Trump, the Economy & World War III: Col. Douglas Macgregor’s Shocking Predictions

Well, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, thank you so much for having me at the Our Country, Our Choice headquarters. It's great to see you. You know, you're my most popular guest on the podcast. I can't believe that. It's very true. Amazing. I'm not exactly a Bitcoin expert. So well, your message clearly resonates. And I want to talk to you because it's a very consequential time in American history, another election. Let's really zoom in on the economy because we are hearing from the media and the pundits that everything's so great. Inflation has come down. But if you talk to the average person, I would argue that the middle class has never struggled more in terms of affording the cost of living and their quality of life has been degraded. What do you think needs to be done to strengthen our economy? And what can the president do? Well, you always have these hard questions. Do we have any easy ones we can start with? The president has got to do several things. And we don't really appreciate this, how important this point is. First and foremost, we have to enforce the law. I talk to people from all over the world who come to this country who become citizens. They take seven years to become citizens. And they come from Turkey, they come from Pakistan, they come from Thailand, they come from Italy, wherever they come from. And one of the first things they all say is, I love this country because I can do business here. And most of these people that come here legally actually want desperately to do well in business. They want to get out there and earn money, improve themselves. And I said, well, why is that? He said, because you don't have to everyone to do something. Everywhere you go, you have to bribe someone. In most countries in the world, we don't go through that. That seems like a minor issue. But this is breaking down in our country. The law is not being rigorously enforced. And as you pointed out, I think we were talking earlier about taxation. The power to tax is the power to destroy and the tax structure is a disaster. It does far more harm than good. We're not harvesting the kind of income from the population that we want. We're harming the population in many cases. So you've got to reform the tax structure. But first and foremost, you have to enforce the law. That means you close your borders. That means that anybody who breaks into your house is treated as a criminal, not welcomed with checks for thousands of dollars and told to settle anywhere they want. These things have to be done first. Now, then there's the whole issue of what do we do about industry? How do we repatriate a lot of manufacturing? Well, I think a lot of that will occur largely because you can no longer operate overseas and have the wonderful margins of profit that you once did in the past. China is no longer the promised land in terms of cheap, easy labor and lots and lots of profits. So a lot of the manufacturing in China is moving down into Southeast Asia, into Indonesia, Malaysia, and so forth. We have to do that. And there are ways to do that. And I think that was something that President Trump wanted to do in his first term. Maybe this time around, he'll have a way to do that. Tariffs are a big problem. People say, well, we have to punish these people. Well, we have to punish China. Let me tell you, I was reading through something today and what really struck me as important was this statement. China's exports to the Global South and BRICS countries in March reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.6 trillion a year. That's nearly four times China's exports to the United States and more than the combined total of China's exports to the United States, Europe and Japan, which reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.38 trillion in March. What does this mean? How do you punish China? China has moved on. It is expanded. It is adjusted. It's prepared to deal with us on a far less advantageous plane than the one we previously enjoyed. It's very similar to Russia. Remember, we're going to harm Russia. That's what we're helping all of these Ukrainians to do. We're going to harm Russia. We're going to degrade Russia. And what have we done? Russia has profited. Ukraine is destroyed. It's in ruins. We've lost hundreds of billions of dollars and we're responsible for the deaths of at least 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers, probably 1.2 to 1.5 million wounded, and the nation is gone. Millions of people have left. It's not going to recover anytime soon. And Russia is sitting on top of what it wanted, which was essentially areas where Russians live to protect the Russian population. And contrary to expectation, it hasn't advanced west because it doesn't want to conquer Eastern Europe, which it never did. Who in their right mind wants to conquer Europe right now and manage that place? It's a catastrophe. People just don't think any of these things through. So what we have today, I think, in China and in Russia are the very opposite of the things that we anticipated. So the whole idea of sanctioning, threatening, bullying has got to go away. It just won't work. So we have to take out a clean sheet of paper and look at the true balance of payments, the true commerce, the commercial traffic. What's it look like? What do we produce? What do we create that they buy? What do they produce that we need? People like Lighthouser, who I think was a very brilliant man and did a great job under President Trump, they're going to have to take out the clean sheet of paper and start from scratch. I think this financial and economic crisis that looms over the horizon will probably help us do that. 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One thing that I hear you touch on is the fact that one of our issues is we are not one of the net producers of the world. The only thing we really produce now is debt, whereas these other countries, they're producing commodities, they're energy powerhouses, and we have gone more in the direction of just financializing our entire economy, which has crushed the middle class. So what is this financial Armageddon that you see and how is it going to play out? Well, first of all, I'm not the visionary who sees the Armageddon. I'm someone who is sitting by the side of the river watching the waves roll by and listening to someone like Nassim Taleb, the man that coined the phrase, the black swan. And he points out that if you look at the bottom of the hill, there is a pond down there and there are lots of black swans and they're ready to take off. And he said, this is back in March of this year, I think he was on MSNBC, which I like to watch because they do bring on some great guests. I don't care for their analysis, but the guests are great. And Nassim Taleb said, look, Armageddon is just over the horizon. This is fake money. This is not real. It's all going to collapse. There is no production. And the people at the top, they have no skin in the game. So Armageddon is just over the horizon. I think what he's saying is that the financialization of our economy, the transaction fees that are the source of wealth for the top 1% or 2% or 5%, that's not going to work much longer. And at some point, everybody is going to refuse to deal with you. Now, we're going to have a strong dollar for a while, which is not necessarily good for us for a while. I don't know how long that lasts, but at some point that's going to change. We've already seen the petrodollar begin to move away because we watched Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. They're all marching into the BRICS architecture. And that's very important. Bank failures are just beginning. We've had the problems with the first republic. Now we're going towards Bank of America, which looks very bad, similar to what was UBS and so forth. I think that's the number one concern, first of these bank failures that we're going to start experiencing. The tariff war, we already explained why tariffs aren't going to work, so that's a dead end. Fed tightening and easing too late. What did the Fed do? They said, well, we're going to drive down interest rates. What's happened in the bond market? Where are the yields? They're rising and rising. This is sort of like you're trapped in a room, and you've got this much oxygen left in the room, and everything else is underwater. And you're trying to tell yourself the fundamentals are good. I know this is going to work. And if I just blow bubbles long enough, there'll be more oxygen up there. No, I don't think so. So I think that's part of the thing. And the financial crisis that we're confronting, look at Japan, look at the United Kingdom, look at Germany, the systematic deindustrialization of the country, which is not very different to a large extent from what we've been doing to ourselves over the years by exporting manufacturing bases. And finally, gold. Gold is up 30%. Now, it's not impossible that gold could tank and then rise again. But the point is, it's gotten to 30% in how short a period? In a space of what, a year? A year or two? And we haven't even touched on Bitcoin. And you know more about that than anybody. Because that's why Bitcoin is important. That's why gold's important. All these commodities are very important. Because they're stores of real value. And that's what we're missing here. You can't run a fake economy on fake money for very long and get away with it. We've been doing it at least for 30 years, maybe longer. Some people want to go back to when we came off the gold standard. That may be true. But we're definitely running a fake economy with fake money. Now, what we say here in our country, our choice is that we have to focus on certain specific things. We've talked about rule of law. We've got to get out of all these conflicts. These are just sapping our strength. They're wasting our time, money and energy. We're not living in 1900. This is not the era of gunboat diplomacy. We've got to get out of this business of intervening all over the world in other people's affairs. It's just not, it's unaffordable. We can't sustain it. We don't want it. And we're creating new enemies. But the first thing we need to do is we've got to say, where are we going to focus our efforts? Energy is absolutely number one. Donald Trump understands that. Energy is critical. And everybody says, well, that's right. We'll just get going really, really fast. We'll start fracking and we'll start this and that. Stop a minute and think about something. How many refineries do we have in the United States? When's the last time we built any new ones? How many drilling platforms have we recently started and opened? And when was the last one that was abandoned? You can't go to an industry like the oil industry and natural gas and say, OK, restraints are off. It's time to go, boys. Huh? Where's the capital? How do I do this? How do I get it rolling and running? But energy is critical. Energy, energy, energy. The second thing is high end manufacturing. You talked about what do we make? We used to be the leader in microcircuitry in the world. Go back 30 years and we were producing all this complex micro circuitry, which powers all of your precision munitions, not just in the military, but in a whole range of areas. What do we build now? Everyone says, well, Taiwan, Taiwan. Well, of course, it's got to be there's got to be any war in Taiwan because they're producing microchips that everybody needs. But why has that happened? It's because we shipped it out. We exported it. The so-called ruling elite, the ruling class, abandoned the American people and said, to hell with you. We'll go make it over here and we'll make more money. It'll be cheaper, better, faster. And at the same time, what's happened to the skilled labor? It's dropped. Agriculture. We have an enormous potential in this country to dramatically increase our yields of all sorts of grains and food. That is there. That is a huge strategic advantage for the United States. So those are three critical areas that we've absolutely got to focus on. And something which I brought up recently that a lot of people have been interested in is something I called the Golden Spike Program. Have you heard that? No. Well, the Golden Spike Program was a very smart former Navy nuclear submariner and I wrote in the Washington Times back in 2017. And we tried to get the attention of the White House and the lady who was the Secretary of Transportation. And she was married to, I think it was Senator Mitchell. I can't remember her name, but no one would touch it. But it's very simple. If you look at the United States in the world, where does the United States sit? Everybody says, well, it's between the Atlantic and the Pacific. That's right. Now stop and hold that picture. Where was Rome at its height? It was in the middle of the Mediterranean. It was surrounded by water. And ultimately being positioned in the center of the Mediterranean made it a power in and of itself. It was an economic and financial power, much more than it was necessarily a manufacturing power at that point. But everything had to cross the Mediterranean in business and commerce, and Rome profited. Right now, the Chinese and the Russians and most of the Central Asian republics are so sick of dealing with us that they're trying very hard to bypass us. Well, how do you bypass us? You've got to build rail and transportation networks that run from China, almost virtually from the coast, because China is referred to in East Asia as the banana. Because if you look at where all the population is, it's shaped like a banana. It's all along the coast. There's nothing inland. I don't want to say nothing, but comparatively few people. You've got to ship the things that they're building, producing across the Eurasian continent to Poland, Ukraine, right through those corridors and into Europe. But that's not easy. Not only is it an engineering catastrophe, it takes years and tremendous investment, but it also means that you've got people all along the way who have their hands out. You want permission? You've got to pay. You've got to pay. You've got to pay. We have a tremendous advantage, much like the Romans. We speak one language from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There are no intervening countries. There are no intervening tariffs or regulations or anything else. If we build fast sea lift that can move from France, from Rochefort, if you go on the European map and look at the western part of France, that's one of the major terminals for trains all over Europe and reaching into Asia. If we build fast sea lift from there to the east coast, and fast sea lift from the west coast to China and back, and in the middle we build fast trains that can pick up goods and very rapidly move them at light speed across the United States, we can outpace anything they move across Central Asia because there's nothing to stop it. There's nothing to interfere with it. Why aren't we doing it? We should be doing this. You want an industrial revolution, a new one, a new scientific industrial trade revolution, a revolution in commerce? That's it. Now, we can all wait around for light, gravity, and magnetism to be related, and at some point I'm sure we'll all be able to break the laws of fractal mathematics, and then we can say, beam me up, Scotty. But we haven't gotten there yet, and right now things that move have to move primarily by sea and train and truck. But look at the center of the United States, the heartland. What would happen to the center of the United States if suddenly it became the crossroads of world commerce? We've got to do these things. These are the big projects that a future president needs to invest in, and I hear nothing like that. It's so depressing to me. That's what we need to focus on. We need to get out of the Middle East. We need to get out of Europe. These people have been there for thousands of years. Long before we showed up, they'll be fine. Let them sort it out. We need to come home and start focusing on what happens here. If we do these things, it'll take a decade or more, but we will once again be what we were just 50, 60, 70 years ago, the leading economic power in the world. That sounds like a productivity miracle that no one wants to actually spend money on. But speaking of money, all roads lead to the money printer. They're just going to continue to debase the currency. That's one of the greatest problems. That's why a lot of Bitcoiners are seeking refuge in Bitcoin. Talk to me a little bit about solutions for the average person. How do they protect themselves from what seems to be, regardless of who's in office, who's president, they're going to keep printing money and eroding everyone's purchasing power. That's true. I don't have a podcast where I advise everybody on what to do with their lives. I can only tell you what I've done. I'm heavily invested in cash, gold, and Bitcoin. Now, if you want to buy silver, fine, buy silver. But I own it, I keep it, and I store it. I think that's the only hedge right now against the high possibility that everything falls apart. I mentioned cash because during the depression, there were times when the banks were closed, that you had to have cash to do anything, and a lot of people didn't have it because they couldn't get into the banks. I don't know what's going to happen now. I mean, I really don't. This is new territory. This debt load and the situation we are in is virgin territory. None of us really knows how terrible it could be, nor have we explored very many solutions because no one wants to admit that this thing we call financial Armageddon could actually happen. I mean, there are a few people out there. I mean, you listen to Ray Dalio, and he'll tell you a little bit, although he tends to, I think, commit a lot of plagiarism, borrowing heavily from Sam Huntington and Oswald Spengler and his little developmental model. But he has a lot to say, and I think Gundlach is another one who has a lot to say on these matters. And obviously, one of my favorites is Michael Faber out in Singapore. And people don't like it because Michael Faber says, this is going to be the worst I've ever seen. Everyone is going to suffer. Okay, thanks, Michael. Everybody says, what do we do? What do we do? And I don't have an easy solution except to say, this is what I've done. And I sold off a lot of things. I've sold off most of my real estate holdings. All that's gone. Yeah. Why? Because that's what has no value whatsoever when things go under. You know, this is back when people were selling 2,000 acres at 10 cents an acre because they needed cash. They didn't have any. Well, I've been disappointed that throughout the campaign, both Harris and Trump have really avoided talking about the debt and what they'll do. I mean, truly with regards to policy to make us an American economic powerhouse, I think that that's what gave us strength, not becoming the imperial power, but really focusing on a strong economy. That's what I think lifted us up and we became a beacon of hope for the world. Listen, Natalie, let me just tell you how right you are. Because Bismarck, who died at the end of the 19th century, he said many things before he passed and he tried desperately to illuminate his, the second Kaiser, who is unfortunately not the best choice for Kaiser, but he nevertheless became the Kaiser. But he said, the great superpower in the world in the future of the 21st century is America. And people said, America? Why? America has almost no army. America has a very small Navy. And America led the world in what? Steel, oil. Look at what was built between 1865 and 1922 in this country. And he knew that was coming and he understood. He watched the Civil War carefully. Anybody who watched the Civil War knew we were the future superpower. We were the first people in the world to field armies of millions and fight across a continent, incomprehensible to most people. The only one that came closest to it was Napoleon Bonaparte. And he was, you know, he was a horrific danger to everyone as far as the Europeans were concerned. Well, what about us? Bonaparte couldn't even come close to us and Bonaparte was aware of it. He knew it. When he purchased, or when he sold rather, what we call the Louisiana Purchase, several of his advisors said, Your Majesty, don't do this. Sire, don't do this. We need to send an army over there and we need to hold this territory. This is very lucrative. And he said, how? He said, we'll never have enough armies to hold that territory against the Americans who live there. They live there. They will overwhelm us. And then we'll have enemies we don't need. Better that we should sell it, get what we can for it. And then hopefully in the future, we can be friends with them. That's what, 1805, 1806, 180... I can't remember the Louisiana Purchase. It's terrible. I should remember the date. But he understood that. So you're right, when you look at these candidates, you know, good God, man, what is most important? What is the foundation for everything? What is the source of our great power? It's our labor, our capital. It's building what we've built in the past, prosperity. And we have new industries, new capabilities that are emerging. And people say, well, they don't produce enough jobs. Let me tell you, the Golden Spike program that I talked about, they'll produce a lot of jobs. So I wouldn't worry about that. But all of it is contingent on first getting control of the United States. You've got to get control of it. It means you have to restore the rule of law. What do you say to people that don't think the president can do much because they are worried that there's sort of a shadow government behind the scenes, and the president's almost a puppet that really can't do much to help the average person in this country? Well, the deep state is this enormous bureaucracy that is universally supportive of Vice President Harris. They are part of the largess. The bureaucracies in and around Washington, D.C. are ridiculous. It's back to what I was describing with the military, this sort of clown show. We've become a banana republic. How many generals have you got? Oh, I've got 44 generals. We're powerful. We don't have anybody to fight, but we've got 44 generals. The same thing is true across the boards of the federal bureaucracy. And I think President Trump has said on more than one occasion, we've got to get rid of the Department of Education. We've got to get rid of, I think the Department of Agriculture needs to go away. We were a country that at the time we founded the Department of Agriculture in the early part of the century, it was necessary to manage the massive production of food and so forth. That's not required anymore. I don't think we need a Department of Energy. Now, how do you get to the point where you can dismantle and liquidate these bureaucracies? Crisis. Crisis is everything. As long as there is no crisis, as long as the money printing press is running, toot toot, toot toot, oh, everything's fine. But as Ben Stein likes to say, at some point, everything stops because it can't go any further. And that's where we're headed. Very soon, I think. It's time for a quick break to hear these messages from my partners who make this podcast possible. First up, Casa. It is so easy to set up your Bitcoin three-key self-custody with Casa that I can show you pretty much the whole process in just 30 seconds. You're watching it right now. I recently switched to Casa for multi-sig collaborative custody and inheritance planning because of their enhanced non-KYC required privacy and the ease of this mobile app. Make sure to watch the tutorials and get your Casa plan for 10% off at casa.io slash Natalie. 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Set up your node and become the master of your own transactions and enjoy true autonomy and upgrade your cybersecurity and protect your online privacy like I did. The Bitcoin way specializes in personalized one-on-one training to help you become fully self-sovereign. Schedule a free consultation today. What do you think a president needs to be an expert in? Oh, this is a loaded question. I often go back to Eisenhower as a president because Eisenhower identified some of the attributes that he thought were important. He never set out to list them, but what emerges from his discussion are what I would call four important points. Every president must come to office, or in his view, should come to office with experience in certain key areas. Number one, economics and finance. He needs to have some background. He needs to understand how the economy works. Why do we want a weak dollar as opposed to a strong dollar? He needs to understand that. There are reasons for these things. Number one, economics and finance. How does trade work? Secondly, what about the international system? How does the international system work? Who controls the international system? Who are the key figures in the international system, right? Okay, so we've got finance. We've got the international system. Need to understand the American military establishment. This thing is enormous. It's absorbing a trillion dollars a year. It needs to be severely reduced in size and expenditure. Oh, that's unacceptable in Washington, but it has to happen. But you have to understand how it works. And what's the last attribute? The president needs to have some experience in domestic politics. And of course, Eisenhower had none. And so Eisenhower said those are the four things. It literally is what he said. But he didn't say it in that form, but that's what came out of the discussion. And he admitted that he didn't have the domestic political background or experience. But Eisenhower seems to have done a reasonably good job. He left us without this tremendous debt. He pulled us out of a terrible recession. He cut back on defense expenditures, reoriented the Defense Department. He built the nuclear deterrence force that we have, ground-based, air-based, and naval-based. And he avoided war. Gosh, pretty good record. So what's most important? Is it the domestic political experience that everybody comes to Washington with? I leave it to your audience to determine that. So that's the answer to your question. Okay, that's really interesting. Just to wrap up, if President Trump goes into office with these promises to bring in people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, potentially clear out some of the bureaucracy that you talked about that has grown so large and bloated. With regards to Make America Healthy Again, I've been startled by how much that movement took off. But I kind of worry because those corporations that are behind our health system, our food system, they're very powerful. They're monopolies. How can President Trump be trusted to actually do something about that, even putting someone that seems like he has great intentions like RFK Jr. in charge? Do you think it can actually happen, or are these corporations just too powerful? No, they're not. There are strategies. And to understand the strategies, I don't want to divulge anything because I'm sure that RFK Jr. has got some things in mind. And I hope that President Trump will talk with him. Remember, RFK Jr. has won court cases all the way up to the Supreme Court. You don't get that far, and you're not that successful without knowing what the hell you're talking about. I think he's got some things in mind. But he and the President need to be joined at the hip. It's not enough to say, go do good things and come back and let me know. The President has to be there. He has to be interested in it, and he has to be supportive of it. But go back and look at Teddy Roosevelt and what he did to break up the monopolies, the trusts, when he broke the trusts. There were a lot of interesting strategies that he employed, and he was very successful. And of course, he used to say, they said, who do you most admire in the world? And he used to say, well, I really admire JP Morgan. And they'd say, what? He's your archenemy. You've done everything. He said, well, sometimes your enemy is the most credible person that you deal with, because he's honest in his intentions, and he's intelligent, and he's courageous. And he said, that's JP Morgan. I just don't agree with him, so I've done what I've done. I think that's the way you have to approach it. And I think it can be done. But it's going to take those two to work together on that piece, just as if you're going to do anything about defense. First of all, the president has to appoint someone to do it. All of the people that are currently under consideration for assignment to the Department of Defense are not going to do anything. They're happy to sign on and ride the train. That's the big problem that you have with a lot of people in Washington. They don't really want to do anything. They just want to be something. Because if you do something, oh, you're going to be very unpopular. We talk often about George Marshall as Chief of Staff of the Army. The first year he was in office, he retired 54 generals and 490 colonels. And everybody says, oh, he was a great man. Well, wait a minute. At the time he did that, he was the most hated man in Washington. Eisenhower recounted that when he was promoted to Brigadier General, the wife of a general who'd been retired came up to him and said, who are you? You weren't even in the First World War. You did nothing. My husband was there. My husband was highly decorated. It was very embarrassing for him and his wife. But that man was not a bad human being. But for things to change, he had to go. And I'll finish with this particular point back with Eisenhower, because Eisenhower was not somebody that President John F. Kennedy liked. He didn't care for Eisenhower very much personally. But on the day of his inauguration, after the inauguration, he finally turned to Eisenhower and said, General, can you give me any advice, last advice? And Eisenhower sort of looked down and said, yes. He said, if you want to be a successful president, be a good butcher. And Kennedy was taken aback and couldn't understand what he meant. He said, if you can't fire people and remove people, then you better damn well find someone else to do it for you. Because people will deceive you. People will be disloyal. People will fail to do what you told them to do. If you don't get rid of them, they will do you in. They will drag you down. Eisenhower was right. And of course, then JFK went through the first ugly experience of the Bay of Pigs and discovered what he was dealing with in the CIA and the military. And he asked Eisenhower, can I talk to you? And he said, sure. So he flew up and they spent hours together walking around his farm in Gettysburg. And JFK was shaken by what he'd experienced and how people had lied to him. And subsequently, he performed infinitely better during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But he discovered again that he was dealing with problems of the same sort. You can't wait to do away with people, to dispose of people, to replace people who are not loyal to you. And when I say loyal to you, loyal to your agenda, you come to office with an agenda. And that's what you're expected to execute. If you can't do it, if it crosses your conscience or something, it's incompatible, well then leave. Before we wrap up, I do want to ask you, do you think that we are potentially headed toward greater conflict with everything happening in the Middle East, potentially war with Iran? I get very nervous when I watch certain media outlets, and it almost seems like some of our politicians and journalists are cheering for this. And that's a very scary thought. And obviously with the world of free money that you talked about earlier, they can just pay for all of it with the stroke of a pen and destroy all of our savings. So how can we avoid a World War III situation? That's interesting. A very good analyst, somebody I trust on Wall Street, said, you know, Doug, everybody here thinks this is just another minor conflict where the Israelis are just going to deal with these troublesome Arabs, and it'll be over. Nobody here on Wall Street really understands what you're talking about. So I'm going to try and explain that right now, what I'm talking about. This is not just another Middle Eastern dustup. This is not just about dealing with Arab armies that are large, but demoralized and badly led. This is a new Middle East with new actors in it and new people. Israel is taken on effectively now the entire Islamic world. Now, the people that the Israelis have not worried about for a long, long time are the Egyptians, for instance. But even in Egypt, they are quietly mobilizing troops. They're getting ready for a war that they think they cannot avoid. And they don't want a war with Israel. Remember, it was the deputy chief of staff of intelligence from the Israeli army that called the intelligence leadership in Israel the day before October 7th on the 6th and said, we see a major attack materializing in Gaza. You had better be ready for this. This is dangerous. And the Israelis didn't prepare. So Egypt now feels it's at risk. Jordan is on the verge of collapse. The population is enraged at the mass murder and expulsion campaign in Gaza. These people, you know, I wrote an op-ed months ago that you may have read, where I talked about the Battle of Warsaw and the survivors from Warsaw that marched out under the German guns, singing the Polish national anthem. And the German officers watched them and said, this is a mistake, and this is not over. And this was not the answer. They were smart enough to figure out, we did this to these people. It was not necessary. It was not the right answer. The Israelis haven't come to that conclusion yet. They don't understand that. And they're pressing down on the gas pedal, and they are redoubling down on disaster in Gaza and disaster in southern Lebanon. But those two theaters are not working well for them. It hasn't turned out the way they'd hoped. They have not won anything. They have sacrificed a lot of life and equipment and people and resources. So now they're turning their attention to Iran, because in Israel for many years, there was always this insistence that everything that's wrong in the region, everything we don't like begins in Tehran. They believe that. That's an article of faith. I don't agree with that. But it doesn't matter what I think. I'm not an Israeli. That's what the Israelis think. So the solution is, as they say, to kill the octopus, destroy the head of the octopus. In other words, that the octopus head is in Tehran, with the tentacles that spread across the region. So yes, there is going to be a major collision between Iran and Israel. And that collision will involve us. It will unavoidably involve us, because we're already there. We're ready and prepared. And we seem to be equally anxious to destroy Iran. And when I say we, I'm talking about the United States government and armed forces, the people in Washington. I don't think most people in the United States are even remotely engaged. There has been no debate in the Senate, because there is no debate. The debate is in the grip of the Israel lobby. They own, operate, you know, the Senate and the House as far as our foreign policy is concerned in the Middle East. So we're headed down that track. And what is that going to produce? Well, we're going to take losses. And ultimately, the Russians have made it very clear that they will not tolerate the destruction of Iran. And they have done everything they can within the short time that's been available to them, when this business started to give the Iranians what they need to defend themselves, in terms of missiles and rockets and so forth. What I say defend, also to strike Israel as a matter of deterrence. They are still shipping in Su-35 aircraft. And Russians are training Iranian pilots, who are actually pretty good, how to operate the equipment. Now, yesterday, I think Mr. Netanyahu fired the current Minister of Defense, this is Mr. Ghalib. And he was the one that said that, you know, we are taking losses in southern Iraq, and things aren't going that well. But this is the most just war we've ever fought in his mind. And now he's gone. That doesn't bode well for the Israeli position. So the only thing that Mr. Netanyahu has got left and his supporters is to bring us in. And we will be involved in a war that is not just Iran, but is also going to involve Russia. And behind Russia stands China. And the other interesting part of this is that all the countries in the region, Muslim countries around the world in general, but the countries in the region, have all now finally turned against Israel. Jordan, which is extraordinarily dependent upon US and British money to survive and sustain itself, has now said no, we're not going to allow you to use Jordan as a springboard. We're not going to, we don't want you to use our airspace. Of course, they can't stop us, but they've denied it. The Saudis have said the same thing. The Saudis and the rest have now all said something they haven't said before, that there can be no condition of existence with Israel unless there is a second Palestinian, another Palestinian state. They've never said that. It's a precondition for any sort of reconciliation with Israel is the creation of a Palestinian state. The Turks are fully enraged, the population. And I don't know that Mr. Erdogan is on very firm ground in that country anymore, just as General Sisi is at risk, and King Abdullah is at risk. And I think the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia has been at risk as well, which is why he's changed his tune so much. So I think we're going to see this collision. And all we can do is hope that it does not escalate to the nuclear level. Well, can the next president prevent a World War Three scenario? Well, the next president doesn't take office until 21 June, or excuse me, January. And what I see with the Harris administration, what we've seen from the beginning is there's no one with a firm grip on the joystick, in other words, the steering wheel. There's no one steering very firmly. And so I think this is sort of an administration on autopilot. And the autopilot is flying straight into the canyon. And that's it. That's where I see us going. And as I say, my hope is that we will not escalate to the nuclear level. And I don't think that we or the Russians would turn to nuclear weapons. But I do fear what the Israelis might do. And that then would precipitate something from the Iranian side. And ultimately, that would engage us and the Russians. So it's a prescription for real trouble. Well, some of this sounds absolutely terrifying. So I like to end things and every conversation we've had has ended with a note of hope. So let's try to wrap all this up in something that the viewers can take away and feel good about. Right? I mean, what do you want people to know? This is a very consequential week, American history being made. I heard on TV today that there have only been 60 American presidential elections. So every four years we come out, we make this decision. What do you want people to know? Because at the end of the day, they're probably never going to meet the president. They're never going to talk to the president and they can only do what they can in their own small communities. So what do you want people to know? Americans collectively have to signal very decisively to the new incumbent that they do not want to be involved in a, not just a regional war, but a war with global potential in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. We've been sitting around fiddling while hundreds of thousands of people have been dying in Ukraine. We're fiddling while hundreds of thousands in Gaza and Southern Lebanon are being killed. Americans need to signal enough. You know, Donald Trump said something that I think is a very good thing. He said, I want the killing to stop. That's what Americans need to signal. And you will be heard. You've got to send this message collectively, all of you together. You've got to send that message in any way you can every day, constantly saying, this is not what we want. There's a good chance that it will be heard because what's the one thing that every politician wants to do? Get reelected. And if he thinks or she thinks this could ruin me, then maybe I'm not going to do it. So that much I would do. And otherwise, you know, I always tell everybody there's a, there's an old statement years ago when I lived in Europe. And then when I was an exchange student in Germany, I would visit Cistercian monasteries along a line that went up through central Germany going back into the seventh and eighth centuries. Literally, this was the edge of Christianity. And it then moved, you know, by incrementally east, further and further east. And when you go into these monasteries, one of the things that you see over and over and over again is this engraving on the wall, Ora et Labora, which means work and pray. So I tell people, that's a good way to look at the future. Work and pray. Don't despair, but work and pray. So get on the phone, get on your computer, do whatever you need to, and also pray. That's the best I can offer. I wish I could put a happier face on everything, but we need to be realistic. As you said, the two candidates really haven't been very forthcoming in explaining the icebergs that are in our path. Let's put it that way. Yeah, well, I think that's a powerful message. And we do have a voice and we can get mobilized and take action, even if it is small, even if it is just impacting where we live and the people that we care about. So Colonel Douglas McGregor, always such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. Well, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Coin Stories. This show is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing should constitute as official investment advice, and you should always do your own research. My inbox is open. If you want to share feedback or guest suggestions, just reach out at natalieattalkingbitcoin.com. Make sure you're subscribed to the show and check out my free newsletter, nataliebrunel.substack.com. I'll see you next time.