Larry Page called Elon Musk a “speciest”

• prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species

Another Claim: Elon’s actions define the messiah complex

Questions:

1. Are you a human supremicist?

2. How do you factor in other species?

3. How do you view inequality in humans?

Speciesism

Speciesism (/ˈspiːʃiːˌzɪzəm, -siːˌzɪz-/) is a term used in philosophy and animal ethics for the treatment of individuals according to their species membership. The term has several definitions.^[1] Some writers define it as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on species membership,^[2][3][4] while others define it more broadly as differential treatment based on species, regardless of whether that treatment is justified.^[5][6] Richard D. Ryder, who coined the term, defined it as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species”.^[7]

The concept is used by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and animal rights advocates to analyse differences in how humans treat non-human animals. Writers on the subject have applied it to practices including factory farming, animal slaughter, blood sports, the use of animals for fur and leather, animal testing, and the treatment of animals classified as feral or invasive.^{[8][9][10][11]} Some authors also connect speciesism with the refusal to assist animals suffering in the wild when their suffering results from natural processes.^[12][13]

Elsewhere:

Context of Court Case:

Musk is suing Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, his former collaborators and cofounders at the artificial intelligence outfit OpenAI, for what he argues is a grievous and greedy breach of the frontier lab’s original nonprofit founding mission. But over the past few days, it sometimes seemed like he’d forgotten this whole circus was his idea. As the first witness to take the stand, Musk had an opportunity to set the agenda and charm the room

Email Archives

What is speciesism?

‘Speciesism’ is the idea that being human is a good enough reason for human animals to have greater moral rights than non-human animals.

BBC: The ethics of speciesm

Video Transcript: Pivot with Kara Swisher

31:49

Well, one of the things he was concerned he absolutely and one of the interesting things I love them being under oath because now I finally hear the things I

thought were true like that Larry Page and he got into an argument cuz he was he was a doom a doom doomer for sure

back then and Larry Page called him a speciesist for being concerned be overly overly negative which I’m like yeah this

we like the the human species just sorry You know, these people, these people, I can’t tell you. I’m so pleased for people to see them as they are, right?

You know, when someone said greedy, racist, homophobic, piece of garbage, I’m like, you see what I’m saying? Like,

jerks. Um, don’t care about people. This whole thing is fantastic because they’re under oath and they have to show

themselves and they also have to show how they’re trying to present themselves. Like Elon is the savior of the world when he has decimated. He’s

responsible for the millions of these deaths that are going to happen because of USID. He’s responsible for all manner of stuff that he’s been doing on

Twitter. And he wants to present himself as it is like Thanos. Thanos has an idea of himself as a hero when he’s the

villain because he’s he’s helping the human race and he talks about it. To me, this defines Messiah Complex.

Full stop. He He’s the guy to to colonize to turn us into an interplanetary species. Only him. He’s

the one that should control AI. He’s I just And I It’s literally I’m Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. I would agree. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s good for him and I don’t think him getting agit this lawyer actually worked for him at one point and then worked against him. So, he’s

familiar with this firm and he’s just losing it on the stand, which is just what he should not do. He should be as

calm as cucumber and he can’t be. And it’ll be interesting the contrast with I think Sam will be smooth as silk. I think he’s not online. On online, he’s

kind of sad over on Twitter. Sad Sam and Elon’s crazy Elon. And by the way, an increase in white supremacist post, too.

Um, but Sam has got to hold it together during and so does Greg Brockman. Um,

and so does Satcha, which will help anchor Open AI quite a bit, as you said.

So, we’ll see. You know what I thought about doing, Scott? I thought about going down to the courtroom when I was in San Francisco cuz I had some free

time and just sitting and waving at him just to get him even more riled up. Just troll him. Hey, girl. Does he show up? Does he go to court?

Palate Cleanser: Lamb and Her Rock

Wikipedia

Palantir has been criticized for its involvement in expanding government surveillance through artificial intelligence and facial recognition technologies.^[22][23] Critics have raised concerns about its contracts with the Trump administration, which enable deportations of undocumented immigrants and the aggregation of sensitive data on Americans (Wikipedia)

Transcript:

So Palantir have posted a pretty bizarre manifesto which has been described as the ramblings of a super villain. People who don’t know what

Palantir is, it’s a US spy techch giant co-founded by the billionaire and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel. It’s been called the world’s scariest and most important

company and its tech has been used by everyone from ICE to the Israeli Defense Forces. This weekend its official

account posted like a 22 point manifesto on X. startup post said because we keep getting asked but no one really knows

who’s asking. The key points included implying that some cultures are inferior to others. Some cultures have produced vital advances. Others remain

dysfunctional and regressive, heaping praise on the US for its role in global peace and progressive values, while

saying that America should reinstate the military draft and saying that free and democratic societies need hard power

over soft power and moral appeal. Also said that Silicon Valley had an obligation to help out in things like national defense and violent crimes. And

the future is AI war because if we don’t build the killer robots, our enemies will build them. Weirder points included

saying multiple times we need to be nicer to public figures and billionaires. So this means not snickering at Elon Musk for not just

staying in his lane and making boatloads of money. As Taylor Swift said, “It’s a good thing I like my friends canceled.”

But all of this is a worrying statement from an incredibly powerful company, one which demonstrates just how deeply embedded Palantir is in the Trump big

tech axis. As someone from the tech nonprofit Fox Club told me, the list appears to be taken from the recent book of Palantir CEO, the controversial

billionaire Alex Karp. That book laments a widespread complacency among engineers and founders who build photosharing apps

as opposed to collaborating with governments to secure the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order. Side note, this is the guy who drew criticism recently for saying that

AI would disrupt the power of childless cat ladies. I’m sorry. Highly educated,

often female voters who vote mostly Democrat and for last year suggesting that Palantir wants when it’s necessary to scare enemies and on occasion kill

them. You might see all this as the self-indulgent rambling of a powerful tech company, but it speaks to a larger movement that’s happening right now

a software company, but a pundit with important insights into the future of civilization. one in which the west deserves to be globally dominant and

should use the technological might of Palantir to achieve this.

ELSEWHERE:

Alexander Dugin on Eccentrism and Epstein associates

The recipe for saving the unipolar world, which has begun to crack, is total global surveillance and the concentration of big data in the hands of the United States. It is no coincidence that Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, regulars at the Bilderberg Club and the World Economic Forum, are now dictating this agenda. The fact that Thiel’s name appears on Epstein’s lists almost more frequently than any other—along with the names of people from Trump’s inner circle—only underscores the nature of this elite. The manifesto itself contains a call to ignore the psychological or moral “peculiarities” of the representatives of this new ruling class.

In one of its points, the authors of this manifesto urge us not to be too harsh on the “psychological deviations”— in essence, the perversions—of political and economic leaders. The logic is this: if these people are creative and drive technology forward, society must show leniency toward their “peculiarities,” no matter how monstrous they may be. We are dealing with outright techno-fascism in its most radical form.

The sole criterion for success here is declared to be technological development. According to the manifesto, nuclear weapons take a back seat—possession of artificial intelligence becomes the new deterrent. Welcome to “The Matrix.” One of the most shocking points is the call to abandon the restrictions imposed on Germany and Japan after World War II. They are being offered the chance to once again become powerful militarized structures, but now under the full digital control of Palantir.

COMMENTARY:

DETAIL:

Original X.com post: Palantir’s 22-Point Manifesto

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

6. national service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Questions:

1. What do you think the average American thinks about “Global Dominance Bros” like Pete Hegseth and Alex Karp?

2. Who are the members that comprise what I call the “Global Dominance Bros”?

3. What limits are there to this class of people?

4. Who are the alternative AI Leaders that the public can put their faith in.

Comments:

23. Companies should not be publishing manifestos on how our societies should operate and function. The act of private companies attempting to take on the role of government and/or policy construction should be seen as a threat to national security and the Western way of life.

Unless Palantir or others are willing to accept direct democratic oversight and accountability, they should remain entirely outside of the realm of policy formation or decision-making.

We are a freedom-loving people with values, principles, and rights that are not gifted to us by government, or corporations, or narcissistic drug addicts suffering from god complexes.

If corporations will not or cannot understand this, and stand in support of fundamental Western values (free speech, privacy, individual liberty, etc.) they should be broken up or temporarily nationalised in order to bring them back under direct democratic accountability and control, and until new laws and/or constitutional amendments can be made to protect free citizens from infringements on their god-given rights.

ELSEWHERE:

• CBT Automotive: Government ‘kill switch’ in your next car — and Congress made it happen

• Yahoo: House Preserves Vehicle “Kill Switch” Mandate Despite Privacy Backlash

• Palmero Law Group: Types of Car Kill Switches

QUESTIONS:

1. How much do these electronics add to the cost of the cars and trucks?

2. Who has liability if these electronics fail to operate property?

3. Who supports these surveillances measures? Exactly where does this support break down and how much do they stand to profit?

4. Who are the data brokers who have access to the data?

5. What is the background of Jim Himes vs Jaime Raskin/
   

   Thanks for reading openpolitics! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Here is the argument that Iran is defeating the US:

First, Iran has the advantage in that it has to merely avoid defeat, while the US has to actually camp out in the region indefinitely1 in the hope that they can get Iran to surrender or agree to a set of terms. The US can only maintain the blockade for so long. Iran is like Vietnam in their willingness to sacrifice, and they merely have to play defense.

The Iranians have weathered past attacks, such as a nearly 8-year war with Iraq when the US supplied Saddam Hussein and Iraq with chemical weapons,2 along with the intel Iraq used to target Iranians. Contrary to their portrayal in American media, Iran didn’t respond to Iraq’s chemical weapons attacks in kind, with chemical attacks of their own. Only the side the US was supporting resorted to chemical weapons.****

Iran didn’t control the Strait of Hormuz before the War; now they do, in part. Some say controlling the Strait of Hormuz is even better than having a nuclear bomb.

Iran is allied with the Houthis, which can block trade via their control of the Strait on the Red Sea. The Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb is strategically even more significant than the Strait of Hormuz!

Iran has “escalation dominance”:3 4

• Iran can destroy Gulf countries’5 oil and gas fields and infrastructure, knocking out Gulf energy resources for a number of years, leading to a global depression.

  • Such an attack would be devastating to the US and it’s allies, and ..

  • It would generate higher oil prices, which would actually benefit Iran and Russia.6

  • Being able to benefit financially when your opponent is losing is a very powerful strategic arrangement.

• Iran could destroy Israeli and US Gulf allies’ desalination plants.

  • Gulf countries depend on their desalination plants for 60-80% of their potable water. This would force a mass exodus of people in a very short amount of time because societies can’t exist for long without.

  • Israel relies on desalination for between 55% amd 86% of its water, depending on the year. An attack on desalination plants would force many Israelis to flee and the question would then become — Would evacuees return to Israel? Escalation could lead to the demographic destruction of the state of Israel.

• Iran destroyed Israel’s long-range radars, blinding Israeli air defenses.

  • Iran also destroyed critical US E-3 Sentry AWAC planes providing radar for US and Israeli planes.

• Iran has more ammunition than US/Israel: The Iron dome does not have sufficient interceptors to shoot at least two interceptors for every incoming missile, which is standard practice when the Iron dome deals with incoming missiles.

• Iran has an asymmetric manufacturing and cost advantage: The US and Israel have to spend up to 4 million dollars per intercepter,7 and use more than one intercepter per $20,000 — 50,000 drone.

• The US supply chains don’t have the ability to quickly replenish interceptor inventories, even if we wanted to pay the ungodly amount of money to the military contractors.

  • Some crucial US systems depend upon rare earth minerals from China, and China is not keen on helping the US replenish these stocks.

• Iran is able to keep US aircraft carriers 600 miles off the Iranian coast using drones and missiles. This makes it more challenging for the US to attack Iran because it takes extra flight time and refueling to travel the 1200 miles roundtrip to Iran. It also makes it harder for the US to contest the Strait of Hormuz.

• Trump says that Iran’s navy was destroyed but Iran invested in an asymmetric approach that can send 100 drones at a carrier.***** The Iranian approach is effective and much cheaper, albeit not comparable in every way.

• Trump said that the US destroyed the Iranian air force, but Iran didn’t have much of an air force to begin with. They had some planes from the 1960s, but Iran invested in missiles and drones instead. These drones and missiles were successful in breaching the Israeli Iron Dome, and they didn’t need an air force to do it.

• The US has “air superiority” by virtue of the fact that Iran does not have an air force, but the Israeli and US air force attacks were not possible because they can roam freely over the Iranian countryside. Instead, they used stand off missiles with a range of 500 miles, fired at Iran from near the Iranian border. These missiles flew from outside of Iran, the rest of the way to the target under their own propulsion.

  • This is important because if the US wants to go deep into Iran and attack declared and suspected nuclear facilities, the US can’t go in uncontested like Trump pretends. The US risks more pilot/special forces rescues if they choose to fly over central cities and facilities.

• Other US “cards” are overstated, such as the number of air defense installations that the US has destroyed. China provided Iran some high quality decoys**** that even generate their own heat signatures. The US risks its planes and resources attacking air defense and building decoys which cost a few thousand dollars, while American precision missiles can cost $2-3 million. Iranian/Chinese decoys and can be quickly restocked, unlike the US missiles, which have a slow and costly supply chain.8 ****

  • The goal is not a “conventional military defeat,” but rather .. the logistical and financial inability to continue a war that achieves no tangible results against real targets9

• The US and Israel were hoping for a revolution which would overthrow the Iranian government. This relied on trained insurgents, communicating by Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite receivers.**** Iran was able to shut down the insurgents’ ability to receive coordinating messages and, even more, identify the insurgents themselves. The Israel/US-sponsored insurgency failed. Another option for dissatisfied Iranians would be to emigrate, but demand for that is not high, which one would think it would be, even in wartime, as there is no restriction against those who would want to leave via neighboring countries. ****

• While it is in US interests its the military to leave the region, Trump will have to override the desires of Israel and his donors who want to destroy the state of Iran, divide it ethnically, and weaken it to the point that Israel can bomb it at will (what Israel calls “Mowing the Lawn”). I can imagine a scenario where pro-Israel supporters manipulate Trump using his “Winners/Losers” philosophy. I expect overcoming this psychological attack of “Losing” to be the most challenging aspect of Trump’s decision. Alister Crooke has said “Everyone knows that Trump needs a trophy.” Either that or Congress will have to take back its war-powers, but I’m not holding my breath on Congress.

QUESTIONS:

1. Which of the above reasons that the US is being defeated had you not heard of before reading this article and which do you think are the most significant?

2. What do you think of the Chinese strategy identified in the ModernDiplomacy article, of defeating the US through supply chains and finances?

3. Were you tricked by US propaganda regarding air superiority in Iran, or allegations of a destroyed navy and air force?

4. Were you aware that the US overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran’s elected democratic leader in 1953 and backed Iraq’s 8-year war against Iran, starting in 1980, including Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran?

5. What do you make about Footnote #6: Attacking Middle East Oil to Hurt China, in which the US and Israeli attacks incentivize a Tit-for-Tat Iranian destruction of oil and gas fields in the Middle East? The loss of these fields would weaponize oil against China, forcing China to rely on Russia for oil in the absence of damaged Middle Eastern oil capacity. This would be functionally equivalent to a oil blockade of China, while US intent would be deniable.

6. How can Trump be “given a trophy” for withdrawing from his self-induced disaster?

ELSEWHERE:

Even Arch Neoconservative Robert Kagan has admitted the US is losing badly. Kagan’s goal is to anger the administration into throwing everything they have at Iran:

“Checkmate in Iran”, The Atlantic, by Robert Kagan (Summary)

Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing this war.

The article in The Atlantic (which appears to be a piece by Karim Sadjadpour or a related analysis from the “Washington Week with The Atlantic” series) argues that while the Trump administration has achieved tactical military successes, it is currently “losing” the strategic war with Iran.

According to the analysis, the situation as of May 2026 can be summarized through these key points:

1. Tactical Victory vs. Strategic Failure

• The “Victory” Claim: The Trump administration (and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) has declared “total and complete victory” via “Operation Epic Fury,” citing the decimation of Iran’s military infrastructure and the killing of top leaders (including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in late February).

• The Reality: Despite the physical destruction, the Iranian regime remains in power, and its “radical core” has become more entrenched. The article suggests that Trump mistook “breaking things” for “winning,” failing to realize that a weakened but vengeful regime can still inflict massive damage.

2. The Economic War

• Control of the Strait: A central argument for why Trump is “losing” is that Iran still effectively controls the Strait of Hormuz. By using asymmetric warfare—drones, mines, and missiles—Iran has successfully disrupted global energy markets.

• Domestic Impact: The war has led to a sharp spike in U.S. gasoline prices and consumer inflation, creating a political liability for Trump at home. The article posits that Iran’s goal is not to defeat the U.S. military, but to “fracture American political will” by making the war too expensive for the average voter.

3. Trump’s Search for an “Off-Ramp”

• Political Fatigue: The piece notes that Trump has already begun to view the Iran war as a “political loser.” He is reportedly looking for a quick exit or a “deal” to save face, even if the original goals—such as total regime collapse or the complete end of Iran’s nuclear program—have not been met.

• The Vance Factor: The article mentions that both the Trump administration and Tehran have looked toward Vice President J.D. Vance to negotiate an end to the conflict, signaling a shift from military escalation to a desperate search for a diplomatic conclusion.

4. Regional Destabilization

• Allied Friction: While Israel and the U.S. were initially aligned, the article highlights growing friction. Israel seeks the total elimination of the Iranian threat, while Trump is increasingly focused on a swift ending to stabilize markets.

• Geopolitical Vacuum: The war has pushed regional players (like the UAE and Saudi Arabia) into a corner, forcing them to balance their security ties with the U.S. against the reality of Iranian retaliation on their own soil.

Conclusion: The article concludes that Iran is the “strategic winner” so far because it has survived the initial onslaught and retained the leverage to damage the global economy. Trump’s lack of a clear “end game” or post-war reconstruction plan has left the U.S. stuck in a costly war of attrition that he is now eager to abandon.

FOOTNOTES:

3

Gemini Summary:

Escalation dominance is a strategic concept, primarily used in game theory and international relations, where one party has the ability to increase the stakes of a conflict in a way that the opponent cannot match or counter.

Essentially, it is the “trump card” of a confrontation. If you have escalation dominance, you can move a conflict from a lower level (like a heated argument or a minor skirmish) to a higher level (like a lawsuit or full-scale military action) where you hold a decisive advantage, forcing the opponent to either back down or face a certain defeat.

---

The Three Key Components

To achieve escalation dominance, a party usually needs to satisfy three conditions:

1. Vertical Superiority: Having more “rungs” on the ladder. You possess tools or weapons that the opponent simply does not have.

2. Cost-Benefit Asymmetry: The ability to escalate at a lower cost to yourself than to your opponent.

3. Credibility: The opponent must believe that you are actually willing to take that next step. Without credibility, escalation dominance is just a bluff.

---

How It Works in Practice

The “Escalation Ladder”

The concept is often visualized using a ladder. Each rung represents an increase in intensity.

• Bottom Rungs: Diplomatic protests, economic sanctions, or “saber-rattling.”

• Middle Rungs: Limited military strikes, cyberattacks, or trade wars.

• Top Rungs: Total war or the use of unconventional weapons.

The party with escalation dominance is the one who “owns” the top of the ladder. If they can always climb one step higher than the opponent is willing or able to go, they theoretically control the outcome of the entire conflict.

---

Note: While escalation dominance is a powerful deterrent, it is also risky. If both sides think they have dominance, or if one side miscalculates the other’s “breaking point,” it can lead to inadvertent escalation, where a small conflict spirals into a catastrophe that neither side actually wanted.

CLAIM: ‘It’s other countries’ fertiliser that’s stranded in the Persian Gulf, not our fertiliser.’

REALITY: Does one single official in this ridiculous administration understand that global supply contractions raises prices in America?

Rubio: This is a favor to the world because it is their ships that are stranded .. (18 sec)

COMMENTS:

1) That fact aside, does not a single official, not even the top diplomat, realize how counterproductive this “screw the rest of the world” attitude is?

2) Yes, it is other countries’ fertiliser stranded in the Persian Gulf because you started this illegal war. It’s your duty to sort out the mess you created.

3) I thought they were needing a replacement for having lost the Canadian vital potash to other countries.

Question:

1. What do you think will be the consequences for the US due to its War on Iran and (alleged) indifference to it effects on allies?

2. What will be the consequences for those with the least food security?

3. What should Americans and Canadians do to help the food insecure? Is it recommended that those who can afford to not eat cheaper food (what economists call inferior goods) because it increases competition (and prices) for cheaper foods?

Elsewhere:

Nature (summary)

The article “How fertilizer shortages caused by the energy crisis threaten food security,” published in Nature (May 2026), examines the critical intersection of global energy markets, agricultural production, and food stability.

Core Summary

The paper details how the recent global energy crisis has triggered a “triple challenge”: threatening food security, accelerating environmental degradation, and complicating climate change mitigation. Because the production of synthetic fertilizers—particularly nitrogen—is highly energy-intensive, spikes in natural gas prices have led to severe fertilizer shortages and price hikes, disproportionately affecting developing regions.

Key Findings & Themes

• Energy-Fertilizer Link: The study highlights that the cost and availability of nitrogen fertilizers are inextricably linked to energy prices. Shortages have led to reduced crop yields, particularly in “breadbasket” regions, straining the global food supply.

• Regional Inequality: Africa is identified as the most vulnerable region, with nearly 21.3–24.4% of the population suffering from undernourishment. The article identifies three primary drivers of the current food crisis:

  • Conflicts: Responsible for 45.9% of the population in need.

  • Extreme Weather: Accounting for 28.8%.

  • Economic Shocks: (Including energy/fertilizer costs) accounting for 25.3%.

• The Subsidy Paradox: The researchers analyzed agricultural subsidies (like India’s PMGKAY). While these programs expanded to record levels (up to 24.9% of agricultural budgets in 2020) to buffer farmers from costs, they have remained “structurally high,” potentially draining funds from health, education, and rural development.

• Need for Efficiency: The authors argue that technological innovation alone isn’t enough. Improving Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) is critical, but its success depends on poorly understood socio-economic factors and a shift toward decentralized, digital monitoring of food supply chains.

Proposed Solutions

The article advocates for a move toward Integrated Soil Fertility Management, which combines limited chemical fertilizers with organic inputs (manure, compost) to maintain soil health and reduce dependence on volatile energy markets.

Video not found: Why fertilizer price impacts food security This video provides a helpful visual explanation for how natural gas is used to create fertilizer and why energy price spikes directly lead to higher grocery bills and food shortages.

Summary: The US killed off the Iranian gerontocracy and the new generation of Iranian leadership is smarter and more capable.

8:14

what that’s why it didn’t happen. And again with the result of killing all these top uh leaders, what they’ve done

8:22

is revitalize the Iranian government actually. Um which is I think what they didn’t want. It was really sort of a decaying gerontocracy and I think

8:30

Ayatollah Kame knew that and they probably just left himself out to be to be martyed. Uh and you know look the

8:38

reality is anyone who’s worked in a bureaucracy knows that DoD there’s probably 2,000 people who are better equipped to be the secretary of defense

8:46

than Pete Hegseth and State Department there’s probably a thousand people who are better than Marco Rubio. So literally when people say oh now there’s the B team or the C team or the D team.

8:56

actually they’re better people. They’re younger. They’re uh smarter. And I don’t know that that’s what the United States wanted because now they’re really dealing with an adversary. So, you know,

9:05

it’s just like the misinformation from the media and the government is just crazy. Like there were zero refugees,

9:12

right? You imagine 33,000 31 provinces in the country. Nobody left the country. All the borders are open.

9:19

Iranians don’t need a visa to Armenia. They’re great allies. Turkey, no visa.

9:25

you could cross anytime. All the borders remained basically during the bombing, they remained uh normal. Uh you know,

9:31

there’s truck traffic and then people going on vacation. Uh and I talked to plenty of them. I was on all the borders and uh there was nobody who said, you

9:39

know, there’s some giant revolution about to occur in Iran.

9:43

9 minutes, 43 seconds

Uh so last night on uh Emily’s uh Megan Kelly Network program, there was a really fascinating um call-in from an

9:51

American uh responding to Trump’s war in Iran. I wanted to play that and get your get your thoughts on it.

Video link

Do swing senators like John McCain, Joe Manchin, Kristin Sinema, and Susan Collins, and Jon Fetterman have big egos that are fed by their swing voter position?

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema act out of ego, not principle

But I do know from 50 years’ experience in and around Washington that most of the people who serve in our nation’s capital have very, very large – shall we say? – egos. Robert Reich

Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corrupts

In this opinion piece for The Guardian, Robert Reich argues that the primary motivation behind Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s 2022 decision to block voting rights legislation and maintain the filibuster was narcissism and a craving for the national spotlight.

Key Points of the Article:

• The Contradiction: Reich points out the hypocrisy in their stances, noting that both senators had previously supported filibuster exceptions (such as for the debt ceiling) and had even co-sponsored the very voting rights bills they ultimately helped kill.

• Money vs. Ego: While Reich acknowledges that corporate campaign donations play a role in their decision-making, he argues that “ego” is the more powerful factor. He claims that before this controversy, neither senator had much of a national profile; the deadlock turned them into “Washington celebrities.”

• The “Addiction” to Attention: Reich describes the national spotlight as “addictive” for politicians. He suggests that Manchin and Sinema became intoxicated by their roles as “spoilers,” enjoying the power of being the sole gatekeepers of the Democratic agenda.

• Senate Culture: The article describes the U.S. Senate as a “stew of egos” where senators often prioritize personal recognition and “the spotlight” over legislative progress. Reich cites Sinema’s “theatrical” thumbs-down vote against the minimum wage as an example of relishing the role of a contrarian.

• Conclusion: Reich concludes that by prioritizing their own sense of importance and “shafting American democracy,” Manchin and Sinema demonstrated how the pursuit of individual notoriety can corrupt the political process and stall essential protections for the right to vote.

This article is more than 4 years old

Robert Reich

‘The Democratic version of John McCain’, Politico

The Politico article from February 7, 2021, titled “The center of the universe: Joe Manchin’s big moment,” explores the unprecedented leverage Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) gained following the 2020 elections, which resulted in a 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate.

Key Themes and Insights:

• The Ultimate Power Broker: With the Senate evenly divided, the article describes Manchin as the most influential person in Washington. Because his vote was required for any Democratic priority to pass via reconciliation (or to reach the 50-vote threshold for nominations), he effectively held “veto power” over President Biden’s entire legislative agenda.

• The “Manchin Cycle”: Politico details the repetitive pattern that came to define this period: Democrats would propose a bold policy, Manchin would express public skepticism or concerns about the cost and “bipartisanship,” and the entire party would be forced to negotiate down to his specific requirements.

• A “West Virginia Democrat”: The piece highlights Manchin’s unique political survival. Representing a state that voted for Donald Trump by nearly 40 points, Manchin’s “conservative Democrat” brand was a necessity for his political life. He used his position to protect West Virginia’s energy interests (particularly coal and gas) and to demand fiscal restraint.

• The Personal Spotlight: The article notes that Manchin seemed to relish the attention, often holding informal press conferences in the Capitol hallways (known as “stakeouts”). This mirrors the “ego” theme found in other critiques, suggesting that the media’s obsession with his every move only increased his resolve to remain a centrist outlier.

• Frustration Among Progressives: Politico describes the growing resentment from the progressive wing of the party, who felt that one man from a small state was blocking the will of the national Democratic majority on issues like the minimum wage, climate change, and social spending.

This article serves as a snapshot of the moment Manchin moved from being a relatively obscure centrist to the central figure of American governance, a role he maintained throughout the first half of the Biden administration.

Transcript

6:46 Isn’t it crazy? You know, soccer, I was thinking back when we interviewed him and it was in the middle of like all the stop the steel nonsense. 6:51 This was also pre-stroke and he was Yeah. But I was just thinking back on that and how different he I mean, he really was like a different person. He’s like a blueon liberal. 7:00 Yeah. I mean, we interviewed him because he was the most aggressive Democrat practically in the country going after Trump for all his stop the steel delusions and Trump was going after him. 7:10 They were waring on Twitter. I mean, 7:12 that’s what his brand was, and that’s obviously not his brand anymore. Um, so anyway, I don’t know. He seems to relish 7:19 the possibility of very likely if even if he doesn’t flip parties, he is going 7:26 to be in a position to play the Joe Mansion or Kirstston Cinema role where if Democrats want to get something passed, they’re going to have to go to 7:34 John Federman and they’re going to have to give him what he wants and cater to his ego, blah blah blah. What’s that? 7:40 This makes me think he won’t switch because cuz you think he’ll like that role too much. 7:44 Those people the the McCain’s, the mansions, the swing vote, they are the biggest egoomaniacal 7:52 most like they relish when all the reporters camp out and they go, “Oh, 7:58 this one’s not acceptable to me.” And everyone has to, you know, you do like Kremlin on Joe Mansion. Remember when I remember he lived on that boat and 8:06 they’re like, “Who was on the boat last night?” Susan Collins spotted on in the housebo or something like that. So I mean cinema she was very much the same. 8:15 The the level of egoomaniacal narcissism that those swing vote people have like the centrist corporate swing vote. Also they love they get dined out all over 8:23 town. They’re they could go to any restaurant in the country that they want to. The ultra rich will all flock to them. This I’m talking myself into it. 8:32 He’s not going to switch. He he will love that position. 8:35 Yeah, I think he I think you’re probably right. He will relish. I mean, think about it. I mean, otherwise you work for John Thoon. Like, who wants to do that or for Trump? Like, 8:43 that. You know, 8:45 that is part of what he told Jart in this piece is he’s like, they didn’t even let like Tom Tillis stay in the party. He’s like, you think that I’m 8:54 going to that it’s going to work out for me as a Republican? I mean, the other possibility is that he just completely changes more of his positions, which is also not something I would put off the 9:02 table. But, uh, I think you’re right that he’s looking forward to being playing that role of the the rotating villain, you know, the one that everybody has to cowtow to and everybody 9:10 has to like find out what you want and massage your ego and all that sort of stuff because if Democrats take the Senate, which is still a tall order by 9:19 the way, but they have I mean now they have they really have a fighting chance at it. um between I saw polling for in Alaska where me Mary Pelola who is the 9:28 Democrat running there is up um shared Brown is up in Ohio you know then you’ve got North Carolina I think is pretty much a lock for Roy Cooper frankly 9:36 you’ve got Maine with Graham Platner looking very good that Susan Collins won’t be able to hang on this time Texas the polling has been pretty good for Taler Rico there as well so in any case 9:44 they have a path but even if they win it’s going to be narrow you know the most you could see is they have a two seat margin and that would be 9:52 extraordinary if they were able to get that that would be like biggest landslide that we’ve had going back to the Tea Party era. Um but you know this 10:01 time for Democrats that would be those sorts of numbers. So even in that situation you know and Fedterman teams up with whoever the next most conservative Democratic senator is to 10:10 cause problems you could easily see it and yeah he would relish that role.

Summary:

Richard Wolff, and Michael Hudson discuss how the US uses “managed democracy” to maintain primacy in which the US is the only sovereign country and other coutries are dependent “satellites.” “Managed Democracy” uses extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and covert operations to overthrow governments. Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro unmasked this system for many Americans.

U.S. Foreign Policy and “Unipolar Control”

The participants argue that current U.S. foreign policy is driven by a desire to maintain “unipolar control” and ensure that the United States remains the sole sovereign nation.

• Coercion and Sovereignty: The speakers contend that the U.S. rejects the post-1648 Westphalian concept of national sovereignty, instead attempting to turn other countries into dependent “satellites”.

• Military and Covert Actions: Wolff and Hudson criticize the U.S. for acting as a “police state” that utilizes extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and covert operations to overthrow governments it deems adverse to its interests, specifically citing recent actions involving Venezuela.

• “Managed Democracy”: Hudson argues that the U.S. practices “managed democracy,” using assassinations and political interference to ensure that foreign governments serve American interests rather than the will of their own people.

Economic Warfare and Strategic Isolation

The panel views recent U.S. economic measures as acts of desperation rather than strength, intended to isolate rivals like China and Russia.

• Weaponizing Trade: The U.S. is accused of using sanctions, export controls, and massive tariffs to block China’s access to markets and technology.

• Corporate Confiscation: The speakers highlight the recent confiscation of Chinese-owned assets in Holland—specifically the company Nexperia—as an example of the U.S. forcing allies to abandon open investment in favor of economic “national security” alignment.

• The Case of Argentina: Wolff and Hudson describe U.S. financial pressure on Argentina—including IMF loans and election interference—as a method to enforce a right-wing, oligarchic government that is subordinate to U.S. economic demands.

Domestic Implications and Class Interests

The discussion posits that these international policies are deeply intertwined with domestic economic and class dynamics.

• Wealth Grab by the 1%: Hudson contends that economic crashes, recessions, and trade wars are not merely negative outcomes but are leveraged by the “rentier class” (the 1%) to consolidate wealth and seize assets through foreclosures and privatization.

• Rise of Oligarchy: Wolff suggests that the U.S. is increasingly characterized by a merger of government and business oligarchs, which he equates to historical forms of fascism.

• Stagflationary Risks: Wolff warns that U.S. reliance on protectionist tariffs is driving the country toward stagflation, noting that the political leadership seems willing to accept mass suffering to maintain geopolitical control.

Overall, the speakers conclude that the U.S. is attempting to reverse the decline of its empire, but that this effort is counterproductive and failing to account for the changing global reality represented by organizations like BRICS.

Questions:

1. If you could explain it to them, what percent of Americans support the traditional concept of national sovereignty (post-1648 Westphalia), as opposed the idea of one sovereign country of which other countries are dependent “satellites?”

2. Do you agree that the U.S. practices “managed democracy,” using assassinations and political interference to ensure that foreign governments serve American interests rather than the will of their own people?

3. Do you see US weaponization of trade, such as tariffs, sanctions, coups, (Argentina), and confiscation as acts of desperation rather than strength?

4. Do you agree with Wolff that government and business elites are merging to form a fascist Oligarchic entity?

5. Do you agree with Richard Wolff that the internet poses a new challenge to “managed democracy” because it enables word (and opposion) to spread quickly around the world?

   Thanks for reading openpolitics! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Transcript:

NIMA ALKHORSHID: Hi, everybody. Today is Thursday, October 16, 2025, and our friends, Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson, join us today. Welcome, Richard and Michael.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Hello.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, let’s start with you, and with the reports we had in the New York Times that Donald Trump and his administration have authorized the CIA to do some sort of covert operation in Venezuela to overthrow [President Nicolás] Maduro. And here is what we’ve learned from Republican Senator Rick Scott on Fox News:

RICK SCOTT, U.S. Senator, R-FL, Senate Armed Services Committee (CLIP): I think if Maduro’s smart he’s going to go ahead and move to Russia, or China, some place like that, because his days are numbered. You know, the public of Venezuela don’t want him. They rejected him in the last election. He stole the election. He’s a dictator, a drug cartel leader. So, his days are numbered. However they do it, I look forward to the day that he is no longer in Venezuela. It’ll be great for the world.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: What do you expect, Richard, from what’s going on?

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Well, the only interesting thing about Rick Scott — and let me tell you, it takes a lot of work to find an interesting thing about Rick Scott — but the only interesting thing about his remark was that little remark at the end: whatever it takes. Because that’s where we are.

And also, I like the way the television station juxtaposed the camera on him making the statement and, likewise, on the boat, somewhere in the Caribbean, that is being targeted by the missile.

I want to say here for the record: The United States is, therefore, engaged, by the president, with the approval of people like Mr. Scott, in being the police, the army, the judge, the jury, and the lawyer, for people it is executing. Those people were not arrested. Those people never had a chance to have a lawyer explain who they were, what they are. By the way, it’s not just Venezuelans. Today’s newspaper indicates that Colombians have also been killed in boats. So, who knows how widespread this is? Who knows how much we’re being told?

I want to also stress to people that being in the drug trade is not treated as a capital crime inside the United States. People are arrested for the drug traffic in this country every day. They are not executed. Those that are found guilty are subject to various kinds of imprisonment and punishment, but they are not executed. So, we arrest people in this country; we give them a lawyer; they have their day in court; they get a judgment; and they are not killed.

What are we doing in the rest of the world? We are showing the rest of the world a little bit — a junior version — of what the Israelis have done in Gaza. We’re killing people. We’re killing people who are alleged to be involved in a crime that we don’t kill people for in our own country. You know, I’ve been around a while. I don’t recall anyone being executed in the United States for drug traffic, ever. I may be wrong, there may be somebody who once was, but it is hardly ever done. So, what are we doing here?

We’re showing the world that we’re a tough guy. You know, that’s what the tariffs were: a big piece of theater, but it didn’t cost anyone’s life. Now, we’re saying we’re prepared — and we’re not only prepared to kill people — with no judge, no jury, no lawyer, no due process, none of the guarantees that we say we revere as intrinsic to the Constitution and the values of the United States — all out the window — that is a remarkable statement to make. And we don’t like Mr. —

Everybody who studies the drug traffic knows that the major problem of drugs comes from the Pacific side of the continent, not the Atlantic side; that there are loads of people involved who seem to be able to continue, with very little interference. Nor has the United States ever acknowledged, or admitted, that the problem begins with the fact that the United States is the world’s richest market for the drugs — the endpoint of the trade is mostly here — and that we could do a lot more here without violating our Constitution to deal with it, if we were — we’re not.

It’s another message to the rest of the world that the United States is going it alone, that the United States is isolated, that the United States is relying on military power because its economic and political reach is now so weak. You know, we start — at this point, when you behave like this, then things have to be called by their proper name, not by their polite name.

The people, the immigrants, who came to this country for a chance to do what immigrants have always come to this country for a chance to do, are now being hounded by a special police force, and detained in concentration camps — that’s what they are.

Let’s be clear. Let’s stop playing these silly games. We are killing people. We’re promising to overthrow governments in the worst replay of the ancient activity of the United States in Latin America, which is as old as the Monroe Doctrine — and let me remind you, that’s from the 1830s. What in the world do you expect, now? What are the countries in the BRICS going to think, given what Mr. Trump has said about them? Are they being overthrown by the CIA? Are we really back in that world?

Well, if we are, if we are using the CIA to go after the serious enemies, you know, enemies who can do something to the United States — Venezuela can’t. It’s too far away. It’s too poor. It’s too small. You’re picking on somebody — you know, it’s a little bit like the British fighting in Grenada, or the Falkland Islands — it’s a joke. So, assumedly, they’re going to go after the big guns, you know, Russia, China. So, the message to them is, that’s what the United States is now reduced to. Get ready for that.

And let me make a message to my fellow Americans. You are messing with an enemy now that is much richer, and much stronger, than they have ever been. Be very careful because you will likely not prevail. Let me remind you: The CIA was busy in Vietnam, before that war — it failed. And the war that came after it, after the failure of the CIA? That failed too. Ditto for Afghanistan. Ditto for Iraq. Ditto, now, for the Ukraine. Wow. Be careful. Be very careful what you are doing.

There is an alternative — whether it’s in the drug war, or any other conflict — and that is, you sit down with whomever else is involved — other countries, other enterprises — and you work something out: a deal that allows you not to be engaged in killing people and overthrowing them, because that is a game everyone can play. And now, more than ever in the history of the United States, the enemies that you are making by this behavior are strong, very strong.

So, this is now more dangerous than it has ever been, and it was never a good policy in the first place.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Richard, if you try to work something out, then you’re treating other countries as equals. And the United States has rejected that very concept. The reason that it’s doing these assassinations and killings is for control. So, Trump has called Venezuela a narco-state, as if every Venezuelan is a drug dealer. And this is like [Benjamin] Netanyahu, as you pointed out, saying that every Gazan is a Hamas terrorist. So, the whole Caribbean belongs to the United States.

It’s not really about drugs at all. It’s about control. And I think — you’ve been describing — the United States has turned into a terrorist state. And it has been a terrorist state, since 1945, as a deliberate arm of foreign and domestic policy for what it calls “promoting democracy.” The former head of the CIA, [Mike] Pompeo, has said the CIA is like Murder, Inc.: He found out that they’ve been killing people all over the world, beginning with Patrice Lumumba in Africa; Aldo Moro in Italy, when Moro tried to achieve a rapprochement with Soviet Russia. You know what happened to Libya with [Muammar] Gaddafi. You know what happened in Chile with Salvador Allende, and the whole terrorist actions throughout Latin America that the CIA began.

So, this is already official U.S. policy — long before Trump. And I think that on a larger scale, the U.S. is backing terrorist groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda, throughout the Middle East, in order to maintain control of Near Eastern oil; and at home, you have the FBI assassinating Martin Luther King [Jr.], Malcolm X, and many others. This is called “managed democracy.” You need assassinations to make sure that “democracy” works. That is, it works for the aim of enabling the United States to meddle, not only in foreign countries’ elections — to make sure that they don’t allow elections of leaders who follow policies adverse to those of the United States and its desire to control — but in the United States itself, the meddling [in] elections here.

These killings are merely the tip of the iceberg of America’s attempt to control foreign policy and politics, and domestic policy; and it does not accept the United Nations rules of non-interference in other nations’ affairs. That’s been the rule of international law ever since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, saying you have to agree [that] every country and every state has its sovereign power. The United States rejects that.

The United States says: We alone have the sovereign power; and we use that sovereign power not only to control who will be the rulers and the ruling parties of these states, but what countries various states can deal with, and in what commodities they can deal with. We have the power, not only to impose sanctions on other countries, but to confiscate companies that are following trade policies that interfere with the United States demand for unipolar control.

This is being done under the slogan of “national security.” The United States government, the neocons specifically, feel insecure if they cannot control other governments, and international trade, and foreign investment, to make sure that the United States can decide who gets what, who trades what, and who owns what. It feels that if it doesn’t control this, it will no longer have the unipolar ability to decide what countries do. And that control is at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

I think you have to begin with that, and realize that these killings are simply — well, in the case of Venezuela, it’s killing the chickens to frighten the monkeys. What the United States is doing in shooting these Venezuelan fishermen (and also, I’m told, from Trinidad, fishermen), is saying: The Mediterranean is an American lake. We control the seas. We have no boundaries to what constitutes U.S. authority to control the world’s geography.

All of this is simply a reflection of a larger picture that the press, and many observers are just too embarrassed to come right out and say; but the neocons have already spelled it all out, that that’s the plan of U.S. diplomacy. You can use U.S. statements themselves for all of the evidence you need for that.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Two citizens were killed from Trinidad and Tobago, Richard, in addition to what the Colombians were talking about.

Let me play a clip of the former director of the CIA talking about meddling in the elections in other countries.

⁣LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): [Have we ever tried to] meddle in other countries’ elections?

⁣JAMES WOOLSEY (CLIP): Oh, probably. But it was for the good of the system, in order to avoid the communists from taking over. For example, in Europe in ‘47, ‘48, ‘49, the Greeks and the Italians, we — CIA —

LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): We don’t do that now, though? We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?

⁣JAMES WOOLSEY (CLIP): Well, [indeterminate vocalization]. Only for a very good cause.

⁣LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): [Laughing] Can you do that? Do a Vine video on this former CIA director [vocalizing] —

⁣JAMES WOOLSEY (CLIP): Only for a very good cause, in the interest of democracy.

LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): Alright. Thanks for being here.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: “Only for a very good cause.” [Laughing]

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, you know, it is very naive — and it’s no longer working. You know, the United States, when I was growing up here, going to the schools in the United States, where I’m born, and lived and worked all my life, we were told stories about what the United States stood for, and what it was. And all of that had to be kept secret — that’s why we have a secret CIA — because it clashes (what they do), with what we are told as a people. And that’s why it has to be kept secret.

But when things get difficult, it becomes harder and harder to keep a secret. Part of what we’re observing is that the secrets, you know, the word is out. Those fishermen who went out are now dead. They’re not coming home. And their widows and their children are talking. We’re in a connected world, and we hear about it. The world is different from what it was.

Let me give you another example. You don’t have a clip, perhaps, but the President of the United States, if I heard him correctly, has told one of the largest countries in Latin America — namely Argentina — that he will give their government $20 billion to stave off the collapse of their currency — if they vote for Mr. [Javier] Milei in the election coming up there. Okay. You know what that’s called? Interference in the election of another country. It’s literally — because the United States is wealthy and Argentina is not — it’s a bribe. It’s an attempt to say to the Argentinian voter: Look. If you vote for the one you don’t want, you’ll get all this money; and if you vote for someone else, because you prefer the other person, well, then I won’t give you this money. What? You know, legally, we don’t allow that in this country; although I understand Mr. [Elon] Musk was running around last November giving money to people in various states for voting, or something pretty close to it.

We are becoming desperate. It’s a word you hear me using on this program, elsewhere, when I talk. I believe you’re watching a government that is becoming desperate. These things that it is doing are not new. But what is new is that they’re being exposed almost — almost — as fast as they’re happening. More and more people around the world, more and more governments, are speaking up about it. Mr. Maduro isn’t the only one. There are plenty of others. If you talk to anyone from Cuba, you will hear a story of, I don’t know, I think twenty-five CIA efforts to either kill him [Fidel Castro] or overthrow his government, over the period of the Cuban Revolution, since 1959. You know, it’s all now more and more — and, given Latin America, it will circulate. This information, and all of this, will be known everywhere in Latin America, if it isn’t already.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: I want to interject here. Trump just doubled the $20 billion and said he’s trying to round up private capital at $20 billion. After he made the statement that you quoted, he said, quote, if he [Milei] loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina. The $20 million was spent to support Argentina’s exchange rate, and this has two purposes. Number one: It helps the flight capitalists, the wealthiest Argentinians — it’s an oligarchy in Argentina. Supporting the exchange rate enables them to move their money out of Argentina into foreign currencies. And they’ve run up a huge debt.

And Trump says: If you do not vote for the oligarchic candidate to continue doing this, now we’re going to insist, with the International Monetary Fund, that you repay this $20 billion (or $40 billion), plus the few hundred billion that the IMF has lent. Well, suppose that a non-right-wing dictatorship comes into power in Argentina? That’s when the IMF will say: We’ll clamp down and withdraw all the support for the capital flight — and, of course, the currency will plunge. It could be a 50%, 60%. Enormous plunge. That’s what the IMF does.

[Number two:] And so, when what it calls a left-wing dictatorship, meaning a country that elects a government that is not backed by the United States, its currency plunges and the inflation goes up, unemployment spreads, and the United States and the United Nations and the West say: You see? Socialism doesn’t work. Only the right-wing works. They [Argentina’s oligarchs] get the loans; they [the working tax-paying population] get the debt.

And of course, this debt is simply to enable the United States and the IMF and Europe to pull the plug and make sure, financially, as much as on war, that other countries cannot survive — unless they are subordinate to the United States.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: I also want to point out, just as a matter of history, that Argentina has an oligarchy that is among the greatest players of this game in the world. Argentina has borrowed money like almost no other country.

The last infusion that this extreme-right-wing government — which is the government of the oligarchs, who are in power, even when you had [Juan] Peron and you had [Néstor and Cristina] Kirchner, and the others — this government’s last infusion of cash to keep itself going — was $20 billion, in April of this year! So, we’re looking at, a few months later, another $20 billion, and yet another $20 —

The Argentinian oligarchs are laughing all the way to the bank, as America uses the taxpayer money of American citizens to enable them to convert their worthless (or about to be worthless) currency into dollars, to join the rest of the world in buying gold — because they haven’t the confidence in the dollar they used to have, either? So, they’re going to do a one-two jump: Get rid of the Argentinian [peso], get the dollar, use the dollar, buy the gold, and hold it somewhere in Europe — that’s what they’re going to do. It’s a farce, what we’re watching! An extreme-right-wing government, which has managed, in a very short number of months, to make itself hated — that’s why Mr. Trump is stepping in — because that right-wing government has shot itself in the foot and is about to be kicked out by the Argentinian people.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: This is all part of the broader fight that’s happening in the world economy, to isolate, not only Argentina, but China, Russia, and the other countries. It’s part of a much bigger picture.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: But it shows you the level of desperation that is now governing all of this kind of behavior. I would like to believe (I mean that) that even the CIA director, giggling on the right-wing show that he appears on — that’s a right-wing woman, person, I forget her name right now, the clip that you just showed us — I’d like to believe that they, too, don’t really want to kill fishermen, or whatever those people were, in the boats. We obviously don’t know because there’s not a shred of evidence provided by the President who has now authorized at least five — if I’m keeping score correctly, five — such attacks. If they had some evidence — right? — they would show it because they don’t want to appear to be doing what they are clearly doing.

But when you’re desperate, you can’t afford it anymore. They have to have some “show.” They have to show how tough they are. That’s why we had the other bizarre (and maybe we can discuss it, the other bizarre) — the President of the United States tells us, yesterday, that India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil. He said that! And this morning, the Indian news reports coming out of India are that the government knows no such thing. There’s been no such conversation, and no such commitment.

I don’t know who to believe — and by the way, that’s what’s happening to most people: they don’t know who to believe anymore. It is so chaotic. But you’re not in good control. That’s not a sign that the United States — Michael is right: that’s what they want. But I’m right: it’s what they want, but don’t have anymore — and that makes you desperate.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah. Michael, the other point that Donald Trump was talking about is the case of India. He said that India promised him not to buy Russian oil, which was rejected later on by Indian officials. And not only that, Scott Bessent said that the Congress and the administration is ready to impose 500% tariffs on China, in case they decide to import Russian oil, and gas. Where are we going with the case of Russia, in your opinion?

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the real problem is not only isolating Russia, but isolating China. And that’s where all of the action has been recently. The United States is trying to decide just which countries are permitted to deal with other countries, and what they’re allowed to buy, and sell to these countries. And that’s an extension of the control that we’ve been talking about.

This is the neocon strategy. If you can’t have a U.S.-based “democracy” — a “democracy” means a country that has agreed to become a satellite of the United States (has nothing to do with the political system) — you can’t have a “democracy” (meaning a unipolar world), without the ability to make sure that you can control other countries’ elections and who they trade with.

Now, much more than the U.S. and Trump’s demands on India — that essentially means you’re going to try to block India’s foreign trade with the enormous 50% tariff that’s already put on — or the huge tariffs that you just mentioned on China (that means you block all trade with China) — this is going to essentially ensure, if it were applied, the most serious depression that you’ve had yet in the United States.

The kind of confrontation we’re talking about began a month ago with TikTok. Trump used the “national security” claim, that somehow TikTok is looking at what Americans like to watch; and if you discover that, then you can control the way they think, with the narrative.

And TikTok further violated the United States’ ban on free speech: it became a site for public discussion of politics.

So, you had many political people, views, treating it almost like X, or the other social media — and that included a criticism of genocide, and an insistence that the mass-killing was wrong. And that infuriated the United States. So Trump said: You have to sell TikTok to a group of billionaire Zionists — who will change the algorithm to prevent any discussion of the Middle East that is not in favor of Israel. There can be no use of the terms “Gaza” or the “Left Bank.” It’s “Judea and Samara” now. You have to control the dialogue and the discussion in order to shape what people think so that they will elect governments that are “democratic,” meaning governments that are controlled by the right-wing alliance between the neocons and the financial sector (the 1%, the deep state, the Americans).

So, you have that again: you have the neocons feeling insecure, if you could have TikTok permit personal opinions and analyses — and, especially, they were having photographs of the children that were killed in Gaza. They were having photographs — Israel has done [its] very best — targeted photographers and reporters for assassination — precisely to prevent this. They were targeting doctors for assassination, so that there would be no photographs of the destruction of the hospitals, the destruction of the babies.

Now, if the TikTok deal is permitted to go through, the United States will control all of the social media and prevent any discovery of this. That will enable the United States to shape “democratic” opinion to vote in the way that “managed democracies” are supposed to do.

I know you have a tape that is a wonderful tape that I want you to show, Nima, but I’d like to talk about what happened two days ago when Holland was the first country outside the United States to confiscate a Chinese company, on the grounds that China — it was producing computer chips for automobiles, in Holland, [in] what had been a subsidiary of Philips — and the United States said any company — passed a rule — any [company] with more than 50% Chinese ownership must be confiscated if it in any way affects “national security” — if it makes batteries, if it makes computer chips, if it does anything that we consider “national security.” I can go into that in detail if you want, but you probably want to shape the discussion first.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah, let me play the clip, Richard, that Michael mentioned. Scott Bessent talking about China:

⁣SCOTT BESSENT (CLIP): No mistake. This is China versus the world. They have put these unacceptable export controls on the entire world. China is a command and control economy, and we and our allies will neither be commanded nor controlled. They are a state economy, and we are not going to let a group of bureaucrats in Beijing try to manage the global supply chain.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: This is wonderful. Well, Trump said that, for the first time in history, nothing like this has ever occurred. And of course, it has occurred! It’s what the United States —

What China has done is, [it] passed a series of rules that were almost word for word the same rules that the United States had imposed on other countries dealing with China — for “national security.” China is finally doing to the United States exactly what the United States did to China.

The difference is that China doesn’t really need the United States, in the sense it doesn’t need U.S. exports, because the United States isn’t exporting anything that China really needs. And if it does need something, like replacement parts for Boeing airlines, then it’s going to avoid the fact that the United States has weaponized its foreign trade — so that it can stop the export of replacement parts for Boeing airlines, in the hope that the Boeing planes won’t be able to fly anymore and [that] China will have a problem — because China has indeed developed its own commercial airliner.

But the United States has told foreign countries, and the international transportation licensing authority: Don’t approve China. Only approve airplanes made by the United States and its satellites, like Airbus. Do not let any Chinese-made airplane land, because it doesn’t have official U.S. approval. This matches with the United States intention that we must control all of the airplane, and other, essentials.

I want to talk about what happened last week in Holland, when the Dutch confiscated the Chinese ownership of a company called Nexperia. The Financial Times has been focusing on this by saying, for the first time, Europe has, and especially Holland has, moved away from the whole idea of open investment, free trade, free investment, to say: All domestic investment is now controlled by the United States. Any foreign-owned firm, specifically a Chinese-owned firm, should be confiscated; and any Chinese firm that uses American exports as part of its products, its trade must be banned.

Well, the company that China bought was a company specializing in making batteries for automobiles because China has become the world leader in making batteries. The United States wants to prevent China’s leadership in batteries so that the United States can supply batteries that cost approximately ten times as much. The intention is to prevent Europe from using low-priced batteries designed by China, so that it cannot compete with American cars using American batteries.

So, you have this semiconductor company and battery company — with 12,500 employees all over the world, not only in Holland — and all of that has just been confiscated. It was sold to a Chinese conglomerate in 2017, and it was bought by a Chinese group, Wingtech, in 2019. And everything has been going fine, until the last few months when the U.S. State Department told Holland: You have to close down this Chinese company. We want to make sure that China cannot make any money in Europe, or any other “democracy” which we control.

So, the words that were used in your wonderful clip — a [command and] control economy — that’s what the United States is: that’s “democracy.” If you do not centralize control (and, essentially, be a police state) then you are not assuring the U.S. unipolar control of the world. And China has fought back.

But if you go into the details, I mean, this is an escalation, this confiscation of Chinese companies. The Financial Times wrote that “Wingtech is a landmark moment in Europe’s evolution, from one of the world’s most open trading blocks to increasingly preoccupied with economic security.” And the “economic security” is dominated, is defined, by the United States.

And just as the United States forced TikTok to be sold — either you sell at a giveaway price to the Americans, or we’re just going to close you down — it’s now using the same policy towards Europe. And China [has] essentially decided to fight back against all this. The court documents in the case that the Financial Times have been quoting is that The Hague (the government in Holland) was acting under pressure from the U.S. to back the control.

Well, look at what’s happening. Lenin had made a quip once; that capitalist countries would sell [the U.S.S.R.] the rope from which to hang them [attributed to Lenin], metaphorically speaking — meaning the arms. Well, China has no intention of selling the United States the military materials — rare earth metals, and other metals, and other tools — to destroy it in missiles. The United States said: We expect war with China as our existential enemy in the next two or three years. We must destroy China. Again and again, from Biden to Trump, and to Congress, there is an announcement: We intend to go to war. We’re preparing the way.

Well, of course, China’s blocked what you need to make the missiles, the rare earth magnets to make the missiles. China blocked what you need to make the computers to guide the missiles, and to spread your control of the internet, control of the public media platforms, really, to control the direction that the world’s moving in.

And China has watched what the United States did to Japan, with the Plaza Accords and the Louvre Accords that insisted that Japan raise its exchange rates, and essentially [brought] on its depression. And it’s watched America’s demands that Japan pay tribute of $350 billion to the United States, in order to have access to the U.S. market, even subject to the high U.S. tariffs. And China [has] watched the demand on Korea to pay just as large a $350 billion “choice.”

China has no intention of surrendering on these terms, and it has no intention of letting the United States have, what it says is, the new equivalent of controlling the world’s oil reserves; controlling the world’s food; controlling the world’s information technology; controlling the world’s computer technology (computer chip technology, the programming technology, the engraving of computer chips — the blocking of Dutch companies from selling computer chip engraving machinery to China).

China has realized that if the United States has a monopoly on computers, on missiles, on automotives, on military technology, it’s going to use this to attack China. And it’s taking moves to stop it. And Trump has said he’s willing to create a depression that will be like the 1930s in America. His threat to impose these multi-hundred-percent tariffs on Chinese goods means we are blocking all trade with China — that means with China technology.

Well, China has what the United States needs for its military domination. The United States doesn’t have anything that China needs. China will grow. The United States will move into a crisis. And, as Richard said, this is an act of desperation; but it’s a desperation that’s worth following, because 90% of the Americans are going to be downgraded in their standard of living, their wages, what they can afford; but the 1% of Americans, the Silicon Valley billionaires and the financial banks, will make a profit.

And what’s so amazing is that [on] today’s New York Times first page: “U.S. Banks Score Big Helping China Firms Go Global” — Well, you can imagine what’s going to happen. Who is going to win? Will American foreign policy be what the banks want — which is usually what foreign policy is all about for the United States? Or will it be what the neocons want? [Neocons:] We want war. We cannot have another country being independent from the United States. We cannot have a country of equals.

So, we’re back at what we talked about with Venezuela: You cannot negotiate with other countries and make a reasonable deal because that would be to treat them as equals; that would be to treat them as sovereign countries. There is only one sovereign nation: the United States. All other nations are to be treated as, or turned into, satellites for the United States. And I think that’s why Richard brought up what was happening in Argentina — to make sure that it’s locked into a satellite controlled by a client oligarchy in Argentina; just as you could say the same thing is happening in Europe.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Let me comment a little bit about Scott Bessent (and I don’t mean to pick on him, although I’m not opposed to doing that either, but that’s not what I’m doing).

Watch the fuzziness of the way he speaks. So: We’re not going to allow bureaucrats in Beijing because they are a state economy —

This is a minister of finance whose boss just did the following: took a 10% ownership of the Intel Corporation; imposed a partnership of the U.S. government on AMD and NVIDIA; is busy taking other positions in American corporate governance — ownership. I mean, we are more of a state economy than we have ever been!

Tariffs are the biggest imposition of taxes any government of the United States has ever done. We are taxing everybody. The whole world is being affected by us because if you choose tariffs, it’s international. You’re taxing your own people, hugely. Look how proud Mr. Bessent was a few days ago, telling us that the tariffs have raised $60 billion already in their first x months. He’s proudly telling you what previous Republicans would have been horrified — they’re a party against taxes! No, now they’re a party for taxes.

Every government that has ever taken a bigger and bigger share of the economy has used “national security” as its rationale. That’s not new. That’s what Republicans used to make fun of. It’s really, it’s remarkable. He’s denouncing China for wanting to control the world. As Michael correctly says, China is demanding what the United States has always fought for, has acquired, and is now desperate because it’s losing it. It’s angry at China — for what? For wanting pretty much the same thing, if Mr. Bessent is right.

It used to be the argument, here in the United States, that a free-trade regime was the best protection against war, against hostility. People used to talk about the competing empires — British, French, German, Russian — before World War I, as the reason they destroyed each other. The League of Nations after World War I, and the United Nations after World War II, were created because countries that used “national security” to shape their economic policy ended up in war against each other. The whole point of these international organizations was to not have that happen again.

The United States’ withdrawal from the United Nations — which has been going on for twenty years — is also, as we should have seen before, a withdrawal from that whole project; and a return to being a national security state, in which the state and the leaders — the oligarchs of business — are becoming the same people. Remember who was sitting behind Mr. Trump when he was inaugurated? The ten billionaires from the leading few industries the country has. It was an advertisement for the merger of oligarchs and government, which is a hallmark of fascism — Italian fascism, German fascism, Japanese fascism, Spanish fascism — come on! We know these things.

The difference is that the United States is now not the dominant country. The G7 is not the dominant player in the world economy. And all the pretense, and all the fuzzy ideology of Mr. Bessent, who conveniently forgets that his government is now becoming more “statist” with each passing week, and therefore not different from “China,” but indeed rather more like “it” —

China is also not — because he should know better — it’s not a state economy. Half of it is private enterprise. People are critical of China’s claim that socialism has developed faster and further in the last forty years in China than any other system has developed; and they like to criticize that by saying, yes, yes, yes — but that’s because of the “private” sector.

Okay, if you want to make that argument (I think it’s stupid but, okay, if you want to make that argument), then you can’t turn around the next morning and refer to them as a “statist” economy. You’ve just explained that they are a “private” economy — and that’s why they’re so rich and big and powerful — richer than you are.

And let me remind you: In the contest before World War I of competing “national security” — economic nationalisms built around Europe and its colonies — nobody had an outstanding advantage of population.

But that’s not true, folks. The United States has 4.5% of the world’s people. China and the BRICS have 60% of the world’s people. What kind of a conflict are you imagining you’re going to be able to have? What are your chances? This is very stupid.

You ought to be working your rear-end off, trying to come up with a revived United Nations to work out a way for the G7 to function, and for the Chinese and their BRICS allies to function. The planet is big enough for both of them.

Or, are we going to descend into another world war, even knowing the disasters of the first two? And in case you’ve forgotten, World War I ended up with the Soviet Union. World War II ended up with the Soviet Union — plus China. You notice something? You know where World War III will likely end up? Yeah, yeah. It ought to make you stop, and think a little bit about what you are doing.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael, go ahead.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Today’s international conflict between the NATO West and China is being fought over what kind of strategy the world will have. Given the inequality of population and size, the United States wants to be the only country that is able to wage war with the best armaments. It wants to be the only sovereign nation. All the other countries are to be turned into dependencies: trade dependencies, by weaponizing foreign trade; financial dependencies, by dollarization; and military dependencies. [It] is a precondition for their very survival. That’s the only way in which the United States can possibly achieve the strategy that you say can’t work.

Well, of course, it can’t work in the end because other countries are going to retaliate. But the essence of U.S. foreign policy is to cripple other countries’ ability to retaliate by things like controlling their oil supply, so they can’t survive, if they retaliate; by denying them ownership of and production of information technology — computer chips, basic electronic technology — and monopoly of the internet, if they don’t comply.

The United States says: Yes, of course, we know that there’s this inequality of population and productive power. We’ve deindustrialized, they have not deindustrialized, but we can win anyway — by the policies (that I’ve just developed) of total control, and the narrative that is needed to impose that control.

And I think the policy of targeted assassination, of killings — like you’ve seen, from Venezuela to Gaza — are all part of this demonstration of America’s willingness for total control, even to the point of preparing for the Near Eastern war against Iran, that many of Nima’s guests believe is imminent.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, you mentioned G7 and compared it to BRICS. And once (we know, once), Donald Trump said that Spain is part of BRICS. He was trying to lecture the reporters in the room, and he said Spain is part of BRICS. Here is his latest comment on BRICS:

⁣TRUMP (CLIP): I told anybody who wants to be in BRICS, that’s fine, but we’re going to put tariffs on your nation. Everybody dropped out. They’re all dropping out of BRICS.

BRICS was an attack on the dollar. And I said, You want to play that game? I’m going to put tariffs on all of your product coming into the U.S. They said like I said, we’re dropping out of BRICS. And BRICS is, like, they don’t even talk about it anymore.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Dropping out of BRICS? [Laughs]

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: But, you know, it’s it is important to understand that if you have a leader who forever makes things up like this — everybody’s dropping out of BRICS —

You know, I pay a lot of attention to BRICS. I’d be very interested. Could that happen? Yes.

By the way, Argentina is the only example I know of. They did withdraw — with this fellow, Milei, who’s on his way out. He withdrew. They [Argentina] actually joined, and then they withdrew — because it happened in a very short period of time, between when they joined, and when Milei took them out — and that was an act of him, as an extreme-right-wing neoliberal person, which he proudly says of himself. It’s not a label I’m putting on him.

But when you have a president, like we do, who makes these casual comments — India has decided not to buy Russian oil — and turns out, no. And the BRICS are falling apart — no. Or I will put tariffs on them — as if that’s the end of the whole story. This is becoming pathological, sure, but it’s a pathology that has a place. It has an origin. It has a set of supports. It is to be taken seriously — he isn’t; but the fact that he has to talk like that is an interesting phenomenon, right? Most leaders don’t do that.

Why is it important for him to do it? It’s like asking the question that should have been asked when he first ran for office — and he descended the escalator in one of his buildings in New York City; and he made the famous comment that the Mexicans here are all rapists and killers, and which he had, of course — you have to ask: Why would a personality aspiring to be a politician say such crazy stuff? Because in our environment, there’s a need for it. He’s meeting a need. His instincts tell him — and he was right. Politically, there was a constituent out there that needed to beat up on immigrants. Mostly from Mexico, they come.

So, it was important. He’s meeting a need, and he discovered that there’s a whole community of people whose peculiar experience in the last thirty years has been to be — what? They are white male Christian union members who lost their jobs because corporations wanted to replace white Christian male union people — because they were the highest paid part of the working class. So they were the targets: Replace them, either with automation, or by moving your production to China. And so they were left to die in their cities across the Midwest and the South, to become MAGA, his support.

He understood without — you know, he doesn’t have the capacity, or the vocabulary, or the education, but he understood, instinctually, that there was a need out there to demonize Mexicans as immigrants. That’s why you now have this Christian fundamentalist community cheering on the concentration camps for immigrant children — which violates their Christian commitments. And somewhere they know that.

But they’re so needy — I want to get that across. Mr. Trump is needy for saying this. We should understand, because it’s important, what the need is, that this dismissal of the BRICS is about. And the need? The BRICS is overwhelming. The BRICS is the biggest danger he faces economically because it’s the option for China to behave in the way Michael has laid out.

Because they have the BRICS, and all that that means, they can now afford, finally, to be taking steps, like what they did in response to the action of Holland. If I were to make a guess about the decision to hold back the rare earths? Michael is right. The precipitate act was not the fees charged to the boats that are made in China, which the United States is doing, or the slippage here or there — it was that: that act of trying to literally organize the whole world economy to be focused against China; to take Chinese property, the way they took the $300 billion of Russian assets at the beginning of the Ukraine war.

Okay, now is the time. And my guess is it took a difficult, long debate inside China as to whether this was the moment to move. And it should be taken seriously because the Chinese are responding to a deep need they have in taking their action, just like Mr. Trump is responding to a deep need that comes out of the dilemmas of the United States.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what Richards brought up is the fact that this international trade war finds its counterpart in the U.S. and international class war. It’s a war, not only of the U.S. to dominate other countries; but for the rentier class — the elites — to dominate labor, as its policies — by making revenue and wealth for itself, in the form of creditor claims, monopoly claims, and the capture, the privatization of government to prevent public social spending — all of this is going to impoverish the population. All of that goes hand in hand with the international class war to promote Thatcherism, privatization, financialization, and the whole economic philosophy that we’ve discussed so much in earlier episodes.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: And let me — a concluding thing: When you hear Mr. Trump and some of his lieutenants — as you are already hearing, and you will be hearing more — talk about how, even if it takes a depression, even if it takes mass suffering, this is a matter of the “national survival” and our “security” — you know what they’re gearing up for? It probably means they are getting the advice that the tariff game is leading us into a stagflationary situation, one way or another: a very troubling combination of 3% or more inflation, with a decline in our employment situation.

Jamie Dimon was quoted everywhere yesterday, talking about the collapse of two automobile companies, and saying, where there’s a few “cockroaches” — his word, not mine — there’s always lots more. What is that? That’s a statement that a credit crash is underway, or likely, or possible, with all that that has meant. Let me remind you of how the 2008 crisis got going. That, too, was a credit problem. That’s why it’s called the subprime mortgage crisis.

So, they’re getting ready to even carry their craziness to the point of a mass depressive recessionary onslaught, because they are convinced it’s the necessary price to pay — of course, always for the working class — to get them through the crisis they face, which is one of a world no longer willing to be the colonial territory; because that’s really what this is about: it’s a resurgence of colonialism.

It’s not an accident that Mr. Trump meanders about Greenland, or Canada, or Panama or, now, Venezuela. These are all imaginaries; but they’re logical, if the whole world is going to be controlled, because that’s the control that a metropolitan country used to have over its colonies. It’s the United States rehashing the end of the British Empire, hoping to reverse the flow of history.

Well, I am one of the masses of the world saying to the Americans: too little, too late, not available.

It’s like explaining to Israelis that settler colonialism was something that worked two centuries ago, but now? Doesn’t work anymore; puts you in an impossible situation.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Richard, unemployment and economic collapse is not a price to be paid by the ruling elite.

It’s easier to make money and get wealth in a crash, than it is in slow growth. The crash is going to lead, as I think you pointed out, to many mortgage foreclosures. People are going to lose their homes, as they did after [President Barack] Obama’s bailouts in 2009. All of this led to a huge asset grab by the 1%. While home ownership declined in the United States, and GDP and wage levels for the 90% remained pretty stable, all of this wealth grew for the [1%]. Same thing in the world.

Well, when Trump withdrew support for the Agency for International Development [USAID], withdrew support for the United Nations health agencies and cultural and social-spending agencies, the intention was to create mass starvation and famine in the rest of the world — just like Trump’s attack on global warming to maintain the oil supremacy is causing rising sea levels — it’s going to create mass destruction.

All of this is viewed [by] the United States as a collateral benefit, not a collateral [damage]. You have to realize that when something like this happens, not everybody loses.

It will be a negative-sum game for the economy of nations, and the world as a whole, but very positive as a wealth grab by the 1%. And the United States is trying to make that the American 1%, not foreign 1%.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Thank you so much, Richard and Michael. Bye-bye. Great pleasure, as always, talking to you.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Talk to you again next week.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Talk to you next week.

Transcription and Diarization: https://scripthub.dev

Editing: Kimberly Mims
Review: ced

One strategy Pro-Israel supporters may be taking is to preemptively concede US military funding to Israel as a way of “taking the wind out of the sails of the “far left and far right.” (second-to-last paragraph)

Annual US Military aid is a small concession to make if it leaves in place:

• US military “partnership” in which the US moves Aircraft Carrier groups into the region and attacks Israel’s “enemies,” as well as

• diplomatic1, and “intelligence” support.

  

Transcript Quotes

Emanuel2, a moderate former congressman and mayor of Chicago, pointed out in the interview that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had himself proposed winding down U.S. military aid over the next 10 years, saying in January that the country had “come of age” and “developed incredible capacity” to continue on its own.

Emanuel, whose middle name is Israel and who speaks fluent Hebrew, holds a uniquely personal connection to the Jewish state. His late father, an Israeli immigrant born in Jerusalem, served in the Irgun, the Zionist paramilitary force that fought for Israeli independence. As a child, he spent summers in Israel and later volunteered as a civilian assistant to the Israel Defense Forces during the Gulf War. His son celebrated his bar mitzvah in Israel.

“There will no longer be U.S. taxpayer subsidies for the purchase of U.S. military equipment. Israel will be like every other ally. They can buy what they want, and they have to live within the restrictions,” Emanuel said of his vision of the future of military aid to Israel.

One prominent Jewish Democrat, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a charged issue, called Emanuel’s stance a practical response that “takes the wind out of the sails of the far left and the far right,” which have politicized funding for Israel. “As long as we’re giving aid to Israel, Americans will feel like they have a say in Israeli policy and how that investment is managed.”

But if that is Emanuel’s aim, he has not made it clear. In conversation with JI, he was hesitant to clarify his own positions when pressed. Asked if he would back Iron Dome funding, he said he had been “part of the financing” for a “joint project” that he called “key for Israel’s security” when it was first developed with the United States.

Source:

• “How Rahm Emanuel is recalibrating on Israel ahead of 2028: In an interview with Jewish Insider, Emanuel outlines his views amid changing winds in a Democratic Party increasingly antagonistic to the pro-Israel perspective that had long been central to his identity”, Matthew Kassel, Jewish Insider, May 5, 2026

FOOTNOTES:

Note: This video features swearing.

TRANSCRIPT:

20:58 a lot of times the questioners are pre-selected in advance. And when they’re not pre-selecting the questioners, sometimes they will

21:05 pre-select the question. So that kid who asked him that question made a video and spilled the tea about how he was

21:14 able to in pretty unlikely fashion get to ask that question in the first place.

21:20 It’s only because JD Vance the putts didn’t know to keep his mouth shut that this kid was even able to ask that question. They weren’t going to get to

21:28 him because they were screening the questions in advance. So let’s take a look. I’m the UG student that asked this question to JD Vance at the Turning Point event on Tuesday.

21:38 If there are compromised government officials in those files, how can the public trust that this administration

21:46 will hold anyone accountable when its own justice department is actively blocking the investigation?

21:53 I sat at the front of the event and was prepared to ask a question on whether there should be a formal investigation.

21:59 When I saw they opened it up for Q&A, I immediately tried to get to the mic. When the spotlight came on for the Q&A,

22:04 five people were already standing there wearing suits and dresses with TPUSA lanyards already positioned there.

22:11 This guy kind of sounds like I poned you. Is this I poned you? I pawned you.

22:14 Hides behind that cartoon avatar. Are you the guy who snuck into the Q&A? I pawned you.

22:18 I still got up and got in line and I think I was the first one there that was not a part of TPUSA. So, I just sat in line and got ready to ask my question.

22:27 When we were waiting in line, this lady in a blue top was going around asking people, especially not in TPUSA, what

22:34 topic we are going to ask about. When I was waiting in line and the lady came up to me, I could tell from her tone that they were probably screening the questions.

22:41 Okay. So, if you were part of the organization, I guess you got to go in the front of the line. If you were a civilian and you weren’t part of the organization, you had to wait and they

22:50 asked you, okay, what are you here to to say by topic? So, I just said that I was going to ask on foreign policy. After a

22:58 few more times of people coming up to me and asking what my topic was, this finally happened. Thank you so much.

23:06 This will be the last question. Okay. Oh,

23:09 can we take two more? Cuz I I I like I like answering questions. We’ll take idiot. See, that’s the thing, man. That that it’s very unprofessional of of JD

23:17 Vans to like be like, “Hey, can we take two more?” Like there’s the saying in uh Glengarry Glenn Ross when the the guy

23:25 blows the sail for his colleague and then the other colleague says you you never open your mouth unless you know what the shot is. Meaning you don’t just

23:33 talk unless you know what’s going on in one of these controlled environments. So JD Vance the putts doesn’t

23:41 never quite occurs to him that this could be like contrived and that the reason they’re stopping the line at this person is because this is the last uh

23:49 you know TPUSA stoogge that they have you know asking a pre-approved question or if it’s not a TPUSA person this is

23:57 the last person whose question they think is kosher to to ask. He doesn’t realize that. So he’s like you know what let’s take two. So if you see this is

24:04 the girl who asked about the home buying and the economic questions that we covered with kit and then right behind her is the guy who asks the Epstein question.

24:14 A couple more. This was the last person in front of me.

24:16 And when JD Vance said that they were going to have a few more questions, this lady immediately went back and started asking what my topic was.

24:23 So now she really wants to know what you ask about. Looking at my phone and saying, “Can you please read your question to me?”

24:29 I was astonished how they were talking to us. So, I went off to the side to talk.

24:32 You should have been like, I want to ask him about Milo Yiannopoulos’s claims that Benny Johnson is uh into gay orgies. That’s what I I’m going to ask

24:40 him that question. I I really want his his comment to somebody sitting down and I look back and immediately someone had cut me in line. The lady in blue put this girl

24:48 right in front of me because her topic was better than mine. And here can you can see me uh fighting back on that a little bit. So, she lets the girl in front of him.

24:57 So, even after JD Vance says, “All right, we’re going to take two more.”

25:01 She’s like, “All right, well, now I have to really get to the bottom of who asks who asks what.” Then she puts the other girl in front of him to try and stop him from asking this. This is the

25:10 transparency of free speech. DP USA asked for one more question. He asked for it. He does it again. And finally, let me ask a question.

25:17 He [ __ ] it up again. He’s like, “Yes, take one, boys. Just keep going.” Like, clearly they’re trying to stop this.

25:23 Clearly, they’re trying to like, “All right, that’s enough. Let’s Let’s get out of here and call it a night before things get worse than they are because don’t forget we covered this with kid.

25:30 He was getting protested and heckled the whole time. Yeah. So, I finally got to get off my chest. Thank you.

25:37 We’ll do one more. Sorry, real quick. I love this, but I got to go. I got to go. Thank you so much, Mr. Vice President,

25:45 and uh coming to UG and allowing us to express our freedom of speech. So, thank you so much. This is my first time at a

25:53 TPSA event and a political event, but I just wanted to show that this was my experience and they might preach for freedom of speech and non-censorship,

26:02 but this was just my experience and how they managed the event. Thank you.

26:08 Yep. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is as it seems. That’s been my take about this TPUSA thing from Jump. You know,

26:15 people are talking about, you know, how Erica Kirk’s behaviors seem strange. I’m like, “Yeah, they’re all strange because nothing none of this is as it seems.

26:22 It’s all it’s all a show. It’s all show biz at the end of the day. They’re not a free speech organization. Everything is pro wrestling. What looks like a

26:30 spontaneous Q&A is anything but.” It was only because the doofus didn’t know to take the hint and stop the event that he even got to ask that in the first place.

26:39 Go ahead.

26:40 Yeah. Um, no. The reason why I said uh it was a great segue into the TPUSA situation is because I’m reminded of how

26:47 you know Donna Brazil and whoever had orchestrated the questions in the debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, right?

26:54 And you know like all the Bernie Bros were like this is unfair. Like this is clearly like an orchestrated event where you are meant to come away with one

27:03 opinion. And I think the Trump administration is highly characterized this way is these people are so

27:11 narcissistic that they really they really [ __ ] believe like JD Vance is sitting here. He’s getting these like questions pre-screened and he’s like,

27:19 “Oh man, I’m knocking this out of the park. Bring me another one.”

27:22 It’s the hubris and the overconfidence of this administration that leads them to making mistakes like this where they’re just not understanding like,

27:30 “Hey, this is an orchestrated event.”

27:33 like don’t break. It’s just like the Door Dash grandma. Like Trump walks in there and he goes, “Yeah, what do you think about the trans?” It’s like you

27:40 realize [laughter] this lady was told like tax on tips. So she gets up there and she’s he asked her about that and she’s like, “Well, I don’t have any

27:48 opinion about that. She’s got to worry about all these other interests going and do it.”

27:51 You know, because it’s an orchestrated event. It’s just a scop. It’s meant there for there to be narrative control and for people to come away with one

27:58 impression from the event or the uh whatever it is his speeches or anything like that. It’s just meant to be narrative controlled.

28:07 Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s not it’s not ju it’s not unique to TPUSA. So many of these events are like this. When I covered the Dean Phillips event and I

28:15 got thrown out because I started screaming at him,

28:18 you know, I wasn’t planning on screaming at him. I was planning on asking a question about Gaza, but what happened

28:25 was a guy in front of me, it wasn’t in front of me, they were they had this guy going around like with a with a with

28:34 another microphone uh or no, when when somebody would ask a question and Dean Phillips, the candidate, would would answer, they

28:42 would take the microphone and they would automatically like find the next person.

28:45 So, it wasn’t like this spontaneous thing where like you raise your hand and they find you like they would give it to the next person. And uh so I thought that was

28:52 kind of strange. But then when Dean Phillips said something that I found kind of objectionable, I just kind of blurted out my my objection to it. I

29:00 forget exactly what it was. Oh, he was talking about the October 7th like videotape of all of the, you know,

29:05 horrible things that happened on October 7th. And I buted in I said that’s never been released to the public. It’s never been released to the public for vetting.

29:12 Right. Exactly. And so I said, “We’ve all seen countless videotapes of the horrors committed by the IDF.” Something like that. I just blurted it out ill advisedly.

29:22 But then when I saw how the event was going, how they were kind of like pre-seelecting the next questioner, I’m

29:29 like, “Ah [ __ ] I kind of blew it.” Like they’re never going to call on me now because now [laughter]

29:35 a red flag about myself. Like now they’re going to think I’m a problem. So at that point, I just kind of yelled. Um but uh yeah, so it’s not unique to TPUSA

29:44 that they do it this way. A lot of organizations do it this way, but it just goes to show the artifice of things that can seem very real and and organic.

29:53 So even even an organization that brands itself so like free speech. No, I mean so much of this so much of this is curated for Yeah.

30:02 your consumption. Yeah.

ELSEWHERE:

CNN cuts off the interview after the interviewee says “the wrong thing” under the pretext of an transmission “issue”.

QUESTIONS:

1. Have you observed “rigged” feedback in quasi-democratic question and answer times?

2. Are you conscious that events are curating feedback when they ask people to write down or record questions for the event to choose from?

3. Do you think that speakers and audience are aware when feedback is being curated?

4. Was JD Vance’s enthusiasm for more questions a result of TP-USA staff giving him softball questions earlier?

Note: This video contains swearing.

The “RootsAction” 2024 Autopsy Counter-Report

Because the official DNC report remains private, progressive groups like RootsAction released their own “autopsy.” Their findings—which many believe mirror the suppressed DNC data—concluded that Harris failed because she spent too much energy courting “mythical” moderate Republicans while neglecting the working-class and young voters who actually form the party’s core.

The standoff over the report has created a rift, with the “establishment” wing wanting to move on to 2026, and the “reform” wing insisting that keeping the report secret is a sign that the party hasn’t actually learned anything at all.

• View Roots Action 2024 Autopsy Counter-Report

Questions:

1. How do political parties benefit from hiding their mistakes?

2. Why aren’t political parties able to do a better job of satisfying their voters, or are they actually succeeding at satisfying the people and corporations that matter?

3. How can we have faith in political parties that don’t want to “look back” at 2020 (Republicans “Stolen” Election) or release the results of their 2024 autopsy report (Democrats)?

4. Too Big to Fail: Does the fact that the actions of top Democratic officials and consultants can not even be honestly reported by the party’s own reviewers prove that people at the top have virtual impunity? Is the failure to release the “Autopsy Report” a sign of dysfunction like the Pentagon’s inability to pass a financial audit?

5. Why is the Democratic Party more attracted to courting “mythical” moderate Republicans, rather than attracting working class and young voters?

6. Who benefits from unaccountable political parties?

7. What are the dangers and costs of unaccountable political parties?

DETAIL: Gemini Results

Q: The Democratic Party recently released part of their 2024 Election Autopsy report, but they did not release all of it. What do people believe hasn't been released and why?

A: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has sparked significant internal and public debate by choosing not to release its full 200-page “autopsy” report on the 2024 election. While the party has shared vague “learnings” with senior leadership, the decision to keep the comprehensive document under seal has led to various theories about what is being hidden.

Here is a breakdown of what people believe is in the unreleased portions and why the DNC is withholding them.

What is Believed to Be in the Unreleased Report?

According to leaks and statements from party members who have been briefed, several “painful” topics are reportedly detailed in the full report:

• The “Gaza Effect”: Reporting from Axios and The Forward indicates the report identifies the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “net negative.” It specifically notes this policy cost Harris critical support among young, Arab-American, and progressive voters in swing states like Michigan.

• The Biden Withdrawal Timeline: Critics suspect the report contains a candid assessment of whether President Biden should have dropped out earlier. It reportedly examines the “shadow” cast by his late exit and how it hampered Harris’s ability to define herself independently.

• Working-Class Disenchantment: The report is believed to detail a massive failure to message effectively on inflation and the cost of living, showing that the party lost its traditional base to corporate interests and failed to counter the “everything is too expensive” narrative.

• Losing Young and Progressive Voters: “While Biden surprised and temporarily impressed some progressives with his COVID-19 economic recovery stimulus and climate policies in the Inflation Reduction Act, large portions of young and progressive Democrats became disillusioned by Biden’s failure to move forward a federal minimum wage increase, ongoing struggles and uncertainties around student debt, inadequate progress on the climate crisis, and his unflagging support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” (Added from Roots Action)

• Failed to speak to Populist voters: “An April 2025 poll by Survey USA showed that 50% of respondents wanted the party to “become more progressive,” while only 24% said “stay the same” and 18% said “become more moderate.” A whopping 72% of Democrats told pollsters they preferred progressives like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, “who are calling on Democrats to adopt a more aggressive stance towards Trump and his administration and ‘fight harder,’ over moderate Democrats who are willing to compromise on Trump issues important to their base.” (Added from Roots Action)

• Spending Inefficiency: While Democrats significantly outspent Republicans in 2024, the report allegedly highlights that this financial advantage did not translate into votes, suggesting deep structural issues in how the party uses its “war chest.”

Why Has It Not Been Released?

The DNC’s official stance, led by Chair Ken Martin, is that releasing the full report would be a “distraction” as the party prepares for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential race.

FOOTNOTES:

1) Oil Company Climate Change “Reform”: Deception

“Did you know that the oil companies are in favor of a carbon tax to address climate change? It may appear that the oil companies have found climate science “religion,” but you must understand that according the an Exxon lobbyist, this stance is a merely a public relations tactic. By taking a seemingly progressive position, they make it appear as though they are being responsible about climate change, but they have actually calculated that adoption of a carbon tax would be exceedingly difficult to achieve. For them this difficulty is a feature, not a bug.

“Bluff-Reform” describes a type of proposed reform that is intended to deceive or distract from more substantial, achievable reforms. It's a tactic employed by opponents of real change to appear progressive or open-minded while actually stalling or hindering progress.

They will work to oppose action on climate by funding “shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts,” while portraying themselves as responsible companies that are being cooperative.1

Keith McCoy, a senior director in Exxon’s Washington government affairs team, was recorded on video in May saying that the company backs a carbon tax “as an easy talking point” and an “advocacy tool” because “there is not an appetite for a carbon tax” and that Republican legislators who oppose taxes in principle will never let it happen.

“Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans, and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that – but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well, what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” he said. (The Guardian, June 30, 2022)

2) Tax the Rich: Was Kamala Bluffing?

I wonder how common this “bluff-reformer” strategy is? When Kamala Harris said she wanted to tax unrealized capital gains, what chance of success did she think (or her advisors) think this tactic had? Did she have a strategy for an “initial bargaining position” turning this into something achievable, or was this just posturing, like the oil companies support for a carbon tax?

3) “Sheep Dog” Candidates

The strategy of “sheep dogging”2 is similar. It’s a type of “bluff reform” in which a candidate offers the promise of reform, with the intention of ultimately funneling those wayward voters who are alienated with the party, back into supporting the usually corporate “centrist” nominee, by staking out a position within the party that captures the attention of those wanting reform and then drop out after the deadline for new candidates to file, thus capturing the audience for reform and then blocking the emergence of a real reform candidate.

QUESTIONS:

1. Were you aware of corporations, parties, or political figures taking positions without the intention of following them, but out of a “bluffing” strategy which hinders reform-minded voters ability to achieve long-term representation?

2. Have your heard the term “sheepdog” in “mainstream” media? Would the naming of the

3. Would a political party like the Democrats allow a candidate to run, without the intention of allowing them to win the nomination?

FOOTNOTES:

This slogan was deployed to define all criticism of the Iraq war as illegitimate, necessarily implying the war’s critics were in collaboration with those who planned and executed the 911 attacks.

• Years later, are we able to reject this form of argumentation?

THE GUILT TRAP

• Are you a vegetarian? You know who else was a vegetarian — HITLER!

• Or are you a meat lover? You know who else ate meat — STALIN! :-)

If you can’t share anything in common with bad people, you’re not free to do a whole lotta things! This is sometimes called “Reductio ad Hitlerum”.

I asked Gemini:

What is the name for the following fallacy, of which I will give you three examples?

1. If you hold a principled position, such as opposition to the Iraq War, critics will call you a Saddam Hussein or terrorist supporter, ignoring the fact that you may have legitimate principles that lead you to oppose the Iraq war.

2. If you oppose the Ukraine war on principled grounds, they call you a “Putin-puppet.”

3. If you like chocolate ice cream and Vladimir Putin also like chocolate ice cream. must you change your favorite ice create to avoid being smeared as a “Putin-puppet”?

If like chocolate ice cream, you must be a “Putin Puppet”, created by Gemini AI

Gemini said:

The rhetorical tactic you are describing is primarily known as Guilt by Association (a form of the Association Fallacy).

In a more specific, informal sense, it is often called Ad Hominem Circumstantial. This occurs when an opponent ignores the actual merits of your argument and instead tries to discredit your position by linking it to a person or group that is already viewed negatively.

Breaking Down the Fallacy

This line of reasoning usually follows a flawed logical structure:

1. Person A holds View X.

2. Person B (a “bad” person) also holds View X (or benefits from it).

3. Therefore, Person A is just like Person B.

1. Guilt by Association

This is the most common label for your examples. It attempts to “stain” a principled stance by pointing out that an unpopular figure shares that stance. It ignores the independent reasoning behind your choice.

2. The “Hitler Card” (Reductio ad Hitlerum)

When the “bad person” in the comparison is a dictator or a villainous historical figure (like Hussein or Putin), it is a variation of Reductio ad Hitlerum. It suggests that if a villain liked something, that thing is inherently evil.

3. Nutpicking / Straw Man

In your Iraq and Ukraine examples, critics are also employing a Straw Man. Instead of debating the “principled grounds” (e.g., non-interventionism, economic cost, or legal sovereignty), they mischaracterize your motive as “supporting the enemy” because that is an easier argument to defeat than a complex geopolitical one.

Why the “Ice Cream” Example is Important

Your third example highlights the logical absurdity of the fallacy.

• Fact: Vladimir Putin breathes oxygen.

• Fact: You breathe oxygen.

• Fallacy: You are a Putin-supporter because you share a trait with him.

In logic, this is a failure to distinguish between coincidental agreement and functional alliance. Sharing a preference for ice cream (or a specific policy) does not imply sharing an ideology or a moral character.

Summary Table

Feature | Description

The Target | Your principled position (e.g., anti-war).

The Smear | Linking you to a “pariah” figure (e.g., Putin/Hussein).

The Goal | To silence dissent by making the position socially radioactive.

The Error | Assuming that shared conclusions require shared motives.

Would you like me to help you draft a logical rebuttal for when someone uses this “association” tactic against you?

Strategy: Decouple Principles from Person

To effectively shut down a Guilt by Association smear, you need to decouple your principles from the person the critic is trying to link you to.

Here are three ways to handle these situations, ranging from a logical dissection to a more pointed, “ice cream” style retort.

1. The “Logic Bridge” Rebuttal

Point out that sharing a conclusion does not mean sharing a motive. This is the most professional way to handle the “Putin-puppet” or “terrorist supporter” label.

• The Script: “You’re making a leap in logic. Two people can arrive at the same conclusion for entirely different reasons. My opposition is based on [insert principle, e.g., fiscal responsibility/non-interventionism], not an affinity for a foreign leader. If a dictator says 2+2=4, does that make mathematics a ‘puppet’ of the regime?”

2. The Reductio ad Absurdum (The Ice Cream Defense)

Use the user’s ice cream example to show how ridiculous their logic is. This works well in informal debates or social media settings.

• The Script: “That’s like saying because we both like chocolate ice cream, I must be his best friend. If we only held positions that bad people didn’t hold, we couldn’t believe in anything—they also eat, sleep, and breathe. Can we get back to the actual merits of the policy instead of the personality labels?”

3. The “Burden of Proof” Flip

Shift the weight back onto the critic. If they are accusing you of being a “puppet” or “supporter,” they are making a claim about your character that they cannot prove.

• The Script: “That’s a heavy accusation. Do you have any evidence that my position is motivated by support for [Figure X], or are you just using a label to avoid discussing the [Iraq War/Ukraine War] itself? I’m happy to debate the policy, but I’m not going to defend a motive I don’t have.”

Comparison of the Strategies

Strategy | Best Used For...Vibe

Logic Bridge | Academic or professional debates. Calm, intellectual.

Ice Cream | Cutting through rhetorical nonsense quickly.Witty, slightly biting.

The Flip | Forcing the critic to defend their smear. Assertive, firm.

4 Related Association Fallacies

The “Galileo Gambit”: We’re both misunderstood geniuses.

1. Guilt by Association

This is the most common version. It occurs when a person or claim is rejected solely because it is associated with an unpopular or “evil” person or group. The intent is to smear the target without actually addressing their argument.

• The Logic: Person A makes claim X. Person B (who is disliked) also supports claim X. Therefore, Person A is bad or claim X is false.

• Example: “You think we should improve public infrastructure? You know who else liked public infrastructure? Dictators. You’re basically supporting tyranny.”

2. Honor by Association

The inverse of guilt by association. This happens when someone claims that because they are associated with a respected person or group, they (or their ideas) must also be virtuous or correct.

• The Logic: Person A is associated with Group B. Group B is prestigious. Therefore, Person A’s specific (and unrelated) argument must be right.

• Example: “Our CEO went to an Ivy League school, so her plan for the company’s new logo must be the best one.”

3. Reductio ad Hitlerum

A specific, hyper-common subset of guilt by association. It involves invalidating someone’s position by claiming that Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party held the same view.

• Example: “You’re a vegetarian? You know, Hitler was a vegetarian.”

4. The Galileo Gambit

A form of honor by association used by people promoting fringe or pseudoscientific ideas. They compare themselves to a persecuted but eventually vindicated figure (like Galileo) to imply that their current rejection by the “establishment” is proof of their future success.

• The Logic: Galileo was laughed at and was right. I am being laughed at. Therefore, I am right.

• The Flaw: This ignores the fact that many people are laughed at simply because their ideas are incorrect.

Summary Table: Association Fallacies

Type | Mechanism | Goal |

Guilt by Association | Link a person to a “bad” group. | Discredit an individual or idea.

Honor by Association | Link a person to a “good” group. | Gain unearned credibility.

Reductio ad Hitlerum | Link a view to a historical villain. | Shut down debate through moral outrage.

Galileo Gambit | Link oneself to a “misunderstood genius.” | Shield a weak theory from criticism

Here’s a video of a Washing machine repairman the typifies the type of plain-spoken sales pitch that has integrity that is seldom found in public officials. Commenters commend this man, saying that “Men Like this Man is what Makes the United States great.”

• What lessons can Americans apply to those who serve and elect people to public office?

• What systemic factors cause our public officials to be more “slippery?”

Harper & Knowles Washer and Dryer Repair

Questions:

1. There is still a pride in plain-spoken integrity that doesn’t exist often at the “higher levels” of the social hierarchy. Why do you think that is?

2. Is it possible to occupy positions of power without losing one’s integrity?

3. Who are people who have done a good job in management, professional life or public office, while maintaining their integrity?

4. What lessons can you draw from them?

5. Are there books, videos, etc that explain an effective approach to “Integrity for Public Officials?”1

Comments:

Men Like this Man is what Makes the United States great.
Tells the truth and honest as the Day is long.

Since 2008 these men have been replaced with bean counters and financiers looking for their next bailout. They replaced “buy it for life” with “planned obsolescence” and “shrinkflation” to compensate for inept monetary policy by central banks.

It’s too bad. Our presidents aren’t like him ..

Not even in the market (hopefully not for a long time) but, watched whole video. This is the type of content the internet needs. Good, straight forward, buy this cause it ain’t crap knowledge.

Miele is also a family-owned and operated company and is on their 4th generation of family running things. They have no investors to answer to except themselves.

TC5 owner here. They’re the only washer I allow in my house too.

Best of all, the washer is actually made here, in Wisconsin.

I don’t mind paying for quality and American labor if I’m getting a durable, reliable product. SQ delivers.

Anyone named chip who repairs stuff gets my ear. Not enough chips in this world.

QUESTIONS:

1. Will middle-age administrative members in power in today’s American and Israeli administrations be able to maintain their impunity 20 years from now?

2. If they are charged, who is most likely to be charged and what are the possible charges?

How do war crime charges differ from crimes against humanity?

1. Context of Occurrence

• War crimes must occur within the context of an armed conflict, whether international or non-international.

• Crimes against humanity can be committed during war or peace, as long as they are part of a widespread or systematic attack.

2. Nature of the Attack

• War crimes can result from isolated acts (e.g., a single soldier killing a civilian).

• Crimes against humanity require a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, indicating organization and policy.

3. Victim Status

• War crimes can target both civilians and combatants (e.g., torture of prisoners of war).

• Crimes against humanity are directed exclusively against civilian populations.

4. Legal Framework

• War crimes are defined by international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions.

• Crimes against humanity are codified in the Rome Statute (Article 7) but are not yet covered by a standalone international convention.

• List of convicted war criminals

• List of people indicted in the International Criminal Court

Questions:

1. Have you ever worked for or heard of a company engage in counter-productive cost-cutting?

2. What are ways you have heard of businesses successfully signaling to their employees that the company cares about their employees or work?

3. Do you think high-level leaders fail to take into account the signals they send to their workers? Why do you think they fail to take this into account?

4. Have you found that employers take advantage of their leverage during economic downturns? What, if anything, is the consequence of this?

Transcript:

0:02 Paul O’Neal had had been head of OM and sort of come out of government and the board chose him to run Alcoa and I’m I’m

0:09 going to shorten the story just to make a point and he he comes in and he does a whole review of the company and looks at everything and he comes back to the

0:17 board and he said, “Okay, my number one priority is worker safety.” And a bunch of the guys on the board went nuts. They thought, “Oh god, this is a government guy. He’s not going to make any money.

0:27 he’s going to fail, you know, blah blah blah, anything. One leads to another and he was very serious. There was a real worker safety problem. And uh the

0:36 process goes in place. He makes worker safety number one. And um and so suddenly people start caring about their

0:44 jobs and the business and because they believe he’s sincere and he really is.

0:49 And the next thing you know, Alco is performing fabulously financially because he turned around the culture.

0:55 And when I read all your stories of, you know, explosions and fires,

1:02 what I’m feeling is, you know, when you’re on the financial side and you see the financial guys financialized, they

1:10 are constantly sending signals to the workers, we don’t care about you. We don’t care about you, and we’re going to nickel and dime you, and we’re going to

1:18 nickel and dime your benefits, and we’re going to play games with you. And then what you get is you get a workforce that’s like the workforce Paul O’Neal

1:26 found when he went to Alcoa. And I look at all these companies and I’m thinking these companies have a Paul O’Ne we call at the investment screen company we call

1:34 it a Paul O’Neal problem. They all have a Paul O’Neal problem.

(I put these videos all on one page so that they are easier to navigate, but you don’t have to watch them all in one sitting)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

QUESTIONS:

1. Were you aware of the inefficacy of regulations of ammunition magazine sizes, grip types, and other aspects describing “assault weapons”?

2. Would you be in favor of setting a minimum age of 21 for gun purchases and tightening up enforcement of gun prohibitions on perpetrators of Domestic Violence, even if that disqualified police officers?

UPDATE: Why the gun control debate is going to change:

Replacing AR-15 → MCX-SPEAR ( twice as powerful )

UPDATE: More Questions about the Army’s New Rifle

Russell’s conjugation involves using “emotive” language to describe a piece of information in a biased way. Often bias is created based on whether the subject is part of the in-group, rather than the out-group.

Examples:

I am a freedom fighter

You are a rebel

He is a terrorist.

or

I am firm.

You are obstinate.

He is a pig-headed fool.

Same behavior, described differently

A good rule of thumb when hearing something described, is to imagine if the same event were described with different emotive language.

• One can draw the same conclusion about the same underlying fact, regardless whether it is reported with positive, negative, or negateive emotional conjugation.

• The way the speaker describes an event tells the listener both the event and the speaker’s orientation towards it.

Wikipedia:

In rhetoric, emotive or emotional conjugation (also known as Russell's conjugation)^[1] is a rhetorical technique used to create an intrinsic bias towards or against a piece of information. Bias is created by using the emotional connotation of a word to prime a response from the audience by creating a loaded statement. When used seriously, such loaded language can lend false support to an argument through emotional connotation and implication rather than through fact.

History and research

Emotional conjugation was originally defined by Bertrand Russell in 1948 on the BBC Radio program, The Brains Trust.^[2] During an interview, he gave multiple examples of emotive conjugation, one of them being the following:^[3]

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.

While firm, obstinate, and pig-headed are all synonymous with stubbornness, the emotive connotations of these words are different. Firm carries a positive connotation, obstinate carries a neutral (or slightly negative) connotation, and pig-headed fool carries a negative connotation. Thus, most individuals have a positive reaction toward the speaker, and a negative reaction toward the pig-headed fool. Russell notes that no additional information is given on each individual, yet a strong opinion on each individual forms nonetheless. Russell explains this phenomenon by defining humans as social creatures. He claims that the mind is always asking “What is the social consequence of accepting the facts as they are?” which causes the audience to mimic the emotions presented by the speaker.^[4]

^{Frank Luntz: political consultation}

.. an individual would oppose the idea of a "death tax" while supporting an "estate tax" despite the fact that the nature of the taxes are the same.

.. An example Luntz mentioned was the emotive conjugation of "illegal aliens" being used in place of "undocumented immigrants." While these phrases refer to the same group of people, the former was met with a negative reaction in comparison to the latter.^[4]

• I know my own mind; you like things to be just so; they have to have everything their way.^[5]

• I am a freedom fighter, you are a rebel, and he is a terrorist.

• I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.^[2]

• I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.^[2]

In popular culture

The inherent incongruity also lends itself to humor, as employed by Bernard Woolley in the BBC television series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister:^[6][7]

It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?
I have an independent mind, You are eccentric, He is round the twist.^[8]

That’s another of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?
I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he’s being charged under section 2A of the Official Secrets Act.^[9]

Questions

1. Have you’ve noticed examples of Russell’s conjugations in the past?

2. Can you think of other examples of Russell conjugations?

3. Do you have suggestions of how readers/listeners should better handle emotive language?

Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases, The Atlantic

Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and others have taken over homes that until recently housed senior officers.

.. For weeks before Kirk’s death, activists had been protesting the Millers’ presence in north Arlington, Virginia. Someone had put up wanted posters in their neighborhood with their home address, denouncing Stephen as a Nazi who had committed “crimes against humanity.” A group called Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity warned in an Instagram post: “Your efforts to dismantle our democracy and destroy our social safety net will not be tolerated here.” The local protest became a backdrop to the Trump administration’s response to Kirk’s killing. When Miller, the architect of that response who is known for his inflammatory political rhetoric, announced a legal crackdown on liberal groups, he singled out the tactics that had victimized his family—what he called “organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting peoples’ addresses.” ( Oct 30, 2025)

Some Trump officials leave homes for US military bases amid political protests - report, The Jerusalem Post

According to the report, several US administration officials, including Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem, have moved into houses that hosted senior military officials on bases in the Washington area to shield themselves from protests outside of their homes and political violence.

However, the number of Trump officials who have moved onto bases is now impacting housing for the nation’s top uniformed officers, as well as other administration officials.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard requested earlier this year to move onto Fort McNair, but was denied based on the lack of availability. (Oct 31, 2025)

In Trump’s Administration, Military Housing Is Becoming a Hot Commodity, NYTimes

Until President Trump took office for the second time, it was rare for civilian government officials to live on military bases or installations.

All across Washington, some of the most powerful people in the federal government are hosting one another for dinner, comparing their rent prices and fixing leaky pipes — which, in one unfortunate case, recently flooded a cabinet secretary’s basement.

It sounds relatable, except for one detail: These high-ranking officials are not living in Georgetown or Kalorama or the wealthiest enclaves of Northern Virginia, as many did in administrations past. An increasing number of them are living in secure military housing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are neighbors, living in a row of stately homes at Fort McNair, a military installation that sits on a peninsula where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet. Their homes are usually reserved for high-ranking generals. They live not far from the site where four conspirators of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination were executed in 1865. (March 21, 2026)

Trump Admits His Goons Don’t Need Their Military Housing, The Daily Beast

President Donald Trump has admitted that some senior members of his administration are unnecessarily living in military housing.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller all live in Washington-area military housing for security reasons.

Rubio and Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row“ at Fort McNair, an Army enclave, while ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has yet to vacate the waterfront home on a D.C. military base she moved into after supposed threats related to her job.

.. During his Sunday interview on 60 Minutes, one day after a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Trump was asked by correspondent Norah O’Donnell if he believed there was a link between the divisive political violence in the U.S. and his staff living on secure military bases because of potential threats against them due to their jobs.

“Well, they choose to,” Trump said of the living arrangements. “I’m not sure that... ah, they need to. They also have nice places, you know? Democrats did the same thing. Some of the housing on the military bases is very nice. I’m not sure they do it necessarily for violence, but probably... it’s not the worst thing in the world.”

QUESTIONS:

1. Is this unprecedented action a sign that the government:

   1. doesn’t believe it has the confidence of the public, or

   2. the government anticipates civil strife, or

   3. consciousness of guilt — these officials deserve opposition?

2. One of the provisions of local police officers is that they live in the locality.1 This prevents the officers from “Lording it over” the public. Do we need a law mandating that government officials have their lot in with the public?

3. What is the significance of billionaires like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman allegedly buying homes on or near military bases, according to Max Blumenthal?

Footnotes

Secret Service Agent J. Lawrence Cunningham was in charge of designing the Secret Service protective protocols after the Secret Service failed to protect Ronald Reagan1 from assassination on March 30, 1981. In this video he describes the differences between the lessons the Secret Service applied then and the way the Secret Service has handled security for President Trump in:

1. Butler, PA

2. Mar-a-Lago

3. White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Hilton Hotel, Washington

Gemini Summary

This transcript features a discussion between host Judge Andrew Napolitano and Jay Lawrence Cunningham, a former Secret Service agent with 20 years of experience. The conversation centers on security vulnerabilities concerning President Trump, specifically regarding an incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, previous events in Butler, Pennsylvania, and security concerns at the Mar-a-Lago golf course.

Assessment of Security Failures

Cunningham argues that security measures during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner were inadequate, specifically citing “profound missteps” regarding the perimeters.

• Weak Perimeters: The “concentric circles of protection”—outer, middle, and inner—were not sufficiently robust or wide enough to account for potential threats.

• Inadequate Screening: The screening process was limited by space, and the entry requirements were too lax (requiring only a ticket rather than verified identification).

• Lack of Counter-Surveillance: There was an absence of “roving intelligence units” or “counter surveillance units,” which should have been deployed to detect suspicious behavior before individuals reached the magnetometers.

• Response Delays: During the incident, the protective detail for the President appeared to be at a distance, causing a delay in the “alert, shield, and evacuate” protocol. This resulted in the President being exposed longer than necessary compared to the Vice President, who was moved more expeditiously.

Training and Procedural Concerns

A central theme of the discussion is a perceived decline in the effectiveness of the Secret Service, which Cunningham attributes to several factors:

• Lack of Training: Cunningham states that agents have not consistently engaged in high-level training, including physical training (PT), in recent years.

• Inconsistent Leadership: He suggests that modern agents are not held to the same standards of accountability, site-walking, and “red teaming” (thinking like an attacker) as they were in previous eras.

• Staffing Issues: He notes that assignments sometimes involve personnel lacking the specific nuances of presidential or candidate protection, such as Homeland Security Investigators, rather than specialized agents.

Broader Security Philosophy

Cunningham highlights several principles he believes are necessary for effective protection:

• Coordinated Attacks: He expresses grave concern regarding the potential for “coordinated” or “simultaneous attacks,” citing the 2015 Paris attacks as a model that the Secret Service must prepare for. He warns that current operations could be vulnerable to diversions, where one person acts as a distraction while others penetrate the site.

• Site Management: He emphasizes that every location must be treated as a unique environment requiring rigorous advance work, which includes consulting with local law enforcement, counter-snipers, and hotel security to form a cohesive team.

• Previous Incidents: Regarding the Butler, Pennsylvania incident and the Mar-a-Lago security breach, Cunningham characterizes them as “egregious” abandonments of basic protective principles, noting that in his era, having an individual camp out for 12 hours would have been impossible.

Questions:

1. Do you agree with former Secret Service Agent Larry Cunningham that the Secret Service protection have featured egregious abandonment of basic protective principles?

2. Why do you think Trump hasn’t insisted on more of an investigation into the Butler and Mar-a-Lago assassination attempts?

DETAIL:

Video Transcript:

Today is Monday, April 27th, 2000.

1:10 I can’t hear you, Judge. Um,

1:13 all right.

You hear me now through the Yes, I I put speakers. We’re good. Thank you.

1:18 All right.

Ready to go. So, our uh guest uh is Jay Lawrence Cunningham.

Larry was

1:26 a Secret Service agent for 20 years, was in was a supervisor for many of those

1:32 years, was the lead advance agent for such people as President Ronald Reagan

1:39 and Pope John Paul II.

Larry is of course an expert on security, having spent so much time in the Secret Service

1:47 and having been engaged by the government and others to advise them on security issues.

Larry, welcome here.

1:55 It’s a delight to have you even though we’re talking about a most unpleasant subject.

Um, was President Trump adequately protected on Saturday night

2:04 at the White House correspondents dinner at the Hilton Hotel?

Well, uh, I would have to say in total, no.

There were

2:11 some missteps and candidly profound missteps on the out of perimeters which allowed um this person Allen to get

2:21 close.

uh in some areas they were um following protocol but the problem is

2:29 the um issue that I saw there are many that contributed to this but the outer perimeter is weak and the observation

2:39 tools that you have were not in place adequately and the other problem I found is that they adapted um the environment

2:48 for screening which was limited But given that uh that limited space between the entry and the metal detectors, there

2:58 was limited space.

So to accommodate that, there should have been a few more buffer zones, a few more

3:05 sort of what you say is the outer perimeter.

As I understand it, the Secret Service operates, and I’ll I’ll try and make this simple for everyone

3:13 listening, with concentric circles of protection.

And what you’re saying is the outer circle either wasn’t strong

3:21 enough or didn’t go out far enough.

Is that a fair way to describe this?

3:26 I would say both candidly.

Um there are a lot of tools. Well, let’s back up for a second in the context of the number of threats that the president currently

3:35 gets on a daily basis.

the elements that you do as you described in the perimeters approach the outer middle and

3:42 inner perimeters they need to be far more robust to deal with all the threats known and unknown and because of that

3:50 I’m faulting the uh candidly the um somewhat porous outer and middle

3:57 perimeter uh this person was basically had uh a free rain and a free uh runway

4:04 to get right to the metal detector and the metal detector really wasn’t very far at all down the steps to the main

4:11 dining area.

So, in my view, there should have been more robust screening on the way in. A couple contributing

4:19 factors, all you needed was a ticket to get into the event.

You didn’t really need ID, per se. Uh, anybody could have

4:28 had a ticket.

There’s a lot of remedies for that. They did not have that. There could have been trouble desks.

There could have been folks to verify ID, hire

4:37 lots more people, get more staff and do all that verification as far away from the inner perimeter as possible.

So,

4:46 judge, as you rightly point out, it is a perimeter’s approach, but it has to be adapted to the circumstance and to the threat level and frankly the geography and the infrastructure.

4:57 Shouldn’t someone have noticed him in the hallways, in an elevator, on escalators,

5:05 if he was carrying a long gun?

I mean, I can understand you can you can hide a handgun under your jacket or your

5:13 clothing, but you can’t hire you can’t hide without being obvious as hell a long gun.

5:19 That’s true. Well, I I’ve read the latest update and apparently he came down a back stairwell with a black bag.

5:27 He assembled that weapon somewhere. We don’t know exactly, but you’re absolutely right.

And that speaks to what I’m talking about with the outer

5:35 perimeter assets.

Uh there’s a couple of couple assets that go with this.

5:40 Obviously, it’s barriers and sort of tiered entry points, ID and tickets.

But

5:49 to your point, judge, uh there are other things that can be done.

They do it at the White House, and they’re basically called uh counter surveillance units or

5:58 roving intelligence units.

Ideally under these circumstances given the geography given the threat level and given the

6:06 condensed uh geography there there should have been numerous teams like that not only in the outer perimeter but

6:13 in the middle perimeter in the lobby area and also before the metal detectors because

6:19 some team usually p paired with a local intelligent asset would be able to see

6:26 something suspicious presumably and that speaks to another thing which lots of folks have made a big point about.

Uh

6:35 I’ve developed some curricula for the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA on this very subject and it’s basically called site protection and it’s called

6:44 lone wolves.

In this case, the service has a a very robust study on behaviors of lone wolves and in general they their

6:53 behavior exceeds the baseline.

It’s just simply not normal. Let me ask you a few specific questions.

6:58 Do you know what kind of a long gun he had as the government revealed that?

7:02 Yes. He had a shotgun and his thinking in his manifesto which I read uh was he didn’t want a rifled slug to go through walls.

He wanted it to be a scattershot.

7:13 So it was actually a shotgun with uh pellets.

He had a handgun and a couple of knives.

7:22 Can Chris, can you run the clip of him running past the magnetometer?

7:30 You You’ve probably seen this, but I would like Yeah.

I would like you to analyze it for us, Larry. To me, it’s odd.

7:38 It’s almost as if the agents in pursuing him a fired but missed. I know. Unbelievable.

7:45 abandoned their posts. It appears that way. Maybe there were other agents to follow.

I I don’t know. I mean, how did

7:52 they not know that this guy was just a decoy to be followed by uh a dozen others?

So, thanks be to God that didn’t happen.

8:01 I’ll address that as soon as we watch this one more time.

Okay.

8:06 Now, you’re making several points and I have this in my notes actually. Here we go.

Okay.

8:13 That’s him in the circle. Yes. Okay.

8:22 Are they They can’t just be pointing.

8:25 They must be shooting.

Yes, they are shooting. There were six rounds,

8:29 apparently. Six pops that we know of.

If you look in the lower left, there’s a police officer who actually fires. It appears.

There’s a little bit of a a

8:38 flashbang on that officer right there on the lower left.

And candidly,

8:44 the asalent had a free runway up to the magnetometer point.

My issue with the whole thing is given that close

8:53 proximity between the outer perimeter or the middle perimeter and up to the magnetometer, there should have been a

9:00 far more robust screening or barriers or personnel to minimize this kind of thing.

If I were setting the security

9:08 up, I would have put up a trouble desk or several to verify ID and verify the the tickets and maybe even given a

9:16 second ticket.

To me, this is far too few uh screening area and and too anemic

9:24 of a screening area to deal with all these attend agent there who almost seems to collapse or fall as uh Mr. Allen runs past him.

9:36 Well, the problem is, and this is a ongoing issue with agents and police, they have a tendency to look at the protectee.

So,

9:45 whomever did the advance wasn’t really strict enough or emphasized enough that you should be looking at the outer

9:52 perimeter, not the inner perimeter.

And I’m I’m struck by the fact that you have police officers on the left and

9:59 presumably I haven’t looked at the the advanced plan yet, but presumably other agents further out.

If they didn’t,

10:07 that’s an egregious misstep. You’re out of perimeter.

Being so close to the magnetometers and then have this person

10:15 blow by you and then have the miss is just to me an egregious uh misstep.

It could have been resolved very easily. Do

10:23 you know the make and model of the shotgun?

I mean, did it have a folding stock? Could he have secreted it under his jacket or in a bag somewhere?

10:32 He may well have. I don’t know the specifics on that, but I would presume,

10:36 as smart as he is in trying to be surreptitious, I would presume he probably did have a folding a folding

10:43 shotgun.

Is the u job of the secret service to provide security for the

10:51 event or security for its designated protectees in this case the principal of whom is the president?

11:01 Yes. So that is a bit of a conundrum but when you do an advance like this I’ve actually done a Capitol Hilton security

11:10 advance.

The first thing you do is you talk that room.

11:13 Yes, I do.

And you talk to the manager of the hotel and you also hook up with their security folks.

To do it

11:20 correctly, you look at after actions of vulnerabilities from prior events,

11:24 whether they involve pus or just another dignitary.

And then you pair up with the

11:31 chief of security there.

Um, police from Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies, for example, State Department,

11:41 Capitol Police and others that to protect the attendees there, the other cabinet members, and you collectively make it a team approach.

This looks like

11:51 it that was not done.

And so to answer your question, yes, it involves you’re in their house for example, and so it involves consulting with them,

12:01 explaining to them what your requirements are, uh what their uh capabilities are, and pair up accordingly.

12:11 Why didn’t uh the Secret Service kill him or at least hit him with their weapons?

They

12:19 fired six times and the and the bullets went astray.

12:23 I I really can’t speak to that.

All I can do is speak to the training that I had in my era.

Um our folks were very um

12:34 shall I shall I say trained adnauseium for these kinds of things.

I do know I that they have not done a lot of

12:43 training in recent years.

And part of the reason that I’ve been given with some of my sources is the fact that they’ve been overwhelmed with other dignitaries,

12:52 other protectes.

And so they really haven’t been able to do PT, for example,

12:57 and they haven’t been able to do as many.

You say PT, you mean physical training. Right. Right.

13:03 And also, why was the vice president also there?

And why was he removed from the scene before the president was?

13:15 Well, that’s something that um concerns me greatly and I looked at that several times.

My conclusion without having the

13:24 benefit of being at their briefings is the VP detail you see coming in there right away were in closer proximity.

So,

13:32 they were able to access the vice president and remove him expeditiously.

13:37 Now on the left on the screen here you see the president.

13:42 It appears that his detail leader and his supervisors were

13:48 quite a distance from him which increases time and and reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of the response.

13:58 But now watch what happens when yes,

14:00 President Trump stands up and is surrounded by these people.

Watch what happens to him. I know you’ve seen this, but I’d like you to comment on it.

14:11 Okay.

14:13 They fell down.

Did Did they intentionally push him down so as to be out of the view of a shooter or did they trip over each other?

14:22 That’s hard for me to tell. The protocol is you alert, shield, and evacuate.

Um,

14:29 I don’t know if he fell down or tripped or whatever, but the fact is he was there almost 30 seconds exposed longer

14:38 than the vice president.

And the protocol calls for the following. You alert, shield, and evacuate. You don’t wait around.

Even though the protective

14:47 may want to stay or look around, it’s been said that he wanted to see what was going on.

That’s not the deal. You remove him from the vulnerable area as

14:56 soon as possible.

The textbook example is the removal of the vice president.

15:02 The other example with Donald Trump was it was too delayed.

I can tell you historically in my era the supervisors, the head of the

15:11 details wanted very close access.

In my area, if you look at era, if you look at

15:17 the old films and the old uh events, um a detail leader for the president and a

15:25 detail leader for the first lady are in very close proximity.

They may be a seat behind in a tux for this very purpose.

15:33 It appears that the presidential protective division agents were not near in close proximity enough to be

15:41 responsive and effective in a timely manner.

Thank God there was no other compadres out there, no other shooters in the audience because he was exposed for too much of a time.

15:52 Let me expand this to the two other threats in his life, one of which could have killed him just a matter of an inch in Butler, Pennsylvania.

16:03 How did that guy get up on on the roof?

16:06 Okay, I’m very familiar with that. I actually wrote a 16 page 17page paper on it, which I will send you.

Uh that was

16:13 probably one of the most egregious um abandonment frankly of the most basic

16:21 protective principles, the basic advanced principles.

And the the way I look at this is that part of it was the

16:28 assignment of the personnel.

The personnel that were assigned did not have protective experience.

The numbers of the personnel that were assigned was

16:36 not commensurate with this level of a protectee, especially given the threat level.

They utilize homeland security investigators.

16:46 Nothing wrong with those people, but they’re not trained in the nuances and of presidential or candidate protection.

16:54 So to answer your question, there were a series of missteps in terms of leaison with the police, partnering with their

17:02 intelligence group and basically having a one voice command post.

There are so many other issues that occurred but

17:10 those types of things sort of doing the advance solo in a vacuum is part of the problem.

The other issue is the folks

17:19 that were doing that advance, and I don’t take pleasure in in talking about this this way, but I have to call it out, is that they really didn’t

17:27 understand how vitally important it is to create a cohesive team.

We’re in Butler’s house. We’re not at the White House, and there are many resources,

17:36 counter sniper, police, sheriff, state police that could assist in a very meaningful way.

The perimeters were set

17:44 up in a way that is completely counter to what we’re taught.

The the thought was the perimeters are covered so they had personnel looking in to the site,

17:55 not outside the site.

And they arbitrarily said the fence was the dividing line. Well, threats can come

18:02 from anywhere, miles away.

And so to answer your question about how did this person get on the roof?

Candidly, they

18:09 didn’t have enough surveillance personnel, Secret Service personnel specifically. It wasn’t manned properly.

18:17 So, that person uh Crooks was able to get on the roof pretty much unnoticed

18:24 except for the police noticing that um that uh climbing on the roof and the assassin positioning himself on the roof.

18:33 If we go back to my concentric circle analogy,

18:37 Yes.

again in Butler, just like in Saturday night, the concentric the largest concentric circle wasn’t big enough and it didn’t go out far enough.

18:45 That’s correct. Exactly the same mistake.

18:48 And the same thing at his golf course in Florida where that guy actually aimed a long gun at the tea where Trump was

18:57 about to be putting.

And and I can explain a couple things here that this would not have happened in my era.

And I’m not saying because I was in that

19:05 era.

I’m saying because we were had we had very strict managers and very strict protocols and incredible accountability.

19:12 Let’s use the the um Marila Lago golf course as an example.

So that person

19:19 um Ruth was there for 12 hours. That’s impossible in our era.

When you when you have a site like that, the advanced

19:29 agent with a supervisor walks it a couple of times day and night.

Hours before you have dogs that do the

19:37 perimeter, you cut off the traffic and immediately before the advance, you do this again.

So to have someone like that

19:46 sitting there for camped out for 12 hours with no second supervisor going through this with the agents and with a

19:55 counterpart and dog teams to me is it’s anathema.

It’s just I’m a gasast at that oversight. That just simply is not the way it works.

20:05 Why is it that No. And I realize you’re retired from the service, Larry, but can you speculate

20:13 I’ll call it an educated guess as to why no substantial changes were made after the two threats on his life, the one in

20:20 Butler that almost killed him and the one in Mara Lago, God knows what would have happened if an agent hadn’t seen the tip of the gun.

Why is it that as

20:29 recently as two days ago, he’s still inadequately protected and one of the people assigned to him, a young female,

20:37 is half his size.

How could she be expected to pick him up when he fell?

20:42 Exactly.

And what I can tell you is that this gets back to training.

Uh Jason Chafitz after the penetration of the

20:50 White House several years ago and after a um armed felon was in the elevator with the president at the CDC many years

20:59 ago, Jason Chafus and um Lieberman did an extensive expose and study of the procedures.

21:08 uh conspicuously absent from the whole paradigm, the security procedures was

21:15 consistent and effective training.

You go forward some more in terms of Butler,

21:22 that still is the case.

They have not taken training seriously. Now whether it’s funding or basically making um

21:29 agents available for that or scheduling for that, I’m not privy to that exactly,

21:33 but I can tell you this is clearly a result of improper strategy application,

21:40 protective strategy application and a real lack of consistent training.

I know for a fact they haven’t done PT in many

21:48 years on a consistent basis.

But I wonder if Trump himself, you know, he was obviously exhilarated

21:55 later in the evening that his life was spared, but I wonder if he himself was aware of all all these defects when he praised the Secret Service to the skies.

22:06 Well, I was talking to a couple of uh former colleagues and candidly um he doesn’t completely understand the

22:13 perimeter’s approach.

This is not I mean this was a reactionary thank god successful reaction to an imminent

22:21 threat.

Let’s just say that upfront. But the the effective mitigation measures

22:28 which I’ve mentioned and we talk about some more were not in place in the correct numbers and in the correct

22:36 configuration.

And to answer your question from before, how is it now we keep having these missteps,

22:45 I have a couple of a couple of uh theories.

Number one, I don’t think they’re held to account the way the old

22:53 days were.

In other words, physically walk the site at nauseium. Um be a devil’s advocate.

uh put on a red team

23:02 hat if I were an assassin, if I were a terrorist or or god forbid, if I was a group of terrorists, how would I penetrate this?

And candidly, it scares

23:10 the daylights out of me because I’m looking at this having studied many terrorist attacks on my other work that

23:17 this basically was sitting doc.

If one person can get in like that and be a distraction, like you said, what to

23:24 prevent four or five more coming in from different directions?

That is the part that that flabbergasts me. And so I’m

23:32 thinking they don’t look at um terrorist attacks and how that matches the Secret Service strengths and vulnerabilities.

23:42 I’ll make make another observation here very quickly.

In 2015, you recall the Paris attacks and that was an ISIS um simultaneous multi-attack,

23:54 right?

And the the the strategy there was to distract. They had a theater, a couple of cafes, maybe a restaurant and

24:03 another area, but they also had the Stad Paris, which is the football stadium,

24:08 and that’s where the president of France was.

So if you were a resource person, a supervisor, you couldn’t handle this.

24:16 You would have to rep prioritize every minute or so because these are almost simultaneous.

the babyface bomber who

24:23 terrorist who went to the um gate to get into the stadium uh told one of the

24:30 ticket takers his friend was inside and had the ticket.

Can I go inside and get my ticket? Well, the uh senior ticket

24:39 taker said no, he can come out and give me the ticket.

So, he said he walked away and tried to do it again.

So the

24:47 whole point of this thing is that we need to be aware of simultaneous attacks.

In my paper regarding Butler,

24:56 uh DHS and I was part of it and some of my other uh police instructors created a course called uh coordinated attacks.

25:07 We’re not ready for that. I I I’m I’m just I’m I’m sad to say this.

I’m I’m I’m really concerned about it because if

25:15 you look at that scenario and you had a very studied terrorist group that observed our operation several times in

25:24 several different contexts and several different venues, you could see how vulnerable it is.

And judge, as you aptly astutely observed, they weren’t

25:33 looking at that.

That could have been a diversion and then the next wave of several attackers could have accessed the entire the entire group.

25:42 Wow.

25:43 Uh Larry, we have to go, but thank you very much.

This has been a fascinating fascinating conversation. Uh, will you

25:50 come back again as we learn more about this, more about the weapon and more about the uh more about the shooter and more about I I have to say this, the

26:00 defects in the protective services around the president of the United States.

26:05 I’m happy to. And this is done in the spirit of trying to improve. Yes, absolutely.

I mean, I I’m 100% red,

26:12 white, and blue. I want things to work.

26:14 But if you’re going to take on that responsibility, you’ve got to pay the dues and do the training,

26:19 right?

And I have to tell the audience how you and I met because the person who introduced us is a very, very popular

26:27 guest on this show who’s here twice a week.

And that of course is Larry Johnson. I think you know Larry Johnson from back when the two of you were working in the government.

26:36 Very well.

26:36 Another another great Larry.

Well, thank you for having me and I look forward to more and um I will send you some more documentation to help.

26:44 Okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna sign off and remind the audience of what we’re doing tomorrow.

Would you stick around? Uh I want to ask you something off air.

26:53 Yes.

26:53 Uh thank you very much, Larry Cunningham.

Uh coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, uh at 8 in the morning,

Footnotes