Transcript of JD Vance’s Warning to Israel, the Last Desperate Move of Israel-Firsters & Iran’s Growing Strength

It's always a kind of sketchy proposition to cite casualty figures in the middle of a war, because if there's one thing combatants, governments lie about, it's how many people have died. You could almost never get a straight answer. Everybody lies about it. They're lying about it now. 4.5 years in, we really have no idea how many Russians, Ukrainians, or people from other countries have died in the Russia-Ukraine war. And we definitely don't know with precision how many people have died in the war with Iran. But we thought it'd be interesting to pull up the official numbers to the extent they exist. We don't know, by the way, with total certainty how many Americans have died. The official number is maybe 16. Is that true? We hope it's no more. Every death is a tragedy, but we just don't know. But there are official numbers. And so, again, just as an exercise, as something that might reveal a deeper truth, we pulled up the numbers a minute ago. So here are the numbers. On the Iranian side, the official number is about 3,600, 3,664, about that Iranians dead, combatants and civilians, majority civilians, as is true in every war, uh, 3,600.

But that's not the biggest total of dead in a country in the last 3 months since this war broke out in the Middle East, launched by the United States and Israel. The biggest number of dead is not in Iran. It's not in a Gulf state. It's in Lebanon. Lebanon.

Yeah.

Over 4,000 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, killed by Israel since Israel and the United States launched the war against Iran. Think about that for a second. Now, again, we have no confidence in the precision of these numbers, but in the relative scale of the numbers, in other words, more killed in Lebanon than killed in Iran. Sounds right. If it's even close to right, it tells you something amazing. And it tells you, which if you've been paying attention, something you already knew, which was that Israel cajoled, convinced, threatened, however they did it, got the US government to fight this war, a regime change war in Iran on its behalf with it as a partner. Israel and the United States partnered in this war, different goals, but somehow a partnership. And then immediately use that war as a pretext to launch another war against a neighbor, Lebanon, the only country in the Middle East with a Christian head of state, Christian head of the military, the only even semi-Christian country in the whole region, and kill a bunch of Christians and other people more than the US and Israel together killed in Iran. Think about that for a second.

Think about what that says about Israel's attitude, not toward Lebanon, or Hezbollah or Hezbollah or whatever we're calling it, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia that they're supposedly at war with. Think about what that says about Israel's attitude toward us here in the United States, its sponsor, the people paying for all of this. This would be like you get a call from a friend, your closest friend, your only real friend, who says, I've got a home invasion in progress. MS-13 is beating down my door. They're going to kill my family. Come help. It's existential. And so you get in your car, you drive over there armed, and he's right, you're— you begin a pitched battle with the MS-13 home invaders. But while you're fighting his home invaders, he splits out the back door and shoots his next-door neighbor in the head and steals his house. You would say to him, probably, if you had any self-respect, no, what are you doing? You told me that I had to fight this battle on your behalf because we're such close friends and that your existence, your future depended on winning this battle. And the second I joined the battle that you convinced me to join, you split and started another battle to increase the size of your property.

That's not a good friend. That's a friend who's taking advantage of your generosity, of your loyalty, of your help. That is, in fact, someone who's betrayed you. And that is, roughly speaking, or maybe a little more than roughly, that is pretty much exactly what Israel just did to the United States. So Israeli leaders somehow convinced, controlled, threatened, whatever they did. They overrode the advice of the American president's advisers and intelligence chiefs. And convinced him that Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, despite the fact that that same president told everybody a little more than 6 months before that that threat had been neutralized during the 12-day war in— back in June, that they were somehow building a nuclear weapon again despite having no nuclear facilities because we blew them up. Whatever. You remember the story. And we needed to neutralize that threat. The Iranian nuclear program was the justification for this regime change effort, for killing the Ayatollah, bombing the girls' school, everything that's happened in the last 3 months. And we had to do this, not simply for Israel's sake, because you would never go to war on behalf of a foreign country.

That would be effectively treason. But for our own sake and for the sake of the world, you can't allow Iran to have a nuke. And they, they're almost ready. They almost have a nuclear weapon. And the delivery device, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the ICBM capable of blowing up Miami. And if we allow them, they will do just that. Because they're so crazy. Killing is their reason for living. They hate us for our freedoms. It doesn't make any sense to the rational Western mind, but to the Shiites in Iran, yeah, they get up in the morning determined to kill the West because we're the West. And on that ground, just on the basis of that, They've devoted their entire lives to building weapons of mass destruction just so they can kill us. And so we have to kill them first. That's literally the case, not simply that Donald Trump made, but that American presidents have been making for like 40 years. They're just crazy. You don't have to consider their perspective, their point of view, their motives. They don't have a perspective, a point of view, or motives. What they have is bloodthirst. They kill for its own sake.

That's their religion. Okay, that's what the mullahs are about, killing Westerners. They hate us for our freedoms. So they sold that explanation and then immediately revealed they didn't believe it themselves because they took our resources and their military, which we pay for, to go fight a separate war and in the course of that war took like half the country and occupied it. And it just so happens that that country abuts— it's contiguous to Israel. It abuts northern Israel, the Galilee. And it's definitely true that Hezbollah has shelled the Galilee or sent drones over the Galilee and killed people in the Galilee. Not thousands, not even close. But they're very hostile to Israel. They want to kill Israelis. There's no doubt about that. There's no reason to lie about that. That's true. Hezbollah is hostile to Israel. But it's also true that Israel would like to steal the land of a sovereign nation called Lebanon, which is not run by Hezbollah. It's in effect occupied by Hezbollah and has been for a long time. That's a big problem for Lebanon. No reason to lie about that either. It hasn't made Lebanon better. It's a beautiful country with amazing people, but it's become a —well, literally a battleground in a larger contest for regional control between Iran and Israel.

So that is a fact. And if you're trying as an American president or vice president or chairman of the Joint Chiefs or, you know, anybody in an official capacity in the United States who's trying to wrap up this war in a way that you can plausibly claim victory at the end, or at least with less humiliation. That's extremely annoying. Why wouldn't it be? You just told your people you were doing it for one reason, and your partner admitted by his actions, if not words, that he's got a completely separate agenda, which is not good for you, results in the intentional deaths of Christians, the bombing of churches, the emptying of Christian villages, ancient Christian villages, etc., etc. So the whole thing is repugnant. And it's also, as the Israeli style of war tends to be, wildly disproportionate. So they kill people in the Galilee in northern Israel. You kill 1,000 of them. And not only do you kill 1,000 per one, but then you brag about it and you say, as a cabinet minister in the Israeli government did just the other day, hours ago, yeah, those are the rules. Kill one of ours. We kill 1,000 of yours.

That's not how civilized people conduct warfare because it's so asymmetrical that it's not justifiable morally. It is by definition punishing the innocent. And it's also something that only truly discredited, widely recognized evil regimes have ever done in public, have ever said that. There was a certain European country 80 years ago that did that to partisans, say, in Eastern Europe. You kill one of our soldiers, we'll round up 100. It was 100 to 1, by the way, or 50 to 1. But here you have our partner, our client state, saying it's 1,000 to 1. It's all bad. It's bad in absolute terms. There's no justifying it as a question of behavior. It's also bad for the United States. Why would we want to be tethered to a lunacy like that? Why would we want to be paying for lunacy like that, brutality like that? Totally unjustifiable. And of course, undergirding all of it is the belief that all human life is not equal. Some lives are worth more than others. It's not just a matter of nationality, it's a matter of race. Our people, our bloodline is more valuable than yours. Now, by the way, Israel's not the only country that's reached that conclusion.

Lots of countries have entered a state of insanity and concluded that. Famously the Germans, but many others. It's like, this is a human problem that people tend to have. I'm fully human, you're not. Like, they're not the first country to reach that conclusion, but that conclusion itself is the enemy of civilization. That's exactly what we reject. That's why we're civilized, and people who believe that are by definition uncivilized. So all of this happens. Meanwhile, the United States realizes its president its leadership that there's no military solution to this. We can't kill our way out of the war with Iran. We can't, despite the awesome and much advertised power of our military, we can't actually force Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, or we would have already. And by the way, no one on either side of this debate has ever proposed exactly how you would do that, not noted military geniuses like Mark Thiessen. Nobody had— because there's no— there's no solution. But there is an inevitable outcome if you keep going, and that's poverty. That's economic collapse. And the president said that out loud last week. If we keep going, we run out of oil.

I don't know if we actually run out of oil. I don't know if that's true. Probably not. We do have massive energy reserves in the United States, but this stuff is priced on the international markets. And at some point, sooner rather than later, energy, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, the things that make the society work will become too expensive for most people to buy, at which point things fall apart. You get hyperinflation and then all the downstream effects of that, like chaos and violence. So we can't— we're boxed in, made a bad decision, got to get out. Yes, getting out looks a lot like defeat because strictly speaking, it is defeat, meaning we're pulling back We've reached none of the goals that we publicly articulated we were trying to reach, and that's all very embarrassing. We have reached the limit of American power. Yes, that's true. It's sad. We can certainly readjust. Doesn't mean our country's gone, doesn't mean we're in a Great Depression, doesn't mean we have a civil war. Like, there are lots of things we're avoiding here, and that's good, but it's definitely a step down, and it's kind of impossible to save face entirely.

But You know, it's the best of a series of really bad options. So the president who got us into this mess in the first place— and shame on him— did make a rational and in some ways, though depressing, probably the only right decision, a noble decision, actually, just take his lumps and get out. Because if we don't do that, what exactly are we going to do? And again, no one's answered that question because there's no answer. Other than just continue to fruitlessly suffer at an accelerating pace until everything truly falls apart. So you have to get out. So we're going to get out. So he announces we're getting out. Well, from the Israeli perspective, there's no worse outcome. And just to show a little grace to Israel, this is one of those rare moments where the hyperbole actually does match the reality. So Israel's been complaining about, whining about, inflating the severity of existential threats for, you know, generations. It's an existential threat. No, it's not. But this gets about as close to an existential threat to Israel as anything in the past 50 years, for sure. So they go into this with the aim of disabling Iran, breaking the country apart into warring factions, taking— kind of taking it off the table as a global player.

And that was their goal. They said it, and the opposite happened. Iran became stronger. Iran became globally recognized as a true player in international energy and commodity markets, but also as the country that stood up to the two most ferocious, maybe least scrupulous militaries in the world. This is the global view, true or not, and didn't crumble. They killed the head of state and the entire top echelon running the state, and new people nobody had ever heard of seamlessly moved into those roles and just kept, kept going. So like the message to the rest of the world is this little outlaw terror state stood up to the most powerful coalition in the world and survived. That in itself is a massive win and it increases Iran's prestige and its operational power going forward. There's kind of no way around that. Not many people would have predicted that. Not many people would have wanted that. But we're not in charge of history. And that's exactly what happened. From the perspective of the rest of us, that's sad. It's a massive downgrade in American power and there will be consequences for sure, particularly in East Asia. But you're just going to have to live with those and deal with them.

And it may be in some ways good for the United States to recognize the limits of military power because there are limits to military power, period. Even if you use nuclear weapons, there are limits and those limits include your own assured death. So like, let's stop talking ourselves into lunacy here. Military is great. Everyone supports the military. Certainly it's well-funded. A lot of that funding is wasted. There's a lot of theft. Building aircraft carriers is obviously insane, as any person could have told you. There's a— there's obviously a lot to learn from the waste in $1.5 trillion in Pentagon funding. But the military is still impressive and has lots of great people and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But no matter how great your military is, there are things you can't achieve with it. That's just a fact. It's always been a fact. Wise people understand that. There's no leader in the world with any wisdom or foresight who doesn't understand that. And now perhaps our leaders will understand it. And that's not bad. But from Israel's perspective, it's very hard to see an upside in this because Iran, which it's fair to say, no matter how much you dislike Israel, you'd have to admit Iran has a real grudge against Israel.

Iran has been funding And it's a little more complicated than this, but they have effectively been funding some of Israel's most dangerous enemies. That's just true. And now they're more powerful than ever. And the Gulf, the 6 Gulf states, which are inherently powerful because they have all this energy wealth, they're not more closely allied with you or the United States. They will, some of them inevitably will in real terms, if not openly, become closer to Iran because they have no choice, because Iran is now a partner with Oman in controlling the ability of their commodities to get out of the Persian Gulf. So it— this is all obvious, but think about it from the Israeli perspective. This is like a true nightmare scenario, but it's also a familiar scenario to anyone over 11 years old. And that's the scenario in which all of your dreams whip around and become the opposite of what you thought they were going to be. You have no ability as a human being to precisely predict the future. Sometimes you can be kind of right, often you're 180 degrees wrong. The opposite of what you thought was going to happen happened.

And again, anyone who's not a child has lived this. And wise people write it down on a note and post it on the fridge just to remind themselves every single day: I am not God. It is entirely possible that I'll go into some complex, high-stakes project, and at the end, the opposite will happen. So I should slow down a little bit and be ever aware of the limitations of my own predictive abilities. That's how wise people approach life. People like Benjamin Netanyahu, by contrast, and a lot of politicians, by the way, get up on stage and tell you, if we do this, this is exactly what's going to happen. And people like that should never hold power because they're dumb and they're dumb in a recognizable way. They don't recognize their own limits. They don't know what they're not capable of doing.. And the only way they ever learn that is by leading others into disaster and death. That's like the oldest lesson in human history. And we're all learning it once again. So those, I think, are the relative perspectives. The United States realized we've got to get out. It's, that's obviously embarrassing. It's bad, but it could be way worse.

So we should be grateful they're getting out now. Israel realizes, Holy smokes, we miscalculated, or we were betrayed, because there's really no self-awareness at all at any level of the Israeli government. It's always someone else's fault. It's always your fault. You just hate us because you've always hated us. Okay, now. But in any case, whatever the cause of it, the Israelis understand, wow, oh wow, we're up against it. We thought we were going to be in charge of the region, we'd be the regional hegemons, and now we realize our main enemy is more powerful than they ever were. Whoo. And by the way, our only ally on the planet is telling us that we have to stop the war that we started under the COVID of the war we convinced them to start. Okay. So it's tough. And you can see the total misalignment between the United States and Israel, these purported partners in this doomed venture. But they're not really partners. One country is many times the size of the other country, both in population and territory, and in resources are not even closely comparable. This is the elephant and the flea. And moreover, the little country is wholly, totally dependent on the big country for everything, for, for everything, for its economy, for its intelligence, and more than anything, for maintaining its territorial ambitions and providing for its defense..

But the little country refuses to recognize that, both out of arrogance and because it's in a state of total hysteria and can't think straight. And so that's the rub right there. The little country somehow has control over the future of the big country, but the big country is solely responsible for the little country being able to do anything at all. And only one side understands this dynamic, and that's the big country. So the vice president of the United States last Thursday said some of this in public. He said, by the way, who spent more to defend Israel in the last 3 months during the course of this war? Was it Israel or the United States? No, the United States spent more money defending Israel than Israel spent defending itself. Not whining about it, not attacking Israel, but just like, hey, for a little perspective here. Your cities are still largely intact because American taxpayers paid to defend them. By the way, to our own detriment. We now lack the defensive capacity to send American troops other places in the world if we needed to, because we expended it defending you in a war that you got us into.

So the vice president said that, and then he said this in a now famous clip, which is worth rewatching. Here it is. What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you have seen people within Bibi's cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal and in some ways very personally attacked the President of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world. Yeah. You think? I mean, that's the most obvious advice. And it is advice. It's, it's criticism, but it's not an attack. It's an acknowledgment of reality. And it's a, it's a call to change behavior. It's, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, you've got some ideas that are totally wrong. It would be like you get in an argument with one of your kids who's in college, and the kid's like, I don't care what you think, man.

And you're like, whoa, son, I'm paying the tuition. Okay? So if you wanna pay your own tuition, you can do whatever you want, but as long as I'm paying for it, you gotta hear me out. That's a conversation probably every parent has at some point. It's not an expression of hate toward the child. It's a reminder to the child that you are not independent. You're not an adult. How do we know you're not an adult? Because you're not living independently. That's why. And that is the measure. If you can take care of your own stuff, then I'll respect you as an equal or a peer anyway. But if I'm paying for everything, you got to hear me out. My interests and my feelings also matter. In fact, they matter quite a bit because I'm paying for it all. And that's pretty much what JD Vance said to Israel. Not, I hate you, but, hey, wake up, guys. No, you're all spun up into a state, but like, here's some reality for you. And then he went on to say, as noted, that we paid for more of your defense than you did. So you would think— and JD Vance doesn't hate Israel at all.

In fact, probably a lot of people on the right think he's way too comfortable with Israel. But whatever. This is not an attack. Okay. At all. And it's true. Most important, whatever its intent, whatever the motive was, is factually true. There's no arguing that. What's the untrue part of that? There isn't one. So he says this. So you would think in a country that's thinking clearly with wise people who envision a future for themselves, someone say, you know what, there's— you're right. Like, everybody hates us. We literally— our prime minister has been indicted for war crimes in civilized countries. The whole world is against us. This is our patron. It's the only country that's with us. Maybe we shouldn't give them the finger in public. Maybe we shouldn't blow up a peace deal that's essential to their survival as an economic power. Right? Don't you think? And by the way, they've done a lot for us. It's America. No, that's not what they said. Oh, they said the opposite. They attacked JD Vance as an anti-Semite. Oh, really now? Anti-Semite. Okay, here's what a— not— there's not a French character. This is like a very well-known and highly regarded Israeli defense analyst, Ben Sabti.

He works at a security think tank, Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. Here's what he tweeted on Sunday, a few days later, quote, maybe USA needs another Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to remember who is the enemy and who is the friend. Maybe America needs another 9/11. Ooh. Now keep in mind, it was this same leadership establishment, in fact it was Benjamin Netanyahu himself, 25 years ago after 9/11, the event, 9/11, the biggest, most damaging terror attack in American history, who said this is a good thing because it reminds America that we're on the same side. We're fighting against 19 Arabs with box cutters or whoever supposedly did that. So this is a sentiment, it's the ugliest possible sentiment. It's rooting for your supposed friend to suffer. It's rooting for civilian terror deaths in your allies' nation. That's not right. What? There's no uglier sentiment than that. But it's also something that like you would never say in public ever. Even if you had a dark thought like that, you would never say it. You couldn't say something like that. Maybe you didn't another 9/11. It's like, you know, saying to your spouse, maybe, you know, you don't understand me.

Maybe if you got stage 4 pancreatic cancer, you would understand how much I'm suffering. You don't wish stage 4 pancreatic cancer on a friend, okay? You wish it on an enemy. And of course, it's also a threat. I mean, let's be real, that's a threat. Maybe you need another 9/11. Oh, another 9/11. Okay, now says the Israeli security official. All right, does he work for a moving company? Anyway, you see the point. Like, what the hell are you doing? So you would think— by the way, if you're an American who supported Israel, and there are good people in the United States who sincerely support Israel, Jews and Christians— you would look at this and you'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not good. First of all, as an American, I'm outraged that anyone would talk to us that way or treat us that way or make a threat against it. Maybe another 9/11. But you would also say, if you cared about Israel, like, man, that's self-defeating, that kind of thinking, those kind of threats. Like, that's crazy talk. Like, there's no way you can win. Okay, so pull back a little bit.

That's what you'd think people would say. But that's not what they said. That's not what Israel's agents in the United States were saying. No, they doubled down on it. And I'm going to play this clip. I hate almost to do it because, you know, of all the 535 members of Congress, House and Senate, there are a few, just a few. I mean, most of them you just disagree with, but there are a couple who are just like so repulsive that you think this person is trying to turn me into a hater. So I'm just going to avert my gaze. I don't even want anything to do with this person. And the following member of Congress from the state of Florida is definitely in that category. But just for context, This is Randy Fein. He's a new member. This is the guy who tweeted laughing emojis at the picture of a murdered Arab child, possibly a Christian child, in Gaza. So this is someone who, you know, should not be serving in the United States Congress, whose presence really in this country is humiliating to all of us because Americans are better than that. Overwhelmingly, most Americans are not going to laugh at a photograph of a dead child.

But he did. Anyway, here's what Randy Fein said. This is a sitting member of Congress in response to the vice president's accurate, justified, and totally reasonable, level-headed assessment of the dynamic between the US and Israel. Watch.

JD Vance from the podium yesterday chastising critics of this deal coming from Israel. That was pretty unprecedented by JD Vance. I'm surprised he went that that far. Yeah, look, I thought JD's comments yesterday were absolutely inappropriate and frankly disgusting. The state of Israel was not created by the United States. It is not funded by the United States except in some small way.

Um, it was created in the blood and sweat and tears of the Jewish people arising out of the Holocaust.

The United States didn't support Israel during its formation. In fact, there were times when it put arms embargoes in place.

And JD Vance would be wise to go back and learn his history.

I think his comments today were completely out of line.

Learn his history. It's almost— the whole thing is almost unbelievable. The vice president— and this could— but it's not a defense of JD Vance. It's any— any politician who said that. If Joe Biden said that, any normal person, the same response, like, okay, maybe I don't like Joe Biden or whatever, but that's just true. It's just It's just true. What is untrue about it? Well, Randi Fein didn't tell us what was untrue about it. Neither did the host who set up the question. It was unprecedented. Unfortunately, that's true. It was unprecedented for any American public official from the White House or affiliated with the White House to say anything that was even mild chastisement of Israel, to deviate from the script so familiar to Americans. We love you. You're special. The rules don't apply to you. Whatever you want to do, we will back you. In fact, our whole country depends on you. We didn't create you, you created us. Or in the famous words of Nikki Haley, America needs Israel more than Israel needs America. This kind of stuff, this nonsense talk has been going on for decades really, because no one has ever stood up and said, what are you talking about, Nikki Haley?

How in the world would the United States need Israel more than Israel needs the United States? It's not an attack on Israel, but like, what are you talking about? Shut up, Nazi. All right, now, but because of decisions forced and inspired by Israel's defenders in the United States, we can't avoid where we are now, which is at a place where lots of Americans who are agnostic on the question or pro-Israel or just didn't think about it, didn't care, are waking up to the reality. This is really bad for us. And their reaction, its agents in the United States, including Randy Fine is, shut up, Holocaust. They built it 'cause of the Holocaust. Well, I mean, okay. Without even getting into debate about how Israel was built, under what circumstances, who did it, it's a little more complicated than that. Actually, it was controlled by Britain. And a lot of British diplomats and soldiers and officers had to be killed in terror attacks before they finally abandoned it. To the settlers. But, but whatever. Leaving that aside, to invoke the Holocaust with no mention of the fact that tens of hundreds of thousands of American men died fighting the Nazi regime.

The United States did not abet the Holocaust. The United States fought the Nazis and hundreds of thousands of Americans died and many more were wounded and their lives destroyed fighting the Nazis. So you would think if you're an American member of Congress, you would preface every reference to the Holocaust with You know, a lot of Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice fighting this stuff. But no, he would never say that because it would absolve America of the unearned guilt from those murders 80 years ago. So, of course, the point of invoking the Holocaust is to say, hey, you've got a lot to feel guilty for. Shut up. But of course, the United States has nothing to feel guilty for. Zero. When it comes to its relationship with Israel. United States has done a lot more for Israel than Israel has done for the United States. That's just a fact. It's a math question. Show me numbers that contradict that. You can't because they don't exist. They don't even— nothing in that realm exists. But here you have a man with no moral authority to speak on any topic lecturing the US government in his own party He's a Republican.

This is a Republican vice president, Republican administration. But these questions for Randy Fine supersede party ID because the most important thing in Randy Fine's life is the fortunes of the Israeli government, not of Israel itself. By the way, if you cared about Israel, you would not take Randy Fine's position. You would not laugh at a genocide. Everyone who laughs at a genocide is going to be punished, including Randy Fine. At some point, people who committed the genocide will be punished most harshly. And that's the Israeli government. So like, it's not in their long-term interest to encourage this kind of criminal behavior, obviously, any more than it'd be in your kids' interest to give them heroin, no matter how much they wanted it. If you loved your kids, don't give them heroin. If you love your ally Israel, don't abet genocide, 'cause it's not gonna end well for them or for you. But whatever. Randy Fine, when he hears any, not even criticism, mild chastisement of Israel, immediately launches into Holocaust mode. This is not sustainable. That's kind of the point. Obviously, it's not justifiable, but it's not sustainable. So when you, you know, tune into Fox and they're doing yet another segment, the rise in antisemitism in America, and you think, well, maybe there is a rise in antisemitism in America.

There's certainly a massive rise in distrust of Israel. Massive. But where does that come from? Is it because people woke up in the morning like, you know what, I'm going to blame all my problems on the Jews? Just hate the Jews. It's an ancient hatred. I'm mad they've been poisoning wells or whatever. Just millions of Americans decide to become irrationally hateful one day? Probably not. Probably not just antisemitism. It's not just this ancient hatred that just rears its head randomly like a Bubonic plague or something. No, it's not an act of nature in this specific case, and it's not aimed at all Jews, hardly. It's disapproval at the behavior of a secular government that we fund. And everybody knows that except for the tiny percentage, and it's a very tiny percentage, most of them seem to have congressional seats, of American leaders who seem to sincerely believe— and I will give Randy Fine credit for sincerity— probably sincerely believe that the only motive for criticizing the secular government of Israel must be irrational Jew hatred. Of course, they don't even address, you know, the many, many Jews in good standing who have the same view of the government of Israel, which is it's bad, it's terrible for the US.

They don't even address people like that because that, you know, that's just the cognitive dissonance is just unbearable. Like, what do you do with Glenn Greenwald? You're not really Jewish. Shut up. You're a Nazi. Okay, now, so basically the point is when you have criticism that is rooted not in hatred, but in reality, and when you have a fundamental conflict of interest, Israel needs to have one thing. The much larger patron country needs to have another thing. You're facing a really tough situation that you have to assess. Critically, rationally, non-emotionally, with an aim to minimizing damage on all sides. What you don't do is threaten another 9/11 if you don't get your way, because you may pull off another 9/11. Okay, but it's not going to change the fundamental dynamic. And the only people who don't understand this at this point are the bitter enders in the US Congress. In the American neocon commentariat. They just have no idea. And that is a recipe for collision, for collision. So here's— and I'll stop with this before we get to an analysis from geopolitical expert Brandon Weikert on where we are in this conflict and how we can get out of it and what the cost might be when we do.

But this clip just really kind of says it all. So this is from Fox News. Which was at one point, I guess, a broadly conservative— back when that term had meaning— cable network. Familiar with it, of course. A lot of great people there. But it has become in the last year sort of a nonstop cheerleader for the most nihilistic kind of military action, military action that has no assured positive outcome. Really, the point of it is just to kill people, apparently. Like, what is the point? No one ever explains that, but you're, you're a weakling and unpatriotic and probably a secret Muslim if you're not for it. I mean, it's literally— it is nihilism. You can't tell me why this is a good idea, you can only attack me for not getting on board with it. Okay, that's very dark. You never want to find yourself advocating for things like that, but they are. And because they are, and because it's the most important thing to the network for reasons that are not clear All of a sudden, every other issue is subsumed into that. It's, it's not important at all. So you find yourself in a place where you have longtime conservative, not just cable news hosts, but, but figures like very famous people, recognizable people, and doing this for 30 years, but in your bedroom for 30 years, telling you that what matters are the conservative values.

And those would be roughly in order: small government, lower taxes, entrepreneurship, family values, pro-life, you know, no castrating kids. All of a sudden you have people like that making common cause. In fact, not just common cause, but celebrating figures on the other side with whom they agree on nothing except the need for the United States to keep funding irrational, counterproductive, genocidal behavior in a foreign country, cuz that's all that matters. So you wind up with a tableau like the one we're about to show you where you've got Sean Hannity commiserating with John Fetterman, who's very liberal on everything except Israel, and who knows even what liberal means now. But he's on the other side of every other issue except Israel, which for reasons either of cognitive impairment or campaign donations, he's decided is the only issue that matters. And they're looking right into the camera and telling you, yeah, any criticism of Israel is just Jew hate and it means you're a bad American. This is the kind of clip that will be preserved in the museum of national decline at some point. Like, how did this great country dissolve? Well, because the people went insane.

The people with the most power went insane. They started saying things that make no sense at all. And this will definitely be in that exhibit. So here's Sean Hannity and John Fetterman. All right. Let me ask this. Why? Why the deep hatred for Israel? Why?

Yeah, because, because, I mean, if you have such contempt for Israel, I mean, of course, you're also anti-American and you're anti-Western civilian civilization and you're, you know, seem anti-capitalism and the American way of life.

I mean, it's like so tempting to get literal. Okay, so a socialist country, which is Israel, not attacking them, just saying, founded by socialists on socialist principles. It's not a free market country. It's run by the government and the military. It's like the opposite of free market country. It's a pretty successful country, you know, for a bunch of reasons. But if you don't support Israel, you're against capitalism and you're against America. Is there any other foreign nation to which this applies? If you don't support Moldova, if you don't support Estonia, you don't support Guinea-Bissau, you don't like America. 'Where are you on Namibia?' Countries like equal in relative significance globally, like they're not really players. Israel's not really a player except to the extent that we imbue it with value because our politicians have been lobbied by them. But like inherently, why do we care about Israel or Guinea-Bissau? We don't. But you ever hear a politician say, 'Where are you on Guinea-Bissau? Where are you on French Guiana?' You got to get on board with French Guiana. Put a French Guianese flag on your lapel or you hate America. You're against capitalism. You'd be like, why?

You got a head injury, pal? Like, what? Lay off the psilocybin. It's not, not helping. But says that with a straight face and then has the gall to say, and this is not an attack on poor Fetterman who is impaired or on poor Hannity who was also impaired. This is just a reminder of what reality is. You're an enemy of Western civilization. Okay, now, now you've roused me from my slumber. I'm an enemy of Western civilization. So you're begging the question then, what is Western civilization? Well, it's a lot of things that emanate from Rome, Israel's ancient enemy. But let's just put it succinctly. At the core of this thing we call Western civilization, upon which our society is based, is the idea of justice. What is justice in the West, in this thing called Western civilization? Justice is the notion that we punish the guilty and we spare the innocent. And it is not simply an accident for which we're sort of sorry. It is a grave offense against the idea of justice itself to ever punish the innocent. And that's why we go through an elaborate process called the justice system to prevent doing that.

We don't have a justice system to make it easier to convict people. We have a justice system to make it harder. So terrified are we at the prospect of hurting the innocent. That is the core idea of Western civilization. Where does that idea come from? That idea comes from a Christian understanding of the human soul. The human soul, your soul, is coequal with every other human soul because God created every human being. People in Western civilization don't think they are uniquely chosen by God and therefore exempt from universal rules. They don't believe that. They believe just the opposite. They believe that people in— yes, Guinea-Bissau— well, maybe not welcome here to partake in our welfare state, but are nevertheless equal to us on the most basic moral level because they are human beings. And that's why we have a thing called human rights. So that idea is the basis of Western civilization. And because it is, Western civilization is precluded from doing the thing that all tyrannies do, that uncivilized nations do, which is punish on the basis of bloodline. There is no blood guilt in Western civilization. There cannot be because it is a direct contradiction of the West's understanding of the human soul.

You are different from your father and your mother and your ancestors going back however many thousand years, because you are you. You are a distinct soul created by God, and you cannot be killed because you are related to people the murderer doesn't like. That is the most repugnant thing in this collective we call Western civilization. And that is the very thing that Israel embraces. So you can say whatever you want about Israel. And I've said honestly many times, great country in a lot of ways. Charming, smart people, lots of great things. But the Israeli government has abandoned the central tenet of Western civilization, which is justice on an individual basis, and instead adopted an older and darker and I would say evil standard of blood guilt. So don't lecture me about Western civilization and tell me that if I don't defend Israel, I don't defend Western civilization. I oppose the policies of Israel precisely because I do defend Western civilization. John Fetterman. Well, a lot of organizations talk about supporting veterans, but not all of them actually do it. Not even close. And that's why we only partner with companies we know are telling the truth and really working earnestly to make a difference.

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So with that, as promised, one of the most insightful and most knowledgeable sources on what's happening in this conflict with Iran and Israel and Lebanon and all the different players in this now global drama has been a man called Brandon Weikert, who was a geopolitical analyst, someone most people probably weren't familiar with before this conflict. But since it began, a lot of people have been tuning into regularly to understand what is going on and to get facts about it. So we are honored to have him join us now. Brent, thanks so much for coming on. So can you just start big picture? Thank you. And tell us, where are we now? Last time we— when we left the serial, we were on the verge of negotiating out this memorandum of understanding, this MOU. How is that going where are we?

Well, we have to remember— well, first of all, it's going better, I think, than what we were doing about a week ago, which is shooting at everything. So that's a win. It's a low bar these days, but I take that as a win. Um, but it's only 60 days, and, um, the three parties involved— because remember, it's not a two-party, um, issue. It's not just U.S. and Iran. If it were, I think we could probably get this thing wrapped up pretty quickly. The third party is, as you noted, Israel, and they're not really a party to the negotiations. And they don't perceive themselves— this is very important— as being bound by the negotiations that are ongoing. So the only way that they would really be restrained from, say, doing something to blow up this very tenuous, temporary right now, 60-day at most ceasefire would be if the president of the United States basically brought the hammer down on his counterparty in Tel Aviv and told them, "We are gonna cut you off if you do anything to meddle." And I can assure you that the Israeli government is looking to complicate this process right now.

So where are we right now? Well, we have not had a resumption of hostilities. Today that we are doing this show, we had, I think, the highest number of ships go through the Strait of Hormuz since the war really began. The number, I believe, I wanna say was 43, which is high for post what was going on in the war. But I want your audience to remember that this is about, and I have the numbers here, just gimme one second. This is about 20 to 30% of normal pre-war capacity. What that means is the pre-war baseline for container and oil ships getting through the Strait of Hormuz was about 120 to 140 ships. That was around 100 million barrels of oil every week. We are, we are nowhere near that right now. So there's a lot of irrational exuberance coming from Washington, D.C. because they got to spin this thing as best as they can. Uh, we're seeing a decline in the price of oil because of the mini glut. You see, a lot of ships were blocked from leaving the Strait of Hormuz the last 2 months. Now that the strait is somewhat reopened, they're leaving, and we're not really seeing a commensurate increase in ships coming to collect new oil.

It's mostly outgoing. So until that changes, people like me are going to be on pins and needles. I think what's happening here with the price of energy going to about $72 a barrel, which is pre-war level, and good for us, it's good for our wallets right now, that's a mini glut. And a lot of oil experts were anticipating this before the war really got going. Uh, also, for the last 2 months, China basically pulled themselves voluntarily off the global market. They have the world's largest strategic Petroleum Reserve, 1.4 billion barrels of oil was in their SPR. So what they did was as soon as the Strait of Hormuz was shut down, they took themselves off the market. That is one of the reasons you've seen these sort of bizarre downturns when everybody was expecting the price to go up. It's because China pulled themselves off the market. When they come back onto the market, and they will soon, that's going to cause problems. That's the civilian side of the story. The military side, Tucker, and feel free if you want me to stop, just—

No, I'm learning. Thank you. Okay.

Yeah. Well, thank you. And it's come to this. I have to wear glasses nowadays. But the weapons depletion rate, this is all publicly available. I do not deal in classified information. I am a public person. I don't deal in stolen information because that is something that's been lobbed at me in recent weeks. So missile interceptors, about 50% of the inventory of Patriot ballistic missile interceptors and 50, likely closer to 80%, of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors were expended in the course of the war. Over 1,000, that's about a third of our entire stockpile of, um, Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended. Large quantities of the JASSM missiles, uh, as well as pretty much the entire pre-war inventory of new precision strike missiles, the Prisms, that were used. Also, interestingly enough, because we were told there was never any threat to our Navy— this is why, of course, they never really dared to go through the Strait of Hormuz— um, the Navy reports that they expended large quantities of their SM-3 and SM-6 naval interceptors, which indicates to me, if I may conjecture here, that there must have been one hell of a fight over, uh, the security of our ships when the war was in its kinetic phase.

So the, the White House was lying when they said that the ships were totally safe. Our ships are very much at risk, obviously, from these numbers. Furthermore, uh, there are now significant, uh, gaps in the supply chain for those naval defenders. One last bit of data I'd like to deliver here Uh, the, um, I'm sorry, that's the wrong one. The chart here I have is for the PRISM. We blew through our pre-war stock, which was already low. They're saying the best estimate will be it will be replenished by late this year. The JASSM air-to-surface missiles, uh, will probably be replaced middle of next year. Those SM-3, SM-6 Navy defense missiles will take until about mid-2028. Those Patriot interceptors, not until closer to 2030. The THAAD interceptors— and the THAADs are the real important ones— that's not going to come until probably 2030. And the Tomahawks will not be replaced for another 5 years. So we better hope that the Chinese or some other area of interest is no longer requiring our assistance because we have depleted ourselves Tucker, and I will just add and conclude my little statement here with, unfortunately, it is my assessment that this memorandum of understanding that might or may not lead to a longer deal— I'm very skeptical of that.

I think we'll get a 60-day reprieve and then it'll be like the tariffs. It'll be every 45 days we're getting an extension. But I would just add that what we have agreed to, the Trump administration— and they didn't have a choice because the president already said we're gonna run out of oil in 4 weeks. So he was up against a wall and good for him for doing this. But ultimately, this is a conditional surrender document. The United States started a war and it promptly lost. The Iranians have unfortunately, strategically, at the strategic level, they have achieved victory. And where I think this goes geopolitically is a post-American Middle East in which Israel is likely now the pariah state, whereas before the war, you'll remember, even, even after 10/7, the Abraham Accords were really still in effect and they were working Israel as sort of the center of this new US-backed order in the Middle East. That's gone. And there's now gonna be a new Middle East and it's going to comprise, and this is my friend Dr. Arthur Moynihan, this has been his thesis as well. And I agree with him. There's gonna be 5 powers in the Middle East now.

It's gonna be Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan with their nuclear umbrella, The Egyptians, second largest economy in Africa, one of the best— I think it's probably the best conventional military in the Muslim world. And then Turkey with its very impressive industrial indigenous base. Remember, Jonathan Conricus, the former IDF spokesman at the JNS conference this last week, implied that the Israelis could not build an F-35 on their own. I would add that's true, but actually the Turks are proving with their new Kaan fighter that they absolutely could on their own. They don't need the US and NATO. They have a very proficient defense industrial base. Those Middle East powers are greater Middle East powers because obviously Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey are not technically in the Middle East. But those greater Middle East powers are going to form the new post-American order. And, you know, where it goes from here really is up to really Mr. Netanyahu and his government, Tucker.

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I mean, that is, as I've thought from really a couple of weeks into this conflict, that is a disaster for Israel. And, you know, it's not my job to defend Israel. It has enough defenders in our country. But just objectively speaking, I don't think the outcome could be much worse strategically for Israel. So, yeah, I don't think they're good stewards of their own future. I don't think they're wise. I don't think they're helping.

Certainly not their government. Their government.

That's what I mean. Yeah, I knew.

I know there are about 20% of Israelis are not okay with what's going on. Yeah. What's really surprising, Tucker, is, you know, my colleague Kieran Andrew has been talking about this to me for a long time, is just how consistently supportive majority Israelis are of the Netanyahu policies. Even if they don't like Netanyahu, they're okay with what he's doing. And I argue what he's been doing since '07. Has put them in this position. Oh, yeah.

No, it's truly— it's a disaster. And I think the vice president put it best when he said you can't kill your way out of every problem. And that's just a— that's a fact. It's a physics principle, really. It's like not even a judgment. It's just true. And so— but here's my question. Like, how did they— so now you have the regional powers are all Muslim states, by the way, majority Muslim states, and they're all kind of hostile to Israel. And they have reason to be hostile to Israel. And Israel spent the last number of decades making bellicose noises at all these governments, assassinating people in their countries, basically treating them like animals. And now they're kind of in charge of one of the critical regions in the world. So where does that leave Israel?

Well, they're going to be basically the way we treated Iran for the last 47 years. The Israelis will now be treated that way. Oof. And it is not because particularly the Arab states woke up and said, we're gonna screw Israel. You remember, again, the Abraham Accords were still being pushed by even Saudi Arabia behind the scenes. Oh, I know. Until about October, November of last year. What happened? The Israelis decided to entreat with Hamas and got their leadership to go, or their negotiators to go to Qatar, meet in Doha under diplomatic cover. The Israelis said they were sending their diplomats, and what they ended up sending was a cruise missile into the building in Doha. And they ended up killing a, a Qatari security agent. They ended up wounding— they didn't even— tactically, it was a disaster for them. They didn't even kill the targets. They ended up killing a bunch of low-level guys from Hamas. The big guys survived. Then they came back even angrier. Go figure. But furthermore, at that point, that was the first time that Israel had struck a Gulf— a GCC country, which had been going along quite well with the Abraham Accords at that point.

Since last November, when those strikes occurred, that was September—

September 9th.

Was it September? I'm sorry. Day before Charlie Kirk was killed. Charlie, you're— wow. You're absolutely right. It was September. Yes, I apologize. Thank you for correcting me. But, but it was in the fall of last year. And the point is, is that this shift occurred and a momentum began building in which all of the Arab states looked around and said, okay, it's not Iran that's crazier now. It's actually the Israelis. Exactly. And that's the key to understand it, because all the Arab states, for the most part, the governments at least, were agreeing with Iran, with Israel. Saying Iran's a bigger problem than anything we dealt with the Israelis. That flipped on its head almost instantly. And the Americans were, of course, stuck holding the bag because we gave the cruise missile. We, we've been providing diplomatic cover. We've been providing economic aid. Trump has been, has been providing political cover for Netanyahu on a personal basis, leader to leader. You know, he's the one begging the Knesset for pardons for Netanyahu. And his top people. So the Arab states looking around going, not only are the Israelis going to be a problem, but we got to get the Americans out of here now, too.

Exactly. And that is at play here because we lost a bunch of our bases, or rather they've been degraded, as the Pentagon keeps saying. Those bases are not coming back online in any meaningful sense, Tucker, because the Arabs know they have to get us out, at least the level that we're at, because otherwise they can't— they can't contain Israel.. And now you're gonna see a real flip from trying to contain Iran to now trying to contain Israel. And that's what I think's gonna play out over the next 5 years.

I, I, I don't know how that's gonna play out. I think your analysis is spot on, uh, very smart, and I hope people are listening to this, but I just wonder how it unfolds because sure, Israel feels legitimately threatened. And you could say Israel has a very long history of hyping threats and, We heard Randy Fine invoke the Holocaust. Okay, settle down, Randy Fine. But this is a real threat. It's almost like all of their hyperbole became real. Like they are actually threatened now. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it's been fulfilled. So like, if you have a country like Israel or really any country that feels— Russia— that feels cornered, that's a very dangerous country.

Yeah, well, no, certainly. And if you're a neighbor of Israel, you know, you're going to have to always be looking over your shoulder. But this is only going to compel the regional powers to align against Israel even more. The reason the Egyptians even were thinking about getting closer to Saudi and Pakistan and Turkey, uh, in this new alliance is because the Israelis woke up after 10/7 and started pushing all the Palestinian Arabs trying to get them in Gaza to go to the Sinai Desert. And the Egyptians are saying, we have all these deals with you. We've covered for you, Israel. WTF, man. Like, what are you doing? And so, you know, this is part of the problem. So you're— I think what you're getting at is, and maybe I'm wrong, is does this risk nuclear exchange of some kind?

Or something. I mean, it's so— it's too— Israel's under too much pressure. I don't think their leaders are thinking clearly at all. I know Israelis who are thinking clearly. Clearly, you're right to say there is a percentage of the population that's like shocked by what their government is doing. But the government is not thinking clearly at all. No. To have some guy threaten 9/11 against the United States on Twitter, like, this is their— we're in a crazy stage, I think, of their history. So, like, I'm just concerned that they're under too much— yeah, under too much pressure. Yeah. No.

So, you know, there is a real chance that they will do something with nuclear weapons. I wouldn't say, though, it is yet a probability. I think if, if Netanyahu is not in power, I suspect even if it's a hardline leader, which it probably will be, they will probably play things a bit more sly. They'll be a little bit more sly about it. And I think part of that is because they can't count anymore on America always having their back. If they use a nuke, that's pretty much it. That's the final, and I'm not saying they won't, but I just, I'm not ready to say that is, I thought that at the beginning of the war when everything just looked to be going so fast, but I look now and it looks to me like both on some level, the Iranians have pulled back from some of their extreme rhetoric. And while Israel was really going hard against Lebanon, the fact is I don't yet know if they are ready to pull the nuclear trigger because that is it. Then. And I think that a lot of Israelis tell themselves, look, we've always been the pariah, we've always been on the outside, on the periphery, and we'll just deal with that and we'll be stronger.

So that, I hope, is what the thought is. But it is still— yes, it is, it is a higher probability or higher possibility, but I wouldn't say probable just yet that under these conditions they would go nuclear.

I saw this last year where the talking points from Israel's agents in the United States were rolled out about how Qatar was funding Hamas.

Well, they were saying you were funded by Qatar. Yeah, right. Okay.

Yeah, I was funded by Qatar. Yeah, I'm the one who's an agent of a foreign power. So I just ignored it. But it's so insane. You know, every accusation is an admission.

But it's a projection, right?

It really is. But they start to say Qatar is funding Hamas. I don't think most Americans are aware that Qatar sent money to Hamas at the request of Israel. Okay. That's right. They were doing a solid for Bibi Netanyahu. So I was—

who was taking a vig, by the way. Of course he was taking a cut. Always. This is one of the reasons he was under investigation.

Always.

By his own government. Exactly.

So I knew this, but I didn't want to say it because like no one would believe. It sounds so crazy. Yes, Qatar sent money to Hamas because Israel— why would Israel want money to go to Hamas? I didn't want to get into it, so I didn't say it, but I knew it. And then I watched as these propagandists started to convince themselves that Qatar, which is like the most moderate country in the world, is somehow like the main sponsor of terror. And the next thing you know, they're bombing Qatar in the middle of a negotiation, which I agree with you, was a pivotal moment in the history of that region. And Trump thought that too. Trump was completely outraged by it.

But he humiliated Netanyahu. Remember, he made him sit with the phone in the Oval Office.

And then he's like, we're going to build a Qatari military base in Idaho just to, like, show you how much we love Qatar. And he actually does love Qatar. I mean, they gave him a new plane. But my point is, I watched this process, which is familiar, I think, to all people, where you tell a lie and then you convince yourself the lie is true and you get so overwrought believing your own lie that you do something crazy. I guess that's the thing I'm worried about.

Yeah, no, and that's certainly a possibility. Look, Israel is a very ideological state. You know, it's interesting because I think you and I probably come from the same kind of ideological origin story. And, um, I was always led to believe— I wrote a book not long ago about, about the threat of Iran, and it's this ideological crazy power. If they get the nuke, it's going to be suicide bombing with nukes. It's the end. And I, you know, you look at how they conducted themselves in this war, Tucker, and again, I hate that they beat us because I love America, so I'm not happy with that.

I agree.

But But they actually conducted themselves quite responsibly. The Iranian military did not go crazy. The Iranian military did not send suicide bombers to go blow up civilians. I mean, they didn't do the things I think you and I were taught to believe. Oh, yeah, they would do. And that's a good thing, by the way. That's a very good thing because it means that they're there. They can be reasoned with on some level. Not that I'm saying I trust them, but, you know, they have self-interest. And that's a very powerful motivator here. And they're very smart about protecting their interests. The Israelis come across now as the ideological power, as the ones who might actually— I mean, look at this thing in Lebanon. Listen, Tucker, I know you mentioned in your commentary that, you know, they had taken half of the country. They actually took like, I think like 25% maybe. But the Israeli Defense Force are running these 2006 tactics against a 2026 Hezbollah force, and it's having really devastating results for the IDF. It just— this time a month ago, you had the IDF chief of staff telling publicly twice, he said at the Times of Israel, then he said it while he was talking to the, I think, the cabinet for Netanyahu, saying that the IDF is on the brink of collapse if we don't get a massive surge of new recruits into the IDF in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon. And the reason that they've been struggling is because they're using their Merkava main battle tanks to basically run up the gut, to basically go into these urban centers where they're basically— they can't maneuver, they can't work around the way they need to. And Hezbollah's waiting, they're lying in wait, and they've got these drones and they've got these anti-tank guided munitions, just like the Ukrainians had at the beginning of the, of the war with Russia. And the Russians were were not prepared for that. And that's why you had in the beginning such a large number of Russian tanks getting annihilated. It was because the Ukrainians had figured out how to do this new form of anti-tank warfare. The Israelis watched all this. They didn't learn any of it though. They didn't learn a thing. They've lost upwards, possibly, and it's very murky, but they might have lost as many as 60 Merkava main battle tanks just because they keep running these things up the gut. Not using them on the periphery of battle as that's how you're supposed to use them. Now, I had a long conversation in December with the great Danny Davis, Colonel Davis, and, you know, former tank commander, and— or he was in the, in the armored infantry, and he sort of walked me through in great detail what tanks need to be, or how tanks need to be used today in modern combat.

The Israelis know how they're supposed to be used. They won't use them. And so this idea that they're even really being effective, I don't actually think, again, on the strategic level, they're really having the desired impact. They're blowing a lot of stuff up. They're killing a lot of people, but they're not actually translating that into like a real political end state. And what is the political end state? I have been told by former security officials in Israel, and this is really a bad way to put it, but they call it the Gaza model. That's what they want for southern Lebanon. They want to create what what they call a basically a desolate security buffer between their northern tier region and the southern component of Lebanon. That's what they say. But the, the, even that, they can't do it because what they're, the way that they're fighting this is completely not tethered to the way you're supposed to fight the modern war, as the Ukrainians have shown us when it comes to tanks, and the Russians now. So this— a lot of myths have been broken here. And that makes the Israeli political establishment— you're right, that makes them more desperate because the myth of the IDF as this, you know, they punch above their weight, etc., that's really being dispelled in real time.

Everybody sees it. And it's setting off alarm bells among Israeli leaders and they don't know what to do. All they know is to keep pressing the gas pedal and expanding. So, you know, it could get very, very bad here, uh, you know, if this thing continues as it is.

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25 years ago telling me, who'd done a lot of joint exercises with the IDF and had friends in the IDF and, you know, wasn't against Israel. I was pro-Israel, actually. But he's like, ah, they're not that impressive at all. And they spend a lot of time maintaining their reputation and sort of less time, you know, becoming impressive. And so I think people knew that, but now everybody knows it. And they also know it, I hate to say this, but about the US military. Like, why, if we have all these aircraft carriers, which are the most expensive war device ever built, and we can't use them to open a strait that's not that long. What are we doing?

So I don't know if you're familiar, but one of my calling cards is I am one of the world's biggest critics of the aircraft carrier. So I am right with you here. I am— the main battle tank, the aircraft carrier, you could make the argument they're not quite obsolete. I think in the case of the tank, I think Danny Davis made that that case in December to me very well. It's just you have to use them differently. But the carrier, the carrier, my God, it is so not right for the kinds of wars that we're fighting today. It cannot provide— it can't defend itself. So maybe it can launch some of their planes, but we saw this with, uh, what was it, Operation Prosperity Garden against the Houthi rebels, where basically the Houthi rebels chased Uncle Sam out of the Red Sea.. And we have not gone back there since 2024. I talked to a, a destroyer, a guy who served on a destroyer during Operation Prosperity Garden. And he said that he has in his entire career never seen anything like the kind of hell that the Houthis were giving the US Navy. And that was the Houthis.

Now we're talking again about the Iranians, which, okay, they're not Russia or China, not yet. Um, but, but they clearly are a competent military force. They clearly understand strategy and tactics, and they clearly employ those tactical capabilities with very significant effect. They kept us out of the Strait of Hormuz, Tucker. I know for a fact— I'm not going to say how, but I know for a fact that we were moving forces for a much bigger operation into the region, and that whole thing was was stunted because partly of the way in which we could not penetrate into the Strait of Hormuz reliably. And if we couldn't even send a ship for like a freedom of navigation type operation, there was no way in hell the admirals were going to risk sending an entire amphibious lander full of Marines to land on Karg Island or to take Kashem or whatever insanity the Trump administration was spewing at that time. I would also add there is clearly a shakeup or a breakdown going on at the highest levels of our uniform military command structure. I bet there is. And that's not being widely reported. Go figure. But I will— I will say, you know, everybody's focused on the reflecting pool in Washington, D.C. I think it was Donahue who resigned today, the head of— I think it was AFRICOM.

He resigned today. Fred Kotcher, who we spoke about previously when I was on the show, I've noticed he's not being charged with being a leaker. He's actually being allowed to leave quietly, it looks like. That to me indicates that Kotcher was speaking for more than himself. I think that he was speaking for Dan Caine when he leaked that, that conversation between Dan Caine and Trump on the eve of the war on February 27th, which indicates to me there is, there is a significant amount of uniformed military leaders who are looking around and they're saying, this ain't working. We're not being heard. We're GTFOing out of here.

It does seem like that needs to happen. I don't understand how the United States could be— the US military could be so totally and obviously unprepared for modern drone warfare, having watched it in different parts. We helped create it. Well, I'm aware of that. Yeah, and I think we did create it really. And well, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, the modern iteration of it in Afghanistan and I remember, I remember it very well. It was October 2001. But anyway, the point is, I don't— I just don't get that. All these smart people, biggest budget on the planet, biggest budget in history, and that you're not prepared to beat the Houthis to keep the Red Sea open like that should occasion deep soul searching, punishment. Of the guilty, by the way. And it, it hasn't. And instead we've got like a bunch of aircraft carriers in production still. Like, what is going on?

Well, they're in production, not being produced very quickly because our shipyards are a sclerotic mess. But, well, what's going on is the bubble, right? It's, it's not only protects the people in D.C. that you and I lived among for a long time and not only protects them from reality, It also protects them from accountability. Yes. Um, looking back on 9/11, whatever people think may have happened, um, you know, to cause 9/11— I certainly have my ideas— um, the fact is nobody was held accountable for the very blatant security failures, except for, like, you know, Richard Clarke, who, whether you like him or not, he did kind of warn us it coming, and he was the one. And, you know, of course, you know, he was the one that got, you know, so, but anyway, um, you know, nobody's really ever held accountable. That's the whole system in DC. It is one of protecting, you know, CYA, you know, cover your A, you know, that's, that's, that's the whole logic. And it's all political, and they're going to protect each other and close ranks. That's why after Iraq, by the way, all of the generals, remember Franks, the day that the fighting in Baghdad— we got Baghdad in '03.

The day that we did that, he put in his resignation papers, and him and his top generals resigned on mass, or retired en masse, to go write their memoirs because they knew the insurgency was going to come and the whole thing was going to go upside down, and they didn't want to be blamed. So that's your— that's sort of what you're dealing with in DC, whether it's the uniformed or non-uniformed people. And so So, you know, the only way this is going to change, Tucker, is if Congress actually gets off its rear end and starts holding the military accountable. Why haven't there been committee hearings yet? Where, where is the people in Congress demanding after-action briefings, demanding accountability for the very clear failures? I heard Seth Moulton, who I know is kind of a left-wing, you know, he's kind of nutty, but Seth Moulton to a guy I admire the hell out of, Elbridge Colby, back in March. He really held Bridges' feet to the fire, though not personally, but for the organization, uh, the Pentagon's failure to account for the fact that we were going to burn through all the munitions that we went through.

You know, we need more of that, and we're not getting it. And that's the sort of thing that will only ever bring accountability, uh, and they don't want to do it because fundamentally everybody's somehow benefiting from the existing system, right?

And it's, it's such a recognizable syndrome where you're destroyed by flattery, not criticism. It's the people who claim they love you who encourage your worst impulses. It's the— what they call it, like, AA world, the enablers. That's right. Yeah, you got a drinking problem, but it's like, it's not that bad, you know, let's go get loaded. Those are the people who kill you. And it's all these members of Congress and Fox News flag pin wearers who are like, we've got the greatest military in the world, the president says that all the time. And it's like, yeah, it's It's a great military, great people, amazing people, especially in the ranks. Yeah. However, like, they need to be held to the highest standards. That's why they're the greatest. And when you drop the standards, they become less impressive.

Like, well, they become Jack Keane. I mean, you know, listen to him on Fox and it's— no one is listening to—

so shameful.

Well, yeah, you know, or, or so say, or your friend Jesse Kelly, who is— or Jesse Waters, rather, uh, who, uh, is tweeting out these insane things about how much winning we're doing, and I wish that were the case. But, you know, North Korea wants their propaganda back because this is, this is the greatest strategic defeat of the United States, I think, maybe ever. Thankfully, the casualties, the US casualty rate was not in the many thousands. That is a blessing. Yes. That's also though because the way the war was fought it was mostly targeting our bases. So a lot of our people, thankfully, were near hospitals, and a lot of our people were able to— when they did get wounded severely, they were able to receive very top-quality treatment, either with military, you know, assistance, or the, the locals had good hospitals they were able to get our people to. And they were treated in that very important golden hour, uh, when one is injured. And they were I mean, that is a blessing. So in that way, we can be very thankful. But ultimately, at the strategic level, which our military leaders should be worried about, at the strategic level, this is, this is the end of America's hegemony.

That's it. Those days are done. That's right. Charles Krauthammer's beloved unipolar moment completely devastated. Pat Buchanan is proven right more and more every day when he challenged Krauthammer a big drama on that in the '90s. You remember that, I'm sure, better than me. But, you know, ultimately where I think this is going on the global level, Tucker, and again, feel free to cut me off, but where I'm going with this is it's looking to me like the transition from unfortunately US being sort of the dominant global power to a multipolar system in which really China is sort of the rising dominant power. That's just been expedited. That's been expedited. And, you know, I keep hearing from people in Trump's orbit that, well, really, this was 5D chess because we were going— we collapsed Venezuela and we took that offline for China, and we went after Iran, which is another big energy source for China, and we took that offline, and they're going to be on their knees. Well, as it turned out, like I said at the beginning, China was more than well prepared for this. In fact, I would argue that the Chinese, the reason they voluntarily divorced themselves from the global market and decided to rely solely on their very impressive SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, is because it was a proof of concept for them.

Because I think Beijing knows the next move by America, if this is part of some grand bizarre crackpot plan, um, the next move will be eventually to go after the Strait of Malacca and to try to cut China off And, and they are preparing themselves for surviving that.

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No, this is one-dimensional checkers.

Exactly. Not even. It doesn't rise to the level. And I say that with Sadness. I will say, I think— I don't think I know that the administration has gotten religion on this. They understand it. The consequences of proceeding are so severe that not only are they committed to ending this, but they are turning against— the president himself is turning against the people who advocated for it. I guess this was all inevitable, wasn't it? And so, yeah, the enemy's—

we'll see. They'll see how well that goes.

Well, I don't know. As of this morning, it at least in this country. Yeah. And that's my next question to you. Yeah. Okay. What do you do actually to restrain Israel, which is the impediment to settling this? But I would say domestically, Trump has totally soured on Mark Levin. Not guessing. He has. On Mark Levin.

I don't know how you were ever sweet on Mark Levin.

Well, I totally— the whole thing was like a deranged episode. It was like that, you know, weird affair you had. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I can't believe I ever found that girl attractive. Like, what was I thinking? And the takeaway from those experiences in the life of a man is don't always trust your own judgment. Like, I have the capacity to go crazy. But anyway, that's right. So I do think they— or he, again, I don't think I know— is now like actively angry at the people who helped convince him to do this. But that's not the same as getting this done, getting the MOU hammered out and translated into an enduring peace. What does the administration need to do to achieve that, do you think?

Well, the first thing is Trump needs to stop having Natalie text out these insane things about how he's going to kill the negotiators. I mean, that would be the first, you know, just, just putting the— going for the low-hanging fruit here, you know. So first that, then we, then we would probably say, Mr. President, you really need to use this as an opportunity. A teachable moment, as Obama used to lecture us about, a real teachable moment here. We can really use this as a window to actually implement the very brilliant— and I know you know that I supported this— national security strategy memo from last year, which said we weren't going to do any of this.

And then nobody read it, but it was great.

Nobody read it. So Mark Levin did his siren song from Fox news and dragged us in. But, but I would say that this is a real opportunity because the Arabs don't want us around anymore. I mean, they want to do business with us, um, which is great. That's fine, uh, because I don't know if I want to do business with us after this shat show. Um, but they want to do business with us still for the most part. So this is a real opportunity for us to create sort of a long-term exit strategy from the whole geopolitical quicksand. Let the locals figure out their own mess. They know the neighborhood better. They'll figure it out. By the way, Big Brother always being around for Israel is the absolute worst thing for Israel because it creates this sort of— we talk about moral hazard when we talk about like bailouts. Well, in this case, it's moral hazard in a geopolitical sense because the Israelis think we're always going to bail them out. So, and we can't do that anymore because I just told you we depleted all of our systems as well. Oh, by the way, I'm going to tell you this fun fact.

I was told not long ago by a little Berti, that actually the Israelis were stunned by how many of our defensive munitions we expended on their behalf because the Israelis didn't expend anywhere near as many of their critical defensive munitions defending their own cities and their own country. They were— they were— they couldn't believe the Americans even let the Iranians attack American territory or American facilities. In the Arab states, uh, and they let— we sent all that stuff to Israel. So the Israelis didn't even use anywhere near the level of—

because, you know why? Because we're all my cuckabee. It's like our leaders love Israel more than Israel loves itself. It's like, it reminds you of the George Floyd thing. I'll never forget video of like some liberal white lady washing the feet of a black woman. The black woman's like, why are you washing? Yeah, why are you washing my feet? Like, this is weird. The Black lady's like— the white liberal's like, I love you, you're holy. And the Black lady's like, oh, you're freaking me out.

Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. And that's exactly what we're seeing here play out. So the first thing I would say is this is an opportunity to pull out and never go back. Pull out right now, never go back. In the process, get on the phone with Bibi and explain to him a multi-point plan for stopping sending the aid Uh, that we've been sending. Uh, we are not going to engage anymore in intelligence sharing at any level that we've been doing. We are not— by the way, there's— I, I can reference a bunch of former CIA guys and one former U.S. Army intelligence officer that I know who told me that when he was in Iraq, he was charged with basically dealing with a certain area of the Sunni Triangle in '05, and he said that basically, hey, the— there was a group of Mossad operating here and they were interrupting and interfering with our missions to try to stop al-Qaeda in Iraq from doing whatever the hell they were doing. And I said, you know, I asked him, I go, what do you think was the reason? He goes, I'm not even gonna get into that because I don't wanna lose my pension.

So, you know, we're dealing with not, you know, a non-ally ally, fighting a non-war war with a non-ceasefire ceasefire right now. So it's all very sort of, you know, nihilistic.

But wait, can I just ask you to back up for a second and explain a little more deeply what you think that comment meant about Assad operating in Iraq in the Sunni Triangle?

I think that they had people on the ground, and we— you know, this is me now just sort of speculating based on that. This is not Okay, so my speculation is this was a few years before ISIS really got— I mean, before the Syrian Civil War really got going. But remember, there was a whole buildup before it even popped off, and one of those buildups was we let out all of the al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters from Camp Bucca, which was a very nasty facility along the Syrian border. All those guys ended up going back into Syria, and they became basically the the nucleus of al-Nusra Front. Yes. ISIS. Yes. And that basically was our shock troops against Assad. And we armed them with the arms that we got from Gaddafi through Benghazi, which is what Benghazi really was about. Exactly. And the Turks were running— it was the rat line. Yeah. So, so basically, I can't help but to wonder if the reason Mossad or Israeli intelligence was on the ground in that particular area of the country of Iraq during that time is because they were doing something to try to shape, uh, what would eventually become sort of the nucleus of the attack on Assad.

Because we know that 7 nations in 7 years, or whatever the quote from General Clark was, right? We know there was some grand plan originally that the neoconservatives, Paul Wolfowitz and the Clean Break memo guys, all concocted that would have seen us going after— I mean, I was told by somebody who was there that in 2004, John Bolton and Dick Cheney were trying to convince Bush to bomb Assad in '04. So I think this is somehow— that story is somehow related to what— because we know there was a buildup before suddenly all these things just popped off in Syria. There was part of a plan. William Van Wagenen talks a lot about things like this in his wonderful book, Creative Chaos. Highly recommend your audience. William's a friend of mine, and he's in the region, actually, a very insightful guy. But he, you know, there's a lot of people that can get deeper into this than I will. But fundamentally, I do believe that there was an Israeli, however small, footprint, notably in western Iraq, and they were doing something, I think, probably related to what we ultimately ultimately saw play out in Syria.

That would not surprise me, and that would explain why there was all of a sudden this overnight consensus in the U.S. Congress, throughout Washington really, that, quote, Assad must go. And exactly, a guy who had been celebrated in the Western press— Nancy Pelosi shook hands with him, of course. And why wouldn't you? He was a religious minority in his own country who protected religious minorities, including an ophthalmologist too. And no London-trained with a very attractive multilingual wife and like the whole thing. It's the Levant. It's like a moderate, you know, uh, thing, but protected the ancient Christian communities of Syria. And then all of a sudden, in one day, it was like, no, no, the real problem is Assad and we need to like blame a fake— but there's also a gas attack on him and all this.

There's also a Russia thing that we, we were— and I talked about I put this in my last book, but there was— I know that there was a group of, shall we say, thinkers, um, in DC who had been pushing this idea that we needed to roll back Russia's warm water ports after the Cold War. One of those smaller ports, but very important for their navy, was Tartus. And the idea was you're going to have to get rid of Assad to push back the Russian influence there. So there was also some connectivity there with some of these, these globalists after the Cold War. So you had that sort of weird fusion of Islamist terrorists, anti-Russia stuff, Israel, Turkey. So it's kind of weird, you know, polyglot admixture of imponderables. But there they were.

Of all the most dedicated opponents of civilization finding— of America, ironically, America. Right. No, I know it doesn't surprise me at all. So you said at the outset that you're skeptical that this MOU and negotiations ongoing in Switzerland will lead to a durable peace. Why?

Yeah, well, I think that the three parties are still not quite on the same page. Like I said, I think if Trump, the Trump team and the Iranians kind of could do their own thing, I think probably they might be able to get a more durable deal. I think how this is going to play out is the model is going to be very similar to the tariffs where it was sort of like every 45 days, we're just going to keep extending. We'll keep extending, you know, for some of these, these, these things with the tariffs. I just don't think that— I think that the Americans know that if they really do walk away from the Strait of Hormuz, if you look at what's going on right now in the Strait of Hormuz, has really become the center of gravity. Here. If you look at what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz, Marco Rubio and his gang are all saying, you know, it's not even possible. Nobody would ever toll these, the Strait of Hormuz. Well, the Turks toll the Turkish Straits. So I mean, that alone is, you know, sort of ridiculous when you hear that the Montreux Convention works very well and has since 1936.

There's no reason why we couldn't figure out some new way to make everybody happy there. But anyway, I think as long as you have those voices who are in the president's ear mixturating these crazy ideas, I just think that you're always going to have sort of this tension where I think that the president will always be one foot in, one foot out. And that's, that's not good. We don't need that right now. We need to just get out. So I'm just very skeptical. I am a natural skeptic, though, Tucker, I should say. I'm skeptical of many things. Me too. So that's just my background. But, but I also think the Israelis are the real wild card. And the fact of the matter is, look, they've got— they've got a cluster of Dolphin-class submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles likely sitting off the coast of Iran right now. You know, what's to stop them? I mean, you're not wrong to bring up that possibility. If they really think that this whole thing's going to go pear-shaped, what's to stop them from just saying, eff this? We're going to try to do it our way, the way we wanted to do.

So this is why I'm— there's just so many different competing interests. The Iranians are never going to let go of the Strait of Hormuz, and I don't know if Trump is going to be okay with that. They are going to start tolling. So the, the, the, the 60 days is what we have. By the way, the Iranians have the first 30 days to reopen the strait fully. Do you really think the Iranians are going to reopen everything immediately? No. They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna drag this out because they want to make sure the Americans are gonna hold up their end of the bargain, and we never have so far. So the Iranians are gonna drag this out. That's gonna then get us to day 31. We will be reaching bottom barrel of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Gary Vogler explained this to me on my Twitter page recently, and he's an oil expert, but he explained that salt caverns where our oil is held Basically, the oil is tainted there. And the deeper you go into those things, the more tainted and the less usable the oil becomes. So basically they're saying officially, the EIA says that we have 340 million barrels remaining now.

I think it's probably of usable closer to 100 million barrels. And if we can't get the strait reopened and the Arab production back up and running, which every expert I've spoken to says it's going to take weeks, probably months under the best conditions to restart Arab production for a variety of reasons. Um, that means that the Iranians not letting up on the Strait of Hormuz fully right now, that is going to create shortages, complications, uh, here in the United States because we're hitting bottom barrel. Uh, and so this is going to compound and create, I think, greater political pressure on Trump. And I think that that's, that's going to cause a lot of problems for maybe not getting a full-time resolution. But maybe I'm wrong. I'm happy to be because I would love to see us just done with this whole thing.

It after the midterms and when, you know, there's a new political reality that's measurable because there will be at that point. Yeah. I mean, that's the upside of elections, whether they're real or not. They establish a new baseline of where we are and what voters want. Right. No, it's true. Or—

and even if they're not real, I can guarantee you they're not going to rig it in favor of Trump. I don't know if Trump's deluded himself into thinking that, but it will not happen.

I've lost track of what I think. But anyway, here's the point. Wilbur Samir. I don't see the pre-March status quo politically surviving where 95% of members of Congress, whatever, over 90% of members take money from AIPAC or some version of AIPAC, where every member of Congress says, you know, unthinkingly, I support Israel. They're our greatest ally. Like, I just don't see that. But maybe I'm wrong. But I just don't see how that survives this moment. I can't imagine it.

I think this is sort of the height of it and it's going to all now be downhill because even if you take all of the boomers and this is a generational You take all the boomers in both parties who support the sort of the status quo. Let's face it, they're not gonna be around much longer. I mean, I hate to speak that way, but inevitably soon it's going to change. And the next generation is much more skeptical of Israel. And, you know, some of them are, some of them are antisemites. There's no doubt. There are definitely antisemites out there. But most of the people who are skeptical are skeptical with good reason. They're skeptical because they recognize there is a delineation between American interests and Israel interests. And when they eventually rise to power in Congress, this new generation in both parties, I think, I think there's a reason that Israel's trying to basically permanently integrate aid, uh, in this current National Defense Authorization Act and the current Intelligence Authorization Act. I think it's because their, their allies know that in another 10 years, it's, it's a totally different ballgame for Israel. They're not going to be getting kind of support.

I don't know that it could take 10 years. I don't know, it might have 10 years, but I got it. So Tom Cotton is the driving force behind the idea of giving up the sovereignty of our intel agencies to a foreign country. He's also, as far as I know, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a sitting U.S. senator. That's treason, obviously. I don't know his motive for that. I have some guesses, but can that continue? Can you have the chairman of the Senate Intel Committee demanding that we have mandatory intel sharing with a foreign, pretty obviously hostile country. That's, that's bonkers.

It is bonkers, but it's just crazy enough where the world we're living in, Tucker. Yeah. Tom Cotton, he, he's clearly not speaking for himself. And, you know, so I think that he will continue to push this as long as he's in that position. And I think he will continue to be in that position until Pete Hegseth is gone from the Pentagon, because I think the ultimate plan is to put him in, or at least it was, to replace— switch out Pete with, with Tom Cotton.

That's not an upgrade. No, no, no. Maybe an IQ upgrade, but it's not.

Maybe he washes his hands more. But, but I think that Cotton will continue to push this. And do I think that it will go forward? You know, they already passed the Senate version. It's now got to go through the next, next round. This is why they're doing this now is because this is the last shot for them. And I think that Tom Cotton's motivations are not his own. And I don't want to get too deep into that. But I think that Tom— yeah. Yeah. And I think that there are many more. And I think the fact that he and Graham and all these other people, I think the fact that they continue to be so publicly, you know, supportive of these moves indicates still how much maneuvering room they still have right now. I also think it's interesting, though, you know, Cotton has been really pushing hard to basically cancel or end the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, that whole office. This is something that after 9/11, a lot of intelligence professionals looked back and said, look, we don't need the DNI, it gets in the way, blah blah blah. Republicans and Democrats both never wanted to get rid of it.

Now he wants to get rid of it. I think it's just because he's worried another Tulsi might one day be put in permanently to the DNI, who might actually uncover a lot of the nefariousness that our, our people have been up to in the intelligence. And so he wants to neuter that capability and return it exactly to the director of Central Intelligence.

And not just our people, but people with whom we are, quote, allied. I mean, it was Tom Cotton who expressed— I mean, this is a fact. He's denied it, but it's, it's a fact that shortly into this administration, he expressed concern that the Kennedy— that all the JFK files would be released. Well, that's not— you know, he doesn't care It's an act of Congress. Well, right. It's— and later, I mean, it was an executive order, but like Tom Cotton's like, whoa, whoa, why are we doing that? And that's, of course, to cover for a foreign country. So that's like crazy behavior.

Well, it is. Look, it is. It's treasonous. And I know he's not the only one. And also, I think that this War Powers vote, I think from what, a day or two ago in the Senate, I actually don't think that was anybody standing on principle. I think what that was was a quiet message to Trump. You remember in the last week Trump pulled Clayton's nomination for DNI. Clayton is the guy, you know, that Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and all the neocons wanted to replace Tulsi. And for whatever reason, Trump nominated him, probably because Susie nominated him. And He now has Bill Pulte, who, whatever people think of him, he is going to just salute and gut all of these people without— because he doesn't know anything that's going on in DNI. He said he's a real estate guy, but he's going to go in there, he's going to kill everything. He's going to drain that particular part of the swamp. And then also Trump is trying to get the SAVE Act tied and FISA reauthorization tied to all of this. I think the War Powers Act, was the Senate telling Trump, we can get you, do not interfere with us.

And I think that wing of the Senate is the neoconservative wing that wants Pfizer reauthorized, that wants to see the SAVE Act not passed. And ultimately, I don't think these things are going to get passed, by the way, and wants to see someone like— well, I think it's Clayton from the SEC or from the Southern District of New York. They want to see that guy in there. There. And of course, that guy, for your audience may not know this, but he was the guy that effed up, supposedly by accident, the Epstein file release. Yep. Or last year. So we have another Epstein class, uh, being promoted by the neocons as the new DNI. They prefer him over Bill Pulte.

So it's— the agenda is more spying on Americans. There is no Fourth Amendment, no voter ID, because why would we want secure elections then? Like voters would have a say and energy prices that drive people into poverty. And like, all of this seems aimed at the American population. Certainly these are decisions made without reference to what people want. No one wants any of this.

You're sounding a lot like my dear friend Michael Yan, who's been saying this is actually a war on the American people.

Don't forget. It's so obvious.

And don't forget the Strait of Hormuz closure. One-third of the world's agricultural base supplies That's cut off. And we are in the dead of planting season. And what's going to happen now here in the United States as well as elsewhere, it's going to be worse elsewhere, but it's going to be bad here. We in the United States here, not this year, probably because we're still running off reserves from last planting season. But next year, the delayed impact of not having planted enough because we didn't have enough urea fertilizer, we're going to be talking about severe shortages in the agricultural sector of baseline goods that every American needs. You've also now, again channeling Michael here, uh, the screwworm, which is a highly devastating to crops and livestock, um, parasite. We had gotten it out of North America about a century ago. Now in the last 3 years it's popped up again because it supposedly was brought up with all the illegal immigration. They, they basically brought in a bunch of, by accident supposedly, contaminants and whatnot, and the screwworm larva was one of them. And now they're finding them in Texas and the cattle there, and that's very bad.

Um, so I think they found some in Florida, Central Florida, uh, recently as well. The point is, is that, um, all the stuff that we as Americans take for granted— abundant food, affordable groceries, energy. All of this stuff is being denied to us on some level. It's being complicated. Yeah. Our ability to get that. And it's being done because of policy. It's not being done because there's an actual shortage. No. It's being done because of policy, either war or whatever. But remember, the war was a war of choice. It's not like the Iranians attacked us. So all of this is certainly, you start getting into a very dark place, Tucker. And I know I've certainly gone down. Don't let my sunny disposition confuse you. I've certainly gone down. I'm very blessed. I have a beautiful family. And so I'm very happy in my personal life. But, but, you know, I talk about some pretty bleak things and you can start to see the darkness in human hearts and certainly our leaders and our leaders.

Yeah, I have some thoughts which I'm not going to express because that's dark enough. But I know, I hope you will come back. And it's just— it's great, uh, anytime, get your analysis. I learned— I just learned a lot. So, Brendan, thank you. Thank you. Great to see you.

God bless. Yes, sir. God bless.

That's it for us. We'll see you next Wednesday. Thank you.