← Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton
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- [00:00]
A
Tonight, unprovoked, will Richard Nixon be impeached?
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All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans.
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Negotiate now end this war. You're watching Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present and future. This is Provoked. I screw up the intro to this show every time on purpose because that's the theme of this show.
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B
It's kind of endearing, I'll admit.
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A
I'm Scott. I'm not quiet baby boomer. I'm a young Gen Xer. And that's, I guess, the same thing. He's the most honest historian in America. So I got that going for me. Thank you, martyr Maid, for joining me on the show tonight. How you doing, man?
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B
Happy to be here. Happy to class up the joint a little bit.
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A
So thank you, God. I know, listen, you know, they say that Barry Goldwater is threatening Nixon, that he's going to turn all the Republicans in the Senate against him. And, and that's going to be it. He might as well resign because he's going to be impeached and removed. Daryl, what do you think?
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B
Well, I mean, I think for those, for everybody out there who hasn't seen the news this week, it was his piece put out by James Rosen in the New York Times. Start the, the, the premise of which was to go through these seven pages of the Nixon grand jury testimony that had been suppressed until very, very recently. And they are, I mean, they're quite the bombshell in a lot of ways. You know, he goes through, they, and they speak not only to what was going on in our government and in Western governments sort of across the board back then, but also to the character of Nixon. You know, he, he, Rosen goes through and he talks about this guy Charles Radford, who's kind of known before, but not the full scope of his activities and what he was up to. And Radford was this junior enlisted guy who's assigned to the Pentagon. And as like a, he was like a typist. You know, he was like a nobody. He was like a stenographer typist guy, which, you know, you're the right person. You get a lot of access to a lot of stuff. That's your job. You know, somebody's got to take the minutes of top secret meetings. And so he was a, he was also a very devoted Mormon and so was Alexander Haig at the time, who's one of the top people, you know, at the Pentagon. And they knew each other from outside of work, from Church and became friends and sort of got to know each other. And essentially what happened was the Joint Chiefs directly from, I mean, this guy, this guy Radford was reporting directly to Thomas Moore, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. They had him running just straight up black ops against the Nixon administration, the, the National Security Council, Kissinger. I mean, he, he had access to everybody. He was in all of these meetings, traveling overseas with Kissinger and in other high cabinet officials, you know, in all of their meetings. And this guy was, I mean, he was going through briefcases, he was going through burn bags, copying documents. He was doing all the things and sending all of that right back to the Joint Chiefs who were, you know, looking for ways to use this against Nixon. Because, you know, at the time their big worry was that Nixon was going to pull out of Vietnam and the military brass really, really, really didn't want to. And you know, one of the most striking things about it to me is that it's not exculpatory for Watergate. You know, it's a different, it's sort of a side issue, sort of a different issue in the sense that the break into the Watergate Hotel didn't have anything to do with it and the COVID up of that, you know, didn't have anything to do with it. But it is part of like the story of everything that was going on with Nixon at the time that puts Watergate in a little bit better context. You know, understanding that besides the dod, which, you know, the, the Rosen revelations are all about, we know that the CIA had people all around Nixon spying on him. So did the FBI. All of them probably were communicating with each other on some level and coordinating their activities with the press. And, you know, so there, you know, a lot of the, a lot. One of the things Nixon is so known for is like, he's the paranoid president. He's so paranoid. He's so paranoid. Well, you know, this puts that kind of in context. And when you start to see things, you know, like, like the Watergate break in which Nixon himself, when he's giving testimony, you know, sort of very clear that the plumbers, that was what the, the team that was set up at the White House to plug the leaks that kept coming out, they got, they were set up like the plumbers were set up because of all the leaks that were coming out from this DoD spying operation from this guy Radford, you know, in the Joint Chiefs. And so the plumbers were set up and they were told to go plug this stuff and Then they kind of went off the reservation. Who knows what's going on? There's a lot of weird stuff around, you know, that group as far as CIA connections and stuff. But they went and broke into, like.
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A
Why was Howard Hunt on the team with these FBI agents, White House guys.
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B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so there's a lot of. A lot of that stuff. But, you know, this was an environment where. Something we should be very, very familiar with from the first Trump administration.
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A
Well, Darrell, look, I mean, it's. For anyone who's ever been skeptical of Nixon's removal from office, one thing that is kind of a knee jerk thing, that you never really hear the explanation for this other than aha, you know what I mean? Kind of thing, and that is that Bob Woodward just came from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. So did you say it was Admiral Thomas Moorer was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was the one who was after Nixon? And on this, on this project that has been covered up until now, then the only place was ever revealed was Nixon himself to the grand jury. And then they suppressed that part. And then, you know, because we always just were like, I wonder what was behind Woodward being sent and just so happened to stumble onto this case and continue to develop it and get all these great sources for his stories, you know what I mean? And then there was obvious. I mean, it's still just speculation, but this is more reason to suspect that he was really planted there, that he was sent there by the military on a mission to overthrow the President.
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B
Maybe. Yeah. I mean, the thing that you can come away with with the information we have now is whatever you think of Nixon as a human being, as a president, like, taking him down was an opinion from the deep being run out of the deep state. 100%, it was, and it was successful. I mean, you know, if you think about it like. Well, I would say one of the, you know, one of the things that. I've always been a Nixon guy, just because I, I love his, his memoirs. They're my favorite presidential memoirs, probably besides Ulysses Grant. They're just, They're. He's a brilliant guy. He really is a brilliant, brilliant guy. Nixon was whatever you think of him. And, you know, he. This is at a time where he had a very bad relationship with the Pentagon. I mean, Rosen talks about in the story, like, he quotes some of the, Some of the transcript quotes from, you know, the White House tapes, and he's not a big fan of the Pentagon of the Department of Defense at this time, like, says, a Lot of greedy.
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A
And they just want more men to shine their shoes.
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B
Yeah, exactly. They just want more. More people to shine their shoes. Exactly. And so he's not a big fan of the Pentagon. And yet this being a time where, you know, soldiers are coming home from Vietnam and being called baby killers and the, the, you know, the. The reputation of the military was just very, very down in the dumps for, you know, for reasons that. That make sense to everyone, especially today. Nixon felt it was his responsibility, regardless of the personal cost to himself, not to contribute to that. And so rather like, this is something he never talked about, ever, except for when he was in front of a grand jury, a closed session of a grand jury. And he told the, The. The prosecutor questioning him. You know, he told him, when he first brought the issue up, he said, you don't want to open that can of worms. And then the guy tries to be like, oh, yeah, we're not going to open it. We're not opening. I want to move on. And Nixon kind of like, interrupts him. He's like, well, let me tell you why you don't want to open it. He gives him, like, a brief about the stuff we just talked about, like, what was going on. And the prosecutor's, like, trying to stop him from talking, basically, as if they don't want this on the record, you know, and at a certain point, by the end, you know, after. After a fairly short portion of the testimony, it was seven pages total. You know, he tells them, that's all I'm going to say about that. And, you know, but it's. But it wasn't the whole story either. There was a lot more going on behind the scenes. And the reason that he didn't say all that is he just thought, you know, the. The military's reputation is already in the dumps, and I don't need to contribute to that. And it's something I always, you know, I always respect about people is when they're being attacked and they have, like, a trump card that they could play, but they don't, because it would drag other. I mean, looking back now and everything that's happened with the deep state and everything since then, he probably should have just pulled the trigger and done it and exposed the whole thing. You know, but in context, knowing what he knew and, you know, his role and what he felt, you know, his responsibilities were, I think it's very admirable that he never mentioned that to the end of his life, you know, where he could have said, yeah, look, we had some things Going on where, you know, we, we were. Had people spying and breaking in, but you got to understand what we were facing here and go. He never did that. You know, and that to me is just. It's a real mark of, of character, in my opinion. I mean, think about it.
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A
He. Yeah. So basically here was Darl, I was.
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To say real quick, he basically consented to. To going down in American history as like one of the great villains and symbols of evil in American politics. He basically consented to that rather than, you know, expose this deep conspiracy that was playing out against him not only at the Pentagon, but, you know, the rest of the security services. And I, Yeah, you know, I find that to be. To be very admirable.
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A
So here's one quote here. We walked out thinking this was Seven Days in May, recalled the lead Pentagon investigator, W. Donald Stewart, referring to the Cold War novel and film in which the military tries to overthrow the President. And if people have seen the original of that, Kennedy let them film it in the White House because he's actually worried that the Pentagon might overthrow him and wanted that out there that like to kind of let people know that this was a real danger, that that's a lot of power in that building across the river there. They really could just march right across and do whatever they want with the President. They really feel like it, you know. But anyway, so I wanted to quote that because that's the lead Pentagon investigator called it that. In other words, you know, you might hear, okay, some of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had some guys spying on Nixon. Like, I don't know, what exactly does that mean? You know what I mean? Well, apparently from their point of view, even this was a huge deal. This was the highest kind of a scandal for these people to be treating their superior in this way. And very interesting too, about the role of Alexander Haig. I don't know what Nixon says about Haig in his memoir or anything like that, but he was a military man. But then who was attached to. Was like the deputy to Henry Kissinger.
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Yeah.
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On the National Security Councilor as Deputy Secretary of State or something. And I don't know, essentially the deep state got Nixon, but Nixon hired Kissinger and Kissinger. Kissinger was Rockefeller's guy. So like, you know, maybe this is already, you know, in the. Toward the end of Vietnam when that matters less. And it really is kind of the new right represented by the Pentagon and their interests that the, you know, Kissinger doesn't buy Nixon protection.
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B
You know what I mean? Yeah, I Mean, Kissinger not spied on, too. You know, Kissinger is being spied on as well, and he was like, through the roof demanding that generals be prosecuted. I mean, he wanted, he wanted scalps. He was really mad. And Nixon just, you know, he just refused to do it. But, yeah, I mean, look, there's factions in the Deep State, and there's, you know, groups that conspire together for certain purposes, and then that conspiracy breaks up and they go their separate ways and they come back together again in different formations. Obviously. Like, you know, it's not like there's a head office of the Deep state where they'd be like, okay, you guys are going to go spy on Nixon? He's like, it's very, it's more fluid than that. But it really does go to show you that just the, the way that the military establishment and the security services in general, like, the, the way they saw themselves with regard to, with respect to American politics and policy making, you know, they, they thought that it was their prerogative to veto, you know, the foreign policy of the President, to subvert it any way they could. Because, you know, you say what, like, what's the big deal if they were spying on him? It wasn't just that they were spying on him. They were taking what they could selectively and out of context, sometimes, or sometimes in context, leaking things to the press that, you know, that, that sort of let Nixon know that if you push this too far, there's a lot of stuff going on around the world right now in Cambodia and other places that are straight up illegal and that you don't want exposed. You know, you don't want your, your, your, your big move to, to go to China and soften those relations. You don't want that sabotaged. And if that gets out early, that's going to be sabotage. So, you know, they were leaked to the press, you know, in a way that was intended to influence the American political system. You know, and if you go back, I mean, this is something that, you know, it's, it's something probably goes back to the beginning of civilized history. But I mean, just 10 years before 19, early 60s, when the Franco Algerian War was going on, you know, you have the, the famous Algiers put, you know, where the French generals were plotting. I mean, to go basically go kinetic to force de Gaulle to, to not go down the, the road of giving up Algeria, as he was sort of in the process of, of coming to terms with. I mean, they were going to seize several major cities and bases in Algeria and Just refused to follow orders. And I mean, it was pretty hardcore. It didn't obviously work. I mean, de Gaulle won out in that. But, you know, this is something that across NATO, at least at that time, the security services really did feel like the Cold War. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them a generous interpretation that they really did believe that the Cold War superseded all other considerations. And if you have these politicians who have their, you know, their petty partisan interests or their funky ideas that they came up with, you know, you're going to be in power for four years, bud, or eight years, and you don't get to just shift the course of the Cold War. And we're going to make sure of that. And, you know, this is, again, we should all be very familiar with this from the first Trump administration.
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A
Yeah. All right, a couple things here. So first of all, you reminded me of that quote from Mike Eisenhower, who everyone remember was the five star general, Supreme Allied Commander of United nations forces in Europe and World War II, and then became the two term Republican president of the United States of America. And he said, God help any president with less influence over the military than I have because it's everything that I can do to try to hold the army at bay. They always want 10 more divisions or something. Like, you know, he had to do this whole new look policy that said we're going to make a bunch of nukes instead of a bunch of new army divisions because we'll never be able to get rid of them now. Like, it's such a runaway train that Eisenhower himself was, you know, whatever, flabbergasted by the whole thing or whatever. And then legend has it that the military and their friends shot the next president in the head for wanting to limit intervention in Vietnam and or wherever. I know people have their different theories about that one. But then, yeah, Nixon does get us out of Vietnam, or, you know, does the major move, it finally ends under Ford, but he does the major move to get us out of Vietnam. And that sure does seem to have motivated these major forces against him. You know, whether it was the corporations involved or the generals and the admirals themselves, I know Bell Helicopter and others, you know, played a huge role in lobbying for continuing Vietnam, that kind of thing. And then I also just want to point out real quick here that for people who don't know, I mean, whatever you got to admit, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, this is who the government talks to. And so you're going to find News there. It doesn't mean you're supposed to believe it. You're supposed to hate read it, but you got to read it. So if you don't want to pay them money, what you do, Mr. Most honest historian in America is you just go to archive is or archive pH, and you put in your New York Times link and you hop right over the paywall there. Same for the Post. And now, unfortunately, they have somehow figured out how to block. The Wall Street Journal has figured out how to block them. But anyway, you can read this article about Watergate for free. You just go to that New York to find this headline at the New York Times, go and plug that link into Archive Ph or Archive is and you can read the whole thing without paying them scum. You wouldn't want to help pay Charlie Savage's salary. That would be sinful. But you can still read the article. And so here's a bit of a transition one. I wonder if Henry Kissinger is in the Epstein files anywhere. He's pretty old. I don't know. But I could also. Here's another segue is that there's a piece in the New York Times, Darrell Today, yesterday maybe by Robert Draper, about how the Epstein files reveal this deeper, you know, dark secret American establishment and coming to terms with the import of it all in and to the readers of the New York Times. And one way to interpret that headline might be, here's what we've been keeping from you actually, that America is like thoroughly corrupt, beyond broken and maybe beyond fixable at this point, in a Humpty Dumpty style of way, when we might have told you the only thing wrong was that Trump won an election or something like that. And so I thought that was interesting that they're. They're not trying to play it down anymore. They're going, yeah, you're right. This is ugly, dude. Yeah. At the very least you have all these people knew that this guy was a convicted sex creep and didn't care at all. That just made him one of us or whatever to them, you know what I mean? And so I thought that was important. And I wish I had actually thought Daryl to reread that article before we went on tonight because he actually makes some pretty interesting points worth remembering. But I are escaping me now. But just whatever the fact that it was in the Times and that he was kind of given this overall, like, what have we learned about America in the last couple of weeks type of a piece I thought was pretty big and. And he was basically right on there. So I guess I would ask you, you know, it's been, I guess now, yeah, two full weeks basically since all the stuff came out. So what's new? And. And by the way, so for people not familiar, Marta Mate, our historian friend here, Daryl Cooper, has done in the past three. How long?
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B
I did a three episode series on it myself and there's also a three hour interview I did with Tucker Carlson on the subject.
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A
Right. So, yeah, in other words, unlike a lot of us, you got a real good scaffolding of a timeline, of a understanding of who this guy is and what he was doing over time and all that. So now you have this deluge of new information to kind of plug into your mosaic that you'd already been building here. So what's new, bud? Tell us what's going on.
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B
I mean, I will say it was. It was kind of nice to see that maybe that's the wrong word to use for a situation like this. It was kind of nice to see that the basic structure of the story that I laid out in that series and in the Tucker interview has been vindicated. I mean, in terms of the Epstein's history and what he was doing in the 1980s and so forth, we had a lot less information then than we do now. And that has been fleshed out. I mean, you know, the. Back then we had these connections. You know, we had him at Bear Stearns and doing this thing that looked a lot like money laundering. And then he gets fired from Bear Stearns for that and ends up like the next year on a private plane with a British weapons broker to go to the a meeting at the Pentagon. You know, he's like 29, 30 years old. So we had these little bits and pieces where we had to kind of fill in the gaps of exactly what was, you know, maybe going on there. But now that we see his network really in full play and we see that this dude was a player across the board and, you know, I don't know if he really was like this spider at the center of the web. I saw somebody say that, you know, Epstein is such a great story and a great way to expose these power networks, not because he was at the center of them, but because he's kind of the Forrest Gump of like the late Cold War and, you know, early war on Terror sort of intel and political communities. He's just sort of everywhere because he's this, you know, he's this party monster that all these freaks want to be around and want to get to know and all this. And so he just turns up everywhere and everyone's got a relationship with him. It seems like, you know, one of the things I asked in my right at the beginning of my Epstein podcast and I just said, is it like too much of an ask? Is it like, I'm not going to ask the government, politicians, I'm not going to ask you to stop taking bribes. I know that's ridiculous. That's never going to happen. I'm not going to ask them to stop lying about things to try to get elect. That's never going to happen. Like, fine, keep all that stuff. I don't care. Keep the money. You don't even have to. You don't have to give the money from your bribes back. Whatever. Is it too much to ask, though, that we just have like a couple people in government in serious, you know, places in the security services that are not one degree removed from this guy who was running a giant child sex trafficking ring, Is that possible? And you read these emails and all of the files that are in there and what you find out is, no, it's not. Because if. It's. Because if to do that, you basically would have to go completely outside the American political system and pull somebody in. And in fact, actually we tried that with Trump and that didn't work because he's right there with them too. And so, you know. Yeah, it's just not somebody, you know, somebody said that, you know, if you went after everybody that shows up in those files in an incriminating way, it would tear down the whole system. It would burn everything down. And that's probably true. It probably would, because there's enough in there that not to convict a bunch of people. But there's enough in there that definitely justifies bringing people in for questioning, which by itself is enough to ruin someone's career and reputation, you know, and because you'd have all these people being asked, what did you know about Jeffrey Epstein? And there's just no way they could credibly convince the public that they didn't know what he was up to. Everybody knew what he was up to. People who weren't plugged in, like, you know, who, who weren't in D.C. circles, in elite circles, knew about all this. Ryan Dawson, I mean, he's been talking about this since like 2008. And those of us who, you know, on the old Internet.
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A
What about the Dow, Darrell? What about the Dow Jones Industrial?
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B
Dude, that was embarrassing. I mean, I, I was embarrassed watching that. I don't know what, it doesn't even affect me. But that was, that was just, that was brutal to watch.
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A
I mean, for those who missed it, that's Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, testifying before Congress, and they ask her about this stuff and she starts going, we should be talking about how great the S and P is doing. She knows Trump is watching. So that's her audience of one. Even though she's supposed to be the.
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Attorney General of the country.
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But whatever, man.
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B
I'm sorry to interrupt real quick.
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You were saying about.
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B
Go ahead.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Oh, well, just that, you know, he's like, you go back and look through his stuff. He's been talking about this stuff since like 2008, and there have been people out there who were before that. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, I think so, yeah. I first picked up on the story, I think probably around 2014, 2015. And when I started to pick up on it, there were already communities on Reddit and other places you could go where people been talking about this. And so even regular people knew about this. And the people who would have been in a position to get on Epstein's plane, they all knew. And just that question alone, you know, even if there's nothing in there that suggests that you did anything illegal necessarily, or whatever, but you were hanging out with this guy all the time. You're going places with them, you're playing buddy buddy and like lovey dovey in his email, what did you know about this guy? And they cannot say they didn't know. Nobody will believe that, you know, and so just that by itself is, is damning. I did want to say we. I need to correct one thing that I said last week, thanks to, you know, everybody's favorite Twitter personality, Michael Tracy, for, for doing the digging on this. But in the email, in one of the emails, this woman who I didn't, I didn't recognize her name at the time, but I looked it up later. She was the, she. She ran a, one of the major, one of the largest, like child sex trafficking victim support organizations in the country, you know, and that tries to lobby politicians and do all these things. And it was in that email that she said she was telling somebody else that Epstein, through his Zorro Ranch Trust in New Mexico, had won the lottery for $80 million and that she was forwarding that information to Director Mueller. It was back when he was in, you know, in charge. And, you know, so that sounds super official. I mean, it sounds like somebody who can email something directly to Director Mueller and, you know, and all this. And so it kind of was going around the Internet and I repeated that. Apparently it's not true. Apparently it's a different Zorro Trust in Oklahoma or New Mexico or Arkansas or something like that. It's just a case of mistaken identity, apparently. And so, yeah, mia culpa on that. I. Yeah, let's see what else is, what else has been coming out about this. I mean, it's tough. You know, one of the things that's tough to like, sort through with all this is you go online right now and I mean, it is. I mean, you got, you got not just random anonymous people on X, but like, you know, you got, at this point, politicians who are basically coming out and saying, you know, if I told you who and what was in the rest of these emails behind these redactions that I'm seeing, you know, when I go into the skiff, you know, it would. You would tear the whole place down. I mean, there's. They're making it sound really, really bad. And so when you have this, this sort of, this sort of black hole, this story that has all of these redactions in it from front to back, and you have people in positions of, you know, informational authority, let's say politicians and media and so forth, who were saying vague things that make it sound way worse than like, what's publicly available. People are taking that and running with it in all sorts of directions. I mean, there's cannibalism, there's ritual murder and all these things. I don't know anything about all of that stuff. Like, you know, I guess we'll see what, what comes out. But yeah, it does make it a little bit harder to sort through the information and determine kind of what's true and what's not. What we do know is true though, is that this guy that everybody knew was a convicted pedophile, that, that virtually everybody in the elite system was friends with this guy, curried this guy's favor, was providing favors for this guy. And if you look at the certain implications and insinuations of some of the emails, there's nothing like so super direct that I've seen, but things that are pretty clearly showing you that they were. A lot of these people were at parties, at events with this guy where underage girls were being brought in. And you know, again, that does. Doesn't necessarily mean there's anything in any of those files that directly implicates anybody in a crime that can be proven in a court of law. I don't know. But it should be enough to end your career. It should Be enough to make sure that, that you are nowhere close to the levers of power, you know, if you don't have a problem befriending a guy and hanging out with a guy, playing buddy buddy with the guy that, you know is a convicted sex criminal and who never stopped doing that, by the way. It's not as if he went to prison and never did it again. There's all a lot of these emails, like, make that very clear, and we already knew that anyway. If you can do that, then, you know, you don't get to be in a position where you get to, you know, provide the swing vote on a new age of consent law that comes up, like, sorry, you have to be completely removed from the centers of power, like, anywhere near them, even if we can't convict you, you know, and that's kind of where the public's at right now. It seems like, you know, the President even really wants this to go away. And it's kind of amazing how Trump has fumbled this issue. And I don't know, there's a lot of people, like, saying Trump's, like, implicated in these emails and so forth. He's in there for sure. A lot of they say he's mentioned all these times. A lot of Those times are post2019 arrest. And so it's like interviews that are taking place in the context of his presidency and stuff. But he is in there before, in other, in other instances, too. I haven't seen anything that's, like, directly incriminating. There's some, there's some accusations in there. But you don't, you know, I, I don't want to get in the business of taking seriously every anonymous accusation that, you know, we, we don't know who provided it and, and what the circumstances were, but it is very clear that he wants this to go away. And the way that he took this issue, which for years had been pushed almost exclusively from the right, from the MAGA right, really had been pushed and involves, if you look at the people who are really, really, you know, implicated with this guy, who are really, like, close with him, mostly people from, like, the Democrat organizational system, you know, not necessarily politicians, but just the broader ecosystem. Mostly. Not entirely, but mostly. And this should have been like a Republican issue, a Trump issue, and somehow it has become the exact opposite. This is like something hanging around Trump's neck because he decided to go out and say, you know, not to say, hey, you know, look, I understand everybody wants all this information and everything, but, you know, there are rules, there are laws as far as disclosure, we don't want to, you know, risk hurting any of the victims. We don't want to put out information that, you know, might put somebody's name out there in a negative way when we don't really have any confirmation about that, but it'll ruin their reputation. But he, you know, he could have said something like that. Instead, he says, it's a Democrat hoax. It's all made up. Anybody saying, this supporter, how dare you? And sorry, man, like, you know, it's true. Like, your real hardcore cat turd types are going to just open up and unhinge their jaw and swallow whatever you throw into their mouth. But that is not most of the people, you know, and. And this is not going away anytime soon. Which is not to say that I have any faith whatsoever that we're going to really get any solid information on this, unfortunately.
- [31:43]
A
Although, you know, there's so much there. There's so many trails where, you know. And I know there are a lot of great people doing a lot of independent investigating all over Twitter and substack and whatever, but to me, it's worthwhile to note that even at the Wall Street Journal, they're going, wow, okay, look at Les Wexner's finances. Because, you know, that's their speciality. That's what they're looking for. So they go, we found his 56 bank accounts and all his money, and here's where he has his cash, and here's where he has all his holdings, and here's what he's doing with it all. And there's just so much there for. If you think about all the reporters at Forbes magazine or, you know, the Wall Street Journal, for example, people who report the business press, for them to dig into there as well as to ignore, but just for everybody else, too, there's so much there. They're these files. It's almost like the Snowden stories or the State Department cables, where they're going to be reported out for years, you know, and in fact, you know, like nine years from now, you're gonna be like, well, in the 2026 Epstein file release, we find this thing that backs up this one part of our story. You know what I mean? The same way the WikiLeaks are referred to now, the State Department cables and that kind of thing, there's so much there. And you're right that there's so much where people are jumping to conclusions, where clearly they're speaking in code and people assume what they must be referring to and all that. I Prefer to hold my horses than try to be first on stuff like that. But there's clearly something going on there. In fact, even in that New York Times article, he goes, you know that the kind of weird references to pizza. He says, well, this makes the kooks think they were right before. He doesn't really say why they really weren't, other than to say that everyone who ever thought there was anything to it before also thought that the guy should take a rifle to the basement of the pizza place. But that's not true.
- [33:28]
B
Oh, yeah. Speaking of which, by the way, did.
- [33:30]
A
You hear one particular idiot radio host thought that, not anybody else.
- [33:35]
B
You know, did you hear that the guy that did that got killed by police in a traffic stop like, two weeks ago?
- [33:43]
A
No, it was. It was. It was like a year ago or something.
- [33:46]
B
Oh, it was a while back. Did it just come out? Oh, okay. Somebody just told me about it, like, two weeks ago, as if it just happened. That was like a year ago. Okay.
- [33:53]
A
Oh, yeah. No, no, Maybe even more. Maybe even two years ago.
- [33:55]
B
Okay. Okay, then.
- [33:57]
A
Okay. I wanted to bring this up. So, first of all, there is. Les Wexner was the real money guy. And we may have even talked about this before that. The Netflix documentary When the lady, maybe it's Virginia Roberts, draws the. The big painting, the kind of mural at the end. Epstein is like a face on a flying saucer over here in the corner. But it's Wexner who is sort of the centerpiece of the painting and all that, for what that's worth. It seemed to be, you know, meaningful in some way there, and he was the guy with all the money, although it seems like he would have been the dog on Epstein's leash most of the time. That's the way it's portrayed as far as, like, who was zooming who and Boston who around there in that relationship and that kind of thing. Epstein taking his money and doing what he wants with it and all of that.
- [34:47]
B
But, I mean, Wexner is the one who gave him full power of attorney over his estate, you know?
- [34:53]
A
Right. And now. So they've had to admit. Now they had to unredact his name in one place where they admitted that he was what that the. I considered to be unindicted co conspirator in this global trafficking ring. So that was a huge one. It's one that Massey confronted Pam Bondi about, and she punted. But there's. Can we just take us, by the way, somewhere? Yeah.
- [35:16]
B
Can we just take a moment to sing the Praises of Thomas Massie. I mean, you gotta remember if. If the rest of the political system would have had its way. They didn't want any of us to know any of this. You know, this would have never come out. This would have just been sitting in a DOJ vault and been forgotten about. That's what they wanted. That's what they tried to do. And it was because of. It was like, this is one of those things where you really do have a major thing happen, a major earthquake in the political system that really was driven by the integrity and action of a couple people, you know, him and Ro Khanna and a few people who were kind of backing them on the slide. I mean, and they deserve a huge amount of credit for that. And I really hope that whatever happens, like, you know, that these. That those people are remembered, you know, 50 years from now when we do the history of American politics in this era as the people who stood up when the entire system wanted them to sit down. Like, you really, really do deserve credit for that.
- [36:18]
A
You know what, too, man? I'm sorry. It's. I don't have a vendetta or anything. I don't want to be a sectarian, but it's part of history is that Robbie Suave from Reason magazine went and wrote for Bari Weiss's publication, the Free Press, about why they should not have released these documents. But he ain't no libertarian of mine. All right, now then, the other thing.
- [36:43]
B
I wanted to say is.
- [36:44]
A
Oh, a couple things. I don't like this, but talk about that. But I want to say about. You mentioned Ryan Dawson. Ryan Dawson. I don't vouch for every single thing that Ryan Dawson says. I do like him very much, and we've been friends for 20 years. And he's a good dude. For people who argue that he's imperfect. Okay. However, he also despises, like, dumber truthers than him who get things wrong all the time. And he don't like that. And so he does things like on his substack this week, he has written about. No, no, no, dummy. Don't get it all twisted to what he's talking about here. So one thing that's blowing everybody's mind is that after Epstein was indicted, he ordered barrels of sulfur.
- [37:29]
B
Yeah.
- [37:29]
A
And then people. People just, like, imagine a movie that they've seen before where they throw a guy in, you know, Breaking Bad. You dissolve the guy in acid or whatever. But, like, I don't know, man. Like, why don't you ask Rock? Are there any reasons why a guy who lives on the island might need sulfuric acid, right? And so Ryan Dawson says, yeah, actually, guess what? There are reasons why you might need that. It's desalinization and whatever, some process in the reverse osmosis, which by the way.
- [37:59]
B
It says on the order form in the files. It's just nobody knows what RO means, so.
- [38:06]
A
So yeah, look, man, there ain't no need to get all crazy. The truth is bad enough I see people where and whatever this, I'm not trying to go off on this, but it's just, just an example of. I'm not trying to denounce anyone or whatever, but it's just an example. Things to be careful of. You just take the worst case scenario things where a lady, and I don't know who it is, some lady emails him and says, sorry, we're running late, it takes forever to get two little girls ready. I'll see you there. And people are like, oh my God, this monster who is preparing to deliver two children to this man to be horribly abused and maybe tortured to death.
- [38:42]
B
Right?
- [38:42]
A
But meanwhile, if you just take it at face value, she has two young daughters and when she puts the shoes on one, the other one takes off her headband or whatever because they're little girls and it takes forever to get them ready to go. Which is a completely innocuous statement that any mother of little girls would say to anyone on any given day. Right? So you start with your conclusion first. You could go way off the deep end here and you know, hey, maybe that is what that email was about. But I'm just saying let's not jump to conclusions, you know, for unwarranted reasons here. But then I, I want to ask you about, I want you to tell.
- [39:18]
B
Us more about what you know about. Quick comment on what you just said. It's just. Yeah, yeah, the reason that's important is like you said, this is a story that is going to play out not over months, probably over years. You know, things are going to come out and this story is going to develop over years. And the way that we ensure that that happens and that people continue to take it seriously and follow up on it is we got to maintain the credibility of it, you know, and running off into all of these loose change kind of explanations for things that we really can't, that we really can't provide much backup on. As soon as, you know, where you really can't even withstand just a light critical questioning of your, you know, of your assertion, you have to be able to do that because this is something that's going to take a long time. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.
- [40:03]
A
Okay. Now, so I want to ask you about Wexner, like to tell us more about this guy and what role you think he really played. Like, he was part of the mega group of Israeli lobby donors and all this. He's extremely powerful guy. So I want to know about that. But then I want to go ahead and bring up these two things real quick. That seemed to me to be the kind of thing that warranted real investigation or at least real explanation. Maybe someone has already explained these things. Like, again, I'm not trying to jump.
- [40:31]
B
To conclusions about them, but one of.
- [40:34]
A
Them was, it was a highly redacted memo from a lawyer. And maybe this is the same lawyer that you're talking about who, like, represents victims and is. Maybe she's some kind of fabulous. Whatever. I don't know exactly. But it's a highly redacted thing about how this young girl and her. This mother had taken her young girl with a Rockefeller heirs, flying the plane from Florida up to New York for this little girl to be abused by Larry Summers. And I had just seen it, like a screenshot of part of it, but then, hey, they had the link to the Justice Department website to follow the thing to the real document, for whatever it's worth, wherever it comes from. And then I don't recommend people like reading that unless you're really interested, because it's really horrific. It describes what Larry Summers allegedly actually did to this very underage girl. I'm not exactly sure how old, but very underage girl, and hurt her terribly, like this sick, absolutely sick stuff. And I'm going, look, like this shouldn't be like, replace the Bill of Rights permanently or whatever, but I think we could just get Larry Summers up on the gallows and put a rope around his neck and tell him, all right, boy, you got 30 seconds. You better say something convincing. And then just see what he's got. You know what I mean? I think it's time to get this started. We're like, I don't know. Or at least for people to start taking this stuff more seriously. And then the one other thing was something that it just seemed like if this is made up, then it's like a real fiction author made this up as a. Like a real hoax, right? Because otherwise, boyish. If this was, in fact written by a young woman, then it's hard to imagine that she was embellishing this, making this upward, because what it is, is, it's this girl. I. I believe you know, I don't know exactly the age, but obviously a very young woman who somehow was coerced or tricked into. Or maybe she did agree to be a surrogate mother or give birth to a baby for Jeffrey Epstein. And talks about how Maxwell had told her to keep her eyes closed, but damn it, she couldn't keep her eyes closed. And so she saw the baby's hand and foot and now she can't get over the fact that they took her baby away and it hurts so badly and whatever, and her heart is just broken to her. She's completely crushed. And then it, you know, it's transcribed, but then it's like written out in like these block capital letters with no spacing between the words in like this crazy way. Like, I could totally picture a absolutely like sobbing 19 year old girl in a mental hospital writing this letter to her therapist kind of thing. Like that's how it comes across. It's like, it seems very disturbing. So, yes, it's true that some playwright could come up with that crap, right? Fine. But it seemed like there's some really horrible stuff that at least I want to hear a good explanation for why that's fake.
- [43:34]
B
Like when that allegation supposedly took place.
- [43:38]
A
No, I'm sorry, It's just a deluge, man. And I quit Twitter again because I have to have so many other jobs and I have to get work done and it, it's just like closing one eye. But even when it's all coming out, I can't keep track of it, man. I can't categorize it and, and figure out which, which things are really worth paying attention to and trying to follow up on and what, I just don't know. But these are the things that just horrified me. It just seems so sincere when she's talking about seeing her little baby's foot and then never seeing her baby again. You can imagine if that's someone that you love going through that, like if that was you and your baby, you.
- [44:12]
B
Know, because I mean, Larry, you know, Larry Summers is somebody who, if you were to go do a Jay Leno man on the street and ask people who Larry Summers was, you get maybe like one out of a hundred who knew, you know, he is. I know who he is. Our listeners probably know who he is. He's not. Some Russians know who he is. That somebody's gonna totally, like some, some girl is gonna draw out of a hat somewhere and like come up with a story like that. At the very least she knew that he was in tight with Epstein you know, so at least she's got like more information than most people had at that time, you know, who weren't investigating the story or something. And so, you know, the, the. Yeah, so that's why the dating was interesting to me. I was thinking today, I just looked this up and bro, I would have sent it to you earlier, I probably sent to you in the past sometime. But I've been thinking a lot today about this interview that Eric Prince, Blackwater dude, gave to Breitbart News in the fall of 2016. So three years before the Epstein arrest, before this was any in anybody's, you know, mind at all, who wasn't just like obsessed with the Epstein story from way back. He's given this interview talking about the Wiener laptop. You remember Anthony Weiner? They took his laptop and there was this, all this stuff for like a minute about like there's some, there's some very questionable stuff on here. And then it just sort of went away. Well, he gave an interview about that November of 2016. And let me just read a little bit of it to you. He says, because this is again, Sarek Prince, like Prince is a connected guy. Like, you don't have to like Blackwater or whatever, but like owner. He's a very connected dude. Okay? Because of Wienergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. This is Prince talking through a subpoena, through a warrant. They searched his laptop and sure enough, they found those 650,000 emails. Those are the missing emails from the Hillary server. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing. They found State Department emails, they found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 12 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times. The amount of garbage that they found in these emails of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting, they gave it to the FBI and they said, we're going to go public with this if you don't reopen the investigation and you don't do the right thing with timely indictments. I believe. I know. And this is from a very well placed source of mine at One PP One Police Plaza in New York. That's NYPD headquarters. The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation. And they've gotten huge pushback to the point of coercion from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That's the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice.
- [47:12]
A
And he says that Eric Garner crack. Just goes to show what a crank Eric Prince is, though.
- [47:17]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah, he, he had a heart attack. Yeah.
- [47:21]
A
After cops strangled him to death, he.
- [47:24]
B
Said, he says there's all kinds of criminal culpability through all the emails they've seen of that 650,000, including money laundering, underage sex, pay for play, and of course, plenty of proof of inappropriate handling, sending, receiving a classified information. And so this is like back before anybody's talking about this stuff, which, like, to me it gives it sort of a, you know, sort of a priority when I'm considering the information.
- [47:50]
A
You know, I don't know.
- [47:53]
B
If he doesn't have good connections at One Police Plaza, I would assume he probably does.
- [47:58]
A
Well, I, no, I, I agree with that, but I think he's a lion, son of a. I wouldn't trust his numbers about how many times anybody went where or any of those things. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, in fact, sorry, I said arm bar.
- [48:12]
B
I didn't sort of like what you were saying.
- [48:14]
A
When you do the thing across the guy's throat and choke him to death. And the, that's what happened to Eric Garner. He didn't die of a heart attack. He died of being murdered by a government employee. The kind of guy who would have been trained by Eric Prince how to murder people and get away with it. Him. Anyway, sorry.
- [48:34]
B
Anyway, as I said, whatever you think of Erik Prince, I mean, I, I, I listen to that though, and I think, I think the same thing that I think when I read that email about the girl story about Larry Summers, and that's. Damn, this is pretty specific.
- [48:50]
A
I mean, you know, this is in the Netflix documentary. There are two eyeball witnesses who put Bill Clinton there. Or at least, okay, I'm 100% sure there's one eyeball witness in that documentary says he saw Clinton there twice. But I think there's two different witnesses in that movie. I know that it's, it was like the janitor guy, the groundskeeper superintendent guy saw Bill Clinton there. And there's one other eyeball source. I'm sorry, I forgot, I forgot who it was anymore. Who said on the record they saw Bill Clinton there. And I believe it. Which, by the way, I want to reiterate A point I made last week that Sagar kind of dismissed. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place, but I'm not seeing like a lot of good information about what all was happening at that island, who all was going there, how big were these parties, how many people were going there, how often were they happening, what bands were playing, who was there. I mean, I heard his story a couple of times. Now, I don't know if this is true, but one of them was about a 15 year old girl who tried to swim away from there and they caught her, they like took a boat out and got her. So I mean, how terrifying is that? To go swim at night to try to escape an island in the ocean, right? To swim to the next island. Like what must have already happened to that girl to do that? You know what I mean? But like the island, the island, the island. Everybody goes the island. Well, who walls everybody. As I mentioned that heat map, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are going there. Now, it doesn't mean that there's always horse there. I don't know. You know what I mean? Of whatever age, kidnapped, you know, prisoners and slaves or whoever. I don't know. It seems like that's still a big place where people, including me, I guess fill in a lot of speculation that that's where the worst is going on. Otherwise why is it an island out in the middle of the ocean that's so that you can do despicable crimes there, Right? But it seems like we still, am I right? That we still don't know nearly enough.
- [50:46]
B
About that for sure. That's one of those things that is going to play out over the long term. You know, as people have time to go through these, especially as we start to get a lot of the names that are redacted, they're going to start to look at, okay, this email is this person talking about the party last night and they're going to be able to put them up on the chart and put a mark by their name and people will do that. You know, the crazy Ryan Dawson types will do that over the ensuing years. But yeah, it's really hard to say we put any of that together really at this point. There's still a lot of questions. You know, I will say, man, we have come a long, long, long way from a president almost being brought down completely because he messed around with an intern in the Oval Office. We've come a long, long, long way. That, that seems so. That seems like Leave it to Beaver, like very quaint Americana, you Know, I.
- [51:40]
A
Remember as soon as that came out, I was my age. As soon as that came out, I was like, this is a limited hangout, man. I want to talk about Waco. I want to talk about bombing Iraq, causing terrorism. All right, you know what? We're going to take some super chats, but let's talk about the Ayatollah for a minute here. The super chats, I'm sure are going to be, you know, about Epstein is what people are going to want to talk about. But we need to cover the Ayatollah here. Netanyahu came to town and said, I want it to be these demands. And I don't know. Last time, Trump pretended to negotiate, but we all know he wasn't really negotiating. This time. He's saying he's negotiating things, just pretending.
- [52:21]
B
Or. What's the.
- [52:22]
A
What's the right question about what's going on here? How far is. Well, maybe I should ask this. How far do you speculate that Ayatollah might be actually willing to compromise here compared to before? Have things really changed at all? Or he's gonna be right where he always was, which is he promises no nuclear bombs, but that's it.
- [52:41]
B
I don't think you are ever going to budge any Iranian leader, regardless of who they are from that position. You know, it's just we know they know, the American negotiators know, Trump knows. Everybody knows that if they do what Netanyahu wants and give up their ballistic missiles, they get attacked and destroyed by Israel the next day. Everybody knows that and like it. I feel like the Iranians would be perfectly justified, especially given just the way that last year's attack began, you know, in such a. Just a. A really dishonorable way. You know, attacking them in the middle of negotiations and then coming out and bragging about how you lured them into these negotiations to, you know, to get the element of surprise. Like, that's one of those things that, like, you're ashamed of. If that's your country behaving that way, you should be. And so the, you know, the Iranians, we come and say after that happened, and the only reason that that war came to an end, short of Iran being destroyed and that regime being toppled by. By Israel, the only reason it stopped is because they had their own arsenal of ballistic missiles that couldn't be stopped. And after 12 days, Israel tapped out and asked America to intervene and figure out a way to end this thing for him, which we did. That's the only thing that, you know, it. It would just. It would be tantamount to just national suicide, regime suicide to give up their ballistic missiles. As far as nuclear enrichment goes, you know, it's just, that goes to just a basic question of sovereignty. You know, there's no reason, there's no reason that we cannot set up an inspection regime that verify. Look, Iran, I've known a lot of Persians, okay? Persian, Americans. Granted, my doctor down in, when I lived in Los Angeles was a Persian. These are very intelligent people, okay? These are sophisticated people. These aren't like son Bushmen from like the Kalahari Desert or something. Who. These are very sophisticated people. If they wanted to build a nuclear weapon, they could build one. They could have done it a long time ago. And they very specifically, you have laid, you have laid this out better than anybody. Like with Sagar. I think you did it on piers one time when you shut down that Emily Austin ch. Where I mean, you know, they got a threshold deterrent. They got something that said, look, we're showing you we are being open about the fact that we could do this if we decided to. And we are deciding not to. And it's not just because of Israel in the United States. You know, Iran doesn't want Turkey deciding they need a nuclear weapon and then Saudi Arabia deciding they need a nuclear weapon because Iran has one. They don't want that any more than anybody else does. And so they have plenty of reasons besides threats from the US And Israel to not want to not want one. And you know, sort of ironically, it's the threats from the US And Israel that are really their only reason to want one. You know, it's not as if, like, what do they really think? Like, think about it like you're an Iranian, okay? We finally master the whole technological chain, and now we finally got a testable bomb, and we're going to put it out in the desert in Balutistan, and there's a nuclear explosion out there. And everybody goes, oh, no. Like, they, they have one. They have a bomb. It's like, okay, so you have like one bomb. You tested how many you got. And they're all gravity bombs. None of them are capable of being put on ballistic missiles. They can't be miniaturized like that with the type of uranium they have. And so that happens. What do you think is going to happen? Israel is going to flatten Tehran the next day if that happens. If they, if they light off a nuke, you know, in a test in the desert? And so they just, it makes no sense, you know, And I think that Israel's Real problem is Israel is not afraid that Iran's going to get a nuclear weapon and then just one day they're going to wake up to Tel Aviv having a mushroom cloud over it. They're not afraid of that. Iran has demonstrated again and again and again that can they be ruthless? Yes. Can they act according to priorities and values that are, you know, very hard for people from our position to understand? Maybe. But they're not crazy, irrational nutjobs who are going to voluntarily bring destruction upon their whole country just to show those dog darn Zionists, you know, that just that's, that's, they've never shown that kind of behavior. And so I don't think the Israelis or the Americans are really afraid of Iran having, having a nuclear bomb. I think that they're afraid that Iran is going to get back to work.
- [57:24]
A
When this is all over the article now I'm almost.
- [57:29]
B
Hello.
- [57:32]
A
Go ahead.
- [57:33]
B
Oh, yeah, so I think that they're afraid that after this is all over. Yeah, I'm sorry. Iran is going to get back to work rebuilding their proxies and, or, you know, proxies. That's a, I was talking to somebody about that the other day. It's a term we should really object to, unless you're talking about Hezbollah specifically. I mean, to call Hamas or the Houthis or anything Iranian proxies, in my opinion is a bit of a stretch. But, but, you know, helping to rebuild these militias that are oppositional to Israel, they're going to do that and they're going to be able to defend themselves from a direct Israeli attack without nuclear weapons. And that's Israel's problem. You know, it's not nuclear weapons. It's that Iran is, you know, they, they fund and provide support to Israel's enemies and Israel does not have the military power alone to do anything about it. That's what they don't like and that's why they want that country destroyed. What are you looking for?
- [58:25]
A
Yeah, that's right. And look, there's this article, Darrell, from, let's see if I can pull it up here. This article from 2010 where Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Netanyahu and this is when Ehud Barak was Netanyahu's defense Minister. And I'm 99% sure it's this article, but I think I got paywall and stuck in a hurry here, but I'm 99% sure it's this one where, where Netanyahu himself says to Jeffrey Goldberg, who is, you know, Likud's number one guy in the American media, probably. And now the editor of the Atlantic helped Lias into war with Iraq with lies about ties to Al Qaeda and chemical weapons back then between Iraq and them. Anyway, in here, he says they're not afraid of an Iranian first strike. Exactly. You just said, Daryl. They're not afraid of an Iranian first strike. They know that Iran would not do that. All this hype that, you know, right wing politicians tell their audiences that the Ayatollah would love to die in a nuclear war as long as he thinks he can bring on the apocalypse and kill all the Jews and whatever. It's totally not true. And Netanyahu himself says that in here, and so does Hud Barak. And they say what they're afraid of was one, if Iran had nukes, then that would give Hezbollah and Assad more freedom of action in the region. In other words, it would limit Israeli impunity in bombing Lebanon and Syria whenever they want. If they have a friend who's got an atom bomb. Right. It would limit Israel's ability to aggress. Not that it would even empower Hezbollah to, what, invade northern Israel or anything. They don't even say that. And then they say they're worried about a brain drain. Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, not because they'll attack Israel with it. Daryl Cooper, according to Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barack, his then Defense minister, but because talented Israelis will just move to Miami, they'll just move to New York and make their success already happening, by the way, of course, and because of their belligerent attitude in the name of this doctrine, you know, in large measure. And. But so there you have it, you know, against interest. They confess when they're talking with Jeffrey Goldberg. Look, Jeffrey, I'm not gonna lie to you the way we lie to the rubes all day on Fox News. No, we're not afraid Iran's gonna attack us with a bomb. Don't be stupid. But still, it would be disadvantageous to us if they had one. So that's good enough, you know, and that's why it has to be America's policy that we will go to war rather than let them have one. And in the case of Donald Trump, we'll go to war rather than let them have a civilian program because he can't tell the damn difference. Whatever.
- [61:08]
B
Yeah. And I mean, the thing that one of the reasons the Israelis have been in such a panic and the Trump administration, you know, following along with that, I think, is that they found out last June that the Iranians don't Need a nuclear deterrent to hold off Israel unless Israel wants to do a first strike against them. Iran can defend themselves just fine from Israel. You know, you got to think about it. It only took 12 days before the Israelis tapped out and asked us to bail them out of that war. And that was with us, the uae, Jordan. I mean, we were helping defend them from every side, and they still just tapped out after 12 days. And the Iranians, right up to the end, right up until we moved in there, they were. They were talking like they were ready to fight for as long as Israel wanted to fight. And so I think, you know, that's got to be. I remember when I first. First started to go to Israel for work when I was with the dod, I got to know a lot of the people that I would work with, like, on a regular basis when I go over there, because it'd always be the same. Ministry of Defense engineers, IDF engineers, they're all electrical engineer types, computer engineers. And, you know, I got to know him. We just talk about Israel, talk about the region and stuff. And one of the things that they told me, and these are not softy left, win. You know, guys, they were. I mean, a lot of them are crazy now, but, like, you know, they weren't necessarily crazy back then, but they were hardliners. They're military guys. And they all said that after the 2006 war with Hezbollah, I mean, the whole mood in Israel shifted. You know, it was the first time that they really realized that, like. Oh, right, like, we are just people and bullets do the same things to us that they do to everybody else, you know, because they just had never really suffered any kind of a reversal other than, you know, the surprise attack from Egypt in 73, which they could sort of rationalize to themselves, you know, against Hezbollah in 06. They just got beaten on the battlefield by tougher, more motivated light infantry than they had, you know, and. And they found that out. And that's terrifying for them because, you know, it. Israel's in such a position because they have such an aggressive posture with everybody in the region and because their support from the outside, from Europe and the United States, as locked in as it is, it's like a thin layer of ice over an ocean of discontent. You know what I mean? Like, it's something that they have to, like, account for the possibility that that could go away because of that posture, like where. That vulnerable posture that they. They have put themselves in. You know, they really do need to have their people have this aura of complete and total Invincibility. And they need their enemies to have that sense that you cannot beat these people. Like, they're just, you know, they're levels above us in every way and just there's no point. And so 2006, that Lebanon war, like, really shook that. And especially when, you know, they started to see in 2014 that Hamas had learned a lot from the way Hezbollah fought the IDF in southern Lebanon in 06. And Hamas, who's not anywhere nearly near as well trained, well equipped, well organized as Hezbollah was, hamas gave the IDF plenty of problems in 2014. You know, that's one of the reasons they just abandoned the infantry assault and pulled back and flattened parts of the city, you know, like they did this time. And so now, you know, those are, you know, sort of more localized problems that shake their. That shake their confidence. But now you're talking about, like, a regional power that just showed everybody else that these people, this country, they're not that big of a deal by themselves. You know, you think like a country like Turkey, a country like, I mean, I know Egypt's got all sorts of just, you know, internal problems and stuff that keep them from really being stable enough to present any kind of a threat, but that could change, you know, things. They could get their things together. And so these countries that have large economies, large populations, large numbers of people who are perfectly intelligent and well educated enough to, you know, work as engineers for the Ministry of Defense, it shows them that, you know, this whole time we've just sort of decided that there is no move other than be friends with America, do what Israel wants, and hope for the best. Like, that's the only move. And Iran showed them last June that. No, that's not. That's not true. You know, these. They. They couldn't last 12 days in a fight where they had the backing of half the region and the Americans defending them. And so, yeah, that brain drain thing, I don't. I don't. I didn't catch when that article was. But, you know, that brain drain thing is very, very real. And it's one of the reasons, by the way, that the. The general mood of the Israeli public, voting public has changed over the last 10, 15 years or so, is that you have, like, just sort of reasonable, either apolitical or maybe liberal or moderate people who got a cousin in New York who's been holding a job for him at J.P. morgan, and they're taking that offer finally. And all the crazy dudes in Brooklyn who are, you know, religious nut jobs who want to go move to a West bank settlement or something like people, those are the people that are moving into Israel. And so you've got these, you know, these really extreme personalities moving in, everybody moderate moving out because they don't like the way things are going. They just don't like being part of an apartheid state that, you know, whether you, however you frame it, you know, they, it has the reputation, they don't like that. A pariah state. And so, you know, you're starting to see this accelerating shift in Israeli ideology that honestly is really dangerous. I mean, people talk about Iran being, you know, a theocracy, you know, a bunch of religious nut jobs. I don't know how you can say that Israel is any less of that. You know, the, like the Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party have gotten so extreme and have dominated the government for so long at this point that it's almost a one party state. And that that one party is crazy. You know, they're as crazy as the Iranians at least.
- [67:12]
A
Well, they're in alliance with parties that are way even crazier than Likud for sure. That's the current coalition which Netanyahu had to stoop to to stay in power and stay out of prison. Yes, it is the September 2010 issue. And again, archive ph to save the day for us here, the Point of no Return by Jeffrey Goldberg. And then, yeah, control F for brain. And there it is. If someone finishes a PhD and they're offered a job in America, they might stay there. It will not be that people are running to the airport, but slowly, slowly the decision making on the family level will be in favor of staying abroad. The bottom line is we would have an accelerated brain drain. And an Israel that is not based on entrepreneurship, that is not based on excellence, will not be the Israel of today. So that's why America has to go to war with Iran. So that is so that Israel can stay the Israel of 2010. That's what Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak say. Which by the way, I should, I should make sure. Is that Barack or, or Netanyahu talking? But this is when he worked for him. Oh no, I'm sorry. Actually, I guess I did get that wrong. It's Sneh. Efraim Sneh, a former Israeli general and deputy defense minister, was the one who said brain drain.
- [68:24]
B
But still it shows you people thinking about that over there, you know, still.
- [68:28]
A
That sucks though, that I got that wrong. Same damn thing though. But still, same difference ain't good enough. But at least I found myself screwing up live. All right, listen, we're gonna do super chats, so don't go away while I tell you that what you need to do is you need to sign up for the Scott Horton Academy. We're having a President's Day special. Everybody else is hawking furniture. I'm hawking Anti Government Studies, the Scotland Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. I got my course on the terror wars and my course on the Cold War. And while the first half of it and the second half is almost done. And then of course, Ramsey Barud on Israel, Palestine, James Bovert on the police, Bo Bard, that is on the police state, Bill Buford on all of America's failed wars since World War II, and Adam Francisco debunking Christian Zionism. Soon, C.J. kilmer on how Woodrow Wilson is the worst person who ever lived. And the great Grant F. Smith as well on the history of the American Israel Public affairs committee. Get 30% off if you sign up for the Scott Horton Academy between now and, I don't know, a week or so, whenever it is. And it's our President's Day sale, so the promo code is presidents 30. You get 30% off, whether a lifetime subscription or an annual there at the Scott Horton Academy. So do that. And then also I'll tell you this, you should take your phone and take a picture of that there QR code and get yourself some coffee. Scott Horton flavor coffee. It's really good. And I get emails all day long that, oh, look, somebody just bought some more of this coffee. And I get a little bit of a kickback. But most importantly, Phil Pepin, my coffee dealer, keeps me drinking caffeine. And so it's very important that you people buy this coffee so that I can keep drinking free coffee. Boy, is he saving me a huge part of my budget by sending me coffee all the time to drink. Thank Phil and thank all of you for enjoying my wonderful Scott Horton flavored coffee. It's actually Ethiopian and Sumatran mixed wonderfulness. And it sells real good because it's real good. And then tax planning advice. Let me tell you about your guy. Not just my guy, if I owned a real business, but your guy. You're trying to not pay taxes, but you want to also not go to prison or lose your house to the state. So what you do is you pay only what you absolutely have to with the help of tax lawyer Matt C. Le. And he will help you get around paying taxes. He will help you depreciate your assets so that you don't have to pay them scum, which you don't want to do. So that is very good. Now, Mr. Cooper, before we go, we've been promising to take some super chat comments here, and it looks like we got hundreds of comments. I don't know how many super chats. We got a few super chats here. Is there a way to just categorize by super chats? I don't know, but yeah, we'll try to page through some of these and see what the people have to say. Thank you. Super chat means, by the way, that's where they volunteer to pay money to leave a comment when they don't have to do that. That's just because they're rad. So thank you, everyone, for that. Oh, and let me say a little piece of good news for you, Mr. Goop. Did you know this? That they pulled the troops out of the Altam base in Syria? This is right at the border of Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. We had troops there ever Since Iraq War 3 against the Islamic caliphate that Obama built and then blew back up again. And they were there to block the Shiite land bridge from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut. But now Al Qaeda is serving the role of Saddam Hussein and being the Sunni power blocking the Shiite land bridge. And so we don't need our troops at Altom anymore. And so that's just fine. The fact that ISIS is still dangerous and that the Al Nusra government's forces are riddled with ISIS fighters as well as just being Al Qaeda guys themselves anyway, doesn't seem to be a problem as long as they're not Shiites and friends with Hezbollah who hate Israel. And so the enemy of Israel's enemy is Israel's friend and therefore America's friend. That's how it works. Okay. Oh, I saw a Raimondo dancing Israeli reference. I don't know what that was. Good old Justin. Boy, if Justin Ramonda was here now. Be patient with me, everyone. I'm paging up. If Justin was here now, it would be a riot. I'm not sure what do you think, but I know it would be funny. All right, I'm gonna page down and look for brightly colored comments, Mr. Cooper, if there's any. I see you. You've been reading the comments here, so go ahead and respond to whatever you want that you've already seen there while I'm bluffing.
- [73:01]
B
Oh, sure.
- [73:03]
A
Got any favorite comments you wanted to answer? What's all this stuff about beef jerky? Somebody asked?
- [73:10]
B
Yeah, it's one of those things Like, I don't know, man. Like maybe there, there are definitely places where, you know, they're using the same terms in ways that really don't make a whole lot of sense if you take them at face value. And so people are looking at that and thinking it represents some kind of code. And it might, I guess I'm not like, I'm, I'm concerned with like getting too far out over my skis on this thing. And so I don't know. And I'm not really prepared to like, you know, stand on that point. But it, you know, there's some weird stuff in there for sure. Just like with the Pizzagate thing, man. Like there were emails in there where they're talking about pizza in ways that very strange, you know, like I found a. I found your handkerchief at my house. It had a pizza related map on it. Do you want, do you want to come get it or should I throw it away? Like that was in like the original, I think pedestal emails. Like that kind of things are very weird, but without context. Like, I don't know, man, maybe, maybe like there's just a. You're actually answering a map to a pizza place on it. I don't know.
- [74:13]
A
Yeah, you're actually answering the first super chat here that I found from Nathan. He asked how do we prevent people making the absurd things muddy in the water the way they did with Pizzagate around the last time? And the answer is, you do what Daryl just did, you go, I don't know about that, man. I ain't saying you're wrong, but I don't know. And let's just wait and see and hold your horses and make sure instead of being first and wrong. What's the good use of that other than clicks?
- [74:41]
B
The first thing you can do is. And the most important thing you can do is don't contribute to it. You know, in the right. In the Internet age, you're not going to be able to stop it. Especially since, you know, you have dishonest actors out there, whether they're individual grifters or intelligence agencies who have their own prerogatives putting that stuff out there on purpose. So, you know, just don't contribute to it.
- [75:04]
A
Darrell, what's a Canadian dollar worth, man? This guy gave us 500 of them. Congress branch.
- [75:11]
B
I'm just kidding, dude. Thank you.
- [75:14]
A
Jeffrey Epstein was the David Koresh of America's power elite.
- [75:19]
B
Hey, take it easy on Dave, all right? Give me a break.
- [75:24]
A
This one. What are your thoughts on nukes? I'm against them. Do you Think we have, they have stopped a lot of conflicts or are we better off without them both, is the answer. I, I wrote a book. I didn't really write it, I just published a book that's a collection of interviews that I did, but it's called Hotter than the Sun. Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. It's debatable. I would, I would like to see a scale, numbers of them way, way, way down, which is a matter of verifiable arms control. Just like with Iran's civilian program that we were just talking about. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 86, two years before the wall came down, more than two years before the wall came down, said they, they were a hair away for making a deal to abolish nuclear weapons and from the entire earth. And the plan was they were going to reduce their numbers way, way down to a few hundred. Then we'd be equal with France and Britain and Israel and China and then we'd reduce down even more than that and we would twist our friends arms to disarm and we'd have mutual verification. And yes, there you can't uninvent them. And so somebody cheats and starts building up, then you can too and go back again, whatever. But so in other words, the fact that it was Ronald Reagan means that yes he did think he was on a mission from God to abolish nuclear weapons, but he wasn't being silly, he was approaching it seriously. And but it fell apart over the Star wars, you know, was a stupid stipulation that fell apart about at the time. But point is it is doable. And, but also yes, I do concede that they have prevented major power war because the people are afraid of losing their capital cities with them in them, you know, and, and so that has kept the peace. But then it's also been a license for some countries to lord it over others such as ours and Israel, you know, for, for a couple of examples, the Russians and the Chinese too. And so, and you know what it is?
- [77:11]
B
Here's what it is.
- [77:12]
A
It's a Mexican standoff between the major powers holding H bombs, mostly H bombs, some A bombs, but mostly H bombs to each other's heads and saying now look man, I'm not going to use these if you don't use them and you're not gonna, because what are you crazy? I don't think you will. So let's not shoot. But then the thing is, how long is that posture supposed to last in the next hundred years, the next 200, like that's? The future of humanity forever. It's nation states where the capital cities are all holding H bombs at each other's heads to keep the peace. At some point, they're going to start going off and we'll have decided that that bluff wasn't worth it. Because what happens when the bluff gets called? It's too crazy. And we just go on because, come on, we haven't had a nuclear war yet, but yet 1945 to now is not even a blink of an eye. That's nothing. That doesn't prove anything. That's not a controlled experiment, right? That for all we know, in 20 years we'll be looking back at the entire history since the Second World War as the inevitable path to nuclear war. And now it's after the nuclear war and some of us are still alive and wish we were dead. So that's my answer to that.
- [78:17]
B
How about you? Nassim Taleb was critiquing Steven Pinker's book the Better Angels of Our Nature, which makes the case that, you know, as time has progressed, we're becoming more peaceful, less violent and so forth as a species and as a geopolitical order. And he talks about how. Which, you know, I, I think this argument of Pinker's is kind of specious to begin with because he, you know, he says that if you look Since 1945, the number of war deaths in the world, while it's been a lot compared to the population, like, as a percentage of the population, is much lower than like all these other times. You know, I think it's a specious argument because the population has just exploded since then in a way that it never has before. And you have to take that into account. But even ignoring that, Talib makes the point. He says, well, yeah, that's true, fine. But if India and Pakistan get into a nuclear war tomorrow, this is the most violent era in the history of mankind overnight. So it's like, you know, these are weapons that have one purpose, and that is to genocide the civilian population of an enemy country. That is what they're for. These are aerial weapons. You don't. You can't aim them at, like, military installations or something like that. These are things that are designed to destroy cities full of people. And, you know, that's who. That gun to the head. It's to the. It's to the heads of the civilian populations of every country in the world. And so I do think that we're in a more difficult position today as far as trying to get down to full disarmament than we were during the Cold War. Because back then you really had kind of two powers in the world that really mattered as far as nuclear arms race went. And if those two powers could come to an agreement, they had enough leverage over the others that possessed them, they could probably pull something off today that's a lot harder. There's not enough trust in the global system. Even if there were no, no verification regime, I don't think would be enough for anybody to agree to give up at least a defensive arsenal. But getting us down from a point where all you have is a defensive arsenal so that nobody has a first strike arsenal, something that is designed to hopefully overwhelm and destroy a country before they can respond in at a scale that's going to, you know, that's going to destroy us. I think that is doable if somebody really took the initiative, you know, and bring it down so that, you know, all the countries that have them now have three or four hundred of them. So it's, if you hit us, if you do use these things against us, we are going to be, we're going to destroy you. You know, we have the capability to do that, but we do not have the capability to strike you first and expect not to get hit back. And that should be a goal we should all be pushing towards, you know.
- [81:06]
A
Yep, absolutely. Which by the way, because it would.
- [81:08]
B
Still probably be enough, you know, the US and Russia going to direct war. What's next?
- [81:15]
A
And look, so right now, as we talked about before it, it has happened. The last treaty outstanding between the United States and Russia regulating nuclear weapons has expired. New start has expired. But here Lavrov says the Russians will continue to abide by the limits. They're not trying to rush into an arms race if we're not. And so Trump has said he let it expire because he wants a new, better treaty that includes China. He let the last major treaty, all the other ones are gone. Salt one, SALT two start, one start, two SORT and new start. All these are now all gone and dead. And so it's, this is the greatest emergency, man. This absolutely has to be solved. We can't just have no control.
- [81:59]
B
We're in the middle of a war. When war happens. Yeah, like if one happens. It's like you said, the only thing anybody will ever think as they read the history of this era if a nuclear war does happen is how are these people not just single mindedly focused on this like the entire time? This is so obvious.
- [82:17]
A
You know, that's what I'm Saying, man. Yeah. All right, Another Epstein question. Don't you think the Epstein types will be more careful going forward? Yes. They have surely been burned. There's a lot of do. I remember emailing that guy.
- [82:31]
B
I wish I hadn't.
- [82:32]
A
You know what, Daryl? I had a dream that the other Scott Horton was in the Epstein emails and everybody was mad at me and they didn't believe me that it wasn't me. And I, like, had a picture of me and him together and I was like, see, we're totally different dudes. But then I woke up in the morning and I searched for our name and it's not in there.
- [82:52]
B
He ain't in there.
- [82:53]
A
Other Scott Horton, he's a good dude, man. He wouldn't pal around with Epstein, not even on anything. There are some Hortons in there, but I never heard of them. So we're good. Pam Bondi will be gone. That's true. She will be sacrificed for politics.
- [83:10]
B
The only reason that she's still there, and I heard this from somebody firsthand, is that the women in the Trump administration have inordinate, a disproportionate amount of power in the administration because Trump has this thing where he gets really, really defensive of the women that work for him. And so he almost like has this sort of, I don't know, fatherly, husbandly, whatever relationship kind of thing where he feels like he has to take their side, you know, or at least weight things toward their side. And that's the only reason she's still there, too. Same same thing with Kristi Noem, who probably also will be gone by the midterms, if not immediately after.
- [83:50]
A
Yeah, Seriously, this guy. Most ethical form of capital punishment, I would think. I never understood this part, man. When you do the lethal injection, it seems like he really wanted to make it the most humane. First you would just knock them all the way out and then kill him, but they seem to do it all at once, you know what I mean? Which is more like a murder. I don't know. It already is a murder, but whatever. That seems to be obvious.
- [84:20]
B
You remember when Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, executed one of his uncles with an anti aircraft artillery gun? I mean, I remember him claiming that. I don't know if that was really true, but you don't have to worry about surviving in pain or anything. Like you're dead immediately. And it's grotesque. And we gotta clean. Clean you up and everything afterwards, you know, with a mop and bucket, but at least it's certain. How big is that?
- [84:46]
A
Round. How Big is that round, Darrell?
- [84:48]
B
I'm assuming it's probably. Yeah, I'm assuming it's a 20 millimeter, but they're. You know, they come in. I don't know what North Korea's got, but usually probably around 20 millimeter. So, I mean, that's enough to. That's enough to do the job, even if you're Iron Man. So maybe something like that.
- [85:04]
A
All right. This guy wants to see our home libraries. Mine is a wreck. Mine. See, the thing is with those shelves, and we're trading those out, things going to change around here. I can feel it. But, dang, all that, those shelves are two books deep. And then, as you can see, I got books stacked on top in each little QB2 thing there. So it's just a wreck. I'm not digging through that until something.
- [85:25]
B
We should do a show every so often. Every so often, we should do a show where we both just grab, like, two or three books and we can just kind of talk about them. Yeah, that. I mean, I think that'd be interesting. There's a lot of books that I'd like to talk with you about that we've both read, and there's others that you probably haven't read that I could talk about.
- [85:44]
A
We should do that. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to. God dang, I told you I quit Twitter again. And I am. I have to absolutely have to finish the audiobook and then very soon finish the Academy edits. And then my plan is to get back to doing the Scott Horton show regularly. Hey, you guys know I have a show, right? It's right here on YouTube, the Scott Horton show, and go back to doing that interview show and hopefully reading a lot more books, as I do as well, you know, because that's what the show is for, is not everybody has time to read things and likes reading as much as I do. So I kind of. That's what my show has always kind of been about, right? Is ever since 1990s radio. There's this like, hey, here's this article I read that I'm sure y' all didn't read, but I'll tell you about it because you should have read it because it was really good by Gareth Porter or something. Thoughts on Ian Carroll's Web. I don't know what that is. Do you know what that is?
- [86:33]
B
Nope. Sorry.
- [86:35]
A
Is that like Charlotte's Web? Daryl, do you think if you did a podcast on the history of World War II from the Japanese perspective, would it get as much pushback as from the Germans. Well, I would say to. That we don't know how much pushback you're gonna get for enemy yet. I think we can anticipate a hell of a lot, though.
- [86:59]
B
Even though we arguably treated things worse. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously not, you know, and that's just because the Japanese, as brutal as they could be during that war and in China before the war, you know, the, the Japanese mindset, the Japanese ideology, we didn't form like our global order as the antithesis of that, you know, in the same way that we did with the National Socialist ideology, where, I mean, everything since then, the post 1945, post Nuremberg order, I mean, is really like, if you had to say, what is it? It's anti fascist. It's anti, you know, and not whatever. We'll support dictatorships when it, you know, but, you know, as far as in our own countries in the Western alliance, it really is to just shut down any form of extreme nationalism, fascism coded like, you know, that type of right wing authoritarianism, let's say. And. And it really is like, I think what most Western governments see as their reason for existing, you know, is to. Is to be anti Nazi. That's their whole. That's their whole reason for existing. And so. Yeah, obviously not. Good question though.
- [88:10]
A
Yeah. All right. This guy says, if we ever have a slow news week, I want to see Daryl interview Scott about skateboarding. Cab driving in punk rock.
- [88:17]
B
Maybe we'll just do that.
- [88:18]
A
I don't play music.
- [88:19]
B
We'll wait like as, like, like the day after the missiles are falling on Iran, we'll jump on here and talk about skateboarding. How about that?
- [88:28]
A
There you go. That's what we should do. Like south park, when everyone was expecting to find out who is Cartman's father. And then they just did a Terrence and Philip episode for April Fool's Day.
- [88:39]
B
Good times.
- [88:40]
A
That was a long time ago, but it was yesterday to me. Thoughts on Michael Tracy saying that this is all a bunch of hooey, man. Are you and others out over there skis at all? Daryl Cooper.
- [88:52]
B
Well, look, they have their place, you know, and you don't have to like them. You don't have to necessarily think that they're coming at it from, you know, a place of anything other than just being contrarian. Whatever the reason is, people like that keep the rest of us honest, you know, and it's whether. Whether like I don't like Michael Tracy, but those are for very personal reasons, like if he says something or exposes something that shows that I need to make a correction. I have no problem doing that, you know. And so, yeah, they have their place. And we should be open minded enough and honest enough with ourselves and other people that when we hear something that contradicts what we thought or what we wanted to think from somebody, we don't like that, you know, we can be big enough to incorporate that into our own. Into our own thinking. For sure, sure.
- [89:44]
A
All right, here's one man, based on Epstein's scientific interests. What was he really up to there, do you think, Darren? Thank you everybody for these, by the way. Good questions and monies.
- [89:55]
B
He does seem so. A few things. One is he seems to have been very, very, very interested in eugenics. You know, there's a lot of stuff in there. We don't have to. We don't really have time to get into all of it right now, but there's a lot of stuff in there about, you know, human breeding programs and this genetics. Yeah.
- [90:13]
A
A girl that lost her baby, she says, why, because of the colors of my eyes and my hair. That's why you wanted me? Something like that.
- [90:19]
B
She says, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that in there. And then he seems to. I watched that interview he did with Bannon, and some of the stuff that they talked about in there shed some light on why he was as interested as he was in the Santa Fe Institute. You know, very interested in consciousness, very interested in just sort of, you know, if you're, again, giving him the benefit of the doubt. I personally think that Epstein was mostly a bullshitter. You know, that he had surface level understanding of most of the topics that he would talk about and, you know, would be able to pass himself off as an expert in a conversation with me. But if he had to, actually, you know, you have people like Nassim Taleb, who. I don't remember if he met him or if he just came to this conclusion watching or reading something of his. But Eric Weinstein, you know, who is very smart mathematical mind, he met Epstein and he. He gave. He said the same thing. He got the impression that he was, you know, he had like a wiki. He had memorized the Wikipedia on this topic. But if you deviated from that at all, like, he was just completely in the dark, had no idea what you were talking about. And so I think he was kind of a dilettante, honestly. But a smart dilettante, obviously. I'm sure he had a high IQ and all that. Yeah, yeah. Very interested in eugenics, apparently, and. And very interested in consciousness and just systems Systems thinking, if you're interested in.
- [91:40]
A
Yeah.
- [91:40]
B
You know, into, you know.
- [91:43]
A
Yeah. I read a thing today, Matt Taibbi's site, Racket. He had an article from a guy who's like, you know, Wall street critic, reporter type guy, whatever, I don't know. And he was talking about how this guy's no financial genius at all. And in his interview with, with Steve Bannon, he gets even the most basic facts about the 2008 meltdown wrong.
- [92:05]
B
Yeah. And yeah. And he said, he's like, oh, yeah, I was in jail when Lehman was. Yeah, he was like. He said that. He asked him, where were you in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers went down? He said, I was in jail. He's like, so the first thing I did is I called my contact or I called Jimmy Kane, who is the CEO of Bear Stearns. First I called him up, and then I called up a friend from J.P. morgan and had them explain to me what was going on because Bear Stearns was collapsing and Lehman Brothers was collapsing. And it's like those two things did not happen at the same time. Bear Stearns collapsed in March, and Bannon tried to correct him on it, but then he just kind of let it pass. So. Yeah, that's right. That's not exactly the kind of thing somebody in his position would. Would forget. So I don't know.
- [92:49]
A
Yeah, well, it would sort of be like if every time you asked me about Iran's nuclear program, I started going, well, so if. If a heavy water reactor is like a spleen, and I just started talking about some stupid metaphor instead of addressing your question, that's kind of what happens over and over again there.
- [93:09]
B
It would really be. It would really be more like if, you know, you wanted to. I asked you a question about the Iran Iraq War, and you told me, well, I remember when it started because I called up my friend at the Defense Department and I asked him, why did Saddam attack Iran and why has Hitler just invaded Poland? And it's like, wait, yeah. And then you try to correct them and like, maybe you just made a speaking mistake. And they're like, no, no, no, that's what it is. Be like, oh, this guy doesn't have any idea what he's talking about.
- [93:35]
A
Yeah. Oh, this guy asked question. This guy says, do you think Trump got cold feet about attacking Iran because of China handing over all this intel to Iran? Did you see about that? Where China was publishing high quality photos of American milit. Military bases around the region, exact placements of equipment and so forth? That was A big one, man.
- [93:55]
B
That's, that's.
- [93:57]
A
There's so much going on, Daryl, we might admit the import of that might have been the big story of the week, that China decided to go ahead and start calling American bluffs in a way they have not at all since whenever, since World War II.
- [94:10]
B
China probably by this point is starting to pick up on what's going on here. You know, it's very easy, especially just, you know, the, the, the destruction of Gaza has been so photogenic in a negative way. And just so, you know, something is so horrific to see on a daily basis that it sort of captured our attention and really brought a lot of people who are interested in this stuff to focus a lot of attention on, on Israel as the cause of, like, you know, a lot of chaos and problems. And so, like, when Venezuela went down, the fact that the new government immediately thawed relations with Israel, they're sending oil to Israel now, all that stuff, people come to the conclusion that was about Israel. That wasn't. That's a side effect, in my opinion. That was about China, that was about not having a country in the Western Hemisphere sending oil to China. Trump said in public he made the demand. I don't think the negotiators have ever brought this demand in an official way. But Trump said in public that Iran, you know, that he wants a deal where Iran stops selling oil to China. You know, he's starting, I think, in China's gotta be picking up on the fact that, you know, this is what's going on here, especially since, I don't know if you saw this. This was very interesting. Bloomberg reported they got their hands on a memo, and I don't think it said in the story, I don't remember it saying who, who leaked it to him. But it was an internal Kremlin memo where the Russian, you know, this wasn't, this wasn't an official proposal to the United States. It wasn't something that is, like, official policy to pursue or whatever, as far as we know. But it was an internal circulating at the Kremlin that was proposing, I mean, it's not, not even a day with the United States. It was proposing that Russia get back on the dollar system that, you know, and, and settle its international sales and exports in dollars, that the Americans, American companies and the American government would have joint deals with the Russians on developing Siberian oil, Russian nickel mines, all sorts of other resources, natural gas, doing offshore exploration together. I mean, a really deep, like, economic intertwining proposal. And so, I don't know you know, again, that could just be some like, you know, mid level bureaucrat at the Kremlin was charged with writing up, you know, every crazy idea you could think of. And that's circulating around. Maybe, but somebody gave that to Bloomberg. And whoever did it did it for a reason. If it was a Russian, you know, something from that side that they did it, or if it was somebody from our side, like, they put that out there and it was not spun in some like, can you believe this? This is proof that Trump is colluding or what? It wasn't like that. They were just putting it out there. It's like, this is kind of on the table. And then when you saw, I don't know if you saw how the Europeans were talking about the United States at the Munich Security Conference, like, they're talking. Dude, they're not talking about us like an enemy or anything like that. It's not that far, but, man, they are not happy with us. And, you know, if we really are trying to pursue, after everything we've put Europe through during the Ukraine war, if we really are trying to pursue, you know, shifting Russia from a Chinese ally to being, you know, not one of our rivals and sort of being on our side in some way, or at least distancing themselves, I mean, the Europeans would have a reason to be upset. You know, first thing the German should ask is, why the hell did you blow up our pipeline? You were going to do that? Yeah, exactly.
- [97:37]
A
Oh, that wasn't me. That was the last guy. All right, listen, this guy is asking about Patagonia, but we got to go. We're way over time. Nobody's going to listen to this thing if it's an hour and 45 minutes, and it already is, other than everybody's watching live, who we're very grateful for, and especially all you great super chatters. You've been very generous tonight and we've had fun hanging out with you. Thank you very much to JDA2001. He's been a good guy hanging around, big fan for a long time. So thank you very much. Good show to you too, sir. And good show to you, Daryl. Thank you very much.
- [98:06]
B
Later, gator. Oh, whoops.
- [98:07]
A
I almost hit the button too soon. But I didn't. Wait, I'm going back to the other page. I'm gonna hit the right button again. Wait, where? I always got a page back down again. This has been provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton. Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow at provoked show on X and YouTube and tune in next time for more provoked.