A Conversation With MAGA

Summary

Part Of The Problem – Episode Summary

Podcast: Part Of The Problem
Host: Dave Smith
Episode Title: A Conversation With MAGA
Date: June 18, 2026

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Overview

In this solo episode, Dave Smith responds thoughtfully and critically to the current state of the MAGA movement, Donald Trump’s recent foreign policy—specifically the Iran war and subsequent Memorandum of Understanding to end it—and the fracture this has created in right-wing politics and commentary. Dave details his own journey from Trump endorser to critic, analyzes the broader conservative and MAGA responses, and attempts to open a candid, sometimes harsh, conversation with remaining MAGA loyalists. The episode is also a call for political realignment within the right toward figures like Thomas Massie and a rejection of establishment neocon influences.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dave's Relationship to MAGA and Context Setting

• Dave begins by clarifying his current distance from MAGA, despite having endorsed Trump in the 2024 election ([02:45]-[05:34]).
  • "I did support Donald Trump in 2024, by the way, during the election… At that point, everybody was thrilled… It was a year ago… I went on Breaking Points and I said I regretted voting for Donald Trump and I called for his impeachment and removal." ([05:06])
• He frames the episode as a "one-sided conversation" and invitation for dialogue with MAGA, aiming to provoke honest, good-faith discussion rather than pulling punches ([02:16]-[11:41]).
  • "I'm not particularly inclined to pull punches… the point of this show is for me to tell the truth to the listener as I see it." ([11:41])
• The episode is set against a backdrop of Trump's drastic shift in tone and the apparent disarray within the MAGA coalition following the outcome of the Iran war.

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2. The Rise & Fall of “MAGA Unity”—Fragmentation Over Iran ([06:12]-[13:42])

• Dave details the magnitude of the rift caused by the Iran war: key figures (Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones) have turned against Trump, breaking apart the coalition ([06:12]-[06:45]).
• He highlights his consistency in opposing US involvement in Iran, noting the economic and strategic inevitability of defeat:
  • "I’ve been consistent… that this was a war we couldn’t win… the best thing we can do is just stop, just accept whatever deal, accept that we’ve lost and get out of here." ([07:14])
  • Explains the impossibility of "spinning" the outcome as a win, even acknowledging the right’s efforts to do so ([07:40]-[09:04]).

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3. Trump’s Surrender to Iran—Deal Analysis & Right-Wing Media Reaction

Key Points from Fox News and Commentator Clips ([17:49]-[24:18])

• Dave plays and unpacks Fox News coverage, highlighting conservative commentators' shock and inability to frame the deal as a win:

  • Rebecca Heinrich: "We have the Iranians in a vice, which is why I’m concerned that we would permit the Iranians access to their oil… They will be flooded with cash almost immediately." ([19:19])
  • Brian Kilmeade: "It looks like they're going to be selling oil right up front… after 60 days, they charge tolls with Oman. There's no way, because that's gonna set a precedent…" ([20:27])

• Dave emphasizes the grassroots–machine swap: Trump traded a loyal movement for the loyalty of the political "machine," which is now abandoning him ([22:07]-[23:18]).

  • "The machine… is not loyal to Donald Trump. You can see who they're loyal to right there." ([22:20])

Deal Structure Details ([26:11]-[28:48])

• US lifting all sanctions, unfreezing tens of billions of Iranian assets, and offering a $300B+ reconstruction fund in exchange for Iran opening the Strait of Hormuz and loose nuclear vows.
  • "All US sanctions on Iran are lifted… they're right back into the global financial structure… this thing is worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars we are pouring into Iran." ([28:13])
• Dave notes skepticism that Iran will ever receive the full funds, but the perception and political hit remain the same ([26:17]-[26:39]).

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4. Conservative Voices Grapple—Notable Quotes & Contrasts

Bacha Ungar Sargon (Liberal Zionist MAGA Perspective) ([35:22]-[36:52])

• "There has never been a nation as strong as the United States is right now… and we have been brought to our knees by a few mines. And as an American, I cannot stand that." ([35:22])
• Says the deal is “exactly the same as the JCPOA, if not worse.”

Dave’s Counterpoint

• Dismantles the “unlimited power” chauvinism: there are practical limits, as in all military overreach.
  • "We're the biggest, strongest country ever and we're brought down by a few mines… There's a difference between being strong and having limitless godlike powers." ([38:05]-[38:54])

JD Vance on Megyn Kelly—Selling Surrender to the Base ([55:49]-[61:01])

• Megyn Kelly: "It's been kind of civil worry over on the conservative team since this whole thing got launched. The non-interventionalist right feels very betrayed…" ([55:15])
• JD Vance: "Even if you disagree with this particular action, it's completely ridiculous to pick up your marbles and go home. That's not how politics works. The way that politics works is that you have to stay engaged in the process." ([59:13])

Dave’s Reaction:

• Rejects the logic that a catastrophic war of choice is just "one thing" to overlook; for antiwar conservatives, it’s a dealbreaker ([61:01]-[61:28]).
• Argues that the right's outsider voices were correct, and those demanding loyalty now are exposed as failures ([52:57]-[53:27]).

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5. Analogy Central: Toxic Relationships, Hostage Calls, and COVID Arguments

• Dave draws repeated analogies—like a toxic relationship where cheating and abuse have broken the bond, and now it’s just about caring for “the kid” (the country) ([12:14]-[13:14], [32:31]-[33:23]).
• Uses a hostage-negotiation analogy to explain why, despite Trump’s catastrophic mistakes, the priority must be ending the war for the good of the country ([32:31]-[33:39]).
• Compares absurd MAGA post-hoc spin to the COVID “cure” arguments: if you truly had a miracle win, why does nobody believe it? ([41:54]-[44:23])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dave Smith ([14:00]): "You can sit there and pretend that we’ve devastated Iran… but when the deal is, we’ll give you $325 billion, doesn’t really seem like they were that desperate."
• Bacha Ungar Sargon ([35:22]): "There has never been a nation as strong as the United States… And we have been brought to our knees by a few mines."
• Dave Smith ([42:36]): "So what these guys are trying to sell is that it was a great idea to launch the war… and the only problem is at the end, Donald Trump gave them everything... That doesn't sound right, now, does it?"
• JD Vance ([59:13]): "…even if you disagree with this particular action, it’s completely ridiculous to pick up your marbles and go home. That’s not how politics works."
• Dave Smith ([69:38]): "All I’m saying is that, J.D. Vance, you can’t be the guy going forward. And we need you all to support Thomas Massey for president. That’s all. That’s all I’m asking for. Fair deal."

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Key Segments & Timestamps

• Episode Introduction, Dave Smith’s Standpoint — [01:00]-[03:19]
• Context: State of Trump, MAGA, and Coalition Division — [03:19]-[06:45]
• Dave’s Public Break with Trump: Last Year’s Iran War — [05:34]-[11:02]
• Dave’s Challenge to MAGA, Analogy of Toxic Relationship — [11:07]-[13:14]
• Trump’s Negotiation Position & The Details of the Iran Deal — [14:00]-[28:50]
• Fox News Critique of the Deal / Machine vs. Grassroots — [17:49]-[24:18], [22:07]-[23:18]
• Bacha Ungar Sargon’s Perspective — [35:22]-[36:52]
• Dave’s Military/Limits of Power Analysis — [36:52]-[41:14]
• COVID Vaccine Smell Test Analogy — [41:54]-[44:23]
• JD Vance on Megyn Kelly: Selling the Surrender — [55:15]-[62:24]
• Dave’s Offer to MAGA: Support for the Deal in Exchange for Future Massie Support — [66:03]-[70:39]

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Dave’s Closing “Negotiation”/Proposal

"The only thing that we ask for in return… is that, J.D. Vance, you can’t be the guy going forward. And we need you all to support Thomas Massie for president. That’s all. That’s all I’m asking for. Fair deal." ([69:38])

Dave offers to be part of defending Trump’s exit from the war—and to fight off the Mark Levin/Israel/warhawk critics—if, in return, MAGA acknowledges the disaster, moves on from neocon figures, and supports a genuinely America First, non-interventionist candidate like Thomas Massie.

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Summary

This episode is an intense, unvarnished reckoning with the aftermath of the Iran debacle and the crumbling MAGA unity. Dave Smith balances anger with pragmatism, insisting that antiwar conservatives were right, refusing to whitewash failures, and making a practical offer to MAGA for the sake of the country—with an eye toward a saner, more principled right in 2028.

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For New Listeners

Even if you missed the news or haven’t followed MAGA politics closely, this episode encapsulates the internal war in conservative media and politics, the perils of foreign adventurism, and why principle and honesty matter, especially "after the disaster." For those disillusioned by the establishment or seeking what comes after Trump, Dave makes a compelling, passionate case for realignment around peace, honesty, and accountability.

Transcript

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[Dave Smith]

What's up? What's up everybody?

Welcome to a brand new episode of

Part of the Problem.

I am Dave Smith. I am rolling solo for this episode. Rob is out. I believe he's on his way to Denver where we will all be tomorrow night, me and Robbie Bernstein. Tomorrow, Friday and Saturday. Tomorrow we are at the Comedy Works south and then Friday and Saturday we're at the Comedy Works downtown in Denver, Colorado.

This was one of the, as I've said a bunch of times, this is

one of my favorite weekends I've ever done. Last year, Denver Comedy Works is like a legendary club. All of my friends have a bunch of them. It's been like their favorite club in the world for, for many years and last year was the first time I ever headlined a full weekend there and

we sold out every show.

It was really great, really, really fun time. So very much looking forward to coming back this year, getting on a plane tomorrow. So hope to see some of you guys out there. All right, so comic tapesmith.com by the way, there's still tickets available so go grab them. Okay. So I wanted for today's show to.

I, I think the way I'm gonna

frame this is I want to have a conversation.

Although it'll be one sided for this hour, but perhaps this, this could serve as an invitation. Like I would be interested if maybe like some, some people, some MAGA people maybe listen to what I have to say here and give it a response

if you want to.

Because I kind of want to almost have a conversation with maga. Whatever exactly that means, whatever the MAGA movement is. I'm not sure exactly what it is at this point.

I think the best definition of it would be people who are still loyal to Donald Trump. I, I'm not a part of it. That has been made very clear.

Over the last hundred days, I have

had it made very clear to me that I am not a part of maga, if ever I was, perhaps I never was. And I'm fine with that. I. I've never really cared about the. The label maga, and I, for most of the last decade, I haven't considered myself to be part of it. So, anyway.

But I would like to kind of talk to MAGA because we're in a

very interesting moment right now. It really does feel in some ways,

and it's not clear.

It's not clear exactly what's going to come out of this, but it does for the moment, feel in some ways,

like in the same way that we would go, wow, think about how crazy

it is that you went from, you know, Election Day 2024 through, like, say, you know, Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025, where Donald Trump wins the popular

vote and the youth and the UFC fighters are doing his dance and the culture is on his side, and, you know, he's got record high approval ratings and he's come back in with this whole new coalition.

And, you know, Donald Trump was at his height.

And then all of a sudden, Donald

Trump is, you know, doing what he's

been doing for the last year, really, but particularly the last hundred days, and

there's been this huge change.

But now in the course of just a few days, it almost seems like

everything is flipping back.

All of the sudden, Donald Trump is the one saying, hey, we can't fight endless wars. All of a sudden, Donald Trump is

the one trying to reign in the Israelis.

He's talking about how, oh, man, we're killing. Were blowing up a whole apartment building

over something that didn't kill.

It's almost like a throwback to what old Donald Trump used to say. And, well, there's.

There's a few different dynamics that are going on with all of this in this all weird kind of twist.

One of the things. So for me, okay, it's been kind of interesting when I say the last

year of Donald Trump's behavior, it really

is almost to the year.

I mean, we.

When I, you know, when I say

I'm not a part of MAGA. Well, I did support Donald Trump in

2024, by the way, during the election,

when I said I was going to

endorse Donald Trump, not too many people

were telling me I wasn't MAGA then.

They were all very happy to have me on board.

At that point. Everybody was thrilled, like, you know, because it's an election season, so you want as many votes, as many influential people endorsing you as you can get.

And it was a year ago, almost to the day that that I, I

publicly, I went on Breaking Points and I said that I regretted voting for Donald Trump and I called for his impeachment and removal. And it was over launch in the 12 Day War, which was in June of last year.

I guess it's what is, it's the 17th today.

What was it? I think it was the, or maybe a week shy. It was maybe a week longer, 25th or something like that of June last year. So, you know, I kind of jumped off myself very adamantly over this war. And

really it was the next, you

know, this most recent war in Iran that really created huge, huge rifts within the Trump coalition. It wasn't just that someone like me had jumped off, but over the last

hundred days, Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly

and, you know, Alex Jones and, you know, a huge number of very prominent voices who were Trump supporters have, you know, that part of the coalition has fallen apart and in ways that are

very hard to see it being put back together.

Although, who knows, I guess. But, you know, when I say who knows, I mean, I don't know. Could Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump become friends again? I've not talked to Tucker since any of this has happened, so I don't know. I have no insight into that. But maybe, maybe it'd be like, hey,

yeah, he did, he kind of warned you about this. Anyway, over the last, over this period of time, you know, really particularly over

the last hundred days during this war. One of the things that I said from, from the outset was that Donald Trump had destroyed his presidency over this and that I've, I've been consistent on

this the whole way through, that this was a war we couldn't win.

We didn't have escalation, dominance. I've been saying this for 20 years about Iran. Turned out to be exactly right. I've been saying from the beginning that

the best thing we can do is

just stop, just accept whatever deal, accept

that we've lost and get out of here.

So this is a really important thing to do. And also one of the other things I've predicted, again, not to say I get some predictions wrong, but one of the other things I've been predicting is that Donald Trump wouldn't be able to sell this as anything other than what it obviously is.

And I think really over the last, say, 48 hours, but particularly over the

last 24 hours, that has been something that has become more and more evident, Donald Trump is, I mean, hey, who

knows, maybe he's going to surprise us

with some terms of this deal, you know, that'll be revealed on Friday that are way more in the US US Favor. I can't imagine what it would possibly be, to be honest, but he's going to surprise us.

And then maybe the Iranians actually do agree to that and they have just

been bluffing this whole time.

Or, or maybe then they say, hey, we never agreed to that and the

whole thing blows up.

I mean, it's possible we're back at war. It's possible something comes out of this that we don't foresee right now, but

it really looks unlikely. And in fact, Bloomberg just released what they claim they got a copy of the, the deal, I can't remember was

there if theirs was 12 points either it was Bloomberg at 1 and then CNN had 1.

One of them had a 12 point, one of them had a 14 point. There's a couple little differences in there, but it's basically everything we've been laying out. It is basically just undeniably a complete surrender slash US Loss. There's just really no other way to look at it.

And it's, it's so, it's so obvious that the, the attempt of getting a base of Trump people to even spin

it as anything else is, is just seems fruitless. Seems like that's just not going to happen. Everybody essentially is already admitting it.

And I got to, I gotta say it's almost a little bit surprising.

I'll go through some of these clips,

but it is a little bit surprising just to, for me, just to go through social media and see people like,

like Bacha Sargon, I always forget how to say her last name, but I have a clip of hers that we might play today.

But seeing people like her and Will

Chamberlain and you know, all these guys go, oh yeah, no, this deal is terrible. This is a complete, we're just giving them everything they want. This is a loss.

And so anyway, that's kind of been

interesting just to see them. It was June. Oh, it was June 13th last year.

Is that right?

Oh, so we're over the one year anniversary. I'm sorry, I had that wrong. I thought it was later in, in June. Thank you, Natalie, appreciate it.

Anyway, so it's been interesting to see those guys even kind of having to

acknowledge that, okay, this, and so it's

in this context that I think it's kind of interesting to have a conversation with Maga or, or I guess if none of Them are listening, then in

that case, we're all just having a conversation about maga. And I'm fine with that, too.

But there is something for those of us who maybe even voted for Donald Trump or endorsed Donald Trump, maybe even people who were, like, didn't vote or endorse for him, but maybe were rooting for him, or people who are even flirting with that, but people, broadly speaking, who at one point might have in

some way been part of this coalition that have really left in disgust over the last year.

And I think it's important that maybe we talk to some of those people who are still on the team. And I want to try in a

way to almost like, have a. A good faith, you know? You know, obviously, I don't mean to frame this as a conversation, a dialogue. It's me, you know, ranting.

But I just mean what I'm trying

to start here, what I'm trying to

provoke would be some type of good

faith discussion or some type of good faith back and forth.

But also, I'm not particularly inclined to pull punches.

I just don't. I'm not gonna pretend that something other than what happened just happened, because, number one, I'm. I'm a grown man and I don't believe in doing that. Number two, the point of my job, the point of this show, is for me to tell the truth to the listener as I see it.

And I don't particularly feel like carrying

water for this movement that has not been so kind to people like me over the last year and particularly over the last hundred days or so.

You know, in a way, this feels like a. Like a horrible, toxic relationship where, let's

say, the partner was, you know, I

don't know, like a crazy drug addict

who was abusing their kids and cheating all over you. And, you know, now in some point, like, maybe they're trying to go to rehab or something, Something like that. Not saying this analogy is perfect.

And it's like, hey, just so you

know, I don't need to pull any punches over what happened back there.

You've destroyed much of what this relationship is. But we do have a kid together. I care about the kid more than

I care about our petty nonsense.

The kid in this case being the

United States of America.

And Donald Trump is still the President

of the United States.

He is trying to get this deal done now.

He is desperately trying to get out of this nightmare that he got us. And he needs his cheerleaders, he needs his MAGA people around.

There is a role for all of them to play. However, I just can't accept that my

role here is to pretend this is some type of victory or something like that. And I don't think that is my,

I don't think that is the role

and I don't think, I think that

does nothing but lose all of us

credibility and kind of fracture the relationship between us and, and our own audiences. Because then you're lying. And that's never. Or that, that rarely seems to be the, the correct path in all of this.

But anyway, so just keep that kind

of in mind as we, as we go through some of this. If I'm talking to maga, I'm not pulling punches.

You guys are big boys. It's not like you guys are those, those libs who need a safe space. You can handle a little bit of harsh truth. And also, as I think MAGA has

maybe been learning slowly over the last few days,

when it comes to negotiations, you're not in such a strong position.

You might have to give a lot because, you know, no matter how, you know, you can sit there and pretend

that we've devastated Iran and that's why they're desperate to make a deal. But when the deal is, will give you $325 billion, doesn't really seem like

they were that desperate. Seems like maybe the party offering $325 billion was a little bit more desperate. And in the same sense that Donald Trump could sit there and say, you know, this war had 100% MAGA approval.

Well, the reality is that it was

the most unpopular war in American history. And maga's going to wear the bruises of celebrating that and, and supporting that. There's really no way to get around that.

And so I think it's important we can be honest. And we can also maybe now that

things are being revealed a little bit more, we can think about what's best for the country and what's best for,

for moving forward, not just with the MAGA movement, but with whatever is to follow it. Because really, however we like it, you know, Donald Trump is like 80. The midterm elections are a few months away.

The Democrats are coming back in to Congress. They're certainly going to take the House.

There's going to be impeachments and hearings

and investigations and all this stuff for two years.

And then Donald Trump's going to be

gone from American political life. So it's kind of worth mentioning that

now, by the way, just to mention, and this is something that I said for quite a while, and this was actually What I was very concerned about the escalation trap, even though I said the whole time, I think eventually Trump will do something like this.

I did say I don't think he's going to escalate. I don't think we're going to get boots on the ground.

I think eventually he'll quit because he

doesn't have the stomach for that. He knows the world economy and, and the American people don't either.

But the what I always said was

the problem is that it's going to be self evidently a defeat and we're not, he's not going to be able to spin this.

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All right, let's get back into the show.

Just to be clear here, this is let's go. This is FOX News and how they

are covering the, the, the memo of understanding here. Let's let's play this FOX News clip.

[Brian Kilmeade]

Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebecca Heinrich joins us now. Rebecca, can we just start on the Israeli portion of it? Israel has to I guess stop fighting back against Hezbollah who's lobbing missiles and at the northern part of their country. This makes absolutely no sense.

[Rebecca Heinrich]

It makes no sense. And we also know, Brian, that there have been diplomatic attempts over and over again since the early 2000s to try to get Hezbollah to disarm. They will not disarm. It has never worked through negotiations and diplomacy at this point. If this is tied to this deal, the United States would essentially be restraining Israel, our greatest ally in the region and the reason that we had such a success in Epic Fury. So Israel must defend itself. It cannot be restrained. It has to be able to even go on the offensive, to preemptively take out these Hezbollah cells, even if they're in Beirut. I would expect Israel to continue to do that. They're not going to wait until they get hit before they can respond.

[Brian Kilmeade]

Yeah, you can't blame Netanyahu for this. They're defending themselves. They just happen to be very good at defending themselves. It's not their fault that they're this strong and this devastating. And Syria is not equipped to take out Hezbollah, even though they'd love to. They have no missile defense. Hezbollah's got rockets. Let's talk about the deal. What concerns you most about what we now know about this deal as we wait two days for the formal reading of the deal?

[Rebecca Heinrich]

Well, first of all, Brian, I just want to. I mean, Epic Fury was so successful and Economic Fury is so successful, and President Trump was. Was right to initiate it. And we really have the Iranians in a vice, which is why I'm concerned that we would permit the Iranians access to their oil when, as we relieve this blockade, they would essentially have billions of dollars back into the IRGC coffers. I know the vice President continues to say this will be conditions based, but as far as I can tell, this isn't even be put in escrow accounts to trap it to make sure that the IRGC complies. We have no reason to believe that they will. So they will be flooded with cash almost immediately. My second big concern is that the deal does recognize Iranian governance with other Gulf states over the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the Iranians will say they just want to collect environmental tolls. They're not going to call it tolls. They'll call it fees. That's tolls, Brian. That's worse than before. Epic Fury. The United States cannot permit Iran to have coercive control over the Strait of Hormuz. And so to me, those are the two big ones tied with, I think the fact that once you relieve sanctions, you really lose your leverage to Enforce what we want on removing and dismantling Iran's nuclear power.

[Brian Kilmeade]

And what we're going to do is they have frozen funds, so it'll be 300 billion. It looks like they get it up front. It looks like they're going to be selling oil right up front. And it looks like after 60 days, they charge tolls with Oman. There's no way, because that's gonna set a precedent for international waters and waterways around the world. So that every big and small power does not want this to be a new trend that'll blow everybody's budget. Correct?

[Rebecca Heinrich]

Yeah, I'm very concerned about that. I mean, to me, geopolitically, I think President Trump again had an incredible opportunity to wrest control of the Strait of Hormuz away from the Islamic Republic of Iran, China. So United States is in this cold war, this great competition against the Chinese. We do not want China and its proxies to have coercive control over major waterways. If we set this precedent, you would expect the Chinese to be looking to do it in its region of the world as well. So I'm concerned about that. One more point, Brian, on the $300 billion. It is true that we, it's not going to be American taxpayers that are going to go to this fund, but the language that I've seen of the MoU says that the United States would help essentially get investments in Iran. Remember, Iran has not changed. Iran is still conducting industrial scale executions. They execute minors, little girls, as little as nine. So this regime has not changed.

[Dave Smith]

All right, listen, let's, let's turn it off there. But okay, listen, I let that play

for a little bit, but I just

wanted you to get the point here

because it's like there's something here that

MAGA is going to have to wake

up to, and that is that the

whole apparatus here behind Donald Trump.

See, Donald Trump had a genuine grassroots

movement for many years and he essentially

traded that movement in for the machine.

But the machine, unlike that grassroots movement,

is not loyal to Donald Trump. You could see who they're loyal to right there.

I mean, like Brian Kill Meade. I mean, like I've, it's just, just

one of Fox News's biggest guys.

He's nothing.

But in every other case, somebody who

just takes Donald Trump's side, just essentially Dick rides Donald Trump on whatever position he has.

But what does he want to do? Restrain Benjamin Netanyahu? Well, that's insane.

As Brian Kilmeade says, no problem.

You know what, Think about the words that, that Mark Levin And Ben Shapiro

and Brian Kilmeade and all these guys have been describing Donald Trump with the last couple of days.

This is. So now, in other words, Donald Trump

now with his record low approval ratings,

he's set to fall quite a bit further because all these guys are going

to turn on him. But here's the thing, and this will be a through line throughout all of this coverage.

Look, the reason why essentially all of

this coverage is so batshit insane is

because they, it's everything except grappling with

the fundamental reality of what just happened.

This woman and Brian Kilmeade, they're both,

they're lying to each other or they're lying to the audience, I guess maybe it's more accurate.

But you can frame this as like, wait a minute, we're giving hundreds of

billions of dollars to the, the, you know, the, to this regime?

Why would we be doing that? Wait, and China's in bed with them. Wait, so now they get to control the Strait of Hormuz. We don't like that. That's bad. Well, okay, that's bad for.

You can make obvious arguments for why that would be bad, including even arguments

I would agree with.

I don't like the idea of, of, of the Shiite radicals in the region getting to choke off 20% of the world's oil supply.

That's not great. I don't like that. But that is the reality in the same way that, look, Donald Trump was just up against the economic realities here.

And in fact, there's a clip we might play later where Donald Trump kind

of admits this, that he was up against the economic realities. He could not get that straight open. If the Pentagon's own assessment was that it would take another six months, and that was only after we had concluded the war. Okay, well, then we got to conclude the war so we can open the strait, and it takes six months to do it militarily.

Okay, so now by all experts, I

mean, you know, most.

Well, maybe I shouldn't say most, but

many economists are arguing that already, even we get out of this now, this

is going to be devastating and that

next year we're really going to go

through a steep economic recession over energy costs, over how long the, the, the, this was, how long the Strait of Hormuz was shut down over.

And so you're talking now another six months of it.

You're talking global depression.

Okay, so that's if we did it militarily. And then, by the way, how do we even do it militarily? Well, we have to get the war over first.

Okay, well, Iran doesn't want to end

the war, so how do you get

Iran to end the war?

Okay, well, the only way to get Iran to end the war and open up the strait immediately was to wave the white flag, promise them hundreds of billions of dollars. We essentially bribed him off with and,

and other promises, too.

But look, just to be clear here, okay, this is what's in the deal. What's been released from cnn and

[Brian Kilmeade]

I'm

[Dave Smith]

sorry, from, from cnn.

And what did I, I had just mentioned it earlier. Who was. It was Bloomberg. I'm sorry, it was the other one. It was CNN and Bloomberg.

They both put out different, somewhat, largely

similar, but slightly different versions of what the Memorandum of Understanding is.

And to be clear here, you're talking about now, I just, I want to be clear because I don't. Let me just give the caveat of,

like, I don't think Iran's ever going to get that 300 billion.

We'll see. I could be wrong about that.

But there is a little thing where

it's tied to, like, what the agreement after 60 days is.

I don't think we're going to have

any type of nuclear agreement after 60 days.

I wouldn't be surprised if Iran goes back to charging fees as, as this woman, I just said, to charging fees for the, the Strait of Hormuz. There's kind of language that protects their ab. Ultimately do that.

Who knows if they'll actually get access to that fund. That fund. But that is what's being promised to

them by the US in order to get them into this. Right. So they're pledging that there'll be this $300 billion reconstruction fund.

Then there's also close to about $25

billion of, of frozen Iranian assets. These were things like, you know, I, I'd have to check on exactly what

these assets were, but in the past, I know it was things like, so

in the revolution in 79, right. So we overthrew their government in 53 and installed the Shah. So from 53 to 79, the US had very friendly relations with Iran. And then the revolution happened. Then a few months later, they took our hostages. Then the relations started, ship started to deteriorate.

There were, there were like, the previous

government had bought a bunch of weapons. They used to buy a bunch of weapons from our, you know, weapons companies. That was part of the cozy relationship. And so they had, like, purchased a bunch of weapons. And then the revolution happened. And then the, the US Was like, well, we're not giving the weapons to this new government, but international courts had ruled fairly reasonably that like, okay, but

then you got to refund the money

because they purchased the weapons. So either give them the weapons or give them their money back. And they wouldn't do either. So it's that money that's been froze anyway, neither here nor there, but then

also in the deal. And people by the way, are really jumping over this one, but this may be the most important part of the

deal is that all sanctions are lifted,

all US Sanctions on Iran are lifted. They are right back into the global finance financial structure, the global economic structure. I mean this thing is worth, this is hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that we are pouring into Iran. Keep in mind, by the way, Israel is a little country, you know, Israel has, has a GDP that is probably less than the total benefit of this deal to Iran.

Maybe not maybe, probably got a GDP at 600, $700 billion, something like that.

But still, this is like pouring the

entire economy of Israel almost into Iran.

You can see how much this is going to ruffle feathers. Okay, so anyway, I guess another,

another you know, point and like, like if

you try to, from Israel's perspective, this

isn't just them not getting the regime destroyed the way they wanted.

This is getting, you know, I, I don't know, it would be like pouring

$20 trillion into Canada and the U.S. being like, Whoa, that's like, that's a lot of goddamn wealth that's flowing into this country that we were just at war with.

And so you're going to get this response from people. This is, like I said, we're going through the next 60 days are going to be an all out blitz. And strangely now Donald Trump has found himself in a war of sorts with the Israel lobby. And so it's kind of, again, this

is why it's kind of important to talk to MAGA again now.

So you know, we're not going to pretend what you guys did back there

didn't happen back there.

We all, you know, you, you launched a war of choice on behalf of a foreign country and you supported that. And, and, and look like, why should

we be kind to MAGA right now?

It was loudly broadcasted right into our face that MAGA is not Tucker Carlson

because he's a low IQ trader. MAGA is Mark Levin.

Okay, well that's, that's what you got

to live with now. And what happened?

Geez, what happened when we followed Mark Levin and Douglas Murray and Ben Shapiro's advice? What happened? Oh yeah, another catastrophe so bad that we had to just conceive, we had to just wave the white flag and

pay them hundreds of billions of dollars to get them to stop again.

We're not going to forget that. But as we move forward here, it is important, it's here to understand, right, that, like, this is the battle now. The battle is going to be over people attacking Donald Trump for making this move look as bad, as bad as it is that Donald Trump failed in

the way that he failed. And I'm, I'm saying he destroyed his presidency.

It's over. There's not much to save, but it's still really important that we win this one, you know? All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Massa chips. You don't have to overhaul your whole life to start improving your health. Start with simple swaps, like upgrading the snacks in your pantry to ones with real ingredients, like Massa. It's the easiest way to eat clean without feeling like you're on a diet. Masa chips are delicious. I. I have them all the time. Snacking Massa chips is nothing like eating regular chips. With Massa, you feel satiated, light and energetic. There's no crash, bloat, or gross sluggish feeling because these chips are made from real food. And also because they're made from real food, they're more satiating, so you don't find yourself uncontrollably binging and still feeling hungry afterward. And if you love Massa, you'll also love Vandy Crisps. Vandy is Massa's sister company. They make the most delicious three ingredient potato chips I've ever tasted. So if you're ready to give Massa or Vandy or real food a try, go to Massachips.dave and use the promo code Dave for 25% off your first order. Or you can just click the link in the episode description below. Massachips.com Dave promo code Dave for 25% off your first order.

All right, let's get back into the show.

You know, like, if you're, if you're

in a hostage situation, I know people make fun of me for making these

analogies, and God damn it, I know they're not perfect, but they are useful. And so, you know, some of you

guys, you make fun of me for

them, but they are useful.

There's a reason I do this, but,

like, in the sense that, okay, if

you were in a hostage situation and

somebody has all, you know, and you're the Negotiator.

[Shopify Advertiser]

You're.

[Dave Smith]

You're outside on the cell phone talking to him, and you're like, please, at

least give us the women and children.

You know, this guy's got a bank,

a lot of people there. Even if he's already killed a few people, even if he's already done terrible things, and this guy is going to get the chair.

You know, whenever you get him out and he gets. Goes to trial or whatever,

you still might be talking to him. And you're like, hey, can you, can you let the rest of the kids out?

He goes, okay, I'll let some of the kids out. You still go, thank you so much for that, dude.

Like, that was really huge, because those are real kids, and their lives are

on the line right now.

Okay, I'm not saying it's a. I'm not equating the two things. I'm just saying the reason I use the analogy is that as much as Donald Trump is up, as furious as

many of us may be with him,

we still got a country here. You know, we still have a kid

together, and the kid is the United States of America.

This is the country that both of my little kids are going to grow up.

And I care very much about the future of this. And it's very important that Donald Trump wins this fight. It's very important that we get this memorandum of understanding signed and we get

out of this war. This is. I, I am not sure how much

damage has already been done. I'm very concerned about that.

But we were flirting with.

With catastrophe.

And there's for no reason, for no

reason other than Donald Trump's choosing for listening to the Israel lobby instead of people with common sense.

Okay, let's move to the.

The. The Bachelor clip, which I always. I do apologize if I'm saying her name wrong, which I often do, but Bacha Ungar Sargon is her name.

She is. I, I know her. We. We debated. She was a part of that debate

with me and Jane Cougar and Dennis Prager and her.

And, and we all went out to dinner afterwards.

She's really very nice person, very lovely, although I could not disagree with her politics more.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

But.

[Brian Kilmeade]

Yeah.

[Dave Smith]

Anyway, so she kind of, in.

In the spirit of checking in with

maga, she kind of represents, like, kind of the lefty, pro Zionist part of maga.

Like, kind of a liberal. Not lefty. I shouldn't say liberal. A liberal Zionist member of maga.

And again, somebody who's been cheerleading President

Trump for his entire second term. Here were her thoughts on on the war and, or, excuse me, on the memorandum.

[Bacha Ungar Sargon]

This is actually exactly the same as the jcpoa, if not worse, because we're so close to victory. I mean, there has never been a nation as strong as the United States is right now. We are the world's greatest and only superpower, the strongest nation to ever exist, and we have been brought to our knees by a few minds. And as an American, I cannot stand that. I cannot stand saying that sentence, but it is utterly true. And what's worse, exactly as Ben pointed out, they will never be weaker than they are now. They're about to get all their money back, and so in 60 days, they're gonna be even less likely to give us anything that we're asking for. I just wanna say one more thing. Nobody wanted this to end more than I did. I cannot stand how broke Americans are right now. I've been using my show on News Nation every week to call for help for working class Americans because they voted for Trump because he promised to put money in their pockets. And they are broke because of this war. I cannot stand that. But there are a million ways the president could have helped them domestically that didn't involve the greatest superpower in the history of humanity being brought to its knees by a few minds. He could have given stimulus checks. That's what I suggested. He could have put controls on oil exports. We are a net exporter of oil and gas. We're exporting oil and gas while Americans are paying 450 at the pump. It makes no sense.

[Dave Smith]

All right, so, I mean, getting away

from her lefty economic prescriptions, which I think are kind of ridiculous, and I don't think people voted for Donald Trump because he would put money in their pocket. Exactly. I do think one of the reasons people voted for Donald Trump was because he explicitly promised to not fight stupid, unwinnable wars. But even she cannot spin what's happening here that we've lost. Now, one of the things that, Again,

this is, I, I, I don't know. I guess it's just like for some

people, just for whatever reason, and I guess perhaps with a lot of them, it's willful.

They just have this blind spot for the reality that there are limits to US Power. And even as Bacha says, you know, it's like we're the biggest, strongest guy or we're the biggest, strongest country ever and we're brought down by a few mines, like, strategically placed in the Strait of Hormuz.

[Rebecca Heinrich]

Yes.

[Dave Smith]

I mean, there's a little bit more to it than that there's some missiles and some drones and stuff. But yeah, that's essentially right.

And you know, there actually is no contradiction between those two different things. Like were the strongest country ever.

But we're also brought down by something

like, you know, quick history lesson. The founding of our country. We're celebrating 250 years, if you haven't heard.

It's coming up.

The founding of our country was us

taking down the strongest, most powerful military that had ever existed, which was the, the British army at the time. And the British Empire was by far

the strongest nation on earth.

And we were able to beat them with muskets, not minds, I suppose.

But yes, there, there is a difference between the being strong, having power and having limitless godlike powers.

There's a difference between those things and

the, the fact that, I mean, I don't.

Again, this is like very basic.

Like maybe the most fundamental 101 lesson of like military history is that there's. Yes, even a much more powerful military,

when over extended, can be defeated by less powerful forces. Yes, there are asymmetrical wars and sometimes there are asymmetrical victories in war.

And so again, it's not,

you know, it's, it's not a question of who

has a stronger military, US or Iran.

Nobody is debating that.

Obviously we have a stronger one. It's not who can blow more of their up versus who can blow more of our up. Obviously we can blow a lot more of their up. But then there are these very tangible logistical questions that were obvious from the

very beginning of this thing.

Just incredibly obvious questions like how do you do regime change without a ground force? When has that ever happened? It's, it's incredibly difficult. In fact, I've heard several military experts say that it's never happened.

And I, I would love to like, question that. I, I don't know, I'd have to like go research on that.

But has there ever been a pur. The air regime change accomplished? I mean, I know in Libya and

Syria we had some forces on the ground and sure, we used Al Qaeda

when convenient, but anyway, without.

Now, of course, there's other questions about if you don't have a military occupation, how do you replace the regime after you change it? That's a pretty big one.

And there's also major questions about, you know. Right. Like, so if you have an IRGC

with a couple hundred thousand members, how

do you take that out from the skies? Okay, that's a pretty tough question. That was pretty obvious. Okay, what about escalation, dominance what do we do if they touch all of our bases in the region? They've got a large stockpile of missiles. They can do that. What about the strait? All they have to do is be able to plant a few mines, target a few boats before regular people who aren't members of the military don't want to risk their lives to, to go through this straight where they're being shot at.

You have insurance companies that have ships

with $50 billion worth of cargo on them who don't feel like insuring that when they might take a $50 billion loss if an Iranian drone hits that ship. Okay, that's a tangible problem, and it doesn't matter how well we spend a trillion dollars a year on our military. Okay, but how do you solve that problem? But none of them want to admit what is the obvious case here, which is that we got beat, you know, but all, all of them, and it's

important for MAGA to understand this and understand what just happened here.

All of these guys are essentially saying something that really doesn't pass the smell test that you should be able to

look at and go, okay, there's a

pretty big problem with what you're telling me here. You know, it reminds me of, if you guys remember back during COVID me

and Rob used to make this joke. You know, it's, it's.

Sometimes you have all these arguments, but then you could just go to this like, basic, kind of logical, like, smell test. So when they were pushing the COVID vaccines, they were essentially saying that Covid is so deadly, this, this thing is so awful that we had to lock

down the whole country because they were still supporting lockdowns.

You know, we had to lock down the country because we had to slow the spread or whatever, fight the, flatten

the curve, whatever their dumb argument at the time was.

And, and so it's such an horrible

illness, the germ is so dangerous that

we had to shut down the entire world. But now we have this cure, we have this vaccine. It is safe and effected, safe and effective. And if you get it, you, you 100% will not get Covid. You can't transmit Covid. The whole plague, essentially, we have a plague, and now we have a cure for the plague with no side effects. And yet we have this major problem of vaccine hesitancy. And you just like already, if you just look at that, you go, so you're telling me we're living through the plague and we came up with the

cure and people don't want it.

That's a really tough sell right now. All of us looking back at that,

we kind of laugh because obviously this is. Indicates that they were lying through their teeth about the whole thing. And we had lots of reasons to know that at the time and lots more reasons to know that now.

But, you know, just think about the idea of even trying to sell that.

So what these guys are trying to

sell is that it was a great

idea to do, to launch the war,

that we did destroy so much of their stuff. And the only problem here is that then at the end, Donald Trump gave them everything.

It's as ridiculous as the narrative around the vaccine.

It's as ridiculous. What are the odds of that? Donald Trump went into this war. He. He had it. He had won. We were about to get everything we wanted, and then at the last minute, he said, no, no, no, you take everything.

[Megyn Kelly]

He.

[Dave Smith]

He pulled his gun on the other guy, they put their hands up, you win, and then you gave them your wallet. That doesn't sound right now, does it? Oh, yeah, because that's not what happened.

That's not what happened.

What happened here is that this is the only way we could get them

to sign onto the agreement which Donald Trump was desperate to get them to sign onto for obvious reasons. You know, it's like we listened. We listened one more time to the Israelis and their lobby and the idiot warhawks. And just like they were wrong about everything else, they were wrong about this one, too.

And, you know, I don't know, looking. Looking back at it, it's like, as somebody who was very critical of the

12 day war and very critical of

Donald Trump, well, the Epstein files, the

12 Day War, and now this war in Iran again, and a lot of stuff in between.

It's like the. The amount of shit that we took from maga. Like, again, who cares at this point? We got a country to save. But if we are having this conversation, it is worth pointing out that MAGA right now, like, if you're not the Israel lobby, but you just, like, support Donald Trump, just think about where these guys led you versus guys like Tucker Carlson who were trying to warn you about exactly this, exactly where we are now. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Superpower. This is a great product I'm thrilled

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All right, let's get back into the show.

Okay, well, one of the things actually,

that got me thinking about this conversation

was that JD Vance went on Megyn

Kelly's show the other day, and there are.

There are people in who are actually, like, very upset about this.

There are, like, people in MAGA who.

Because you know, MAGA is Mark Levin now, right?

And Mark Levin and Donald Trump himself has. Has trashed Megyn Kelly and she's Grandma Groiper, according to Mark Levin and Laura

Loomer, like, according to all the cartoon

characters who are clearly here to serve as foreign spies.

[Brian Kilmeade]

They.

[Dave Smith]

They all decided she's terrible. So now Megyn Kelly has really become,

in my opinion here, a very interesting phenomenon because.

Because Megyn Kelly is so, first of all, she's she's an institution amongst like, American conservatism at this point. She had the number one show on Fox News many, many years ago and she's still here with one of the biggest shows today. She is one of the, one of the reasons why Megyn Kelly is almost even more revealing of how crazy things

got is that Megan is not.

Megan doesn't even have the politics of

Tucker Carlson, let alone Candace Owens, let

alone Nick Fuentes or something like that. Megyn Kelly is really Megyn Kelly. She's kind of been Megyn Kelly this whole time. She's only guilty. Like essentially her only crime from going from being like the conservative darling, the person that all of the people trashing her right now would have had like just the utmost respect for and would have spoken about in like the, the highest, you know, praise. The only thing she's guilty about is not losing her mind with all of

them through this collective freakout.

Like, she essentially just kind of went like, well, you know, Tucker has a right to make the arguments he's making too. If I remember the comment that she made about me in the Charlie Kirk

episode, the, the famous episode where Charlie Kirk was on her show and they

were both is her and Charlie Kirk, right?

These are moderate Republicans, Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk.

So the episode they were on together

where Charlie Kirk was complaining about how

like, my God, you could be the most pro Israel guy ever.

And I criticize one thing and all

of them are like trying to, they're

calling me a Nazi and all this stuff. So this now famous episode, which was actually pretty famous before he died, but became much more so after in that,

at one point she said about me, she goes, she goes, I mean, you were there to, to host a debate between Dave Smith and Josh Hammer and like, and then she goes, and Dave has a right to be a critic of Israel. Like, that was all she said about me. Like that, that. But essentially that is her position.

And that was enough for them to say, oh, you're a Nazi.

For her to go, we could host a debate, right? If she, if she just points out that like eh, you know, they, Donald Trump is selling you at the beginning of this war. Like, oh, this war is going to go so great. And you know what Megyn Kelly said, think about like how

by definition, how moderate of a statement this is. This is what Megyn Kelly said when the war first broke out. She goes, you know, I worked at Fox News for a while and I've

seen a lot of people pushing wars

and celebrating and telling you how great it's gonna work out. And it never ends up being that. You know, I've seen this movie play like seven different times and it just never ends up, it always ends. So I'm gonna be cautious on this one. Like, literally, that was her take.

And for that, you're a Nazi. You know, you're a Nazi for thinking maybe we shouldn't launch a war of choice. But anyway, one of the reasons why I think Megan Kelly is kind of interesting here is because, so Megan Kelly

has been totally reasonable this whole time.

She's still Megyn Kelly. And in some ways, you're almost going like, hey, so what comes out of all of this? Geez, man. Now, Donald Trump has infuriated all of the non interventionists, infuriated all of the skeptics of the Israel lobby. Now he launches this terrible war. It ends up being the disaster that

all the people he infuriated said it was going to be.

Now he's trying to pull out. So he's infuriating the Israel lobby. And so in the midst of all of this, J.D. vance goes on Megyn Kelly show. I thought this was just kind of interesting. Like, okay, here's the vice President now. I got to say, couple thoughts on this. Number one, the people who were like upset, they're the people out there like going like, oh, what is J.D.

vance doing going on this Nazis show or something.

It is unbelievable.

It's, it's much like with the actual memorandum of understanding. And this is why I made this point at the beginning of the show.

It's like, do you guys not realize

what a position of weakness you're coming to this negotiation with, you know, Bacha

and the Fox News lady and Brian Kilmed, they can spin this however they want to. Who do you think you are? Oh, what's he going on Megan Kelly show for? Excuse me, we ran this experiment. Megan Kelly was right.

You were wrong.

Sorry. That if we're going to move forward here and we're going to try our best to at least get some wins out of this administration. And by the way, not the global

depression that is threatened if this war isn't resolved.

If we're going to move forward. Let's just get a few things clear. This war was a stupid idea. You didn't listen to us and you launched it anyway. And you know what you did? You lost. You lost. You humiliated the country. It was devastating. There's, there's 13American soldiers are dead because

of this stupid war with nothing to show for it.

So, like, yeah, Megyn Kelly was right.

You guys were wrong. You should be lucky to get back on our team.

[Rebecca Heinrich]

Now.

[Dave Smith]

The other thing that's going on here,

man, and I really gotta say this

is maybe as blatant as when Joe Biden put Kamala Harris in charge of the border and you were like, oh, you must really hate Kamala Harris, because my God, imagine just assigning her your biggest problem.

Okay?

In the same way, this is what

they're doing at J.D. vance right now.

They are, they are sicking J.D.

vance with the responsibility of selling this capitulation.

His job now is to go out there and explain why this war was a really good idea and this deal is a really good idea. No, I know what you're saying. You know, a lot of people are saying that this is essentially unconditional surrender, but really, if you look at it from the right angle, it's us winning. This is his job. And you know, in typical fashion, because Megyn Kelly and I, I don't mean this as like, I mean, this is a compliment, actually, but because she is

a moderate, very much by nature, she was kind and reasonable to, to J.D. vance, she could have been a lot harsher on him.

But just so we're clear, Miriam Adelson's favorite member of this administration, Marco Rubio,

he's not being sent around to be the one who's claiming this is a

huge victory now, is he?

[Brian Kilmeade]

No.

[Dave Smith]

J.D. vance is the one who's supposed to take the fall for this.

And it's, and you'll see that it's, it's already happening. The hawks are blaming J.D. vance for, for all this stuff.

Anyway, let's play. Here is a JD Vance on the

Megyn Kelly show talking about everything that's going on.

[Megyn Kelly]

Let's talk about what happened to the GOP base as a result of all this, okay? Because it's divided. I know you've experienced it yourself. I've experienced it too. It's been sort of a sad, tumultuous, stressful time. It's much more fun, I think, for most of us who lean right or right leaning independence to be fighting with the left. But it's been kind of civil worry over on the conservative team since this whole thing got launched. And the non interventionalist right feels very betrayed, very betrayed by it. Whether you agree with that, they've been betrayed or not. Mr. Vice President, what do you say to those people?

[J.D. Vance]

Well, what I'd say to them is, is one, I, I think you can walk through all the ways in which this has led to a good place for the United States of America. And I'd ask them not to sort of view this purely through the filter. I know, you know, a lot of these, these folks are frustrated with the role that Israel has and all this. We can talk about that, but don't look at it from the lens of, you know, what, what is it that different people think about it? What do you think about it? What like fundamentally do you think?

[Megyn Kelly]

I've talked to a lot.

[Dave Smith]

Let's pause it, let's pause it for a second. Okay, Listen. I don't like the role Israel's played in it. Let's imagine Israel played no role in it. There was no such thing as Israel. Let's say Donald Trump just did this. You launched a war of aggression, a

war of choice against a nation in the middle of negotiations in the most disgusting, dishonorable, Pearl harbor style sneak attack, like a fucking coward, like a criminal. You launched a war against a country who had not attacked, attacked America over a civilian nuclear program which was being monitored until you launched the last war. And what did it accomplish? You got 13 of our boys killed. You got hundreds of our, our boys and girls injured. You killed hundreds of little girls at a school. Thousands of innocent people. Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage. Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to the global economy. All to fucking lose and bribe them to, to stop. What is this? What? This is what. JD Vance has to come with us. This is. You want to send your vice president out now? You're not going to send him on

Tucker Carlson because it's been a little

bit too heated there.

Obviously he can't do Candace Owens or

any of these other shows, but the one avenue you have, okay, he'll go to Megan Kelly and he's going to talk directly to

me. I mean, I don't mean to be narcissistic and make this about me. I just mean that she mentioned the non interventionist, right?

I mean us talk about us. What is the implication here? That we wouldn't care if only Israel. Our beef isn't that Israel got us to do a thing, okay? If Israel got a doctor to cure

cancer, I wouldn't be upset with them.

Our beef is that Israel got us

to do a horrific, evil thing that's not in our national interest. Let's keep playing

[J.D. Vance]

the best argument, that the nuclear program is destroyed, the Iranian conventional military is destroyed. We had, yes, a temporary rise in energy prices that's already coming down substantially. And we didn't get, as I said repeatedly, we were never going to get the quagmire that a lot of people were warning about because Donald Trump is just not George W. Bush. So I would say first, the first argument I'd make is, all right, let's pause it. We are right now.

[Dave Smith]

Let's pause it. And I think, yes, we didn't get the quagmire because Donald Trump offered him

hundreds of billions of dollars to stop up. That's how we didn't get the quagmire. But their nuclear program is obliterated. But the nuclear weapon that they never had still doesn't exist.

That's. Listen, man, I think the war in Iraq was a huge success because their

nuclear program was obliterated.

Their weapon, their WMDs are, are no longer there. What a success. This.

I mean, this is just a joke. Anyway, keep going.

[J.D. Vance]

You can make the best argument that where we are right now is a good place for the United States of America. And again, if we transform the Middle east, this is fundamentally worth it. Okay, the second argument I'd make this is maybe, is, is this, even if you disagree with this particular action, it's completely ridiculous to pick up your marbles and go home. That's not how politics works. And I've been very much on the inside of a lot of these debates and conversations. You know, some people have criticized our immigration policies, some people criticized tax policy, or some people have criticized foreign policy. The way that politics works is that you have to stay engaged in the process. You absolutely have to make your voice heard. But right now, right now, we have a very good deal for the American people. And importantly, we have a constituency right now that is saying that we're gonna send boots on the ground. They want the Donald Trump to send. Send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran. The best thing.

[Dave Smith]

We need people, but we need people

[J.D. Vance]

to be pushing back from inside the tit.

[Bacha Ungar Sargon]

Okay?

[Brian Kilmeade]

Frustration.

[Dave Smith]

Okay, so.

[Rebecca Heinrich]

And then we're told, all right, let's pause it.

[Dave Smith]

Let's pause it.

Because Megyn Kelly's about to get to a very good point here. But some of us have pushed back.

But there's an interesting.

There's an interesting offer in a way that J.D. vance is making here. And I'm going to end this episode with a counter offer. This is kind of what I wanted to have this conversation with Maga about. And this is why I wanted to close out with this at the end of the show. So maybe I'll hold off on, on my counteroffer.

But just to be clear about what

JD Bounce is Saying he goes, look,

some look, you can't just take your

balls and go home over one thing, you know? Yeah, okay. I mean the one thing was launching a war of aggression on behalf of a foreign country that turned out to be an absolute disaster.

So it's a pretty big thing.

[Progressive Motorcycle Insurance Announcer]

Thing.

[Dave Smith]

It's a pretty big thing to some of us.

And I know that this is for the political operators like J.D.

vance.

I think this is something that's hard

for some of them to wrap their

head around, that some of us actually believe in things. And so, yeah, like when we say we don't want to launch a war

of aggression on behalf of a foreign country, that is a disaster.

That's something like we are really against.

We really mean that, that it's kind

of a deal breaker for us. But he's going to say, hey, look,

you don't pick up your balls and

go home over one thing not going your way. You got to push back from inside the tent. Meaning I got to still support Donald

Trump in order to push back.

And the problem with that, of course, is that many of us did support Donald Trump. I gave it my best effort. I had President Donald Trump's son quote tweeting me saying he's on it 100% that we're going to keep all the neocons out of this administration. We tried our best to push back from inside the tent. We were explicitly told by the guy up top that we're not in the tent anymore and that the movement is Mark Levin. So probably not exactly what we're gonna do.

Now Megyn Kelly is gonna make here. I'll save my counteroffer for the end, but here's Megyn Kelly's gonna bring up what happens when you do push back.

[Rebecca Heinrich]

And then we're told, and I quote, those who speak ill of Mark Levin are not maga.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, the President, as he does, is pushing back at a criticism of yours that he thought was unfair.

[Megyn Kelly]

Not just me, I mean a lot of non interventional.

[J.D. Vance]

But I talked to him last night And I said, Mr. President, I'm gonna go on Megyn Kelly's show and I'm defend the administration's policies. Absolutely. I love that because again, good.

[Megyn Kelly]

Tell him he should do it next.

[J.D. Vance]

He engages and he's going to criticize you when he agrees or disagrees.

[Megyn Kelly]

I don't mind.

[J.D. Vance]

He's going to say nice things about you when he agrees with you, you. But that's what I actually love about the President is he's not, he's all right.

[Dave Smith]

So let's just pause it there.

[J.D. Vance]

Debates.

[Dave Smith]

All right, and we can, we can

turn this off here because I really, this is kind of what I wanted to get into.

So here's JD Bands going on Megan

Kelly, he's coming into this world, the podcast world. And, and you know, look, what is the dominant media right now, as people have gone over this a bunch of times, but you know, it's like something like six out of the top ten right wing podcasts are the ones that Donald Trump hates.

Now, J.D. vance is trying to sell Donald Trump to this audience.

And I'm gonna push back against this a little bit because I don't think that this is actually what's required.

And also, this is not Donald Trump

engaging as Megyn Kelly says Donald Trump could engage. This is JD Vance engaging with Megyn Kelly.

It's not like Donald Trump's going on

Tucker Carlson's show so they can get into where they disagree.

That would be, hey, at least then JD Vance would have a point. Say what you will, but he's engaging. But this is kind of what I

was getting at earlier in the show when I said that, look, Maga, if

we're entering a negotiation here of sorts, which in a way isn't that kind of what J.D.

vance is doing. Right?

Like, in a sense, Donald Trump and the administration, they're entering into negotiations with the Iranians. We're putting together this memorandum of understanding. In a weird way, JD Vance is also entering into negotiations with, with us. He's talking to the non interventionist. Right.

You know, he's talking about Tucker Carlson and Tucker Carlson's audience.

Okay. Well, there's a whole lot of overlap

between my audience and Tucker Carlson's. I'm a person who regularly goes on Tucker Carlson's show. And I, I'm friends with Tucker and you know, I'm.

So as somebody kind of in this world, as a, a somewhat influential figure

in the non interventionist.

Right. Okay, let me respond to these negotiations. You're essentially saying, hey, I'd like you to. Here's what I'd like you to do. You, I'd like you to stay inside the tent. I'd like you to support Donald Trump. We can have criticism when we don't,

but keep supporting this ticket. Now going forward.

This is a good deal.

You know, you're asking something of us. We are kind of asking something of you.

There's, it's a bit of a negotiation. And much like in your other negotiation with the one with Iran where you had to realize that, oh, yeah, you

don't have all of the cards, you don't have all of the chips. And in fact, if you look at

the Memorandum of Understanding, what's been leaked, there's a whole lot of things America has to do.

There's only a couple things Iran done has to do.

Iran's like open the straight promise once again that you won't get nukes. Okay, we're going to do all this, we're going to leave the area, end

the sanctions, open up the frozen assets, put together the fund, like all this stuff. You're in a very similar situation with us right now. Just saying you're kind of in that situation with us.

You've lost. It's obvious even your own propaganda machine

is saying you've lost. They are not running with you, they're not defending you.

You, you're coming to Megan Kelly now for the same reason that Iran's make, that Donald Trump is making a deal with Iran right now. Because you have to. Because there's something you want out of these negotiations as well. It's not right. It's not. Look, here's the thing. They know this and, and this is the deal I'm going to make here. Okay?

This is my offer to Magan. I want to hear your guys response.

My listeners, MAGA people, I'm interested to

hear what you think of this.

The reason why J.D. vance is coming back to negotiate, much like the reason why Donald Trump is going to negotiate with the Iranians, is because there's something we need from them that's part of the reason why he's

giving them hundreds of billions of dollars.

We need the straight open. We need, you know, there's something we need. Okay, well what is it that J.D.

vance needs?

[Brian Kilmeade]

J.D.

[Dave Smith]

vance is, has to sell this thing to keep his political future alive, to keep this, his, this presidency that he's tied to alive, he needs to sell. He knows he's got the fight of his life now with the Israel lobby over the next 60 days for them to try to get this thing done. And so essentially he needs some backup. He's going to Megyn Kelly to be like, no, guys, this isn't a bad deal. You know, it's a bad deal. Mark Levin wants boots on the ground. That's a bad deal. And hey, you've come to the right place. You know, there's something that you want from us and we kind of do have that. And you know what, I'm kind of

inclined to give it to you.

And so you're right. You need Backup. We need to defend Donald Trump making

this decision to admit defeat and to

get us out of the war for the next 60 days. What I suggest now, again, keep in mind, Maga, you're not in the position of strength you think you are.

Far I saw one poll came out

that had Donald Trump at a 28%

approval rating the other day that might be a little bit of an outlier, but low 30s.

And by the way, at the end of this, Fox News turning and this whole war is a loss, 28 might become the mean.

Might become the mean poll for Donald Trump real soon.

And so keep in mind, the country hates Donald Trump's guts. He's one of the most unpopular, if not the most unpopular president in modern American history. You're not in a position of strength.

[Bacha Ungar Sargon]

Strength.

[Dave Smith]

But here's what I'm going to give you.

Here's what I'll offer to Maga. I will tone down for the next 60 days.

I will do my best to tone

down my criticism of the people pushing this deal and ramp up my criticism

of the Israel lobby, Fox News, all the Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel government, all the people who are trying to destroy this deal and keep the war going. I will focus my fight against them and I will defend Donald Trump in doing the right thing after being solely

responsible for bringing us to this point,

a person who was uniquely qualified to know exactly why he shouldn't be doing this. Okay, you came here for backup.

We're going to give you some backup.

But we're not going to pretend what

just happened didn't happen. You made your choice.

You know, much like the, the, your ex, you still got a kid together, but you cheated many times in this relationship.

And you're not coming to a relationship.

We will help you do right by the kid, though. The kid is this deal.

The kid is the country.

We'll help in that effort. We will get out there and we

will fight the Mark Levins and the Ben Shapiro of the world. We'll make that a focus going forward.

But we're not going to forget what you did and we're going to remind you that that was really a deal breaker for us. And so the only thing that we ask for in return, this is it. It's a very reasonable deal. It's not going to cost you nearly

as much as the deal with Iran. I'm not even looking for $300 billion.

All I'm saying is that, J.D.

vance, you can't be the guy going forward. And we need you all to support Thomas Massey for president.

That's all.

That's all I'm asking for.

Fair deal.

And I think you're. I think you guys should consider taking it. And listen, maga, I'm talking to you guys here.

One of the benefits you get is that, that he's actually maga. I mean, he's actually America First. He actually believes in all the stuff that you claim to. We're sorry. We are. You made the mistake of listening to Mark Levin. We are never listening to Mark Levin again. And so now I think you should get on board with someone who we can trust not to do that. I think this is a fair deal. And by the way, we reserve the right to still bash you guys for

making this decision because you did did. And you're going to have to live with that.

But here's the deal. We'll fight against the people trying to hold up this deal.

We'll give you a political cover right now for the moment. And we all agree to support Thomas Massey for president in 2028. I think it's a fair deal. I think it's something you should consider. And that's our show for today. All right, catch you guys on Monday.

[Brian Kilmeade]

PE.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

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