Speaker 1
I just feel safer knowing like police microphone.
Speaker 2
Oh, I feel safer Knowing that Trump is in office. I do too. I think feel great about it. Like what I don't feel safer is right now They're launching missiles into Russia.
Speaker 2
the how do you how are you allowed to do that when you're on the way out? Like the people don't want you be there anymore. This should be like some sort of like a pause for like significant actions that could potentially start World War Three. Maybe that would be a good thing that we would like to avoid from a dying former president. Yo, man,
Speaker 1
I think Rogan coming out the last minute to knock it out of the park, endorsing Donald Trump. You know, and now I'm not sure who his guest is. I don't know if you guys know who that is. But, you know, saying he feels safer under Trump.
Speaker 4
Who is it? He's a legendary hip hop producer. Oh, right on.
Speaker 1
To say he feels safer under Donald Trump and mad respect to Joe Rogan for making that endorsement. Now we're seeing all of these different people come out and say, actually, Trump's not that bad. You've got Bill Maher. You've got Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart said this election was a repudiation of a bureaucracy that wasn't providing for the people. And I'm like, these people before the election were saying Trump's going to lose. He can't win. Now they're coming out saying, oh, Democrats are all bad and all bad and all that. But as for Joe Rogan, coming out and calling out the war and the war machine, what they're trying to do. I think I'm feeling pretty confident that this is going to deescalate.
Speaker 2
You know, I don't know for sure the exact mechanism to prevent things like what's going on in Ukraine, because Congress did vote to fund it. Right. So whether or not we agree with it, Congress actually has has passed funding bills to do this. But when it comes to actual assistance from the United States, like because these missiles apparently or allegedly they need the Ukrainians can't do it themselves. If that's if I understand correctly. So if they need assistance from the United States, that's something that is beyond funding. feel like that should have some kind of some some additional vote from Congress, first of all. And second of all, if not, would it fall under the maybe you'll know this, would it fall under the war powers? Well, nobody
Speaker 3
uses that anymore.
Speaker 2
I know what does. I know. But the point is,
Speaker 3
the long range missiles did have to be explicitly authorized by Joe Biden. And I find the timing of it all incredibly interesting because it cuts against everything the administration is claiming, because their argument for why they decided to allow the authorization now was because North Korea had 10,000 troops moving into Russia to help fight against Ukraine. But that happened. That was first reported publicly, which means the administration knew about it probably weeks before that, on October 30th. He did not give the authorization until, what, the beginning of this week? So three to four weeks later than the media reported it, probably months since the Biden administration knew about it. Why would you wait that long if the North Korean troops was really the reason why you're doing it? And the reason is obviously because it's not. It's because it's intended to prevent Trump from negotiating peace as soon as he gets in office, delaying it because now we're at a higher level of escalation. I
Speaker 2
wish that there was more procedure that was necessary for, you know, so that way you could have have, have the legislature actually putting the brakes on this.
Speaker 3
Yeah, that should be the case. Absolutely.
Speaker 2
Because something like that, something that is as dangerous as this, this, this, you know, Russia responded with the IRBMs, which is the first time that any kind of missile like that's been used. And thankfully they didn't, they decided not to use, you know, I don't know if they were, I don't even know if they were actually using warheads or if it was just the kinetic energy of the reentry vehicles. I'm not, I don't know, because when you saw the video, it didn't look like there was big explosions as well. But either way, using that kind of weapon, that was definitely a signal to the West, like, hey, we're really, we're in a position where, you know, these kind of things are going to be put on like these kind of weapons are going to be put on the table. That was unprecedented. And that's something that the United States and NATO should look at and take seriously. And I don't think that the response should be continue to shovel money into the Ukraine and continue to help when there is a clear when there's a new administration coming in and it clearly has a mandate like the united the people don't want the american people don't want this the american people might say we want to go ahead and support ukraine uh with some funding maybe the american people would be fine with that but they certainly aren't going to be like okay we need to go and start attacking russia and shooting missiles into r, which is only going to make Russia feel like they have to escalate themselves. It
Speaker 5
also feels like it bookends in a way. So they screw it all up on purpose before Trump gets in office just to prevent him from being able to negotiate peace at a faster rate. Just like he negotiates the afghanistan troop withdrawal and then they managed to screw that up as soon as as soon as it happens and then they still take credit for it even though it didn't go the way it was supposed to i
Speaker 3
i was actually um at the state department a couple of times uh related to the negotiation process to hear kind of how that was going with the Taliban. And it was very clear. There were specific things that the Taliban had to do in order for the next phase of the withdrawal to happen. And there were like three or four phases, if I recall correctly. I mean, it's all publicly reported now, so I'm not like speaking out of pocket here. Um, but there was at one point where the Taliban wasn't meeting their goals and Trump stopped, like he didn't progress to the next stage. And I believe he called, uh, one of the commanders of the Taliban and was like, Hey, like I will actually go backwards if you keep doing this. And when Biden came in, because he wanted this symbolic date of withdrawing September 11th, um, just completely ignored all of the guardrails that were in the Trump plan. But then conveniently when they were selling this to the media, well, it was Trump's plan that we were following it. OK, but you took like the bare bones of Trump's plan, which is withdraw and took out all of the necessary steps that had to be abided by in order for that process to go through without 13 Americans being killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport, without surrendering billions of dollars of equipment and Bagram and all of the other boneheaded things that anyone with a lick of common sense would have avoided doing.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, to blame Trump for the for the withdrawal in Afghanistan is one of the more despicable political things that that the Biden administration did. it was clear that whether or not people you know like the the situation going on in afghanistan there was a plan that wasn't just like you know everybody run away you know i mean not that i not that i'm not that i'm familiar well-versed in what trump's plan was when it comes to the withdrawal. But he had a timeline. He had stuff. And Joe Biden, when he got into office, it wasn't just Afghanistan. It was anything that Donald Trump touched. He just rescinded, rescinded, rescinded all these executive orders, the Remain in Mexico policy, all these things that had massive negative consequences to the United States. The influx of people. Joe Biden, on the campaign trail, while he was doing a debate with Trump, said, you know, we want to see a surge at the border. We want to see people come to the border. Like, what on earth are you thinking, old man? Like, why are you telling people to come to the United States illegally? This is complete madness. And we've seen, obviously, the terrible consequences of that. So the whole blaming of Trump is one of the most politically irresponsible things that the Biden administration had done. And
Speaker 3
they blame him for inflation, too.
Speaker 4
Of course. Well, and you know, we created the Taliban. We created the Mujahideen, and we armed these Afghanistan rebels to fight the Russians originally. And then it kind of just spiraled to ISIS and Taliban. So in a way, we kind of need the boogeyman. And the way that they left there is just keeping the Taliban intact. And then they have all of our weapons and they could probably sell them to other countries. So I don't know. I think it's like all just kind of a facade that we're even fighting them like basically we kind of need the taliban to exist so we have a boogeyman to go and invade these countries well
Speaker 2
i mean my personal understanding is a little bit or my understanding of it it's a little more complex than that like that when it comes to like the soviet union and their presence in um in afghanistan the mujahideen was going to be there regardless the United States. They did
Speaker 4
arm the Mujahideen.
Speaker 2
They did, absolutely. But they armed them with stingers to shoot down helicopters. That was the big thing that the U.S. did was give them the ability. We fought a proxy war against
Speaker 4
Russia through Afghanistan.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And the reason they did it is because of the Vietnam War, because the United States looked at Russia and China's helping Vietnam against the United States in the Vietnam War. But like it was, it wasn't just that the Mujahideen wouldn't have fought back. Like the Mujahideen would have been fighting the Russians because that's the way that they behaved with us. Like when the United States was there, the Mujahideen were fighting us. They would have continued. And the end, Afghan, everyone said, like, for all of history, Afghanistan is the place that empires go to die. They stopped Alexander the Great in Afghanistan. You know, it's like that. That's something that, like, nobody's ever been able to actually take Afghanistan from the population there.