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- [00:00]
A
Howard Lutnick, the way in which he got caught just spitting that incredibly detailed lie about how he went to Jeffrey Epstein's apartment. Nick had constant contact with Jeffrey Epstein, including asking to go to his island. The easiest way to have your career destroyed was to speak out against Israel. Seeing these people as heroes who come home to heroes welcomes and things like that, because they're concerned that will incentivize people. That's what they want to do with Tucker.
- [00:26]
B
Okay, guys, got Glenn on today, coming in halfway across the world. How's it going, Glenn?
- [00:32]
A
Doing great. Thank you for having me.
- [00:34]
B
Yeah, I've been watching your. Your pod run going on. Tucker, Julian, Dora, you've been going viral lately, man. Congrats. You know, lots of talk about Lear bad, but I don't know, lots of spoke about. Yeah, Pam got fired, I think, yesterday. Now they're saying potentially Cash Patel. What do you think about that?
- [00:53]
A
You know, I. I don't really like to critique public officials on the basis of intellect, but I do have to say that I think the last two cabinet officials that Trump fired were by far his two dumbest. Kristi Noman and Pam Bondi. I really think that's one of the problems that she had. I also think that Trump has a lot of demands for Pam Bondi that aren't really attainable within just our traditions of justice and the way in which the courts work and the legal system works. And he felt frustrated by the fact that she wasn't able to successfully indict James and James Comey and people of that strain. And I guess he thinks that if he puts somebody in there who's both smarter, slash more competent and more aggressive, he'll be able to have better results.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know. The Cash stuff is going pretty viral. His email got hacked, some things got leaked, and now they're saying he might get fired. Did you see his. Some of those leaked emails from him?
- [01:50]
A
I haven't seen the leaked emails, but I definitely have been hearing for a couple of months that, that Trump is particularly frustrated with both Cash Patel as well as Howard Lutnick. You know what Trump really dislikes are losers at the end of the day. I mean, and if you are looking as though you're a loser in the eyes of the public or the eyes of the media or even Trump, that is pretty much the worst thing you could possibly being. I think Cash Patel has on many occasions looked like that. I haven't seen these new emails. Which just by coincidence happened to be right next door to his, and he and his wife, you know, 15 years ago, got so disgusted by what they saw that they ran out and swore they'd never have anything to do with that terrible, horrible, creepy man again. And then the Epstein files came out, part of them at least, and showed that how her. So these are the sort of things that are kind of embarrassments that Trump really, you know, wants to. To punish.
- [02:54]
B
Do you think they're going to release any more of the files, or do you think this is all we'll go.
- [03:00]
A
This is. There's this term that I've always hated called limited hangout. And one of the reasons I hated it is because it was often used to disparage WikiLeaks. The reporting we did in these big cases where we would divulge a lot of files, like in the Snowden reporting, where people try and imply, oh, you've look, you made it look like you, you, you disclosed a lot. But that was just a way of justifying the concealment and withholding of the documents that are really incriminating. A lot of people think that's what happened with jfk, too. And although I still dislike the term in some ways that it's deployed, I have come to believe that that is something the government does. Vix administration definitely do that. With Watergate, for example, they kept thinking if they would be. Some people will just say, okay, well, we don't have it all, but we have enough. And that's clearly what the Trump administration is gambling on. They've released a lot, but there's still immense amounts that they continue to conceal. And I think they're hoping with time lapsing and people losing attention span and this new war, that we'll all kind of just forget about it and say, well, we got enough.
- [03:58]
B
It does seem like this war has taken over. The Iran war. Seems like more people are talking about that than the files now, right?
- [04:05]
A
Well, yeah, and I would say justifiably so. I mean, it's a major, massive new war that's unbelievably dangerous and costly on, on every level. And our attention should be paid to that, I think principally because of just how quickly these sorts of things can escalate, get out of hand, turn into protracted conflicts. So. Yeah, but we shouldn't forget about other things, including the Epstein files.
- [04:32]
B
Yeah, and you've been pretty vocal about this war. You don't like America getting involved at all. Where do you see it going from here?
- [04:40]
A
Well, I mean, just like, look at China just for, for, as an example, China in the last 20 years by everybody's agreement, has become a major world power, competing with the United States on pretty much every level. Technological, militarily, politically, economically, displacing the United States and Europe and regions around the world that the United States traditionally has yielded a lot of power, like Africa and Latin America and other places. And yet China has not fought a war, has not had a single war in the last 48 years. You have to go back to 1979 when China had a war and that was a one month border dispute with Vietnam. Look at how many wars we've had in the interim. And it turns out you can do a lot of extraordinary things if you don't just go around the world bombing countries, invading countries and trying to change their government. You can instead use those resources to improve your own country. Building that massive high speed rail that connects all your cities, you know, on and on and on. All the things that China has so remarkably done in oddaway surpass the United States. So we're supposed to have this idea that war is a last resort, war is hell. All these cliches that, that have a basis in truth. And yet if you kind of step outside the United States, I've obviously lived outside the United States for quite a while now. You can start realizing things that seem normalized and customary in your culture that are in fact very operational. And the fact that we constantly fight wars against countries that have not attacked us and aren't about to attack us is one of those things. And this is yet another war, another war like that, but kind. That Trump ran for 10 years, promising to avoid denouncing and saying that it was destroying our country. And he was right about that. That resonated with me and a lot of other people. And yet here we are arguably in the middle of the worst and most dangerous one yet.
- [06:19]
B
That's a good point. I think the military industrial complex is so large now, if we were to stop going to wars, it would probably hurt us for a little bit the short term, economically, I mean, I guess
- [06:29]
A
the question is, who is us? You know, we had this 20 year occupation of Afghanistan that Donald Trump negotiated an end to with, with the Taliban and then Joe Biden rather incompetently, but nonetheless executed. We finally withdrew from, from Afghanistan. This is in mid-2021. And the Taliban would just march right into power, back into power, as though none of it had ever happened. All that money, all those lives wasted for no reason. And then six months later we found new war, which is when Russia invaded Ukraine. And suddenly we had all this new reason to crank up the war machine. And so you're definitely right. It needs to be fed. These people wield immense power in both parties in Washington. But when we say we would suffer, I think what we mean is the arms industry would suffer, the defense contractors would suffer. All the kind of leeches that cling to them would suffer. But you could use that money instead for all sorts of other stimulus inside the United States, for, like, renewing infrastructure. You go to any other country and you're shocked when you compare their airports, their roads, their bridges to the United States, where everything is falling apart, put people back to work. So, you know, it's. It's not just a binary choice. I think it's a question of who. Who's benefiting specifically and who isn't.
- [07:42]
B
Yeah, that's a good point. Do you think America should be investing more in infrastructure? What else do you think we should be investing in in America?
- [07:50]
A
I mean, our communities? You know, this was the whole promise of the Trump project. In fact, if you go back and look at Steve Bannon's plan for the Trump 2016 campaign, which even though I had long been associated with the left in my work, I found very interesting and appealing. Steve Bannon's plan was, we get into office, we raise taxes on the rich, we use that money to do a bipartisan infrastructure bill with the Democrats, we renew America's infrastructure, put hundreds of thousands of people back to work with good paying, you know, American base, even unionized jobs, and then we closed the border. That was the recipe that Steve Bannon envisioned. That was like the America first recipe for. For improving the United States. And basically none of that was done in the first term. That's because Jared Kushner won his power battle with Steve Bannon, and instead we had corporate tax cuts and tax cuts on the rich. No, no infrastructure bill. The border wasn't closed. And a kind of traditional, more traditional foreign policy. So I still think that vision of having, you know, America's Rust Belt and the heartland revitalized so that our communities aren't plagued by unemployment and addiction and suicide and depression and everybody on all sorts of, you know, hills and. And our communities falling apart and therefore, like the spirituality in the soul of the United States is disintegrating as well. That's what needs renewal more than anything else. But you cannot do that if you continue to just give huge tax cuts to the rich and at the same time, spend, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars on endless foreign wars, which is exactly what we're doing, right as we speak.
- [09:29]
B
Yeah, it does seem like the spirit is dying. We see more divided than ever. No Kings Day protests had over 8 million people broke world records. Yeah, it doesn't seem like we're heading in the right direction right now, right?
- [09:42]
A
No, I mean, you know, if I, I've always tried to avoid this very melodramatic rhetoric, but it does feel like late stage imperial collapse. I mean if we look at how other empires have collapsed, there's a lot of lashing out, a lot of insecurity and then it usually is driven by internal dissension, by, from a loss of identity and purpose. And you know, if you look at a lot of it is just modern day life. Right. And, and it was exacerbated by Covid the fact that we no longer, you know, spend our times in churches or union halls or community centers. We live in these gigantic cities. You know, if you want to start a family, it's very difficult. Both parents have to work outside the house. People are losing religion, they're losing spirituality, they're increasingly isolated. All the things that human beings need to feel fulfilled, the connection and community and purposes, all of that is disintegrating along with our communities. They're kind of disintegrating together. And so of course you're going to have people feeling like they're lost societally. And I think, you know, polls overwhelmingly show that, especially in the richer countries, ironically in the west, that's how people increasingly feel.
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, I noticed you seem to be very pro religion. I saw you on Julian Dory talking about religion and you don't mind Islam coming to the West. So you see religion as sort of a net positive to society.
- [11:01]
A
I see spirituality as a net positive, one expression of which is religion. I think if we don't, you know, to me, I haven't, I am not a theologian, but I have, you know, studied to some extent various religions and I do feel like, you know, they have a lot more in common than they do differences. And in particular I think it's this question of what is the purpose of our existence? Why are we here, what we search for, something greater than ourselves. These are all things human beings have, you know, strived for and needed to feel and needed to be connected to basically since organized society existed. And if you lose that, everything becomes nihilistic. Everything becomes just kind of, you know, of the moment. There, there is nothing greater than ourselves. We, we, we, we become very narcissistic and self centered. And I think nihilism is, is the alternative to that. So it's not that I'm, you know, hypocritically insisting everybody be religious. I don't really practice a specific organized religions, but I think a spiritual aspect to life is absolutely crucial for human fulfillment, for human happiness in a healthy society.
- [12:10]
B
The Christian nationalism movement, you know, depends on what your definition of Christian nationalism is, I guess. But that gets a lot of scrutiny on social media. Mixing politics with religion, I guess. Do you see a problem with that, mixing the two?
- [12:24]
A
Yeah, I mean, you know, like anything, religion can have its negative outcomes as well. You know, it can really lead to all kinds of factional strife. And when it mixes with politics, I think one of the ways that political power is most easily abused is when political people become too self righteous. You know, they believe that they're just on a course of absolute righteousness. And so they start disbelieving in the need for constraints on their own power. They lose a humility because they believe that everything that they're doing is ordained by God. I think those are very dangerous concepts for people acting in the political realm. But the other extreme of just becoming completely irreligious, of becoming completely secular, of having no spiritual component, that too can be very, very dangerous.
- [13:18]
B
Absolutely. I saw your debate with Coleman about free speech, how you believe it's being suppressed. What did you think of the feedback after that debate? I thought it was a really interesting one.
- [13:31]
A
Yeah, you know, I, I've known Coleman for a while and so I felt like it would be a debate that would be at least in good faith and conducted civilly. I really like despise shows where you go on and you're supposed to scream at each other and, you know, like who yells out or who speaks most? Maybe I'm too old for that, but I just don't have the, the, the energy for that, like the, the motivation to do that. And I do think it was conducted in that way. I think he, he conducted it civilly and I think people responded well to that. But at the same time, you know, he works for an outlet that is fanatically pro Israel, that has as its core mission talking about the free press as founded by Barry Weiss and now incorporated into CBS News, where Barry Weiss is the president of the network and the Ellison family, who are, you know, the largest single donors to the idf. Friends of the IDF in history are the owners. And so they clearly are a project, a Zionist project for Israel. You know, he's not. I'm free to say whatever I want. I don't have, you know, bosses of that kind. And he's not. And I think that he was in a difficult position. And I think it was interesting to see that even his own audience reacted. You know, usually if you go on someone else's show and you look at their comments on a YouTube page, it's all, oh, you destroyed him. You killed him. And I don't think there was a lot of that. And I think the reason is because, especially when it comes to the free speech question, which we devoted, you know, the first 30 to 40 minutes to, even if you are pro Israel, even if you want, for whatever reason, the American worker to have to finance and subsidize Israeli society and the Israeli military people. Still, to be American doesn't mean that many things these days. But one of the things it definitely means is this kind of instinctive belief in the idea of free speech. The government can't prohibit ideas or render ideas off limits. And increasingly the government has been doing that in various ways in the name of shielding Israel from criticism. And I think even people who are pro Israel just react very poorly to that. And there's no question that's happening. It's very difficult to die, especially if you, you know, are well informed about these developments and can easily demonstrate that it is. And so I think that made it more difficult for him.
- [15:52]
B
There's no doubt it's happening. I've lost millions in sponsorships because I have on certain people that speak out against Israel. My TikTok got banned after Ellison took over. So it's happening on a pretty large level. I do worry that it spreads to other platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Hopefully it doesn't under Trump, but we'll see. Right.
- [16:13]
A
Well, I mean, let's remember, you know, Facebook is. Is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, who is very close to the Israeli government. I think Elon Musk deserves some credit in that he's resisted this a lot. There's been efforts to pressure him to impose censorship in defense of Israel. There's some occasions where he has capitulated, but by and large, he's kept it a pretty free speech platform overall. There's certainly no shortage of Israel criticism on X. But at the same time, you know, this is not a new phenomenon. This is something that has been going on for quite a long time where. The easiest way to get fired have your career destroyed in media. I can show you endless examples demonstrating all of this. After October 7th, when support for Israel was no longer sustainable simply because people were seeing its true face in Gaza, and not just in Gaza, but also how captive the US Government and our politicians seemed to be to Israel, going there constantly, standing up every week and talking more about Israel than their own constituents and their own states and districts. People started naturally, you know, really booking for the first time, especially young people. And as support for Israel unraveled in the US and then throughout the west, they just became increasingly desperate. And in general, power factions turned to censorship more and more when they're losing the debate. They used to have a very, you know, aggressive and strong lockdown on the ability to dissent on Israel. Very few people could do it. You know, most people are afraid to speak out. But once you get past that tipping point where it becomes mainstream to speak openly and critically and have these questions about Israel and US subsidizing it, it's very hard to put that back in the bag. And they kind of, for the first time, are acting out of panic and desperation. And that's why the censorship has become so visible, so brazen, so explicit.
- [18:14]
B
Yeah, they almost have to be so explicit now. Right. They can't hide it anymore because the masses have changed, I think, over the past few years, especially with the war in Palestine and now this war in Iran. People are very frustrated.
- [18:25]
A
Right. Yeah, but. But, you know, I. To me, and this is why my main cause over the last decade as a journalist or just as a citizen has been a free and open Internet, and particularly keeping independent media free and flourishing, is that as long as we have decentralized information vectors where, you know, it's not even like 20 years ago where you just have cable networks that are owned by big corporations, or 30 years ago where you just had networks owned by massive corporations that were easily controllable and dependent on the US Government. It's impossible, essentially, with a free Internet, to control the flow of information, to prevent people from organizing and asking questions of one another and learning from each other instead of from these centralized fonts that are easily controlled by the government, they're trying. That's what the TikTok ban was about. That's why they wanted to ban TikTok or force it into the hands of Larry Ellison. That's why all these Western European countries or Canada and the UK and Australia and Brazil, lots of other places are constantly passing laws to make it easier to control content on the Internet. But I think that ship has long ago sailed. The Internet's just too big and unwieldy, and people are too accustomed to being able to speak freely and hear what they want. That I don't think that tactic is going to work. And that's why I always thought a freeing and open Internet was the most important cause, because if you can have a place where you can always communicate freely, you can reach a large audience. People are capable of hearing what they want to hear, what they should hear, then making up their own minds, thought control or coercion or population control of that kind, like really heavy state propaganda becomes virtually impossible.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah, I do think it's the obvious better alternative. But do you see independent alternative media eventually getting compromised too? Like, do you see certain governments throwing money towards podcasters and stuff like that?
- [20:21]
A
Sure. I mean, you know, any human institution is, is susceptible to corruption and independent media has a ton of bad incentives. I think probably the, the worst of which is audience capture. Because the way that you make money in independent media is by building a big audience. And if you build your audience based upon some sort of partisan or ideological identity, it means that they don't want to hear the moments when you start questioning things or challenge their preconceptions. They want to hear it validated. They want to feel like they're part of a like minded community. I'm not saying all, but that is a big tendency. And so you can see, we know a lot of podcasters, the easiest path in order to become a big podcaster, build a big audience online with independent media, and therefore make a lot of money, is just to plant your flag in some camp, you know, and say I'm MAGA or I'm a Democratic partisan or I'm whatever. And you know, you can do that and that'll work, but you run the huge risk of it very quickly, no longer being free, it just becomes a job. You're just eating, you know, people what, what they want to hear. And you don't feel free to say what it is that, that you want. But I think there are more than enough people out there. I know this is the audience I've always tried to build and I think I have cultivated over a large amount of number of years that don't want that, that don't want to just be patronized that way, that don't want to just have feel like they're part of a choir. They, they want to be challenged. They want to know that you're giving your best efforts to, to understand things, communicate what it is that you're seeing, what the evidence demonstrates and be convinced and, and not just, you know, kind of pandered to. And, and I, you know, that's where independent media can thrive. But of course there's all kinds of, as you said as well, there it's subject to, you know, secret payments and all kinds of corrupting influence. And there's definitely a lot of that going on as well. There's no way to avoid that. But on the whole, I think the benefit of independent media provides just the plurality of views, the diffused information dissemination, that those benefits are very significant.
- [22:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. It does feel like some people pigeonhole themselves. Like when you, when you said all that, Charlie Kerr came to mind because near the end, it really seemed like he was starting to question some things and he couldn't speak out about it. Right.
- [22:33]
A
Well, he talked. I mean, Charlie Kirk lost donors on exactly the same issue that you referenced that you did, which was Israel in particular. It wasn't even things that he was saying. It was people that he was inviting. The idea of Talking Point was always that it was this big tent uniting force that would bring all the different factions of American conservatism, the American right, together. And once people like Tucker Carlson started, you know, really aggressively questioning Israel and the US Relationship with it, started talking about Epstein as a Mossad agent and then went and did that at Talking Point events, a lot of the funders that, that were funding Talking Point were, in Charlie's own words, Jewish billionaires. And they were aggressively insisting that he de platformed those people. And when he refused, he lost millions and millions of dollars in donations, which is not an easy thing to do. And then he himself also started openly questioning it. You know, having those kind of town halls where young people, young conservatives could come and express their reservations about Israel. This became extremely scary to people who care most about Israel because they've kind of written off the American left. The Democratic Party is sort of on its way to becoming more hostile to Israel and so keeping the American right in line, especially evangelicals who Charlie represented, you know, this kind of younger evangelical sector of the American right to now have anti Israel sentiment, contaminating that with the person that they thought was always going to be the one who would sort of shape this new generation to think in very pro Israel ways. That was extremely alarming to them. And the evidence of that is, is what he endured.
- [24:14]
B
And I believe after his death, they Turning Point ended up taking some more donations. Some people say like a large amount. I've heard like 100 million. I don't know if that's verified, but it seems like they got those donors back on board it.
- [24:27]
A
Well, they. Very quickly. You don't hear any Israel skepticism from Talking Point anymore. You, you know, to the extent the Talking Point is Erica Kirk and And the people who were on Charlie stuff who have now taken over his podcast, you. That's gone. But I don't think Talking Point is going to be nearly as influential without Charlie. He was extremely charismatic person, exceptionally good at personal networking and relationships. And without him, it's just kind of like a, you know, it's got a big potting corporation. I don't think it has a lot of robust energy to it. So, yeah, it'll be pro Israel in exchange for money, but I just don't think it'll wield anywhere near the same influence it once did.
- [25:16]
B
I don't think they'll be inviting Tucker back at amfest this year or that.
- [25:20]
A
Yeah, exactly. Definitely not Tucker.
- [25:25]
B
I know you just went on his show. He announced recently he's being investigated by the CIA. Are there any updates on that story?
- [25:32]
A
I don't have any updates that I can share on that, but I. I know that there are a lot of efforts inside the Justice Department, the CIA, to try and depict him as some kind of almost like treasonous agent. But if you look at, you know, what a journalist does, which, you know, you can think whatever you want about Tucker. I mean, Tucker has been a journalist his whole life. You know, he's done nothing but work for media outlets and was paid for reporting and for, you know, punditry and analyzing. I mean, that is what Tucker does. At the end of the day, obviously, talking to foreign governments, including ones with whom your nation might go to war, is absolutely fundamental to the job. But you cannot reasonably inform people about a potential military conflict if you don't understand the perspective of the other side. But Tucker is a huge threat to the same people that I just described Charlie Kirk as being a threat to. And, you know, if you don't believe that those people, A, have a lot of power and B, will wield it without limits in order to guard themselves against whatever perceived threats they think exist, then you just don't understand how they work. And I. For that reason, I mean, it was always very credible to me what Tucker was saying, and the more I've learned about it, the more credible I know it to be.
- [26:54]
B
It does feel like CIA going after him is kind of an attack on alternative media, too, and free speech and reporting. I mean, I could see why people are very invested to see how this plays out. Right.
- [27:07]
A
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think it's a really important point. I've seen this with whistleblowers before. You know, one of the big. The big leak that WikiLeaks got one of the big ones was leaked by, as we now know, the army Private Chelsea Manning, who was in Iraq and discovered all these files that showed all sorts of government lies and war crimes and sent it to WikiLeaks. And they caught her and they put her into this prison. And then they started really treating her abusively, you know, like way beyond the way a normal prisoner would. Would be treated. And by that point, you know, she couldn't do any damage. Like, she obviously lost whatever access to classified information she had. She was no longer in the army. And so the question was, you know, why? Same thing with Snowden. Right. Edward Snowden had access to a massive amount of. Of top secret documents, gave them to me and. And to my reporting partner, Laura Poitras. And yet they're still after Edward Snowden to this day. They want to put him into prison forever, even though he obviously can do more. No more damage either. The question is why? And the reason is. Is because they want to make examples of these people so that if you're somebody who's thinking about, you know, discovering government deceit or criminality and then disclosing it publicly through some means, you'll think to yourself, you know what? I just watched them destroy the lives of this person and that person and that person who did it. So I know I don't want to do that because the same thing will happen to me. They don't want. They don't want anyone, you know, Because everybody else in independent media will think, well, if they can actually criminally investigate Tucker, if they can actually credibly charge him or accuse him or intimidate him with the legal system, this is, you know, one of the biggest people in this media space about the biggest. What can they do? To me, maybe this is a topic I'd be best advised to avoid. It's a climate of fear, which is designed for deterrence that they're really most determined to create.
- [29:11]
B
100%. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. John Kiriakou, too, when he whistleblow, he got thrown in prison for a few years. I believe they bankrupted him.
- [29:21]
A
Yeah.
- [29:21]
B
They want you in that state to not talk about certain things. They want you in a state of fear.
- [29:26]
A
Yeah. And again, not just those people who, you know, generally when they blow the whistle, that's, you know, they. They reveal what they have. It's the people who end up in their situation, you know, inside the government with access to this information. I mean, the most, you know, I think the most amazing story, and to me, it's sort of like the grandfather of, of modern day whistleblowing was Daniel Ellsberg who you know, worked inside the Rand Corporation, was, was one of the key Planners of U.S. nuclear Strategy at the height of the Cold War, was also a key planner of the Vietnam War. And then in the 60s started to discover through his access he had the most unfettered access to top secret documents because he's a war planner that the Pentagon and other war planners inside the US Government knew that they could never win the Vietnam War. That at best it could be fought to a standstill if they fought for many years, but probably they were going to end up losing. And yet publicly they would go testify before Congress and give interviews and they would say exactly the opposite. They would say we're six months away from winning. You just need to stop tying our hands with these protests and we're going to win. And you know, tens of thousands of American troops, to say nothing of millions of people in Vietnam were dying. And he went and took the study, the Pentagon paper study where they concluded they could never win and made it public. And for that they wanted to put him into prison for life for showing the truth about a war that huge numbers of Americans were dying in. Like you know, 20 year old kids were coming back in body bags by the thousands for a war that they kept saying they were going to win but knew that they couldn't. He should have immediately been treated as American hero. But the only people who in general are punished or paying the price for severe government deceit and wrongdoing and criminality are the people who expose it, not the people who do it.
- [31:12]
B
You got me wondering with the Iran war, like they're saying we're going to win in a few months too with that, who knows what's actually happening there, right?
- [31:20]
A
I mean, what is winning? Look like, you know, I mean originally, like think about even what happened with Venezuela. Like leading up to the abduction of Maduro in Venezuela, we kept hearing about the drug trade and drug boats. Like does anybody think the drug trade has been meaningfully interrupted in the United States? Is it harder to get drugs if you're an American inside the United States? Will anybody credibly claimed that as result of what we did in Venezuela, blowing up a bunch of boats and abducting the Venezuelan president or even freeing the people of Venezuela from this harsh dictator? Have we done that? No, of course not. We up the government in place. There are, I don't know, maybe symbolic rights that now that are honored that didn't previously. But by and large it's the same exact system. So same here in Iran. Think about everything we were hearing in the lead up to this war. Oh, the government is killing protesters by the tens of thousands. It's this tyrannical government, as though we fight wars to free people. We don't hear about that anymore. Like, clearly, it's not the goal of whatever we're doing in Iran that we're going to impose democracy and build some sort of free government. I mean, that would take, you know, decades of nation building of the kind that we failed to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and everywhere else we tried. Like, who would ever think we're really doing that? So the question is, like, what does winning even look like? And you can see, I mean, the Strait of Hormuza is closed. We cannot open it. Despite what we were told, the Iranians are launching massive amounts of ballistic missiles, not just at Israel, but at the energy sectors in the entire Persian Gulf, on US Military bases, many of which have been rendered inoperable by Iranian airstrikes. And then just today, they blew an F15E fighter jet out of the sky, something that was thought utterly impossible for them to do, and yet they did it. And so, yes, I do think one of the. There's all sorts of ways we'll lie to about wars before they happen and while they're undergoing, while they're underway. But one of the main ones is just the question of whether we can, quote, unquote, win and what winning even means.
- [33:20]
B
I wonder also now if they could lie to the same extent with alternative media and social media in place before, they could easily lie with just the traditional news networks. Right?
- [33:30]
A
Yeah. I mean, the fact that you and I can talk the way we're talking, I think sometimes, like, I know I take this for granted sometimes, too, but, you know, when I started writing about politics, I had been a lawyer previously, and I wanted to get into journalism and writing about politics. And one of the reasons I was able to do that was because there was just this blogging software that Google had created called Blogspot. And it let you, you know, just kind of open a. A blog, and if you could attract an audience, then you could reach a lot of people. You could reach an unlimited number of people, in fact. And the reason that was so innovative and revolutionary was because, you know, 10 years earlier, you had to have a newspaper, which meant you had to have a printing press and a huge newsroom and delivery systems and everything else. And having digitalized, you know, blogs and information made it so that you could reach a huge number of people with very little investment. And now you have shows, like relatively professionalized shows that look like in studio shows or have the same capability. They just appear on the Internet and are not transmitted over cable or network television, which is how most people watch and get their information anyway. And the fact that we're able to have these conversations, that we're able to build big audiences, that it kind of gets collective, that we go and listen to each other and talk to each other, this is. I think it's important not to take for granted what a remarkably revolutionary development that is.
- [34:56]
B
Absolutely. Some people think Trump's playing 5B chess with this war. They think in the long run it'll pay off. Other people think it's going to ruin his legacy. Where do you lie in all that?
- [35:08]
A
Trump himself has known for a decade that involvement in these kinds of wars destroys presidencies and destroys legacies. Americans didn't even want this war. So it would be one thing if Americans were sold on this war, that there were big majorities, like there was for the Iraq war, for example, where at least Bush and Cheney spent a year convincing the public to support it, albeit filled with lies and deceit and propaganda, but they still bother with to do that. And so there was a big majority at the start. And ultimately the failure of that war is what ruined Bush's legacy. That's clearly how he'll be remembered in this case. I've never seen a war in my lifetime that didn't produce some sort of, like, rally around the flag effect, where people said, okay, my country's going to war. I support this war. I understand why we're fighting it. There was no attempt to convince Americans of that. And so this war is quickly the most unpopular war that I've seen in my lifetime. And that means Trump has two choices and only two choices. Number one is he can continue to get further and further sucked in, which is how these wars become the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan war, exactly this way. Nobody starts off saying, oh, I want to fight a 20, I want to fight a 20 year war. Nobody starts off with that. Everybody starts off, oh, just another month, just another month. And, you know, suddenly 12 special forces soldiers are killed, and now you can't get out. You have to go and avenge them. And then you escalate, and then they escalate, and then it becomes that. Or he just arbitrarily and prematurely ends it, pretending that we won some great victory even though we won nothing. And everybody sees that and it's like an unprecedented humiliation for the United States. Like, we are on the road to losing this war, and neither of those choices is good for him. So, yeah, I mean, it's amazing. He had, unlike the first term, a lot of goodwill at the start of his second term. He was actually a reasonably popular president. People were willing to give him a chance. And there's been almost no focus on domestic policy other than closing the border on ice. And the ICE stuff was pretty unpopular just because of the brute way that it was carried out. People don't like seeing American citizens, you know, shot in the head on the street by, by federal agents. Other than that, it's all been Israel and, you know, bombing Yemen and the Epstein files and Ukraine and none of, and now this war. None of what was promised to people when they voted for Trump, none of it.
- [37:30]
B
Yeah, I wasn't really into politics during his first term, but I feel like this term Israel's just way more involved with him. I'm not sure if they were as involved in his first term, you know.
- [37:41]
A
Well, I think one of the important things to realize, not to make excuses for Trump, but just to kind of get an, an insight into how he, he, he sees things. He was running for President 2024, not only to become president, but to stay out of prison for the rest of his life. Had he lost in 2024, the Democrats were absolutely going to put him in prison for a long time. And you're talking about somebody who's, you know, almost 80 years old. There were four different felony cases pending against him. They already obtained felony convictions in that preposterous New York case with Stormy Daniels and those hush money payments. But they were, you know, they had two penalty cases relating to January 6th, another one related to classified documents to the Mar A Lago. And they were open about the fact that they wanted to put him in prison for life. And not just him, but, you know, he, they had already tried this in his first run with Reshigate, and he was desperate to win. And one of the things that happened was the people who are, who care most about Israel and who have a ton of money, you know, I'm talking about, like, pros, real billionaires like Miriam Adelson and Bill Ackman and these type who never really were behind Trump particularly, but saw that he was, once it became apparent he was going to be the Republican nominee, they kind of swooped in and extracted a bunch of promises. And in exchange for those promises, you know, spent tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars that enabled his campaign to be a winning campaign. And he ended up, you know, his big promise in 2016 was, I'm so rich, nobody can buy me. I don't owe anybody anything. I only am go work for you in 2024. He owed everybody everything. And, you know, the, the. Yes, he's been a very pro Israel president. His daughter is married to, you know, an Orthodox Jew, Jared Kushner, whose family has been fanatically pro Israel for a long time. He was probably the most influential White House advisor in the first term. But I don't think anybody expected that Trump was going to actually involve the United States in exactly the kind of Middle east war that he spent a decade railing against and denouncing, clearly for Israel. I mean, this is Israel's enemy, Iran, not the United States.
- [39:36]
B
Is. What are the odds, you think, after the midterms that they try to impeach him?
- [39:43]
A
I don't know if they're, you know, in, in, in. You have to. It's hard to. You. You don't want to underestimate how cynical and disgusting the Democrats are. In. You know, the same exact thing happened in Bush's second term. He was extremely unpopular. The Iraq War was dragging on. You know, Americans were coming home. American soldiers killed there as well. Americans realized they had been deceived. And there was Hurricane Katrina, and, you know, we were heading into the 2008 financial collapse. And the Democrats ran in the midterms on a platform of defunding the Iraq war and impeaching Bush. And the Democrats won. That was when Nancy Pelosi became the first ever female House speaker. They took over the House, they took over the Senate. And within about a matter of days after they won that midterm election, Nancy Pelosi said, we're not going to impeach George Bush, and we're also not going to cut off funding for the war. We don't want to leave the troops exposed that way. But what they really wanted was they wanted Bush in office, and they wanted the Iraq war ongoing into the 2008 election because they knew it would help them recapture the White House. So they kept funding the Iraq war despite their promises that they wouldn't, even though they won on a promise to cut it off, because they were hoping that Bush and the Iraq war and the unpopularity of it would. Would spur them into the White House. And that worked. That's. That's a big part of why Obama won against John McCain in 2008. So that's what the Democrats, even if they win, I Don't. I mean, maybe they'll impeach Trump. I don't think they're going to remove him from office and make J.D. vance the president. That would be absolutely contrary to their interests. He's a lame duck anyway. But clearly when the Democrats win, and I think it's extremely likely, certainly in the House, maybe in the Senate, that they will, you know, it's going to be the end of Trump's domestic agenda, that's for sure.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Have you seen these Netanyahu conspiracy theories?
- [41:34]
A
I mean, obviously I've seen a lot of those. Which ones in particular are you referring to?
- [41:39]
B
The ones that he died and there's AI videos of him. Have you seen those?
- [41:44]
A
Yeah, I mean, I've seen those. I mean, I, you know, I, I don't, I don't run away from conspiracy theories because conspiracies are very real in our world. I mean, a lot of human history is driven by conspiracies. But I try really hard to be evidentiary based with them. And, you know, there have been journalists I know who, who are based in, in, in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv who have been to press conferences with Netanyahu. So unless they created some, like, hologram or incredibly lifelike, you know, clone of his, you know. No, I don't think that. Now who is dead and they're just propping him up with some sort of technology.
- [42:17]
B
Yeah, I mean, the videos were definitely AI, but that doesn't mean he's dead. I think they were just trying to not disclose where he was at live. Right. They canceled a lot of events. He was supposed to be up.
- [42:27]
A
Right. Which, you know, I mean, given that they, on the very first day, killed Iran's spiritual leader, have killed the leader of Hezbollah and Hamas, clearly using it as a war tactic, the Iranians and other people in the Middle east would love nothing more than, than to kill Netanyahu. If I were him, I would definitely want my location to remain undisclosed as loyal.
- [42:45]
B
Yeah, I believe I saw some news outlet. I didn't fact check this, but it said Israel doesn't plan on sending ground troops to this war. Did you see that?
- [42:55]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, they're just gonna have the United States through it. They're gonna. I mean, this is, you know, this is the, the most amazing thing is as somebody who has been a very harsh and outspoken critical of Israel, a critic of Israel for, you know, more than 20 years, the claim has always been from Israel supporters. Oh, there's no such thing as Americans going to war for Israel. American soldiers don't, don't go die in wars for Israel. And yet here is a war against the country that has been Israel's primary adversary for decades, that Netanyahu has wanted more than anything else that he's wanted in the world to lure the United States to go fight a regime change war against them, to remove them as a bulwark against unfettered Israeli power in the region. And now on the verge of a very potential ground war, the Israelis are basically saying, we're not going to go risk our boys in this ground war. And they really, the Israeli military is, is, is really near collapse. I mean, they've been fighting a war now, a very difficult multi front war for many years. And I don't know if you know this, but like the, one of the reasons why, you know, they're a small country and they're fighting major wars in many places. But the Orthodox Jews, the sect of religious Jews in Israel, are exempt from the draft, even though everyone else in Israel, men and women, are required to go to the idf. So you have this huge sect of Orthodox Jews in kind of hundreds of thousands of them, if not even more than a million, probably more than a million now who just don't fight. And they're among the most fanatical and militaristic and it's causing these extreme rifts in Israeli society because of the exhaustion of the troops. The fact that this is the group that often demands more and more war, but they never go and fight them, much like the United States where you have, you know, the warmongers who send everybody else's families. And as a result, the Israeli army, despite, you know, all the lure about the uwor, about the idf, they're really in tatters, they're really exhausted. Fighting ground war in Iran would, would absolutely collapse the Israeli military. So their attitude is it's the American's job to go do it for us. And I'm sure Trump will serve those demands if, if the situation arises.
- [45:03]
B
I actually did not know that. Wow. So if they want to actually achieve the Greater Israel projects, they, they need us basically. And even America might not be enough based off this Iran war. I was looking right.
- [45:15]
A
Well, that's why you're seeing this kind of like desperation on the part of Trump, on the part of Israeli leaders. They're trying to demand and cajole and beg Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis and the Bahrainians and even the Qataris to enter the war against Iran on behalf of the US And Israel, they have their own tensions with Iran. You know, in terms of Iran's not an Arab country. There's the shoot, the Sunni, Shia distinction. There's been tensions between the Persian Gulf countries in Iran for quite a while. So the Israelis are trying to kind of stimulate those. But then you also have Trump begging the Europeans, begging NATO, to go in and help him open up the Strait of Hormuz, because the US And Israel are really losing this war. I'm not saying that at the end they will lose. And in fact, my big concern is that if other countries don't intervene, and I can't imagine Western Europe, France, or the UK or any of those countries, Spain or Italy, going and fighting alongside the United States against Iran, they would rather just pay Iran, you know, hostage money to get their oil from the Strait of Hormuz. And I don't think these other Arab countries want to either, because at the end of the day, these Persian Gulf states, you know, they're like tiny, little fragile monarch. Monarchies that just have oil. And if the Iranians can just destroy their energy infrastructure, which they easily could, there's no more uae. There's no more, you know, Bahrain. There's no more Saudi Arabia. These countries don't ex. These countries are nothing without their oil infrastructure. So it's really essential for them. And my big concern is that if. If Iran, if. If Israel and the US Continue to lose this war, if Trump, you know, starts to put ground troops there, but you need so many ground troops to be able to take over a country of this size, driven a country of 90 million people, like, almost four times what. What Iraq was when we invaded there. They could start to resort to some extremely desperate measures, including the use of battlefield nukes and things like that, because you cannot have the United States brazenly losing this war in front of the world. It just. It's. It's not a humiliation that the United States will accept.
- [47:18]
B
I've seen videos where it's almost impossible, allegedly, to invade them with ground troops because of the terrain, very mountainous. So it doesn't look like that would work, Right?
- [47:27]
A
Yeah. And, like, it's their country. You know, they've been preparing for this forever. This is something we don't think about. You know, yes, our military is the greatest military and the most powerful military, et cetera. And it has the biggest ships and the most advanced planes and the biggest bombs. That's for sure. We do have all that, but that doesn't mean that you can go in and control somebody else's country. It's like obviously someone else knows their country way better than you know it. That's why this kind of ragtag Sunni insurgency in Iran, in Iraq, was able to give the US Military so much trouble. But Iran is way bigger, a very proud, thousands of year old civilization. They've been planning for this kind of hostility for a long, long time. They're very good at it, as we're now seeing. They're not a joke. And I do think the U.S. you know, ground troops would be cannon fodder in a lot of ways. Like they would do a lot of damage, but a lot of damage would be done to them probably well beyond the level that Americans are willing to tolerate.
- [48:22]
B
Yeah, it'd be like Vietnam, but worse, right?
- [48:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's like what we're seeing in Russia and Ukraine. You know, we can send the Ukrainians all the big beautiful weapons, but at the end of the day, it's a war of attrition between ground troops using cheap drones that are just causing these massive bloodbaths. And I don't think, I know the Israelis aren't going to risk their boys in that kind of a war. And Trump might because he gets convinced. I mean, a lot, you know, a lot of what Trump does is a byproduct of what, what people convince him is true. And he sits all day in front of Fox News. I mean, that is the reality. And that's where he gets. We have this intelligence infrastructure that we spend $75 billion a year on, like the CIA and the NSA spying. But Trump sits there in front of Fox News and gets his information from Fox News. That's what he responds to that or Lindsey Graham or whomever. And if he's convinced, if he gets convinced, I think he got convinced with this war that it would be a lot easier than it is that we can send ground troops in and take this and take that and force Iran to capitulate. I could easily see that, that the United States getting itself into that.
- [49:33]
B
Yeah, I wonder if he got confident after the Venezuela stealth attack. Right?
- [49:38]
A
Yeah, but like Venezuela is not Iran. Plus, like what all we did in Venezuela was we went in and we, we, we kidnapped one, one president. And in a lot of ways, Maduro could have done a lot more to put the entire country kind of in upheaval, but he kind of gave himself up in a way, and that's why it was so quick and easy. But what was accomplished there. And like I said, we didn't go in and invade Venezuela. We're not occupying Venezuela. We didn't spend months carpet bombing it. And to compare Venezuela, which has been sanctioned and strangled and embargoed and cut off from the world economy by the United States for decades, to Iran, which is a big, powerful, sophisticated nation. I think Russia and China are helping Iran more than we know as well, with technology and other kinds of targeting information, even some technological support. That's a much, much different undertaking.
- [50:41]
B
Absolutely. You mentioned the Strait of Hormuz earlier. As long as it stays blocked, it does seem like oil is going to keep going up. It's almost $6 a gallon here in Vegas. Has it affected you over there in Brazil?
- [50:52]
A
A little bit, yeah. I mean, because, you know, the world oil supply is basically collective. And, you know, the United States, for example, doesn't even get oil from the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, we're a net exporter, the United States is of oil. But the world oil market is just one big world oil market like the. The supply is what feeds every country. And if there's some huge disruption, as there is now, it is going to affect every country, but it's not just affecting gas prices. It's affecting stock markets and futures and bonds. And I mean, the whole world economy is being disrupted. And I don't think the Iranians are ever going to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz again. They're never going to go back to saying, oh, it's just free. Everybody can just go and use it because it's. They're going to extract a price for. For this war of aggression that has been launched against them.
- [51:41]
B
Wow. So you think the navy's gonna have to get involved, or what do you think the approach should be with that?
- [51:47]
A
I mean, you know, one good solution to the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is closed is to stop attacking Iran and do a deal with them to open the Strait of Hormuz, because the Strait of Hormuz was completely open before the United States launched an aggressive and unprovoked war against Iran. So if you want to open the Strait of Hormuz, I guess you could say, you know, I mean, the issue with the Strait of Hormuz, the reason why it's so difficult to do anything is because it's extremely narrow and it's right there on the Iranian coast. So even if you destroy the Iranian navy and they can't block the Strait of Hormuz, any ships that are passing through there, including US Naval ships, are going to be very vulnerable to missiles and drones that can Be shot from the interior of Iran, from, From hundreds of kilometers away. There's no way that you can make the Strait of Hormuz safe from Iranian aggression if they want to attack the ships that are going through there. It's just very narrow waterway. It's like 24 miles at one of its narrowest points that you have to pass through. And so the Iranians want to menace ships in the Strait of Hormuz. And then you also have the, you know, the Houthis in Yemen, who are close Iranian allies who can also do the same thing, have done the same thing with the Red Sea, you know, as protests against what the Israelis were doing in Gaza. They haven't really entered the war yet, the Houthis, they have a little bit, but nowhere near. And they could blockade the Red Sea or pirate attack or missile attack. Ships going through the Red Sea. And you can fuck the world economy in so many different ways without much effort.
- [53:25]
B
Geez, that is nuts. I did not know it was that narrow. So, yeah, taking out the Navy won't be enough. So you either have to negotiate or we have to go all in. Right?
- [53:34]
A
Yeah, you either completely just, you know, you send Iran back to the Stone Ages, as Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump have been repugnantly threatening to do. You know, I thought that was the country the people we wanted to save and liberate and make them thriving, and now we're going to return. The Stone Age, or you just, you know, my hope is that, you know, one of the things that I guess Trump's superpower is, is that. And he's had this, you know, well before he entered politics of the New York 15 years, when he was this big, like, tabloid figure before he went on the Apprentice, you know, he's always been able to just. He's always been shameless. Like, there's nothing that embarrasses him. He can look you in the eye and say anything, even though everybody knows his balls. And he will insist on it. It's kind of like a con man skill that he's very good at. And so my hope is that he'll decide I'd had enough and I'm going to declare victory. I'm just going to insist that we won. Attack. Anybody who suggests we didn't win is insulting the troops or fake news or whatever, and that is probably the best way out.
- [54:32]
B
Yeah. Well, Glenn, thanks for your time today, man. What's the next project you're working on? How could people support you?
- [54:38]
A
I just moved back to substack so I'm doing my most of or all my reporting there. Do a lot of video interviews and segments, a lot of writing as well. So anybody's free to follow my work there.
- [54:50]
B
Beautiful. We'll link it in the video. Thanks for coming on, man.
- [54:53]
A
Yeah. Good talking to you. Thanks for having me by.
- [54:56]
B
Thanks for watching all the way to the end. Guys, please hit like and subscribe. It helps us grow the show and helps us get bigger guests. Thank you so much.