Transcript of 'Dialogue Works' edition of 19 February

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Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:05
Hi everybody. Today is Wednesday, February 19th, 2025, and our friend Gilbert Doctorow is back with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Yes, my pleasure.

Alkhorshid:
Let's get started with the reactions on the part of Russians to what has happened in Riyadh between the two delegations from the United States and Russia. What do we know about that?

Doctorow:
Well, I was following the body language as well as the statements made by the three American negotiators. And, of course, what Sergey Lavrov said afterwards. And from this it was clear that the atmosphere was positive, constructive on both sides. It was diplomatic. I mean, we don't think about Trump as being a diplomat or a subtle man, shall we say. But Rubio was. In that sense, he displayed one of the finer points of diplomacy, tact. He has a lot of it.

1:06
And that is a very important attribute for his job as Secretary of State. There are people who said in the days following his nomination by Donald Trump. "Oh, this man's a lightweight. He doesn't know anything about diplomacy. He's just in the pocket of the Israeli lobby. He's a pro-Zionist."

And they were dismissive of him. But the people were dismissive of nearly all of the appointments or nominations that were made by Trump, except for a couple whom we knew to be good guys. Tulsi Gabbard is the outstanding case. And maybe his defense secretary nominee. Anyway, the main thing is that we all saw that he appointed a lot of hawks, people who didn't sound like they would be acting in keeping with his peacemaker approach to his second term.

2:01
And you know what? Now that we've seen what's happened in the last week, it's just a week that everything has been turned on its head, starting with the telephone conversation that Trump had with Vladimir Putin. Everything's been turned on its head, and we look at each case. Who said what where? Trump didn't say much about the call. He let others speak for him. The first one to speak and speak really very loudly, importantly, was of course, Pete Hegseth.

And in his debut here, a speech in Brussels, to what's called the Ukraine support group or the Ukraine Coordinating Organization. Well, Hegseth said, one, there will not be Ukraine in NATO; and two, it's unrealistic to talk about going back to the pre-war borders, that this is a new reality. That was picked up by Western press and observers as saying that Trump had already conceded the major points to Putin, before they ever sat at the table. Well, it isn't quite like that. These were non-negotiable terms for the Russians.

3:30
And either you're going to accept them and you'll proceed to peace negotiations, or you'll reject them and there are no talks. So I don't think that he was conceding anything if he was intent on taking this to talks. And the things that came out between the appointment of these power ministers or advisors to Trump and what we saw in the last seven days, almost everything is different. And you have to ask why. Is this the same Trump or is something else going on?

Well something else is going on. Those of us-- and I include myself among them. I don't stand above my peers in being so very perceptive-- no, no, we all were taken in by these strange appointments of Trump. And we said, my goodness, does he know what he's doing? My goodness, how are these people going to implement his plans, when their personal orientation is quite different?

4:31
And we misunderstood what he was doing and why. He appointed these people, including General Kellogg, knowing that they would say things that would be directly contradicting what we all expected. But in keeping with what some other people expected or hoped for, crossing their fingers, that they had Trump once again over a barrel, that once again, his assistants would betray him and they would get what they want. All of his opponents on Capitol Hill, in the press, in the academic establishment of war, the war keepers, they all were very happy with these appointments, even if we in the alternative media were cringing that maybe we made the wrong bet on Trump.

5:30
That was a game, that was a charade. And you know, we were all taken in on both sides of the aisle. Here in the alternative media, I think all my peers were taken in. We were all discussing, gee, you know what happened? Trump is getting the same false intelligence from the CIA as Biden was getting.

They got a completely wrong reading. They're saying the war is a stalemate, as Kellogg did. They're saying, as Kellogg was saying, we've got to have a stick and a carrot for the Russians, we're going to beat the hell out of them if they don't sit down at the table and conclude a peace as we think it should be, or we're going to raise the arms shipments into Ukraine, we're going to raise the sanctions against Russia, we're really going to show who's boss. Well, that was Kellogg before his wings were clipped. He was saying what Trump wanted him to say, to make all of Trump's enemies quiet, and allow him to proceed with what would overwhelm them all before they had a chance to react.

6:37
And that overwhelming effect is what we saw in the last week. No, we didn't have to wait for Tulsi Gabbard to come with her candle into the dark room and light it all up for Trump, to show him who's who and what's what. He had that all down perfectly.