← Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton
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A
Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless build? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan, $15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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B
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan. Required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy.
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A
See Terms tonight on the show. Daryl barely made it.
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B
All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans.
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A
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. Oh my goodness. It's time for the show. Good evening, Daryl Cooper. How are you, sir?
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B
Doing all right, brother? I like to keep you in suspense. Every week, show up like, wait. At the last second I could actually
- [01:21]
A
see my heart beating out of my chest. Listen, this is the Expat Money Bro show, I guess, or something. So how it works is these guys sponsor the show, so we talk about their thing. It's Expat Money. It's run by this guy named Mikel Thorpe. He's a very good guy. I toured ancient Mayan pyramids with the guy. And so that means he's a great guy. And it doesn't really mean that, but in my experience, he's a wonderful guy. And. And then what happened was, well, he's been an expat kind of for many years and he's traveled all around the world and he knows all the rules for if you were to want to move to some other country, any other country, can you own property? How much? What can you do in terms of Plan Bs and Plan Cs for when the empire finally falls all the way down? And so what you do is you just go to expatmoney.com provoked. Don't forget to put so slash provoked on the end of expatmoney.com provoked. And then you will get this free booklet on Plan B residencies and instant citizenship. Your introduction to expatriateism. And although that's misuse of that term, but anyway, so go and check that out. Xfat money.com provoked. And then that way me and Daryl can keep doing our show here, which is about so many great things, I mean, bad things that we have to cover on the show. But let's start with. Oh, Vice President Vance did the Rogan show there. And, well, I had a couple of comments. I think I'll try to sum it up and stick to the overall point. Daryl, did you get a chance to watch it?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay, so my thing of it was this. On Iran, the overall thrust of the discussion was not him threatening Iran and explaining to Joe why we gotta go back to war now. Because them damn crazy mullahs, they just only understand one thing. For us, it was not that. Instead what it was was, it was him defending diplomacy and saying that in fact, there is no military solution to this problem at all. Only a diplomatic solution can keep that straight open. And so those are his instructions from the President are to get a deal. And then he spent the whole time, seemingly somewhat angry, fending off the war party and this concerted campaign against him, demonizing him and trying to undermine his diplomacy, which he explained is he's acting directly on orders from the President of the United States to see this through. And so I'm not trying to say everyone should trust Peter Thiel now or whatever thing. People like to extrapolate and deconstruct things. I'm not vouching for J.D. vance at all, but I am saying that was the thrust of his argument up there, was saying essentially admitting defeat and saying the administration admits defeat. So we have to see this through at the table. And, and there are only two issues at stake, Darrell. Cooperation. They got a promise not to make nuclear weapons and they gotta open the straight.
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B
Yeah. You know, just from a political standpoint, like for J.D. vance's political career, he's really put himself in kind of the worst of both worlds, you know, where now he's, he, he went out and gave a sort of half hearted, you know, defense of the way this whole thing has been carried on in a way that does not satisfy and, and like anybody, and really pisses off people who were against this whole thing. But at the same time he did it in a way that has Ben Shapiro disavowing him and all the neocons attacking him and everything else. So he's kind of in, in a no man's land now. And you know, in his defense, I guess to a certain degree this is just, it's a no win situation. You know, your job as the Vice President is not to go out there and counter signal the President's policies. Do you Want to do that, you should probably resign. But. And if you do that, then, you know, go back to whatever, working in venture capital or something, because your political career is over. If you're not going to do that, you know, if you're going to tell yourself that you can do more good from the inside than the outside, then, you know, you got to go out, I guess, and do stuff like this. And it's kind of sad to watch, but, I mean, you're right, though, you know, he. He did say what you said, I mean, which is just recognizing reality, right? I mean, the idea that, you know, I was watching some of the videos of the supposedly. Some of the videos of the strikes that the DoD has been releasing, and, you know, there's ones where, like, you got two or three missiles hitting, like, a stack of cargo containers on the side of a Runway. And I'm like, how sure are we. What's even in those things? Like, are we blowing up a bunch of, like, child pool toys or something? Like, we, like. I feel like when we launched this war, we had years, months at least since the last war, for sure, you know, to. To develop our target deck and like, really go through and figure out, okay, these are the strategic things that we've got to take out in order to give ourselves an advantage. What. You know, and we did that. We thought we did, you know, we did our best, I guess. And this time, like, there's just no way they've developed anything like that. And the targets they're hitting, I. I guarantee you, like, if they're not bouncing missiles ineffectively off of Granite Mountains still, you know, they're hitting a bunch of things that are back online a week later or that we really don't know with very much certainty what's even in them. And so, you know, we. Look, if. If. It's kind of ironic actually, right, because, like, if Putin, when he had invaded Ukraine, had for some reason just this artificial arbitrary deadline set on that war, like, I gotta have this thing over by September. I got midterms, I got this. I got the world economy. I got all these things. This thing. We're on a timeline, and this is how long we have to try to accomplish our mission. They would have definitely lost the war. But it probably would have been better for them if that was the case, you know, like, better for the Russian people and. And whatnot. And here we have done that. You know, we've been signaling from the very beginning of this thing to the Iranian regime that all you got to do is hold out For a few months, maybe something, you know, and as long as you can do that, then you're going to be able to at least have an equal say in the terms, at the very least, an equal say in the terms of how this thing is settled. But it's just a, this is just an insane no win situation, man. Like there's just, we're pursuing a policy that has already failed once when we had, when we had all the time in the world to plan it and prepare it and to, you know, get everything in place and, and to surprise them, you know, hit them with a surprise attack and throw their leadership into disarray while we did it. And like, we, like, we're just following the same failed path without any of those previous advantages that we thought we had. It's just, it makes no sense. Which is why last week and for the last few weeks, you know, people ask me and I said on this show, like, do I think this is going to go back to like high intensity, full scale war? No, because that doesn't make any sense. Which is what I said when people thought, you know, Russia was going to invade Ukraine. I said, now that doesn't make any sense. You know, I just over and over and over, like, this is what always happens to me.
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A
Oh, Anna Cooper.
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B
Yeah, I'm naive and optimistic all the time to a fault. And you know, they, they say like in the stock market that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. That applies politics too, man.
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A
Yeah, yeah, I'm afraid that's right. But you know, I mean, you're right though, that this is not quite the War of March as bad as it is. And it has been at the time that we're doing this live. And for people watching this later, this is, you know, on after three days of strikes here that we're talking now. But I think that, yeah, as far as what Vance says, it fits with my theory from before, I guess our theory from before that. Well, now this is, was my speculation that, that they know that there's going to be ongoing problems between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and they know that there's going to be ongoing problems between us and Iran in the Gulf, but that they've already essentially accepted that and maybe even like whispered about that to each other. That like, look, we know that that's going to be a thing and yet they're still on the path toward the 60 day or whatever it is. And Trump already said he's soft on the deadline. It's not a hard deadline, but that they're still working toward that ultimate compromise because they know they have to. And I. You know, Vance's comments seem to reaffirm that. That this is still just, you know, scratches along the path or whatever on the line, but the line is still moving forward toward.
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B
Well, both sides are like, kind of ultimately in the same position. Right. Which is we cannot, like, we have to get them to agree to keep the straight open. We cannot force them to do it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
They cannot force us to stop just showing up every few months or so and bombing a whole bunch of crap. I mean, it's not like they're gonna go bomb the naval yard in Norfolk or something, you know, so it really is like a situation of, like, how long do the two sides want to do this? At what point does it become, you know, and it has. This is the hard part probably, is that this has to happen at the same time for both sides for it to work. Is what time does it become politically advantageous for them to take a step back, you know, and again, like, the hard part is that has to happen for both sides at the same time for it to work.
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A
But,
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B
yeah, it just. This thing seems to be going just sort of, you're. We're treading water. You know, there's. Yeah. Unless something happens, like if we wander too close with an aircraft carrier or something and they get a lucky shot off and take it out, something that, like, forces us into a serious escalation, it seems like we're just going to be kind of treading water for a while as both sides sort of. Oh, really? Like, our side really just doesn't want to admit defeat, and the other side doesn't want to give us a way out. That, that, that, you know, doesn't make us do that. So hopefully one of those two things breaks down.
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A
Yeah. And. Well, and it seemed like it's important that. Well, one, this isn't important, but notable, I guess, kind of that when Rogan asked him, would you have done it? He refused to say that. He's like, look, my job is not to be a Monday morning quarterback. Which is a nice way of saying, hell, no, I would not have done this. But what do you want me to say here, pal? Which is, you know, which I think is right. You know, I don't think anybody would have done this other than Trump at this time. Again, W. Bush passed on the opportunity numerous times, and he wanted to, but he basically realized the facts of life.
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B
I mean, even. Even Rubio, who. Rubio's, you know, he's been Kind of until very recently, like, you know, people would list him off right next to Lindsey Graham. And John McCain is one of the, you know, hawks who just. And even he told him not to do it. So, I mean, you know, yeah, it. It had to be Trump. Which is why the Israelis are so intent on squeezing every last bit of juice that they can out of this thing right now. Because, I mean, they understand that they're not going to be able to get anybody else to do this. And, you know, it's a. Yeah. Oh, look, you know what?
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A
This is just a pet peeve of mine, but, like, where he says, you know, jeez, I just gotta humble myself before God's plan when, like, no, this is. Donald Trump made this decision here. And, like, you want to retreat as vice president of the United States in this elected political government, you want to sit here and invoke the winds of time. Well, Father Time launched this war. You see, it was all part of God's plan back when he created the universe, that ultimately this war would come to fruition. And the early 26. I'm sorry, dude, you don't get to talk to me like that and such.
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B
The idea that, like, this is all just us being dragged along by, like, you know, the winds of history is so ridiculous. Like, take some responsibility. And granted, like, I get it, it wasn't his decision. You know, he argued against it. I get all that. But then don't go out and this, you know, don't go say anything, but I guess that's his job. And again, if you, you know, if you don't want to do that job, you probably shouldn't be the vice president. So. So, right.
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A
Although, boy, once you take the job as vice president, you basically can't resign that one unless for corruption reasons or whatever.
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B
I mean, technically, honestly like it when I say that it's not your job as vice president. You know, it. The thing is, like, the president cannot fire the vice president. The vice president was elected. He could go do that. He's actually in a unique position to be able to go do something like that. It's just, you know, when I say that, that they, that they're the vice presidents, don't do that. That's really just like a tradition. It's like a custom, you know, but. But honestly, like, nobody's better positioned to do it than the vice president. If you want to. That would be kind of crazy. But, you know, and you'd have to have either. You would either have to be content with the fact that your political career is over after your term as vice president, or that, you know, you'd have to be really, you'd have to be really confident that, you know, the, the public's going to come down on your side, that your party's going to, at least the base going to come down. Like, I just don't think that's the case right now. Unfortunately, there's still just too many people in the Republican base who are going to, you know, go along with whatever Trump says. So.
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A
Yeah, well, and he, he doesn't have any power inside the executive branch that the president doesn't grant him and could revoke him. So he could give one good speech and then he could sit alone in a closet for the rest of his two and a half years.
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B
I mean, he could give speeches for the next two and a half years, but, you know, they would, but those speeches would be like, well, this is what I heard because I'm not allowed in any of the meetings anymore. Right.
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A
He's sitting over in his Senate office as president of the Senate doing nothing. All right, well, oh, but then, so look, the important part was he invoked Ola, Mike Pence by name, says, my predecessor in this office, you know, criticizing me for seeking this deal. And he's referring to other, you know, Fox News hogs. And, and then he challenged them. What's your plan? Let's hear it. He says, Joe Rogan, you and your friends with a couple of RPGs could keep that straight closed. The only thing that could keep that thing open is an agreement with the government of Iran to keep it open. Right? Like, that's it, man. They can shut it down for pennies. So there. So you tell me then what to do, Mr. Pence, who says this ain't good enough? Like, let's hear specifics. I didn't think so. And he's totally right about that. And it's the same as what we talked about last week, where right before I, we started the show, I had just done an interview where was with Danny Davis, where he played a clip of Keith Kellogg demanding unconditional surrender. And it was like, yeah, but we didn't win, so we can't demand that dude. And, and so, but look, and I'm not sitting here again because I know people hate JD Vance. I don't trust the guy at all either. I don't know if I hate him yet, but I certainly don't trust the guy. I don't think even that his instincts are usually right necessarily. Like, I don't know. But I do think that he volunteered for this job because he thought that this war was bad and that he thought it would be good for him even to be involved in trying to end the thing. And I'm taking my silver linings where I can get them. And I don't think that what he was saying on Rogan there was posturing in a way that's deceptive, is posturing in a way that is simply telling the war party to back off. It was President Donald Trump told me to do this. So stop calling me an anti Semite and stop saying I hate Israel and stop saying that I'm a bad person for seeking a peace deal here just because it's not what Benjamin Netanyahu wants. I'm serving Donald Trump, and which I think is totally honest for him to do that. And. And it seemed like he was actually under a lot of strain, not from anti war people accusing him of selling out, but from pro war people accusing him of selling Israel out. And apparently he's feeling that pressure a lot and was kind of lashing out against that said, y' all go to hell, man. I'm here to represent America first, which ain't exactly right. It's, again, whatever. It's political posturing. But it's important that that's what he feels he has to do and say, because that's the cloud that he's under. Right. He's not under pressure from you and me. He's under pressure from the Le coup, you know.
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B
Yeah. And their agents in the US which he was pretty direct in saying, you know, were basically part of an Israeli influence operation to attack him and. And subvert and undermine the deal. You know, I saw somebody responding to that on Twitter, you know, and. And first of all, like, just saying, oh, he's. He's like, you know, just. He's. He's repeating some kind of anti Semitic conspiracy theory. Like there's a Jewish cabal that is working together behind the scenes to try to. To try to undermine this deal. It's like, well, I mean, he's the vice president. Like, he's in the room. Like, if it's happening, he's not just sort of like reading on 4chan like that this is going on. Like, he knows. He's seeing the intelligence reports. Like it was in. It was in the New York Times or whatever, one of the main papers of record recently that the Israelis were using a lot of influence, paying people over here to. To try to swing things their way. So I don't really see what the big deal on that is. But, you know, it's real. One of the things I find really telling is that, you know, when you, when you, when he questions Israeli policy or Israeli desire for American policy to go a certain way, and all of a sudden starts getting attacked by all the usual suspects as an anti Semite, it's like they're, you know, they're sort of giving their game away here because what they're doing, I mean, look, like, I know lots of Jews who don't like this war at all. And so if you're insisting that by criticizing the people who are in favor of this war or saying that, you know, they're, a lot of them are part of an influence operation, you know, to, to subvert the peace deal or to attack him, that you're somehow attacking the Jews. That's like they're purposely swapping out Zionists, which is what they mean with the Jews. And all they're doing is using regular Jews, the accountant down the street, as human shields for their political faction. And, you know, that's what they have always done. And I, and I really think that it just does not work anymore. I mean, it works to the extent that, like, if you're a guy who's got a traditional media career and it depends on you being on Fox News and getting published in, you know, the Wall Street Journal or whatever else, then, yeah, they can hurt you. But, but in general, like, people who aren't in that, like, very specific sort of mainstream track, which, you know, those track, people on those tracks are always very visible. So, you know, it seems, I think, like, they have a lot more control than they really do because under the surface, nobody's buying that stuff anymore and nobody cares. And J.D. vance, for all of, you know, the, the valid criticisms about maybe like, the things he's been involved with and, and the way he's handled some of these situations, he's not a stupid person, and he's pretty politically astute, I think. And he would not be going out there and talking like that unless he thought that the people who, you know, were going to freak out have no power, you know, to, to, to enforce that. So, like, you know, I think I saw today online, Ben Shapiro came out and he was just. I will not be supporting J.D. vance. You know, da, da, da, da, da. I don't think that hurts him at all. I really don't. I don't think that hurts him at all.
- [22:14]
A
Oh, hell, was it 2015 when they put out the National Review story of Never Trump and all those guys and my first response. I tweeted at Jonah Goldberg and I says, did Donald Trump pay you to do this? This is so obviously in his favor.
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B
What do you mean?
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A
The worst people in the world don't like him.
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B
I mean, come on, are you kidding?
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A
Ben Shapiro denounces J.D. vance. Maybe I need to take a second look at this man's guy. I don't know how anyone else could possibly react to that. You know what I mean? Other than, geez, whatever this whiny little C word is complaining about, like, must be okay. I didn't mean to call Ben Shapiro cancer. That's unfair. But listen, Time magazine has this important piece. Daryl Cooper, it is called. Trump's ex campaign manager is running an Israeli influence operation targeting the MAGA base. Now, is that Parscale? Continue.
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B
Yeah, Parscale. Is that who that is?
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A
Yeah. So before we continue, I must say that there are a lot of other people who have done this story before who don't get credit in it. And I'm not sure who all. I'm willing to bet Max Blumenthal. I'm like 90. Sure. Max Blumenthal has done some work on this guy. And maybe the drop site guy.
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B
Blumenthal's. He's the one. I mean, I'm sure there's been lots, but Blumenthal's kicked ass on this, this. On this exact Salem Media and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
So people really do that to him a lot, man, where they publish his work months later and don't give him credit at all, you know, which sucks. Anyway, this is one we got before us here, and it's in Time magazine and it is about how they're targeting J.D. vance and how it's this pseudo decentralized, but not really, you know, pretend to decentralized group of influencers online who are all doing the same thing at the same time. And it all traces back to this group by Parscale, which again, Clock Tower X and which is a registered foreign agent for Israel.
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B
Clock Tower X? Is that like a University of Texas reference? What the hell is that?
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A
Or maybe Back to the Future. But they. They conflate what they're doing with fighting anti Semitism. Well, it's not that it's they're fighting for Israel's interest is all that they're talking about here has nothing to do with anti Semitic anything. See here, the campaign was framed as an effort to combat rising anti Semitism online. But then, so check this out, ma'. Am. Was this the paragraph that I like so much? I Tweeted one of these the other day. It's further down here where they say, look, the danger here is that people like Tucker Carlson and even Stephen Bannon are normalizing these anti Israel attitudes on the right. And that is very bad because that could lend itself to supporting an isolationist foreign policy, which is their smear, of course, for non interventionist foreign policy or non imperial foreign policy. And they say that, well, that's against Israel's interests. America coming home, they can't have that at all. Here they quote Charlie Kirk's letter to Netanyahu warning him about how bad things were getting there, I think before he started changing his mind, or maybe at the start of when he was changing his mind. Where is this dang paragraph? I'm looking forward to quote for you here that all I can do so far is paraphrase. It's in here. I could do control F, couldn't I? No, I already passed it. I passed it.
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B
God dang it.
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A
Hang on.
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B
Bannon.
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A
Bannon, where are you, man? So by last fall, Daryl Cooper, by last fall, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs CL in there. This is according to the ministry official that they're talking to. They have a source inside the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Is the source of this knowledge that we're getting from this paragraph here that
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B
I'm quoting, that highlight of anti Semites, as everybody knows.
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A
Yeah, they're the worst. By last fall, Israel's Ministry of Foreign affairs, according to a member of it, had concluded that its conventional public diplomacy efforts, known in Israel as Hasbara, were woefully insane.
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B
That's an anti Semitic lie. Hasbro is not a real thing. I've been assured of this.
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A
They were worried that Carlson and Bannon and their influence and the suspicion taking hold among young conservatives that Israel exercised hidden control over America's foreign policy, according to the Foreign Ministry official. And they feared that Vance and his allies were steering the American right toward an isolationism fundamentally at odds with Israel's strategic interest.
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B
You know, there's two things they wanted
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A
someone who understood this and that and whatever. But wait, so the point being there is that this is why we can't have peace. Yeah. For all the influences continuing, you know, pushing the American empire to continue rolling on. Zionism is one of them, a very important one. They're not willing to let America come home from anywhere because then we might get a taste for that and then would be unavailable to protect Israel. It doesn't matter whether it's good for the people of Idaho. Doesn't matter. Whether it's good for the people of Texas or Kansas or Colorado or New York. What's important for Israel is that America stay globally engaged as world empire.
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B
Yeah. Although, you know, that's even. That is. You remember, you remember back when Elbridge Colby got appointed to the State Department and a bunch of the same usual suspects tried to get him torpedoed. And he's not. He's furthest thing from an isolationist. He just thinks we should be turning our guns on China, like, that's all. And they went after him. Like the same people. Like the exact same people went after him in really harsh terms, too. It shows you they're not, they're not in. They're not concerned about isolationism. They're concerned about us not being engaged here. And you're right, you know, if we, if we did come home, if we did disengage from this stuff, I mean, it's like, it's like anything else. It's like working out or staying sober or eating well or anything. Like, like it's a lot easier to keep doing it than to fall off the wagon and then get yourself back to it. Like, it's kind of a reverse of this, but, like, you know, if we were home, like, it's a lot easier to say we can't withdraw from the Middle east than it is to be like, you know, we need to send our troops into the Middle East. Like, that's a totally different argument and really hard to convince people of, you know, and it's. You know, the only thing I would have really objected to in that paragraph, like, in terms of the way it was framed, is that it's a hidden influence effort. I mean, it's not hidden at all, especially with this administration. You know, it's, it's. I guess you could at least say that for him. I mean, it's right out in the open. But, you know, again, like, the, the good news is it's not working. It's just not working. Like, the fact that Time magazine is talking about Hasbro, like, writing that article at all is, you know, like, and when they talk about people like Bannon and maybe not Tucker. Tucker, you know, the, the Gaza thing has, like, really radicalized Tucker in, in important ways. And so he's, you know, he's, he's, he's pushing from, like, his own self motivation on this, like, you know, to a. To a great degree. Like, he's, he's telling people what he believes and how he feels because he feels very strong about it. Somebody like Bannon A lot of these other people who are kind of in his orbit, you know, they're not, they're not out there convincing people of these, of these things. They're just reflecting what is going on right on the right in America. You know, they're reflecting.
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A
Right. I mean, just look, this is the crucial role that you play too, is that you give license to other conservatives to look askance at Israel without getting hippie juice on them. Nobody wants to stink like patchouli. Nobody wants to their cousin to think that they're a college communist now. But like, no, man, you should check out this guy. Daryl Cooper makes it okay. That's what it is. It's the pure social psychology of the thing. If Steve Bannon is willing to question them, I mean, he's a pretty mainstream conservative man, you know, that, that, that
- [30:52]
B
is an important function. And I was on, I was on with Oren McIntyre last week and I made that. I saw that. Yeah. And I think it was last week, whenever it was, I made the point to him that like one of the important functions that people like him meet to a lesser degree, I mean, here on this show we do it. But I've been pulling back from social media lately, but just people sort of who are on the right and with us on this issue and some of these other issues, like the important function that we, that we play is, you know, there's a. You, you, you're, you're dealing with. You're not just countering Brad Parscale's propaganda machine. You're, you're running up against the fact that when people were 11 years old in sixth grade, their teacher made them watch Schindler's List, you know, and they have these built in things that when somebody calls you an anti Semite, doesn't matter if you're criticizing not even Israel, you're just criticizing one political party in Israel. Whatever they call you an anti Semite. People have these deeply embedded, like emotional triggers that just get flipped and it's really hard for them if they start to have a thought of like, I'm not so sure that I can agree with this anymore. And I just saw somebody get called Nanti Semite for what I kind of think they, they run up against that blockage and when they go online and all they see are people who don't like Jews and just, you know, are really sort of using Israel as, you know, like, like, you know, it's, it's not that they are upset with what Israel's doing and therefore they have a problem with like, what, you know, the organized Jewish American community, the. The organizations and stuff. How. What. How they're contributing to that. It's sort of the opposite way. They don't like j. They're sort of using what Israel's doing as an opportunity to bang them over the head. When people go online and that's what they see, those triggers get flipped and they just pull back. They're like, okay, yeah, I guess I'm on Ben Shapiro side because I'm not on this side. It's important to have people out there to tell them that, like, no, there's actually. You can work around those triggers. You know, just because you think this here are ways you can talk about it, ways you can think about it, that, you know, you don't have to feel that way. You don't have to respond to those accusations because you can know that you're coming at this from, you know, from. From a place that's, you know, that that's not sort of a, you know, a preconceived place of hatred. And you can. As long as you're doing that, you know, you can. You can state it with confidence and you have to. You have to offer people sort of the. The pathway, the arguments, the, you know, the narratives so that they can actually not even. Not even debate it online or talk to their friends at the water cooler at work or anything like that, but in their own mind, you know, have to feel like, you know, nobody wants to feel. I mean, even Hitler in Mein Kampf, you know, he has this one part where he's describing, like, his early. How his anti Semitism developed. And even he talked about how when he was younger, he's like, I'd have these thoughts, but I was always, like, really afraid, like, am I being unjust here? And then of course, he decided convince himself, no, I'm not being unjust at all. But even anybody, you know, anybody, like, nobody thinks of themselves as the bad guy. And if they can't figure out a way to think about something that doesn't, you know, make them feel like the back, then they won't think it. They'll just repress it.
- [34:21]
A
When you gotta wonder too, you and them and everybody should also wonder about all those vile comments and how much of that is just cointelpro BS from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Also, like, yeah, I agree with Daryl. Down with the Jews. Like, oh, come on. That's not what he was saying. You know what I mean?
- [34:40]
B
And they're always in there and they use it too, to like, you Know, you know, they'll use it to like, they're always sort of probing the defenses like a velociraptor on the electric fence, like trying different ways, different angles to figure out how to attack from, you know, as, as the, the public mind sort of adapts to, to what they're doing. And so. Well, you know, like a good example of this on the right is they'll come and they'll call you a third worldist or you're just like a Muslim lover or all these things that are going to work on somebody who's like part of the online right or whatever. But then you go and look at like all of that person's comments and you realize this is a complete Astroturf account. Like that's all this person does is go on and defend Israel from the right by attacking people as Muslim lovers or whatever it is. And so they do that. There's, you know, look, they're, they're not as smart as they used to be, but they're still pretty smart. And you know, we're smarter though. So.
- [35:43]
A
Yeah. All right, so now is the part of the show where I remind you about expatmoney.com provoked. We do two spots per show for them. That's right. Expat.monies.com provoked. And you get this free booklet, plan B, Residencies and instant citizenships for, you know, worst case scenario. Man, you got to protect your neck. Or maybe you're just trying to protect yourself from inflation, which is what we're about to talk about in a second. So I rage against JD Vance's ignorant communism, but then also I got to tell you about good old Matt C. Le. He's at agorist tax advice.com and he's a great sponsor of the show as well. And I forgot if we got a promo code or anything, but tell them Scott and Daryl sent you and he'll hook you up a good deal. And basically, if you run a small business or you're a professional with a high end type salary and you're trying to protect your neck from the IRS revenuers come to take all what you work for, then what you do is you go to Matt Sersley and he will make sure that you hang on to every last penny that you legally can. That's agris tax advice. And we're very grateful for Matt's support of the show here. And okay, a couple more things about old vice president man before we can
- [36:57]
B
I real quick just respond to one of the commenters real quick. You know, I'VE seen this, some version of this a couple times. Said, according to Daryl. Is there like any. It's, it's up there now. I haven't seen. I don't know exactly word for word what it is, but is there ever any reason to despise a group because of X, Y or Z, whatever? And my answer to that is. I mean, the answer is no, first of all. But I would, you know, I would. I would place a lot of stress on the fact that, you know, the reason you avoid hatred is not because it's good for the other party. You do it because hate is. Hatred is bad for you. It corrupts your own soul. It clouds your thinking. It makes you a worse person. Like, and I don't mean like worse according to some social standard that you need to be ashamed of. I mean, actually worse. Like, it makes you stupider, it makes you less rational. It makes you just sort of. It bleeds over into your other relationships and the things you think about other things. You have to be able to approach these things, you know, with a certain dispassionate attitude and don't let them drag you into. What do you think they're trying to do when they call you an anti Semite or a racist or anything like that? They're trying to get you into a fight so that you hate them and now you're playing in their world. Like you, you can't fall for that. That's just, that's how I feel about it. So, no, the answer is no. You should not hate any group. I mean, even if it was a uniform group, which no group is, even if it was hate, hatred is still bad for you. You know, it just
- [38:27]
A
can. I hate vice presidents.
- [38:29]
B
Oh, individual people. I mean, maybe you can get away with, especially public figures like that. But no, I don't know.
- [38:35]
A
Listen, man, I'm. Empire Strikes Back.
- [38:38]
B
Luke. Hate the office, not the man.
- [38:42]
A
I'll tell you what pissed me off about that interview on the Joe Rogan Show. Well, first, a little credit. And this is important. This is going to be controversial. I don't know if anybody's making a big deal about it yet, but JD Vance did say that Epstein was clearly connected to Mossad, which is true. I mean, he must have just read journalism about that Drop site news. Ryan Grim and Murtaza Al Qaeda have the best stuff on this over there at drop site, but they got, you know, many episodes of him working directly with Mo on all different projects all around the world. And the Vice President of the United States said that you know, he claimed to be a deep researcher into all things Epstein. And that was, I think, the most important thing that he said about it. If you want to comment more on, on that, go ahead.
- [39:21]
B
But I mean, he was careful to say, you know, that he clearly had connections to people involved with, you know, he, he didn't, he was careful not to say that, you know, anything that he was doing that we do or don't know about.
- [39:37]
A
I think he raised the question about blackmail and stuff like that, but said we don't know for sure. But like, a lot of people think so. And Stu was given it credibility. I thought so, yeah.
- [39:47]
B
I mean, look, J.D. he reads the comments, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if he has time to do it now, but he was doing it for years. I mean, he, he still follows me on X, like he has for many years, even after he got challenged by a journalist after my Tucker interview. And you know, they wrote about it in an article too. Like, you know, this is one of the evil, terrible, fascist, awful people that J.D. vance follows. He still follows me. And he's been questioned about a few times, still does. I mean, he's aware of this stuff and you know, the, the things people are saying. So yeah, I mean, he's, you know, when he says people are saying that, he, he knows that it's a, it's a groundswell. I mean, it's, it's a lot of people. So.
- [40:27]
A
Yeah, all right, but then now I gotta rant about the economic discussion on there, which, like, I get it, not everybody's libertarian and JD Is trying to strike a Buchananite type pose on protectionism on behalf of workers and whatever, supposedly, you know, trying to find common ground with Bernie Sanders there against free trade and all that. But the thing is, the whole time he's ranting against cronyism and him and Rogan are both agreeing that the young kids today are turning to socialism because of how corrupt capitalism is. He keeps saying that over and over. If we don't fix this, we're going to get communism. If we don't fix this, we're on the road to socialism. But the whole time he makes it sound like he's a commie and that Marx is right, that it's the historical inevitability that we'll all end up at communism and that we're only just trying to stave that future off, even though that's the ultimate positive destiny of mankind, apparently. But for some reason, maybe because he's such a right wing backwards Reactionary. He's trying to prevent that glorious future from coming all the way to fruition. And we got to find ways to stay with the whole God dang time. He never says, but the problem with that, Joe, is communism is already what's wrong with our system. Control over the economy rather than participation in it by power. And communism is just more of that. And so it only means that whatever is wrong with the economy now because power is dead, dictating prices and resources, those same problems are just going to be magnified that much worse. So the, the perils of crony capitalism include, yes, pushing people to socialism, which is just more of the same thing. That's all. Crony capitalism is socialism for people who already have successful businesses, but not everybody else. So they think the solution to that is to spread more of that around so we have full communism. And he doesn't explain why. Like, no, but see, that would be a big mistake. That would be a huge logical fallacy that would be, you know, causing. That'd be, you know, eating the same poison that's making you sick as the cure, you know, and he never says that. He makes it sound like, of course we're supposed to be communists, but for some reason he's trying to slow our transition to that or what. The whole thing was maddening.
- [43:06]
B
And then he says, you know, and
- [43:08]
A
the problem is you got these communists and then you got these crazy libertarians. And what we need really is the third. The third way. The third way. That's Bill Clinton ism.
- [43:20]
B
Hey, we've got another context for that too. Hey, don't take that from me.
- [43:26]
A
What in the fucking world. I just. God dang, I want to headbutt this guy. If he doesn't know stuff, he should not talk about it.
- [43:34]
B
I mean, well, look, I think to say that we know we're in a, we're in a period of like very, very dramatic transition right now that like technological and economic that and social. That. I think, I don't know. I think, I think that it's,
- [43:54]
A
you
- [43:54]
B
know, it doesn't overthrow like the Austrian analysis of the importance of price signals or something like that. Like all, all of that basic theory still applies, but like, I don't know if it's necessarily true and because we don't have any like counter examples really, like, I don't know if it's necessarily true that the problems that people complain about, the economy, the unfairness of it, or the concentration of wealth or any of that is, you know, just purely due to government interference. It may have been at one point. But I mean, it's, it's entirely. Why is it not entirely possible that like a technological change could, could come over society that just, it's something that only, you know, large organizations or ultra wealthy individuals can really access and take advantage of. And if they do, it provides such a massive advantage that it leads to like a huge concentration that eventually is going to get overthrown by people who don't like it. That's possible. Like, I don't think the only possible explanation for why people would find the economy unfair is that the government is making it that way. I just, I don't, I don't know if that's necessarily true.
- [45:06]
A
No, dude, you're wrong. It's all inflation. Everything that everyone complains about is because of inflationary money. Joe Rogan and J.D. mans, this entire discussion was about the destructive effects of inflationary money and what government should do to solve the problems caused by inflationary money. And they do actually mention inflation for a moment at the end, but they never question that that's the basis of our entire monetary system is that the banks are licensed by the government to create money out of nothing as long as they promise to buy bonds. When the government creates money out of nothing so they can all go to war and bail each other out, and it's this massive error. I mean, as Ron Paul says, they've nationalized. One half of every transaction is the money, and it's a huge corrupting factor. So for example, one of the hugest issues of our time is illegal immigration. And as J.D. vance and Joe Rogan discuss in their conversation, yeah, but big business says, but we need that illegal immigration because it relieves upward pressure on wages. Well, where is all that upward pressure on wages coming from? They debase the money. And in fact, the poorest wage earners, the hourly wage earners, they're the very last ones in the entire economy to get a cost of living increase. 25 cents a week or whatever is their insignificant little raise. And then they get blamed for causing inflation. And, and if you run Tyson Chicken or you run Cargill or Archer Daniels Midland or Monsanto or these giant agribusiness firms, or you run a chain of hotels or whatever it is, then your overhead costs for your labor are everything. That's your entire margin of everything. Don't forget all your income taxes and all your property taxes and all your sales taxes and all the regulations you have to obey and everything about that. And then comes the inflation, debasing the currency all the time. So the Citizen is fired and the illegal immigrant is hired to do the same job for less because they're the inflation fighter. And then what does that mean? Well now we need a totalitarian police state to check the the employment records of every business in the country to make sure that they don't have a bunch of illegal immigrants. And now we need to have know your customer regulations to oversee every bank transaction because we got to make sure that nobody's being paid under the table. And now you got whatever it is. And there's a. And of course the ICE raids and people shot. Another guy got shot the other day, a guy that wasn't the guy they were looking for who panicked and drove off and they shot him the other day in Maine. All of that is all downhill. Consequences from the government printing money all day. Same as the wars. They can't have wars. All your buddies who came home missing limbs and with their heads all screwed up. They couldn't have had George Bush's war in Iraq if they had to raise taxes. Instead.
- [48:07]
B
Remember what they did?
- [48:08]
A
They gave everybody a two and a three hundred dollar rebate. Every income taxpayer got an extra rebate check in the Mail in 2003 and 4. As though it was your dividend from all the profit we were making from invading Iraq when they printed that money to pay for that war that they could have never started if they had to raise your taxes in order to pay for it. And all the consequences downhill from the invasion of Iraq, from the wars in Libya and Syria and the Islamic State in Yemen and everything that's happened since then to all the effects at home, from all the disruption, all the opportunity costs, all the traumatic brain injury and all the. Everything else that's flown from all of that. It's. And, and for that matter, the entire national police state runs on inflationary money. Every bit of it. ATF kicking in this guy Malinowski's door and blowing his head off at six o' clock in the morning paid with inflationary dollars. If people had to pay taxes for this national leviathan, we would not have one. And so that's true.
- [49:07]
B
But don't you. I mean, and I don't. I don't now I'm being.
- [49:10]
A
The PES cycle. It causes the Great Depression every 10 years when everybody who's finally getting up on their feet gets the rug pulled out from under them and have to take a slam and start all over again every 10 years.
- [49:24]
B
I mean doesn't this. And now I'm being the pessimist, but doesn't this kind of feel like when. It feels like when I, When I, When I see people who say, like, you know, democracy, Republican form of government, whatever, is fine, but, man, we got to get rid of the 19th Amendment. It's like, well, the women are like 55% of the voters now, so forget about it. It's just not going to happen. Like, if you want that, then what you're going to have to do is have, like, a dictatorship, because it's the only way you're going to do have to get rid of the system completely and have a dictatorship that imposes that with this. It's like, you know, like, like inflation. Yeah. It serves all these purposes. You know, what other purpose it serves is the fact that, like, there's more debt out there than could possibly be paid off. And if we just went into full liquidation mode right now and told people that, look, in the long run, trust us, this is going to be better for everybody. Yeah. A lot of you, in fact, tens of millions of you maybe, are going to have your lives completely ruined. But don't worry, your grandkids are going to have a much better time of it. There's just. People aren't going to go for that. That's like JD Was saying, they're going to vote for Bernie Sanders, who says, you know, the, the problem here is that, you know, you don't have enough help paying for college or whatever it is. I mean, as long as we have a democracy, you have to deal with that reality. And as much as I, you know, look, I, I love. When we're on, Paul would get up on stage and talk about the Fed and all of these things and all the stuff you're saying just now, like criticizing the, just the, the, the, the consequences of, of fiat currency and the inflation. All that stuff is definitely true. I mean, we wouldn't have gone into Iraq if people had to. If they had to raise a new tax to do it. I. All that stuff's true, but to walk it back, like, I just don't know if there is a way within a democratic system to unwind all of this stuff that really has been over a century in the making. You know, I mean, it's like the present.
- [51:20]
A
All you can do is make it worse. And I'm sorry, because I left out the most important thing, which is housing and the cost of living and the cost of literally living indoors in the country right now in terms of rents and prices as a percentage of income. And all this is Generation Z is screaming. The Average price of first time home ownership now is 40, which I probably skewed that number quite a bit myself, being a 50 year old buying a house right now. But, but it's, this is a huge one. And you're right, when this is what you're talking about, when you're saying, you know all these people who aren't ready to take a hit, what you're talking about is, I believe your implication was all these people who are sitting in homes with inflated prices, who, if we let the free market rule, then they would face a correction. They would lose a lot of their equity that is built up in another big bubble, the same one that's keeping younger people out of the market. The only solution to that is let prices fall and repeal all the zoning that prevents new housing from being developed and allow the market to provide housing for people instead. Donald Trump himself said, I mean, you cannot blame this on free market capitalism. Darrell Cooper, the President United States said, no, no, no, we want to juice the market. We want to keep housing prices high because those baby boomers, they have all of their wealth saved up in their homes. And, and we can't let those prices go down. And if those prices are just too high for young people who then he adds, who just don't want to work hard enough to get in one, well, that's just too bad for them. He literally went ahead and finished the sentence. And the younger, poorer people, screw them. But here's the point though, is it ain't the baby boomers responsible for this, it's the national government responsible for this. They've made it illegal to save money. They have outlawed interest rates, right? They have had interest rates near zero for 25 years. They've only just very recently raised them. But even now, try and open a savings account at your local thing, they won't. They'll give you 1%. I don't know why, but you can't even get a 5% interest rate on your savings account. It's illegal to have a savings account. You have to invest in the stock market or in shitcoins or in at least your house. And then they tell you, well, but the equity, your house will continue to go up in value even as it gets older and older and rained on, and rained on, it'll still go up and up in value. And so this is the only place for you to put all of your wealth is into your home. And so that's not the free market. They've been forced by the national government into that position. And now they're the ones who are going to have to take the haircut in order for young people to not have to live under a bridge.
- [54:01]
B
No doubt. It's not free market capitalism. That's. I, I don't need to be convinced of that. But I, I guess I just think like, I don't know, like, we, we have to deal with reality as we find it. Like, we're not arguing whether or not we should go down this road. Like, we're arguing whether or not it's possible to step off the road at this point in, in a way that doesn't create so much chaos and instability in people's lives, that what comes out the other side is worse than what we've got now because that happens. Like, you know, I think we have this like sort of rose colored view of a lot of this stuff in America because we had sort of an idyllic situation over here relative to a lot of other countries in the world. The Industrial revolution happened, you know, over here. Not that we did this completely, but to a degree, like we could kind of let the chips fall where they may. We had cheap land, we had, you know, a labor shortage rather than a labor surplus. For most of our history up until about the 1970, we had a lot of like, natural advantages here that allowed us to sort of smooth out the disruptions that were caused by the industrial revolution in Europe. That wasn't the case everywhere. You had the Russian Revolution, you had like a lot of these things. Like the, the, the instability that was created in people's lives by a lot of this did not always turn out okay. You know, the chips fell where they may and sometimes they fell on the floor. And that's a real possibility, man. Like, you know, especially when, like, you're gonna have a really hard time not saying that we shouldn't do it. If, if people believe this is the case, you have to go out there and make the case and change public perception over a long period. It would take a long period of time to really like, change public perception on this stuff. But, you know, if you were to go out there right now in a presidential or senatorial or whatever, maybe you could get away with it on like a, you know, in a House of Representatives district or something, but a statewide or national election. You went out there and you told those young people who can't buy a house, who can't afford, you know, health insurance or any of these things, you know, here's this like long theoretical history lesson about why all of this is actually the fault of the Federal Reserve and Everything. And the answer here is that we're just gonna stop doing all that and not help you at all. But on the other side of this, you won't need help. I mean, you have to, you have to get those people to vote for you. And so it's like until you, until you change everybody's mind, enough people's minds, like, really convince them that, like, okay, this is, you know, something that we have to just go through. I mean, look, like the thing is, I agree with you on all of the, all of the theory as well as like, the history and stuff that you're saying. Our, our disagreement on this is really like, largely political. It's like, what is politically possible and what would be the consequences of taking these steps and allowing things to. I mean, think about like, well, look,
- [57:00]
A
just go back to 2008. We had a massive correction in housing in 2008, and they bailed out all the bankers and all the insurance companies, and a lot of regular people got wiped out. A lot of artificially inflated housing values went back to where they should have belonged. And then what they do. QE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 678 and reinflated the housing bubbles. Then came Covid and they, you know, spent. This wasn't even the Fed. This was just the Congress spent trillions of new dollars into circulation during COVID to bail out everybody and the corporations and the, and everybody else too, during COVID The massive increase in the money supply at the same time that the Democrats are chasing people that hell out of Democrat states. So you have massive booms in real estate in places like Austin and wherever. So if we allow prices to rule in a free market now, then I don't know why we should expect a worse crash than what happened in 08.
- [58:01]
B
Because, man, like, think about it.
- [58:02]
A
Although maybe we were to allow bailouts of those bankers, if we were to
- [58:06]
B
allow interest rates to just float. Because, like, I don't think, I don't know, like, if we just go back to the gold standard and, and, and fire everybody at the Fed, I don't know what would happen there necessarily. But if we were to just let interest rates float, which is like one step more realistic than that. I mean, the federal government, every, most states and most municipalities would go bankrupt the next day. Like, they, they would go bankrupt. The banks would go out of business. I mean, they, they're all dependent on their US Treasuries and they would get defaulted on me. Just the entire financial system and the global financial system, not just ours, because the whole thing is built on the US dollar would completely collapse. I mean it would completely fall apart. And not just the housing market, not just a few banks. The government decides not to bail out. There's not going to be any bailouts. There won't be anybody to bail out the US federal government. And so if that happened, there's not going to be anybody to bail out China's sovereign wealth fund or whatever. So if that all happens all at once, I think we just have to be very, very careful about being so certain about how that would turn out on the other side. I mean, you know people when they're, because you talk about 2008, right? Like I think about somebody in my, my wife's a little few years younger than me. Her generation graduates or she was a sophomore when, in high school, when 9, 11 happened, she graduates. And that, you know, her whole generation, her whole graduating class is looking for jobs and they're competing with 540 year olds with 20 years of experience. You know, because they all got laid off during the financial crisis. They finally start to get back on their feet and Covid happens which granted that's a government created crisis like through and through. True. But my point is if you expose people to that kind of just instability, they're going to demand some, they're going to demand that somebody take power who tells them that I can fix this, I can take control of this situation, do it. Even if they're full of shit like that, they're gonna, they're gonna follow that person. It's happened again and again and again. And so stability, I think stability has to be the number one concern. If we get to a place maybe by certain reforms, rolling back certain things to, you know, to, to make the, the, the, the decade long business cycle, like not so, you know, bipolar, like oh, it's gonna be bipolar. But you know what I mean? So manic depressive as it is, whatever, whatever the, the reforms would be like, once we achieve like a certain level of stability, then you can go talk to people in a rational, theoretical way and explain these things. Because all people know right now is they can, they're barely holding it together and that is what they're voting on. They're not voting on like how are things, you know, gonna be like 30 years from now after the global debt, you know, default and everything else sort of washes out. Like they're, they're, you know, if you tell them like all of this is going to be way better for the rest of human history, but you're gonna Lose your job and maybe not get one for a long time. And your kids are gonna, you know, live that way. And they're, they're gonna, they're not gonna go, you know, even if they believe you, they're not going to go down that road. And so I don't know, man. I just think, like, it's the baby
- [61:20]
A
boomers who have everything to lose, not the young people. It's the young people who can't buy a house who need the correction. It's the baby boomers who've been fooled into putting their entire savings into their housing and on these hugely inflated prices who are going to lose when the next correction comes. And then that'll be the chance for Generation Z to finally own a home, when again, this is the government's policy. I mean, look at it right now. Donald Trump says, we're doing this on purpose. We'll just stop doing it. How about that? I'd like to have 100% gold standard, but there's no reason to think that, that it should be like a total catastrophe. It's not like every old person is going to lose their house. It's just, it's going to not have the artificially inflated value that they're sitting on. That they're able to refinance and cash out and redo their.
- [62:09]
B
On real estate prices is one. That's one effect. I mean, okay, but I mean, I think there, dude, there, there have just been like such radical social changes over the past, especially like 50, 60 years that make this a such a different situation than would have been dealt with in the past.
- [62:29]
A
You know, look at what they're saying. They're saying, I saw an interview with this guy from the DSA the other day, and they go, so what are you going to do about. They go, well, we're going to, we're going to bring democracy into every part of your life, not just when you vote, but everything about you is going to be democratic. Now what? Oh, yeah. This kook knows what prices should be. This guy knows what should be developed and where resources need to go. We already, you know, solved all of this. What's it, 26 Mises wrote Socialism in 1920 about how this idiot doesn't know what prices should be. So why are you listening to him? This makes no sense at all. So the answer is libertarianism. I'm sorry, you could say that. Like, well, it's really too bad that the great deformation is this great, but still, the only answer is to let it correct and get back to rational Pricing. There's no. Who, who is the best Federal Reserve chair to engineer a soft landing for us here? There isn't one. And there is no soft landing. Every time you try to prick the bubble and slowly let the air out, the whole thing pops and crashes. Just like Rothbard wrote back in for a New Liberty in 1970, whatever the hell. 78, I guess.
- [63:45]
B
Yeah, but I also, but I think, no, you know, we're not having the debate over like, widespread price controls and stuff. That's not really the thing that's being debated. That's not what J.D. vance is talking about. I don't think, I don't think he would support something like that. I mean, maybe, maybe price controls on things like, you know, money. Not, not price control. Yeah, on money for sure, but like, not price controls, but price influence for sure. Maybe on certain things. But I mean, we're not at a point where it's like Lenin versus Keens versus Hayek anymore. Like, it's, you know, we're. A lot of those questions have been settled, at least, you know, for the time being. And we're having debates, like, in the context of those, those questions having been settled. But I think too, man, like, you have to consider also, like, when you went back to like the, the Great Depression, say, or even the 1970s, the average person, like, knew how to do something. Like today, all of these, all of these people who are working at email jobs in a cubicle that really like 10% of the people in their office do all of the work in the business or the government agency or whatever could do without 90% of them. They're just like, those people don't know how to do anything if those jobs evaporated. If things change where, like, you tell people, well, don't worry, like, you're going to be able to get paid a living wage by picking strawberries in Oxnard. They're just not going to go for that. Even though, like, I, I guess I wish they would. Like, you know, people should get, we should get Americans back to work doing real things. But again, like, I keep coming back to the fact that you have to go out on the stump and convince people to, to go along with this stuff and you have to do it in the face of resistance from every, like, moneyed interest in the country in the world, really. I mean, it's just a. I don't know. I, I think it's one of those things that, like, it sounds nice in theory, it is, but there is absolutely just no road from here to there politically and you know, there may be it, which is not to say, by the way, that there's no, there's no value in getting these ideas out there because what is going to happen, if you ask me, is we're just going to keep riding this thing until the crash comes and it's inevitable and the whole thing is destroyed because, you know, we hit the point where the government can't make its interest payments and it has no choice but to just super ramp up inflation or whatever they decide to do. And then it is all going to go to chaos. And on the other side of that, then maybe, you know, it, it'll be good to have a population that's educated in the things you're talking about. So when we put the pieces back together, they put them back together. Right. But in terms of using our political system as it's configured to enact any of these things, I just think that is, I mean we're, we're debating like how many angels can fit on a pinhead. I just don't think it's something that is, is a real question.
- [66:51]
A
But, well, 18 years ago, and then again 12 years ago we could have elected Dr. Paul President, United States. He ran.
- [67:00]
B
Yeah, but what would he have been able to get away with?
- [67:03]
A
I mean, you know what, precedents are pretty powerful. I mean, hey, everybody, drink Moondo's artisan coffees. Go to scotthorton.org coffee and you'll get Scott Horton flavored coffee. It tastes just like my show and it's really good. And it's free to me as long as you people keep buying it. So please keep buying it. It's really good. You can see it's got. There's a. Oh, got all five stars for 29 reviews. They really love it because it's really good coffee, man. You're drinking Dunkin Donuts in a bag from Walgreens. It's not good enough. You get up in the morning, drink yourself some Scott Horton show flavored coffee and it's really Good. Go to scotthorton.org Coffee for that. And then. Wait, I should do one more. The Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. Guess what, Daryl Cooper. I posted the second and final half of my course on the new Cold War. So it is all there now. And also guess what we got? We got the great Grant F. Smith and his new course apac, the tip of Israel's lobbying spear. And this is the entire real secret, underground unknown history of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and all of their legal and illegal Shenanigans in this country over the last generation since the end of the second Great War there. And so you guys are really going to want to get your eyes and ears on Grant's new course. It's all at Scott Horton Academy.com and use promo code Summertime and you'll save 20. That's Scott HortonAcademy.com and then also let me recommend to you the Martyr Maid podcast. That's him, Darrell Cooper, Martyr Maid. And this is his podcast@martyrmaid.com and subscribe martyrmaid.com I think. Yeah to get the. To subscribe on substack there. There we go. And yeah, you guys will like that. His long form history podcasts and his, his other essays and spoken soliloquies. And here's my Liberty stickers. I own Liberty stickers again. Can you believe it? It's just like back in history, only now current day again. Libertystickers.com and you see, you gotta abandon Israel and work harder. Millions of Israelis on welfare depend on you. And the right is wrong, left is stupid. A classic going back to the 90s there lots of great ones there@liberty stickers.com. so you got all your founding fathers quotes. There's your Madison and your Franklin and your Jeffers and you're great is the guilt of an unnecessary war says John Adams here. And stupid liberty stickers.com everyone else's stickers suck. And then yeah okay, so that's all the ads. Let's talk about. Let's talk about news. We do have news. Forget that. Let's talk about. We already covered that last week. Let's do a little Ukraine before we wrap up here.
- [69:53]
B
You want to.
- [69:54]
A
Sure. So this is Moon of Alabama. I got out of the habit of reading Bernard but he's a really sharp guy, a German analyst of all kinds of things There refugees from the old Billmon blog there over at Moon of Alabama. And this is called another anti western coup. And this is how Zelensky has sacked the prime minister and replaced him with a guy, supposedly a technocrat corporate guy from a natural gas firm. And then he also sacked the Fedorov, the head of the. The minister of defense. And so Bernard had an interesting thing here about this guy. His, his job was to reform the draft system in the recruitment offices known for snatching people off the streets
- [70:47]
B
to
- [70:47]
A
feed them into the cannon fodder machine. There he sent out, set out to modernize the Ukraine army by hyping drone warfare and more effective procurement. But it led to resistance from the regular military and supposedly from the troops in the field as well. But what happened, though, that got him in trouble, Daryl, according to to Bernard here, is that he was fighting against corruption, so Zelensky got rid of him. Those of the Zelensky family, reminiscent of Boris Yeltsin's time in Moscow. Right. The Zelensky family, who are making billions for military procurements, were aghast when Fedorov started to cut into their business, and so they got rid of them anyway. Everybody can read.
- [71:35]
B
I can see why the military doesn't like him too, though. I mean, you know, like, Ukraine is in this position. Like, he was a guy who was basically making the case that, you know, yeah, we're running out of humans to throw at the Russians, but that's okay. We'll just make it up with drones. And the military, you know, has a more realistic view of that. Like, you can't just make up for shortages in manpower with infinity drones, which is kind of what that guy was known for, so.
- [72:04]
A
Right.
- [72:04]
B
But I mean, at this point, like, they haven't had an election in like a thousand years or something, so firing a prime minister, you know, doing stuff like this, like, I don't even know if it's worth calling anti democratic or whatever else anymore.
- [72:19]
A
Yeah, that's true. Their last presidential election was in 2019. I love the way the war party always says, like, yeah, but it's martial law. You can't have an election under their law when it's martial law. Yeah, but it's the president who declares martial law. He could undeclare it and then stand for election.
- [72:36]
B
As simple as that.
- [72:37]
A
Why doesn't he do that? Abraham Lincoln stood for election in the middle of the American Civil War and he thought he was going to lose and he still stood for election anyway,
- [72:46]
B
because what are you going to do?
- [72:47]
A
Not stand for election just because there's a war on? Come on. I don't usually like to invoke Abraham Lincoln as the great precedent.
- [72:58]
B
Somebody earlier. I didn't want to interrupt you. You were on fire. Somebody earlier said, I don't. And I don't know exactly what they meant by this, but they said Trump needs to go full on Lincoln. And then somebody responded, yeah, the Ford Theater version.
- [73:12]
A
Goodness, man. All right. This is mentioning too. I tried to get Max Blumenthal on the show. Maybe I'll get him on my show tomorrow. I know he's a very busy guy, but he went to Iran and back. And I wanted and for me and for you to be able to ask him all about what he saw and did there. But I know that he visited, for example, that I don't know, quite ancient but extremely old Jewish synagogue in Tehran that the Israelis bombed. And he went and visited the rubble there. And he visited, I don't think, I don't know if he went to the school where the 160something kids were killed, but I know he did go to the school where 20 something were killed in the volleyball game. And he did go and visit that. That's the one that the New York Times covered, how it was a Lockheed experimental missile that shot the million tungsten BBs out the front before the rest of it detonates. And all of that, that they shredded all those kids to dead to death with. But so anyway, and then. And he covered the funeral and now I know that there were American communists who went there to participate in the festivities and all that. I do not believe that that is the case with Max Blumenthal at all. He is some sort of leftist, but he is a journalist and he went there to cover what was going on there. I don't know if you saw, I saw a footage of Jackson Hinkle chanting down USA and whatever. Well, he's the head of the Communist Party, so what would you expect from. Or a high level member of it, so what would you expect from him? But Max Blumenthal was not there in solidarity with Iran. He was just there to cover it. And I believe it's him that I'm paraphrasing here. And he says this is the funeral for Ali Al Khamenei was essentially the biggest event that's ever happened in human history. There's nothing else like it that compares to, I mean, other than like, I don't know, World War II or whatever, but like to have this many millions and millions and millions of people coming out to this guy's funerals as they move him from city to city to city. They sent him to Karbala and Iraq and then they brought him back to Iran again. And they just had, you know, I don't know, maybe a total of 10 million people or some kind of thing come out in the streets. Even the New York Times, you could tell that they were reticent to put it this way, but they were like, man, it was a veritable ocean of people out there. It was unbelievable, the number of people out there mourning. I mean, when you contrast that with all the propaganda about the absolute hatred for this man among the population of the country of Iran and the fact that their regime only lives with a gun to the head of every one of their enslaved subjects and whatever, that they're clinging power by the tips of their bloody fingernails that they had to massacre 30, 40, 50, 80, whatever, thousands, tens and tens of whatever number you want of tens of thousands of people in the streets in January in order to cling on to power, because otherwise they were doomed as the entire populace of the country was rising up to overthrow them. And, boy, you compare that propaganda to this, who you gonna believe? The monarchists paid tweeterers or your own damn lion eyes when you got 10 million people come out to mourn this guy? And some significant percentage of them, at least, or, I don't know, some significant raw number of them pledging revenge and pledging that this ain't over yet. And, you know, then the Israelis claimed that, oh, Trump, guess what? The Iranians are trying to kill you, and we've disrupted a plot. Like, I wouldn't believe the Israelis claiming that, but then again, I might believe anyone else claiming that. I'm not really sure that it's over here at all. And I don't really know. Like, man, Darrell, if you were the president, I would advise you to not kill the second most important leader in Shiite Islam, dude, because I can't really predict the consequences after that. And you really. You really shouldn't do that. And it was the Israelis, apparently, who killed him. According to the Wall Street Journal, it's the Americans who got the school. It was the Israelis that killed Ali Al Khamenei.
- [77:13]
B
But, I mean, I don't.
- [77:16]
A
But.
- [77:16]
B
But. And I know you probably feel the same way. Like, I don't accept that distinction at all. I mean, it's.
- [77:20]
A
No, it's.
- [77:21]
B
Same difference when we say, okay, you're gonna hit this, this, and this, and we're gonna hit this, this, and this. Like, you know, whatever.
- [77:26]
A
I mean, yeah, yeah, It's. It's certainly no cover, right? It's certainly no protection for Donald Trump. And I. You know, look, he is putting himself in danger, and he's putting other Americans in danger. And I think I told you this man before. I did a speech in one of these northern states for the Libertarian Party, and I met this kid who was an Iraqi Shiite whose father and uncle fought in the shiite uprising of 1991 against Saddam Hussein. That, of course, Bush Senior betrayed and all of that. It's all in the book. But I asked him, hey, if Sistani got angry and declared holy war against the west or against the United States, what would you do? And he said, well, I would go home and fight, but he would be essentially duty bound to fight. And, you know, he didn't want to say and, and I don't think that he would do anything here. He said he would go home and he would fight there.
- [78:18]
B
And did you hear about there? At least the way I heard it, there was one speaker and one speaker only at the, at the Tehran portion of the funeral who got booed, and it was Pizzaskian, because they see him as
- [78:35]
A
really. Wow. Yeah. Okay.
- [78:39]
B
And all right, now, it's so ridiculous too, because it's just one of those things. And we've, we've talked about this before. It's like, we're not psychologists, we're not sociologists, we're not political scientists or anything like that. Neither is like, you know, most of the people that we know and yet all of us understand, just as a matter of like, basic common sense, that when you do something like that, you're gonna draw those people together and cause them to put aside their differences who want to fight you, like, obviously, like, it seems so just common sense that it's amazing that like anybody could have. Which is why I just, I just don't believe that the Israelis really thought that when they were telling Trump that that's what is going to happen. I, I don't think they thought. I think they were saying, tell them whatever you got to tell them to get them into this thing and then we'll go from there. But like, yeah, it's just, it's, it's so ridiculous, man.
- [79:32]
A
Well, you know, I kept citing the Oklahoma City bombing. It was Adam Johnson, the leftist media critic, noticed this immediately, that it was like 167 killed. Well, I mean, if you don't include the extra leg, that's the Oklahoma bombing casualty count right there. You know what I mean? And, and virtually all children, there are a few teachers, but almost all children, entire Murrah Building worth. But then I forgot the main point. Like, what, what happened with that.
- [79:58]
B
Yeah.
- [79:59]
A
Bill Clinton said himself, the Oklahoma City bombing saved my presidency. As the people rallied around their country and their government, me, their president, you know, when we are all under attack, then the people rally around their leadership. George W. Bush presided over the greatest failure, deliberate or not or whatever, however you conceive it, the greatest failure of any president to protect the American people. 3,000 civilians, virtually all civilians, slaughtered on his watch. And his approval rating went up to 90%. And it wasn't because of his great competence. It was because it doesn't really matter what the pollster is asking on the phone. The answer is united we stand as one country against our foreign enemies, whoever they are, no matter who the president is, doesn't matter if it's Al Gore or Georgia.
- [80:53]
B
It's actually, it's even worse than those things just because, you know, it would be as if, like, I mean, I mean, this is not like George Bush was asleep at the switch or Bill Clinton was asleep at the switch and 911 happens and that this is like, literally you have this regime that is pretty extremist, that is pretty hardcore. Even a lot of people in the country consider them, like, pretty radical. You know, the IRGC types and everything. And what's their whole justification for existence? The Americans and the Israelis are crazy, and eventually they're going to come for us. And so all of this stuff you don't like about us, you know, you got to put up with it because we're telling you they're crazy. And the people who may not have believed them or thought they were exaggerating or whatever, like they saw what happened. They're like, oh, the things that these guys have been telling us for 47 years about the Israelis and the Americans, it turns out they got a pretty good point. You know, it's just this is what
- [81:51]
A
say the I told regime back in 1980. I mean, it was a very shaky, revolutionary regime. Then Jimmy Carter gave Saddam the green light to invade and then everybody rallied around the Ayatollah Khomeini. That was what happened back then.
- [82:03]
B
So Saddam Hussein saved my Ayatollah ship.
- [82:07]
A
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, one last thing before we run here, man. Or I don't know if you want to do super chats can, but dude,
- [82:13]
B
we'll have to save those. I gotta pee. I can't last another 20 minutes or something.
- [82:16]
A
I gotta go too. But I want to show you this. I subscribe to Ali Sufan's newsletter in the morning. I don't know if you remember him. He was the right hand man, John o', Neill, the FBI counterterrorism agent back then working the Yemen case and all of that. He's played by the guy that played Monk in the movie the Siege with Denzel Washington as John. Yeah, there's a funny story there where they. The movie was obviously about the bin Ladenites, but because of pressure from the Saudis, they switched it and made them Shiites who were mad about the betrayal of the shiite uprising of 91 instead of being about Osama bin Laden and the Sunni jihadi edge. Anyway, Ali Sufan, I Do not always agree with the guy, but he is very interesting and he, he does this little email newsletter every morning that's usually very well researched. And this is about the new prime minister of Israel. Same difference. Iraq. And what happened was Maliki was coming back. Nuri Al Maliki from the Dawah Party who was an absolutely horrible prime minister and extremely chauvinist Shiite against the Sunnis and really helped set the stage for the rise of the Islamic State in the west of the country. Total piece of. And Donald Trump put his foot down and said absolutely not Nuri al Malik. I don't want Nuri al Maliki. Pick someone else. So they held kind of an emergency meeting and they settled on a businessman who correction for Mario Nowal's audience. I screwed up on his show the other day and I said this guy was a member of the Dawa Party. And I had read that by the way, I didn't just make that up, I had read that. But I looked deeper into it today and he is not a member of the Dawa Party and he was simply decided on as a compromise candidate. He's a businessman. And, and now just a couple of weeks after they chose him, he launched a so called anti corruption campaign. You may have seen this where they had a bunch of tanks and armored personnel carriers rolling around in the Green Zone arresting high level other Shiite politicians. These are guys close to Iran and they've already got Muqtada Al Sadr who is probably the most important Shiite cleric after Sistani in the country, who he has already ordered his Mahdi army to all join the army and the red. They're trying the pressures from the United States to get the Iraqi army to subsume Khatib al Hezbollah. And or I don't think there's all it's Khatib Hezbollah and then there's a few other Aseb Al Haq and all these other Shiite militias, most of which grew up in Iraq War III against the Islamic State in 2014 through 18. There was the PMUs, the popular popular mobilization units. And now so they're trying to consolidate those back into the government and under a guy who is leaning more pro American than pro Iran and the Shiite of resistance here, Shiite axis of resistance. And also they're pressuring him to reopen an old oil pipeline through Syria. And get this, not from, not from Mosul but from Basra to the port of Aqaba, which is where, remember where Mark Rich had the secret oil pipeline at the port of Aqaba there. Which is the reason that David Worms, that this is what Chalabi pitched to David Worms or Netanyahu was we're going to build the oil pipeline to Haifa to replace the secret oil shipments from Iran to Aqaba. And this was in the famous video and still photos of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983. This was, he was going over there to promise him money for weapons. But also he spent like two thirds of the meeting brow beating Saddam Hussein about how we really want George Schultz's company, Bechtel, to build this oil pipeline to the port of Aqaba and Saddam Hussein's politely ignoring him. But this was, and this is a big part of the reason for the Iraq war was so if, if Saddam won't build the pipeline to the port of Aqaba, well, Chalabi promises he'll build one to Haifa. And so that'll replace that same thing after Iran stopped shipping their secret oil shipments there anyway. So point being that things are a big doings afoot over there in the Iraq right now. It's been ever since 03. It's been a massive contest between the United States and Iran for dominance in Baghdad and who's going to have more political influence over the various prime ministers. And this whole time, Iran has won out. This may be the start of a change. We'll see how long it lasts. But it does make sense for them stuck all the way at the northern end of the Gulf to try to find westward oil pipeline routes so that they don't have to depend on Iran's good graces, no matter how close of friends they are. You know what I mean?
- [86:58]
B
But that's true.
- [87:01]
A
Yeah. All right, well, so that's what I got. Everybody go read Ali Sufan about Iraq if you're interested in Iraqi politics like me. Oh, one more thing. This is the John Bircher in me. I support dismantling the icc. Hold that piss. You can do it. Marco Rubio, he tweeted out this thing over at the substack that says we're dismantling the ICC because it's one world communism. And he's right. And I know that they're just mad that the ICC has indicted Benjamin Netanyahu and threatens to put him in prison. And he does belong in prison. I'm not upset about that. But I do think that it's terrible that any court would claim the jurisdiction to prosecute American soldiers or officials of any kind in their courts without the benefit of our Bill of Rights. Or our military Code of Uniform Code of Military Justice. So that being said, it is our responsibility to prosecute our war criminals so nobody has an excuse to ICC us. And with that, we gotta go because Daryl's gotta go. 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 underscore show on X and YouTube and tune in next time for more provoked.