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Dave Smith
Smokey the Bear. Then you know why Smokey tells you when he sees you passing through. Remember, please be careful. It's the least that you can do.
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Dave Smith
Council, this podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. Last year I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my best version of myself. When you're navigating life's changes, Talkspace can help. Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatry providers that you can access anytime, anywhere. Living a busy life, navigating a long distance relationship, becoming a first stepfather, Talkspace made all of those journeys possible. I could speak with my therapist in the office. I could speak of my therapist in the comfort of my home. I was never alone. Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com send save $80 with code space80@talkspace.com.
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What's up everybody? What's up? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. Okay, I'll be rolling solo for this episode. I should let me get some business out of the way real quick. April 11th, this Saturday, one night only, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be in Stack Stamford, Connecticut. Those tickets are moving fast. Those shows are going to sell out. If you want to come out, go grab tickets now. Comicdavesmith.com and then the following weekend after that we'll be out in Chicago doing the Zanies in Rosemont and downtown Chicago, which always one of my favorite weekends of the year. So really looking forward to all that. Comic Dave Smith.com for all those ticket links. Okay so wow, what a 15 hours we've just, we've just been through. So as all of you guys know, I'm sure Donald Trump posted before the deadline before about an hour and a half before his, you know, self imposed deadline. He he took to Truth Social and I this is a spoiler alert for any of you guys. If you if you fell asleep at 5:30 and just woke up now. I, I spoiler. There was no bridge in power plant day. All civilizations that existed yesterday still continue to exist today. So Donald Trump here, let me, I guess I'll, I'll read the tweet or the truth social that Donald Trump put out. He said okay. Last night Donald Trump put posted based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif of Pakistan and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran. And subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to a complete, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attacks of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided ceasefire. The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all military objectives and are far, and are very far along with the definitive agreement concerning long term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle east. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran and, and believed it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. All right, there's so much to break down here that there's probably more than I can possibly fit into one episode because I really, I want to cover, you know, what, what happened here, what Donald Trump just did last night. My thoughts on it then. I also want to get into some of the reaction to this because there's just so much that's fascinating about it and that just needs to be, I don't know, discussed. So first of all, thank God, thank God that this is what it turned out to be. You know, as you guys who listen to the show know for, for, you know, days now, at least the last three episodes, me and Rob have both been talking about this and we've been saying, you know, there's this dynamic with Trump where as, as we've said every episode, multiple times, he could just stop, he maybe will just walk away from this. But the more serious these, the, these threats became, where he was really like repeatedly talking about the Stone Age and ending civilization and bridge and power plant day there, you had to at least treat it like perhaps there's a chance he means this. And even if there's like a 10% chance that he actually means what he's saying, like, oh my God, what is this guy about to do? Like, what a horrific and destructive and pure evil thing to do. But of course it turns out that that's not what this was at all. And, or, or at least that certainly seems like the case. Now to be clear, there's a lot here that we don't exactly know how this all came down, but it was how it all went down. But it was very interesting if you listen specifically to the language of what Trump posted. Ryan Grimm, who's a really phenomenal, phenomenal journalist over at Drop site, and of course, he's on the Breaking Points show as well, he had this video. It was pretty incredible. He must have posted this, like, I think a couple hours, or he recorded it like a couple hours before Donald Trump posted this and. And backed off. And he. He was talking about the. It was during the Cuban Missile crisis. And there was essentially the. As the story goes, Khrushchev had sent a couple of cables to Jack Kennedy. And so, like, one of the cables was, like, a kind of reasonable proposal. And then the next cable, he was more pissed off or he was more, you know, drunk on Russian vodka or whatever. And the next one was, like, furious and offered, like, a much worse deal. And what Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy came up with was they said, we're just going to go public and accept the previous offer. We're going to pretend we never got that second cable, and we're going to just accept the first offer and say we've come to that agreement. And so they come, they go public, they say we've come to that agreement, and then it puts Khrushchev in the position of going, well, I mean, that was my idea. That was my agreement. So I guess I'll go along with that. This seems to be what happened here with Donald Trump. Now, Ryan Grimm called. He basically called that Trump would have this option. And there's a very specific reason why. And one of the things that Ryan pointed out. Now, Ryan over at Drop site, him and Jeremy Scahill have done, like, the best reporting in the world, as far as I can tell, certainly in the country, on what the Iranian government is actually saying through all of this, which is, like, a very interesting component to that. You know, I know the. The level of intellectual discourse amongst the war hawks is like, you must, I don't know, hate your grandma and love jihad if you're interested in hearing from the Iranians at all on this. But for any thinking person, you'd be like, no, that's a pretty important part of this dynamic. I'd like to hear what the US Leadership is saying. Hear what the Israeli leadership is saying. I'd also like to hear what the Iranian leadership is saying. Okay, so as Ryan was pointing out, and this is such an interesting, like, dynamic here, this plan is something Iran's been offering all along. Now, we've actually talked about this on the show several times. And I've given those guys credit, the, the drop site guys and the whole team there, not just Ryan and Jeremy. But we've been saying the whole time that Iran has had this kind of deal on the table. Now, essentially since the first week of the war, they've been saying the same thing. And this is ultimately what turned into the 10 point plan. Dropsite had ran an article with it a few weeks ago. This is, at least for a couple weeks now, been what they call their ten point plan. And from all the reporting, what it seems like happened yesterday is that Donald Trump just came out and acted like a new deal had been reached. But the point Ryan was making was that because the entire American media essentially operates like they're Mark Levin, none of them have ever reported on the fact that Iran's been offering this plan. And so Donald Trump is able to credibly say to most of the American people, like pretty much everyone who doesn't read dropsite or antiwar.com or listen to Breaking Points or this show or a few others, all the rest of them haven't even heard this. So it's like, oh, we came. So I think essentially what happened here, now, this is not confirmed, but it seems like what happened is that the Iranians said, no, we're not talking. Donald Trump says, you have to talk or I'm going to go scorched earth and send you back to the Stone Age. They didn't budge and he blinked and he just went, well, I say the ten Point plan is, you know, is a workable start. And then when you say that the Iranians go, ok, yeah, if you're agreeing to the deal that we already proposed, then okay, sure, if you're saying that's where we could start, okay, let's start there. Now, part of the reason why this really seems to be the case is that, look, it's, it's pretty interesting language that Donald Trump did not announce that he has a deal with Iran. Initially he said if, if I go back to this after saying, he said he made a deal with some, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, where they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject, subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing. So he said this as if, if they agree to this, then we have the ceasefire. And then the Iranians came out and agreed to it. But there's a reason why they agreed to it. We'll, we'll get into that now in a second. Look, Donald Trump seems pretty clear what happened here in hindsight now, and this is part of the reason why. I mean, I got to say I've felt, I have felt a darkness about covering this war that I have not felt about almost any other issue. Even like the COVID stuff, when it really felt dark, like our whole country was being locked down and stuff. There was something about this war that just, you know, to me was genuinely like just a disturbing thing to be talking about for the last several weeks. And there's a lot of reasons for that. We get into it another time. But there's. Man, it's just such a relief this morning to find this out, because it is just so much better that it wasn't. The, the answer wasn't that Donald Trump was just had gone that crazy and was going to do this. The answer now seems to more be that Donald Trump is the kind of buffoonish bully that we always kind of knew he was. He was never really going to do all this. He got convinced, at least according to a lot of reporting at this point. New York Times just had a big piece on this. Maybe we'll have time to talk a little bit more about that. But he got convinced by Netanyahu that he could do this strike and topple the regime, just like Venezuela, and that it would lead to a regime change and he would go down in history. And then he got in there. None of it worked at all because, of course, the Israelis are just trying to trick you into this war to begin with. The, in the most predictable way. And according at least to the New York Times, damn near every member of his cabinet warned him that this would not work. Now, I don't know if I buy that or not. You know, people, as this thing starts to get worse and worse, people try to jump off board. And I'm not sure, honestly, I don't really care. You're all part of it. But anyway, see, he's been desperate to get out of it ever since because it's a disaster. It's an absolute disaster. It's destroying his presidency. He, you know, it's destroying, it's threatening the global economy. It's destroying the Republicans chance in the midterm elections this year. It's just, you know, and it's costing tons of money. Americans are dying, not to mention the Iranians and the Israelis that are dying. And so now he wants to get out of it. And so his last play was to threaten to destroy the whole civilization. Maybe that'll make him capitulate. And they didn't. So he swerved. He played a Game of chicken. They called his bluff and he just gave in. Now, there's still a lot of huge questions here. I mean, look, it's, we're still in a terrible situation, in a much, much worse situation than we were before Donald Trump launched this stupid war. It is not, you know, I remember one time, this is like when I was first getting into all this stuff, you know, I was a young man, it was like 20 years ago or something like that, and Barack Obama was given a speech about climate change. I think this was before he actually became president, but it was maybe during his campaign, maybe shortly after he became president. And he said something like, he goes, he goes, now if there's something we know about climate change, we know that it's a man made problem and therefore we know that man can solve this problem if he created it. And I remember just at the time thinking that, I mean, he said it in a real eloquent, intelligent, Obama way. But I was like, that is not true. Like that is just. And in fact, that might be like the most unwise statement. There may be no statement more devout of wisdom than saying if man can destroy something, then that can definitely put it back together. Forget the fact that we didn't destroy the climate and all that nonsense anyway, but you know, man can, we can explode the whole world. We got enough, just America, we got enough of a nuclear arsenal, I think, to blow up the world like 20 times over. We cannot put it back together. Just because we can break something does not mean you can put it back together. And this is like on some very basic level, like the dichotomy of man. It is to build and to destroy and one is way easier than the other. Building takes work and planning and intelligence and resources and investment. Destruction is, you know, my four year old can walk into his playroom and destroy the place. Putting it back together is more challenging anyway. So Donald, I mean, starting this war is, is a, you know, that colossal mistake is not that easy to put back together. And this is, so much of this still hangs in the balance. But look, the ten point plan, just to be clear here, like the ten point plan that Donald Trump is seeming here to say. Now, he hasn't agreed to it, but he said that this is a reasonable starting point or whatever. Let's go through the 10 point plan. This is as I said, it was published, a version of this was published in drop site a couple weeks ago. The Wall Street Journal listed it as the following. Okay, number one, the US must fundily. Excuse me, the US must fundamentally Commit to guaranteeing non aggression. So we, we have to commit to no aggression against Iran. No more attacking Iran. Like a, a, a commitment. Number two, a commitment of Iran's control over the Strait of Hermu. It's number two, Iran controls the Strait of Hermuz. Number three, acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program. They get to enrich uranium. That's number three. Four, removal of all primary sanctions on Iran. They also get full sanction relief. And if you don't think I mean full, check out number five, removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions. So no secondary, like full sanction relief. Okay. Six, end of all United Security. United Security Council resolutions targeting Iran. So all UN, all UN Security Council resolutions. Gotta go. Number seven, End of all international atomic Energy. Excuse me, End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran's nuclear program. Number eight, compensation payment to Iran for war damage. Number nine, withdrawal of US combat forces from the region. Number 10, ceasefire on all fronts, including Israel's conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Now, Donald Trump just said that that was a good framework to start working on a deal. Now, who the hell knows what this means? Because, you know, first of all, Donald Trump has now not once but twice entered into negotiations with the Iranians and then just attacked them. But the fact that he would even enter into negotiations with this starting point coming from what the negotiations were leading into this war, where essentially he's saying, we concede everything we wanted, plus more, plus we're leaving the region, plus we have to rein in Israel's ability. Israel attacking Hezbollah, we have to get that done. But I mean, now, I, I have heard, according to some of the reporting Jeremy Scahill's done at Drop Site News, he did say, like they were a little bit more, there was some wiggle room on the reparations for war damage. And the Iranians had expressed that, like, if they were willing to charge a fee for traveling through the Strait of Harmuz, they'd be willing to use that, that, you know, revenue to rebuild the country or something like that. So they're being, they're being good sports about it here. But like, look, first of all, okay, we don't know exactly what's going to happen here. We don't know exactly what Trump's plan is. Is this a decoy of some sort still? That is, it is such a tremendous walk down from where Donald Trump has been over the last few weeks. It is hard to imagine that he's saying now without saying it directly in a kind of way where most of the American public doesn't really know what this ten point plan is and they just say, oh, Donald Trump just announced a ceasefire or something like that, oh, we're working on a deal. But from everything that's being said, at least on the Iranian side, and what Donald Trump said is the start of the framework here, this is not only a deal that concedes every last one of the war efforts being unachieved, it's something that's so, it's, it's giving so much to the Iranians, given what the status quo is, that it's hard for any of us to imagine that Donald Trump would even be capable of pulling this off. How is he possibly going to be able to, to sit here and say, wait a minute. So the result of this is that we have to leave the entire region. The. You know how I told you they, they have to have no enriched uranium? They're still going to have enriched uranium. Remember how I said they have to give up all their intercontinental ballistic missiles? They still have a, they still have missile stockpiles. You know how we said they're, they're going to have to stop funding Hezbollah? Nope, they can still fund Hezbollah. And in fact, we have to give a security guarantee to Hezbollah that we will make sure that Israel doesn't attack them. I mean, and then also, and again, look, again, we do not know what's going to happen here. There's a lot of moving parts. But we've talked about this several times on the show. You know, when people say, you know, as you see a bunch of people out on social media today, right, Then you see this argument where obviously, in a way people are talking past each other, but people will be saying we lost the war. And then you'll see other people, the hawks saying, what are you talking about? We won the war. We just announced that we won the war. And of course, the thing about these wars are, in a very real sense, there is no winner, nobody wins. War is like a terrible, awful thing that always should be the absolute last resort. And for the simple reason that there's nothing but loss. That's all it is now. Yeah, there might be some powerful people that come out of that mix with more power than they had before. But I mean, I'm just talking about the actual effect of the thing is just loss everywhere there. And so if you want to say, you know, like as we've talked about for weeks now, right, People say we lost Vietnam, the war in Vietnam. Well, I mean, I don't know, we killed a whole lot more of them than they killed of us, you know, but people look at it as a loss because, like, but yeah, but what'd you get for that? So whatever. We got like over half a million of our young boys killed and, and then, you know, hundreds of thousands more injured and their lives ruined. And we just have this generation of let now, like homeless ptsd, you know, basket in our country and it cost us, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars. And, you know, like, what, what did we get? Just what's the win? And so, yeah, look, there's no question, right, that we, we blew up a lot more of Iran's than they blew up of our. And we killed more of them than they killed of us and all that. But, you know, again, the reason why people say Vietnam was a loss or Afghanistan was a loss is because you sit there fighting a war to overthrow this regime. It cost you a, a bunch of blood and treasure. It ruins all these innocent people's lives. And then at the end of it, even though you killed a lot of people, that regime's still there. You didn't achieve the goal. You didn't achieve any of the war goals. Vietnam went communist after the Vietnam War. The whole point was to not let communism spread there. You know, Afghanistan, the Taliban controls Afghanistan to this day, and they have better arms than they ever had before, thanks to us and our tax dollars. And okay, that being said, if we are actually going to, like, if this is the net result of this war is that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz going forward, and that becomes the new international status quo, whether that's, you know, whatever the ideas they've floated out, you pay them a little fee, you have to trade in the currency. They say maybe they get lax on those rules, but it's still understood that they're the ones who get to make those rules. Okay, if you, if that is the case coming out of this, which is still a big F, but it, if that is the case, and it looks more likely than it ever has at this point because Donald Trump's conceded this is the framework. This is in many ways, depending on how you want to measure it, the biggest foreign policy l in American history. Like, I mean, certainly in modern American history, right? Like in the 20th and 21st century. I've seen us lose to countries before in the sense we always blow up more of their than they blow up of ours. If you want to count that as a win, okay, congratulations. But I've, I've seen the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan and stuff like that. I've never seen something like this where we actually. The. The net effect of this war in. Or a huge part of that would be that Iran has gone from being a sanctioned, crippled, isolated third world country in the Middle east to being a global power. No, I'm not saying they're a superpower. I'm not saying it's. It's, you know, the. The great powers of the world are still the United States, China and Russia right now with maybe you could say, like, cumulatively Europe as. As another one or something like that. But I would really put Europe under the American influence probably. Perhaps you could say something about Israel with all the control and influence they have in throughout the Western world. But now Iran's a global power. You control the Strait of Hormuz. You're a global power. Like, by definition, that's enough to be a global power. And I mean, I'm sorry, dude, people try to walk. You can try to spin that however you want to, but if that is what comes out of this, this war, I mean, my God. My God, I cannot believe, like, what a loss. What. What a just humiliation, you know, for our nation. And don't get me wrong, there was. It's the best case scenario, quite possibly now, that we just do that as a. Look, obviously the scenario right now is a lot better than if Donald Trump had followed through with his madman, you know, Genghis Khan promises or whatever. That would have been much worse than this. But the point is that this is why you don't get into these stupid wars of choice, because you're left with awful options. Awful options. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Massa Love Masa Chips. They are. Everybody is talking about these things. They are delicious tortilla chips, and they're actually made with real ingredients, unlike every other healthy chip I've tried. These actually taste great. I'm not exaggerating. There's a reason sprouts, Farmer's Market, Wegmans and select Whole Foods locations picked them up. This is the real deal. Snacking on massive chips is not like eating regular chips, massa. You feel satiated, light, energetic. There's no crash bloat or gross sluggish feeling afterward. It's the kind of thing that once you try it, you wonder why you ever ate anything else. So don't sleep on massa. Go to Massachips.com Dave and use the promo code Dave for 25% off your first order. Once again, go to Massachips.com Daveand use the promo code Dave for 25 percent off. Or you can click the link in the video description. Seriously, these chips are delicious and they're healthy. Go check them out. Massachips.com Dave promo code Dave for 25% off. All right, let's get back into the show. You know, I'm really, I mean, I, I'm, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders that it didn't go the way it did. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. I'm sure a lot of Iranians feel that way. But it is, it. There is also something about watching this thing move in this direction where you just go, and this is why we've been warning against this for 20 years. And this is why spent everybody. You know, I've, I've been, you know, a libertarian for 20 years now and I was always, I always from the start of it, I was in the hardcore anti war, you know, lane of libertarianism. I mean, I like, I always, you know, was friendly and got to meet a lot of people at different types of, you know, in different types of camps and. But that was always it to me. I mean, I, I came in on the Ron Paul stuff and then I was always a Mises Institute guy, a Scott Horton guy. That, those, that was always my thing. And because I think it's the, I think war and peace are, that's the most important issue always, no matter what your political, you know, worldview, as I think that should always be the number one because it's like the worst thing that ever happens is wars. And particularly if you live in a country that's in a state of perpetual war. But you know, there's just nothing, there's nothing worse that human beings do than, than fight wars. And that doesn't mean they're never justified, but they're the most important thing to always make sure are justified. And you know, particularly for libertarians, I mean like, war is the health of the state and war kind of dictates the relationship between the citizenry and their government. And of course war is, you know, a government policy and it's the worst one. It's the worst government policy of all. So anyway, I've always kind of been in this lane and all the guys, you know, I've just been in the anti war kind of world and all of them have been, you know, all my, the guys that I look up to and have learned from and, and myself and all the, we've all just been arguing against this war for so long and you know, and really won the argument with the American people. And then Donald Trump launched it. Anyway. Okay, let's, you know, I just want to kind of to, to, to make this clear too. If you really think about the thing that's so remarkable about Donald Trump going from the position he was to saying that we've agreed to this ten point plan as a starting point is, you know, just even reading, you know, obviously we've, we've made a lot of the Stone Age, the Stone Age post and the ending civilization post, you know, the Easter tweet about, you know, just all the stuff about how they're gonna, he's gonna destroy all the civilian infrastructure. But even before that, you know, Donald Trump again. This was a month ago. Okay, this was on March 6th, so. Yeah, well one, it's, it's April 8th today as I'm recording. So this was one month ago. A couple weeks into this war, Donald Trump posted, and I quote, there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender. After that and the selection of a great and acceptable leader slash leaders, we and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners will work tireless, tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better and stronger than ever before. Iran will have a great future. Make Iran great again. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump, it was four weeks ago he said unconditional surrender and now he's agreed to this ten point plan. I mean, what can you even say about this? I've, I, I've seen, you know, the, the reaction has just been so revealing to me and I, I know that I keep kind of saying this. It's like every, every new topic that comes up, I keep talking about how exposed so many of like the Trump supporting commentators are, how exposed they're being. But this one, to me, it's just unbelievable. You know, I said today I went back and forth with Steven Crowder and Gerald his, his producer there's co host and you know, it's just watching these guys like just defend whatever Trump does. And I, I said to Gerald at one point where I was like, dude, this is just like, what are we doing here? It's like talking to a little like White House press secretary or something like that. What do you even, are we even two people having a conversation or am I just like, I'm just like talking to like Kaylee McKenna or whatever, you know, and she's just gonna defend Whatever the President did that day, Caroline Levich, it's just whatever he did, she's going to defend it. And if that contradicts what she was saying yesterday, then it doesn't matter. Like, imagine these people will be like, they're defending Donald Trump when he says he's going to destroy the civilization, and then they're also defending him the next day when he just completely capitulates to everything that the regime wants. Like what? No matter what he does, he could drop a nuke, he could put boots on the ground, or he could call the whole thing off and give them everything and you'll support it no matter what. It is so strange. It's unbelievable. I, I don't even want to, I don't want to miss. Characterize this, because this was the, the, the response that I had to Steven Crowder today. It's just so, so bizarre. But so he, Steven Crowder, he was picking on Sager and Jetty, who's been great on this whole thing, just by the way. Just been perfect. Completely called this thing since the, the 12 day war last year. Been really great on the issue. But he said Taco Tuesday or whatever the Taco is. The, the joke about Trump never following through on nothing. I, I think it comes from the tariffs. Right. Taco Trump. Sorry, what is that? It's. What does it stand for? Trump always chickens out. Okay, so he was saying that now. Okay, anyway, so Stephen Crowder posts these people scream genocide and demand impeachment. If Trump escalates, then a ceasefire gets announced and suddenly Trump's a chicken. So which is it? It's all a game to them. So, like, that's their coping mechanism for them supporting Trump, doing the exact 180 of everything he's been saying he's going to do for the last few weeks. Everything. Total surrender, regime change. No. Enriched uranium? No. Everything he said turns out to be wrong. And you're still supporting him. And yet your take on that is that we're hypocrites because we criticized him for being like a psychopathic, genocide threatening bully. But then we also criticize him when he just threatened that for no reason. Like, understand from our perspective, which is, you know, objectively correct here, like, objectively, Donald Trump just launched a war of choice against a country who posed no threat to the United States of America. That's the truth. And so he launches this war, he gets a bunch of people killed, including, like, you know, 15Americans and something like 700 of them injured. Gets our, our bases destroyed and the world economy devastated. And thousands of Iranians have died. Thousands of people in Lebanon have died. Who knows how many people in Israel have died. I haven't seen good numbers on that. The thing cost probably a couple hundred billion dollars when all is said and done. And then he's threatening to just commit genocide. Just wipe a country off the. The map. And then goes, nah, just kidding. They can have whatever they want. And what we're wrong for just being like, yo, like, that's insane. Yes. None of us are suggesting. We wish Donald Trump went through with that. That doesn't mean, like, this is the logic that I, I've. You know, Steven Cr. When I was on his show, it's actually. He actually bragged that Donald Trump ended the 12 day war. And you go, yeah, but he launched it. I'm supposed to give him credit. It's like, oh, this guy burst into your house and threatened to kill your whole family. And then the next day he didn't do it. You're not giving him credit for that. Yeah, he was completely full of shit. All these goddamn Republicans, by the way, I've heard Steven Crater and every last one of them I've heard all talk about, like, literally. Oh, my God, I didn't even remember this yesterday. Yesterday. I think it's coming out today. Yesterday I debated Ben Ferguson on Piers Morgan, and you know what he told me? He said, donald Trump doesn't bluff. When Donald Trump draws a red line, it's not like Obama's red line. He means it because he doesn't bluff. That was yesterday. That was yesterday. This was said to me, donald Trump doesn't bluff. So now what? Steven Crowder. And you guys are in the position of saying that it's a great thing for the President to draw the craziest of red lines, make the craziest bluff, and then show that he's completely full of shit and isn't going to follow through at all. That's wise foreign policy. Like, I can be against that and also be against him following through with the fucking bluff and destroying a civilization and maybe killing 10 million innocent people. Yes, I can. I can oppose both of those things. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Van Man. 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Like, if you could run two simulations like where, like if you had a time machine and Donald Trump did one thing today, they'd all defend him. And then if you could run back time and have him do the complete opposite thing, they'd all defend him on that too. These people just, they don't have minds of their own. Or if they do, they're not letting you see that mind and they're useless. But then there's like the Israel lobby. You know, those are the people who are like, no, they're not just defending Donald Trump. They are defending Donald Trump because he is pursuing this very specific policy. And if he wasn't, they would be doing everything they can to ruin Donald Trump. And it's interesting to see some of their reaction because a lot of them are not very happy here. Let's, why don't we, since I brought that up, why don't we go to that and then we get into the, the latest, because I want to play a couple clips of some people's reactions to this that I thought was interesting. But then I also want to talk about the latest in how the ceasefire is actually going because it really does look like there's so many, you know, the prospects of just getting from here to implementing this ten point plan seem to be so difficult. And no kidding, Israel is at the center of this. Okay, but let's, let's play. All right, let's, let's play Mark Levin first. Let's let him, let's let him in on here. We were going back and forth earlier today. That crazy old man, let's check in on him.
- [41:24]
Mark Levin
Fear if we're going to have some kind of deal, Donald Trump won't be around forever to ensure that it's enforced. That's number one, I trust him. Number two, I don't trust the enemy. The enemy has shown for half a century that every deal signs it violates. So what's going to be different this time? What's going to be different four or five years from now? Number three, everybody says we don't want regime change. Okay, then we're not going to have regime change. But what does that mean? Well, the regime still exists. Maybe not the top three tiers, but the fundamentals are still there and some strong man will rise to the top as they always do. That's a question. The President is up against really unbelievable obstacles. He is a Democrat party that basically would rather destroy him than the enemy. And that is their focus. Number two is woke, right? Self aggrandizing so called influencers that are used by the media to attack him and to try and undermine his base. Number three, his base is solid as a rock. 100%, 92% are with him. That's the Republican Party. But there are other issues that nobody's talking about and I want to raise them because at some point somebody's going to have to talk about it. What do we do to enforce whatever it is we agree to? How do we enforce it? Are we going to have certain rearrangement of our military? We're going to have another base there. But how are we going to do that? Number three, what about the people of Iran? What are we going to just leave them there? There's nothing that we can do and we're going to wash our hands over that. That to me is morally very difficult, very difficult to accept. And then what about the proxies? Hezbollah. I was reading these statements. Hezbollah.
- [43:14]
Dave Smith
Look, you can pause it here, right, because you Just, you get the point already, right? Doesn't everybody get it? It's that, listen, there are the other. See, here's the difference between the. The two types of commentators I'm talking about. The other guys are talking about what a historic win this was for Donald Trump and how he made an incredible deal and he got all this. Mark Levin's not celebrating this now, is he? The Israel lobby ain't going to celebrate this. They're going to sit here and point out that none of the objectives that Donald Trump laid out have been fulfilled. There was a long post by that lady, Emily Schrader or whatever. She's, you know, an Israeli, you know, essentially an advocate of the Israeli regime. But she's an Israeli, like an Israeli journalist. Journalist. She's talked a lot of. About me over the years. But it's just like, it's a weird thing where you're like, I don't even really care about debating like the Israelis on this. Like, I'm an American. I'm talking to other Americans, Like, I will. I've debated a few of them, but I don't really care about engaging. I care much more about engaging with like a popular commentator who's talking about. About me who has an American audience, to be honest. But they're all pointing this out. And this is one of the issues. I've seen this happen a lot of times with presidents and specifically with Donald Trump several times. Here's one of the problems. You start. The Israel lobby comes down at you and they put all their pressure on you to get you to say this, this and this. You got to say this, Mr. President, this will do it. If you say this, then you'll. And if not, then they're going to be really hard on you. They're going to keep putting all their pressure on you. So then you say the thing, but now if you don't do it, they're gonna remind you he said this thing. Like they're gonna be a thorn in his side, letting him know, sir, you haven't. Because, look, I mean, what Mark Levin saying there, you haven't gotten any of this, you haven't achieved any of the goals of this war. And ob. You know, it's funny because, say, back during the 12 Day War, I was out there very publicly arguing that this is all about regime change and making my argument about the clean break strategy and Wesley Clark's memo and all this stuff about this has been their plan. Read Benjamin Netanyahu's book. Listen to all of the times he testified before Congress testified at the United nations. This has been their plan the whole time. They're working toward a regime change here or a regime collapse, but they want this regime out of power. And people would say, no, that's not what it's about. It's about the 60% enriched uranium or it's about this or that. But now as it becomes clear, and this does seem to be the one thing that is really clear, is that this regime is not falling. This regime is not falling. And that's what they really wanted. And so they could, they're gonna, they're gonna try their best to remind people of that, that it's like, no, the goal has not been achieved. Here they are, they're not trying to pat Donald Trump on the back. And you know, I got to say, if ultimately what happens here is that, which I think there's a real chance here, that the Israel lobby turns on Donald Trump because, you know, I don't know, whatever, it's like, if he's right now, they're not ready to turn on him because hey, we're still here. And we got a lot of ways that we could try to sabotage this, this cease fire. And there's a whole lot of pressure they could put on him to be like, sir, we didn't do any of that. Remember you said going to get the enriched uranium, we're going to do this. And all that is designed to like keep the conflict going, keep it going, escalating and escalating till eventually the regime is no longer in power. That's their plan. And the right now they still have the best opportunity with Donald Trump that they have, you know, they're the best opportunity right now is to try to suck him back into this thing. But if he does get out of this, if he does just go no. Which really is the indication with him putting that, that 10 point plan out there. If he just sits here and goes, no, no, no, we're giving them essentially what they want, we're capitulating, I'm going to call it victory, but that's what we're doing. And he leaves. Quite possibly the Israel lobby is going to really turn on him. Don't forget, these are the never Trumpers. They don't have any love for Donald Trump. It's all about getting the policy for Israel. That's what it's about. And if they do and they turn on Donald Trump, I just, man, good, good for you. Good for you, Donald Trump. Now you have none of us. That would just be the most hilarious and well, deserved thing ever. If that does end up happening, oh, good. Because you're like, it doesn't even matter how much they hate you. We'll hate you more than them for all of eternity. And, and I don't know, it's like, it's like a, like a spouse, you know, it's like if, if Maga. If America first was like the base and then you went and you cheated on them with, you know, someone else and then promise them you were leaving your family for them, but then they didn't want to be with you, and then you come back, it's like, nah, dude, you already cheated on America first. You're done. You deserve all of this, man. This is, of course, the predicament that we're in now is that, you know, it's going to be very hard to make this happen. As I was saying before, it's a lot easier to destroy something than it is to put it back together. And already what's happened, right, so since the, the ceasefire. Well, Iran continued hitting Tel Aviv last night. Now, I heard from some sources that, well, what the Iranians had basically said is like, look, it takes a little bit of time for us to get down our chain and command. And we were not aware that this ceasefire was happening at all. So we just accepted, you're going to have to give us a few hours on this, and that the US Essentially was willing to look the other way on that and go, okay, fine, let's get the ceasefire going. But if you remember, so essentially what's happened already, already since this, since this ceasefire has been announced, is that Israel immediately afterward, right? Because we all know this. Like we saw the same exact movie play out last summer. But Israel, immediately after the ceasefire is announced, they just launch their biggest offensive in, in months on southern Lebanon. So there. Or at least in weeks, at least in like six weeks. So it's like their biggest, their biggest bombing campaign. And then of course, around points out, hey, this was part of a ceasefire, right? I mean, now technically, was it part of the ceasefire? They don't actually have a written ceasefire agreement. So technically it's kind of a gray area. I don't know. Donald Trump said we agree to the 10 point plan in principle, but he didn't exactly say we agree to every goddamn plank of it. He kind of just said, that's a good place to start negotiating, which is an overwhelmingly strong place for the Iranians. But from the Iranian perspective, they go, hey, one of those planks is that Israel's also got to stop attacking Lebanon and they're still attacking Lebanon. And so then the Israelis come out and go, no, Lebanon's not part of the ceasefire. This is a ceasefire between Iran, Israel and the United States of America. This is a whole different thing over here. See, all of a sudden, Hezbollah and Iran aren't the same thing. Now, of course, the reason we got to fight Iran is because Hezbollah killed some Americans or something like that. But when convenient, they're not the same thing. When convenient, they are the same thing. But so then Iran responded by saying, oh, okay, well, then straight Armus is not open. So already it seems like some ships have been denied access. We're, we're less than, than 24 hours into this, at least as the time I'm recording. Maybe not. When you're listening and already fundamentals are breaking down, fundamental, you know, pillars of this even most basic, you know, structure of a potential ceasefire. And, you know, then the question does, you know, the question is like, because the way Donald Trump framed it at least was, you know, that there's two weeks in which to make a deal, and that'll be, you know, if. How long can we even keep this going to have some negotiations here? And are we really to believe that there's going to be some type of deal? I mean, I. Obviously, for this to actually be put in a deal, you'd have to assume there'll be. There'll be some pretty major concessions from the starting point of those ten pillars. Right? Like, I don't think any of us really think America's just leaving the region, and that's the deal. I don't see how Donald Trump could do that. Then again, there is also something that's really been exposed by Iran about, well, the power of the US Military empire. You know, the thing about governments, and this is true about even very powerful empires, is they're. They do develop atrophy and even really big strong ones. You know, we're in a position where it's like, I forget, oh, who said it. Someone might have been on. Maybe it was Daniel Davis said, or someone. One of them said. They said, I mean, what's good? What good is a military base if you can't use it in war? You know, like, what good is a base if you got to evacuate it as soon as the war starts? And something about that has really been exposed. It's also been exposed to all of our allies in the Middle East. You know, these guys now recognize that, I don't know, you can't really mess with Iran like that. Or they could all of a sudden we got missiles coming in to our countries. We're, we're trying to convince, you know, international, you know, top, you know, like highest net worth people in the world to come here and, and, you know, do business that's not good for business anyway. You'd have to imagine that there'd be some level of concessions like Iran's not going to get everything they want in that deal. But I don't know, at least from where I'm sitting right now, it's just really hard to imagine Donald Trump actually sitting down and making that agreement. So who knows what's going to happen here? This thing is totally still up in the air and this ceasefire could break down. By the time you guys are listening to this podcast, we could be just back at war or perhaps we could be moving to some deal somewhat outlined on that, on those planks. I don't know, it seems, it seems tough for me to imagine. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Prolon by El Nutra. I'm sure you've heard a lot about fasting diets. I certainly have. A lot of my friends are doing it. Not for me. I cannot completely give up food. But now you don't have to give up food to get all of the benefits of a fasting diet. Introducing Prolon, a revolutionary plant based nutrition program that nourishes the body while making cells believe they're fasting. Researched and developed for decades at the University of Southern California's Longevity Institute and backed by leading US medical centers, Prolon helps promote healthy blood sugar, supports cardiovascular health and reduces abdominal fat. But Prolon isn't a diet. Prolon is science SC based on Nobel Prize winning discoveries in medicine. And this all starts with Prolon's five day program. Snacks, soups and beverages, all designed to keep your body in a fasting state. It's unlike anything you've ever experienced. And right now Pron is offering part of the problem listeners 15% off their five day nutrition program. Just go to pron life.com that's P R O L O N l I f e.com for this special offer. One more time. Pron life.com potp all right, let's get back into the show. However, if you look at the, the even in like from, let's say maybe not just the best case scenario, but let's look from the best to reasonably good case scenarios that could come out of all of this. You know, let's say we work at Some type of deal we give, what's it going to look like? Iran has some sanction relief. They have some control over the Strait of Hermouse. They have some, you know, abil. Like. And if Donald Trump, I mean, I just think this thing is so obviously what it is. But Donald Trump, if he can't come away with a single one of his war, you know, his own stated war aims, I don't see how this isn't just, you know, universally viewed, which of course it's going to be. I mean, even when you saw Mark Levin there saying he's got, he's got a hundred percent of MAGA, something like 92% of, of, you know, the Republican support. Why don't you just read his approval rating? Yeah, 39% doesn't sound so good, does it? So you say that 95% sounds a lot better than 39%, but I just think even more than Donald Trump has already tanked over this war. Just, I mean, it's like you got the most unpopular war in American history and now you so clearly have nothing to show for it. You just, oh, you just caused all this death and destruction and then threatened like this kind of total annihilation for what? Nothing. I, I'm sorry. And you know, now that it comes, now if we are accepting, which I, I guess maybe some people still are not accepting this as, as, like this is definitively true. And perhaps there is a way that Israel sucks us back into the war or maybe Iran themselves suck us back into the war, or Donald Trump gets us back in there. You know, maybe there's a way that we get back in and we actually do go through with some huge war in order to topple this regime. But that seems more and more unlikely now, doesn't it? And I think almost everyone would have to admit that at least it's a very likely scenario that this regime is not going to fall. I think most people who can see clearly would say that, yes, that is overwhelmingly likely is that this regime is still going to be here at the end of all of this. And if that is the case, can all of the people who were advocating for this war on behalf of liberating the Iranian people just finally admit how catastrophically wrong you are about everything? I just look at it, man. Oh, look what you did. Big surprise. You broke a bunch of eggs. And you never made that omelet, now, did you? You just got a bunch of the Iranian people killed, including innocent little kids. A ton of people just got killed and no one was liberated. Not A not a liberated soul in the country. In fact, they're just worse off living under the same regime, but just, you know, poorer and with more death and destruction in their nation. And, you know, like, that was. That was your plan. You sat here and thought. I mean, again, like I've said, man, you haven't seen the way the US Empire liberates people. You would ever wish that on your own people, and what do you even have to show for it? You know, it's. I saw Glenn Beck was. It really does just. I don't know why. It just infuriates me that. But I. I saw him. He was saying, essentially going, you know, we could do whatever we want to. This army could do whatever they want. We could open the straight of hermut. We could defeat this government. The only thing that can stop us is the American people. The American people not believing in the mission. That's what. Yes, Glenn Beck. That's. You know, all these years of guys like him pretending that they had learned the lesson and really spent years, you know, then, like, looked people like me in the eye and said with all sincerity, you know, I really learned my lesson from supporting the war in Iraq. I mean, man, that was devastating. Oh, man, I really. I cheerleaded a thing that got a million people killed. Man, I really feel horrible. Like, really said that to me, really, like. And. And to now watch him go up there and go, oh, you know why we're losing this war? You know why this war is such a disaster? It's because of all the people who oppose it. That's why. We could just open the Strait of Hormuz. But what some podcasters are pointing out how full of shit this whole thing is, but, like, as if we had the military capability to just open the Strait of Hormuz, but there just wasn't enough will at home. It's like. Like somehow our military operates like Tinkerbell or something. We all have to start clapping and believing in order to get the Strait of Hormuz opened. What nonsense. You cheerlead disastrous wars, then spent years pretending to be. Feel sorry about that, and then when the next one comes along, you just do the most. The. The. Just like most baseline propaganda. You might as well be the. You might as well be shaming the unvaccinated. You know whose fault it is. The people. That's whose fault it is. The people who don't go along with the regime's clear lies. That's who I'm aiming my guns at on my big platform. Am I crazy for Just hating that. Like, I just think that's like the ugliest quality ever. That's. So you've got a platform and that's who you're going after, the people who got it right and blaming them. That's why we can't have regime change here. Like everybody knows, right? Like, look, all you got to do is look at the, the logistics of this. This is why it was so easy for people like us to, to get this right the whole time. Look at the logistics of this. You got like 200,000 members of the IRGC, a couple million people in the military, you got police forces, you got, you got a whole regime here and a big nation of 90 million people. So what do you need to overthrow that regime? Well, look, I don't know, man. I mean, I said from the very beginning of this thing and go, they think they can get a regime change just through the sky. I mean, maybe, maybe they can just hit something and then that makes the government fall apart. But seems really unlikely. They just look at that on the ground. You go now you don't even need a ground force with that. And what type of ground force are we talking about? Well, you're not taking a country of 92 million people with a hundred thousand people. You're looking at north of 500,000 soldiers that you'd have to send out something like that. Now if we did that, we could topple the government, but we would take losses probably in the tens of thousands. It would, it would cost trillions of dollars. You know, it would be another Iraq or Afghanistan. And who has the stomach for that? No one. So if you want to blame. That's why we can't do it, because no one has the stomach for it over here. Okay, but I mean, that's for pretty good reason. That's why we can't overthrow the regime, not because any of us pointed out Trump's lies. And you know, look, I don't know. I, I don't know. To Glenn's point, I don't know if there, this had any effect. Like, I don't know if, if any of the shows that we, we've done have had any effect on this. Did, did Tucker Carlson coming out of against Trump, his big, the number one right wing, you know, show in the country? Maybe, maybe it did. But what even if it did have an effect, what did it do? Stop Donald Trump from doing bridge and power plant day of. Okay, all right, fine, stop. Just more death and destruction from coming. That still wouldn't have opened the straight of her moose or overthrown this regime, man. Look, we will see where all of this goes. Obviously, it's still a very, very risky situation. But I will say I will end this on the note that I started it on, which is that, thank God, Donald Trump was just completely bluffing. That was quite a thing for a president to threaten. And I try to imagine, you know, I, I don't know why I think about this. I talked about this a bunch during the 12 Day War, and Donald Trump had not made threats like this, but had made some pretty, you know, intense threats, or at one point, I think he. He told people to evacuate Tehran or something like that. Can't remember exactly, but I remember thinking just that, like, because, you know, I'm a dad, and I bet a lot of dads can relate to this. They find like, I got little kids and a wife, and I live with them in a house. And you find as a husband and a father, like, about 90% of your job is just calming everyone down. Like, just trying to make everyone not worry. You know, there's a lot of, like, no, sweetheart, there's no monsters in the closet. No, monsters aren't real. Monsters are only pretend. You know, there's just a lot of that. There's nothing to be scared of. Come on, come over here in the deep end of the pool. I'll come with you. You know, you're always kind of like, no, there's nothing to be scared of. There's. Everyone just calm down. With my wife, it's always constant. I just don't want her to worry about things. It's okay. Everything will be fine. We'll figure this out, you know, and anyway, I guess because of that, there's just something where I do think, like, as a man, as a dad, as a husband, you're always kind of like you, you just feel this, this obligation to, like, protect the women and children in your life and that your, Your job is to make sure they're not scared. You don't have anything to worry about because I got it covered. And I do, just on a human level, because I do kind of approach these things from the wild perspective that Iranians are humans also. And you do think about how the civilian population there has no more to do with this war than me or you have to do with this war. We're not making these decisions. Donald Trump and his cabal are making these decisions. And same thing for the people over there. And you just think about the fact that Donald Trump threatened to, you know, this, this the most powerful military of all time, who's been threatening your destruction for 20 plus years, has invaded both of your neighbors, the two countries that touch you, and destroyed the places, plus a few others in the region. And then he says, tomorrow is bridge and power plant day. Just think about how many, you know, Iranian women and children just spent the, the last few days being absolutely petrified. You know, just how terrified they all were. Not just the ones who have been, you know, killed or maimed or, you know, watched a family member get destroyed or something. You know, this thing about just terrifying an entire nation that's got women and children, too, and all of that. For what? Listen to these Iranian expats justifying that. For what? Oh, to not even change the regime, to not even do anything, not even do anything to help the people. It is something. All right, catch you guys tomorrow. Peace.
- [67:12]
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