December 17, 2025 • 12 mins
LISTEN and SUBSCRIBE on:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
From America’s uneasy military footprint in Syria to the broader question of assimilation at home, this episode tackles two issues that are often discussed separately—but shouldn’t be. Why are U.S. troops stationed in places with no clear mission, and what happens when deterrence disappears? Drawing on insights from Victor Davis Hanson, Rand Paul, and history itself, the discussion argues that Americans should never be left as sitting ducks overseas. At the same time, it turns inward to the assimilation debate, questioning an immigration model that prioritizes numbers over shared values, cultural cohesion, and accountability. An empire that won’t defend its people abroad—and won’t insist on assimilation at home—eventually weakens itself on both fronts.
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
From America’s uneasy military footprint in Syria to the broader question of assimilation at home, this episode tackles two issues that are often discussed separately—but shouldn’t be. Why are U.S. troops stationed in places with no clear mission, and what happens when deterrence disappears? Drawing on insights from Victor Davis Hanson, Rand Paul, and history itself, the discussion argues that Americans should never be left as sitting ducks overseas. At the same time, it turns inward to the assimilation debate, questioning an immigration model that prioritizes numbers over shared values, cultural cohesion, and accountability. An empire that won’t defend its people abroad—and won’t insist on assimilation at home—eventually weakens itself on both fronts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst and trader Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Markowski, Empire and assimilation. Guys like Rand Paul get a
lot of heat. They call him an isolationist because he's
constantly talking about the need to bring our troops back home.
I think we had troops and a and an interpreter
killed in Syria, and he makes the point they said,
(00:38):
you know, why are we there? What is the point
in our being there? Why we have nine hundred troops there? Exactly? Wow,
We're a trip wire for some sort there. Anyway, I
want to talk a little bit about that. I want
to talk a little bit about assimilation. A guy have
a tremendous deal of respect for I highly recommend his books. Historian.
(01:02):
He's a professor at Stanford, Victor Davis Hanson. I think
almost all of his books that he's come out with,
he's a great classical historian. Above his stuff, he's done
about ancient Greece to and truly phenomenal work. Tend to
differ with him to some degree on economic issues. Sometimes
(01:25):
it was a little off and kind of goes on
the populace front when it comes to that. But neither
here nor There. He does a podcast, and I want
to talk a little about some of the comments that
was made because Trump said, Trump said that he is
going to retaliate after that ambush that took place in Syria.
(01:51):
We'll see again this what happened in Syria happened a
lot in Afghanist. It was actually a great, great film
by Guy Ritchie, fantastic, one of the better films I've
seen in some time. I think, came out a couple
of years ago. It was called a Covenant. Had dealt
with Afghanistan with the interpreters and how you know, certain
(02:14):
people would get kidnapped and there would be an ambush
and all sorts of things. Was really really great film.
It wasn't a true story, but was based on several
other stories. But anyway, neither here nor There, Hanson says,
I think we have nine hundred soldiers in Syria, and
I think the former Isis members who have now flipped
and are trying to form a government in Syria who
ousted the Asad dynasty. Are supposedly pro American, and they
(02:38):
are supposedly, according to Trump, outraged at this and will
punish them. I don't believe it either. I don't think
quite frankly, I don't think Hanson thinks that they're going
to be punished. No, it's let's see how let's things
(03:00):
a little bit and see what we can get away with.
And he talked about how we lost to Terrence in Syria,
and he talked about it during the Biden administration, and
he says, I'm not blaming Biden solely, but for four
years they staged over three hundred and thirty attacks originating
in Syria on American basis security positions, and we didn't
do much of anything. We basically established this principle that
(03:23):
if you want to kill an American, nothing's going to
happen to you. I've talked about this for some time,
the fact that, you know, any attack I'm president of
the United States, I'm going with the Don Corleone assessment,
(03:46):
where you know, he talks about bringing his son Michael home,
and he's having the meeting with the five families, and
of anything anything is to happen to my son, you know,
he dies in a prison hangs himself in a prison cell,
get struck by a bolt of lightning. I'm gonna start
blaming people in this room. That's quite frankly, how we
(04:08):
should handle Americans around the globe. With that being said,
we shouldn't be putting ourselves unnecessarily in harms. Way, anyway,
back to Hanson, Donald Trump's gonna have to find a
way to disabuse people of that notion that nothing is
(04:29):
going to happen to you if you attack an American,
and we'll see what he does. But if he can't,
then you can't put Americans over there as sitting ducks
like we did in Lebanon, and Reagan took everybody out
of Lebanon. That probably was a bad sign, a reaction
to the destruction the embassy and the barracks in nineteen
eighty three. But if you're gonna put Americans over there,
(04:50):
then you're gonna have to tell their enemies if you
kill these people, we're going to make life very uncomfortable
for you. Now, let's get into the assimilation part again,
something that I have been talking about for some time,
and actually a little bit more often than not as
of late. There's nothing more uncomfortable for radical Islamis because
(05:15):
we got about a quarter of a million of them
here on college campuses around the country to tell me,
tell them, we really have no problem with you. But
if you're associated in any way with these movements, or
let's just say there's certain countries and Trump has named them,
(05:36):
I don't think there's at this point in time, there's
no need. We have enough people coming in. There's no
need to bring people from Gaza, from the West Bank,
from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, I don't know, maybe Jordan, maybe not,
maybe some of the golf places, but there's no reason
(05:57):
we have enough people. Why would we bring anybody in
from Somalia. There'd be no reason to do that. We
have enough people here and we've already proven that A
we can't vet them and b they're not honest they
as a group immigrants about who they are and what
(06:17):
they're here for, and that they will all be self
supporting or they have a patron that will support them.
And when you have seventy five to eighty percent of
the Somali community on public assistance and they're committing fraud.
In addition, and then only a Minnesota governor Waltz would say,
we want more people like this. He actually said that
(06:42):
it was basically it was gibberish. We have seventy five
percent of the Somali communities on public assistance and they've
created the greatest welfare fraud the United States, a large
group of Somalis, and we want more people just like that.
That's basically what Walls is saying. Again, people who refuse
to assay, they have no desire to assimilate. Maybe they
(07:06):
can't assimilate based upon their culture. If you come over
from a country, the difference, as I said before, between
a Judeo Christian country where that is the majority religion,
and an Islamic where it's the overwhelmingly overwhelming religion, is
one of tolerance. If you are in an Islamic country,
(07:30):
and I've been to a lot of them, and you
just watch, you can't be apostate, an atheist, agnostic, it's
just almost impossible. You at least have to profess you're
a devout Muslim. Here in the United States or Western Europe,
you can do whatever you want. And that's the difference.
So except for these you know, petro chektoms that have
(07:53):
all this money, that's why people are not flocking to Egypt.
They're not flocking to Morocco Outa, They're not flocking to
Tunisia and Libya. They're not flocking to the West Bank.
They're not flocking to any of these places. If they're
not Muslim and Arab, they're just not doing it. They're
coming here because they have a particular view. They want
(08:15):
the security, the freedom, the prosperity of the United States
or Western Europe, but they want it in a Cocoon
as an enclave so they can continue to have all
their traditional customs and values. But with the major exception.
They won't be poor, they won't be monitored by the government,
they won't be attacked by their tribal rivals. They'll be safe,
they'll be rich, they'll be healthy. When they get a
(08:39):
problem like I have, they just will go right to
a university research hospital and bam, three hundred thousand dollars
for procedure or something that'll be paid for, and then
they can vote for somebody like elan Omar, who says
this is a trashy country and the dictatorship is worse
than the one that she left. She said at uh huh,
(09:03):
uh huh, remember got interview actually used to you know,
out of many one e pluribus um. Yeah, and it's
something I talked about for some time. The fit's not there.
(09:23):
We're just we're not the right place for you. You know.
I wish these people, yeah, we wish you best, Okay,
but we just don't think you're gonna figure you're not
gonna be truly happy here. Well I guess they are
happy here because again we allow them to do whatever
the hell they want. Yeah, quick story, this is this
(09:45):
true story. This this I remember this vividly. This was
two thousand and one, two thousand and one. I am
in Rhodes, Greece, and I'm with my wife saying it
and she was going out to get I went with
(10:06):
her going out to pick up some food items. I
mean this was again they still had the dragma in Greece.
Everything would costs nothing. Oh god, I missed those days. Anyway,
out to get food, we were going to one of
the beaches in Roads and there was a new shop
that opened up. And she goes into the shop and
(10:30):
they were all Brits that owned this shop, you know
where we were buying the food and she starts speaking
to them and Greek, and they didn't speak a lick
of it. They didn't speak a lick of it. And
she told them, she kind of told them off. But
in her stir voice, she's a bit of a tough lady.
(10:53):
She's like, listen, I want to come here, fine, enjoy
invest the country, make a living here. But you learn
the language. And they're all like, yes, ma'am. Anyway, that's
a part of it, people, that's a part of it.
We give away that and we bend and you know know,
(11:17):
press two for all that stuff. Step in the wrong
direction again. One of the things that again is jogging
my memory here back in time is the roads in
two thousand and one. Let's go back. Let's go back
to Bill Clinton where he made it a law here
in this country that if you walk into any federally
(11:41):
funded institution hospital, if somebody comes in there and is
speaking Swahili, you better have paperwork in Swahili. You better
find somebody that is able to translate. Yeah, no, we
don't need to do that. Watchdog on Wall Street dot
(12:05):
Com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst and trader Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Markowski, Empire and assimilation. Guys like Rand Paul get a
lot of heat. They call him an isolationist because he's
constantly talking about the need to bring our troops back home.
I think we had troops and a and an interpreter
killed in Syria, and he makes the point they said,
(00:38):
you know, why are we there? What is the point
in our being there? Why we have nine hundred troops there? Exactly? Wow,
We're a trip wire for some sort there. Anyway, I
want to talk a little bit about that. I want
to talk a little bit about assimilation. A guy have
a tremendous deal of respect for I highly recommend his books. Historian.
(01:02):
He's a professor at Stanford, Victor Davis Hanson. I think
almost all of his books that he's come out with,
he's a great classical historian. Above his stuff, he's done
about ancient Greece to and truly phenomenal work. Tend to
differ with him to some degree on economic issues. Sometimes
(01:25):
it was a little off and kind of goes on
the populace front when it comes to that. But neither
here nor There. He does a podcast, and I want
to talk a little about some of the comments that
was made because Trump said, Trump said that he is
going to retaliate after that ambush that took place in Syria.
(01:51):
We'll see again this what happened in Syria happened a
lot in Afghanist. It was actually a great, great film
by Guy Ritchie, fantastic, one of the better films I've
seen in some time. I think, came out a couple
of years ago. It was called a Covenant. Had dealt
with Afghanistan with the interpreters and how you know, certain
(02:14):
people would get kidnapped and there would be an ambush
and all sorts of things. Was really really great film.
It wasn't a true story, but was based on several
other stories. But anyway, neither here nor There, Hanson says,
I think we have nine hundred soldiers in Syria, and
I think the former Isis members who have now flipped
and are trying to form a government in Syria who
ousted the Asad dynasty. Are supposedly pro American, and they
(02:38):
are supposedly, according to Trump, outraged at this and will
punish them. I don't believe it either. I don't think
quite frankly, I don't think Hanson thinks that they're going
to be punished. No, it's let's see how let's things
(03:00):
a little bit and see what we can get away with.
And he talked about how we lost to Terrence in Syria,
and he talked about it during the Biden administration, and
he says, I'm not blaming Biden solely, but for four
years they staged over three hundred and thirty attacks originating
in Syria on American basis security positions, and we didn't
do much of anything. We basically established this principle that
(03:23):
if you want to kill an American, nothing's going to
happen to you. I've talked about this for some time,
the fact that, you know, any attack I'm president of
the United States, I'm going with the Don Corleone assessment,
(03:46):
where you know, he talks about bringing his son Michael home,
and he's having the meeting with the five families, and
of anything anything is to happen to my son, you know,
he dies in a prison hangs himself in a prison cell,
get struck by a bolt of lightning. I'm gonna start
blaming people in this room. That's quite frankly, how we
(04:08):
should handle Americans around the globe. With that being said,
we shouldn't be putting ourselves unnecessarily in harms. Way, anyway,
back to Hanson, Donald Trump's gonna have to find a
way to disabuse people of that notion that nothing is
(04:29):
going to happen to you if you attack an American,
and we'll see what he does. But if he can't,
then you can't put Americans over there as sitting ducks
like we did in Lebanon, and Reagan took everybody out
of Lebanon. That probably was a bad sign, a reaction
to the destruction the embassy and the barracks in nineteen
eighty three. But if you're gonna put Americans over there,
(04:50):
then you're gonna have to tell their enemies if you
kill these people, we're going to make life very uncomfortable
for you. Now, let's get into the assimilation part again,
something that I have been talking about for some time,
and actually a little bit more often than not as
of late. There's nothing more uncomfortable for radical Islamis because
(05:15):
we got about a quarter of a million of them
here on college campuses around the country to tell me,
tell them, we really have no problem with you. But
if you're associated in any way with these movements, or
let's just say there's certain countries and Trump has named them,
(05:36):
I don't think there's at this point in time, there's
no need. We have enough people coming in. There's no
need to bring people from Gaza, from the West Bank,
from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, I don't know, maybe Jordan, maybe not,
maybe some of the golf places, but there's no reason
(05:57):
we have enough people. Why would we bring anybody in
from Somalia. There'd be no reason to do that. We
have enough people here and we've already proven that A
we can't vet them and b they're not honest they
as a group immigrants about who they are and what
(06:17):
they're here for, and that they will all be self
supporting or they have a patron that will support them.
And when you have seventy five to eighty percent of
the Somali community on public assistance and they're committing fraud.
In addition, and then only a Minnesota governor Waltz would say,
we want more people like this. He actually said that
(06:42):
it was basically it was gibberish. We have seventy five
percent of the Somali communities on public assistance and they've
created the greatest welfare fraud the United States, a large
group of Somalis, and we want more people just like that.
That's basically what Walls is saying. Again, people who refuse
to assay, they have no desire to assimilate. Maybe they
(07:06):
can't assimilate based upon their culture. If you come over
from a country, the difference, as I said before, between
a Judeo Christian country where that is the majority religion,
and an Islamic where it's the overwhelmingly overwhelming religion, is
one of tolerance. If you are in an Islamic country,
(07:30):
and I've been to a lot of them, and you
just watch, you can't be apostate, an atheist, agnostic, it's
just almost impossible. You at least have to profess you're
a devout Muslim. Here in the United States or Western Europe,
you can do whatever you want. And that's the difference.
So except for these you know, petro chektoms that have
(07:53):
all this money, that's why people are not flocking to Egypt.
They're not flocking to Morocco Outa, They're not flocking to
Tunisia and Libya. They're not flocking to the West Bank.
They're not flocking to any of these places. If they're
not Muslim and Arab, they're just not doing it. They're
coming here because they have a particular view. They want
(08:15):
the security, the freedom, the prosperity of the United States
or Western Europe, but they want it in a Cocoon
as an enclave so they can continue to have all
their traditional customs and values. But with the major exception.
They won't be poor, they won't be monitored by the government,
they won't be attacked by their tribal rivals. They'll be safe,
they'll be rich, they'll be healthy. When they get a
(08:39):
problem like I have, they just will go right to
a university research hospital and bam, three hundred thousand dollars
for procedure or something that'll be paid for, and then
they can vote for somebody like elan Omar, who says
this is a trashy country and the dictatorship is worse
than the one that she left. She said at uh huh,
(09:03):
uh huh, remember got interview actually used to you know,
out of many one e pluribus um. Yeah, and it's
something I talked about for some time. The fit's not there.
(09:23):
We're just we're not the right place for you. You know.
I wish these people, yeah, we wish you best, Okay,
but we just don't think you're gonna figure you're not
gonna be truly happy here. Well I guess they are
happy here because again we allow them to do whatever
the hell they want. Yeah, quick story, this is this
(09:45):
true story. This this I remember this vividly. This was
two thousand and one, two thousand and one. I am
in Rhodes, Greece, and I'm with my wife saying it
and she was going out to get I went with
(10:06):
her going out to pick up some food items. I
mean this was again they still had the dragma in Greece.
Everything would costs nothing. Oh god, I missed those days. Anyway,
out to get food, we were going to one of
the beaches in Roads and there was a new shop
that opened up. And she goes into the shop and
(10:30):
they were all Brits that owned this shop, you know
where we were buying the food and she starts speaking
to them and Greek, and they didn't speak a lick
of it. They didn't speak a lick of it. And
she told them, she kind of told them off. But
in her stir voice, she's a bit of a tough lady.
(10:53):
She's like, listen, I want to come here, fine, enjoy
invest the country, make a living here. But you learn
the language. And they're all like, yes, ma'am. Anyway, that's
a part of it, people, that's a part of it.
We give away that and we bend and you know know,
(11:17):
press two for all that stuff. Step in the wrong
direction again. One of the things that again is jogging
my memory here back in time is the roads in
two thousand and one. Let's go back. Let's go back
to Bill Clinton where he made it a law here
in this country that if you walk into any federally
(11:41):
funded institution hospital, if somebody comes in there and is
speaking Swahili, you better have paperwork in Swahili. You better
find somebody that is able to translate. Yeah, no, we
don't need to do that. Watchdog on Wall Street dot
(12:05):
Com
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