B (7:35)

Just like with the Vietnam syndrome, the Iraq syndrome ushered in a period of American retreat and international chaos led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Predominantly withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS under Barack Obama.

A (7:46)

Pause it already. Okay, so he's. Now he's saying, much like Vietnam syndrome, America has been suffering through Iraq War Syndrome. And isn't it. Look, this is just, there's something so utterly depraved but very revealing about people who use either of these terms. So what they mean when they say that we developed Iraq War Syndrome or Vietnam Syndrome is that Americans, the syndrome that we have, the sickness, is that we kind of tend to go like, oh, maybe we shouldn't go on these giant murder campaigns, on these giant state sanctioned state backed mass murder campaigns that just end in nothing but destruction and the blood of innocent people and bringing hell on earth to a whole generation of children and just inflicting an unthinkable level of human suffering on people who didn't do anything to anyone. That's the syndrome. They view that as a sickness like that is something that requires a cure. The idea that you'd have an allergy to war. And by the way, in all these cases, we're talking about wars of choice, you know, not wars of necessity. But you. That the Americans. That's the real problem here. That's. In fact, a lot of people think the worst thing about the war in Iraq were the million people who got killed. A lot of people would say that the worst thing was like the 9 million people who got displaced or maybe the, the fif. 15 million people or something like that who had friends or family members killed or tragically wounded. A lot of people think the worst part about the war in Iraq was the thousands of our brave young soldiers who were killed, the tens of thousands who were injured, the tens of thousands who committed suicide. And some people would even say that the worst part about it was the trillions of dollars that were caused from the American taxpayer. You know, and like, look, obviously it, it might be a little unseemly to like say the worst thing about something that killed so many people was the price tag. But you know, you do have to understand, I mean, when you waste trillions of dollars, that's real wealth that's extracted from real people's lives, that's making real people who are poor, much, much poorer. And so there's a real, you know, there's a debate about what the worst thing about Iraq was. But, you know, I really would say the worst thing about the Iraq war was the syndrome. That's what these people regret about it. The syndrome. The worst thing about the war in Iraq, the real problem with that wasn't that we got so many people killed and waste so much money or even that we gave Iran that much more influence and control in the region. It was a big gift to them. No, the real problem is that it had the effect of making Americans not want to do more of this. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, longtime sponsor of this podcast. A great sponsor who's been with us forever and a great product. The most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you will ever wear. The only underwear that I ever put on my precious body is sheath underwear. I'm wearing a pair right now as I speak to you. I love them and I've had them at this point now. I've had them for years. And the pairs that I have, I have pairs that are like three, four years old and they're still just as comfortable as the day I got them. So definitely go check them out. Sheathunderwear.com the promo code is problem. That'll get you 20% off your entire entire order. Support the sponsors that Support our show. Sheathunderwear.com and again, the promo code is problem for 20 off your entire order. All right, let's get back into the show. That is really the problem. And the next, the next thing he says there is just utter. It's so for anyone who actually knows, like to, to tell the story of like, well, we had Iraq war syndrome. And then see, the problem was because of that, we pulled out. There's this age old thing. They always keep saying such bullshit. The problem with the, the re. We pulled out of Iraq and that's what led to the rise of isis. Now, first of all, it's just not true. I mean, it was one factor of why ISIS was able to invade Iraq, I guess, like if we had had our troops there, it might have been a little tougher for them to get in. But what happened is that Barack Obama, as you may have noticed, didn't pull out of the region. He toppled Gaddafi and he attempted, he started a civil war in Syria with the attempt to topple Bashar. Al Assad, which ultimately ended up working in the Biden presidency. But Barack Obama, in his attempt to overthrow Bashar Al Assad next door in Syria, started arming all of the anti Assad rebels. And this is what led to the rise of isis. There was American trucks and weapons that ISIS was using to invade Iraq. So to just tell the story is like, what happened as we left. Like, that's not exactly right. There's a bit more to it than that. And it's. Isn't it interesting that like, for all these people like Ben Shapiro who are supposedly, supposedly critics of Obama, that they always leave out the detail that he armed Al Qaeda and ISIS knowingly, like it's, it was actual treason what Barack Obama did. And yet for some reason, Ben Shapiro won't mention that in his list of criticisms about Barack Obama. And why is that? Oh, because Israel was on their side. Israel was in on that. And they also, Israel also is fine arming Al Qaeda or ISIS because they're rooting for them, because they fight against the Iranians and their proxies. So that just gets left out. But also, like, what, even what. So what is the implication here of the problem with Iraq? Like, if you're going to say that, oh, the problem is that Barack Obama pulled out. Not the problem is that George W. Bush went in, but the problem is that Barack Obama pulled out and that's what led to the rise of isis. Like, let's just say for the sake of argument, Ben Shapiro is an idiot and he doesn't know that Obama was arming the rebels in Syria, that that's how the whole thing started. Let's just say. So what's the implication then that we're supposed to be there forever? Iraq, I mean, short of Afghanistan, Iraq is the longest war in American history. But not long enough, I guess, for Ben Shapiro. I guess we should have, we should just always have troops in Iraq. Anyway, let's keep.

B (14:32)

Iranian proxies around the region grew and that eventually resulted in the cataclysm of October 7, 2023. Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and prompted at least in part, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China. China looked at the United States and the world.

A (14:50)

Pause it again. Yeah, like so, first of all, if you're going to talk about the rise of Iranian proxies, well, nothing, nothing helped Iran more than George W. Bush invading Iraq and handing Iraq over to Iran. That's literally what happened. He put the, their best friends, the Shiites, in Iraq in power in Iraq, they were mortal enemies with Saddam Hussein. So actually, you know what it's like with all of these things. There's, so it's such a, a perverse, upside down way of looking at everything. Like, look, obviously, even with Biden, obviously Biden bungled the withdrawal from Afghanistan and obviously he did not do it in a good way. And, you know, a lot of that is because he insisted on breaking Trump's timeline and just because he wanted to do something different and didn't want to do it on Trump's timeline. But isn't it crazy, Ben Shapiro go, that withdrawal got all these people killed, that withdrawal got 13 people killed or something like that. And you're like, yeah, well, the war got killed. Hundreds of thousands of people killed. So if people getting killed is the metric, I think the real problem is the war. Like, once again, you know, it's like even, like, like if Ben Shapiro is going to say in the, in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, just think about this, right? So, like in the aftermath of the longest wars in American history, incredibly bloody and costly wars, the aftermath of these 20 year, you know, catastrophes, it ends up with Iran having, and their proxies having more influence in the region. Like, okay, but the lesson from that is that you shouldn't have invaded. You shouldn't have invaded Iraq and handed Baghdad to the mullahs. But no, his lesson is that's why we shouldn't have left. That's why we. So we should just be there forever. I mean, right. That does seem like the implication. Well, let's, let's go back to it.

B (16:50)

And decided that it was going to spread its tentacles throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. Well, now on the tail end of Joe Biden's catastrophic foreign policy presidency, again in Iraq syndrome presidency, just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Trump has now put the Iraq syndrome to bed. Trump has done so with what could be called the Trump Doctrine. That's a term that I defined back in November 2024 with the following criteria. One, America's interests are paramount, and they include a lot of things, from freedom of the seas to the strength of American allies in contentious regions to, yes, oil interests. Second, America's interests must be carefully calibrated to our investment in them. So big interest means big investment, small interest, smaller investment. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America's interests are on the table, from diplomacy to military interventionism. And fourth, all of this should be made very public. All the time. The threat should be on the table. The threat of the Gun should always be on the table. Well, President Trump has done this again. I said this was his doctrine in November 2024. And now in the last year, he has done it twice. First, he did so at the June 22, 2025 B. Two strikes on Iran's nuclear reactor at Fordo, reestablishing America's deterrence power in the Middle east, reshaping the geopolitics of the region in dramatic fashion. Despite all of the caterwauling from his supposed allies declaring that World War III would break out because again, they had been captured by Iraq syndrome, President Trump is not well now President Trump has done the same with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In pursuing these actions, Trump has re established American deterrence globally. He's made clear America's enemies are on notice. Fafo. And he's demonstrating that such action doesn't need to lead to or to a full stool.

A (18:34)

Was. Well, well, here's the thing, right? I mean, just what a child is like, just so fundamentally unserious. F A F. Oh, around find out. But also, you don't even curse, so you won't say the words. So you, an adult saying F a F O. It's just the whole thing is so cringy. It's all like, it's so funny, man. Like they're, they're actually, again, like I said last episode, this is how stupid they think you are that they think they could be like, no, listen, Trump's laid out this whole new foreign policy. It's not neocon shit and it's also not isolationist shit. It's just kind of in the middle somewhere. Meanwhile, it's neocon. It's why all the neocons are praising him. It's exactly what they want out of him. And you know, again, it's just so goddamn wild to sit here and say that Donald Trump, at first of all, Ben Shapiro's claim is that Donald Trump has broken the Iraq War Syndrome, this horrible, you know, disease where Americans aren't bloodthirsty savages looking to go murder a whole bunch of people in some poor country who poses no threat to us. That horrible condition has been broken. But where exactly is the evidence of this? I mean, there's the, the popular support for military intervention in Venezuela was non existent. Was non existent. Now that, of course, whenever there's a successful mission like this and Americans haven't taken, you know, losses and we got the head guy and Donald Trump's just telling everyone we're going to get all this oil now it's like people going, huh? But the last poll I saw was like split. It was like something like 30 something percent in favor, 30 something percent opposed, and the rest undecided. There's like, there's really no evidence at all that like, the American people's appetite for foreign intervention has drastically changed. So, like, Benjamin is just kind of making that up. It's funny because it's like he's sitting here and selling you the idea that, like, his side has won out, that they've won the argument amongst the American people. Meanwhile, the only thing that's happened over the last two years is that Ben Shapiro has been destroyed. You know what I mean? Like, that's like that he's gone from being a person who people took seriously to being a laughingstock, yet he's telling you, what is it? What are we here a week into this thing that this has already been proven to have convinced the American people that we can do these type of military actions and they won't lead to a catastrophe? And just, I mean, look, how intellectually dishonest is this whole thing. We, look, we have absolutely no idea whether this is going to lead to a catastrophe or whether the situation in Iran is going to lead to a catastrophe. There's, it's not like there. Whenever they talk about, and I'm sure Ben Shapiro would agree with this too, by the way, Ben Shapiro hosted Benjamin Netanyahu on his podcast. And this was after the 12 Day War. And Benjamin Netanyahu was just talking all about how Iran is still developing nuclear weapons and they're developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit Florida and that we're going to have to go take them out again. So it's like, it's not even like their side is saying this worked. Their side is saying, we're gearing up for round two. Like, we're at halftime of this thing. So how do you know what's going to happen? Like, how do you know whether this is going to be a catastrophe? And Ben Shapiro knows damn well he's not this stupid. He's not as smart as he thinks he is, but he's not this stupid. He knows that the goal of Benjamin Netanyahu and himself and Lindsay Graham and Mark Levin is regime change in Iran. They've all admitted this themselves countless times over the years. And so the question is, would that lead to a catastrophe or not? All the evidence in the region suggests yes, we've run this experiment many times. Every single time, it has been a catastrophe in that region. So the idea that he's proven you can avoid a catastrophe. No, he didn't. Like what, Again, we was, it was, we were in Iraq for over a year before, before we, we got Saddam. Right. I think it was something like that. I think Scott, I think I said it wrong the other day, and then Scott corrected me about that. Yeah, it was, it was over a year. And then, then the following eight years after that, we're just horrible, bloody civil war. But like, okay, so if George W. Bush hadn't invaded with the, the whole country and had just like, done a strike on some of Saddam's mill, I mean, he didn't have a nuclear program, but like, if, say he did and they had just done a strike on that and it didn't end in catastrophe, like, that doesn't prove.

B (23:31)

Anything.

A (23:32)

You know what I'm saying? Like, that doesn't prove that. Like, oh, see, you can do these things and it doesn't end in catastrophe. Especially if he was still talking about coming back and striking them, trying to topple the regime. The point is, once you did that, it led to catastrophe. And of course, with the Venezuela thing, I mean, look objectively, even whether you are on, even if you support what Donald Trump just did, if you support this last mission, and let's say you support the strikes on the boats or something like that, even if you support it, you got to admit, at this point, Donald Trump is making, like, big claims about what we're going to do, how we're going to run the thing, how we're going to control the oil, how we're going to do all of this, and it is just totally up in the air as to how that will go. There's just a lot of questions. But Ben Shapiro, of course, already celebrating. And I guess what I was kind of getting at in the opening, where I was kind of talking about how, like, you know, it matters to be right when it's important. You know, like, for example, an old Tom woods example that he used in his book Real Dissent. It was a great book that Tom woods wrote, like, a decade ago. But he said he, he made the point in his book that he was like, he goes, if you're against slavery today, I think he wrote the book in, like, you know, 2015 or something like that. So he was like, if you're against slavery in 2015, that is really meaningless. Like, it doesn't mean anything to oppose slavery today. Like, you should. You know, we all should. But, like, everyone opposes slavery. So what? But if you were against slavery in 1840, that really meant something. Like if you, you were against slavery in 1840, when, like, the abolitionist party was getting, like 1% of the vote and abolitionists were regularly lynched and stuff, like, it was dangerous and it meant something, but you were like, keeping an idea moving that, that, you know what, it was a very important thing against the great injustice of your time. It's like that meant something. And in the same sense, it's like, dude, if you go back, I'm just saying, like, if you go back and listen to what I was saying about lockdowns in 2020, I'd be proud of what I was saying. I'd be like, yeah, that's right. Like, Ben Shapiro would be mortified by what he was saying about all this shit. At the time, Ben Shapiro was telling, he called everyone dopes to take the vaccine and all this. But the thing, I guess the point is that these guys just don't care about that. They just don't care. Like, it's like, Ben Shapiro, he's fine to just celebrate, but hoist the Mission Accomplished banner. Celebrate it all. Look, these two things worked out even though he knows damn well he has no clue whether they worked out at all. And he knows damn well that the last seven ones that he supported all ended in catastrophe. But that won't stop him from just hoisting up Mission Accomplished banner. Like, come on, man. How does anyone not see through that? All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Hexclad. I've been telling you about these guys for a while. If you want to take your kitchen game to the next level, you gotta check out Hexclad. They've got everything you need. Knives, pots, pans, all really good quality stuff. We got a bunch of their pots and pans. My wife loves cooking with them. Hexclad's six piece set is the perfect starter bundle for any kitchen. It includes three of their most popular pans with matching lids, giving you everything you need to handle daily cooking with ease. From breakfast to dinner, these pans deliver pro level performance, effortless cleanup, and durability that lasts a lifetime. They also have the Damascus steel knives, which are really cool. We just got those bunch of great products and they're all reasonably priced, so make sure you go check them out@hexclad.com problem that's H x C l dash.com problem to get 10% off your order hexclad.com problem for 10% off. All right, let's get back into the show. All right, here, let's play the last little bit.

B (27:35)

E. To a quagmire or to a full scale nation building exercise draining America's attention and resources? Iraq syndrome should be dead. And if it is, it died at the hands of President Trump.

A (27:48)

Yeah, well, I don't, I don't actually think Iraq syndrome, as you call it, should be dead. And I think that any, I was going to say like any moral society, but I would change that even more to just any sane society, any society that has not lost its collective mind should always have a syndrome about going to war. The war should always be an absolute last result or last resort. You know, like this, it's, it's, you know, it's so funny too, because the, you know, half the, the defense for every war is the, you know, the whole defense for Israel through the last two years was war's hell. Don't start a war. You know, you'd be like, but look at this baby being tortured to death. You're like, yep, that's why you don't start a war. It's like, okay, well, if that's your defense, that war is hell, then it should be a last resort. You know, you should have, you should have an allergy to hell. And if someone starts suggesting hell, you should go, well, do we, is that absolutely necessary? Right? Is that, isn't that the most, like, it's not even a left or right position. It's the most moderate human position. Fighting a war should be an absolute last option that you only do when there's absolutely no other alternative. And in Donald Trump's own words, by his own statements, Maduro had agreed to give him everything. That's what he said. Maduro had agreed to give him everything. Still wanted to do it. And you know, in terms of like, as far as Ben Shapiro sitting here, he's gonna, he's gonna look at his viewers who he has so little respect for, that he'll just lie through his fucking teeth to them and go, donald Trump has proven that it doesn't have to be a nation building exercise, but Donald Trump himself is saying he's open to boots on the ground and that we are running the thing and that we're going to be choosing the next government. Well, what the fuck is that? That's nation building. That's what he's talking about. Like, I don't know, he's. Now, does Donald Trump say a whole lot of dumb shit and only follow through on some of it? Sure, but this is at least a question mark. We don't know what's going to happen here. You know, Donald Trump is bragging that they got this, some, this big oil deal. You know that what. Here, I'll pull up the tweet. Where is it? Donald Trump. This was announced yesterday that he started posting this. Everybody's, you know, of course, got the, you know, the, the Mission Accomplished banners out. So Donald Trump posted. I am pleased to announce that the. I'm pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 million barrels of high quality sanctioned oil to the United States of America. This oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me as President of the United States of America to ensure that it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States. I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright execute this plan immediately. It will be taken by storage ships and brought directly to unloaded docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So Donald Trump is bragging that they've essentially that this regime is acquiesced. They're going to be turning over a whole bunch of their oil to Donald Trump. Now, it seems to me that the situation here is like, okay, so we don't have any of this oil yet. Donald Trump's claiming they have. But the dynamic. So the dynamic is kind of like this. And it does seem that the, the Vice president who now assumed the presidency in Venezuela, she, so she did, the first day she was talking, like, real defiant, but then she did start kind of saying like, hey, we should kind of make a deal and we should all be friends here and stuff like that. But here's the dynamic in Venezuela, and that's why, and this is why this whole thing is still a huge question mark and a big gamble, a humongous gambler. So Venezuela has, for, oh, what year did Chavez come into power? Like around 2000 or something like that. For about 25 years, Venezuela has been like a hostile regime to the United States of America. And what that means is that their people have been, you know, programmed, propagandized, brainwashed to really hate the Americans. You know, that's, that's what the calling card of the regime has been. In the same way that our, you know, society has been brainwashed to hate Muslims and the Israeli society has been brainwashed to hate Palestinians and Palestinian kids have been brainwashed to hate Israelis. I mean, you know, in, in a lot of those cases, it's the Israelis make it a lot easier for them to do that. But there's good. Like the whole, the government that's still in place, right? The government that's still in place, their whole calling card, their whole justification for existence has been that they oppose the American empire, that they will not acquiesce to, to the, the, this bully. And so you could see where, like, the new president of Venezuela, now she's got to kind of tell her own people, hey, we're not backing down, we're standing shut. But then she also doesn't want to get killed herself and Donald Trump's threatening her, so she's going, no, okay, let's kind of make a deal. So she's walking a tightrope right now, but the tightrope here is this. First of all, if she's really just going to turn over 50, you know, barrels, you know, like, if she's just going to like, turn over this insane amount of oil to the U.S. okay, this entire government was picked by Maduro. This is his government still standing. Does anybody else in there get resentful about that and try to overthrow her? She's got her own regime that she's got to wrangle and keep together. And then how much pressure is there on the whatever percentage? I mean, Venezuela is like a country of 30 million people. I don't know what percentage exactly hate America, but it's in the millions for sure. And like, so they're going to have a whole lot of pressure against them. So again, Donald Trump getting this woman to agree to this and then posting about it on Twitter or truth social media, that's not mission accomplished yet, man. That's just him saying, we're gonna do this. All right? Like, is he really going forward with this? And then if he's saying he's not allergic to troops on the ground or something, look, it's just. Now he's put himself in a situation where his presidency relies on what goes on with the Venezuelans, what they end up doing. And if people want to say it's going to be this like, fairy tale ending, like, okay, you can make those predictions, but there's a whole lot of goddamn factors in here. And this is the thing, man. You start, you start these wars, you don't know which way they're going to go. And by the way, to the example that Ben Shapiro used or he didn't use, but he intentionally left out, but there's, and there's a hot mic, like recording where John Kerry's actually talking about this. But when they're, you know, when, when, when Barack Obama was arming Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. The plan was for them to put pressure on Bashar al Assad. So they were trying to get Bashar al Assad to step down. And they were like, oh, if, if he sees these head choppers coming through, these bin Ladenites, he's going to fear for his life. He's going to step down. And, and we can, you know, and, and essentially we could have what we have now where the, you don't have Bashar al Assad in there. And as Ben Shapiro himself has pointed out, you break up what he called the Shiite crescent, so you won't be able to get weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lemon in Lebanon through Syria. So that was kind of the goal of the thing. And, but the plan was not that ISIS was supposed to turn around and invade western Iraq. That just wasn't part of it. But, you know, they didn't get the, they didn't get the memo on that. And they're isis. They, you know, they got their own ideas. So, like with all these things, you always, you have a game plan and they can game out, oh, this is exactly how it's going to go. But it almost never comes to fruition exactly like that because there's just a lot of other factors that you can't take everything into account. By the way of the other people celebrating Donald Trump here, we should also point out. Here's Lindsay Graham. Let's go to that video here. Here's Lindsey Graham's latest on. You remember how Ben Shapiro was just telling us that it's proof that you can have these military interventions and they won't lead to catastrophe. Here's Lindsey Graham with the latest on Iran. He's not Barack Obama. He's not turning his back on the people of Iran who are demanding that their oppression end and to the Ayatollah and his thugs. If you keep killing your people in defiance of President Trump, you're going to wake up dead. Iran is on the verge of falling. He's not Barack Obama. All right, so I don't know if you guys are keeping up here now, but you know how much the goalposts keep moving. You remember when it was, it started with, Iran can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. And then it was, Iran can't be allowed to ENRICH up to 60% uranium. And now it's, we're saying Iran can't be allowed to have intercontinental ballistic missiles. Even if they don't have a nuclear program at all. They can't be allowed to have, you know, mid range intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now it's, you better be nice to your own people. This is the new line now that the, this is the, the pretext for war now is that they're putting down protests. You know, it's like, and, and I don't know, you know, look, the protests in Iran, they, they might be totally organic or partially or mostly organic. I mean, look, it is the, it is true that people don't much like repressive governments, or at least there's a lot of people who don't like repressive governments. And Iran is a very repressive government. And so it's quite possible there's people protesting out there. But also, you know, whenever, whenever there are protests against the country that is on the CIA's kill list, you always wonder like, what's exactly going on. In fact, it would, it would seem, and I don't know the answer to this, I mean, I know that the CIA and the State Department and all types of forces in our federal government have fomented, you know, protests all across the world. That's something they're known for doing. But it would be almost crazy to imagine that there wasn't at least some type of effort to funnel money in there or at least support them or prop them up. But I've lived through this time. There's been protests in Iran, like, maybe at least like four or five different times in the last 20 years. There's been like big protests. And every time the hawks always make a really big deal out of it and they always say that the regime's close to falling and who knows, I mean, it's, it, it is possible, you know, that eventually they're right. Like the boy who cried wolf. That story does end up with there being a WOL wolf at the end of it, right? So just because they cry wolf the whole time doesn't mean it can't ever come true. But you could also imagine, right, like, if you picture it like being in the United States of America and if you think about like some of the protest movements here, right, like there's been, you know, like, if you just think like yourself in the last 15, 20 years or something like that, and you were to think of all the real big protest movements, like, you know, you think of like Occupy Wall street, they had huge demonstrations or Black Lives Matter protests, or there was like the, what they call the, was the Pussy March, the women's march, where they had like, I mean, I think millions of, of people out at them. And if you were to let's say, like, you just took, like, a. Like an aerial, you know, camera shot of, like, some of these huge protests, you know, and you could picture it, like you've seen a bunch of them in your mind, where it's like, blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks. Just hundreds of thousands of people out on the street. And you look at that and go, oh, they had a big protest. But, like, you could imagine in some foreign government, in some foreign country, if they just started playing those images and they went, look, the United States of America's government is about to fall. But, like, as an American, you'd be like, oh, well, no, no, not at all. You know, like, I mean, yes, this is a big protest, but we're not, like, anywhere close to it even being in the realm of possibility that this thing is going to, like, overthrow the regime in D.C. and so, like, I just, you know, people make, like, such a big deal out of it, because I saw, you know, last week, that's what all. Oh, the Iranian regime is about to fall. The people hate their own regime. You're like, all right, guys. Well, you know, the regime's been in power since 1979, and it spent much of its existence having the most powerful governments in the world dead set on overthrowing that regime. And they've survived the whole time. So, like, I'm just not convinced when people always constantly try to convince me how fragile the regime is. But, like, maybe. Maybe this time is different. Maybe they are, you know, more fragile than they've been at the past. But anyway, none of that's really the point. The point is here you have Lindsey Graham saying that this is now the new. And he says that he's gotten this from Trump, that this is now the new red line. The new red line is, like, if they. If they shoot a protester now, we're going to launch a war over that. So it's not, you know, it's not the nuclear threat anymore. It's not the missile threat anymore. It's. Don't you, at a certain point just start to, like, wake up, like, for anyone with an IQ over 85, at a certain point go. It was never about any of those things. Isn't that obvious? That's the same thing with Venezuela, dude. They've thrown out, like, 15 different excuses that are all just such bullshit. And you start to see, this is why the Hawks are all happy right now. They're all celebrating because they. They got Donald Trump's presidency. They. They totally wrestled it away. You know, who knows? They're probably never even. There was probably never even a shot that he wasn't going to go in this direction. But that's what you got. The, the war hawks who champion every war feel no shame at all when it turns out to be a complete catastrophe. They will just get up and start, champion the next one, demonizing anyone who opposes it and that's that. And if it ends in catastrophe, it ends in catastrophe. I mean, who, they don't care. They're going to have the same lives no matter what right seems to be. That seems to be the game, as far as I can tell. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Vandy Crisps. 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So if you want to give Vandy's a try, go to vandycrisps.com Dave and use the promo code Dave for 25% off your first order. That's vandycrisps.com dave promo code Dave for 25% off YOUR first order. All right, let's get back into the show. Let's here, let's, let's play the Megyn Kelly clip because I really did appreciate this. I think I mentioned this yesterday on the show, but I wanted to actually play this to, to give Megan some, some credit because, man, let me tell you something. And I saw, I saw some people who were kind of a, you know, more like in, in our camp type guys who were kind of giving her about this and going, oh, look, she's, she's, you know, she's riding the fence or whatever and she won't actually take A position. But actually I will say that I was, I was really proud of her for this. And I think what's awesome about it is that it's like, look, even if you're not all the way over here with me, you got to at least admit that Megyn Kelly is the alternative. Like, like how you cannot come to the conclusion that she's come to, should be disqualifying for being listened to anymore. Here, let's play the Meg and Kelly clip and then we'll, we'll talk about it.

C (44:56)

I have seen what happens when you cheerlead unabashedly US intervention in foreign countries, thinking it's for our good and for the national, the international good, only to wind up with what we've called quagmire in places like Iraq, not to mention Libya. We're not great at going into these foreign countries, decapitating them at the leadership level and then saying either we're going to steer the country to a better place or it's going to steer itself. Either one, they just, nine times out of ten they don't work out well. And what does it mean in terms of boots on the ground? Trump is saying, I'm actually fine with that in Venezuela. Well, whose boots? Cuz I have a 16 year old boy and I have a 12 year old boy and I have a 14 year old girl and a lot of my listeners have children too who are actually the ones who might have to fill the boots. So I think I speak for a lot of moms and dads for that matter, when I say I'm staying in yellow territory until we know more. And I will not be joining the FOX News cheerleading brigade this time. I've been burned too many times.

A (46:07)

Yeah, I mean, look, like I, I get, if I wanted to nitpick here, I guess I could say to Megan, who I really do like very much, but I could say to her like, yellow, you're staying in yellow. I mean, I don't know, I don't, I don't have kids that are that age. My, my kids are young and so I guess it's not as real of a like risk, but I got the thought that like please, you're gonna take my, I mean over my dead body would any government ever take my kids and go use them to fight one of your bankers wars? Like, sorry, that ain't happening. But yeah, I mean I, I, again this to me, the reason why I'm praising Megyn Kelly for this is because this to me is like, this is the bare minimum of what obviously any of these guys should be feeling. And, and how, how any of these guys, like, like Ben Shapiro or, or Mark Levin or Lindsey Graham or Douglas Murray or any of them, how you can, like, you can support seven disastrous wars in a row and then with confidence, tell you on the eighth one, you gotta support this thing and not even like, you know, like, even like bringing up your responsibility for the rest of it. And I do like the way that Megyn Kelly said we call it a quagmire. You know, there's something about that word, quagmire. It's like, what a, what a euphemism, you know, it's like quagmire. I don't know, it kind of reminds me of the guy on Family Guy or it's kind of just like a word. Like, it's like a word for a. Like this is a little bit of a. We're in a pickle. You know, you're like, by quagmire you mean we just, we just slaughtered people for nothing? We just ruined millions of people's lives for absolutely nothing? Well, I mean, maybe not nothing, but not anything for us, not anything for them and not for any of the reasons that you liars told us it was for. It is something. All right, we got a couple questions here. I'll, I'll. Dave, how much do you think the CIA and the FBI are actually making the decisions and the Congress and the presidency are just lying to cover agencies actions? Yeah, well, they got way too much power, that's for sure. But honestly, I don't think, you know, I think Donald Trump is. Is. This is him. He's the one responsible. Hey, Dave, did you see Clint Russell saying that the reason why we invaded Venezuela for oil is so we can up Iran? No, I didn't, I didn't see him say that. I'm not sure exactly what his point on that is. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if that's the reason. You know, it's not like, I don't, I don't know exactly how much any of this is really connected to Iran and Israel and all that. I mean, I'm sure the Israelis are happy for us to overthrow the government in Venezuela, but, you know, why wouldn't they be? They're a government that is friendly with, you know, a lot of their enemies, but I don't really think that was like the driving impetus behind this. I really think from everything I've read on it, I really think this is. This was Rubio and Trump and the Rubio angle is all about Cuba and the Trump angle is all about the oil, about this big deal. You know, I think Trump just thinks like, oh, this is a way that I could go, I could get a whole bunch of oil, you know, bring it into the economy and win the midterms, you know, can't, can't deliver on any of the fixes the other way. So maybe we'll just go take someone's shit and that'll be the answer, I guess. I don't know. But I'm open, I'm open to that stuff. I don't, I don't know. Question for Dave. Are you going to debate that Columbia professor Jeffrey Lacks? He called you out and said, anytime, any place on X. I have no idea who that is, so I don't know, I'd have to look into it. I'll check it out. Jeffrey Lacks. What did he, what did he want to debate on? All right, it's Dave. Let's see that. It's not a members only. This is a public episode. This is not a members only episode. I mean, I'm not going to show my hog anyway, but that's a, a weird question. Okay, well, you got some knuckleheads out there in the chat. All right. There was one more that I wanted to get to. Oh, yeah, I did want to say this before I, before we, we wrap up, because I had seen that Dan Bongino, I guess his is back, he's, he's back in the podcast world or something, and he was like, got into a thing where he was kind of like trashing Matt Gaetz and he's gone on this whole thing where he's going, like, his mission to coming back to podcasting is to, like, take out what he keeps calling the black pillars. And essentially the black pillars are the people, I think, saying critics of the Trump administration. So, like, that's, you're black pilled if you don't support what Donald Trump is doing or something like that. And I just, I, I don't know, I can't. I almost couldn't believe it's real, that this is actually. I mean, I just. Listen, I just assumed, and perhaps this was a wrong assumption. I just assumed that Dan Bongino, when he sold his soul and made his legacy of his life defending a pedophile, I just thought he would go away and maybe get like some cushy position on like, the board of a weapons company or something. Like, I thought he'd be handsomely rewarded by, you know, powerful people. But, like, he could never show his face around these parts again. I mean, I just assume that was obvious. But now I guess they're saying, like, he hasn't really called out people by name, I guess, except for Matt Gaetz. But the implications certainly seem to be like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or someone like that, or maybe me to a lesser extent or something like that. And like, I just, I don't know, it's just we're at the beginning of a new year. And I will tell you, there is something just exciting about the prospect that they're like, do they actually think that they're going to, like, send Dan Bonino out onto the scene now to come take care of this problem of, of people being critical of the Trump administration? Let's play. I saw this. Luke Rajowski. I'm sorry I always mess up your name, but I know him well. But in my defense, it's a crazy Polish name, but he, he tweeted this, this compilation, which I just love. Let's play the Dan Bongino.

D (52:51)

Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal. Please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this. Katherine Rummler, I want you. We need to keep the heat on this case, folks. There are a lot of people who are knee deep in the Washington swamp who are not telling you the truth about serious allegations out there that Epstein may have had video and audio of people out there doing things they shouldn't have been doing. And you should be asking yourself the question, how is it that all these people, the CIA director, the Obama fixer, Bill Clinton, all intersected past with Jeffrey Epstein? Jeffrey Epstein isn't with us anymore and nobody seems to want to talk about it outside of a few entrepreneurial media outlets saying, hey, this is a big deal. He killed himself. Again, you want me to, I've seen the whole file. He killed himself. Listen, Jeffrey Epstein story is a big.

A (53:48)

Okay, so look, the thing that's, that's amusing to me about this is that if Dan Bongino, if he wants to serve this function, if he's going to be the guy, because, you know, he had a real big show before he went into the administration and one of the biggest right wing, you know, shows conservative shows in the country and talked about, and as you could see right there, used to tell the truth about stuff on it. And that's why a lot of people were excited that he got the position as Deputy FBI director. If he wants to pivot back now to coming in this world after, after what he did in his time There. If he wants to come back and be like, I'm the one who's gonna, like, take the fight to the whatever group in the way the industry is these days, it's almost impossible that he's not going to have to talk to one of us at some point. Whether that's having Matt Gaetz on your show or having going on Tucker Carlson show or having Candace on or doing something, I'd certainly be more than happy to do it. But if you want to sit down and have a conversation about this stuff, then fine. But it's just so laughable. You're so vulnerable. We watched you lie through your teeth. Look, he said, I've seen the files. He killed himself. I just want you to think about this, okay? Dan Bongino, after talking about this all the time, and you saw him right there in the clip saying, don't let up. Don't let up on the Epstein thing. We got to keep talking about this. None of this makes sense. Well, you didn't see. There's. He even went as far as one time on the Tim Pool show. He said. He said, I have it on good authority that Jeffrey Epstein worked for Middle Eastern intelligence. Could be any of those Middle Eastern countries, of course, but. So he said all that. Then he goes in there, he says, I've seen the files. He killed himself. That was approximately two months before the official position of the administration was that the files don't exist. They said, he's seen the files and he killed himself. And by the way, as you know, because we followed this whole crazy train, right? You know, the end result of it is that the bill passed, the files are to be released. Great. So now we all get to see it, right? I mean, I understand they just missed a deadline, but of course, this administration is that they ran on being the most transparent administration in history. Right? So we're going to get all that information. So this will be great. So let's see what Dan Bongino saw. I mean, Dan Bongino, by the way, you're g. You're coming back to podcasting now. The files have been declassified. I'm not a lawyer, but pretty sure you can tell us now it's not classified information anymore. You can tell us exactly what you saw, exactly how you were able to look the American people in the eye and guarantee and promise that he killed himself. And you know that for a fact. Ah. I mean, you must have seen some really strong evidence in order to know that for a fact. What we've seen so far is a Fake AI image of Epstein attempting to kill himself in some way in a cell. But it was. It was clearly determined that that wasn't a real video. So what is it that you saw, Dan? I mean, look, dude, if you want to come back into this world, in this world here, as you knew before you went into government, in this world, the currency is honesty. The currency is the truth. So tell us, man. You. You went into government, looked us all in the eye, and made up a big fat fucking lie that you don't know. And you know it. You know you did that. So now you think you're going to be the one to come back into this, you know, the podcast and game, and you're going to be policing this space, the black pillars. Like, okay, let's talk, dude. I'm happy to do it. Open, invite. You can come on this show anytime. I'll come on your show anytime. Like, let's do it. Or do it with one of the other ones. I don't care if it's me. But how on earth is that supposed to work? How. Like, I couldn't. I guess I'm. I'm slightly stunned that. That they even thought this could work. You know, that. That Dan Bongino, because he's. He's clearly still, like, in an asset of the administration, but, like, so this is what you sent him to do. We got to get him back out there in the podcast scene to help control the narrative. I just don't. I don't see how it's possible. I don't see how it's possible. After the Epstein thing, I think that, look, Donald Trump was. Was severely wounded by his awful handling of the Epstein thing, but he's still Donald Trump. Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino and Cash Patel, their stock has gone to zero. Zero. Like, the reason why people liked them is because they said they weren't gonna do what they just did. You know, it's like, it's. It's like. Like, I don't know. I don't even know what to compare it to. It's like. It's like if a. If a truck breaks down, I guess you could still, like, park it in your backyard and put, like, flowers in it or something. Like, there could still be some other use. That was your only use. This was the entire point. The entire point of you guys taking over the Justice Department and the FBI was to get to the bottom of the criminals in Washington, D.C. and you got us. Zero. None. You're done. You're done around these parts anyway. All right. We're gonna wrap up there. That's the episode for today. Hope to see a bunch of you guys out in Philadelphia this weekend. Really looking forward to it. And I'll catch you guys next time. Peace.