In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the insane geopolitical wins stacking up for Trump in early 2026—wins so massive they rival the collapse of the Soviet Union, Napoleon’s early campaigns, or Cromwell’s rise, but with almost zero U.S. cost so far.

From the precision strike that took out Ayatollah Khamenei (and the sneaky Mossad magic behind it), to Maduro’s capture in Venezuela halting oil to Cuba and forcing blackouts, to Iran’s proxy network (Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas) getting defanged, the Collinses argue this is a new era of low-cost, high-impact American dominance.

They explore the risks of overreach (history’s villains who won too much too fast), why most of the Muslim world isn’t mourning Iran, the “frenemy” dynamic with China, why dumb white women seem to be the main group getting radicalized, and Trump’s unlocked hack: kill hated dictators surgically, threaten successors, let regional allies (Israel, Saudis, UAE) handle cleanup, and watch dictators self-moderate out of self-preservation.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. The world has changed so dramatically, and I think much more dramatically than people realize in the past few months, specifically in the past few weeks with what’s going on in Iran right now, the number of core geopolitical winds that Trump has had.

And I think even the right wing doesn’t seem to really grok the magnitude of this. There is no historical parallel in all of American history except for maybe the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that wasn’t exactly all our doing. A lot of that was internal. Yeah. The, the closest three historical parallels I can find, like series of wins this significant with this little early cost would be the beginning of h man’s campaigns.

The beginning of Napoleon’s campaigns or most of Oliver Cromwell’s life. Those are the only three that come anywhere near. And, and I think that this actually [00:01:00] highlights one of the big risks of where we are geopolitically right now.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: In the same way that if you look at Napoleon’s early career, just win, win, win, win, win, win, win.

Or the h man’s early military career. Win, win, win, win, win, win, win. Mm-hmm. Very low cost to his own troops. Very low cost to him geopolitically. What happened in, in both of those cases is they completely overdid it and ended up giant villains from history. Mm-hmm. And I can completely see the temptation from Trump’s perspective right now.

And for people who don’t understand what I’m saying right now. Trump has taken out first obviously Maduro and the Venezuelan, the new Venezuelan president. It, it appears to be working like she halted the oil shipments to Cuba, which now is forcing Cuba because Mexico did not restart the shipments. They, they, somebody out our last podcast we’re talking about this, said they restarted them.

They’ve halted oil shipments as well. So it looks like the Cubans are either [00:02:00] going to cave or be put into a permanent blackout because they don’t really have oil anymore. And if you don’t have oil, you can’t grow crops or move cars or anything. And none of their geopolitical allies have the ability to get them oil because like if China tries to send a ship all the way to them, the US will just.

Grab it like we’ve been with everyone else who’s trying to send them ships. And they don’t, and China doesn’t even seem to want to. And then Iran has been taken off the map with very little geopolitical cost. And we’ll explain why each of these has had so little geo, because that’s also weird, right?

And if you go through American history and you look at something like, say the Vietnam War or something like that, if we had overwhelmingly won the Vietnam War, right, like just completely won it early days, it would not be one 10th Is geopolitically relevant at the three victories combined? Hmm. We have been trying to deal with Iran, [00:03:00] Venezuela, and Cuba for.

A half a century at least.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. No. From our childhoods, we’ve all grown up hearing about Iran and Death to America and Yeah. All this stuff. But it was more of a recent thing though.

Malcolm Collins: The United States doesn’t really have that many geopolitical enemies.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Truly it’s just been Iran and North Korea mostly with China and Russia both being kind of like frenemies.

Frenemy

Malcolm Collins: China is, is really more of a frenemy than anything else.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They’re like the Jessica to our Utah mom. That’s a little too. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: , What I mean by China is more of a frenemy is in terms of like big geopolitical enemies that we’ve had. China really hasn’t made a point outside of the fentanyl epidemic, which is absolutely terrible.

And inventing TikTok again, absolutely terrible. But, you know, it’s, it’s been nothing like our wars against our other geopolitical enemies, like what we had

Simone Collins: to deal with. No, they’re like that [00:04:00] passive aggressive, mean girl. Like we’re, we’re in a mean girl clique together and like, you know, one’s like, Aw sweetie, let me help you.

Like you can buy some of my cheaply manufactured goods. Or like, oh, why don’t you have like, here you can have my Cheetos. ‘cause I mean, they’re gonna make you fat anyway, and I’m gonna eat like all my healthy food over here.

Speaker 22: We do not have a click problem at the school, but you do have to watch out for frenemies. What are frenemies? Frenemies are enemies who act like friends. We call them frenemies or ene amens, or friends who secretly hate you. We call them freighters. That’s so gay.

Simone Collins: But that

Malcolm Collins: is actually exactly like, it, it’s like two mean girls that constantly hang out together.

Simone Collins: Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: But, but what I mean is they’re not like an existential threat to

Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re just like competitive rivals who really don’t like each other and feel like it’s a zero sum game. So like, yeah, actually it is pretty bad, but like. In a more collaborative way, whereas Iran was like, no, I just wanna kill you.

You just like, there can be no room for the two of us. You know, it’s more exclusive. That’s like a one,

Malcolm Collins: their founding thesis is, I [00:05:00] wanna kill you. You

Speaker 12: We are two months away from enriching weapons grade uranium to be used for peaceful purposes.

Speaker 29: Obviously this joke was made a while ago. , By Iran’s own claims, they had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs, , nearly enough to wipe out all life on earth.

Simone Collins: Know, like, yeah. So it’s like, it’s, it’s the, it’s the school bully. Like, meet me out back. I’m gonna beat you up. Versus the mean girl of like,

Malcolm Collins: well I do, I love how everyone is meed on Khomeini for this, that he, the mans spent his entire life trying to get into a war with the United States.

Simone Collins: So you can’t make you smell. It’s gonna burst my mouth. Stitches, but kine, can we please? Oh God. Oh, the stitches are gonna open. Whatcha doing? Kine. [00:06:00] Okay, go. Keep going, keep going. Just, just keep butchering all the Iranian words and I’m just gonna bust all my stitches open.

Malcolm Collins: I’m not, I

Simone Collins: to stay away.

Malcolm Collins: I ran. Day one, he spends his entire life trying to get us into a war with Iran.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Dies like day one, hour one. Watching a video on this was insane because they knew not just like the bunker he was in, but the floor he was, was in, in that bunker.

Simone Collins: How I, I wish I knew how they knew. You know, I wanna watch the Oceans 11 version. It’s real piss

Malcolm Collins: off Jews. Jews are sneaky. This is the thing about Jews that people don’t know.

They were very sneaky people, which makes them excellent spies. Like all Jews, if you’re playing like Skyrim or something, they’re born with like a plus 10 to their sneak stat. You know, stealth, they’re, they all go stealth. Archer blt wait,

Simone Collins: Because I like legit have never played Skyrim or like any video game, aside from a rollercoaster tycoon, are there [00:07:00] Jews in Skyrim?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. But there’s races in Sky Room, so I’m saying if there were

Simone Collins: Jews in Sky Room,

Malcolm Collins: okay, I get you. It’s racial sta modifier. With Jews, it’s a, oh, we should do that. We should have an episode where we make racial stat modifiers for every race. Oh my God. But Jews, Jews, Jews are sort of an op build these days, I’m gonna be honest.

Gotta, gotta Nerf. That turns out to be very, very useful. That’s

Simone Collins: what the H man said as you refer to him. But

Malcolm Collins: you know what? Oh yeah. Yes, he did try to Nerf the Jew build. He’s like, he did try to Nerf

Simone Collins: the Jew build

Malcolm Collins: unfair to have Judes in our server.

Simone Collins...