Jim Gilmore

We are back on this Friday and appreciate you sticking around with us.

I think it's very interesting to hear from Elizabeth Pipco and her perception of things.

You heard her say at the beginning of her career that she was naive or not prepared to

deal with a group of people that you would expect to be up front.

Doesn't mean they have to agree with you.

You know you're going to get tough questions.

You're going to get people going to ask you questions that will challenge your beliefs.

You need to have fought through it enough if you're going to be a spokesperson or an elected

official.

You need to have spent some time thinking about these issues so you could actually respond

to people who were going to challenge you on them.

And I find that a lot of people haven't done that.

They're in an echo chamber.

Everybody just nods their head and says, yes, yes, yes.

I agree with you.

I agree with you.

Of course, that's the way it should be.

You never have to actually defend your beliefs.

That you're not ready to be in public life if you can't defend what you're saying.

And a lot of the folks who are doing communications, that's just not what they're dealing with.

So let's, you know, Dan, I still do not see the elements that you're showing.

So I think it's probably best for us just to go to our next guest, former ambassador and

former governor of Virginia, Jim Gilmore, who is very, very, so excited to have you on

today because my God, things have really changed since the last time you and I talked good

morning to you.

How you feeling these days?

Good morning, John.

I'm glad to have a chance to talk to your viewers.

Thank you.

All right.

So let's dive right into the situation with Iran.

I don't, I don't know how you perceive this.

You were in Vienna dealing with European powers who most certainly had concerns about Iran.

What do you think is going on right now and I assume you support the president in this

action?

Tell me what you're thinking.

Well, perhaps let's wait and see how this hand plays out in Iran and have a clear

definition of what our goals are.

So let's talk about that for just a minute.

There's no doubt that the destruction of Iran's military capability rockets, even their

nuclear capability, if they can get to that.

Their armed militia, the destruction of those things is a good thing because that's what

has been empowering Iran to extend themselves out across the Middle East and beyond.

And let's be very clear that the primary beneficiary of that approach is Israel.

They're the ones right now who are under the direct threat, not so much the United States.

The Israeli is, but the United States has a long term interest in this.

We have four countries on the world stage that are anti-American, Russia, China, North

Korea, and Iran.

If ultimately you can take Iran off the board and put a different regime in and make them

a more normal country that's more concerned about building up their country rather than

exporting revolution kind of attitude, that would be a good thing for the United States

of America, not to mention, for Israel.

But I think that the war still has to play out, John.

I don't think that we have a clear idea of what victory is or what is achievable.

And we have to find out how it's going to be executed in the days ahead.

I know what they're doing, by the way.

Their goal is systematically weak by weak to eliminate certain aspects of Iran's power.

And they are doing that.

That doesn't necessarily result in regime change.

They've slaughtered the first and I guess second tier of people who might step in and navigate

and manage the existing political infrastructure.

For two months, it seems like that political infrastructure was slaughtering the people

who might be on the ground and capable of leading a resistance to the radical Islamists.

How do you think that plays out?

Is everybody with any kind of leadership instinct going to be wind up dead?

And then it's, I don't know, the meek shell on her at the earth.

You get a bunch of kind of random people that we're not familiar with who take over or

the folks come in from Paris who've been exiled or the United States who've been exiled.

Well I think the meek shell on her at the earth is Iran right now who have been doing

the protests are in a position to take on the revolutionary guard.

That's not going to happen.

And I question whether or not you can make it happen without putting American soldiers

into Iran, which I think we're not going to do and I think that I would not suggest

that we do at this point.

So that leaves a question mark and that is, can you just systematically keep destroying

the current structure in Iran until there isn't anybody?

I still don't think that makes the protesters the government.

Can you parachute somebody in from either Paris or the United States to take over the country?

I don't know whether that creates the legitimacy.

You would, I suppose, put in an interim government and a couple are starting to try to organize

and then try to have a fair and honest election.

That would be, I would think, the approach which has not been articulated by anybody,

by the way, but I would think that would be the approach that you would try to take.

Now I'm talking about taking over the government and building a different regime change.

I'm not clear that's the American goal.

It looks like it is, but right now the only thing we definitely see is the elimination

of Iran's military capacity that is favors the United States in the long run.

It favors Iran, Israel immediately.

When you were ambassador and based on the briefings you got and your understanding of global

affairs, do most Iranians resent and want to get rid of the radical Islamists who have

been running their country for 47 years?

Or are we, and this is just objective, are we seeing the protests and doing what so

many people in the United States do when they see protests against Donald Trump?

They presume that that's the way most Americans think and we're missing that there was a reason

that this regime took over and there was a reason that this regime has stayed in power.

It's not all just slaughtering the opposition.

There's, is there widespread support for this radical Islamic movement and maybe we have

been confused about what's on the ground there?

That's hard for me to accept, but.

John, I think this is a legitimate question and I think that we don't know really the answer

to that.

I think that will play out in the days and weeks ahead as to what the exact answer to

that question is.

Let's, let's talk about it for just a minute.

Tyranny is a terrible thing.

Once you have control of a government, you have control of its police, you have control

of a secret police and regular police and it's military.

It's very hard for some internal movement that's more democratic to win.

Less, less there are organized and armed, which they are not in Iran.

I see no evidence of that.

They're not in the courage and they may take over a portion of their area and create

a Kurdistan, which they're going to have to deal with Turkey, but that's another story.

The story right now is we don't really know whether or not regime change is possible

in this environment or not.

And I think that that hand still has to play our job and we just don't know.

Look, just, we are Westerners who would like to focus on the protesters.

And I want to just say a word about that.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was largely caused by this kind of internal protest type

of movement.

It was.

I saw it.

We call it color revolutions.

We saw it in Ukraine.

We saw it in Georgia.

We even saw an attempt at it in China, at Tiananmen Square.

We saw a successful work of it in Russia before Putin took over.

So this can happen.

But you have to have basically a breakdown completely of the government so that they can

no longer exercise any control in that country.

I guess that's what's underway right now by the American and Israeli strikes.

I don't know whether you can do that or not once again with our soldiers.

I just don't know.

Yeah.

How is this playing politically?

You think for President Trump?

Well, we don't know yet if he's in a position to have a great triumph.

That the public will support him.

I mean, so far the polls are not favorable to President Trump on this incursion.

But it's early days yet and that we have to wait and see once again whether it's successful.

Are you watching the military and thinking that they're executing in a different way than

we have with other conflicts that we've engaged in?

There wasn't a lot of build up and explanation to the press and explanation to the people.

I mean, I think we knew this was coming.

He said I'm going to give you eight to 14 days to negotiate and then I'm going to annihilate

you.

But it does seem to be a different mindset than what we saw under, say, George W. Bush

when he was engaged in these types of action.

Well, it is different.

Let's talk about the differences very quickly.

I had just been National Chairman of the Party and was very engaged in national policy

at the time of the Iraq incursion.

I didn't have any voice to say what I thought, but I thought that the Iraq incursion was a

bad idea.

But George W. Bush led up to it with a lot of discussion, a lot of preparation, a lot

of marshaling of forces.

You saw it coming and of course, and it was not successful.

They, yeah, sure, they toppled the government, but then they tried to take over the government

to regime change and that did not succeed.

Let's look at where we are today.

We actually have less going on.

We didn't do a real military build up that was visible to the American people.

We haven't offered a real plan of action that we're trying to execute to the American

people.

And I think the American people at this point are puzzled as I am, as to exactly where

this thing comes out.

It's almost like you now reveal that the cake is in the oven, but you don't know what

it's going to look like when it comes out.

And I think that's one of the reasons why the American people are a little puzzled

by this whole thing.

So let's see how it plays out, John.

Yeah.

I've got to ask you about Ukraine, Russia, which is slid to a backburner status, at least

in the national news of late, what has been happening and where are you on that conflict?

Do we see a resolution of that anytime soon?

Well, let's talk about the linkage between the European Ukraine war and Russia and the

fight that's going on in Iran.

Right now, the fight in Iran has done several things.

First of all, it's bad for Russia because they look silly because they can't come to

the aid of their so-called ally.

And I would point out that last year that Iran and Russia actually entered into a military

and economic agreement of alliance.

And now that's not happening.

On the other hand, this is not a bad deal for Putin.

This is actually Iran was actually a pretty good deal for Putin for two reasons, at least.

One, it's going to increase the price of oil worldwide.

Putin, we have been dramatically trying to reduce Putin's ability to use his oil economy

to fund his war machine.

And as a result of that, he's suffering.

I think Putin is losing the war and is going to lose that war.

If we stay the course, if Zelensky and the Ukrainian people can stay the course, Putin is

going to lose that war.

On the other hand, this war in Iran will boost the price of oil, which will give more

money to Putin, which will save him.

There's that potential that's there.

And furthermore, to your point, to come back to this, this war in Iran does what I really

fear.

I've made it clear to everybody for months and even years that I think the European

war is the pivot of the future.

That's where the real battle for the future rests, whether Europe is going to be compromised,

intimidated, and neutralized, which I believe is a threat to the existence of the United

States.

The Ukraine is the key.

The Iran war diverts attention and resources away from the European war into the Middle

East.

That's great for Putin.

We can't send any materials, we can't even sell materials.

Where our attention is completely diverted, you make the point correctly that there's no

discussion now of the Ukraine war.

This is all dramatically to Putin's benefit.

So if I were Vladimir Putin, I'd want this war that the United States has involved in.

If I were Israel, I would very much want this war, and they are executing this war to

their benefit.

So there's a lot to still learn here as to how it's going to impact things.

Furthermore, China at this point doesn't look particularly active either.

But on the other hand, have I always made the point that I think the Chinese are some

of the smartest people geopolitically in this discussion.

Right now, they can buy their time and wait and see how this comes out.

If this turns out to be not a good thing, the Iran war, then that proves out a Chinese

position which is don't interrupt your enemy when they're scurrying themselves, okay,

when they're hurting themselves.

We don't know whether the United States is hurting themselves in this war yet or not.

So sometimes, geostrategically, you get something like this, that's a big distraction.

And one of the protagonists in the other conflict uses the distraction as the moment that

they go full throttle to try to vanquish their enemy.

Is there a way for either Russia or Ukraine to use that distraction to win and put that

to bad or are we still in the midst of negotiating this thing, somebody?

My opinion is the negotiations help Putin.

That I think that it's been continuously an effort to really help Putin.

We need to be full-throated behind Ukraine in my opinion.

And it's not just being for Ukraine, it's the international system.

The question is, are you going to allow Russia to come in and conquer another independent

country and prove to the rest of Europe that he can do it?

Are you going to enable him to go into the Baltic States and even to the Scandinavian

States?

Are you going to enable him to do those things?

I think that that is a direct threat to the existence of the United States.

I've made that clear.

What's the answer?

I think the Russians are not able, at this point, to conquer Ukraine.

They've proven it's been four years, they haven't got anything really.

They've gotten gains and they're doing terrible things in those ill-gotten areas, by the

way.

Terrible things.

They're committing war crimes all over the place there, and it's a terrible thing, but

they're not going to be able to conquer the rest of Ukraine.

Even the Europeans at this point have stepped up, and that's one of the President's leadership.

They have stepped up their own capacity, and they're helping Ukraine at this point in

a way that America is no longer is.

I don't want to run out of time without bringing you back to Virginia politics, and today

is the day that early voting starts for this gerrymandering scheme that the Democrats are

jamming through here in Virginia.

Even though they said they weren't going to do it, Abigail Spanberger, the new governor

said she wasn't going to do it, now she's going to do it.

What do you make of this?

It's one of the greatest and historic wrongdoings that we've seen in Virginia, maybe in generations.

This is an effort to disenfranchise the people of Virginia, and to manipulate the election

to make it a 10-to-1 Democratic result.

It's wrong.

It's completely wrong.

I hope every single person watching your podcast will get themselves out to the early

voting polls and vote no for this.

It must be defeated.

If it's successful, I believe it changes Virginia politics for generation.

Now a couple of things here.

If you really look at this, once they do this wrongdoing thing and they manipulate the

elections, they undermine people's confidence in democracy in Virginia all the way to begin

with.

They do that.

Second of all, once these Democrats are in office, do you really think they're going

to go back to some other kind of more fair redistricting over again?

If you believe that, I got a bridge to say in Brooklyn, that's not going to happen.

Furthermore, Governor Spanberger, who of course violated her own principles and all other

principles democracy by supporting this redistricting, she says, don't you worry, I tell

you now as Governor of Virginia, who will go back to the right thing again.

I remind your viewers and everybody else of the one-term governorship.

When this comes back up on the issue again in the census of 2030, she will be long gone

she will not be governor and will have nothing to say about this.

Who knows what that next governor will do?

It may be even more radical governor out of the Democratic House of delegates that becomes

governor of Virginia, for example, or Lieutenant Gore-Hashemir, somebody like that, who's

even more radical.

So who knows what's going to happen then, but these reassurances to the people of Virginia

is baloney.

This is wrongdoing, it's corrupt, it's filthy politics, the people of Virginia have an

opportunity now to vote it down, but you know that rests with the people of Virginia.

If they vote yes on this thing, they are basically surrendering their own democracy in Virginia

in my view.

Or if they stay home, I mean, you think Republicans are motivated, are they paying attention?

And clearly last year, a lot of Trump voters, I mean, you could list five or six reasons

why maybe they stayed home, I don't think anybody's determined exactly what happened, but

they didn't turn out.

So do you think that this animates them?

Are they aware of it?

What's your sense?

I look, I think when some series is entitled to a lot of credit for running, she ran

very vigorously, but I think that most of us would agree that she never really settled

on a theme of election that would persuade the people of Virginia to vote for her.

Now Spanberger was selling snake oil, okay, but she at least was trying to do that.

She was doing that.

So this is my way of saying this redistricting thing is a clear message of the Republican

party.

And frankly, of the independence of Virginia, and everybody in Virginia that believes

in democracy, this is a mission that we have right now.

Unfortunately, it's all of a sudden upon us with this crazy early voting thing, we no

longer have election day, we have election month, we have election month than I have.

So people may go to the polls today and vote yes for this based upon the misleading

information on the ballot from the governor, from the special television ads that are on

right now.

And then as it begins to sink in 30 days from now, that this is undemocratic, it'll

be too late, people have already voted.

Too late.

So that's a quite a problem.

So anyway, to your point, this is the time to motivate every Virginia and especially

Republicans to get up out of their chairs and go vote no, no, you know, you mentioned

the wording on the referendum, which is clearly one sided and says it talks all about fairness

when I don't, I don't see how you can make the case for fairness.

Is it illegal to for the government to present wording that is that one sided and it doesn't

appear to be any objective attempt at neutrality here.

And I have a hard time believing that that is kosher with the law or am I missing some?

Well, I think you would have to have a court rule on something like that.

And the courts have made it very clear that they don't want to intervene into the politics.

Well, it's a longstanding legal principle that the courts tried to avoid getting into

the politics of partisan politics of any state.

That's true at the federal level and also true at the state level.

But the point is not so much that they've done that now.

They've basically said, look, you can go forward with the referendum.

And so there you are.

So the burden is no longer on the courts to try to fix this.

The burden is on the people of Virginia to say to respond, to be cheated here by this

language.

How dare they put this kind of language up and mislead me.

How dare they put on these fake ads and try to mislead me.

How dare governors, Spanberger, do a backflip and do this endorsement of this find up.

The courts are basically saying, hey, look, it's up to the people of Virginia to do their

duty.

And that's what I'm saying right now.

Yeah.

Well, now you were attorney general.

You were a commonwealth attorney and a practicing lawyer.

Do drill in with on this for just a second with me.

I would have thought that the rules and the law mandating certain dates before this could

be presented to the public would be clear and that the courts would say, hey, we're not

taking an opinion, we're not issuing an opinion on whether this is good or bad or any

of that.

But you would least have to look at the calendar and follow the dates that you agreed to

when you created this law.

And you haven't done that.

So you know what?

You can still repeal the constitutional amendment.

You can do whatever you want, but you've got to obey the basic structure that's been put

in place.

And they wouldn't even get involved in that.

Am I wrong to be really disturbed by that as a as a former attorney general?

Does that seem normal to you or because I'm mad about it, but maybe I don't know what

I'm talking about.

I think it's all still pending.

Now I haven't studied the law case because I'm my practice in the case.

But it's my understanding that the courts have basically said, we're not going to issue

an injunction against the referendum, the legislature's rule, the governor's signed it, we're

not going to overturn that, but we're still going to have briefing and we're still going

to have argument and we still reserve the right to rule at a later time.

I think that is actually the status of these cases right now.

I think that's right.

But then once it's done, it's done.

Not necessarily.

But not necessarily what I think the courts are praying is that the public will rise up

and vote no.

And if they vote no and defeated in the referendum, then the cases are moot.

And the courts can wash their hands of it.

What is it on their part?

Very much so, but if on the other hand, it passes, I still think the ball is, if the

volleyball is still up in the air on this.

Then we're running up against the clock.

And the calendar matters.

We're running up against the clock for the midterms and, you know, does Rob Whitman run

again?

Is he running in this district that he's currently in or running in some bastardized district?

Gen K, all of these people, I, I mean, I think the courts in action here to just enforce

these basic calendar rules is creating chaos that I would have expected.

People minds to abhor and say, you know, it's up for us.

Our responsibility is to keep the structure of law intact, even if we don't like the end

result of what the people choose.

It is what it is.

It is what it is, John, the courts haven't created this.

Right.

That's true.

The best way they can.

But it's been created by the left wingers in the House of Delegates and the Virginia

State Senate.

And then the, the going along to get along with Governor Spanberger on this.

This would have been a place where the governor could have stepped in and said, look, I'm

going to try to bring some water into this.

And I'll do the amendments that are proper.

But she's going along with this because that's been created long before she got there.

And now, of course, it's a heavily empowered democratic legislature.

So anyway, that's what's going on here.

That's what's created the chaos.

And let me also say, by the way, that the main point we need to make on this redistricting

is this.

This is wrong.

This is an effort to disempower the voters of Virginia.

This is improper.

It's wrong.

It's unconstitutional.

And it's really unnecessary.

If you really begin to count up the votes of the various states around the country that

are looking at this.

The Democrats have an edge, really, with or without the Virginia votes.

Right.

That's right.

But the duty here, in my view, as the former governor, the duty is to the people of Virginia.

We are not, it's not appropriate here to put together a system with this referendum

or otherwise, this new system that ruins the congressional seats in Virginia.

That's the wrongdoing in the state of Virginia to the people of Virginia.

Our first duty is to the people of Virginia.

Now you can argue about what's going on nationally.

And you know, Spanburg is playing the national game, the Democrats legislature are playing

a national game unnecessarily in my view.

But that's not their primary duty.

Their primary duty is to the people of Virginia that they were elected to represent.

Yeah.

Next to sick irony about the people who constantly lecture us about protecting democracy, stomping

all over half the voters of the state, I just hope people are on both sides of the political

spectrum.

Don't appreciate that.

And to your point, once this Pandora's box is open, the payback is going to be hell

in the future.

I'm afraid that that's not good for any of us.

That's right.

But look, this your podcast ought to be along with everything else that we're doing and

everybody else is doing across the state on the Republican side and frankly in neutral

side, this should be a call to action.

Your podcast today should be a call to action.

People need to not only go vote no, but they need to get their wives and husbands to vote

no and their grown children to vote no and their friends that their offices to vote no.

Because there's a mission here.

And the mission here is to do not allow the democracy of Virginia to be impugned.

That's the mission.

And I'm shocked that we have to be talking like this, but we do.

But it's a call to it's a call to mission right now for all of us.

Yeah.

Well, I'll be voting soon and voting now.

And I know you will too, former Virginia governor and former ambassador to Europe, Jim

Gilmore.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, John.

Yes, sir.

And when we come back, producer Dan Rijunges and we'll talk about the best and worst

of the internet as we wrap up this week on the Read Revolution.

And when we come back, producer Dan Rijunges and we'll talk about the best and worst of the internet, as we wrap up this week on the Read Revolution.