This episode of The Shawn Ryan Show features Joe Kent, a former Army Special Forces veteran and ex-director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over the Iran war. The conversation covers the Republican losses in the midterms, the influence of lobbyists and pro-Israel groups on the White House, and the role of Susie Wiles in national security decisions.
The guest argues that the war damaged America's Gulf alliances and the petrodollar, and the two discuss negotiations, Israel's regional aims, and what a 2028 Republican campaign would need. Listeners hear strongly stated opinions from both speakers, many of which are contested and presented as personal views.
In this episode Shawn Ryan, Joe Kent
This episode's transcript of Shawn Ryan's interview with Joe Kent was made with HappyScribe's technology to transcribe audio to text.
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Joe Kent, welcome back.
Thanks for having me, man.
What is this, like, the third time?
Yes. Number 3.
Right on, dude. Well, a lot has happened.
A lot has happened.
Always a lot happening. So here we go.
My sons will be very excited. Thank you.
I'll give you another one. And then, yeah, so good message at mass this morning, huh?
It was really good. Yeah. Very, very fitting. I mean, I think one of the better, better stories of Jesus throwing over the money exchangers and telling them to get out of the church. I mean.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the whole, the whole point is, if the church isn't getting it right, then nobody else is going to either. So.
Exactly.
Better get it right. So I got a little, you know, I always give gifts out here. This is from.
Oh, wow.
Cardinal Burke. He said you watch that interview. He gave me a bunch of blessed rosaries, so.
Oh, wow. Thank you.
Thought I'd pass one on to you.
Thank you very much.
Especially after some of the other conversations we had after mass.
Yeah.
But, man, Joe, I don't really I have, like, zero agenda here. So I haven't talked about politics in probably close to 6 months now. Despise them. I've pretty much lost all hope.
Yeah.
I feel like I'm politically homeless. I don't align with anybody. I also think I was taught some valuable lessons over the past, over the past look, you just can't believe anybody. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Every single person that I brought, other than you, that I've brought in here who is running for office or holds an office or was in the administration, they're all just lying sacks of shit, to be honest with you. And, and, you know, I think you're the only one that actually left and said, "I don't agree with this shit. This is bad for our country, and I'm stepping down because of it."
And, you know, that's, you know, I already told you last time, you're a very admiral way to leave. And a very unpopular way to leave, apparently, judging by all the other politicians. But I haven't, yeah, I haven't really followed the Iran war anymore. I don't believe in any of our leaders. So I just kind of want to get a scope on what you think is going on. Obviously, I mean, we saw, you know, the midterms, which was whatever you want to call it, huge wake-up call, maybe.
Yeah.
I don't know. A lot of people say, you know, "Oh, this happens. This happens every single time."
Mm-hmm.
No. No, it doesn't. I remember.
I know that.
I remember the last midterms. They were going to, they were saying there was going to be a massive red wave.
Mm-hmm.
Remember? That huge red wave.
Yeah.
And it wound up being more like a little.
Yeah.
Like a little fart.
Handful, handful of seeds. Yeah.
Yeah. And so this doesn't happen every time.
No, not like this.
And I think this, this is, like, historically, this is, like, a historic election, right?
Oh, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think everything that you just said about, like, the loss of faith in politicians, I think that's actually, like, the mildest take based on the results that we saw on Tuesday.
Mm-hmm.
We saw a lot of people come out and vote. There wasn't, like, an apathy issue. People weren't, like, checked out. They were really mad. I mean, the vice president the day after the election, he put out a pretty long post where he basically said that, you know, we had enough voter turnout to do much better than any of the pollsters said we were going to do to possibly hold the House and hold the Senate because MAGA voters were going to come out and actually vote. The challenge for incumbents, especially incumbent Republicans in a midterm, is to get the low they call them low propensity voters.
Low propensity voters are people that only vote when there's a president on the top of the ticket. So getting them to come out and vote for, you know, senators and congressmen, like, a lot of people don't do that. So the challenge is, like, drive voter turnout. And so what the vice president was alluding to was that in this election, turnout wasn't necessarily the issue, but where, you know, a lot of the people that were stuck in the vacuum or the echo chamber of Washington, DC, were surprised was that same turnout that voted for Trump in 2024, they voted against Trump. They didn't just stay home. They didn't just say, "Oh, I'm checked out of it.
You know, I'm not going to bother." They went out and they voted for the other guys. They voted for the Democrats. And now I don't think and now the Democrats are going to come out and say, "Well, you know, it's a rejection of Trump, and people are accepting that Democrats are the way forward." I don't think the Democrats won that race. I think the Democrats were the they benefited from the betrayal that Trump voters felt. I think betrayal is, like, one of the stronger human emotions.
Mm-hmm.
That we feel. But you can only be betrayed by somebody that you really care for or, in many cases, that you love. And President Trump's base, they loved him for a very long time. And I think he abused that love. I think he felt that, you know, no matter what, people would vote for him, and he could kind of just do whatever. And we've even heard him say, "Well, whatever I say is MAGA." But the results on Tuesday proved that to be the exact opposite. People were furious about the Iran war.
I mean, the vice president said that too. And that's what all the polls reflect. And people will articulate this in different ways. They will say, "Oh, the price of the pump." But I think because the Iran war kicked off and quickly the Strait of Hormuz was closed down, people understood cause and effect. They were like, "Well, the price of the pump was already not great, but we voted for Trump to fix this." And then he took an action, number 1, that he said he wasn't going to do. He said he wasn't going to do another Middle East war. He based a large portion of his campaign off of that. Then he kicks one off. No one really understands why he kicks it off because it wasn't explained to the people.
And next thing you know, gas prices, diesel prices, and that just trickles down to everything, you know, groceries, et cetera. And so people were enraged by it. And they.
So you think that the DC crowd, the administration, other politicians, you think that they are in that much of a vacuum that they I mean, how could you how could you not have any pulse at all on what the American people want? How could you not have that? I mean.
Yeah.
It's everywhere. Everyone I talk to, every like, everywhere you look, it's people talking about betrayal.
Mm-hmm.
Whether they're talking about the health industry, whether they're talking about no new wars, whether they're talking about the corruption. I mean, everything.
Yeah.
Everything.
Everything. Yeah.
Everything.
Yeah. It's an interesting culture inside, like, the White House and, you know, I guess, like, political land inside Washington, DC. I think you're so used to everything being hyper-partisan that it's really easy to discount any information that doesn't fit into your mental model as, like, "Oh, it's Democrat propaganda." If you're a Republican, "Oh, that's Democrat propaganda." And I do think that the administration focused very, very heavily on what the lobbyists wanted across the board, whether, you know, it's what we're probably going to talk a lot about, the Iran war, my optic, seeing the way that APAC and the pro-Israel lobby drove us into this war, which ultimately led to me resigning.
But you're seeing it in other areas too. The MAHA agenda feels very betrayed. And that's because the MAHA movement spoke for the people. The people were pissed off that their food was poisoning them and that Americans are sick and health care costs, et cetera. They brought in some people to make changes, and those people were quickly blocked or just completely and totally marginalized by the lobbyists because the logic in DC was, "Well, the lobbyists have the money that we need to win in the midterms. The people that are going to cut us the biggest checks that we need to drive voter turnout and to get our voters to come out, they're, you know, the pro-war lobby.
It's the big food, the big pharma." The list goes on. All the corporate special interest groups. That's who had the ear of the administration because the president and his political team believed that, "Hey, all we have to do is make enough money that we can drive voter turnout, and these same voters will vote for us." It's a very, I think, callous, but not just callous in, like, a moral way to think about people. It's also very stupid. I mean, to think that the people aren't going to hold their elected officials accountable. I mean, President Trump was hired to be our fighter.
I mean, and we thought in the first administration that he fought. He pretty much raged against the machine for his entire first administration. It wasn't perfect, but we knew he was fighting. And that's why the MAGA base loved President Trump. I don't know why he changed his mind. I don't know. I don't know, you know, what made him prioritize the special interest groups. I think a lot of that was what he needed to win the election because he felt that he needed the money. And the next thing you know, he gets locked into this echo chamber, however you want to describe it, where all the only thing that's really valued is bringing the big donors in to kind of pitch the president and pitch his team on what's going to get them more money because they thought that that equaled success in the midterms, meanwhile not listening to the people.
And I think a lot of that I mean, there's multiple facets to that. But another big factor is prioritizing what the mainstream media felt. I mean, it's pretty crazy that, like, the president and the vice president, I think, did really well in 2024 by going on podcasts and speaking with a wider, wider audience, especially a younger audience. But then the second we got into power in Washington, DC, suddenly we cared, you know, about what The New York Times was going to say.
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean.
On a given day.
That changed immediately.
Yeah.
You know, it was fake news, fake news, fake news. Then he gets elected. Then Laura Trump has a new show on Fox News, like, the next day.
Yeah. Exactly.
Like, "Oh, okay."
Yeah.
Fake news, right?
Yeah. But that I mean, that came back to that came back to bite him because, I mean, had he had you and Rogan and I mean, those two went on a ton of podcasts. And members of the Cabinet went on a ton of podcasts, you know, to come into before they were in power. I mean, had they been taking the pulse of the American people by checking in with, you know, podcasters, social media social media influencers who are independent, not the ones they were paying, to regurgitate, you know, their talking points.
No.
They were.
And they were paying people.
That's what I mean, that's what it looks like.
Somebody I just do you know Alex Brusselwitz?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Didn't he just come out and say that they were paying.
Yeah.
A slew of influencers to push this bullshit?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then to and then anybody who.
Is he still in there?
I don't think he was ever technically in. He's always been one of Trump's outside political guys. So he's never had a position, to my knowledge, inside government. But I think he's been he, like, ran Trump's, I think, social media in '24.
Mm-hmm.
So he's got, like, his own consulting group. But, yeah, there was all kinds of paid influencers. You had Laura Loomer basically going after anyone inside the administration or outside the administration who was questioning the Iran war.
Mm-hmm.
It's turned out she was paid, you know, by, you know, outside entities that had a special interest in getting us into the Iran war.
I mean, I'm sure both sides do this.
Oh, of course.
They're not sure this is, like, a new a new play. But I mean, what is all this what's all this stuff going on with Susie Wiles?
Mm-hmm.
What is going on there?
Well.
I mean, I've always heard that.
Yeah.
I've heard things. You know, I've heard that she ran, you know, Netanyahu's.
Mm-hmm.
Political campaign. She was his campaign manager, something like that. I mean, I've heard that she's really tied in. What is she tied in with the health industry? She's protecting stuff with her daughter's interests.
Yeah.
What's going on?
Well, so she her lobbying organization that she left, Ballard Partners, they're a lobbying organization. If you have an interest and you can pay them enough, they can advocate it to get you access in the government. That's what lobbyists do. So she's been a lobbyist, I think, for the majority of her career. She's also worked on the campaign side. But at one point in time, she did work for Bibi Netanyahu's, you know, reelection campaign inside Israel. So I mean, she's a essentially a hired political gun, very, very efficient, very organized. She was President Trump's chief of staff. But she prioritized, especially from the topic that I was assigned to, national security, she definitely prioritized letting in a lot of the pro-Israel voices to get time in front of President Trump as opposed to having, you know, members of the actual intelligence community come in to give him United States intelligence.
So Susie was definitely a gatekeeper. I mean, the president enabled that. He picked her to be the chief of staff. And so she prioritized the pro-Israel lobby. We've heard a lot of the MAHA people come out and say she was prioritizing a lot of the big food, the big sugar industry folks to come in and basically cancel out the MAHA agenda. And I think overall, the goal, especially in that regard, was to get donations for the 2024 for the 2026 midterms, the idea being if we had enough money in our pockets, we could then, you know, drive voter turnout and win the midterms.
Do you think she was the driving force behind the the shit, the pesticide companies, the immunity, the pesticide companies?
I mean, I believe she was the one that enabled the lobbyists to come get in front of President Trump and enabled the lobbyists to basically be the loudest voices in Trump's ear. I don't think she was out there personally doing that advocacy herself, but she controlled who got in front of the president. She may have been doing some of that. I never I never saw that. I can't speak to that. I just saw the way that she handled, like, the national security file. And look, I mean, Susie was part of the Trump 2024 campaign, but with her came a bunch of donors, a bunch of donors who in the past had been against President Trump.
Mm-hmm.
So you've definitely got the pro-APAC, the pro-Israel crowd, Miriam Adelson, very close with Susie Wiles. You know, Trump wins the election. The next thing you know, APAC is getting to pick key advisors for national security because Israel wants us to go to war with Iran. So they're able to seat the CIA director, John Ratcliffe. They're able to seat Marco Rubio, who's confirmed by the Senate with, like, 99 votes, just to show you, you know, how much of a how much of a fighter he is. I mean, you've got the entire United States Senate saying, "Yeah, that's our guy. We'll have him be the Secretary of State slash, you know, national security advisor."
Mike Waltz, who's now at the UN, but he was the original national security advisor. You know, you've got APAC, the leader of APAC on tape saying that all of these guys were picked by APAC and then put into the Trump administration. Susie's part of that ecosystem as well, just because of the Florida donor money, her working in the past for Likud for Benjamin Netanyahu. So she definitely enabled those people to basically serve as conduits to get Israeli intelligence to the president that helped get us into this war.
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I think we went, but I think they lied about a lot of stuff.
You do think what do you think they lied about?
I think they found some stuff on there up there they weren't supposed to.
Probably being a designated driver for the SEAL teams. Which means you pretty much just drive a bunch of drunk, angry SEALs that struck out at the bar. What's the closest you've come to walking away from your platform entirely?
There's been some times where the workload was so much that it was affecting my health. I was just getting sick. I was actually getting mentally and physically ill from the workload and the pressure.
I get really irritable if I don't see my kids. What's the one thing you want people to say about your body of work in 20 years? So she's the one that okay. But I mean, even as the president of the United States, don't you think, you know, she gets all these lobbyists in front of him. Don't you don't you think he should be sharp enough to go.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, why am I not talking to DNI? Why am I not talking to, you know, Director NSA? Why am I not talking to why am I not talking to our own intelligence people?
Yeah.
Why do I have all these lobbyists in front of me?
Yeah. I mean, the buck stops with President Trump. Like, he is the guy in charge.
But don't you think he should be sharp enough to be able to, like, differentiate? Like.
Well, he definitely should be. And then when things don't go well, I mean, Trump was sold by the Israelis and by the national security team that this is going to be a short war. You're going to kill the Supreme Leader, and this is going to be as easy as Venezuela. And he thought that he was going to be in this thing for a week, maybe a couple weeks. But by the time he started approaching his second month in this war, he should have picked his head up as a businessman and just said, "I was sold one thing, and I didn't get it." And he should have started making some drastic changes. He just recently started making some slight changes. Susie's left the White House, so hopefully that leads to better outcomes.
But I mean, look, Trump has known since his first administration that the Israelis wanted this war with Iran. He avoided it in his first administration. He killed Qasem Soleimani. The Iranians, you know, shot at our bases. He had the entire national security state then breathing down his neck to do the war with Iran. He just, at a gut level, knew getting involved in another war, a major war, a regime change war against Iran would be a disaster, and it'd be the end of his presidency. And he avoided that. So why exactly he decided this time he was going to listen to the neocons who he knew were picked by APAC, who he knew, like, despised him.
I mean, Marco Rubio ran against him in 2016 and is very much a member of the old Republican Guard.
Mm-hmm.
Ratcliffe as well. Ratcliffe was his was his DNI in his first administration when the intelligence community was actively working against President Trump. He was the DNI that, you know, had the evidence that Russiagate was a complete hoax, had the evidence that the coronavirus came from a lab leak, you know, had the evidence that there was there were some major issues with the 2020 election that he didn't disclose until after January 6th. So he brought these people in. Why and how those deals were made, I don't exactly know.
But I do I agree with you. He should have been sharp enough to say, "Hey, I think I'm getting played here," especially when the results were so evident after the first, whatever, month or two of the war. I think he should have said, "Hey, I've got to start making some changes." But here we are, you know, eight, nine months into this thing, and the only change he's made and this is a good change. He's gotten rid of Susie Wiles, but, you know, he just lost the midterms in a very resounding way. And, you know, wake up today and we're still doing bellicose rhetoric against Iran. We're talking about going back and doing more strikes against them.
We're at the negotiating table, but we're still injecting the same poison pills in the negotiating process. So.
I mean, I think.
We just seem to be stuck.
What is the negotiating table? Is it just a target list for Israel to hit?
Well, the.
That's the way I started tuning out when I was like, "Oh, we're in negotiation. Oh, this guy got whacked. Oh, we're in negotiation."
Well, yeah.
Oh, this guy got whacked. It's like.
Yeah.
Like, okay, so they're just going to kill everybody that we're negotiating with.
Well.
So that we can't negotiate.
Yeah. Early on in the war, certainly. And then the Iranians basically stopped truly negotiating with us. We got into the memorandum of understanding in June. And this is interesting. This is a rare moment where I think President Trump realized he had to make a change. And the memorandum of understanding, Trump said that he got into it because he knew if we if we kept the war going in its current state, that our country would face a major economic downturn because of what was taking place the straightforward most. He literally said, "I don't want to be like President Hoover. I don't want to march us into a depression. So I have to get into this deal that's at least going to get us the MOU basically was going to get set the conditions for a cease-fire that hopefully later on would lead to, you know, further negotiations, but it would end the war.
That was the whole goal. But in very short order, within, I think, like a week, 10 days or so, we immediately dispatched the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to Israel that cuts a side deal with the Israelis that allows the Israelis to remain in Lebanon, which went against the MOU that the president had just signed. And then we also start bringing ships out of the Strait of Hormuz that's outside the parameters of the MOU. Therefore, the Iranians start hitting ships again. So even though President Trump acknowledged, "If I don't get into this deal, we're going to face major economic downturn in America."
And this is in June. So he's thinking, obviously, about what's going to take place in the fall. So he's like, "I need this deal." He still couldn't hold the deal. You know, his own people between Rubio and between whatever's taking place with CENTCOM negated the deal. And then we are back into the war. And actually, it turns out President Trump should have listened to his instincts in June because he was right. We did hit major economic downturn. We did hit $6 plus per gallon diesel here in the US that drove up costs, and it affected him in the midterm. He can see all this.
He was actually kind of right about it in June. Yet here we are. We're trying some more negotiations. Look, I frankly don't think that this is why I've been recommending for us just to simply walk away, pull out the blockade, pull our troops out of the region, kind of throw the ball back in the Iranians' court and say, "Are you guys really going to just continue to shoot at ships, you know, on the Strait of Hormuz?"
I just don't understand. Like, how does that even it's a loss.
It would be I mean.
Well, we've already lost.
We've already so the longer we stay.
I mean, do you like, I want to get back to the Susie Wiles and all that stuff, but.
Sure.
Since we're on this. I mean, we're all we're just we've already I think the whole world knows.
Yes.
We've lost. This isn't this kind of how Britain lost the superpower ship?
100%, man. I mean, this is the story.
So are we what do you yeah. What do you think?
Well, I look, I still think the president is still the president for over he's got over two more years left in office.
I mean, from a world viewpoint.
From a world viewpoint, I mean, look, you can already see starting in the Gulf where the war is taking place, you already see a lot of the Gulf states. They're cutting side deals with the Iranians that we get glimpses of every now and again, where you see, like, the Emiratis, the Qataris, and others that are paying the Iranians under the table so they can get their oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. You see the Chinese coming in and settling some transactions in yuan as opposed to in the petrodollar. So the security arrangements just there in the Gulf alone that have, you know, held up basically since the end of World War II, but especially in the era of big oil and OPEC, those security arrangements have been shattered because the old security arrangement was basically, "America will have military bases in your backyard, warrior security, and in exchange, all you guys got to do is sell your oil in the dollar.
We get cut in on the transactions. Everybody's happy." Well, we started this war, and because of geography, for one, I mean, just the Strait of Hormuz is not that big. Iran can shut it down or at least frustrate it pretty easily. But because of drones and ballistic missiles, the Iranians were able to basically dismantle all of our bases. And they, to punish the Gulf for being a part of the war, they hit a bunch of Gulf energy infrastructure. So they hurt our allies, who ostensibly we had said that we were going to protect. We couldn't protect our own allies. So that is the beginning of the crumbling of the I mean, the empire, I think, has been crumbling for quite some time.
I don't think Americans are very good at empire. The empire has never served the American people. It's very different, I think, than, like, the British Empire.
Mm-hmm.
So I think this is probably the most, like, public-facing portion of the empire crumbling because it's had just such a direct economic impact so quickly on the American people. But the rest of the world is seeing right now firsthand that we're not the superpower that, you know, we told everybody we were for quite some time. And so we have a choice to make. Do we continue to bleed out and suffer more by trying to cling onto it? And so my, you know, my question would just be, like, what do we get out of the empire anyways?
What do American voters what does your average American get out of the empire anyways? They don't get much. The empire doesn't really mean much to American citizens. It only means a lot to people in the Beltway. It only means a lot to the people that are selling, you know, weapons to every country that's at war right now. There's some economic interest here and there, but it's not served. The American people basically are taxed to death. They get very little in return because their hard taxpayer earn their hard taxpayer dollars go to prop up this empire that doesn't serve them. So the sooner that we admit that and just say, "Actually, this is a bad deal," I think in the long run, we're that whoever it is that says that and actually has the courage to start to retract our empire on our terms, I think they're going to be a hero.
So Trump's got an opportunity right now. He has a real opportunity. I'm not trying to be too optimistic, but if he just says, like, "Hey, he didn't have to say this whole thing's a mistake." We know Trump's probably not going to say it's a mistake, but he can just say, "It's over. I won." Everyone's going to know that, like, whatever, it's not really that we won. But he can say, "I'm not putting our bases back in the Middle East because they're already destroyed." Those are bases for the Biden-owned people.
Are they legitimately destroyed?
I think for all intents and purposes, yeah. I mean, we still, I think, have some troops here and there in Kuwait, but they're in very vulnerable positions. And at the end of the day, like, anytime hostilities start, we have to disperse the bases. We have to move our people out of the bases. So the fundamental question is, like, what good is a military base you can't fight a war from? So we'd be fools if we try and reoccupy those bases. That's like a gift to Iran or to any of our enemies. It's like, "Hey, here's some targets for you to shoot at." So I think the sooner that we start to retract that, the better off we'd be.
And Trump has an opportunity to be the one that actually is the changed president. He's the one that says, "Hey, I'm a business guy. I realize that we're spending more on this empire than we're receiving. And so I'm going to cut the best deal for the American people. I'm going to start retracting that empire." But again, if we hold onto it, man, we are just going to continue to bleed out. It's the same, you know, we can get into it more, but it's the same thing in the Ukraine war. Like, we're just continuing to pour, you know, billions of dollars into there. Ukrainian men are getting sent into the meat grinder and being killed.
And at the end of the day, it's having major ramifications on also the world diesel supply, the petrochemicals, and just energy in general. So it's hurting people here in America and throughout the world. And again, you know, for what? What's our actual interest there? So.
I just I just I don't see I feel like the whole world just saw through the facade like that, you know? I mean.
They did. Yeah.
I mean, we're supposed to protect these countries, keep oil flowing through there. Now they know it was all bullshit. We can't protect them. They see it. They're feeling it.
Yeah.
We're feeling it. So what do they do now? Do they look for a country that can give them protection? Do they look for a country like China? Look for a country like Russia, maybe even Iran? I mean, they're already obviously, you know, you just mentioned they're paying them under the table. So what they know one thing, we don't do shit. We don't protect them.
Right.
We've proven that.
Yep.
And so what does that do to the petrodollar? Which, from my understanding, pretty much our entire economy is propped up on our currency is propped up on that.
Yeah. Well, I think broadly, our currency is propped up on the fact that the world's a reserve currency holder. And so we expect, you know, most banks and international transactions to be done in dollar cuts to send on the deal. That's why when we do things like we sanction, especially when we sanction major energy producers like Russia, we're actually shooting ourselves in the foot. I mean, because that's less dollars in the system. You know, the Biden administration was like, "If we sanction Russia, we take them off the dollar, we take them off the SWIFT system." You know, that's going to be the death blow to Russia. But it turns out people still want to buy, you know, Russian energy because they have a ton of it.
And so they're still a powerhouse. It really didn't affect Russia that much at all. It just took more US dollars out of circulation, adding to our inflation and hurting us. So our sanctions actually ended up hurting us. Same thing we've been doing with Iran for quite some time. I mean, I think sanctions, like, in very limited amounts can be effective, but then we get suckered into this Iran war that was not in our interest, that was in the interest of the Israelis. And the second order effect of that almost immediately was the erosion of the petrodollar. Because just like you said, we told these guys that we were we told all these Gulf states, we are going to keep them safe as long as they, you know, settle their transactions.
The petrodollar win-win. We put our military in your backyard. We're the global empire. You guys do all your trading in dollars and everybody wins. Well, we launched the one war that was actually going to show that that entire system is pretty much out of date. We launched it. And so now the Gulf states can see that. I don't think that they're going to go to China or Russia for security guarantees. The Chinese are pretty smart, and I think the Chinese will help out with economic development. And that's why I think the Chinese have come in and said, like, "Hey, if you got currency problems, like, how about the yuan?" The Chinese have been very effective at not doing, like, military empire the way that we do it.
I mean, America comes in and, you know, we want to tell countries how to run pretty much every aspect of their lives and we want to extract resources. The Chinese come in and say, like.
They invest in the economy.
Yeah, we'd like to build you a port that we can use. You know, it's much smarter, it's much softer. Russia, I think, has too much going on right now with their own war on their border. They're concerned about NATO incursions. They're concerned with the Ukraine war. What I think is going to happen is what we're already starting to see. You're starting to see the Gulf the Gulf countries make relationships with themselves. The Gulf and beyond in the broader Middle East. You've got the Mecca Accords, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. So you've got kind of some of those the Sunni powerhouses that are developing a relationship. I think the Saudis were hoping that the Pakistanis and the Turks were going to come help them out with their Houthi problem.
But the Mecca Accord members basically said, "Yeah, we'll help you, but not with that because that's a little bit prickly." I think Egypt is going to come become a part of the Mecca Accords as well. I think the Gulf states will do something similar, but I don't think they're going to do it in a, like, traditional muscular military way. These are smaller countries. I think they've already recognized that Iran has asserted itself as a regional power, if not more. And so I think that they are seeking a lot more diplomatic outreach with the Iranians. They're definitely doing it now because the Iranians have very publicly said, "If we go back into, like, a full hot war and you guys are coming for us, we are going to dismantle the rest of the Gulf energy infrastructure."
And so that's why you've been seeing the shuttle diplomacy back and forth from all the Gulf states, but especially from Qatar and the Emiratis going over to Tehran. I personally think to try and cut some kind of a new security arrangement. And I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. I mean, like, why is it in our interest to go somewhere 7,000 miles away and tell them how to live? I mean, we have very narrow interests in the region. As long as the oil is flowing from the region and we can buy oil and we can do limited counterterrorism operations against real terrorists who actually want to come to America and kill us, that's basically our only interest in the Middle East.
Like, we don't it's not even in our best interest to be the guarantee to be the people who have to guarantee security for the entire region to people. Like, why is it on us to make sure that all these different key waterpoints or these key choke points are open? Like, why is that? It's on us now because we started the war, because we have been the security guarantors for so long. But I don't even think it's in our best interest to do it. So again, we're clinging on to this old empire.
So trading in the petrodollar.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's why.
But that's all been basically taken away from us now.
It's wiped out.
It's wiped out.
I mean, it's yeah. It scares the shit out of me.
So I think we need to be charting forward new relationships with all those countries and saying, like, "Okay, we're eating some crow here. We understand that that didn't work out. How can we continue to keep the petrodollar alive? Or how can we make how can we make the transition?"
What do we bring to the table?
I well, the question you're asking is the right question because I think it's going to be hard because there's been an erosion of trust.
The only thing I could think of is if we threaten them if we threaten them to move off the petrodollar.
Yeah. Well, that could be.
I can't think of anything else. We definitely don't bring stability.
Well, I think.
We've got plenty of track record.
Yeah.
You know, we've got Afghanistan, we've got Iraq. Now we have this.
Yeah.
We have a track record of not bringing stability to the region.
I think that not necessarily the threat, but the arrangement that we can make with them is that, "Hey, America, also, we are sitting on a lot of oil. We're sitting on a lot of crude. We're sitting on a lot of natural gas that hasn't been brought onto the market." A lot of that is because we lack the refinery capacity, but also because of the environmental constraints that we've put on ourselves, like, foolishly. I think an arrangement that we could make to keep the petrodollar running so that there isn't a massive shock to the system is that we say, "Hey, we will continue we will slow down the rate at which we introduce a lot of our oil to the market in exchange for you guys not zeroing out the petrodollar right away."
And I think that helps stabilize the market in the long run. Again, I'm not an economist. That's not my department, but that comes off my head.
It all comes down to energy anyways, right? So wouldn't I mean, I don't know how this would play out, but wouldn't unleashing nuclear power, wouldn't that be another answer?
Well, it's totally another answer, but then you're taking away the oil. Then you're kind of taking away I mean, if, like, the world moved to more nuclear in general, I think that would take quite a while to do because I think for the near term, we run off fossil, we run off oil, natural gas.
No, it'd be a whole new infrastructure. I definitely understand that. But I mean, as you move along, I mean, if we were just only relying on our own energy sources and started moving forward with whatever, you know, whatever we need, all new infrastructure comes from nuclear.
Yeah.
I mean, is that an answer?
No, I think that's an answer.
Self-reliant on our own stuff.
I think in the long run, I think us being self-reliant here in America, that's good for Americans. That's putting America first. That means we don't necessarily have to worry about the rest of the world in the way that we do right now. I think to your point, to, like, kind of ease the transition off of the petrodollar so it doesn't happen rapidly, it doesn't happen in a way where China comes in and just says, "Now, it's all replaced with yuan." I do think we can make some sort of an arrangement where, "Hey, number one goal, open the strait back up again, but we're opening the strait back up again because we want to continue to buy a lot of your oil and natural gas that's coming out as long as you guys don't rapidly dump the petrodollar."
Now, that's going to be challenging, especially if we kick off another round of the war and the Iranians hit more Gulf energy infrastructure, because then the Gulf states are going to be really burned and they're going to say, like, "Okay, like, us being associated with America is not a good thing at all. It's a very bad thing." And I think the Iranians would go quietly to the Gulf countries and say, like, "Move off the petrodollar," because that's a quick, easy win, you know, for the Iranians as well. And this is what this, like, for all the people who are really concerned, you know, about China and they think that we're going to be in some confrontation with China, this is handing China the keys to the kingdom on a silver platter.
Because China, they can either sit back and they can make money off of the whole thing, or they can come in and we're already seeing this. The Chinese are offering to be part of the mediation team. We're seeing the Chinese come in and being the ones who, like, are going to restore order. Like, if you restore order in a chaotic situation, like, you're in charge, right?
That's what I'm saying.
Aren't you the power?
That's what I'm that's what I was talking about.
Yeah.
That's what I'm talking about by losing the superpower ship.
Yeah.
They're the mediator.
Right. Right. Because we are now viewed by people who formerly were our allies, who will still say they're our allies, we're now viewed as kind of a chaos agent. Like, we're almost more trouble than it's worth to be involved with, or at least to be deeply intertwined with. Most of these countries, like, I think are pretty smart and they still realize we have a massive economy and we're powerful. So they're not going to totally tell us to, like, you know, pound sand, we're not going to deal with you.
Are we that powerful?
Well, I mean.
From my understanding, our economy is pretty much propped up by artificial intelligence right now. At least the markets are.
Right. Well, we have a big consumer base, which is why I think the Chinese aren't aggressively trying to tank us in the way that they could. I mean, China, I think it's very interesting. All the folks who think we're heading towards a conflict with China, I think this conflict is interesting because if the Chinese really wanted to screw America, they could have stopped they could have not drawn into their strategic petroleum reserves and they could have kept their import demand high, which when a lot of the oil got out of the Strait of Hormuz when the MOU was signed, China could have sucked a lot of that up and it would have hurt us a good deal.
We wouldn't have been able to import a bunch of that oil either. Like, the Chinese could have just basically gobbled it all up the market. They opted not to do that. They opted to draw on their own strategic petroleum reserves, which actually kept the price of Brent relatively low, even though it spiked. So China could have screwed us, I think. This is just my opinion. And again, I'm a counterterrorism guy, not necessarily an economist, so I could be wrong here, but I feel like the Chinese, because the way that the world market has been arranged where Americans are consumers and the Chinese are manufacturers, the Chinese are actually hurt if America goes through a major economic downturn because then who's going to buy all the stuff that they make?
So they may want to, you know, eventually surpass us in a lot of different ways, but I don't think our actual, like, economic demise is in their best interest.
Well, who the hell else are we going to buy from?
Exactly. But they need American.
We saw that in COVID.
They need American consumers to have enough money in their pocket to buy cheap crap on Amazon to keep their economy going. Because if we get screwed and people really have to tighten up the pocketbooks, then China's going to be hurting too, which I think that actually explains a lot of their behavior in this conflict where they said, "Okay, we don't want to spike the price of Brent. We don't want to gobble up all the oil when it finally comes out of the strait. We'll draw on our own strategic petroleum reserves." Which in the big picture, for people who are concerned about us getting into a hot war with China, I think that actually shows a new way forward where we are kind of cooperating with other countries throughout the world within our own best interests.
I think this war with Iran and what we're seeing in Ukraine, I really think leaders need to step back and think, like, "Okay, the old paradigm of a strong country going and dominating and exerting its will on a weaker country, the proliferation of some key technologies here, whether it's AI, ballistics, and drones, it's basically made it so the playing field is relatively level and actually the defender has a lot of advantages over the attacker." So, like, is modern warfare, like, is it even worth it for either side?
You know, like, there's somewhat of a zero-sum game that we're seeing play out in Ukraine, zero-sum game playing out right now, you know, with us in Iran. So we could be moving if we have sane people who can cooperate with the rest of the world in charge, we could be moving towards an era. It's not going to be a rosy peace-filled era. You know, I'm not, you know, that idealistic, but an era where there is a lot more diplomacy, economic trade arrangement being made as opposed to what we're seeing right now, which is just counterproductive, almost nihilistic wars.
So you're saying, you know, just to recap, you're saying our negotiation power is either threaten them militarily to keep on the petrodollar or threaten to unleash our own oil reserves onto the world.
Yeah.
That's what we have.
Yeah, we really can't threaten the Gulf countries that much at all right now. I mean, I think they're hoping we act relatively responsibly and get out of the war.
I mean, they got to be looking for other options.
I just don't think so. Yeah. For the petrodollar to continue.
Like, why would you even want American bases in your country at this point? Like, get the shit out of here.
No, I wouldn't if I were them either. I would I think we're going to run into some issues there. We've already had the Saudis reject us using some of their key airfields because they don't want to get hammered. I mean, like, our bases were vectors, not just for our guys getting killed. Our bases were vectors for a lot of destruction, you know, in their own countries. So I think you're right. I mean, the question is, if we continue to keep our foot on the pedal of this war, then there is something drastic will happen. There will be a drastic breakaway, I fear, or it's much more likely, I should say.
But if we can wind the war down now, then I do think we have time to actually dialogue with the Gulf countries to be like, "Okay, what's the new way forward? We can't have you guys dump the petrodollar." I mean, the world reserve currency, us being the world reserve currency, like, all those systems are pretty, like, rigid and well-defined. So I don't think it's going to happen overnight, but it's already starting to happen. So if we don't get in the driver's seat, like, of managing that, then it's going to be managed by somebody else or kind of like what we're doing right now, it's just sort of eroding and slipping through our fingers.
You know, so I would say that we need to figure out a way to manage this new arrangement that actually prioritizes the American people as opposed to just being reactionary and saying, "Well, we can't lose this war. We can't look bad in front of the, you know, in front of the Iranians. We can't show any weakness. We got to, you know, put our troops back in those bases and hammer Iran again." It's like, "Okay, but hammer them again to what end? What do you mean?" Like, the administration still really hasn't come out and clearly defined what winning is in Iran. Like, so, okay, if we go back to hostilities tonight when the sun goes down, what are you bombing and what does that achieve?
Like, that still hasn't been defined.
I think winning looks like we just do it until our greatest ally tells us, "We don't need you to do that anymore."
Yeah. Which, I mean, and the Israelis.
That's pretty much what's happening.
Yeah. And this is where we never really level set with the Israelis. To be this intertwined with a partner, you should at least share the same strategic goal. And we've never shared the same strategic goal. Like, we've both said, like, just casually, "Yeah, Iran's our enemy." But for us, that's much different. Like, what do we want with Iran? What does Israel want with Iran? What are we comfortable with and what are the Israelis comfortable with? The Israelis are comfortable with constant chaos. I mean, we've seen what their strategy is. Their strategy is literally mowing the grass. Like, you just every now and again kill a new crop of leaders and you make the situation so chaotic with your enemy that your enemy can never marshal enough combat power to hurt you.
I mean, that's not how we think in America. We're not comfortable with chaos. The Israelis are very comfortable with chaos. So the Israelis are fine. They want us back in the conflict. I mean, the Israelis right now, I think, are pushing very hard for however much longer Bibi is going to be in power. That remains to be seen. His goal is for more hostilities to kick off, for us to get sucked back into the war so that America is dealing with Iran. Because they realize now they've kicked over the hornet's nest. Now that Iran is even more emboldened. The people have rallied around the Iranian regime in a way that they had not before.
They've got a real problem and they need us to deal with it. And so that's what the Israeli lobby, that's what Bibi is trying to accomplish right now. Unfortunately, I think because we have a lot of people that are still in the government at CENTCOM and the intelligence agencies that were part of selling this war, in particular the political appointees, Radcliffe, Rubio, Hegseth to a lesser degree. I mean, Hegseth's probably going to get, like, impeached by the Congress, but Hegseth isn't the one that was selling the president. He wasn't giving the president the fake Israeli intelligence to get us into the war.
He was just, you know, executing what the president wanted him to do. But Hegseth is very much married to this war. So is Admiral Cooper, the CENTCOM commander. They seem to be advocating for more aggression. You know, we've got three carrier battle groups almost marshaled on the shore of Iran right now.
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What a discipline. You know, Hegseth, when I interviewed him, he said he's a recovering neocon.
I've seen the clip, yeah.
I forgot he said that and then Tucker put something out. I was like, "Oh yeah, he did say that." I guess he fell off the wagon.
I guess he fell off the wagon. Yeah. Yeah, it's very uncomfortable.
I want to get into Israel's interests in a minute, but, you know, why would, even if we came out, you know, originally, like what, right after, when was this? Maybe eight months ago, it was just declare victory, get out. Declare victory, get out. Now it's all been exposed.
Now it's all been exposed.
I think it's all exposed. We can't protect them. Obviously, we're under the influence of Israel. You know, so if any of our other allies over there go against Israel, they know we'll turn on them like that. And so, you know, don't you think, so let's say we did the, you know, what you said would have been a success or how we pull out, you know, however many months ago and we're like, "Declare victory, leave."
I mean, do you think Iran would actually open the strait? Because I don't.
Well, I.
I think I would make them pay. Like, we're going to hammer this out until you do what we want you to do.
So Iran, from the time that, like, this actually, rewind, from the time that Trump came back into office, Iran has shown throughout every phase of the war negotiations a very calculated and disciplined escalation ladder. At no point have they, like, totally gone all in with attacks. Like, they allowed us, they allowed the Israelis and us to attack them during the 12-day war. Midnight hammer they didn't really respond to. And throughout every iteration of this war, they've been doing proportional responses. The Iranians obviously value, and they've done, I think, a pretty clever job of this.
They value, like, the moral high ground. And they've been messaging that to the world. And that's why you still have the world flying to Tehran. You have world diplomats still flying to Tehran to deal with them. When they go to the UN General Assembly, every country other than us pretty much is dealing with Iran as if they're still, you know, a regular country as opposed to a country that's at war with America. So I think if we, this is almost like a checkmate because, like, we're not going to get a, I don't believe, and I hope I'm wrong, I don't believe under the current circumstances we're going to get a deal. Because I don't think the Iranians can give us a deal.
We killed the Supreme Leader, killed members of his family, killed multiple of the moderate negotiators. We bombed a girl's school and killed 160 schoolgirls. The Iranian people are now, at one point in time, they didn't really like the government, but they have now rallied around the flag. We proved the case of the hardliners. And we can get more into this because I think it's interesting for G1 veterans. You know, for years, Qasem Soleimani was telling his government, "You can't deal with the Americans. You can't deal with the Israelis. You need to bloody them. You have to make them retreat from the region bloodied." It's the only thing they understand. The moderates, the former Supreme Leader, the guy we killed, Larry Andioni, another guy that we killed, they were saying, "No, no, no, we can actually get a deal with the Americans.
We can deal with them. We don't need to go to war with them." Well, even though we killed Soleimani, you know, six years ago, at this point, we proved his case. We proved his case for him. And so now the Iranians, even the negotiators we're dealing with, short of us giving the Iranians everything that was guaranteed in the MOU, plus, like, unfreezing a bunch of assets, which I don't think Trump's going to do upfront, they can't sign a deal. Because if they sign a deal, they can't go back to their people and be like, "Oh, we compromised the Americans again." These people are very, very galvanized. I've spoken with a few American reporters who've been over that they went over and they covered the funeral of the Supreme Leader.
And they said, "Hey, neighborhoods and parts of Tehran that I used to go to that were very pro-American, they're literally telling me that they're going to get vengeance. Like, they're now, like, committed to the Islamic Revolution way more than they were before." So us being able to get a negotiation right now, while we still have our blockade on and we still have our troops in the region and we're threatening them every day and we're getting into these little tit-for-tat skirmishes, I don't think we have really much of a chance of getting a deal. If we declare victory and we go home, we're throwing the ball back in the Iranians' court.
And the Iranians, keep in mind, they're very conscientious of, like, basically the moral high ground. Then Iran, if our blockade is gone, we remove our aggression, they don't have much incentive to keep an aggressive posture in the strait. Because then it's like, "Okay, are the Iranians then just going to keep shooting at all the ships in the region if we're not there?" I think the Iranians are going to charge something. And this is kind of where the war is a loss because before the war kicked off, they weren't charging anything. The strait was open. Anybody could use the strait. And it was great for commerce.
I think the Iranians, in order to get some money back in their pocket for all the damage that's been inflicted, I think they are going to charge something. But by us throwing the ball back in their court, I think them and the Gulf countries will then work out an arrangement where basically the free market principles take over. Like, it's in everyone's best interest in the Gulf if the strait is navigable. As long as, like, the companies are willing to pay whatever fee they negotiate with the Iranians, and I think that'll be a constant negotiation. And I think we can do one better. I think once we got our troops out of there, our forces out of there, and pulled the blockade, I think we could quietly say to the Iranians, probably, you know, through the Qataris or somebody else, "Okay, if you take down the fee, we'll unsanction your oil."
Because the Iranians have had their oil industry under sanctions now for 47 years. If we lift those sanctions, then the Iranians are incentivized to keep the straits open themselves because then it's in their best interest as well. Now, there's going to be a back and forth with the Gulf partners on that as well. But I think throwing the ball back in their court and saying, "Hey, there's a way now to have everybody sort of win-win, like to have you guys be able to charge some fees." I mean, Turkey charges fees, you know, for transiting the waterway that they control, you know, between the Black Sea and into the Med.
So most countries charge Panama Canal, et cetera. There's usually a fee. So there'll be a fee at the Strait of Hormuz. I think if we just accept that and we say that that's going to be something that's negotiated between the oil companies and between the Iranians and the Gulf countries, then it's really on the Iranians to show, and I think the Iranians will be very, very eager. The Iranians have shown over and over again, they're very eager to show the world that they're not like the mad mulas, that they're not like crazed terrorists, that they're very, very reasonable. This gives them the opportunity to demonstrate that. And again, it also takes away some of the leverage they have because if we pull all of our targets out for them to shoot at, then they can't suck us back into the war.
We basically checkmate them with that.
We're still at everybody else's mercy to, basically at everybody else's mercy to continue the petrodollar.
Yeah. I mean, that arrangement, I think, is, like you said, it's going to go away. How quickly and how painful it is, I think we can control some of that. And we have the most control if we show that we're actually reasonable and we're not going to go right back into hostilities. The longer we stay at hostilities and the longer we stay as, like, the chaos agent in the region, I mean, the less the Gulf countries have any incentive whatsoever to stay on our system, to do us any favors, you know? So again, I just think that gives the president the most maximum leverage because there's nothing he can achieve militarily without, you know, putting boots on the ground, you know, letting the Israelis drop a nuclear weapon.
And diplomatically, I just think we're kind of at an impasse. I mean, the Iranians will barely sit down at the negotiating table. They won't sit at the negotiating table with us. We're doing it all through intermediaries. I mean, I saw one report today that said the Iranians have agreed to meet with the vice president at some point. But I'll believe that when I see it. But I think they're just going to tell him, "Hey, we have the same exact same conditions for a ceasefire that we had before." And every time we get close to even, like, having the parameters for a negotiation, our side will throw out something like, "Yeah, well, we want to negotiate on the nuclear issue right away."
And the Iranians have just said, "We're not going to negotiate on the."
Yep. Why would you send a negotiator if they're just going to get killed?
Well, I mean, I think they have that concern too. I mean.
It's an honest question.
Well.
Why don't he be a smartass, like, legitimately?
Well, when we've killed negotiators, you have to ask.
Exactly. Like, no thanks. That's how you get assassinated.
We've burned.
I think we'll not negotiate anymore. Appreciate it.
We've, like, uniquely burned, I guess, like, the threat of American power in this conflict, but also, like, the promise of, like, American diplomacy and credibility. Like, both, like, at the same time. Like, it's astonishing.
What does Europe think about all this?
I.
You know, because we're supposedly there for, you know, nukes, right?
I guess.
But also, everything I've read says they don't have a nuke that can reach the continental United States.
No.
Maybe London.
No, well, they weren't even working towards building a nuclear weapon and they didn't have a delivery system. I mean, at best, they were somewhere between several months to several years away from developing one. And they had a self-imposed prohibition on developing a nuclear weapon. I mean, that's all, at this point, proven ancient history, you know?
So, you know, they didn't have anything, but like I said, so maybe they had some stuff that could breach Europe.
They sent ballistics, yeah. Ballistic missiles.
So, you know, what does Europe think? Are they like, "Yeah, thank God the US is over there, so now Iran can't bomb us"? Is that what they're saying?
Well, I think the.
It must be what they're saying, right?
Well, the Europeans want Trump to continue to fund the Ukrainians because they're just obsessed with that war. So I think a lot of them, excuse me, are continuing to tell Trump what he wants to hear. That, like, "This is great. We're glad you guys are doing this." Yeah, if you listen to someone, like the UK will say this. But, like, the French and some of the other European countries, they've kind of stayed out of this. Like, they don't want really anything to do with it. Like, most of these countries have already gotten burned by us before when we drug them off to wars in the Middle East. So most of them are sitting it out. But I think every now and again, you'll hear the Brits say, like, you know, they're all on board and Iran can't have a nuclear weapon and all the same talking points you hear from the Trump administration.
That's interesting. Where are they getting their energy from? Because we, I mean, didn't they, Russia cut them off or we told them they needed, you know what I mean? They were getting a bunch of energy from Russia. Oh, we still have Middle East. Oh, shit. America fucked that up too.
I mean, that's why there's the, yeah, we're approaching a worldwide energy crisis. I mean, you can't, I mean, I think it's very simple. I mean, it's big numbers, but it's relatively simple math. I mean, if you've got Russia was one of the world's biggest energy producers and then the Middle East was the other valve there. Like, both of them are unreliable now and heavily conflicted. There's still some oil and natural gas coming out, but not in the numbers that it was, that the world relied on. So the question is, like, how much longer can we continue to play this game? You know, like, what is it, I mean, and I think the fundamental question too is, like, is it worth it?
Like, who is better off right now that we're at war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is shut down sometimes, sometimes not, and very little oil and natural gas is getting out of it? Who's better off now because we're at war, we're running a proxy war in Ukraine against the Russians?
China.
Yeah. I mean, China's the big winner. And I guess Israel is the big winner. But, like, obstinctively, you'd be serving because America's doing the heavy lifting and all this and so are some of the European countries. You would think that, like, because our governments are going through all this hassle, that, like, the American people and, like, the European people and the folks in Britain, you know, are in a better position. But they're not. Like, they're suffering. And they said that they understand exactly why they're suffering on Tuesday. They showed the president, "No, no, no, we understand. We're not listening to your propaganda."
There's only so many times you can say that, like, everything is great. We don't believe you. You betrayed us. We have now voted against you. So it should be loud and clear to the president. Number one, like, just the results on the battlefield should be clear to the president. Like, this isn't working. And then the results that he got on Tuesday night where MAGA voters showed up, you know, with a lot of enthusiasm, like they didn't in 2024, but it was enthusiasm to vote against the guy that they had just elected in a landslide because they feel betrayed.
I can't even stand that word, MAGA.
Yeah, it's.
I can't even stand it. It's like, it makes me cringe just hearing it.
Yep.
So, I mean, what does Israel get out of this? Why are they so hell-bent on this?
I mean, this is.
And paying all our people off to, you know.
Yeah.
Go do this.
I mean, this is the final war for them, really, in the Middle East. They've always wanted America. Final war for them to get America in. I mean, they wanted us to take out Saddam. They wanted us to get rid of Assad. They wanted us to get rid of Qadhafi.
Why did they want us to get rid of all these people? Everybody, you know, goes on about this.
Yeah.
So just break it down. Why? Why did they want us to get rid of Saddam, Assad, Qadhafi?
Yeah. I mean, the short version is it's a combination between those are all Middle Eastern strongmen who were not going to get pushed around by the Israelis. There was also a lot of efforts by, like, the Ba'ath Party and Qadhafi to kind of unify.
What's the Ba'ath Party?
The Ba'ath Party is Saddam Hussein's political party, but also it's the political party of the Assad family. So they had, like, they're both Ba'athists, but they had, like, a beef where they, like, didn't like each other. But strong Middle Eastern. So the Ba'ath Party generally was secular. It said that people in the Middle East should be unified under kind of somewhat socialist principles, but still secular, not aligned based on ethnicity of, like, you're an Arab, you're Kurd, you know, you're Yazidi, et cetera, but under just the flag and the banner of Iraq or under Syria.
Very secular, very Western leaning. There was some socialist influence there as well. But it was also a threat to a lot of the Islamists in the region. And so it was kind of moving things more towards the Western model. But they propped up strongmen. Saddam Hussein was a strongman. Hafez Assad, Bashar al-Assad, they were strongmen. So you have the strongman issue where Israel doesn't want strong independent countries on its border that can fight it. You have the Iran angle too, post-1979, when the Islamic Revolution happened there, the Islamic Revolution, very hostile towards America and towards what they viewed as America's client state in the region, Israel, because the Iranians had good relations with Assad, not with Saddam.
We funded Saddam to fight against the Iranians. We kind of funded both sides of the Iraq-Iran war. And the Israelis were fine with that. I mean, that's kind of like their chaos model that they like. But when that war ended, they kind of had a double-header of a problem. They had a very strong Saddam Hussein, who actually had a lot of US support, and then they had a strong Iran under the Iranian Revolution. And the Iranians were aligned with Hafez Assad and then eventually Bashar al-Assad because the Assad family is part of, like, the Alawite sect, which is Shia.
And so they were aligned and supported, and they supported the Iranians, but they also supported Hezbollah in Lebanon, basically right in Israel's backyard. So the Israelis viewed the Assad regime as, you know, hostile and as a threat because they were aligned with Hezbollah. But also too, because in the 1967 war against Syria, the Israelis took the Golan Heights. People can fact-check me. I think it was '67. Took the Golan Heights and took Syrian land. And they've been occupying it basically ever since. And so there's a lot of friction and hostilities there as well.
So the Israelis basically wanted us to come in and help them take out the majority of their neighbor states, to expand the territory of Israel. Some people will say back to, like, the biblical definition, which, you know, people fight over that. Because if you read the Bible, I mean, like, the greater Israel can go all the way up to the Euphrates in Iraq. It's absolute insanity. But at least in our era, to expand its borders, to expand into Lebanon, definitely to take away the West Bank, definitely to take away Gaza.
So they needed us on board to accomplish all of that. So when we went into, so after 9/11, they basically already had this plan ready to go where they said, "Hey, not just," they kind of viewed Afghanistan as a sideshow, which is why we quickly pivoted. You know, Bin Laden escapes into Pakistan. And in very short order, you know, the US government's like, "No, we need to go to war in Iraq." Because the Israelis viewed Iran and Iraq as the two big threats. And there was a debate internally in Israel which they were going to lobby the US government for first.
Were they going to lobby for Iraq or were they going to lobby for Iran initially? And because of the logistics, how hard it would be to invade a country as big as Iran, they ended up supporting us going after Saddam. And that's why you see Benjamin Netanyahu going back to, like, 2002, testifying in front of Congress. He was out of government at the time, testifying in Congress why Saddam Hussein has links to al-Qaeda, why Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, all the same talking points that we heard, you know, regurgitated from the Bush administration that we're now hearing regurgitated about Iran because they wanted to use Iraq basically as a launchpad.
We screwed that up so badly and the Iranians outmaneuvered us there that we ended up, as you know, emboldening and putting a Shia government, because Iraq's majority Shia. The whole idea that we were going to, like, be able to put a puppet there was ridiculous anyways. But we ended up screwing up Iraq, leaving in a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. And so when we pulled out in 2011, under the first time we pulled out of Iraq, the Israelis are looking at the battlefield or they're looking at the map and they're like, "Well, now we basically have this big Shia crush that goes from Tehran through Baghdad all the way into Syria, right into our backyard with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And that's just unacceptable." And so then they got us on board with the dirty war to unseat Assad. And in order to do that, we funded the Sunnis, who we called moderate Syrian rebels. Turned out it was al-Qaeda, eventually became ISIS. You know, the rest is history. Assad eventually falls and now we've got a former ISIS member slash al-Qaeda member, US detainee in Buka running Syria. And as messed up as things are, like, he's actually, I think, doing an okay job. And that's, I mean, we could talk about that too because I think there's going to be another conflict here coming soon because the Israelis are not happy with the way that turned out.
So the Israelis are okay with, like, the constant regime change. They're okay with basically cutting off the head of whatever government and creating chaos to make sure that government doesn't get strong enough to eventually come after us.
Do these place, do these, do they show aggression towards Israel or is this their own paranoia?
Who? The.
Saddam, Qadhafi.
No, they did. They definitely showed aggression against Israel because they viewed Israel as the US client state in the region. I mean, the Syrians, the Iraqis, they all tried to fight Israel in 1967. You know, like, I think over time they did kind of come up with a happy median in there. But the Israelis, their school of thought was, "We have to go on the offense against all these different countries."
It hasn't been in a while.
No.
I mean, you know, it's interesting, you know, that so what do they, I mean, I ask everybody this, but, you know, what do they, what is Israel, our greatest ally?
Yeah.
What do they do for us?
They get us sucked into these wars that make defense contracts.
I mean, it's interesting because.
And they donate to politicians.
When you talk to people, you know, who don't look into this at all, they're like, "Well, they bring stability to the region." Really?
No, they bring constant.
They bring stability to the region?
No, it's constant war. I mean, like, we just laid out several of them and there's multiple layers to all those different iterations. And this is the final one. I mean, like, Iran is the last strong nation-state that actually opposes Israel. And so now they've gotten us sucked into this one. And what do we get out of it? I mean, we're getting nothing out of it. We've destroyed our reputation in the world, but really the Gulf, everything we just talked about, the petrodollar, et cetera. People are feeling the economic hardship here because of it. So we don't get much. I mean, you'll hear, and I even up until a year and a half ago, I believe this, we did get some decent intelligence from the Israelis.
The Israelis have a very proficient intelligence service. They're good at doing intelligence operations, human intelligence. They're really good at human intelligence. They're so good at it, as a matter of fact, we have allowed, and this is on us, we've allowed a lot of our capabilities to atrophy, especially our human intelligence and even a lot of our other, I'd say, more sensitive capabilities to atrophy because the Israelis, for a very long time, have come to us and said, "Hey, we'll do it for you." And, you know, much to our shame, we've accepted that without growing our own unilateral capabilities.
And so this is why it was a challenge in the lead-up to this war to have unilateral only American intelligence to kind of counter what the Israelis were saying. And the Israelis are good at doing targeted assassinations. They're very good at that. I mean, they've killed Hamas leaders in downtown Tehran by putting a bomb, like, in the guy's bed. I mean, that's some skill, right? It takes a long time to develop access and placement like that, human intelligence skills. But strategically, their strategic vision is so different than ours.
And so for lack of better terms, it's crazy. Americans, I think, we believe that we're willing to go fight, but we're fighting to, like, eventually have peace. The Israelis just view the constant conflict they're going to have over there as basically their norm. I mean, that's what, you know, the Netanyahu government has ran on. Hopefully the guy who just got elected, Gadi Eisencott, maybe he's going to chart a new path, but I don't really think so. I think the Israeli populace right now, especially after October 7th, they've been pretty radicalized and I think they believe that they're just going to be in, you know, constant conflict.
But none of their strategy seems to be working towards an eventual peace with any of their neighbors. It's really just this constant chaos that they're completely comfortable with. That seems to be the strategic objective that they're marching towards.
I mean, I keep hearing, I haven't heard it in a while, and like I said, I'm not nearsighted as what I used to be, but, you know, aggression towards Turkey. I've heard for a long time, you know, Turkey's next. What's that all about? Is that real or is that just internet bullshit?
No, that's very, I believe that is very real because once Iran's gone, the next threat they're going to have.
So this shit just never stops.
Exactly. It never stops. And the only reason they can do any of it is because we're backing them. So Turkey, obviously, they didn't like Assad. They made us basically get rid of Assad. Al-Shara when he split from ISIS and aligned with al-Qaeda, he eventually rebranded to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which, you know, had all the al-Qaeda guys basically rebrand. They were heavily backed by the Turks. The Turks backed them up in northern Syria. He eventually was able to get strong enough to take over the entire government. We acknowledge that, recognize the government.
He's been, I'm very skeptical of him because of his past. However, he has been trying to kind of hold the country together. He has integrated the Kurds, the former Syrian defense forces. He integrated them into the military. So he's doing kind of all the right things, but he's kind of the glue that holds the whole place together. Now, having a strong Syrian government on Israel's border is a threat to them to a certain extent, but especially one that is as closely tied with the Turks as al-Shara's government is.
And so you're already hearing a lot of Israeli propaganda and talking points talking about how, you know, there's a bunch of terrorists in Damascus, that there's a minority group called the Druze. There's some of them that are in Israel and some of them are in Syria as well. The Israelis are backing a lot of the Druze to go and have, and to fight the HTS, to fight al-Shara's guys. Now, al-Shara's guys are a lot of former jihadis and a lot of them, they did go down about a year, year and a half ago, they did go down into Sueda and basically conducted ethnic cleansing.
So there's like no good guys in the region, you know, in a common sense. So a lot of this is just your typical Middle Eastern one tribe against the other. But the Israelis are now trying to use the Druze. And we've heard them making overtures probably towards the Kurds, but the Kurds seem to be, you know, to their credit, they seem to be pretty committed to being part of Syria and finally having some peace. But we are seeing the Israelis basically do everything they can to destabilize that brand new government there. Because I think they want to fight a proxy war using the Druze and using other, you know, rented proxies essentially to go fight against Turkey's proxies, which is how they view al-Shara's guys, to destabilize that.
So to eventually suck the Turks into a prolonged counterterrorism insurgent fight inside of Syria to weaken Turkey eventually.
And so in short, basically what Israel wants is just instability throughout the entire region.
Yeah. They want to expand their borders.
Or maybe.
Yeah. Yeah, they want us on board for obviously the big one and then they want to be able to go and level Gaza, displace the people, conduct a genocide there, displace it, take over all that land, give them a chance. They want to do the same thing to the West Bank.
I mean, that's pretty much done, right?
I mean, Gaza, yeah, Gaza's destroyed.
It is leveled.
Gaza's destroyed. They've killed 70 to 100,000 people, depending on how you do the math. And now I guess they're going to go back in and rebuild it somehow. I mean, they're still, Hamas is still there. They're still dug into some of the tunnels. So there's still going to be more fighting. But yeah, Israel wants the flexibility to do that. They also want the flexibility to expand in Lebanon. I mean, they've been very, very aggressive in northern Lebanon. They want to hold, I mean, you had Netanyahu when he addressed the UN General Assembly, he's like talking to al-Shara and he says, you know, the Golan Heights, it's Israel's territory, like we took it.
You know, sorry, you can't have it back. So like, they just want to keep, they've had that for quite some time, but they want to keep expanding. But the only reason they can do that is because of us, you know? And so it's like, again, it's that fundamental question, like, who in America benefits from whether or not Israel controls Gaza or the Golan Heights?
Well, the people that have a relationship with APAC.
Right, exactly. Outside the DC beltway, nobody, but in the DC beltway, all the people with power because APAC and other parts of the Israeli lobby are funding them. And this is, I mean, this is why you're seeing the Israelis know that they're losing a lot of popular sentiment inside America. And so that's why you see Bibi saying like, okay, we don't need American aid anymore. Well, they're one or two steps ahead because they've already basically gotten our lawmakers, who they paid for throughout the course of their career, to essentially merge the most sensitive capabilities that we have in the Department of Defense and our intelligence community with the Israeli military and intelligence community inside the National Defense Authorization Act, that big phone book bill that funds the Pentagon and the IC every year.
There's section 219 that basically gives the Israelis unfettered access to some of our most sensitive programs, everything with quantum AI, ballistic missiles, everything that's sensitive. It makes them a co-equal. It makes them a part of it. So yeah, we may stop the nearly 4 billion that we give them in either arms sales or cash payments, but what are they going to get in return? They're not going to get that cash anymore, but now they're going to be part of all of this very expensive R&D. So it's going to be worth way more than 4 billion. And then in the Senate on the Intelligence Authorization Act, section 266, I think, there's a provision to basically give Mossad unfettered access to the intelligence community, but in particular in the CIA.
And I think they already have too close of a relationship.
Too close.
Right? But this is going to be a huge ROI. And the Israelis are doing this because they're smart. They understand American domestic politics, that Trump is probably the last pro-Israel president that they're going to have in the White House for quite some time. They even know in this next election cycle, most candidates aren't going to be able to blatantly take money from APAC. They're going to have to start new organizations and funnel it in a different way. But money's fungible. They'll find some new way to keep the wheels of influence greased.
Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's just, geez.
The interesting thing about the section 266 and 219 is this Congress that is now a lame duck Congress that's going to be out in January, they're going to try and pass it between now and January.
Pass what?
Try and pass the National Defense Authorization Act.
I thought it already passed.
It hasn't passed yet.
It hasn't passed.
It has not passed yet. So people can still call their senators and their congressmen and say like, do not vote for that. I mean, that's what should happen immediately right now. Like Trump should, I mean, the vice president, if he wants any chance in 2028, he should be saying, because he's technically, you know, he is the president of the Senate, he should be saying to the Republican caucus like, strip that out of there right now. Otherwise, this is going to be used against us all in 2028. That's what he should be saying. Just purely politically, strip it out. Otherwise, they're going to wield it against us as a weapon.
Never going to say it.
I agree with you. That's probably not going to happen.
I love that bold tweet that he put out all of a sudden after the midterms. Good job, buddy.
And he said it. I mean, he said like, well, guys, I think our relationship with Israel might have had something to do with this. It's like, well, yeah. I mean, so he should, so right now he should lean into it. I mean, he should just lean into it and say like, we heard you, America, and we're going to end the war and we're going to strip out section 219 and 266 and we're going to change our relationship with Israel. But people aren't going to trust us.
They can't give a shit about anything but the next election.
Yeah, he's got two years to prove otherwise. But right now, I mean, right now I think what you're saying reflects the sentiment of a lot of people. And so if he doesn't turn it around in a very bold way, that's going to be a reputation.
I don't think he's any different than anybody else. So that's why a lot of people didn't even vote. You know.
Or voted against.
Yeah, or voted against.
I mean, there's a lot of people, I mean, I've talked to them. There's a lot of people out there who have MAGA hats at home and probably went to a Trump rally that last Tuesday, they went out and they voted for Democrats who they don't like. But they voted for the guy they don't like to hurt the guy that hurt them. Like, I think that's just basic human nature.
Yeah. I mean, I don't feel like anybody's excited, you know what I mean? Well, I'm sure some people are, but I don't think any moderates, independents, I don't think anybody's like, it kind of makes me sad to watch everybody looking for the next guy.
Yeah.
Like, there isn't another guy.
No, we need people to be engaged and proactive.
Like, do they really think anything's going to change? Aren't all these other people funded by APAC too?
Yeah. 100%.
Like, it's just.
We have to make the issue of any kind of corporate funding, but funding from APAC, we have to make that so toxic that the money's not even worth it. I think the only silver lining I see out of all this is that people showed the politicians that they see exactly what's going on. Had they sat out the vote, I don't know if they would have gotten that message, but because so many people went out and they spite voted essentially, they said, we see exactly what you're doing. We see that you broke the promises and now we're going to punish you for it.
So I think that actually sets a really high bar. And this is going to be a challenge for the Republicans. It sets a high bar that says like, you have to put forth somebody who's going to build trust, but building trust is going to be a constant evolution. It's never going to.
It's kind of the same thing that just happened the other way, right? I mean, it's just the pendulum just getting farther and farther.
It is, but I think and I hope that going forward, we can actually have people that have a record of standing up to the corruption, standing up to everything that's wrong with the way government is right now, but also who like put it on themselves if they do get back into government to constantly prove that they're doing what they ran on. And just having an open dialogue. I mean, the way that like when this administration came into power, the way that they boxed out anybody who would, you know, put a critical eye on them and then started, you know, paying all the influencers, only going on certain channels.
I just think that was such a mistake. Not just a mistake in messaging, but it was a mistake in like they never got any feedback. Had they been getting constant feedback, none of this would have happened. You know? So, and I think with like social media and having people that are more engaged and long-form podcasts, I think you have a real opportunity to have kind of constant feedback from the people that put you in power. So, I mean, I don't know. The way people voted the other night, it's dark because it did put a bunch of Democrats in power who, a lot of whom I think, you know, they're going to vote to open the borders, they're going to vote for a bunch of bad things.
But it should be such a shock to Republicans that they take much, much different actions. And Democrats too, the Democrats should see that like this could happen again to them.
This could be a huge win for Democrats.
It could be a huge win, yeah.
A massive win.
And if they listen, and man, one of the most tragic.
I mean, it already was obviously.
Yeah.
But I mean, this could like really, they could turn this into some longevity here and really win.
They could all win.
Like really big. If they just, if they just, if Democrats just become more moderates.
Yeah.
And just listen to like the middle section, you know, the independent section.
Yep.
Don't go too far this way. Keep out of this shit. And just, you know what I mean? Like this is, they could decimate the Republican Party.
The American people voted it.
Decimate it. They already did.
Yeah.
But I mean, if they really played it right and did the people right.
Yeah.
It'd be over. I think.
Yeah.
Republican Party would be extinct.
Yeah. Being against foreign wars, foreign influence, and then economic populism, that's the winning ticket. I mean, if you look at some of the Democrats that won, the ones that were like the most exciting, Al-Sayyed in Michigan, John Ossoff in Georgia, if you listen to some of their speeches without knowing like if they were an R or a D, you'd think they were like MAGA candidates. Because literally like, I mean, Al-Sayyed had this viral clip about how he would never vote to send, you know, money overseas to kill other people's kids. He wants American money to be here to support American kids.
That's like a Donald Trump 2016, you know, campaign speech going against the globalist Hillary Clinton or the globalist Jeb Bush. You know, like that's the frustrating thing about it is Republicans under Trump, for a while there, we were leaning much more towards America first, economic populism, do what's right for the American worker. This is one of the big reasons why we want, you know, less immigrants coming into the country is because we want to put the American worker first. There was that unification between like the folks who had been former Bernie economic supporters and the Trump campaign.
It was the whole reason, you know, bringing Tulsi Gabbard, who had ran for president as a non-interventionist, pro-peace Democrat president, bringing her into the admin. So we had this great coalition that was really diverse, that was built on like a non-interventionist foreign policy and economic populism. We handed that on a silver platter to the Democrats. Now the Democrats are running with it. I still think that that is a, there's a golden opportunity in 2028 for Republicans to pick that up and to cast out all the neocons and say very plainly like there's nothing conservative whatsoever about starting another foreign war.
There's nothing conservative about allowing a foreign government to influence our government and foresee our own people.
Well, polymargot.com has a market on which party will win the White House in 2028. You've argued that voters are rejecting their Iran war. How much do you think Republican chances depend on Trump ending it and what would he have to do to win back voters who feel he broke his promise and keep America out of wars?
What would the president have to do to end it right now or to.
What would he have basically, what would he have to do to win back voters?
In the war. I mean, that's a big one. And that's why like if he did do what I've been advising since I resigned, declare victory and walk away, there would be a lot of loud voices screaming at him that like he had just handed a victory to Iran. But most people would say, oh, he listened to me. Oh, okay. He listened. And they really wouldn't care about the details. Is Iran going to charge for the stray deport? They wouldn't care about that. They would just say that the president like heard them and he said, okay, I'm going to end this war.
Man, so you think there's a real possibility that a Republican could get elected to the president?
If we keep on this.
In 2028.
If the president doesn't change anything between now and 2028, then he is kind of screwing over the Republicans in 2028. If he changes, we've still got an uphill battle. I think if we have people who are not wed to this war and are not wed to like the old neocon ideas and we can truly run on being, you know, we are the party that's not going to get us into any more foreign wars. We're the party that's going to reject the Israel lobby, the corporate special interest groups. We're going to focus on the American people. Then I think we have a fighting chance. I do agree that like the brand of having an R by your name is being severely damaged and more damaged every minute that goes on that we're in this war.
Man, I think, I don't think there's even a possibility that a Republican could get elected as president of the United States in '28. I think so much damage has been done. And I mean, look, not that, I mean, just like the last administration, I thought so much damage had been done. There is no way.
Yeah.
Now here we are two years later.
Yep.
And I mean, the distrust just continues to grow. No trust is getting better.
That's the problem.
They haven't accumulated any trust. They've just, the distrust is what's accumulating.
Yeah.
Through administration after administration after administration.
Yep.
It's just more and more and more distrust.
Yep.
And I don't think there's anything he could do. Everybody will always view him as a lying piece of shit. I don't think there's anybody in this administration that could even have like realistically hope to get elected.
Yeah. Right now.
Like J.D. Vance coming out after this?
Yeah.
Give me a fucking break.
Yeah.
Everybody knows what that was. That is an attempt to save your own ass. Now there's these rumors of, and I don't know, I think Rubio addressed it, but rumors of him resigning. Have you seen that?
Oh, Rubio? Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I saw the rumors of Rubio resigning.
He said he wasn't going to, but I mean, and I said that, I've been saying this for a long time. If you come under this administration, you will always have that, it is a stain. It's a stain on your resume that you will never get off. The only person that I think will be able to wash it off is you.
Yeah, I mean.
Because you stuck to your values, your morals, and what you believe in and what you think is best for this country. You didn't sell out. It was a hard thing to do. Nobody else this go-around has had the balls to do that. Everybody else is just a yes man or made up some bullshit excuse. Or now, now that they know it's safe, that it was a total wipeout like Vance.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you didn't know that before?
Now the world knows that, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I generally agree with you, but the space we have is still two years. They still have two years. The Democrats might do crazy Democrat things. Got two years. I mean, if Trump, I mean, I know I'm probably just being too optimistic. If Trump and Vance decided today they were going to turn everything around, we'd at least have a fighting chance in 2028. And it'd be the right thing to do by the country.
I think we already went through this though. How would they turn it around?
Look, the president's still.
You know what I mean? Like we're talking about potentially the end. We're talking about begging to keep the petrodollar breathing.
Yeah.
And the only, remember, we just went over this. The only avenue we have is threatening them militarily or threatening that we unleash our own oil reserves, which we know that's not going to happen.
If we ended the war though, I think we'd have a lot of credibility with them. And I think we'd just have more, I think we'd have more wiggle room in the, I guess, in the agreement going forward. But look, they've got two years, you know, for them just to sit here and to continue to double down. They know what doesn't work. If they keep doubling down on what doesn't work, then you're right. They are condemning every Republican in 2028. And they're basically getting a Democrat president.
And I mean, there's just so much more to go off of too, other than the war. You know, there is the MAHA movement to make America healthier. That shit went out the window a long time ago.
Yeah.
I mean, I brought Zack Lon. Did he get elected?
No.
Zack Lon?
Unfortunately not.
Man, what a great guy he is.
He's great.
That sucks. I really liked him.
Yeah.
His heart was in the right place. But yeah, so the MAHA, I mean, they gave immunity to the pesticide companies, the Epstein stuff. I mean, there's just so much more to go off of as a Democrat or an independent. You know, I think it's definitely, if there's a time for a third party, it's now.
Yeah.
But let's take a quick break.
Okay.
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What do you think about Stephen Miller?
This can be.
Before I ask that, actually.
Yeah.
So why did he, is this just optics? It's got to be just optics. Why did he get rid of Susie Wiles?
Well, I mean, she was the driving force behind like the, not just the chief of staff role, but like also the political operation. She was campaign manager. So I think the strategy that we talked about, prioritizing the needs of the lobbyists in order to get the money to win the midterms. Well, obviously that strategy didn't work. So I think he needed to fire somebody. I think he needed to kind of blame somebody for the midterms.
I'm not saying she's good, but I'm just curious.
No, no, no.
Like why just.
Everybody's talking about a fall guy. You hear a lot about Hegseth being a fall guy. It's like you're the fall guy. Like there is no fall guy. It's you.
Right. I mean, my question is why.
You are the problem.
Why haven't more people been fired is my question. I mean, especially like this was such a massive intelligence failure. His entire intelligence team should be gutted. And the people who got us into this war, they should be removed. The people who are deeply wed to the war, I think they should be removed too. Because his goal right now should be, I don't think it is, but his goal should be to get us out of the war. It's hard to have the same commanders who are committed to like just give me five more minutes and I'll win this thing. I think the easiest thing to do, the best thing to do is just to replace them with people whose mandate is actually getting us out of it.
But he's not doing that. He's only replaced one person who Susie, I think Susie might solve a lot of the cultural issues because Susie was a very organized, a very experienced political fighter. And she did maintain access to the president very, very tightly. And she created a culture that I think is, I mean, toxic is the wrong way to put it because it's just destructive. She created a culture in which bringing the president any bad news or having any friction in front of the president was not allowed.
And if you brought things that were, you know, that were going to cause friction to the president or any kind of like bad news, you were asked not to participate, you know, anymore. And I can get into my own personal example of that. But this was the culture that she created in the White House. You've heard other people come out and talk about this as well. And this really affected the information flow going to the president. What is your personal example?
So my personal example of this, it's interesting. It ties into kind of all of this. I had a major issue with, not just me, myself and Tulsi when she was the DNI. We were concerned that a lot of the information that was being given to the president, it wasn't being caveated properly to say where it came from, especially a lot of the Israeli information that was making its way to the president. It was being briefed to the president like, sir, this is the intelligence. Because the president gets robust intelligence briefings usually given to him by the DNI and by a professional briefer.
And you've only got so much time, so you can't go into granular detail with every single, you know, intelligence report. But I have always thought, and this kind of goes back to like the CIA analytical tradecraft, that you need to say what your source is upfront. You don't need to identify who it is if it's a human source, but you need to say where are we getting this information from? Why are we getting this information? Like how is it collected? Just so that you understand when you're the person getting the information, like what's the broader picture here?
A lot of times information was presented to the president as just the information. And a lot of times that's okay because you don't have a lot of time. But when it's something, if we're making a decision on whether or not to go to war or not, it's critical that the president actually understands, hey, this information came from a country that wants you to go to war with another country. So you're getting an intelligence report about all the bad things Iran is doing, but it was never being explained to the president that that information, lock, stock, and barrel, all came from Israel.
Not only did it come from Israel, we really don't have a lot of unilateral, like our own intelligence collection that can confirm or deny it. So it should be explained to him, sir, this information came from Israel. The Israelis very much want us to go get into a war with Iran. Here's the information. So then the president just understands where it's coming from. I had a personal experience where there was information being briefed to the president that was coming directly from the Israelis about Iran. And I interjected and I said, hey, sir, just for your awareness, all of that information on this topic about the Iranians, it all comes from the Israelis.
And we don't have a lot of ways to independently verify it. And, you know, the president said, okay. And the CIA director disagreed with me. And I said, no, you can look at the reports. This is all categorized in a way that you could check to see that it all came from the Israelis. And CIA director, I think, probably didn't like that. But he was adamant that, no, no, you know, we have other information that confirms this. And it was like, okay, well, where is that information? And he couldn't present anything.
And he also couldn't prove that the intelligence report in question was not all from Israel. It was indeed all from Israel. So the president at least got that context there. I was promptly told as I left the Oval Office that day that, hey, we're not going to need you at the next intelligence briefing.
Don't ever come back.
In a polite way. In a polite way, just say, hey, we're just not going to need, you know, because I wasn't principal cabinet. So they just said, hey, we're not going to need you at the next briefing. We'll let you know if we need any, you know, counterterrorism advice or whatever, which is fine. That's the president and his staff's prerogative. But for it to be based on that topic, especially considering what happened a couple of months later when we let the Israelis drag us in. And we consistently saw this. This was just an incident that happened in front of the president. And I think Susie, for whatever reason, either she didn't want me telling the president that, or she didn't want the friction between me and Ratcliffe.
I don't know what the case is.
I mean, so how did, I mean, you brought up Ratcliffe's history, you know, in the last admin. Can you go over it again?
Yeah, so in, I mean, he was a congressman from Texas. And then in the last admin, in the first Trump administration, he was brought in to be the DNI. At the time, the intelligence community itself was like really going heavily after President Trump. There was all the Russiagate nonsense that took place. A lot of the reporting that eventually ended up clearing the president or showed that the intelligence community was conspiring against the president, that existed within the DNI.
And Ratcliffe had access to that. So Tulsi declassified a lot of that last year. But all of that was in the DNI when Ratcliffe was the DNI.
So it should have been released then.
It should have been released in 2019.
And then the COVID stuff. What was that?
And then COVID, so COVID, the narrative coming out of the government was this is, you know, from a wet market in China, et cetera, et cetera. It's a big mystery. Where did it come from? The intelligence community knew it came from a lab leak. And there was documentation coming from the ICE, from the National Intelligence Council that sits underneath the DNI that it was a lab leak.
And so it sounds like this guy was maybe working against Trump.
I would say working against Trump or just letting the ICE run him. I don't know.
So how did this guy get picked this go around?
Well, he's very popular of APAC. I mean, literally you have the president of APAC saying, we got the CIA director installed. So APAC was key to Ratcliffe's campaigns when he was in the house. And DNI, he did what he was told. He let the intelligence community keep doing exactly what the intelligence community wanted to do. He didn't take anything to the president of any kind of consequence. And then he was rewarded with an even more powerful organization, the CIA. And since then, you've seen, I mean, President Trump has publicly said he wants to end the war in Ukraine, yet we are continuing to supply the Ukrainians with not just weaponry, but also key intelligence that is now being used to strike Russian energy infrastructure.
So even though the president says he wants to end that war, it seems to me that the intelligence community is continuing on that war because they haven't been stopped.
Yeah. Yeah, he told me that he would have it ended before he ever took office.
Yeah, and had he come in and been able to cut off all the support we're giving the Ukrainians, he had a good chance of making that happen. However, he didn't manage his CIA director and his CIA director is letting the agency, you know, run him ragged. I mean, like look, Ratcliffe has no background other than being the DNI. He's got no background in the intelligence community. So the CIA is full of case officers and the CIA wants to continue running their operations. After the war on terror ended, where did all of those resources and where did the next war go? It was Ukraine.
It's their pet project.
Do you think the DNI should have former backgrounded intelligence?
I think it's helpful. And if they don't, they need to bring in people that actually have the on-the-ground experience. And I think because the CIA is the top dog in the IC, I think you need people who have case officer experience because the case officers still run the CIA. And I think nowadays just the way that leadership has been structured inside the building there, I think you need guys that have experience with special activities center because the wars, the GWAT promoted a lot of ground branch guys, a lot of SAC guys because they were doing the hardest missions, the most critical missions.
And so now a lot of them are in senior leadership positions. And you get a guy like Ratcliffe who doesn't have any background in the IC whatsoever. He just thinks it's cool that now he's like the chief's my master. They're going to have him eaten out of their hand.
I'm just curious because, you know, Tulsi also no backgrounded intelligence.
No background, but she's a soldier, so she understands chain of command. She understands the president's command or intent. I mean, she's been overseas. So she came in very aggressively and actually said, we're going to do oversight of the IC. And that's why the IC fought her every step of the way. Tulsi brought in myself and many others that had experience in the IC that wanted to make change, most of whom have subsequently left or been kicked out of the government, the folks that she brought in that were doing a lot of the key investigations to hold the IC accountable. So I don't think it's necessarily critical that you have that person has the experience.
I think it's very helpful if they do. If we're going to get these organizations under control, I'd say the same thing about the FBI. Like you can't just have somebody who's like always wanted to be the FBI director become the FBI director because then the FBI is going to run rough shot over them. They're going to give them a badge and they're going to take them to the shoot house and be like, now you're in charge. And then they're basically going to get to continue to do all the things that they were doing before. And that's what's taking place right now. Why we've seen zero reform whatsoever from the FBI. So you need people who actually have experience in these organizations. If you think back to the first Trump administration, the first target of the deep state was Mike Flynn.
Because General Flynn had, I mean, he had extensive combat military experience. He was the JSOC, J2, and then he was the head of the DIA. And he was coming out swinging. He knew exactly how the IC ran and they went after him, you know, first and foremost. So if we don't have people that understand these organizations, but then have the courage to actually go in and make the real reforms, but they've also got to be empowered by the president. The president actually has to have a desire to have true reform. He can't let the donors pick who his CIA director, his national security and secretary of state are going to be and his sec def.
I mean, it's going to be hard to keep the donors at bay when they're donating over a hundred billion dollars to you.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, this era of exposure that we've had, my only hope is that people now, they identify that money. There's so many different researchers now on the internet that are just like random people hanging out in their living room doing this research that this stuff starts to get exposed. And now when politicians start taking that money, those politicians become toxic to make the money not even worth taking.
And I just, you know, to go back to the, you know, the 2028 election, I just, I just, I just, I don't see how a Republican could win. I just don't see it. I mean, so many things, it's just everything is backwards. I mean, if you look at even the, you know, the Islamist stuff, you know, now that's all we hear.
Yeah.
All we hear is Islamist stuff. And look, I was over there. You were over there.
Yeah.
I know these guys are bad guys. You know, not all of them, but I mean, there are terrorists. It's bad. It's a bad deal. You know, and I don't think it's necessarily the primary focus right now, but you know, we did a, I mean, Islamists gave him a jet, right? Qatar gave him a jet. He didn't have a problem with that. He's parading Assad, is that his name? The guy that, yeah, it's my bad. He's parading him around the capital.
The guy that chopped heads off. And, but it wasn't a problem then. Now all of a sudden it's a problem. Like it's just backwards land. Like everything is backwards. Like I just watched you parade around the worst of the worst.
Right.
Human beings that come out of Islamic terrorist organizations. I watched you fucking do it. And now here you are, like the big warning. Like what the fuck are we supposed to believe, Joe?
I mean.
And we watch all the congressmen and all the senators just fall into line. This is what we're doing. This is what. How can anybody trust that?
I think the Republicans realized they had nothing to run on whatsoever. So they drummed up this like Sharia law, Islamo, communism, nonsense, just to fearmonger people. But again, the American people didn't fall for it because like the Republicans got stomped. So I think we have to go back to like running on what the fundamental issues are. If we have any hope whatsoever, I mean, to get out there and to yell that like, you know, Sharia is the biggest issue and people can't afford to put gas in their car because we launched another stupid Middle East war. That's just like calling your voters stupid, you know, to their face.
So I think the Republicans should like abandon that and just like pretend that never happened again. They just shouldn't talk about that anymore. There's fundamental issues with our immigration system for sure. I mean, if you're worried about like some other culture coming over here and our country being overran by them, you should be because our immigration system is entirely broken. But unfortunately, because this administration prioritized another foreign war, we didn't put the necessary attention on really reforming our immigration system, doing the mass deportations, getting the worst people out of our country.
Another foreign war got all the attention. So until the Republicans address that and they address like why we got sucked into the war, that was the donor money coming from the pro-Israel lobby. Like if they don't address that, then they're going to continue to lose.
I mean, do you think Democrats will address that?
I don't, I mean, it's going to be hard for the Democrats too. Like.
That's what I'm saying.
It's a broken two-party system. Yeah, I mean.
None of us are invited to.
None of us are invited. I mean, that's why I think there's a need for real, real reform. Otherwise, it'll just keep, you know, flip-flopping back and forth between the two parties. And most of what the two parties do, they don't disagree. It's an illusion of choice. They want us fighting over the social issues. And some of the social issues are very important, but at the national level, when it comes to like the commander in chief, the White House, a lot of the social issues don't matter because actually the president doesn't really have a lot of like authority over them. What matters is how the economy is structured and our foreign policy. But really, I mean, the foreign policy, I think this administration proves that what people on like the Ron Paul, right, and people on like even like almost the Green Party have been saying for a very long time, that in Washington, DC, there's no policy but foreign policy.
Like the only thing that matters at the end of the day in the White House is foreign policy because they spend all their efforts on that. That's why a lot of the domestic agenda of the Trump administration just like fell by the wayside or just simply didn't happen at all.
Do you think an independent party has any chance at all?
Well, if you could put independents on the ballot, I think independents would win up and down ticket because people, like we just said, are mad at the Republicans and the Democrats. As long as you had good candidates that ran on common sense issues, I think they would do very, very well, probably with a lot less money. The problem is both Republicans and Democrats realize that a third independent party is a major threat. After Ross Perot in '90, they realized he was a threat and they've basically made it almost impossible at the state level to get enough, to get on the ballot in enough states to get 270 Electoral College votes.
So there's some talk right now in the Libertarian Party of taking over the Libertarian Party because the Libertarian Party still has ballot access in most states of taking over the Libertarian Party and having that be like the new independent party. The problem is they still have ballot access issues right now too. I mean, everybody remembers the Kennedy campaign. One of the big reasons why Kennedy endorsed Trump is because he couldn't get on the ballot. I mean, he had spent millions of dollars, I think close to 20 million on lawsuits.
People can fact-check that. I don't know exactly how much it was, but it was millions of dollars to try and sue their way essentially onto the ballot in enough states to win the presidency. And they didn't have it. So he ended up, you know, doing the right thing and making the Trump coalition. But for now, our two-party system has blocked out any chance of a real formidable independent ticket. That's why I'm still, as mad as I am at the Republican Party, I'm still saying like the Republican Party still is actually our best hope. And the Republican Party, because the way that they structure their primaries, they don't have super delegates like the Democrats do.
Like the Democrats have proven that like they don't even need to have a primary. They were just like, oh, it's Kamala now. Like they didn't even have a primary. That those rules don't exist within the Republican Party. There's still an actual primary where voters' voices can be heard. So I think for now, in our imperfect system, our best bet is probably with the Republican side.
Shit. That doesn't give me much hope, Joe.
Yeah. No, it's, yeah, it's rough. It's rough. But I don't know. I think this era has exposed so much that one of two things are going to happen. People are going to check out like the younger generation. Like I think people our age and older, they still have some trust in institutions. And so there's still going to be good Americans that go out and like they vote and they're Republicans or they're Democrats because my dad was, my grandfather was. People younger than us, man, especially like the 20-year-olds, like they've grown up in a world where all the institutions are corrupt and broken and they've seen it like on full display. So if we don't give them something to believe in and bring them over like basically to our side, I think a lot of them are just going to check out and they're not going to participate.
And then that's going to have massive ramifications throughout our entire system.
I'm almost 40. I have zero trust in any institution.
Yeah.
Do you?
No, I don't have any, especially after working at them. But I still remember an era like when we grew up.
I remember.
3911 where I did trust them. And I think it was a beautiful thing. And I think our country was and still is an awesome thing. And I think if we get good people back in government and we have enough accountability, it's not just getting good people in. We need the constant accountability from the people who are engaged, who are engaged in the process, who are looking at the actions that those in government are taking, where they're getting their money from. I do think we then have a potential to turn things around and so that when our kids become adults, there actually are these institutions, there is this country.
One of my biggest fears, one of the biggest reasons why I haven't just like, you know, gone off into the woods of my family and, you know, focused only on that is because I am afraid of facing a fate like the boomer generation. And the boomer generation, like they grew up in like the golden era of America. And we all give boomers a hard time because like things were economically easier for them. After Vietnam, there wasn't any big wars they had to fight, et cetera. But I feel bad for the boomers because right now they're kind of approaching the back end of their life right now.
And they're seeing, oh man, we lived these great lives, but we're leaving a chaotic and broken world for our kids and for our grandchildren. And they don't have enough time on the clock, most of them anyways, don't have enough time left on the clock to turn that around. And they're older now. They don't have the energy they used to. So I think right now, like while people, like those of us, especially those of us who fought in the wars and we felt the betrayal, we lived through it, we buried our friends because of the betrayals, like we've got a window right now where we are literally the adults in charge, regardless of where we are in society, whether we're in government, outside government, whatever, we're the ones that are in charge.
We can fix this so that when we're in our 70s and our 80s, our kids are still living in like the United States of America as we knew it, as opposed to looking at us and saying, what did you guys do? Like why didn't you fix this? What kind of country are you handing me?
How do you, I mean, how do you think we fix it?
I think it's getting people engaged. I mean, it's getting people engaged. It's making it so that the corporate PAC moneys, the APAC, the Israel lobby, the, you know, all big pharma, all these organizations, that their money becomes so toxic for politicians to take. The politicians can't take the money and they actually have to run on their own ideas. They have to run on their own track record and then hold them accountable once they're in office. Hold them accountable every single day. Stay engaged, you know, demand constant access to information. In this era, I mean, there's no reason why our leaders, you know, can't be doing far more to engage directly with, you know, the American people and get a good pulse check.
I mean, again, another tragedy of this administration is this administration had every single podcaster and influencer on speed dial and could have gotten constant pulse checks, you know, on pretty much everything on any given day of the week. And instead, they put themselves in a bubble and they only let the people with the biggest checks into the room. So I think as long as we can reverse that, and we're going to have to be really diligent at going after the corruption in our government. I think corruption and just general distrust of the institutions, it's one of the biggest issues that people have. The Iran war like manifested a lot of that because of the Israeli influence.
But I think a real willingness and a real mandate to go after just all the blatant corruption within our government, within the intelligence community, I think that's something that can inspire people. But the thing is, then we actually have to do it. We have to have the courage to go in those institutions and have real accountability.
Man, I just, I think they did, I think they had the pulse check. You don't think they had the pulse check?
Well, a handful of them did, but a lot of them went in their own little world. They thought because Trump won with this massive mandate, I mean, they essentially got high on their own supply, which I think is easy. I think if you've been successful, you've been very successful, it's easy to get high on your own supply, right? Like, I mean, we saw this all the time in the SEAL teams or in, you know, in SF. Like I saw like guys get their green beret. It's like, oh, man, I'm a green beret now. It's like, you know, hey man, nobody really cares that you're a freaking green beret. But the guys who got high on their own supply, who ran around and made that their identity, that one accomplishment for the rest of their career, they usually didn't have the best careers.
The administration essentially did the same thing.
I feel like I always have a pulse check.
Yeah, I mean.
It's important.
I do. Yeah, 100%.
And I know for a fact some of these people have a pulse check.
Yeah.
But they don't listen.
Yeah.
You know, if you tell them what they don't want to hear, they don't, it's just, it's like they don't even give a shit.
That was the attitude, you know? And then Tuesday, they saw the result of that. So a lot of them did just insulate themselves though. They got in that little world. Like the White House is incredible.
You can't tell me that you think the economy is doing good while your daughter is buying private islands with fucking bunkers in it. Like why would your daughter be looking at a private island with bunkers in it?
Yet they'll roll.
Because she thinks the U.S. is doing great?
Yeah. And yet they'll roll out the press secretary who says the problem is that the younger generation has a silver spoon in their mouth. You know, I mean, like I'm telling you, like the White House is like the, it was an honor to work there. It's historic. But there's something weird in the air, for lack of better terms. I mean, you can really get into your own bubble where everything is, it's just a self-licking ice cream cone. You know, there's not a lot of pulse checking that goes on in there. And again, a lot of this is leadership culture. This is why I have a little bit of optimism about getting rid of Susie, because there was this, you know, like Trump responds really well to like flattery and hearing how great he is, but people just took that to like the nth degree and that became the entire culture.
Like just tell the president, he's the one who won the election. He survived all these, you know, assassination attempts and they try to throw him in jail. You know, whatever the president wants, let's just give it to him without giving him any bad news. And so that just became this cycle where it was impossible to bring any kind of bad news to the president. It became an echo chamber and they lost touch. I mean, you're right though. They had the ability to call you or, I mean, name it. Like they had every influencer, every podcaster, you know, if they wanted granular details about how people were feeling, they easily could have gotten it.
But I think because of that bubble there, they just stayed in their own bubble and they didn't even think to ask. I mean, you had Trump out there just saying things are great, we're in the golden era constantly and people believed it.
I asked you what you thought about Stephen Miller.
So this could go either way. And again, I'm going to give you the optimistic version first. If Trump wants to turn things around, he should listen to Miller because Stephen Miller, I know like the media likes to make a cartoon out of Miller, like he's this crazy guy that's just going to round up everybody and deport them. Miller's background, I think he's like the longest serving member of the Trump team. He was on like the 2015 Trump team. He was a key speechwriter for Trump.
So articulating what MAGA America First is, a lot of those words and ideas, like I like to say it's like Trump's intuition, but a lot of it was Miller's words. And Miller actually, I think, does have a good pulse check on the base, on the American people. I think he understands that like the Iran war wasn't popular. He understands because he's an immigration hawk. He understands and Trump ran on build the wall immigration and everybody in 2015 and '16 said that's a losing issue.
It's going to polarize people, et cetera. They said the same thing in 2024 and Trump got elected twice, making no wars in immigration, you know, some of his key tenets. And Miller really understands that. And, you know, I didn't interact with Miller a ton, but enough. He, I think he, I mean, I know that he knew going into the Iran war that this was bad. Like this was not a good thing. However, now the downside of Miller, I would say, is that he is like a hardcore Trump loyalist. And so I think he can fall prey to just make the president happy and the president knows best.
And you know, obviously you're working for the guy. So at the end of the day, he's the president. He says he wants something. Your job is to give it to him or resign. If Miller has, and I don't know one way or another if he does or he doesn't, if Miller has like the courage to go to the president and say like, I am going to be the polar opposite of Susie Wiles. I am going to tell you bad news. I am going to bring in people to put in front of you that have two different opinions. I'm going to tell you how bad things are. I'm going to tell you how unpopular this war is.
Do you think Trump could even actually handle that?
If it's coming from someone who's been loyal to him for so long, I think he could.
I mean, this is a guy that wasted his time redoing all the plaques.
I know. I know.
He's such a narcissist.
Yeah. If he cares about his legacy and he wants a legacy of being a good president, I mean, he needs to really, he needs to listen to Miller and Miller needs to pull out the great speeches that he wrote that had Trump's vision going back to like 2015. People can fact-check me on this too, but Trump's original inauguration speech in 2017 when he came into office, I think is a fantastic speech. I think it's called the American Carnage Speech. It articulates what the MAGA agenda is and the vision for America.
I'm pretty sure Miller wrote that thing or he was at least one of the key writers in it. I think Miller should bring out some of those key speeches that he wrote for Trump that got him elected and sit him down and be like, here's how we get back to this. We can make this your legacy or we can make Tuesday night your legacy. That's your choice. But if Miller falls prey to, I just want to make the president happy and I want the president to always say nice things about me, which is the culture in the White House, then it's going to be no change from what we have with Susie Wiles. And another good thing about Miller is he's not a lobbyist.
Susie Wiles is a career lobbyist. Miller literally has been a staffer and he's worked with President Trump. So I'm sure he knows donors here and there, but he's not the donor's guy that I know of. I could be wrong. Someone can pull up some whatever research, but to my knowledge, like he's not a lobbyist. Like he's a base MAGA guy. So, you know, I know I'm being optimistic here, but I'm hoping that this could start to turn the tide.
Have you seen the stuff with Jensen Wang?
No, I don't think so.
Sleeping with a Chinese spy?
No, I haven't seen that.
Oh man, you got to take a look at that.
Who is it?
Nvidia.
Oh, Nvidia. Oh yes, I'm sorry. Yes, yes. Nvidia CEO.
What do you think of that?
I mean.
I brought on so many tech guys on the show and that's a question that I've asked a lot about the insertion of Chinese intelligence assets in the Silicon Valley. And now here we are, one of the top dudes.
Yeah. I mean, look, China's, they prioritize, I'd say the important thing. I mean, this is what they prioritize. We've been prioritizing Israel's wars in the Middle East. Meanwhile, China's running, you know, pretty sophisticated, I mean, probably the oldest version of, but they're running sophisticated spying operations to penetrate our traditions.
Didn't we have like some chip thing where they weren't allowed to sell it?
I think that was mostly some corporate cronyism that went to Biden's top tech donors. I mean, that's another one. Like why aren't we spending a lot more money? Just same thing with being energy independent. Why aren't we building up our refinery capabilities? Why aren't we doing more drilling? So we're energy independent. Like same thing. Anytime people talk about Taiwan, I'm just like, why don't we spend whatever money we're going to use, you know, producing weapon systems to give the Taiwanese when they probably won't even fight anyways for some war that hasn't happened yet. Why don't we just spend that money on developing our own ability to build semiconductors and chips here in America?
You know? Yeah.
That's a great question. Maybe they haven't figured out how to tax it yet.
That's probably, I mean, like the taxing, I mean, that's another, that's another thing the federal government should be working on. Like those type of investments that are for our national security, they're going to make America safer. Like why are, just don't tax. If you fix the corporate tax code, a lot of these different industries would come back to America. Like this is what our federal government should be focused on. Again, not Israel's next war, but instead, you know, here we are once again talking about, you know, how we can get more ships into the Persian Gulf.
I don't know, man. I don't think anybody's excited about it.
No, I don't think so either. It'll be interesting to see what the Democrats do.
It'd be just to see Texas flip completely.
Which is crazy.
Democrat, you know, Alabama.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, it's, but nobody's, I mean, I didn't even participate. I was just like, what, I'm literally at the point where I'm just like, what is the point?
Yeah.
I've had so many of them just sit right where you're sitting and just feed me full of shit, feed my audience full of shit. We were talking about pulse checks earlier. I feel so, I feel so fucking guilty for giving these guys, you know, access to millions of people. Like it's my fault.
I mean, yeah, but it's not though, because they, I don't know. Like maybe I misread the whole thing too. Because I was, even after my late wife got killed with Trump as the commander in chief, he was trying to pull our Trumps out, our troops out of Syria. And so I was like, okay, this guy at least as bad as this went, he was trying to do the right thing. And so I felt that Trump at least was trying, at least he was fighting for us. And so I think that the case be made, especially in '24 against Biden and Kamala, but I think there was real reason to believe that Trump and this team that he was bringing in, they were going to at least try to do what they ran on, that they weren't going to just turn around and just, you know, so blatantly betray the American people.
So I don't think you or Tucker or anybody who, you know, platformed them, Rogan or whatever, I don't think you guys should feel guilty. I mean.
I mean, I feel, I feel, I just, I feel like Democrats on too.
Yeah.
I already caught them in lies. Like it's just, it's just, it just never, they're just like shitting out the mouth.
It's good though, because you get them on record though. You do get them in.
I know. I mean, that's kind of part of it. You know, people hate me for it, but it is like, well, now that's exposed.
You know, like I.
A lot of people aren't fast enough to be able to understand that.
Yeah.
Would I've noticed in my pulse checks.
That's true. It's true. People, no, I mean, I think it's great because you do get people on record. I'm on record now. I mean, I've had hours sitting down with you explaining like why I left the admin and my vision for the future. If I ever decide to run for something again or I get put in another position, well, I mean, it's all out there. People are going to hold me accountable as well. And I think that's a good thing. I think, you know, people shy away from in politics a lot of times, the long-form podcasts. I think most political consultants will tell you not to do it just for this very reason. But I think it's good.
I think it's how we actually hold leaders accountable and how leaders can hold themselves accountable. It's like I'm on record saying this, you know?
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know where the politically homeless go. You know, I just, I don't.
Yeah.
I don't really have an answer to that. I mean, you're against the Iran war. Obviously, you know, the world puts a label on you. You're an Islamic sympathizer, you know what I mean? Or whatever, you know?
Yeah.
You're against the war in Ukraine. Oh, you know, you're automatically a Russian asset. Like it's just, you can't have an opinion about anything with somebody putting some ridiculous label on you. It's like, no, like I'm not a Islamic propagandist because, you know, because I don't agree with what's happening in Iran.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's insane, man. It's insane.
I think the good thing is we're seeing a lot of it get exposed from like now Laura Loomer's been exposed that she was getting paid to tweet and to go after people who were against the Iran war.
Yeah, but how many people actually know that?
Well, that's a good point.
That's just the X crowd.
Yeah, it's true.
Which is garbage.
Yeah. Well, and is it bots? Like how much of it is it real? That's one venue. Hopefully we can find more venues to put that stuff out there. Like the SGE scandal at the DOD when half these people who are tweeting out pro, you know, pro-war, pro-administration stuff, it's exposed later on that like they're actually special government employees of the Department of Defense. Like the whole thing is just absurd. So I think the exposure of like how much of it is paid propaganda, I'm hoping that helps erode a lot of the different labels because like you said, like if you have one opinion, you're labeled this, that, or the other thing.
When I think most, I think most people identify like you do when they say like I'm politically homeless. Like when Americans get polled, most identify as independents. Most are forced into like, do I vote Democrat or do I vote Republican? But I think the era of like more transactional voting is a good thing. I mean, I think people voting just like, hey, I'm going to hire this guy to do what he said he's going to do. And if he doesn't do it, I'm going to vote the other way next time. Like I think that's actually a good thing. Like if you don't deliver on it, you should be fired. People should not have a loyalty to a political party.
You know, I've been in, you know, I've ran for office twice, so I've had to go through the Republican primary process. And there's usually like this big litmus purity test of like how long have you been a Republican for? Are you a lifelong Republican? It's like, it's so dumb, you know? Because it's just like, well, actually it matters who the Republican is. Like, you know, if you guys nominate Ted Cruz next time, guess what? Like I'm not going to be a Republican. I think the Republican Party is still worth fighting for. I think where the direction a lot of the neocons have gone, I don't think those are conservative values whatsoever.
I think those are the opposite of conservative values. So I'm willing to fight there for the proper Republican Party that's actually trying to conserve America and trying to conserve American values. But if they go a different direction, like whatever this is, there's no reason why people should be loyal to that. It's absurd. But I think younger voters understand that.
Right on. Do you have anything, do you got anything you're coming out with?
I'm working on a book, more to follow on when it's going to be released. It's with the Department of Defense and all that now for redactions, because probably like you, I had to sign all the NDAs when I was a young man that said if I ever wrote a book, I'd have to run it by them. So it's with them. So hopefully it's out soon, but I just don't know when the timeline is.
What's it about?
So it's a combination of memoir, like of my military career and then my time in the government, but also extracting the lessons that I learned from being at war, from my deployments, my time in government to kind of plotting a path forward, like politically for the country. A lot of the ideas we've been talking about here. So a lot of it is explaining what happened in this last administration from my viewpoint, what went wrong. And a lot of it's like my military career, like why I think the way that I do, how I came to view the world the way that I do.
But also like kind of a path forward for like how we fix this, especially how we fix this going into 2028. Like now that we know that, you know, we were betrayed by essentially the MAGA movement, like how do we find a way forward that actually preserves and saves our country?
Sounds like you got some future aspirations, but I guess we'll see.
I do. I want to help fix the country. That's all I want to do. I mean, running for office is like pretty horrible because you have to go ask people for money. All the other, like discussing ideas and meeting with people I actually like doing. I hate asking people for money. So if I can serve, I'll serve. We'll see what the future holds.
All right, Joe. Well, thanks for coming, man.
Absolutely.
Great conversation.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Thanks for coming.
Absolutely.
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Joe Kent is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces veteran, former CIA paramilitary officer, and former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March 2026 over his opposition to the Iran war. An Oregon native and Norwich University graduate in Strategic Defense Analysis, he served 20 years in the Army, completed 11 combat deployments, and earned six Bronze Stars before retiring in 2018 and joining the CIA’s Special Activities Center. His military service included assignments with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and U.S. Army Special Operations Command. In 2019, his wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing while serving in Syria.
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