Col Doug Macgregor: Ukraine Russia Talks Look Unlikely, Now What? (Transcript)

But is his possibilities or is his push realistic?

The Alaska Meeting: Optics Over Substance

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, I agree that President Trump is a vast improvement over his predecessor, but as we both know, that’s not really saying very much. That’s a pretty low bar. But having said that, I think what we have to understand, and you know that I like President Trump personally, and I think his instincts or intentions are true, is that we’re witnessing one long, uninterrupted reality TV show.

Whatever President Trump does is designed for optics. In other words, the meeting in Alaska had very little substance to it. And I don’t think he was terribly concerned about the substance. He simply wanted to be seen as changing the climate, at least in broad terms with Russia. He wanted to be photographed with President Putin, surrounded by his F-22s or whatever the aircraft were that were present at the time. And of course, you had the B-2 bomber that overflew everything. This is all vintage Trump. He’s very theatrical. He knows how to stage things.

But the problem is that meetings on the spur of the moment, which is really what this was, mean there’s no systematic preparation. That usually takes months. Americans were used in the 1970s and 80s to summits between the Soviet Union and the United States, for instance, after many, many months of very hard work and preparation, detailed preparation for the meeting, such that the leaders who were present, Gorbachev and Reagan, for instance, were no longer debating over the substance of anything. They were talking about the impact and why they thought it made sense.

And when they spoke publicly, one had the impression that both had thoroughly digested the material and were reliably supporting it. I don’t see any of that with President Trump. So I think the Alaska meeting was a feel good moment and not much more.

And so when people say, “Well, where are we on the peace front and what kinds of agreements are in the offing?” I tell them, look, I don’t see any. There are no such agreements. Again, there has never been a strategy enunciated by President Trump and the administration. Frankly, whatever’s written on paper doesn’t matter because President Trump is impulse driven.

So at the end of the day, I just think we’re where we were months ago. There’s no resolution in sight. And you got to be very careful of these claims. “I could end this war in 24 hours,” you know, how well did that go down? That’s a lot of nonsense. But if you know nothing about Ukraine, know nothing about Eastern Europe, nothing about Russia, and you view yourself as a brilliant deal maker, this is sort of another exercise in selling the used car. And I don’t think that works. And so while he may have meant well, and I’m perfectly willing to accept that possibility, nothing of substance came out of it.

Washington Meetings: More of the Same

DANIEL DAVIS: And I think you could probably just carry that on through right to Washington, D.C. a week ago on Monday, when he had Zelensky and then the European leaders all paraded across the Oval Office, and again, I think that they reiterated where they were weeks, if not months before that. I don’t see any change in them either, do you?

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: No, not yet. We can come back to that. I do want to make a comment, though, about this particular photograph, because General Kellogg apparently has endeared himself to the Russians quite a bit. He apparently has been using the same cell phone and cell phone number, though encrypted, over and over and over again for months, maybe years.

And as a result, the Russians were able to follow all of his activities, whatever he visited, Chasov Yar, Chernigov, any of these places. And it is being used for targeting. So that many of the targeted locations that I just mentioned that he’s visited have been utterly and completely destroyed, along with whatever military personnel were present, including NATO and including us. So he’s being a real boon to Russian intelligence.

DANIEL DAVIS: Wow. Did not know that.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, I don’t think most people do. I was not aware of it either until somebody in the intelligence community pointed it out to me. So it’s tragic, but I’m afraid it’s true.

Pompeo’s Dismissive Comments and Russian Territorial Claims

DANIEL DAVIS: And now let’s continue on back because the issue is not just what Trump may or may say. I think that’s actually a very interesting observation you made about an ongoing reality TV show, because that certainly matches what we’ve seen. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but wow, that’s pretty accurate.

Unfortunately, it’s not just him, or at least there’s other actors on here. This is former Secretary of State, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Fox News having a banter about the part of the claim that Russia was going, that Trump got Russia to agree that they would take back the Donbass area, that Ukraine would evacuate it and hand that back over. And Pompeo basically just mocks that and laughs at the idea, says it’s just posturing…

DAVID: Even to suggest for a moment that they would get all of the Donbas, which is a region that they’ve been fighting to control wholly for a long time, have been failing to do so. And they just wanted for nothing, you know, before they’ve given away anything major. Is that something that can be dismissed pretty readily?

Mike Pompeo: Yes, I think it can be dismissed quite readily. In fact, think about this. The Russians have lost somewhere between 200 and 250,000 soldiers. That’s dead. That’s not casualties. Casualties are multiples of that. In a decade plus the fighting, the United States lost 50,000 soldiers. I mean, the staggering death toll is very real. Putin knows that.

And so when he makes this claim that someone’s going to give him some real estate that has been fought over like this, I think he knows that’s not right. In the end, President Zelensky is going to have to likely accept that some of the real estate that the Russians have taken, he’s not going to be able to reclaim immediately. He won’t be forced to recognize it. I think there’s a deal in there that can be reached that is fair and just and provides sustainable another 25 years of peace if we get the security guarantee piece of this right.

DANIEL DAVIS: So yeah, all we have to do is get Russia to agree to give in on almost all of their positions from position of strength. What do you say to that?

Pompeo’s Credibility Problem

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, remember this is the same man who pointed out that when he was the head of the CIA it was his job to lie. And I think he’s done an excellent job of it. He continues to lie about all of this business in Ukraine. He’s adopted this utterly fictitious narrative that everything started with Putin’s decision some morning to wake up and decide to invade Ukraine. It’s all nonsense.

I wouldn’t pay much attention to anything that Pompeo says. I would just dismiss it out of hand. It’s unworthy of serious discussion. And by the way, I think President Trump would probably say that privately as well.

Macron’s Mocking and Russian Military Capabilities

DANIEL DAVIS: And it’s unfortunate though, because you certainly know that and have good reason to making that statement. But most people watching television, they don’t know that. They think, “Wow, former CIA director, former Secretary of State, he must carry a lot of weight.” He certainly is still friendly at times with President Trump, but one wonders what the purpose then of having him say stuff like that.

And by the way, this was in a certain sense mirrored by Emmanuel Macron about a week or so ago when he was mocking the Russian side, because you saw the anchor there, said, “Well, it’s ridiculous to think that Russia, who couldn’t take the Donbas in all these three and a half years, they’re just going to be giving it to him.” Macron kind of echoed that and says, “Well, look, in the last, I think it’s since November 2022, they said Russia’s only captured an additional 1% of territory, so they really aren’t that capable.” So what do you say to those kind of comments?

The Reality of Russian Objectives

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, we’ve been down this road before. Putin framed this as a special military operation. He did not frame it as an all out war. But he discovered after the first several months, certainly after the first six months of action, that he was not really facing Ukraine. He was facing the United States and the west, primarily US Military power and all of its enormously valuable capabilities from seabed to space.

When that was finally discovered and understood. But it wasn’t understood at the beginning because I think President Putin, who’s always been very favorable in his thinking about the west, had to come to the conclusion that this was a completely malicious action on the part of the United States to destroy Russia. When that happened, everything began to change.

You know, I just think that Macron is another globalist. The globalists in London, Paris and Berlin are all clinging desperately to power right now. Their populations almost universally loathe Macron, Starmer and Scholz. But the oppressive apparatus that they control, the media, that they control, the governmental institutions, the intelligence services, are working overtime day and night to suppress any possible emergence of a viable opponent.

And that’s what’s happened to the alternative for Germany. It’s happened in France, it’s happening in England especially, but also Scotland and Wales to a lesser extent. The sad part is that it’s hopeless because the war is being won by the Russians.

Territory vs. Military Objectives

Now, this business of territory. President Putin did not set out on this operation to capture territory, never did. We’re the ones that keep obsessing over territory. What he set out to do was to utterly and completely annihilate the Ukrainian threat. That Ukrainian threat was manifested by its paramilitary and armed forces. They are just about gone, let’s face it. They’ve been killed in great numbers.

We now have all sorts of information saying anywhere from 1.7 to 1.8 million Ukrainians have been killed on this Eastern Ukrainian battlefield. And that’s really been the objective, to destroy that entity. The Russians are now operating on the other side of the river, and a lot of people don’t realize this. On the outskirts of Odessa, you’ve got Special Operations forces there directing strikes and eliminating the Odessa base of operation for the regime. I think you’re going to see more of that in the future.

But again, if you go back to historical experience and the origins of what we call Ukraine and New Russia that was created under Catherine the Great, it goes back to the capture of Crimea and then the settlement of the areas along the Black Sea out to the Romanian border and all the way up along the Dnieper River. Those things are real.

And Putin has made it very clear that that portion which is settled by Russians, populated by Russians, where the Russians speak, read and write, their language and their culture is predominant. Those will be protected, they will be kept, they will not be given up. But the idea that he was ever interested in marching all the way to the Polish border is a lot of nonsense.

Now, if no one is willing to sit down and secure an agreement with Moscow that basically turns what’s left of Ukraine into a neutral state on the Austrian state treaty model, then I guess the Russians will actually cross in strength and head west, because they don’t have any choice. What the Russians don’t want to do is refight this war.

Media Narratives and Generational Divides

But again, we’ve never seen things in that light because we don’t want to. We want to cast Putin as the aggressor. He has to be demonized. He’s the latest version of Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein, you know, the usual suspects. It’s all nonsense. And unfortunately, when you listen to Pompeo and others, they fall back on that phony narrative.

And that narrative is picked up particularly by Fox News, but also by the other mainstream media outlets. And let’s face it, our generation, my generation, I’m a so called boomer, we all watch that stuff. Now I don’t, I mean, occasionally I’ll put it on just to see what the other side is saying. But unfortunately the majority of my age, they still go back to the same poison well to ingest more poison. The rest, you know, 40 and under, they walked away. They’re getting their information and news elsewhere.

DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah, like the Daniel Davis deep dive. That’s why we’re on the air right here and having you come in and talk about this. You mentioned in there about that Russia doesn’t want to fight this war again. Pompeo said toward the end of that clip right there that if we get the security guarantees part right. He said we might have as much as 25 years of peace before a new conflict breaks out. Well, in looking at what those security guarantees look like, President Trump was asked yesterday from the Oval Office and he says, “Well, we really don’t know about them, but one thing, it’s going to be easy.”

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: “Well, you don’t know what security guarantee is because we haven’t even discussed the specifics of it. And we’ll see. Number one, Europe is going to give them significant security guarantees and they should because they’re right there. But we’ll be involved. From the standpoint of backup, we’re going to help them. And I think if we get a deal, and I think we will. But if we get a deal, you’re not going to, I don’t believe you’re going to have much of a problem.”

DANIEL DAVIS: So yeah, it’s, we don’t even know what. This was crazy. We had the Alaska, we had the Oval Office meeting with Europe and then now yesterday we’re still saying we don’t even know what the terms that we’re trying to get done are. But it’s not going to be hard. I mean, what do you take from that?

Regional Stakeholders and European Interests

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Not much. It’s more hot air. I mean, with all the hot air that comes out of the Oval Office these days and Congress, I’m surprised that Washington is still on the planet and hasn’t lifted off and been elevated into outer space.

I think what we need to do is understand that there are certain people with a keen and justified interest in what happens to Ukraine. If you live in Lithuania, I think the Lithuanians have an interest, although I don’t think it’s as great as the others. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, those are the key states that border Ukraine.

Now, in the case of Poland and Hungary, and I don’t know about Slovakia, they also have some territorial interests. Given their history, I know that the Hungarians would like to bring in the couple of hundred thousand Hungarians that are living inside Ukraine. Got to go all the way back to the Versailles Treaty and then subsequently the tragic outcome of the Second World War and see that a lot of these people ended up in places they didn’t want to be, under governments they didn’t want to be subservient to.

So they all have an interest in what happens in Ukraine. They’re the ones that really need to sit down with the Russians. I would argue the Germans do. The Germans, because they’ve always played a very important role in Central East Europe. They have long term strategic interests with Russia. They need to sit down. They should be part of that.

But as far as the rest of the Europeans are concerned, they don’t know anything about the region, they have no background or experience there. They’re up to mischief, they’re up to malevolent activities. We’re back to MI6 moving in to create havoc today in the Balkans in a place like Croatia, trying to foment conflict with Serbia or put people in power in any of these Balkan states that are like their contemporaries in Western Europe, enemies of their own population and countries.

This sort of thing needs to stop. But unfortunately, it’s on autopilot right now. And I don’t even think President Trump is aware of just how serious the problem is. But the notion that somehow or another what Macron thinks in Paris or Starmer in London is important to the outcome is nonsense. They’re just globalists clinging to power, trying to convince everybody that Russia is this great and powerful threat that can’t wait to overrun Europe, that’s just not true. It’s never, it’s not been true from the very beginning of this, and it’s less true now than at any point in the history of Europe.

Everybody, except the United States and its globalist friends wants peace they want peace and prosperity. That’s what they want.

America’s Proper Role

Now, the good news is that President Trump said something that makes a lot of sense, that we are in a backup mode. That’s a good thing. And he ought to repeat that, because these people, they need to come to terms with Russia, not us. We have interest in Russia. We want good relations with them. And I think privately, President Trump would say that the problem is that he cuts off his nose to spite his face on a routine basis by making comments and statements and failing to rein in the CIA and other entities, government entities, and get them on board with a real strategy that is promising in terms of its relevance to peace and prosperity.

But I’m glad he said backup. That’s where we belong in Europe, not as the first responder, not as the single key player representing everybody else. That’s nonsense.

The Reality of European Military Capacity

DANIEL DAVIS: And, you know, I’m going to show you something here that kind of illustrates why Europe is so keen on getting us not on the backup, but on the front line. Because one of the things that especially Macron and Starmer keep hitting relentlessly is this so called coalition of the willing. And this coalition of the willing they’ve been talking about. They want all these troops to be able to overlook the ceasefire that they want to get, or this end of term negotiations, et cetera.

But as Sean Bell pointed out on Sky News earlier today, that’s a bit of a heavier lift than they were thinking.

Sean Bell: “What form will they take? Ultimately, they have to be credible and they have to have teeth. One of the challenges that Ukraine faces is they’ve got at least 1,000 miles of frontline border, even more if you include the border with Belarus. And let’s give an idea of the scale required for troops on the ground. If you were to put troops 60ft apart, which doesn’t appear that credible as a deterrence, you’d need 100,000 troops to man the border. Now, you’ve got to give them a break. So they’ve got to have four months on, four months off, and then four months training, ready for deployment. So you actually need 300,000 troops to be able to man that. Where would these come from? Well, the harsh reality is, even if you use the whole of the UK army, about 30,000 deployable, that’s about 10%. There’s potential for France to provide another 10%, but it’s pretty clear Italy wouldn’t provide any. Poland is worried about its own national security. And there’s no way that America wants to get itself bogged down in Ukraine and Therefore, where would the rest of these troops come from? It’s just not a credible option.”

DANIEL DAVIS: I’m sorry, that was actually on the 19th. That wasn’t from this morning. I saw the video this morning. But his numbers are even off because of that. That’s if every troop went, was actually a combat troop standing on a picket line. But then you still have all the enablers and everything. So you’re probably, you’d probably be closer to like 6 or 700,000. And there’s not a fraction of that. So what is going to, I mean, when it comes down to nut cutting time and they actually have to produce, what is Europe going to do?

Russia’s Military Strength vs. NATO’s Delusions

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Not much. And there’s another factor to be considered that nobody ever brings up. If you go back to the aftermath of the Vietnam War and I entered the army from the Winter Ranger course. I graduated from West Point in ’76, but I went through obviously armored training and then went to the Winter Ranger course. So I reached my first unit of where I served, a cavalry unit in Germany in March of 1977.

Now our army, even at that point, was in very bad shape. And I would argue that by 1975 we had really bottomed out the Vietnam War, destroyed the United States Army. Wasn’t just NVA and the Viet Cong. Many of the policies that we had in place, the way the generals operated and managed the force, destroyed the United States Army.

It then took from, I would argue from 1975 to 1985 to rebuild the old Army. We didn’t really build a fundamentally new army. We just took the old World War II structure, improved upon it, put new equipment in it. We did change some training policies and personnel policies.

But what I’m trying to say is the Europeans cannot expect to have a real ground force of any real capability, properly organized, trained on a strategic level for 10 years. So the notion that some agreement could involve what you just mentioned and that force would be meaningful in any way, shape or form is absurd.

In the meantime, the force that he described would be sitting across from a Russian force that is very well trained, battle hardened, now very, very well led, I would argue, and has great technology at its disposal and knows how to fight. The whole thing is ludicrous nonsense.

The Austrian State Treaty Model

So you’ve got to go back to something like the Austrian State Treaty, and that needs to be the model. And that involved no U.S. European, NATO forces under any circumstances inside Austria. You’ll remember when we flew back from Saudi Arabia in 1991, we actually had to fly around Austria, because the Austrians were neutral. They wouldn’t allow us just flying troops back from the Middle East to enter their airspace.

That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a truly neutral state. That’s what the Russians want with limitations on what they can do. And as has been pointed out repeatedly by everyone from Ambassador Friedman to Professor Mearsheimer and a whole host of others, neutrality was the best thing that ever happened to Austria. They now have a higher standard of living than the Germans do. And that was never true in the past.

DANIEL DAVIS: And look, the part is just, it’s still stunning to me to see. I know you won’t be surprised by what follows here, but it does go to show that this is Lord Ricketts, who is a former national security advisor for the United Kingdom, was going on talking about the difficulties that people are talking about here, that what Sean Bell had mentioned and some of these others. But he says not to worry because as it turns out, Russia’s already lost.

Lord Ricketts: If you look at the big picture. They’ve really lost badly already because one of the things they did not want was more NATO closer to Russia. Well, they’ve got Finland and Sweden in NATO. They would never have joined if it hadn’t been for the war. And they’ve also got new determination by the Europeans to up their spending on defense, to take on more responsibility and to stand with Ukraine. So I think in the big picture, Russia has in an important sense already lost. And Ukraine is now going to be a pro western democratic country for the long term, A pro democratic Western country to be one of the…”

The Delusion of British Leadership

Biggest organized crime states in the world, heavily engaged in drug trafficking, child trafficking and every other horrible form of criminality is now going to be this liberal democratic paradise.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: I thought it was nice that he was sporting his Ukrainian pin on his lapel. So obviously this is a very objective thinker and analyst.

Listen, the whole British ruling class is infected with self delusion. The whole, you’re talking about a country right now that is nearing open rebellion against its government because the government is dedicated to the destruction of its own people. And he’s a part of that.

I think the truth is as follows. He’s obviously completely delusional and he’s wrong. Russia hasn’t lost a damn thing. Russia is in better shape now than it’s ever been. And Russia obviously is interested in peace as any sane person, any sane state anywhere in the world would be interested in peace and is looking for partners in peace.

But the partners are reluctant to leave this thing called NATO and strike out on their own, with the exception, obviously, of Prime Minister Orban and I would argue Fico in Slovakia. They’re at the vanguard, though, of a very large mob that is beginning to form.

NATO: A Terminal Patient

NATO is finished. I’ve said this a thousand times. It’s a terminal patient. In other words, you walk in the room and here’s the terminal patient. He’s hooked up to all the machinery. He can’t speak, move, or do much, and people like Ricketts want to give the patient a haircut and a shave. The truth is, the various others in the room are going to pull the plug on this patient. It’s going to go away.

NATO doesn’t serve the purpose for which it was founded, and it has been wandering in the wilderness looking for a reason to exist ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. They picked the wrong reason to exist, which was war on the Soviet Union. But they’re globalists. They need this enemy picture. They need the lie. They need the narrative that’s utterly and completely false and fictitious. They need it.

Because if it’s given up and people realize, gosh, we’ve lost badly, NATO has been a total failure. They’ve thrown everything they have but the kitchen sink at the Russians, and they’ve been crushed, and we’ve killed millions of people or destroyed this country of Ukraine, it may never recover to its former position or strength, ever. And all of this for what? To supposedly harm, hurt, destroy Russia? It’s a huge failure.

If Starmer is compelled to admit that, if Macron is compelled to admit it, if Merz is compelled to admit it, they’re finished immediately, within minutes. I think they’re all going to go away shortly anyhow. But nevertheless, that would be the downfall of the entire globalist project, of which project Ukraine is a big part.

The Immigration Crisis and European Awakening

Remember, these are all the same people that invited millions of people from North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere to come into the various European states. And it’s created chaos and havoc because the people that live in these countries have said, “Wait a minute, we can’t afford them. We don’t want them. Why are they here? What’s wrong with being German? French, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish?”

Everybody’s beginning to ask these questions. The Italians have had it, but nobody’s been willing to stand up and say, “Okay, I will take all the abuse for being everything that you say that I am, bigot, racist, all this crap. I don’t care anymore. I love my country. I’m going to defend it to the bitter end. And the war that we need to win is not in Eastern Ukraine. It’s inside our own countries.”

That’s the issue that’s coming today. Nigel Farage is holding some sort of, or may have already held it, public meeting, where he was going to display some strategy on how he’s going to deport large numbers of people from England. That’s what we need.

You had several thousand Austrians, I don’t know how many tens of thousands, they demonstrated in Vienna recently and they all chanted, “No importing, time for deporting.” And they want to deport as many of these non-Europeans as they’ve got in their country.

The point is this. There’s always a certain number of people from outside any society that can be admitted to the society who are different from the society in small numbers, and that the society can cope with that. What the society doesn’t cope well with is a massive invasion of millions. We’re not coping well with it. They’re not coping well with it. It has to stop and it has to be reversed. And that’s where we’re headed. We’re all headed there.

America’s Urban Decay

I just wish we had a real strategy. I cheer when I see President Trump say Washington is a disgrace. Of course it is. I’ve seen it deteriorate for decades. I was always embarrassed with my European colleagues in NATO whenever I’d come back for conferences in Washington, and they came with me. And you see what you had on the streets of Washington, and the criminality was out of control, and it was badly run, badly organized. Dulles Airport was a disaster.

He wants to change that. I’m 100% for it, but of course, you and I know that’s the tip of the iceberg. We have at least 10 or 12 major cities, over a million that are in terrible condition. And what do you get from the critics? “Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s gotten so much better. Oh, we should be celebrating the presence of tens of thousands of human beings strung out on drugs, living on the streets. That’s a great thing. What’s wrong with that?”

This all has to stop. Same problems in France and Italy and Germany. This is common to all of us. It will be reversed. It’s going to be difficult, it’s going to be ugly, and the whole globalist project is going to collapse.

The Reality of Ukraine’s Future

Ukraine is going to go away as a problem because we can’t solve it. And I think President Trump knows we cannot solve it. This is a matter for decision by the Russians. Always has been, for a very simple reason. Who was willing to fight the Russians? Were we willing to fight? No. Were any of the European states willing to go in there and fight?

With the possible exception of the Poles, who sent thousands of Poles into that Ukrainian army to fight and at least 2 or 3,000 came back dead, the Poles have said, “Whoops, we made a mistake. That was a dumb idea.” So I don’t see anybody going over there anymore, period.

I think the whole idea of guarantees is something that needs to go back to the Austrian state treaty. What was guaranteed at that point? There were no forces involved. We and our European allies simply said, “Yes, we will abide by the provisions in this treaty. We will not try to introduce weapons or equipment or people or anything else into Austria. Austria will govern itself.”

And we accept the fact that the Russians are going to monitor this for some 20, 25 years to ensure that all the provisions that they have outlined have actually been accepted and implemented and it worked. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what needs to happen in Ukraine. But if you say we’re going to do that, then you’re admitting the whole thing is a lie. The entire project from the beginning has been a lie.

The Coalition of the Unwilling

DANIEL DAVIS: And it’s interesting you use that phrase, Russians are willing to fight, and clearly we are not. I often think it’s comic when you hear so many of this coalition of the willing and they want these security guarantees as a deterrent to Russia. When we have proven for three and a half years nobody in Europe is going to fight with their troops now, why in the world would they do it later? It defies real logic.

But the Russians, on the other hand, were very clear on this. And earlier on one of my shows today, we actually had the deputy UN Ambassador for Russia, Polyansky, Dmitry Polyansky, on. And I asked him, I said, back in, I think it was May, your boss, the UN Ambassador from Russia, said on the UNSC floor that Russia would either accomplish its objectives for the special military operation in negotiations or on the battlefield.

And I asked him this morning, has any of that changed from the outset? “Not only my boss, but President Putin, Minister Lavrov, were saying that we are ready to continue our fight if the other side is not listening to what we are saying and if the other side prefers to see the solution on the battlefield. This is not the scenario that we prefer, but we are ready for this scenario. And nothing has changed in this regard.”

And so there you have it there. So the question is, is this just Russia putting on a good face, or do you think they actually mean what they say?

The Reality of American Foreign Policy Challenges

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, I think Ambassador Polyanski is correct. And I don’t think there’s any question about their readiness to do what they need to do to secure their country. And that involves doing exactly what Ambassador Polyanski said.

We, on the other hand, and we need to keep this in mind, we are now suddenly presenting Maduro in Venezuela as another potential Saddam Hussein who needs to be removed. We see how well that regime change worked in Iraq. The people of Iraq want us out of the country. And Iraq is now closely aligned with Iran, the very state we said we didn’t want to have any say in what happened in Iraq. We did everything we could to put them into power in Iraq.

So I think now we’re dealing with something similar in Venezuela. I hope we don’t think in terms of direct intervention, because if we do, we’ll ultimately regret it. On the other hand, I fully support the notion that the drug trafficking and criminality that emanates from Venezuela and moves north via sea and up through Central America and over the Mexican border, all of that needs to be dealt with very substantially. But I would not go down there to fix it, because our track record of fixing those kinds of things is not good. But I see a lot of evidence that we’re building up for something like that.

Multiple Fronts of Conflict

At the same time, we see a build up going on right now in the Middle East to prepare Israel for what ostensibly appears to be Israel’s resumption of war with Iran. And of course, we’ve been involved in Azerbaijan and Armenia, and we had a nice beautiful reality TV program showing Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and Pashinyan, the leader of Armenia, sit together and supposedly sign some great peace accord. That all seems to be falling apart pretty rapidly.

And the various mafias that had kept Aliyev in power are now really toying with his removal because they’ve been utterly annihilated inside Russia, and their hopes and dreams for expanding their control and influence and money are evaporating. And the Armenians that normally sell all of their fruit to the Russians have been halted at the Russian border and can’t export anything.

So I think we’re losing, frankly. And a lot of that, of course, is Israel inspired. Most of it is, although we also want to break up the BRICS. One Belt, One Road back to China that runs up through Iran and through Azerbaijan and Central Asia. It’s not going to work. But we’re busy trying to do those things. And then we have this business in Venezuela germinating.

Lack of Coherent Strategy

And at home, you know, we’ve gone into Washington now the president’s talking about going to other cities. Well, that’s all fine, well and good, but again, where’s the coherent strategy? Are we just listening to the reality TV show again? “Oh, I thought of this last night. This is what we’re going to do.” And everybody says, “Oh, that’s great, we’re going to do this.”

Now, there doesn’t seem to be any coherence. There aren’t any cogent arguments for or against things, don’t seem, don’t see any discussions. And our position overseas has been dramatically weakened. I mean, now President Modi, who in my judgment is the leader of one of the most important countries on the planet, India, with what, 1.1 billion or 1.2 billion people, refuses to take phone calls now from President Trump, won’t talk to him. I think that’s very unfortunate. But that’s a product of the tariff business, which I think has backfired badly for the most part on the United States.

So the whole thing is a mess. But the reality TV show continues, and Americans are easily swayed by optics. If it looks good and sounds good, it must be good. And that’s where most Americans that watch the mainstream media that we were talking about earlier really reside. They reside in the corner that watches the big screen and they are mesmerized by the reality TV show.

Israeli Military Leadership Tensions

DANIEL DAVIS: Now, since you mentioned the subject of the Middle East, there was reportedly an actual shouting match in an Israeli cabinet meeting between the chief of the IDF and Netanyahu, who wants to continue on with this occupation of Gaza, to continue on with this methodical, by bulldozer, physical destruction of the infrastructure. So it turns it to physical dust. Not literal, but physical.

And he says, “We can’t.” The IDF commander argued, “We can’t do this. We need an immediate ceasefire to end this conflict, otherwise we put both our troops and the remaining hostages at risk.” And so far, it seems that Netanyahu has gone on with his own version of a reality TV show. It says, “Nope, that’s not true. I’m not going to go with it,” at least so far. They’re going to continue on for the occupation. Where do you see that going?

Israel’s Recruitment Challenges and Continued Support

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, the Israelis, I’m told, are also trying to recruit mercenaries from various sources in the West. People are willing to come in there and do the job for money. They’re also trying to entice Jews from the United States, North America and other parts of Western Europe to come back and join the IDF and fight. That’s not going very well.

So I think there’s no doubt he’s in a lot of trouble, but he still has his ace in the hole and that’s absolute control over us. And we are not scaling back our support in any way, shape or form. And we are providing the Israeli Defense Force with everything that it could possibly need. And there has been no change in that. By the way, we’re still supplying the Ukrainians, we’re sending things over there.

Now, we just got to look at where the money goes and the activities as opposed to listening to the rhetoric. And that’s when you discover really nothing has changed very much since Biden left. And so that’s the problem too. So I think Mr. Netanyahu has serious problems, but he still has a great deal of power and influence and he’s not going to give that up. And that includes power and influence over us.

Remember, if he backs down from any of this, that’s the end of his Greater Israel Project, which has implications for Syria, for Lebanon, for Egypt, for Jordan, for everybody. He’s not prepared to do that. He says it’s not over and I’m going to continue pressing forward. And I still think he has enormous support from the Israeli population. So that’s why I’ve said from the beginning that what began with the attack on Iran during our negotiations with the Iranians is not over. That was a pause, not an end of the conflict. And that’s going to re-erupt, I suspect, in September.

Military Limitations and Escalating Violence

DANIEL DAVIS: But now, where can this go, Doug? Because when you take a look at that, the Israeli Defense Force has not been able to in many meaningful way, end the conflict in Gaza by itself. The Houthis are still out there. Even the Hezbollah is greatly weakened, but they still exist in there. Iran still exists with its missile capture capabilities that clearly can penetrate all of the integrated air defenses that Israel has.

And then you see things like what happened was reported in the last 48 hours or so where Israel attacked a hospital and then when the emergency workers came to get the victims out, they double tapped it and blew up all those people. Just a heinous, heinous crime by any stretch. And yet they’re, there’s no backing down from any of that to keep going. But there’s no, I don’t see any capacity to actually accomplish what you talk about, this Greater Israel Project, however defined, I don’t think that they have the capacity to do it, however much we support them. Where is this going?

American Public Opinion and Economic Support

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, the Israeli Air Force, other than its inability to necessarily, as you point out, overwhelm and utterly destroy the integrated air defenses in Iran, which were damaged and have since been repaired and are growing increasingly effective, as I’m told, through various intelligence sources. But keep something in mind. If you believe in what you’re doing, you keep doing it, regardless of the potential downsides.

As long as we continue to subsidize the Israeli economy and keep that afloat, and we’re pumping huge quantities of money into that place. It’s not just military, it’s also to keep up the standard of living, because otherwise Israel would fall apart, you know, overnight without that kind of economic subsidy. That’s one thing.

The other thing is that if you talk to Americans, and I try to talk to them wherever I travel, I would say at least 50% of the time. The Americans I talked to and I asked them about Gaza, they either haven’t paid much attention to it, or they say, “That’s fine, kill them.” And I say, “Well, these are human beings.” I said, “No, they’re not. These are Muslim Arabs. To hell with them. Let them kill them. It’s not our problem.” I’m serious. I run into people that tell me that flat out, “You’re wrong. I think this is great. Trump’s doing exactly the right thing. Let these Israelis kill them.”

Cultural Stereotypes and Media Influence

Now, that’s not totally surprising because most Americans have been fed a steady diet of hatred towards Arabs. I mean, let’s face it, to know the Arabs from the standpoint of the average soldier who was shot at on the ground was not necessarily to love them. You know, we were in the Middle East, we understood the differences in culture and mentality and behavior, but the average person doesn’t understand that. The average person simply says, “Oh, these people are terrible, they deserve the worst.” The Israelis are counting on that. And they have the news media to reinforce that negative stereotype repeatedly.

And let’s be frank. You know, the Muslims don’t help matters. You know, if they bring up things like Sharia law and honor killings and all this in places like Canada or the Midwest, that doesn’t endear them under any circumstances. That’s unacceptable inside our societies. And that’s immediately projected onto the people that live in Gaza or the West Bank, rightly or wrongly, and in most cases, I think probably wrongly, but nevertheless, that’s a big issue. And that’s why the so called MAGA base continues to support the kind of policy that goes on. It’s not easy for me to understand or justify. I’m just saying these are the facts.

Prospects for Continued Conflict

So if you look at that, you look at the enormous quantity of money that’s on hand to continue to buy support in Congress, if you look at the people that surround the president and who they are and what they represent and the sectors from which they’ve come, particularly the financial sector, there’s no reason to expect any change. So I think we’ll see a resumption of the war. I think we’re going to see more people killed.

Now, what will that provoke in the region, and could that bring in the Russians, the Chinese and others? That’s eminently possible. And that’s a whole different set of questions worth exploring. But right now I think it can continue. So I do not sign up for the notion that Israel, because of its obvious internal strains, is necessarily incapable of sustaining the larger operation.

America’s True Interests in the Middle East

DANIEL DAVIS: They may not be able to accomplish it, but they can sustain it. I do agree with you on that. In the remainder of the time we get Doug, let me ask you, what is in America’s actual interest in the Middle East? If Trump should call you up again and say, “Hey, I’d like your advice, what should we do here?” What could the president do that would actually accomplish American genuine interest in the Middle East?

Middle East Policy and Strategic Interests

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Well, first, let’s be frank. No one is going to call me for advice on anything in the Middle East who’s currently in the White House or for that matter, on the Hill. You heard what Ted Cruz had to say in his discussion with Tucker. I think Ted Cruz is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. He can dress it up in whatever form he wants with religion or anything else. But the bottom line is the money has been invested. The return on that investment is the war that Israel is waging with our support in the region. So that’s not going to change.

What I would say is that our interest globally is very straightforward. We’re always interested in stability, or we should be, so that if you see evidence for a potential conflict emerging, such as we saw in January, February, March of 2022, our immediate interest was not to gain control of resources or minerals or anything else, or oil or gas. It was to find a way to restore some measure of stability and order, a degree of stability and order that could exist without the presence or use of American military power. The best arrangement is an arrangement with which everybody can live, not necessarily the ones that we support.

Trade Relations and Strategic Partnerships

That’s true in the Middle East. We always want to do business. We want good commercial relations. That’s why the fact that someone like Modi, even though India’s contribution to our trade is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3% or 4%, there’s very little in the United States that we buy from India, even though that’s the case. This is the leader of a very large country with a potentially strategic role in the world. And he won’t talk to us anymore. And it’s all about the tariff business.

It’s even more serious with the Chinese, for obvious reasons. I don’t need to go into that yet. We have these strange decisions. That one was just announced that for reasons that make no sense to me at all, President Trump has decided to admit 600,000 Chinese students to study in the United States. Frankly speaking, I would get rid of the tariffs and find a way to do business with the Chinese, but I certainly wouldn’t invite any more into the country, not given the track record.

Education and Chinese Student Policy

The other thing is, the argument is, “Well, we have too many colleges and too few 18-year-olds to attend.” Well, then maybe some of these colleges need to go away. These land grant universities that were developed decades ago, if they can’t find people that will attend them, then it’s time for us to make some adjustments. This goes into the whole education argument. What are we educating people to do? What are we churning out? What good is a graduate in basket weaving or ancient Greek culture or something? It’s a waste of money. So that’s another debate.

But what I’m saying is the Chinese students in this country also have other interests. Every Chinese that leaves China is told, “If you find anything of value for China, it’s your solemn obligation and duty to steal it, get it, and bring it home.” That’s been true for 2,000 years. This is not a new policy invented by Xi, who just happens to be the current emperor. So why are we doing this? I would not do that. So I don’t understand that.

But I would change my commercial relationship with the Chinese dramatically. And I think we need to do that. We need to come to some sort of understanding. This has not been possible with President Trump. When he walked in, he had virgin territory. It was completely open and new. He could have done any number of things. And what he’s done is largely double down on bad decisions by the people that preceded him.

DANIEL DAVIS: That is a problem.

Government Investment in Private Sector

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: By the way, he’s now taken – he’s now signed off on the government taking a 10% interest in Intel. Why are we taking an interest in a high tech firm in the IT world and putting the government in a position where it’s investing and is now on the hook for the taxpayers’ money that was invested? It doesn’t make much sense to me. Why are we doing that? The government doesn’t know anything about Intel’s business. The last people I’d want involved in the project there is anybody from the government.

DANIEL DAVIS: Exactly.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: So that’s a mistake. The other thing is that the entire sector that Intel is part of is flooded with cash. In fact, a friend of mine in the business told me this morning, he said, “Doug, we have too much cash chasing too few good ideas.” Well, why is the government there?

I’m beginning to become very suspicious when I see the dead hand of Peter Thiel and his friends in Palantir and the CIA now moving behind the scenes installing people in candidates, now Congress. They probably say, “Well, that’s fine, maybe there’s more money in this for me,” which depresses me beyond belief. We shouldn’t be in that business. Remember Chrysler, the bailout, what a catastrophe that was. And the only thing we managed to do is reinforce the surging power of the Japanese automobile industry.

DANIEL DAVIS: Good.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Yeah. You’ve got to let some people fail. This is called creative destruction. That’s the nature of the marketplace. Anyhow, there are a lot of things happening right now and I don’t think the American people understand what’s going on because they’re not being told and they’re not really watching it.

Upcoming Dallas Event

DANIEL DAVIS: Well, that’s one of the reasons we love having you on this show here and one of the reasons I understand that you’re heading to Dallas coming up pretty soon. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about what that is, especially if any of our folks might be out there to come see you.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Yeah, I hope so. We’re setting something up for the 4th of October at the Frontiers of Flight Museum. I keep screwing that up. It’s this brilliant museum just about five miles outside the center of Dallas. And with me will be, of course, the judge, who needs no introduction or explanation, and Natalie Brunel, who I think is one of the sharpest and most intelligent young women I’ve run into. And we have moderating this panel through a whole series of questions, Olga Ravazzi, who is an extraordinarily bright person and also brings an interesting perspective given her background.

I think this is an attempt to start a conversation across the country about all these kinds of issues. It’s not designed for us to necessarily tell the audience how the world should be, it’s rather to go through a series of questions and all the things that you and I have mentioned here and more, and then interact with the audience. And it’s a select audience. Not everybody’s going to be there. It’ll be about 350 people, we hope, and they’ll have a chance to respond to the questions and respond to what we say.

Then, of course, there’ll be a cutoff point. We can’t spend three hours on one topic or two hours. It’s basically a reception for an hour and then two hours nonstop of dealing with all of these things. A friend of mine said it sounds like a combination of Phil Donahue and Jay Leno. I said, “Well, maybe it is.” We want to interact with the audience. We want to do this, we hope, every 90 to 120 days across the country. So Dallas is the start point. We want people to come in, listen and respond and comment and express their views because we really do want to get a flavor for what Americans think. I know that may sound silly, but it’s…

DANIEL DAVIS: No, that sounds fantastic to me. Hardly anybody does that anymore. Everybody just feeds American people, so they don’t want to know what they think.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Anyway, I think it’s going to be fun. I think it’ll be interesting. Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, is the location. And we have – it starts at 5 for the reception and then 6 to 8, and then we’ll be having dinner with some of the people that are coming to the event afterwards. So I think it’s a good beginning. We’ll see how it turns out.

But this is not just for people that agree with us. People are encouraged to show up with views, with attitude. You want to express your views? Absolutely. We’re happy to hear it and we want it. We want to air these items. Just as I said this, the idea of the federal government taking a 10% stake in Intel is something – the last thing, frankly, that I would have expected from President Trump, who is a businessman. Any businessman with his background, experience, I would think, would want the private sector unencumbered with the federal government. But I’ve been wrong before.

DANIEL DAVIS: I guess we’ll find out. Well, wish you the best of luck and we’ll look forward to hearing a report from you on the other side of that, how that ended up going. So thanks for sharing that. We appreciate it.

DOUGLAS MCGREGOR: Thanks a lot, Dan. Appreciate that.

Closing Remarks

DANIEL DAVIS: And we appreciate you guys too, being with us today, always a reminder. Obviously, we’d like you to like and subscribe if you haven’t already done that. Also this afternoon I’m going to be talking a little bit more on the tactical battlefront that there has been some breakthrough in both Kupiansk, some more back battles going on in the Pokrovsk area as well as in the Zaporizhzhia area. So a lot going on there. We’re going to talk about that at 2:30pm this afternoon.

Also, be sure to let your friends know who like to get their information via podcast. We’re out there right now. Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast Addiction. Type in Daniel Davis Deep Dive and they will find us there. We are also on Substack now because I know a lot of other folks like to get their information through the written word. You can share that with them as well. Daniel Davis Deep Dive dot substack dot com – we’re out there waiting for you as well.

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