Episode 201: “Surviving Hurricane Ian while Contemplating Nuclear Armageddon” with Brandon Weichert

This episode took a couple of twisting turns to complete. A few weeks back, I emailed my friend Brandon Weichert, a very smart geopolitical strategist and publisher of the Weichert Report, to ask if he could come on my show to talk about Ukraine, Putin and the possibilities of a nuclear war. He emailed back that “well, perhaps we could do the recording later this week or next weekend because I've got a category three hurricane bearing down in my home, presently. It might end up in Tampa, but we might be right in the epicenter".  In the event, the hurricane did land, and it landed right on top of Brandon.  “Before the hurricane hits,” shares Brandon, “the night before, I'm watching local news and they're saying it's going to strengthen into a category four, but it looks like it's still going to miss Southwest Florida, it's going to hit Tampa. So we’ll be ok. Not great, but ok.”   “Then I wake up at 7:00 or 8:00 am the next morning and my house is shaking and it's like something from a disaster film. And this hurricane not only strengthened into a category four, but almost a category five! We lost power immediately. We had no internet, no nothing. So I could receive texts and phone calls, but I couldn't make any and I couldn't send anything out.” What happened next is quite a story, and a sobering look at what happens after a real disaster.  Listen in as Brandon shares this first-hand experience surviving Hurricane Ian, but also as we segue into what’s developing in Ukraine, Russia and Putin’s nuclear saber rattling.  There are troubling parallels explains Brandon:  “So this was really a snapshot, I think, of what may happen if, God forbid, this issue with Russia and Ukraine goes nuclear or EMP Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons or involves cyber-attack or space attack or some combination thereof.”  “Because the first thing that I learned, is that our infrastructure is going to collapse. No one will save us.” President Biden seems weirdly glib about the prospect of catastrophe, and some of his remarks sound almost as it he’s inviting it. It’s not just Biden. He’s joined in this by too many in official Washington, including Republicans like Lindsay Graham.  People who say Vladimir Putin would never use nuclear weapons have not studied Putin, or at best, are making a judgement call about an unknowable mind. Talk of regime change and further arming Ukraine to win a decisive victory are beyond reckless. Instead, we need to use American power to wrap this war up and return Europe to peace. “We’ve gone on to push this to the red line of a nuclear war,” warns Brandon Weichert. “It now it behooves a great power like the United States to say, ‘It's time for everyone to go to that big beautiful table, sit down and figure out how we're going to get out of this situation.’” We unpack a lot in this episode. Given the existential stakes we face, Brandon’s assessment is definitely worth a listen.