Netanyahu Controls Trump — America No Longer In Charge | Col. Douglas Macgregor

[00:00:00]I think uh President Trump is not really president of the United States. I think he's ultimately obeying the orders that's that are given to him by Mr. Netanyahu and his government.

[00:00:11]I think that's one of the reasons you've seen so much vacillation.

[00:00:15]Now, some of the vacillation is a function of Donald Trump's efforts to manipulate the marketplace.

[00:00:22]Uh that's obvious.

[00:00:24]Uh but in terms of meaningful agreements, we have none yet. Nor are we likely to see anything in the meantime as long as the Israelis exercise veto power.

[00:00:35]And Netanyahu has veto power over everything and anything that uh President Trump does. Now, the question is, could that change?

[00:00:45]Uh I don't know. Uh I would hope so. But thus far, I think that's pretty clear.

[00:00:50]And you've already hit the nail on the head. Uh the Israelis have tended to treat our ongoing hostilities with Iran as something they can exploit to busy themselves elsewhere.

[00:01:02]Uh finish the job in Southern Lebanon, finish the job in Gaza uh in pursuit of the Greater Israel project.

[00:01:10]But that doesn't mean that they're going to sign on for peace with Iran because they want something that we have not been able to deliver, and that is the destruction of Iran.

[00:01:19]All you have to do is go back and look at the various goals that we set for ourselves.

[00:01:24]We started off with this ridiculous notion that there were millions of people in Iran that wanted to dispose of their own government.

[00:01:31]They sent in the CIA and the Mossad and probably MI6 to try and stir this up. It failed. The government remains strong.

[00:01:40]And so then the What was the new goal?

[00:01:42]Well, it's decapitation. We just have to go in and kill all the leaders, and like most states in the Middle East, Iran will fall apart.

[00:01:50]Iran is not like most states in the Middle East. Iran is a civilizational state.

[00:01:55]It's existed for 2,000 plus years.

[00:01:58]Uh bombing them isn't going to make much difference in the grand scheme of things.

[00:02:03]But we didn't see it that way. We grossly underestimated them, overestimated ourselves, and that's because we tend to project our feelings and thinking and values on others.

[00:02:13]And we say frequently in in the Pentagon in Washington, "Well, we wouldn't put up with this. This is something we would never tolerate." And we forget that uh the rest of the world thinks differently from us.

[00:02:25]So, that failed. The decapitation has failed. The first uh several weeks of intensive bombing have failed.

[00:02:32]So, now we still at a at a kind of pause. It's not a complete pause because we still have violence. We still have exchanges of gunfire and so forth.

[00:02:41]The question is what comes next. And the only thing left for us is the destruction of the Iranian state and its society.

[00:02:49]And that's what I always thought it would come down to because that's really what Israel demands.

[00:02:55]Israel's strategic position has not really improved over the last several years. It's gotten much worse.

[00:03:03]They've created more enemies than they ever had in the past.

[00:03:06]Uh Iran is not the only capable state out there that can present real resistance to them.

[00:03:13]But they're afraid that if they don't make an example of Iran, everything in the region that they've tried to create for themselves will be at risk and probably won't survive.

[00:03:25]So, you've got to destroy Iran.

[00:03:27]I don't think President Trump personally is interested in that, but uh I'm not sure he really cares.

[00:03:34]Uh I think he's beginning to care more, but for reasons that don't have much to do with Iran, that have a lot more to do with us. And we can talk about that.

[00:03:46]>> Hm. I I just remembered, by the way, our first conversation ever in Washington when we talking I mentioned to you it seems Hezbollah's been you know, completely decapitated, the capabilities have been eroded, and now we're seeing Hezbollah use drone warfare to cause significant casualties to Israel. And And there's a lot of reports on the Israeli front, the military spread very thin. They couldn't achieve their objectives in in Iran. Iran is coming out of this stronger, they control the Strait of Hormuz, they're more emboldened. They seem more determined to support their allies or their proxies.

[00:04:15]And then you've got um Hamas is still there.

[00:04:19]And uh Hezbollah is using drone warfare, and it seems to be working well for them. So, um >> And Mario >> And they have >> Well, as I recall, when you asked me the question about Hezbollah, I said, "Absolutely not. Hezbollah is not >> Yeah, he did.

[00:04:32]>> And you looked at me as though I owed you money.

[00:04:35]>> Yeah, yeah, I You remember that. Yeah, I was very sur- I didn't expect that from you. I mentioned it as like a fact, cuz you know, we saw those pager attacks, and then the Stella was killed. I treated it as fact. Um And that was I had someone from from the IDF, from Project 8200, and he said something to similar to what you said. He's like, "Mario, Israel is great tactically, and they're great at killing people, but strategically, that's where they fail."

[00:04:58]That's someone who was formerly in the in Project 8200 in the IDF. And that's similar to what you just said now.

[00:05:04]Strategically, Israel is in a very bad spot. And um I think it's hard to deny that.

[00:05:10]>> Well, I I think there's a lot of evidence that the Israeli Defense Force, at least the ground portion, is effectively imploding. And I think the chief of the Israeli Defense Forces tried to make it clear that they can't continue on the current path.

[00:05:26]Uh you know, you've got a problem with calling up reservists, reservists who won't come, who won't show up. You've got problems with reservists leaving.

[00:05:33]And you have you have, I think, also a broader deterioration of discipline.

[00:05:38]When, you know, we already saw lots of things happen in Gaza, which indicated poor discipline. Now we're seeing some of this in South Lebanon with Israeli soldiers that are looting uh homes that have been attacked and destroyed in Southern Lebanon.

[00:05:53]When that begins to happen, your army is falling apart.

[00:05:58]So, I think the Israeli army on the ground is in bad shape. I don't I can't speak about the Air Force. The Air Force has always been uh the principal instrument uh of aggressive military power for the Israelis, and their pilots are excellent, and I think they have an inexhaustible quality of spare parts and aircraft. So, I'm sure they're in pretty good shape, but you can lose the war quickly regardless of uh how good your Air Force is if you don't have an army.

[00:06:24]>> Yeah.

[00:06:26]Um I I've been getting the sense that the influence Netanyahu has over Trump has been diminishing after this Iran war, and I've said it a few times where I think he bit off more than he could chew.

[00:06:38]Um we're seeing reports today and yesterday and even the day before where Israel announced this new campaign that included the bombing of Beirut. Then Netanyahu had a call with Trump, and then nothing happened. They're still bombing the south. They did escalate.

[00:06:50]Uh but nothing happened in Beirut. And then when you look at the deal in Iran, it's a deal that is catastrophic for Israel and the balance of power in the region.

[00:06:58]Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, we are starting to see a shift in Trump's approach or the US administration's approach towards Israel, or that's wishful thinking?

[00:07:08]>> Well, let let's look at the things that may be influencing President Trump at this point, and step away for a minute from the Persian Gulf.

[00:07:16]The Persian Gulf is an insoluble problem. Let let's be frank.

[00:07:20]Uh over the last 80 years, we we ran into a brick wall, if you will, in Korea.

[00:07:29]Uh we couldn't make any headway. Uh we couldn't win it. Uh there was no interest in fighting China, thank God.

[00:07:36]And Eisenhower made the prudent and and intelligent decision to leave. He said, "No, we're going to negotiate an armistice and we're not going to continue this war and that's what what happened. But we failed in Korea. I think it's very important for people to understand. That was not a victory and we made the best of a defeat that we could possibly make strategically. And you go to Vietnam. Vietnam, there was no strategy just as there is no real strategy now.

[00:08:02]People that went in there never knew what the hell they were supposed to be doing. They had various vague notions.

[00:08:07]It was unclear.

[00:08:09]And if what was it? Five five six years later uh we decided well, this isn't working and we began the process of disengaging.

[00:08:19]And as soon as we got out everyone agreed we will never do this again.

[00:08:23]Well, that didn't turn out to be accurate.

[00:08:26]But then you had 1991 and 91 was a very different set of circumstances. That that was an enemy that was perfectly configured, trained, equipped, and positioned for us to defeat.

[00:08:39]Uh they met us on air terms. We hit them back on air terms and we won. And this tremendous victory that very few people at the time thought was possible for reasons I never understood.

[00:08:51]Uh we then concluded well, there's no one in the world that can touch us. We are supreme. The Soviet state has collapsed.

[00:08:58]Uh everyone else has given up and stacked arms.

[00:09:01]So it's time to you know, leverage this strategic power and we began leveraging it as soon as possible.

[00:09:08]Not long thereafter we resumed hostilities with Saddam Hussein when frankly there was no reason to do so.

[00:09:14]Saddam Hussein presented no threat and quite frankly, Saddam Hussein was always willing to do business with us.

[00:09:21]Uh you know, he he'd sold us all the oil we want. He'd cooperate anything we wanted to do.

[00:09:27]But it was decided that the path to Israeli dominance was through Baghdad.

[00:09:33]In fact, Paul Wolfowitz said something along those lines. If you want the path to peace in the Middle East, uh the path to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad. Well, that made no sense, but everybody bought it, and the rest is history.

[00:09:47]Then we went into Afghanistan, as you know, and we muddled around there, not knowing what we could do, and that didn't go very well. Eventually, we just up and left in one of the most embarrassing, ignominious withdrawals of American military power in the history of the United States.

[00:10:04]But, to date, those things didn't matter to the American people.

[00:10:11]That's very important for people to understand. We didn't care. The average American didn't care because it didn't affect him.

[00:10:17]That's changing. Iran is different.

[00:10:20]Iran cannot be conquered. That was a phrase that the Bolsheviks used to the Germans in 1918 during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

[00:10:31]And actually one of them named Radek wrote back to Lenin, "The good news is the Germans understand we cannot be conquered." Well, how could they conquer them? They were a thousand miles away, and it was a an 1,100-1,200 mile front.

[00:10:48]Anybody would be crazy to go in there, as was demonstrated by all of Hitler.

[00:10:52]But, at the time, he was very very much on the right side of the argument. The Germans understood that.

[00:10:58]The Iranians know we cannot conquer Iran.

[00:11:02]There will be no draft. We are not going to bring in millions of men sitting in the armed forces.

[00:11:07]We're not going to build means of transporting them halfway around the world. We're not going to nationalize industry and mobilize it. That's not going to happen. So, Iran cannot be conquered. So, what do you do?

[00:11:20]Well, this is a big problem for Donald Trump because he promised all sorts of things. You know, he governs by tweet.

[00:11:27]That's the problem. There there are no speeches that you can point to that outline any real policies. Instead, you have to read through tweets. The United States Armed Forces is poised to attack Iran not because of anything Iran did to us, but because Israel is demanding it.

[00:11:44]So, we are the servants of greater Israel. We need to understand that.

[00:11:47]There shouldn't be any question in anybody's mind. If you want to know who governs, it's not Donald Trump. It's Netanyahu.

[00:11:54]Donald Trump is simply passing on the message. However, we have problems.

[00:12:00]If you go back to April, you discover that inflation rose from 3.2% to 3.8%.

[00:12:08]And right now the projections are for the second quarter that it will rise to 6%.

[00:12:14]>> Oof.

[00:12:14]>> Now, if it rises to 6%, this means that our interest rates, theoretically, I mean, if you're Paul Volcker and you're you're serious about suppressing uh inflation as he was back in the '70s and '80s under Reagan, that means your interest rate should be about 7%.

[00:12:32]But they're not. They're right about 3.75%.

[00:12:37]Well, why is that?

[00:12:39]Because if we were actually to raise rates to seven, we'd crush the economy.

[00:12:44]>> Yeah.

[00:12:45]>> Destroy everything.

[00:12:46]This is what confronts Donald Trump at home.

[00:12:49]So, what's Donald Trump been doing?

[00:12:51]Well, he recognizes the war is a huge source of inflation because he cut out what, 13 million uh barrels of oil a day by doing what he's done in the Persian Gulf.

[00:13:02]Well, how's he work What's he doing about it? Well, he's he's trying to compensate.

[00:13:09]So, he has started to sell oil from our strategic petroleum reserve in order to suppress the cost, keep the cost down. Not only domestically in the United States, in fact, last week I was told that he had sold 17.8 million barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve at a price below market rates. This was sufficient to suppress oil prices to 110 dollars a barrel.

[00:13:35]The problem is he's also selling oil below market rates to some of our friends in Asia as a way to try and compensate for the stupidity of having never asked any of our friends in Asia like Japan and Korea and others what they thought of our dumb idea of attacking Iran.

[00:13:51]Okay.

[00:13:53]So, what does this mean? Well, this means that probably by the end of July, maybe the beginning of August, we're going to be hitting rock bottom in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

[00:14:06]Now, is that the end of the world for us? Not necessarily, but it may be the end of Donald Trump.

[00:14:11]And that's what people don't seem to understand.

[00:14:14]He didn't understand when he went to China that China is 86% self-sufficient in oil. They've stockpiled oil. They have the largest petroleum reserve in the world, 1.3 billion barrels.

[00:14:28]Okay, so now we have another problem.

[00:14:31]And that problem is Russia. Russia has has proven very helpful to China and other countries by selling oil, but in the meantime, we stupidly have been encouraging and helping the Ukrainians with targeting data and intelligence to attack targets inside Russia with long-range drones whose components are made in Western Europe.

[00:14:52]And these drones have done what? They've attacked refineries.

[00:14:56]So, right now Russia has got a problem.

[00:14:59]It can't keep up with the demand anymore.

[00:15:02]Well, what is this doing to us? Well, this is hurting Europe. It's hurting us.

[00:15:07]It's hurting the world. So, we think uh what is it?

[00:15:12]We're not really sure. We think there's a 14% shortfall now that wasn't there before.

[00:15:17]In other words, here we are struggling with the oil or the energy supply. And when I say energy, that's everything.

[00:15:25]It just remember, it includes sulfuric acid, helium, fertilizer, feedstock, uh all kinds of fuel, jet fuel, whatever.

[00:15:35]All of those things are in short supply.

[00:15:37]And he knows that and he's trying to fix it, but he can't control what his own government is doing in Europe.

[00:15:45]Because the smartest thing we could possibly do right now is stop the war in Ukraine. End it. Pull out completely.

[00:15:52]Get out totally.

[00:15:54]That is the easiest way to restore some measure of normality to the economies in Europe. Because right now the economies in Europe are suffering from deindustrialization.

[00:16:05]Well, that's about to end. You're going to get a new government in Berlin.

[00:16:09]You're going to have a new government in London. When those new governments come in, and I'm not sure exactly what the personality makeup will be. I think Alice Weidel has a good chance of becoming chancellor.

[00:16:20]But she speaks for everyone. She says, "The first thing we're going to do is halt this war with Ukraine. We're stop.

[00:16:26]We're not going to waste any more money on these criminals and thugs in Ukraine. Number two, we're going to go to Russia and buy cheap oil."

[00:16:35]In other words, we've got to get back to cheap energy, energy that we can afford.

[00:16:39]All of this is going to happen as soon as the war ends. But instead of ending the war, and he is after all still the head of NATO. He's the the key person in NATO. And what's he do? Nothing.

[00:16:51]He lets it drag on.

[00:16:53]He lets the intelligence services run wild, run amok, and do whatever they like.

[00:16:58]I mean, that's one of the reasons that Putin said many, many times, "I met with many presidents. They always end up being unable to change anything. They don't seem to be in charge." And I think that's clearly the attitude today in Moscow. Trump is obviously not in charge.

[00:17:13]Mhm. So, what are we looking at? I I what Trump is being told privately is that the global economy is probably going to shrink over the next 12 months by 36%.

[00:17:25]36%. Now, why is that important?

[00:17:29]Because the Great Depression reduced the world economy by 20%.

[00:17:35]Now, what's the difference between 20% and 36% today? Well, it's not just the percentage, it's also the fact that we are heavily in debt.

[00:17:46]We had practically no debt to GDP ratio at all in the 1930s. And we demanded from our allies in the First World War that they pay us not in cash, but in gold. And so we had vast quantities of gold pouring into the United States.

[00:18:04]My point is, what have we got now?

[00:18:07]We have a much higher debt to GDP ratio.

[00:18:09]It's at least 125%. Some people think it's really 130 and rising.

[00:18:15]Trump knows this.

[00:18:16]So, if you're the president of the United States and you know you're in a very bad position economically, what do you do? You try to get out. He wants to get out. The problem is he's got Netanyahu, and Netanyahu's billionaire agents inside the United States to say, "No, uh-uh.

[00:18:34]No, uh-uh. You can't leave.

[00:18:36]If you leave, we pull our support for you. It's open season on you. We won't protect you anymore.

[00:18:43]You've had it, Donald. And by the way, Congress Congress is going to jump at the opportunity to destroy Donald Trump, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, and he knows it.

[00:18:53]So, what can he do?

[00:18:56]He has a choice. He can ride the Titanic to the bottom. He's already on the Titanic. It's already struck the iceberg. He can go down with it.

[00:19:04]Or he can try to get off, which means he has to jump in that ice cold water.

[00:19:09]He's He's to have to subject himself to humiliation.

[00:19:13]He may ultimately be revealed as being very prominent in the Epstein files.

[00:19:22]>> Well, he's speaking just now while we're speaking, Iran is very much intent. They want very much to make a deal. So I know you said just ignore his comments. We don't have much to go by these days.

[00:19:34]So everyone's just waiting for his comments which are are all over the place. He says Iran wants to make a deal. So far I haven't gotten there.

[00:19:40]We're not satisfied but they will but we will be.

[00:19:43]Either that or we'll have to just finish the job. They're negotiating on fumes.

[00:19:47]Maybe we'll just have to go back and finish it. Maybe we don't. Very different rhetoric to what we had on Sunday and this is This is what how I see it as well. It's like he wants a deal. He wants to get out of this mess. But there's all these different powers, there's donors, you know, different countries, Israel his administration pulling him in all these different directions including the Gulf.

[00:20:05]The Gulf are pulling him towards peace but all of the other forces are pulling him in different directions not necessarily towards peace or or trying to sabotage the deal. So it's like you have a Trump I think you have an honest tweet from Trump saying, "Look, we're going to do a deal with Iran. It's going to happen and maybe they'll join the Abraham Accords." Obviously that's just rhetoric. But like a no threats, nothing. That was I think on Sunday he did a tweet. No threats, no humiliation, nothing. And then 2 days later he's talking about um maybe we have to finish the job. Um the deal's not there yet.

[00:20:37]Um and then he he doubles down on the Abraham Accords. That's just a bizarre a bizarre thing to happen. For me it just seemed like he's giving Netanyahu a bone.

[00:20:47]Um because he didn't allow him to bomb Iran.

[00:20:50]>> Well, he may be offering him a bone but what he's doing is he's embarrassing himself in a very very dramatic way.

[00:20:58]What is he telling everyone?

[00:21:00]Look guys, I have to deliver a victory for Netanyahu, for Israel.

[00:21:06]>> Yeah.

[00:21:06]>> Help me.

[00:21:07]Help me deliver a victory for Israel.

[00:21:10]Why would anyone anyone in the Middle East, any ruling elite of any kind, want to do a damn thing for Israel?

[00:21:19]Israel has already said everyone in the region except for them is Amalek.

[00:21:25]They've declared themselves you know, superior to everyone. They're waging a war for Jewish supremacy in the Middle East. That's what they're about. We are helping them.

[00:21:35]You know, they couldn't murder people in Gaza. They can't kill people in South Lebanon without us.

[00:21:41]We are the enablers of all of that.

[00:21:43]So, the question comes back once again to Donald Trump.

[00:21:47]Are you president of the United States or what?

[00:21:52]President Trump, what is in the interest of the American people?

[00:21:57]Well, if he asks that and answers it honestly, we have an interest in peace.

[00:22:02]Do we want to be the pariah in the world? Because when you travel around the world these days, whether it's in Europe or you go to Canada or even down into Latin America or across Asia and Africa, who is held responsible for what's happened in the Persian Gulf? Iran? No.

[00:22:20]We are.

[00:22:21]So, if you're the president of the United States, you want to correct that mistake as quickly as possible and end this tragedy.

[00:22:29]So, where's the debate? That's number one. Number two, he needs to think about what's going on at home in the United States.

[00:22:37]The potential here for unrest, given what the things that I cited to you in the economy, where things are headed, is very serious.

[00:22:46]You know, Lenin said, and it's probably hyperbolic, but he said it nonetheless, every society is three meals away from a revolution.

[00:22:57]Well, he wasn't completely wrong.

[00:23:00]We have not yet felt the effects of what's been happening in the Persian Gulf on the scale that we will.

[00:23:07]In other words, there's a lag time between what happens now and the real effects in several months.

[00:23:14]And my point >> turn things around? Can he if he if he ends this quickly, could he turn things around before it's too late still?

[00:23:21]>> It's going to be tough. It's going to be very hard. I think he's going to have a tough time doing it. But at this point, it's no longer about him.

[00:23:29]It's about the American people. It's about the fragility of our economy, the vulnerability of the financial system.

[00:23:36]He's got to focus here on those things.

[00:23:39]Because if he doesn't, it's ultimately going to bring him down.

[00:23:44]He's not going to be voted out of office because he failed to destroy Iran, because he failed to capture the Strait of Hormuz. That's not going to get him.

[00:23:53]But what I told you earlier about inflation, about the uh economy, productivity falling by 20 30 36%.

[00:24:03]That could kill him. That could kill the government.

[00:24:06]And it it's worse than that.

[00:24:08]Nobody seems to understand if you go back to the end of World War I, certainly from 1917 until the war ends.

[00:24:15]That's about 15 months from the middle of uh uh uh 19 uh 17.

[00:24:21]The Ottomans, the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, they had all collectively ruled for somewheres between 300 and 800 years.

[00:24:32]And they ceased to exist overnight.

[00:24:37]That could happen in Western Europe. It could happen here in the United States.

[00:24:41]People don't realize that.

[00:24:43]We take too much for granted. When your supply chains break down, when there is no credit, and right now when you have large firms like uh BlackRock or KKR trying to borrow cash based on their manage their assets under management, you're in trouble.

[00:25:03]Right now, if you have money in BlackRock's funds, you can't get it out.

[00:25:08]Why not?

[00:25:10]How long before the liquidity problem strikes us in the major banking system?

[00:25:15]There are a lot of things that are out of sight, but they're not that far away.

[00:25:20]There are a lot There's lots of potential for disaster. The problem, Mario, is that most Americans have experienced 80 years of extraordinary stability.

[00:25:31]And it's incomprehensible to them that this could all end in a few months.

[00:25:35]But it could.

[00:25:37]And that's back to the original question.

[00:25:40]What matters most if you're Donald Trump? What happens in the United States?

[00:25:44]And what happens globally, financially, and economically?

[00:25:48]Those things are the top priorities, not the Strait of Hormuz, not destroying Iran, not enabling Israel's conquest of the Middle East, the creation of the greater Israel project.

[00:26:07]>> Yeah.

[00:26:09]And the consequences of this war and saying Oh, actually, we haven't spoken in a while. It's been a few weeks.

[00:26:14]It's wild to see that unfold. Like, we talk about how the We've talked for a long time about the American empire kind of, you know, moving to a multipolar world, etc. You've been critical of the capabilities of the American military. And then you look at these things starting to unfold.