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Good evening. It's Friday, September 1. Welcome to a new episode of 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: When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, one of his signature foreign policy arguments was one that polling data has long shown American support, namely, that it is both immoral and a violation of the core duty of the American government to continue to pour billions into wars, regime-change operations, and other obscenely costly imperial projects to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. All while Americans in the United States continue to suffer at home from a deindustrialization heartland, stagnant wages, the inability of millions of American families to raise their children without having both parents work outside the home and lack of reasonable health care, the inability to pay for college and on and on and on. As you know, that turned out to be a winning message as Trump rode that attack on longstanding bipartisan neoconservative orthodoxy all the way to the Republican nomination and ultimately to the Oval Office. It is difficult to think of a more vivid example of the war priorities in Washington than what is happening right now inside the U.S. Senate. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the federal entity responsible for administering and overseeing disaster relief to American citizens when major destruction ruins or ends their lives, such as the wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, or Hurricane Dorian, in Florida. Because that agency is short on funds at exactly the same time Americans most urgently need it, Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida urged a quick standalone vote to replenish the federal disaster relief fund so that American citizens – again, the people to whom the U.S. government has its highest responsibility, at least in theory – can obtain the relief they desperately need from these multiple natural disasters. And yet, earlier today, Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic senator from Illinois, announced that she will block this vote unless – and I'm not making this up – that bill also includes $24 billion, which the Biden administration is demanding as the latest sum of unaccounted for largesse that will be lavished on our colonial puppets in Kiev, Ukraine.
Let me say that again: Tammy Duckworth is refusing to allow disaster relief for American citizens in desperate need of help in the United States unless the bill also includes another $24 billion for Ukraine.
On CNN, with Jake Tapper this afternoon, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, emphasized that the White House fully supports Senator Duckworth's threats. In other words, in the eyes of the DC ruling class, the interest of Ukraine and the Ukrainian government is at least of equal importance to the urgent need of America's own citizens whose lives have just been overturned or worse, by several natural disasters. Indeed, the only logical conclusion one can reach is that the lives of American citizens have a lower priority than the latest demands from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
If you're ever wondering why so many Americans despise its ruling class in Washington and are increasingly attracted to the type of foreign policy principles that demand the end of endless wars and the neocon obsession with sending American resources to slaughter and destabilize other countries rather than using their resources to improve the lives of American citizens, just look at what is happening right now, in Washington, and everything will be clear.
Then: Last May, we spoke with Jeffrey Sachs, the long-time Harvard economist who has held numerous powerful positions as part of the Western establishment, going back to the 1980s when he helped Bolivia and then Poland and other countries exit their crisis with debt. Despite that resumé filled with some of the most impressive establishment credentials that exist, Professor Sachs has simultaneously become one of the most emphatic and scathing critics of the foreign policy and global economic dogmas of leading Western institutions. Indeed, he managed to stay inside the establishment while always being a critic of it, and yet now has become an even more scathing one. We reviewed that interview as one of the most interesting that we had and we are thrilled to have him back tonight for a wide-ranging and very enlightening discussion on the war in Ukraine and the latest events there, the U.S. posture toward both Russia and China, how to reconcile America First or other anti-imperialist and anti-militarism policies with the seemingly quite rapid march to a Cold War with China, if not a hot war with them, and the question of whether the so-called BRICS alliance, led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that are now expanding to include six more countries, including Saudi Arabia, presents a meaningful threat to the hegemony of Western institutions such as NATO, the G-7 and the World Bank, and whether that alliance poses a real threat to the role of the American dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Our discussion with him, which we filmed just about an hour ago because of schedule context, was at least as fascinating as the one we did with him in May. It really is remarkable that someone who has been on the inside of institutional power for so long is simultaneously now one of the most independent, informed and important voices of dissent. We are glad he is and are thrilled to show you our discussion with him.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
