“Russia Will Lose This War”: Veteran Explains What’s Really Happening - Jake Broe | DSH #1633

Speaker 1 What would his angle be for being pro-Russia's business angle? He wants Teslas over there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Elon needs inputs, you know, lithium or whatever for his companies and his batteries. Elon also

Speaker 2 wants to do business with the Russians because he's privatized space travel. Does the United States even have the capability under NASA to launch astronauts into space? Doesn't seem like it.

Speaker 2 So there's the argument there. What other country has a space program that Elon would love to get in business with?

Speaker 2 Russians. Elon does not support democracy.
He does not like the democratic process because it is inefficient for business.

Speaker 1 Okay, guys, fellow Vegas local here today. We got Jake Bro here in the studio.
We met through our mutual friend Ryan Macbeth. So shout out to Ryan.
But thanks for your time today. Coming on, man.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me on your channel. This is fantastic.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Yeah, it's we were talking before this how our audiences are so different.
So I think it'll be a unique episode.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Anything you want to ask or anything you want to know, let me know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got an older crowd. You've been covering this Ukraine-Russia war for since the beginning, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the full-scale invasion began in February of 2022. And

Speaker 2 I had been talking about finance and investing topics prior. My YouTube channel was about 80,000 subscribers, but this was the number one news story in the world, Russia invading Ukraine.

Speaker 2 So I made kind of like a one-off video because I was a military veteran and

Speaker 2 that video got more views than my average video. And when you're a content creator, you tend to chase views.

Speaker 2 So I didn't think the war would last very long. So I was kind of like alternating between my finance investing content and then just talking about my reactions to the war.

Speaker 2 But my channel doubled in size within two months. And I realized, you know, like this, I have a larger audience for this than.
what I had been doing the previous two years on YouTube.

Speaker 2 So I told my original audience, when the war is over, I'll come back to you, but I need to focus on this. And that's kind of how it was with a lot of the pro-Ukraine YouTubers.

Speaker 2 They were doing something else. They were talking about something else.
And then the war started and

Speaker 2 they just transitioned. And we've all been committed to this for now almost four years.
Wow. So like all of these other pro-Ukraine YouTubers, I know them all.
I've talked to them all.

Speaker 2 I work with them.

Speaker 2 And yeah, nobody's stopping. Nobody's stopping until Russia is defeated.

Speaker 1 When it comes to pro-Ukraine YouTubers versus pro-Russia YouTubers, who has the bigger audience right now on social media?

Speaker 2 Pro-Ukraine, because YouTube is basically blocked in Russia. Oh, is it?

Speaker 2 You know, the

Speaker 2 countries that support Russia, think Iran, China, North Korea, they don't really have big YouTube audiences because YouTube is banned in these countries. So it's authoritarians versus democracies.

Speaker 2 And if you live in an authoritarian state, you don't have unfettered access to social media and dangerous ideas and thoughts that anyone can put out there.

Speaker 2 So, the pro-Russian

Speaker 2 community on social media is very small. They're very loud.
They're very active.

Speaker 2 But when you actually do polling of Europeans or polling of Americans, what percent of you

Speaker 2 are sympathetic to Russia's talking points or propaganda? It's like 10%.

Speaker 1 Wow, very low.

Speaker 2 70% of Trump supporters, 70% of MAGA supports increasing sanctions and increasing weapons deliveries or even financial or military assistance to Ukraine to make Russia stop this war.

Speaker 1 Very fascinating. Have you spoken to anyone from the pro-Russian community? Like on social media or like in an interview or something?

Speaker 2 Well, I've had interactions with them because they seek me out. They try to

Speaker 2 go me or engage with me because they're just looking for traffic for themselves.

Speaker 2 I don't even want to say any names.

Speaker 2 But yes, they do

Speaker 2 talk about me. They do message me.
They do tweet at me. And I never reply or respond to them because they're just looking for attention.

Speaker 2 They're paid for Russian propagandists. Most of these people directly are receiving payments from the Kremlin to say what they say and do what they do.

Speaker 2 They are not good faith actors or genuine people. For me to do a debate with them.

Speaker 2 I'm willing to have a conversation with anyone if I think they're open to taking in new information or accepting reality as fact, but they don't.

Speaker 2 They live in an alternate reality completely made up. Doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 You're not going to understand anything they say if you actually put scrutiny or do any research for yourself.

Speaker 1 Yeah. One of my previous guests actually moved there and has a podcast there now.
Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 2 Can they, on their podcast in Russia, express sympathetic views towards Ukraine or critical views of Vladimir Putin?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 Because there is no free speech in Russia.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I doubt it. I haven't talked to him about it, but

Speaker 1 I know he's getting paid in some way to do what he's doing. Sure.
But I don't think I'd ever know.

Speaker 2 No, the Kremlin, if you want to promote Kremlin propaganda, just reach out to RT News. They will pay you.

Speaker 1 You will get your check. That's crazy.

Speaker 2 It doesn't matter how many views you get, how many followers.

Speaker 2 You know, the Kremlin has so much money, they're willing to just toss it around. And that's the only way they can survive in a market, free market of ideas.

Speaker 2 When you actually do

Speaker 2 research or think about uh none of it stands up to scrutiny it's all an underlying kind of uh narrative or fantasy or objective like the people who support russia when i do like hear from them it's all for different really unspecified reasons that don't really have anything to do with ukraine

Speaker 2 um the kremlin

Speaker 2 they blast different narratives for different people. So they will say conflicting things, confusing things,

Speaker 2 nonsensical things, because they're targeting a specific audience who wants a certain issue.

Speaker 2 Like if you think I should be supporting Russia because they're the Christian nation promoting Christian values, when in reality church attendance in Russia is atrocious, you know, the HIV rate is horrendous.

Speaker 2 Prostitution, abusing children, like the metrics inside Russia are horrendous.

Speaker 2 And I don't see anything about Russia saying it's a Christian state aside from that's what Putin says, and that's the propaganda they put out, when really Patriarch Kirill and the Eastern Orthodox Church, it's just a wing of the Kremlin.

Speaker 2 The state controls the church in Russia. So they want people going to church to get their weekly dose of Kremlin propaganda.

Speaker 1 Wow. So they're just using the church system to disseminate messaging.

Speaker 2 I can't remember the name of this documentary I watched, but it talked about what's happening in the occupied territories because the Russian military, when they swept in, this is Herson, Zaporizhia, Luhans, Donesk.

Speaker 2 They just started destroying Protestant churches and Catholic churches.

Speaker 2 The only church you're allowed to join or be a part of is the Eastern Orthodox Church of Russia, because they control all the priests. They control the Sunday sermons.
They control the messaging.

Speaker 2 And it's not very Christian. They are pro-war, pro-death, pro-die for Putin.

Speaker 2 And it's, I don't know why there's more. isn't more outrage uh at what has been happening.

Speaker 2 You know, hundreds, if not more than a thousand churches have been destroyed by the Russian military in this four-year war.

Speaker 1 Holy crap. And those are all within Russia?

Speaker 2 No, these are the occupied territories. So Russia controls them, yes.

Speaker 1 Got it. Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, it is interesting. All I see on my feet is the Israel war right now.

Speaker 1 I used to see the Ukraine war a lot more, I feel like, but I feel like the Israel war has taken over on my Twitter at least.

Speaker 2 I think that war,

Speaker 2 you know, it's more polarizing because I think it is more infused with religion like there is not a religious divide between russia and ukraine they're both dominant you know majority christian nations

Speaker 2 uh so like doesn't draw the same aspect a lot of people refuse to even see ukrainians as being different than russians they're saying well ukrainians are just like a slight variation so this is more like a internal civil war amongst Slavic brothers or whatever, but that's all nonsense.

Speaker 2 Ukraine has an older ethnic identity than Russia.

Speaker 2 So when Moscow was a swamp a thousand years ago, the Kievan Rus' was the capital of its own state, its own empire, basically. So the Cossacks, the language, everything is distinct and unique.

Speaker 2 But the Russians of Muscovia have been trying to eradicate this ethnic identity.

Speaker 2 There was a battle and a treaty 300 years ago in which Ukraine was subjugated into the Russian Empire. But they've always had their own language.

Speaker 2 They've always had their own history, their own culture, and they want to be distinct and unique. But the Russians want empire, so they're trying to eradicate that.
This war is a genocide.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Do you have any confidence in Trump to negotiate a peace deal with the two nations?

Speaker 2 Based on the last 10 months, no. But Russia's going to lose this war anyways.

Speaker 2 Yes. And when Russia loses, Trump's going to declare a victory for himself, regardless of what he did.
He's just going to say, I did that.

Speaker 2 So the big news this week was the sanctioning of Luke Oil and Rosneft.

Speaker 2 This is something that even Joe Biden wasn't willing to do while he was president because this is going to disrupt global energy markets. It can trigger, you know, maybe

Speaker 2 some kind of global recession. We don't know what the fallout will be.
Joe Biden and his advisors were overly cautious.

Speaker 2 People were very critical of decisions he made while the war was going on because they said he was just too reserve.

Speaker 2 Trump doesn't think through anything,

Speaker 2 does not consult advisors. Trump.

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Speaker 2 Does stuff from his gut. So 10 months of asking politely, Russia, will you please stop killing people? Putin says, no, we're going to keep killing people and we're going to kill more people.

Speaker 2 More wars are coming if Russia is not stopped today. Wow.

Speaker 2 And I think

Speaker 2 to give Trump credit, yes, he is genuinely trying to get a ceasefire. Now,

Speaker 2 the criticism is Trump doesn't care how the war ends. And I think Trump was confused and upset because Russia was supposed to win this war by now.

Speaker 2 MAGA was told, just cut off all military supports, all financial supports, shut down Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, kill USAID, which had programs benefiting Ukraine, completely abandon Ukraine.

Speaker 2 This is going back in January. And Russia's military will overtake the front lines in three to six months.
They'll take everything they want to take, or maybe Odessa, Kharkiv, Kyiv, whatever.

Speaker 2 And the front lines have barely moved in 10 months.

Speaker 1 That was the mainstream narrative for sure. I was a believer in that narrative.

Speaker 2 Over the last thousand days, Russia has only taken an additional 1% of Ukraine's territory. Wow.

Speaker 2 Can you think about all the Russian soldiers' lives lost, all of the equipment lost, all of the money spent?

Speaker 2 A thousand days is a little under three years.

Speaker 2 And they've only taken an additional 1% of Ukraine's territory. It's unreal.

Speaker 2 When you zoom in, you know, Russia pounds their chest and declares victory every time they capture a mailbox or some kind of, you know, farm village, but that's not, that's not going to win the war.

Speaker 2 So I think Trump is genuinely embarrassed that he had such a high opinion of Russia's economy. of Vladimir Putin, of Russia's military.

Speaker 2 And after 10 months of stalling, do you know the expression taco? No. Trump always chickens out.

Speaker 2 This was coined on CNBC saying that whenever Trump says I'm going to place tariffs, it's just a negotiation tact or whatever, and he chickens out and doesn't do the tariffs.

Speaker 2 But it's the same thing with, I'm going to get tough on Russia.

Speaker 2 For 10 months, Trump has been saying, well, I'm going to give Putin two more weeks. He has to agree to a ceasefire, otherwise bad things are going to happen.

Speaker 2 We had this insane summit in Alaska in which you know, U.S. service members were literally on their hands and knees rolling out the red carpet for the dictator of Russia.
Wow. And Trump got nothing.

Speaker 2 You know, Trump, the days after, was screaming, I got Putin to agree to a one-on-one meeting with Zelensky. But then the Russians said, oh, we never agreed to that.

Speaker 2 And if we're going to do a one-on-one, Zelensky has to come to the Kremlin. He has to come to Moscow.
These two nations are at war.

Speaker 2 Putin has been actively trying to kill President Zelensky for three and a half years now and has failed numerous times.

Speaker 2 So no, I don't think Zelensky is going to visit the enemy's capital of a nation that has invaded his country.

Speaker 1 Do you think from Trump's point of view, he just doesn't want to aggravate Putin because he doesn't want war with Russia and America?

Speaker 1 Do you think that's where he's coming from or where do you think his perspective in all of this?

Speaker 2 I don't think Trump's motivation is negative consequences such as nuclear war. I don't think he considers or fears that at all.
He sees a lost opportunity to make money.

Speaker 2 He wants to do business deals with the Russians.

Speaker 2 Every time he gets off the phone with Putin or tweets out about Russia, he always tosses in these lines: we're close to an aluminum deal, we're exploring Arctic trading routes together, we're going to have joint exhibition hockey games.

Speaker 2 Like he keeps announcing all this stupid stuff because he wants to

Speaker 2 be partners with the Russians. And Trump's ties to Russia are really bizarre.
Like they go back to the 90s when he opened all these casinos in Atlantic City, you know, the Taj Mahal or whatever.

Speaker 2 And his casinos were filled with Russians. Really? Trump properties have always had high occupancy rates disproportionately with Russians.
That is weird. There's that famous quote from Eric Trump.

Speaker 2 This was back in 2016 or 15 when Trump was running for president. And

Speaker 2 Trump's kids were saying, we get all the financing we want and need from the Russians. So the financial ties, the business ties, the cultural ties have been there for 20, 30 years.

Speaker 2 Trump famously went to Moscow, I think, in 1987,

Speaker 2 back when the Soviet Union was still in existence. Trump saw the Winter Palace in St.
Petersburg, and he's been obsessed with it since.

Speaker 2 When you look at the designs for the Trump ballroom, this 300 million ballroom he's building,

Speaker 2 he's just ripping off the winter palace in St. Petersburg.
Wow. He loves the gold and the, you know, the ostentatious decorum.
And

Speaker 2 what this relationship is really about is is admiration.

Speaker 2 The fact that Vladimir Putin has stayed in power for 26 years, has killed, jailed, and exiled all of his rivals, killed, jailed, and exiled any journalists that would question or challenge him,

Speaker 2 and has basically stolen the vast majority of the wealth of Russia for himself. Putin easily is the richest man on earth.
The richest man in the history of the world. Richer than Elon? Yes.

Speaker 2 Well, that's what Elon says.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Elon Musk said this in an an interview.

Speaker 1 Elon's worth 400 billion.

Speaker 2 Somebody said, you're the richest man in the world, and Elon corrected him, being like, no, Vladimir Peek was the richest man in the world.

Speaker 1 That's crazy. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 There are very few people in the history of the world that have transcended money.

Speaker 2 You know, the famous Montezuma, you know, of the West African kingdom.

Speaker 2 Putin is one of them. So he's not motivated by money, which is, I think, something that is very confusing to Trump.
For Trump, everything is a business deal.

Speaker 2 How can I gain more power and wealth for myself and for my kids? That's every decision that drives Trump. So he keeps engaging with Putin and talking to Putin.
Let's do business deals.

Speaker 2 Let's engage in graft and corruption. And I've got control of America.
You've got control of Russia. We are the largest food producers in the world, energy producers in the world.

Speaker 2 We've got vast natural resources. Let's work together to make more money.

Speaker 2 And Putin just looks at him and laughs. I've already got all the money I could ever want or need.
The treasury of Russia is my personal bank account. Wow.

Speaker 2 You know, he so when you transcend money, you start thinking about legacy. You start thinking about empire.
And that's what Putin wants.

Speaker 2 He wants to be the man known for undoing the collapse of the Soviet Union. So all the territories, I think there's 14 former Soviet republics.
He controls 20% of Georgia. He controls 20% of Moldova.

Speaker 2 He now controls 20% of Ukraine. He controls 100% of Belarus.
Lukashenko is his puppet dictator for that country. And he wants it all.

Speaker 2 And this is what he's been telling the West basically since this speech in Munich in 2008. This is our sphere of influence.

Speaker 2 And either we will indirectly control them by controlling their politicians and business leaders, or we will use our military to directly control them. This is our right.
This is...

Speaker 2 great power status as being one of the victors of World War II and having 6,000 nuclear warheads.

Speaker 2 Putin said the collapse collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. Now, I disagree.

Speaker 2 I think the 140 million people living in these other 14 former Soviet republics, they're better off today than they would have been if they had stayed part of the Soviet system under the communists and the Bolsheviks.

Speaker 2 You can look at the standard of living of people in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.

Speaker 2 You can look at the former Wassaw Pact members, such as Poland, the miracle that is the Polish economy over the last 30 years. That's what Ukraine wants.

Speaker 2 They look at the people on the other side of the border in Poland and the prosperity and growth they've had over the last 30 years, being part of the EU and being part of the NATO and being free of Russia's sphere of influence, which is just corruption.

Speaker 2 And that's what they're fighting for. They're fighting for true, lasting independence, to be able to make their own decisions.

Speaker 2 And And the Russians are saying, no, you are always going to get pulled back into our empire. This is the cycle that's been repeating for 500 years.

Speaker 2 The Russians expand, they conquer their neighbors, they have some kind of catastrophe, they collapse, they then start reassembling themselves. People say, Russia's not going to collapse.

Speaker 2 Russia can't collapse. And I said, based on historical precedence, Russia is the most likely country in this world to collapse.
They've done it twice in the last 110 years.

Speaker 2 So we're getting very close. We can talk about what's what's been going on this year, but

Speaker 2 this is a dangerous future we're heading for. And I can explain to you why the policy by NATO and especially under Joe Biden was containment.

Speaker 2 We don't want Russia taking Ukraine, but we also don't want Russia collapsing.

Speaker 2 Because if Russia collapses, we now have 6,000 loose nukes that are unaccounted for being scooped up and used by regional warlords in a Russian internal conflict.

Speaker 1 Wow. So that's a really tricky situation then.
Because you want Russia to lose, but you don't want them to collapse is basically what you're saying, right?

Speaker 2 My argument on my YouTube channel the last four years is Putin is not giving us a choice. Putin could stop this war today and declare victory.
Everything he's taken, that's all he'll take.

Speaker 2 That's all he'll get. It's, I don't think, worth the cost in Russian soldiers and treasury for the last four years, but he can still do it and hold on to power.

Speaker 2 But Putin is now taking this personal, because it's his legacy. It's his name.

Speaker 2 You know, are the Russian people going to be singing songs to Putin at the local Putin statue in their town square 100 years from now? That is what this guy is thinking about.

Speaker 2 This podcast interview he did with

Speaker 2 Tucker, you know, he's just rambling about stuff that

Speaker 2 800 years ago, a thousand years ago, he's obsessed with. his narratives and his versions of history because he views himself as a great man, you know, like Genghis Khan Khan or Joseph Stalin.

Speaker 2 And he is committed to killing as many people as possible, losing as many soldiers as possible to achieve these objectives. And

Speaker 2 he probably is getting bad information. People just keep telling him what he wants to hear.
Famously, he doesn't have a smartphone. He doesn't use the internets.

Speaker 2 He doesn't fact check or do anything on his own. So he's only hearing what...
he wants to hear because when someone tells him something bad that person usually is poisoned or falls out a window

Speaker 1 If your safety was ensured, maybe you could do it remote or something. Would you ever want to interview Putin on your show?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 It would achieve nothing.

Speaker 1 You don't think so.

Speaker 2 What would it achieve?

Speaker 2 I could lecture him and yell at him for being a genocidal dictator,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 he lives in his own reality. He lives in his own artificial construct.

Speaker 2 He does not respond like a normal person anymore.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that Tucker interview was hard to follow for me. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It was incoherent. Like I watched it.
I did a YouTube video reviewing it or, you know, doing the highlights. And like,

Speaker 2 did that interview change the world? Did that change anyone's perspective?

Speaker 1 Tucker, I like Tucker overall, but he seems to pick and choose when he kind of goes hard at certain guests. You know what I mean? Have you seen a lot of his stuff?

Speaker 2 I mean, Tucker Carlson is one of the most viewed people on television for the last 15 years. So, yes, I think Tucker Carlson has kind of

Speaker 2 so Tucker Carlson, if we're going to talk about him, you know, he's been fired from MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and PBS. So he is done with legacy media because he keeps lying.

Speaker 2 He just lies about everything. He makes up what he knows his audience wants to hear.

Speaker 2 So you can chase views and you can

Speaker 2 alter cast or reality cast. I don't know what the term is.
And Tucker now lives in this netherworld of conspiracies and alternate realities.

Speaker 2 And that served him well when Joe Biden and the deep state was in charge of America.

Speaker 2 But now that Trump is in charge, a guy that he supported in 2016, supported in 2020 and supported in 2024, a lot of these grifters don't have anything to say

Speaker 2 because Trump is in charge of the FBI, the Justice Department, the CIA. Like you can't really promote conspiracies when the guy you put in power is responsible for everything.

Speaker 2 We could talk about domestic politics, but.

Speaker 1 Yes, I agree with that.

Speaker 1 Most of that. He did expose the 9-11 stuff.
I don't know if you saw that.

Speaker 2 Defined 9-11 stuff.

Speaker 1 9-11 conspiracies, I guess. He made a three-part series.
I didn't watch it yet, but I did see that on his channel.

Speaker 2 Well, the most famous film.

Speaker 2 Avery Dylan, I think it was Loose Change 9-11. This came out like in 2006.
I don't know how old you were in 2000.

Speaker 1 I was 9.

Speaker 2 The 9-11 conspiracy theories,

Speaker 2 I don't believe them all, but I definitely believe the official story given by Congress is complete BS.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we can agree on that.

Speaker 2 World Trade Center 7 building collapsed at free fall speed in downtown Manhattan, and there's never been a single mention of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were in the Air Force, too, so you could speak from like your experience flying planes and all that.

Speaker 2 Well, I was a missileer, so I was a cave pilot. I was underground, and I joined in 2016.
So that was 15 years after 9-11. So I have no relation connection or anything like that.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 World Trade Center 7 makes no sense. I don't want this podcast to become about that.

Speaker 1 No, only one.

Speaker 2 But I definitely think we don't know everything that happened or why it happened. And if Tucker wants to talk about that, great.

Speaker 2 But that's not going to be my hill to die on because that happened now over 20 years ago. And, you know, just like a lot of things that have been suspicious in America's past, people just move on.

Speaker 2 I do want to say, I think in the age of the internets and especially smartphones, and everyone's got cameras and microphones everywhere, something like that would be impossible to do today if there was a conspiracy.

Speaker 2 So I am glad that there is more technology and

Speaker 2 people being vigilant because I do think, yeah, nefarious things have happened in world history where governments have had to manufacture consent to go to war.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 unless something bad happened, then people wouldn't have supported the war. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And someone that served in the military, that must be really frustrating to find stuff like that out where certain wars were manufactured, right?

Speaker 2 I have no connection or relation to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I never deployed, so I can't give you like my own personal heartfelt story about being, you know, betrayed.

Speaker 2 I have nothing critical to say about my time, my personal experience.

Speaker 2 Now, everyone who joins the military, enlisted or officer, Navy, Army, Marines, whatever, everyone has a unique and different experience. And some of them are great.

Speaker 2 I had a very good one, but some people do have. negative or bad experiences with their job or their duty station or a deployment.
So I don't want to generalize or speak to anyone,

Speaker 2 but yeah, everyone's experience in the military is unique. And I respect and I appreciate everyone who talks about their experiences, positive or negative.

Speaker 2 I think they're both necessary because this is a very large and diverse country. America's military is the best and the strongest in the world still to this day.

Speaker 2 So yeah,

Speaker 2 I speak highly and I recommend it. Other veterans don't.
And I don't take away from them because I know they had a unique experience and I can't speak for them. Well said, well said.

Speaker 1 So I was strolling through your YouTube, a couple of the videos I wanted to to get a deep dive on. Russian stock market potentially crashing.
Is that actually a possibility in your opinion?

Speaker 2 Well, so this is timely news.

Speaker 2 Russia's stock market today, I think, is lower than it was five years ago. So that's pretty bad economic growth.
And it's this, the war spending has been a huge stimulus.

Speaker 2 So prior to the full-scale invasion in February of 2022, Putin had saved up $600 billion.

Speaker 2 And I think that could have been a red flag that something big was coming. But Putin made sure that Russia had no debt and had $600 billion saved up to fight this war.

Speaker 2 Actually, it wasn't even to fight this war. This was supposed to be a three-day special military operation.

Speaker 2 Zelensky was supposed to take the helicopter ride out of the country and flee, go into exile in London or D.C., and Kiev was supposed to fall.

Speaker 2 So the money that Putin saved up was not to fight this war. It was to make sure the National Pension Fund was solvent for 20 years, the rest of his life, under sanctions.

Speaker 2 The West, NATO, the United States, they sanctioned Russia a little bit after 2014. They were expecting more sanctions after, you know, this full-scale invasion in 2022.

Speaker 2 Putin is so stupid, he didn't tell his economic advisors what he was going to do. So like

Speaker 2 good economic advisors, they were diversified. They had $300 billion in Russian banks saved up, and they had $300 billion in Western banks saved up.
You want to spread the money around.

Speaker 2 And because Putin's economic advisors didn't know the nation was going to war, they didn't transfer the money back. So it was all frozen.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 2 So half of the wealth fund of Russia on day one of this war was instantly frozen. It's still frozen today.
Wow. Four years later, $300 billion.

Speaker 1 Frozen by who?

Speaker 2 Well, it's mostly in EU banks. So this is Brussels.
This is Belgium. But there is money in, you know, like banks in Japan, banks in the UK.
There's about 8 billion in U.S. banks.

Speaker 2 It's still frozen to this day.

Speaker 1 Wow. So half the whole country's net worth got frozen.

Speaker 2 Correct. Overnight.
Seized. And Russia's never getting that money back.
That's been frozen.

Speaker 1 You don't think so? If the war ends, they won't get it back.

Speaker 2 When the war ends, that'll be used for reparations. There will be

Speaker 2 some kind of judicial process, and Russia will have representation in international courts. This will go to courts.

Speaker 2 The new government of Russia, once Putin is gone, will have to agree to this in order to get diplomatic relations

Speaker 2 restored or,

Speaker 2 you know, maybe security assistance somehow, dealing with nukes, because Russia is going to have a lot of problems when the Putin government collapses.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's going to become this democratic utopia overnight. So they're going to have a long, hard transition because when a country loses a war, this is psychologically damaging.

Speaker 2 All of these Russian soldiers that have been in the war zone now for years, they're all traumatized. They're all suffering from PTSD.
These guys, when they go home, especially when they lost the war,

Speaker 2 it's going to be a nightmare.

Speaker 2 All these people, because there's going to be economic turmoil and shortages, and

Speaker 2 it's not going to be a nice place to live in Russia after they lose this war. But this money is going to be used to rebuild Ukraine.

Speaker 2 Everything that Russia has destroyed, they're going to have to pay that. Now, your original question was the stock market.

Speaker 2 The sanctions this week put on Rosnev and Lukoil. Lukoil is down 20%.
Rosnev is down 14% in just three trading days. Jeez, for stocks, that's a big deal.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the Russian stock market was going up after Trump got elected because everyone thought the United States would abandon Ukraine. Russia would then overtake Ukraine and win this war abruptly.

Speaker 2 But nope, Russia's not really making progress. And Trump is now pissed off.
And I think more sanctions are coming. More weapons deliveries are coming.

Speaker 2 Trump doesn't care if people die, but this is what he campaigned on. No more wars.
I want to be the peace president. I want to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaker 2 So he has made this his own personal objective to get Russia to stop. He doesn't care the terms.
He doesn't care who gets what land or there won't.

Speaker 2 I'll explain to you. Last 10 months, the deal that Trump has been offering Putin is I will return all frozen assets.
I'll pressure the Europeans to return all frozen assets. I'll lift all sanctions.

Speaker 2 I'll normalize all relations. You can keep all the territory you've taken.
You just have to stop killing people. Stop killing people and stop going for more.

Speaker 2 And the Russians for 10 months have been saying no. Wow.
And so Trump's a little pissed off because he wants to be on good stand.

Speaker 2 At the last G7 meeting,

Speaker 2 he was saying that Putin needs to be let back into the G7.

Speaker 2 Take it to the G8. Do you know what the G7 or G8 is?

Speaker 1 Is that a jet or no?

Speaker 2 It's an economic cooperative of democratic nations. So this is, you know, the largest democratic economies in the world.
But Russia is not a democracy.

Speaker 2 So they have no reason to be in the G7 or the G8.

Speaker 1 This is all crazy to me. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like I said, I haven't been up to date with this because I bought the mainstream narrative that you said Russia was going to win this thing quick.

Speaker 1 And then ever since that narrative ended or whatever, I haven't seen much of this on Twitter, which is how I consume my political content.

Speaker 2 Elon has completely corrupted the Twitter algorithm. He is 100% pro-Russia.
He's been pro-Russia the last four years.

Speaker 2 The reason why you're confused and a lot of people are confused is disinformation that he advocately promotes. Grackopedia launched this week.
I don't know when this podcast will go up,

Speaker 2 but Grackopedia directly sources information from the Kremlin. Really? Yeah, like the

Speaker 2 footnote article links go directly to the Kremlin's website. Wow.

Speaker 2 It's the most referent on the new. This is like the news this morning as I was waking up and checking my Twitter.

Speaker 2 But yeah, Elon's Grackopedia uses the Kremlin as their primary source for anything having to do with Russia, Putin, or Ukraine.

Speaker 1 That is interesting. What would his angle be for being pro-Russia? Is it a business angle? He wants Teslas over there.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Elon needs inputs, you know, lithium or whatever for his companies and his

Speaker 2 batteries.

Speaker 2 Elon also

Speaker 2 wants to do business with the Russians because he's privatized space travel. So the United States, does the United States even have the capability under NASA to launch astronauts into space?

Speaker 2 It doesn't seem like it. I think it's just SpaceX now.
So Elon is privatizing, and there's positives to this. You could say it's more cost-effective.

Speaker 2 We can either spend tax dollars with NASA and it's inefficient, or we can spend tax dollars with a private company and they're doing it for cheaper and better. So there's the argument there.

Speaker 2 So what other country has a space program that Elon would love to get in business with?

Speaker 2 The Russians. So there's that.
But I also think, and Elon has been very candid about this in interviews.

Speaker 2 Elon does not support democracy. He does not like the democratic process because it is inefficient for business.
If you want to do business, for example, in Belarus,

Speaker 2 all you need is the dictator's permission and approval, and they can make anything happen.

Speaker 2 You don't have to hand out campaign contributions to elected representatives to lobby to have them approve something.

Speaker 2 You don't have to worry about labor relations laws or environmental laws or consumer protection laws. Like in a dictatorship, it's really easy to do business.
All you have to do is show respect.

Speaker 2 and give money to the dictator and they can make anything happen for you.

Speaker 2 So there are these oligarchs, I call them American oligarchs, billionaires, Peter Thiel and

Speaker 2 the people basically in charge of America right now.

Speaker 2 Yes, they are pro-autocracy because it is easier and more efficient for them to do business.

Speaker 2 Elon loves China.

Speaker 2 Is there any free speech in China? No.

Speaker 2 Isn't Elon supposed to be the champion of free speech? Yeah. Isn't that kind of a contradiction? It is.
They're only in favor of free speech until they gain control.

Speaker 2 And as soon as they're in control, free speech is is done.

Speaker 2 That's what's happening currently. They're silencing journalists.
They're silencing news programs. They're trying to get Jimmy Kimmel Colbert taken off the air.

Speaker 2 Anybody who criticizes MAGA, Trump, Elon, or their movements, they are trying to silence. My first Twitter account got deleted, and I was never explained why.

Speaker 2 It was given a restriction in 2023, and I lost 90% of my traffic. I was not searchable.
I was not

Speaker 2 like, I didn't show up in anybody's For You feed. Even people subscribed to me could not see my content.
Like, I documented what was happening. I made a video about it.

Speaker 2 And the only thing I did was I was a pro-Ukraine YouTuber in 2023. And I'm confident Elon, and he messes with private accounts on Twitter all the time.

Speaker 2 If they offend him or upset him, he's the most thin-skinned baby in the world.

Speaker 2 So, no, I don't think he's a champion of free speech. He's a champion of his free speech.
And

Speaker 2 we could could talk about what's going on with social media in general.

Speaker 1 I was just going to ask you, have you faced more silencing on under Biden's administration or Trump's administration on social media?

Speaker 2 Here's the thing about free speech censorship.

Speaker 2 The First Amendment only stops the government from restricting people's free speech.

Speaker 2 You can't have the government passing laws saying you can't talk about this or this. Now, there's plenty of carve-outs, you know, libel and slander and threats.

Speaker 2 Like you can't scream fire in a crowded theater that could kill people in a stampede. So the Supreme Court, Congress, the Constitution, everyone knows there are exceptions and limits to free speech.

Speaker 2 But these platforms are private companies. They're businesses.
And they can have their own community standards and guidelines.

Speaker 2 So like if you're a Nazi and you promote Nazi ideology, I'm sorry, but you can be banned from Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or whatever.

Speaker 2 These are private companies with their own community guidelines and I meet them. So I'm not too concerned about censorship, if that's what you want to call it.
But these companies have the right.

Speaker 2 If you

Speaker 2 promote hates or,

Speaker 2 you know, the thing is, is that these companies have to make a profit. The concern has always been advertisers.

Speaker 2 If we let unsavory, offensive people

Speaker 2 just blast on our platforms and you've got advertisements for Wendy's and Chick-fil-A showing up. This concerns the advertisers.
It costs the business money.

Speaker 2 And I personally think there are just some people that should not be followed and listened to.

Speaker 2 Now, am I lobbying my government to censor those people? No, I would never do that. We have First Amendment free speech laws.

Speaker 2 But can I lobby or put pressure on YouTube or Facebook or whoever to restrict or ban these people?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm going to do that because I think those are terrible people making the collective commons worse for everyone.

Speaker 1 Got it. Interesting.
Yeah, I

Speaker 1 faced more scrutiny. Actually, my TikTok just got banned, so it's hard to say now.

Speaker 2 Where'd you get banned?

Speaker 1 TikTok for Israel stuff.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's terrible, dude.

Speaker 1 I had some pro-Palestine guests on.

Speaker 2 Well, so Congress banned TikTok. This was a law passed at the end of last year.

Speaker 2 This was very surprising. I didn't think that Congress would get the votes to do this.
But then Trump came into office and he said, we're going to extend it.

Speaker 2 He then extended it again, like another six months, even though he doesn't have the congressional authority to do this. So he's breaking the law, extending when TikTok was supposed to be banned.

Speaker 2 And the latest thing that I've heard, and it could have changed, but TikTok is being sold to, you know, pro-MAGA, pro-Trump people, which means pro-Israel people.

Speaker 1 I think Ellison's group is part of it.

Speaker 2 Correct.

Speaker 2 They didn't resolve the issue with everyone's user data still going back to data centers in communist China.

Speaker 2 They don't seem to care about people's privacy if pro-Trump, pro-MAGA people are making money off TikTok now.

Speaker 2 So the Chinese are playing ball because they want to keep their giant spy apparatus going in the United States.

Speaker 2 I don't really use TikTok.

Speaker 2 I don't think it should be banned. But at the same time, like

Speaker 2 that's what Congress voted for. And Trump is defying the law.
He's defying Congress because his investors and friends are now making money off TikTok.

Speaker 2 And yes, they're not trying to make it free and fair.

Speaker 2 The TikTok algorithm is very skewed.

Speaker 1 It's changed.

Speaker 2 Well, it was pro-Palestine to make Joe Biden look bad prior to the election. And now that Trump has taken over, it's now pro-Israel

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 that's the political wins. And China wants to play the game.
They want to remain relevant in the U.S. market to influence people's opinions.

Speaker 2 So I'm sure people in the Trump Trump government said, start banning anything having to do with pro-Palestine or whatever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I had a good-sized following, too. That won't hurt the business.

Speaker 2 I'm dumbfounded that anyone would be okay with Trump and the State Department denying visas or expelling students who are critical of the Israeli government.

Speaker 2 How can you claim you're champions of free speech and then be denying visas or kicking people out of the country just because they're critical of the Israeli government?

Speaker 2 That's un-American.

Speaker 1 That doesn't make sense to me at all.

Speaker 1 You mentioned China in the TikTok. Do you see China as a big threat to

Speaker 1 America?

Speaker 2 China,

Speaker 2 yes and no.

Speaker 2 China is different than Russia

Speaker 2 because Russia is food independent and energy independent. So when you think about how you defeat a country, If you go to war with a nation, how do you exhaust them to the point where they collapse?

Speaker 2 And they've got to either run out of food or they've got to run out of energy, which is why Russia is chugging along for four years and many analysts are now predicting this war is going to go on much longer.

Speaker 2 Wow. China is the opposite.
China has to import massive amounts of food and import massive amounts of energy to keep everything going the way it currently is.

Speaker 2 So if China gets in trouble or starts a war or whatever,

Speaker 2 the U.S. policy has always been containment.
If China invades Taiwan, which I think they're going to do for sure,

Speaker 2 the official U.S. response, like this is like the strategy documents or whatever, is to cut off the straits of Malacca.
This is by Singapore and Indonesia.

Speaker 2 And you basically detain any cargo ships going to China or coming from China. You just steal all their stuff.
So we have the world's largest navy. 10 or 11 super carrier groups.

Speaker 2 They would go out at a safe distance from the Chinese mainland, and then nothing gets in, nothing gets out of China for six months, and hundreds of millions of people will starve to death. Whoa.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just from doing that one move.
Yes.

Speaker 2 But as Trump is president, would he do that?

Speaker 2 Would he tell the United States military to start interdicting and seizing all of these food and oil containers going in and out and then commit to the plan to stop them from taking Taiwan?

Speaker 1 Do you think he would?

Speaker 2 At this point, no, because Trump is doing everything he can to make money with the Chinese. Trump, every decision he makes as president is to enrich himself and enrich his children.

Speaker 2 And so as long as he's making money, he doesn't care who dies. Now, I can explain to you the importance of the first island chain.
This is Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines,

Speaker 2 for containing China, because China wants to be a global superpower. And the United States, after World War II, emerging as the global superpower, we were pretty benevolent.

Speaker 2 We did not use our military.

Speaker 2 Okay, I understand the criticism here that I'm going to get, but

Speaker 2 the police actions that the United States has taken the last 70 or 80 years being the global hegemon has been restrained when you think about the history of empires and what they've done to provinces or regions that got out of line.

Speaker 2 The United States is not perfect. It's entirely flawed.

Speaker 2 But the Bretton Woods Agreements, the UN Charter, you know, all of the things we did in the late 1940s to set up the current system, we tried to help as many people as possible.

Speaker 2 I think democracy and capitalism have been forces for good in most of the world.

Speaker 2 When you look at the average standard of living of somebody in South America or Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe, has it gone up or has it gone down over the last 70 years?

Speaker 1 I'd guess down.

Speaker 2 You think the quality of life in maybe Colombia was better in 1950 than it is today?

Speaker 1 Colombia?

Speaker 1 Well, now with your reaction, I'm going to say up.

Speaker 2 All the metrics, you know,

Speaker 2 salaries,

Speaker 2 cost of living, you know, what consumer electronic products can you buy or use? You know,

Speaker 2 every place has problems. Capitalism has many flaws.
There are always people who fall through the cracks. That is what communism was promoting, the idea that we can take care of everyone.

Speaker 2 Everyone would have their housing, food, and

Speaker 2 basic needs met.

Speaker 2 But it doesn't work because people need incentives. They need

Speaker 2 private property in order to produce and to risk and to invent new things and better themselves.

Speaker 2 Communism was a complete failure. In theory, it works great.
In reality, it works nowhere. China is supposed to be communist, and they basically gave that up in the 1970s.

Speaker 2 There's still things that they do that are definitely communist, but they promote innovation. And,

Speaker 2 you know, Chinese are pretty good capitalists if you let them.

Speaker 1 So what would you label China's

Speaker 1 government now then if they're not communist?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it's a command economy. So what Russia has done is they have

Speaker 2 they were told to privatize everything after the Soviet Union collapse.

Speaker 2 This is the loans and shares scandal of the 1990s where state industries were sold to oligarchs for pennies on the dollar of what they were actually worth.

Speaker 2 This led to the rise of the first oligarchs in the 90s, people like Mikhail Kordakovsky, who Putin put in jail for 10 years. He took his company away from him.

Speaker 2 Putin, when he came into power in 1999, realized these businessmen, these private industries are going to bully me around if I let them.

Speaker 2 They're going to tell me what to do and get rid of me if I don't serve them, these private companies.

Speaker 2 So Putin's first term in office, this is from 1999 to 2004, 2005.

Speaker 2 It was all about breaking the 90s oligarchs and taking away their industries, their resources, reclaiming them to the government.

Speaker 2 Now, either the Kremlin can directly control them or have a ownership share, or what Putin has been doing is just installing a pro-Putin person in charge of the company. Do I know this person?

Speaker 2 Do I trust this person? You're now in charge of the steel companies. You're now in charge of the coal mines.
You're now in charge of the diamond mines. And all of those people only have their jobs.

Speaker 2 because of Putin. And if they step out of line, if they start thinking and acting too independently, open window or serve some tea.

Speaker 1 Jeez, people are very scared to speak out in Russia, then.

Speaker 2 Nobody speaks out. You will be disappeared.

Speaker 2 You will be murdered. Wow.
They murder people. There's a Wikipedia page,

Speaker 2 mysterious deaths of politicians and businessmen since the full-scale war began.

Speaker 2 This is its own Wikipedia page with hundreds and hundreds of entries of state and local politicians in Russia or billionaires just being murdered. And there's no follow-up.

Speaker 2 The official ruling from the Kremlin is always: must have been a suicide. This guy hung himself, you know, from a second-story balcony.

Speaker 2 Obviously, how did he get up there or whatever? Like, there's never any follow-up. Wow.
The Kremlin kills people and makes people disappear every day.

Speaker 2 They do this in the EU. They send out their spies to kill people in the EU.

Speaker 1 And those countries aren't retaliating against that, but countries in Europe.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 you can recall ambassadors or expel diplomats or I mean, the EU has already put 20 sanctions patches on Russia. Like, what else can you do?

Speaker 1 So they're murdering people in other countries.

Speaker 2 All the time.

Speaker 1 That is scary, man. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 2 So there is a very famous Ukrainian YouTuber named Sternenko.

Speaker 2 Obviously, his broadcasts are in Ukrainian, and he has fundraised, I don't know how many millions and millions of dollars for the Ukrainian military, but Russia has failed has tried to assassinate him three times and failed.

Speaker 2 Wow. So they paid a woman outside of this building in Odessa, and he was shot.
Like a bullet went through him, and he survived and he was on his YouTube channel broadcasting the next day.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 what a brave person. So shout out to him and I hope him

Speaker 1 success in the future, man.

Speaker 2 Shout out to Sternenko. He's doing a great job.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's awesome. We'll link his stuff in the video.

Speaker 2 But if you, I'll go ahead and give a plug for myself here.

Speaker 2 I run fundraisers on my channel as well. I buy, it's a group called

Speaker 2 the NAFO 69 Sniffing Brigade. They're based out of Estonia.
The website charity is Help99. I do

Speaker 2 million dollar fundraisers every three months and we purchase pickup trucks with this money.

Speaker 2 And they're purchased in Estonia, fixed up, and then convoyed, delivered to Kyiv, handed off to individual units. I did my first fundraiser for my birthday last year.
My goal was to fundraise $40,000.

Speaker 2 That would have been two pickup trucks. And we hit $40,000 within the first hour.
Whoa. So then I said, well, let's do 100.
And we hit 100 in the first day. And then it just kept going like crazy.

Speaker 2 And it went over a million. And I've done that five times now.
Wow. So I'm about to launch my sixth fundraiser.
And we've hit a million. It always drips over, goes to 1.1, 1.2.

Speaker 2 So I have fundraised over $7 million

Speaker 2 to benefit Ukraine in the last two years.

Speaker 1 That's incredible, man. Well done.
We'll include a link to that as well. That is just the power of your audience that you built, though, because not a lot of people can do that.

Speaker 2 No, nobody else is doing that. I don't know any other YouTube channel aside from Sternenko that is consistently fundraising over a million dollars every couple months.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well done, man.

Speaker 1 Have you ever been to Ukraine?

Speaker 2 I have not. Would you ever go there? Yes, I will.

Speaker 1 After this all settles?

Speaker 2 To me, I'm always like, I'm going to go when it's a good time. And now that we're heading on year four of this war, I've realized it's never going to be a good time.

Speaker 2 It's never going to make sense to dedicate two or three weeks away from YouTubing to then vlog or whatever I would do, you know, to keep posting while I'm traveling.

Speaker 2 You know, there's the 10-hour train ride from Poland

Speaker 2 to Kyiv. I've got a fly to Poland from the west coast of America.

Speaker 2 There are lots of people who have been very generous and said, please come, Jacob. You know, we'll help you meet people or to do things.
But in my mind, I'm always hesitant

Speaker 2 because the timing just never feels right. But I know the timing is never going to be right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, you said this thing's going to last a long time, right?

Speaker 2 Well, analysts say that, but analysts have always been wrong. So when you go back to February of 2022, everyone said that Ukraine would fall in two weeks.
Yep, I remember that.

Speaker 2 I said, well, I didn't say that. Actually,

Speaker 2 I said my first YouTube video, this doesn't make any sense. Why would Russia invade Ukraine, a country of 40 million people, with only an army of 200,000?

Speaker 2 You can't subdue and conquer a nation of 40 million with an army of 200,000.

Speaker 1 I didn't know their army was that small.

Speaker 2 No, Russia's military is over a million, but they had 200,000 on the border

Speaker 2 to go in.

Speaker 2 And what Russia had been doing every year since 2015 is war gaming.

Speaker 2 So they would send 200,000 troops to the border of Belarus and Ukraine and Russia and Ukraine, and they would do their exercises and then they would call it off.

Speaker 2 They did this every year for five or six years to kind of like lull the West into a false sense of security. The problem is the Kremlin is like Swiss cheese.
Nothing, everything is leaked.

Speaker 2 British intelligence, French intelligence, American intelligence, Israeli intelligence. There are Russians in the Kremlin taking payments from everyone to leak classified information.

Speaker 1 Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
You could probably say that about every government, though, right?

Speaker 2 There's going to be

Speaker 2 spies and informants and stuff getting leaked everywhere all the time. It's getting worse today.

Speaker 2 But the West knew. Like I remember seeing, I think, a speech from Joe Biden like a week before, and he was saying, don't do it.

Speaker 2 We know what you're planning, but don't do it.

Speaker 1 Oh, so we knew.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Oh, we warned them.
We warned Ukraine. Wow.
Yeah, I think Zelensky was told directly. Now, Zelensky didn't believe it.
Zelensky thought it could be averted, that it could be avoided.

Speaker 2 But as soon as the troops started going across the border,

Speaker 2 I mean, what can you do?

Speaker 2 The Ukrainian military was not ready, not prepared. They did not have any way to defend themselves.

Speaker 2 We're lucky that the Russians are so incompetent. There was this famous battle at the

Speaker 2 airports north of Kyiv because Russia was trying to establish a land bridge. They needed to get control of this airport to get equipment and troops into the capital city.

Speaker 2 There was a famous battle there. You know, have you ever heard of Bucha? No.

Speaker 2 All right. But

Speaker 2 it wasn't going to work. I just said to myself, how can an army of 200,000 quickly take a country of 40 million actively resisting?

Speaker 2 Because Ukrainians in the capital city, they were mass-producing Molotov cocktails.

Speaker 1 Wow. They had baseball bats.

Speaker 2 Like they were ready to defend their cities, their lands, their homes from the Russians, any means possible.

Speaker 2 So it was really

Speaker 2 touch and go those first couple weeks, the first couple months, because Ukraine didn't have anything ready to stop them.

Speaker 2 Now we're lucky the Russians are so corrupt and so incompetent, they didn't Blitzkrieg take anything.

Speaker 2 They got smashed in the north the first couple months and they gave up on taking Sumy, Chernihiv, and the capital city of Kyiv.

Speaker 2 They were in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and a bunch of their soldiers got radiation poisoning because they're so stupid.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 What the Russians achieved in the first three months, months, you know, they took the Kherson region, most of Zaporizhia. They got to the nuclear power plants, took that.

Speaker 2 But they were really bogged down in a city called Mariupol. Have you heard of Mariupol? No.

Speaker 2 Pre-war population, hundreds of thousands. I think maybe like 300,000, 400, 500,000 people lived in the city.
It's a big city. And it's on the coastline of the Sea of Azov.

Speaker 2 So the Russians came from the east and they came from the west. They encircled the city and they just leveled everything.
They killed everyone.

Speaker 1 Holy crap.

Speaker 2 They killed probably 80,000 civilians.

Speaker 2 They were completely surrounded, encircled, and trapped. Now, the Marines, the Ukrainian Marines, you know, they kept pulling back, pulling back, but they're not getting resupplied.

Speaker 2 They weren't being resupplied food or water. They weren't being resupplied ammunition.
The government in Kyiv couldn't reach them.

Speaker 2 But they held out for three months and they bought a lot of time for the rest of the provinces and regions to fortify, call up reservists, enlist people, get them to the front, and just try and stop the, you know, the advance.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 That is crazy.

Speaker 2 I'll recommend a movie to you,

Speaker 2 20 Days in Mariupol. It's a documentary about the fall of the city.

Speaker 2 I think it was a British journalist, and it was absolutely, I mean, this is a very shocking film to watch.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'll definitely give that a watch. Do you think Zelensky will take another meeting with Trump?

Speaker 1 After what happened the last time?

Speaker 2 Zelensky understands the game now. There was that blowup in the White House.
I think this is in March or April.

Speaker 2 J.D. Vance said, why don't you say thank you? Why aren't you wearing a suit? It was really petty and stupid.
But I think Zelensky has figured it out since then that you can just tell Trump no.

Speaker 2 When Trump says, you know, give me your mineral, you know, the mineral deal, give me all of your mineral rights or whatever. Zelensky, you have to be polite.
You have to be nice.

Speaker 2 But you just tell Trump no.

Speaker 2 This happened again at the White House. This was Friday of last week.
So this was almost two weeks ago. Trump started swearing at and yelling at Zelensky.

Speaker 2 This is behind closed doors, that Zelensky had to give up the rest of the Donbass region because the Russians were not willing to engage in a ceasefire

Speaker 2 until at least they have the rest of Donetsk. This is the entirety of the Donbass region.
This is never going to happen because Ukraine has spent over 10 years fortifying this region.

Speaker 2 This is where all their defensive lines are. This is where all their units are embedded.
They're not going to give up their home, their lands to the Russians. So

Speaker 2 Trump was applying pressure, trying to bully and intimidate Zelensky to surrender this territory. And I do want to defend Zelensky because even if he gave that order, his soldiers would mutiny.

Speaker 2 They would not give up this territory. Really? Oh, yeah.
They would tell the capital city no. Because this is their land.
They're not going to give it up to the Russians.

Speaker 2 So Trump was trying to force Zelensky to agree to this terrible deal and to give up land so the Putin

Speaker 2 so the Russians will start entertaining the idea of a ceasefire.

Speaker 2 And Selensky just told him no, was very calm, didn't want to make a big deal out of it, didn't want to embarrass or humiliate Trump by saying no. But when you say no, Trump just oscillates.

Speaker 2 And then two days later, he said, I'm mad at Putin for creating this situation, and I'm going to sanction Rosneff and Lukoil.

Speaker 2 So the Russians have figured this out too. that if you just say no, Trump gets annoyed or bored and then he flips on the other side.

Speaker 2 So the last 10 months have been very confusing because Trump keeps oscillating in his tweets between calling, he called Zelensky a dictator.

Speaker 2 He has said that Russia's economy is on the brink of collapse and they've lost hundreds of thousands of troops this year.

Speaker 2 And then the next day he'll start praising Putin and saying, you know, wouldn't it be great if we could do business deals together? So he doesn't have a strategy. There was no plan.

Speaker 2 During the 2024 presidential campaign, you heard him say a million times, I can end this war in 24 hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he he campaigned on that.

Speaker 2 He never had a plan.

Speaker 2 He's a bullshit.

Speaker 1 He said it'd be over before he got in office.

Speaker 2 He said as soon as he was elected, he could end it in 24 hours. Right.

Speaker 2 No, Trump lies about everything. He just makes stuff up.

Speaker 2 He's a businessman and a deal maker,

Speaker 2 but he never has a plan. He just guns from the hip and goes with his gut.
And the guy's been elected twice president, so it serves him well. There's no reason for him to change now

Speaker 2 at age 80.

Speaker 2 But no, you can't make Putin stop because there's nothing that Trump has that Putin wants.

Speaker 1 Have you looked into the seven peace deals he says he's made?

Speaker 2 They're all made up.

Speaker 1 You think they're all made up?

Speaker 2 I mean, first of all, Israel and Palestine, they're not holding. They're still bombing each other.
Like Trump went to the Middle East and there was a signing ceremony, peace in our time.

Speaker 2 I got something done that people have been fighting over for hundreds of years. And they're still bombing each other.
So, okay, whatever.

Speaker 2 i didn't think he could solve it so i'm not trying to take anything away from him on that issue but he's listing india and pakistan when both india and pakistan have publicly said trump had nothing to do with any of our talks or negotiations i i don't even i mean seven can you name them i can't i cannot He had nothing to do with Thailand and Cambodia.

Speaker 2 He had nothing to do with

Speaker 2 Ethiopia and Sudan or something. I don't even know what he's he's talking about.
But he's trying to compensate the two wars that he said he could end on day one.

Speaker 2 They're both still going. Right.

Speaker 2 So he's making up other ones to try and

Speaker 2 have his supporters think that he's still doing something. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's bizarre. Have you always been pretty critical of him, even in his first term?

Speaker 2 He's terrible in every way.

Speaker 2 He is a terrible human being.

Speaker 2 Here's the whole thing with the MAGA movements and what's currently happening in America. I can't make people care about other people.
I just can't.

Speaker 2 I will have conversations with MAGA people and we'll get to a point where I'm like, don't you care if other people have health care?

Speaker 2 And they'll say no. They don't care if people go bankrupt or they die from preventable illnesses and diseases.
And that's the end of the conversation. Wow.

Speaker 2 What else can I say and do? I care about human life. I care about people dying.
I care about people suffering.

Speaker 2 I want, within a system of capitalism, I'm not a communist or a socialist, but I want the most people benefiting possible from good policy, efficient governments,

Speaker 2 best use of taxes. We can have policy debates, but at the end of the day, if you don't care about other people,

Speaker 2 okay, that's how you want to live your entire life. Now, I'm a personal believer of heaven and hell on earth.
If you are a good person and you lead a good life, good things will happen. Karma.

Speaker 2 if you're a bad person who does bad things bad things will happen to you

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 i i that's just my personal philosophy and how i try and live my life uh but when i speak to the average manga person and we get to that point where i'm like don't you care about other people and they say no and i say no i say well and i'm gonna start asking them that question they're not gonna admit it but when you actually start talking about policy when you actually start talking For example, the government shut down going right on right now.

Speaker 2 The U.S. government has been shut down for a month.
Why is the government shut down? Can you explain it to me? I honestly can't.

Speaker 2 Well, it has to do with these tax credits under the Affordable Care Act to bring down the costs of health care for people in the states. These are the Obamacare subsidies.

Speaker 2 The Republicans want to get rid of them. Okay.

Speaker 2 Is that what they're saying? No, because people's health care premiums would go up. We don't want to admit that.

Speaker 2 So they're saying the Democrats want to give health care to illegal aliens and maybe transgender people.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I have seen that, yeah.

Speaker 2 That's what they're saying, but it's a lie.

Speaker 2 You can read the text of the bill. You can listen to what the Democrats have to say.
No illegal immigrant is getting health care under these subsidies.

Speaker 2 So the Republicans don't negotiate or speak or talk on anything in good faith. They just make stuff up.

Speaker 2 They speak in language that they know their base will understand and repeat for them.

Speaker 2 So like when I try to explain to people why the government is shut down,

Speaker 2 because healthcare premiums will go up. It'll become, you know, like if your health care premium for your family is $300, it's going to go up to $700.

Speaker 1 That much?

Speaker 2 Yeah, if these subsidies are, even Marjorie Taylor Green is in favor of keeping these subsidies once somebody explained to her what they actually do. So Trump and MAGA have shut down the government.

Speaker 2 because they just want to get rid of these subsidies, I guess, to save on cost. When they're benefiting people,

Speaker 2 people are going to lose their health care if they don't have these because they just won't be able to afford them. When you don't have health care, you don't see a doctor.

Speaker 2 Preventable, stupid things like a child getting an ear infection or pink eye.

Speaker 2 There's just very basic things that people should not be suffering with because they're scared to go to a hospital because it's too expensive.

Speaker 2 I think the system we have is horrendous in how it treats people. And I want to see better policies, but that's not what Trump, MAGA, or anyone has to offer.

Speaker 2 Let's do another one here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Who pays the tariff?

Speaker 1 Oh my God, there's a viral clip of me getting absolutely roasted because of David Pac-Man on this.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Trump has raised tariffs and he's talking about all the money, money, money we're bringing in.

Speaker 1 Who pays the tariff? We do.

Speaker 2 Americans.

Speaker 2 A tariff is a tax on imported goods. Now, you can claim tariffs are beneficial to protect American industries that are vital for our national security, such as the steel industry.

Speaker 2 I understand the benefits of a tariff, but that's not what Trump is doing.

Speaker 2 Trump, you know, was pissed off this week because the Ontario governor played this ad about tariffs using Ronald Reagan's voice.

Speaker 2 And Trump said, I'm going to put an additional 10% tariff on Canada now.

Speaker 2 That's not good economic policy. Canada, when you actually do like favorable, unfavorabilities, like Canada is more popular than Trump.
Canada is more popular than any politician in America.

Speaker 2 Every time Trump attacks Canada, people are going to be annoyed and mad at Trump. Now, at this point, I just think MAG is a cult.
It doesn't matter what Trump says and does.

Speaker 2 People have their own beliefs and why they support him. And I'm not going to change anyone's mind at this point.
It's been 10 years. Everyone has their final opinion on Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 You really think so? Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's no point in engaging with people who tell me that China pays the tariffs because Trump lied to them and they're repeating his lie. Yeah.
Like those people don't live in reality.

Speaker 1 I think you can't change people on the extreme far right, but someone in the middle you could influence. I mean, if you look at Trump's poll numbers right now, they're really low.

Speaker 2 Well, he's high 30s, low 40s consistently, and it's going to get worse as the economy gets worse because I don't think tariffs are good policies. They make everything more expensive.

Speaker 2 Coffee has like almost doubled in price because Trump put tariffs on Brazil and other South American countries.

Speaker 2 Everyone drinks coffee, and we can't grow coffee in the United States. This is not a domestic industry that we need to be protecting with tariffs.

Speaker 1 I just paid $11 for my coffee delivered to a studio this morning.

Speaker 2 Now, thankfully, I'm financially doing fine with my social media operation. And so I'm not stressing over price increases, but I mean, to the average Gen Zer, they are all nihilists now.

Speaker 2 Like when I talked to somebody in their 20s, A lot of them voted for Trump because we had J.D. Vance at grocery stores complaining about the price of eggs.
It worked.

Speaker 2 Nothing in the grocery store has gotten cheaper. Everything has gotten more expensive the last 10 months.

Speaker 2 And I think Gen Zers especially know that, which is why Trump's polling amongst young people is now in the 20s. Wow.
It keeps going down.

Speaker 1 I worry for the young people because what you're saying, I agree with. But also with AI, man, it's going to be tough to find work when they're coming out of college these days.

Speaker 2 If you want to talk about the Democratic Party, we could talk about the Democratic Party and what's coming. Hey, I grew up Democratic.

Speaker 1 I grew up in New Jersey. So let's talk about it.

Speaker 2 The Democratic Party is full of losers and they need to go away.

Speaker 2 What the Republicans did the last 15 years, starting in 2010 with the Tea Party, is they just started primarying their established candidates.

Speaker 2 Normally, you don't want to primary an incumbent because they have the name recognition, they have the donors list,

Speaker 2 they've been spending years shaking hands and kissing babies to get you know,

Speaker 2 the FaceTime with their constituents. So when you primary or an incumbent, you take a risk because what if the guy who won the primary against the incumbent then loses the general election?

Speaker 2 But the Republicans were willing to risk it all, the base especially, because they hated their establishments,

Speaker 2 Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor.

Speaker 2 I'm already forgetting their names. So this was a violent process happening in the elections in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, where they just kept going after their own, the far right in America,

Speaker 2 in safe red districts, because you don't want to lose the general. They just kept primaring people, primaring people with more extreme people who will fit what they want.

Speaker 2 Kudos to them for having a plan and then carrying out that plan. Donald Trump rode that momentum in 2016 to get elected.
The Republicans then got wiped out in 2018.

Speaker 2 They then got wiped out again in 2020.

Speaker 2 But the pendulum swings because nothing is getting better.

Speaker 2 For the average American, for the average 30-year-old, they are worse off today than their parents were at age 30.

Speaker 1 That doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 That is the first time in American history that people are not prospering more than their parents' generation.

Speaker 1 And that's why when you asked me earlier, if other countries or something along the lines were, are they living better now than 80 years ago? That's why I answered it that way.

Speaker 2 What's coming for the Democrats, you're already seeing it with this Mom Donnie guy in New York City.

Speaker 2 The establishment is Andrew Cuomo. He lost the primary.
Mom Dani won, and he's going to win the general election. He will be the mayor of New York City.

Speaker 2 Now, MAGA is trying to strip him of citizenship and deport him because they don't want to debate ideas. They don't want to talk about the cost of living.

Speaker 2 They don't want to talk about, this is the scary thing, taxing the rich.

Speaker 2 I'm in favor of restoring taxes,

Speaker 2 rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the top 1%

Speaker 2 because we're going bankrupt.

Speaker 1 Then you're top 1%, so you're speaking kind of against your own.

Speaker 2 I owe everything to this country. You know, the education I got, my military training.

Speaker 2 Why would I want to screw over my nation by continuing to rack up trillions of dollars in debt every year? Donald Trump and MAGA, you know, they...

Speaker 2 they were talking about serious issues, but they never had serious proposals to fix anything. They were just trying to get people outraged at the Democrats because they were in power.

Speaker 2 But now that they're in power, they're not fixing anything. They're not making anything better.
Trump's primary focus is this $300 million

Speaker 2 gold-leafed ballroom he wants to build on White House grounds.

Speaker 2 People cannot afford groceries. People cannot afford rent.
People cannot afford car insurance here in Vegas. It's the highest in the country.

Speaker 1 So bad out here.

Speaker 2 And the president of the United States' primary focus is building a $300 million ballroom to himself. So he and his oligarchs have a fancy place to party six times a year.

Speaker 1 I'd love to know how he got that approved. Like who he actually did.

Speaker 2 Nobody approved it. He's just doing illegal stuff.

Speaker 2 He does not own that building. That building is public property, belongs to the people of America.
And he did not go through a planning commission, no discussion in Congress.

Speaker 2 He's saying he's using personal funds, which is nonsense.

Speaker 2 He just demolished it.

Speaker 1 That's crazy to do such an expensive purchase like that, to have have to answer to no.

Speaker 2 Everything he's doing is unprecedented and honestly the actions of a dictator.

Speaker 2 So he's building this $300 million gold monument to himself on White House grounds. He also wants to build this arch of triumph.
He wants to build an arch for himself.

Speaker 2 Do you know who the last world leader was who built a triumphant arch to himself in his nation's capital?

Speaker 1 I don't even want to say the name. Is it who I think it is?

Speaker 2 Hitler. Yep.

Speaker 2 Who built an arch, a triumphant arch to themselves before Hitler did?

Speaker 2 Napoleon.

Speaker 2 Trump loves this stuff. He loves the ceremony.
He loves the power. He has no respect to what America has been the last 250 years.

Speaker 2 Everything that made America great and powerful today, separations of powers, checks and balances.

Speaker 2 He doesn't believe in any of that. He doesn't believe in the Constitution.
And Republicans in Congress have quit. The Republicans on the Supreme Court have also rolled over.

Speaker 2 They've ruled him above the law, and he can do whatever he wants. Now, 30% of Americans are in favor of this.
They want a dictatorship. You can go on these Jubilee, you know, circle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've seen those.

Speaker 2 And people are just saying, yeah, I want Trump to be a dictator because I want my issues forcefully imposed on everyone else. Now, everyone has different ideas of what they want the dictator to do.

Speaker 2 And I'm watching Trump's actions. Don't listen to what he says.
Listen to what he does. And the dude's nuts.
He just does whatever he wants.

Speaker 1 30% is really high. That's way higher than I thought it would be.

Speaker 2 I think Trump's approval, because at the end of his first term, it was down at 30%.

Speaker 2 And he's like 37, 38 now. It's going to go to 30 and he'll keep that 30 until the day he dies.

Speaker 2 Trump will only leave office when he's dead. He at some point is going to have a stroke or a heart attack or something, and then he will just collapse probably on camera.
We're all going to watch it.

Speaker 2 Wow. I do not want anyone to do anything nefarious.
That would be very bad for the nation. I don't think the response, given what happened with Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 1 Yeah, rest in peace, Charlie.

Speaker 2 But no, Trump is obese and he's 80 and he is clearly in physical decline. You can see the cankles.
You can see the bruising. You can see his speech is really weird now.

Speaker 1 He doesn't give the same energy as he did in 16.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was more firing in 16.

Speaker 2 He's 80 and he has the most stressful job in the world. And what are they talking about this week? Trump 2028.
How can we get Trump to stay in office for a third time?

Speaker 2 You don't demolish the east wing of the White House and build a $300 million ballroom in your own honor when you plan on peacefully transferring power to somebody else who wins a Democratic election.

Speaker 1 Hey, Trump versus Obama, maybe. They might bring Obama out of retirement.

Speaker 2 Obama has no interest.

Speaker 1 You don't think so?

Speaker 2 Obama respectfully declines. I think he hated being president.

Speaker 1 Whoa, that's a hot take. You think so? Yeah.

Speaker 2 He was a senator for only four years, so he hadn't served an entire term yet. And I think everybody wanted him to do it.
And I even think he didn't think he was going to be the nominee.

Speaker 2 I'm sure he was trying. I'm sure there were moments when he was excited to do it.

Speaker 2 But Obama is an introvert. He doesn't like.
That's what I've gathered from his eight years as president. If he could avoid a meeting, he wanted to avoid that meeting.

Speaker 2 If

Speaker 2 phone phone calls,

Speaker 2 the dude wanted to be a competent manager of a team of leaders, and then those are the guys doing all the field work.

Speaker 2 Whereas Trump, he wants his hands and everything. Trump's superpower is his energy, in that he just goes and goes and goes.
He never stops talking.

Speaker 1 He is a workhorse.

Speaker 2 He loves it, though. He's an extrovert.
And I do think that the presidents of the United States has to be an extrovert.

Speaker 2 They have to love talking to, being around and interacting interacting with people all the time.

Speaker 2 That is how you win. That is how you become loved.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's why Biden was kind of near the end.

Speaker 2 It didn't look so good for him. Well, Biden also is an extrovert.
Is he? Oh, yeah. But the dude was 83.

Speaker 1 I have seen videos of him, his younger self.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's clips of Joe Biden as a senator meeting in the White House with Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 2 But Joe Biden loves people.

Speaker 2 He's still alive, so I'm going to use the present tense.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 he loves having conversations. Now he's an old man now and he just rambles like old men will do.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But no, he has always

Speaker 2 loved public events, loved taking meetings. He's an optimist and he thinks he can get that deal.
Joe Biden represented the establishment in the old way of American politics.

Speaker 2 The guy was in government for over 50 years. He was the status quo, which is really hard to defend, especially in uncertain times with the world being as chaotic as it is and and the American economy.

Speaker 2 The American economy works well for the top 1%.

Speaker 2 It works horribly for the bottom 90%.

Speaker 1 Jake, this was very informative. Thank you for your time.
I actually learned a lot generally, so I really appreciate you coming on. Where can people find you to keep up with you?

Speaker 2 Jake Bro on YouTube.

Speaker 1 That's my homepage. Link it below and we'll link the you're doing a fundraiser, you said.

Speaker 1 So we'll link that as well. Thank you for coming on, though.
Thanks, Sean. Yeah.
Check them out, guys. Leave a comment.
I'm on your day.

Speaker 1 I'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe, it helps the show a lot with the algorithm.
Thank you.