B (8:07)

It was automatic. And in fact, it bear to be

A (8:09)

true because in fact, the within an hour of the initial attack on the

B (8:15)

leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north for that matter, had already been activated to launch.

A (8:21)

In fact, those had already been pre positioned. The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the President made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.

B (8:54)

Going back.

A (8:56)

So there you have it. Did you hear that? We knew it was a certainty that Israel was going to attack and we knew that Iran was going to respond with with retaliatory attacks to Israel. But also to us, that is quite an admission. Because if that's true, then what Marco Rubio is saying is that Israel got us into this war. Israel was going to do something that. Yes, by the way, I obviously this is not a shock to anyone who listens to this show, but the shocking part is that Marco Rubio is admitting it, that he's saying straight up that Israel was going to do something that was going to result in our boys dying. And we knew that. And so we had no choice but to join with Israel and get into this war. A war that the American people do not want. A war that many of the top generals did not want, and a war that at least at some point, at least previously, Donald Trump didn't want to because he himself predicted what a disaster it would be. A war that Tulsi Gabbard has spent a career pretending she doesn't want. A war that J.D. vance has pretended he doesn't want. A war that Bobby Kennedy, okay, I know he's at the Health Department, but whatever, there's other people in the government. There all right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Knick Knack. I don't know if you love nicotine, but I sure do. And most nicotine products are loaded with extra ingredients and all kinds of slop. Knickknack is the alternative. A family owned company making the superior nicotine option. Manufactured in the United States of America with the highest quality standards, Knickknack is a fully dissolvable nicotine lozenge, a lip brick, if you will. Made with just six premium ingredients. You know exactly what's in it. No ph adjusters, no pouch, no waste, no bs. It's made with real essential oils for real flavor. Available in both 3 and 6 milligram strengths. Go to knickknack.com Dave and use the promo code Dave for 20% off. Or you can use the store locator to find knickknacks near you. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Once again, knickknack.com Dave promo code Dave for 20% off. All right, let's get back into the show. Everybody going into this is really important to make this point that like they are actually however this war ends up turning out, I mean, look, as we titled the episode yesterday, it's already a disaster. It's a disaster right now. The latest numbers are that I saw it was reported over 550 Iranians dead, haven't been able to get good numbers on the Israeli casualties thus far. Just like five Americans have died, not counting the, I think it was three and like a dozen wounded in Austin in that blowback terrorist attack. So however this goes from here, all of these political leaders, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth and all of them, they are in many ways more guilty and responsible than George W. Bush and those guys because these unlike, unlike George W. Bush, he at least had the excuse, as dumb as it was, that 911 changed everything. Yes, we used to have these views. You know, George W. Bush, if you remember, in the year 2000, for those of you guys who are old enough to remember, he, he ran on a humble foreign policy, no nation building, no policing of the world. The military should only be used to fight and win defensive wars is what George W. Bush, the candidate said. But as he was leading the country into 20 year catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said 911 changed everything. This is different now. We got attacked and the attack came out of Afghanistan and it was aided by Saddam Hussein. Okay, well, the first one was true. The second one was a lie. But regardless, he at least had something to say. These guys have nothing. They have nothing. No major thing has changed. We haven't been attacked. We haven't. We don't live in a new world. And they can't even pretend we live in a new world. They're just saying, oh, Israel, Israel was going to do it anyway and therefore we had no choice. Just for more on this, before we really break this down, let's go to Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House. He also had some comments on this yesterday.

C (13:46)

To me, the most critical point is that this was a defensive measure, a defensive operation. And why is that? I took some notes and this is not classified. So I'll tell you what I think is important. Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deemed to be an existential threat. Iran was building missiles at a radical in a rapid clip to the point where our allies in the region could not keep up. As you know, Iran has long vowed to take out Israel, wipe it off the map. And they have long seen that as a critical threat to their very existence. Because Israel was determined to act with or without the US Our Commander in Chief and the administration and the officials I just named had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the US to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region and beyond. And they determined, because of the exquisite intelligence that we had, that if Israel fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then they would have immediately retaliated against US personnel and assets. We have troops in harm's way and we have many Americans in the region. And that was of great concern. If we had waited for all of those eventualities to take place, the consequences of inaction on our part would have been, could have been devastating. We don't know at what magnitude. But you can assume, because it is common sense, that if Iran had begun to fire all of their missile arsenal, short and mid range missiles, at our personnel and our assets and our installations, we would have suffered staggering losses. And if we had waited to respond before acting first, then those losses would have been far greater than if we had done what we did, okay, so

A (15:54)

there'd be even more Americans dead. So here you have, okay, just to be clear, we have the Secretary of State, National Security Adviser and the speaker of the House confirming that this is the reason we went to war with Iran. We went to war with Iran, because Israel had decided that they were going to attack Iran. And we had solid intelligence that the Iranian response was not only going to be to send rockets and missiles back at Israel, but it would also be to target our bases, our soldiers, and we would have had a lot more of them dead. So, yeah, we got, you know, a couple planes shot down and a few Americans dead and a dozen or two injured. But it would have been worse than this. This is the answer they're giving now. Of course, the major problem with this answer is that it just leads to many more questions than it does answers. And in fact, this is kind of right at the heart of, of the political dynamic in America over the last two plus years. Really? Really. I mean, this is something that people like me and Scott Horton and our camp of, you know, libertarian non interventionists have been talking about for much longer than that. But the American people broadly have really been talking and thinking about this since October 7th of 2023. And the thing is, it's like this, like this is the reason, it is the heart of the reason why the American people are essentially forced to speculate about what exactly the level of Israeli control over United States politics is. And there are, there are people who kind of like, you know, specialize in scoffing at the people who speculate over this. Oh, you're a conspiracy theorist or something like that. But it leaves no other option than for people to speculate about the power of the Israel lobby, blackmail operations a la Jeffrey Epstein or something like that. Or maybe that's what was really going on here. How many of these people are compromised? How many of them are threatened? Quite frankly, it leads people into, let's say, being quite hostile toward Jewish people in general and certainly organized Jewish groups. And people speculate about. How could this be? Because with what Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson here are giving us, this makes absolutely no sense, right? Like there's a huge missing link that they're not telling us about. If this is the story, which I got to say I believe it is, because how could it possibly be that our client state, the, the state that is completely and totally dependent on us for their survival would be in a position where they tell us, well, hey, whether you like it or not, we're going to do it. And if that gets some of your people killed, too bad. Like, how is that freaking possible without another layer there that explains how our, our political class is completely controlled by this foreign government? Because what we know on paper, right, what we know for a fact, is that just Think about this for a second. Israel's gotten like, I don't like $30 billion from the US since October 7th. Normally they just get their standard four plus billion a year guaranteed with a sweeter deal than any other country gets. It's much, much more than that though. There's also an incredible amount of diplomatic cover that the US gives to Israel because look, hatred of Israel has spiked in the last few years and because of the genocide in Gaza. You know, people are paying attention to this more than ever before. But the whole world has hated Israel since way before this. The entire world's position, short of like three countries, the entire world's position is Israel is an occupying, has been occupying the west bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights for like nearly 60 years. The entire international opinion is that they're guilty of heinous war crimes and human rights abuses and that the settlements are illegal and that they're, you know what I mean? Like it's just the entire world, but they can always count on the US to veto UN resolutions condemning Israel will protect them against the world courts will protect, you know what I'm saying? So like we, we protect this, this so many ways. Also, it's not just the money we give to Israel. We also give money to all of the Sunni sock puppet states that surround Israel, all the Gulf states and the non Gulf states. You know, so like Egypt and that, you know, Egypt is the second largest recipient of US foreign aid after Israel. Why is that? When did that deal start? Okay, it started at Camp David in the 70s after Egypt and Israel had fought for four wars in like 25 years. They've never been to war since. Yeah, we pay Egypt to not with Israel. We pay Jordan to not with Israel. We pay Saudi Arabia and the uae. We bribe Bahrain, we bribe all these countries to not with Israel. That's how we get them to the sea. That's how we got them to the Abraham Accords. We bribed all of them off. That's how we get them to have maybe not be official allies, but have diplomatic relations and certainly not be enemies. And that's the incentive for these regimes because if you want to know, say like the population of Egypt, like forget the government, right? We're talking about the people, the people of Egypt, the people of Jordan, the people of Lebanon, the people of, you know, Saudi Arabia, the people of the, the United Arab Emirates, okay? Those people oppose Israel at roughly 100% rates. If you want to go through any of those countries and ask people about how they feel about what The Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians. Believe it or not, they're not for it. Okay? And so these governments are, despite the wishes of their people, being friends with Israel, they're doing that because, well, the most powerful government in the history of the world will give you a whole bunch of money if you're friends with them and you're on their enemies list if you're not. So that's a pretty strong incentive. But if you remove that, the incentive is for them to not. The incentive is for them to stick up for the Palestinians. All of that. I haven't even mentioned this right now, during this war and of course after the 12 day war. And of course this was true after, just before the 12 Day War, when Israel murdered in Iranian in Syria, when Iran starts launching missiles back at Israel, they rely on the US to help shoot down those missiles. We literally protect them from the response to this. And, and then also, you know, like after that, that, you know, when they killed the Iranian in Syria that I'm referencing from last year there, it was also Saudi Arabia and other countries helped them too. Because we bribed them to, not because Israel bribes them to. Israel doesn't have the fucking money to bribe them to. I mean, just think about what's being said here. That there is a. There is a client state, a welfare state of ours in the Middle east that we can't control, even when it means they're going to drag us into a war that the entire administration promised they wouldn't get you into, that they know damn well, at least has the risk of a catastrophic ending that would be terrible for this country and terrible for those people. But we can't stop a puny little country in the Middle east that is the size of New Jersey with around the same population. You're telling me New Jersey just bossed around the United States of America? This makes no sense whatsoever. It only leads to so many more questions. If this is true, then there must be some other element of control to this. How, how is it possible that like they almost say it as a given, right? The way that, that Rubio and, and Mike Johnson are saying it here are like, well, look, dude, Israel was going to attack. And so essentially the way they're positioning this is we had two options. Option one was we sit back while Israel attacks and then we do nothing when they, you know, when there's the response and you know, that's that and then more of our boys die. Or option two, you know, the lesser of these two options, the lesser evil of these Two options is we join Israel in this attack and then we can at least be prepared for the response and, you know, whatever. But what about fucking option three? We tell them, hell no, you're not doing that. Are you out of your fucking mind? You're going to launch a war that we don't want to, that's going to get our boys killed. Sit down. You're our client state. If you even think about doing this, don't expect any protection from the rockets coming back at you. Please. If this was any other country, you'd say look out for some rockets from us. I'm not advocating that. But we're, this is, this is the United States of America military we're talking about here. What do you mean you're going to launch a war that's going to implicate us and get our boys killed? You out of your mind? But we wouldn't even have to threaten Israel with any military action. You just go, okay, well guess what? You do that and you're never getting another dime from us. You're never getting any more logistical support from us. You're never getting a UN resolution vetoed from us. And you know what? We're going to tell all our sock puppet states in the region. We don't care if you're friends with Israel. You guys want to stick up for the Palestinians, go ahead. I mean, just saying that, like if there was the ability to say that would obviously have Netanyahu go, oh, sorry for bothering you, sir. Won't ever happen again. And there's no war. Like with what we know on paper, it's insane. It's just absolutely insane to, to pretend that the leverage would be in any other, in any other situation. Right? Like, it just doesn't make any sense at all minus some other type of control that you guys aren't telling us about. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is my Patriot Supply. A great company, really, really proud to have them on board as a sponsor. If a major disruption happened and you couldn't get to the store, how long do you think you would last with what's in your house right now? If it's anything less than a month, you need to check out our friends at my Patriot Supply. They're America's number one preparedness company with over 3 million satisfied customers. And right now, when you go to prepar like Dave.com, you can get their bestselling four week emergency food supply that comes with an additional week of free food this is the best long term storable food you can find. You're getting at least 2,000 calories a day. Real meals made with real ingredients, no artificial flavors or colors, and the shelf life is measured in decades. Look, we all know we need to have some food stored for emergencies. Why not get it from the most trusted folks in the business and get a free week of food while you're at it. But just so you guys know, this is the same stuff that I keep in my house after Covid, I really kind of vowed to myself that I will never be without, you know, a reasonable, a few months supply of food and water and, you know, the firepower to protect it if need be. So if you want to be Prepared, go to preparelikedave.com and get your free week of emergency food today. That's preparelikedave.com all right, let's get back into the show. Now as far as the, the other aspect to this which really just doesn't make sense is that, look, Iran was at the negotiating table Both in the 12 day war and in this war when this happened. They were at the negotiating table, they were trying to negotiate this away. There is absolutely no question, and I mean literally, there is nobody who pays attention to this stuff, who reads about this, who's honest, who won't tell you Iran didn't want this war, they didn't want the 12 day war, they didn't want this war. They, they've been signaling this forever. And so if it's the case that Iran doesn't want this war and that, and that Israel, or excuse me, if it's the case that Iran doesn't want this war and you're telling us now that if Israel attacked them, they were going to respond to both of us. Well, let's examine that for a second. So it does make sense that Iran would treat an Israeli first strike in Israeli, you know, aggressive act of war as a war from both the United States and Israel. Right? Because, well, hey, we've been coordinated every other time we're doing something and we jointly fought a war against the Iranians last summer. And so they would assume that this is the beginning of a war from both of you guys. Unless we told them it wasn't. I mean, it seems like all it would take would be us to tell Iran that, like, hey, just so you know, Israel's about to attack you. We did not authorize it. We do not want to be in a war with you. But if you respond by killing any of our boys, then we're at war with you. So respond to Israel all you want to, but just so you know, we're not catching their back and we're not with them anymore. We're, we do not want this war with you. There is, it is just not plausible at all that Iran still would have gone and killed our, our guys. Look, I mean, look at what they did after the 12 day war. They bent over backward to not kill any of our guys because they didn't want it. Because they're, look, they're getting lit up right now, and they didn't want this. Why did the Ayatollah make that decision? Well, I don't know. He's dead now, so it kind of makes sense why he didn't want it. Right. So the only answer here, the only thing that makes what Rubio and Mike Johnson are saying plausibly make sense is what? That that's not an option. It's not an option for us to say we're not with Israel anymore. It's not an option for us to say, no, Israel, we will give you all the support in the world. You just can't do this one thing. You just can't do this one thing. You know, I'm reminded again, I know I love bringing this, this story up because I just, I think it, it's like a microcosm for the whole thing. But if you remember, there was one time ever, really, the only time I've ever heard a US President say this, these words. There was one time ever where Donald Trump said that he would cut off, cut off funding to Israel. So he had said that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. And then he was in an interview with Politico and they asked him about that. They said, hey, you said you wouldn't allow Israel to annex the West Bank. Well, what are you going to do if they do it? And he goes, I'd cut off all support. I'd cut off all support for them if they did that. And then J.D. vance visited Israel and the Knesset, the Israeli equivalent of Congress, or their version of Congress, the Knesset voted on a resolution to annex the west bank the day that J.D. vance was visiting Israel. And it passed. They voted yes. I'm sorry, you cannot tell. They did that intentionally because the vice president was in the country and because that was the red line that this administration, this the most pro Israel administration in US History, they had one red line, and they made it a point to, to humiliate our vice president. That was a message that they sent. What the Fuck is that? What is that message? I mean, I don't know. I don't think it's speculating that much. To go. Yeah, the message is you don't have the option to do that. That's not an option. Clearly. Clearly it is not an option for the United States of America to say no to Israel, to say, we'll stop supporting you then. Well, why is that not an option? Can anyone give an answer for that? There is no official answer for that. And that's what leads to people speculating, and that's what leads to a rise in, you know, people not liking Jews very much. That's what leads to a rise in conspiracy theories. Because what the fuck else explains this other than some type of conspiracy? You're telling me that an administration stacked with people who all warned against what a disaster this war would be. You know, the disaster that we're witnessing right now is what everyone who was against this was warning about, and they still did it because the option was do it or fucking cut off Israel. And obviously that's not an option. You know, this war is very, very unpopular right now. The, the, the latest polling that I've looked at is about about 25%. About 25% of Americans support this war. Democrats and liberals, leftists obviously completely oppose it. Independents completely oppose it. Young people completely oppose it. Probably the only group of people who support the war are, are maga, Trump supporters. And there really is no question. And by the way, when I say they support it, slim majority, it's like 45. I missed like 55%, 54%, something like that. A slight majority of Trump supporters support this war, by the way. That's a really bad number for it to be at the very beginning of a war when it hasn't even been that costly or that bloody yet. You know, like, that's really bad. You barely have majority support. Just for like comparison, the. Afghanistan was enormously popular amongst every demographic. Just about, I think every demographic. I mean, whatever. Maybe you could come up with one that didn't. But like, it was enormously popular. And even the war in Iraq, not as popular as Afghanistan, but it had like more than super majority support of the American people. Something like 70 plus percent of people supported it when that war first started. This one is starting with 25% support. And for the one demographic, Trump supporters who have a slight majority who are supporting this war, look, they are supporting it for one reason and one reason only, and that's because Donald Trump launched it. And that's just a fact. You Know, it's, it's, it's one of the most frustrating things about the Trump base is that there is this percentage. And honestly I think those numbers right there could almost like tell you the whole thing. There's a percentage, it's about 54% of Donald Trump's base who just support him, just support whatever he does. Now look, I mean, hey, there's another 45% there who are not saying they support it. There's, of that number, I think it's like 30 something percent say they're, they're not sure. Then there's a smaller percentage who, who outright oppose the thing. But you know, this is something that I, obviously I've talked about a lot because it's something that, that I think about quite a lot. It's a real interesting dynamic of politics today. But for, you know, even in Donald Trump's first term, in the first four years that Donald Trump was president from 2017 to 2000 to January 2021. So in his first four years, if you remember, the culture never like the pendulum didn't swing, you know, if you really in Obama's second term was when you had like the rise of wokeism. And then when Donald Trump got elected, it's not like the, the cultural pendulum swung back and we got like, like wokeism receded, Wokeism went through the roof. In Donald Trump's first term, it was really in Biden's term that the pendulum started swinging back. But essentially what had happened was that like the left, you know, I shouldn't even say the left, the progressive Democratic establishment, had political control of the country and total control of the culture for that entire time. You know, like, like Donald Trump's first term was the time when it was roughest to be not a left winger out in real life. You know, like if you were, if you were on social media or you had a YouTube channel, this is when people were getting kicked off like crazy. This is when, you know, like people were being protested and antifa was showing up to any, you know, right of center event, you know, so essentially as, as someone like me, right, who's like a, a commentator on political and cultural events. It was like we had essentially 16 years of the progressive Democrats at the driver's seat. There was the eight years of Barack Obama, the four years of Donald Trump and the four years of Joe Biden. And in that time they really fucking wrecked the country in a lot of very profound ways. We got the banker bailouts, the failed Obama recovery, we got the expansion of the global war on terrorism to everywhere. That was the Obama doctrine. A war is anywhere I want to in the world. I can bomb. Don't need authorization from Congress or nothing. They. They gave us the worst economic recovery in American history. They gave us the worst political and racial and cultural divides in modern American history. They gave us insane wokeism, just poisoning children's minds, in many cases poisoning their bodies as well. They also left us with the sickest nation in the world. They gave us COVID lockdowns. They gave us Russiagate. You know, they framed the sitting president for treason. They locked down the country. They just ruined tens of millions of people's lives. They, you know, whatever. They ran a senile president. We could go through all of the things just, just unforgivable crimes like the. The Democratic establishment of the last 20 years should be launched to the fucking moon. They shouldn't be allowed to live on Earth anymore. And anyway, I guess the dynamic that I've talked about a lot on the show before is that during that time, a resistance grew up. And we were kind of honored to be a part of that resistance. You know, it was. It was a cool thing to like, go out and take on these guys, you know, to get to, you know, just from. It's not like, whatever. I mean, there was hard work and a little bit of skill involved in it too, but there was also a lot of good fortune and luck. And I got to be the guy who was going and making the case against the Ukraine war on Joe Rogan or debating Chris Cuomo or whatever. And the whole kind of Trump base was with us completely. You know, there was no, you know, a year ago, a year ago, I would say things like, we, you know, the global war on terrorism is a complete failure. We should never fight any more regime change. Wars of choice, wars of aggression, they've bankrupted this country. Get nothing but cheers from Trump supporters. They frame Donald Trump for treason. These people committed crimes against our republic. They need to go to jail. Nothing but applause from Trump supporters. The lockdown governor should be prosecuted. Foushee should be prosecuted. Nothing but but support that all the Epstein files should be released and anybody implicated should go to jail for it. Nothing but support. Not anymore. Not anymore. And that's for one reason and one reason only. Because Trump did it. That's it. If anybody. Let me ask you this. Let's say Joe Biden had ran on releasing the Epstein files, and then he got in there and did exactly what Donald Trump would do. Would Dan Bongino be defending him right now? Would any Trump supporter be defending him right now? No. Would they be calling it a Democratic hoax? No, they'd call it out for exactly what it is. You're covering up a scandal that involved children being raped. That's what everyone would call it. Every Trump supporter would be on board. And likewise, if Kamala Harris had won the presidency and she had launched this war in Iran, what would they all be saying right now? That entire 55%, okay, minus mark Levin and the Israel lobby. They would support it. Okay, fine. But the entire rest of them would oppose it. And this is just. If everybody knows this is true, right? And this is. This is just the way it is. They'd have been like, it's another forever war. It's more Bush, Obama, foreign policy. You know, they would blame, you know, whatever. James. I was going to say Comey, but I meant to say Brennan. They would blame John Brennan, the Deep state, all this shit. It would. There's just no question about that. Everybody knows that's true. The only thing that's different now is that Joe Biden, that Donald Trump's doing it. Joe Biden was doing it. Kamala Harris was doing it. Hillary Clinton had done it. And in fact, one of the fun things to point out now that everyone's having a lot of fun on social media with is Donald Trump tweeting, you know, back in Obama's term, Obama's going to start a war with Iran. It's going to be a disaster. He's going to be doing it just to distract from his failures and other issues. Isn't that interesting? Well, this is. I want to talk for a second here to the group, if there are any who are listening to me, to the group that I mentioned before, which were Donald Trump supporters who are not sure about this war and maybe even a little bit to the 55, 54% who support this war. I want you to consider this and maybe learn from the mistakes that the left made over the years. You know, in my life. In my life. And, and this goes, you know, this extends from before my life, too, from before I was born. For quite a while, at least since the 1960s, culturally speaking, the conservatives have won nothing. Just about nothing. I mean, you could point to. You could point to, you know, the Supreme Court had some rulings that were decent on, you know, your constitutional right to own a gun or something like that. But if you just look at our society and where it is compared to, like, the 1950s, it's just a much less conservative society. There's. There's really no Way to argue that. And, you know, the left just kept winning, kept winning, like everything, like, you know, gay marriage or whatever it is. It was just like every single issue, they kept winning and winning and winning and winning. And really it's only been like the last few years, you know, maybe from like 2022. When did Elon buy Twitter? Like right around the time Elon bought Twitter. And there were a few other big things. There were like the, the Target and the Bud Light boycotts, I think really had an impact on, on pushing Wokeism out of the, the culture. And Elon Musk buying Twitter was a huge, huge part of it. And then of course, this resulted in Donald Trump's big victory. And a big part of the reason why the left finally lost the kind of like having the driver's seat in, in the culture was that they just went too far. They just went way, way, way too far. And they were so wrong. You know, the, the first thing that really set the table for the culture to actually move in a right wing direction, the first major thing was Covid. And the fact was that even though the Republicans were in many cases as guilty as the Democrats in terms of lockdowns and all the awful policies, the Democrats championed it in a way that the Republicans didn't. And then they really browbeat every American over the head, lying to them about the germ and then lying to them about the vaccine and lying to them about lockdowns and masks and all this other stuff at lying about the origin of the thing, you know, that they made it. And once all that got exposed, it was just like a huge, huge loss for them. And, you know, it just shows you that it's like, look, man, taking the wrong side of an issue, especially, especially in today's media environment where you can't really just control the narrative through propaganda the way you used to be able to. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to take those issues. And eventually what happened was they just, they lost the argument. They got proven wrong on all this. You know, we, we. And again, I'm honored to have been a part of this, but we. I'm not saying it's me. I'm a small part of it, but I'm honored to be a small part of it. But we were able to get out there and just win the argument and go, no, this Covid thing is bullshit. You guys are wrong and we're right. This Ukraine war is stupid and you're lying about the origins of it, you know, and, and all of this stuff and this resulted in essentially us kind of taking the country back in some really kind of profound sense. I don't mean politically. I mean just where the nation is. And what this all culminated in was Donald Trump winning the popular vote and every single swing state and the culture and the youth and the UFC and Joe Rogan and just, you know, like. And me and just, you know, just like, winning, at least for the moment. Donald Trump came into that environment, and the democrats had been so thoroughly defeated, so thoroughly defeated. Man, they were sitting at 24% approval ratings just in the. I mean, after. After senile president Joe Biden and then somehow, worse, candidate Kamala Harris, they were just discredited for a generation, Unless the republicans handed it right back to them. But so I just want to try to, you know, like, make this point that if you admit what is obviously true, which is what I said before, which is that if Kamala Harris was launching this war, you, Trump supporter would oppose it. Okay, but now you're supporting it. Well, now this is what you're allowing to happen. Just so you know, you're supporting a war that is the justification is ten times more incoherent Than the justification for the war in Iraq. It makes absolutely no sense. What people are. Are arguing. I mean, they're grasping draws. It's the most ridiculous goddamn ever. They don't even have a justification. The only coherent one that they came up with was this one that we just played, which at le, as I said, leaves more questions than answered. The justification is essentially, well, we're controlled by our. Our own client state. But all the other justification. Oh, we've been at war for. We didn't start this war. We're finishing this war, says idiot. Pete hegseth. Really? We've been at war for 47 years. How come that never came up on the campaign trail then? Since you guys. Since you guys were running while we were in an active war that our country was not responding to, why didn't you run on? We're at war with Iran. We're going to finish this war. It's been going on for 47 years, after all. Oh, yeah, because it's stupid and you're lying through your teeth. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Ridge. I love ridge. Love the Ridge wallet. I've been using it for years. And I was really. I was one of those guys who was really married to my old school wallet. Like, I was like, no, I'll never change it, because that's just what I've always done. And then I tried the Ridge and I was like, why was I ever doing, why did I ever have a leather brick in my back pocket filled with receipts from 1982 and like a gift card with $3 left on it from when I was 27 or something like that? You don't need any of that. All you need is the Ridge. Also, the Ridge just looks badass. It's a sleek, minimalist metallic wallet. They're really cool looking. It holds your cards, it holds your cash. It has everything you need. You can also find Ridge's Power bank at Best Buy. Or our listeners can get 10% off go to ridge.com and use the promo code POTP10. And our listeners can get 10% off at ridge.com when they use the promo code POTP 10 at checkout. Just head to ridge.com use that promo code POTP10 and you're all set. All right, let's get back into the show. Anyway, if you want to support this, let me just tell you what you're doing. Here's what you're doing. In effect, you are now handing the Democrats and the liberals and the leftists who were like on death's door, you just handed them the biggest issue of the moment to be 100% right on. And all they have to do is oppose you. That's what you've given them. That's the gift that you've given to your political domestic enemies, or at least, you know, opponents, whatever you want to call it. That's what you give them. You know, it's like in the same sense that, like, if you, like, let me just say it like this. Let's say you were a leftist, okay? Try, try to put yourself in that. Go with me on this thought experiment. I know it's a difficult thing to, to conceive of, but imagine you were a leftist, okay? And imagine, let's say you were a leftist and your goals were like, I don't know, whatever. You, let's just say your, your really important priorities were like the climate change agenda or like universal health care or something like that, right? And you've got some, some politicians, you know, whoever, let's say Bernie Sanders or someone like that, who you think is like really going to help or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, whoever it might be, who you think is going to implement those policies. You want them to have political power to implement them. Okay, let's, let's imagine that that's your position. If you could try, if you can go with me here on this. I know it's tough for my audience to imagine to put themselves in this situation. A few of you, a few of you guys, this might define you or describe you. So let's, let's say that's who you were 10 years ago. You know, you really cared about climate change and universal healthcare. Okay, well, from your political perspective, the worst thing in the world that you would want to battle against is your entire movement saying that six year old boys are actually little girls. Because holy fucking shit, dude. Like, it's amazing. And by the way, there were a sliver, not nearly enough, but there were some leftists who recognized this at the time who went, yo, what are you doing, man? Because you're just handing the easiest of talking points to the other side. Because this is insane. If you were a leftist who really cared about climate change and really cared about universal health care, then the worst thing in the world for you is a fucking tranny giving an 11 year old a lap dance like, my God, what are you doing? And then all of your people are defending that and acting like you're weird for objecting to it. Like I'm saying from the perspective of a leftist, this is the worst thing in the world that could happen to you. And ironically, right, this is one of these, like kind of counterintuitive things about politics. But ironically, if you're a right winger, if you can get past the horrible nature of that event, if you're a right winger, in a way, it's the best thing for you because you could go, look how fucking crazy these people are and you can win that argument. Ok, well, in the same sense, if you're a right winger and you're defending any of this bullshit, this is the best thing in the world for a fucking leftist or a liberal. You're just handing them the whole entire game. People really have trouble with this in politics. They really have trouble with dealing with second order effects, you know, as the, the wisdom of Rosie Perez and white men can't jump. Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win. I can't really do a Rosie Perez. I'll work on that. But that's what you guys have done here. I mean, just taken a moment where you had, for the first time in my life, all the energy, all the opportunity, all the wind at your back, and handed it right back over to the worst elements. This is the, the best thing that's ever happened for the prospects of an AOC presidency has been Donald Trump launch in this war on behalf of Israel. And I understand, by the way, I know, I know that she doesn't really oppose it. I know that Chuck Schumer doesn't really oppose it. I know any of them. But again, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter. It just matters that Trump did it and they can say they're against it. It you just hand them the argument. Let's, before we wrap this up, let's play the JD Vance clip because I did think that this was something that, because we had on the last show played a clip of J.D. vance from after the 12 Day War. But this is a more recent clip of, of the vice president. Let's listen to this one. Because, by the way, this the reason, sorry, just say the reason I'm going into this now is because this is directly tied off of my point as you're handing it back over to the Democrats. Okay, here's your guy. Who's the guy who's supposedly set up to be the next presidential candidate? Let's check in with him.

B (55:48)

Vice President of The United States J.D. vance joins us now. Mr. Vice President, why this operation and why now? Well, good evening, Jesse. So to step back just a little bit. If you go back to Midnight Hammer in the summer, what the president wanted to do with that mission was eliminate Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon. And we did destroy the nuclear enrichment facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer over the summer. Now, here's the thing, Jesse. We destroyed Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon during President Trump's term. We set them back substantially. But I think the president was looking for the long haul. He was looking for Iran to make a significant long term commitment that they would never build a nuclear weapon, that they would not pursue the ability to be on the brink of a nuclear weapon. And after months, really almost a year of painstaking diplomacy, what the president determined is he didn't want to just keep the president, or excuse me, keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three, four years of his second term. He wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon. And that would require fundamentally a change in mindset from the Iranian regime. So he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened. He knew that they were committed to getting on that brink of a nuclear weapon. And he decided to take action because he felt that was necessary in order to protect the nation.

A (57:06)

Pose it here, you fucking liar. You just unbelievable liar. Now, I'm sorry, I know politicians lie, but it's a little bit different when you're lying us into a war against a country of 92 million people, you know, our seventh war after six catastrophic ones in the region, lying us into war. See, the thing is, that's kind of a deal breaker for me. It's going to be a little bit of an issue. Iran had never attempted to achieve nuclear weapons, ever. This is by our own annual threat assessment from last year. They had, they had promised to never achieve nuclear weapons. They had an ayatollah who swore that it was against his religious views to have nuclear weapons. You murdered that guy. And now the thing is, this is how they're going to try to square this circle of how do you fight a war over a nuclear program when you just fought a war six months ago and bragged that you obliterated that nuclear program. Well, here's J.D. vance's attempt. Well, yeah, we had set him back three years, but Donald Trump didn't just care about his presidency. He had to make sure. They can't get nukes in seven years. Okay, why not make it 70? Yeah, we should start launching wars. I'm, I'm very concerned that Lichtenstein is going to get a nuke in a thousand years. Let's want, let's launch a war of aggression over them, over that, over the completely unfalsifiable idea that maybe at some point they would get nuclear weapons. That's what we're going with now, by the way, if that is what you're going with, that's the. I mean, again, and I'm, you know, this is me, right? You guys who watch the show, you're familiar with how I feel about George W. Bush and Barack Obama, right? This is, this is dumber than any of their justifications for war ever was. He's saying, yes, they were set back years, but hey, years isn't enough. Here's another major problem with what JD Vance is saying here. And by the way, you might notice, from listening to Marco Rubio, to listening to Mike Johnson, to listening to Pete Hegseth, to listening to Donald Trump, to listening to JD Vance, every one of them gives you a different justification. They have just not been clear at all about what is the reason we're going to war. You know, say what you will about the Bush administration, and I'll say quite a bit, they should all be in jail for the rest of their lives. But they went on the record with evidence and made claims and stuck their neck out there and said, this is what's going on. I put my reputation on the line. Colin Powell went to the United nations with the little vial of a thing and charts and talked about their mobile chemical weapons stations. Now, none of those existed. He was lying through his teeth. He knew he was lying and he's burning in hell now because of that. But at least he went out and said something. You guys, just every one of you makes up your own thing. But by the way, if what JD Vance is saying is true, then this war is totally illegal, because he's not. There was nothing imminent. There was no planned attack, as the Pentagon has, has confirmed. There was no imminent threat from JD Vance that we're concerned about them having nuclear weapons. But this is years away. And Donald Trump isn't only worried about the next three years of his. Well, if we got a buffer zone of three years, you know, that's more than enough time to take it to Congress and get a declaration. I mean, if you're. Dude, if you had stock, if you owned stock in aoc, if she was a publicly traded company and you owned stock in aoc, this shit is the greatest thing that's ever happened to you. Yeah. Be like, oh, my God, Buy More right now. Yeah, let's keep playing

B (61:08)

security. So Senator Marco Rubio, Secretary Rubio, and the President have both said something along the lines of, you ain't seen nothing yet. We could hit three times as hard. What does that mean? Well, what it means, Jesse, is we have a lot of capacity here. I think there's a lot of chatter about what our objectives is, what our goal is. I mean, I think the President's been extremely clear about our objectives and it's that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. But there's also been a lot of conversation about what are our capabilities. And look, I know this stuff. Obviously I'm not going to reveal classified information here on air, but the President of the United States knows what we're able to do. He knows that we have much greater capacity to inflict damage on the Iranian nuclear program, but also on various missiles that threaten our troops. As you've seen, they've been launching those at our troops for much of the past three days. So I think the President has made it very clear that the United States has a lot of optionality here. And we could go for a little bit longer. We could go for a lot longer. But I think the President just wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all important objective of ensuring that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, not just for the next few years. Not just because we obliterated Fordeau or some other enrichment facility, but because the Iranians themselves commit long term to not building a nuclear weapon. You know, after Iraq and Afghanistan, some

A (62:30)

people say, oh, we can post it there. We can. We can turn this off now. You fucking liar. I don't know what to say. You fucking liar. They've already committed to this. They've committed to it over and over and over again. And if the fucking. If we didn't have the most goddamn corrupt press in the world, this would be the front page story. They committed the day after, the day of, and the day after Donald Trump's State of the Union speech. The Iranian foreign minister. Because Donald Trump, if you remember, said, I haven't heard those magic words, we will never get a nuclear weapon. And he's like, let me make this clear. We will never get a nuclear weapon. They've said this over and over and over again. And J.D. vance is a fucking liar, dude. And you know, look, I'm sorry, man, but you want to have a voting coalition that is enough of a coalition to win the presidency. There are, as somebody who was in the Trump coalition in this last presidential race. And look, I mean, I'm not claiming to fucking speak for like some huge swath of the American people, but, like, I speak for some people. And obviously this is on. I'm a libertarian. This is on a voluntary basis only. If you choose that. I do. But a whole lot of people listen to my show and a whole lot of people agree with what we're saying. And then there's a whole lot of shows as big or bigger, who have similar type views. There are people out there who have principles. Now, I'm not saying I'm any better than any of the rest of you, or I'm a more principled person, but, like, there's shit that I believe in and lying, lying to my fucking face and to my family and my friends and my nation about launching a war. War about. About murdering people, getting children killed and getting us embroiled in what could be another calamity. That's a deal breaker for me. You will get. JD Vans will get no support from me going forward. Neither would Marco Rubio. I guess those are the two being floated out. In fact, I'll work as hard as I can to make sure nobody supports them. That's what you've gotten. That's what you've achieved already. And there's a lot more like me on this now. Of course, you know, it's Just again, it just can't be overstated. And I got to wrap up here in a second. But it just like this. This can't be repeated enough. How all of them have different justifications. What is the end game here? What are we trying to do? They keep saying Donald Trump will go as long as he can till his mission is accomplished. Who defines what the mission is? Here's JD Vance is defining it as they. Not only will they make the decision to not get a nuke, but the Iranian people will know that they can't make a nuke. They've already made that decision. They promised it, they've declared it. They said they're willing to negotiate. By the way, they have negotiated. They joined the JCPOA. They kept enrichment down to 3%. They did all of this until Donald Trump tore it up. So what is. But by the way, Vice President J.D. vance, the President of the United States, said the goal was regime change. Is that the goal or not? What the are we doing this for? None of them can tell you. They can't even come up with like a cocaine. They can't all, at least in the Bush administration, they all stuck to script. They all had the same thing to say. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. He was in on 9 11. He's working with the terrorists. In a post 911 world, we can't have a rogue regime who's working with the terrorists, have nuclear weapons. That is coherent. It was lies. None of it was true. But it's a coherent argument at least. It doesn't justify a war of aggression, by the way. But it's at least an argument that could maybe get someone to go, ah, maybe this is the move. This is insanity. And again, we have every reason in the world to think every reason in the world to think that this regime falling right now would be the worst thing that could happen to the Iranian people and to US Interests in the Middle East. Every reason to think that, you know, look, and I'll end on this, but when people, when people talk about the regime changes, you know, we've had lots of regime changes in the Middle east since 911 or in the Middle east and Northern Africa since 9 11. Obviously, you know, we overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and propped up our government there for 20 years, which fell to the Taliban after the war. We overthrew Saddam, we overthrew Gaddafi, we overthrew Assad in Syria. There was regime change in Egypt, there. There was an attempted regime change in Gaza after Hamas won the elections. There was regime change in Yemen think am I missing any? Might be. Every last one of them was a disaster in absolute catastrophe. Like either either. You know, like in Afghanistan where we tried to overthrow the Taliban, we propped up this new government which by the way was really into raping boys, just a thing. And that was the government we fought on the side of for 20 years. The, the boy rapers by the way. Ask any, anyone you know who served in Afghanistan. This is a very known thing. This isn't like a fringe thing. Like a couple people did this, this was part of their culture and it resulted in a more well armed Taliban. Overthrowing Saddam resulted in the bloodiest eight year civil war. Overthrowing Gaddafi resulted in a failed state. Libya is really not a nation anymore. Overthrowing Assad led to the Emir of Al Qaeda. But you might want to ask, it's not just like a coincidence that we got bad results from this. It's not just like oh you, you flipped a coin in the air and we happen to get tails seven times in a row. Like it's not. There's a reason, there's a reason why fucking really bad, brutal people tend to take over in these situations. Because think about it, right? You start, what are you going to do? You're going to drop bombs on Iran until enough high level people are, are dead that the government can't function anymore. So what does that mean? Like what does it mean if you overthrow the regime from a bombing campaign? It means there's chaos, there's dead bodies everywhere. It means there's supply chain issues. It means the, the shelves are dry, are bare in stores. It means there's chaos. Well, like who is most likely to take over a government to either take over a government or install a new government in a situation like that? Who is it the really peaceful people? Is it Gandhi who usually rises up? I mean like not saying it's, it's logically impossible. But what is so much more overwhelmingly likely is that the most ruthless killers with the most amount of guns are the ones who end up fucking taking over. This is like when Obama would talk about the moderate rebels in Syria. But what are you talking about? What does moderate mean? Like by definition when you grab a machine gun and enter a civil war, you're not a moderate anymore. So such thing as a moderate rebel, it's a contradiction in terms. Once you're a rebel, you're in a extremist by definition. You know the other thing that Donald Trump floated out today is he said he's open to the idea of arming the resistance Inside Iran, he. They also won't close the door on boots on the ground. Neither will the Israelis. But that's what. Oh, that'll. That'll bring stability. I know that'll bring stability. What you do is you start dropping a bunch of bombs from the sky and then flood the place with guns. See, that's how you get the moderate liberals to take over the country. Dude, this shit is not going to age well, man. It's. It. Look, man, Donald Trump has destroyed his presidency. And for any of you guys, and for the people like me who forget Trump, because too many people made a cult of personality thing, too many people hated Donald Trump too much, and too many people love Donald Trump so much. The truth is this. This isn't really about Donald Trump. Him, who cares? He's a buffoon who's just always been kind of like a cartoon character. Also, he's 80. He's going to be dead soon. Like, I have children. A lot of you guys listening to have children. I have children. They're growing up in this country. That's not the most important thing. That's the only thing. The only thing that matters to me is what kind of lives my kids get to have, what type of country we get to have here. And for those of us who cared about this project, and I don't mean Trump, I mean the project of trying to take this culture back from insane progressives and trying to make this country resemble something that might be a country that I'm comfortable with my kids growing up in is being destroyed by this. And if you care about that project, like, if that's what you care about is saving this republic and. And trying to give our kids at least, if not better than what we got, at least something close to what we had. If you care about that project, the only option now at this point is to abandon this administration. Abandon this administration. We need the Democrats to come destroy the Republicans in the midterms, which certainly will happen. And then we need a fresh start in 2028. We need somebody to essentially do what Donald Trump did. Hijack the party, win the primary, run against the Trump administration, against burying the Epstein files, against wars of choice, against this war in Iran. We need someone to run against that while still being against all the progressive establishment. That's our only hope. Thomas Massey, I'm looking at you. All right, that's our show for today. Thank you guys for watching. Be back soon. Peace.