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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 391 | We Were Lied into War with Iran | Guest: Joe Kent
01:16:36
Matt Kibbe is joined by Joe Kent, former director of counterterrorism for the Trump administration, to discuss why Americans were led to believe that Iran was an existential threat that needed to be dealt with immediately.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking to Joe Kent, the former director of counterterrorism in the Trump administration, about the latest deal that the president has that he says will end the war in Iran. Are they going to let him do that? Let's find out. Check it out. Welcome to kibbe on liberty. Joe, good to finally meet you.
- [00:53]
B
Great to meet you, too. Thanks for having me.
- [00:54]
A
You've been a busy man these last couple months. When did you resign again? Remind me.
- [01:00]
B
March 17, I believe, was the.
- [01:02]
A
Was the date we pulled the trigger, March 17. And for maybe just a few of my listeners have been living under a rock. Remind us, you know, why you left the Trump administration and give us a little bit about your resume, particularly your military service.
- [01:19]
B
Sure. So the big reason why I left the Trump administration two weeks into the war, the real immediate tactical reason, is I didn't believe that we were being listened to about ways we could get out of the war. So I believed that I had reached basically my maximum efficiency within the administration. Prior to that, myself and others had been critical of Israel's influence on trying to drag us into the war ahead of the 12 day war. A lot of us pointed out that this was in Israel's interest and not our interest, that actually our negotiations were making good headway and the Iranians were withholding their proxies. They had prohibition on developing a nuclear weapon. So we felt that we were in a good space. We felt that the 12 day war derailed. That Midnight Hammer happened. There was mixed feelings on that. I was against the initial strikes, but it did give us a chance to step back and kind of reset. Unfortunately, there was a lot of boxing out that happened after that. The robust debate that existed before the 12 Day War and Midnight Hammer really ceased. The president was pretty isolated. And I watched the echo chamber that I described in my resignation letter of official engagements with the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence officials, and then also donors to the president and then the media ecosystem that the president consumes, Fox News, et cetera, all echoing the same talking points that basically Iran can never have any kind of enrichment, which hadn't been an issue before, but we knew it was a poison pill for the Iranians. We can get into all that, but watching that transform and watching us be boxed out and then the war basically being forced upon us. And Secretary Rubio in the initial days kind of confirmed that. He said that, you know, there was an imminent attack, but it was the fact that the Israelis were going to imminently attack Iran, which would then result in The Iranians attacking us basically because the, in the Iranians mind, they had already taken one iteration of war on the chin and got back to the negotiating table in good faith. So I believe that I couldn't be efficient anymore. But also we had just taken our first casualties. We had taken about 13 casualties at that point. I spent the majority of my young life, my 20s and 30s, fighting in the global war on terror. 11 combat deployments. Lost my late wife, she was also in the military. She was killed fighting ISIS in Syria in the first Trump administration. And so for me, morally, I couldn't be part of a war that was going to produce more casualties that was not in our nation's national interest. So, I mean, we can get into all this too. But 20 plus years ago, I was sitting in Iraq on my third deployment watching us lose more and more people, and it kind of dawned on me that like there was no weapons of mass destruction. The only reason we were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq was because we had come there to Iraq, that it didn't exist before. And I was frustrated as a 25, 26 year old man that none of the people who were career government, you know, employees, professional soldiers who had transitioned into working in the senior levels of the government, who fought in the Vietnam War, who had similar experiences when they were young men, I was frustrated that none of them were speaking out at the time. And so like idealistic young men do, I said, well, if I'm ever in a position to make a difference, you know, somewhere down the road I'm going to do so. And so I just, for moral reasons, I had to, had to walk away and start speaking out to hopefully at least attempt to, to make a difference in that regard and hopefully get us out of the war before it spiraled even further into disaster.
- [04:38]
A
You know, I hear that story again and again, people that served in Afghanistan and Iraq and realizing that the rationale, particularly for being in Iraq was a lie. Weapons of mass destruction. It's more powerful coming from you guys because you had real skin in the game. But it's funny because you're. Now, was Tulsi Gabbard your boss or were you in separate divisions? I didn't even know what the National Intelligence Director did specifically until Tulsi got that job. Yeah, you were counterintelligence. Explain the.
- [05:13]
B
I was counterterrorism. Counterterrorism, yeah. So. So Tulsi was the Director of National Intelligence. She supervises the office of the Director of the National Intelligence because the government loves these crazy acronyms. So after 9 11, two organizations were created that basically became one. So the narrative behind the failures of 911 was that the IC, the intelligence community and law enforcement weren't talking together. And so a organization was created which became the National Counterterrorism center, which I was eventually the director of. And our sole purpose was basically to oversee all counter terrorism intelligence collection. But also we get access to basically the raw reporting before it's put into finalized product from both the FBI, so both law enforcement level, but then everything that the CIA and the rest of the, the intelligence community and the Department of Thought Defense do. So we could see everything that pertained to counterterrorism. About a year after that, there was an official act, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention act in 2005 that established the DNI to oversee all of the intelligence community to be above the CIA and everyone else. So not just to oversee counterterrorism, but to oversee everything to be read on to all the COVID action, to be read on to all the special access programs. And so Tulsi, actually, in my view, we can, we can talk about this more. She's probably the first DNI who read that statute and said, okay, I'll go do this because, you know, this is my job now and I'll oversee it. That's why she probably didn't make too many friends in her time as the dni.
- [06:41]
A
Not. Not received particularly well by. No, by the deep state.
- [06:45]
B
No, the CIA does not like it when you say, like, I want to start looking into what you're doing, you know, wherever. They're just not. The CIA and the FBI especially, they're not. And to a lesser degree, the NSA and the arresting intelligence community, but especially those two big dogs, if you will. They're not used to someone saying like, hey, what are you guys doing over there? Let me, let me see the raw reporting. Where'd you get that intel? Why do you think that those are not things that they, they really like. So I worked directly under Tulsi when I was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. So if you, if you look up the, the goofy statute that created the director of the National Counterterrorism center, you kind of have two bosses. So I'm part of, I was part of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, So reported to Tulsi, advised her on everything counterterrorism wise. But then I had a second direct line as a presidential appointee where I was the President's senior adviser on all matters counterterrorism.
- [07:33]
A
So. And the reason I want people to understand that, because very early on in this Trump administration, I think it was March of 2025, Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was not making a nuke. But that was almost immediately dismissed by Trump himself. Like he's. I think he said, I don't care, I don't care what she says. Yep. What happened?
- [08:01]
B
So basically the intelligence community does not agree on a lot consistently. And this is where the DNI does come in. And under the dni, this is. We're getting like way down in the weeds here. But also under the dni, there's a National Intelligence Council. National Intelligence Council is supposed to be basically the final word from the analytic community. It has people from basically every single aspect of the, of the ic and they'll come together and they'll put together the finalized report. And so the IC actually had been in consensus, which is hard to do, for quite some time for, for almost basically since 2004, 2005 ish, that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. And this isn't because the Iranians, like, were too dumb. They couldn't do. It's not because of that. It's not because they lack the capability. Iran's strategic plan basically, when it came to nuclear proliferation was that they weren't going to get the Gaddafi treatment and they weren't going to get the Saddam treatment. They were going to thread the needle and basically have the ability and show us, show the world they had the ability to develop a nuclear weapon, but that they didn't have one, basically to be a breakout state. So they saw what happened with Gaddafi in Libya, when Gaddafi and Libya, after we invaded Iraq said, okay, I'll give you guys everything I have that could, you know, let me put together a nuclear weapon. I'll do exactly what you say. And we all saw what happened a few years later with Gaddafi. Saddam kind of did something very similar where he was coy about it. You know, he, he never kept quite came out. He came out like towards the very end and said, I don't have any wmd. But there was a while there where he was kind of like making it seem like maybe I could have one. He had done some development. So the Iranians watched all this and they came up with a very pragmatic kind of thread the needle. I call it the Goldilocks solution. You don't give it all up, but you don't quite make one. And then that gives you a big bargaining chip. The Supreme Leader also codified this with a religious fatwa and, and When I bring up fatwa, people will say, oh, my gosh, you believe Shia fatwas? I'm like, actually not. I don't believe Shia fatwas. In the intelligence community. It wasn't my job to believe anything that anyone ever said, but it was our job to check in and see what actions they were taking. And we saw the Ayatollah and we saw a lot of senior members of the Iranian government, many of whom who have been killed now basically hold this and say, this is our pragmatic solution. We don't want to develop a nuclear weapon. So when Tulsi presented that intelligence, she was basically just saying, this is the consensus of the ic. Now, unfortunately, President Trump, and a lot of this the IC did themselves. It is a case of the boy who cried wolf. President Trump has a. Not the greatest relationship with the IC and for good reasons. I mean, the Russiagate and several other matters that were weaponized against President Trump. When he would hear something from the IC that maybe he didn't necessarily agree with or maybe he was skeptical of, he. Just because of all the experiences that he had, I think a lot of times he would kind of tune it out. Now, the CIA was getting a good deal of information from the Israelis through Ratcliffe, Rubio as well. These guys have long storied histories with AIPAC and with Israeli donors and generally have been much more hawkish. And the Israelis came. When we came into the administration, the Israelis are pretty upfront with us that they thought right now was the time to go take out the Ayatollah. And so it was hard to balance for. For the dni. Before I was confirmed as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, I was serving as the DNI Chief of staff. And so it was hard for us to push back when the President would say, yeah, but, you know, the IC screwed me over last time, or the IC gets it wrong all the time. You know, they said Saddam, you know, had weapons of mass destruction, and he didn't like. So the track record of the IC at that time wasn't that great. It was hard. And I had worked heavily on the Iran portfolio when I was in Special Forces, especially in Iraq. So I knew the Iranians pretty well, but it was hard to be able to get the opportunity to present the level of expertise that there was in the IC to the President. So that's, I mean, Tulsi, to her credit, even though there was a lot of, I think, political pressure within the White House of people saying, like, the President doesn't want to Hear that? She. She stood in the breach in March of 25, and then actually after this war began, too, another time, and just said, like, they weren't developing a nuclear weapon.
- [12:01]
A
There's no shortage of hot takes out there. What's actually rare is rigorous thinking. People who follow the data wherever it leads, regardless of which side it makes uncomfortable. That's exactly what Anthony Davies and James Harrigan do on the Words and Numbers podcast. And Free the People is proud to announce their launch on our channels. New episodes will drop every Thursday. Check freethepeople.org on social media @freethepeople or find words and Numbers anywhere you listen to podcasts. Go give your brain something it actually wants. I'm old enough to remember when President Trump accused Marco Rubio of being Sheldon Adelson's puppet.
- [12:44]
B
Right.
- [12:44]
A
But I guess that was a. That was a younger, more idealistic time.
- [12:49]
B
Yeah.
- [12:50]
A
And I'm thinking about this. This metaphor. Weapons of mass destruction light us into a forever war in Iraq. Who lied us into this war?
- [13:04]
B
This was a concerted effort by what I think just colloquially we refer to as the Israeli lobby. But it's not just a bunch of AIPAC lobbyists going door to door and handing out campaign checks. From what I saw, it's much more sophisticated, and I would just say so pervasive that it's almost decentralized at this point. Obviously, it's centralized because people have the same goal, but. But it's multifaceted. We have done. We, the US Government and the intelligence community and the Department of Defense have gotten very, very cozy with the Israelis over years. And a lot of this is because the Middle east is a very hard place to work. I spent a lot of time working there. We don't speak the languages, we don't understand the cultures. Those of us who do, we had to learn it the hard way, and it takes us a while. So we've become very dependent over the years on the Israelis because of this. We have given them what I think is unprecedented access. And there's. There's efforts right now to give them, like, even more unprecedented access, but we have given them more access to our senior officials and to be able to put intelligence into, you know, into, and in many cases, circumvent the traditional intelligence processes. And so that's. That's given them the ability to really be able to inform us, but also influence us. And I say usually they influence us a lot more than they actually inform us. And so I just think organizationally, on the intelligence community side, we did get Pretty weak, a lot of our skills to go out there and actually collect our own unilateral intelligence. To double check what a liaison partner like the Israelis is telling us. A lot of those skills atrophied unfortunately, over the years. Another facet is, I would say this administration's and the people that the President chose to have around him. You know, Rubio, Ratcliffe, Waltz and some of these, like I like Mike Waltz, we're both Green Berets. Always been good to me. I think he's a good person. We see the world a little bit differently. But these guys all have relationships with a lot of Israeli donors. AIPAC was bragging about being able to insert the National Security Advisor and the Director of the CIA because they have long standing relationships with them. This gives these Israeli officials or in some cases donors, the ability to go directly to the principal. So we would get things from Israeli liaison in the intelligence community and put it through the traditional. Let's check to see if our liaison partners are being, being honest with this process. But by the time we can spit out a product, the, the Israeli officials have already gotten to the principle, so kind of negating a lot of that. And then there's the media ecosystem where you have Fox News, Mark Levin, you've got think tanks like FDD that are very influential here. If all of these different elements get on the same sheet of music like they did over the course of the last year, they can affect US Policy in a very big way. Now, one of the key ways they did that in the lead up to this war was they basically changed the President's own red line. They kind of convinced the President and obviously there's still some onus on him because he should have drawn a much more hard line. He should have said, this is not my policy. I don't think he necessarily got the wool pulled over his eyes, but I do think he was inundated with information. President Trump's position, and he says this all the time. He always says, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. But like we just described, the Iranians actually agreed with him. And so the Israelis realized this and this was a massive threat to the Israelis. So right when President Trump came back in, In January of 2025, he basically dispatched Steve Witkoff and said, I want negotiations with the Iranians. Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. That's my starting point. The Iranians said, great. And the Iranians actually even took actions to show us that we were serious. They didn't take Biden serious. And so under the Biden administration, the Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria that attacked our troops, you know, 200 plus times, they stopped all that immediately got at the negotiating table. Steve Witkoff, at this time, you know, last year and early in the Trump administration was in the process of negotiating how, you know, what level of enrichment the Iranians could have and how it would be monitored. You can even go back and pull up clips where Steve was on, like the Sunday shows talking about just these issues, like, yeah, we're still working out the details on how, what level of enrichment, etc. So the Israeli lobby essentially saw and the Israelis saw that, like, oh crap, like Trump's going to get a deal with these guys. Because that's what Trump wanted. He wanted to deal, he wanted to be the President of peace. And so they, using this very pervasive ecosystem, were able to basically come in and say, the President's actual policy isn't Iran can't have any weapon, it's Iran can't have any enrichment. And if Iran can't have any enrichment, that throws away the whole Iranian strategy of being a breakout nuclear power. And then they think that they're going to be on the cusp of basically getting the Gaddafi treatment in Libya. So this was a poison pill. And we all knew it was a poison pill for the Iranians. Everybody who had studied the portfolio had studied the Iranians and what the negotiating position was, because we had a lot of data on them, like, think what you will of the jcpoa. That was a two year process. Our intelligence community was monitoring that. So we knew what the Iranian red lines were. So the Israeli lobby was able to insert this, this poison pill and basically say, no, President Trump's position is Iran can't have any enrichment, period. And that led us up to the 12 Day War. But even then, the Iranians were still at the negotiating table with us. I think Witkoff understood this and he was staying on the negotiations. The Israelis launched the 12 Day War. A lot of us ahead of the 12 Day War were saying, hey, if we think our negotiations are working and we're worrying about the Israelis messing this up, then what we need to do is take away the Israelis ability to go on the offensive because they can't consistently go on the offensive to Iran. It's a big distance there. It's not like them striking Lebanon in their backyard. They actually need us for that. We lost that fight. 12 day war kicks off. The Iranians are like, well, we're not happy that the, the Israelis are attacking us, but the Americans really aren't attacking us, and so they didn't actually strike us at that time. Trump conducts Midnight Hammer. The good thing coming out of Midnight Hammer was that President Trump said, all the uranium is completely obliterated. And so that took the whole enrichment issue completely off the table. Again, this is a major threat now to the Israelis because now we're back at the negotiating table with them. And so they went back on a full court press to tell the president that, like, you know, they're going to get a nuclear weapon. You didn't get all the nuclear dust. Maybe if we arm the protesters, maybe if we arm the Kurds. And then, unfortunately, we had the Venezuela incident and, like, we were successful. I'm glad none of our guys got hurt. However, that gave us a very false sense of, you know, invincibility that our military.
- [19:20]
A
Easy, right?
- [19:21]
B
This will be easy. We can just swoop right in there. And so, again, the Israelis did a very good job of seeing that the president, like, had kind of moved away from the enrichment issue, was working towards getting a deal. They then kind of shifted the way that the. The echo chamber and the ecosystem was approaching him. They basically said, protesters are on the streets. The Israelis or the Iranians didn't even hit you during the 12 Day War. See, they're a paper tiger. All this talk about, oh, they're proxies, their ballistic missiles, it's nonsense because they didn't do it during the 12 day war. This is going to be easy. It's going to be like Venezuela, you know, well, maybe we'll arm the Kurds, maybe we'll arm the protesters, but we hit them, we kill the Ayatollah, which basically, I think got us to the situation that we're in right now where I'm very skeptical of us having a deal that sticks because we killed so many of the moderates, that if we do that, we kill that, we kill the Ayatollah. The whole thing's going to fall. Then you're going to be a historic president that accomplish what no one could
- [20:10]
A
accomplish in 47 the second lie. This will be easy.
- [20:13]
B
This will be easy, right?
- [20:14]
A
So, like, how does that. I mean, you're describing the ecosystem and the echo chamber and, you know, old corporate media versus the podcasters. We all hate the podcasters now because we're allowed to talk about other things other than what's. What's sanctioned. But, like, as I understand it, the consensus was a war in Iran, particularly if it got to the point where we had troops on the ground, would would absolutely be twice the quagmire that a place like Iraq was. And yet they were able to flip on a dime the narrative like, oh, this will be easy. Is that, is that because of certain guys like Rubio who are echoing those talking points and they have the President's ear?
- [20:57]
B
Yeah. And the President was isolated at that time. We had a really robust leading up to the 12 day war in Midnight Hammer. There was a robust National Security Council debate, there was a robust deputies Committee process. The whole IC was in there kind of, you know, fighting it out, hashing out different courses of action. After Midnight Hammer, for whatever reason there, there was kind of a firewall built around the President. And I don't think he had enough dissenters there. You know, especially people who had been boots on the ground. I mean, I know Secretary Hegseth, you know, served many years ago as well, but the people that were really pushing this, I just don't think that they ever were truly honest with the President about just how challenging this was going to be. I think they had kind of gotten high on their own supply. I think that they were like. Because the Israelis did impress a lot of people during the 12 Day War with how they were able to take down the Iranian air defenses and it's seemingly fly with impunity into Iranian airspace and bomb whatever they wanted to bomb. We didn't factor in at the time. It wasn't factored in, or at least it wasn't delivered to the, the President, that the Iranians still had most of their moderates in place and they still wanted to get back to the negotiating table with us. And we hadn't fully joined the war and the Iranians had factored that in and they were withholding their ballistics, their drones, their proxies for a time when we fully jumped into the war. So between that and Venezuela and then again, the protesters being on the streets, I think they were, they were able to kind of pull a fast one by the President and just say, hey, like this is going to be quick and easy, man, this is going to be just like Venezuela.
- [22:25]
A
It, it, it sort of assumes that guys like you and Tulsi and other voices who had a different perspective were at that point completely marginalized in the conversation.
- [22:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why I left. I mean, look, Tulsi and other folks can come and they, they did have better access than me. They can push back and say, no, I, you know, I was there. I had some more, more information that Joe didn't. That's fine. But there was a drastic night and day difference between lead up to the 12 day war where we were actually doing the full NSC process. I think a lot of that was actually reaching the President because he was much more skeptical. And then after that all that we at the deputies and level, we were kind of talking to each other.
- [23:02]
A
Yeah. So all this leads up to the question of the day and, and this, this show will run two days from now and God knows how many things will change by then. Yeah, I don't think they will change because it's strikes me that history keeps repeating itself here. We're about 100 days in and I had to ask Rock because I've lost track 38, 39 times the president has announced some sort of understanding with negotiations with Iran and every time Israel bombs Lebanon or something else. And so we just, these things keep unraveling. But according to Grok, there is a memorandum of understanding that may well get signed, a signed agreement this week. Is that still true?
- [23:53]
B
As far as I know, when I was checking X as I was parking, I mean in theory they're going to Geneva, at least the vp potentially they're even teasing the President might go and sign some memorandum. Now what's in the memorandum? You HEAR what Washington D.C. what the White House says, and that's basically like Iran commits to never developing a nuclear weapon. Well, they committed to that before the war. They'll open the Straits of Hormuz with like no tolls or anything like that. The Iranians are saying something completely different right now. Straits, I believe are open as of this morning. Now are they getting told by the, the Iranians and the Omanis? Iran says they are. We also are saying that Iran's going to give up any supplying or training or equipping they're doing for the proxies. And then there's even demands in there about their ballistic missiles, which is pretty, pretty crazy to me. And then the President is insisting that Iran will either blend or dilute their enriched uranium or give it to us under our supervision, which I think is a big red line for the Iranians. So I think there's still like a lot of friction points in here. And the wild cards is Israel. I mean the Iranians have, because they were so successful in the war and able to leverage, I think just such strength on the, on the streets of Hormuz, they then decided that they were really going to take the fight into Lebanon and actually have Hezbollah's back and kind of extend themselves. Now as one of the major powers in the Region, which they'd never really done before. They'd always given, you know, clandestine support to Hezbollah, clandestine support to Hamas. But this was them really stepping up and saying, like, Israel, if you take action against Lebanon, we're going to strike you back. And they actually did that. So for us to say that, you know, the Israelis can't just go do a bunch of bombing raids in Beirut, which as of, like this morning, they were doing that, that's not going to spoil the deal. I'm pretty skeptical.
- [25:44]
A
Yeah. I mean, Netanyahu, by the way, I'm taking a risk here by even criticizing the head of a foreign government because apparently we're not allowed to criticize Benjamin Netanyahu. But he came out immediately after Trump announced this memorandum of understanding and said, we're not party to that.
- [26:04]
B
Right.
- [26:05]
A
We don't care.
- [26:06]
B
Yep.
- [26:06]
A
It seems pretty arrogant to me.
- [26:09]
B
It does, yeah. I mean, that's why from the time I resigned and started speaking out publicly, I said, step one and any way out of this is what we have to restrain the Israelis. Like, I know the president, he'll leak stuff to Axios and say, like, I cussed out Bibi, or he'll even do, like, the all caps truth posts or whatever. Like. Like the Israelis are prohibited from striking Lebanon. The Israelis have gotten, you know, chewed out multiple times. It doesn't have any effect. And of course not, because we continue to give them basically whatever they want. They still get the 3.8 billion, plus all the other military hardware that we give them. They get the political top cover. I think in order to actually assert that we're serious this time. If the President is serious about making the signing work on Friday, he has got to really restrain the Israelis, knowing that they can still strike into Lebanon because it's so close for them, but he's got to take something away from them to say, like, I actually mean it this time, guys, like, you've really crossed the line, and we want to make this, this peace arrangement last. And if you guys continue to take these actions, then you will be cut off from all of our aid. And then we can go our own ways and you guys can pursue your interests, but we're not going to be a part of this anymore.
- [27:15]
A
It's fascinating. And I know we're all trying to figure out what's really going on with President Trump because He's done a 180 on much of his foreign policy positions that first attracted people as far back as 2015. He could probably even go back earlier. And I was in Kentucky helping Thomas Massie, and I was asking Grok to run the numbers. I'm not sure they got him right, but at least 20 million spent against Thomas Massie, and that's. I don't know what the number is. It's 300, $500 per vote against him. I understand the message they're sending, and they've definitely gotten a high degree of fealty from elected Republicans to support a blank check for whatever Israel wants. But Trump's not running again, and so what? How have they captured him? I realize you have to speculate to answer this question, but why won't he cut them off?
- [28:19]
B
This is what I've had a hard time wrapping my head around as well, because someone like Trump, who basically in 2016, was able to put out enough feelers on social media and from talking to people that the American people really mad at our foreign policy so much to the point where he, at a Republican debate, goes after the Bush establishment for Iraq, which at the time, other than, you know, Ron Paul, nobody was doing. And he did it, and he did it very boldly. And that's when I became a Trump supporter, actually. And I don't think I was alone. And then, even in his first administration, even though things did not go perfectly in the first administration, he didn't get us into any new wars. He had, you know, John Bolton and other neocon hawks, Pompeo, in his ear, screaming at him to do this, you know, back four or five years ago. And he didn't do it. You know, he even backed off every time there was escalation, essentially in a very intelligent way, when they, when Iran shot down one of our drones, you know, Bolton and Pompeo wanted to blow up, like, an Iranian Navy base. And Trump was like, for a drone, Like, I'm not doing that. We're not going to get involved in a war. When Iran, Iranian proxies in Iraq, killed one of our troops, but Trump killed Qasim Solmani, killed Abu Mahdi Mohandas, but then he backed off from the larger war. And so it seemed like President Trump understood just at a, at a gut level, like, a war with Iran is going to make me, George Bush, like, I'm not going to do it. And even coming into the administration, in the early parts of the administration, I remember it being discussed that the Israelis, you know, they want to talk to you about, like, you know, seizing all these different nuclear facilities. And the president, to me seemed at that time utterly uninterested. Like, are you kidding me? Like, of course this is this is BB shtick or whatever, like, I don't care. And then I don't. I can't put my finger on exactly what happened because we went from, like, we're not that interested in it. We'll kind of humor the Israelis, but we've got bigger fish to fry. I think Wikoff's going to get us a deal. It's going to be historic. And somewhere around, I don't know, May, June, time frame of 25, that just shifted. And it was. It almost became an inevitable ability that we are going to do something against Iran. And I don't know what changed the President's mind. Something that I can't not wrap my head around because of other parts of the scope of duties I had. Looking into the Butler assassination, looking into Charlie Kirk's assassination, was that basically there was multiple assassination attempts against the president, two of which one got really close. That one. There was a lot of innuendo around that Iran was involved. I couldn't find any actual Iranian linkage. When we tried to go down the rabbit hole and figure out if there was any connection between this guy named Asif Marshant, who was ostensibly hired by the Iranians, who came here, who was arrested two days before Butler, we tried to see if there's any linkage between him and between Butler. We were shut down. We were told there was nothing there to see. And that Thomas Crooks was truly an enigma. We can't get into his phones. And they said, okay, we can't get into his phones, but there's nothing there. Would never let the rest of the intelligence community look at it. Even though the guy was dead, there's no Fourth Amendment issues there because we're trying to. We're trying to determine if there was indeed any foreign links. And then, you know, this time last year or so, Tucker Carlson's investigative journalist comes out and finds a prolific online presence that Thomas Crooks had where he's even talking to a guy who's designated as a terrorist. So it's definitely way more questions than answers. And the fact that no one in the administration seemed to be very interested and getting to the bottom of it, you know, it leads you to think. But then, you know, there's other assassination attempt in West Palm Beach. Still not as many unanswered questions there, but still quite a few. A lot of overseas ties as well. And then there's multiple breaches of the President's protective detail of his actual bubble, his security bubble. You know, one here in D.C. when he went out to the restaurant. There's the Code Pink people. There was the escalator stoppage that the UN There was the armed New York police officer who was off duty that came up and shook the President's hand. So there's multiple instances where it was very clear to the President that he wasn't safe. And then in the interim period between Midnight Hammer and between this war, one of his biggest political organizers, who is publicly against the Iran war, who was in the Oval Office trying to press the President not to go to War of Iran, Charlie Kirk, is publicly assassinated in September. I think all those things have to factor in. Now, I'm not saying definitively any one of those things or all of those things is convincing the President. But if I just say if I was back in the intelligence community and I was assessing a foreign country, trying to determine why a leader was thinking the way that he's thinking, and he had had multiple assassination attempts, he had a political ally killed, multiple breaches of his security detail, I would say, well, we have to factor all that in to determine if that's, you know, influencing the president in any way, shape or form. Because if you have that many data points, the President is very good as a executive. He's been an executive his whole life at taking in, you know, large sets of data, maybe not getting a clear answer, but being able to paint himself a clear picture of, you know, where his risks are. So that's something to me that I can't ever put out of. Out of my head as to the question of why did Trump do all these 180s on key, you know, campaign promises and what seemed to be, at the time at least, fundamental beliefs.
- [33:23]
A
You can't understate what a big comment that is, that the President is behaving against America's interests because he fears for his life. That's. That's an insane thing to say out loud.
- [33:34]
B
It is, yeah.
- [33:35]
A
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. And I should add, as a caveat, and I think you've heard. I've heard you talk about this, I've been skeptical of the official government narrative on shootings ever since Las Vegas and that it doesn't add up. I mean, I've since heard various theories that sound plausible to me, and the fact that we're not wanting to know exactly what happened in Butler, that we're not wanting to know exactly why and who murdered Charlie Kirk and who might have been involved. On the periphery of that, I think I heard you say this, that sometimes the intelligence agencies purposefully withhold the facts so that the wildest conspiracy theories emerge as opposed to what actually happened. Was that you who said that?
- [34:54]
B
I may have said that. I don't know. That sounds like something I could have said for sure. I mean, because. Yeah, indeed. Like, if you. If you don't address the obvious questions. I mean, like, with. Obviously with Butler, there's so many, and we're not allowed to ask any questions about that. So it's like, okay, people started looking at what the work that Tucker did and say, okay, why isn't this being looked at with Charlie Kirk as well? You know, whenever people get in this heated debate with me, they'll say, well, they have the guy. And I'm like, okay, I'm not questioning if that guy pulled the trigger or not. I'm questioning, did he act alone? Whether or not that guy pulled the trigger, that's going to play out in court, and there's a process for that. But we had people online ahead of Charlie being killed that were saying that Charlie was going to get killed. So to just say that it was a lone gunman, to me, it's like there's more evidence to indicate that it wasn't. You know, this didn't happen as an isolated event with just one random lone gunman. So now they take it and they're able to flip it and just say, like, anyone asking any questions is crazy. And then that gives people nowhere to go. And so then they start looking at, like, the craziest conspiracies and pointing that out and saying, like, all these people are crazy because they all believe that, you know, whatever, space aliens came and killed Charlie.
- [35:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the other factor, if. Let's say that the president may not trust his own government to protect his life, and there's evidence that they're not very good at doing that, even if it's just incompetence. There's also the money thing. Like, you know, they spent 20. It's probably going to be more like 30 against Thomas. 30 million against Thomas. Thomas Massie. And obviously, I assume part of the Republican strategy going into the midterms is that those same Donors and Those same super PACs are going to somehow protect Republicans from what absolutely looks like a catastrophic midterm election. There's all sorts of business relationships with various members of the Trump family. And that broader is business empire. You know, could it be that they're just a credible threat against his own financial empire when he leaves office?
- [36:57]
B
I mean, that could be it, too. Something that I think of. I think Trump actually is pretty courageous. We saw that on. On the stage at Butler when he got shot and stood back up. I don't know why the Secret Service let him stand back up, but they did. And under fire, he did display bravery. I think if it was a matter of just Trump's life being threatened, I honestly think he's 80 years old, and I think he'd probably walk out there and say, like, go ahead, make me a martyr. However, when it's very evident to the President that he can't be kept safe. He's got a big family, he's got lots of grandkids. And so I do think that there is a lot of leverage you can put under someone by just the innuendo of a threat against people that you love. I think that's a factor. I think the financial aspect has a potential, too. Yeah. It's hard to figure out exactly why he changed so quickly.
- [37:45]
A
Yeah. So the good news is that Mark Levin is apoplectic. I don't even what's more apoplectic than apoplectic right now about this memorandum of understanding. So that must be a good sign, because he's demanding that we finish the job. How would we finish the job?
- [38:06]
B
I mean, you really can't. And if you play this scenario out, it gets pretty dark pretty quickly, because Iran's huge. It's massive. So even if we had national will and we wanted to deploy our military fully, boots on the ground, let's knock down the regime and force whatever outcome it is. We want this. Another problem is that we never really, before we started the military campaign, we never really fully articulated what our goal was, which is like a fatal flaw in any military operation. But if our goal was to take. Take down the regime, dominate Iran, install a new government, we don't have enough folks in our military to actually accomplish this. Even if we had a coalition of the willing of some sort that gave us the right amount of troops to go ahead and do that, the insurgency that would definitely follow would be absolutely brutal. We saw this in Afghanistan, we saw this in Iraq. So when you play that out scenario, basically, if your goal is total Surrender. Well, the only other way to do that is what we did in Japan. And that's basically the calculus that we made, as I understand it, you know, with how we handled Japan, it was like, we can't afford to do another bloody ground incursion like we did in Europe, here in the Pacific here, to take Japan. So we're going to use a nuclear weapon. And so that would be the only way I could truly see us, you know, finishing the job. Because I don't think Levin, I don't think he's sophisticated enough to understand what truly finishing the, the job means, because it's like we've already proven right now, if the Israeli theory of the case was, you kill enough of the Iranian leadership and things will change. Well, that's been completely debunked because we're on like, the third or fourth iteration of Iranians. And frankly, I think they're getting more and more hardline. We saw a protest just the other, other day on the streets of Tehran against Orachi and against some of the other moderates because they're mad that, you know, the Iranians are even against negotiating right now because they view themselves as winning because there was a big rally around the flag effect after we killed the Supreme Leader.
- [39:55]
A
Yeah. I mean, we've already regime changed.
- [39:58]
B
Yeah.
- [39:59]
A
And things have gotten worse, as they always do. Yeah. Like, I feel like we've done this before and we never learned a lesson. Maybe I need to repost Ron Paul's speech from when he left Congress, but. So all that said, it sure seems like Trump wants an exit strategy. It sure seems like his instincts that turned you on to him in 2015, 2016, when he dressed down Jeb Bush. It seems like he just knows that war is bad for business, it's bad politics, and he is going into midterms. So he seems like there's a sense of urgency here. I got to get out of this. Because even though he says it doesn't matter, gas prices matter. Even though he says it doesn't matter, inflation matters. Even though he says that he doesn't care about what people's economic situations, he knows better than that. That's just bluster. You're skeptical that he'll be allowed to succeed.
- [41:04]
B
Yeah. So the Israelis were pretty smart. I mean, Mark Levin and a lot of the other crazy kind of neocons will be be like, well, if Trump was completely controlled by Netanyahu, there's no way that this, this would happen. So all you crazy podcast Joe Kent, Tucker Carlson types, you're nuts. But the Israelis are pretty clever. And so by them getting us on board with killing the Supreme Leader and getting the President to basically brag that we were on board and we killed the Supreme Leader and then the Israelis to go in and assassinate a bunch of the other so called moderates. And I say moderates and people freak out. But moderate by Iranian standards, they kind of pre baked in that we weren't going to be able to get a deal. And so the Iranians, I think, or the, the Israelis may show some tactical patience knowing that basically like they've already pushed us pretty far. And when you've got like a lot of people in America right now saying what the hell is going on? Why are we fighting Israel's war? I think they know that they're going to need to back off just a little bit. Kind of like they did after Midnight Hammer. I mean they, they gave us several months there where they, they quietly campaigned, they, they shifted their focus. But right now the President is, he is still, still stuck because he's, he's going to be forced with this, I call it a false binary choice. If he signs the MOU and it's anything like what the Iranians are claiming it is, with how much money we're going to have to unfreeze and give to them. He's going to get lambasted here domestically from his right that he cut a worse deal than Obama. And in terms of just giving Iran cash and giving an IRGC led government that much cash, they are going to fill back up the coffers of their proxies because their proxies were a great ROI in this last iteration of the war. And so he's going to get hammered for having a worse deal than Obama. He already knows if he keeps going militarily, he's going to have a worse war than Bush. You know, by some arguments he probably already has because of the way he's emboldened the Iranians. So they have him stuck in this, this prison that basically they, they created now, I don't think, I think right now Trump legitimately is mad at the Israelis. And so I don't think they're calling the shots as much as they were. But because they got us on board of killing the moderates and because now Lebanon is very much involved in the war, because the Israelis couldn't help themselves, they couldn't just wait to do Lebanon. They had to go in there because we were so committed and doing their heavy lifting for them in Iran. They said, great, let's go take Hezbollah now, but the Iranians, you said game, set, match, and they said now Lebanon and Hezbollah. That's going to be part of our calculus of as well. So Israel can still act as a spoiler without really telling President Trump off. They can just go back in there. So I think he's either going to be forced to take the deal, which at some point is going to get blown up again, because Israel or somebody else will come in and say, well, the Iranians are giving their proxies this money, and so now we have to go back in. So if he signs the deal, it really boxes us in to then having to enforce that deal and then returning to the conflict again. There's just no, no end to that. That's why I have always been advocating for President Trump just to walk away, seriously restrain the Israelis, you know, cut them off and say like, you guys are. You guys are done. And I'd even be public about that. So at least the Iranians and the rest of the Gulf can see that we're not going to get dragged back into this thing and then just walk away. And if we walk away, the Iranians basically, at that point, they have to justify to the rest of the world, now that we're not there as the aggressors, they have to justify to the rest of the world why they're messing with Straits of Hormuz. And then I think we can engage in quiet diplomacy with the Iranians on other matters, you know, kind of case by case, a la carte, as we need it. But in general, I'm not really sure, even at this point, other than having the Straits of Hormuz opened, what we really need necessarily from that region. Our bases that we claim that we needed there, you know, forever, were proven to be more of a strategic risk than they were an asset during the war. So I think this is a good time. And Trump can really lean in heavily to the this. He can say, like, this was a stupid construct built by Bush and Obama and I'm, I'm bringing our troops home. This is a good investment for the American people. I, I would just really caution him against getting locked into this MoU because it in unto itself is a poison pill that we used against him.
- [44:57]
A
Yeah. At Kibbe on Liberty, freedom is a lifestyle 24 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. Trump is going to probably, I don't, I don't see any scenario where he doesn't lose the House for the first time. Serious people are saying that the Senate is at risk as well. What happens when, when the Democrats control Congress? Are they going to force him to be more restrained or are they in the tank too?
- [45:51]
B
It's a good question. I think that the, the Israeli lobby, if the Democrats do win, I think they're going to be much more subtle. And this is where, like the section 2 to 4 of the NDAA comes in and the other bill that, that Tom Cotton's proposing from the Senate side that kind of gets Israel, like more deeply ingrained in our defense industrial base.
- [46:11]
A
Let's explain, because I think it's another quite shocking thing that 224 actually mandates that all of our defense technologies are integrated with Israel.
- [46:26]
B
Who.
- [46:26]
A
You've said a million times, regardless of what you think of Israel, their goals are by definition different than American foreign policy goals. That shouldn't be controversial. Apparently it is. But we're about to collaborate with them in a way that, that seems unprecedented.
- [46:43]
B
Yeah. So the Israelis are, they're smart and they do a very, very good job of staying ahead of the American politics. And they, they know this was an issue for Biden from the left. It was an issue for, I think, Kamal Harris on the campaign trail as well, that sentiment, especially amongst younger voters post, you know, Gaza genocide and especially after this iteration of the Iran war, Simmons turning against the Israelis. So it's going to be hard to justify 3.8 billion plus all the other goodies that we give the Israelis. And so as opposed to having that rug yanked out from underneath them, you've seen a messaging campaign over the last, whatever, six months where the Israelis are saying, yeah, we're grateful for all the assistance the Americans gave us, but we think we can go it on our own now. And it's like, oh, wow, that's, that's so great. You guys can go it on your own now. But what they've done is they've basically gotten through their lobbying efforts, they've gotten it at least into the National Defense Authorization act, which hasn't been voted on yet. But I mean, I'm sure most of your listeners know NDAA is this massive bill that funds the military and the.
- [47:39]
A
Already rubber stamped out of committee.
- [47:41]
B
Rubber stamped out of committee. 1.5 trillion for the, for the, for the Dow. And that doesn't, that's what we can See, there's also black funding and all this other stuff in there. But section two to four basically says that the Israelis will become intertwined with not our military. There's some people who have some like, I think not so sophisticated takes on this. And this is where the Israeli, I think, lobby goes to work overtime. That's a conspiracy theory. Like, there's not going to be Israeli generals controlling the 82nd Airborne. That's absurd. And it is. It's even worse than that, actually. It is taking the Israeli defense industrial base, their intelligence community, their military, and putting it in with our defense industrial base, our research, our development of the most sensitive technologies that are really going to drive the way future wars are fought. So we're talking about quantum computing, AI, ballistic missile systems, drone, counter drone, all these things that are very cutting edge. It puts the Israelis in there with us. So once if this is actually codified, it's going to be nearly impossible possible to determine where Israel starts and America stops and vice versa, because they're going to be there with us. So this is going to end up being a much more, a much bigger benefit for the Israelis. And then there's the counterintelligence aspect. This is then basically going to give the Israelis not even a back door. It's going to give them a front door and everything that we're using here in the US and as was was recently pointed out, like, we know the Israelis spy on us just as much as the Russians and the Chinese do, but for a long time, they basically had kind of a free reign to do that because of the. Just culturally, the way that we viewed the Israelis. So section 224 is very damaging. I know Tom Cotton has another bill that basically is saying that we won't be able to ever cut off intelligence sharing that we're doing with the Israelis, which to me is absolute insanity.
- [49:26]
A
It seems so unconstitutional that you could bind future Congresses in such a way. But I suppose, practically speaking, it's hard to unwind things once they're created.
- [49:36]
B
Yeah.
- [49:38]
A
So the other question is. Well, it's not a question I was thinking about. I think his first name is Marlin. Congressman Marlon Stutzman is actually openly bragging about the fact that the language from section 224 was actually handled, delivered to him by Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. And he's. This is. I'm not. This sounds crazy, right? But. But he's bragging about it on X. Is that, Is that treason? Are we. Are we allowed to use the T word there?
- [50:11]
B
I mean, I would say, if it was any other country, like, wouldn't we call it that? I mean, if he was like, hey, the. Well, I mean, we. The DIA just released a report. At least they leaked it. If it's true, The DIA released a report that says Israel spies on us as much as Russia and China. Now, if a congressman came and said, you know, I got this. This draft for this bill from the Chinese or from the Russians, I mean, that guy would at least be voted out of office, and if not, you know, facing you know, criminal prosecution. So it's just insanity. It just. It really speaks to, I think, the culture within the US Government that US and the Israelis are exactly the same. And I saw this over and over again where we would get presented with intelligence. And because I'd served so long in the Middle East, I just. And I. I used to run sources, and so I. The question I always ask is, like, where do we get this from? Like, before we even talk about the intelligence, tell. Tell me how we got this. Like, is it sigint? Is it human? Like, what is it? And a lot of times, especially on the Iran topic, like, well, the Israelis gave it to us, but I had to ask, like, 10 questions to suss it out that the Israelis gave it to us. And it's like, this is a huge issue, guys. But that's just, like. That speaks to the culture that we have within the US Government that us and the Israelis like, especially if we're talking about something like Iran or Hezbollah or anything, we have the exact same goals. They're the exact same as us. And what this Iran war should show us is that US and the Israelis have drastically different strategic goals. And then also what we should have learned from what took place in Gaza is that US and the Israelis have a completely different value system in terms of how we fight our wars. So do we want to be intertwined? Do we want to have our policy driven by someone who has a different strategic objective than us and that. Someone that has a different. Different value system than we do?
- [51:48]
A
Yeah. So I'm gonna. This. This is right out of left field. And just tell me that I'm an idiot. But my. My theory on the. Both the Israeli. The. The Netanyahu response to October 7 and. And the Hamas response is that in a bizarre way, they're both getting exactly what they want. Oh, yeah, because. Because Benjamin Netanyahu, he wants Gaza. He wants. Want southern Lebanon. They are grabbing land, and they're clearing it in the process in the most brutal and disgusting way. To your earlier Point we want to be associated with that. But Hamas, at the same time, is watching the popularity for the support of the entire Israeli project decline, particularly in the United States, but all over the world. So both of these evil geniuses are getting exactly what they want, and everybody dying in the process is collateral damage.
- [52:46]
B
I think that's spot on. I mean, just kind of Insurgent or Terrorist 101, whoever it is that you're fighting against, when you attack them, you want them to overreact, and you want them to hit the civilian population that you're hiding amongst, because that bolsters your cause. That basically proves your case that the government or whatever the authority figures you're going after are evil. So you need to join the cause. And so this does speaks to your point that it benefits Hamas as well. And I would say it really benefits. This is the unfortunate thing as me being a true believer of the Trump policy in the first administration, where I really think he got it right with Iran. He was isolating them via sanctions. And sanctions are not the greatest tool in the world, but it is a tool isolating them economically. When Iran would strike us, he. He did a targeted strike that killed one of their leaders and his deputy, and no collateral. So that showed the Iranians we meant business. But then also the spirit behind the Abraham Accords, I know now the Abraham Accords are getting a much different connotation to them. But initially the Abraham Accords were kind of a bulwark against the Iranian incursion. It was basically saying, hey, we're not going to solve the Israel Palestine issue. We'll kind of freeze that where it is, but then we'll all work together on a mutual project. And what the. The Iranians did very, very well by supporting Hamas was they said, if Hamas can attack Israel, we know the Israelis will go absolutely, you know, insane and strike back in a very, very big way. That will fracture the Abraham Accords, because if the Israelis strike and they go into Gaza and they go scorched earth, that's going to basically make it so all these different Arab states that are now in line with the Israeli Israelis and with the Americans, they can't stand by that. Otherwise they might get the Arab Spring treatment. And it's actually been very, very effective. So all of this and following Israel's lead has really played into the worst actors in the region.
- [54:33]
A
Yeah. And I would be sort of a case study in really changing my views on certainly the government of Israel. I always like to draw this distinction, and I realize that the demagogues on the other side. Side won't accept it. But there's a big difference between criticizing a government and criticizing the people of a country. And that should be obvious, but I have to say it. Someone's going to clip it and show this. But as someone that's been to Israel several times, I would have considered myself sympathetic and again, from a more libertarian perspective, because I generally don't trust government, period. And I think that's sort of the American ethos that you, you always question power, you hold it accountable. But I've gotten more and more negative as this has gone on. So I guess the strategy is working. Like, I don't want myself as an American taxpayer, I don't want to be involved of what's going on in Gaza or southern Lebanon. I want no responsibility for that. And I don't think the, the American government should be involved, period. And I suspect that that used to be kind of a fringe libertarian view and now it's quite mainstream.
- [55:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's. If there's any silver lining here, I think that's, that's probably it. Yeah. I think it was easy to justify to Americans, like, why we need to support Israel because, you know, we got to fight the terrorists over there, etc. But I think this whole thing has just gone so off the rails that most Americans are like, why do I care about what's taking place in these, these places? I can't point out on the map, and rightfully so. So, yeah, I do think that, that, that is taking hold, especially with the younger generation of voters. And again, this is why Israel is kind of moving to, I think, more subtle. Subtle means of trying to keep their hooks and to keep their, I mean, because really, without America's support, I mean, Israel's in and in big trouble. It's debatable. If they could defend themselves, they could probably defend themselves, but they most certainly wouldn't be able to go on all these different adventures to try and expand their territory and being aggressive against their neighbors.
- [56:40]
A
Yeah, it's fascinating to. And this, this is the one place I'm optimistic. You know, podcasters, Tucker Carlson, but, But the list is infinitely longer than just Tucker. This is where young people get their news.
- [56:55]
B
Yeah.
- [56:55]
A
And the format and the style and the less telling you what to think. Yeah, I think is very attractive to young people, and I'm quite optimistic about that. Obviously, CBS News and, and 60 Minutes and, and old media is almost 100% captured. Yeah, it's sort of, it's, it's, it's not so much pro Israel, it's just pro war. But that, that shift. And obviously, I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu famously came out and said, we have to, you know, we have to do something about TikTok. And we. And you can just see the bots, like, the bots still going after Thomas Massie.
- [57:34]
B
Right.
- [57:35]
A
He's obviously still a credible threat to their monopoly on the truth. That's a cool thing. Like, I think we're winning that war.
- [57:47]
B
No, for sure. I mean, just the age demographic breakdown of like, who voted for Massie versus his opponent. When you saw basically Gen X down all voting for Ma, not all, but by and large voting for Massie, I think that's a pretty big, you know, silver lining to this as well, because, I mean, they spent 20 million against Massie, but can they replicate that? I mean, they have a lot of money, but I don't think they have enough money to do that across the country all at once in something like a presidential election. So I'm enthusiastic that in 2028, this movement, whatever we're calling ourselves, people who are skeptical of more foreign wars, skeptical of, you know, Israel having as much influence. I think we're going to be able to have some serious influence on who at least goes forward on the Republican side. And I actually think on the, I don't know as much about the Democrats, but I think on the Democrat side too, I think they've got a real issue as well with this topic. And I think it actually is a place where the left and the, and the right, so to speak, but at least with the younger voters can unify.
- [58:41]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think about. You could call it America First. You could call it. I call it. It's not a ready for primetime slogan, but it's basically libertarian populism being skeptical of foreign wars, being radically pro free speech, being against crony capitalism, not spending so much money that inflation has done doubled since 2017. I mean, these, these are both pocketbook issues and, and fundamental American issues. And it could be, it could be Massie, it could be Marjorie Taylor Greene, it could be. There's, there's a whole group of people that actually believe that stuff, which is a nice segue to, to what I think is a tragic loss for the Trump administration. Tulsi Gabbard has announced that she's leaving. Yeah, I think at the end of this month. So just in a couple weeks. And maybe for all practical purposes, she's kind of done. I've heard you explain this many times, and I did get a chance when she was here doing my show. I got a chance to meet her husband. I kind of take her at her word, but I suspect that she's leaving because she needs to support her husband as he fights cancer. But at the same time, did she decide that she can no longer be effective in this administration? Was she marginalized?
- [60:00]
B
I mean, I think she was kept out of some places where she should have been for sure. And we saw that, like I described, between the end of the 12 Day War and this, this last iteration as I was leaving the administration. Her husband Abe had just gotten the diagnosis, and then right after that, he underwent his first surgery. And so I believe her that she is, you know, doing the, doing the right thing by her family and leaving. That said, there's people who are probably not too sad to see her go. I think Tulsi, like I said, is probably one of the first DNIs who actually said, I'm going to do what this office is intended to do. I'm going to conduct oversight. And I know there was times when they didn't want Tulsi being as vocal as she was, and she remained true. So whether she was pushed out or not, or whether she figured this was the best time to go, that, I don't know, you'd have to ask her. But it's a big loss for the country to not have her there in that position.
- [60:52]
A
Yeah. I mean, I, I have to take her at her word in part because of her history of service. Like it's, it's hard to leave men on the field.
- [61:00]
B
Yeah.
- [61:01]
A
And. And I'm not sure how many men are still on the field inside the Trump administration. But. But clearly those voices are. Are dwindling.
- [61:11]
B
Yeah.
- [61:11]
A
As we speak.
- [61:12]
B
Yeah.
- [61:15]
A
Her last act.
- [61:17]
B
Yeah.
- [61:18]
A
Pretty awesome. For those of us who are called conspiracy theorists for talking about bio labs. What do you know about. So she came out with a report just a couple days ago documenting that there are some 120biolabs internationally. And I've gone down this rabbit hole for the last six years trying to figure out what, what the hell actually happened with lockdowns and gain of function research. And it all started because we discovered very early that they were covering it up. And once you see a cover up and once you don't get the real story, you start to dig deeper and deeper. What's the story behind the biolabs?
- [62:02]
B
It's basically what Tulsi put out in the disclosure that in some way, shape or form, we, the US Government were funding these things that should not have been, you know, that the gain of function research was outlawed by the US government and this was basically used as a workaround. I think there's probably still more there for us to dig into, obviously. And now is this still taking place? And if it's not, if we think it's not taking place in the way that it once was, can we be sure that it hasn't morphed into some other way they're funding it and conducting it?
- [62:34]
A
Yeah. So riddle me this. We and my understanding, which I believe is correct, is that a big part of Anthony Fauci's incentive to offshore this dangerous bioweapons agents research was a de facto first a treaty, but then an executive order from the Obama administration prohibiting this kind of wildly dangerous work on US soil. So he offshored all this stuff, which I get it, he's a bureaucrat. He's a bit of a megalomaniac and he thinks he can actually re engineer these dangerous things and come up with solutions. Let's accept that he actually thought he could, that he was doing something good, even though he clearly really wasn't. Why do it in China? Why do it in Ukraine? I feel like, I feel like those are not necessarily the good guys that we. That you would trust with bioweapons agents that could literally end humanity, especially China. Yeah.
- [63:43]
B
I think that's the question like who, who decided that? And I'd have a hard time. I mean Fauci's a bad guy. He definitely deserves to be held accountable. But I'd have a hard time believing that it was just, just fouche that was like, hey, let's go put this in China. Like there's something, there's more to that. That story.
- [63:56]
A
Yeah.
- [63:57]
B
That's buried somewhere. And the intelligence community was certainly involved in that because you can't go do business in places like China.
- [64:04]
A
Yeah.
- [64:05]
B
Without the ic. I, unfortunately I don't have a ton of insight on that because I was working counterterrorism and Iran and stuff. So I, I sort of was aware of a lot of this going on, but wasn't my.
- [64:13]
A
This is what I. Senator Paul. Rand Paul comes on my show on a regular basis and he's. He's actually the guy that first intrigued me to dig into the COVID up in the first place. He's written a really important book on it. You know, so is RFK Jr. But I keep asking Senator Paul who is Anthony Fauci's boss and he just had this CIA whistleblower testify before his committee that there was. It's kind of like what you're describing on the foreign intelligence side, that there's just an ecosystem that seems to move in a certain direction. But I still, I want to know who Fauci's boss is. And you know, is it the head of the CIA? Is it. Is it the entire intelligence apparatus? Because he was. He was not the guy in charge. He was doing something for somebody.
- [65:06]
B
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I hope what Tulsi put out is just the start. But again, without her there, though, I am a little concerned about that because she had to push very, very hard to get out what she's gotten out. Because again, the intelligence community does not like people coming and looking in their files.
- [65:25]
A
My theory, I've never worked in the executive branch, but my theory is that that was kind of a covert operation of sorts that was held fairly close before she did it. Is that possible or did they just couldn't stop her?
- [65:44]
B
I think they just couldn't stop her because there was so much public outrage. And this is still something that I think a lot of Republicans are still pretty pissed off about. So I think it was pretty unstoppable. But again, where are the other tentacles and ties? So I think there's still more digging that needs be to. To be done.
- [66:01]
A
Final question. I've loved this conversation and I really appreciate you coming all the way in to do this in person. You touched on this with your own experience, but. And we debate this on the outside, you guys don't know this, but whenever a good guy goes into public service, and we libertarians like to make fun of government officials as a, As a first principle, but I've always respected people that will go on, on the inside and fight the fight. How do you decide? How does Tulsi decide when you're. The cost of making a difference. You know, the struggle sessions and the public contradictions that she, and maybe you and almost every public official that works in a Republican administration, when do you decide that you got to walk away?
- [66:57]
B
You know, for me, it was. I just viewed the Iran war as just so egregious. It was just so much against what the President said he was going to do. You know, I'm willing to serve someone who I don't agree with. Like, I did that for 20 plus years in the military. So I'm very comfortable with.
- [67:14]
A
We almost have to, like, yeah, you're never going to agree with everybody.
- [67:16]
B
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm very comfortable with, you know, hey, you. You say your piece and then the boss makes a decision and you Move out. Like, I was a soldier for most my adult life. I get that. But the Iran war was just. It was so egregious. And especially having the insider view of how it was basically foisted upon us. And just to see. I was aware of, like, the Israeli lobby. I had read stuff I was skeptical basically, of, you know, most of our foreign adventures. I had seen what the. Is how the Israelis had helped make the case for us to go into Iraq. I watched them basically say, well, you guys screwed up Iraq so bad that now we've got this pipeline that goes through Syria into Hezbollah. So now we need help with going into Syria and how that whole thing unfolded. But I still didn't think that they had this much influence. And so watching that, I mean, that was one I knew. But then for me, also the US and then seeing that that was costing Americans their lives, and just being that close to what it's like to be at Dover and to receive the casket of your. Of your loved one, I just knew, like, I can't be part of this. You know, if I'm a part of this, then basically what I've stood for and all the experiences that I've had, then it's a betrayal for me to continue. But then also, there was an aspect of. I didn't feel I came back into government in the Trump administration to make a difference. And the second that we weren't being listened to anymore, and I felt like what I was doing on a daily basis, we were making a difference here and there on the margins, but we weren't moving the needle on this big crisis that we were in. I said, okay, just basic military principles. If you can't be effective in the fight where you're at, then you actually have to move. And so I said, well, I'm going to make a move and attempt to find a better fighting position, for lack of a better term, and be effective from there.
- [68:53]
A
What is. Do you know the casualty count? You mentioned an early number, but where are we at with how many Americans have we lost in Iran?
- [69:01]
B
So killed, I believe, is around 14 or 15. There was a. Like, a training accident up in northern Iraq. So I think that takes us to 15. I don't think the Dow will count that wounded as much. Those numbers are harder to get. So I think there's already been, like, hundreds of people wounded, and I don't know what what wounded means. If that means, like, they took some shrapnel or like, they had some hearing loss and they're returned to duty or if they're full on medevac with, you know, injuries that will alter the rest of their lives, I think that will come out much later on because the wounded, they can keep kind of quiet for a while.
- [69:33]
A
What about Iranians, Gazans, Lebanese? That body count is big.
- [69:42]
B
It's big. I don't know. I haven't seen any convincing numbers. I just know the tragedy of the girls school. But I don't know how many Iranians we've killed. I mean, we brag about how many members of their government, et cetera, we've killed, but I'm not, I'm not sure. I'd imagine that's a pretty big number.
- [69:55]
A
Yeah. If you've Final, final, final question. You've, you've left government, you had reportedly no plan because you didn't plan on leaving, but you had to leave. What do you, what's next?
- [70:12]
B
So what I want to do is continue to talk about these things publicly so that more people can understand what's going on in our government, why we got into this war. War, and then hopefully inspire more people to get involved, especially as we head into 2028. I really don't want, on the Republican side, for once, Trump fades away for what has become MAGA to now become the new standard for the Republican Party. A year ago, I would have said I hope Trump is the new standard, but he's basically become just a neoconservative. So I want to ensure that we have a strong and broad coalition going into 2028 and we can hopefully pick someone like, like Thomas Massie or somebody who will step forward and truly say, who actually has, you know, the background in speaking truth to power, who, you know, we can trust to go in there and that we can actually be a deciding factor in the primary in 2028, so that we don't just have to settle for, you know, Marco Rubio, who, nice guy, but he's, he does not ideologically align with where we are and where I think the majority of the country is too. And if we can broaden that coalition to bring in people from the left, whether that becomes like an independent thing, I don't know, or if we just bring them into our, our big tent, I think that's, that's going to be key and especially just keeping the, the scope of what we believe very, very narrow as it pertains to the executive branch. Because I think a lot of times they want, they being the Republicans and Democrats, they want us fighting over cultural issues for who we pick as president. And even these issues, even if they are important, the president really can't affect them. Like, at the end of the day, the president really, the place where he kind of is the king is the foreign policy. And whether or not we go to war or we don't go to war, that's where the president has the most control. So really, if we can articulate to young voters we're going to be the gold standard, whoever we pick forward on the Republican Party or maybe an independent ticket, that we will not get you in any more foreign wars. We will get out the Israeli or any foreign influence, and we'll actually start putting our country first. I think that's going to be key. So I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I think doing as many podcasts as I possibly can, I might write some stuff here and there, but staying active in that space is what I plan on doing.
- [72:26]
A
Yeah, something's brewing. Yeah, something's brewing. Having been through this cycle, going all the way back to Kuwait, it seems like we have to hit the bottom before you create sort of a countervailing force, a grassroots movement. I was involved in the Tea Party movement, which was born out of the dark days of the Wall street bailout. So, like, just when you think everything's lost, suddenly Americans emerge and try to take their country back anew. So I think you're barking up the right tree and tell people where they can find you.
- [73:00]
B
I think X is probably the best spot to. To do it. If you joke. Hand. I'm on. I'm on there. I'm on Instagram as well, but probably primarily on X.
- [73:06]
A
And occasionally on Tucker Carlson.
- [73:08]
B
Occasionally Tucker Carlson. Yeah.
- [73:09]
A
All right. Thank you, Joe.
- [73:10]
B
Thank you.
- [73:11]
A
Yeah, 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 free the freethepeople.org.