Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong is Joe Getty Armstrong and Jetty and he Armstrong and Eddy.
So the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has a sad day for the US at the UN, the Land of the Free votes with Russia on a Ukraine war resolution. We brought that up with Tom mcclintalk last hour. If you didn't get hear that, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand. But the resolution was basically calling, you know, Russia the aggressor and that they need to
get out. And we didn't vote yes on that. We voted with Russia and North Korean some other scumbag countries on not wanting to call out Russia in that war.
And as Tom mcclintact, the Congressman said, heal give plenty of latitude to Trump to negotiate the way he sees fit to try to end the war. It's fairly obviously to me anyway, Trump trying to avoid any antagonizing the people with whom he'll be negotiating, specifically Putin unnecessarily. I think you can manipulate Putin through flattery or leaving out criticism about as you successfully as you can negotiate with a hungry mountain lion. It's just it's a useless effort.
But that's the way he does business well. But it's a completely different thing. We're not negotiating on a house or a car here.
If I flatter some lying, cheating I know he's a scumbag car salesman, but I flatter him.
I know he's a jerk. I know him from around the neighborhood.
He's a bad guy, but I flatter him because I'm trying to do a deal with him.
That's one thing. There's no ultimate harm.
There really, but telling the world as the most important country on planet that no, there's nothing to criticize about what Russia did here.
Is not good. Yeah, oh, I agree completely. You know that.
I was just trying to, you know, express the Trump point of view. That is one of my great criticisms of Trump is he does not understand how the United States and the way it behaves echoes through history like a real estate deal doesn't. On the other hand, maybe he does, according to his defenders, or in the case of Jerry Baker, who is a great writer, happens to
work for the Wall Street Journal. Most of the time he's trying to understand exactly what Trump's at And I thought it was very interesting you even if you don't agree with it. But first, as a bit of a scene setter, here's a reporter grilling the president yesterday subsequent to his meeting with Macrone, the pante wasted leader of France, talking about you in Russia and European security. And I actually I have a lot of sympathy with mccrone's point,
if you at least to some extent. But the Roll forty one, Michael Lin will discuss a dictator.
Would you use the same words for gold and cruising the part.
I don't use those words lightly. I think that we're going to see how it all works out.
Let's see what happens.
I think we have a chance of a really good settlement between various countries. And you know, you're talking about Europe and you're talking about Ukraine as part of that whole situation. The other side has a lot of support also, so let's see how it all works.
It might work out.
Look, you can never make up lives. The one thing you can, you can make up the money, but you can't make up the lives. A lot of lives lost. I think, probably a lot more lives than people are talking about. It's been a rough war, but I think we're close to getting itself.
So you think Trump thinks that there's an advantage to no calling Putin a dictator. Because he called Puttin a dictator, he's less likely to do a deal.
He's yes, he is doing what you described, more or less, he's flattering all of the parties to the deal before the negotiation, because it just does not do any good to antagonize the person you're negotiating with.
Generally, but as you keep pointing out, putting such a crocodile, he's gonna do a deal if he thinks it's in his best interest, and he's not going to do a deal if he doesn't. The end, with no other extraneous things mattering whatsoever.
Right, exactly, he is no more throne to flattery nor threat than a crocodile.
Yeah, exactly, in my opinion.
But Trump does business the way Trump does business another explanation of and obviously he does throw the word lightly around dictator, called Zelenski a dictator, even though he's clearly not anyway.
And if I was gonna, you know, back on the side of giving Trump some credit, He's done a hell of a lot more deals than practically anybody, and maybe he's.
Dealt with some really bad guys before, where you know.
Other people would have said, look, you can't flatter old you know whatever mob boss or whoever he had to deal with tried to get a hotel Bilt Matt turns out he did.
He feels like it helped him.
Yeah, yeah, I suppose. And this really gets into seven dimensional chess. Maybe he wants Putin to think he thinks he can flatter Putin. Ah, yeah, but I don't know. Anyway, This is the really really important part. I'm gonna quote Jerry Baker a bit here and there, as we discussed. But Jerry's trying to figure out Trump's strategy, and I
think he may be onto something. Beneath Donald Trump's mendacious that means dishonest contempt for Ukraine and its dictator, and his cringing admiration for Russia and the genie in the Kremlin, there seems to be a kernel of strategic reasoning.
Okay, I read that opening.
Partly to illustrate that Baker is no fan of what Trump said recently, but he says he isn't wrong that America has born the burdens of global leadership for far too long undeniably truth. Look at NATO and their lack of spending on defense. Just that's almost the only thing
you need to see. And he's not wrong that the liberal order we have led is giving way to a world in which the US must pursue a narrower definition of the national interest, and that the age of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to defend parts of the world that are no longer essential to US security and for nations that have the resources to defend themselves.
That era is over. And what he says is this.
Strengthens the impression that mister Trump may be leading the US toward a return of a great power approach to global strategy. Here's what that is if you're not familiar with it. As he uppends a foreign policy, there's been a lot of talk in diplomatic circles lately of.
A new Yalta.
That was the nineteen forty five conference on the Black Sea where the leaders of the US, the UK, which used to matter and the Soviet Union struck up a deal to carve up the planet. This is your sphere of influence. This is our sphere of influence. This is your sphere of influence. We don't mess with yours. You don't mess with ours, and we don't go to war. Now, Jack, you have been talking about how what's his face?
The great reporter puts out a newsletter.
Mark alperson Mark Alpern has been describing lately how Washington is a buzz with some sort of great bargain that is allegedly being crafted behind the scenes that.
Includes Greenland and Taiwan and Russia and Ukraine and a whole bunch of stuff exactly as a way to make
business not war in the style of Yalta. Getting back to Jerry Baker, mister Trump's apparent hunger for US territorial expansion in Greenland, Panama, Gaza, even maybe even Canada, his ambitions to tie foreign policy to the exploitation of economic resources, his seeming acquiescence to Vladimir Putin's European ambitions, and similar expressions of respect for Shijin Ping of China suggest a hard edged foreign policy realism revolving around a new big three powers, while another yalta.
This is damned interesting. This is damned interesting.
And you know, I don't want to get sucked into giving Trump way too much credit for the sort of thing that I don't think he's spent a lot of his life thinking about. But it's possible that he and smart people around him have decided we're into a new era. Now, we're into an era much like you know, the Soviet Union in the United States where you have to say you get that side of the world, we get this side of the world. You don't mess with us like you were just talking about. It might be where we
are now. It's funny. It's easy.
Even if you spend your life studying massive changes in global dynamics, it's easy to think, well, massive changes are in history books. Now we have stability and rules based blah blah blah. There will never be as Fuki Yama idiotically said, we're at the end of history. I mean, how did you get those words to come out of his mouth anyway?
Ah, So, set aside.
The moral indignation about the president's till to Moscow, take a take at face value. There's potentially profound shift and foreign policy. Then he gets into three potential implications, what would this new world look like? I humbly submit that we should break semi on time for once and give plenty of time for those three main potential implications.
Well, I'm fascinated by this idea. I know, I know.
I have accused Trump many times of not being real up on the historical significance of certain maneuvers and the presidency and the rest of it.
I do think he understands power, leverage and money though, true, Dad, huh, So, we got a lot more on the way, including paying off what that would look like.
We'll do that next.
And has anybody had increased luminosity from their silk pillow case if you have? Our text line is four one five two nine five KFTC.
And finally, doctors are warning against a new viral TikTok trend in which users are dropping heavy objects on their feet. You know, at a certain point, we just have to let evolution do its.
Thing, as we've argued many times.
And apparently TikTok's back is the thing everywhere and just people are using it, and China continues to spy on us and whatever.
And propagandize our young people yeah, lovely. Speaking of China, we've been discussing Jerry Baker's column in the Wall Street Journal. He's talking about how Trump is showing a number of signs of going toward moving toward a great power approach to global strategy, not the rules based international order of the last fifty seventy five years whatever, and the references.
Maybe we're going for New Yalta conference.
That's a nineteen forty five conference where the leaders of the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union struck a deal to carve up the planet back.
In nineteen forty five.
And there are rumors Mark Alpern we've discussed, says the Washington's a buzz with talk of just such a giant agreement, which might indeed include Greenland and Panama and Gazan, Canada, who knows what, but almost certainly Taiwan, Which brings us to Baker's analysis. If there is a move towards this great power world and a New Yalta first, we can
look forward to territorial insecurity. In a Trumpian vision of the world in which great power sees what they can, we can expect a much more fluid, muscular approach to international boundaries than the last half century's efforts at a rules based system. And then of course he name checks Taiwan. I've heard it said many times. If Taiwan goes, there will be a global depression because of the acute need for their advanced computer chips, mostly in some other technologies,
but mostly the chips. There's an argument to Trump's approach to Russia. It represents a hardened approach to Taiwan, saying that cutting Ukraine loose was necessary to enable Washington to focus on China. But is this mister Trump's view? How essential does he think of free taiwan Is? And it's not clear? And then he talks about how Trump has also spoken favorably of Shijin paying is a brilliant guy. He controls one point four billion people with an iron fist. Is he just trying to flatter him?
Does he mean it?
Nobody's quite sure. So territorial instability definitely would come down the pike. Second, nuclear proliferation. The big difference between the great power world of the past and that of today is the thermonuclear bomb. If small nations can no longer rely on large, powerful allies to protect them against predators, they have one last option, the threat of nuclear annihilation
for any country that tries to invade them. Then he goes through quite a list of countries that don't have nuclear arms because they're under the US nuclear umbrella and they are our allies, Germany, let's see Poland, Oh blah bah bah. Who else does he mat well? Bunches of countries and obviously Korea, Japan.
Obviously, the more countries that have NU clear weapons, more likely that one gets used on purpose or by mistake or whatever, or gets loose.
Right, Yeah, absolutely, And then the third thing to look for is geopolitical and economic realignments. If Europeans no longer view America as a dependable ally, they will seek alternatives. In the pre World War One era of Great European powers, countries shifted allegiances fairly regularly. Britain could have signed up with Germany rather than France and Russia. We may now see that kind of hard, self interested realism among powers
replace attachment to sentimental ideas and values. You know, I think he almost undersells the idea of the democracy, the world banding together to defend freedom and free trade and democracy. It's more than sentimental ideals. It certainly values.
If Germany was willing to go all in on using Russian gas until the invasion of Ukraine, they don't care about Russia's value. I think history will look back on Angela Merkel as a self important jackass who did all the wrong things anyway to finish a Baker's piece here, For all its frailties as a geopolitical force, Europe's economy is many times the size of Russia's, and combined with the UK's, it's on par with Americas. Europe as a whole as an economy just about as big as ours.
It's already heavily dependent on China, and Europeans now see closer ties with troubling implications for American interests. In as summary, mister Trump may well like his new world's order, but it will come at a steep price. Well, at least sounded like the beginning of this article that he was kind of presenting it as that there might not be any other choice. Right.
Well, I think he would probably put it, and we ought to try to talk to Gerard Baker someday.
Fascinating guy.
Anyway he might put it. It's not not clearly true that the old choice will work. I think he would say it can if we're super smart about it and do it in the right way. But there are those in the Trump orbit who say, hell, we get their emails all the time, say no, the old world order is broke. It's not going to work anymore.
So we need to grab hold of the future and change before it changes us. If there are still human beings on the planet. A couple hundred years from now, one of the big stories in history books will be the rise of China and how it just changed the world order.
Yeah from the previous century.
Tom Cotton in his new book talks about how China's military rises the fastest expansion and growth of a military in world history.
I think China's peak and decline is going to happen within five years, maybe maybe ten. But they'll soon be like Britain, a shrunken former power might be, you know, after we're dead. And on Europe, the coddling of Europe over the last fifty years one of the greatest mistakes ever made.
Oh wow, that's some heavy, interesting stuff. We got a lot more on the way. Stay with us, Armstrong and Getty.
After a trans female basketball player missed her game.
The team ended up.
Losing by twenty six points, but on the bright side, they didn't have to shower in their uniforms afterward.
That's a good joke. I'm not sure I followed that well.
What was confusing about it was that Guttfeld used a trans girl and her talking about a dude, and I think we needed more setup to that joke. He was talking about a dominant basketball team whose dude couldn't play one day and got hammered.
Apparently. Oh okay, a bit of missing context there, and I.
Should making the point that that player made a big difference. Having having a dude on your team was a great benefit.
Yeah.
I have a little more gender bending madness. If you're in the mood for it, you know, why not? Michael, do you have the theme ready?
We don't? You know? No, no, this you know what.
Elon Musk is going to take a look at your list of five things and he's.
Gonna cross it off. I've seen his list. It was playing theme songs on time and.
Under bending madness.
A couple of items worth mentioning. Riley Gains And if you don't know Riley, she's the great college swimmer who called out Hey, there's a full grown dude in the locker room calling himself a woman, and I'm sick of pen making me put up with it. God bless her for her current anyway, she's been a leading light in keeping men out of women's sports.
Well.
The President signed in order to ban transgender athletes from school sports, and the NCAA claim to have rewritten its rules to comply. But now Riley and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have gotten together to say the NCAA policy has way too many loopholes to be meaningful. She says, quote, this policy is about as clear as mud, and very very much still allows men to compete on women's teams and receive women's benefits, And she says we're watching to
see what they actually do. But critics of the NCAA's changes claim that the new policy bases gender on birth certificates or a doctor's certification, both of which can be changed by compliance state officials or activist doctors. Sure, and that does not comply with the Trump administration's definition, which maintains that sex is immutable and binary.
Why can't they just go with if you got a penis, because.
You can get your penis lopped off, then you have still have male skeleton, lungs, bone, well, I said, skeleton already muscles, et cetera. Anyway, so we're and this is it's true of the DEI stuff, it's true of the race based college admissions.
They will not change.
They will change the appearance of what they do to try to fool you and still get away with their nefarious radical schemes.
Moving along, maybe you heard about this story. I thought it was worth mentioning Columbine High School. Yes, that Columbine High School news story recently that a female teacher was sexually grooming a free female student and the administration knew it and covered it up and allowed the girl to change her status to homeless so she could legally move out of her parents home and into the teacher home.
Oh my god, they could be lovers. Wow, Holy crap.
When the student's mom got w into this, she discovered thousands of phone calls and texts between the teacher, who had at minimum been making out with the student. When the student's mom went to the principal to let them know that a predator had been sexually grooming her daughter, the principal responded and I quote Ms Kearnie takes interest in helping kids.
Navigate their sexuality.
But again, the administration, knowing that this girl had a home and parents, helped her declare herself homeless so she could move in with her teacher. The sexualization of children in schools and trying to pry them away from the families straight out of Marxism.
Well, and an adult helping a child navigate their sexuality is one hundred percent grooming.
I mean one percent is the definition of grooming. Yes, it is absolutely true.
And again, if you don't get this, I don't know what to do except slap you upside the head any time, any it would help me any time an adult says and hey, let's not tell your parents about this. Something awful is going on unless there is a clear and documented history of abuse or something like that.
Moving along, I just wanted to get this on.
We have a link at Armstrong and gedddy dot com under hot links. I'm ninety percent sure, he says, scrolling to make sure it's true.
Yes, what is Sage's Law?
And this is a law that is got some momentum in Virginia and people are becoming aware of it around the country schools keeping secrets from parents open the door to predators, I'm reading from their website. So do states who call it abuse to raise girls as girls and boys as boys and rip them from loving families to affirm them in state custom and both led to this person's sages trafficking.
Her school affirmed her.
As a boy when she was a confused adolescent afraid of puberty, etc. We've talked about this and told her to use the boy's bathroom, but kept her parents in the dark. She was terribly bullied, assaulted in the boy's bathroom, fled the threats, was caught, drugged and exploited by sex traffickers, And when the FBI found Sage, a judge withheld her from her parents over false claims of misgendering abuse and ordered her into a boy's state home, where she was
raped and assaulted again. She fled and was caught again for months of horrific abuse before.
She was finally rescued.
So it's very simple, no secret gender transition in schools. And two, it's not abuse to raise a child according to his or her biology. We've got their web page at Armstrong and getty dot com under hot links it's called Sage's Law.
Read it, know it, love it.
It's a brief but important gender bending madness updates. I've noticed you have several segments that you do that have theme music. I don't have one. I should really come up with something that has theme music. I just Jack's ramblings and then there's music.
I don't know. It's hard to Alman brothers rambling Man.
Maybe just I haven't read this whole thing. This is in the Wall Street Journal today in the opinion section. Mike Gallagher, who we like bring warriors back to the US military recruitment campaign should frame services the ultimate test of strength, courage, and leadership. Remember when Mike Lions told us how well that worked as a recruitment tool. I
know that it worked on me. I very nearly joined the military and talk to recruiters, I mean as down the pipeline, and I don't even remember why I changed my mind.
But what was appealing to me about it was the idea of.
I wonder if I can do this. I think I could do this, the challenge of it. And somehow we got a realizing the best version of yourself.
Yeah, somehow we got away.
From that in our military recruiting, and then numbers have plummeted over the years. Well they've they've gone back up a lot under Trump. Anyway, he's writing a piece about how we need to get back to, you know, push yourself, test yourself, how good can you eat? Be all you can be as a military recruiting thing, and I just I love that. I think that's a great idea.
And then I think it is too. He also I read the piece and he mentions that.
Enlistment.
Enlistment seems to be very conditional on who's in the White House in a way that's probably not super healthy.
So no, not shouldn't be that. That's not good, right, Yeah, Joe was off the other day.
I assume you're attending the Maha Kummele like so many other people around the world did. Oh yeah, try to keep me away. I was unaware of this thing. It's the biggest gathering that ever happens on planet Earth.
Every however many years, they don't have it every year. It's in India.
It's a six week ritual bathing spectacle that is visible from space. It's so large where everybody goes and bathes in the river to cleanse themselves of their sins or demons or something. I don't know.
You'd have to read this. You can be troubled. Actually, you know, read into it. I four hundred million people attended this. Four hundred million. There's no close second to gather make can Mecco look like a Little League game? Yeah?
Well it certainly makes you know, whatever music festival you've been to seem like nothing.
I mean that's just stunning.
Four hundred million people over six weeks attended this and it just wrapped up the other day. So if you didn't make it, you'll have to go, say years from now when they do it again.
Yeah, keep in mind that they can hardly run the thing without a trampling or two. Sometimes it's dozens of people who get trampled.
I would like to go just for the logistics of it. I don't really need to bathe in that river. God, dang it.
That's gotta get a little gaming. There are secondhand bathwater is bad enough. Four hundred million people all bathing in the same river.
It's people matter.
Well I don't know about that, but uh, what was I gonna say? Oh, I just the logistics of it. The food stands, the porta potties, the traffic.
I can't even imagine how you put something like that together. You're assuming there are porta potties. I was, do you have knowledge that there are not? Well, I don't know.
India is not known for its gleaming sophistication everywhere. There are certainly amazing parts of India, but some of it's a little bit primitive by American standard.
Thank you, come again. Four hundred million people, even if they have porta potties, they could get a.
Little out of hand. I mean, if you've been to a music festival, you know, go early in the day.
Oh oh, I don't even want to think about that.
It's so horrible.
I almost screamed at an innocent young woman last night. I'm fairly proud of myself that I did not. I came as close as you can come without actually erupting like an insane volcano. I will describe the circumstances in a.
Moment, okay, fantastic. Among other things. On the way, Hey Michael, have we played number four yet? The Greg guttfeldt Joe. I know we haven't play it for me? Would thanks so?
Over the weekend, MSNBC canceled joy Read's TV show, and according to the network, all of her wigs were quickly released back into the wild.
Here they go, a loving tribute to the moron joy Read Next Hour stay with us if you can. If you can't grab it via podcast, you should subscribe Armstrong and Getty on demand some of her greatest hits through the years.
What a numskull. So here's the situation.
We have insurance through our jobs, and as most insurance programs, there are incentives. If you don't smoke, it costs less. If you have a primary care physician, it costs less, and you have to go to the primary care physician and get a quote unquote physical or a preventative care visit once a year. Now I have, as a guy who's successfully dealing with high blood versus hypertension in HI and stuff like that. I'm on the try not to have a heart attack variety pack.
I call, you know, the.
Medications I take and I exercise, bab blah.
It's going great.
But so I see my doctor every six months and do a rigorous, thorough preventing me from croaking visit, not every year, every six months. The blood work, although we've cut back on that to once a year because it's always good. The blood work, PSA test even for prostate cancer, blood pressure, just everything very thorough.
But here's the problem. Well, I will tell you this.
I checked and it said, no, you haven't had your preventative care visits, so you're going to pay more for insurance. And I said, no, I have. In fact, I do it twice a year. Well, I got on the line because, of course, the blanking website, you know what, I swore I was gonna stay calm.
I'm going to stay calm during this discussion. I can do it. So the effing.
Website, of course didn't. More so I got on the phone t help us know where to.
Direct the anger so we can ride along with you. Are we angry at the insurance company.
Or the like?
I often say to my wife when she says, who is that guy while we're watching a movie that's part of the script writing, we're meant to wonder.
I thought I would want to join in on the anger. I just don't know how to direct it. Okay, there'll be plenty jack plenty of anger. So anyway, so I call and say, hey, it says I haven't had this but I have. And the nice girl says, yeah, yeah, you need to make an appointment for that. I said, but I do that twice a year. It's incredibly thorough. Blah blah blah, and she says, you know what probably happens.
I don't know that this is in your case, but what happens is if you go for your physical, your preventative care visit, whatever you want to call it, and then at the end of it, you say to the doctor and he says, is there anything else? And you say, my knee hurts and he says, well, you should put some ice on it. That will be coded as a diagnosis and a treatment, so it's not coded as a preventative care business. And I said, do you understand how moronic that is?
What you have just explained to me.
That moment, that moment there, that's what I struggle with the moment before you talked, is where when they say something that is ludicrous and then stop right And that's one who I.
Had explodes like you just stopped.
Like that makes sense and that bothers me and I went zero to sixty man, zero to sixty.
I raised my voice.
I said, this is like the Soviet effing union. What matters is not the medical care. What matters is checking the box. So it doesn't matter if you do the right thing or not, just check the box. You have conceded in the conversation that I did the right things, but because of the unchecked box, I've got to go waste everybody's time and money to do it again.
And then I said, but I understand, you don't make the rules. You've been more than helpful. Thank you, goodbye, and I hung up.
And then she said, I wonder why I blood pressure.
But here, here is the fundamental issue here, the idiotic flaw in the system is so well known and so easy to understand.
Even the girl answer in the phone said, oh, yeah, I know it happened.
Well, if it's that efing known, why has nobody fixed it? How is there not some method by which I say, Well, they may have coded it as put a little ice on your knee if it hurts.
It was a fault.
You look at the you see the blood work, look at it.
Look look do you see the report of.
The blood pressure which is rising as we speak. Well, sorry, no, it was coded as this other thing. That's exactly what kills socialism. Yeah, it becomes about the checking of the box, not the doing of the act. So now what Thursday, I'm gonna walk into my doctor's office.
He's a terrific guy. Great doctor, I'm gonna say, doctor Jones.
Not as real Dad.
I said, if you want to walk in here, shake my hand and leave.
That's fine.
I'm only here for one reason, and for God's sake, don't ask me.
If there's anything you, as a physician, can help me with.
That's the one thing we must not do here. Wow.
The alternative being go to the front office. And I've actually tried this and argue with the nice lady who types into the computer and codes it for billing, and explain to her, no, no, don't code it like that. Well, I'm sorry because the doctor said, put ice on your knee, So we have to.
I swear to God.
That moment, when you get the inex inexplicable explained nation and I'm supposed to just accept it drives me crazy. It's like when I was trying to rent the car, but I got there and they didn't have the car. Well, if you book online, sometimes the car goes before you get here, and then you just stop and I'm supposed to just say, okay, no, no, you've described to me the idiotic problem. I've already described that I need you
to describe the solution. If you miss a second, we get the podcast Armstrong You Getty on the Man Armstrong and Getty