Because four hours.
Simply, this is Armstrong and Getty extra large.
President Trump is the only one that could have prevented this war from taking place. And President Trump now is cleaning out the mess that Biden left behind.
And President Trump will.
Get it done. He will negotiate an end to this war. He wants to see the war ended, regardless of how that takes place. He wants to see a win for Ukraine and a win for Russia at the same time, because there's a lose lose going on for for both countries.
Right now.
People are dying, and the President said he wants people to stop dying.
As Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, friend of the Armstrong and Getty Show, we're in the stage of Trump communication where Trump says something outrageous and sometimes ridiculous, and then his allies reinterpret it for us in a more sane way.
And I want to talk about, you know, some of the things Trump's said and done lately, is they try to move toward a solution of the Ukraine Russian conflict specifically, but first a general discussion with Mike Leons, military analyst to Mike served with various military organizations in both the US and Europe throughout his career and joints us. Now, Mike, how are you.
Good? Good? Thanks for having me back.
Oh, it's always a pleasure. Thank you. So before we get into some of the specifics of the Ukraine Russian thing right now, you're a student of history, as we know it is, I think beyond question that there is a serious change in the chemistry the magnetic fields. However, you want to describe it of post World War Two NATO and the Western Powers, where would you start in telling a class about that.
I'd start at nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety when the Soviet Union falls as the West completely screws up what happened of the Russian Empire back then, and you go back at that point, you know, NATO wins the Cold War and Russia's bankrupt rold Reagan a lot of it has to do with what he wanted to do with Russia and decides and the Soviet Union breaks up, and instead of managing that properly and making sure that the Russian Empire had zero chance of ever coming back again,
the West decided to bring countries into NATO one at a time or so over the course of the next thirty years since then and thinking that that was going to be a stable way to go, as opposed to recognize not recognizing that you can't have every member of NATO to be everybody except Russia, because that's how the First World War started. So we're seeing now the effects of lack of NATO doing anything in O six when
Georgia gets invaded. We're definitely seeing the effects of fourteen when Obama and Merkle does do nothing when Crimea is taken. And then very clearly Joe Biden when he was president, was the reason why Vladimir Putin decides to go after Ukraine. And now we're faced with a NATO that's disarmed on the continent that but for the United States nuclear umbrella that the defenses don't.
Happen the last twelve years.
Historians are going to look back at the European countries and say they had multiple warnings to rearm and re mobilize their forces, to put some kind of leverage behind any kind of military operations, and they didn't. And I think that's where we're at right now, and that's where the message being cleaned up.
Which leads me beautifully to the next topic. I'm on to address, and that is I've been reading a lot about the domestic politics and economics a lot of the European countries now, particularly because several of them are having important elections, virtually all of the biggies are. And it strikes me, whether you're talking about technology or the economy in general, the politics, the freedom of speech policies in Germany, which has been much discussed lately, it all feels like shrinking,
not growth. Europe just feels like a diminished force that's continuing to be diminished with few signs of life.
Yeah, and the thing is, we needed each of those individual countries to have their own individual leaders that had that same vision with regards to where they were going, but instead each of them have been more aligned with i'll just say, more liberal tendencies of unlimited immigration. The free speech conversation that's taking place in Germany right now
is appalling. I mean that what happened over with the sixty minutes interview, and they're arresting people for putting memes on the Internet and then trying to equate that summer reason like because thus free speech, that's why.
We had the Holocaust.
I can't even connect these dots or whoever thought they were going to get connected is just virtually insane at this point. But what's happened is and then go back to Germany. You know, they've they've gotten rid of all their nuclear energy power plants. The world runs on energy, you have to you can't have a country unless you have that, so they rely on Russia.
So you kind of bring all this together.
I saw a good quote the other day that talked about, you know, when the Roman Empire fell, it's not because of the elites, you know, didn't improve their cost of living or didn't improve their their lifestyle, as it fell because the barbarians had hatchets. And that's still the same for today. You've got to have a military presence and show leverage and show capability of doing things. And all of those countries, to include England. England is no less
guilty in any of these countries right now. And they really risk Europe in particular England, France, Germany, some of these countries really risk losing their cultures, losing everything that's.
About them well, and every sign is that they have no inclination whatsoever to do the things that need to be done to fix it. In fact, the minute somebody suggests, for instance, hey, our welfare state is draining our coffers, and we don't have the money to defend themselves. They get voted out of office. So I don't have a lot of hope. So let's get a little more specific about Ukraine and Russia. You can either address some of the incendiary things Trump has said lately or not, it's
up to you. But as as the folks gather for various peace talks, how does the whole thing strike you overall?
Well, yeah, he said some outrageous things. Obviously, you know, the dictator here is Prutin, and you know, Russia did invade Ukraine. It's unjustifiable, and Russian aggression is something that has to be dealt with. The question is how what's the leverge that we can apply back in order to have them not do it again? And Trump's transactional view this whole thing is it has to stop. Once it does stop, we create an armascist. But he's afraid of
the same thing over and over again. We you know Land, the European troops there, we put American troops there. American troops will be forwarding this and they became really what will be a tripwire. I mean, again I appreciate what the British Prime Minister was talking about sending troops to Ukraine.
I'd like to know exactly which troops.
There's less than one hundred thousand active duty troops that are in the UK army right now, which is ridiculous for a country that size for once was once a great. I mean, they might as well be Portugal, they might as well be you know, some some mid Atlantic, you know, the Middle Eastern country right now. So so again, none of these countries have got really any capability to do this.
But I think I think the question is I think we're going to get to the spot that everybody is, you know Pete Heggs that said the quiet part out loud. Russia will contain, will have the twenty percent of that they've kept, they'll likely keep CRIMEA, they will put up a border.
NATO won't be won't.
Be bringing in Ukraine anytime soon, and they'll be lucky to get some some EU you know kind of money they're going forward and to try to get the fighting to stop.
I think that's where it's going to go.
And that's that's where it should have went back when the first thing started four years ago and three years ago at this point.
And honestly, whatever's next is not going to play out in the next year. It's going to play out in the next thirty years. So we'll all fight out together. Military analyst Mike Lions online, Mike, we're really putting you through the paces today, and we appreciated another topic speaking of Pete Hegzeth and in Trump's order to take a serious look at the Pentagon, cut budgets, cut the fat.
What do you think of that in general? And you, as an experienced Pentagon hand, tell us about the efficiencies and inefficiency of the Pentagon.
Yeah, they go.
Through this every once in a while. They've tried a couple of different administrations. What you're seeing though, is Pete Heggs that's being very overly transparent. He put about an eight minute video out last night with regard to what that was going to be about. Specifically left certain things out of it, certain domains that won't be cut. But like anything else, there are there are things that are redundant within the Pentagon that it's an easy place for
fivetoms to be built. And you know, for kingdoms to kind of move forward as people, you know, try to stay in one location and don't change their jobs.
So I think he's looking to knock down some of those stylos.
Some of those styles are calcified, I'll put it that way in terms of where they don't talk and nine to eleven it did actually a pretty good job of knocking those silos down when it came to information communication. But they they still get rebuilt and they still get re established, and I think that's what Pete wants to do.
He's up against a very strong momentum on the other side, because there's people that are going to dig in pretty deeply and they're going to want to keep their fivectems and keep their dollars.
But when you think about it, the Pentagon is the.
Most the largest discretionary budget that we have right now, and so if we can get some savings out of their ten percent, then I think that'll be a win, right.
And we have always said around here at the A and G Show that the kindest, best thing we can do for our actual fighting men and women is to ensure there's efficiency at the Pentagon, and the idea that scrutinizing the Pentagon or re ordering budgets is somehow weakening defense, I think is foolish. Final question, speaking of our military in these turbulent times, what do you see as our greatest strength right now as our forces exist, and what's your greatest concern our greatest weakness.
I think our greatest strength remains this intangible of being an American. I think anytime you see America, it's in a situation where they have to rally and put themselves together. Not just in the military, you see it in corporate America sometimes. But but there's this thing about being an American, which is why everybody wants to come here, why everybody
wants to be part of this thing. When when when push comes to shove, when a mission has to get done, I remember, you know, my time in active duty, that that people would say, you know, this is we're going to get this done.
We're going to you know, look left and look right and take care of each other.
So I think our greatest strength is this tangible that runs in our DNA of of being an American and what that means.
And being on the high on the high ground and doing whatever it takes.
I often think about, you know, I look at these videos and I watch the Russians leave their soldiers behind and things like that. I remember being and when I was at combat thinking that, you know, you never see Americans surrender and things like that. So we have this intangible that's there. But then that greatest strength is a weakness.
If we still don't have the technology and don't have the equipment, and we if we come up with somebody that has better, better kind of things, we're not going to no matter no matter how great that intangible is, it's not going to overcome that. So we still have to have military might, we have to have material might, and be able to put our money where our mouth is.
I think those are the two biggest things.
Right, And that's so perfect. I was just going to interject it. In reading about Germany and the elections and that sort of thing, a German analyst was saying, what really weakens us and strengthens the Americans is that we have a culture of we better be careful, we'd better not hear the things that can be wrong, that could go wrong, Rather whereas the Americans have a spirit of let's try it and see what happens, learn from it
and go from there. And yeah, If we ever lose that, including technologically as you're saying, then you know we're screwed. Military analyst Mike Clients Mike, great to talk to you. Thanks so much for the time.
Yeah you. Thanks for
Extra large