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A lot is happening in Ukraine this week, so we start there with our two guests: retired Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis and Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen.

After Russia launched its largest strike on Kyiv in a long time, peace talks between the two sides with the US as intermediary are stalled, with Trump appearing to blame Volodymyr Zelensky for the impasse.

Useful Idiots: What is your assessment of where we are in the Ukraine proxy war?

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis: We need to understand from the first point here that this war is already concluded. Ukraine lost, Russia won. That's the entry point that we have to start with because there's too many people in the West who still operate like there's a choice that can be made, that Trump can either press for a good outcome or he can quote ‘abandon Ukraine’ and give in to a bad outcome.

There isn't. There is no good deal here to be had. We can get an ugly peace deal right now or we can avoid that yet again and end up setting the stage for a Ukraine military outright defeat.

Useful Idiots: Meanwhile, you had these talks this week that were supposed to happen in London, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped out, saying that Ukraine is not ready to come to the table. And Volodymyr Zelensky is openly rejecting one of the key U.S. concessions so far, which was to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Glenn Diesen: I think it was a poor play by Zelensky, because this is Trump's hundred-day plan to finish off the war. The United States is preparing to walk away and wash its hands of this war if it can't get a peace deal, and the Russians are making real concessions, so obviously you want to at least appear to accommodate Trump's proposal. But Zelenskyy shut it down before the meeting even took place.

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Our chats with the two experts cover the history and future of the war in Ukraine, the “catastrophic” prediction they have for Trump’s China plans, and why the role of Deputy Director of National Intelligence was taken from Lt. Col. Davis at the last moment.

Davis: I actually was going to be the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, but that got sank. There were these voices: the Jewish Insider, Mark Levin, the ADL, spreading all kinds of stuff. That's a shame, because what that's telling you is that there is some external entity that has power over who gets to serve in the United States government at even the highest levels.

When you say, ‘We're going to follow one path here that harms another group of people writ large, not just Hamas but all of the Palestinian people, and if you don't hold that view, you're going to be prevented from serving in the United States government,’ something is desperately wrong and we need to get that fixed.

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Subscribe for the full interview with Lt. Col. Daniel Davis where he deep dives further into how the Israel lobby got his job rescinded, which president from the last 40 years he considers to be a strong leader, and some crazy China comments from Bari Weiss.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt Accidentally Celebrates College Protests

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With only a colorful graphic as evidence, Dana Bash and Jonathan Greenblatt announced on CNN that antisemitic incidents have increased by ten times since 2015. This, they admit with gleeful importance, is the stat they will use to justify the silencing of Palestinian voices in America.

Since Bash won’t tell us what those antisemitic incidents actually were, we go straight to the ADL’s audit and dissect what they found: according to the Anti Defamation League, the definition of antisemitism includes “activity at or surrounding anti-Israel protests” and any use of the phrase “from the river to the sea.” They report that 58% of the 9,354 incidents were “related to Israel or Zionism.”

Antisemitism is a real and dangerous thing, and when people like Bash and Greenblatt conflate it with anti-genocide protests, it waters down the severity of real anti-Jewish speech and gives the Trump Administration free course to arrest and deport nonviolent student protesters like Mahmoud Khalil.

When Bash brings up Khalil and the other students kidnapped by the State Department, Greenblatt answers that he supports the Trump Administrations actions. Bash has no further questions.

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Also in this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Secretary Pete Hegseth’s embarrassing second text leak, Republicans use the ‘states rights’ argument to justify cutting Medicaid, Jordan Peterson tells Joe Rogan that he no longer supports free speech, and Elizabeth Warren can barely keep a straight face while saying she didn’t notice Biden’s cognitive decline.

It’s a jam-packed week of media madness, which means it’s a jam-packed Thursday Throwdown. Watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here: