Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together today. We’ve got an interesting program.
In a few moments, I’ll speak with Peter W. Wood. Dr. Peter Wood is the head of the National Association of Scholars. Our conversation will be about higher education, what to do about it, and he has a great perspective on that, both as a longtime professor and a provost of the university and also as a scholarly critic of where we are. He wrote a book called 1620, which is sort of an idea by idea rebuttal, if that’s the right phrase, of the 1619 Project, which has gotten so much attention, obviously. So we’ll talk with him in a few moments and a lot more. A lot more, I think Ted Malloch’s on the plate, too.
So what to talk about today, what you need to know today, what’s the key takeaway from today? And I was buffeted. I was going to talk about this, the coach, the praying coach who was Supreme Court said, yeah, of course you can pray. Of course you can pray after a football game. You shouldn’t be able to be fired for that because you’re a praying coach. But, and that’s a great decision. That’s a real serious decision. I was thinking I would talk about the January 6 situation. The Select Committee is having another hearing. I guess they had a hearing. I haven’t watched much of it minute by minute. But I tell you, that hoax, that propaganda hoax is one of the most powerful things in American political life right now. It may or may not work in the long run. I don’t think the Russia Russia, Russia hoax worked the way they wanted. They wanted to take out Trump. But it did work in making, I don’t know, 20% or 30% of the country crazy, and it worked in making 80% of the country think there was something going on. And that’s what I think the Select Committee on the January 6 show trial is doing. But I backed off all that.
And what I want to talk to you about, what you need to know today is we’re watching the Lurching back from America First to America Last, or at least America of the world.
Joe Biden has been in Europe. He’s at the G7 meetings first, which is the industrialized nations, the biggest nations of Europe and others. And then he’s going over to the NATO meetings in Spain. I think the G7 meetings are in Bavaria in Germany somewhere in some picturesque little town with the Alps in the background. And then they go over to Spain, and there’s a new Socialist prime minister who’s going to host them there.
I love this. The Socialist prime minister of Spain.
They spend barely 1% of their GDP on a military defense, and everybody is supposed to in NATO spend 2%. So he said, Yeah, we’re going to get to that maybe in the next 20 or 25 years.
Do you remember when Donald Trump was saying, we’re going to make these guys pay their fair share, and he was getting them to pay their fair share? They were moving on that issue. That was just a few years ago. But back to my point.
What you need to know is we’re putting ourselves in the position again of allowing Europe to dictate our policies. At least, I think Finland I don’t know what Finland and maybe another nation are going to apply for NATO membership, and we’re for it. We say we’re all for it.
In other words, so we’ve got ourselves in a position where we’re putting all of this NATO activity and aiming it at Russia and pretending that Russia is the greatest threat to America. It may be a threat to its neighbors. I don’t know. It feels like we watched Europe and America, we participated in egging him on.
But what you need to know right now is even the people at NATO, even the Prime Minister of Spain, who is hosting it, who did an interview with the AP, a lengthy interview, even he acknowledges, everybody acknowledges the real problem is China. But NATO won’t say that out loud. And the reason NATO won’t say that out loud is because now the economies of NATO and America are on the brink of depression, if not recession. And so if you don’t have the strength, you can’t be America First or you can’t be anything if you don’t have the strength to do it. And so what you’re seeing and what you need to know is we’ve weakened ourselves because our economy is so weak and Europe has weakened itself. The story’s coming out now this week.
Italy has admitted its leadership, that they’re headed to a recession. Europe is in a recession. Germany has said they have an energy problem. They’re going to try to restart nuclear power plants, but they have an energy problem. All of Europe is under a cloud of higher inflation and higher unemployment.
But more troubling in terms of the economy, their interest rates. The European Central Bank is going to raise interest rates. So we’ve all put ourselves in a position as America led on it, of weakening ourselves so that our true enemy, China, nobody can say it about you can’t get people to say it because they need the help. So Europe is not going to blast China because they need the help.
You go to northern Italy, you’ll see business after business owned by Chinese money. Chinese nationals, Chinese companies. And the Chinese government is spending money all over the world, the so called the Belt and Road initiatives. So what you need to know is we have made a terrible mistake by putting ourselves in a position where we are beholden to other nations to keep our nation going strong.
And once America’s weak, everybody else gets weak too. That’s the real lesson.
And so Joe Biden’s over there and he’s talking I don’t know, but he’s saying anything. There’s nothing they can say They’re staying with Ukraine, he says Ukraine is being lost minute by minute because we’re not willing to fight for Ukraine on the ground, thank goodness. So it’s really shaping up. It’s going to be a long, long year or so going forward.
But you’ll watch these NATO and the G7, prancing and cavorting and talking big. When they’re weak, they’re weaker than they’ve ever been.
All right, we have to take a break, and we’ll come back. We’re going to come back with Peter W. Wood, Doctor Peter Wood, right after this break. It’s Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report. Don’t forget to go to ProAmericaReport.com. Sign up there for the daily WYNK, and that’s what you need to know. Be right back. Ed Martin, Pro America Report, back in a moment.
