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Good evening. It’s Friday, May 26. Welcome to System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, the Democratic Party's strategy to protect Joe Biden from a primary challenge is rapidly crumbling. That strategy is as simple as it is delusional. They have been simply pretending that Biden has no primary challengers, that there is no voting process to be had, and, thus, no debates are required. There's one rather significant problem with that fairy tale. Polls continue to show Biden to be one of the weakest first-term presidents in modern American history, not just with the electorate generally, but within his own party. Yet another new poll released today shows that 20% of Democratic voters, one out of every five, are supporting the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. That's more support than many polls show Ron DeSantis is having in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Marianne Williamson continues to be polling at close to 10%. If these numbers continue, not even the Democratic Party's most loyal media servants will be able to keep pretending that Biden is already the nominee because he just happens to have no real primary challengers.
Democrats know what saved Biden in 2020, mainly a COVID pandemic, that let him rest most of the time in his basement at home and confined himself to MSNBC daytime appearances where adoring hosts like Nicolle Wallace treated him like an addled, but lovable grandpa but that won't work this year. Exposing Biden to the rigors of a fall campaign, especially one that includes even a mild primary fight, would be devastating, especially for Biden's physical and mental health. But these poll numbers will make that fairy tale unsustainable.
Then, a remarkable foreign policy address was delivered this week by one of Washington's most mainstream and hawkish foreign policy figures, Fiona Hill, known as a Russia specialist and an anti-Russian hawk, who is one of those Victoria Nuland-type figures, who always runs foreign policy no matter which party wins the White House, and became a close ally of John Bolton during the Trump years. She is now a Brookings Institution scholar. Her recent speech this week warning that most of the world outside of Europe is in full revolt against U.S. hegemony and that Ukraine's war cause is being severely addled by guilt by association with the United States and NATO, in one sense, simply states what is visibly obvious to anyone not completely propagandized – namely, propaganda about the U.S. foreign policy apparatus or its noble values is really intended for domestic consumption only. There are absurd claims believed only by Western corporate media outlets, but in the rest of the world claims that the United States foreign policy community fuels wars to save and protect people and to spread democracy provokes intense laughing fits. And that's been true for quite a while. But the fact that the U.S. is clearly now weakened, seriously weakened, vis a vis the rest of the world by endless wars that have saddled the country with massive debt, as well as the related and growing sense among the American public that these endless wars benefit everyone except the American people has enabled other countries to defy and subvert U.S. dictates like never before, at least not since the fall of the Soviet Union.
That this warning so explicitly and accurately stated, comes not from an anti-establishment critic of the U.S., but from someone deep within the bowels of the foreign policy establishment, makes a speech really significant beyond words. We will report on the key points she made.
Finally, while Joe Biden knows where he is some of the time, the 89-year-old Democratic senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, almost never knows where she is. She was recently away for months from the capital due to health problems and, when she returned, she was asked by a reporter about her absence and she had no idea what he was talking about, insisting she never went anywhere. Despite this, leading Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, are adamant that she not resign. Apparently, her right to cling to power to the end of her sixth term in the Senate, even if she doesn't even know her own name, outweighs what they regard as the needs of the 40 million people of her state, the people she's supposed to be representing. If there's a clearer and more vivid expression of the real priorities of America's ruling class than this, I can't think of what it might be. But the real motive for their attempt to keep Feinstein in office is even more cynical. They are petrified that Feinstein's resignation would force California's governor, Gavin Newsom, to appoint in his place the black liberal Democrat who has already announced that she's running for Feinstein’s seat, Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Gavin Newsom has promised in advance to name a black woman to that seat if Feinstein resigns and Lee is responsible for one of the bravest acts of any members of Congress in the last 30 years – something infinitely more valuable than anything supreme authoritarian Adam Schiff, the most compulsive liar in the House, has ever done. Nonetheless, Pelosi, Hillary, and most other establishment-Democrat radical leaders want that seat held open for this white Russiagate fanatic. We'll take a look at what all these maneuverings by Democratic elites reveal.
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Few things have proven to be more crippling to a Democratic Party presidential incumbent than a serious primary challenge, especially when that primary challenge comes from the heralded Kennedy family. Back in 1968, the success of Robert F. Kennedy's primary challenge, based on his opposition to Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam, forced Lyndon Johnson to announce that he wouldn't even seek the nomination for the Democratic primary because his defeat became almost inevitable. In 1980, Edward Kennedy, the senator from Massachusetts, challenged the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, and though he ended up losing, Carter ended up severely debilitated by that very contested primary challenge, and though he won, he ended up getting destroyed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. Now, Joe Biden has two primary challengers who are now, both, apparently, according to Democratic voters, reasonably credible: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of California Senator Robert Kennedy, who forced Lyndon Johnson out of the 1968 race, as well as the author Marianne Williamson, already familiar to Democratic voters because she previously ran for president in 2020.
When I say the strategy of the Democratic Party in the face of this primary challenge is simply to pretend that it's not happening, to just insist that Joe Biden has no primary challengers, even though he does, and therefore no debate will ever be sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, I really mean that. I'm not exaggerating. Here is current MSNBC host and former Joe Biden and Kamala Harris White House aide, Symone Sanders, who was asked by Joe Scarborough what the Democratic Party and the DNC intend to do about these primary challenges. You can listen in her own words to the extreme arrogance and hubris of what she said, the contempt that they have for the Democratic Party voter. Listen to what she told them.
(Video. “Morning Joe”. May 6, 2023)
Joe Scarborough: Bobby Kennedy, Jr. doing well, he's at 19%. Hasn't really gotten that much out there. I mean it's – and I'm starting to hear more and more talk about him – are we going to actually have a challenge here?
Symone Sanders: I'm trying not to laugh, Jeff. There's not going to be […]
Joe Scarborough: Can I just can I stop you for a second? Do you know how many people said the same thing about Donald Trump in 2015? The same exact […]
[voices overlap]
Symone Sanders: Yes, because there was going to be a Republican primary. But I really think that the mealy-mouthed Democrats, as I like to call them, and some of my progressive friends who would like to live in a fantasy land, they need to come back to reality. And the reality is this: the sitting president of the United States of America is a Democrat, a Democrat that would like to run for reelection, so much so that he has declared a reelection campaign. In that case, the Democratic National Committee will not facilitate a primary process. There will be no debate stage for Bobby Kennedy, Marianne Williamson, or anyone else.
Joe Scarborough: So, we're going to have another Bobby Kennedy and an empty chair in the debate, right?
Symone Sanders: There will be no debating […]
Joe Scarborough: No debate.
Symone Sanders: The Democratic National Committee administers the debates and they're not going to set up a primary process for debate for someone to challenge the head of the Democratic Party.
There are two amazing ironies of that. The first is she accused her progressive friends, whomever she meant, or these “mealy-mouthed Democrats” of living in a fantasy world. Right afterward, she just got done announcing, after hearing that 20% of Democratic voters support not Joe Biden to be the party's nominee, but Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – and another 8% support Marianne Williamson. So that's almost one out of every three Democratic voters who are announcing their support for a different candidate other than Joe Biden. She said there will be no primary race. There will be no debate. She's pretending they don't exist. Who's living in the fantasy world? But the other irony is these are the people who constantly tell you that they are the guardians of democracy. They want to preserve democratic values but the contempt they have for the democratic process, for their own voters, they don't even bother to hide anymore. She just said, “I don't care how many people prefer Robert Kennedy, Jr. or Marianne Williamson or any other candidate, Joe Biden will be the nominee.” Or, in other words, it's not the Democratic Party voters who determine the nominee. It's people like her. And it's already decided: it's Joe Biden. There's no need to have an election. He's the nominee regardless of what Democratic Party voters want. How self-hating do you have to be to listen to party leaders say that right to your face and continue to support this party that makes clear that they don't care in any way what it is that you think or want?
There's a new poll today from CNN that is even worse for Joe Biden. It is not only another poll that has Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., this time at 20%, not 19 – Marianne Williamson at 8%. The results continue to show substantial support for candidates other than Joe Biden within the Democratic Party. It's also a devastating poll for Joe Biden. Among other things, it has about a 35% favorability rating, the lowest for any American president in the first term since Dwight Eisenhower, 70 years ago. In one way, this poll was so devastating for Joe Biden, that even CNN was forced to admit it.
Here is Jake Tapper telling his audience what you know they do not want to hear to the extent that there is such a thing as a CNN audience anymore. But the few who are still there definitely don't want to hear this message and yet he had no choice, given the clarity of this data, to deliver it.
(Video. CNN. May 25, 2023)
Jake Tapper: It's horrible news. Horrible for Joe Biden. In our new CNN poll, while the president leads his Democratic competitors by a huge margin, two-thirds of all of the American people surveyed, 66% of the public say that a Biden victory would either be a setback or a disaster for the United States.
Tapper suggests that Joe Biden's lead is huge. It's actually not in the context of primary challenges to a sitting president. Donald Trump had primary challengers in 2020, people like former Massachusetts Governor, Bill Weld, and former South Carolina governor, who resigned in disgrace and then ended up running for the House seat that he held, Mark Sanford, and losing in the primary. It was a joke of a candidate and they never got anywhere near 20%, even though supposedly a significant portion of the party was so Trump, so anathema. And as I said, there are a lot of polls that show Ron DeSantis at a lower number of support than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has – at 16% and 18%. I saw a South Carolina poll today where Trump was above 50% and DeSantis was at 15%. And yet everybody acknowledges, and I think they should, that there's a real Republican primary, the outcome of which we won't know until the voting is counted. But if you think that about the Republican Party, you have to think that about the Democratic Party, given that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is polling higher in some polls, at least than Ron DeSantis, but has roughly the same level of support. And everyone regards Ron DeSantis as at least a credible primary challenger. Nobody would say Donald Trump is not a primary challenger. This is a fairy tale, a mythology that they have invented.
Here's CNN talking about its own poll. It has this hilariously optimistic headline: “Biden has a lead over Democratic Party challengers but faces heavy headwinds overall.”
Just a third of Americans say that Biden winning in 2024 would be a step forward or a triumph for the country. At the same time, the survey finds a decline in favorable views of Biden over the past six months from 42% in December to 35% now. And results from the same poll released earlier this week showed Biden's approval rating for handling the presidency at 40%, among the lowest for any first-term president since Dwight Eisenhower at this point in their term. Within his own party, 60% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said they back Biden for the top of next year's Democratic ticket, 20% favor activist and lawyer Robert f Kennedy, Jr., and 8% back author Marianne Williamson. Another 8% said they would support an unnamed “someone else.” (CNN. May 25, 2023)
One of the things I find extremely interesting about the challenge from RFK Jr., in particular – and I said this to Marianne Williamson when I had her on this show, and I'm going to have RFK Jr. on within the next week or two. We're finalizing the dates. Looking forward to that discussion – is that the way in which that last primary challenge against the Democratic incumbent proved to be successful it wasn't just RFK who drove Lyndon Johnson out of the race, but also Eugene McCarthy because there was a war going on that the Democratic Party president supported and they exploited anti-war sentiment to mount a challenge against him. Marianne Williamson has no differences or criticisms at all of Biden's proxy war policy in Ukraine. She supports it, in fact, vehemently. But RFK Jr. is a vehement and vocal opponent of that war policy. He finds the war in Ukraine to be recklessly disastrous and recklessly dangerous in a way that produces no benefits for the American people and all kinds of harm. But it's not just in that very important issue where he presents a stark choice and therefore a crucial debate where Biden would be forced to defend this war policy, even though Biden himself said it has brought the war closer to nuclear Armageddon than in any point since 1962, his own policy has done that, but also the widespread lies and errors and damage done. In the name of COVID, which Biden has vehemently supported. So let Biden go before the Democratic Party electorate and justify school closures that have caused retardation in the intellectual and emotional and cognitive development of millions of American children or the fact that lies were told about the efficacy of cloth masks and what the vaccine would do and how it works. That's why the Democrats are petrified of a debate because they actually have a real contrast.
Now, let me say, on a show a few days ago when I was just sort of talking about RFK Jr.’s candidacy in passing, I mentioned that there are certain things that I disagree with him on, including what I called his vehement support for Russiagate. His campaign got in contact with me and said they thought that was wildly overstated, even a little inaccurate, or maybe entirely inaccurate in their view. And we checked more than I did before. I said that it was kind of an off-the-cuff comment I made. And I have to say that at the very least my formulation was excessive. I don't think it's fair to call him a vehement supporter of Russiagate. You can find a couple of tweets that can be interpreted as supportive and a couple of skeptical tweets. And I'm going to refrain from characterizing that any further until I have RFK Jr. on the show where he can talk himself about what his position was and what it is now when it comes to Russiagate. But clearly, the Democrats are petrified of the debate that he brings. This is a serious person. He was an environmental lawyer for 20 years, widely regarded among left-liberals for doing an important job. He knows what he's talking about. We showed you that interview he did with Krystal Ball on “Breaking Point,” where she tried to tell him he was wrong on vaccines but was ill-prepared to tell him why and admitted he had done far more work than she had in researching it. He wrote an entire book on it that became a New York Times bestseller filled with references to hundreds of studies and thousands of footnotes. Imagine Joe Biden having to engage in that debate.
So, of course, they're going to do everything possible to keep Biden hidden like they did in 2020. But as poll numbers like this continue to grow and he becomes a weaker and weaker and weaker candidate, barely able to speak a coherent sentence, oftentimes, clearly not having any idea what he's saying, the ability to sustain this fairy tale is going to crumble even more now.
Let me show you a speech that Biden gave at the G-7 just last week that was, despite him reading from a script, cringeworthy and difficult to watch. Uncomfortable. Because what he was saying, the words that were coming out of his mouth were incoherent. So, imagine him trying to do that in the debate. Whatever medication they gave him in 2020 that got him to those debates seems not to be working any longer. Listen to him try to read from his script.
(Video. G7 Summit. May 22, 2023)
President Biden: And there's a lot of other, for example, the idea that we're in terms of taxes that they refuse to, for example, I was able to balance the budget and pass everything from the global warming bill – anyway. I was able to cut by $1.7 billion in the first two years the deficit that we were accumulating. And because I was able to say to it that the 55 corporations in America that made $4,400 billion or $40 billion, $400 billion that they pay zero in tax zero. Zero.
That was a 42-second clip. He mentioned no fewer than seven issues, none of which had anything to do with the prior one. He threw out numbers that made no sense, that were clearly wrong. He had no idea what those numbers meant. He continuously interrupted himself with like, whatever, and moved on. He couldn't complete a sentence, even though this was scripted. You see him reading the speech looking down. He had a script in front of him. He couldn't even read from it. His cognitive decline is something that was alerted to, warned about, and trumpeted not by Trump supporters or Bernie Sanders supporters in 2018 when he was gearing up to run, but by Democratic insiders on “Morning Joe,” who were petrified he was going to get the nomination due to name recognition only to be able to be exposed to somebody whose brain is melting. That was five years ago. This is going to be another year and a half, another year before he starts running. How are they going to present, then prop him up to make him even acceptable to watch, let alone people willing to vote for him again? And if he has to go through the rigors of a Democratic primary where he gets exposed even more, where he gets weakened even more, where his energy is devoted to that, where he gets exposed like this over and over, it is very hard to see how he ends up as even a viable candidate, let alone one that Democrats are going to have confidence in. But Democratic voters themselves see it. It's very possible the more they learn about RFK Jr. and his position on vaccines, that support will disappear. But Democratic voters clearly are petrified of supporting and nominating Joe Biden and are very uncomfortable watching him and extremely unfavorable about how he is governing this country – let alone independents and Republicans – to the point where even CNN is calling polling data disastrous.
I want to move on to a separate issue, which I have to say I consider to be significantly more important than those polling data – and we're probably going to do a show on this next week. It was only today we saw the speech, so we wanted to give it coverage but we want to delve into it a lot further because it really deserves all kinds of attention.
What has become extremely obvious since the beginning of this war in Ukraine and especially the United States’ sponsorship of Ukraine as a proxy in this war against Russia, is that outside of Europe, virtually the entire world is no longer feeling compelled to support the United States and submit to its dictates. They have from the start abstained from U.N. resolutions that have been designed to put the world against Russia, to isolate Russia, including major countries like China and India and the top democratic countries in the world, the biggest democracies in the world. Sometimes ten out of the first 20 democracies have just abstained on these U.N. resolutions. And these countries are now openly exploiting the weakness of the United States because we are always devoting ourselves and our resources to these endless wars, pouring billions and hundreds of billions of dollars into these wars. We just got out of Afghanistan after 20 years and six months later found a new war. And the arms industry thrives and our country is saddled with more and more debt, people are suffering more and more at home because the priorities of our country are clearly imperialism and militarism – And it's not just the rest of the world that sees it, but increasingly people here at home. And the rest of the world sees an opportunity to finally get out of the hegemonic rule of the United States, which has dominated the world since the late 1980s with the fall of the Soviet Union.
We've repeatedly shown you videos of world leaders who are confronted by Western media outlets about supposed war crimes they're committing or supposed repression in their countries, and they scoff at it and they tell these reporters, Who are you to judge us? You invaded Iraq, a country that never attacked you, and destroyed a country of 26 million people; you tried to do a dirty war in Syria to remove that government; you changed the government of Libya and left it filled with ISIS and anarchy and slave markets; you bombed eight or nine different countries just under Obama alone – and now you're coming to lecture us about the rules-based international order? This is propaganda that I promise you only works on U.S. corporate media outlets, in Western corporate media outlets and in the UK and Western European capitals. But the rest of the world, which is now increasingly empowered and emboldened in the wake of U.S. weakness is increasingly not only mocking the U.S. but organizing quickly to subvert the U.S. led world order.
And it's not just people like me now saying this. Fiona Hill, who is somebody who comes from the deepest bowels of the U.S. foreign policy community, like I said, she's practically a Victoria Nuland figure, she just gets passed around from one foreign policy job to the next no matter who wins. Unlike Victoria Nuland, who was at least out of government, when Donald Trump was elected, she managed to control and run Russia policy, often against the stated wishes of the president, and she did so by aligning herself and partnering with John Bolton, probably the most deranged warmonger in recent American history. So, for her to go and give a speech warning that the rest of the world now sees the United States as a joke, as a cauldron of hypocrisy, as a country that no longer intimidates anybody and that they have a rationale for thinking this, is truly remarkable. The speech she gave – we're going to show you some of the segments – is just not something foreign policy elites like her say, but in this case, she did, because of how compelling she obviously sees it. It was a very impressive speech because she so perfectly captured the world view of what we like to call ‘the rest of the world’, meaning not the United States or our European allies. Sometimes we call the United States and our European allies and Australia, the international community, and everything else is ‘the rest of the world’ and an arrogant formulation, she warned, needs to be modified because people understand that and no longer accept it.
So, before we show you the keywords of her speech, let me just show you a video of the South African leader who's the leader of The African National Congress, Fikile Mbalula, who was confronted by a BBC reporter about the fact that he and his country continues to trade with Russia. Just watch this confrontation.
(Video. BBC. “Hardtalk” May 24, 2023)
Stephen Sackur: Africa is a treaty member of the International Criminal Court. If Putin comes here in August as planned, your government will be obliged to arrest him. As head of the ANC, do you believe your government should and indeed will arrest him?
Fikile Mbalula: According to the ANC, we would want President Putin to be here even tomorrow to come to our country.
Stephen Sackur: You would? You would welcome Vladimir Putin here right now, a man who is being investigated for war crimes by the International Court?
Fikile Mbalula: Of course, we would welcome him to come here as part and parcel of BRICS. But we know that we are constrained by the ICC in terms of doing that. Putin is a head of state. Do you think that a head of state can just be arrested anywhere? How many crimes has your country committed in Iraq? How many crimes have everyone else who is so vocal up today committed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Have you arrested them?
Stephen Sackur: You know, the impact […]
Fikile Mbalula: […] A lot of noise about putting a state working for peace between Ukraine and Russia. And you failed to resolve the war. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Tony Blair went to Iraq and claimed {there were} weapons of mass destruction. Did you see anybody standing against that in the United Kingdom and Britain? More than – millions of people have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. We know what the war is about between Russia and Ukraine.
Stephen Sackur: Mr. Secretary General […]
Fikile Mbalula: We want peace. That's what is important so that the world can thrive and organs and institutions of the world that institute world peace must not be conspicuous by their silence […]
Stephen Sackur: We don't have much time left, which is why I want to bring it back to domestic South African politics before we end.
They never have much time whenever they get put in a corner like that. And whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, this is exactly how not powerless countries, but powerful countries around the world now think. And it's not just they think this way. They feel emboldened by U.S. weakness to say it. Just to give their middle finger at what used to be the kinds of hypocritical actions that they knew were hypocritical but had to swallow, but no longer have to swallow the BRICS alliance by itself. An alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. One that countries like Saudi Arabia are now seeking to join and is all about creating a new pole of power that will liberate much of the world – you're talking about 30% - 40% of the world's population or more – from having to live under a sanctions regime of the United States, where the United States tells the world with whom they can and cannot trade because they control the dollar as the reserve currency, and they can punish countries for trading with whatever countries the United States decides not to like. Nobody in the world is having this anymore. And again, you may not like that. You may think we want a world where the U.S. doesn't pay attention to its people at home but instead rules the world through superior force. But that world is no longer possible. Because people like the general secretary of the African National Congress understand that the moral lectures are bullshit and that they now have the power to say so. And what is so unusual is that someone like Fiona Hill stood up and explained this at this conference of Western foreign policy elites this week, where she urged the West to stop living in this fantasy world that is still 1997 or 2006, to understand that the world has changed and it's in large part change because of the war in Ukraine. Because while the U.S. was pouring all of its resources into fueling this war, China marched into the Middle East – China, that doesn't get itself involved in endless wars, that uses its resources to build infrastructure at home and invest in countries abroad, marched into the Middle East, traditionally where the United States rules, and forged a peace deal between the two primary enemies in that region, the Iranians and Saudi Arabia, right under the nose of the United States. While we're focused on this insane and pointless war over who rules Eastern Ukraine. And you go in to talk to these African countries and they will say, when the United States comes, we get a lecture. When China comes, we get a new hospital. That's the reality of the world, whether you like it or not. And that's what Fiona Hill is trying to get people to realize.
So, let's listen to just a few of the key excerpts. I really encourage you to read this entire speech. It's not that long, but let's take a look at what she had to say.
In its pursuit of the war, Russia has cleverly exploited deep-seated international resistance, and in some cases open challenges, to continued American leadership of global institutions. It is not just Russia that seeks to push the United States to the sidelines in Europe and China, that wants to minimize and contain U.S. military and economic presence in Asia so both can secure their respective spheres of influence. Other countries that have traditionally been considered “middle powers” or “swing states” – the so-called “Rest” of the world seek to cut the United States down to a different size in their neighborhoods and exert more influence in global affairs. They want to decide, not be told what's in their interest. In short, in 2023, we hear a resounding no to U.S. domination and see a marked appetite for a world without a hegemon.
Since 1991, the U.S. has seemingly stood alone as the global superpower. But today, after a fraught two-decade period shaped by American-led military interventions and direct engagement in regional wars, the Ukraine war highlights the decline of the United States itself. This decline is relative economically and militarily, but serious in terms of U.S. moral authority.
Unfortunately, just as Osama bin Laden intended, the U.S.’s own reactions and actions have eroded its position since the devastating terrorist attacks of 9/11. “America fatigue” and disillusionment with its role as the global hegemon is widespread.
This includes, in the United States itself – a fact that is frequently on display in Congress, in news outlets and in think tank debates. For some, the U.S. is a flawed international actor with its own domestic problems to attend to. For others, the U.S. is a new form of imperial state that ignores the concerns of others and throws its military weight around.
Ukraine is essentially being punished by guilt through association for having direct U.S. support in its efforts to defend itself and liberate its territory. Indeed, in some international and American domestic forums, discussions about Ukraine quickly degenerated into arguments about U.S. past behavior.
Russia's actions are addressed in a perfunctory fashion. “Russia is doing only what the U.S. does,” is the retort… Yes, Russia overturned the fundamental post-1945 principle of the prohibition against war and the use of force enshrined in Article 2 of the UN Charter. But the U.S. already damaged that principle when it invaded Iraq 20 years ago.
“Whataboutism” is not just a feature of Russian rhetoric. The U.S. invasion of Iraq universally undercut U.S. credibility and continues to do so for many critics of the United States, Iraq was the most recent in a series of American sins stretching back to Vietnam and the precursor of current events. Even though a tiny handful of states have sided with Russia in successive UN resolutions in the General Assembly, significant abstentions, including by China and India, signal displeasure with the United States.
As a result, the vital twin task of restoring the prohibition against war and the use of force as the critical cornerstone of the United Nations and the international system, and of defending Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, get lost in a morass of skepticism and suspicions about the United States. In the so-called “Global South” and what I am loosely referring to as the “Rest” of the world, there is no sense of the U.S. as a virtuous state. Perceptions of American hubris and hypocrisy are widespread. Trust in the international system(s) that the U.S. helped invent and has presided over since World War II is long gone.
Elites and populations in many of these countries believe that the system was imposed on them at a time of weakness when they were only just securing their independence. Even if elites and populations have generally benefited from pax Americana, they believe the United States and its bloc of countries in the collective West have benefited far more. For them, this war is about protecting the West’s benefits and hegemony, not defending Ukraine.
Non-Western elites share the same belief as some Western analysts that Russia was provoked or pushed into war by the United States and NATO expansion. They resent the power of the U.S. dollar and Washington’s frequent punitive use of financial sanctions. They were not consulted by the U.S. on this round of sanctions against Russia. They see Western sanctions constraining their energy and food supplies and pushing up prices. They blame Russia's Black Sea blockade and deliberate disruption of global grain exports on the United States – not the actual perpetrator, Vladimir Putin. They point out that no one pushed to sanction the United States when it invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, even though they were opposed to the U.S. intervention, so why should they step up now and sanction Russia?
Countries in the Global South’s resistance to the U.S. and European appeals for solidarity on Ukraine are an open rebellion. This is a mutiny against what they see as the collective West dominating the international discourse and foisting its problems on everyone else while brushing aside their priorities on climate change compensation, economic development, and debt relief.
The Rest feel constantly marginalized in world affairs. Why in fact are they labeled (as I am reflecting here in this speech) the “Global South,” having previously been called the Third World or the Developing World? Why are they even the rest of the world? They are the world. They are the world representing, 6.5 billion people. Our terminology reeks of colonialism.
The Cold War era non-aligned movement has reemerged if it ever went away. At present, this is less a cohesive movement than a desire for distance to be left out of the European mess around Ukraine. But it is also a very clear negative reaction to the American propensity for defining the global order and forcing countries to take sides. As one Indian interlocutor recently exclaimed about Ukraine, “This is your conflict! We have other pressing matters… our own issues… We are in our own lands, on our own sides. Where are you when things go wrong for us?” (Lennart Meri Lecture by Fiona Hill, 2023)
As I said, this is something you've heard on my show before, this is something you might hear from Jeffrey Sachs that we had on Wednesday night. It's a longtime critique of Noam Chomsky of the U.S. hegemonic role in the world and a warning that it will eventually backfire. It's something Donald Trump and a lot of the America First foreign policy advocates have been arguing as well. Their going around the world trying to change regimes and impose our will on others is a huge waste of our resources when we have so many problems at home and will simply create resentment in the rest of the world – anti-American sentiment – and drive people into the arms of China that, notice, does not do that. That is not to defend the Chinese, it is to point out that they do not invade other countries and occupy them for 20 years because they see how wasteful and counterproductive it is.
The fact that you hear it from all the other sources is one thing, the fact that you're hearing it from her is something completely different. Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center of the United States and Europe and the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings – it does not get more establishment that. In November 2022, Hill was appointed chancellor of Durham University, U.K., a high-profile ceremonial and ambassadorial role. Hill is also currently a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council from 2017 to 2019, and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council from 2006 to 2009. In October, November 2019, Hill testified before Congress in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. She is the author of “There Is Nothing For You Here,” and co-author of this other book on Putin. She basically is the living, breathing embodiment of foreign policy elites. And this is the message she is delivering, one which is amazing even needs to be delivered, given how often the rest of the world and its leaders make this clear.
I want to show you a video of just how far gone U.S. leaders are, how deranged and unhinged they are when it comes to this war in Ukraine, and how they are talking themselves into greater and greater involvement all while this change is around them. Here is the long-time Democratic congressman from Manhattan, Jerry Nadler, who represents an American gerontocracy. We have a president who barely knows where he is. We have a U.S. senator from California who doesn't know her own name. Everyone seems to be in their late seventies and eighties. Joe Biden's going to run for a second term at 82 to finish his term, theoretically when he's 86.
Here's Jerry Nadler, who's been around forever. Listen to him when he was asked about the dangers of sending F-16 fighter jets, as Biden just now reversed himself and said he would do, given the Ukrainian propensity to want to strike deep into Russia, watch him talk so cavalierly about the most dangerous war since at least Iraq and the event that has brought us closer to nuclear in any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Joe Biden himself.
(Video. May 24, 2023)
Interviewer: And what do you think about his previous comments, though, that it was too escalatory to do?
Jerry Nadler: I think that he was wrong. I think, you know, every different weapon system is too escalatory and then we eventually gave it to them. And they're fighting not only for their lives, but they’re also fighting for democracy, the fighting for the world order against, you know, just invasion of another country, all three borders by force, which is inadmissible since 1945. And we should give them whatever they need.
Interviewer: And are you concerned that they will enter into Russian territory, as there have been recent reports of Belgorod, the border city?
Jerry Nadler: I'm not concerned. I wouldn't care if they did.
Interviewer: You wouldn't care if they entered Russia? No, really?
Jerry Nadler: Turn of events is fair play. I don't think they're going to do it on any large scale. But why should Russia feel that they can invade somebody else and have total safety at home?
Interviewer: Well, but that would cross the line to a U.S.-sanctioned invasion of Russia.
Jerry Nadler: But we don't have to sanction it.
Interviewer: Well, you would be providing the weapons that conducted it is what I'm saying
Jerry Nadler: If you're not providing it for that purpose, I said I personally wouldn't mind.
Interviewer: You personally wouldn't mind, but you know, you are a representative of the government.
Jerry Nadler: So, I'm part of the government, part of the executive branch, but I think we should give them whatever they need.
Interviewer: Okay. And, you know, if an F-16 was to be used on Russia, you wouldn't come out and say, that's too much, it's too far.
Jerry Nadler: No, I don't think that's going to happen in any event, no. They're going to use F-16s for air defense, basically […]
Interviewer: But there are these reports right now that American weapons are being used in Belgorod, which is, you know, a Russian territory. It's already happening.
Jerry Nadler: They're not going to use major weapons. I mean, things like F-16s they need for air defense over Ukraine so they can provide air cover for their counterattack and things like that. They're not going to waste that in Russia.
Do you want U.S. F16s being used to bomb Moscow by Ukraine? Are you ready for that kind of direct military confrontation? He said, Why should the Russians get to invade another country and be safe at home? What would have happened if while the U.S. was invading Iraq, China or Russia gave F-16 fighter jets to Saddam Hussein in the name of protecting his country, and he used those to do bombing runs and bomb U.S. barracks in the Middle East or even the U.S. homeland. Do you think this would be our attitude? But you can be this cavalier about nuclear war when you're at the end of your life. It's a major reason why it's so dangerous to be ruled by 90-year-olds and 80-year-olds. Let's remember that about a year ago, Jerry Nadler was giving a press conference in Capitol Hill. It was recently, within the last year or so. He was standing next to Nancy Pelosi and he pooped in his pants. At a press conference. And you kind of tried waddling away very carefully, because if you walk too quickly when that happens, you can imagine the mess you would make. This is a metaphor for the kind of people who are ruling us – our ruling class. This is what the rest of the world sees. It's a major reason they understand that they have an opportunity to subvert and undermine us. Does this seem scary to you? Let's watch this.
That is disgusting. I mean. That is the government. There's like an 82-year-old woman here and some guy who doesn't have control over his gastrointestinal system. And, you know, this was from 2020, so, now we're three years later. He's like, “Yeah, have the American F16s bomb the world's largest nuclear power.” And they are working to elect a president whose brain is melting and they now want him to be the president for four more years until he's 86. This is our ruling class. And it's the reason why American power is collapsing around it, to the point where even someone like Fiona Hill sees it and understands it and finds it so dire that she needs to break through or urge elites to break through the propaganda in which they're subsumed and start to realize the truth that is so glaring.
Speaking of people whose brains are melting and who are part of America's meritocracy, I want to talk about Dianne Feinstein. Dianne Feinstein is now 89 years old. She is currently in her sixth term representing the state of California in the United States Senate. She, by all accounts, no longer has a functioning brain. She doesn't know where she is, she doesn't know her name, she has no idea what she's voting on: everything is done by her staff. She was just absent for three months, which meant the Democrats were unable to pass or get approved any of Joe Biden's judicial nominees, angering the Democrats when a lot of Democrats want her to resign because she was incapable of carrying out the work because her brain doesn't function anymore. It's sad, but it's true. And she shouldn’t be a United States senator. A reporter confronted her about where she was when she was gone and she denied being gone, not because she was lying, but because she didn't remember having been away, even though she was gone for three months, about two days until this exchange.
Here you see The Hill’s article: Feinstein: “I hadn’t been gone. I've been working.”
A Feinstein spokesperson declined to immediately comment on the reports. Feinstein was hospitalized and stayed away from the Capitol for weeks because of complications from shingles. Her absence led four House Democrats, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), to call for her resignation as Democrats struggled to move a judicial nomination through the Senate. Critics have argued that she can no longer serve on the air because most popular state effectively, given her health.
Feinstein and her office have pushed back at some suggestions, and the pressure to resign has not come from Democratic colleagues in the Senate and the Senate, key allies in the House, the White House or Congress, or California Governor Gavin Newsom. The exchange with the reporters, however, is likely to raise more scrutiny about Feinstein's acuity and her ability to effectively serve her state. (The Hill. May 16, 2023)
We have the video of this exchange where Feinstein is being wheeled around in a wheelchair and you can judge for yourself.
(Video. May 16, 2023)
Benjamin Orestes: What has the response from your colleagues been like? […] the well-wishes? What have you heard?
Dianne Feinstein: What have I heard about what about?
Benjamin Orestes: Your return. How have they felt about your return?
Dianne Feinstein: I haven't been gone. You should follow... I haven't been gone. I've been working.
Benjamin Orestes: You've been working from home, is what you're saying?
Dianne Feinstein: No, I've been here. I've been voting. So please, either know or don't.
Benjamin Orestes: What do you say to Californians like Ro Khanna who say you should resign?
She was gone for three months. That was the day she came back. She was waving like some kind of prop-up character from the film “Weekend with Bernie’s.”
While a lot of Democratic voters are understandably angry that they can't get any judges approved because Dianne Feinstein, despite her not realizing it, is not actually in the Senate working, she's been absent for three months on the Judiciary Committee, meaning the Democrats have no majority and are calling for her resignation. As that article suggests, the top level of the Democratic Party, the actual ruling elite, who, as we showed you in the past, doesn't care at all what their voters want – which is why they're saying you're not going to have a primary no matter how many of you want to vote for a different candidate: have fun, he's still going to be the nominee – also are saying we don't want Dianne Feinstein to resign. And the reason they'll say is that it's sexist to demand that, the same way they did when Democrats wanted Ginsburg to resign under President Obama, in fear that there'd be a Republican president who would appoint a replacement, which is exactly what happened in a lot of Democratic parlances, came out and said that's misogynistic to demand that she resign. A woman has the right to her own body and can resign when she wants. But Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have a much different motive.
So here is an article that sheds light on what their motive is and, as it turns out, it is Nancy Pelosi's daughter who is currently taking care of Dianne Feinstein as her primary caregiver, at the same time that Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton both explicitly and publicly said Feinstein should not resign despite her not knowing her own name. Here is the May 18 article from Politico, the title of which is “Feinstein's primary caregiver: Pelosi's daughter. A quiet, caretaking arrangement has raised questions about whether Nancy Pelosi has the ailing senator's personal interest at heart.”
When senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, walked into the Capitol last week, ending a monthslong medical absence, she was accompanied by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a small entourage of aides – and a close personal confidant with a storied political pedigree. Nancy Corinne Prowda blended into the swarm around the legendary California Democrat. (Politico. May 18, 2023)
What makes her legendary, by the way, just the fact that she's like 90 and has been around forever?
The San Francisco Chronicle made note of her presence but left it unreported amid the spectacle, the larger role that Prowda, the eldest child of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has come to play in Feinstein's life as the 89-year-old has dealt with the absence of her disease, the departure of trusted staffers, a nasty case of shingles and spiraling concerns about her fitness for office.
By all accounts, the arrangement is rooted in a long and friendly relationship between Feinstein and the Pelosis – twin pillars of San Francisco politics. But among some of those who are aware, it has also raised uncomfortable questions about whether Nancy Pelosi's political interests are in conflict with Feinstein's personal interest. The intrigue surrounds the future of Feinstein's seat. Pelosi has endorsed Rep. Adam Schiff, her longtime protégé and former hand-picked House Intelligence Committee chair, to succeed Feinstein after her sixth and final term ends next year. Schiff is a household name in California and already raised a $15 million campaign cash advantage over his nearest competitor. But if Feinstein were to bow to pressure and retire early, Schiff's advantage could disappear. Governor Gavin Newsom has pledged to appoint a black woman to serve out her term, and one of Schiff's declared opponents, Rep. Barbara Lee, would fit the bill.
“If DiFi, resigns right now, there is an enormous probability that by Barbara Lee gets appointed – thus it makes it harder for Schiff,” one Pelosi family confidant told Playbook, adding that the relationship between Pelosi, her daughter and the senator is “being kept under wraps and very, very closely held.” (Politico, May 18, 2023)
Also, in Politico (Feb.2, 2023), “Pelosi Endorses Adam Schiff in California Senate race –if Feinstein doesn't run.” She said he would be the one who needs to be filling that seat, not that black woman, Barbara Lee.
Ordinarily, if you think about it, a state like California that has no black representation, they have a white man as their governor, this is how Democratic Party politics works. Another man who is Latino and a white woman, Dianne Feinstein, would at some point have to account for the fact that in such a large, important democratic state, they have no black representation. That's why Barbara Lee is running along with Rep. Katie Porter. And you have Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein working very hard to prevent this long-term black congresswoman from ascending to the Senate because they want this white man to do so instead, Adam Schiff.
Ordinarily, that would be called racist, without question. Fortunately for Democratic Party leaders like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, the rules clearly state that Democratic Party leaders are exempt from racism accusations, so lucky for them. But what makes it particularly amazing is that Barbara Lee actually has done something significant in the House, unlike Adam Schiff on September 14, 2001, as I've written about several times. So, we've had about three days after the 9/11 attack when there was enormous pressure to acquiesce to everything the U.S. government wanted. She stood up on the House floor and was the lone vote the only vote in the House or the Senate, to vote against authorizing military force in Afghanistan. And for that, she was mauled, as you might imagine, as any dissident in the wake of 9/11 was. She was called a terrorist lover. She had tons of violent threats pouring into her office. She had to walk around with armed guards for months. It was a very brave thing to do. And whether you were for the war in Afghanistan at the time or against it – and lots of people believe it was morally justified because of the claim that the Taliban was harboring Osama bin Laden, even though the Taliban said they would turn over Osama bin Laden if the U.S. presented proof that he was actually responsible for the 9/11 attack – not in an unreasonable demand. When a country is saying we demand you turn over someone safely in your country, legally in your country, and you say, well, show us evidence that he's guilty and we will. The Bush administration said we're not showing you anything. You give him to us or we're going to bomb you and go to war against you. And Barbara Lee stood up and said, not that the U.S. has no moral right to do it but if we did it, it would end up being a morass. We would end up with no war aims and with yet another war that we were trapped in for years without any end. Whatever you think of the wisdom of going to war, there is no question that Barbara Lee stood up and gave warnings that were very prescient, that proved absolutely true. Time has vindicated what she said, and she was the only one with the courage to do it.
Let me show you this video. It was a two-minute speech that she gave or even less on the House floor. And again, this is September 14, 2021, when almost nobody was willing to oppose what the U.S. government was demanding. Listen to what she said.
(Video. Sept. 14, 2001)
Chairman: Gentlewoman from California is recognized for a minute and a half.
Rep. Barbara Lee: […] Mr. Speaker, members, I rise today really with a very heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Only the most foolish and the most calloused would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world. This unspeakable act in the United States has really forced me, however, to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God, for direction. September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter. Now, this resolution will pass, although we all know that the president can wage a war even without it. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let's step back for a moment. Let's just pause just for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control. Now, I have agonized over this vote, but I came to grips with it today and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful, yet very beautiful memorial service, as a member of the clergy so eloquently said, as we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore. Thank you. And I yield the balance of my time.
Again, there's no denying the courage of what she did there. And for those of you who didn't live through it, it was an incredibly repressive time. Everything that happened in the weeks after the passage of the Patriot Act – the war in Afghanistan; the installation of a domestic, illegal, unconstitutional spying regime and so much else – ended up being incredibly damaging to the United States. We just showed you Fiona Hill's speech about how the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan devastated Iraq and America's moral standing in the world. If anybody had known it would take 20 years to occupy that country, to lose thousands of American lives and then to walk out with the disaster that we left, only for the Taliban to waltz right back in – do you think anybody would have voted yes on that war? She was very prescient and very courageous in her warning. This is who they're trying to keep out of the Senate in favor of Adam Schiff, who has done nothing but blatantly lie to the American people, and has pushed false claims after false claims. He swore on cameras over and over that he has personally seen smoking gun evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, only for, as the public now knows, that to be a complete lie. So, the first thing the ruling class, the Democratic Party, is trying to do is to keep a woman in power who is completely incapacitated, just like they're trying to do with Joe Biden because they don't care at all about whether the government acts on your behalf. How much more obvious can that be? But the reason they want to keep her in power, other than the fact that their only loyalty is to their own class, the ruling class, is because they want to keep that one out of power to place Adam Schiff in it. And you can just imagine what would be said in any other context about this being done.
But that is the Democratic Party, a group of extremely old and addled leaders, people who poop in their own pants while they casually trifle with the risk of nuclear war. And you go around calling everybody else racist for behavior far less egregious than this while exempting themselves from those accusations. We’ll definitely continue to follow the attempt to keep Dianne Feinstein in that seat and especially the nefarious motives for why this is being done.
So that concludes our show for this evening and this week. As a reminder, we are available in podcast form on Apple, Spotify and every other major platform. These shows post 12 hours after they first air, live, here on Rumble. To follow us, simply follow us on those platforms and review the show, which helps spread visibility. We also have a Locals community that you can join that helps support the journalism we do here and entitles you to exclusive access to the aftershow, we do on Tuesday and Thursday that are interactive. We take your comments and address your critiques and your suggestions for what we should cover and whom we should interview to join the Locals community, simply click the join button in the Rumble. That, as I said, promotes our journalism and it gives you access to the written transcripts that we post each show every day, and the written journalism. We are starting to expand once again as I have more energy and time to do so.
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