
Loading summary
A
Discover top rated stays loved by guests. Rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews.
B
Verbo.
A
Book a vacation rental loved by guests.
C
You know what they say.
A
Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home. Book early and save over $120 with VRBO because early gets you closer to
B
the action, whether it's waves lapping at
A
the shore or snoozing in a hammock that overlooks.
B
Well, whatever you want it to. So you can all enjoy the payoff
A
come summer with VRBO's early booking deals. Rise and shine. Average savings $141.
B
Select homes only. Welcome in everybody to redacted on this Thursday. So glad to have you here. Is there a peace agreement possibly in place that where Iran hands over all of their everything that they want and they get nothing in return? And there was apparently a pretty heated phone call between Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump where Benjamin Netanyahu wanted more war with Iran and President Trump said, hold off. We're gonna move towards a peace agreement. So Joe Kent is gonna be joining us here today to talk about all of that, plus the Massey election and so much more on the show today.
A
That's right. We're gonna continue to talk about the economic fallout for the rest of us, though, because it's just a game that we don't get to play. We just have to. We look at the board. We live on it, but we don't get to move any pieces. So it looks like it's going to be incredibly tough for us. Skyrocketing gas prices and famine throughout the summer.
B
Chris Martinson is here. He's a futurist. He watches this stuff very closely. He says people are not paying attention to the oil shock, the energy shock that's about to hit. It's going to be one of the greatest in recorded history and people are not paying attention to it.
A
Well, we're paying attention and thank you for being here to pay attention with us. We're so glad you're here. Please make sure that you like and subscribe. Subscribe to the video. Before we get started, help us with some algorithm juice because the algorithm is usually not our friend.
B
No, not at all. And how many of you are actually subscribed and actually turn on your little bell notification and you know, most people never receive those damn things anyway. I don't know, it's like the darkness control knob on a toaster. Like it's not really doing anything to the toast when you turn on that little button.
A
We have this argument a lot now.
B
I don't know if it's working or not. Anyway, glad to have you all here on this Thursday. Thank you so much to the tens of thousands of you that watch us around the world. Great to see you. We're going to get to Joe here in a moment. But first, the mainstream media wants you to believe the old 6040 portfolio is still your safe haven. They want you parked in dying bonds right now. Even if bonds are going up, it's inflation that of course is eating your lunch. It will not keep up with inflation. But of course smart money is moving and they've absolutely hit the panic button on where the US Dollar is right now. Morgan Stanley just shredded the rule book. They're calling for a 60, 20, 20 split right now. That's 20% dedicated to precious metals. They're literally replacing half of your bonds now with gold. Why? Because central banks are building up reserves at record rates. Industrial demand for silver off the chart for solar and technology right now. And bombs, by the way, every time they silver's in these bombs, as soon as they land, it's eviscerated so they don't get that back. They know the dollar is weak. And look what just happened with President Putin and Xi Jinping reaffirmation of this BRICS alliance. And of course, the multipolar world order right now is moving in that direction. That's why China has been buying up so much central bank gold, as much as they can. And forecast right now the gold could hit $6,000 an ounce by 2026. So you need a partner who understands this landscape. We do. Or big fans of our friends at Lear Capital. They're an American company. They've got decades of experience, thousands of five star reviews and they are a company in the United States that will send you gold and silver right to your house. So you can store it in your gun safe, you can store your silver coins, your gold coins on you or you could have it stored in an offsite facility in Delaware. 24, 7 guard you do you whatever you do. I know some of our viewers say if you don't have the gold in your house and you don't actually own it, that's up to you. You do what you want to do, whether you're looking for physical delivery of gold or a tax advantage. Gold, Iraq, they are the gold standard in service and transparency. So go to learedacted.com right now or call 1-800-613-3557 to get their free investor kit and tell them that I sent you 1-800-613-3557 for your free guide. So our thanks to lira. All right, well, a couple of big Iran stories hit Washington yesterday. Let's start with the bombshell New York Times piece yesterday that smacked Washington, D.C. upside the head, claiming that Israel and the United States had planned to install Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, remember him? That's a blast from the past.
A
The guy they said did not win election because it was an illegitimate election. Now we like him.
B
Now we like him.
A
They call him a Holocaust denier, but Israel all of a sudden loves him.
B
Anti Israel, anti Israel guy. We're gonna install Ahmadinejad to rule Iran. Why would they do that? Why exactly would they do that? Is it to keep this, like, perpetual war going? Wait a minute. Ahmadinejad, he's now the head of that country. Use that as, like, some sort of a false flag? I don't know. We'll unpack that in a second. Then a second story. The phone call. President Trump, under pressure from Middle east partners to get a peace agreement in place, on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu for about an hour yesterday. And according to the readout, and three individuals who were in the room said that Netanyahu's hair was on fire, what's left of it, after this tense phone call where basically he's pushed. He says, no, no, you're allowing them too much time. We need to bomb them right now. We need to keep bombing Iran. And President Trump saying, ah, under pressure from Middle east allies, we're not gonna do that. We want a peace agreement. And then President Trump was asked about this, and he says, you know, Netanyahu will do whatever I want him to do.
C
Listen, what have you said to Prime Minister Netanyahu about Iran and how long to hold off on strikes?
D
He's fine. He'll do whatever I want him to do.
C
He's a very, very good man.
D
He'll do whatever I want him to do.
C
And he's a great guy. To me, he's a great.
B
Yeah, he's a great guy. And so he'll do whatever I want him to do. Do you believe that? Trump telling Bibi what to do? We'll talk about that. The Massie election, this possible peace plan, which seems to be coming together, at least that's being purported, but I'm not sure we believe it. And this new DOJ task force to combat antisemitism in the United States with our special guest today, we're gonna talk with Joe Kent. He is the former director of National Counterterrorism center, and he joins Us now. Joe, great to have you back on the show. Welcome.
C
Great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.
B
Our pleasure. So maybe, I guess we could start at the top. There's rumblings of this peace agreement that seems to be in play right now over the past few hours, and a lot of people seem to be believing it, but it really shows that Iran is sort of giving up all of their chips here, all of their cards. When we see this talk of a peace framework. What did you think when you started hearing this truth?
C
I'm an optimist, and I think that there is a goal there. There is a peace deal that we, we can get as long as we're realistic. And, and first and foremost, we have to be realistic that a peace deal won't be acceptable to Israel. So if we just look at the Israelis with clear eyes, which we've had a very hard time doing throughout this entire administration, and we actually take steps to restrain the Israelis, we can get a peace deal with the Iranians. We're not going to get everything we want. They're not going to get everything that they want. But I think if we don't bury any poison pills in the deal about zero enrichment, hand us over all your enrichment and we're real and we get an end to the fighting. I think it's. I think it's definitely possible, but I am skeptical that we've taken the first hard step in telling the Israelis. Like, you are done taking offensive action without our permission?
B
Do you do. I'm sorry, I just want to follow up on that. Could you believe that phone call readout where Bibby's hair is on fire? Trump says he'll do whatever I want. Like we've been played before, Joe, right? Where we've been played, where we're told that there's this rift between them. Right when they're really on the same page. What do you believe from that phone call?
C
I agree with you. I have a hard time believing it at this point. But if Trump did say, I'm not resuming military operations, I still want to get a deal, I can see where Bibi's hair would. Would indeed be on fire. He can see the public sentiment right now. He knows that President Trump is feeling a lot of the pressure. And what the Israelis have done, though, has actually been very, very clever at the beginning, at the onset of the war. I know we're going to get into this with the ott. They convinced President Trump this was going to be very easy, and they got us on board of Taking that initial strike against the Supreme Leader. And then the Israelis and us, too, we killed a lot of the different moderates. So I think Netanyahu and the Israelis know that really the Iranians that we're negotiating with right now are going to be much more challenging for us to negotiate with again. I still think we can get a deal with them, but I think every time that President Trump doesn't get him exactly what he wants, I do think his hair is somewhat on fire. And then there's going to be a full court press with the pro Israeli lobby, the pro Israeli media apparatus here leaning heavily on President Trump. I'm hoping that by now President Trump is just frustrated with that and he's starting to dictate terms. But. But time will tell.
A
Well, in the wake of Thomas Massie's loss to the Israel lobby, it feels the timing might be there to show us, like, look, we don't do what they say. Even though they bought an election, even though they bragged about their influence in that election, which we'll talk about later. But no, it's. That's in charge. So it feels a little bit like a vitamin that they're giving the MAGA crowd so that they don't start to buy in to this. What do you think about that?
B
That's a good point.
C
No, I would agree with you. Look, it's all gonna come down to, I think there is a limited amount of time here because at some point, if President Trump doesn't see that he can get a deal with the Iranians, he's gonna be under pressure, and I think he's also gonna get frustrated as well. So I think a lot of what we're seeing right now is, like, you said that vitamin to maga. Like, hey, we' pushing back on the Israelis. They're not going to come out and admit that the Israelis, you know, kind of pressured us into this entire thing, but they're going to kind of throw us a bone right now. But they did have to just spend, I mean, however many millions last night just to take out one congressman. They can't repeat that for the entire, you know, Senate, the entire Congress. They can't repeat that on the national level. They just simply, they have a lot of money, but they don't have that much money. And they, they can read the same data that we can. They can see that. Yeah, they still have like, the boomer Fox News crowd, but the rest of the people that are out there voting, engaged, like, they're really not going to tolerate this. So I'M sure there's an argument taking place right now amongst the Israelis of, hey, do we go for broke right now and do we really try and push this next offensive against the Iranians? Is it that big of a deal? Or do we take a tactical defeat and kind of let President Trump get some kind of a deal and then kind of work our way back in from a different angle? I'm sure the Israelis are having that debate internally right now. We know where Bibi is, we know where Likud is. They're probably much more maximalist, only thinking about, you know, the next week or so or how long they can make this war. But I think that's probably a debate that's taking place right now with the, with the Israelis as well.
B
Fascinating. No, let's talk about Ahmadinejad. So this New York Times piece, I mean, what a blast from the past that they're gonna install Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as the Iranian leader.
A
The US And Israel, they didn't even answer his letters when he was. They would ignore it. And they called him a holocaust denier and an illegitimate president. How did we get this guy on the phone?
B
What do you make of this? Report?
C
This really, to me, it just shows that the Israelis were. Their main goal before we got committed to the war was just to get us into the war. The Israelis knew they couldn't accomplish anything in Iran without us. So basically they were doing what I would call the throw everything at the wall model and see what stuck. So they would tell us a variety of different things, and a lot of it would end up being very, very far fetched. But they wanted to see if any of it resonated. And the second that any of it would res, they would stick on that and say, no, no, that's actually our plan. Trust us, we're really good at this. Don't you know, we have great intelligence. And so I think what they were trying to do with Najad was basically the Venezuela model where, hey, we'll decapitate, we'll kill the Supreme Leader. And then we've got this guy who will just jump right in and he'll stabilize everything, you know, Mr. President, just like you did in Venezuela. So I think they, I don't think that the Israelis ever got in a, in a dark, smoky room and were like, yeah, I didn't mean to judge. We're going to install that guy and here's how we're going to do it. Steps one through ten. That wasn't ever the case. This was just a sales pitch. And I think they were just trying to basically copy paste Venezuela just to sell it so they could get us on board. And I think. I don't know if the Ahmedijad pitch worked, but it did work. This. Some version of that did work to a certain degree because they got us into the war. And most importantly, they got us to take that strike against the Supreme Leader, which killed off one of the moderating forces inside of Iran, making a deal right now that President Trump so desperately wants even more challenging to get. So the Israelis didn't have any foresight on, like, tactically to take down the regime. They put all their eggs and all their foresight into how can they get us into this war and how can they keep us into the war?
A
But again, Ahmadinejad was not a Western puppet. He tried diplomacy many times. Can we put this photo back up of him? The reason that Iranian politicians don't wear neckties is because it symbolizes Western imperialism to the Persians, to the Iranians. And so why. It's almost insulting. Like, we remember what the messaging was about him. It almost feels too stupid to be in New York Times. I can't wrap my head around it.
B
They'll help you forget. Just like Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with and partnering with Saddam Hussein. It's like, don't Forget about the 20 years ago. Just forget about it. Memory hole. It.
C
Yeah. And it was a close copy paste to a Venezuela. That's where I think their head was at, because I think they had already. They'd already tried the whole Shah, hey, we'll bring this shah's son back in. And that didn't pass the sniff test. There's the, the mek, the Mujahideen, Khaliq. There's the Kurds. All of that was always hard to formulate. But I think they were able to say, like, okay, we've got a guy, and he was sort of part of this regime that we don't like, but trust me, he's our guy. That seems like a very Israeli pitch to me. I'm just, I'm just guessing. And that he would jump in. And they, they kept referencing. In my view, they probably just kept referencing Venezuela and saying, hey, it worked in Venezuela. You guys came in, you took out the leader of Venezuela, and then we had somebody, you know, just kind of step in who we were able to make into basically our puppet. And that will work here. Again, none of it was ever a serious plan, but it was a serious sales pitch to get us into the
A
war or if I Could maybe use reverse psychology, because Ahmadinejad many times questioned Israel's use of the Holocaust in order to expand their global war powers. If they got a Holocaust denier in there, that would really help them springboard what they've always been able to use to justify their war. And like, oh, we got even worse guy. Now we gotta. Now we gotta go. I'm just calling. This is. This is what I would do maybe if I were an evil regime. What do you think?
C
I think that's something that's underappreciated on our side about the Israelis, because the Israelis are very polished and they're very slick at their presentation. And a lot of the Israelis that we deal with are dual citizens, and they sound just like us. Forget that. They have a much different mentality. So when we're talking like, hey, how do we take down a country? We want steps one through 10, and we want to understand how it ends. Because in the American mind, we are not good with chaos. We do not like chaos. The Israelis view it much differently. The Israelis are completely fine of chaos. Look at their strategy in Lebanon, look at their strategy in Syria. And so for them to say, like, like you said, okay, we'll get this other guy in, but then we'll be able to come right back and be like, bad news, guys. This guy's just as bad. So we got to keep going. The purpose of the war is for the war to. Not for the war to be concluded in any meaningful way. Especially, you know, from the perspective of the Likud Party with the internal dynamics there in Israel with Bibi being on trial. The longer the war goes on, the better. So, you know, again, I think this is mostly just a pitch to us, but I think you're probably onto something right there where they even could bake into the cake even further. If this harebrained plan even kind of got off the ground, they would have a justification to continue the war.
B
You mentioned the chaos piece of this. I want to play a soundbite from yesterday. This is Nick Fuentes on Alex Jones show. And here he thinks that Israel, in order to keep us in this war or push us back into it, especially if some sort of a peace framework is laid out by President Trump. He believes that Israel will carry out a false flag on the United States in order to keep this Iranian charade going. Take a listen.
C
You think about there was a show on Netflix Zero Day, and then there was another show, Leave It All Behind. And they're both kind of predictive programming these scenarios where it's either a nuclear conflict or it's some kind of advanced cyber attack. But I think that that has been at the front of my mind or back of my mind ever since October 7th, that they're going to need another 9, 11, a new Pearl Harbor.
B
A new new Pearl Harbor.
C
How are they going to restart that momentum? Well, how did this whole thing get started October 7th? October 7th was a stand down order. And that pretext has been the rolling justification for everything. Lebanon, Gaza, the Houthis, Iran, the whole enchilada. So what, what it clearly suggests is that there's going to be another little triggering event, another little pretext where they' get another momentum. Let me get your dead reckoning. Does Israel hit itself or do they hit us? I think they hit us or Europe.
B
Okay, us or Europe. What do you think about that being hyperbolic there? Or do you think serious concerns based on what you've seen in the counterterrorism world?
C
Well, this war is existential for the Israelis. So I think we have to just recognize that and to think, you know, would they thrive in the chaos? Would they be able to continue their overall mission by having us get attacked or another terrorist attack? We can't take that off the table. We can't rule it out and we can't let anyone shout at us and say like that's a conspiracy theory. These are things that we should consider, especially when we're looking at a air quotes here, ally like Israel, who basically has, you know, lied to us to get us into this war. We really have to start being much more skeptical with what they're telling us. And we have to turn a very skeptical eye towards them and towards everybody for that matter. As a matter of fact. And we've had a very hard time institutionally doing that with the Israelis. And I think if the Israelis believed that we were going to extricate ourselves from this conflict, I think that there would be an element within Israel that would say, hey, we should look at some course of action that gets the Americans to recommit to this conflict. So I wouldn't take anything off the table and we need to be not trusting and doing much more verification.
A
Now the American Zionist messaging tells us, for instance, there's Ben Shapiro saying, if you think that AIPAC had anything to do with Thomas Massie's loss, then you're an idiot. Israel is not involved here. They're not, you know, the main stage of everything, of all foreign policy. But at the same time, today I'm reading the New York Post and the Mosque shooting in San Diego. The guy killed Muslims, but they're saying really he was anti Semitic. Mostly it was an anti Jewish mission. So you can have it both ways. We're involved in everything, but we're not. Let's listen to what Ben Shapiro had to say about this foreign influence.
C
Massie himself is out there saying that Israel is trying to buy his seat in Congress. Again, my dude, like this. This tactic is one of the dumbest tactics. I just have to say. It's. It's such an incredibly. It's a tactic made for stupid people. And the reality is that people who are pro Israel do not like Thomas Massie because Thomas Massie has engaged in every conspiracy theory it is possible to engage in and has made common cause with the most anti Israel people. That's true. But the reason that Thomas Massie is actually in trouble is because the Trump administration has decided to oppose him on the basis of completely other issues. And so the usual game that is now played right now on the right in the very podcast to Stand, right, the game that is played is there will be a critique that has nothing to do with Israel. And the first thing you do is you claim that it's about Israel.
B
Okay? But then APEC tweets right after the election to reaffirm their involvement. Ed Gallerain's victory in Kentucky and Clay Fuller's win in Georgia ensures two outspoken pro Israel voices are positioned to fill seats previously held by outspoken detractors Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Our community was proud to help pro Israel candidates win these races. Right. Okay. And then even Haaretz in Israel newspaper headlines. This is the most consequential Republican primary for Israel and it's happening in Kentucky. That's a Israeli newspaper, but you're an idiot, Joe, I guess if you think that Israel or the Israel lobby had anything to do with Thomas Massie losing in Kentucky. What do you think?
C
Yeah, I mean, Ben Shapiro, I know he gets a lot of traction by, you know, claiming everybody else is kind of dumb. He's super smart. But AIPAC didn't help him out there when they tweeted right afterwards that, like, yeah, this was us, we did it. I mean, all this stuff is verifiable. You can look it up, you can see which super PACs, you can see the donors for the most part. There's a lot of. It still has to come out later on in July when the super pacs are done doing their filings. But I mean, to say that the pro Israel lobby didn't have Anything to do with Massey's loss last night is just absurd on its face. So, yeah, now they're yelling at us for noticing, while at the same time they brag about it. So the only good thing I would say here, the only silver lining, I mean, I think there's a few silver linings, but really, so much of this now is out there. It's exposed. People who don't follow politics even very closely, they're aware of it now as well. So I do think, I'm not sure if it's, you know, if it's going to run out of steam towards the midterms, towards 28, or if it's going to take a little bit longer with, you know, the baby boomer generation phasing out. But this, this campaign that AIPAC and the pro Israel lobbyists had, they're going to have to change their tactics because what they're doing right now, I think they're in the final throes of it, which is another reason why they just went all out on Massey's race just, you know, a couple days ago.
A
And so maybe you can share your thoughts about it, because we've had two days now. Yesterday, Clayton was apoplectic. Today he can string together a sentence with more optimism. How are you feeling?
C
Obviously, it's a bummer. I mean, it's hard to feel super energized about it. I was really looking forward to Massie winning and kind of sending a message to the establishment, but, I mean, it took a record amount of money to actually put down Massie. And in doing so, they made him even more of a national name than he already was. I mean, the clips from his victory speech are going viral all over social media. And if you look at the demographic breakdown, too, I mean, Massie, he did very, very well with the people that are going to be voting for decades into the future. So that, that gives me a lot of optimism. Again, you know, as long as, unfortunately, as long as voters can have, voters will vote based on how many ads are on TV and how many mailers are in the mailbox and not do just a little bit of research, we are going to have this issue. But I mean, if you just look at the demographic breakdown right there, if we can continue to get people to vote, you know, and when I say young, it's actually like under the age of 55 to, to vote and to consistently get out to the ballot box, we're going to do very, very well. The high propensity primary voters that typically are a little bit Older and are in the baby boomer generation, are consuming, you know, Fox News and, and just mainstream media. They, they won the day because that's the demographic that tends to vote in primaries heavily. So if we can do more activism to engage that, that younger base right there, we're going to start getting results that I money is going to be able to defeat.
B
Right. It seems like this strategy of claiming that you're anti Semitic, if you somehow speak out against the Israel lobby, it doesn't seem to be holding among the young people. To your point, 82% of the young vote went to Massie, the boomer sort of Fox News viewers who are now hitting 80 years old, that 65 to 80 range. Those people are aging out. And those are the people that voted for Ed Gowrane, particularly if you believe those numbers. Congressman Ron Paul, friend of the show, Legend, Legend Congressman Ron Paul tweeted out was massey2000 twentied because there are quite a few anomalies now pouring in as Internet sleuths look through the mail in ballots at the last minute. These weird anomalies with this election. That's Congressman Ron Paul saying, was he 2020? What do you think? I mean, and to me, obviously you were in counterterrorism, looking at the United States of America specifically. If there was like massive election rigging in Kentucky, would this cross your desk?
C
Not in the National Counterterrorism center, it wouldn't. It's domestic. And so this would primarily be the FBI. I mean, any place where there's mail in ballots and there's machines that we can't see the code in. I think the American people from both sides of the aisle should just demand a new system because when you have the mail in ballots. I'm originally from Washington State. That's where I ran for Congress. We can't even vote in person out there. It's all mail in. It is a terrible system. So I think just in general, it is good and right for us to question the mail in votes. It's good and right for us to question the machine tabulation. Because when you get down in the meat and potatoes of like, how is my mail in ballot even like verified? How do they count it? How do these tabulations on the machines work? It's all smoke and mirrors. It's almost impossible for us to get straight answers. And there's very few people that are looking over the shoulder of those who are, you know, behind the scenes doing the tabulation. And a lot of times a lot of these states, I don't know Kentucky in detail, but a lot of the tabulations that's happening in most states, it's machines and it's algorithms. So even the people that are there in the polling station, they're not really able to even verify this. So we have major issues still in this country of election integrity.
A
Now, something that continues to baffle me is the headlines around, oh, let's say Hillary Clinton's loss or Donald Trump's loss is that it was foreign interference in the election. It was Russia, it was China, it was Iran on. And yet we have now proof of foreign intervention. Foreign intervention in Thomas Massie's election, and there are no headlines about it. It's totally fine. We know that it was money and it was bought armies that helped to push El Ghellarrain over the finish line. And where is the. I mean, maybe I'll ask you from a official perspective, you know, is it something that would be tracked by intelligence
C
in terms of the foreign interference? Certainly. I mean, there's entire divisions. There was an entire division for quite some time that was looking at the foreign interference. Especially, look, the Democrats did this when everyone believed that Russia had interfered in our elections. But it still is something that the intelligence community would look at if there was foreign interference. Unfortunately, with the American system, where the money is really, really hard to track, the money from the super pacs is really challenging. We get into a really weird situation too, with dual citizen. I mean, a lot of folks that are very pro Israel, they have Israeli citizenship and they have American citizenship as well. And because they're Americans, they have American citizenship, they can give an unlimited amount of money to super PACs. I mean, most famously, the Adelson's, Miriam Adelson, she's an Israeli citizen. She's also an American citizen. She can give hundreds of millions of dollars to super PACs. I mean, that's absolute insanity in my view. Getting a fix for that would be complicated because of some of the rulings by the Supreme Court. But I think going forward in our country, this is something that we really need look at and decide who the American people are good with being able to contribute money, and should there be a limit on that? And that's going to be a dicey conversation because there's a liberty issue there where, like, your money is your speech and you can spend it however the heck you want if you're a free American citizen. But that kind of makes our elections the Wild West. And we really just saw that play out in Massey's election.
A
But are there Any other countries that are doing, do we have wealthy Russians that are influencing elections? Do we have wealthy Chinese knees?
C
You know, I think if we did, it would be all over the news. I mean, can you imagine if, if a, if the Russian newspapers the day after the 2016 election were like, yeah, that was us. We, we got that Trump elected or whatever. I mean, we would never hear the end of it. You know, probably half of Trump's family would have been arrested. I mean, but here we, here we have major publications in Israel saying, yeah, we did that. We got, we got, we took out Massey and then the apac, you know, saying that we helped take out Massey. So, so it is a, to say it's a double standard doesn't even do it justice. It's just absolutely absurd.
B
There's something that really bothers me and I want to ask you because in the counterterrorism world, and this is really troubling, there are a number of American journalists who've been on these hit lists, these kill lists, obviously in Ukraine. But also this came to light. A former IDF unit 8200 soldier just in an interview you yesterday talking to Mario Narfal that Tucker Carlson is number one on Mossad Israeli intelligence targets lists like would. And I'm going to play the clip, but I want to get you to respond to this idea that American journalists would be on Israeli target lists. And is there any discussion inside of the counterterrorism office? Hey, maybe you want to take those people off your list. Watch this. The number one person on their list
E
by far is Tucker Carl Carlson.
B
He is considered enemy number one by Israeli service.
E
Touch him.
B
I'm not saying they'll touch him.
E
I haven't heard that they would. But that's where if there's one person who's being monitored carefully and there are
B
plans and contingencies for, it'll be Tucker Carlson. Candace Owens may be number two. I think they take it less seriously.
E
But still, those are two people I've heard Israeli intelligence people mention. Which is, which is bad.
B
Is that something that you would discuss in your. I'm just curious why there wouldn't be more of an outrage and demand to have Americans removed from these lists or why are you doing this? Why is Marco Rubio not standing up at a podium yelling about something like this, even on the Ukraine side on the Miravets website targeting journalists?
C
I would just say in general, because we have a very unrealistic relationship with Israel. We in the US Tend to think of the Israelis, like, literally as our partner. In the same way that the five eyes countries are. And there's issues with the five eyes, whole different conversation. But we will basically take what they say almost like verbatim and just say, okay, this is coming from the Israelis. They have the same goals that we do. And we're not going to talk about some of the uncomfortable stuff like what you just played there in that clip. Because the mentality is because the Israelis give us so much good intelligence. And if you even say what myself and a few others, not just me, there's been people over the years who've said this, this when we say, hey, look, the Israelis probably do give us some good stuff, but they're still a partner that has their own agenda, their own goals. And then we really fail to assess just how vital American support is to the Israelis. And so if you just put yourselves in the Israeli shoes, there's no length that you wouldn't go to to make sure that you don't get the support from America. But we fail to like accurately assess that. We're usually pretty good about playing the, the adversary in other scen, but we have these big blinders up when it comes to the Israelis. It's almost forbidden to think, like to even say out loud, hey, do you think maybe the Israelis gave us that piece of so called intelligence to influence us as opposed to inform us? Or hey, do we think, you know, the Israelis might be aggressively spying on us? Do we think that they might do some other kind of operation like those things are just not really. That discussion is just not tolerated within the US Intelligence community right now. That is something culturally that we just have to change because we do not have a very real on how the Israelis view us and just the lengths they'll go to to keep the relationship as it is right now.
E
Wow.
A
Well, now we see that the Justice Department has launched this advisory committee on antisemitism. What they say it is, is just a group of people who will advise the Department of Justice on combating antisemitism. The Department of Justice is constantly posting about anti Semitism. They don't seem to need a new group of advisors, nor are they targeting any other anti discrimination programs for any other group. And I'm very confused because it feels very much like the Biden administration's protection of transgender people. But now we have it again for only one group of people. And you know, this is something that will be done on American taxpayer dollars. The only thing I can think of is that they want to re stigmatize antisemitism because it doesn't hurt anymore as a label. I think back to the beginning of my career as a journalist, and I was terrified of that word. Now it's like a B. Like get away. You know, it's. It's. You shoo it away. You don't pay any mind to it. What do you think?
C
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, a lot of it, too. Just almost seems like at this point, because we have so many other issues right now in the country, we have so many other crises for them be focusing on this. It's just like, okay, is this a statement where we just have to. We have to say this. Did someone, you know, is someone guaranteed the APAC money next time in order to say this? Because, like, in terms of what we should be prioritizing right now, someone having their feelings hurt about any kind of speech, like, obviously that's against the constitution. But again, like, how is this even a priority? So I think your theory makes sense because they know that the whole anti Semitism insult or whatever, it's just kind of rolling off people now. And so now they want to put some sort of a legal label on it. So people are just. They're back to being scared. Like, you better straighten up and fly right and not ask about why APAC just spent tens of millions of dollars against Massie.
D
Right.
B
Joe Kent, great to see you. I guess we're also sort of ruminating over Tucker did a show yesterday saying there's a positive sign out of this. And he was trying to talk me off a ledge yesterday. Yesterday. Like, he's like, I promise you, this is the bottom. This is the bottom. It goes up from here. And I just. I'm trying to see it that way. I'm trying to be a glass half full kind of person. And I hope that this was a major tipping point moment for Americans to see the amount of foreign influence money that poured into this election, and we will not stand for it. But I don't know, what's your sense. I'll get you out of here on this. What you see in the midterms and maybe over the next, you know, election cycle or so.
A
Yeah, glass hef him deer half full.
C
I'm going to go with Tucker and be a glass half full. I think we basically, if we're going to stay in this fight in which we have to, then we have to be glass half full. I mean, again, if you just look at the numbers, like the baby boomers, like, that's my parents. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see them go. I love my parents. I love a lot of boomers. However, they are being phased out, and the younger generation, Gen X and down, they understand everything that we're saying, probably at a much deeper level, and they're passionate about it. So I think if we can drive voter turnout with those younger demographics, educate them about how to vote in primaries, we're going to be in a much better spot. And to Tucker's point, too, this was just so up in everyone's face to take a guy that no one's ever really heard of before, to have the Secretary of War, literally during a war, come out to the district to campaign for him. Plus, however much it was 50 million, 60 million, we'll find out later on. I do think that they kind of went all in because they knew this is their last hoorah, the midterms. I think we're in trouble. And I think that's just very basic math. If you have an R by your name in the midterms, everyone's going to associate the price of the pump and the price of the grocery store with the Iran war and with President Trump. And so I think it's going to be pretty bleak for the Republicans. I'm not a. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a fan of the Democrat Party, so I hope I'm wrong on that. But I think the midterms are going to be bleak and hopefully that serves as a wake up call. But, you know, we're probably going to live through. Through a little bit more of this. But, but I agree with Tucker. I think, I think we're heading in a right direction as long as we. We keep speaking truth and we show that we have integrity and we show that we truly care about the country.
B
You know, from your mouth to God's ears. Joe, great to see you. Thank you so much for your time and your expertise. We really appreciate it.
C
Thanks, guys. Great to see you.
A
Yeah, you too.
B
And thanks for his positivity as well. I need it.
A
Yeah. Are you feeling better?
B
Feeling better. I know. I, you know, so, yeah, I feel better. Go ahead, Philip.
D
Well, you know what? I. I can't. I'm sitting here thinking about the, The. I'm in a job.
B
Yeah.
D
Like, so. Okay. So, well, but, but I'm like. I'm like, okay, so, you know, killing a. Killing a foreign leader, that's. That's fairly easy. You just throw the explosives over there and. And if you get the right spot, they die. But, like, what leverage do we have in Iran to force them, like, to force a president. President, like, I understand Venezuela because we had, you know, gunships, and they had, you know, nothing. But, like, what leverage do we have over.
B
Well, the leverage is.
A
Well, Ahmadinejad is popular. I don't think they would have to.
B
But the leverage is disruption, you know, and you've got. And so by continued bombing campaigns, trying to have these hardliners who are trying to form a government, and you're. You're constantly bombing and pushing a wedge between them with the CIA and others, and you're funding one half, and you're trying to, you know, it's disruption, and it's something they've tried for decades to overthrow governments and cause chaos. And then the idea, though, is you hope that the people will rise up, right? The people are going to rise up. They're tired of this. They're going to overthrow the shackles of their government because the US Is bombing them. And that has never worked.
A
So the thing that I actually quite envy about Iranians is they are quite split on their politics. Not everyone supports the Ayatollah. What they universally oppose is foreign intervention, particularly Western imperialism. So they are united on that front, that the west will not dictate our politics. We're gonna fight it out between ourselves, and it's not gonna be solved by anyone else. I wish to God we would do that. We should do that. Yes. We can fight about women's rights and, you know, school choice and all of that cultural stuff, but we should be united the way they are against foreign intervention. Wouldn't that be pretty great?
B
Yeah. Here's Alexita. Thank you for your super chat. Says you think 20 million for the. For the APEC money was just to. For ads. You believe that? I think speaking to someone else on our. On, you know, in the chat room or whatever. But no, we don't believe that. $32 million of foreign influence money was not just for ads. In fact, a lot of the. And they're not even published in their own name. A lot of these ads are run through intermediaries, of course.
A
Influencer campaigns, bot armies, paid podcast. We talk about the methods all the time here.
B
Yeah, it's not just for ads. It's also for influencer campaigns where they're all on the same message. The sort of the. The Epstein Binder crowd, they come out, you know, the podcast crowd, they come out, Comes out and smashes Massey almost immediately. All you basically rallying around the same message, essentially. All right, we got more news to get to here. We're going to talk about the energy shock and maybe more fallout from this Massey Massey election as well with Chris Martinson. Very excited to talk to Chris. He's a futurist. I mean I follow him closely on X and I think he always has some of the keener insights. Very excited to have him on the show for the first time.
A
But first, but first we want to tell you about our friends at IQ Bar. They are our exclusive snack partner for redacted and we really love them. We use the not just the hydration packs but we also carry the bars around quite a bit. So check out their buffet of offerings. I think you'll be happy you did. They have, let's see, coffee packs, hydration packs, mushroom coffee. If you'd like to try out what they've got and then learn what you'd like to commit to, you can get the ultimate Sampler pack. It's a great way to try all of IQ Bars, products and flavors. You'll get nine IQ Bars, eight IQ Sticks and four IQ Joe Sticks. All IQ Par products are clean label certified entirely free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs and artificial ingredients. My my favorites are the almond bar and the blood orange hydration packs. Those are the ones I carry all the time. It's a smarter snack choice. Plenty of plant protein, tons of fiber and no added sugar. If you'd like to try them out, text redacted to 64000. You'll get 20% off your order plus free shipping. They have over 20,000 five star reviews and counting because more people than ever are fueling their busy lifestyles with IQ Bars, brain and body boosting bars, hydration mixes and mushroom coffees. So try it out for yourself. Text redacted to 64000 well, are we
B
about to face the largest energy shock in US history? Our next guest says that's exactly what we have in store for us and people are largely ignoring the story or they're trying to cover it up and with some fancy math and trying to hide all of it. Nobody who lives in a real world can basically continue to ignore this as you see it, price at the pump, food prices, et cetera across the board. Chris Martenson is an economic researcher and futurist specializing in energy and resource depletion. He's the co founder of Peak Prosperity.com and really one of the keenest intellects on X. Which is saying a lot because there are quite a few keen intellects. There's also quite a few dolts on X but Chris is at the top of the list on there. Chris, great to have you on the show.
E
Thank you. Thank you. It's so good to be here with both of you and real pleasure to be on.
B
It's our pleasure. There's a lot of topics and I'd love for you to tell us what you see right now, what you would love to talk about. But at the heart of it for me is obviously this sort of so called peace agreement that's floating around out there over the past few hours, that there is going to be some sort of framework in place. We just had Joe Kent on who said he is a glass half full kind of guy. He's hopeful about it. But I sense from your tweets that you're not buying what's being sold to us about this peace agreement, which seems to give up almost everything from the Iranian side and sort of hand it over to the United States side. What do you make of peace that might open oil flows again in the Strait of Hormuz?
E
Well, it's this simple. 73 days ago, we had Trump for the first time come out and say the war is over. And almost there's been this periodicity that people have noticed, particularly people in the markets, that Trump has these market moving sort of statements that come out always, you know, a deal is near, Iran has just died to fold and you know, we own the strait. And every time it seems to dump oil and move markets. So there's a whole component to this which, you know, has a side story to it. Here's the deal though. The United States, within five minutes of doing the decapitation strike, was subject to suffering some of its worst military losses since World War II. Right. We 14 bases around the region got dialed in within two weeks. The United States was kind of forbidding somehow private satellite companies from releasing actual satellite photos because it would have been embarrassing. And ever since March 2, the strait has been effectively closed and it's remains effectively closed. So a winning country would be in charge of the strait. Trump just said we control the strait just today. And it's not true because if we did, there'd be ships going through it that aren't passing through. So here's the deal. Iran has a lot of leverage here and they've been preparing for this for 40 years. Right. And they've built tunnels and put all their things under deep mountains, you know, and all their military assets. And it turned out we were largely unable to meaningfully deflect Iran from its. And his strategy was to use different levels and layers of missiles, ranging from relatively crude to highly sophisticated missiles. It used up its, say, you know, crappier stuff first, and then it moved into its more sophisticated materials later. And it showed a remarkable ability, Natalie and Clayton, to hit what it wanted to hit. I mean, with extreme precision. Okay, and then we came into the ceasefire deal and. And Iran's whole strategy at this point, which I totally understand is just run out the clock. Every day that the strait remains closed is another 13 million barrels of oil and oil products that aren't making it to market. And this is an extraordinary shock. We can get into that in a minute. So when I see these things you asked about the peace deal, so the one that just got floated today, I actually think it came off of an obscure telegram channel and the Axiom angle seems to be dead. So they pulled this thing up and it was just a wish list of. It was everything the US wanted. Right. Iran gives up complete control of the strait. It, you know, folds, it doesn't get any money, you know, all kinds of stuff. And Iran has been very clear. They've always said, look, we want. We're going to have control of the Strait. That's done deal. You're going to have to pay us some reparations, you know, and we can discuss that later. We're not giving up our nuclear material. And. And, oh, yeah, you're going to have to unfreeze all the sanctions and release our money. So they haven't wavered from those conditions since, ever so far. And that's all I can tell you from this point. I don't know what's actually going on, you know, with the negotiators inside, but taking Trump's statements, we're winning, they're losing, and that's not actually what the facts on the ground say.
A
It's very frustrating to see oil prices react to what seems like a meme, because we don't have any official source of this peace deal, and yet we've seen slight movement downwards towards price of oil. And so what are we to make of that? Because the constriction of supply has not ended. It's only based on poof. A belief system of social media.
E
It's astonishing. It's astonishing. So I don't know how we got. Because remember 2022, the Ukrainian war kicks off and the world was worried about a 3 million barrel per day potential shortfall. That's a 3 million barrels per day. And oil prices shot up to 120 bucks a barrel and all that. And here we are an order of magnitude beyond that in terms of actual impact. Secondarily, you're right, Natalie. Every time Trump tweets something, oil just gets slammed. Today it got slammed for another 5 bucks. Went from 101 all the way down to like 96 because of this tweet string that came out. And what's amazing is, so you have that. You have the Tweet moving oil 5, 6, 7%, usually to the downside. And on the other side, you have Fatih Birol, the executive of the International Energy Agency, saying, this is the worst energy shock forever. We're running out quickly. You have top commodity analysts at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs. You've got Jeff Curry out of Carlisle saying, wow, we are weeks away from tank bottoms. You have Exxon CEO, Chevron CEO saying the same sorts of things. Basically, everybody who's anybody who really knows this business is just running up the red flag saying, wow, we are like weeks away from imminent disaster. And that doesn't cause anything to happen to the oil price. But, oh, Trump tweets out, you know we're winning, and bang, five bucks, right? I'm highly suspicious. This, this isn't organic.
B
You're a futurist. I mean, you look at this data more closely than just about anybody. So I trust your opinion on this implicitly. When you're listening to Jeff Curie, you're listening to all of these individuals, but you're looking at the data. What can we expect over the next few weeks? What is the truth here?
E
The truth is that the simplest, most elegant chart in all of economics is the PQ chart. Price, quantity, quantity and demand. Right. So there's supposed to be this relationship. If demand is here and supply is here, you need prices, not to make more supply come out of the ground right away, but you need prices to rise so that demand comes down. Now, we've been holding prices at a level where demand remains really, really high. And the way we've been covering that up, we in the United States, principally last week, for the last reported week, 17.8 million barrels left the United States of crude oil came out of our strategic Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or as I sometimes call it now, our strategic political reserve, and also commercial stocks. And that's our seed corn, that's our national. That's what we run our country on. And we're now just selling it at below market rates. So that I think for political reasons, we can make this seem like it's not as bad a thing as it
B
is how much is left in the oil reserves and how Long can we keep up that charade? Because I've seen you talk about this sort of moving paper around is not enough to hide the real story here. And I find that fascinating.
E
Well, you go until, you know, theoretically you go until you run out. Now what's that? Where's running out? So we have two major stockpiles right now that we track pretty carefully. One is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's four separate caverns along the Texas, Louisiana borders near the Gulf. And then we have this big stockpile at Cushing, Oklahoma. Oklahoma. The big Cushing terminals. Cushing's at 25 million barrels right now. Sounds like a lot problem. Its operational minimum is 20 million barrels. It can't go below that because now the pipes are below that level. Like 20 million barrels is what it takes just to sort of like fill the system so it can operate. So we only have 5 million barrels left there. The salt caverns that hold our spr. Different kind of a thing. It's hard to say because these aren't giant holes in the ground. Well, they kind of are, but you fill it with oil. But to get the oil back out again, you don't just suck the oil down, you pump water in from below and you float the oil up. Problem is these are salt caverns and salt dissolves in water, it doesn't dissolve in oil. So as we pump water in there, it's doing some damage. There's only so much you can pump in there before. It really would be inadvisable to go any higher than that. And so this is hard data to come by. But, but for sure, if they say there's 374 million barrels left in there, it's something less than that that we can actually realistically draw out without actually physically damaging our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Different from China, China built above ground storage tanks. They have some underground. But theirs is, is like if they say they have 1.3 billion barrels in reserve, that's pretty tappable for the most part. We have a different situation here. So best guess, we have about 60 days until we hit tank bottoms here, tops.
A
Gosh. And so what do you think that this shock will look like for us at home? We've had experts on saying the Big Mac index is going to go up upwards of 30. Can you imagine a $30 Big Mac? What do you think?
E
Well, there's this really famous chart circulating right now and it shows we went through what was called a double hump inflation in the 70s. Right. So from 73 to 78, there was this Big bad round. Then, oh no, from 79 to 82, there was this next hump and that was even worse. Now that second hump went up to about 14% inflation back then. And see if any of this rhymes. We had this thing called the oil embargo from the OPEC nations. And so the Arab oil embargo was a cause because oil went up a lot in price. All of a sudden we had this little thing called the Vietnam War. So there was high deficit spending by the U.S. government. And so you get these twin forces and it creates, created that double hump of inflation, almost in a perfect rhyme this time. And so I actually think this next hump of inflation, which has already started, we just had our producer price index, the PPI came out, it's at 6%. That means in three to four months the CPI will also be at 6%. But the actual reading for the last month was 1.4% for the month. You annualize that that out and that's closer to 16% yearly inflation. So look at that at 6%, that's the blended rate. But the single month of April came in at 1.4% just for that one month. So if that continues, hey, here we go. So this is the ticking clock. So here's how all this pieces in Trump can't just sit here and wait for Iran to drag its heels forever and ever. Iran knows that that's all it has to do. Get close to a peace deal, walk away, get close, walk away. Promise you're going to get closer. Walk away, walk away. Because I think Trump legitimately wants out of this quagmire. But all Iran has to do is drag this out a couple more months. And now we're not just up against the wall, we're now responsible for creating what's a global catastrophe. A giant global economic depression would probably be the right word for it. So if you can't let Iran wait, what do you do? Well, either you're going to have to give stuff up and negotiate. Like a negotiation means you don't come in and dictate terms. That's what the US has been to trying, trying to do. Here's the 15 point plan, take it or leave it, or we're gonna bomb you back to end your civilization, kind of. That's our language. If we want to get out of this with negotiating, it's gonna have to be negotiation. Hey, we give up some stuff, you give up some stuff, nobody walks away totally happy. But you get some stuff, we get some stuff. Problem that makes us look weak. It makes it really elevates Iran. You know, they suddenly, you know, actually took the bully on and won. And I don't think that constitutionally American, I mean, from an ego standpoint, I'm not sure we have the people in positions of power right now to do that. Second problem, you can't bomb them and get more escalation is not going to get us anywhere. Iran has already said that. Real worry here. So listen, this is where I would put out my most urgent warning to all my followers and you should do the same if we do attack again. Iran has very clearly said if you do this, we're coming after the rest of the Gulf coast countries. The GC energy infrastructure assets, the east west pipeline across Saudi Arabia with the port at Yanbu goes out, the Omani pipeline goes out, and we're going to close the Babel Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. And that's it. That's it. Now we suddenly go from 13 million barrels a day missing to 25 million barrels a day missing. And if they damage those in a way that would take months or years to fix, this is now an absolute, unmitigated, mitigated disaster. And let me paint how much. If we took 25 million barrels a day of crude oil out of our equation and then we look back in history and ask the question, when was the last time we were burning that much less oil? The answer is about 2010, when the world economy was 36% smaller than it is today. Wow. That would be the minimum impact. Great Depression was about a 20% hit. So we're talking something worse than we've seen at a time of the highest debt, highest indebtedness, highest deficits. La la la. Right. So we're not coming into this from a really strong position financially monetarily at this point. And that's how these pieces come together. We got talked into a super quagmire and I honestly don't see a way out of this. And maybe I'm not clever enough, but it's bad or worse. Those are our choices as a nation right now.
B
Wow. When do you think this will hit? First of all, I guess I should say, do you think people are probably. There seems to be a lot of ostriching going on, people burying their heads in the sand about this.
E
I would say most people are unprepared and a lot of people don't want to know. You know, actively ostriching, I think that's the right way to put it because it's a lot It's a lot to take in. I get it. This is. You know, intellectually, I think most people can handle it, but emotionally, that's where it gets.
B
Yeah, you got kids you got to take. You know, you got to get your kids to dance class at night. You know, you've got to take your son to swim practice, and you got to put food on the table, and you're running around, you're working. Hardworking Americans who watch this show and have small businesses and they're busy, and to have to sit down and sort of sit there for 30 minutes and really think, oh, my gosh, in the next 60 days, everything could change for us unless we're prepared. What does that preparation look like to you?
E
Well, for me, it means first thing you do is the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of need, needs, right? Food, shelter, safety, warmth. Right? And so what I've been doing personally is I bought some more ecoflow lithium batteries, so I'll be. And I've got a solar system, so I'll be able to at least have electricity for sure, you know, which can run some things. I bought an electric car. Never thought I'd be one of those guys, but it plugs in my solar panels. I've been thinking this is. Something like this is coming for a long time. So I actually live on a. On a small gentleman's farm here. But I believe in growing my own food, taking really good care of my neighbors, forming local relationships to as much depth as I can, because I really do truly believe if this gets as bad as it could, you know, we're all going to be. Our neighbors are going to be our most important assets. So really, it's a fundamental shift in believing that the systems will be there for you and understanding that maybe you get a little bit of your freedom back by taking care of as much of that as you can. I don't say, go 100%, grow your own food. That's impossible, right. Unless you become a subsistence farmer. But if you can grow 5% of your own food, if you had to grow 50%, going from 5% to 50% is easy compared to starting from zero. Nobody wants to start from zero in this story, right? If you have to. But if you can't grow food, you know, maybe you got local farmers, develop relationships with them. I'm really at kind of at that level. It's really. It's very basic. It's like food and energy is where I'm really focused, because we talk about oil, oil products. That's the big thing in the Gulf, but it's much more than that. It's a story of sulfur, which is a story of fertilizer as well. And also the fertilizer directly in the form of urea. Oh. It's also an aluminum story. Wait, it's also got helium. Yeah, it's natural gas, too. Like, there's so many things that got impacted from this. It's dizzying and it's paralyzing. I totally, totally get it.
A
Yeah. Well, thank you for that sobering read. You know, I think about my son, who is in his. He's 15 and thinking about getting a summer job, and I think, how are you gonna climb this ladder? We really have just not. I know, made it easy for you. And my heart is broken for where they need to start. I feel so guilty for the world we're putting them into. That's not a question. I'm just sharing.
E
I just had the same experience. I was talking with my youngest. My youngest daughter, and she's struggling to find a job right now because the field she's looking in is flooded with people who just got booted out from AI, you know, taking over positions. So she's up against people with decades more experience who are willing to work for peanuts because they're really desperate, and she's just trying to get started. And so, you know, this is where we've. This is where we've gone as a nation. So here, let me be my best glass half full kind of guy. We have to go through these pains, I think, so that. That we can straighten up and fly. Right? You know, what's that old saying, like, hard times create good men, and good men create easy times, and easy times create weak men. Right? But we're there, right? And weak men create hard times. So, I mean, look at this. What we're doing with, like, just AI, which. It has an energy component. That's why I analyze it. So much energy is going into these things. They're boxes. They're basically. I call them toasters. They don't make toast. You know, they just literally pour electricity and they make heat and cat videos. And we're doing that at a pace where we have no idea, not even having the national discussion about how people who are displaced, who no longer have a role in society, what we're going to do with them, we just sort of shrug and go, I guess, you know, sucks to be you. It's awful, right? And so this is why I'm really excited to have these conversations. And I think, listen, if we have the Hard times. We'll get back, we'll find the good people, people again. I mean, it's kind of why I'm pretty distraught over the mass he lost because he had integrity. He didn't have to like everything he. He said. I liked almost most of what he said because he was for the country against deficits, against wars, all the stuff I believe in. So ideologically I liked him. But more than that, he had integrity. And Washington D.C. took one look at that and said, we have no use for a person with that characteristic here. We're going to replace you with somebody whose own SEAL team members hate it, you know, because he's our kind of guy. Right. With outside funding.
D
So.
E
So I'm hopeful that good people get to rise up again. And we, we're gonna. But we're gonna have to do some rebuilding in this country, no question.
B
Yeah, you're right about that. And we need. We need that strength more than ever right now. Chris, great to see you. The website is peak prosperity.com. check out your latest episode, by the way, on called the Wake Up Call. Oil and AI. Time for some soul searching. I like that. So check it out. New episode that just published called a Wake Up Call. Thank you so much, Chris. Great to see you.
A
It was a pleasure.
B
Yeah, real pleasure having you on the show. We'd love to have you back.
E
Yeah, thank you. I'd love to be back.
A
Thank you so much.
B
Appreciate it.
A
All right, you guys, food, shelter, warmth, work on that this weekend. Don't get drunk with hot dogs. You have your assignment with hot dogs.
B
Get some. Yeah, make sure you get some. Some backup food. And I, I like what he said too. He doesn't have to grow all of your own food, but, like, making sure that, like, you have some of it, you know, that you can support yourself with. And then also, you know, maybe have some meal preps that you have like on storage as well that you can. That you can have ready to go. Like, we have meal prep stuff ready to go for the next, you know, few months or like 3, 6 months of storage ready to go. So.
A
Yeah.
B
All right, we take your super chats and rumble rants. We got a bunch of people here in the comments. Comments with a bunch of super chats. We'll take those in just a moment.
A
But first, first we want to tell you about our friends over at Ghostbed, because you don't realize how much your mattress affects your life until you sleep on something engineered for recovery, not just for softness. Now, we noticed it pretty quickly that after tossing around and, you know, sleeping hot that if you have a bed that's meant to prevent that, Whoa, do you sleep so much better? Because Ghostbed doesn't just build mattresses like furniture. They build engineered sleep systems. These beds are designed for relief and recovery. Your body should be healing while you sleep, not just fighting for comfort all night long. And if you're waking up stiff, feeling hot, constantly flipping over, trying to get cooler, even taking something before bed, hoping tonight will be better, well, then, honestly, it might be your mattress. So one thing that we really like is you get 101 nights to try it at home. You can actually experience the difference yourself, risk free. Ghostbed is offering our audience their lowest price of the season plus an extra 10% off. So go to ghostbed.com redacted. Make sure you use that promo code when you check out redacted one more time. That's ghostbed.com redacted. The code is redacted. We want you to sleep better. Get here rested and recovered, covered when you come Back to redacted. Ghostbed.com I just bought a new sleep
B
book, by the way, about how important sleep is.
A
Yep.
B
Yeah, I need to remind myself of that. So I just bought this book.
A
Yeah, Because Clayton doesn't come to bed when I ask him to. We want to argue in front of people about how you play your switch.
B
I was. No, I was working on something last night. But anyway, on my laptop, I want
A
to go another round.
B
I should have gone to bed anyway. Yeah, you need to sleep. You need to sleep. We need those eight hours. All right. Hey, when we started redacted, there was definitely that moment of panic where you think, oh, my God, okay, are we crazy for doing this? What if nobody watches? What if the. This show completely flops? And, you know, now, of course, we've got over, you know, 3 million subscribers across all of our platforms. So thank you very much. But starting anything new as a business, a brand, a podcast, is a huge leap of faith. Right? That's why having the right, right tools matter. And today's episode is sponsored by Shopify. We built our entire store, our entire redacted store on Shopify. Shopify is the e commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And 10% of all E commerce in the United States now runs through Shopify. They make it incredibly easy to build a professional online store with ready to use templates that actually look great. You can be up and running in no time. Grim on our team, he does all of our graphic design. When we were launching the store. I said, you know, all right, what do we got to do here? And we decided to use Shopify. And he was able to get that store up and running in very little time. It took almost no time. And then of course, he was able to manipulate graphics and do what he needed to do on the back end. But we got that store up and running in no time. And he did a great job getting that launched. Everything is in one place. Inventory, payments, analytics, shipping. So you're not juggling five different platforms trying to run your business. So it's time to turn those what ifs into Cha Ching with Shopify. Today, sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com redacted. You know, we're in America. You know, you can start a business in an afternoon, right? You got an idea, you want to grow it. Don't let like creating a store get in the way of actually taking your idea to the marketplace. Shopify. Shopify.com redacted. Sign up for a one month trial period today. Shopify.com/redacted. All right, let's check out some of these super chats. Philip, what are your thoughts today?
D
Oh my. Where to begin? Well, I still, I still think, I think it's funny that when I was. Because I'd asked the question about what leverage do we have in around to install a new president? And then after listening to Chris Martinson, I was like, oh, Iran actually probably has enough leverage that they could install a new US President. Shutting down all the. Yeah, if we, if we hit that 25 million barrels a day missing, then, then, you know, when that pressure hits, that's when the torches and pitchforks come out.
B
Yeah.
D
So just that's my thoughts right now.
B
Guys in the comments, let us know, like, are you guys concerned right now about what happens in the next 60 days economically, you know, with, with these oil shocks, with what's going to happen to food stores and all of that and prices. Like, do you think that we're in just a state right now where we've got our heads buried in the sand? I just don't see. I certainly, I don't. I'm glad we're not seeing like panic buying, like people running up, buying crazy food stores right now? But I mean, I'll ask you guys, have you guys like stocked up on extra food to keep in a freezer, just even prep food to keep on hand in your garage or in, you know, in, in your basement space or whatever with extra meals ready to go just to protect your family? You Know, the thing is with America, like, we don't notice it because a lot of this stuff just happens over there all the time and it never really hits hard, hard here. And so I'm just hoping that people are heeding these warnings and just doing a little bit. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but just enough. Even having like a solar generator or something in the. As a backup to keep things running in the house in case you need to, or just having a little extra food on hand, you know, just some of those things. Or just like what Chris was talking about, some of those lithium batteries that are, that are able to be recharged and you know, on solar and things like that, that. So anyway, okay, let me take a look at some super chats here. Joe Kent for Secretary of Defense 2028. Yes, we are changing the name back to Defense, not War with Thomas Massie, President of the Patriot Party or whatever. It is not D or R Patriot Party. You know, the question is like, what happened to Elon Musk? Right? He was like a huge defender and supporter of the Massey. Whatever happened, like that support, was it in the, in the background? And he did, I don't know, like, I didn't hear much push from his side on that at all.
D
My, my personal belief is that he completed the grift he was after with the whole Doge fiasco and so he just doesn't really need to be a part of it anymore. Yeah, they got theirs, you know, now he's looking at what, a trillion dollar offer becoming a trillionaire with the, the IPO for SpaceX. Yeah, just take, take a bit more of our money.
B
Yeah. Did they even.
D
That's my thoughts.
B
What do they do with any of this? You know, the Doge money, where was it was spent, wasted, gone. Bystander syndrome says we're all going to die by starvation. Everyone panicked. That's all. Thanks. Thank you for your $2 donation. He's a glass half full kind of guy. Bystander syndrome. Thank you for your rumble rant. I mean, I'm always a positive person, but I do get scared. You know, I hate to admit this, but you think about it, right? Like, we all sort of take certain things for granted and you hear about, what is it, nine meals. Like we only have enough food kind of in grocery stores for up to like nine meals for people. You know, the trucks are constantly moving, right? So trucks are constantly showing up at the grocery stores bringing the new food. But what happens if that slows down dramatically? What does that look like? And Then you start to think, like, what would that look like if this actually happened at your house and you had solar panels or whatever and you're the only one that had lights on and then suddenly the entire neighborhood starts showing up at your house. What would we do? What would people do? I don't know, but I don't. I hope that it would be like a sign of resilience, you know, where you'd see a country comes together and like says enough is enough and stands together and supports each other. And maybe people meet their neighbors for the first time because they have to let them in their house to keep them warm. I don't know. But who knows? Clay and Natalie. Hey, Clay and beautiful Natalie. I'm mad because Massey, I'm not voting any anymore. Seriously. Thank you for your donation. I think a lot of people feel that way. When you feel like, does your vote even matter? They can just come in and manipulate this, these voting machines, the rigging, like these like last minute fake mail in ballots, where they come from. When you see what Massey has, and then suddenly 10,200 show up and Massey gets 10, 10,000 and a batch of 10,200 shows up at the last, last minute. It's hard not to feel just totally
D
have you followed at all this. I can't think of her name right off, but she was an ex girlfriend or at least one of the baby mamas of Elon Musk coming out saying that in the last election that he was telling her that he had basically something like a secret weapon basically for voting in that election. Not the massy one, but he was talking about the Trump election. He's got all these lasers in space and all of the stuff. And then she kind of like was laying some of that out. But then she, when people requested on it, she had, they have the texts and everything between them that he was basically saying. And now you can't verify what that secret weapon was. But it seemed like he, he at least had the ability to rig elections as kind of in some way, either through data or actual like intervention is what it sounded like she was saying. So maybe, maybe that's what happened to Elon Musk on Massey.
B
Who knows, right? But does anyone trust these elections anymore? I mean, it's hard to. It's. You guys let me know in the chat room. Do you guys trust these elections? I don't know. Let's see. Reno and the Reno Gazette report in June of 2025 that Nevada has 1.4 billion barrels of untapped oil along with 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Thank you for your five dollar super chat. I wonder if that's true or not. 1.4 billion. Laura, not Loomer says, are we starting a new party? You know, on yesterday's live show, Tucker had a pollster on him. I forget the gentleman. Gentleman's name. He said that. And to hear this from a pollster who looks at this very, very closely. Democrats versus Republicans, every district knows everything. And he was asked about that very question. He said, I think that we might be at that moment where we have to really look at a serious third party. I just don't buy it. I don't see how you would. It's. It would be a miracle to pull off starting a third party in this country. I always point out, like the Bull Moose Party, Theodore Roosevelt, he's president of the United States. He leaves office, then he runs on a third party ticket. The Bull Moose Party and one of the most popular presidents in American history cannot get elected on a third party ticket. I just don't see how. Ross Perot was as close as we ever got. And then of course, course, something very strange happened where he had to drop out, pull back, but he still got a large portion of the vote. That was as close as it came. Close as it came. So I don't know. I would love to see it. It's crazy to think like all these other countries have 50, 50 political parties. 100 political parties. I think there's 200 or something. Or 150 in 100. Russia. Let's see. We won't. We won't for. Because they already said not only will they attack assets the US Relies on, it will wipe Israel off the map. And Trump is owned by Israel. Thank you for that. Bystander syndrome says it's worse than all that. Redacted crew. Ask your guys. What do you guys think about our swap lines being extended to all allies, not just traditional western nations? It's going to explode our inflation. Thank you for that. I mean, how many of you guys think inflation in this country is skyrocketing? It's going to get much, much worse. Much worse. What would happen if they had same day voter registration. Thank you for, for your $1 rumble rant. Same day voter registration. I don't know. I mean, I think the prop. The heart of it is these machines. Absolutely. Brazilera Mia says the age bracket that voted for Massey speaks volumes. We are an ancient nation of voters stuck in the past. It is. It's true. It is true. 82% among the young people voted for him. Is that crazy? 82%. It's incredible. Who's calling me during a show? Some eight man, I get. I get so many stinking 800 numbers.
D
Oh, man. I had like. Was it yesterday or the day before where I had like four texts that day that just these random women that just got out of college and were looking for a man. And I was like, wow, how'd they get my number? And then I blocked them.
B
Four different girls from just out of college looking for a man, and they're calling you?
D
Yeah, and they texted me. I didn't realize I was still that popular on college campuses. I must have really made an impression back in 2010.
B
It's maybe because I signed you up for freshoutofcollege.com. appreciate that.
D
Yeah, put my name out there on sugardaddy.com or whatever.
B
That's so crazy. It's hilarious. Yeah, I mean, I never answer.
D
I get one every now. Yeah.
B
If I get a. I mean, if I get, you know, an unknown call, I never answer. Answer that. Oh, no, never. I can. You think, like, it's so funny to me. Like, I don't ever do, like, phone calls. It seems such like an anachronistic thing these days, but I, I rarely do it. The kids, man, they love doing Facetime. Like, my, you know, 13 year old daughter should be on. Like, I walk up in a room, say hi to her and see what she's doing. And she's just on FaceTime with her friend, her girlfriend, and I'll be talking to her for like five full minutes. Minutes. And then I'll hear like a something in the background. I'm like, are you on the phone? She's like, yeah, like, you're right. Now you're on the phone. I've been talking to you for five minutes. Yes, I'm on the phone. And I look and there's like, there's just like a ceiling fan on the other phone. You know, it's like they don't even like, look face to face. Like how you and I would be like, hey, Philip, what are. You know. Yeah, it's so crazy.
D
My daughter does the same thing.
B
Do you remember growing up in the 80s, do you remember growing up in the 80s when we all, like, we wished we had a video phone? Remember the, like, we heard the video phone idea, you know, in the 1980s when we were kids, you know, I
D
mean, I, I lived out in the middle of nowhere in middle school and, and one of our neighbors, which is about, probably about Half a mile away was like the closest neighbor we had. And so if I was home, I'd just look over and see if I saw smoke coming out of their chimney. If I did, then I knew they were home. And I'd go over and see if Darrell wanted to go ride four runners or whatever. But if, if there was no smoke, then it was a, you know, it was a risk. I could, I could walk that halfway through mile, find out no one was there.
B
Oh man. Oh, okay. So it, the. The phone call I got was from my daughter's school or the our kids school system. It's like a, it's an A test. A test of the emergency notification system. So glad I answered it. Glad I didn't answer it. Test. Clayton. Someone says Clayton isn't as Ra. Rayleigh. Oh yeah, that's right. Israeli. It was Carl Rove. Colin. Carl Rove. Let's see. Just Dwayne says wait a second. My four girlfriends are cheating on me again. Yeah. Philip. They're calling Philip. Sour of seeds says rumor has it we have until the end of the year. Famine comes next year. Well, I mean that's when the fertilizer and. Yeah, right. This is a rolling problem because it's not the food we have right now that was grown last year. It's the food that we'll have next year that we should be growing right now thanks to the fertilizer that they're able to put down and they don't have. So we'll see. We will see. They hang out on the phone. Yeah, I mean we used to call our friends. I used to. My friend Andy and I used to sit on the phone like for two hours. We, we'd stay up and just like talking and talking in sports and then watch like we'd sit and like sit up and watch Letterman together. Crazy in the early night 90s. Sit and talk for just random stuff. Yeah. Humongous shift says. Oh a 13 year old daughter. Poor Natalie and Clayton actually she just turned 14 like two weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Exactly. Three boobs in total recall. That was a. That was a gift. That was a gift. Back then Tony beer said Clayton. We had a CB radio rig. Thought we were the bees knees.
C
Yeah.
B
A friend of mine, Eric, his dad had a CB radio. Well he had the full HAM radio which I'm looking to get. I, I'm kind of interested in that because honestly, you know, if, if stuff hits the fan, you're going to want to be able to communicate with, with people, you know. You're going to want to be able to have that connection to hear what's going on. So some sort of a small ham radio, CB radio, something like that would be ideal, I think, you know for sure. All right. Any other super chats coming in here that we want to get to? Pay phones were great for prank calls. If only Russia Limbaugh were still here. Perhaps a voice of reason. I don't know. Hard to say. He did, he did famously say that, you know, Trump's enemies really can't beat him. The, The, The. The person that will beat Trump or screw up Trump is Trump himself. So he was, he was pretty wise. You know, imagine a guy. Did someone use. Someone use my avatar? My picture is an avatar given the middle finger, I think, which is pretty funny. Yeah. Even Natalie, she's just had to pick up the kids at the. At the bus stop. She said, do you want to. Do you want to go to the store or right now and get some emergency supplies? So I think I might join her for that. What was I going to say? Anything else? Is David still here? Is he duck out?
D
No, he had to duck out.
B
Town of Memphis is poisoned with Elon Musk Data center. Tonight is the last Colbert Report. Can you imagine watching that show? Oh, my God.
D
I never have.
B
Back in the day, I used to stay up late. My parents thought I was in bed. I would watch Letter. I'd watch Carson, watch Letterman back when, Back when I liked Letterman back in the. I mean, Letterman was my idol back in the day, but he's kind of a liberal. Like literally kissing the boots of Obama. Look at my avatar, Belair. Belair Oen is using my avatar with a. The middle finger. I love that. Who's paying attention to effed up poly market bets? Thank you. I love the avatar. Thank you for that. I don't even remember doing that.
D
What was the old studio? It looks like. I couldn't tell. It was kind of small.
B
Yeah. Oh, man. Most of the earth fertilizer is by way of Morocco. Well, hey, I should tell you, we have a store, if I didn't already, I kind of mentioned it during Shopify. But hey, check it out. Father's Day is coming up if you want to grab some of our great wares over at the redacted store. We've got a lot of new stuff up there that you should check out. A lot of great T shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers. Check them out. I really love it. Go to redacted store.com and get our conspiracy knower T shirt to annoy people in your life. You know, America First T shirts to annoy people that are pro Israel first or Israel first. You can get all of it right there. No farmers, no food. That's one of our popular shirts as well. Communism equals starvation. You can get that hoodie as well. And end the Fed. And the Fed as well. So so many great things over there on our website. Check it out. Redacted store.com we keep the prices as low as we can. We don't mark it up beyond the printing costs of everything. So we just want to have a great storefront for you to grab some great wares to support the show. The Don't Tread on Me shirt, one of my favorites. I wear that regularly so check it out. Redacted store.com all right everybody, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We've got some great interviews lined up up for you that are soon to be coming out here on the channel. We hope you enjoy them, we work hard on them. Some of them are multi hour in length and what's great is many of you love those really longer form interviews which we're thrilled to do. So hopefully we're going to do more of those. Would you guys like to see more of those really deep dive interviews on subjects that we don't really get to cover here in the shorter like live shows but deep dive subjects. And please, you know, share with us too, like leave comments on stories you would love for us to cover here on the show. Deep dive segments on things that are covered up, redacted that they don't want you to know about that you would love more insights into. Please share those with us as well and we will try to do those and try to because I'm not afraid to do any, any interview. I'm not afraid to do any coverage of any story as evidenced by what we cover here on the show from Gaza to you know, organ harvesting in Ukraine, I don't give a rat's ass and I don't care who we piss off. We will do those stories where you couldn't do those stories in the mainstream media and you certainly can't do them as part of like these other alternative media networks that exist out there that pretend to be independent. So we don't care. We don't answer to any of these big moneyed people. We are supported by you and the few sponsors that we have here on the show and they will never take tell us what to say and if they ever tried to tell us what to say, we would give them the finger and tell them to go pound sand. So we've got great people that support us here. So again, whatever subjects you want let us know and feel free to send messages through our tips line as well. Or just leave comments here on the video what you would love to see covered and maybe Philip and the team we can put up a poll and ask people and then just to drop comments below what stories they would love for us to cover and get more coverage of that you don't think is getting enough of it. So thank you guys so much. Have a great rest of your evening, have a great weekend and we'll see you back here live next week. Have a great one everyone. Have a great holiday as well.
C
A T shirt and jeans, Mac and cheese. Some things in life are an obvious match like RIAS and Schwab Advisor Services, the number one choice for independent advisors.
A
The difference is so obvious it Schwab
B
learn why@schwabius.com Dish has been connecting communities like yours for the last 45 years, providing the TV you love at a price you can trust. Watch live sports news and the latest movies, plus your favorite streaming apps, all in one place. Switch to DISH today and lock in the lowest price in satellite TV, starting at 89.99amonth with our two year price guarantee. Call 888-D dish or visit dish.com today. Tired of overpaying with DirecTV? Dish offers a reliable low price every month without surprises. Get the TV you love and start watching live sports, news and the latest
C
movies, plus your favorite streaming apps, all in one place.
B
Switch to DISH today and lock in the lowest price in satellite TV, starting at $89.99 a month with our two year price guarantee. Call 888, add dish or visit dish.com today.
Episode: Iran Peace Plan in Place? Something Doesn't Add Up as Bibi and Trump Face Off | Redacted
Date: May 21, 2026
Hosts: Clayton Morris and Natali Morris
Guests: Joe Kent (former Director of National Counterterrorism Center), Chris Martenson (Futurist, Economic Researcher)
This episode explores breaking reports on a possible US-Iran-Israel peace agreement, examines ongoing tensions and back-room maneuvering among global leaders (especially Netanyahu and Trump), and investigates the controversial role of the pro-Israel lobby in US congressional races. Also, it dives into the impending energy shock due to the Iran war and discusses media narratives, political manipulation, and the impact of foreign money on US democracy.
Rumors of Peace:
Reports circulate that Iran may accept a peace framework, supposedly giving up key leverage points in exchange for little. Joe Kent expresses deep skepticism about any real progress, cautioning against believing official readouts or media narratives.
The US-Israel Dynamic:
President Trump reportedly told Netanyahu (“Bibi”) to hold off on strikes against Iran, aiming for a negotiated settlement, with Bibi allegedly furious. Trump later blustered, “He’ll do whatever I want him to do” regarding Netanyahu’s action.
Israel’s Leverage:
Both hosts and Kent underscore Israel’s ability to manipulate US decisions and media, suggesting any rift between Trump and Netanyahu may be staged for political purposes to appease disillusioned pro-Trump (MAGA) voters.
NYT Bombshell:
Reports claim the US and Israel considered installing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a new Iranian leader, raising suspicions about perpetual war motives and “Venezuela-style” regime change.
Chaos as Strategy:
Kent emphasizes that Israel often benefits from chaos in the region, using it as a pretext to justify continued war and keep US resources locked in the Middle East.
Foreign Lobby Power:
The episode dissects the defeat of Congressman Thomas Massie, attributing it to heavy spending and organizing by pro-Israel PACs (AIPAC), despite media deflections claiming otherwise (e.g., Ben Shapiro).
Generational Divide:
Massie won overwhelming numbers among young voters; the older, media-consuming, Fox News audience—targeted by costly ad campaigns—secured his opponent’s victory.
Election Integrity Concerns:
Questions swirl about last-minute ballot spikes (echoing “2020” election disputes), the dangers of mail-in ballots and unverifiable machines, and the double standard on foreign money influence.
Journalists on Hit Lists:
Concerns about American journalists (e.g., Tucker Carlson) allegedly being on Mossad’s “target lists,” with hosts lamenting American intelligence blindness toward Israeli intentions and unchecked influence.
DOJ Task Force on Anti-Semitism:
Discussion on the Justice Department’s new advisory committee, suggesting it aims to re-stigmatize criticism of Israel or pro-Israel influence as anti-Semitism just as public tolerance for the accusation is waning.
Guest: Chris Martenson (Economic Researcher, PeakProsperity.com)
"Peace" and Oil Markets:
Martenson debunks rumors of Iran folding to Western demands, noting Iran’s strong negotiating position and skepticism towards any so-called peace deal reported in US media or Trump tweets.
Closed Oil Routes and Fallout:
The Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz has blocked 13 million barrels/day, an order of magnitude greater than the global oil shock from the Ukraine crisis in 2022. Despite this, oil prices remain oddly suppressed, driven “downwards” artificially by official statements and Trump’s tweets.
US Strategic Petroleum Tactics:
The US is “papering over” the crisis by dumping reserves at unsustainable rates—Martenson calls the Strategic Petroleum Reserve the “strategic political reserve”—and warns it will run out in ~60 days.
Imminent Global Disaster:
Martenson forecasts a looming inflationary depression if the oil shock isn’t resolved, warning that further escalation or a failure to negotiate honorably with Iran could crash the global economy.
Preparation Advice:
Martenson recommends practical resilience: stocking food, investing in basic alternative energy (solar, batteries), and building community ties.
On Escalation and Chaos:
“The purpose of the war is for the war to... not for the war to be concluded in any meaningful way.” — Joe Kent (15:45)
Trump’s Assertion of Control:
“He’ll do whatever I want him to do.” — Donald Trump about Netanyahu (06:03)
On Iran’s Negotiating Power:
“We were largely unable to meaningfully deflect Iran from its… strategy.” — Chris Martenson (44:30)
On the Coming Shock:
“The United States cannot just sit here and wait for Iran to drag its heels... because now we're responsible for creating what's a global catastrophe.” — Chris Martenson (52:00)
The episode works as a deep-dive into the interplay of global geopolitics, war and peace deception, and domestic political manipulation. The hosts and guests argue that peace with Iran is anything but straightforward, highlighting Israel’s subterfuge, the unchecked power of foreign money in US elections, and the potentially crippling consequences of current energy strategies. The outlook is bleak, but not hopeless—preparation, skepticism, and grass-roots action are suggested as antidotes to the coming storm.