Patriot Power Hour #269

[00:00:03] Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who would escape from Castro. And in the midst of his story, one of my friends turned to the other and said, we don't know how lucky we are.

[00:00:35] And the Cuban stopped and said, how lucky you are. I had some place to escape to. And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

[00:00:53] This is the last stand on earth. The last stand on earth. You are now listening to the Patriot Power Hour. This live episode features the situational awareness you need to practice self-reliance and independence.

[00:02:20] Introducing your hosts, Ben the Breaker of Banksters and Future Dan, the editor of FutureDanger.com. Patriot Power Hour, Episode 269, it's July 10th, 2024. Ben the Breaker of Banksters here with Future Dan. Still a quiet week I would say Ben, but twice as many headlines as we had last week.

[00:02:44] So plenty of topics to discuss. Absolutely, we have a wide variety of topics to discuss. Current news and events. We also got a couple topics we might get into in the second half of the show that maybe

[00:02:58] aren't as news focused, but I still think we'll put on some good conversation. Now Future Dan, we're going to get to the news blitz as always in the second segment, but what's been on your mind the past week? Times flown.

[00:03:14] Fourth of July was good over here, but before you know it, we're live again. What's been on your radar? Yeah, so Biden's just dug in and said he's not leaving. No way, no how, not leaving. Complete resistance.

[00:03:28] So it's just one more week of watching the Democrats in turmoil about his condition. And yeah, something's got to give. There's an election. Something's got to give. We had a break, but we're pretty much exactly where we were seven days ago.

[00:03:46] I'd say I don't often do this because it makes me sick to my stomach, but I went on to social media and decided to go see what Democrats were posting just to get an idea.

[00:03:59] And a lot of them were saying how undemocratic and pretty much BS it would be to get rid of Biden after the primaries and he's already won it. So there was a lot of people defending Biden and then there, of course, there's a

[00:04:14] lot of Democrats also just eviscerating him. They're very fearful as it's all about Trump's going to crush us. We got to get rid of him or on the other hand, Trump's going to crush us. We all need to rally behind Joe. It's too late.

[00:04:30] And I always thought it was kind of funny in a sad way that they're saying, oh, it'd be so undemocratic if we just got rid of Biden and put someone else in there. I'm like, oh, oh wait. You're maybe you're waking up to something.

[00:04:41] Maybe there's a sliver of hope there. The only thing the word democracy or democratic means to Democrats is power. How do they have power? It's the means that democracy required to distribute power. They don't care about it.

[00:05:04] So to say that their convention doesn't have state party delegates that could use their judgment and vote against Biden on what they're supposed to, you know, tradition holds that they have ballots, right? They have delegates that vote and nominate. It's a nomination convention.

[00:05:23] So that's democracy, by the way. You know, if you have someone frail of mind by the time they arrive at the convention, you could, those party delegates could vote against him. It makes sense. Let's just take away any semblance of alleged corruption.

[00:05:42] You should be able to do that in case something occurs health wise, especially. Um, well, someone passes away. We'll do it. Party should be able to nominate their presidential nominees any way they see fit. I pull up, pull up. Name out of the hat.

[00:05:59] If that's what your party wants to do, it's freedom of association. Right? So knowing that Democrats are going to have something that's essentially a completely orchestrated party machine, you know, they'll hold the ballots, but it'll all be decided before they hold the ballots. Right?

[00:06:18] They're gonna, they're gonna do the least motions to be democratic about how they select their nominee and some of those states canceled their Democrat primary, both in 2020 and 2024. Right? So they're not really practicing it anymore.

[00:06:40] Now, one thing I want to point out is DNC is August 19th to the 22nd. So still more than a month. Uh, we don't make too many predictions on this show except for our end of year and mid-year predictions. We have a whole show dedicated to that.

[00:06:56] But otherwise we try not to make too many predictions. I don't think, but I'm going to ask you who do you believe will come out on August 22nd or beforehand as the DNC nominee? Biden, Biden, he's dug in and he's got control of the party.

[00:07:14] They have no mechanism to, I don't think they have a gumption to do a open democratic ballot before the whole world. Conventions became highly staged since, I guess the seventies, right? I mean, some of those Republican conventions even back into the seventies had first ballots and delegates.

[00:07:36] And of course, you know, this still is in effect in the Republican party. That's why Nikki Haley released her 90 something delegates that she won in the Republican primaries to Trump today. So that the Trump nomination is on essentially unopposed.

[00:07:53] These parties have behaved this way for a long time. You can go back in history. It wasn't always this way. I think a piece of news that came out, I believe, since our last show

[00:08:08] or almost maybe the exact same day, but the July 11th big day on the calendar for Trump sentencing has been moved to September 18th. So I just wanted to point that out as well. Yeah. Which which conviction is that the civil in New York?

[00:08:25] Yes, New York, Manhattan, jury with like the 34 counts and whatnot. So it's still before the election, obviously, but but it's not July 11th, which would be tomorrow. I was kind of I was actually thinking a week or two ago.

[00:08:40] I was like, oh man, our July 10th show is going to be pretty intense if the next day will be the sentencing. But it got pushed off a couple more months. I got you. Yeah, it's like that judge and all of the cases against Trump,

[00:08:53] the prosecutors and the coordination in the Department of Justice. Consider that one car and maybe it's the same car as the Biden family inside the White House, you know, just deciding that Joe's sticking with it and there's nothing you can do about it.

[00:09:13] It's like two cars and they look like they're going to drive off cliff, both of them one right after the other or together. And I'm just watching this year to see if the Democrat party can

[00:09:25] can, you know, pull up short of the cliff, but putting Trump in jail, sentencing him and walking him in cops in the custody to go to prison. At that would be one of those cars going right off the cliff. And Biden getting nominated, going into that election

[00:09:44] in his mental conditions, another one. And I don't see any reason why they won't drive both off the cliff. They're that crazy right now. I don't see any reason either. They're that crazy, that desperate, that much humorous like, yeah,

[00:10:03] this is a good case of history rhymes where the elite just they just become too powerful in their own mind that they think reality doesn't apply to them. And then when it does, it comes back and smacks them in the head. Pretty hard.

[00:10:23] So we're going to go to this news blitz in about 60 seconds. I do want to do a real quick shout out. Anyone who missed the fourth of July PBN celebration on rumble. And I think it might have been also going on on Instagram.

[00:10:39] I don't have Instagram, but it was the full day of speeches. Patrick Henry, Gettysburg address, different papers written whether pre-revolutionary or from the Civil Rights era all throughout. And it's pretty darn good music. I wrote down multiple pieces of music that we're just going to have

[00:11:04] to integrate into Patriot Power Hour in the next iteration of our master block break. So that was super cool, James. It's kind of a tradition now. I remember tuning in often. So I just wanted to point that out. Future Dan. Yeah, awesome. Awesome.

[00:11:20] Let's do the news blitz right after this break, Ben. Deal, folks, we'll be right back. Stick with us, Patriot Power Hour.

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[00:14:05] We're live. Welcome to the News Blitz. Not as much news as other days. However, I will say a few of these articles are of a high grade. So let's get started. Record temperatures scorched the USA. From West Coast to East Coast and the Midwest. Some pretty hot temperatures.

[00:15:53] Also had a category one hurricane hit Texas. About two million people were without power at a certain time around the Houston area. I know a lot of them have their power back, but I know a lot don't. Going on to Liberty column.

[00:16:16] Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstates unstaffed drop boxes ahead of 2024 election. 10% of illegal aliens admit their registered to vote. A radio talk show host admits that the president's reelection campaign sent them questions for their interviews. One of the talk show hosts was fired.

[00:16:43] We do have a 75th anniversary of NATO and a NATO summit going on in DC, but not much in the news kind of of new information. Some Patriot batteries have been pledged in addition to what's already been sent over. And economically quite quiet.

[00:17:04] Dow Jones is just over 40,000 essentially all time high. S&P about 5700 also close to an all time high. The NASDAQ also near an all time high. So stocks at an all time high debt at an all time high. Oil not at all time high.

[00:17:24] 82 bucks and holding not, not horrible for this time of the year. And given the other inflation we've experienced, Bitcoin has taken a bit of a thrashing in the last week down from about 63 K to about 57 K. Always pretty volatile.

[00:17:47] Golden silver on the other hand, relatively flat silver, just under 31 bucks. And really that's about all we got right now, future day economically or otherwise that's the news blitz. Yeah. And the search continues on the same standard as sure people, same sources, same frequency.

[00:18:09] And I'm not hunting for news that's, you know, on the edge of trivial, like marginally related. I'm not looking for headlines or news articles rehashing things that we already knew just, just reformulating something for people that might not have seen it before.

[00:18:28] And it seems like a new shock headline, but you get into the details and all the events that it's reporting on were reported by another source months earlier, none of that. So I'll try to call the balls and strikes as I see them. It's a relatively quiet again.

[00:18:45] And we're headed towards the potential of four years with a president that all hell will break loose and Washington DC, but again, Trump could just roll back a lot of bad things in the country. And so we could see improvement.

[00:18:59] So it's not necessarily a foreboding summer of 24, 24 from my perspective. I think that just means it's a good time to prep and maybe enjoy some life before any potential collapse. Just, I know for a fact, this fall is not going to be as quiet as it is now.

[00:19:20] So I'm taking advantage of that myself, getting some things done and just preparing myself mentally, physically, spiritually, otherwise. Here's the, you know, the articles I want to jump into first. I'm not going to go on a ramp, but I could.

[00:19:37] I think I know you know, and I think a lot of the listeners that have listened for a while know that I'm fairly libertarian and I don't like following government rules and regulations. I'm not a fan of show me your papers, please. But gosh darn it.

[00:19:55] One of the only times you do need to, in my opinion, and really fact, show your papers is when you're voting. Like there's so many times where I as a citizen get a pat down or have to go through different hoops, whether it's with the IRS or

[00:20:13] the DMV or all of these different things where I have to show my birth certificate. I have to do this. I have to pay a fee, all this stuff. But 10% of illegal aliens admitted in their register to vote. Unstaffed drop boxes.

[00:20:27] I mean, the mail-in ballots never should have happened anyway. Maybe for, you know, for deployed soldiers, that's about and related kind of people working overseas. Maybe some mail-in, but I don't know. Long story short, this is pathetic that illegal aliens are able to vote without showing their ID.

[00:20:49] But me as a citizen, I get totally raked over the coals if I don't have my proper paperwork and taxes of paid on time and all that. What's your take on 10% of illegal aliens admitting their registered to vote?

[00:21:04] I bet many others would not admit it or don't even know that they're being registered on their behalf by others, probably. What do you think? Yeah, I think it's all true. I think it's widespread. I think it's a deliberate globalist strategy against the West.

[00:21:19] I think it's obvious for everybody. So what are we going to do about it? Because as soon as these people get social security cards, even if they're not a full-on citizen, we're never going to be able to deport them.

[00:21:30] I don't think we're going to be able to round up 20 million people and deport them anyway. That sounds pretty bad. Authoritarian. On the other hand, we can't just let everyone stay and let everyone keep coming. What do you think is the solution if there is one?

[00:21:45] Well, you don't have to deport them all to get many to leave. Right? The threat of it alone would create a massive self-deportation. Right. You've got to incentivize them to leave in many different ways. I'm not looking so like the left would say, oh, Ben, the

[00:22:09] breaker bankers wants death squads to go house to house and drag out 20 million illegal aliens by their hair or execute them if they won't comply. That's totally not what I mean. But we need something reasonable and it needs to be done now.

[00:22:23] And I think the most important is at least close off the borders or highly, highly, highly restricted. At least stop the flow, stop the bleeding, and then we can start dealing with what's going on. But what do I know?

[00:22:34] Well, think about the leverage that the state being the government or government's layers that you live under. The whole state applies against you. You just listed them a minute ago. Every single one of those can be applied more easily against people who aren't documented and are illegally here.

[00:22:59] Right? Tax policy, licensing, all of that. The opportunity to come here and make a very large income relatively because you're not paying taxes is easy to shut down. We know that the IRS can come after people. It all depends on who they're ordered to focus on, right? Certainly.

[00:23:25] A lot of it's the businesses that employ them illegally. That's a big part of the route you got to dig out, too. There's a lot of companies, big, small and medium that do their absolute best to pay these folks under the table so they don't have

[00:23:40] to pay insurance or to pay taxes. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Don't have to pay overtime. So yeah. What about this Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstating unstaffed drop boxes? Is that even? Will that be challenged at the Supreme Court or maybe it is

[00:23:55] legitimate and I'm just whitewashing or don't fully understand what an unstaffed dropbox is, but what's up with that? Well, that goes to Dinesh D'Souza's. Two thousand mules. That's documentary from 2020, right? All the videotape of unstaffed drop boxes with the same people

[00:24:16] showing up dropping off five to six ballots, which is plausible if you had doing it for your family, I guess. And coming back every other day, every few days over and over getting dozens and dozens and dozens of ballots stuffed into unattended drop boxes.

[00:24:35] I don't know what Wisconsin state law allows. I don't know if there's a constitutional question. Obviously the Constitution allows states to organize their own federal elections, but there is federal election law. And I don't know the case, but it's clear that these types of

[00:24:55] things are what it comes down to deciding elections now, not democracy. So to say that Biden needs to win to preserve democracy is like the act of doing it is literally the opposite of democracy if you're stuffing ballots.

[00:25:15] So this was a four or three decision and actually reversed the Wisconsin Supreme Court's own 2022 prohibition on unmanned drop boxes. So 2020 happened, we know what happened there. 2022 they prohibited it, prohibited it. And in 2024 they said that four to three with a liberal majority on the court.

[00:25:38] What if we made a mistake? Quote, are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future? No, you fixed the mistake and now you're putting it back into place. So yeah, it's just, it's a tough go.

[00:25:53] It does seem at least some of the polling I've seen that Trump is kicking the crap out of Biden. Many points ahead of where he was in 2020 and many believe Trump won 2020. And even if you take the narrative mainstream result

[00:26:09] on his face, Trump was damn close to winning anyway. So the way it's trending right now, he's whooping Biden much more than 2020. So even some of these tricks and illegal voting may not be enough, I guess we'll find out sooner than later.

[00:26:26] Radio talk show hosts admit President's reelection campaigns, sent them questions for their interviews and one gets fired as a radio talk host, this talk show host yourself. Do you consider that unethical or just doing your homework? I consider it blatant news censorship.

[00:26:47] I consider it gerbil kind of censorship, like a regime of a fascist party controlling state media kind of censorship. So yeah, it's an ethical problem on a high order for me. Yeah, that's about as high as you can get gerbils himself. Godfather of propaganda. This was CNN.

[00:27:14] This is two radio talk show hosts said that President Joe Biden's reelection campaign sent them questions for their interviews with him last week. In the wake of his debate debacle, by the way, so this is after his debate, this is extra sensitive timing for the Biden campaign.

[00:27:35] And this is the source in Philadelphia. Telling CNN this, so it wasn't actually CNN employees doing this. They were reporting on this radio host, although we know that's CNN does stuff like this too. So it's kind of ironic. Almost eight years ago when Future Danger had just

[00:27:57] begun and we still had a YouTube channel during the I believe second debate. Between Clinton and Trump, there was footage of Hillary Clinton entering the debate complex and coming in parking, walking through the hallways. And there's a guy, an aide, following along with her.

[00:28:21] And then after the debate, the same guy crossed the stage and did something to interact with Lester Holt in a suspicious way. Almost as if he was trying to return the questions that Lester Holt had written and also shared with

[00:28:43] him so that he could share them with Hillary. So just prepping the questions thing, the Bidens did not invent it, but it is Soviet style non-transparent, just the anathema to our democracy, which is a very important part of the system. Our democracy always was.

[00:29:03] I won't go too deep into conspiracy theories, but I believe it was Patrick Ewing who was the first round pick in the NBA. Future Dan, you there? Future Dan, Future Dan. I am back now, yes. Also no problem. I was just going down a little rabbit hole saying

[00:29:32] it's a well-known part of NBA lore that there was a cold envelope during the lottery pick. And it's like the biggest thing. They have entire documentaries about how they were fraudulent for a first round draft pick, blah, blah, blah in the NBA.

[00:29:49] That's not even one millionth as important as what we're talking about here, but people, some people care, but a lot of people either say, well, of course it's all already pre-approved. Maybe that's kind of where I fall into, but a lot

[00:30:04] of others don't even really care at all. They're like, that's not even a problem or, you know, they're not even paying attention to this type of stuff. Yeah, well one way to look at the world right now is there's like three kinds of Americans,

[00:30:18] those patriots that stand against this. There's Democrats who do this and then there's more Democrats that often pretend like they're not Democrats that let it happen. That's my view. They might be the worst ones because they're not even trying hard. Yeah, I mean they're not raping America,

[00:30:42] but they're standing by watching somebody do it. Yeah, they're not even playing for the bad guys. They're just too cowardly to pick sides, I suppose. Let's see here from a natural news point of view, did have Hurricane Barrel in Texas as well as some of these hot temperatures.

[00:31:00] I mean it is July and Houston has been hit by a lot of natural disasters in the past. I don't even think there's much that you or I could comment on more than, hey, these things happen, we'll continue to track them and if we see any

[00:31:15] trends we'll certainly point them out, but hurricanes happen, 100 plus degree weather happens. It's a little early in the year for both, but nothing too crazy. What do you say? Well, it's topical, right? Grade one, green fatalities, 12 in Texas is not to be

[00:31:34] unexpected from any hurricane hit in the country, right? Populated areas. That's not a radically dangerous death toll, right? Wouldn't unstabilize a region like Katrina did. The part about Hurricane Barrel that has me kind of scratch my head and I read this in Twitter

[00:31:55] from an account that has good points. I take the points from that account seriously. Ask in the question how the forecast for that thing was to hit Mexico, well south of Texas, or much longer than you would have thought the national hurricane forecast would have had it wrong.

[00:32:19] So I don't know if Barrel is an example of a natural occurrence that just juke out the forecasting models, but it makes you question how off that was. And would anybody benefit from a natural disaster in Texas this time of year? This year? Of course.

[00:32:41] I think it was like, it was a distraction a little bit from the complete devastation of Biden's campaign. You know, I don't know. We've talked a little bit about weather manipulation, geoengineering on this show and there are documented patents and even programs admitted to exist.

[00:33:05] Does that mean that Hurricane Barrel was steered? Not necessarily, but they've even going back to the Vietnam War they admitted they could move, start, or stop major storm systems if they needed to flood out the Ho Chi

[00:33:21] man trail in a certain area at a certain time they could cloud seed for example. So that was 50 years ago. So they would have the ability to do it, but did they do it for Barrel? I don't know. But I think the closer we get to the election,

[00:33:37] the more they got a reason to make things chaotic, perhaps, but I guess there's the argument that they want to keep things calm if they really want Biden to win because if things get chaotic, it might look bad for him.

[00:33:46] Every exotic form of weaponry was tried during the Cold War. On the very principle that if the Soviets were trying it too and succeeded, we'd have to know how. So clearly that happened in Vietnam. I don't think it's true to say it succeeded.

[00:34:05] I'm not sure they you know there's any evidence that they succeeded in flooding out the Ho Chi man trail in any effective way militarily. And I'm not certain that steering of hurricanes is anywhere near the possible within the possible realm of human

[00:34:20] technology, no matter how secret it is. But suppressing the real forecast that's headed to Texas and putting out there disinformation that the forecast was going somewhere else, thus leaving a U.S. state unprepared like it otherwise ought to be, that's not outside of the realm of possibility

[00:34:44] when we cover the new censorship stories. Right. I mean the White House essentially is exposed feeding questions to the press and only talking to the press that will allow Biden to ape back whatever part of the answer he can remember. I think you know that's a great point.

[00:35:11] When you use Occam's razor the simplest answer is probably the right one. It would be a lot more simple for them to change the forecast or manipulate what NOAA gives as the official forecast and a few other maybe universities that are highly

[00:35:28] controlled could be a little easier than actually moving the storm itself. So something to consider. I will say there's a lot of random things happening in this world and even with 90% certainty there's always that 10% something crazy could happen.

[00:35:45] So it's tough to pin it for sure in my opinion. Which is the space and information operations that's most effective to achieve results, right? And the people we're up against know that better than anybody. Great point for sure. Going to say it better.

[00:36:05] I mean we've pretty much hit every article today. No reason to belabor the point where there are any other items you wanted to talk about either on this dashboard or otherwise. Well you did kick out the idea of discussing Frozen Tons of NATO before the show.

[00:36:25] Yes it is the 75th anniversary of NATO. They had a big meeting yesterday. I don't know if it continued today but it was definitely yesterday and maybe even started on Monday in DC. Big leaders were there, Biden spoke.

[00:36:42] Hey if I had to choose NATO or the Ruskies I would probably be picking NATO every time. But I just wanted to ask you maybe from a historical point of view could explain a little of the history of NATO and also in your opinion is NATO still relevant?

[00:37:02] Is it irrelevant? Is it more relevant than ever compared to your historical review of the last 75 years I guess? It's more relevant now or since Putin invaded Ukraine than any time before since the end of the Cold War.

[00:37:22] Then obviously during the Cold War it was the Warsaw Pact. Not just Soviet Union which was a union of later independent countries. Ukraine being one of them of course which is part of why there's a war there now. But other countries Poland, Romania, Hungary,

[00:37:41] Warsaw Pact versus the NATO alliance. And NATO alliance was formed by a treaty ratified by the Senate so it's law. It's not an option to just not follow it. If someone did that including Trump just ignored the NATO treaty's basic requirements

[00:38:09] that would definitely herald in the collapse of an entire world order. So NATO is right up there, one of the strongest international organizations that exist or ever has and I don't see it going anywhere. All those questions you asked, is it relevant? What does it do?

[00:38:28] What is it for? That's what was being asked from it from 1991 until Obama's term really. And if it survived that period where had the least amount of relevance he would think then like you said after Ukraine was invaded

[00:38:48] it's probably more relevant than ever to practical sense or at least since like you said early 90s or late 80s. Well it never made sense to abolish it right? You could just fund it or defund it at whatever level you could get away with

[00:39:06] which is what the Europeans were doing right? They were just pre-riding on our military strength and that was the whole thing about Trump is making them pay their fair share. Interestingly I think in recent days some officials in NATO have said that the 2% minimum

[00:39:24] GDP percent of your GDP in contributions to NATO or at least your internal defense spending at 2% of your GDP to meet the NATO minimum. We got officials now in NATO saying that's not an option anymore and they're not

[00:39:43] saying that to United States of America we're always above that number by a lot but almost none of Europe had been until now. The that was always something that annoyed me a bit on let's just say social media or otherwise

[00:40:01] where Europeans be bragging about all their their great government benefits and obviously they're paying hell of a lot under taxes and a true American doesn't even really want many government benefits anyway.

[00:40:16] Part of being independent but I always thought the back of my mind yeah well that's because we spend so many billions of dollars to keep your ass safe so we don't have to go save you for the third time in the last hundred years in a world war.

[00:40:31] I actually have a couple friends that are European, one's German, one's British maybe he wouldn't like me calling him European. But anyway long story short I think NATO has an important role especially Article 5 which is if

[00:40:49] you attack any of us then we all attack you back but one thing I really am not fond of is not only just adding more countries which they've done recently but potentially add in Ukraine.

[00:41:02] A lot of people are pushing for Ukraine to get added to NATO a lot of people are like no that is just like way too much of a red line. Do you think they're actually going to try or even be

[00:41:11] successful adding Ukraine to NATO because that would be a whole new thing? No I don't but what you're highlighting really is one of those loopholes in constitutional law that clearly Soros funded think tanks go going back to the 60s honestly with people just to have

[00:41:32] a fetish for disrupting and undoing American constitutional order just I mean that's their number one goal right and it's definitely the goal of at least the 20% hardcore Democrat voter in this country is to absolutely ignore and wipe out constitutional order. One of the

[00:41:53] ways to do it is expose issues with it like if you ratify a treaty that has a set number of states and then the next president's administration can agree with the rest of the members of NATO to

[00:42:11] add more members and that never gets brought back to the Senate for ratification. I don't think that people that signed it envisioned that right it's an oversight but it's entirely legal because they didn't prevent it when the Senate passed ratified the treaty originally so now

[00:42:31] you do we have this problem because our forefathers didn't have the foresight to anticipate this kind of you know type of it's a type of constitutional crisis. I'm looking this is actually wow a lot bigger disparity than I even thought and this is after

[00:42:53] Trump tried to get some of these countries to pay their fair share or increase their percentage NATO defense expenditure so this is 2021 a couple you know a few years old couple years old

[00:43:07] but again Trump was already out of office at that point so anything he did to improve it is baked in here we go the United States 811 billion so 811 billion 811 billion dollars to NATO 3.5 percent of our GDP you mentioned the 2% GDP standard we're at you know 3.5 percent so much

[00:43:34] higher but at the raw numbers 800 all right go ahead that's not too NATO that's our military spending which constitutes our contribution to to our commitment to NATO right we don't give it to some international organization we spend on our military I'd question how that's measured is

[00:43:55] that measuring the entire military budget I'm not sure about that right and of course if you're going to do the math fairly you'd only count basically European command and the forces that are you know

[00:44:07] allocated to European command for our contribution to NATO. Yes as some of the masters of finance I did a horrible job reading the data set that is total defense budget 811 billion right and find the amount contributed and you know the value of the units man and material

[00:44:28] by country to NATO I don't know if I'm able to find that not on the fly but that's a great point but if you look at who the free riders are historically on that basis you got to look

[00:44:40] at the other members of NATO that you know actually do you know have military commitments outside of Europe so not all of them do right but Britain and France definitely do and and so you know their GDP or their total military budget spending is going to be a

[00:45:03] you know a tiny fraction of the things that they're always side by side with us you know when it comes to sailing the Strait of Taiwan or working you know working to suppress piracy

[00:45:16] off of Somalia whatever it may be but you know it's almost always token representation compared to you know that the US fleet doing that the uh don't want to go too deep into it running out of time

[00:45:32] my dogs are barking and also this is a tough visual to describe only in words but who really sticks out to me is not carrying their fair share is Luxembourg 474 million dollar that's less than half of 1% Luxembourg is one of the richest countries

[00:45:54] per square foot in the entire world highest GDP per capita they're barely contributing to GDP even though they're right in the middle of uh of Europe I think we need to get Luxembourg

[00:46:08] quadruple their their NATO and that still would be nothing but a drop in the bucket so anyway the US has you know you put all the NATO members together all their military budgets together

[00:46:21] and the US is at least six times larger than all of them combined in overall military spending so here's a question for you then is NATO even needed I mean or is this just a little bit of

[00:46:31] a formality but NATO is really just the US I think you've almost said that before like it's pretty much the US but it is a good way to facilitate help with our allies

[00:46:41] well we always have the commander of NATO he's never gonna be a European commander or NATO with American forces under his or her command so we always command the military of NATO when member states decide to do a coalition operation together you know it hadn't happened since World

[00:47:00] War II in any major way I shouldn't say that though because covertly all those staffs are working the ISR and the and the supply of weapons and the training to Ukraine so honestly NATO is you

[00:47:14] know on a military level is cooperating at a tighter level in active war than you know at any time since its founding well they seem to be working towards becoming a more cohesive

[00:47:29] unit and they got a lot of supplies that they're putting through to to Ukraine in the eastern front so working together with our allies to help now provide well one thing that was you know

[00:47:45] attempted at times and talked about a lot was a European military force under the European Union outside of NATO possibly even to replace NATO to stay outside of you know the control and

[00:47:59] demands of the United States watch out because people might start talking about that if Trump comes in and and you know negotiate a peace in peace in Ukraine there's a lot of people in Europe that

[00:48:12] might say all right we're gonna we're gonna have our own military that's a unified federated you know cohesive European force and all I could say is good luck with that because it's

[00:48:23] never happened in the history of Europe and I don't think it ever will nah I don't think so either can only happen with the United States at the head of the table because essentially we

[00:48:32] reconquered Europe from the Nazis all right that's all I got yeah well there you go good point the better half maybe but what do you have else to share for the tonight are you done yeah I'm gonna enjoy a summer thunderstorm which is going to interrupt this podcast

[00:48:53] right about now but it was a good one and I'll be back on for episode 270 next week with you breaker of answers absolutely man another great show folks I'm gonna play a couple ads please support

[00:49:06] pbn please support all the hosts all the shows a lot of great content on pb and another shout out to interpret commander james walton really cool fourth of july need to definitely do that more often

[00:49:20] and maybe we can I don't know maybe a veteran's day or memorial day equivalent would be cool to anyway future dan i'll talk to you next week all right good show ben good show

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