Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / War, Oil, and the Fiscal Cliff: Iran, Odessa, Hormuz, Zelensky, Trump, and America’s Dangerous March Toward Global Escalation

Transcript

War, Oil, and the Fiscal Cliff: Iran, Odessa, Hormuz, Zelensky, Trump, and America’s Dangerous March Toward Global Escalation · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, happy Monday to everyone.
• 0:03
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:05
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:07
  You are listening to DAM Radio coming to
• 0:10
  you live from the Lake Ozark Real Estate
• 0:12
  of the Art Studio.
• 0:14
  And we do this, oh, Monday through Thursday
• 0:18
  for you from 7 30 to 9 o
• 0:23
  'clock.
• 0:25
  And then on Friday, we do another iteration
• 0:28
  of Civic Outlaws.
• 0:30
  I encourage you to go to civicoutlaws.com,
• 0:33
  see our current events and all of the
• 0:36
  shows out there that have been done in
• 0:38
  the past.
• 0:39
  And then I encourage you to go out
• 0:40
  to internationalflavor.com and check out the show
• 0:46
  from there.
• 0:47
  With all the interesting rhetoric, as they call
• 0:51
  it, the political babble, as some may also
• 0:56
  call it.
• 0:57
  And I also encourage you to listen as
• 1:00
  much as possible to damradio.com forward slash
• 1:03
  live or forward slash podcast.
• 1:05
  Should you choose to listen, not at the
• 1:09
  proper slotted window, you can go to damradio
• 1:12
  .com forward slash schedule to get the goods,
• 1:17
  to get the goodies and find out when
• 1:19
  all of the shows are up and coming
• 1:23
  and what the schedule says as far as
• 1:27
  going deep into the lunacy of the day.
• 1:33
  And there's plenty of that to go about.
• 1:36
  Um, tell you what, I got a lot
• 1:40
  done this somewhat cold, but otherwise beautiful weekend.
• 1:45
  And maybe I'm a whining over the cold
• 1:50
  because it really wasn't all that bad.
• 1:52
  I helped a helped a sister build a
• 1:58
  bathroom.
• 1:59
  Well, her husband, she was there too.
• 2:01
  And so I suppose I was helping the
• 2:03
  both of them.
• 2:04
  Hmm.
• 2:05
  Yeah, that's probably true.
• 2:07
  And, uh, if you haven't built a bathroom
• 2:09
  lately, I encourage you to get in the
• 2:10
  mood.
• 2:11
  It's a lot of fun.
• 2:12
  And, uh, that's even more fun when it's
• 2:14
  out in the middle of nowhere.
• 2:15
  So there you go.
• 2:17
  I encourage you to go out to the
• 2:18
  middle of nowhere and create a bathroom.
• 2:20
  It could be a lot of fun.
• 2:22
  So do it.
• 2:23
  I listened to plenty of commentary of talk
• 2:31
  and researched a couple of things.
• 2:34
  One of the most, I don't know, revealing,
• 2:39
  I suppose, is how things are so different
• 2:43
  and yet the same.
• 2:48
  I tell you what, I've, everybody knows that
• 2:53
  I have not been for the illusion that
• 3:00
  for the illusion of war or the, uh,
• 3:05
  what do they always say in my church
• 3:07
  class when I was in Sunday school in
• 3:09
  that time there shall be wars and rumors
• 3:12
  of wars.
• 3:13
  And if you're Monty Python and you can
• 3:15
  say, uh, and during those times, a man
• 3:18
  shall steal another man's hammer and no one
• 3:21
  will be able to tell where it is.
• 3:24
  They left that thing, which they only remembered
• 3:27
  a few days before, but they can't remember
• 3:29
  where it is now.
• 3:31
  If you're going to be quoting scripture and
• 3:33
  talking about the future, you know, Monty Python
• 3:35
  is a good source, source for all of
• 3:38
  your entertainment value.
• 3:41
  Or you can listen to all of the
• 3:45
  countries that are speaking today.
• 3:48
  So I listened to, let me give you
• 3:51
  a broad smattering as it were of people
• 3:55
  that I spoke about, spoke.
• 3:57
  I didn't speak to any of them.
• 3:58
  I listened to over the weekend or on
• 4:02
  Friday, I listened to a guy named uh,
• 4:06
  Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was a former chief
• 4:11
  of staff of the U S secretary of
• 4:13
  state.
• 4:14
  Um, and he had a long military career
• 4:17
  and also worked at the white house.
• 4:19
  He's an interesting individual.
• 4:20
  That was a, a, a, a seriously good,
• 4:25
  um, speech or, or discussion.
• 4:30
  I listened to Richard Wolfe, a professor from
• 4:33
  New York that, uh, another half an hour
• 4:37
  with him.
• 4:38
  I did another John Mearsheimer round.
• 4:41
  Uh, I did a one with, uh, Rachel,
• 4:46
  uh, Blevins, who I like to listen to,
• 4:51
  uh, Alex Christopher, Dr. Mohamed Morandi, uh, in
• 4:56
  the name of, and this, he was with
• 4:57
  a guy named, um, what was that guy's
• 5:02
  name?
• 5:02
  I remember Cyrus Jansen.
• 5:05
  Cyrus Jansen is a, uh, a young, a
• 5:08
  politically challenged, politically motivated.
• 5:11
  I don't know if he's challenged.
• 5:13
  He challenges the politics.
• 5:15
  That is for sure.
• 5:17
  Um, he always seems to have an economic
• 5:19
  angle, which I kind of like.
• 5:21
  And he interviewed a guy named Mohamed Morandi
• 5:24
  and, uh, Morandi.
• 5:28
  So he's from kind of inside, uh, well,
• 5:31
  he is in Iran and he, he knows
• 5:33
  some things.
• 5:34
  There was the, uh, the, the fuel equals
• 5:37
  the blood of war.
• 5:39
  There was, uh, uh, that was the Alex
• 5:41
  Christopher one and the Houthis are entering the
• 5:44
  war.
• 5:45
  There's a, so, and then I watched a
• 5:47
  big game, uh, or watched one called, uh,
• 5:50
  the big game March 30 of 2026.
• 5:55
  And it says the game is, uh, for
• 5:58
  Odessa and, uh, this was a Russian language
• 6:02
  version.
• 6:02
  So I listened to two Russian language ones.
• 6:04
  There's this one, which is, uh, uh, a
• 6:09
  big game over Odessa.
• 6:11
  Now I think I may start with that,
• 6:15
  uh, with, with where it's all of those
• 6:21
  things, they could fill an entire week of,
• 6:24
  uh, of talking, especially with me.
• 6:26
  And, uh, I w I watched the, you
• 6:29
  know, Trump talking about the, the, the gifts
• 6:32
  that he received from, um, from Iran nonsensical,
• 6:40
  uh, that's that he didn't get any gifts
• 6:42
  from them.
• 6:43
  Those Pakistani gifts, the gifts came to Pakistan,
• 6:48
  but well, if you want to claim them
• 6:50
  as your own, I suppose you could.
• 6:52
  And, uh, but it's 10 ships that get
• 6:55
  to go through the Straits of Hormuz, but
• 6:57
  they're going to Pakistan or Pakistani ships.
• 7:00
  They paid a new one to get out.
• 7:03
  And, uh, uh, and that is, uh, the
• 7:07
  funny part of it all is, is that
• 7:10
  the, the mistruths that are being talked about
• 7:13
  the whole way through the bombing, I watched
• 7:16
  one, uh, the Rachel Blevins one really got
• 7:19
  me going a little bit.
• 7:23
  And that has not a whole lot to
• 7:25
  do with Iran.
• 7:26
  It had had to do with, uh, Lebanon
• 7:30
  and had to do with the, the killing
• 7:34
  of journalists that nobody in the West is
• 7:37
  talking about.
• 7:37
  And she was pretty upset about it and
• 7:39
  she wasn't interviewing anyone.
• 7:41
  And rightly so, uh, she showed some pictures
• 7:44
  and some stuff like that, that, uh, that
• 7:47
  were, that came into that, uh, area.
• 7:52
  I'm going to see if I can find
• 7:54
  this, um, find this commentary.
• 8:00
  Oh yeah.
• 8:00
  There's the, no, that's Alex.
• 8:02
  And let me find that's the circular as
• 8:10
  a Lenski Lenski's crews in the middle East
• 8:13
  looking for gas.
• 8:16
  Okay.
• 8:17
  He's looking for gas.
• 8:19
  And so all of these things have kind
• 8:21
  of come together into a big circle.
• 8:26
  And so it's, it's, uh, this is not
• 8:29
  good.
• 8:30
  Okay.
• 8:30
  So, so let's, let's do a quick little
• 8:33
  review of all of these.
• 8:35
  So basically we're going to start with, um,
• 8:40
  the framework, which is if you listen to
• 8:44
  Wolf and Wilkerson, which, you know, I made
• 8:47
  an effort to do and they speak with,
• 8:50
  with real numbers, they, they give you real
• 8:53
  stories.
• 8:54
  And I want to go all the way
• 8:56
  around through this circle about the mistake of
• 9:01
  Iran that I believe is happening before our
• 9:04
  very eyes.
• 9:04
  Now I had my own theory upon this
• 9:08
  and you've heard bits and pieces of it
• 9:10
  before.
• 9:11
  And nobody knows what the hell Trump is
• 9:14
  thinking.
• 9:15
  He don't know what he's thinking.
• 9:16
  He changes it every morning and it just
• 9:19
  changes.
• 9:20
  You know, I think it is something that
• 9:23
  has to do in part, like when I
• 9:25
  heard, uh, Joe, um, Kent, the, the guy
• 9:32
  who left the, uh, service of, of the
• 9:36
  president here a couple of weeks ago, middle
• 9:38
  Eastern guy that said it was a big
• 9:40
  mistake to go into middle East.
• 9:42
  I agree with that analysis completely, by the
• 9:45
  way.
• 9:46
  I also believe that my thought process doesn't
• 9:49
  matter anyway.
• 9:51
  Uh, not as not, not any more than
• 9:53
  anybody else's and where you choose to get
• 9:56
  your information is up to you.
• 9:57
  But the fact is, is I'm fairly well
• 10:01
  versed in, in, in all of this stuff.
• 10:04
  And I am a cynical and a disbeliever.
• 10:14
  I do not believe the excuses that government
• 10:17
  gives to work just because the government gives
• 10:21
  them.
• 10:22
  I never say, Oh, gee, this politician is
• 10:26
  better to listen to than that politician.
• 10:30
  You know, I have my thoughts on the
• 10:31
  matter and I try to listen to them,
• 10:33
  but I think they're all full of crap
• 10:35
  and they don't, they don't tell you the
• 10:37
  truth, no matter what.
• 10:38
  Anyway, it's like, you don't have the capacity
• 10:41
  because they're always trying to sell you something.
• 10:44
  It's like the used car dealer just because
• 10:47
  he happens to be telling you the truth
• 10:49
  about this particular thing.
• 10:51
  Don't mean you should believe him about everything,
• 10:54
  you know?
• 10:54
  And that's the same for political commentators.
• 10:57
  That's the same for people on CNN.
• 11:01
  It's, you know, the same for people who
• 11:03
  aren't, same for people who do not have
• 11:07
  the right or the desire, uh, either the
• 11:12
  right or the desire to, uh, speak with
• 11:16
  you on what they think, not what they're,
• 11:22
  not what their backers think, not what the
• 11:25
  big money man thinks that's supporting them, not
• 11:29
  that, but what they actually think themselves.
• 11:33
  And, uh, you cannot take the money and
• 11:36
  the backing out of a, of a national
• 11:39
  politician and hell, you can barely do it
• 11:42
  out of a state politician, although your chances
• 11:44
  are a little bit better and of that,
• 11:47
  but you can't believe what they say because
• 11:50
  it's always being presented to you through someone
• 11:53
  else's lens, not yours, unless you're the guy
• 11:56
  backing them.
• 11:57
  You know, if you're the, if you've bought
• 11:58
  yourself a politician, well, more power to you,
• 12:01
  good luck to you.
• 12:03
  But, uh, but I don't trust you anymore.
• 12:05
  And I trust them.
• 12:06
  You have the goal of, uh, increasing your
• 12:08
  own power.
• 12:09
  So just understand that when I, when I
• 12:12
  listened to these or when I spout this
• 12:14
  off myself, at least for me, I'm not
• 12:19
  beholden to somebody else's opinion.
• 12:22
  I'm not.
• 12:23
  And you can convince me to change mine,
• 12:25
  but not just by telling me that's, you
• 12:28
  know, what I need to do.
• 12:30
  That's not going to happen.
• 12:31
  So I've always thought this is an, is,
• 12:35
  is an economic when, when, when Venezuela happened,
• 12:39
  everybody knows I went, ah, what the hell
• 12:41
  are we doing?
• 12:42
  And then, and then immediately after that, we
• 12:46
  end up in a, uh, unsustainable action, another
• 12:50
  one in the Middle East and the Middle
• 12:53
  East.
• 12:54
  It's, you know, almost always about encircling Iran
• 12:57
  and taking out the biggest, biggest, largest oil,
• 13:05
  uh, interest in the world.
• 13:09
  You know, Iran, well, arguably Russian now, but
• 13:12
  the biggest in the Middle East, right.
• 13:14
  And, uh, and the biggest block to the
• 13:18
  U S controlling the oil out of the
• 13:21
  Middle East.
• 13:22
  Why do you think we're there?
• 13:24
  Why do you think we've ever been there?
• 13:26
  We've been there to control the oil period.
• 13:30
  There's no other reason for us to be
• 13:32
  there.
• 13:33
  None whatsoever.
• 13:35
  And why do we need bases all over
• 13:37
  the Middle East?
• 13:38
  The only reason to justify it is oil.
• 13:42
  Okay.
• 13:42
  And other, uh, natural, um, products, you know,
• 13:47
  aluminum's over there, pretty big supply took a
• 13:50
  huge hit.
• 13:51
  Uh, there, there's plenty of other natural resources
• 13:54
  over that way.
• 13:55
  So I always thought that it, and when
• 14:00
  the, the, the pieces all fell together after
• 14:03
  the Strait of Hormuz was closed this time,
• 14:07
  and this has been a long time in
• 14:09
  the making, if you believe some of the,
• 14:12
  uh, Iranian, uh, strategists that are speaking that,
• 14:17
  you know, this is, and now they're talking
• 14:20
  about closing the red sea, which will be
• 14:22
  another 15 to 20% of a global,
• 14:26
  uh, supply of oil through the world controlled
• 14:30
  by the Houthis or able to be shut
• 14:33
  off by the Houthis.
• 14:36
  And, uh, you have the continued killing of
• 14:40
  people, um, in Israel, uh, and in Lebanon
• 14:45
  by the Israelis, whether you believe those stories
• 14:47
  or not.
• 14:48
  So it's important to listen to somebody like
• 14:50
  Richard Wolf, who, uh, has a vested interest
• 14:53
  in all of those things.
• 14:54
  Um, and at any rate, the theory that
• 15:01
  I've always had is this is an affront
• 15:04
  to China and it's because the one in
• 15:09
  Venezuela was far too obvious.
• 15:11
  They lied to us about why they were
• 15:13
  there.
• 15:14
  You know, we aren't there for narco terrorism
• 15:16
  and to blow anybody up.
• 15:18
  And those that were paying attention knew that
• 15:20
  was bullshit from the beginning because that is
• 15:24
  the smallest of the five biggies that are
• 15:28
  allegedly controlling narco terrorism.
• 15:32
  And, uh, you know, that is nothing but
• 15:35
  the, the, we have a bigger, a bigger
• 15:38
  appendage than you.
• 15:39
  And so we can go in and dictate
• 15:40
  what you're going to do with your oil.
• 15:43
  And it only came clean by Trump afterward
• 15:46
  because he has to tell about his victory
• 15:48
  and his victory all has to do with
• 15:52
  oil.
• 15:52
  And so he gets to go, look, we
• 15:54
  have the oil.
• 15:56
  Nothing has changed there.
• 15:57
  By the way, they have the next corrupt
• 15:59
  person in line.
• 16:01
  You know, if you want to call it
• 16:02
  corrupt, you know, that's how their country is
• 16:04
  run.
• 16:05
  That's just the way it is.
• 16:06
  And maybe it'll change someday, but that's not
• 16:08
  our gig.
• 16:09
  And by the way, there's still over there
• 16:10
  pounded where we're not completely out of that
• 16:13
  debacle.
• 16:14
  You know, it's not like we walked away,
• 16:16
  you know, wherever Trump said, I'm going to
• 16:19
  control these people, me, Marco Rubio is going
• 16:22
  to run.
• 16:23
  Marco Rubio is going to run Venezuela and
• 16:26
  they think they're still doing it.
• 16:27
  So, but then we move straight into the,
• 16:31
  and that is leg number one knocked out
• 16:34
  from under allegedly, uh, China.
• 16:37
  Okay.
• 16:38
  Because they had a hundred billion invested in
• 16:40
  that infrastructure that Trump gets to probably claim
• 16:44
  his own too.
• 16:46
  And so now they're trying to do the
• 16:47
  same thing in Iran.
• 16:49
  That's why us took the opportunity to follow
• 16:51
  along after Netanyahu declared his intentions and, um,
• 16:56
  gave them the date for when and time
• 16:59
  for when he was going to, uh, to
• 17:02
  attack.
• 17:02
  And according to Rubio, you know, we, we
• 17:05
  knew he was going to do it and
• 17:06
  it was a good opportunity for us to
• 17:08
  follow along.
• 17:09
  So those two things pretty much sealed the
• 17:12
  deal for me, uh, knowing that this is
• 17:14
  an anti-China, anti-Russia measure, which I've
• 17:18
  talked about before.
• 17:19
  Um, but this is, here's the collapse part.
• 17:24
  Let's talk about the economy first and the
• 17:26
  war second, because what distinguishes this from every
• 17:30
  prior us conflict is not just that another
• 17:33
  voluntary war, you know, a war that we
• 17:38
  don't need to fight, frankly, that we have
• 17:41
  no business fighting right now, another voluntary, a
• 17:46
  war of choice that we, this is our
• 17:49
  choice to go to war.
• 17:50
  It's not a necessity.
• 17:52
  This is not a, uh, anything like that
• 17:55
  for us.
• 17:56
  Meanwhile, the, the people who are in the
• 17:58
  two big wars in the world, the Russians
• 18:02
  and the Iranians, and arguably the Chinese, if
• 18:06
  you're going to economic throw it in there,
• 18:08
  you have three existential threat wars, or at
• 18:14
  least two Russia and Iran.
• 18:16
  Those are existential threats where we're going to
• 18:19
  destroy you.
• 18:21
  NATO and America are going to attempt to
• 18:24
  destroy Russia.
• 18:26
  They miscalculated that now Israel and America, and
• 18:32
  now Ukraine are going to destroy Iran.
• 18:36
  These are existential threats to the, the, the
• 18:41
  countries of Russia and Iran.
• 18:43
  They must fight.
• 18:45
  They were not brought into this as a
• 18:48
  voluntary elective war.
• 18:50
  Although that is what they try to sell
• 18:52
  you as this Putin's war.
• 18:55
  This is, uh, the Ayatollah's war.
• 18:57
  They were going to attack us first.
• 18:59
  So we had to attack them.
• 19:02
  Russia was going to attack us first.
• 19:04
  So we had to build up Ukraine and
• 19:07
  supply those nuts with all kinds of weapons
• 19:09
  so they could engage their hate of their
• 19:12
  hatred of Russia and all things Russian.
• 19:15
  By the way, over the weekend, I met
• 19:17
  a bunch of fellows from Latvia and, uh,
• 19:21
  uh, they're speaking Russian.
• 19:23
  And I went up to him and started
• 19:24
  speaking Russian.
• 19:25
  Tell you what the hatred of Russia is
• 19:28
  alive and well with all those Baltic States,
• 19:31
  because those boys, they were looking anywhere but
• 19:35
  at me when I went and I said,
• 19:37
  do you guys speak Russian?
• 19:38
  I said, you're speaking.
• 19:39
  I hear you're, you know, you're over here
• 19:42
  speaking Russian.
• 19:42
  It was really funny because they were speaking
• 19:44
  Russian until I walked up, they all were
• 19:47
  speaking Russian.
• 19:48
  Why?
• 19:48
  Because they come from various areas of, of,
• 19:51
  of Latvia, Lithuania, any of those Baltics, maybe
• 19:54
  Belarus, maybe somewhere in there.
• 19:57
  And they all speak Russian, but they don't
• 19:59
  want to.
• 20:00
  And so if you come up as an
• 20:01
  American and you're speaking Russian to them and
• 20:05
  they know that they're speaking Russian, they want
• 20:07
  to show you that they aren't speaking Russian
• 20:10
  because you're not supposed to like Russia.
• 20:13
  You're supposed to hate them, especially here in
• 20:15
  America.
• 20:15
  We're supposed to feel sorry for them because
• 20:18
  Russia is pounding them and geez, Russia is
• 20:21
  the big bad wolf.
• 20:22
  And it's, I think it's ridiculous that you
• 20:27
  hate, it's like us hating Mexicans, us hating,
• 20:31
  and we don't, but I mean, hating Mexicans
• 20:33
  because they speak Spanish, you know, it's nonsense.
• 20:37
  So we're going to discount Spanish and that's,
• 20:40
  they, they, they're still doing it.
• 20:41
  That shit's live and well.
• 20:44
  So at any rate, the war is, has,
• 20:48
  has begun and it's economy first, war second.
• 20:54
  Okay.
• 20:54
  And that the war has begun inside a
• 20:57
  structurally weak system already.
• 21:01
  This is, it comes clear from Richard Wolff.
• 21:03
  You should listen to this, his theory, because
• 21:05
  it was strong and it is, maybe that
• 21:09
  should be an anchor for, for everybody's thought
• 21:12
  process, because for Wolff, this isn't a military
• 21:16
  question at all.
• 21:17
  And for me, it's really not either.
• 21:19
  It's an economic one, more specifically a question
• 21:23
  about whether the United States still has the
• 21:27
  financial architecture necessary to sustain the kind of
• 21:34
  war that it has chosen to enter.
• 21:39
  It's arithmetic people.
• 21:41
  The United States entered this conflict already, carrying
• 21:46
  over a trillion dollars in annual deficit.
• 21:52
  Already our credit rating from all three bureaus
• 21:55
  has been downgraded to AA, not AAA, we're
• 22:00
  AA.
• 22:01
  We're already dependent on borrowing to fund not
• 22:06
  only domestic programs, but the entire global military
• 22:11
  posture.
• 22:13
  And, you know, we have a fragile structure.
• 22:15
  You may not believe it, but it's fragile.
• 22:18
  Trump comes into office.
• 22:19
  He says, I'm going to fix all this.
• 22:23
  And we're going to bring in shit pots
• 22:24
  of money by tariffs.
• 22:27
  We're going to bring in all these tariffs.
• 22:30
  And he starts bringing in the money.
• 22:32
  People start anticipating the money.
• 22:34
  The Wall Street starts betting on the money
• 22:37
  and possibilities begin to emerge that goes, oh
• 22:43
  my gosh, he might actually pull something off.
• 22:47
  He may pull something off.
• 22:49
  He might actually reduce the deficit.
• 22:53
  Not so young people.
• 22:55
  He immediately spent whatever he thought he was
• 22:58
  going to do by.
• 22:59
  Now, think about this size increase in a
• 23:05
  military budget, which in twenty twenty four was
• 23:09
  eight hundred billion.
• 23:14
  Right.
• 23:14
  Which is a huge number.
• 23:18
  OK, maybe not quite nine hundred cases, almost
• 23:21
  nine hundred.
• 23:24
  And.
• 23:26
  Guess I mean, this year.
• 23:29
  One point five trillion dollars.
• 23:34
  Imagine that number.
• 23:35
  OK, you have to imagine that number because
• 23:37
  you couldn't fit it in a warehouse.
• 23:40
  All the cash, he couldn't fit it in
• 23:43
  there.
• 23:44
  Not even in cryptocurrency.
• 23:46
  Anyway, that amount of money, nine hundred, let's
• 23:53
  call it nine hundred just to have a
• 23:55
  nice round number.
• 23:56
  What's it take to get from nine hundred
• 23:58
  to fifteen hundred billion?
• 24:03
  Right.
• 24:04
  Nine hundred billion to fifteen hundred billion.
• 24:07
  That is a sixty seven percent increase in
• 24:14
  the Department of War.
• 24:16
  Sixty seven percent in one year.
• 24:22
  Now, where's that money going?
• 24:24
  Same old assholes that went to before the
• 24:27
  military industrial complex.
• 24:28
  That's where it's going.
• 24:30
  And you enter in you up it.
• 24:32
  Then you figure out you can't live within
• 24:35
  that number.
• 24:36
  And so you immediately ask Congress because you
• 24:39
  got to start another war.
• 24:41
  And you're already way above this, by the
• 24:43
  way.
• 24:44
  You need another two hundred billion.
• 24:48
  You have almost doubled just just for Iran,
• 24:52
  by the way.
• 24:53
  And you have now doubled, almost doubled your
• 24:58
  military budget in one year.
• 25:03
  Meanwhile, your tariffs are reversed by the Supreme
• 25:08
  Court.
• 25:09
  And everybody who's paid a tariff over the
• 25:13
  last year and a half wants it back.
• 25:16
  They want that money back and judges are
• 25:19
  saying they're going to have to pay that
• 25:21
  money back.
• 25:22
  Where's it going to come from?
• 25:24
  You already don't have it, by the way.
• 25:27
  You have a double A rating, by the
• 25:29
  way.
• 25:30
  This means your interest rates are going to
• 25:32
  go up.
• 25:34
  Meanwhile, the economic balance is going down.
• 25:38
  And so, according to most economists, you have
• 25:42
  stagflation.
• 25:44
  Means interest rates are going up.
• 25:46
  But but guess what else is going up
• 25:49
  at the same time?
• 25:50
  Inflation.
• 25:51
  That's what's happening.
• 25:53
  And that is happening.
• 25:55
  And how does Trump save it?
• 25:57
  He has to win and he has to
• 26:00
  win and do something about China and do
• 26:03
  something in his own mind, you know, and
• 26:06
  he's already stuck in a war that, according
• 26:10
  to all popular commentators, even unpopular.
• 26:15
  This is this is now mainstream.
• 26:18
  He can't win this war.
• 26:19
  This is it's not going to be one,
• 26:21
  which is my fear, that when you can't
• 26:23
  win, what do you do?
• 26:24
  You escalate and everybody's escalating.
• 26:27
  Everybody's making it more troublesome to continue.
• 26:32
  Right.
• 26:33
  And so you're going to up it.
• 26:35
  Who are the most likely to throw a
• 26:38
  nuclear bomb in this scenario?
• 26:42
  It's freaking Netanyahu.
• 26:43
  I'm telling you, it's Netanyahu.
• 26:45
  That guy loves his escalation and he has
• 26:48
  the glory of God behind him.
• 26:50
  So there you have it.
• 26:53
  That is the hundred billions in new commitment,
• 26:57
  simultaneously losing revenue that he had expected on
• 27:00
  tariffs have been struck down.
• 27:03
  This, in plain language, is something that most
• 27:06
  war analysts don't touch.
• 27:08
  Anyway, it's the fiscal limits of the empire.
• 27:11
  The U.S. is not choosing to fight.
• 27:13
  It's choosing to fight at it.
• 27:14
  Not only is it choosing to fight, it's
• 27:17
  choosing to fight at a time when it
• 27:19
  has to borrow to do so.
• 27:21
  And when borrowing is now more expensive, more
• 27:24
  uncertain and you got the war driving the
• 27:28
  spending, spending increases, borrowing, borrowing pressures, interest rates,
• 27:32
  higher interest rates feed inflation.
• 27:35
  Inflation constrains domestic stability.
• 27:38
  Domestic stability limits how far the war can
• 27:41
  go because the popularity of this war is
• 27:45
  minimal.
• 27:46
  The only people out there raising sabers get
• 27:50
  this.
• 27:51
  Trump has a new press secretary.
• 27:53
  Guess who it is?
• 27:54
  Mark Levin.
• 27:55
  Well, I can't figure out what, you know,
• 27:57
  I can't figure out how to tell people
• 27:59
  how they're going to love this war.
• 28:00
  So listen to Mark Levin.
• 28:02
  Get on and listen to Mark Levin.
• 28:04
  No, he's not skewed at all.
• 28:07
  Not remotely.
• 28:08
  He's just got to have 15,000 soldiers
• 28:11
  over there.
• 28:11
  You ain't getting into Iran with 15,000
• 28:14
  soldiers.
• 28:15
  Well, you want some gnats on a horse?
• 28:17
  There you go.
• 28:19
  You want a couple hundred thousand?
• 28:21
  The American people will string you up for
• 28:23
  doing that.
• 28:24
  And a lot of them are ready to
• 28:26
  do so over 15,000.
• 28:28
  This is foolish.
• 28:29
  This is stupid.
• 28:30
  And it has nothing to do with us.
• 28:33
  Zelensky realizes it.
• 28:34
  Why do you think he's in Saudi Arabia
• 28:36
  and Qatar?
• 28:38
  And where else did he go this weekend?
• 28:42
  Bahrain.
• 28:43
  He went to all these places trying to
• 28:45
  figure out how to replace his natural gas
• 28:48
  because he can't get it.
• 28:49
  Why?
• 28:50
  Because they get, Europe gets a lot of
• 28:52
  its supply through the Straits of Hormuz Suez
• 28:55
  Canal through Iranian channels that are going to
• 28:58
  be turned off in the Red Sea by
• 29:01
  the Houthis or through Straits of Hormuz.
• 29:05
  And what did Russia do this past weekend,
• 29:07
  by the way?
• 29:08
  They shut off the gas supply.
• 29:11
  Now they're trying to claim in Europe that,
• 29:14
  oh, by the way, this means that we're
• 29:16
  defeating Russia.
• 29:17
  Well, maybe so.
• 29:18
  Maybe it does.
• 29:19
  I don't think so, but maybe so.
• 29:22
  I'll give you some time to expand that
• 29:27
  theory because I see it differently.
• 29:30
  Even if you bombed a couple of gas
• 29:32
  infrastructure places, right, inside of Russia, and Ukraine
• 29:35
  is attempting to do that because they're very
• 29:38
  frightened of Russia's new satellite system, which are
• 29:42
  going to level the recent advantages of the
• 29:46
  playing field because Elon Musk was able to
• 29:49
  cut off Russian access to Starlink that they
• 29:52
  had stolen through a bunch of terminals that
• 29:55
  were coming through Ukrainian sources, right?
• 30:00
  And so now Russia has their own and
• 30:04
  it's working and it's working well.
• 30:07
  And so now they can, now remember the
• 30:10
  warning of Zelensky going down into the Middle
• 30:13
  East and telling these countries that, look what's
• 30:16
  going on, don't you get it?
• 30:18
  Russia is taking satellite pictures and giving targeting
• 30:22
  data to Iran.
• 30:25
  Oh my God.
• 30:27
  And the world's up in arms over this.
• 30:29
  What has NATO and the United States been
• 30:32
  giving Ukraine for five years nearly?
• 30:36
  Well, we're in the fifth year or longer
• 30:39
  actually, because where do they get all of
• 30:41
  their intelligence?
• 30:42
  It's not developed by some grand Ukrainian military
• 30:47
  intelligence service.
• 30:48
  No, it's handed to them by England, by
• 30:51
  America.
• 30:52
  We are giving all of the targeting data.
• 30:54
  Who gave the pictures of the airplanes back
• 30:59
  last summer or whenever it was that they
• 31:01
  bombed the Russian airfields?
• 31:03
  Remember that?
• 31:04
  With the drones that came out, who provided
• 31:06
  that information?
• 31:08
  So that's where the Lavrov speech came in
• 31:12
  that I watched this weekend.
• 31:13
  That was extremely interesting.
• 31:16
  I tell you what, there's some very, very
• 31:18
  smart people analyzing this.
• 31:20
  And I listened to a lot of them.
• 31:22
  And all I get to do is spout
• 31:24
  it back out to you, hopefully picking and
• 31:27
  choosing all of those together.
• 31:30
  Um, Wolf says this is, this war is
• 31:34
  going to take us over a fiscal cliff.
• 31:38
  And that's not rhetoric, people.
• 31:40
  It's recognition that the U.S. is approaching
• 31:42
  a point where the ability to finance its
• 31:45
  domestic obligations and global military excursions simultaneously are
• 31:53
  going to break down.
• 31:55
  Now let's talk about that, the political dimension,
• 32:00
  because this is where Wolf observes New York
• 32:06
  and Mamdani.
• 32:07
  Now, I'm not sure if you're aware of
• 32:09
  this, but think about this, bring back politics
• 32:13
  all the way to New York.
• 32:14
  You want to know how terrible the impressions
• 32:25
  are of what Trump is doing right now.
• 32:29
  Take this as an example.
• 32:32
  If you think that Trump is going to
• 32:36
  sweep into the elections in November without some
• 32:44
  serious problems, there's something you need to think
• 32:47
  about.
• 32:49
  Trump's own Mar-a-Lago went Democrat, his
• 32:53
  area.
• 32:54
  And by the way, he used a mail
• 32:55
  -in ballot.
• 32:57
  How do you like that?
• 32:59
  He used a mail-in ballot in Mar
• 33:02
  -a-Lago is what everybody is reporting.
• 33:04
  Now, did I see him do a mail
• 33:07
  -in ballot?
• 33:08
  Nope.
• 33:08
  But he didn't go to the field to,
• 33:12
  or didn't go to the polling place to
• 33:16
  vote.
• 33:17
  He sent in a mail-in ballot.
• 33:20
  And the candidate that he backed, I mean,
• 33:24
  in his own friend's and neighbor's area of
• 33:26
  Mar-a-Lago didn't vote for him, didn't
• 33:29
  vote for Trump's dude.
• 33:30
  And a Democrat took that district.
• 33:34
  And if you want to see what's happening,
• 33:36
  I mean, go back to the Mamdani.
• 33:38
  And Wolf brought this up, and this is
• 33:40
  something I knew the pieces and parts, but
• 33:43
  I'd never heard it put together like this
• 33:45
  way.
• 33:46
  So I want you to, this was not
• 33:53
  my original idea, not remotely.
• 33:57
  And the fact that the new guy, what
• 34:01
  is his name?
• 34:01
  Mamdani, I think, the new ruler, if you
• 34:06
  want to call him that, of New York,
• 34:08
  that he said during his election campaign, here's
• 34:12
  what he said.
• 34:14
  He said that if Netanyahu came to New
• 34:19
  York, he would have him arrested.
• 34:22
  He's Muslim.
• 34:24
  He's young.
• 34:25
  He isn't the same old, same old, certainly
• 34:28
  not in the state of, well, in the
• 34:32
  city of New York or the state of
• 34:33
  New York.
• 34:34
  And according to Wolf, he was backed like
• 34:40
  60, 70 percent by the Jewish population in
• 34:46
  New York, said that they supported this guy.
• 34:50
  That's how bad it is for Trump.
• 34:54
  They elected a socialist, they elected a Muslim,
• 34:57
  and they're all Jewish.
• 35:00
  And so he brought it home.
• 35:03
  I mean, this is unbelievable.
• 35:05
  And he's not just speaking as an economist.
• 35:12
  He's a resident in New York.
• 35:14
  He talked quite a bit about it.
• 35:15
  And they asked him to get into Iran.
• 35:17
  He goes, no, no, no.
• 35:18
  He goes, I'm not an expert in Iran.
• 35:20
  I don't.
• 35:22
  I don't.
• 35:23
  I see the economic signs of what's going
• 35:26
  on, and I know what the United States
• 35:28
  is up against before they ever get to
• 35:30
  enemy one in Iran, is being able to
• 35:33
  avoid this fiscal cliff.
• 35:35
  I mean, it's an interesting argument.
• 35:37
  You get a chance, you should go listen
• 35:38
  to him.
• 35:39
  Guy's name is Wolf, Professor Wolf.
• 35:42
  He was on some talk show or another
• 35:45
  with a good guy.
• 35:46
  Next one is a guy named Wilkerson.
• 35:48
  Now, Wilkerson was former, former military.
• 35:51
  He was a military insider.
• 35:53
  He was up there pretty high.
• 35:56
  What he describes is something even more alarming.
• 36:00
  Now, this was a punch in the face,
• 36:02
  too.
• 36:03
  He said that he is embarrassed over the
• 36:08
  military.
• 36:09
  Now, frankly, I don't find any of them
• 36:10
  to be, to be remotely believable anyway.
• 36:16
  He says that it's operational incoherence at the
• 36:20
  highest military levels of leadership.
• 36:24
  He didn't mince his words at all.
• 36:27
  He said this is the worst performance he
• 36:30
  has ever seen from U.S. leadership call.
• 36:33
  This is not casual criticism.
• 36:35
  It's a criticism from a guy who spent
• 36:39
  a career inside of it.
• 36:41
  And why does he say this?
• 36:43
  It's because, and this is my bitch about
• 36:46
  the whole thing.
• 36:47
  My complaint is the exact same.
• 36:50
  What's the mission, people?
• 36:54
  Really, what is the mission?
• 36:56
  Does anybody have a clear idea of what
• 37:00
  the mission is?
• 37:02
  You know, there are objectives.
• 37:04
  There are things that you can do.
• 37:05
  You know, when I'm Sergeant Trapp running through
• 37:09
  the woods of Germany or running through the
• 37:12
  deserts of Iraq and I receive my set
• 37:16
  of orders, what's the mission?
• 37:19
  What's the mission?
• 37:19
  The mission has objectives like that you're going
• 37:22
  to take, you know, you're going to do
• 37:24
  this, but it also has the overall mission.
• 37:27
  And nobody knows what the mission is, which
• 37:30
  means they hardly know what the objectives can
• 37:32
  be to fulfill that mission because, and it
• 37:35
  certainly is going to lead people to not
• 37:38
  be as committed.
• 37:41
  You don't know what your mission is.
• 37:43
  You don't just say Sergeant Trapp take that
• 37:45
  hill or take the Straits of Hormuz.
• 37:47
  All right.
• 37:48
  Good luck to you.
• 37:49
  You know, well, our mission is to take
• 37:53
  that or is our, the mission is the
• 37:56
  abstract.
• 37:56
  The mission is how do we clean up
• 37:59
  the, you know, what influence can we have
• 38:02
  to clean up the economic mess that's been
• 38:06
  made by the United States and Israel jointly
• 38:10
  attacking Iran with nothing but an air power
• 38:16
  thinking that they're going to collapse in a
• 38:18
  weekend.
• 38:19
  And here we are in week five, you
• 38:21
  know, and slated now to go a couple
• 38:26
  more months.
• 38:27
  Rubio said, oh, a couple more months, another
• 38:31
  200 billion.
• 38:32
  Why don't we jump into that?
• 38:34
  Because you're spending it anyway, even though the
• 38:37
  Congress hasn't approved it.
• 38:43
  We're way over 39 billion now.
• 38:45
  Well on our way to 40 billion, because
• 38:48
  without a mission objectives are disconnected.
• 38:52
  You know, you don't know what they are.
• 38:53
  These disconnected actions in a war environment produce
• 38:57
  drift.
• 38:57
  You begin in one stated goal.
• 39:00
  What's the goal?
• 39:01
  Well, we don't know because first it was
• 39:04
  decapitation.
• 39:04
  Then it was no, no, no, no, no.
• 39:06
  It's nuclear containment.
• 39:08
  Then it's, you know, regime.
• 39:10
  Then it's wait, wait, wait, we have to
• 39:11
  secure shipping lanes.
• 39:13
  Look what they've done.
• 39:14
  They've done the, the Straits of Hormuz were
• 39:18
  open five weeks ago.
• 39:20
  Weren't they?
• 39:24
  How are you going to secure the shipping
• 39:25
  lanes when you're the ones who destroyed them?
• 39:28
  You're the ones who closed them.
• 39:31
  What did you expect them to do?
• 39:32
  Sit there with their thumbs inserted and just
• 39:35
  wait.
• 39:36
  This is existential to them.
• 39:39
  So the U S has no objectives.
• 39:42
  Therefore, it doesn't have a mission.
• 39:44
  You can't take all those objectives and tie
• 39:46
  them together.
• 39:47
  This is catastrophic in military terms, because without
• 39:51
  a mission, you know, all they're doing is
• 39:55
  a buying time.
• 39:57
  Okay.
• 39:58
  But buying time to do what he was
• 40:00
  quizzed about this.
• 40:01
  And I didn't like his answer.
• 40:03
  He said, buying time to buy time.
• 40:05
  Well, I don't agree with that.
• 40:07
  They're buying time because they don't know what
• 40:09
  else to do.
• 40:10
  And they're buying time to create a scenario
• 40:14
  where perhaps Trump, you know, like a blind
• 40:19
  squirrel getting that nut anyway is going to
• 40:23
  come out and, and, and Higgs, Seth, and
• 40:25
  these two geniuses are going to, are going
• 40:28
  to come to some level of success.
• 40:30
  But if the economic and military systems are
• 40:33
  both under strain, you don't just have a
• 40:36
  difficult war.
• 40:37
  You got a misaligned system.
• 40:39
  The economic base, no way can comfortably support
• 40:43
  military expansion, especially when it is not anything
• 40:48
  guided by a clear strategic endpoint.
• 40:54
  This is, this is frightening on many layers,
• 40:57
  not the least of which is Netanyahu.
• 41:02
  He said, you know what Wilkerson did?
• 41:06
  I think, you know, I was the only
• 41:09
  one stupid enough to say anything like this
• 41:11
  before, or maybe not as controlled as others
• 41:15
  to say it, but he said the same
• 41:16
  thing.
• 41:17
  He said that he is of the same
• 41:22
  opinion that it's far more likely that Netanyahu
• 41:25
  will be the one to continue to increase,
• 41:32
  continue to one-upsmanship, has to play it.
• 41:36
  And tell you what, these are frightening times.
• 41:40
  And when you go to people like John
• 41:42
  Mearsheimer, these are your more traditional role players.
• 41:46
  You know, we have Mohamed Marandi, Sergey Lavrov
• 41:50
  gave a speech.
• 41:53
  John Mearsheimer talks about the structural defeat, the
• 41:56
  logic of it.
• 41:57
  Mohamed Marandi talks about Hormuz and the plans.
• 42:03
  Lavrov talks about the complete legal collapse of
• 42:07
  all the systems.
• 42:10
  And Vladimir Solovyov and company last night, that
• 42:14
  was the last thing that I watched, two
• 42:16
  and a half hours of escalation psychology.
• 42:19
  So let's begin to talk about Odessa.
• 42:23
  Because remember, Venezuela, now Straits of Hormuz, the
• 42:27
  third one, the third pillar, Odessa, Black Sea
• 42:31
  port in Ukraine.
• 42:34
  This is important because that port for Zelensky
• 42:40
  to get liquid natural gas or any other
• 42:44
  petroleum products, it must come through two sources.
• 42:50
  Either the Turk Stream is how some of
• 42:53
  the oil parts can come up.
• 42:55
  He's got a slight potential to get it
• 42:58
  through the Greek one, whatever the name of
• 43:01
  that was.
• 43:02
  It comes roundabout way.
• 43:05
  But both Serbia and Hungary are blocking their
• 43:08
  portions off.
• 43:09
  And then Transnistria is cutting off the approach
• 43:13
  to Ukraine through Moldova.
• 43:16
  And now the port of Odessa, which has
• 43:19
  been bombed heavily for months, is being destroyed.
• 43:23
  The infrastructure, the ability to bring in regular
• 43:27
  ships is really, really curtailed.
• 43:31
  And Ukraine, with Russia blocking off natural gas
• 43:37
  and gas and fuel going outside of the
• 43:41
  country, they've stopped it until, I forget the
• 43:44
  date, June 30th or July 30th.
• 43:46
  They've just cut it off, said we're going
• 43:48
  to use it for our own purposes, not
• 43:51
  yours, not anybody else's.
• 43:53
  And so Zelensky knows he can't get it
• 43:56
  from America because America's going to need theirs.
• 43:59
  He knows he can't get it through the
• 44:02
  Red Sea.
• 44:03
  He can't get it through the Suez Canal.
• 44:07
  He cannot get it through the Straits of
• 44:10
  Hormuz.
• 44:10
  He can't have it shipped to him by
• 44:12
  anybody except through the Black Sea.
• 44:14
  And so he's over there trying to get
• 44:16
  that done, and he's down there raising alarms
• 44:18
  and saying, now Russia has put these big
• 44:21
  satellites up that are competing with the internet
• 44:26
  capabilities that we've—they've had about a six-month
• 44:30
  period where they've been not as beat up
• 44:33
  before because Russia did have to figure out
• 44:36
  and move forward on the plans quicker than
• 44:39
  they intended to release their Sputnik system to
• 44:44
  allow them to use the internet.
• 44:47
  But now they have a series, and more
• 44:51
  and more are going up.
• 44:52
  You know, they're putting up quite a few
• 44:54
  every week, and it's designed to have 900.
• 44:57
  And as it keeps happening, they keep expanding.
• 45:00
  And so Ukraine, rightly so, is frightened, very
• 45:05
  frightened.
• 45:06
  They're no longer the—no longer the preferred model.
• 45:12
  Rubio has a conversation with Kayakalis, the foreign
• 45:17
  minister for the EU, and that didn't go
• 45:22
  well, according to all accounts.
• 45:24
  He basically told her, you know, you're on
• 45:26
  your own.
• 45:27
  You know, we're not doing anything.
• 45:29
  We aren't escalating against Russia.
• 45:31
  You want to escalate against Russia, you go
• 45:33
  right ahead, but we're not.
• 45:35
  Well, they are indirectly, but this problem, there's
• 45:40
  a no-win framework.
• 45:42
  The calamity of it all is we don't
• 45:50
  have the natural capacity to get it done
• 45:53
  right now without edging right up to the
• 45:58
  fiscal cliff.
• 46:01
  Let's see.
• 46:03
  Let's talk about—let's go to Mearsheimer.
• 46:06
  He doesn't argue from ideology, morality, sympathy.
• 46:11
  He talks about power distribution and the dynamics
• 46:15
  of escalation.
• 46:17
  And he said something, and by the way,
• 46:20
  virtually all of these people and any realistic
• 46:26
  person in military channels in the United States
• 46:29
  is coming to the same conclusion, but for
• 46:32
  different reasons.
• 46:33
  And it is the United States has entered
• 46:36
  into a war.
• 46:37
  It cannot win.
• 46:39
  But the reasoning behind what he says, he
• 46:42
  said that the war, you know, this one
• 46:45
  is built on a familiar American assumption.
• 46:50
  Shock, awe, decapitation, internal regime collapse, remove leadership,
• 46:58
  destabilize command, and the system will fail.
• 47:02
  It's the same logic that drove us into
• 47:04
  Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, earlier interventions, none of which
• 47:10
  worked, by the way, long term.
• 47:12
  And that model fails here for similar reasons.
• 47:16
  But Iran is even worse for them because
• 47:19
  Iran is not structurally vulnerable in the same
• 47:23
  way that those places were.
• 47:26
  Decapitation strategy failed.
• 47:28
  The regime held on.
• 47:29
  The population has not collapsed.
• 47:32
  In fact, the opposite is occurring.
• 47:34
  Military retains operational capacity, which they do.
• 47:38
  And once that initial phase failed, the war
• 47:42
  is into something far more dangerous for the
• 47:46
  Western side more than the Iranian side, a
• 47:49
  protracted conflict.
• 47:52
  And in this long conflict, Iran holds the
• 47:56
  advantage at nearly every level of escalation because
• 48:02
  they do.
• 48:03
  Escalation is not symmetrical.
• 48:05
  It doesn't affect both sides equally.
• 48:07
  One step upward in every step upward, more
• 48:12
  strikes, more pressure, more force.
• 48:14
  You know, they say they sent 850 tomahawks,
• 48:20
  850 so far into Iran, 850.
• 48:29
  Those things are not cheap, not remotely.
• 48:33
  And how many more we got to keep
• 48:35
  lobbing at them?
• 48:40
  The numbers aren't going to add up for
• 48:42
  very long.
• 48:43
  We can't give them, we can't continue that
• 48:46
  for any serious amount of time.
• 48:51
  So the balance shifts in favor of the
• 48:53
  actor whose tools are best suited for that
• 48:56
  environment.
• 48:57
  Each one of those black hawks is in
• 48:59
  the millions, tens of millions of dollars, right?
• 49:03
  Each one.
• 49:04
  That airplane that got destroyed, the spy airplane,
• 49:08
  the flying command center, one of 15 in
• 49:11
  the military is nearly a billion dollars for
• 49:15
  one plane.
• 49:17
  And by the way, you can't just repurpose
• 49:19
  another airplane with that type of technology.
• 49:23
  You can't do it.
• 49:24
  Iran's tools are not conventional dominance.
• 49:28
  What do they have instead?
• 49:29
  They can disrupt the energy supply, clearly.
• 49:33
  They are regional exploitation of vulnerabilities of the
• 49:39
  GCC states, no problem.
• 49:42
  And asymmetrical strikes, they can continue to strike
• 49:46
  the Straits of Hormuz with their little mini
• 49:50
  subs, their mine laying equipment.
• 49:53
  They could close that sucker off for a
• 49:55
  long time and no taking of an island
• 49:58
  in the Karg Island isn't going to help.
• 50:00
  15,000, 20,000 soldiers sent over.
• 50:03
  Those are not going to help.
• 50:06
  You ain't taking over Iran with 20,000
• 50:09
  soldiers.
• 50:10
  90 million people live there.
• 50:13
  Let's see.
• 50:14
  The geographic depth, the geography there favors Iran
• 50:19
  big time, just like it favored Afghanistan and
• 50:23
  the people that were fighting there.
• 50:28
  What John Mearsheimer said, one of his quotes
• 50:32
  that I'm going to give to you is,
• 50:33
  we are the Titanic heading toward the iceberg.
• 50:39
  And the iceberg is not military defeat, it's
• 50:43
  systemic disruption, because Iran does not need to
• 50:46
  defeat the United States militarily.
• 50:49
  It only needs to impose increased costs, economic
• 50:56
  costs, regional costs, logistical costs, to make this
• 51:02
  continuation of this war as unsustainable as the
• 51:07
  one in Iraq, as unsustainable as those in
• 51:10
  Syria, against the Houthis, that against anybody, Afghanistan,
• 51:16
  I mean pick it, that against Vietnam for
• 51:19
  that matter.
• 51:20
  And so this takes you to what Marandi,
• 51:23
  and now Marandi, I tell you what, he's
• 51:28
  defining all of this.
• 51:29
  He shifts the battlefield completely.
• 51:32
  And he was on an interview.
• 51:34
  Who was he on with?
• 51:35
  What was that guy's name?
• 51:36
  I told it to you earlier.
• 51:38
  Cyril Jansen.
• 51:39
  You get a chance, you should watch this,
• 51:41
  or go out and listen to him at
• 51:43
  least, get the words from somebody there.
• 51:47
  He says the war is being misinterpreted, certainly,
• 51:52
  because analysts are looking at airstrikes, troop deployments,
• 51:58
  and activity on the bases, but those aren't
• 52:00
  the decisive bases.
• 52:02
  He says that the factors that are decisive,
• 52:05
  the Straits of Hormuz, control of Hormuz is
• 52:09
  not geographic.
• 52:10
  It's capability based, and that's a critical correction
• 52:15
  that you need to understand.
• 52:17
  Western thinking assumes that control means ships, fleets,
• 52:22
  presence.
• 52:23
  Marandi rejects that entirely.
• 52:25
  He says that the control comes from Iran's
• 52:30
  long-range missile systems, their underground infrastructure, and
• 52:35
  the distributed strike capability.
• 52:38
  In other words, you don't need to occupy
• 52:41
  Hormuz to control it.
• 52:44
  You only need to threaten it credibly, and
• 52:46
  Iran can do that from hundreds of kilometers
• 52:50
  inland.
• 52:51
  Okay?
• 52:52
  This means naval superiority is far less relevant,
• 52:55
  and they're sitting ducks in there anyway, according
• 52:57
  to our own Navy.
• 52:59
  Base positioning is vulnerable.
• 53:02
  Did you realize, and do you know, that
• 53:04
  American soldiers stationed in countries of the GCC
• 53:10
  aren't staying on their bases anymore?
• 53:13
  They're staying in local hotels.
• 53:16
  A lot of those bases are destroyed or
• 53:20
  partially destroyed, and they're having to find different
• 53:23
  living arrangements for people.
• 53:25
  It's all over the place.
• 53:27
  And Marandi pushed it forward.
• 53:29
  His argument goes a little bit further.
• 53:31
  He says, the United States is operating, this
• 53:35
  is one of his quotes, on an outdated
• 53:37
  military assumption, says 20th century thinking in a
• 53:41
  system that has already gone past it.
• 53:43
  Aircraft carriers, forward bases, concentration of assets.
• 53:47
  If these were useful, they would have used
• 53:49
  them already, but they lost them all quickly
• 53:52
  to Iran.
• 53:54
  And you layer that onto what we already
• 53:56
  know from other actually credible reporting.
• 54:01
  U.S. surveillance assets degraded.
• 54:03
  They've taken out some 10, 12, multi, multi,
• 54:08
  hundreds of millions of dollars in radar equipment
• 54:11
  taken out in the first two weeks.
• 54:14
  Radar systems have been targeted.
• 54:16
  Refueling infrastructure is hit.
• 54:19
  This is not random.
• 54:21
  They are targeting visibility sustainment.
• 54:26
  Escalation transforms this short-term crisis into a
• 54:30
  long-term global economic disruption.
• 54:34
  Which brings us back to Wolf, right?
• 54:37
  Wolf, the economic system cannot absorb a long
• 54:42
  -term disruption, can it?
• 54:45
  So now we have Mearsheimer, Marandi, and Wolf.
• 54:50
  Those are kind of a closed group.
• 54:52
  Then you got a guy who talks, now
• 54:53
  Lavrov, and he's pretty well spoken.
• 54:56
  I mean, this is a guy who's dealt
• 54:58
  with all of this for 26 years.
• 55:01
  Okay, he's not talking tactics, he's talking procedure.
• 55:04
  He says that the wars are being initiated
• 55:07
  during negotiations themselves, and that destroys diplomacy itself.
• 55:13
  And this is far more important than it
• 55:15
  sounds, people.
• 55:16
  This is important.
• 55:18
  Because this is what the rest of the
• 55:21
  world thinks of us.
• 55:23
  Not what we're over here saber rattling and
• 55:26
  talking about how wonderful we are because we
• 55:28
  outsmart everyone.
• 55:31
  It's deeper than that.
• 55:33
  Do you know Carney was on the Prime
• 55:36
  Minister of Canada was on again, talking about
• 55:39
  how they can't support what the US is
• 55:42
  doing here, even though there's no way they
• 55:45
  can support what Iran has been doing for
• 55:47
  years.
• 55:48
  And he says, but that doesn't mean, you
• 55:50
  know, we don't stand with them, that this
• 55:52
  is incorrect.
• 55:54
  This, what is going on, it shouldn't be
• 55:57
  going on.
• 55:58
  This is not, this is not in accordance
• 56:01
  with the UN Charter.
• 56:04
  It's not in accordance with anything.
• 56:06
  The rules-based scenario doesn't exist, because we
• 56:12
  don't follow the rules.
• 56:14
  We, and we truly do not, nor have
• 56:18
  we, for a very, very long time.
• 56:21
  And now it's a blatant flaunting of any
• 56:27
  international rules.
• 56:29
  We haven't looked at them in forever.
• 56:30
  There, you don't have any UN threat.
• 56:35
  These are, according to many terms, and not
• 56:38
  just Lavrov, a lot of people in Europe
• 56:40
  too, have said, these are illegal wars, illegal
• 56:45
  war in Venezuela, illegal war against, with Israel,
• 56:49
  again, and US against Iran.
• 56:51
  It was illegal last year.
• 56:53
  And you know, and of course, the rules
• 56:56
  don't apply.
• 56:57
  If you're the biggest bully on the block.
• 57:01
  And so, but his statement goes further than
• 57:04
  that.
• 57:04
  He says, diplomacy isn't just communication.
• 57:10
  You know, you're negotiating.
• 57:12
  During the negotiation, you bomb the hell out
• 57:15
  of Iran.
• 57:16
  Yeah, that's going to help, isn't it?
• 57:18
  As Ukraine, while you're meeting with the Russians,
• 57:22
  Boris Johnson comes and says, no, no, no,
• 57:26
  no, no, you can't do that.
• 57:28
  We disagree.
• 57:30
  We disagree.
• 57:31
  And so, you pull all the cards off
• 57:34
  the table, and you take your toys, and
• 57:35
  you go home saying, no, we'll beat them
• 57:37
  on the field.
• 57:38
  Well, good luck to you.
• 57:39
  You haven't done so, so far.
• 57:40
  This work could have been over four years
• 57:42
  ago, if not for that idiot.
• 57:45
  It would have been done.
• 57:47
  Ukraine would have taken it.
• 57:48
  It might have started again, you know, after
• 57:50
  people got involved, but at least there would
• 57:52
  have been something.
• 57:53
  This, many, many people, I am one of
• 57:58
  them, are afraid that this is going to
• 58:00
  turn into a prolonged and worse world war.
• 58:06
  Economic war, real war, depending on, you know,
• 58:11
  who you get.
• 58:12
  So, get your food storage ready.
• 58:16
  Things aren't going to be easy, in my
• 58:19
  own humble opinion.
• 58:21
  And tell you what, the future negotiations are
• 58:25
  meaningless, because nobody trusts us anymore, at all.
• 58:30
  During the middle of negotiations, we bomb the
• 58:33
  crap out of you.
• 58:34
  During discussions, you know, we support something else.
• 58:38
  Lavrov explicitly pointed to the same pattern that
• 58:41
  we all know, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran.
• 58:45
  Each intervention framed a little bit differently, but
• 58:48
  the similar trajectory, escalation followed by long-term
• 58:52
  destabilization.
• 58:54
  And he introduced one other one.
• 58:56
  This one has energy control as the policy
• 59:01
  objective.
• 59:02
  He circled back to where I came from.
• 59:05
  Venezuela and energy sector control, not incidental, it's
• 59:10
  right to my thought process.
• 59:13
  This goes right where I've been thinking ever
• 59:15
  since Venezuela.
• 59:17
  The conflicts are increasingly aligned with control of
• 59:21
  energy flow and infrastructure.
• 59:23
  So, Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine are all connected.
• 59:28
  Not as identical conflicts, but as, I don't
• 59:33
  know, separate nodes in a system of pipelines,
• 59:38
  shipping, resource access, are all central.
• 59:43
  And maybe his framing is politically aligned.
• 59:46
  Of course it is.
• 59:47
  He supports Russia.
• 59:48
  But it definitely, you can see the economic
• 59:52
  layer quite a bit separately from the military
• 59:55
  layer.
• 59:57
  And, you know, if the Houthis can control
• 1:00:00
  access to the Red Sea, if Iran can
• 1:00:03
  control the Straits of Hormuz, what can we
• 1:00:06
  do to get around it?
• 1:00:08
  I mean, seriously, what is the end game?
• 1:00:12
  Nobody has said it.
• 1:00:14
  There was a meme shown yesterday of Trump,
• 1:00:17
  somebody asking him basically the same question, what
• 1:00:20
  is the end game?
• 1:00:21
  And he said, you're not a very nice
• 1:00:23
  person.
• 1:00:24
  That's what Trump said to the guy.
• 1:00:26
  You're not a very nice person.
• 1:00:29
  Well, you know, that's because you can't answer
• 1:00:31
  that question.
• 1:00:32
  We don't know what the end game is.
• 1:00:34
  And there's more people.
• 1:00:36
  And this is nonsense, because unfortunately, I think
• 1:00:41
  people are starting to believe this.
• 1:00:44
  And it's stupidity, truthful.
• 1:00:47
  The Straits of Hormuz are going to now
• 1:00:50
  be called the Trump Strait.
• 1:00:51
  I mean, geez, we have the Gulf of
• 1:00:53
  Trump, you know, downstairs, you know, down south
• 1:00:57
  of, you know, the Gulf of Mexico's, you
• 1:01:01
  know, the Gulf of Trump, you know, the
• 1:01:04
  Gulf of America.
• 1:01:05
  I mean, who gives us a crap, you
• 1:01:08
  know, what it's called, what difference does it
• 1:01:10
  make?
• 1:01:11
  You know, but that's the important part for
• 1:01:16
  a lot of people.
• 1:01:17
  And what is, you know, who's going to
• 1:01:20
  rule?
• 1:01:20
  Okay, who's going to rule Iran?
• 1:01:23
  Trump says, me.
• 1:01:26
  Who's going to rule Venezuela?
• 1:01:28
  Well, me, you know, we'll pick the next
• 1:01:31
  leader.
• 1:01:32
  You know, I get to pick the next
• 1:01:34
  leader.
• 1:01:35
  I mean, what kind of stupidity and arrogance
• 1:01:39
  is that?
• 1:01:39
  I get to pick the next leader.
• 1:01:41
  It's me.
• 1:01:43
  I'm king of the world.
• 1:01:44
  Who's the next leader of Greenland?
• 1:01:46
  Oh, yeah, me.
• 1:01:47
  Who's the next leader of Cuba?
• 1:01:48
  Oh, me.
• 1:01:49
  Hey, we'll send Marco.
• 1:01:50
  We'll send a little Marco down there to
• 1:01:52
  make sure that he rules it for a
• 1:01:54
  little while.
• 1:01:55
  Where in the hell is J.D. Vance
• 1:01:56
  in all this?
• 1:01:59
  Tell you what, I think the boy's been
• 1:02:00
  sidelined.
• 1:02:02
  Solovyov was, that was a raw, raw show.
• 1:02:06
  I'm telling you, those guys were on a
• 1:02:08
  roll.
• 1:02:09
  And they were talking two and a half
• 1:02:11
  hours, but it was a joy to watch.
• 1:02:13
  And you know what I really like about
• 1:02:15
  that show?
• 1:02:18
  I like the format.
• 1:02:19
  I've told you that before.
• 1:02:20
  I really love the fact that they have
• 1:02:21
  so many people to lean upon.
• 1:02:25
  He has one guy in particular.
• 1:02:26
  I wish I could remember his name off
• 1:02:27
  the top of my head, but I can't.
• 1:02:29
  And he's on there.
• 1:02:32
  Oh, nearly every Sunday, I'd say.
• 1:02:34
  There's a couple of my favorites.
• 1:02:36
  One's a Ukrainian lawyer who basically is in
• 1:02:40
  Russia now.
• 1:02:41
  And I forget his name.
• 1:02:42
  Very, very well-spoken, very professional-looking guy.
• 1:02:47
  And I like listening to him.
• 1:02:49
  And then there's an artist that he brings
• 1:02:51
  in.
• 1:02:53
  And he's a political discourse person and an
• 1:02:58
  artist.
• 1:02:59
  And so, it's always funny to me.
• 1:03:01
  I'm sitting here, why in the world does
• 1:03:03
  an artist come in here?
• 1:03:04
  That'd be me picking Tom Hanks as my...
• 1:03:09
  Or what's her name that went over to
• 1:03:12
  Ukraine?
• 1:03:17
  The hot ex-wife of...
• 1:03:21
  Well, crap.
• 1:03:23
  I can't remember his name either.
• 1:03:24
  I'm running out of names on these actresses
• 1:03:27
  that I really like.
• 1:03:29
  I like their movies.
• 1:03:30
  Their politics suck.
• 1:03:31
  And I have friends who won't watch particular
• 1:03:33
  movies because this person is too political.
• 1:03:37
  I don't give a crap.
• 1:03:38
  I like a movie or I don't like
• 1:03:41
  a movie based on what I'm watching.
• 1:03:43
  Like Tom Hanks, he's got some good movies.
• 1:03:46
  He was in Big.
• 1:03:48
  What was he?
• 1:03:49
  He was in the You've Got Mail movie,
• 1:03:53
  whatever that was, where he met...
• 1:03:55
  Was it Meg Ryan?
• 1:03:57
  He had some...
• 1:03:58
  Yeah.
• 1:03:59
  I liked him in Saving Private Ryan.
• 1:04:05
  That was probably a bit overboard, but I
• 1:04:07
  liked that movie.
• 1:04:09
  But I hated him in that idiotic one
• 1:04:11
  with the volleyball and he's stuck on an
• 1:04:15
  island.
• 1:04:15
  That movie was slow and stupid.
• 1:04:21
  But I liked him in Forrest Gump.
• 1:04:23
  Forrest Forrest Gump.
• 1:04:24
  I think it was...
• 1:04:25
  I try not to judge people based on
• 1:04:26
  their politics.
• 1:04:27
  Anyway, I've deviated from my original brief, but
• 1:04:32
  let's get to it.
• 1:04:33
  So the panel and Solovyov talked about...
• 1:04:35
  How come Ukraine can target decision centers?
• 1:04:41
  How come the US...
• 1:04:42
  And Lavrov talked about this too, because this
• 1:04:45
  offends me.
• 1:04:46
  And listening, it offends me.
• 1:04:49
  And I've talked about it before.
• 1:04:51
  The decapitation strikes are offensive.
• 1:04:55
  I think that's horseshit, period.
• 1:04:59
  And Trump and company and Hegseth, the JV
• 1:05:04
  quarterback, jumping up and talking about, oh, just
• 1:05:08
  kill them.
• 1:05:10
  We'll do what we do the best.
• 1:05:11
  We go out and we kill.
• 1:05:12
  They go after individuals to kill.
• 1:05:16
  Now anywhere else, that would be murder.
• 1:05:18
  But if you're in the Pentagon or in
• 1:05:22
  the White House, it's perfectly feasible.
• 1:05:25
  CIA kill missions, that's all right.
• 1:05:28
  Why can't we do it?
• 1:05:29
  Well, in that case, why in the hell
• 1:05:30
  do you waste everybody's time bringing Maduro here
• 1:05:33
  to put in a prison?
• 1:05:35
  Why didn't you just freaking kill him and
• 1:05:37
  be done with it?
• 1:05:38
  That's decapitation.
• 1:05:41
  How come you can justify it all over
• 1:05:44
  Iran, just killing named individuals, along with Benjamin
• 1:05:50
  Netanyahu, and you couldn't justify it in Venezuela?
• 1:05:55
  What difference does it make?
• 1:05:56
  If this is how we're running the world,
• 1:05:58
  then fine.
• 1:05:59
  And this is what all the Russian commentators
• 1:06:01
  are thinking.
• 1:06:01
  Why are we doing the same thing?
• 1:06:03
  When these become legitimate targets, why aren't we
• 1:06:07
  doing the same?
• 1:06:11
  Now, these are people who are not political
• 1:06:13
  people.
• 1:06:15
  I mean, they are, but I mean, they're
• 1:06:16
  not government officials.
• 1:06:18
  These are politicians, right?
• 1:06:21
  Or political commentators, I mean.
• 1:06:24
  And the politicians, they're a little better behaved.
• 1:06:28
  You know, you're Lavrov's of the world.
• 1:06:30
  He brings up questions.
• 1:06:31
  And then he might bring up the question,
• 1:06:33
  well, if decapitation strikes are the future, then
• 1:06:38
  why aren't we engaging in them as well
• 1:06:41
  in Ukraine?
• 1:06:42
  Why aren't we?
• 1:06:44
  Most countries, you realize the depth of evil
• 1:06:52
  that you are committing if you're not in
• 1:06:55
  trying to engage in discussion.
• 1:06:58
  And you could say, well, you can't have
• 1:07:00
  a discussion with these type of people.
• 1:07:02
  You can't have a discussion with Zelensky.
• 1:07:05
  You can't have a discussion with anybody in
• 1:07:07
  the West if you're from Russia.
• 1:07:09
  You are a non-entity.
• 1:07:11
  You won't even claim to know Russian when
• 1:07:15
  you damn well do.
• 1:07:17
  You won't even accept the language.
• 1:07:22
  So I don't know.
• 1:07:26
  The act.
• 1:07:27
  NATO is hesitant.
• 1:07:29
  The U.S. is stretched.
• 1:07:31
  This is all the perception that Western deterrence
• 1:07:34
  doctrines are weak.
• 1:07:36
  And they're getting weaker all of the time.
• 1:07:40
  So if you pull all these together from
• 1:07:44
  Mearsheimer, which says that escalation favors Iran, Mirandi,
• 1:07:48
  the mechanism is energy plus the asymmetrical reach
• 1:07:51
  we have.
• 1:07:52
  Lavrov, diplomacy is broken.
• 1:07:54
  Solovyov and company.
• 1:07:57
  Escalation is now normalized.
• 1:07:59
  Decapitation is normal.
• 1:08:00
  And from part one when I spoke about
• 1:08:02
  this way back when, the U.S. system
• 1:08:05
  is already constrained economically.
• 1:08:09
  That means there's no clean path forward.
• 1:08:14
  There is no end game.
• 1:08:16
  Nobody knows what it is.
• 1:08:18
  Nobody's told us what the end game is.
• 1:08:21
  You know why?
• 1:08:22
  Because they don't know themselves.
• 1:08:25
  Trump doesn't know what the end game is.
• 1:08:28
  I've heard so many different stories about what
• 1:08:31
  it is.
• 1:08:31
  Nuclear deterrent.
• 1:08:32
  They were gonna, Lindsey Graham, they were gonna
• 1:08:34
  push a button.
• 1:08:35
  They were gonna blow up.
• 1:08:36
  We had to attack them first.
• 1:08:41
  Reality and Lindsey Graham rarely collide in the
• 1:08:47
  same environment there.
• 1:08:51
  Escalation increases risk.
• 1:08:55
  But they're stuck in it.
• 1:08:56
  De-escalation looks like defeat.
• 1:09:00
  Negotiation has no credibility because you're either gonna
• 1:09:04
  kill people while they're negotiating or bomb around
• 1:09:09
  them.
• 1:09:10
  And then the time just keeps expanding the
• 1:09:17
  economic pressures.
• 1:09:19
  Time.
• 1:09:20
  This is a closed strategic environment.
• 1:09:23
  This is not, things are not open right
• 1:09:26
  now.
• 1:09:26
  And there's no way out of this loop.
• 1:09:30
  None.
• 1:09:31
  Now, I wanted to bring up, because this
• 1:09:34
  is important, this, this isn't a battlefield problem.
• 1:09:38
  It's a structure problem.
• 1:09:39
  Structure doesn't collapse all at once.
• 1:09:41
  They just collapse as soon as everything, you
• 1:09:44
  know, is made so much worse.
• 1:09:46
  And think about this.
• 1:09:47
  The global system.
• 1:09:49
  I brought this all together for you.
• 1:09:51
  Energy, Odessa, the port on the Black Sea
• 1:09:55
  for Ukraine, Iran Straits of Hormuz, the Houthis
• 1:10:01
  in the Red Sea, the straight down at
• 1:10:04
  the bottom there that connects two together, they
• 1:10:06
  can control both sides of that and block
• 1:10:07
  that up.
• 1:10:08
  Nobody's getting out.
• 1:10:10
  So what happens when the rest of the
• 1:10:12
  world is operating on the reality already that
• 1:10:17
  there's no clean strategic pathway, because they are,
• 1:10:20
  Europe is, Asia is, everywhere is.
• 1:10:24
  There's talk that Australia doesn't have enough, that
• 1:10:27
  they've caused limits.
• 1:10:28
  Philippines, they've put limits in the amount of
• 1:10:30
  gas you can buy, like you can't buy,
• 1:10:32
  you can't fill up your car, you can
• 1:10:34
  only buy five gallons, right, is what they're
• 1:10:38
  saying.
• 1:10:38
  And that these realities are occurring.
• 1:10:43
  And so what happens when the rest of
• 1:10:45
  the world is already operating on that reality?
• 1:10:48
  I told you last week about India and
• 1:10:51
  the Times of India and the Palmy Sharma,
• 1:10:59
  I can't remember her name, Palki Sharma, I
• 1:11:02
  believe, very good on Times of India or
• 1:11:06
  whichever one it was.
• 1:11:07
  And there was another one that I listened
• 1:11:09
  to that is important to look at because
• 1:11:12
  these are global, these are big time events
• 1:11:17
  and where this energy come from.
• 1:11:19
  So what happens when the rest of the
• 1:11:21
  world is operating on the reality?
• 1:11:24
  The war is no longer contained in military
• 1:11:27
  boundaries.
• 1:11:28
  It's already moved into the global systems.
• 1:11:33
  Europe is under extreme pressure.
• 1:11:36
  Asia is under extreme pressure and China is
• 1:11:39
  even under pressure.
• 1:11:40
  So is Russia.
• 1:11:42
  But Russia is benefiting enormously by the cost
• 1:11:46
  of oil going up.
• 1:11:47
  Hundreds of millions of dollars increased a day.
• 1:11:50
  They're almost selling at full cost of oil
• 1:11:52
  right now regardless.
• 1:11:53
  Remember Trump had to lift sanctions against Iran
• 1:11:57
  and against Russia.
• 1:11:59
  Crazy.
• 1:12:02
  Energy markets, supply chains, diplomatic alignment and economic
• 1:12:07
  survival because a lot of other things, no
• 1:12:10
  helium coming through Straits of Hormuz, no fertilizer
• 1:12:14
  coming through any of those areas.
• 1:12:16
  And India is horribly dependent on that fertilizer.
• 1:12:21
  And their planting season is upon us right
• 1:12:25
  now.
• 1:12:26
  And in this environment, the rest of the
• 1:12:29
  world is already adapting in real time.
• 1:12:32
  So are we, by the way, with our
• 1:12:34
  extra $1.20 an hour, an hour a
• 1:12:37
  gallon, and our gasoline prices, we're doing the
• 1:12:41
  same thing.
• 1:12:42
  Filled up my tank yesterday, Saturday, one of
• 1:12:47
  the two days, $108.
• 1:12:52
  And it wasn't long ago at all that
• 1:12:56
  it cost me $70.
• 1:12:58
  So less than a month or two.
• 1:13:03
  $108, okay, it's only $30, $40, whatever.
• 1:13:08
  It's not the end of the world, is
• 1:13:09
  it?
• 1:13:10
  How many times is that going to happen?
• 1:13:12
  And gee, what about how much is it
• 1:13:15
  going to cost me now?
• 1:13:16
  Because I can't, well, can't, I won't pay
• 1:13:20
  $4.80 a gallon for Supreme once every
• 1:13:25
  three tanks.
• 1:13:27
  I won't do it.
• 1:13:29
  I'm not going to pay $140.
• 1:13:33
  That's crazy.
• 1:13:35
  But well, apparently I will at some point,
• 1:13:37
  because it ain't going to go down.
• 1:13:39
  The prices are not going to go down.
• 1:13:41
  The rest of the world is starting to
• 1:13:42
  deal with this.
• 1:13:43
  What's the Zelensky signal, right?
• 1:13:45
  This is his government scrambling for fuel.
• 1:13:49
  This is the clearest, most visible example of
• 1:13:53
  what's happening when the logistics and not the
• 1:13:57
  ideology is beginning to drive your policy.
• 1:14:01
  Zelensky has been traveling through Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
• 1:14:04
  UAE, not only for diplomatic theater, but for
• 1:14:09
  something else, fuel.
• 1:14:11
  That is all confirmed.
• 1:14:13
  Ukraine faces a severe diesel shortage.
• 1:14:17
  90% of its fuel deficit is specifically
• 1:14:21
  tied to diesel, which is absolutely essential for
• 1:14:28
  military operations and basic infrastructure.
• 1:14:32
  So what does he do?
• 1:14:33
  He goes to the Gulf.
• 1:14:35
  He signs defense agreements.
• 1:14:37
  He offers drone expertise.
• 1:14:39
  He sends Ukrainian drone specialists to assist the
• 1:14:44
  Gulf states.
• 1:14:46
  And in return, what is he after?
• 1:14:48
  Diesel supply agreements, energy cooperation, long-term logistic
• 1:14:55
  support.
• 1:14:56
  Now think about that.
• 1:14:57
  Ukraine, the centerpiece of Western military support, allegedly,
• 1:15:02
  that we helped create a million man army
• 1:15:05
  for over the last 20 years, is now
• 1:15:10
  bartering its own battlefield expertise for fuel.
• 1:15:14
  Does that show strength or is that a
• 1:15:17
  logistics strain of grand proportion?
• 1:15:22
  Because this is happening at the same time
• 1:15:24
  that Ukraine is entangled in its own energy
• 1:15:27
  dispute with Europe itself, pipeline disruption, diesel export
• 1:15:33
  suspension, no electricity coming in from Slovakia or
• 1:15:37
  Hungary, Ukraine needs this energy flow.
• 1:15:40
  So now you have a country fighting a
• 1:15:42
  war, losing access to energy routes, negotiating abroad
• 1:15:46
  for fuel, and pressuring or receiving pressure from
• 1:15:50
  its own would-be allies.
• 1:15:55
  They're fighting, literally, with Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, everybody
• 1:16:00
  down there, because they don't want to let
• 1:16:03
  them have any Russian petroleum or gas products.
• 1:16:11
  Odessa, I've already talked about, it's a fuel
• 1:16:15
  intake point, a logistics hub, and a maritime
• 1:16:19
  lifeline.
• 1:16:20
  And England has put butt-tons of money
• 1:16:23
  into that over the last 30 years, and
• 1:16:25
  now it's just being blown up in front
• 1:16:27
  of them.
• 1:16:27
  If Ukraine is seeking fuel from the Middle
• 1:16:30
  East, it's got to run through that maritime
• 1:16:32
  route, be stored, and then transported inland.
• 1:16:35
  And so if you blow up Odessa and
• 1:16:38
  its surrounding logistics corridors, they're all critical nodes.
• 1:16:42
  What has Russia been attacking over the last
• 1:16:44
  month?
• 1:16:45
  Odessa, shipping, and all rail.
• 1:16:50
  There was a story I saw a couple
• 1:16:52
  of days ago that said that literally 90
• 1:16:56
  % of Ukrainian rail lines are delayed, like
• 1:17:06
  massive delays, days long in delays, and Russia
• 1:17:09
  is blowing up their targeting engines, diesel and
• 1:17:14
  electric railroad train engines, and they're blowing them
• 1:17:20
  up.
• 1:17:20
  It's not a coincidence.
• 1:17:21
  This is how Russia is getting more money.
• 1:17:27
  They didn't even have to fire a shot,
• 1:17:29
  and they suddenly are getting, you know, suddenly
• 1:17:31
  the oil prices are making it again.
• 1:17:34
  The global energy system is so much under
• 1:17:37
  strain that maybe it doesn't affect us.
• 1:17:41
  It does.
• 1:17:42
  I just told you about my extra dollar,
• 1:17:44
  and at least per gallon in gas.
• 1:17:50
  India talks about escalation versus deterrence, diplomacy versus
• 1:17:59
  force.
• 1:17:59
  The system is unstable and must be navigated.
• 1:18:04
  India, maintaining access to energy flows, trying to
• 1:18:09
  through Russia, continue trading relationships and avoiding direct
• 1:18:14
  alignment either with Iran or with the United
• 1:18:19
  States, and it's still receiving some energy through
• 1:18:24
  Hormuz.
• 1:18:25
  It's not universally closed.
• 1:18:27
  It's open for India, China, Pakistan, and the
• 1:18:31
  Yuan, if you pay in Yuan.
• 1:18:34
  It's restricted for those who are aligned with
• 1:18:37
  the That isn't chaos.
• 1:18:39
  That's targeted economic warfare, and it reveals something
• 1:18:44
  very crucial.
• 1:18:46
  The global system is no longer binary.
• 1:18:49
  It is not the West versus its adversaries.
• 1:18:51
  It's a fragmented, multipolar network, and countries are
• 1:18:57
  acting based on their own survival, not ideology.
• 1:19:02
  The same pattern as Venezuela, different justification.
• 1:19:09
  The US is creating...
• 1:19:13
  What was that that you always used to
• 1:19:15
  put?
• 1:19:16
  Your body's right...
• 1:19:19
  No, no, no.
• 1:19:21
  Your hand is writing checks your body can't
• 1:19:23
  keep or something like that, some famous movie.
• 1:19:26
  But this is what we're doing in America.
• 1:19:28
  We sling the same old crap, new language
• 1:19:33
  for Venezuela, narco-terrorism.
• 1:19:35
  That was brand new, something we get a
• 1:19:37
  claim that we're fighting for.
• 1:19:40
  And it proves something important when you switch
• 1:19:44
  to oil.
• 1:19:44
  The stated objective is not the real objective,
• 1:19:48
  because if it were, removing the leadership would
• 1:19:51
  have ended the operation.
• 1:19:53
  What's the real line here?
• 1:19:56
  Energy, Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine.
• 1:20:00
  That's it.
• 1:20:04
  So what's the most important critical piece of
• 1:20:07
  all of this?
• 1:20:09
  The narrative being presented domestically is still being
• 1:20:16
  spouted out as if the objectives are clear.
• 1:20:20
  They are not.
• 1:20:22
  They can't tell you today the same thing
• 1:20:25
  that they told you yesterday.
• 1:20:28
  We're going to take Karg Island.
• 1:20:29
  So that's the objective?
• 1:20:31
  Was it ever the objective before you started
• 1:20:34
  decapitating Iran?
• 1:20:36
  No, it wasn't.
• 1:20:38
  The Straits of Hormuz.
• 1:20:39
  We need to open the Straits of Hormuz.
• 1:20:41
  Well, if you hadn't bombed in the first
• 1:20:44
  place, you dumb moron, it would still be
• 1:20:48
  open.
• 1:20:50
  It was open before you started bombing.
• 1:20:53
  So that is not your justification.
• 1:20:58
  If you knew what your objectives were before
• 1:21:02
  you bombed, perhaps you could have achieved them.
• 1:21:04
  You said, first, it was decapitation.
• 1:21:08
  We need to get rid of this regime.
• 1:21:10
  Second, we need to get rid of nuclear
• 1:21:12
  weapons.
• 1:21:13
  They're after nuclear weapons.
• 1:21:14
  Third, we have to deter them from attacking
• 1:21:18
  us.
• 1:21:19
  They haven't attacked us.
• 1:21:22
  They might have attacked Israel.
• 1:21:25
  Jesus, who'd blame them?
• 1:21:26
  Israel's bombing the crap out of them every
• 1:21:28
  day.
• 1:21:29
  And other places, Israel's on a hunt to
• 1:21:32
  take over far more land over there.
• 1:21:35
  Gaza became what, Trump Tower 2 or something,
• 1:21:41
  way back a year and a half ago.
• 1:21:43
  And now they're trying to, well, fine, he
• 1:21:45
  can have Gaza.
• 1:21:46
  We'll take Lebanon.
• 1:21:47
  This is nuts.
• 1:21:49
  They just keep expanding and nobody questions it
• 1:21:52
  at all.
• 1:21:53
  Killing of journalists, any of that.
• 1:21:56
  There are no trusted mediators.
• 1:21:57
  We have shifting war goals.
• 1:21:59
  We have logistical strains and no stable negotiations,
• 1:22:04
  but we're still acting as if everything is
• 1:22:06
  manageable and we're in the right framework.
• 1:22:09
  What we are watching now, unfortunately, is not
• 1:22:15
  a series of disconnected crises, but a single
• 1:22:22
  system under a vast amount of pressure.
• 1:22:28
  When you see Ukraine scrambling for fuel, sending
• 1:22:33
  its president across the Gulf to secure diesel,
• 1:22:37
  trying to keep basic operations running, while at
• 1:22:40
  the same time, the Strait of Hormuz is
• 1:22:43
  being selectively controlled with global energy flow, so
• 1:22:47
  disrupted and prices rising around the world that
• 1:22:51
  they're limiting it in Pakistan, in many, many
• 1:22:56
  countries.
• 1:22:58
  They are limiting the amount of fuel you
• 1:23:01
  can put in your car.
• 1:23:03
  And Venezuela is in place still under different
• 1:23:09
  justification, but the same patterns.
• 1:23:11
  And all this is unfolding in the domestic
• 1:23:14
  narrative continues to present this war, the Trump
• 1:23:19
  administration continues to present this war as controlled,
• 1:23:27
  strategic, and contained.
• 1:23:30
  But it isn't.
• 1:23:32
  And the rest of the world has already
• 1:23:34
  adjusted to that reality.
• 1:23:37
  The only question is, how long will it
• 1:23:41
  take the U.S. to do the same?
• 1:23:45
  Seriously, when, I mean, those of us who
• 1:23:50
  are paying for gas, we're already doing it.
• 1:23:53
  We're already adjusting.
• 1:23:55
  We are curtailing trips.
• 1:23:58
  We are not, you know, planning different over
• 1:24:02
  the summer, what we're going to do.
• 1:24:07
  This is where we go back to John
• 1:24:09
  Mearsheimer, because he doesn't argue from ideology or
• 1:24:12
  from preference.
• 1:24:13
  He talked about the structure, remember?
• 1:24:15
  He talked about escalation, and his conclusion wasn't
• 1:24:19
  subtle.
• 1:24:21
  Not at all.
• 1:24:22
  The U.S. has entered a war it
• 1:24:24
  cannot win.
• 1:24:26
  Not because it doesn't have military capability in
• 1:24:28
  a conventional sense, but because the structure of
• 1:24:32
  the conflict favors the opponent as you continue
• 1:24:37
  to escalate.
• 1:24:38
  The assumptions that shaped the opening phase of
• 1:24:42
  the war, leadership decapitation, sustained bombing, internal pressure,
• 1:24:48
  would cause collapse and ruin, just like they
• 1:24:51
  thought would happen in Russia.
• 1:24:53
  And, you know, these mistaken beliefs have already
• 1:24:59
  proven false.
• 1:25:00
  Iran has not collapsed.
• 1:25:03
  Its leadership has not disintegrated.
• 1:25:06
  Its command structure is resilient, and its ability
• 1:25:10
  to continue to launch strikes demonstrates that the
• 1:25:14
  initial phase of the war has not produced
• 1:25:18
  any decisive outcome that is expected.
• 1:25:21
  And once that fails, the conflict won't reset.
• 1:25:25
  It'll transform into a protracted conflict, and the
• 1:25:31
  question is no longer who can strike harder
• 1:25:33
  in the short term, but who can sustain
• 1:25:36
  pressure over the long term while imposing costs
• 1:25:40
  on the other side.
• 1:25:43
  This is where me, where I say, and
• 1:25:46
  where Mearsheimer argues that Iran holds the cards,
• 1:25:50
  because as you move up the escalation ladder,
• 1:25:54
  the nature of the conflict shifts away from
• 1:25:56
  conventional dominance and multi-hundreds-of-million-dollar
• 1:26:01
  missiles to small drones that cost $5,000
• 1:26:04
  and are, you know, inflicting damage like crazy,
• 1:26:09
  and the huge amount of underground arsenal still
• 1:26:14
  in place by, and by the way, I
• 1:26:16
  watched an interesting show on that that said
• 1:26:19
  that for, oh yeah, we took out Hegseth.
• 1:26:21
  We got 95% of all their stuff.
• 1:26:23
  We destroyed them last year.
• 1:26:25
  We killed everybody.
• 1:26:26
  Well, if you have, how in the hell
• 1:26:27
  are they still bombing the crap out of
• 1:26:29
  you?
• 1:26:30
  Where is the Iron Dome in Israel?
• 1:26:33
  Why in the world are we able to
• 1:26:34
  blow that crap up?
• 1:26:35
  Why can't Israel come up with, you know,
• 1:26:38
  Netanyahu says he's going to activate another 400
• 1:26:41
  ,000.
• 1:26:42
  He activated 300,000 not two and a
• 1:26:45
  half, three months ago, and a third of
• 1:26:47
  them didn't show up.
• 1:26:49
  What makes you think the 400,000 are
• 1:26:51
  going to show up, and how many of
• 1:26:53
  those will come in?
• 1:26:54
  If it's two-thirds, well, that only gives
• 1:26:56
  you, what, 240 or so, or 250, who
• 1:27:00
  knows, somewhere in there.
• 1:27:02
  But even then, what are you fighting for?
• 1:27:06
  You know, they're getting blown up all over
• 1:27:09
  the place.
• 1:27:09
  Once the phase, you know, the conflict is
• 1:27:12
  going to be protracted, it was going to
• 1:27:14
  be three, four days, oh geez, it'll be
• 1:27:16
  done in a weekend in time for me
• 1:27:18
  to go see Xi Jinping and put him
• 1:27:20
  in his place, say, sorry, energy's mine, here's
• 1:27:25
  some more tariffs for you, if the Supreme
• 1:27:28
  Court doesn't overturn them.
• 1:27:31
  I don't know, friends and neighbors, things are
• 1:27:34
  looking not all that positive as the war
• 1:27:38
  continues to escalate with zero off rampage.
• 1:27:45
  We got nothing.
• 1:27:47
  I encourage you to go listen to the
• 1:27:54
  Professor Wolf video on your own.
• 1:27:58
  I think that was a hell of a
• 1:28:00
  good discussion that he had there.
• 1:28:06
  I believe that was with Professor Dyson, the
• 1:28:08
  guy from Norway, it was pretty cool.
• 1:28:10
  D-I-E-S-E-N, I think
• 1:28:12
  it's called.
• 1:28:16
  Well, I'm Samuel Trapp.
• 1:28:18
  This is International Flavor.
• 1:28:19
  We come to you every Monday through Thursday.
• 1:28:24
  Hopefully, it's a little warmer in here, you
• 1:28:27
  know, and over the week, and it was
• 1:28:29
  a little on the nipply side for me.
• 1:28:33
  Did I say nipple?
• 1:28:34
  Oh, horror story.
• 1:28:37
  At any rate, I encourage you to listen
• 1:28:40
  to, what do we got coming up here?
• 1:28:44
  Shield Maidens of Missouri coming up right after
• 1:28:47
  me.
• 1:28:47
  Gonna be good stuff.
• 1:28:49
  Hope you listen, hope you join us in
• 1:28:50
  every day this week, and on Friday with
• 1:28:53
  Civic Outlaws.
• 1:28:54
  Very interesting topics.
• 1:28:56
  Got a few extremely cool meetings going on
• 1:28:59
  in that regard this week with some influential
• 1:29:03
  and interesting people.
• 1:29:06
  So, I shall try to keep you posted
• 1:29:08
  come Friday.
• 1:29:10
  So, I hope you have a very good
• 1:29:11
  Mid-Missouri day this happy Monday, and I
• 1:29:15
  will see you tomorrow at 7 30.
• 1:29:19
  Very nice day.