Transcript of Houthis Pound Saudi Airports & Trump Throws Putin a Lifeline | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS New

This episode is presented by Vaer Watches. Go to vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse. What's up, dude? We're live. Just— I'm good. How you doing?

Not bad. Thank you for calling.

No problem. Of course. We're live and alive.

So I didn't show up just having stepped out of the shower.

I know. How you normally do. Um, what's going on over there?

Yeah, so here's, um, and you can stop me at, uh, at any time, right? Just to bring everyone up to speed on what, uh, what's been happening here, not just in the country I am, which is Saudi Arabia, but, uh, in the Middle East generally. So, uh, you know, it's been a busy week for the Houthis, right? And, uh, on this, a few days ago, the 6th through the 7th, we had missiles and drones hit Abha Airport in the south here, but also King Khalid, which is the main international airport in Riyadh. 3 were killed, including a Saudi pilot, Saudia Airlines, which is their national flag carrier. And at least 1 aircraft was injured— injured— was damaged. Yeah. And then a day later on the 8th, there was another strike That killed another 3 people on the airport, on the main airport too. And then on the 10th, which was yesterday, of course, there was a big strike in terms— I mean, it was another ballistic missile, not that the missile was any bigger, but it hit the complex of Terminals 3 and 4 are joined together. So it basically hit 2 terminals, brought them— I don't know whether it brought the roofs down, but it caused extensive damage, killed 12, and injured 309, 309 who were injured badly enough to be treated in hospital.

And a number of those, unspecified number, is still critical. So among the dead, now those are the domestic terminals. So I don't know how accurate Houthi targeting is. By all accounts, it is pretty damn accurate. I mean, they were just— from what I'm seeing, from hearing, hitting a Saudi Airlines jet was not an accident. So it may well have been that they intended to hit the domestic terminals. However, among the dead, there were 4 Saudis, but there are also foreigners, 2 Bangladeshis who— anyone who's been to the airport here know that there's a lot of Bangladeshis, third-country nationals, who work in the airport. also an American who's yet to be identified, and nationals of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine are on a clear case. So right now, the airport's closed. Something like, you know, saying 300 flights have been canceled in the last 24 hours. And basically, all embassies here have told their citizens to stay away from the airport. So that's going to have a big impact on Saudi Arabia, the economy, but also a couple of major international events coming up. The Houthis have doubled down. They said today that they warned all airlines against using any Saudi airports, And previously they'd said, look, you can enter Saudi airspace if you request permission from the Houthis.

I don't know how you do that. You call up Houthi traffic control. I don't know what their call sign is. But now they're saying they're not even going to let anyone fly over airspace, Saudi airspace. So, I mean, how they can stop that, who knows? But nevertheless, serious situation, right? They've effectively shut down not just the airport here in Riyadh, but all across the country. The UN calls it a dangerous escalation, which is a huge understatement, right? So we talked about the Mecca Pact, right? Turkey and Pakistan now— Are

they going to come and meet again?

Yeah. Now, Pakistan's already confirmed that it has troops here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Don't know how many, don't know what exactly their role is. Of course, Saudi Arabia is also getting air defense support, not just from the US. This is open source, right? As far as Air defense support. Patriot missiles, though, I'm not talking about more Patriot and THAAD missiles. Because, as we all know, and we had discussed, there is a worldwide shortage. And the Gulf states, you know, it's obviously how many interceptor missiles they have left is, of course, classified. I don't know. And even if I did, I couldn't say here on this broadcast. But the concern is that their stock, their inventory is dangerously low. There's much speculation about why these missiles are not getting intercepted. All right. And within— because the Saudi air defense system is actually pretty damn good. They've had a lot of practice. And so this is really unusual that this number of missiles are getting through. I mean, 3 in 1 week in 1 area. Right. All 3 inflicting casualties. on a scale upwards. That's a gap, obviously. Now, it could be a crisis if this means that the interceptor stock is so low that countries in the region no longer have the ability to defend themselves.

Anyway, so other countries are providing Short-range air defense, okay, mainly against drones. That is a gap. But the problem now is not drones. The problem, and this is, as I've said, is concerning, is defense against ballistic missiles. The best way to do that, seeing as the interceptor stocks are so low, is to go after the launchers in Yemen. And that is why you have seen Saudi Arabia, MBS, request from Trump twice now. Assistance in going after the Houthi launchers. So, you know, he has said no. Trump has said no. Now you've got a US citizen killed in the terminal strike. You've got Rubio condemning the attacks, calling them a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. But we don't know yet whether that's going to prompt action by the US government. Trump said, we may get involved, we're going to look at it, when he was asked about it. Right. I would say, not just because I'm sitting here and I have a personal stake in this, but why would we not? Going to the aid of a strategic partner whose civilians are under attack and whose adversary has just killed one of our own citizens, despite what they're also doing to fuck up the Bandar al-Mandeb.

Excuse my language. And then we take a step back. Before the attack, as I mentioned, Washington had twice declined Saudi's requests. But at the same time, this speaks to the wider war, not just Yemen. We talked last week about the Camp David principals meeting on October 2nd, the feeling that some kind of decision had been made. And then you've got the 3rd Carrier Group heading here to the Middle East, another Marine Expeditionary Group, speculation that the war will resume again after the midterms. Now, in the meantime, the US has given the Saudis more than 200 Houthi targets in the last 2 weeks. So, you know, the target development work is getting done, but now we have an American dead. So that may change the calculus. And I think personally, the question of whether the US will join in is now— I think undoubtedly, it's not just me, banging the drums saying we have to. I'm saying I think we will. A dead American, a mass casualty attack on a civilian airport terminal, and a ground offensive in Yemen that gives air power something to support, right? Because air power alone, as we've seen, is not that useful.

Apologies to Juan and all my Air Force friends, but you're not going to win a war through an air campaign. But if you've got a ground campaign going on at the same time, as we saw in the war against the Islamic State, that gives Sana'a something to hang on to. And the Houthis have launched a ground offensive— not the Houthis, the Saudis with the anti-Houthi coalition have launched a ground offensive to take Bandar back. Bandar al-Mandeb, not Bandar al-Mandeb, but the coastline, Mokka, and the coastline there in Yemen, which is in, by the way, in US interests to seize also since that helps free up that second strait, prevents it being interfered with. All right. So, you know, you see a lot of stuff in the news about, hey, there are 50,000 US troops now in the region extended into 2027. Of course, vast majority of those are Navy and Air Force dudes, right? But there are There is the Boxer ARG here, Amphibious Readiness Group, which has about 2,200 Marines. And there is another readiness group on the way, the Makin Island Readiness Group. That's only 4,000 Marines. You've got odds and sods from the 82nd Airborne, let's get the command element, et cetera, et cetera.

But there's no indication that this is going to result in a ground invasion. What it's likely to result in, I'll talk to in a moment. It's about 18 warships in all enforcing the blockade of Iranian ports. And then you've still got remnants of the 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Jack, let me ask you, Jack Murphy's joined us. I don't know if Andy, if you see, because I know— Excellent.

Hey, Jack.

What are your thoughts before Andy gets into that? Because I definitely want to know what it would entail. But what are your thoughts? Like, we have to step up and, you know, knock the Houthis out, knock the Houthis off.

I mean, Andy's better spoken on this than I am. I think that we're— it sounds from what Andy's saying, it sounds like we're heading into this interesting situation where resources that we would have dumped into fighting Iran are now going to have to be split to also fight the Houthis in Yemen. And I mean, that's the Iranians' intent, right, is to create a 2-front, open a new front in the campaign.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. And again, I don't have any inside track on this. I'm just speculating like all of us, right? But But arguably, now you've got midterms as the benchmark, and you've got before a phase zero in which you're going after Yemen, right? So the resources aren't being necessarily taken away. I'm not— look, this isn't an argument really either way. I'm just saying that this is perhaps the way CENTCOM can see it now. Okay, we've got to take— we've been told to take action against Yemen. We can do it now. And then we've got kind of a period between phases when we can shift to focus on Iran. And I think, so with that, what would that, you know, how that would look, I think perhaps in phase 0, and it's a tough proposition that we've gone after the Houthis 3 times before, right? I mean, we had a campaign just back in July, 7-week campaign we launched you know, something like 1,000 sorties in that time. I know that seems like an absurdly round figure, but it was— I remember seeing it was around that, right? Um, and, uh, and, and we didn't achieve much at all.

Um, it was actually— it wasn't July, it was, um, uh, yeah, yeah, it was, it was July of this last year. I'm sure someone will jump in and correct me. So yeah, we've achieved very little. But so what might be different now, I think, is focusing first of all on just missiles or launchers within range of Saudi airports, which sadly appears to be a considerable part of the Houthis' inventory. I think you'd see, I think you see now in phase zero, the US potentially going all in with Tomahawk, everything from cruise missiles through carrier-borne aviation. And specifically going after missile launchers, because that is the problem. That's the only way you preempt and mitigate the interceptor problem.

But you don't think there's a potential for a ground game at this time?

No. No. And of course, I've been wrong before. I don't think there was a potential for the invasion of Ukraine. a week before it happened. But no, not at all. I mean, I think you probably share— I don't know, but I think you may share my views on this. I mean, there's nothing to— first of all, the forces aren't in place. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, how many troops do you think it would take? Okay, we'll come back and talk about the islands and we'll talk about the enriched uranium mission, which you know a considerable amount. But You know, what if the plan was to clear the straits by securing that coastline, right? I mean, think how many troops that would take. It would take at least—

Multiple tens of thousands.

Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, at least a couple of divisions, right? And you're going to— and what are you going to achieve? I mean, you—

Some of the terrain, like if we were to really fully like try to resolve this problem, As I understand it, some of the terrain is quite mountainous. It's probably somewhat similar to Afghanistan in that regard.

Yeah, yeah, very much so. And you've got the problem, even if you secure— so it's the sort of terrain that soaks up a lot of troops. Conventional troops are going to have a problem with mobility. Everyone's going to have a problem with mobility. You're going to suck up all of your aviation, basically covering them, and you don't solve the problem. I mean, the Iranians can lob missiles and drones at shipping in the Straits of Hormuz over the head from pretty much anywhere in the Iranian hinterland, and Iran is a large country.

I mean, in theory, right, the Saudis could provide the ground force that we would provide the air support for, which is, you know, during the ISIS campaign, you know, there's American air power and almost, you know, entirely Arab and Kurdish ground forces with American advisors or coalition advisors. Do you think that's even a possibility? I mean, how do you rate the Saudi National Guard? Do you think they're up to a task like that?

Are you talking the Straits of Hormuz, or are you talking in Yemen?

In Yemen?

Oh, in Yemen? Well, I think it's a problem of mobilization and getting them there right now. The forces there that are roughly the anti-Houthi forces that the Saudis have been trying to get together are roughly equivalent to about 5 divisions, light divisions. So, Yeah, I mean, numbers vary, but maybe 60,000 dudes, but they're not a homogenous force. So I'm answering your question, but it was never on the cards for the Saudis to go back there in force. They're just not— I'm not going to comment about whether they have the capability. Frankly, they don't have the capability to deploy there, right? Yeah. I mean, they've got to be You've got to— the force, the land forces, to include the National Guard, are spread over the country right now. You've got to bring them together, and then you've got to launch them down into Yemen. There are— yes, Saudi Arabia has a history of operating in Yemen. There are task forces, joint task forces along the border. There is a some scale of advise and assist effort taking place, but it's not advise and assist as we know it. It's more higher-level commanders there, Saudis directing Houthis on the ground.

But to get a Saudi force there anytime soon is just not on the cards. I think that, but your point's a good one. It's what I was referring to earlier, but there is at least some kind of ground force there that is fighting the Houthis. and is now, even as we speak, launching an offensive to try and take Mokka back, which is obviously, it's a separate proposition. Supporting that force, I'm saying potentially, yes, gives the air campaign a focus of effort that it didn't have before. And that's an argument to do this stuff in Yemen. But, but we were talking about that before, was the ground operation in Iran, which I think we all agree, absolutely not at all practical.

Hey, Jack.

What's going on?

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Yeah, absolutely.

You know, and

how would you rate— you know, I know we're talking about hypotheticals right now, but How would you rate purely an air campaign then over Yemen? And I mean, how would that be different, or would it be different from the air campaign over Iran where we blow up a lot of stuff, but we haven't— we've diminished but not prevented the Iranian capacity to fight?

Yeah, well, we weren't successful in Yemen either.

I

mean, It's incredible. I'm not eulogizing the Houthis, but you've got to hand it to them. They've taken the best shellacking that the 3 most technologically advanced militaries in the world can deliver, the Brits, us, and the Israelis, and us multiple times, and they've just gone on advancing. Not only that, but now they're They're threatening the countries around them and demanding that they be asked permission for commercial aircraft to enter Saudi airspace. I mean, the dudes are, they're technologically advanced, as we talked about on this program, beyond what anyone thinks. They're using AI for the missile guidance. The missile guidance that we've seen here has been very accurate. They're a formidable enemy. So getting back to your question, how would we be more successful this time? I'm not sure we could be. What I am saying is that it is easier now when you are supporting a ground force, memories of the SDF, right? It's easier for a number of reasons because you have someone— the Houthis have to show up and fight this force. And when they show up and fight, it makes themselves vulnerable. They can't simply disperse. The fight going on right now, vicinity of Bam and Mokka, anchors the Houthis to the terrain and thus conceptually makes them easier targets.

And of course, we would be going after primarily though their missile launchers, radars, anti-ship missiles. I mean, first of all, we would be stripping their air defense. And they've shot down— I mean, you may have the numbers.

A lot of drones.

They've shot down a lot of— we've lost a lot of high-end drones over Yemen. So their air defense systems aren't shite. We'd have to get rid of those and then go after their launchers.

And our primary goal really, like to get to cut right down to it, it's to prevent them from imposing these costs on Saudi Arabia. I mean, that's really—

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we were saying, we've said twice, hey, we can't help you. Now potentially we can. if the escalation, if our continued war against Iran is separated by time. And then there's kind of the political dynamic of, in the views of those in the Middle East, I'm generalizing here, the United States responds to Israeli requests for help, but not to Arab requests for help. Okay. I'm not saying that's the case, I'm just saying that is the perception here in the Middle East.

Seems like the case.

Well, I, yeah, it does, doesn't it? I mean, you know, so, um, I, I don't think, okay, it's hypothetical, but if Israel had been hit 3 times in a row inflicting those type of casualties and Netanyahu said to Trump, hey, help us, we need your help, can you, can you strike targets in Yemen?

I mean, at minimum, we'd probably be flying sorties to knock out ballistic missiles.

I'm pretty sure we'd be doing something. Anyway, so my point is, look, and I'm not just saying this because of where I am, but arguably it makes good sense. But the thing is that Jack's got a good point too. What could we achieve by an air campaign that we couldn't before? And my argument would be, well, potentially now we're supporting a ground campaign. Yes, we begin with air defenses, we go after the long-range missile launchers. But we also, by the way, go after anti-ship missile sites too, so the BAM doesn't become a huge issue again. And the Houthis are right now fighting hard around Bab al-Mandeb. And so they are, as I've said, kind of preoccupied. They're out in the open. It might be a good time to do this. So that would be kind of phase zero. And then I suppose after the midterms, resorting to escalation of the war again against Iran if Iran hasn't showed signs of negotiating. Because as we talked about again on the show, we're not going to open the Straits of Hormuz by military force alone, not in a real sense. Because when you're talking about commercial shipping and insurance and all of that other stuff, oil prices are going to remain sky high.

I don't know if you've been seeing how much it costs now to get a tanker through the Straits. It's phenomenal. So all those costs are going to remain high even if every single tanker is escorted and the risk remains. As long as the risk remains until the Iranians say they're going to take their foot off the gas, No, that's an unfortunate metaphor there. But until they say they're going to stop hitting tankers and they agree to a negotiated solution, those prices are going to remain high. It's all good news.

As usual, only good news here on the Eyes on Geopolitics podcast. Do you guys want to hit on Trump making a deal with Putin for diesel? It's interesting too, because like we're talking about Saudi Arabia and us helping Saudi Arabia with the Houthis, and we're probably not going to do anything due to the midterm elections, our midterm elections. It seems like this move with Russia, outside of Trump being like Putin's, for lack of a better word, lackey, he's doing it to probably ease some tensions before the midterm elections in terms of what the diesel price is here in America and stuff like that. But while it seems like a cheap move, he was in that same press conference or press gaggle, Andy, that you mentioned before where people asked him about Saudi Arabia and he said, you'll see. He also mentioned that when they asked about why are you buying or why are you making a deal with Russia to buy their diesel? Because you need to— and he basically blamed Zelensky and said he needs to stop bombing their refineries and Ukraine needs to find a new leader. And, you know, anybody with a, you know, a working frontal lobe, uh, can see that this— that kind of, that kind of talk's crazy.

Um, so I want to know what you guys are thinking in terms of what we heard the other day about the diesel.

Jack?

I mean, I did hear or did read that, um, the amount of diesel is such a drop in the bucket that they're ostensibly buying from Russia, that it's really not going to make any impact on the market at all. But it sounds the administration probably already got their objective accomplished, which was a day's worth of headlines. They already did that. As far as this stuff with Ukraine, I mean, you have to think that the Ukrainians are becoming inured to American threats at this point. You know, we've been threatening them since the beginning of this administration. We keep threatening them with stuff, and the Iranians— or I'm sorry, the Ukrainians continue to be able to fight and impose these economic costs on the Russians. I mean, why would they stop? And, you know, if the United States government isn't going to help out Ukraine, then, you know, what is the leverage? What is the threat that you're kind of holding over their head?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know in the great scheme of things whether the numbers they're talking about are huge, but it seems like a lot. I mean, it's originally— it starts 300,000 tons immediately, then 500,000 tons in early November, and then 3 million more within a short period. It's the messaging, right, that is just so embarrassing right now. You know, Russia, it's been reported for some time, and the president has acknowledged that Russia is helping Iran with its targeting. Here we are amassing this force in the Middle East. We have been at war now for what, 8 months against Iran. Russia has, along with China, been Iran's biggest supporters materially as far as oil and also technologically as far as the agreements on Shahed drones. The Russians have been improving the Shahed guidance systems, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. And also with intelligence, with targeting of US forces in the region. And then here we are now cutting a deal with the major benefactor of our enemy while we're at war. I just can't— whatever way you look at that, it's very hard to make sense of. And I don't know what the spin has been from the president's— from the government, but to me, that's hard to swallow.

They've said since the beginning that, you know, they always wanted Russia as a trade partner. They didn't care about Ukraine or any of this other stuff, that the primary was Russia as a trade partner. Um, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot. I could probably say some things that upset some people, but I mean—

Please, please do.

Well, I mean, I think the Trump family sees Russia for, you know, the Russian government for what it is. It's a big grift. There's a lot of corruption. And so there's a lot of graft that the Trump family can get involved in there, um, if they can open that up as a, a trade partnership up, um, through Putin's regime. I, I mean, I think deep down that's what this is really about.

Well, early on when they were talking about like peace talks and stuff like that, they sent Kushner and, and Wyckoff, and there was rumors about—

Patel this last week, didn't they?

Yeah, that too. But like initially they were talking initially about like when the Nord Stream when the Nord Stream 2 pipeline starts up again, who's going to have a piece of that? And they were basically like, at least that's the rumors, that that's what the conversation was about. And again, Kash Patel, like, why the director of the FBI needs to go to Russia, I don't know.

Especially when we don't care about counterintelligence anymore.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, the direct incentive has to do with the midterms, right? I mean, these are I haven't been back in the States. I'm told diesel's almost doubled in price in the last year.

Yeah, I think it's around $7 a gallon.

And, um, yeah, so close to at least 70-80% up, right? Um, and now Hormuz closed, largely closed to traffic. Gulf refinery output is cut off. Uh, and Houthi and Iraqi militia attacks have hit the Saudi East-West Pipeline. So all of that's affected the prices. And so midterms, yeah, diesel prices hit. Who do they hit? They hit truckers, farmers, small businesses, all of which are core Trump constituencies, right? Just 3 weeks being— we're 3 weeks before the midterms. His economic approval is at a low. I would say all of those are factors in this decision. Um, but, you know, Jack, to your point, I, I'm no expert, but I, I know, I mean, I was reading, you know, obviously the experts agree with you, or rather, of course the experts agree with you. You are one of them is what I meant. Um,

I kind of need to quote that on, uh, my next book.

Uh, you know that this isn't enough volume, right? Um, It's still like, even with all of this, even with all that supply to Russia, refined diesel supply— I mean, I'm sorry, even getting all this diesel from Russia, incoming diesel supply is about half of pre-war levels because Gulf refining has been cut off. And Aside from, in return though, and aside from the fact that it's saluting Moscow again, it helps Moscow ease its revenue squeeze, which arguably is far tighter than ours. So yeah, it's just hard to see a good— a good justification. I mean, especially last month, right? The president signed a Russian sanctions law targeting—

Wasn't it the Lindsey Graham BEARD Act or whatever it was?

Yeah, it was targeting banks and the shadow fleet. It was banning new investment. And it was imposing tariffs up to 100% on the top 5 importers of Russian energy, right? And here we are, now we're one of them. I don't know, what are we going to do, sanction ourselves? Just weeks later, the Treasury's licensing Russian diesel into global markets. So, I mean, does that undermine— does that mean the tariffs due this month are going to be imposed at all?

Speaking of our friends, the Russians, there's something I wanted to point out here. There's a new book out. I have not read this yet, um, but I'm looking forward to it. It looks really good. It's written by 2, uh, 60 Minutes journalists, and, uh, they worked on a story for 60 Minutes about Havana Syndrome, and now they've written this book. And, um, yeah, I'm really looking forward to reading it. It looks like they cover a lot of ground in here, um, including some stuff I don't know about. Um, so yeah, I'm looking forward to reading this one.

Has, uh, has Mark seen that?

Yeah, Mark pointed it out to us in the group chat. Yeah, yeah, he wanted us to have him on the Team House, the journalist, which—

That would be good with especially Mark on there too.

I have, uh, there's a question from the chat. Will this orange turd even matter when he loses the midterms? I mean, I guess it depends on how badly he loses the midterms, and it also depends on if the Democrats are fucking not pussies.

Yeah, I mean, he's still the President of the United States, right? It still matters. Um, but You know, yeah, there's something to that, that like, will the system be completely jammed up after midterms? And like, functionally, it's kind of the done— it's kind of the end of the administration in the sense that they're not going to pass anything further through. Yeah.

But Jack, frankly, they're not really passing much anyway. Like,

yeah, they're just making decisions and then seeing if the courts challenge them.

Yeah, he's doing— he's, he's ruling by executive order, essentially. I mean, he did pass some stuff. You know, the Epstein Act passed. They're, they're in contempt of Congress for that right there. You know, they're not really following acts of Congress. And it remains to be seen because let's say the Democrats take the House by a lot and they have a solid majority, and let's say it's razor thin in the Senate. Will they try to put up impeachment proceedings on him? Which he's probably, you know, in violation of them. Like, he could easily get some impeachment hearings on him and stuff like that, charges on him. will the Senate actually convict even with a majority Democratic? Like if let's say it's 51-49 Democrats, Democrats are spineless. Like, let's be real here. They are spineless. They are not an opposition party. They're a joke. They're a complete joke. So I don't know, he'd probably be able to do whatever he wants to do still. He'll probably be able to, you know, govern by executive order. And, you know, and if the courts say, okay, no, like, will they even listen to the courts? Will they even listen to Congress?

They're not right now currently. He signed a bill into law and they're actively in contempt of Congress. So yeah, he'll still matter is the answer to that question.

You know, I mean, there was an interesting aspect to that phone call that I don't know if it'll come to anything, but, you know, Putin basically acted as though he has the leverage, which I suppose he does. We've given it to him. You know, Pesezhkian has said publicly that he is refusing talks, right? But then privately, he's passing terms through Putin, through Moscow. And Putin apparently brought this up in the phone call. We don't know what those terms are, but it was essentially an Iranian an Iranian offer. So that tells you at least Iran wants an off-ramp. The problem is that, of course, we don't necessarily acknowledge this, but they're not going to acknowledge that publicly. I mean, face is everything. So there might be something positive that comes out of this phone call. I mean, I'm grasping the silver linings here because we have been accused of being ultimate pessimists. I think we've lost 20% of our audience, which was 5, maybe 6 people.

Well, something else that I'll throw out, this is a more abstract academic conversation perhaps than what we're willing to have, but I just finished reading this book. Which was very good. It's Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies. The book is basically like some of the clearest political writing I've read about democracy in America today and where it stands. And it's basically talking about how in highly pluralistic societies, governments have to come up with all these different legitimation stories, like basically creation myths about themselves. And the end result is a sort of like gridlock that nothing gets done. And so there's this interesting thesis that, you know, we think about revolution, revolt, insurgency. Well, what if things just kind of continue to slog along and get stupider and stupider and the system is just totally in gridlock and nothing ever gets done? Yeah. And that seems actually like the most honest and realistic scenario for the future that I've heard. It's not a revolution. In this book, he makes the point revolutions and revolts can't happen in a country like America because democracy is so deeply embedded in the society that people cannot imagine a different type of government.

So I would say I would agree with him. on the thesis that revolution isn't possible in the United States, but not for the reasons that he's given. Actually, democracy is not well entrenched in the United States. I think the bias has always been anti-democratic in real terms. We only became a democracy very, very recently. And my feeling may be, when you think about it, I mean, the American experiment among Western governments, is essentially the— I mean, in many ways, the newest and was— I'm just wording this carefully. Let's take most Western democracies in Europe. What they have now, the system that has evolved over century after century, they don't have with a couple of exceptions, they don't have constitutions, right? It's been a constant kind of back and forth until a path was chosen that people by and large realize works best, right? I mean, you take the UK, you had people pushing back on the monarchy with the Magna Carta, but it took many— they're still pushing back on the monarchy. It was gradual evolution. In the US, you had this thing called the Constitution that people keep trying to interpret. And you had this method of government, but you have— and again, I'm going to be critiqued for this— essentially, in many ways, very immature sense of thinking among the population.

I can't put my finger on it. It's more than formal education. It might just be a result of the fact that the country has evolved relatively recently from people who've come from all over the place. There isn't any sense of historical progression. Okay, we tried this or tried that. Since our ill fate, our unwise decision to throw off the British, we haven't really toyed with revolution in the same way that other countries have. So anyway, long-winded way of saying this, my concern, I agree with the thesis. I agree that that things are just becoming more and more dysfunctional. And I agree that this is not likely to result in revolution because we are, small c, essentially a very conservative society, small c, right? But my concern is that there's no end to the dysfunction. We keep thinking, we just got to get through this 4 years. Do we? Well, then what? All kinds of precedents have been set, not good precedents under this government, in this administration. Or you can take it back. If you're talking about this, let's just take it beyond this administration going back. Let's talk about Congress's— we talk about this a lot— Congress's ability, Congress's responsibility to oversee the conduct of wars.

Right. We've already seen that erode for the last 2 to 3 decades. It's not going to suddenly get stronger. It's not as though there's suddenly going to be a feeling, hey, listen, we've got to go back to what we're supposed to do by Constitution. We've seen executive powers grow increasingly simply because of that vacuum. We've seen the two-party system, I would argue, become an Again, I'll be critiqued for this, but both parties, by the standards of any European parliamentary political system, both parties are far right-wing, right? Yeah. But at the same time, we've seen the divisiveness between them that doesn't allow, doesn't broker any type of— that puts party first before any sense of— how is all that going to be reconciled? It's not sudden. None of this. These are deep cultural issues. And maybe we have to say the American experiment is not working, the American governmental experiment. And people will attack me, oh no, of course it is. The Supreme Court's doing X and X. It is to a certain extent, but that's not the way the Supreme Court is acting now or the courts are acting now as a check on the executive, as the first check on the executive.

It isn't the way the system was supposed to be designed.

Well, he points out in the book also that, you know, despair sets in in the individual at a certain point as these legitimation stories fail one after the other. The person sinks into essentially doomerism. Apathy.

Apathy.

Apathy. Yeah, yeah.

Call it apathy too.

That you completely have lost faith in the system and the institutions of government and the capacity for reform. But he also points out that those people are atomized. When someone becomes a doomer, they're, you know, camped out in their parents' basement playing video games. They are not out on the street organizing. They are not at the beer hall trying to rally the troops to go and overthrow the government. So again, nothing actually changes.

Yeah, I mean, I think he's absolutely right. Think what's, you know, Whatever your criticisms of France, I know they're, you know, of course, I mean, I've got— They have a protest culture. Yeah, they've got to protest because look what's happening now in the schools, right? They're kind of Bill of Rights. I mean, what they're demanding, it all makes sense. I mean, and all those things that they're talking about, they're basically the atrophy, the erosion of the education system. across the board in France are things you would talk to any teacher, things that are happening here. But we're not going to see those level of protests. I'm not countenancing violence, but I'm saying even the walkouts from all the high schools across countries, all the lycées, all the teachers and students on the same side of this and making demands. And you know what? It will result in something. Yes, you can see all the backlash now, but all the videos of the riot police shooting gas canisters in the face of 14-year-olds and everything, it's going to result in changes. It's a painful way to do it. Again, I'm not countenancing violence. I'm talking about the demonstrations themselves.

You'd never see that here. In fact, there's a revulsion. The people who do demonstrate, are reviled, you know? I mean, that's why when you saw those yahoos coming out on the side of ICE, I— it's— yeah, so I mean, I do agree with— I just don't agree with the why, but I agree with his—

well,

the way we're going to try to make this— He kind of—

he sort of ends on the note that crises come about, but they don't go on long enough And they're not acute enough to the point that the American public really rises up, that they do end up getting mitigated. You think of like the 2008 economic crisis, 9/11. I mean, there's a bunch of things you could throw in there, I suppose. But he points out that, you know, there could be a trigger point in the future, whether started by a natural disaster or pandemic or a war. Or AI getting out of control. So who knows what it could be? You know, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter, but that a crisis is initiated and the government cannot respond quickly enough because of what we were talking about, that nothing changes, that everything's locked up, that it can't be flexible or adaptable enough. And that could really actually lead to something like collapse.

I think the only way that happens is if like our, what our pacifiers are taken away. Like the NFL season is, is canceled, or, you know, you can't get your Grubhub delivery.

Yeah, it's like during the pandemic, my, my, uh, canary in the coal mine was McDonald's. As long as McDonald's is open, we're good to go. If McDonald's shuts down, bro, it's time to leave the country. Get out of here.

Yeah. I wish people were as like passionate as they were about like, you know, their football team. You know, there's a reason why 25 million people or more watch a single football game in America.

So it's interesting. So in the book, he also talks about how, um, as politics are failing people, they kind of resort back to other things, um, like their faith, their family. And one of the things he lists in there is fandom, that people retreat into these fandoms, sure, and that private corporations provide a sort of narrative, a narrative glue, and even a narrative story. If you think about like superhero movies and stuff like that, Star Wars, and people attach themselves to these franchises, um, like it, like it's a very personal thing for them. And so fandom is, is one of the things that people retreat into as politics fail.

Fandom, that's a great term. It is very true, isn't it? And to your point, yes, it's almost a It's almost pathetic, isn't it? The obsession.

Yes, it is.

When you think about it, yeah.

And it is true that, you know, I think even back, looking back to the US military, it doesn't matter what was going on in the world, but most officers in the morning will talk about the game they watched the night before. You know, I've worked with militaries all over the world. The French, the Brits, the Israelis are not like that. Of course, the Israelis, not all. French, not so much. But the Brits, a little bit, we'll talk about. But they'll talk about geopolitics way more than their US counterparts. The conversations we have had in this discussion, if you bring that up in the average group of military officers, you'll quickly get deflected. And it's not that we're arguing in a partisan way. But if you're just talking general terms about what's going on in the world, and if they do offer an opinion, it's often very simplistic, not a lot of deep thought or reading often. Now, I'm generalizing here. And of course, Marine officers are a cut above the rest. But that's symptomatic of the culture at large. It never ceases to amaze me how grown adults become so emotionally attached to football teams.

You know, they have, they have real lives going on outside that. I mean, they've got, you know, children, families, you know, professions, but they all talk endlessly about, well, you know, last night's game. I've always found that a little sad.

I think it's to a point, right? Like, uh, I'm a fan of teams. I don't really care much except for like hockey, right? So there's one team I enjoy and that's the New York Rangers and you know, I like them, I hope they win, but it's not like my be-all end-all. It's not everything I need it to be, and it's like my, my whole personality, right? Uh, I think a lot of the times people—

You don't wear hockey jerseys with your favorite player's name on

and no pants? No, just a hockey jersey. No, no, I don't. Uh, so I, I mean, I do see— I see with my friends of mine too, and, and I don't know. It's just, it's interesting how I guess people don't care as much about like the real issues as they care about like their running back who's starting for their fantasy team.

It's hard. It's very hard to live in the sort of like, you know, ideal that we're describing here. No one, really no one lives a life of empiricism.

Sure.

You know, no one does because it's too painful. It's too difficult to do that. So, you know, we all—

this particular podcast,

right? But this podcast is contained like in an hour of our lives, you know. Um, after this, about

a

week after this, I can be, you know, painting Dungeons and Dragons miniatures, you know. I have these like weird hobbies that have nothing to do with, uh, with politics. And I think everybody kind of has to have something like that, whether it's watching a basketball game or whatever it is.

Sure.

Because it's just so painful to, like, live in a world where we have to mentally juggle these profound philosophical and political issues on a daily basis. It's hard. I mean, let's admit it to ourselves, like, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world and we're bombarded with this information all day, every day. And it's not great for anyone's mental health. I don't care how smart or how responsible you are.

100%. Escape— escapism, absolutely necessary. But when escapism becomes everything and your second reality, that is disturbing. And when that's all you can talk about, that— it's—

I think the problem in America specifically is also a lot of people are very much blackpilled. You know, there's a reason why 100 million people don't vote, right, at elect— even at the highest turnouts, there's still 100 million people who are registered or can vote who don't vote. And I think you talk to people and they're just like, oh, that shit doesn't matter. They're both the same shit. Like, they're checked out completely from politics and geopolitics and issues.

It gets to Jack's point about apathy, right? So the real question, I think, you know, Jack brings it up, or the book brings it up, is when something extreme happens, when the system seems to be breaking down, people are pushing the limits in a bad way of the checks and balances, do the people react correspondingly, if not by revolting, at least dropping their apathy and showing up to vote? We don't know yet, but I think— And to Jack's point, even if they do, the prospects are not great. I mean, so many boundaries have already been broken and the general shift has been in a negative way.

Also, I think the way we teach kids now, whether it's civics or whatever, just the basic stuff in terms of how the government works, there's a reason why midterm elections are the slow elections. because everyone's looking at top of the ticket. It's, it's kind of ingrained apathy.

Yeah, I think, I mean, my, my blackpilled moment here, I would advance a controversial idea. If those 100 million people vote, I don't think it would substantially change the system in any meaningful way. If you increased enfranchisement to, um, let's say younger people like 16-year-olds, I don't think that would make any substantial difference. I mean, I think it's a little bit more than just voting. There are these sort of institutional problems.

Yeah, there's no question. I mean, yeah.

Yeah. It's more than voting and it's more than education about civics because it's hard to put your finger on it, but there's just a There is an underlying— it's hard to tell what comes first, but there's an underlying apathy in American society. And it gets back to Jack's point about not really reacting when things start, when the whole process, the whole system shifts in a bad way and the checks and balances aren't working.

I think it's been like a slow kind of burn in terms of like it's been going on for decades. Where the erosion of institutions, and in a way where they don't make enough noise or news for people to react in certain ways, whether you see going away from the dollar or the gold standard, or where you see huge tax cuts and deregulation in the '80s, or the bank deregulation in the '90s, or super PACs with Citizens United, these little things that have happened that don't really get huge headlines. Maybe they do in like the small, like the junkies, like the political junkies who follow this stuff like it's a sports team and they have their own fandom or own interest in it. And all that stuff has completely coupled, like has completely compiled to a place where most average people aren't going to know the intricacies of a specific Supreme Court case That hurt our— gave super PACs almost unlimited effect on our elections and stuff like that, and our politicians essentially. It's things like that where people are just like— and I understand that the worlds they— the lives they live, they're just trying to get by.

Maybe they don't have the bandwidth to think about it or read the Wall Street Journal or whatever it is, like take 20 minutes a day and read up on the news and see what's going on. I think media literacy too is a huge— like, people in America are extremely in a bad space in terms of how they digest their news and what they think they know and what they think is a reputable news source and isn't.

We, as Americans, we've kind of been trained to be docile consumers from an early age. And, you know, for us, politics is another fandom. It's, you know, it has been pitched to us both by politicians and by the press and by the media As entertainment, that politics is this form of entertainment. It's this sort of cage match. It's this sort of—

It's a horse race, right? You look at the polls, it's like, it's literally like football, like you're playing fantasy football. Yeah.

And so I think that's why you see some of the cosplay in American politics is for that reason.

Yeah, that's a great point. I want to say more mature democracies, you don't see that to the same extent. You see it in Eastern Europe with some of the populist leaders there. You see it in Latin America, places like Brazil, of course, Bolsonaro and Argentina, but you don't see it so much in Western Europe.

Yeah. I mean, my friends sometimes ask me, what would you do if you had one choice? What would you pick? Like, if you were king of the day, for the, for the day, and I'd be like, first things first, it would be getting unlimited money out of politics completely. If Elon Musk wants to make an ad about his preferred candidate, he absolutely could do it. But he needs to like literally be on the, on the thing being like, I am supporting this person. It shouldn't be some like, you know, some wedge issue. and it's brought to you by, you know, somethingforamerica.org, where nobody knows who it's from and stuff like that. The anonymous, uncapped money that's coming in is the biggest problem, without question.

I would pass a law against how long you can have a political campaign going. So for like Congress, I'd be like 3 months, and for president, 6 months. And that's it. That's all you get. Sorry. We don't need, we don't need, you know, 300, you know, 50 days of campaigning a year.

It's going to be more like once the, once the midterms are over, presidential 2028 is kicking off.

Oh yeah,

especially with the primaries first and stuff like that. It's a horse race for 2 years. Well, then in Europe they don't have that. Like, it's way shorter.

They've got rules against, at least in the UK, there's rules against that. All right, fellas. Hey, on that high note, I'm gonna have to jump off. So, um, all right, yeah, thank you. Conversation can go up. Great, great seeing you both again.

Yeah, good talking to you.

I want everyone to check out Andy's Substack. That link is in the description. And his book, he's got a new book coming out as well. Uh, and there he goes. Let me mute him. Jack Murphy.

I stay on because I'm 81%.

Yeah, stay on, Andy, and I'll just mute you. Ciao. Uh, The Most Dangerous Man, Jack's book, is out now. My book, check it out. Of course, you want to check out Jack's, uh, Substack called The High Side. Him and Sean Naylor do investigative journalism of the highest standard. Um, anything else, Jack? We're going on a field trip this week.

I was go— I was going to go apple picking today, but it got canceled because of the rain. Doing a family thing. Um, so yeah, so me and you will be down at, uh, AUSA this year, uh, the Association of the United States Army conference down in DC. So, um, the next like 3 days we'll be down there.

Yeah, we're gonna be perusing the defense industrial complex. It's gonna be very exciting.

Come and say hi to us if you're down there.

If there are any Chinese or, uh, North Korean honeypots, I am more than available. I don't have secrets to give, but I have other things. No, it should be fun. It should be cool. There's a lot of drone companies out there. I know that. That's the one thing I know from signing up for this event. And you put your email onto that signup list. I've gotten in like 300 emails.

Yeah, everything is drones and AI.

Yeah, yeah. Like, we— I'm gonna keep saying the joke, podcasts are out for the white guy. Now it's drone companies. We got to start drone companies. That's the move. Jack, I love you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody who watched. Thank you. We'll probably— I'm gonna try— let's try and do this livestream maybe once a week, maybe the midweek we'll do it.

Okay.

And shout out to Vare Watches, varewatches.com.

Oh, there's something in the, uh, in the chat here from a Mr. Well Hung who says that he is in fact a Chinese honeypot and he's going to be looking for you. I can't wait.

I can't wait to see him. I guess I should have said a female honeypot would be preferable for me. I mean, I'm sure there's male ones out there that do a great job, but not for me.

I heard, I heard the story years ago. Um, we'll get going, but real quick, this story about a, uh, it was a U.S. American naval officer abroad somewhere, and he was staying in a hotel room, and like, it wasn't in China, but it was like you know, Vietnam or something like that. And someone came and knocked on their door, and there's a Chinese prostitute at the door. Hello. And he's like, hey, no thank you, go away. Like 15 minutes go by, there's another knock at the door. It's a different girl. Like, you know, first they send a blonde, then they send a redhead. And like the people keep knocking on the door all night, and he keeps like not answering or sending them away. And finally, at the end of the night, They send a dude.

Oh my God.

They're like, yeah, and he finally did it. We know what this guy's deal is.

Yeah, he finally succumbed to his passions. He couldn't help it anymore. He's like, finally, I didn't want to say that I wanted a guy, but—

They obviously didn't do very good, uh, target reconnaissance. I mean, maybe not at all. So you should begin with a man.

There's the Marine causing trouble. All right guys, thank you guys for watching, uh, Yeah, this watch is a frickin nice watch. It's Vayre. Go and buy it. They're presenting sponsors for the Team House and Izon. So if you want to help support Izon and the Team House, go to vayre.com/teamhouse. Links are in the description. I love you.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Hello everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early. And you can ask us questions, maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast Completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com/theteamhouse. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com/theteamhouse. Thanks, guys.