11-24-25 - 9am - "Do You Have A Talkback By Chance?"

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is there anything at all that you can do to
salvage the opening of the program on a Monday morning
holiday week and you've already threwed it up.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to the Situation without Michael Brown. Here are your
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(00:35):
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Redbeard what he's worth. And now a talkback, then let's

(00:59):
welcome our guest commentator, Dragon.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Do you have it? Okay? Do you have a talkback?
By chance? Lets it? No? No, no, no, you can't
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
You can't do that because I know there are talkbacks.
I know there's some talkbacks. Yeah, all right, you know what,
screw it, let's just get started. So let's go to
I've heard an awful lot of discussion over the past well,
I think you since last week when Trump and Secretary

(01:32):
State Marco Ruby on the others, released this twenty eight
point plan that the White House negotiated with the Kremlin
without input from the Ukrainians, and that apparently we have
just absolutely obliterated the Ukrainians on Saturday. What set me

(01:55):
off about Saturday was on Friday evening, the George W.
Bush Residential Center, I don't and quite frankly, I don't care.
I'm not going to look it up. But whoever, the
director of the George W. Bush Presidential Center is posted
a tweet to X that basically said that the twenty

(02:18):
eight point plan, and I'm just paraphrasing here, but that
the twenty eight point plan is wrong and it's horrible
for the Ukrainians and that it should simply be a
one point plan, and that one point plan is Russia
get out of Ukraine. And when I read that, I

(02:40):
when I was pissed off too. I quote tweeted it
because I know that the President's staff reads my tweets.
I know this because I've talked to some of them,
and so I wanted somebody. I don't know whether it
actually got back to Bush or not, but I wanted
the staffers in Dallas to.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
See that tweet because.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
I thought, how, how what a simpleton's comment to make
for the for the president's staff to make. Now, I
don't look who this new executive director is as the
Bush Center, and again, like I said, I don't care
who it is, but that kind of simple, unrealistic response

(03:20):
on behalf of a former president that was, you know,
got us engaged in the global War on terror, got
us engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, got us engage in
a lot of things that we look back on and
we probably regret a lot of those things. For that
staffer to then come out and say, well, this is
really simple. All we should do is just say to

(03:41):
Russia get out of Ukraine. So the question that I
posed Saturday and that I want to pose again today
is what does that mean? Isn't that a lot like
when you know Ukraine first invaded or in Russia first
invaded Ukraine three or four years ago, and you know,
Joe Biden went out and he stood in the Rose garden,

(04:01):
he stood in front of a presidential seal somewhere, and
thank goodness, there was only one word because they couldn't
reprobably read much more than one word, and the one
word was don't. And then Kamala Harris thought, oh, I
think I can handle that, so I'll go out and
I'll say the same thing, don't.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Don't. Really, that's your foreign policy. Don't.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
And we, of course we see exactly how that affected
Vladimir Putin and the Russians because they kind of looked
at they kind of looked at Biden, they looked at
Kamala Harris and said, oh, well, let's think about this
for a second. Do you think we really should do it?
Because they told us not to do it. Let's think
about this. Okay, Boom, here we go and they invaded. Well,

(04:43):
what Bush's staff said is the equivalent of what Biden
and Kamala Harris said, and for that matter, Secretary of
Stint Anthony Blincoln and all the rest of them in
the Biden administration back when this occurred almost four years ago,
now was just basically don't do it. So my response is,
if we're gonna start playing simpleton when it comes to

(05:05):
foreign policy, I'm not gonna let it get by because
I know that people are on if we had a
spectrum of positions about the Russia Ukraine War, or the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, or Russia's defense of its own territory.
You see, there are so many different ways to posit
what this situation is. And I know that within this

(05:26):
audience and within the larger, you know, population of the
United States, people are all over this spectrum about what
we should or should not be doing. I don't like
the war, but I'm also very realistic about the war.
And I'm realistic about the war because one, Russia is

(05:47):
losing what twenty three and I'm not only use the
word troops, but Russia is losing twenty thousand men every
single month. He's taking He's emptied out the prisons. There
are virtually no prisoners in Russia anymore because they've all
been sent into the meat grinder on the front lines
of Ukraine. He's reached into Africa, he's reached into Yeman,

(06:11):
He's reached into North Korea, He's reached into everywhere to
try to find bodies, just to try to keep this
effort going. And now the sanctions are starting to take place,
are starting to have an effect. And in addition to
the sanctions, Putin has decided that now I'm running out
of money, I need to increase taxes, and now needs
to increase taxes on the Russian people. So Russia is

(06:32):
not exactly in the greatest spot at all, but neither
are the Ukrainians. We're at We're in a war of attrition,
and right now I couldn't tell you if you put
a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you which
side's really winning, if indeed there is even a winner
or a loser in this situation. But for Bush to

(06:53):
have come out or his staff to have come out
and said, well, the Ukrainian peace agreement is pretty simple,
Russia it out, that's not dealing with reality whatsoever. So
I talked about that on Saturday. I've thought about it
a lot more, and I've come to this conclusion. The
twenty eight point plan that the White House negotiated with

(07:13):
the Kremlin is not a done deal. It's a starting point,
but it's not even close to being a done deal.
It is a blueprint, no more, no less. It's just
simply a blueprint. Yes, they sat down with the Ruskies
and that's what they came up with, and now they've
given it to Zelenski, and Zelensky has come out in
a nationwide speech and he's talked about how you know

(07:36):
this is going to cause us to give up our
sovereignty blah blah blah blah. Yet he's probably going to
meet I think he's meeting with Trump this week. Now,
in any case, we have to recognize that Trump is
and I don't mean it's in a bad way, but
he is an unpredictable player. He could back at it
any moment, He could change the terms, he could do

(07:57):
any number of things. But he's trying to get people
to start talking now. The plan was first circulated, leaked
onto a telegram channel. Telegram is like WhatsApp or any
other messaging service, but equally it isn't a capitulation.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
And those who have described this plan.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
As a capitulation as such that they don't really want
a deal. Ukraine will be able to improve on it,
but admittedly not by much. I don't think remember when
Trump told Zelinsky, you don't have the cards. Unfortunately, now
after the recent corruption scandal in Ukraine, I think Zelensky's
hand is weaker than ever. And now, over the past

(08:41):
three years, American officials have repeatedly said that Ukraine has
no chance of winning the war, and then when we
withdrew support earlier this year, it was clear that they
had a point. Europe was in no position to plug
the gap. What this is exposing is when you think

(09:03):
about Trump's idea about stealing from Reagan, but that's fine,
peace through strength, he's really showing that the Europeans don't
have the capacity to enforce anything by peace through strength.
Europeans indeed might be self righteous defenders of the fast
collapsing multilateral world order that's going on right now, But history,

(09:26):
I think would show that when push came to shove,
the Europeans weren't ready to put their money where their
mouth is. On average, the total support for Ukraine was
around about four billion euros per month during the first
half of the year. In July and August, it collapsed
to under one billion euros per month. According to the
Kiel Institute, not one major European country has been willing

(09:50):
to cut spending or raise taxes to fund Ukraine meaningfully.
Meanwhile American taxpayers continue to do so. Now again, you
don't know where I'm going with this. You may think
you know, but you don't. But already I can hear
people on both sides of this issue screaming at me.
Oh but Michael, We've got to do everything. We've got

(10:11):
to do everything. Okay, my question, you be why. I mean,
I understand that this was an active aggression, This was
an act against Ukrainian sovereignty. I understand the geopolitical position
and the geographical position the Ukraine is in, and how
that is indeed important to America's national security. I also

(10:31):
understand what's going on with Russia, and that Russia isn't
a war of attrition, just as the Ukrainians are an
a war of attrition. And this is directly and indirectly
a threat to NATO and therefore is a direct threat
to the United States our security. And it's, frankly, if
you want to take it to a gigantic macro level,
this whole active aggression by Russia is a threat to

(10:53):
world peace. But the European strategy, if you look beyond
the photo ops and the meetings they had was just
to keep the Russians fighting until they got tired.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
But what happened.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Trump gets elected and America, I guess got tired first,
and then we found out earfully has no plan. B.
Europe is now out of money and Europe is out
of ideas. But Trump police has a plan which is
more than the Europeans have come up with. And I
think Trump is playing the long game. His tough talk

(11:29):
against Putin was merely tactical. Was this strategic? It was
just simply tactical. He was intended to mask a long
term strategy to try to force an end of the war.
In his long con analysis, Phillips O'Brien notes that even
Trump's secondary oil sanctions were a part of his original gambit.

(11:52):
These were supposed to take effect November twenty one, last week,
and yet nothing happened Indian China while they're continuing to
buy Russian oil with impunity. The sanctions were never serious.
Trump has a singular priority, singular He has one objective
to end the war, whatever it takes. Now you may

(12:13):
disagreed or agree or disagree with that. I'm just again
pointing out the reality. I'm not trying to take a
side here, I'm just pointing out the reality. Trump's singular
priority is to simply end the war. But I think
he has two major advantage advantages in his favor in
his attempt to end the war. One is Ukraine and

(12:35):
Europe's military dependence on US American taxpayers, and the other
is our the United States unique status as the only
influential Western power that has direct diplomatic channels with Moscow.
So the Europeans really did commit a huge strategic blunder
when they simultaneously ended their conversations with Vladimir Putin and

(12:57):
so Trump's twenty eight point plan Negotia by Steve Witkoff
with his counterpart in Russia Kuril Dmitri Dmitrovev and Middle
it does have the feel of a kind of a
work in progress, if you will. The leaked version was
written in Russian, did you know that? And when translated
into English it really is clumsy sounding. It's detailed, but

(13:20):
it's by no means what I would consider to be
a formally agreed to text. It sounds to me like
if somebody that was taking notes kept notes of what
the two sides were talking about and made some bullet
points and put it into bullet points, and that's what
gets leaked to telegram. There are, though, I think, some
non negotiable elements that in.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
That list of notes or bullet points.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
One is the territorial agreement, which would give Russia a
part of Ukraine that it does not yet occupy. Russia
already holds most almost ninety percent, give or take almost
ninety percent of the entire Dombas region, all of Luhaansk
and ruff three quarters of the Dunetks. So Trump's Peacepan
peace plan would hand Russia the remaining territory of Dunetsk,

(14:08):
along with two hundred thousand Ukrainians who are still resident
in that Ukrainian controlled parts of that particular oblast, and
oblast is like a state a province. Under the plan,
the territory would be demilitarized and become part of what
I guess would be just like a DMZ or a
buffer zone. And I think Trump's team accepted this because

(14:31):
they concluded correctly in my view, that without it there
would be no deal whatsoever. Putin is not going to
give up that which he has occupied, and so the
negotiating the negotiable part is that part that they're fighting
over with about which he does not have complete controller
or have an occupation. So Putin would have had continued

(14:52):
to fight and eventually captured more territory. Russia has been
making advances, albeit like, you know, maybe one hundred yards
a week or something.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
At best.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
It did manage to occupy the vital front line town
of puck Ross. It could take another year for Russia
to capture the remainder of the Dunnask before it went
for the big prize. Zapyrzi, I can ever can pronounce
this Zeparisia. That's the city. I think it's about seven
hundred and fifty thousand citizens and the capital of the
region that bears the same name. At that point, Ukraine's

(15:26):
future independence I don't think it any longer be assured.
So this is it's kind of like you've been operating
on a long term plan going all the way back
from the very beginning when the invasion first happened. Although
the Biden administration really didn't do anything. Trump comes in.
Trump was thinking about it before before he took office,

(15:47):
you know, the transition team was, and so now they've
come up with Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart have
come up with these bullet points, and it's more than
we've ever had before. But you know what I think
it does in a nutshell, I think it simply calls

(16:10):
Europe's bluff because the bureaucrats that run the EU, and
for that matter, the bureaucrats in NATO, have no other alternative.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yet.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I'm going to remind you that if you're sending me
text messages the numbers three three one zero three, it
is not whatever that other number is. It is three
three one zero three. So if you want me to
read something that you are sending, I don't read it
if you send it to the other number. So we're
talking about this twenty eight point plan or twenty six

(16:49):
or twenty nine, depending on how you read the points
that got leaked last week, to which George Bush's response was,
or at least his staff's response was, Hey, should just
simply be at one point, Russia get out of Ukraine.
And I thought one that was stupid, naive, and it
doesn't deal with reality, and it just pissed me off
because Trump's trying to be serious about trying to get

(17:13):
this war to an end. That is his singular objective
is to end the war. And when you go through
all of it, there are certain things that you recognize
that I think some things are probably non negotiable, some
things are negotiable. Actually, I think everything in the world
is negotiable, depending on all the other things.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
That you have in a package that you're negotiating.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
And of course the Lensky has already come out and
you know, and to cried this, and of course the
Europeans have too. Now what I find fascinating about the
Europeans decrying this attempt to at least get the conversation going,
is that I think it exposes just how bad Europe
is in terms of its economy, its military strength, and

(17:59):
it's it's a ability to stand on its own and
not be able to survive without our support. They have become.
I mean, it's like we're the crack dealer and they're
the crackheads, and they need us because they're too busy
running around with all the mass migration, letting all these
people come in get onto their social welfare system, and

(18:21):
they're at the same time detegrating their own military, doing
all the Green New Deal crap. They're doing all of
these things to destroy them, expecting that we will come
and save them. It's just like we did in World
War Two. Well, sucks to be you, Europe, because that
was then and this is now now. I would point
out that I've in one of the points for these

(18:45):
de militarized zones, that part of the security guarantees for
those security for those de militarized zones. That guess what
Trump's doing. Trump's looking to Europe. You keep saying, although
you're contribution to the fight in Ukraine went from tens
of billions of euros down to less than a billion

(19:07):
dollars than euros this past year. Is that if you
want security guarantees, and you claim that you do, and
they do, don't get me wrong. I do believe that
there have to be security guarantees to keep Russia from saying, okay,
we'll agree to this now, and then two years, three years,
five years, ten years down the road, we will just

(19:29):
go invade again. Once we get another Biden elected as president,
We'll just invade and go ahead and move into Kiev. Well,
I think the security guarantees would prohibit that. Whose best
interest is it that there'll be security guarantees to keep
the de militarized zones truly demilitarized. Well, some people might

(19:49):
say US troops. Well, I'm against US troops doing that.
How about we do something like we have with the DMZ.
I know we've got DMZ, we have American troops that
DMZ and se South Korea, and we have for decades now.
But we could create a similar DMZ that would put oh,
EU troops in there. Yes, Europe, you want to do something,

(20:12):
you want to show your commitment. You want to make
sure that that Russia doesn't invade poland again doesn't invade Moldova.
Then put some troops on the ground. Trump's team I
think accepted this these bullet points because I think they
concluded correctly my view that without it there would be

(20:35):
no deal whatsoever. Putin would have and would continue to fight.
He would eventually capture more territory. Russia has been making advances, although,
as I said in the last segment, very little, maybe
one hundred yards here or there. It did manage to
occupy some of the front line towns Vaporiziesia. They're still

(20:56):
going after seven hundred thousand or more citizens there, the
capital of the region that bears the same name, and
if they were able to do that, Ukraine's the entirety
of Ukraine's future and their independence would no longer be assured.
So I don't think the peace deal is as one
sided as everybody keeps claiming it is over the weekend.

(21:19):
It does recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine. It does give
it a right to join the EU. Not NATO, but
the EU. That's probably a distinction that I need to emphasize,
because there's nothing about the EU. If the European Union
wanted to invite Ukraine to become part of that conglomerate,

(21:43):
they could do so. But it does prohibit Ukraine from
becoming a member of NATO. It caps its military, the
Ukrainian militaryat six hundred thousand troops versus their current nine
hundred thousand, so are reduction of about thirty percent.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Is that reasonable? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Seems reasonable, particularly if you have troops in there, because
it does not it does not restrict NATO countries from
becoming part of that security guarantee. Now NATO can't provide
certain long range missiles, certain weapons, but you know that

(22:21):
seems reasonable to me too, as long as there are
the security guarantees. But you know, you know the real
about butts, right. This number fourteen in the twenty eight
points suggests the investing of one hundred billion dollars of

(22:41):
Russia's frozen assets in the reconstruction of Ukraine, with the
United States United States taking fifty percent of the profits
from that. Now, I think that's classic Trump playing commercial
games which are beyond the imagination of the stupid European diplomats.
And in addition to that, europe would be obliged to

(23:04):
pay about one hundred billion dollars of assistance from their
own pockets, and there would be created a US Russian
Investment Fund to finance joint American Russian projects, with the
profits being shared from those. Now that's kind of a curveball,
because you're actually taking sovereign money being held frozen by

(23:24):
European countries and saying to Russia, it sucks to be you,
but we're gonna take your money and we're gonna spend
that in rebuilding the territory that you've destroyed. I think
it's a good I think it's a good trade off.
But it's the first time that kind of thing's been done.
I think most importantly, it forces Europe to unfreeze two
hundred billion dollars in Russian assets currently held in European accounts,

(23:48):
mostly held in Belgium. That's a pretty bitter pill. Europe
had hoped it could use the Russian money as collateral
for Ukrainian loans. Trump has no authority to force Europe
to release the funds and members of that you have
already said no. But Trump could make life difficult if
it refuses to do so. Europe's only semi coherent strategy

(24:12):
regarding Ukraine has been to withhold those assets, those Russian assets,
as leverage for future reparations. Well, that's a plan built
on the fiction that Ukraine is going to win the war.
I don't know whether that's true or not. But if
Russia and Ukraine end up agreeing to a deal, then
that scheme would be rendered unworkable since it would be

(24:34):
a tool with which the Europeans could sabotage the deal.
And I just simply don't trust the Europeans. There's another
redline in this piece deal too, and that's the gradual
lifting of sanctions. You know, if you readmit Russia to
the Group of Seven, the Advanced Industrial Nations, of the world,
making it the G eight instead of the G seven.
Once again, that may not be acceptable to the Europeans.

(24:58):
Russia was expelled in two thousand and FOURT team after
the annexed crime CRIMEA, so a revived E eight would
effectively be ruled by Trump and putin. So no surprise
then that we're out, that we are where we are,
and I think that it is that we have called
Europe's bluff. Now, Ukraine made some positive noise about the deal.

(25:24):
I'll tell you what those are. Next to Janu. We're
talking about this twenty eight point deal to bring the
Ukraine Russian war to an end. And I think people
have been The histronics around this thing have been really
kind of lopsided because no matter which side of this

(25:45):
issue you fall down on, I shouldn't put it that way.
I think many people, regardless of which side of the
issue they fall down on, make one fatal error, and
that is recognizing the military reality on the girl because
you can't, as George Bush's staffers want to say, just

(26:06):
tell Russia to pull out?

Speaker 3 (26:09):
How that work?

Speaker 1 (26:10):
When Joe Biden said, don't what we should just told
Saden was saying, don't leave. I mean, it was just
so naive of Bush's staff to say that. It really
pissed me off, because we need to bring this to
an end. It is a humanitarian crisis, it is a

(26:33):
political crisis, and quite frankly, it's a crisis for our
national security and security of Europe. And I think the
domestic attitudes in Europe, I mean in Ukraine are shifting
just as much as I think attitudes are in this country.
A woman by the name of Ms Mendel Iluyah something Mendal.

(26:54):
She's Zelenski's former press secretary. She's a really staunched defender
of Ukraine. She is a she is Ukrainian through and through.
She tweeted this out over the weekend, quote, my country
is bleeding out. Many who reflexively oppose every peace proposal
believe that they are defending Ukraine. But with all due respect,

(27:15):
that is the clearest proof they have no idea what
is actually happening on the front lines and inside the
country right now.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
I think she's absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
She's right in her observation that the loudest supporters of
Ukraine and Europe, and I think to some degree in
this country are those that have no basic understanding whatsoever
of the military reality of what's going on on the ground.
So are the Europeans going to encourage the Lisky to
keep on fighting. I'm sure they will, but I don't
think they will succeed, and then ultimately they'll back down too.

(27:50):
If Ukraine were to reject this deal outright, I think
Trump would probably formally disconnect his remaining military aid and
is Intelli Intel supports Ukraine, and the country has to
have that because that's its early warning system for all
the incoming attacks, as well as guiding its own strikes
on Russian infrastructure. And Trump could go even further and

(28:15):
renounce US responsibility for europe security. Oh Michael, you never
do that, really, huh, Because he imposed the tariffs on
Europe and everybody said, oh, no, you can't do that,
and while Europe do, they rolled over, rolled over like
a dead cat. Okay, all right, well you give up.
I think that's the same game that he's playing here.

(28:35):
I think it's exactly the same game that he's playing,
And people like George W. Bush are completely missing the point.
And I think just because they're so infected with Trump
derangement syndrome, and I think they're refusing to recognize that.
I think most Americans, while we support Ukraine, don't want
troops on the ground. Who is most responsible for their

(28:58):
own defense when it comes to Europe, it is Europe.
But Europe has squandered its defense industry, Europe has squandered
its own culture. Europe has absolutely screwed the pooch. And
I think that Trump recognizes that, and they're like, Okay, well,
if you're so adamant that you need Ukraine as a buffer,

(29:19):
which I do believe they do need Ukraine as a
buffer from further Russian aggression, then here's my deal. Take it,
talk about it, figure out what you want to do.
Sometimes you've got a fish or cut vat, and I
think that's exactly what's happening here.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
You know, I would ask you serious question.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
If the answer is to tell Russia to just pull out,
to get out of Ukraine, how would you enforce that?
How would you make that happen? For everybody who screams
and yells at me and they don't understand that, I
have got a much more nuanced pen about the Russian
Ukraine War than most people because I recognize one the

(30:04):
reality on the ground to the geopolitical reality of we've
got Russia, and I understand what's going on inside Russia too,
I understand what's going on in Ukraine. This is a
no win situation for everyone, and the only way that
I see that you could actually bring it to an
end would be for American troops on the ground. I

(30:27):
don't want that, and I don't think you want that,
because that puts US in a direct kinetic war with
the Russians, and then that will spill over into Poland,
that will spill over into Moldova, that will spill over
into Germany, and it'll be Czechoslovakia in nineteen forty four
all over again, and then we're facing another World War.

(30:51):
So I think Trump understands the long game, and I
think he understands where Europe is. He understands the status
of all the people involved in these negotiations, and what's
he trying to do. He's trying to figure out a
way to make sure that we least talk and that
Europe step up and do their part.