B (4:29)

No.

C (4:29)

Or, or that's all the corruption itself has been there self evidently for the entirety. She's been doing this the whole time, spending public money to advance her own name id it was that Trump was somehow set to approve of it. Which means that in, in my estimation, Trump must not have been getting his taste sufficiently because if Trump had been getting the kickbacks that he needed. Right. He's like a mob boss who it's not, it's not the corruption. It's when you don't get your peace. When someone keeps your peace from you, that's when you're screwed. And so this was like straight up Mafia rules. Did you guys talk about that on the thing?

B (5:13)

A little bit. Yeah. So this was the, and we've seen this before, where for him, the unforgivable sin is somebody else making money off of him without him getting a piece of the action. Now, my conspiracy theory here is that I believe this entire hit was a premeditated inside job being run by Stephen Miller. Here's why somebody, maybe it was Jared, went and Did a quick count. Mark Wayne Mullen has been all over conservative video for the last, like, seven to nine days in ways that are, if you're just graphing it, huge spike.

C (5:50)

Sure.

B (5:50)

Clearly somebody's like, yep, he's going to be our, our new guy. We got to get him out there so that Trump has recency bias with him. I think that Kennedy, who asked the question which supposedly got her fired, was probably set up to ask that question and told she will have to answer it in this particular way because she's concerned about perjury, and this is the way we get her. And my guess is that this entire thing was being run by Stephen Miller. This was a Stephen Miller op to get rid of her because she'd become a problematic to him and problematic for his continued project of getting rid of 20 million or 30 million or every brown person in America. And so this was all a coordinated hit to get rid of her, push her out, and get her replaced with a guy who he thinks will be even more pliant than she was.

C (6:47)

That's a good theory. I wouldn't push back too hard against that. I certainly think I was surprised to see Senator Kennedy push her the way that he did. And so, so, you know, mostly the way that these hearings go is for Kristi Noem or Pam Bondi, is that you get to the Democrats, they ask you tough questions, you filibuster and complain about bias, and you scream and yell, and then you get to a Republican and you get in a nice warm bath. You know, they're just there to tell you how you're doing a good job. And, boy, these Democrats are rabid against you, but you're doing great. And so they, the, this, this was, you know, some r on our violence. And when he came for her, it was a setup. It was like. And it was specifically just to, I guess, undergird your theory is it was about Miller. Right. Because this, the, the, the thing in question was when Kristy Gnome got asked about, like, when everything was going sideways for them in Minneapolis after the Alex Preddy shooting. So the second time now, and the second time they've jumped the gun, calling them a domestic terrorist or saying that it was their fault they were doing something. And the video contradicts it. She came out and said, I was only doing what I was told by Stephen Miller and Donald Trump.

B (8:07)

I was only following Ortez, that him

C (8:11)

getting dragged into her mess. I could see him looking for retribution or, or yes. And he does seem like a revenge best served cold kind of Guy. So, yeah, I, I gotta say I'm a little surprised. I've kind of been under the operating under the theory that as bad as anybody is in the cabinet, Trump needs to run like he's not going to throw them overboard because they know too much, which is why they seem to have given Kristi Noem a new. A new little perch.

B (8:45)

New perch. Question is, did she know she was getting that perch or did she find out when she walked off stage? That I don't quite know. Now she must have known she was in trouble because she did drag her husband to the, to the hearing with her to sit behind her and be humiliated. And I think she wouldn't have done that because I'm sure that cost her something. Wouldn't have done that if she didn't think that she was in serious danger.

C (9:10)

Yeah.

B (9:10)

And I don't know, the whole thing is wild. Did you see John Fetterman has already said he's an absolutely. An eye. An eye vote I will on Mark Wayne Mullen. Mark Wayne Mullen? Yes. Do you think a single other Democrat will vote confirm Mullen?

C (9:34)

No. No. Do. I can't. I mean. Okay, let me just think about who likes to be unorthodox in this. Here's the thing. I mean I could see and this is where I did Slotkin. I don't think so. I don't think so. Here's.

B (9:51)

I don't know what confirmed known but

C (9:54)

don't you think, I mean in 99 it was 99. Zero to confirm Rubio. I think if, I think part of the problem is that now they know a lot more. This, this person's going to be sitting on top of a major budget. They've got a mess to clean up. I mean, Mark Wayne Mullen, I can't say that I know so much about him other than I know the following things. He's extremely dumb, like Tuberville dumb. Like if you watch his media stuff, he is a, a not intelligent human whatsoever. So there's that. He's also, he does love to go on tv. So he does love to go on the right wing media, like do that stuff. But I don't know, I just tweeted a picture I probably shouldn't have. But you know, Mark Wayne Mullen's one of these guys who, you know, the election was stolen and then when the January 6th people came and were banging down his door, he's crouching, you know, he's like crouch. Yeah, he gets, he crouches in the, the well of the, of the congressional Seating all, like, you know, scared. And then, you know, then once you're out, he's back defending the January six people. So he's, you know, like a junior. Not Tom Cotton, the other guy.

B (11:09)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Not Josh.

C (11:12)

This Josh with the fist in the air. So I, like, I don't know why Mark Wayne Mullen, other than, I guess he's part of like the dude squad with Trump's kids and Miller or something. But he's not going to be good at it. He's not like a better choice.

B (11:28)

I just was. The reason I asked about the confirmation is because as a matter of politics, I think it would be political suicide for any Democrat to vote to confirm him in.

C (11:38)

Yeah.

B (11:39)

And I think. Because what it means is that you now own anything that happens under dhs. Right. You've. You can't say. Well, with Nome, we weren't sure what they were going to do or whatever. Right. For the seven Democrats who've voted to confirm Noam, which I think basically should end their political careers, like, I don't think you get to go any further if you voted to convert. Voted to confirm Christine. Um, but you really don't get to do anything else in Democratic politics if you vote to confirm this guy because of what you're signing up to own. And so I take this vote by Fetterman basically as a declaration that he is not even going to bother running again.

C (12:23)

Yeah.

B (12:24)

This is rushing out to say 30 minutes after, like, you know, he could have waited till tonight, till tomorrow morning, till somebody asked him. Right. But to say, like, yeah, let me get out and tell people how hard I'm gonna vote for this dude, you're saying, yeah, I'm done with this job.

C (12:45)

What if he runs as a Republican? Can I just say, Pennsylvania has a long history of this. Pennsylvania places Arnold Specter, flip from R to D, I believe during the Santorum days.

B (12:59)

Yeah, I believe so.

C (13:00)

And you know, we. But Pennsylvania's always loved. It's kind of more. It's not even centrist is not the right word, but like, it's pro life Democrats and it's, you know, like, they loved it. They love to mix it up. So it wouldn't shock me if he ran again as a Republican.

B (13:19)

He's a pro choice. He'd be a pro choice Republican. Like, I, I just don't think. I, I think that the Republicans would not want him. I think he's. I don't know. I think he is in a sour spot, the likes of which they would

C (13:33)

want no part of I mean, Trump is not pro life and everybody knows it, right?

B (13:39)

But like, he votes on pro life stuff. I, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what that would do to his marriage.

C (13:45)

I do think, I do think Fetterman,

B (13:49)

his wife is dsa.

C (13:50)

He's not super well. He's not well.

B (13:53)

He's not well. So that's interesting. How about the war? Want to talk about the war?

C (13:59)

Yeah, why don't you?

B (14:00)

I wrote a big, long piece about the war today.

C (14:01)

I haven't read it yet. I'm sorry, what did you, what did your piece say?

B (14:07)

Basically, that it looks to me like the idiot terrorists hiding in underground bunkers in Iran who run that country are smarter than the United States President and that they have a clearer understanding of their objectives and a better alignment of their strategy to their objectives in this war than Trump does. And that this is, this is bad for America.

C (14:34)

Okay, let's. I guess, boy, this is a, this is a real classic jvl. So I don't know any of these people. Like, I obviously don't think highly of Donald Trump's intelligence. I. But I don't know any of these people, so I'm not. Don't feel like I'm in a position to evaluate their actual intellectual capabilities. The idea that they are more clear on their objectives than Trump is sort of interesting, but let's just tease that out, right? So if their objectives are death to America.

B (15:10)

No, their objective is regime survival.

C (15:13)

Okay.

B (15:14)

Period. The end. Regime survival.

C (15:16)

How do you do that in this moment?

B (15:19)

In this moment, you do it by making the United States declare victory and leave while you still control the country. Because Israel is not capable on its own of regime change in Iran. They are capable of high value target assassinations, but they don't have the throw weight to actually like, put boots on the ground or do anything like. They don't have to throw weight to arm rebel groups or anything like that. They can't do that. They need the United States. And my just looking at what's going on is that the Iranians realize that they, I mean, their doctrine on this is, is mosaic, that they are a distributed networked organization throughout the government in order precisely to not have chains of command concentrated in one place. Idea is you can kill one node, but then the other nodes are able to function independently. And they have already succeeded in widening the war in ways that America was hopeful they would not. And to take the simplest, stupidest example, so America, American war planners seems to have believed we can keep the strait of Hormuz open because we can prevent the Iranians from militarily closing it. And the Iranians seem to have understood we don't need our military to close the Strait of Hormuz. We need to make it dangerous enough that insurers won't ensure traffic that is going through it, because if you can't get insurance on your ship, then you can't send the ship through it. And when this happened and all of a sudden maritime insurers were saying, whoa, hold on, hold on, cut that traffic. We can't do this. The United States seemed totally flat footed.

C (17:13)

Yeah, that's a problem is the question. So, so this is maybe what I'm, what I'm reacting to is sort of the framing of your point, when what it is to me is like it goes back to everything else. It's not that they're smarter than Trump or it's that we went in without a lot of contingency plans for what happened. But, and, and, and they know what to do in that region of the world to exact an enormous amount of pain from us. Right. And that's sort of just simple in general because they know that there's a very low tolerance threshold for mass casualties of Americans or for this to go on for a long period of time or the price of oil. So all you need to do if you're them, this is again going back to the, they have the watches, but we've got the time is like, okay, like, we can just shoot rockets at you guys and do a bunch of things that make you both more ensnared in the region. And like, we know Donald Trump is eventually, and I think this, I guess this is your point, right? It's, it's not about smartness. It's about them understanding Trump, like, knowing his play his game better than Trump sort of knows theirs, what they have access to. So they know that Trump on unable to endure pain over a long period of time, or at least they think that he won't, which is why, I guess Hegseth is out there saying we'll stay as long as we need to and we'll do this, is like they're trying to counter the idea that Trump might just turn tail and walk out. So, but I agree with you that Trump isn't going to have this either, isn't going to have the stomach for the amount of pain that will be political pain that will be inflicted on him if this goes on too long and if too many Americans die and if the price of oil goes up. Too much. On the other hand, maybe he doesn't care and he just keeps doing it.

B (19:12)

He cares. So. So here's my theologist latest. I'm going to save you the five minutes so you don't have to read it. My thesis basically that we're playing checkers, the Trump administration is playing checkers, and they're playing chess. The Trump administration's view seems to be, look at all the explosions. We can win a war through explosions. And the Iranians seem to believe that wars are won through logistics and political will. I would argue that that is the correct understanding of things and that explosions do not determine who wins a war. Logistics and political will tend to. And they understand that Trump, almost uniquely among Americans, like another American president, might get suckered in to, like, sending boots on the ground and staying for a long time. But Trump has never believed that there is a universe in which personal accountability applies to him. And so he could fuck all of this up over there. He could leave the whole and just in ways that no other American president could. He could simply say, and I won. Look at that. Biggest win. Biggest. They said it couldn't be done. A guy came up to me, big, strong, tough guy. He said, tears in his eyes, said, sir, sir. They said we could never do it, but we did it. A strong, historic victory. And now we're going back and where America's been great like never before. We're gonna do a cage match, 250 anniversary birthday party. Cage match on the lighthouse lawn. Dana White, very strong. Love that guy. Bald years. Look at his ears. A little weird. So he could just do that and walk from the in ways that, like, it doesn't even matter what has happened. It doesn't matter if the region's a mess. It doesn't matter if all of a sudden Israel's like, what the fuck? I thought you were riding with us, bro. Like, it. It doesn't matter if it creates short term or medium term danger for America. Trump can just walk in ways that no other American president would ever be willing to do. And I think they understand that about him.

C (21:09)

Yeah, I think when you say can walk, what you mean is Trump is the kind of person who does not. He won't if. If he walked into a store that was filled with precious things and it had a sign on it that said, if you break it, you've bought it. Trump would knock those things over, smash them, and walk out the door and not feel the slightest bit of compunction about the damage that he'd caused. And I so I think in that regard, you're very correct. I think when, again, I always, you know me, I don't love the phrase it doesn't matter, because I do think these things matter. And, and I think Trump, he might be able to do it. I don't think he can do it without consequences, not the least of which is, although I'm open to the idea that he does it in such a way that just like, makes a mess that some other president has to come clean up, which is. But it also, like he does, sometimes I feel like I have to remind people it's only been like 13 months. It's like, so, like, if he does it, if he did that in the nearest term, there would still be years of us being like. I mean, the Iranians could conceivably reconstitute whatever they were doing during the point at which Trump is still president. So.

B (22:25)

But that's a problem for tomorrow. Trump, today, Trump, it's not a problem at all. And I think he is going to be sensitive to things like gas prices. Right? So gas prices, we've had two of the biggest single day jumps in gas prices in American history over the last week. It was two weeks ago that Trump's entire affordability agenda was predicated around, look at the price of gas, look at the price of gas. He will notice that if energy prices go up, as a for instance, one of the things that happen is inflation goes up. If inflation goes up, that means the Fed can't cut rates in the way that they might want to in order to stimulate the slowing economy, which he is sitting on top of. Right. Again, you just look at all the stuff that's coming out. Right. Shipments of the raw components for fertilizers are, like, being totally disrupted, which means you're going to wind up with downstream effects with food prices going up. In Qatar, there's this huge aluminum smelting operation. It accounts for some significant percentage of world aluminum supplies. They've had to shut their smelter down because they believe they aren't going to be able to secure the supplies of liquid natural gas needed to run it, at least not at the prices they need in order to be profitable. Shutting a smelter down, it turns out it takes months to restart it because these things are so complicated. Yeah, that's going to drive commodity prices up. You see, like, all of these things, which, again, it, When I say checkers versus chess, seem to have occurred to no American planners involved in this war. Who could possibly have guessed that they were like, do you See what I'm saying? Like, it, these things are all like somebody on substack said it's like not understanding how the plumbing in your house works and thinking, well, I can just go over and jackhammer this wall here and everything will be fine. Right. And not even bothering to look. Is there anything in here? Does this wall have any, Is there

C (24:26)

anything in there that,

B (24:30)

you know? And I, I just, we are being led by, by a bunch of fucking morons.

C (24:39)

Yeah.

B (24:39)

And they have walked us into war. And I just think, wow, man, this is great. We're being outthought by a bunch of guys who basically are from the medieval ages, who are terrorists and like spend all their time in bunkers and they're the smarter ones than our leadership. Great. That's good feeling, America.

C (25:06)

Yeah. It's funny, you know, Bill, our buddy Bill has been taking some, some heat online because he has been opposed to them this sort of half assed way that they've got into Iran and he's getting, you know, the, his former friends, our former friends are all over him, like, how dare you, Bill. You have said, always, we need freedom for the Iranian people. And it's great.

B (25:34)

Are we doing that?

C (25:35)

I, I, and that's, Are we doing

B (25:36)

freedom for the Iranian people? I'm all for that.

C (25:38)

Me too, Me too. And in fact, and this is where, so I was asking him, I was like, because, you know, Bill doesn't actually read what anybody else says.

B (25:47)

Smart.

C (25:48)

Yeah, he is. He never reads the comments. Great lesson. And so I was like, hey, what do you make of people who are kind of, you know, dogging you because you said that Rubio shouldn't have just like walked into this war. Rubio on Trump. And he was like, yeah, because I don't trust them. And I was like, that's like just a perfectly legitimate reason. Right? Like the idea for people who, I mean, people like Eric Erickson who make me crazy, are sharing like 2012 articles from Bill about how you can't let Iran get nuclear weapons. Here's the thing. We all agree with that. We all agree that Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons.

B (26:23)

We all agree with their nuclear weapons program totally, completely obliterated. Sarah.

C (26:27)

Yeah, I know.

B (26:27)

Five months ago.

C (26:28)

I can't. It's amazing how quickly they rebuilt them. But, but this idea that you might, as somebody who does not think Iran should have nuclear weapons, as somebody who thinks that the Iranian people should be free. He didn't even, it's one thing like they're, A month ago they were in the Streets we could have gone to support them then if some could have

B (26:49)

established a no fly zone.

C (26:50)

It's just. Look, I. Again, I will hope. I hold out the vaguest of optimism that there this could turn out not, not horribly, but it doesn't seem like we have a plan and you shouldn't trust any of these people. Like it's perfect. It's no, I don't want to go to war with a president who seems to be running this whole operation. Like the CIA did a really good job of planning the initial strike of knowing where everybody is. Like those things American still have really good information.

B (27:24)

Did a good job. Okay, whoever the Israeli intelligence on this was wildly impressive.

C (27:30)

If you listen to Hegseth like they just have. They don't have any idea going back to the beginning, they don't know what the objectives are really. They've got conflicting reports from everybody. And all of that has created I think for a thinking person, for a thinking person, if you just want to be like, well, you guys were for regime change in Iran 10 years ago. And we say sure, and if any responsible president wanted to have a plan for how we would do this, had made a case to the public in their State of the Union, perhaps since it was that week, had gotten congressional authority, laid out a series of, you know, objectives and done it, that is different than what is happening right now,

B (28:12)

or even told us today that the plan is regime change. This is. I mean, this is the other. Like, it is not even a.

C (28:18)

They don't even know if we're at war or not.

B (28:20)

It is not even the case of like, oh, I don't trust them. It's that we have five different versions of what's happening.

C (28:26)

Just like with tariffs, by the way.

B (28:28)

Yeah, pick one. Tell us which. Is it regime change? Is it not regime change? Are we arming the Kurds and sending the Kurds in to do it? Are we not arming the Kurds? Is it a proxy fight? Are we committed to what form of government should succeed? This is it. We want to find a moderate element within the current Islamic Republican. Is that the answer or is the answer that the whole mullah system has to go, okay, how are we going to neutralize the police in the Islamic Republican Guard, whatever the fuck their name, the Revolutionary Guard? What is the plan to deal with them? Like what? I'm, I'm open to those things, but those don't even exist. You don't even have to get to the step of, well, I don't trust them to execute that plan. Is that nobody has identified the objectives or the plan to get the objectives. Everything is, look at how much stuff we're splodin, bro. Boom. War fighters. Yeah, gonna give me some Schlitz. And the other side of it is people are just saying whatever it is, I'm down.

C (29:31)

Yeah.

B (29:32)

And like, I don't know that that's ever where we've, anybody has ever been. Like, whatever it is, I'm down. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say.

C (29:41)

Well, a lot of people keep running around with the number that Trump has, you know, 80 something percent approval of his own base of, of Republicans or of, Sorry, it's like it's, they actually split it up into Maga Republicans. So there's some stats. Somebody asked about like Maga Republicans specifically, they support him like 96%. And I'm like, okay, but what about just like all Republicans generally? Well then the number drops to in the 70s. But of course, independents among independents who are the reason that Donald Trump is president today. 70% of independents are against the bombing of Iran.

B (30:18)

I, as I, I wrote about this on Monday. There's a wide range of outcomes that are possible. And I don't think any one outcome is like a lot more likely than any others. But I don't have a catastrophic view of this. I don't think there's going to be World War iii. I do not think it'll be a quagmire. I do not think that America will wind up sending troops in. I think the most likely outcome, by most likely I mean it's like a one in seven chance is we drop a bunch of bombs for a few weeks. Whether that number is two weeks or seven weeks, I don't know, but it's something like that. It's less than 90 days and at the end of it, prices are up and there's been a bunch of global instability and the region is a little bit on fire and, and trade is going down. We've worsened relations with India, we've worsened relations with the eu And Trump says, look, we won. And he pulls out. And the Iranian regime continues, although it is degraded and a bunch of people are dead and the global economy is stalled out again. And this becomes another, you know, like we get to Q3 in 2026 as we're coming up and the Q3 numbers are very weak because of all the downstream effects from this. And we're on to whatever the next crisis is. Like we're on to Cuba and Havana because by God, I am Telling you right now that Trump is going to intervene and try to topple the regime in Cuba. That is, take that to the bank, right? Go to Kalshi or Polymarket. That is. I don't have the time.

C (31:50)

Don't do that. Don't do that. You don't have to bet on Kalshi or Polymarket.

B (31:55)

It'll be basically fine. We will have killed a bunch of people, dropped a lot of munitions, hurt the economy, and not accomplished very much. And we'll be on to the next thing.

C (32:06)

Yeah, well, you're the foreign policy guy, so I defer to you.

B (32:11)

All right, time to talk about the big reveal. All right, so everybody else, if you are listening, come join us. Come be part of the team.

C (32:20)

Let's get to something I am an

B (32:21)

expert in, because this community is awesome. You know what? Before we even get to the real, this is why you want to join this community. So our shows out in Minneapolis raised $60,000 for second harvest Heartland, which is a great organization that helps feed people in Minneapolis, especially those right now who are being impacted by the ice invasion. Sarah wrote just a little email to members just to say thank you and sharing with them that. That we were able to do this together and saying, like, and hey, if you want to give more, here's. Here's a link. We get a note from Second Harvest this morning, Thursday, saying, oh, my gosh. Uh, we. Yesterday we got. I forget the number. $97,000.

C (33:04)

No, I can tell you it was 60, 60, 000 that we had donated from the show.

B (33:08)

Right.

C (33:09)

And so we were telling people we were able to donate this from the show, the 60, 000 for the price of admission. And we got an email from the Second Harvest people saying that in the. That email where we were telling people that and saying, here's the link if you want to donate more. It was, I think, another $96,000 people

B (33:26)

donated from this community in a day from this community. So this is. We have the best people.

C (33:32)

We do.

B (33:33)

Come be part of it.

D (33:34)

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