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March 25, 2024 - Viva & Barnes

02:39:47

Viva Moderated Debate B/W Roger Stone/George Papadopoulos & Michael Tracey/Richard Painter

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	Former presidents have already clinched the nominations.
	We're going to save our country.
	We're going to have to choose between a dinosaur and an orangutan.
	The economy was great.
	Tells it how it is.
	Trump made this country great.
	They have normalized just evil and wrongdoing.
	and the general election is just getting started.
	Good evening, everybody.
	This is...
	It's going to be an interesting discussion tonight.
	I'm David Frye, for those who don't know me, and I'm going to be moderating a debate between Mr. Papadopoulos on my left, Alex Jones digitally, Michael Tracy on my right, and Mr. Painter on my other right.
	And it's going to be amazing and interesting.
	Full disclosure, everybody knows what I think of the question that's being asked tonight, but it's not because of what I think that I'm going to treat anybody differently as a moderator of this discussion over the question, should Trump Be the next president.
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	That is not in my own voice.
	That was in the voice of the paid advertisers, just so people are aware.
	Well, I guess we can get on with the debate tonight, and the question is going to be, how bad will the catastrophe be, depending on who the next president is going to be?
	On my left, and Alex Jones is going to be joining us remotely, I see Alex, I think, right behind me.
	There he is.
	That's Alex Jones.
	They're going to be debating or answering the question, should Trump be the next president?
	Now, the question is, is it a categorical imperative?
	Is it a catastrophic, if it doesn't happen, how bad will things get?
	Arguing against it is going to be Mr. Painter and Mr. Tracy.
	So now, it's going to be more of a discussion.
	It will probably not devolve into hair pulling, although if it does, I'm running.
	But how do you want to start it?
	Do you want to start with...
	Actually, if we can start the discussion, not to put Team Tracy Painter on the spot, the question is, should Trump be the next president?
	And by the way, we should also mention, Roger Stone was scheduled to do this, unforeseen events such that now Alex Jones is filling in.
	We're going to start it, I guess, just to open it with statements at first, but if I may put Team Painter, Team Stacey on point right now.
	My question is, if not Trump, who?
	Well, I just want to say up front, one of the great things about our glorious country, the United States of America, is that you have a constitutional right to be an equal opportunity hater.
	So nothing I say here in criticism of Trump should be construed to be an endorsement of Joe Biden, at least for my purposes.
	I can't really speak for Mr. Painter.
	I'd say I'm the last thing from someone who's suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, George...
	You recall we've had discussions about your ordeal and the Russiagate fiasco, and I was one of the very early media critics of that whole sham.
	And even the New York Times recognized me begrudgingly for that a couple of years ago.
	So, again, the proposition tonight happens to be ought Trump to be in office.
	I say no because I say no to pretty much everybody.
	I guess I'm a curmudgeon in that respect.
	So, if not Trump, who?
	I don't know.
	You tell me.
	Mr. Printer, if I may ask you the same question.
	Well, we're in a situation where both of the leading candidates could assure their party wins in November by dropping out.
	Joe Biden, if he were withdraw and turned his delegates over to just about any Democrat, I'd be able to beat Donald Trump.
	Not any Democrat, but a moderate Democrat.
	Donald Trump could do the same.
	Donald Trump could decide that he served one term, it's time to retire, and turn his delegates over and ask his delegates to support one of many Republicans who could win this election in November, hands down, against Joe Biden.
	I think those are the strategies that ought to be pursued by both political parties as a former Republican.
	I would like to see the Republican Party do the right thing and nominate a candidate who can beat Joe Biden.
	I don't think that's Donald Trump.
	Mr. Papadopoulos, for those who don't know, it might be worth briefly summarizing your experience with the Russiagate hoax.
	I think I can call it that.
	I think we all agree that that's what it was.
	The three and a half years where that hoax was pushed.
	And the people that they went after, you were among them.
	Just briefly mention to the crowd what happened.
	No, of course.
	It was initially called a hoax, but as new information has been declassified and various pundits have testified under oath and FBI officials have testified under oath and some officials of the CIA have testified, it doesn't look like it was a hoax.
	it looks like it was actually premeditated sabotage and an overt or maybe subtle attempt to interfere in our democratic process by the United States intelligence services and foreign allied intelligence services.
	And just about three weeks ago, there was a bombshell report that suggested that this FBI investigation did not spontaneously
	who was a different presidential candidate.
	And that, of course, all metastasized into a very corrupt FBI investigation, which has been at the center of at least four different investigations.
	I was, of course, caught up in that.
	I survived.
	And now, of course, I was not the beginning and the end.
	This type of lawfare has now impacted the ex-president of the United States of America, Donald Trump.
	And now I'll turn it over to Alex.
	Alex, you're going to be able to hear me, and I don't know where I'm going to look to see you, but I can see you right there.
	Alex, the question of the evening is, should Trump be the next president?
	I think I know where you stand on this, but if you can give us the opening remarks for the team, yes.
	Well, I'm actually right here with you, just my head is much bigger than yours, so I feel like I'm sitting there at the table.
	We know Roger Stone wanted to be here tonight but had a family emergency, and he was very excited about this discussion and debate tonight.
	Look, here's the bottom line.
	George is completely right.
	This was not a hoax.
	This was a premeditated deep state.
	Coup against the voters of America.
	And I am not some Trump worshiper.
	I'm not the Trump cult.
	There's a lot about Trump I don't like, just like Tucker Carlson has issue with him.
	There's a lot of things I like about Trump, but he believes in America.
	And he tried to actually be the president, and he actually delivered on almost everything he said he would do.
	He was wrong about the so-called vaccines.
	I've been critical of that.
	I'm on record.
	But it doesn't matter.
	They have tried to take him off the ballot.
	They've been overridden by the Supreme Court, not indicted, not convicted.
	They've filed all this lawfare and had juryless attacks on him or trying to seize his assets.
	We are all Donald Trump.
	And so Trump's not perfect by a long shot.
	And after eight years of this, because there's, you know, a few years of campaigning before, I'm quite exhausted from it and wish that we had not a corrupt democratic establishment that was on the CHICOM TIT.
	and the Republican establishment, half of them, like, swallows well.
	Mitch McConnell also on the Chi-Com did.
	And so I'm...
	I'm really tired of the Trump era.
	I'm tired of the Jared Kushners saying we're going to blow up Gaza and get all the land for building beachfront property.
	But that said, it's not even holding my nose.
	Because even if they weren't trying to take Trump off the ballot, he's still way better than Biden.
	But them trying to tell us who we can vote for and trying to take our rights Preemptively to steal an election, which is what this is, and to indict him in Georgia for questioning an election is a fraud against me and my family.
	So I 110% support Trump, but I'm not in a cult.
	It doesn't mean I agree with everything he says, but we'll have some sway over him when he's in office as his constituents, whereas the Democratic Party has liquidated our borders, has devalued the dollar, has cut off our energy.
	And is literally saying that the average conservative American is the number one terror threat in the country.
	So if people don't vote for President Trump, they are certifiably insane.
	Imagine four more years of Joe Biden.
	It shows how crazy the ruling class is.
	We know that Biden's a puppet for Obama and the deep state.
	And the fact they're trying to do this again is a joke on us if we put up with it.
	Fool me once, shame on you.
	Fool me twice, shame on me.
	Again, I'm 100% for Trump winning.
	It is about the will of the people and saving our republic.
	I'm going to ask Richard and Michael a question here because I took a note as Richard was giving his opening remarks.
	You know, anybody except for Biden would ensure that the Democrats would win.
	I'm not sure I agree with that.
	Anybody except Trump would ensure that the Republicans would win.
	I'm not sure I agree with that either.
	And I remember when DeSantis was running in the primaries and he was something seen as a competitor at the time, the headlines were already running.
	DeSantis is worse than Trump.
	And I'm old enough to have remembered demonizing George Bush Jr.
	When a Republican comes out, they immediately become racist, Nazis, worse than Hitler, etc.
	It hits steroids with Trump, but I'm convinced that anybody from the Republican Party who might otherwise have won the nomination would be demonized even more than Trump, that they would go harder against them.
	And my number one argument for DeSantis, if they're going to indict Trump on all of these bogus charges, well...
	Pick DeSantis.
	They'll indict him on human trafficking for the Martha's Vineyard scandal.
	So my question would be, who do you think would be able to win the party, the election, on the Republican side?
	And do you not think they would do the exact same thing to that candidate if that candidate would not play ball with the Uni Party at Deep State?
	I think both parties attack each other's candidates.
	This has been going on for a long time.
	I mean, the vicious attacks on George W. Bush.
	That I saw were very, very partisan, full of lots of fake news.
	But bottom line is he didn't come in close to getting indicted.
	And it's not about the system.
	It's about do you have the common sense when you're running the White House to conduct the White House in a way that isn't going to expose you to these types of investigations and criminal charges.
	We did have investigations.
	We had partisan investigations from the U.S. House of Representatives.
	But we held control of Congress for six years of the Bush administration.
	Didn't lose control until the last two years.
	We had to deal with a lot of partisanship.
	There was common sense in the Bush administration.
	When you don't conduct yourself with common sense, you expose yourself even more.
	And that's the way it's been for a long time.
	This isn't about deep state versus whatever else we want to call it.
	Politics is this way.
	If you don't make good decisions, if you say stupid things, like telling Vladimir Putin to go hack Hillary's email, you're asking for investigations.
	It's just stupid.
	George W. Bush would never say that kind of thing.
	We need a candidate like Ronald Reagan, like George W. Bush, who has common sense.
	I think we're in a strange place where we're being lectured to believe that the invasion of Iraq was just common sense.
	You know, Trump getting ensnared in various legal snafus is, I don't know.
	But he never got indicted for it.
	Well, indictment or not, I think it's ridiculous to characterize the invasion of Iraq, which is the signature policy initiative of the Bush administration as according to common sense.
	It's a disagreement about policy.
	That's different.
	We've always had disagreements about Vietnam that both parties got us into.
	But that is not, that's a very different conversation.
	This is actually a good jumping-off point for just a brief explanation of my position.
	I wholeheartedly reject almost every histrionic liberal critique of Trump, so I don't know if Richard has ever been formally diagnosed with Trump derangement syndrome, but, you know, I certainly have done all I could to immunize myself from it.
	So I'm actually trying to deal with the The actual Trump who was in power for four years and the record that he left behind rather than imaginary scenarios of Trump colluding with Putin or of him single-handedly destroying democracy, getting into all these hysterics and histrionics that I really think distract from a recent critique of Trump that's been necessary since the time he burst onto the scene in 2015, but it's been sorely lacking.
	So I think that's really what people should strive toward if they want to be grounded in some kind of rational understanding of Trump.
	So here's one thing that I think ought to be put out there, and I'm curious what people think about it.
	Trump, when he was running in the Republican primaries in 2016, gained traction initially because he would say stuff to the tune of, I'm a self-funder.
	I don't need to appeal to the donors.
	In fact, I'm going to take an antagonistic position for the donors because they're...
	They've got Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and the others in their pocket.
	I actually pulled up a tweet from Trump.
	This is October of 2015.
	He said, quote, Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet.
	I agree.
	Now, if you followed the news at the time, you might be aware that almost immediately when Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016, what did he do?
	He assiduously courted the donors.
	That he had just gotten the nomination by castigate, including Sheldon Adelson, who went on to become the single most prolific donor to Trump and the Republican Party in 2016, '18, and 2020, and then even 2022.
	Now Sheldon Adelson is dead, but Trump, when he was addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition annual gala in the fall of last year, what was he doing?
	He was calling out to Miriam Adelson, who's the widow of Sheldon Adelson, and having private...
	Soirees with her and she's expected to give millions of dollars to Trump's next campaign.
	He even said it outright.
	He said because of Miriam's late husband, he was compelled to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv and Israel to Jerusalem.
	Now, you could debate whether that was a wise move or not, but he was explicitly attributing his decision-making on that policy issue to the influence of a donor who he had maligned to get the nomination in the first place.
	Now, you're not going to hear that critique from like a DeSantis or other Republicans who might have qualms with Trump because they're usually in the same position in terms of sucking up to donors.
	You won't hear from any Democrats because they're going to be obsessed with shrieking that he's going to usher in the end of democracy.
	So it's left for us people who are more reality-based to point out the actual flaws with Trump rather than the ones that have been invented and hallucinated.
	You're exactly right about the donors, but the Democrats have the same problem.
	They've got a ton of donors and countdown to donors.
	All the politicians are doing it, including Trump.
	Well, I'm actually curious to hear.
	To me, I don't know how big of an issue that is, whether or not it's disqualifying, but George, what do you say about that?
	When I look at Donald Trump, I look at his history and his history on...
	Issues of the economy, foreign policy, industry, societal issues in America.
	And I look at a person going back to the early 80s who has actually stayed steadfast in many ways with his ideology from then.
	So whether he gets five million dollars from a shuttle Adelson in 2016 or he gets a million from another person, I don't believe that those individuals have the prowess or the ability to influence Donald Trump's foreign policy or his Policies on various issues because he's been actually talking about these issues since the early 80s.
	You could just go back to various interviews he's given regarding trade deals, foreign policy, the relationship with Israel, ending these endless wars that you described with the George W. Bush administration.
	And I knew many of these individuals.
	My career actually started at the Hudson Institute right after the George W. Bush administration ended.
	I walked into this world in Washington, D.C. with the Scooter Libby's, with the Douglas Feith's, all these individuals.
	And that was something that Donald Trump, no matter how much money, if you want to call it the military industrial complex, people associated to it, the Boeing's, whatever you want to call it, he was not going to commit America to a disparate war like George W. Bush did.
	And that's really what I think the difference is with a Donald Trump.
	Who is astute and rooted in his principles versus a Marco Rubio or even a Joe Biden who completely vacillates, oscillates, whatever you want to call it, depending on which crowd he's talking to.
	The same issue you could describe with Vivek Ramashwamy.
	One of the major issues that he had was he would...
	Particularly speak to one crowd one way, then another, and then they called him to chat GTP, you know?
	So that was...
	That was a good line.
	That was a very good line.
	So that is what I think is a diametrically opposed viewpoint that I have between Donald Trump, the ability of donors to influence him, versus the rest.
	A last one to Alex.
	Oh, sorry.
	Alex, go ahead.
	Look.
	This is a good discussion because people are actually making cogent points.
	And when I was listening to Mike Tracy earlier, everything he said, and please come on my show, is my real criticisms of Trump.
	I mean, Jared Kushner and two billion from the Saudi Arabians and all of this.
	And I agree that when Trump agrees with what donors want to give him, he'll do it.
	The money doesn't make him do it.
	But if you agree with him, he'll take the money.
	But that criticism of Tracy is actually a plus, as George just said, because Trump is the most pig-headed person you'll ever see.
	And the fellow here promoting George W. Bush, he never got indicted.
	It's a plus that no president in modern history has been indicted and the deep state's coming after Trump because they're fundamentally scared of him.
	And so that's the reality.
	The system is trying to take away Openly, who we want to vote for.
	And openly, I've got Rolling Stone articles and Time Magazine articles and New York Times articles right here saying that Biden is mobilizing to, quote, stop Trump from stealing the election.
	Okay?
	And we've got Liz Cheney, who was always really a Democrat deep stater, you know, saying we've got to stop Trump to save democracy.
	So we've got to...
	We've got to stop Trump from the public being able to vote for him.
	Here's the Rolling Stone article last week.
	Biden is building a superstructure to stop Trump from stealing the election.
	And the truth is, the crimes of the Bidens and of Obama and all the insider stuff with Nancy Pelosi insider trading, it is gargantuan.
	And the fact that the purely weaponized Justice Department is coming after him, we hear from one of the speakers, oh, we need a president they won't indict.
	Well, that means somebody that's going along.
	We need somebody disruptive.
	Thomas Jefferson talked about gridlock in Congress.
	It's why we have three branches of government.
	It's why we have a federalist system and three branches at the state level.
	It's why we have six branches all together in between federal and state.
	It's so that we don't get a man on a white horse, a Napoleon Bonaparte, or an Adolf Hitler, or a VI Lenin that rides in to save everybody.
	And so just pull back.
	Joe Biden was being indicted for things he hadn't done, and they were taking him off the ballot.
	I would support the voters if they voted for Joe Biden because this is a bureaucratic, deep state coup against the people, not against Trump.
	And even CNN's like, well, Mar-a-Lago's worth hundreds of millions, 200 to 500 million.
	He can just sell it.
	And pay the bond here.
	But then the same judge with no real estate license in a juryless trial says, you lied.
	Mar-a-Lago's only worth $18 million when they just sold a lot down the street for $200 million.
	And others, a two-acre lot, by the way.
	Mar-a-Lago's 17.9 acres, hundreds of houses, condos, facilities.
	It's conservatively worth $500 million.
	The judge said, I don't care.
	I'm saying you're a fraud, and then they're trying to seize his property within a matter of weeks, when anybody knows the process is months and months, if not years.
	So, again, move aside all of Trump's warts.
	I am not a worshiper of Trump.
	But I am a supporter of the people's will in our limited democracy, constitutional republic, and this is a coup.
	Now, I liked DeSantis before he signed on to Karl Rove and Jeb Bush, and I think he's a great leader, and I think somebody like him could probably navigate better than Trump, who I agree has some basic issues, but we all do.
	But that all aside, they're trying to compare.
	Biden to Trump, there is no comparison.
	And then you add trying to take him off the ballot and take our right to vote.
	That's why we must back Trump all the way.
	Because if they can take down the popular frontrunner in all the major polls, they can get everybody.
	Just like Kevin O 'Leary and others have said, who aren't even Trump supporters, the whole world sees what's happening here.
	That's why we've been the business mecca of the world, because everywhere else wasn't safe to invest money.
	And if this coup d 'etat against the voters, and this coup d 'etat against Trump continues, no business is safe, no corporations is safe.
	Look at Letitia James, literally campaigned on bringing down Trump, literally put in by Soros, going after the biggest meatpacker organization, trying to take it over, trying to destroy the NRA.
	They are only starting with Trump.
	And so this is a real cancer we have, and it must be defeated.
	Did I wish there was some amazing black horse?
	Tucker Carlson, good friends with him, doesn't want to be in politics, isn't going to be Trump's VP.
	If Tucker Carlson ran, I know he's a pure guy, and he was way ahead of Trump, I would support him over Trump.
	He's not running because he's too smart to do it.
	But we don't have a Tucker Carlson, so all we have is Trump.
	And the only reason I criticize Trump...
	It's because I've got issues with him to be honest about the problems he's got.
	Am I presidential material?
	No.
	Is Trump?
	Only because he literally wants to be the leader and will not listen to special interests.
	So again, I back Trump because the deep state is against Trump and because the deep state wants to take my vote away.
	Alex, I'm going to get to some of the legit criticism of Trump in a bit and give you a bit of a hard time in a bit as well, or not you, but the position you're presenting.
	But now I'm going to turn to Richard and give him a bit of a hard time because, you know, to say that, and I'll ask you this question, they gave Bush a hard time.
	Okay, yeah, they called him stupid.
	They questioned his intellectual capacity.
	They didn't try to jail him.
	And you say, get someone up there who's not going to say stupid things to expose them to indictments.
	Trump could literally do nothing, and they would indict him for it, as they're doing in New York State now, with no fraud, no victim, alleged overvaluation of assets.
	A $500 million disgorgement in interest.
	Yeah, he wasn't indicted for that.
	That's the civil case.
	That's the civil case.
	The civil fraud case.
	Indicted on the RICO case, where one of the acts in that RICO case was literally Trump saying, find me whatever the legal remedy is for what I think was a stolen election in Georgia.
	So you see...
	But it wasn't a stolen election in Georgia.
	No, but you're saying just behave better.
	He could literally do nothing and they would indict him.
	And there's a difference between attacking people and trying to jail them and their family.
	Do you not appreciate that distinction with the treatment of Trump versus any predecessor?
	Trump is the first president who has refused to follow the Constitution.
	And it has been clear since John Adams ceded the election to Thomas Jefferson.
	We have peaceful transition of power in this country.
	And you lose an election, you leave.
	George H.W. Bush did that.
	We have had many...
	George W. Bush challenged Al Gore with the Supreme Court, claiming that Trump's the first person to challenge an election is preposterous.
	He had every right to do, to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
	Also, Richard, you were working for George W. Bush when the administration was engaged in warrantless wiretapping.
	Do you want to talk about...
	Is that consistent with the Constitution?
	We were talking about the election.
	Let's talk about one issue at a time.
	But you said Trump was the first president not to follow the Constitution.
	Was George Bush following the Constitution?
	Hold on, hold on.
	They're all interconnected.
	I don't have a mute button, but I'll just ask the question.
	You said Trump violated the Constitution specifically.
	In this specific way.
	Act and action provisions.
	There are no findings yet.
	Those are claims.
	Just like taking them off the ballot.
	No indictment for insurrection.
	No conviction.
	Supreme Court ruled it was a fraud.
	Where is the current...
	The Supreme Court ruled nothing was a fraud.
	The Supreme Court disagreed with the Colorado Supreme Court removing Donald Trump from the ballot.
	The Supreme Court did not say it is a fraud.
	I'm not going to participate in a debate when people are making things up.
	The Supreme Court did not say it was a fraud.
	You just said Trump's line about a stolen election.
	The Democrats are taking him off the ballot.
	What did the Supreme Court say was a fraud?
	Is that not a stolen election?
	Hold on, hold on.
	Richard, hold on a second.
	No, no, he's going to walk off.
	I don't know where you found this...
	Where?
	Where did the Supreme Court say it was a fraud?
	Where did the Supreme Court say it was a fraud?
	You can't handle the heat.
	Get out of the kitchen.
	Go ahead.
	Walk off.
	Piss your pants.
	Alex, I'm going to ask the question again.
	Make it all up.
	Richard, I'm going to ask the question again.
	You said he violated the Constitution.
	What act, what provision of the Constitution?
	The Constitution has a procedure for choosing the President of the United States.
	The Democrats don't like it.
	They don't like the Electoral College.
	Sorry, we have an Electoral College.
	You have a procedure for choosing the president of the United States.
	Donald Trump lost the election in 2020.
	And it is critically important in this country to be willing to cede power when you lose an election.
	This goes back to when John Adams ceded power to Thomas Jefferson when he lost the election.
	We've had many elections.
	And he did.
	He did at the end.
	You do not have a riot.
	You do not...
	Engage in the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in.
	He did not trigger that riot.
	He said go peacefully the Capitol.
	He engaged in conduct that got him indicted.
	We will see whether he is found guilty on those charges.
	The point is that Donald Trump is one of the first presidents we have seen.
	We have not had an election end in violence this way since the Civil War.
	We cannot tolerate this conduct in the United States.
	9 /11 was not an election.
	What are you talking about?
	What does 9 /11 have to do with an election?
	The Civil War killed a million people.
	You're saying this is as bad as the Civil War.
	One of my personal rules of thumb has been to make what is hopefully A rational critique of Trump without any reference whatsoever to January 6th, which has obviously been saturated the minds of every paranoid liberal for like three and a half years,
	and also to agree that the extra-legal tactics that have been employed against Trump, going all the way back to the Mueller investigation which ensnared George and Roger, While also not necessarily following along with, I think, an unwarranted logical leap, which is to say that because there are these excessive measures that are being taken to stymie Trump, therefore Trump ought to be affirmatively...
	Support it.
	No, I mean, I think the Jack Smith indictments, whether it's trying to invoke a Civil War era civil rights statute to charge him on the basis of January 6th, or absurdly resurrecting the incredibly pernicious Espionage Act, which has also been what the U.S. government has charged Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning with.
	By the way, the Trump Department of Justice is the one who charged Julian Assange.
	People...
	But Michael, if I stop you there, because that's a common talking point.
	But Trump's administration also lied to him about how many soldiers were left in Syria.
	So it's quite clear there was some internal sabotage within the Trump administration.
	But that's the case with every president.
	I mean, the military brass lied out of their ears about Vietnam.
	It takes a determined executive with some organizational focus to recognize that there are going to be vested establishment interests in, for example, perpetuating a military intervention like Syria and take concerted action to circumvent that.
	Trump didn't have the interest.
	He was more interested, most of the time, in just, like, tweeting what his comments were on, like, the award show last night.
	Well, but hold on.
	He was more the pundit-in-chief than the commander-in-chief.
	If he was a diligent commander-in-chief, then some apparatchik fudging the casualty statistics on Syria wouldn't have been the be-all, end-all of the U.S. government Syria policy.
	Instead, Trump just lost interest, capitulated to Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, and...
	By the end of his term, the troops hadn't been removed from Syria.
	They're still there to this day, by the way, without any statutory authorization.
	So, like, at what point is Trump accountable for what he and his administration actually did?
	It seems like there's a common refrain where, like, anything that we regard as bad to happen under Trump, that was the deep states thwarting him or that was his will being thwarted by these nefarious actors.
	Hold on, Michael.
	I thought the buck stops with him.
	I think most people would agree that military officials who are in the highest of command lying to the president Would be Deep State attempting to undermine the president.
	I mean, William Westmoreland lied out of his ass to Lyndon Johnson.
	Does that mean that Johnson was, like, somehow being penalized by the Deep State?
	I don't know.
	I think that's a reductive...
	And I'll say, I think you are sucking and blowing a little bit to say that it happened under his administration, but we now also admit that his administration was actively lying to him to try to...
	No, I mean, there clearly were elements of the administration that were seeking to undermine Trump.
	Especially the intelligence services elements of the national security state.
	Nobody denies that.
	George is barely talking.
	George, what do you think?
	They tried to throw you in prison as a Russian agent.
	How does that feel?
	Well, before I get to it, yeah, I mean, look, this attempt to basically undermine Trump's administration began from day one.
	The moment that he ascended to the Oval Office, he was actually on defense.
	He never actually had the opportunity to function as a commander in chief properly because once he survived Comey, then you have Mueller.
	Then you survive Mueller, you have impeachment 1.0 over a transcript that he released publicly.
	Then you have a second impeachment.
	He survives that.
	And then, of course, the debacle on January 6th.
	The entire first term was not only on defense, but it was also...
	On taking bad advice from so many people that he just did not know.
	And that does come from being an outsider.
	This is an individual who won the presidency the first time based on running as an outsider, somebody that did not know Washington, D.C. from the inside, that wanted to come from the outside to shake it up.
	He succeeded some ways.
	He failed the other ways.
	Regarding foreign policy, you can look at the micro level regarding soldiers left in Syria.
	I look at the Abraham Accords.
	I look at Russia not invading Ukraine under his term.
	I look at Russia not invading the caucus.
	I look at Russia and China not having this ossified relationship they do right now.
	I also look at North Korea not shooting off missiles towards Japan under the Trump administration.
	So I look at it through the macro lens.
	I'm not focusing so much on this attempt to undermine them through some bureaucrat who wanted to give Lindsey Graham more power in terms of how the United States...
	Posture is in the Middle East, which we know he's one of the warmongers in the Senate.
	So that's how I saw it.
	One of Trump's earliest endorsers for the 2024 campaign, by the way, which suggests some compatibility in their foreign policy views.
	But I also see Lindsey Graham now shifting.
	Lindsey Graham, in some ways, at least publicly, has made pronouncements, especially regarding funding Ukraine, where he's echoing the sentiment of Trump that you can't give this endless check to Ukraine.
	It's going to be based on, you know, loans that are going to be, you know, guaranteed that Ukraine eventually is going to have to return.
	He's focusing a lot on the border now.
	This wasn't the Lindsey Graham of 2016.
	Just in Ukraine.
	Promising aid.
	It's conditional.
	It's conditional, and it's echoing Trump's- Well, they're saying it's going to be a loan, just like Lend-Lease in World War II, where we're going to give you what's technically considered a loan, but there's no expectation or requirement for repayment.
	But how far has Lindsey Graham shifted?
	George, talk for a minute, because I want to jump in.
	Look, let me just jump in.
	Go ahead, go ahead.
	We have a deep state openly publicly surveilling and censoring What you guys said earlier, what Viva Frye said earlier is totally true.
	They're going to target the next candidate.
	The Democrats have said they want to outlaw the Republican Party.
	They know the public's turned against them.
	We have a tyranny taking over right now.
	And so Trump is a side issue to that.
	Trump was a major disruptor.
	To the entire power structure because he was an outsider that came in and thought he would really be the president.
	So what Trump did, despite all his missteps, is much better than I would have done or anybody else.
	So I give him all the credit.
	But my criticism of Trump is just being honest.
	He's not perfect because we're not God.
	We're humans.
	But he did an amazing job.
	And now they're trying to take him off the ballot, which is election theft.
	And then claiming it's a conspiracy that there's election theft.
	It's a fraud.
	Who tried to say they're going to outlaw the Republican Party?
	I'd like to know the name of that person.
	Facts.
	Not make up stuff.
	Facts.
	Who said they're going to outlaw the Republican Party?
	Biden's constantly calling them domestic extremists.
	And the FBI.
	Oh, my God.
	Listen, what I'm going to do is, this is live.
	I'm sitting here.
	There's like one crew member here.
	It's at night.
	I've been on the air five hours a day.
	But I will take this.
	I will air it in the next few days.
	And when you say that, I will show we need to re-educate the Republicans.
	The Republican Party's dead.
	We need to get rid of the Republican Party.
	MSNBC, CNN.
	MAGA are all terrorists.
	We need to put them all in re-education camps.
	Somebody's gonna kill Trump.
	I mean, they are literally talking about trying to destroy the Republican Party.
	Who's gonna put someone in re-education camps?
	Please tell me.
	Let's debate on facts.
	Let's not make it all up.
	No, I can fact check that while we wait.
	They definitely talk about re-education camps.
	I'm going to get you on this.
	I don't care if it's not whack on that.
	I'll put the clips in.
	Alex, while you get those clips, I have a question.
	We'll do like a roundtable, answer the question, because we'll notice a bit of a pattern.
	I'll start with Richard.
	I think I know the answer.
	Some people would look at 2016 Russia collusion story, and they would, if you're Rachel Maddow, believe it to be true, notwithstanding.
	If they're like most reasonable people would believe it was now turned out to be a debunked hoax.
	If you're next level, you might say it wasn't a hoax.
	It was a coup.
	I'm going to ask the same question about 2020 and what they're doing now in 2024.
	Rassagate, was it true, hoax or coup?
	MICHAEL STOLER: Anybody who's talking about the Russia Influence in the election in 2016.
	Anybody who's talking about that in 2024 is going to lose the election because the vast majority of the American people don't give a hoot about the 2016 election.
	What happened in 2020, January 6th?
	Yes, people are concerned about that.
	But to be talking about Russia and Russiagate and what happened there in the 2016 election...
	Actually, the national polls show like 3% are concerned about January 6th, which you say is the biggest attack in history.
	I pulled up lots of you saying that there was definitely...
	January 6th, bigger than Pearl Harbor and 9 /11, like Democrats say.
	So you could allege that there was this grand geopolitical espionage conspiracy and then a couple years later say, whoops, never mind?
	I mean, don't you think there's a little more...
	If you want a debate, if you want a debate...
	2016, in 2024, either side, you're going to lose.
	Richard, you're seeing where I'm going to go with this.
	Do you think it was true, hoax, or coup?
	I believe there was Russian interference in the election.
	Yes, the Mueller report concluded that, but it could not be demonstrated that the Trump campaign committed any crimes in collaborating with the Russians, as discussed in Part 1 of the Mueller report.
	Part two of the Mueller report discussed Donald Trump's efforts to obstruct the investigation and concluded that Donald Trump should not be indicted.
	It is a policy of the Justice Department not to indict a sitting president.
	Well, look at the weaponization hearings.
	They called everybody a Russian agent.
	And we've heard all these other incredible lies.
	And we had also the Durham report saying Russiagate was a fraud.
	No, Russiagate is repudiated and discredited.
	But I guess you're Liz Cheney in a suit, buddy.
	Are you actually Liz Cheney with a rubber suit on?
	I don't understand what your problem is with Liz Cheney, other than that she stood up for our democracy.
	And she is a good person.
	No, no.
	Liz Cheney says don't vote for any Republicans because she is the daughter of a criminal warmonger who has hated the world around and has in indictments, arrest warrants against him for war crimes around the world.
	So you love Dick Cheney.
	You love George W. Bush.
	I mean, my God.
	What are you going to tell me next?
	Dick Cheney is the blame for Sandy Hook.
	I mean, what are you going to make up next?
	Come on.
	Michael.
	How about Iraq?
	I mean, he seems blameworthy for that.
	You want to discuss Iraq, we can discuss.
	But you act like it's just crazy to think that Cheney should be blamed for anything.
	Hold on.
	There's a pattern to the question.
	We're going to get to the dots that I'm going to connect.
	Just true hoax or coup?
	2016 Russia game.
	I actually don't think all those things are mutually exclusive.
	One thing that I wrote shortly after the Mueller report came out is that this really should be thought of as a kind of soft coup.
	I mean, Andrew McCabe, who was the deputy director of the FBI, wrote in his memoir that he attempted to recruit other Trump administration officials to oust him through the 25th Amendment because not that Trump was mentally incapacitated, which in theory is supposed to be the purpose of the 25th Amendment, where the cabinet can take an action to remove the president, but because that Trump's foreign policy views, namely on Russia, posed a national security threat.
	So I totally granted, I tried to...
	I just want to chronicle it pretty meticulously throughout Trump's time in office that there were these forces within the executive branch, if you want to call it deep state, permanent bureaucracy, whatever, that attempted to stymie him on the most scurrilous possible grounds.
	So, yeah, I think people who won't reckon with the utter fallaciousness of Russiagate even now probably don't have a clear-minded view on the threat or not that Trump poses today.
	Ask George something about, because this gets to Trump's foreign policy record, which I think it would behoove people to really try to stay grounded, because you can get lost in all the hysterics and the character flaws or character traits, whatever, of Trump.
	But here's what the Russian Foreign Ministry said on January 15, 2021, so just before Trump left office.
	They said, quote, regrettably, all attempts to improve our relations with the Trump administration have been unsuccessful.
	Washington even managed to put us on its list of America's enemies.
	That was after Mike Pompeo, who was the outgoing Secretary of State, and who basically ran U.S. foreign policy for the majority of the Trump administration, had said something antagonistic about Russia.
	So they summarized the entire contours of that relationship bilaterally between Russia and the U.S. over the course of Trump's term.
	They had deteriorated drastically.
	Remember, Trump ran for office in 2016 saying, "Wouldn't it be good if we actually got along with Russia?" Which was a very reasonable pledge to make, but he didn't actually follow through on it.
	Now, you could say that he was undermined by forces within the national security state bureaucracy who were kind of preternaturally...
	Aggressive toward Russia, but he's still the commander-in-chief.
	He still has an enormous amount of agency that he did not deploy in service of that aim.
	I think when Donald Trump was campaigning on bettering relations with Russia, it was simply to prevent nuclear Armageddon.
	At the end of the day, the United States and Russia are adversaries and their competitors.
	So I think that the Trump administration quickly understood that you're going to be able to engage them where you can, but you have to confront them where you must.
	Trump unleashed the shale renaissance in the United States.
	The United States became a net exporter of energy for the first time since World War II under the Trump administration.
	This went completely against the interests of the Russian Federation, which depends on oil and gas for over 30%.
	Trump killed the Nord Stream pipeline, which under Biden actually happened.
	So there's some continuity there.
	That was my next point.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Trump totally did a great job for America.
	George is right.
	Yeah, and he sanctioned Nord Stream to cut off the Russian economy from the Europeans.
	Thirdly, I should say, he bolstered NATO's defense spending.
	The defense spending, the expenditure spending, increased to the tune of billions.
	I don't have the number off the top of my head, but NATO members were committing to the 2% expenditure.
	This all happened while simultaneously trying to- Trump sent heavy weapons to Ukraine.
	I agree with you, George.
	Stinger missiles.
	The Stinger missiles that have now been used- Javelins.
	Yeah, the Javelins, absolutely.
	I agree with you, George, but this gets to a conundrum at the heart of Trump's Case for a second term, or the case that is ascribed to Trump.
	People will, on the one hand, say, oh, he was this antagonist against the deep state.
	He was thwarting all the ambitions of the military-industrial complex.
	Meanwhile, he had-- and he brags about this even to this day-- record-setting military budgets.
	I don't know.
	How you can oppose the military-industrial complex if you're stuffing their coffers with record-breaking amount of money.
	But then on NATO, you're right.
	Well, Mike Tracy, you're an honest...
	Mike Tracy, you're an honest liberal.
	These are real paradoxes with Trump.
	...that liberals use against Trump where they say, "Oh, he was trying to sabotage NATO from within." But that's not true.
	You're right.
	He did bolster military suspending.
	Among NATO member states.
	He actually bolstered this Pentagon program that supported supplementary military activities in Europe.
	He started sending lethal weaponry to Ukraine.
	I tell people all this all the time, but nobody listens to me, sadly.
	Go read Putin's speech before he launched the invasion of Ukraine.
	Let me comment on that.
	He cites multiple grievances with the U.S. administration, and half of them are to do with Trump, abrogating treaties.
	Installing military architecture in Ukraine.
	So it's just not consistent with the idea of Trump being a peacenek or he's not getting us into wars.
	He hyper-escalated tensions with Russia under the auspices of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and all the other hardliners who, you know, filled his administration and went straight to the election institute.
	Hold on a sec.
	Hold on a sec.
	We're going to let Alex...
	We're going to let Alex...
	Is it going to piss up to Putin?
	I mean, the problem is...
	It's not a detente.
	Obama did it.
	The problem is, Putin, it's not Obama or Biden or Trump.
	I mean, on that...
	Putin has created this situation through his conduct.
	And, you know, if he's going to go invading Ukraine, he's going to get a response.
	And he got a response from Obama, and he got a response under Donald Trump.
	So I think to blame any of those presidents for what's going on with Russia is really pretty far-fetched.
	Let Alex speak.
	He wanted to get something in here.
	Trump did not do a perfect job.
	But in the end of the day, he did not attack Russia as an enemy and didn't say he hated Russia.
	At the same time, he dominated Russia on energy and on NATO.
	And Trump was the biggest friend of NATO.
	So we're pro-NATO now, Alex?
	We're in favor of NATO.
	Can I just talk?
	Just hold on.
	I don't like NATO.
	I don't like NATO and what NATO's doing.
	But how can you brag about Trump empowering NATO?
	Hold on.
	Let him finish.
	Go for it, Alex.
	By Trump challenging NATO's legitimacy, he actually made NATO wake up and contribute and actually become stronger.
	So I'm actually arguing for you that this is kind of the schizophrenic paradox we see with Trump.
	But look, if you pull back from this and actually look at the facts, the point is he was not a Russian agent.
	He was not acting in the behest of Russia.
	He was acting in the interest of America that he believed.
	He was doing.
	Doesn't mean, from my perspective, he made the right decisions, but he definitely was making the decisions.
	And that's why the deep state didn't like Donald Trump.
	And that's why it's leaked that Putin would have actually wanted a Democrat instead of Trump, which shows how this whole thing is a giant lie.
	So that was the point that I was trying to make.
	But the idea that the West didn't, 10 years ago, overthrow the Ukrainian regime.
	Send in CIA bases.
	Start a war with Russia to provocateur Russia to now make this move.
	And then NATO and Victoria Nuland got what they wanted and Russia's won.
	So now they've resorted to asymmetrical warfare.
	They're losing.
	That's the reality.
	of what's happened here.
	So to sit back and claim Putin's taking over the world, Russia has the biggest country in the world, the most resources, they're not expansionists, they don't need to be.
	China, ally of the Democratic Party, is heavily controlling Hollywood, massively involved in our domestic politics, controlling much of the Democratic Party, and some of the Republicans like Mitch McConnell and his wife, and so...
	When we focus on Russia all day, that is a diversion, a red herring, from communist China.
	And that's my view.
	And Trump stood up to China massively and dominated China.
	And even after Trump left, the deep state continued his policies because it's the right thing to do.
	George wants to add something here.
	Yeah, let's harken back to Reagan, right?
	Because you mentioned Reagan earlier.
	Make America great again and peace through strength.
	You build up the military so that you don't have to actually use it in combat.
	And this Trump strategy was, I think, a three-pronged approach, right?
	You project force, you promote energy security, and you sustain the cohesiveness of our alliance structures around the world without having to fire a single bullet.
	And that is the ultimate achievement of the Trump administration.
	It's black and white.
	You cannot debate that.
	Under the Bush administration that you worked for...
	Putin invaded Georgia, a country in which he continues to occupy 20% of that country and prevented them from ever joining NATO.
	Under the Obama administration, when Hillary came in with her shiny red button to reset, what does Putin do?
	He goes and seizes Crimea, which he continues to hold today.
	Under Trump, that did not happen without firing a single bullet at the same time, as Alex just mentioned, crippling the Chinese economy to the extent that we have this now Major scandal with the virus emanating from China and how that reeked the global economy and in many ways tilted the balance of fortune for Trump this past election.
	So when you look in politics, and you've been in politics a long time, I haven't been as long as you, but I know one thing, results speak louder than words, and that's what I'm focused on when it comes to Trump.
	success after success.
	He has those successes and I want to see his past leadership experience perpetuate to a victory in 2024 and to bring some of those victories back then to the unstable, destabilized world that the Biden administration has had.
	Let me just say quickly, because I wanted to be here for the whole debate, but I've got to leave in 20 minutes.
	You guys will get your time back.
	Trump is a disruptive force to the deep state that sold us out to China, dissolved our borders, devalued our currency, is funding critical race theory, transgenderism with Hollywood, with big tech, with the media.
	The globalists are the main threat to America, with their ESGs and their central bank digital currencies and all of it.
	So Trump stands against that and pulled us out of the UN treaties that are allowing all this.
	So that's why I support him.
	Trump is a wrecking ball to the new world order, and that's why I support him.
	I gotta ask you this question, because you say, on the one hand, Trump funded NATO more, provided weapons to the Ukraine, antagonized Putin.
	As facts.
	And yet, the media says he was the one coming in and saying, "We're gonna end NATO." And yet, despite antagonizing Putin, Putin doesn't move a finger, so it doesn't have a small incursion until a weak, decrepit old man like Biden gets into power.
	Set aside what you think in terms of that being hypocritical.
	It might be just negotiation, but how do you then reconcile that with what the media says, despite what you acknowledge Trump actually did?
	Well, I mean, the media has just been completely absurd in their depiction of Trump from the very beginning.
	So I just put no stock into what the conventional media narrative is on Trump.
	It's almost the polar opposite, usually, of what they're screeching about on any given day.
	And, you know, frankly, the attitude toward Trump or interpretation of Trump that is advanced by the likes of Richard Pater tends to accord with what you get from the media most of the time.
	But I wanted to agree with Alex because I agree wholeheartedly with him.
	That the case that's being made for Trump here is totally schizophrenic.
	On the one hand, NATO is maligned as this globalist institution and Trump is opposing globalists.
	But then we're all supposed to simultaneously cheer that Trump coerced other NATO member states into spending more on their military.
	Production?
	I mean, we're supposed to be heartened that Germany is re-militarizing in 2024?
	That Poland and the Baltic states are pouring more and more money into their arsenals and guiding NATO collective policy?
	What is so great about that and how is it consistent with...
	Alex's general position on Trump, which is that he's this bulwark against the globalist institutions.
	How is NATO not a globalist institution?
	If you look at it through that perspective, yes.
	But if you look at it through the perspective, I think, which is a Trump logic, it's you bolster the European defense expenditure so that American troops can come home.
	So that we don't have American troops based at Rammstein.
	Well, that's the thing.
	George, let me just say this real quick.
	Exactly.
	It's a mix.
	They don't like him because he makes the decision.
	Some of it's for them.
	Some of it's not.
	They do it all by committee.
	That's why they hated Nixon.
	He was making the decisions.
	They got rid of him because of that.
	The deep state wants to make decisions by committee.
	Trump makes the decisions.
	A lot of his decisions I disagree with.
	The point is, you've got a president that's making the decisions.
	That's why they're pissed.
	Maybe a key point here that sums this up.
	They got rid of Nixon because he screwed up on Watergate.
	We know what happened.
	We watched the hearings.
	Unless we want to make up another deep state.
	I don't know what this phrase, deep state, by the way.
	How can we defend this country?
	Democrats can commit any crime they want, break into everything, spy everywhere, it's okay.
	Republicans don't believe in this deep state nonsense.
	This is all a bunch of crazy...
	The Justice Department is not the American voter.
	We cannot defend this country.
	Unless we believe in our military and our intelligence apparatus.
	Yes, we need to fix things.
	We need to reduce our defense spending when we can.
	We spend almost a trillion dollars on our military.
	But we go around using stupid phrases like "deep state" and attacking the institutions of our own country.
	How about the deep state defense?
	No wonder Putin and China.
	No, the deep state is at war with America on record, spying on us and censoring us, and they hate the country, and they teach to the colleges to hate America.
	See, one of the fallacies in the case for Trump that we hear being articulated here is the idea that he is some ardent foe of the deep state.
	Now, again, I've granted that there have been excessive extra legal measures that have been utilized against Trump by entities that you might call associated with the deep state.
	But on the issue of China, I mean, Alex has made the case that Trump and George made this case that Trump is going to be really strong in taking it to China.
	I mean, do you think the quote "deep state" wants anything more than this rolling confrontation with China?
	In fact, that's one area where there's almost unbroken continuity between Biden and Trump, is the issue of China.
	Biden's actually gone further than Trump in many instances.
	He's openly threatened to go to war with China over Taiwan.
	Mike Tracy, you're a smart guy, I respect you, and I want to interview you, but I'm going to say this.
	Sometimes you've got to oppose something.
	Communist China and Xi Jinping is literally the model of the Antichrist.
	So we want to overthrow the CCP like Steve Bannon, like his whole regime change philosophy for China.
	Is that what we're going to lurch toward?
	I mean, who is that going to end well for, Alex?
	I mean, what do you think a military confrontation between the United States and China is going to look like?
	You know, puppies?
	We already have, let me answer your question.
	We already have U.S. troops in Taiwan.
	Yeah.
	Which Trump accelerated.
	I think we put, look, the globalists for 40 years, since George Herbert Walker Bush moved our jobs to China, as Trump sent his middlemen to get a big cut.
	So now we should go to war.
	I want China to still have some, I want it to finish.
	I want China to still have some business.
	And I still want to deal with them, but we need to build American factories and American jobs.
	And so China's had a one-way street, and Trump looked at that just like NATO and said, "No more one-way streets." And so Trump was bringing China to heel.
	China, the CFR, the New World Order said, "Oh, they're the future.
	America's done." Trump said, "No, that's over." And so the Communist Party, China, other than the Democratic Party, is the main threat to freedom in the future.
	And so I love what Trump...
	Did to China.
	The deep state salivates at all the boondoggle weapons programs that they're gonna be able to justify because you're saying that there's this existential confrontation brewing.
	Between the United States and China.
	You got the wrong guy.
	I'm not a peacening.
	I don't want to invade sovereign countries or bomb sand people, you know, innocent Muslims live in the middle of nowhere in a hut.
	But when China's got nuclear submarines and nuclear missiles and saying they're ready for war and buying up Hollywood and taking over the Democratic Party with Swal as well and Dianne Feinstein and Pelosi.
	Let me tell you, if the Russians...
	I'm not a Russophobe, okay?
	I'm not a Russophile either.
	If the Russians were in our business like...
	I'd be all against Russia.
	The Chinese communists are literally dominating our ass till Trump got in.
	And so, yeah.
	Or maybe America is in Chinese business by transitioning Navy ships to the South China Sea.
	Is China sending its vessels to, you know, the Florida Keys or something?
	Or is there maybe a discrepancy?
	I meant what you said.
	What was that?
	But that's much different than military conflict.
	I mean, I don't even necessarily disagree that some degree of repatriation of economic resources that have been outsourced to China is within America's national interest.
	But that's a whole different discussion than let's encircle China with brand new military installations.
	I mean, last year Mike Tracy, you're a smart guy.
	I know we're chatting every time.
	He missed it.
	with missiles.
	I do not want military conflict with China.
	So who's antagonizing who?
	Well, but I think one of the I think one of the biggest...
	Let me finish your question.
	You asked a question.
	I do not want military conflict.
	90% of war is economic.
	I want to make our drugs and our chips, everything here in America, and then China will be an afterthought if we don't have politicians selling America out because they have side deals with the Communist Chinese Party.
	So I don't want war.
	We bring them to their knees economically, which is what Trump was doing, and cutting off their little ally they plan to use as the trigger for World War III in North Korea.
	I think their economy is doing very well under Trump, as it did well under Obama.
	We do need to confront China as an economic rival.
	I really hope we do not have war.
	We really need to figure out a way to spend less on our military and get more bang for the buck.
	And we do not want our troops getting involved in wars all over the world.
	But having a strong military is important, and also a strong economy, and confronting China is important.
	But when we don't have confidence in our own country, and we use stupid phrases like "deep state," which Ronald Reagan would have been ashamed to hear Republicans talking that way, about our own country.
	We have to be proud of our country.
	We fix our problems.
	If we don't like our military and the wasteful spending, that we do have wasteful spending with defense contractors.
	I've watched it in the Bush administration.
	We need to crack down on that.
	We need to make our country more efficient.
	But we do not attack our own intelligence apparatus, our own military, and run around using stupid phrases like "deep state." We believe in America, and we are going to defend this country.
	Let me ask you this.
	Let me ask you this.
	There was a New York Times article last week saying the deep state's kind of awesome.
	So they went from denying it exists to saying permanent Washington that ignores voters is a good thing and a check and balance, kind of a fourth estate.
	So are you saying the deep state doesn't exist?
	Or is it a good thing when it tried to put George Papadopoulos in prison for no reason?
	It's a stupid phrase.
	Speaking of George, George wants to add something desperate here.
	I can see it.
	No, no.
	It goes to the economy and foreign policy and the mistakes of the Biden administration.
	The point of this debate is Trump being president in 2024.
	So when you look at the war in Ukraine and Russia, what have sanctions actually done?
	The way they've been just thrown out, the way the Biden administration recklessly imposed sanctions, trying to Isolate Russia from the global community, one of the largest economies in the entire world, trying to ban them from the SWIFT measures, all of this stuff.
	What has it really done?
	It's done two things.
	It's brought China and Russia closer, which this is something that Nixon feared and something that we feared throughout the entire Cold War.
	And secondly, it's actually ushered in this drive to destroy the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency of the world and usher in the BRICS era.
	So when we talk about China, this isn't Russia.
	This isn't Iran.
	This is a country which is attempting to rewrite not only the rules of global commerce, but global security.
	They have to be confronted.
	Trump had the ingredients for how to confront them, using the economic levers, the sanctions, the punitive measures that he used.
	And that all, of course, went...
	The wrong way under Biden from this way he recklessly ushered in sanctions against Russia, the effect of that, and how China is dealing with Biden and all the corruption scandal that is involving that regarding Penn, the Penn situation, the classified files.
	This is why the American people need Trump back.
	Trump knew how to deal with these countries.
	Trump knew how to deal with business, foreign policy, and economics at home.
	He was successful.
	We need that type of leadership back because the world- That's a great point.
	Why did nobody mess with us for four years?
	Exactly.
	Because they feared a real leader.
	It didn't mean he was perfect, but he was the leader like they fear Putin or Xi Jinping.
	That's exactly right.
	And they're totalitarian.
	I'm not defending them.
	My point is we had an elected leader that was out for our own good.
	Doesn't mean he didn't make mistakes, but he was the leader.
	But George, Putin was asked in September of last year about his view of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
	He's reminded...
	Listeners that it was Trump who had imposed a record amount of sanctions on Russia while he was in office.
	So are sanctions all of a sudden reckless when Joe Biden imposes them on Russia, but wise policy when Trump imposes them on Russia?
	I mean, don't you see a little bit of a disconnect there?
	And I just want to make a larger point on that.
	Unlike Richard, I'm not going to take offense on behalf of permanent bureaucracy intelligence operatives because I, you know, hurt their feelings by calling them to de-state.
	But whatever you want to call them, my point...
	Overall, is that Trump is actually nowhere near as incompatible with the interests of the deep state as some of his supporters want to make him out to be.
	I mean, is Mike Pompeo an enemy of the deep state, the guy who was running U.S. foreign policy in Trump's administration, and was also the CIA director and pushed for the prosecution of the massage?
	Mike, I'm glad you raised that, Mike.
	Just give me a second to back you up.
	Here's the deal.
	Here's what I ask you, Alex.
	You were talking about Kushner earlier.
	Is Jared Kushner really separable from Trump?
	Aren't they a joint package?
	I mean, Kushner wasn't just some freelancing son-in-law in the Trump administration.
	He was a member of the White House staff.
	Pompeo was Secretary of State, the CIA director.
	So he's going to be brought back into positions of power in the second Trump administration.
	Kushner's going to be, what, sidelined?
	Maybe he'll go live in the United Barrier of Emirates or something?
	I mean, what's his role going to be?
	Mike, I'm going to say it again.
	I've seen your stuff before, but I really want to interview you.
	I agree with you.
	And that's the paradox.
	The deep state doesn't want Trump.
	They're attacking him.
	They're trying to take our right to vote for him.
	That makes me back him.
	But I'm on air today.
	I said, if he puts Jared Kushner...
	I said this today, like four hours ago in the last hour of my show.
	I'm on the air from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day central.
	I said, if he puts Jared Kushner in any lobbyist position or any power position, I'm done with Trump no matter how good he is countering the deep state.
	So I think you're making extremely...
	And who was running Middle East policy in the Trump administration, Alex?
	Who was given that Israel-Palestine portfolio?
	It was Jared Kushner.
	We heard about the Abraham Accords earlier.
	The Biden administration has basically continued that paradigm.
	In fact, they've tried to add to it by offering Saudi Arabia security guarantees, just like were offered to the UAE, Morocco, etc., and the Trump administration.
	And it's caused this entire conflagration, or at least contributed to it, with Israel and Gaza now because it's shut the Palestinians out of any negotiating process.
	And then you have crazed people like these Hamas fighters attacking Israel.
	I think what you're saying is real.
	Let me just say this.
	I'd never go on a show and hear a "liberal" actually quote facts.
	So I respect facts when I hear them, and what you're saying is true.
	I'm insulting that you probably are liberal.
	At some point he's going to be far right, Alex.
	Most of the time I'm called far right.
	Well, I don't like Jared Kushner, and Trump says he's sidelined, Kushner says he is, and to me that's a deal breaker because I'm not in a Trump cult.
	My point is...
	Trump is better than Biden and what they're offering because Trump at least thinks he's right.
	He's got problems.
	He pushed the shot, which has been a fraud.
	He keeps doing it.
	I'm a major critic every day.
	I'm not in a cult.
	I'm not anti-Israel.
	I don't think Israel should carpet bomb Rafa where they push 2 million people because I don't support genocide.
	I also don't support January 7 and an attack on Israel.
	I just have a moral compass.
	I'm not perfect.
	People demonize me for a lot of stuff, out of context.
	But I'm just trying to navigate this, and I'm going to ask all of you.
	Okay, so Joe Biden's better than Trump.
	Let me ask, I'll shut up now.
	Let's war game an 80-something-year-old Joe Biden, can't find his ass with both hands.
	Let's just say Trump, the Republican individual here.
	Says Trump should just stand down and have a new Republican nominee.
	You think the deep state's going to stop prosecuting him if he stood down?
	No, they want blood.
	They'll go even harder.
	Where is the offer of that?
	Maybe that's a good idea.
	Who is the candidate?
	But what happens if we put Joe Biden in?
	And you have these bureaucracies that control him who won't get the blame.
	They feel no pressure or heat for their policies because they're acting through a factotum, through a legate, through a puppet.
	This is dangerous.
	This has nuclear war written all over it.
	So explain to me, because let me tell you, I'm not sitting here sucking Trump's dick, okay?
	I've been persecuted like hell for supporting him.
	He pisses me off.
	I'm not on his Trump train.
	But I also see stuff way worse than him.
	So explain to me.
	How we get rid of Trump and how we fix the country.
	Please, I'm listening.
	But hold on a second, George first.
	Going to your point just very quickly about the sanctions, the difference between sanctions.
	Trump's sanctions against Russia were targeted.
	These were not blanket sanctions like the Biden administration with European allies imposed on Russia, which really resulted in many African countries too, BRICS, the Global South, as they call it, saying, whoa.
	But what would you do in response to the invasion of Ukraine?
	Well, you have to prevent it.
	Well, now we're going to peace through strength.
	We're going to Reagan.
	Bush should have prevented 9 /11.
	I mean, it was all his fault.
	And if Clinton No, let's put Biden in for four more years.
	I'm asking you all, please, what does Biden do in four more years?
	Fine.
	Hypothetically, I think most most people support Trump.
	Hypothetically, I'm not actually saying this war game.
	Trump has a heart attack next week and dies.
	What does Joe Biden do?
	Well, I think most people would, I hope, probably agree that Biden is actually not the person who's actually in charge.
	But I want to come back to one thing a little bit earlier.
	Then I want to get to Alex's other legit criticism against Trump.
	You fault Trump for surrounding China, creating an adversarial situation.
	I presume then that you also fault NATO for presumably surrounding Russia and creating an adversarial situation there.
	Do both of you agree with that or disagree with that?
	Of course, I do.
	I mean, I was going to ask George, one way you could have maybe prevented...
	The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is not repeatedly expand NATO, which Trump supporters seem to think that he agrees with them on, even though he presided over two rounds of NATO expansion.
	He elevated Ukraine into a subsidiary status within NATO in 2020, called enhanced partnership status, which enraged Putin.
	He held massive military drills in Ukraine in the Black Sea.
	That the Russians always objected to as evidenced by that foreign ministry statement just as he was leaving office.
	He went further than Obama in antagonizing Russia by sending lethal arms to Ukraine.
	In fact, when the Russian invasion started in 2022, Trump went around bragging how effective the javelin missiles that he sent to Ukraine were at killing Russian soldiers.
	So I agree.
	I mean, it might have been preferable if that invasion had been forestalled.
	is the one who was taking that course.
	It doesn't align with the record.
	He just made a great point.
	He was acting through strength so they didn't invade.
	That's Trump's mindset.
	And I'm not defending what he did, but that's how he, he literally believes what he's doing.
	I'll take a legitimate guy that's wronged some over a Machiavellian liar.
	But I was just going to say, to respond to Alex, I mean, I stipulated up front in this discussion that nothing I say here should be construed as support in any way of Joe Biden.
	I mean, I think we could have a whole separate debate, if you want, or discussion on the flaws of Biden.
	I'm happy to take the same position on him as I do on Trump.
	Let's not have a discussion of that.
	Let me ask you all, I respect your views.
	We've got a lot of smart people here.
	What do we do about Biden?
	Let's say Trump flies off to Mars tomorrow.
	What do we do with Biden?
	I mean, come on, guys.
	If Trump flies off to Mars tomorrow...
	Biden will not be re-elected.
	I think it's highly likely that any other Republican nominee will win in November.
	They will go back.
	I mean, I would raise the argument or the hypothesis that— Well, I agree with that.
	So who do we put forward?
	Who do we put forward?
	Let me ask.
	Who do we put forward?
	Well, I mean, Alex, I'm not in charge of putting forward the Democratic presidential nominee.
	It would be kind of amusing if I were.
	Maybe I could think it through.
	Yeah, but people listen to us.
	I'm saying if Trump goes away, hypothetically, who is good?
	Well, I mean, I guess I'll argue that in a way it doesn't matter.
	I counterintuitively agree with Putin on one point.
	No, no.
	He said, hold on, let me answer.
	Let me answer.
	Let me answer.
	You definitely listen to me.
	You got a bunch of popular talk show here, sir.
	People listen.
	Who would we replace Trump with?
	I'm seriously asking.
	I'm actually most curious to hear who Richard would say.
	I think you could draw a name out of a hat of the Republican caucus in the United States House of Representatives, and I hope you don't end it with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	I mean, there are a couple of them that are pretty wacky, but most of them could run that race and do...
	Quite well against Joe Biden.
	Look at the polling numbers.
	You have a lot of very unhappy voters with both choices.
	Those polls are very consistent.
	That a large number of Americans don't want to vote for Trump or Biden.
	And they feel that these primaries...
	Trump is very polarizing, so is Biden, so who would it be?
	As I say, if we could have open primaries, the point is that what happens in both political parties is the incumbent president...
	On the one hand, or someone who's formerly been president, has a lock on the nomination and on the fundraising, and there's no opportunity to challenge in these primaries.
	And that's the way it is.
	It goes back to money and politics, the enormous amount of money that is given to support campaigns.
	But I think that ship has already sailed, so I don't think that's going to happen.
	So what do you think is going to happen?
	I'm asking a real question, sir.
	George has his hand up.
	You're a smart guy.
	Go for it, George.
	Just respond, Alex.
	Look, over 75 million Americans voted for President Trump.
	That's not simply a base, that's half of the electorates.
	And they voted for President Trump, not because he's a George W. Bush.
	He's not a GOP member.
	He's not a Reagan, even though he takes some of the principles of Reagan.
	He's an America first ideologue.
	They preferred him to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and those voters preferred him to Hillary Clinton.
	There are a lot of people who didn't vote.
	Forget even the Democrats.
	We're talking about the primary now.
	He wiped the floor clean with his primary opponents.
	It was a real bloodbath.
	George is canceled.
	It was a political bloodbath.
	It was a political bloodbath.
	Is because the will of the people is paramount.
	This is the type of candidate they want moving forward.
	And President Trump is not the beginning and end.
	Once his term is over, his second term, once he's reelected, hopefully, you're going to have to look at various different candidates who just espouse that ideology and those convictions, and they will be successful.
	I believe whether they're, you know, a Ben Carson, whether it could be a potential Marjorie Taylor.
	It could be many, as long as they stick to the script of success and results that the American people want.
	Let me just say this.
	Alex, let me make a point really quickly.
	I actually was going to say that I counter-intuitively agree with something Vladimir Putin said, which he said that it doesn't even particularly matter who wins between Trump and Biden because there'll be no difference in terms of the underlying foreign policy disposition of the U.S. state.
	And I think the record bears that out on the critical issues.
	That the president has the most jurisdiction over, which is in the foreign affairs arena, because the Constitution vests him with extraordinary unilateral power in that area, whether it's China, Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, military spending, foreign arms sales, etc.
	Trump signed the...
	Humongous Saudi arms deal, which then Kushner cashed out on when he left.
	He got, you know, millions of dollars from the Saudi sovereign wealth from.
	Exactly.
	So I think Putin has a point that it doesn't particularly matter.
	And what partisans on both sides try to do is hype up the supposed differences between the two candidates so people get really emotionally invested and they take on this, like, catastrophization about what will happen if the other guy gets in, because that then inflames their partisans.
	Well, Mike, Tracy, if I can just say one thing, and I'm leaving here in a few minutes.
	You guys will get your time back.
	I agree with you.
	So why does the deep state hate Trump so much if he's so close to them?
	Which he is on many issues.
	Why do they hate him so much?
	I gotta do one thing.
	I gotta do two things, actually.
	First of all, catastrophization.
	Some people would say, well, yes, we lived through four years of the catastrophe of Trump, peace, prosperity, right up until he was voted out of office.
	And then it became...
	Some people say the fear of catastrophization is one thing.
	The realization of it in real time is something else.
	You're right.
	Things got a lot better under Trump.
	You can't lie.
	But I want to do one thing, and I need to pick your brain on this, Alex, because this is going to be my criticism, my question to you.
	But first, I'm going to read the next ad because it leads right into it.
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	Everybody should be part of the wellness company.
	If you don't do that, you are completely insane.
	And this is going to be my question for you, Alex and George.
	Everybody knows what the public sentiment is of the jab now.
	I think the booster uptake is up to or down to 3-5%.
	I don't want to misquote it, but it's single digits.
	Why in the name of all things that are holy does Trump continue to take pride, boast about the success of something that, by all accounts, everybody deems to be a failure at best and maybe something much worse?
	Why and what should he do about it?
	It's very paradoxical, and I'm very honest with my audience.
	And I have nightmares about this.
	I struggle with this because I am a moral person.
	By that, I'm not perfect, but I try to make the best decisions that I think are right.
	And Trump, I know what Trump did.
	He pushed hydroxychloroquine.
	He pushed all the other things that were happening.
	He said he passed a law, right to try.
	He passed a law for telemedicine.
	He just said, let me...
	Let people make their own decisions.
	So Trump, when it comes to medicine, just says, let it all go.
	So they came to him and said, because he believes in the military, he believes in medical systems, they came to him and they said, sir, we have the cure, we have the answer.
	He got behind it.
	He won't admit he's wrong later.
	I understand why he did it.
	If he admits he's wrong now, he thinks he'll be attacked.
	I understand that.
	So that's where we are.
	But yeah, this is Trump's biggest faux pas.
	His biggest failure was going along with this.
	You look at DeSantis' surgeon general in Florida, saying don't take the shot, banning it for children.
	Beautiful what he's doing.
	But I understand the thought process of Trump.
	But again, I don't see Trump as God.
	He's a flawed man like any of us are.
	The deep state doesn't want him elected because he tries to actually be in charge.
	So he's a wrecking ball to them.
	That's why I support him.
	But I piss my listeners off to support Trump.
	By criticizing him daily, because just because we're going to show Biden the deep state doesn't mean we just take hook, line and sinker, whatever Trump says.
	I think regarding the vaccine, I think Trump was very cognizant that you had to make the vaccine available for all, but mandated for none.
	And that is, I think, a key difference between what many on the left were trying to impose.
	Trump overreach, his government overreach.
	That was the first thing.
	Secondly, he did shut down travel from China.
	Well, that's right.
	Trump didn't try forced injections, George.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	He didn't try to push forced injections.
	He didn't try to kick the military out.
	You're right.
	He's way better than the Democrats, which is, again, why I'm supporting him.
	Let me push back just a little bit on that item number one.
	I can push my way into George's screen when he's on.
	It was supposed to be available for all, mandated for none.
	And my understanding of Operation Warp Speed was that it was only intended to be Did the OWS not get bastardized or warped, and does Trump not need to take some responsibility for that?
	Look, I certainly think the people that were giving him advice, he's not a general practitioner, obviously.
	He's a businessman.
	So the people that he was taking advice from, like Fauci, like some of these other people, they were not giving him the advice he needed, but he did attempt to use whatever knowledge, whatever information he did get to mitigate the risk and the disaster of the vaccine rollout and give it to the people that were vulnerable, the people that were not negatively affected, the way that we are now seeing with these various health issues that have emerged years later on.
	So I think...
	He did the best he possibly could with a bad deck that he was presented with.
	And that's really where I stand on COVID.
	Well, that's right.
	It's easy to look back and play Monday morning quarterback.
	What are we going to do to prevent the next pandemic?
	And we could very well have biological warfare conducted against this country by a foreign adversary.
	What are we doing to prevent it?
	How much are we investing in?
	Medical research to be able to fight pandemics and how much are we trying to figure out what's going on in other countries?
	With respect to potential biological warfare.
	Or if I may interject, potential gain-of-function research that is being funded by members of, discreetly by members of the American government.
	Let me ask you one question first.
	Yeah, but we should not have been doing that.
	But we don't need to use phrases like deep state.
	We need to defend our country.
	We need to figure out what we should be doing in terms of medical research, what we should not be.
	But the deep state released the virus and released it.
	Oh my God, it's like you pull a string, you just say...
	I gotta ask you a question.
	What if defending your country actually means acknowledging, calling out, and potentially disbanding?
	If you don't like deep state, how about administrative state?
	How about unelected officials who are actually the ones pulling the strings and making orders?
	We need to reform our government.
	I have been supporting campaign finance reform for years, cutting back on wasteful spending in the Defense Department and the way the military contractors buy off members of Congress and also try to influence the executive branch.
	We need to reform our government and make it more efficient.
	And we need to support our troops, but we don't need the massive defense budget we have.
	But we do not need to attack our own country.
	So you're against vaccine mandates on the troops.
	You're against that, right?
	Actually, this was my next question for you, Richard, and I don't mean to put you on the spot.
	Was the vaccine or the jab, this will show my bias, but I don't call it a vaccine.
	Was the jab a success to you?
	I think the vaccine works.
	I think it works.
	Now, whether you should require it, whether you need to require it of your troops, that's a decision that needs to be made by the commander-in-chief.
	I think the vaccine works.
	I am certainly getting myself vaccinated.
	So like Biden said, take the vaccine, you can't get COVID.
	That's all an admitted fraud, dude.
	You're living in the past.
	Now that's stupid.
	I mean, we know it works.
	So then you do give Trump credit for having developed a highly successful, highly effective vaccine in more speed time.
	Look, there are some things they did right.
	And I'm not saying the vaccine necessarily is going to protect you always.
	We're better off with it than without it.
	We shouldn't be requiring people to have the vaccine.
	This is a personal decision.
	But it's not a vaccine.
	It's a gene therapy.
	Whatever.
	On the issue of COVID.
	Whatever.
	Don't look into that.
	Whatever.
	What a debate.
	Can't you challenge me on facts?
	We got to hear Michael here.
	Show me your medical degree.
	No, but I want to talk to him.
	He saw Tyrannosaurus Rex.
	He saw Diplodocus.
	He saw Triceratops.
	What was it like 50 million years ago?
	You guys were still in charge.
	We bought WMDs in Iraq and 9 /11 and all the lies.
	There's only three news channels.
	I wish I could be following the chat right now.
	Michael Tracy is the most intelligent liberal you've ever seen.
	He's going to say something smart here.
	On the issue of COVID, Trump continues to maintain to this day that the lockdown policies, which he championed in 2020, are responsible for saving millions of lives.
	So if your signature issue, which mine isn't necessarily, but let's say your signature issue is continuing to have grievances with how lockdown policy was handled, then to support Trump is completely bizarre.
	He's...
	Should be public enemy number one for you, should we?
	I think that's a mischaracterization.
	The governors have the ultimate authority.
	Remember when he hectored Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, when he wanted to roll back some of the lockdown measures in the spring of 2020?
	And Trump intervened and said, you better not do that or you're going to lose federal support.
	I think that's a mischaracterization of Trump's position on it.
	At first, everyone was pro-lockdowns.
	Then they started looking at Sweden.
	Absolutely.
	And then he, like DeSantis, eventually changed their tune.
	And rightly so.
	Right.
	But I'm saying, if you are nursing a judge about how lockdowns are handled, he's the one who has the most power to handle that whole situation.
	My god.
	He's ardently pro-lockdown.
	Was he not?
	For a bit.
	For a bit.
	I think the I disagree with that being his current position.
	I think everybody recognizes What is his current position?
	I mean, well, the only part of his current position is.
	The current position that we do now Viva, can I say one thing?
	Absolutely.
	I'm going to leave here in a few minutes.
	They said Selah can't fish.
	We're dead for 40 million years.
	They caught a couple of them the last 50 years.
	I want to commend Zero Hedge for fighting this Republican because he's a living...
	Coelacanth.
	And it is amazing.
	I'm actually blown away.
	I want to invite him on my show to be talking to a living Neanderthal right now.
	The world moved on, brother.
	Everybody's awake.
	Your old games are over.
	We know the deep state's at war with America.
	Humanity's rising.
	Team HumanityInfoAwards.com.
	Let us know what happened at Sandy Hook.
	As a fisherman, Alex.
	Oh, God.
	A whole deep state operation with PR firms lying about what I said and rigged cases just against Trump.
	Has it shut me down?
	No.
	All that is more New World Order garbage.
	That's all you got.
	So I'm glad dinosaurs like you, when I reach 50 million people a day, conservatively.
	Continue to tell me that I'm a loser and I failed.
	You failed.
	Everybody hates George W. Bush.
	Everybody hates Dick Cheney.
	Everybody hates Lynn Cheney.
	Everybody hates the New World Order.
	And you'll never stop us.
	Infowars.com.
	Alex, as a fisherman, I know what fish you're talking about.
	And I will admit, I didn't think that we would be hearing some statements of opinion tonight that we've heard.
	That the vaccine was wildly successful and that you're going to go back and get more?
	I think it works, but I don't think people should be required to have the vaccine.
	I think the lockdowns didn't work.
	But that's what science shows.
	We need to respect science here.
	But they fired hundreds of thousands of nurses, and now they say it wasn't mandated.
	And Rachel Maddow said, take it and you're protected.
	Versus 95, then it's 80, then it's 70, then it's 60, then it's 40. Now it erases your immune system.
	I've got a whole stack of mainstream news.
	Cancer is...
	You know what?
	I agree with you.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I'm against Trump.
	I'm no longer supporting him.
	I don't support Biden either.
	I'm telling you, we are being murdered by depopulation, by the New World Order.
	I cannot sit here and watch humanity murdered by the globalists anymore.
	So I'm not leaving because I'm scared to debate.
	I got a call because Roger Stone's wife was sick.
	We love Roger Stone.
	I came in here.
	I love Zero Hedge.
	I love everybody.
	I will debate everybody anytime on my show.
	But I'm just telling you, the new world order, all we've heard tonight is the deep state isn't real.
	There's no deep state.
	The deep state is censoring you.
	It's spying on you.
	It's watching you.
	It's attacking you.
	It's been caught.
	It's cutting off your resources.
	It's got an ESG.
	It's got a central bank digital currency.
	It's Bill Gates.
	It's Klaus Schwab.
	You will eat the bugs.
	And we're rallying, and humanity is going to defeat it.
	And I am just so pleased to be part of this debate tonight.
	Alex, I'm going to ask Richard a question after you take off, but whenever you need to go, don't worry about it.
	I got five more minutes.
	Okay, good.
	I want to cut in everybody's time here to tell us how the deep state doesn't exist.
	Well, I want to ask Richard this question.
	I want to ask Richard this question.
	When you have members of the FBI talking about an insurance policy in the event that Trump gets elected, when you have the Time article magazine talking about how people work in a cabal, working to change laws, control the flow of information, when you have James Baker, and I'm maybe totally partisan here, these are facts, working in Twitter to suppress information, intelligence lying about the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop, lying about the authenticity of Hillary, not Hillary, This is Ashley Biden's diary.
	If you don't want to call it the deep state, what the hell do you call it?
	We've had intelligence failures.
	We've also had misconduct in our FBI.
	These aren't failures.
	This is manipulation.
	Can I answer the question?
	This goes back to the conduct of the CIA that led to the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s.
	And we know there has been misconduct in the CIA.
	And we need to hold them accountable.
	Absolutely.
	Do you support new Church Committee hearings?
	But we need to investigate the way intelligence is handled in this country, including classified information.
	We have a better, our public library can keep track of books that are checked out more efficiently than the National Archives can keep track of checked out classified documents.
	I don't care if they're in Joe Biden's garage at the Penn Biden Center or down at Mar-a-Lago.
	We should figure that out.
	But Joe Biden was in charge and Trump was, even though he was vice president.
	We have a rogue deep state at war with the people, sold us out to China.
	It's time to end the deep state.
	I think all of you can agree.
	A bunch of Chinese are going to love this circus.
	A bunch of people worried about the deep state.
	I mean, China and Russia are just going to love it.
	I mean, we as Americans need to learn to get along, too.
	Oh, God, let the globalists rape you and ship it fentanyl.
	Let me ask Michael Tracey.
	Or the Russians are going to get you.
	Alex, I'm going to put your question to Michael Tracey in a second, and maybe to Richard as well.
	Once the system works, Where all that they have to do is find a man, show you the crime, go after them state level where you can't get pardoned even if you get elected, try to lock them up, try to indict them.
	Once it works on one candidate, why would it not be used on every single candidate who does not play ball with rogue DAs, corrupt prosecutors, corrupt judges, and if you don't want to call it a deep state, call it an administrative state, call it infiltration.
	If it works once, why wouldn't they do it each and every single time with anybody who won't play ball?
	I think they probably will.
	I think it's a threshold-crossing event that Trump has been indicted all these times, especially under such dubious auspices, statutorily, like the Espionage Act, as I mentioned earlier, this ancient civil rights statute.
	Even in New York, the Alvin Bragg argument is that Trump defrauded himself by entering into his corporate ledgers and misrepresentation of the payment he gave them.
	And they turned it into a 30-whatever charge indictment so that others can say, well, now he's been indicted 91 times.
	One ledger.
	One entry, one basic fact.
	Exactly, and I've covered that pretty comprehensively.
	But, again, I don't see how that leads to supporting Trump's re-election.
	No, it isn't, and you just meant, you said it, because this is the threshold.
	If you don't support him in the face of this, you let them win, and you let them defeat the man who...
	Who's them?
	I'll call it the administration, whoever's doing it.
	You let this tactic work, and you no longer have a democracy.
	You have institutions that select the winners.
	And if you don't support Trump this time around, that's what you are tacitly supporting.
	So if you don't want, like, Mike Pompeo running U.S. foreign policy again, that means that you're handing a victory to...
	I agree.
	Trump was far from perfect.
	The point is, I'm going to say this in closing, I'm leaving, and I love you all.
	Let's stay for 10 hours.
	Trump, for all his foibles and all his warts, as Lord Nelson said, has brought the enemy out of the open, and now the deep state.
	Is exposed, and now it's got to deal with the people knowing it's running things.
	So Trump has brought all this out of the open.
	He's pointed it away, and that's the most important thing.
	I've been very honored to be here.
	I'm not pushing out because I'm scared of debate.
	I love you guys.
	Infowars.com, forward slash show, band out video, Real Ox Jones, George, Mike, I'll invite the Bush creature.
	All of you, please come on my show.
	We love you.
	God bless you.
	Good luck.
	Thank you, Alex.
	And by the way, before we get into the further line of questioning, we've got another ad.
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	I had another question for George.
	Did Alex Jones really leave this time?
	No, Alex Jones, he definitely left, but I'll take over his persona for a bit.
	I'm joking I won't, but I'm going to ask you harder questions, Richard.
	In a second, George, you had something to say.
	You've been biting your tongue for a while.
	No, I would just say, yes, it's disturbing what's happening to President Trump because the Department of Justice has essentially departed from historic norms to never indict a former...
	We're sitting president, and what the perception is today is that the Department of Justice is a protection racket for the Biden family or for high-profile Democrats.
	You go around the country, you have millions of Americans on the conservative side who believe that, and that in and of itself is unsustainable.
	You have the FBI approval rating at around 20% among conservatives.
	Now that affects, of course, courts, rulings, the justice system.
	These are the deleterious long-term consequences.
	Of a two-tiered justice system.
	And I'll also say, when you do normalize the political and selective targeting of dissent, writ large in America, whether it's a president, whether it's Catholics, school teachers, where you designate them as potential terrorists.
	You've got Jim Jeffries, not Hakeem Jeffries, extreme MAGA Republicans in every second word that he says.
	White supremacy, all of this nonsense, that in and of itself...
	Is the greatest threat to the American Republic that we face, and it comes from within, not from outside.
	So I think when the Department of Justice is colluding with these activist DAs, just, you know, pin an indictment or a potential conviction on Donald Trump at a time when he's actually leading in the polls, think of the long-term picture.
	One, you set the precedent.
	Now you could do it to Democrat presidents.
	And two, think of the future of the country.
	And that's something that the short-sighted Democrats today are not thinking of.
	Richard, this is my question to you.
	I think that I would love to see what the chat says because I know I can understand and anticipate what they're saying about your positions.
	You come out and your position is Trump should not be elected.
	He's been indicted, which must make him guilty of something.
	I think that he engaged in conduct that exposed him to the criminal indictments.
	We will determine whether he's guilty when the trials take place.
	I hear that, and I say, well, you know, she shouldn't have been dressed like that.
	Now, the flip side is, you shouldn't have been out at 3 in the morning in a bad part of town versus you shouldn't have been dressed like that at a bar.
	To the argument that there was literally nothing he could do or could not do that would not have resulted in this, how do you respond to that?
	Let's slow down and think about what happened after the 2020 election.
	Donald Trump had every right to go to court, in state courts and in federal courts, including a Supreme Court.
	With six conservative justices, three appointed by Donald Trump.
	Not a single justice of the United States Supreme Court said that there was fraud in that election that would have changed the outcome.
	He could not persuade a single federal or state judge.
	He lost.
	Just like Al Gore lost in 2000.
	Al Gore lost by 400 votes.
	That's what happened in 2000.
	And when you lose, pursuant to our Constitution, you cede power to the next president.
	You do not continue to claim fraud.
	You do not stir up a crowd claiming the election has been stolen.
	That was a lie.
	If Donald Trump wants to acknowledge- So why wasn't Hillary charged following that rationale after 2016?
	Illegitimate president, appointed by Russia, Russian asset, why weren't any of them charged?
	She conceded that election.
	Just like Richard Nixon, who was the other president, by the way, who almost was indicted and would have been indicted as a former president if he had not been pardoned by Gerald Ford.
	But at least Richard Nixon had the decency after losing the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy by a razor-thin margin.
	And I will have to say there was a lot of fraud in that election and probably in Chicago that changed Illinois, that gave Illinois to Jack Kennedy.
	By the way, we have had elections in which there has been voter fraud.
	For a hundred years, large portions of the American population, African Americans, were denied the right to vote for a hundred years.
	And yet did we say that because of that, the president who won was not the legitimate president?
	No, not until Donald Trump insisted that he had won that election.
	There was voter fraud for a hundred years in America and yet somehow it's impossible to assert there was voter fraud in 2020 when they changed all the rules of the game.
	And the President of the United States cedes the election when they lose and simply saying there's election fraud when there's election, there's always been some election fraud.
	There was zero election fraud that could have changed the result from the Donald Trump versus Joe Biden election.
	That's just a fact.
	I think the real crime of Trump's conduct post-2020 election is not that he was overthrowing democracy or ushering in fascism, all these overblown, overwrought, you know, characterizations that were common among liberals at that time, but just that he made everyone dumber because, I mean, there were just flagrantly wrong talking points that he was relying on.
	For example, I...
	Had to look into at one point and showed to have been false.
	I'll just give you one quick example.
	Go back to, like, November or December 2020.
	Trump was constantly repeating that there were suspicious vote totals that went to Biden only in four metro areas.
	It happened to be in the critical swing states, so Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta.
	Only in those four metro areas did you see these trends where Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton or Obama by certain metrics, right?
	And it was just 100% wrong.
	I mean, you could look at metro areas throughout the entire country, whether it's in Texas or Tennessee or Florida, which were not nearly as competitive as those other states, but trended in the same direction and caused Trump the election.
	So it's just more stupidity and just flooding the zone with as much crap as you possibly can and then hoping people will just cling to your theories.
	I mean, Trump accused Ted Cruz of fraudulently winning the 2016 Iowa caucus.
	Trump claimed in 2016 that he actually won the popular vote.
	So apparently Trump thinks he won California in 2016.
	To me, it's just this nonstop deluge of sheer abject stupidity, more so than something that we should all lay our hair on fire about and run around screaming about the end of democracy.
	What's the question of facts?
	Are you committed to facts?
	I mean, for example, you can like President Obama or not like President Obama.
	But he was born in Hawaii.
	He was not born outside the United States.
	That was just stupid.
	Trump ended up retracting that.
	I was actually at the 2011 CPAC conference when Trump first started blowing the trumpet on Obama's birth certificate.
	That was getting him air on World Net Daily and other kind of right-wing online sites, and it was giving him a little bit of a profile in that 2012 Republican primary.
	And then all of a sudden, he decides a couple of years later, oh, I guess this is no longer Canadian.
	It just says, forget about it.
	And he blamed it on Hillary Clinton.
	I mean, at a certain point, look, I think some of the liberal complaints about Trump, like I said, are overwrought, excessive.
	But at a certain point, you've got to wonder, is all the drama worth it?
	I mean, there's just a never, I mean, Nikki Haley, for whatever her flaws, and there were many, she did appeal to a genuine urge in the populace by saying, Chaos follows him.
	It's just true.
	So now if he gets in office again, everybody's going to be hyper-politicized.
	The opposition to Trump is going to be hyper-inflamed, just like the, quote, resistance from 2016 onward.
	Liberals are going to be...
	Utterly brainbroken and despondent, and everyone's just going to be more and more manic and crazed when you don't really get a whole lot on the back end from that policy-wise.
	I mean, what did Trump do when the Republicans had unified control of government after 2016?
	Had the presidency, had the Senate, had the House.
	He got through corporate tax cuts, which I'm sorry, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio probably would have prioritized as well.
	So is there like enough of a return on the investment for all the chaos and drama?
	I'm not sure.
	But you could argue that the Mueller investigation tilted Congress during 2018 midterms, and I think that's written in stone.
	I think it's the way he responded.
	I mean, the Mueller investigation, he just sort of gone off and played golf and not even talked about it, and Robert Mueller would have ended up reaching the same conclusions, which is a yes, Russia interfered in the election.
	There were indictments against the Russians.
	There are several other indictments, but that Robert Mueller could not prove criminal collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
	We should have ignored it instead of talking about it all the time and complaining about it and talking about the FBI.
	What were the indictments for subsequent to the Russia investigation?
	What were the indictments?
	A bunch of Russian agents were indicted.
	Of course, they're over in Russia.
	We're never going to put them in jail, but they were indicted for engaging in the election interference.
	Well, Roger Stone, who was supposed to be here, he was indicted and was subject to a pre-dawn raid that was...
	Suspiciously coordinated with CNN so they could film it and they'd be on the scene at 5 a.m. or whatever.
	And he was not indicted for anything to do with conspiring with Russia, despite that being the entire premise of the Mueller investigation.
	So they had to follow all these disparate leads because nothing actually related to the core allegation of collusive...
	I'm just saying that...
	Just so you know, I got Michael to argue my point for me, but I'm not a moderator.
	I'm not a participant.
	I mean...
	Michael, thank you for clarifying that because that was the correct answer, Richard.
	Now, George...
	What's the correct answer?
	Well, the correct answer was one would make the argument that the only indictments they got out of that three and a half year, $30 million investigation were...
	Related to the procedure itself, obstruction, lying to the FBI, yada, yada, and had nothing to do with it.
	What it is, if Donald Trump had just simply not commented, that was our rule in the Bush White House, you do not comment on a pending investigation, and there were investigations of Scooter Libby got indicted and so forth, no comment from the White House.
	That's the way you handle it, and if that's what Donald Trump had done, he wouldn't have gotten any grief over that, and he wouldn't have lost those seats in the 2018 election.
	That horse crap.
	There's nothing he could have said or not said.
	If he stays silent, he's ignoring it.
	He's playing golf.
	If he says something, they pick on it.
	Sorry, George.
	Just run the country, for crying out loud.
	Don't worry about the investigation.
	Some might say you can't run the country when they're hanging every sort of Democles over your head.
	Sorry, George.
	And this is why recent history is so important right now, and that we can't forget what happened in 2016, because as I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, just three weeks ago, there was a bombshell report by liberal reporters, Matt Taibbi, Schellenberger, others, who confirmed.
	That the CIA was instructed by Obama, along with MI6, to basically sabotage and bump into Trump advisors going back into March of 2016.
	This was not a spontaneous investigation the way that the New York Times wanted you to believe through their propaganda.
	So my question is this: Given that of course Mueller, Comey, Obama knew of the operation going into March of 2016, why even have Mueller?
	And why even have Mueller put Trump on defense that resulted in this chaotic situation of a new president going through a transition where he's new to Washington.
	Being spied on, if we can say that.
	Being spied on.
	So that is at the core of what people like Alex, myself, others, call the deep state, the administrative state, whatever you want to call it.
	And it's subtle or overt.
	Interference in our elections.
	And that is a danger to our republic that must be solved because, as I also explained...
	It's not simply a president.
	They're going after dissenters writ large in America, and Congress must act.
	You mentioned the church committee.
	Potentially, we need a church committee with teeth in 2024.
	We also need the FBI to be reined in, potentially.
	You see Speaker Johnson cutting the FBI's budget, not giving them their $2 billion home that they want in Washington, D.C. These are consequences.
	The Republican Congress that was elected in 2022, Republican House, they have made a whole big show about how they were going to have a Church Committee 2.0 and they were really going to investigate the excesses of the intelligence services.
	What have they done?
	Where's the Church Committee 2.0?
	It seems like they spend most of their time fear-mongering about China, which I don't know if you agree with or not, and speeding through committees.
	I built a band TikTok because we needed to...
	As a geopolitical weapon to leverage against China.
	So all this was supposed to happen to this idea that Republicans are the South.
	Republicans are the solution to the excesses of the national security state.
	They're just not borne out by the evidence.
	They shouldn't TikTok, I mean, they have it owned by an American.
	I mean, that's what they're saying.
	I mean, if we, you know, the social media that millions of Americans use, particularly younger Americans, I mean, shouldn't we have an American control of that company?
	Well, here's another area of...
	It's a slippery slope situation, I think you would agree.
	Well, I mean, here's yet another area of continuity between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which again, Parsons don't like to acknowledge'cause they want everybody's emotional anger at maximum so they are motivated to support the Republican or Democratic Party.
	But Donald Trump is the one who issued an executive order in 2020 trying to unilaterally ban TikTok and got held up into courts.
	Then what happened is that Congress just now is basically codified in statute what Trump saw unsuccessfully in 2020, which vests the president, whether it's Biden or Trump, with an enormous amount of unilateral power to designate what they call an application, that could be a website or a mobile app like TikTok, as in the control of a foreign adversary, not just China, also Russia, North Korea, Iran.
	And the president, again, has discretion to do this almost entirely on his own accord.
	That's the slippery slope.
	Let me just say, by the way, as I feel my blood pressure rising, a special thanks to the Wellness Company for sponsoring tonight.
	The website is ivmnow.com.
	Zero Hedge told me to give a special thank you to Gold Co.
	For being the primary sponsor of this debate.
	And there's prep beef as well.
	But now I've got to ask Richard this.
	Speaking of high blood pressure and predicting the worst, how do you not support or how do you argue that Trump should not be the next president seeing what many would feel and argue rightly so as an absolute invasion of the country?
	We haven't talked about the border yet.
	How do you support anybody else?
	Or how do you not support Trump given what is nothing shy of an invasion of the country?
	Well, I don't think that he was very effective either.
	We need to deal with, our immigration system needs to be orderly, and we need to make sure that people go through the process to enter our country.
	What we do not do is make racist comments.
	We do not say that people come from asshole countries.
	We do not say that people who come from Sweden or Norway are somehow superior to people who come from Latin America or are black.
	We are a country of immigrants, going back to the Mayflower.
	If you don't like immigrants, then perhaps you're a Native American.
	That's it.
	The rest of us are all immigrants.
	So the bottom line is, let's speak with respect about immigrants.
	Let's not demean immigrants.
	Let's not talk about asshole countries or some massive threat to Western civilization as if we're somehow superior to other parts of the world.
	Well, many people come from Asia to the United States.
	This is a country of immigrants, and we should be proud of that.
	But it should be an orderly system at the border.
	It has been chaos at the border under several administrations.
	President Bush tried to get an immigration plan through Congress, a bipartisan immigration plan.
	The fact of the matter is that the far right of the republic The Republican Party won't go along with an immigration bill, and the far left of the Democratic Party will not.
	Hold on.
	I'll be morally remiss if I don't push back on virtually everything you just said.
	I think the shithole country remark has been unsubstantiated, or at least was sources.
	I think many people would say Trump has never denigrated immigrants writ large, that it was talking about illegal immigrants, and that he was talking about the illegal immigrants coming over that...
	As a matter of fact, undeniable, there are a great many criminals coming over the border, a great many people on the terrorist watch list that have been caught.
	And if there's been some that have been caught, there have been many that haven't.
	So I think many people would take issue with the bulk of your statement there.
	And when you said Bush tried to make an orderly immigration policy, you meant Bush and not Biden right now, right?
	President Bush did try.
	We almost had a bill, almost through Congress.
	There were several attempts to get a bill through.
	The fact of the matter is, the far right of the Republican Party will not give in on some issues, and the far left of the Democratic Party will not give in on others.
	And we haven't been able to get an immigration bill through Congress for decades.
	And this is chaotic, what's going on at the border.
	And we need to fix it.
	Congress needs to fix it.
	But the bottom line is that the racist rhetoric needs to stop.
	Whoever's engaged in that, whoever says that, gee, we're somehow threatened because people of color are coming into this country, we should push back on that.
	All of us have to push back on that, including Donald Trump.
	And I hope when he's the next president and he hears somebody talk that way about immigrants, as if somehow they're inferior if they don't come from a Western country.
	That he will shut that down because that is un-American and it's racist.
	I think George has to say something to this.
	No, I would really say that Donald Trump's pronouncements, his statements are completely anti-racist.
	It's all about legal immigration from every country.
	He simply doesn't want a chaotic situation at the border.
	He doesn't want gang members in this country coming from everywhere.
	He doesn't want terrorists coming from everywhere around the world.
	And he had the ability, potentially, to get that border bill.
	It never happened in Congress.
	And if we just focused on securing the border, then potentially later on we could find some sort of, not an amnesty, but some sort of path, if you will, to citizenship.
	The way the situation is right now, it's chaos.
	And with chaos, you have no sovereignty.
	Without sovereignty, you don't have a country.
	And that's exactly why we are in the situation we are today.
	So to summarize, he's not a racist person at all.
	He's about legal immigration.
	But I believe because of this chaotic Congress that we have not giving the financing to secure the border, it has created this...
	30 million to 40 million people who are living in the dark, in the shadows, in perpetuity.
	And that's something that I also believe is unsustainable.
	And Trump can't dislike immigrants all that much because he repeatedly marries them.
	Well, I was going to say, Mike, the smartest liberal Alex Jones has ever met.
	The talking point is that Trump didn't build the wall.
	He didn't secure the border.
	That's not a talking point.
	That's true.
	But as a seemingly honest liberal, I'm saying it as a joke.
	What were the illegal immigration numbers under Trump versus under Biden?
	Well, I know in 2019, the number of contacts that the Border Patrol made at the southern border of Mexico skyrocketed.
	To peaks that hadn't been achieved under Obama.
	So if you're trying to use just like the number of individuals that attempt to cross illegally the U.S.-Mexican border, it went up substantially under Trump.
	Obviously it went up even more under Biden, but it's not as though Trump being in power just automatically solved the problem.
	In fact, and Ron DeSantis pointed this out in the primary campaign, Barack Obama constructed More miles of new southern border barrier than Donald Trump.
	Now, Trump's supporters will say that he fortified existing walls and so forth, but one of the marquee pledges of the entire 2016 campaign was that Trump was going to build the wall.
	He had crowds chanting and everybody could recite it in their sleep as one of his primary promises, and he didn't do it actually in 2019, which had this record amount of influx from the southern border.
	If you look at the budget bill that was passed that year, there's more funding allocated to Israel than to the southern border.
	That's a congressional plan.
	But the Republicans control all three branches in the first two years of the Senate.
	You can't.
	You can't.
	Possibly talk about not having gotten the border wall built and not mention the multiple lawsuits that they took Trump to court to prevent it.
	He said he knows how to handle lawsuits.
	He can get the environmental permits so quickly.
	I mean, that was supposed to be one of his selling points.
	But he was not going to be bogged down by the bureaucracy.
	By the courts?
	Could he get an appropriation for the wall if he thought that was the solution for a Republican-controlled Congress in his first two years?
	There were concerns in Congress, including in the Republicans, that it wasn't worth it.
	He could have tried to convince them.
	The fact of the matter is you can get into this country many ways, not just walking across the border.
	The wall is not necessarily the answer.
	But if he thought it was he had the opportunity to convince a Republican-controlled Congress to appropriate the funds in 2017 and 2018, he couldn't get it done.
	Why couldn't he get that done if the law was such a great idea?
	Not to give you the last remarks before your closing arguments, but I think we've made a convert with Mike over there, but I'm joking.
	What's the answer to that question?
	The answer to the question is the same answer that he's been facing the last years as well, is that the uniparty element of the Republican Party was basically colluding with Democrats who undermine.
	His agenda for various reasons.
	We've seen it with Mitch McConnell.
	You can make this argument over and over and over.
	Just because you have an R next to your name or you're sent to DC with an R next to your name does not mean that you are going to implement an outsider's agenda in a first term in a chaotic situation in which he's facing myriad lawsuits, myriad lawfare.
	And that's something that I believe is the reason he wasn't able to achieve it his first term.
	But now that he has learned the lessons of that, he can his second term.
	And I think that's what this debate is all about.
	It's about the future.
	It's about learning from the mistakes, learning from his leadership and his successes, and how he can resolve those and mimic them in the second term.
	Richard, I'll give you the first kick at the closing of arguments, but I do have to ask you this question, and I ordinarily don't ask people who they're going to vote for, but hypothetically, it's Biden versus Trump.
	I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump.
	I continue to urge Donald Trump to give this a second thought.
	And let another generation of Republicans contend for the nomination.
	George P. Bush?
	There are many.
	It'll simplify my framing of the question.
	You two are going to give your closing arguments as to should Trump be the next president.
	For you, it's going to be why Trump should not be the next president at all costs.
	Try to convince the crowd.
	I doubt you will.
	But try to convince the people watching why it should not be Trump.
	Why it should not be Donald Trump?
	Well, if we care about fixing our country, we need a president who can work with Congress to pass the legislation that we need passed to fix our country.
	We need to cut taxes.
	We need to cut the size of government, and that includes cutting wasteful spending in the military.
	That includes wasteful spending on some domestic programs.
	But you need a president who can work with Congress and get that done.
	There's only so much a president can do on his own.
	We need a president who can work with a Congress of his own party.
	And I can assure you that there is one man who will elect more Democrats to the U.S. Senate and to the U.S. Congress than anyone else in the White House, and that's going to be Donald Trump.
	And that's what we're going to live with.
	And it's what happened in 2018, and we're going to see that again.
	The American people...
	are fed up with Donald Trump.
	Now, that doesn't mean that Joe Biden is the best answer.
	And I can assure you that if you're a Republican and Joe Biden is re-elected, that the Republican Party will probably enjoy the usual gains of the party out of power in both houses.
	I don't think that Joe Biden has long coattails in the elections to Congress.
	The Democrats are not going to get their agenda through.
	That we know.
	But Donald Trump's not going to get his agenda through because he doesn't know how to work with Congress.
	And if you go around saying that members of the Republican caucus are the deep state, that Mitch McConnell, who got three Supreme Court justices through, four Donald Trump, three Supreme Court justices, and you start attacking him as a member of the deep state, forget it.
	It's just going to be four years of chaos under Donald Trump.
	And that's what we're going to get.
	Michael, may I ask you, if it's between Biden and Trump, what's your decision?
	I usually write in Fred Flintstone.
	I mean, seriously, I don't actually have...
	It's like, I ordinarily never ask this question.
	It just seems precious.
	Like, I also don't ask if people are jabbed.
	It's ordinarily none of my business, but under the context.
	Okay, interesting.
	And now, what's your argument?
	That it should not be Trump, or...
	Well, my argument is that the best window into what Trump is likely to do in his second term is what he did in his first term.
	When he first wielded the power that he sought.
	So you don't think four years of the experience that he's had since, it would change the way he would do things?
	Well, that's a speculative argument.
	I mean, George seemed to concede that there were mistakes made, or that to some degree anyway, Trump's first term was a failure that needs to be built upon.
	It's a strange argument for re-election.
	I screwed up the first time, give me a second chance.
	No, let's look at, I mean, I insist that people look at the record of what Trump actually did, what the Trump administration actually did when he was in power.
	It is not consistent with a lot of these highfalutin platitudes around him being this warrior against the deep state.
	You talk about George W. Bush, Trump appointed Elliott Abrams to run Venezuela policy and tried to do this regime change op.
	That was run out of the State Department, and by the way, Marco Rubio was also the point person on that in the Senate.
	I mean, I thought we're against regime change now.
	I mean, can you be against the deep state, but also pro-regime change in Venezuela?
	Seems strange.
	Economic warfare, drone assassins.
	I mean, Trump is anti-war, we're told, or he's...
	Against endless wars, so he lovingly and gently drone assassinates the top general of Iran.
	I don't see how that really adds up.
	Some might argue that that's better than drone bombing an American citizen extrajudicially.
	At least it's illegal.
	Which Obama did.
	That's my point.
	One of the first things that Trump did when he got into office was he drone assassinated the al-Awlaki kid's sister, or relative anyway.
	What I'm saying is there's continuity there.
	Trump's whole argument for his candidacy this time around...
	It's just an invasion.
	We have four years of data we can look at.
	But he says, don't look at any of that.
	Look at what you can speculate that I'll do when I'm in office because I've learned all my lessons.
	Whenever he's asked about Ukraine or Israel or China, he'll say, nothing bad would have happened if I was still president.
	Because you know what that enables him to do?
	Evade being pinpointed on any actual policy commitments.
	I actually think that Trump ought to be subject to more adversarial interviews.
	Ron DeSantis correctly pointed out in the primaries that conservative media have become the Praetorian guard of Trump.
	So he never gets a challenging question.
	He's never held to account on his actual record.
	Instead, he gets to just rant against the deep state and the liberals who, yes, are hysterical about him, but that's always been the case and always will be.
	If we want to drill down on the record, it's not the most pretty picture.
	So who am I going to vote for?
	Well, again, I thank God.
	And our creator for the U.S. Constitution, which does not bind me to vote if I don't want to.
	And I can write in a candidate who more reflects my values or not vote at all.
	I actually think there's some virtue in abstention.
	Because if you're just going to say, like Alex Jones did, well, Trump has all these faults.
	I mean, it's weird.
	Alex Jones barely mentioned anything positive that Trump actually did in office.
	He mentioned all these foibles and flaws that we're supposed to overlook.
	But not a whole lot that was actually good, other than that he needs to get back into power, and we can't give in to the deep state.
	Well, I mean, that's almost like the enemy of the enemy is my friend logic, where, I mean, let's analyze on its own terms what Trump actually did in office and what he's therefore likely to do again, because I think, and I'll end with this, Lindsey Graham being the first person to come out and say that Trump should run again in 2024 is a hugely important omen, because if you remember...
	Graham and Trump were at loggerheads in 2016.
	Trump read out his phone number on stage or something.
	They were in a feud.
	They were seen as ideological nemeses.
	Now, you say Lindsey Graham has changed.
	No, he's not.
	He's just as fulsomely in favor of funding Ukraine in perpetuity as he has been before.
	And he says that Trump will actually do that.
	I mean, so...
	I think that's what needs to be looked at instead of erecting this caricature of Trump, whether you're pro or anti, so you can deal with this fantasy version of him.
	No, I think actually the best insight into what he's likely to do with power is what he did the first time.
	And it was a giveaway to the deep state.
	He's not a foe of the deep state.
	He's actually very much compatible with it, but that's not really convenient for anybody's narrative.
	I'll just say one thing before I give it to you, George, that there's an expression in French, les absents ont toujours tort.
	Those who aren't there are always wrong.
	So at the risk of...
	I'll defend Alex just a bit.
	And I don't think what he was arguing was that all of these problems yet vote for him again.
	It's more like constructive criticism that, look, you want to say that the past is prologue to the future.
	You had four years of peace and prosperity.
	Some other scandals.
	But yet, if you want to summarize it, it was more peace and prosperity than what we have now.
	And I don't think Alex is saying it's all crap, but he's human.
	It's these are constructive points where I think we can make him better.
	You said peace and prosperity.
	Trump greatly escalated drone strikes.
	Well beyond Obama in Somalia, Yemen.
	Trump vetoed a bill that would have stopped U.S. support for the Saudi bombardment of Yemen, regime change attempts in Venezuela.
	He actually escalated in Afghanistan.
	I mean, people don't know this, but look at the data.
	There were more airstrikes in the year 2018 in Afghanistan under Trump's command than there had been for like seven or eight years prior to that.
	So you say peace and prosperity, that's just a convenient canard because Trump, like most successful politicians, knows the American public wants to hear that he has this glorious record of peace and prosperity.
	And most Americans are huge hardcore Hudson Institute interventionists, so Trump will cater to them when he's campaigning.
	But again, it just does not comport with the actual record.
	Let me ask a question.
	What was the...
	The purpose of a $110 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
	$110 billion.
	Jerry Kushner gets on the phone with the chairman of Lockheed Martin and persuades him to cut the price for...
	Saudi Arabia.
	I'm no fan of Lockheed Martin, the way they've been milking the Defense Department for many years.
	But they have an American company give a price cut to the Saudis.
	I don't know why Jared Kushner's involved in that.
	Why do they need $110 billion of weaponry in Saudi Arabia?
	What are they going to do with it?
	And why is Jared Kushner getting a $2 billion deal from the Saudi royal family against the advice of their financial advisors within a year or so after leaving the White House?
	I mean, is this the way we're conducting foreign policy?
	Last point, I promise.
	Three consecutive defense secretaries that were handpicked by Trump, okay?
	James Mattis, Patrick Shanahan, Mark Esper, they were all plucked directly from the defense industrial sector.
	Mark Esper, again, appointed by Trump, confirmed by the Senate, was the top lobbyist at Raytheon.
	So I'm sorry, if you're talking about how Trump is this...
	Dying the wool enemy of the deep state and military-industrial complex, and you don't even attempt to reconcile that fact?
	I mean, how many times could Trump possibly be tricked or split with his personnel deployments?
	At what point does he actually have agency for what he does in power?
	It's bizarre.
	First question for George to answer: the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and I guess your closing arguments.
	Yeah, look, Saudi Arabia is an ally.
	It's actually a stalwart ally in a very dangerous part of the world, and that is the Persian Gulf.
	This came at a moment in which the Trump administration imposed draconian sanctions on Iran to defend them so that they could not export their version of terrorism throughout the Middle East, as we have seen over the last two to three years under the Biden administration.
	As far as Lebanon, Syria...
	It is the right move, just like the Bush administration, to defang the Iranians, to be hawkish towards Iran, to prevent them from exporting terrorism.
	That is a good thing.
	And if Saudi Arabia can help us achieve that ends without our troops getting in harm's way by buying our weaponry, I'm all for that.
	It's good for industry and it gets American troops out of harm's way and allows the...
	The Saudis, just like NATO, as we discussed earlier, to take on more of the burden themselves.
	I don't see anything wrong with that.
	As far as Jared Kushner, my understanding is he was a private citizen when all these deals went down.
	As a private citizen, not part of public office or the Trump White House, he can do as he pleases as far as I'm concerned.
	So that's that.
	And regarding my closing statements...
	Are you better off today than you were four years ago?
	If you ask every blue check mark on Twitter, Keith Olbermann in particular, everyone seems to be better off today than they were four years ago.
	They can pontificate all they want publicly, Brad Pitt, Jimmy Kimmel.
	They can make a mockery of themselves.
	But are they really better off?
	Maybe the multimillionaires who aren't feeling the pinch of inflation, rising gas, high mortgage rates.
	Destabilized border, chaos abroad, maybe people that don't care about those issues, maybe they do feel better now because they just don't want Donald Trump.
	For people that care about real life issues, real life problems, that want a problem solver to address these issues so that we can go back to a...
	50,000 a year income can afford a mortgage, where you can afford groceries, where you don't have the cartels exporting Fettin all the way they are at this rampant pace, where you don't have a war abroad in Ukraine and Russia, then use Trump's previous leadership from his first term.
	To impose those solutions in a second term.
	Did he make some mistakes?
	Absolutely.
	And this comes from being an outsider, coming into Washington, not knowing the jungle that you're getting into.
	He knows it, I believe now.
	I believe he will hire the right personnel.
	He will ameliorate those issues that hounded his first term.
	And he will make this country much better off than it is right now.
	And that is why I would vote for him this time around.
	Well, this has been fantastic.
	When Roger Stone couldn't make it, I was for a second.
	Contemplating or being contemplated as an alternative to debated, and I sort of got to do both here tonight, so that makes me very happy.
	It's been phenomenal.
	And whether or not people watching vehemently agree with some and vehemently disagree with others, I know based on the audience, Richard, the people must be screaming at their computer, but at least you're here unshy about it, and it's good to hear the opposing view even if you disagree with it.
	It's been phenomenal.
	Thank you very much.
	And Zero Hedge, thank you for doing this.
	It's been wonderful, and I hope I can host it again, maybe participate next time.
	And that's it.
	You've seen it.
	Come to your own decisions, people.
	November is just around the corner.
	thank you all for being here.
	The current and former presidents have already clinched the nominations.
	We're going to save our country.
	We're going to have to choose between a dinosaur and an orangutan.
	The economy was great.
	Tells it how it is.
	Trump made this country great again.
	They have normalized just evil and wrongdoing.

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