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Unknown A
What are we fighting over? Here's the Lenski tweets. Can I. Yeah, can I give you. Okay, I'm gonna start with a broad overview of how I view the United States. Okay. I'm gonna ramble for like, a minute and a half.
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Unknown B
Okay.
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Unknown A
And you can come in. All right. Okay, sure. Real quick. Can I ask you what your background is in terms of, like, family, where they come from, where'd you come from, you've been with your whole life or anything? Or are you.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I was born. I mean, I was born here, but my dad is a Palestinian Christian and my mom is Jordanian.
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Unknown A
Oh, geez. Okay. When you say Palestinian Christian, do you know where he was living in? Was he there prior to Jerusalem? Okay. Okay, gotcha. All right. Whom you say mom was Jordanian. Is she Palestinian as well, or was she there before?
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Unknown B
She's a Jordanian Jordanian.
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Unknown A
Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Okay. When I was growing up, my parents were both in the Air Force. My mom is Cuban, so super pro America, very, you know, all communism and socialism. And I grew up in a very big, like I say, red scare household. Like, I always talked about the Chinese Communist Party. I think my mom always called Russia Soviet Russia. She never called it Russia. And one thing that I grew up with was kind of the strong idea that even if America's not perfect, and especially through the Cold War, there are a lot of questionable entanglements we got into in South America after the Cold War, you know, like the second Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan, or at least Iraq, probably not very defensible, A lot of mistakes made there. But for the most part, America stands for something worldwide and ideally is seen as some kind of guide and guiding beacon for, like, we'll say broadly democracy and freedom, even though not perfect, of course, but preferably alternatives like Russia or China.
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Unknown A
Easily. When I look at the Ukraine Russia conflict, there's a couple things that come up. One is that Europe has enjoyed, I would say, a good deal of stability in the world that followed both World War II and then followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think a lot of that has had to do with America as being kind of this guiding leader of, hey, we're going to do all the military. We're going to ensure, you know, freedom of trade routes and integrity, you know, territorial integrity, all that. So you guys are building armies to fight each other constantly because that's what Europe likes to do or likes to do. And the United States has enjoyed a great deal of economic and diplomatic benefit, like soft power as a result of that. When I look at Russia invasion into Ukraine. That seems to be unlike Palestine, Israel.
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Unknown A
We can go back and forth on the history and you can bring up, like, points on both sides. It seems to be a, like, a purely, like, not good thing on the Russian side. Like, it's. There is no defense of this. It's a horrible action. It throws the whole order into question. And when I watch the United States, I really should say, when I watch Trump be so reluctant to take an active role in that and be so reluctant to, you know, instantiate the United States as kind of like this defender of Marxian freedom and wanting to back away from, you know, back away from Europe. I don't know. That's very sad and confusing and not cool to me. So then with all that context, looking at the. Looking at Vance and Trump attacking Zelensky, who is this man who has, like, hoisted this country on his back, who refused to leave when they were getting attacked by Russia, who's done everything he can to both cheerlead his country while also kind of like giving in to foreign leaders because he has to stuck a little bit then to have to sit in this meeting
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Unknown A
where both Trump and Vance are repeating literal Russian propaganda talking points that he's already been corrected on for Trump. I don't know, man. I just feel really. I don't know how anybody can look at that and be like, yeah, Zelensky definitely messed up there. Yeah, that's my coming on.
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Unknown B
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot there. So we know. I mean, I start my analysis from the understanding that we know who Trump is. There is no point in being surprised by Donald Trump, his behavior, his motivations. And in early 2025, we've been watching this for almost a decade now. More than that, he's doing the birther stuff before that. So more than that, he's been talking nonsense for 35 years. So we know who this man is at this point. Now, take in Trump as, like, who he is. The question is, like, how did Zelensky perform in the White House? Did he accomplish what he needed to do? Now, you could say that the minerals deal was sort of stupid and he should have gone and signed it. Like, okay, that's one opinion. Then he probably should have gone to the US he probably should have, I don't know, asked for some other kind of meeting or something else.
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Unknown B
But this was supposed to be the time when they signed this minerals deal. So obviously he thought that there was something to be gained from that. And I think it's not like all these people Like Lindsey Graham and the Wall Street Journal editorial board and all these people who thought the minerals deal was progress. These people have always supported Ukraine. I think they were right. I think there was a kind of. There was a way to psychologically manipulate Trump into him, kind of putting his ego on the line when it came to Ukraine. And so I watched the entirety of the press conference for the first 40 minutes, and then the last minutes was that time when they fighted, when they fought. And like, if you were a supporter of Ukraine, there was a lot to be happy about in that first 40 minutes. For example, they would ask Trump explicitly, will you keep sending money in arms to Ukraine?
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Unknown B
And he, I don't know if they're money, but arms. He said, yes. But he says since he was saying it unequivocally, yes, he'd been saying it, yes, in the days leading up to the minerals deal. So he got that. He also did this thing where they would say, whenever they would bring up the point, reasonable point, Putin, you know, you can't trust Putin. Trump would always say, he never broke a deal under me, right? It was always about me. It was like he invaded under Biden. He wouldn't have invaded under me. And so he does this. He keeps going back to previous presidents. And he liked to make this comparison. So his ego was like, you know, set on this thing, I'm going to send money to Ukraine. We're going to send money to Ukraine. At least I am going to be on the other side.
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Unknown B
And like, my ego is wrapped up in the idea that Putin trusts me and Putin likes me, right? And so if you're Zelensky, that's what you want. And maybe you're correct that Putin will, like, without a security guarantee, Putin is going to keep fighting. Putin is going to come regroup and attack again. But at that point, I mean, Trump is kind of bought into the idea that Ukraine needs to be defended. And we saw this in the first administration, right? Trump comes in, he is kind of skeptical about supporting Ukraine. He tries to remove sanctions on Ukraine. Congress passes a bill to keep those sanctions on. Trump vetoes that. They override his veto. Trump ends up sending up to the press conference, too. He becomes the first person to send deadly aid to Ukraine. Now he brags about it, he gets impeached. He goes and says, obama didn't give them anything.
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Unknown B
I gave them javelins and so forth. He brought that up again during the press conference. This is a very simple man who can be kind of manipulated or pressured into going of two ways, just so.
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Unknown A
Real quick, I guess when we think of that way, just as a quick thing, did you date before your current wife? Did you have other girlfriends or whatever?
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Unknown B
Sure.
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Unknown A
You ever have me ask you for a. Have you ever in a situation where you say something or you do something, you're late for dinner, whatever, and then after that person's like, I'm breaking up with you, or somebody says like, oh, she broke up with me because I didn't respond to her text in time. And like, the answer to this is always like, well, clearly this wasn't the issue. There must have been like a piling on of stuff and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Like, what does it say about Trump's supposed hypothetical commitment to Ukraine if all it took was Zelensky asking a. Not even like a brutal question, but like a legitimate question to Vance, for everything to break down that quickly and that easily. And if it was gonna break down that quickly and that easily, then who's to say that Putin couldn't have forged Trump over if Trump was literally meeting with him alone, which he was every odd.
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Unknown A
Or for all the other people that talk, and the fact that it's got to sit there and take these unhinged comments, why did you wear a suit from fucking mtg's hospital and shit? Like, why? Like, I feel like that's a deal where we can say like, well, you know, but nothing's signed there. One, it wouldn't meant anything. There was no security guarantee attached. And two, if it was that easy to tear it apart, it could fall apart for 15 million other reasons as well. No.
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Unknown B
Well, yes, that is a danger. I mean, the flattery from Putin carries around his letters from Kim Jong Un and shows them to people, is very proud of them. So it can work, you know, the other direction too. But I would say that the building a relationship with Trump and getting Trump to like you is a kind of more long term thing. And so it's like a kind of ass kissing that sort of needs to go on. And the Ukrainians, for whatever reason, haven't been able to. Haven't been able to do it because.
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Unknown A
Trump has decided, I'm meeting with Putin alone. I'm not going to Ukraine. I don't think that's what's Ukraine like.
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Unknown B
Okay, so what was this last? Like, you know, there's reasons why, like, okay, so Putin goes and Putin says he can have our minerals. You know, we have mineral people, right? Bigger minerals than Ukraine. Said this recently. And it's like, well, I mean, it's like there's more political constraints and when it comes to domestically being friends with Putin than there is being friends with Zelensky, Right. So, like, they can both flatter him. Like, it's kind of easier for Zelensky because, like, there's more meetings, there's more people in Trump's here right before this, right before this press conference with Zelenskyy. I mean, the UK Prime Minister, Emmanuel Macron, they both visited Trump. They're all trying to tell him, you know, be friends with Zelenskyy. Right? So there's a lot of pressure pushing in the, like, pro Zelenskyy direction, not so much in the Prabhu direction, although Trump kind of, you know, has affinity for him regardless.
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Unknown B
And so you have to answer, like, was it going to break up anyway? Like, maybe, I don't know, but, like, the trend of, like, since this minerals deal was coming together was like, it looked like a process of Trump starting to, like, Ukraine starting to have his ego. Starting to have his ego sort of intertwined with the idea that I'm going to be the peacemaker.
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Unknown A
Yeah, but just think about when you say starting to have a mineral deal with Ukraine, we're talking about, like, an extortion racket, an extraction racket that's being talked about, right? Firstly, because any sort of guarantee to steal resources from Ukraine to help them broker peace, that, you know, that even if they did that full deal, you know, that Trump's not planning on getting any territory back to Ukraine, you know, that he doesn't want to put any. Ukraine's nowhere near NATO, nowhere near any kind of concrete security guarantee. Trump was going to make any of that. The idea that Zelensky, like, one thing that people don't understand, too, doesn't even mean the debates and stuff is that, like, what you sit there and take and tolerate, like, to some extent does matter. And we're looking at this retrospectively, like, oh, for sure they would have signed a good deal.
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Unknown A
But imagine if Zelensky would have held his tongue and allowed himself to be shit on constantly by these two fucking jokes, by Vance and Trump, by them making lie after lie by lie somewhere, which Trump's already been corrected on, like, by Macron in person, right? And then they go to do a deal afterwards, and then nothing materializes because Trump will only give any security guarantees to Zelensky. Now I feel like the whole media be like, it was unreal. Zelensky commands no respect. They literally lied to his face on TV in a press conference. And Zelensky wouldn't say anything like Macron did. Like I think even Star or whatever did. Like, I feel like it's a lose lose. But I think the problem is just that where we're evaluating this from Zelensky has to be the perfect Pope and see the future everything. And Trump and Vance get to be treated like basically retarded children who can flip on a dime.
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Unknown A
Although it always only seems to be against Ukraine, which is also a questionable but the.
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Unknown B
So yeah, I mean you're not gonna fact check Trump. Like you're gonna have to listen to his lie, everyone who has a relationship with Trump in any way.
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Unknown A
But those lies are important because they inform the American public and where we stand, right? How many people in America don't want to help Ukraine because we've given more money to them than Europe. We don't know where the $350 billion is. It's all been stolen anyway, right?
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Unknown B
Let him have a fantasy world where like now they're giving us all the minerals deal. Like what was originally negotiated versus what the, what the end result ended up being was very, very different because the first version was like Ukraine gives you 500 billion right off the bat. It was also that like there was, it was all the basically minerals, basically everything that Ukraine is doing right now, the US would get half of it. This new one had no 500 billion billion requirement and basically set only future projects, like future kind of, you know, drilling for future kind of mining operations. Who knows like how many future mining or oil operations like Ukraine is going to start in the next coming years in the middle of this war. By the time, you know, by the time it happens, the Democratic president can be in office. He can, he can Republican.
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Unknown A
I understand what you're saying, but this is the equivalent to walking in and there's a rape victim and you're like, okay, we came to, we got justice for the rape victims. Oh really? What happened? Well, we told the rape victim they no longer have to get by getting anymore. They only have to give the person head for the next six months. And then afterwards like we're going to go back to everything being chilled. We're so far away from any kind of actual just resolution or anything that we're talking about. Like we're not taking 500 billion in resources from them. We just have like some claim on future. Why are we taking anything from them at all?
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Unknown B
Because it's Donald Trump. What do you want to convince him of the rules based international order? Convince him about the morality.
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Unknown A
If there was enough public Push. Right. Because we can both agree with one thing. The Trump flattery goes both ways. Right. Trump picks and chooses who he likes, and he'll get rid of people he doesn't like. But if the American public, if we had 75% support in the American public for Ukraine, Trump would probably have boots on the ground. Because he's that crazy.
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Unknown B
Depends on what Trump says.
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Unknown A
Exactly. But when Trump's allowed to sit there and lie with impunity, that's a problem. It's not just we have to deal with Trump's lies up.
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Unknown B
I'm sorry, with impunity. Like, the media's gonna affect Shekman as long as he's gonna affect him. And space is going to desert him. What's. What's allowed him to lie with punity.
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Unknown A
Mean allow him to say things that are just completely, totally not true, that are also forming the American opinion on how we should be approaching Ukraine.
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Unknown B
Let him say things that are not true. That, like, we are getting this awesome gift from Ukraine. You're all gonna be rich. Because, like, he's gonna say stupid things that are not true. You are trying to direct him.
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Unknown A
That deal doesn' Help anything. Like, I'm curious, do you think that Russia is going to give up anything with Trump negotiating these deals? Conquest of all of Ukraine, if they could.
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Unknown B
So, you know, it's hard to say what Russia will do. Right. It's like they could, you know, Putin could sign a ceasefire and have a plan that in four years I'm going to end Ukraine again. And he could die in two years. Right. Or something could happen politically in Russia that makes it, like, difficult to start a new war. I mean, so it's like, it's hard.
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Unknown A
To, like, if the Warrens right now. Have you seen. Do you see how much land Russia had? They had, like, the whole land bridge going over to Crimea. They've got so much territory, Ukraine, and I think they formally annexed most, if not all of it. Do you think any of that is going back to Ukraine with Trump arranging some kind of deal?
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Unknown B
No, I think that that's probably gone. But I mean, is Ukraine going to get it back? That's the question. Because how is Ukraine going to get it? We have this kind of stalemate where I just saw that the third year of the war had more casualties in the first and the second year of the war put together, and it's moving the wrong direction.
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Unknown A
Well, when you say, how can you get more? They can't. But with the U.S. negotiating, the U.S. could say, we're going to invade Russia or we're going to do a no fly zone over Ukraine or we're going to start bombing strategic targets in Russia until the war stops, you retreat. That's the same that the US could make. The US has the power.
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Unknown B
Strategic targets in Russia.
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Unknown A
In Russia, I would support no fly zone over Ukraine because what's going to happen next? Is Putin going to start?
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
When we talk about what are we going to do, shouldn't that be Russia's prerogative? Like, why is it that Russia can operate with all the strategic freedom open to them? And on our side we're like, what are we going to do? I don't know. We're the United States of America. What the mean, what are we going to do? We can do anything, literally. We can turn the whole country into glass. We wanted to. Not that we should. But I think it's strange that Trump can be so heavy handed with his negotiating tactics against our allies. Right. He can talk about 25% tariffs against the EU, against Mexico, against Canada, but when it's Russia and Putin, he has to treat them with kids gloves. Why? Why is Russia never in a spot where they have to make a difficult decision? Like everything so far for Russia has been a breeze. It's so easy for them. Why?
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Unknown B
Look, I think the best case scenario coming out of this minerals deal was basically okay. They weren't going to probably get a explicit security guarantee. But that's what you get, that's what you go to the negotiations for. Right. You have, you have the immediate question was the flow of weapons. That's like the immediate, you know, the immediate thing that Ukraine needs to defend itself. So Trump was cool with that. Trump was saying, you know, very, very explicitly, we're going to keep doing that. So Ukraine at the very least gets his weapons.
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Unknown A
The status quo, which we both agree is not good right now, right?
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Unknown B
Well, sure. I mean, better than what they might do now, which is cut off, cut them off after, after the slave stuff. And basically you have the Ukrainians talking about putting peacekeepers in Ukraine. Trump, I don't know, might go along with that. Russia might not. But like, you know, if they don't, maybe, maybe the, you know, maybe the talks break down and maybe Trump blames Putin and like we learn something that it's like going to be impossible to make a negotiation with Putin. Maybe we learned that during the process. Right. But there's something short of like bringing Ukraine to NATO or even giving security guarantees. There is like put European peacekeepers there, get American companies on the Ground make Trump think that, like, UK is like, you know, part of his, you know, legacy. He did this peace deal, which Biden didn't do. I thought it was so psychologically telling.
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Unknown B
He kept going back to, like, they did it under Biden, they did this under Biden. The war started under Biden. He just does this for, like, every issue.
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Unknown A
Yeah. He's looking for an easy out. Like, what he wants to do. Agree this. In my mind, what Trump wants to do is he wants to freeze the borders where they are right now. Ukraine is forced to permanently cede all the territory that Russia has to Russia permanently and to give up all claims to it. Okay. On top of a ceasefire and on top of a guarantee for 99 years or whatever that Ukraine doesn't join NATO and maybe even some restrictions on what Ukraine's allowed to do in terms of deals with the EU for trade or Russia. Like, that's the deal that Trump is looking to sign. And if they were left to the three of them to negotiate between Ukraine, Trump and Putin, that's the deal that would be negotiate. That's what Trump wants. And Trump will walk away thinking that's a victory. But that's insane.
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Unknown A
Like, Ukraine doesn't need Trump to fully surrender. Right.
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Unknown B
I mean, they might need Trump to not, like Russia, not keep going. Because the possibility is Russia just sees it, you know, it's winning and Russia just keeps going on and they're not sensitive to casualties necessarily. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, it really does depend on kind of Europe and.
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Unknown A
Can'T accept that deal. Right. Why would they ever go to the United States? The biggest, baddest one on the block for them to basically do a Democrat agreement 2.0 give out.
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Unknown B
You're saying because the deal is ceasefire, I'll give up the land to Russia.
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Unknown A
And no security guarantees, probably maybe restrictions on trade with Europe. Like, why would.
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Unknown B
No, I mean, that would be. That would be. It would be bad. It would depend. I mean, look, if they're getting a lot of weapons from the United States, they're basically the other. They're not NATO, but they're like NATO trainers who are in Ukraine. NATO is working with Ukraine right now. There's, like, intelligence, you know, officials, there's. There's cooperation. So, like, Ukraine freezes the borders. Ukraine will be. Ukraine won't be this, like, weakling that has nothing. Ukraine will be a country with a lot of support from Europe and from America.
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Unknown A
You're just saying, remember, though, that's the status quo. And they're already not doing that great. So it's not like the status quo is a positive.
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Unknown B
They're doing that great. Just with that means the same thing. Just it's no more fighting, no more people dying. With these large numbers right now, Ukraine could.
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Unknown A
My guess is Zelensky went to Putin said listen, here's the terms the same ones that America's going now. Putin was like, okay, I'm gonna be out of this war. I'm glad that I need because my economy's hurting this thanks for me bad pr. Right. Putin would probably just accept that kind of surrender from Zelensky, period. I would imagine what the US being brokering skill.
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Unknown B
It's interesting you think that because a lot of people say that Putin winixon people who, who are kind of taking your pro Ukraine position argue that Putin wouldn't accept that if he'd want to keep going and that he's not going to be happy until he takes over every inch of Ukraine. If you can stop and just freeze the border right now, it sucks. It's a reward for aggression, sure. But hundreds of thousands are dying for moving the border at inch or two every couple months or so. I mean it's just really kind of ridiculous. Yeah, it sort of sucks that that's not a morally satisfying outcome. But like somebody from the Biden administration actually reached out to me and told me that like if they could have gotten it in the Biden administration, they would have been happy with it. I think a lot of people who support Ukraine would just say let Ukraine be a sovereign country.
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Unknown B
It's lost part of its territory. If fought heroically, it survived Ukraine.
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Unknown A
That's not compatible that let Ukraine be a sovereign country. We've accepted that that's not the case now. Right. If somebody comes in, they wanted territory that's literally the opposite of protecting sovereignty.
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Unknown B
They've lost sovereign terr but they're still, you know, Mexico lost territory to the U.S. they're still a country. Right. If they can sort of solidify the borders and have a peace deal, I mean it's like you can't tell them they can't join the eu. Like Russia cannot have I think that degree of like ability to veto their internal relations like that. But look, Russia had control over Ukraine because there was a lot of pro Russian parts of Ukraine, right. They had the east, they had Crimea, they Donetsk, Wuhans, basically all the pro Russian parts. If they're going to be lopped off and Ukraine is getting. Ukraine is getting like the most anti Russian state ever. Like I don't think Russia.
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Unknown A
Hold on. When you say Russia controlled Ukraine, it's because they invaded, not because they were.
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Unknown B
No, I mean, Russia. Even before that. Even before that, like, there was always pro Russian politicians and candidates and they were, you know, they were pro Russian.
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Unknown A
Politicians and that, like, maybe they had, like a slightly more view of Russia, but not like, we want to secede from this country and join Russia.
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Unknown B
Yeah, no, not that. Not that. There was no. There's no support for secession, but there was, like, people who had a vision of, like, instead of being NATO, eu, we would, like, sign. We would be friends with Russia and.
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Unknown A
Belarus and join whatever they have, trade union, whatever. So here's the question.
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Unknown B
What is them want that? No. And future of Ukraine.
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Unknown A
Here's my issue right now. If Russia invades Poland, do you think the United States would help?
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Unknown B
Yeah, I think the United States would help. Why?
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Unknown A
Because all of the, all of the complaints that we've had, it could be World War iii, it could be nuclear war, you know, it could be the destruction of, you know, so many lives, the meat crimes and all that. Why would we expect the United States to put all those arguments would carry over to a NATO country being attacked?
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Unknown B
Well, first of all, look at sort of Poland's recent military spending. The size of their military. They have a pretty serious military. I mean, if Russia's found Ukraine difficult, they've a lot more difficult from Poland. Now. Now, the Balkans is maybe a more. The Balkans is maybe a more interesting case. Right, because the Balkans. What's that?
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Unknown A
I think there are online countries in the Balkans as well, right?
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Unknown B
No. Baltics. I'm the Baltics.
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Unknown A
Okay, the Baltics. Yeah. Those are NATO. I don't know. Why do we expect the United States to step up? Do you really think Trump would say we're deploying our military to go and save Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Do you think Trump cares about these countries? I feel like the answer would be no.
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Unknown B
I think Trump is driven by a completely kind of tunnel vision, zero sum.
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Unknown A
Yeah, I agree. So the answer to be no. He wouldn't help them.
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Unknown B
He wouldn't care personally. But he does care about being Donald J. Trump and being seen as a tough guy and being someone who's kind of important people don't mess with. He looks like he can't. You can't have an attack on a NATO country. And then Trump, like, I know he creates, like, an alternative reality for himself, but, like, things break through every once in a while like he did.
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Unknown A
You're saying this, but everybody said this exact same thing about Ukraine. You can't invade countries in Europe and steal territory.
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Unknown B
You can't invade NATO countries. I mean, that's the difference. The US has this long standing commitment and there's just, you imagine the kind of political backlash to that of the United States. There's a lot more polls than Ukrainians in the U.S. i mean, polls are put up a bunch.
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Unknown A
Well, sure, but like how many Estonians or Latvians or Lithuanians live in the.
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Unknown B
U.S. probably not Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. That's hard. Like, you know, I don't like then if you're worried, if you're worried about that, you know, it might be a case for keeping the war going, dumping Russia down so it doesn't try those, you know, try to take one of those countries. But you know, Russia is. This Ukraine thing was a lot harder than they expected. They did not expect this to drag out for three years and have hundreds of thousands of casualties and for them to get so little territory compared relative to what they were expecting. So the idea that like they're going to just fight off a new war with NATO, like seems far fetched. I mean, look, Trump wins.
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Unknown A
Look at. That's the legitimacy of Putin and his actions, right? Like, he did the same in Georgia, now he's done the same in Ukraine and he did it despite the entire Western war. Like, this isn't just a victory against Ukraine. This is arguably since 91. This would be Russia's first military victory, he could say against the United States in the entirety of the west as well. Right. Because we didn't really support Georgia in that way. Definitely not Moldova. 91, right. But like Ukraine was getting funding from everybody, Five Eyes intelligence assistance, NATO intelligence assistance, weapons from all over. Like for Russia to walk away with a big dick win through all of that. Why can't it be that Russia has to think if we invade here, we might get, if we invade here, maybe we're getting nuked. Why are all the difficult decisions on our end?
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Unknown A
We have all the power. Why does Russia have to think about those difficult decisions?
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Unknown B
I think they do it. I think if they're thinking about taking Estonia or Latvia, they're thinking like we might get nuked or we might get attacked. I don't think that they don't think there's potential danger there. And then, yeah, I mean, like, what's the alternative? So you're saying they're going to portray it as a victory. Of course, if they get anything out of it. But the only alternative then is you have to go all out for Ukraine to retake every Piece of territory. Right. That's the only way that Putin can have an unambiguous loss.
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Unknown A
Well, I don't think there's a world where, I mean, I can play, obviously we can play macro politics, but I'm sure it's all incredibly complicated. But there's a world where in my perfect dream, where Trump comes in, the United States does big ticket, we know, fly zone all of Ukraine and maybe even start providing air assistance. And we say, listen, Putin is allowed to have, we will force Ukraine to make them sign like a 99 year lease on like Sebastopol so that Putin can have access to his port in Crimea because that is important to him. We give him that and then all the rest of the territory goes back. Maybe there's some joint reparations fund that the US and the rest of the world can contribute to or whatever, including Russia. And then Putin gets to say, well, you know, we fought a great battle and you know, now we've guaranteed our rights to vessel.
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Unknown A
He can walk away feeling that way. Maybe we can allow some population transfer, Russians want to leave so they can have their civil war, you know, victory talking point, whatever. And then like everybody walks away with that. But at the very least then like Putin can sell it publicly. Like, well, look, it was a win. He knows privately that he got, you know, checked. But right now it's just, I don't understand why the whole world is so feckless. Why are we so weak in pretending that Russia is the one. Like Trump is saying over again, you don't have the cards. We have the cards. We spent so much. What happened to all of that? The world's about to find out why America doesn't have social health care haha, with our military. Okay, well, I don't even know why we have a military not doing anything.
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Unknown A
I don't know. Doesn't seem sad to you? The US Isn't do, isn't doing anything.
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Unknown B
During the, look, during the Cold War, I mean the, you know, the Czechs, the Hungarians, they rebelled against Soviet power and they were crushed. We just accepted we were much stronger. We were stronger than the Soviets as far as between us and our allies. But you know, there were realities on the ground that we had to, we had to accept a little bit. I don't buy the Putin is going to say I'm going to get a lease on Crimea. No, they're going to keep at least the next Wuhan. They're fighting for it. Right. And so like, yeah, I mean we could like do a no fly Zone over all of Ukraine, I guess, including the parts that Russia controls and considers part of its territory. You could do that. Maybe he folds. Maybe it's a game of chicken and you win. And I would be happy if that's a fold. Right.
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Unknown A
Like what's Putin going to do? I will start to go to war. Like that kind of trouble with Ukraine.
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Unknown B
He uses a tactical nuke against Ukraine.
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Unknown A
Wouldn't this be the like would Putin deploy a nuclear weapon in an offensive war you think would be the first. Like, would he even have the support of like China to do that? I feel like the entire world would look at him like a magnet.
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Unknown B
Yes, you're right there. The nuclear taboo is pretty strong. Using it earlier there was pushback, but you're putting it in a toxic with.
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Unknown A
Other alternatives for him.
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Unknown B
Why.
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Unknown A
Why can't a tough adventure good.
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Unknown B
Look, he's losing. I mean, he's losing, you know, the scores of tens of thousands like monthly.
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Unknown A
Especially he gets away with win against the entirety of the west. And really about what that does for the Russian nationalist feelings like, yes, we beat Europe and everybody.
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Unknown B
So you put him in a tough situation and maybe you play chicken. Maybe he falls. Great. I'm happy if he does. Maybe he says, I'm going to take the next escalatory step and then see what you do. Because he's desperate now. Now he's desperate now he thinks he's going to have to give up everything. You're saying you put a part of him. We're going to do not. No flies on a regret. You give up everything. That's the only way we have. We have peace. Maybe you got at least if I.
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Unknown A
Give up everything and give up the territory that's invaded, not even any of sovereign Russia, it's the territory that he's invaded is offensive war.
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Unknown B
Okay, so you put him in that situation and we agree. And the point of you putting him in that situation is you want him to feel like a loser.
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Unknown A
You want him to feel like if he's going to invade. Like. You ever play poker?
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Unknown B
Yeah. Play poker.
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Unknown A
If you play poker well, right. If you're faced with really tough decisions and know lots of hands, it means you're probably playing poorly. Many mistakes. You never have to face tough decisions over and over again. Means you're doing something suboptimal. You play. If Putin is an area where he has to make a tough decision should mean that he's made a mistake. People try to avoid tough decisions. But if we take all those off the table for him and he Just is able to, you know, flood on through with all this negotiating power somehow. Right. Russia is a smaller country. They're suffering a lot of losses too. They face a ton of sanctions. They are facing a rough economy. How are the decisions so simple on his end? Like why can't we put a tough decision to him and force him to act a little bit more maturely?
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Unknown A
And I don't think oligarchs would imagine you're European. Do we agree that he's probably run to some extent by appeasing the oligarchs in his country, the ones that supported on him. Right. Imagine they're looking at the US and the US is going to freeze all these funds. All the sanctions are being unfrozen. Your guys economy will function again. Just give Ukraine back their territory and you even have your Sebastopol lease, maybe even all Crimea maybe, maybe that's a big concession, whatever. Right at that point would Putin say, I think I'm gonna try. I'm gonna start nuking like the Black Sea. I'm starting tactical nuke instead. What are the oligarchs looking at him think like excuse me, we're about to lose support from the rest of. It's about to become bix instead of bricks. Nobody's gonna like us if you start nuking on an offensive board.
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Unknown A
Just let our fucking money. Why? And he has enough to walk away victorious. We have enough to walk away victorious, to sell it to our public and then the world just goes on. But we can do that deal. We United States.
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Unknown B
Yeah. I don't believe as a factual matter that Putin the oligarch. If I think if the oligarchs were as powerful as that story makes it, I think this war probably would have been over a long time ago. This hasn't been good for them. I think it's more the national security elites, not the people who have financial interest and good relations with the west who Putin cares about satisfying. And look, he doesn't face to face. I mean Kurz was invaded. He had to rely on North Korea. They're sending more North Korean troops. He's getting, you know, there's infrastructure attacks, there's drone attacks going into Russia. He was also overthrown. I mean the Prigozhin thing is such a weird thing to think about in retrospect. But like, I mean he almost, it almost happened. And so he's facing tough decision now. You can face a tougher decision.
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Unknown B
The problem is it's a gamble and you know, he takes the decision that escalates he uses a tactical nuke. If you say the world's gonna hate it, whatever, like he's gonna hate it. If basically he has NATO comes in and says, basically surrender. That's what that is. Your deal is basically surrender. They've lost hundreds of thousands of lives. They, you know, they've been isolated from the world over these last three years. And Putin, just because Trump decided to top cough and they became united with the Europeans, Putin pulls out and says, okay, we gotta, you know, we get a, we get Crimea, we get to use Crimea, and that's it. That's a horrible scenario. That's like the thing that could make him say, okay, okay, hell with it. Like, they know we, you know, it's gonna look bad. We use nuclear weapons.
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Unknown A
He doesn't need Ukraine. He doesn't need it. It's not like Russia's success in the future. His survival doesn't depend on him controlling Ukraine or it's peeling some part.
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Unknown B
It probably does. War's failure in war is like a common thing that brings down leaders all throughout history.
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Unknown A
Yeah, on that level, he's already failed. They failed two weeks in when they weren't able to immediately take over the country. But the fact that we both agree this went on for three years was unforeseen at the beginning. So, I mean, he's already had a failure in that regard. But again, it can't be. Why? Like even how you're talking right now, why is his well being the only thing that the entire west has to be concerned with?
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Unknown B
Because he controls a large nuclear arsenal, and we have to think about that.
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Unknown A
Okay, if that's your answer, then he goes to Estonia next. What changes?
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Unknown B
Because Ukraine's different. Why didn't he go to Estonia before 2014? Why doesn't he go to Estonia now.
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Unknown A
In a country that Putin was gaining more control over when Yakovic got kicked out? That's why. When? In 2014. But I mean, like, why using San Francisco, using now he goes to Estonia. What do we do? He still has the nukes. There's a nuclear saber island that's strong.
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Unknown B
What's your theory why he doesn't go to Estonia today?
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Unknown A
Today? I don't think he wants anywhere right now. I think he's probably like stressed to the limit right now, I would imagine.
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Unknown B
Okay, and so, like, why is it impossible to imagine he gets, you know, this. Whatever he's got now 15% of Ukraine, he goes down. So you're saying things that kind of are like, contradictory. You're like, oh, it's been Such a failure. But then, like, if we give him this territory, he's going to be seen as like a big success and he's, you know, appetite. He's. What is appetite? Right. So instead of these things, these things are kind of contradictory. You can portray the war as a failure or you can portray it as a success.
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Unknown A
You know, again, okay, so basically you.
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Unknown B
Say, you know, we have to, we can't have like this outcome where like, Putin is. Where basically Putin, like, you know, comes out a winner. Right. So you can't surrender, you know, this portion of Ukraine that controls or any significant part of it. Yes, right. Right. At the same time, you're saying he's already failed because, you know, they can't, they didn't go to Kyiv within three days and they didn't take over three years and they lost all those people. So like you, these are, these are sort of contradictory things. You're saying he's a failure already or. But we have to, like, because of the current state of the conflict. But then if it's freezes right now, he's going to come out as a, as a winner.
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Unknown A
Well, it's, there's, there's two different aspects to winning a losing war for all wars, right. You have the public aspect aspect and then you've got the private aspect, right, where you can sell a win to the public, depending how you speak to them, and dictatorships of the oxygen ways. And then you privately know whether or not you can sell a win as successfully, not successful. Right. Do you know anything about, like the Yom Kippur War in 73 for Israel? Right. Technically that was like a failure. The Arab states lost, but publicly it felt like a massive success because in the first few days of that war, Israel was losing a ton of territory around the backflip. That was a huge boon to the air of confidence when it came to fighting with it. Even on paper, they completely lost. Right. But the public, Goldmeyer, that whole cabinet had resigned.
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Unknown A
Everyone was kicked out. Israel was Superman even though they won on paper. Right. So what I'm saying is that for Russia, like, when we talk about making an off ramp, they're an off ramp for Putin's able to sell it publicly. We got Crimea, we got Sebastopol. Like, we did it. We won, guys. Even though privately he knows, like, okay, I need to be more mindful when I do shit like this in the future because I'm gonna get my shit check as opposed to right now. I can do what the I want and then just rattle my nukes whenever I, you know, want to be unimpeded so we can sell it publicly, understand what happened privately. And then the same thing happened on Ukraine. Everybody gets to walk away with, with I guess, feeling like they got something basically. Whereas right now I just don't understand.
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Unknown A
Like they did this in Moldova in 91 and they took away transistor. They did this in Georgia in 2006, 2008, and they knocked out Salvador like that, whatever the fuck that other place was. Now they got it in Ukraine. 2022, 2023, 24, 25, they got in Ukraine where they're taking territory. If we assume that he's able to do this over and over and over again, why would he not go to another country next? Why would this be the last one? Why would Ukraine be the last one that he does? How would we.
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Unknown B
Because Ukraine was a lot more painful than he thought it was going to be. All those were relatively small. They were basically nothing in terms of casualties. This has been a massive loss for Russia. But I like your framing. I like how we can, I think the best possible scenario, right, I think we're agreeing here, is that there's a way where Putin can save some space in front of the Russian public. He can say we have a victory or we got something out of this thing at the same time, the rest he sort of understands that it would be crazy to try anything more. And I think that. And you are saying that just giving him that lease deal on a festival is going to. Or Crimea is going to be enough where that would mean they have less than. They started this war, right?
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Unknown B
When they started this war, they had a bunch of Donetsk and Lukhansk, they had two major cities. So they're going to go this three year war, hundreds of thousands of people, they're going to isolate themselves from the entire world and they need to go to the Russian people and have less territory than when they started the war.
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Unknown A
And yeah, well, I mean that territory is ward. That's like contested. There's an active conflict. Like imagine Putin being able to go back and say, because remember again, this is an offensive war. It's not like these are parts of Russia they're losing. If Putin go back and say we have Crimea, we've done it. You allow for that population transfer because ignore what the west says about NATO expansion. That cringe shit. That's not what Putin was talking about with his people. Right. They're talking about civil war and Russians being killed. Maybe we allow some population transfer there. If they want, Putin can say we were able to save the Russians from Ukraine that were being genocided. You can sign some bullshit agreement that says the Azov part of the battalion is fucking disbanded, whatever the fuck, and then he has Sebastopol who can go back and sell it to his people as a win so he's not getting fucking executed or murdered by, you know, some oligarch.
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Unknown A
And then Ukraine gets to keep all their territory except for maybe Crimea or just a vast possible. And then everybody kind of walks away from there understanding that, okay, we're done. I guess I feel like it's a better deal than allowing him to, you know, get everything down here. And we say that like, well, it was harder than they thought it would be. But that's because Russia hasn't fought a real battle. But imagine all the data that they've collected from this war. Imagine how much he's learned about his military now if they went into a battle again, it's not going to be this reckless. Right? They know what they have to do now. They know what they fucked up on. And the Baltics, no offense, the Baltics, probably a lot easier to steamroll through than fucking Ukraine.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I mean, they are. But he's also learned something about the West. I think that like, you know, I.
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Unknown A
Think there's no confusion. What do you learn about the West?
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Unknown B
I mean, look, I think he's learned how hard it is to conquer countries. Like he thought. Like what he thought at the beginning was that, you know, three days. And basically our Western intelligence agency saw this too. Not just Putin, but like they learned that people don't want to be ruled by Russia and people will fight back against Russia. So I think he has learned some information that like, conquering territory is not nearly as hard. It's not nearly as easy as he thought it was, and it's gonna cost a lot more. And at least we reunited for a while. We did have a lot of support. Ukraine, it was isolating internationally, probably more than they thought.
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Unknown A
Sure, he gets all the data and all the training, all the practices in here. It's going to be order of magnitude or two orders easier for the both.
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Unknown B
Now we know about drones and we know about. You see the New York Times piece on drones this morning? It's like 70% of the casualties now in Ukraine, in the Ukraine war, are now caused by drones. So it's a completely different war from what it was in 2022. We have that information too. We also have technological superiority and more resources. In the end, I think that put his less if the War stops right now. Putin does not gonna be like, wow, that was easy. That took three years. He doesn't have many years left. He's like 70, right? Three years at a 70 year old. Life is a long time. It took him just to get that 20% of Ukraine against a non n where he thought he had support among certain parts of the Ukrainian population. That was tough. And like, maybe he just like dies happy.
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Unknown B
Because look, he got 20% of Ukraine. Like that's an amazing accomplishment. Like from like his perspective, from his logic, right?
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Unknown A
Let's say there's no politics, Politics doesn't exist. And you can just do. We're playing risk or some military war game, right? If Putin is allowed to lick his wounds for five years, okay, after taking how much he's taken, what, he's going.
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Unknown B
To be old in five years.
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Unknown A
Listen, Trump is like 83, isn't he? 82 bad people a long time, unfortunately, right? Let's say. So let's say that he's, he's allowed to kind of like, you know, recoup. Do an analysis of the military. Ukraine had a population of almost 45 million people at the start of that war. I think the Baltics all combined have a population of like 5 million people. Do you think they would have the same amount of difficulty rolling through the Baltics as they did in Ukraine? Are we about to see Estonian super soldiers like fighting the especially a more trained Russian military that's had now combat experience that has like more modern abilities to engage, you know, on a military level.
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Unknown B
Like look, it's, it's, it's, it's a risk. I cannot guarantee that any kind of deal, no matter what happens, like, you know, like you can speculate, okay, he takes your deal, which is like, you know, which is basically, you know, just taking Crimea. He's so pissed, he feels like I'm gonna die soon, I need to get something for Russia. He goes and he tries to take us, he goes, this is gonna be easier. We're talking about psychology, right? We're trying to make, we're trying to get this man to die happy. Feeling like his stupid morality, he accompl something cool, right?
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Unknown A
We don't need to do that. We need to make people respect the United States, respect. We don't have to appease every crazy fucking dictator. No, I don't think that's a healthy framing for things I don't need. He doesn't need to die happy also. We're going, sorry, what does this, what does this mean? Imagine you're fucking Taiwan or you're fucking Japan or South Korea and you're looking at the US and you hear Trump say, well, there's no ship between us. Who gives a fuck? You know, we don't want to fight everybody's battles. Who cares? You know, we're building, we're targeting the fight and we're building our own chip manufacturing in the United States. It from tsmc, whatever the fuck, right? Does this, what was this thing with the rest of the world in terms of can the US Be a reliable partner? Like if Taiwan was attacked, would we help?
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Unknown B
Look, I don't know about Taiwan, but look, there is a distinction here between countries we have treaties with and those we don't. There is politically and there is morally and there is legally. And these things do matter politically. So, like, it is actually, you know, it is actually a difference politically if Putin attacks Ukraine versus Poland versus Estonia.
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Unknown A
But I mean, like, I'm sorry, I.
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Unknown B
Could just say totally, South Korea have formal guarantees. Taiwan doesn't. Like, there's a reason we didn't because we thought that like China claims that that's going to be very, very difficult. We want to help you get Taiwan. So there's no, there's no 100% guarantee we go to war with Taiwan. There never was. But we try to, we try to help them. Right. I think that like, there's a line to draw where we have these formal alliances versus where we don't. And this is what makes kind of Poland and these other countries are talking.
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Unknown A
About different for as long as Trump continues to respect NATO. But it's also not out of the question that Trump withdraws the US From NATO as well. Right.
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Unknown B
I mean, Trump has, you know, he can't do everything he wants to he wants to do. Right. He can't. Like, it's like there is even within the Republican Party, there's limits on, you know, how much they can be pushed around. So, yeah, I don't think, I don't think necessarily pulls out of NATO. I would be, I would. If you go to the betting markets, the odds of that are going to be very, very low.
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Unknown A
Okay. I don't know. We're one month in. Barely.
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Unknown B
Yeah, this is the most frantic time. I think it sort of becomes kind of a groove after a little while. So maybe we'll see. I mean, I get your concern. I get the kind of, I get the way that the anti Ukraine people lie all the time. You talk about the Marjorie Taylor Greens. He said her husband, especially her boyfriend, talking about the suit and like, just Talking down and yelling at Zelensky. It is repulsive. I get your sort of attitudes towards this, towards these people. Sure.
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Unknown A
I mean, also, like, I think that. I think that status quo stuff is hard because nobody really knows what they get from the status quo, but they can always point out things that make them unhappy, and then they can do a grass is always going on the other side. I don't think Americans know how much we've enjoyed just having unfettered access to literally the entire world. Right. Like, it wasn't an. The Houthis started bombing ships that were trying to go up through the Suez Canal that people were like, wait, we can't ship stuff through here. Wait, this is super delayed. Or, wait, like, this is getting way more expensive. Like, the idea that I might not be able to buy something from India or from China or that we have some special tariff or blockade or whatever from Europe or, you know, the fact that the US Is just totally ceding all of the soft power that we've spent decades or near a century building, that's just so sad to me.
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Unknown A
It seems so childlike and stupid that we're just gonna throw all of it away for nothing. Like, nothing's even happened. Like, it's all just, like, words and things on paper. Like, we haven't gotten. We haven't suffered a huge military loss. We haven't had a massive assassination attempt on all our leaders or anything for no reason. We're just giving away because Trump is retarded. It just seems sad to me.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I wish. I do wish. I mean, as much as I'm sort of taking the perspective that Zelensky screwed up, I mean, it's not that I'm not critical of kind of Trump and Vance's attitudes or, like, I wish I got into a little spat with Vance, actually. Twitter. I don't know if you saw it, but I basically said, like, because fans had this tweet going. You know, we are. You know, here's the reality. Russia is, like, you know, advancing on the battlefield, this and that. And, like, they're. You know, their manufacturing power is so awesome, and we in Europe and America have a living. I'm just like, like, okay, but, like, why are you telling the world this? Like, you're going to negotiations. You're starting from the perspective of, like, you, Russia are so awesome and so strong, and we in the west are so weak.
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Unknown B
I think there's. There's a lot in their attitude that, look, they don't. You know, I don't know. Did you watch The Vance Munich speech?
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Unknown A
Unfortunately, yes. Jesus fucking Christ. Me and the rest of the year, I watched in fucking horror. Yeah, this is.
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Unknown B
I think this is insights of Trump youp know, he's got his own brain, he's got his own psychological kind of issues. But Vance, I think, is like, kind of an avatar, represents, like, how. Right. More intellectual MAGA people see the world. And I was. I was one of maybe three or four years ago. The idea is basically. And look, there's. I still think there's a point to this. Although they exaggerated and they can go in a ridiculous direction. There's a point that, like, Europe really doesn't have a First Amendment. Europe doesn't really have free speech. There's a lot of, like, cultural things that Americans, American conservatives find objectionable about Europe. And from their perspective, like, that's so bad that it outweighs, like, the moral gap between.
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Unknown A
You can say, though, right, that perspective. That American perspective is literally fucking retarded.
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Unknown B
Right, I agree. Yes. I know people who are close to, like, the Trump administration who will argue with a straight face. And this is. This is mental illness. The dissidents in the west have it harder than China.
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Unknown A
And even just comparing, like, the US and like a Great Britain, like, we could imagine an island that allows for things like defamation and child porn and unlimited spam and anything they want. And in that country, you could say the U.S. huh? You guys think of a First Amendment, but we allow you to watch or do anything here. That would be a stupid claim.
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Unknown B
Like, okay, what's the entire 60 minutes thing from Germany? I mean, it's beyond, like, just a couple, like, things like that. Like, Germany has, like, thousands. It has bureaus that have, like, thousands and thousands of people whose, you know, whose tweets they're looking at even. Not even being racist, calling a politician a moron or an idiot or something, you know, the police will come and they'll take away your phone and find you.
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Unknown A
I would have to. So I would have to look at any case with product because he's always horrendously misunderstanding. It'll be like, oh, this guy got his phone taken away for calling somebody up.
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Unknown B
Go 60 minutes. 60 minutes. They're not some conservatives.
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Unknown A
Sure, sure, sure. But, like, even so, like, their laws, the way that they run their country, that's up to them. It's the way that they decide to do their stuff and their democracies too. Their people can vote on their rules. They can vote on their people. Like, that's on them. Right? Like, they don't Have a right to go in other countries.
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Unknown B
I mean, that's on them because they're not democracy. If you think democracy is the only thing matters. Sure. But like some of us don't think democracies the only thing.
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Unknown A
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Russia have to do any of this?
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Unknown B
Well, because you said, well, because you can said, well, that's just the way they run their own countries. You could say, well, you know, we don't have to think Russia so bad. That's just the way they run their country. Or China's so bad.
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Unknown A
Russia trying to do their stuff. But the problem with Russia now is they're invading another country now that they are democratic. But I'm saying that like the. I'm just saying that the. If they have different lines that they draw on, like hate speech or however they regulate, that doesn't mean they don't have freedom of speech. Just because their lines, their laws are like 100% with parity with our laws. Right.
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Unknown B
Well, it's a spectrum. Right. If China being anti free speech and Russia being anti free speech is the reason why we are not, you know, natural allies with them or we have kind of hostility to their system of government. Europe is just on a spectrum. Europe is just. Germany, I think, is like, you know, somewhere between America and China.
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Unknown A
So it's like a legitimate between. We mean, like five steps from US and 1,000 steps from Russia or China. Right.
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Unknown B
We can disagree on like, the kind of like where exactly I say conservative see that gap as fast because, like, look, you don't care about being racist online. That's like, not your thing. But if your thing is being racist online, like, the U.S. europe might look worse than Russia because, like, there's probably more restrictions on, like, speaking out against Islam or whatever. Right. So it depends on kind of like what you want for him for, I guess.
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Unknown A
But then it's also rich that those same conservatives don't seem to have anything to say about Donald Trump suing people for stuff that he doesn't like.
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Unknown B
No, they're hypocrites. Oh, my God.
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Unknown A
Suing the seltzer pol lady or suing 60 Minutes because they don't want the cut of the commonwealth interview? Those are insane positions to have.
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Unknown B
Magas are hypocrites. Yes.
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Unknown A
Well, any other thing you want shout out?
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Unknown B
No.
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Unknown A
I mean, is there any breaking point for maga? Like, I'm trying to do this thing more over the past few months where it's like, like try to go where the puck will be instead of where it is. And one of my biggest fears has been, and it's started to crop up in a few places, that Trump will not only be unable to bring down prices, but these terrorists will cause prices to go up. But the MAGA talking point, instead of saying, wow, Trump failed, things are getting more expensive, they're just gonna switch to actually paying more is actually patriotic because we're buying all America now. Like, is there anything that Trump can do or any outcome that can happen that actually breaks the MAGA movement apart or.
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Unknown B
Well, the MAGA movement. Look, there's a, there is a. Not like the court, not the core maga. Sure. I mean, these people are beyond reason being reasoned with. Right. There is, though. I mean, public opinion and, you know, maybe 30% of the country is, is a MAGA cultist. If the economy goes down, I mean, we, we know that from the history of America. We know that from political science. The most basic thing, things like inflation and sort of the state of the economy do drive public opinion. So, you know, Trump could go down to a 35% approval rate. Probably is fully, probably can't possibly get beyond that. Republicans get wiped out of midterms. They're not a good midterm party right now because they're relying on less educated and less informed voters. So they could be just totally wiped out. Imagine how tough Elon Musk's life is going to be once the Democrats in Congress have subpoena power and they could ask what Dojo's doing all this time.
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Unknown B
So, yeah, I mean, the 2026 midterms, it's just basic, you know, basic political science 111. If the economy goes down, if this doesn't work, Maga's going to suffer.
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Unknown A
Hopefully I'll go. Do you think in retrospect, seeing this month now, do you still think going to Trump's right call, you know, I'm.
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Unknown B
Not as horrified by the Ukraine stuff as you are. I think that you could have had like the mineral steel.
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Unknown A
Just be clear. The Ukraine stuff is like, I love my foreign policy, but that's probably like six or seven on the list. I would say that the insane handling of the Gaza Strip, foreign policy wise, that's crazy. The wanting to separate from NATO's crazy suing people are having suits settled as he's the President of the United States is crazy. Everything up with Eric Adams stuff.
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Unknown B
What the f. Yeah, that stuff. That stuff is bad.
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Unknown A
Not bad, horrible. That's insane. The pay for play the quid pro quo for Eric Adams is crazy.
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Unknown B
Look, I think surprised you bringing up Gaza I mean, it's sort of like retarded. He talks about, you know, we're going to annex it, but like, you know, he's actually, he's actually telling Israel, you can go in and do it again. I think he's been a pretty strong supporter of, supporter of Israel. So I'm not a problem with that. I think that moving people out of Gaza as refugees is a kind of human settlement. I appreciate that he's put it on the table. It's not going anywhere now. Maybe it goes somewhere down the line. So I'm not happy with the Gaza stuff. I think Doge, I think their focus I've written about this is just sort of stupid. I don't think it's. We'll see how disastrous it is. Like if we see real long term damage, it might be just like this damage to like sort of scientific research.
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Unknown B
Maybe it's just a thing where they did this scalpel, they cut off all this stuff. Maybe they bring it back. If there's long term damage to like American innovation. If we see kind of evidence of that, I would say yeah, that's a pretty disastrous outcome that I didn't foresee. But yeah, it's so the US anti.
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Unknown A
The illegality of Doge, the chopping off all the departments and foreign gravitas disagrees with him.
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Unknown B
I think usaid actually, I think it's, there's some programs that do a lot and I think writers hate it because they think it's like a haven of like, you know, transsexual militants and so forth. You know, one of our best soft.
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Unknown A
Power programs in the country. We had so much goodwill in other countries built up as a result of these programs and it's just like completely ejected.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I mean, I think America soft power is probably more, you know, just Hollywood and our economic growth and our success rather than like government usa like being able to take a lot of credit for that.
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Unknown A
You know, the USA economic growth is going to be sacrificed now for tariffing everybody for whatever reason and for isolating us as much economically as we can from as much as Trump can the rest of the world. We still do cultural exportation, but I mean, I don't know if that's alone enough to carry us like.
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Unknown B
Well, I mean we'll see, we'll see how bad the tariffs is and how all in he goes on it. There's good stuff on sort of permitting and good stuff on energy and di, and there's going to be bad stuff on tariffs. But I think the fact Trump's just self interest is the key here. I mean the market responds. The market really is hurt by tariffs. You know, I think there's, you know, he might, he might enjoy from them. So at least we have, we potentially have that.
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Unknown A
Did you see that Atlanta Fed forecast of the like 2.8% GDP retraction or contraction that they've predicted coming up negative 2.8 growth.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I think hopefully, hopefully we can have a crypto reserve now. So you know, if the economy goes off, we do have the most.
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Unknown A
Oh, and that too that's possibly ever go down. Do all the crypto scams, does that value the fact that the President of the United States is only running one of the most scammy crypto, crypto things that any crazy person could be bribing him on or they have 80% of the tokens held that it sucks.
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Unknown B
Look, I'm not as. I don't think corruption is as bad as a lot of people do. I think corruption is often like a way to get things done. There was a case out here in LA where there was a Chinese guy who wanted to build some like a multi billion dollar skyscraper and basically paid like a million or two chiefs of city councilman and they put the city councilman in jail for like 10 years. I'm like LA, we need to build stuff like, you know, we have this major problem. So like the guy pays a million dollars to see council get $1 billion skyscraper. That seems like a good deal something Hope, you know, something that if you left slide wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily hurt the country. A lot of stuff like this too. Like Trump being corrupt on Middle east, like the fact that he just wants to go to Gaza, like build like that's better than like the way the left sees the Middle Eastern conflict.
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Unknown B
I mean you have to have stability and peace and things have to work out in order for you to build hotels, to have a, to have a fruitful financial relationship. So yeah, the corruption stuff is kind of bad, but you know, it has some pluses.
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Unknown A
Okay, so if all of this stuff is so easily handwave, what was the huge fear you had for Kamala? I'm so curious.
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Unknown B
Well, this is kind of more like more unambiguously bad policy. Right? It's high taxes. It's high taxes. It's pro labor unions. It's probably the environmentalist movement, like one.
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Unknown A
Of the types of high taxes. So we have an issue with our deficit right now. There's. I don't know why Elon keeps saying this. There's only Two things you need to balance the budget. What was it like? Competency and caring. This is retarded. The only thing that matters is how much you spend and how much you make. They keep cutting the taxes. So the government's not getting enough money. They've already asked for a $4 trillion increase in taxes or I'm sorry, in the debt ceiling. And I don' think that we're going to get any real savings in terms of how much we're spending. I don't know if the deficit will decrease. So like how can you keep. Unless.
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Unknown B
Unless like it's all that, you know, you of course know where the money is going to see Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And Social Security, Medicare is down the line. Medicaid, we might get, we might get some cuts coming forward. So yeah, you could raise taxes or you could cut spending. I'm, you know, conservative in that respect. I think we should cut spending. DOJ is not going to balance a bunch of saving trillion dollars. This is just a must. BS but yeah, but we probably have.
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Unknown A
To raise taxes and extend our tax base a bit if we want to bring our budget anywhere back in line. Right.
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Unknown B
I mean, maybe there's going to be a negotiation at some point where we're going to have to have some probably combination of revenue raising and spending cuts. I am with the Republicans because I want to be more balanced by my spending cuts. Okay.
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Unknown A
So they're not cutting any spending while they're doing their tax cuts. When we had the Trump tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
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Unknown B
Right. They're, you know, they're trying the budgetary negotiations. They are talking about, you know, cutting petty Medicaid and they are trying to do that.
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Unknown A
So, you know, why can't we just feel like the easy way to do it, expand taxation a little bit or at least the Trump tax cuts and Jobs act expire, which would be fine. I like anybody making seven figures is going to be hurt by three or four points on their taxes going on. I'm going to plus 7 million six.
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Unknown B
Figures and five figures are also to see our taxes. But even though the majority goes to the highest earners because they pay the most in taxes, still it's significant. Your marginal tax rate at 500,000 would go up, you know, 10%. Whatever it is.
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Unknown A
I don't ever go up 10%. But even if you're even for 500,000, I think a few percentage points more, I think they'll be okay. I don't think they're gonna be suffering in the United States if We think the budget deficit is a big deal. We think that that matters. Then we have to bring it in line somehow. And the second way you can address your deficit issue, of course.
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Unknown B
Right.
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Unknown A
Is by growing your economy. Because as the economy grows, your debt is a small percentage of gdp. You maintain the same percentage of GDP collective as taxes, and then you seal your deficit. But like we're doing tax cuts. Right. Trump wants to extend the tax cuts or make them larger, but he's extending the lease's tax cuts. We haven't found any significant spending cuts yet. I don't know what is gonna come of this new continuing resolution for action in a budget. And he is hurting the growth of the economy by tariffing the of everything. Everything just points to worse cost of living in the US as prices go up and everything lower. Gdp looking at a contraction, why we were growing, I don't know why we were contracting. And then, excuse me, 3% contraction. Economy is messy. Cyclical is like we only grew 1 or 2% this year.
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Unknown A
That's a bad economy. It's 1, 2% growth for a quarter, not the 3% contraction for a quarter. That's insane.
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Unknown B
Yeah. So on the growth thing, I think we, I don't know, I don't agree with this, but I think growth is kind of the key. If you get 1% more growth every year, that compounds that you're a much significantly wealthier country.
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Unknown A
What are we doing to grow tariffs are going to by definition hurt the economy.
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Unknown B
Right. I mean, look, look, the. There is a benefit, there is a positive benefit for corporate, reducing corporate and individual taxes. I think that the permitting issue is a big issue. I don't know how much you looked into sort of Trump, what he's doing against the environment, Environmental Protection act, but it's significant. The people who pay attention to energy policy say this is a really big deal because basically Trump is taking cleaver to this entire thing, which says you just have to produce thousands of pages of paperwork if you're going to build anything in the country. So there is that and energy is just a huge part of it. I think there's a lot of restrictions on energy in the Biden administration. I think that's significant.
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Unknown A
You're talking about, you're talking about you've found the nicest band aid for a few cuts and traits that I've had on my leg. But I also have life threatening leukemia that's ravaging my entire body. Were there issues with the EPA with being too heavy, efficiency, maybe we already produce more energy than we ever have on our body. We're already a world leader in production.
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Unknown B
That's not just about energy. It's the National Environment Protection act. Basically says anytime you want to build anything that has any federal component at all, you have to go through these ridiculous red tape. You have to produce these.
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Unknown A
Yeah, sure. And I'm sure some of that was maybe bullshit, and I'm sure producing some of that is fin. But none of this is going to compare to, but not anywhere near as huge as a 25% tariff on every fucking thing we imported to this country. Not even removed. Like, the offset for that is like 0.1% maybe, right?
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Unknown B
I mean, we'll see. Like, I think NIF has a bigger energy or bigger deal than you might be thinking. But 25% tariffs would also be catastrophic.
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Unknown A
Not pretty catastrophic.
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Unknown B
I'm hoping that, like Trump just being stupid, like, again, like, I just hope being stupid is like, how we get out of this. Because he sees the, you know, he works out some deal where he feels like a big important man. He sees the economy goes down, he sees that's dangerous. He's going to be a rational actor at some point. That's the benefit. I think the Democrats are probably less likely to like, change on their crazy policies because they're about, you know, they're about 20 line of interest groups. So when you talk about the environmental lobby, if you talk about the, you know, the environmental lobby, the civil rights lobby, these kind of groups that want, you know, labor unions, all these other things, like, it's not very easy for Democrats to go against that. Trump, you know, the economy starts dipping, his poll numbers go down.
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Unknown B
He can switch out the back of hat and the people like his Secretary of the treasury, people like Elon Musk will love it. Because those people aren't necessarily.
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Unknown A
Yeah, but when you look at him and how you have interest groups. The SEC just like killed how many probes into different crypto investigations. We've got Trump crypto scams, crypto scamming.
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Unknown B
Idiots out of their money. I mean, it's not great, but it's like that's not going to like, destroy the country. It's just idiots losing their money. I mean.
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Unknown A
No, but the tariffs might, the tariffs are on the way for that.
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Unknown B
I'm hoping that, you know, he can, he can adjust. I think it's easier for him to adjust. The Democrats with their, you know, the pressure of their interest groups.
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Unknown A
Yeah, like, what was the worst outcome for Democrats giving into pressure from interest groups versus the worst outcome from Trump? Which is like the destruction of the country economically. Like we were in the rating a little bit too much like DI and government programs or like what is that? What was this huge catastrophe.
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Unknown B
I think we get, we end up basically poor. Like Europe, we get slightly lower growth. We get 2% lower growth a year. Yeah. Trump is. So far, economic growth has not been so good this first quarter.
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Unknown A
Not so good as in catastrophically low. Right. We have seen anything this bad since.
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Unknown B
COVID The estimate of one quarter. Right. But now the long term damages, I think Trump was more kill and like if he told me like is something ridiculous is going to happen, it's going to destroy the country, I would say that's more likely under Trump than Kamala. But I think the median outcome for Kamala, immediate outcome for Democrats rule is California or New York, nice places to live. It's still the United States of America. But just, you know, people are, you know, people are leaving these states.
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Unknown A
We're not nearly moving because it's so expensive. But these are like our economic powerhouses. Right. The United States is not known internationally because of Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia. Places like New York and California are the drivers of so much of us.
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Unknown B
The trajectory is wrong direction. They're growing much slower than the red states. They're losing people. Texas and Florida are booming. And this is, I mean this is a direct comparison of kind of. There's these policy differences. It can't just be the weather because California has beautiful weather. Liberal policies just have not. I think Democrats are acknowledging this. There was some meeting. I forget what this was.
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Unknown A
But maybe there are issues related to crime for sure. But you say like Texas is now having a booming economy or whatever. Or Texas is growing, Tex, no offense to my wonderful friends, Texas is not growing because More guys with F150s and Chevy Silverados are ranching more cattle there. They're growing because people are maybe are moving out of California and are setting up new liberal havens in Texas.
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Unknown B
Right.
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Unknown A
If you go to, I don't know if you spent time in Austin, but if you go to Austin, you walk down 6th street, you feel like you're in San Francisco. Almost like these are not super ultra conservative redneck bastions of conservatism. They're just like maybe liberal cities.
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Unknown B
Maybe, maybe that's. Maybe the ideal is a red state government. Look, I think smart people just sort of naturally, you know, sort of become towards the left. I don't deny that within Texas, like the most economically productive members of the Although, you know, a lot of them are in the energy industry. Energy is a big part of this too. That's a lot of tech of Texas economic growth. Just like they could drill for oil and do this stuff while Californ really, really can't because of the environmental regulations. But no, you're right that like human capital is liberal. That's unquestionably true. It doesn't. But you know, like, if those Austin people, those people in Austin who have all the fancy restaurants where the legislature. Legislature of that state, I don't think it would grow as. Grow as quickly and probably would have never attracted them in the first place. So there is this kind of paradox.
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Unknown A
I guess the thing that bothers me the most is that like, so I don't know how much you're familiar with my economic support, but like, I'm a very, very, very huge capitalist. I believe the markets are real. I think market forces need to be respected. I'm very big on policy that is oriented around market forces. I think it used to be that conservatives had. Because back in the neocon days, they at least defended our big businesses, they defended capitalism and all that. But I guess my biggest fear now is that you kind of have the left on whatever economic policy they have. I don't even know anymore because we don't talk about politics policy in the US anymore. But MAGA is just so out there. Like, if you were to tell me, like, what coherently is Trump's economic policy? Like, is. Even by the time you finish that sentence, are you even confident it hasn't changed by the time you explain it?
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Unknown A
Like, I just don't see like a good tension there. I just see like we are gonna turn progressives or go left or crazy when it comes to MAGA is just as crazy, it feels. And that they're not based in any kind of capitalism, realistic market forces world anymore. It's just deregulate, but then also tear off the fuck out of everything and then see what happens.
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Unknown B
I guess MAGA is MAGA is maga. You know, there is a kind of. There is a kind of gap between maga. You know, I've been tempted to at some point say that I'm like a Democrat at the national level and like a Republican at the state and local level, because these are different things. I think that the national Republican Party kind of just become retarded. I think it started with Fox News. He's kind of infotainment. I think that like Elon Musk has obviously made this worse and kind of right when Twitter is just a disaster. But then you know, you look at the performance of red states and yeah, sometimes they're, you know, they're hicks and they want to battle abortion and so forth. At the same time, like their policies are a lot more sensible. Like smart left wing people like Besser, Klein and so forth will acknowledge that they're like better on housing policy.
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Unknown B
So there is like good sense there. So there is, you know, that you can look, I mean there's people who track economic freedom. There's you know, these organizations that like try to rate them how much, you know, the licensing regime and the occupational licensing regime and housing and the labor market and all of that and they basically find that the conservative states are doing better. Sometimes a, you know, state run by Democrats will do a hey Jared Polis in Colorado has been doing some good things and Colorado has been booming as a result. So yeah, you know there's a, I'm a pro market guy too. Look, Democrats became overall pro market and were otherwise did not have the flaws of MACA and loved our rules based international order. I'd love the Democrats, you know, I'd be happy to jump on that train.
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Unknown A
Okay, well any other topics?
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Unknown B
It's up to you, man.
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Unknown A
Okay, well hey listen, I appreciate the conversation. You owe my audience to be Superman in this conversation. I do appreciate the chat. I like watching you rally on Twitter, me included. What's your, the main thing you link is your substack.
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Unknown B
Yeah, substack is where you know when sometimes people follow me on Twitter but they don't read the substack. I sort of get disappointed. It's you know like 60, 70% free. But that's where like the, you know, that's where the more serious thoughts go. But follow me on Twitter of course too. And yeah, I look forward to seeing the reaction to this.
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Unknown A
What is your do you mind me asking how you pronounce your last name?
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Unknown B
Hananya.
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Unknown A
Do you mind me asking where it comes from? Where's the name from?
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Unknown B
That's what I called you. It's my dad's a Palestinian Christian. If you look back if you Google it you will see it seems originally Hebrew. There is a Rabbi Hanania who fought the Romans like 2000 years ago. So it's like yeah, a Jewish name that got kind of adapted by the Palestinian Christians.
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Unknown A
Okay, well thank you so much and I will, I'll talk to you later if anyone comes up for re shooting messages also. Yeah, thanks a lot.
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Unknown B
Been a pleasure, Steve.
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Unknown A
Thanks. Damn. Trump say there's nothing Canada, Mexico can do in the terms will end effect tomorrow. Fuck. You know what? I feel like I'm a loser on every front now because I used to make fun of conservatives saying, hey, you know, you guys are just voting for big tax cuts for people like me. So actually, you guys are losing at the end. But if the economy goes to shit, all my stocks fall. I'm losing more than any of these broke losers are. No thoughts on Bitcoin today? Oh, no, what happened? God damn. How much money is being made and lost here in these daily swings? Holy.