Geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter breaks down the explosive shifts in global power as Trump’s return looms, Iran stands firm against Western pressure, and Yemen + Russia resist US hegemony! Who’s winning the new Cold War? Tune in for a deep dive into the unfolding chaos!
🔴 Key Topics:
✔️ Trump’s revenge? How his potential 2024 win could reshape US foreign policy
✔️ Iran’s defiance – Will sanctions & threats backfire?
✔️ Yemen’s resistance – How the Houthis are changing the game
✔️ Russia’s resilience – Can the West break Moscow’s alliances?
✔️ The new Axis of Resistance – Who’s really calling the shots?
#Geopolitics #Trump2024 #Iran #Russia #Yemen #Houthis #AxisOfResistance #ColdWar2 #USForeignPolicy #MiddleEast #MilitaryAnalysis #ScottRitter #BidenVsTrump #GlobalPowerShift #AntiImperialism #WarInUkraine #OilWars #Sanctions #StrategicDefiance #NewWorldOrder
🚀 Like, Share & Subscribe for more unfiltered geopolitical insights! 🎤🌐
🔴 Key Topics:
✔️ Trump’s revenge? How his potential 2024 win could reshape US foreign policy
✔️ Iran’s defiance – Will sanctions & threats backfire?
✔️ Yemen’s resistance – How the Houthis are changing the game
✔️ Russia’s resilience – Can the West break Moscow’s alliances?
✔️ The new Axis of Resistance – Who’s really calling the shots?
#Geopolitics #Trump2024 #Iran #Russia #Yemen #Houthis #AxisOfResistance #ColdWar2 #USForeignPolicy #MiddleEast #MilitaryAnalysis #ScottRitter #BidenVsTrump #GlobalPowerShift #AntiImperialism #WarInUkraine #OilWars #Sanctions #StrategicDefiance #NewWorldOrder
🚀 Like, Share & Subscribe for more unfiltered geopolitical insights! 🎤🌐
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Hi, everybody. Today is Tuesday, April 15th, 2025, and our friend Scott Rader is back with
00:00:13us. Welcome back, Scott.
00:00:15Thanks for having me.
00:00:16Last time we talked, we talked together with Larry Johnson, and we didn't know what would
00:00:22happen between Iran and the United States. Right now, we had the first round of talks,
00:00:27negotiations between the two parties. What's your assessment so far?
00:00:33Well, this is what I've always been saying. This is the only path out. Nobody listened to me.
00:00:38Everybody thought it was a great idea for Iran to get a nuclear weapon and all that. Iran had no
00:00:43choice. The United States was prepared to use military force, and this military force would
00:00:48have been decisive. This is about the Iranians doing that which is necessary to survive as a
00:00:56nation-state. I remind people that the Ayatollah Khomeini, to bring an end to the Iran-Iraq war,
00:01:03at a time when he said he will not stop fighting until Saddam Hussein is removed from power for the
00:01:07crimes that were committed by the Iraqis invading Iranian territory, occupying their cities, brutalizing
00:01:13their people. He said this war will go on until Saddam is gone, but he is forced to accept ceasefire
00:01:20terms that he likened to drinking a cup of poison. The Iranians are drinking a cup of poison right
00:01:27now. They have no choice but to negotiate. But, you know, the Iranians, by standing up to the United
00:01:35States and putting the United States into this, you know, boxing America into this corner where the
00:01:40only alternative for the United States was a war which, if we were going to win, would require the
00:01:45use of nuclear weapons, which would make us a global pariah. I think Donald Trump finally woke
00:01:52up to the fact that he didn't want to be a global pariah, and that's why he softened his stance.
00:01:57He stopped talking about, you know, he stopped sending insulting letters to the Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:02:03He stopped talking about, you have to get rid of, you know, you have to cease your friendships with
00:02:08this, you have to get rid of this, that, and the other thing. And the only thing they're talking about
00:02:11right now is Iran's nuclear program and the military aspects of that program. And the Iranians
00:02:19are sitting down and listening because I believe there will be a compromise. I believe there will be
00:02:25a JCPOA type settlement that will be, you know, reached between the United States and Iran. Whether
00:02:33this is able to be turned into a treaty or not, I don't know. But I think Donald Trump
00:02:40as he campaigned on doesn't want a war with Iran. The fact that he announced the departure of Steve
00:02:47Wyckoff to Oman in the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu, who'd flown to the United States
00:02:52to get the United States to bomb Iran shows you where Trump's heart is on this one. He doesn't
00:02:57want a war with Iran. The problem is the peace through strength mantra that the United States
00:03:03has adopted, where Trump feels a need to lead off with just ridiculousness, maximum pressure.
00:03:11That turned the Iranians off immediately from any potential negotiations. Then the insulting
00:03:16letter, that shut all doors. But the doors got open, as I said they would, because Iran was about
00:03:23to disappear as a nation state. And I think the Iranians understood that the United States was boxed
00:03:32into a corner. Just like the Obama administration had been boxed in in 2014, if you recall, where
00:03:38Obama had bought into the Israeli notion of not one spinning centrifuge. We're not going to allow
00:03:43one spinning centrifuge. And if you don't shut down everything, the military options on the table,
00:03:50and the Iranians are like, okay, if you got to do it, you got to do it. And Obama's like,
00:03:55I don't want to do it. So next thing you know, they have secret negotiations that lead to
00:04:00the JCPOA. Not because the Iranians were begging for it, but because the Obama administration had
00:04:05boxed itself into a rhetorical corner. And the Trump administration has done the same thing here
00:04:10by leading off with maximum pressure, by threatening military force. When confronted by the fact that
00:04:15the Iranians weren't going to bend the knee, Trump softened. And as soon as he softened, the Iranians
00:04:23softened as well, because neither side wants a military action. And so we've gone down the only
00:04:30path available. There is no other path. Stop fantasizing about Iranian nuclear weapons and an
00:04:38Iranian nuclear deterrent. It will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happen. Never. It can't happen.
00:04:46It won't be allowed to happen. The Iranians don't want it. They don't need it. And the United States
00:04:51won't allow it. It would be immediate nation termination event for Iran. One that might
00:04:58actually reduce the pariah status for the United States because the United States will say Iran has
00:05:03no right to a nuclear weapon and therefore military action is legitimate. But thankfully, right now,
00:05:11we're not engaged in that kind of discussion. We had a successful meeting, according to both sides,
00:05:17a successful meeting between Wyckoff and the Iranian foreign minister. And I believe they're scheduled
00:05:22for another meeting later on this month. And Trump is, he's, you know, he needs to learn how to shut
00:05:30up his secretary of defense. That would be useful. But Trump himself is not beating the drums of war.
00:05:37He's talking about, you know, the potential of peace with Iran, a nuclear deal that focuses solely on
00:05:43nuclear, the potential of Iran to produce nuclear weapons. So I think we're in a much better place
00:05:48today than we were this time, two weeks ago.
00:05:53Scott, here is, you've mentioned the secretary of defense. Here is what Pete Hexitt said on Fox News.
00:06:03At direct talks yesterday, they began in the past, it's been indirect talks with a mediator,
00:06:09but there's Steve Whitcoff meeting with the foreign minister of Iran. What can you tell us?
00:06:12Well, I can tell you that President Trump is dead serious on this issue. He's dead serious that Iran
00:06:19cannot have a nuclear weapon. He's said that for 20 years. He's been consistent. That is clear.
00:06:25He's dead serious that he wants it done at the negotiating table. He wants it done peacefully.
00:06:30And that's why he's going straight to these talks. He set that deadline. These were productive talks
00:06:34yesterday. I don't want to get ahead of our skis. Steve Whitcoff does a fantastic job,
00:06:38but it was a good step. And they're going to, they're going to go at it again on Saturday.
00:06:41But he's also dead serious that if we can't figure this out at the negotiating table,
00:06:45then there are other options to include my department to ensure that Iran never has a
00:06:50nuclear bomb. We hope we never get there. We really do, Maria. But what we're doing with
00:06:55the Houthis and what we're doing in the region, we've shown a capability to go far, to go deep,
00:06:59and to go big. And again, we don't want to do that. But if we have to, we will to prevent the
00:07:04nuclear bomb in Iran's hands.
00:07:06The problem, Scott, is not just Pete Hexet, it's the Marco Rubio as well. And these people are not
00:07:14helping Donald Trump. They're somehow destroying everything that Donald Trump is working for,
00:07:21working on, and is planning for. And how do you see these people and comparing them with Whitcoff,
00:07:30which I do believe that he has much more, they're talking about he's a businessman, he's not that
00:07:37much deep in the geopolitical issues. But after all, he's much more, he's wiser than these two people
00:07:44who are, who have the main positions in the Trump administration.
00:07:53Where to begin? Look, we know that Marco Rubio is not Team Trump. We know that. Marco Rubio hates
00:08:01Donald Trump. We know that. So whatever transformation that's taken place for Rubio to become Trump's
00:08:09Secretary of State, this is cosmetic in nature. At the end of the day, Marco Rubio is Marco Rubio,
00:08:16a neoconservative to the core, who wants war with Iran and doesn't want peace with Russia.
00:08:23That's his core value. And suddenly he's been called upon to, you know, front for different
00:08:30policy objectives. And this grates him. You look at his body language. I don't want to pretend that
00:08:35I'm some sort of, you know, expert on reading bodies, but I'm not bad. And his body language
00:08:41is just off. This is man that when Trump is talking about peace and all that, Rubio is in a defensive
00:08:47crouch. And then you see when he has a chance to come forward, you know, he comes in with an extreme
00:08:52interpretation of something. He's not supportive of this at all. The fact that Whitcoff doesn't report
00:08:58to him, but instead reports directly to the president, you know, is part of the problem.
00:09:02Hank Seth, very loyal to the president. There's no doubt about that. But he's a man totally out
00:09:09of his depth. I mean, they promoted a lieutenant colonel to serve in a job that should only be
00:09:15held by people that have four-star general experience. I'm not saying they have to be
00:09:20four-star generals, but you need people that know how to manage large institutions and understand
00:09:26strategic thought. Hank Seth was never a strategic thinker. Never. He's an operational planner.
00:09:32At best. Tactical guy. I mean, the fact that he gets off on going out and running with the troops
00:09:38shows you where his mind is. I mean, that's great. I'm sure the troops that he runs with love it.
00:09:43But, you know, Pete, you should actually be sitting back getting briefed on the big picture.
00:09:47So you wouldn't say stupid things like, you know, we've gone deep, we've gone hard, we've gone big,
00:09:53you know, in Yemen as a way of, you know, somehow threatening the Iranians. Because you haven't
00:09:59gone deep, big, hard in Yemen. You're not doing anything in Yemen. Pete, you took your two biggest
00:10:05bombers, put your two biggest bombs on the bombers, you flew them in the Yemen and you dropped them
00:10:10against targets that were underground in nature, believing you could blow them up in a way to send
00:10:14a signal to Iran. And you didn't make a dent in them, Pete. American weapons aren't doing
00:10:19anything to the Yemeni underground. And now you're talking about flying deep into Iran and
00:10:24what, dropping those same bombs on Iranian targets that are even deeper? I mean, I wish
00:10:29the interviewer had asked, Pete, since you don't have, and you acknowledge you don't have any
00:10:34conventional munitions capable of taking out Iran's buried nuclear facilities, what munitions are you
00:10:41allocating to this target deck that you speak so fondly of, Pete? Are you talking about using
00:10:48nuclear weapons against Iran, Pete? Because it sounds like you are. Is that really the mission
00:10:53that you've been given? The answer is yes. That's why Trump doesn't want to do it. So Pete should
00:10:58shut up. Literally, shut up. You don't have to say things, Pete. What you could say is, you know,
00:11:07I stand by the president and everything's trying to accomplish in Iran and I will faithfully execute
00:11:12the orders given to me by the president. Right now the president is focused on a diplomatic option
00:11:17that we in the Department of Defense think is great. Nobody wants to go to war. And we're hopeful
00:11:22that Steve Whitcoff and his Iranian counterparts can, you know, can find a solution to this problem.
00:11:29We're very supportive of it. We stand by to assist the president any way necessary. Huh. Did he say
00:11:36anything wrong there? Nope. Did he say the exact same thing that he said earlier, but without the
00:11:43implied threats or the implicit threats, yes. But Hegseth can't think like that because in his heart,
00:11:50he's still a battalion operations officer, a battalion commander at best, who's thinking about
00:11:57taking the next hill, not thinking about how to solve the world. This man is out of his depth
00:12:02and it's an embarrassment. He embarrasses America on a daily basis. Every time he opens his mouth
00:12:08because you know, he's not familiar with half the things he's now charged with overseeing. I mean,
00:12:16he has to, you know, understand the briefing necessary to bring him up to speed. He doesn't
00:12:23understand the programs he's responsible for. He's making knee jerk decisions, emotional decisions,
00:12:30and he's dealing with a man child as the president who doesn't understand the military either,
00:12:35who is desperately relying upon the wisdom of his, of his secretary of defense when it comes to these
00:12:42issues of war and peace. And instead he has a baby there. So a baby is advising a man child.
00:12:49This is not good. This is a bad thing. Um, and it's the same thing with Rubio. I mean,
00:12:54these are two people that, you know, come from different ideological perspectives,
00:13:00but at the end result, they're not doing either the president or America any good.
00:13:04But the real problem is Michael Waltz. See, Michael Waltz is a national security advisor.
00:13:10I'd have to ask myself why Rubio and Hegseth are so off message consistently.
00:13:18And the answer is there is no message. You know, when was the last time the national security advisor
00:13:25called together, they've called together all the principals to have a strategy meeting to sit down
00:13:29and say, okay, let me give you the president's guidance. Um, and then, you know, have each one
00:13:35of the principals turned down to their deputies and they hold a deputies meeting with the deputy
00:13:39national security advisor who then says, okay, let's lock in how we're going to do this. So
00:13:46let's get our interagency planning groups together. Um, let's get it down there, get the agencies
00:13:51talking to each other. I want you guys to come back to me with a consensus policy options, uh, in a
00:13:56week. And then the, the meeting come up, the deputies have their meeting. They all agree. Yep. These are
00:14:01the consensus that go to the principals and there it is. And then the principal can go to the president
00:14:05and brief the president. This is what we all agree upon. And now you have singular policy. It's how it's
00:14:10supposed to happen. Instead, you have this man child out there just going, I want this,
00:14:14I want that. I want this. I want that. And sometimes his instinct is good. Sometimes his
00:14:18instinct is horrible. Secretary of state should be telling the president, knock off this threatening
00:14:25stuff because all it does is make you look bad. You know, what happens if Iran didn't yield? Are
00:14:33you really going to go to war violating everything you say you stand for, Mr. President? But Rubio is
00:14:38not because Rubio wants him to go to war. So Rubio's like, keep it up, Mr. President, keep up saying
00:14:42stupidity. So you fall and you fail. Rubio secretly hopes Trump fails. In his heart of heart, you know,
00:14:48Marco Rubio wants Donald Trump to fail. So he can step in and say, I, as secretary of state, saved America
00:14:55from this colossal disaster called Donald Trump. And I'm ready to be your next president of the United
00:14:59States. That's Marco Rubio's ambition. You think he's just going to stop at secretary of state at his age?
00:15:05He's just going to sit there and go, this is, this is it. This is as high as I go. No, man, this guy's going to be
00:15:10in the presidential race forever, forever. That's why he was bumped up to secretary of state.
00:15:17So, you know, Rubio isn't going to be supporting Trump. Rubio is supporting Rubio. Hegseth, again,
00:15:23I think he's just tickled pink to be where he's at. But it's over for him. He's never going anywhere
00:15:27after this because he's a failure. I don't know if he's going to last two years because he's going to
00:15:32make fatal mistakes. Tragically, Americans are going to die because Pete Hegseth is incompetent,
00:15:38not up to the task. You know, we saw this with the whole, you know, with that signal chat group
00:15:45where, you know, Hegseth is sitting there throwing data around. No, don't do it. But, but there's no,
00:15:53there's no coordinated policy. So what happens is you have freelancers. You have Tulsi Gabbard out
00:15:58there trying to do her thing. You have J.D. Vance doing his thing. I think they're both on the side
00:16:03of Trump trying to do what's right for Trump when it comes to, you know, fulfilling peace. You have Hegseth
00:16:07who just wants to go to war. That's all he wants to do. And you have Marco Rubio who just wants to
00:16:12be president of the United States. So he's going to undermine Trump at every chance he gets.
00:16:16And therefore you have no policy. You just have a president wakes up every morning and tweets out.
00:16:22I mean, to be honest, instead of the national security advisor, you know, calling people in
00:16:27and reminding them of the policy priorities that have been set and setting the agenda, everybody wakes
00:16:33up in the morning, goes to their social media and says, what did the president put out on? You
00:16:38know, what is it? Truth social that he's on? You know, that that's, that's how we get policy in
00:16:42America. We have to wait for the president to tweet guys. That's not how it's supposed to work.
00:16:48That's not how it's supposed to work. And yet that's what's happening here. People are waiting
00:16:52for the president to tweet. This is a system that's out of control and it will eventually come back to
00:17:00haunt the president. He may get one or two victories out of this, but unless he brings it under control,
00:17:06the competition that isn't being coordinated, it's okay to have a cabinet of people that don't get
00:17:12along. I mean, Abraham Lincoln famously put one together during the civil war, people that,
00:17:18that didn't get along, but he managed it. And he had secretary of state who managed these people
00:17:24and held them in. And, um, we don't have anybody managing this Trump disaster right now. This is
00:17:33literally the most powerful ship in the world sailing on the ocean and, uh, nobody's at the
00:17:39helm. It's just sort of going where it wants to go. As you mentioned, I think the key is the
00:17:46secretary of state, Marco, Marco Rubio. I see him getting to the same path and just,
00:17:52it's so similar to what Mike Pompeo was in the beginning. He was somehow coordinating with Donald
00:18:03Trump. Then he, as time went by, he just separated himself from Donald Trump. And finally he got, he,
00:18:11he, he, he was one of the worst enemies of Donald Trump within the administration.
00:18:17Yeah, that's, that's Rubio right now. We just saw, um, this morning, Rubio, you know, at a time when
00:18:23the president is, you know, on Sunday, uh, the Russians hit Sumi with, um, with two Iskandir missiles.
00:18:32Um, and according to the Russians, they hit a gathering of military officials, um, including
00:18:38some of the senior officers who were responsible for the invasion of Kursk back in August. Uh,
00:18:44it was an award ceremony and the Russians killed about 60 of them and, uh, some of their Western
00:18:50advisors. And if this is true, this is a major victory for the Russians. Um, tragically civilians
00:18:57died as well. Um, the Ukrainians admit that there was a military award ceremony and that,
00:19:03uh, the official in charge invited civilians to be present. So this is sort of like a human
00:19:08shield kind of thing, whatever. Um, tragic, but it's war. Um, but the Russians have sort of fumbled
00:19:18the, um, the information warfare aspect of this, um, expecting people to accept at face value
00:19:25what they say without providing any evidence to back up the, you know, their assertions.
00:19:30And therefore they've opened the door for people in Europe and the Ukrainians to take control of
00:19:35the narrative. This is like Bucha all over again, but Bucha, I knew the day Bucha happened, who did
00:19:41it? Everybody knew who did it because the Ukrainians broadcast who did it. You have the Safari unit
00:19:46on their webpage saying, we're coming in, we're going to cleanse cleansing operations. You have videos
00:19:52of them shooting people that don't have the right armbands on. Uh, you have a statement by the
00:19:56mayor, stay indoors. Don't worry about the shooting. It's just cleansing operations. Don't worry about
00:20:01it. Um, so you knew what happened, uh, and the Russians were like, no, that wasn't us. We were
00:20:07out of there. We were doing our thing. We were retreating. It's a very bad. And then the Ukrainians
00:20:12together with the West put on this huge PR campaign and seize the narrative and used Bucha as an excuse
00:20:18not to implement the Istanbul communique. So what we have now is the Europeans and the Ukrainians
00:20:26trying to do the same thing to use Sumy as a excuse to prevent Trump's, you know, peace plan with Putin
00:20:34to, to bring it down. And this is a time when the Trump administration needs to rally around the
00:20:42president and only feed off the president's lead. Instead, he's getting horrible advice. And again,
00:20:47this president has diarrhea of the mouth. He doesn't know how to shut up. Um, you know, so he
00:20:52says, well, this was a mistake. The Russians made a mistake. No, they didn't Mr. President. They hit a
00:20:55target. And if you got briefed by your intelligence people, they tell you what the target is, but
00:21:00instead you go with whatever is whispered in your ear and you're saying things. And now he's sort of
00:21:04backed away. He's not talking about that anymore. Uh, just the need to bring it into this conflict.
00:21:08But Rubio, the disloyal person that he is, is now working with Keith Kellogg, who's an idiot,
00:21:16who, uh, at the same time that Steve Whitcoff goes, I mean, Kellogg again, how's this for team
00:21:22player? Whitcoff flies to St. Petersburg, has a remarkable three and a half hour meeting with
00:21:27Vladimir Putin, where they actually lay out in very stark terms, what is necessary for Russia to
00:21:34move forward aggressively on peace? And it's basically total Russian control of the,
00:21:39of five territories, Crimea, and then, uh, Kerson, Zaporizhia, Lugansk, Donetsk, and Lugansk.
00:21:46And if, once you do that, the Russians, I think we'll have some flexibility on the other stuff.
00:21:52Um, but that, that's a prerequisite, non-negotiable, et cetera. So Whitcoff comes back and goes,
00:21:57yeah, Mr. President, if we, if we do this, I think we got smooth sailing.
00:22:01So what does Keith Kellogg do? Immediately publishes his, uh, stupidity of a map about
00:22:09partitioning Ukraine up into some sort of occupation zones, uh, with a 18 mile buffer zone
00:22:15and occupation forces. Who authorized that? And now you have Rubio working with Kellogg
00:22:24to work with the treasury secretary. Just in case this fails, Mr. President, we're ready to put on the,
00:22:30we're going to sanction them to death, Mr. President. We're going to give you a full range
00:22:34of options to hold Putin accountable for the failure. Well, the president ain't talking about
00:22:38failure. He's trying to work towards success, but this is Rubio Kellogg and the treasury secretary
00:22:44all undermining the president in public, in public. I mean, again, Donald, this is where the national
00:22:54security advisor needs to call them in and say, tell me why I shouldn't go to the president right
00:22:58now and demand your resignation. Because I'm going to tell you what, if you don't give me a good
00:23:04answer, I'm going in there. It's either going to be you or me. One of us is leaving here without a job
00:23:09and it ain't going to be me. You traitorous son of a bitch. Why shouldn't I have you arrested right
00:23:15now for undermining the foreign policy of the United States? You know, just things like that.
00:23:19Just be right in their face. Keith Kellogg. Hey, guess what, Keith? Good news. We're bringing you
00:23:24back to be a four-star general. Put on your uniform. Bad news, we're court-martialing you
00:23:28for treason. You're deliberately undermining the policy of the president of the United States
00:23:35with unauthorized release of classified information. Whatever. I mean, do something like this.
00:23:40Hold these people to account. Take control. Take control of this situation. But don't let this go on,
00:23:47this active betrayal of Donald Trump. Because you're right. This is exactly what Pompeo and
00:23:53Bolton did in Donald Trump's first term. And Trump said he learned his lesson. Well, apparently not.
00:23:58Apparently not. We could have had an agreement with North Korea that could have led to denuclearization.
00:24:06At very minimum, North Korea wouldn't have ICBMs armed with nuclear weapons aimed at the United States.
00:24:11That would be a good thing. We could have had it. But Pompeo and Bolton stabbed the president in the back.
00:24:16Stabbed him in the back. Sabotaged it. Treason. Literal treason. And now we have Pompeo. I mean,
00:24:24I'm sorry, Pompeo. Little Marco Rubio working with the Treasury Secretary and Keith Kellogg doing the
00:24:33same thing. Doing the same thing. Stabbing Donald Trump in the back. And Michael Waltz isn't doing
00:24:40anything about it. Isn't taking control. This is a dysfunctional team. Which may be the way that
00:24:46Donald Trump wants it. Maybe Trump is happy waking up in the morning, making everybody respond to his
00:24:51tweets. But that's not the way to run a country. And that's definitely not the way to manage the
00:24:55national security affairs of the world's most powerful nation.
00:24:58I think one of the reasons that he's sending Witkoff to Iran, to Russia, to the Middle East, because he
00:25:06doesn't believe that these people are going to help him. And I don't know if he's that much serious.
00:25:13He's that much. He can just fire them and say, I don't need you. Well, he's going to keep up and just
00:25:19let them work with him until this administration is over. I don't know. Do you see him firing them or
00:25:29he's going to just continue working with them?
00:25:35I don't know. I mean, I would be surprised if Rubio survived. I think Rubio at best is a two-year
00:25:43secretary of state and come midterm elections. He'll be jettisoned. Hegseth, I don't think he's
00:25:50going to make it. He's going to screw up. He's going to get fired. Waltz almost got fired. I
00:25:57mean, the president almost fired him over that Signal chat room debacle. The only person he trusts
00:26:03is Witkoff, you know, because Witkoff is loyal and Witkoff doesn't have competing agendas. Witkoff's
00:26:09not trying to be somebody. Witkoff is who he is. He's a friend of the president of the United
00:26:14States who's here to do that which the president wants him to do. And he's executing the president's
00:26:20guidance flawlessly. And he's realistic, too. That's one of the problems is that he's coming
00:26:28back with very, you know, reality-based policy options, which the president should run with.
00:26:36But instead, he delays and hems and haws and allows an opening for Rubio and company to come in
00:26:42and stab him in the back. So, but I think the president trusts Witkoff because he doesn't have
00:26:51an agenda. You know, I'm stunned at a couple of things. One, Marco Rubio, your secretary of state.
00:26:58And while you're sitting here coming up with stupidity to violate the constitutional rights of
00:27:06non-U.S. citizens, believe it or not, they have constitutional rights regarding, you know, this
00:27:13whole thing about Palestine and, you know, you can't stand up against Israel. It's become a thought
00:27:19crime. If you think it, you get kicked out. He's allowed the good name of America to become weaponized
00:27:26like this. And yet, according to the news, his State Department is going to take a massive cut,
00:27:34meaning that his ability to do diplomacy. So, Marco Rubio is no longer the lead diplomat.
00:27:41Witkoff's the lead diplomat. And what Rubio should be saying is, Mr. President, Witkoff needs to
00:27:48coordinate with my team or my team is going to be advising him and all this stuff. You know,
00:27:52we have to have, we have to be, we have to know what's going on. We have to be president. We have
00:27:58to do something. But instead, Witkoff goes up, comes back to the president, who then, I don't know
00:28:03how he disseminates the information to a little Marco. But Marco, Marco Rubio is presiding over
00:28:11his State Department. It's about to become gutted at a time when we say that we want peace, at a time
00:28:17when we're talking about improving U.S.-Russian relationships across the board, which require,
00:28:22you know, the staffing up of embassies, the staffing up of the State Department.
00:28:26Instead, we're getting gutted, gutted. And not a peep out of Marco Rubio, not a peep.
00:28:34I mean, this is, this is insane. We need more diplomacy.
00:28:39Pete Hegseth came in and talked about, you know, we're going to take a,
00:28:42was it a 5% cut in the, in the defense budget for the next five years, or maybe a 7% cut? I don't
00:28:53know what it was, but it came up to basically at the end of five years, you'd have, you know,
00:28:5640% cut. And now we're turning around, no, we're going to have a trillion dollar defense budget.
00:29:02Where's the cut? I mean, there, there's just a disconnect here. There's, there's,
00:29:09there's not consistency in policy. Uh, and it's bad for America again, leading with the fist
00:29:16and, uh, you know, keeping the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the velvet, you know,
00:29:25glove of friendship, you know, is being put off and put into a, into a drawer. This is insane.
00:29:30Total wrong, wrong priorities. Um, but there's no policy. That's the problem. And we can blame
00:29:40Rubio, but you knew what you're getting when you bought Mark Rubio. The problem is the president.
00:29:48The problem here is the president of the United States. He's a man child that has no discipline.
00:29:53And, um, he's unable to assemble a team because he he's never had to have a team.
00:30:01His whole thing is you're fired. You're fired. The apprentice type court cop. He's never had to
00:30:07control a team and make the team work together with common objectives. And he's brought people
00:30:13into his team that don't know how to do it. The PK except what the hell is he doing there?
00:30:18I mean, I have to be honest. If someone came to me and said, Scott, I want you to be secretary
00:30:23of defense. I said, no, you don't. No, you don't. I've never operated at that level. I could advise
00:30:29the secretary of defense on certain things, but to manage the department of defense, um, you know,
00:30:37800, 900 trillion, 900 billion to a trillion dollar enterprise, um, that has such complexity,
00:30:45uh, across the, the, the board. No, I can't be secretary of defense. You need somebody who's
00:30:52managed a CEO or a four-star general, somebody with that large scale management experience,
00:30:57who's familiar with the Washington C bureaucracy, comfortable with, you know, how the system works,
00:31:03but you bring in me, you know, you're going to get, you know, a guy who, um, you know,
00:31:09on his best day commanded, you know, a couple hundred inspectors on the ground in Iraq.
00:31:14It was complex. It was, it was difficult. I'm proud of the work I did, but that ain't the same
00:31:19thing as running a corporation or running a department of defense. And I know that. So,
00:31:24you know, why didn't PK just say, Mr. President, I'm not, I'm not the man for this. Uh, make me the,
00:31:30uh, assistant secretary of defense for, you know, special operations and low intensity conflict.
00:31:35I could do that. Uh, but no, it's a secretary of defense. I'm, I'm just not up to the task. Um,
00:31:42I'll fail you. And I don't want to fail you. I want you to succeed, but he went with it.
00:31:50And he went with Marco Rubio as a secretary of state, a man who literally doesn't believe in
00:31:55anything Donald Trump believes in. And now he's representing Trump and the United States
00:32:00as our nation's lead diplomat. This is, this is bad stuff. It's the president's fault. One hundred
00:32:06percent.
00:32:09Scott, here is what Whitcoff said in his interview about the talks he, he has done with Iranians.
00:32:16Peace through strength. It resonates throughout the world.
00:32:19It's the very good message of peace through strength. It resonates throughout the world.
00:32:30This is, I'm not, this is not a threat on my part now. It is just a simple fact. The president means
00:32:37what he says, which is they cannot have a bomb. The, the conversation with the Iranians will be much
00:32:44about two critical points, one enrichment. As you mentioned, they do not need to enrich past 3.67%.
00:32:54In some circumstances, they're at 60% and other circumstances, 20%. That cannot be. And you do
00:33:00not need to run as they claim a civil nuclear program where you're enriching past 3.67%. So this is going to
00:33:10be much about verification on the enrichment program. And then ultimately verification on weaponization.
00:33:18That includes missiles, the type of missiles that they have stockpiled there. And it includes, um,
00:33:26the trigger for a bomb.
00:33:30Yeah. They're mostly, Scott, they're, they're mostly focusing on the nuclear bombs and the capability of
00:33:37hitting the targets by nuclear bombs. We know on the part of Iranians, when you look at the Iranian
00:33:42media and the way they're talking about, they started these negotiations because they just not
00:33:49negotiating for the sake of negotiations. They want something to happen for the sake of outcome of
00:33:55these negotiations. And we know that the Trump administration is looking for the same thing.
00:34:00They want to get the result as soon as possible. The two parties, they want a solution for the conflict,
00:34:07for the, for this sort of conflict between the United States and Iran. And the way forward, if,
00:34:14if they achieve some sort of agreement, as you mentioned, like JCPOA, something like that,
00:34:19how, how the problem with Yemen, the problem in the Middle East would remain, how do they have any
00:34:30sort of strategy for, for that? Because the way that Pete Hexet, as you mentioned, is talking about
00:34:35Yemen, it seems that Yemen doesn't exist. Yemen is just can be manipulated the way that he's talking
00:34:41about them. And we know that that's not the case. And there has to be some sort of strategy on their
00:34:47path. Does there have to be? This is the Trump administration you're talking about. Does there
00:34:55have to be a strategy? I mean, if there was a strategy, again, I mean, I've sat in meetings like
00:35:05this. You have to weigh out all your options and lay out the, you know, the probability of success for
00:35:13each option. And right now, if we're talking about the problem of Yemen and Israel,
00:35:17and the shipping, I, if I were briefing the president United States, I would say that military,
00:35:25the military option is our least desirable option. We don't have a solution to this problem.
00:35:31Based upon the resources allocated, bringing more aircraft carriers into the theater isn't going to
00:35:37do anything other than increase the target deck for them to attack us.
00:35:40What we need to do is get the Yemenis to stop. There needs to be incentives. And right now,
00:35:48there's only one ceasefire in Gaza. That's it, Mr. President. You want it? You want to stop the
00:35:56missiles? Ceasefire in Gaza. We had it. The Israelis violated it. You greenlit that violation. We need to go
00:36:03back and put the pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu and put the squeeze on it. Whatever Steve Woodcoff
00:36:08did back in November of last year, we need to replicate that today and get the Israelis to stand
00:36:13down. Then the missiles stop. And now we've suddenly solved that problem. It's not there
00:36:18anymore, Mr. President. Then we can focus on how to deal with Gaza. And you might be amazed,
00:36:25Mr. President, that if you stop bombing Palestine and actually send humanitarian goods in and create
00:36:32an environment conducive to peaceful outcomes, that we might be able to get Hamas to agree to certain
00:36:38things. You know, Hamas isn't going to agree to anything with bombs dropping on their head. They
00:36:43sort of proved that for 15 months. If you want Hamas to agree to things, if you want there to be
00:36:50some sort of consensus-driven compromise that has Hamas step aside as the lead and take up a
00:36:58subordinate posture in a joint Palestinian governing body that isn't called Hamas anymore,
00:37:06you do that by encouraging that outcome, by stopping to drop bombs, stopping the Israelis from dropping
00:37:12bombs. You know, that's the solution. And you can't tell me that Trump's afraid to go against
00:37:21Israel because he made Benjamin Netanyahu sit next to him as he did two things. He told Benjamin Netanyahu,
00:37:27we're not bombing Iran for you. And he also told them that you don't get a say over Gaza. At the end of
00:37:33the day, it's my harebrained scheme to depopulate and it's going to be American land. We do this. You
00:37:40don't get a vote. You're out. Netanyahu had to sit there with his stupid grin. And what could he do?
00:37:49Nothing. You know, he'll go and he'll have his meeting with Rubio and everybody will try and stab
00:37:54Trump in the back and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, Trump can go against Netanyahu.
00:38:01It's, it's not as though it's impossible for him to do that. Um, you know, and, and what's interesting,
00:38:07you know, you, you have, I I'd love to have the secretary of treasury, a treasury, uh, tasked with
00:38:15saying what would be required to bring Israel to its knees economically?
00:38:21Now you could say, I'm looking at this from the standpoint, how do we prevent others from making
00:38:27that happen? Because the last time I checked, there were long lines of people killing in Israel for
00:38:31food and goods because they have to ration because the economy is fundamentally broken, uh, because of
00:38:36what Yemen's doing. But also as the president, I'd like to be able to call up Netanyahu and said,
00:38:42Hey, baby, I've listened one too many times to your stupid ass video where you talk about how you own
00:38:47America, you bought America and we work for you. I want to remind you, BB, that we don't work for
00:38:53you, that you work for me. You may not know that you work for me. And I'm telling you right now,
00:38:56you work for me and you're going to do everything I tell you to do, or I'm shutting you down.
00:39:03I'm shutting you down. I've got a list of five things here that I'm going to do. I can do overnight
00:39:08and you're finished. You're politically finished. Your government will collapse and your nation may not
00:39:12survive. It's not doing too well right now, BB. And we can put the pressure on it. You know,
00:39:17we used to be able to talk to the Israelis like that because we own the Israelis. We really do.
00:39:23I mean, this is, this, this is like a spoiled child telling the parents that they work for him.
00:39:30As long as the parents want to listen to the spoiled child, then it looks like the spoiled
00:39:34child is in charge. Mommy, daddy, buy me an airplane. Oh, we don't want our baby to cry.
00:39:39We buy him an airplane, but the baby can't buy an airplane. Mommy and daddy have to buy the
00:39:44airplane. Mommy and daddy have to do everything. Israel's the baby. Just spoiled, rotten brat,
00:39:51screaming and pouting. And he's got all the relatives on his side and the relatives can call up and say,
00:39:56you got to buy the baby an airplane, do the baby. But at the end of the day, the baby can do nothing.
00:40:02That's Israel. They literally can do nothing without us. Nothing. They don't live without us.
00:40:08They don't survive without us. They don't function without us. But somehow we become a nation of,
00:40:14you know, parents that have caved into the spoiled brat. But all you have to do is tell
00:40:19the brat no and mean it. And it's time we start doing that with Israel because this is the national
00:40:25security of the United States that's at stake here. You know, why we're continuing this ridiculous
00:40:32bombing campaign in Yemen? Because all it's doing is killing innocent, you know, Yemeni civilians.
00:40:38It's not accomplishing its military task at all. Why are we doing this? Because the spoiled brat
00:40:44is holding a temper tantrum. Bring the brat into the room, pull off your belt,
00:40:48whack him on the ass a couple of times, tell him to sit in the corner, shut up. And by the way,
00:40:53there's a ceasefire and humanitarian goods are flowing into Gaza again. It's that easy.
00:40:58It would happen overnight. It literally is the easiest thing in the world to do. But we can't
00:41:04because we have people that have, they're not under the control of the Israelis. This is what
00:41:10I've been saying all along. This is about people using Israel to achieve political control here in
00:41:14America. You leverage Israel, you leverage the whole Israeli issue, the Holocaust industry, everything,
00:41:21and you turn it into, look what's happening here in the United States.
00:41:26Fought crime. If I'm a foreign student, I wake up in the morning and I have a thought,
00:41:31gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a free and independent Palestine? The Israelis are Zionists.
00:41:36I'd better not articulate that thought in any way, shape or form.
00:41:40Suddenly I'm a threat to the United States of America and off I go. I'm done. Thought crime.
00:41:46You're an enemy of America. If you speak ill about Israel, how does that work?
00:41:50It's because people that this is a tactic, not about defending Israel, but about controlling America.
00:41:57This is it. This is the mechanism to control the American people. The constitution is being eroded.
00:42:03Our freedoms are being eroded. Everything's being eroded.
00:42:06All. And remember, this is the president who signed executive orders. I believe in free speech.
00:42:12I will defend free speech. I will not weaponize. Hell, you just turned the Department of Justice
00:42:17and the State Department into the biggest damn weapon of pressing free speech in the history of
00:42:22the United States of America. And you're ignoring the courts. Separate but equal branches. I mean,
00:42:30if I hear one more person say, well, the courts aren't the president. They're never meant to be the
00:42:34president, you moron. They're meant to be a check and balance to executive power abuse,
00:42:40which is happening right now, happening right now. And we have a we have a Congress that's just punted.
00:42:46They don't exist anymore because Congress is the other thing. Checks and balance requires two against
00:42:51one so that one can't arise. But right now, the president's Congress is sleeping and the courts,
00:42:58the president. I mean, because it comes down to Andrew Jackson, you know, when the Supreme Court,
00:43:02I think, can, you know, countered him on the trail of tears. He said, good. Tell him to enforce it.
00:43:11Supreme Court can't enforce anything. Nothing. Squat. So we have a president just telling the
00:43:17Supreme Court to pound sand. And Congress isn't doing anything about it. And they're using
00:43:24Israel and anti-Semitism as the mechanism to achieve total control. Look what they're trying
00:43:31to do. Shut down universities. I'm not the biggest fan of what Harvard and Columbia and
00:43:37Yale have turned into. You know, I, you know, especially when I speak of Russophobia and the
00:43:43role that academia plays in, in sustaining that. Now they become a tool of the deep state and all that.
00:43:48That's all that. But they have the president, the executive branch, dictating academic policy to
00:43:56academic institutions and threatening them with not just financial disaster, but to send actual
00:44:04armed agents in and pull people out. This isn't the America that I put on a uniform to defend.
00:44:13I don't defend an America where jackbooted face mask thugs pull people off the street for not for,
00:44:19for the crime of writing an op-ed piece. Hey, Marco Rubio, if you're scared of an op-ed piece,
00:44:24you're not much of a man to begin with. In the battle of ideas, when people have the courage to
00:44:30put their ideas out there, your response should be better ideas. You shouldn't be afraid of a debate,
00:44:37but when you collapse down to where you have jackbooted thugs seizing people, shipping them off,
00:44:42violating their rights, due process hell, seize them in New York, send them to Louisiana to some
00:44:48dumb ass judge who will sign anything because she's too stupid to live. I mean, this isn't the
00:44:54way our system's supposed to work. They're gaming the system because they're scared. Because at the
00:45:01end of the day, you can't defend Israel logically. There's no logical defense for genocide. There's no
00:45:07logical defense for Zionism. But what they've done now is they've elevated these crimes so much,
00:45:13and then they said, you can't criticize it. That's anti-Semitism. And if you criticize it,
00:45:20you're now anti-American. We've equated Zionism with American values.
00:45:26This is the death of America right here in front of us. We're watching America be eviscerated before
00:45:33our very eyes. And it's a travesty, but Israel doesn't control anything. This isn't being done
00:45:42by Israel. This is being done by Americans to control America. And you can't blame it on the
00:45:49Jews. Oh, there's God blaming everything on the Jews. No, the majority of people doing this are
00:45:54evangelical, you know, Christian Zionists. I hate the Jews doing this. It's Christians doing it.
00:46:01Because at the end of the day, Christians are fully capable of being every bit as fascist and,
00:46:05you know, anti-American as anybody. But this is a very dangerous period in the history of America.
00:46:16It's not about Russia, Ukraine, or Iran, you know, Iran and all that. Hell, we've been in
00:46:20situations where we've almost got a war before. It's about what's happening internally. We've never
00:46:27faced a threat like this. We've never faced a threat like this. And we don't have a solution to it.
00:46:36The American people are cowed into submission. We're fundamentally divided. That's part of the
00:46:40genius of this whole operation to divide America. So that when those who speak out now against what
00:46:46Trump is doing, you're told, oh, you're just, you're, you know, you've got the, you know,
00:46:50Trump delusion scenario, your derangement scenario, TDS. So you're just against Trump. You're just upset.
00:46:56Trump won. Well, what if I voted for Donald Trump, supported what he claimed to be doing,
00:47:02and I'm this, you know, vociferously opposed to what he's doing constitution right now? Do I have TDS?
00:47:12Am I somebody who just doesn't want Trump to say, I want Trump to succeed like you've never seen,
00:47:17because I believed in his platform of peace, but I'm not willing to sacrifice
00:47:22the essence of America to achieve whatever the hell Donald Trump wants to do. Because whatever Trump's
00:47:28doing globally, we'll eventually have another president, you know, and foreign policy changes
00:47:36and all that. I'd love to see us have lasting good relations with Russia. I'd love to see us
00:47:41get better relations with China, great relations with Iran. I'd love to see all that. And I hope it happens.
00:47:47Um, but not at the expense of losing free speech in a free press here in America, not at the expense of
00:47:56creating the FAP police, which is what ICE and the State Department have become.
00:48:02When you have people scouring the social media to see if you've tweeted anything mean about Israel
00:48:08and using that as a determining factor, whether or not you get to be in the United States,
00:48:13that's problematic. Free speech is free speech.
00:48:19And we don't have it anymore. It's under assault right now.
00:48:28In a meeting, Scott, that you mentioned that Donald Trump said that the United States is going to talk
00:48:34with Iran, negotiate with Iran. We've been witnessing that Netanyahu wasn't that comfortable
00:48:40next to Donald Trump. And he said something amazing that he would agree if they can achieve something
00:48:47like what they have achieved with Libya. Here is, I don't know if you had the time to watch the
00:48:57Tucker Carlson interview with the former Congressman Kurt Weldon.
00:49:01Well, yeah, here's what he said about Gaddafi back from Gaddafi offering to resign. The US didn't
00:49:08want him to resign. They want to kill him. Why? Because Gaddafi and I met him three times. I took
00:49:13Biden on my second trip to Libya, by the way. He went with me when I spoke to the whole country.
00:49:17And every meeting I had with Gaddafi, he wanted two things. He wanted to unite the African continent
00:49:22into a group of nations economically, like European stand to go like the European economy.
00:49:27He wanted to base it on the gold standard. And the US and Europe didn't want that.
00:49:31And the other thing is they wanted control of his oil, and they wanted control of his sovereign
00:49:34wealth. So Gaddafi had to go. That's outrageous and it's wrong.
00:49:39This is Tucker Carlson, Scott. We know that he supported Donald Trump. People like Tucker Carlson,
00:49:46they are hoping that Donald Trump can bring some sort of change. And while we know that Netanyahu is
00:49:52just looking for those old policies that would benefit them. How do you see the way that these
00:49:59people who are important, who are substantial, who are so much to the core of the main supporters of
00:50:07Donald Trump asking for these sort of changes, like Tucker Carlson? And on the other hand,
00:50:13Netanyahu is trying to push the way that he wants the United States to act.
00:50:17Well, first of all, we need to point out that what Netanyahu is referring to when he wants a
00:50:23Libya solution is Libya circa 2003. He wants the United States to eliminate Iran's nuclear program
00:50:31as we eliminated Libya's total capitulation by Libya, etc. Listen to what Kurt Weldon said.
00:50:39There was no talk about weapons of mass destruction or anything. These are two totally separate events.
00:50:45You can't link the two. You can't say this is a continuation. You had a unique set of circumstances
00:50:51in 2011 where Libya was threatening. I mean, the other thing that Weldon mentioned is Sarkozy
00:50:58and the corruption of Sarkozy, where Libyan business were funding Sarkozy's campaign,
00:51:03and they were holding that over Sarkozy as blackmail. There are a whole bunch of complicated
00:51:08issues here that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, everything to do with corruption
00:51:11in politics. And Gaddafi was inconvenient to the corruption of France, to the corruption of Italy,
00:51:19to the corruption of the United States. And so we wanted to kill him. We wanted to get rid of him
00:51:25because he was a threat, not because of weapons of mass destruction or anything, but because of
00:51:30the politics of... It'd be the equivalent of, you know, slaveholders in the South, you know,
00:51:43saying it's okay for Nat Turner to have risen up and liberated a chunk of the South and he can live
00:51:50outside the boundary. No. Gaddafi, you're a slave, a slave to America, a slave to the system.
00:51:57And we're not going to allow you to declare yourself free and independent and able to do this.
00:52:02You're a slave. You sold it. You bent the knee. You kissed the ring. You know, you belong to us.
00:52:09You marched to our beat. And now you're rising up saying, no, you want a gold standard African
00:52:13currency. You've got bribery held over Sarkozy's head. Your oil is your wealth.
00:52:19You can't let slaves behave like that. So you kill them. That's what we did.
00:52:28It's, you know, I think it's, I think, you know, Kurt Weldon's only touching on
00:52:33the complexity of the situation, the lies they were told, the deliberate lies, the whole genocide thing.
00:52:40The Libyans are committing genocide. No, they're not. Nobody's saying they are. There's no evidence
00:52:45for this. You're just making it up. It's, it's like, you know, cop coming up. I got a Diet Coke
00:52:53in my hand. Drop the gun. I don't have a gun. Drop the gun. I don't have a gun. Drop, kill me.
00:53:01You know, and that's what happened to Libya. You know, they just stopped committing genocide.
00:53:06I'm not. Stop committing genocide. But we're not. Stop committing genocide. Bomb, bomb,
00:53:12bomb, bomb, bomb. It was, it was a lie. Everything about it was a lie. Hillary Clinton, again, she
00:53:18belongs in jail. You know, you remember, we came, we saw he died. The cackle of just, but
00:53:27she's Secretary of State. You don't just say these things out of the blue. And maybe she does,
00:53:33because she's deranged. But there's something there that drove her to that. And Kurt Weldon's
00:53:38right. We wanted him dead. We didn't want to give him any options. This was, you know,
00:53:44death by cop. A cop was going to kill you no matter what. You know, it doesn't have to be a gun. All the
00:53:52cop has to say is there is a gun. There didn't have to be genocide. All we had to do is say there is
00:53:55genocide. Today, everybody acknowledges that the genocide thing was just made up. Didn't happen.
00:54:01Didn't happen. They can't even, they can't even assemble a case of, well, we had good reason to
00:54:07believe at the time. They can't even do a whole Iraqi WMD thing. You know, well, you know, inspectors
00:54:13weren't on the ground, so we didn't know. So we just believed that. Nope. We never had any evidence
00:54:19of genocide. We just, we just ran with that so we could bomb, bomb them, so we could kill them. And
00:54:25that's what they did. So that's what Netanyahu is trying to talk about, the bending the knee
00:54:32aspect of it, not the killing the regime aspect of it. So I think we have to be careful when we
00:54:38talk about, you know, Netanyahu's Libya scenario. But again, the insulting nature of that.
00:54:44You know, Libya tried to get nuclear weapons in violation of international law. Iran's complied
00:54:53with the MPT. You know, that's what gives Iran the negotiating strength that they have is that
00:55:01they've done nothing wrong. You know, so we, you know, we have to be careful coming and making demands.
00:55:08Logically, you and I have talked about this, and I know I get a lot of people pissed off when I say,
00:55:12but Iran has no need for anything other than 3.75, you know, to 5%, let's say, uh, enrichment.
00:55:19There's no need, none whatsoever. And anything above that, you have to say, well, why are you doing it?
00:55:26They don't need 20% anymore because they've produced all the 20% in the world they need to
00:55:30make fuel plates. They have fuel plates that outlive the reactor, the Tehran research reactor that they,
00:55:34that they, that they have. Um, 60%, there's no reason whatsoever, unless you want to be a threshold
00:55:40state. And I got Dr. Miranda to, uh, to admit that's exactly why they did it to have leverage.
00:55:47Well, that's dangerous game you're playing there to have leverage means that you have a potential
00:55:51of developing a nuclear bomb right now, which is the red flag to the American bull that will get us
00:55:55to gore you, i.e. drop nuclear bombs on you and kill you. Um, and Iran knows this. Iran knows that
00:56:01their position is indefensible, which is why Iran's willing to negotiate. And I believe,
00:56:05bring it down to 3.75%. Missiles is a different issue. I don't see the Iranians giving up their
00:56:12missiles. Um, if I were the Iranians, I would say, um, you know, every missile that penetrated
00:56:19the iron dome was a conventional missile. And so we're going to keep all of them. Um, if you have
00:56:25a specific missile that you're interested in, uh, maybe we can work out an, an inspection.
00:56:31Um, you're worried about, you know, specific, uh, you know, capacitors, uh, my God. Capacitators,
00:56:38I guess. Yeah. I don't know if there is there that additional syllable in there. Yes. Capacitators,
00:56:45um, that, uh, that are used, you know, for, you know, to, to detonate a nuclear weapon. Apparently
00:56:50we have some concerns over this. I think it's related to some things that come out of the IAA,
00:56:55meaning that it's dual use capable of the Iranians have provided excellent. But if you're worried
00:56:59about that, something can be worked out about that. Um, if you're worried about a specific
00:57:04warhead design, I'm sure something could be arranged where the warhead was subjected to,
00:57:10you know, inspection and scrutiny to determine that it didn't, there's a deal to be made here.
00:57:16There really is a deal to be made here, uh, but it's not going to involve Iran giving up its,
00:57:20uh, ballistic missiles. When I spoke with, uh, President Raisi in September of
00:57:252003, I addressed that question specifically. I said, you know, where is your deterrence?
00:57:32You know, you've, you say you don't want a nuclear bomb. So there's no nuclear deterrence,
00:57:40which means then it's going to be conventional base, which is your ballistic missiles, but you
00:57:44haven't declared a ballistic missile deterrence policy, what the consequences of,
00:57:49you know, violating Iranian sovereignty will be, they have done. So now operation true promise one
00:57:55and two promise two is the manifestation of a declared report, but it's, it's, it's what they
00:58:03are going to do. So we now know that Iran's deterrence is its ballistic missile capabilities,
00:58:09which have been proven to be capable of defeating the Israeli iron dome. They can defeat anything the
00:58:14United States has in the region. This is their, this is their conventional deterrence. They're not
00:58:20going to give that up, nor should they be asked to give that up. Um, especially not in a vacuum. I mean,
00:58:26if I were going to make a bid for Iran's missiles, I'd say, what if we get Israel to give up their nuclear
00:58:31weapons? Ah, Iran might be able to do something there, but even then you don't want to give up that, which
00:58:38scares the crap out of everybody. Uh, and Iranian missiles do scare the crap out of everybody because they're
00:58:43very capable, uh, missiles. So there's a deal to be made here, but there's going to require flexibility
00:58:49on both sides. Iran's going to have to bite the bullet on the nuclear program and they're going to have to
00:58:55get rid of things that they don't want to get rid of downsize. Um, Whitcoff hit it on the head. I've been
00:59:01saying this all along, you know, people get mad when I say it, but when Whitcoff says it, it's genius, uh, that Iran has
00:59:07to appropriately size its nuclear capabilities to that, which it needs. It can't have excess capabilities.
00:59:14Iran knows how to build centrifuges. So if Iran develops more nuclear reactors that require fuel
00:59:19and Iran's not going to get the fuel from Russia and instead Iran opts to make its own fuel, then Iran can,
00:59:25you know, size up and, and, and, and, and install centrifuges based upon because nuclear reactors aren't built
00:59:33overnight. So if you sign off on the nuclear reactor, you go to the IAA and say, okay, at the same time, we're going to be
00:59:39bringing up the following centrifuge halls. We're going to time it so that, you know, the centrifuge
00:59:45halls are here. They're producing the fuel so that when the reactor is ready to be fueled, we have
00:59:49sufficient fuel ready to go into the reactor. So it's all part of a scheme. See, that's appropriately
00:59:54sized nuclear program. I think that that is the best Iran can hope for is an appropriately sized
01:00:02nuclear program. That's so much better than Obama's not one spending centrifuge. By the way,
01:00:08it respects Iranian sovereignty. It allows Iran's, you know, scientific base to continue to exist,
01:00:17not shut it down. But it also alleviates the concerns. And I know the Iranians get mad when I
01:00:24say this, but the moment you said you're a nuclear threshold state, you made a fatal mistake.
01:00:29Because that means we're always going to view you as a nuclear threshold state,
01:00:32always views a nation that has at least thought about leveraging nuclear capability
01:00:40into a potential nuclear weapon. And that's why you've got to be downsized. That's incompatible with
01:00:51any notion of regional peace and security. Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. They're not allowed
01:00:58to have one. They say they don't want one. So why put yourself in a position where you can leverage
01:01:02nuclear capacity and no potential nuclear weapon? Unacceptable. Again, the entire internet is going
01:01:08crazy right now. Scott Ritter's insane. He's the... Screw you guys. Because if you were right,
01:01:14there wouldn't be negotiations right now. You're wrong. I'm right. There are negotiations because
01:01:20that's the only way out of this. It's the only way out of this. And Iran knows that. But it's up to
01:01:26Trump also to be realistic here. That's why I like Steve Woodcoff, because he will be realistic.
01:01:31He will listen. You know, who could have thought? Could you imagine Joe Biden, anybody in the Biden
01:01:37administration coming back after meeting with the Russians? First of all, even meeting with the
01:01:40Russians, but coming back and saying, hey, Mr. President, Mr. Biden, all we have to do is give
01:01:46the Russians Crimea, Kyrgyzstan, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk, and everything will be okay.
01:01:51By me going, we can't even consider that. That's outrageous. Why are you bringing it up?
01:01:59Woodcoff's realistic. So just the same way, he, I think, will come back and tell Trump,
01:02:05I can get you a deal that gets it down to 3.65% appropriately sized nuclear program.
01:02:12We're not going to get rid of their missiles, but we might be able to get some inspection-based
01:02:16stuff in there to, you know, deal with the military aspect, you know, any, any transition.
01:02:22Because again, the Iranians are their own worst enemy. When you say that you're a nuclear threshold
01:02:28state, when you have officials saying within a matter of weeks, we can bring all the pieces
01:02:34together to create a weapon deployed on a missile. That means you've done some work on the warhead.
01:02:42It means you've done some work on the warhead. You know, it means you've done some work on the
01:02:46warhead. We know it means you've done some work on the warhead. So those warheads can no longer exist.
01:02:52So it's going to require some work on that aspect. But I think a deal's there, a deal's ready to,
01:03:01a deal. And both sides want this deal because the alternative is bad for everybody. Bad for the
01:03:08United States, bad for Iran, bad for the region, bad for the world.
01:03:15Scott, here is what Witkoff said about his latest meeting with Vladimir Putin.
01:03:22I do. This is the third meeting I've had with him. This last meeting lasted close to five hours.
01:03:31We had two of his key advisors in the room at the time, Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev. And it was a
01:03:41compelling meeting. This peace deal is about these so-called five territories, but there's so much
01:03:48more to it. There's security protocols. There's, you know, no NATO, NATO, article five. I mean,
01:03:58it's just, you know, a lot of detail attached to it. It's a complicated situation from, you know, rooted in,
01:04:09you know, some real problematic things happening between the two countries. And I think
01:04:14we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large.
01:04:22Yeah. He shows that the way that he's talking about the negotiation, the talks,
01:04:27that it shows how deep Russia is talking with them and how they're getting to the root of the problem.
01:04:35And do you, he's optimistic about the future of the talks, but how do you see it so far? Do you think
01:04:44that can we have a deal with Iran, with Russia, that would be hugely beneficial for Donald Trump
01:04:52and his administration, if he can do that? In case of you, as you remember, we talked about the
01:04:59situation in Ukraine before Donald Trump coming to power. You said that the easiest conflict to be
01:05:06solve is Ukraine. And here is, we are talking about Ukraine and how do you see the way that Donald
01:05:14Trump is dealing with? Again, by allowing Wyckoff to take the lead, it's a very good step. It'd be nice
01:05:24when Wyckoff brings his message back that there was a national security team ready to receive this
01:05:29message and staff it and act upon it and such. They're not. I mean, there's a disconnect between
01:05:36the State Department, Department of Defense, even within internally. Are we providing intelligence
01:05:42support to Ukraine? Are we continuing to ship weapons? Are we continuing to sanction Russia?
01:05:46Because these are different mindsets. If your mindset is how to sanction Russia, then you're not
01:05:52thinking about the economic opportunities that Wyckoff talked about. And Kirill Dmitriev is brought in for
01:06:00a specific reason. You know, he's not the security guy. He's not going to be he's not talking about
01:06:05Ukraine. He's talking about post Ukraine, what how the United States will benefit from a relationship
01:06:15with Russia, what the opportunities are for our two nations to work together. And this is important stuff.
01:06:22Ushakov on the other, he's the security guy. I mean, he's the advisor. But Ushakov's jobs made easier.
01:06:30Again, just to remind everybody, the peace deal is already done, Nima. It's done. It's called the
01:06:37Istanbul communique. And the Ukrainians already agreed to things in there. They were ready to sign off on that
01:06:45in 2022. All Putin said is that there are new realities. What are those new realities?
01:06:51The five territories. Those are the new realities.
01:06:58When Wyckoff says, we solve the five territories, we have a peace deal. It's because the Russians have
01:07:04said, you do that, the peace deal that was on the table ready to go is the one we'll go with. All those
01:07:10details in there. Now, Europe doesn't like that. So they're coming back with some counter proposals and
01:07:18the complicating thing. But again, if Trump took the bull by the horns and literally just said,
01:07:25yep, we've come to a deal with Putin. It's basically the Istanbul communique updated five
01:07:32territories. This is the peace agreement. Thank you, Vlad. We got it from here. Zelensky,
01:07:37get the hell out of here. You're fired. Bring in somebody new. You're signing this.
01:07:40You don't have any options. Europe, shut up. Literally that. I mean, I can shut up this future
01:07:50chancellor of Germany in a heartbeat. They shut him up and instantly. Hi. Yeah. Look at the U.S.
01:07:58embassy. Can you see it? You see the flag going down? Yeah, we're done. We're unplugging. We're
01:08:04finished with you until you leave, until the German people eject you. We have no relations with you
01:08:09anymore. You're an enemy of America, and we're going to treat you as an enemy of America from now
01:08:14on because what you're doing is opposing a peace that is essential to our national security. We've
01:08:20deemed you to be the number one threat. Hey, German parliament, we're sort of serious about this.
01:08:27Check your banks. We've shut them down. We've shut everything down. Oh yeah, your diplomats,
01:08:31they've all been arrested. We had the FBI storm the German embassy because you are an enemy of
01:08:35America now. We've arrested everybody and we're putting them on airplanes, flying them to
01:08:38a neutral third-party country. You want to play ball? Let's play ball because that's where we're at
01:08:44right now. Germany thinks they can oppose us. How? How do they think they're going to do this?
01:08:52How do they not understand that they're promoting World War III? I mean, this is what I'm trying to
01:08:57your audience. Scott, that's just ridiculous. Guys, we're talking about World War III here,
01:09:01literally. Okay, this is the end of area. It's not a joke anymore.
01:09:08We have a chance for peace. The treaty has already been written, agreed to by the Ukrainians once,
01:09:14updated now to reflect current reality. A simple update. Ukraine's lost those territories.
01:09:19They're never going to get them back. Russia will, I assume, make some certain compromises
01:09:26on the other aspect of it. That's what Wyckoff was talking about, Article 5, not Article 5,
01:09:32da, da, da, da. There can be some compromise there, but Russia's going to get the territories.
01:09:37The war's going to end. No data on Ukraine. We're done. War's over. Why we can't tell Europe that?
01:09:45Why do we keep sending people to Europe who give contradictory signals? Why do we allow Keith
01:09:51Kellogg to even leave the United States, take his passport? Trust me, guys, it works. You take
01:09:55their passport, they can't travel. I know. Shut it down if you don't like what they're doing.
01:10:03Tell Hegseth to stop traveling and shut up. I don't want to hear another word out of your mouth,
01:10:09Pete, except the following. Our policy is peace. Go to Ramstein and tell them.
01:10:15We're done. Shut it down. Ramstein belongs to us. It's a joint base. All you foreigners get off
01:10:22of it. Germany, we occupy. I want to remind you, we beat you in World War II. We're still in
01:10:26occupying power. That's the status. Fact is, why don't we exercise our occupying power status and shut
01:10:33your whole damn country down? Because you're doing things that are insane. You're doing things that
01:10:38are threatening not just regional peace and security, but global peace and security. America could do this.
01:10:45We could. I mean, this is the kind of stakes that we're at right now. Instead, we just send
01:10:51these contradictory signals. Germany's talking about sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine
01:10:57to facilitate deep strike. Why are we allowing this to happen?
01:11:06People say, well, Scott, this is extreme. We blew up Nord Stream 2. How extreme do you want to get,
01:11:13guys? I mean, we've shown what we're capable of doing when our national security interests are on the
01:11:18line. This is dangerous stuff. Germany's out of control. Literally out of control. And yet,
01:11:28we're letting it happen. We should tell the French the same thing. No, you're not putting any troops in
01:11:33Ukraine. We won't tolerate it. Go to the Romanians and say, shut the French bases down. Now,
01:11:42who has more leverage over Romania, France or America? Ask the Romanians who can shut down
01:11:51their economy tomorrow, France or America. So, the Romanians will do what we want. We could just
01:11:57tell the Brits and the Romanians, you don't get to operate on it. Go to the Poles and say,
01:12:01you like Fifth Corps where it's at? Then tell the Brits and the French they ain't coming through Poland
01:12:07either. And we could shut the Baltics down. And we need to pull all American troops out of the
01:12:11Baltics and tell them that, you know, if you continue to do stupid things, you lack Article
01:12:155 protection. I mean, you know, Article 5 is for nations that are acting in conformity with NATO
01:12:23policies. If you're out there doing your unilateral thing, then like Turkey going into Syria, you're on
01:12:29your own. Turkey's a NATO member. Went into Syria. Russia bombed them. Turkey didn't get Article 5
01:12:35protection because that's a non-NATO thing. So, just tell the Baltics, whatever stupidity you're
01:12:40doing to Russian tankers, that's on you, man. That's on you. NATO ain't going to be there for you.
01:12:48And it's time for us to become large in NATO. What I mean by that is to stand up and say,
01:12:53we own you. We control you. Rute, sit down and shut up. Fact is, Rute, you're out of here. Let's show
01:12:58our true power. Fire him. Call him NATO and say, Rute's done. Let's get another person in here
01:13:04because we're the boss. We're the puppet masters. You're the puppets. This is what we need to do
01:13:09if we truly want peace, is bring NATO under control and bring Europe under control and say,
01:13:16no, you don't get to start World War III. But instead, we just go forward and we give
01:13:22contradictory signals. We're either strong, we're weak, we're going to do this, we're going to do
01:13:25that, we're going to do this. And Europe, they feed off of this. I want to remind everybody that
01:13:32Europe did this once before. From 2017 to 2021, I guess, Europe wrote out four years of Donald
01:13:43Trump. It was a concerted strategy facilitated by Pompeo, Bolton, and the other deep state guys,
01:13:49but their whole job was to tie Trump up so he couldn't do his thing. That's what Europe's doing
01:13:54right now. This is a repeat of that strategy. This is the tie Trump up strategy. Trump said he learned
01:14:01from the first administration. Well, then where's that knowledge? Where's the knowledge?
01:14:07You got to shut it down, boss, or else the same thing's going to happen. You're going to get so
01:14:12tangled up, not just by the Europeans and the Ukrainians, but by the traitors in your own ranks,
01:14:18the Pompeos, the incompetent people in your ranks, the Hegseths, Waltz, the fact that you surrounded
01:14:25yourself with neoconservatives who don't want anything that you're trying to accomplish.
01:14:31The Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of State, and the National Security Advisor don't want peace
01:14:36with Russia. They don't. And yet Trump picked them. There they are. It's crazy.
01:14:44Just to wrap up this session, Scott, who's negotiating? Who's talking with Europeans? Is it
01:14:49Witkoff or Marco Rubio? Because I don't see Marco Rubio being capable of... You've just mentioned
01:14:59the main agenda. Witkoff doesn't have a European portfolio. Witkoff flies to Moscow, flies to St.
01:15:08Petersburg, flies to Oman, and comes back home and briefs the president. But he doesn't go on a feel
01:15:16good tour in Europe trying to tell people what's going on because he works for the president of the United
01:15:19States. This is Marco Rubio's job as the lead diplomat. And he should be working in concert with
01:15:26Hegseth. But Hegseth should understand that the military arm doesn't lead. The military arm
01:15:32supports. And so the Secretary of State should be going in and setting the policy mandate. And then
01:15:40Hegseth should back it up. And it should be coordinated policy. Again, they shouldn't be making it up as
01:15:45they go along. This shouldn't be about a speech writer writing a speech that you're going to give
01:15:50the day before to announce policy. That speech should be actually a product of, you know, well-staffed
01:15:56proposals on what we want to accomplish so that every word in that speech leads to a policy objective
01:16:01that people are ready to act on, that people are pushing for. But instead, everybody's just waiting
01:16:06for the speech. And then he speaks and we go, what does that mean? What does that mean? Because almost as
01:16:13soon as he gives his speech, J.D. Vance gives another speech in Munich. What does that mean?
01:16:18What does that mean? And then Marco Rubio comes out and says some things. And what does that mean?
01:16:24And that's the whole Trump administration. Nobody knows what any of this means.
01:16:29And all you have to do, though, I mean, the good news is just wait 24 hours. It'll be overcome by
01:16:34events. He'll say something else, something stupid. And so what you were worried about yesterday,
01:16:38you're not worried about anymore because something else is out there. But that's not how you make
01:16:43good policy. This is why you set yourself up for being exploited by Europe, by NATO, and by your
01:16:52enemies. Because they have met. They are meeting. What the hell do you think is happening every time,
01:16:59you know, Macron assembles the crowd there? Before that assembly happened, their staff's working
01:17:04things out. They come in with point papers. They know what they want to accomplish. They are
01:17:09speaking with a single voice. They're doing everything that we're not.
01:17:18Thank you so much, Scott, for being with us today. Great pleasure, as always.
01:17:24Thanks for having me.