Okay, we are live. And we have with us Alexander Mercutis in London. And we have joining us for the first time, but we hope to have Daniel Mcadams on many times going forward. Daniel, it is great to finally have you join us on The Duran.

Well, thank you very much. Good morning from Texas, gentlemen.

Great to have you with us, Daniel. I have your information where people can find you in the description box down below. Would you like to tell people that are watching right now where is the best place to connect with you?

Well, the Ron Paul Institute, is where we put up our articles. We just put up a couple, two or three a day that are the things we think that you are to most benefit from. Doctor Ron Paul and I do the daily Ron Paul Liberty Report live on Rumble at noon, Monday through Thursday, and Friday they do a financial show at the same time. And I'm on Twitter @Daniel Elmick Adams, or X, I guess I should say, or X Twitter.

Twitter X.

Twitter X.

And I will have all of that information also pinned as a comment as well. So, Alexander, we have Daniel with us for about 30 to 45 minutes, and we have a lot to talk about from Ukraine to to Trump. So, Alexander, let's get started. By the way, by the way, Alexander, before you start, a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on Locals, Rumble, Odyssey, YouTube, and Rockfin, and a big shout out, a big hello to our amazing moderators. Thank you very much, moderators, for all the help that you give us.

Alexander, let's get started. Yeah, well, we're incredibly privileged to have Daniel Mcadams with us because, of course, Daniel understands something which I find incredibly difficult to understand, which is American parliamentary politics, which are increasingly Baroque, at least to me, even by the standards of British Parliament, they're complicated. He worked with Ron Paul in the House of Representatives. He knows the system well. He knows how the two houses work. He knows how politics works. He knows how politics works in the United States. And the United States remains the single most important country. There are other countries which are becoming important, but it is the United States which remains at the center of the system. And the United States is going through an extraordinary time. We have wars. The United States is involved in two great wars now, one in Ukraine, where it is fighting a proxy war with Russia and losing. We have another war in the Middle East, which it's more difficult to say where it's going exactly, but there's criticisms, mountain criticisms of the policies that the administration is following. All of this, whilst there are doubts about the future course of the US economy, which once bestrowed the world, and it is still a very very powerful economy indeed, we have a presidency which in my opinion is becoming increasingly eccentric and dangerous in many of the things that it's doing.

But we'll see what Daniel has to say about this. We have an election season coming up, which looks like it's going to be the most fraught that I have ever known. Suffice to say we now have legal proceedings being brought against the most popular politician on the opposition side, Donald Trump, multiple legal proceedings. We now have had an extraordinary decision from the Supreme Court of Colorado, which I personally, I'm going to say straight away, I think it is completely and utterly and almost grotesquely wrong, but the very fact that it's been made at all shows how fraught the situation is. Daniel, where shall we begin? Shall we start with the foreign policy, perhaps spend a little time on that and then concentrate on the meat of this program, which is the domestic politics of the United States, and maybe have a look at the economic situation too. But the foreign policy, it seems to me, is all over the place. We've had the administration overcommitting, overinvesting in Ukraine. It shouldn't have invested there in the first place, in my opinion. That was a completely misconception policy. They're having trouble getting their Appropriations Bill for Ukraine through Congress.

I should say we corresponded about this, and you'll be able to enlighten us further on where this is going. It looks to me increasingly that we have a fallback idea, a disastrous one, in my opinion, which is that if we can't get Congress to vote the money, then we'll just take the Russians' money and use it instead. Am I getting this right? And where is this going with Congress? Do you think?

Pardon me. I think you absolutely have it right. It's difficult to read the tea leaves in Congress because I have to say, it's been 10 years since I've been there, and a lot has changed since then, and not for the better. And it wasn't that great back then. Back when Dr. Paul was in the house and I was working for him, we did normal appropriations and authorization bills. We carefully, as careful as possible, looked into the NDA, National Defense Authorization, the foreign affairs authorization, and members were able to offer, pardon me, amendments to change things. Members of Congress had much more power than they have nowadays. The power has all been devolved to committee, chair and leadership. So you essentially don't have a functioning parliamentary body, and I think that's why you have 430 some petulent children that are running things because they're really not running things. So they have a lot of time for mischief, and they're not really that awfully interested in learning much outside the very narrow narrative that's provided to them by the still functioning, barely US mainstream media. So I would say, gentlemen, starting probably if you had to put a date on it, I would say starting in 2020, in a way, with the arrival of the COVID lockdowns and the COVID reactions and how you had this panic and hysteria where cooler heads did not prevail.

In fact, cooler heads were lopped off. And that continued really without a pause when it came for Ukraine, they just basically... And there are a lot of memes and cartoons. They basically just switched the flags and then it was Ukraine on their profile pages and what have you. And you had the same herd mentality where there was no pause. Putin is Hitler and we have to stop him. Otherwise, he'll be in Washington soon. And when you had any cooler heads in this, I'm thinking back in early 2022, when we were passing the initial large authorization in the House and Senate of what it was, at 100 billion, just a little bit of change. When cooler heads tried to prevail, and I'm thinking specifically of someone like Senator Ram Paul, who said, Okay, this money is going to pass. I get it. I can read what's happening here. But can we at least put in an Inspector General, someone like we've had in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan reconstruction, who's been extraordinarily effective, in my opinion, even suggesting that incurred the wrath of the entire Washington Beltway. He's obviously working for Putin. He's obviously on the payroll.

So there's no time for pause. And here we are a year and a half later, and there's nothing but ruins in front of them. So what do you do? You change your Ukraine flag for an Israeli flag, and you full steam ahead. So it's very upsetting. You gentlemen, I'm sure, will remember well, and I'm sorry to belabor this, but it was a similar mentality back in 2002 when the neocons and the Bush administration were determined to go to Iraq. And every day people like Judith Miller and The New York Times would put out another piece of slop, and it would be dutifully amplified by the mainstream media, which had a lot more power back then. So you still have the same herd mentality, but I would argue that the stakes are now much higher than attacking Saddam Hussein.

Well, absolutely. This is Russia. They actually do have weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons more even than we do. And they have a very, very powerful army and one gets the sense that they're winning. That's certainly the sense we're getting here on the Durant. We've been following the war very, very carefully. Is this something that people in Washington-State-of-the-Uk, we understand that this war is not going well? Because we're seeing all this talk all the time about this is a stalemate and we can hold it there indefinitely and we can give them a bit more money here and a bit more money there and it will somehow all go away and roll over. But that's not how it looks to us. I'd say this, I don't know whether people in the US understand that, but it's not how people in Europe see it. I was reading some articles today in the Financial Times, especially. At the beginning to panic, they're saying if Ukraine goes, falls, the usual thing. I don't know that people necessarily take this domino theory nonsense particularly seriously, but they will feel that Europe has been led up a particular path. And inevitably, there's going to be a backlash against the US when all this is over.

Do people in the US understand that? And are they thinking about some way out of this? I mean, JD Vance talks about talks, starting negotiations. I mean, is anybody going to do that? Do you think?

Well, the political leadership in the US is the trailing edge. We've seen the leading edge is public opinion. And we've seen poll after poll. We've seen support from the initial groundswell of support for poor, plucky democracy Ukraine back in 2020, when Putin woke up one morning and decided to invade out of the clear blue. Of course, everyone rallied around the flag. But then when the American public sobered up, you see the numbers completely going south. And this is even among Republicans. And I think there was a poll maybe a month or so ago where even among Republicans, including the neocons, there's less than 50 % support for more money to Ukraine. Again, Congress is a trailing edge on this. But what really worries me and concerns me seriously is that you have this circular reasoning. You have an Echo Chamber in Washington, DC, certainly members. Now that's a given. Members and senators are not enlightened. There's a myth that they are more well informed. They have access to things that the rest of us don't. Not true. Absolutely not true. And I spent 11 years on the Hill, and I know that for a fact.

They read the mainstream media. They have absolutely no interest in alternative media, with the exception of a few members. And I would guess probably Senator Vance, certainly, Congressman Thomas Massey would. But with very few exceptions, I apologize for that. There is very little interest in anything external. But what worries me more is the circular reasoning within the State Department and Pentagon. And I think we see, not to get out ahead of us, but I think we see in the State Department, the extensive use of the back channels, of the alternative channels. And I spent a little bit of time working in the State Department, I know a little bit about how it works. But the fact that you had dozens and dozens of State Department experts using the back channel to say we disagree with the policy should be encouraging. But nevertheless, especially when you have the Pentagon basically becoming a propaganda outlet rather than a war fighting outlet, at least when it comes to the top layer, the political layer, you've got danger on your hands. And as you point out very well, Alexander, when you mess up with Syria, it's terrible for the Syrians, but when you mess up your Russia policy, it's terrible for the Americans.

Can I just ask this? This opposition in the House to funding for Ukraine, is it really about the war and about Ukraine, or is it about American domestic politics? Is it about the battle within the Republican Party, the populist wing, as some of our friends call it, and the Mitch McCarnell wing? Is it about making life more difficult for the President? Or is it based upon real convictions and real concerns? Or is it a mixture of all of those things? Because to be honest, I think there are some people, Marjorie Taylor-Greep, for example, who I think is a real convinced, committed opponent of funding for Ukraine. But I think in some other cases, this is simply a case of some people saying, well, why should we give money for Joe Biden's war ahead of the election next year? This is what I think, but perhaps you can enlighten us there.

I mean, I do find it a little bit personally depressing because I would like to think that our superior argumentation and principles would have carried the day. But I am slightly dismayed that I don't believe that really is the case. There are some exceptions, and they're leading the opinion makers. And I know for a fact, because one of the things that we did when Dr. Paul was on the Hill is we hosted a lot of closed door luncheons for Republican members of Congress. And a lot of things they said in private, they wouldn't necessarily say in public nor vote that way at first. But then things start to change when they start to talk to each other. So I can imagine that this virus of non-interventionism, at least when it comes to Ukraine, might be spreading. But nevertheless, I think, unfortunately, you are right. You do have domestic concerns. Principles haven't carried the day. It's more like rubbing their hands together, and unfortunately, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, rubbing their hands together saying, How can we get something out of this? How can we give Biden a black eye by making this all about the border?

You give us some new legislation on the border. You change asylum laws, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and we'll give you your money for Ukraine. Now that, I think, was much more of a danger three weeks ago or two weeks ago before the House adjourned and the Senate stayed on for another week or so. That was a bigger danger. But I would say every day that passes that they don't authorize this money is a day that's a good day for us. The momentum is in our favor because the flavor of the month is now getting a little bit stale. And we saw that from the last trip of Zelenski to Washington, DC. He's now become toxic. He's become, crypto night in Washington, DC. And as much as they loved him, they can certainly turn on him. You can ask Gaddafi about that.

What about this incredible idea, which is now being talked about a lot in Europe of seizing Russian assets, using that instead to fund the war. We got $260 million there. So it's a sitting around. After all, it is somebody else's property. But one gets the sense that that's merely an inconvenience for some people rather than the problem, which is an incredible thing to say about the United States, by the way. But do you think this is really going to happen? Because the Financial Times, interestingly, is worried about it. They've done an editorial today saying that this would be a very, very bad idea, but they seem to think that it might actually happen.

I mean, it seems like they would be going full rogue if that's the case. But all of these wonderful tools that they had, look at the oil price cap. That was supposed to kneecap the Russians didn't do so. We're on the 12th package now of sanctions that haven't done it, and they keep trying to escalate. And it's almost comical in a way, how the effect has always been the opposite. I think there are some assets in Russia that might be seizable by Russia, assets of the West that may be seizable as well. So if you start down this path, it looks like we're going toward chaos. And again, I think that given the situation, Russia has the escalation dominance. It's proving itself more agile, I think, certainly than the EU and the United States when it comes to these matters.

What some people seem to overlook, or so it seems to me is that one of the fundamental principles upon which the American economy was based was the sanctity of private property rights, not just private property rights, but state property rights, property rights generally, and the administration, the impartial administration of law. That was how the US grew and became prosperous and rich. People were able to engage in free activity, entrepreneurship, material activity. They knew that their property rights were protected, that the courts would administer them, that the government wouldn't seize that money. And importantly, people around the world knew that also. That's one reason why they're prepared to lend money to the United States and park their money in the United States. And of course, not just the United States. Perhaps in Britain, we're even more vulnerable to this because we're such a smaller economy. But that was what we did. Now, Dr. Paul does understand that. I wonder sometimes whether people in the White House do. In fact, I get the sense that they don't really care.

Well, I think they're backed into a corner. They failed in literally every part of their foreign policy. They don't deserve the blame for Afghanistan, because that can be shared equally over the past 20 years from all the presidents, but certainly contributed to it, and they're backed into a corner. But I think America is in a state of complete shell shock. I spent a number of years living in Europe and working as an election monitor for the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. And I can tell you, if we ever went to a country to monitor an election where the person in power was having the top opposition leader thrown in jail or getting rid of, gotten off of the ballot, even the OSCE might make a peep in that case. So we've devolved into this banana republic where the stakes of politics are so high that your team R or team D and you don't care. We may get into this later, but this whole issue with the Colorado ballot is it? Because if you are team D and you're following the pack, well, maybe we'll gain from this. If you're team D and you're a little smarter, you're saying, Oh, crap, this is a bad idea.

If you're Team R, say, Well, if they could do it, why can't we ban Biden from the ballots in these states? I just think that everything is coming apart at the seams in the United States, including, as you as you point out, the basic economic bedrock of our society.

Well, indeed, the decision, the Colorado decision, I think is an absolute monstrosity. I read the 14th Amendment. The history of it is something I actually once long ago studied. It was part of my first degree was studying the American Civil War, which I did intensively, not just the Civil War, but the politics of it, the war between the states, as people still call it. I studied all of that and how the 14th Amendment came about and the reconstruction laws and all of that. Taking this amendment and weaponising it in this fashion against a political opponent seems incredible. And getting a court, a high court in one of the states to go along with this, going against the opinions of its own chief justice, I would not have believed this possible. If you'd asked me five, ten years ago, can this happen? I said, in America? No. And yet it has.

And it's all well, well, but Trump. It's because of Trump. Trump has driven the country completely insane. And we can see this repeated in Maine and anywhere else. And these are perhaps states that Trump wouldn't have carried anyway because of our electoral college system. At the end of the day, it may not make such a difference. However, as you say, it's the principle. It's astonishing. Who would have ever believed? I read part of the opinion, at least of the... And remember, these are all seven of these judges on the Colorado Supreme Court are appointed by Democratic governors. So the fact that three of them have dissented, and at least some of the dissent I've read makes a lot of sense that there's no mechanism for enforcement, where basically this is an extra constitutional punishment of a candidate, which has no basis. There's no system. There's no way of doing this. This is someone who has not even been charged with an insurrection, much less have been convicted. And even if he was charged, it wouldn't have changed anything. So the reach here, and I think that's why you're seeing people in the Democratic Party, the old leadership like, and I don't remember specifically if it was James Carville who said it, but someone like him who's been an operative for decades have said, this is going to backfire.

This is a bad idea. And even Frank Lunt, a Republican pollmaster who hates Trump with the passion, he says, You guys don't know what you're getting into. You're making him more popular. And yet maybe there is a degree of satisfaction that we get from that or that I get from that because they deserve a bloody nose. But nevertheless, when you look at the system as a whole, and it's a great word, if you weaponize literally every aspect of American life, well, then you become the system, as it was, into the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. And I moved to Hungary right after the end of communism. And so there's still very heavily... The culture was subsumed with that idea of us versus them. Were you in the party or were you a dissonant and what have you? And this is where we're getting to and it's toxic.

Absolutely. I studied Soviet law, by the way, and there was the foundational principle articulated by Prashinsky, who was Stalin's chief prosecutor, in which he said, You don't look at the evidence, you look at the person. That's what really matters. You don't worry about whether the evidence, there's any evidence there or even whether there's any law there, it's the person who is there. That is the underlying principle of Soviet law at that time. And it's in Soviet legal textbooks, incredible, as it says. But at least that was straightforward and honest. In America, of course, America is supposed to function in a completely different way. And as I often point out to people, America, to a very great extent, is a product of its constitution. The two countries emerged the constitution and the nation arose together. If you take the constitution out, if you distort it and disfigure it and manipulate it in this way and the legal system in this way, what you have left, it may still be a political apology, but it is no longer the United States of America as it was originally set up to be. I think this is something which again, Americans need to understand.

And it's all about wielding power at that point.

Absolutely.

And you see in the US, you see the complete destruction of what would be the traditional left, the progressive left. You saw we worked with coalitions from the traditional progressive left even up through the Iraq war. That's gone with very few exceptions in the US. The populist right may be in the emergence, but it's nothing like, in my opinion, now there's some hope there, but there's nothing like we had maybe 20 years ago when Pat McKennan, for example, in the US, was leading a right-wing populist movement against war and against interventionism. And by the way, for the working class in America. That was Pat McCannan's big appeal. And that's something Trump very, very wisely tapped into in 2016 is the reason he won. He tapped into the Rust Belt and the essence of the American work of the Democratic Party, which my grandparents voted for because they were for the working men, they don't give a damn about the working men at all anymore, and they all but say so. It's all about special interests and special groups and getting power. So America is undergoing a real fundamental transformation. And I think that's why everyone seems a little bit dizzy.

They don't really know where to go.

That's absolutely correct. Can I just say? I was just as it happens a short time ago, I was looking at old films of JFK and Lyndon Johnson, meeting people, working crowds, working crowds as politicians used to do. And it's striking to see the people that were coming up to see Kennedy and Johnson in the 60s were the people you see at Trump rallies today. It's exactly the same demographic that once used to be the core demographic of the Democratic Party. It was the idea of the old left to which I once belonged, by the way, which was based upon working class and unions and things of that kind. That doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anywhere. It doesn't exist in the United States. It doesn't exist in Europe. What is it about Donald Trump that people are so upset about? I mean, he was President for four years. What did he do when he was President that made people that were so terrible?

Well, he brought us Nikki Haley, who just announced that the Hamas attack on October seventh was actually a birthday President, a present to President Putin. And that's the real conspiracy. So this is our foreign policy expert, Nikki Haley, who we're told is catching up to Trump. He gave us John Bolton. He gave us innumerable foreign policy neocons and morons. The only good thing he did was named my good friend Colonel McGregor, like literally 48 hours before he had to depart. Doug, I need to get out of Afghanistan. I need a plan by tomorrow. Really? Okay. So that's the thing that we scratch our heads. And I have to confess to some admiration for Trump, and it's not because of what he's done. I mean, he didn't start a new war, and that's fair enough. He did make a stupid move and kill Solimani, but nevertheless. But I like him, and a lot of Americans like him because they hate the elites so much that anyone who drives them crazy, is there a guy? And I think that's where we are in America. That's his appeal. And that's why anything they do to try to harm him actually helps him.

He feeds off of it, and that makes them even crazier. So they try something new. So it's toxic, but entertaining.

But it's dangerous as well, because as we've seen, if any of this holds, if any of these legal cases succeed, and I'm much more worried about this than some people are, not because I think any of these legal cases stack up, but precisely because they don't. I used to work, as you probably know, in the High Court in London, and I looked at these cases and none of them make any sense to me at all. Some of them seem to me so absurd, actually, legally speaking, that makes me more worried still, because if prosecutors are bringing absurd cases, do they know something about the courts that I don't? It makes you worried about where all this is going. But if this happens, if we start getting convictions, if there are real moves to exclude him from the presidency, from the presidency, or harass him in that way, this looks to me like it has the potential to snowball. And besides, it creates a terrible precedent for the future. If you can prosecute Trump, why can't you prosecute someone else? If you can impeach Trump after he's left the presidency, why can't you do that to any other person who's been President before?

These are very, very dangerous things that have been done.

It's a road to ideocracy, literally. It seems that's where we're heading. But Dr. Paul, who we do our show every day, and he's not given to making rash statements. And he said something yesterday that surprised me. He said, I think if this Colorado thing holds, we're going to see violence in the US. And I think he's probably right. I think the anger, the senior anger is so strong among the silent majority in the US. I hesitate to think what will happen. It will be horrible.

Yeah. I have to say another point which I think you might want to comment on, is that the economy, the American economy is being managed in a very strange way. The monetary system has been managed in a very strange way for a very long time. I actually think that the reason that's happening is partly because the need—and I'm sure this is the case—the need to sustain this global presence that the United States has taken on for itself. But when you do that, when you start manipulating and changing the economy, making it more of a smoke and mirrors thing than it used to be, well, that inevitably is going to have an effect on other things. It means that politics can't be conducted in a transparent way if the economy isn't being conducted, managed transparently either. There is the direct link, for example, between the fact that the Senate refuses Rampall's idea by having and the fact that we have decisions like the one in Colorado and all of these things coming together in that way. In other words, if the economy, if money isn't sound, really sound, nothing is.

Well, we're managing a global empire on a credit card. And anyone who is close to being maxed out on a credit card, when the interest rates rise, you know what happens. Your payments double, and it's what? $34 trillion in debt. I think for the first time, servicing the interest on our debt payments will exceed the military budget, I believe next year. So you're seeing this massive chunk of our global wealth being used to continue the illusion that we're in charge and we're running things. And meanwhile, and we haven't really gotten into this, but meanwhile, you're seeing the one force that has been used because industry is gone in America as it is now in Germany, but industry has gone in America. We have a service sector, but we did have the strongest military, and that's what keeps us number one. Well, we learned in Ukraine, and my friend Bill Scriver, who had a great piece out the other day or yesterday I think it was, the US has put every single one of their top weapon systems against Russia in Ukraine, and each of them attack them. High Marsh, you gentlemen know it all. They've all been defeated.

Now they don't shoot down everyone, as Will said, but they shoot down enough. So even that last vestige of our global power, our global influence now has been disproven in Ukraine. So what is their left? You have to wonder. At some point, it will sink in, but this isn't the time yet.

What about this thing that we're hearing that there is a massive recruitment crisis for the US military? You're in Texas. As I understand it, the South is a major recruitment area for the US military. It seems a lot of military families, their sons no longer want to join. I mean, first of all, can you confirm that? And why do you think that is happening? Is it because people are becoming exhausted and cynical by the need to maintain the subpart? Well, I.

Think there are a number of factors, and one of them is the increasing quote, wokeness in the military. You don't have to... If you see what's been happening to the military in terms of its promotion of the the social LGBT, et cetera, et cetera, it's taking precedent over fighting wars. And the crisis in recruiting is so intense that there's open talk now about simply recruiting illegal aliens into the military. And here's how you get citizenship. It's a mercenary army that we're going to have because most Americans, as you point out, certainly from the South, the military has lost that allure, that sense of patriotism, and that's completely gone. So you have a strange situation where you basically cross in the border. Okay, here's a gun in the uniform. You can be an American. I don't think that's a recipe for ruling the world.

I can remember when I used to go to America, the reverence in which the military was held, and this is a grassroots thing. I can remember I was seeing a soldier at.

A.

Cafe and the people that said, the waiters said, Thank you for your service, the fact that you're serving in the military, and there was this enormous pride in the US military and apparently a pride in serving in it. That seems to be draining away. Can I suggest that so much of what you're describing is actually not so different from that previous end of empire moment, which is a Britain I'm very familiar with. I live in London, the old Imperial Capital, because one of the reasons that the British Empire collapsed again was because it became increasingly difficult for the British government to find young people prepared to serve in the military. The credit of the British government became exhausted. It found itself in debt to its own empire, which was increasingly unwilling to pay that to fund that debt. And eventually, and of course, the industrial system, because of the effort taken to sustain the empire for a very long time, the industrial system that had been the machine that had created it in the first place had atrophy. So that come the 1950s, it was antiquated and starting to break down. It seems to America is going through a very similar cycle.

I think that's absolutely true. I'm just thinking as you're putting all these things together, I remember a lunch I had probably 15 years ago with someone from the Chinese Embassy. And at that time, there was a lot of talk about the Chinese holding an enormous amount of US debt, which they don't any longer. But we were chatting about this, and I said, At some point, this is funny money. This is fake money. You're going to reach a point where you're going to want to get rid of this. He said, Come on, that's never going to happen. There's no alternative. There's no competitor. Well, now there is. We're seeing that. And that's partly, at least because of the policy of Biden in Ukraine and Russia. They have forced the rest of the world, the global south, if you want to call it that, into providing alternatives. And they're there and people are taking them. I don't need to tell either of you about this because we know how much trade now is being conducted in non-dollar denominations. It's here. It's right upon us. And most Americans will scoff at it. Who cares about these some uppity Indians somewhere?

But it's a fact and the global south is a reality and it will have implications, I think, for the rest of the US existence.

One last point from me, and that is that there is a difference between Britain and the US, which is that you are a republic and we are not, and you are a much bigger country than we are, and you have a much more stronger democratic tradition than we do, and you still have a much more dynamic economy. I think that if all of this could be dropped, you could still turn it around. I mean, America could still turn it round. It can become again a prosperous, strong, democratic, Republican law-based country, but it's living dangerously. This is what I would say.

It's the embodiment. We were like the Hunter Biden of countries right now. We've got to get off the crack and get off the other stuff and clean ourselves up.

Exactly. Daniel Mcadams, we're going to have you many times. I think this is a wonderful introduction of you to the Duran. I get a pass on now to my colleague, Alex.

Thank you. Daniel, you want to answer a couple of questions? I've got 10 minutes.

I will do my best.

All right. Fragments of the USSR, the effects of Gaza on the Israeli lobby in the USA, ADF, et cetera.

That's tremendous. And I followed this for a very long time. The tone in the US has radically changed with this latest Israeli attack on Gaza. The proportionality is such that it can't be ignored. You're seeing the rise, and especially it's generationally based. The young generation, the Gen Z, whatever they're called, if you look at the numbers and how the support for Israel, it's completely the of the old boomers who that was a reflective support for Israel, our great ally, the ship of democracy in the Middle East and what have you. That's all gone now. That's all changed. And I think that's one of the reasons why you've seen this assault on universities because the backlash started in universities, the pro-Palestine backlash against what's happening now in Gaza. And I think that's why you're seeing some of the backlash against universities. They're trying to quash it down. But I myself have been surprised because I've always been very impressed by the strength of the Israeli PR machine in the US. They've been very savvy, but they've utterly failed. It's amazing to see they almost look sclerotic. And one of the reasons I have to say is the rise of Twitter X and the suppression, at least to a degree of censorship.

You're having people like my friend Max Blumenthol who are challenging some of the basic narratives of what happened on October seventh, and it's changing the way people are looking at things, people who are in tune. So there is a very, very big shift. If I were Israel, I would be concerned about this because Israel essentially has no allies other than the US right now, and squandering that is dangerous. And I think a lot of people in Israel understand that, and certainly people in the US understand it.

Jamila asks, do you think the US institution will back down before poking us down? Thank you so much for your great work, gentlemen.

I'm afraid I'm leaning more toward where you need to crash before we will sober up. For a long time I thought maybe we would carry the day. We promote non-interventionism at the Ron Paul Institute, and that's our main thing in Civil Liberties. And I would have thought that this would have carried the day. Even appealing to people's pocketbooks might have carried the day. The reason why you can't afford to go to the store now is that you spend a trillion dollars not on our defense, but on special interest inside the Beltway and on keeping the elites overseas living in a style they're accustomed to. I think all of that is partly successful, but ultimately it seems, at least to me now, that we're facing an economic crash in 2024 that might hopefully cause people to rethink things.

Elena Diaz asks, how can the people in the USA take back their country constitutionally in a peaceful way? Is the future US wants for Russia a split? Be the remedy for the US. Look at Hawaii. What do they gain?

Well, there are a lot of secession movements in the US, and it sounds at first it sounds cookie, sounds conspiratorial, but there are degrees of secession that can take place. There's nullification where states can nullify stupid federal laws and stupid federal moves and the massive bureaucratic state that's centered in Washington, DC. And I think we see some of that on the immigration issue. For example, in Texas, they're bucking to the degree that they're capable of doing, they're bucking the Biden administration's open borders policies. And you're seeing that elsewhere. So if there were some glimmer of hope, I would not necessarily mean de jure secession, but a de facto return to more of a federalist system. And that could... There's no reason why Oregon can't remain a heavily blue state, and Texas can be a red state, and we can have different laws. And as a matter of fact, not to get into social issues, but that's why I thought the overturning of Roe v. Wade was great. And it has nothing to do with abortion, in my view. It has to do with states rights, the ability of states to regulate things like whether it's murder or not murder or what have you.

So I think there is a bright glimmer of hope in that and we'll see what happens.

I'd just quickly say that, of course, what Daniel Mcadams has mentioned just now is essentially what the original Constitution was supposed to be about. I mean, it's certainly not a unitary state. That was never what was envisaged when the United States was created. It was a federation of states that came together and which agreed on certain things and had a federal government that basically managed those things that the states gave to it. The United States has become much more like a unitary state than its Constitution really allows for.

And I think that to a large degree is because of the growth of bureaucracy of the permanent state in the US. And the permanent state, well, certainly we're seeing in the Biden administration, the permanent state runs things. Biden is not running things in the State Department, in the Pentagon, or elsewhere. The permanent state is. And even during President Trump, you would have the President coming out and saying one thing, Chairman of the Joint Chief saying, Well, he didn't really mean that, or we're not going to do it anyway. So you do have the rule of the permanent state in DC, and that's a big part of the problem.

From Rockfin, Jean says, Ron Paul had it when he said, Eliminate the Fed. You guys didn't even discuss this, which I see as the only real solution. And you need local direct democracy using 10th Amendment to get it done.

Yeah. It's absolutely essential because we could not afford the wars if it wasn't for the Fed. The Fed creates the money, pardon me, and also the fed ships it overseas. And that's one of the reasons why Dr. Paul's signature piece of legislation was audit the Fed because we need to know where the money goes. And when you look back at the real estate crash, how much money did the Fed send overseas to prop up markets over there? It's the linchpin to the US's global foreign policy, the global American Empire is the Fed. It's the linchpin. And it's not an easy nut to crack. And unfortunately, there aren't many Ron Paul in there. Thomas Massey certainly carries the mantle. But the Fed is absolutely the key to everything. The Fed is the engine that drives the war machine.

Ilza says, The Biden White House is looking for money in a magic pot, but using Russian frozen assets would be opening Pandora's box in regards to the global markets.

Yeah, but Blinkin has a plan. He said, We've got a plan to maintain Ukraine without this continual influx of money. So that's what my parents said to me when I was 22 and graduated from college, We've got a plan for you, which doesn't include our continuing to give you money, and that means move out.

So I think.

Blinkin's plan is going to be abandoning Ukraine.

Yeah. Sparky says, build a better world with bricks, and Tish M asks, are the hooties testing the fences a la T-Rex in Jurassic Park?

Yeah, we didn't get into that, but that's incredible. You're seeing the triumph of asymmetric warfare here, literally. If Biden could find, hootie capital and bomb it, he would do it in a second. But there's just no they're there. They're mobile. They fought the Saudi to a standstill after what, eight years or ten years or what have you? They defeated patriot systems in Saudi Arabia. They hit the Saudi airport. They hit oil fields. They are absolutely fearless. And they've ground global traffic to a halt, except for Russia, by the way, which they said, okay, you guys can go through. It's absolutely amazing to see. And as someone else commented, if the Huthis can shut down the Red Sea, Iran can certainly shut down the Persian Gulf. So that is the escalation dominance that you have from an asymmetric system, an asymmetric group like the Huthis, a dedicated and spirited and well-armed group.

Daniel, one more question, and then, Alexander, we can answer the rest of the questions. Do you have time for one more? Yeah, sure. All right, one more. Let's see here. From Locals, from locals, from Super Guys, Saudi's were getting too close to Israel. So Hamas attacked on October seventh. That ended the relationship for good.

I think that definitely was a factor, and you gentlemen have covered it on your show many times. That's certainly part of it. I mean, Trump's great Abrahamic accords had one thing missing. They didn't include the Palestinians. They weren't even invited to the table. And that's a big problem. And it wasn't necessarily a terrible idea, but it's a big problem. And now you're seeing what is it called? Operation and restoring whatever, prosperity. Nobody is joining it. Saudi said, no, we don't want any part of it. The UAE says no. Egypt says no, the Chinese aren't interested. And I was just reading before we started this program that Francis now said, you know what? We're not that enthused about this. We're not going to participate. So the US is far from being able to put the cobble together this global coalition to reopen the Red Sea. It finds itself completely vulnerable with innumerable ships there just waiting to be sunk by this rtag tag group. So the Saudi, they're no dummies. They don't want any part of this system now.

Yeah. Zahir says, Thank you very much for having Daniel on gents. Thank you, Zariel, for that. And Raphael says, Merry Christmas, guys. You are the best of gentlemen. Thank you, Raphael, for that. The one and only, Daniel McAdams. Daniel, once again, where can people find you?

Rompallinstitute. Org on Rumble, live Monday through Friday, live at noon Eastern Time. The Ron Paul Liberty Report.

That information is in the description box down below, and I will add it as a pin comment when we wrap up the live stream. Daniel, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Daniel. Welcome to the G-Rown.

Thank you.

Thank you. Take care.

Thanks.

Alexander, we have not that many questions to get through. Let's wrap it up, and we'll let everybody enjoy their Friday. Tim, thank you for that super sticker. Valiant, thank you for that super sticker. Sparky says, Russia absorbing all Ukraine is a death meal for NATO. Once NATO is effectively gone, hold a referendum in Galitzia. They can vote to remain Russian or vote to be given to Poland, Hungary, or Romania.

There's a lot in what you say there, and it may very well turn out to be just like this. There is an unbelievably panicky article in the Financial Times today, by the way, the most frightened article in the Western media I've seen, which is almost exactly this thing, that if Russia prevails in Ukraine and this article basically accepts that they will, NATO is discredited. And it comes up with all kinds of reasons why that would be a bad thing. And it also suggests that all kinds of things should be done to try to reverse it. But you can see that the author doesn't really believe that it will be reversed.

Yeah. Alexander, Sparky. When they're panicky, they do stupid stuff.

Absolutely.

Someone's going to do something stupid.

But.

Yeah. Hello. Thank you for that super sticker. Fragments of the USSR. Gentlemen, let me wish you a merry Catholic Christmas and a happy New Year in advance. Ps, do you think things in the US may become so bad that a narrative of a UFO invasion will need to be rolled out?

Who knows? There was one previous occasion, by the way, when the UFO invasion, the narrative of it was publicized and did take hold. This was just before the Second World War when Orson Wells did a radio broadcast in which he pretended that the United States was being invaded by Mars. It was supposed to be a fictitious thing, but a surprisingly large number of people believed it. So who knows? I think today we live in a different world, and I don't think this could quite pull off, actually. But narrative is what they are all about. They are now admitting it all the time. So maybe not UFOs, but something else.

Anglo-rentier oligarch says, Biden-anglo-Zionist-MIS-Kleptocracy, Trump-right-wing-populism, Zionist-MIS-Kleptocracy. Prove me wrong.

Well, we're not going to prove you wrong. We just have to wait and see what happens.

Sleepy Crane says, The counter offensive is going too successful. If it's not successful, it's not the counter-offensive. Interesting. Thank you for that. Alexander Polyakov says, What is Putin's plan for dealing with the neocons?

Who knows? I don't know that he's got a plan. What I do know is that he is a very angry man. His speech to the Defense Ministry Board, it lifted. He's an incredibly disciplined, controlled person. He's very careful what he says. He measures his words very carefully. But for the first time, he basically showed us some of the feelings that he has about the way in which both Russia and he personally have been treated by the West. And the person he's most angry with is himself, the fact that he's allowed himself to be deceived by the West for so long. It's all there. This is not somebody who's going to be amenable to negotiations, it seems to me, on anything like the form that we have. And I think he fully understands now what the neocons are and how implacable they are. And he will do everything he can. And I think most of the leadership in Russia will do everything they can to insulate Russia from whatever possible danger these neocons could inflict.

Yeah. Dominique Gaudette says, The Western republics increasingly look like the Republica Romana after Augustus. The only difference is that instead of an imperator running the show, it's the oligarchs. It's like the Canada dries. It looks like a republic, but it isn't.

A republic. Dominique, you are always somebody who brings up these wonderful classical analogies. I think you're basically correct. I prefer to, when talking about these things, to reference instead Michel's theory that there's the Iron Law of oligarchy and that we have an oligarchy that's basically in control. And this is a that it always inserts itself into the political system. But certainly we are run by an oligarchy today. In Britain, we are, in the European Union, we absolutely are. And in the United States, we increasingly are.

Josie says, The Ukraine-Russia conflict stems from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The question is, was the collapse of the Soviet Union legitimate? The former leaders of Russia were naive and did not do the things. Why did none of the collective West leaders, especially the US leaders, complain and try to make some agreements to future problems? Thank you.

Well, first of all, go and see what Putin has to say about this, because his point is that the Russians for decades, even before the Soviet Union collapsed, were basically reaching out to the West and that they never understood how utterly implacable towards them, the West ultimately was that it was never really interested in meeting them halfway on anything. And that's Putin's view. And I can tell you for a fact, it's the view of an awful lot of Russians now. And as for finding some deal, making some deal with the Russians at the end of the Cold War, which would have managed the problems caused by the Soviet collapse. Well, of course, the point is that the Russians thought that they had agreed such a deal. I mean, that was what the whole business about not extending NATO Eastwoods was all about, for example. They thought that they had made those deals. And then what happened was the West simply went back on them and pretended it had never made them.

Exactly. Dominique Gaudet says, Among the most astonishing Western Impostors is that of Oleg Schultz declaring without blushing Russia's responsible for cutting off Russian gas.

I know. I agree.

He who made the decision to sanction Russia and who attended Biden's declaration on the destruction of Nord Stream. He is worse thanOb than the that. And Johnson, it is an exploit. One wonders what the global south may think of the increasing melody of Western leaders.

You're... I mean, you're absolutely right on every point. I've got nothing to add to what you just said.

Law of attraction says, Curapieldes or Melet Macarona. What would you choose.

Gentlemen, Mary- Kudapieides.

Kudapieides. Absolutely. Tish M.

This is Greek confectionery, by the way. Both delicious.

Tish M. Says, I love that guest of the Durand and elsewhere follow you by mentioning that. Thank you, Tish M. Envy Storm says, Merry Christmas, guys. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you for that. Peter says, Merry Christmas early and much love from Yelta, Crimayya, Russia. Oh, right. Okay. Thank you, Peter. Raphael says, Putin at the beginning said Russia will not be intimidated. Everything we are doing is trying to intimidate Russia and we do not have a plan B.

Exactly right. Completely true.

Lns says, What's happening with Russia and the Olympic Committee?

Well, I think the Russians have basically given up with the Olympic Committee, and I agree with them. The Olympic Committee is very unhappy because the Russians are holding parallel gains to the Olympic Games and they've been trying to pressure countries not to participate. But I understand that nobody's paying any attention. There'll be lots of countries participating into the alternative games. Putin, who is a sportsman, has made the point that the decision of the IDOC to basically exclude Russia from the Olympic movement, which is both unprecedented and extraordinary. And it completely and fundamentally violates the core principles of the Olympic movement, which were based on inclusivity and nondiscrimination. Yeah.

Tatiana, thank you for that. Super-sticker and nick, thank you for that super-sticker. Alexander, that's everything. Let me just do one quick check as I do one quick check. Alexander, any final thoughts?

No, it's a fantastic program. We're going to have Daniel many times, as I said, especially now with the election. The elections coming in the United States. Who better to keep track of what's going on? Daniel Mcadams, who is there. He's been at the belly of the beast in the House of Representatives and has worked with and still works with Dr. Ron Paul, one of the bravest political figures in America.

And they have a great channel on Dumble and YouTube. Absolutely fantastic channel. One more question from Jasonal Bakken, I don't trust Western governments. I must warn Russia not to trust them either.

You are absolutely right. But Putin is ahead of you there because he doesn't trust them anymore. If you go to the Kremlin website, you'll see what he has to say about the way he was personally deceived by them. He is very disillusioned. He's angry with himself, and he's also very, very angry with one particular individual who he's careful not to name, but it's clear that she's very much in his mind, and that's Angela Merkel. Why he ever trusted Merkel? Of course, is another thing. If he'd asked us, we would have told him not to trust Merkel. But there we are.

I don't understand why Merkel gave those interviews and admitted that Minz was a farce. I mean, why did she have to do that? She just should have been kept quiet.

I know.

Absolutely. I don't understand her thinking there. And Lavrov has said some pretty tough things to.

Ask for.

A couple of days. All right, we will leave it there. Alexander, everyone that's watching, have a happy, merry Christmas. We wish you all the best.

Absolutely.

All right. Take care, everybody.