The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on The Pro America Report. Great to be together. And it is a very interesting day. We’re going to talk about that in a moment, but also a tribute to Pat Buchanan, the great Pat Buchanan – incredible career and life he’s had and worth celebrating. I don’t think people talk about him very much. We’ll talk about him in a moment.
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So today there are lots of things we could continue to cover up in Washington, in the swamp, they’re getting ready to pass another debt ceiling increase, probably spend more money. There’s drama about whether the Democrats can pass the $2 trillion Build Back Brandon Boondoggle, all that stuff. China. There’s some follow up on the China boycott of the Olympics, diplomatic boycott so far. Other folks are joining me in saying it’s time to go ahead and boycott completely.
But what do you need to know today – I want to do a brief tribute to Pat Buchanan and in particular to his staying power. Now Pat Buchanan was a 20-something staffer for Richard Nixon in the 1960s, starting at about ’66, ’65. He went with him all the way to the White House, and then he went and was a writer. He was a TV host. He worked for Reagan. Then he came out and he ran for President twice.
And he was very successful and very consistent and with perseverance on his world view that might be described as America First before Trump sort of claimed that mantle on things like immigration, on things like not wanting to fight foreign wars. Pat Buchanan was always ahead of his time and therefore a little out of sync. And so when Trump went on a roll in ’15 and ’16 was elected, people said, wow, a lot of what Pat Buchanan was for…
Here’s what I wanted to mention: He’s been consistent, now he’s in his 80s. He’s consistent, like Phyllis Schlafly, continues to write. And his team, I forget right now the name of his assistant who sends out his essays. They go out in the middle of the night. So when I got up this morning, I opened my email after a few other things. It’s probably six in the morning, my time, and in the inbox from 2 hours earlier was Pat Buchanan’s most recent column.
And so here my first thing is a hat tip to Pat Buchanan. My second thing is stealing his teaching from the column this week, which is about the Ukraine. And basically he lays out what if you knew a little bit of history, you’d know, which is we formed NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, when we were worried about the Soviets after World War II, in the Cold War. And we aligned a bunch of pieces, nations, together to stand tall against the Soviets.
The nations in Europe needed us. But we also want to be together, and we pledged “We’ll all fight together. We all go down together. We all win together.” Buchanan’s column this week is talking about Ukraine and says the Europeans are trying to drag us, America, the only world power now that’s other than China and Russia. You know, Germany has a nice economy, but it’s not a world power.
So they want to drag us into signing up to defend Ukraine no matter what happens. Now, his point, Buchanan’s point, which I second, is that that’s from a different era when there was a Warsaw Pact, which was the Soviet version of NATO. And of course, they were under the thumb of the Soviets. It wasn’t like you had a choice. But you had Poland, and you had all the different Soviet satellite nations that were already held in. But when the Soviet Union fell, it required a reset.
And frankly and practically most of Europe did reset, so much so that the Germans have signed on to do the Nordstrom 2 pipeline because they want the Russian natural gas and energy supply. And that doesn’t exactly sound like you’re somebody you’re worried about being an enemy with. If you’re signing a multi trillion dollar over the decades, a deal.
So Buchanan’s point is simply this. And Biden and Putin met earlier today by phone call. Buchanan’s point is understand what our national security is. What our national security is is not to be drawn into a NATO that includes the Ukraine that has, that we have to defend. I’m not saying I want to see Russia overrun the Ukraine. I hope they don’t. But we cannot fight a war with a nuclear power over that.
And frankly, if you watch the neocons of the last 25 years, they made more trouble by destabilizing entities after the Cold War. I mean, at a certain point, we’ve got to let Europe be Europe, let Russia be Russia because we’re not at war with them. That Cold War is over. We won it. Now we’ve got to find ways to be allies.
So read Buchanan’s article. I think what you saw today was Putin basically saying to Biden and Biden agreeing, we’re not going to fight, go to war over this. Nobody needs this. And hopefully we’ll get there. But read Buchanan and recognize Buchanan, one of the great American figures, a lot like Phyllis Schlafly. His longevity and his output, writing wise and speaking wise, is extraordinary. And here’s the thing. He’s been right from the beginning. That’s one of his books, extraordinary man. So tribute, hat’s off, tribute to Pat Buchanan and follow his lead on the Ukraine. Read his column. I’ll put it up on social media. Excuse me.
We’ll be right back, it’s Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report, back in a moment.
