Ep 377 | There's No Easy Way Out of This War | Guest: Scott Horton

Summary

Kibbe on Liberty - Ep. 377
"There's No Easy Way Out of This War"
Guest: Scott Horton
Date: March 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, libertarian host Matt Kibbe is joined by antiwar author and journalist Scott Horton, executive director of the Libertarian Institute and author of Provoked and Enough Already. The conversation dives deep into America’s latest war with Iran, the machinery and politics of U.S. interventionism, the illusions and myths that drive forever wars, and the prospects for an antiwar movement in an era of severe political and ideological polarization.

The tone is candid, urgent, and often grave, with both Kibbe and Horton expressing frustration at the persistence of U.S. militarism and the monumental challenges of change, but with glimmers of optimism about coalition-building across traditional ideological lines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Lessons from the Antiwar Movement: The 2013 Syria Drive

• Grassroots Power Against Syrian Bombing (2013):

  • Kibbe recounts the story of how a grassroots, cross-ideological movement temporarily stopped Obama’s plan to bomb Syria, aided by skepticism from figures like Thomas Massie and opposition organizing by Justin Raimondo and Steve Bannon.
  • "There were reports ... that Republican congressmen were saying that the calls to their office were unanimous against the war. They had no calls saying, let's attack Syria, but the phone was ringing off the hook saying, you better not." (B, 05:52)
  • Horton lays out the circumstantial factors that made this possible, highlighting the influence of public opinion as a "very thin margin" in the equation, but one with real consequences when leveraged.

• RAND Report on Public Opinion:

  • Horton references a RAND Corporation study: "I was pleasantly surprised that we made a mention in the RAND Corporation study that the opinion of the American people does count, that they're really afraid that if they put us in a position where we just get outraged, that things can fall apart for them." (B, 07:25)

The Fraying of Antiwar Coalitions

• Past & Present Antiwar Left:

  • Both hosts lament the shrinkage of the antiwar left willing to challenge the Democratic party, and the way that party loyalty on both sides mutes dissent.
  • "But the real anti war leftists didn't. ... She and her core people did not [go away]. And it's the same thing on the right." (B, 11:16)

• Republicans & MAGA:

  • Discussion on how Trump-era MAGA populism has shifted right-wing attitudes, with reliably pro-Trump influencers like Mike Cernovich now breaking ranks over war with Iran.
  • “They drag us into war with Iran and he's like, nah, forget this.” (B, 12:00)

Frustration Over the Latest Escalation with Iran

• Deployment to the Gulf:

  • News breaks during the episode: “Upwards of 5,000 Marines are headed to the Gulf on American battleships. That doesn't sound good.” (A, 15:59)
  • Horton’s sources: “They are going, they're putting troops on the ground...this was not in their war plans...no planning, just ad hoc...” (B, 17:00)

• Illusions of Quick Victory – “Venezuela Syndrome”:

  • Horton discusses the delusion among U.S. leaders—especially Trump—that regime change in Iran will be as easy as operations in Venezuela.
  • “Trump just, like, said abracadabra, and some incredible stuff happened...how do you convince him that it's not that easy?” (B, 22:31)

• Propaganda of Regime Collapse:

  • The narrative that “all we have to do is bomb the Ayatollah and Iranians will rise up” is exposed as recycled, dangerous wishful thinking—further inflated by exaggerated casualty figures.
  • “It's virtually certain that that's what Trump is being told. ... if we just hit the police stations and...take out the Ayatollah, the people of Iran will rise up spontaneously and create a new pro American order there...” (B, 23:19)

• Blowback and Intractability:

  • Immediate retaliation and chaos have already upended any easy victories.
  • “Within days, the entire Persian Gulf is on fire...you got all of our bases hit...it's already a disaster.” (B, 29:10)

No Easy Way Out: Strategies, Stalemates, and Face-Saving

• What’s Trump’s Exit?

  • Kibbe asks: "How do we get out? ... How do we appeal to that part of him [Trump]?" (A, 31:57)
  • Horton: “...for him, he could just say anything, right?...on one day he'll say, we require nothing less than unconditional surrender. And then the next day...quits the war...so it turns out words don't mean anything…” (B, 33:09)

• Escalation Risks:

  • The deeper the U.S. pushes, the harder and more dangerous Iranian resistance is likely to become, with real concern over the use of nuclear weapons and the war spiraling beyond anyone’s control.
  • "Now, you've got a real asymmetric fight. ... All they have to do...is hang in there, and make this as costly for the Americans as possible before it's over so that we don't try it again." (B, 37:56)

The Power and Limits of the Israel Lobby

• Question of Israeli Influence:

  • “Will Israel let Trump get out?” (A, 43:58)
  • Horton: “There's only one President of the United States...and it ain't Benjamin Netanyahu. And Donald Trump tells him no, the answer is no, but he has to be firm...Israel’s the size of Maryland...they don't even have any oil. His country produces nothing except death and lies.” (B, 44:19)

• Past US Presidents Standing Up to Israel:

  • Horton offers pointed historical vignettes:
    • Ronald Reagan forced Israel to stop bombing Beirut (47:49)
    • Bush Sr. punished for opposing settlements, possibly costing his re-election (51:18)

• The Resilience of the Lobby:

  • Money, organization, and a culture of intimidation (“AIPAC handlers”) make it hard for politicians to break free.
  • Kibbe: “Thomas Massie...went on Tucker Carlson...talking about the way that AIPAC assigns a handler to every member of Congress and he blows the lid off this thing.” (A, 59:51)
  • Discussion of how financial carrots, sticks, and accusations of antisemitism insulate pro-Israel policy.

Building a New Antiwar Coalition

• Cross-Ideological Cooperation:

  • Both agree that the most viable antiwar movement today is a strange-bedfellows coalition including liberterians, MAGA populists, independents, leftists, and even figures like Jimmy Dore and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
  • Kibbe: "If we're going to build that coalition, we have to get comfortable with someone like Jimmy Dore, who actually endorsed Thomas Massie for president, even though he comes from a very progressive background. ... There is an opportunity here to mobilize like we did in 2013, but it's a bigger project." (A, 65:19)
  • Horton: “What I really want is for everybody to be anti war. If you like your identity, you can keep it. ... Just stop being stupid about American foreign policy, that's all.” (B, 67:05)

• The American Spirit & Bill of Rights:

  • Horton calls for a realignment rooted in fundamental American values—anti-empire, pro-Bill of Rights, and civic freedom.

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Notable Quotes

• On Public Pressure & Policy:

  • “At the end of the day, there are 300 million of us and they need our money and they need our sons and they really can't have an empire without us. So if the American people would just put their foot down and scream hell no, then that's your answer.” — Scott Horton (B, 07:38)

• On Regime Change Propaganda:

  • "If we just take out the bad guy, then the people are going to rise up and they're going to organize a liberal democracy. And I feel like we've heard this script before." — Matt Kibbe (A, 27:16)

• On American Militarism:

  • "You can't create something just by blowing it up." — Scott Horton (B, 20:51)

• On Antiwar Realignment:

  • “The best of the left and the best of the right, led by the libertarians, we can form a new consensus in this country, a new realignment in this country against national power and most importantly, against the world empire.” — Scott Horton (B, 71:49)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:08–07:00 — Lessons of the 2013 Syria antiwar campaign; how public outcry matters
• 07:01–11:15 — RAND study on public opinion and war; the loss of antiwar left
• 12:00–16:00 — MAGA, influencer shifts, and Ann Coulter's antiwar turn
• 17:00–23:10 — U.S. troop deployment to Gulf; “Venezuela syndrome” and Trump's hubris
• 23:11–29:10 — Regime change myths; propaganda about Iran; immediate chaos post-decapitation
• 31:57–39:00 — How does Trump exit? Calculations around humiliation, saving face, and Iranian counterattacks
• 43:58–49:30 — Israel’s influence over U.S. policy, the history of presidents standing up/being thwarted
• 51:18–55:00 — Money, lobbying, and the machinery of Israeli influence in DC
• 59:51–65:19 — AIPAC handlers, Massie’s independence; the possibility (and example) of America First donor bases
• 65:19–71:49 — Building a broad antiwar coalition, finding common ground across the spectrum
• 72:04–74:43 — Scott Horton’s educational projects and resources

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Further Resources

• Scott Horton Academy and thefree course, thefactsabouteran.com (B, 72:13)
• Daily antiwar reporting: antiwar.com and libertarianinstitute.org (B, 74:01)

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Conclusion

The episode stands as both a sobering account of another ill-fated American war and a hopeful challenge: that a new populist, antiwar coalition might yet emerge as the only real check on the machinery of perpetual war. The hosts urge listeners to get informed, organized, and to find allies far beyond traditional political boundaries.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking to my friend Scott Hortons, who is the executive director of the Libertarian Institute and author of Provoked and Enough Already. And if you haven't figured it out by now, we just had an awesome conversation. You got to check it out. Welcome to kibbe on liberty, Scott.

[B]

Yes, sir.

[A]

Here we are.

[B]

Happy to be here.

[A]

Yeah. A quick shout out to our friends at the West Virginia Libertarian Party. You and I are on the way to that. And as it turns out, Washington, D.C. is halfway between here and there or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So shout out to them because my buddy Joel helped us arrange this and it feels like a fairly timely moment to talk about this escalating war in Iran. Yeah, but I want to start like, I'm pretty black pilled right now. I'm pretty frustrated. And you must be more frustrated because you've been trying to stop this for 25 years. But I want to start with a story that you probably remember. 2013, there was this freshman congressman, sort of Ron Polish, member of Congress, named Thomas Massie, who decided to organize both inside Congress and outside grassroots opposition to Barack Obama's proposed bombing of Syria, 2013, September. And I was at FreedomWorks at the time and Justin Raimondo, your colleague, reached out to me and he's like, let's cause some trouble. And that became such a wave of grassroots opposition that Obama had to back down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At least temporarily.

[B]

It did work.

[A]

It worked. It worked. And so I want people to know that story because right now it feels like you can't vote your way out of this. You can't organize your way out of this. You can't speak truth to power. Facts don't seem to matter as the war machine just grinds on and on and on. But in reality, our ability to know what's going on and then speak out, that's the only thing that's going to stop it.

[B]

Yeah. And look, people are right to be somewhat dubious or cynical or whatever about it because, you know, there's no point being naive. American public opinion is hardly ever the deciding factor in any major policy that our government embarks on. Right. The voice of 300 million of us is the margin and a very thin margin. But some of the time, at least that's where the action is and it really can make all the difference. So we had some stars aligned for us there. First of all, Barack Obama being the president was in our favor because, and especially like at that time, the left and the liberals were sort of like still feeling a little anti war left over from the W. Bush years. Not that they had strongly opposed Obama tripling the war in Afghanistan or anything, but they were not really excited for going to Syria. If anybody wants to go and beat up on Syria, it's going to be macho, tough guy right wingers, go teach them radical Islam's lesson again kind of thing. And yet with Barack Obama leading the parade and they were all convinced that he was a Muslim terrorist anyway or whatever, that didn't make sense that they're going to follow him into battle. So that really undermined Republican support for the thing. They might have supported Bill Clinton or Joe Biden doing it, you know what I mean? But Barack Obama was just, there was no way they were going to follow him into a war. And then the second thing that we had going for us was the fact that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, and the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, both were opposed. And this is the only time Clapper ever did a redeeming thing in his entire stinking life. Everything else about him is absolutely horrible. But he. And by the way, we didn't find this out until years later that Obama gave a interview to Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic where he said, yeah, and then Clapper came out and told me that this is not a slam dunk and I won't stand by this intelligence. Basically, we think Assad did this sarin attack, but the Director of National Intelligence won't swear by it. So that really pulled the rug out from, from under Obama there. And I think Martin Dempsey, also the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised him against it. And so they figured out a way to walk it back. And they. But no, but to your point, there were, I don't know, at least hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Americans who spoke up against this. And you know, major credit goes also to Steve Bannon and Breitbart at that time. He was the head of Breitbart at that time. And that was where all of AM talk radio got their news. They had stopped looking at drug and they were looking at Breitbart instead. And Breitbart was saying, we are not going to war for Al Qaeda in Syria. No. And then it was viral. Right. You can still find this on Google Images and whatever, where Marines and soldiers were holding up signs that said, I didn't join the Marine Corps to fight a civil war for Al Qaeda in Syria. And there were a bunch of those people were threatening to go AWOL and mutiny and things over. It was looking really bad. And then. And plus, the sarin attack was a hoax. The whole thing was put on by Al Qaeda in the first place. And there are a lot of people who, you know, it happened sort of the third week in August, I guess, and the story is falling apart. And so the lie was getting debunked in real time. And that was really, I think, empowering people around the country. And there were reports, I think it was ABC News that had it, that Republican congressmen were saying that the calls to their office were unanimous against the war. They had no calls saying, let's attack Syria, but the phone was ringing off the hook saying, you better not. And I know there was one Republican congressman who said that. He went and did a town hall, and he told people, come up and talk to me one at a time so that you don't have to feel any, like, peer pressure from people in the room about saying the wrong thing. Just come up and talk to me privately. And every single person came up and said, don't you do it. And nobody said they supported me.

[A]

He was desperate that someone could.

[B]

He was trying to create some room for them to say yes and no. And it was just. They were overwhelmed by that. I mean, it really was like, boy, the. The people of the country. And by the way, as long as we're on this, because it's probably the only other thing I have to say on this subject, and I very often forget it, but there's an extremely important study by the RAND Corporation about Russia and picking a fight with Russia from 2019. It's called extending Russia. You may have read it, and I wrote about it in my book Provoked. And by extending Russia, they mean overextending Russia. And by overextending Russia, they mean provoking Russia into Over. Expanding. Provoking them into taking on new and greater commitments that they cannot afford. We'll hit them here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Okay. However, all throughout that study, the RAND Corporation eggheads say, on the other hand, this policy is very unpopular in Germany, and this policy is very unpopular in France, and this policy is very unpopular in the United States of America. So if we're going to be able to do this, we're going to need a real propaganda campaign for the thing or whatever, because public opinion really counts. And I actually remember when I read the thing being, like, pleasantly surprised that we made a mention in the RAND Corporation study that the opinion of the American people does count, that they're really afraid that if they put us in a position where we just get outraged, that things can fall apart for them. And so, like, you know, not to play into the myth of the American Republic and popular sovereignty and all this stuff that isn't really true in our corrupt, evil empire. But at the end of the day, there are 300 million of us and they need our money and they need our sons and they really can't have an empire without us. So if the American people would just put their foot down and scream hell no, then that's your answer. Of course, then this is much harder when a Republican's in power.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because you can have people just switch on a dime. It's their guy doing it. Just the same way the liberals at least were quiet about Afghanistan get. Republicans get right in line. Especially when you're blowing up Muslims and like, it must be their fault. They call us the Great Satan, man. They burn our flag. They. You know, I met a guy one time, air conditioner repair man, really great guy, fixing the AC on my truck. And he. I swear, I thought he was listening to my show. He started going on and on and on about how Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were all motivated by American intervention in the Middle east as those bases in Saudi Arabia, you know, support for Israel killing them Palestinians. And I'm like, man, this guy really knows his stuff. And then he goes, but the Iranians, they just hate us. They just hate us. I remember in 1979, they burned our flag and called us the Great Satan. They just hate us. Osama bin Laden, he had reasons, the Ayatollah. I was too young to know what his reasons were Right.

[A]

Back then. And I'm thinking about the coalition that you were describing with Steve Bannon and anti War and FreedomWorks and Thomas Massie. I don't think Ro Khanna was in Congress yet. I don't remember, because he was definitely working with Democrats and moveon.org and Code Pink. So back then, at least there was not most of the left, but that serious anti war left that was actually willing to challenge a Democratic president. There's not a lot of that anymore. But these phony MAGA polls that show that, what is it, 85, 90% of MAGA supports the President on Iran. I'm sure that's a definitional thing. You can make it say whatever you want. But there's maga, then there's the rest of the Republican Party, and more importantly, there's the independents and the libertarians and Democrats across the aisle to support Trump in a midterm election. All of that energy is not only not there, but it's going to be on the other side for us libertarians. And I'll probably speak about this at the West Virginia lp. If you want to create a social movement, you want to drive public opinion and you want to scare the warmongers. Think about all those people who are disaffected right now around the broken promises on war. That's a tremendously large coalition of people that we could pull together as long as we don't start giving them the purity test. Like, well, you're not libertarian on monetary

[B]

policy, so therefore, oh, definitely not anti war is. That's all I care about for sure. And look, it's just like in the Obama years, not we. You're great. I'm mean, I and others sometimes are unfair to the anti war left when, you know, yeah, all the anti war center left shit libs, you know, who were very anti Bush because he was a Republican president, they all went away. But the real anti war leftists didn't. Right. Like some of the very greatest journalists on foreign policy and people like Madea Benjamin at CodePink and all that. She didn't go away at all. Now her army did. Right. But she and her core people did not. And it's the same thing on the right. As you say, they have to redefine Republican to take every Republican who doesn't like Trump anymore because of things like this and take them out of the poll, give them a separate category so that they can tell us, well, listen, among the people who still are avowed Trump supporters, they support this. Okay. Yeah, well, I can see how you're skewing your poll. Go ahead and add up everyone on the American right and tell me what's the actual, you know, support for him there? And I think the number is a lot lower. And then, and it also goes to show that it's a, it's, I think, a result of a lot of, you know, pro Trump influencer types deciding to go ahead and get good on this. I'll pick on my sometimes friend Mike Cernovich a little bit for whatever reason. Well, I guess I know why. Right. He don't give a damn what happens to Palestinians or what America helps Israel do to them because that's something that communist left wing kids care about. That's something that that college protester Marxists think is important. And Mike Cernovich just ain't gonna get that kind of communism on his shirt. You know what I mean? He just can't be near those sorts of cooties. But then they drag us into war with Iran and he's like, nah, forget this. Like, right, who cares what some college kid says? It doesn't matter that they agree, okay, we should not be doing this. And you know, we should not be doing this. And he's out there, he's been great, you know, him and a bunch of other, you know, right, right leaning and pro maga guys who if they have a political allegiance, it's to him. And instead they're choosing their allegiance to their own moral principles and, and this reality that we live in and in their own political future too. I mean, I saw a guy today complaining, you know, here's what's gonna happen when the Democrats retake both houses of Congress. You realize that, right? And this is all for Israel, right? Like for all we know, in a year they're gonna be cutting little boys peckers off again, calling them Sally and oh no, it was just those mean old Republicans that say you can't do that and go right back to just total woke insanity and who's gonna stop them and why? So that we can help Israel get rid of their strategic rival has no relation to the well being of the American people whatsoever. I saw Ann Coulter pissed about this in an interview. She goes, this war does nothing to keep the American people safe whatsoever. This war is not about serving American interests whatsoever. And I remember how much she loved supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan back when, but she's just over it. There's no way that you can call this Defend America First. It's either America first or it's Israel instead. And come on, who could argue that this is the former Only a liar.

[A]

Yeah. 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 Blaze TV 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. I was surprised by Cernovich because he's been loyally going after Thomas Massie in what I would argue is a totally incoherent set of arguments. But this war finally broke him. Ann Coulter has been with us now for a while and to me that's an opportunity. I don't know if you saw it, but Trump went to Thomas Massie's district two days ago and the betting markets jumped 18 points for Massie afterwards in Part because the guy they're running against, Massie is just a clown. And I think for the first time people actually heard him speak and it was sort of clownish.

[B]

He had that Howard Dean scream sort of voice crack. That'll really do you in, man.

[A]

Yeah, the memes are just beautiful. But when Trump was going after Massie, the crowd's not cheering them on, right. They're putting up with it because they still love their man. But they're not going to the extent that the people in that crowd were actually from the district. They're going with a guy who is actually America first, who is actually against the wars, who is actually not wanting to spend us into oblivion. And I think the spell is wearing off. But you know, for right now, the question is what do we do with this shit show? You probably saw just a couple hours ago, upwards of 5,000 Marines are headed to the Gulf on American battleships. That doesn't sound good.

[B]

No, I've been told by people who are, you know, it's secondhand hearsay type stuff, but it's people who are. The people I've been talking to are veterans of the wars and who are still connected to people in the officer corps who say that it is on. They are going, they're putting troops on the ground. I don't know whether that means they're going to try to take the island, the Carg island or whether they're going to try to, you know, so called liberate the Straits of Hormuz, prevent Iran from being able to close Hormuz or probably just as likely, I'm not really sure. This is one idea that they've been talking about is sending troops in to try to seize what's left of the enriched uranium at Isfahan. And well, I'll tell you, I was told by a guy who was told by his friend that he was shipping off over there that he sent him his last will and testament that he said that this is, there's just total, no planning, just ad hoc send the marines or send, I don't know what I was told, What I was told was not specific to Marines or army or SOCOM or what. But it was. I know what we'll do. We'll send the guys and they'll do it and then thing and like. But no, no, no, this was not in their war plans. This is not the kind of thing that they had rehearsed. This is not, if you go to the way that they do these kinds of things. You don't put in a force like this, in a place like that, unless you also have a free force like this and like this and like this and air cover and whatever, and they just don't have that. And so, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that guys who are being sent there believe that they are not being, you know, prepared well for the fight that they're about to be dropped into. So, you know, nobody thinks that they're going to try to sack Tehran or something like that. There's no way they're doing that. But. I guess whether it's Hormuz or whether it's the Carg island or whether it's Isfahan, like on either of those three, I guess it's pretty easy for me to imagine Trump being talked into the necessity of this. But, like, look, we didn't think they were going to close the Straits of Hormuz, but now that they did, we have a plan to open them back up again. Here's what we have to do, right? And, and, you know, if the President says to the military, can you do this? Can you do that? Whatever the answer is, yes, we can, sir. We'll figure it out. Right? Like that's their deal is to tell him. Yes. And do what he wants done, right. Not to tell him. Ah, geez, we really don't. And it depends on the situation. It depends on the question. I think W. Bush, I hate to give him any credit at all, but I think W. Bush was willing to say to the Chiefs, all right, talk me out of it then. You know what I mean? We're like, I don't think Trump does that. You know what I mean? I think when, when the, when the Chiefs warned W. Bush not to go to Iran in 07, he listened. You know, he tripled the, the Iraq war, but he did not do the strikes on Iran that Cheney and Petraeus were pushing so hard for him to do, because the rest of the Pentagon had told him, we don't want to do this. The Iranians have like, yes. Can we defeat them ultimately, sure. But will they have a say in it? Will they be able to fight back in a way that Saddam Hussein absolutely could not? Yes. And, you know, we will not have escalation dominance. We'll, we'll be able to prevail eventually, but they will be able to hit us back. And at that time, of course, we had about 150,000 troops in Iraq, 50,000 in Afghanistan, and they were all hostages, too. Right. So that was a real danger for then. But I Think point being that if Trump isn't seeking contrary advice and he's being told, absolutely, sir, my Marines can do anything, then I think he's likely to follow with that and say, yeah, like, who can? This is a huge part of Iraq war. Two people maybe don't remember, and I don't know if I got, like, exact quotes of this or whatever, but it was very much the spirit of the time that you're not questioning the power of the big green army to do whatever it wants, are you? You're not saying that you doubt that the American military can achieve whatever goal that they set out to achieve and all that. And then the answer to that is, look, tactically and operationally, yes, our military can blow up anything. But the strategy has to make sense. The policy has to make sense. You can't create something just by blowing it up. You can't change the circumstance from one thing to exactly this or that just by setting things on fire. There has to be more thinking behind that. But you can see how that illusion of the power of the army would, especially if you're a president and they work for you, that you could get really drunk on that.

[A]

You know, the Hegseth vibe.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. You know, I. I have become text message buddies with Tucker Carlson. I think it's okay for me to say this. He was Wolfgang Man. After he met with Trump, he went like three times. And after the first time he went to meet with Trump in recent weeks, it was like pretty, pretty soon after the Venezuela thing. And I asked him, like, hey, man, is he just like, totally drunk on the ease of the Venezuela thing or, like, is there any kind of sobriety that's hit at all that, like, well, of course Iran isn't exactly Venezuela or whatever. And I think the quote, I think when Tucker wrote back to me was just no sobriety, right? Like, he is drunk on hubris here. Venezuela, I mean, come on, man. They plucked the head of state and his wife out of there like it was an Afghan night raid in Marja Province, right? Just go in there and do whatever you want. And none of our guys got killed. I don't even know if they. How many of their guys got killed. Less than 20 or something to go in there and, and do that. They're making the movie right now, I'm sure. And from Trump's point of view, right, like, put yourself in his shoes, right? He just, like, said abracadabra, and some incredible stuff happened. And so, like, how do you convince him that, like, yeah, but that could never work anywhere else in any other time or place. So don't ever think that it's that easy again. You know, look who you're talking to. Look who you're talking about. I mean, he's just.

[A]

So he actually did it. So Trump actually believed that he could just take out the Ayatollah, claim victory and go home?

[B]

Yeah. And in fact, this is what I predicted, right, was that they're not going to try to kidnap him, but they could just drop a bomb on his head, and if they got eyeballs on him, they can put a bomb on him. And it's. Yeah. Virtually certain that that's what Trump is being told. And I think we know that that was what Benjamin Netanyahu told him, because that's what Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling everyone for 20 years. All you gotta do is hit them and they'll fall. Everyone in Iran hates them and wants to see them overthrown. So if we just hit the police stations and hit the besieged beside whatever besiege militia and hit the Koods force and the IRGC and take out the Ayatollah, the people of Iran will rise up spontaneously and create a new pro American order there or whatever. And I think Trump just bought it. As we were talking about on the way over here, this completely ridiculous narrative that The Iranians killed 30,000 people, right? This is like the Battle of the Somme or something, right? This is Somehow they killed 30,000 people without carpet bombing their own capital city, right? It took the Israelis a year to kill 30,000 Gazans, you know, Palestinian Gazans just absolutely, mercilessly collapsing apartment complexes on their heads and everything. But somehow The Iranians killed 30,000 people just again, by saying abracadabra, and they all just fell down dead somehow or whatever. But the thing about that is that propaganda was one made to justify war, to get you so upset that you go, well, anything is worth doing to stop some terrible tyrants like that. But I think that there was also potentially like a perverse narrative that came out of that, which is that if you believe those numbers, that they had to kill 30,000 people to put down this insurrection, this popular protest uprising, well, then there must have been, I don't know, 150,000 or 200,000 of them or more out there that it took killing 30,000 to make the rest go home. And so you might then, in your mind's eye, believe that there are enough people in Tehran who absolutely are just chomping at the bit, can't wait for their opportunity, even if they got A die trying to, to overthrow this regime. And so I bet you that that narrative about how bad that was in January helped bolster the case for war at the end of February, right? That like you can see, trust me, man, we saw what happened last month, man, they had to crush this massive uprising in order to survive. But that wasn't true. That was a bunch of crap, right? They killed. The total killed was three or 4,000. And some major proportion of those were government employees, were cops and militia guys who were killed by. Not protesters and not even rioters, right, but people armed teams of mercenaries who were either working for the Monarchists or the Kurds or whatever, working for the CIA and the Mossad out there attacking police stations, attacking, you know, electric stations and, and whatever, you know, transportation hubs and whatever they could. It's just like in the, in Kazakhstan In January of 2020, it's like, oh look, there's a big anti inflation protest. Oh look, there are armed teams of 10 men each sacking police stations all over the place. They're clearly being coordinated by a foreign intelligence agency. It's not a popular uprising. This is a attempted put, you know, and so same kind of thing here. And remember the, the Israelis were bragging about it in the media that yeah, our, our agents are on the ground leading the thing, right? And Mike Pompeo was bragging about it like hello to the Mossad agents leading the uprising on the ground there. Well, like you really gotta wonder about that, like what's their motive for doing that? They're so full of hubris, they think that they can't possibly lose because in effect all that did was completely undermine any legitimacy those protesters could have possibly had.

[A]

Well, there's a lot of central planning involved in their mindset, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They really think like the whole nation building mindset is you can airdrop in without any local knowledge and sort of reorganize things from the top down. And the CIA and all these other mystery Alphabet agencies have been doing these color revolution type things forever, thinking that yeah, we'll start something and it's going to take off on its own. But of course the other half of this, which you're already saying is it's just propaganda to build a narrative to convince the President of the United States that if we just take out the bad guy, then the people are going to rise up and they're going to organize a liberal democracy. And I feel like we've heard this script before.

[B]

I know, and I have to admit, not that I ever said this publicly like, the other side of the argument or whatever. But I, I admit that part of me at the start of the war, like, was arguing, like, maybe this one will not be as bad as the other ones. Right? Like, it's so easy to say that the last nine wars have been total catastrophes. So the lesson is to stop doing this. Obviously, that's my point. But whether it's just from the propaganda or just, like, in my own head, just the law of averages, like, I don't know, I don't think anyone would argue that. That the Iranian government is some, like, flawless, wonderful, you know, democratic republic with popular sovereignty and, and robust civil rights protections and all these things. I'm. As much as I hate my government, I'm sure many Iranians do hate their government. And like, it's not like I was saying, oh, let's withhold judgment and wait and see. I still always have been recommending against this, but I, I was at least trying to hold open the possibility that maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just don't know everything and maybe those right wingers on my Twitter feed are right, that all we need to do is hit them hard and just wait and see. And you guys are gonna have to admit that you were wrong and we were right and whatever. And I'm like, I'm trying to be fair and like, okay, maybe they're right. Let's see. And then within days, the entire Persian Gulf is on fire, right? You got, you know, first of all, somewhere between like, 17 and 25American bases have been hit between Iraqi Kurdistan and Oman all up and down the Gulf, in, in Kuwait, in Iraq, in Kuwait, in, in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi, UAE and Oman all up and down. Got all of our bases hit, bazillion dollars worth of radars and whatever. And plus oil resources, they're hitting, you know, oil platforms in the Gulf, they're hitting refineries in Bahrain and Oman, they're hitting tankers in the north of the Gulf, so never even mind Hormuz, right? They can hit anything. They can reach out, touch anything that they want in the Gulf, including American oil tankers that were refueling over there off of the coast of Iraq the other day. So. And then. And the Ayatollah is dead and they appointed his harder lying right wing son to, to replace him. And the rest of the regime is completely defiant. And it was funny because I saw our mutual buddy John Hoffman from Cato, wrote a tweet today about how, boy, is this thing bad and we should quit. And I saw one of the Responses was, yeah, right, the, the Iranian government, they're all in hiding in their bunkers. They can't even go outside. And then the next tweet down was the President of Iran walking down a main boulevard surrounded by citizens cheering for him. No security guards at all, right? No Secret Service type, you know, guys with Uzis or whatever around him whatsoever. And there he is walking down the street going, hey everybody. And they're going, hey, long live the President. And what? He's perfectly fine.

[A]

If you made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Key Beyond Liberty is just one of the amazing products we created. Free the People. We tell emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty, independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance. After the show, check out our [e-mail] and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show. You know, I was secretly like, you hoping like every, every time, like you fight, you fight, you fight. You say, don't do this, it's going to be a disaster. History repeats.

[B]

Yeah, you want to be wrong, right? You don't want it to be bad.

[A]

I would love like, I've had Iranian dissidents on the show and trust me, the Iranian government, they're a bunch of monsters and they kill a lot of people and they're tyrants and all that. Like, we could go through the whole litany of that and the critique of that government is 100% correct. That doesn't mean that what we're doing actually helps. It might actually make it worse because again, we've heard this script before. The question now, it's a total shit show. It's everything you would have predicted. And the question is, how do we get out? What is a reasonable strategy for this administration to unwind itself? Because you got to believe that Trump, maybe just to himself, but certainly behind closed doors, is saying, you guys said this would be easy and it's not so easy. And he does seem to have always had this instinct of like, I don't want to do long dragged out wars. It's not good for our country. How do we appeal to that part of him?

[B]

I think the, well, I mean, just the reality is that the war is terrible and it's only getting worse, right? Whoever's telling him, yeah, but we got another 400 missiles today in our airstrikes or whatever are clearly misleading him. And you Know, again, the tactical and the operational art of blowing things up is one thing. Achieving the results that you were going for is a total other thing. And these people are essentially, they're, you know, the Secretary of Defense, I guess especially is selling him on. We're very successful in the strikes that we're carrying out. So it's just a matter of time before they give up, give in, or are so broken that they can no longer resist. And whatever. He's at some point got to realize, if he hasn't already, that actually that's really not right and that the country's big enough and their missiles are widely dispersed enough. I mean, the Bloomberg says that they still have at least half of their launchers. When Trump had said that they lost something like 90% of them. I forget if that's the exact quote, but he had said that they were almost out of launchers. But like, no, they still have at least half of them. And it's a. The country is the size of two and a half. Texas is, okay, is huge. And, and it's got two massive mountain ranges. And so there are. Their ability to squirrel away a truck with some drones in the back is essentially unlimited. Right. So at some point he has to come to grips with the fact that because killing the Ayatollah did not achieve a regime change into a pro American government, that he stuck with essentially the same old government he always had there, that they have the ability to continue to resist and that they're not going to give up. And once he finally gets his head around that, then the question is, how can he do it? In a way to save as much face as possible for him. And I think luckily with Donald Trump, he could just say anything, right? He doesn't give a damn. He'll be like, on one day he'll say, we require nothing less than unconditional surrender. And then the next day his press secretary announces, unconditional surrender means Donald Trump quits the war whenever he feels like it, regardless of what the Iranians say or any piece of paper they sign. Okay, so. Oh good. So it turns out words don't mean anything and unconditional surrender doesn't mean anything. And then I think this was the next day or two days after that Trump said, we already won. So that also sucks, cuz words don't mean anything. He can keep bombing them after he already won too, right? But he can flip, flop around and he can just say, look, we sank their navy, we blew up their missiles, we degraded their power. I'm calling that A win. Too bad we didn't get the regime change, but it's not like I'm putting the Marine Corps in Tehran, so what the hell? But let that be a lesson to you, you dang Shiite revolutionaries over there, and whatever, and. And hope that sticks, right? I mean, the real problem is all the military strategists are saying that Iran ain't gonna let him go so easy. Now, you know, the old ayatollah, before they martyred him, he used to be, well, first of all, very old, right? He's, like, in his late 80s and. And was just quiet and cautious and conservative guy, not the insane firebrand that they always, you know, tried to tar him as. And he always had counseled a very conservative type of response to American action, especially when he's dealing with Donald Trump. You know, when Trump killed Soleimani, he fired some missiles at an empty corner of an American base in Iraq to deliberately not kill anyone. And then last June, he, as Trump, even tweeted out on Truth Social and said, thank you for calling in advance and letting us know that you were about to fire missiles at our base in Qatar so we can shoot them all down. Great job, whatever. And a couple missiles got through, but they hit an empty part of the base and didn't kill anyone. Symbolic. Purely symbolic. Just to say the slightest bit of face to show, look, we're not pacifists, okay? You drop 14 bombs on us, we shoot 14 missiles at you, but, hey, heads up, we're shooting 14 missiles at you, right? And trying to minimize the thing. Well, here they killed him right away. So he was the most conservative force there in terms of, like, the guy probably most reluctant to make Trump even angrier, right? Whereas the lower down guys apparently have adopted the policy, and perhaps he had approved this policy before he had died. That, look, if they kill me and the ruling leaders and whatever, they have what they call this Mosaic defense, where they have delegated command authority way, way down the chain of command so that, hey, if they nuke the west half of the country, the east half can still fire rockets off or whatever, right? So they have delegated this power way down. And. And they, you know, the experts say that the policy has now completely changed from, look, we're afraid to piss them off to, oh, no, they've already gone this far. They've already killed our ayatollah and his family, and they're trying to do a regime change. They've declared regime change. They've declared unconditional surrender and all that. So the only Response to that is use them or lose them. The only response to that is hit America as hard as you can and for as long as you can. Right? To drag out the economic consequences of having the Straits of Hormuz closed, to drag out the diplomatic consequences of all this chaos throughout the region. It's an asymmetric fight, right? America is the world empire, global superpower, up against Persia, which has, you know, in terms of firepower, a hundredth or less of. Of what America can bring to bear, even aside from the thermo nukes. Right? So all they have to do, almost like an insurgency, is they have to survive, they have to hang in there, and they have to make this. And apparently this is their. Their stated policy even, is they have to make this as costly for the Americans as possible before it's over so that we don't try it again. It's the same way the Americans talk about Vladimir Putin. He's a schoolyard bully. You got to punch him in the nose and then he'll stop. That's what the Iranians say about us, right? We've. We've been trying appeasement. Appeasement hasn't worked. So now we've got to punch them in the mouth hard enough that they'll stop. And so I think if Trump tries to do Ron Paul and just march home, that they'll say, and they'll keep firing and to drive the humiliation and the defeat home. So that leaves America in a very difficult position, especially Donald Trump and his ego in a very difficult position then, because how do you get him to stop other than to, okay, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it. Right. Screw Israel, whatever. Like, he's not going to do that. So I really don't know. Right. The question. Another way to phrase your question is how much punishment are these Iranians really willing to take? And are they. Are they willing to risk being nuked? Right. I mean, if they really drive this guy crazy, he could nuke them. And that's not just Netanyahu, but that's Donald Trump, too. I mean, he was saying the other day we could destroy their entire electricity program, their entire electrical grid, in a matter of hours or like, in an hour or 45 minutes, something like that. So, like, I don't. People said that he was implying nuclear weapons there. I'm not certain that he was, but, like, he kind of was. And he's been willing to threaten to use nuclear weapons in the past. If you remember, in his first term, he threatened fire and fury, like the World has never seen against North Korea if they didn't come down to a deal then and all that. So I don't think that they're really off the table. I think he's, God dang it, man. I'm reminded of there is a quote from James Baker, Bush seniors national, pardon me, Secretary of State, who said about W. Bush when W. Bush announced the 48 hour speech, we're going into Iraq. Even if you give up and move to Cairo in exile, we're still invading in the 48 hour speech. And Baker turned to Edward Dejarian and said, I told him not to do that. And it's just, yeah, pretty hard to back down from there, man. And that's where we are now. Like, God dang it. All of these terrible difficulties is, are the reasons why anti war people in this country far beyond me. I mean many, many, many wise voices have been saying for a generation to not do this and now we're pretty stuck, you know, And I'm willing to take whatever I, I, I don't mind the, the American empire being humiliated. I want Trump to declare victory and pull out right now. In fact, somebody asked me on Twitter today, would you prefer that America actually stay and get hit and hurt harder and learn the lesson? No, no. Worse is not better, okay? Worse is worse. We don't want worse. And, and, and worse begets worse too, right? Like maybe we get punched in the mouth hard enough that he nukes Tehran. Okay? We don't want that. We want, call it victory, call it, spin it, call it Christmas morning. I don't care what you do, you know, however you spin it, call it off as fast as possible. And if the American empire has to take a humiliation there, fine. But it's either take a humiliation in giving up on a fool's errand we shouldn't have launched or take our humiliation in dead corpses of our guys and losing anyway, ultimately coming home anyway. So, and, and for all the hawks on Twitter, I mean, you can see how none of them have an actual answer, how this is supposed to work, right? The decapitation already failed, so how, what's the game plan here? You follow? You know, what's that guy Erickson or what, what's his name Anyway, all these hawks and all they do is bluster about how, yeah, well, it ain't over yet and whatever, but none of them have like a syllogism where they can explain how. No, see, if we carpet bomb the new ayatollah and the ruling council that appointed him and then we Bomb the next ayatollah and the ruling council that appoints him, and the next ayatollah and the ruling council that appoints him. And if we bomb, I don't know, the southwest corner of Tehran where all their military stuff is, and if we bomb this, that, whatever, then that's what'll do it. That's when the regime will fall. That's when the monarchists will be able to take over and declare a new pro Israel policy. Give me a break, dude. Nobody has an explanation for how this is supposed to work other than just hang in there and it'll work out. But see, that argument already failed within the first couple of days. This is going to be short and sweet and easy. You watch, you'll see. I remember people attacking Dave Smith. What's it going to take, Smith, for you to admit that this war worked and was great? Like, are you kidding me? They already bombed our base in Kuwait and killed seven guys. They already destroyed the fifth Fleet Naval station at Bahrain. They already closed down CENTCOM headquarters at the Al Udid base in Qatar. It's already a disaster. That's on the second day, on the third day of the war. Are you kidding? Good people.

[A]

So let's say art of the deal, Trump wins his internal debate over the. Trump, that's kind of an egomaniac and. And can't take that humiliation. And he realizes that this is a bad deal. I'm just going to get out of it. I'm going to walk away. Sunk costs. Will Israel let him do that?

[B]

Oh, good question. Good question. Well, look, Netanyahu and his regime clearly have their own agenda, but at the end of the day, there's only one President of the United States of America. One guy gets to sit in that chair behind that desk and call shots, and it ain't Benjamin in Netanyahu. And Donald Trump tells him no. The answer is no, but he has to be firm. And. And is Netanyahu willing to push it? Absolutely. He has to be stopped, right? But, yes, the American world empire has all the power and Israel none. Israel's the size of Maryland. They don't even have any oil. His country produces nothing except death and lies. And so as long as they have a stranglehold on American foreign policy, they can get what they want. But any president that puts his foot down, the foot stays down. That's it. I mean, Netanyahu tried desperately to push Obama into war, and Obama's complete pushover, but he said no. Look, man, I'm not doing it. Okay? You hear Me? You asked me. You asked me three times. I told you no, the answer's no. And it stuck. That was it. You know, there's a famous quote of. And people can read this in Ronald Reagan's diary online right now at the Ronald Reagan Library website. You know, double check my facts. Ronald Reagan called Nanak and begin in 1984 and told him, I want you to stop bombing Beirut right now. He said, the image of this war is a 7 year old girl with her arms blown off. It's a holocaust and I demand that you stop it. And then within 15 minutes the bombing stopped. And according to, was it Michael Deaver? Believe it's Michael Deaver that worked for Reagan. He said that. Reagan said, wow, I didn't know I could do that. Yeah, well you can because you're the emperor of the planet earth and Menachem Begin is nothing, right? Menachem Begin is the mayor of, you know, sadist land. Right? They have nothing that we need. We have everything that they need. Need. And so if Ronald Reagan can do that, it's the same for any of them. And which also raises the whole thing about damn Bush Senior and Bill Clinton and George W. And Obama and the rest for not pushing the Israelis around and forcing them to do what is in America's interest, first and foremost withdrawing from the west bank and Gaza Strip and let the Palestinians have an independent state. That was in fact how the why the Israelis worked so hard to help Bill Clinton beat Bush senior back in 1992 is because that's what he wanted to do on the advice of Colin Powell. He was riding high on a 90% approval rating from Iraq War One. And Colin Powell and James Baker said, we got to do the two state solution now before it's too late. And then he was defeated and driven out. Bill Clinton, of course, you know, tried to do the two state solution. But then a Netanyahu fan murdered Yitzhak Rabin. So that was the end of that. Then after September 11, somehow you explain this to me, Matt. George W. Bush's approval rating was at 90%. Not after a victorious war, but after the greatest failure of any president in all of American history. But anyway, and then Colin Powell again, that he had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush Senior, now he's Secretary of State and he convinced W. Bush we have to do a two state solution. And then what happened was Ariel Sharon, he. You could read all about this in the Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy by Mearsheimer and Walt. Ariel Sharon sent the Born Again, Christians after W. Bush. And I love this anecdote. It's just perfect. They got the Majority Whip of the House of Representatives, Tom delay to come and tell W. Bush you want to be a one term president. Because I can make every born again Christian stay home in 2004. You'll be done. And so. And then Ariel Sharon's guys laughed and bragged about it to Haaretz and they said that it came right up to it. We could see the whites in their eyes. And then they backed down. Hahaha. Colin Powell got totally German and and George W. Bush sided with Ariel Sharon

[A]

at Kibbe on liberty. Freedom is a lifestyle24. 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. So that's got to be a piece of it. Because the question is so what has changed? Because there seems to be a spell. There seems to be to be an inability of Republicans or Democrats to question Israel anymore. Part of it is the evangelical wing that is now not all of them, but there's a radically Zionist wing of the evangelical right.

[B]

Importantly, not even all dispensationalists believe that you have to support Israel to force Jesus to come back sooner and whatever. There are major discrepancies in those.

[A]

I feel like you can't trick Jesus into.

[B]

You might think that, but like it depends on who your minister is, I guess. But yeah, look, that is a huge part of it. And then it's also the money. I mean back to Bush senior for a second. I don't know if you ever heard this anecdote, but James Baker, I'm sure he was joking when he said this. If you know about James Baker's personality, I'm sure he meant this in jest and probably was an inside joke among people he was with at the time when he said it. But in print it looked really bad. And James Baker said f the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway. And they went, oh yeah. And they started writing million dollar checks to the Democrats. Right? Is a huge thing. This is how Bill Clinton won Rock the Vote. Remember that? I'm Kurt Loder. Rock the Vote everybody on mtv. That was Israel. That was Israel rigging the American election against the incumbent because they pwned the Democrat, the boy from Hope, right? And he promised he did outflank in the, in the campaign, outflanked Bush Senior on the right on the settlements in the west bank and, and helped rig that election. I gotta say, someone who was in 10th grade and extremely interested in the election of 92 at the time. I don't remember anybody saying the word Israel once. I remember anybody saying the Israelis have decided they don't like the American president anymore and they want a new one. And now all of their fifth column in Washington D.C. and all the TV networks and everything else are now doing everything they can to overthrow him for Bill Clinton. I don't remember that. Nobody said that. I don't even know Pat Buchanan said that. Right, Like. But that was what happened. And you can look it up that Bush Senior even blamed the Israelis for his loss. Later on at a talk at Texas A and M, you can read this at mondoweiss.net, a talk at Texas A and M, he was like, yeah, I think that is really what cost it. That cost me the election there.

[A]

So it's money they've invested in politics in a way that, and so look,

[B]

in that book I mentioned the Israel Lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt. Max Blumenthal just interviewed John Mearsheimer about it yesterday. I was just watching it today on the plane. It's the 10 year anniversary of that paper and then it became a book. And their thesis in there is essentially that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and the Israel Lobby plays the game of democracy, such as it is in the United States, extremely well. And it just comes down to email lists and telephone, you know, trees. I remember my mom used to do like the March of Dimes. You call everybody on your list and see, you know what I mean? They just, they're extremely well organized. With billions of dollars comes office towers full of lawyers and receptionists and secretaries. You need to file some paperwork, you need to create a new think tank, you need to sue somebody, you need to protect yourself from being sued, whatever, whatever. All that money provides all the ability to make those things happen. And so, you know, in fact, Max told the story in that interview about, and there's audio of this where they brag about. The head of APAC bragged about how he groomed John Ratcliffe from the time he first began to run for the Congress. He was a lawyer in Dallas. He decided he wanted to run for Congress. And his AIPAC handler showed up and said, hi, I'm your AIPAC handler. If you want to go to Congress, sign here. And he signed there. And they made his entire Political career. And Blumenthal has audio of this guy admitting that about Ratcliffe and about Rubio and about Stefanik, who she ended up getting kicked out for bureaucratic reasons or whatever. But he bragged that he made the head of aipac. Says, yeah, I invented Marco Rubio. I made him. And this is the senator, now Secretary of State and National Security advisor is a wholly poned property of the Israel lobby. And in fact, in that same thing he named Michael Waltz. Remember Michael Waltz? He was the national security advisor. And why did he get fired? Because he was busted for overtly conspiring with Israel to fire force Trump to attack Iran. And Trump fired him for it and then replaced him with Rubio. Yeah, same damn difference, right? So, so that's what it is. And you know, it's so cowardly, it's the most obvious thing in the world. But they do it all day long. They hide behind cries of anti Semitism in order to protect from any criticism whatsoever. You could have on video an Israeli plane drop a bomb and kill a family. And then you go, hey, I can't believe you killed that family. And they go, that's a blood libel. If anyone ever criticizes any Jewish person for killing anyone, that's a blood libel. What? Somebody made up some unfounded rumors about Jews in Eastern Europe six centuries ago and now no one is allowed to criticize any Jewish people for any murders they might commit because then it's a blood library. I mean they've gotten away with that, Matt. They've gotten away with that up until now. They have. In fact, they have worn out anti Semite so badly that they've had to try to switch it now to Jew hater. You're a Jew hater. Because they know that if they call you an anti Semite, people just gonna yawn. They go, whoa, Jew hater. That sounds really bad. You know what they did? They just got Frank Luntz to test a focus group and have him twist their little dial. Which of this propaganda is effective on you? And here you have, you know, Ben Shapiro and his entire ilk who built up their entire credibility as Zionist hucksters by not talking about Zionism but criticizing blue haired Wokeists, turning boys into girls and all this kind of stuff, right? And kind of trying to corner the market on the anti woke stuff. And then it turns out they don't care about that at all. It's all just about getting you on the reservation to support Israel. And, and it's extremely effective propaganda. You know, I don't know if you ever saw this, man? I love talking about this and recommending this to people. It's so good, dude. Like four or five years ago, Al Jazeera did a two part documentary called the Lobby. And the first part is about the Israel lobby in the United Kingdom, and the second part is about the Israel Lobby in the United States. And both of them are just fantastic. And what they did was they got young anti Zionist Jews to go deep undercover with secret recording and whatever for months. And so you got these guys on tape just admitting the most heinous stuff. But one of the things on there that really caught my attention, and you can read about this at Wormia, the Washington Report on Middle Eastern affairs has an article about this. They had this Facebook group and there's a million of them like this. Whether it's, you know, turning wrenches on your pickup truck or whatever you're into, they have a thing like this for you. But this one was a Facebook page called Kittens and Donuts. And what it was was it's just pictures of kittens and donuts. And sometimes the kittens are on top of donuts or sometimes they're next to them, or sometimes they're just a kitten or just a donut or whatever. And like, I don't know, it's Facebook. There's a million things and whatever. And this is just this cute little thing for housewives to follow. Kittens and Donuts. Oh, isn't that cute? A little kitten and a little donut. And then like once every nine weeks or so they go support Israel. They let women fly fighter jets and whatever. And so the whole thing is about Israel. It has nothing to do with kittens and donuts at all. Kittens and Donuts was just them jerking your wife's chain to get her to go, oh, isn't that cute? And then, oh, I guess Israel's pretty progressive place over there in the Middle east, they let women be fighter pilots and whatever and just try to like get under your skin with this bs and it's just this kind of relentless onslaught and people just eventually just give into it. You know what I mean? Like, you just heard your whole lives, the Arabs are nothing but radical Islamic terrorists. The Israeli Jews, for some reason, they live in the Middle east, even though they're all white Eastern Europeans from our same European civilization, so we get along better with them. Netanyahu was educated in the United States. He speaks English with a mostly American accent. And like, how could you choose the Arabs over these guys, right? And it's just the they try to make it real simple for you to just go, okay, well, these are the good guys, those are the bad guys. These are the ones who are like us, and those are the evil enemy. And of course, there's no real reason in the world for America to have a contrary relationship with Islamic civilization at all. Except for Israel, right? I mean, if you want to say, like, okay, well, we support their potentates so we can get their gasoline at discount prices or whatever, okay, that sucks. But that doesn't mean that we have to be, like, completely at odds in this civilizational clash with them at all. In fact, when America took over the Middle east after the Second World War, everybody was really pleased because we weren't the British. And in fact, we were the first country that had proven that you can overthrow the British. And so people were really happy that it wasn't the European empires that were ruling the Middle East. And then they come to find out that not the Zionists had completely taken control in Washington and that they were all going to get screwed. But otherwise, I'm not saying that, that, you know, European civilization and Islam are the same civilization. They're not. But we got a lot of overlap, such as, for example, that Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ to Mary and. Or they don't call him Christ, but they believe that he was a prophet in the same line with Muhammad and, I mean, pardon me, with Solomon and, and Abraham and Moses and all of that stuff. They're. They call us people of the Book. And in fact, I was reading a thing the other day about how the Israeli Jews are passing a law in the Knesset to outlaw Christians praying at the Wailing Wall because Christians are idolaters, because Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God, where Muslims are not idolaters because they believe he was a prophet, but they don't believe he was the son of God. And so they're still monotheists to Jews, whereas Christians are like pagans, Christians are polytheists. If Christians believe in Jesus or what. Like, this is completely. You see what I mean about how there's no actual natural reason why we should have this affinity for the Israelis over even the Iraqis or the Egyptians or the Saudis or whoever you were

[A]

talking about AIPAC handlers, and it just dawned on me, which probably an obvious point to most people, but you remember when Thomas Massie a couple years ago went on Tucker Carlson's show and said something to the effect of, oh boy, you're going to get me in trouble, and he started talking about the way that AIPAC assigns a handler to every member of Congress and he blows the lid off this thing. The most poorly kept secret in Washington D.C. but I wonder, so many people say that he really, really got Trump's ire and the Republican Jewish Coalition by pushing through the release of the Epstein files.

[B]

That seems to have been it. Right.

[A]

But I think it probably started with that direct shot at AIPAC handlers.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's probably right. You know, you might remember in 2016, Trump gave a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition where he was actually quite rude to them. And in fact, they attacked him as an anti Semite in the media because he had like invoked these tropes, I don't need your Jewish money. Or however exactly he put it. But it was like pretty crude. Like, you know, like, oh, you think you can just buy me, I don't need your money, whatever, whatever. And, and they were like pretty sensitive about that at the time. But I think one, I mean, I don't know how sincere was in the first place. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Like how sincere was he in the first place? But also I think someone must have told him, Mr. President or Mr. Trump, you don't need their money. But the Republican Party does need their money, right? You want the House and the Senate to vote your way. They got to be under the control of the rest Republicans. And you're not going to do that without the Israel Lobby, right? You're going to, you want any support in the media, you want any support, you know, whatever. You're going to have to fall in line with this stuff. And then he did very quickly. I mean, that may have been the same speech where he said, sh. Sheldon Adelson gave all this money to Marco Rubio and he made Marco Rubio into his perfect little puppet. And then he turned around and he took hundreds of millions of dollars from Sheldon Adelson and his wife. Which by the way, for conservative Christians out there listening to this, you really got to ask yourself, like, how is it that the most wealthy and powerful donors in the Republican Party in the United States are Israeli Jewish heirs? Or this, you know, Sheldon's dead now. So an Israeli Jewish heir to a Chinese gambling fortune is the one who bankrolls Donald Trump's campaign and get and confront compromises him for Israel, gets him to do all these things for Israel for hundreds of millions of dollars from gambling in China. That's the conservative American Republican Party. Like, geez, I don't know, what if that was impossible? What would The Republican Party of the United States of America be instead. If it wasn't Israeli Jews with hundreds of millions of dollars of chicom gambling fortunes to spend, but just American voters were the only ones who were allowed to donate, for example, we'd have an entirely different Republican Party, an America First Republican Party as well.

[A]

They could look at what, I don't know how much Thomas Massie has raised right now, but his average donation, he's raised millions of dollars, which is a huge amount of money for a congressional district primary. Obviously AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition and Miriam Adelson are putting in millions of dollars. They're trying to blast them out the way that they've blasted other members out. But Thomas, by being America first, has a very diverse, robust donor base.

[B]

Well, don't forget where he comes from too. Right. Like I know you know the story probably better than I do, but he is a regular guy from his district who went down to a city council meeting to oppose their zoning changes or whatever it was, sticking up for the local farmers. Then as he was up at the, at the stand, all everybody whose turn it was to speak said, I yield my time to that guy. Let him speak. He's the one doing so great. And whatever. That's how he became a congressman in the first place, was his neighbors chose him to be their representative. Just like the BS they taught you in fourth grade. Right. Just like how it never works, but that is actually where he comes from. And so, you know, I don't know exactly how safe his seat is, but I think it's probably, probably pretty safe. And this is the kind of thing is very difficult to do even with 435 different members of the House. You know, Ron Paul was able to hang on to his district because first of all, he had delivered such a.

[A]

I think he delivered. Delivered most of his voters.

[B]

Yeah, like a huge percentage of them anyway. Like, yeah, here in the Johnson family, all seven of us vote Paul. Right. He had that pretty locked up. But also he would be pretty cautious about Israel sometimes and he would say, look, I don't think we should support Israel, but I don't think we should tell Israel what to do either. We should just let them be a sovereign independent country and make their own decisions and whatever. And so he was really kind of splitting the difference between, you know, not wanting to help them, but also not wanting to turn the population of his district against him for being too against

[A]

what Israel was doing, which is exactly where Thomas is and probably got it from Ron Paul that position of like, I'm. It's not my job as a U.S. congressman to opine. He's been on my show a bunch of times and when I push him on something, he'll be very careful about expressing opinions about the bad behavior of foreign governments. Because he's like, that's not my job. Me as a pundit.

[B]

As long as we're not subsidizing it,

[A]

it's not my job. It's our constitutional responsibility to stay out of that stuff. So, like I said, this could be a very depressing show, but I want to try to bring it around to a positive thing because I'm looking at this strange bedfellows coalition where you have guys like Jimmy Dore and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and this beautiful broad spectrum of opinions that a lot of them signed up for Trump because they thought he was going to be the America First. Less forever wars. No forever wars. But those people are out there. And that's an organizing principle. I always say this. If you look at these various concentric circles of people that were part of Trump's coalition and Maha anti war being the biggest ones, free speech absolutists and a dozen other circles that would overlay in the middle of that is a very libertarian center. That's what unites us. But if we're going to build that coalition, we have to get comfortable with someone like Jimmy Dore, who actually endorsed Thomas Massie for president, even though he comes from a very progressive background. There is an opportunity here to mobilize like we did in 2013, but it's a bigger project. We got to get our shit together.

[B]

Yeah, totally agree with that. And we do have Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, you know, at least up there on Capitol Hill to be, you know, national figureheads of the, of the movement. But this is something that I guess I haven't done as good a job preaching about in recent years. But I used to talk about all the time in the W. Bush years, especially where. And this is partly because I'm from Austin, right? So in the 1990s, I knew right wing militia guys who are really good on stuff and I knew left wing commie hippie types who were, well, are like anarcho syndicalists, like all the way to the left where they're like less totalitarian and more anarchists who are really good guys, you know what I mean? And we agreed about all the most important stuff. And at the time I always thought if I could introduce my hippie friends and my militia friends, they would hate each other. Right? But if I can keep whipping them into staying good and prioritizing the things that they're good on that we can all be good on together, there is room for a realignment there. It can be done. Where it's in my conception, it's, this is in 2012, I proposed that Ron stay in the race and name Kucinich as his running mate and demand that Obama kick Biden off his ticket and run with Mitt Romney. And then that way we can have a two party system. We'll have the Democratic Republicans versus the war party of taxes, tyranny, Zionism and death, and then we'll actually have a choice. Right? And so Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich were very different on a lot of things, but their sames were on the most important things. And so, you know, Jimmy Dore is a great example. There's, and, and you know, people like Jack Posavic, I know he kind of tries to ride the fence sometimes, but Cernovich, some of these other right wingers, like, I think it's really worth working on them. And, and for me, like, look, I am a libertarian. I want everybody to be a libertarian, but not really. What I really want is for everybody to be anti war. If you like your identity, you can keep it. I'm not asking you to move one degree left, right, or toward me, front, back, whatever, dude. Just stop being stupid about American foreign policy, that's all. We can't have libertarianism in a world empire. So let's just worry about trying to get as many Americans as possible on the same page about, you know, opposing this kind of interventionism. And then we can see about, you know, bringing our troops home, really repealing the empire and get to work on restoring something, something like a republic here. But there are plenty of good leftists and plenty of good right wingers who are just sick and tired of the national government ruining everything. I mean, our Constitution does not describe this leviathan at all. It describes a limited republic of sovereign states and semi sovereign states and whatever the hell. Nothing like what we have in even the post New Deal era, much less the 21st century. However, the Constitution to me seems kind of workable actually. If we were to try it, it's not that bad. It's just they gave up on it so long ago. But especially the, the Bill of Rights. I bet you could probably get something like 85 or 90% of the American people to agree. Last time I saw a poll about this, something like 90% of the American people agree that the Bill of Rights is extremely important and that we need to keep it, even if they don't really know what's in there, they've heard of it and they know that without it we're worse off. You know, we could lose our free speech or our right to go to whatever church we want, or our right to own a gun and protect our family and whatever it is. People know they need that. So I think, you know, ultimately true Americanism, right? Like Declaration of Independence Americanism, that is libertarianism, right? That's what freedom is, what this country is about in the first place. It's just TV would have you believe otherwise. You know, Alex Carp from Palantir would have you believe what's special about America is how good he is at killing people. But that's not right. Which, he said that in an interview yesterday. That's not right. What's, what's great about this country is that the people who are from here can live here and be free. And, and that is our highest political goal and, and our highest political ideal. And I think despite all the, the corruption and diversion and all the crap people learn in college and whatever that, like, ultimately that is what we agree on. And in fact, that's, that's why they have to take libertarian type ideologies and tropes and then twist them into reasons to go to war, right? Like, oh, don't you believe the people of Iran have a right to be free? Don't you want to go and help them be free? And whatever they have to exploit our Declaration of Independence, our sentiments, in order to, to twist them, to, to justify their empire. So anyway, point being that I believe, like you, that the American people overall are good on things and definitely can be persuaded to be good on things if they're not yet. Maybe they're just lacking the right information and whatever it is, but that the best of the left and the best of the right, led by the libertarians, we can form a new consensus in this country, a new realignment in this country against national power and most importantly, against the world empire.

[A]

Well said. I wanted to bring up your master class that you're producing. I guess Tom woods is, what is he, an executive producer?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Why don't you take a minute and tell me about the dozens of projects that you're currently doing that is a source of information if people want to dig deeper.

[B]

Sure. Thanks. So first of all, just go to the factsabouteran.com because what I've done is I've taken some of the course material from the, the Scott Horton Academy focused on Iran. And I have that for you for free right there@the factsabouteron.com give you a deep background on American foreign policy concerning Iran all through the 70s, 80s, 90s.

[A]

We went through about three hours of that today.

[B]

Oh, okay, great. Oh, thank you. Very good. And then, yeah, and then that does come from the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, which as you say, was Tom woods idea. Actually he has his own liberty classroom and this is my version of it. I have two courses is one on the terror war and another on the Cold war with Russia based on my books. Enough already. And provoked. Then I also have the great Jim Bovard on 40 years of investigative journalism. I got Ramsey Barood, the Palestinian refugee on the reality of the Israel Palestine conflict. Bill Bupert on how America lost every war since 1945. And Adam Francisco is a Lutheran scholar debunking Christian Zionism basically. And, and for that matter, really teaching the entire history of Christianity and Judaism since the invention of Christianity is an absolutely fantastic course. A Christian view on the Christian view of Judaism and Israel, I believe was what it's called excellent stuff. And we're going to be adding more and more. We've got C.J. kilmer working on his course on how Woodrow Wilson is the worst person who ever lived. We've got Grant F. Smith is doing one on the history of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which of course was created by the Israeli regime in the first place. And more coming up. So that's all Scott hortonacademy.com and again, for the quick and dirty, relatively quick and dirty on Iran, go to the

[A]

facts about iran.com and also antiwar.com antiwar.com

[B]

all day, every day. I don't take credit. People give me too much credit because I'm the editorial director, but I don't do the work there. Eric Garris is the real boss. Dave decamp is in charge of the news. Kyle Anzalone is our opinion editor. I'm here basically to break a tie in case Kyle and Eric disagree about which article to run or whatever.

[A]

You're just a sex symbol at this point.

[B]

That's exactly right. I'm the flavor Flav of the group out there. I'm the hype man. But no, Dave DeCamp and Kyle Anzlone and Eric Garris and the others get the the credit for the hard [e-mail]. but yes, that is where you need to go every day for the bad news. And of course the libertarian institute as well. Libertarianinstitute.org all right, cool.

[A]

We gotta, we gotta hit the road and get to West Virginia. Absolutely appreciate you doing this.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about free the people, go to freethepeople.org.