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Feb. 26, 2022 - Timcast IRL - Tim Pool

02:05:26

Timcast IRL - Russia Threatens Military Action Against Sweden And Finland w/Nick Freitas

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ian crossland

14:10

nicholas j freitas

53:17

tim pool

53:47

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lydia smith

01:45

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Speaker	Time	Text
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for watching.
		We now have reports that Russia has threatened military and political consequences, serious military and political consequences, if Finland and Sweden try joining NATO.
		Finland and Sweden are already having discussions with NATO.
		They're actually involved in the NATO meetings over the defense of, or I should say, the response to the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
		And while there are some people who are saying, well, that's not explicitly threatening war or military action, If you actually look at what's been going on for the past several weeks, it is.
		There's been unidentified drones flying over nuclear plants in Sweden.
		There has been Russian activity from Kaliningrad into the Baltic Sea.
		So very much so, Sweden has been on high alert for some time.
		This statement is basically saying there is going to be some kind of action against you if you go out against us.
		Not only that, We already heard Vladimir Putin say anyone who interferes in their operation in Ukraine will face consequences never before seen in history.
		So I think it's fair to say obviously everyone's going to try and play some game of how they're describing things to win PR points, but this is It's a veiled threat at the very least.
		But I think it's, in my opinion, it's outright overt to say military consequences.
		So things are absolutely starting to heat up.
		We'll talk about that.
		We've got NATO.
		Apparently, it's for the first time they're having this defensive meeting.
		And then I want to talk to you about propaganda because, you know, man, I go on Reddit.
		I go on Reddit all the time.
		You guys know it.
		And it is the lowest of low-tier propaganda I've ever seen produced in favor of Ukraine.
		And I like Ukraine, and I oppose Russia's actions.
		I think it's all wrong.
		And I'm just like, your propaganda is garbage, but it's just so annoying to see bad propaganda.
		I'm like, guys, do better than this.
		The Ghost of Kiev thing?
		That was cool.
		The Ace Fighter pilot took out six Russian fighter jets?
		Cool story.
		The Snake Island one?
		Go F yourself, I like it.
		But these memes are just cringe.
		So we'll talk about that.
		At the same time, RT has been taken offline, and I think that's absolutely wrong.
		If people want to see the Russian perspective on the war, or see what Russia's claiming, they should be allowed to do it.
		But apparently Anonymous has shut him down.
		Yeah, I don't know if I believe that, but we'll get into that stuff.
		Joining us to talk about all of this is Nick Freitas.
		You want to introduce yourself?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thank you very much for having me on, Tim.
		Yeah, my name's Nick.
		Did some time in the military.
		I'm currently serving the Virginia House of Delegates.
		But yeah, it's kind of an interesting topic because my whole role in the military was unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency.
		And so watching this kind of unfold is amazing.
		But yeah, I've been serving the last seven years in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing the 30th district, so thanks for having me on.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Right on.
		I think it's perfectly pertinent, I suppose, with your military experience, but also you had a viral video recently condemning, you know, like critical race theory in schools and things like that.
		And so I think, you know, before we even went live, you were giving it all away, talking about school choice and what's going on in these schools.
		And I'm like, well, you know, it's fine.
		You'll just say it twice.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So that should be fun.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We got Ian.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What's up, everybody?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I've been very inspired by all the 20s I've been rolling lately that you've been reminding me about, so I got a couple of hundred-sided dice.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, snap.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's about time to start rolling hundreds.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And one of these is for Tim.
unidentified		I'm gonna let Tim decide which one you'd like.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Here you go, Tim.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		A 100-sided dice?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, one's rainbow-colored and one's blue.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
unidentified		That's so cool.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's very heavy.
unidentified		It is.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		A giant metal ball.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Hard metal.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'm gonna roll it.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh my gosh, that's loud.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they don't play well in D&D because they take forever to roll.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Rolled away from Nick.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Got the wide shot on that.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		It's in front of Nick now.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What do we got?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		What do we got?
unidentified		22, 23?
unidentified		23.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		23!
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's a prime number.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Nice.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Better than 20.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Good night ahead of us.
unidentified		All right.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What's up, everybody?
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		And I'm also here.
		I warmed Nick up by talking about anything and everything.
		I try not to talk about the podcast topics, but sometimes we get into it.
		It's going to be great.
		I'm really looking forward to it.
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		But don't forget to smash the like button, subscribe to this channel right now, share the show any way you can.
		Let's read that first story from the hill.
		Russia threatens military and political consequences if Finland or Sweden tries joining NATO.
		Russian's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.
		Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries, and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences, Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference.
		The ministry later posted the same threat on its Twitter.
		Finland and Sweden have given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine since Russia invaded.
		One pretext Russia has given for attacking Ukraine is that NATO would not give any assurances that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the Intergovernmental Military Alliance.
		See, I'm gonna pause real quick and say a few things.
		It's hard to believe any of the stuff that's coming out.
		You know, I mean, this stuff is on Twitter, these videos and these statements, but a lot of the videos, a lot of the claims, a lot of the propaganda just seems that it seems like attempts to manipulate the public.
		It's hard to know what's true.
		But, We have had stories coming out for quite some time.
		This is from France24.
		The Russians are coming.
		Sweden on edge as Russia flexes military muscle.
		It could be a long-standing propaganda campaign.
		I just don't really think so.
		I think Russia has literally invaded.
		Russia has said that they're engaged in a military operation.
		Call it whatever you want.
		I think the reality is Vladimir Putin feels like he lost.
		He lost the influence battle.
		The U.S.
		basically bought Ukraine.
		He couldn't do it.
		So here we are, getting into war.
		The question is, this threat towards Sweden and Finland, is it legitimate?
		Or is Putin just spiraling out of control?
	Nick, I'm wondering what your thoughts are.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I don't, you know, I don't see, Putin's never struck me as the sort of guy that like just spirals out of control, right?
		The sort of guy that gets pissed off and just starts, you know, executing generals and things like that.
		He's always seemed to be, again, I don't think he's a good guy.
		I think he's a bad dude.
		But I've also thought he was a fairly calculating guy.
		I mean, the guy has managed to stay in power this long within Russia, within an environment where it's fairly unstable from a political perspective with a bunch of oligarchs running around.
		So, I don't know.
		I'm not convinced that he's at a point where he's just kind of lost his mind.
		I think he's pushing to see how far he can get away with what he's doing.
		I think he knows he's got a fairly short time to be able to act in order to consolidate gains.
		And then it's all a question of what are you bringing, right?
		When inevitably we get to the negotiating table, what does that look like and what do you transform in order to get what you want?
		So I don't really understand why he brings Sweden and Finland into this, but again, I don't see him as being an unstable guy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		What are your thoughts on, I mean, you were talking about unconventional warfare, that's where you specialized in when you were in the military?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So what are your thoughts on everything we're seeing, right?
		Just to preface this, none of us here at least thought Putin would go this far with Ukraine.
		And so this seems very much like conventional warfare.
		And it seems like they're saying, while Kiev has some major gains, they've taken down a lot of Russia's assets, they're going to lose.
		And then there's questions about what they can do in the insurgency phase, in the resistance phase.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I don't, look, everyone likes to talk about the fact that Russia is not the power the Soviet Union was.
		That's absolutely true, right?
		It's got a GDP that's a little bit bigger than Mexico's, right?
		It's got a population of about, you know, 150 million.
		So not what the Soviet Union was.
		But when we talk about Russia doesn't have the GDP to fight a sustained war, yeah, you know who also doesn't?
		Ukraine.
		So this isn't about them having to fight a war for years.
		This is about how quickly can they get their gains, consolidate those gains, and then put themselves in a good position on the negotiating table.
		And so from Ukraine's perspective, they had to know that you're not going to go toe-to-toe, especially with the geography of Ukraine.
		It's not like you can go fighting in the mountains for 10 years like they did in Afghanistan, right?
		It is built for tank warfare, and the Russians know a little something about tank warfare.
		Especially in Ukraine, right?
		There's a lot of historical battles there.
		But what a lot of people don't understand about this is immediately following World War II, the Ukrainians fought like a 10-year insurgency against the Soviets.
		So there is a history of them fighting over that area.
		The borders of Ukraine are a little bit weird from an ethnic standpoint.
		So, at this point, this is a question of using the natural geography that you have, right, around the Dinapur and whatnot, in order to slow, like, the major advance.
		And then, it's largely going to be urban battles.
		If you can be in an urban environment, and you can make them pay, because that's where asymmetric warfare works really well for the defender, for the person that doesn't have the technology.
		But if you're sitting in a city right now and you've got an AT4, an RPG, or if you've got really something good like the U.S.
		gave them like Javelins.
		Okay, you got a $10,000 or a $15,000 rocket that's taken out a $15, $20 million tank.
		That adds up.
		And so if they fight the insurgency point in the urban areas, which are kind of behind the lines of the Russian advance, and then they use their military in order to kind of stop them at some of these main geographical areas, rivers being one of the best, They can drag this out and they can make Russia pay a much higher price for it, and that's what I don't think Russia can afford.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I want to pull up this Google map real quick of the, you know, Eastern European region.
		You have Moscow, you got Russia, you've got Ukraine here, you can see it.
		When Vladimir Putin says he wants assurances that Ukraine won't be joining NATO, I think Tulsi Gabbard came out and she was like, just give them assurances Ukraine won't join NATO.
		It's like, have y'all looked, I'm a fan of Tulsi, but have you looked at a map?
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Estonia and Latvia are EU, I'm sorry, are NATO members.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, they are.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They're already on the border.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		They take it very seriously.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And then if you go up and you look, it's Sweden, which, you know, look, Russia's got St.
		Petersburg, they've got Kaliningrad in the Baltic Sea.
		Sweden, not NATO, but now obviously Russia's threatening Finland, not NATO, but also Russia's basically threatening them.
		They're both in these same meetings with NATO.
		So when Moscow was like, oh, we don't want NATO on our borders, like they've been there, dude.
		I mean, I know Sweden and Finland, but to act like this is the line for him now, perhaps it's fair to say, I'm not saying he's spiraling out of control like a madman, but he's desperate.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You know, Russia is not the power it once was, and it's being weakened.
		It's being pressed upon.
		It's already got NATO on its borders, and now it's going to have Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Putin.
		He's done.
		His only option basically is to bend the knee to the West and say, you know, how may I serve my leash?
		And he doesn't want to do that.
		So he's like, I'll go out with a bang, I suppose.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh no, I think he's someone that wants to believe in the greatness of Russia, that would love to see the Russian Empire once again on a global stage as something that's respected as opposed to kind of a second-rate power.
		And again, you're growing up, he was once a KGB officer.
		This was a guy that believed in the greatness of Russia, regardless of whether or not he was a communist.
		Right.
		And I think he sees, again, these countries that used to be in the Russian sphere of influence.
		He's finding different excuses for Costas Belli in order to justify why he's going to war.
		I think some of this, too, has to do with internal dynamics within Russia.
		I mean, you have a decreasing birth rate.
		You have records showing that you've got a record number of kids in their teenage years that are alcoholics.
		Right.
		Look, I don't think any of us are shocked by the fact That there are plenty of times when, throughout history, when a domestic leader had problems at home, a war abroad was a great way to, you know, kickstart your nation and get them focused on something.
		You know, again, the greatness of whatever it was.
		And look, our nation hasn't been beyond that sort of enticement in the past.
		But so yeah, I don't buy that it was Ukraine potentially joining.
		Would this have happened anyway?
		I don't think NATO was the fulcrum.
		I think NATO made a convenient excuse for Putin to do something that he already wanted to do.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They're trying really hard to push this propaganda, this anti-Trump propaganda.
		It's so... Man, the propaganda is mind-numbing.
		You know, it's under Trump.
		Putin did not make these moves.
unidentified		No.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And so the only real response they have, because the first thing I started seeing from these activists was that, oh, thank heavens Trump wasn't president when this happened, because we'd be worse off.
		And I was like, for four years, Putin backed off.
		Yeah.
		And they said now they're saying it's because Trump gave them everything they wanted, because he was he was opposed to NATO.
		It's like he got NATO to pay them more to pass.
unidentified		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Money.
unidentified		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if anything, he was he was stabilizing it in a sense.
unidentified		Oh, so.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, no, this is the part where, and the other night I was just kind of pissed off, and I said, you know, I said, I can't remember how far along we were for a bunch of European countries to, you know, ask the United States to intervene in the Ukraine, only to turn around six months later from now and bitch about the United States intervening in Ukraine, right?
		Because they're always willing to fight to the last drop of American blood to sustain their welfare states.
		So this idea that when Trump came in and basically told NATO, hey, look, a treaty is an agreement, it's a legal agreement, and you're not living up to your part of it, that lit a fire under their ass.
		And quite frankly, they needed it.
		And the other thing was, is that Putin also understood that Trump didn't draw, and look, there was things about Trump's policy I didn't necessarily agree with, but Trump didn't do this thing that Obama did, where it's, we're going to draw a fake line in the sand, and then when you cross it, we're going to draw a different line in the sand.
		Putin expected that if Trump said, you do this, we're going to do this, that he would do it.
		And that's a big part of when foreign leaders cannot calculate what you're going to do, And you have the ability to actually make good on your threats.
		That's a far different dynamic than Joe Biden ripping everyone out of Afghanistan.
		Which again, I wanted the troops to come home from Afghanistan.
		But ripping everyone out the way that he did?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Surrender.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Oh my gosh.
		Afghanistan seemed like they botched that on purpose.
		How you abandoned Bagram, it was just mind-numbingly insane.
		I cannot... I'm sorry, I know I love to cite Hanlon's razor.
		Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
		But in this instance, I'm like, there's no way you thought abandoning our Air Force Base before evacuating people made sense.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Maybe because Biden's a bureaucrat with no military.
		I don't think he has any military experience.
		Does he even have any military knowledge?
		Surrendered and routed our troops?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But the guys advising him certainly did.
		Now, this is the part where I do think we've seen this trend within politics and some of the rhetoric and the direction the left is going.
		And I'm not talking about everyone that might be a Democrat or a liberal.
		I'm talking about the hardcore progressive left.
		They honestly believe some of this crap where it's like, oh, we're just going to pull everybody out by September 11th in 2021.
		And that's going to be that's going to be our market.
		It's going to show that we're dedicated to peace.
		I honestly think Biden is someone that is making a political calculation based off of photo ops and honestly had no idea it was going to go this badly, even though, again, to your point, anybody should have been able to look at that like you cannot pull out this way.
		But Putin is watching things like that.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
		We have this story from the New York Post.
		Trump talks about Putin mocking Merkel and more at Mar-a-Lago.
		Boy, did they bury the lead on this one.
		The story is about Donald Trump threatening to hit the capitals of Russia and China.
		This is, I mean, these are bold statements.
		So you want to know why?
		Why is it that Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine under Trump?
		There are these, there's this, there's this top post on Reddit where they're like, because, you know, Russia put bounties on soldiers in Afghanistan and Trump didn't even do anything about it.
		The story was fake.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And this is what they believe.
		No, no, no.
		Let me show you exactly what it is.
		I will scroll down and give you this.
		There are several other stories making the rounds too, and they are even more provocative.
		One has it that Trump, noting that Putin seized land from Georgia when George W. Bush was president, and seized the Crimean peninsula when Barack Obama was president, warned Putin against a land grab on his watch.
		If you move against Ukraine while I'm president, I will hit Moscow.
		Putin reportedly scoffed, no way.
		And Trump said all those beautiful golden turrets will be blown up.
		He reportedly said the same thing to Xi Jinping, that if he made a move against Taiwan, it would be met with an attack on Beijing.
		Xi, like Putin, is said to have been stunned.
		It's possible neither man believed Trump was serious.
		I kind of don't like the idea of bombing civilian targets immediately as soon as a regional war happens.
		But let it be said, Trump was called a madman by his enemies and his supporters.
		And I just want to say, I don't believe Trump would bomb civilians.
		He's the guy who said, we're calling off the airstrike on Iran because too many people would die.
		But Trump is notorious for the big ask.
		He exaggerates his position and then pulls back to a more reasonable spot.
		That's what he does.
		He says, I'll buy that off, you know, I'll, you know, if I'm doing the job, I want a million dollars.
		And they say, Oh, a million.
		That's crazy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		How about half a million?
		Now he's getting you to half a million dollars.
		In this instance, he goes to Moscow.
		He goes, he goes to Putin.
		If you invade Ukraine, I will hit Moscow.
		And Putin's like, no.
		And Trump's like, yes.
		And Putin's like, Okay.
		This guy's a little off his, you know.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And they know that he'll be out in four years.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		They know that the American democracy or republicanism works like that.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So Putin was like, let the, you know, hold, like the Braveheart meme, hold.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And then Biden comes in, he's like, we good.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, and nobody thinks, I mean, again, this is also, some people think that diplomacy works with everybody because they honestly believe that, well, if we all just sat around the room and we talked and we understood one another, like, I can't remember who it was that said that, you know, Israel and Gaza understand each other.
unidentified		Oh, they do.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they do.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		They don't like one another.
unidentified		Sure do.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So this idea that if we just had a better conversation, I don't think we'd be fine.
		No, when you're dealing with people, that are either dictatorial or quasi-authoritarian or
		whatnot, what they respect is strength.
		And that strength has to be backed up with the, first of all, the capability to do it.
		Could you actually make good on these promises? They all know we could.
		And then it's the idea of, would he actually do this?
		And even if they don't think he would, the bottom line is that there's a part of him like, damn, he might actually do it.
		That is the sort of stuff that can stop a war from ever taking place in the first place and can check aggression.
		You have to have the capability and the willingness, and you have to be able to negotiate in a way that your enemies don't know what you're gonna do, but know that the wildest crap is still on the table.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You ever play poker at all?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		A little bit, not very good.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Only with my life.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I'm all in.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Only with my life.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		When you're playing Holden against somebody who doesn't know how to play poker, there's
		a certain advantage they have in that it's hard to know what they're doing because they're
		all over the place.
		So I remember when I was like 20, I played a game of poker.
		I had two seven off suit.
		And I went all in on it.
		And I got a full house.
unidentified		Oh, wow.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And I beat a guy who had ace king, you know, it was just it was it was a good hand.
		And he ended up losing thinking you can't have anything but like I got ace king and I think he ended up with like, I don't know, I don't think he had anything.
		But I ended up winning and he got angry.
		He was like, why did you?
		I'm like, I won, didn't I?
unidentified		Oh.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I have lost more hands with pocket aces than legs.
unidentified		That's right, right.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Because you're like, it's a, I mean, it's a fantastic, it's one of the best hands to go in on.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Pre-flop.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Pre-flop.
		Maybe Ace King suited.
		But anyway, the point is, with Donald Trump, Putin's like, I don't think he'll bomb Moscow, but I also don't know if he knows what he's doing either.
		I don't know how he'll respond.
		How can you make a plan for war?
		What Sun Tzu said, win the war before, you know, before you actually start it.
		How could you plan against a man like Trump?
		He was like, look, we're going to wait a few years because I don't know what this guy's doing.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, and he was the other thing, too, that I think shocked a lot of people.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And one of the things that impressed me most about Trump is that is how reserved he actually was in foreign policy when it came to actually deploying people into harm's way to get shot at.
unidentified		Right.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of other again, Joe Biden.
		There's the whole Teddy Roosevelt thing, right?
		Walk softly, carry a big stick.
		Joe Biden mumbles and carries no stick.
		And once people get used to that idea, then they know they can walk all over you.
		And it doesn't matter what your capability is, because you don't have the willingness to use it.
		Whereas Trump had the capability.
		Again, he was actually a lot more reserved.
		When that whole thing happened in Iran and it was, no, we're not going to do this because I'm not going to... One, it's immoral to kill a bunch of people that had nothing to do with any of this.
		Two, it doesn't make sense on a practical level to create a bunch of enemies off of killing civilians.
		But when it came to Syria and then there was a legitimate thing to strike, like he struck, he struck hard.
		He was in there quick.
		He didn't have any, you know, aspirations to like remake Syria.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It was just, this is the weirdest thing about the whole, the whole argument about Trump and you know, what he, what, you know, why Putin didn't attack.
		Because they're acting like Trump was favorable to Russia.
		I guess in some ways you can argue Trump's disdain for NATO, but Trump's disdain for NATO, there's a video going around of Trump sitting at a meeting table with them saying, why are we paying for your defense against Russia, and then you're negotiating billion-dollar gas deals making you dependent on Russia?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It was not helping Russia that Trump sanctioned Nord Stream 2.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Joe Biden, May 2021, lifted the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, and all of us were like, why?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		As he was shutting down the Keystone Pipeline.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Right!
		And then it was appeasement.
		Is that what it was?
		The idea was, well, if we give him a little, then we can take it away if he does bad.
		It's like, He's got nothing to lose then.
		He's like, you gave me free stuff so I can invade anyway and lose what I already didn't have.
		Whatever.
		And then he did.
		Putin did.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, and he also, again, it's this idea.
		It's incredible to me that there's this honest belief that anybody's capable of sitting down at the table.
		No, you have completely different objectives.
		You have completely different worldviews.
		You have completely different capabilities, interests, et cetera.
		Now, that's not to say that you still can't have a productive conversation with someone engaged in effective diplomacy.
		But effective diplomacy only takes place when people actually believe that there will be consequences for their actions that they go against you.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think, you know, I wonder about Vladimir Putin's term of mind, but I do know we talk a lot about Strassau generational theory.
		You're familiar with it?
		Fourth turning?
		Hard times make strong men.
		I think about the motivations of Vladimir Putin.
		He wants Russian greatness.
		He wants that empire back.
		And he knows, you know what?
		Maybe things will get worse off for the people of Russia, but that will be good for them spiritually in the long run.
		I'm not saying it literally will.
		I'm saying that's his mentality.
		And so his idea is, look, we go to war.
		We are more willing, have less to lose than these Western nations, and it will harden up our people a little bit.
		In the long run, maybe he thinks he's planting some seeds.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What I don't understand, maybe I'm playing Dev's Advocate, America took Iraq, Russia takes Ukraine, China takes Taiwan, then we're done with it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Can we just be done with it and move on?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I don't... Can we trade Iraq for...
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would love to trade around for maybe no conquest.
unidentified		How about that?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Greenland's going to be super valuable in the 21st century.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Greenland.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And beyond.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		How about this?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Russia, you can have Ukraine.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Who's going to get Greenland?
		It's Denmark, isn't it?
		The Kingdom of Denmark.
		Talk about getting an ally early, because in 100 years, they're going to be mega powerful.
unidentified		Unless someone seizes... Yeah, it's gonna melt and it's gonna be so much oil and lithium and beachfront property.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		We have Alaska.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		We do have Alaska.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		We conquered it, didn't we?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, we bought it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		We bought it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		We conquered Hawaii.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Senator Seward, yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		We conquered Hawaii, yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, wasn't there like 10 years ago, I think it was, a bunch of Native Hawaiians stormed the state building and occupied it or something?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they still get pissed about that.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		A lot of the islanders do.
		Well, yeah, they're like, we had a king.
		America came and took it while America wanted a Pacific military operation.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It looks like Putin wants the Black Sea.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		He wants to control the Black Sea.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so this is what I think is interesting.
		I was talking to a buddy of mine, Christian, who works with us, really good historian, and he's done a lot of research on what's going on in the Ukraine.
		And we were talking about, okay, what are some of the possible angles here, right?
		Because the most obvious one is, all right, Crimea used to be part of Russia.
		It actually got worked into the border with Ukraine after Nikita Khrushchev shut down the insurgency that the Ukrainians had launched against the Soviet Union, right?
		Crimea went from the Russian SSR over to the Ukrainian SSR.
		It was like, well, it's not a big deal.
		We're all the USSR.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Right.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, when you have the breakaway republics, now all of a sudden you have these areas which ethnically, culturally, you could even argue historically are more Russian that are now not part of that.
		So, OK, again, if you're looking for Cossus Bela, you could say maybe he was he's interested in getting back parts of Russia that he thinks always belong to Russia and want to be Russian anyways.
		But as I look at the Black Sea, and as I look at the Belt and Road Initiative by China, and I look at what they're trying to do with respect to their overland trade, I have a feeling that the more access you have to the Caspian Sea, the more access you have to the Black Sea, the more important that that's going to be from a trade and economic perspective.
		Not to mention the fact that if he gets away with doing this in Ukraine, who the hell is gonna stop him when it comes to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And now we're talking about minerals, we're talking about, you know, overland routes, we're talking about natural gas.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Who's gonna stop him then?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And look at the strategy he's using.
		Donald Trump called it genius, savvy.
		And the media has... CNN actually ran an article saying Trump sides with Putin.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Did you... Trump said it was a genius move, it was savvy, and it wouldn't have happened under me.
		It's sad.
		So I don't think that's siding with Putin.
		I think he's like, you know, you mentioned.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Acknowledging that your enemy is a genius can be very good to defeat your enemy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And so you mentioned, you know, in war at the negotiating table, people will only respect power.
		Respect often people, people conflate some words with positivity, like greatness, excitement, or respect.
		You can respect someone and despise them.
unidentified		Oh yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You can be excited and in despair.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Not happy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You can be a great man and pure evil.
		Great is just a magnitude.
		But we often view greatness in a positive way.
		Like, he was a great man.
		It's like, that could just mean a powerful man.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		A conqueror.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
		And when it's funny too, you would think the same left, that whenever, when Trump said, make America great again, and they all came out with their little hat, we'll make America good again.
		So you get that there's a difference, right, between the two.
		And then when he comes out and says, yeah, this was a genius move on his part for these reasons, it could be genius at that.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What was he referencing when he said it was genius?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So Vladimir Putin says, oh, look, these regions are independent.
		I'm going to send in a peacekeeping force to keep the peace.
		And Trump was actually being sarcastic.
		It was like, oh, yeah, peacekeeping force.
		Look at all those tanks.
		That's a peacekeeping force.
		And they're like, he's siding with Putin.
		He was being sarcastic.
		But it was, it was a clever move for Putin to be like, well, you know, they're independent, so we can go help them.
		And it's like, oh, yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So you win a war without, before it begins, basically.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But let's talk about, you know, we always do it, the double standards and the hypocrisy of our good Democrat voter and activist friends.
		Take a look at this story from TimCast.com.
		Ukraine says they have supplied 18,000 weapons to citizens.
		Anti-gun leftists celebrate their efforts.
		My favorite is Occupy Democrats.
		Let me pull up this image from Defiant Elves.
		Occupy Democrats first tweeted, no civilian needs an AR-15 regardless of whatever mental gymnastics you do.
		You are a very special breed of stupid.
		And they then, you know, about six years later, breaking, Ukraine's interior minister announces that 10,000 automatic rifles have been handed out to the civilians of Kiev as they prepare to fight tooth and nail to defend their homes against Putin's invasion.
		RT if you stand with the brave people of Ukraine.
		Now hold on, hold on, hold on everybody.
		I think Occupy Democrats are right.
		I think Joe Biden's correct.
		You know what?
		I was wrong to criticize the establishment when they said Putin was a very real threat.
		I stand corrected, you guys.
		You're right.
		I think our government should join in as well and give all of the United States citizens some automatic weapons.
unidentified		Yes!
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Because Vladimir Putin's such a big threat to all of us.
unidentified		We could be next.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we could be next.
unidentified		That's right.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I'm terrified.
		And China.
		But Putin!
		So, um, I'll take a, I'll take a fully, I'll, I'll, I'll select fire.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I mean, while you're handing them out regarding this guy's first tweet, he's talking to the air and then he says, you're stupid.
		This is something I think people should avoid.
		This is a little off topic when you're, when you're using social media and you're like complaining towards someone and you, they start insulting them.
		If you do it on social media, a lot of people that are unintendedly reading it are going to feel like you're insulting them.
		So don't do that.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You are a very special breed of stupid.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Who are you talking to?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Me?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, they're talking to themselves.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Apparently.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Because now they're tweeting that he's they and they actually say civilians like no civilian needs an AR-15.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		To be fair, they're handing out collision to cops.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Keep in mind here.
		They think a they still think AR stands for automatic rifle.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So what's what's crazy is they don't think any civilian needs a semi automatic rifle.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But they are thrilled about fully automatic AKs going out to people.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's actually a really good point.
		Maybe we're being mean to our good friends.
		No civilian needs an AR-15.
		What they're really saying is, it's semi-auto.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's not sufficient.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, you need select fire.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Not against tanks.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And if one of those selects is not full-auto, then Occupy Democrats is not satisfied.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		50 BMG.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So maybe what they're really saying is that no civilian needs a semi-auto single shot.
		Come on!
		You need full auto!
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		That's right!
unidentified		Only the best!
unidentified		That's what they're getting at the whole time.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But let's talk about the asymmetrical warfare, though, because this is the reality.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		When you try to invade someone else, The big challenge for Vladimir Putin is going to be demoralized Russian soldiers, a finite amount of them, versus the entirety of Ukraine civilians who have remained, who are going to be like, I'm going to fight you.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Which is actually surprising.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		There's a number, I think a lot of people, and I think Putin thought this would be something where, hey, as soon as the armored divisions go rolling across the border, you know, presidents leaving the country, you know, uh, nope.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		He put on body armor.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you gotta hand it to him.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Boris Shenko took out a gun.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if I believe it.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's propaganda.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But it's good propaganda.
unidentified		I believe it, yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		If you're trying to rally... I mean, let's face it, especially when you're engaging in asymmetric warfare, you are the weaker party.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Propaganda is one of the key things you're going... We still got Democrats that think that we lost the Tet Offensive.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Why?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Because Walter Cronkite said we lost the Tet Offensive.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I thought we lost the Tet Offensive.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Didn't people just get rolled over?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		North Vietnam and all down Vietnam.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Didn't the Americans get annihilated?
unidentified		No, no.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Didn't happen.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Are you serious?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		On the Tet Offensive.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Oh, OK.
		Real quick segue.
unidentified		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		OK.
		Go for it.
		So yeah, in Vietnam, the Viet Cong launched a massive attack all throughout the country during Tet, which was supposed to be a ceasefire within the Vietnamese calendar.
		Right.
		And so they made like some fairly
		major gains quickly But with like in several weeks
		They had taken massive amounts of calories. We're like talking like 20 to 1 at that point
		It was after the Tet Offensive that the North Vietnamese Actual North Vietnamese army had to start coming in and
		supporting because we'd almost wiped out the Viet Cong After the Tet Offensive they threw they threw the kitchen
		sink at it and they got obliterated So it looked bad overnight partly because our own military,
		you know leaders are saying oh, yes, they're on their heels They can't do anything. Well, they launched this major
		offensive. That was unexpected. They got temporary gains, but they got destroyed
		But it didn't matter.
		The propaganda campaign that went along with it made it look like, one, the military or the government was lying to the people, which is certainly not hard to believe.
		And then the other two was that this never would have happened if we were actually in the good shape that we were.
		And as Thomas Sowell likes to say, when a democracy decides you've lost the war, you've lost it.
		And so that was the problem.
		But again, if you look at something like this, the propaganda component for an asymmetric force is critical.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Psychology is one of the most important things in a war.
		It's why we're seeing so much propaganda, because making people feel like we can win, we should win, and we have to win is important to keeping people in the fight.
		So there's a video of Poroshenko, you know, throwing a strap over.
		He's got a rifle of some sort.
		And he's like, I'm here on the ground.
		And he's like, here's all the, you know, other people I'm fighting with.
		You've got President Zelensky.
		And he's like, I'm with the prime minister.
		I'm with the cabinet from this guy.
		We're here on the ground.
		He's got like a vest on.
		Because the people of Ukraine, they're going to see that.
		And they're being handed out guns.
		And when you see your leader on the battlefield with you, they're going to be like... It's like my favorite movie, The Patriot, with Mel Gibson, I often say.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Good movie.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		When he says, hold the line, and he runs back when they're retreating, and then they pull forward and win.
		That's the thing.
		But let me tell you, you mentioned we got into Vietnam.
		I got to tell you the story I read.
		It's fascinating.
		The US was trying to engage in psychological warfare.
		It's something I read on the internet.
		Perhaps it's not true.
		And so what they did was, they knew that the Vietnamese were very superstitious.
		So they made these creepy recordings of wailing, haunting Vietnamese, like Vietcong soldiers, saying, you know, why did I fight?
		I should have gone home.
		They believe that if you are not given a proper burial, you're forced to haunt wherever it was you died.
		So in the forestry, the jungle or whatever, they're playing in these loudspeakers, wailing Vietcong voices, saying, flee while you still can or you'll be trapped like me.
		It was so effective, the South Vietnamese fled as well, and so they had to stop doing it.
		I don't know if it's true, it sounds amazing.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's black magic.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's one of those stories you hear, you know, it's probably apocryphal or something.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's one of those stories that, if it's not true, it ought to be, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Right, right, right.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's kind of messed up though, you know, going after people's, it's like a psychic attack on the people.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Superstitious cultures tend to get wiped out, I think.
		Are there any that exist anymore?
		I don't think so.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of superstitious cultures.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Like the Christians?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Cal Berkeley.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		There's Christian and Islam, which are both kind of superstitious.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		There's tons of, like Americans have tons of superstitions.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		But like, it's easy to manipulate someone if they're superstitious.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Go to a casino and you will see how superstitious everyone is.
		Or a sporting event.
		You'll see a guy like tap his Coke can five times before playing.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Well, that concerns me because superstitious people are easy to manipulate.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's like Michael Scott says, I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, man.
		So let it be known.
		They're giving out all these guns to regular people because it works.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I want to see Biden hitting a speed bag.
		I need some motivation.
		Get on the floor, bro!
unidentified		Yeah, let's go!
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's a funny thought.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Give me some speed!
		I'll tell you what'll be interesting on this, though, is that, and this is the part where, okay, again, how does Ukraine stall Russia?
		How does Ukraine, like, capture the press and the media and the propaganda and all of this?
		And this is going to be interesting because it's the first war we've seen like this, where literally everybody has got access to the world to some degree from their phone.
		So you imagine partisans out there doing this sort of stuff and then making a TikTok about it, right?
		That's going to be a fascinating thing to potentially watch, not just from a propaganda perspective, but a sharing information perspective.
		Because if you don't think terrorist organizations already use social media in order to coordinate their activities, Regardless of what ends up happening here, there's going to be a lot of research and study going into how social media influenced it from a propaganda, from a coordination standpoint, because there's good ways for partisans to fight, and there's really stupid ways for partisans to fight, and partisans should not be taking on a T-90 with their AK-47, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's just crazy.
		I'm trying to figure out why Putin would do this.
		And the only thing I come up with is, it's the last great hoorah of a dying empire.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		They're not part of NATO.
		I play Crusader Kings 2.
		You know, I play a lot of like battle conquest grand simulation strategy games.
		And if you have a lot of countries with a defensive pact against you, but one of them isn't in the pact, that's the country you hit.
		And you take it fast.
		And then you're done.
		And then no one complains anymore.
		It's just back to base zero again.
		And hopefully no one else signs up for the pact.
		And if someone drops out of the pact, they're a meaty target.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he's got a war-weary United States, which is the only one that has any teeth.
		He's got a Europe that's been hit by COVID and doesn't want to deal with this crap.
		And everyone on the Western side can say, Ukraine wasn't a part of NATO.
		Now, if you do it to Poland, we'll be pissed.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Poland's not in NATO right now.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Or excuse me, if you do it to Estonia, we'll be pissed.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Poland's in NATO.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Poland's in NATO.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		So is Estonia, yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Should we get out of NATO?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what do you think?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Because we've had those conversations here.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		We pull all the weight.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		We do.
		We do pull all the weight.
		It's going to be interesting to see what happens because, well, NATO hasn't been attacked, right?
		So it'd be interesting to see.
		Well, not that I'm wishing for this.
		I do think that there's something to be said.
		And this is the part where I'll probably get a little bit amped up.
		Because again, I've lost friends overseas fighting wars that I'm not so sure were the best decision on America's part.
		But one of the things that has maintained the level of peace that we've seen since World War II, and obviously there's been horrible conflicts in Vietnam, in Korea, and other places that we've been involved in and that we haven't been involved in, but nothing like the massive bloodshed we saw in World War I and World War II.
		And the reason why we have that, and the reason why for the last 30 years we haven't even imagined a conflict like that, the reason why this is surprising the living piss out of everybody, is because of US military dominance.
		That's why.
		The same thing that a lot of our allies are constantly bitching about, and coming to the United States and talking about, oh, you know, they're always throwing their weight around, they're always going...
		Yeah, and because we have, and because people know we can, it has kept people at bay, and no one's going to convince me otherwise.
		It really has.
		And so now we're at a point where you do, you have a war-weary United States, you have a global pandemic that took place, we have a country that we have no legal obligation to defend, and I think that kind of the world order Post-Cold War is being challenged right now by Putin, and he's probably picked the best possible time to do it.
		And again, that's why I said that.
		The same countries that will want the United States to intervene to do the heavy lifting for them, if we decide to do it, will be bitching about us six months from now.
		And so, I don't think we should.
		Now, does that mean we pull out of things like NATO?
		I think there's value with the United States being the preeminent military power.
		And I think that does do something to preventing other nations from getting a little bit froggy when they shouldn't.
		But one of the things, again, that I appreciated about how Trump handled this was he went back to NATO and he made it a very real possibility that you might not be able to rely on us because you're not pulling your weight.
		And that's not the same for allies that we have in like South Korea or Taiwan.
		They do pull their weight.
		They do recognize the threat.
		They do recognize their responsibility to hold back the threat.
		And yes, they depend on the United States for support, but they don't have this expectation that they don't got to do the fighting because we got this.
		And so I think one of the positive things that could come out of this is a lot of these countries that it's become real popular to trash the United States.
		Nope.
		are gonna realize that, you know what, what do you think your country would look like,
		Western Europe, if it was Putin that had the military and economic power that the United States had?
		You think we'd be having these conversations?
		Nope.
		You think we'd be talking about Eastern Ukraine or you think we'd be talking about
		the South of France right now?
		So just remember, as much as the United States may screw up on our foreign policy,
		as much as we might, at a time where we had all the power, all the money, all the military might,
		show me the country that we annexed into the United States in order to expand our own empire.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Iraq.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But we didn't.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		We don't own Iraq.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Not on paper.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, no, not, not at all.
		I mean, again, the way that you look at, you look at Russia, if Russia takes over Ukraine, watch what happens in Ukraine.
		It's going to be nothing like what happened to me.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I was really impressed with the Spanish American war.
		What I've read about it is that the Americans basically liberated Cuba for better or worse.
		They didn't invade and take it.
		They get, they kicked the Spanish empire out and were like, now Cuba's free.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, we didn't do that in the Philippines, but... Right, we didn't do that in the Philippines, or in Wake Island, or in Midway.
		This is not me suggesting that the United States military has not had our own little brush with empire where we've done things that we shouldn't have done.
		I mean, go look at what Lincoln was saying about the Mexican-American War.
		Go look at what Grant was saying about the Mexican-American War.
		About how we kind of picked a fight with a country we knew we could kick the crap out of and then got a lot of territory from it.
		So again, I'm not saying we're perfect, but if you look at the situation in the world, the level of peace and security that has existed in certain parts of the world, especially in Western Europe, has been as a direct result of U.S.
		military dominance.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's the Kissinger limited war doctrine.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		He was a big part of creating this idea that we're going to fight proxy wars only so that we don't go to total war.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I'm not a huge Kissinger fan.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Me neither.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But that was his... Yeah, I'm not a huge Kissinger fan.
		And I think it's... I don't like to call it the proxy war idea that like, okay, if we just get involved in a bunch of little wars, we'll stop big ones.
		I do think there's an argument to say that there is such a thing as the Sudetenland moment, right?
		Where there was a point where the French military, the British military, if they had intervened in Sudetenland, or if they'd intervened when, you know, the Nazis were going into Czechoslovakia and just carving it up because they could.
		Would that whole scene turn out a lot differently than if they waited all the way till Poland?
		And I think there's an argument to be made there.
		I think there's an argument to be made that you identify when someone has larger aspirations, when they have the military and capability to do it, and you intervene at a point where they realize that, okay, we're not going to get away with this.
		You don't let them build up a certain significant amount of power to where they now can potentially get away with it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's kind of what we've been doing in Iran.
		Well, like I've heard the Stuxnet, we blew up infrastructure.
		I think they targeted them with weapons, blew up weapons depots and stuff.
		I don't know how hot it's gotten.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		The Stuxnet was obviously, you know, fairly significant and they've also tried to manage their growth through sanctions.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So we could have done that to Germany.
		Looking back in retrospect, we could have tried to somehow disrupt their rise to power, but it was internal.
		It was like, how could we get involved and stop the military machine from creating itself?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, I think it's more of, and again, I am very, I tend to, I always side with non-interventionists, and then you need to explain why something is so significant that United States men and women need to bleed for it, right?
		That's my starting point.
		Now, when you're talking about something like Germany, again, when you have internal issues, I tend to say, look, you stay out of those, those are internal issues, piece of Westophilia, right?
		But once you start seeing naked aggression, like you did with the Sudetenland with Germany, or like you did with Czechoslovakia, Then I think there is some argument to say like, okay, is it appropriate at this point to intervene on some level?
		Now, there's a big difference.
		There's levels of force that you apply, right?
		There's an escalation of force.
		Not everything has to be like, you went into the Sudetenland, I'm nuking Berlin, right?
		It's not that, but- It sounds like Trump.
unidentified		Yeah, right.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I'll hit Moscow.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But that's the thing.
		There's a difference between, okay, what's gonna be your escalation of force, right?
		That's what you know.
		That's not what you share with the rest of the world.
		You want Putin thinking, you send one Russian troop into Ukraine, right?
		And I'm going into Moscow, right?
		It's gonna be, I'm gonna set up a Trump hotel in downtown Moscow.
unidentified		Right?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Because he doesn't know if you're actually going to do it.
		And so that's where there's a difference between, okay, what should be our actual strategy versus what sort of strategy should we project?
		Right?
		And our enemies don't get to know this one.
		They just get to know what we're capable of.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Biden said recently, you know, the minor incursion, it depends on if it's a minor incursion.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That was preemptive appeasement.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That was so stupid.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Biden should have said outright, We'll go into Moscow.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Biden's the Neville Chamberlain of our time.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Or, I mean, and worse possibly, the Buchanan.
		But he could have said, we won't tolerate this.
		Europe won't tolerate this.
		Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, Western Europe, none of it.
		If Putin makes this move, we go into Moscow day one.
		Try me.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you get the president of France, England, Germany, United States.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		The thing is, here's what I'll say, though.
		If Biden had said that, He would have flubbed it.
		Show of hands on who believes that.
		I don't buy that.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		He would have been reading a prompter and he would go, come on man, we're going to Moscow!
unidentified		Look here, corn pop.
		Whatever. I'm going to Moscow. Look here, Corn Pop. I'm going to Moscow. Vladimir Putin's a bad dude who's got some
		bad boys.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Someone called Putin a bad dude yesterday.
		Or you might have called him a bad dude earlier.
		I think he was going to say bad mother in the video.
		You can hear him start to say the word mother, and he stops himself and says dude instead.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Biden said that.
unidentified		Dude.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Biden, yeah.
		When he listens, he starts to say dude real weird.
		Bad dude.
		This is like when Hitler went into Poland to reconquer part of Poland that had been stripped away after the First World War and give it back, because apparently he said there was a genocide of German expats in Poland that they were committing.
		Putin says the same thing.
		There's a genocide of Russians in eastern Ukraine that's been going on for eight years.
		I haven't heard an inkling of this in the media.
		I don't know if it's real or complete propaganda, but this was Hitler's reason for invading Poland, or part of it.
		Probably also to connect you know, more land bridges and stuff, because he had
		Hitler was like ready to take over the world.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		There's a conflict in the Donbass region. And you've got people saying, yeah,
		the separatists are dying. You get people saying Ukrainians are dying.
		And both sides will use what they can to justify the position. I don't know who's
		more right or more morally right. I don't know. I know that both sides are making those assertions.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I think that I think Putin is doing what he wanted to do.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And then he found reasons to do it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So should we I guess my question is, should we treat this like how we treated Hitler invading Poland?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's a different time, and I'll preempt that a little.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I don't either, because America took Iraq 20 years ago, and that gave the Russians an opportunity to match the playing field.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Look, two wrongs don't make a right.
		The U.S.
		screwed up with Iraq and Afghanistan.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		They're screwing up today by still being there.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's not like it happened.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's happening right now.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Unscrewed up, miserably leaving Afghanistan.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But we can't be like, well, Russia gets to take a sovereign country because the United States did it too.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And even then, the thing that I go back to is that with Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no point where Iraq became the 51st state or Afghanistan became a territory.
		Now, again, I think there was huge problems with the way we did a lot of it.
		Now, I don't think it was wrong to go after the Taliban.
		I don't think it was wrong to go after terrorism.
		I don't think any of that was wrong.
		I think there was something significantly wrong with this idea that we're going to come in here, completely devastate whatever current government is in charge, and then we're going to go ahead and recreate you on our image.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But I think it was Ron Paul who said that when it came to the Taliban after 9-11, we should have issued letters of mark and reprisal, specifically targeting the group, not the country, not going after Taliban.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		They would have cannibalized each other.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It would have been awesome.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Instead, it was like, let's nation-build for 20 years.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh no, if you look at the initial invasion, so again, in the military, I was Army Special Forces, it's better known as Green Berets.
		Green Berets focus on unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency.
		What does that mean?
		It means when we go into a country, we work by, through, and with local allies, the indigenous population.
		You look at the opening days of Afghanistan, we're talking about, you had agency in there, you had, you know, Several hundred green berets working with the Northern Alliance and within what a couple of months like they had kicked the Taliban out of like Kandahar and It was all by through and with the local population and what would have been fascinating to watch And and and who knows what would have happened would have fascinated watches What sort of organic solutions people would have come up to and I'm sure it would have been you know ugly and I'm sure it would have been brutal at times everything else but
		It wouldn't have been the United States saying, no, no, no, we're not just going to fight the Taliban.
		We're going to take over the entire country.
		We're going to take over the entire war.
		It's now our war.
		We're going to help you with your infrastructure.
		We're going to help, because some of this, I don't know if you've ever seen, read the book or seen the movie, Charlie Wilson's War.
		A big argument that they made is that we went in there to help the Mujahideen against the Soviets.
		And then we didn't stand by, stay behind in order to help with some of the infrastructure.
		And so it got out of hand.
		And so this time was, well, we're not going to repeat that mistake.
		We'll just double down and take over the whole damn thing.
		Okay, no, you're trying to impose certain cultural, political, social changes on a culture that is not necessarily interested in the social changes that you're trying to affect.
		It doesn't matter whether or not you think it's more moral than what they currently have.
		If you don't have buy-in there, then don't expect to be able to do it unless you're willing to stay there for a hundred years.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's my concern with Iraq.
		They say it's not a state, but what's the plan?
		Either we're gonna be there for a hundred years and it may as well be a state.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But we're not, we have no significant military presence in Iraq.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Right, yeah, it's drawn down substantially.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I just don't believe that.
		I don't know where that idea comes from, but it's like locked down by the United States or whoever's there.
		Is it American weapons in the Iraqi puppets' hands?
		It's a large nation that has been well defended by the United States for two decades.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, we've been, we have not been a significant military force on the ground in Iraq for, gosh dang, we're probably, I mean, trying to think of the actual, I was last over there in 08.
		I think by 2013, we were really drawing down significantly.
		Um, so no, I mean, we have not had a significant military presence in Iraq for, I mean, it's getting close to, you know.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think under Obama, he, he, he pulled all troops out of Iraq, put them into Afghanistan.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		He moved a lot down there, then he reinforced in Afghanistan by the time Trump was in there.
		I mean, we have a huge embassy over there.
		There was some military presence, but that was one of the big complaints, right?
		Is that the reason why ISIL was able to come in and do so much was because we didn't have a significant U.S.
		military presence.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It seems like Iraq is a staging ground, and so is Afghanistan for, like, Russian interference.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		For surrounding Iran.
unidentified		Iranian.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Iranian.
		They've got Syria on the border.
		They're close to Egypt in the south.
		They've got their eyes poking into Saudi Arabia's north border.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's been... I mean, Saudi Arabia was when the... during the Cold War.
		Iraq, especially Syria and all that, that was very clearly Soviet sphere of influence.
		Iraq was a little bit because they were they were taking most of the military equipment.
		Egypt was Soviet influence at a certain point.
		And then Saudi Arabia was more U.S.
		influence.
		So it's just been an interesting dynamic.
		But keep in mind, all those borders were, you know, drawn by British mapmakers.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, after World War II.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I want to talk about modern day piracy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting conversation.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So we have this story from Cyber News, Anonymous Leaks database of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
		We had this report out of NBC that Biden had been presented with U.S.
		plans for cyber attacks, direct attacks on Russian infrastructure.
		My position has been this for some time.
		The modern-day pirate or corsair is going to be the hacker.
		Governments... because we watched this happen.
		Back in the... what do they call it?
		They call it the... What was the time of the colonial... there's a word for it.
		Oh, the Barbary Pirates and the... It's called like the Sale Era or something like that.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I know what you're talking about.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I say the colonial times, but... Age of Sale.
		The Age of Sale, I think it was.
		So, uh, the crowns would issue letters of marque, which basically would commission a private warship to attack enemies during a time of war, and they could then capture it, bring it in, and get a reward for it.
		It was a simple way of being like, we don't gotta pay for your repairs, we don't gotta pay for the ship, you find your own crew, you bring a ship, we'll pay you for it, we'll make it worth your while.
		So governments would effectively commission pirates, corsairs, to go and, you know, stage these acts.
		Then the other country would be like, your ships are taking us.
unidentified		Oh, no, no, no.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Those are pirates.
		Don't look at us.
		So now we have anonymous.
		Hacking RT and shutting them down.
		Hacking Russian Ministry of Defense.
		And I don't buy it.
		First of all, it's probably just like U.S.
		cyber warriors.
		And if it isn't, it's effectively letters of mark.
		The U.S.
		government saying, private hackers, go for it and have fun.
		Take what you can from Russia.
		Think about it this way.
		You've got black hat hackers.
		These are the people who just want to rip you off and steal what they can.
		You got gray hat hackers, activists, politically motivated, and white hat, corporate security types.
		The government can go to these black hats, effectively pirates.
		Heck, some of them are probably pirating software online, literally.
		And they'll be like, anything you steal from Russia, you will not be prosecuted for.
		Any information you rip off, any databases, I'm willing to bet these people are being given carte blanche by the US government.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So you think they're getting paid through the dark web or something?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Not necessarily paid, but I'm willing to bet you've got like FBI going to this black hat hacker and being like, you know, we got that case against you.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We're gonna drop it if you can hit these Russian targets.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I think that's what they did with Jack Ruby with the Kennedy thing.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		He was like a mobster and they gave him, he got off.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I don't know about all that!
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		For killing a suspect.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think it's as simple as, you know, we know who you are, we know you're good, why don't you use your skills to help the United States and we'll look the other way.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So they're blackmailing criminal hackers in part in addition to maybe other things?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Blackmail, they're like, we're gonna let you have carte blanche to steal whatever you want and we want no repercussions?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		We'll punish you unless you steal whatever you want, and then we'll turn it off.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		And again, there's not a lot of people talking about this because when people talk about, we've just gotten so used to, oh, the president wants to go to war, I guess we'll go do that now.
		But there are constitutional ways to deal with certain threats.
		When is the declaration of war, which is supposed to be done by Congress?
		That's a fairly laborious process. The other thing that the president has as a tool, now again,
		if you're going to engage in major action, you're still supposed to get approval from Congress to
		do this. It's not like they can do it. But the whole idea of letters of mark and reprisal and
		kind of the last president I think we had that issued one was Madison. Wow.
		And it was, and again, don't quote me on that, but I think, and again, part of that was going after the, you know, the Barbary Pirate Wars and the United States didn't have a, you know, a huge Navy or anything like that.
		And so it made sense to do this.
		And I actually think it makes a lot of sense toward non-state actors when you're talking about terrorist organizations.
		And like you said, the modern day pirates are the Hackers, man.
		They can do more damage with a couple lines of code than, you know... Dude, they were talking about deep fakes.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I saw a video of a jet coming in and then it fired two rockets at that building where the camera guy was.
		And then you hear the kids screaming and it's like, was that fake?
		Was that deepfake?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I can't tell.
		I saw a deepfake today that really freaked me out.
		It confused me.
		I don't even know what to believe.
		It's Vladimir Putin fishing, but he has large female breasts.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's got to be fake.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's on the front page of Reddit.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's real.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		American propaganda.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's been confirmed.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That is an image on the front page of Reddit.
		Putin with large breasts fishing and topless.
		And I'm just like, I see that stuff and I'm annoyed by it.
		Now's not the time to poke the bear, bro.
		The bear bro, we don't know no poke him but make make the propaganda good right like watching fighters
		Like there's video of like a plane falling from the sky and they're like the ghost of Kiev and I'm like wow and then it
		was A grums he's like on Twitter. He's like this the the ghost
		of Kiev is like an anime protagonist I'm like now you got some good problem. Yeah
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		You know a new comic book character, but here's my question Do you think and this is this is interesting the hero's
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		journey masculinity, right?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		When you look at social media, there are certain platforms that the better it is, the worse it does.
		And there's other platforms where if it's bad, it does better because it seems more authentic.
		People think it's actually real.
unidentified		Yeah, but like when we're talking about- I'm not saying anything cringy!
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		There's a meme on the front page of Reddit, and it's Megamind, and he's got, it says like the size of the hero's balls, and then it says ball size, and it says mega, and I'm like, that's the stupidest thing, like, what is this a cultural reference to?
unidentified		Like, come on, man, do better!
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But who's making memes with Megamind?
		I mean, what is this?
		Did someone pull a meme out of the butt?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's a boomer.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's a boomer trying to make a meme because it's propaganda.
		Some, like, 50-year-old intelligence guy.
		He's probably listening to this show and he feels all bad now.
		I worked really hard on it.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		My grandkids loved it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Don't worry, Megaballs will come back one day.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		We're just ahead of your time.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but so this is not the first time we've heard stories like hacking.
		There's that Chinese hacking group.
		There was the Syrian Electronic Army.
		And it turns out, I believe it's true because we did this reporting advice, that the person who was actually running the Syrian Electronic Army was in Moscow.
		So this is somebody who hacked Twitter and then tweeted that Obama had been injured in some kind of attack on the White House.
		And the stock market in the U.S.
		dropped substantially before, because like the AP got hacked and tweeted it out.
		And then all of a sudden the market dropped substantially and then bounced back up.
		But it only returned like 90 percent.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		RT's back up.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it is?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		We're just talking about RT.
		RT was down for a long time today.
		And I just got it in.
		It took a while to load up, but then I was able to load it.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They finally figured out how to get, I can't, I can't load it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		They've been hacked.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Maybe I'm looking at a cash, cashed version.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So I like to go to, um, actualidad.rt.com, which is Spanish language RT.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That still works.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And then you just, uh, you just translate it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It works in English, but I'm getting this message that it says checking your browser while loading RT.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You think that there's, they're logging everyone that's going to RT now?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't know, but what I will say is, when I heard that Anonymous shut down RT, and I'm like, that does sound like a lot of what Anonymous is.
		And I will also stress this point, there is no hacktivist collective called Anonymous.
		That's just, it's a propaganda, it's manipulation, it's always been.
		If you ask someone who's a hacker, what does it mean when Anonymous hacks something?
		They'll just look at you and be like, it literally means Anonymous hacked it.
		Like someone signed it Anonymous.
		Like if you wrote someone a letter, I hate you, signed Anonymous.
		That's literally what it means.
		There's no secret group conspiring to hate you.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's what the secret group wants you to think.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's very antico.
		They are typically like, you know, they take down websites.
		They obfuscate.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		But like you said, there's no they.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's just anyone that wants to become a hacker and say, I'm anonymous can be anonymous.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And you know, when it first started, there was a small group who were doing it.
		It's like 500.
		And there was only a few of them who are prominent and actually had the skills.
		And then once it got popular press, all of a sudden you started getting all of these videos popping up on YouTube, where it was like anonymous declares.
		And the initial concept was if you have a thousand anonymous individuals and people propose things randomly, whatever is popular rises to the top.
		So a lot of the actions that were being taken by anonymous was like someone said, you know, operation this, let's do it.
		And people would be like, that's stupid.
		And then someone would be like, operation ABC.
		And they'd be like, all right.
		And they all start doing it.
		And then it gains popular traction.
		So you still have attempts at, you know, making these videos, but for the most part, the movement or whatever of like this kind of meritocratic, hacktivist operation just doesn't exist anymore.
		That's what I think now.
		I think it's government actors.
unidentified		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Cause I think if you get, I mean, not to say that I know a lot of hackers, but the people that I do know, let's say that possess a skillset.
		I don't know that you could get five of them to agree on anything.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the one thing I will say is that the hacker community has gone full cult for the most part.
		So I used to hang out, I'd go to Defcon, Blackhat, hang out at hacker spaces, and they were free speech, anti-establishment, anti-government.
		And then the last time I went to Defcon, which is the biggest hacker convention, it's like a civilian hacker convention, because they have Blackhat, which is the corporate one.
		There was a guy, I think he was from the NSA or something, and he was giving a presentation, and he mentioned how they try and stop Russia, and everyone started clapping and cheering.
		And then he stops and he goes, wow, an applause from DEF CON for a spook.
		I'm really surprised things are changing.
		And I started laughing.
		It was because the media had been running the narrative of Russia, And I mentioned there was like this semi-open event there, and I had mentioned that RT had offered to pay me money for some of my footage out of Sweden, which I said no to.
		I said no because I was like, my footage is on YouTube for free.
		You can fair use it.
		There's literally no reason to give me money for this.
		It sounds weird.
		And I got people clapping for me.
		I was like, so when I was reporting out of Sweden, I got hit up by RT.
		They asked if they could pay me.
		I said no.
		They doubled the amount they'd pay me.
		I said no.
		Then all of a sudden, people I knew were like, hey, I'm getting hit up by guys from RT.
		They're trying to pay you for this.
		And I was like, no.
		And people were like, oh, so brave, so honorable.
		And I'm like...
		It's weird.
		It was a weird shift that happened where, like, the corporate press said Putin bad, and everyone just went, you got it, we're gonna march in lockstep.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was so weird.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that was just because of Putin, or do you think that had something to do with Trump?
		I mean, not only that.
		I mean, let's face it, like, Putin's not a good guy, I get that.
		Yeah.
		But the attention on him.
		Do you think that was just Putin, or do you think that was a combination of Putin and Trump?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's Putin.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And fear of the Cold War.
		There's so much residual fear of the Soviet Union.
		They put that fear onto Russia.
		It's not the same country at all.
		It's completely different.
		It's not communist.
		It's a federation of states.
		So it's like an easy target, but it's tickling their amygdala.
		I brought that up before.
		It's enticing their lizard brain to become afraid of some ancient idea.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Ancient evil.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Like, does he still have the ring?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Or is the ring destroyed?
		The glacier is melting.
		He's going to be free.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a cult.
		We have this story from TimCast.com.
		Nearly 70% of liberals say it's more important to protect Ukraine's border than our own.
		I don't know if it's 70%.
		I thought it was 57.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You have a link to the poll on this one?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that doesn't surprise me.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And I think...
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's 57.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		The reason it doesn't surprise me is because there's a lot of people that I know, again, I always make a distinction between liberal and the left, but there's a lot of people on the left that I know that any other country in the world is better than our own.
		We are uniquely evil in some capacity for which we must pay, I don't know, We just need to be sorry all the time, and so the idea that you would ask them, should we protect our border or Ukraine's?
		Of course it would be Ukraine's, because the only way we would protect our border is if, you know, we're all a bunch of racists.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		This defies Jesus's logic.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Take the plank out of your own eye first.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Did you see that they're calling on CBP to leave the southern border to go to Poland to process Ukrainian refugees?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's remarkably insane.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to check that up as things that don't surprise me anymore.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Things that don't surprise me anymore.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So, okay, back to the story for a second.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You said it's 57, 58%?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		57% of Democrats.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So not the title was wrong, but we're going to copyright that.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think the title is wrong.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so somewhere between 57 and 70, but you think it's more close to 57?
unidentified		A majority.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		49% of them.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Well, you gotta log in to Rasmussen if you want to get the hard numbers.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		The idea that we should send our National Guard overseas to fight is completely insane.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's completely insane to me.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Our Custom and Border Protection Agents, like Border Patrol.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Our Border Patrol, their job is to run the border and they're like, go to Poland.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You think it's because they fired so many people for not being vaccinated?
unidentified		No.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		It actually sounds like they would allocate resources.
		Like, we are a border patrol and there's a border issue in Ukraine.
		Oh yeah, that's where you should be!
		And by the way, does Ukraine have a coast?
unidentified		Because we have a coast guard.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they got a coast off the Black Sea.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		They have a government, so they could use our army.
		You know, governments need armies.
		They could have ours.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Wow, man.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's why I was saying the other day, I'm like, I'm ready to just put my feet up and crack open a coconut.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		No, never.
		Never.
		Never give up.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Never surrender.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Always chance.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Always change.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Not so much give up, but kind of like, just glide.
		Oh, that's good.
		We've fallen off the cliff.
		Just spread your wings and enjoy it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I do think we need to make entertainment for a while and veer away from the negativity of war and conflict.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Interestingly enough, I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.
		Not an either-or proposition.
		In fact, I'm willing to say, and again, this is not one of those, you know, George Bush, we just got attacked, so go shopping, right?
		Like, I'm not saying that.
		I do think there's a realm for, like, you know, sacrifice when the times call for it.
		But, like, as I look at, like, all the things that are kind of under assault and the way things are acting, there is a huge realm right now.
		One of the reasons why we are in the situation we are in right now is because we didn't fight for the cultural space.
		Um, we, we, you know, we might fight for the political space.
		We didn't fight for the cultural space, which is why it is dominated by, by a certain perspective or viewpoint.
		And I, I tell parents this all the time when they're at, well, how are we going to fix our schools or how are we going to like, well, if you think you're going to fix your schools with one election cycle.
		You're out of your mind.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Because your child is now going to a school, which in many cases is pushing a particular worldview or propaganda that might not coincide with your own beliefs about your country or faith or whatever.
		Then they come home and they watch Netflix, right?
		And chances are whatever they're watching there is going to be pushing a particular worldview.
		Then they turn on a song, which is pushing a worldview.
		Then they look at the media, which is pushing a worldview.
		And then they go to their college professor, which is pushing a worldview.
		And then what do you get?
		30 minutes around the dinner table?
		You think this is sufficient?
		And so any sort of activity I see which is pushing into that cultural space, which is so critical, because everything political is downstream from culture.
		is absolutely necessary and one of the most important fronts that we're in right now.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But there's two good things to say here, some optimism.
		One is, you've got The Daily Wire ramping up production of cultural content, they're buying movies, they absolutely see your point and they're working towards it.
		But then I would say that when you say we haven't gotten involved in the culture, or I forgot exactly how you said it, Well, Ian and I did not come into this as conservatives.
		So there's a lot of people who were working in some kind of entertainment, some kind of media or cultural space, and now find themselves in agreement on many core issues of freedom in the United States and our Constitution with conservatives, and that's giving a big cultural boon.
		Yeah.
		So, you know, we talked with the guy from The Daily Wire about, you know, how we can expand our cultural content.
		We have a vlog, we do silly jokes and have fun, and we do flips and into beanbags and stuff.
		But we're talking about, you know, things we can do.
		We launched a show called Tales from the Inverted World.
unidentified		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Which is, and we have a book available at invertedworldbook.com.
		And it's mysteries.
		Mysteries, UFOs, ghost stories.
		Because, you know, we've always been involved in that.
		We actually got a mix of a song that we've been putting together.
		So we're putting out music.
		Yeah, it's fantastic stuff.
		I grew up playing music.
		I grew up making skate videos.
		I grew up making videos with my friends.
		And now what the left has kind of screwed up is that they're constantly pushing people They're making authoritarian demands of people to give in to their politics and their views or else.
		And a lot of people are saying, or else, and they're walking away.
		So now there's an opportunity here for conservatives to get back in the game and push back on the left.
		And I think in the long run, the left will lose the culture.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I was in Hollywood acting 2006, 7, 8, kind of.
		And I was like, I'm going to change the world.
		I'm going to become a famous actor and then be able to give the speech at the Oscars that changes everyone.
		That was my idea.
		But it was so dirty, that industry.
		I felt so sexualized.
		And they were like, you're just so sexy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Sex, sex.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'm like, I gotta get out of here, man.
		I felt their fingers coming at me and I just ran.
		But I bailed on culture for like a decade.
		I started building minds, the social network.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's why people get involved in politics is because we're not pretty enough for Hollywood and we're too stupid for the private sector.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yes, case in point.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But it's gotta be done.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's gotta be done.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I didn't like that top-down pressure in Hollywood of the oligarchs of Hollywood that were these weird sexual deviants.
		It seemed like they were creating the feel or the energy of the system.
		It was gross.
		Beautiful city, though.
		Until recently, I guess.
		Incursion, it's terrifying, but beautiful weather, that's for sure.
		Because of the valley, the mountains, and it's like, you got snow-capped peaks to the north an hour, you got the desert to the east in an hour, you got the ocean to the west in an hour, you got the hills just 20 minutes north of you, the beautiful valley, it's an incredible city.
		They called it the City of the Angels for a reason.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it says Los Angeles has a really weird long name.
		You ever look it up?
		Yeah, it's like super long.
		It's like the river of the women who, I don't know, something like really long.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm looking it up now.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you look at California, man, and they say California is our future.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That California is five years ahead of the rest of the country.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, so here's what I think.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I think California is going to be a wonderful place to live in about 20 years, and then Texas is going to be the problem.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I agree.
		That's why people were telling us, like, you should go to Austin.
		I was like, no way.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, so I call it the, and I did this once, and I think it was like, I don't know, Occupy Democrats or Blue Virginia, or someone got, like, fears, like, I can't believe they called us locusts.
		Well, it's the locust theory.
		The locusts have no idea that they're the ones eating all the crops.
		They're just wondering why all the prosperity is gone.
		And then they go somewhere else to find more crops.
		I'm like, okay, so no, I'm not comparing you to people to locusts.
		I'm saying that it's this idea that someone will come and see all this prosperity, you know, use it, then destroy it.
		And then when they move, they don't realize that, okay, you're taking the policies that created the destruction with you.
		Maybe don't do that this time.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
		I'm not calling people locusts.
		I'm calling them a virus.
		I'm kidding.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I think this is the mindset of the World Economic Forum is that people are destroying recklessly without reproducing the environment.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So they were like, OK, that's a big problem.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they look they look at people like a fire, like animals.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Just consuming carbon and expanding the growth and just burning things down.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		It's fascinating.
		They never want to take a look at the fact.
		I can't remember who it was that had the bet, but it was with that.
		Oh, gosh.
		It was with One of these one of these guys that was predicting in the 70s that we would be engaged in a series of world famines and like all of our natural resources.
		Paul Krugman.
		Earl Rick.
		Earl Rick.
		Good guess though.
unidentified		Good guess though.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		If you're talking about a guy that makes crappy predictions, Paul Krugman would have been a really, really good pick.
		But Paul Earl Rick.
		And so this other economist came in and I think he told him he's like pick five natural resources and I'll bet that in 20 years they're all cheaper than they are today.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And Earl Rick engaged in the bet and lost.
unidentified		Yes.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Because it's this idea that no, human beings have this amazing capacity to adapt if they're not being controlled by, oh, I don't know, an authoritarian central government that's trying to control their lives or treating them like they're a virus.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But how about we make that bet now?
		Do you think things will be getting cheaper?
		And I would, I would say it from this point forward.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		In Singapore.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		I think, I think we're, we're, we're in for a world of hurt.
		Why in Singapore?
		If we boot Russia from SWIFT, Then everything's going to get more expensive.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I got a story here.
		I think that Russia is leaving SWIFT.
		I don't think that they're going to wait to get booted.
		I got a story from Russia-briefing.com.
		Russia and China to develop SWIFT avoiding international financial systems.
		What's that?
unidentified		Of course, of course.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		I just didn't know about the source.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, but Russia and China have been trying to get off the dollar for a long time.
		Yeah, that makes sense.
		I think Putin's known.
		You can't imagine this guy has risen to the level he's risen to without planning for something like this.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, for sure.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Again, I was talking with Tim about this.
		What do we think is the worst case scenario?
		And what we were talking about was like, okay, he takes Ukraine, he uses that as kind of like a trial balloon, right?
		Takes Ukraine, doesn't really suffer any major consequences for it, and then you start to look at incursions into places like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, where we're talking about, again, the Belt and Road Initiative, and now you start to see this block, this Russian-Chinese block, where you have a massive amount of natural resources, you've solved some of the population issues that Russia's having with expansion, and then you have just these major spheres of influence.
		And then it becomes almost kind of like a remake of the Cold War on some level.
		Now again, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I'm saying it's not science fiction to look at this and be like, okay, yeah, I can look at a map, and I can look at what he's doing, and I can look at where resources are at, and I can see where spheres of influence would potentially engage, and then where do we go from there?
		And to your point, back when it was the West and the Soviet Union, you had people coming off of World War II, you had generations that were familiar with sacrifice, familiar with fighting, that they had a strong sense of patriotism, they had a strong sense of moral responsibility to themselves, their family, their country, etc.
		And now you're talking about a world where I don't think anybody believes that we have that same sense as widespread throughout the population.
		Given some of the things that we're complaining about right now and some of the things that people honestly believe are really key issues.
		And so it's weird to look at where the power dynamic is going to be from a cultural standpoint at that level.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think moving forward, if we look back at home and we can see what's going on culturally, I'm not so convinced the U.S.
		is going to be a major player in international conflict the same way they are now.
		I think it's obvious that that influence is waning.
		But let's bring it back home and wrap it back to the cultural issues.
		We were talking about schools and school choice early on, so I really want to talk to you about this and get your thoughts on what's going on with Youngkin.
		You're in Virginia, obviously.
		Education played a huge role in a Republican victory in Virginia.
		So I'm wondering if you can just bring us up to speed on what's been going on, how you got involved, and where do you think people are in this critical race theory stuff?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So this is what's interesting, right?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So I think for the first time I can remember in my lifetime, Republicans won an election in what has been increasingly a blue state on the issue of education.
unidentified		Yes.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Right, usually, what do Republicans win on?
		Jobs.
		We win on, you know, taxes, right?
		We win on regulations.
		We don't win on education, right?
		That's always been, like, a Democrat issue.
		They always come off as the ones that are more, you know, well, what happened was, and I got to kind of set the scene here, Democrats took control of, you know, the House of Delegates, the Virginia Senate, and the governor for the first time in, like, over 20 years in Virginia.
		And there was one Democrat, Delegate Lopez, who represents, I think it's Arlington.
		And he had told people at this one campaign stop, he goes, if you give us everything, we will accomplish a lifetime's worth of work in an afternoon.
		And keep in mind, for 20 years, they hadn't had this sort of power.
		So they got to run on a lot of like aspirational things like, oh, we're going to equality and social justice and equity.
		Like, OK, what does any of that mean?
		But it sounds good.
		And we're mad at Republicans right now.
		So they got into power and they did it.
		I mean, he was not lying.
		They did as far and as fast as they possibly could within a two year period of time.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Then they tried banning guns.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, brother.
		There was a debate between me and Delegate Mark Levine.
		The same people that said, nobody wants to take your guns, all we want is common sense gun control.
		And then 52 out of 54 Democrats voted for a bill that would have made you a criminal for owning a 15-round magazine.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So a low-capacity magazine.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		A 15-round magazine.
unidentified		Wow.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's horribly low-capacity.
		In fact, every single magazine you would have owned, that would have been a Class 1 misdemeanor with up to a year in jail and $2,500.
		So it wasn't just, we're going to get rid of AR-15s.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They wanted to retroactively make people criminals.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Yes.
		And they voted for this.
		This is not like, oh, some crazy loon passed this and they killed it in a subcommittee.
		No, they voted for this.
		All right, so that's where they're at.
		And then you saw the same thing.
		They did this whole cultural competency training, right?
		Because who could be against cultural competency?
		Just like who could be against equity?
		Who could be against tolerance?
		And what this did is it set up this process whereby teachers in Virginia, in order to get their license or renew their license, had to go through cultural competency training.
		Well, when you go onto the Roadmap to Equity in Virginia Education website, that's where you found out that, oh, wow, there's Ibram X. Kendi, there's Robin DiAngelo, there's Southern Poverty Law Center.
		Like all pushing CRT.
		Now, what happened was his parents were starting to see this stuff arrive in their classrooms.
		Their kids are coming home and they're making comments about it.
		At the same time, Democrats had removed like reporting requirements for principals for certain like criminal acts happening on within a school.
		And so you have this perfect storm.
		Especially in Northern Virginia, Loudoun County was like the hotspot for this.
		Where students are coming home and talking about what's going on and the parents aren't liking it.
		And then you had certain like equity restrictions that were taking place where now certain students that would have qualified before are not making it into certain schools or certain programs.
		Then you have a case where now you have a... I don't even know if it was a transgender female.
		It was a biological male that was wearing a dress, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		This person wasn't trans.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, okay.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It was just a guy wearing a dress.
		Yeah, so that was real quick.
		The news was reporting that it was a transgender student, but if you actually read the details, it was just a student who wore a dress and was going in the girl's bathroom.
		It was a male student, not transgender.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So the big part that kind of blew up was you had a father that went to a school board meeting, and they were mad about a lot of things.
		CRT was part of it.
		They were mad about some of the bathroom issues and stuff like that.
		And the superintendent got asked, or the president of the school board or whatnot, asked about, have there been any assaults in bathrooms?
		Because some of the parents were mad about this idea of why is a biological male going into a bathroom?
		And they said, you know, no.
		Well, this is the part where people hate politics, and this is the reason why.
		There was an ongoing investigation about that.
		So technically, nobody had been convicted of something, right?
		But they sure as hell had had an incident.
		It was actually like forcible sodomy.
		And then that student, right, that student was quietly transferred to a different school.
		So they did call the police, the parents were notified, but that student was transferred to a different school where that student then re-offended.
unidentified		Jeez.
unidentified		Wow.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		And was actually, has now been convicted and is one of the few minors that we have in Virginia that has actually been put on the registry.
		Yeah, the sexual registry, sexual offenders registry.
		And the judge even said after reading the psych review that it was terrifying.
unidentified		Wow.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		So, again, you have this perfect storm of all this taking place.
		But what was incredible was the Democrats' response to it.
		The Democrats' response to it was, at first, was, CRT is nowhere in our classroom.
		And then people started to see it.
		And it was like, well, no, it is in my classroom.
		My kid just said this.
		You're a racist.
unidentified		Right?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's stuff going on in my kid's school with respect to the bathroom.
		This is not a statement.
		You're a bigot.
		And I think what happened and they weren't saying this to like hardcore conservative parents, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We've all heard it before.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		This is in Fairfax, right?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		This is you have now told you have now told an Indian immigrant family that they're racist because they're concerned about what's going on in their kid's school.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And real quick, these school boards are like white progressives telling minorities they're the racists.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Or the sexist or the bigot or whatever it is.
		And I think what happened was is that you had a lot of you had a lot of people that
		they weren't engaged in politics.
		They probably voted for Joe Biden because they thought they hated Trump's Twitter account.
		But they had a real issue that they thought that they could bring up.
		They bring this up to their elected representatives.
		And what they found out was no, no, no.
		The moment you ran afoul of the Democrat narrative, the progressive narrative.
		You're a racist.
		You're a bigot.
		You're a sexist.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, the father of that, uh, the girl who was attacked was like violently dragged out, wasn't he?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, no, no.
		He was, he was arrested at that school-born meeting.
		And it was funny because that was one of the events that the department, the, that the school board association, right?
		The national school board association wrote a letter to.
		The Department of Justice, and that's where they were trying to use counterterrorism law in order to crack down on these meetings and school board meetings.
		And it wasn't until a reporter, I think with the Daily Wire, actually bothered to go to the man, right?
		Go to the father and say, so why'd you do this?
		And he goes, because my daughter was raped in a Loudoun school bathroom.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And they lied about it and they covered it up and they transferred the kid?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Loudoun County is literally 20 seconds from here.
		Yes.
		Okay, okay.
		Figuratively, it's about one minute.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		If you're going a million miles an hour, it's like next door.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It literally is.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Time and space are the same thing.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's like a half mile, maybe.
		You drive down the road, you make one left turn.
		One left turn from here, and you're in Loudoun County.
		And so, it's big, though.
		It's big, though.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, it's a big county, the wealthiest county in America, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But you go to, what is it?
		Is it Leesburg, or what's the... Yeah, Leesburg.
		Leesburg.
		You go down there, and I mean, it's Democrat.
		It is D.C.
		suburbanite Democrat types.
		I was surprised to hear this story, because I'm like, when I'm hearing parents rising up, I'm like, these aren't Republicans, man.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there were.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there were Republicans too, but it wasn't just... If it had been just Republicans, we wouldn't have seen the election results we did.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I just mean to say that, like, the narrative of the only people who are complaining are Republicans.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		This was regular suburbanite families.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You know, of many different backgrounds.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But it wasn't just Republicans complaining about something.
unidentified		No, no.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		The media was trying to claim the far right was doing it and white supremacists.
		And then we went to a skate park.
		There's a really great skate park down there, Catoctin.
		And we saw, like a block away, was a bunch of parents holding up signs protesting about this.
		And I'm like, just regular looking people.
unidentified		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But you're in a blue area.
		So that was what was really surprising to me about the whole fiasco.
		So what is it?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So Youngkin actually runs on school choice, right?
		He doesn't just run on the typical thing that politicians are, we're going to increase teacher pay, right?
		We're going to have more money for education.
		He said, no, we're going to run on school.
		We're going to actually give parents more control over their child's education.
		and he wins on it.
		And this is like a, and so we see a series of bills
		that come through the Virginia House of Delegates, the Republican controlled House of Delegates.
		We got education savings accounts.
		We got a regional charter school bills.
		We've got lab school bills.
		We've got, you know, I had a bill.
		I had a bill called the Safer Schools Bill.
		And what it did is says, we have this grant for scholarship funds,
		which means if a company wants to donate money for scholarships for students to be able to go to school,
		They get a tax credit for it, whatever, right?
		Every state has one.
		We got one too.
		I said, okay, I want to make another type of student eligible for this.
		And the type of student that will be eligible is a student that has been assaulted, you know, beaten up, bullied.
		You got to go through a process.
		Principals got to investigate.
		They got to sign off on it.
		But if they sign off on it, we will make funds available through this scholarship fund for the child to go to another public school.
		Right.
		I mean, I had some big school choice bills.
		This was a really minor one.
		I figured let's do some good for some kids that are getting beat up at school or like this young girl that got raped in a bathroom.
unidentified		Right.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Let's do some stuff to help them.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Democrats killed that on a straight party line vote.
unidentified		Wow.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I can't say I'm surprised, though.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that the Senate needs to be, like, reorganized so that every citizen gets a vote?
		school choice bill that we did this year, it would pass out of the House of
		Delegates and then it would go and die in the Senate. Do you think that the
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Senate needs to be like reorganized so that every citizen gets a vote? No.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'm just so tired of putting all that power in the hands of 400 people.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's so ridiculous.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		How many people are in the state Senate of Virginia?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Forty.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Forty people get to decide the life or death of a democratic bill.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Well, technically, no.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		People vote for their senators.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Vote for their representatives.
		I mean, look, I don't think the problem is the Senate.
		The problem is the senators, right?
		It's who we have.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I'll just say real quick.
		Make sure you're voting in your local elections.
		Make sure you're voting in your primaries.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, those senators have a lot of power.
		So it's 19 Republicans, 21 Democrats, right?
		That's the Virginia Senate.
		But it doesn't matter because when you get to their subcommittees, like in the House, let me just explain this process real quick.
		I know it's kind of boring, but it's important for people to know.
		Bill comes in, Speaker assigns it to a committee, right?
		70%, like 50 to 70% of the bills that you see die, die in a subcommittee somewhere.
		It's not debated on the House floor, dies in a subcommittee.
		And it makes sense because there's a lot of stupid ideas and we don't all need to look at them.
		But anyways.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So you get a bill from anyone?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
		You've got to be a legislator to submit a bill.
		We submit a bill, it gets drafted, and then we look at all the bills and we say, okay, this bill is for education, education committee.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And the subcommittee will be like, this one's not good enough.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		Subcommittee sits down.
		So I'm a subcommittee chairman for public safety.
		All the gun bills come to my subcommittee.
		So you have a certain number of Republicans, a certain amount of Democrats on the subcommittee, and we hear the bill first.
		And if we have a majority of that subcommittee that likes the bill, it goes up to the next level, right?
		But in the House, we do proportional representation.
		So we've got 52 Republicans, 48 Democrats.
		So if you look at our committees, that's reflected in the numbers
		that we have in the committees.
		The Senate, 19 Republicans, 21 Democrats.
		You'll go to a Senate committee, they'll have like nine Democrats and three Republicans.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the federal government's like that too.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		They pick.
		Yeah, so there's no way you can get—so even though you—if you make a good enough argument— It's like internal gerrymandering.
		If you make a good enough argument, you might be able to get something out of a Republican-controlled House committee, because we only got a majority of two.
		On the Senate side, they will stack those committees, and even if you could get enough votes on the floor of the Senate, They will make sure it goes to a committee where it will never see the light of day.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that they intentionally have senators pick the committees so that there isn't a democratic voice because of the compounding effect of democracy that mob rule can take over?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, it's just part of this is whoever the controlling party is in a particular legislative body, they want to be able to control the outcome for what legislation makes it to the floor and what gets sent over to the other body.
		But the thing is, is what we did in Virginia on the House of Delegates side, what we said is like, look, there needs to be proportional representation on these committees because it's a more accurate reflection of what the people actually elected.
		But you can manipulate that committee process pretty bad.
		And again, it's not every committee, but it's been frustrating.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I think it should be like... I talked with Thomas Massey about this.
		We've got to do that in the federal government as well.
		It's ridiculous that the Democrats win by 51% and then they pick all the committee chairs because that one... And they make sure the ones that matter the most, they have the majority on.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that doesn't seem right.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And then they can shuffle people into the, you know... Oh, the Republicans can have a committee we don't care about.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's got to change.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So did you guys change it in Virginia?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So the majority party gets the committee chairs.
		That just happens.
		It wouldn't make sense for it to not happen that way.
		The difference is that we don't stack our committees.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Who picks how they get?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		The speaker.
		Most people don't understand how much power the Speaker of the House has.
		The Speaker of the House has an enormous amount of power.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And the Speaker will say, you have to pick three Republicans and two Democrats for this?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So then they look and they decide?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		In Virginia, yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Again, because we have proportional representation, it's like, okay, you're going to have this many Republicans, this many Democrats, blah, blah, blah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Do you see people change party affiliation on paper so that they can get into a committee when they're actually still the same person?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't work that way.
		It doesn't work that way.
		You gotta run for the party's nomination, get elected to that.
		You could theoretically try to switch when you're there, but that doesn't happen.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Will you propose a bill to pass constitutional carry in Virginia?
unidentified		I carried the bill this year for constitutional carry.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So we had a House version, we had a Senate version.
		The Senators killed the Senate version right away and so ours didn't go forward.
		Because every once in a while we'll do that, we'll look at bills.
		No, I carried a lot of gun legislation.
		I usually do.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Virginia is not so bad.
		Maryland is a nightmarish.
		The laws up here.
		But constitutional care would be something great because we live in the tri-state.
		I live in West Virginia.
		We work in Maryland.
		West Virginia is fantastic.
		You can conceal carry.
		You can carry open.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		West Virginia just passed great school choice legislation.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		They've done a lot of good work.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Some of the pushback I've heard on school choice is that if everyone has the opportunity to send their kid to whatever school they want in the surrounding area that a lot of people will go to the good school first and all these other schools that need students for money are going to go out of business or get worse.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		This is why you should fund students and not a particular building.
		And again, we've gotten so used to the way education has been monopolized and run by the government that it's hard to imagine another way to do it.
		But think about, again, think about the way you buy anything else, right?
		You don't have a government store you go to in order to buy something, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear that story about the grocery store story.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So the way I've described this before is we all agree education is important.
		We also agree eating is important.
		So, let's imagine that the government at some point said, you know what, eating is so important that here's how we're going to do this.
		We're going to set up thousands of government grocery stores all over the country and then you're going to be assigned a government grocery store based off of your address.
		Now, when you show up to the government grocery store, you're not going to actually shop for your groceries.
		Your groceries will be decided for you based off of a government board and the caloric intake or the nutritional necessities of your particular family.
		Now, if you don't like something in the grocery bag, not a big deal.
		All you have to do is show up to a bunch of board meetings or go and lobby your state legislature in order to get a different product into your grocery bag or out of your grocery bag.
		Oh, by the way, none of the employees working at this government grocery store will be rewarded based off of creativity, ingenuity, or work ethic.
		They will only be rewarded based off of seniority.
		Does anybody think that is a grocery store you would want?
		Would you want that to be your grocery store option?
unidentified		No.
unidentified		Negative.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I haven't had a single person, surprisingly enough, I have not had a single person yet go, oh my gosh, that sounds like a great idea.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Utopia.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I don't know about Ian, but I'm in favor of school choice.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I am.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'm interested in learning more about it.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But here's the point.
		I go back and I say, okay, But what I just described is exactly what we did with public education.
		You are assigned a government school based off of your address.
		When you show up to the government school, you don't have any say over the curriculum, over the class, or a very, very limited say over what you can do.
		If you have a problem with what's being taught or with what's not being taught, great!
		Try to re-elect your school board or maybe go to the state legislature and try to get something changed there.
		And by the way, none of your teachers are rewarded based off of how good a job they do.
		They're just rewarded off of seniority.
		Not to mention the fact, now again, everyone can then see in that example that, okay, maybe there is a better way to run education.
		How would that look?
		And the thing I say is, okay, well, are you happy with the grocery store options you have?
		Yeah, are you happy with the options that you have to buy a smartphone?
		Are you happy with the options you have to go and do other educational opportunities?
		Yeah, okay, well then, maybe that's because when you as the customer of the product or service have the power The rest of the world is trying to get you to be their customer.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Okay.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		The government doesn't have that incentive.
		I don't need you to be my customer.
		I don't need you to like what I'm doing.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Would the schools be able to be like, Hey, if you come to our school, it'll be easier to graduate.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Or will there be some sort of government oversight?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Here's the thing.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Is that what a parent wants for their kid?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I don't know what they want.
		I don't even know if they, they want education.
		I think primarily they want them to understand how to learn.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		They want them to understand how to learn, and then really what they want is they want them to be able to learn the basic social and economic skills they're gonna need to be an independent adult, right?
		And that's your oversight mechanism.
		It's not to say you can't have some government restrictions or guardrails.
		You can.
		But the oversight restriction is, no, I as a customer want the best for my child, and now I have the ability to go find what that looks like.
		That's on the demand side.
		On the supply side, Now all of a sudden you have this huge world where schooling is no longer based off of a government building you go to.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Khan Academy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Jordan Peterson, if you could divvy up your $18,000 a year stipend amongst the great creators and educators of our time that are on the internet, that'd be so great.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Did you get to meet Matt Walsh when he came down?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I did not.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That was great.
		He rented an apartment because they tried... A basement.
		Yeah, a basement.
		They tried stopping him from speaking.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I know the people he rented from, though.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So Matt Walsh was going to speak.
		They're like, oh, you got to be a resident.
		So he's like, all right.
		So he rented a basement, I guess.
		That was great.
		Brilliant, brilliant.
		All right, let's go to Super Chats.
		If you haven't already, smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, share the show with your friends if you really want to help out.
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		We'll now go to your Super Chats.
		So get your Super Chats in.
		We'll read what you guys have to say.
		Oh, here's an interesting name.
		Trinidad, a shop out of pressure says, Nick Freitas, big fan of yours from Culpeper, Virginia.
		Glad to see my rep on one of my favorite shows.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And thanks for saying we're a favorite show.
		I appreciate it.
		All right.
		Joseph La Liberté says, Nick has two great speeches.
		One about a green beret and the other about gun control.
		This dude is awesome.
		I love this guy.
		He's my hero.
unidentified		Wow.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You know Ben Stewart?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		You have a great audience.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		One day I want to get you and Ben Stewart next to each other and break the internet because I think you guys look so similar.
unidentified		That'll break the internet.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I get told I look like the guy off of Outer Banks that's always trying to steal the gold from the kid.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Stealing the gold.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		The Bros Durham says, Hey, Nick, why don't you come down to Hampton Roads and rep for us?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So don't get me wrong.
		Hampton Roads, wonderful place.
		I briefly live there, but I do.
		I do enjoy the Piedmont of Virginia, but you've got some good people down there in the Hampton Roads area.
unidentified		My AC Cardoza and I hung out down there for a few months.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Hannah Anderson.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun.
		Hampton Roads, man.
		Go hang out in Norfolk a little bit.
		Virginia is a big place.
unidentified		Yeah, it is very big.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Let's grab some super chats.
		David Sanchez says, fifth time trying to super chat.
		Well, I got you now, buddy.
		In the future, if Biden does nothing substantial to protect, what does that say?
		To protect the world?
		I don't know.
		You think there is anything the next Congress election can force him to address or aid Taiwan?
		I don't know.
		I think there's like a typo in, you know, you tried five times, but there's like a weird typo.
		I can't read what it means.
unidentified		Yeah, that is strange.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything the next congressional election can force him to address?
		I don't know if so much it's about the congressional election.
		I think it's public pressure.
		And if they see the polls, clearly the CDC is now announcing, oh, we're gonna pull back on the masks and everything.
		Yeah, because they know they're spiraling.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I thought it was funny that it wasn't the medical science that changed on masks.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		It was the political science with respect to the polling that caused them to finally wake up to the fact that maybe this is not a good idea.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Hey, we're gonna lose an election, huh?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Gunn Griffin says, for Nick, in Vietnam, we weren't prepared for insurgency warfare with General Westmoreland attempting a conventional war.
		After 60 years of regular warfare, are we prepared to return to conventional?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's a great, that is a great question, because he's absolutely right.
		We, for the last 20 years, we built a military around the idea of counterinsurgency and, you know, initially a little bit was was U-Dub, but mainly it was counterinsurgency.
		Now it's getting back into the realm of actually trying to fight a large conventional conflict.
		And we can see the potential for something like that happening with Russia.
		I think we can recognize the potential for something like that happening with China as well.
		So I will say that I know it was a concern that was being addressed, but I mean, let's face it, the United States military has a track record for fighting the strategy of the previous war.
		And so there's always going to be a learning curve that takes place when you have an officer corps or an NCO corps that has grown up in kind of one style of fighting and then you move into a different style.
		It can be difficult.
		The one thing I will say is that while the United States military has not always been the best at predicting the next sort of tactics that will be necessary for the next conflict, it does have a track record of adapting usually very quickly in order to overcome.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Here's a good one from Vashtz.
		He says, you and others keep saying Trump would have been better.
		I need to remind you, Hong Kong fell to China under him, so I'm not so sure.
		Yes, that is a good point.
		But I would add, that was the UK and China having what was a negotiation in the 90s, I think it was.
		And so this was a long set up China, like timeline that we knew was going to happen.
		And it was all done through a legal process with the UK and China.
		And there were protests.
		But it's not the same as, you know, Russia invading a sovereign nation.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to understand at that point, Hong Kong was part of China's jurisdiction.
		There were certain agreements with respect to how their government would be run for like another 50 years.
		That's a little bit differently than a full-on invasion of a sovereign country.
		I mean, but again, it still was horrible.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Random username says, when Trump says he will bomb the golden turrets, he's talking about bombing churches.
		Yes.
		I don't, I, I should have clarified that.
		Maybe I assume people understood.
		He's talking about the, you know, the, the steeples or whatever, the spires and stuff.
		He was talking about blowing up churches in a civilian city and maybe Vladimir Putin was like, this guy's nuts.
		This guy's nuts.
		Yeah, man.
		Brooke Harrington says I have a co-worker with family in Russia.
		I'm told they were bombed by Ukraine first two days ago.
		Any validity to this?
		I don't know if that's true.
		I can tell you this, with RT going down, you better believe in the West, they're going to try and restrict information coming out of Russia, and you better believe Russia is going to try and manipulate you into believing they're being victimized.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I think, yeah, both of those statements are absolutely true.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		The one thing I would question is, I don't know what it gets Ukraine to be the initial aggressor with Russia.
unidentified		Oh, for sure.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's insane.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I do not know what would...
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		All right.
		Marco says, I am from Norway.
		Russia has always done military practice outside Nordic Sea for like 20 years.
		Never been problematic.
		Even Russia helped Norway under World War II on the Nordic side of Norway.
		Interesting.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I love the history of Russia and the United States is great because it was like we were enemies, but we worked together to defeat a common enemy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		And that's what we should be doing today.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Gosh, what the heck?
		Yeah, well, the story of East and West Germany is... oof.
		I mean, the story of the Soviet Union.
		Brutal.
		You ever hear the story of Tetris, the video game?
		Oh my gosh, so long.
		There's an urban legend about the guy.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		We've all dated ourselves, go ahead.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Basically, there was a...
		There was a game in Russia they were playing where you would take the Tetris shapes, but just place them.
		And then some dude made the block falling version.
unidentified		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And it's like, how do you in Russia make a product that can be commercialized internationally?
		How does it even work?
		Yeah.
		And so I guess like Russia was communist and they were like, it's communist.
		So we get, you know, but apparently everyone in the West just ripped them off anyway.
		And they're like lawsuits.
		Crazy story.
unidentified		Wow.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		There's a two player Tetris on the NES that got, that got sued into oblivion.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It was made by some other company.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That was always crazy to me.
		Like, why would anyone respect an international lawsuit during a cold war?
		You know, some guys like I made a video game.
		It's like, well, he won the lawsuit, right?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's like the bureaucrats are still trying to make money off of it.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's what war is for those guys.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Let's grab some more Super Chats.
		Oh, people are saying my camera's blue.
		Yeah, I don't know why that happens sometimes.
		It is indeed.
unidentified		I'm aware.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yep, well, I am blue, dabba dee dabba die, says Josh.
unidentified		I think so.
unidentified		Thanks, Josh.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		That's Eiffel 70.
		Eiffel 77, I think.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Is that what it was?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Is that it?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they wrote that.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		They brought it back for one of the Iron Mans, right?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I love that song.
unidentified		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		CJ says when Trump took office, ISIS was the top foreign policy issue.
		He set aside our differences with Russia to solve that problem, and the deep state hated it.
		Meanwhile, the Minsk agreement stewed.
		Yeah, because I think, I think the U.S.
		was hoping that ISIS would destabilize Syria so that we could get a more favorable regime in, and then we could build our pipeline through Syria.
		But Trump getting rid of ISIS, while the right thing.
		Yeah, I think the bureaucrats, the military industrial complex were upset.
		Weird stuff went down with ISIS and the Syrian rebels.
		I got to tell you that.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		To clarify, it was Eiffel 65.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		That song blew.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Great song.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Sea Griff says, it's time for the U.S.
		to leave the U.N.
		It's nothing but global bureaucracy and sanctions, which never really do anything to determine countries like Russia and China.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So here's where I disagree.
unidentified		The U.N.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		does a lot.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Like, for instance, they will write strong notes of protest.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		They do, yes.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		To Israel.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		And may I just add, before we continue.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I've heard they've wagged their finger.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		About the UN.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Relentlessly.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And shaken their fist quite fiercely.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Stomped their foot perhaps.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Guys, guys, the UN Security Council resolution concerning condemning, sorry I can't read, Russia for the invasion of Ukraine has failed due to the Russian vote and China has abstained.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		So the UN is doing great stuff over there.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Not only have they done great work there, but they have done great work for the parking situation in New York City.
unidentified		I'm all for foreign engagement.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah. No, like I honestly and again, this is someone that I'm all for foreign engagement.
		I'm all for I think it should be primarily economic and cultural, you know, as little as possible.
		But I look at the United Nations and what is it doing at this point other than giving an air of
		legitimacy to brutal dictatorships that don't have genuine democracies are regularly trampling on
		people's civil liberties. And like the number one thing the U.N. does is pass resolutions condemning
		Like, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't see, I have a hard time seeing the point.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Are you familiar with the Non-Aligned Movement?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Isn't this amazing?
		It's the other UN.
		It's global.
		It's 120 countries are in this non-aligned movement.
		It's the countries that aren't in the UN, basically.
		All of Africa, South America, I think Mexico's in it.
		Iran, it was headquartered in Iran.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		They're all in the UN.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, they're not blue.
		Check them out.
		This is really the non-aligned movement, and you can get a map of it.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		There's light blue and dark blue, so Mexico's light blue.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I gotta read.
		This is a very, very good super chat here.
		Turk, say no to war.
		Longwell says, dude, Biden hitting a speed bag was a total 100.
		Wow.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Good stuff.
		Oh, yeah, for sure.
		Thanks, Turk.
unidentified		I got you, B. All right.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Thrawn says, can't show you Joe Biden hitting a speed bag, but I've seen a few pics of Hunter hitting a speedball.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's right.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'd be fine with a deep fake of Biden hitting a speed bag at this point.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I just want to see it happen.
unidentified		A video.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Really fast, you know, like you see his muscles twitching in his arms.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Good propaganda.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Something from Rocky 3.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Going up steps.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Kevin D. Sturmtruppen says, the Vietnam story you're referring to is Operation Wandering
		Soul.
		There's plenty of uploads of the actual declassified tapes the CIA made to blast on speakers.
		Supposedly gave US servicemen a bit of a fright too.
		Oh, that would be so cool.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		That would be so creepy as heck.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think we should just do that in our woods right outside.
unidentified		That's a good idea.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We've got big speakers and just play wailing songs.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And then just act like you don't know what your neighbors are talking about.
unidentified		I shouldn't have questioned you, Tim.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Did you hear that thing?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it.
		People apologizing to you for what they did and stuff.
		That would be hilarious.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I shouldn't have broken into Tim's house.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry for betraying him.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		I was trapped.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Don't drink the water.
unidentified		Oh my gosh.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Alright, Dragon Lady says, evening y'all, no Cast Castle today?
		That makes me sad.
		Need my bucko fix.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Oh my gosh, me too.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Nick was sick.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I just hugged him earlier.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Nick wasn't feeling well today?
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		No, he was sick the other day.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So yeah, go to youtube.com slash castcastle if you want to see what it's like inside the Cast Castle operation, how we make all of the, what is it?
		How the sausage is made.
		It will shock and devastate you.
		It's horrible.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's why I showed up today, I was told there would be sausage.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, it's true.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You were right.
unidentified		He was.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		There's leftover pizza from Papa John's.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there you go.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's good.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And a lot of chicken nuggets or whatever.
unidentified		True.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Chicken wads.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Chicken wads.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Wads of chicken.
		We buy their just wads of chicken.
		All right, let's grab some more.
		Let's grab some more.
		Uh oh, people are mad at Ian.
		Mitch Marco says, I don't know what's more annoying, Ian claiming to love the art of movies despite not seeing a movie made in the last 20 years or getting caught up on words that have nothing to do with the route word.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		The root word?
		The second one's more annoying.
		The one where I get caught up in words is more annoying.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		Here's a good one.
		Jay Schartzer says, Tim, bring Lex Friedman on when he's back.
		He went to Russia to talk sense to Putin.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Don't know if that will work out, but he's a smart guy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So who knows?
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Love Lex.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I mean, yeah, I'd love to, but Lex is a super busy guy.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You know, people who already have shows, you know, you got to work around their schedule and especially someone like Lex.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		He's got a big show.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		But I will say sometimes it's more important.
		I think you would come on and report the conversation and talk about it.
		That's now's the time.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Lex is always invited.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he hit me up once about doing something with his show and then never happened.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		He was too busy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Love him.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, I was.
		Yeah, because he hit me up and I was like, bro, I don't know if I can do it.
		Tim went with the power play there.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, I'm busy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I can't go on your show.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I'm too busy for this.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, Alex is fantastic.
		I'd love to.
		But I was busy and then I got back to him and I was like, you know what, I think I can do it.
		And he's like, now I can't.
		And I'm like, eh, hit me up at any time.
		It'll be a great conversation.
		But I'd love to have him.
		That'd be fantastic.
		All right.
		Adrian says, do you know anything about the Ukrainian U.S.
		biolabs that Russia hit?
		Love the show.
		Keep up the good work.
		I don't think they did.
		There was a meme showing a map saying like, here's where all the biolabs are and here's where Russia attacked, but they didn't line up.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		We talked about this last night.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, on the after show.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They didn't line up.
		I'm no fan of Snopes, but Snopes pointed that out too.
		The maps aren't the same.
		The attacks aren't in the same places.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's Ukraine, Pennsylvania.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		It's a different place.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a little different.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so John Boyce says, Lex Friedman announced today he's heading to Ukraine to speak to friends and then to Russia to speak to Putin.
		Don't think it's possible, but if he does, it's crazy.
		Your thoughts?
		I think it's a bad idea.
		For Lex, That's crazy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't think so. He's been planning it for a while with Putin. They've been at least he talked about a couple
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		weeks ago Well before all this actually with Vladimir Putin. Yeah,
		that's that's good. Then that's absolutely fantastic.
		Absolutely I'm thinking about him going into Ukraine because I would I
		You you you got it. You got to have a certain understanding of urban conflict
		I mean, what are your thoughts on war?
		Would you recommend, I don't know Lex's background.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Would I recommend urban?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Out of all the conflicts, would you recommend urban?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, no, I mean like, would you, Lex Freedman's background I don't think is in conflict.
		I don't know if he has that experience.
		I personally wouldn't recommend somebody to go into a conflict if they don't have any experience.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, it's generally a bad idea.
		Especially something like this where it's very fast moving, you're gonna have a lot of, again, As the Russian lines move forward and you have, like, pockets of troops that are in urban areas as they hand out, like, you know, weapons to their civilian population to be able to fight back, you're gonna have a lot of people running around and playing clothes and whatnot just because it's the nature of warfare.
		So if you're running around and playing clothes, sorry, dude.
		Like, I don't know what to tell you.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you want to be wearing a t-shirt and shorts.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Or just, like, a speedo and nothing else because... No, they're not gonna know.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		If they see a guy who looks like a weirdo, Okay, so in that area of the world, running around in a Speedo, nothing else in the winter, it's pretty normal, I'm pretty sure.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm guessing that's not good.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I'm obviously kidding.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Nice try, Speedo.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		The issue is, if you're a regular person in plain clothes wearing a jacket, they're gonna kill you.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		You need like a Hawaiian shirt.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Because you could be somebody who's armed, you could be part of the conflict, and they don't know, and no one wants to take the chance.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		If they don't know you, and you're not from their neighborhood, don't expect to be able to walk through there.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		If you can't speak the language either, I mean, that's a huge problem.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I was in Maidan during the protests that started in 2013 and in 2014, and they eventually got to the point where they built these massive barricades around Independence Square, or whatever they call it.
		And I was walking around with my British producers from Vice.
		We walked out, When we came to walk back in, we got surrounded by like 15 Ukrainian guys who were yelling at us in Ukrainian.
		And the only thing I had to do was say like, American, speak English, sorry.
		And then someone came in and started speaking Ukrainian and backed them off.
		And they were like American journalists.
		And they were like, please, please, please come in, come in.
		But the guy's with me, I'm like, they're British, they're not American.
		But it was cool.
		And actually, we actually got to talk to a former Soviet general.
		That was super cool.
		But when you go into an area, you don't speak the language and they're all yelling at you.
		Let me tell you man, I was in Turkey and we went to this neighborhood, they call it like the last anarchist neighborhood of Istanbul.
		There was a street where the anarchists were throwing molotovs at cops and the cops were, you know, holding the line and firing less lethals.
		So we went around and went on a side street to try and go in, and we've got, it's me and a guy with a camera and another producer, when all of a sudden a whole bunch of Turkish dudes run up to us holding molotovs, screaming at us in Turkish, and one guy holds a molotov cocktail right up to the side of my face.
		And my response, I put my hands up, I said nothing, and I just nodded, and I slowly turned and started to walk away.
		The guys I was with were, like, kind of more excited.
		And I was just like, as we walked, I was like, guys, guys, don't try and speak English in an excited way to somebody who doesn't speak English or is not speaking English to you.
		Because the only thing they hear is you going, back at them, and they might think you're aggressive.
		So just, you know, put your hands up, nod, and then just walk in the direction they point.
		I would just say, man, Vice sent me on some... Vice had sent me out a couple times into conflict with producers who had no conflict experience.
unidentified		Oh boy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And I just want to say, it is... It's exciting.
		Maybe the most stressful thing I've ever experienced is knowing that I'm responsible for the life of someone because... That doesn't know what they're doing.
		And that's putting me in danger?
		Yeah.
		Man.
		But Vice is also, you know, to their credit...
		Sent me out with people with way more experience than I have.
		And one of the most heartwarming moments was when I was in Ferguson and the first gunshots went out.
		And I'm already on the ground, and I look to my right, my producer's already on the ground as well.
		And this is a guy who had been trained in firearms, who had been to war, because Vice has some good people, they really do.
		And I was just like, yeah.
		I look to my left, there's a guy from ABC News, standing up, looking around, and he goes, those fireworks?
		And I'm just like, oh man.
		I felt bad for the guy.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		You ain't gonna make it.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		But you know what I say to them?
		Do you see anyone holding fireworks?
		Do you see anyone holding guns?
		Make an assumption.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That's what we call deductive reasoning.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's crazy though, like I've been on the ground with people where the gunshots ring out and they stand there like it's just fireworks.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Where do you think you are?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		You know what's kind of an aside to that?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		It's because a lot of people, again, one of the benefits of especially growing up in the United States is most people, not everyone, most people have grown up in an environment where they really haven't had to experience any sort of conflict or deprivation.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Or gunfire.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		So it's this idea of like, well, that can't be that.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Like, no, no, it actually can be.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's the craziest thing, too.
		As much as America is this gun country, people, urban liberals have not heard a gun go off.
		They've heard movies where it's like, bang, bang, pow, pow, pow.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Or silenced.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And then you hear a .22, and you know, someone who's never heard a gun would be like, is that a firecracker going off?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		And it's like, no, that will kill you.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Man, who was it who said you can conquer a nation?
		Was it Bannon?
		You can conquer a nation with 1,022, you know, rifle, like Ruger 10-22s.
		Interesting.
		Was it Bannon?
		Maybe it wasn't.
		We were talking to someone who's like, A thousand Ruger 10-22s can take over a small country.
unidentified		I'm like, eh, it's a weapon.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Alright, let's grab some more Super Chats.
		V Rise says the ghost of Kiev has been proven to be fake, yet many leftist communities online acknowledge and blatantly say they don't care that it's fake, they are still going to believe it.
		Thoughts?
		I have not seen any evidence saying it's fake.
		I'm not saying I've seen any evidence to say it's real, to be completely honest.
		They're like, this is the ghost of Kiev, and I'm like, that's just a picture of a fighter jet.
		It's one picture.
		Like, how is it evidence of any of this being true?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Sounds like manipulation.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		As far as I can tell, it's not been proven or disproven to me.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Thinking about like, um, uh, what's his name from, uh, World War II, the British guy.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I don't know why I'm blanking on that.
unidentified		Yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		That does not narrow it down.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		The British prime minister.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Winston Churchill.
unidentified		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Churchill was like, it was all about morale, uh, more like mentality, propaganda and keeping people sane, like giving them, giving them motivation.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		He would like, he had no idea if they were going to win or lose, but he would tell them they were going to win.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Every night.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Here's a good one from Damien Simmons.
		In Revelations, the dragon gives power to the beast.
		The tale of the dragon will rain down on three-fourths of the world.
		Could China be the dragon and the beast be Russia?
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		The dragon is humble, I'll tell you that.
unidentified		I don't know.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		What do they call China, Russia, the dragon bear?
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, dragon bear.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		The dragon bear.
unidentified		That's what we call them.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Brick Muppet says at least one letter of marque was issued in the Civil War.
		They are now banned by international treaty, Paris Declaration.
		U.S.
		never signed that treaty.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I was thinking of this earlier, if the hackers are the modern day... I didn't realize the Civil War, but that's a good... Yeah, I thought it was Madison was the last one.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		If the hackers are the modern day pirates being hired with letters of marque, then what about the people that are controlling the algorithms at the top of the companies that are being paid to change the algorithms?
		Are they also pirates?
		Are they being hired?
		Like, CCP is controlling TikTok.
		And in China, this is what I've learned in the last week or so, the algorithm is showing like science, technology... It's just media.
		They're showing media to the people?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		The analogy here is just, that's the media.
		In the United States, the media was completely on board with the war effort, and the government would go to them and be like, don't report these things.
		They'd be like, you gotta cheat.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So should we consider them pirates, like for hire?
unidentified		No.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		If they're being, doing what they're told?
unidentified		No.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		You're talking about aggressive action toward, like, I mean, there's a long time relationship between governments and media where they'll essentially say, you know, restrict certain information, or they'll classify it a certain way so they can't report it, or they'll just voluntarily self-censor.
		But the letters are marked. That's more, it's like, I'm going to take this hacker,
		and I want this organization tracked. And the way you're going to do it is,
		and again, I want you to hack all their bank accounts. And if you hack their bank accounts,
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		you can keep some or whatever. Or not even that, be like, here are the targets we want hit,
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		and we won't come after you for hitting them. Yeah. What about like, we want you to show this
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		algorithm here and this algorithm here. But you're talking about massive
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		corporations that work with government.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		That's not the same thing.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Think of a mark as almost like a bounty.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		That's a good way to say it.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		OK.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		So if the U.S.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		government has a bunch of corporations that produce weapons for it, that's just the crown's boyar or whatever.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Probably the most famous privateer in history, Sir Francis Drake.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I'm concerned that a corporation won't go after one of the bounties.
		I wonder if that'll start happening, that governments will pay corporations to take Mark.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They don't need to.
		You have a group of three dudes hanging out in an apartment in Moscow, and the government is just like, oh, won't someone rid me of this priest?
		Wink, wink.
		And they go, you got it, boss.
		And then they do it, and then Russia says, oh, those pesky hackers, why would they do this?
		Can't get mad at us?
		We'll arrest them if we find out who did it.
		And then they don't.
		Of course they won't.
unidentified		Who did it?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		They want to be able to disavow and say we had nothing to do with it.
		You can't.
		Don't look at us.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Plausible deniability.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, and there's overt and covert letters of marque.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, interesting.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can be overt about it.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Like, yep, I put a bounty.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Which is like, what was that military company that we had hired guns in the Middle East for a long time?
		Blackwater?
		Yeah, Blackwater.
		They changed their name at some point.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Well, that wasn't even a letter of remark.
		Now you're just hiring a company to provide a certain set of services that they're permitted to do.
		And most of it was security services for bases or dignitaries or things like that.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		So that would be more mercenary?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Just mercenary work?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		It's interesting because mercenary has like an actual definition and then it also has kind of like a colloquial understanding or like a popular understanding of it.
		So there was like a lot of what we think of when we think of mercenaries is like literally like the Swiss Guards or something like that where you have an element of soldiers or troops that will essentially fight for the highest bidder or whatnot.
		Um, then you have people that are paid to provide, you know, military services, but it's, it's not as if they're just going to the higher bid.
		It's not like you just go to whoever, it's not like one day we're working for the U.S.
		government and the next day, the cartels, who knows?
		Right.
		Um, so I think there's some distinction between the two, if that makes sense.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Alright, Chris Skanapieko says, supposedly the former UK President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the ghost of Kiev is real.
		But he has a pretty good reason to push the lie, if it is a lie.
		It's propaganda.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		What's the story of the ghost of Kiev?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		It's an ace fighter pilot, took out six Russian fighter jets in dogfights over Kiev.
		The videos show there's dogfights happening over Kiev.
		And I've just not seen any evidence that this is a single pilot who took out six fighter jets.
		But a cool story.
		Oh yeah.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But it's a little bit like I have confirmed the story that I am awesome.
unidentified		That's right.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		It's like the Red Baron.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		But he actually had like locked down a hundred kills or something.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They need these stories.
		But you know what?
		You know what?
		It just goes to show that the hero's journey, the story of strength and masculinity resonates with people.
		They're making modern day heroes.
		I'm all for it, man.
		I mean, the Ghost of Kiev is a cool story.
		If this is someone defending their home, it's not an invasion, it's defensive.
		And it's the underdog fighting back and taking out the aggressive force.
		I'm like, it's a cool story.
		And at the end of the day, it's going to inspire some kids to be better people, to defend their families, their friends, their homes.
		I dig it.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		You know what I don't like about aggression and defense is that you can have a country that is meddling other places with like technology and not sending a troop.
		And then you're basically the aggressor at that point, even though you haven't moved a troop.
		And so if you get attacked, you can't claim that you're defending yourself.
		If you were out there screwing with people and now they're retaliating.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I don't think Ukraine was invading Russia.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Well, the U.S.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		has been meddling and I think it's like a proxy.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but as much as I think Joe Biden's crooked with, you know, the deals he's worked and the illegal quid pro quo and all that stuff, trying to buy favors and influence with cash, Vladimir Putin had every opportunity to do the exact same.
		He could have gone to the president of Ukraine, I think it was Poroshenko, he could have gone to any one of these people and said, the US has offered you a billion dollars in loans, I'll give you a billion dollars in loans as well.
		The problem was, my understanding, you know, having been on the ground in Ukraine and talked to some of the people, and I still am in regular communication with a friend of mine who's there, is that they don't like Russia.
		They, they, the Holodomor.
		These people are like, the Soviet Union staged a genocide and it was, it was primarily Russia staging a genocide over the Ukrainian people.
unidentified		It's Stalin.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		You're, it's exactly, you're not, you're, it's going to be hard-pressed to get popular support across the board.
		And so what was happening was the US was playing their influence games, Russia was playing their influence games, but a lot of people in the country were still like, we'd rather be in the EU.
		Not to mention, for a lot of people in Ukraine, they were hoping that getting into the EU meant they could migrate out of the country and go get jobs in higher paying countries.
		So, when you look at what happened with the EU, people from Poland, where the GDP was lower, moved to the UK, where the GDP was higher, and were making more money now.
		People in Ukraine were hoping for the same thing.
		That getting in the EU would raise up, you know, all of their wages and bring in more money.
		And Russia wanted them to join the Trade Federation.
		He didn't have the influence.
		So what does he do?
		Like a whiny baby, he invades.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Is he, like, gonna be out of office soon?
		What happened?
		Because he was Prime Minister.
		You know what is... I don't know about that.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Something tells me their government structure doesn't work quite the same as ours.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he just keeps bouncing back and forth.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		I've been kind of defending, like, hey, Russia's a federation of states, but, like, dude, if the dude seized control of the government, it's a dictatorship now.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		He's supposedly the richest guy on the planet.
unidentified		Yeah?
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Well, my friends, if you haven't already, smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends, and go to TimCast.com and become a member.
		It helps support our work.
		Your membership keeps the show sustained, keeps all of our journalists employed, and you'll get access to our exclusive members-only segments from this show.
		You can follow us at TimCastIRL, basically everywhere.
		You can follow me at TimCast.
		Nick, you want to shout anything out?
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		No, well again, lovely meeting all of you and thank you very much for having me on.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, thanks for coming.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		We've got a couple programs that we've been working on.
		One is Making the Argument with Nick Freitas.
		One of the things that we do on there is we actually try to equip people to be able to make better arguments for free markets, for individual liberty.
		One of the things that we do that's kind of unique on that, we actually highlight bad conservative arguments.
		Because that's one thing that drives me nuts is watching my own side make really bad arguments.
		And then we've got another program we do called the Why Minutes where we take, you know, actually one of the issues that we were talking about recently on there is, you know, we talk about the environmental policy and stuff like that.
		And it's always this idea that if only the government intervened more, we'd have better environmental policy.
		So we like to talk about things like the Aral Sea and how, wow, centralized government power was actually not better for the environment, along with all the other things it's not good for.
		But if you're interested in individual liberty, free markets, all that good stuff, making the argument with Nick Freitas, the Why Minutes, Also, you are Nick for VA on Twitter.
		On Twitter, yeah.
		Yeah, we have fun on Twitter and the TikTok too.
unidentified		Oh my.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We got banned from TikTok.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		Oh, so I've been, we went from like all of my, we went from 7,000 followers to 200,000 followers in six months.
unidentified		Whoa!
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		And then all of a sudden, bam, nothing goes to the For You page anymore.
nicholas j freitas ▲ ● ▼		But it is still kind of funny because I like to be able to tell my teenage daughters, hey, how do you feel about the fact that your 42-year-old father has a bigger TikTok account than you?
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Lit.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		They banned us.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		I think it was because of Alex Jones.
unidentified		It was.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We had Alex on.
		I don't care.
		You know, whatever, man.
ian crossland ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm fine with it.
		Well, hey, I'm Ian Crossland.
		Check me out at iancrossland.net.
		I'll see you guys next week.
lydia smith ▲ ● ▼		And thank you guys for tuning in this evening.
		I really enjoyed our talk with Nick Freitas.
		I forgot to shout out the sign behind me that looks a little crooked.
		It's actually not.
		They made this amazing sign for me.
		I need to shout out the company that made it.
		Ian also has one, and then we have the Timcast one.
		Mine has my cat in the at sign.
		That's Dip.
		You can find more of him on my Instagram.
		Way too much of him on my Instagram.
		Anyway, I am Sour Patch Lids on Twitter and Mines.com.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		We will see all of you over at youtube.com slash castcastle, which will be up tomorrow, and then we'll be back Monday.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you all then.

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