Tucker Carlson talks to colonel Douglas Macgregor about the ukrainian war (video and transcript!)

By R.C.
friday, september 15, 2023 at 10:36:14 p.m. edt

Tucker Carlson talks to colonel Douglas Macgregor about the ukrainian war
1,461,094 views Aug 21, 2023

Go to 25:00 mark.





0:00
Pretty much everything that nbc news/the new york times have told you about the war in [the] ukraine is a lie. The russian army
0:07
is incompetent, they claim [the] ukraine is a democracy, Vladimir Putin is Hitler and
0:13
he's trying to take over the world. Thankfully, the ukrainians are winning. None of that is true, every claim is
0:20
false, the last one especially. The ukrainian army is not winning. In fact, it's losing badly. [The] ukraine is being
0:28
destroyed. Its population is being slaughtered in lopsided battles with a technologically superior enemy, or
0:35
scattered by the millions to the rest of the globe, as refugees. [The] ukraine is running out of soldiers.
0:41
As that happens, the question will inevitably arise who's going to replace them, if the ukrainians can't beat Putin.
0:48
Who will the answer, of course, will be U.S. American troops will fight the russian
0:54
army in eastern europe that's most likely, and the assumption is we'll win. But will we win?
1:01
Probably not, says former army colonel Douglas MacGregor, a decorated combat veteran who advised the secretary of
1:07
defense in the last administration. The u.s., says MacGregor, is on the brink of a catastrophic war that could very
1:14
easily destroy us. Few Americans seem to understand that but they should.
1:19
Doug McGregor is now the ceo of our country, our choice, and we sat down with him recently. This conversation is worth
1:25
hearing. Doug McGregor, thanks for joining us. How would you assess and describe this state of the war in [the] ukraine right
1:31
now that's an important question and not enough people have good answers at this
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point I think all of the lies that have been told for more than a year and a half about the ukrainians are winning the
1:45
Ukrainian cause is just the Russians are evil the Russians are incompetent all of that is collapsing
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and it's collapsing because what's happening on the battlefield is horrific ukrainians now we think have lost 400
1:58
000 men killed in battle we were talking about 300 350 000 a few months ago
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within the last month of this supposed counter-offensive which was to sweep the
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battlefield they lost at least 40 000 killed we don't even know how many
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people have been wounded but we know that probably upwards of forty to fifty thousand soldiers are amputees
2:23
we know the hospitals are full and we know that Ukrainian units at the
2:28
platoon and Company level that's with anywhere is from 50 to 150 to 200 men are in piecemeal fashion surrendering to
2:36
the Russians not because they don't want to fight it's because they can't fight anymore they had so many wounded they
2:43
can't evacuate them and commanders are saying well if I can't evacuate my wounded I'm going to surrender because
2:49
otherwise the wounded will die and so they call the Russians and they all speak Russian and tell them on the
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radio look I I've got 50 60 wounded here I'm going to surrender because I don't want them to be killed and the Russians
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from the very beginning have always treated the Ukrainian soldiers very fairly and very gently and so they know they're
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not going to be abused or mistreated they know they can actually be exchanged for Russian prisoners in the future so
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they're surrendering and I think we're going to see this Army that we've been spending so heavily on increasingly Melt
3:21
Away and at the same time as we're talking if you look at this long banana-shaped
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strip of territory in southern Ukraine that the Russians control if you go to the north
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Eastern corner of that south of this city called kharkif there are major
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offensive operations taking place there right now and the Ukrainian forces are being Swept Away in front of the
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Russians and again all of this all of this happens in a way that is just not
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reported in the West and in the meantime rather than admit that this is a terrible tragedy that
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should be ended on humanitarian grounds if no other that the killing should stop as president Trump said Stop The Killing
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we're going to continue and this puts the Russians in the unhappy position of marching further west because from the
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very beginning Putin and his his advisors were never interested in a war with NATO or the
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United States that's what why you've had such incrementalism the slow grind of
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movement forward defensive operations for a long period to build up the force and then continued
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offensive operations they have over 300 000 combat troops in reserve in Russia
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and I think they're sitting there and not being released to fight because President Putin anticipates the
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possibility that we will intervene in Western Ukraine and if we intervene in Western Ukraine the Russians will be
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ready for that and the consequences for us and for NATO will be devastating because we are not ready to fight the
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Russians why well I think the Readiness has been on the decline for a long time
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you've had an almost steady uninterrupted decline in the discipline that makes soldiers fight
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discipline is a tough thing we we don't always understand it discipline is really a form of habit and
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you build those habits over time through repetition but you also build it under stress under pressure
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so that it sinks in and then you build cohesion within the framework of those units you don't build cohesion when
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you're dividing the force on racial grounds when you're pushing people who are clearly unqualified up the ranks to
5:34
command when you're rewarding people for anything other than demonstrated character competence and intelligence
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all of those things are demoralizing destructive to military establishments
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the Army and the Marines are suffering with it so is the Air Force in the Navy and there's no easy fix and these cracks
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that are just cracks at the moment will become giant fissures if you go to war
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so you spent your the bulk of your adult life as an army officer went to West Point
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um commanded troops in battle your combat veteran decorated um but you entered the Army right at the
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tail end of Vietnam that's right when it was famously at its at its name yes how would you compare the Readiness of the
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current U.S armed forces to say 1975 at the end of Vietnam uh I think that in
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terms of morale and discipline we are close to where we were in the late 70s we have a lot of people that uh are
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confused about what needs to be done we've lost a sense of what's right in other words you you don't have people
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that have served long enough in formations to know what right looks like
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so that you can see a battle group whether it's a battalion size or Brigade
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or larger and you know what makes things work you know what it takes to fight in
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battle we don't have very many people like that because since 2001 most of the
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fighting has been on a very small scale against a fleeting enemy you know running around in sandals with an AK-47
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relying heavily on explosives Minds to kill and Native Americans about 87
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percent of our losses were really a result of explosives that came from
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Minds this is not an army that is accustomed to finding anybody who can fight back if I were going to compare it
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to an army a better comparison would probably be the French army before the franco-prussian war
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because the French had fought Mexican Bandits Mexican Rebels they'd fought
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Arab Bandits Arab insurgents they had a little experience fighting disgruntled
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demoralized European troops austrians in Northern Italy but they hadn't faced a
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truly modern enemy but people were convinced that the French army was the greatest army in the world because
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they'd fought in North Africa nindo China Mexico all over the world that war
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was a catastrophe for France and that Army was decimated in months by oppression Army that was a modern Force
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highly disciplined very confidently LED trained and equipped so we're not there we have equipment that is decades old
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the tanks that I served on for instance when I went to war in 1990 were
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virtually brand new state of the art those tanks are still out there they've
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been rebuilt but they're not new anymore they're no longer as capable as they once were you know give you a quick
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example we have a turbine engine in the M1 A1 series tanks and that turbid
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engine burns up as much fuel sitting still as it does moving because it's a turbine engine it was designed to be
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used on an aircraft we put them into tanks so that means you've got an eight-hour tank
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every eight hours if you're operating you've got to refuel this thing this thing also Burns it fueled a very
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very high temperature over a thousand degrees and there are 40 plus

8:57

connections around the engine that are very brittle that can easily cause fires

9:02

if the accidentally they touch these little tubes that carry various types of

9:08

fluid if they actually touch this engine that's burning so hot so the engine is so hot that you can

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track the movement of U.S army Ground Forces with tanks from low Earth orbiting satellites

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so if you think you're going to hide or conceal yourself or outpace somebody you're just a glowing Target from space

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so this must be added the Ridiculousness of not having to replace that engine with a reliable

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state-of-the-art diesel electric engine which is much cooler which can go for 24

9:41
hours or more without a refuel and these things are extremely problematic when you go to war because you have to pull

9:48
forces back refill them return them to the front that's not easy to do when

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you're operating as frequently with Avery eight or six or nine hours they say well we put it on I guess a

10:00
generator on there to make up for this when you're sitting still the problem is that you don't sit still for very long

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in combat because if you do you're going to be targeted and destroyed and that of course is what we're seeing in Ukraine

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persistent surveillance from space from overhead surveillance makes everything

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visible all the time so if you're going to embed yourself in the ground if you're going to set up a

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permanent position there where you try to fire from that you're going to be targeted and destroyed very very quickly

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so that's why this defense right now looks a lot like World War one because anybody who moves is identified and

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killed the only limitation on your ability to Target and destroy the enemy is

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ammunition the Russians of course have no shortages whatsoever you recall at the beginning of this we have all these

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shortages right the Russians can't keep up with missiles the Russians can't keep up the show so they have multiple

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manufacturing facilities operating seven days a week at 24 hours a day

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we have no surge capacity in the United States it would take us many many months to

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come up to that kind of standard where we could actually compete in high high-end conventional Warfare and that's

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why people like me and others worried that if we get into a confrontation that we cannot win because the world has

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changed Warfare has changed integrated air defenses will knock virtually everything that flies out of the sky

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that we will then fall back on a nuclear deterrent a tactical nuclear weapon that says if

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you keep advancing we'll have to use a nuclear weapon we don't want to go there because the notion that there are

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so-called tactical nukes you've heard that expression yes oh that's just a little Duke so that won't precipitate a

11:43

major war the use of any nuclear weapon is going to precipitate escalation very

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rapidly because your opponents will assume that if they don't use their nuclear weapons

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they're going to lose them so we're living in a terrible dilemma right now the smartest thing that we can

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do is end this war what is Russia's objective do you believe assuming the

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objectives change over the course of course well the original objective obviously was very different I mean if they'd made

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peace with the Russians back in let's say March or April I think the Russians would have retained very little

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territory probably only luhanska Donetsk the two so-called Breakaway provinces

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and I think there would have been guarantees of neutrality for Ukraine and guarantees of equal rights before the

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law for Russians that's what people don't understand most of this has to do with abuse meted out

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to Russians in Ukraine by the Ukrainian government and this of course is this

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radical nationalist government that came to power in Kiev in 2014. and they

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almost immediately as soon as that government came in apparently started launching a war against the so-called Breakaway provinces and Putin kept

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trying and trying and trying the Minsk Accords were another good example trying to get to a solution that would not

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involve confrontation now we know of course thanks to Angela Merkel the German Chancellor that the mexicorns

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were just a ruse a way to kill time and give the ukrainians more time to build 13:13
up their forces for what and it's pretty clear they were building up

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for an offensive against Russia and of course the next step was that we bring in our missiles and station them in

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eastern Ukraine which puts them in a couple of minutes away from all of Russia's cities and all of Russia's

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nuclear deterrent so this was unacceptable so that original deal is gone now and 13:36
the question is what will the Russians accept well they'll I think they're going to demand that whatever remains of

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Ukraine rump Ukraine is what most people are calling it now most of what's probably west of the Nampa River has to

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be neutral it can't be part of native [N.S.: nato] the Russians will never tolerate

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NATO forces on Ukrainian soil because we've demonstrated conclusively that we

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are fundamentally hostile to Russia so that's the minimal requirement how that's governed that's another

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question who knows I'm sure Moscow would want to have some say in that government and who is there to ensure that behind

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the scenes they are not once again subjected to the treatment that we subjected to them them to in the minska

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courts what is the Ukrainian objective uh I think more and more ukrainians just want

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to survive this and that's becoming very hard and Zelensky and the radicals around him are basically committed to

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fighting this war to the last Ukrainian and of course I'm sure that Mr Solenski [Zelensky?] and his friends are anxious at some

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point to retire to their Estates in Florida or Venice or Cyprus to collect

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on the billions that they've managed to steal or siphon from all the aid that we've provided. Remember the Ukraine is

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probably one of the most corrupt places in the world a friend of mine who had

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spent time in the old Soviet Union and also lived in Mexico came back from a visit to Mexico and he said it's hard to

15:02
believe this but Ukraine is more corrupt than Mexico wow and I think that's true so this is

15:10 a world-class disaster 14 million ukrainians have left left the

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nation presumably never to return because when they're asked in Germany or France or Croatia or Spain or wherever

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they go we will never go back so what are you going to do with this country and then of course we have The

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Usual Suspects the great agricultural business conglomerates along with

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BlackRock who had their eyes on the fertile Ukrainian ground in the western Ukraine I suppose there'll be a big

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effort to get control of that in some fashion that may not work though once

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this war ends with a complete and utter defeat of the Ukrainian regime

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exactly how would you characterize Zelensky. Well, Zelensky, George W. Bush called him Our Generation’s Winston

15:56

Churchill. Well, this is W, right, yeah, not a very thoughtful man.

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he was a comedian who made a living acting on stage frequently pretending to

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be a transvestite doing things with the various body parts that I won't go into

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and he was picked up by an oligarch named Kolomoski. Kolomoski is the individual [who] is probably

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more responsible than anybody else for funding this atrocity we call the Azov regiment that runs around with

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swastikas and Nazi gear and so forth and he was picked and then blessed by

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Victoria Nuland and the state department as their man. Now, when he originally ran for office he ran on a

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peace platform and he was overwhelmingly elected across the country because he said if I am

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elected as your president I will make peace with russia

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be crazy to want to go to war with russia they were looking for a way out of this and a resolution of the crisis

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of course once he was in there he took a different road and I can't help but think that that road was defined for him

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by us. Who is Victoria Nuland? Oh, goodness gracious, all these hard questions 17:12

I do not know Victoria Nuland personally. I know Fred Kagan and his

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brother Bob is married to her and she's a long-term, committed neocon. This is
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someone I would not characterize as either democrat or republican. These are people with this agenda and

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the agenda says until the entire world is garrisoned by U.S. forces and is

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converted forcibly to some form of democracy that we approve of, the world will not be safe and we

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must continue to fight and I think in the case of russia, russia has special appeal because I

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think these people have ancestors who came from that region of the world and have a permanent ax to grind with the

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russians, which of course I don't I don't think most Americans do, and nor do I

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think anybody in government should shape policy based on whatever unhappiness

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their ancestors experienced in a place like russia so I think that's in a

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a nutshell but I think that's enough and wherever she goes, usually there is

18:15
conflict, crisis, and fighting and she's a strong opponent of fighting to the last

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ukrainian. Does she have relevant

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experience that would qualify her to to be in charge of this war? Well, obviously she does but you

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know it's sort of like asking somebody who has never snaked a drain or replaced a garbage disposal

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to be a plumber, and I think we have a lot of those in Washington. She's not the only one so no,

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I don't think she understands the gravity of the situation. These are the same people Tony Blinken is in this with.

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You know, what's his name, Sullivan, I keep mixing up Sullivan with the previous O'Brien who was in The White House [N.S.: All these Irishmen look alike to me!]

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not much difference, and Sullivan will all tell you, well, you know, the russians are weak the russian

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economy is fragile, the russian armed forces are poor, their generals are terrible, and they can't possibly win. All

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we have to do is to keep up the pressure and they will collapse. Well, then, that's been a hell of a strategy and it's

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killed large numbers of people and created millions of refugees and destroyed the country but it hasn't hurt

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russia, and russia today is stronger than it has been in 30 or 40 years. You have a 19:32
russian military establishment that is now more potent and more capable than the russian military was in the

19:38 mid-1980s. why Wars typically don't they [?] degrade to

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military force? Well, the russians have been very very careful and deliberate, very cautious about the expenditure of

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life. What do you think the casualty numbers are in russia? You know that's a hard one to estimate I think

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probably fifty thousand forty to fifty thousand killed maybe another 40 to 50 20:01

thousand wounded, wait, total, yes, as compared to the ukrainian 400,000 dead [?], yeah

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Oh, so this is the ratio? It’s one-to-five, you believe those numbers are roughly accurate? Yes, yeah, absolutely and these

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are three thousand to four hundred thousand that's a larger country or with a much smaller country with a

20:21

much smaller military, I mean, that's a grotesque. Oh, it is. And the manpower is leaving the ukraine as quickly as it could

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get out because people don't want to be thrown into the meat grinder. You can't defeat what the russians have built

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they were the first back in the 1970s to understand the criticality of linking intelligence

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surveillance reconnaissance in space, as well as on land and at sea with strike

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weapons. Well, it's a strike weapon—rockets, missiles, guided artillery for

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precision. They've done that extremely well, so that's one of the reasons they have thousands of guns, hundreds of rocket

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launchers hundreds of ballistic missile launchers, cruise missiles, and so

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forth, and these are then linked to that isr, so the response time is is almost

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instantaneous. A ukrainian formation is located at this spot next to this

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building on the outskirts of say karkov they can have missiles on the way to

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those targets or rockets or drones within the space of perhaps five six

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seven minutes so this is a very well-structured, well-organized machine

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and the machine is grinding up everything in front of it and it's not going to be defeated.

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But what about the space-age military technology that we've been sending to trade [?]? That hasn't brought parity. Well,

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first of all, a lot of the equipment we send over there is quite frankly obsolete. It's very old; it's not new.

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We've given them a few new items but not much, and remember what I said about missiles? We sent them some patriot

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missiles, and I think at this point in this newest round of money about 750

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million something like that, we're sending 33 missiles.

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patriot missiles, these are missiles that are used to shoot down aircraft, or cruise missiles, incoming

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opposing forces hey every time you're in air defense

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people will tell you if there's a target out there you shoot two missiles at it as a minimum to make sure you get to

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target. Well, you run out of our missiles in the space of a few days. 33 missiles will

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be gone in two or three days. You can't possibly defeat the thousands of

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projectiles that are being hurled in your direction and the radars of course emit and so

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your radars light up and become targets. This is a no-win situation because

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the russians, though they were not prepared in february 2022 for this kind

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of war, they are now, and they're continuing to prepare which includes continuous mobilization.

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they're up to 750,000 troops in and around the ukraine. Most of them are on the 23:13
outskirts, but [?] russia, western russia down in the southern ukraine, that number is going to rise over the next year. I would

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expect to 1.2 million and reservists being

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called out of universities, people are being through the military now working universities to become engineers,

23:30
architects, mathematicians, whatever, they're being pulled out and put in uniform and readied, because again our

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intransigence and demonstrated hatred and hostility for moscow and for russia

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has convinced the Russian people, as well as the leadership in moscow that they

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are going to have to fight us and anyone who has allied with us, so they're

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preparing for that eventuality. That's why it's so important that we have to wake up and understand what we've

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done has backfired. Whatever we set out to achieve has failed. What we need to do

24:07
now is stop this, and come to a settlement that we may not like, but it needs to happen and soon, before this

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thing is out of control. Eventually, you keep this up within the next six, eight months, you'll see hundreds of thousands

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of russian troops on the polish border. That is not what we set out to achieve

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No, it's a terrifying disaster and what cost do you think to the united states, what the latest

24:34
estimates since 2001 spending, including the spending in the

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ukraine, all the military spending designed to support these interventions conflicts, wars, whatever you want to call

24:46
them? About 14 trillion dollars. Now, that 14 trillion is largely debt-

24:53
financed, so then you have to move from the 14 trillion to where we stand now in

24:59

national sovereign debt, which, of course, I know the economic luminaries think

25:04
is meaningless, but you have 130 million workers and you look at those figures and

25:11
suddenly you realize that every adult male or woman in the united states who

25:16
works for a living has a debt hanging over them of roughly 200, 240 thousand dollars,

25:23

in order to deal with what the 14 trillion have added to the national sovereign debt

25:29
and this is part of the issue that people are walking away from this war for good reasons. Look,

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the average American earns about thirty one thousand dollars a year, that's it.

25:43
The average American pays about sixteen thousand six hundred dollars a year

25:49
Now, the people in congress, this doesn't affect them, or on the hill or inside the beltway. We're talking

25:55
about the real Americans who live out there who's scratching out a living. Keep in mind that a person who works all

26:03
his life and then tries to draw on social security can expect a monthly payment of probably

26:09
fourteen hundred dollars. If they're lucky, fourteen hundred dollars. We hand every alleged asylum seeker illegal

26:18
migrant pouring into the border in texas or wherever else, we hand them when they

26:23
get there twenty-two hundred dollars, and we put them on that twenty two-hundred dollar diet

26:29
from there on out per month. Yet somebody who works all his life retires and draws social security gets

26:35
1400. The afghans who were hanging on to the planes in kabul trying to come to the

26:43
united states, when they arrived they received twenty-two hundred dollars a month.

26:49
Now, if you can make sense out of this, please try, because I don't think most

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Americans can make sense out of this at all, and that's one of the reasons people have said not because they know anything

27:01
about the ukraine, most Americans don't. If they knew anything about the history of eastern europe, they would all say ‘Get

27:08

out!,’ because the wars and the blood and the hatred that have been characterized to

27:16
that part of the world for hundreds of years is something we can't sort out. We can't

27:21
fix it, we shouldn't try to arbitrate it, we don't know anything about it. We shouldn't be in this. It's the bottom

27:28
line. I think Americans have figured that out, but now they're beginning to look at the numbers and the figures, and they say

27:33

“What happened to consent by the government?” Instead, we have contempt for the

27:38
governed. Whatever the governed want they don't get

27:45
Who gets it? Well, the donors get what they want. You know, somebody was joking the other day and said, ‘You know, Doug, if

27:51
the donors were cannibals they'd feed the American people to them.” That's the attitude in Washington,

27:57 D.C. What's the donor? What? Give me more money! It's a catastrophe; it's the

28:02
destruction of our whole republic. I don't think people realize how far gone things are. A lot of Americans sense it

28:09
and I think we're on the path to some sort of national come-to-Jesus moment

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where we're tired of being the contemptibles. We want to have a say

28:20
in what our government does and we we really don't have it. You mentioned the donors, and we just had

28:28
a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s running for president on the republican side. He's granted [rich?]

28:34
and so he doesn't need big donors, but he has said publicly that he can't get money from any big time

28:41
republican donor because his position on the ukraine is similar to yours. He doesn't

28:46
buy the nbc news version of the ukrainian war. Why are donors on both sides so attached to a war that's

28:53
clearly hurting the United States. Well, first of all you've got to go through and identify the donors. What's their

28:59
background? Where did they come from, and why do they feel the way they do? I think there are more personal

29:06
issues here than we realize with many of them. Secondly, you have to look at the monetary benefits to them.

29:12
It's not just being heavily invested in the defense industry. You've seen that report from the oakland

29:20
institute, which talks about arable land in the ukraine, the breadbasket of europe, some of the richest, most fertile soil

29:26
anywhere in the world. A friend of mine who's ukrainian said, ‘All you have to do is take take an old boot, stick it in the

29:33
ground in ukraine, come back in six months, and something grows. The boot transformed into something you can eat.’

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He said, ‘That's how fertile this is.’ So, there are people that are interested in getting control of it. ‘Oligarchs,’ they

29:46
call them ‘oligarchs’ in eastern europe. I'm starting to think that we should talk about ‘oligarchs’ in the west. Of

29:54
course, because they're also invested in this they have an interest in it, so that's part of it. Then, of course, you

30:00
have the advantages of people on the hill. You have somebody like McConnell who says

30:06
‘We're so fortunate that we're doing so much damage to the Russians. This will set them back for 10 years. They've lost

30:12
all this equipment. The ukrainians have done a great job.’ Well, of course, all that's a lie, that's a blatant falsehood,

30:19
and then he follows up by saying, ‘And we're offloading equipment that we can

30:24
replenish with newer equipment.’ Well, unfortunately, the new equipment we're going to buy looks an awful lot

30:31
like the old equipment, so you're not necessarily getting new, top-of-the-line material

30:36
you're just getting new versions of what you've already got, which, of course, is what congress wants. Unfortunately, that

30:42
doesn't prepare you for a future war, because your probable opponents are

30:47
investing in very different capabilities from the ones that you have and, remember, again, all the things that

30:53
we once monopolized, all the precision, all of that's lost now. Everybody has it.

31:00
There's nothing that we can do that they cannot also do in moscow, in beijing, and

31:05
probably in many other countries that we don't even know about yet, but of course it all means money.

31:11
You know, where does the money go? Does it go into the defense department? Sure, but then it's transferred over into industry,

31:18
and industry then contributes money to pacs and the pac money goes where? Back

31:23
to the hill, so it's a wonderful sort of recycling machine, where the wash

31:28
is washed again and again. Now what happens in the ukraine? Well, the equipment shows up.

31:34
Some of the equipment reaches the troops, a lot of it is sold off, ends up in arms bazaars like kosovo, or we see it now

31:41
being used by the drug cartels. We saw somebody working for one of the major

31:47
cartels and is also involved in human trafficking, walking around with a javelin missile,

31:54
the whole kit. Well, where did that come from? Well, it came from europe, probably.

31:59
may have gone from europe to afghanistan, europe to north africa, europe to the

32:04
balkans, and then over in the united states, south of the border. What I mean you can't be the only

32:12
person who spent your life as an army officer who receives conclusions like what are they thinking at the pentagon.

32:17
there have to be people who've come to the same positions, Tucker. We

32:23
have right now, I think 43, could be 44, it's usually 43 or 44 four-star

32:30
generals and admirals. You have to think about that.

32:37
Well, let me explain just how much it is. We have 1.12 million people in the armed forces

32:46
In other words, you add up all the armed services that’s 1.12 million.

32:53

In World War II, at the height of the war, end of ‘42, beginning of ‘43, when we had

32:59
12.2 million men under arms, we had seven four-stars.

33:07

Seven four-stars. I can tell you who they were: You had George Marshal, chief staff of

33:13
the army, Douglas MacArthur commanding in the pacific, Eisenhower commanding in Great Britain and in the European

33:19
theater, Hap Arnold for the [Army] Air Force unofficially, he was the vice chief but

33:24
he was effectively commanding the air forces and then you had Leahy who was in

33:29
the white house admiral, he is the liaison of, he was effectively the unofficial chairman of the joint chiefs

33:34
for FDR. Then you had Nimitz, and King was the cno and Nimitz command in

33:41
the pacific. Now, somehow or another with only seven four-stars we managed to 33:47
survive the greatest, most destructive war in history, and fortunately end up on the quote unquote winning side

33:55
now we are blessed with 43-44 four-stars organized into multiple commands

34:01
designed to blanket the globe with American military power and interests.

34:08
I think it borders on lunacy, especially since we don't live

34:13
in the world of 1920 1945. This is the 21st century. Today, if you have forces

34:20
forward, they're easy to identify, easy to target, easy to destroy.

34:26
So, what's the point of having a lot of forces forward? Well, we can always reinforce them? No, you

34:31
can't. How do you get across these vast oceans—the atlantic and the pacific—when your opponents have submarine fleets

34:38
How many ships do they have to sink supply ships, transports before everybody says ‘That's it, we're not going’?

34:46
Same thing’s true for aircraft. Well, ‘We have better aircraft.’ We may have better aircraft, but we don't have very

34:52
good air defenses. We've neglected air and missile defenses for years.

34:57 In the army, they always treated theater air and missile defense as sort of the red-headed stepchild, because we haven't

35:02
fought anybody that compelled us to defend ourselves from missile and air attack. Well, those days are over

35:09
In other words, if you press this war with russia in central-east europe, it

35:15

will reach us here in the united states. People aren't thinking about that. How

35:21
many Americans do you think are assisting or fighting on the side

35:26

of the ukraine right now? Well, I don't know, but I imagine it must be hundreds because the president of the united

35:32
states, as you know, has authorized combat pay for Americans in uniform in the ukraine

35:39
Now, he didn't specifically say ‘uniform’ just that Americans serving in the ukraine, so I

35:44
imagine large numbers are in other uniforms not necessarily American, and some may be assisting contractors,

35:51
are working with them but a substantial number and again thus far

35:56
the russians have been very careful about not necessarily targeting them and
36:02
it would be a mistake to assume that the russians don't know where they are. And the latest strikes that we've had

36:07

over the last couple of months have been all the way out on the border with romania, the border with poland, the

36:13
border with moldava. Precision strikes, kinshaw missiles, carrying thousand-pound warheads.

36:20
Great accuracy, very destructive. Why? The russians are sending a message: ‘if you

36:26
think you're going to hide from us if you come in here, you're not going to do that. If you cross these borders, we will

36:33
annihilate you. You'll never get to the upper river. We won't permit it,’

36:38
and we need to come to terms with these realities, because we can't defeat it

36:44
And see, this is the sad part. Somebody will say to me, ‘Well, Doug, you know you don't sound very patriotic,’

36:51
but I'm not patriotic. I put my life on the line for the country. I have no compunction about fighting or killing

36:57

anybody if we need to do it. Don't get me wrong: we don't need to do this. That's the point. This is unnecessary. So

37:04
I think a lot of Americans think, suspect that maybe our military forces

37:10
weaker than we think it is. You're saying it's much weaker than they think it is. Think of it like an engine. You have a

37:15
500 horsepower engine in 1991. And a 500 horsepower engine

37:23
goes from 500 to 400 to 300 to 200 down to 100.

37:31
now you don't notice very much because you don't put the pedal to the metal.

37:36
It's good enough to get to the grocery store. It is good enough to drive on 95

37:41
for 50 miles, but if you put your foot down the pedal

37:48
you're going to discover that this is a very weak engine it's not performing very well it doesn't

37:53
have what it once had. In other words, we've gone down in the horsepower arena. Militarily,

38:00
this is the warning. This is what people need to understand. People say, ‘Well, what about all the money we spent?’ That's a damn good question.

38:07
You spend all this money; what are you getting for it? Where did the money go? Who's making the decisions? And you have

38:14
separate services. Each service lives in its own world, has its own doctrine, its own bureaucracy, its own way of war. All

38:21

this jointness, is just, you know, fugazi nonsense, and you've got lots of

38:27
generals and every general has a reason to exist and every general has a thousand men in this headquarters. Every

38:32

four-star, and every four-star needs money for his projects, and this becomes

38:38
a giant trough feeding frenzy for people on the hill, and nobody ever bothers to

38:43
stand up and say ‘Why?’ ‘What are we doing this for?’ I mean, just look what's happening in africa. niger

38:50
decided they'd had enough of their french overlords. You know, the french retained ownership of virtually 50

38:55
percent of of everything of value in their colonies. [?]

39:00

I'm that's french business, whatever the french want to do, it's fine with me, but my point is

39:07
we're involved there because we built an airstrip in niger, and we marched in

39:12
there to defeat islamists. The truth is, there weren't very many islamists until we showed up. Now there are lots of

39:19
islamists. What's wrong with that picture? And now it turns out the whole population, in addition to hating the

39:25
french has decided they hate us, so we've had a coup in niger. It's now being backed by the algerians as well as

39:33
the neighbors, and people are saying, ‘Well, we trained them, we gave them assistance, and they're

39:38
turning on us. Oh, it must be the Wagner mercenaries, Ernie Wagner mercenaries in the place.’ In

39:45
other words that we may have gone in there and blown it on our own, made mistakes of our own, backed the wrong

39:51
horse, whatever you want to call it doesn't occur to anybody. Well, it must be those russians or maybe those pesky

39:57
chinese. We have this unfortunate habit of seeing ourselves as always wearing the white

40:03
hat, always doing everything right, and we miss the truth. The truth is

40:09
soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines do what they're told. They'll go wherever you ask them to go,

40:15
they'll put their lives on the line, but it doesn't always make sense and sometimes it may be for profit, not for

40:22
national interest, not for the interests of the American people. And that's the problem, and no one's been watching this

40:29
thing, they see the flag, everybody salutes, everybody listens to the music, everyone's enthralled but the old 500

40:36
horsepower engine is gone. Wwe're down to 100 horsepower, and a 100 horsepower engine is trying to make it all over the world.

40:42

It's not going very well, and we haven't even talked about our economy. Obviously,

40:48
given all of what you're saying is horrifying, and some of it, with respect, does seem

40:55
kind of obvious. Almost nobody in the congress is saying

41:01
what you were saying. Chris Christie never served in the congress, but he was a governor

41:06
He's been on the national stage for quite a long time, he's running for president, now he recently went to the ukraine to meet

41:14
with the world's highest paid actor who runs it. I think we have a clip. I believe that the overwhelming majority of the

41:21
American people understand that we need to be with the ukraine on this fight. ‘Do you

41:27
maintain the current commitment, do you expand it, or do you contract it?’

41:34
‘I increase it by position on the ukraine, which is that we haven't done enough,

41:39
and that while I think that president Biden has certainly done better than President Trump and

41:44
President Trump did better than president Obama, on this, we still have more to go. We can spend

41:50
this money now, and have ukrainian soldiers fight our war, or we can spend a lot more money and American blood later

41:57
to fight in taiwan.’ How do you respond to that? When we were in vietnam, I was 16. And I

42:07
remember general Westmoreland telling everyone, ‘We don't fight these people in

42:13
vietnam, and to fight them here, we'll be fighting them in Los Angeles, and in all

42:18

our major cities so we have to stay here and win this, or that's what's going to happen.

42:23
a lot of them did go to Los Angeles and build thriving businesses. Actually, in the end, well, my hat's off to them.

42:30
That's fine. I have no problems with that, but I think it's a lot of nonsense. You know there's the same thing with

42:36

the ukraine, but Chris Christie's not stupid, he's very dishonest, obviously, but he's not stupid. Well, he has donors that's

42:42
what that is, of course. Where's he going to get his money? ‘Well there, governor Christie, we want

42:47
this war in ukraine. We want to see that man Putin removed. We've got to get rid of him and his regime.

42:53
‘Why, well you know, it's not democratic.’ Most of the world is not democratic.

43:00
There are a lot of people who don't think we're very Democratic anymore. We're not, so who are we kidding? I

43:06
think Americans are waking up and Christie is probably there for name recognition and more money but I don't

43:12
see him winning anything. No, but he does I mean in a blustery

43:17
way he's expressing the same thing that the rest of them, Nikki Haley and all the rest. Well, doesn't this also

43:24
divert attention from far more serious matters here at home? It really does. What does it cost Christy

43:30
to say we have to beat those russians? Nothing, it doesn't cost him anything. Costs the country a great deal, in terms

43:36

of money, prestige, what, Fitch just downgraded our credit- 43:41
worthiness one more time and people say ‘Oh, it's not a problem, you know the bond

43:46
yields are on their way up, and prices are on their way down.’ When is the treasury bond fire sale

43:53
going to happen? One who banks offload these treasury bonds that they bought when they were at

43:58
zero interest? Because they're now worthless. What's going to happen in china and japan and saudi arabia, where they have

44:05
lots of bonds? I mean we're fragile, we're vulnerable, nobody even mentions it,

44:11
because nobody wants to fess up and tell the truth. We've overreached, we're running on fumes. What about

44:18
this economy? What are we building? What are we producing?

44:24
You know, that's what made us a great power between 1865 and basically

44:30
1920, that's when your industrial base was created, that's when you had people like Edison and Tesla, Rockefeller, all

44:37
these people. They were tough and they were intelligent and they were effective. The only person I see out there now who is

44:43
remotely like that is Musk. He's building something, he's creating something,

44:49
when you do that, you create employment. I don't see that happening. High-tech startups, the hell are they? What are they

44:56
doing for us? A new app on your phone? We've got to wake up, and then say, ‘Oh

45:02
well, ai, ai, ai, is better algorithms. Better algorithms do not replace human

45:08
beings and they don't necessarily create opportunity for people to work. We've got

45:13
to think this thing through very carefully. We haven't done that. We haven't—what about our energy sector,

45:20
oil, gas, we've killed it. We have what half the refineries we once had?

45:25
california had something in the neighborhood of 43 or 44 refineries, they're down to 23.

45:31
You know, how long before suddenly we're in another energy crisis, and we need to rapidly refine fuel. Can we do it well?

45:39
The answer is, it's going to be tough. The same thing applies to raytheon. We want 200 missiles, and we

45:46
want them now. Well, we have no surge capacity. There's no excess capacity built into

45:53
anything. What are we going to do with this scientific- industrial base? What about our agricultural sector? What are we

45:59
doing for that? What do we do? What do we, I mean, high-end manufacturing is dead. We

46:05
need to repatriate lots of industries. That's what President Trump talked about. We absolutely need to do that. People say,

46:11

‘Well, we want free trade,’ well, I'm 100 percent for free trade, as long as it doesn't kill us,
46:16
but if it kills us, then I'm for protection. I think we need to understand how we got where we are today. I don't

46:23

see anybody talking about that, and I think Americans are going to turn these people off, you know democrats, republicans, it's the

46:30
uni party. Who are we kidding? What are they doing for us? The swamp gets bigger and richer, the rest of the country gets

46:37
poorer. I don't see any good outcome right now from any of these candidates.

46:43
Perhaps I'm too harsh, but that's the way I feel. Last question, and it's more a piece of

46:51
tape that I want to get you to respond to but I think it's come to a lot of people's attention. This is just so perfect that

46:57
one of these spokesmen for the ukrainian military is an American guy leftist dressed up

47:04
like a woman who's now wearing a ukrainian army uniform and talking about killing Putin.

47:11
Watch this: “If you look at Putin's mouth you'll notice that blood drips from it he's a

47:18
vampire carrying out genocide against both ukrainians and russians alike.

47:24
Vlad Putin bathes in the blood of innocent children and enjoys it,

47:29

and this is why the dictator of the russian federation must be deposed,

47:35
and why peace talks have to be focused on president Zelensky's ten-point peace 47:40
formula and the full liberation of ukraine.’

47:46

There's something so perfect about that the convergence of every ugly anti-human

47:51
trend in modern is that a transgender person—that's a guy with fake breasts—yes

47:57
That's interesting. Well, I think everything else is fake, too. We estimate that at least 60, 000

48:04
children from ukraine have disappeared, vanished, since this war began

48:10

Where are they? What about all of the women that have 48:15
been sold into prostitution that once lived in ukraine. This war is a

48:21
catastrophe, the people bathing in blood are in kiev, in Washington, not in moscow

48:27
and this sort of thing is going to play, well, until it can't.

48:32
and that's the sad part. We're going to see this whole thing collapse and implode it's coming and with it, nato.

48:39
I would think so, because the europeans right now, germany is well into a recession. It has systematically de-industrialized

48:46
itself by casting its lot with the anti-russian crowd. And remember that in

48:51
europe it was not very difficult to supply stereotypes left over from the second

48:58
world war of the soviet armed forces. The soviet army was an exercise in

49:05
barbarism and savagery, mass rape, you name it. That's not russia today. russia today

49:12
is a very different society, very different state, and that's been Putin's

49:17
effort from the from day one he's been interested in restoring russia as an Orthodox Christian state with a true
49:25
national identity and a strong national culture. That's probably another reason why so

49:31
many people want to destroy russia, because it's the last european state that has not been flooded with

49:37
foreigners and turned into some sort of polyglot experiment, which is failing badly, by the way

49:44
because at some point all of these unwanted people in europe, and for that

49:49
matter, here as well. I suspect when things fall apart economically it's going to get very hard on them, because

49:56
people are going to look around and they go through this, ‘Wait a minute, I'm an American, who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you living that way why are

50:03
you being subsidized?’ ‘I'm a german, you know, you don't belong here, you need. I'm getting 1400 bucks a month in retirement

50:09

that I paid into my entire life, and you just show up from congo and you're getting 2,200 bucks. Well, here's another

50:16

one. The president announced yesterday on one of these tweets somebody tweets for

50:21
him obviously that the people that have lost everything in hawaii, thousands of them

50:27
lost everything, are going to receive a one-time payment of seven hundred dollars.

50:35
Now, I haven't been to hawaii in a long time. I'm not even sure I've ever been there

50:40
but I know that 700 isn't going to take care of a family for very long. No, but in 50:47

the meantime, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars continue to flow into this black hole called ukraine,

50:53
which I think is an exercise in fraud, deceit, and criminality to be blunt.

50:59
So, when's it going to stop? When are we going to take care of hawaii? Let's go back to ohio, where we had the

51:05
derailment and the chemical spill. Four-thousand human beings living in this area. The water is still not fit to drink,

51:11
as I understand it, we wouldn't even invest the money to move those people to a safer area, even if it meant temporary

51:19
housing or permanent housing, until this thing was cleaned up. What have we done? This is the problem.

51:25
It is America-last on every level. The last people who are

51:30
consulted the last people who are benefiting from anything that goes on in Washington are Americans. This

51:37
cannot go on. It's got to end, and I think it will end, but unfortunately it's like everything else. We're going to have to

51:44
be pushed over the cliff into the abyss. I think that's where we're headed. Well, on that cheerful note,

51:51
retired Colonel Douglas McGregor, thank you, sure was great.

52:06
[Music]