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Scott interviews attorney Bud Cummins about Bryan Malinowski, a man who was killed by ATF agents in a poorly planned and entirely unnecessary pre-dawn raid in 2024. Two years later, no government officials have been held accountable, or have even adequately explained what happened. Cummins is representing Malinowski’s wife in a lawsuit that seeks to change that.

Bud Cummins is an American attorney, businessman and politician. He served as United States Attorney with five years of service from 2001 to 2006 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

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For more on Scott’s work:

Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org

Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show

Read Scott’s books:

Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com)

Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu

Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx

Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow

And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/scott; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton)

You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow

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A ceasefire memo is supposed to stop wars, not rename them. We start with the weekend’s flashpoint in the Strait of Hormuz and ask a blunt question: if the MOU bans initiating military operations and the threat or use of force, how do we end up with drone attacks, retaliation, and Washington “making rough rules as it goes along”? Larry Johnson walks us through Iran’s claimed legal authority to regulate commercial passage via its Persian Gulf Strait Authority protocols and why enforcement hinges on which ships are tied to Israel.

Then we zoom out to the diplomacy theater: Trump posts that a Doha meeting is happening, the White House says envoys are headed to Qatar, and Iran says it never agreed. That contradiction matters because it shapes everything else on the table, from nuclear negotiations to whether the MOU gets implemented in full. We also dig into Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s messaging with GCC foreign ministers and why it looks like a deliberate attempt to undercut the deal’s core premise.

The back half connects regional shifts to hard politics: Gulf states reassessing US bases like Al Udeid and the Fifth Fleet footprint, talk of a new security framework with Iran, and the limits of trust for partners tied into the Abraham Accords. We also confront Israel’s stated plans for West Bank settlement expansion and Gaza displacement, plus the growing US public backlash that still hasn’t translated into policy change. We close by interrogating America’s favorite smear word “communist” and what defense contractor capture and the F-35 readiness saga say about power in the United States. Subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review, then tell us which part of this story you think gets ignored the most.

John and I continue reading and commentary on Rules for Radicals

Calling everything “communism” might win a news cycle, but it doesn’t explain why so many Americans feel the ladder to a stable life is disappearing. Kyle sits down with Jim Webb to sort propaganda from incentives, starting with Trump’s warnings about socialist takeover and asking the blunt question: are there even enough communists in the United States to matter? We argue the bigger threat looks more like crony capitalism, captured regulation, and an economy where people who followed the rules still can’t buy a home near where they grew up.

From there, we get specific about why the democratic socialist message is landing right now. We talk about wage gaps, wealth concentration, and the way housing affordability has become a political accelerator. Jim lays out how populist energy moves across party lines when promises fail, and why younger, high-energy candidates with working-class credibility can outperform polished messaging when voters are hungry for someone who sounds real.

Then we pivot hard to foreign policy: JD Vance’s “victory” framing, what “denuclearization of Iran” can realistically mean, and why vague language can be used to claim a win while the hard parts remain unresolved. We dig into the memorandum of understanding, sanctions relief, the Strait of Hormuz, and the biggest obstacles to a durable ceasefire, including Congress and Israel’s actions in Gaza. If you care about US foreign policy, Middle East security, and the domestic costs of permanent war, this conversation connects the dots.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who argues politics in good faith, and leave a review with the one point you most agree or disagree with so we can respond next time.

I discuss the possibilities of America relinquishing its global ambition to reduce its footprint to a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. The new technologies of AI, UAVs and hypersonics rather easily challenge the spending paradigms and mission architecture of the American armed forces.

There are no near-peer competitors, every nation on Earth is now a peer to modern western war machines.

America boasts a magnificent 20th century war machine is not fit for purpose for 21st century peer warfare.

The crossroads is chock-full of landmines.

References:

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America

Martin van Creveld

The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz

Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945

Colin Gray

Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice

Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy

William Lind Maneuver Warfare Handbook

John Boyd Patterns of Conflict

Michael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA

John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA’s Heart of DarknessSun Tzu The Art of War

Carl von Clausewitz On War

Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

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Scott interviews Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center about his new book about how the efforts and accomplishments of the American revolutionaries have been betrayed, bringing about a system of government that is effectively identical to the one they fought a war to overthrow.

Discussed on the show:

• The Revolution Betrayed by Michael Boldin

Michael Boldin is the founder and executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center, which advocates state nullification as a means of local resistance to unjust federal laws. Follow him on X @michaelboldin.

Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com

For more on Scott’s work:

Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org

Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show

Read Scott’s books:

Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com)

Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu

Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx

Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow

And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/scott; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton)

You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow

Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com

Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show!

Putin says Russia is in a “challenging period,” but the more revealing question is what comes next when a war stops feeling like a crisis and starts running on autopilot. We unpack why Russia can look simultaneously steady and stuck: not prone to emotional swings, yet still locked into a slow, costly grind where drone strikes reach deep targets, NATO proximity raises the stakes, and every month of fighting makes the eventual political settlement harder to swallow.

From there, we zoom in on the Ukraine endgame that rarely gets discussed honestly. If Russia holds territory in the east and south, what happens to the remaining Ukrainian politics when the most Russia-leaning constituencies are effectively removed from future elections? We talk about why that dynamic can empower hardliners, including the rise of Andriy Biletsky and the institutional growth of the former Azov network, and why a “freeze the lines” ceasefire can simply set the stage for the next phase across the Dnieper.

We also connect the dots to Washington’s incentives, including the explicit “Afghanistan” framing some prominent voices used before and after the invasion, and how that mindset treats Ukrainians as expendable inputs in a long proxy war. Then we pivot to the Middle East, breaking down reports and proposals that point toward pressuring Lebanon in ways that could spark a dangerous confrontation with Hezbollah and push a fragile country closer to civil conflict.

If you care about Ukraine, Russia, NATO escalation, neocon strategy, and Middle East spillover risks, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review, and tell us what you think: is the world sleepwalking into a wider war?