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Scott Horton
Tonight. Where's Daryl? He'll be here in a minute.
Daryl Cooper
All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans.
Scott Horton
Negotiate.
Daryl Cooper
Now end this war.
Scott Horton
You're watching Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. This is Provoked.
Daryl Cooper
All right.
Scott Horton
There we go. Ah, there he is. I just had to.
Daryl Cooper
I was here before. I don't know why I wasn't on the screen. No, I could.
Scott Horton
You were down at the bottom, but I had to just page down a little in this dang old window. Hey, buddy, how are you doing?
Daryl Cooper
Doing all right. Doing all right. Ben Shapiro made me famous again last night, so that was nice.
Scott Horton
Sweet. I hope you got a bunch of clicks out of that. Tom Wood says you got to monetize your haters. So do promo code, Shapiro, and everybody gets half off of subscription to Marade Podcast, something like that. Juice those numbers up, man.
Daryl Cooper
I don't really want to tie myself to a sinking ship like Ben Shapiro, so.
Scott Horton
Yeah, well, I don't mean it quite that way. Okay, good. Yes, let's talk about that and lots of things. This is Provoked. Every Friday night, we go live here on the YouTubes, usually on Rumble, although we had a technical thing today, but we're also on X.com, of course, and I'm Scott Horton, and he is, of course, the great martyr maid Daryl Cooper. And we do have a bunch of stuff. Before we talk about that, I have just kind of a sort of, not really, but kind of mea culpa sort of deal. Yesterday. I overreacted Daryl Cooper, because what happened was. Well, what happened was Donald Trump jerked somebody else's chain and then therefore mine. And what it was was the White House sent people. I'm not exactly sure who said what because it's a little bit grapevine, but he sent people to the Congress to tell members of the House of Representatives that he was going to announce an escalation against Venezuela in his speech. And Tucker Carlson was told that by a congressional source and mentioned that on the Judge Napolitano show. And then I also had hearsay from the House of Representatives along those same lines. And then I also had hearsay, triple hearsay. What's that worth? Not very much. But I had a source, which, again, was secondhand, but from the military, which wasn't about what Trump was going to say in his speech, but that the military was actually getting ready to go ahead and do something. So I thought that that was enough to go ahead and get on Twitter and say hey, man, everybody, now's the time. Call the White House, let them know that part of the story of today was the calls were going crazy and everyone was against it. And it's just a marginal thing, but it's the best that we can do. And it sometimes has made the difference in the past, like getting the war powers resolutions at least brought to a vote in the case of Yemen and in helping to stop the Syria war in 2013 and other things. And I don't have any power. That's my only power is Twitter. So, like, hey, everybody, what if we all called phone numbers at the same time? It turned out what I found out later was in the middle of the day, Fox News said, now we're going to talk with our panel about Trump's speech tonight. And it had nothing to do with Venezuela. It was all economic stuff. And I could tell, like, they obviously have early access to what it is. And I tweeted that, you know, I don't like being alarmist. I even tweeted before that I really don't like being alarmist about the near term future. That's not my job, predicting things. I don't claim to have special access to knowledge or whatever. It's just I heard three bad things and thought, you know, what if, if there's a chance of that, then we need to all really raise our voice against it. And then what I found out later was, one, he gave the speech and it didn't have the word Venezuela in anywhere, I don't think. And two, I found out later that he was also sending people to tell the Congress that he was not going to do anything. And then that sounds much more like, oh, I get it, I'm stupid. I wish I had thought this through more carefully, which is that Thomas Massie was bringing the War Powers Resolution to a vote yesterday, and this was an attempt to sabotage that, not by saying anything in the speech, but just by spreading rumors in the morning that he was going to say something in the speech. And that was enough.
Daryl Cooper
You could.
Scott Horton
I'm just speculating this part, but it totally makes sense that the White House figured with some members of Congress, they would tell them, listen, the president's doing something today. You're not going to get in the way of that. All right?
Daryl Cooper
No.
Scott Horton
And then that would be a good argument for some members of the House, and then for others, they were told, trump's not going to do anything. And so you doing this, you're just going to make him mad, probably make it more likely he does something. So you should just shut up and let it go. This kind of thing. In other words, they were whipping votes against the War Powers Resolution. That was the purpose of the rumors that they were spreading in the morning. Those were the rumors that I picked up on. I don't know what explains the rumor that I heard from the military side, but whatever obviously didn't happen, didn't happen yet anyway. And so, whatever, I got to eat a little bit of crow about that. But I don't really care, you know, because as I said yesterday and as I said today and trying to explain my. My job is not predicting things. And I don't go around pretending to predict a bunch of things and then crowing about when one of my predictions seems to kind of come true or something like that. Although that does happen from time to time. That's really not my thing. In fact, I'm not even very good about complaining about what happened today. And this week, I'm better at complaining about what happened, you know, 40 years ago or whatever, that I still got a. Or 20 years ago. I still got a grudge over something like that. So I don't know. But when it seems to be a potential emergency and it seems like on the margin we can make the difference, then I'm willing to say. And I didn't say, oh, I hereby predict a war. I just said I'm hearing hearsay, which I said was hearsay. And it seems like enough to move me to action. So I called, and here's the phone number to call. It's quick, it's free, and so let it be known that you're against this stuff. So I barely regret it. But as I tweeted yesterday, boy, if. If I'm alarmist and something doesn't happen, then I might look stupid heaven for spend. But really, like, just because I have a fragile, weak ego and I don't like looking stupid doesn't really mean that I shouldn't try to do the right thing if it seems like it's necessary or very, you know, potentially could be. So, anyway, that's my mea culpa from my overreach yesterday, for what it's worth. But it wasn't, by the way, that I got it wrong. I was saying we're hearing these rumors from the house or whatever, right? Like, this is what it was. And that was. Now I'm Charlie Savage reporting on rumors I heard.
Daryl Cooper
You know, I mean, look, I spoke not only to Tucker. I spoke to Tucker about it before. Can you hear me?
Scott Horton
Yeah.
Daryl Cooper
So I spoke. Spoke To Tucker.
Scott Horton
You're out a little. What's up?
Daryl Cooper
I don't know. My connection's good. I'm wired.
Scott Horton
No, you're good now. You're good now. Go ahead, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead.
Daryl Cooper
I spoke to Tucker about it before the Napolitano show, and I spoke to several other people in the media that I'm, that I've become friends with who are, you know, not at Tucker's level, because who is. But people everybody watching has heard of. All of them had their own sources. They were all hearing the same thing. So that was definitely put out there for, you know, on purpose. And, and, yeah, I've got, I've got contacts in the military as well that, you know, they didn't, like you said, they didn't tell me he was going to say anything in the speech that night, but they did tell me that their office. I won't say any more than that. Their, that their Christmas leave was canceled and that they're pretty much, it's just, it's just sort of like common knowledge that, that things are going to pop off at some point. Now, if that happens or not, who knows? You know, this isn't like I'm not talking to, you know, an admiral or something, somebody who's in the room, but, you know, not making decisions. And so, you know, here's the thing, man. Like, there's a saying on the dissident, right? Always chimp. And you really have to always chimp out. You have to go crazy whenever any of these things happen, partly because sometimes they just float stuff out there, you know, hey, 50 year mortgages, hey, maybe we're going to do this, maybe we're going to do that. And they want to see how people respond. Especially Trump, you know, he's very sensitive to stuff like that. He wants to see how people respond. He's a B testing, you know, and if you just say, well, you know, it may or may not happen, like, we're not really sure, just kind of let it go. And meanwhile, all the people who want war with Venezuela are out there like, yeah, yeah, kill him, get him, kill him. Well, that's all he's going to hear. And so you have to put that stuff out there, you know, so that's one reason. The other reason, though, we don't, you know, things aren't like they used to be. Even as recently as, as Iraq War two, You know, Iraq War two. Yeah, it was already set in stone. They didn't give a crap what any of us thought about it or Whatever. But at least for months beforehand, there was like this public quote unquote debate. People were talking about it on the news, and, you know, people were having their opportunities to sort of, you know, get their arguments in edgewise. And as everybody kind of knew, it was building up. And then one day they're like, all right, this is the date, and then we're going to war. And everybody kind of knew that was coming and turned on their TVs and watched it all. Hang on. None of that happens. You know, you have, like, I don't know if this started with Obama in Libya, where he didn't even give a press conference for, like, two weeks. He's just like, oh, yeah, by the way, we toppled the Libyan government and, like, created chaos there, by the way. And that's just kind of how they handle things now, is they just let us know who we're at war with now and okay. And so if that's how they're going to operate, then every time you hear a rumor, you got to go crazy. You know, you have to. You got to call them and let them know. Especially since I think Trump, and I've heard this from multiple people, you know, Trump is very, very, like, very much in a bubble right now. And if you look at the first Trump administration, a lot of the moves that were made against him by the deep state or, you know, whatever like you want to call it, a lot of those things were really built or really intended to put a bubble around him that was not there when he got elected, because he wasn't supposed to get elected. He certainly wasn't supposed to have people like Steve Bannon so forth around him. And so, you know, they needed to build a bubble of establishment people who were gatekeeping him and making sure that the only information that he got was stuff they wanted to hear. They've got that fairly well locked down now. Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, she controls who speaks to Trump and who doesn't, period. Live I that from an unimpeachable firsthand source that she decides who gets to talk to Trump and who doesn't. The only person who can really go around that, who has some idea what people like us, the people are thinking, is J.D. vance. Like, he's the one of the only channels in there, because other than the people he's meeting with directly, Trump gets his Fox News daily diet, and that's what he knows what's going on. You know, he sees Mark Levin and he thinks that he represents the conservative people out there, and his maga voters or whatever because he's on Fox News, he's not hearing any different. And so, you know, you have to raise a ruckus just to get through and to make sure that people who are around him who are sort of paying attention to that stuff, like Vance, see that and convey it to him that, like, this is, you know, potential political issue problem for us. And so, you know. Yeah, so you can Mia Culp all you want. I mean, it's sort of like when Dave, Dave Smith, when Israel and Iran had their little spat earlier in the year and he was out there saying, look, this could be a complete disaster. We get sucked into a war with Iran, Iran could start, you know, bombing the crap out of our bases and then what are we going to do? We're going to like invade, saying all this stuff. And people still, to this day, the haters still love being like, oh, you said it was going to be a disaster, but it wasn't.
Scott Horton
Hahaha.
Daryl Cooper
It's like, yeah, thank God that Iran decided to show restraint at the end of that and just do like a telegraph strike on our, you know, spot and like, thank goodness for that, that they showed that rationality and restraint. But it could have gone another way and you know, in pointing out that we're. There's a very real risk of that. No, no mea culpa is necessary when something like that doesn't happen. You know, we can all cross ourselves and thank God that it didn't, but that's it.
Scott Horton
Yeah, well, look, the bad news is that it worked. I mean, what if we had spent all day calling our congressmen and demanding they support the War Powers Resolution instead of calling the White House complaining about what we don't want to hear in the speech tonight might not have made the difference anyway, but, and look, you know, as I've always said, that when it comes to stuff like this, the difference is absolutely, you know, marginal at best. We don't have wealth and power, we just got lots of numbers. But that is something, right? It ain't like it's not the same thing as saying, believe in the system, young man. If you don't like it, we'll call your congressman and try to get him to introduce some new legislation like in the Schoolhouse Rock or whatever. It's not that, but it makes a difference if people are really complaining, if the phone's ringing off the hook or whether it's not, as I put it yesterday on Twitter. Does it make a difference if the phone is ringing? Well, it definitely doesn't. If it's not. And so, you know. Yeah. When Trump looks out the window and imagines America out there, does he think that we're all pissed off or does he think that we don't care if he does this? And maybe even I think it's funny or. Right. Like that matters. His impression of that and whatever we can do to influence his perception of what the people out there think is, to me, that's all we got. And, and of course, it's crucial, you know, by the way.
Daryl Cooper
And especially I just, you know.
Scott Horton
Go ahead.
Daryl Cooper
Well, I was going to say, because, you know, Trump, he doesn't believe when, when the media puts out polls saying that he's losing his young voters or that he's, you know, approval rating even among his voters to. He doesn't believe any of that. You know, he sees all that as an op and he has good that way. You know, you can totally understand why. But as, you know, like, like I said, they, they've, they've put up a fence around him. That's, that's pretty impermeable, with the exception of the leak, you know, the sort of the, the little pe. Hole of JD Vance that can get through there. And, and he, Yeah, I just think, you know, he, he probably does think that, like, everything is hunky dory. You know, when he said back in 2016, whenever it was that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn't lose any of his voters, I think he kind of believes that. He think it's one of the reasons he spends so much time trying to please the 2016 Never Trump crowd and seems to just ignore his base because he thinks he's got those people on lock. I don't have to worry about that. That's good. I have to, like, win, you know, the Never Trump people, all the people who hate him and we're calling for his impeachment after January 6th in 2020. People like Ben Shapiro and Lindsey Graham, you know, their loyalty to him is conditional. And he knows that. And he knows that a lot of his base, the cat turd types on Twitter and, you know, just a lot of his boomer base, that their loyalty's not conditional. You know, and if that's, you can't be like that politicians, because they'll take you for granted. And that's, that's what we've gotten so far.
Scott Horton
Yeah, totally. Now, one thing is, I was only reminded this the other day because someone's asking about the clip in the, I guess the intro to my other show. Oh, no, it's in the intro to this show too where I'm at the Lincoln Memorial saying, negotiate now, end this war. And somebody asked, what is that from? And it was a speech I gave in February 2023, one year anniversary of the war. It was sort of a libertarian leftist coalition kind of a thing there.
Daryl Cooper
War in Ukraine.
Scott Horton
What did I say?
Daryl Cooper
Just the war. Yeah.
Scott Horton
Oh, sorry, yeah, there's a lot of worse. You gotta be specific there, Horton.
Daryl Cooper
Yeah.
Scott Horton
And yes. And so what was I gonna say? Oh, yeah, in that speech, I had forgotten about this. And I don't even think this is in the book. I gave this speech a year and a half before the book came out. Yeah. So whatever fact was on my mind about this, I don't think this made it into the book, Dara. I think I forgot it like Joe Biden. But it was in the speech that, you know the very famous Rand Corporation study that we talk about about Ukraine that came out in 2019 called Extending Russia Read Overextending Russia. Right. In other words, how do we provoke them into overextending themselves? We give them obligations in Belarus, in Kazakhstan, in Syria, in Ukraine and then. But with all the disclaimers of boy, this is what might happen though, if we do. Right. So it's a very, you know, compelling read. I URGE it's the McCallum memo of the Ukraine war is what it really is. You know, but in that same study, you know what they say in there over and over again? They say, however, the German people have expressed strong disapproval for this way of going about it. And in public opinion in Britain won't stand for this and public opinion in France won't stand for that and public opinion in the United States won't tolerate this either. And I would have just guessed, darl, that that wasn't in there. But it is in there. That for the eggheads, calculating. Look, none of it is about how can we best obey the will of the people and serve their needs. Right. It's not that. It's what can we get away with before the people stop us. But at no point do they say, screw the American people. What are they going to do about it? They don't say that. They go, well, public opinion, of course, is very iffy on this proposition and we must tread very lightly or we could undermine our whole thing. And so if that's the way they look at it, then that's the way we should look at it. That like, that's right. We don't have money and power and organization, but There are a hell of a lot of us, so let's just go with that. And we have to ally with or work with. What does that mean, to work with, say, people you don't like? I'm a libertarian. I get along with left wingers and right wingers of all stripes. But a lot of times right wingers, they don't like left wingers at all. That, that big coalition that we put together for that rally at the Lincoln Memorial, if we brought some right wingers too, it would have not worked. Right, libertarians and leftists, sure. Even if it had been libertarians and right wingers, sure. But right wingers and left wingers and libertarians all together? Yeah, maybe not right. Too much name calling, too much difference of opinion, but who cares about that? What if we just all oppose the same horrible thing at the same time? Then we're not working with each other and left wingers don't have to get right wing cooties on them or vice versa. But we can all just say, like, hey, let's just forge a consensus that everyone in the country who is not in on it is against it. And we did that in 2013 after the first big fake sarin attack in Ghouta in eastern Damascus, and Obama wanted to take us to war on that. And yes, it's true that Clapper, the DNI, and Dempsey, the chairman Joint Chiefs, also weighed in against it. And that ain't nothing. But it was also true that the American people, and especially Republican voters of America were calling their congressmen. It was unanimous. We do not want to follow Barack Obama into Syria. Absolutely not.
Daryl Cooper
Stomping foots.
Scott Horton
No. And same on the Democratic side. And eventually Obama gave into that and, and you know, he called the Democratic leaders in Congress and said, let your people vote how they want. In other words, let them vote against it and kill it. And in fact, even supported putting it to a vote in the Congress in the first place. When we all know, just like with Libya, he could have just gone if he wanted to, but he, he backed down because the American people were pissed. That was a huge part of it. It's not everything, but it, it's, it's wrong that just because we're powerless, we're completely powerless. And especially on crucial issues like this, where they are going to stick their thumb in the wind or their finger in the wind and see overall whether Cinnamon is with them or not. It's not quite the Powell doctrine of you must have American, solid bipartisan support, but it's at least something.
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, let Me? Go ahead. Now you go.
Scott Horton
Let me ask you about Ben Shapiro's jihad. They're trying to take out Tucker Carlson. And you can tell it's so obvious what they hate about him is he's a good man. If anybody saw his speech, he got up there and for the 10,000th time this year alone, denounced anti Semitism as bigoted racial type collectivism that is entirely contrary to basic American principles of individual existence and liberty, as well as against his Christian religion, which also identifies people as individuals and God's children, not his to judge, et cetera, et cetera, and against collective guilt and collective responsibility and collective everything. And again, so that was the same reason why he was against what the Israelis were doing to the Palestinians. And so it's obvious that that's what they have against him is because he brings common decency to anti Zionism in a way that is quite contrary to the narrative. You're supposed to be on the right. You're supposed to be a good little Zionist until you get so far to the right that you just hate Jews and that's why you don't like Israel. And that's the narrative that they have pushed and pushed and pushed for decades. And Tucker Carlson is living, breathing, walking, fearless example of the untruth of that narrative. And so they're just going nuts and, and including, they let Ben Shapiro come out and denounce Tucker Carlson and demand his unpersoning and deep platforming from the conservative movement at the same TPUSA conference where Tucker was about to come out and also give a speech, I guess, a few speeches later or whatever it was.
Daryl Cooper
It was just incredible that, yeah, at an event put on by an organization founded by a martyr who literally died for the principle of we need to actually talk to all of these people, you know, not cancel people and shut people down. We need to have all conversations. I mean, it was really grotesque. Yeah. I mean, real, you know, Ben Shapiro was never invited to a TPUSA event when Charlie was alive. And he spent all his time trashing a bunch of, you know, all the people who, who, who were, you know, Ben Shapiro. It's kind of funny to me that he mentions my name so often because it's, I, I guess it's sort of surreal the think that he's in his, you know, bed at 3am Just sweating beads, like, thinking about what I said about World War II today or something. But, you know, it was like, this is why it was really important for them to get rid of Tucker from Fox News, because again, like Fox News is one of the few, is one of the few channels through which, and I don't mean TV channels, but just in the generic sense, one of the few channels through which Trump gets his information about what the people are thinking. And you go back to, like, the Syria example you gave. I mean, it was a, a big part of why that got stopped was, you know, that Tucker was talking about it. And then later on when Trump, when Trump went in and did those airstrikes on Syria, Tucker was talking about that in a way that nobody else was talking about, that never would have been spoken about on Fox News. I mean, he was just asking the obvious questions of, like, okay, this war seems pretty much wrapped up. The only thing they cannot do is provoke the United States, give us an excuse to, like, jump into this thing. And, oh, they did the exact thing we said you better not do for no tax. You know, just obvious questions, things you would expect a responsible press to, to talk about. But they weren't, and Tucker was. And so they had to get rid of him before Trump was back in office, you know, and it became pretty evident, I think, to them that Trump was going to win a lot earlier than it became evident to most people watching, you know, the campaign. I think they knew halfway through Biden's term there was no way they were going to stop him without military means, basically. And so, you know, the, the, it's funny because Ben spends his, his time up there lecturing the Turning Point, you know, America Fest or whatever audience about how conservative. If you're a conservative, you call yourself a conservative, which I think a lot of the people who are Turning Point types don't these days, honestly, they might call themselves right wingers. I think a lot of them would hesitate to actually identify with that term. But he said if you call yourself a conservative, then you have to be willing to put principle, put the truth above personal relationships, loyalty to individual people or to groups and blah, blah, blah. And then he went on to just brazenly lie about the USS Liberty incident and just lie about the crew members, you know, and the stories that they've told. When a kid asked him about it and he did that, why he's, he's, you know, casting aside the truth to defend his tribe. The thing that he sat there excoriating, you know, other people for, for doing and warning, admonishing the crowd not to do. And, yeah, I mean, it's a.
Scott Horton
Pardon me for interrupting here. Can you please clarify that? Because I did not watch all of Ben Shapiro.
Daryl Cooper
So a kid asked him like they were taking questions afterwards. Yeah, so they were taking questions and somebody asked him about the USS Liberty incident. And at first he said, you know, well, it was so long ago. Why do you care? You know, why should we care about something that happened so long ago? It's like, all right, but let's go ahead anyway. Let's. But he. First he said that and then he just went on, think about it was an accident and you know, a friendly fire and these things happen in war. And, and then he just, he, he asked. He. He implied that the kid was an anti Semite for asking. You know, he's like, why are you asking? Why do you care? Why is that a question that you would want to ask? Da, da, da. That kind of thing?
Scott Horton
And then I'm. Did you say something about crash sailors too?
Daryl Cooper
Well, no, just said, look, if you are out there saying that this was an accident, you're out there saying that.
Scott Horton
Okay, I just wanted to clarify clearly that.
Daryl Cooper
Okay, no, he's smart enough not to do that.
Scott Horton
I understand. I just wanted to clarify.
Daryl Cooper
But you know, if Scott Horton says, I saw this guy murder a guy and I go out saying that that guy didn't murder that guy, I'm calling Scott Horton a liar. You know, and when you go through the Liberty incident, which I know, a lot of people who are fans of ours have, you know, they're familiar with it, but a lot of people aren't. Like, just go through like some of the basics of what happened there. In 1967, the Egyptian Navy had already been sunk. It was sunk the day that Israel launched its surprise attack. The Egyptians didn't have any ships that look like the USS Liberty.
Scott Horton
Oh, homeboy, you know what?
Daryl Cooper
What?
Scott Horton
Well, hold on one second there, Daryl. Your, your, your Internet is busted, buddy. So I'm gonna take over for you for a second until it catches up. Yes, the, the, the. Sorry, you might be fine in a second, but just, just give it a second. It was in the 1967 war, and he's right. A lot of people have no idea about this. In the 1967 war, the Israeli Air Force and then ultimately navy attacked an American ship. It was a NSA spy ship, of course, you know, run by the US Navy with so two sets of people on there and, and strafed the hell out of them and eventually shot torpedoes at them and tried to sink the ship and. Geez, I'm sorry, was it 73? I forget. I'm sorry now off the top of my head, the, the death toll. But it was very Bad. And they covered it up. And there were even planes that were sent to go and rescue that were called back. And it's a sordid tale, man. And now let's see how Daryl Cooper's bandwidth is doing here, folks. Let's see if we can save this. Okay, you seem nice and smooth there now. Go ahead, buddy.
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I got you. So the important thing for people to understand about the incident is that the crew members, ever since they started speaking out decades ago, they've been absolutely consistent about what happened that day. There's not a he said, she said and this and that. That does not exist in this instance. You have. I mean, you have to believe that the entire crew. I mean, you. Okay, let's. Let's steel, man. The most generous interpretation of what the, you know, the. The rationalizers of the Liberty incident say, like, the. The most generous interpretation of their view is that while these men. Look, yeah, they were there and they saw these things, but, you know, in a given incident like that, everybody only sees, like, a little part of it. It's like if you're in the engineering compartment, then, you know, you're not topside, and if you're topside, you're not seeing what's going on here on the bridge and all that kind of stuff. So maybe they're just confused. Maybe that. But again, they all tell the same story. They all sell the same. The same timeline of events. And when you look at, you know, the lies, the. The. The exposed lies that have come out over the years, like the fact that they tried to say there was no flag flying. It's like, well, we got the signalman who was on the bridge on watch at the time, the guy literally in charge of running the flags up and down the polls, who was there, who put it up himself, who was looking up at it as all this was going on. And then it gets burned up in that initial attack. And what did they do? The same guy, the guy on watch in charge of the flags runs the holiday incent up, which is a great big giant flag that we only fly on federal holidays. And so they tried to say that, you know, it was a. A misty, cloudy day. No, it was a perfectly clear day, actually. And so, you know, in court, they say when you lie about things like that, it shows consciousness of guilt. You know, you're lying about it for a reason. You're not just you doing it just because you kind of compulsively do it or something. You know, there's a reason behind it. And so when you're not displaying the life rap.
Scott Horton
All the bullet holes in their Navy museum in Tel Aviv.
Daryl Cooper
I've seen anything.
Scott Horton
Sorry.
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I've seen it. And. Oh, really? Yeah. And yeah, I used to, when I would work in Israel when I was with the DoD, most of the time I would be based out of Hia, because that's where their main port is that our ships and, you know, pull into and stuff. And so, yeah, I've seen it. I went there, I looked at it. And a lot of people, you know, they'll try to tell you if you, like, go online and mention it and someone wants to defend the Zionist, they'll, you know, they'll say, well, you know, yeah, look, this was a significant incident. And, you know, it was just, it's a part of history. And so, yeah, it's going to be, nah, go, go, go to Haifa. Go look at the thing. Go look at the way it's displayed. This is not something that is like, here's a tragic example of like, something that happened with one of our best allies and like, something we always need to keep in mind, you know. No, that is not how the thing is displayed at all. That thing is a trophy. I mean, 100%. And I mean, and when you think of, you know, there's like so many things about the attack that, that, that if you don't have a certain amount of familiarity with, like, how the military works, especially the Navy and Air Force, how they work, that will just sort of go past people where, you know, like, they say that they didn't know it was an American ship, misidentification of the ship, and it's like, okay, well, we know that Israeli jets were buzzing that ship all morning long, like, back and forth, buzzing that ship. And the guys on the ship remember thinking to themselves and telling each other, oh, we're safe. The Israelis are up there watching over us, you know, so everything's cool and nobody's going to come bother us. The Egyptians or all the bad people, you know, who might attack us, why we're safe.
Scott Horton
The Israelis, by the way, the Israelis admit, said.
Daryl Cooper
And so as part of my job when I was in the military and I was not somebody who, you know, I wasn't a tactical commander or a pilot or anything like that, but it was still, like, it was tangential to my job, but I still had to go through training literally every single year, I'd have to go through a training evolution where they would make us, like, memorize and be able to identify ship silhouettes, you know, plane Silhouettes of thing of just of, of platforms that, that allies and enemies had. You have to be able to identify that pilots that is drilled into them non stop being able to identify like a ship platform based on silhouette. I mean, the idea again, you know, that that's something that, like, you don't really need that when you consider the fact that, you know, it was, it was a clear day with a big American flag flying on the ship and they spent hours going back and forth and looking at it. But it's just, it's one of those things that, like, it's so galling when people try to come like when, like the things that, that wait to finish the thought.
Scott Horton
Daryl, what you're trying to say is the ship looked nothing like an Egyptian trawler. And specifically the Egyptian trawler, they say they thought it was give us all a break. It even had a very oddly shaped bow and all this stuff the Egyptian boat did. And so it definitely, there's no way even I would.
Daryl Cooper
And the Liberty was absolutely brimming with, you know, radar and communications antenna everywhere because of its mission. Like, it, this is the idea that it was misidentified is, I mean, you know, you know, a lot. It's so ridiculous that it honestly doesn't merit discussion. And you know, and it's really just galling when people try to, you know, they use the fact that like the public doesn't know that a lot of the details about the thing. And it's why, it's one of the reasons I'm so grateful to Jocko for doing that episode that I set up for him with the survivors.
Scott Horton
Right.
Daryl Cooper
You know, because that is the largest platform by far that they'd ever had up to that point. And millions and millions of people thank to him, thanks to him, heard the real story from the people, including the signalman, the guy in charge of the flags. He was there on that show and, and you listen to them go through the entire story and, and I challenge anybody, I mean, we're not going to have a whole lot of people who doubt us on this, I guess, like watching this show especially live. But you know, anybody who comes across this later, if you have any doubt, go watch Jocko's episode, Jocko Willing's Jocko podcast episode with the USS Liberty survivors. They go through the entire day in detail and there is absolutely no room for doubt that the Israelis carried out an attack on an American ship on purpose. Now, one of my, one of my favorite like responses that the rationalizers are always throw out There is. They'll ask, okay, well what was the, what was the motive? Why would they do that? What possibly was the motive? Never fall into that trap, okay? When people do that to you there, it's not on you to speculate what the motive was. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of eyewitnesses who were there at the time and went through the entire attack for the entire, it lasted over an hour by the way. This was not like, you know, in 1983 with the USS Star where an Iraqi, you know, jet fired a couple Aaron missiles and, and was like, oh no. And now they're gone. You can't do anything like that's not what happened. This lasted over an hour. It came, the attack came in waves. You know, they came first and blew up the communications antenna so that they couldn't send a distress signal and then they came and hit it with torpedoes. And you, torpedoes are incredibly powerful weapons. Like if, like if you, I, I've been out on demonstrations where we're testing some of our weapons and we'll do it on like decommissioned ships and stuff, you know, just to sweet. You know, you only get so many chances to see what kind of damage these things really do to actual holes. And so, or we're hitting a ship with cruise missiles, we're hitting all kinds of gunfire and the thing just won't sink. And you hit it with a torpedo and the thing just cracks in half and goes to the bottom. Like it's incredibly powerful weapon and it's a complete miracle that the ship didn't sink. When that torpedo, the one that actually hit, you know, made contact, it hit a very specific part of the ship, ship's hull that was reinforced, distributed the force enough to like keep them afloat. It's a miracle though. I, it's just you probably couldn't replicate it if you tried. And so, you know, after that happens and the guys are up on the deck trying to fight fires, then the Israelis come in with gunboats and they start engaging them with their 50 caliber crew served weapons. Okay, so people on the gun going, if you're doing that, you're a quarter mile away, you know, half mile away maybe at most. And after they had already disarmed the ship and they knew that, you know, that the Liberty hadn't fired back yet and it wasn't likely to. In any case, these guys were a quarter to a half mile away shooting at our guys on the deck of the USS Liberty as they were trying to fight fires, shooting up the lifeboats so that they Couldn't escape shooting at people who were in the lifeboats, which by the way, is a international, you know, it's a war crime under any international agreement or custom. And so like, again, just to repeat one, one point, don't ever let them try to put you in the trap of like it's on you to explain what the Israelis motives were. That's not on you. We have the eyewitnesses. We know what actually happened that day. Don't fall into that trap because, you know, because you're just going to be speculating and then they're just going to say you're spec. Don't ever do that. You know, just in fact, what you do is you ask them, you say, I don't know what their motive was. What was their motive in 1954 when they blew up a bunch of British and American theaters and community centers in Cairo? You know, Israeli intelligence did that. It's called the Levon Affair. Go look it up. It's like in, you know, it's not even denied anymore. Like the Israelis themselves. Go back to 1950. Why were the Zionists bombing Jewish synagogues and community centers in Baghdad in 1950? 51, I don't know. We know they were doing it, though. We know they did do the things associated with the Lavon affair. We do know that those things were all still in charge in 1967. So, you know, it's not on you to explain their motives.
Scott Horton
Yeah, and look, there are different theories floated about it. I won't even mention them if you don't want me to. But there are much, there are, you know, sort of more fanciful ones and they're much more reasonable ones and much more limited type explanations for why they did it too. So this is not like the realm of kook territory for speculating, that kind of thing. So tag me in here though, for just a minute because I want to talk about how it must have just been in preparation for interviewing some of these guys a few years ago, Darrell, that I did a deep dive on this thing. I read a couple of books about it, two or three. And I watched a bunch of documentaries. And of course, I don't know if you know this, but over the time I have interviewed many of these guys. I've interviewed Joe Meadows a couple of times. I've interviewed him and Larry Bowen, I interviewed Ron Kukal. And you know, Google just sucks so bad now, man, and it hates my website. I've got, I, I know I have a lot of interviews of these guys. If you want to Go back and then let me share this screen again here real quick and show people this is a tweet that I put out back whenever the hell. And it's. You can find it real easily. Just search my name. Scott Horton. Show all one word and Liberty. USS Liberty. Argument from authority. Now, of course, that's famously a logical fallacy. Argument from authority. That's why I called it that. But in this case, look at who I got. And I won't read you the quotes, but look, I got Dean Rusk, the second Secretary State, George Ball, Undersecretary of State, Admiral Thomas H. Moore, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA Director Marshall Carter. Captain William McGonagall, the captain of the Liberty, finally admitted it. NSA Deputy Director Lewis Tordella, Major General John Morrison. Walter Dealey, the senior NSA official who conducted the internal NSA investigation. Former CIA Director Richard Helms, who told this to Bamford. Your chapter on liberty was exactly right. Rufus Taylor, Deputy Director of CIA. Paul C. Warnke, Undersecretary of the Navy, David G. Ness, the Deputy head of the American mission in Cairo. Oh, and then I'll skip that first space here. Senior leadership of the NSA was, quote, virtually unanimous that it was deliberate. Dealey concluded, quote, there is no way they didn't know the Liberty was American. NSA Director Carter, Deputy Director Lewis Tordell. Oh, these are the quotes here. John Morrison, Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations Tom Hughes, Director of inr. That is the State Department's CIA. Their own, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at State. Bobby Ray Inman, Deputy Director of CIA. NSA Deputy Director for Operations Oliver Kirby, General Johnny Morrison, General William Odom, famously former head of NSA under Ronald Reagan. And he's the guy who said that Iraq was the greatest strategic disaster in American history. You might remember back 20 years ago and a CIA official quoting an Israeli source admitting that they did it. Okay, and so that is. And I compiled that from a bunch of different sources, but all of it ought to be easy. See to Google and check me on if you would like. And so call that a logical fallacy, you know, that all those guys are bluffing. Yeah. No, I don't think so. What they are is they're mad as hell and they're not mistaken. Give me a break. You know, and then let me show real quick here. This book is the great James Bamford. He is the greatest American journalistic chronicler of the National Security Agency. He wrote the Puzzle Palace. This one is called Body of Secrets. And then he wrote A Pretext for War about Rock War ii and then the Shadow Factory about the national security agency after September 11th. And anyway, this one is called Body of Secrets. And this has. For my money, Daryl, and I've done a lot of work on this over the years. For my money, this chapter on the USS Liberty is the definitive take, or at least the most reliable take. And you know, when, when subjects are, and whatever, if someone wants to say that's a limited hangout and go with Blood in the water, be my guest. I just think some of the more far out explanations for what happened, they don't seem to fit the bill to me, nor really be necessary to explain what went on there. And the Bamford chapter is absolutely bad enough, believe me. But there's just. You want to talk about any question whether this was an accident? There's no way in the world that everybody at CIA and NSA and State and all of these people are all saying this the whole time and all through the military and Richard freaking Helms. You should see the interview with Helms. I believe it's in the Al Jazeera documentary. Or. No, it can't be the Al Jazeera. What the hell? I'm sorry, man, there's so much. But there you can see the video of the interview of Helms about this. And he is adamant. And so, you know, that's. If that ain't authoritative enough for you, I don't know what it is. And then, so what's ultimately the motive? I don't know. But you, I can tell you what's partially the motive. Treachery on the part of this measly little nation that's no good to the United States whatsoever and ought to be kissing our ass all day every day instead of attacking our ships and making demands and using their agents in this country to lie people into sending their sons off to war like happened in Iraq War two. Barking demands that the American people and, and other nations, I'm sure you saw Netanyahu, we demand that you crack down on what he calls anti Semitism, which means any opposition to Israeli, you know, so called policy of mass murder there. But anyway, let's get you back on track of putting this back in the context of Ben Shapiro's merciless attack on the great Tucker Carlson by way of his merciless attack on you. And in the same way that he brings up, you know, or any of these things, the same way he attacks you, he attacks even the story of, of, you know, people paying attention to the USS Liberty, the narrative that it even matters at all, even Though, as you know, I know these guys, like Phil Turney, he still is having a hard time with this man. Like, you know, they. They got strafed and they still take it extremely personally as much as anyone.
Daryl Cooper
Not only that, but over the years, ever since they started speaking out, they have been harassed, they've been intimidated. They've got.
Scott Horton
Wait and first. First, though they were sworn to total secrecy. They were not even allowed to talk to their wives, their priests, nobody.
Daryl Cooper
They were threatened, quote, with jail or worse by John McCain's father, who was an admiral. You know, I think he was 6 fleet at the time. And so, I mean, you know, which, you know, whatever, that's fine. As a military guy, like, you can kind of understand something like that. Like, you guys are not going to go talking to the press or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Like, that part's fine. But then to go out and just see them brazenly lie about what happened to your dead friends, and then when you start speaking out about it, finally, you know, you get. I mean, these guys have crazy stories, man, like being in random places and having people they don't know come up and she'd be like, you know, like out of nowhere. Not like at a liberty event or something. Like, they're out to dinner with their wives and somebody comes up and says, hey, you know, you should really stop talking about that Liberty thing. He says, who. Who are you? I won't say which one of the guys like this was, but who were you? He's like, don't worry about it. Just bad things can happen. That's what he got told by some random dude who, like, came up to him, you know, so these guys have been going through that, and they still have to listen to, like, Ben Shapiro, call them liars by implication, you know, not. Wouldn't say it directly. That would annoy too many people. But, you know, he's not as brazen as the Israelis themselves, you know. You know how we found out or got. I mean, we knew about it anyway. But how we got Israeli confirmation finally of the Levon affair, that's the one in 1954 for everybody, where they tried to bomb a bunch of British and American community centers and theaters in Cairo to blame it on the Egyptians. And they denied it for years until the early 2000s. And we found out about it because they did a public ceremony to honor the guys who participated in it. They just cannot. I mean, they don't care, dude. They do not care. Like, when you. When you talk about what happened in, like, the 1940s a lot of the atrocities that took place, they, they'll love to be like, oh, well, look, yeah, that was Leahy, you know, that was the Stern Gang and Irgun. They were enemies of the mainstream Zionist movement. Like, you know, these weren't like, this wasn't like the actual, like Haganah, the mainstream that became the labor government. That. Yeah, okay, except that like two, like the leaders of the two main terrorist organizations you're talking about both became prime ministers of Israel later. And Israel, the Israeli military still to this day has two medals to honor the Stern Gang and the Irgun. I mean, and so, like, they don't care, man. They just don't care. Like, the only good news that we have on this, I mean, this is really good news though it kind of makes up for everything else, is that their, their, their, their brazenness and the way that they like and it's brazenness that they can't help, you know, people, individual people who have the same mentality, like they can't help themselves either. Like, they, they always are. You know, they, they push it as far as they possibly can until people start to push back. And then they, you know, maybe try to ret until next time, but they can't help themselves. And the only way they've gotten away with that for so long is that they had a complete and total media monopoly. You only had to control three channels and a few newspaper corporations and you were good to go, no problem. And now that they don't have it, they're never going to get it back. They can buy TikTok all they want. They can make Elon go to Auschwitz and go kiss the wall all they want. But the Internet especially, you know, here in America, like, they can do all they want, try to control, adapts, life finds a way and it moves around. The Internet does not like that kind of control. And they're never going to be able to centralize it. So they've lost that monopoly forever. And they know it. And they're scrambling to try to get it back, but they're panicking because the people who are smart know that they can, you know, and, and that is very heartening.
Scott Horton
Now let me just say here, dude, because with an eye on the clock now, another major best part of this is that Ben Shapiro is the face of the Zionist amen corner in America. He's going to be the enforcer. He is going to take the mantle of leader of the conservative movement and tell you who you're allowed to listen to and who not. And I just can't think of anyone less credible at this point than maybe his counterpart, Bari Weiss. Good luck with this, you kooks. But it is just over. And just like with the terrorist attacks as we saw. And I say plural because we saw them here too in Boulder and in Washington and you had this one in Australia. And what do the hawks do? They go in there and they blame Islam and they'll go on and on, do a 10 minute segment and not mention the war in Gaza that happened for the last two years and just pretend that anti Semitism fell out of the sky somehow. I guess people around the world were inspired by October 7th to just now they want to be terrorists too. And just forget your own lion eyes and your own lion memory about what just happened for two years and the tens of thousands of innocent people killed and the people even now starving and freezing in the mud in the Gaza Strip and all of this and they think that they can just make it go away by not mentioning it when they denounce all their opposition.
Daryl Cooper
But.
Scott Horton
Or any of these phenomenon out in society like people turning against Israel or even these terrorist attacks.
Daryl Cooper
But it ain't gonna work.
Scott Horton
It's just too obvious. It's. It's too in front of everyone. Now listen, we build this whole episode as the Christmas truce. And I really want to hear from you on it. But first we got to do a.
Daryl Cooper
Little bit of business.
Scott Horton
And I want to talk about the Christmas truce myself because I have a little something to say about before I turn it over to you, Mr.
Daryl Cooper
Historian.
Scott Horton
But let me just share this with you really quick. This was my wonderful idea and Phil Pepin made it for me. Damn, Jimmy. That's gourmet this and that. So scan that with your phone and get yourself some Scott Horton flavored coffee. It tastes just like me. It's wonderful and you'll like it. And it's. It's gourmet stuff, man. And you can also just go to Scott Horton.org coffee and they'll hook you up there, go right to it. And then this is also a gift card for Christmas season. Get it Mundos? That means they hate Starbucks. Starbucks hate. First of all, their coffee sucks. But also they support the war party. They love doing business with the Israelis. Oh, your soldiers need more caffeine so they can kill babies all morning. Says Starbucks incorporated. Well, not Mundos. They support us because we're anti war and, and we appreciate the hell outta that. And it's really good coffee. I just drink it all dang day. I drink more of this than I do Dr. Pepper these days, nevermind water or anything like that. And then also listen, important business would include me showing you Matt C. Le who is the great savior of people who do business for a living or people who have a job or people who are just trying to live against the great communist enemy, the irs. That really is in the Communist manifesto. It's like what plank floor or something like that. You need need inflationary money and you need the income tax. You can destroy regular people's prosperity so that they'll be so desperate that they'll demand a total commie state. Read it and weep yourself. Anyway, so this guy is here to help protect you from them. And this is not some gimmick where you get to get away with not paying your taxes. You do too have to pay them. And I mean have to. That's all it's about. They'll punish you. They'll take your money from you if they have to. They'll put you in a cage and they have the power to do it. So you do have to pay your taxes. But Matt Sersley is here to make sure you only have to pay taxes that you absolutely have to and not one dime more than that. And he will protect you and he's a real lawyer, not just an accountant. So you can call him up and you can bounce off your all your crazy schemes off him and see what he says. But he is here for you. That is Matt Sersley@agarist tax advice.com and then, well, one more I have to mention again Mr. Cooper here, this great new book. Oh glare. Leave me alone you dang glare. Empire of Lies by my friend, the great Charles Goyet and a great longtime journalist and author of many wonderful books. And as I said last week, kind of, you know, obviously very proud, but also a little embarrassed he figured out how to put all of enough already and all of provoked in one 300 page book. And it reads quite a bit better than all of my stuff. So anyway, if you didn't ever want, if you looked at provoked and you thought, well that looks nice for someone else to read, well maybe you prefer this one. It's Empire of Lies, on sale now, brand newly published by the Libertarian Institute, our 18th book that we have published@libertarianinstitute.org oh, and then one more thing, of course I gotta mention Daryl is the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. And this is me and my guys doing long, long form lectures on American foreign policy especially, but domestic stuff too, and including I'm about to publish. I think tomorrow we will be Publishing Part 1 of my course on the new Cold War with Russia. Of course based on my book Provoked and I know it's only part one, but it's 54, not hours, but 54 videos, most of them approximately an hour long, some longer, some shorter. But it's a lot of material for just H.W. bush through Obama. All the rest of it is recorded. We just got to finish getting it edited and punching in the fixes for the mistakes and stuff. So that'll be out in another little while, but it should be tomorrow@scott hortonacademy.com we will be adding the Cold War course on top of the terror workhorses and all the other great stuff on there. And if you use the promo code Christmas20, you'll save 20% on an annual or lifetime subscription to the Academy. I know you signed up for it. Have you taken any of the courses? Have you watched any videos and did you have an impression of them at all, Daryl, yet?
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I started watching the one with the Lutheran minister.
Scott Horton
Oh, okay.
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, yeah. And I haven't discovered finished it yet though. That's the one that I. Well I'm so I'm. I'm only a little bit into it but I. Okay. It's something that now, you know, I'm gonna take a few days off. I'm going to pick up my mother in law tomorrow and we're going to take just a few days of not working and stuff here for Christmas. And so it's one of, one of the things that's on my queue.
Scott Horton
Cool. I learned so much from his course, man. It is just fantastic. And I know with as much as you already know about, you know, your own religion and everything, you'll definitely have a very good and interested perspective in that. I know you'll get a hell of a lot out of it. So anyway, yeah, and that is for it's the course is essentially debunking Christian Zionism or just explaining the history of the relationship between Christians and Jews and Christianity and Judaism and modern day nation states and Israel, Western nations and Israel and especially ours. And so it's just the very best man I've learned so much from. And there's so much other great stuff on there, including Bovard on Covid and Waco and the TSA and the drug wars and including giving you a run for your money. Cooper is Ramsey Baroud and his history of Israel Palestine from his Palestinian perspective is really great stuff. The reality of the Israel Palestine conflict Anyway, I'm rambling and salesmanship really like that.
Daryl Cooper
I encourage everybody to go, I have familiar with a little bit of his work. I haven't done that course yet, but I definitely encourage people to check that one out. Even if they've listened. I would say even. Especially if they've listened to Fear and Loathing, because that'll give you a good sort of baseline understanding what happened. But one of the. One of the problems I ran into when I was making that and I did the best I could to sort of correct for it and account for it, is just that there's not a lot of Arab sources that are translated into English. Like, we got some stuff and like, you know, the Institute for Palestine Studies and some of the others are very, very helpful. They got a lot of good stuff out there. But in terms of like, volume stuff from the Zionist perspective, some of which is good, like, you know, new historian stuff where they really do a good job to try to talk about a lot of things that happened, but it's. It's still from that side, you know, and to get the perspective of a Palestinian, somebody who really does understand the mentality of the people that are involved in this conflict on that side, it's really invaluable. And it's not something you're going to necessarily get as much as I did try to try to do that with, with my series. You're not necessarily going to get as well. So. Yeah, but listen.
Scott Horton
Yeah, look, different perspective, but yeah, go ahead.
Daryl Cooper
So we had talked about doing this, doing the Christmas truce episode today and then taking next week, the 26th, off. I told my wife I would keep this show to an hour. We actually got something that I got to get going to do. And I spoke so long about Ben Shapiro and all that. Yeah. So, I mean, are you available next week on the 26th or. Why we doesn't even have to be on a Friday like our people. Yeah, okay. Let's just not. Let's not skip that day after all. Let's do that. We'll talk about the Christmas truce then to close this one out. Like, here's a taste for people to.
Scott Horton
Share with their family in the meantime. Here, real quick, before we go. This is the Christmas truce of World War I by Will Griggs, otherwise known as William Norman Gregg, my good friend and co founder of the Libertarian Institute with me. And this is his very wonderful article that he wrote about it quite a few years ago that we republished at the Institute in his archive. We have his full archive at the Institute and every year, Darrell, @antiwar.com we publish a whole mess of articles, you know, six or eight articles about the Christmas truce from all different people and including diary entries about it and all kinds of stuff. We do that. That's a tradition@antiwar.com every year. So if people want to stop by there beginning probably like on the 23rd, 24th around there, we'll have all that stuff up for you.
Daryl Cooper
Great. Just to close this discussion out, though, I want to just go back to like a sort of, you know, I made the point we were talking about the liberty of just not getting trapped, trying to speculate and explain things that you don't know for certain. Don't let people do that. If you watch Ben Shapiro's speech at TPA last night, and then you watch Tucker's, you will understand why, like, Tucker is so good at what he does and why he's so effective is because he sticks to things that you cannot argue against. You know, he goes and says, American Christian ministers. And I'm. And I'm kind of quoting him. He's like, you know, don't look. I'm not like a great Christian. I'm the farthest thing from that. Like, no, I'm not trying to preach to anybody, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't have, like, Christian ministers coming and trying to rationalize and justify the bombing of children. Right? I mean, you can't argue with it. You know, I'm pretty sure that, like, you know, if we're going to give billions of dollars to a foreign country and we're going to co sign and put our names on every foreign policy action that they decide to carry out with, without our knowledge or approval. That just doesn't sound like America first, does it? And he just sort of puts it in this way that, like, what are you going to say? You know, and. And that's really important is stick to the things that are really, like, the core of the issue that they're. And don't let them turn you around and get you to start explaining yourself and speculating and all that, stick to those things and drive it right through their freaking skull every time. And it works. It works. Everybody that watched that last night, except for, like, the people who, you know, just already hate Tucker and love Ben Shapiro, whatever, like the people, the hardcore Zionist types. This is another thing that's, like, related to what we were saying is like, really like a white pill for this period of time. Is it back? You know, until a few years ago, you'd have People who watch Ben Shapiro, Red Barry Weiss and the Free Press or whatever and they thought, oh okay, they care about all of these things. And Israel also, you know, obviously that's a big deal right now. Everybody knows. No, all of that is just to draw you in there. There is only one, glad you mentioned that they care about and everybody that their audiences now it's just people who. That's it. That's their single issue. That's all they care about. So let them play around in their corner over there while the rest of us actually talk about politics and what's going on. That is.
Scott Horton
I saw one the other day where it was gays against groomers. Remember that? I never followed it very closely but it was like, oh, that seems reasonable, you know. And then I found out nap it's just another Zionist has bar rag with just another pretext for being out there. It's just like we talked about in that everybody should really watch this. Just wonderful. The Al Jazeera documentaries where they went undercover inside the Israel lobby in Britain and the United States and they have this one section about the website Kittens and Donuts where it's all cutesy stuff for housewives. And then once every six or eight weeks they go support Israel, they let women be fighter pilots or whatever, you know, and just smuggle that in there. And that's exactly what you're saying, right? Is Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, Gays against Groomers. They're just kittens and donuts, man. It's not about the kittens, it's not about the donuts. It's about making you think, oh, here are people who are good on this thing, like opposing trans and kids or whatever it is. And then now all it really is is securing your support for these. And as you say, it's so everybody. Turns out it's obvious to everyone now, dude.
Daryl Cooper
And it's distilled their audience down to that like that little hardcore of people who are right there them with that, you know, only caring about that issue. And so it's great. And you know, let me ask real.
Scott Horton
Quick, I can't be the only one who noticed. I'm sure someone else has pointed this out before. But Ben Shapiro, he is not charming at all, right? Like he's just a sniveling little like something, right? Finish that however you want. But like what's the redeeming quality in this kid really? I never understood it.
Daryl Cooper
His redeeming quality is that if you put him up against an inferior opponent, like a blue haired college student who's going to tell you that men can get pregnant by somebody who identifies as a unicorn. Then he's going to make them look really stupid and just hammer them with, you know, his fast talking style. That, that's what he, that's what he's good at. And that got you by for a while. I mean, look, man, like Dave, what's his name, Dave Rubin was like one of the. He was part of the intellectual dark web. Like the idea that intellectual would be attached to that dude's name in any way, shape or form. He's just like a, A plain. Forget everything else about him. And like, you could get by with that for a while because you were arguing with people that said men could get pregnant. So it's easy. It was just easy. You know, you're arguing with people who were saying, censor people, and you were saying, no, censorship is bad. And that's something that just resonates with Americans. It's easy. And, you know, they're not doing that anymore. Now they're trying to convince good Americans that people should be censored for saying maybe Israel shouldn't be massacring children by the hundred every single day of the last two years. You know, and, and so they're. They betrayed their, their fan base. The only ones they're left with are the people who knew all along what the whole game was. But the game is up. And look, there's enough of those people out there, the Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, they're going to keep making money or whatever because there's enough. There's millions of people out there, Christian and Jewish Zionists, who. That is their issue. That is what they care about. And so they're right there with them. And they want to hear him slander Tucker and talk about me. And so that's fine. They'll make their money. But they are going to be increasingly irrelevant as time goes on and there's nothing they can do to stop it. And so that's everybody's Christmas present this year. Yep.
Scott Horton
Absolutely. All right, well, and speaking of which, have a Merry Christmas, Daryl, and thank you, buddy.
Daryl Cooper
You too, brother.
Scott Horton
Good night, everybody. This has been provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton.
Daryl Cooper
Be sure.
Scott Horton
Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow at ProvokedShow on X and YouTube and tune in next time for more Provoked.
Date: December 21, 2025
Hosts: Scott Horton & Darryl Cooper
In this episode, Scott Horton and Darryl Cooper dissect how ordinary people are drawn into cycles of violence, focusing much of their discussion on US foreign policy, the manipulation of public opinion, and cycles of propaganda—anchored by a modern and historical lens. While billed as an exploration of the Christmas Truce of 1914, most of the episode is spent addressing controversies related to the Israel/Palestine conflict, US political dynamics, media manipulation, Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, and the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War. Only a teaser for the Christmas Truce is provided, with the promise of more in the following episode.
RAND/public opinion and coalition-building—(15:12–20:02)
The tone is irreverent, blunt, and driven by a shared skepticism toward government, media, and establishment narratives—laced with dark humor and exasperation. Scott Horton is discursive and self-effacing, while Darryl Cooper offers structured, analytical responses rooted in history and insider knowledge. Both hosts champion direct action, coalition-building, and intellectual independence.
Although headlined as an episode about the Christmas Truce of 1914, this installment of Provoked circles through the mechanisms by which establishment power, media, and inner-party politics keep populations complicit in violence—and how the cracks in that system are growing more evident. A robust, polemical conversation for anyone seeking a critical (and at times combative) perspective on war, politics, and truth in the age of disinformation.