3602 - AIPAC in Illinois; Trump on his Own Private Iran; Cuba next?

Summary

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The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3602 – AIPAC in Illinois; Trump on his Own Private Iran; Cuba next?

Date: March 17, 2026

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Overview

In this hard-hitting "Newsday Tuesday," Sam Seder and crew deliver broad, irreverent, and incisive analysis of major current events. The episode focuses on:

• The influence and tactics of AIPAC and “dark money” in Illinois primaries
• Trump’s war in Iran and its global fallout, including oil shocks and military quagmires
• The humanitarian crisis in Cuba caused by US embargoes—along with Trump’s cavalier colonial ambitions
• The US-Israel axis and impending crises in Lebanon and Gaza
• Larger systemic critiques: the corruption of US democracy due to dark money, and a government captured by oligarchic, militarist, and racist interests
• Listeners are treated to the characteristic blend of detailed policy discussion, biting satire, and somber reflection

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Illinois Primaries and AIPAC Dark Money

[06:53–19:49]

• AIPAC’s Massive Spending:

  • AIPAC spent over $21 million in Illinois through the United Democracy Project and various “shell” PACs, such as “Affordable Chicago Now,” “Elect Chicago Women,” and “Chicago Progressive Partnership” ([07:36]).
  • Crypto & AI super PACs have injected an additional $7.5 million.

• Tactics of Obscuring Affiliations:

  • PACs intentionally pick misleading names (e.g., “Chicago Progressive Partners”) to obscure their ties to pro-Israel or AIPAC interests ([07:36], [13:11]).

• Splitting the Progressive Vote:

  • AIPAC is running ads ostensibly for certain progressive candidates with the intention of fracturing the progressive vote and undermining genuine progressive challengers ([13:11]–[15:30]).
  • Notable ad supporting Bushra Amiwala, who forcefully rejects the outside support, stating:
    • “AIPAC is running ads supporting my campaign. We don’t want it, we didn’t ask for it, and we’re demanding they stop. This is an attempt to smear my name by putting my name next to pro-genocide, pro-war Trump-funded billionaires...Once I’m elected to Congress, I’m coming for dark money, starting with yours.” — Bushra Amiwala ([14:48]–[15:30])

• Cynicism and Backfire:

  • When AIPAC’s direct support was revealed for candidate Laura Fine, her favorability dropped 23 points ([13:11]).

• Polls/Tight Races:

  • Justice Democrats–backed candidates Janaid Ahmed (IL-8) and Kat Abugazaleh (IL-9) are within striking distance despite massive spending against them—evidence, Sam notes, of “how toxic AIPAC money has become” ([11:24]).

• Dark Money Post–Citizens United:

  • Matt displays a graph showing independent “dark money” expenditures skyrocketed post–Citizens United (2010): $1.3B in super PAC money vs. $43M in direct spending in 2024 ([16:13]–[18:10]).
    • “Everything we’re seeing in this Trump era, all of the anti-democracy…the erosion of our democracy and move toward oligarchy and fascism, is right there on that chart.” — Matt ([17:59])

• Corruption/Oligarchy Warning:

  • Sam: “When you go from a plutonomy to a plutocracy…that amount of money ends up being problematic not just because it drives things like inflation…really becomes stark. That type of wealth disparity, you suddenly have that type of political power disparity not compatible with democracy.” ([18:10]–[19:49])

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2. Trump’s War on Iran: Lies, Contradictions, and Global Fallout

[26:29–48:21]

• Military & Economic Quagmire:

  • “We are still on the cusp of a quagmire…It can still get worse. We’re going to have an oil shock. We’re going to have a food supply shock…” — Sam ([26:29])
  • Trump administration assumed Iranian society was more centralized and would quickly collapse; in fact, regime remains resilient.

• Proof Experts DID Warn About This:

  • Trump claims, “Nobody expected that”—referring to Iran retaliating against Gulf states after the US attacked ([28:46], [29:02]).
  • But a National Security Council Iran expert (fired after being targeted by Laura Loomer) explicitly warned, days before the attack, that Iran would “seriously consider targeting Gulf Arab States’ energy infrastructure” ([33:29]).

• Admin Purged Experts in Favor of Right-Wing Media Provocateurs:

  • Trump’s Iran policy increasingly directed by fringe figures (e.g., Laura Loomer, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham). Matt speculates this is “the Israeli government or Zionist lobby” influencing US policy via right-wing media ([32:06–32:25]).

• Trump’s Contradictions & Grandiosity:

  • Claims to have “predicted” every Middle East crisis, including 9/11—despite being repeatedly fact-checked and shown to be lying ([39:20]).
    • “I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did. I said, you better get him, he’s a bad guy. I watched him be interviewed one time, and I said, that’s a bad guy. You better get him.” — Trump ([38:29])
  • Sam: “Here he is making 100% contradictory statements…No experts thought Iran would hit these countries, but also, they were going to take over the Middle East.” ([29:20])

• “Coalition of the Willing” Fizzles:

  • Trump attempted, and failed, to rally NATO, EU, China, and Japan for his war—no partners stepped up ([42:49]).
  • Iranians mock Trump with social media AI videos about his diplomatic isolation ([44:24]).

• Comparison to Bush’s Iraq War:

  • Approval for Iraq War pre-invasion was 80–90% ([45:02]), so antiwar voices were very isolated at the time.
  • Michael Moore’s infamous 2003 Oscars protest is featured, highlighting how lone opposition was in U.S. culture ([47:17]).

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3. Systemic Disaster: Dark Money, Colonial Mindset, Oligarchy

[48:21–76:37]

• Historical Inevitability of Quagmires/Fascism:

  • Lack of accountability for Bush-era war crimes paved way for Trump’s reckless militarism:
    • “If we had prosecuted these people…if the AUMF had been rescinded—then perhaps Trump wouldn’t be able to do this on a whim.” ([51:39])

• Lebanon Next—‘Greater Israel’ Ambitions:

  • Israel preparing a ground invasion into southern Lebanon (“10% of Lebanese territory…3–400,000 people” to be depopulated by leaflet drops) ([56:06]).
  • Trump justifies Israel’s bombing of Lebanon via anecdote:
    • “A person whose parents live in Lebanon…explained to me that it’s really a different section of Lebanon…it’s where Hezbollah is. They get used to it, I guess.” — Trump ([54:06], [56:44])
  • Panel ridicules Trump’s ignorance of basic geopolitics and human life outside his narrow social circles ([57:34–58:19]).

• Humanitarian Disaster in Cuba via US Embargo

  • Cuba suffers a nationwide blackout; US embargo prevents essential supplies. Dialysis, ventilator patients, newborns at high risk ([62:01]).
  • Trump glibly boasts:
    • “I think I’d have the honor of taking Cuba. That’d be good…I think I could do anything I want with it…They’re a very weakened nation right now. They were, for a long time, very vulnerable, violent, very violent leaders. Castro’s a very violent leader. His brother’s a very violent leader.” ([63:31])
    • Panel: “He talks about ‘taking’ Cuba as if he’s roofied somebody.” — Sam ([62:24])
  • Host panel breaks down real history:
    • Cuba’s political repression an artifact of being under US siege; Trump’s “taking Cuba” would mainly benefit former sugar barons, with a return to colonial/plantation order ([65:06]–[65:26]).

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4. Larger Critiques: Money, War, and Absence of Vision

[68:04–73:49]

• No Strategic Thinking, Only Oligarchic Extraction:

  • “These are legitimately white supremacists…They enjoy seeing people suffering.” — Matt ([68:54])
  • US government behaves as “a war machine operating autonomously…pushing and the politicians are abandoned.” ([70:18])
  • No clear endgame for war in Iran; panel ridicules fantasy that “Iran will implode and you’ll get a monarchy there…there’ll be much more stability.” ([70:18]–[70:56])

• Corruption at Home Mirrors Colonial Despotism:

  • “It’s analogous to the stage of capitalism we’re in, CEOs and board…running cottage industries within major corporations. There is no company, no notion of giving workers buying power. This is all about extraction.” — Sam ([72:24])
  • US oil & gas companies profit massively from Middle East turmoil; price gouged at the pump, no increase in production cost ([73:42]).

• “Peace Through Strength” is Not Anti-War:

  • Trump’s claim to antiwar stance is a lie, simply dupe for further war crimes because “this is the only language they (Iranians) understand.” Panel references fascist, colonial logic at work ([74:40]).

• Republican/Right-Wing Foreign Policy is About Supremacy, Not Diplomacy:

  • “If you think antiwar is enough, then you don’t really look at how fascism and colonial politics inform each other…the violence inflicted abroad eventually boomerangs home.” ([75:26]).

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Notable Quotes

On AIPAC and Dark Money:

• “When you go from a plutonomy to a plutocracy…that amount of money ends up being problematic…You suddenly have that type of political power disparity not compatible with democracy.” — Sam ([18:10])
• “Everything we’re seeing in this Trump era, all of the anti-democracy…is right there on that chart.” — Matt ([17:59])

On Trump’s Iran War:

• “Nobody thought that they would hit these countries at all. No experts. But what they were going to do was take over the entire Middle East.” — Sam (paraphrasing Trump, mocking contradiction) ([29:20])
• “I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did…” — Trump ([38:29])
• “To have the President of the United States have the capacity to engage in this bombing campaign on a whim is the direct result of the lack of accountability for Bush-era war criminals.” — Matt ([51:39])

On Lebanon & US/Israeli Policy:

• “Over the years, they’ve gotten used to the fact that it’s being bombed, but they explained to me that it’s really a different section of Lebanon…It’s a section where Hezbollah is. And they get used to it, I guess.” — Trump ([56:44])
• “He talks about ‘taking’ Cuba as if he’s roofied somebody.” — Sam ([62:24])

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Important Timestamps

• AIPAC Spending & Illinois Primaries: [06:53–19:49]
• Dark Money/Citizens United Impact: [16:13–19:49]
• Analysis of Trump’s Iran War: [26:29–48:21]
  • Trump caught in lies and contradictions: [28:46], [38:29]
  • Expert warnings about Iran quagmire: [32:40–35:41]
  • Michael Moore Oscar speech flashback: [47:17]
• Israel/Lebanon Offensive Discussion: [54:06–59:16]
• Cuba Blackout, Embargo, and Trump’s Colonial Mindset: [62:01–66:49]
• Synthesis on Oligarchy/Corruption/No Vision: [68:04–74:40]

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Memorable Moments

• Bushra Amiwala’s furious rejection of AIPAC money and demand to outlaw dark money (14:48)
• Trump grandiosely boasts about “taking Cuba,” as if colonizing a country is an “honor” (63:31)
• Panel’s mockery of Trump’s confusion about civilians living overseas, and how US bombing is just another part of their daily lives (56:44)
• Michael Moore Oscar speech, met with awkward silence in liberal Hollywood, illustrating manufacturing of consent during the Iraq War (47:17)
• Matt and Sam’s raw critique of the failure to prosecute Bush-era war criminals as enabling Trump’s current excesses and illegal wars (51:39)

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Summary Tone & Language

The episode is biting, bleakly humorous, and deeply critical, mixing clear-eyed policy analysis with sarcasm and moral outrage. The hosts scrutinize the disastrous consequences of US foreign and domestic policy under Trump, the bipartisan rot of dark money, and the failures of liberal opposition. Listeners don’t just get the news—they get context, history, and a call to see the US’s crisis as structural, not exceptional.

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If you missed the episode, this summary has you covered—from Illinois to Iran, from the Gulf to Havana, and from machine politics to the machine logic of war and money.

Transcript

[A]

Hey folks, we heard from our [e-mail] and they hope you're hanging in there. They know things have been rough lately, certainly a lot of stuff going down up in their neighborhood with ice and it has been a very cold and a rough tough winter. Time change has messed up our sleep schedules and then there's the continual barrage of existential horrors that we have to deal with on a daily basis. But spring is nearly here. I told you about those starlings. They came early. Spring is close and it's a great time to recenter and focus on maintaining healthy habits and to support you in your wellness goals. They're having a big sale on all of their Saba Day tinctures now through March 24th. You can save 30% on their full spectrum Saba Day tinctures with the code spring to 6 ring number 26 no spaces. This is this includes tinctures to sleep, tinctures for balancing your stress levels and even tinctures for your cats and dogs. I am a big goodnight oil tincture user. It has helped me dramatically with my sleep now for a couple of years without having to take as much of that, you know, stuff like Ambien and I don't know, cough medicine or it's fantastic they have both sleep aids with melatonin without melatonin. I also will take some of the just the straight sab a day usually in the 3500 meg realm, just when things are getting a little stressful at the home because of the kids, but as they age out then it's just, well, I'm just going to chill. Head on over to sunsetlake sabade.com use the code spring26 spring26 that spring26 to save 30% on all their Saba de tinctures for people and pets. Sale ends March 24th at 11:59pm Eastern. See their site for additional terms and conditions. And now time for the show. It is Tuesday, March 17, 2026. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today Europe box at Trump's plea for help in the Strait of Hormuz Top US Counterterrorism official resigns over the Iran war Israel claims the killing of top Iranian security Basij heads Pakistan bombs Kabul killing one hundreds. I should say the primaries in Illinois could shut out AIPAC. Senate Republicans kick off an attempt to pass the SAVE act which would disenfranchise nearly 20 million people. Cuba suffers a countrywide blackout as a function of US Embargo. Meanwhile, Trump claims the United States will take over in a friendly way. Federal judge blocks RFK's vaccine policies and the woefully understaffed DOJ starts hiring prosecutors directly out of law school. It is day two of the 3800 meatpacking workers strike. This is the first meatpacking strike in over four decades. 200,000 legal immigrants losing their truck licenses to starting yesterday. And abundance takes one square in the face. A new housing study. Lastly, a Georgia city fighting ICE detention mega center. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen.

[B]

It is news Day Tuesday and in

[A]

fact a Newsday Tuesday.

[B]

A true and pure and honest Newsday Tuesday. We're not lying to you anymore on this program.

[A]

And breaking news. Yesterday was Brian Bogey's birthday. Yep.

[B]

Yes, it was.

[C]

I know.

[A]

I'm so stressed out for my upcoming bar mitzvah. Brian waited. You actually can do that? Yeah, My, the actually my uncle who Saul was named after, he got rebar mitzvahed like at age like 96 or something.

[D]

How is Adam Sandler not in a movie about this?

[A]

Yeah, that is, that's a great point. Point.

[B]

And also being rebar mitzvah sounds a lot more fun than being re circumcised just in case Tony Dokipal wants to. Well, he did once.

[A]

Or did he actually?

[B]

Who knows? Who knows.

[A]

It's hard to know what was there before. Nevertheless. Happy birthday, Brian. Thank you.

[B]

Happy birthday, Brian.

[A]

Brian tried to stay away yesterday to avoid this and so sending a message.

[D]

He didn't say why he was going to be gone on Monday. He's just like, I'm going to be gone.

[A]

Oh, no, no. It was the birthday thing. And then I just realized like, oh, he doesn't want us to mention it. Well, too bad.

[B]

I remembered on the day.

[A]

Yes, very nice text from Emma that said like new wee wow or something. Well, I remember I just, I just said we're going to celebrate it today. It's celebrated today. Oh, your birthday's usually, it's always celebrated on the first Tuesday after your birthday.

[B]

I said wahoo.

[A]

Oh yeah, wahoo. Right. There are.

[B]

Like the song from the frickin Lion King. Okay, keep going.

[A]

We've got four primaries in Illinois today. I mean there may be more in fact, but there are four congressional ones. Illinois second, Illinois seventh, Illinois eight, Illinois ninth. AIPAC has spent over $21 million through its election pact. The United Democracy Project as, as well as they have apparently other shell packs. The Affordable Chicago Now Elect Chicago Women and Chicago Progressive Partnership.

[D]

Not hearing anything about the relationship America has with Israel and any of those names.

[A]

It's. It's hard to fit those in. Affordable Israeli Chicago now affordability.

[B]

They care.

[A]

I mean this all reminds me of like when Cuomo ran in. I think it was the, was it the governor's race, one of the races he ran under started a party women for Cuomo, something to that effect as a way of fighting all of the accusations of him assaulting women. That's what they do. Crypto and I have spent a combined nearly $7.5 million in Illinois. Second, seventh and eighth their super PACs. One is called Fair Shake. That's a crypto one. Protect progress. That's another crypto one. Jobs and democracy. AI and think big. Yes. Opposite Day was already taken. Apparently our democracy is in good shape, folks.

[D]

Thank you to the Supreme Court for making sure free speech was protected with the Citizens United case.

[B]

Exactly right.

[A]

We had two different candidates on this program who are running today and Illinois 8. Janaid Ahmed was on. Was it last week? Two weeks ago? Two or three weeks ago. And running against former Congresswoman Melissa Bean, who is a, I mean, you know, I would call her a corporatist. I think that she would be in favor of that. She had over $6 million from APAC crypto and AI lobbies. That is a very, very close race. The polling, you know, to the extent that you can really glean too, too much from these polls. He was down just by five points and there was still plenty of undecideds in Illinois 9. Cat Abuxela, who was on this program last week. She. There's a bunch been a couple of polls and she's within, you know, I don't know, four or five points of Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss. We should say that there's a weird controversy about this weird. That dropped last night.

[B]

A.

[A]

He apparently was a TA at a university. He was age 25 or 26 and he had a student who was 21. After the class ended, he more or less like asked her on a date or tried to get together and then they apparently. This is, this is from her account which she announced on Blue sky last night. They made out a couple of times and it apparently impacted her adversely. He called it off because he felt that it was inappropriate because she had been a student. I don't, you know, it's, it's all a little bit strange in terms of the timing.

[B]

But it just matters more. I mean BIS has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Israel lobby donors. So I mean there you go, case closed.

[A]

But I thought we should just mention that because that's what's happening. But the idea that you had at least two candidates who supported by Justice Democrats who may still win, they both could win. When you've had this much APAC aligned money is a, is a very, very good sign on how toxic AIPAC money has become. And just it's quite clear they know this too, which is why they're going through all of these hoops to hide where this money is coming from. They are also spending money in that same Illinois 9th in support of a candidate who we discussed a little bit after Kat Abuxelo came on. She is, she was supported by a one local chapter, not the sort of like biggest one, I guess.

[B]

DSA chapter there recommended not endorsed. And she is running, she is polling significantly behind Kat Abu Ghazala. So our advice to you if you're in Illinois's 9th would be to support Kat because she has the chance to really actually win.

[A]

But just to give you a sense of what AIPAC is doing, they put money into her campaign as a way of splitting Abigail Zaylor's vote. Now the funny part is, is that the AIPAC gave directly to candidate Fine, Laura Fine and it hurt her favorability by almost like 23 points once it came out.

[B]

So they have to do these cutouts where they lie about what they actually are. This is the ad we're referring to here by they call themselves Chicago Progressive Partners, but it's AIPAC money going through this super PAC cutout. Bushra Amiwallah is fighting for real economic justice.

[E]

We must break down these oligarchs and monopolies. We must make sure that billionaires, corporations and these oligarchs pay their fair share in taxes. Bushra's plan, Medicare for all, a living wage, student loan, forgiveness, real affordable housing options, and yes, making the wealthy pay their fair share.

[B]

Bushra Amiwala is the real deal fighting

[E]

for real economic justice.

[A]

Oh so obvious AIPAC money that comes through from there because it's all of those things that AIPAC stands for.

[B]

This is them kind of learning the reverse of what happened in NJ11 by the way, where they ended up running ads to the left of Tom Malinowski to say that he had like kind of supported ICE funding and things like that. But they ended up splitting the vote of the pro Israel contingent and then you had me here who ended up winning that race by the skin of her teeth. They're trying to now split the progressive vote. This is their newer tactic because they

[A]

got swamped in NJ11 and here's she. She had a response to this. She wasn't happy. I mean she had no control over them spending this money. Let's make that clear. You know there's an outside expenditure.

[E]

APAC is running ads supporting my campaign. And let me be clear. We don't want it, we didn't ask for it and we're demanding they stop. This is an attempt to smear my name by putting my name next to pro genocide, pro war. Trump funded billionaires in billionaires who funded Trump's fascist regime in hopes that it sticks. And since Laura Fine is sinking fast, I'll save you the trouble of shopping around. Daniel Biss has already asked for your support. He won't call what's happening Gaza genocide and he won't say no to any further military aid to Israel. You all actually even stopped attacking him a week ago. We all noticed. Go back to your actual candidate. Once I'm elected to Congress, I'm coming for dark money, starting with yours.

[A]

I mean it's good that you pointed out those two candidates are.

[B]

And she's still in the race. She's not going to be the candidate if all the polling holds. It would be a huge statistical error if that ended up happening.

[D]

So still though very funny of Apex ad actually pushed her into the.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

From basically out of tension.

[A]

I will say this that in the event that Abu Zayla wins her issue set will have had. You can add those points right. That AIPAC promoted there to her mandate in terms of like, you know what her job is going to be in Congress.

[B]

But I just wanted to just because she mentions dark money here and Matt mentioned it too. We still don't I don't think fully talk about it too much. I just wanted to show this graph really quickly. This is since the Citizens United decision. So Brennan center for justice had this like you see 2010 there. That's $144 million in terms of direct spending. That was prior to the Citizens United decision where they determined that money is like speech and corporations have the right to freely speak, which means independent expenditures. They can spend as much as they want without going over the totals directly contributing to a campaign. This has been the. The dark money corruption explosion. It was only like a fraction of super PACs being the expenditures there. Only $6.7 million I'm seeing is the figure in 2010 that super PACs were contributing versus the 144 million total spent now go to 2024. That's almost the entirety of all spending. $1.3 billion in super PAC money, which is where dark money comes from, versus the direct spending of 42.9 million. So we have, you know, 1.4 billion and a 1.3 billion of that in the last election cycle was in the so called independent extent expenditures, which is what you're seeing there, groups that are running advertisements on candidates behalfs, but not directly coordinating with them. This is kind of a rarer thing for AIPAC to be doing this without her consent, but it's been enabled by the fact that since 2010 we have legalized corruption and everything we're seeing in this Trump era, all of the anti democracy, the, the lack of input that we have on things like our foreign policy and the responsiveness of both the Democratic party and the Republican Party. You can look at that chart and you can see that that's exactly what has been the erosion of our democracy and moved us towards oligarchy and fascism.

[A]

Well, I would also say there's a reciprocal relationship to that too, in the sense that wealth inequality is also why you have this explosion of spending. Because you have people out there, particularly you know, the crypto and APAC billionaires who have so much money that the idea of dropping 20 million, 30 million, in the case of Trump, you had a couple of people drop 130, 150, 200 million to 50, $250 million from an individual. Elon Musk, the idea of doing that, or you know, the, what was it, 30 or $40 million dropped on Sherrod Brown by crypto people in the 2024 Senate race. That wealth disparity is what we talk about when you go from a plutonomy to a plutocracy where that amount of money ends up being problematic, not just because it drives things like inflation and housing inflation. We actually will talk about that report later in the program. But it also begins to really, I mean we've always had a problem, but it really becomes stark when, when you have that type of wealth disparity, you, you suddenly have that type of like political power disparity not compatible with democracy. No, I think. Who is the founding father that said that?

[D]

Or is it John Adams?

[A]

I don't know, but I remember, at the very least I remember Brandeis said you can have a bu millionaires or you can have a democracy, you can't have both. Something to that effect. We're going to get to Some of the latest on President Trump and his

[B]

war in Iran and on the Cuban people as well.

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

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[B]

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[C]

You did.

[A]

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[B]

Oh whoa.

[A]

Yep. Discover how care in every detail transforms simple routines into moments of true comfort and ease. Head to cozyearth.com use the code majority report all one word for up to 20 off. That's code majority report for up to 20 off. And if you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Experience the craft behind the comfort. Make every day feel intentional. We'll put a link to that at the podcast and YouTube descriptions. Honestly, that Cozy Earth stuff is awesome.

[B]

It's phenomenal.

[A]

All right, let's get into this. The we are still on the cusp of a quagmire. It seems from, you know, the various places I've been reading that it is unlikely that we will not be suffering the impact of this war economically for years to come. But it can still get worse. We're going to have an oil shock. We're going to have a food supply shock. And now it's just a question of, like, how long will it last? How bad will it be? Will it drive the entire world into a recession? It really appears like they had no plan. Or they had a plan A, which was the Israelis are going to take out the Ayatollah and the entire society will implode and people will come out in the streets despite the bombing that we're doing and will overthrow the government. It now appears like there's very, very little chance of that happening, that it was ill thought out and the nature of the Iranian society and its government was such that it was far more decentralized than they assumed. And now Trump is in the CYA part. And the problem is, is that the fear of humiliation, the fear of being seen as weak, means that the chances of Trump exiting this war are getting smaller. And apparently like the military keeps trying to feed him options on exit ramps. So we'll see. But here he is now claiming that none of this was predictable.

[F]

Thank you. You were talking about Iran a couple times today and what they did after Epic Fury began. You said they hit Saudi Arabia, uae, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked. Are you surprised that nobody briefed you ahead of time, that that might be their retaliation?

[C]

Nobody? Nobody? No, no, no, no. The greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit. They were, I wouldn't say friendly countries. They were like neutral. They were. They lived with them for years, Peter. They were going to take over the Middle East. They were going to knock out Israel with their nuclear weapon. But after we knocked out their nuclear, nuclear potential, their nuclear.

[A]

Pause it for one second. I hope everybody sees the contradiction Just in what he just said, nobody thought that they would hit these countries at all. No experts. But what they were going to do was take over the entire Middle East. I mean, like, like those are back to back statements. But, but, but continue on here. I mean, I just wanted to point out that 100% contradiction, Peter.

[C]

They were going to take over the Middle East. They were going to knock out Israel with their nuclear weapon. But after we knocked out their nuclear potential. Their nuclear potential. Weapon potential, they started building missiles, thousands and thousands of missiles. And they were going to do it with missiles. While they developed. These are sick people. While they developed nuclear. Somehow they were going to start at a different site, because that site was, you saw the site, the mountain. They were going to go into a certain area which we know exactly where it is, and they were going to do that. And it's incredible what we've done. I tell you the job we've done. You know, if I didn't tell.

[A]

Okay, let's get to that question as to whether there was any experts that could have possibly known this. Get number two up. This is a piece that was written on February 24th. Does anybody remember when we attacked? It was February 28th, and it was written by a guy named Nate Swanson, who is the, he was the director for Iran at the national security council between 2022 and 2025. In the spring and summer of 2025, he served on the Trump administration's Iran negotiating team. And he was loomered sometime in the fall of 2025, fired from his job because apparently Laura Loomer wanted him out. I mean, you actually start, like, it gives you a better sense of who may be, you know, sort of, because we've speculated, like, how did Laura Loomer get a list of people who needed to go in this administration? Like, how is Laura Loomer, you know, sitting in her studio and wherever she is in Florida or whatever it is, how does she know which members of the National Security Council are advocating in any way or whatnot? And my assumption has always been, and I continue to believe it's like Stephen Miller is feeding her stuff. Maybe, you know, whatever J.D. vance is feeding her stuff, or literally

[B]

the Israeli government or Zionist lobby, she is clearly in bed with them to some degree. And I mean, that's. You say Loomer, that's not even an exaggeration. I remember Trita Parsi at the start of this war was saying that that was the scuttlebutt was that at that time, Trump was listening to Lindsey Graham Tom Cotton and Laura Loomer.

[A]

No, she is the one who literally said this guy's name. Go back to this piece because we need to read part of it because Donald Trump asked who. Who could have known this? Well, if you go down in that piece. Keep going.

[B]

It's paywalled.

[A]

All right, well, I will read it for you as you. As you get the. I had put the other link in there. Tehran. Okay, here we go. This is. He's writing to the piece why Iran will escalate. This is four days before we attacked. He, you know, he may, or he may have had a sense that we were going to attack in a speech last week. Find this. Khomeini threatened to sink US Aircraft carrier and close the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran is unlikely to do either of these things given the US Military buildup in the region, but it could more easily inflict U.S. casualties. Killing Americans may be a particularly appealing option. I'll go down. Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab States energy infrastructure.

[B]

Ding, ding, ding.

[A]

The US has roughly 40,000 troops positioned across 13 regional bases, not including the significant naval and air power it's recently deployed to the Middle East. On February 19, Iran's ambassador to the UN warned the body that if the country were attacked, all nearby bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force would constitute legitimate targets. So both this guy who worked for the Trump administration before Laura Loomer decided he shouldn't, and Iran's ambassador to the UN Gave a warning about this stuff.

[B]

Put me back up. Right, yeah, it's okay.

[A]

I mean.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Finally, Tehran could target global oil flows in international shipping, of course, sending energy prices up and creating a serious political liability for Trump.

[B]

I mean, every administration prior to this knew that this was going to be a quagmire. So you don't even need this piece, but here we go.

[A]

Iran may well encourage the Houthis to resume attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. Watch for this in the coming weeks. The Houthis have been quiet, but if Iran wants to shut down the supply of oil, the Houthis will start hitting ships because the Red Sea was sort of an alternate route for some of these tankers for Saudi Arabia. I mean, if the conflict with the US State deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab States energy infrastructure directly. In 2019, during Trump's last maximum pressure campaign, Iran directly attacked Saudi Arabia's Akbank oil processing facility, the world's largest. That assault appeared to be designed to damage easily replaceable components, thus limiting the consequences to the global energy supply. But if Tehran instead assaulted infrastructure that it knows would take longer to repair, the results would be much more damaging.

[B]

It also is just common sense when you think about it, because the Iranians probably assumed, rightly so, as you had the administration say, saying that we did this to protect Israel, that they were not going to prioritize protecting the Gulf states as we throw billions and billions of dollars at Israel and we fund their missile defense system, the Iron Dome. More bang for your buck if you target the Gulf states. And yeah, that there's less of a lobby, to put it mildly here in the US but in terms of financial interests, like these countries are trying to expand to the west and to ingratiate themselves to European and American tourists, and they're working themselves financially into our, our sports industries, and they have crypto deals with a bunch of American and Western capitalists. So Iran is thinking, okay, we can do this relatively cheaply, even with drone attacks, save our more sophisticated missiles for the Iron Dome and hit them where it hurts when we need to. And we still don't even know fully what the damage is from those missiles because of Israeli censorship. So you gotta wonder what strategic thinking was involved here, if any at all, or if you have just a deeply racist administration. And it seems like Hegseth is calling a lot of the shots here. And we know how he feels about Muslim people both in Iran and in the Gulf states, where they literally quite. Where they, they don't care. I mean, it's. Those Gulf states are just like filled with billions and billions of dollars. And they probably were arrogant enough to think that like, yeah, they'll take their hits, but they don't have any democracy there, so who cares if some of the people are harmed?

[D]

Yeah, the leadership is like how Israel sort of outgrowth of the military industrial complex. A lot of those Gulf state monarchies are outgrowth of just the global oil industry.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

And the bottom line is, to the extent that they had experts on Iran, they did not want to listen to them or somebody arranged for those to be fired. I mean, obviously Donald Trump had no idea that this guy existed. And Laura Loomer sent a list and they were gone. And so anybody who could warn the president or the, you know, through the chain of command as to the dangers inherent in this were taken out months ago from the administration anyways. But here is Trump on one hand, he had no idea about this, no idea that they would attack. How could one possibly know? Here's clip number eight.

[C]

I know.

[A]

Excuse me, I'm sorry. Seven. He had no idea. But he did know some other things.

[B]

Hmm.

[A]

This is number seven.

[C]

I knew about the straight, that it would be a weapon, which I predicted a long time ago. Predicted all of this stuff. You guys were very generous in that. I predicted all of it. I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did. I said, you better get him, he's a bad guy. I watched him be interviewed one time and I said, that's a bad guy. You better get him. One year before. Exactly. I wrote it in a book. You can even check. About a year before the World Trade center came down, President Clinton actually had a shot at him and he didn't take it. Unfortunately, I'm not blaming him for that, but he didn't take it and he ended up knocking down the World Trade Center. But I predicted that. I predicted a lot of things. We strongly encouraged. I knew.

[B]

Okay, looking at this as kind of neocon Don, maybe Bush three point, Bush term three. And I think that we should be talking about like the catastrophe in the Middle east in those terms. It's almost like the reverse of when Trump looked into Putin's heart and he saw that he saw Pudi put he could work with him. Trump saw. Looked into Osama's heart, saw that he was a bad guy. He's also using like a very similar logic for the war in Iran as well.

[A]

We should also say that this is not the first time that Trump has made this claim that he had predicted 9 11. Here's a story. Let's go to the. No, let's go to the. Is this the top one?

[D]

This is the most recent here.

[A]

This is from. Yeah, okay. This is from March 16th. Delusional Trump, 79, falsely claims he predicted 9 11. That's one piece. But it's not the first time he has said this. Let's go to the next one. This one is a fact check from October 6th. In 2025, Trump falsely claims again that his pre 911 book warned about Osama bin Laden. That was fact checked by Daniel Dale. But again, it's not the first time he said this. And so this is from October 27, 2019. Fact check. Trump falsely claims his 2000 book demanded the killing of Osama bin Laden.

[B]

Well, to be fair, he didn't probably write his book, so he may need a refresher on his own book. Well, what's in it?

[A]

Well, I told the writer and he forgot to write.

[B]

He forgot. Did you? The other, the other part that was so Bush that I was thinking about was when he said he was at asked the other day, when will this war end? He said, when I. When I feel it in my bones. It really reminded me about how Bush spoke about how it was him listening to his gut that caused him, that led him on foreign policy. And so it's subliterate. Yeah. I mean, it's just important to point out these consistencies, whether it was John Bolton being consistent across the administration or just like the same infrastructure of the neocons that Marco Rubio was a part of, or Hegseth being a guy that was lobbying to overturn the convictions of war criminals in Iraq. As you have a class of people in media that had a lot of influence saying that this administration was going to be anti war and dovish back to Hillary the Hawk and Donald the Dove in the New York Times. You would have to have no understanding of the Republican Party, no understanding of neoconservatives, no understanding of their philosophy to understand that. And here we are once again in another quagmire in the Middle East.

[A]

And let's take the other claim that he made in that, that statement, which was that he knew they would weaponize the Strait of Hormuz. If you knew this and you were about to launch an invasion and you knew like, okay, we need to figure out a way of preventing them from weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz. We know that Donald Trump has gone to NATO and has gone to European countries. Ask China, ask Japan, hey, you need to help us escort ships out of the Strait of Hormuz. And the idea being that Iran may not want to blow up ships that are not American because they don't want to expand their enemy list here.

[B]

I think he actually just doesn't want them to hit Americans because he'll get blowback. So he's asking to the Europe, European, like young men and women to be on the front lines of his illegal offensive criminal war in Iran and is like, I'll take NATO members. I will threaten Naito funding if you don't acquiesce.

[A]

Well, yes, and the point being is that, that Iran is going to be more hesitant to fire or send a drone against a ship from China or from Japan or from Naito. And so Trump has begged them. But you would imagine if he predicted this, you would line those ducks up before the war started. Right. Like, even Donald, even George Bush attempted to have a coalition of the willing. It got very, very small by the end and was sort of like people were pulled in, dragged, and you know, kicking. But Donald Trump did not do that. And it seems that they have all rejected him. And so much so that the Iranians now have taken a page from the Trump administration and produced their own AI video where they are mocking how the rest of the world is not listening to Donald Trump. Podcast audience vote Gently down Merrily, merrily Merry magazine.

[B]

So that's McCrone.

[D]

I can't do the water splash.

[A]

Come on, stop. I know how I feel awake. Up, up. Pockets broke as hell of a.

[B]

Oh, they did.

[F]

Why?

[C]

Nobody helps me to open haras.

[B]

That's pretty good. The coalition of the willing is a little bit easier to pull off when Bush's approval rating is not what Trump's is right now. The approval rating for the Iraq war is not what the approval rating for the Iran war is. Right?

[A]

Oh, my God. I mean, the approval rating for the Iraq war in the days leading up to it was somewhere in the high 80s, maybe low 90s. I can tell you. It was so isolating to be against the Iraq war. And that's what's so strange about this moment is like, I don't think that this show has the ability to really reach any significant number of people who are in favor of this. Like, you know, when I was on Air America, you know, we would be reaching people who were in favor of the Iraq war even as late as 2004, because there were so many people. Take this clip. Do we have that clip from Michael Moore? This is the bullying Columbine. He won this Oscar. Oscar. Just literally, I think it was a week or two after, maybe just days after the beginning of the Iraq bombing and invasion. Shock and Awe. It happened a couple of days before Michael Moore won the Oscar for best documentary for Bowling for Columbine, which was about the mass gun shootings. So this is roughly the end of March 2003, were the Oscars and Shock and Awe happened in mid March, I think it was.

[C]

And the 20th at night into midnight it went in.

[A]

And so this was like three or four days later, actually. And so here's Michael Moore. But I want you to get a sense of just how popular George Bush and the Iraq war were. You'll get a sense from this room full of Hollywood elites, Moore comes up on stage with a lot of people.

[F]

On behalf of our producers, Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this. I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to. They are here. They are here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction. And we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictitious of duct tape or the fictitious of orange alerts, we are against this war. Mr. Bush, shame on you. Mr. Bush, shame on you. And anytime you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.

[B]

I'm sure they're playing him off now.

[A]

I mean, liberal Hollywood. See, you could see that the shot of the audience was really telling where nobody wanted to speak up. You had one guy in there.

[B]

It looked like Scorsese was about to

[A]

start clapping right there. I mean, that, that one is where everybody's just like, I wouldn't put myself out like that.

[B]

Who's the blonde lady clapping there? Is that Nicole Kidman? Okay, well, maybe not.

[A]

But you see there one guy in there who's actually really. I mean, this is what, what it was like at that time. It's probably a seat filler.

[B]

And I don't want to. I don't also want to like, say things have improved in terms of what the approval rating for this war in particular was. But just because we had the Oscars on Sunday, there was one speech that mentioned the Gaza genocide, and it was Javier Bardem. And I know Joachim Trier said something in afterwards about Sudan and Congo and Gaza, but, like, in the midst of our country funding a genocide, the fact that that was really the only decision display at this point of opposition is deeply upsetting. But like, that mood there is. It was reflected in the poll numbers, Bush's approval rating and the approval rating for the Iraq war. So Trump is maybe, you know, a continuation of Bush, but he certainly doesn't have the nationalism that came from 911 to buoy him into this criminal war

[A]

or even the have. I mean, look, the Bush administration went through a lot of trouble to make up a lot of lies on, to justify it. They leaked information directly from the White House to Judith Miller, who was a reporter at the time for the New York Times, saying that Saddam Hussein had access to weapons of mass destruction. And then Dick Cheney, the next day, the office that leaked it to her via Scooter Libby went on Meet the Press at a time where Meet the Press actually had some violence and said, I'm just quoting the New York Times to prove that there are weapons of mass destruction. They've done the reporting. This isn't. This isn't coming from us. I mean, we have stuff that also verifies it, but, you know, we can see that it's public information. You had Colin Powell use all of his cachet and sit in front of the UN and hold up a vial of fake anthrax to say there are weapons of mass destruction there. And Lt. Col. Wilkinson, who years later I think went on a sort of a reputation rebuilding tour, said that it was the worst day of his life and that Colin Powell, you know, knew they were just basically whitewashing the stuff that the CIA, I can't remember his name now, was sitting behind him at the UN and so there was a concerted effort to lie to the United States, to people. And of course, like you say it was in the wake of 9 11, the country was largely in shock. In this instance, Trump just like it was like almost like in the same way that, you know, I might decide I'm going to go see a movie if I don't have my kids. So it's like that loosey goosey.

[B]

And hopefully we'll have a guest on to speak about not just the human toll of this bombing campaign in Iran, but the ecological toll that is going to be felt by people for decades. To have the President of the United States have the capacity to engage in this bombing campaign on a whim and is the direct result to bring it back to Iraq of the lack of accountability that the war criminals in the Bush administration were able to experience. The fact that Dick Cheney died outside of a jail cell, the fact that Bush is painting and saw on his ranch in Texas Condoleezza Rice, what she's like, you know, a consultant for the Denver Broncos or something. I mean, it's absolutely insane. And that was because the Democrats were complicit in. Democrats, including Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq war. Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, huh? How are these people still influencing the party? If we had prosecuted these people, if we had also removed the, the, the, there had been a war powers vote, if there, the authorizations for the use of military force had been rescinded, then perhaps, perhaps Trump wouldn't be able to do this on a whim. But this is the result of that lack of accountability.

[A]

Let's go to number six. This is as we are continue to bomb Iran as the Israelis continue to bomb Iran. Israel is being, is very busy these days. Lebanon, the Israelis are not only having their police and IDF kill people in the west bank, not only are they still bombing Gaza, but they are now apparently prepping for a ground invasion. Of Lebanon as they bomb southern Lebanon first, and then we'll come in with a ground invasion, supposedly. Here is Donald Trump being asked about that bombing in Lebanon. Israel is expected to expand its ground offensive in southern Lebanon to go after Hezbollah. Have you discussed that with Israeli leaders? And does the United States support a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon?

[C]

Yeah, No, I did. And I know, though, look, Hezbollah is a problem. It's been a problem for a long time. Not just now. And it's a certain area because I was with the other night a person whose parents live in Lebanon. This is a very substantial person, wealthy person whose parents live in Lebanon. I said, really?

[B]

Can you pause this? We don't even. He's talking about. Almost certainly Tiffany Trump's husband

[A]

just live there.

[B]

So this is the decision.

[A]

I just found this out for the first time. I mean, they've only been married for a while.

[D]

People in my circle actually live there also.

[B]

Which one is it? Has Hezbollah completely been decapitated and degraded? Wasn't that the Israeli claim last? In the same way that Iran's nuclear program was totally obliterated by the Israelis last year? Now suddenly Hezbollah is back and they were able to build a nuke in, like, record scientifically impossible time.

[D]

They're displacing hundreds of thousands of people, almost create a new buffer zone.

[B]

Almost a million people in Lebanon. They're, this is the. They are at the beginning of the Greater Israel offensive and they're going for Lebanon first. And Trump is now saying because of some anecdote from his least probably favorite son in law, though maybe Tiffany Trump is higher up on there now. If this guy's rich, he's like, now that's his justification, this lunatic.

[A]

I can't remember who I got this from on Twitter, but in 1919, Chaim Weitzman and David Ben Gurion attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference which ended World War I. They presented a map containing the boundaries of their hope for Israeli state. The map includes what is now Lebanon's Litany river, which is in southern Lebanon.

[D]

So just, just conquest. That's what's happening.

[A]

Yeah. Yep. And they are now, they've apparently sent leaflets to depopulate the entire area south of the latani River. That is 10% of Lebanese territory. And like you say, home to, you know, somewhere around 3 to 400,000 people in more than 150 villages and towns. So, but here's Trump giving the answer. Like, I actually know somebody who knows people who live in Lebanon, but, you know, it's not that area. So what Was the question good?

[C]

Long time? Not just now. And it's. It's a certain area, because I was with the other night a person whose parents live in Lebanon. This is a very substantial person, wealthy person whose parents live in Lebanon. I said, really? How do you live in Lebanon? Your parents are living. Oh, yeah, they live there. And over the years, they've gotten used to the fact that it's being bombed, but they explained to me that it's really a different section of Lebanon. It's a section where Hezbollah is. And they get used to it, I guess. I don't know. I mean, people live in Ukraine. You would think they wouldn't live in Ukraine, but they live in Ukraine. I don't know that I do that, but they live in Ukraine, they live in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a big problem, and. And they're rapidly being eliminated. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it.

[A]

Thank you. First off, what also strikes me about this is this dude has no concept of, like, that there are other countries, human beings living in other countries. Like, he can't even imagine it. It's like, it's hard enough for me, like, New York, Miami. I mean, it's similar stuff. It's not even a Trump golf course near there. There's Ruth, Chris at both places, and you can play golf at both places. I got Trump, but he can't. He's lived in such a bubble that he can't even contemplate the idea of living in another country and. Or at least like wealthy people that he would converse with.

[B]

Well, he's like, why wouldn't you just move?

[D]

I mean, I get why peasants live there.

[B]

Right? Right. I would never build a property there. He's a. Also lying. They haven't just been bombing the south. Days ago, they bombed central Beirut. They've killed around a thousand people, including around 100 children, let alone, by the way, since this, this war in Iran has started, the aid flowing into Gaza has been choked off significantly. There is likely to be a hunger crisis. The price of food. You know what happens in these situations. The people that have it and can sell it, they'll raise the money. This is like some of the, you know, raise the cost. It's about to be another devastating situation in Gaza, and everybody's living in tents. Oh, and there was a sandstorm. I mean, like, the conditions on the Strip are there to designed to make sure that people die slowly. If they can't die quickly by bombing. Bombing.

[A]

Let's move on to. And on some level, like, if there is a hope that Trump will be convinced to take an off ramp for this disaster regarding Iran, which could be even a greater disaster. And like I say, NBC reported that the military are desperately trying to sort of like put into their options menu for him off ramp opportunities. My suggestion would be to write that stuff in like gold. Like, like put it on a trophy. We did different color codings for things. This one is the gold one. Or put them on the sashes of a beauty contest. Exactly. Or yes. Just to like configure the, the typing so that it's like in the shape of two breasts or something. But honestly, like it will come at the expense of another country. And we have, when we kidnapped the president of Venezuela and apparently made a deal with his underling, it was basically no, among other things, no oil for Cuba. Cuba. And we have enforced an embargo on this country that represents zero threat to us. Zero threat. Cuba represents. I don't even think people make the argument no. That there's a threat anymore.

[B]

I mean, he's not making that with Iran. They're making these false claims like Iran was about to attack Israel, Iran's about to attack the United States.

[A]

About Venezuela, like Venezuela was going to, you know, Venezuela was dangerous. They were maybe responsible for stealing.

[B]

They're not even bothering to say this because it's so clearly this like revenge for right wing, the right wing Cuban diaspora and for capitalists that feel like, wow, Cuba right off our shores is socialist and didn't succumb to our, you know, covert operations and our attempts to make them into, you know, someplace where we could extract from. So we're going to punish them.

[A]

And here is in Cuba is now suffering a countrywide blackout because of their inability to get things like oil and other support and probably parts for their, their grid. And understand you're on dialysis.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I think it was only three or four thousand people on dialysis there. If you're on ventilators, I mean, you

[B]

have a baby in the icu.

[A]

Just people are going to die. People are going to die because of this. But here's Donald Trump explaining it in the way that, I don't know you would if you had just roofied somebody.

[C]

I was just with a fantastic person who's Cuban and made a fortune in sugar. You know, Van Houl family, right. And this family wants to go back to Cuba to visit it. They wanted, they haven't been back in like 50 years or something. They come from, largely come from Cuba and we'll see what happens. They were asking me about that. They want to go back. Not only Fanjul, a lot of Cubans have said, oh, boy, would they love to go back. I think Cuba is, in its own way, if, you know, tourism and everything else. It's a beautiful island, great weather, they're not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for a change. You know, they won't be asking us for money for hurricanes every week. But I think Cuba see the end. You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States States do it? I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be good. That's a big honor.

[F]

Taking Cuba.

[C]

Taking Cuba in some form. Yeah, taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth? They're a very weakened nation right now. They were for a long time, very vulnerable, violent, very violent leaders. Castro is a very violent leader. His brother's a very violent leader.

[D]

We tried to assassinate for 50 years.

[C]

That's how they governed. They governed with violence. But a lot of people would like to go back. Okay,

[A]

Incidentally, I mean, we've seen what ICE has been doing, right? I talk about governing with violence. And to be clear, I. I mean, I mean, there was a lot of political repression in Cuba. There was more, probably under Batista and a lot more deprivation under Batista for sure.

[B]

And you can understand, with the US being right off their shores trying to

[D]

assassinate their, like, heads of state all the entire time, like, this is our fault.

[B]

Oh, yes, escape. That doesn't.

[D]

It's not a product of socialism then. That's ridiculous. That's a. It's a matter of propaganda.

[C]

That's.

[A]

That.

[D]

It is.

[A]

No, it's not a product of that. I mean, it's a. It's a product of a country completely under siege. But the idea that he's going to take Cuba and do it, I'm going to do it like. And incidentally, all those people who want to visit Cuba, they've been able to visit Cuba, I think, since the Obama administration when we had taken them off the terror watch list.

[B]

But the rich sons of the sugar barons say that they want to go back there.

[A]

Grandparents, grandkids, grandkids, grandsons.

[D]

Those were plantations. It was slavery. It was a mobocracy and slavocracy that was overthrown by revolution that wasn't even Marxist until America forced it to be.

[A]

To be fair, the Haitian slaves, they paid reparations for over 100 and what was it, 20 years to the French? So if you're going to be freed, you got to pay the people who owned you. There's a fee for that.

[B]

By the way, Trump called them the country. And do you think that the fact that they had to pay reparations for daring to free themselves from chattel slavery might have something to do with Haiti's impoverished situation?

[A]

Haiti had to, had to pay up to something like, I don't know what it was like 40% of its GDP up until the 1940s.

[B]

France, I just.

[A]

For freeing them.

[B]

Yes, but, but he's, when he says that about the hurricane thing, right? I mean, the other part is one, he's completely disconnected from reality. I just looked it up on the New York Times. Cuba has had 10 major hurricanes in the last 25 years, including a Category 3 last year. But when he says they're not going to be asking us for money, he's doing, you know, he's sneering at Puerto Rico. So he's saying that he wants to turn Cuba into another territory of the United States, but they'll be a little bit more fun for us because we can maybe reopen those casinos that some of my buddy Roy Cohn's friends were really into back in the old days. The old days then bringing us to, including a complete return to open colonialism. As he says it, just instant.

[A]

No, no hurricanes. See, I look at the weather map and I just. Somebody wrote that no hurricanes. No very rich guy told me that there's no hurricanes there.

[B]

They don't like Castro either. So I mean, like, I wonder if

[A]

somebody says to him, there are hurricanes there. Oh, I guess we won't take them.

[B]

He's saying we have to recolonize Cuba and there's no strategy here. Like, what Obama understood was that normalizing relations with Cuba and moving towards that kind of relationship is actually more strategically beneficial. It makes no sense for us to have this acrimonious, like, completely cut off relationship with a country that's just a few, you know what?

[A]

Well, some miles good crypto regulation. And that could be worthwhile.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

But yeah, there's a bipartisan support for this strangling and it's because there's fascists in our government that want this for ideological reasons. And this is not just a Trump thing. All the, all the previous administrations that had tried to assassinate Castro, it's the same sort of thing. It's lunatics, militaristic, jingoistic lunatics, particularly the Cubans. But that's who's running our foreign policy. It's no surprise that we're doing this in Cuba and also doing this insane shit in Iran right now. Fascists are in power.

[B]

Yeah. This is why I'm hesitant to assign like a ton of strategic thinking to way that they're acting here, because I really do think a lot of these guys, like Hegseth is just an anti Muslim bigot and that's a big part of his history. And I think that he enjoys seeing people in Iran suffering and, and like the, the, the Cuban diaspora here, they're the right wing Cuban diaspora. They're just out for revenge. It doesn't matter if it doesn't like make sense and not for money too. Sure.

[A]

I mean they, I mean they pipe dream. Well, they, they think that if there is an implosion if the, if the, if Trump takes Cuba or whatever, that means that they're going to get reparations, that they're going to get either land or they're going to get payments that will be annuities for years and years to come. I mean that is, I guess it

[B]

doesn't matter really 100%. It's part of it. But I also think we shouldn't underestimate that these are legitimately white supremacists in this, in it specifically as it relates to Iran with Cuba. There's a blend of both revenge and like capitalist interests. But like these people really are sadistic. Sadistic because like Mearsheimer has pointed out, you know, Putin is a awful leader, whatever, but he is thinking strategically. Xi Jinping is thinking strategically. The Iranian government is thinking strategically. I'm not sure we have a government that is thinking strategically. It's just bloated off of like the, the military industrial complex. That's a machine that's almost moving and rolling down the hill and gaining momentum as it goes.

[A]

Honestly, I think like the one opportunity to end Iraq would be the military saying like, well if you really want to go for Cuba, what we really need to do is bring some of those ships.

[B]

But it also like, like our Israel policy isn't that isn't thinking strategically too. Even when it went to Biden, because we had people in the intelligence community saying this is a liability for us. The amount of weaponry that we're flooding in, it's going to jeopardize relationships with the other Arab nations in the area. Like we, the, the war machine has so corrupted our government that is almost operating autonomously and it's like pushing and the politicians are abandoned. Big part of it that's what it feels like to me.

[A]

It certainly doesn't. I mean, I don't think you're going to find a lot of people in the government who feel like this is a. I mean, that's the point. Nobody can figure out what the end game is like, what is supposed to. What is supposed to happen, what is the material difference. If Iran is degraded or I guess they had this idea, which, which does not seem to be the case, maybe it will be that Iran will implode and you'll get a monarchy there and then we can have a whole Middle east full of, just, of monarchs and there'll be much more stability. I don't know what the argument is.

[D]

This is the problem with all the liberals saying, you know, I don't agree with how we did the Maduro thing, but he was a problem because there's no vision for what kind of world they want to create. Guess who has a vision? All the fascists in Florida who are former Cubans. They have a vision. It's. It's like Emma said, it's not a street, once an insane one. It's at least a vision. You can put a military in charge of going after it. Same with Greater Israel. That's an insane vision. It's a vision. What vision do the liberals have in the world right now?

[B]

Besides, it's a great point. And it's, you know, even, even like the, this crypto stuff and the AI, like, push, it's. That's not strategic either. Trump taking rid of, getting rid of all of the credits for greening our economy, that's not strategic if you were thinking about the interests of the country. But that's when I say, like, we've been corrupted by big money, like it's. The democracy is not functional. And that's why, like, these people are not operating even within the best interests of what the population or what like furthering America would be. They know Trump knows he's dying. He talks about it all the goddamn time. So it. Now is time to get what we've always wanted. Netanyahu, Trump, all of these guys are acting in their own self interest, and so are these capitalist interests. Knowing that the people are banging down the door and demanding some sort of, like, material benefit for them. So they got to get while the getting is good. And it's very dangerous.

[A]

It's analogous to the stage of capitalism we're in, where you have CEOs and board of directors are in this stage where they're. They're basically running cottage industries within These major corporations. You look like a guy like Zaslav who's going to be selling the Warner Brothers. He's going to make $900 million. They're going to be firing. They're going to be firing thousands of people, but he will make $900 million. Everything that he's been doing as the head of this company has been geared towards enriching himself. There is no company. There is no notion of, like, you know, as much of a fascist as Ford was. There is no notion that, like, I need to have my workers be able to afford my products. There is. This is all about extraction. And so the extraction is, you know, there is no way that Donald Trump was not enticed into this without thinking about personal enrichment. I don't know what it is, but I just, like, there is no. He had no vision for going out after Iran outside of what's going to line his pockets in some fashion. And I don't know where that incentive comes from. We may know down the road, but.

[B]

Well, you see that, by the way, like, US Gas, oil and gas companies are actually doing quite well in the stock, of course, right now.

[A]

Of course. Because the bottom line is they're pulling out the exact same amount of oil as they were before. And it cost them the same amount to extract, except for the price they're getting now.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Is 20 or 30% higher. This is massive profits.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For these oil companies, at the gas station, you'll be paying 30% more. It will cost more, but it doesn't cost any more to produce. It just means that there is one part of the market that's not delivering it there. Like if you're a dairy farm and you're selling milk and your neighbor's farm burns down, it doesn't cost you any more to produce any milk. And if you have the ability to go like, well, I see there's now double the amount of buyers for my milk. I can raise the price. That's where it's at.

[B]

Yeah. And I also think it's important here to just look at how. And there is a real difference between when people describe themselves as anti war in this current context versus having an anti colonial mindset and like a belief in kinds of. Of diplomacy. Because Trump says he's anti war, but he frames that as, well, peace through strength. We're not putting American boots on the ground yet. But I'm anti war because I'm going to hit them so hard and poison millions of people potentially for generations to come and kill hundreds of girls in the school because I'm anti war, because this is the only language that these people understand. That's what Pete Hegseth said in 2020 on Fox News. That's how they feel. So like, if you don't understand politics as if you think anti war is enough, then you don't really look at things like, you know, how like Cesaire spoke about how fascism, the imperial boomerang, how fascism and colonial politics inform one another, how the violence that is inflicted upon the rest of the world eventually comes home. And when you elect a fascist and expect them to be anti war, I don't know, I've got a bridge to sell you because it's he's not going to have an anti colonial perspective, one that like elevates all people and is egalitarian. And you can even see that in the far right commentators that are critical of Israel, it's a similar, it's a similar mindset. They're not, they don't view their project as uplifting all people. They view it as supremacy for certain groups over the other. And the split in the Republican Party over Israel is whether it's elevating Christian Zionists or whether it's it's saying that it's Christians that say that Zionism isn't the way to go. But either way, both visions are about Christians having supremacy. And that's like a major and that's who populates our the federal government right now.

[A]

All right, we're going to take a break, head into the fun half of the program wherein you can join us and I am the show. If you are a member, go to jointhemajorityreport.com to become a member today. Join the majority report.com also just coffee.co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, Use the coupon code majority. You will get 10% off of your coffee purchases. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe?

[D]

Yeah. Coming up right after the show today on YouTube and Twitch left Reckoning, we're talking with Nathan Robinson and Alex Scopus who are going on this Noistra America convoy to Cuba to break this blockade and bring in aid to Cuba. Appalling what our government's doing. And also Brandon Sutton, we're talking about Alex Jones and the PBD crew reacting to the Iran war. So a fun show and infuriating one at the same time. So patreon.com left reckoning to get the Sunday show.

[A]

All right, folks, see you in the fun half three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. The months already run Pack. Emma. Welcome to the program. Fun Half. Matt. Fun Pack. What is up?

[C]

Everyone?

[A]

Fun Pack. No me ke.

[B]

You did it.

[A]

Fun Pack.

[B]

Let's go, Brandon.

[A]

Let's go. Brandon. Fun Pack. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone.

[D]

I'm just a random guy.

[A]

It's all the boys today.

[B]

Fundamentally false. No. I'm sorry. Women.

[A]

Stop talking for a second and let me finish.

[B]

Where is this coming from?

[A]

Dude?

[C]

But dude, you want to smoke this?

[A]

7A.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Hi.

[A]

Me? Yes.

[C]

Is this me?

[A]

Is it me? It is you.

[C]

This is me.

[D]

Hello.

[A]

That's me. I think it is you.

[C]

Who is you.

[A]

No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[B]

Sports.

[A]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go Skyline Libertarians.

[D]

They're so stupid.

[A]

Though common sense says of course.

[B]

Gobbledygook.

[A]

We nailed him.

[B]

So what's 79? 21.

[A]

Challenge. Matt. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96 up. Want to say 857. 210.

[B]

501.

[A]

1/2. 3. 8, 9.

[C]

11.

[D]

For a second.

[B]

$3,400. $1,900. 5 4.

[A]

$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually.

[B]

You're making me think less of wait.

[A]

But let me say this. You can call it satire. Sam goes satire.

[B]

On top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every time day, all day.

[A]

Let everything do without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks. Folks. Folks.

[B]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[A]

Yeah. Sun's out, Guns out. I, I, I don't know.

[B]

But you should know.

[D]

People just don't like they entertain ideas anymore.

[A]

I have a question. Who cares?

[D]

Our chat is enabled. Folks.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

I do love that.

[A]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'.

[B]

Clock.

[A]

We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[B]

Outrageous.

[A]

Like, what is wrong with you?

[C]

Go.

[A]

Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye. Bye.