'They Would Like Me Dead': Glenn Talks With Key Russia Witness Dems Blocked From Testifying

Today on radio, Glenn introduced someone that many have likely never heard of --- Bill Browder.

"He is a really important player in everything that is going on in Russia," Glenn said.

If you've heard of the Magnitsky Act --- sanctions imposed on Russia during the Obama administration --- Browder is the man that made it happen.

Sergey Magnitsky was Browder's lawyer. He was beaten, tortured and killed in a Russian prison for exposing a vast, $230 million government corruption scheme.

Wednesday, Senate Democrats blocked Browder from testifying during the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation into the Russian's meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

"Senate Democrats blocked his testimony by invoking the two-hour rule --- which is rarely, rarely used --- to protest the Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. Was that really why they used that, or was it because they wanted to block his testimony on Fusion GPS, the company that produced the Trump dossier and was also hired by one of the Democrat's biggest supporters?" Glenn asked.

Glenn and Browder engaged in a lengthy, two-part discussion surrounding the fascinating --- and troubling --- details. After learning that at least seven people related to the Magnitsky case are now dead, Glenn asked Browder one question: "The people around you are dying, and you're continuing. Have you made peace with this?"

GLENN: Our guest Bill Browder is the man responsible for spearheading the Magnitsky Act. Magnitsky was Browder's lawyer, and the two of them uncovered a $230 million corruption scheme involving Russian government officials. Magnitsky was jailed, tortured, murdered in prison. Browder vowed to get justice. The Magnitsky Act was his initiative, and it became the sanctions package on Russia that punishes the oligarchs. This kicked off a geopolitical shock wave. But there's a lot more than just this.

Wednesday, the senate judiciary committee in the Russian investigation into U.S. election medaling, the senate Democrats blocked his testimony by invoking the two-hour rule, which is rarely, rarely used to protest the Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. Was that really why they used that? Or was it because they wanted to block his testimony on Fusion GPS, that is the company that produced the Trump dossier but was also the same company that had been hired by one of the biggest Democratic supporters as well. Welcome to the program, Bill Browder. How are you, sir?

BILL: I'm doing really well. Great to be here.

GLENN: Thank you. It's nice to talk to you, and I appreciated your testimony in front of Congress, the way you constant responded, "I can't think for Donald Trump or his team. I don't know. What I do know is how Russia think so." And I appreciated the fact that even as a guy who doesn't support Donald Trump, that you were not going in for political heads. So thank you for that.

BILL: It's my duty in this situation just to try to get to the truth about what Russia's up to and what Putin's up to, which is something that affects -- is a totally nonpartisan issue when it comes to Russia.

GLENN: So listening to your testimony, I believe -- we've been doing a lot of homework, and I've been working on Russia things and trying to expose my audience to what Russia is doing for the last probably three or four years. And I warned way before this election that Vladimir Putin and his minions were trying to cause chaos in the entire western world. And they'll play all sides. They don't care. They just want chaos and a destruction of what they call the -- what is it? The people of the sea. The Atlantic states. The NATO states.

BILL: Right.

GLENN: I believe, and I would like to start here. I believe not knowing truly what happened in that meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. and everybody else, that they may have wanted dirt and were probably told we've got all kinds of stuff on Hillary Clinton. But they could have gone in to a meeting and had Veselnitskaya, the Russian woman, just read nursery rhymes because Putin got what he wanted with that meeting, and that is doubts in people's minds on both Clinton, the Democrats, and the Republicans, and we're all fighting each other now. Do you think that's plausible?

BILL: Well, I think we might be reading a little bit too much into Putin's -- Putin is a great tactician. I wouldn't argue that he's a great strategist, and that sounds like a strategic -- a long-term strategic thing. And I do know a lot about what he's and thinking doing because I've been sort of at odds with him in a very serious way for the last eight years. I think that he -- and he's very blunt and kind of basic in terms of what he wants. And when that lady, Natalia Veselnitskaya went into that meeting, it's pretty clear what she went into that meeting for, which was she had something that was on the top of Vladimir Putin's agenda, which was getting rid of these sanctions, these asset freezing and visa-banning sanctions named after my lawyer Sergey Magnitsky. Putin really wanted to get rid of that, and they had a long and a wide campaign to do that. And I think that they spotted Donald Trump, he was the Republican nominee at that point. They hadn't done much with Obama and Obama hadn't done what they wanted. And they said. Okay. This guy is saying nice things. Let's go see if we can do something with these guys. And as you mention, I don't know what the Trump guys were thinking when they had that meeting, but I sure know what the Russians were thinking, which is here's something important to us that we want to do if your dad becomes the president.

GLENN: So tell me -- because I don't think people understand Russia and its level of corruption and how brutal it is. You know, we think, oh, well, you're dealing with some people but everybody's corrupt. Not like Russia. Can you give --

BILL: No. No.

GLENN: -- people an idea of what this means.

BILL: Well, let's just talk about this case that I've been involved with. So this is called the Magnitsky case. Sergey Magnitsky as you mentioned at the beginning was my lawyer. He uncovered this vast $230 million government corruption scheme, and he thought that -- and this was a scheme where a bumbling of government officials were altogether $230 million from their own country -- and Sergey thought this is wrong. This is my country. I don't want them stealing this money from my country. And as a good patriot and good citizen, he went to the law enforcement agency there, and he gave sworn testimony against the officials involved and waited for those officials to be arrested and prosecuted. But instead of those officials being arrested and prosecuted. He got arrested, they put him in jail and tortured him viciously and killed him, leaving a wife and two children. Now, I wish the story had stopped there in terms of the deaths. And then another guy comes forward after Sergey had been killed. His name is Alexander. Alexander was not a good guy. He was one of the bad guys in Russia who had fallen out with the other bad guys. He shows up in London fleeing Russia. And he says, listen, the people I used to work with, they're really bad guys. Here's the bank statements showing where they got the money.

And so we took that stuff to the Swiss prosecutor because the money was in Switzerland. The Swiss prosecutor froze the accounts and opened up a big money laundering investigation. And then all of a sudden this guy drops dead at the age of 44 in a suburb of London. And it has since been shown he had a poison in his stomach. And it goes on and on. There are seven people who are dead connected to this case.

GLENN: Why aren't you dead?

BILL: They would like me dead. They've threatened me. They've threatened me on a number of occasions. If they could get away with it, if they could kill me and get away with it, I would already be dead. The only thing stopping them is that they don't know exactly how they can get away with it.

GLENN: So you said something interesting in your testimony. I think it was Lindsey Graham who said, you know, Putin will do whatever he can to get away with. And you responded I think he'll do whatever he can or wants even if he can't get away with it. What do you mean by that?

BILL: Well, basically, the -- he kind of goes around the world doing whatever he wants. Look, he invaded Ukraine. It wasn't like -- he said it wasn't us, it's just a bunch of guys on vacation. Well, it turns out that it was them. They shot down a civilian aircraft, Malaysian aircraft going over Ukraine killing 298 civilians, and they said it wasn't us. It has been proven it was them.

GLENN: Wait, wait, wait, this is kind of new. Really?

PAT: Was it proven to be them?

GLENN: We knew that was speculation. It has been proven now since?

BILL: Yeah, everybody knows that it's them. It has all the evidence. Of course it's them. There's no question.

GLENN: Okay.

PAT: They still don't admit it, right? Just all the evidence points to them.

BILL: Yeah, the Russians deny . . . they say we didn't invade Ukraine, we didn't shoot down that plane. We're not bombing civilians in Syria.

GLENN: Oh, that plane. Yes, you're exactly right. Correct. Correct.

BILL: There's two Malaysian planes, the one going from Amsterdam shot down over Ukraine, 298 people, 200 of them were Dutch. And these Dutch people, this is the Dutch equivalent of September 11th in terms of the number of people killed per capita by a terrorist. Putin did that. No question.

GLENN: So how are you feeling about the -- about how the right played footsie a little bit with Putin and then the left is now playing footsie with Putin -- or was the left and now the right. And I'm talking about the people. The right is now starting to say "Oh, no, Putin's not so bad. He's just like us. And, yeah, he has some problems." It's a different category entirely. How do you respond to the American people?

BILL: It's shocking anybody -- anyone who believes that Putin is a normal human being. This man is a cold-blooded killer. I've seen it with my own eyes, and it goes on and on and on. And it's just ignorance. I mean, anybody who thinks that somehow we have in any shared situation with him, any shared values, any shared interests is just misinformation. It's wrong. It's just -- and, you know, part of my goal is to try to inform people. I'm glad you're giving me this opportunity to tell the story on your show because people who take that view just do not have the information, and they need to have that information.

GLENN: So I want to get in a little bit to Fusion GPS. These are the people that came out, and they were the ones that produce the dossier on Donald Trump and the golden showers and all of that stuff. It's a really bad organization and both sides of the aisle in America are dealing with these people. And I don't understand it, and I would like you to try to -- if you can -- take us through a little bit of that when we come back.

[break]

GLENN: Bill Browder is with us, lives in London, if I'm not mistaken, Bill.

BILL: Yep.

GLENN: Let me start here with you, Bill. Fusion GPS. This is the organization that apparently had a dossier on Donald Trump, you know, the whole golden shower thing. All of that crap. It has been apparently, you know, debunked and said most of it is not real. I want to not focus on the dossier, but I want to focus on Fusion GPS. Are they a -- are they an arm of the Russian government?

BILL: Well, I'm not sure who's arm they are of, but I have my own experience with Fusion GPS. When they were hired by the Russian government or I should say by a Russian government official to basically run a disinformation campaign against the Magnitsky Act and against me in Washington. They were effectively going out last year, a guy named Glenn Simpson, who is the founder of GPS, he was running around meeting with and discussing with journalists trying to get them to write stories to say that Sergey Magnitsky, my lawyer, had not been murdered. That he died of natural causes. Glenn Simpson was trying to get the journalists to write Vladimir Putin's part of the story to white wash what the Russian government had done, being paid for by the Russian government.

GLENN: So who are they, exactly? Fusion GPS.

BILL: Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch are both Wall Street Journal reporters. They left -- I don't know a few years back. Set up this firm called Fusion GPS. They call it opposition research, which sounds sort of legitimate. You know, researching people's backgrounds. But what I saw them doing to me, and I'm not the only victim of this, is that they were effectively doing . . .

GLENN: Disinformation.

BILL: Disinformation, smear campaigning, spreading false information to try to cast doubt on me and on Sergey Magnitsky, and I'm not the only one. There's another human rights activist from Latin America named Thor Halvorssen, and Thor was trying to expose corruption in Venezuela. And these people were -- Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson -- were hired by the Venezuelan oligarchs to smear Thor and his human activist colleagues.

GLENN: So if they are acting on behalf of Venezuela oligarchs and Russia and Putin, why aren't they registered under the foreign agent registration act?

BILL: Well, that was my question as well. I had the exact same question. After they ran this campaign last spring and summer, I went and checked into the database to see if they had registered and any other people. Because it wasn't just them. It was a whole team of people hired by Russians, lots of Americans involved, and none of them had registered. So I wrote a -- and just so you understand, you're required to register under the law there's something called the Foreign Agent Registration Act. It was put in place to prevent Nazi propaganda from being spread in America during the Second World War. It's very important, and these guys hadn't registered. So I wrote a criminal complaint to the counterintelligence division of the Department of Justice saying that these people didn't comply with FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. I filed it in the summer of last year and as far as I could tell, there doesn't seem to be any big investigation going on, and so --

GLENN: But here's -- so here's the question, though. I mean, we have the Democrats supporting -- you know, paying into Fusion, the biggest Democratic supporter paying into Fusion. We have the FBI hiring GPS fusion. I mean, do -- I mean, you can't tell me that the FBI isn't aware of who these people are. What's -- I tell you what, I have to take a break, and I don't want to cut you off in the middle of that. I'm sorry. I lost track of the clock. Hold onto that answer and give it to me fully. And then we go into what you think happened in that office with Donald Trump, Jr., and especially Paul Manafort. He's the real troublesome character here.

[break]

GLENN: So the Magnitsky bill that we've heard a lot of talk of, most people don't know about it other than the sanctions against Russia, it passed 419-3.

STU: Well, it's the new Russia sanctions going. But still bipartisan.

GLENN: This is confirming that. It is bipartisan. The people in Congress, at least seem to know who Donald Trump is. At least they're acting like it. This all leads really to the heart of all of our governments and to chaos that I believe Russia is trying to sew all over the world. Let's go to the Fusion GPS, which is the company that came up with this dossier on Donald Trump. The FBI has used it, the Democrats have used it. I mean, do they know who these people are?

BILL: I would assume that they don't, just based on the fact that anyone engaging with them should certainly know the background of what they did, they tried to do with me and what they've tried to do with this other human rights activist Thor Halverson. These people are professional liars, essentially. I don't have any insight into the credibility of the Trump dossier. I understand that the people who he subcontracted is quite well regarded. But Glenn Simpson is a layer, he has gone out and lied on behalf of Putin and on behalf of some Venezuelan oligarchs, and that's to try to discredit human rights activists, and that's not a good thing.

GLENN: Okay. So let's go over -- because Donald Trump, Jr. finally admitted that, yes, he met with Natalia Veselnitskaya and others. First it was just her, they were talking adoption, then it came out it was more. First, let's start with her. Who is she?

BILL: So Natalia, this is the lady who showed up at Trump Tower, the Russian lawyer. She didn't go there on her own volition, on her own initiative. She went there being paid for and funded by a family in Russia. It's a family called the Katysv -- K-a-t-y-s-v. The Katysv family is headed by a man named Peter. He was the former transportation minister of the mosque region, which is the region the size of vice president. He's now the vice president in the second most important Russian-government owned company called Russian railways, and he's a very wealthy man. His family is very wealthy. And he's a senior member of the Putin regime. She was there in New York on his dime. He was paying for her time and effort. And she was there with one specific ask. And let's not mince words here. She was not talking about adoption. There's nothing -- her meeting had nothing to do with adoption.

GLENN: Yes.

BILL: It's a total red herring to be throwing out this adoption nonsense. She was there to talk about trying to repeal a piece of legislation, which is on the books in America, which punishes Russian torturers and murderers and makes sure that they can't use the American banking system and come to travel to America. That's what she was there to do, and that's what was -- she was there to ask the son of the possible future next president of the United States for that particular favor.

GLENN: Okay. We know this is true because of the documents that Donald Trump, Jr. himself was forced to release by The New York Times that they were more than eager to hear the dirt and to accept that the Russian government was for them. They got this, really, through a friend, the Agalarov his makes -- the way this is being spun is Donald Trump was a hapless dupe and Agalarov is not a bad guy and so what if he has some dealings with the Russian government that's not -- it's -- this is just a guy who's a businessman that Donald Trump knows. Is that true?

BILL: Well, you know, I don't know what was going on the side of the Trumps. I honestly don't. I mean, if anyone had done any even basic Google search on this woman, they would have found out that her main public claim to fame is representing the same family as they were being indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for money laundering in connection with the $230 million Magnitsky discovered. I mean, that's not a particularly good resume filler to get a meeting. And so either they didn't do a basic Google search, or they did and just decided to hold their nose when they had the meeting.

GLENN: Let me play devils advocate here with you. So what? I mean, John Adams, you know, was representing the British, and that's very unpopular. What is the problem with a defendant? Al Capone needed an attorney. What's the problem?

BILL: Well, there's no problem with him needing an attorney, but there's a problem if Al Capone had met with a presidential candidate saying, hey, could you get me off of my crimes, that would be a little bit of a different story.

GLENN: So tell me about Agalarov. Do you know anything about him?

BILL: I only know about him from what I read in the paper. He's another Russian oligarch that was friends with probably Mr. Katysv I have because these guys travel in packs, but I don't have any specific knowledge about him.

GLENN: Okay. So when that meeting happened -- I believe Paul Manafort was in that meeting, was he not?

BILL: He was there, yes.

GLENN: Paul Manafort is a guy who I've been trying to explain to our audience for quite some time is deeply in with the Russians. You want to give a little bit of background on him, and then what he had to have known about this meeting?

BILL: So Paul Manafort has a very dubious background. He's worked for a lot of dictates around the world. But the one that's most relevant to our conversation is that he was working for the -- this guy, his name is Victor Yanukovich who at one time was the president of Ukraine. And people often think of Ukraine and Russia being at war. He was the Russian's puppet in Ukraine. So he was Putin's guy in Ukraine. And effectively the reason Ukraine and Russia are at war now is because the Ukrainian people when they discovered how much money he stole from the country, they drove him out. He had to flea in the middle of the nature in a helicopter. And then the next day, they discovered his compound with, like, gold-plated caps and a garage with 120 classic cars and duck ponds and all sorts of crazy stuff. This guy was a total, absolute crook, Putin's crook, and he was boss of Paul Manafort and Paul Manafort's job was to keep him in power.

GLENN: So when the e-mails, which he was on the e-mail chain was going around, and a meeting was asked, and he saw Natalia Veselnitskaya, her name there and what they were going to talk about. Any doubt in your mind that Paul Manafort knew exactly what this meeting was, who was behind it, and that's a meeting that nobody in a presidential campaign should be having.

BILL: You know, it's -- you know, that's what it looks like on the surface, but I don't really want to get into defining his state of mind. I don't know what he was thinking or not thinking.

GLENN: Is there any way that he didn't know who the -- if he read the e-mails, that he didn't know that this was Russian government coming in?

BILL: Well, the e-mails suggested that, for sure. I mean -- so let's put it this way. If I had read the e-mails, I would have known that. But I don't know what he was thinking, and it would be wrong to put my own thoughts in his mind.

GLENN: You tracked a lot of this corruption here to the United States. And a lot of this money has come to the United States. Do the companies here in the U.S., are they aware of what's going on? The FBI, DOJ, anywhere in the U.S. government? Anywhere anybody doing anything about the massive money laundering that's going on with the Russians here with U.S. companies?

BILL: A tiny bit. I mean, we identified some of the money from the murder of Sergey Magnitsky, and we alerted the Justice Department, and they opened up a very big criminal case that had a lot of lawyers working on it, and it eventually settled for $6 million. But it was a tough and strong team from the DOJ. Having said that, let me answer the question more broadly, which is that effectively Russia and a lot of other crooks and kleptocrats were getting away with murder as far as financial flows in the United States go and other countries as well. I mean, I would say that 99.9 percent of dirty money goes to where it's intended to go without being disrupted in any way.

GLENN: Years ago, I was on CNN, and I did an interview after -- I can't remember his name, he was killed by Putin in England, they gave him some polonium, what is it 212 or 220, whatever it is --

BILL: Litvinenko was his name.

GLENN: Yes, thank you, and I was talking to a guy who was here in the United States. He was also a guy Putin was after, and he gave me a long list of all the people who have been killed around. And about six months later, he was -- I think he died in a car accident, and I've always wondered if that was Putin or if that was a car accident. The people around you are dying, and you're continuing. Have you made peace with this?

BILL: Have I made peace with -- well, I mean, you know, basically, my psychology is that Sergey Magnitsky, who was my lawyer, was in a much graver danger, much more tenuous situation, and he never sacrificed his integrity, and he fought for truth and justice and for loyalty to me, and he died doing that, and I'm -- I may be in danger, but I'm in a much safer situation.

GLENN: You have the -- do you have the 24 security and -- I mean, have you ever seen any direct attempt coming your way or threat coming your way?

BILL: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. In a lot of different ways and threats are coming my way on a regular basis. I mean, the prime minister of Russia at the World Economic Forum in Davos was asked by a number of prominent journalists what do you have to say about the Magnitsky case? And he said it's too bad that Sergey Magnitsky is dead and Bill Browder is still alive and running around. And that's the prime minister of Russia saying that.

GLENN: Wow. Bill, we will add you to our prayers. And I appreciate the way you have handled yourself in front of Congress and here, not wanting to just get involved in the politics. I've given you a couple of opportunities, and you took me up on none of them, and I really appreciate that. Thank you for your integrity on this and your willingness to stand up in facing your own personal danger. Thank you so much, sir.

BILL: Thank you.

GLENN: You bet. Bye-bye. Bill Browder, he is the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management.

PAT: Seems like a stand up guy.

GLENN: He does. He's got a weird past. Very weird past.

PAT: Does he? I don't know much about his past.

STU: He announced his citizenship, right?

GLENN: He announced his American citizenship.

PAT: Oh, why? That would have been an interesting question.

GLENN: I would like to have him on again, and we'll ask him that. But I would like to know that. He's also at one point, I think he was a communist, wasn't he?

STU: His grandfather was.

GLENN: Yeah, that's right. His grandfather was a communist. The head of the party, actually.

PAT: Jeez.

GLENN: So he's got a very different -- now to be the head of a capital fund, a hedge fund is really quite interesting. He's got quite a life story to tell. And this is just another turn in it. But we have much more. This actually full disclosure to you, this is actually just some research that we're doing on a much larger story that we hope to have finished by the middle of September and be able to put all of this together on a massive chalkboard, so you can understand all of the pieces of the Russia story. Because I am totally convinced it doesn't matter who was elected. Anyone who is willing -- and both Clinton and the Trump family both willing to play footsies with the Russians -- it doesn't matter. If Donald Trump would have lost, Hillary Clinton would have been here, and we would have had the same kind of conversation that we're having now, and we all just would have switched chairs. We all would have been saying this has to be investigated. This is treason. We would have been saying it because Donald Trump won, they're saying it. We need to find a way to come to the truth where we're both sides saying the same thing. And the first thing you have to get to is Putin is evil. He is a stone-cold killer, and he is trying to cause chaos in the West and correct what he says is the biggest mistake in 20th century history and bring back the Soviet empire.

Trump's Zelenskyy deal falls apart: What happened and what's next?

SAUL LOEB / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump offered Zelenskyy a deal he couldn’t refuse—but Zelenskyy rejected it outright.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington to sign a historic agreement aimed at ending the brutal war ravaging Ukraine. Joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump met with Zelenskyy and the press before the leaders were set to retreat behind closed doors to finalize the deal. Acting as a gracious host, Trump opened the meeting by praising Zelenskyy and the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed agreement, emphasizing its benefits—such as access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals for the U.S.—and publicly pledged continued American aid in exchange.

Zelenskyy, however, didn’t share Trump’s optimism. Throughout the meeting, he interrupted repeatedly and openly criticized both Trump and Vance in front of reporters. Tensions escalated until Vance, visibly frustrated, fired back. The exchange turned the meeting hostile, and by its conclusion, Trump withdrew his offer. Rather than staying in Washington to resolve the conflict, Zelenskyy promptly left for Europe to seek support from the European Union.

As Glenn pointed out, Trump had carefully crafted this deal to benefit all parties, including Russia. Zelenskyy’s rejection was a major misstep.

Trump's generous offer to Zelenskyy

Glenn took to his whiteboard—swapping out his usual chalkboard—to break down Trump’s remarkable deal for Zelenskyy. He explained how it aligned with several of Trump’s goals: cutting spending, advancing technology and AI, and restoring America’s position as the dominant world power without military action. The deal would have also benefited the EU by preventing another war, revitalizing their economy, and restoring Europe’s global relevance. Ukraine and Russia would have gained as well, with the war—already claiming over 250,000 lives—finally coming to an end.

The media has portrayed last week’s fiasco as an ambush orchestrated by Trump to humiliate Zelenskyy, but that’s far from the truth. Zelenskyy was only in Washington because he had already rejected the deal twice—first refusing Vice President Vance and then Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was Zelenskyy who insisted on traveling to America to sign the deal at the White House. If anyone set an ambush, it was him.

The EU can't help Ukraine

JUSTIN TALLIS / Contributor | Getty Images

After clashing with Trump and Vance, Zelenskyy wasted no time leaving D.C. The Ukrainian president should have stayed, apologized to Trump, and signed the deal. Given Trump’s enthusiasm and a later comment on Truth Social—where he wrote, “Zelenskyy can come back when he is ready for peace”—the deal could likely have been revived.

Meanwhile, in London, over a dozen European leaders, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, convened an emergency meeting dubbed the “coalition of the willing” to ensure peace in Ukraine. This coalition emerged as Europe’s response to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. By the meeting’s end, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a four-point plan to secure Ukrainian independence.

Zelenskyy, however, appears less than confident in the coalition’s plan. Recently, he has shifted his stance toward the U.S., apologizing to Trump and Vance and expressing gratitude for the generous military support America has already provided. Zelenskyy now says he wants to sign Trump’s deal and work under his leadership.

This is shaping up to be another Trump victory.

Glenn: No more money for the war machine, Senator McConnell

Tom Williams / Contributor | Getty Images

Senator McConnell, your call for more Pentagon spending is as tone-deaf as it is reckless. The United States already spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined — over $877 billion in 2023 alone, dwarfing China ($292 billion), Russia ($86 billion), and the entire EU’s collective defense budgets. And yet here you are, clamoring for more, as if throwing cash at an outdated war machine will somehow secure our future.

The world is changing, Senator, and your priorities are stuck in a bygone era.

Aircraft carriers — those floating behemoths you and the Pentagon so dearly love — are relics of the past. In the next real conflict, they’ll be as useless as horses were in World War I. Speaking of which, Europe entered that war with roughly 25 million horses; by 1918, fewer than 10 million remained, slaughtered by machine guns and artillery they couldn’t outrun.

That’s the fate awaiting your precious carriers against modern threats — sunk by hypersonic missiles or swarms of AI-driven drones before they can even launch a jet. The 1950s called, Senator — they want their war plans back.

The future isn’t in steel and jet fuel; it’s in artificial intelligence and artificial superintelligence. Every dollar spent on yesterday’s hardware is a dollar wasted in three years when AI upends everything we know about warfare. Worse, with the Pentagon’s track record, every dollar spent today could balloon into two or three dollars of inflation tomorrow, thanks to the House and Senate’s obscene spending spree.

We’re drowning in $34 trillion of national debt — 128% of GDP, a level unseen since World War II. Annual deficits hit $1.7 trillion in 2023, and interest payments alone are projected to top $1 trillion by 2026.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s a fiscal time bomb.

And yet you want to shovel more taxpayer money into a Pentagon that hasn’t passed a single audit in its history? Six attempts since 2018, six failures — trillions unaccounted for, waste so rampant that it defies comprehension. It’s irresponsible — bordering on criminal — to suggest more spending when the DOD can’t even count the cash it’s got.

The real threat isn’t just from abroad, though those dangers are profound. It’s from within. The call is coming from inside the house, Senator — and not just the House, but the Senate too. Your refusal to adapt is jeopardizing our security more than any foreign adversary.

Look at China’s drone shows — thousands of synchronized lights painting the sky. Now imagine those aren’t fireworks but weaponized drones, each one cheap, precise, and networked by AI. A single swarm could cripple our planes, ships, tanks, and troops before we fire a shot. Ukraine’s drone wars have already shown this reality: $500 drones taking out $10 million tanks. That’s the future staring us down, and we’re still polishing Cold War relics.

Freeze every bloated project.

Redirect everything — every dime, every mind — toward winning the AI/ASI race. That’s the only battlefield that matters. We’ve got enough stockpiles to handle any foreseeable war in the next three years and a president fighting to end conflicts, not start them. Your plea for more spending isn’t just misguided — it’s a betrayal of the American people sinking under debt and inflation while you chase ghosts of wars past.

Or is it even that senator? Perhaps I have buried the lede, but I am not sure if the following stats will help people understand why this op-ed might have been written by someone in your office.

Your state, Kentucky is:

  • 45th in GDP Per Capita
  • 44th in Employment
  • 42nd in High School Diplomas

And 11th in Defense-related defense contract spending

Who are you actually concerned about, Senator? The safety of the American people or your war machine buddies?

Thanks, but no thanks.

'MAD AS HELL': Here's what happened with the Epstein Files and what's next

Andrew Harnik / Staff, SAUL LOEB / Contributor, Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Jeffery Epstein's despicable low-life clients escape justice yet another day.

If you followed last week's commotion surrounding the release of the Epstein Files closely, you likely came away from the situation feeling frustrated and confused. Many anticipated the full release of Epstein's damning evidence, with names and details that would bring the hammer of justice down on those who indulged their wicked desires on that infamous island. Instead, we were dealt another disappointment, vexed once more by the swamp creatures Trump swore to destroy.

Many have turned their frustration towards the ensemble of new media representatives, including Glenn's friend and BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler, who was among those chosen to break the story. But don't shoot the messenger, if you take a moment to hear Wheeler's side of the story as Glenn did on radio, it's clear that the party at fault is the same enemy we've been fighting the whole time: the Deep State.

While Trump has won back-to-back victories during his first few weeks in office, he hasn't even been president for two months yet. It should come as no surprise that the swamp is still full of monsters, and they are starting to fight back. The events surrounding the release of the Epstein Filesprove there is still a lot of work left to do.

What happened?

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To fully understand last week's events, we need to go back to an interview Trump's new attorney general, Pam Bondi, did with Fox on Wednesday, February 26th. On the night of the 26th, Bondi sat down with Fox News host, Jesse Watters, where she first announced that the next day, Thursday the 27th, she would be releasing the long-awaited Epstein Files, and even made hints that the contents would be of interest, saying they would "make you sick."

The next morning, Liz Wheeler and other "new" media hosts were summoned to the White House, though they did not know why at the time. No mainstream reporters were present and Wheeler speculates that the purpose behind that was to deny them this story in retribution for Trump's poor coverage. Then Bondi and Kash Patel, the new director of the FBI, came in with the now-infamous binders, along with a letter Bondi had written to Patel and informed the reporters of the bad news. They told them that the binders contained what they had previously believed to be the full Epstein Files, until Bondi received information from a FBI whistleblower. This allegedly happened after her interview on Fox, and revealed that the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and the FBI had withheld large portions of the Epstein Files from both Bondi and Patel.

After this meeting, the reporters were let out of the White House where they were ambushed by the mainstream media. Believing that they were going to immediately break the news, the new media reporters smiled and waved, gloating their exclusive access to the story while their antiquated counterparts took photos. Then the new media reporters learned that the White House forbade them from breaking the news until 3:30 pm EST, to avoid Trump's conference with the UK Prime Minister from being focused solely on the Epstein Files story. This explains why Liz Wheeler and her fellow media representatives were silent for so long. It was a bait-and-switch that they never intended.

What did we learn?

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While initially this seems like a complete bust, there is new information we learned from this fiasco.

First, there was some new information in the binders, although a large portion of it was information we already knew. There was a copy of Epstein's Rolodex, essentially his contact list, which contained many of the same names we already knew had associated with Epstein in some capacity, though it's certainly not proof of any wrongdoing. The biggest reveal was a long list of known victims of Epstein and his degenerate client, although it was entirely redacted to protect the privacy of those on the list. This list was, allegedly, what Bondi was referring to on the Wednesday Fox interview, although Bondi's exact timeline is unclear and potentially suspicious.

The real takeaway from yesterday came from the letter Bondi sent Patel in response to the FBI leak. Not only did it prove our suspicions right, that this story is much deeper than we are being led to believe, but it reveals blatant betrayal within the government. The letter from Bondi orders Patel to knock some heads, get the real files, and compile a report highlighting who is hiding these files from Trump, Bondi, Patel, and the American people.

There are Deep State swamp creatures that are actively working against President Trump and his administration. Glenn likened this to aninternal Civil Warand encouraged Trump to take an axe to the whole system. We need to pull out this corruption root and stem.

What needs to happen next?

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The next step is learning what Kash Patel found when he started knocking heads. According to Bondi's letter, the full Epstein Files and Patel's report were due on her desk by 8:00 AM February the 28th. The American people need to know what he found and soon. We have waited long enough.

There also needs to be immediate and hard-hitting action taken against SDNY, the corrupt FBI agents, and whoever else seeks to undermine Trump's presidency. Really, this should not come as a surprise, Trump has been in office for less than two months. That is a very short time to completely uproot the Deep State which has been twisting its corruption around every branch of our government for the better part of a century.

This is the first major hiccup of Trump's second term, amid nearly two months of victory after victory, and if anything proves the validity of DOGE's work gutting the government. While we can't let this slide, now is not the time to abandon hope, now is the time to double down and demand answers.

DOGE's top 5 BIGGEST cuts

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President Trump has only been in office for a month, and already, he seems to have accomplished more than most presidents do in their entire careers.

Nothing defines Trump's first month more than the newly established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Equally controversial as it is popular, the department, headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has made it its mission to root out wasteful government spending. DOGE has already combed through a handful of agencies and eliminated billions of dollars of waste, and it doesn't show any signs of slowing down anytime soon.

DOGE is part of Trump's initiative to curb runaway government spending and to start to chip away at the Fed's crushing debt. At the time this article was written, U.S. debt sat at over $36 trillion, with an estimated $1.9 trillion a year federal budget deficit. According to the U.S. debt clock, Musk and the DOGE crew have already saved more than $136 billion, and that number only keeps growing.

To help track DOGE's progress, we've assembled a list of their top five biggest cuts:

1. USAID

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The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, has been hit with the some of largest cuts out of any government agency and will potentially even be shut down. This comes after Musk and his team revealed theabsurd things USAID was funding, including a transgender opera in Colombia. The total cut came out to approximately $6.5 billion.

2. Department of Education

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The Department of Education is another agency that faces extinction, much like USAID. The American school system has been found seriously lacking, with many students struggling to meet expectations despite the torrent of cash spent on education. Trump's new Secretary of Education pick, Linda McMahon, has sworn to turn the agency around and even oversee the closure of the department. DOGE has reportedly cut almost $1 billion in waste within the agency.

3. Institute of Educational Sciences

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The IES, or Institute of Educational Sciences, is tasked with tracking the academic progress of America's students and helping improve outcomes. The changes made by DOGE will not affect NAEP, also known as "The Nation's Report Card," and the College Scorecard, which tracks the spending, costs, and outcomes of universities. The agency was all but gutted by Musk's deep cuts, totaling $900 million.

4. Social Security Administration

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For years, we've speculated that the Social Security Administration was a colossal waste of resources, but after Elon Musk posted a screenshot from the SSA database showing that there was a significant number of people over the age of 100 that were still consideredalive by the agency, it seems our suspicions are proved true. It's no small wonder Musk was able to trim over $230 million from the SSA.

5. General Services Administration

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The GSA is the latest agency to be hit by the DOGE crew. The administration, which manages federal property and contracts, has started a massive "reduction in force" push, thinning the numbers of employees by a large margin. As of yet, upwards of $300 million have been cut by the once-bloated agency.