Right, where were we? The east of Sanis is Remnant's second largest landmass, Anima. That's where you'll find the Kingdom of Mistral. Of the four kingdoms, Mistral has the most controlled territory, meaning you'll find a wider variety of ecosystems and lifestyles. Trust me, this place is something for everyone. Or better or worse, the high society folks of Mistral are known worldwide for their contributions to fashion, architecture, theater, all the things that make the world pretty intolerable. But its lower class has got a fame of its own.  Made something that's hard to find, got someone that's hard to kill. They can help. Provided you've got the Lien to pay for it. There's one common thread that links all these people together, though. And that's their respect for nature, particularly the sea and the sky. The natural resources and geography of the area impacted Mistral's culture and technology in a big way. Its first settlers found shelter high up in the wind-carved cliffs, and as their population grew, so did their ability to utilize the land to its fullest potential. Real bunch of forward thinkers. Of course, the bigger the kingdom, the harder it is to govern. There's a reason traders and thieves flock to Mistral. The main city's right under the council's eye, sure, but places like Windpath and Kuchinashi start to get a little farther out of sight. There's plenty of places to hide in Mistral. That's why you gotta know where to look. Hope you enjoyed that peek behind the curtain for Ruby. For more Ruby-related content, check out roosterteed.com. There's also a ton of other great animated content on this channel, so go ahead and click that video to watch more. And please subscribe for more Archie animation on YouTube. Don't forget, mash that bell. Mash that bell. Those notifications, you would know.


Coin toss yesterday, you got one hit but elected to receive, that's kind of unusual. Is that something the players decide? Was that something you saw from the Raiders that made you go that way? No, I was just excited to take the ball. Wanted to take the football and try to finish that first drive with points, which is what we did. We had some great conversions and that was exciting to see. So it's just something that before the game I felt good about doing. When you look back at the game, Nicholas Petitfarai, it seemed like he played really well. What are your thoughts on his performance? I would probably stop short of saying really well. I think that as a rookie, there are just so many things that come up new each and every game. I would say that he battles, he competes. He stays on his feet. He tries to finish in pass protection. You know, and whether he gets, maybe the guy gets the edge on him inside, he's got the ability to kind of stay with him and finish and take some of the shot off the quarterback. So I think it's just a process of getting the game plan details out to the field in a live environment when it's going fast and things are moving and changing and they're going to different people. So continues to progress and really excited about where he's at. But I think it's just a great place to start and continue to improve. How did this daily hold up over on the left side? Well, I mean, I think, you know, Double D is certainly trying to figure out what we do here on the fly, doing a nice job competing, trying to get him to continue to understand where he fits in our scheme and where he needs to be in combination with guys. But, you know, we did a nice job pretty much all the day in protection against some really good guys. So I think he's only going to continue to get better as well. As you look back at the tight from the offensive standpoint, I'm very happy with Sean, the first half, and then the second half only had four possessions. What are some things you could clean up there to maybe help moving forward? Well, making sure, you know, we had the turn over, which was, you know, unfortunate.  But we had some opportunities, you know, felt like we could have got the screen going again. We had success with that in the first half, wasn't able to get Nate out, you know, for obvious reasons if you watch, you know, how they played him, not allowing him to get to the backer, and the conversions. You know, we had some really cool third down conversions in the first half, and weren't able to get it, you know, third and one. You know, we didn't get many people blocked on that one. You know, and then just really just making sure that we're better in four minutes there at the end. I thought the way that we finished the first half was three critical points when you look at defensively getting the stop, stopping the clock, 20-yard return. You know, Caleb Farley did a nice job of getting to the second level. Robert does what we ask every returner to do is make the first guy miss. I did a fantastic job with that, 21 yards in midfield, 21 seconds, you know, the two timeouts, you know, Nick sitting down, catching a contested pass, Ryan being decisive with it, you know, and then getting the extra yards that we needed, and Randy coming through with a big kick. So those were three critical points, and I think we all just have to, you know, make a few more plays offensively and defensively in special teams in the second half there. We had opportunities in all three phases. Is Caleb just not taking stuff from the practice field to games, Mike? Is that fair to say? You're seeing some things from him in practice, and it's not showing up on game day? Well, I mean, I think that there's been some growth there, and, you know, we're going to continue to give him opportunities and make sure that he's, you know, ready to go, and that he's competing each and every week for that opportunity to play, and continue to help us on special teams.  And whether you're playing pass rusher, you're playing an inside linebacker or corner, and just making sure that whatever that call is, that it's getting executed and that everybody's focused on doing their job. You're sitting top of being comfortable. Is it a confidence issue for him? Well, I mean, I can't really speak on anybody's confidence level except for mine. That's not something that I think, you know, that's for the player to understand. And we have full confidence in everybody that's here, that, you know, throughout the course of the season or even this week, that, you know, the guys that are here, whether it's on the practice squad or on the active roster, are going to learn a game plan, prepare as a starter, have to go in there.  And so that's what we ask everybody to do. Was your valuation process like Mike for that? I'm still going to say that's positioned specifically during the course of the week that leads you to, here's the other guy we're going to go with. I just wanted to try, you know, man, try somebody else, try somebody new and give somebody else an opportunity. And that may change this week. That's what it was on a short week. And, you know, that could be something different for this game plan this week. What does this know that you look for during the week, Mike, as you do about it? You know, just an overall understanding. You know, we don't have that many reps. You know, Wednesday was a walkthrough. But, you know, there's certainly things that we will look for is, you know, the ability to, you know, be able to match up, be able to understand what the zone coverage responsibilities are, the ability to play the correct leverage. And those are all things that we look for. So is it more of a technique issue from an individual standpoint or a scheme issue of him not maybe all the time carrying out the assignment correctly? And just overall just trying to make sure that everybody's ready to do their, do their job, execute when their, when their numbers called, you know, and find ways to help us win.  Is that something? You're still looking for guys that can rush and can cover, you know, when they do all those things. And we're looking for as many guys as we can find. And we'll evaluate the, you know, the guys that we have here and try to make the ones that were rushing here and figure out the ones that can cover. And so, you know, each week is going to be something different. You were having the I-5 catches yesterday. How nice was it to get them going in that way? Do you think that helped maybe open up the running game or is that unrelated? Well, I think it was what they were trying to do is they were trying to get back to try to stop some of the intermediate, you know, play passes that we've had, you know, that we'd like to have success with. And I thought the best thing that Derek was was available. He got to those spots quickly. And then Ryan was able to find them. Derek did a nice job of putting the ball away and turning it up like we talked about and gaining some valuable yardage. I think was it for Stonehouse to get off that 70-yard punt to at least put you in position to have them pinned back? Take as many 70-yard pints as we can get. To Caleb, what is the balance for you in terms of wanting to have confidence in the guy that's out there to execute and then also wanting to get a guy like Caleb who hasn't played a ton of football, that development in live game reps and where does that balance lie for you when you make those personnel decisions? I think that's just something that we have to look at each and every week and hopefully that we can have a full week of practice and have a competition and see who is going to be the guy that's going to go out and play for us and what the rotation may look like as we work through what personnel they're in and what personnel that we end up playing. How did Mitchell do given that he'd only been here four days? I think there was an understanding. They caught some balls on him and obviously we did the job that we wanted to on Devontae and Darren, but Matt Collins really came up big. So give him a lot of credit. We just gave up too many X plays there defensively in the second half. Back to Derek, how good is it to get him out in space like that when he's split out like that? Well, I mean, space is probably hard to come by for Derek, but when it is his own and if you look at the screen, it's cool to see him get going. We just got to try to catch it a little cleaner so that the timing of some of those things are better, but those have to be good plays for us and still try to find ways to use his skill set along with running the football. Robert had his best game yesterday. Who was that just a function of the game? Or do you see now that he's getting further away from the injury that maybe he's doing things a little bit more decisively and just playing better football? Yeah, I mean, I think that we were able to find him. I think there's really some cool stuff there with him and Ryan thought he ran a great route down there in the red zone. The over, the play pass was nice. I think he set his angle and Ryan was able to throw him a really, really good ball. And the punt return was something that I thought was really beneficial and really helped us outside even those catches that he had that I think was a huge play. How integral is he to the offense when trying to establish a rhythm like that? Well, I think everybody is. Everybody is. Everybody has their role in each and every play and how you perform that job. And we understand that the better that receivers play and running backs play without the football in their hand can only help us. Guys that are fighting for extra blocks to try to protect the guy with the football. And I think a great example of that was just at the end of the game on the on-side kick. Whoop goes and gets the kick, but Cody and Jeff Swame and Tori Carter over there trying to protect the guy and coming from a long distance and Tori had a heck of a block to protect Jeff. So those are things that we always are preaching. You see, Zach Cunningham get hurt. How'd you like his effort on that play to kind of fight through a bunch of guys to keep that going?  Zach fought through some guys and made a play and don't really question his effort or anybody else's effort. I think we just have to continue to make that a calling card for us. Make sure that we're executing better and we're executing better together. How do you feel for Shah Weaver has done considering elevated snaps and playing a bigger role in the defense? He continues to improve. I think that he gets tired a little bit in there and probably playing too much, but that's a product of not getting off the field and not many other guys behind him. Mike, is there a little bit different field today as you watch film or even some relief of just getting that first win and doing it in the fashion you did yesterday? I think we're excited about winning. I mean, it's hard to win in this league. It is and we're never going to take anything away from winning. We just got to continue to improve and fix the things that we feel like are fixable. Again, find out who's available, who we're going to have and start to build a game plan and a roster to travel to Indianapolis for a huge division game on the road. And with that division, how much do you put emphasis? It's the first one of the year. It's only week four. There's a lot of football left, but do you really put an extra emphasis on the fact that it is a division opponent? Well, I mean, I think you have to play well. You have to beat the teams in your division. You got to steal a couple on the road, which this is the next opportunity for that. So I don't think that there's any... We understand that they're a good football team. We have to go on the road against a good football team that just beat a good football team and start doing some things better and continue to do the things that... That looked pretty positive yesterday. Given how much draft capital you put into that cornerback position, a first-round pick, two second-round picks, to be in this state where you're saying, we still got to find guys to cover, is that, like, is there a frustration level to that? No. You know, this is our football team. This is a football team that we want and that, you know, no frustration.


when called upon your country to do something, you will not be called a war criminal by a non-American entity.  And that's just not going to happen. You cannot speak of the American military today functioning if they could be held to account by a jurisdiction other than the United States of America. Is America capable of punishing its war criminals? Yes, to a certain degree. America will never punish the ultimate war criminal. You'll never see Dick Cheney called before the court. You'll never see George W. Bush called before the court. You'll never see somebody with four stars, three stars, two stars, or even one star called before a court. But you'll see the privates, the corpals, the sergeants, the lieutenants, the captains, maybe a major or two. They'll be held to account when they commit gross violations and some have been committed. But for the most part, you know, I would say that virtually every engagement the United States has done in Afghanistan has incorporated an element of a war crime. Not winningly, just through the nature of the way we operate in Afghanistan. Ticking in doors in the middle of the night, having a free fire zone. Whereas if somebody perceives a threat, they can immediately put rounds in there. And so you kill the family of 17. You won't be charged because all you have to do is say, sir, I thought they were armed insurgents. And now you are literally given a clean bill of help. You know, that's wrong. And but that's just the way it is going to be. As long as the United States has this interventionist policy where we take American men and women, you know, train them to kill, give them weapons, and we send them overseas and give them opportunities to carry out their training. The best way to prevent a war crime is to get American boys and girls home and recondition the American public that military service is about staying at home and training for the opportunity to defend your country if somebody attacks you. Not joining the military overseas and involved in conflicts have nothing to do with the national security of the United States of America. Scott, as you know, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is investigating possible U.S. offenses in Afghanistan. The response from the Trump administration, I think Bolton was still national security advisor, was to threaten the ICC, any of their officials that could not come to the U.S., threaten them with sanctions. You think the Biden administration would reverse that? No. I don't think the Biden administration would be as crass and crude. I mean, John Bolton, you know, is a special category of crass and crude. I'm not a big John Bolton fan. But John Bolton is simply implementing the policy that every presidential administration would implement. There's not a single man or woman who could be President of the United States who would allow an American military person or American diplomat to be prosecuted under foreign jurisdiction. It just isn't going to happen. Biden would probably come up with a more clever way of saying this. Maybe he wouldn't sanction the court, wouldn't be as punitive. But the impact would be just the same. He would not allow, and he will not allow Americans to be prosecuted by any international court, especially American military members. You're muted, I think. I was indeed. You mentioned Syria before. Trump twice said he wanted to pull the troops out and never happened. What about a Biden administration in Syria? Will they revive an attempt to overthrow Assad that was begun by the Obama Biden administration? Or is it irreversible now, the victory by, except for Idlib province, the victory by Syria, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah? Well, now we're in a very curious question because it's not just Syria that we're talking about, but you know, Syria would have been the last of the three places Trump would withdraw. When we eventually leave Iraq, we will have no choice but to leave Syria. So that'll be done virtually simultaneously. Trump was on the path of pulling troops out of Afghanistan and pulling troops out of Iraq. And the end result would have been troops being pulled out of Syria because you can't stay in Syria without an American military presence in Iraq. That's just a reality. But people go, oh, well, that means he was going to get out of the Middle East. No. We still have tens of thousands, I mean, like 50,000, 60,000 military personnel deployed in the Middle East outside of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. They're in places like Kuwait. They're in places like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Saudi Arabia. And we've now, in Bahrain, we've now under Trump, we've built this new line of defense. See, when Trump speaks of leaving Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, he's not speaking of leaving the Middle East. He's simply talking about withdrawing from regions where we're involved in wars that we can't win. They're endless wars. They're just grinding us down. And they actually end up strengthening our number one foe in the region, Iran and Hezbollah. What he's seeking to do is withdraw back to a new line of anti-Iranian resistance. And this is one of the trademarks of his current policy of, you know, Arab nations normalizing relations with Israel, because now you're getting a Gulf Arab State-Israeli coalition lined up against Israel. And this isn't theory. This is happening. It has happened. So one of the questions is, what is Biden going to do about this? Because we've already started this policy. This new relationship has already advanced. What we've gotten Israel to normalize relations, is Biden going to reverse this? Because I can tell you that if Biden re-engages in Iraq, re-engages in Syria, re-engages in Afghanistan, this new coalition's going to fall apart. This new coalition requires a lot of hands-on treatment that they were getting from the Trump administration. And if they don't get that from the Biden administration, you know, it's going to collapse. And if it collapses before we've re-solidified our, you know, our first line of defense against Iran, Iran will just emerge stronger. So this is one of the, you know, the great challenges for Biden administrations. What are they going to do? The smart thing for them to do is accept the inevitability of Assad's victory. Because today, this isn't 2012-2013. You're not going to be, there is no Arab spring that you can exploit. The opposition has been destroyed. There's a tiny group of al-Qaeda hardliners that are dug in in Idlib, and their day is numbered. Look, these repositioning forces. And the reality is, they're not going to last too much longer. There might be some sort of last second Turkish gambit seeking to annex a strip of territory where they can populate, you know, these people. But the concept of turning that around into the kind of viable anti-Assad coalition that can threaten to remove Assad from power is, those days are done. Iraq, you're not going to be able to recover America's position in Iraq. The Iraq that Biden's inheriting is not the Iraq that Obama left. You know, we have a parliament that's voted American troops out. We have a ceasefire that's contingent upon American troops leaving. And Biden will be confronted with that to you. If Biden doesn't withdraw, he's going to immediately find that these pro-Iranian militias are going to be attacking the American troop concentration. What is he going to do about that? And then Afghanistan, you know, Trump has said, I'm getting the troops out. He signed a peace deal and he's turned a blind eye to just about every violation that one can imagine because he wants to get the troops out.  Be a tough guy and bomb back, destroy the peace treaty, reinforce American troops? There's not any domestic support for this. Or is Biden going to continue the Trump policy of retrograde, getting out? That would require Biden to take on the military in a way that, you know, a lot of people don't realize this, you know, and he was mocked for it.  You guys can't win a war. It was the most refreshing, honest thing an American politician has ever said to a collection of American military leaders, especially after 19 years of not winning a war in Afghanistan, after promising they could, if we just gave them a few tens of thousands, more troops, then a trillion more dollars. Every president that's been involved in Afghanistan has given the military everything they wanted and the military continues to lose that war and Trump finally had it up to here and he called them out on it and it was a wonderful moment in American presidential history. Americans will never truly appreciate a president calling the collection of senior leaders losers because they don't know how to win a war. Honest, refreshing. Biden will never do that. Biden will go in there and he will call them the greatest men the world's ever seen, the sonification of honor and what do you need to win? My son, Beau is a soldier. He deserves a medal and his Hunter Biden help him score the cocaine heat up in a sailor. And I mean, whatever, Joe Biden just discussed me the way he, you know, uses his sons to disguise the fact that he never served in the military. But he's going to continue to be this faux patriot, great supporter of the military, and he's going to give him whatever they want. And I don't think the military has learned the lesson yet. I think they honestly believe that they can prevail. I know the CIA thinks they can prevail. The CIA's running the show in Afghanistan. We want to continue to stay there. They need the military to be the heavy hand behind the CIA's secret army. You have a secret army in Afghanistan. Most Americans aren't aware of it.  CIA knows that this secret army can't continue to function without American military muscle. Trump recognizes that. That's why Gina Haspel's mad at him because Trump is getting ready to pull out that last American military muscle, which means the CIA has is going to be compelled to disengage. They don't want to. Biden is going to inherit this. And I don't think Biden knows how to say no to the military. You think Biden will keep Haspel? He'll probably keep Haspel, won't he? No, Biden's going to pick his own person. Haspel has too much baggage. She's the queen of torture. She's done some other things that the American people don't know about. I'll say this in defense of her. You cannot have been involved in the director of operations during the Bush administration and during the Obama administration. Have clean hands.  And I think Biden is going to dump her, and he's going to bring in his own people and try and remake the CIA in his own image. I have a question from a viewer that's related to what we've been talking about. This viewer would want to ask you to evaluate Turkey's goal on Azerbaijan and the current conflict with Armenia and also how the Bush administration, I get it right, the Biden administration will react to that. What will be Biden's policy on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and his relations with Turkey and also Turkey's de facto occupation of Idlib? So we're going back to Syria, but let's ask first about Azerbaijan, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Biden's relations. Let's start with Turkey because that's the key player here. Turkey had no problems with our neighbor's policy when Erdogan came in. That policy was thrown out the window during the Obama administration. We had a program called Timber's Sycamore, I think, where the CIA program providing weapons. The weapons were shipped from Libya through Turkey into Syria. So Joe Biden and Barack Obama were part of the Turkish engagement in Syria. It's not as though this happened overnight and blindly. Turkey also lost, began to divorce itself from Europe and the United States during the Obama administration. If you remember the 2016 coup that took place, I think that there's the Turkish have a point that there was some American involvement in that coup that we were viewing Erdogan as a Islamist that we couldn't trust. And while we may not have actively supported the coup people, we might have known about it and not informed him about it. And so there's going to be some bad blood between, some complicated blood between Biden and Turkey. But what's happening in Azerbaijan today is just an extension of Turkey's transformation of geopolitical reality in the region. For decades, Turkey was supposed to be the secularist nation, Kamalist nation that wanted to be a member of the European Union and link itself to the West. Those days are gone. Turkey has never been a secularist country. I've lived in Turkey. I've been in Turkey. It's a Muslim country. It's populated by a heavily Islamic population that the government may have been secular. The military may have been secular. People were never secular. If you go back and look at Turkish history from 1930s on up, Ataturk was always opposed by staunch Islamists. In fact, in the 1960s, they actually elected one of these Islamists and then they killed them. They hung them by the neck until death. The military rose up. In the 1970s, there was, you know, I think Erdogan was the guy, the Turkish military put him down in the 80s. Another guy rose up. They put him down. Erdogan is a direct, his mentor was the last great Islamist leader to be put down by the Turkish military. Erdogan isn't Islamist. He's governing Islamists. The coup gave him a chance to cleanse Kamalism out of mainstream Turkish governance. The Turkish military today, the Turkish government today, is a completely different beast than it was when Biden became vice president in 2008. It's a reality that Biden's going to have to deal with. Turkey's flexing its muscles in the area. Azerbaijan's an interesting problem because, you know, the primary combatants are Armenian and Azerbaijan. Armenia, as people should know, is more closely aligned with Russia. But there's a heavy Armenian diaspora in the United States that has a great amount of political influence, especially in the state of California. They're in opposition and you can't ignore the Armenian diaspora if you're an American politician. So there's a great deal of, you know, contrary, do you support Armenia? And if you support Armenia, therefore you're supporting Russia. Is that really the policy the Biden administration wants? Or will they support Erdogan and Azerbaijan, which is opposed to Russia, but now you're helping Erdogan flexes regional muscles. And then the other question you have is international law says that Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan. And we support that. So here we have Azerbaijan with Turkey's help trying to return the lands that everybody said legally belonged to them, return them to their sovereignty. Are we against that? Biden's going to be in a very difficult situation when it comes to Azerbaijan. And if he's smart, he'll do what Trump has done, which is absolutely nothing. And let this play out because, you know, Azerbaijan left to its own devices is going to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh. And they're going to reoccupy the lands that were captured by Armenia. That is going to happen. And once that happens, you've eliminated one of the great, you know, problem areas. And I say this, and I know people are going to say, well, you can't condone this now. Look, I didn't create this problem. I'm just talking about geopolitical reality. It's like looking at what happened with the Croats and the Serbs and cleaning up the Yugoslavian Civil War. You know, in the end, we had to basically let the Croatian army run rampant across of Bukovina and ethnically cleanse 300,000 Serbs in order to realign the map so that you could have a chance for peace in that region. Nobody would say that that's a good policy. Nobody would say that that's a humane policy. It's not. But it did create the opportunity for peace, whether or not we've successfully acted on that is another question. You're not going to have peace in the South, caucuses, so long as Armenia maintained its presence, not only in Nagorno-Karabakh, but in 20% of Azerbaijani land that they occupied in the 1993-1994 war. Right now, that reality is being changed. If Azerbaijan and Turkey continue their offense, if they continue to be successful, there's not much Biden can do to change that. Without direct intervention, it would be sloppy. So the best thing Biden could do is to sit back and do absolutely nothing. I don't know if Joe Biden's capable of doing nothing. I don't know if he's capable of doing something about anything right now, but I don't know about the analogy with Croatia, because in that case, the U.S. didn't do nothing. Madeleine Albright actively encouraged that. We armed them. Yeah, no. Yeah, we armed them. We gave them the green light. We made it happen. That's different than doing nothing. That was... Right. I was just talking about the situation of the end result. I mean, the fact that we tolerated a policy where hundreds of thousands of people were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, where they've been for centuries, that's a tough policy to embrace under any circumstances. Yeah, I don't know if Trump ever heard of Nagorno-Karabakh. No, and I think he's heard of Erdogan, and he likes Erdogan because Erdogan's a tough guy. So I think that's the extent of his analysis of that situation. And again, from my perspective, that's fine, because the last place America needs to be sticking its nose in right now is that area of the world.  Let them sort it out. We don't need to be there. Right. There's no wonderful national security implication on that one at all. There would be if we got involved, because now Americans would be dying and more trillions of more dollars would be wasted. But I'm just as happy to let the rest of the world solve its own problems, as bad as those problems are. There is, of course, a secular intellectual population in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul. So there were people who supported Kamal. There are Kamalist parties, the Republican party it's called, which has never been able to do much under Erdogan. And Erdogan's main target was the Berlinists, of course. In that coup, he blames without real evidence and he attacked and destroyed this group and called them terrorists. And I can tell you they're not terrorists. I know a lot of them. No, no, I'm not accusing them of, but I think that was an excuse. One of the things that happened in cleaning out the military is almost every general that had a NATO affiliation and NATO alignment, a history of training with NATO, educating the United States, were purged. And the military leadership today is a far different composition than the military leadership pre-2016. So Scott, we have a new guest coming in, Alexander McChura. So you're welcome to stay, but we're going to be talking to him most. So we've had you here about two hours. So no, I appreciate it. I have to actually go take care of some domestic issues. Yes, we're going to be talking about foreign issues now, Alexander. So take your time, Scott, as always. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, thank you. See what's going to happen. We'll probably have you back on and talk about as the Biden administration goes forward. All the best. Okay. Super. Thanks, Joe. Hello, Alex. Can you hear us? And can you? Yes. I am very well. Hello, everybody. Great to be with you. I ask you to come on to give us a perspective from Britain and Europe of this, this fiasco, really, this American election, which the whole world is glued to, because it affects the whole world, particularly Britain. What are your personal views, first of all? Well, I'm going to make a very brief comment. I mean, obviously fiasco is the right word in term, but I'm not surprised by it. And by the way, I'm not surprised that Trump did much better than many people expected. I'm going to say very simply and very straightforwardly that the Democratic Party for me is a party which is unfit for purpose. What the Democratic Party needs to do, maybe it cannot do it. What it needs to do is to reform itself and to reconnect with its progressive past. In other words, it has to be a left-wing party again. What we had was an attempt to try and defeat Donald Trump and the Republicans by getting a very establishment, very centrist, very conservative political leader in Joe Biden, with a very, very compromised past, put him up against Trump. And in the best possible circumstances, with a pandemic, an economic crisis, when everything apparently going wrong, they still are only just able to e-counter victory. So I think this is bad. This is a bad result. And it was a bad result in terms of the congressional elections. It's a bad result apparently in connection with the elections in the various states. I think this whole idea that if you go for a centrist, a conservative Democrat to take on a right-wing Republican, it seems to me a completely misconceived thing. They should have gone in for someone much more well-established and more left-wing and more connected to the kind of tradition that might have won over more of those sort of working-class voters who, for various reasons, which I'm sure you've been talking about, are still voting for Donald Trump. That's my view about the election in a nutshell. Well, Alexander, had Biden lost, it would have been, again, an indictment against this center-right centrist establishment Democratic Party that has twice successfully defended against a strong insurgency led by Bernie Sanders and through not the most open-handed means as well. But had they lost, the pressure probably would have continued to grow on them to move more to the left and take this progressive wing of the party more seriously as much as it threatens their own class interests. But now that he's won, is that your view, does that push that even further into the past where the left-wing of the party has even less standing now? I'm afraid that's exactly what's going to happen. It's going to be already, in fact, you have the centrists, if I'm going to call them centrists, I mean, I think you can use stronger language within the Democratic Party, the DNC, all those sorts of people, and they are blaming the left of the party for the fact that the party didn't do as well as it should have done in the congressional elections, that they lost ground in the House of Representatives. So they're saying, you know, we're fine, we got Joe Biden elected, so it's obviously we're doing that right. It's you people who talk about socialism and left-wing policies. You are the people who are losing us support and who are losing us votes. That, unfortunately, is the view that he's now going to become further entrenched in the United States, in the Democratic Party, in American politics, and it is entirely wrong, in my opinion. What it is going to do is it's going to store up the prospects of a further right-wing reaction in 2022 and 2024 with, you know, even more problems accumulating down the line. I mean, I think this is, in fact, if you really look at this election properly and examine it as one should do, it's the obvious lesson to learn. I'm going to make another point, by the way, which is that it's very interesting and ought to be very disturbing for the Democratic Party that, rather like the conservatives in Britain, so much of their vote seems to be coming from retired people and working America is increasingly not supporting them. A party that represents, if you like, the Democratic tradition in the United States, that positions itself as the left should be connected with the productive part of the U.S. population. And that is something that I think the Democrats don't seem to understand at all, at least the DNC part of the Democrats don't seem to understand at all. So how does the British government, what would the religion be like with the Biden administration? Well, I think there's some people who think that the British government, Boris Johnson and all of those, will not be happy to see Biden. I think they would probably have preferred Trump. I think they will adapt themselves to Biden. I think they'll get on with him perfectly well. This is my own personal view. I think if we ever get a Labour government, which is possible, one day they will be even happier to work with Joe Biden than the Conservatives are. I think the British establishment, the British ruling elite are not bothered by this. But if you are talking about liberal opinion in Britain, they are in profound shock. They had been expecting a Democrat landslide in Britain. Donald Trump, to say that he's unpopular, would be an understatement. I think the British were expecting a massive repudiation of Donald Trump, of the Republicans, and of everything he stood for. They simply cannot understand why it hasn't happened. They haven't been prepared for it. They haven't really, I think, grasped the granular realities of American politics, which I suspected beyond them. What the British feel about this is, I think, replicated right across Europe. I don't think it's just the British who are dismayed. I've been talking to friends in Germany, friends in France, and they're all astonished that Donald Trump has done as strongly in this election as he has, and that the Republicans are not just still standing, but have actually apparently grown in strength in Congress and in the various states and local elections across the United States. It's dismayed people. It's astonished them, and it's even appalled them. What do you think the Biden administration's relations with Britain would be like? Well, we've been discussing that Biden is more likely to be more aggressive in foreign policy than Trump was. Traditionally, when the U.S. wants to be aggressive, they always drag Britain along with them, don't they? Oh, absolutely. The British will not be sorry. I mean, there are some people in Britain who have opposed Britain becoming involved in these aggressive policies. But the fact is, this year, those voices have all been marginalised. Jeremy Corby no longer leads the Labour Party. The people who were opposed to more interventionist foreign policies within the Conservative Party have been marginalised also or driven out also. The political class in London, the leaders of both the Conservative and Labour parties, would be fully signed up to more aggressive foreign policies by the Biden administration. They would support them, and some of them would support them with enthusiasm. Now, looking across the continent, what are the reactions we're hearing from France, from Germany, from Europe? Greece, for example, you might be plugged into that. Is there anything coming out yet or they're still waiting? Well, I mean, they're looking, I mean, the election, to my latest knowledge. I mean, it's almost decided. It's not quite yet decided. I think the Europeans are looking forward to a Biden administration. They think they will get on with it an awful lot better. But at the same time, I think that they sense that the United States is drifting away from them in the sense that it's become clear that its politics are very different from those that Europeans feel comfortable with. I'm talking, I mean, this is true of Germany, it's true of France, it's true of places like Greece. I talk, of course, always about the sort of liberal mainstream of European politics. If you're talking about people like Aubame in Hungary, Kaczynski in Poland, they have seen how strongly the Republicans did, how strongly Trump was done in this very difficult election, or ought to be in a very difficult election for them. And I think they've drawn encouragement from it. One of the things you were hearing before was, you know, this was going to be the turn of what is called the populist tide. Well, I think the populists in Europe are undismayed. Alexander, I forgot the question, but it'll come to me in a moment. Yes, I thought one of the unintended consequences of Trump's alienation of NATO and all of his bluster and that was to spark inside European leaders the idea of becoming more independent from the US, going their own way, not being the lackey of the United States, and to take an independent foreign policy between Russia and Europe, and the United States, for example, in Germany, getting rid of those sanctions against Russia to help their own businesses. Would that be reversed? That tendency that we started to see, Macron, was one who articulated that. Will Biden now put Europe back firmly into the US corner? I think this is what Biden himself thinks. I mean, one of his people apparently spoke to some Syrian officials, some Syrian opposition officials, and talked for the United States and for Europe, which I think has gone down, you know, not terribly well here. I think the Europeans looking at the election itself and the outcome of the election are going to say to themselves, clearly, Trump is not an aberration. We don't know how stable this Biden administration is going to be. We may be looking at more gridlock in the United States, and there's every possibility that, you know, what the Trumpism may come back, you know, with renewed force in 2022 or 2024. And I think they'll be very cautious. And I think they will say that, you know, we will continue to look for independent paths. I think that's certainly the mood in Germany. I'm not so sure about what the French think, but I don't think Macron is the kind of person who will feel comfortable to reverse an independent line, which he's already taking.  I mean... Well, he also has a difficult election coming in a few years. I mean, he's got his gears trying to play to go. But at the same time, I mean, Macron is somebody who I think has high ambitions for himself. And I think he doesn't want to be the kind of political leader that Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy were seen to be, which was just basically the handmaidens of the United States. I think he feels that many people in France, who also have aspirations for France to be a major player in world affairs, were always uncomfortable with that. And I think that he doesn't want it. And I think he senses that most French people don't want it. I don't think he has the intellectual coherence behind all of this, or the political stature and force of personality to carry it off in the way that De Gaulle did. I don't think there's anything like that going to happen this time. But I think he will try to distance, continue to play an independent role from the U.S. And also, and this is perhaps a more important, even more important priority for him, distance himself from the U.S. and distance France from the U.S. and distance Europe from the U.S. in order to position France as more important in Europe and that way to crystallize Europe around France, breaking up the German-American-British axis, which has run European affairs basically since De Gaulle's time. Thank you, Alex. How long can you stay with us? As long as you want. Okay, we have another guest that we need to go to, because she only has about 20 minutes. If you don't mind staying by, and you can perhaps participate, it's Whitney Webb. Whitney, thank you for coming on and just unmute your microphone, of course, so we can hear you. Okay, hello. How are you? Great to be here. Thank you. Oh, I'm doing well. I finally got my kid to nap, so I get to pop in for a little bit, which I'm very happy to do. Thanks again for the introduction. I'm glad to have you. Of course, we want to talk to you about the article you wrote, but before that, you're not surprised by this. What are you surprised about in this U.S. election? Anything? Well, I haven't been following super closely today, but I honestly thought people would be a little more tense than they are now, at least from what I've seen. I'm glad that's the case. I was certainly worried that based on how the Transition Integrity Project and other groups had sort of planned for this to transpire, I was a little worried that it would get dicier faster, but I think a lot of Americans are as maybe tired from just how crazy 2020 has been and a little unwilling to buy into this sort of effort to manufacture and gin up tensions even farther than they've been over the course of this year. But as far as surprise, I mean, I don't know, nothing really surprises me anymore. I'm really cynical, so sorry if that's not a great answer. Tell us about this Integrity Project, and it was set up in case Trump would win, but what happens now that Biden is one, and Trump decides he doesn't want to leave all? Well, they were actually set up for a different reason. Basically, it's a marriage of Obama national security officials and Bush era neocons and also project for a new American century neocons like Bill Crystal and the like. And they publicly justified their existence by saying that they were concerned that if Trump lost, he would not leave office. And so they had to plan for that particular scenario. But actually, they planned for several scenarios, including Trump winning. And in the Trump winning scenario, they basically forced simulated how to create a constitutional crisis and prevent him from taking office. And every single scenario they simulated, they simulated four different ones. In every single instance, Biden was either became the president or there was a constitutional crisis resulting in no president-elect being decided on January 20th. So it definitely seemed to me at least that this group was planning for the very chaos they claimed to be preventing because if they're publicly justifying their reason for existence is saying that Trump isn't going to leave office, why would they simulate a scenario where he clearly won by a landslide? And then they did all these extreme things to prevent Trump from actually taking office. It seems like there was an ulterior motive there. And the transition integrity project is, I would argue a manifestation of what a lot of related nationals, former and current national security officials and intelligence officials were saying in the US last year, basically saying that it was inevitable that the 2020 election would be chaotic before any of that chaos or this contested election scenario that we're now seeing was really even palpable, at least to most people publicly. So because that first sort of became obvious a couple months ago, I would say to the general public, but intelligence officials were saying last year around this time. And there were also simulations with intelligence linked firms for chaos in the 2020 election as well. So just a lot of sort of suggestions from the national security community that they somehow knew that there was going to be a lot of chaos around the day of the election before the general public was aware that that would be the case. And then you have these, the never Trump Republicans and the Obama-era national security officials coming together to simulate and game this stuff out. And what's interesting is that the transition integrity project also has ties to a group at Georgetown that also is full of basically their executive directors, the former national counterterrorism advisor to Obama's National Security Council, but they're called the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. And basically what they do, what they have done is since the transition integrity project did their simulations in June, right after that took place, this particular group at Georgetown went to city various cities and states, battleground states and major cities, including Philadelphia, and advised the creation in Philadelphia specifically of their election task force with the district attorney, Larry Krasner, that includes a whole bunch of different officials and has really now at the center of a lot of this controversy in Philadelphia in particular. But the person that was doing this on behalf of this group ICAP at Georgetown was Mary McCord, who was one of the Department of Justice officials intimately involved in the illegal FISA spying on the Trump campaign Crossfire Hurricane. So it's interesting to see these officials that clearly had showed extreme bias and had deep ties to the Obama administration taking these actions in the months before the election. And also, you know, I just I think a lot of this, you know, this chaos was preplanned. And I think the fact that the intelligence community in the US was basically stating that was the case over a year ago, and that there were simulations to that effect over a year ago, even before the transition integrity project came into existence, I think that is pretty telling about how we got here and who plans to benefit from, you know, the scenario that we're seeing play out in the US right now. Before I turn it over to the two quick questions, one had Trump won a landslide. What were they planning to do to prevent it from coming to office? And the second question is now that he has lost, and he may not leave, what are they planning to do to get him to leave? All right, well, I'll have to remember back to the article because I actually wrote it on September 3. But as far as I can recall, in the scenario where Trump was to win, they were going to basically first have what they call dueling electors, where a governor would send a different set of electors to the electoral college than those that were decided in the votes or because of some controversy in this particular in a particular state, they named three states in that scenario, Michigan, North Carolina, Carolina, I think, Washington, I can't remember exactly, which the ones they were in the exercise, but they were going to send a different set of dueling electors that would vote for Biden, they would be pro Biden electors as opposed to the ones that had been elected per votes, which would have had them be pro Trump electors, so the whole dueling electors narrative. And of course, since that was simulated, this has been seated in mainstream media, including in the Atlantic, whose editor in chief David Frum is a member of this whole transition integrity project group. And then after that, they were going to the Biden campaign in the simulation. By the way, in the simulation, the person playing Joe Biden was John Podesta, which is worth pointing out a little interesting. After that, they were going to basically pressure three states to to secede from the United States, the Cascadia region, Washington state, Oregon and California. And in order to prevent the secession, we're going to try and get the basically pressure Republicans to agree to a series of what they called structural reforms, which included abolishing the electoral college, but also things that were very extreme and unprecedented, like dividing California into five states in order to give it greater representation in the Senate, making Puerto Rico a state and making Washington DC its own state, which of course would basically assure Democrats a longstanding majority in the Senate, which they have not been able to obtain in recent years. So for a group that claims that they want to prevent chaos for them to have a simulation where their favorite candidate, because they're all pro-Biden people, have a simulation where their favorite candidate doesn't win and then go through those unprecedented actions that would create extreme political chaos, I think is very significant. And your second question, what they plan to do if Trump, I'd have to go look at the other scenarios, but some of them were things like he's just going to be escorted by the Secret Service. I'd have to go back and look at all of it because it's pretty extensive, the document. And like I said, I wrote this article back in September, so my memory is failing me a little bit on that one. So I'd have to go back and review that because I basically focused on how the group was hypocritical for having their public claim about all being about keeping maintaining integrity in the transition process and preventing Trump from refusing to leave or something like that. So I think that aspect of it is probably playing out the way we're seeing now. People saying that he needs to be escorted out on January 20th and things like that. But I think what they also simulated too was a lot of extensive litigation and things like that. But I'd have to go back, like I said, and look at the specific scenarios because I didn't cover those in my article. In a general sense, now that we're seeing the election play out in the way that it has where it's very close, it does look like Biden will win in the end, but it is a very close race. Do you have a general sense of the way this will play out according to the transition integrity projects plans or in a general sense, how do you think it will play out? Well, I think there's a lot of different plans going on right now. I think the transition integrity project represents one particular power faction and how they expected things to play out and how they wanted to ensure a desired result for them, regardless of what the vote counts ended up being. Personally, I think, and I've been talking about this for a while, I think there is an intent to engineer chaos around the selection. And really, under the guise of, I'm sorry, it's been a long day. So lost my train of thought there. So sorry about that. I have another question while you recover the train of thought eventually. And that is that basically, I don't believe that you're exactly a fan of Trump. I'm not either. But what is your assessment of his claims of mass election interference and fake ballots and all of this type of thing that we've seen play out on his Twitter feed? I'm not referring to any single specific tweet by him, but the claims he's making around election interference by the Democrats. Well, I personally do think that some of the numbers are not necessarily accurate. But I mean, basically the situation we have as it's set up and how it was set up before the election is that the people that were pro-Trump and pro-Biden either way are willing to turn a blind eye to the type of stuff if it favors their particular candidate. I think so even if there is a presentation of legitimate evidence of election fraud or something like that having taken place, you're going to have people that voted for Biden denying that to be the case because they want a particular outcome and then obviously the people in the pro-Trump camp claiming the opposite because it's not their desired outcome. So I think it's just going to be contested regardless of whether they end up presenting that results to the courts or not, whether that's going to be the case. I mean, I think is ultimately what decides if that fraud took place. But if you look at what a lot of these intelligence officials were saying last year, it was all about talking about how Americans were not going to have faith in the electoral system after the 2020 election and basically would no longer trust in the integrity of elections. I would argue that part of the interest in that is this push within DHS in particular for the imposition of a more federally controlled voting system sort of moving away from the localized nature of elections to a federal system that runs a particular software that was produced by Microsoft in a DARPA contractor called Election Guard. And the current guy who's in charge of DHS is a CISA agency, which is there in charge of protecting critical infrastructure, including election infrastructure, was the former vice president for Microsoft's relationship with the U.S. government and has been a longtime lobbyist for Election Guard. It continues to lobby for it. So it's interesting that they've talked about, you know, perhaps there'll be some sort of cyber vulnerability in the election system going forward. Of course, that would be beneficial for the solution that's waiting in the wings, Election Guard. So, you know, if there's enough questioning in the system across the board of people not believing, you know, the results that they're being told, whether it's on, you know, the left or the right or whatever, you know, there are people that are looking to benefit from that. And if it is engineered, it makes a lot of sense that there seems to be this, you know, inescapable catch-22 situation where if Biden wins and then Trump eventually takes the case to the Supreme Court, it's overturned. You have the Biden supporting half of the country thinking the election was stolen, that it's invalid. Then on the other side of that, you have Trump supporters feeling that the election was stolen if Biden comes out triumphant. Do you feel, if you're right, that this was engineered chaos, do you think that was also an engineered catch-22 situation? Yeah, I mean, I think they game this out pretty extensively. Like I said, there was not only the transition integrity project, but you had a company called Cyber Reason, which has very extensive ties to both US and Israeli intelligence that were simulating this with, simulating complete electoral chaos. Beginning in 2018, and they've been doing it, you know, the last one they did was in February of this year, I believe. So they've been doing it pretty extensively and often in cooperation with federal officials, the US Secret Service, DHS and the FBI. So, you know, I mean, there definitely has been a lot of interest in the national security community in sort of gaming out how such chaos could take place and things like that. Another group that I didn't bring up is the one that was funded into existence by Michael Bloomberg, which is called Hawkfish. And they're the origin of this whole narrative called the Red Mirage, where they said, I think in early September that it was going to look like Trump won an election day and then the mail-in votes were going to throw it for Biden over the course of several days. But of course, they were funded entirely by Michael Bloomberg and have had a contract with the DNC this entire time that they've been promoting this particular narrative. So, you know, I want to cut our view, that's a conflict of interest. But, you know, it's just interesting to see all these high-powered players in the political sphere and also in the intelligence community, essentially, you know, indicating that this was going to happen months in advance and years in advance even. That's fascinating. And it is interesting that's pretty much exactly what we did see is we saw a very red swing states turn blue overnight. In addition to all of this, in your article on the Transition Integrity Project, you also talked about artificial intelligence. Can you explain to our viewers how artificial intelligence plays into all of this? In the Transition Integrity Project article? Yes. Sorry, I don't remember discussing artificial intelligence in that particular... You talked about the faction in the U.S. that wants to work with China on AI? Oh, right. So, that would be the one backed by Eric Schmidt and the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Right. So, that's basically a marriage of the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and Silicon Valley. It's headed by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who of course has very close ties to the DNC and the Quentin family. And also some of these groups that I talked about earlier, like the Georgetown Group ICAP, their executive director, was hired by Eric Schmidt's philanthropic arm in September when they were setting all these task forces up for the election across the country and things like that. But that particular group, the National Security Commission on AI, says that we have to basically beat China in the AI arms race at all costs. And that basically means that we have to implement AI and automate the economy, basically supercharge the U.S.'s implementation of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution in order to have developed better AI algorithms than China. And that this group in particular, but they have a lot of sympathy in the National Security State, they feel that the only way to maintain U.S. military and economic hegemony is to basically do that, to basically remake how the American economy works, automate to a very significant degree in order to basically feed as much data as possible into these AI algorithms, because the way you make a better AI algorithm is to feed as much data into it and train it on as much data as possible. So the more data you have, the better your AI is. And they keep bringing up the point that we are lagging far behind China because they have a larger population, they have mega cities, they have more smart cities, smart city functionalities than a lot of U.S. cities do. So, you know, this group argues that it needs to go further. And there are ties to the TIP to that. For example, one of their co-founders is part of the Bergruen Institute, which is basically looking to create a transnational group that want to promote the sort of transhumanist fourth industrial revolution economy and things like that. So, and Eric Schmidt is a member of the Bergruen Institute, so is Jack Dorsey of Twitter and a lot of other prominent Silicon Valley executives. So, hopefully that answers what you were looking for me to say there. Sorry. Absolutely. It does. Thank you so much. Sorry, I've got a cat in here also, and it broke in me. Whitney, what is your view of Biden administration in terms of, this is apart from your article now, just in terms of what kind of changes you might see in foreign policy from Biden in any regard, particularly towards Russia? Well, you know, honestly, I don't really expect it. I expected to be just as hawkish as an Obama administration was and will probably increase a lot of things that were bad that happened under Trump too. For example, the drone war, you know, the amount of drone bombings from Obama to Trump did increase. It will probably increase under a Biden administration. I don't expect them to withdraw from anywhere. I've heard people saying that they think Biden will end the war in Yemen. I highly doubt that. His foreign policy team is very hawkish with respect to Israel and Palestine, for example, which, you know, will obviously have a lot to do with Middle East foreign policy. His main advisor is part of this Tel Aviv national security state think tank that regularly collaborates with the IDF in Israel's government. So it's very likely that a lot of Trump era policies in Israel that were viewed as kind of extreme will continue. And I actually don't really expect him to get back into the Iran deal, because a lot of the posturing they were making over the summer made it sound like they were a lot more hawkish on Iran than they had planned to. And there was also this talk that Iran would be unwilling to enter back into the deal unless some of these sanctions were, you know, that have been placed on during the that have been placed on Iran during the Trump administration, those would have to be removed for them to enter back into that agreement. And apparently the Biden camp has been unwilling to really budge on the reduction of those of those sanctions for whatever reason. So, you know, I think that would be I don't really expect to see a lot of change. Honestly, I'm rather pessimistic, mainly because I expect Biden to do this whole shtick about how he's going to unite the country now and by bringing a bunch of, you know, the neocon side of, you know, the Republican Party of the Never Trump Party into his cabinet as a way to sort of be a bipartisan leader going forward. So, you know. Alexander, can I bring you in here about some of these foreign policy issues you need to unmute? Yes. What about Biden's relationship with Russia to begin with? And the other things that Whitney touched on? I think that basically on the generality, I agree with Whitney. I don't think there's going to be any fundamental change in US foreign policy. I think it'll become more consistent and more aggressive. But the overall contours will remain. I think we will still see, you know, the Iran, I don't think they're going to go back into the deal. I don't think they're going to soften on China, for example. With Russians, it's more complicated because, of course, the Russian-US relationship is conducted at two levels. There is the sort of arms-controlled side. And there is here, perhaps, a possible opening with the United States agreeing with the Russians to continue with the New Star Treaty, which Obama and Putin and Medvedev negotiated. So we might actually see at that level of overall military competition a certain reduction, a certain slackening of tension. I think, though, that's going to be accompanied by an escalation, if you like, of the political tensions. In other words, we're going to see a more aggressive attempt by the United States to involve itself in Russian domestic policies, which hasn't happened very much recently. And we're also going to see the United States nibbling away at the countries around Russia's periphery, Ukraine, of course, where Biden has personal interests of all kinds, but also races in the Caucasus, in Georgia, in Moldova, where they're having a difficult election of the moment in all those sort of places. And, of course, I don't expect any slackening in US sanctions policy whatsoever. But I think that won't change much from the Trump years. So a perhaps more stable military competition, if you like, accompanied by a more active and hostile political relationship on the ground. I think the Russians are prepared for this. I think they've been working out their moves, if you like. And I think this is perhaps something which perhaps Biden doesn't understand. I think they feel that they're in a stronger position to resist that sort of pressure than they were six years ago when Obama and Biden imposed the first set of big sexual sanctions on Russia. The Russian economy has been recalibrated, the financial reserves have been increased, there's much less input dependence than there was, and the military has been considerably strengthened. So I think the Russians expect that they can see out the storm. But I think they do think that at that level a storm is coming. Whitney, do you ascribe to that? And what do you think Biden's policy against Ukraine might be? And I want Alexander's view on that. Well, unfortunately, I think I'm probably going to have to go tend to my daughter. Sorry about that. No problem. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, I'm not more awake. So a crazy week. We totally understand. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Take care. Bye. So Alexander, you're in a well position to answer that question. I think that we're going to see continuation of what has been already happening under Trump, which of course didn't happen under Obama, U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, more political support for Ukraine, and perhaps even a renewed push to bring Ukraine into NATO. Though I think that will run into strong opposition from Germany and France, just as it did before when George W. Bush first suggested it. So I think more of the same in Ukraine. The problem with Ukraine is again, and this may not be something that perhaps Biden understands, Ukraine itself is not quite the same place that it was back in 2015, 2016. There's been local elections in Ukraine recently, pretty much all the big parties did badly in them. There is a sense that the economy isn't going very anywhere, very far. Living standards are falling. I think there is a sense of general exhaustion in Ukraine. And I think the Americans coming in, Biden coming in, saying we must renew the push, perhaps against the Russians in the East, might not be as welcome in Ukraine as perhaps Biden expects it to be. It's not the same Ukraine as when he was running Ukraine. It's not the same Ukraine as it was when he was running Ukraine. I think that's an important. How will Zelensky respond to pressure from Biden to enforce, to start that war up again in a more significant way? I think he will be most unhappy. I mean, he was already losing support. He of course came to power as the person who was going to end corruption in Ukraine, an almost impossible task, and finding political and peaceful solutions to the conflict. So I think if he finds himself instead being dragged into a war, which is what some of the people you get this sense in the Biden administration would almost like, I don't think he would welcome that. I don't think most of the Ukrainian political elite would welcome it either actually. There are obviously some very hardline people in Ukraine.  But I think a lot of the momentum behind this, a lot of the energy, if you like, that was there back in 2013, 14, 15, even, even, even, you know, 16 has dissipated. And I think it's going to be difficult, more difficult to restart it than Biden perhaps understands. So we'll see. Is he likely to embrace the Minsk plan and actually try to get Ukraine and implement it? No, again, I can't really, I mean, it's possible.  And I think that would perhaps be, I mean, it's not inconceivable. I mean, we've talked about him being a more aggressive leader and perhaps pushing a more forceful policy towards Russia. But, you know, it may be that, you know, as reality starts to emerge, and it may be that policy shifts, and it might be easier to shift under a Biden administration, which doesn't have, you know, the specter of Russia gate hovering over it than it was under the Trump administration. But it may be that at some point, you know, they might decide that they need to start sorting out their problems with Russians, as opposed to creating more of them. And in that event, maybe they would look at the Minsk accords and try to put life into them again. But for the moment, I don't think that's what they will do. Given all the domestic problems that, political problems that Ukraine gave, Biden, is he likely to stay away from it for a while or? You just thought so. I would have thought that would be the obvious thing to do. I wouldn't have thought that he would want people to, you know, remember Ukraine, especially as, by the way, I suspect that some of these stories about, you know, what his son was up to in Ukraine and what perhaps he himself was up to, I think they probably did gain some traction with parts of the US public and may have had some effect in the election. So I'd have thought, you know, logically, he would want to stay away. But of course, there's lots of people around him.  And I think that those sorts of people will be speaking very loudly and very forcefully for more active engagement in Ukraine. I have to say, my own guess is, Ukraine is a priority, but Syria for these people is perhaps an even greater priority. To an extent that I find difficult to understand sometimes, you know, hardliners both in Washington and London seem to have a particular issue, obsession if you like, with the situation in Syria. And maybe, maybe the pressure in, for, you know, if you're looking for a confrontation with the Russians, the pressure in Syria will be even greater. I mean, there was a most interesting article in, I think it was antiwar.com about, you know, this Biden, future Biden administration official talking to, you know, the Syrian opposition and outlining what looked like a very hawkish policy on Syria. And what hasn't heard that actually so much with Ukraine. So maybe, maybe Syria will be, if you like, the major flashpoint. Alexander, what do you think the Biden administration would try to revive an attempt to overthrow Assad? Or have they accepted that that war is over and he won? I think that there might, there will be certainly some people, I suspect, who do want to see that. And I think also, there's also going to be this even further attempt to economically strangle Syria in order to engineer the overthrow of Assad. But I think what they're going to try and do actually, and this is where it comes, they're going to revert to the Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry policy of trying to get the Russians to agree to remove Assad from them, for them. It didn't really succeed. But I think more than, you know, clash with the Russians head on in Syria, which I think the US military probably wouldn't want. I think that's probably what we're going to see. Oddly enough, that might result in a strange kind of way, in more diplomatic engagement with the Russians. But in terms of that policy succeeding, I think there's no chance. Now, you mentioned Russia gave before, a couple of weeks before this election. We heard again from anonymous intelligence officials in the US that Russia was interfering in this election. Now, funny enough, Biden is one, we're not hearing that tonight. No, it's an extraordinary fact.  And having said that, I think it's done immense damage. It's done immense damage in relations between the US and Russia. It soured the Russians about the US and about prospects of a future partnership with the US to an extraordinary degree. And of course, it's also provided much of the backdrop to the things that Whitney was talking about, you know, this sense of conspiracy and intrigue that surrounds this election with all these strange groups emerging with all these very, you know, rather troubling and concerning plans about managing the transition and all the rest. And if we have a disputed election, and we have a disputed election with many, many people across the United States, willing to believe stories about election fraud, which may have some substance, by the way, but if they're willing to believe it, and they're not prepared to trust the media because of it, well, it's partly because they've been fed for four years with the Russia Gate story, which was, which is essentially disintegrated. And which, as I said, the media isn't even talking about anymore. So it's done damage this, this narrative, this, this fictitious narrative has done damage at every, every level between US and Russia, within the US itself, in immeasurable ways. Elizabeth, did you have any follow-up on that on Russia Gate? Sorry, I didn't, I didn't catch that. Can you repeat that? Elizabeth, yes. Yeah. So I was just wanting to ask, we know that obviously a part of Russia Gate was focusing on WikiLeaks. You've been really helpful in helping us cover the exhibition here in Julian Assange, the co-founder and former editor and chief of WikiLeaks. I've asked almost every guess we've had on this question, but I'll ask it of you as well, especially because you helped us cover Assange's situation. What do you think, if any, will there, will the difference be under a Biden administration when it comes to Assange, or is there really no difference whatsoever? And is that one of the ways in which, you know, although Biden and Trump look very different, they speak in different ways and they sort of have different personas in many substantive ways, they are very much the same in their policies. Indeed. Can I just, before we discuss that, because it's an important question, can I just preface it by saying that apparently there's been information. I haven't researched it fully, but apparently Mueller was trying through, you know, prosecuting Roger Stone to connect WikiLeaks to the Russians in some fashion and found that he couldn't, and that's why he didn't, you know, charges on that issue have not been brought against Assange. It has not been reported here in Britain at all. It is quite depressing. Or by means of the US. Or exactly, but that major issue, which has actually done Assange's public image here, damage. It's not been corrected at all. Now, what difference will the Biden administration make to these proceedings? I think absolutely none at all. I say that with, you know, regret, because I would love a new administration to come along. Look at this mess that has been made. Well, actually, let's not call it a mess. Look at this persecution of this man. And say to themselves, well, let's go back to what Barack Obama and his Justice Department were thinking. And they were saying, well, we can't possibly press on with this, because if we do, it will go against any and every journalist in the United States and could, you know, compromise First Amendment rights and freedoms of the media and all of that. I wish I believed that. But unfortunately, I don't. I think the momentum behind this has now become so great and so strong that I think it will continue. And the kind of national security, various hawkish people we see around Biden, I'm afraid they're the kind of people who will not want to see, you know, Assange go. Having said that, there is one thing Biden could do, which would separate him from Trump is he could drop this prosecution. That would make a big impact. I mean, that is something people would notice. But, you know, I'm afraid realistically, I don't expect it. Yeah, unfortunately, I completely agree with you. I think it's one of those issues that really does show how much this is a really a bad choice of two evils. It is very hard to say that one's really a lesser evil than the other. We've got some questions from the audience. One of them is whether you think Hillary Clinton might become Secretary of State again. I know that Joe's talked during our broadcast since the election that it might be someone like Susan Rice. What's your take on that? And do you see Hillary Clinton taking a role in a Biden administration at all? Right. Well, I think firstly, I think it's more likely that it's going to be Susan Rice. I think that Biden, if he's got any political sense, will want to keep a certain distance from Hillary Clinton, not just because she's a non-popular figure with many people. But I think if he starts teaming up with Hillary Clinton, it will seem as if he's brought in to his administration a very powerful alternative center to himself. So I think he won't want to do that. And I don't think he needs to do it. Obama needed in a way to do it in 2008 because bringing in Hillary Clinton into the administration united the Democratic Party. I don't think that need exists anymore. So I think it's much more likely to be Susan Rice. That's a guess. I mean, I don't know. But I think it's much more likely to be Susan Rice than Hillary Clinton. I think Hillary Clinton is, however, always going to be there. She's going to be a voice. She will be. She's obviously very influential still in the Democratic Party. She played a prominent role in the Democratic Party's convention where Biden was formerly nominated. So, you know, she's still going to be an influential voice, both behind the scenes and in public. So, you know, when we mustn't count her out, and I've heard another rumor that perhaps when the next vacancy comes up for the Supreme Court of the United States, well, she might be proposed for that. And perhaps in a way, that's a more, I'm not sure it would be a popular move, but I think that's probably something I could perhaps more easily. Exactly what Joe predicted as well. Exactly. Where did you hear that rumor from? Because I said it yesterday.  It's somebody, somebody you said and somebody picked it up. But I mean, I can certainly see it. I mean, I think that's very plausible. I doubt on the only one. I hadn't heard it before, but I'm sure somebody else has thought that. She'd love it. She'd love it. Oh, she'd absolutely. And you know, as you know, Alexander, they've been talking about expanding the size of the court. So to reverse this five, there's now six, three conservative majority by adding four more seats, they can have a seven, six majority. Well, with that, they will, as I understand it, need the Senate to do that. And I mean, I, I, it doesn't look as if they've got it. And I can't imagine Mitch McConnell, the kind of person who will help them do it to be quite frank. So I would have thought that particular plan is, is not going to, is not going to happen. But certainly, there will be vacancies that will come up. And I can certainly see Hillary Clinton sitting in the Supreme Court. And by the way, can I just say, I mean, she is by all accounts an extremely, you know, able lawyer. I don't know how much of a jurist she is. But you know, she probably has the legal qualifications to do it. Who knows, we'll see. I just hope she's not sitting on the court if a Saundra's case, a challenge to the First Amendment, to the Espionage Act and conflict with First Amendment goes. Well, well, I entirely agree with that. And I, I think that would be a disaster. And I think frankly, if she was, I mean, it would be so bad that given some of the things she said about Assange, I think even talking about sending drones to kill him or things like that. I mean, there would be, yeah, I mean, there'd be, I mean, there would be, there'd be such an obvious conflict of interest that she would, she should recuse herself. But anyway, I don't think it's going to happen soon enough, to be honest. Well, but we know, we'll see, we'll keep our fingers crossing. Another question that we come back to you repeatedly, but it's important. So I'd like to ask you about it is the fact that we know that Biden will not remain in office or in a cognitive capacity that will allow him to really serve as president for all that long, if he does get into office. So what is your opinion on Kamala Harris? What do you think? How do you think she would run the country in a different way potentially? And as Joe and others have pointed out that she's on foreign policy, at least she's an unknown, but in a lot of other ways, she's also an unknown really. So if you could give your opinion, I mean, this is the great problem because she is unknown. I find it difficult to form a clear view of her. I'm going to say this, she doesn't come across to me as a very authoritative figure. And the fact that if she were to step in, because Biden had been forced to step down for one reason or another, I wonder what legitimacy, well, not legitimacy, what authority as president she would have in that case. I mean, she'd have obviously certain things working for her, but I wonder whether she would be the kind of person who, you know, the Democratic Party, the bureaucracy, the officials are in the bureaucracy, would take especially seriously, given also that as I understand it, she's not very popular in the United States. I mean, she may become more popular, but if she remains less popular, I mean, she didn't do very well in the primaries. She was bested by Tulsi Gabbard in a most extraordinary way. But if she continues to carry all that baggage, they may say to themselves, well, this is a person who hasn't been elected president, has inherited the presidency in rather strange circumstances and isn't realistically likely to win the presidency by herself. So how much notice will we pay to her? Problem with that is I sense anyway that the Biden administration is going to be, you know, sort of collective leadership of people, partly because I don't think Biden himself will be a particularly strong president. You know, he may surprise me, but I doesn't look like that. So if he goes, that quality of a collective leadership, if you like, will become even stronger. And that doesn't seem to me to be something that the US Constitution is really very geared towards. So we'll see. I haven't answered the question very well, because I just don't know enough about this person. Well, and that's exactly the issue that none of us really, she doesn't have enough of a history and politics for us to have a good assessment of what she might do. And that's really scary, considering the fact that she might very well, relatively quickly become our president. So another thing that we've talked about a lot is just the general chaos that might develop in the next few weeks. From an outside of the US perspective, what do you make of that? How do you think Europe will respond if there is a lot of chaos, especially once Biden does declare victory? Well, I think this is an issue which is very widely felt, not just in Britain, but across Europe and in other places, which is people look at the United States and they see this country, which is still the world's most powerful country, still the world's richest country, still a country that promotes itself as being enormously technologically advanced. And it doesn't seem to know how to do a proper vote count. It doesn't even seem to understand how to do an election. And I think they look at the system in the United States, and they see a system that is both profoundly dysfunctional and unfit for purpose. But also, it seems unreformable, because there doesn't seem to be any way of sorting this thing out. I mean, you have this bizarre situation where the United States, in one sense, is a country. It clearly is a single country. But it conducts an election, as if it was 50 different countries with different rules in different parts of the Union. No central electoral commission that can impose sort of a more uniform system across the entire nation that can look into what goes on in Michigan or Arizona or Texas and see if there's problems there, what to do about them. No single set of electoral laws. And they worry, I mean, they say to themselves, if the Americans can't even run that and can't even organize sensible transitions of power, then what can we realistically expect of them on other matters? And this does create nervousness.  Because until perhaps the Bush-Gore election, nobody thought that elections in the United States were at all problematic. But they started to look to Europeans, and not just Europeans, but to many people, increasingly so, in a way that, as I said, does undermine confidence in the United States. Perhaps more than Americans themselves understand. So the next question I wanted to ask you was about the media. We talked earlier about Russiagate. We talked about the way in which the media has used Russiagate dishonestly. But there's also the fact that the media has profited extensively from coverage of Donald Trump and whipping up hysteria around it. What do you think, if anything, the media will latch on to to keep its viewership and ratings and clickbait type income flowing once he leaves office? If he does, I assume that he will at the current time with what the results of the election are looking like. What are they going to do when he leaves? I'm sure there's lots of people in newsrooms and boardrooms all over the media who are asking themselves exactly that question. I mean, they've done marvellously out of Donald Trump. I mean, they've loved to hate him. And now, you know, this figure who's made them so happy and is now probably going to disappear from the scene. And if we really are going to go back to politics as usual, well, it's going to be hugely boring and very dull without Donald Trump there. So I think they're asking themselves the same question. And I don't think they know. Maybe perhaps some of them on the fringes may be saying to themselves, well, you know, we need another scandal. We've got all sorts of scandals lurking in Joe Biden's closet. We didn't want to talk about them during the election. But perhaps now is our opportunity. I'm not sure they will want to go there, because I don't think they want to undermine his legitimacy, if you like, the legitimacy of his election. So soon after they were backing him to get elected. But I think they're going to have problems and we'll see what they come up with.  But of course, the danger is that one thing they might say to themselves is, well, you know, one of the ways we can get attention is by having another, what was it, you know, Theodore Roosevelt said a nice little walk somewhere. I mean, that's exactly the speculation I've seen. That's exactly the speculation I've seen is that they'll start beating the war drum again. I hope that's not correct, but that seems relatively likely. Joe. Yes, we're still waiting for somebody to announce that this guy's won this damned election. It's been stuck at 253. He's doubled his lead in Nevada. He's up by 14,000 in Pennsylvania, the melon ballots that came in are 70 to 80 percent in his way. There's no way he's losing this now. I suspect that in 22 minutes from now, the three networks, the over-the-air networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, the traditional three networks in the U.S., have their nightly news. It was yesterday that Trump timed his remarks in the White House press briefing room at 6.30 for those over-the-air broadcasts, and they all cut them off, by the way, because they were afraid he was riling up his people on the ground to start doing something violent. So they cut them off, which was controversial, where CNN continued to broadcast on cable, which is not accessed by as many people as the three networks are. So maybe we're going to get this in 20 minutes.  Possibly. I mean, I think, I think, I think Kassman will probably want me at some time, but your dog is sleeping. He certainly is. He certainly is.  Anyway, one of your dogs. Let me ask you this last question, then, Alex. We talked about Maiden in Russia, but what about Maiden's relation to China, given all the background of the allegations of his corruption, where he used his office to help his son get deals there, and then he is the big man. He may have gotten into it. Of course, he didn't sign these deals until a couple of months after leaving office to make it legal, since he couldn't do that while he was vice president, but he may have used his office to set it up. It seems like. So what going forward is Biden's relationship with China like will he lift these tariffs? Will he be more aggressive than Trump even militarily outside of sea, for example? I think he's vulnerable on this issue. I mean, this is an issue which the remember the Republicans have and they might want to run on. And if they want to do a sort of reverse Russia gate on him, which is not impossible. I mean, there's some people in the Republican Party who I think would be quite happy to do that. They control the Senate or it seems likely they will control the Senate so they can do all the kind of things that the Democrats did to Trump. They can hold all kinds of hearings and get all sorts of witnesses and start pressing for special prosecutors. And if the electoral cycle starts to turn in their turn their way in 2022, you know, who knows, you know, they can perhaps use that even more. So if they do that, that might make Biden anxious not to be not to appear too close to China, just as Russia gate made Trump very nervous of getting too close to Russia. I think over and above and beyond all of that, my own senses that China and the US are each going their separate ways. This began before Trump came in. Trump turbocharged it to an extreme degree and infuriated the Chinese in the way that he went about it. But I think the drift to separate had already to some extent be gone under Obama. So I don't see a whole bunch of results as well. So think about what you just said. Let's break that down. Virtually simultaneously. Yes, your dog is called you Alex, but I'm loving your please finish it. I will let you go. Yes. So I think that this period, you know, which which we had, you know, especially under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the United States and China being very close, Chimerica, as we used to say in Europe at that time. I think that's gone forever. So I think we will still see the Chinese moving away towards export dependency on the United States. And I think we will see the US increasingly seeing China as an adversary and a challenger, both economically and politically and technologically with the kind of things Whitney was saying. So I think that kind of competition is going to continue. And it's going to perhaps even intensify, but it will perhaps be conducted in a rather more civil and polite way. Well, we'll let your dog have the last part. And we'll end the interview there. Thank you so much, Alexander. It's very interesting, the prospect of China gate replaying itself by having trying to undermine and weaken a Biden presidency. They'll get back what they gave to Trump. Thanks so much, Alexander, Bill. Thank you. My regards. And a pat on your dog's head for me. Bye-bye. So, Elizabeth, we are once again here awaiting this declaration. I'm going to make a proposal that we wait until the bottom of the hour, which is 12 minutes from now. And if they don't announce it then, if Biden doesn't come out to the parking lot that he was in Delaware with the cars and say, I'm, I'm the president. Now, where do I go now? Oh, no, I'm in the Senate again. He's not sure whether he's one seat in the Senate or whether he became president. We'll see if he gets that right. Or if he remembers that he's against Trump and not George Bush, we'll see. Oh, yeah, right. So I propose a short musical break. We'll be back, let's say in five to 10 minutes. And then we will take it to the bottom of the hour, which is when the broadcast news takes place. And if he doesn't call then, we're going to call, we'll call us our broadcast off. But today we'll reassess about whether we'll come back tomorrow to talk again. But we've been talking throughout the day today as if he'd won already. So I'm not sure there'd be much more to say after this, but let's come back in about 10 minutes and see what happens. That sounds good. Okay, we're back here at CN Live with our coverage of the 2020 U.S. election. We were waiting until 6.30 when the over-the-air broadcast began in the U.S. And they have started. There's no announcement from Biden. We don't know when this is ever going to happen. CNN is going over and over the same material for the last 12 hours. It hasn't been news since early this morning in the U.S. when Biden overtook Trump in Pennsylvania. That was major news. He's up to 14,000. Vote lead in Pennsylvania with 96% counted. He wins Pennsylvania. He wins the presidency. If he wins Arizona and Nevada, he wins. If he's in ahead in those two states. So he's won this thing. But they're not announcing it for some reason yet. Biden hasn't come out to his car park and made his announcement. That he's won. But we're saying he's won. And everybody else is, except Biden, it seems like, and the networks saying that he won. So we're going to leave it at that tonight. We had three excellent guests. Scott Ritter, Whitney Webb, and Alexander McCouris, Alexander from London, who was giving us a European and British point of view on this. And I think we did a tremendous job, Elizabeth. I have a friend. I'm going to say this to everybody. I was just going to tell you privately, but I have a friend, Oris Lipishek, who's the most famous TV reporter in Slovenia and unknown anywhere outside of Slovenia. But believe me, he's well known. First time I traveled there, I was a friend of his from the UN because he was based in New York. And I was on a train in Slovenia and I started speaking to a woman there. And I asked her if she knew Oris Lipishek. And of course, he was the Dan rather of of Slovenia. Anyway, he wrote an email the other day, he's been watching our broadcasts. And he thought you and I said you and Elizabeth are a great team. And we're doing a great job. So a guy who's been in the TV, he even became the director of that TV station. And some of his people telling him to run for parliament, they wanted him to even be prime minister someday, but he'd stayed in TV. Anyway, it was just I just I felt great hearing that from him, a TV professional from way back. We're doing a great job. So I'll let him say that instead of us. But I've enjoyed these four days with you going over this. And we're going to pick this up again. We don't know when but stay tuned to our Twitter feed and to consortium news for if we do another installment on this. But we've spoken today as though Biden had won and what the consequences are of that in terms of his foreign domestic policy. So Elizabeth, Kathy, our producer, our guests, we've done several shows going back to Jill Stein, Chris Hedges, Rick Wolf and Mike Ravel. Before that we had Greg Palast as well and our four shows here. So I think we've given a very different and I think more informative and in-depth look at this election that you're going to find on any over the air or cable TV station, certainly in the United States. So I'm proud of what we did. And I thank you, Elizabeth, again. Thank you. It's been great. So to our audience, and we've had some good numbers and we appreciate all of you for coming in. We apologize for our late starts, especially today, but we picked up audience anyway. So that means there's been interest in this. And I thank you all. So for CN Live for consortium news, this is Joe Lauria. Goodbye.