Transcript of Tucker on the Devastating Cost of War and What It Means for American Politics With Saagar Enjeti New

In just a second, we're going to talk to Sager Ngeddi, who's one of the smartest and most honest analysts of American politics, we think about the effect of the war in Iran here in the US on our politics, on our economy, on our life. But first, just a couple of quick things, which is no matter what you think of this war, you've got to be rooting for the United States, your country, and particularly for the people fighting this war. It's a cliché to say it, but it's true. They are the best people this country produces people who voluntarily join to defend the United States, who are often put to bad use and badly treated by our political class. But that doesn't make them bad. They are great. You got to be rooting for them, for us collectively, and saying prayers both for the country and for the people fighting on its behalf and in its name. Our troops, that is real. The second thing concerns to show that we did two days ago about the efforts to rebuild the third temple in Jerusalem. We went on at some length about this and why at its core for some of the people fighting in this conflict in the United States and Israel and Iran, this is a religious conflict and that we should be aware of the effects of that long term.

Religious conflicts are not typically resolved quickly. They can go on generationally. They can go on a thousand years. In fact, they're still ongoing for over a thousand years in some cases. It's a big deal to have a religious war. In some ways, this may turn out to be a religious war. In others, it's just inherently a religious war. So you should know, and at the center of that conflict is this thing called the Third Temple, which is not yet exist, but some people would like to rebuild. We did a whole show on this, seemed important and true. In the course of that show, we described patches that some soldiers in the Israeli military, the IDF, are wearing that show an image of a temple, the third temple. We asked, Where did these come from? It It seems like from accounts that we read from those soldiers online that they got these patches somehow from a group called Habad. In the United States, it's a global group, but it's headquartered here in New York and Brooklyn. We said, you can check the tape, it was like, Habad, they seem like really nice people. Met a bunch of people in Habad over the years.

They do a bunch of charitable enterprises. But apparently, these patches came from Habad. And Habad, check their website, is in favor of rebuilding the third temple. And Why wouldn't they be? They're religious Jews, and the temple is at the center of Judaism as described in the Torah, what Christians call the Old Testament. All sacrifices, all public worship takes place in the temple in Jerusalem, built on the foundation stone. That's where God resides, according to Judaism, to Torah Judaism. All of that ended in 70 AD, when the Romans, as predicted by Jesus, destroyed the temple. Now, from a Christian perspective, God destroyed the temple, Jesus destroyed the temple, and became himself the temple. He replaced the temple with his body. He says this, I am the temple. That is the Christian view of the temple. But the Jewish view of the temple is very different, and it's what I just described, which is this is where God lives. If you're a religious Jew, you want to see the temple rebuilt, and there's no criticism of that. That's a religious perspective, which is internally coherent. Our only point was, you should know that this is happening and that US taxpayers are paying for it.

And apparently, these patches came from Habad. That was the sum total of my observations about Habad. Well, the next morning, which is to say yesterday, you wake up and there are all these attacks. You know, Habad, you're attacking Habad. You're blaming Habad for the war. No. Didn't really pay too much attention to it. Of course, these are organized by these attacks or part of a propaganda campaign waged by Israel and its proxies here in the United States, who are many, at least online. The idea was to make this seem like an attack on Habad, which it wasn't and not intended to be and wasn't not inherently an attack. Then Bill Ackman gets in and says, You have potentially blood on your hands. You're calling for violence. Bill Ackman is mad at me. I know Bill Ackman because nothing to do with because I once pointed out that Bill Ackman is a thoroughly mediocre intellect. Bill Ackman is not a genius, and yet Bill Ackman has billions of dollars. I'm like, How did that happen? That's not the American dream I was told about, that people with very little talent become the richest people in our country.

How does that work? What American dream are you living? How did you do that? Same with Jeffrey Epstein. Guys like not very bright. It's very obvious from his text and emails, but he wound up with a billion dollars on his own island. Where did the money come from? How does this economic system work, actually? Can I get in on this? I made that point about Bill Ackman because anyone who knows Bill Ackman knows, not a genius, not like a moron or anything, but clearly not a brilliant person at all. And yet he is so rich. So that's his grudge. Understandable. People don't like it when you point that out. No one's ever answered the question, by the way, how did he get rich? But whatever. Anyway, he's mad. And so he me of stoking violence or something, and I just completely ignore it. But then I get two phone calls from friends of mine, people I know and I've known a long time, who are involved with Habad, both good guys, and both have kids at Habad schools. The first calls and says, People are really upset that you're calling for violence against Habad. I said, Why?

I'm not calling for violence against anybody. Including Habad. I would never do that, ever. I totally reject that. So that didn't happen. He said, Well, it would be very helpful if you would issue a statement disavowing violence. I said, Well, gosh, I mean, I've done like 100 shows on that. I hope my life is an ongoing disavowal of violence against innocence. I will continue to say that because I sincerely mean it from the bottom of my heart. It's my religion. So yes, I mean it. Then just to be mean, I said, I will issue a statement disavowing violence against innocence in tandem with Habad's statement, disavowing violence against innocence. Knowing, of course, Habad does not disavow violence against innocence, of course, Gaza, and they can't. Because they don't believe that. I think I would be surprised if Habad issued a statement disavowing all violence against all innocence. Of course, if they do, I will join them for dinner to celebrate because I will praise them for doing that. Anyone who does that will get praise from me, heartfelt, but I doubt they're going to do that. Then I got a call from another friend of mine, an actual friend of mine, saying, You don't want me to bother you, but I've got kids, and they're closing the school because of your calls for violence.

I thought, Oh, my gosh, now I'm upset because I don't want to add at all, even inadvertently, to an environment where people are afraid or feel like they're going to get hurt. I guess what I would say is, of course, I'm totally opposed to violence against innocence, again. But moreover, this is the product of the war that is underway now and evidence of the point that this is fundamentally a religious war, whose effects are already being felt here, which is to say groups are in fear of other groups. American groups are in fear of each other. That is just absolutely a tragedy. We should all oppose that. At the center of it are the most innocent of all, which are kids who are being told by adults that they could be killed for who they are. Now, think about that for a second. Think about a PR campaign or a propaganda campaign designed to make people terrified for their lives, which is what the Israeli campaign is, telling Americans that they could be killed, that anti-Semitism in the United States is so terrible being ginned up by people like me and other people online, that they could be killed.

Imagine, that's not true at all, but imagine being so unscrupulous that you would terrify kids in order to silence criticism of your territorial expansion campaign, which is exactly what this is. Israel wants to be bigger. They want their regional rivals out of the way. They want to weaken the United States, get us out of the Middle East, and they want to weaken Western Europe, which they just hate for whatever reason. They truly hate Western Europe, which is one of the reasons the Israeli government has helped move migrants into Europe to weaken and destroy it. What is that? I don't really know the answer, but it's demonstrable. They hate Western Europe. So whatever their bizarre agenda is, in order to stop criticism of it, they're telling Americans, including children, that they could be killed to get them on side with their program. That is super dark. That is evil, completely evil. And imagine, moreover, playing along with it with your own kids, telling your own kids that people hate them and will always hate them no matter what they do because of how they were born. That is not good for kids. I say that not just as an American, but as a father of many kids.

That's the worst thing you could ever do to children. Who's doing that? A lot of people are doing that. It doesn't produce happy people. It produces unbalanced people like Mark Levin, whose mother clearly told him that. That is not a fair description of the country we live in. We live in a, still now, for all its flaws, a very decent country where people accept each other's differences. There is an organized campaign underway this moment to foment religious hatred in this country, hatred of American for American on the basis of religious identity. That is totally wrong, morally, but more than that, it's completely destructive. If you want to wreck the United States, and some people do want wreck the United States, weaken the United States. People behind this war want to do that. Again, that's one of the reasons we're having this war is to weaken the United States, both economically and destroy its social cohesion. You would do that, and that's why they are doing that. I would just hope that all Americans can resist that, deal with each other as individuals, as fellow Americans, as citizens, and whatever you do, leave the kids out of it.

Don't use kids for your political ends. That is totally wrong, and the rest of us should call it out when we see it. I hope everyone connected to Habad understands that the last thing I would ever do is call for violence against them because they're part of a religious group No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. With that, our friend, Sagar and Jetty. Sager, thank you very much for doing this. I've been thinking of you all week. Let's start just with the overview. What have you learned since this war began?

Well, Well, Tucker, unfortunately, and I'm very sad to say this, is that our very sovereignty is in question right now. The Secretary of State made perhaps one of the most remarkable statements of my entire life, and perhaps in modern history, when he declared unequivocally that we are involved in this war as a result of the either inability or the adherence to an Israeli strike that was going to happen on Tehran. This reveals a lot of different things about our government, our structure. We were either unable to exert pressure on Israel to avoid such a war. We either acquiesced to it, and both are terrifying in their result because we are, of course, the global superpower in Israel is a client state. I've also learned, very unfortunately, having spent my entire career trying to repudiate the lessons of the Iraq war, of Syria and of Libya, of an overwhelming propaganda effort on both sides, both parties, the mainstream media, but still, unfortunately, very alive and well, it seems in the Republican Party and in the White House, cheering on regime change, demands of conditional surrender made to the Iranians just this morning, the endorsement of a Kurdish Civil War campaign.

It really does feel as if things are accelerating, even with the perspectives in modern history of literally 5, 10, even 15 years ago to learn that these are exactly the moves that we should not be making. And so I'm really terrified right now to be saying that our sovereignty itself remains in question at the behest here of Israel, our very own government, which seems complicit and is, of course, involved in these very strikes. And then watching the way that this is all going, I do not see a single way that this will make the life of any individual American better.

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I Unfortunately, I agree with that. You could feel it in the days leading up to it. I saw Trump three times in the month before, and it was obvious to me that he didn't want to do it. It was, I think, obvious in every TV appearance that he He never made the case that this was going to help us in any way. He did make the case that Iran shouldn't have the bomb. Got it. It was never about that, of course. I don't think he wanted a nuclear-armed Iran. I don't think he likes Iran. I think he's been told they tried to kill him. I think that's all real. But he understood the risks, and it was obvious to me from talking to him that he didn't want to do this, but that he couldn't get out of it. The American President just has less room to maneuver than voters imagine he does. It's just It's a horrible burden on every President since John F. Kennedy. You can feel it. I think we should all go back and look at the tapes at pivotal moments. These guys just don't have the latitude they thought they did.

They're bumping up against immovable objects and pressure that just can't be resisted.

Well, it's tragic if that's the case. I will say, we can't take away the individual action of our commander in chief and of the people who are in power. And let's be honest here, Tucker, promises were made. You and I sat in many rooms rooms over the years where we were explicitly told that this is the one thing that we are going to avoid, war with Iran. And I do want to make very clear that it's not just about war with Iran. This is a regime change war with Iran. This is a regional war with Iran, which has now engulfed our Gulf allies. This is now a war which is depleting our interceptor stockpile, calling in the very alliance structure of the United States. We are potentially pulling interceptors away from South Korea, which we, of course, do 400% more trade with than Israel. I mean, take the combined GCC bilateral trade, the Gulf Arab Nations with the United States compared to Israel. And you have Gulf officials who are furious going on national television saying that they are being deprioritized. Their very ministers at this moment You and I are speaking, are talking about withdrawing their economic investments in our companies, trillions of dollars at stake.

And all of that belies the very people who I think you talked about, the American soldier. And I've been thinking all week about Declan Cody. He was 20 years old, and he perished in that attack on our base in Kuwait. He was born four to five years after 9/11. I'm literally in this business to trying to make sure that something like that doesn't happen. It breaks me to watch somebody who is just that young, who had their entire life ahead of them, perish in another Middle Eastern war, not to mention, including one of the servicemen who was a mother of children. She had hobbies. She had a husband. And I have to say, I cannot let our individual leaders off the hook here. Secretary Hegsetf recently made a statement at the Pentagon podium where he said and chastised the national media for not celebrating more of the wins that were happening in Iran and spending too much time on the dead American soldiers, trying to highlight It's like that, as if it's some political prop. And part of the reason I'm here today, and part of the reason I do my show every day, is just to say it's not 2003.

I will not be blackmailed, silenced or told that we cannot mourn our dead, that we cannot support our troops without supporting the war. This is over. We are absolutely declaring an end to this. I thought, I think you thought, many others thought that this was an end whenever it came to the Trump election in 2024. And it is tragic, actually, to have to be able to sit here and talk to you about this situation today.

I mean, the vote for Trump, which I cast, and I try not to... I don't vote that much, to be totally honest. You never have because I'm always traveling. But I voted absentee for Trump and was happy to do it. I think a lot of people who don't normally vote did the the same. They did it in part as a vote for sovereignty. That's the debate is, does the United States have a right to make decisions in its own interest, in the interests of its own people? Does your vote actually matter? Are you voting Are you voting for Bibi every time, whether you want to or not? Or are you actually voting for an American who might help your country? I think we answer that question. If Trump isn't going to save us from a system that us, then what's the option?

Right. And you look, I mean, I'm pleading. I know that many people in the administration are going to listen. So let me just lay out the case already of the damage that has been wrought on the United States. Our alliance structure in the Gulf Arab Nations is in question. We have multiple bases which have been hit. These are allies which pump billions of dollars into our economy. Their very lifeblood is at threat right now. Force Majeur being declared Qatar. Lng production has significantly declined. The The very morning that you and I are taping this, we just got a very troubling jobs report, 92,000 losses in the economy. We actually saw unemployment tick up for native-born Americans. That is the very opposite of what Donald Trump wanted on the campaign trail. An oil analyst that I deeply respect, I spoke to him this morning. If the Straits of Hormuze remained closed, he projects oil at $200 per barrel. This is a disaster, a full-fledged disaster. The very day you and I are speaking, again, gas prices are at the highest price in Donald Trump's entire presidency now so far. So you can see very clearly for the individual pocketbooks of every American, they will feel the result of this war.

And then geopolitically, when you say sovereignty, what is that about? Sovereignity But the questioning of NATO, which Trump and many of his officials talked about, it's not about subsuming our national interests in transnational organizations. But even then, we are watching. If you care so much about NATO, I've been trying to make this point to the neocons, the Ukrainians are already noticing that many of the weapon systems which would be needed to defend them if they wanted to continue this war are going to be depleted, and they're not very high on the priority list. I talked about South Korea, about Japan, about our actual economic commitments to real allies, by the way, people who we do a lot of trade with who love us and we love them. Watch how we are abandoning them. If you care about China and trying to project power in the South China Sea, the interceptor stockpile that we are using right now is a joke compared to what some potential conflict with Taiwan would look like. We're already slowly removing many of those options off the table. We are not stronger as a result of this action. I do not see an off-ramp currently floated by the President of the United States who is now declaring unconditional surrender.

Tucker, you and I, we bonded often over history. Let's remember unconditional surrender and what it takes. It takes the bloody urban conflict and invasion of Europe and the battle of Berlin. It takes dropping atomic bombs in Japan, floating hundreds of thousands of American casualties if we needed to invade Japan to occupy it and demand that very policy. It takes the Ulysses S. Grant, who is willing to sacrifice, literally hundreds of thousands of casualties for an entire year long period to get to that point. That's what unconditional surrender means. And that is what the President has been demanding. And I want every American to realize that. Unconditional surrender, if that is the true demand, and It is now. President Trump said, make Iran great again this morning. That can only be enforced with a ocean of American flood. And that is not something in our national interest. We are walking every single day closer to that possibility. And it is an abomination, if you ask me.

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Join Blocs. Get your edge back. Unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter if they want, and everyone knows that. If there's one consistent lesson of history, it means unconditional Surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter. Everyone can feel that. That's the most ativistic instinct there is. To avoid that, people will do anything. That's why it requires that level of force to get a population subdued to the point of unconditional surrender. That's why. In this case, of course, we don't have the ground force necessary. I don't think Americans would voluntarily participate in it. I just don't think we can do that. It would require weapons of mass destruction. It would require, presumably, nuclear weapons in order to do that. Let's not lie to ourselves. We're moving toward that.

Yes. That is another important point that I think you have been highlighting here is if you at the decision matrix where everything is about upping the ante. A good friend of mine actually pointed out many of the Vietnam aspects that were already starting to climb. So you watch very quickly. We thought we could just decapitate the Ayatola and they would crawl over and make a deal. It didn't happen. So then what happens? We have to start bombing the police stations, the border guards, to be able to make sure that these Kurdish CIA-backed groups can make an incursion, that they can start their civil war in part of the country, distract the security force. At every step, when the Iranians reject an American overture, the natural choice of the American President will be escalation and bombing. Already, I mean, watching statements coming out of the Pentagon, it's shocking. It's like military assistance command Tehran. They're bragging. I mean, Tucker. I mean, Tucker, again, as an American who really was radicalized by the Iraq war, to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about how we've already dropped double the munitions of shock and awe, I actually felt like I was going insane because we have learned nothing.

Already, they're talking about, We've struck 2,000 different targets across the country. Look, you don't have to believe me. Go and look at footage from the ground. It doesn't look like civil war has erupted, civil society or any of that. The Iranian regime remains relatively in power as of right now. And so when you, again, up the ante, which President Trump did with his demand for unconditional surrender, remember, they told us it was just about nuclear weapons, then it was about ballistic missiles, then it was about projecting terrorism or something in the region, which is nebulous and indefinable, designed for that reason, by the way, so that we would have to be able to go to war. Well, then we now get to unconditional surrender, which is orally enforceable with massive weapons, nuclear weapons in this case. And now we have two nuclear arm powers, Israel and the United States, which are engaged in this conflict. The Israeli part of this equation is really important. America actually does have an interest in a stable Iran because of the Straits of Hormus, which, by the way, our empire is now having to ensure oil tankers moving through the Straits of Hormuz and potentially put all of our Navy sailors at risk to escort ships through.

Does it even make any sense? Did you know that almost 80% of the oil moving through the Straits of Hormuz goes to Asia? 50% of it goes to China. So we're ensuring it paying for Chinese oil for the Straits of Hormuz. But Israel doesn't care about any of that. There's even a quote from an Israeli analyst in the Financial Times who said, Look, if they change the regime, great. If they have a civil war, great. If anything happens, great. As long as they can no longer pose a regional threat to the nation of Israel, then the Israelis are happy. We have divergent interests, actually, in what happens in the country of Iran. But this President has feeced them with Bibi Netanyahu. And by doing that, he has sold us truly into Pandora's box. And now, even extricating from this situation, if the President just declared victory today, which, by the way, Mr. President, please do so, it will be the best thing, smartest decision that you have ever made in your entire presidency. Unfortunately, I don't I think that's going to happen, even if he did, think about all the fundamental questions of US alliances that were already in the minds of these Gulf leaders of Japan, of South Korea, of Taiwan, any potential US ally around the globe.

Hundreds of billions have already basically been put to the test. The war is costing, internal Pentagon projection, $1 billion per day every single time that this goes on. And extraordinary measures are already being taken. I just read this morning, the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians to help them target US bases. Not like we can complain, can we? That's how the Pentagon runs the entire Ukraine war. As we learn from the Discord leaks, we do their battle damage assessments, we give them the coordinates, and we tell them exactly where to shoot. So we are entangled in a deep conflict which has immense risk for the global energy markets, for our own soldiers, for the region. We've talked also about sovereignty. Let's talk about the refugee crisis. My favorite question that you asked Ted Cruz. He didn't even know the population of Iran. 92 million, by the way. 92 million, one-third, almost the size of the United States of America, destabilize a country which, if we give them the Gaza treatment, which again looks currently potentially likely, and especially when the Israelis are involved, what does that mean? Mass immisceration, mass refugee flows all across Middle East, across Europe.

Turkey is already... I mean, you have Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli Prime Minister, are already saying, Oh, actually, Turkey is already now a threat to Israel. A friend of mine predicted, the dissolution of NATO will not come from America. It will come from an Israeli action on Turkey. And I hate to say it, it looks even more likely today. Turkey, Again, actually a good ally. We have a good base there. We have a decades long relationship. All of that, apparently, is being thrown out as long as it's in Israel's national security interests.

So if you game this out a little bit, what that means, because countries under threat flee to safety, just like people do. If our allies in the Gulf, which are real allies, actually, as you just said, we get massive benefit from our alliances with these countries. But if they feel unprotected by the United States, and it seems like they do because they are, they're going to go somewhere else. It's the same for Turkey. I'm not for NATO because I don't think it's fully under US control. On the other hand, the option is powerful states, emerging states like Turkey, which is not getting less powerful with time, will align with the bricks, of course. Absolutely. The net effect of this is to weaken the United States, to get us to pull out of the Middle East, which Israel wants, and to weaken the Gulf States and to destroy Europe, which Israel hates for some reason, has always hated Europe. Maybe there are obvious reasons. I don't know, but they have abetted the decline of Europe very aggressively. Now you're seeing Iranian refugees massacring massing in France to cross the English channel, this is this morning, to Great Britain.

So it's already happening. The migrant flow is already going into Europe. Tell me that wasn't the point from the start.

Of course it was. Exactly. This is why I find it so galling to actually have this administration be the ones who are perpetuating this policy. We understood that the global effects of this refugee crisis inspired things like Brexit, things like Declarations of sovereignty, the Donald Trump election in 2016. This was genuinely a rejection of that. Then to watch the Syria-Libya playbook currently being played out. Unfortunately, I find many people know Syria and Libya were a disaster, but they can't eventually explain why. So let's take some time. What was it? There was a so-called protest against Bachar al-Assad. That protest movement quickly became subsumed by radical jihadists. The United States, for no reason, basically decided that it was in our to remove Bachar al-Assad, massively fund all of these jihadists in the region. We gave them weapons. We gave them time, money, support, of course. And what happened? It created a gigantic civil war, as you always talk about. It destroyed the Christian community, some of the less radical elements of that society. And now, 14 years later, a literal Al Qaeda terrorist is their president. The only reason that we don't talk about him that way is because he's a friend of Israel and allowed portions of his country to basically be annex by them.

That's That's what the Israelis want. They want and they had no problem with seeing an erupt state emerge in Iran. But that's not in our interest. That's not in Europe's interest. That's not in our allies' interest. It is massively destabilizing. Same in Libya. What was the promise? No fly zone for Gaddafi. He, fortunately, he literally gets sodomized on national television, on a video which deeply inspired Kim Jong Un and many other regimes that wanted to race to a nuclear weapon. I've been told directly that whenever When we asked in those bilateral meetings with Kim Jong Un, we said, why don't you just give up your nuclear weapons? He said, look what happened to Gaddafi. He's never going to do it, and he shouldn't. In fact, his entire policy has been vindicated. So that's another element of this. Let's think about nuclear proliferation. Since the outbreak of the Iran War, Poland has now declared their intent to try to become a nuclear power, a nuclear armed state. France said they are going to increase the amount of nuclear weapons that they have under production, and they are no longer going to publicize them. South Korea and Japan are going to be having some very serious discussions around this.

So in an ostensible war over a nuclear program, we've actually probably inspired more nuclear proliferation than even the war in Iraq, which I did not think was ever possible. So to watch this all continue in this spiral, none of it works to our benefit. And you and I are not NATO defenders. We've talked often about the folly of expanding NATO eastward. However, we can recognize we have fundamental interests in a few select group countries. The problem with NATO is that it got far away from our core security interests. But now countries in the core security umbrella themselves are questioning their We have a fundamental relationship with the United States. The Eastern Baltic region is not one that keeps me up at night. But Japan, South Korea, Japan and South Korea, the GCC countries, which look, I'm not saying we need a massive basis or any of in the region, but we need oil, we need natural gas to keep flowing nicely. We need some of that money to be coming back here. And that's obviously very beneficial to our companies. Those things being called into question erodes the foundation of the American Empire, which actually does serve the United States.

So what we're watching is the far flung parts which always break an empire's back, actually call into question the security core commitments, our national security commitments at a very base level, which Which is very, very weakening to the United States.

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Yeah, that's a great question. Who do you think sells them the weapons and staffs their intelligence and basically supports their entire nation state and military? It's us. And that's the reason. They could never have struck Iran like this on their own, by their own admission. That's why they always needed the United States. I mean, Bibi, for once, said the most honest thing of his entire in our life. It's been my dream to go after Iran for 40 years. Forty years, it's been a dream. And so called, you have Republican senators on our national television with no shame saying that Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 40 years. I think they need to go back to school and read the definition of imminent. But at the very least, this propaganda is completely unchecked by our press. It is just accepted. It is currently the party line. But let's get to it. You know what you just talked about there with Lebanon. Again, if you don't read the Israeli press, which in some cases, actually more honest than our own press, ironically. Much more. There's a quote where they say, the Israeli Minister said, We will turn DHA into Gaza.

That's basically what he said. We are going to take an area of Beirut, and we are going to level it to the ground. That's what he said. That is an open admission from the Israeli ministers. What you can see already with the belligerence in all of these different countries, from the strikes in Doha to Syria, now to Lebanon, is this is about regional hegemony for the state of Israel. I also think that their political popularity, dramatically declining in the United States at this time, makes it more existential for them than ever. They know that this is literally their last chance to knock off any individual power which dares to try to either host different types of groups or have a government which may check them in some way. And that's part of why our President's decision to join them is so disappointing, because you can see very clearly. And I think you say this, I often do, too. I get it from Israel's perspective. Yeah, me too. But I'm not Israeli. My job, our job, is to look out for our country. And so to see the vast armaments of the United States of America effectively prop up Israeli regional hegemony at the direct expense of our own power projection is shocking.

So watch very closely what's going to happen with Lebanon. You're going to see the mass expansion, very likely because Because of Hezbollah rockets and ballistic missiles which have been shot into Israel. That will be the pretext for a full scale, basically, reduction campaign. That's what they like to call it. You're going to see very similar actions right now in Gaza and in the West Bank. Don't forget, I know you haven't seen this, or I know you've seen this, an American citizen was killed in the West Bank very, very recently. Not that anybody in America cares at all. He's from Philadelphia, by the way, and his own senator won't even stand up for him. Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, just Just to show you some of the bipartisan ship of this nature. That's why it's sickening to watch. We've described this before as not a healthy relationship. We're so far beyond that. We need to wake up and we need to reclaim our sovereignty right now. And this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I just laid out the very strategic case for why individually this is going to hurt you in the short term, in your pocketbook, in the long term, from our geopolitical allies or strategic situation in the region and then across the globe.

If you care about China chips, anything, really, you're watching the degradation of our ability to project force. And that is not only shocking, but it is an urgent crisis, which, unfortunately, again, You are not going to hear much of this from our mainstream media networks, which are just cheering on this war, bringing on Iranian diaspora. Tucker, a friend of mine made this joke. He said, America is the only country in the world where immigrants come here to try and get us to bomb their home country and their family. What's the sickness of that relationship? I think you know this as well. I'll say it. I'm technically part of the Indian diaspora. My parents are from there. I'm from Brian, Texas. Never ask me what's going on in India, please. I don't know anything. I'm not from there. I don't know anything about it. I barely know what's going on in my own home country. It would actually be disgraceful for me to try and to speak on behalf of them, let them speak for themselves. And I can't get over watching. The BBC recently had a package where they had on three individuals, Iranian, who were celebrating the bombing of their home country.

And my friend, Trita Parsy, was like, I'm sorry, this is sickening. Look, Maybe that's one perspective, but that's not the only perspective. In fact, it might be a minority perspective from what we see currently, what's happening on the ground in the country. So let's not deny the people of Iran their agency, since allegedly, we're supposed to care about that and their protest movements. Let's recognize this is a highly heterogeneous, this is a massive heterogeneous country with a lot of disparate types of opinions. And we can look to history to say that when we demand unconditional surrender, again, I'm sure You've seen the literature on this. What did the Unconditional Surrender Man demand do to the German populace? Even when the Nazi Party was massively underwater in terms of its popularity, they said, We have no choice. We must fight to the death. Of course. That's what they declared. The Japanese. I mean, there was a lot of consternation in their society about the way that the war was going. Once you firebomb Tokyo and you kill 100,000 people in a single night, and you say that unconditional surrender and the removal of your Emperor is the only thing that we're going to accept, well, a lot more of those people died over the next several months.

We're probably going to watch that happen now with Iran. It's the same dynamic that always plays out.

The point, of course, is to build Israeli Empire, to replace American Empire, which is dying, hastened by war with Israeli Empire. One thing I notice, I can't contain myself and have to express it, but when you say that the Israelis are destroying Beirut, which is, having been to a lot of places in the world, one of the prettiest places on the globe, Beirut is a marvel. It's beautiful. It reminds me, and it's being destroyed by Israel, which is one of the single ugliest countries in the world. Nothing of beauty has been built there since 1948. Sorry, I've been everywhere in that country, and it's true, that the nature of this emerging empire is destructive, and it always seems like beautiful things wind up being destroyed. Europe, Beirut, parts of Syria, the holy sites. I don't... Parts of Iran are apparently beautiful, totally blown up. This does seem like a war on beauty as well, which, next to truth, is like, this is not an American perspective, but it's a Christian perspective and a real perspective. It's a global perspective. Beauty is worth preserving. And yet it seems the determined effort of the IDF to destroy beauty.

And I just want to say that because I really notice it.

Well, I mean, we watched some of that in Gaza, and you don't have to be a Hamas lover to recognize the beauty of some of those churches or of their society of the West Bank, which I'm sure that you have seen as well. And yeah, I've spent a lot of my life in a large portion of this region. I mean, I'm watching my former neighborhood in Doha Qatar with missiles flying down. And by the way, I think it was exactly a mile from where I used to live when I was in high school in Doha Qatar, that the Israelis actually struck that Hamas compound and actually even killed a Qatari police officer. I can't imagine what some of my... Look, this could have been me. Once upon a time, I was in a classmate at the American School of Doha. It's March. So it's just school time. There are children, American children, by the way, children of oil executives, others. I was my child of professors of many American universities which operate there who are now in a panic mode trying to get of the country as their airports are shut down. There are a million plus Americans who live in the region, and it has been very short, the evacuation notices that went out.

They clearly were not planning for this. Actually, that's a major indictment of our current force projection as well. It's pretty clear, and Donald Trump said this, he said, We were surprised by the attacks on the bases, which is shocking because I think you knew that was going to happen. I knew that was going to happen. You only need to read open source and read a a little bit of what the Iranians themselves were saying. They were like, Hey, here's the plan. If this happens, this is what we're going to do. And he said that they were surprised by that. And now a million Americans are stuck. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who, by the way, supposedly cares so much about Americans. I saw his guidance for Americans in Israel trying to get out. He was like, Take a bus to the Sinai, and hopefully you can catch a flight from there. That's insane. It's like a five or six hour bus ride, which they're not even really arranging, and that they would take to the Sinai Peninsula. And then I even read a story, a pregnant woman who had to... Who did all of that. Imagine the stress of all while this is happening.

It take five, six flights to be able to come home. These are our people. These are the people that we're supposed to care about. And so it's just so tragic. You're talking about wall and beauty. What you're trying to recognize and paint for a picture, not everybody is as privileged as us to be able to go all across the world, is to say these are not evil incarnate, gray, black, white photos. These are real places with real people. They have different opinions. Some of them hate us. Some of them love us. They have very disparate histories and identities, religions. They're beautiful in the same way that all humans really are beautiful in all places that we can find something to appreciate about them. And so I think that's what's tragic.

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This is, I was thinking this morning, the last gift of the boomers. Wars that are planned by that same generation, which really did diminish the United States in the space of just 50 years. I mean, they really took so much and gave so little. I think this is the war you could only have between people of advanced age. I was thinking that.

I totally with you. And let's even take some of the talking points. You're older than me, so this might resonate with you, but everybody says this has been happening for 47 years. Remember 1979. I'm 33 years old. My mother was 15 in 1979. Okay, so 1979 to me, is a history book. 1979 is Argo, the movie. That's about as close as I've got to the Iranian Revolution. I'm much closer to the destruction of my country at the hands of the neocons of Iraq and Afghanistan. I watch my cohort being unable to buy houses. I watch relative people who are younger, who are terrified of AI. I have friends who are having their electricity bills go up as a result of data centers. I've watched my own city East, Washington, DC, which you and I have spent a lot of time and go downhill every single year that I've lived in it, which is shocking, right? And to watch, literally, that happen. And then, meanwhile, I get on planes and I go visit Tokyo or Doha or Singapore or Bangalore, any of these places, which had a lot of problems and still do, but have gotten a lot nicer, whereas where I'm living continues to tick down.

So 1979, I can appreciate as an American, especially for a lot of the boomers. I get it. It must have been so horrible and shocking. And to be fair, I also think that the way the media covered that at the time, they acted like the revolution just happened out of nowhere. They don't have enough of the know-how to go back to Mosoudek and the political revolution and the CIA much of the meddling that we also did in that country, not to mention the disaster of Jimmy Carter. But I empathize with them for their hatred, let's say, of Iran and their knowledge or looking at it as an enemy. But I would also ask them to give us the same empathy is to look at us in a country that we have grown up in, and they're now raising children, in my case, and are saying, I am looking at Iran as an explicit, not only distraction, but coming directly at the expense of a lot of the problems, which I care a lot about out on behalf of my family, on behalf of the people who are around me. For them, I don't see any benefit from this.

Well, that's for sure. Now I want to ask you about the effect on American politics. I mean, it feels like in the last week, well, as you said, the Secretary of State said something out loud that the day before would have been denounced as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Israel made us do it. He said that, and it's true. I can verify that. That's true. And now everyone's seen it. And so where do we go? The kidnapper has pulled off his mask. So what does that mean now that we know?

We're not going back from here. We are not going back from here. That's for sure. The Republicans are in a tough spot. So let's look at the evolution of just the Democratic Party in the last 48, 72 hours. I'm watching Ruben Gallego, Mark Warner, who is a national security Democrat, whatever that means, who are like, wow.

He's a CIA cut out. Yeah.

Literally, right? As you and I know. And he's talking about how the dog the tail is wagging the dog, and we can't be acting on behalf of Israel. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, who months ago twisted himself into a knot to avoid saying the word APAC and couldn't even talk about their influence on politics, just said he understands why people would call Israel an Apartheid state and how we may have to question our relationship with that country. So the dam has broken on the democratic side.

Can I ask you to pause? I've watched all of this with my jaw open. What are the chances Gavin Newsom called the ADL and APAC first before he said that and said, Hey, guys, just want to give you a heads up. I'm going to performatively attack you.

Almost certainly A hundred %. But the attack still matters. And the fact that even ADL or APAC would even allow that to happen, if that were the case, is still shocking. I mean, even APAC has made changes in a lot of their funding where they're allowing funding to go to some Democrats, even, who are at least on the surface level who are opposed to them. But if that's the Overton window that we all now live in as a country, we can literally never go back to even the 2024 status quo. But this is where the Republican Party is very... Look, I think they're in a very tough spot. Imagine the amount of messaging, let's say, that's starting to come out about how Trump doesn't care about your gas. I mean, it's not just messaging, it's literally true. The President said basically high prices is so be it. And even in terms of dead Americans, it said something along the of it happens, there are casualties in war. These comments are going to be wall to wall. I remember '06 vividly. It was actually the first election, which I really paid very close attention to and lived through.

I'm sure you do as well. Just remember how the Democrats destroyed the George W Bush Party. And then let's look at the structural problems that we already have. We have the economic problems I already mentioned, the bad jobs report as of this morning, potential high gas prices, just like back in the mid 2000s. And then you have people, senators like Ted Cruz on your show, Mike Huckabee, members of our government who are talking about the Third Temple. I mean, that's insane. You're talking about third temple and Red Hefers. I'm out here trying to pay my bills, man. And then you can just watch how this is going to erode the entire Republican Party, especially whenever it comes to turnout. But I do also want to be clear, and you lived through this as well. I grew up in Bush country. The Bush dead-enders, they stuck with him with 5,000 American troops dead. So there are a lot of Republicans who will stick with President President Trump throughout this war. They revere and they trust him, and that's their right. They can do so. But here's what I always try to say. Republicans are not the reason that Donald Trump won the 2024 election.

He won with a wide coalition of young people, of Latino voters, of a lot of independents. And those people, I can attest to you this 100 %, because a lot of them are watching this show, my show all the time. They have turned on this President. They are furious about not just this war with Iran, but a lot of different things up to this point. And at this point, I mean, We are going into a territory where it's not just about the war with Iran, it's about how many clips I've played some of them on my own show of members of this cabinet, members of this administration who spoke explicitly about why war with Iran is not in our interest. And it's one of those things that's like the Epstein files. What people see inside of them is when you cover that up, I can't trust you about anything else. And same with war and peace. I mean, we're literally playing with people's lives. And you've spoken very eloquently about the reason Washington loves this is because they believe that they are God, is that the power of God for life and death upon them makes them feel bigger from whatever sad life that they came from.

And they've been subsumed by that now with power. And they are going to get a rude reminder of what that looks like in the midterm elections if things don't go in a radically different direction. We're watching that play out in Texas. We're watching that play out all across the country with Democratic turnout. And look, even in a self-interested perspective for a lot of these Trump officials, if you don't want millions of dollars in Lujo bills and house subpoenas for the rest of your life, the rest of your natural life, let me be clear, you might want to start to do something very different than what you're doing right now.

So as I said, I flipped to DC three times in the last month to try to convince Trump not to do this. It didn't work. It happens. I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, boy, this is not going to get better. So then I think I'll fly up again and ask ask him, I don't know if anyone else is doing it, so I'm going to try, to just declare victory and go home. You killed an 86-year-old cleric, let's just call that a win and then pull back. Then meantime, he got convinced to denounce me. Okay, I don't care. I'm going to fly up anyway and see him, right? Even though he's denouncing me. I call over there to see, call someone who knows him. I said, I'm just going to fly up anyway and tell him this because I think it's so important. The person says, Don't bother, because he's being shown polling that this war is like a 9010 win for him. I said, I don't know where that polling is coming from. I guess you could make any poll. He's watching Fox News, which is telling him the same thing, and he's getting fake polling.

I guess they're only polling Sean Hannity's viewers or something. I'm not sure that there's a sense as if this was yesterday because I was getting so agitated and worried. I don't think that there's a sense that this is unpopular. I think there's an information vacuum here.

There's a massive information vacuum. For the President and the administration who declared victory based on internet and vibes and podcasts, let's take a survey, shall we, of every podcast that he appeared on and how do they feel about the Iran conflict. You can look very clearly for yourself. You can look at a lot of the polling of that same demographic, which they were very excited about, young men in particular. How are they feeling about this conflict? And if you were saying 9010, it's not even true in a Republican sense. I mean, the latest one that I saw was like 72% Republicans, which, by the way, Mr. President and everybody in the administration, Bush had 93 for Iraq, and how did that turn out for him? Let's not put all of our eggs in the basket of just because Republican voters are here, that this is all going to be like sunshine and roses. I also would not make the spurious claim that it's all about Iran. It's about compounding effects. The gas price effect of the Iran conflict is going to be dramatically more important to the White House's political chances in the midterms than anything that's actually happening on the ground.

I don't think it should be that way, but that's reality. I do think also your inclination to get him to try and declare victory, that's the correct move from a strategic perspective, an economic perspective, from every political perspective. You don't want the entire country's national discourse focus on Iran. I'll give you a good example. Just yesterday, the White House did a summit where they were trying to address rising electricity prices on data centers. In another world, no Iran, that's a main topic of conversation on my show, a major topic, maybe one of yours interests as well. But in the middle of rumor and peace and death and everything that's happening, the amount of coverage that got is zero. The President just gave his State of the Union. He had a lot of things in that State of the Union. Iran, what? It didn't come until the 70th minute, I think. What Who is the rest of it about? The economy, about gas prices, about jobs, Mr. President and others? That's what people really vote on. And so there's also in Washington and in media, there is literally zero sub whenever it comes to people's attention The news is attention, media.

And it's not like we're doing the wrong thing. Matters of war and peace are unironically more important than data center, electricity, potential plans. But if you want people to be even acknowledged that you're focusing on those types of things, you cannot be having foreign adventurism run amok in the Middle East and be declaring things like unconditional surrender, which is going to be the headline of every major news, every news organization in America. Whenever we're going to make Iran great again, whether you're pro or anti, that's all people are going to be talking about for the foreseeable future, not to mention oil prices and just the sheer imagery of bombs literally flying over people's head.

So big picture. And again, I'm always rooting for the United States and its president, no matter who it is, in the case of this President, I know him really well for many years, and I always like him. I don't care what he says about me. I will always have affection for him. But I also think if you think about it, this is the end of something. Voters take a guy from completely outside the political system because they're so frustrated with the system, and they like him or don't like him or whatever. But it's the system that is on trial here, and the system has been found wanting. It doesn't actually respond to voters in the way that it It's not improving the country. So they bring this guy from completely outside the system to shock the system and to tame it, to drain the swamp. And now I think we can say that that failed. And so what now?

Well, we have a three more years to go. I put a book behind me, the George W. Bush book, and it gave me no pleasure to do so because the parallels I'm watching already to '04 to '08, let's think about it. We've got a squishy economy with some problems. We've got a Middle Eastern conflict, potentially Potential Energy Crisis. We have an AI potential bubble which could pop at any moment. We have Democrats who are radically enthused with no leader at the top, meaning they get to have an open debate in their party. They can say things that are a lot more honest than the person who has a leader at the top of their party. They can have real function, and they can actually debate things out in the open. That's very healthy for a political party. That's exactly how the Democrats really ascended from power from 2004, the failed John Kerry campaign to winning what, 55% of the vote under Barack Obama. That was a very good process for them. Well, I'm watching it all play out step by step by step. And it's very similar, like you just said about the revolution. There was a revolutionary aspect to the Donald Trump campaign.

The second one, more so than the first, in my opinion, and affirmed, I think, with the popular vote, where it truly was revolutionary in terms of it, you have this President. He'd been President before. I mean, literally, he was almost assassinated. There were all of these potential indictments against him. The imagery, the sheer imagery and idea of somebody like that being able to ascend again to the highest surface of the land is insane. And then in the initial moments, you have Doge and you have people you would never see in power, like RFK K. June here and Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegsef. There was a real excitement for or Cash Patel at that point, not at this point. But these people were seen as revolutionary actors who were going to come in and throw a bomb inside of the system. But then if you watch the US government do the exact same thing that it did under all these past presidents. Your revolution starts to look a lot more like the status quo which was deeply hated and which you exploited to your great political benefit. Right now, I am watching the same type of revolutionary aspect take place in the Democratic Party.

And if you want any part of that and not to just be run over in future elections, they need to get wise very, very quickly.

I wonder, since all kinds of things have happened in the last two years that no one ever could have predicted, really, really radical things from Trump being shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, to right now, a week ago, the United States declaring war unprovoked. There's no direct provocation in the middle of negotiations with Iran. Even though it was happening, it was still a shock that it actually happened. Since we have a very recent track record of really unusual, if not radical things happening, I mean, how How concerned should we be in the United States about something really radical happening here and not just a terror attack or as likely a false flag terror attack or whatever, Americans being killed in America, which is what matters. But the US government doing something crazy. How should we feel about criticism of this war or Americans who criticize the war from within the United States at risk, do you think?

Let's just be honest. It terrifies me. Let's be honest. You should be honest because, well, let's look at the Department of Homeland Security. You and I can be supportive of a lot of the President's immigration policy. I think we can also recognize that there were parts of that immigration policy which were specifically directed by a foreign lobby for trying to deport people who are critical of the nation state of Israel. Sorry, I didn't care about that. That was literally a function of the Department of Anti-racism, effectively, coming in, becoming the Department of Anti-Semitism, as floated by Ibrahim Kendi. That was the level of insanity that we saw when People are getting deported for writing an op-ed. Okay, well, now this machinery has a new potential lead. Mark Wayne Mullen, he's very pro-Israel. Well, also, let's see that could get marched and created into an organism where already I've seen calls for people who are critical of the war. It should be silenced, should be subpoenaed. I think I saw that one about you. They said that you should be subpoenaed and dragged before Congress.

They said I should be imprisoned. Yeah.

Right. Imprisoned. Didn't somebody say you should even be put into an internment camp? This is how it all happened, guys. I mean, this is how it all... The Pearl Harbor to internment camps for Japanese was like this. It was a blink of an eye. Within a year long period, that's how it happened, where we stripped all of these Americans of their fundamental rights and locked them in a camp. That's insane. So the idea that it could never happen is obviously proven by our own history that it very obviously could. But more importantly, it will look like in a 21st century way. So there will be AI, there's already mass censorship, there's mass bots and propaganda efforts that are going on right now. I mean, already, how difficult is it to even see various types of video which is coming out from the actual conflict, trying to verify whether any of this is even real in real-time as we're processing what's happening. But I think what you raise is if you look at every war, as for Americans, especially the wars of my lifetime, the war on terror, I am fundamentally less free today than I was as a child, born in the United States in 1992.

And the Americans who lived through Vietnam were less less free after the Vietnam War than they were before. And the Americans who were born or the Americans in World War II were less free in many respects, or especially during the war for censorship rules and all of the stuff that the government was doing than before the outbreak of the war. And then before that with World War I. In Civil War, too. I mean, think about suspension of habeas corpus, all of these different things that these presidents have done. It is a natural effect for a wartime nation to crack down on speech, and specifically critical speech, of those war efforts. And they should be afraid. Even if you like the person who is in power, you need to recognize that this is a historical trend which goes back through our entire history. It's part of the reason I think that you and I abhor war so much. And we also, this is the scariest part, is When you watch this censorship be self-imposed on media organizations and you create a system and an incentive structure such that criticizing the war will remove any professional ability that you may have to advance yourself, specifically, let's say, as a policymaker in Washington.

You and I know dozens of people who are empowered. They don't support this war. They can't say anything out of fear of losing their job. I'm not just talking about in the White House. I'm talking about in the entire national security apparatus, the think tanks or others, because they're afraid of either being called by the donors or for saying that you're being too critical of something that the President supports. Open debate and free speech, the inability to have any of that in the lead up to Iraq, It destroyed our nation. It destroyed it. I'm very committed to making sure that doesn't happen again. But you and I are very... We're individuals, and the US government is a Leviathan, and we should be wary of it.

Are you... I mean, as someone, and this is not flattery, but it's sincere. You are one of the very first people to see this realignment in American politics. I mean, 10 years ago, you saw it very clearly, and you staked your whole career on it, and you were right, and that's why you've been successful. I would say. It's worth listening to your prediction, I think, on this question. Do you see a crackdown on Civil Liberties, human rights in the United States coming up? Because of this war, the war is a pretext for what was already in the plans. But do you see that happening?

I could see it easily happening. We already have the machinery, as we saw with Israel criticism and the so-called Department of Anti-Racism. I've raised several cases to you, Tucker, of the Department of Justice getting involved in campus incidents, which is insane, by the way. I oppose that under Obama. I oppose that under Biden. I oppose it now. I'm going to stick to my principles. The machinery for that is already laid, and it is one that should really terrify us. And you and I are in a unique position. We can speak out. I don't really care about myself. I care about the individual person who is relatively powerless with 200 or so followers getting a knock on the door by the FBI saying, Hey, why did you say this? What did you mean by that? And that very level of harassment is chilling, not to mention an institutional level. Who knows? Will the government find people? Look at the situation with Anthropic and Claude. You have this showdown between a Pentagon and Anthropic over the use of AI, their technology in a time of war, demands over human oversight. The government's basically saying that's unacceptable. You don't get to dictate those terms to us.

They can blacklist you as a company, literally blacklist you for not agreeing to those terms. That's fine. That's the right. But think about that. I mean, they're basically saying that not only they're not going to use the tech, they're not blacklisted from all US government contractors, which is massively, massively impactful to their entire business. This can happen across the board. And you can look at the CBS acquisition right now with Barry Weis in charge of CBS News. Censorship doesn't just happen. Censorship and reduction civil liberty does not just happen at the government level. Corporate censorship, corporate power can be just as much a threat to your individual liberty as the government power.

I mean, this is the last English-speaking country, probably the last country in the world in which attitudes have not yet been criminalized, at least officially. But Australia, New Zealand, Canada, every country in Europe, you're not allowed to have certain attitudes. You can go to jail. Like, your opinions are crimes. They are literally thought crimes. I've just noticed because I've been at the center of it, this effort over the past year to criminalize attitudes. When I was first called an I remember thinking, well, I'm actually not. I don't know why you're calling me that. I was annoyed or whatever. But the insistence with which these forces are labeling people with the slander anti-Semite, it It didn't seem accidental. I don't really think they care if you're an anti-Semite or not. I mean, Israel is very close to the Zelenskyy government, which supports actual Nazis. They don't care if you're an anti-Semite. This is an effort to set the stage for prosecutions. That's what I'm starting to think. Do you think that's too paranoid?

No, not at all. Well, first of all, we literally deported people for being critical of Israel. That actually happened already under this government. We are having the Department of Justice, the attorney general, get involved in campus incidents around so-called anti-Semitism. That is the machine and the groundwork which could be laid for exactly what you're talking about. But then let's look, we recognize this. If you lived through the woke revolution, let's think about the way that this works now with so-called anti-Semitism as they accuse use you. It's all about escalation. So first, you're being defined as an anti-Semi. In more recent comments, what did they say? That you're trying to incite violence against a specific organization. Incitement of violence is actually a very specific term. So what does that mean? An imminent threat. Which means that they want to be able to have an FBI agent come and knock on your door to ask you either to clarify what you're asking about or potentially prosecute you for your alleged comments that are around this. Each one is a step in a ground to lay the groundwork to make it so that such a case could eventually be brought and in an insane time.

When we have, look, we're at the very beginnings of this conflict. Who knows how long it goes? I pray it just ends. But again, all through history, it only usually gets worse whenever it comes to censorship and demands. I mean, already this entire conversation, you and I know, will be branded as anti-Semitic and pro-Iran. These are meaningless, ridiculous terms, but they will be pumped as propaganda into entire ecosystem to smear and to define us both as individuals. From there, if you're pro-Iran and where it were with Iran, wow, then you're a traitor. And now the traitor moniker is going to begin to be applied. And then from there, we'll start talking about treason. So very recently, I'll give you a great example. During the outbreak of Russia and of Ukraine, we had an incident, I think it was with YouTube, where they banned all Russian state media. And I would make a case to them behind the scenes. I said, Guys, I'm not pro-Russian, but if we're in the middle of a war, which ostensibly we're not even in, shouldn't I be able to cover what's going on in Russia? Which, yes, has a state media, but they put out things from Vladimir Putin.

Should I not be allowed to play things from Vladimir Putin? But never really had any answer to that. I used to deal with that with Donald Trump. So back in 2021, they had a policy where even if you pulled a clip of Donald Trump saying that the election was stolen, let's say in 2021, they would take down that video. And I would say, Guys, I have to cover the news. He's going to run for President. I can get commentary on his clips. But that is how quickly the censorship machine can act. And especially now we're watching here with the intertwinement of regulators and of these big companies. If you start to put pressure like that, you could see it so that even with the government not directly trying to censor you for your comments by literally just branding you, anti-Semitic, pro-Iran, or any of these things. You can watch your very ability to speak out as a citizen in America be eroded or evaporate completely overnight.

And Just to restate the foundational principle of the country, you have a right, a God-given right, not granted you by government, but with which you were born, to have any opinion you want, to follow your own conscience. You don't have a right to do anything you want, but you have a right to believe anything you want and to say anything that you want that you believe is true, period. I'm not pro-Iran. I've never been to Iran, and I'm certainly not an anti-Semite at all. However, any has the right to preferences and beliefs, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs, political beliefs. Those are absolute rights. Those are human rights. That's what human rights are. You can never prosecute someone for having views you disagree with, period. I do think we have to stand up for that above all else, right?

Especially in wartime. In wartime, more important than ever. Again, I watched this happen with Iraq. I watched this happen with Afghanistan. I've read too much about it from Vietnam, from World War I, from World War II, from the Civil War. And I literally based my entire career trying to say this will never happen or if I have anything to deal with it. It won't happen again. And then it did happen again. And so then we have to set up for the next playbook. It's okay. We know that they're coming. We know they're coming. So we have to plan for that. The only way to plan for that is to get the people who are on our side, because fundamentally, again, it's not about us. It's about even it's really about smaller private individuals who have literally the fundamental right to say they're whatever they want. And for them to be harassed, we have to protect that more than anything.

I don't know what's coming next, but I know that you're going to be at the center of it. I know you will understand it before most people. I hope that you will come back. I really mean that. Anytime, Tucker. I'm grateful for this. Thank you, Sagar and Jetty.

Great to see you. Thank you, Tucker. Thank you for everything that you do and for giving me my own start in this business. I'll always be so deeply thankful.

Man, if I knew you were as smart as you turned out to be, I would have paid you more. I'd still be working here.

I would like that, too. I would like that, too.

I would like that. Thank you, Sagar. Great to see you, man.