Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #077_ STORY INSPIRE: Scott Horton: The Truth About War, Foreign Policy, and America’s Global Power

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#077_ STORY INSPIRE: Scott Horton: The Truth About War, Foreign Policy, and America’s Global Power · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: by night, all day. Does that sound okay? Check, check, check.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: This is my normal complaint volume.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Is it one of those one ear on, one ear
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: off guys?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my right ear hurts a lot from years of this,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and so I usually just leave it off.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: There's a volume adjuster thing too, so if it's too loud,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: you can turn it up or turn it down.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: You sound good. But no, it's just I have a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: pain in my right ear, so I try not to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: antagonize it.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: And thank you very much for the gift, ladies and gentlemen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Scott Horton gave me a professorial pipe. And like I
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: was saying, Metzger uses a pipe now because of you.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I love that guy.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: He's the best.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: He's so funny.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: He's such a nut. He comes into the room.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: He just blows the room away. He's just a force
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in there. It's incredible.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: And he's a giant dude. So he hovers over you like, oh,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: you didn't know? You don't know about this? And then
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: he just hits you with 15 conspiracies in a row,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: rapid fire. So good. Yeah, with No breaks in between them.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: So thanks for doing this, man.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: We have a great mutual friend in Dave Smith. He
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: recommends you highly. So I'm glad we could finally do this.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I wish there was more going on in the world
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: right now we could talk about, though. It just seems like.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Everything is so calm and peaceful. We'll just have to
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: go back over Vietnam or something.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. The old stuff. Back when we didn't know
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: any better.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a mess.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've seen you argue on television like a thousand times.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Do you enjoy that Piers Morgan type chaos? No.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: In fact, I just got back from England. I got
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: invited to do the Oxford debate, which I lost on Ukraine.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: But then I invited myself on Piers Morgan Live as
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: long as I was in town.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: When you say you lost the debate, is that because
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: the people voted that were in the audience? Yeah. All
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: those people with Ukraine flags?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yes. Well, they didn't have Ukraine flags that time. I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: think someone showed an old picture or something. Yeah, same crowd.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So what happened was, yeah, when they leave, they either
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: leave through the yes door or the no door. And
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the yeses had it, which was unbelievable to me. But
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: not that I did my very best job. But on
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Pierce Morgan, I was trying to get myself just an
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: interview so I could just talk to him about some things.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: And instead, they just prefer that format where you got
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: to mix it up with a guy, which I can
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: do that, too, you know.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the interview thing is way better. The thing that
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: he does, though, is really good for engagement. He's very smart.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Like, Pierce has done– he's mastered it. He's taken, like,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: the Jerry Springer-type format and thrown it into the world
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: of politics and any other social issue that's going on.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But it is, too, like– years ago, the guy
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: from Antiwar.com can't be on TV. But we can be
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: on his show. He doesn't care. He's cool with it.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess same thing here. Yeah. Where it's–
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: That is a big change from how things used to be.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: We just had this whole separate conversation going on below
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the higher one where he has reach up and down
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the chain, I guess, is a way to put it.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Is he on TV TV or is it just YouTube? No,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: but he just has massive viewership, so it counts, I guess.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: TV TV is actually a hindrance now because the only
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: way people watch– TV, TV is clips that someone takes
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: and puts on X or YouTube. That's it.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Or they just see it accidentally. It's just on. It
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: happens to be on when they're in the room or whatever.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: What a fucking dying market. Like imagine if you're in
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: broadcast television right now and you're just thinking like, where
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: am I? What am I doing? Like this is a
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: bad format. You have to break for commercials every seven minutes.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: No conversation could ever get in a depth. There's executives
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: in your ear. telling you what to say and what
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: not to say. They'll edit out anything that they think
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: is like controversial. That's going to fuck with their sponsors
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: or fuck with the government or fuck with whatever their
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: narrative is.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: It's just, everything's changed. When I first started doing podcasting,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: it was the archives of the interviews for my radio show.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And it was so important to me that I'm on
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the radio. Cause that's real legitimacy. That means somebody hired you.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Somebody thought you were good enough to be there. Whereas podcasting,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: any jerk can do from his basement and it just
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't count. And then that just became not true. And I,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: kind of clung on to my radio show. I actually
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: gave up my last radio show on KPFK in Los
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Angeles last year after, I mean, where it didn't matter
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: anymore anyway. And podcasting has completely changed the entire market.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Do you know how many people were listening to actually
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: on the radio before you quit?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's like probably high thousands, but not 10,000,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: you know, KPFK in LA. It's the most, it's the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: most powerful FM transmitter west of the Mississippi river. it's
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: grandfathered in at 115,000 Watts, but it's, but the thing
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: is about it too. And it's always been like this, the,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the programming on there is so inconsistent that you're listening
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to Latina lesbians one hour, and then you're listening to
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: crystal worship. And then you're listening to hard hitting news.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: And then you're listening to like leftist union organizing, or
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: then just whatever, you know what I mean? But it's just,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: there's no like real rhyme or reason to us. It's
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: hard to follow.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: You know, what kind of a channel is it?
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's, um, You know, left of the dial at 90.7 FM.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So it's, you know, comparable to like KUT type. It's
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: not actual public radio, but it's no commercials, all donations.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, they were good to me.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: A regular radio show that's no commercials and it's not public? Yeah.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: That's interesting.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know if co-op still exists here
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: in Austin.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: You must have made a lot of money from that.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: You must be so rich. From doing that, like a
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: leftist radio with no ads at all, just donations. Boy,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: you must be raking it in.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: No, they never did pay me, but I looked at
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: it like they let me be on there for 14,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: 15 years or something. And, you know, like even when
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I was writing my book about the Russia-Ukraine stuff, I
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: would do my radio show once a week and I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: was able to still cover what was going on in Palestine.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: And in a way that I felt like you know,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: something meaningful that I can do even though my attention
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: was completely diverted elsewhere. I still got all my guys
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: from the Libertarian Institute and Antiwar.com and I can interview
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: them once a week. And then when I left KPFK,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I got some response. I'm like, oh, no, where are
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you going kind of thing. So, I mean, some people
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: were caring for it at the time.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Did you let them know, hey, I have a podcast.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: You can see all these episodes be archived online.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of always let them know that. You know,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I've done 6,200-something interviews since 2003 on my various shows.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So I always try to remind people to go check
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the archives if they want for the full dose of
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: that stuff.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Before we get into any of these subjects, how did
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: you get into this?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, in the 90s, when I was younger,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I was much more of like a New World Order,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: truth or type. But then I basically dropped all that.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: I grew out of that.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: How do you define new world order truther type?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I mean, the new world order conspiracy was
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: that American foreign policy ultimately is about building a one
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: world federal government under the United Nations that would ultimately
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: dominate the United States, the John Birch society sort of
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: idea of how, and I, uh, I really liked those guys. Um,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and I believed that for a long time, really through
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Clinton and even into the beginning of W Bush. But
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: then I could, I finally realized with the way that
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the Iraq war was prosecuted that this is not about
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: building up the UN Security Council. We got the National
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Security Council and Cheney and his neocons, and they have
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: their own separate policy that just disproves... that sort of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: New World Order theory. And the American... And in fact,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: so what H.W. Bush meant by that was just the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: era of the American Empire with no one to stop
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: us this time. It was never to build up the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: UN as the world government. It was to build up Washington, D.C.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: as the world government. And of course, they've been failing
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and flailing at trying to establish that ever since.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the conspiracy was... That the United Nations would
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: be the government of the entire earth. Right. And that
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: all other governments would somehow or another give up their
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: power to the United Nations for what reason?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Because they're all in on it together in secret or whatever.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: And that's the point is it ain't right. It's not true.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Well, my question would be like.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Too many people would have to– exactly. Too many people
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: have to sacrifice the power they do have to somebody
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: else when they don't have to.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Money.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: That's the other thing. I mean as soon as you
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: lose power, then you lose access to– insane amounts of wealth.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah so we don't want you know obviously it's the
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: ultimate nightmare would be that you would have some kind
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of one world government and then some kind of totalitarian
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: regime take power with a monopoly on nukes and a
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: monopoly on police power and you know but that's just
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: a nightmare for centuries from now i mean that's just
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: not going to happen anytime soon.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: At all that's not what you don't think there's any
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: push towards centralizing things in that regard like Wasn't the
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: World Health Organization trying to push for something where the
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: entire world would have to respond to their pandemic rules?
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Well, look, so yes, there's always the widening and deepening
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: of the international law as much as they can. At
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, there is no actual world
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: state to enforce that law other than just the United
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: States of America. But there is no one world army,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: one world police force to enforce these things. It's all
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: about coercing and cajoling governments to go along. And which
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: goes to show, I mean, this is the whole thing
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: about when they talk about, you know, what H.W. Bush
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: meant when he talked about the new world order is
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the same thing that Joe Biden meant when he would
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: say the liberal rules based international order of just doing
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: what America says.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: That's what it is. You know, it's a pseudo empire.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: It's not exactly the same kind of empires and, you know,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: colonialism that we've had in the past. But it's sort
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: of a neo colonialism where. we can overthrow your government
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: with some money, then we'll do that. A little bit
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of CIA help, we'll do that. And if we have
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to bomb your capital city, we'll go for that if
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: we think so. And it does go back really to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the Wolfowitz Doctrine, you know, of various degrees. But this
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: is a reference to right after the first Gulf War.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Paul Wolfowitz at that time was the Deputy Secretary of
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Defense for Policy. And him and a couple other neocons,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Scudalibi and Zalmay Khalilzad, they wrote up this document called
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the Defense Planning Guidance. And it was saying this is
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: going to be, you know, the posture for the post-Cold
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: War era and the post-First Iraq War, Gulf War era.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And what it said was we're going to be the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: most dominant power on every continent anywhere in the world.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And we're not even going to tolerate any other nation
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: or country. alliance or a group of nations anywhere to
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: try to join together to balance against us. We will
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: be dominant everywhere and we'll never let anyone get that
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: far ahead. Or at least we're going to try to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: construct an order where our power is essentially permanent and
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: they don't even try it. And so that's what they've
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: been trying to do with expanding our footprint in the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Middle East, expanding our footprint into Eastern Europe. And of course,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: you know, Working hard at least on building their alliances
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: or tightening them and arming their alliances in Eastern Asia.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: And it's, you know, under the theory that if it's
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: not us, it'll be somebody else. It'll be so much worse.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So we have to stay and dominate everything forever. But
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: of course, you look at the dead and just see, well,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: we can't afford it. So I don't know how anybody
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: else can, but we certainly cannot afford to keep doing this.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And if you look at Wolfowitz, if you see Popa
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: image of Paul Wolfowitz, he looks exactly like the kind
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: of guy you would expect to make something like the
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Wolfowitz Doctrine. Right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And by the way, they did rewrite it because it
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: was a scandal. It was leaked to The New York Times.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And so they went back and rewrote it. And they
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: just said, well, we'll bring our friends, you know, from
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the international institutions along, too.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: That picture right there where your cursor is right below,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: right there. No, to the right of that. That one.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Look at that. That looks like... That completely looks like
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: the type of guy that would do something like this.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: So listen, there's a book about the neoconservatives by Jacob
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Hilbrun called They Knew They Were Right. That's hilarious. Yeah,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: these guys who have no idea what they're.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Doing, really. That's hilarious. Let me try this.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really fit right on my little head.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Like I said, you can fuck with the volume on
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: that little knob and turn it up and down. So
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: this was– one of the things that– when Coleman Hughes
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: and our buddy Dave Smith got into it with was
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: about whether you remember when they brought up this seven
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: countries thing that, you know, and he was saying that
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: there was no real proof that that exists, that he
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: didn't actually read it. He was told that we were
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: going to go into seven countries, but you know, I
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: was talking to Dave about this the other day. He's like, I,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: If you just look at the fact that we did
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: everything on that list except Iran, every single one of
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: them took place except Iran. Like he's like, I really
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: want to go and do that debate again and I
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: can't get Coleman to sit down with me. Yes.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: For people who are interested in this subject long term,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: there's no mystery about the connection between the neoconservatives doctrines
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and then the activities that the W administration engaged in.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: You know, subsequent. I mean, what happened was you have,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: you know, Andrew Coburn, the great journalist, Andrew Coburn, says
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that the neoconservatives are a cross between the Israel lobby
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and the military industrial complex. The fighter bomber salesmen needed
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: eggheads to justify their policies. And the neoconservatives wanted to
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: support Israel, wanted to support American hegemony. And so took
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: all the military industrial complex money to build their think tanks,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to create their consensus, to build their policy. you know
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: their own kind of thousand little council on foreign relations
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: is to get what they want and then when you
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: know the seven countries thing is so.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: What we're talking about just to clarify is wesley clark
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: was given what was he was on some television show
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: i forget what the show was do you remember.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: There's two different statements one of them i know was
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: with amy goodman from democracy now that's right democracy now
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and basically what he's talking about is um You know,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: he says that a general or I'm sorry, a military
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: officer of some rank told then retired but still with
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: access former General Wesley Clark, who had been the Supreme
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe under Bill Clinton,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: did the Kosovo War. So very prominent four star general.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And he said the way he told the story was
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: he told him, hey, you know, they're planning for a
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: war with Iraq. And he said, Iraq, why? And the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: guy said, I don't know.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And then.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: The second part of the story was he came back
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a week later or something. And the same guy said,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: there's this memo that has the seven countries and they
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: say they want to take them all in five years.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: So they meaning the office of the secretary of defense.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: So that's Donald Rumsfeld, who is not a neoconservative. He's
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: his own separate thing here. He's the secretary of defense.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: But all of his guys, all of his most important
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: guys are neoconservative. So the deputy secretary of defense is
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Paul Wolfowitz. The Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence is
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Stephen Cambone. The Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy is
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Douglas Feith. And then under him is Abram Shulsky and
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Bill Lutie and all of these guys, Michael Rubin and others,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: who are all working on this project to get us
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: into Iraq. And this is the neoconservative network of power.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: You've got Scooter Libby and David Wormser would travel around
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: from state to defense to the vice president's office. But
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you've got Scooter Libby and John Hanna in the vice
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: president's office. You got Zalmay Khalilzad and Elliott Abrams on
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the National Security Council, Robert Joseph and Stephen Hadley and
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Eric Edelman. All of these guys were already the network
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: of guys who agreed with this policy going back through
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the 1990s. It was what they had founded the Project
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: for a New American Century on. And so what they're
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: saying is we should not tolerate any Remember the time.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: This was the stated doctrine. We will not tolerate the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: existence of any Middle Eastern regime that supports terrorism. And
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: supports terrorism can mean anything, right? Like Abu Nidal died
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: in Iraq before the war even started and was a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: washed up old terrorist from a previous day. But like,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that's good enough. Got Mujahideen-e-Qaami terrorists who've worked for us
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: ever since, but at that time was a good enough
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: excuse to invade Iraq. They would invoke that. And so,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: they made up that doctrine.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: The Mujahideen were in Iraq as well as Afghanistan?
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a particular sect of Mujahideen kooks who
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: were Iranian communist cultists who were, had left Iran and
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: gone to work for Saddam Hussein and then were, you know,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: he supported them. They had nothing to do with anti-American
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: terrorism at that time except, you know, I guess committing
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: it when they had worked for Iran previously during the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Iranian revolution. But, I mean, by the time we invaded Iraq,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Donald Rumsfeld inherited them, and they've worked for America and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Israel ever since then. They have a base in Albania now.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: But in other words, though, this wasn't al-Qaeda. This was
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: not any real excuse. They would just invoke the doctrine
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: of fighting terrorism in order to check off this list
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of all of these governments that they didn't like. And
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: coincidentally and incidentally and very importantly, of course, this was really,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: in many cases, Israel's list of enemies. where if it was, say,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Colin Powell, which is what people thought they were voting
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: for in the year 2000, by the way, well, I
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: don't know about this W. Bush, but at least Colin
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Powell will be up there. We can trust him. They
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: all said if it had been up to him, we
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: would have done a two-state solution in Palestine and solved
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: that issue, and then we would have had probably the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: most limited of wars against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and that
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: would have been it. The rest of it would have
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: been police and or special forces action. There would have
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: been no invasion of Iraq, which he did lie us
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: into that war, and he's responsible for that. But that
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: was not his policy. That was the policy that came
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: out of the vice president's office and this neoconservative set.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And it's really, as Dave Smith correctly says, it's all
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: based on the clean break doctrine, which David Wormser and
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Richard Perle. Oh, I neglected to mention Richard Perle and
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: his friends on the Defense Policy Board. But Perle and
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: David Wormser had written up this policy paper called A
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Clean Break in 1996. And they wrote it for Netanyahu
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: when he was first prime minister the first time back then.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And what it said was instead of going along with
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the Oslo peace process and making a deal with the Palestinians,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: we should just forget all that and just– we'll have
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: peace through a position of strength and total dominance over
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: our neighbors. And so– but the problem of course is–
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and of course meaning continue to devour Palestine, what's left,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the 22 percent of what's left of historic Palestine in
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the West Bank and Gaza. But the problem is we
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: have Hezbollah on our northern border. And Hezbollah is backed
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: by Iran by way of Syria. So if you just
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: picture the Middle East, you know, if you want to
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: throw up a map and just kind of show there's
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: this arc of power from Tehran in Iran through Syria
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and to Hezbollah, this Shiite militia in southern Lebanon. Now,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein was the Sunni roadblock in that arc of power.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: But these guys are stupid, the neoconservatives. They're as stupid
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: as they are arrogant and certain in their policy. And
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: they believed in this harebrained scheme, essentially, that the Jordanians
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and the Turks would be dominant in the new Saddam
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Hussein-less Iraq. And that even though it's a super majority
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Shiite Arab country, those Shiites, they just love being told
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: what to do by either their original plan was the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Hashemite king, the cousin of the king of Jordan. And
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: then they threw that out and it was the guy
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: who sold them this line that this was possible in
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the first place an Iraqi exile you might remember from
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that time Ahmed Chalabi the head of the Iraqi National
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Congress they said well we'll just make him the guy
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: instead which ended up not happening but that was their
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: plan and they said the new Shiite dominated Iraq will then,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the religious leaders in Iraq, will then force Hezbollah to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: stop being friends with Iran and start being friends with
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Israel instead. And they'll even build an oil pipeline to
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Haifa or reopen the old British oil pipeline to Haifa Israel.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And they were sold this bill of goods and they
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: really believed it. And so, and you can find this
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: on my website, scotthorton.org. I have a clean break, a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: new strategy for securing the realm. And then the companion
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: piece is called Coping with Crumbling States, a balance of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: power strategy for the Levant. They're both by David Wormser,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: signed off on by Richard Perle. And then they wrote
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: a book where Wormser wrote the book and Richard Perle
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: wrote the foreword. It's called Tyranny's Ally, America's Failure to
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Remove Saddam Hussein.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Get that?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: America's the ally of Saddam just because we won't launch
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: a war to regime change. And they're right in the title.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And then based on the same harebrained scheme. And what's
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: funny about this is this guy, David Wormser, now tries
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: to defend himself. And he did an interview on a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: podcast not too long ago with this born-again Christian about
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: September 11th and stuff. But he talked about this and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, no, that's still right. They'll do whatever
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the Hashemites tell them to do, those Shiites. They just
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: worship and revere anyone who claims to have the blood
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of the prophet. But if that was true, as Dave
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Smith pointed out, well, then how come you can't just
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: call the king of Jordan right now and ask him
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to ask the Ayatollah to knock it off? Call him
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: and have him ask Hezbollah to stop being friends with Iran.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Why couldn't they have just done that this whole time?
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Why do you have to have a regime change in
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Baghdad before you can make this magic wish come true?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And the whole thing is completely stupid. And the Shiites
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: do revere some of the lineage of the family of
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the Prophet Muhammad. But one, it's not a magic spell
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of hypnosis and total control over them. And two, that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the Hashemites, who are Sunnis
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and a whole separate line and are the British sock
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: puppet kings of Jordan. Right. Who used to rule Iraq
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: back 70 years ago or something, but had no purchase
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: there whatsoever. And of course, what happened just real quick,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: what happened then in the war was they just empowered Iran.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: They didn't empower Jordan and Turkey and America and Israel
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: over the Iraqis. They just gave Iran even more power
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: than they ever had before. When it was all meant
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: to screw them over, it blew up in the American space.
• 22:28
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• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Do you think that that is because of total incompetence
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: and stupidity, or do you think that it was a
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: scam and that they kind of knew this was going
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: to happen in the first place, but what they really
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: wanted to do was sell a lot of weapons, sell
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of war, make a ton of money. I mean,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: the amount of money that was generated— How much money
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: did we spend on the Iraq war?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, on Iraq alone, at least five or
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: seven trillion. I think it was probably 10 trillion for the.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Whole terror war. Let's stop and think about that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Five or 10 trillion. Let's just say five. Let's be nice.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Where's that money going? How many defense contractors were deeply
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: enriched by that? How many defense contractors are involved in,
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: you know, lobbyists, policy, influencing change? influencing certain actions. And
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: why would they do that? Why would they do that?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Why would they push a harebrained screen? Is it because
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: of stupidity or is it because they don't give a
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: fuck what the excuse is? Let's get the party started.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I think let's get some missiles. Let's get some new planes.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. OK, so boom. But OK, so we can see
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: right in front of us right here where Netanyahu convinced
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Trump this would be easy and then it wasn't. I
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: think that's the same thing here. Iraq was supposed to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: be easy and it was easy after all.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: You send the Marines to take Baghdad. They could take it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: The 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines were done regime-changing
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the place in, what, five weeks? But then it was
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: a matter of occupying the place and the whole thing
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: devolving into civil war and all that. And I think– well,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I'll put it to you like this. In the clean break,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: we might be in coping with crumbling states, but it
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: might even– yeah, I think it's in coping with crumbling states,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: which is the same thing.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Are we back?
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Sorry about that. We had– Stupid glitch again. Did we
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: get a new computer?
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: I've done everything.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I've talked to the company. They don't know what's going on. Motherfuckers. Yeah, anyway.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Can I ask you this?
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: On the stupidity of the plan. Look, plan A is
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: it'll be fine. And then plan B is, well, at
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: least we can make some money and push this thing
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: on and let both sides fight and weaken each other
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and these kinds of attitudes for sure.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: But that's the point. Did they genuinely think that this
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: plan would work or was this plan just a feasible
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: excuse to talk them into getting the party started?
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I have one good argument in your favor there for sure,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: which would be Senator Joe Biden. at the time, insisted
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: that we break Iraq into three.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Our greatest president?
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right there with the worst. That we draw these
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: lines and essentially enforce ethnic cleansing or sectarian cleansing and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: create three sort of mini states within Iraq. And, you know,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Antony Blinken was his right-hand man then. And, I mean,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: that's who these guys are, is, you know, very, very much,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, Israel first, Israel instead, types. There is something
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: before the clean break called the Oded Yanan plan from,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I believe, 1981, which is a real riot to read.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: It's this Israeli strategist. And the premise of the thing
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: is that the Soviet Union is certain to conquer the
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: entire planet. Talk about one world government. We're about to
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: have one world communism run out of Moscow and poor
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: little Israel is going to be all alone out here.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: So we have no choice. to smash every near Arab
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: state into as many warring tribal pieces as we possibly
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: can to weaken all of them relative to us as
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: this desperate strategy. And of course, the Soviet Union didn't
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: exist anymore at all by the end of the decade.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: But that was the premise for the thing. And there's oh,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: and here's what I was going to say before the
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: glitch was there is a statement in I think it's
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: in Coping with Crumbling States where he kind of says, yeah,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you know, these states are pretty artificial. And without, you know,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the Baathist construct in Iraq and Syria, you would have
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: these smaller tribal based type units. So then, you know,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: in other words, if you can't have a completely compliant
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: sock puppet there, might as well make them fight and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: destroy their countries. And that certainly happened in the case
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of Iraq, certainly happened in the case of Syria under
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Obama as well, where they just said, look, if we
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: can't get the Al-Qaeda guys to sack Damascus and get
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: rid of Assad, at least we can just destroy the place.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Do you think there's a parallel in when we first
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: went into Iraq, like Desert Storm? It was very easy, right? Relatively.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Minimum loss of American lives. And I think everybody got
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: a little cocky. Oh, yeah.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: That absolutely was part of that. Just like what we
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: just saw with Venezuela. That's what I was going to say.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: It was so easy.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what I was going to say.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, people asked me right after Venezuela, so what
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: do you think this means for Iran? And I was like,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: bad news, right? Like nobody thinks we're going to go
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in there and kidnap the Ayatollah. But if you put
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: eyeballs on them, you can put a bomb.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Well, they killed them. Yeah.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: And that's all you got to do.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: And that didn't even help. Of course. It's like. Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Is it true that whenever they've been negotiating with someone,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Israel kills them?
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I think that happened at least a couple of times
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: early in the war.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was what they said. In fact. I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: forget if it was Vance or Trump who said, well,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: we can't say. I think it was Trump said we
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: can't say who we're negotiating with because they'll get killed.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: And like you're supposed to think that what like hardliners
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: in Iran will kill them for trying to negotiate. But no,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: this is the Israelis will kill him.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is wild. Yeah, that's wild. It's wild that
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: it's true. One of the things that's not talked about
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: at all since Iran, we rarely talked about is Ukraine.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: It's so strange how that kind of just left people's consciousness.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: It's like they're now just concentrating entirely on this Iran thing.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: And the Ukraine thing is fascinating too because it was
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: one of the few wars that I saw leftist support.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: It was very interesting. It was like kind of right
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: after they put the masks and the syringes down from
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: their profiles, then it was Ukraine flag.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Metzger had a joke about that did he like yeah
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: he starts out like hey invading Ukraine is bad can't
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: we all agree on that like he really gives him
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: like he like leans on can't we all agree that
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it's bad but it wasn't cure for COVID you gotta
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: admit you know And it was. They just switched from
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: night to day on that. And then, yeah, the other
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: thing– and look, a big part of that is Putin
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: is a great stand-in for Trump. If you're an angry
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: liberal something, you've got to be angry at something. And
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: he represents– now we're the common turn, and the Russians
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: are the more conservative Christian force. And so– not that
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Trump's a Christian, but you know what I mean, and
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: they're anti-right everything. The Russians are the right. Not that
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the Ukrainians are the left, but whatever it is. And
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Russia is obviously the much larger country and the one
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that invaded that crossed the border first here. And and
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and they are the aggressor in the war. So it's
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: as far as the narrative goes, it's easy to justify
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: sticking up for those plucky defenders, which is, you know,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: I was actually surprised. But I shouldn't have been right
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: when I went to Oxford and lost that debate was
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: that was who was. Not that they're leftists, but they're liberals,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: you know, or progressive-type college kids. And they're just totally
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: on the side of Ukraine. And, in fact, the question
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: of the debate was, this House would rather go to
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: war with Russia than lose Ukraine. And I thought that
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: was just the most ludicrous thing in the whole world.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: That's not even debatable. They've got H-bombs, 7,000 of them.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: We're not having a war with Russia. I don't even
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. And then I should have
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: made my case better because— they did not like me
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: or my case at all. They were so just staunchly
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: for Ukraine that they were willing to support that, that
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: they think that Britain should get into a war with
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Russia over the Donbass, which is just absurd. But I
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: take responsibility for not framing my argument well enough. I
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: just thought the question was so ridiculous in the first place,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I would barely have to make my case. I just
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: thought I'll just make an H-bomb joke and that'll be
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the end of that. You know, I said, haven't you
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: ever seen Threads? Have you ever seen Threads? It's like
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the British version of The Day After where Margaret Thatcher
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: gets them nuked in a, No.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It's a movie?
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Remember the day after from 1983 with Steve Guttenberg? So
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: this is the Russians version from the same time frame.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And I was like, haven't you all seen Threads? Which,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: of course, they haven't. They're a bunch of little kids.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Well, they probably think it's that social media app. Yeah, right.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: The Instagram one?
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: We should talk about how this whole thing got started
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: in Ukraine. Because most Americans don't even realize that the
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: United States kind of overthrew the government there.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Twice in 10 years.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: In the Orange Revolution of 2004 and in 2014. And
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: in fact, you know, George Soros bragged that he had
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: really influenced the vote toward the pro-Russian candidate in 1994.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: You know, back 10 years before that, he bragged about
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: that in an interview with The New Yorker, Connie Brooke
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in The New Yorker magazine. He said, like real estate
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: investment trusts, I make it happen with my investments, you know.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah. And look, I mean, Russia and Ukraine
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: have a long and difficult history. But the long and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the short of it for our purposes is that they
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: wanted out at the end of the Soviet Union. And
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: in fact, even embarrassingly for the Republicans, George Bush Sr.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and his government even intended the USSR to stay together.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: They wanted it. not communism, but they wanted Russia to
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: be able to hang on to Belarus and Ukraine and
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: at least some of the stands. But what happened was
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: really the Russians under Boris Yeltsin overthrew the Soviet Union.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: The most powerful member of the Soviet Union overthrew what
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: was left of it. And it was actually in the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: aftermath of a hardline commie coup in August of 1991,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: which failed. And so it was Boris Yeltsin who saved
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the day, but then ended up doing his own coup
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: basically and just destroying what was left of the USSR
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: and and kicking Mikhail Gorbachev out.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: So why did the United States get involved in Ukraine
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: and why did they stage a coup?
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Well, so it's been a contest for dominance there ever since, right?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: And so back to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, and they talked
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: about this in Rebuilding America's Defenses, the PNAC strategy document
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: from the 1990s, 1998, I guess. And I believe in
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: the defense planning guidance that he wrote in 1992, Wolfowitz,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: that we got to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. And
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: this is the debate at the time was whether to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: include Russia or not. And in fact, in the 90s,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: there were some people who opposed expansion altogether. But then
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: there was another school of thought that just said, well,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: we'll expand, but we'll bring the Russians in. But then
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: they never did. And so they ended up expanding the
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: military lines up to Russia's border in a threatening manner
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and in a way that did not include them at all.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And they had alternatives. like the Partnership for Peace. And
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: before that, we still have the OSCE, the Organization for
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Security and Cooperation in Europe, where those had been brought
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: up as alternatives to NATO, where NATO would be more political.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: This is what James Baker and under H. Shelby Bush
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: and Warren Christopher under Bill Clinton had promised the Russians,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: that we're going to make NATO a political organization. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: we're going to have as a security organization, it'll be
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the OSCE or the PFP, which will include you guys.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: And which was not true. They're basically, you know, never
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: really meant to live up to those promises. So, um,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: it's not a perfect analogy, but imagine if America had
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: lost the cold war from all the spending in the 1980s.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: And then the Soviets had come to dominate Western Europe.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: And then they started moving into the Caribbean and then
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: they started overthrowing the government in Canada when they voted wrong.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: And this is, Ukraine is Russia's Canada, right? Kazakhstan's their Mexico.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Ukraine's their Canada. It's their most important neighboring state other
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: than maybe Belarus. But same difference here. And so.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: That narrative gets lost here. Yes, it does. And it's
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: weird because it's so obvious when you lay it out
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: like that. And when you look at the agreement that
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: was made at the fall of the Soviet Union, that
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't push arms closer to the border of Russia.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: And yet they consistently did that. Absolutely.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: And by the way, so let's talk about that for
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: just a second, because people dispute that and say it's
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: not true. But it is true. In fact, H.W. Bush
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: gave the first promise to Gorbachev in Malta in December
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: of 1989, that if you let the Eastern European Warsaw
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Pact states go, not the Soviet republics, but the Warsaw
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Pact states, if you let them go, we promise not
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: to take advantage.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Like, full stop. That's it.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: 100%. And then from there, and I cover all this
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: in my book, Provoked, Um, and I, I, it's even
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: overkill on the research cause I wasn't sure where to stop.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: So it's all there for you where it wasn't just
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: on February the 9th. It was all of these meetings
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: over the course of months where the Americans, the British,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: and especially the Germans, but with the Americans standing right
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: there in many cases to affirm to the Russians, the Soviets,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and then the Russians over and over again, that we
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: are not coming. We are not going to integrate Poland.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: We're not going to integrate Hungary. then Czechoslovakia, which hadn't
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: split apart yet. And we have no intention of doing that.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: And that was, you know, came from Hans Dietrich Genscher,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: the foreign minister of Great Britain, as well as Helmut Kohl,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the chancellor, Margaret Thatcher, and John Major, the prime ministers
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: of England, and Douglas Heard, their foreign minister, and even
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Francois Mitterrand, the president of France, and along with George
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Bush's government over and over again promised them that we're
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: not going to do this. And then they just went
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: ahead anyway. And the Clintons, you know, went along with
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: it too. And in fact, in the Clinton years, one
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: of the major proponents of NATO expansion was a guy
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: named Strobe Talbot, who originally opposed it. And by the way,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: so when all of the, anybody in that era, whenever they,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: on America's side or on the West side, whenever they
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: opposed this, It was always for one reason. There was
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: no like variety of reasons. There's always one reason. This
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: is an unnecessary provocation against the Russians. These are our
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: friends who just overthrew the communists for us. So why
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: would we pick a fight with them? Why would we
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: disrespect them? We should be doing everything we can to
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: integrate them into the West, into Europe, into everything. And
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: this is totally unnecessarily antagonistic. That was the one and
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: only reason. And it was brought up by a lot
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: of people, including Famously, George Kennan, who had coined the
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: containment policy against the Soviet Union in the 1940s and,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: you know, was had been ambassador to Moscow. And he
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: was the one who said, we got to contain communism. Well,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: now he's saying we should not be trying to contain
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Russia when they didn't do anything. And he said, in fact,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: in an interview in The New York Times in 1998,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Kennan said, and he was the most highly respected Russia
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: expert out of all of the old so-called foreign policy
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: great bigs. And he told Thomas Friedman in the New
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: York Times, he goes, I'll tell you exactly what's going
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to happen here, okay? We're going to expand NATO right
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: up close to Russia, and we're going to get a
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: negative reaction from the Russians. And then as soon as
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: we do, all of the people who are now telling
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: us that'll never happen, don't worry about it, will then say, aha, see,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that's how the Russians are. That's why we have to
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: do this, which is exactly what they say now. See,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the Russians are coming. That's why we need NATO more
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: than ever before. When it was building up NATO more
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: than ever before was what created this antagonistic relationship in
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the first place and then you know, and I should specify,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I am from Austin, Texas. I don't have any connection
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: to Russia whatsoever. I don't give a damn about Russia whatsoever.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with favoring their side of
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the story or whatever. This is like whatever. What can
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I say? I reluctantly admit that. And I'm not saying
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: this is a good enough reason for war, but I'm
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: saying that this is true essentially. in his declaration of war,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: when Putin said that basically we tried independence, we tried
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: letting Ukraine be an independent country, but it turns out
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: that no, it just became a colony of the United
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: States of America. It's totally controlled by America. So, well,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: but we're just not going to stand for that, you know?
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: So we're going to intervene. We're going to do what
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: we have to do, at least to mitigate that. If
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: America is still going to control Kiev, then at the
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: very least, we're going to control the Donbass and the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Southeastern coast here. And so, I'm not saying that's a
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: good enough reason to do what he did, but I'm
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: saying that was essentially true, that America had, you know,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: almost like it was a British colony, just had total
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: sock puppets in charge of that country. In fact, there's
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: a clip that I quote extensively. It's one of the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: only block quotes in my book because I got rid
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: of almost all of them for space. But I think
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I have the block quote of Victoria Nuland testifying. That's
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Robert Kagan's wife, very important neoconservative, worked in Dick Cheney's
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: office in the W. Bush years and everything, helped, you know,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: cause all of this problems. And she goes on and
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: on describing the level of what can you call the
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: infiltration essentially of the Ukrainian government by the United States.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: She says, we have our people, State Department people and whoever,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: working at every level of the Ukrainian government throughout their
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: police services, throughout their military, throughout their judicial branch, throughout,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: you know, and out in the provinces and everywhere. We're
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: doing everything we can to control everything that's going on
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: in that country. And, you know, the WikiLeaks are very
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: beneficial on this story because they show where the Americans
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: understand clearly– by the Americans, I mean Washington, the State Department, whatever,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: these guys– that they know good and well that Ukraine
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: is deeply divided, especially politically, on questions like whether they
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: should join the NATO alliance or whether they'd rather be
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: closer to Russia or try to split the difference and
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: stay out of it or anything like that. And so
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: they say, well, so we just have to push then.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: We'll just have to spend tens of millions of dollars
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: on massive propaganda campaigns. And we'll just have to make
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: sure to support the candidates that support us and our wishes.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: And essentially, it's America. You know, the book is called sorry,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I keep mentioning the book. It's how Washington provoked how
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: catastrophe in Ukraine. I'm not blaming on Kiev. I'm blaming
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: it on essentially Bush senior through Joe Biden that they
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: all of them had such a ham handed Russia policy
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: that it led to this.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: It's just fascinating that this perspective is not being discussed
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: or wasn't being discussed when it was in the news
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: every day. When people were talking about Russia and Ukraine,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: it was always that Russia had done this horrible thing
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: and attacked Ukraine, which was horrible. Of course. But no
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: one gave any background. No one really talked about and
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: made the comparison to imagine if the Soviet Union or
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Russia rather took over Canada.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Or was proxying Canada.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: If they went back at all, they would go, well,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: you know, this all started when Russia seized Crimea. But,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: of course, they seized Crimea as a direct reaction to
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: America overthrowing the government and the so-called revolution of dignity
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: in February 2014. And so then it's a complicated mess.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: But Crimea happened after that. But they just want to
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: start history at places where it's the most convenient for them.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: And there's also– The control of Ukraine is also connected
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: to resources, right? I mean there's immense amounts of minerals,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: natural gas. There's trillions of dollars of that stuff there.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: And this also connects Burisma to the Biden administration, right? Yes.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: So like I would not buy anyone arguing that. these
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: minerals or these resources are somehow crucial for the United
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: States of America, for the American people, for our betterment
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. Only as Ross Perot called them,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the special interests, right? Chevron wants that oil and Cargill
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: and Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto have investments in those grains.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: And so this is about them, but that isn't necessarily us.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: You look at, you know, whatever benefit they have to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: our GMP or GDP is, certainly not worth starting a
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: war or anything like that. These are all the free riders.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: These are, you know, the excuse makers for this kind
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: of policy. But essentially, I think what it really is,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: is just trying to keep Russia weak and off balance
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: as much as possible. And, you know, like there's this
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: really important Rand Corporation study that was published in 2019.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: So the Rand Corporation is a Pentagon sponsored think tank,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: but it's out in Santa Barbara. They put it in
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: California so it would be somehow a little bit less political,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: a little insulated from East Coast stuff and be able
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: to come up with their thing. But that's basically who
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: they are. So of all the think tanks, they're like
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the most directly connected to the Pentagon itself. And they
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: came up with this thing. It's called Extending Russia. And
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: by Extending Russia, they mean overextending them. In other words,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: how to provoke them into overextending themselves.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Like during the Cold War.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So cause.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Small trouble for them in as many places as we
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: can just to bog them down with expenses and commitments.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: So we want to– at that time, the pipeline wasn't
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: complete yet. So we want to intervene with sanctions, whatever
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: we can, to disrupt the Nord Stream pipeline. They said
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: maybe we could try to overthrow the government of Belarus again,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: which they actually did in 2020. They had done it
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: before in 2005 and 2001, failed all three times. Which
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: if they did that, boy, that might lead right to
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: a nuclear war right there. You don't want to succeed
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: in– especially a bloody, if it turned bloody, a coup
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: in Belarus, my God. But anyway, then they said, we
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: could increase weapons to the jihadists in Syria. We could
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: try to overthrow the government of Kazakhstan. We could increase
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: support for the Ukrainian military. And what's interesting about this,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: so in other words, see how they're saying, do all
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: these things to essentially agitate the Russians, to keep them
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: off balance, to keep them bogged down, to keep them
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: spending money they can't afford to spend, right? But then
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: all throughout it, they have all these disclaimers where they say,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: don't listen to us. If you do this, it'd be terrible.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Like if you overthrow the government of Belarus, the Russians
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: might just invade it immediately and station nuclear weapons there
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: to make the point, right? If we support the jihadists
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: in Syria, they could break out of the Idlib province
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and sack Damascus. And then we'd have an al-Qaeda government
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: in Damascus, which is, of course, exactly what happened at
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the end of 24. They said we could increase support
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: for what was then the ongoing civil war that had
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: broken out after the revolution in 2014. We could increase
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: support for the Ukrainian side of that or the Kiev
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: side of that war. But then that could provoke the
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Russians into a full-scale invasion of the country, which would,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: of course, be terrible for Ukraine and terrible for the
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: United States. A massive expense for us, a humiliation for
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: as far as our international standing and prestige, and, of course,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: untold chaos for the people of Ukraine. And so... We
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: better be real careful about pursuing these policies. And then
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I swear you look at how Biden ran things and
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: it was like he got that memo just without any
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: of the disclaimers. And they just went ahead and did
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: all of these things. And in fact, they were doing
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: they were messing around. It was actually the last year
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: of Trump that they tried to overthrow Belarus. So that
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: was independent of Biden's wishes. That was already going on.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: And then they were messing around in Kazakhstan in January
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: of 22, right on the eve of war, right when
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: you might have hoped that the entire pressure in Washington
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: was to try to figure out a way to avoid war,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: to prevent this from breaking out. What kind of deal
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: might we have to make with Putin to try to
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: prevent him from invading Ukraine as they're threatening to do?
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: And we're building up their forces in preparation for it.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: And then what do they do? They surrender. support an
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: armed insurrection in Kazakhstan, which is that's the big one
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: right on Russia's southern border there out of all the stands.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: It's the most important one, which is just madness. And
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: it goes to show that that's essentially what they're up
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: to when it comes to that is just, you know,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: if we can't overthrow Putin, we're going to still weaken him,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: hem him in, surround him, agitate him and force him
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: to make commitments. And of course, this is what this
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: is why the war has been going on for four years.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: America could tell Kiev, under Biden or under Trump, that, look,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: you guys are just going to have to compromise here, obviously.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: You've lost, you know, all of Luhansk and most of
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Donetsk and, you know, at least half of Zaporozhye and Kherson.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: And so just make a deal, figure it out. And
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: we're not supporting you anymore. Instead, what they say, remember
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: they said over and over again, we want to inflict
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: a strategic defeat on Russia. Russia might win the war or,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: but no, we promise they won't. But yeah, but if
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: it takes a long time, good. And in fact, I
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: have a collection of quotes in the book where politicians
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: and pundits and all these people would say, and maybe
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: they still say this, we're getting such a good bang
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: for our buck in Ukraine. Because just think about it.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Russian soldiers are dying, but American soldiers are not. So
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: all we got to do is we just give them
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: money and then they go fight. And then sometimes they
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even make any reference to the Ukrainian soldiers at all.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed. Hundreds of
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: thousands of whom have been horrifically maimed. A major part
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: of this country completely destroyed. Huge segments of their population
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: fleeing the country as refugees, many of whom to never
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: come home again. Right. The total destabilization of their culture
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and society in every way. And then but you can
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: tune into Fox News or hell, the Democrats, too, talking
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: about maybe worse. Oh, but we're getting such a good
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: bang for our buck because we're killing Russians. We're sending
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: them home in body bags. We're sending them home in coffins.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: We're even killing their generals in the field. But none
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: of our guys are dying. Hey, hey, hey. As though
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the Ukrainians don't matter at all. And that's the way
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: they think of it. This is inflicting costs on the Russians.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden would say that over and over again. It's
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: almost like the underpants gnomes thing with the first, you
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: steal the underpants, then question mark, question mark, question mark,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: and then profit. Not really sure.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that is.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, and South Park, the poor, I think it's butters.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: The underpants gnomes are stealing his underwear and they're trying
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: to explain how this is supposed to work. And they
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: don't really have it worked out what they're going to
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: do with the underpants, but they're sure they're going to
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: make a lot of money in the end. And that's
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the same kind of thing here where they skip the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: step about how, well, is this really weakening Vladimir Putin's
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: regime or maybe it's strengthening his regime? Is it, you know,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: increasing American power and influence in the region, or in fact,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: we're shown as sort of a paper tiger ourselves. And
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: we've done more than, you know, you could have imagined
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: to push Russia towards China and toward the rest of Eurasia.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: You know, Joe Biden is essentially deliberately trying to prevent
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: them from being part of European civilization and to emphasize
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: their turn to the east. That seems to me to
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: be a terrible mistake, you know, and I think Part
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: of it is part of the longer term Cold War
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: with China, too. And and there you hear them talk
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: about this, Joe. They'll say, you know, essentially Russia's friends
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: with China. So there's two things we can do there.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: And this is what I think Trump would prefer to
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: do would be just make friends with Russia and pull
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: them away from China. Maybe he's already decides too late
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: for that or he doesn't know how. And then the
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: other side was no lure Russia into Eastern Europe, bog
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: them down so they're no use to China. you know,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: weaken their power, inflict on them the strategic defeat in
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Ukraine so that then they won't be as useful to
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: China in our Cold War with them or worse. And
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: which I think is stupid and didn't work. I think
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: that was the choice that Joe Biden made. And I
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: think it was totally wrong because it just strengthened the
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: relationship between Russia and China. And the Russians have a
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: huge new pipeline that they opened. Well, not that new,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: about 12 years ago that they opened And they keep
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: adding to it. So they're able to sell all the
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: hydrocarbons they want. And the Chinese will burn every hydrocarbon
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you got. So, you know, they really don't need Europe.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: You know, Joe Biden kicked them out and basically solidified
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: their economic break with Europe totally unnecessarily, but in a
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: way that didn't really hurt Russia.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: And the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline was
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: a part of this. This was to disconnect their oil
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: supply or the natural gas supply to Europe.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in fact, more specifically, right, it was to make
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: this break between, to solidify the break between Germany and Russia.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: The previous German chancellor, Angela Merkel, she had this project
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: she called Eurasian Home. And what she was trying to
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: do was balance American and Russian interests in Europe. And
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: then they were closing down all their nuclear stuff, all
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: the green movement, you know, environmental stuff. They closed down
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: all their nuclear in Germany. And then the idea was,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: don't worry, we're going to import all this clean burning
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: CH4 from the Russians. But to the Americans, this is
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: the worst thing that could happen, would be an alliance
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: or any part of any strengthening relationship or budding relationship
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: between the Germans and the Russians. Because with German manufacturing
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: power and Russian raw materials and both of their at
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: least potential military strength, that if they have an alliance
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and dominate Eastern Europe, they can keep everybody else out.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: And so I think that has always been the British
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: and the American fear there. And, you know, there's here
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: in Austin, there's that sort of corporate CIA Stratfor run
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: by this guy, George Friedman.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Stratfor, it stands for strategic forecasting. They do dirty tricks. Yeah,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: it's here in Austin.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: They do some dirty tricks, but I think they mostly
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: like do like, you know, pseudo CIA briefings for corporations
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: and stuff, let them know what's going on in the world,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing, mostly. Their emails got leaked on Wikileaks.org
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: years ago. And, you know, they're involved. They're close with
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: some of these color-coded revolutionaries. And anyway, I don't know
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: them or anything, but their leader is a guy named
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: George Friedman. And I'll give him credit. I know he
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: opposed Iraq War II in 2003 because I heard him
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: on the radio back then. But, I mean, I'm not
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: vouching for the guys like a good guy or whatever,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: but just to say He's sort of like a realist
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: school foreign policy analyst type, not too ideological or anything
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: like that. And he gave a speech years ago where
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: he says, and this is the key words, primordial fear.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: This is the primordial fear of American imperial policy planners
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: is that you would have an alliance between the Germans
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: and the Russians. And so anything that we can do
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: to prevent that, we'll do. Now, I don't know exactly
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: who blew up that pipeline, but I'm sure they had
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: at least, the support of the United States. Seymour Hersh
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: has it that it was American military guys who did it,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: which I think, I don't know. And then there's a
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: whole cover story about this yacht. And then there's six
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: different versions of who rented this yacht and whether it
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: was used and whether it was robots or whether it
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: was divers or whatever. And it's all meant to confuse.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by Visible. Ah, spring
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• 56:25
  Speaker 1: The bottom line is nobody wants to know, right?
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Seymour Hersh, what did he say happened?
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: He said that it was minors based out of Pensacola, Florida,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: meaning not pickaxe minors or children, but meaning. divers that
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: go down and disable sea mines that that was their
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: expertise those were the guys that they sent to do
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: it and that was in i think he did that
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: in the london review of.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Books or something like that is that disputed.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah and including by people who blame the ukrainians and
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: people who blame um i don't know like polish or
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: i guess polish uh groups or whatever they had all
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: these different investigations that all led different directions i know
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: jeremy i think jeremy scale who had one version of it.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: And then James Bamford, who I really respect, he's the
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: guy that wrote all the books about the National Security
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Agency over the years. And he had it that it
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: was the Ukrainians and they used robots to do it.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: And he's, you know, sussed that out through documents and
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: stuff and decided that that must have been what had happened. And,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: you know, so I don't know. There's six different versions
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: of it. And I have, I'm not choosing which is
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the favorite here, but I think it's clearly was in
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: America's interest. And of course, Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: have both sort of cheekily said, we're not going to
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: let this proceed. And if they do, we will do
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: whatever it takes to stop it. And so evidently they did.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: And you could see how they would consider that to be,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: you know, what they would be trying to prevent would
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: be this strengthened relationship between Germany and Russia.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Where's all that natural gas going now? Is it just
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: pouring right into the ocean?
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Well, eventually they capped it, but I think it was
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: the biggest release of methane into the atmosphere ever. It
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: was a huge thing. It was massive. If you were
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: a liberal, progressive, Democrat, environmentalist type, that ought to be
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: like the most offensive thing you ever heard of.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's way worse than cow burps.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: Remember they were worried about cow burps?
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's centuries worth of cow burps. Centuries worth.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: Jesus. So the Kazakhstan thing, I never heard of. I
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: hadn't heard a peep about that. I had no idea
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: that we were meddling in Kazakhstan.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was one of those where Much like what
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: just happened in Iran in January where there's protest over
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: some economic policy. I think in that case they had
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: cut the gas ration or something like that. And it's
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: a country that's divided by ethnicity. Those borders are in
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: all the wrong places and whatever. So you have sort
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: of the ruling caste and the people on the outs
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: and whatever. So you had a big protest movement and
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden there's armed gangs of guys
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: killing cops, seizing police stations, Trying to seize airports and
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: this kind of thing. And then what happened was the
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Russians invaded. They sent regular troops. across. They were asked
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: by the government there to come and intervene. They sent troops.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: They crushed the insurrection. And then it was funny because
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Antony Blinken said, oh, there's a lesson. When the Russians come,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: they don't ever want to leave. And then the next
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: day they turn around and left. And then they invaded Ukraine.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: They haven't left there since.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: But.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: Who were these insurrectionists? I don't know.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think presumably they worked for the CIA
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: and probably the Turks or something. You know, I don't know.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Smirks.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, them too.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so this whole thing was just what you
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: were saying earlier, just to try to get Russia to
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: be spread as thin as possible, spend as much money
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: as possible, cause as many problems in as many places
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: as possible.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: In fact, the same George Friedman from Stratford. I think
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: it's in that same speech or maybe a different one
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: where he says, yeah, when Iran is doing a little
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: bit better, you hit them. When Russia is doing better,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: you hit them. When China is achieving a thing or two,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: you hit them. You do whatever you can to always
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: be effing with everybody all the time in order to,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: you know, that's how to press your advantage, which I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: think is totally just short sighted. It's high time preference,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of government thinking, right? That like, well,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: if we can get away with this now, we should.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: without really thinking about the long-term consequence. In fact, that
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: was one of the things that failed to impress at
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Oxford that I brought up that I thought was crucial
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: that is in my book is a strobe Talbot, Bill
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Clinton's guy who originally opposed NATO expansion and then later
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: championed it in 2018 when it was the middle of
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: the war, uh, the, the civil war so-called with America
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: supporting Kiev and the Russians supporting the so-called rebels on
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: the other side. Um, A New York Times reporter named
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Keith Gessen went and interviewed Strobe Talbot. And it just
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: kind of went without saying that, like, clearly what is
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: going on here is the project of NATO expansion has
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: sort of blown up and caused all these problems. You know,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: what are we going to do? And what do you
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: think now, pal? I forgot exactly what he phrased it,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: but it's sort of, you know, what do you have
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: to say for yourself, Strobe? And so Strobe Talbot says, well, listen,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: he goes, when you're in power, you have one job.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: And that is to pursue your nation's national interests. And
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: if you don't do that, well, then you won't be
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: in power very long. So that was what we had
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: to do. But then he says, now, maybe should we
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: have had a higher, wiser conception of our national interest? Maybe.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: In other words, at the time, what they were thinking
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: is we want Lockheed dollars and we want Polish votes.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: for 1996, Illinois' crucial swing state, right? So, or was,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it still is. So that's why
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: we got to do this, because it's in America's national
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: interest that Bill Clinton get reelected and we all get
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to keep our jobs. So we're going to make these
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: promises to these people and pursue this policy for our
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: narrow interests as rulers of the empire. But then if
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: he had had a higher, wiser conception of America's national interest,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: he might have thought, wow, are we scheduling a military
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: conflict with Russia for the next century? And maybe we
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: shouldn't do that. Maybe we should look at it like
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: actually nothing in the world is more important than America
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: continuing to get along with the Russians. And again, when
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: the communists are long gone, so whatever problem you have
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: with these guys, it ain't Stalinism and it ain't evangelical
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Marxism at the point of a rifle, right? I mean,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: this is just whatever it is, we can deal with it. And, um,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: And so, no, they chose the lower, dumber conception of
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: America's national interest instead of the higher, wiser one. And
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: they blew it.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Is there anyone that's ever made the argument to you
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: like where you've had these debates where you have a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: utopian perspective on international relations and that this libertarian ideology–
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Of like staying out of people's business, staying out of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: what you'll do if you don't fuck with the Russians,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: you don't keep them spending, you don't keep them stretched out.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: They'll just amass more and more power and then they'll
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: start to try to take over what was traditionally the
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union. What was originally the Soviet Union? Yeah.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: You know, it just so happens, right, that America never
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: leaves anybody alone. So we just don't have a controlled experiment.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: We're constantly provoking. And everything that we see them do
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: is clearly a reaction. And it's just like when we
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: talk about terrorism. Again, I'm not in any way justifying it,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: but I'm just saying we have so much intervention preceding
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: the terrorism. You have to be able to attribute that.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Now, so how would things be otherwise, for example, if H.W.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Bush had just said, OK, well, we won the Cold War.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: Pat Buchanan's right. Let's just come home and had brought
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: the empire home from Europe. Then what would happen is
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: the Germans would have reunified. And then they would have
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: joined into a new European Union army with the British
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: and the French and probably the Poles. And then it
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: would have been on them to keep the peace between
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: each other, to police the smaller countries in their region,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: and hopefully strike a long-term security partnership with the new red, white,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: and blue Republican Russians. And, you know, if people want
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: to say– and, in fact, the other side in that
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: debate at Oxford– Daniel Freed said, yeah, but it was
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Poland wanted to join our alliance. It's not like we
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: made them. They wanted to. But the thing is, yeah,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: they might have reason to fear Russia based on old things.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: But the question is, why are we obligated to be
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the guarantor of their independence? It's too far from here.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: And it's something that we're no good at. We only
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: cause problems and something that the other European states who
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: are all Western Christian capitalist democracies and friends of ours
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: that they can all work together and solve on their own.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, when Germany reunified, it's not like the commies
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: were taken over. It was the West that was dominant
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: in the new Germany, right? These are our pals. There's
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: no reason in the world that America should have had
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: to have, well, for example, like a big part, part
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: of The horrible war in the Balkans was because of
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: a contest for power between America and Germany over who's
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: going to be dominant in the former Yugoslavia. We should
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: just let the Germans have it. Or, I mean, not
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: have it and kill everybody or whatever, but God, it
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: could hardly have been worse than what America helped to
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: cause there by trying to compete with the Germans for dominance.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: In a land that's quite literally 6,000 miles from here.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: But it's the fear from the American side that if
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: you let other countries consolidate power, if you let them
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: grow in influence without fucking with them and keeping them
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: spread out like we're doing with Russia, that they'll eventually
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: get stronger and then they'll become a real problem. And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: they keep them weak, keep them distracted, keep them engaged
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: in this Ukraine conflict and Kazakhstan and anything else you
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: can cook up. And that keeps them down.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like this. When it was the Cold War
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: against the Commie Soviet Union, I was a kid and
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on all of that history. I
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: think there were real questions about the dangers of world
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: communism at that time where at least I'd be willing
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: to hear you out. But since the end of the
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Cold War, no, there's just no justification for it because
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: as Bill Hicks would say, right, like just spin the globe, man.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: There's no countries out there, right? Every power in Europe
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: is our friend. And no threat to us and mean
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: us no harm whatsoever. There are no powers in Egypt–
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, pardon me, in Africa that count at all
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: except for Egypt, which is our friend. India will be
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: a power in 100 years from now. China is a
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: rising power. But we've been their friends for 50 years.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Even when they were still communists, Nixon went and made
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: friends with them in the early 1970s. Friends. And then
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, yeah.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: But aren't they constantly infiltrating our different universities and people? Wow.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: I ain't endorsing that. You can keep them out.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: But Chinese infiltration is kind of crazy, like what they're
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: doing in America. It's like if you're saying they're our friends,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: you know, the mayor of Arcadia just got busted. She
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: was a communist spy. She's a fucking mayor of a
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: city in California.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: I'm putting that on the FBI counterintelligence division. That should
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: have never been allowed to happen in the first place.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: And no, I don't mean that they're totally benign, but. Look,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: worst case scenario, China invades or just surrounds and forcibly
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: reintegrates Taiwan. That doesn't mean they're going to invade Korea.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean they're going to invade Japan or Australia
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: or have the appetite to want to do that. I
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: think China's already a pretty overextended empire and it's very
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: poor in many parts of it. And they have something,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: is it 14 or 15 neighbors that they got to
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: deal with already? You know, their greatest ambition is to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: build this highway and fiber optics and whatever from Shanghai
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: to Lisbon, right? Why am I forgetting the name of
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: the damn thing? The great new highway they're trying to
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: build all the way across Eurasia. They can't do that
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: by intimidating everyone and lording it over everyone. They've got
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: to cut through Tajikistan. These are wild lands. They're going
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: to make deals the whole way across if they're going
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: to do that. And if you look at the way
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: they're building their empire so far, it's all just briefcases.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Government-backed businesses making deals and buying up resources and stuff.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: But I really don't think that Xi Jinping is looking
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: at George W. Bush and Barack Obama and Donald Trump
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: and Joe Biden and going, yeah, that's what I want
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: to do for my country is blow my own brains
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: out trying to take over the whole rest of the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: planet Earth.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, just to point to what you're saying,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: it's like China's not invading anybody.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: They're not.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: They're not doing what we're doing.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying they're nice guys or whatever, but
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: they don't rule us and they're no threat to North America.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: They have no need to pick a fight with us.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: People say, oh, you got all your microchip factories on Taiwan. Well,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: then move them to Austin. We've had advanced micro devices
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: here for 30 years or whatever, 35 years, maybe more
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: than that. They can build that stuff here.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: They can, but they tried. It's very difficult to think
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: about what they've got going on in Taiwan. The reason
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: why Taiwan is the head of it is that they're
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: far more advanced than anybody else in the world at
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: doing it. Bring them. Yeah, you would have to. That's
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: a lot.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say it was something
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: special about the saltwater over there or something.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. They're just way ahead of everybody else.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, in fact, didn't Samsung try to do a
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: chip manufacturing plant in Texas? And I think their yields
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: were so poor. I don't know what the actual story
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: with that is. So I'm speaking way over my pay
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: scale here. But I think what it is is you
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: have to have like certain tolerances. When you're creating these
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: chips and they weren't achieving what they were trying to
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: achieve despite spending an enormous amount of money. So it's
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: not as simple as build a plant. The schematics are there.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: You just crank out chips. Like apparently these chips are
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: super complicated to make. Sure.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: Not worth having a war over.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: No, not worth. I'm not saying it's worth harding. But
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying that this idea, just move them to Austin.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's that easy. I think chip manufacturing
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: is one of the most complex technological challenges in 2026.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I mean we've had– I don't know what all AMD
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: does here. But I'm pretty sure that them and Samsung
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: and others have all the facilities they need here to.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's quite true.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: Or they should be able to.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: They maybe could with enough resources and time and maybe
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: stole all the fucking eggheads from Taiwan and bring them
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: over here, all the geniuses that have figured out how
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: to make those chips. Maybe. Maybe they wouldn't let them.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: But what happened with the Samsung chip factory?
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: It's never been fully opened and it's not done yet.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: I used to be a rent-a-cop at some pretty fancy
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: factories here, you know, back 25 years ago.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah? What kind of factories?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I think it would have been AMD and or Samsung.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Some pretty fancy, like, chip fabrication and stuff like that.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: Well, let's ask. Perplexity. Let's ask.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: And I did have a job being a rent-a-cop because
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: you skate parking garages at work and do my homework
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: at work.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: It was great. Yeah. Yeah, easy job for the most part, right?
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: Just free time. Let's ask perplexity, why are so many
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: chip manufacturers in Taiwan? Because I'm pretty sure there's something
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: about the advancements that they've made in chip manufacturing that
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: no one's been able to replicate. Otherwise, it doesn't make
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: sense that China wouldn't just make their own. Like, they're
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: right there.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: I read this thing not long ago about how, like,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: with the China's AI stuff, they figured out how to
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: write their program where they need Much less computing power
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: to do the same kind of effort in the way
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: that they did it. So they just found their own workaround. Yes.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: Well, they also– there's a lot of espionage going on too. Yeah, probably.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: A lot of the world's chip manufacturers is in Taiwan
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: because the island deliberately built a specialized ecosystem around contract
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: chip fabrication, foundries, then compounded that early lead with huge investment,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: dense clustering of suppliers and talent, and strong government support
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: over several decades– So early strategic bet on manufacturing. Starting
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: in the 1980s, Taiwan chose to focus on precision manufacturing,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: fabricating chips for others, instead of trying to build its
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: own big consumer tech brands. And then their dominance and scale. Yeah,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: founded in 87. Now the world's leading contract, TSMC, the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: leading contract chip manufacturer, produces over half of the world's
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: advanced semiconductors and more than 90% of the most cutting-edge nodes.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: Because advanced fabs cost tens of billions of dollars and
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: must run near full capacity to be profitable, only a
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: few players can keep up. And Taiwan's leader kept pulling
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: ahead as others dropped out. See, that's what I'm talking about.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's easy.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: The biggest issue I was seeing was that no customers
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: is what kept popping up.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: What is that? There are no customers.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is, at the same time— There
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: are huge problem.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: Delays because there's no one to buy them.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: Why not? I don't know.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, when it comes to capacity, then it's a lot.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: We got Samsung and Dell and AMD and IBM here.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like they can invest their own
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: money and build their own whatever they need to.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: But just read what they said there about the amount
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: of money that's involved in keeping it running. Like, I
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: think there's so I think the idea about Taiwan and again,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: this is not really my area of expertise. Not that
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: I have any. But that they're so far ahead that
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: this process that they bet on early on, that they've
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: got their manufacturing to this point where they've already invested
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: this enormous amount of money. And the money– and they
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: have to keep them running constantly. I don't think it's simple.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's like car manufacturing.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: And then by no customers, you mean– Essentially, everybody who
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: needs these chips is already getting them from Taiwan. There's
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: not much more demand than that.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: Well, not necessarily. It could just mean that they already
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: have contracts, that they don't need them because they've already
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: made commitments to Taiwan chip manufacturers.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, if Beijing is a military threat
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: to Taiwan and these people would rather not be under
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the rule of Beijing and the Communist Party, then there's
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: a pretty big incentive for them to move to Texas.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: There is, but again, what I'm saying is I don't
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: think it's a simple step. I don't think it's just
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: like move here. I think it's an enormous investment in capital,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: like beyond normal things. And then I think to keep
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: them running is an insane commitment. It's very difficult. And again,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: if Samsung doesn't have any– if right now they don't
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: have any customers, didn't they have an issue with yields though?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: Wasn't there an issue with chips being made to standard?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: I think there was something else on top of that.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: I tried typing that in and out. I didn't see anything.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: But they're trying to get to two nanometer production. They
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: started on trials. And then there's rumors about why they
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: have not moved into mass production. And that's all these
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: articles are saying.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: Well, the Pentagon budget is a trillion and a half
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: this year. Let's just cut all that. Then we'll have
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: plenty of capital freed up to build your microchip.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that's cute. They're not going to do that.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Who needs a world empire? Hey, look, one of the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: lessons of the war in Iran is the empire is
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: good for nothing anyway. We have H-bombs that are enough
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: to deter anyone from attacking us. But America's military empire
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: in the Middle East is completely bankrupt.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: That whole thing was a hollow bluff and the Iranians
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: just called it and we lost. I mean, our bases
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: have been evacuated. They keep coming out. I know. I
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: think you talked about this on your show.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: How they were covering up. the satellite photos. They weren't
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: letting Americans have access to the satellite photos when you
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: could get them online, whatever other countries had them. And
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: then you've had the New York Times and I hate
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: to cite CNN, but it was a well-sourced story where
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: they got all these great satellite photos and went and
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: showed how the Iranians reached out and touched 18 bases
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: from Erbil in Northern Iraq, all the way down to
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Muscat in Oman and, and took out all radar stations and,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Pitted our runways, hit refueling tankers and AWACS radar planes
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: and took out the entire, not the entire, but a
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: huge percentage of the overlapping radars for the missile defense
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: systems over there. Left our allies in Saudi, Qatar, UAE,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: Bahrain wide open. You know, our naval's fifth fleet station
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: at Bahrain is destroyed and offline. I read this thing
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: said the Qataris are our main air base in the
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: Middle East, the headquarters of Central Command and our main
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: air base at Qatar. The Qataris made a deal with Iran.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Please stop hitting us. And they promised to not allow
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: America to fly any sorties out of Qatar, our main
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: air base during that war. And so as Justin Logan
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: from the Cato Institute said, well, what good is a
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: military base that you can't fight a war from? You know,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: it's just like that. I know you see this, right?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: That that old meme. It says, well, if Iran doesn't
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: want trouble with us, how come they put their country
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: so close to all our military bases? And it has
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: all the map of all our bases in the region.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: But the thing is, what Donald Trump, I guess, didn't
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: understand was that those were a tripwire that were essentially
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: we were making our own guys hostages of Iran to
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: prevent war. Those bases were preventing war because it should
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: have been out of the question that we would attack
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Iran because all those bases would be up for grabs
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: against them.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: So how are they so poorly defended? That's what I
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: don't understand. Like, how is it so easy for Iran
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: to attack these bases? And did they have any foreknowledge
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: of this? Did they understand? Oh, yeah.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: So why they were so poorly defended, that's got to
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: be political decision making among the brass, right? About like, well,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: we don't want to admit that we need these fortifications
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: in the first place, maybe, or just the other. general
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: said don't. So we don't want to fight with him
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: about it for office politics reasons or what?
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: Like, I don't know. No good excuse. It's not a
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: gross underestimation.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: It can't be because, listen, I'll tell you, man, in
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: January of 2007, the chiefs took W. Bush down to
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: the tank in the basement of the Pentagon. And they
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: told him, look, we'll do your Iraq surge where we
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: increase the war in Iraq. But we really don't want
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: to go to Iran. And they told him the reason
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: why not is because the Iranians have escalation dominance, or
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: at least we won't have it. I shouldn't have said that.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: I was overstating it. We will not have escalation dominance there.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: And that means that, you know, it's a Pentagon term
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: for if we're going to get into a fight, we
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: don't want to fight at all unless we know we're
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: going to control every stage of that conflict. And In
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: the case of, say, invading Iraq, there's nothing Saddam Hussein
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: can do about it, right? As Paul Wolfowitz said, Iraq
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: is doable. In the case of Iran, they have, most
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: importantly of all, a short and medium range missile force
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: that we cannot defend from. Now, we can defend from
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: it some. We have our Patriot missiles and our other
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: type of interceptors, but they can pour on volume that
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: there is no magic Star Wars shield that can protect from.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: And we had at that time more than 100,000 guys
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: in Iraq, 50,000 in Afghanistan, and then plus still, as
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: we still do, tens of thousands, Air Force and Army
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: in Kuwait, Air Force and Army in Saudi Arabia, Air
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Force in Qatar, Navy at Bahrain, I guess Air Force
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: and Army in UAE, and I didn't know in Oman,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: but yeah, of course, in Oman they had, you know,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: some naval presence there as well. So, And they knew
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: then that all of that stuff will be up for grabs.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: And then the Strait of Hormuz will also be at risk.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: And in fact, it's true. At antiwar.com, you can find
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: in the archives there, I wrote an article in August
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: of 2005 called Who's Behind the Coming War with Iran?
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: And I say in there, they can close the Strait
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: and they can inflict economic damage, drive the cost of
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: a barrel of oil up above $ 200 a barrel. And
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: all of that. So there were people a lot smarter
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: than me who were writing about that at the time
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: that I was interviewing on my show at the time
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: who were just saying, look, we can start a war
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: with Iran, but we don't really have a good way
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: to finish one. And so and we talk about the
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: nuclear program, how unnecessary all this was in a sec, too.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: But point being that you want to do a regime change.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: As you just said, you kill the Ayatollah. It doesn't
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: do any good. They have a new Ayatollah. You can
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: kill the whole ruling council that appoints the Ayatollah, but
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: then they'll just appoint a new ruling council. So then
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: you can dump in the 82nd Airborne Division, but they
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: can't occupy and control Tehran. There's no good land route
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: to invade the country. They have two massive mountain ranges.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: And one of the most preposterous narratives was like getting
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: the people to rise. Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: We're going to arm up some Kurds.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Not just the Kurds. They were trying to
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: get just the Iranian civilians. Yeah. With no arms. Yeah.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: And they'll talk about, you know, arming the Kurds and
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: arming the Balukis, which is I don't know if there
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: are other factions, but that seems to be a direct
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: reference to groups like Jandala, who the Obama administration and
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the Israelis both backed about 15 years ago, who were
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: bin Ladenite head choppers, suicide bomber guys. They're no different
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: from al-Qaeda or ISIS. And they, you know, John Bolton
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: on Pierce Morgan, the same show that I was on
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: was saying, yeah, we could arm up the Belukis. And
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: stuff is crazy. I actually wrote in that article at
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: that time, the neocons daydream that if we just start
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: the war, then the people will rise up and create
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: a new pro-American government there. But that's crazy to bet
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: on that. There's no reason to believe that. And so,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: and there's video of me in 2010, warning the same thing.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: And I'm not claiming any great insight. I didn't go
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: to college, man. I just, I'm interested in this stuff,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: and I have a show where I was interviewing all
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: these experts about it at the time, and it was
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: just complete consensus. Everybody knew. They can reach out, and boy,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: over 20 years I must have said this a thousand times.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: They can not only hit all of our military stuff
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: in Iraq and Kuwait and Bahrain and Qatar, etc., Saudi, etc.,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: but a trillion dollars of economic targets all up and
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: down that gulf, which is exactly what they did. They
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: hit refineries. They hit chemical plants. They hit not just
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: at the Strait of Hormuz, they hit American oil tankers
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: up near Kuwait just to show that, like, we pwned
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: this entire thing now. So back to my original point
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: when I got on this tangent was that America's conventional
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: military empire is bankrupt. Donald Trump just blew his big
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: bluff that we're the big player in the region. We're
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: actually not in the region. We're here. The region is
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: over there. And the entire country, you know, threat of
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: our dominance over there is basically called. I mean, obviously
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: we still have aircraft carriers and planes and bombs and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: even nukes and all that. But can the leaders in Bahrain,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: in Qatar and UAE and Saudi rely on America to
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: defend them?
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: Or are they going to come up with their own
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: different policy now?
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: Haven't we also used up like two thirds of our
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: Patriot missile supply? Oh, yes.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know the exact percentages, but a lot. And
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: they're admitting now that the Iranians still have 70, 75%
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: of all their missiles and launchers. All that stuff about
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: we decimated everything they had was all just plaster.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: They're admitting that? Who's admitting that?
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: Government officials talking to the New York Times and the
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Washington Post in the last three days. Oh, I hadn't
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: heard that.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: 70, 75%.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: They got all their launchers, all their missiles. They dug
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: out missiles that had been buried. They refurbished some and
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: finished some that were on the assembly line. That was
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: what they told the Post. They were finishing some that
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: had been on the assembly line that they went ahead
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: and restarted up again.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: And don't they have some crazy like missile elevator system
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: where they're buried deep underground?
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know how it works exactly, but yeah. And
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: even they have apparently like the factories are buried deep
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: underground as well and just dispersed throughout the country.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: And so– They've been preparing for something like this for
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: a long time. And so these bases that we had,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: are all of them non-functional, all the ones that have
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: been hit?
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't know the exact extent
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: of that. But as far as their usefulness– Over the
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: long term, they might as well have just been abandoned
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: at this point.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: Let's see what the conventional news says.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: New York Times and CNN have two big profiles on this.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know off the top of my head better
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: stuff than that. The CNN– oh, NBC also had one within.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: The CNN and the NBC are within the last couple
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: of weeks. The New York Times is about six weeks
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: old maybe.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: One of the things that disturbed me to no end,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: and we talked about this a couple of times in
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: the podcast, was there was one of the guys who
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: was over there. who attended a briefing and they were
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: told that this is bringing about Armageddon and that Trump
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: was anointed by Jesus Christ and that this war in
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: Iran was going to cause Jesus to return and that
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: this was actually being told to a bunch of military
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: people that were having a war debriefing. And then the
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: guy had a– Whoever this officer was that was talking
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: about this said that the guy had a giant smile
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: on his face when he was telling this, which made
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: it all the more creepy.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, good. The end of the world. Nobody wants to
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: die alone, right, Joe?
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: But they were saying that there's a faction in the
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: military that is these religious fundamentalists that actually believe that
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: it's bringing about Jesus' return. So, look, there's a guy
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: named– Commander claimed Trump was anointed by Jesus to cause
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: Armageddon to justify Iran strikes.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: So there's a guy named Mikey Weinstein.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: Let's just go over this real quick because this is
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: so crazy. Go up to the top, please. Right there.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: So it's where it says who it was. So it's
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: a military commander. Told a group of non-commissioned officers that
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: President Donald Trump, anointed by Jesus to light the signal
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: to Earth.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: And then that's that's Mikey Weinstein right there, the Military
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: Religious Freedom Foundation. He was I believe he was an
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: Air Force officer, maybe as an army officer. And then
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: he created this group to advocate against this kind of
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: stuff in the military. And it's been a long time
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: since I spoke to him. But he was saying to
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: me years ago that it's especially in the highest ranks
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: of the Air Force, the highest ranks of the Air Force.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: They really believe this stuff. It is time to bring
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: on the apocalypse. And it's a good thing that they
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: are the ones in charge of the nukes so that
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: they can use them according to the divine plan. It
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: is scary stuff.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: People need to know this. Go back to that, please,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: because there's one quote that's below that. This is so fascinating.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: He urged us to tell our troops that this was
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: all part of God's divine plan. And he specifically referenced
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: numerous citations out of the book of Revelations. referring to
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. Can you
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: imagine if you're over there, you already think the war
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: is sketchy. Like, why the fuck are we doing this?
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: And then this guy comes down, you're like, oh my God,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: we're cooked.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: This is a big part of how they justified Iraq.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many Protestant ministers out there who
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: told their people that this is the Bible.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: Get it?
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Middle East, year 2000, sort of-ish. This is how you're
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: going to get raptured up to heaven in your body.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: And all you have to do is support this aggressive
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: war and all this magic stuff is going to come true.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: And in fact, this is why there's Such a massive
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: crash in evangelical support for Israel and these kind of
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: foreign policies now is because people just don't believe that
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: anymore because that's what the Left Behind series at Walmart
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: said 25 years ago, and then it never happened. It
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: didn't come true. Speaking of the one world government and
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. where's Satan where's the deal instead it's
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: just Obama and Trump you know.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: So how do you think we got talked into this
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: Iran thing because J.D. Vance very against it a lot
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: of people Tulsi Gabbard very against it what the fuck.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: Happened I think that Netanyahu essentially, you know, all this
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: talk about, um, four dimensional chess and whatever. I think
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: what it is is it's just checkers, right? Is Netanyahu goes, listen,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: for Iran, for Iran to have a civilian nuclear program,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: come on, that's just cover for really a weapons program.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: It's just a stage in a weapons program. We know
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: eventually they're going to make nukes and then they're going
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: to attack Israel with them. And we also know that, um,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: And you already said that you're not going to let
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: them have nukes. Well, having a nuclear program at all
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: is having nukes. Same difference. And you already agreed to that, right?
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: Right. Okay.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: Well, and they won't give up enrichment. So what do
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: we do? We got to attack. It's just like Obama's
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: red line on the fake chemical weapons scare in Syria
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: there that once you agree to this thing, now it's
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: written in stone. And now, like, we got you on
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: this technicality. Double jump. You already agreed with the stupid
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: things I said. And so now you have to do
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: the thing that I said. And then Trump goes, OK.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: And then plus on top of that, just the flattery.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: And like, you know, honestly, this is the most obvious thing.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: Back when he was on Twitter in his first term,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: I used to tweet at him and I would say, wealth, strength, gold,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: get out of Afghanistan, height, power. And we're like, just
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: tell him like things that he likes.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: With get out of Afghanistan in the middle. And so
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: this is what Netanyahu does is he goes, listen. You're
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: greater than Abraham Lincoln. You're greater than George Washington. You're
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: a world historical figure. You're sure to go to heaven now.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: You're like if FDR had done the right thing and
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: invaded Germany in 1935 and prevented that whole thing from
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: ever happening.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: Well, you're just guessing that this is how he talked
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: to him, right?
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: Well, kind of, but.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't it be awesome.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: To be a fly on the wall? Because he repeats
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of it.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, it would.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: It would be great. But he repeats so much of
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: it back that I think that, like, yeah, you can
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: pretty much tell. This is what they're saying to him,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: and then this is what he's responding is. Obama wasn't
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: man enough to do it. George Bush wasn't man enough
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: to do it. He knows what has to be done.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: He's willing to do it. And he's ill informed enough
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: to believe that it makes any sense that if you
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: just bomb their nuclear program, that somehow it'll go away.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: If you just hit them hard enough, then eventually they'll
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: just do what you say. It doesn't work like that.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: It oftentimes does not work like that. And with these guys,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: they've made it clear that We're not making bombs, but
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: we absolutely reserve our right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: And we will suffer your airstrikes. We will not give
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: up that right. And so that's it. And they've been
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: completely clear about that this entire time. But Netanyahu convinced them.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: This is why he also believed that the Strait of
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: Hormuz was not at risk. Because Netanyahu convinced him, once
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: we hit him, once he killed Ayatollah, the whole thing's
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: going to fall apart. There'll be no one too close
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: to stray to Hormuz because we'll have already won by then.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: But what do you think happens if Iran does get
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapons?
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: Probably the other states in the region will. You know,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: Daryl Cooper, who's my partner on our show, Provoked, and
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: I know a good friend of yours.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: I love Daryl.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: He is so great.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: He's awesome.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: And he was pointing out.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: That guy gets- Boy, does he get fucking misrepresented all
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, he does.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. He does. Oh, my God.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: Heroic guy, man.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: Very fucking smart. And if you listen to Fear and
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: Loathing in the New Jerusalem, anybody who listens to that
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: and thinks that guy's anti-Semitic is fucking crazy. Yeah, no.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: You're crazy.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: All that stuff is just a smear.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: So balanced.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: Out of context stuff.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: It's so balanced and so objective and his perspective on
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: it and just– People take that one thing that he
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: said about– fuck– Churchill, the thing that he said about
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: Churchill being the real villain. He's being provocative, right? And
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: what he's trying to say is that Churchill, by imposing
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: those embargoes, essentially was starving them and was keeping resources
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: from getting to Germany and he forced Hitler's hand to
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: do what he did. It's not excusing him. It's not
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: like saying Hitler wasn't a fucking evil cunt. It's not
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: like saying Hitler's a good guy, but Winston Churchill's the
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: bad guy. Somebody was saying it all. But he was
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: saying Winston Churchill, also a bad guy, also wanted to
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: attack Soviet Union right after they were done with the war.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: And he was actually, he even introduced the subject by
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: saying to Tucker that, you know, I like to pick
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: on my friend Jocko, who's very waspy. And I like
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: to pick on him and joke with him that Churchill
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: was the real bad guy. Exactly. Because he wouldn't accept
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: peace for an answer. He had to finish the regime
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: change no matter what, even if it took America doing
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: it for him and whatever. And then his point about–
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: he never even finished the point about the people starving
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: in the camps. He was totally taken out of context
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: to mean that the only people who died in the
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Holocaust– All that happened was the Germans didn't care enough
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: to feed them well enough or something. But that was
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: not what he was saying at all. He was essentially
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: arguing that even if you were some kind of German apologist,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: even you would have to admit that every single soul
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: they took possession of, they took responsibility for. And if
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: people are starving to death by the millions in their camps,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: then nobody could deny that.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: And then he didn't even discuss the rest of the Holocaust.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: His point had nothing to do with like trying to
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: diminish the rest of it or discount the rest of
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: it or anything like that. He was just saying, you know,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: arguing even the devil's advocate would have to admit so
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: much of the case on the face of it. he
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: was segwaying right into a point about Gaza and how
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: the Israelis, Gaza is not a country. Gaza is an
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: Indian reservation. They were already whooped and conquered and besieged.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: And so you take control of people like that, then
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: you're responsible to make sure that they're fed and that
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: they're not starving to death in this, you know, under
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: your captivity, which was the point that he was making.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: So it ended up being, you know, Half of a
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: thing in jest and half explained about Churchill. And then
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: a point about the war in the East that was totally,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: and I think in some cases, honestly, misinterpreted. But what's
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: dishonest is people pretending like he didn't explain himself on
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: the record over and over and over, clarifying what he
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: meant by all that stuff.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: And that's the problem with video clips. Yeah. Clips are
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: a real problem because you lose the context of the
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: entire conversation. You get one person's point where they might
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: be steel manning something else or they might be like
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: trying to be provocative or whatever it is. But to me,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: it's always very fascinating that this one war is beyond debate.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: Like there's no room for any discussions of what might
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: be true, what might not be true. I don't think
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: there's a single fucking moment in human history where we
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: have gotten a completely objective, 100 percent accurate representation of
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: why the war started. What were the factors? What were
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: the motivations? We could go all the way back to
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: Smedley Butler and Smedley Butler's war is a racket, which
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: I always point out, because here's a guy. In 1933,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: that was realizing he was a major general, realizing at
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: the end of his tenure, like, holy shit, what did
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: I do? I thought that I was doing this to
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: make the world safer. And really, I was making it
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: better for bankers, better for all these interests to go
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: in and control resources or do whatever the fuck they
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: were actually doing.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: And.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: You can talk about that. But if you get into
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: discussions about World War Two and anything involving the Nazis,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: anything involving the Holocaust, all of a sudden anti-Semitic gets
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: thrown around. All of a sudden you're you're a bad person.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: As he says, it's, you know, a huge part of
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: our civic religion, basically. You know, we're like George Washington
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: and even Abraham Lincoln and all that stuff is too
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: long ago, where it's really Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: and Dwight Eisenhower are the founding fathers of the American empire.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: And their great project, the greatest generation and all of
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: those things. That was, you know, that's, that's how we
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: know that that's who we are. I mean, my grandfather
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: was in that war and my great uncle was, you know,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: death marched by the Japanese in that war and stuff
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: like that. A lot of people have connections to that.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: As Bill Kristol and his friends would say, this is
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: how you build national greatness. You need big projects that
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: we can all do together. And World War II is
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: the biggest project of all. So it's, the kind of
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: thing that, that people don't really want to question.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: It's also, we should point out that they were bankrolling
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: Smedley Butler trying to get him to overthrow the fucking government. Right.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: And he refused to do it.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: They marched up Capitol Hill with the documents and, yeah.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: And showed them.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: They were trying to get him to throw a military
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: coup on the United States government and take it over.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, you thought FDR was bad and these guys
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: wanted to overthrow him. He wasn't, you know, isn't that crazy?
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: Wrong faction, I guess. Um, but, um, Look, I'm not
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: an expert on, and I've only read a few books
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: about the Second World War, and you'd have to read
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: hundreds to really know what you're talking about on that one.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: But I can tell you that Pat Buchanan's great book, Churchill, Hitler,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: and the Unnecessary War, that Pat knew that everybody was
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: going to try to smear him, and everyone was going
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: to attack him, and nobody wanted to hear his version
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: of how this all happened. So he only quotes the
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: high level, most credentialed English historians from Cambridge and Oxford.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: And so he's not relying on the German point of
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: view whatsoever. He's quoting only these English historians saying, here's
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: how the idiot Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill died. essentially
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: fumbled into this war, screwed up and got us into
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: this war that was way worse than we ever could
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: have hoped. And they ended up turning Poland over to
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: the commies at the end anyway, and all of that.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: And it's really honestly is what I think it is,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: is a decent take on World War II without all
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: that religiosity that you're referring to there. And just take
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: a cold look at it. You know, like they say
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: that W. Bush, he's the Winston Churchill of the 21st century.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, you know what? Maybe that's right. And
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: maybe Winston Churchill was really just the George W. Bush
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: of the 20th century. It's just you're supposed to never
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: admit that or.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: Talk about that. Who's Winston Churchill's Dick Cheney?
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's a good question.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Boy, that guy, he had no pulse
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: for a while. Yeah. Is that not in the Bible
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: or something?
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it should be.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: A fucking guy who wants war, who is giving no-bid
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: contracts to the company that he was the fucking CEO of,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: where they're going over there and fixing for billions of
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: dollars shit that we blew up. And this guy doesn't
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: even have a pulse.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: He had a fake heart.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: He lived so long, too. Woo!
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: Crazy.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: Only the good die young kind of thing.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, how many people dropped dead after COVID? of
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: heart attacks that were young and healthy. And this fucking guy,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: keep on trucking. Remember when he shot his friend in
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: the face and his friend apologized?
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: Yup.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: He fucking, they were, they were doing, which is one
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: of the most, uh, very, I'd say it's one of
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: the hardest to, uh, argue in support of type of hunts.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: It's called a canned hunt. You know what it is?
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: Because what it is that they just released in Gaza.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: Very similar. They just– well, this is birds. They just
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: release these birds from a cage literally and they fly
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: and then they shoot them out of the sky. And
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: even then he blasts his friend.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: And then he wouldn't do– Drinking and hunting.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: Well, allegedly. So he wouldn't do any interviews or anything.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: He wouldn't talk to anybody for like 24 hours. And
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: so he had to sober up or allegedly or whatever.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: And then his friend was like, minor misunderstanding. Got a
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: few pellets in my face. What the fuck?
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: I'm very sorry if this reflected negatively on the vice president.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: That's a gangster.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: My fault for putting my face there.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing? No lawsuit. No nothing. Your friend shoots
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: you in the face. No worries.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: And what angle exactly did he get shot that he
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: was okay after that?
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing about it is it's birdshot. It was
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: just birdshot, yeah. And birdshot spreads, right? And depending upon
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: the distance and how far he was away from him,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: he could have just got clipped. Most likely that's what
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: happened because I think he was 70. You know, if
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: you're 70, you get shot in the face with a shotgun.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: Usually that's a wrap.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: So I think he just got clipped with a couple
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: of pellets and, you know. Yeah. He probably should have
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: just shut the fuck up and not reported it. Right.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know how it even got out.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: He must have had to go to the hospital.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: I fucked up. I dropped my gun and it went off.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: The vice president shot me. Don't tell the newspaper I
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: said that.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: If that was my friend, I would probably say, let
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: it go. Let's figure this out. You don't have to
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: go to the fucking press.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: Come on, bro.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: We're both hammered.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: There's a guy who's killed and wounded a lot of people,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. Mostly vicariously, but not always.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, there's a special place in hell.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: He's there already.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: It's just so weird that that worked. You know, just
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: all of it. The no bid contracts, the fact that
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: he was essentially running. Remember when he was in a
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: bunker and Bush was running around? He's in a bunker somewhere. Like,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: why is he in a bunker? Like, what the fuck?
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: That whole war was so weird.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: It was to pretend that there's a threat, that there's
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: an ongoing threat when there wasn't.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: I had a bit about it in my act is
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: like that the elites really have no idea how dumb
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: people are. And the only way to find out how
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: dumb people are is make a dumb guy president. And
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: that's what they did. And then when we went into
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: a war with Iran– or with Iraq rather, like how
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: did we justify that? And they bought that? What the fuck?
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: And then the bit was like, he won again? Right, yeah.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: He won again.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: He got reelected on that, yeah.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: And then I go– there's someone sitting in the back
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: of the room going, I think we can go dumber.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: That was the idea of the bit is that this
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: is the only way to find out how dumb we are.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: Like that– Kurt Vonnegut story, Harrison Bergeron, where there's like
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: the ruling elite, but the president, I think is the
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: president in the movie of his Tim Curry or something.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: He's just a total like buffoon. And they just, the
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: real power is all behind the throne running things.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: Well, my favorite movie about that is Dr. Strangelove. Because
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: it's like– because it's kind of humorous and, you know,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: but the whole thing is like, oh, my God. I
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: think when you see this Pete Hexess thing where these
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: guys are talking about this and this commander is saying
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: that it's all to bring about Armageddon, this is right
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: out of Dr.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: Strangelove.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, you can tell– and this is one of the
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: most dispiriting things, right, is when you can tell a
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: lot of times when these people are talking that, wow,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: he's really not lying. He really thinks that that stupid
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: lie is true. And he's telling us what he thinks
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: is true, like, you know, depending on their tone and
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: the way they explain it. He is sometimes like even
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, like. It's possible he's even talked himself
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: or allowed himself to be talked into believing that they
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: really were making nuclear weapons and that then they were
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: going to use.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: Them on us.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: I mean that might just be the dumbest lie and
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: he knows it.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: But if they did have nuclear weapons, it would be
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: a giant problem because the Iranian government, just look what
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: they've done to their people, executed protesters. They've done some
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: wild shit. I don't know. You don't think that's a
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: big deal, what they've done to their protesters?
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: In fact, that's where we got off on Martyr Made
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: there a minute ago was because on our show he
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: was saying, Right now, through their conventional power, and especially
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: because W. Bush gave their best friends Baghdad, Iran is
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: by far the dominant power in the region, conventionally speaking,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: other than us. If they rush to an atom bomb, say,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: to somehow deter us, which I don't think that would work.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: I think we'd just attack them if they really did.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: We'd just attack them again. But if they did somehow
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: get an atomic bomb, well, then that would then incentivize
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: all of the other powers involved. I mean, or other
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: states on the GCC there, Saudi and Qatar and Bahrain
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: and UAE to get their own nukes. And at that point,
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: Iran's entire strategic advantage is canceled because now they got
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: nukes too. And so now nobody has.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: A strategic advantage. But no one can do to them
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: what happened to them now if they had nukes. This
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: was the argument for Ukraine not disarming.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: But that would include them being able to deliver them
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: to the United States as well. And I think, you see,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: it's like this. Here's how it worked, okay? The Iranians...
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: They're members of the nonproliferation treaty going way back. They
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: had a safeguarded civilian nuclear program where the IAEA could
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: verify they're not diverting their nuclear material.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: How could they verify this? Oh, it's just they have
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: their bases all underground.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, no, no, no, because all that stuff was
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: open and declared and safeguarded by the IAEA. So they're
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: enriching at two major facilities at Fordow and Natanz. And
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: then they followed the uranium from womb to tomb from
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: the mine. through the conversion process.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: But how much oversight do they have of this? I mean,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: how much of it could be done in secrecy?
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: It was very robust up until, you know, last June. Essentially,
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: they're proving the negative there.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: Can I pause you there? Because they didn't know that
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: the Iranians had the capacity to, they sent one 4,000 kilometers, right?
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: The Diego Garcia attack.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the missile.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: So those missiles had a far greater range than anything
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: that they had declared.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Actually, not quite because– well, first of all, that's– the
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: missile stuff is totally separate from their safeguards going with
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: the IAEA. They have nothing to do with that. But
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: as far as the missiles, the only limit on their
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: missile range previously was a political limit.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, it wasn't a capability?
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: That's right. So they had– So it wasn't.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: That they stated that all we have is this?
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: They– only previously. But then in October of– I'm pretty
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: sure it was last October in the aftermath of the
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: June war. And so then in October of 25, the
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: Ayatollah announced we're lifting our limit on the range of
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: our missiles. And they said that publicly that they were
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: doing that. And so that was as a result, again,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: of this provocation of the war last June. So that's
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: still separate from the nuclear stuff, though. But go ahead.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. So it wasn't a capability thing. It was
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: just an agreement.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: Although they don't have the capability to launch a three-stage
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: intercontinental ballistic missile to the United States of America. They
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: can hit Israel, but they can do that with an
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: intermediate-range missile.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: But if they're cooperating with China, and China has that capability.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: Because Bill Clinton gave it to them, yeah.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: Yikes. Jesus, why did he do that?
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: I love this story. For the money. If you remember
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: the scandal of 96 and all the Chinese money in
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: his campaign in 96— They spent all their money, all
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: the media attention, hyping up Charlie Tree and Johnny Chung,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: who were like low-level fundraisers who didn't have anything to
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: do with anything. And then they framed an entirely innocent
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese scientist named Wen Ho Lee, and the evil FBI
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: persecuted poor Wen Ho Lee. And it was this huge
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: distraction from what really happened, which was this Chinese-Indonesian billionaire
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: named Riotti who was directly tied to Chinese intelligence he
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: got his guy John Wong appointed to the Commerce Department
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: where he was put in charge of licensing missile technology
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: transfers to China and they took that authority away from
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: state and defense and gave it to Commerce and then
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: John Wong was the guy who got to rubber stamp
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: those missile technology transfers so then Hughes Aircraft and Loral
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Corporation then sent their very best three-stage rocket technology to China. Oh, geez.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: Because it's cheaper to have them launch the satellites, you know.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: So they were not, I don't think, able to deliver
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: hydrogen bombs to the United States before that. And they
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: were able to because, I mean, for a few hundred
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars or maybe a couple of million dollars or whatever,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: they were able to buy this from Bill Clinton.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. I know, crazy.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: But no, you're right. Look, could Iran with Chinese help
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: or whatever someday be able to deliver a war here?
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: However, the much better solution to that certainly would have been,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: I know we can't go back, but certainly would have
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: been just normalizing relations with Iran and just dealing with them.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: The reality was Iran's position was not that they were
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: racing to a nuke. Their position was they had this
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: safeguarded program where again, the IAEA is essentially proving the negative.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: We know where all their uranium is. It's right where
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: it's supposed to be. And they haven't taken it and
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: diverted it yet. And we know how much they're enriching
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: and we know where it all goes. And so there,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: so then Israel would say, America, they're making nukes. If
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: they have a nuclear program at all, this is the
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: same during W. Bush, during Obama. This is true under Olmert,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: as well as under Netanyahu, um, who's been in charge
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: almost the entire time since Obama. Um, And the policy
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: was from the Israelis. America bombed them. They got a
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: civilian program. And you know that's just cover for they're
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: going to make nukes someday. And they're going to use
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: them on us. So just go ahead and let's get
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: them now. Then America would say, no, we're not doing that.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: This is under W.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: Bush.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: Again, under Obama. Under Trump won and under Biden. No,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: we're not going to just start a war. But we
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: will warn the Iranians. Don't you break out and try
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: to make a nuke now. Because if you do, then
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: we will attack you and we'll bomb your Manhattan Project
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: before you can complete it and before you can get.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: An atom bomb.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: We'll see you then. And then the Iranians would say,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: we're not making nukes, so don't attack us. And then
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: the heavy implication was, if you attack us, then we
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: might make nukes. So they had a latent deterrent, right?
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: A half-assed nuclear weapons deterrent. They proved that they had
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: mastered the fuel cycle, that they could enrich uranium. If
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: they wanted to up to weapons grade, they never did.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: But they said they were essentially saying we have a
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: revolver in one pocket and bullets in the other. Let's
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: not escalate this. And that could have and should have stood.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: Except this is what this is the answer to your
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: question about how do they get us into this? Because
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: Netanyahu convinced Trump to change that line and to adopt
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: the Israeli line that for them to have a civilian
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: nuclear program at all is equivalent to the exact same
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: thing as them making nuclear weapons. And we're just not
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: going to allow that.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: So how much understanding do we have of their capabilities
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: and how do we have that understanding? Like how much
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: do we know about their enrichment program? How much do
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: we know about whether or not they're capable of making
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: a weapon? Because haven't they stated recently that they are
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: capable of making a nuclear weapon? well do you think.
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: That was not a threat i think what in fact
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: if i if i know the statement that you're talking
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: about they were saying look we're not making nukes and
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: the proof that we're not is the fact that we
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: know how to we could and we're still not and
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: you can see all this time they mastered the fuel
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: cycle back in 2006 once you okay so it's like
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: this and and they have been set back on this
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: they got their facility uh blown up last june but
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: especially you have remember yellow cake don't drop that shit
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: um You have that refined yellow cake is refined uranium ore.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: Then you convert that to uranium hexafluoride gas. And that's
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: the stuff that you inject into the centrifuges. Then you
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: have what's called a cascade of centrifuges, a whole bunch
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: of them all connected together with tubes. And then you
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: spin the uranium hexafluoride gas in the centrifuges and you
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: spin the U-238, which is heavier, out and away from
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: the U-235, which is the sweet stuff. And the more
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: you enrich it, then... the more capable it is of
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: being used for nukes. Well, it's one way to put it,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: but so they would, they need like 3.6% U-235 for
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: their electricity program. They need 20% U-235 for targets for
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: their medical isotope reactors for like cancer treatment, radiation, or
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: like that radioactive dye that they put in people for,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: to see your circulatory system and stuff. But then to
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: make weapons grade uranium, you need typically above 90% pure uranium-235.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: In any case, Once you spin it through the centrifuges
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: to whatever stage of purity, then you got to convert
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: it back into a metal again, whether you're going to
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: make fuel rods or whether you're going to try to
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: make a bomb warhead out of it. So under the
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: Obama deal of 2015, the JCPOA, it was really just
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: an extra layer on top of the nonproliferation treaty and
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: on top of the safeguards agreement that we already had.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: But the way that was worked out was a big
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: part of it was that they would scale back their
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: capability to enrich by shutting down, I think it was
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: two thirds of their centrifuges at Natanz. And then at Fordo,
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: they would change it from a production facility to just
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: a research facility. And then whatever stockpile of uranium they
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: came up with would be transferred out of the country
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: to Russia and they would turn it into fuel rods
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: and send it back. That way they have no stockpile
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: that they could just quickly reintroduce into the centrifuges and
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: enrich to a higher grade. They'd have to basically start
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: at nothing again. And so under the theory and the
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: way the scientists work it out, that if they withdrew
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: from the treaty, kick the inspectors out of the country.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: And so we are now making atom bombs. It would
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: take them a year to enrich enough uranium at weapons
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: grade to make one bomb out of it. Then on
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: top of that, you have to have the actual experts
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: who know how to machine it into the exact specifications
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: as in how to detonate it and everything else. And the,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: The simpler the nuke, the harder it is to deliver.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: So typically, like the Hiroshima bomb was a gun-type nuke
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: where you just shoot one uranium pit into the other one,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: which they didn't even test. The Trinity test was the
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: Nagasaki bomb, basically. They knew it would work, but it
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: was essentially a very heavy bomb and very difficult to deliver.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: And virtually all miniaturized implosion bombs in the world that
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: can ever be married to a missile, they're virtually all
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: made out of plutonium. And they don't have a plutonium
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: route to the bomb. Because under the Obama deal, they
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: poured concrete into the Arak, that's A-R-A-K, which was supposed
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: to be a heavy water reactor, which can produce weapons-grade
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: plutonium as waste. But they poured concrete into that thing
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: and shut it down completely before it was even open.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: Their reactor that they do have operating is at Boucher,
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: and it's a light water reactor, which means that it
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: is possible for it to produce weapons-grade plutonium as waste,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: but it's much more difficult to... They would have to
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: shut it off all the time to harvest the stuff
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: out of there and all of that. Under inspections, they
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: can't do that.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: So this is all monitored.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: This is all monitored. It's like if you had a
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: gun shop and you have an ATF cop sitting at
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: the barstool. Well, unless he was fast and furious smuggling
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: your guns to cartels. Assuming not that, but like assuming
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: he was just a regular cop. Like you can't accuse
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: me of selling illegal laser rifles from my gun shop
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: when I've got a cop sitting right here. And that's
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: the deal here is they've got inspectors throughout the place.
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: And then what happened was, so we had that perfect
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: Mexican standoff, right? Where is Israel saying, bomb them, they're
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: making nukes. We say, no, we won't bomb them, but
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: we will if they do. And them saying, don't bomb
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: us because we're not. Then Trump called their bluff last June.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: And really Netanyahu did. And then Trump jumped in the thing.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: And they really did set their nuclear program back quite
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: a bit. Now, I don't think there's any proof that
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: they destroyed the centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow. They're deep underground,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: under granite and very hard to get at. But they
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: got the elevator shafts and they got the air shafts.
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: And if anybody was working down there, they were buried alive.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: The Iranians were incentivized to move giant boulders in front
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: of the doors to protect them from missiles and attack
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But so all the reporting is
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: that the Natanz and Fordow facilities are essentially just frozen
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: right now. There's nothing going on there. There's open source
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: reporting from last November. And then there was a report
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: in the newspapers just two weeks ago or maybe three
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: that Based on classified information that there is nothing going
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: on there.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: You know what my deep concern is?
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: No one said what you said to the president.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. See? That's right.
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: Not only that. You're right. That the people, these elected
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: officials and these appointed officials that get into positions around him,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: they don't know this.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: Which is crazy.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: Dude, I'll tell you what, that New York Times article,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: did you read that one where Netanyahu came and they
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: sat across from each other at the table like this
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: instead of Trump sitting at the head of the table?
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: And Netanyahu gave him the whole presentation about how easy
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: the war would be. So as soon as he left,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: then they said everyone else at the table said, don't
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: listen to him, boss. He's he's blowing smoke, man, that
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: this is going to be so easy. Now, they didn't
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: really tell him, don't do it. But they told him,
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: don't trust Netanyahu. And that ought to be a snap
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: the way that he promises and all that. But then
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: and look, it's Maggie Haberman and them at The New
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: York Times. I mean, it seemed like a very well
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: reported story from, you know, the principals are talking to
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: her about this stuff.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: Well, this is what Joe Candace said as well, right?
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: So they go around the table and Rubio has his say,
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: the vice president has his say, the chairman of the
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: Joint Chiefs of Staff and whoever, but none, as you
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: just said, none of them say what I just said. Right.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: And it really is, it's like four or five dudes
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: in a room who may or may not know very
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: much about this really. And and and talking about it
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: and none of them man enough to say, like, Mr. President,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: permission to speak freely here, sir. Don't make this mistake, buddy.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: Well, my fear is that they don't know as much
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: as you know about it.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: I think they probably don't. Which is wild. I've been
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: at this for a long time.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: But that is wild. That is really crazy that you'd
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: be in a position of making these decisions without having
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: this understanding of the fact that they're not even really
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: capable right now of making nuclear weapons.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: If any of them. were capable of really knowing about
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: it like this, it would be Rubio or Vance. Or hell,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: Kane too, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: All of these guys should have been able to say
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: to the president, this is an illusory threat, sir.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: Wasn't Vance not there? Wasn't Vance not there while this
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: was going on?
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: He was not there for the Netanyahu part, but then
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: he came in later, which he was in Azerbaijan prepared
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: for the war, right? It was Where he was is
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: why he was late.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: Wasn't Azerbaijan– didn't they have some sort of a peace
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: agreement with Armenia at the time? Oh, I don't know.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: And he visited both of them?
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I had missed that then. You're
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: right then. I didn't know that.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: I think he visited both of them and that's one
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: of the reasons why he couldn't come back.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: I assume he was in Azerbaijan as preparation for the
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: war with Iran.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: If you visit Azerbaijan, you also have to visit Armenia. Otherwise,
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: it would cause some sort of an international conflict, right?
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we support the hereditary dictatorship in Azerbaijan. Because
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: they help us run the oil pipelines west instead of
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: north through Russia.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: But it was also because they had made some sort
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: of a peace agreement, correct? Didn't Azerbaijan and Armenia make.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: A– Possibly. I mean they're fighting over– or the contest
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: was over whether Armenia is going to open this corridor
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: across Armenia to an Azerbaijani or– Could you look that up, Jamie?
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: An Azeri enclave on the Turkish border.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: OK. France, Matt and Baku. J.D. Vance and, how do
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: you say his name, Aliyev, met in Baku to discuss
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: the implementation of historic August 8th White House Peace Summit
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: and reaffirmed their shared commitment to regional peace, security, and prosperity.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: Leaders signed the U.S.-Azerbaijan Strategic Partnership Charter, which will strengthen
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: bilateral relations between our countries. The United States remains committed
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: to working with Azerbaijan to unlock the great potential of
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: the South Caucasus region. So it was a peace summit.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: And so he met with Azerbaijan and he also had
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 2: to meet with Armenia as well. This is February 10th.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: So this is right before the war.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: OK, so, yeah, I guess I thought he was like
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: just tipping them off. No, we're on your southern border
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: in a week or two.
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that the reason for this was that
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: he had to meet with both of them. So he
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: could not be there. So if I was J.D. Vance
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: and I knew– or rather if I was Netanyahu and
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: I knew that J.D. Vance was really not into this
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: war and didn't want to be a part of it
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: at all, I would probably try to– Time it for them.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: What a good time. You can't even come back.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: What does it say? Ah, the gathering had been deliberately
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: small to guard against leaks. Other top cabinet secretaries had
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 2: no idea it was happening. Also absent was Vice President J.D. Vance,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: who was in Azerbaijan, and the meeting had been scheduled–
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: on such short notice that he was unable to make
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: it back in time. Now, if I was Netanyahu and
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: I knew that J.D. Vance is going to be in Azerbaijan.
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't really, you know, try to spend
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: too much time on the symbolism of things, you know,
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: leave that to the symbol minded, right?
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: Symbol minded? Yeah.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: But like, isn't it meaningful that this is the situation room?
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: The president's supposed to sit at the head of the table. Instead,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: Netanyahu sat there and Trump sat here. Opposite him and
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: let him run the thing as an equal instead of.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: Why do you think that is? Why do you think they.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: Have that kind of influence?
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: I really don't know. I mean, they've been friends for
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: a very long time. All the speculation about him being compromised,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, is very possible, but unknowable really, right? Netanyahu
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: would do that. I mean, he brought up Monica Lewinsky
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: to Bill Clinton.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: Did he?
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. You know we're tapping your phone, homeboy. We
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: got you on tape. You better let Jonathan Pollard out
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: of prison. And then Bill Clinton refused to do it
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: because George Tenet and the whole top tier of the
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: CIA were going to resign over it if he did it.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: So he didn't do it. It was Trump that let
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: Pollard out. And now Pollard is running to the right
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: of Netanyahu. He's now announced that he's running for the
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: Knesset over there.
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: So the reason why the Monica Lewinsky scandal went public?
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: No, because no, no, no.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. Netanyahu said to have offered Lewinsky
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: tapes for Pollard. Oh, they had tapes? What do you
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: mean they had like recordings?
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: So it may have been after the scandal had broken,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: but they had him on tape with her because the
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: only tapes were her on the phone with Linda Tripp
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: that Linda Tripp had recorded. But they had him on
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: the phone with her.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: I forgot her name.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: You know, the story is the first time Bill Clinton
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: met Netanyahu in 1996, they were in the room for
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: half an hour or something. And when they came out,
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: Clinton was just completely exasperated. and says, who the F
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: does this guy think he is? Who's the superpower and
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: who's the client state? Because Netanyahu had just told him like,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: look here, Butler, here's your orders. For half an hour,
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: just barked commands at Bill Clinton in a way that
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: he was just like, I can't believe this guy.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: It's hard to feel sorry for him. In fact, here's
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: one too. Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: This is the only time I've ever been sympathetic with
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama. He's caught on a hot mic talking to
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: the president of France. And he goes, oh man, You
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: think you hate him. I got to deal with him
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: every day.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: And that was about Netanyahu.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: About Netanyahu.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: Well, wasn't there an issue with JFK and Israel over
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: their ability to acquire nuclear weapons? Yes.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: He was demanding inspections of Dimona, their nuclear facility there.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: To this day, they don't officially have nuclear weapons. Correct.
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: And the reason for that is because it's illegal for
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: America to give aid to a nuclear weapons state that
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: refuses to sign the nonproliferation treaty. And they don't want
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: to do that. In fact, they did proliferate nuclear weapons
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: to South Africa who gave them up before the change
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: after apartheid. But if they openly possess nuclear weapons, then,
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, hell, it should already be illegal because everybody
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: already knows. But the Glenn Symington law says that you
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: can't give a military aid To a nuclear weapons state
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: that won't sign the NPT. That's America's treaty that we
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: forced the whole world to accept. And which, by the way,
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: is in terrible jeopardy now.
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, Saddam Hussein goes, look, my hands are up.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: I got nothing. They invaded him anyway. The North Koreans
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: armed up with nukes. The Libyans said, well, look, we
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: have some centrifuge material, but we have no operational program.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: But you can have our junk. They killed him. And
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: then the Iranians said, look, we can make nukes, but
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: we're not making nukes. They'll leave us alone already. And
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: then we kill them. So America is the great destroyer
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: of America's nonproliferation treaty that we foisted on the world,
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: by which the non-nuclear weapon states promise never to get them.
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: And the nuclear weapon states promise never to share them.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: And that's all in jeopardy now. That may not even
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: exist anymore. The Poles are talking about getting their own
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: nukes now because of Trump's pivot away from Europe in
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: the middle of a war that America helped cause over there.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: Jesus. So Israel officially doesn't have nukes.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: Officially, they don't. But everybody knows that they have at
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: least 200. And in fact, I have that personally from
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: Mordecai Venunu, who is the Israeli whistleblower who went to prison.
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: They kidnapped him in a honey trap plot, I think
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: in in England or in Italy.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: With chicks with chicks.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: They went to get him laid and they kidnapped him
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: and they held him in solitary confinement for 25 years
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: or something. But he gave the whole story to the
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: Sunday times, the London times, and they published it back in,
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say 86. And then, um, what happened
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: was he was on Twitter. He may still be on Twitter. Um, but, um,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: I had an anecdote from Daniel Ellsberg, the great whistleblower
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: of the Pentagon Papers and who was a friend of
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: mine for a long time. He died a couple of
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: years ago now, but he had an anecdote about Venunu
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: that turned out was incorrect. But I asked Venunu, is
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: this correct? And then he said, no, it's just like
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: I told the Sunday Times back then. And that was
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: that they had 200 atom bombs by the time that
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: he squealed on them. And we know from Grant F.
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: Smith's research, He got this through some FOIA documents. He's
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, really great
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: researcher on this. And he showed that they had at
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: least been researching hydrogen bombs, the big ones, although there's
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: no proof that they ever actually made H-bombs. And I
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: don't think it's been reported that they've made them, but
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: they at least were looking into how to.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: And this was part of the conflict that JFK had
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: with Israel. Yes.
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: And trying to register... What was then, I think, the
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: American Jewish Council, I believe is what it was called,
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: the predecessor to AIPAC as foreign agents. And then they
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: dissolved it and created AIPAC instead, I guess, is the
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: long and the short of that, how they got around that.
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: And they got whacked. you know, and it was, you know,
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, honestly. like I told you, I
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: was more of a conspiracy theorist in the nineties, but
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: I never did all read into JFK because there's just
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: a hundred books about it and a hundred different theories.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm just not sure if LBJ hired French hit
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: men to do it, or if the Israelis got James
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: Jesus Angleton to do it, or if Alan Dulles got
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: some Cubans to do it or what the hell, right?
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: Like, I don't know.
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: And so I really get, you know, um, uh, I
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: don't think I ever really could figure it out.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: Well, no one really has.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of speculation, but Oliver Stone is the
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: best guy to talk to. There are a lot of
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: people with motive. You know what's funny about that? And
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: I think he even admitted this at one point, man.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: You watch the whole movie, JFK. Oh, God. You watch
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: the whole movie, JFK. And I'm sorry, man.
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: No worries. It's just Dr. Pepper. I like the little
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: stains on this table.
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: It makes it live.
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: In the edit later, we'll just clip. To Joe and back.
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 2: No, we'll just show the Dr. Pepper. Why Dr. Pepper?
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: Why are you so into Dr. Pepper? I should tell everybody.
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: He brought a whole cooler filled with Dr. Pepper.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: I got to have Dr. Pepper, man. No, you watch
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: the whole movie JFK, right? He's got every theory under
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: the sun in there. And then as soon as it's over,
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: it says produced by Arnan Milchan. Who is an Israeli
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: spy and who helped Benjamin Netanyahu steal Krytrons, which are
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: an essential part of these nuclear triggers for their weapons.
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: That's who produced the movie. And so then someone asked
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: Oliver Stone, like, hey, man, an Israeli spy produced your
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: movie where you point the finger at everyone except maybe
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: the Israelis.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: What's about that?
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: And he's like, wow, you're right. I forgot exactly how
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: he says it, but he acknowledges that. You know what?
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 3: Like.
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: It could have been even that my own film was
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: part of a put on there.
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: Well, especially when you consider the fact that his own
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: film was made in what, the 90s?
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it came out in like 91, I think.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: 90, 91.
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: So back then, he probably didn't know as much as
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: he knows now.
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, probably never even heard the angle that it would
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: have been the Israelis.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: But of course, you know, LBJ was very close to
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: the Zionists and even had a Mossad agent for a girlfriend.
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I forget her name, but. One of his
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: mistresses was a Mossad agent. And then he completely reversed
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: all those policies as soon as he was in power. But,
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: of course, same thing with Vietnam. He reversed, well, at
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: least released any skepticism about Vietnam and said, let's go
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: ahead and escalate there and all that. So, like I say,
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: that one's it's too muddy for me to try to
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: wade through and figure out exactly. It's all the trigger
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: on that one.
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 2: Crazy. The not-so-secret life of Matilda. Is that how you
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: say her name? Matilda Krim. That was his Israeli spy girlfriend?
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that's her.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: She looks like a dirty girl.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: Good old Phil Weiss. I love that guy. He's a
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: great guy. Mondoweiss.net is a great website for anti-Zionist.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: The no-daylight policy of the U.S. alignment with the Israeli government.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: So obviously today Trump's deference to Netanyahu was born under
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: Matilda Krim's dear friend Lyndon Johnson. In the feverish weeks
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 2: surrounding the 1967 war, Krim, who had once emigrated to Israel,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 2: and her husband, Arthur, a leading fundraiser, were continually at
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: Johnson's side and advised him on what to say publicly.
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, you got to give it up to a
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: country the size of Rhode Island that has that kind
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: of fucking pull.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: They got their priorities straight. That's for sure.
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 2: Kind of amazing that they've been doing this since the
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: 60s and before.
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: Yep. I mean, they threatened Harry Truman. They bribed him,
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: and they also threatened him. His daughter's memoir said the
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: Zionists sent letter bombs to the White House, and they'd
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: stop at nothing to get their state.
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: Truman.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: And they paid for his reelection, too. In fact, there's
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: a great scholar named John B. Judas, J-U-D-I-S, and he wrote.
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: A book about this.
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: What an unfortunate name. Yeah, kind of. You mispronounce it,
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: you know. He actually also wrote, as long as I'm
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: talking about him, he wrote a great article for Foreign
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: Affairs in 1995 about the neoconservatives called From Trotskyism to Anachronism.
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: And it was about how now that the Cold War
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: is over, who needs these crazy hawks anymore?
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: And then these are the guys who took us who
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: launched the Iraq war, you know, a few years later,
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: seven years later or whatever. He was he was saying
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: they're a spent force. They should be by now. Because
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: they had been Trotskyite communists and then had moved to
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: the right for the militarism and stuff. But he wrote
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: a book about how Truman did this. And I think
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: that was part of it was this intimidation campaign. And
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: it was his own daughter that in her book, in
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: her memoir, said that they sent letter bombs to the
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: White House. And they also paid for his elections. It was,
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: you know, carrot and stick kind of a thing. And then, yeah, look,
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: if you ran the Israeli foreign ministry, you only have
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: one priority in the world that outranks every other priority
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: by a million billion. And that is your relationship with
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: the United States of America. How friendly is the president?
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: How friendly is the Senate? What do we got to
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: do to make sure that everything stays in line? It's
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: everything to them.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: So let me ask you this. What do you think
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 2: happens with Iran now? Like, how does this play out?
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 2: If you had to speculate?
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you that, first of all, they're more
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: likely to go ahead and try to break out and
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: make an atom bomb now than ever before. Although I'm
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: not necessarily predicting that. I think You know, Trump has
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: proven by calling their bluff on their latent deterrent. He
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: has proven he's willing to bomb them if they really
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: break out and try to make a nuclear weapon. It's
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: almost impossible that they could do that without us knowing.
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: And then this president and I think the next one, too,
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: would be willing to go back to war over it.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: As Barack Obama promised, he would absolutely launch a war
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: against Iran if they broke out and tried to make
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: an atom bomb. And, you know, he did an interview
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. called As President, I
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: Don't Bluff, where he's essentially begging Jeffrey Goldberg to tell
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: Netanyahu and them, I really, really mean it. If they
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: try to make a nuke, I will bomb them. But
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: just let me try to solve this another way. So
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: I think that promise stands. This is the same as W. Bush,
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: same as Obama, same as Biden. And I think that
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: will continue to last into the next presidency. And if
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: the Iranians are smart, what they'll do is they'll hold
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: the same posture they've had, which is we're not giving
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: up enrichment. We're not giving up our capability to make
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: a bomb one day, but we're never going to call
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: it that. And just don't do this to us anymore
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: and try to bet on the fact that Trump's only
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: got three years left and the next presidents won't be
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: so belligerent and they won't call the bluff and go
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: ahead and launch another war unless they break out and
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: try to make a nuke. And as Daryl was saying,
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: they're so much more powerful than all their neighbors conventionally.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: They really have no need to make a nuclear bomb
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: and they can I think, successfully deter Israel, even with
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: their conventional missile force. And we saw them just absolutely
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: blast the crap out of Tel Aviv.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very underreported, right?
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, they should not have killed
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: the conservative old Ayatollah, right? And they kill him and
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: apparently like the new Ayatollah, his son, they killed his
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: mother and sister and or mother and wife and baby.
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: And that's the new Ayatollah over there. He's got to
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: be more radical than his father. He's got to be
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: angrier at us than his father ever was.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: So what is the pathway to resolution?
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: Well, this is– it's so unfortunate because honestly, whatever, maybe
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: some genius at some think tank has a better idea.
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: But I really think that the thing to do is
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: just quit. The thing to do is for America to
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: just come home, for Trump to say, look, I won. Yeah.
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: But we don't really need these bases over there. The
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: American people don't need to dominate the Middle East. We're
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: not worried about the Soviet Union invading Iran and dominating
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: the Gulf anymore. So forget the Carter Doctrine. Let's just
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: come home. And I think if we do that, we
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: bring all of our ships home, all of our planes,
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: all of our bases, close them all up and come home.
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: Then that shifts the entire burden on to Iran that
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: they still have to deal with the rest of Eurasia.
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: We're not the one dependent on their hydrocarbon exports. Everybody
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: else is. So are they going to now levy a
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: tax to get through the Strait of Hormuz? Absolutely. But
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: too bad shouldn't have started this war then. Nothing we
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: could do about that now, Willie Nelson said, you know.
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: So like the way going forward is, and by the way,
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: like in Panama, they tax ships going through the Isthmus there,
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: through the Panama Canal. The Indonesians, I believe it is,
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: tax people going through some of the bottlenecks in the Indies.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: And so it's not entirely unheard of that. You know,
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: the dominant power there is going to levy a fee
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: on people coming in and out of there. But again,
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: too late, too bad. I mean, America already, we had
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: exactly what Marco Rubio says he wants now, we had
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: on February the 27th. And then they launched this war
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: on the 28th, which, by the way, was the anniversary
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: of the Waco raid. This is a pretty ugly time
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: to start an aggressive war. And in fact, as long
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: as I'm on that, and I know you know this,
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: but it's really worth dwelling on. that they killed not
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: just one but two girls' schools in their initial assault.
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: In one building, they killed 173 or 174, almost all
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: little girls. And then in the other one, it was
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: 20 more. And that was an experimental new Lockheed missile
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: that fires tungsten pellets out the front before it detonates
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: or as it detonates in a creative new way to
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: cut people to shreds. And the thing is about that
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: is as there's this great media critic named Adam Johnson
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: who pointed out this is equivalent to the Oklahoma City bombing, which,
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: you know, for young people, Oklahoma was 9-11 before 9-11, right?
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: It was massive. And never mind, it was a bunch
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: of FBI informants who did it and got away with it.
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: That's another interview, Joe. But But it was another interview.
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 2: And that's a deep one.
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. And just I'm here for you, buddy.
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But they kill 167 people were killed in that thing.
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: And it was just the ugliest damn thing. And it
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: included like 20 kids in the daycare there.
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: That was the cover of Newsweek was a firefighter holding
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: a dead baby. So worst thing is the most traumatic
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: thing for this country and in the heartland of Oklahoma
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: City and all that. Well, that's what America did to Iran.
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: Only the entire building full of kids died. All 167
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: of them, a few teachers, but virtually all of them
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: little girls. And another school down the street, too, or
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: relatively nearby, at the volleyball game, where they killed even more.
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: So now think about the Pearl Harbor attack, which Donald
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: Trump himself compared it to Pearl Harbor, out of context,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: but still. It was a sneak surprise attack in the
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: middle of negotiations on behalf of a foreign country over
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: a lie. And then they killed a bunch of kids.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: It's like imagine if at Pearl Harbor, if our story
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: of Pearl Harbor was that they sank all our heroes
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: and drown them down in their ships in the halls
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: stuck in their halls down there. But also they wiped
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: out schools full of 180 little girls. The children of
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: those sailors who drown at Pearl Harbor. Oh, and also
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: they killed FDR that same day, too. Oh, and also
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: is a Catholic country. And he's also the pope. Imagine
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: how we would react to that. Imagine what our story
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: of Pearl Harbor to this day would be. I'll tell
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: you what our story of World War II would be.
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: It would be that we kept nuking them until they
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: were all dead. Is what our story of World War
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: II would be if that's how they had done us
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: at Pearl Harbor. It's just somehow we just don't really
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: think of it in that context, but we should. If
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: that had happened to us. Again, just like we, you know,
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: we did a little on Ukraine there and the way
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: America just absolutely pushes their luck. If Russia overthrew the
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: government of Canada twice in 10 years because they kept
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: voting wrong, we would invade Canada and nuke Moscow. And
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: in fact, when you bring up the analogy, it's completely absurd.
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: How ridiculous is it that the Russians would dare try
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: to overthrow the regime in Ottawa, that they would dare
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: threaten to try to kick us out of our bases
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: in Alaska or any of these kinds of things? That
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: they would go to war with the people of Vancouver
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: who refused to accept the new coup junta. It's comic
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: book crazy. They wouldn't dare. But we do that to them.
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: And we act like, as Dr. Paul said, if we
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: go around the world killing people like this, bombing people
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: like this, and we think that we can just get
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: away with it and not have to suffer the blowback,
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: then we do that at our own peril. And he
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: was speaking for the government as a member of Congress
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: at the time that we're putting the American people in danger.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: by acting this way. It's completely crazy.
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 2: You know, remember.
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: The Shiite fatwa that the old Ayatollah, the Ayatollah before last, Khomeini,
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: put on Salman Rushdie, the author of the book, The
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: Satanic Verses, where people have tried to kill him numerous times,
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: including got his eyeball in one case. We've had a
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: real problem with Bin Laden-ite jihadi terrorism over the time.
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: We have not had the Shiites... We have not had
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: the Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq or the Ayatollah Khamenei declare
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: that all good believers should attack the West now. They
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: could do that. That's the kind of fire that we're
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: playing with. It's extremely dangerous. I mean, bin Laden didn't
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: even really have a religious rank. He was just a
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: rich guy who he had earned respect because he was
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: wounded in battle and stuff. He had money and influence.
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: But if the Ayatollah Sistani put out a full jihad,
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: which I'm not saying he would do that. I don't
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: have any real reason to believe that he would go
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: that far. But he's been willing to stand up to
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: the United States numerous times, especially during the war, in
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: the last couple of wars over there. And remember what happened.
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: The night that they started this war, on February the 28th,
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: the next day, on Saturday the 29th, I think it
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: was Friday, was the 28th, and it was late in
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: the night they started the war. And then Saturday, I believe,
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: was the 29th, and an American immigrant from Sierra Leone,
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: here in Austin, took an AR-15, put on a shirt
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: with the Ayatollah and an Iranian flag on it. I
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: didn't even know they had Shiites in Sierra Leone, Joe,
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: but I guess they do. And He went down to
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: Sixth Street and he shot 18 people, killed three and
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: wounded 15 people in an immediate blowback terrorist attack called backdraft.
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: I coined the phrase in my book that if blowback
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: means long term consequences from secret foreign policies that the
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: American people then don't understand and are left up to
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: false explanations or left susceptible to false explanations. Well, then
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: backdraft terrorism is when the. consequences of your overt foreign
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: policies just blow up right in your face. And, you know, frankly,
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 1: like those three people were crucified for Israel for their
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: sins for, for, and 15 more wounded. And I don't
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: know how terribly wounded for all. I know people are
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: still in the hospital or that thing. And that was
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: the immediate blowback terrorist attack from this war just right away. And,
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: and it's the kind of danger that our government is
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 1: continues to put us in through these interventions over there
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: at some point, you know, all those sort of, um,
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: hypotheticals about, yeah, but what if Russia took over the
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: world or what if China did, if it wasn't us
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: or whatever, those have got to just kind of fall away,
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: you know, by the wayside. There's no real reason to
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: fear that in the first place, but also who in
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: the hell are we to stop it at this point?
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: Another South Park reference. When Cartman is so scared by
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: the Chinese display at the Olympics ceremony, he gets all
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: paranoid that China's coming for us. So he recruits butters
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: to come with him to fight and keep all the
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: Chinese away. And then over and over again throughout the episode,
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: Butters keeps like closing his eyes and shooting some guy
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: accidentally in the dick just over and over again. And
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: then by the end of the episode, Cartman says, you
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: know what? Just forget it. OK, if that's the best
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: you can do, Butters, let's just stop. We're just going around.
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: This is not working. Our intervention. It's just not.
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 2: What do you predict is going to happen with Iran?
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: I'm really worried. I mean, I try not to take
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: Trump too seriously when he's, you know, or to literally
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: take when he's being hyperbolic. But he has threatened to
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: nuke them over and over again, including just the other day.
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: He said, the country's going to have a glow around it,
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: you know, when I'm done with them or whatever.
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 2: Do you really think he would do that?
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, no, no, I don't. I'm not predicting that.
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: But I think it's symbolic, right, of his frustration. He
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: absolutely just should not have done this. And now he
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: has no good way out of it, right? He could
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: just declare victory and it would be fine by me.
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: In fact, there was a story in the Jerusalem Post
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: about the end of April, I think, I think it
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: was like April 28th, about how Trump ordered the intelligence
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: agencies to do an estimate about what would happen if
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: I just walked away.
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: And then they're looking into it. Well, just how bad
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: will Iran exploit the new vacuum that we've created and
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: the power and influence that we're handing to them? How
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: bad will it really be? Because he has no options
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: to fix it. He just doesn't. You want a regime
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: change in Tehran, you can drop a hydrogen bomb on
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: the capital city and kill 10 million people and then
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: claim the desolation is peace. Or you can just forget it.
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 1: And like, man, you know what? We're all tough and
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: badass enough to kill all these people. We should be
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: tough enough to admit when we screwed up then. Look
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: at Afghanistan. We stayed for 20 years because Washington couldn't
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: admit that we can't win this war. There's only one
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: way to tame the Pashtuns, and that is kill them all.
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: And we're not willing to do that. So what are
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: we doing? We're just losing slowly. And then what they do,
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: they finally admitted it. They finally just said, fine, I
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: guess we lost and left. That's what we got to
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: do here. But sooner is better.
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: Do you think that it's possible that this war will
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: go on to the end of his regime and then
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 2: whoever comes into power in twenty twenty eight?
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: Then gets out god i hope not i i can't
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: imagine what's going to happen if this thing keeps on
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: for three years you know this is a real flaw
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: in our system quite frankly is like if we had
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: a parliament we could just vote no confidence in this
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: guy and put a new guy in there whose fault
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: this isn't and try to get him to resolve it
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 1: instead all we can do is wait three years wait
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: for him to kill over of a heart attack or
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: wait for his own cabinet to overthrow him in the
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: name of him being you know too demented to continue,
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: which is not going to happen. You know, that 25th Amendment,
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: they always invoked that like they could do a coup
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 1: against him for being a Russian agent or whatever back
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: in his first term.
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 2: But you can't do that.
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if they didn't do it with Biden, he would
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: have to be completely off his rocker and to a
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: degree where his own cabinet is going to agree to
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: overthrow him, which I just think is virtually impossible. So
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: The good news is, right, is that he's he just
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: flip flop on anything.
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: He just changed his mind about anything. In fact, when
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: he announced the ceasefire, he said, we're going to we're
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 1: going to negotiate based on Iran's 11 point proposal. Like, OK, man, fine.
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 1: Go from unconditional surrender to surrendering unconditionally like car. it
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: whatever you want. And he is good at that. You
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: could call that a gift if you want to politically.
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: He can just pretend like, yeah, no, I meant to
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 2: So what is the holdup? Like, what are they disagreeing on?
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: Well, he's got to deal with Netanyahu, right? The master
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: blaster thing, you know, from Thunderdome. on his back shouting
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: in his ear what he's got to do and what
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: he's got to not do. In the 60 Minutes interview,
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: he tells the Major Garrett that, you know, we're not done.
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: The war's not over until we get that uranium. And
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: Garrett says, well, how are we going to get it?
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: He says, Trump promised me he wants to get it.
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: He's going to get it. And And, of course, they
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: have this ever since they announced the ceasefire. The Israelis
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: immediately escalated their bombing campaign in Lebanon just to destroy
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: the ceasefire. This is what prompted Tucker Carlson to say
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: that Trump has clearly been somehow enslaved by Netanyahu, that
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: he's willing to put up with that. As Bill Clinton
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: said again, who's the superpower and who's the client state?
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: How is that we have a ceasefire deal and then
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 1: you can come and veto it like this and then
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: not be chastised and not told to get back in
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: your corner? We're handling this. I really just don't know
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: the answer to that. Some people speculate that it's blackmail
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: or it's just the bribery or he's just into it.
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: He just, you know, he wants to be great. He
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: wants to have a legacy. This is I really should
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: study more about this. But this is a part of
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: libertarian economic theory called public choice theory, which is kind
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: of a clunky name. But it just means that the
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: public choices are still made by private individuals. And they're
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: acting based on what's good for them rather than what's
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: good for the country. Like Strobe Talbot. We need those
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: Lockheed dollars. We need those Polish votes. So we do
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: a policy that ultimately is bad for the country, even
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: though it's good for the Democrats at the time. And
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: same thing here. What's good for the country is to
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: just come home. But and you can hear this just
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: built in. People don't even question. It's just built in,
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: of course, to every single discussion about this. How are
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: we going to do this in a way that it
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: looks good enough for Trump that he's willing to accept
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 1: his defeat here?
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: How can we spin it for him? How big of
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: a gold medal do we have to give him? How
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: big of a ticker tape parade do we have to
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: give him? How firm of a pat on the back
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: and a congratulations do we have to give him for
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: him to decide that it's OK to come home otherwise
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: and without looking like too much of a jerk himself
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: for what he's done here and then and having to
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: live with it for three years, the aftermath of however
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: it works out with Iran newly dominant. And so again,
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: Bush put Iran up two pegs in Baghdad. Obama put
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: them up two pegs by building the caliphate and then
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: helping them destroy it again. And then of course, Al-Qaeda
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: rules Damascus now. So that's a big hit against them.
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: But what Donald Trump has done with this war is
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: about at least equivalent to what W. Bush did in
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: terms of enhancing Iranian power in the region. It's like,
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: The guy in the football game grabs the ball and
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: then runs the wrong direction and scores the goal for
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: the other team.
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 2: You really think it's that bad?
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, before— Despite the destruction of their nuclear— Absolutely.
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, it's just as
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: simple as this, right? On February the 27th, the Gulf
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: was open for business. And the illusion of American conventional
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: air and naval power kept it that way. And nobody
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: questioned it. It's America's dominated order. Yes, Iran has Iraq
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: and they have Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. But hell, we
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: even got Sunnis ruling in Damascus now. And so the
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: GCC and including Jordan and Turkey and Israel, this is
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: America's empire in the Middle East. On February 29th, 30th,
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, no, sorry, there is no one leap year.
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: On March 1st, 2nd, 3rd this year, all that was over.
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, Daryl Cooper, again, is, you know, we do
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: this show Provoked every Friday night. And he said, listen,
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing from my friends in the Pentagon. This was
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: one week into the war. He goes, I'm hearing from
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: my friends. This war is not going well. They're hitting
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: all our bases. They've killed a couple of our guys.
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: And they're hitting our runways and hitting our radars and
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: hitting our planes. And we knew it then, right then.
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, man. It's just true. Told you so.
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: For 20 years, all of our assets in the Gulf
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: are up for grabs. They can reach out and touch
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 1: us there, and there ain't a damn thing that we
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: can do about it. And it just absolutely is true.
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 2: Scott, you're a real bummer, but thank you.
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun, isn't it? Talking to me?
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 2: It is. It's good to get your perspective, and I
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 2: really wish someone had had your perspective before this all
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 2: got started, at least an understanding of the, uh, ability
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 2: to enrich the uranium and turn it into an actual weapon.
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 2: But thank you very much. Um, tell everybody about your shows,
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 2: where people could find them, where people could find you. Absolutely.
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: So I do the Scott Horton show, which is my
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: interview show and provoked with Daryl Cooper. And, um, I,
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: people get those, uh, here on the YouTubes and on
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: Spotify and all those things. And then, um, I'm the
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: editorial director of Antiwar.com. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute.
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: That's libertarianinstitute.org. And for the deep, deep dive and the
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: deep background on all this stuff, I have the Scott
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com. And, oh,
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: you know what?
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 2: I have them here.
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: If I could just show my books real quick. If
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: I can find the zipper on this thing. Oh. Got
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: these for you here. Got Fool's Aaron on Afghanistan. Enough
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: already on the war on terrorism and provoked on Russia
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: and Ukraine.
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 2: Boy, those are some fat ass books, dude. You do
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of work. I do.
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of jobs. I work real hard
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: on this stuff. And these have been very well received.
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm basically my job is I was inspired
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: by Bill Hicks like this when I was a young kid.
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: There's a great interview of Bill Hicks on Raw Time.
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: which was the heavy metal show on the access channel
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 1: here in town. And it is probably not too long
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: before he died. And this is of course the days
• 2:34:02
  Speaker 1: before the internet and everything, um, where he talks about
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: the importance of seeing people get up there and tell
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: the truth and not be afraid to tell the truth
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: and set the example for other people. And, you know,
• 2:34:14
  Speaker 1: at that time it was like to have a guy
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: like him, a comedian able to tell the truth on
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: a platform where other people could hear it. It was
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: just so exciting to even, it was like, just breaking
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: through this, this, you know, impenetrable force field. And then
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: he was just saying, he says, well, well, if that
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: guy can do it, well, then maybe I can do
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: it and I'll get up there and I'll say what
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: I think is true too. And then that kind of deal.
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: And so I've been more or less following that same
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: path since then.
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for all this, because the amount of
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 2: work that's involved in putting together these books and all
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 2: the interviews and all the podcasts you've done for most people,
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 2: to occupy their mind with the kind of information that's
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 2: in yours. It's got to be very troubling. It's probably
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 2: not so much fun. And it's also very important for
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 2: people like me who haven't done that work to have
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 2: access to it, to get an understanding of it. So
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 2: thank you.
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me.
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 2: It's been great. We'll do it again, Scott.
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: All right. Bye, everybody.
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 2: Bye.