Transcript of the above video: 

This is kind of more an opinion piece, just FYI, I am not really getting into some of the more legalistic fodder that we usually get into on this channel, although more and more it has overall, they are moving to kind of more news. But we are a law firm, I still do the videos on stuff that we are doing here, but frankly I have got a ton of content going back now nearly 10 years on everything that runs the spectrum on this channel and you can check us out in the resources section over at legal.co.th, our main website over there, and we have the transcripts of all these prior videos. I've done extensive legal analysis over the years and explanations for expats. So frankly, there is only so long and so much you can talk about especially as it pertains to expats that from time to time, we are kind of branching out.

Another thing, just to get this video started in that vein, I am starting to do more long-form content in the form of analysis: geopolitics, how it fits in with international finance. I think we are going to start seeing some real change, especially geopolitically, moving forward. I think Thailand sits at the vanguard of all of this. If anything, I've described Thailand many times as sort of sitting in the centre of a kaleidoscope that's like moving around it. And to borrow a notion from Halford Mackinder and the World Island, Thailand sits at the edge of the rimland and the periphery and it is sort of all spinning around it. It's also a very unique country because it has never been colonized but it has had deep relations with both colonial powers and the Superpowers like the US and Russia. It has a deep history with China, but it's an independent sovereign nation and it's a unique nation that stands alone. And I get into all that in our more long-form content. If you're interested in that, email us, [email protected]. We will get you on the mailing list for the long form content, the paid new service, that's Integrity News Service. While I'm doing a plug real quick, we have also opened a restaurant, my better half and I, here in downtown Bangkok. It's called Pancake Palace, as I discussed in other videos. All day breakfast, pancakes as you can imagine, and American diner style food. We have got glass bottled Coke, we've got chilli bowls, we've got Sloppy Joe’s, though the Sloppy Joe's are a little bit of seasonal as it takes a little time to make those, and to find the ingredients is a little bit difficult here in Thailand. More and more we are going to be adding special dishes and I will announce that as and when we do, but we have also got cheeseburgers, hamburgers, chilli bowls and the best buffalo wings here in Thailand. If you're interested in that, link in the description below to the Pancake Palace. 

Now the title of this video is Thaksin, Trump, Political Crossroads and "Moral Men", so I'm going to start at the end of that and kind of work toward the beginning of that title. The notion of moral men. So in the thumbnail, you'll see Richard Harris, immortal Richard Harris, great actor, and the father of Jared Harris by the way, he's a great actor as well too. He's playing the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the great movie Gladiator, and link in the description below to the photo credit of that, but there is the clip of the scene. It's a really powerful scene, not least because Richard Harris is an amazing actor, but I think he captured in many ways the essence of Marcus Aurelius to an extent - although I would argue maybe he puts a little more passion into it than I think the very stoical Marcus Aurelius probably would have actually been, candidly. That said, it's an amazing performance and it's a scene in Gladiator where the fictionalized Marcus Aurelius is telling Maximus, his General, that he will be vesting him with the powers of Rome and with the powers of the Imperator or the Emperor of Rome which people don't actually know that Imperator was basically like a military title. It was like General, sort of Supreme Allied Commander or something would be akin to it. But he is talking to him, and he says, "I'm going to vest these powers in you to return Rome, to stamp out the corruption, return Rome to her better days" and Maximus sort of says, "no I don't want that, I don't want to do that." He says, "this is why it has to be you because you don't want it and because you are not corrupted by her politics." And then Maximus says, "well what about Commodus" and this is where the line that I am paraphrasing from comes up, and he says, "Commodus is not a moral man, he cannot be allowed to rule Rome." I've been thinking about this a lot in the past whatever, 4 days, 5 days, since one of the other photos in the thumbnail is of Trump in this - I guess it was a Cabinet Meeting - but the press was there, so it was sort of a Press Conference where Trump says, "What are you doing talking about Epstein still? What are we doing talking about that?" I bring this up not because I think Trump is not a moral man per se, that's not what I'm getting to here. A friend of mine years ago, that I would argue and I would tell him this to his face, he is a good old friend; he has never liked Trump and he and I talked politics for years. He would be what I would call a blue dog Democrat from the old school, kind of a boomer type if you will. And I'm a little younger - I'm kind of Gen X - I am kind of a libertarian-minded type although I really don't like political labels particularly, but and he may call me like a red stater type or something, fine, whatever, but we have always been able to have reasonable discourse on politics. He, years ago, in the first go-around of the elections that ended up seeing Trump put into office after the 2016 elections, he would talk to me about Trump and frankly I would have accused him at the time of having what some referred to as TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. He looked for anything to have a problem with Trump. I have got to tell you, the greatest, to paraphrase Voltaire, he said, "the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist." The greatest trick Trump ever pulled was convincing the Red States and Rust Belt of America to elect essentially a Liberal Republican from New York. This has been attempted many times before. Steve Forbes comes to mind. He tried to do that in the late 90s; it just never much comes up. Go back to Nelson Rockefeller in American politics. He tried to as well; I think his last name probably hurt him in an American political sense because he was viewed as far too much of an elite, whatever. But again, he was a New York Republican, a Liberal Republican. It's a difficult, difficult place to be in American politics. Trump pulled it off. I mean it's a fact and I don't have any huge issues for or against Trump. I disagree with him on some things; I agree with him on some things. In the last election cycle, I preferred him over the alternative. In the cycle before that, I was frankly kind of ambivalent. I frankly wish it would have been Trump in '20. I think it would have been better for the country. Going back into 2016 I would probably say I was on balance probably more on the Trump side of that, but again not so much out of any great love for Trump. If anything, I was way more ambivalent about him to the point of being more negative on him in the first time around, in his wilderness if you will, where we had to watch him go through all these legal shenanigans and things and frankly undo legal process because I think motivated by politics, which I have serious issues about and I have commented on that including over on X. If anybody is interested in following me on Twitter or X, I'm over there, Benjamin Walter Hart, I think I'm @BenjaminWHart. In any event I have talked about this stuff a lot. I felt like coming off of his legal problems, it was right that he won. I felt like especially the first month he was in, it felt like things were being set right. This whole Epstein thing, now to be clear I am not saying he's personally implicated or anything, or his actions bely he was personally implicated or anything, that's not the point here. I think he is at a political crossroads for a different reason. 

But I bring up this "moral man" concept because my friend said that about Trump going back into '16. It was just the basis of his constant argument. He said it to me multiple times. That is why it kept coming up in my head when I started thinking about making this video. He kept saying, "Trump is not a moral man. He cannot be in charge of America", kind of thing, and that was his argument. The reason I bring it up is because I am starting to wonder if maybe he was maybe on to something, on a certain level. Again, I am not trying to imply that he has any direct involvement or anything that is associated with the accusations regarding Epstein. More my issue is I never viewed him as much of a consummate politician if you will, as I think he is up to now. What do I mean by that? Well, he was branded as a businessman, which by the way, there are parallels here with Thaksin, which I will get to more directly on Thaksin in a minute, but he was branded as a businessman, an outsider, and in his first term I think he very much was and not particularly political if you will. He was not a politician in the negative sense of the term, okay? He was a businessman; he was an outsider. He was more of a politician than I think he is given credit for because he won, I mean, and he knew how to read the lay of the land. In a sense, he is also a pretty brave guy. He went through all this, he could have just left the political sphere, been a one-term President, kind of an anomaly, and moved on. He didn't. He charged ahead; he went through his legal wilderness if you will and he came out as President again. I think his legacy will ultimately be positive. 

I bring up this issue of he is a politician and the issue of sort of something my friend brought up with this "moral man" thing because he has, I think maybe become a more astute politician and it is not to his credit; I think he probably was better off when he was less of a politician and this is what is key - this is the crossroads I'm talking about. I think his comments, let me be clear, his comments and his attempt to politically "handle" this Epstein situation is leading to a fallout that is a crossroads for him. And when I say that, I think it's a crossroads that will see him become what we call a true lame duck in his now second term and we will see to the chagrin of some, to the great horror of some in the American political sphere, and to the jubilation of some in the people who watch American politics, we will see the end of the Trump era now. I don't think it is ending by any stretch of the imagination. We have got more than three years left of his term but in terms of the phenomenon of Trump, I think we can mark this past week as the watershed moment, the beginning of the decline of that movement, insofar as a political force. Not the end of, let me be clear, we have got a lot more time, but as Churchill I think said, "it wasn't the beginning of the end, it was the end of the beginning". Something akin to that. We are seeing sort of a turning of the page on Trump generally. Now again I want to be clear. I am not casting aspersions at Trump in any way similar to the accusations made against Mr. Epstein, others associated therewith, including Ghislaine Maxwell; I don't have any insight on that. I'm not even inclined to think anything toward that line of thinking that he had anything untoward to do with anyone underage or anybody that was trafficked or anything of that nature; I want to be very, very clear on that. What I am saying is his comments, I think he thought he was handling the situation and it has backfired and from a political standpoint, we are seeing the fallout, and we are also seeing a Crossroads of sort of the era of Trump being the dominant face in American politics; we are seeing the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning of that. We are seeing the page turning and we are moving on. He is not gone; he is still going to be very much a dominant political force in America which is very different from Thaksin's situation which I will get to here in a minute. But I do think the crossroads, there is a Rubicon if you will that has been crossed - to kind of get into the Roman theme again but I want to be clear as to what I think this is. It's a political crossroad. I think he thought that by doing what he did, he had the political capital, he has the political acumen if you will, to move the focus of the people of America's attention away from that Epstein issue and get it off to other things, and that's not what has happened. If anything, if you will, the so-called Streisand effect has now occurred, and people are more focused on it and they are angry. I am one of them frankly. I don't like this condensation of, "what are we still talking about that?" We are talking about it because it is important and it goes to a core problem that seems to constantly be being swept under the rug, but again I don't think Trump's necessarily even part of all that. What I think is he was trying to politically handle it and he mishandled it, and I think we can mark this past week as a moment in time where the tide starts shifting. It's somewhat subtle, it's not instantaneous; he is still there, he is still very much a political force, I expect he will be. 

That said, moving over to Thaksin. I did a video some months, well a couple weeks ago where we used a thumbnail and I cited the movie: Searching for Bobby Fischer. And there is a scene at the end where these two chess genius children are playing a game of chess and the one kid offers his hand to the other kid and he says, "I'm offering you a draw", and the other kid says, "no I'm winning, I'm not going to take a draw". But the other kid saw ahead far enough that he knew he had won. He had just won so far down the road that the other kid hadn't seen it yet. And he says, "take the draw, we'll share the championship". And the other kid says, "no play". So they play and the kid that offered the draw wins. I made a video about that with regard to again Trump and Elon and Thaksin and now suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra here where I basically said, look there was a fissure growing in the Elon - Trump alliance and there was a fissure growing in the Bhumjaithai - Phue Thai if you will, but more Shinawatra faction of the Phue Thai Party, which is becoming more and more of its own discreet thing. And when I am commenting now moving forward on Shinawatras and things, I hope people understand, I am not talking about the Phue Thai Party particularly, any more especially. It looks like they have their own agenda and Phue Thai is just trying to be a normal Thai Political Party and not be if you will, sort of a vehicle necessarily for this political celebrity’s' thing that seems to be also driven by World Economic Forum policies and not so much driven by what is best or what is in the best interest of Thailand. So let me be clear, I separate those two things - Phue Thai and the Shinawatras - now much, much more than I once did. And I have discussed another videos, we have another alternative who is from Phue Thai that could be the next Prime Minister. We don't need it to be Paetongtarn Shinawatra for Phue Thai the current Core Coalition Party to remain the current Core Coalition Party and remain the Government. There is an alternative. 

That said, I made that video about "I'm offering you a draw" because at that moment, I thought it was better for Trump, Elon and the Shinawatras, Phue Thai and Bhumjaithai, to make peace within their tent if you will, within their ranks, because to do otherwise would be detrimental to everybody basically, and that was the video I made. I stand by that, and it has borne out. Bhumjaithai has left the Coalition in the aftermath of the leaked phone call with Hun Sen and then Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, now suspended Prime Minister, and Phue Thai is not in a good place. And frankly I think the fortunes of the Shinawatra clique are waning, heavily, and this is discussed in many op-eds in the Bangkok Post and it brings me to this Tweet. I'm going to go ahead and put it up. It's from Trump. Let me go ahead and put this on screen. 

This Tweet got me thinking about making this video. I'll read into the substance of it here in a minute, but as I was saying, regarding the Shinawatras and how this sort of the kind of analogous nature of this crossroads we are at. Let me be clear, it is different. In Trump's case, I think it is the beginning of a sea change; he retains a great deal of political power and capital. In the case of the Shinawatras I think, if anything I would say Trump is at the end of the beginning if you will, and the Shinawatras, this is the beginning of the end or maybe now we are in Act 2 of the end, especially where she is suspended. The point I am trying to make here is they could have made different moves, especially here in Thailand, to get to this point, as could Trump have done. If he would have made more peace with Elon, maybe there wouldn't be all this talk of a third party. Maybe when he tried to fob this Epstein stuff off, it would have been taken better most notably because Elon controls X, and maybe there could have been some influence made on that platform that wouldn't have seen this really big, huge, tidal wave of negative response on this Epstein response. 

But the point I am trying to make is we are seeing this crossroads in both situations and I think the culmination of which I think is going to be longer for Trump, but the culmination of where we are at in this Crossroads is both of these outsized and outside, semi-outside political figures' era of influence is ending. And people can argue the issue of whether they are a moral man or not but one of the big things they have had a problem with, both of them, is that large factions of their opposition have a kernel within them that questions whether or not they are moral men. And that is what started their opposition, what the culmination of their time and influence if you will, seems to me to be their own actions to some extent and how they refused in many cases to see their own limitations, refused to work with others to an extent, and very dismissive sometimes of things that their constituents and people in general throughout their own countries, really, really care about. 

Going to this Tweet though, one of the things I notice when I read this Tweet is one, it is very long. Unlike most of Trump's types of Tweets which I don't really get into very often, it's not particularly concise, and it's not particularly sharp. Most of his stuff is like cuttingly, just incisively sharp. It's like being cut with a Samurai sword. This thing, honestly when I was first reading it, what it reminded me of is the Nixon 'I'm not a crook' speech. Not because I think Trump is saying, again that he's not a crook or anything like that, that is not what he is saying, and I don't think again Trump is implicated in anything in the underlying issues of this, but I think he knows, as Nixon knew, he was on his political back foot and he was reacting, not being proactive, and it comes through in this Tweet. Quoting directly:  "What is going on with my "boys" and, in some cases "gals"? They're all going after Attorney General Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!" Really? Fantastic job? She said that the client list was on her desk, and now they say it doesn't exist, and there is no conspiracy and blah, blah, blah. Again, not to get into the underlying facts, but politically this has all looked bad. This has been a political, frankly just a giant political mess and to not acknowledge that, I think one, shows a lack of understanding and a lack of really getting to the core issue that people are really upset that they think that there is been a cover up of people that pray on children; that is what upsets me to no end. And if there is, we want to know who did it. This isn't politics as usual for anybody. This isn't partisan. It is just, "is there somebody praying on our kids and are the government not doing their utmost to do something about it?" Because if so, we are pretty angry because the Government tends to do their utmost to go after the littlest thing that we citizenry might do - like maybe we didn't pay a tax or something like that - but this is a big deal, and it seems to be just fobbed off and dismissed. Quoting further: "We are on one Team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and "selfish people" are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein." Well no. It's over the issue of what was going on there? Why is this woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, locked in prison ostensibly for trafficking no one to no one. She's in jail for trafficking, but for trafficking to no one. Then they say “there is no client list.” Well then who was she trafficking to? That is the constant question with this. It is not a matter of Jeffrey Epstein personally. That said the tone of this, "We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD and selfish people are trying to hurt it" - very reactionary. Again, I go back to that Nixon, "I'm not a crook, they need to know if that their President is a crook and I am not a crook." It smacks of a kind of, I am not going to say desperation, but a kind of nervousness born of fear of not being in line with people's political opinions in the moment. That's what it feels like to me, for lack of a better term; that is what it seems like to me. - "For years, it's Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration..." - well I thought there were no files, first of all, and secondly, I don't care who wrote these things. If they are about trafficking of those under age, those who can't protect themselves, we need to do something about it. I want to know what it says at least in order to dismiss it first. You are telling us to dismiss it for the exact same reasons people told us to trust them when they lied about you, as you get to here. - Quoting further: "...and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the world with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 "Intelligence" Agents, "THE LAPTOP FROM HELL, and more?" Yeah, and you are using the same tactics on this, just saying, "oh there's nothing to see here; the sources are bad and therefore there's nothing there." Quoting further: "They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the fake Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called "friends" are playing right into their hands." Well no, there is a substantive difference here. That man was convicted in a Federal Court. We do have Court documentation that he was a convicted offender here. There is no question on that; it is a different thing. I get that, I don't want to go into like the Russia thing, and the laptops and the this, that and the other, but I do understand there has been fabrication for political means and political ends. This ain't that, okay? He was convicted in a Court of Law. We know that. There is something here. This is not a "Nothing Burger" to use verbiage that was used when talking about things that they went after Mr. Trump for. It's just not the same thing. That said, quoting further: "They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the fake Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called "friends" are playing right into their hands." Again this smacks of, "oh they are coming after me." This has nothing to do with Mr. Trump. This has to do with people being concerned that it seems like a case involving the trafficking of children to high profile individuals is just being swept under the rug. That is what is concerning; it has not got anything to do with you and your friends. Quoting further: "Why didn't these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein files?" Yeah, that is a good question. That's what we want to know. That's why we want more clarity on this.

You know, this reminds me, this whole thing actually kind of reminds me of what the Soviets called "Glasnost". Right at the end of the Soviet Union, they talked about Perestroika and Glasnost. Perestroika everybody kind of knows about. They lightened up on the economy and ended up really crushing the Soviet system because the free market came in and it just is overwhelming; everybody knows that narrative. Very few know the term Glasnost. Glasnost, translation loosely means “publicity”, what I would call it now in the modern era as “social media”. It was predicting a time like this, where we have all the "transparency" in the world and no results. We are all sitting around talking about Epstein but nothing has gotten done, and they tell us there is nothing to see here, and we are all just supposed to continue moving on, and yet it has been one of the driving narratives arguably that helped propel Trump into the White House, and yet nothing comes from it. The Soviets talked about that: Glasnost, again “publicity”. People have called it transparency, but with the implied notion that there is some level of accountability, when in fact there isn't. It's just this sort of false transparency where we sort of all talk around things, but nothing ever happens; there is never any accountability; there are never any results. Quoting further: "If there was anything in there that could have hurt the MAGA movement why didn't they use it?" Well we're not saying there was. We just want to know what was there. We don't want them saying there's nothing to see here, moving on. They have admitted that there is footage; they have admitted that there are things out there. We have had these weird tapes being brought out that have a minute missing from them and things. It's odd. It doesn't have anything to do with partisan politics. Nobody's attacking you, and I do get now, I think he's worried and nervous and this comes to this Crossroads issue because that thing, again the photo is in the thumbnail, and I'll put a link in the description below, that thing backfired. When he said that, "why is everybody talking about Epstein?" This was a tactic that I think has worked in the past. He kind of interrupts and he says, "Why are we talking about that? We have got other problems, let's move on." He's done that before; it has worked for him. It didn't work here. There is a hardcore cadre of people very concerned about this, that think there is something there, and when we were all told there is no client list, even though specifically the Attorney General said, "it's on my desk”, and then now it is magically gone, that there's no client list, there's no conspiracy and he was not murdered. It's just said, it's just stated, it's like the Ministry of Truth in 1984 just says, this is how it is. No backup, no nothing, just this is how it is. That makes us all very, very uneasy. And it sounds like the same thing we've been hearing over and over again. Now again, I'm not implying that he is in any way involved. I think he was again trying to politically handle this, arguably for good reason. As he said, we have got Texas, we have got these other problems, let's move on, but it didn't hit right. And it has led to, it is my understanding there is a huge fissure now within the Justice Department over all of this. It has turned into a real political hot potato, real political bombshell, and he looks like he is reacting to it. Quoting further: "No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have Nuclear Weapons, it's never enough for some people." Well first of all, you know, rattle off all those things, these are all absolute goods or something. Maybe reasonable people can disagree but let's presume those are all great. Sorry it isn't ever enough. That's what you are in office to do is to work out problems. That said, nobody is saying that either. What we are saying is, "hey, what gives?" It's just overnight, there's nothing to see here, move along. These aren't the droids you are looking for? That's what people are upset about. And again, I think he is now reacting to the reaction from him trying to handle this and move people along, and that reaction was negative and overwhelming and I think we are again at a Crossroads here, where he is not able to communicate and have that communication stick the way that it did in the past. Quoting further: "We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any Administration has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY. The Left is imploding! Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020 and arresting Thugs and Criminals." Well nobody disagrees with that, but they should also be concerned with child predators, and they should also be concerned with child trafficking. That's what the concern is. It's not a dialectic here; it's not a one or the other. It's not a binary choice. Either we get these investigations, or we get this? We can do all of those things. We certainly give enough money to these organizations. Quoting further: "Instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired documents on Jeffrey Epstein." First of all, who said they were Radical Left inspired? If anything, it's my understanding it goes after people on the left and in some cases as much as after people on the right. This isn't a leftist, rightist thing. This has never been a leftist, rightist, if anything it seems like across a spectrum of the establishment if you will, there is a problem going after this. Quoting further: "LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB -- SHE'S GREAT!" Well, she said these things were on her desk, and now they are saying they don't exist. How can we let somebody like that do their job when they tell us, "oh, it's on my desk, I'll get to it", and then "oh there's nothing on my desk." Quoting further: "The 2020 election was Rigged and Stolen.." okay great, apropos of, what has that got to do with anything? I feel like that scene in The Big Lebowski. "What does everything have to do with Vietnam? What the F does this have to do with Vietnam?" What does the Epstein have to do with the 2020 "rigged election"? Which reasonable people can disagree on that issue, if it was rigged or not or whatever, and I don't want to get into all of that, but I definitely know it's apropos of nothing when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein. Quoting further: "...and they tried to do the same in 2024." Okay fine, what does have to do with anything? "That's what she is looking into as AG, and much more." Well okay you can put some people on that. You can't put people as well -- she said that there were hours and hours of tapes. If there are hours and hours of tapes of abuse of underaged people, shouldn't we be looking at that? Quoting further: "One year ago our country was DEAD. Now it's the "HOTTEST" country anywhere in the world. Let's keep it that way, and not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein." It is not a waste of time and energy to go after what clearly was an organized ring of trafficking. And by the way, the number one person was in jail for who had previously been convicted on similar charges to what is being alleged in the case, and then died mysteriously while in custody. The other person is now in jail, ostensibly for trafficking underaged people to no one. Again, it's not a waste of time and energy if there is a crime there. Isn't that the raison d'être for the Justice Department? Quoting further: "..somebody that nobody cares about." well says you. Clearly people care about it. Quoting further: "Thank you for your attention to this matter." I kind of like the end of that. It was like a principal over the loudspeaker in a high school or something - "thank you for your attention!" 

Look, this is what I am saying is, again I think Trump had really miscalculated how to respond. I think that miscalculation has had orders of magnitude more blowback than he ever imagined. I also think look he's now in his second term; he would argue he won three times, but he is in his second term, well he is in his second term. Presidents become lame ducks in their second term; that's sort of the nature of it. Now it's generally viewed that that doesn't happen until after the midterm election where they still have some clout and things. It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out with this notion of a third political party. I think that probably there's more hot air there than actual substance, but you never know. A guy like Elon Musk, very capable, very wealthy and he is saying this for real, and look there are issues that just transcend politics, and this is one of them. And frankly he got on the wrong side of it it looks like, or he responded to it in the wrong manner and it is not something he is used to and you couple that with the confluence of all these other events, and it looks to me like we are really seeing a turning of the page in terms of the influence of Trump and this era of Trump being sort of at the foreground of everything political in America. Again, he's not going anywhere; there's three and a half years left; he's going to be around a while. He's definitely not a spent political force. I like a lot of the things he's doing. I especially like his policy on stopping illegal Immigration; I've talked about that at length. That was one of the biggest things, the biggest issues I felt like facing America going back the last five years. I made a video about Pancho Villa and the gunfight with Patton at the border years ago, and talking about illegal immigration. I think that's a very, very big deal and I think he has been really assiduously, more so than any President I can remember in the recent past, going after that issue. So hats off to him for that. But again, I also think whatever the heck happened with this Epstein thing is also a significant issue and if there is a cover-up, I would like to know about it and I think a lot of Americans agree, and that's the reason for the blowback on his response. And we are seeing now a turning of the page with regard to the era of Trump. I think that's happening. 

Coming back over here to Thailand. Look I don't think by any metric you can say that we are not also in a very similar watershed moment with regard to Thaksin here, and especially in light of the fact that - I am sorry, I have read the transcripts of Ms. Paetongtarn's discussion with Hun Sen, former Prime Minister, now President of the Senate whatever, de facto leader of Cambodia, Hun Sen, calling him “Uncle”, disparaging effectively our military commanders at the border, calling them an "opponent", saying he can basically have whatever he wants. I likened it to appeasement; on the record I have said that. And by the way, I was very much in her camp not three months ago. I was behind it when Bhumjaithai was still part of the Coalition and she went through the no confidence vote, succeeded and got through it. I thought it was a good moment for Thailand, and I think it showed that we have Democratic institutions here but times have changed. I really question both her ethical standards as well as I question her competence because of that call - and I have done many other videos on that - and I just think that is in itself a watershed moment. But then now we are seeing Thaksin trying to like come out and get out ahead of it and handle it in much the same way that Trump did, and I think it's backfiring in similar ways. And I think also, much like we are seeing a turning the page on the Trump Administration, I think we are seeing a turning of the page over here where no longer will this “Shinawatra clique” if you will, be the dominant force and be at the foreground of every kind of political discussion moving forward here in the Kingdom of Thailand.