12/16/24: ABC Pays $15 Million Trump Settlement, Trump Reveals Crypto Bailout, Scott Horton On Ukraine Lies
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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our

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All right, let's get to media. I wanted to make sure we covered this important story. It's genuinely crazy, some of the details. Let's put this up there on the screen. So ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million to Donald Trump's presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit. So the reason why this is so extraordinary is that it almost never happens that you have defamation lawsuits which are settled publicly.

involving public officials. The reason why is that the bar is so incredibly high to prove defamation. Nonetheless, ABC News agreed to this settlement on Saturday after a quote unquote statement by George Stephanopoulos that happened on ABC News some months ago with respect to the E. Jean Carroll case. Now, if you look actually into the details,

The settlement came right before there was a deposition that was going to go through, as well as discovery, which would have required Stephanopoulos turning over all of his emails, deposition of all the people that were involved in the segment. Now, the reason why, again, I think it's just so crazy is the fact that it even got to the deposition phase is extraordinary. Almost in every other one of these defamation cases, it's thrown out.

which means that the Trump people had to rise to a bar where they at least were able to say to a judge that they could realistically prove malicious intent on behalf of Stephanopoulos. So again, I know this is complicated and just in plain speak. As public, as commentators here,

Whenever we're talking about anybody who is a public official, especially an elected official, for them to prove defamation against us, they have to prove that not only did what we say was wrong, but that we knew it was wrong when we said it and that we were doing so specifically to harm the reputation of that individual. A slip of the tongue. Right. Or a slight mischaracterization. What he said was only a slight mischaracterization of the truth.

Like that is not sufficient unless you can prove what's called actual malice. Exactly. Actual malice, which is, I mean, again, unless you basically have it in writing and be like, hey, screw Trump. I'm going to lie about Trump and say that he raped someone. Yeah. So it's like if I texted you and was like, hey, screw Donald Trump. I'm going to go on the show and say today X, Y, and Z, even though I know X, Y, and Z is false. That

That is what they mostly need to destroy you. And yet, they decided to settle. So two options. Either they're afraid and they decided to pay him off or it was true. I'm starting to get to the point where at this point,

at least in terms of what they had, it must have been bad because to pay $15 million to a public official as a news organization is crazy. You're supposed to fight this thing to the bitterest end to make sure that there is no... So I think he might have been guilty, honestly, because there's no other reason or they're just afraid. But I mean, even when we think about, quote unquote, afraid, I mean, think about the precedent that's being set here for defamation. No, that's right. That's why...

They must – there's something in those emails that they don't ever want the world to see. Whatever you think about this case, et cetera, and just – let me just lay out what he said and what the truth is because it shows you how sort of like nitpicky this is and how it's an easy mischaracterization for people to make. And I'm quite confident that George Stephanopoulos, by the way, was not the only person who mischaracterized it this way.

So he said that a jury in a civil case found Donald Trump liable for rape and defamation. Okay. In reality, based on the New York state law at that time,

the jury found him liable for sexual assault, but not rape. Now, it would have met the definition of rape at the federal level. It would have met the definition of actually the newly revised definition of rape at the New York state level, but did not technically meet that definition at the time. So if he had been 100% accurate with the legal standards, he would have said sexual assault and not rape. But you see how like,

how close that is, right? And so, yeah, the assumption from anybody would be that in a defamation case, when you're considering that this is a public figure, when you're considering that even the judge in this case said

said that it would have by the sort of like colloquial parlance met the definition of rape, just not by the technical New York standard, you would assume that this would be something that they would fight and that they would ultimately be victorious because the bar is so incredibly high. Now yours, I think you're right that there are two choices here. Number one is that they had something in Stephanopoulos' emails that was just absolutely terrible that they didn't want to come out. Worth 15 million bucks, his annual salary that they didn't want to come out. And that they're contributing now to the

Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, which also looks disgusting. But anyway, either that and or they are afraid of being at odds with Donald Trump. And I tend to put more stock into that one because if you think about it, I mean, Trump has been quite aggressive

and many of his allies quite outspoken about how they want to go up against their media critics, how they want retribution against their media critics. Steve Bannon going on and threatening Ari Melber with some sort of investigation imprisonment, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't think that they want to be. I think this

Could very well be another example of basically like Joe and Mika making their trek down to Mar-a-Lago. They don't want to be at war with the incoming Donald Trump administration. Not only are they fearful, but they also feel like they'll be the target of attacks, whether it's, you know, some sort of investigation or just Donald Trump's verbal attacks.

They'll be subject to that. They'll lose whatever access they have to the White House, and it will impinge on their ability to break stories and do their whole thing. And so I think that there's a good likelihood as well that they just were fearful of going into this administration actively at war and in this legal battle with Donald J. Trump. I personally think that that's

It could be a little bit of both, but to me, that's the more likely explanation of what's going on here. Look, yeah, like you said, it could be all of the above. I think, I don't know. I think to pay somebody, a public official, as the president, 15 million bucks is nuts.

for any news organization. So I think the only alternative is, I think there was just something going on in those emails. I just don't think there's another explanation. There must have been some discussion that either related to him being informed that he was misspeaking, or maybe they could have proved that somebody was in his ear at the time and he had spoken differently. Again, these are all speculations, but the idea that you would pay off an incoming president

for a sum of Stephanopoulos' yearly salary shows extraordinary capitulation or extraordinarily liability. In either case, it is extraordinary capitulation. Whether it's out of fear or because there's something that's damaging in Stephanopoulos' life.

Either way, it is extraordinary capitulation because it does set a damning precedent for just, you know, freedom of the press. And as I said before, like this was a very minor mischaracterization of what the civil rights

actually found Trump liable for. And so for them to just like bend the knee on this is really crazy. And it does set, frankly, a scary precedent. We put T3 up on the screen, which had some of the reaction online to this, mostly from liberals who were

you know, really upset. Well, a lot of them are journalists too. Yeah, journalists and liberals and prosecutors too who were confused by this direction. So you had Norm Ornstein who said, add ABC to the basket of cowards in our media. Democratic attorney Mark Elias wrote, knee bent, ring kissed, and the legacy news outlet chooses obedience.

Reporter Oliver Willis chimed in saying this is actually how democracy dies. Tech reporter Matt Novak said not good for the rest of us when you do this shit, ABC, but that's probably half the point from management's perspective. True. Former prosecutor Joyce Vann said I'm old enough to remember to have worked on cases where newspapers vigorously defended themselves against defamation cases instead of folding before the defendant was even deposed.

So again, quite a significant reaction to this. And I do think it is a significant development and quite surprised. I mean, I was shocked to see it. - Oh, same. - Especially once I read the details of what the allegations were. - The only option is the insurance company told him to settle.

That's it. So I previously, because I studied actually some defamation cases. This is a case like many years ago involving, what's his name, to catch a predator guy, Chris Hansen. Yeah, Chris Hansen. There was a whole defamation case that was against him. The insurance company, I believe, forced him to settle. He's spoken out against it. He's like, I never should have settled. He's like, I didn't agree with settling it.

But the insurance company forced basically NBC News to settle. I guess that could be a theory. But in this case, at the very least, Stephanopoulos and others have not come out and said this was an insurance decision. Because even at that time, NBC was significantly criticized for settling that case that involved – I forget exactly what it was. It was either defamation or wrongful death or something like that.

It was a crazy case, by the way. You know, it's also interesting. So they were also forced to append an editor's note to the article about like Nancy Mays thing and whatever. And the editor's note is very nonspecific. It says something just like ABC News regrets some of the statements made by George Stephanopoulos in this segment.

That's it. That's a mistake too. It's like really not specific. That might be why as well because that's another thing people don't understand is you have to have recourse. So what happens is the Trump people could reach out to you and they could say, hey, we're going to sue you for defamation unless you issue a correction. So maybe they refused to issue a correction. Well, the editor's note was part of this settlement. Part of the settlement? So they never issued a correction. It was weird.

I don't think, I don't know. That I'm not sure about. But it was weird to me that the language was so like non-general and non-specific and wasn't like, you know, George Stephanopoulos was wrong when he said blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it is weird. If you work at ABC, let us know because I want to know more about this stuff. Yeah, reach out to Ken. Reach out to Ken, reach out to me. Listen, I'll publish another thing. I'll publish whatever you guys want as long as it's true. This is it.

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Hi, everyone. It's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right. Nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list. So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the hot.

- Crystal, what are you taking a look at? - Well. - I'll ask you one last question. You don't like Bitcoin? You wouldn't invest in Bitcoin? Do you invest in the stock market at this moment? - So not at this moment. I think it's high.

So I have not invested in the stock market at this moment. I have in the past, but I have not at this moment. I think it's high. Bitcoin just seems like a scam. I was surprised. You know, with us, it was at six thousand and much lower.

I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar. Essentially, it's a currency competing against the dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world. That's what I've always said. So that was former President Trump in 2021 telling Fox Business that Bitcoin seems like a scam.

And voicing concern it could undermine the dollar. My, what a little time a few hundred million dollars in campaign contributions can do to change your mind. Because now, after receiving the backing of a bunch of crypto-aligned billionaires and wealthy individuals, including Elon Musk, Trump is backing a plan to funnel American taxpayer assets into a scheme to further enrich his coterie of oligarchs through a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

In a conversation with Jim Cramer at the New York Stock Exchange, Trump recently confirmed that plan to throw the weight of the U.S. government behind Bitcoin, placing the volatile speculative asset on the same level as gold and as oil. So how exactly would this all work? Well, Senator Cynthia Loomis, herself a significant Bitcoin investor who has become crypto's top proponent in Washington, has sketched out potential details.

Basically, in her view, they could pull some creative accounting with the nation's gold reserves. Those reserves would be marked to current market value. The resulting paper gains would be used to finance bulk Bitcoin purchases to the tune of $200,000 a year for five straight years.

As the Financial Times explains, today, the U.S. government's gold is valued at a book cost of $42.22 an ounce, making it worth $11 billion. At current market prices, it would be worth over $650 billion. So, if we've understood correctly, Federal Reserve Banks would be required to remit around $640 billion to the U.S. Treasury, and the Treasury could use those funds to buy Bitcoin.

Now, this is on its face a plan for extraordinary plundering of the public purse, which would result in perhaps the largest upward transfer of wealth in history, given that it would primarily be a handful of Bitcoin whales who stand to benefit. Because as unequal as our normal financial system is, and it is plenty unequal, the crypto world is vastly more unequal. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the top 0.01%

of Bitcoin holders control 27% of all Bitcoin in circulation. The top 2% of all wallets hold over 90% of all Bitcoin.

South Africa, which is considered the most unequal country in the world and has a Gini coefficient of somewhere around 0.63. That pales in comparison to that of Bitcoin, which is estimated to be around 0.88. Now, the presence of a small group of whales means, of course, that a handful of mega wealthy investors stands to benefit from the U.S. government showing up with a virtually unlimited checkbook to buy up Bitcoin. And it also means that the price of Bitcoin, which has little actual value except as a high-tech poker chip, can be easily misplaced

easily manipulated by a relatively small group of people. Doesn't seem to me like we should be funneling trillions into an asset that can be easily and maliciously manipulated. Now, you may have heard the crypto-libertarian propaganda that the great thing about these coins is that they fly free of any government manipulation, that they represent some kind of new financial frontier, a wild west, fortune favors the brave, all of that. So you might wonder why these Bitcoin whales would want Uncle Sam meddling in their libertarian frontier currency.

Well, as Ryan Cooper at the American Prospect explains, the truth is these crypto whales have a pretty major issue on their hands, which is, quote,

The Bitcoin market is exceptionally illiquid. The last 24 hours saw roughly a piddling 660,000 transactions in Bitcoin and something like 70% of Bitcoins have not moved at all in at least a year. That is made worse by how expensive and slow Bitcoin transactions are. By way of comparison, Amazon, which has a similar market capitalization, has seen about 40 million daily trades of its stocks over the last few days.

As Ryan goes on to explain, that means that in order for large bag holders to cash out without totally crashing the market, they would have to lure an unfathomably large number of new crypto suckers into what is at bottom a giant Ponzi scheme. So they came up with a much easier plan, which was to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's campaign, along with many other Washington politicians besides of both parties, so that all U.S. taxpayers could be conscripted into the role of, in Ryan's words,

"sacrificial lambs to a digital asset slaughterhouse." Effectively, the US taxpayer will be forced to serve as the useful idiot, the hapless bottom tier of the pyramid scheme, allowing the whales to convert their illiquid digital tokens into cold hard cash while we get stuck with the bill.

Now, this oligarch thievery is only the beginning of the problems with the idea, however. A Bitcoin strategic reserve means funneling trillions into a famously volatile asset. In 2021 alone, Bitcoin surged from $30,000 a coin to $69,000 a coin before crashing back down to $30,000.

The idea of setting up a strategic reserve with an asset that can lose half its value in a matter of weeks is truly insane. And contrary to Bitcoin lore, that it could serve as a significant store of value and function in effect as a currency, in reality it has been nothing more than a speculative and non-productive asset.

somewhere around 20% of the whole market has been lost for good. The primary use, outside of speculation, appears to be mostly for money laundering, drug dealing, and human trafficking. Why should the US government spend real money on a digital casino instead of, I don't know, healthcare, education, infrastructure? The amount of risk involved is honestly wild, and to be truthful, it's only escalating. In fact, the advance of quantum computers has raised concerns among crypto enthusiasts that these

unfathomably powerful computers could be used to crack the blockchain encryption on which crypto security relies. Google, you may have heard this, recently announced that its quantum computer Willow successfully completed a problem that would take current supercomputers more years to solve than the entire age of the universe. That breakthrough alone created enough fear in the crypto markets that it sparked a $1.7 billion digital asset sell-off.

There's also a risk that as technology advances, Bitcoin just simply becomes obsolete, surpassed by superior technologies that evolve in the space, effectively rendering this particular scheme worthless. After all, there is nothing particularly special or durable about Bitcoin. It was just the first mover in the field and is the most well-known. Think of it this way: of all the things the government could buy, of all the prices it could artificially boost, which is what this is, there is no good reason to pick Bitcoin outside of a desire to funnel trillions to your campaign supporters.

So basically, a Bitcoin strategic reserve is a world historic billionaire giveaway, puts trillions of taxpayer dollars at risk, and unlike reserves of physical goods, which can be kept secure through physical security, runs the risk of outright theft from high-tech hackers. What could possibly go wrong? As if that isn't enough, creating a Bitcoin strategic reserve is a massive step towards further integrating Bitcoin into the regular financial system. And this is one of the major projects.

of the incoming Trump administration based on his statements and based on staffing decisions. A project that federal regulators in two new reports are already sounding the alarm over. So the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

They are warning that the increasingly common use of loans to finance crypto purchases has created a lot of exposure throughout the entire financial system. Meanwhile, the Office of Financial Research, another government agency, found a link between crypto holdings and home and auto loans, an indication that low-income households are using crypto gains to take out larger mortgages and finance more expensive cars, a situation that again could lead to disaster in the event of another crypto crash.

In previous downturns, that damage was relatively limited, relatively contained to just a few uniquely vulnerable banks and of course the crypto holders themselves. Next time, it could be much more like the cascade effect that we all lived through back in 2008. And contrary to the libertarian propaganda, the crypto industry's goal in Washington is to join the big Wall Street players in being too big to fail. They look set to get their wish based on Trump administration picks.

SEC chair currently is Gary Gensler. He's been serious about regulating crypto. Well, he is out. Instead, Trump has picked Paul Atkins, a crypto booster who blamed US regulators for FTX's collapse instead of, you know, brazen fraud. For Treasury, Trump picked Howard Lutnick. He's another crypto-friendly type whose firm has been a leader in allowing clients to use Bitcoin as collateral for loans.

And Trump's AI and crypto czar, David Sachs, is part of the PayPal mafia who believes that crypto will fulfill PayPal's desire to create the, quote, new world currency. Strange goal, I would say, for an administration that is supposed to be America first. And indeed, the use case that actually makes the most sense to me for a crypto reserve is not for the U.S.,

but for countries around the world who would like to undermine U.S. dollar hegemony and evade sanctions. In fact, that is exactly what is fueling Putin's current interest in Bitcoin and is the concern Trump was gesturing at when he originally called crypto a scam to undermine the dollar.

But for us, there seems to be nothing resembling a reasonable rationale. It's just all a smash and grab operation to loot the public purse and further enrich the already wealthy. So Sagar, strategic Bitcoin reserve, pro or con? And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. This is it.

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Very excited now to be joined by Scott Horton. He's the author of an incredible new book. Let's put that beautiful book jacket up there on the screen. What have we got? "Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine."

And even just looking at this book, at this tome, I would say, in a good way because it's extremely well-researched and so detailed. We have quotes up at the top. The most important one to me is detailed by Professor John Mearsheimer, a personal hero of mine, as well as Scott now because of so much of his work. So, Scott, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate you.

Very happy to be here. Good morning to both of you. Morning. And so Scott, tell us a little bit about what inspired the book with the war in Ukraine, but why you decided to put it out now. And in particular, some of the background and the history that a lot of the American public may be unaware of whenever it comes to the war in Ukraine. Well,

Well, you know, I've been doing radio since 98 and I've been working with antiwar.com since about 2004. And so just like with my previous book, Enough Already on the Middle East Wars. And now with this one, I think what I bring in terms of comparative advantage is just that I'm so old now and I've been doing this for so long in a row.

that I have continuity in the story. I can tell the story all the way through. And so a lot of times you can find some really good commentary about different aspects of it. But I wanted to take you from H.W. Bush and the end of the last Cold War and show essentially how American imperial hubris led us

straight to the path of future confrontation with the Russian Federation. And what really amounted to a self-fulfilling prophecy since the very same people who did it were the very same people who warned what would happen if they were allowed to do what they wanted to do. Yeah, well, the book title itself is a rebuke.

of the media coverage and the narrative that has been provided to the American people that this invasion from Russia just came out of nowhere. It was, quote unquote, unprovoked. Give us some of the highlights. Obviously, it's a lengthy book and people need to read it to understand the full picture. But give us some of the milestones on the road to this, quote unquote, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Okay, well, first of all, at the end of the last Cold War, the Americans knew they were lying. I mean, I really thought it was Bill Clinton, but it really was George H.W. Bush and his team before Bill Clinton ever came to town. They were telling the Russians what they needed to hear to get them to acquiesce to American plans, while all along they were planning on expanding the NATO military alliance into Eastern Europe.

They told the Russians, look, we're going to have we're going to use what had already existed since 75, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, now known as the organization, the OSCE. We're going to use that and we won't have an alliance anymore because there's no enemy. So we'll have a security partnership and you and Ukraine and the rest will all be members of it together with us.

And so this was the promise. And, you know, as long as NATO was a military alliance, they promised not to expand to east. And I know that's disputed, but I'm right about it. And you can check my notes in the book and see the argument. Yeah, I've gone through it as well. Yeah, no, continue, continue.

You're absolutely right, though. And then in the Bill Clinton years, you had the shock therapy economic policy. You had the Balkan Wars in Bosnia and in Kosovo. And then you had the NATO expansion. And really it was, I think, three weeks after the ink was dry on the new NATO expansion treaty, they launched the war against Serbia, which was over Russia's dead body, basically. Boris Yeltsin and his entire government had a fit over it, but there was essentially nothing they could do about it.

Then W. Bush comes to town, and, you know, Putin is new, too. Putin's been in power for a year. Bush is also brand new. And so they sort of try to do a reset. Putin calls Bush. He's the first foreign leader to call Bush on September 11th. But just a couple of months later, Bush tears up the—

pardon me, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the ABM Treaty, and in effect also tore up the START II Treaty, which hadn't been ratified yet but was in process. And that START II Treaty, his father's treaty, would have banned multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, which matters a lot. But anyway, Bush also did the color-coded revolutions, including overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2004.

And in 2008, over the best advice of all of not just the foreign policy establishment, but his own government, the National Security Council, the CIA, the ambassador and all of his staff at the embassy in Moscow, and even the secretary of state and secretary of defense, Rice and Gates, all told Bush not to do it.

or at least, I don't know what Rice and Gates told him, but they certainly agreed that it was a bad idea to do it. And we all know, we should know, everyone should find at WikiLeaks the Nyet Means Nyet memo by our current CIA director, William Burns, who was then W. Bush's ambassador to Russia, warning Rice, why not to offer NATO membership to Ukraine? And by the way, this whole time,

Even the expansionist hawks, never mind libertarian non-interventionists like me or Ron Paul or something like that, but even people like Brzezinski and Kissinger who were out front in pushing for a NATO expansion had always said all along, well, of course we'll have to make a special case for Ukraine. We'll have to ensconce permanent neutrality for Ukraine. We'll have to come up with the Vienna-Austria option or the –

Finland option for neutrality for Ukraine, just like we had in the last Cold War to prevent, not like we had for Ukraine, but like we had for Austria and Finland in the last Cold War in order to prevent a fight over it because the country is so crucial to Russia. And even though so many of the people, especially in the West of the country, really want

out from under Russia's domination and would rather move west. So instead of having a fight to the death over it, we should compromise up front. But then they never did that. They never followed through. Then Bush also did the anti-ballistic missile systems in Romania and Poland. Now, this sounds fine. Like, I don't care if my government has anti-ballistic missiles all day, right? What's the problem? It's set that there was a reason that Nixon tried to get this treaty done in the first place and did get it done in the first place.

was because it's just arms racing. The more anti-ballistic missiles you make, the more missiles I make, and vice versa the other way. At that time, we already had tens of thousands of H-bombs and ICBMs on each side. There's no point in continuing to escalate. And as we can see, when Bush installed the anti-ballistic missile systems, the Russians just increased their number of offensive missiles. Rather than try to reciprocate with their own super expensive and unworkable design, they just made more offensive missiles.

But there's another problem, which is they're launched from dual-use launchers, the MK-41 or the Mark 41 missile launcher, which can also host Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be tipped with hydrogen bombs. And this is, of course, in violation of Bill Clinton's promises in the –

founding act of 1997, where he said, yes, we're going to expand NATO further east, but we promise not to move our military equipment in there. But then he did anyway. Oh, I said substantial, and I don't count this as substantial, he said. But this is a real problem because it was in essence a

tearing up the INF Treaty, or at least violating the spirit of it and putting it in jeopardy. And this was Ronald Reagan's great treaty from 1987 that kept all short and medium-range missiles out of Europe. We saw nuclear bombs there, but only air-delivered, you know, airplane-delivered

bombs. We have no nuclear missiles in Europe, and that could change now because the INF Treaty's dead. And it was actually Donald Trump who finally tore it up his last year in office. Then Barack Obama comes in, and there's a lot to it. Of course, the war in Libya is a huge one, another aggressive war by NATO going around the UN Security Council again to do that. But

the worst thing of it all was the Maidan revolution, the so-called revolution of dignity in 2014. And people say, oh, you're denying the agency of the people on the ground. Well, look, I mean, the reality is Ukraine is a small, poor country and America is the global superpower. So when the empire drops a few tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into your protest movement, that makes all the difference. Just imagine for one moment, the Occupy movement of a decade ago or January 6th

Only now you have Chinese or Russian agents out there with, you know, supplying not just everybody focuses on the sandwiches and cookies. It's not that Newland was there passing out cookies. It's that what was she doing there at all? She was there blatantly supporting the revolution and telling the people America's on your side. She had Senators Chris Murphy and John McCain with her.

And they spent tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on the NGOs that supported the entire carnival to keep the thing going for three solid months until they could get their first, their deal to force the president to agree to new elections, which led to the street put.

which was accomplished by local Nazi forces on the ground. And this is another one that's important. And I go through, I beat this dead horse beyond any reason in the book. So I know the burden of proof is on me. I know everyone says that this is all just Russian propaganda, but I think we all, if you went to a government school, even in my era,

then you probably have heard of the fact that when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, some people in the border countries welcomed them. Yes. Because they'd been enslaved under Soviet communism. It was the worst thing that ever happened to them. And when the Nazis came, some people sided with them. And that includes in Ukraine. But the people who sided with the Nazis in Ukraine, they were really bad communists.

guys, it wasn't just, oh, people from out West, they were already Nazis. The people that were already, you know, organized groups of Nazis that came and swore their loyalty to Hitler and served him in the war. Then those same forces were supported by the CIA during the Cold War through the end of the 1950s as part of a stay behind type operation. People are probably familiar with Gladio that's in Western Europe, but this is the same kind of thing, supporting stay behind forces.

during the Cold War. And then after that, the fighting fell apart and ended in the 50s. America, the CIA and whatever still supported all the Ukrainian exile groups in the United States and Canada, many of which were founded by Nazi exiles and expats who had escaped after World War II. And then even beginning in the 80s with Glasnost and Perestroika, but especially in the 90s and then after 2004,

These groups poured a ton of money in to reestablish all these Nazi militias and to rewrite the whole history of Ukraine to try to make George Washington and Nathaniel Green out of these guys because they had no real heroes to be the founders of their state. So their heroes are a bunch of Hitler's servant Nazis, Holocaust perpetrating Nazis. We learned a little bit of that. Like Steppenbender and.

And these are the groups that did the putsch that overthrew the government in 2014 and then were put to use fighting the people of the East when they refused to accept the new coup junta in the war in the Donbass when it broke out. So...

I'll skip Trump and Russiagate for a minute, but we all, and I'll just say this about Trump. His own government told the New York Times, you can read it, Keith Gesson in the New York Times, The Quiet Americans is the article. And they say Donald Trump is like the captain of a ship. He's holding the wheel, but it's not attached to anything. And so his government had their own Russia policies, we saw with the impeachment and all that. But then I'm rambling on, so I'll wrap this up here. In the year 2021, Joe Biden's first year in office-

He came in and this is just his basic psychology. It's also the way the entire empire thinks too. Everything is a simple historical analogy because none of them ever really read anything or know anything. So they always go for these simple historical claims. And Joe Biden's

you know, framework for understanding the entire situation was Putin is Hitler and he's Winston Churchill. Yeah. And what you do with bullies is you punch them in the nose and you force them to back down and you always stand up to them and this and that and the other thing. But, you know, over at Harvard, Stephen Waltz said, actually, you're applying the wrong model. This is like, you know, these guys that went to Georgetown and whatever they have

you know, textbook formulas already for this stuff. And he says, look, you're going on the Hitler appeasement model, but you shouldn't be. You should be going on the other page is the spiral model where the other side actually has real concerns and you could, yes, appease them.

to use a bad word to prevent a worse crisis from breaking out and it wouldn't be the wrong thing to do, particularly when a country like Ukraine is so much more important to Russia than it is to the United States. And so, but they refuse to look at it that way. They looked at it, in fact, you see, Biden did nothing but escalate more arms

He had the State Department and Defense Department promise further integration into NATO and interoperability with our military. They refused to negotiate with good faith when Putin introduced the treaty. They talk about the treaty now like it's completely insane. Oh, he says that we should move all our military forces back to where they were in 1997. Yeah, but that was the blood oath that Bill Clinton had signed and promised. That's not 1897. That's just 1997.

It wasn't exactly a treaty. I cover this in the book. They refused to sign a real treaty over it, but still that was the promise. And it was not the kind of treaty that America should have just signed on the bottom line to, but it was negotiable. But the Biden government didn't want to negotiate, and we all know why. They said it to David Sanger, the most important establishment guy at the New York Times out of all of them. He wrote it in there. America seeks to lock Russia into a long-term struggle in Ukraine. If they're going to do it,

we're going to not do whatever we can to end the war. We're going to do whatever we can to extend the war, to bog them down and bleed them to bankruptcy. They invoked the Afghan model from the 1980s. Never mind the 2000s through 2020s. We don't want to talk about that. The Afghan model from the 1980s, where Rambo III helped the Mujahideen and al-Qaeda fight against the Soviet Union, a proto-al-Qaeda then. And so that was what led to the war, was Biden said, you better not

But he refused to negotiate in good faith or accommodate Russian legitimate security concerns in any way whatsoever. And let me just one more sentence here. The book is titled Provoked. It's not titled Justified. I'm from Texas. I don't give a damn. I should have said this first. I don't give a damn about Russia. The book is not about Russia's point of view other than Russia.

the idea that what they call strategic empathy, that Americans need to understand the Russian point of view so that we can do the smart thing for what's good for our country. That's it. Yeah. Scott, let me ask you this. I'm inclined to see things your way and I've always appreciated your analysis. But what people will point to is, you know, on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin gave this long stemwinder address.

And his justifications, they gestured to some of the things that you're talking about. But they also did sketch out this sort of like grand vision of empire restoring Russia to its previous greatness, you know, from a territorial perspective, etc. And so that's part of what's been used for people to say, listen, if you don't stop him in Ukraine, he does have these greater ambitions for other to reclaim other parts of Europe that were previously part of

the Russian Empire. What is your response to that? Do you think that that desire plays at all into his ambitions and is a reasonable case for people to make on the other side? No, I think it's overstated essentially because

what he's doing in there is lamenting the loss of Russian populations that were quote unquote left behind, or, you know, they're, they're called them a beached diaspora because their country receded and, and they were left there. Right. Um, and so, but the thing is where Russian, where ethnic Russians rights are not in jeopardy, there's not really a conflict. Right. Um, so, um,

If you look at it from his point of view, and even Joe Biden called him the most pro-Western Russian president ever. He was doing everything he could to try to integrate with the West, with Europe, with Western Christian civilization broadly defined. And that was of the highest importance. And so even going back to independence in 1991,

There was a question whether Russia might actually invade and take the Donbass and Crimea back from Ukraine right then. It was just the commies who'd drawn the line where they drew it back in 1921 and Khrushchev with Crimea in 54. But they decided at the time their relationship with the United States of America and the rest of the West was the most important thing. That was the priority. So...

The question is really what changed Putin's calculation to make it worth it for him to go this far? And the answer is George Bush and Barack Obama overthrew the government in Kiev twice in 10 years. And then Obama, I mean, John Brennan went to Kiev and two days later they launched the war. And Forbes magazine, everybody covered it at the time. There's no question that it was at Obama's insistence.

that they launched this war and then America supported it. And even after our European allies had worked out the Minsk to peace agreement in February of 2015, the American government refused to pressure Kiev to implement it. They tried to change the deal. No, Russia has to leave entirely every last...

soldier has to give up even control of the Ukrainian-Russian border to Ukrainian forces first, and only then will they hold elections and all this stuff, which was not the deal. That's the other question I have for you, Scott, is like, did American leaders just get more stupid or more arrogant? Because there seemed to, in the past, been more of an understanding of...

as you put it, Ukraine's this kind of like red line. Okay, yes, we're lying. We know we're going to expand NATO, but of course we're not going to expand NATO to Ukraine. Ukraine needs to be unaligned. This is just too important. And then somewhere along the way, that's just abandoned. So is it a lack of knowledge? Is it a lack of studying? Is it just this sort of superpower arrogance? What do you ascribe this decline to?

I think the fundamental dishonesty of government employees, they can never be held accountable in any way. You know, in private business, you lose money, you get fired, right? It doesn't matter what your excuse is. Your division is hemorrhaging cash flows and you're gone. In government,

They're just never accountable for anything. I think, you know, Sager mentioned John Mearsheimer. I think he gets this right, you know, it's better than anyone, is that what really happened was when the revolution blew up in their face and they lost Crimea in 2014.

then they invented this whole narrative about how Putin wants to recreate the empire and recreate the Soviet Union and that only America can stop him now and all of this stuff because otherwise they would have to admit that their plan backfired. If you listen to the Newland...

um, Pyatt phone call where they're planning who should be the new prime minister and stage managing the entire, you know, protest movement, essentially what they say, they go, we got to glue it. We got to stick it. We got to midwife it. We got to make it sail. We got to push this thing through before Putin can torpedo it.

Right. They know that they're smart. They know they're getting away with it, but they don't get away with it. It doesn't work. As soon as they overthrow the government there, the previous three presidents sign a letter saying now's the time to kick the Russians out of the Sevastopol naval base, cancel the Kharkiv pact and kick the Black Sea fleet out of Crimea. And so Putin said, actually, no. And he told his sailors and Marines to go outside and stand on street corners in a big coup de main and cease the thing. But again, he didn't do that until America forced the issue.

So even if he woke up every morning really lamenting the fact that the far eastern regions of Ukraine were no longer part of the Russian Empire.

For him to go so far as to launch a war over it was not based on romantic notions, but was based on, as he explained in his declarations of war, legitimate security concerns. Again, I'm not saying enough that I would agree to justify what he did. But when he talked about, listen, if you put these same missile launchers in Kharkiv,

then you'll have H-bombs 10 minutes from Moscow or less. He said this numerous times, but in a dispute back and forth with a French reporter, he started yelling at her. And he said, listen, lady, if Ukraine joins NATO,

You guys all say that Crimea still belongs to Ukraine, but I say it belongs to Russia. So that means if they attack Crimea and my forces in Crimea and I defend Crimea, you're going to say that I'm the aggressor and kick in Article 5. And then we go to nuclear war and we all die. Do you want a war between Russia and France? Because that's what you're talking about. And the lady goes, oh, no.

Yeah, when you put it like that, it really doesn't make much sense. That's why it's against American law and it's against the NATO treaty to bring in a new member that has an ongoing border dispute because it's exactly the kind of conflict that you want to avoid. And anyone can just look at the map of Europe. We got no business. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea?

I mean, you thought Turkey was pushing it. At least they're in the med. And this makes no sense. And by the way, you know, I quote in my book to ruin the book for everyone. At the end of the book, I quote Robert Kagan himself, Victoria Nuland's husband, saying, you know what? On second thought, Ukraine doesn't matter to America at all. The Soviet Union occupied it that whole time and it never bothered us. He calls it the good old days. I heartily disagree with that. But, um,

But he's right that, no, it does not matter who has sovereignty ultimately over the Donbass and Novorossiya and Crimea at all. And as far as the disruption to the global rules-based liberal world order, well, that's just a bunch of crap. That's a euphemism for the world empire.

Well, we've all seen we've all seen that to break the law whenever they want. They want to break off Kosovo from Serbia. They can do that if they want to break off South Sudan or if they want to break off northern western Sahara. They want to give the Golan Heights to Israel and do whatever they want. Oh, but, you know, in this case, it's different because it's not the Americans doing it.

There you go, Scott. We're fortunately, we have to go to be able to wrap the show. Highly recommend the book. As you guys can tell, Scott is a walking encyclopedia, even more encyclopedic in this guy. So Provoked, we'll have a link down in the description and we hope to have you back soon, my friend. Scott, did you have to look up any of this or it was just all right up here? Because I get the sense you could just, no, I'm talking about in your book. Oh yeah, yeah. I can imagine you just writing this all out, just like head to keyboard. The truth is it started out as a speech that I wrote in an hour. Ah.

in 2020, and then it grew a little bit. - Wow, grew a little bit. - Good to see you, sir. - Great to see you, Scott. - Thank you guys. - Thank you for your wealth of knowledge. We appreciate it. - Really appreciate you guys too. - Yeah, of course. - Wow, a wealth of knowledge. That's the only way to put it. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. Have a great show for everybody tomorrow, and we'll see you then.

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