Scott Horton (3:46)

I mean, it's just atrocious, absolute terrorism. I mean, it's unbelievable that he would say that. And, and of course, if, if the subject is the critical nuclear infrastructure of the country, none of that is in Tehran. There are plenty of government targets in Tehran, of course, but if we're talking about satellite guided munitions on government buildings, you don't need to evacuate the entire city for that. So the implication there was like up to and including carpet bombing with B52s or, you know, even potentially atom bombs. I'm not saying that's what I think he meant by it, but I mean, evacuate the entire capital city of the country, a city of millions of people. I don't know the exact number. I've heard people say 10 million people. And I mean, it's just unbelievable. And, and what he could have possibly, what he had in mind there, like, who knows, like, quite frankly, he might have just meant by that that that Israel still has the same green light that they have had for the past few days and that they're going to continue to hit government targets right like, he might have not meant anything by it other than that the, the same war is going to continue, essentially. Or he might have meant that I'm sending in the heavy bombers and I'm going to wipe your capital city off the face of the earth and anything in between there. Dave, I mean, for Christ's sake, this is the President of the United States of America talking this way. It's just unbelievable that this is what's happening. And despite everything, I tend to be a minimalist on even the worst stuff because the most alarmist take is usually not what happens, right? Like, he's not going to drop an H bomb on Tehran. He's not going to send a btd, just carpet bomb the neighborhoods, right? He's going to do like, you know, Winston Churchill style saturation bombing. Why would he do that? He's not going to do that. This is no reason in the world to do that. So. Not that there's good reason behind any of this stuff, but I. But the fact that he would even talk that way is unbelievable. I would say that, you know, I did, you know, I had heard what I thought were credible enough statements from people who know things that we@antiwar.com announced that, as I had said on Sunday, I had heard that it could start as soon as Monday and that America was getting into the war. And that was not like a vow of, oh, my great prediction or whatever is me telling you the bad news that I have heard from people who I thought it was worth repeating that this is what's being talked about is that America is going to really get in full scale here. And I sure hope that my sources were wrong. And I saw where Steve Bannon actually on Getter, had quoted Dave DeCamp's news article about my statement there and said that this was coming from the Israelis, which, according to him, the Israelis were going around Washington saying the same thing. That may be true, but that's not who my sources were, and that's for sure not where my sources were getting their information from whatsoever. So. But the point is that it so far has not happened. And in that same article, we say@antiwar.com everyone call the White House, please do whatever you can. Call them, email them repeatedly. Do it over and over again. Get all your friends and family to do it. It matters a lot whether just the word is in the White House that people are going crazy over this and hate it or not, or worse, the opposite. If people are really rallying behind it, he's got to know it isn't Just Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith. It's huge factions of his supporters. This is their absolute line, they will never support him again over this, that this is an absolute breakup, done deal kind of thing. That he absolutely cannot go further and should, you know, he's saying he wants peace, he's saying he wants to stop fighting. Well, he's the one sending all the bombs and telling Netanyahu that he has permission to break all of the international law and go right ahead and, or protect him in that. So he's the one who could, you know, end it with a phone call right now. But, but I don't know what's going to happen. I do know that I saw assuming this is real, I really don't know. I guess I should not mention unless I know that this is true. But I guess I could just say there are indications of, there are strong indications from many sources, regardless of the video I saw this morning, that the Israelis have essentially total air dominance over at least major parts of western Iran, if not the whole country, where they're just, they have at will they can go wherever they want. There's the, whatever F4s and F14s they ever had in reserve are not flying, if they are even possible to fly at this point from, you know, the Nixon and Ford years that they had stockpiled up then. But, and I don't know how many missiles they got left. But their ultimate threat that they would decimate American resources in the Gulf and hold America ultimately responsible for any major attack by Israel like this has not come to pass. I guess they're probably terrified of what Trump would do if they would go that far. Although they should have been just a spray to George Bush. Perhaps that was always just a bluff that that was their deterrent was this medium range ballistic missile force. But then again, how might America react if they really decimated or even made a good try at killing our guys in Kuwait, in Qatar and Bahrain, at these major naval and air bases there and army bases, they could get nuked over something like that. If, if they hit back that hard and we were unable to stop it, at least it could, it could escalate, never mind nukes, but it could escalate into a much worse war than the one that they're already in now. And then, of course security in Iran is a government program, Dave. And so of course they're the Keystone Cops over there. Once they lost a little bit of, you know, I don't know exactly how many anti, anti aircraft missiles they lost last October in the Israeli raids then. But they essentially were helpless before this thing or not organized do anything about it. I hadn't heard a thing, and I'm sorry, because I am a bit out of touch, but I heard a thing about what their navy's doing just sitting in port, or if the Israelis are even targeting it. They're just going to sit this one out because what the hell are they going to do? I don't know. But then again, like, you know, in the scheme of things, Iran, of course, is much more powerful than Iraq, Liberia, Syria ever were. And, you know, their bluff always was that they would find ways to hit back. But of course, that included things like activating Hezbollah to launch other missiles at Israel. Well, that's already a spent force. Assad is already gone. Nasral is dead. You know, they said, I'm sure you saw this, that they say that Netanyahu wanted to kill the Ayatollah, but Donald Trump talked him out of it. But that's, of course, still on the table, if they know where he is, which they probably do, by the way. The last I saw, they have not completely destroyed Natanz and Fordo. And perhaps, you know, they mean to, you know, potentially protect that nuclear material. They could, you know, inflict enough destruction on Iran's military force. Perhaps they intend to send ground forces in there to destroy those centrifuges and get nuclear material out of there rather than just bombing it. You know, they have hit a lot of facilities at Natanz and at Istjafan and at Bushehr, I believe I saw. Not sure. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So all those already. But on the other hand, I don't think that I've read that they've made a significant attempt to actually collapse and or otherwise destroy entirely the underground facilities at Natanz and at Fordo, where the centrifuges actually are. So I'm not sure about that stage. But as they have said, they expect this thing to take at least weeks. And I don't know if there's really an Iranian army, air force, Navy, special operations, forces of whatever kind, the Quds Force and RGC prepared to respond in any significant way at this point, or that was it. They had their missiles and that was their bluff. They fired most of what they can. I hear other people saying, oh, no, they're completely, you know, dominating the Israelis. They have, I know, got a lot of hits in on Israel, have overwhelmed their defensive missile forces. I don't know for how long they can sustain that. Maybe for longer than anyone expects. You know, I try Again, you know, even in the worst of things, I try not to be worst case scenario about any of this stuff or on, on either side either. But just, you know what I mean, like the most extensive claims of casualties or the most extensive claims of destruction or of consequences are usually not what come to pass. But then again, we've also seen like in a Rock War two, God dang, that thing turned into an absolutely catastrophic eight year civil war and a million people killed and whatever, far beyond what even the worst Britics expected before it happened. And I knew people who were saying, hey, there's going to be a sectarian war in that country, they still didn't think it was going to be that bad. You know, where America was going to help the Shiites cleanse every last Sunni or almost, you know, virtually all the Sunnis out of Baghdad and, and all the predominantly Shiite areas and create a new Shia stand the way they did and all of that. But anyway, so it's still early days. I don't know what's going to happen.

Dave Smith (13:23)

Yeah, well that's, I mean I think that's the, the responsible take on all of it. Do you think so? Because I want to get into kind of like the politics of all of it in a second. But obviously, look, as you said, Iran is a different situation and they're, the fact that they've hit Israel at all and killed some Israelis kind of demonstrates that this is different than Iraq or Libya or Syria or Yemen or these countries that simply just didn't have the capabilities to do that. Now one of the arguments that the hawks have made for a long time, and I'm trying to be charitable here because I think that this, this might be the case and maybe I just don't know enough to know whether this is right or not, but the claim has been in a lot of ways that Iran is actually a much better candidate for regime change and that, you know, Iran certainly does have, it's a more sophisticated country. It has more of a history of something like liberalism, you know, under the Shah you can see pictures of women in mini skirts and stuff in the big cities. And I know that there is still like an underground world in, in Iran, in Tehran, for example, there are like nightclubs and stuff where girls go and like, like you're not allowed to do it, but they take off the hijabs or whatever and go down. But like, do you think there's any possibility that maybe. Because, because it seems to me that this is clearly a regime change war, you know, even Netanyahu himself, in his interview with Brett Bayer said that he they had some intelligence that Iran could have been a year away from a nuclear weapon. But it seems to me like it's pretty obviously the case that Israel thought this was their opportunity to do it. Like as you mentioned, with Hezbollah being weakened and Assad out of the picture, that this was their moment where they could get this regime change. If, if that's the case, do you think there's a chance that maybe they can neutralize, you know, Iran's ability to launch missiles at our bases and at Israel and a regime change here wouldn't necessari the disaster that it was in all of the previous ones? What do you think about that?

Scott Horton (15:33)

All right, well, all right, so I'll get back to the nuclear question because you brought that up in there. But that's a couple of different answers to go into.

Dave Smith (15:40)

Sure.

Scott Horton (15:41)

But just as far as the population, they're not liking their government. Of course, this is what they said about Afghanistan and Iraq. And of course it was true that in Afghanistan and Iraq there were a lot of people who didn't want to live under the Taliban and there were a lot of people who didn't want to live under Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The super majority, in fact, was very happy to stand aside and let Bush invade and then take them all the way to Baghdad. That was what led to the civil war that I just described that killed a million people when, you know, even Jon Stewart fell for the big purple fingered election of January 2005. Oh my goodness, everyone look, democracy. But democracy is just two wolves and a lamb, right? Democracy is just only majority rule unless you already have all of these principles of liberty and respect for minority rights and religious, you know, sectarian differences and every other thing. Instead, all you had was America touching off a gigantic war by solving those people's problems. Then in Libya they said, oh, you know what we're going to do here? We're going to do the lighter touch and we're going to do a regime change, but we're just going to back Al Qaeda forces on the ground there and, but we're not going to do a big occupation like George W. Bush. That's where he screwed up. Iraq is. He should have just, you know, had, you know, done the regime change but then let them work it out. But then that led to a giant 10 year civil war in Libya too, and still some fighting. It's not like the whole country is in total chaos, but there's certainly no such thing as Libya anymore. There's Tripoli and Benghazi are the two capitals of warring factions in the south. Last I read about it, you know, a couple of years ago, was essentially lawless or, you know, under various tribal clans and whatever. So the United nations state of Libya, created after World War II, by the way, not after World War I even, but had been two or three kingdoms back then, no longer exists. And of course, as everyone knows, and this wasn't just a scandal from 2011 and 12, this is ongoing this whole time still literal chattel slavery of black Africans, sub Saharan Africans in Libya. They can be bond sold for $400 on the market there. This is what America did to Libya. So there's your heavy hand and there's your light touch. Regime change. Then in Syria, it was all supposedly covert, although overt action, where America supported bin Ladenite forces on the ground and led to the rise of the caliphate and we had to launch a whole Iraq War III to destroy the caliphate that we built. Oops, we being Barack Obama. And then that's the, the war that Trump finished up in his first term. Now, whose side are we on taking on the Ayatollah here? Dave, again, Osama bin Laden's side is who? And whatever's left of Al Qaeda, which there is, you know, still remnants of Al Qaeda networks in the world, you know, depend. They all have the same essentially Islamist ideology. The question is whether they'd agreed with bin Laden's politics about whether to target Americans or not. But they're all still the same suicide bomber head chopper maniacs of, you know, in the Bin Ladenite mold anyway. And those guys and the Islamic State in various factions still exist and probably at the behest of some intelligence agencies, maybe some friendly, maybe some not always suspect the Saudis first. And they're always, of course, joined at the hip with the CIA when it comes to stuff like that. And I would expect them to benefit greatly from regime change in Iran. I mean, if they kill the ayatollah and the mullahs and whatever succeed in essentially decimating the regiment, I think everybody's going to break out in friendship and like whatever, the liberals in Tehran who watch CNN are going to take over the country and everything's going to be rad after that. And they're all the Aziris and all the Sunni Arabs and all the Shiite Persians and all the different factions there, they're all going to get along once all of the chaotic violence that we're raining down on them is wrapped up. Yeah, probably not. I, I tend to Doubt that. And that's not to say that everyone there loves their government. I don't know why anyone would love their government. In their case, they're under a Shiite theocracy, which I would presume probably most Shiites don't even want their government to be run by their religious leaders. You know, I don't know. I'm not speaking for them, but if you showed me some saying that they don't like theocracy, I would not be surprised by that.

Dave Smith (20:04)

Right.

Scott Horton (20:05)

But you remember George W. Bush got a 90 something, 91% approval rating, or 89 or something. Maybe 91 was instead 89% approval rating for September 11th happening to us on his watch. Because simply the idea was that, no, it's us versus the world. Nobody messes with us, and us is us, and we are all united together. And America supports our political leadership in marshaling our violent force to hurt anyone who dares to hurt any of our people. That's how we felt about it at Georgetown University. They call it the rally around the flag effect. Yeah. Well, what do you think is going to happen when you carpet bomb people? You know, there's a guy that I interviewed in Yemen for years. I still, in fact, I was supposed to interview him recently, but our plans fell through. Nasser Arabi, this great reporter from Sanat, and he told me, essentially paraphrasing, we're all Houthis now, pal. Right? Not that they are at all. The Houthis are the Shiite sect from the north that used to rule the country back, you know, in the ages and whatever, but haven't been in power in a very long time. But once they took over the country, Barack Obama first worked with them to kill Al Qaeda guys, but then quickly stabbed them in the back in March of 2015 and started bombing them. And so essentially every Yemeni patriot rallied around the government that at that time now happened to be run by the Houthis. As he put it to me, he said to me, it's just like when George W. Bush, he comes from Texas, but when he's the president of the country, he's the president of the whole country. Doesn't mean that the Texans are representatives of everybody all the time, but they are. When George W. Bush is the president and something happens, then in that case, we're all with this guy because he's the leader. It's the same thing for the Houthis, and I would suspect it's the same thing for the Ayatollah now, at least to a great degree. And I think, man, it's crazy to see the Israelis just openly palling around with the monarchists, with the. The Pahlavi family saying that that's what we're doing here. That's what America. Is that what Donald Trump's speech in, in Qatar was all about? When he said that we don't care about spreading democracy anymore is what he was saying was, well, we're just going to reinstall a monarch, so we don't want to come off sounding like Robert Kagan first and getting ourselves into that trap. I don't know. What, man, what a trip. I don't know.

Dave Smith (22:24)

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Proton Mail. ProtonMail is an email run by Proton that will replace your Gmail account for all of your important stuff so that you can have a more secure emailing experience. It's also a great way to start over. All of our emails are flooded with junk at this point, so get a clean start with Proton and know that you'll have a more secure experience going forward. Proton will always have a freemium version and you can later change to a paid product if you're convinced about the product. You can, but you can create an account right now for free. It does all the stuff that that Gmail does. It's just more secure. ProtonMail, go an account today. All right, let's get back into the show.

Scott Horton (23:05)

Ask me about the nuclear if you want.

Dave Smith (23:07)

Yeah, yeah, Well, I was going to. We'll get into some of that stuff if we have time. Our mutual friend Daryl Cooper had a great post on Twitter last night when he was really saying that, you know, you see Donald Trump siding with the Never Trump neocons after delivering this amazing speech in the Middle east where he just blasted all of them in their entire worldview. It's just. It's truly pathetic. I mean, it's like one of the. It's. It's. It's more embarrassing than senile Joe Biden being our president. Is Donald Trump just totally cucking to the. The elements that have been working against him his entire political career? Okay, maybe we'll get into the politics if we have time, but I do want to talk. Yeah, we should. I should get you to talk a bit about the, the nuclear threat. Maybe this will be a good launching off point for you, but. Because Donald Trump really had a brilliant response the other day. I don't know if you saw this clip, but. So he said, you know, as he likes to say in his Big, beautiful capital letters, Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. And then one of the reporters pointed out that your own Director of National Intelligence released the annual threat assessment a couple months ago, saying that nothing's changed there and that there, yes, they have a latent nuclear deterrent to, but they've enriched uranium beyond the medical need of whatever, 20% or something, they're up to about 60%, but they have no ambition of getting a nuclear weapon, and they're not attempting to get one. And Donald Trump responded by saying Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. So I thought that was a really brilliant comeback. I don't know why Tulsi Gabbard hasn't resigned already. But anyway, what exactly is this? This phony Iranian nuclear threat?

Scott Horton (25:00)

Yeah, I mean, and this is just absolutely outrageous. There's nothing has changed at all. And so for Trump to pretend that anything has changed here other than that him and Netanyahu agreed that they wanted to start a war now is just a damn lie. And his implication there is a lie, as you say, his statement is so paper thin, it's, there's, you can't even find the direct lie in it, other than what's. It's just like when you're dealing with W. Bush. Jeez. It kind of sounded like what he was trying to say was, Dave, that, well, they're, they were making a nuclear bomb and I had to stop them before they finished. Right. That must be what he meant. And then that's what we're supposed to take from that. That's what your mom and dad are supposed to think. He said, but that's not right. That's not right at all. And it's the same kind of thing that W. Bush would say, you know, about September 11th. They go, why we gotta attack Iraq because of September 11th? And a two and a three and a four and a seven and a eight. And then you go, because we learned that day that from now on, we gotta start all the wars and you can't just let people attack you and stuff like, wait, what? It sounded there in that giant pregnant pause, like he was saying, we have to attack them because they did September 11th. Isn't that what he meant? Sounded like what he meant. That's essentially what Trump is doing here. George W. Bush would say, well, I shorthanded it. Whenever anyone call him out, I short. Yeah. In other words, he implied a giant lie for you to just kind of understand and infer from his statement. And that's what Trump is doing here. Nothing has Changed other than is to start a war. And Trump let him. And he said he gave them a deadline to agree to end all enrichment, and that deadline expired. Okay, but having enrichment is not making a nuclear bomb at all. Two entirely different concepts. Now, in fact, they have had enrichment capabilities since the end of 2005, beginning 2006. So when they started spinning their centrifuges at Natanz, they master the fuel cycle, they enrich up to 3.6%, mostly for their civilian nuclear program and as you said, 20% for targets for their medical isotope reactors. And then the 60% lately is since Trump tore up the deal in 2018, then they did that in order to have a bargaining chip, just to negotiate away again, is all. And they made that clear this whole time. And not just they've made that clear. Everybody knows that the IAEA and all the inspectors and all of the wonks who write about this regularly and whatever, everyone understands the deal. And in fact, in the 2016, pardon me, the 2015 deal that Barack Obama signed, there's stipulations in there that if America breaks the deal, then Iran can stop abiding by its restrictions in the deal, too, without breaking the deal itself. And they are still members, not exactly in perfect standing, but yeah, essentially they're still members in good standing with the rest of the Security Council in that deal, the jcpoa, Trump didn't really tear it up as much as he just withdrew the United States from it. But the problem was he just essentially got himself in this idiotic trap by letting, you know, agreeing and letting the neoconservatives and the hawks dictate this policy, which you might remember, they wavered on this couple of weeks ago and the hawks all freaked out. This is when Mark Levin went to the White House and everything, no enrichment. And Trump had said, ah, maybe there'd be some enrichment under some kind of deal. And they said, no enrichment. And then he agreed with that. He backed down from his, you know, softening position there. And then, as anyone could have told you, the Ayatollah is never backing down on that. They have to keep some centrifuges and at least a late nuclear capability. And that is one, their electricity program so they can consume their domestic sources of uranium, which they have, and sell their oil. And two, show the world that, look, we could make a nuke, but just don't put us in that position, all right? And was essentially what they had, essentially, just like Japan, Brazil and Germany, everybody knows it can enrich uranium, but let's not perturb them, because you know how well especially the Germans and the Japanese can get. I don't know if anybody's too worried about the Brazilians, but they can make nukes. Don't anybody mess with Brazil. They can make nukes. So, all right, same thing here. And the problem is Trump took Netanyahu's advice, if you want to call it that, and tore up the deal of 2015. Now he's trying to find a way essentially into the exact same deal again, only if on a bilateral basis, not with, not the same jcpoa. But he just couldn't give in on enrichment. And the Ayatollah wasn't going to give in either. But all that meant was we were at an impasse of idiocy. All he had to do was figure out a way to back down on that, not tell Israel to now launch an aggressive war, because somehow we're supposed to again, just infer and believe that they're continuing ability to enrich uranium at all is tantamount to an almost complete nuclear weapons program. And in fact, I don't know if you saw this, but today it's on. Dave DeCamp has a piece on Antiwar.com about it. There's a thing on CNN about a new intelligence report. And I know it's cnn. I don't know exactly what I mean. They're claiming their sources a new intelligence report that was given to Trump by the intelligence community last week. And I don't know for sure. I'm not, I'm not certain from here if it's a national intelligence estimate.

Dave Smith (30:34)

No, you cut out there for a second. Okay, Scott, cut out there for a second. But while, while we're waiting to see if we can get him back, I think the thing that's really important to understand about the, the, the insistence that there's no enrichment is that this is, this is a poison pill. It's, it's intentionally designed to ruin the possibility of negotiations. And so, like, that was the goal the whole time. It's, it's not that they want to stop that. Like, they're very concerned about this nuclear threat. If you were very concerned about the nuclear threat, what you would want is an inspection regime, which is what they got, a new inspection regime under the deal with Obama that Donald Trump tore up. And so, you know, it's like the, and here, let me, let me text Scott right here to see if we can get him back on. But, but this is what the, the war hawks are kind of masters of. They're the Israelis and people like Mark Levin, but I repeat myself, they're, they're always attempting to put these poison pills into a would be negotiation for peace because they don't want peace, they want war. And so this is like what Israel does, right, with Israel's. You know, this was always the, for many, many years, the. So the talking point, this isn't exactly accurate or this is, isn't the entire story, but the talking point for many years was that the surrounding Arab countries to Israel refused to recognize Israel's right to exist. I, I remember this vividly from when I was a kid there. Now the, okay, so the, the dynamic here obviously is that like when Israel, the state of Israel was first created, the surrounding Arab countries didn't recognize its right to exist. Meaning like, yeah, they didn't want this state here that had just ethnically cleansed the Palestinians out of it. But years later, is, this is the way they would frame it, is they would say, look, none of them even accept our right to exist. So how can you negotiate with your neighbors? And like, okay, there's, there's a bit of, to that. I mean all countries are, or all nation states are founded illegitimately on, on a moral level. So okay, fine, at a certain point you could kind of insist your neighbors have to recognize your right to exist. And then they all did. They all recognized Israel's right to exist. There. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, like all these countries, Qatar, they all recognize Israel's right to exist. Even the PLO and Hamas at different points have recognized Israel's right to exist. They. So then this was a Netanyahu invention. And this is what you'll hear today. You may not even notice this sometimes when you hear it. But now they'll say, do you recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state? And the reason they insist on that is because they know that'll be a bridge too far for their Arab neighbors. Not all of them, but for some of them. And, and for groups like Hamas or the Palestinian Authority even, or things like that, if you ask them, does Israel have the right to exist as a Jewish state? Well, now there's a poison pill in there because they, 20% of their population is Arab. And so now you're asking other Arab. It'd be like asking black people in Canada to accept the United States right to exist as a white state. Like, well, yeah, they're probably not going to agree with that. So the intention isn't ever to negotiate a peace. The intention is to put a poison pill into the peace negotiations. So it's impossible. So the reason they wanted to insist that Iran does no, has no enrichment of uranium at all is because they know that's something they won't agree to. So it's not that you're concerned with them getting a nuke. If you were concerned with them getting a nuke, you'd want to have an inspections regime. You'd want to negotiate away that possibility. The reason why they insist on this thing that they know won't be accepted is so the deal falls apart and they can say, look, we tried to make a deal. Now our only option is war. That's the, that's the whole game. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Monetary Metals, an amazing company run by amazing people that I've been telling you about for quite some time now. They have revolutionized the precious metal space. If you own gold or silver, you might have it professionally stored for you, in which case you're racking up fees, or you might just be, it might just be collecting dust at home. But now there's a new way to own precious metals where they work for, for you with monetary medals. Now, you're not just owning gold and silver, but it's stored for you at no cost. Plus, you earn interest on your precious metals in precious metals. So if you own gold, you're accruing interest paid in additional ounces. Same with silver. If that sounds interesting to you, go check them out@monical-metals.com that's monetary-metals.com. all right, let's get back into the show. I did want to say this, I guess, before we wrap up, and maybe I'll make this a little bit of a shorter episode and then try to put out some, some more stuff this week. Look, I don't want to, I'm not trying to create a situation here where like, you know, heads I win, tails you lose type thing. And I'm not, look, it is possible if, you know, some people were saying, I don't know if you guys, I was, I was trending all day yesterday on, on Twitter because I, you know, came and, you know, was very critical of Donald Trump. And then later in the day, him and Tucker Carlson had a fallout. And that was, you know, really stupid of Donald Trump. Just, you know, it's, it's unbelievable. It is one of the things about Donald Trump that, and look, this isn't new to me. I've always known this. But one of the major problems with Donald Trump is that he is just such a. A terrible person. Like, he's like a really bad person. And, you know, I don't care. Honestly, I don't care about who my president is personally. Like, they don't have to personally be somebody who I like or respect. If they're good at the job, they're good at the job. But when you're such a terrible person, it seeps into how good of a president you're able to be. You know, like, Tucker Carlson gave the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention. He was Donald Trump's champion. He has been his. Giving him, like, intellectual cover and, and moving the needle with his supporters. I mean, like, he's just been enormously loyal and helpful to Donald Trump. And of course, the second a reporter tried to drive a wedge in between them, Donald Trump takes the bait right away and throws the guy who did so much for him under the bus, just because that's the type of guy he is. It's all about him. It's all his own narcissism and ego. But I will say that, you know, there were a lot of people who were telling me, you know, the Trump loyalists who were telling me yesterday that I'm overreacting, I shouldn't have jumped off so quick and I should wait. Let's see how this plays out. He's kept us out of wars before. He'll keep us out of this one or whatever. I disagree. I don't. I think we're already in this war. We're already at war with Iran. The question now is how bad it will get. And the potential is that it could get very, very bad. I hope I'm wrong about that. I hope, I hope to look foolish on this. I hope that nothing ends up happening, although it doesn't. It doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. But I will say that we, we don't have too much power. We, you know, the, the, the influence that people who have shows have is. Well, look, it would have been probably at its highest during the election. I mean, that's when politicians really need you. At this point, Donald Trump doesn't have to run for reelection. I mean, yeah, he's, you know, there's. He's got midterms coming up, and he needs to be able to get his agenda through. There's still some need to have, you know, popular support. But the fact is that I think. I think at this point, the message has been sent that, and this is not me. This is much, much bigger than me. I'm a small, maybe a small part of this, but the, I mean, I'm, I've really been kind of blown away by how amazing Tucker Carlson has been on this, how great Steve Bannon has been on this. Jack Pasabiec has been great on this. Even Charlie Kirk was talking about how like, this will, like the MAGA base does not want America involved in this war. This will absolutely be devastating. There have been so. Any people. I apologize to anybody who I'm leaving out here, but at the very least, I think what, what all of these guys have been able to do is create a situation where, like last night when Donald Trump saying evacuate Tehran, he, on some level, and this has to be a calculation because, I mean, this is politics, after all. We've been able to impose a cost of, of escalating this war. And the cost is that you will divide your base. Candace Owens was, has been phenomenal on this as well. I should have mentioned her. And there's not that much more that people like us can do than that. Then at least add to the cost for you personally of what escalating this war would be or starting to take direct, you know, US Strikes on Tehran or whatever. And at this point, I do think it's been made perfectly clear that this will destroy your coalition. This will destroy the, the MAGA base. It will, it will divide it. And, and already you've seen it's making enemies out of people who all supported Donald Trump. And again, there's not that much more that we can do. But at this point, that, to me, seems like the best. It seems like the best, the best thing to do is to just make it known that there you will lose support over this. Is that enough to stop what, what's coming from happening? Probably not. But I, I do have to say it's going to be. This is going to be a fascinating new reality that we're living in. It almost, it, it's almost on the level of when Donald Trump almost got shot. And then you would sit there for days afterward and even weeks and months and even, you know, now looking back at it, you, you look back at it and you're like, whoa, we would have been living in a completely different country. Like, we, we were almost living in a completely different world where Donald Trump got his brains blown out on national television. And now who know, I don't know, does JD Van step up and run what's going on here? Is there violence in the streets as response to this? Like, it just would have been such a crazy different world. And I did, you know, last night when Donald Trump put out that ominous tweet saying everybody evacuate Tehran. And you're like, my holy. What's he about to do? Also, by the way, keep in mind what Scott was saying earlier about his sources, who I also have talked to some of the same sources. They, they told me when Israel was going to strike, and they were right about that. And then they told me America is going to strike Monday. And then Donald Trump put out that tweet. So it certainly seemed like there was something there to who, you know, that, this, to these sources, that they had some information. And I remember my first reaction last night as I saw that that post from Donald Trump was like, oh, we're, we're in a whole new world now. Now, it didn't end up happening last night. Who knows, maybe this has been avoided now and it's not going to happen. Or maybe, you know, it was just postponed by a day or two. Maybe it's going to happen right now while I'm recording, who knows? But I, you know, we were staring down the precipice of like a whole new moment. This is going to be something totally. I mean, imagine they're going to launch a war that they haven't even rolled out a propaganda campaign for. This isn't like, you know, 911 happened, of course, in September of 2001. We invaded Iraq in 2003. They spent the entire 2002 rolling out the war propaganda and convincing everybody in America that Saddam Hussein was in on 911 and he had weapons of mass destruction and all of this stuff. They just simply haven't done that this time. It's, it's basically just Israel doesn't get along with one of their neighbors and they wanted to go attack him. That's enough to get a mar. I mean, it was, it, it was immediately going to shatter MAGA. And then there would have been two MAGAs that emerged and there would have been like the war hawks and the ant maga. We would have now been the insurgency. I mean, you know, you're in a situation, I was thinking about this last night where it's like, well, who's going to oppose Donald Trump in this crazy war? The Democrats who are sitting at a 24% approval rating and have completely destroyed their credibility? No, it's not going to be them. Who's left? It's the MAGA people, the people who supported Donald Trump who were opposed to war. And so it was just like an interesting moment. And, and look, already this is true to Some degree. To some degree, things have changed a lot, but not like what it would have been. If, you know, you're thinking Donald Trump might start carpet bombing Tehran. We will see where this goes over the next few days. But this is going to be an interesting time period. And I don't know it like, if they were really going to do what it looked like they were going to do last night, and like, this really was going to be a major war, you know, and a US War, they haven't rolled out like. Like, there's just several things happening here. Number one, they haven't rolled out the propaganda to even get what typically happens with wars is. I'm sure most of you guys who are, you know, like, some of. I got some young people listening to the show, but for you guys who are like, closer to my age or older, you know, you know how this is. They. They roll out the propaganda, they get everybody all excited. War fever sweeps the nation. The war is very popular at the. And then little by little, as the cost of war becomes more and more apparent, it becomes very unpopular. And then years later, you got all these people, you know, pretending that they never supported the thing or apologizing for supporting it or whatever. That's how it typically goes. But you're telling me that right now you're about to have a major US War and you haven't even rolled out a propaganda campaign. And also add into that we have the decentralized media now, and like, if you, you just can't control the narrative in the same way that you used to be able to in, in order to pull something like that off, they're gonna have to silence us. I don't know exactly how they're gonna do that, but they're gonna have to try to. And so just all of these things, you know, I'm like, thinking about this last night. It's like we are, you know, now, again, it didn't happen last night. We will see what happens going forward, but we really are like, on the precipice of something new. And, you know, it's. It's a. A little bit concerning to say the least, but it's exciting and interesting and terrifying, but this is perhaps, like, what, what needs to come. It would have been nice if Donald Trump had had avoided this situation, but not only has he not done that, but he's bragging about having brought us here. And I'm, I'm. And as I was mentioning earlier in the show, very interested to see what happens with Tulsi Gabbard. Here. I mean, you know, I think she should resign. I really do. I don't know if she will. So we'll, we'll see. But there is no question that from of course, Donald Trump is always on every side of every issue. Of course he always says wild crazy, half of which you just assume he doesn't even believe. But he did get up on the debate stage in 2016 and look Jeb Bush in the face and say, your brother lied us into war and it was a big mistake. And he has gone off about the military industrial complex and the war machine and how war hungry people are. And as we were talking about earlier in the show, he gave that great speech in Saudi Arabia just about a month or two ago. And so there's a huge part of the Trump coalition of the Trump base that that hates neocons and hates regime change wars on behalf of Israel. And he is going to lose all of them if he pursues this policy. So buckle up. All right. So we will see what happens. Thank you guys very much for tuning in today. And we will catch you tomorrow with a brand new episode.

Scott Horton (47:54)

Peace.

Unknown (48:08)

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