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This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a stunning and unprecedented statement to the world: he called the Ukraine war a proxy war.

Rubio’s statement makes him the highest ranking official to admit what has been happening in Ukraine since the start of this war. Adam Schiff said it: “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia over here.” Lindsey Graham said it: “As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.”

Now Rubio: “I’ve been very clear from the beginning that President Trump views this as a protracted stalemated conflict, and frankly it’s a proxy war between…the United States and Russia.”

The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris join the show this week to explain the history of the proxy war, the magnitude of this unprecedented statement, and why it could represent a major shift away from the last 30 years of US foreign policy.

“Since 2014,” Alexander explains, “[the CIA] has basically been controlling Ukraine's intelligence services and has even trained people who have taken part in the assassinations of rebel leaders in the Donbas. Admissions are slowly coming out about what has preceded all of this and what helped provoke Russia to invade.”

But Rubio’s statement could be more than an admission; it could be a policy shift. “It's just so unprecedented to get at this level. The secretary of state saying, ‘This is indeed a proxy war. It has to come to an end.’ I think Rubio knew exactly what he was doing. He made this extraordinary statement a few weeks ago that the unipolar moment is over, that the United States is one great power amongst several, that it must pursue its own interests, that the entire history period of American foreign policy has essentially come to an end. Which is a massive reversal of everything that the US has been saying it's been doing for the last thirty years.”

Subscribe to hear the full interview with Alex and Alexander on whether a proposed peace deal would actually be accepted by Russia, why there hasn’t been a single US lawmaker to oppose any military spending for Ukraine, and if the Trump administration’s peace messaging will extend to their policies in the Middle East.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Trump Attacks Trans Mice; MSNBC Attacks a Child

Thanks for supporting independent media. Subscribe for the full episode here:

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

Useful Idiots’ resident economist Yanis Varoufakis returns to the show this week to analyze Trump and Musk’s chainsaw cuts to Medicaid, USAID, and other government programs, answering the important question: is it actually bad for a government to run a deficit?

But before getting into the DOGE of it all, Varoufakis gives an economic explanation for how Trump reclaimed power, and whose fault it is.

“Donald Trump is the creation of the Democratic Party's spectacular, lamentable failures,” he says. “The first time he was elected, it was entirely due to Barack Obama. Barack Obama betrayed every single promise or principle that he put forward in 2008.”

And his reelection was a result of the same calculated missteps by the Dems. “The average American couldn't make ends meet. And yet the liberal establishment were saying you've never had it so good and you should celebrate the fact that we've had a recovery in the labor market and inflation. People couldn't make ends meet. And there was a Democratic establishment telling them that it was the best of all possible worlds. How dare you complain about your finances?”

Just as he did after Obama, Trump capitalized on this: “Trump comes again and says, I'm looking you in the eye and I can recognize your pain and I'm going to make you great. So he got elected as a result of very concerted efforts by the Democrats to lose.”

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But will Trump follow through on these promises to help the working class, or will the donors in Mar-a-Lago trump the voters?

“The Republicans,” Yanis explains, “are notorious for being exceptionally liberal when it comes to handing money to themselves, to their friends, to the financial and real estate community. They have no problem doing that. But they look at a single cent, nickel, or dime being spent on a poor person and they scream blue murder. Why? Because they are class warriors. They're in the business of conducting a vicious class war against the little people.”

But the even harsher reality, he says, is the reason it will be so challenging to fix any of these problems: “Unfortunately, the Democrats have been even more efficient class warriors than the Republicans.”

Subscribe for the full interview with Yanis Varoufakis where he explains this, plus why Amazon is “the wet dream of the Soviet Economic Planning Ministry,” how technofeudalism killed capitalism, and the real reason that Germany is so beholden to Israel (hint: it’s not Holocaust guilt like they say).

Catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Brian Stelter: Voters Who Want Peace Are Illiterate

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