B (9:07)

How you doing?

A (9:08)

I'm doing pretty good. I'm back from vacation. It's nice to see a friendly face. I was off a single day and it seems like the podcast was okay without me, you know?

B (9:18)

Single day at Coachella.

A (9:19)

I know. I was at Coachella for four days. I just took a single day off the podcast.

B (9:23)

Oh, I see.

A (9:23)

Okay.

B (9:24)

You're a well traveled man.

A (9:26)

We'll do some Coachella talk tomorrow night on the live stream. She will come hang out with me on. I want to talk to you though, about more serious matters of international diplomacy and intrigue. And I think we should start with Iran. While I was in the desert, J.D. vance was in Islamabad trying to close.

B (9:46)

That's the opening scene three, by the way. Tim's in the desert and J.D.

A (9:51)

vance, according to his own account, he called Daddy Trump more than 12 times during the 21 hours of negotiations to discuss the issues. Also talked to Bibi a couple times, came away with nothing. And we now have a blockade of a blockade. Kind of though a Chinese ship snuck through today or yesterday. I don't know, man. What's the. Where are we at? What's the status of the war in Iran?

B (10:14)

I don't know. I mean, JD's negative charisma and unlikability are just highly contagious these days. Wherever he goes, you know, failure seems to stalk not far behind. So what I heard Is he did 21 hours in Islamabad Jared and Steve sort of running shotgun to his little operation. The Iranians played hardball. They agreed to continue to talk and I think they're going back on Thursday. The rumor that I heard was that the Iranians called it off and went back home because they didn't trust their communication not to be intercepted from our side, from Pakistan. So in other words, they had to go back to Tehran, consult with the new Supreme Leader, Kameni junior And then come back to with whatever their counter proposal was, which now I think is a 20 year halt on a nuclear.

A (11:04)

We want 20, they want 5, the middle at 12 and a half and call it good, leave it. I mean, Trump will be dead by then. We can just leave it up to the next guy. But that, I don't know, that's not how it's working.

B (11:15)

So, you know, this is one of the sticking points. But you know, the other thing to keep in mind at the start of this caper, the only sort of sensible guy to listen to on anything is General Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And he laid out very succinctly, I thought, three operational objectives. Operational objective number one, eliminate the nuclear program. Well, obviously we didn't do that because that's why they're putting on the table, you know, five years and we're asking for 20. And plus they've got, you know, 900 pounds of the stuff buried underground or underneath the rubble. And you know, Donald Trump was talking about the nuclear dust and sending in commandos to come and exfiltrate it. So that's one that we didn't quite get. The second was the missile capability, particularly their medium range missiles, which have wreaked havoc all across the neighborhood, hitting GCC countries, being responsible for killing American soldiers. We didn't quite get all of that. US Intelligence assessed that in fact they have quite a bit more launchers than we reckoned. And some of those launchers have been kept underground. So that's mark two. And number three, you know, their ability to project power in financing and arming manifold terrorist proxies from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas and Gaza to Iraqi Shia militias. That's kind of tbd. Hezbollah's been pretty badly battered by Israel and Lebanon. Remember that was one of the other questions at the start of the ceasefire. Was Lebanon on the table? Was it not? The US and Israel said it wasn't. The Iranians said, yes, it was. My question, and I don't have a good answer from anybody, is if we are going to lift sanctions, start to enrich the Islamic Republic, if they are going to simply get rich by charging tolls for tankers that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. That's assuming this, our blockade of their blockade is lifted. Are they going to use that money to build schools and hospitals and bridges that we knocked out, or are they going to use that money to enrich the IRGC and also all of the above? Missile program, nuclear program, maybe Kind of

A (13:18)

a one for you and a three for me type situation. You know.

B (13:21)

Exactly. So, look, I mean, my, my read of this is it's, we have a very interesting kind of split. You get a lot of pro Israel Maga adjacent Maga curious types in the US saying rah, rah, sis boomba, we won. Trump, you know, really knocked him down and vitiated this, this terrible theocratic regime to the point where they're now willing to put on up or, or even discuss things that they hadn't before. Israeli security hawks, who I think nobody could consider to be uninterested in the state of Iran or what kind of future threat it might pose to Israel or the neighborhood, are in, shall we say, maybe not high dudgeon, but they're a little more depressed about the situation. They don't see this as a, as a stunning success because I think they too realize that Netanyahu and Mossad chief David Barnea thought this was going to be kind of an easy operation. They legitimately sold Trump, if you believe this New York Times deep dive that came out a few days ago, on the idea that you go in, you start pounding them from the air and the Iranians will rise up again. It'll be that protest movement, but on steroids. And oh, by the way, we can do some fun stuff with Iranian Kurds. So I met with a senior US Intelligence official last week before the announced ceasefire. And it's actually true what Trump said, believe it or not, about the Iranian Kurds keeping all the kit that was provided to them. So the idea was the Israelis ran guns and Starlink terminals to a group called pjak, which is the PKK franchise in Iran. Our job was to get our Kurds, the Iraqi Kurds of the Kurdistan Regional Government, to allow this stuff to transit through their borders into Iran. So that kind of happened. And it was like 40 guys and they just kept everything. They did not distribute it evenly to would be insurgents in Iran. Right. So our covert program for some kind of proxy revolutionary force, that didn't go so well. And we, we knew that. I mean, we've been war gaming a scenario for taking out this regime for years. And every option that has come back or every result has been rather lackluster. And I think, you know, the dividends of that are. I see. Now that's not to say that, you know, Iran is doing great. Like, they think that they've won simply by surviving. They did get a lot of their missile program destroyed. Their navy is at, you know, the bottom of the sea, although they have a lot of fast boats and, and assets kind of unsophisticated ways that they could chivy and do harm to not just tankers, but also the American warships that have amassed this blockade. But did we achieve all of our objectives? Do we have regime change? No, we, we did regime decapitation, but we got new guys in in charge. Whether they're more hardline than the previous slot. Some Iran analysts seem to think that they are the speaker of Parliament. He's not a cuddly character. I mean, this is a guy who was going around bashing people over the head embedded with the Basij during a protest movement, what, almost 20 years ago. He's pretty in it to win it, you know, not, not a reformist. This is not a kind of Gorbachev of Iran type figure. So, yeah, I mean, what can I say?

A (16:39)

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B (19:26)

Look, if we kind of zoom out from the 247 news cycle, what's going to happen tomorrow or even next week? I think this is the kind of broad strokes of it. We're in for a penny, in for a pound. By doing what we've just done, we have wounded this regime. And this regime is not going to forget. And they're not going to just take it lying down. They are going to retaliate, maybe not immediately, but down the line. They will have resources and assets with which to do so. I mean, remember Iran's ability to project power from the AMEA bombing in Buenos Aires in South America, which that's, that's our neck of the woods, right? That's our sphere of influence, Western half pretty far to the Burgess bombing in Bulgaria, where they blew up a busload of Israeli holiday makers. What, in 2000 something or other, they can do these kinds of operations. In fact, one of the things I've been very worried about and counterterrorism officials have been worried about is, you know, they have sleeper cells here. They have agents in continental United States.

A (20:26)

In fact, good news is we fired all of our Iran experts at the FBI. And DHS isn't being right now correct.

B (20:31)

And the question is, do they lack the capability to do something or have they simply refrained from doing something provocative or spectacular against us? I use spectacular, by the way, in the kind of anodyne terrorist sense of a big atrocity designed to get attention? Or have they simply refrained from doing it because they didn't want to provoke us into going all in with a full scale land invasion, occupation kind of thing? That said, as time goes by, they may decide that now's the time to kind of test the waters here and to, to get our licks in. Right. Those aforementioned US Intelligence official I met with, I kind of painted a scenario for this person and said, this is kind of how I see things going in future. You tell me if I'm wrong. The scenario is tantamount to what the Israelis euphemistically called mowing the grass or mowing the lawn. In other words, every several months, when they see untoward activity, weapons transfers, the rebuilding of something that they feel the Iranians or that some foreign state adversary or non state adversary should not have, they go in and they bomb. It's not a full scale war. It's not 12 days. Sometimes it's an overnight operation, but they just do that right here. It's more complicated for the Israelis because Iran is much farther away than Lebanon, Syria or certainly Gaza. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to help them with refueling or even base sharing rights or perhaps even joining in some operations like this, right? So Iran right now, it lacks air defense systems. Its skies are completely vulnerable to our air superiority, if not air supremacy. The question is, does that become the status quo and do the Iranians just kind of continue to take it as we dole it out to them? And I think the interesting thing here is in foreign policy, it's kind of easy to set a new normal, right? George W. Bush took a decision, Iran must not get nuclear weapons. And obviously the policies changed over time. We did stuxnet, we did all kinds of covert operations. The Israelis blew up, scientists went in and, you know, eventually exfiltrated the nuclear Archive. Obama had the JCPOA, Donald Trump had the 12 day war overt.

A (22:39)

We had people inside the.

B (22:41)

But there was a concerted, bipartisan, multi year, decade, actually effort to prevent Iran from doing something. My question is, does this now become the new normal where every successive administration, so long as this regime persists, has to engage in some kind of kinetic operation, maybe plausibly deniable, maybe covert action, you know, on the ground, things go boom in the night simply to keep them from getting back up on, on two feet again. And this is intelligence official I spoke to said this is pretty much how we see it going forward.

A (23:13)

Yeah. So here's a counterpoint to that, or maybe not, I don't know. Let's, let's talk this through because the geopolitical element in the region is going to determine a lot of that. I mean, we have reporting that MBS was pushing Trump to not do the ceasefire and wanted to go finish the job more. So it's not just the Israelis, it's the Saudis, but it's also obviously Bibi and the Israelis that want as much as they can get, I guess I would say, out of us as far as decapitating Iranian regime and their power. And so, okay, let's say we get into that type of new status quo that you're talking about. They have some kind of ceasefire. There are conflagrations that sprout up over the next three years while Trump is in power. And just like we bombed them last year and then we came in the next year we got to do something, the next year we got to do something. I mean, it's not out of the question that both parties then end up having a nominee in 2028 that are running on, we need to decouple from Israel and we need to separate ourselves from this. And so I think that that might cause a new normal. Right. But it also might cause a backlash here in the country.

B (24:24)

It's not going to just be the Israelis asking for this now, it's going to be the Gulf states as well.

A (24:29)

Yeah, right.

B (24:30)

So the Emiratis have been very outspoken. Interestingly, I saw one official quoted in the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago saying, for all the storm and drang about, oh, this is a disaster for the region and the Israeli pro Israel opinion in the United States has, has cratered across both parties. Right. He said that we see it differently. We see the new status quo being we must keep the Iranians down and, oh, actually we want the Americans in more in our neighborhood and we want The Israelis in more, too, to ensure this. And the level of cooperation, not just by the Emiratis and the Saudis. I mean, I don't put very. A high estimation on these talks between the Israelis and the Lebanese, which little Marco is overseeing. He. He gets the fun profile, right? He doesn't go to Pakistan. He does ultimate fighting and he's like, stays in D.C. and makes, you know, two ambassadors to come to meet together. However. However, I do think that there's a recognition that, as I said earlier, you know, we cannot allow Iran to reassert itself in any way, shape or form from what it has been able to do up until this point. Right. Because now we've gone to war with it. Now it will be seeking revenge. I mean, the Supreme Leader, we killed his dad on day one, within hours, right, with our intelligence. The Israelis bombed the shit out of, you know, not only him, but this sort of conclave, the Axis of resistance. Somebody on Twitter said they love two things. They, you know, they love death to America chanting that. And they love, like, all hands meetings. Right. Just show up together. From an HR perspective, very, very bad decision.

A (26:04)

They needed to have the dedicated survivor. They didn't learn from the State of the Union. There needs to be, like, a cabinet official like Doug Burgum that doesn't go. And so, you know, the line of succession.

B (26:15)

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the new supreme leader, Khamenei Son, is himself a creature of the irgc. So the idea that the IRGC has been engaged in the creeping takeover of the state, replacing the clerics, that's been something that's kind of been in the background for many, many years. Qasem Soleimani, the general that we whacked in 2020 in Iraq, who was the head of the Quds Force, their expeditionary unit, who himself was kind of the architect of these proxies across the region. There's a lot of muttering and speculation that this guy was going to, you know, either one day wage a coup or simply take over as a military commander. So now I think we have facilitated that process in killing the previous lot.

A (26:58)

Yeah.

B (26:59)

And the question is, are they going to be, as I say, you know, they're going to be more pragmatic and amenable to some kind of accord with us, maybe some joint racket, you know, Alex Witkoff can get into.

A (27:09)

Yeah, right.

B (27:09)

Depends on how much Iranian foreign minister and, you know, crypto farms in Krasnodar, you know, minting stable coins to charge tolls. I don't know. I mean, you know, it's possible, but yeah, I don't see it quite going that swimmingly.

A (27:25)

Yeah, I mean, Trump does have the superpower of just being the superpower might be waning right now, which we'll get to, but he has in the past been able to say to his base, you know, eat this shit sandwich and call it the golden age. Right. Like he, that is what he was built to do. Okay. And so maybe you can do that again here. The argument against this and for, you know, the peace starts going bad and there being more escalation just does go back to that New York Times report that like it's hard to see how they come out of these negotiations with anything that looks better than the JCPOA and anything where the Iranians are making money.

B (28:01)

Well, they want sanctions relief. Right. And any sanctions relief, given what it took to cobble into place this sanctions regime over time. I mean there were some that came with the JCPOA rather famously or notoriously depending on your perspective, but they stand to make billions and they certainly are interested in making billions right now. So. Yeah, but again, you know, there's going to be enormous pressure on Trump not to take, you know, some sham or, you know, fugazi deal that's going to make him look like, you know, a chump or worse than Obama. Right, right. You're going to get the FDD crowd, you're going to get AAC, you're going to get Bibi himself coming to D.C. saying you mustn't. You're going to get the, the, the Arabs, Gulf states also putting pressure on him not to do this.

A (28:49)

Mark Levin, Life, Liberty and Lavin on the weekend prime time.

B (28:53)

He has shown, you know, I mean if, if you, you know, just look at what Tucker is now doing in his social media and his marketing campaign. Low IQ hats, right. Putting up on the Daily Caller, you know, old maga, you know, all the white Aryan, blue eyed Christians and New MAGA practitioners of the Shinto religion perhaps. No, you know, I mean it's, it's, it's Mark Levin, it's Laura Loomer, Ben Shapiro and Trump, I mean, basically denounced Tucker. Megan.

A (29:26)

Well, Tucker said that he was a slave to Israel.

B (29:29)

Tucker, you know that it's hard to

A (29:30)

live as a slave. Yeah. And it is funny that even in this moment where Tucker is now in full out war with Trump, like even at this late of date, he is still doing the thing where Trump doesn't have agency himself.

B (29:43)

Well, this is the thing.

A (29:44)

He still won't go all the way there to Segment it as Trump himself. That is bad and flawed. Even now he has to be a slave to the, you know, mysterious Jewish

B (29:53)

forces the Israelis have been advocating for years, starting with, with W. Please go in and take care of this for us. For years and every administration has said no. Trump said yes because in his mind, taking out Iran and not just the nuclear program. In his mind, accomplishing that which could not be done by Jimmy Carter on would be his legacy. It wouldn't matter. He's been impeached twice. It wouldn't matter that he's. His mental and moral faculties are non existent. He's comparing himself to Jesus Christ. All the rest of it, the price of gas at the pump, the economy, runaway corruption, war in Ukraine. Doesn't matter. I took out the Ayatollah. I destroyed the Islamic Republic. Republic. That's me. So, yeah, don't, don't discount. Donald Trump is in the cockpit here. Dark forces on the Internet like to think that the Jews are at once all powerful, but also kind of weak and pathetic. I mean, Tucker Carlson has announced a publishing imprint, which. I thought we controlled the media. How is he able to do this? His first author is Russell Brand, a guy who's been accused of rape and sexual assault, who wants to declare how you can become a Christian in seven days. Nice work if you can get it.

A (31:07)

Truly, man, I love this. It's just like, which religious huckster do you want to go with? Do you want to take the J.D. vance, like Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo? Religious huckster. I came to Catholicism at the same time I came to the Church of Trump. That does feel like it's a little bit in conflict. But both conversions happen simultaneously. Or you have the Russell Brand kind of tabloid version, the front of the grocery store version. Cheap and easy. Seven days. Seven days to heaven. You got it. You can sexually assault young girls, but as long as you read my book and you go on the Tucker Carlson

B (31:44)

podcast, no means yes, according to the Nazarene. And please sign up for my substack. That's the new state of our public intellectuals.

A (31:57)

Donald Trump is in the cockpit, but, boy, he is also a pliable and malleable person. And if Donald Trump was in the cockpit and somebody was in the, you know, was riding shotgun, giving him the hard sell on Greenland, we might have been invading nuke instead. That's all I'm saying. Like, he is very susceptible to what the last person he said wanted to listen to. Doesn't mean that there's a puppet master or A secret conspiracy. But I just. Bibi, obviously foremost, but also MBS and his business partners in the Gulf states, yes, got us into this in a big way.

B (32:29)

But, but for all that, I mean, it's important to realize there is kind of a through line with Trump.

A (32:33)

Yeah.

B (32:33)

You know, he's been down on NATO for decades before he decided to run for president. He's kind of had a soft spot for Russia, to put it mildly, for as many years. When he went there to Moscow in 1987, Yuri Dubinin, the former ambassador to the UN famously paid him that visit at Trump Tower and polished his throne. Oh, yours was the first building we saw coming from the airport and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he went, you know, to the Soviet Union and God knows what happened to him there. He's been talking about the Strait of Hormuz for many, many years. You know, I mean, I've, I've always said when he threatens military action, people forget that taco. You know, Trump always chickens out. That was coined by Wall street analysts and traders over his backing down on tariffs. But he usually does not back down when he threatens to not go to war, per se, but to engage in some kind of military confrontation. For him, it's not about war. I mean, it is war, legally speaking. But he doesn't like sending in troops. He's not in it for the long haul. He would never do a full scale occupation, which is why, frankly, see things go boom. Yes. You know, I'm very glad of the fact that we're not sending Marine expeditionary units to Carg island, because every Marine I've talked to said we were going to lose lots of people. This is, you know, it's a kill box, that, that, that sort of amphibious assault kind of thing. And it's also people who have no experience doing it in combat because these are young kids. Right. These are not veterans from the war on terror. So, you know, if a blockade is sort of the second tier operation. All right, I mean, fine, see if it works. The Iranians, by one analysis, stand to lose $435 million a day by not being able to move their oil. You know, China gets 40% of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. About 13% of it comes from Iran. So I'm very curious to hear what Trump's conversation with Xi next month is going to look and sound like.

A (34:24)

Can we talk about China on that front just a little bit more? Because there's reports, at least one ship that we already have sanctioned because they are taking Iranian oil Violated the blockade, just went straight to the Strait and onto China. That happened over the weekend. Another report out there from CNN that China is preparing weapons shipments to its friends in Iran if the ceasefire breaks down.

B (34:48)

They've been sharing intelligence with the Iranians just as the Russians have. The Russians are keen not to move it away from China. But you know, I spend more time focused on Russia. The Russians are very keen to, they put on the table. We can send the, the uranium to us. We will enrich it for the Iranians. So let, let us do a favor for Trump in pursuit or in, in facilitation of our grand rapprochement with the United States. You know, lift sanctions on Iran. Yes, yes, yes. But let's lift sanctions on us too and let's end the war in Ukraine on favorable terms to ourselves.

A (35:18)

I just think it's worth sitting on this for a second. Like he is kind of in a corner on the threats to China. Again, not in the cheap version of Chaco, but just in the sense of like he did with Iran. It's like we're going to end the civilization. It's like, I really don't want to do this. I mean, he's making these threats on China that he doesn't really want to do. I mean, he doesn't want to interdict the Chinese ships like he was doing in Venezuela. It's easy to interdict those ships and it's in our territory, it matters. But like the impacts on the American homeland aren't going to be great if things get dicey in the Gulf. Like if we really, you know, get into a confrontation with Chinese ships carrying Iranian oil, like that has massive implications. And if he goes back to the Liberation Day style tariffs on China for doing this, that has massive implications when we're already seeing inflation go back up. Like he doesn't want a confrontation with China right now.

B (36:09)

No. And, and China has been all too happy to watch the United States burn through some of its critical munitions going after Iran. I mean, I just saw you posted

A (36:19)

this that we fired our entire stunt.

B (36:21)

Yeah. So the PRISM is, is basically the, the, the next generation of ATACMs. It's longer range, it's more powerful. One of the reasons we were able to give Ukraine ATACMs after this big back and forth about should we, shouldn't we, is we were phasing them out.

A (36:35)

Right.

B (36:36)

The PRISM was the new, the new game in town. And I don't know, I'm, I have to talk to my weapons bean counter friends how many we had in Our stockpile, there's obviously classified stocks as well. But it seems like on, in the first few days of this thing, we launched all of them to say nothing about our expenditure of Patriot missiles. You know, the Ukrainians were staring mouth agape, watching us fire Patriot interceptors at Iranian shaheds. When these guys have their own drones that take down shaheds that they've manufactured at scale simply because they needed to. They use shotguns to take down shahids in Kyiv, for Christ's sakes. So the United States is learning on its feet how to wage 21st century warfare. And I mean, I'm sorry to say this, that you know, the, the first casualties, fatalities. I'm sorry, that we suffered in Kuwait, that was simply because the military facility, the blast walls that were constructed, were constructed for what purpose? Keeping suicide bombers on vehicles out. But they weren't constructed to withstand strikes from drones that could easily navigate their way better than missiles can. So we've got a lot of updating to do in our arsenal and in our force posture. And I think the Chinese, I mean, they're watching all this on satellite, you know, footage. They've got human assets in play. The Iranians are sharing with them in real time what they're doing and how we're responding. And you know, all eyes shift to Taiwan now.

A (38:01)

Right? Yeah.

B (38:02)

It was not exactly a far fetched scenario that in the middle of this thing the Chinese could have said, well, the Americans are, they're bogged down over here. Let's go, let's go do it. You know, in Taiwan now, we're lucky

A (38:15)

they didn't onto the Ukraine thing and then we'll kind of take that back into Hungary. Yeah, one other thing I saw that you posted, that Zelensky had posted over the weekend was an announcement that for the first time in war, an enemy position was captured entirely by ground robotic systems and drones without any infantry. A robot entered the most dangerous zones instead of a soldier and took the positions. I thought that was an interesting anecdote that, that ties to kind of what you're talking about here, about the ways in which we hadn't quite adapted to the changes in weaponry.

B (38:47)

I retweeted that because it's interesting, him standing there. It looks like the set of Terminator 2 with these kind of fancy robotics. I want to put an asterisk on his comment. There is a misconception that in Ukraine they can make up for their manpower shortage and relation to Russia with technology. Drones, fiber optic cable drones, you know, these self propelled robotic artillery Systems, whatever. Not true. They need infantry. All wars need to be fought with, with soldiers. Right. Whether or not, you know, the heavy lifting in this case was done by unmanned systems. Probably is. There's truth to that. But at the end of the day, you're not going to hold terrain with

A (39:35)

Rosie from the Jetsons. Yeah.

B (39:36)

With robots you need, you need soldiers in place. Correct? Sure. So I would take that with a little bit of pinch of assault. However, it is absolutely the case that Ukraine is now the world's leading innovator in military technology. One of the interesting developments, if you're looking at the American Kremlinology of who's on top and who supports what. So J.D. vance's guy, Dan Driscoll in the Pentagon, who is being considered, evidently, as a possible replacement for our chin up artist friend Pete Hegseth. Driscoll has actually become more pro Ukraine because he's gone to Kiev, he's seen what the Ukrainians have done, and he wants some of that. I mean, our military requires Ukrainian ingenuity and know how. And it is, you know, it's ridiculous that Trump was shitting all over Zelensky because, because Zelenskyy was traveling to the Gulf in the last five, six weeks cutting deals with the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis. I mean, the Emiratis, for Christ's sakes. It's impossible to tell where Emirati intelligence ends and Russian intelligence begins. According to the CIA, the Emiratis are going to the Ukrainians saying, help us. That's a big deal and that's a net win for Zelenskyy. Kathy Young did a great piece in the Bulwark about, and I said this at the outset, it was like, oh, oil prices are going to skyrocket. We're now lifting sanctions on Russia. Sure. But, you know, the geopolitical correlation of forces, if you like, actually favor Ukraine here because going to war with a Russian partner, which was Iran, if not a client state, that's not a good thing for Moscow. And whatever sugar high that the Russians received as an economic benefit from lifted sanctions was mitigated by the fact that the Ukrainians just kept bombing the shit out of Russian oil terminals and their energy infrastructure. And also for the first time in, I think over a year, maybe more, the Russians, their, their offensive has ground to a halt. They have not taken any substantive terrain on the battlefield. So Ukraine hasn't come out so badly in this war. I'm not saying that's a reason to, to have done the war. You know, let's let's just have a little sense of perspective here. And Zelensky has done what he needed to do as a statesman, which is cut bilateral deals with partners in the global south that had wanted absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine. The one country that still won't do anything with him is Israel, because Bibi

A (41:57)

is terrified of Trump to that point. I'm hoping that Pete Hegseth's allies in the Pentagon are not monitoring this podcast because they're going to be clipping that little bit about Dan Driscoll becoming a Ukraine head and sending it up to the White House, making sure old Donny Trump can see us because Hegset's worried about the coup.

B (42:15)

I like to sow fit men paranoia where I can. What can I say?

A (42:18)

Okay, the other thing that is, I mean this was kind of happening anyway, but marginally benefited Ukraine was the result of the election in Hungary.

B (42:28)

Oh yeah.

A (42:29)

You know, because the blocking of the funds from the EU that Hungary was doing US trial is like essentially kind of working their way around that anyway. But now officially that there won't be any block on the funds from the EU to Hungary. Talk about that and then just give us a bigger picture take on the result.

B (42:47)

Yeah, I mean, it was nothing short of breathtaking. You know, orban has spent 16 years doing everything he can to foreclose on exactly this contingency, which is to say gerrymandering up the wazoo. I think today, what two days after the election, was the first interview that the new incoming prime minister, Peter Maillard, has done with public broadcast in Hungary. So state media had basically blacked out, had banned all opposition. So this was a guy who just traveled the country, went to six, seven, eight different towns and villages in a day, shook hands with everybody, had to go door knocking to make his presence known and to make his policies understandable to Hungarian voters. There were other controversies. I'm very happy to say that I played a part in some of them, including intercepted phone calls between the Hungarian, soon to be former Foreign minister Peter Syrto and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. These phone calls were what sierra to feeding Lavrov in real time sensitive information or intelligence about EU negotiations over sanctions packages to punish Russia for its full scale invasion of Ukraine, feeding him documents, giving him briefs on the discussion about Ukraine and Moldova's accession talks with respect to the European Union. Asking his Russian counterpart, Katie, give me talking points I can use in Brussels to dress up a pro Russian initiative as serving the Hungarian national interest. We showed the the transcripts of these calls to Western intelligence and counterintelligence officials. And they said it read like a case officer Lavrov handling an agent Saarto. And you had chants in Hungary of, you know, Russians go home, Russians off is a spy. Yesterday the new Prime Minister designate said we finally found Peter Sierto because he had disappeared after the election results came in for a day or more. He's in the Ministry of Foreign affairs shredding documents related to sanctions.

A (44:53)

Wow.

B (44:53)

So he's certainly behaving like a fifth columnist. And you know, this guy was just, I mean he was a functionary, he was an agent of Viktor Orban who, you know, himself professed that I am but a mouse to Vladimir Putin's lion. Right. So the, the end of, of a Russian satrapy in Central Europe, the end of Russia's sort of backdoor entry into the European Union and NATO is nothing short of extraordinary. And look, let's be clear. The new government, TiSA, led by Peter Magyar, this is not some ultra left Marxistant, you know, woke conspiracy. This is the center right guy who in many respects has a border security policy that's even more stringent than the outgoing Fidesh party. I mean, Mayar was himself a loyalist to Orban, who then defected from his apparatus and waged this kind of dark horse campaign. But that's a good thing because Hungarians went to the polls and voted overwhelmingly. This is now a super majority. So a lot can be undone that has been done in the last 16 years, from packing the courts to giving media outlets to your preferred cronies and so on and so forth. They went to the polls because the state of Hungary's economy was in ruin. The relationships that Hungary had created with next door neighbors, Poland, Ukraine, but also with Brussels and also frankly with the United States, because it was really creepy what Orban has done. I mean, Maur has said that or alleged that CPAC was financed by the Hungarian state. That's kind of a big deal, isn't it? You know, I mean, this kind of nexus between MAGA and what was seen as the hub or ground zero of the populist reactionary right in Europe that's now over. So just bringing the temperature down on some of these interactions is going to be very, very helpful. And you know, it means that sanctions packages will not be blocked. The Hungarians will not shake down Brussels for subsidies, the Hungarians will not do the bidding of the Kremlin. And Hungarians may even have good bilateral relations with Ukrainians. You know, Orban was his sole campaign, was my Opponent is a Ukrainian agent, and if you vote for him, it's World War Three.

A (47:09)

Just a couple other little points to add to that. You know, David Baer, who's written for us a bunch about Hungary is over there. You know, was. Was texting with Bill, Crystal and me a little bit over the weekend. I just got other things I wanted to flag about the importance of this. Manjar was locked out, as you mentioned, of all the state media interviews. Right. Like, Orban had complete control. The independent media really did spring up, though, in Hungary. And, like, it should be mentioned and those folks should be. Should be acknowledged. Like, it was a lot of online stuff, but there was, I believe, one weekly paper. And if you kind of look at the districts, like, where that was distributed is one of the areas where he overperformed particularly well, that it is important in this modern world, reality and facts can find a way. Maybe it takes too long and it takes time, but eventually stuff gets out there. And I think there's a lesson for us, obviously, in that as Trump tries to consolidate control with his friends at the head of these media and technology companies, that this stuff is beatbackable.

B (48:08)

It is, yeah. I mean, so VSquared.org is one of the outlets that was responsible for kind of breaking these stories about, you know, Hungarian, Russian collusion. Shabby Panier, who's my colleague, had to flee the country because his reporting exposing this relationship between Siarto and Lavrov led to Orban and his government accusing Shabi of being a Ukrainian spy. Sure. And there was an investigation open to him. And they had already put Pegasus software on his phones. They'd already surveilled him. They treated him as an enemy of the people. Right. So now, you know, with one vote, this guy, the best investigative reporter in all of Hungary, can return home to Budapest and continue to do what he does. And, you know, he said, the first thing I plan to do is report on the new government. You know, he's. I mean, he's like, I just want normal politics. I just want to be in a normal democratic state again. So, yes, media played a big role in this.

A (49:04)

Yeah. To the other point I was trying to make is that manager, like, yeah, is center right conservative. I loved. I forget who posted this. I started to give them credit, but I laughed at one post on when the results were coming in on social media, which is like, in Hungary, these are the election results. Center right party, 55% right party Nazi curious, 38% right party Nazi enthusiast, 7%. And it's like those are the options. But Bear was talking about how his campaign was very much infused with small l liberal values, too. Like being a center right guy, which is important and different. There was a viral thread going around, I think you shared a bunch of people. Shared from a woman, Vogada Timar, who I don't know, but she was talking about the importance.

B (49:45)

She's a Hungarian who lives in Estonia, by the way.

A (49:48)

Yeah. She was talking about the importance of his campaign, and she wrote this. Is he a center right person? Yes. And nobody cares. He believes in a democratic state and the rule of law, and his job is to take Hungary back there. He has declared he does not care what one believes in or whom one loves, as long as they love Hungary. And I do think that there are like, again, like, important lessons to that about. How about sort of reinvigorating just the small l liberal values and we can hash out marginal tax rate differences later.

B (50:21)

Well, exactly.

A (50:21)

Once a greater foe is defeated.

B (50:23)

You know, just to put this in American terms. Right. And this is not a perfect analogy, because the person I'm about to invoke was never a loyalist to Donald Trump. But if John McCain were still drawing breath and posed a credible challenge to Trump and actually built a coalition behind him to take down Donald Trump politically, would anybody be batting an eye or questioning the fact that he is infinitely greater a person to be president, United States? Of course not.

A (50:52)

Sure.

B (50:53)

So, you know, the choice is not, you know, it's a fascist or a communist. I mean, unfortunately, in European history, that has very often been the choice. But sometimes it's better not to have somebody who's saddled with whatever you want to call it, the woke mind virus or, you know, LGBTQ ideology or. No, I mean, this is a guy who every Hungarian sort of nationalist, cultural conservative can say, yeah, he's fine. And that's what they needed. That's what they needed.

A (51:19)

And the gays were kissing in Budapest, and the gays were kissing on Sunday. You know, so we could have both. You can have both. Nothing wrong with that. The other thing I wanted to bring up about this as it relates to lessons back home, is the importance of optimism and belief and persistence. Because the degree to which Orban gamed and rigged their electoral system is far more advanced than where Trump is here, in part because it's a smaller country, and so it's easier to control the sorts of bureaucratic levers, part because he'd been in power 16 years. The Hungarian system versus our system. There are a bunch of reasons. And yet all of the little gamesmanship he tried to do didn't work in the end. It backfired and it worked for a while, but in the end it didn't work. I get very frustrated sometimes with people in the so called pro democracy side that speak in fatalist terms about the way that Trump has broken the democracy. And I definitely think that there's a bunch of stuff that's permanently broken that we're never going back to, but the ability to win at the ballot box over, you know, more radical proposals that you hear out there, the Hungarian people like demonstrate it. Not not only is it possible, but it's, it's doable and you can do so in an overwhelming fashion.

B (52:37)

Well, and also I would say that the kind of hyper reality of online discourse really didn't matter. You know, the Russians were on thick on the ground in Hungary. At the same time J.D. vance was there rallying for Orban, dialing in Donald Trump on speakerphone. And, you know, the gru, a group I know quite a lot about, they brought in all their political technologists to sow disinformation, to push these conspiracy theories to blame Zelensky for, you know, blowing this up or the, you know, Malyar was, was a Ukrainian spy. And, and at the end of the day, all of that cynicism, all of that brain rot didn't matter because people, you know, they want more of a better life, they want more income, they want affordability, they want, you know, it's, it's kind of the materialist conception of history. That's what drove this thing. Right. And yes, they're exhausted by having their country be the focal point of everything wrong in Europe. There is no reason. I mean, Hungary belonged to what's known as the Vishakrad 4 and of the Vishkra 4, I think it's the catastrophic failure of the lot. Right. It was, I think, second lowest wages in Europe, arguably one of the poorest countries, if not the poorest country in the European Union. There is no reason Hungary could not be Poland.

A (53:50)

Right.

B (53:50)

You know, Poland will overtake Japan in terms of GDP per capita. I think next year Poland is, spending, is, will spend 5% of its GDP on defense. You know, there's daily Mail headlines about polls who went to live and work in the UK pre Brexit, returning to Poland because the economy is better there than it is in Britain. There's no reason Hungary can't have the same thing. So I think for a lot of Hungarians, this is kind of like a Pepsi challenge. You know, do we want to Live in, you know, trash Canistan, as Stephen Kotkin once called the post Soviet space? Or do we want to live in what Rumsfeld, I think quite rightly, once called New Europe, because it is New Europe. The center of gravity has shifted eastward, so it's Central Europe and Eastern Europe. I mean, you look at the Baltic states, you look at Scandinavia, you look at Poland, these are going to be the countries that will define security going forward in the 21st century. Because if Russia is allowed to get back up on its two feet, if it does, God forbid, win this war. I don't think it's going to win the war, but you know what I mean? If it's allowed to reconstitute itself, it doesn't suffer a strategic defeat in Ukraine. These are the frontline states that'll be doing the heavy lifting for all of us.

A (54:58)

Which ties us back to the first topic, which again is why I've just been so gobsmacked by the idiocy of Trump's choices with both the tariffs, but then this war in Iran on and the economics. And if Trump was actually just singularly minded on gaining as much authoritarian power as possible and keeping his popularity as high as possible, and he could have done a lot of what he did at the beginning of the first term, just keep jacking up the debt, the next guy can pay that, just flood the country with as much money as possible. Don't do the stupid tariffs or just do do a few of them and call it a big deal. You know, pick a couple of industries, pick up winners and losers. He ends up in this place where we have, like an energy crisis now we have inflation, economic stagnation. I mean, that is the death knell of these guys.

B (55:50)

The real tragedy here, the missed opportunity, is a Republican president coming in in 2024. There was a lot of capital to work with here. It's a good thing that, you know, we set this new benchmark for NATO. 5% spending of GDP on defense. I'm not going to say that he was wrong to do that. His tactics were, were miserable. He threatened to go to war with a NATO ally, annex their territory. He treated another NATO ally as the 51st state. I mean, there's some kind of colonial possession in waiting for the United States. I mean, it just idiocy. However, you know, Europe stands there waiting to rearm, to invest heavily in its own defense, to, to take basically post Cold War security architecture seriously, perhaps for the first time. And they're not doing it because we're encouraging them and saying, you know, we will always be with you, we will always be by your side, but we need you to take on a greater share of the responsibility. They're doing it now because they realize we're going in the opposite direction. We were abandoning them. You know, I was in Stockholm with the former Lithuanian foreign minister and the current Swedish foreign minister on a platform in August of last year, and I said, you know, actually quoting Friedrich Mertz, the Chancellor of Germany, who had used this term decoupling from the United States. When I said decoupling, again, not my own coinage, I was citing the Chancellor of Germany. I mean, gasps of horror throughout the room, NATO officials, other, you know, I think the princess of Sweden nearly passed out. Everyone said, no, we must, we can, we mustn't do this. This is impossible. The United States has to be here. And then after this whole fandango with Greenland, all of a sudden, decoupling is not such a radioactive term. People are beginning to say, why didn't we do this? Long time ago, you know, So I want to be very careful how I say this, because this kind of shit that goes viral in a bad way. But, you know, there is a way to instrumentalize anti Americanism as it exists now, which is really anti Trumpism in Europe for the greater good. There is a benevolent form of it, and I am very encouraging of this, this effort.

A (57:52)

Me too.

B (57:52)

The Europeans should tell us, go fuck yourself. Every time we do something stupid or immoral or unjust or we threaten them. And they should prepare. They should prepare for a world without us.

A (58:02)

Okay, my old Republican's about to come in for a second. But also, you hear the European leaders start talking about the value of deregulation, and it's part of decoupling is making sure they can stand on their own two feet economically, too. I'm hearing more of that kind of talk when you're listening to speeches from Macron, et cetera, when it comes to economic development, getting companies to. To build there instead of here, etc. No, I mean, it's going to be to our detriment in the end.

B (58:31)

And, you know, I play these kind of weird reindeer games online about, you know, Marco is up, Vance is down. Marco has, you know, the stink of this whole thing attaches to him. He went to Munich, he gave a speech. It didn't go down so well. He went to Budapest. He endorsed Orban, too. But I will say, every European you talk to, meaning Europeans in political power, they know the cut of his jib. Closet Reaganite is what they say, and they don't think he believes.

A (58:55)

They know the cut of Vance is correct. More importantly, they know the cut of Vance.

B (58:59)

Here's what I'll say. If it's Rubio who's the heir apparent for 2028 versus whatever Democrat, things are not so bad versus J.D. vance, you know, who may get it early if Trump chokes on a cheeseburger in the Oval.

A (59:15)

Yeah, well, unfortunately, Michael, I think Trump's going to take both of them down with him and it's going to end up being somebody even worse. So we save that for another day, that is. Michael Weiss, I always appreciate you. Thank you for my pleasure being able to brief our audience, but also me, since I was. I was glancing at the hungry stuff from the concert. I can admit that it was like

B (59:36)

1989 all over again. What's not to like?

A (59:38)

Yeah, exactly. I was trying to check out of the Iran war stuff, but I wanted the happy news once I heard it was happy news. I did do a little bit of happy scrolling, but I appreciate the briefing and we'll be talking to you again soon. All right, brother.

B (59:47)

Good to see you, man.

A (59:48)

All right, for everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. We got a new guest. I'm excited about it. We'll see you all then. Peace.

B (59:55)

The devil inside the devil inside Every

A (59:59)

single one of us the devil inside Devil inside the devil inside Every single one of us the devil inside. The Borg podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.