Scott Horton: Provoked

Summary

Podcast Summary: Part Of The Problem – Episode Featuring Scott Horton: "Provoked"

Introduction

In this engaging episode of Part Of The Problem, hosted by Dave Smith of the GaS Digital Network, Dave welcomes Scott Horton, a renowned libertarian thinker and author. The primary focus of their discussion centers around Scott Horton's newly released book, Provoked, which delves into the intricate web of U.S. foreign policy, the origins of the current conflict in Ukraine, and challenges prevailing narratives about Russian aggression.

Overview of Scott Horton's Book: "Provoked"

Scott Horton introduces Provoked as a comprehensive analysis of the factors leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He emphasizes the book's extensive research, comprising over 7,800 citations and numerous firsthand accounts, aiming to present a well-substantiated narrative that counters mainstream media portrayals.

[02:31] Scott Horton: "I really just have a stack of 8,000 note cards... trying to tell the story just through facts."

Key Themes and Discussions

1. Provoked vs. Unprovoked Invasion

   Horton argues that the term "unprovoked" is a mischaracterization of Russia's actions. Instead, he posits that a series of provocations by the U.S. and NATO expansions have systematically edged Russia into a corner, leading to the current conflict.

   [07:43] Scott Horton: "There is no coherent argument that Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked into this invasion."

2. Historical Context of U.S. Foreign Policy Failures

   The conversation traces U.S. foreign policy missteps from the collapse of the Soviet Union to recent events in Ukraine. Horton highlights interventions like the Rose Revolution in Georgia, NATO's eastward expansion, and policies during the Bush and Clinton administrations that he believes have destabilized regions and antagonized Russia.

   [08:55] Scott Horton: "White separatist Randy Weaver... framed him just so they could extort him into being an informant against somebody else."

3. Critique of Media and Intelligence Narratives

   Horton and Smith critique the media's portrayal of events like Russiagate, suggesting that these narratives were manipulated to justify political agendas. They argue that intelligence reports have been selectively interpreted or misrepresented to fit predetermined conclusions about Russian interference.

   [14:00] Scott Horton: "I give the Other guys side of the story... you can really stand on, I hope."

4. Russiagate and Its Implications

   The episode delves deep into the Russiagate controversy, with Horton asserting that the FBI and intelligence agencies fabricated evidence to frame Donald Trump. He references John Durham's report, expressing frustration that it undermined his extensive research.

   [20:35] Scott Horton: "They tried to frame him just so they could extort him... They are the criminals. Full story. That's it."

5. Influence of Political Donors and Operatives

   Discussing the role of significant political donors like Miriam Adelson, Horton suggests that substantial financial contributions sway policy decisions and appointments within the U.S. government, sidelining qualified individuals who might advocate for more balanced foreign policies.

   [75:31] Scott Horton: "Miriam Adelson wrote a check for $100 million. So she gets to decide who's in the cat."

Notable Quotes

• Scott Horton on Writing "Provoked":

  [04:00] Scott Horton: "I have the advanced copy... it's a masterpiece, dude."

• Dave Smith on Media Manipulation:

  [11:02] Dave Smith: "Nobody really is. Nobody out there is going to be like, I've found flaws in Scott Horton's book... but it does just seem that there is no coherent argument that Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked."

• Scott Horton on Intelligence Community:

  [20:58] Scott Horton: "I'm right... Robert Kagan admits that I'm right about everything."

Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy Failures

Horton meticulously outlines how successive U.S. administrations have pursued policies that inadvertently or deliberately provoked adversaries. From fostering uprisings in Eastern Europe to aggressive NATO expansions, he argues these actions have destabilized regions and incited hostile reactions from nations like Russia.

[25:23] Scott Horton: "Why would he [Putin] wait eight years... he could've taken Crimea outright if that was his goal."

Critique of Russiagate and Its Aftermath

The discussion highlights how Russiagate has been perpetuated despite lacking substantial evidence, emphasizing how intelligence agencies have pushed narratives to target political figures. Horton criticizes the lack of accountability within these agencies and the swift dismissal of dissenting voices like John Durham.

[40:01] Dave Smith: "Major things like that... but it does just seem that there is no coherent argument that Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked into this invasion."

Influence of Political Donors

Horton touches upon the pervasive influence of wealthy donors in shaping U.S. foreign policy, suggesting that financial power translates into political leverage that often goes unchecked and overlooks qualified, perhaps more balanced, policymakers.

[75:18] Dave Smith: "She's an Israeli who inherited money from her dead husband who ran a casino in China... Americans Christian conservatives obey."

Conclusion and Future Projects

Towards the end of the episode, Horton and Smith express enthusiasm for future discussions, particularly focusing on topics like shock therapy and color revolutions. They encourage listeners to explore Horton's book for a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding current international conflicts and U.S. foreign policy.

[80:04] Dave Smith: "I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is... you’re going to understand what's going on in this conflict better than 99.9999% of people out there."

Final Remarks

Dave Smith extends heartfelt praise to Scott Horton for his thorough research and impactful work, underscoring the value of Horton's contributions to libertarian thought and critical analysis of international affairs. The episode concludes with an invitation to listeners to purchase Provoked and stay tuned for forthcoming episodes that will delve deeper into the subjects introduced.

[81:48] Scott Horton: "Peace."

Where to Find More

• Book Purchase: Available on Amazon and ScottHorton.org
• Scott Horton's Projects: Visit LibertarianInstitute.org for more resources and upcoming publications.
• Subscribe: For in-depth analyses and future discussions, subscribe to the Scott Horton Show on YouTube.

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This summary captures the essence of the conversation between Dave Smith and Scott Horton, highlighting the critical examination of U.S. foreign policy, media narratives, and the geopolitical tensions leading to the Ukraine conflict. Through insightful dialogue and compelling arguments, the episode invites listeners to rethink conventional perspectives and explore alternative narratives through Scott Horton’s Provoked.

Transcript

[Scott Horton]

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[Dave Smith]

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yocratum. Yocratum.com longtime sponsors of the Part of the Problem podcast. This is for adults over the age of 21 who are already enjoying Kratom. If you don't use Kratom, I'm not telling you to go try it. But if you love Krat, you got to get [e-mail] it's all lab tested, it's delivered right to your door and it's the best price you're going to find anywhere. $60 for a kilo, which by the way, has been the price since they've been advertising on this show. It's been many years now of them being a sponsor and I think it is the only price that has not raised in the world over the last few years. It's still just $60 for a [e-mail] all right, let's start today's show. What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am very excited for this episode, thrilled to be joined by the great Scott Horton. This is the, this is the one. We've talked about this a bunch of times over the last few years that as soon as the book's out, we're going to have to do, you know, an episode, talking all about it. And the book is out. It is right here. I got a copy in my hand. I have the advanced copy still in my hand.

[Scott Horton]

But provoke no page numbers for you, Smith.

[Dave Smith]

Well, that's. Well, I got. I have a few more coming and a few more that I've sent out to other people. So I'm doing the best I can to get this book in as many people's hands as possible because it really is. It's. It's a masterpiece, dude. Congratulations. I mean it really is. You know, for people who. Who I've read Scott's other books, um, it is as much as Enough Already is like just the best book on the terror wars. Provoked is just the absolute best book on the. On the new Cold War and the history of post the after the collapse of the Soviet Union and everything that led up to the disastrous war that's going on in Ukraine right now.

[Scott Horton]

I'll ask.

[Dave Smith]

I'll start this way. Me and you are close friends. We talk on the phone quite a bit. Um, every time I've talked to you over the last few years, I mean I always just reflexively say, hey, what are you up to when we start a conversation? And every single time the answer has been working on the book. Working on the book. What's it like before we get into the substance of it, but just to obviously Fool's Errand and Enough Already were big projects, but I mean this one really does dwarf it in terms of the work that you put into it. In terms of the size of the book. How does it feel to be done with this thing? How do you feel feel looking back on it and you know, just producing something with that had this much information in it. What was the experience like?

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, it's nice to be done with it. I mean, quite frankly, I'm not a writer, I'm a radio host. I'm not really smart enough to write well. Like if you compare what I do to say Justin Raimondo, for example, be he was my mentor [e-mail] and closest analog to what I'm doing. I guess he could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs telling you stuff that he thinks and you should also think or whatever. I really just have a stack of 8,000 note cards for you that I tried my very best to put in order for you to sort of tell the story just through facts. And that was actually my job working for Justin was filling his articles with links. So that's my thing. It's Just I'm the information guy, so. But it's. But that also means it's a miserable task. I'm not a gifted writer at all, and it's a terrible chore. But I guess I feel like I have a bit of a comparative advantage because I'm a radio host, frankly, because I've been doing this for so long in a row and explaining this stuff on the radio for so long in a row that just like in the case of Eastern Europe or, sorry, just like in the case of the Middle East. It's the same with Eastern Europe, where I think I do have a comparative advantage in being able to tell the whole story, going back at least to a certain amount of time and really filling in the gaps for you. There's a lot of stuff that you know about this already. If I tell you that George Bush sponsored the Rose Revolution In Georgia in 03, you may well know all about that, but I'm just going to put that in context with a lot of other stuff for you, too, and also give you a version of that story that you can really stand on, I hope. And so the same kind of thing I tried to do with. Enough already. Right. Is. Is. I guess when I hear other people tell the story, I'm always like, yeah, but the key to the whole thing is the shiite uprising of 1991 that Bush encouraged and then betrayed. But why? It was because Iran was coming to lead the thing. And so then that was the status quo that held, and that was why the. Bill Clinton bombed the thing that caused the terror attack. So it's. It's a huge part of the story. If you don't talk about the Shiite uprising, you're kind of missing the whole kind of key to the 1990s and the advent of the terror war, for example. Right. So the same kind of thing here where I'm just trying to tell the story and not leave anything out. And so I did get a little bit carried away. Maybe the book is. It's about half a million words, but. But yeah, I try to, you know, if there's a color code revolution out there and you want to know about it, I have a section on there for you.

[Dave Smith]

You sure do. Well, it's, you know, so me and you, of course, have, as. As people who listen to the show know. Well, we've been. We've been doing podcasts together for many years, and we. I mean, I. I know. I remember we met. The first time we met, I think, was in 2016 or 2017, but we had been doing podcasts together for a couple years before that. So around 2014, 2015, me and you started, like, you know, became friends and started doing regular shows together. And this would be a. This topic would be something that you wanted to talk about a lot. Like, this is well before the, you know, the war in Ukraine. It was right around the time of the. Of the maid on revolution. But this would always be, you know, you would go through this. In fact, I remember where was it at a. I think it was at a Ron Paul event when the. That you were giving a speech about this topic years ago, maybe in 2019 or something like that.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, that's right. Huh.

[Dave Smith]

You know, and the topic of how the US Just Kind of blew this amazing opportunity with the fall of the Soviet Union. And so this has kind of been like something that you had researched a lot and really cared about well before the war took off. So I'm sure it must have been, you know, frustrating for you, as it was for me, as when the war first starts, it's like all of this history is just supposed to be buried. We're not even supposed to discuss any of it, let alone put this into context. And of course, obviously, your title provoked is, you know, refuting the propaganda, which was. It was wild to see when the war first started that everybody, Everybody, everyone use the term unprovoked like this, like some type of religious dogma or something like that. Like, that is the only way you are allowed. That has to be the starting point that we agree that absolutely nothing happened. Which, by the way, is just. Is just absurd.

[Scott Horton]

I mean, you know what that reminds me of? The first time I remember that in my life was white separatist Randy Weaver. You could never just say Randy Weaver.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

For all I know, the guy's middle name was Wayne. Like a serial killer. But you're not allowed to just call the guy Mr. Weaver or the. The accused alleged criminal. No, he has to be white separatist Randy Weaver, which just means he lived in the woods with his wife and his kids. And, you know, but meanwhile, actually, his job was. He worked as a mechanic at the garage in town. His boss was a black guy. They got along just fine. He was no Nazi. He just lived in Idaho. But you're supposed to hate him. You have to hate him. White separatist Randy Weaver. And so. And. And then, of course, they've done that to a million things since then. But it. It really is something, isn't it, to see how they can do that? Just stick an adjective on the front of an actual, like, noun or a verb that you want to talk about, you have to use their weird little adjective that they coined first. And to me, I swear to God, don't ever take me out of context that I used this word in the way that the people use the word. I mean, in a very specific way. It offends my sense of, like, reason. You know what I mean? I don't like. I don't like when people try to manipulate me. I kind of rebel right against it. You call him white separatist Randy Weaver. It must be because you murdered his son and his wife. Huh? Oh, I get it. You guys are murderers, and he's innocent. Oh, I see. Yeah.

[Dave Smith]

Well. And by the way, for people who don't know a lot about the story, which we're not gonna dive into right now, because Scott will talk to us for three hours about.

[Scott Horton]

I could do a thing. Yeah.

[Dave Smith]

About Ruby Ridge. But, yeah, no, he totally was not a white separatist, too, by the way. I think he, like, the. The closest they had is that he knew some people who were. And, like, they wanted him to saw off a shotgun, and he refused to or something like that. Like, it's. Anyway, whatever. It's not.

[Scott Horton]

He might have subscribed to some of those beliefs, but he certainly never acted negatively. Any other people or any kind of thing. The whole thing was they tried to frame him just so they could extort him into being an informant against somebody else. They are the criminals. Full story. That's it.

[Dave Smith]

The one with. With. As it relates to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The thing that I always found so funny, like, the example that I used to use when I was mocking it was saying, like, it's almost like if a. If a dog bit like a neighborhood kid or something, and you came out and you were like, hey, what happened? The dog. The dog just bit this kid. And all of the kids were like, we'll tell you what happened. We weren't throwing rocks at the dog. And then this dog just bit this kid. And I just want to let you know that we weren't throwing rocks at him and all the dogs. Like, we were not throwing rocks at this dog. And then he just bit. And right after. We weren't throwing rocks at him, and you'd kind of be like, why do you keep saying that part? Like, I'm starting to think maybe you were throwing rocks at this dog and that's why he bit you. And it is just even like, what if Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked? Why do you need to keep saying unprovoked? Like, then wouldn't it just be a given? Why do you have to. Why does every single public official and every person in the corporate media, every single time they talk about this conflict have to use this word? And then it's like if you study, if you study the history of it at all, it turns out this whole goddamn thing is just provocation after provocation. Undeniably even. Look, even if you support the policy, you'd still have to admit, well, yeah, it's clearly a provocation. I mean, this is clearly provoking the Russians. I mean, even if you're for NATO expansion, let's say in the 90s or where or up to today, you'd still have to admit that, like, the Russians sure don't like this and they have feelings about it. But again, one of the things that's been really eye opening to me over the last few years has just been how much there isn't a counterargument. Like, I don't, I don't know if I could recall any other conflict in my lifetime where there, there actually isn't a counter to any of this. There's. All you'll get is NAFO retards on Twitter saying you're a Putin propagandist or something, or that dummy who you were on Piers Morgan with the other day who goes, when you say that the US Overthrew the government in Ukraine, that means you don't believe it's possible to have democratic revolutions, which, as I said to you on the phone, separate conversation, I don't think it is. But regardless of that, it's, it's like the logic of, it would be like if you were to say that woman was murdered. And he goes, oh, so I guess you just don't believe people die of natural causes. What, what are you talking? Like, what? And so there is no counter. Nobody really is. Nobody out there is going to be like, I've found flaws in Scott Horton's book. He's got this wrong and this wrong and this wrong. Half the thing is freaking footnotes. So I don't know how they're going to. But it does just seem that there is no, there is no coherent argument that Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked into this invasion. And it's in all of their own words.

[Scott Horton]

I'm afraid that's true. And look, I try my best to steal, man, the thing, you know, I have no need to be sensational here because I'm already right anyway. So, you know, I give the Other guys side of the story, not meaning the Russians, but I mean the American Warhawks side of the story as much as I can. I link directly to their arguments. I show, look, this is what the Daily Beast would have you believe. You can follow the link and in the Kindle version there are links to all. Well, there's 7,800 citations. Some of them are books. But anything that is online will have a hot link in it. And we're going to have a PDF file very soon at Scott Horton.org provoked or provoked book.com will forge you over there and it's going to be the PDF file of all 6600 something footnotes with all active links for you there for everybody to check the work because that I show my work the whole time and at the bottom of the page where you can double check, come on, that can't be true. And then you look and go, oh, wrote that in his diary, huh? Okay, well you know, or State Department document or whatever the quotes from. So yeah, and, and look, I think, pardon me if I'm being redundant. I think I may have said this to you on your show last time, but it is true, I promise. I did not go searching Google for Clinton and Bush and Obama era officials using the word provoke when it comes to talking about Russia. Okay? I did not do that. I did a hell of a lot of research. And what happened was it just came up, these quotations come up over and over and over again. That's their word for it. Man, we better be careful we don't provoke the Russians with this. Well, you know that's going to provoke them. And it just comes up over and over and over. That's what they all say. Because that's what they were doing and that was what they knew they were doing. And they said over and over again, yeah, but what are they going to do about it? And that kind of crap because they, they had no argument even against themselves. You know, Fiona Hill, who I pick on, she's one of many characters that I pick on mercilessly throughout the book for her horrible sins, rightfully so. Yeah. And she will say, oh, you've been brainwashed by Russian propaganda in the same New York Times article where she again for the 10th time boasts that she told W. Bush on behalf of the entire intelligence community and all of the Russia experts on the National Security Council, don't offer the membership action plan to Ukraine and Georgia in Budapest in April 2008, you are going to cause a conflict. They will invade. They will destroy these countries before you let them. Before they let you bring them into NATO. That was what the CIA told Bush. That was what the National Intelligence Council told Bush. That was what Fiona Hill told Bush. Now if you quote Fiona Hill, she'll tell you you're the victim of a psyop. No, that's just the reality of it. And why did Bush do it? And I quoted in the book. Come on. I'm sorry to say this, I hate to say this to you, Dave, I hate to, but I was legacy building for W. Bush, right? Simple, stupid public choice theory had nothing to do with America's national interest. If we're going to go to with America's national interest, we'd have listened to Angela Merkel saying, this is a bridge too far. Don't do it because I love you. Listen to me. Was what she said. No, this was because W. Bush's legacy was supposed to be Iraq War two. Oops. Yeah, it turned out he fought that one to get Baghdad to Tehran and Mosul to Osama bin Laden and company. So yeah, that didn't really work out that well. But tell you what we'll do. We'll offer membership action plans to Ukraine and Georgia and start to bring them into NATO. And that'll be Bush's legacy for going out in his last year in 2008. And of course, he's the same W. Bush that did Iraq War two. The same W. Bush that tore up the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty. The same W. Bush who didn't have the slightest idea what he was doing but was always malevolent in his intentions and are certainly in his behavior. And so of course it was a wreck, just as all of his best advisors told him. And you know, we talk about the net means nyet memo. That was at the same time Fiona Hill was talking about that same consensus. This was William Burns, who's our current CIA director under Biden, who's a career foreign service guy from the State Department. He's not a spy or a military guy. He's a diplomat and he was stationed in the embassy over there since the 90s, off and on. And was the ambassador to Russia during W. Bush. And he told Connolly's rice man, don't do this, please don't do this. Anyone can read it at WikiLeaks. Yet means yet. And there are also, and I have many more quotes in the book from his memoirs as well and whatever, I guess other articles and interviews, I guess. No, mostly it would be his memoirs and then he's quoting his own emails in his Memoirs and things like this, where he says, madam Secretary, look, if you're not already with me, you could just stop reading right now. That's what he says in a private email to her. You might as well just stop reading right now, because essentially, like, I don't know what to do with you. I'm telling you, this is a bad idea. Don't do it. And. And so, you know, I don't know. One more. Here's the CIA says there's a guy that writes for Yahoo. News. Zach. Oh. Oh, Horton. Oh, it's right on the tip of my tongue. But instead, I thought of that other horrible guy from Vox.com's name instead, and it screwed me. Zach. I'm sorry. But Zach at Yahoo. News, and he. He. God dang it, that's gonna bother me. He. He quotes these CIA guy, he had this great investigative series at the start of the war, and he quotes the CIA guys, Dave, who were in charge of bringing in the weapons in the Obama and Trump years. And they say to him, man, we tried to tell them, you should stop doing this. We're not deterring Russia, we're provoking them. We're giving Ukraine enough weapons that the Russians see it now as a threat that they better do something about, rather than a threat that they better not mess with. And he says, but the politicians, they don't listen. The bosses, they don't listen. They only see one shipment at a time. They don't understand that from the Russian point of view, this is cumulative. That's the CIA talking on the eve of war, Dave.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

That's the guys in charge of bringing in the weapons, saying they tried to tell their bosses to tell the elected officials. This is stupid, man. We should stop doing this. So therefore, that's it. I'm right. Hell, even Robert Kagan admits that I'm right, because I am. And you can call that confirmation bias. But no, it's just the one time that Robert Kagan was right about something when he says Horton is right about everything. That's it.

[Dave Smith]

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[Scott Horton]

He has a conscript army.

[Dave Smith]

Yes, that's right. He's enslaving his army. He's killing other people who have been conscripted in an army who are enslaved by the Ukrainians. Just a lot of horrible stuff. But isn't it a pretty big detail, like a pretty important piece of information that even our CIA chief has said he didn't want to fight this war? And like, as soon as you know that, you're like, oh, oh, all right, well, that's, oh, maybe that's what he's Been trying to negotiate this whole time. It's like. That's a pretty interesting piece of information about this war. The big bad wolf, the Adolf Hitler in this case, actually doesn't want this. He doesn't want this policy. And of course not. He's not an idiot.

[Scott Horton]

And the other side, you mentioned the other side of the story. That's it. Well, Putin just wants to retake everything. Well, look, he's been in power since the year 2000, since the first day of the year 2000. Right. Midnight, he took over. So how come he waited till 2014 to seize Crimea? And how come even after the horrible civil war did break out in 2014, completely backed by the west on Kiev's side, how come he only sent in deniable special operations forces twice in August of 14 and February of 15, and otherwise essentially stayed out, other than sending quote, unquote volunteers and advisors and this kind of crap and some weapons. But he did not take responsibility for occupying the Donbass and protecting those people for eight years. For eight years. So what is he waiting for?

[Dave Smith]

Even after, even after the plebiscites he didn't take. Which, you know, like, whatever, people can argue about the legitimacy or whatever. I know in the case of Crimea, I believe there's been independent polling done, right? That, that pretty much came very, very close to the same results as those.

[Scott Horton]

But let's say, including Pew and Gallup, by the way, American polling firms said, yes, no, this is fine, and the Germans and whoever else.

[Dave Smith]

But let's just say for the sake of argument, as Kathy Newman would not. Kathy Newman, Kathy Young, you know, when you debated her on this topic and just absolutely destroyed her, it was quite enjoyable watching. But as she's, she kind of mocked you for even mentioning the. Oh, you believe these pleas? Vladimir Putin doesn't have honest, you know, elections. This, this is all nonsense. Okay, let's say that's true. Let's say every single, you know, like it's just complete, completely fake. Still, that's not the point. If Vladimir Putin was hell bent on recreating the Soviet Union and obviously he can take Crimea, he can take the Donbass, nobody's going to be able to stop him. Why would he not do that when he had the perfect opportunity where he could look and say, oh, no, no, no, I'm not even annexing them. They democratically decided that they'd rather be part of the Russian Federation than part of Ukraine. If that was his goal, he obviously would have done that. It otherwise makes no sense.

[Scott Horton]

Right. And meanwhile he waited eight years while the west armed his enemies up to fight him and resist him and. Which was effective when he finally did invade and they busted out their shoulder fired anti tank missiles and you know, severely crippled his invasion in the original plan in there and. But yeah, I say that in there like, look, there's no reason to. Why would a Texan have faith in some election the Russians held in the Donbass Problem? I don't care about that. I'm just telling you like whose fault it is, which is Joe Biden. Like you can there. You don't have to presume the legitimacy of anything that the Russians are doing. Anything like quite literally. Take my word at that. I mean that I don't care. I'm not rationalizing what they've done or excusing it in any way any more than in. Enough already. I'm excusing the attack on the towers. I'm just telling you what causes these enemies to fight the United States. And ain't that America is a nice boy minding its own business. And just these implacable enemies keep turning up. And by the way, as everyone in your audience knows and has known their whole life, well, at least since 1989, we are number one. America is the global superpower. There used to be another, now there's not. Now there's one global superpower. And the European Union and China have big economies, but they're not global superpowers. They don't have political and military and dominance in other people's countries on other continents the way the United States does. The United States has the greatest world empire that's ever been created right now. And so how could it be that just all this stuff keeps happening to us? Come on man, everybody knows better than that. Like what is this, you know, 11th grade civics? Because by 12th grade you should be over it and know that like, you know, these wars ain't all they're cracked up to be. A lot of the times remember the main. To turn a phrase there.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well that's, I mean, that's right. And somehow it's, it's fascinating to watch just from doing, you know, like doing a lot of shows and a lot, lot of debates over the last few years. How much people compartmentalize the atrocities that their own government commits and that somehow. And even when they'll kind of grant, you know, like nobody. When I go, if I go on Piers Morgan's show or if I do a debate or anything like that, I never catch anyone who's like defending the Terror wars. Still, everybody basically concedes, like, yeah, we shouldn't have fought in Iraq and we shouldn't have tried to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan, because how could you not at this point, you know, just let look at it and be like, well, yeah, sure, that did not work out. That was not wise policy. And yet they'll still. If you bring up Vladimir Putin, you know, to someone like Pierce Morgan, well, immediately the first thing that comes to the front of your mind is all the crimes that he's committed. And fair enough. Like, I think that's okay. You know, you bring up Vladimir Putin, it's like, he imprisons journalists, he does this, he does that, you know, whatever. Okay, fair enough. And yet why should that not be the first thing that comes up when you bring up any of our political leaders? Like, okay, I'm fine with that. Let's go with their crimes. Here's the crimes of our government. And even you'll admit, right, we just started this war off lies and just slaughtered all these people. And then to turn around and somehow it's like, yeah, that was a mistake. It didn't exactly work, but we're still the force for good. That. Like, that that's just not questioned in the next, you know, encounter. And at the same time, you'll be like, well, look, I mean, if you know anything about George W. Bush's disastrous wars, it's like, okay, well, who were the people in the upper echelons of power in George W. Bush's administration? Well, it's these neoconservatives. Okay, well, the neoconservatives also had this plan for expanding NATO. It's like, okay, so the same people who are managing our foreign policy were managing our foreign policy at that time. And it's not just in the Middle East. We also have a foreign policy in Europe. And so if you'll all concede that not. Not just like they got it wrong in the Middle east, you're conceding, like, they got it wrong to catastrophic consequences with hundreds of thousands to millions of innocent people slaughtered by that. It's like, okay, then why is it such a big leap to say they also got it all wrong in Europe and they also were not concerned with protecting innocent life or something like that. This show is sponsored by Better Help. As I've told you before, guys, I have personally benefited from therapy in the past, and I know a lot of people who have benefited from therapy as well. I think. I think a lot of times there's a misconception about therapy. People think that they're going to be going in there to talk about why their dad didn't hug them enough or hug them too much or something like that. Whereas in reality, often it's just when you realize that there are obstacles in your way in life, it can be helpful to kind of understand the patterns that we all find ourselves in and what we have blind spots about. It kind of helps you to see what you're missing in the bigger picture. And I really just highly recommend therapy. I think it can, it can help almost everybody. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire and you get matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. It's the easiest way to do therapy. It's literally designed for the modern world. Go check them [e-mail] problem today and you'll get 10% off your first month. That's B E T T E R H E L P.com/problem for 10% off your first month. All right, let's get back into the show.

[Scott Horton]

And seriously, before W. Bush was Bill Clinton the face fighting rapist, the guy that burned the Branch Davidians to death, the guy that lied you into war with Serbia, the guy who caused September 11 by backing Al Qaeda terrorists for 10 years at the same time that he's provoking them by bombing Iraq from bases in Saudi Arabia, site of the two most holy places in Islam, Mecca, Medina, and helping the Israelis to mercilessly slaughter the Palestinians and steal the third most important site in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque, from the Muslims there and doing absolutely nothing to protect the United States from the terrorists that he had emboldened and provoked. So, oh yeah, and you're telling me what, like he didn't have the soundest, most well thought through policy toward Latvia? Yeah, why would he, why would you think that he would do the right thing ever? He burned those little babies in Waco to death and called it a suicide. He said those people poured gasoline on their own kids and set their own kids on fire. When he did it, he did it. Him and the Hostage Rescue team and the Army's Combat Applications Group, AKA the Delta Force, they murder those people. The national government of the United States of America and held back the fire trucks while the building burned. Yeah. Oh, no. That guy, he couldn't. Hey. How dare you talk bad about America Dave.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, it really is criticized.

[Scott Horton]

William Jefferson Clinton, Osama bin Laden's, I don't know, mentor, patron, sponsor.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It is wild. I remember there is one time I had a. Like, a Twitter exchange with Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe over there, which was kind of wild to me. Even though, like, there's this weird thing where, like, nobody really watches the corporate media anymore and so many people watch podcasts now. And, like, I'm regularly on much, much, much bigger shows than Morning Joe. Like, that's that. What if I was invite, I would go on Morning Joe if they invited me on tomorrow, but I wouldn't be like, I wouldn't be calling you Scott. Like, I got my big break, dude. I'm going on Morning Joe. Like, it wouldn't even be a big thing yet. I was just really surprised that he knew who I was. Like, you know, like, so I tweeted something about him being an elitist, and he. He replied back to me and he goes, oh, yeah, the guy who says that Putin was provoked and that Osama bin Laden was provoked into 9 11. You know, he thinks that. And I was like, oh, you, like, know me and know what I think about this. Which was kind of weird. And then I remember I said to him at one point, he stopped replying to me after this one. We went back and forth a few times, but I was like, ok, fine, you don't agree that we provoked Osama bin Laden into attacking us on 9 11. Fine. But can we all at least come together and admit that it was probably a mistake for your wife's father to bankroll him? And, like, it's just like, this is the big new Brzezinski's daughter's husband is like, oh, the idea that we had any hand in this is absurd. Like, what are you talking about, dude? You know, you don't pretend like you don't fucking know. Like, you. And it's just. Anyway, that's why the book is so important and why people really got to read it, because it's like they do. They rely on you not knowing anything about history. And when you actually look at the history of the thing, it's just. Again, it's not. And it's not what they cartoonishly try to say. It's not. Oh, you come away from this book realizing that Vladimir Putin is the good guy. He's not a good guy. But you do come away from this book realizing that the American foreign policy, foreign policy establishment is just. They're not. They sure as hell aren't. The good guys either. And not only that, but just that the profound recklessness of the policy, literally from 1990 to today is just. It's even for people like me and you who live in this world of constantly focusing on how evil and corrupt the government is. As you read the book, you're just like. Like my jaws on the ground the whole time. I just can't believe it. I still. Even, even just the news over the last couple of weeks, I can't believe it's just know, reckless.

[Scott Horton]

I'll tell you the look, I mean, I'm a horrible, hateful person. I wrote the book. The book is a collection of things that piss me off. Like, what are you going to do? Like that's what it is. But the thing, and a lot of it, when I read it, I just think, God, these people, you know, especially Bill Clinton and Bush. Those are the ones I may there just because that was when I was younger or whatever. Those are the ones I just hate the most, those two. But see, I got off on a tangent about how much I hate them. I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, I know the part of the book that you know because I had to reread the book a hundred times to finish the writing and get it all edited and straight and everything is not fun. But the part that no matter how many times I read it just drives me absolutely off the wall. Is Russia Gate. And Russia Gate. Reading about Russia Gate is like we reading about Waco or something. It's just like, like I don't want to. It's like reading about what's happening in Gaza. Oh, God. Oh, so ugliest thing. And here it's not mass murder. I mean, they're framing a president that I don't really favor that much. But like, still, like, really, dude, if they did the same thing to Obama or Bernie Sanders or whoever, I still would be this upset just because I hate all lies this much. You know what I mean? But like the, the. The list of things that the FBI pretended to not know yet as they continued to pursue that case or pretend to like just that. Even when I say it that way, it doesn't sound like that big of a deal. You know what I mean? But like, no, it's such a big of a deal, dude.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, no, it really.

[Scott Horton]

What they pretended to not know for three years about how fake that whole thing was is just incredible to me. And it's funny, I've noticed on Twitter nobody said a word about Russia Gate yet. Nobody's that Far in the book yet. Right. Like, nobody said anything about Bill Clinton back in the Terrace in Chechnya, yet nobody said anything about the Boston bombing. I got all this stuff in there. Let me say anything about the Kyrgyzstan revolution and. But Russia gates toward the end, like, that's Trump. So it's going to be like a few weeks before those reviews start coming in. You know what I mean? But, and, and again, I'm not the best writer. So it's really, it's just subject by subject by subject by subject under the Russia gate outline there. But it's just, I don't know, I get.

[Dave Smith]

It's.

[Scott Horton]

I freak out just thinking about it now. Like it bothers me. They would dare.

[Dave Smith]

Well, look, I'll say this about Russia because, you know, aside from my kind of claim to fame or whatever is, you know, there's. There's several issues that have kind of like come to define my public, you know, Persona or whatever. And like being anti war is obviously like a big one of them, particularly with, you know, Gaza and Ukraine over the last.

[Scott Horton]

Right on the term.

[Dave Smith]

Well, that's another one that the COVID stuff that I, you know, did. Did really well through that. But before that it was Russiagate. Like Russiagate was the. If there was a topic that was at the center of this show for people who listen through the years know. Well, I mean, in 2016, 17, 8, really 2017, 18, 19, that was because it was like the biggest story going on. And it was, you know, and it was so obviously bullshit from the very beginning. And so reading the Russiagate chapter in this book, I got, by the way, I got an advanced copy. So I'm a little ahead of the general public who just got this thing a few days ago. But yeah, it's interesting because obviously I haven't been talking about it as much, but. But just so everybody listening understands when Scott says how much the FBI pretended not to know, it's like an example for that is like that Carter Page wasn't a Russian spy. That they knew this from the very beginning. They had. And the bosses by the CIA and the boss working with them.

[Scott Horton]

The bosses refused to let the agents interview him for seven months.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

To make sure that they couldn't just say this is completely ridiculous boss and this kind of thing. And that's just one example. But then there's a hundred of them, right? And I should say, by the way.

[Dave Smith]

Major things like that.

[Scott Horton]

I've actually wanted to say this for months now. And finally I have a chance. I'm really mad at John Durham, the special prosecutor who did not a perfect, but a really, really great job of his report. And he tried to prosecute a couple of the liars behind the dossier and, and the Alpha bank hoax and this kind of thing, which he failed to win his prosecutions, but he was right and his, his defendants were guilty, so screw them. But anyway, I'm really mad at him, dude, because I did so much work that then when his report finally came out, it just completely, like, washed away two thirds of the research that I had done. Well, I had all of these notes, I had all of this stuff. And then here comes the special prosecutor, is like, no, I'm telling you, this is what happened. And then, so the way he puts it is just superior to whatever I had. And so whatever I had had to get canceled and replaced with what he had. So now you read my Russia Gate section, you're like, okay, Horton, so I guess you can read the Durham report. And I'm like, screw you, man. I had all of this stuff. I had done such a good job. This book took me forever to write and, man, I had done, I spent a lot of the early part of the book working on Russia Gate. Then this guy Durham comes and I'm just plagiarizing his ass now, but it's okay because he's a government employee and so he's got no copyright protection, so screw him.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, there you go there. You found a nice libertarian justification for it. I mean, the Durham report was, I mean, a scathing indictment.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, I beg your audience to read it. I beg your people to read it. Everyone read it. I mean, it's a stupid, horrible government report, but you read that thing, this is a federal prosecutor writing about the FBI and the, in the Department of Justice. And, you know, he's the same guy who let Bush get away with torturing people to death. You know that. Yeah, he's the one that they brought in to be the narrow it down, narrow it down, narrow it down until it's nothing and drop the case guy, same guy which is prosecuted the FBI for, for employing Whitey Bulger all those years too. So kind of a mixed bag there, but he did a hell of a job on that. No, it could have been worse, but.

[Dave Smith]

Well, I, I, I assumed it was going to be much worse. I, I assumed it was going to be another. He was coming in to do the same thing that he did under the Bush torture regime and that it was going to be. To downplay it. And then when you actually read the report, you're like, oh, no, he gave a pretty good report actually. It's like, yep, here's what happened. And. And I say this all the time on. On shows because I'm always trying to provoke somebody to. To fight with me about it, where I always say it's like the intelligence agencies framed the sitting president for treason. Simple as actually what happened. Anyone want to argue about that? Because that's a pretty bold claim I just made there. So if anyone wants to argue, go ahead. But then when no one ever does want to argue because they all know this whole thing is bullshit, it's like, okay, but take that in now like that. If you're not going to argue with me, then you must incorporate that into your worldview now. And that does it. Just understanding Russiagate, it's like this narrative shattering understanding, because almost everything that's talked about in, say, like, the corporate news, all of it's shattered now. All of it. Like, whenever you're talking about Donald Trump, whenever you're talking about America, whenever you're talking about democracy, when all of these things you must view through rate, and particularly this war, you must view all of this through a different lens now, because we already know what's going on here. So, like, wait a minute, because now the other half, which I'll admit, I did not focus on nearly enough during those years when I was talking about Russiagate all the time, which you did focus. I give you a lot of credit for that. I also, as I mentioned the other day on Glenn Greenwald show, uh, some. She certainly is not perfect on foreign policy, and there's some areas where she's really, really bad. But Tulsi Gabbard deserves a lot of credit for this, too. You know, when Tulsi Gabbard was running for president in, In. Well, it was the 2020 campaign, but I guess it was in 2019, when she was still in the Democratic primary, that every single time they asked her what her number one issue is, she would always say, nuclear war. Right, Nuclear war. And I remember I, at the time, I kind of would cringe when she would do that. And I would kind of. I was like, I kind of wish she didn't say that. And she just. Because it does sound a little bit like, I don't know, like you're kind of catastrophizing things. No one really thinks we're on the verge of nuclear war right now or whatever. It's like, talk about the wars that we are fighting and why we should be against those. But, man, she was right. You were right. And I was really wrong to not focus more on the Russiagate narrative, because really, framing Donald Trump was only 50% of it. And the other 50% is that they were framing Vladimir Putin. And this is, you know, fast forward.

[Scott Horton]

A minute now, Dave. So look at, you know, they sort of kind of dropped Russia Gate a little bit, but then it came right back with the laptop thing. They all immediately jumped to say, oh, see, is just like the last chapter in Russiagate, in a sense. Oh, it was all true anyway, because, see, now they're doing it again, right, by introducing this fake laptop, which, of course, that was completely fake. And I have a whole treatment on that in the book, too, the accusation. So that reinforced it. Well, that was just right on the eve of Biden's election, Biden was sworn in two months after that, three, four months after that. And then we spent just one year in the lead up to war there. So it could be hard for somebody like you or me, who are not Democrats and don't think that way, to put ourselves in the shoe of a Democrat, in the shoes of a Democrat who never stopped believing in Russia Gate, really. And the war in Ukraine could really be seen as one more thing that Russia did in a row after inflicting Donald Trump on us and trying to rig the election against Biden by introducing this fake Russian laptop and all of these things. Right. So now. And Glenn Greenwald pointed this out to me the other day, and I, I think a friend reassured me that, nah, the implication is in there. But I think, I wonder if I say it strongly enough, I wonder if I, I should have brought it up. When we get to the war that you see, you have to wonder what role the fake Russia Gates hoax scandal played in the minds of America's Democrats in the lead up to the war in Ukraine, that this is the same implacable enemy that you've been grappling with since 2015 when he launched this coup d'etat to overthrow Duchess Hillary and usurp her rightful throne for their secret agent Trump. That's a lot of stress from a foreign enemy. I mean, and remember, they weren't lying. They were expressing themselves when they compared it to September 11th, Pearl Harbor. Kristallnacht lady on MSNBC said, this is like that time when the holocaust started in Germany talking about Russiagate.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And but the thing is, that was how they really felt about it. They were terrified. They were terrified that Russia had done this to us. And it's hard to take that away. Even after the report was a dude. Rachel Maddow took the night off, and then they just talked about something else after that. They never said, geez, guys, this. We really were barking up the wrong tree here. Turns out Carter Page was a loyal CIA asset who debriefed the agency every time he ever met an important Russian in his entire life. Oops. We really got that wrong here. No, they didn't do that. They never had to say they were wrong. Just like with the Republicans in Iraq, they just sort of let it go and stop defending it anymore.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, and that's. And another element to it is that Donald Trump, despite being the best ever at putting on a show and making things entertaining, which just undeniably, he is the greatest ever at doing. He's just the best self promoter who's ever lived. But he is not good at making that argument. Like, he never really stood up for himself. And in a clear, concise way, which is something, by the way, I was very critical of him during this campaign, which I got to say, like, again, he didn't even run a very good campaign. He did. He put on a great show, which is what he always does. So that element of it was good. But, you know, Donald Trump does this thing. The example I always use, it's like the perfect microcosm of Donald Trump when he's at the debate with Kamala Harris and she starts talking the questions about immigration. So she immediately pivots to insulting his crowd sizes, and he, of course, can't not take the bait. So he's just starts going off on how great his crowds are. But it's like the opportunity that's right in front of him, like, it's right there. It writes itself, dude. Like, no, don't start defending your rallies. Point out that she's only bringing up your rallies because she doesn't want to talk about immigration. And, like, how easy is it to say, hey, guys, I made this the central issue of my campaign in 2016. And they all said I was a Nazi for doing it, they reversed my policies. Look what a disaster this is. Now they're all pretending they're immigration hawks and just, like, make the devastating case. Instead, he goes. And he goes, my rallies are tremendous. Blah, blah, blah, Defending his rallies. And then he goes, they're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. And, like, okay, if you are following that story, maybe you get the thing he's referencing, but if you're not, he just comes off like a total loom. And similarly, in this moment, which is really what the whole Hunter Biden laptop. The. The Russia gate accusation, the Russia accusation about it was designed to do. Is that when Donald Trump brings it up in the debate with Joe Biden, Joe Biden can say 51 top intelligence people all signed a letter saying this was Russia. And then Donald Trump has this opportunity to respond, and he goes, you're telling me it's another Russia, Russia, Russia? And it was just like, okay, yeah, if you already knew, you kind of get what he's saying. But he. If you didn't know that, that didn't really explain it to you ever. You know what I mean? Like, he never just coherently said, ever once, listen, the intelligence agencies are framing me for this, and here's how we know this, and here's the best reporting on this. Like, he's not capable of doing that. And so, yeah, this did. This lingered on. I mean, look, and by the way.

[Scott Horton]

I have to say, where the hell was Stephen Miller and where the hell was Hope Hicks and these people who were like the most loyal staff to him? You're telling me Stephen Miller can't read Twitter and see that Aaron Matei just debunked Russiagate today in The Nation magazine. Mr. President, Mr. President, you gotta see this. This Democrat magazine says sor, but it's just not true. All about it today. Tweet that in all capital letters, sir. Nobody. So never even mind his incompetence. But what about all of his people? Dude, nobody handed him that and said, man, look at this. He debunks all of these things. And of course, for people not familiar, Aaron Matei was 100% on it. He was never wrong when he debunked a Russiagate lie. I mean, when he put out a feature article in the Nation magazine, you could have beat an FBI director right out of his job with it if you'd wielded it right? You know, it was huge. So that's on them, too, you know, I mean, seriously, like that lady Hope Hicks, who was supposed to be like his. His, like, number one confidant, you know, Trump whisperer. What's going on in the world, what's going on in the media, what's happening today and what are we going to do about it? And all of that stuff. Like, boy, did they drop the ball on that. Especially when you had Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Matei, Matt Taibi at first, Robert Perry, but then he died, but still Joe Lauria, Ray McGovern, and Michael Tracy. I'm sorry, but I'm leaving out. But those are some of the most prominent Leftists and progressives who were good on Russia Gate, never mind Chuck Ross and Mariel Hemingway and Miranda Devine and whoever else on the right who were also great on it. But I'm just talking about the liberals. Like, if you were working for Trump, you wouldn't make sure that he knows that he can say, look, even these leftists say that I'm innocent because I am like, God, that would have. Oh, man, what a weird time.

[Dave Smith]

And when you think about it, you know, it's. It's a theme that I talk about a lot on, on the show, is that human beings, all of us, we just listen, we outsource knowledge. It's the reason why we don't live in hunter gatherer communities and we get to live in these advanced, sophisticated societies is because of special specialization, you know, the division of labor. And people have expertise in very limited fields, if they have any at all. And if, if there is somebody who has expertise in like two or three fields, they're considered a genius. Like, that's so rare that anybody has, like, expertise across multiple fields fields. And you think this happens all the time in your life. Like, you know, my freaking hot water heater just broke and I had to hire a guy to come here and he said a lot of words to me that I didn't understand and then said I owe him 500 bucks, you know, and I'm like, all right, I guess I do. I have no idea. You could have just been making all of it up. But I reasonably assume, like, probably that's. And I have hot water again. So, like, it ended up working. And for most people, like, you know, if everybody obsessed over politics the way me and you do, we would all starve to death. It's a very good thing that other people are specializing in other areas, but I just don't think that people can. You, like, you can't blame regular people for this. But when you got, you know, look, man, I don't know. All the people in suits and ties on CNN are telling me there's really something here. They say, Trump, Russia, collusion all day long, every single day. And then I just heard from the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and he tells me he's seen the evidence. And I'm not privy to this evidence yet, but he sure is, and he's seen it. And he tells me when the Mueller report comes out, there's going to be mass arrests of Donald Trump. Oh, the former CIA Director Brennan just said there's going to be, that Donald Trump is going to be put on handcuffs on national television. He wouldn't say that if they had nothing. That's a reasonable conclusion for an average American who doesn't pay that much attention to this. It's a reasonable conclusion to go like, unless this whole system is completely evil and based on lies, then obviously they got something or they wouldn't be saying this. Now the answer is that it is a system based on lies. But like, it's understandable why people believe that there's never a coherent objection coming from out of Donald Trump's mouth. And then, yeah, like you what they're think about the claim, Think about how huge it is. They were claiming that the big, it was the biggest scandal in the history of the United States of America by far. That Vladimir Putin pulled off something that the British Empire couldn't, that Adolf Hitler couldn't, that Joseph Stalin couldn't, that, that Osama bin Laden couldn't. Like all the great enemies of the United States of America, none of them ever overthrew our democracy and installed their puppet as the president. And that's the claim. And so, so yeah, to look at that. So on one hand you go, you can't downplay how much that would affect the, the views that people have in terms of a war involving Russia only a couple years after that. And then the other flip side to that, to go back to this idea that it was unprovoked. I've literally had this argument before with people where they've said that the war was unprovoked. And I just asked them if they believe in Russiagate. Like, do you, do you actually believe that Vladimir Putin overthrew our election and installed Donald Trump? And they're like, well now of course, you're like, okay, well that's provocation. Sorry, that already proved that right there. Already proves the title of your book. Think about that from Vladimir Putin's perspective that the most war hungry country in the world who's gone fought in seven wars over the last 25 years and just slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people and left countries in piles of rubble. That, that they, not like some random guy on cnn, but the head of the war machine itself. The heads of the war machine are claiming are laying down the justification for attacking you. They're claiming you started a war with them off complete lies.

[Scott Horton]

Yep. And look, man, this, I, I forget if we, we talked about this before, but there's a new book out that came out this year by Annie Jacobson called Nuclear War A Scenario, and it's a fictional scenario about what would happen if nuclear war broke out. And. But it's based on her interviews with all of the very top guys from the Strategic Air Command, former defense secretaries and CIA directors and strategic nuclear war planners. She did real research. I mean, you check the footnotes in that book. It's something else, these firsthand interviews that she did with America's absolute greatest experts on our nuclear war policy. And she would be right at home at the New Yorker magazine or something. She's absolutely within that center left liberal of that generation, older baby boomer generation type type or maybe younger younger boomer. But anyway, so point is, in her scenario, and I'm ruining the book for you, so put your fingers in your ears if you don't want to hear it. North Korea nukes America. Nobody knows why, but that's how it starts. They nuke us twice, and that means, oh, now we gotta nuke them off the face of the earth or we can expect them to just keep nuking us and nuking us. So The President launches 50 H bombs at North Korea to wipe them off the face of the earth. And the threat? Well, the Russians see the missiles coming and part of the loophole is that unfortunately America can't really nuke North Korea without sailing our ICBMs over Russia to get there. We hit them from subs in the Pacific, but in this case, I guess they use land based missiles in the Dakotas in Montana or whatever. And so the Russians now have to decide whether these missiles coming in are directed at them or at North Korea. And the fictional Putin in the book decides that, oh, I see what they're doing. Doesn't matter that it was North Korea that nuked them. The US government, they're ruthless, dude, they don't care. They're just going to lie. They're just going to tell the American people that it was us that did. And they're already launching a surprise nuclear attack on us even though we had nothing to do with it. They see those incoming nukes, they immediately think of Iraq. They immediately think, I don't know if she was thinking this of Russia. Gate, they'll tell any lie against me here, they would. Even after getting nuked by Korea, they'd even blame it on me, just as an excuse to launch a preemptive strike. So then he launches all of his nukes and America dies. And something that the North Koreans could never do to us would be to erase our whole civilization. They've got a couple dozen nukes at most and they couldn't fire them off before we killed Them, but the Russians, they can hit about a thousand points at once in America, about a thousand targets at once. And likewise on this side, there and then be the end of everything. And based on what you just said, the Americans do nothing but lie. They do nothing but come up with pretexts for war. And not just against Saddam Hussein and Bashar al Assad and helpless Muammar Gaddafi, but against Russia. And, yeah, like you say, and it's years later and it's so stupid and silly. Now, Russia, gay people forget that. Like, yeah, no, this was way worse than McCarthyism. I mean, maybe that was worse in the sense of, like, innocent people were getting accused of, like, oh, you were a commie in the 30s. Like, whatever, dude. You know, a lot of people were commies in the 30s, and a lot of that was, like, embellished beyond what was fair. But here, the whole thing is directed against the elected President of the United States. You know, there's a clip of John Laughlin, who had been the acting director of CIA, and he's at the CSIS or something like this, and they say, oh, Donald Trump says that there's a deep state that's out to get him. And he goes, well, let me tell you something. Thank God for the deep state. And then he says, because the problem is not the Justice Department, it's not the CIA, it's not at the NSA, it's at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's the problem. So here he's just outright. And I'm sorry, he gives the addresses of the Justice Department. It's not the Hoover Building, it's not at Fort Me. Yeah. Oh, did I lose you? I think I lost your audio there.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, sorry. Oh, my mistake there. I hit the mute button when I.

[Scott Horton]

Do that all the time.

[Dave Smith]

No, no, we played. No, I was just going to say we played the clip on the show. Yeah, it was. It was pretty incredible.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, yeah. So. But the thing of it is, this is like. Okay, well, you could imagine a scenario where. Yeah, that's right. Thank God that these guys took their oath before God to defend our Constitution from the Russian installed coup d'etat guy who usurped the rightful elected throne of Duchess Clinton there. Except that. That wasn't right. The whole thing was a lie. They were the ones who were out of line, and they were so far out of line. Oh, my God, man. None of these agencies are constitutional in their existence at all. This is all post World War II national security State garbage. Harry Truman's national security act of 47 and so forth. They had no legitimacy at all. You know, the FBI maybe or, you know, as a. The Bureau of the Department of Justice would have some constitutional legitimacy if NSA was wholly under the Pentagon. Maybe. But anyway, who in the hell are they? A bunch of unelected and acting as secret police. Right. They are completely protected. We're talking about the FBI, Counterintelligence Division and Central Intelligence Agency going up against the elected President of the United States of America. So yeah, if he was guilty then, and boy, nail them to the wall, guys, and you're all get a bunch of medals and you're all heroes. But boy, if this isn't true, then man, are you guys out of line. You know, it's completely crazy for them to have gone that far. And there's just no mistaking here that John Brennan and Jim Comey really thought so. They were lying and we know they're lying. John Durham proved that they were lying and Matt Taibbi proved that John Brennan is the one who cooked the whole damn thing up in the first. First place.

[Dave Smith]

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[Scott Horton]

Crystal himself too. Crystal himself was in on that one.

[Dave Smith]

The most ridiculous. No, no, no, don't give me any of that. You don't have a problem with bigotry. Go listen to the way they talk about Palestinians. They do not have a problem with bigotry. They have a problem with bigotry being used to sell in isolationist position, that's for sure. Which I think you know, we unfairly get smeared as isolationists. I do think calling Donald Trump his rhetoric isolationist is not like, I think that's somewhat accurate. I mean, he's talking about closing the borders, cutting off trade, and not militarily intervening in the world. But like, yes, if you're, or if you're using bigotry in order to argue for detente with Russia or something like that, then they have a problem with it. If you're using bigotry to sell the next war, they delight in that. So, like, don't give. So, okay, so that's. So this is the heart of it. And this is like, I understand this doesn't fit neatly into a bumper sticker, but I think this is what people have to understand. It's like, even if you are highly critical of Donald Trump, as both me and you have been over the years, years, you can also understand that they don't hate him for the same reasons we do. And that's what, like, liberals need to understand. Even if you hate this guy, and even maybe you're justified in some of your reasons for hating the guy, that's not why they're framing him for treason. They're framing him for treason for other reasons. And the major one is that they saw him as a threat to the war machine and for good reason.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, hey, look at the I cited in here in, in the impeachment over Ukraine. Gate, son of Russia. Gate actually got the guy impeached for the third time in American history. And just go and look at the testimony of Alexander Vindman, the rat on the National Security Council who turned him in to his CIA buddy Eric Chermella, who wrote up the big so called whistleblower report and kicked the whole thing off. He wrote an article in the Atlantic essentially elaborating on the same point. Then he's just as unabashed as could be. They just put his brother Yevgeny in the House of Representatives representing the great state of Virginia, if you could believe it. They call him Eugene. So you don't recognize that these people are Ukrainian nationals. And Donald Trump, of course, here's how lazy Donald Trump is while he's watching with bated breath just dying to find out what the absolute idiot blonde lady is going to say about him next on cnn.

[Dave Smith]

Men, right?

[Scott Horton]

He's got Ukrainian nationals sitting on the National Security Council down the hall who hate his guts and want to kill him or at least overthrow him. And he has no idea. None. Anyway, so this guy Binman, he explains to the Congress and he Explained in his Atlantic article. Donald Trump was trying to change our Russia policy. Our Russia policy, says Lt. Col. Vindman. And he explains that, look, the interagency, meaning like a meeting of the deputies of the National Security Council, we decided what we're doing with Russia in Ukraine. Who the hell does this guy think he is to change our Ukraine policy? Says the Ukrainian national on the US National Security Council. And so if Donald Trump thinks that he's going to change our Ukraine policy, he's going to threaten our arms shipments to Ukraine. Well, we're just not going to stand for that. Who the hell does this guy think he is? We at the interagency have our consensus, and there's just no sense whatsoever that this guy won an election to be the President of the United States and you didn't, Mr. Lieutenant Colonel. And so you don't have a say at all. The interagency serves him the chief executive of the government departments. That's it.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

Unless he's, you know, demanding that you break the law, then you have no say here. But, and look, I mean, we're watching this right now. Donald Trump is higher, is surrounding himself with enemies right now. They're all going to stab him in the back and he's going to be like, at 2, everybody. Well, that's what you get for being too damn lazy to just read and find out who actually agrees with you and likes you. You surround yourself with a bunch of war hawks who hate your guts. That's what you're going to get. I don't know why he doesn't make John Bolton National Security Advisor again.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, it's like, you know, we, I had a, a brief window of optimism when we, we kind of launched our never Pompeo campaign. And then Donald Trump came out and put out a statement that Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo wouldn't be in the new administration. And you're like, oh, all right, we're doing it.

[Scott Horton]

You know, it's just a coincidence.

[Dave Smith]

And then. Well, I mean, it's like the issue is, I mean, there's just so many of them in D.C. and they're all the same exact thing. Thing. Like, it's like, does it make any difference if you're, if I was talking about any foreign policy post. Any foreign policy post. And I said, scott, do you have a preference? Because either Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley or John Bolton or Hillary Clinton, or like, they just list them on and on and you'd go, no, they're all the same. Like, you got the same person no matter what. So unless you really recognize why you don't want Pompeo and why you don't want Nikki Haley, just scratching their names off the list does nothing. Because then Marco Rubio is the same as them. And it's all. They're all.

[Scott Horton]

And by the way, there clearly is a full National Security Council staff worth of Good America first anti war guys, conservatives and libertarians with the credentials to sit in the White House or in the State Department or the Defense Department. I'm not talking about, like me and my boys at the Institute suit, maybe Ted Carpenter, but sure, you know, otherwise. But anyway, I have a whole list. I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I got a whole giant list of guys who absolutely could staff the National Security Council as well as the top three or four spots at State in Defense Intelligence, and. And what have you. And, and, but they don't get the time of day, man. They don't have a say. And, and we all know why. It's because Miriam Adelson wrote a check for $100 million. So she gets to decide who's in the cat. It. Yeah, that's what she bought. $400 million. And who's she? She's an Israeli who inherited money from her dead husband who. Who ran a casino in China. That's who American conservatives obey. That's who's in charge. That's the leader of the American Conservative Movement, Dave the widow, heiress of a Chinese communist gambling casino. Line up and click your heels, American Christian conservatives. Please obey your master.

[Dave Smith]

I believe she's actually a Palestinian if I'm being. Which Donald Trump likes to use as a slur against other people. But I'm not. Double check me on this, but I believe she was born before the state of Israel.

[Scott Horton]

Oh.

[Dave Smith]

And so I think. I think I could technically say that just like just as he accuses everybody else of being. You got a Palestinian working for you, Trump. You got to take care of this problem. Well, I'm not always the best at predicting the future, but I did say I'm on record. I did say on Patrick bet David's show on election Day, before any of the polls had closed or any votes were counted, I did predict with certainty that the winner of the 2024 presidential election would be Israel. And I was right. I got that one right. It was a safe, safe bet if ever there was one. All right, listen, Scott, I had a plan in my mind that on the show today because there's just so much great information in the book and so I was like, I really wanted to spend the podcast talking about shock therapy and colored revolutions. We did not get to either of those. So let's just do. Let's. I know you're doing this with Tom already, but let's just make this like, we'll do several podcasts on the book because there really are, like, so many different parts of it that I wanted to kind of. You know, there's this stuff that I talk about a lot that I know pretty well, but then there's so much stuff that I learned for the first time from reading this book. So we'll get you back on in the next few days and go over some of that stuff. I do have to cut this. Do have to cut this short now, but let people. Not cut this short, but end the show. Let people know one more time where they can buy the book and where they can find your other fantastic work.

[Scott Horton]

Okay, so the book is at Amazon and you can go to Scott Horton.org or LibertarianInstitute.org We've got the links for you there. It's out in paperback and Kindle Soap far working on the hardback version. That company is a little bit slower, but we're getting that together. I'm already recording the audiobook. I'm done with Clinton. No, no, pardon me. I'm done with H.W. bush. And I'm through Clinton up to the Bosnian war. I was just about to start the Bosnian war. That is going to be a substack series. So if people go to Scott Horton show.com that's different than Scott Horton.org but Scott HortonShow.com and subscribe to the substack there. That is going to be hopefully beginning pretty soon here. That is going to be a very long foreign podcast series just on the back of the envelope. It's going to be like 48 hours long. Double Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem by Carter made there at least. And maybe more than that. It's a long book.

[Dave Smith]

No. 1. The only human being I know who could make make Daryl Cooper seem not long winded. This.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah.

[Dave Smith]

Darren Cooper's so concise with his telling of history now.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, no, this is what you get with me, man. I had. I had Tom woods, you know, figurative sort of Damocles hanging over my head when I was doing enough already. And I absolutely have to keep this thing at 300 pages. Iron law of the universe on this book. I blew past three, I blew past four, I blew past five, and I said, ah, what the hell? I actually got up to 1400 pages before I finally stopped. Stopped and started whittling it back down again. So here's what it is. Sorry, what was I supposed to do? Leave stuff out?

[Dave Smith]

No, it's. There's nothing that I could point to in the book and go, oh, you should have cut that chapter out. Or you should just. So it's also important to the, to the narrative, to the story, to understanding what really happened here.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, you know what, though? There is an excise chapter, Nuclear War. I had the second to. The last chapter was going to be all about nukes. And so that is now going to be a separate PDF file. It's not quite ready yet, but very, very soon you'll be able to. If you sign up for the email list at the Libertarian Institute or@scott horton.org then you'll get a free PDF of the ebook of the excised chapter, Nuclear War. Save me about 30 pages there. But then I do a show, I do a podcast. I've done 6,000 something interviews since 2003. They're all at Scott Horton.org [e-mail] Scott HortonShow and I'm the editorial director of Anti War.com which is the most important project on the Internet. And I am the director of the Libertarian Institute, which is the second most important project on the Internet. And I got a great bunch of writers and podcasters and thinkers and journalists and philosophers and just killers over there at the Libertarian Institute. I hope everyone will check it out. We published 15 books so far. We got another one coming up here very shortly about Obama's Dirty War in Syria by the great William Van Wagenen. And I just couldn't be prouder of the team we put together at the Institute. And so I guess that's about all I got to say about that day.

[Dave Smith]

Thank you, dude. Thank you, Scott. And you know, listen, I've heaped a lot of praise on you over the years, but it really, you deserve it all, man. I mean, you, you've really, your work has been invaluable to me personally. I just, you're, you're just, your research is so thorough and the case that you make is so overwhelming. And you've really helped me understand the world and understand what's going on. And I know you've done that for a lot of other people to. I cannot, to, to the audience listening. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is. You read this and you're going to understand what's going on in this conflict better than 99.9999% of people out there. And of course, by the way, just because you mentioned, I do want to say the other thing that you've done that I really think is incredible is that you have really built up this. This team of like, kind of the next generation of our guys. And they really are incredible. I mean, your whole team of. Of course, obviously, Keith Knight, people know, because I've had him on the show a bunch of times. And Connor and Kyle, Dave de Camp, the guys are really incredible. It actually leaves me with a little bit of optimism for the future, that we got some really smart, compelling people who are actually, like, also not social retards. Kind of nice, too. Like, they're also just regular guys who, like, are kind of appealing and not, you know, like, what some of. Some of our libertarian types end up being. But anyway, thank you so much for the book. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll do another episode and get into the shock therapy and color revolutions and other stuff that I want to talk to you about. And thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll catch you next time.

[Scott Horton]

Peace.