Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 0:00
The broadcast I was listening to when I was washing the car centered on a bunch of different things. But one of them was a guy had a good discussion about what was all bluster and what was legit coming out of Putin's mouth and the new Butcher of Syria? Who is leading the army. You want to talk about that?

Paul Truesdell, II 0:24
Yeah, it's interesting. The, I think, since day one, most people have had the question of what is, what's a bluff and what isn't? I think the more time goes on the more, the Russian military gets butchered by, you know, a relatively minor power by comparison. It does continue to seem to be just nothing but bluster. They don't really have the Kahunas to do the things they claim they're going to do. But at the same time, they also don't have the competence to do anything useful to succeed in their ridiculous goals. So I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, it's one of those situations where you keep somebody keeps getting beaten, beaten, beaten, they, you're like, are they gonna go crazy mode on us? Are they gonna go nuts? And I guess so far? The answer is no. There's a technical discussion to be had on the specifics of corruption and investment and maintenance of these certain doomsday weapons. But is it that that's holding them back? Or is it the geopolitical realities of them using these things means the whole world basically turns back on them?

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:38
What's interesting is the one of the things I think it's Macron, the leader of France has said that they will not respond to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, that they will only respond if they are attacked. And yet there are more than enough people beginning to talk about the fallout radiation follow up that would sweep westward. The other thing have dramatic

Paul Truesdell, II 2:11
effect on your period, regardless of where the explosion happens, and that's no different than Chernobyl.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 2:16
And they're also talking about the fact that these would if they use nukes that they would use tactical in thing that people don't understand what tactical means is that it's it's a definition that has both specific and broad terminology. In other words, a tactical nuke. Today is many times more powerful than those that were used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So potentially, yeah. And

Paul Truesdell, II 2:46
there's a wide array of, of yield as far as nuclear weapons.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 2:51
Yeah. So you know, if they destroy KYV, which I don't know, what's the population approximately there?

Paul Truesdell, II 2:58
Couple nine.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 2:59
So you kill a couple of million people, does that get the world angry enough to do something?

Paul Truesdell, II 3:06
Well, you've had multiple leaders in Europe, I don't remember specifically Who but a high ranking European union official, you've had us we've had, you've had the British, for the most part, kind of come out in a synchronized fashion say that, if Russia uses nuclear weapons, we will not respond using nuclear weapons, likely. But what we will do is we will, we will annihilate what's left with the Russian military. And that was, that's a quote, like, we will shred their ability to even defend themselves. Because they're dangerous, and they're their problem. And we have the capability of doing that. And I think the thing people have to really keep in mind is in the broad picture, Russia beat its chest since the end of the Soviet Union, and tried to bluster how amazing they are, they have these great weapons, blah, blah, blah, very similar to what China has has emulated. But basically, I mean, what a rounding error for supplies so far has been able to allow that we have donated has allowed. Now, in some cases, not rounding or some cases, it's pretty significant. But in general, compared to the vast stockpiles of NATO, in the US Department of Defense in general. This small amount of supplies has been able to completely destroy our number one large, largest military adversary. And that's the problem that they're facing is they don't have a way out. And we are completely prepared. There was a reporter asked stolen Bert, the head of NATO, right now asked him if if Russia was to utilize nuclear weapons and NATO. Maybe Maybe it wasn't regarded that maybe it was. He asked about how Russia has this is visibly lacking in strategic missiles and other basically high tech, conventional weapons. And it shows in there what they're using on the battlefield now, because they're immensely inaccurate, and really dangerous, to be honest,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 5:33
in a lot of those missiles that were recently launched, with the Devil Back to I call the Scott area there. I mean, these things are since 1960s. Yeah, I mean, if you're pulling rockets out, that are from the 60s and 70s, to fight this war, then if NATO muscles up and moves in, there's no way they can defend themselves. And let's say they go nuclear. And if they do, then then they will be annihilated.

Paul Truesdell, II 6:03
Yeah. And that's that's the thing that's made clear. So this this guy in the context of that discussion was he asked Stoltenberg about it whether or not NATO has a similar problem, like do we have sufficient stockpiles to handle any situation that arises? And his simply hit a one word answer? No. Because we don't, like we haven't used hardly any of that stuff. You know, there was a some hyperbolic articles in some newspapers recently in the past couple of weeks or months about artillery supplies, and it's like, yeah, we have some artillery depots that we've depleted to levels that they we haven't seen in a long time. But the thing is, as munitions expire, they have to be used. And I think a large part of the calculus for our part is we use our stockpiles, we some things over one. If not now, when the hell are these things going to be used? Never. I mean, even 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, a number of these munitions that we use a lot of them like, yeah, we resupplied, some of them, but we just didn't use as much as people think. Especially I mean, because we just use a lot of smart munitions things, you know, higher accuracy, missiles and things like that. So it's an interesting kind of conundrum to consider.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 7:26
Well, you know, when it comes to a war, you never have enough bullets. So always

Paul Truesdell, II 7:33
case you never do you always have a shell priceless. For whatever you plan for you always run out

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 7:38
in the in the thing that I have been completely surprised at is how very, very little discussion in the mainstream press. Not that I follow it that much. But the Wall Street Journal, market, watch Bloomberg, all of the you know, I call them second tier items. I don't mean that negatively. But I mean, as to, you know, comment, the common man and woman go to your local news. And, yeah, but there's that second tier data there. It's not the Bureau of Economic Analysis is not the Census Bureau is not, you know, hardcore Industry Reports. How little reporting is going on out there on manufacturing of weapons right now. It's gotta be going up. It's got to be off the charts. That place near us and Boise, I mean, do you think they're doing three shifts?

Paul Truesdell, II 8:31
Yes. Yeah, that's a whole discussion in of itself.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 8:35
Yeah. Inessa thing is, like, I think a lot of people need to get ready for stupid behavior by the Russians, and that includes nukes. I mean, they proved themselves to be stupid.

Paul Truesdell, II 8:49
If this is a question of whether or not the other elements of leadership in the country that have a significant amount of influence, are willing to let something get that far, and so far, I don't think they have. But at the same time, Putin is still in power, so I didn't think that would last. So yeah,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 9:05
no, I would have thought by now that he'd be out of there. Yeah, at least for our show face. What it tell you what this does do and we're gonna take a break and come back. It shows you how widespread the influence of Russians are here in the US both on the left and right.

Unknown Speaker 9:25
Saturday, October 15 2022, recorded in the break room of the Truesdale professional building. This episode of The Paul Truesdale podcast is sponsored by fixed cost financial.

Unknown Speaker 9:44
During the recording, Paul Sr. And Paul the second revisited by a family member who provided some solid insight that will be shared.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 9:55
Okay, so we had a little break there. l came by she says something is interesting though. We won't pick up where we were left off. I don't know where you're at, but I just want to jump over she said, nuclear for weapons is overrated. And for powers underrated? Yeah, that was a real smart comment. Yeah, that's my girl.

Paul Truesdell, II 10:18
Yes, I mean, but it's true. I mean, it's we'll go way past the period where anybody should be afraid of nuclear weapons when they have very limited actual real use. And they're extremely expensive. And everybody's learned that there's a reason China has like 200 of them. Supposedly, you know, they're really expensive to maintain, and Russia, running around, threatening everybody with nukes all the time, like a, like a much more dangerous version of North Korea. is comical? Because, I mean, you can do the math, and you can tell pretty quickly that they don't have the nuclear force, they say they do. At least as far as numbers, because they just can't afford it. I mean, our our nuclear weapons program in the United States granted are everything we do cost more and whatever. But there is a certain element of there's certain hard limits that you hit when it comes to materials and, and certain things like that.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 11:21
You don't want those things leaking? No, no.

Paul Truesdell, II 11:26
The we spend like 50 or $60 billion, that you're maintaining our nuclear weapons stockpile. That's what Russia spends on their entire melter. So, again, obviously, you have different totally different economies and totally different pricing on certain things. But, you know, tritium is tritium, it costs $50,000 A gram for a reason. You know, there's certain just hard, hard and fast limits that you just cannot get around.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 12:00
I was at a an event in Tampa. And it was, I was invited to attend and it was all about venture capital in mainly software, some hardware, but it was a venture capital. Conference. Sure. A fast pitch, slow pitch, fast pitch, presenting your product, etc. Sure. I'm not gonna mention the guy's name. I'm not gonna mention his company. But he and I had an interesting conversation before and then after his his pitch, and then in the evening at the after party, or after after event party. And he's a scientist. He said, Oh, you know, I'm a bonafide scientist. I have my PhD, blah, blah, blah, chemistry, in electrical engineering, etc. And he, I kind of felt bad because I said to him, I said, Well, you're I'm gonna assume you're about my age. And he So how old are you? I'm 64. And he goes on 50. Oops. Foot and Mouth again, Polly. Yeah, he looked a little he looked a little worse for the wear, in other words, but he told me what he he and his team and he made a comment like, well, it's my team. But they invented a flexible titanium hose. You and I talked about that, and what it's used for. And so I immediately said, Ah, okay, it's got to be concentric circles because it can't have joints. And if you're interested in our space, it's used to refuel satellites. And we had a, I think we talked for maybe 3035 minutes or so and, and he enjoyed it because I was able to keep pace with him on it. And then basically, eventually, I kept going, you know, all these different Well, you could do this, you can do that. He goes, he goes, You're right on. He said all those things he's really thought about, but that's not how it works. And I said, Let me guess if you told me, you'd have to kill me said somebody would. But it was interesting, because what he said and you and I had a conversation while you'd pick up on it. You have to refuel satellites out there. He said, These are we've got satellites out there that are worth multiples of billions of dollars. These things are expensive, really expensive. And they're spy satellites and when you move them he used so when you move them from Iran over just a little ways over to take a look at Afghanistan. There's power loss, and then he was going through what the fuel fuel loss what I say power, yeah, there's fuel loss on it. And he told me what I I've forgotten what what the what is some weird thing?

Paul Truesdell, II 15:06
Yeah, yeah, this is rocket fuel. The different rockets use different mixes of very strange fuels,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 15:11
but it's like insanely unstable insanely expensive. Just, you cannot you can't miss anything on this. And that's kind of cool. And but those are the things. Do you really honestly think the Russians are able to do that? If they are

Paul Truesdell, II 15:29
insanely expensive? Well, they do that in some on some and they don't maintain

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 15:34
anything as we're seeing when was this this war? mean if, you know, I'll let you talk but I mean, it flows from the top down from the bottom up if if the bottom is that on prepared and just Yuck, then it can only you know, there's a limit to what the quality can be.

Paul Truesdell, II 15:56
Well, there's, in general, just a massive cultural problem with Russia. That is obvious now when you see them in action. These are things people thought if had changed. People were convinced that their contact and interaction with the West had, you know, made a more hospitable, more sane country, and that's obviously just not the case. Same thing with China. But, uh, yeah, I mean, as far as satellites go, I remember recently, I saw one of these Russian Talking Heads, one of their state media people was, was bemoaning the fact that they don't have the satellite and surveillance capability that NATO does, mainly us. And it's funny, because that's yeah, they basically admitted that, yeah, they don't really have the capabilities that we use. And it's because it just costs a lot of money. It takes a lot of horizontal and vertical integration, to be able to get things like that done. And

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 16:59
things like that require people who are not on the take and corrupt to the max.

Paul Truesdell, II 17:05
Exactly. That's, that's why I've mentioned the cultural problem. And you can have a great initiative, but you know, when people are stealing stuff, and not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and whatever, you know, insert, insert, insert, fill the blank there, you know, it very, something very expensive and complicated falls apart really quickly. So yeah, it's just it's in general problem for them. And yeah, I mean, as far as fueling goes, it's funny, I think, like in the past year or two, I think it's largely in response to SpaceX and their Starlink constellation of hundreds of little satellites. They've changed the rules on once the satellite gets decommissioned, how quickly you have to get it out of space. And that's, of course, another element of the fuel consumption is, you know, these, these satellites all have rocket boosters on them, and you have to be able to maneuver them and navigate them around. And for spy satellites, yeah, you know, you have to get you have to get over your target. You know, contrary to the flat earth people, you have to you have to move it around the sphere, or the where they call it a. Anyway, whatever the the weird, smushed, spheroid. That is the that is the earth,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 18:25
what you know, it's yeah, it's no different than, you know, you can go out and buy a million dollar house, you can go and buy a $10 million house, it's not a big deal. And I've had people who will say to me, you know, yeah, as you know, desk, it is no, it's not buying is not buying is never the issue. It's the maintenance, it's the tax, it's all the cost of owner Cost of Ownership is so much higher than what people realize. Absolutely. And they get over their head. So that's a good example, using that and applying it to the Russian Space Agency. So I don't know, I literally I don't know what they have in terms of their military apparatus versus civilian, which I'm assuming is all the same. There. But, you know, we have, we literally have civilian space programs. Tesla, SpaceX is a good example. Working in cooperation with NASA and you have others, you have the all the military satellites that go up from Vandenberg and everything else. We don't have just one launch pad in the US. But now let's just say Russia does something stupid now, which I expect them to do. I will tell you, my forecasting, I'm still at the 70 to 74% chance that there will be some type of a nuclear weapon. And I keep telling people in Tampa who know me and who have I have the intelligence to that run around Um, you know, firefighter Pants on Fire hair on fire, because they know we have our military procurement portfolio. What do you think Paul? And I always say, it's just you have to be prepared for the worst. I think that's what you have to be prepared for. But the reality is, you're gonna make money on it. But going back to that, so you got all these Russian satellites? Cool, right, cool. Gollum. What, how we get them down? I think it's a legit question. Because, as you said, Now, they changed the rules from 10 or 20 years, you got two or three years to get them down now. Yeah, in a lot of these things that are targeted to crash any debris into the, into the Pacific, into the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean, etc. And there are ship warnings, you know, you hey, this, this is not an area to be in. There's a lot that goes into this, you know, not just the not just a tracking of these things, but to get them to come down is a big deal. What are the what are the codes, and I go back to I like bringing things where people might remember like Space Cowboys. You know, you had Clint Eastwood and the late James Gardner and, and Tommy Lee Jones, you know, they, yeah. Okay, so you get this big, massive, ugly satellite. Oh, it's it's, it's it's a it's an attack satellite. Oh, this is not good. Right, then literally foretold, I think what you were gonna have to deal with coming up, because the Russian economy is going to go to hell in a handbasket. No, there's no ifs, ands or buts about it, it's going to go down. Who's going to come in and clean it up? Where are the codes? Where are those people? Are they going to take some of these people that are working those places and put them on the front line? Because you know, and I know they've been doing some of that?

Paul Truesdell, II 21:49
Yeah, to some degree. I mean, it's lower level people. But yeah.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 21:54
Well, what if somebody's standing in the, at the market, and they have a mass shooting, like the head of day and so the head of, you know, the boy that does the advanced trigonometry and calculus for the a Russian satellite program gets his brains blown out? I mean, this Do they have enough backup? Um, seriously, you know, and I know it only takes a handful of people to go Yeah, by by the screw up accompany

Paul Truesdell, II 22:16
well, but for us, I mean, none of that matters. You know, they don't think No, I mean, those satellites. There. I mean, it shouldn't be a problem. Okay. Maybe it slams into some other satellite. Okay, whatever. Whoopsie.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 22:31
Well, okay, let me ask you this. Do we have the capability of, of going out there and destroying them? Do we have Killer Satellites? Do we actually, not officially?

Paul Truesdell, II 22:42
Because it's banned, officially?

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 22:47
Right. Okay. So officially is banned. We're doing a wink and nod. But the killer, the Butcher of Syria is now running the Russian army. Will they release? Gas? Will they try to gas already been

Paul Truesdell, II 22:59
using gas? Totally unreported. But yeah, they've been using gas. Okay, I was talking about that. I don't remember the name of it. But it's basically a it's basically like really nasty, like CS gas. Of course, that's totally legal for cops to use on civilians. But it's not legal in warfare.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 23:20
It's worked. We're both was that used?

Paul Truesdell, II 23:23
I've seen it in both the eastern side of Ukraine. And then I've also seen it in the Harrison region.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 23:31
Okay. So I did not realize that we talk all the time there. So the Russians have use some gas. Yeah, nobody's reporting on it.

Paul Truesdell, II 23:40
But I mean, the Russians are using white phosphorus. The Russians are using those little I can't what they call them though, the pedal mines. You know, they're those little pieces of plastic. They're notorious for blowing children's arms and legs off in Afghanistan during their Afghan war. Because kids would think they look like toys, you're gonna pick them up and boom, pulls your arm off. They're not they're not really useful against anything other than infantry. They just, they're just designed to injure people. And, you know, it's harassment type of thing. It Russians have been using illegal stuff the entire war. So, you know, the reality is, is I don't, I don't force I mean, they could use more aggressive tactics. But I mean, what's more aggressive than slaying cruise missiles into apartment blocks, or leveling an entire city and displacing a half million people? Or kidnapping what we're up to about half a million children and sending them back to Russia and then putting them into their adoption system and they're they're promoting on their national television about how great it is that they're Dnata fIying these children and they're showing like the effectively the auctioning process of these kids to to Russian families so they can they can have some some Ukrainian children.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 25:02
But that's not in the press. I have a I have a person in Tampa. I don't I don't associate with any more. Well, I won't have any conversation with Sir. Because if he was in the room right now I know exactly what she would say she would say, Oh, yes, but this is all about Biden and Hunter and the laptop and making money in the

Paul Truesdell, II 25:19
Bio Labs, the Bio Labs and everything isn't about q&a. Yeah, I mean, there's a huge segment of the the former Trump supporting people, the maggot people. In the grand scheme of things, it's relatively small, but you know, it's a lot of people who are clinging to these things. And you know, they're just nihilistic. I mean, they just, they just want an out like, they know the world that they live in is changing. And they just want somebody to nuke them and in their lives, and they don't have the Kahunas to go out and just to either either cope with reality, and move forward with their lives that, you know, the era of Trump and all his bullshit is over. But that's too hard to cope with. Nope, it was stolen. It was there things that were outside of their control happened. And you know what, daddy Putin needs to come in and save us and they just need to, they need to nuke America, give them shovel shovel lesson,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 26:13
and we've talked about it maybe we shouldn't talk about it stupid. But

Paul Truesdell, II 26:16
yeah, it's just it's people who are delusional. And the reality is, is every political movement has those people. Unfortunately, with the advent of the Internet, and a, let's just call him a leader who was desperate to maintain some amount of prestige keeps these people around. I mean, people used to make fun of the Ron Paul people, when it was just like, like, Yeah, I mean, Ron Paul, on some aspects, had some interesting ideas. And he had some interesting policies that he wanted to put forward. But in general, when you looked at his whole set of policies and prescriptions, like no, no, people aren't gonna support them. Just wasn't.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 26:54
And worse yet. No, he's he's doing something with someplace. What's that?

Paul Truesdell, II 26:59
I have no idea what he's doing.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 27:00
Is he on RT?

Paul Truesdell, II 27:01
Oh, yeah. He's been a frequent guest on RT for years, just like

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 27:06
those who don't know, our tea is Russia today.

Paul Truesdell, II 27:09
Yeah, I mean, along with people like Tulsi, Gabbard and, and all kinds of other weirdos out there. Yeah, I mean, it's whatever. But but the point with Ron Paul, is that, you know, in general, people viewed his supporters as kind of loons. But that was the people that he cultivated. Right. So yeah, I mean, some of them are a little more kind of unusual than others. But that was him stoking the fire and keeping his little bass alive. With Trump, he's doing the same thing. So, you know, the problem is, is you just people like that never used to get anywhere near power? And

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 27:47
yeah, we, I used to always tell people that I use Kim Kardashian and Jersey Shore, of course, the people in Jersey Shore around like they used to

Paul Truesdell, II 27:57
buy some of them around. Well, I

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 27:59
mean, it's a TV show, or did it come back? I

Paul Truesdell, II 28:01
don't know. I mean, I think I think I saw something. I mean, I'm not totally in with whatever the let's just call it trash TV is, but I think they did do some type of comeback thing on that. I don't know.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 28:13
Well, I depending on the age of the person, I'll say Jersey Shore, you know, Jersey Shore got elected to be pressing, I stayed in and then I, a gentleman who high ranking in both federal government, as high as you can get in our state and major municipal government, I won't mention his name. He said, You know, we were talking the other day about, you know, the problem with crime and what people are like, and just, just things we just, he used the word that people don't have, there's no shame. You can't shame people. Nobody cares. There's no shame. Whatever you do, I don't care. I think. I think that if you sit back and look at how people make money, you make money on trinkets, and you make a lot of money on people who are stupid, they just they spent all their money. And that's the truth. Right? So my buddy, who I worked with at the State Attorney's Office, goes to New York becomes an award winning Emmy, you know, we know who we're talking about. He's out of his fucking mind. He's gone from friend to acquaintance to meaningless to You're nuts. But Is he nuts? Or is he just fanning the the tardes out there that are just well, they just by his, his crap is?

Paul Truesdell, II 29:40
Well, I don't know. I mean, that's, that's the question you have with a lot of these peoples. Are these people just leveraging the angles that they see and then taking advantage of them for whatever personal gain or are they just as delusional as the people that they've got a following from? I don't know. Some of those people are just so psychopathic and they don't really care what they're leading people to believe. Others they actually are bought in so I don't know.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 30:08
There was a movie with with Steve Martin I don't remember the name of it or your mother and I watched it and we were just fascinated by it because I'm of the age my mother and father took me to some of these, these retirement revivals because it Yeah, it's not not to go to get healed or any of that crap, but literally to enjoy the show. The Yeah, it was literally you need to see this. And I think we've done the same thing with you guys. I mean, I don't think there's there's not much that you haven't seen when you were a child and we expose you to everything. But I remember what let me do this, the movie with Elvis, that new moon Elvis movie, and he, the little kid is having a revival and, uh, he's, you know, seeing everything and he's passing. Elvis supposedly is, you know, influenced by the black revival church and, and all that? Well, I've seen that stuff. And my point being is that you go back to Steve Martin, I can't remember the movie, but he's, he's a carnival preacher, you know. And then he paints a blood of, of Christ in this big cross that he has, and, you know, but here's the thing, everybody who was there, they all knew it was just bullshit. It was just, it was just a piece of masses, get the cash, pass the plate, everybody feel good, be healed and go on to the next place. The guy who couldn't walk as when everything's done is lifting tables and chairs and one of the broken arm and the cast is off and doing it just that stuff is real. And I you know, it just, I just don't know, if, if these people that are stoking this Are they who's funding them. And I think you and I talk about this a lot, even the crazies on the left, right? Everybody needs to be, you know, every boy needs to be d nutted. Everybody needs to be, you know, transgender, everybody needs to, you know, give all your guns away. And whatever the government says is the right thing to do, you know, and in the oceans are gonna rise, we're all gonna die from, from global warming the next three days, you follow the funding for both sides of this thing? I think you're gonna see a lot of money coming in from Russia, but it's not a single. It's a multifaceted war that we've been involved in for a long, long time people just want to MIT.

Paul Truesdell, II 32:37
It's definitely the case. It's definitely the case. I mean, what does it understand, they figured out that, you know, their grand ideas of military, militarily conquering Europe and in the world basically, was just not going to happen. Just that that's not something that they were going to be able to do. I mean, it became no more obvious one, you know, the German army, that was what a third of the size of the Soviet Army at that at their peaks, you know, absolutely destroyed them and without LendLease, like Germany would have would have submitted Russia in World War Two. But obviously, you know, that world was not something the West, the collective West, mainly the United States and, and Great Britain were willing to tolerate because there'll be talks about our global influence would have diminished under a under a, you know, very powerful German Empire that basically had a pretty good control over Europe.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 33:40
And absolutely nobody gives credit where credit is due to Harry Truman, the president, United States, and George Marshall, for doing what needed to be done. Yeah.

Paul Truesdell, II 33:51
Well, the I mean, it's, it's proof that everybody knew that because postwar the first thing it did was stand Germany back up there. Like if Germany doesn't stand, then the Soviets are gonna march through and they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna mess with Europe, just like they're trying to do now. But it became really obvious that militarily rush Russia would never be able to wage the war that they would need to or series of wars to militarily defeat the West. That's just, it was just a literal impossibility. So they, you know, they shifted, I don't I don't have my names of my lovely Soviet characters memorized. Exactly. But you know, there, there was a dramatic shift in how they're going to do business and work that plan. And, you know, I don't believe for one second that, oh, the Soviet Union is over. Okay. Yeah, the Soviet Union as an entity is over. But for all intents and purposes, it was a restructuring bankruptcy. The same people that were in charge of a lot of these government organs. They may be new faces, but they worked for all these old organizations that were previously named slightly different things. was under the Soviet system that it now became the Russian Federation. There's not a lot that changed. A lot of the players even just kind of shifted sideways into a new chair. But I mean, it's no more clear than, you know, Russia retained the Security Council seat, and everything else in the UN that the Soviet Union had. So the Russian Federation is legally and literally legally, and in every other way, the successor nation to the Soviet Union. And, and that includes ideologically, like they like how many hundreds of pictures of Russian soldiers use if you have to see with Soviet battle flags and Soviet patches on their uniforms and stuff. until people start to realize, oh, things really haven't changed in 100 years. It's these guys are still the a lot of these people are seriously hardcore communists, they just, you know, putting hiding, they're hiding their true intentions for the purposes of short term gain.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 36:07
And along those lines, it has been a pejorative to say the word Oh, he's a communist. Oh, you can't say that communist was just not a big deal. There aren't really around. Yeah, they are.

Paul Truesdell, II 36:21
There's enough of them that I'm well here. I'll give you a good example. I saw some, I saw some data from some studies and or research, public research, I think it was even domestic public research, which is even fire out of Russia was like 70% of people in Russia think that the Soviet Union was the best time in Russian history. And it was like 64% of people thought that the communist system provided for the average citizen better than the Russian Federation does.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 36:56
That's a real problem.

Paul Truesdell, II 36:57
So if that's kind of the general consensus among the population, like, all we've just we've, you know, we haven't shifted forward the way people think we have, we've just ignored. And the problem is, is by sitting back and ignoring and acting like, oh, the Cold War's over hell, they're our friends. Now, as many presidents have tried to do. Bait you know, I mean, what? George W. Bush, by Obama and Trump all tried this appeasement policy with Russia. Oh, they're just like us, oh, we can work with and all blah, blah, blah. You know, the reality is, is Russia has continued throughout the post Soviet era to wage war against their neighbors on a consistent basis. You know, first they got the it's, it's it was formerly Georgia, but it's the north, I guess, western part. I can't but it's called. And then what they had the situation in Moldova, now they have their little transistor breakaway region. And then you have in 2008, the Georgians and the Russians fought over that South Oceti region and the Russians seize that. And then in 2014, they and they, they used the weakness of the Ukrainian government as an excuse to officially unofficially send just soldiers with no patches on to go in and assist these weird rebel groups that they had been funding for a while. And take territory from Ukraine, as well as going in completely seized Crimea. And again, it was in a period of transition and chaos for the Ukrainian government because they had had a their, their, their revolution that, you know, their protest revolution, basically, they had chased literally chased the more pro Russian leader of Ukraine, a guy that by the way, had run for I didn't know about this until recently, he ran record, what the hell Hell's his name? Poroshenko I think something like that. Anyways, he he initially ran for president of Ukraine in like 2000 or 2005, or somewhere in there. And he rigged the election and went to jail for

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 39:30
but he did that day in jail.

Paul Truesdell, II 39:33
No, obviously he did not stay. But then, you know, he comes back a few years later, and runs and gets into office. And people are, you know, it was a mess. So it's addressed. He

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 39:44
rigged it better the second time he Yeah, exactly.

Paul Truesdell, II 39:48
He got away with it a second time. And so, you know, the reality is his entire job was to was to ruin the Ukrainian Ukrainian government. its chances of getting into the European Union Economic Zone, which is their main thing. Because they wouldn't be able to sell stuff into the EU and not pay the tariffs and to not be taxed and stuff like, you know, their, their next door to Romania. Romania can make the same stuff Ukraine makes, and Romania doesn't pay any taxes when they shipped it to France or Germany or Denmark or whatever. Right. But Ukraine does it and they gotta pay tariffs. So naturally, just, it's anti competitive, or it reduces their competitiveness, right. And there's other there's lots of other reasons, but the main thing was, is you know, once you get sucked into the European cultural sphere, and the in the economic sphere of influence, it becomes really hard to, to really get along with the Russians. I mean, they're a pain in the ass anyways to deal with. I mean, what I mean every all of Russia's neighbors hate them. Go talk to an average Lithuanian or an Estonian or a Latvian,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 41:03
or a pole, or any of the state literally,

Paul Truesdell, II 41:07
literally any of them. I mean, they will all bitch and complain from now until your ears bleed about how they hate Russians, and it doesn't have anything to do with, you know, this, this like low IQ, idiot kind of hatred. They have reasons they have they have a millennia of interaction with these people. And it's all it's always done in bad faith. So they just don't like him. Yeah, you

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 41:33
know, one of the things you mentioned that you're running through all the different areas that the Russians have very methodically, seized, attacked.

Paul Truesdell, II 41:42
And until currently, until the current conflict, the West just rolled over and was like, well, sorry, guys, we would support you, but it's Russia, and we don't want to make them mad. Yeah, and it's time they got pushed back on

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 41:54
it. Well, the only reason they got pushed back because because you have a united front that was like desperately fighting. But going back far forget. When I grew up in the 60s, we were told extensively, the domino theory. Oh, yeah. McNamara Johnson. Kennedy, Nixon. You know, we, ABC, NBC, CBS, you didn't have all the, by the way, for people who are younger, you didn't have cell phones you didn't have you didn't have satellites, you didn't have that kind of stuff he didn't have Spotify is amazing. People think that this stuff has existed since the Civil War. No, it hasn't. And no, Abraham Lincoln didn't kill the Woolsey killing drum vampires vampires. Yes. But it's called the domino theory. You know, we grew up with that. Well, if ever there has been this, is it, guys? Well,

Paul Truesdell, II 42:53
yeah. I mean, so when I said earlier that that, you know, under Stalin, they realized that they wouldn't be able to militarily defeat the West. Part of that was, you know, you can you can kind of argue with that and talk about how, why did they invade Afghanistan? And why did they do all these other things militarily in Africa and South America and stuff. part about that, that you have to understand is, it's about militarily defeating the West, like they can't do they can't defeat us. But they could submit all kinds of second third tier countries all over the world. Easily, and they did. You know, they utilize Cuba to do a

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 43:32
lot of that. Oh, my God, the number of Cubans have fought in the Angolan wars,

Paul Truesdell, II 43:37
Angola against Rhodesia against South Africa, for the better part of 40 years. Like the whole

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 43:44
nobody, nobody talks about that. Everybody talks about, oh, yeah, South African apartheid and all that stuff. And I'm not going to get into that political quagmire. laughs I got third rail. I'll just fry you. But nobody wants to talk about oh, yeah, we were on the side of the Cubans.

Paul Truesdell, II 43:59
Where I'll try to go everywhere. Yeah. I mean, we just handed it over to him. Because, because a lot of people were like, well, you know, Soviet Union is over. So therefore, just let them have it. Because because, you know, they're bad because they did some things that people don't like, it's like, Well, if that's if that's the standard, you got to go to them. I think every country that's that's an enemy of the West would just go under strategic reorganization if that's all it takes to win, because that's what happened.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 44:25
Well, that's it. The other thing is just revisionist history. We were fighting the Russians but primarily the Chinese and in the Korean War as a Chinese. Yeah. Well, the Russians are flying a lot of the a lot of the airplanes over there with a lot of MiGs. Now, the Chinese didn't have any word on the Chinese didn't have the ability but those big fights was a rush that was Russian us fights in Vietnam, same damn thing. You know, we

Paul Truesdell, II 44:52
were Korea's is funny. I mean, people don't really understand that, you know, we fought the Chinese like we've we've had a war with China. It just was on a fish. So, we were fighting in Korea, and it was a police action. It wasn't even a war technically, kind of like Russia and their special military operation. But the reality is, is I mean, we, you know, we had a very significant war with Korea. I mean, oh, in Korea with the Chinese, you know, if if we, if the number of people that we ended up killing were, I don't know, anywhere remotely, all Korean, then there would be like, there'd be like, almost nobody left, or at least not enough to have the country they have today. And the reality is, is we killed I don't know what the official numbers are, whatever. But the numbers I've seen are somewhere you know, it's it's, it's, it's, it's probably over 5 million Koreans and Chinese men, it's very much like, like Vietnam, it was a very one sided war, as all of our seem to be. But the problem is, is just, you know, you had the entire country of China sending just effectively infinite people. So we just had to cut a line in the sand like, this just has to be over. Right? You can't just mean and that's and that's part of why you know, the

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 46:06
but But going back to those timeframes, I mean, you have to wonder, that's why we talked I mentioned earlier, follow the money you saw, I'm old enough to remember when you saw a shift, and I can I can give you the event for Vietnam. The was when VIN cow key executed that guy and blew his brains out. And we all saw it on TV. Now, everybody talks about that was the turning point or Kent State. When the girls screaming over the body in the National Guard shot, there are events and people say those are defining moments, defining moment for George Bush when he was standing on the rubble with the fire guy and he absolutely, yeah, whether that was staged or impromptu who knows doesn't make a difference. To this defining moment. The Bush

Paul Truesdell, II 46:54
one in particular is impromptu based on every person I've seen and heard anything about.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 47:00
Yep. But but those are defining moments. And because our nation is no different than everybody else, you know, it's it's meme based, you know, people are stupid. Most people are incredibly stupid, as we've learned in the world of finance, he just you want to scream, you know, when you explain to somebody, what we do versus what somebody else does is always the same thing. Or my guy doesn't charge me and just you just have to walk away from those people. So the point being, is that you have you have the media. And we'll just probably I mean, NBC. You know, we know who CBS is with who NBC is worth, who ABC is worth, you know, they're not just three letter alphabet, media outlets, where they tend to favor certain three letter alphabets in our government, yes, but then you start to wonder, but you can see the influence by the Russians or the Chinese in the advertising in the global company. Advertising you start to it just isn't tough to put it together.

Paul Truesdell, II 48:07
No. Well, it is interesting, though, because this war in particular, you can see the power of the media because you don't have any of those types of things have gotten into the mainstream kind of media. Even though I've seen it, I mean, I've seen so many dead bodies so many people get executed so many just so much horrible shit. It's all out there if you want to find it. But the media isn't covering it because they know that's gonna turn people off. And that's not something we can afford right now. We can't afford the populace getting mad about this or wanting it to end it's got to come to its completion you know, and yes, it's a war bad shits gonna happen people pay it literally the whole point of it is you kill one side until you each side is killing the other side until somebody cries uncle and in Ukraine's position, you know, they are justified in doing almost anything in my opinion, because they're the ones being invaded well, they're all the arguments of the anti war people from the you know, anti war people that we protested enough for us invading Vietnam or Afghanistan or or Iraq or any of that stuff. You know, those same arguments apply still like these are people that are defending their what they think is their country. Now the differences is it's an illegitimate democracy and it's it's it's a it's a country that's run by its people, not some shithead dictator, like, or a warlord state like you had with Afghanistan or like you had with Saddam, or you had with you know, whatever the weird quasi cluster, you know what in Vietnam, you know, it's a country that legitimately existed and has international To recognize borders and internationally recognized government, there's absolutely no reason. There's no justifiable reason to allow what's going on. You know, there's, there's, there's no way to look at this and come up with some type of stupid argument that justifies what the Russians have done. Other than just Russian blatant, naked Russian paranoia and imperialism, or a combination of the two, you know,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 50:26
you know, several times I've said, You, I wish we pardon me, pardon me would like to put up all of the pictures and all the things that we have and put it up for clients only, which we still have to talk about that. Because you have done an amazing job of curating so much of this. And my fear has always been that, you know, we would we would get the ire of the federal government and somebody would just, quote unquote, Trump up charges on something, I don't want to deal with that. But if, if people saw what we've seen, from a distance, we're not there. It's just in all the all the interviews of people just it is a bloodbath. And it's the Ukrainians. Children well, so that's ducted well, so

Paul Truesdell, II 51:17
that's the thing I just it's a bloodbath in both directions. And it but it's different. And so here's the thing I mean, Russians Ukrainians have been pretty transparent with their casualties and Battlefield deaths and stuff on both sides themselves as well as what they estimate based on their their reports, because you know, it's it's a it's a fairly professional military and yeah, they have people fill out their after action reports, just like we do, and, you know, they the information filters up through the command structure where the Russians you know, it's it's just it's it's it's what is it it's so Wizard of Oz over there, everything's fake it's all just it's whatever whatever satisfies the the the whack the whacked out minds of the people that run the country. Yeah, the

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 52:06
POW camp that the Ukrainians blew up in incinerated? Everybody. That was Ukrainians. Yeah. Well,

Paul Truesdell, II 52:12
we all know, yeah, for sure. It's just there's so many stupid things like that. But but so on on point is that the, you know, Ukraine has been pretty honest. They have, I guess, somewhere between somewhere between 10 and 15,000. Battlefield deaths, so a lot of people, a lot of people, but in the grand scheme of things of full on full scale, modern conventional war, it's not correct. It's not. It's rapid. But I mean, these are two countries that are, it's a lot of distance. And it's a lot of modern, modern, conventional warfare. Russia, on the other hand, is approaching about 65,000 as just deaths

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 52:54
in Vietnam, the entire timeframe in Vietnam, we lost

Paul Truesdell, II 52:58
about that in eight years. And then we also managed to kill like 3 million of those of the Vietnamese.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 53:09
And then in Afghanistan, I think we've lost what like 3000?

Paul Truesdell, II 53:13
That's, I mean, it's in the grand scheme of things in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is like three times that Yeah, yeah. So Iraq was it's hard to even draw the line in the sand because I mean, Iraq has three wars, right. I mean, in modern sense, I mean, in we, I mean, in my lifetime, we fought for wars in Iraq. We fought Saddam, to get him out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. That's something else people don't ever realize, is in the first Gulf War. We also kicked the Iraqis out of Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabians, like, have no, they, they, they, they should have, they should kiss our feet every time we do anything for them. Because I mean, they, we could have just let Saddam Hussein roll over. And it probably would have been more convenient for us in hindsight. But anyways,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 54:06
Saudis are not a friend of ours, and some of our friends over there are not friends of ours.

Paul Truesdell, II 54:11
Now their government is just there to face always has been. I mean, they're also two faces are on people with I saw a poll 70 something percent of the princes that, you know, have effectively no power, they're just part of the the family structure would would prefer a coup right now to remove the current leadership of the Saudi Arabian government

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 54:33
in the next two or three years. something's gonna happen. It'll break over there.

Paul Truesdell, II 54:37
Yeah, it's just unstable. But so you know, with with regard to Iraq, I mean, yeah. So yeah, the first Gulf War, which, you know, at the time, Iraq was the number one client state of the Soviet Union and was the third or fourth largest military in the world, depending on how you measured it. And, you know, a six week air war and a four day ground war and we completely destroyed them. With a humiliating you know, death and casualty ratio in our favor. I mean, I think we ended up having more friendly fire incidents among our own people than they ended up actually getting out of any of our people. It's just like, it's just they suck. And when so you had the first Gulf War. And, you know, if we would have fought Russia at full strength, pre Ukraine, it would look like the first Gulf Oregon, like Russia is a rack, like 2000 or 1992. Yep, that's just is what it is. But then in 2003, we invaded, took took out Saddam, whatever, that's really the the next war that we fought. I mean, because we beat the regular Iraqi government, and we were able to take it over, and then put together a transition plan. And again, that was extremely decisive, almost no casualties, whatever. But the thing people kind of blend together is everything that came afterwards. And the reality is, is there were very distinct events. The war was over, when you have that famous picture of George Bush on the deck of that aircraft carrier, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever the famous phrase is. That they, the declaring victory. Well, it was true. I mean, the war was over. For all practical purposes. I mean, it was a police action from then forward, we defeated the Iraqi military finally did what his father was unwilling to do, right, and whatever. But then came the suicide bombing, and the insurgency. And that took a while for, you know, the bad actors to put together. So, you know, there were a lot of people there, they're like, Okay, well, war's over, we're just helping these people, you know, kind of, reconstitute their government and rebuild their infrastructure. Because unlike the Russians, when we go and invade somebody, we go and blow up all the shit that makes a government work, we take out your cell towers, we take out your power plants, we take out your government coordination facilities, we take out everything, because it is not worth having this nightmare that doesn't end, which is the Russians are learning that mistake. Again, their learning mistakes, could it should have been obvious for any military commander that stutters Modern Warfare, but again, they're lazy, and obviously not that bright. So you know, then there was this insurgency war. And, you know, from everything that we know, now, it's pretty obvious that Russia and Iran and in other unsavory actors, but primarily Russia, and Iran helped organize and, and supply and whatever, this insurgency so that it lasted was extremely painful for us. They tried to turn Iraq into our Afghanistan, or, like we did to them with Afghanistan, in the 80s. Didn't work. Because, you know, as there are some very famous stories of different places where, you know, you had special forces guys who go in, and they would just go take over an entire town, and they would just go and kill all the bad guys. And people may not like the way it happened, and people may not like that there were, there's collateral damage, but the reality is, is you know, they would go in, they would clear a town or city or whatever, and you would go months without having any terrorist bombings and suicide bombings and all that crap, because turns out, either people are too afraid to do something, or they all got splattered. And it's, it's it was, you know, it is what it is. I mean, you just you had to get brutal with these people to solve the problem. And you know, but eventually that went away because people realize that it's just not worth it. I mean, how many how many more 10s of 1000s of people have to get killed and just hilariously stupid ways for no gain, because it's not gonna work. So that basically kind of went away. And then I guess around the time Obama got into office, they were talking about strategic drawdowns and they were trying to figure out how to get out of Iraq. And then ISIS happened and then you had a whole nother war in Iraq that bled over into or bled over from Syria that turned into this big mess. And

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 59:34
Asus it suddenly instantaneously overnight had all this equipment and all these people and all this ISIS

Paul Truesdell, II 59:41
is its own topic for like so much extra discussion and even then I don't think I totally understand everything, but I mean, I've got a I've got a good understanding of it in general, but it's a mess. It's a mess.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 59:55
It was a State Department invest from top to bottom.

Paul Truesdell, II 59:58
I mean, if you want to build Mr. T, then yeah, that's it was

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:00:01
no, no, no, what I'm Yes. I'm not saying that I'm saying it was for the high level thinking that I'm just saying State Department, the high level thing if they people didn't think that thing through,

Paul Truesdell, II 1:00:14
no, it's it was we're going to destabilize assholes that are against us and things got out of control. And then really nasty people got involved and propel

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:00:24
it forward. Right. And here's the thing, this way I would word it, I'll use a law enforcement background, you got a couple of gangs are fighting each other, we want to, we want to, we want to knock things down. Be careful for the you know, be careful what you wish for. Because it's sometimes better to know the enemy that you got, rather than when you don't have and so, you know, okay, so we're going to sign up with these guys. We need some help. And all of a sudden, well, this new guy now is, is as bad or worse. And as soon as the opportunity chance that they're gonna turn on you. I mean, that's that's the kind of thing that there was no winners there. There was no, no, there were no friends. There's everybody was done. I mean, the whole area is just one giant pool center.

Paul Truesdell, II 1:01:10
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's a matter of perspective, hindsight is always 2020. But I understand that I mean, given the information, different people had different times. I mean, there may have legitimately been a good opportunity, but the reality is, is how it turned out, it was ugly. And so in Iraq, in particular, you know, there's this fourth war and 20 years that we ended up having to fight or what, 2025 years, I guess, that we ended up fighting this time, we took a backseat and kind of did the did the Vietnam approach. We're going to supply a lot of munitions, we're going to have special forces and training and assistance, but we're gonna let the Iraqi army that we previously spent, you know, the better part of the past 15 years training and equipping and getting set up, we're going to let them fight their country, they should fight for it. And yeah, it didn't turn out so well. No, it turned out great. I mean, you know, between American strategic support special operations, and in the Iraqi military, we killed like, 600,000, I don't know what I'm saying about he just fit, we just painted the pain of the desert red with these assholes. The problem is, is there's just a lot of, I mean, it's a lot of people to deal with. And I was reading the other day of a story of a guy who was over there volunteering, helping the Kurds. And he talked about this incident where he's ISIS guys came over original Island, just in mass numbers, like 1000s of them. And the Peshmerga, I think were, you know, their military, the Kurds, they were, they were fighting these these lunatics off and they just kept coming in just wave attacks, like some shit out of a Soviet war to move in. And he said, eventually, one of the Kurds pulled up one of these old Soviet anti aircraft guns that was on a perch, and brought it down to ground level and just start, just start mowing people down in the hundreds. And it's just like, he said, these are this, this guy was a Vietnam vet. And he, he just like, turned away is just like, even even when it's righteous, you know, when you kill enough people, you just have to kind of turn away and look because it's just gross. And he said, in that moment, there were a women holding children kind of where he was, which is way, way, way, way in the rear in at the outskirts of a city. And he said, These people were all excited and cheering it on. You know, they were there as the last line of defense basically for the city. And you knew your kid with your rifle next year. Yeah. And stacks of magazines ready to ready to ready to lay lay down the hate if they got close enough. And, you know, it is just an interesting anecdote that he mentioned that it was in that moment that he realized that you know, you're never going to defeat the Kurds. Like there's just there's absolutely no way you could do it. Because the if you've got that type of stuff going on, you know, the women aren't running away. They're just there on their on the battlements prepared for if it gets close enough with their children, like, you can't defeat that enemy without killing them all the last person. And that's a similar situation we've got going on in Ukraine, Ukrainians, one would have, a lot of them would have fought regardless. But they're emboldened now. They know they can win. They know they're smarter than the Russians. They have a better military. They have a manpower advantage now, and they have for a while. They really have had a manpower advantage. Since the beginning. The problem was always training equipment. But now that they have this constant supply of resources from the West, they really don't have a huge issue of supply anymore other than they just need to figure out their own their own internal logistics. There's some longer range problems they have with repairs for more complex vehicles and things that they're gonna have to figure out. I mean, a good example is if you have, like, you know, you don't have you don't have your field repair people and stuff like you do. In our military, there's not, it's just not super well, oil and then going, but they'll figure it out. They're super smart, the

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:05:23
the speed at which they've muscled up? Yeah, it's just amazing to me.

Paul Truesdell, II 1:05:30
Yeah. So I mean, you know, now you have a few months later, and they've got, you know, roughly, you know, about a million people in their military. And, you know, they have about, you know, I think it's five to 700,000 people that are actual combat arms, like, you know, whatever trained ready to go. And, you know, every What is it, I think the British just finished their second batch of training, their second batch of 10,000. Train Ukrainian soldiers. So they've, they've now trained 20,000 on their training the next 10,000 already, you've got training centers that have been stood up in different countries all along Eastern Europe, for specific skills or for general infantry training. And the thing is, with a lot of or, or even Officers Training and stuff like that, and a lot of those are things that we were doing anyways, there's, we've we've been helping them since 2014, retrain their military to kind of NATO standards, because part of the reasons the Russians were able to walk over them and or walk all over them in 2014, was because they, they were a Soviet satellite state army, still, they just, it was a political prestige thing. They didn't really know they, I mean, they wanted to fight, but they just didn't have the organizations and the structures to properly fight a real war. And, you know, now you have a country that is largely getting better and getting closer to kind of NATO standard. Some units a lot, are very close to NATO standard by comparison to others. And there's active training going on. And then like, for those guys coming back from Britain, a lot of those guys are also now going to be integrated into training units, and they're going to train other guys what they learned, they spent three or six months or whatever, three or four months, I think, in Britain, being taught by people who, you know, that's what they do. That's what they've done. And now they get to go teach what they've learned back to guys that don't get the opportunity to go to Britain. But that's a force multiplier, right? I mean, one guy can teach 10 Guys easily. So you just multiply that out, you very quickly get a well trained militar. But more importantly, I think the thing is, nothing beats there's there is no training in the world that beats real experience. And the Ukrainians have had a lot of success so far. And going forward. They have a lot of really highly skilled purely from real world experience in this war so far. And the average quality of a Russian soldier is going down, it's not going up where the Ukrainian is going the opposite way. You know, if you kind of just mentally imagine a chart, the Russians started the war with a lot more soldiers than the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians had to prevent people from leaving the country, they had to create an institution of conscription that they haven't really needed to use, because they just have had so many volunteers from the get go, that they can't even let them all on, you still have people that in February and March and put their name on a list for I want to join the military that they still are like you're in a queue like we'll get to if we need you, but like, sorry, like, I know you want to fight but we just literally don't have the facilities to equip and train and put you someplace where the Russians are on the opposite end of that. I mean, we mentioned earlier 65,000 Roughly battlefield deaths on the Russian side. But that's just deaths, casualties or deaths plus injured. And that number in a modern war is anywhere between three to three to five, maybe even a little bit more than that are going to be casualties. injured. You know, so the Russians have burned through their entire professional military so far. And that's the scary part for them is now they're they're getting these conscripts out on the battlefield and to add one last thing that I saw some news stories that Russian media is starting to get kind of pissed off because you've had guys that were sent out, they were conscripted, went for their one week of training sent to Ukraine landed someplace in Ukraine on October 6 and came back in Russia they put they put dead people in zinc box. They sent them there. They came back to where they they came back home and zinc box by the 12.

So that's a that's a quick turnaround. Yep. And that doesn't surprise me because these people have almost no training there hold on permanently. Yeah, diminished. So, you know, you start to play the numbers. I mean, I don't know where Russia gets the reserves, they need to win the war that they want to win. And it goes back to what you talked about how you know, you, you're looking at more volatility. I've said the entire time, I don't know how they even got to this point without basically just trying to find a strategic way to back off. Because it's all roads and with ugliness for Russia.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:10:37
You know, just finishing up now, from a pure economic standpoint and forecasting. I'll give you a quick little thing and let you give me yours and I'll wrap it up.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:56
Saturday, October 15 2022, recorded in the break room of the Truesdell professional building. This episode of The Paul Truesdale podcast is sponsored by fixed cost financial.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:11:17
I believe sincerely that, yes, the stock market hasn't performed away people want yes, there's inflation, there's a lot of issues, yada, yada yadi all you're seeing is a conclusion cacophony of events that have taken place at the same time. Okay, meaning that debt, Boomer aging workforce, this idiot COVID thing, a lot of things came to came in all in one time. But there's a fundamental shift in the mindset in what it means to be an American, what it means to be not an isolationist, but to be protective of the nation of North America of South America, I think you're going to see a renewed Monroe Doctrine, I think you're going to see an even greater naval presence, if I was investing is going to be drones, Special Forces and navy, of course, satellites as well, and everything else. I think you just you have to have somebody who's a big man on campus, somebody has to be the cop, because the children don't play well. And

Paul Truesdell, II 1:12:31
will were the guy on the block. And the reality is the only way we're going to not be the big guy on the block is somebody has to displace us. So far, all of our challenges have been pathetic excuses for arrival. And, you know, I think a lot of that is, is is people don't want to admit the reality that we are that far ahead. Because if you do, then people kind of rest on our laurels.

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:12:59
Right, which we have many occasions. And yeah, I just I just think, you know, economic I think that this is this is people who are actually can digest this information will go, Holy crap, we may go through some rough periods. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death right now. On the other side, it looks beautiful. And I think we're just you just got to dig with it, man.

Paul Truesdell, II 1:13:25
Yeah, I completely agree. You know, yes, the current economic situation is not optimal. But it's also not really bad. You know, for some people in some isolated places, or occupations yet, maybe maybe more rough than others. But the reality is, is we are not approaching anywhere near what we had in 2008 or other prior, you know, economic issues. And right now, the main issue in my Outlook is really simple. It's a total reorganization of the global economy. Yep. That's 100%, what's going on? And we have inflation that is largely driven by supply side. Yep. There's some monetary inflation because of all the money printing from COVID and all that. But it's not it wouldn't be as high it wouldn't. It wouldn't account for the percentages that we're looking at now. We're really looking at supply side inflation, largely due to energy. It's its largest input in any economy. The US is is has a lot of insulation against Europe by comparison. I mean, you know, we don't have 20% inflation like Britain does. We don't have you know, a literal dying industrial center or a sector like Germany does. The unspoken about items that we can get into in another episode. Is

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:14:58
it the transfer of German companies to The US Yeah, it is

Paul Truesdell, II 1:15:02
it has to do with energy like you, right? Germany just won't have reliable, the reliable surpluses of energy that they had under this deal with the devil they had with Russia

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:15:12
ever again. And see the other thing that is never discussed go ahead and finish

Paul Truesdell, II 1:15:17
on last. Russia totally disinfect disintegrates. And everything, you know, kind of west of the Urals somehow is under new leadership and is under control of some type of European vengo a puppet state? And, you know, the reality is I think that's just that's a gas station turn the pump? Yeah, exactly. And I mean, here's the thing, it doesn't mean there aren't people worth living there? There aren't? I mean, you know, you don't you? In general, I think a lot of people will think like, oh, you're just gonna, what, you just wipe out the population for some gas like not, I mean, most, most of those people, you know, most of those Russians, I'm sure are perfectly capable of being integrated into a Western economy. But the problem is, is, you know, they have to, they have to face the reality that their country is a giant pile of shit and needs to be destroyed. And if people don't like that, then, you know, tough shit. Because like, this is just not something in the modern era, that people do. We don't we don't invade neighbors and genocide their civilian population, because question mark, right, like they, you know, I mean, it's just, that's just not something we do anymore. So no, you have to you have to be destroyed. That's just as what it is. But yeah, I mean, in the future, I think there's, there's likely a possibility that something like that could eventually play out purely because Europe doesn't want to be always beholden to us. Right? We're perfectly capable of being kind of, I don't know, friendly rivals,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:16:55
we benefit from a very strong European Union,

Paul Truesdell, II 1:16:58
I think so yeah. But they also don't want to be you know,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:17:03
you have, you've had an economic competition. But what you don't have this military competition, now, you have military cooperation, to keep the sea lanes, the airways, open, the space free, that's a big deal. And that's gonna tell us all about transportation.

Paul Truesdell, II 1:17:21
And that's going to be extremely necessary going forward, because the US just doesn't have the population or the required military, that everybody's going to need going forward does. I mean, this is again, stuff for another episode in detail. But the disintegration of China is coming. China is the their best days are behind them. And it's over. And the reality is that when China starts to disintegrate, and the global order reorganizes, around mainly mainly the Americas, North and South America and Europe, then there's gonna be a lot of troublemakers left out there in the world. And that's, that's gonna be that's gonna be a problem to deal with. And, you know, there's a question as to how you deal with that, I am highly skeptical that we're going to resort to methods that were attempted in the past, thinking things like colonialism and other kinds of weird economic subjugation. I think that's unlikely. So you know, it's gonna be interesting how it shakes out, but yeah, well, that's the world we're looking at. And that's, that's the structure, I think, at least in global global power, that is gonna be necessary to kind of hold it all together,

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:18:48
this rapid at this, we'll come back and we'll continue this, we got to get out of town we got to fly out of here on business. So let's put this one to bed. And I'll do a little post production and get it up. And we'll get back into a regular flow of this. What do you think?

Well, that was a fun little podcast that we well, a conversation we had while we were sitting in our break room. One of the things that I want to emphasize is that we do this when we have time, we're really busy. And lately, it's been a little bit kind of nutso. So for those of you who are regular listeners to the Paul Truesdale podcast to Paul's in a pod, we do apologize for not having a more regular schedule. But again, just bear with we think we've turned a corner and we're going to be doing this a little bit better in terms of scheduling, and then as a result, you'll notice that the quality of the audio was so so I think we've kind of figured out how we want to do this. We do a lot of conversations in our break room here at the Truesdale professional building. We're located one mile from the Ocala International Airport and one mile from interstate 75. So quite literally we can get in the car, go from the office and be wheels up or wheels on the road in 15 minutes kind of a neat little thing. People will ask us why are you located in Ocala? Well, it's horse country is ranches. It's a nice quality of life. And we can get down to Orlando and to Tampa, and Jacksonville to Daytona. And we can get all parts of the country we want here in the East Coast and southeast real rapidly. So that's why we're here and what we do what we do and again, we do this little podcast called to Paul's in a pod. Now what's important to always remember never forget that this is not our only podcast, we provide a tremendous amount of podcasts literally every day to clients by way of their dashboard. Some clients get individual podcasts some get root podcasts. And so if you're interested give us a call at 212-433-2525 as to 12433 2525. If your phone number is in our database, we'll answer if not you're going to get the Auto Attendant leave your name telephone number, the detailed message and one of our lovely staff people will get a hold you and we'll have a conversation. Go to fixed cost financial.com That's fixed cost financial.com. You'll be glad you did with that. We're out here hustling assembling Jana hereos until next time, bye.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:59
For more information about some of the other Truesdale companies visit truesdell.net. That's Truesdale spelled t r u e s d e l l dotnet. use the contact form if you would like to be on our email notification list as to when a new podcast is available

Unknown Speaker 1:22:19
to end up eating a steady diet and government cheese and living down by the river. Now young man what do you want to do with your life?

Paul Grant Truesdell, J.D., AIF 1:22:31
Well actually I kind of want to be a podcaster Oh no,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:36
no no no

Unknown Speaker 1:22:42
You stupid guy not was nine plus 1021 You stupid.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:01
Chip people got no respect for the brain dead.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:04
There's a garbage can in the northeast corner. Drop the bags and leave. Like to start with a list of people I can do without

Unknown Speaker 1:23:15
a proctologist with poor depth perception. Any woman whose hobby is breastfeeding zoo animals, a cross eyed nun with a bullwhip and a bottle of gin, a waitress with a visible infection on her serving hand. And any man whose arm hair completely covers his wristwatch. Okay, that's enough.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai