect of, you know, frankly, we have done everything and Europe has done nothing.
It always hurts my throat to do my Trump impression.
And Zelensky is like, no, that is not true, Mr. President.
And then you have this kind of odd series of men, heterosexual men, touching each other's knees.
In a friendly fashion.
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe it's European.
Who knows?
But very much like with Macron, you had that same situation going on.
So yeah, there was a little bit of tension.
There's some disagreement.
But it did seem hunky-dory to me.
And then J.D. Vance entered the chat.
And J.D. Vance went after Zelensky.
And I don't think there's any other way to say it.
And it also is sort of psychologically revealing about J.D. Vance, because he didn't really say anything of substance.
He basically reiterated a bunch of dissident right talking points that you find on Twitter.
And, you know, if you want to call them Kremlin talking points, you can.
There's no real difference between these.
So he made a sort of free speech argument.
I mean, I don't even know.
It's a non-secretary.
I don't even know what he's saying.
Basically, Europe is censoring conservatives on social media platforms in Europe.
Europe likes Ukraine.
Therefore, we shouldn't like Ukraine.
I mean, I don't even know what the hell.
He's even saying.
He's just sort of, again, reiterating a kind of, you know, is it true?
Is it sure to some extent, I guess?
But it's basically just a distraction, deflection, misinformation.
Then he said, you know, with respect, you haven't shown this president enough respect.
You've been bad-mouthing Trump.
And it's just this pathetic demand.
For respect from Zelensky, which ironically demonstrates J.D. Vance's own psychological complex, his feeling of inferiority, his feeling, understandable in many ways, of not fitting in,
of going to those dinners when he was at Yale and he didn't know what to do with that spoon that was above the plate.
Is it like the spoon?
On the side, he never knew.
He had to call up Usha to get some advice on silverware.
Anyway, he's not comfortable in his own skin.
He has an inferiority complex.
Understandable in a way, because I don't think J.D. Vance is a terribly impressive person.
And he keeps pushing Zelensky.
And then Zelensky, this is a guy?
Yeah. He's a comedian.
He's a professional comedian.
He was an actor.
He played the president of Ukraine before he was the president of Ukraine.
He's dressed in drag like almost every comedian who's worth his salt, you could say.
But he's also faced down hell on earth and stood tall against a Russian invasion.
So yeah, he pushed back.
He probably shouldn't have.
He probably should have just sat there.
And eating shit, to be honest.
But he pushed back, and then it started to get out of control.
He said some things like, you have an ocean separating you from Russia and from Europe.
This is the blessed state of America, which we've enjoyed for so long.
But you're going to feel it.
You're going to feel the Russian menace, is what he was basically saying.
And Donald Trump, who has a very different psychology than J.B. Vance, is like, no, no, you can't tell us what we feel.
No, no, we're going to feel great.
We're going to feel strong.
It's going to be fantastic.
Trump, in his kind of crazy narcissistic way, creates his own reality.
Like, you could never tell me what I would feel.
And so that was Trump's response, but things got extremely heated.
Next thing you know, the whole situation is blown up.
Next thing you know, Zelensky is leaving Washington.
Next thing you know, there was a report that Hegseth is ceasing all cyber security, cyber attack strategy and planning and operations against Russia.
Next thing you know...
Whether it's reality or not, it really felt like Ukraine had been sold down the river, had just simply been abandoned.
And Trump is basically like, you know, I can't make a deal with Putin if you're going to insult him like this.
The reason why Ukraine didn't fold, the reason why Zelensky didn't flee the country immediately is because he has balls.
And yeah, he was and maybe still is a kind of celebrity among liberals and the woke and the people who listen to U2 albums remembering the glory days of the American century.
Sure, he is.
But you don't do what he has done if you don't have a pair of balls.
And he has them and he stood up to this Ridiculous man, Vance.
So I guess my question is here, and I've been rambling a lot before getting to the question right at the heart of this livestream, is what just happened?
Are we really to believe that geopolitics have fundamentally shifted due to a dust-up at a press conference?
Or is all this a setup?
That is, did J.D. Vance purposefully antagonize Zelensky?
And was he antagonizing Zelensky before the press conference?
So that you could have some startling disagreement like this, so that the Trump administration could do what it already wanted to do, which was sell out Ukraine, align with Russia.
And I think it goes a lot deeper and it's a lot bigger than that, aligned with Russia and Israel to focus on the Middle East.
Is that what just happened?
It just strikes me as hard to believe that conservatives or Trump and Vance are such delicate snowflakes that they would blow something up.
Just over some harsh words.
Now, Trump actually gave a revealing comment in the first 30 or so minutes of this, where he said, you know, Zelensky hates Putin, and I understand why.
But I can't badmouth either fellow in order to get a deal.
I'm going to get the greatest deal.
And then he pointed to Zelensky and Vance, and he said, these two don't like each other very much.
That seemed to suggest that before the press conference, Vance was already antagonizing Zelensky, already doing these, you know, Twitter-brained, propaganda,
dissident-right bullshit arguments against him the whole time.
But again, my bigger question is, is it a setup?
Now, this is something that I've articulated in some other venues, but my feeling is that what we're seeing really is the Seychelles Islands plan from 2017 that didn't take place in the first Trump administration is actually coming to fruition in the second Trump.
So in the winter, I think, of 2017, Eric Prince of Blackwater fame or infamy met with a manager of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund in the Seychelles Islands.
And the thought there was that Russia, why do you unlink with Iran?
Link up with the US.
We are going to end the sanctions.
We're going to be nice to you.
Link up with the US in an antagonistic campaign and maybe even war against Iran.
Now, this was reported in the Washington Post, and this sort of explains it all.
Once you know this little tidbit, it explains things that are otherwise...
He pleased the alt-right.
He pleased the paleo-conservatives.
He pleased the libertarians and so on.
By his seemingly peaceful attitude towards Russia.
It's like Russia is a big country.
We should get along.
If they're fighting ISIS, Syria, let them.
Why don't we work with them?
Why don't we help them?
As opposed to treating them as an enemy.
This also echoed, and Trump wouldn't want to hear this, this also echoed so many of the comments that Obama made.
Now, Obama wouldn't use those words exactly.
But Obama, when he was running against Mitt Romney, said, listen, Mitt, the Cold War is over.
Listen, Grandpa, the Cold War is over.
And Russia is not a strategic enemy.
We need to move beyond that.
He also, when a red line was crossed in Syria, whatever you want to think about that, he also punted to Congress and then just avoided any sort of war with Syria.
So he was, in effect, at the very least, not antagonizing Russia, if not working with Russia.
So we all saw that, and the...
The alt-right, as it was called, or paleocons or libertarians, whatever, we were all like, oh, this is great.
We've got a Bismarck in office.
He is a realist.
He is going to work with other world powers.
He's going to be sane, grounded, et cetera, et cetera.
But there was another aspect to Trump that I think all of us tried to avoid and not think about.
And that was the fact that he over and over and over again.
He said that the Iran nuclear deal was the worst deal in history, the worst thing ever.
And he basically took Israel's side, tore up the Iran deal when he got into office, and had this sort of angry but vague vehemence against the Iran deal.
Which... I guess, arguably, if you think of it in a way, if Iran is being paid off to not create a nuclear weapon, maybe you sort of, by tearing that up, you might even want them to create a nuclear weapon.
Certainly, being that antagonistic and not offering any sort of mediation would logically lead someone to, in fact, get a nuclear weapon as the one True way of preventing any sort of American regime change war.
So we didn't square any of these things.
We, alt-right libertarians, etc., we heard what we wanted to hear.
You know, it's just like, oh yeah, he sounds like Bismarck or something.
That's great.
But we just sort of avoided the hyper-Zionism that Trump also expressed.
Now, in office as well.
Trump almost started a war with Iran.
He kind of aborted it at the last minute, like one of those Mission Impossible films, like abort, abort, abort, you know.
But he assassinated a major figure in Iran and bought us pretty close.
He gave the Golan Heights to Israel.
He moved the embassy.
We all know it.
He's the most Zionist president in our history.
According to Trump and according to his fans.
Not the alt-right, not the paleocons, his real fans, the ones that hang on his every word and will go with him anywhere.
The most pro-Israel president ever.
So that's the reality of the situation, and so that's how I see all of this lining up in the future.
We are going to decouple from NATO, perhaps, but Europe, more or less, dump Ukraine.
You take care of it.
It's in your backyard.
Who cares?
And that, from the standpoint of, say, the anti-war right or the anti-war left, for that matter, that's all great.
But what's step two?
There's no...
I remember hearing...
I think it was Jerry Jones at one point, the owner of the Cowboys, and he was like, it's like squeezing Jell-O.
Like, you squeeze it over here and it comes out there.
You squeeze it here and it comes out through your fingers.
I'm like...
What I think you can express is the fact that you don't just squeeze the jello and there's an indention there.
It pops out some other place.
So you don't just become anti-war and then your overall anti-war.
You become anti-war to focus the energy of the American empire towards something.
And I would suggest that post-October 7th...
The American Empire is going to be backing Israel, perhaps backing Israel in a regional war that eventually becomes a world war in the Middle East directed against Iran.
It is very important to get Russia on board.
Russia is an economic player.
I mean, its economy is the size of Italy, obviously has natural resource wealth, you know, tremendous.
It is a nuclear power.
You want to take one player off the field, a player that could hurt you, stand in your way, etc.
That's how I read this.
So all of these anti-war types who think it's great that we're dumping Zelensky, be careful what you wish for.
The other thing I would say, before my phone runs out of power, Is that, you know, this gets back to what I was talking about before.
Like, are we really going to engage in geopolitical realignment on the basis of a dust-up between J.D. Vance, of all people, at a press conference?
I mean, who cares?
If you want to sell someone your house and insult you in some way, maybe you'll...
You know, walk out of the room, but you'll probably call him back the next day.
I mean, if you want to do something and someone is willing to partner with you, then why stand on some formality?
Why don't you get over some slight that someone perpetrated against and just do it?
Are we really going to realign geopolitics?
I find it just hard to believe that this wasn't a setup.
That being said, I see the Trump administration, Trump 2.0, as devolving into a series of catastrophes.
It seems like a hundred years ago, but only yesterday, we had this bizarre situation where Pam Bondi promised to Reveal everything about Epstein only to reveal nothing that we didn't already know.
Actually, reveal less than nothing.
To reveal redacted documents that are already out there and give them to a bunch of idiotic e-grifter influencer types.
I mean, that blew up in their face really hard.
And one could talk about why they did that, of course.
And then...
We have this situation where you're apparently engaging in geopolitics on the basis of whether someone does or does not insult J.D. Vance.
I mean, it's just insane, taken from the standpoint of, you know, or standard diplomacy.
So we seem to just be devolving into these series of catastrophes.
And we also seem to be devolving into the end of the American century.
A century that stretched 80 years from the Bretton Woods Accords in 1944, the end of the Second World War in 1945, of course, and the creation of all of these institutions.
A little bit later on, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, all this stuff.
America is the world reserve currency.
America is going to patrol the seas.
America is the one true way.
In competition with Soviet communism, maybe they're going to end up at the same place.
Maybe they want the same thing.
But actually, we found out America wins.
It's the only thing going.
That century under...
Is that the right word, undergirded?
Buttressed by American military might and the American dollar is the world reserve currency.
Are we not seeing the end of it?
I mean, if the whole world is basically radically disagreeing with you and saying that they love Ukraine, if the whole world is basically saying this guy...
To Donald Trump.
If European partners are like, well, we've got to go our own way then.
The new German minister said, we've got to gain independence from the United States.
We've got to continue to support Ukraine.
If the whole world is looking at the United States getting deeper and deeper in bed, aligning with Israel that has just committed god-awful acts in Gaza, in getting Yeah,
that's true, but it's...
It's based on the fact that people believe in the United States.
Soft power is not some joke.
Think about all of the soft power that the Soviet Union actually possessed after 1917.
It wasn't called the Soviet Union at the time, but you understand.
The idea that they were the one true way, that we're liberating the people.
From the oppressive capitalists.
These are all slogans, of course, but they're real.
That kind of legitimacy is extremely important, as was the legitimacy that the United States Empire gained from blue jeans, rock, you can roll the Beatles, you too, consumerism, some feminism,
but not too much, family values.
I'm going to own a, you know, Two-bedroom home, have two cars, have four weeks of vacation and a gold watch when I retire.
All of that, that vision of America is soft power, and it's extremely important.
And from some brutal, realistic way, you could say, oh, none of this matters.
Let's just be transactional.
Pay me, bro.
I might tariff your ass.
If you don't do what I say.
I mean, I get it.
And on some level, that's how politics really is.
But to just dismiss the concepts of legitimacy, that is political theology, as Carl Schmitt delved into.
Legitimacy, credo, belief, credit.
To just dismiss that.
As meaningless, and we'll just do whatever the fuck we want, does represent the end of the American century.
It represents the undermining of the American empire.
And I would fear that what comes after the American empire is going to be much worse.
Now, maybe on some level, it always had to end and nothing can last forever, etc., etc.
I actually sort of...
Maybe on some level, you can't have democracy and an empire.
The democracy is going to demand too much.
It's going to undermine the empire.
At some point, the democracy, the people, Demos, doesn't believe in the empire.
I get all that.
Maybe it sort of has to end.
But what comes after is no doubt.
Going to be much worse.
There are consequences to this.
And I don't think the Trump fans, the online right, the dissident right, MAGA, I don't think they are contemplating any of this.
I think they think in this very stupid way that the government is going to their home.
Pulling out their wallet, taking all the cash out, and just handing it to Zelensky, who buys a new car and throws a keg party.
That seems to be what they think.
That's how Tucker Carlson thinks.
Not in those words, of course, but you get it.
They don't understand that the value of their dollar is dependent upon the American empire.
They are going to lose a whole hell of a lot by the United States empire declining.
They don't want to think about that.
They think that they're just getting ripped off.
And thank God Elon Musk is deconstructing soft power so that we can be rich again.
Look, on some ways, I get it.
I think there have been declining expectations, declining living standards, declining life expectancy.
I get it in many ways.
But that is a fundamentally incorrect way of conceiving the American empire.
And of course, that's how conservatives think.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
Hope you enjoyed these.
I will talk to you guys soon.
Thank you for subscribing.
Thank you for listening.
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