Here is President Trump yesterday commenting on the Russia Ukraine war. As yesterday were pretty accurate, I don't see any way that a country in Russia's position could allow them just in their position could allow them to join NATO. I don't see that happening. And long before President Putin, Russia was very strong on the fact that I believe that's the reason the war started, because Biden went out and said that they could join NATO.
And he shouldn't have said that. As soon as he said that, I said, you know what, you're going to have a war now. And I was right about that, that this is a war that would have never happened if I were president. I think Biden is incompetent. And I think when he said that they could join NATO, I thought that was a very stupid thing to say. I thought when he said, well, it depends if it's a minor incursion, in other words, it's OK if Russia does a minor incursion.
I thought that was a very foolish thing to say. After years of the corporate press and many politicians telling us this war is the result of Putin's attempt to take over the world, but first he just wants to re establish the Soviet Union. Finally, we are getting the
other side of this story. It turns out in 2008, the US ambassador to Russia, a gentleman named William Burns, who later became the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote a cable to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled NYET Means NYET, Russia's NATO enlargement red lines. This is from WikiLeaks. Here's the summary of Burns's memo to Secretary of State Rice, following a muted first reaction to Ukraine's intent to seek a NATO membership action plan at
the Bukhara summit. Foreign Minister Lavrov, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a
potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an emotional and neurologic issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia in Ukraine. These include fears that the issue could potentially split the country two, leading to violence or even some claim civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.
Additionally, the Gor government of Russia and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia's defense industry, Russian Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally. In Georgia, the government of Russia fears continued instability and provocative acts in the separatist regions and. Summary It's always difficult to find an exact starting point in your timeline of figuring out which series of events led to
the current issues. Here is a document from George Washington University titled Memorandum of Conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow.
Secretary of State James Baker and the Secretary General President of the Soviet Union. This is from February 9th of 1990, repeating what Bush said at the Malta summit in December 1989. Baker tells Gorbachev, quote, the president and I have made clear that we seek no unilateral advantage in this process, End Quote, of inevitable German
unification. Baker goes on to say, quote, we understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in Germany that is part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east, End Quote. Later in the conversation, Baker poses the same position as a question Quote would you prefer a united Germany outside of NATO that is independent and has no
U.S. forces? Or would you prefer a united Germany with ties to NATO and assurances that there would be no extension of NATO's current jurisdiction eastward?
End Quote. It turns out NATO did move multiple inches eastward after February 9th of 1990 into countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, N Macedonia, Finland, and Sweden. Let's move ahead to September 7th of 2023. This is from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's website titled Opening Remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the joint meeting
of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs. Here is what Stoltenberg says. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is a member of the alliance and we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us and was a precondition for not invade Ukraine.
Of course, we didn't sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all of the Central and Eastern Europe. Mr. Stoltenberg is not a native English speaker, but you can read the transcripts. We should remove NATO from that part of our alliance, introducing some kind of B or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member. The current war between Russia and Ukraine is taking place as a causal result of the United States government going back on its original word in 1990, not to expand NATO eastward.
Just as President Eisenhower was not going to allow Soviet weapons in Guatemala in 1954, just as President Kennedy was not going to allow Soviet weapons in Cuba in 1962. This is a classic case of a country trying to determine it's a an empire attempting to determine what sphere of influence it's able to have in the world.
Doesn't mean it's justifiable, but it means the conspiracy theory that we've heard for the last three years that Putin is just Hitler 2 point O trying to take over the world and enslave people for his own transient aggrandizement. Turns out that is not the case. This war was totally avoidable. What we're actually fighting over is whether the people on the eastern part of Ukraine live under a government that answers to Kiev or they answer to Moscow.
Much like when a company goes under, it's not like all the people die and lose their homes and get tortured to death. They just go under new management. The people of the Donbass would have just gone under.
New management. I'm not saying that justifies it. The state in Moscow was just as illegitimate as the state anywhere else on the planet Earth. The problem is is we were never told that this is a war to determine who rules Donetsk and Luhansk and Zaprazizia, and I can never remember all of the regions exactly or how to pronounce them. We were told this was an inherent issue between good verse bad. Now President Trump came out on Twitter the other day and said the following.
He referring to Zelinsky, refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle, a dictator without elections. Zelinsky better move fast or he is not going to have a country
left. Just as the war for democracy who was waged by unelected Joseph Stalin and unelected Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, who was putting people in internment camps of the tune of hundreds of thousands based on an accident of birth, the current war for democracy is led by an unelected bureaucrat, Vladimir Solinsky, Yes, who was elected five years ago but canceled his 2024
election. On top of not having an election on March 31st of 2024 as planned, Vladimir Zelinsky is attempting to usher in a regime which has a total monopoly on gaining people's allegiances for how they should behave. From the Guardian, October 19th of 2023 Ukrainian parliament votes to ban Orthodox Church over alleged links with Russia. MPs overwhelmingly back move an initial vote despite Church claims it has cut ties with Moscow.
This is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which in previous debates I had thought it was just the Russian Orthodox Church which they were banning. According to the Guardian, the Monastery of the Caves, one of the holy sites of the Eastern Orthodox Christians in Kiev. Ukraine's parliament has voted to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over its alleged links with Russia. February 24th of 2022.
This is from CNN. Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 are banned from leaving the country, Szalinski says in a new declaration. This was referred to as one of the great crimes of the Soviet Union. They had an iron wall to prevent a brain drain in the Bolshevik territories and they would not let people leave. This is what Szalinski's doing. We have to make the country safe for democracy while he's not democratic. We can't let people re establish the Soviet Union while he's
embracing Soviet policies. This means all men ages 18 to 60 must live in a war zone and in many cases will be conscripted to fight. This is the most deadly form of enslavement the human race has ever seen. Military conscription. Not that Zelensky's unique in this. This of course goes back to the Napoleonic era and probably before the US government has conscripted men to die and get their limbs blown off in wars to determine who sits on the throne in Kiev.
That's what this is over. It's not inherently good verse evil. Obviously Zelensky's willing to do every bad thing that Putin's willing to do. The question is, what are you willing to risk your life for? What are you willing to get cities destroyed over for? You could have a movement today for Delaware independence. Delaware is not fully independent. They have to answer to Washington DC.
So we could say, hey, independence is inherently good and Delaware needs to go to war with Washington DC, but then immediately say, well, is it worth getting our limbs blown off for? If we don't answer to DC, then we'll just answer to the local Delaware officials, and they might be even worse in some cases. So maybe we could just answer to the current regime and try to work within the current constraints we already face. This from Reuters, March 20th of 2022 citing martial law.
Ukraine president signs decree to combine national TV channels into one platform. This is what the state is a monopoly on authority. They try to be the ultimate arbiter in all interpersonal decisions, including decisions which involve the state giving it the ultimate conflict of interest that they so often claim the free market will give
the world. From March 20th of 2022, the guardian Ukraine suspends 11 political parties with links to Russia. So Linsky says parties such as Viktor Medvachuk's opposition Platform for Life are amid at division or collusion. When it comes to collusion, we know they always try and play 6° from some guy in Russia. This was Politico in 2020. Hunter Biden's story is Russian
disinfo. Dozens of former Intel officials say more than fifty former intelligence officials signed a letter casting doubt on the Providence of a New York Post story on the former vice president's son. That same year, October 21st of 2020, CNN has the headlines. Fed say Russia and Iran have interfered with the presidential election. That was Russiagate. Forget if that was too, I guess that would have been Russiagate
2.0. Russiagate 3.0 Was President Biden getting on the presidential debate stage and saying well, here's the summary from NBC News. I don't understand why this president is unwilling to take on Putin when he is actually paying bounties to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, Biden said of President Trump speaking to Kirsten Welker of NBC News during the October 22nd presidential debate. Such a definitive statement was
questionable even then. On Thursday, it became more clear that the truth of the matter is unresolved. Last fall, while Biden was a candidate, Pentagon officials told NBC News they could not substantiate that such bounties were paid. Yeah, not a big deal. Just trying to lie about a foreign leader who has control of 6000 nuclear weapons might provoke a third World War, just as they lie about Saddam to get public opinion behind him. They're constantly lying about Moammar Gaddafi.
They lie about Bashar al-Assad. This is how they whip up a frenzy and get people to justify mass murder conflicts. First they get the population educated by state schools so they have no negotiating or critical thinking skills. Then they just say a really bad thing is happening, don't weigh the costs and benefits, don't see what other alternatives are. We must go to war. Every single year is 1938 at Munich. Every adversary is the national Socialist German Workers Party. It's so pathetic.
Russiagate, one point O I'm going in reverse order here. Here is Hillary Clinton on October 19th of 2016 on the presidential debate stage. We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election one year later.
The New York Times actually clarified this position June 29th of 2017. The New York Times says a White House memo article on Monday about President Trump's deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last year's presidential
election. The assessment was made by 4 intelligence agencies of the Office of Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American Intelligence community. So only the four biggest liars on the planet that the other ones that that was just an
accident. You'd think if they're such public servants, the other 13 would come out and say, Oh no, we hey, media, get a hold of us. Let please get an interview with us so we can clarify. We didn't come to that conclusion. Let's not provoke a potential third World War with a nuclear power. They just sat on their hands and they were happy to live with that lie. I'm sure it's just a fabrication like everything else. Going back to 2014.
John McCain went to Ukraine in a attempted to support the protesters of then Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was basically saying no, we're not going to join NATO, we're going to be a neutral state. Well, John McCain and Victoria Nuland and Jeffrey Pyatt, a number of people from the US government went there to support the protesters in hopes of staging a coup in Ukraine. Jeffrey Sachs had just a terrific analogy, he said.
Imagine on January 6th, Chinese officials, members of the Chinese government, flew to Washington, DC and were rallying the protesters, handing out food, handing out pamphlets, giving speeches, saying take what's yours, do what's right. You're on the right side of history. Stand up against corruption. You would clearly see that this was an attempted coup or an assisted coup. Here's what John McCain said in 2014 while in Ukraine.
What we're trying to do is try to bring about a peaceful transition here that would stop the violence and give the Ukrainian people what they unfortunately have not had with different revolutions that have taken place, a real society. This is a grassroots revolution here. It's been peaceful except when the government tried to crack down on them. And the government hasn't tried that since. There's no doubt that Ukraine is of vital importance to Putin. I think it was Henry Kissinger.
I'm not sure, said that Russia without Ukraine, it's an Eastern power. With Ukraine, it's a Western Power. This is the beginning of Russia right here in Kiev. So Putin views it as most highly important, and he has put pressure on Ukrainians, the price of energy, different kinds of activities. The word is very clear that he has made certain threats. Whether he would carry them out, I don't know.
He was there letting people know that the revolution time has come and it's really important that you start answering to new officials now, what happened behind closed doors. This is what was done in public. It turns out there was a phone call that was leaked. Here is a leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland and Jeffrey Pyatt.
Victoria Nuland was the Assistant Secretary of State of EUR Asian Affairs. Jeffrey Pyatt was the United States Ambassador to Ukraine. This is from the BBC February 7th of 2014. Here's what Jeffrey Pyatt said. Very long conversation is sort of have to read between the lines. But here he says. But I think your argument to him, which you'll need to make, I think it's that the next phone call you want to set up is exactly the one you made to yachts.
And I'm glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I'm very glad that he said what he said in response. I don't think Klitsch should go into the government, Newland says. I don't think that's necessary. I don't think it's a good idea. You have U.S. officials determining who is going to be in the new Ukrainian government. You have U.S. politicians on the ground with the protesters telling them the current regime
is illegitimate. This is most likely funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID. Turns out when he says yachts, turns out that is Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the guy who ended up being the Prime Minister. What are the chances the one guy Newland and Piet are talking about and what and how he should be placed in a high position of power, he ends up being the Prime Minister. What are the chances? Here was another politician from the United States, Senator Chris Murphy.
He was in Ukraine during the 2014 protests. Chris Murphy was on C-SPAN February 25th of 2014 and said, I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions that forced in part, Yanukovych from office, the elected president of Ukraine, that's who they're overthrowing. So they could make room for Arseny Yachts and you, Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky, they care so much about democracy.
And also Zelensky should not hold elections and should be given billions of dollars in weapons. It's too ridiculous. In 2017, Lindsey Graham flew to Ukraine to speak to a number of Ukrainian militants, saying. Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of Russian aggression.
It is time for them to pay a heavier price during President Trump's. I forget if it was his first or second impeachment attempt, Congressman Adam Schiff from California said on the congressional floor January of 2020. the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight Russia here. Fortunately, wiser minds have come across this issue and seen it is totally unnecessary and
the result of NATO expansion. Here is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth commenting on Ukraine and NATO. The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non NATO mission and they should not be covered under Article 5.
There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine. So often libertarians and anti war advocates are called extremely naive and don't really understand the reality of situations. There is historical precedent for countries doing terribly evil things and it not resulting in a declaration of war from the United States. The main point is that the costs
of war are extraordinarily high. Not just the monetary cost. The downside? The number of people who get killed, the number of people who get PTSD, the number of cities which took centuries to build blown to bits within minutes. This is the cost of war. You have to ask, at what point
is it worth it? The empirical examples throughout history include President, Republican President Dwight D Eisenhower. Not just a Republican president who was twice elected, but he was a general in the Second World War. In 1956, the Soviets sent the tanks into Hungary. Basically, you had a number of student opposition protests with a number of demands. The very first demands of the people resisting were that Soviet troops withdraw from Hungary.
Yes. Turns out people resort to terrorism when they don't have much power and they feel like they're living under occupation. And Eisenhower didn't declare a war over it because at some point you just don't have the resources to bring about desirable results. John F Kennedy exchanged letters with Nikita Khrushchev, head of the Soviet Union, when they put nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962. In 1964, the Chinese Communist chairman now developed nuclear weapons referred to as Project 596.
And we could have said, well, China's getting the nuke now. And, you know, if a country gains access to nuclear weapons, we have to take them out before they take us out. Not only was there no declaration of war, Nixon and Kissinger within a decade, or in Beijing shaking hands with Chairman Mao and then later Deng Xiaoping.
Of course, the Prague Spring in 1968, Lyndon Johnson did not declare war when the Soviets made sure that the citizens of Prague would not have their independence from the Soviets. In 1983, the Soviets shot down a civilian aircraft which was going from Anchorage, AK to Seoul, South Korea. It's referred to as Korean Airlines 007.
This killed 269 passengers, including 62 Americans, including a sitting representative of the Congress, Representative Larry McDonald And Ronald Reagan did not declare war on the Soviet Union, and within a decade, there was no Soviet Union. So it's not the case that you always have to declare war against empires or they just
keep expanding and expanding. Sometimes the cost of war are just not worth it. Also, under President Reagan, you had the 1983 Beirut bombing attacks and attack by an organization that was a Lebanese resistance terrorist group, what we would consider Hezbollah today. The attack killed 307 people, 241 United States and 58 French military personnel, 6 civilians and two attackers. No declaration of war, and Hezbollah did not take over the world as a result. The costs of war are too high,
the outcomes are too uncertain. Could you have imagined convincing people in 1939 we are going to go to war so the Bolsheviks can control half of Europe? With such uncertain outcomes, you're not able to really make an accurate determination as to whether or not this very, very, very high cost is worth it. Very thankful that President Trump and Secretary of Defense Haggiseth are now coming around
to this position. More good news from President Trump. One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, and I want to say let's cut our military budget in half and we can do that. The new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard commenting on the situation in Ukraine and what this war is over. We're risking tons of money, tons of lives, tons of kids, tons of post traumatic stress. What are we really fighting for?
Here is something that the political establishment and propaganda media don't want you to know. Ukraine's President Zelensky has just banned yet another political opposition party, one that questioned his legitimacy as president and use Ukraine's Department of Justice to mandate the seizure of this party's members assets. Now, this is just the latest of Zelinsky's actions to do this
sort of thing. He began banning major political opposition parties in 2022 when he also started banning TV channels that were associated with his political opponents. And he took over total control of Ukraine's largest television networks, now controlled by their government. Zelensky's presidential term ended on May 20th. He canceled elections in the name of martial law, suspending Ukraine's constitution so that he could stay in power.
Defenders of Zelensky will say, hey, Ukraine is in the middle of a war, they can't have elections. Just stop for a moment and think. If we accept that excuse or criteria for suspending the constitution and canceling elections, then we should presume that leaders in our own country and our own establishment media will also use this same excuse and rationale when they suspend our constitution and our elections since we too are at war with Russia and China.
If you think this sounds crazy, look at what's already going on. They've already started conditioning us to accept a dictatorship by rationalizing their own use of our Department of Justice to target President Trump and other political enemies in their efforts to stay in power. To everyone for watching Keith Knight don't tread on anyone in the Libertarian Institute, check out Libertarian institute.org.