Trump WALKS BACK Another Promise w/Richard Wolff

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:06]Welcome to Savvys podcast. I'm your host Sabrina Salvati. My special guest today is Professor Richard Wolf. He's also an economist. Welcome back, Professor Wolf.

[00:00:18]>> Welcome to me and welcome to you. I'm glad to be here again, Sabrina.

[00:00:23]So, Donald Trump was just recently uh in China, and this is the first time I've actually seen Donald Trump kind of cower uh towards another world leader. Um he was very uh he was kissing up to Xiinping uh quite a bit during this visit. Many are wondering what was this visit really about? Uh I know that he brought a number of uh CEOs with him like Elon Musk was there. uh a lot of the the big time uh industry people. Why do you believe that Donald Trump had this meeting with China?

[00:01:02]>> Well, there are number of reasons I would give. I think probably the most important was the one that seems to govern a great deal of what Mr. Trump does, which is to put him front and center in the evening news, to make him be the focus of attention as he is in the conversation you and I are now beginning uh on this program. So, if you go to China and you meet with the Chinese leader, uh you're going to get a lot of attention all around the world.

[00:01:38]uh it's going to be front page news nearly everywhere which it has been. I re I look at European papers for example and there it is and I looked today at some African papers they were there you know there it is all right so that's the first thing now the second thing and this is something American audiences still have trouble with China is the most rapidly growing economic phenomena not just in the world today but it's been that way for the last 30 years and we have no precedence in human history for what the Chinese have accomplished. And before I tell you what that is, let me assure everyone China has its problems. China is not heaven on earth. Nothing like that. I'm not endorsing China. But I am an economist and I do like to deal with what's going on in a realistic way. Okay. For the last 30 years, China has grown its economy and we measure that in economics by the GDP, gross domestic product. It's a rough measure of the output of goods and services in one calendar year. So when you look at that, you can tell if an economy is large because it produces a lot or it isn't. Okay? Over the last 30 years, the average annual growth of the GDP of the United States has been between two and two and a half%.

[00:03:19]Over the same 30 years, the average annual growth in China has been 6 to9%.

[00:03:30]Okay, this year, and by the way, this year you could take 2025 or you could take 2026 and we know enough about this year because it's roughly half gone uh that we can make a a good estimate. Once again, the United States growing roughly 2%, China roughly 5%, which is low for China, but once again almost three times what we have. That's why China has caught up to us. That's why China is the great global economy on the rise now.

[00:04:08]That's why policy makers in Washington are nervous because they see, imagine a horse race. There's a horse on your left that's catching up to you and each minute that passes it's getting closer.

[00:04:25]And by now you have gotten the idea correctly that by the end of this decade, the 2020s, China will be the number one economy. We will no longer have that position.

[00:04:43]Now, why is that important?

[00:04:46]Because a vast majority of the people on this planet earth are poor and they're poor in the way that 40 years ago China was very very poor and all of them have hoped over the last 40 years to get out of their poverty to break into a lifestyle where they don't have to worry about where the food will be on the table or whether they'll get medical care for their children or whether they get college education for their kids and so on.

[00:05:28]And those countries and those people and I'm talking about the vast majority of the people on this planet now look to China because nobody has grown as fast as China did in the last 30 years. Not just no one in the last 30 years. No one ever in Europe it took three centuries to get the development that China has accomplished in three decades.

[00:06:03]Did China develop because it made use of what happened in Europe and America?

[00:06:08]Absolutely. Do Europeans and Americans get some credit for the developments that the Chinese relied on? Yes, they do. Sure they do.

[00:06:19]But you can't take away from China that that's where it happened in a country run by a communist party for the entire time.

[00:06:32]That there it is. You got to deal with that. The the effort of the United States over the last 20 years has been to block to stop to slow China's development.

[00:06:46]It hasn't worked.

[00:06:49]Not at all.

[00:06:52]It might be time, therefore, for the United States to stop the program of trying to repress, to slow, to block China cuz it doesn't work.

[00:07:11]It's really crucial.

[00:07:14]And let me end this this point, Sabrina, because even American history teaches this.

[00:07:22]When the United States, which was a little colony of Great Britain, remember way back when, when the Americans wanted to break away from the British Empire, wanted to stop being subjects of King George III, who was the leader of England at that time.

[00:07:41]It was a war that got fought. The war of independence, that thing we celebrate every fourth of July, our independence.

[00:07:51]The British thought they could defeat the little American colony.

[00:07:57]Turned out they couldn't. They lost the war. The United States became an independent country. A few years later in 1812, they tried again and they were defeated again.

[00:08:11]And after that, no more wars between the United States and Britain. We decided and they decided since they couldn't stop it. Two wars didn't do it. The United States had gotten stronger. Stop.

[00:08:26]Stop the effort. Try to work out a live and let live coexistence in this world. And that's where we better go with the Chinese because a war now we're all gone.

[00:08:44]So that's not an option unless you're crazy. So the question then becomes, can Mr. Trump and if not him, can somebody else sit down with the Chinese?

[00:08:59]If you watched any of the footage from Mr. Trump's visit in China, you got exactly the impression that you started with, Sabrina. Namely, Mr. Trump is looking up to this man who is clearly comfortable, in charge, uh, confident in a way that Mr. Trump can't be. And it's not a fault of Mr. Trump. I'm no fan of his, but that's not the issue.

[00:09:32]The same would apply if it were Mr. Biden or if it was Kla Harris or anybody else coming to represent the United States. Are you going to try again to stop us, to slow us down? If so, you know, we're going to be enemies. But if you can put that aside, maybe we can work out to the benefit of all of us a much better way to live together. And notice the moment at which this is being said. It's a moment at wi after the effort of the United States to shut down an ally of China called Iran.

[00:10:14]And that didn't work. That's a huge failure, that war. And all that Mr. Trump and his people are trying to do now is figure out a way to get out of that dead end.

[00:10:30]Well, there are more of those dead ends waiting if you keep trying to defeat what is not going to be defeated. The British figured out they had to learn to live with the United States. We have to learn to live with the achievement of the Chinese.

[00:10:52]>> That's so well said, Professor Wolf. Uh I'm curious like why is it that our GDP hasn't grown the way that China's has?

[00:11:00]Well, in my opinion, and of course there's debates and different people have different views about this, but in my opinion, our problem is our economic system. We have a system, capitalism, which has as its so-called bottom line profit. So things get done in our system if they're profitable. You know, if if people want jobs, you'll get a job. If it's profitable for some employer to hire you, if it isn't profitable for the employer to hire you, he's not going to do it, and you're going to sit there uh without a job. So, we make everything depending on on profit. Here's the problem.

[00:11:49]Profit oughtn't to be the only consideration. Why not? Because profit goes to a very small number of people.

[00:11:59]Let me give you an example.

[00:12:01]Profits in part are distributed to shareholders in companies.

[00:12:07]The richest 10% of our people own 80% of the shares. So when you say the stock market's good and profits are robust, that is good news for the 10% who own them. But for the rest of us, it's not good news at all.

[00:12:28]A different economy would say the most important thing is jobs for the majority of people. Employment is what should be our bottom line. We need to have f individuals and families who have a decent job at a decent income that's secure enough that they can indulge their passions, uh spend time with their families, get an education to to change and improve their jobs. But we shouldn't be worried about a job and in that we're a complicated society. We can do that.

[00:13:08]So why are we why are we prioritizing profits which go to a small minority of our people when we don't prioritize what concerns the majority. We currently have we currently have over 4% unemployment the official rate. Okay, that means we have between six and seven million people, American citizens like you and me without work.

[00:13:44]>> Uh, and that touches many families. You know, Aunt Louise or Uncle Harry don't have a job, your sister doesn't have a job, your son doesn't have a job. That's a burden on your family. That creates all kinds of tension. that makes life which is hard enough harder.

[00:14:05]Why aren't we dealing with that?

[00:14:08]Well, we we don't deal with it. We say hopefully somebody will come along who can make a profit by hiring those people and if no one that's not the Chinese government. The Chinese government runs an economy that's half a capitalistically profit-driven economy like ours.

[00:14:34]But the other half is owned and operated by the government which is committed here we go now to doing the things that need to be done. Even if they aren't profitable, we're going to do them because everybody's going to have a job.

[00:14:50]Everybody's going to have health care.

[00:14:52]Everybody's got ah oh. You wonder why the popularity of Xi Jinping in China is here and the popularity of Mr. Trump in the United States is in the toilet. You don't be surprised.

[00:15:08]Don't be naive. This is not about some magic. This is because their economic system is given over to what they think they need socially. So for example, they wanted to grow out of poverty. They weren't going to wait until it was profitable for somebody. If profitability will get some things done, they say in China, good. Give that to a capitalist. Let him do his thing. Hire people get that. But then there's all these other things that need to be done and we'll have the government do that because the government doesn't have to earn a profit. The government just has to cover its expenses to get something done.

[00:15:56]And so the Chinese, for example, people go to China these days and they notice I have many friends who've done this that one of the things you visit are big apartment complexes that are empty.

[00:16:12]And so people, look how inefficient they've built these apartment complexes and there's nobody in them. And the Chinese smile and they say, "No, we build them because we know given our population growth, we're going to need 2 million apartments over the next 5 years. So we build them. We're not going to wait until there's a housing shortage and so then there's going to be not enough apartments and then the private landlords facing a shortage can jack up the rents and people we're not going to we're not doing that. Let me give you another one more example. Over the last several years and right now we in America are worried about inflation.

[00:17:02]Currently, our inflation numbers released a couple days ago is running about 4% for consumers.

[00:17:11]It's going to get worse because the producer inflation is 6%. And that will come down to the retail grocery stores and so forth where we shop over the weeks ahead. So 4%. What is the inflation rate in China? Ready? 1%.

[00:17:32]Wow.

[00:17:33]Is that doable? Well, they've had it around 1% for the last five years. So, I mean, they've had some troubles with inflation in the past, and they've been determined to get the government to control and stop this. Mr. Trump promised he could and would do all that when he was running for president. Now, it's out the window. You know, like his promises to not have wars. Not only has he not stopped the ones we were in, he's added. So, I mean, this this is a reality we have to face. Look, and if we don't if we pretend, oh, the Chinese, they're bad, they're communists, they're if we keep doing that, then we're going to be bypassed because the whole rest of the world is going in that direction because that's where the growth is. It's the same things that made the United States great over the last 75 years is what's making China the attraction.

[00:18:37]You know, business in America, capitalist enterprise were once concentrated in New England in the early parts of our country.

[00:18:46]>> Then they moved out of New England to the Midwest.

[00:18:50]Then they moved again to the south and the west and the southwest. And then they moved, get ready folks, out of the United States, to Mexico, to Canada, and eventually to China and to India. And so capitalism moves where the profits are high.

[00:19:13]That's the way that system works. And we are going to have to live with the results. And it was fun when the American economy was going up. It's much less fun when the down comes. And remember, every other empire the world has ever seen, the Roman, the Greek, the Ottoman, the Benin, anywhere, Asia, Africa, Latin America, every empire that went up peaked and then went down. The American empire has had a good century of going up. It's going down now. And the only question is, do you go down with some grace, with some working out, a live and let live with the others? Or do you make these horrible gestures of defiance as if your bitterness at being a declining empire can be offset by imaginary victories? by having a president who one week tells you I'm gonna take Greenland and next week I'm gonna take back Panama Canal and next week threatens Canada with becoming the 51st state and then makes war in Iran which he loses. How many of these gestures can we afford?

[00:20:41]>> Yeah. And speaking of of promises, uh some of Trump's supporters are not happy uh because this is going around today.

[00:20:50]Uh Donald Trump is is basically caving towards uh Xiinping's demands uh especially when it comes to uh China uh buying farmland in the United States and China sending students to the United States. So someone made a comparison video. This first part here is what Trump said about that in 2024. So when he was still, you know, running for president. And then you're going to see what he said after the China visit. So uh here is Donald Trump uh what he said in 2024.

[00:21:32]>> Well, we're going to protect it by saying you can't come. You can't do it.

[00:21:35]We don't want you buying our land. We don't want you taking the land and basically taking it off the market and we don't want you doing it. And they're buying at levels that nobody's ever seen before. We don't want you buying. It's very easy to do. That's a very easy thing to do. But it's causing a lot of disruption and that's what they want to do. So we can do that very easily.

[00:21:54]Question.

[00:21:54]>> Beijing. Uh >> so that was him in 2024 and this is what he's saying now about China buying farmland in the US and China sending students to the US. uh the issue of Chinese students in our universities.

[00:22:10]More importantly in my mind is that Chinese nationals have been buying up thousands and thousands of acres of farmland, ranch land and land near military installations. Now I would assume I'm in Beijing if I wanted to buy property near one of their military installations. I don't think President would I don't look it's not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop.

[00:22:37]You want to see farmers lose a lot of money. Just take that out of the market.

[00:22:41]But they've had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during Obama administration. He did nothing about it. As far as the students, it's 500,000 students. They come good students. Uh, I could tell them I don't want any students is a very insulting thing to say to a country.

[00:23:10]They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China. But if you don't have those students, good students by the way, if you don't and and we do another thing, you know, if they're good and they want to stay in America, we we won't give them a green card and things like that.

[00:23:24]I'm you know I and that not only them but other other countries but if you want to see a university system die take a half a million people out of it and you know the ones that won't be hurt are the top schools the top schools will do fine but your lower schools your lower uh the ones that don't do quite as well those do they'll be dying all over the place u I frankly think that it's good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here. I think it's good.

[00:23:58]>> So, Professor Wolf, this is the exact opposite of what Donald said when he was running for president. And a lot of people online are very upset. They said, "Oh, so now he's he's caving to China, etc." I want to get your take on this, especially the part about the universities and how they'll lose money.

[00:24:17]Uh Roana did speak about the farmland.

[00:24:20]He spoke about uh manufacturing and he said that these you know the these companies these farmers they should be buying steel from the American steel companies like right here in the United States. And he warned that this could be a problem for the American worker. But the point is here is that this is the exact opposite of what Trump said when he ran for president.

[00:24:46]Well, you know, permit me, Sabrina, to to say back to the people that are surprised, why are you surprised? Uh, like so many of our politicians, we permit them to promise the moon when they're running and then to find some reason to forget what they promised or to say the opposite as you've just shown us. and it doesn't seem to matter. And it's that that's not just Mr. Trump. That's become a pattern in our political life. We do not as a nation. Uh and partly that's the fault of our mass media. We do not hold politicians to account when they just flip-flop all over the place. Uh because it they think it's important to do that. Now, let me turn to the particulars of what Mr. Trump said. Uh he is of course correct each time, you know, he panders to something that's in the in the air and he finds something and speaks to that. When he says that farmers might like to sell their land, the answer is that's true. People who own land in this country are often in a position of wanting to sell it. And now the question is how much can they get for an acre of land whether it's in Nebraska or California or New York.

[00:26:21]And that depends on the market, right?

[00:26:23]How many buyers are out there interested in the land? And if you let the Chinese buy, they are now one of the richer economies in the world. They have lots of millionaires and billionaires in China. After the United States, it's the number two country in the sheer number of Chinese people who are billionaires and they're in a position to buy land anywhere in the world. Now, you can tell them you can't have it here. Mr. Trump can do that. And that means American farmers will not be allowed to get bid bids from Chinese people. They'll have to rely on whoever else is left to buy their land. For them, that's not a good thing for the price they're likely to be able to get. So you're going to find farmers, those that are interested in selling their land, eager to have the Chinese allowed so that Chinese can come in and buy the land because Chinese are rich these days, very rich relative to other people and in a position to buy.

[00:27:37]Let me turn next to the university students. Well, here's an irony, one of many, but here's a big one. Mr. Trump has gotten rid of the Department of Education in the government.

[00:27:54]He is hostile to universities. He is cutting back on the government support left and right. And universities and colleges are in trouble. over 300 of them have closed in the United States in the last five years.

[00:28:14]Okay. So, he's not friendly to universities. Yet here in the clip you just showed us, he's telling Hannity that if he were to block Chinese students from United States colleges and universities, there would be half a million fewer students paying tuition and other fees at those universities. And you would see many of them collapse. many more would go out of business cuz the Chinese who typically pay the full rate to go to a college or university cuz they don't qualify for many kinds of scholarships and so forth. you'd lose them. And that you can be sure university officials are in Washington lobbying all the time saying there would be a catastrophe for American colleges and universities if the Chinese who are one of the larger groups of foreigners coming to American universities if they were blocked that's why he can't do it he really he can't do that would be very very bad for him. But when he says, "I don't want to hurt universities," well, that's a croc because he's already hurting them in many, many other ways.

[00:29:42]But you know, this condition of a dependence on Chinese students, that's another sign if you need it. One economy is coming up. China, it can afford to send half a million students to the United States to get an advanced education to supplement what universities in China can do by having their students access to university system in the United States. We don't do that. We're closing colleges and universities. China has been opening them in the last five years. It is a wonderful metaphor or a piece of evidence of which economy is in trouble and which is exploding.

[00:30:33]Believe me, the Chinese are building universities very fast. If the United States unwisely blocked Chinese students from coming here, they'd mostly stay in China, but they would get educated. They are currently graduating five times the number of technical uh advanced technical students that we are in the United States. I mean, they're going to out compete us with new technology. That's why some of the latest artificial intelligence and high-tech products are coming from China. They are the rising economy and we'd be better off working something out than constantly trying to block them. Mr. Hannity is worried about they buy land near military. It's childish what he's doing.

[00:31:36]The Chinese have satellites. They have everything you need to spy on the United States. By the way, just as the United States has all of that to spy on China, they don't need a piece of land nearby.

[00:31:55]I mean, Mr. Hannity is in the wrong century with questions like that. It's silly.

[00:32:02]Look, the United States has incredible intelligence. No question. Probably the best in the world. But the Chinese are close.

[00:32:12]Chinese intelligence advised the Iranians.

[00:32:18]American technology advised the US and Israel. the US and Israel based on what the satellites told them, what the spies told them, invaded and they couldn't win. And the Chinese advised the Iranians and they could the silliness of we won't sell them a land that's, you know, half a mile from a military base. You imagine that they need that. They don't anymore.

[00:32:54]Warfare now is done with missiles and drones.

[00:32:59]You don't send large groups of people against each other the way you once did.

[00:33:05]Military technology changes like every other technology. We don't go to the store to get milk getting up on our horse, right? We have vehicles that do that. Well, the military now have other techniques because they don't want large numbers of people to die.

[00:33:30]Well, it's really interesting, too, because um I don't think a lot of people know this, uh but I I've worked in the university system for quite some time, but I think people would be surprised at the number of American college students that are receiving some form of financial aid, whether it's student loans or a grant or you got a scholarship. uh there are a number of Americans that cannot attend college without getting like an athletic scholarship or something like that. So, and I this was something I noticed as well was that a lot of the students that came from China, you know, because they don't qualify for financial aid in the United States, like they had to prove to the university that they could pay tuition for the first at least those four uh four years. They have their parents have to prove that like show that they can do that. And so that kind of said something to me that like we are so far behind in this country because a lot of American families here can't afford to pay full tuition for their students. And I'm not even just talking about the public universities. I'm also talking about I mean I I worked at MIT.

[00:34:36]I worked at MIT and I worked at Boston University and and Harvard briefly. And so I I'm just here to tell you guys Boston University does not give out a lot of financial aid when you compare them to the other ones. So these kids were paying like over $69,000 a year.

[00:34:52]That's just for the tuition.

[00:34:53]>> Go ahead.

[00:34:54]>> So their their parents can't afford to pay it. So I'm I'm just trying to we have we have a problem uh here in this country because a lot of the domestic students nowadays depend on financial aid. Well, you know, you don't have to go to China to to to understand the craziness of the American system. Let me tell you what it costs in France. That's an ally of the United States, in Europe, you know. Uh, and what I'm about to tell you about France applies to at least half of the other countries in Europe, maybe more. The tuition is a few hundred a year.

[00:35:32]That's it. The government subsidizes education. If you pass an exam in France, which is given to all the graduates of all high schools, if you pass that exam, you are eligible to go to the university.

[00:35:50]The government pays for you to do that.

[00:35:53]Why? Because the government believes in France, and this has been true for many, many years, the government believes the whole country is better off the more of its citizens get a college degree.

[00:36:11]In other words, the same logic that we use in this country to put kids into elementary school and then into junior high school and then into high school.

[00:36:22]We don't charge families tuition to do that. That's called public education.

[00:36:29]Well, you ought to ask yourself if it made sense in the United States for the last 170 years to have a public school system that says to every child, we will at the government's expense hire the teachers, build the schools, maintain that they're warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and they have a janitor to keep it clean. Will will will pay for public education because that's we want a publicly educated population. Why in the world did that stop at the 12th grade? Why isn't that the logic? Gee, if a student has the desire and the ability to take college courses, pay for that, too. The more education, the better and the quality of what that person can contribute when she or he goes to work.

[00:37:28]And that's what the French do. You have to take care of your own room and board.

[00:37:33]That that's your business. But the university doesn't charge you money for the courses, for the exams, for the degree. That's a public service. That's true in Germany. It's true in most of the countries of Europe. Okay. So attractive is that that you may be surprised to learn that the last time I looked at the statistics, there were more than 20,000 Americans taking their college courses in Germany because in Germany you are funded and listen to this. whether you are a German citizen or any other they will give it you just show up show them that you you know you're 20 years of age or 18 whatever your age is show that you have a passport that you're legally in the country and you can go to university and 20,000 Americans and I know the few that I know personally who told me about this when I asked them why are you going to Germany they said there were two reasons.

[00:38:48]One, it doesn't cost anything.

[00:38:52]We don't have to pay to it. We can get a BA, a bachelor's degree. We can bring it back to the United States. It's recognized as a degree. We're at a good university. And meanwhile, we will learn German because we're here for four years. So, we'll come back with a degree. We will not have spent a ton of money. and we will have learned another language. This is a no-brainer. Well, of course, we're going to come here. All right, that's the reality. Why does the United States think otherwise? And by the way, in case someone listening wonders, well, who would pay for it? I got news for you. If we didn't make this silly war in Iran, which we're losing, which is costing us two billion dollars a day, well, we've been in Iran now for I think 70 days. Do the math. If it's two billion a day, 70 days, that's $140 billion. It wouldn't cost that much to provide a free college education to everybody who needs it.

[00:40:03]We are we You want to know why the Chinese outdo us? They subsidize education for people at all levels.

[00:40:12]Consequently, they're in a position to help. We should be doing this. We should have been doing it long ago. I'm sitting here talking to you from New York City.

[00:40:24]New York City is exceptional in the United States because we've had a city education system, the City University of New York, which was free until a few free until a few years ago, and now has a heavily subsidized uh student body that pays a much lowered uh tuition, part of which is paid for by the city. So, we are still way way cheaper than a college education would cost you if you went anywhere else. And that's just a decision of the city.

[00:41:02]Sadly, it could have been a model for the United States. But we're a country which this goes back to the beginning of our conversation, Sabrina.

[00:41:13]We we wait for someone to say it's profitable to have a university and open one up. These days, what we have is university after university saying it's costing money, we're losing money, so we're going to close the university.

[00:41:29]It tells you the world about which economy is rising and which one is declining.

[00:41:37]>> Yeah, that's so true. And I I want to show people exactly like where they stand. um China stands now uh economically just so people can see it on the uh the graph here countries with the largest nominal GDP worldwide you can see there's the US uh in trillions of dollars and then you can see there's China is predicted they're saying that China has the second largest uh economy in the world and then Germany just short behind but China is is they're gaining uh pretty quickly and I want to show you what Jim Jordan just said. He was questioned about the gas prices, which is what I think a lot of people have been uh complaining about recently.

[00:42:21]Listen to what he said when he was questioned about that.

[00:42:23]>> What about his promise in 2024 that if he was reelected, gas would be under $2 a gallon because of his policies.

[00:42:31]>> Well, gas prices were coming down until we had to deal with this situation. But, you know, that's that's life. that's dealing with with world and the the the world we live in. I think the country gets the fundamental fact and I know I understand this. President Trump makes decisions that are in the best interest of our nation. 250 years, greatest country in history. He makes decisions that are going to help our country and the long-term security and safety of the people. He has the And I think you want a commander-in-chief like that. You want a commander-in-chief who's willing to do tough things that he knows are good for us, all of us, all of your viewers, everyone in this country, and frankly, everyone around the world. It is good if Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon.

[00:43:15]>> But if someone's listening to you and they were paying $2.98 a gallon of gas before the war started, and now they're paying $453.

[00:43:24]I mean, saying that's life might not, you know, make them feel better.

[00:43:28]>> Those are those are your words. Those are your words, not mine. I'm I'm saying >> you said that.

[00:43:33]>> This is the situ.

[00:43:35]>> Yeah. Uh this is this is where we're at now. Uh Professor Wolf, um high gas prices obviously is not good for Americans. But >> look, when you promise something and you don't deliver it, there's two things you can do. Number one, you can say, "I'm very sorry. I really wish my decisions had resulted in no increase in gas prices. I made some mistakes. I'm going to try to fix them. Okay? Or you can do the BS that you just heard from Mr. Jordan. You can make up all kinds of stories to make it seem as though you should shut up. you shouldn't ask about this question because our president is doing the best for what we are. What does that mean that you you have to support your president no matter what he does? And the answer is yes. That's who Jim Jordan is. He's a Republican guy who does whatever it is that the commanderin-chief just said. Let me assure you and your audience, I spend a lot of time reading European newspapers, uh, Latin American news. I I try to get a sense of how the world sees what's going on. The whole world sees the United States lost the war in Iran. It started the war with Israel. It initiated the war. There is no way in which Iran threatened the United States.

[00:45:21]The opinion of the International Atomic Energy Association, the opinion of the American government's intelligence division, Tulsi Gabbard in charge of it, that they had no nuclear weapon. The opinion of the Ayatollah who was killed on the first day of this invasion was that it's against Muslim religion to have an atomic weapon and he forbade it. Okay.

[00:45:54]Now, Mr. Trump, despite all of that, and Israel went to war against Iran in June of last year, 2025. You may remember it.

[00:46:07]12-day war it was called. And during it, Mr. Trump got on television and told us how proud he was of that war and how they had, I'm going to quote now, obliterated the nuclear capability of research that they were doing. didn't claim they had a bomb, but he claimed now they couldn't develop a bomb for many, many years because the United States again had obliterated their nuclear program.

[00:46:41]So why do we have a war? If you obliterated it eight months ago, what do you what is it? Either you're having a war without needing it or you were telling us lies back then and you turned out you didn't obliterate it.

[00:46:58]that you can't have it both.

[00:47:00]And now, by the way, he's telling us, Mr. This this guy, hard to take him seriously ever.

[00:47:10]Mr. Trump justified the war in Iran. He wanted regime change.

[00:47:15]He wanted to control Iranian oil and he wanted to prevent Iran from interfering with the straight of Hormuz.

[00:47:26]At the time he attacks, they had no nuclear bomb. The straight of Hormuz was open.

[00:47:32]So what did he accomplish? He killed the Ayatollah. And let me make it clear to Americans who may not know the Ayatollah in Iran is not just the political leader like the president. He's also the religious leader of the country. So if you were a Catholic, he's like the pope.

[00:47:53]He he is, you know, the guy who talks to God for you. to kill him is an is really an assault on those people both politically and religiously.

[00:48:08]Okay, you've done all that damage.

[00:48:12]Now suddenly when you're confronted as he is by the good questions of that reporter, you're suddenly saying everything is to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon. Well, guess what? You can't do that. You know who has nuclear weapons now? Lots of countries. You know why? Because the countries who had them at the beginning, the United States and Russia made sure to give them to other countries, Pakistan has them, India has them, North Korea has them, Israel has them. On what grounds are you dictating to the world who else can have them? nor can you stop it. Iran is allied now to China and Russia. Both of those countries have nuclear weapons.

[00:49:06]They can pass those to Iran whenever they want to. And what can the United States do about it? Nothing.

[00:49:16]We have to face that. Otherwise, we're going to be having war after war. We had the one in 2025 so obliterated. Well, it turned out it didn't. Now we have a 70-day war. It didn't do it either.

[00:49:32]You have to learn after a while. Like the British, you're not going to do you don't run the world anymore.

[00:49:40]And when you watch the footage of Mr. Trump in China, don't listen to the words. Look carefully and you will see the leader of a country going down accommodating the leader of a country going up and you'll have no confusion deciding which one of those two men is which.

[00:50:08]>> Richard Wolf, thank you so much, Professor Wolf.

[00:50:12]My pleasure, Sabrina, and thank you for having a program that brings these kinds of issues up and brings up the kind of people who who need to be heard so that we have a real debate in this country rather than being lulled into imagining like that fellow that our president is taking care of everything. Isn't that wonderful? That's a baby mentality we shouldn't have in political office.

[00:50:40]Thank you.

[00:50:42]>> Take care.

[00:50:43]>> Hey guys, this was a savvy clip. If you like what you saw, hit that like button and subscribe.