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- [00:00]
A
I surrender.
- [00:03]
B
I surrender.
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A
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show a former member of Congress from Illinois, served in the Air Force and Air National Guard. He's got a new podcast, the Kinzinger Report. He's on Substack. It's Adam Kinzinger.
- [00:23]
B
Hey, buddy, what's up?
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A
If we're going to have a surrender, if we're going to celebrate Donald Trump, the cheese eating surrender monkey signing away the war that he started in France next to Emmanuel Macron, I can't think about anybody better to have to discuss it than you.
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B
So thank you for joining. Thanks. You know, when my brother and I used to play, you know, those Green Army Men, and then you had the Gray Army Men, we used to play that game. And of course, my brother's five years older, so he'd always win. And I just, I remember once, I was a kid, of course I was a kid. I'm playing Green Army Men. But I remember I surrendered to him. And there was an old church song. It's like I Surrender all. You know that one? So I started singing that and my brother made fun of me. And so anyway, there you go.
- [01:07]
A
Okay, well, obviously I went with the alt rock suicide song, but sure. Hillsong worship I Surrender. We can look into that one, too. I don't know. I was discussing this with JVL yesterday. We were reading select excerpts of JD Vance's book together and his conversion to Christianity. Excuse me? His conversion to Catholicism.
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B
That's right.
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A
It's hard to tell kind of from the book that he wants to be a Catholic. He's trying to be everything. But in the book about his conversion to Catholicism, he talks about how the music is so much better at evangelical churches. He's got to throw some bones to the evangelicals for the primary. And he said he's telling his priest to maybe go check out the local Baptist and Evangelical church to hear how they do the music. And it's kind of like, bro, you just joined the club. You just joined us two minutes ago. Don't be fucking telling the priest.
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B
Yeah, you don't get. I mean, you can kind of have a vote on what you guys are having for potluck lunch, but you're not at music yet. And I gotta tell you, like, I don't know, you know, I've only been to a few Catholic services as a Protestant, but I, I can't imagine a drum set up in front of the priest. And. No, I mean, maybe we Started to
- [02:18]
A
do the thing when, you know, when I was growing up in like the 90s, there was a move know as, even as, like the evangelicals are getting some steam. You know what they would do at Catholic churches is on Saturday nights there'd be like a teen mass. This is how we're gonna appeal to the youth. And there'd be like a rock band doing Christian rock. And I just remember going to those things and being like, this is awful. Like, this is making me less interested.
- [02:48]
B
You always had like the, the youth pastor that's like, bro, we're gonna bring pizza, we're gonna hang, we're gonna talk about stuff. And it' 25 year old that ends up getting caught.
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A
The old Catholic hymns are the only thing I liked about the Sunday morning church. You've taken them away and now you've got this ear poison.
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B
By the way, speaking of J.D. i, I saw Jason Kander, actually, who was the former Secretary of State, I think in Missouri. He, he, he found J.D. vance's tell. So J.D. vance, now, when he's gonna go into talking points, right before he does it, he says, let me say this or let me just go ahead and say something. And he said, every time he says that there is the administration approved talking point. I tell you, it's too early for JD to be revealing his tells. If he wants to run for president.
- [03:37]
A
Man, I should check in with Jason Kim. That's a good dude. All right, let's run through the elements of the surrender, the 14 points in the MOU. We're going to talk about how it's in Versailles. It really is, it's really something that we're back at the Treaty of Versailles. Two Electric Boogaloo. But we're to go through a couple of them because I think actually reading them is pretty, pretty telling. Speaking of tells, this is point one of the mou. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MoU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon. It goes on. There are three mentions of Lebanon in the first point.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
Like the war wasn't even about Lebanon.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so I think that tells you a lot about who felt like they had the cards, so to speak, in the negotiation.
- [04:34]
B
Completely. I mean, look, and, and from Israel's perspective, and there's a lot to criticize Israel for, but from Israel's perspective, they have this requirement, honestly, that if they get attacked and they get attacked by Hezbollah from time to time, that they have to respond and somehow drug in and forced on Israel without Israel's approval of it. I mean, it is clear in, once
- [05:00]
A
you start reading that, it's almost as if Donald Trump grabbed them by the pussy, because. Yeah, when you're a star, they let you do it.
- [05:07]
B
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, by the way, the other thing is even just noticing when they say there is now a permanent ceasefire, and of course we get into this later, but it's like, then we're going to negotiate everything else. But that term permanent is basically laying out there to say there is no intention to ever resume military operations. And again, a ceasefire typically is with the understanding that, that hostilities can resume. And it's that sort of Damocles that's hanging over you that is compelling you to an answer. This is already saying, no, we're never going to fight again. Don't worry about that. Now let's talk.
- [05:41]
A
This was on the nmlu, one of the crazy. I mean, Donald Trump said so many insane things the last 48 hours, but one of them was where he was just like, you know, we should just go let Jelani in Syria kind of deal with Hezbollah now, in part because BB's kind of like bombing all these apartment buildings and it's like, it's not even Hezbollah in there sometime. And it's like Trump's basically saying that we should just go ahead and trust the Al Qaeda leader running Syria to handle Hezbollah because he's a little more controllable, you know, and a little. And, and is showing a little bit more prudence than, Than the Prime Minister of Israel, our ally in the war. Totally insane.
- [06:22]
B
It is incredible, by the way, I'll just say quickly, too. I'm one of the few people that U.S. congressmen that have actually been to the Hezbollah, the Lebanon side of the blue line. And one thing you realize is Hezbollah is extremely integrated there. And I mean, it's a real problem. But also, you know, Israel should fight this differently. But this is a, It's a real existential threat to Israel. And not that they should necessarily blow everything up, not that they should invade, but they should at least have the ability to fight back if they're attacked. That's the only way to prevent, you know, to, to push off, frankly, future attacks.
- [06:59]
A
It is, I. It is totally a real threat. And, Well, I, I don't want to get sidelined down the Israel track again. We can circle back to that at the end. But I, I do think that, I guess my, My short point about this is that, like, that is why I. Getting in bed with Donald Trump in this war, Isolating all of your other allies was such a stupid strategic move because you have interests and they've undermined their ability to execute them anyway. Number two, the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other's sovereignty. I got that right. People and territorial integrity. And to refrain from interfering in each other's internal affairs. I thought that one was noteworthy, because now it's. Number two, Iran wasn't really interfering in our internal affairs. I mean, you know, maybe trying to do some cyber attacks here and there, but we, we had a lot of involvement in their internal affairs. Covertly had a lot of things to say about their internal affairs. And so, again, like, the first two points are clearly things that Iran wanted in there.
- [08:05]
B
Yeah. And if you, if you take this to its. Its logical conclusion. So this doesn't mention cyber is. Or Iran is very good at cyber attacks. They're getting better at it. This doesn't mention cyber attack. In fact, as far as I know, there's no mention of that in the whole. The cyber attacks, which is certainly, if I'm the United States and trying to get something out of it. That's one of the things. One of the conditions I would put on. The other thing is it's not like we're going in and, you know, creating opposition to the Iranian regime. Many of the Iranians are actually more affectionate to the United States. We may have liaison with them. They also are very important for our CIA. Right. For the ability to gain intelligence. And by the letter of this. And certainly the CIA can still do its thing, but by the letter of this, we have to basically cease all of those operations, even to get intelligence on the, on the, on the Iranian regime. In theory.
- [09:01]
A
I mean, remember the people. Remember when the Shah was going to. Fans of the, of the former shah was going to republican events. People were like, we're gonna. We're bringing them back.
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B
Yes. Yeah. Yes.
- [09:13]
A
No, it doesn't seem like that happened. Okay, we're gonna skip ahead to point six.