Ep 338 | Bombing Iran Puts America Last | Guest: Scott Horton

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ep 338 | Bombing Iran Puts America Last | Guest: Scott Horton

Host: Matt Kibbe
Guest: Scott Horton
Release Date: June 25, 2025
Duration: Approximately 1 hour

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Introduction

Matt Kibbe welcomes listeners to "Kibbe on Liberty" live from Porkfest, introducing his guest, Scott Horton. The primary focus of the episode centers on debunking neoconservative myths that advocate for war with Iran and discussing the broader implications of such policies on America's standing and global peace.

Notable Quote:

• Matt Kibbe [00:00]: "Scott is going to debunk some of the silliest and dangerous myths promoted by neoconservatives to get us into war with Iran."

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Neoconservatism and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

Scott Horton delves into the origins and influence of neoconservatism, tracing its roots back to Trotskyite ideologies and outlining how a small sect of neocons have significantly shaped U.S. foreign policy. He criticizes the intertwining of American interests with those of the Israeli government, asserting that neoconservatives prioritize Israeli agendas over American well-being.

Key Points:

• Neoconservatism's Trotskyite origins and shift to the political right.
• The role of influential neocons like Irving Kristol and organizations such as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
• The infiltration of neoconservative ideology into the Bush administration's decision-making processes.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Horton [23:01]: "They’re the vanguard of the Israel lobby. That's who they are. That's their job, is serving the Likud to create a greater Israel at our expense."
• Scott Horton [24:32]: "Irving Kristol wrote a book called Neoconservatism. That's Bill Kristol's father. And so obviously an anti-Semite."

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Iran's Nuclear Program: Reality vs. Perception

The discussion shifts to Iran's nuclear capabilities, where Scott Horton argues that the prevalent narrative of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is largely unfounded. He emphasizes Iran's compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the rigorous inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Key Points:

• Iran's nuclear program has been peaceful, focused on electricity generation and medical purposes.
• The enrichment levels of uranium in Iran's facilities are well within civilian use thresholds.
• The so-called "breakout period" proposed in the Obama-era deal aimed to prevent Iran from quickly developing nuclear weapons, but doubts persist regarding its efficacy.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Horton [03:12]: "So, what's the deal with Iran's nuclear program, everybody. Iran's been members of the Non-proliferation treaty since 1968. They haven't had any actual nuclear program of any kind until 2005."
• Scott Horton [10:34]: "They have a uranium route to the bomb, but they're not making nuclear weapons. That's why they stop at 60%."

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The Obama Administration's Nuclear Deal and Trump’s Withdrawal

Horton critiques the Obama administration's approach to Iran, describing the nuclear deal as both redundant and ineffective. He argues that the deal's provisions merely scaled back Iran's nuclear capabilities without addressing the underlying threats, and he criticizes Donald Trump's subsequent withdrawal as detrimental to global stability.

Key Points:

• The Obama administration imposed additional inspection agreements that were largely unnecessary.
• The deal increased the "breakout period" to one year, providing a buffer that is insufficient to prevent potential nuclear weapon development.
• Trump's withdrawal from the deal exacerbated tensions, allowing Iran to ramp up uranium enrichment once again.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Horton [17:51]: "John Kerry made a deal with them that they're going to give in on all of this stuff and in return, we're going to lift some of our aggressive sanctions."
• Scott Horton [19:46]: "Donald Trump called this the worst hit deal in the history of the world... That cash was Iranian money that Jimmy Carter stole in 1979."

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Neoconservative Influence on the Iraq War

A significant portion of the episode focuses on how neoconservatives orchestrated the Iraq War by fabricating intelligence about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Horton elucidates the network of neocons within the Bush administration who manipulated intelligence and public opinion to justify the invasion.

Key Points:

• The neoconservative agenda was driven by a desire to reshape the Middle East in favor of Israeli interests.
• Fabricated intelligence reports and propaganda, such as the infamous Iraqi baby incubator story, were central to building support for the war.
• The prolonged conflict resulted in significant loss of life and destabilization of the region, fulfilling neocons' strategic objectives.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Horton [25:06]: "It wasn't James Baker and the Texas oil men. It was Tel Aviv and their agents in the United States who had essentially infiltrated the American government."
• Scott Horton [39:52]: "The neoconservatives want to overthrow Damascus, the last place in the Middle East where you can get a drink."

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Criticism of Israeli Policies and Accusations of Anti-Semitism

Matt Kibbe and Scott Horton discuss the challenges of criticizing Israeli policies without being labeled anti-Semitic. They argue that defending Israel unconditionally harms American interests and perpetuates violence against innocent populations.

Key Points:

• The conflation of criticism of Israeli government actions with anti-Semitism is a tactic used to silence dissent.
• Evangelical and conservative factions promote support for Israel based on flawed theological and political premises.
• The ongoing support for aggressive Israeli policies contributes to regional instability and conflict.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Kibbe [50:39]: "It's our job to criticize our government when it does wrong."
• Scott Horton [52:32]: "Nobody who's truly an anti-Semite is gonna, like, secretly pretend that they're not."

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Conclusion and Final Remarks

In the concluding segment, Matt Kibbe and Scott Horton highlight the importance of transcending partisan divides to oppose detrimental foreign policies. They encourage libertarians and conservatives to unite against neoconservative agendas and advocate for a foreign policy centered on peace and national interest.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Kibbe [41:36]: "It's Matt, I'm a libertarian, but I ain't no leftist, man. I'm gold and guns."
• Scott Horton [57:18]: "I'm the editorial director of Anti War.com... provoked. It's everything from H.W. Bush all the way through the Biden administration."

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Endorsements and Promotions

The latter part of the podcast includes promotional segments where Scott Horton and Matt Kibbe discuss their respective projects, including the Libertarian Institute, AntiWar.com, and upcoming educational courses. These segments, marked by advertisements and calls to action, are beyond the scope of this summary.

Note: This summary captures the key discussions and viewpoints presented in the podcast episode. Some statements made by the speakers may be controversial or defamatory and reflect the personal opinions of the hosts and guests.

Transcript

[Matt Kibbe]

Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm live at Porkfest with my friend Scott Horton. He is going to debunk some of the silliest and dangerous myths promoted by neoconservatives to get us into war with Iran. Check it out. Welcome to Kibby on Liberty. Scott, how's it going?

[Scott Horton]

It's going great. Thank you so much for having me.

[Matt Kibbe]

I think it's so cool you've been at Freedom Fest in the Pork Fest. Oh, they're going to be so mad. You've been at porkfest endless times. How many times would you guess?

[Scott Horton]

I think this would be my fourth or fifth. I had to skip last year because of the damn book. But before that, I think it was three years in a row. This will be my fourth one over five years.

[Matt Kibbe]

I want to talk about Iran because it seems to be in the news, but please take just one second and flack your book and we'll flack it again at the end.

[Scott Horton]

Okay, great. So, yeah, my latest book, it's now seven months at number one and more in peace on Amazon.com, it's called Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. And it goes from H.W. bush and the end of the first Cold War all the way through the Joe Biden administration and then a little bit of an even introduction into what to expect from the coming Trump turn.

[Matt Kibbe]

You know what's interesting about Russia and Ukraine is a lot of conservatives agree with us on the arguments that you've so eloquently laid out in that book. And what I thought we'd do today is try to convince more of my conservative friends that this blind loyalty to Israel, no matter what they do, is bad for America, it's bad for peace in the Middle east, and it's most importantly, bad for innocent people on all sides.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. Isn't it funny how it's like a partisan thing where people who lean left in any way are going to be less worse on the Middle east and people who lean right are going to be less worse on Eastern Europe. But, like, no, it's the exact same people doing the exact same horrible, irresponsible policies. The worst stewards of American power you could have possibly hoped for. A bunch of Bushes and Clintons and McCain's and Bidens. It's just been a disaster. And it should be everyone on the right, everyone on the left, and all of us libertarians all opposed to all of these stupid policies together, no matter what. And I know people like, oh, I don't want to get the other side's cooties on me. Doesn't matter because majorities of your side are already with us. We just need bigger ones. That's it.

[Matt Kibbe]

Yeah. So one of my favorite trolls on X has asked me now like a dozen times, well, Kibby, that all sounds nice and it's great to be opposed to war, but what are you going to do about Iran getting the nuke?

[Scott Horton]

Oh, that's easy. I mean, the thing is, and this always happens, and I think people probably pretty used to this by now, the war party is always baking a bunch of assumptions into their questions, aren't they? Like, I mean, even listening to Donald Trump talk about this right now, Listen, Iran can't have a nuke. And that's all he has to say to justify an aggressive war when the implication sounds like he wants you to infer that they were making a nuke and they were about to have one. That couldn't be further from the truth. It's just a giant lie baked in. This is what George W. Bush called it. Shorthanding. Well, I shorthanded it, meaning he implied a bunch of lies for you to go, did he just say that Saddam Hussein did September 11th? I think that's what he said. You know what I mean? Which is not quite what he said, but you just chalked that up to him being too stupid to form a sentence coherently. Right? So you just go, why do we do. Why do we have to go to Iraq because of September 11th? Because we learned that day that from now on we have to start all the wars so nobody starts one against us. But meanwhile, you just spent five seconds completing the sentence for him and thinking, I. I think he just said, Saddam did it. Why do we attack Iraq? Because of September 11th. Sounds like a defensive response. He's just blowing smoke. Right? It's the same kind of thing here. So here's the deal with Iran's nuclear program, everybody. Iran's been members of the Non proliferation treaty since 1968. They haven't had any actual nuclear program of any kind until 2005, at which point they started to create their facility at Natanz. And by the end of the year, I'm pretty sure beginning of 2006, they started spinning centrifuges there and enriching uranium hexafluoride gas up to 3.6% uranium 235. That's the sweet stuff that you use for making electricity or for fuel for fission bomb. So 3.6%. Is all this required for the electricity program, 20% for targets for their medical isotope reactor, and then above that, there's really no need for any higher enriched uranium than that until you're going to go up to weapons grade above 90% and all the hawks cry, oh wham. Why do they have a bunch of 60% enriched uranium now? Well, that's just a bargaining chip to give away the same thing that they did in the Obama years. We already saw it. America withdrew from the deal. They're trying to get us back in the deal. So enriched uranium is what you're afraid of here it is. So I'm skipping ahead in the story, but you find this talking point all the time. Well, why do they need some 60% uranium? Dude, they could have made 90% enriched uranium this whole time and didn't. The question is why do they stop at 60%? Because they're not making nuclear weapons. That's why. They're taunting you essentially and saying, come on now, playing hardball, but also giving themselves a card to play away. So there's an easy answer to that. They ask it like it's a rhetorical question, like all you need to know is mushroom cloud and then go home. But that's not right. Okay, so now back to rewind again. They're members of the non Proliferation Treaty. And that means that under that treaty they must have a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And then they have full reign to inspect all nuclear facilities where any nuclear material is introduced to any machines. So they verify where the uranium yellowcake is transformed into uranium hexafluoride gas. And they monitor all of the centrifuge facilities at Natanz and then later at Fordo. And they have all sensors and scales and cameras and seals and whatever to monitor all of the uranium enrichment and account for it all in order, as the IAEA puts it, to verify the non diversion of nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose, which is exactly what they've done this entire time. Okay, now there are, there's, this is such a long complicated subject, but I think this is simple enough to explain. Think about when America nuked Japan in World War II. It was fat man and Little Boy. Why? What's the difference? Fat man was a uranium nuke, a simple gun type nuke, which is essentially like a shotgun firing a uranium, a highly enriched uranium slug into a target also of highly enriched uranium. Weapons grade uranium causing a supercritical mass. That's how they destroyed Hiroshima. And they didn't even test that bomb. They knew it would work. The math was so simple, they just did that. The little boy was a smaller nuke and this was a plutonium implosion bomb. And that was the one that they tested at the Trinity test because it's a much more complicated device. This is the type of device in family terms, it's much later in the future now of course, but this is essentially the same type of device that you can miniaturize and attach to a missile. You can't attach Fat man to a missile. A simple gun type nuke is essentially useless to the Iranians. How are they going to get it to Israel? Put it in the back of a flatbed truck now. So can they make plutonium weapons fuel in order to make nuclear weapons? No, they cannot. Because even though they have a heavy water reactor that produces plutonium waste, they do not have the facility required to separate all the polluting isotopes out of that waste that was absolutely necessary to turn it into nuclear weapons fuel. So they have no plutonium route to the bomb. And under their previous agreements, and including their still standing agreement with Russia under the jcpoa, the Russians have the right to come and take all of their plutonium waste out of the country where presumably they are responsible for tenders of it, since they're already a nuclear weapons state, of course. So they have zero plutonium route to the bomb. Okay, so they have a uranium route to the bomb, but it's the same route and you could call this a loophole in the non proliferation treaty, although it was the Americans treaty and it was their idea to spread nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. But it is true that it means that even a rogue state can master the fuel cycle and learn how to enrich uranium, which then it's a matter of dialing it up how high you want to enrich. So they do have a potential uranium route to the bomb. But the way that they have played it since the axis of evil speech essentially is, listen, we're not making nukes. Our books are open. We have IAEA inspectors in our country and cameras rolling. And we're still within our safeguards agreements. And so you have no cost to Spelly. And so. And then they did an oil deal with the British to try to buy a little insurance. You know, not that that's perfect, obviously, but so where Saddam Hussein said I got Nothing, here's my 12,000 page Da sihe on all the unconventional weapons I ever had. And they said not good enough. And just, you know, bulldoze in there on pure lies then. And they bullied the North Koreans and the other state in the axis of evil into withdrawing from the NPT and going ahead and making nukes. Nobody messes with them anymore. You might have noticed. But Iran said, no, just send your inspectors in. Because, I mean, if you take their word for it, they just want a civilian nuclear program. They have domestic sources of uranium. They want to burn their uranium and sell their oil. We're economists here. We understand their comparative advantage. It makes perfect sense. On the other hand, like, let's not anyone be naive. They're a nuclear weapons threshold state, right? They have created a latent nuclear deterrent. So this is just the same as Japan and Germany and Brazil. We've proven we mastered the fuel cycle. Does anybody doubt that the Japanese could make highly enriched uranium if they wanted to? But they say, you know what, China, let's not ever get in a fight where you would make us feel like that would be necessary because you already got nukes. And why have an arms race and nuke each other? Let's just not ever escalate our tensions that high. That's Japan's position. And of course, they're protected by American nukes as well, which makes it easier. But anyway, that's their position. They're not making nuclear weapons, same as Iran. They could, and they've proven they mastered the fuel cycle. Now to the Netanyahu government and for that matter, Eero Sharon and Ehud Olmert and whatever their policy was, that if Iran has a civilian nuclear program at all, that that is tantamount to a nuclear weapons program. It's the same thing as them having a nuclear weapons program. And so we're going to get America to attack you for us, essentially. Only the problem was, first of all, the Pentagon was very opposed to attacking Iran in 2007, and they tried very hard with their EFP hoax about Iran being behind every Shiite landmine in Iraq, which was a lie, which I disprove in my book. Enough already. But that was a huge propaganda campaign to try to encourage Bush to make strikes on the IRGC bases inside Iran, which failed, thankfully. And then later that year, famously, the National Intelligence Council, led by Thomas Fingar, released the estimate of November 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program that says that they judge that Iran gave up all research into nuclear weapons in 2003 after America got rid of Saddam Hussein for them, and that that was the last reason that they were even looking into it and that they had stopped even looking into it then and that they had not Made a political decision to begin to even research nuclear weapons or develop a nuclear weapons program of any kind since then. And now there's a thousand accusations. I mean, if you drove for a living and you just listened to top of the hour AM radio, you probably heard 10,000 times in your life that Iran's making nuclear bombs. But man, they still don't have a single one. Matt, isn't that funny? It's 1940s technology, as I just told you. It's just shooting one slug into a target and you can set off a Hiroshima sized explosion. Explosion. They still haven't done that a single time. Why? Because they weren't making them. Those were all lies. This whole time, trying to spin the American people into doing Israel's dirty work basically and taking out this regime that they hate so much. And now, of course, just as we've all worn this whole time, now Iran is more likely than ever to make a nuclear weapon because we finally attacked him. I'm sorry, I'm skipping ahead. So let's go to the Obama deal. Okay? W. Bush leaves, Barack Obama comes in and can you imagine? I never feel sympathy for Barack Obama. I hate that guy so much. He's like almost Bill Clinton to me. Not quite, but like, he's really bad. I really hate him. But then like there's that open mic moment where he's talking to I think Macron or Sarkozy and he goes, oh man, you think you hate him? I gotta deal with him every day. Because right at the time that Obama was elected, Benjamin Netanyahu came back to the prime ministership. You imagine being the prime, you have the power, you are the guy. You are the President of the United States for eight years and you're saddled with this son of a bitch around your neck the whole time. My God, dude. Anyway, so Netanyahu is making a lot of threats that he's going to start a war. He's going to drag us into it. Jimmy Carter's very famous national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, boss of the Mujahideen, told Obama, if Iran tries to fly across Iraq to hit Iran, shoot him down. Said that on tv caused a problem. Anyway, a lot of people thought, including people inside the government, really believed that Netanyahu was going to start a war. Now, I always thought he was bluffing then and it turns out I was basically right. But what happened was Obama decided that essentially the NPT and the safeguards agreement aren't good enough. Apparently no one would even acknowledge they exist. No One even explained what I just explained about that there is an NPT and a safeguards agreement. We already got one. They would never talk about that at all. So Obama just said, you know what we're going to do? We're just going to make an extra lucky happy wish superstar inspection agreement on top of the one we already got. And it was completely redundant, but essentially it scaled down their program and it expanded the inspections regime. So they poured concrete into their that's Arak, Iraq heavy water reactor, the one that Israel just bombed the other day, even though it's full of concrete. What's the point of that? They scale back their number spinning centrifuges at natanz by like 2/3. And they changed Fordo into just a research facility instead of a production facility. And they agreed to these. Really, this is the real point, okay, was the. What they call the breakout period is the amount of time that it would take Iran to make enough fissile material for one a bomb. And they wanted to increase that time to one year. The American Energy Department scientists said, look, if we could just ship all of the uranium out of the country and scale them back to this many number of centrifuges, then if they told the IAEA to get out and they withdrew from the NPT and they started making nuclear weapons, it would take them at least a year just to have enough fuel to make one. Okay, so nevermind the metallurgists and the bomb manufacturers and all the explosives and the rest of the project, but just having enough weapons grade your aim would take a year. And that's plenty of time for us to launch an aggressive war before they can succeed, basically. Right, and the Iranians are going, look, we weren't making nukes anyway, so we're perfectly happy to sign this deal as long as you guys won't attack us. We got this deal. Right? But then what happened in 2018? Donald Trump took America out of the deal. Now, under the deal, Iran is allowed. There's a whole section about how Iran is allowed to stop abiding by some of the restrictions but still remain in the deal. It's part of the deal that they can cease abiding by parts of it if America breaks our end of the deal. And by the way, here's more about the deal. I'm sorry, before I skip too far ahead. Unlike regular United Nations Security Council resolution where any one power can veto it by voting no, this was majority rule. And that means America, Britain and France versus Russia and China. So we and our allies win every Time, if we can get obviously Britain and France to agree with us and the others lose, and then that means we can demand inspections at this military base. They had to show some cause. It couldn't just be a farce. They had shown some cause. And they could even inspect non military, non nuclear facilities where it was, you know, rumored or alleged by the Israelis or whatever that something was going on. So it was a really elaborate deal. And then what was so scandalous about it, Donald Trump called this the worst hit deal in the history of the world and all this stuff because America gave him this famous pallet of cash and there was pictures of it and you can make a meme out of it and everything. You know what that cash was? That was Iranian money that Jimmy Carter stole in 1979. It was like literally the same money that he stole and they had been keeping it since the Iranian revolution. And so all John Kerry here. I'm sorry, man, I know I just sound like I was spinning for Obama. Now I have to say something nice about John Kerry.

[Unknown Host]

Stop.

[Scott Horton]

It's okay if somebody wants to punch me in the stomach after this, but I'm just saying that John Kerry made a deal with them that they're going to give in on all of this stuff and in return, we're going to lift some of our aggressive sanctions, economic war against their country, and we're going to give them a little bit of their own money back. No welfare from the American people whatsoever is the only side of our deal and was perfectly reasonable. So when Trump withdraws from the deal, they start then playing the hardball, enriching up to higher percentages again just so they have a card to play in negotiations. And now I'm sorry I'm being redundant for people who watch podcasts, but it's. You would think, after all, especially the way the media treated Donald Trump in his first term, wouldn't you be under the impression that they, the Democrats and the entire establishment thought that he was an absolutely unfit leader, a crazy man, maybe a traitor, and that everything he did was completely insane and wrong and upside down and worthy of full repudiation? Well, then Barack Obama's vice president becomes president and he doesn't get us back in the deal, he stays on the same maximum pressure, economic sanctions, give in or else abolish all the sunset provisions, abolish all enrichment and economic war. And then he probably never thought about it again for four years, you know, as far gone as he is. And so we don't know what he was thinking about. Yeah, we had no idea if he was thinking at all. And so when Donald Trump comes in, it's the exact same status quo that he had left Biden with. And then obviously as close as Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu have been, there's apparently like a little bit of disagreements and bad blood there, although I wouldn't exaggerate them. But Donald Trump is Miriam Adelson and Benjamin Netanyahu's best buddy. And Netanyahu clearly sees his opportunity to go ahead and do this.

[Unknown Host]

Thank you for joining me today on Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it.

[Matt Kibbe]

The switch is striking because I know almost every America Firster I know and a lot of conservatives that went all in think Tucker Carlson as an example. But it's everybody, they went all in on the war in Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and we had to do something about it. And now they're looking at it from a libertarian lens now, like the government lied to us. They lied us into a war. We killed a lot of Americans, we killed a lot of innocent Iraqis and we spent billions in treasure. Trillions. Same playbook. So wouldn't they notice that the talking points and the setup is identical to them when they got duped on the.

[Scott Horton]

Iraq thing, I guess that's why they just did a Japanese style surprise attack, right? Instead of lying to us for a year and a half with a giant pile of crap from a bunch of exiles or whatever, they just went for it. And then a reporter asked the president of the United States, but American intelligence consensus is that nothing has changed in their nuclear program, that they're actually not breaking out toward a nuclear bomb at all. And Donald Trump says, I don't care what she says, referring to Tulsa Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. I don't care what she says. I want to pretend to believe it. Anyway. Essentially, I did the Piers Morgan show and they stopped the panel for a minute to interview Nancy Mace and then did the panel again, which is kind of funny, but so Nancy Mace, he asked her, well, you know, the IAEA and the CIA and the dni, they're saying that this isn't true. And she Goes well, I know it's true. You know, I know it's true. I've seen the intelligence. I went to Israel and they briefed me on it. So I like, man, that's it. It's like Richard Pearl, just out in the open, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. See, people know that it was the neocons who lied us into war with Iraq, but they don't understand. Who are the neocons? Well, they're the vanguard of the Israel lobby. That's who they are. That's their job, is serving the Likud to create a greater Israel at our expense. And that the poor Palestinians and Lebanese and Syrians and ultimately probably the Egyptians and the Iraqis expense as well. That's their doctrine. And you say from the river to the sea is genocidal. Yeah, exactly. That's right. In the Likud party charter, we're going to get rid of every last one of these Arabs and we're going to have our state here. And then you know what, we might by the river, we might just mean the Euphrates. We'll see.

[Matt Kibbe]

Let's drive a wedge between what I call constitutional conservatives, small government conservatives and neocons. Your talk yesterday, you went into the Trotskyite history of what a real neo neoconservative is. Does any, do any of these conservatives that are now carrying their water even know that?

[Scott Horton]

Probably not, but what fun to talk about. So here's the thing. Look, when I was a kid, a Republican meant Ronald Reagan and George Bush and James Baker, like, I don't know, businessmen, oil men, conservative Christians, white guys basically. So who are the neocons? They're like this weird little sect of Republicans. A lot of them are Democrats again now. But the thing is, people use that term so broadly to just mean anyone who's a hawk. That guy's.

[Matt Kibbe]

They're all never Trumpers.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, which apparently has been forgotten. No, not all of them. Not all of them. That's the rub, right? Bill Kristol hates him. His brother in law, Elliot Abrams, you know, worked for him. So they try to split their differences as best as they can. You know, the Democrats need good, good, horrible right wing, not right wing, hawkish leadership. So Bill Kristol goes back to lead their efforts against Trump, right, And become their hero and keep them good and hawkish. So they're all playing their role. But anyway, the thing is, like, I just met this nice girl who goes, hey, thanks to you, I'm no longer a neocon. Like Nah, you were never a neocon, lady. You were just a hawk. But the neocons, they really are like a hundred people or less, right? It's a weird sect of dudes. They are not excluded, exclusively Jewish. And I know people, Mark Levin, or Levin I guess lately had said, oh, it's just a smear term for Jews and just whatever like that. And people like Max Boot and others have protested that all along. But it's funny because, you know, Irving Kristol wrote a book called Neoconservatism, right? That's Bill Kristol's father.

[Matt Kibbe]

And so obviously an anti Semite.

[Scott Horton]

Yes, a horrible guy on that issue specifically. No, but so look, Justin Raimondo, you know, my [e-mail] was such a great chronicler of this. Murray Rothbard, of course, one of the most important leaders of the libertarian movement was blood enemies of these guys. And along in alliance with the paleo conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell and others, they waged heroic wars against these guys back in the late 20th century. And so I don't know what the hell, how much time we got?

[Matt Kibbe]

We got time, but don't you have to go do something?

[Scott Horton]

I don't know.

[Matt Kibbe]

We got time.

[Scott Horton]

So listen, so there are a few different routes that these guys took. They were Trotskyites, the original generation. They were Trotskyites. And so Trotsky was of course the founder of the Red army and leader of the revolution in the Soviet Union in 1917, but then was later after Lenin died, betrayed by Stalin and murdered. But the difference in doctrine was Stalin wanted communism in one country. His dictatorship hold it here, maybe expand as far as East Germany in the war, but like otherwise conserve the communist revolution they got. Trotsky wanted to overthrow the whole world, right? Kill the Pope, right? Set everything on fire. And this is a big part of neoconservative tradition. This is what Michael Ledeen called creative destruction. He doesn't mean like capitalists mean it that like, oh, a good business goes out of business, but a better one gets their assets and makes more efficient use of them or whatever. They mean carpet bombing things. And then that's what's created. Michael Edin said, we need to create a boiling cauldron in the Middle east and then shape it to mean, you know, whatever we want in the end. This is completely like this Trotskyite revolutionary fire in the mines kind of a thing. Like the split between Jefferson and Paine. Paine said, come on, let's go to Europe and overthrow all the kings and they were like, no, no, no, no, no. We got what we got here. Gotta have a balanced budget, you know. So anyway, this is where their, their origins are. And so, but see, because they were Trotskyites and Americans, of course, they sided with America in the Cold War. They hated Stalin and what the USSR had become, contrary to their dreams, right? And so they then became hardcore Cold warriors. And Stalin turned very anti Semitic by like the end of the 30s, right? So they were, you know, in practice at least, who knows what was on that guy's mind. But, you know, he ran out a lot of the Jewish original leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution and stuff. And so the American Trotskyite Communists were very opposed to the new Stalinist ussr, right? And I guess, at least after the Second World War. But anyway, so they started moving to the right and there are a few different avenues. There was William F. Buckley, who was a CIA agent and whose job it was to make the right synonymous with the conservative movement, when the conservative movement was really only part of the right, along with libertarians and Randians and different kinds of Christian sects and all different things that were going on. And Buckley's job was to essentially homogenize the right through the National Review and make it Cold War first. And so he ran out, famously, the horrible racists, but then also all the Randians because they were atheists, all the libertarians because they were against the Cold War, and anybody who knew anything about economics because they'd be opposed to economic policy required to fight the Cold War and all that. And so then who'd he replace all the actual right wingers with? A bunch of Commies, Sidney Hook and James Burnham and Whitaker Chambers. And like all of these original writers for the National Review were all a bunch of Reds. And their job was to say being right wing means supporting the world empire, to oppose the Soviet Union, as Buckley put it, we must accept. This is a real quote from Commonwealth Magazine, 1952. We must accept a totalitarian bureaucracy on our shores, even with Truman at the reins of it all, in order to fight the Cold War with the Soviet Union. So this is the neoconservative consensus as well. Many of them became sort of like right wings, Cold War Democrats. And that's where they, many of them ended up working for Scoop Jackson, for example, a senator from Washington State, they called him the Senator from Boeing, who was like a Truman Democrat, Cold War Democrat, right. But then, so then you had this guy named Max Shockman, and I always think it's the Social Democrats usa, but it's something just like that. I think that's wrong. There's something just like that. And he had trained a bunch of these guys, including like Gene Kirk Kirkpatrick and Joshua Muravchik and a bunch of these guys. And then there was, at the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss and Albert Wohlstetter were both also previously Trotskyites who had moved to the right. And then both became the mentors of the next generation neoconservatives. And then of course, you had Irving Kristol and Norman Pod, Horace, Commentary magazine and that whole crew. So these are like the Abrams family and the crew and the Podhoritz family. And all these people are all like intermarried and all work together and have all promoted each other over many years. One of the greatest chroniclers of neoconservatism in America is a guy named Jim Loeb. He's just a fantastic guy. And he has this wonderful article called all in the Neocon Family. And it was about how Robert Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland, is now working for Dick Cheney as his foreign policy advisor. Oh, this ought to be good. And then he's talking about how you can fit all the neocons at one big Thanksgiving dinner table because this is like who they are. So now fast forward to the important part. Now it's W. Wait. First, H.W. bush had instructions to his national security advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, keep the crazies in the basement. They're allowed to kill people down in Latin America, but they're not allowed to mess with the Middle East. Right? So you had, you know, they were somewhat involved in the lower levels of the Defense Department and messing around El Salvador and Nicaragua, being the neocons. The neocons. Right? Now eight years of Clinton goes by. They're running the Project for a New American Century. They write the Clean Break Doctrine for Benjamin Netanyahu, which if you'd like to ask me about that, I can go into detail about the role of all that thinking in Iraq War two. And they created a PNAC and they wrote Rebuilding America's Defenses, explaining essentially the doctrine of American agenda. And then when W. Bush was elected, Dick Cheney hired them for everything. So in the Vice President's office, you had especially Scooter Libby, but also John Hanna and Eric Edelman. On the National Security Council, you had Stephen Hadley, Robert Joseph Zalmen Khalilzad and Elliot Abrams. In the State Department, David Wormser was there for a time where his job was to prevent Colin Powell and Dick Armitage his right hand man from interfering too much in their plans. And then at the Defense Department on the Defense Policy Board you had Gene Kirkpatrick. Richard Pearl was the chair and a major ringleader of this plot along with Newt Gingrich, who's not actually a neoconservative but is close with them. Sort of like John Bolton was never a leftist of any kind. He's a Barry Goldwater right wing nationalist war hawk peers that come Reaganite, right. But very, very close to them and worked in the State Department, had a very important role there and definitely was part of this network but still continuing in the Defense Department. So on the Defense Policy Board was Pearl, Kenneth Edelman, Gene Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich and one other really bad one, I forget. And then the Deputy Secretary of Defense was Paul Wolfowitz. Under him was Douglas Feith. And then you had under him was a guy named Abram Sholsky and he ran what was called the Office of Special Plans. And this is where they funneled all the lies in from the Iraqi exiles and manufactured and dug through the CIA's trash looking for whatever they could try to cherry pick to build a case about weapons of mass destruction. And then across the hall, David Worms or again with a guy named Michael Malouf, ran a group called the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, PTAG thing something and they were in charge of coming up with lies about Iraq and Al Qaeda. And there's this huge operation to stove pipe all this data directly up to the Vice President's office and directly out to the media. And they even brag. We put 890 stories out there making these claims and all this stuff. And I have, by the way, if anyone wants to look into this, I have a thread that people can find on X. I've redone it a few times. It's up to like I think 30 articles now. But I think if you search, search like 28 articles about how the neoconservatives lied us into war, you'll find a thread by me that just has, I collect these things. So and I remember from back then there's so much stuff about how this happened. So it wasn't James Baker and the Texas oil men. It was Tel Aviv and their agents in the United States who had essentially infiltrated the American government. Now Colin Powell's chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson told me that he thought, look, look, all these guys, essentially if you ask them, they would just tell you America's interests and Israel's interests are the same. So what's the problem. It's all fine and no problem. But he said there's no question in his mind that Douglas Feith and David Wormser were acting directly as agents of Israel. There's even a funny quote where from the Nelson Report, which was this high level insider magazine in Washington at the time, maybe still where Donald Rumsfeld couldn't make it. So they sent Douglas Feith in his place to a White House meeting. And after he was done talking, Condoleezza Rice said, thanks, Doug, but when we want Tel Aviv's opinion, we'll just ask the ambassador. So it was widely known that that was what it was all about. And then, you know, Andrew Cockburn reported that George W. Bush never even asked anyone what is a neoconservative until 2007, okay? Two years after he'd been reelected, right. His term almost over. And he asked his father, who also see people remember him as being smarter because they think he killed Kennedy and all this stuff. But he also is an absolute idiot. That's how this idiot son came out of him. And so the idiot father says to him, he says, dad, what is a neocon? And his father says, who or what? And he says, what? And his father says, Israel. Okay? But he didn't say, your guys Pearl and Wolfowitz and them, George, you blew it because you let them drive. Dude, that's the thing. That's, you know, and because look, and I'm not blaming them for the whole war and I don't want anyone to misunderstand me about that. W. Bush pulled that trigger. There's only one man with a finger on that trigger. He's the one who pulled it. Dick Cheney aside, he's the man responsible. But also Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, right? And these guys are somewhat Zionist, but. But that's not their beef, right? W. Bush wanted to prove he is a bigger man than his father and smarter man knows that you got to be in the middle of a war so you can get safely reelected. Which did work for him, by the way, the cost of all those lives and probably believed the absolute ridiculous hoax that Saddam Hussein tried to murder his father with a truck bomb in Kuwait in 1993, which was a lie which Seymour Hersh debunked in the New Yorker by the end of the year. Case not closed is the article. And then Dick Cheney, I think, wanted to make a bunch of money for his Halliburton friends, putting them on the army dole. He hadn't been that good of a CEO while he was in charge there. I talk about that. Some of the details of that in the book. Donald Rumsfeld had been the Secretary of Defense before and is very much like, I'm the alpha dog around here kind of a guy. And his. What he wanted to do was what they called the transformation of the military. And there are different arguments about how exactly we're going to transform it in this new era. And he wanted to take all the money away from big army and give it to special operations forces in the Air Force so we can go light and fast, kill the guy, go on to the next one, and this kind of thing. So he had a big interest in showcasing his doctrine as well. So all these men had their interests in doing the thing. I'm not saying that the whole policy is just completely controlled by Ariel Sharon. And in fact, importantly, Netanyahu and Sharon are both from the Likud. And Sharon ended up splitting from Likud and creating the Kadima party with Ehud Olmert later. But at this time, they were rivals within their own party. And the neocons really were Netanyahu's guys. And look, the fact is they knew Bush wanted to go to Iraq. So they're like. And Netanyahu was always an Iraq hawk more than an Iran hawk at that time. So he wanted America to hit Saddam. Sharon was more interested in hitting Iran and told Bush, I think y' all to hit Iran first. And Bush goes, well, no. And he goes, all right, well, then hit him next. And. And then I don't know if anybody, if Bush made him the promise, but certainly John Bolton and others did say, yes, sir, we're going to go to Libya and Syria and go after Hezbollah and Iran next. It's all in the plan. It's the same kind of thing. Everybody's probably familiar with General Wesley Clark. He's talked about this numerous times, including in a debate with me on the Piers Morgan show, where he verified it was the Israelis who brought this up. It was their plan for the seven countries in. In five years, which, of course, Iraq War two was such a disaster, they were unable to do that. But the list was to go after essentially just all of Israel's enemies. It was Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, by which they met Hezbollah, Libya, Somalia or Sudan. Somalia. And finishing up with Iran. So that was the list. And as Clark verified in that debate with me, that it was all about Wolfowitz's doctrine. And yes, it was all intertwined with what the Israelis wanted. That was the doctrine. The seven countries in five years doctrine was Born in Tel Aviv. And that's what. As soon as September 11th happened, they just decided they could exploit it. I understand why people are such truthers, because they might as well have done it themselves. They exploited it with such cynicism. It's essentially unbelievable. Instead of attacking Riyadh, they went to Baghdad. The whole thing is completely crazy. But that was their priority at the time, and that was. Who did it was the neocons. People said that. It's so funny, especially in hindsight. Right now. It's 18 years later. In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, this professor of political science from the University of Chicago and the head of the Kennedy School, I think, of foreign policy studies at Harvard, put out a book together called the Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy. And everyone just screamed, you hate Jews at them. And somehow that worked to, like, get them, you know, Anyone who wanted to know could certainly know. But as far as, like, in polite society, we don't touch that Mearsheimer stuff. Like, are you kidding me? These people are the furthest thing from political radicals that you can find anywhere in the country. They are haters of no one. They're professionals, professors, and people can watch mearsheimer. He's on YouTube all day, every day. This guy doesn't hate anyone, particularly not some ethnic group or some kind of thing. It's insane. This is ridiculous. But then. So now go back. Well, wait, if that wasn't true, why did they rate that book? Oh, it's because they knew all about it and they thought that it was very objectionable and that people probably needed to know that this is not the way our foreign policy is supposed to be created. Where the interests of the Saudis and the interests of the Israelis and the interests of the British take such a higher precedent over the interests of the American people. Why in the world should we have a foreign policy like that? And then look at the disaster that it's caused, man. See, it's not just that they lied us into war. Don't you remember how they lied us into staying in that war for almost a decade? We can't cut and run now. We're fighting the bad guys. We're fighting for freedom. It was so important that we do that. And now everyone agrees. Oh, yeah. Guess Horton was right after all. Yeah, Just be fair and listen to the truth, dude. Saddam Hussein sayings that threat to us. Really? Or you just want to get away with some vicarious blood lust because it's fun? Because in the second case, that's probably unwise you know.

[Unknown Host]

At Kibbe on liberty, Freedom is a lifestyle24.7, something you live and breathe and wear every day. If that describes you, you need the very best liberty swag in the market today, just like this shirt I happen to be wearing. Go to freethepeople.org kol and check out our exciting merch. You too can love liberty and look cool.

[Matt Kibbe]

Let's take the Trotskyite roots of the neoconservative movement and link it to the arguments that are being made today, not just by Newt Gingrich. I think there's a bunch of voices out there saying we need regime change. We need to create an environment where the oppressed people can of Iran can rise up against the Ayatollah, who's a socialist, brutal central planner that's crushing the rights of his citizens. And I think about it's like Charlie Brown in the football because we were promised that in Afghanistan, we were promised that in Iraq, we were promised that everywhere. But it's really a fatal conceit, even if the right thing to do, to think that you could centrally plan an economy the way a Trotskyite might think about such a thing, that you would actually know how to do that in Afghanistan. But now, suddenly, if we just take out the leader in Iran, democracy is magically going to sprout from the desert.

[Scott Horton]

This is completely crazy. Yeah, I read this article.

[Matt Kibbe]

And why conservatives buy that. That's what I what I'm wondering. Because surely they know that central planning doesn't work. It doesn't work in America. It doesn't work anywhere that it's been tried in their critics of socialism in all of its flavors.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, I mean, we talk about decapitations of bad guys, bad groups. What do you think is going to happen? The meanest guy among the captains is going to be the one who takes. Takes over. They learn this over and over again in Iraq. When you have a team of guys planting IEDs, when they kill the chief, they get worse because all the new guys are competing for who's going to be the new boss of the IED planning group. And so they all, all the bombings get worse. They just learn this over and over again. You kill the Ayatollah, you have a mad scramble for power among the IRGC among or what, they're going to kill every last, you know, Shiite cleric in the country till no one volunteers to be Ayatollah anymore. Or like, what do they think is gonna happen? And it's worth really dwelling on, especially for young people who don't really know. All this kind of happened while you were too young to, you know, do much more than know about it. Like happening somewhere. But like, that's exactly right. That they promised Afghanistan is gonna work great. Man. Man, we're going to build these people a democracy and it is going to be awesome.

[Matt Kibbe]

It isn't that where the blue fingers were? I voted. Was that Afghanistan or Iraq?

[Scott Horton]

I think they probably did the scam in both places, but especially Iraq was the famous January 2005 election. So in Iraq, they said, I love this. One of my favorite George W. Bush quotes. He says, listen, the way you do hope is through a form of government. Meaning in his mind, if you create a democratic parliamentary system, these people will work out their problems without killing each other. But of course, yeah, but that's just because you don't know anything about it. You're overthrowing a minority, a secular minority dictator of a super majority oppressed, you know, country. And what do you think's gonna happen? And in fact, at the end of the Iraq War one. Anybody ever seen the movie Three Kings? It's got Marky Mark and Ice Cube and George Clooney in it. It's a gold heist, but it takes place in the aftermath of Iraq War I. What's the setting in the background? The Shiites are rising up to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein. But then what's that? Ice Cube asks. America let Saddam Hussein keep enough tanks and helicopters to murder them all. And that's exactly what he's doing right now. Oh, well, why do they do that? It's not just sadism. They wanted him to rise up and overthrow Saddam, Matt, but they changed their mind. Why did they change their mind? Well, go back to 1980. Why did Jimmy Carter tell Saddam Hussein go ahead and invade Iran? Well, he was humiliated over the hostage crisis and the failure of the rescue mission and all that. Right from the revolution. But why did Saddam want to attack Iran? Saddam is a 20% minority. Sunny. That's a weird way to put it. But the ruler from the minority 20% Sunni sect ruling over a super majority Shiite population, which happens to be predominant in all the land from Baghdad to Iran and down to Kuwait. Right? So Saddam's afraid that the Iranian Shiite revolution is going to catch on and spread to Iraq and that the people are going to choose their religious sect and their brotherhood with the people of Persia over their national sect as Iraqis or their ethnic sect as Arabs. And now they're going to overthrow him and come to Baghdad. So instead he conscripts them all and sends them to war against Iran. Is that clear enough? Well, when he did that, guess what? A bunch of Iraqis did choose Iran's side and fight in the Iran Iraq war on Iran's side, namely the Bada BRIGADE. And so 11 years later, in the aftermath of Iraq War One, when H.W. bush encourages the Shiites to rise up and overthrow Saddam, the Badr Brigade starts coming across the border from Iran. Now they are going to take Baghdad for Tehran. So H.W. bush, Dick Cheney, his Secretary of Defense, his National Security Advisor, Scowcroft, et cetera, et cetera. Baker, Secretary of State, maybe. Eagleberg was. No, it was still Baker. They called it off. And that was why they let Saddam crush the uprising. And then that became the excuse to stay all through the 1990s in order to supposedly protect the Shiites, which the insurrection was over. It's not like he was going to kill every last one of them. But that became the excuse to stay in Saudi Arabia, bomb and blockade Iraq. And then the Israelis were the ones who insisted that when Bill Clinton came in, he cannot normalize relations with Iraq or Iran. In fact, America just beat up Iraq so bad, now they are too weak to balance against Iran. So it was the Israelis who invented the dual containment policy. And it was Martin Indyk who had worked for Yitzhak Shamir, who then came to work for Bill Clinton and insisted on this policy. And it was after the fake assassination attempt against H.W. bush, which was not the Israelis, it was the Kuwaitis. Get this, everybody, everybody knows the incubators hoax from Iraq War I. That it was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador pretended that she was a nurse and that she saw Iraqi soldiers throw premature babies out of their incubators in the Kuwaiti hospital and leave them on the cold floor to die. Which they. They beat that drum so bad. It was one of the major talking points for getting us into that war. It was a total hoax. She wasn't even a nurse. She was here at the time, I think. But it was her father that made up the truck bomb attack against H.W. bush hoax two years later. And based on that hoax, Clinton finally gave in and said, okay, I guess we can't normalize relations with him then. Sanctions regime stays forever. Blockade and no fly zone bombings stay forever. And that, of course, as Ron Paul taught correctly, as always, was a major reason, the primary motivation. America, Britain and Saudi Arabia's pet Al Qaeda suicide bomber, head chopper, mercenaries, terrorists to turn against the United States of America, that we were bombing Iraq from the land of the two holy places, as Bin Laden put it in his initial declaration of war. People always say that this always has something to do with, like, the vanguard of radical Islam coming to conquer Western civilization. But nuh, man, it was not either. All it was was an attempt to bait us into invading over there to create a cataclysmic war that would radicalize the region and ultimately bankrupt us and force us out the hard way, just like we had helped them do to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It's as simple as that. And then who built the caliphate? No offense, Glenn Beck. Honestly, man, who built the caliphate? It was George W. Bush and Barack Obama who built the caliphate. George W. Bush turned all of western Iraq into lawless, ungoverned jihadistan, Western Sunni Jihadistan. And then Barack Obama turned all of eastern Syria into the same. And it was really helped Al Qaeda in Iraq come into Syria, create the caliphate in Syria, and then blow back into Iraq again. And then when they created the real caliphate in 2014, he had to launch Iraq War 3 to destroy it again and in alliance with Iran. See, W. Bush took the same battle brigade all the way to Baghdad in 2003. Obama built the caliphate to spite them because we're mad about that in 2014. And then he launched Iraq War III to destroy it again because that's too embarrassing. Having, you know, Baghdadi might as well have been bin Laden himself up on that balcony declaring himself the Caliph Ibrahim and all this. We can't have that. So then we allied with these Shiites again. And the Iranians literally had Iranian Quds force on the ground killing ISIS in Tikrit with American planes flying air cover for them. And you have Americans going, we gotta admit we're flying air cover for the Iranians, but they're pretty good fighters. And you got Iranians on the ground going, well, we gotta admit it's the Americans providing air cover for us, but we really appreciate it. These people hate Iran so much, but they keep scoring goals for the Ayatollah. Maybe that's why they're so angry, right? Is they just cannot help themselves. But to make Iran more and more powerful, that's only really changed in the last, last, you know, happy year where the Israelis really dealt, or even year where the Israelis dealt, inflicted such blows on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. And then the Turks and Israel activated Al Qaeda, what was left of the caliphate basically hiding in the Idlib province that did their own kind of October 7th and broke out of the Idlib province and sacked Damascus last December. And isn't it funny? Like the way the propaganda works in this country where you're still supposed to be in a panic about October, October 7th in Israel, but you're not supposed to care by Hamas, but you're not supposed to care when Al Qaeda did the same thing out of the Idlib province and sacked Damascus. As Lew Rockwell told me in 2004, these neoconservatives want to overthrow Damascus, the last place in the Middle east where you can get a drink. Are you kidding me? And then now here we are, and this very same guy's in charge, and with the very same agenda. What leaves the coup wants nothing to do with what's good for the American people whatsoever.

[Matt Kibbe]

So my final question. We have about 10 minutes and you got to get down to the pavilion to judge the soapbox rant.

[Scott Horton]

That should be fun.

[Matt Kibbe]

An epic part of the pork fest tradition.

[Scott Horton]

Come up with some funny things to rant.

[Matt Kibbe]

One of the things that drives me crazy, and it should drive conservatives crazy. Activists who have spent their entire lives complaining about mismanagement, abuse of power, government malfeasance. In the United States, we're told that we're not allowed to criticize the actions of a foreign government or a foreign president of a foreign government because if you do that, you're an anti Semite.

[Unknown Host]

Why does that fly?

[Matt Kibbe]

Because it's our job to criticize our government when it does wrong.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, it shouldn't. And no one should be intimidated by it anymore. I'm certainly not. And I don't think that, you know, there used to be kind of this fear, like, only liberal Jews are allowed to criticize Israel or something because it's like the home team thing and anyone else would just be too terrified. But I just think, I mean, hell, as anyone who spent any time on the Internet knows, if anybody really hates Jews, they'll be really happy to tell you so and try to get you to also. And whatever. Nobody who's truly an anti Semite is gonna, like, secretly pretend that they're not or whatever. This is such a stupid thing. It's a completely baseless accusation. And like, you know, like the, the phrase about patriotism is the last refuge of a scant of a scoundrel. Like, man, you're gonna hide your nation state behind your religion. Coward. Like, that's not impressive to me at all. Oh, boo hoo. I hate you when I criticize you for murdering a baby. Get the hell out of here. That doesn't impress me one bit. I don't Know why anyone would be impressed by that? Especially at this late date as Pee Wee Herman. You wore it out, man. It's just no good no more, right? It's a boy who cried wolf thing. You just can't make the same baseless accusation against decent people over and over again. Ted Cruz goes, oh, you just hate Jews so much. And Tucker Carlson's like, whatever, dude. You gotta be kidding me, dude. You're stupid Ted Cruz.

[Matt Kibbe]

You're Tucker Carlson and the awesome.

[Scott Horton]

And he's the best. He's the most important man in America right now by far. But, oh, mine. Oh, God, I'm sorry, but forgive me, Tucker, but. But, but no, it is laughable. And Everybody watching the YouTube also laughed. Aha. Look at how weak and pathetic Ted Cruz is wiggling around on his belly down there, trying to come up with a way to. Oh, I know you hate Jews, Tucker. And everybody's like, shut up, dude. You're so stupid. And. And by the way, and this goes to. This is part of the inability to criticize Israel and especially on the right. And it's time for a little bit of tough love here, dude. Come on. And I'm a libertarian, but I ain't no leftist, man. I'm gold and guns. I'm a Ron Paul guy. I'm patriotic enough for anybody. To the right of me too. It ought to be true. Okay, not that I'm a religious guy, but I don't think I have to be to make the same case that these people who say that Americans have to support Israel in order to go to heaven or in order to somehow encourage Jesus to come back and bring the Second Coming and cause the Rapture and all that. This is the most idiotic of blasphemy. It's the most. It's probably the dumbest set of claims I've ever heard of adults believing, and regardless of any other part of the religion, that anyone would think that anything that that Bible says has anything to do with supporting the current secular nation state of Israel, which was founded by a bunch of communists and is run by a bunch of national socialists now who do nothing but butcher innocent people all day long. You think the author of the Sermon on the Mount wants you to do that? You better be really sure. Otherwise, are you. I mean, what could people possibly be thinking? And what did Ted Cruz say? It's the same thing that I bet you, if you. If you polled them honestly, the same thing that any of these evangelical Christians would tell you. Well, that's what my Sunday school teacher told me. But like Ted, that was just your friend Jimmy's mom. She doesn't know anything. You were seven. She's just some lady. She doesn't know anything about it. You're telling me she convinced you. The will of the Creator, the universe, is to help these particular Jews murder these particular Muslims? That is so dumb. And by the way, how did they, how do they enforce this belief? If you remember back 25 years ago, they promised. The biggest promise of all. You will see the end of the world and you will be taken up to heaven with your family in your bodies. John Hagee said we could be raptured out of this building right this minute. And the people went, oh, all you have to do is support the war in Iraq. Get it? Middle east, year 2000. Kinda ish. It's like the millennial dude magic is about to break out everywhere. And then what happened? There was no magic. Either that or everybody got left behind with the rest of us. What happened? I don't know exactly, but it was a hoax, right? And John Hagee doesn't probably even believe in Jesus at all, right? They probably got pictures of him, the Israeli Mustafa, probably have pictures of. Of him in a compromising situation with a prepubescent child. I accuse you, John Hagee, of being a child rapist. And I accuse John Hagee's followers at the Cornerstone Church of being tiny, pathetic children. Like, what are you stupid? You gonna let a human man, some minister, like, he's not even your priest, he's just a minister. And you let him make you think this obviously stupid, horrific, horrifically evil, genocidal garbage, this nonsense. If I told you, come on, man, everybody knows the Indians are the ones who broke all the treaties. You would be like, dude, what would you be like? What would you say? Yeah, that's stupid. No. Oh no. But the Palestinians are the aggressors and the Israelis are the ones who are just defending themselves. Just like in an old Western, the cowboys are always minding their own business and the Indians jump out in ambush them. So no matter what kind of ethnic cleansing campaign is going on, it's always in self defense, right? There's a bunch of scientists who made those movies, by the way. I don't know if there's a coincidence there or not, but I mean, come on, man, especially when it's 2025 and all that magical millennial stuff ever happened. You're going to let your minister, you're going to let your Sunday school teacher bully you into believing this absolute ridiculous, blasphemous Crap. It's insane. And people should reject it. And people should. Should fist fight their minister out in the parking lot over it. Like, how dare you, how dare you be so idiotic and then try to inflict this idiocy on our community like this? It's wrong. Everybody knows it's wrong. As Bill Hicks says, in your heart, you all know the arguments. Get real.

[Matt Kibbe]

Seems like a good time to end this, my man. No, let's. We got one minute for you to do some shameless flacking of Libertarian Institute and your books.

[Scott Horton]

Thank you.

[Matt Kibbe]

Both on the Middle east and Ukraine.

[Scott Horton]

Great. Okay, so listen, I am the director of the Libertarian Institute. I got such a great team of guys there, I could brag about them for the length of this entire thing. So 25 of the best writers, podcasters, authors. We publish 15 something books, including my own, but a bunch more. Just fantastic. It's libertarianinstitute.org especially for extremely wealthy businessmen who know the importance of free market. You can check out our donate page there. Also, I'm the editorial director of Anti War.

[Matt Kibbe]

You work seven figure checks.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, yes, of course. I'm living in a gigantic mansion, obviously on top of a giant hill. The antiwar.com is the most important project on the Internet and I'm the editorial director there. Speaking of great teams of guys, obviously some overlap with the institute as well. And then I have a brand new project coming out. You're familiar with Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom? Well, he's built for me my own Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. And it's going to be me and James Bovard, William Bupert and Ramsey Barood and quite a few others as well. CJ Kilmer. CJ Kilmer. Did I say Bill Buper is going to be awesome with courses on all kinds of stuff. Essentially my courses are going to be walkthroughs of my two last books, which are enough already. Time to End the War on Terrorism, which is really a history of the entire terror wars from Jimmy Carter through Donald Trump. Pardon me, Through. Yeah, yeah, Trump Won. And then Provoked is about the Cold War with Russia. And again, that's been number one in War and Peace on Amazon.com for seven months now. And it's everything from H.W. bush all the way through the Biden administration on the new Cold War and of course the war in Ukraine and everything leading up to that. And. And I wrote, you know, the one on the Middle East. It's authoritative, I'd like to think, but it's also written to. To be hopefully, you know, really consumable by a really average kind of audience. It was like I really wrote enough already for you to be able to give to your brother in law, hey, there's that one guy I'm always talking about. Give this a few hours, would you? Just one and done kind of thing. Whereas provoked I really wrote as though and I know this isn't true, I'm not saying this, but I wrote it as though no one knows any of this. The entire burden proof of the entire world is on me. So I have 7,000 citations proving every fact that I have. It's a meticulous refutation and I steel man every argument I cite. The Daily Beast says this, but the truth is that I take the war party side of the story all the way and I show you why it's wrong all the way through. I show you all the horrible mistakes and deliberate deceptions and horrible decisions made by Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, yes, Trump. Although they framed him for treason with Russia, so that was only partially his fault last time. But then of course Joe Biden and how he got us into this horrific war, got the poor Ukrainians sacrificed in this ridiculous senile power play to try to lure Russians, the Russians into an Afghan style trap just like the kind we had just gotten out of, which hasn't really worked. I mean, I think ultimately it'll be a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians, but it will be a victory and they are keeping that territory that they've claimed. So Joe Biden will probably die before he's done, you know, knowing how badly he lost and what a disaster his policy was. But anyway, that's the book provoked.

[Matt Kibbe]

Give it up for Scott.

[Scott Horton]

Thank you guys.

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