Today at 18:52
Interview: Marine Scout Sniper Matthew Sampson – about Trump Biden/Harris administration, Democrats, Republicans, hope, hate, politics, money and how some Americans praised him as a hero and some called him a criminal. Learn the true person on UATV.
— I know many people that criticize Donald Trump in Ukraine and some say that it’s a disaster they’re very emotional about and just neglecting the fact why exactly this is happening. Do you think this is not bad for Ukraine and for America?
— I find that it’s actually quite fantastic for Ukraine that from what I’ve seen from the evidence, spending time in Ukraine, that Donald Trump has been a pretty good support of Ukraine for a very long time.
And I think it’s easy to argue that Trump did more to support Ukraine than the current Biden-Harrison administration did all.
— Right. Well, can you give us an example?
— That’s something that once I got here and started interacting with, you know, who I recently was working for GUR, which is the military intelligence here in Ukraine, that military commanders instructed me and told me that they’re actually physically here receiving weapons under the Trump administration. And that was something that they did not receive anything under the Obama administration, according to them, when the initial invasion happened in 2014, which I found pretty interesting because according to the Budapest Memorandum, we have a requirement to provide security guarantees to the country of Ukraine.
So when this happened in 2014, then unfortunately, we kind of dropped the ball on that from, you know, the perspective that Ukraine sees as far as how the presidential administration handled the situation. But once Donald Trump took office, then weapons showed up, stingers and Javelins. And that’s something that I’ve heard some people say that is actually the Obama administration that approved those weapons and that they just by coincidence happened under the Trump administration. And initially, I think that’s that’s a fair comment to make if if that’s accurate.
However, it’s in my opinion that it doesn’t take multiple years to get some Stingers and some Javelins from US stockpiles into Ukraine. So with the invasion happened in 2014, Donald Trump being elected in 2016 and then taken office in 2017, in my opinion that that’s way too long for any administration to take to get weapons physically here.
So from just looking at that standpoint, I believe Donald Trump actually should be getting a decent amount of credit that Ukraine is technically sovereign today because they had Western American weapons on 22 February of of the invasion.
And that’s something that is is huge because one of the few things I noticed when all this was happening on the news when I was watching from America was Stinger missiles all over the place and Javelins all over the place, just decimating the Russian military. And that’s because of stuff that was sitting here for years, not stuff that was, you know, magically showing up under the body administration, which did happen, but much later.
— And look what’s going on right now. Mr. Trump is not yet in the office And, and, and NATO and Europe, everyone is getting ready for a big war, which happened almost three years ago, and now we’re getting ready to it. But do you believe that Donald Trump actually understand that when Ukraine needs to have an upper hand in any negotiations with dictator Putin?
— I believe so. I believe that with Trump being quite a businessman and that being ultimately what his background is, is when you go into negotiations as a business person, it’s my understanding that it’s best to have the best upper hand as you possibly can. And with Trump and Zelenskyy using so many of the similar words, especially recently and publicly, it seems like they’re mostly on the same page.
Obviously, I have no idea about their personal conversations between the two of them, and your average individual is never going to know how those conversations are going. But at least publicly, they’re saying a lot of the same things. So I find it interesting that if you support one, then by default you should have some amount of support for the for the other. If you support Donald Trump, then you should have some amount of support for Zelenskyy. As far as having a goal to actually end the war and you support President Zelenskyy, then by default you should have some support for Donald Trump. And that’s something that I believe both sides, both Republican and Democrat, should really take to heart.
I’ve seen a lot of emotion on both sides, not just the Democratic side, but I’ve seen a lot of emotion on the Republican side about specifically the Ukraine issue and especially with this most recent presidential election. And that’s something that I find very interesting in my country, that there’s so much emotion going on that or something that should be a more logical.
— Talking about emotions, I’ve seen a shockwave and I’ve seen people shocked by the Trump’s returning to the office. Like there was so much data and so much information, so much evidence about that Trump is going to win gradually, never collected, never analysed, and they will shock. Oh my God, Oh my God, what’s going on? I mean, the, the, the world is on fire. We all going to die. The America is going to fall apart. Ukraine is going to fall apart. We’re all on orange fire. What’s going on? I mean, what is going on, Matthew? Do you know why they’re neglecting the evidence?
— I think that it’s very easy to ignore some of the logical things that you see in front of you if you’ve allowed the emotions to really be the forefront of your mind and looking at some important decisions. For me personally, what sealed the deal for me was the debate between Trump and Biden back at the end of June. And that that was the one that I I found it fantastic that I believe it was CNN and they gave.
— Debates.
— Yes, they gave each one of them a very short amount of time to answer questions and then would just turn off their microphones and that that was fantastic. I think to have no audience for either one of them to play off the audience, which you know, both of them have different strengths and weaknesses with that. And that’s something that for me, looking at the results of that debate, it it sealed the deal that in that moment, the the Republican candidate, which is Donald Trump, was guaranteed to win the election.
— But do you believe that some say that, again, Trump is in the office and everything is going to end the America is going to fall apart institutionally, politically, economically. That’s the people are really buying tickets for the for the cruise all around the world to wait out the reign of Trump. I mean, this is really happening. People are so afraid why Trump has been there and we’ve really seen the evidence that America institutionally works. He has been impeached. He’s a convicted fellow as well. So the law and order is there, but they are so afraid. Why?
— Short answer is the Kremlin is bad at a lot of things. One of the few things that they’re actually really good at is propaganda, disinformation. And with America being their primary enemy for decades and decades, basically since the end of World War 2, they’re during actually part of parts of World War 2:00. We were only as friendly with them as we needed to be to, to handle, you know, the war with Nazi Germany and also then Japan that it’s extremely effective. So, so that is the short answer.
The longer answer that I see is, in my opinion, my perspective. My country, thankfully, is far too strong and powerful for one man or woman to fix everything that we have because we have a lot of problems as well, or to destroy everything. And something else that I’ve heard people say that with Trump coming back into office, that’s so some people, especially females, are feeling less and less safe now, which makes me question, if the law enforcement individuals and the people that wear uniforms in the armed forces, the United States military, does that mean that people like us are less effective at our jobs?
— Does it?
— In my opinion, no. And that’s something that for me and for those of us that wear uniforms, both law enforcement and armed armed forces, both past, present and future, it it, it’s a little insulting that our citizens feel that depending on who’s in office will dictate whether or not people like myself and the brothers and sisters have come before me and will come after me are more or less effective at our jobs. In, in my opinion, my perspective, we’re, we’re pretty good at our jobs, regardless of whose administration is running the country.
So that means that it doesn’t really matter in that context, if Trump wins, if Harris is in office, Biden, Obama, Bush, Reagan, whoever it is that that individual and their administration, whether it’s for four years or for eight years, is incapable of fixing everything.
And they’re incapable of destroying the country. The country is just too strong for that.
And one thing that is I I love about the country is what you alluded to a little bit earlier is that we have a 2 primary party political system. And I think we’ve seen, we’ve seen historically what it looks like when a country and a nation has one primary political system. We’ve seen that it doesn’t really work. We got to see Nazi Germany was one primary political system where you weren’t really allowed to have any other political system once they came to power.
Same thing with the emperor in Japan, that that that was something that there was no other option. And one of the things that makes America so fantastic is that we have two very opposing political systems that, by design, are forced to work together. And sometimes they disagree. And it’s fantastic. And I think it’s great that they disagree. And they could do it without shooting at each other.
They could do it by really just raising their voices from time to time. And then, you know, spending the time that it takes. And sometimes it takes months and months and months to come to agreement that they feel is best for the American people.
— We would love to have that. The system maybe also in Ukraine. I believe it’s possible. Democrats and Republicans, I don’t think so, but there will be a lot of Democrats and will be a lot of Republicans, a lot of parties, but more or less clear with military law enforcement. So that stays in place regardless. Another question is, is I know someone who has obviously mental issues because of the war, because of war puts a tremendous pressure on people, even on civilians. Absolutely. And also on on on people who are fighting in the trenches. Can you please educate us a little bit more on American perspective of that problem?
— That’s something that I know the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA, they, they are the primary ones responsible for the mental health and physical health as well of all US veterans. And that’s actually a process that I’m personally going through right now is, you know, getting, getting my benefits through the VA currently, I’m returning back to the US here in the near future to, to, to go through part of that process myself. So I’m learning a little bit about it right now as well. And it’s something that it is, is huge, especially once the war is over. And that’s something that here in Ukraine, I found that mental health, especially for veterans, it is not a very big priority at all.
And once the shooting does stop, whether it’s tomorrow or 10 years from now, that it’s going to be an enormous problem that veterans, from my perspective, they’re able to handle the stresses that come with post traumatic stress that comes with warfare in combat a little bit differently when the combat continues.
So if if a veteran is coming home for a specific amount of time and knowing that they’re going to go back into combat, they’re handling it a little bit differently than when they’re coming back home permanently. And they know that the combat is over. At least for them. Whether the war itself is over or if it is just for them, whether they’ve left the military or they’ve been injured to the point to where they will no longer directly see in combat again, that at that moment, that’s where the person starts to find one way or another to either process or completely depressed everything that needs to be processed. And that’s something that I believe is huge.
I know in the US, according to the VA, from 2001 to 2021, a minimum of 6000 veterans have committed suicide every single year. One year it was according to the VA was 6000. Every other year past that was over 6000 American veterans that most of them survived Iraq and or Afghanistan combat, come home and then kill themselves. And I believe a lot of that is so many of them feel that they really don’t have anyone to talk to. And, you know, also looking at how our culture sees to American veterans is not the way it was in some wars past, especially World War 2, where back then everyone was a hero regardless of what you did or didn’t do.
The fact that you put on a uniform, whether you’re drafted or volunteered, you’re a hero. And that is something that kind of adjusted starting in Vietnam and then again during Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was something that I experienced myself where, you know, I’d come home from a deployment and sometimes, you know, some people were very supportive and other people would call me a baby killer. And these are people that have no idea. Come again?
But but that’s something that I hope that maybe the US and Ukraine can work together to help out with the mental health for all the veterans that are here, not just the foreigners like myself that you volunteered to fight on the front lines that have their own, our own stuff that we need to process.
But a lot of the Ukrainian veterans here that have survived, you know, atrocious things at the front lines. And it’s something that also, as you said already, that the civilians is something that they’re going to need a lot of the mental health assistance as well.
