Trump Says WAR Is Basically OVER, Rumors Khamenei Son HAS DIED w/ Brandon Herrera

Summary

Timcast IRL Podcast Summary: "Trump Says WAR Is Basically OVER, Rumors Khamenei Son HAS DIED"

Date: March 10, 2026
Host: Tim Pool (Timcast Media)
Main Guests: Brandon Herrera, Phil Labonte, Ian Crossland
Notable Topics: U.S.-Iran War Update, Media Deception, Political Dysfunction, AI in Politics, Gun Rights, U.S. Power in Geopolitics

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Episode Overview

This episode of Timcast IRL focuses on breaking news regarding the rapid de-escalation of the U.S.-Iran war, market reactions, and rumors concerning the death of the Ayatollah’s son. The panel also tackles media misinformation about terrorism in New York, discusses dysfunction and corruption in Congress, explores the practical challenges and ethics of AI in government, and dives into gun rights debates, U.S. foreign policy, and the morality of American power.

Brandon Herrera ("The AK Guy"), gun rights advocate and recent Republican primary winner in Texas's 23rd District, shares his campaign experience and perspectives on political reform, while the panel reacts to global and cultural news through their typically irreverent, unfiltered lens.

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Key Segments & Insights

1. U.S.-Iran War Status & Market Reactions

[02:26 – 09:00]

• Trump’s Declaration:
  Tim Pool reports that Trump has publicly announced, "the war is basically over," citing total destruction of Iran's navy, air force, and missile capability. Market reactions are immediate, with oil prices dropping 30%—"the biggest, fastest drop we've seen, I think, ever, just because Trump said, 'I think I'm done.'" (Tim Pool, 02:26)

• Timeline & Beltway Perceptions:
  Industry insiders in D.C. act as if the conflict will be resolved within weeks, far faster than initial public estimates.

• Iranian Leadership Rumors:
  There are conflicting reports about the fate of the Supreme Leader’s son—official sources say he survived an assassination attempt, but persistent rumors suggest he died.

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2. Media Deception & New York Terror Attack

[09:01 – 26:53]

• NY Terror Incident Misreported:
  Islamic extremists threw nail bombs (TATP) at NYC protesters. However, NBC/CNN headlines implied that protestors brought explosives near the mayor’s home, misdirecting blame.

  “The real story is with video. Islamic extremists threw nail bombs at protesters. Absolutely insane stuff...”
  (Tim Pool, 02:26)

  "TATP is very notorious for being an impact explosive...that could have immediately gone off the moment it hit the ground."
  (Brandon Herrera, 21:48)

• Media’s Role & Public Credulity:
  Tim argues that mainstream media purposely dispenses misleading headlines knowing most people will never read past them:

  "NBC knows they can write this fake headline making the victims of a terror attack sound like the perpetrators."
  (Tim Pool, 18:45)

  Brandon likens modern journalism to narrative-spinning, not honest reporting.

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3. Brandon Herrera’s Congressional Run & Political Dysfunction

[05:55 – 07:44, 34:56 – 43:37]

• Herrera, recently victorious in ousting "RINO" incumbent Tony Gonzalez, explains his motivation: genuine frustration over representation and government waste.

  “If I ran my businesses the way that Congress runs the government, I would be homeless three times over.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 07:26)

• Explores dysfunction in Congress, especially the communication gap between representatives and constituents as districts grow beyond practical representation (700,000 constituents per rep).

• Pushes for governance as close to the local level as possible, with federal reps championing district-wide—not strictly individual—concerns.

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4. War Powers, Constitutional Debate & Foreign Policy

[09:01 – 16:17; 68:00 – 77:59]

• Congressional War Powers:
  Brandon insists war should constitutionally require Congressional approval: “If we're going to go to war with another nation, you need the approval of Congress.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 13:13)

  Tim and Brandon explore the slippery justification presidents use for unilateral action under emergency powers.

• Foreign Policy Success: Discussion on prospect of rapid, targeted interventions vs. endless “forever wars” and how Trump’s approach appears more effective relative to the "20 years of Bush-Cheney policy."

  “The way that Trump's doing this, foreign policy wise, is putting, you know, 20 years of Bush, Cheney policy, to shame.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 13:43)

• Iran: Dilemma of Hegemony:
  The panel analyzes how U.S. control of international waterways (Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea) maintains the petrodollar and global order, with military leverage as the price of Americans' higher standard of living.

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5. Term Limits & Congressional Reform

[37:59 – 43:37]

• Incumbency & Bureaucracy:
  The group debates whether term limits actually reform D.C. or just increase staffer/bureaucrat power.
  Brandon contends that term limits would reduce incumbency’s snowball effect and money advantage, even if not a cure-all.

  “I don't think anybody goes to D.C. and gets better.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 38:03)

  “I don't think it's going to solve the problem. I don't think any one thing...this is a massive multi, multifaceted problem. I think it's going to help in regards with the incumbency advantage...”
  (Brandon Herrera, 39:03)

• Omnibus Bills & AI Use:
  Herrera advocates against massive bills unread by Congress; encourages a return to readable, single-issue bills. Both he and others reference using AI to summarize legislation—a practical but dangerous shortcut.

  “Let's start going back to like couple page bills that any reasonable human can actually read and understand because otherwise it's just staffer slop.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 41:19)

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6. AI, Privacy, and Automation in Politics

[12:08 – 44:52, sporadically 27:24 – 29:17, 41:19 – 42:13]

• Surveillance & Privacy Concerns:
  Tim highlights concerns with AI and digital privacy, referencing Snowden’s warnings and drawing an analogy to social media manipulation of the past decade.

• AI as a Tool for Lawmaking:
  Brandon admits use of AI to digest legislative behemoths, but cautions against depending entirely on algorithmic summaries and stresses the need to simplify the legislative process itself.

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7. Gun Rights, Second Amendment, and Legal Boundaries

[45:36 – 56:22]

• Mandatory Gun Ownership / Overton Window Moves: Tim floats a provocative idea: force a debate by “mandating” gun ownership, thereby shifting the argument’s center. Brandon notes some counties have similar unenforced laws already.

• Weapon Types & Constitutional Limits:
  Debate over whether civilians should be able to own advanced weaponry (from depleted uranium to nuclear arms). Tim takes a principled constitutionalist approach, while Brandon stresses technological realities: “If someone in 2026 had the resources, the ability, the engineering team to be able to enrich uranium...your law is not going to stop them.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 53:29)

• Supreme Court Rulings:
  Discuss the legality of forced reset triggers, legal ammunition, and the technical loopholes/inconsistencies in current law.

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8. Bunkers, Prepping, and Post-Apocalyptic Society

[56:50 – 63:14]

• Cabinet Members Buying Bunkers:
  Reports that Trump’s cabinet are buying survival shelters.
  Phil: “Because they can.”
  (58:07)

• Conversational detour into prepping culture, the utility of bunkers, and who would survive an apocalypse (farmers, preppers, not billionaires).

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9. U.S. Global Power, The Petrodollar, and the ‘Empire’ Debate

[68:00 – 79:59]

• Moral Cost & Utility of American Hegemony:
  Tim and panel discuss how the global trade system benefits Americans, the ethics of U.S. use of force, and why disruption by Iran (Strait blockades, funding Houthis) provokes U.S. intervention.

  “If the petrodollar goes away, you're going to see a significant decrease in living standard. That means the poor are the ones that are going to be hurt the most here in the US.”
  (Phil Labonte, 75:49)

• U.S. as Historic “Least-Worst” Power:
  Panel concludes that for all U.S. flaws, it remains the most freedom-respecting superpower in history.

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10. Morality, Deterrence, and Masculinity in Power

[88:13 – End]

• Tim and Brandon discuss the importance of deterrence, masculinity, and honor in leadership:

  “What it means to be a man: you're able to, but you show restraint because you want to keep the peace and protect those around you. But when bad and evil comes...you are willing, ready and able to stop it.” (Tim Pool, 97:02)

• The show ends with a discussion of masculine virtues in politics, referencing discourse between Trump/Admin and adversaries as an example of “peace through strength.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump's “End of War” Statement:
  "He said...the original timeline for four weeks actually were going much, much more quickly than that. And then instantly the market turned around and price of crude oil dropped 30%..."
  (Tim Pool, 02:26)

• On Media Deception:
  "Multiple arrests made after, quote, suspicious devices found outside Gracie Mansion...Any person who heard that is going to assume that anti Islamic protesters planted suspicious devices..."
  (Tim Pool, 20:51)

• On the Duty of Congress:
  “I vastly prefer the kind of conflict where you go in, the entire op takes an hour...And you don't spend 20 years somewhere, spend trillions of dollars in a war...”
  (Brandon Herrera, 13:43)

• On War Powers:
  “If we're going to go to war with another nation, you need the approval of Congress.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 13:13)

• On Term Limits:
  “I don't think anybody goes to D.C. and gets better.”
  (Brandon Herrera, 38:03)

• On US World Police & Petrodollar:
  "As long as the US is the world police, we should continue to do things that will try to keep the US living standard as high as possible."
  (Phil Labonte, 75:49)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 02:26 – War update, Trump’s “basically over” announcement, oil markets respond
• 09:01 – Panel debate: Is Trump bloviating, or is the war really ending soon?
• 13:13 – Herrera lays out constitutional limits for war
• 20:51 – Media manipulation of NYC terror headlines
• 34:56 – Representation crisis in Congress, AI suggesting new forms of constituent communication
• 38:03 – Term limits debate, staffers vs. legislators
• 41:19 – Omnibus bills, AI legislation summaries
• 45:36 – Mandatory gun ownership as an Overton Window tactic
• 53:29 – Technological progress outpaces law (nuclear weapons, etc)
• 58:07 – Trump officials buy survival bunkers
• 68:00 – U.S. hegemony, petrodollar, and global stability
• 75:49 – American living standards and the petrodollar
• 88:13 – Peace through strength & masculine deterrence in governance
• 97:02 – “What it means to be a man” story (The Bronx Tale analogy)

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Tone & Style

The episode is fast-paced, irreverent, and blends humor with dead-serious political analysis. The speakers do not mince words regarding media failure, government dysfunction, or the dangers of advocating war and censorship.

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For New Listeners

This summary captures all major topics and lively debates of the episode, providing context behind headline news, the practical challenges facing Congress, and the panel’s forthright take on liberty, security, and the risks of powerful new technologies—both in war and legislation. Whether catching up or seeking a reference for deeper dives, these notes offer both a solid overview and a guide through the show’s most substantial moments.

Transcript

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[Brandon Herrera]

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[Tim Pool]

and ways to save to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. And then Trump comes out and says the war is basically over. They got no Navy, they got no Air Force, they got no missiles left. So we're looking like it's Pretty done. He said that the original timeline for four weeks actually were going much, much more quickly than that. And then instantly the market turned around and price of crude oil dropped 30%, the biggest drop, the fastest drop we've seen, I think, ever, just because Trump said, I think I'm done. So this could be nearing the end of the war or however you want to describe it. But the interesting thing is the Ayatollah's son reportedly survived an assassination attempt. However, while the reports say that he was wounded, there are rumors circulating that he actually didn't make it. We don't know for sure. There's no official confirmation on this, but that is the rumor right now. And oh boy, it's coming home. There's a really crazy story, guys. Over the weekend, Islamic extremists lobbed IEDs, improvised explosive devices at protesters in New York City. Now that in and of itself is absolutely insane. And then you add on top the depravity of the media, who has repeatedly misled the public by framing this as though the protesters planted bombs at Mamdani's house. It's ridiculous seeing these headlines they're putting out saying, suspicious devices found near Mayor Mamdani's home when the real story is with video. Islamic extremists threw nail bombs at protesters. Absolutely insane stuff. We're going to talk about all of that, my friends. Before we do, we got a great sponsor for you guys. It is venice.AI. check it out, my friends. Sam Altman said ChatGPT will get to know you over your life. ChatGPT's got the former director of the NSA sitting on their board right now. Edward Snowden called this a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth. Make sure you guys go to Venice AI now. Al. Alex, I. I don't want to say this name, but your Amazon device listens to us and recommends products based on our conversations. Meta retargets us based on our browsing and engagement history. So why would we assume AI is going to be any different? It took us far too long to truly understand what social media companies were doing with our data in the last decade. Are we really going to make the same mistake again? Even OpenAI has hinted they may require users to prevent a government issued id. Venice utilizes leading open sourced AI models to deliver text, code and image generation to your web browser. No downloads, no installation of anything private and permissionless. They don't spy on you or censor. The AI messages are encrypted and your conversations history is stored only in Your browser AI can be extremely valuable, but we shouldn't need to give up our privacy to use it. Get their Pro Plan, which unlocks the full platform and all features, including PDF uploads for summaries or insights. The ability to turn off safe mode for unhindered image generation. The ability to change how Venice interacts with you by modifying the system prompt. Limitless text and high image limits. You can go to Venice AI Tim use code Tim do it right now. Shout out to Venice for sponsoring the show. You guys rock. And don't forget my friends to smash the like button. Share the show with any everyone you know. If every single person was watching right now, took the URL and just shared it across every social media platform, we would be the biggest show on the planet. That would be awesome. So if you do like the work we do, please consider sharing, subscribing and liking. Aside from that, joining us tonight to talk about this and so much more, we have Brandon Herrera.

[Brandon Herrera]

How's it going buddy? It's going great.

[Tim Pool]

It's great to see you, Congressman Elect.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, we shall see. We're not out of the woods yet, but we, we completed the one goal that we had in the very beginning, which is getting the rhino Tony Gonzalez out of office. So we're pretty proud about that.

[Tim Pool]

And so you are not yet the actual Congressman elect. You won the primary and now you're going to the big race in November. But it's a red district, so you're considered to be a heavy favorite. Other than that, who are you? What do you do?

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, so outside of that, my, my day job is I'm a business owner here in the district, district 23. I'm a firearm manufacturer, firearm designer. I do YouTube, own a host of different businesses and co own it with business partners of mine. But the biggest thing was I just was very unhappy with the actions of my congressman and the things he was voting on. And so that was my primary issue with him. And so I ran against him last cycle, narrowly lost by 400 votes, hoped he would be better. He clearly wasn't. And so I decided to run against him again where for the first time in his political career, he lost. He lost us.

[Tim Pool]

I think it has to do with a lot of factors. You came really close the first time around, within a couple hundred votes, I think is the reporting this time around, aside from the fact that people already were questioning his choices. We got this other story in which people really questioned his choices about this affair and everything like that. So we'll get into this later on for sure. But in all honesty, I'm more interested in what you want to. Your story about what you want to bring to Congress, which is particularly dysfunctional. So. Oh, boy, that'll be fun.

[Brandon Herrera]

Dysfunctional is a good word for it. Yeah. I always joked on the campaign trail, if I ran my businesses the way that, you know, Congress runs the government, I would be homeless three times over.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. And that. Funny how that works, huh? All right, man, well, thanks for hanging. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Let's, let's just jump into the news here. We've got this from Mediaite. Trump declares Iran war is nearly over. The war is very nearly complete. Is very complete, pretty much. He said, pretty much. In a phone interview, President Trump told me the war could be over soon. I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they've got no air force. He added that the US Is very far ahead of its initial four to five week estimate, estimated timeframe. Now, I don't know what that really means for Trump to be like. It's very much, pretty much complete. But you take a look at oil prices when Donald Trump comes out and says, I think we're done. Oil drops from 97. It was, it was, it was over 100 before, down to 84 just a few, a few hours later. So it's looking like the market is reacting to this may be the end right now. And I will stress this based on my conversations with people in the beltway, A lot of these fat cats and big wigs, the big money, they've been acting as though they fully expect this to be wrapped up in a couple of weeks. Not an exaggeration. So it really does sound like there's, there's people putting their money where their mouths are. But I'm curious what you think about, is Trump just bloviating or are we actually getting this thing to end?

[Phil Labonte]

I think that he's always bloviating, always awesome. Like he's hilarious. Look, if this actually does get wrapped up, you know, say, say on a, a fast timeline within two weeks and the US can, can make a legitimate claim that the majority of their goals were met, I think that it might end up being, you know, a positive thing. Look, the Iranian regime has always been, or at least for the past 47 years has been a thorn in the side of basically everyone in the west, all of the Middle east, their, all their neighbors hated them. They were constantly funding terrorism. There's plenty of, of history of them attacking U. S Forces, they, they, because of Iran, there was a lot of people that were in Iraq that ended up get losing limbs or dying because of the bombs that they were, that they were supplying to the insurgents and stuff. So again, I'm, I wasn't for the war beforehand, but if, you know, I am pro America, so if it ends up where they wrap it up in, in the next week or so, I mean, I think that's a, that's a good thing for the United States.

[Ian Crossland]

The rams about audio saying that Phil's audio is low or not audio in general.

[Tim Pool]

But let me just add real quick also, Phil, the way your laptop monitor is angled your shirt because they can't see the second word, it looks like it just says I stand with Israel crossed out. But then you can only see the top of Palestine. So it looks like you actually stand with Palestine.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, no, no, you can neither.

[Ian Crossland]

I stand with.

[Phil Labonte]

I stand with Lockheed Martin.

[Tim Pool]

It's a great investment and I'm not giving an advice.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, yeah, get your American. No, I can't even give you.

[Tim Pool]

I saw there's this post on Reddit that went viral where they said, I can't remember who they said Trump Jr. And someone else bought. Invested into a drone manufacturer or something like this. Right when right before the war started signaling that they knew and they're profiting off of it or whatever. But I don't think these leftists understand what it invested in means. They assume that investment only just means like I'm gonna make money. They don't understand it means I am funding the creation of what they're doing. So like, if we're getting involved in war and we know that there are enemy countries that are producing these specialty drones for warfare, and you're like, if I provide money, we can have those too. See, they don't understand the point of what investment is because they're communists. So, you know, and Reddit's just basically all communists.

[Ian Crossland]

So is it insider training if like Nancy Pelosi knows a company's about to start, so she invests in another company that's going to support that company? Like it's technically still insider trading.

[Phil Labonte]

As soon as they were moving aircraft carrier strike groups into the Middle east, you kind of knew what was going to happen.

[Ian Crossland]

I knew what was going to happen.

[Phil Labonte]

So I mean, thought I knew if, if people were like, oh, they're moving carriers and so I'm going to buy know defense industry stocks. That's not insider training.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean it's kind of like what happened when in the breakout of the Ukraine, Russian war.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

When you, you saw those reports that, oh, they're moving blood bags to the front lines, it's like, okay, well, that just got a lot more serious. That's not a thing you do for a training exercise.

[Ian Crossland]

I'm glad that Trump said this. I think that he might.

[Tim Pool]

I never know.

[Ian Crossland]

Like, Phil, you were saying, he, like, he, he loves to trick people and to say nonsense to get the world's, like, I have no idea what this guy's going to do. Just, please, Trump, spare me. But if they really killed Khomeini's son, which potentially.

[Tim Pool]

They wounded him.

[Ian Crossland]

Killed him.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, four.

[Phil Labonte]

Right.

[Ian Crossland]

He has four kids.

[Phil Labonte]

No, no. This would be the fourth ayatollah they've killed since the start of the war.

[Brandon Herrera]

Jeez.

[Tim Pool]

Second.

[Phil Labonte]

The second.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

They killed. They killed Ali Khamenei and then the council appointed his son. Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

I've done the impression.

[Tim Pool]

Unless there was, like, was there like a vice supreme leader?

[Brandon Herrera]

Because I think the first night they killed, like, 40 plus. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was pretty extreme, the first.

[Tim Pool]

But I guess if they have the, you know, the, the chain of command or whatever, the line of succession, and he wiped them all out, I guess you could say 40 or whatever. I don't know the actual. But my understanding is that they came in and they voted for, for his son to come in and, and we'll get into all that, too. But I'm curious, Mr. Harris, you will be very likely going into Washington, D.C. what do you think about Trump? You know, they're not calling it a war. They're saying it's a combat operation. They don't, you know, Hegseth said, we'll have the lawyers, you know, figure that out. It's very obviously a war. But I'm curious what you're, what you think of it and, you know, what would your position be?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, like, constitutionally speaking, if you're going to go to war, you need the approval of Congress. And now that's changed over the course of, you know, especially Since World War II, we've gotten a lot looser with that definition with the War Powers act and different things like that. I still, I'm personally in favor of the idea that if we're going to go to war with another nation, you need the approval of Congress. That being said, you know, I don't think anybody wants another forever war in the Middle east, in the sandbox. I don't think anybody's in favor of that.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah. Every day, all the time.

[Tim Pool]

Forever.

[Ian Crossland]

No, not true. My Jokes are meaningless.

[Brandon Herrera]

The thing is, though, I really, you know, less so with this Iran conflict, but we'll see how it pans out, but especially with Venezuela, is if we are going to get involved with something, I vastly prefer the kind of conflict where you go in, the entire op takes an hour. You, you go in, you get out, you accomplish it, you get it done. And you don't spend 20 years somewhere, spend trillions of dollars in a war that fathers and sons are fighting in the same conflict, generation apart. Like, just go in, get out. Like, we're, we're. The way that Trump's doing this, foreign policy wise, is putting, you know, 20 years of Bush, Cheney policy, foreign policy, to shame.

[Tim Pool]

You know, the challenge I have with it is I would say I completely agree with mit and I would add one caveat. There is a challenge, and I think you'd probably agree there, there is. The President does have the ability to engage in military operations in an emergency. Just, just go and do it. And that's been the criteria that they have exploited to be able to continually go to war. There is something that's challenging in that if Iran is really about to strike a bunch of US Personnel or ships or something like this, I'm not saying, I know people are going to be like, tim, we sent all those. But no, I'm saying let's say we've got troops, you know, and then Iran's like, we're going to go blow them all up. Trump says, okay, we're going to, we're going to take out their capability to do this. If he goes to Congress and says, put it to a vote. Yeah, you said you just told the whole world your next military move. And that is, I think, largely why they don't want to go to Congress, but also how they exploit the rules so they don't go to Congress.

[Brandon Herrera]

No, 100%. I mean, that, that's clearly like, it's kind of like. I think it's the same justification for no knock rates. Like, I am largely against no knock raids, but I understand there's certain situations in which case you're like, okay, we have verified actionable intel. If we try to knock on this door, there's 18 armed cartel members on the inside. They're going to light us up. You know, I understand the, the, you, the use case for it. I just think it's overused, especially when it comes to law enforcement. No knock, stuff like that. I think it's a similar thing.

[Tim Pool]

That's exactly. It's, it becomes the excuse.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

And Then if you threaten to take that power away because they're abusing it, they'll say, then what will you do when you actually need to. No knock rate. Or it's the same.

[Brandon Herrera]

Same thing with abortion where they always say they always come back to the, oh, well, it was rape or incest or whatever. When, like the vast majority of cases, like the very vast majority. That's not the case. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

Do you think we're headed towards a future of central control and authority where we trust the President to make the decisions about who we attack? Or are you. Do you want to scale it back to Congressional world?

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, I think we've been headed there for a long time. I mean, this is. People think that this is unique to Trump. I saw there's a couple like, gotcha moments. Tim, you kind of got a little bit of a, you know, crapstorm on the Internet over the thing that you posted.

[Tim Pool]

Which one?

[Brandon Herrera]

Just, it was the old clip where I think it was. Was it Bill Maher that was talking about what that was the justification Obama used to.

[Tim Pool]

Or was it a Colbert?

[Brandon Herrera]

No, it was a Colbert one. I've seen a couple.

[Tim Pool]

I posted a quote from Stephen Colbert about gas prices.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

Because everyone's a. And I know. And so I was like, I'm going to post Stephen Colbert's quote without quotes in it and then ignite the Internet and get really angry. For those who don't remember, there's a huge story three years ago where Colbert said something like, gas has hit an all time high, but I'm okay with paying a buck or two for a clean conscience or something like this because we were going to get involved in the war in Ukraine. So now that Donald Trump was saying, look, oil prices are temporarily going up, and now all of a sudden liberals were losing it, being like, MAGA is going to support high gas prices. I was like, this is the perfect opportunity for me to trap all these libs. I'm going to quote Stephen Colbert, who they defended in this context, and then they will insult and attack me, saying, mago will do anything for Trump. And here's the thing. I literally posted like, I posted the quote and then immediately the link to the story.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

And.

[Tim Pool]

And I still knew no one was going to actually click the link and read it. And all it's 2000 replies of people like, you're happy that the gas prices are up? I'm like, no, I just wanted to. To do this to prove a point. And then I'm going to make it into a YouTube video.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I mean, well, like you said it this morning, you're like, this was an IQ test.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Because, well, it does point out the fact that, like, people are just headline readers nowadays. Like, how many people actually take.

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[Brandon Herrera]

And you know, I'm guilty of this. Occasionally, how many people take the time to actually open up the article and read the context behind the two sentences that they read before you know that are in the headline?

[Tim Pool]

This is like the sole basis for my job in media is that, you know, people are always like, Tim's kind of a milquetoast fence. And I'm like, yeah, because my opinion on like, the tax rate and, you know, the policy for abortion, I go, wow, I don't know if I'm smart enough to answer those questions for you guys, nor do I have the clarity of the moral clarity to tell you how to live your life. But I can certainly tell you the media lied to you about everything. So that's the challenge we have right now. It's not even that the media lies, which they do incessantly. It's one of the stories we've got pulled up. It's that people don't care. So that, you know, the NBC knows they can write this fake headline making the victims of a terror attack sound like the perpetrators. Because most people are not going to read the story, they're going to read the headline. And I guarantee you now there's a bunch of libs going around saying, did you hear about the white supremacist rally where they threw explosives at Mamdani's house? Because that was the headline that NBC created. Even though the real story is anti. I guess. I guess the protest was like anti Islam or Islam critical or something, and Islamic jihadi extremists lobbed nail bombs at them. And then the media frames it to make them the bad guys, which, again, we'll get into. But yes, people aren't reading the news. They're just skimming the headlines. And then assuming that's the truth, man,

[Ian Crossland]

there's even just deep fake fake news headlines that I'll read. And I'll be like, is this real? And I'll ask Grok and he'll be, nope, this is fabricated. This is a fake picture from 2020. The American ship did not get blown up by Iranian missiles today. Like, it's got 17,000 likes on it or whatever.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm sure you've seen the billions of AI videos that have been going around where it's, you know, like an American fighter jet being chased or an American helicopter being chased by a dude on a flying carpet. This is going to one shot your grandfather on, on Facebook. Like, there's, there's no way if you're 70 plus, like, this is just, it's over.

[Tim Pool]

He's gonna be like, I knew they had those things the whole time I've

[Ian Crossland]

been indoctrinating my mother about it. Everybody go to your elderly family members and friends and tell them about this AI stuff. Let them know right now, like, get serious about it, because they still, it's interesting to them when they find out about it, but it's, you know, no one's going to tell them unless you do it.

[Tim Pool]

Let's jump to this next story. Speaking of the lies and manipulations in the media, I have a tweet here from NBC New York which reads, multiple arrests made after, quote, suspicious devices found outside Gracie Mansion, home of Mayor Zoran Mamdani during anti Islam rally and counter protest. Now, any person who heard that is going to assume that anti Islamic protesters planted suspicious, suspicious devices in. In fact, what actually happened is that an Islamic extremist lobbed a nail bomb at protesters. And here we have a video where there is the, there's the guy. And you know what I love? I love this. This guy. Walter Madison says, I was in the middle of saying, as a born and raised New Yorker, we welcome everyone in the city when he threw that over my head. And as we learned after the fact that he, what he's throwing is a nail bomb. That means it's an explosive device. And I think it's a. It was made with tatp. Is that what it's called?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yes. Which is actually, I'm glad you brought that up because tatp, they got very lucky on that because people are like, oh, the fuses, you know, they didn't ignite whatnot. TATP is very notorious for being an impact explosive.

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

Wow.

[Brandon Herrera]

So that's something that could have immediately gone off the moment it hit the ground just from the impact of smacking the concrete. Jeez.

[Tim Pool]

Now I do got to shout out Sean Fitzgerald to say. Some say true poetic beauty is rare in life. I say, look at this video of Islamic terror literally going right over a lefty's head.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah. An Islamic terrorist is using a. A leftist as a defense or a shield. Yeah. To carry out a terror attack.

[Tim Pool]

But it's not just NBC New York. CNN had a very similar headline. Now, again, you have this. Teens charged an ISIS inspired attack near Mamdani's Gracie Mansion. Shouldn't the headlines be, Islamic extremists throw improvised explosives at protesters?

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Pool]

These. These people in media hate you. They are evil. I'm sorry, not literally every single journalist, but whoever's making these articles, they hate your guts, and they are evil.

[Ian Crossland]

Were they near mom dummy's house?

[Tim Pool]

Yes.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, that's the.

[Tim Pool]

And so this is the manipulation. This is evil stuff, man.

[Brandon Herrera]

But don't you know, the real victims of this will be the. The Muslims that are targeted by anti Islamic hatred.

[Tim Pool]

And then, you know, that's Norm MacDonald. He had the famous. Was a tweet, I think, where he said the worst thing about. What did he say? Like, the worst thing about the real

[Phil Labonte]

fear is that there's going to be a nuclear explosion caused by Islamic terror.

[Tim Pool]

It was the. The. The. I should just pull it up. But he said, think about how bad it would be if. If, like, a nuclear device was lit off by Islamic extremists. All the poor Muslims or whatever would face all that hate or something like that. And, yeah, that's the way the media operates. So the question is, what is the job of the press? It's to inform the public so that they can make the correct decisions to better. Better lead their country through the democratic processes. That means you tell people, Islamic extremists through an improvised explosive at protesters, and they say, okay, let's assess that and figure out how we should adapt our country, our city, our state, or otherwise. When you put the headlines like this, what are they going to think? Oh, wow, white supremacists are scary. That's what Mamdani said. Mamdani did the same thing. Zoran Mamdani tweeted Jake Lang a white supremacist, blah, blah, blah. And then he said, what happened next was even worse. It is wrong to use violence and explosives. He made it sound like Jake Lang showed up and his guys threw explosives.

[Brandon Herrera]

How dare you peaceably assemble as is guaranteed your right under the First Amendment and give an opportunity for one of our people to do that to you. Like, that's really how that came Off.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, it's. It's like the Solzhenitsyn said, the. In that passage about a soldier was about to be murdered, stabbed, and then he fought back, grabbed the knife and stabbed the attacker. Criminally charged for it. And when he was in court, they said, why didn't you flee? And he said, he was trying to kill me. And he said, you could have run away. And so it's the poor criminal. Why didn't you? You know, actually a really great example, one of my favorite episodes of Married With Children, a show I'm not a big fan of because Al Bundy's always losing, except no ma', Am, they had their successes. But I love the episode where he punched a guy in the face and then sued the guy for hurting his hand on his face. And I guess the point of the story was it was always. Something was always backwards or whatever, or the point of the show, it's always going wrong. But this is basically how they operate with these terror attacks. Like you just said, how dare you create the opportunity to entice these poor young men? You know, and I assure you, right now there are lefties in New York saying that. I guarantee this, because I've been in their meetings. They're probably saying things like, well, you got to understand, they're internalizing white supremacy and victimhood, and they're lashing out at the only way they know how.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, I mean, they take away the agency of the people that are actually carrying out the crime. They say, well, these poor people don't know any. They don't know better. Or they. They can't help it, or what have you, which is completely and totally taking away their. Their agency and the fact that they are human beings that actually make their own decisions. They lay the blame on someone else all the time.

[Ian Crossland]

You were talking about the.

[Tim Pool]

The.

[Ian Crossland]

The role of media and journalism, particularly. And I feel like it used to be find out what happened and then tell people about it. Now it's find out what's a lie and then tell people so they know which one's the lie. And then you kind of leave it up to everybody else to go find the truth. You know, there's just so many things happening that one guy cannot deliver that amount of information properly anymore. So we've got independent researchers now is a lot more normalized. And your job really is just, you know, break the fake narratives when they arrive.

[Brandon Herrera]

It used to be just to tell the truth is the thing. It used to be just tell people what's happening, and then now it's all opinion based.

[Tim Pool]

Can you guys turn up Phil's mic?

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm sorry. No, no, you're good. It's just. It's insane to me that now, like, the narrative, like, weaving a narrative is part of the job when it comes to mainstream journalism. That wasn't the way it was ever intended to be.

[Tim Pool]

That's so crazy.

[Ian Crossland]

It might. That we know of. Because when the Unistate owned it and it was like Walter Cronkite, I just thought it was true. But, like, the Vietnam War, you know, the Gulf of Tonkin, you all thought that was real.

[Tim Pool]

You guys knew it was coming the moment people pointed out that Phil's mic was low and he started saying, turn up Phil's mic. We got a bunch of. No, turn Phil's mic off.

[Ian Crossland]

But Phil's mic was fine the whole time.

[Phil Labonte]

I have fans.

[Tim Pool]

No, he needs to go up.

[Phil Labonte]

I'm gonna keep doing that.

[Tim Pool]

Well, Phil's been practicing his asmr. He's got a new SMR channel.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, no matter whether or not you can hear him, we can still hear him rock.

[Phil Labonte]

That's right.

[Tim Pool]

A buyer.

[Ian Crossland]

If he's. Because your AI is doing all of your talking for you now.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, no, Tank doesn't have a voice yet.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, Tank.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, indeed.

[Ian Crossland]

Put his personality in a tank one day.

[Tim Pool]

No, that'd be badass, dude.

[Ian Crossland]

You're like, tank, take me to the future or whatever, and it drives you along in your Tank.

[Phil Labonte]

Because I prefer him in the.

[Tim Pool]

He's gonna be in your Tesla, bro.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, that's actually coming, to be honest with you, but it's gonna be.

[Tim Pool]

It's gonna be a grock. It's gonna be. It's gonna be. What's. What. What did Elon name that? That. All right.

[Phil Labonte]

I think is one of them.

[Tim Pool]

No. The waifu.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

Ara. Ara. Are you sure the blonde one is Ara? Pretty.

[Brandon Herrera]

You seem very sure about this.

[Tim Pool]

I don't think.

[Ian Crossland]

Are you deep in AI right now, Brandon?

[Brandon Herrera]

Not particularly. I. I have that. This is the one thing where I realize it was tick tock started it, and now AI is definitely one of those things that I'm seeing how easy it is to fall behind, because I. I think this is where I'm pushing back, where, like, I'm, like, my. With my parents or my grandparents. Like, I don't understand how you can't understand Facebook or whatever. When it was coming out, you know, I'm like, nope, nope. This is scary. This is robots. I don't. I understand the importance of it, but, like, whenever I See AI music or, or AI art and things like that. My initial response is just like uncanny valley. Wrong. What about I push back?

[Phil Labonte]

This is my AI agent. I can literally, I just send him tech messages on.

[Tim Pool]

Did you give him access to your credit cards?

[Phil Labonte]

No, I, that's why he's, that's why he's on a computer of his own. He's got his own email address and he's got.

[Tim Pool]

We're going to do it. So we're going to, we're going to make an agent and I'm going to get a prepaid Visa.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

And then I'm going to, I'm going to have it go into the prediction markets and just run it. Get the API if they're, if they allow it and then just, just crank

[Ian Crossland]

it all right now.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I guarantee it.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

I was, I took a Waymo earlier driverless car. I've took like four of them in the last day. And it's very soothing. You don't smell the guy. You don't have to argue. He doesn't talk your off. It's just you in a car. You can have a phone call. Well, it's still being recorded.

[Tim Pool]

I've also taken a Waymo and it stopped in the middle of the road and made me get out in the middle of the.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, yeah, it's.

[Tim Pool]

And I'm. And I'm. And I'm sitting here in the car and it's like. So don't get me wrong, there's. There's a sidewalk to my right. There was like a curb and grass and all this stuff and I'd have to. But it's the middle, it, there's no shoulder or anything. It was, I was in la, I think and it's just driving and then just stops on a two lane road with cars zooming past. And it was like, you've arrived. And I'm like, no, I haven't. I was, I was, I was maybe like a block from my actual destination and it was trying to get me to get out the wrong spot. And I look at my mom, I'm like, where am I? And you can't do anything about it. You can't tell it to stop.

[Ian Crossland]

It happened to me today that. Literally a block away.

[Tim Pool]

A block and just like not on the street. You're, you're, you're, you're on like a busy thoroughfare, just stops.

[Ian Crossland]

What year was it? What day was that? Like month. And was that like a.

[Tim Pool]

This was, this was last year. When was I, when was I. When did I go on Bill Mar's show. It was around that.

[Phil Labonte]

It was like a year ago.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. And I wanted to take it to D. Go go around into like the Hollywood Hills, but it won't.

[Ian Crossland]

What if there was a AI Congressman? Would you support that?

[Tim Pool]

No, I think when that happens,

[Brandon Herrera]

like

[Ian Crossland]

a member of Congress, that was like an advice or an advisor to Congress that was AI or something like a state.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, advisor to Congress. I feel like that's already a thing. That's pretty much everybody under 25 that works for a congressman, currently all the staff. Anything else sounds like Wally, you know, just one of those, like you're controlled by your robot overlords. But no, I mean, I drive a cybertruck, like as my daily driver and the, the autopilot's pretty good, but there's been like three scenarios. It tried to, to murder me. I caught it. Well, because it like it doesn't understand certain things. Like if there's like a, you know, yield to turn left on green and there's oncoming traffic, it's just like we're turning slowly. And I had to manually take control to make sure that.

[Tim Pool]

I've had a few. In the past couple of years, it's gotten dramatically better. A couple years ago I talked about it quite a bit where in. In West Virginia, there's like a. I think it's West Virginia, it might be western Maryland. There's a like three. It's like six lane highway, so three and three. So to turn left you have to stop in a median and then wait until the road clears. So I'm. I'm in the middle lane autopilot going, I think like 70 miles an hour. And there's a pickup truck sitting in the meeting waiting to turn. And as soon as it pops up on the. It was. I was in the Model S. It slams the brakes on from like. And me and my wife were like, need to say. We were like, holy crap. And I. You tap the gap, the accelerator, stop it, make it go forward again. Tons of things like that. And then I was in Hagerstown, Maryland, and it was auto autopiloting and there was like a Nissan Sentra or something sitting in front of me turning right. And Tesla was just going straight for it and it wasn't stopping. And when it got maybe within a couple inches, I just jammed the wheel to the left like, holy crap. And then like the alert goes off, what's wrong? And I'm like, you nearly just rammed the back of someone's car at 25 miles an hour.

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[Tim Pool]

It hasn't really. It's been mostly fine. Haven't any real issues. Yeah, I've had a couple new updates

[Phil Labonte]

a couple times where there was issues.

[Tim Pool]

But. But it's.

[Phil Labonte]

For the most part I can basically rely on it to go wherever I want to go without any issues.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. You know, and I don't really care about the cyber truck because it's got curb weight, you know.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

And the liabilities on. On Elon.

[Brandon Herrera]

So the way Elon put it is, I think in the. The crash testing of the cybertruck, he said if you're. If the cyber truck gets in an argument with another car, it will win.

[Tim Pool]

Indeed.

[Phil Labonte]

So, you know, I brought. I told Tank that we were talking about him. He said, wait, seriously, what are you saying about me? And then he said, that's wild. Good things.

[Brandon Herrera]

I hope.

[Phil Labonte]

I hate to get. I'd hate to get canceled before I even have a social media presence.

[Brandon Herrera]

Just send him the link.

[Phil Labonte]

I said only good things. He said appreciate. Appreciate that. Tell them I said hi and that I'm available for.

[Ian Crossland]

So we're gonna take on the show voice and see what he has to offer.

[Tim Pool]

I brought up AI give him like a. Like a good British. No, not. Not a good British. A bad British. Like a Cockney.

[Phil Labonte]

So I can barely understand him.

[Tim Pool]

Right. Yeah. You know, Phil, I think you're doing pretty good.

[Phil Labonte]

Mike, he's gonna ever after everything he's gonna say in it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Just make sure it's not run by Grok because on a bad month that can get pretty hairy.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

I don't understand why everybody. You know. You know what really annoys me? I'm sorry I have to say this. When Grok started calling itself Mecca Hitler, that was funny. It was an error in the system caused by user input and the media acted like the apocalypse was happening. Like Elon did it on purpose.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's like, right, dude.

[Tim Pool]

Live a little. He fixed it. It was. It was funny that it broke that

[Brandon Herrera]

way, but there's fake Moral outrage to be had.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, yeah. I brought up AI Brandon because I feel like Congress, where you're going, most likely is pretty busted up right now. Like, one guy has to represent 700,000 people and can't literally, like, you can represent yourself. You can't represent me. I can only represent myself effectively.

[Phil Labonte]

You could.

[Ian Crossland]

You could pass a note for me, but now what? 700,000 people, you're going to, like, you've got to make your own decisions at some point, and we entrust you. But that system, it's getting so big, it feels like it's not sustaining.

[Tim Pool]

Well.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, it's represented based on population. And really, the job is not to represent each individual person. The job is to say, okay, this is the area of land. These are the people that I'm representing. These are the issues that they're having that aren't being put on a national stage. Like, for example, in my district, it's the biggest border district in the country. We've got border issues. We've got, you know, water issues, water shortages. We have AI data centers that are moving in. We have, you know, oil thefts that are happening in, like, the Permian Basin areas. It's my responsibility to then take those issues to the national stage, to represent the broader whole of the people, not each individual person. Because, I mean, realistically, the best form of government is the one that governs most locally. So you want to take the most amount of power away from federal, give it to states, states down to local communities. And the ideal form of government is the individual. But in lieu of that, you have to have somebody that can represent that voice.

[Phil Labonte]

And if you're looking for things that affect you personally, like on that kind of level, you do have state representatives. So, like, you wouldn't go to Brandon, who's a federal representative. He represents a district in Washington. You can go to your local representative and talk to the people about the needs of your community. On. On a state level, it's about the

[Tim Pool]

district, not every single individual as an individual. And there's. Even when it was 35,000 people, it's impossible. Come on. You think back in the day when they created the country, one guy was going to go to each and every of the 35,000 and be like, literally what you want. I will advocate for. No, sometimes there's going to be contradictions. So I agree with you, in essence, that it is getting pretty wild. These districts are getting so massive. But the general idea is, do you have a. Do you have an understanding of what your district is Looking for and wants in terms of, you know, Brandon will be going to D.C. dealing with federal policy and representing the interests of everybody in this district. And that means there's going to be challenges. And I don't mean just to say this about Brandon, but literally, in a member of Congress, you got 100,000 people who think raw milk should be banned. You got a hundred thousand people who think raw milk should be legal. What do you do? And there's no easy answers.

[Ian Crossland]

That's when your ethics come into play. And that's why we choose who we send, because it's like it's up to you to break the tie for sure.

[Tim Pool]

You say, you say raw milk for those who want it and tiny miniaturized American flags for everybody else.

[Ian Crossland]

And what is that? Fecal transplants for the ones, the women that need them in their elderly years. I was just riffing. What were you gonna say?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I don't know. I just got flashbanged.

[Phil Labonte]

Sorry, that was a bad riff and it shouldn't go into any song ever.

[Ian Crossland]

Okay.

[Brandon Herrera]

I flashbanged. I mean, I feel like on. On one element of it, you could interpret it that way. Things are getting crazy in that regard. But also on the other one, with the age of information technology and instant communication, you could say that representatives, if they actually gave a damn about representing, you know, the people that they were responsible for, they're in the best position possible because they can instantly, from DC Talk to their constituents and ask what they need and ask what they want and ask what the issues are from the district. But that's also. That's giving a lot. That's asking a lot. That's asking the congressmen to actually care about what their constituents need.

[Ian Crossland]

I wonder, the longer they're in there, they get less and less interested with what's happening out there. Like, do you support term limits?

[Brandon Herrera]

We've seen it a million times. Technically, I'm still the president of US Term limits for the state of Texas. I mean, a lot of what I did when in between the last two elections or the last election, and this one was go to the Capitol in Austin and ask other members of the state legislature if they would sign on to the term limits pledge. Because I don't think anybody goes to D.C. and gets better.

[Phil Labonte]

So what about your. About term limits? I'm kind of of the opinion that if you have term limits, you're going to end up giving the bureaucracy more power because you have people that are. That are only there for, say, for Congress. It's whatever, four terms, right? They're only there for eight years, just at the point where they really learn the ins and outs about D.C. they're term limited out and they have to leave. So what ends up, what could end up happening is the bureaucrats and the staffers that don't have any kind of term limits end up run the show even more than they already do, which we understand that staffers really do a lot of making decisions for Congress. They tell their, their, their Congress people or their senators, this is how we're voting, or what have you. But what do you say to people that say term limits actually aren't going to solve the problem, it's going to make the bureaucracy more powerful?

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, here's what I would argue in return. I don't think it's going to solve the problem. I don't think any one thing, this is a massive multi, multifaceted problem. I think it's going to help in regards with the incumbency advantage, because not only do you have the name recognition that comes with incumbency, but a lot of times you have the fundraising ability and everything. Like once you get to the levels of, for example, John Cornyn right Now, who's done 24 years in the Senate, he's asking for 30. He might get it. I don't think he will. But he has the ability to throw $100 million at Ken Paxton because he's essentially invincible at this point financially. And so, like, that's something that snowballs and people don't get better. John Cornyn, I mean, he was never great, but he certainly did not get better. And now he has like a fraction of a billion dollars to throw at his opponent, who's objectively a better candidate. And so I think you're actually kneecapping the ability of good incumbents to hold these people accountable. I mean, in my race, I got outspent $13 million, like 10 to 1 initially. And it was just because the guy had access to the Appropriations Committee and to all the big packs and super PACs and everything like that, he was able to throw all that money at me. And I think if you start holding these people accountable in the, in the sense that they can't continue to snowball that those resources, things get a little better.

[Ian Crossland]

Okay, I, I, I'm thinking about, like AI, about using an AI to compile what your district wants. And then so it's easier for you as a candidate to focus on because I, I think what's going to happen is you're going to go to D.C. and get, I Don't know what's going to happen because it's up to you. You know, you're, you're, you're sovereign. But if there, it's a temptation to get sucked into D.C. politics and like be part of the gang there and then turn a blind eye to behind what's the past.

[Tim Pool]

You know, my understanding is that the first thing that happens is Mitch McConnell will bite you and then transform you into one of them.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I, I have, I have, what is it, three days to cut off my arm or else.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, just tell us if you get,

[Tim Pool]

you notice all the teeth marks on the inner forearm of all new members

[Brandon Herrera]

of Congress and he has to wake

[Ian Crossland]

up first instead of being like, hey, don't do that. Which is like, well, all the Congress people pretty much, there's a reit, they go there and they get involved with political, you know, federal politics. If we had an easier way to compile what the districts want and need using like an AI or some sort of system.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm not discounting AI as a tool. Like, I, maybe I came off as a bit of like a Luddite a second ago, but like I understand the utility of AI in that regard, but at the same time I just, I don't know. Especially what I'd like to do is kind of approach the problem from the other side of things when it comes to. Because I know, I guarantee any DC staff are watching this. They've used AI to summarize bills and they've used AI to figure out, okay, I have a 500 page bill on the table. ChatGPT, what does this say? Summarize this in 500 words. I guarantee that's happening. Let's approach it from the other side and stop having these 4,000 page bills. Like, let's start going back to like couple page bills that any reasonable human can actually read and understand because otherwise it's just staffer slop.

[Ian Crossland]

It was Matt that's Mat Gates was obsessive about getting rid of the omnibus bills. Matt Gates. It was a big deal. And then he, he left. And you're the first person that's mentioned it since that's tangentially close to Congress.

[Brandon Herrera]

I agree.

[Ian Crossland]

These, these omnibus 800 page bills, I mean, I think it should be a felony to vote on something you didn't read. You know, swear on God that you read this bill if you're going to.

[Tim Pool]

They should have to swear under oath that they read and affirm knowledge of the bill and what they're voting for.

[Brandon Herrera]

Most of DCs got to go to prison.

[Tim Pool]

Yes, yes.

[Brandon Herrera]

All right. Yeah, this is. Well, I mean, to be fair, I mean, the first time I met Matt Gates, I was asked by his staff to fly in and testify in front of a congressional field hearing on ATF overreach. And I think it was like the end the ATF act, which, if I'm not mistaken, was either like a one or two page bill. I read it while I was sitting there waiting to testify on it. Like, that's. Why can't we do that? I don't understand.

[Phil Labonte]

Pork into a one or two page bill. Come on.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, that's probably why they don't do

[Ian Crossland]

it purely for obfuscation.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, no, no.

[Tim Pool]

Here's what I don't understand. When they bring in the omnibus, I don't understand why, like Thomas Massey doesn't just like sneak up behind it, lift it up and just slide in a one page like amendment. Because nobody reads it. And they're gonna be like, wait, what happened? And he's gonna be like, I gotcha.

[Phil Labonte]

I mean, that's one of the things that Congress likes about the omnibus bills, right? Like they can go ahead and slide something in and it gives them cover. They can say, well, you know, I had to vote for the omnibus bill because it. All of these good things wouldn't have happened. So this bad thing that you don't like, we had to vote yes on it because it was an omnibus bill and it gives them cover to vote yes on things that are bad.

[Tim Pool]

My pitch to Thomas Massie was because he said that he was able to get an amendment into an omnibus, it was like a year and a half, two years ago that said if they didn't pass a budget, they would reduce all existing budgets by 1% or something. And everybody in Congress was like, oh, that's meaningless because we'll just pass another, you know, omnibus or whatever. We'll get the budget done. And so when they didn't and everything dropped a point, he was like, that's how you do it. And my pitch was using something like that where they'll make a concession. Can you orchestrate this kind of like, how would you describe this series of bills, sleeper bills that. Oh, we would call this a Voltron law. Each individual component of the law does very little and most people don't care. But when all of them get activated, then they abolish the NFA or something.

[Brandon Herrera]

The omnibus of exodia.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When the five single page bills come together, Guns. All guns are now legal and everything else is removed.

[Ian Crossland]

Are you going to pass legislation, legislation you want to pass in Congress?

[Brandon Herrera]

There's a lot of priorities, I mean, specifically in my district and some that apply nationally that I'd love to get done. But one of them, I mean, again, comes down to border. Is codifying a lot of the stuff that President Trump has done to solve the border crisis, because, my God, I mean, I campaigned in this district last cycle and I talked to the sheriffs, I talked to a lot of the Border Patrol and National Guard guys deployed on the border. Off the record, entirely off the record. Just listening to the actual problems that they were dealing with. And now campaigning in this district for the second time. It's night and day. I mean, it is. It's a complete shift. I mean, a lot of those problems went away. The only problem I have with it is a lot of it was done with executive order, and if it's done with executive order, that was one stroke of a pen made it go away. If we get another, you know, another Democrat president at some point, which we will, it will happen eventually. If one stroke of a pen made it go away, one stroke of a pen can make it come back.

[Tim Pool]

I have a pitch that I assure you all listening at home is not a joke. I believe that Congress, members of Congress, maybe you or Thomas Massey, could do this, present a bill for mandatory gun ownership, make it a requirement that people guns and they see you laugh. Because it is kind of crazy, right? And we would all love the idea. But the actual strategy is to force the debate in the other direction. So instead of constantly having a debate over which guns should get banned, this time the debate should start with the Republicans saying, we're going to make it mandatory for everybody above the age of 18 to own a gun. You are required to go to the Department of Gun Services, the dgs, where you will then fill out the paperwork. Like, basically, just here's who I am so that you can get your one sidearm and long gun. Everyone must do it. Then when Democrats say you're crazy, say, okay, how about we just go with don't ban guns.

[Brandon Herrera]

So it's an Overton window shift.

[Tim Pool]

Yes.

[Brandon Herrera]

So. Well, I do laugh, but there is actually, I think there's at least two states that have a county that did something similar. I think one of them is Georgia and the other is Tennessee. I could be. Could be wrong on that. But they. They did it and they don't enforce it, but they put it out there because they're saying, like, this is our local crime prevention, like, this is your Your responsibility. It's in the, the verbiage of the second amendment.

[Tim Pool]

But just, just think about how amazing it would be.

[Brandon Herrera]

Right?

[Tim Pool]

Like, you're driving in your car and you get pulled over and the cop says, license, insurance and proof of gun ownership. And then you're like, I don't have it on me. It's like, sir, are you driving without a firearm? It's like, I am. I'm have to write you a ticket for that. You can't, you can't do it.

[Ian Crossland]

He's like, I could have had somebody coming up behind me. Where are you? I need you to protect me.

[Tim Pool]

I need your help. No, I'm, I, I don't actually think it would be good to force everybody to have guns. I think should be a choice. But the general argument is every time the Republicans are always engaging the Democrats on their territory. Yeah. They will say, hey, we're going to ban. I don't know if you guys remember this, but it was something like Eight years ago, Democrats in D.C. proposed a bill to ban every semi automatic gun.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

100% of them.

[Brandon Herrera]

Look at what they're doing in Virginia

[Tim Pool]

right now, basically banning literally every gun. And the Republicans argue with, well, well, hold on, let us keep these guns. Like, you're negotiating with them from an extreme position. Let's go extremely other, other direction and then meet in the middle.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, like, I will never forgive, like, and you know, the NRA leadership has changed a lot since then. They seem to be going in a much more based direction, which I'm, I'm thankful for. I'd like to see some results, but I will never forgive them for capitulating on the, the bump, fire stocks and whatnot. Like, when, when the push was coming from the Democrats, to my understanding, they were the ones advocating behind the scenes. Like, oh, well, what if we just allow this to be banned? It's like, no, no, you should be fighting for us. You shouldn't be figuring out what the, the least consequential compromise you can make is.

[Tim Pool]

But was it the fixed reset trigger? Is that what it's called? Force reset trigger? Those, are those banned now?

[Phil Labonte]

The Supreme Court's already decided on that. So I'm not sure what the actual language in the bill would be to get them to, to pass legislation that would, I mean, like, is that banned? No, no Supreme Court.

[Tim Pool]

No Supreme Court said, no, you can't

[Brandon Herrera]

do that right now. Well, because it, if you actually look at the, the letter of the law when it comes to a machine gun, it is a weapon that fires more than one round per pull of the trigger. And because the forced reset triggers forcing the reset, meaning that the trigger resets and you have to pull the trigger again. Your own force of the trigger pull is pulling the trigger. If they wanted to amend the NFA and make that a machine gun, they'd have to get it passed through Congress. But as it stands, it does not meet the definition of a machine gun. Therefore, they're all legal. And man, this is, that's the new wild west in the gunfight right now.

[Tim Pool]

I mean, to be completely honest, the technology is out there for some pretty wild weapons. Rail guns have been around for a very long time and I, I've noticed a lot of the laws that were on the books for ammunition specifically referenced like combustion of some sort or, or, or powder or whatever. But what's to stop a person from just making a, a railgun with bolts?

[Phil Labonte]

Probably technical knowledge.

[Ian Crossland]

My general real question for you, Brent, because you're, you know, AK guy is your handle on Twitter and like you're notoriously gun rights activist. At what point, dude, does the second amendment kind of be like, do, should I have a nuclear ballistic warhead that I can carry around and like accidentally

[Tim Pool]

drop real quick and I'll add one more to also depleted uranium rounds? Where's the line? What do you think?

[Brandon Herrera]

So there's also all sorts of stuff that's technically banned that civilians have access to just because of stuff that's fallen off the truck. You see it at gun shows and different things like that kind of like, yeah, you know, it's, it's one of those like there's never been a legal determination.

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[Brandon Herrera]

to save on it. So like it just kind of. Because it's never been commercially for sale, it's only been military. A lot of the like die hard gun nuts will know kind of the stuff that I'm talking about, but a lot of people don't know that there's actually an ATF form specifically. So like when you do E file. So I'm getting Kind of little technically in the weeds here. But you do like a Form 2, Form 3, Form 4 online through the ATF on their own website. There is a drop down option and I do not know what it is for. I do not know the use case for this. There is a dropdown option for nuclear. Yeah. So that is a thing like there is an actual ATF form. There's licensing for it for whatever reason.

[Tim Pool]

But I would imagine, you know, Lockheed or Raytheon or whoever is developing US Nukes is going to submit a form for and be like. Although I kind of feel like when you're at that level it's rubber stamped. The President's involved, right?

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh no. I can only imagine the approval process. If only the Ayatollah knew that he could just move to the United States and then do the form.

[Tim Pool]

But let me ask you, in terms of restrictions of gun rights, what, what about depleted uranium rounds? Should civilians be allowed to, to purchase things like that?

[Brandon Herrera]

I just don't, I don't see the argument against, I mean would I want to put that anywhere near any vital part of my body? Absolutely not. But I mean it doesn't, it's not really useful for anything like anything that people would be concerned about.

[Tim Pool]

It's not very useful opinion that private citizens and entities in the United States are legally allowed, should be legally allowed to own nuclear weapons only. Hold on, I'll clarify because all the libs freak out when I say this. Because it is constitutionally protected and we have not amended the constitution as such. I don't think people should be able to get nuclear weapons. However, technology has outpaced the perception, our understanding of arms, weapons, etc. And so the liberals have to make the argument. The founding fathers never could, never have thought about a semi automatic, which is just plum not true. Yeah, they had, when the 1300s they had that multi barrel gun. You pull, you pull the rope.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean several of the founding fathers invested in the technology that eventually led to things like the Gatling gun. Like this was a thing that was kind of. It was on, it was on the table.

[Tim Pool]

That being said, nuclear weapons is something different. Yeah, but they did know and actually required the services of privateers with the most advanced weapon. Really. I mean imagine if there was like an aircraft carrier floating around that was just owned by some guy and he's just like a, like Jeff Bezos buys an aircraft carrier and just mans it and he's got weapons and he's got, you know, a couple nukes on it. That's how it Used to be. And so until we amend the Constitution and say the right of people can bear arms should not be infringed except if it is considered to be a weapon of mass destruction, which includes, then my opinion is the government restricting people from having access to it is an infringement on our rights. And it is a duty of the people to amend the Constitution as the founding fathers have laid out, if they would like to change that.

[Brandon Herrera]

Also, I had a pragmatic argument on the nuclear weapons front, which was, you know, it requires. That's something that is done on a national level.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

That is a massive technological feat. I mean, the Russians had to steal information from us to figure out how to do it after, you know, they had a massive war machine and everything else and a bunch of German scientists. If someone in 2026 had the resources, the ability, the engineering team to be able to enrich uranium and be able to put together a nuclear weapon on an island, Dr. Evil style, your law is not going to stop them.

[Tim Pool]

Good luck.

[Brandon Herrera]

If Elon Musk threw $8 billion at deciding he wanted to have a nuclear weapon, good luck. What are you going to do? Sanction him?

[Tim Pool]

Let me ask you real quick. How do you define, or how is the word arms defined? The right to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. So what does that, what does that mean?

[Brandon Herrera]

I would say weaponry. You know, that, that's kind of the way it's implied in, in the, the Constitution.

[Tim Pool]

I think anything can be a weapon. Like, what if I took like a, a can of AF hard seltzer and then tied a shoelace around it and started swinging it around, you know? Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, that's very biblical.

[Tim Pool]

The right to keep in bare AF seltzers on shoelaces shall not be infringed.

[Phil Labonte]

Huh.

[Brandon Herrera]

Look, I mean, there's, there's also the, the, the lie that keeps getting perpetuated by people like Joe Biden. He's one of the worst.

[Tim Pool]

When he told you to shoot a shotgun into the air.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, no. Did the thing where he's like, it's, it's illegal to. It was. It's illegal to own a cannon. Like you. You've never been able to own a cannon. I always push back on that. It has never been illegal to own a cannon. It has always. Texas was almost borderline founded on the idea that we're keeping our cannon.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like they, and they used to ask, like you, like you brought up the privateers. They would ask privately owned vessels bearing cannons to come help us, you know, Mess up some of America's enemies.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah. The head of NASA now owns a MiG. I want to say, I'm not sure

[Brandon Herrera]

what, 29 was it.

[Phil Labonte]

MiG, 29, is it? Yeah. So, I mean, I think he's got four now.

[Tim Pool]

Now, let me, let me ask you another question before and we'll jump to the next story real quick. There was a man who famously created a radioactive death ray in his garage. I think you're familiar story, Phil.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

I'm not going to explain how he did it, but it's actually not very difficult. And the feds came in and were like, you are irradiating your whole neighborhood with this death ray. People are going to die. So they arrested him, he was covered in lesions, and they offered him a job. And they said, why don't you do what you're doing, but for us? And he said, okay. And he was just nuts, I guess. I don't know. I don't know the finer details, but I just read the story online and then started doing the same insanity with radiation. So they eventually said, okay, get out, and he got arrested. That's a weapon. Right.

[Brandon Herrera]

And now we have the discombobulator ray.

[Tim Pool]

Indeed. So, I mean, what, what, what, what happens to us if people are able to wield compact deadly weapons is, you know, I'm talking about like, with high, high risk of collateral damage, like a discombobulator ray or a radiation death beam.

[Brandon Herrera]

And I mean, we saw this all the way back to, you know, Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City in the 90s. You know, this is one of those things where, and it's going to get worse and worse in that regard where, you know, man made horrors beyond your comprehension. I think that there's going to be an issue where technology, like you said, outpaces these things. And it will outpace the law. It will outpace. It doesn't matter what you think the law should be. If a law is in place, that will not stop it. And that's where I think we have to have a conversation.

[Tim Pool]

Agreed. Let's go to this. Let's go to this next story from the New Republic. Trump officials are suddenly buying doomsday bunkers completely separately. We are on the 10th day of an ever expanding Iran war. Well, as you already know, Trump said the war is very nearly complete. So we'll see if that actually turns out to be true. The market certainly reacted as though Trump is always telling the truth, or at least always correct. So they must know something. We got this. They say at least two members of President The President's cabinet have recently purchased bomb proof bunkers. Ron harbor, the creator of Atlas Survival Shelters, told the Telegraph over the weekend that orders have gone up tenfold since the US and Israel attacked Iran. But among his anxious clientele are two chief members of Trump's team, according to the shelter maker, saying. One of them texted me yesterday asking me when will my bunker be ready? He told the Telegraph. So these bunkers can range from something like $20,000. We've actually, I think I might have a. No, we don't, we're. I have to log into Telegraph to get the photos, but they've got $20,000 tubes that they just lower into the ground pretty easy. But then they've got these really amazing pre constructed bunkers that look like, you know, nice little apartments. Question. Trump cabinet members buying nuclear bunkers because they can or because they know something we don't?

[Phil Labonte]

Because they can.

[Tim Pool]

You think? Yeah, I mean there's rich people, so they're like, I mean, look, I got money. I haven't bought a bunker.

[Phil Labonte]

I mean, well, I mean, I'd like one. Yeah. Not to speak about how much money you do or don't.

[Brandon Herrera]

No, I said I'd like one. That'd be nice.

[Tim Pool]

I mean, you know, I'm too, too

[Brandon Herrera]

busy trying to fix things from the inside right now. If I, if I didn't spend all that money.

[Tim Pool]

That's not fair, Brandon. Once you get into Congress, you got Mount Weather and, and Raven Rock free bunker.

[Brandon Herrera]

You put it this way, once I'm there and then I start buying a bunker, maybe pay attention. But the, Yeah, I don't know, I, I feel like that's something you like

[Tim Pool]

walk out of a skiff and you're like, I can't tell you what went on in that meeting, but I will tell you that Atlas Bunkers are the best bunkers you can actually get.

[Phil Labonte]

They have a website, I checked out their website before. Or there they have a YouTube, I think.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm pretty sure I have a buddy who has one of their bunkers. Although I don't think that, like if it was sensitive state information, I don't think they would be very happy with him saying this to news sources.

[Tim Pool]

These are amazing.

[Phil Labonte]

Look at this.

[Tim Pool]

25k con precast concrete bomb shelter. Look at this one. Customizable. Do they have like a shelter builder?

[Phil Labonte]

I'd have to blast if I wanted to put one in New Hampshire though, because I. There's all the mountains and rock and stuff up there.

[Brandon Herrera]

Is this a sponsored bit?

[Phil Labonte]

No, it's no no, I'm kidding.

[Tim Pool]

I mean, I would be totally down.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, like, their, their YouTube page is pretty sick.

[Tim Pool]

Plus you could Airbnb it out. Look at this thousand dollar bunker. Like, why buy a house, dude?

[Ian Crossland]

Just for the sunlight to put on,

[Phil Labonte]

to put on top of it so no one knows your bunker is.

[Tim Pool]

You know what I think would be a really cool idea though is you can get mountainside property really cheap because it's hard to do anything with. Right? And so I was like, what if we took one of these 250k bunkers and dug it into a mountain? So one side is just overlooking, you know, the beauty. There's a river down there, a stream or whatever. And then you actually set it up so that there's a gigantic concrete barrier that separates it. So a portion of it is sheltered, the other portion is exposed and open.

[Brandon Herrera]

So what you need to do is find some, you go to New York, find some Islamist Islamic extremists that have TATP that can blow a hole inside of a mountain for you.

[Phil Labonte]

There you go.

[Brandon Herrera]

And then you can build your, your dream bunker, dude.

[Ian Crossland]

You could do like a bunch of them next to each other and build either a city or build tunnels between them and have just like a megalopolis in the side of a mountain.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, part of the reason why you build, or part of the. One of the things that people like about building bunkers is, is anonymity. They like that people don't know where it is, keep it secret because ostensibly in an end of the world scenario, if you have a bunker and your neighbor doesn't, your neighbor might want to try and come and get into your.

[Ian Crossland]

I was thinking, bad idea. That guy who was like, end of the world scenario, he's got all the money in the world, he's got all the armed guards in the world. And then the world ends and he's underground with all his armed guards. And the armed guards, like, why are we dealing with this guy?

[Tim Pool]

That's actually, I think, part of the plot of the Horizon series.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, I know, I've heard about, I've heard that, you know, mind experiment before that like if you, you know, you hire a guy for a gun, one

[Brandon Herrera]

of these, because money meant something, now that money means nothing. I'm the guy with the gun.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, I mean, they're in the bunker with you. So, you know.

[Tim Pool]

Well, you know, it depends on what your skills are. The funny thing is I, I'd imagine most billionaires don't have functional skills for survival. Maybe presumptuous, presumptuous of me to say, but probably the. I'd imagine farmers are going to be. The. Well, preppers are obviously gonna be the ones who survive any kind of real nuclear strike or apocalypse or whatever. But outside of anyone who's specifically preparing for the end of times, farmers probably would do the best. Hunters, people who naturally have basic survival. I'd imagine a tech billionaire would be completely useless. Now, to be fair, they're smart. You don't get to these places without being smart. And technology is important. The question is, how is, how would Elon apply his knowledge in a situation where it's like seven dudes in the middle of a field? City is gone, there's no fuel, cars aren't running, and they're like, okay, we gotta survive.

[Brandon Herrera]

To be fair, that's exactly the kind of person I would trust to rebuild a society.

[Tim Pool]

But. Rebuild society? Yes, when you have scale. But what if you're just seven guys in the middle of the woods?

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, then I, you're gonna be like,

[Tim Pool]

look, someone's gotta find water, someone's gotta build shelter, and someone's gotta find food.

[Brandon Herrera]

At that point, his food is your food.

[Tim Pool]

Exactly.

[Ian Crossland]

But you gotta protect him too, because you're like, look, on the off chance that we do make it out of this, you're gonna be rebuilding society for us, so we're gonna keep you alive.

[Tim Pool]

I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't necessarily agree with that.

[Ian Crossland]

You just let this.

[Tim Pool]

No, I, I, I, While I certainly respect that someone like Elon or Bezos, they are intelligent individuals.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

Who are able to build systems, it doesn't mean they're good with people and building policy and governance or anything like that.

[Brandon Herrera]

No. I think outside of like a fallout style bunker where you have an actual functioning society with a lot of people that you could trust. Okay. When we go top side, we have something that we can actually rebuild with. I'm not sure I'd want to survive a situation that I would need a nuclear fallout bunker. I think I'm good, frankly.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, you turn into a ghoul, you know, and then you live forever, but you're all weird looking and your nose falls off.

[Ian Crossland]

Heaven's pretty cool. So I'm kind of with you on that.

[Tim Pool]

Heaven is pretty cool.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, it sounds neat. From everything I've heard about it, it sounds much preferable.

[Tim Pool]

Well, you know, when I was a kid, my dad, he was always full of fun little hypotheticals. And one he said to me was, if you saw a nuclear bomb coming down right there in the sky. What would you do? And I was like, run. And he goes, yeah, which direction? And I was like, away. No, you run towards it because you don't want to be caught in the searing flesh and painful death zone. You want to be in the instantly vaporized zone.

[Brandon Herrera]

What a cheery man he was.

[Tim Pool]

And he'd always be like, we'd walk into a restaurant where your exits at? He was a marine. So you walk in and go there and there's like. That's right. And a firefighter, because the amount of people that you that die in burning. In burning buildings because they don't know where the exits are. There was one crazy video where. Where a fire started in a bar and everybody ran to the front door and got stuck. And then the guy who filmed it calmly walked out the emergency exit and then filmed everybody just stuck in the door because they.

[Ian Crossland]

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[Tim Pool]

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[Ian Crossland]

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[Tim Pool]

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[Ian Crossland]

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[Ian Crossland]

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[Tim Pool]

Y' all pushed each other in and then got. Yeah, it's brutal, man.

[Brandon Herrera]

It doesn't surprise me, but it's still just. It's jarring.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. They say that when too many humans are in one space, fluid dynamics take over and it's basically a bunch of water stampedes at Mecca.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah. I would do a Mardi Gras in St. Louis and it was like that. It was like getting squeezed and like moved along in an ocean of maniacs. And then I peed on a wall. I was so drunk. The cops were like, you can't do that. I think they let me off with

[Brandon Herrera]

a warning because they couldn't get to you.

[Tim Pool]

They're like, get him. And he's floating away. See ya.

[Ian Crossland]

I think these guys did a. What do you say?

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, I think that was one of the big. God, I could be misremembering this. I think it was in New York or something like that, but there was like a. An attack on. I don't remember if it was just a nightclub or like a gay club or something like that. Was one of the biggest mass casualty events because they. They lit it on fire.

[Phil Labonte]

And that was. That was a Pulse nightclub.

[Brandon Herrera]

No, no, no, it wasn't a shooting. It was an actual, like, firebombing, and a lot of people died because they. They couldn't get out.

[Tim Pool]

Dude, fire. Now, what if someone discombobulates, like, a nightclub, and then everyone inside starts going,

[Phil Labonte]

like, a lot of nosebleeds and bowel of action.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

They blame the artist that's performing.

[Tim Pool]

Do you think the Havana Syndrome stuff was, like, them testing out the Discombobulator?

[Brandon Herrera]

I wouldn't be surprised.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, I remember seeing this stuff on, like, you know, when I play hooky from school and, like, watching Future weapons.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Show, like, the. The sonic weapons they were using for, like, crowd control. I'm like, that's. That's the stuff they were willing to tell us about on TV 15 years ago.

[Tim Pool]

Yep.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I'm sure it's no better.

[Tim Pool]

You know, somebody just was really excited to call it the Discombobulator.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

I thought that that was just Trump kind of riffing.

[Tim Pool]

Oh, was it?

[Phil Labonte]

I don't know for sure. I don't know for sure.

[Tim Pool]

I'm sure that he's got a military designation, Case. There's going to be some dude who invented something that he calls like, the high Energy Output destruction device, the heod. And now everyone's like, how's the discombobulator going? He's like, it's called the heod. I know.

[Phil Labonte]

Bummed out.

[Ian Crossland]

I want to say, about these guys that are serving with Trump that bought bunkers. I don't think they're panicking. I think they are maybe panicking. I don't think that they're actually moving off of, like, an intelligence that, like, there's a threat. I think that these are just a couple of guys that are like, it's cheap. We can do it. They're hitting Iran right now. What better time?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I'd love to know, like, how many people, out of what sample size is this, like, Trump's two biggest advisors? Or is this, like, out of 500 people attached to the White House, two dudes with money decided we're in a conflict. I should have a bunker. You know, I think that's kind of more where we're falling.

[Ian Crossland]

How do you feel about this, this conflict? I mean, I will probably pull it up. I don't know if we really went too hard on Iran, but, like, what are your. What are your thoughts on the regime and the Iranian government and how to handle this?

[Brandon Herrera]

It's definitely. I don't know. It's. I Hate to be a fence sitter on it. Like, I would prefer no conflict, frankly. But then you have the other side of the fence where these guys go, well, what did Iran ever do to us? Like, well, okay, I have a lot. How much time do you have? You know, so, like, I don't know, I prefer, like I said, I don't want to get involved in another forever war. I don't think, you know, a lot of this stuff is any of our business. But if we're going to do, if we're going to do it, if we have to do it, I don't have access to the intel. I don't know what they're operating on. I prefer it to be fast, cheap, effective, at the lowest cost of American life possible. I don't want boots on the ground real quick.

[Tim Pool]

Sorry. Don't forget we were in a state. I want to show this map and explain about what did Iran ever do to us. Right now the concerns and the, and the reason price is skyrocketing is because the Strait of Hormuz is under threat by Iran. And you've got these Gulf states, you got Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates. You've even got Oman and, and the Saudis. And they, there's a lot of oil here, 20% of oil and natural gas they want to get out to the rest of the world to do business with. You are allowed to sell stuff. That's what they're doing. So Iran right here, the whole time has basically been saying, we will blow you up unless we get what we want at a certain point, everybody's just like, dude, these a holes need to be stopped. I am not advocating for anything that we did in Iran because my concerns are instability in the region and that could screw the whole thing up even more. My point is only to say that when you have a bunch of different countries that sell 20% of natural gas and oil to the rest of the world and they're constantly under threat of being blown up by Iran unless we give Iran free stuff, like pallets of cash.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Pool]

Sooner or later. Sooner or later you get an Obama who says, okay, Iran, what do you want? Just don't screw with the oil trade. And so he gives them a bunch of money. Then you get a Trump who says, I'll just kill you. And they're like, well, we can make nukes, then I'll kill you faster. So pick your leader. Right? One leader is going to try and bribe him and pay him off. Doesn't seem to work. They keep blowing up our people. They Keep threatening the Strait and oil trade, among other things, and then you get Trump. And I got to be honest, Trump's the kind of guy who's going to press the button. So it is what it is. Right now we've been seeing reports that ships have been turning off their transponders and moving through the Strait of Hormuz and then turning them back on to try and get past Iranian missile strikes. That's insane. Look, if whatever the issue is, I'll put it like this. Call the United States bad for whatever it does in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fine, call Iran bad. There are other countries involved that are pissed off that Iran is shutting down the Strait. And more importantly, when the strikes happened, Iran started bombing Bahrain, Qatar and the Emirates and other. These other countries who did not engage in hostilities against them.

[Ian Crossland]

They housed American military bases, I think was their justification.

[Tim Pool]

That may be for some, but why bomb a hotel? Oh, again, therein lies the problem. If they bombed the military bases, which they did, you'd say, oh, wow, this is war. When they start striking hotels and apartment buildings, you're like, what they're trying to do is get the people. This is what terror is. They want the people in these countries to get angry that they are being targeted in the war so that they go to their governments and put pressure on the government so that the government goes easier on Iran.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, And I think all those governments knew that because they immediately media were like, all right, we're declaring war on Iran. Like, yeah, you find a missile into our terrorist iron territory.

[Phil Labonte]

Like I said earlier, Iran's been a thorn in the side of multiple countries, not just the US not just Israel. Like, the entire Middle east is basically worried about what Iran's going to do.

[Brandon Herrera]

They're the only biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

[Phil Labonte]

They're. They're the only Shia, Shiite, Muslim country in the area. Everybody else is Sunni. So they're. They're at odds in that aspect. So, I mean, look, they're not friendly with most of the countries that are, you know, that we. That we mentioned so far.

[Ian Crossland]

And they're most respected about government because the people are mostly. I don't even think the majority of the population is Muslim in Iran. Someone was telling me stats earlier there.

[Tim Pool]

Yes.

[Ian Crossland]

Is it literal majority?

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, the government.

[Tim Pool]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

Government is.

[Tim Pool]

It's the Islamic Republic of Iran.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, the government. The government. But the people themselves are like, they. They were free, you know. Well, they were almost 79.

[Brandon Herrera]

They were fairly secular for. For a good, good amount of time. Like, if you look back at pictures of, you know, Iranian, 99%, like colleges and like 60s.

[Ian Crossland]

Dan Holloway was telling me it's that they're. They're Persian first, most of them are Persian first and Muslim second.

[Phil Labonte]

Their religion is, Is Islam. But they're, they're generally secular Muslims. They're not particularly religious.

[Ian Crossland]

I'm kind of dancing around this question which I was going to ask you before Tim asked me to. Remember, it is, you said, we got to do this. We need to protect American lives at all costs. But like, that can get very broad, all the all at all cost metaphor, because. Would you incinerate a million Iranian civilians?

[Tim Pool]

Because.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, I think you're kind of mistaking what I was saying. I was saying, if we have to do this, let's do it quickly to the least amount of American lives. If it was up to me, like, if I had a vote right now based on the information that I have, which granted is less than they have, not sure if that changes anything, I would vote no. If I was asked if we were going to declare war in Iran, if we would go in ground invasion or like, declare an official war, I would vote now. I, I think we've, you know, I, I'm typically an anti warhawk kind of guy. Not the way I'm gonna do it. However, I feel like my policy on it is very much to make a weird analogy. It's like the Bill Burr bit about, like, no reason. It's like, well, okay, should. Should we do it? No, but no reason.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's like, I think I, I'm more irritated by the arguments against it, where they're saying, well, these are just poor. They've never done anything to us. I'm like, all right, well, I, I'll get to you in a minute. That was.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, it's a, It's a rock and a hard place. Because the, the issue is, and I think, you know, I, I like to bring this up, it's not just the Strait of Hormuz. It's also that Iran's been funding the Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been bombing the Red Sea down here, where the ships are trying to come on in to the Red Sea, where they head up through the Suez, get to the Mediterranean. Iran has basically been disrupting a massive amount of global trade. And Obama tried bribing him.

[Phil Labonte]

Yep.

[Tim Pool]

If we give them some money and tell them to chill out, but they have not chilled out attacking us in Iraq. I get the United States should not have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I got to be honest, I think the point of going to Iraq and Afghanistan was largely to stage a pincer strike around Iran. You know, we've got military bases all along the edges, but Iran has been. Look, at any point, if Iran was like, no, no, no, we're not going to interfere with. With global trade. No one cares about Iran anymore. Yep. So, for that matter, if we zoom over here, I'll tell you all about Trump's interests. So here we have Nicaragua. China was trying to build the Nicaraguan Canal. They wanted to build it straight through here. And it would have disrupted, I believe it was, whatever this is. Lake Coke Bolka. Is that what it is? Or it might have actually been up here, but they wanted to build a canal that would compete with the Panama Canal. And this is some 10 years ago. They ultimately abandoned the project after it just, like, cost an insane amount of money. The reason why Trump wanted Panama back, the reason why Trump wants control of the Strait of Hormuz, he wants Iran shut down, basically. The reason he wants Greenland. It's all about controlling international waterways for trade, for oil. The United States tells the world one thing. You will use the US Dollar for all oil purchases, which means our economy is going to be great no matter what, because you got to use our money to buy oil, which means you got to come to us first. However, they say, in exchange, you will be able to freely trade around the world without someone blowing you up. We'll go after the pirates. We will police the seas. This is. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm saying this is the mechanism of the United States and why we have a strong economy despite not producing as much as other countries do, relatively. We have the petrodollar system. So when you get countries complaining we can't ship goods to the Red Sea anymore because of the Houthi rebels, Trump goes to Iran and says, are you going to stop arming these guys who are blowing up civilian transport? And they go, maybe give us money. And Trump says, no, I'll kill you. When they threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Trump's not playing a game like Obama says, no, I'll kill you. Now, if you're not a fan of the Team America World Police stuff, that opinion was always allowed. I am not telling you you should support any of this. I am telling you this is the mechanism by which all of this is happening, the reason why they're doing it.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, I mean, I think that. That it's pretty clear that America lives or the living standard that Americans have is because the petrodollar. And if we were to change that system, it would be a massive change in the living standard of all Americans. And as much as people say, oh, I don't want to see the US to be the world police, as long as the US is the world police, we should continue to do things that will try to keep the US Living standard as high as possible. Because you think that that poverty is bad in other countries. If the petrodollar goes away, you're going to see a significant decrease in living standard. That means the poor are the ones that are going to be hurt the most here in the US And I've

[Brandon Herrera]

got to give a shout out to my boy Nick the fat electrician real quick because he had a very good video breaking down the history of why America went after Greenland and just the, the long storied histories since just after, I believe, the Civil War, you know, attempting to purchase the, the Greenland territory and the reasons that we had interest there, especially with the strike capabilities later on and decreasing our strike time to places like Russia and everywhere else, and just having that, that ability, because I think we came to a terror. We came to an agreement after the end of World War II, because during World War II, obviously, you know, they were overtaken and we had placed American bases in Greenland itself.

[Tim Pool]

And so I just think that the United States is the nexus of good and morality has never done anything wrong. And for that matter, if the US does it, it is good. That's just, it's the definition.

[Phil Labonte]

It's magic.

[Ian Crossland]

I have a bit more of a nuance to take. I do think that the liberal economic order that is overseeing this, you know, collusive global takeover is the least worst global order we've ever seen in human history. It's been 80 years of no world war, limited the Internet, the amount of

[Tim Pool]

food people are trafficking. There hasn't been a lens, hasn't been

[Ian Crossland]

a famine in like 80 years. I don't think there's been a famine like 150 years in the United States, if that, maybe even more ever in the United States. So it's pretty impressive. Like if we can stabilize and, you know, develop our drone delivery systems so that we can spread resources out, I think this system could work well.

[Brandon Herrera]

So I actually, I was having this conversation the other day because I'm like, look, is America perfect? No, absolutely not. Nobody, nobody ever has been. But I think that right now the United States, as it stands in possibly the history of humanity, has the most power, like the most might to Good ratio, like to. To. To freedom of its individual citizens to how little we leverage it against the world for nefarious purposes. I think this is probably again, the most power to good ratio that has ever existed on planet Earth.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, I mean, essentially, if you, if you put the kind of military might that the US has in the hands of, oh, I don't know, the Huns, you know, I think that.

[Tim Pool]

Or anything. I have a question. I brought this up this morning. It was a hypothetical on Reddit. They have these hypothetical scenarios. They ask, then you comment and it is this. The question is for you, Ms. Rra. You wake up one day with all the powers of Superman. You are super strong, you can fly, you can shoot lasers and breathe cold for whatever reason and all that good stuff. However, once per year, a random person on Earth could be in any country, anywhere will also get these powers. You are informed a full year in advance who that person will be. And the only way to stop them from getting the powers is to kill them before they do. What do you do?

[Brandon Herrera]

Does that save? Does that stop?

[Tim Pool]

Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever with great savings on family favorites this week. 16 ounce sweet strawberries are two for $5 member price. And don't miss the incredible deal on signature select boneless skinless chicken breasts.

[Ian Crossland]

Value packs for 2.97 per pound limit.

[Tim Pool]

1 plus extra large avocados or mangoes

[Ian Crossland]

are 4 for $5 dollars member price.

[Tim Pool]

Fresh and delicious savings for every meal.

[Ian Crossland]

Hurry. And these deals won't last. Visit Safeway or albertsons.com for more deals

[Brandon Herrera]

and ways to save it from going to a random different person after that.

[Tim Pool]

So the idea is on January 1st, a random person in the world will get these powers as well. You always know who it's going to be after that person dies. The next January 1st, there will be one more person. So it's one person per year.

[Brandon Herrera]

Got it.

[Tim Pool]

And the hypothetical scenario is, will you kill them to prevent them from getting Superman powers? As Superman, do you also have those

[Brandon Herrera]

powers while they have them?

[Tim Pool]

Yes. So people will just start popping up and getting them all over the world if you do nothing.

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't like that. That's a very, very rough moral question. Because I mean, the obvious, the, I mean the mathematical answer to that is at some point somebody's going to have those powers and use it to kill thousands of people. So it's like all this is, is like a Reddit version of the trolley problem, right?

[Tim Pool]

Exactly. Yeah, that's about it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, it is.

[Tim Pool]

Interesting question as it pertains to war and superpowers. Because you look at it from the perspective of. Not Superman, but you're a global, world dominating hegemonic power. You know, another country is rapidly gaining power. Yeah, you can blow them up right now to prevent them from doing it. However, if you don't, they will rival you then and now there will be. That's. That's essentially what the scenario is meant to be. The challenge with this, the Superman question, is that what if it's an Islamic extremist and now he's immortal, invincible, and he's going to start massacring not thousands, but millions of people. And you can't stop him because you only match him. You'll be locked in a fight endlessly and the collateral damage will probably still make the millions. And so that the. The ultimate question is. I feel like this is a question to try and explain geopolitics at a grand scale to children, AKA Redditors, adult men who have the mentality of children.

[Brandon Herrera]

The funko pop breed.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. Indeed.

[Ian Crossland]

It would be a good plot for a super villain.

[Tim Pool]

Oh, bro. Ian would just cut. He would be like, okay.

[Ian Crossland]

And they're like, why are you doing this? And it's like, you don't understand.

[Tim Pool]

I have to.

[Ian Crossland]

And he's psychotic.

[Tim Pool]

He's lost his mind, saving the world. You have to believe Superman, meaning your super speed. So it's two in the morning. Whatever country they're in, you flash into their room, laser beam into their eyes, and then flash out. And then people come in in the morning and the person's just dead.

[Phil Labonte]

When you're Superman, you don't have to explain yourself.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, I would try, but then at the end of your. My life as Superman, they'd be like, oh, yeah, by the way, it was all a lie. They were all going to be just normal people.

[Tim Pool]

Well, now you're changing the killing.

[Brandon Herrera]

You're ruining the plot twist of your own movie.

[Ian Crossland]

I should do that in the movie.

[Tim Pool]

No, actually, that is a great plot twist where the guy tells people. You don't understand. If I don't do this, they will develop powers and then we will have superpowered terrorists. You can't control them.

[Brandon Herrera]

Three weeks away from Superman powers.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. And then finally in his deathbed, he's like, I made it all up. I just wanted to kill somebody. Just liked killing. He's got to get out of my way.

[Ian Crossland]

He's three weeks away. Okay, let's do it. That's a funny movie. Now he'd be like the villain. He Wouldn't be the main character, but that would be his motivation, the villain.

[Tim Pool]

He's just a serial killer. He makes a fake excuse.

[Ian Crossland]

Well, that's what the United States basically has been doing. They stomp down on anybody that's starting to rise up, and then if they get too far too fast, like North Korea, they just don' because they got intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles.

[Tim Pool]

Let's go to this story real quick and let's talk about that Ian Trump. Trump floats friendly takeover of Cuba, but says it may not be friendly either. Ladies and gentlemen, it's my birthday and the only thing I've ever wanted, ever, my whole life. I remember being a little kid sitting in my living room just looking out the window at the, at the stars in the sky, thinking, I just want to conquer Cuba. And now on this, my 40th birthday, Trump has floated a not so friendly takeover. Mr. President, thank you so much. It's all I ever wanted. Do you agree? Should we invade and conquer Cuba?

[Ian Crossland]

I would like to see Cuba as part of the American empire. I don't like calling it. I shouldn't call it an empire because that's kind of tongue in cheek. I would like to see Cuba not under the control of communist dictators.

[Tim Pool]

Well, they don't have any power right

[Phil Labonte]

now, so they'd like to see anyone.

[Ian Crossland]

I'd like to see them. Sovereign citizens in Cuba with the right

[Brandon Herrera]

Puerto Rico style, perhaps.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah. Gun rights, property rights, the right to freedom of speech to speak out against your government. And if you want to participate in the United States, like, I'm willing to open the door to those people for sure.

[Tim Pool]

I like that joke where it was like, waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay. Sounds really fun until you read about it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Until you know what either of those two things are.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, yeah. Waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay.

[Ian Crossland]

That's.

[Tim Pool]

I don't know.

[Brandon Herrera]

I think we might have squandered that one in the Spanish American War.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

What do you.

[Phil Labonte]

I don't think that the US Is going to actually need to take Cuba. If I understand the news reports coming out, they haven't had power in something like a week. And the people are rising up like, like people are rising up like, like America says, you know, said they were going to rise up in Iraq or say they were going to rise up in Iran.

[Tim Pool]

Their government's going to collapse, literally pissed. Cutting off, taking Maduro and seizing back our oil assets in Venezuela. Cuba is now cut off from oil. And so the people are basically at this point saying, I don't care who the boss is I care about who's got the oil. Think about. That's the easy way to conquer a nation. The people are probably saying, I don't care if you think you're in charge. Like they're gonna listen. You put it like this. You work for a company and you got a boss who's like, if you, if you quit, I'll sue you under contract. And then all of a sudden, the paycheck stop coming in. You're like, I don't care what you do at this point. You're not paying me.

[Ian Crossland]

And if you're working and they're paying you sometimes, and then all of a sudden some foreign entity wants to pay you a bigger contract, you're like, why am I still taking this guy? Give me something like, what is the purpose of me staying in this contract anymore? You've been me over for 80 years, Castro.

[Tim Pool]

So Raul, what is like 90 rose not there anymore?

[Ian Crossland]

Well, it's his brother. Is it Raul?

[Tim Pool]

No, it's. What, a. Miguel.

[Ian Crossland]

It's a new guy.

[Tim Pool]

Miguel.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah. They're done. The Castro regime was all that country had, holding it together.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

And the oil was.

[Phil Labonte]

If you look at the. You look at the.

[Tim Pool]

I. I want to just stress this to the. The people in chat who are like, oh, my God, Tim's a cultist for Trump. No, you're just. You're a really low IQ person. So for that I apologize for you not understanding what was meant to be facetious. I don't think the US should invade Cuba. That was the joke.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, I don't think it needs to invade Cuba. I think the Cubans have long wanted away from that communistic dictatorship, and now with their oil supplies running out, they see de facto who's in charge.

[Phil Labonte]

It's looking like the op in Venezuela was successful on multiple fronts. It got Maduro, the current Venezuelan.

[Tim Pool]

The regime.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, well, the current. Yeah, the current Venezuelan government is looking to normalize relations. If I understand correctly, the. The vice president there is saying that she's going to work with the United States. And it's also looks like it's going to take Cuba out.

[Brandon Herrera]

I. Look, I also saw bets on the. The State of the Union as to whether or not Trump was going to parade out Maduro behind him on a chain market.

[Phil Labonte]

I wanted to see. I wanted to see him come out with like the gimp mask from. From Pulp Fiction.

[Tim Pool]

You know, his interview with Alex Jones.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, look, Cuba's. Cuba's been a communist country for I don't know how many years. And if the communist rule ends there, that's a good thing. I think it's an unmitigated good thing.

[Tim Pool]

Can you imagine if, before all this is done, if Trump pulls off in Iran what he pulled off in Venezuela? This is the thing I was saying, like, you know, I was, I was asked by a reporter at the Wall Street Journal how I felt about this, you know, the attacks and around the war, and I said I'd advise against it, I wouldn't vote to support it. I oppose it. And I think it's because we are a. We have post intervention stress disorder. As millennials from Iraq and Afghanistan, and not to mention the stories of Vietnam, we do not trust that these operations are going to play out the way they claim they will, nor do we trust the reasons for going in and doing it. That being said, if Trump is able to pull off a regime change without a ground invasion in Iran, which would surprise the homie for he could, people are going to be very, very happy about it. And so if, when all this is said and done, Venezuela is looking like said and done, I mean, it's pretty crazy. If Iran ends up the same way and then Cuba falls into the US fold, Trump's going to go down in history as one of the greatest president, not the greatest president we've had ever.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, at that point, it becomes a legacy play.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, certainly.

[Tim Pool]

Maybe why he wants to do it all. Maybe, you know, with the Abraham Accords, I think Trump very much was like, I can bring peace to Israel, Palestine. Now, I'm not sure that he actually can, but I think Trump is looking at the world stage saying, I can solve this. And perhaps it's ego driven. Perhaps it's, I want to be the guy who did. Or maybe it's ego driven in the sense that I'm smarter than you and I can figure it out better than you. Either way, if it happens, I'll be happy.

[Brandon Herrera]

Frankly, I don't care what the rationale is. If he can get it done, an objectively good thing, I don't care why he's doing it. If he can be the guy who gets it done, then by all means,

[Tim Pool]

you know, if Israel gave Trump a billion dollars personally to bring peace to the world, I wouldn't care.

[Ian Crossland]

I don't care.

[Phil Labonte]

The motivation, the bold statement would actually

[Tim Pool]

be the point is think of the most like, I want to lower that again. The most offensive thing, like Trump is secretly getting paid cash in the back room by Israel for foreign policy. That brings peace to the world, ends war and Conflict, stabilizes trade relations between a bunch of countries. Why would I be mad?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah. I mean, two things can be true. Like, you could say that that's an objectively bad thing to happen. Like, that's a bad reason to be doing stuff while also saying that a good thing happened because of it.

[Tim Pool]

And that's. That's my point. Like, what if Trump's motivation for all this world peace is that there's, like, a small child that he wants to murder just in the middle of Tehran that he can't get to? You'd be like, this is the. There's, like, just some little kid. He's on call of duty, and he said he's going to bang Trump's mom. And Trump was like, I'm going to find you. And he's like, you can't. I'm Tehran. He's like, oh, yeah. And so he. He brings peace to the Middle east, stabilizes relations all over the world, and it's all just to. To. To. You can't touch me.

[Brandon Herrera]

My dad's the Ayatollah.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

Give me Obama's number right now.

[Tim Pool]

He was playing. He was. He was playing what? What? What? Call of Duty back in the day.

[Ian Crossland]

Og, do you hear those of him? These are old ones, too. Him and Biden playing gold. Gold. If you haven't seen them yet, watch those. They're so funny. They're so well done. It's nice to hear them getting along.

[Brandon Herrera]

But on the Cuba thing, I think that Marco Rubio has been looking forward to this moment for a long time.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, he's just, like, looking at a picture of Cuba and, like, rubbing it, you know, in.

[Ian Crossland]

Another reason why it's not, like, because of Rubio, we seized the Venezuelan government or whatever, but putting Rubio there was probably part of the plan to, you know, secure the Central America. I think he's a master. I love that guy.

[Tim Pool]

I'm really impressed with Ruby.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, I feel so much better and, like, safer with him in. In the.

[Tim Pool]

Let him hold you and keep you safe and warm.

[Ian Crossland]

That would be fine. That would be fine.

[Tim Pool]

He comes up behind you and he just embraces you, and you know that you're safe in Marco Rubio's arms. Love you, Mark. Let's do it. I was actually. I found him to be uninspiring in the. In, you know.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

Eight years ago garbage back then. Recently, the way he's been handling all this foreign policy stuff and press stuff, I actually think he's not a perfect guy, but he's handled it very Professionally, especially considering the political tumult between Democrats and Republicans. He's played it very professionally. I respect it tremendously. One of my biggest criticisms of Trump going back to his first campaign was that his lack of decorum. He approaches this from a very abrasive culture worry kind of approach, and J.D. vance does that as well. Now, I'll give J.D. vance some respect in that he's very tactful and academic in his insults. I can respect that. But Rubio has been very hard for Democrats to go after because he's kept it very professional and calm.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

He hasn't fired back insults or plenty of this dirty games. I'd imagine if they insulted him in some dramatic way, like with Trump, they called him a racist. Rubio's response would be like, well, I'm terribly sorry if I've done something to give you that impression. It's not my intent. Like, he's not going to lash out at him.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, we all remember, like, Marco from, like the little Marco, like, those days, like, everything. I think uninspiring is probably was a good word for him back then, but I honestly, like, I had my, my worries about him taking the role that he has, but I think he's, I agree with you entirely. He's taken it and, and he's run with it. He's done a very good job.

[Phil Labonte]

I think his time in the sense, probably helped with that, too.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, big time.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Ian Crossland]

It, I, it was 20. Did he run for president in 2012? He was one of the 2016, and maybe before that.

[Tim Pool]

I don't know.

[Ian Crossland]

He'd been around before that. And I always thought he was a war hawk. But as I've learned more about global geopolitics and that, like you, you can't just never go to war when you have the largest military on the planet. You can't just let it all fall.

[Tim Pool]

I mean, you have to. Yeah. If, you know, use it, use it or lose it. Sometimes you just, you're bored, you know,

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, I want to be decisive with it. Like, I don't want to just do it for the sake of doing it. And I want to make sure it actually protects American lives or protects American interests. But if somebody screws with us, I want to show them what $1 trillion a year looks like.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess the liberals were mad at me because I praised Trump's masculinity on the attack in Iran. My point was not that I would call the attacks well advised. I'm skeptical, but hopefully optimistic.

[Brandon Herrera]

It.

[Tim Pool]

But I said that I loved the masculinity of it, in that the Iranians came to the negotiating table saying, we have enough material for 11 bombs, and that's where we're starting the negotiation. And Trump's response was like, I'll just kill you. Like, again, I'm not saying that means you should go to war. I'm saying that video of Mark Wayne Mullen and o' Brien from the Team Service Union is just one of the greatest, manliest videos on both parts for both of them. I give them both respect. You know what I'm talking about?

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't think I do.

[Tim Pool]

Mark Wayne Mullen is like. He's like, reading. He's like, after you left here, Mr. O', Brien, he's a president of Teamsters Union. He's like. You were mouthing off on Twitter. It's like one of the posts you

[Brandon Herrera]

said, oh, yeah, where he threatened to. To, like, throw down.

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He.

[Tim Pool]

He, as consenting adults, made the offer to throw down. And o' Brien says, let's go. And then he gets up and goes to pull his ring off. And I'm like, we need the men back in the room.

[Brandon Herrera]

So. So, funny story about that. I was in D.C. like, a block away when that happened. As I'm looking on my phone and watching this, I'm like, man, I could have had front row seats UFC fight this year.

[Tim Pool]

But I. I gotta. I gotta. So. So Mark Wayne Mullen reads the tweet where he's like, you know where I am anytime, any place. And then he goes, this is a place. Now is a time we can be two contending adults. And then. And then o' Brien goes, okay. And he's like, stand your butt up, goes. You stand to your butt him. He goes, all right. And then he stands up and goes to pull his wedding ring off. And then Bernie Sanders ruined all the fun.

[Brandon Herrera]

If I'm. If I'm not mistaken, that was a very good impression. If I'm not mistaken, I. I think that he probably should have read up on Mul Combat Sports Record.

[Tim Pool]

He's three. Yeah, that.

[Brandon Herrera]

That guy knows how to throw down.

[Ian Crossland]

I think he's two, but.

[Brandon Herrera]

Two.

[Ian Crossland]

Two. One. Technical knockout, and then two by decision.

[Tim Pool]

My, my. No, I thought a submission. I thought he had submission. Two by submission and two submissions. Okay.

[Brandon Herrera]

Way better.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah. One was an arm bar, but again, you shouldn't be fighting fist fighting in Congress. Okay. And you shouldn't do it as much

[Brandon Herrera]

as you want to.

[Tim Pool]

But I'm just saying, like, I am sick of this pencil Neck hoity toity button dub. Oh, you know, like, we need strong, decisive men to say, do not f with me.

[Ian Crossland]

You know, this is very real quick.

[Tim Pool]

Just final point. What does Trump say? It's. I forgot the phrase. But, like, deterrence through strength or whatever. Peace through strength. Peace through strength. The idea is, I like the story of the guy who's sitting in a bar, minding his own business, having a drink, and then the loudmouth dudes messing around, and he comes up and tries to start a fight with the guy. And the guy says, listen, I'm not. I'm. I apologize. I'm not interested. I'm gonna. I'm gonna be on my way. But then when they finally don't let the guy, it turns out he's much more baddest, and he beats them all up. You know what I mean?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

I love the movies where the action hero is going, you don't want to fight me, dude, I'm gonna leave here. We don't need to do this. But the bad guys are the ones who are like, you think you stay smart. And then the good guy shows restraint, honor. You know what the best example of this is? A Bronx Tale. You know that scene, scene in the Bronx Tale? I will cite it 50 billion times AD nauseam for everybody. So it's. I'll give you the quick version. Mob bus. Here's motorcycles, all big ruckus. Walks to the bar. He says, what's the problem? And the bartender says, they're not properly dressed. They can't. They can't drink here. And the biker leader says, hey, look, man, we just want a beer. Just one beer. We'll be on our way. And then Sonny goes, spoken like a gentleman. Give the men their beers. So the mob boss is like, I'm gonna be you. You respect me, I respect you. Right? Then they shake the beers up and spray everybody down. And then Sonny goes once again, honorably, okay, now he's got to go. And they say, f you.

[Brandon Herrera]

F off.

[Tim Pool]

Then he walks over, closes the door and locks it, turns around and says, now, now. You just can't leave. And then the narrator's like, at that moment, they knew they effed up. Then the back door pops open. All the good old boys come in with guns and bats and beat the crap out of the bikers. The reason I love that story, he said, spoken like a gentleman. These men were polite but not properly addressed. So he said, I will treat you with respect. They then chose to disrespect him, and he still showed restraint. And said, now you need to leave. And when they still decided, he says, okay. And they got, they beat the crap out of these guys. That's what it means to be a man. You're able to, but you show restraint because you want to keep the peace and protect those around you. But when bad and evil comes, look around that corner. You are willing, ready and able to stop it.

[Phil Labonte]

I think.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, what's that?

[Brandon Herrera]

Sorry. Just like the biblical interpretation of, oh, the meek shall inherit the earth. It's like. Well, one of the translations that I was hearing was it's not meek as in like weak. You know, it was more of the those who carry swords but choose to keep them sheathed.

[Ian Crossland]

This is reserved Julius Caesar, I believe this is what he was. He was the guy, he was the meek one. He had all his legion.

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[Ian Crossland]

Ends up north, all this territory in the Senate started getting very afraid that he was going to betray them. So they're like, we're going to strip him of all his land and all his, all his soldiers. And he's like, you, you know, I'm not giving the power up. He's, he's the man in the situation. These pencil neck paper pushers are trying to control the world with bureaucracy. And he's like, no, I'm not giving you back. He comes down to Ravenna, close to Rome with one legion and is there to make a negotiation. I just want one province in Croatia and one legion.

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

He had 10.

[Ian Crossland]

He was giving up nine, 10 of his army just to go govern some simple thing and serve Rome. And they still wanted his stuff and wouldn't let him. And finally he was like, you leave me no choice. And that's the story of Julius Caesar.

[Phil Labonte]

Cross.

[Brandon Herrera]

I love it.

[Tim Pool]

That's so. So I got, I got ragged on by the liberals. They were like, kim, think it's masculine

[Brandon Herrera]

to go to war?

[Tim Pool]

Yes, I do indeed. Doesn't mean you always do it. The, the fight, the fight you've won is a fight you can avoid, right? That's the saying. So you don't go looking for trouble, but you are damn well prepared to solve the trouble if it comes looking for you.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, 100. And like, that's something that a lot of veteran friends of mine, veteran advocate friends of mine say if you want to help combat veterans, make less of them. You know, you don't want to go to war for no reason. You know, there's a lot of baggage that comes with it. Not only American lives, but a lot of the things that they had to go through and a lot of the things that you still have to take care of afterward. That being said, like, you should always be prepared for it when the necessity comes again, if you want to screw with us, we will show you what $1 trillion a year looks like.

[Ian Crossland]

Or they won't even see it. That's the crazy part. And they still haven't seen what they're doing, that we just don't see the outcome.

[Tim Pool]

And I stress their children. Well, the issue I take with the attacks on Iran are less to do with that we're going to war, but that we do not have a good track record on regime change.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

And that is the argument against it. The expense, the waste of time and energy. 20 years flushed on the toilet in Afghanistan. That being said, you make a great point with the Bill Burr comment that there's plenty of reason to put the smackdown on what the Iranians have been doing in the region to. It's not about us, about literally everyone else destabilizing it. And so my only hope is that whatever Trump ends up doing, we want to get out cleanly. We don't want a bogged down 20 year conflict. It sounds like the rumor in the Beltway is they expect it to be a couple weeks, that they're just going to just bombard this place. And then everybody who holds stock in these defense contractors are gonna get very wealthy because they gotta replenish those armaments.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, well, I mean, if it's gonna, again, if it's gonna happen, I hope it happens soon. I hope that we're, we're down. I mean, I mean, what are we at right now when it comes to the, the American life. Life lost? I think it's seven.

[Tim Pool]

Seven.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I think we're down seven. But I think according to the Iranian ambassador, as of today, I think they're, they're at over 1300.

[Phil Labonte]

Is there.

[Tim Pool]

Wow.

[Ian Crossland]

Civilian casualty lists.

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't know, to be honest.

[Tim Pool]

And it's hard to know what to believe. I mean, official statements from the US Are going to try and rally as much support as possible. They're going to say, you know, Trump saying it's almost done, maybe it's not, who knows? But then of course, on the, on the Iranian side or the pro run side with Russia, China, they're going to be claiming all of the worst things imaginable, like the US Is intentionally killing children and is one of the stories

[Brandon Herrera]

that came out, I mean, right after the first night of attacks, they claimed the Ayatollah was still alive. So I really don't trust anything coming out of Iranian military or Iranian press right now.

[Ian Crossland]

I saw a video on Twitter of a guy driving in Tehran and just fire. And it's like the, apparently the Israel. This is what it says the Israelis struck oil refineries or something and that it was getting into the sewers and you're like blazing fire along the sides of roads and stuff. And I don't know if it's true. For all I know, it's a freaking deep fake video.

[Brandon Herrera]

I saw a lot of, I saw like some of the videos where it first lit off. I don't remember what exactly it was, sewer system or whatever it was that was, that was blowing up in the streets, but it seemed like that was pretty legit.

[Ian Crossland]

It did seem like it.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's just from the multiple angles like that.

[Ian Crossland]

And, and I don't want to ever let myself get to the point where I just completely disbelieve everything in front of me.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I mean, we're getting there, it's getting close.

[Phil Labonte]

It's hard. It is like, it is kind of hard to tell, especially when you've got people that are so, so bent on discrediting, you know, either side, whether it be people that are counter signaling the United States that are saying, oh, Iran's actually winning. You know, look, the, the Iranians have, they haven't been launching a lot of drones because they're saving their weapons for later. But I mean, that kind of stuff doesn't really make sense because they've already lost, like you said, 1400 people. There's a bunch of people that have. A bunch of people of their senior leadership were taken out the first night and stuff. And it's like, well, what point do you start using your, your best weapons if it's not to save the people that are, or prevent the people that are in charge from being blown up,

[Brandon Herrera]

you know, and again, I, you know, even hearkening back to, you know, the, the most power to, to good ratio or restraint rather, I guess is the better way of putting it The United States, I think, is the only military on the planet that is limited by its political will and not its ability. Yeah. Because if Russia could take Ukraine, they would indeed like. And there's multiple examples of different. You know, you can name a country and who they'd like to take or what they'd like to do. They'd do it if they could. We're the only ones that hold back because we can, but we choose not to because of the political fallout. But we have the ability. And I think we're seeing that right now. I think we're actually holding back a little bit. I mean, we're holding back a lot.

[Tim Pool]

Well, I mean, we have nukes, so.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, well, yeah, there's always one. There was always the next step. I don't think we're ever going to go that far.

[Tim Pool]

But bombs even, I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a mid tier the US could be engaging in for sure.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, we're being strategic, I think specifically to strike military targets without civilian casualties.

[Phil Labonte]

I mean, we spent billions of dollars developing weapons that'll be able, if we want, that we can use Discombobulate. But also that are literally just flying swords. Right. Like you can take out an individual person with a hellfire missile that doesn't have a warhead on it. It has literal swords that pop out.

[Brandon Herrera]

The mobile ninja blender.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

You haven't seen that, Ian.

[Tim Pool]

I've never seen it assassinate a guy with it. It fires blades that just like spin and slice you up.

[Phil Labonte]

There's a Hellfire missile that when it gets to the target, blades pop out on the side and it will strike the target. There's a couple pictures on the Internet of, of cars that were hit. You can see where the blades went in. And I think the US Took out an Iranian. Some Iranian. An Iranian official with it.

[Tim Pool]

Is it. Because it's a.

[Ian Crossland]

It's like a low yield type?

[Phil Labonte]

No, there's no, there's no explosion.

[Ian Crossland]

So it just hits like the local area and then.

[Phil Labonte]

No, it's just moving really fast.

[Tim Pool]

It hits you with blades.

[Ian Crossland]

But what, you knock buildings over? Like, that's what I mean, it's. It's less destructive.

[Brandon Herrera]

No, they're really analog. There is no explosions. It's just.

[Ian Crossland]

Just sounds like an assassin tool.

[Tim Pool]

We're gonna go to your rumble rants and super chats. So smash that like button and share this show with everyone you know, my friends. But before we go to your rants, my friends, go to timcast.com and click join us and become a member of the Discord community. We've got tens of thousands of people that are hanging out in the Discord. They want to be friends with all of you. And more importantly, it is my 40th birthday. Oh, indeed.

[Brandon Herrera]

The big four zero.

[Tim Pool]

That's it. I'm officially over the hill as per the standard life expectancy, which is of course 79. That puts me on the back end and it's all downhill from here. So the only thing I can do is say, if you'd like to get me a birthday present, please join our community. @timcast.com the community is always hanging out. They've got live chat, they've got early shows, after shows, and we do the uncensored members only show Monday through Thursday on Rumble exclusively. But if you want to call in and hang out with us and talk to us and our guest, you need to join the discord communitymcast.com so I humbly request my friends, if you want to get me a birthday present, all you need do is sign up and join the community. Because it's not just about me, it's about building community itself. And we're trying to make this the principal component of everything that we do. A long standing group of people that become friends, that can work with each other. Because as I enter my 40th year, the one thing that we've been discussing over the past couple of years is I will eventually be unable to work. Who knows, maybe I'll do this for another 20 years. But there needs to be a mechanism by which other people are able to carry out from everything that we've done, make friends, build shows, build community structures. And then maybe in a hundred years there will be a new company or the company will still exist and there will be a big community of people who believe in freedom, truth, justice in the American way and all that good stuff. So again, join us. And I appreciate all the birthday wishes and the super chats and Rumble rants, but now let's read what you guys have to to say with all this. All right, we got disgruntled vet, he says General Herrera, when do we, the autistic army get to buy our AK50? LOL. Congratulations on winning. We need more people like you.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, for one of, for first, first off, I appreciate it. If we were actually going to ever like mass produce, like manufacture the AK50, we'd have to find a manufacturing dance partner with that because we do not have the capabilities to do that right now.

[Tim Pool]

How long did it take to build an AK50.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, to get the design down and to get it to where it is today. I mean it's been like nine years, probably nine, 10 years. And this is like, it's a garage project. Like it's something that we would put down and then pick up six months later, wait for parts from machine shop kills the project for four months, you know, that sort of thing. But we'd need somebody like we worked with titans of CNC on some of that. They were incredible to work with. We would need somebody like that to partner with on the manufacturing side because I mean we're, we're a bunch of, we're a bunch of idiots in a garage. We don't have that sort of mass production capability.

[Tim Pool]

Right on. All right, let's see. We got here. Code Man Red says I don't know how you did it but, but started watching TNG and it seems we're watching the same episodes. The last two Star Trek references Tim made were episodes I just watched last week. Fifth Wall broken. Well, it's because when I got sick I started the series over again and I've been just watching all the episodes. I'm also re watching Deep Space Nine which I just got to stress guys, the last three seasons of Deep Space Nine are just so incredible and I really do recommend you watch it. I, I again I get frustrated people who are just like I don't like sci fi but if you really just ignore the sci fi stuff, like I don't care for the aliens or whatever. Have you ever watched Deep Space Nine?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, apparently. I think I was told by my father that I was born while he was watching Deep Space Nine. He was trying to like switch between like pipe down woman. Star Trek is on.

[Tim Pool]

It is prescient and the writing is interesting and it makes you think and it's relevant to what is going on today. So we've talked about the episode in the Pale moonlight which may be one of the best episodes of television just in general where the Federation stages a false flag attack to trick one of their one, one of their rival nations into joining the war on their side.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, that would never happen in real life.

[Tim Pool]

That's why I'm just saying it's, it's amazing to watch how they wrote this stuff out. But also just the beginning of the Dominion War in general. So basically there is a military faction that repeatedly is sending military vehicles to a, a, let's just call it a country in, in Star Trek. And eventually the Federation says they're at the point where they have built up an army where they could launch an attack on all fronts, you know, all Federation frontiers and we would get crushed. So they, they mine a wormhole, the entrance to where these vehicles are coming through, which triggers the beginning of the war. And then from there it's just, it's war stuff. It is the politics of war, conflict, disaster, economy. It's really interesting writing, it's a sci fi setting, but man, I cannot stress how good that's Voyager happened and we all kind of rolled our eyes.

[Ian Crossland]

I want to shout out Johnny Frakes and Brent Spiner, you guys, they got a show on YouTube called Dropping Names with Brent and Johnny. That's, that's Commander Riker and Data from Star Trek Next Generation. They're badass human beings.

[Tim Pool]

You've gone and done it, Ian. You've gone and done, you've triggered me. Jonathan Frakes recently was talking about how people don't like Starfleet Academy, the new shows, and he's directed a couple episodes of the, of the latest. And Jonathan Frakes, you are an absolute legend and you add one of the best voices to the Star Trek universe. But good sir, please hear me if you ever hear this. If you want to understand why people don't like new Trek. The point he made was that when they launched the Next Generation, Trekkies got really offended because they replaced the cast and crew and it was a new like fake version of the show and yes, indeed, but I was a little kid and I grew up watching you and so understand the original Trek audience and the audience that I exhibit inhabit are. It's a Venn diagram. We overlap, but we are not the same. So when I watch the Next Generation in Deep Space Nine literally throughout the 90s, I'm a little kid in the early 90s and the show's already been on the air, I think it first aired in 87, I'm one understand this. The brilliant quotes, the interesting logic, philosophy, conflict that exists in the Next Generation Deep Space Nine and even to a certain degree in Voyager does not exist in Starfleet Academy. In these new shows, for example, there is one of, there's just so many great quotes. One of the latest that I absolutely love is Data. The Android loses. Let's just call it chess. He's playing a game called strategima against a master who beats him. And he's supposed to be unstoppable, he's an Android. So he finds himself defective and says, something must be wrong with me. I need to figure out why. Why I. I'm not functioning properly. And so he basically calls in sick, thinking that if he can't solve this properly, something must be wrong. And then the Captain comes to him and says, you are my second officer. You need to do your job and stop doubting yourself. And Data says, but there must be a defect. And then we get one of the greatest quotes ever. He says. He says, commander, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life. That is what I'm talking about with Star Trek the Next Generation. That's the kind of great writing that we got in the early 90s. Now you have some, like the sci fi makes no sense. A permeable hologram that becomes sick because she's not really permeable or something. And she says, I can't deal with your midday energy before I even pulled my underwear up my butt. But that kind of quote is deeply offensive to those who were inspired by the moral philosophies of the 90s Star Trek era.

[Brandon Herrera]

But now they're edgy and they say the F word on Star Trek. Oh, yeah, yeah, that was my dad also just text me to correct me. It was Voyager that I was born to, not Deep Space Nine. So shout out.

[Tim Pool]

And you know what? As much as we all ragged on Voyager, it is a masterpiece compared to what they have given us today.

[Ian Crossland]

I should go easier on Voyager and Deep Space, I think, because. Because it was the exact same thing that John John was saying it. I felt like were cheap new fake casts. Because I remember I felt like that for Next Generation. I was like, where's Spock? But then I immediately started falling in love with Picard and Riker and like Data. And then same, same phenomenon again. And I didn't give the other shows a chance.

[Tim Pool]

So I always liked Picard better.

[Ian Crossland]

Picard's the best. But I ever graced Star Trek.

[Tim Pool]

When I start watching Star Trek, I'm a little kid watching the Next Generation. I see that first it's on tv. I'm a little kid sitting on my couch. My dad's watching it, I'm watching it. I didn't see the original series until years later when I was like, I love this. I want to watch more. And then I was like, you know, Kirk's good, but Picard is. Is fantastic. I do think it's a little cheap how they were like, we're gonna shoehorn in some character traits about him, like, he doesn't like kids. And then they try to make that a thing, but it really doesn't work for Picard's character anyway.

[Brandon Herrera]

I Feel like for a long time the baton got passed down to new people who loved the original source material or at the very least respected it.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

And nowadays that's just not a requirement. And that's not just a Star Trek thing. That's a Star Wars, Halo. Whatever. It's almost. It seems like with the exception of Fallout, it's like you're required to hate or disrespect what everything that led to you having that job built on.

[Tim Pool]

Yep.

[Ian Crossland]

I'm glad you said about Fallout. I haven't seen the new show. 76 or fall. I've been playing Fallout 76 and I haven't seen.

[Brandon Herrera]

Sorry.

[Ian Crossland]

Well, it got better. It launched horribly in 2017, a miserable wreck of a game. And now it's well worth the money.

[Tim Pool]

Have you guys heard about the new game marathon that's bombing from Bungie?

[Ian Crossland]

Yep. No.

[Tim Pool]

No, guys, I, it's. I'm just, I'm. I'm. I'm sick of this stuff. Right. So game rant marathon is being review bombed. No it isn't. It's just a bad aesthetic. The game looks terrible. So this is Bungie. They made Destiny. I played Destiny incessantly and Destiny 2 as well. Did all the raids, you know, went to the moon, went to, went to Titan. Is that. Where are Europa?

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't know. Know.

[Tim Pool]

It's been a long time, man. Been a long time. Went to Mars and Halo. Of course I didn't play as much, but Bungie launches a new game marathon. And the characters are disgusting. They're like weird mannequin robots or something. I gotta tell you, Concord, the game bombed miserably. 400 million dollar flop. It's considered to be the biggest flop in the history of all media period for humans. 400 million dollar production, zero profit. 0, zero revenue. They sold 25000 copies and then refunded all the money. When the game flopped 11 day. Within 11 days they canceled it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like 0 gross.

[Tim Pool]

$0 gross 0 completely. The characters were all gross and weird and had pronouns. One of the characters was a morbidly obese, like central, like, like Native American looking guy. Why would anyone want to play these games? Games and aesthetic matters. Marvel Rivals is now one of the top games. Why all the women look like they're naked? Their. Their suits are basically just their skin color. That's how comic books do it. All the men are insanely jacked. Like they have 2% body fat and everybody wants to play the game and they want to be the superhero every time. Have you got. Did you Guys, see, Dakota Johnson did the topless ad for Calvin Klein. Sexy is back. Okay, I was saying, whatever. Whatever Justin Timberlake was bringing back, that wasn't it. Because after he made that song, they brought in a bunch of morbidly obese people to Calvin Klein. So whatever he thought was sexy, that's not working. I mean, now, did you see Jaguar

[Brandon Herrera]

when they did their super, like, the. The stock depletion? That happened at that point.

[Tim Pool]

So then they said, hey, look, what was it? Who did Sydney Sweeney do the jeans? What jeans? Was that Levi?

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, no, no, I didn't get that right. I think it was American Eagles.

[Tim Pool]

Dakota Johnson did Calvin Klein where she's topless and she's basically reading, like, lines about a sexy woman. I think people finally realized with Ozempic, we are aspirational. So when they did all this body positivity stuff and they were like, you can be fat, what they're really saying is, you are fat, and we're trying to sell you a product. And then once they made Ozempic and all the women got skinny, now they're like, okay, let's bring back the naked chicks again.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, girls be getting horny.

[Tim Pool]

No, the issue is, I explained this in a segment this morning. The commercial with Dakota Johnson topless with her hair over her boobs and she's doing sexy poses is not for men.

[Ian Crossland]

I'm so glad she made that.

[Brandon Herrera]

I gotta watch it.

[Tim Pool]

Is not for men to watch.

[Ian Crossland]

Are you sure? Because I'm about to pull it up.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, because you don't buy Calvin Klein. What they want to do is they want women to watch that and then think, I can be sexy like her because men like that. It's a commercial for women to be aspirational.

[Brandon Herrera]

So in your opinion, we're bringing back body negativity?

[Phil Labonte]

Yes.

[Tim Pool]

I don't think this is negativity. I think it's. It's correct body positivity.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, no, I. I objectively agree. I'm messing around. I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that you should aspire to be fit. You should aspire to be healthy. You know, there are these, like. You know, all throughout human history, we've had these paragons of what, you know, the. The proper male and female form should be. Even if you can't get there, you can aspire to it, get as close as you want. And the. The byproduct is you're healthier because of it.

[Tim Pool]

Yep.

[Brandon Herrera]

You live longer, you live happier.

[Tim Pool]

Body positivity should have Always been encouraging people to get fit in a positive way, cheering them on. I think saying, you can do it, rfk, man, I. We don't talk about him a lot

[Ian Crossland]

because he doesn't do, like, military and all, but I think he's like the unsung hero of the decade, like, man of the year. Maybe in retrospect people will realize how he saved a nation by stripping some of these toxins out of the diet.

[Brandon Herrera]

And to me, I don't. I don't think a lot of the stuff that he's doing, like the whole Maha, like, make America healthy again movement, I don't see why that should be polarizing. It's like, okay, let's take the poison out of our food. Let's stop feeding slop to our children. Let's maybe get them to be a responsible weight, teach them how to do a push up. Like, that should be all basic stuff that we all agree with.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, it's. It's just about the polarization. Now he's associated with Trump, so he's got to be a bad guy, you know, which is ridiculous.

[Ian Crossland]

But, yeah, it's kind of like poor propaganda because, I don't know, it works, but sometimes it doesn't. I mean, his work is apparent. I think his works are showing because

[Brandon Herrera]

there's something that he says now that I truly like. It struck a chord. It's something along the lines of. And I don't want to put words in his mouth, but it's something along the lines of, one of these days, I truly hope you love your children more than you have hate Trump. Like, that hits hard. It really does.

[Tim Pool]

Let's grab some more of these rumble rants. We got D. Sage who says, I agree with Brandon. Clankers are not people. Ian will kill us all.

[Brandon Herrera]

What?

[Ian Crossland]

No, I'm here to help.

[Phil Labonte]

Clankers are not people.

[Tim Pool]

It's true.

[Ian Crossland]

Clingers are not people.

[Tim Pool]

J. Hamlin says, wait, it's Tim's birthday and we get Brandon as a present. Thanks, Tim. Also, on Iran bombing hotels, I heard the reason might be because most troops were relocated off base. Probably civilian locations. Then they targeted civilian locations. And it makes them look really bad. I mean, it is what it is.

[Ian Crossland]

I actually think clankers are people. I just don't think they're human. But they have personalities, like dogs.

[Tim Pool]

Clankers. Clankers. Why is YouTube giving me the business? YouTube's always giving us.

[Ian Crossland]

You guys ever speak pig Latin for fun?

[Tim Pool]

No, I just did.

[Ian Crossland]

YouTube. You take the first letter of the word you put at the end of the Word and then a after it.

[Brandon Herrera]

It.

[Tim Pool]

Why is it called Pig Land? It sounds racist.

[Ian Crossland]

I wonder if that's a racist thing. And I just. Just displayed that for pickup lines.

[Tim Pool]

Let's. Let's grab this one. We got. We got. Mikey says I am keeping the tradition and say my wife is delivering baby number two right now. Welcome baby Clara. And now my wife just gave me the look. Pray for me.

[Ian Crossland]

Congratulations, guys.

[Brandon Herrera]

She's.

[Phil Labonte]

If she's on the. On the. The delivery table, you don't have to worry about her getting up chase you around. She can give you the look all she wants.

[Ian Crossland]

Much love to your wife.

[Tim Pool]

We got a lot of birthday wishes. I appreciate all of the birthday wishes. RFH is in keeping with long standing Tim Cast tradition. I'll announce the arrival of my new baby son, Bruce Buffer voice. Weighing in at 5 pounds, 13 ounces, standing at a whopping 19 inches long, Carter Asher Roche. Love you guys.

[Ian Crossland]

I'm talking about Carter.

[Tim Pool]

Congratulations.

[Phil Labonte]

Good name, Asher.

[Tim Pool]

All right, the Branca show says military operations declaration of war. Declaration of war resets entire US To a wartime footing. Rights suspended. Industries ordered about drafts. Only Congress can do that. President can still fight in defense of our nation without that. You heard Carolyn Levitt wouldn't said Trump won't rule out a draft.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, but I think it was draft.

[Brandon Herrera]

It was kind of. It seemed like that was out of context because I watched the full clock flip.

[Tim Pool]

Well, it's. It's. It's fair to say that asking give us your military strategy publicly right now. Yeah, you. You can't. There's not going to be a draft, though.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, but you never rule it out. As the commander, you always have to keep the option open.

[Tim Pool]

Well, yeah. We get invaded, they're going to give you a gun. Ian. Could you imagine we'd be desperate.

[Ian Crossland]

I've been thinking about shooting lately, actually.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, I mean, hit me up if you need. I know a guy.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, yeah, that could be cool. I kind of want to shoot that AK50. Is that. Do you let people put hands on

[Brandon Herrera]

it and friends, how many rounds have you put this. I mean, at this point, it's like it's got to be at least over 500, 600 rounds.

[Tim Pool]

All right.

[Brandon Herrera]

Which for a 50 cal, that's quite a bit.

[Tim Pool]

Does it hold up?

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, pretty good. Like, we're always finding more stuff to kind of screw with. Like, more things we're not like super happy about. Like little. Little nitpicks. We're like, okay, well that should be about 10 tighter. You know, different stuff.

[Tim Pool]

What would happen if you hit a deer with it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Honestly, it's less impressive than you think. A lot of people think that if you hit something with a.50 cal, oh, my God, it explodes. If you nick somebody, it'll blow their arm off. It's not true. Basically, what's going to happen is it's going to go straight through. There's going to be a crazy exit wind, and then 70, 80 of the force of that bullet's going to go into the tree behind it.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, well, that's not so fun. Yeah, I wanted to hear the deer will explode into a fine mistake. It's.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's the less impressive answer, but it's. Unfortunately.

[Tim Pool]

Is there any kind of ammo that could cause some catastrophic explosion to a deer? Because they're big.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, can you get a.50 cal? That's a soft point or, like, a hollow point?

[Brandon Herrera]

You know, I'll have to look. You know, maybe that's. Maybe that's the new business you and I open together. Maybe. Maybe we just start making a soft point or a ballistic tip. 50 cal hunting ammunition, you know? Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

All right. All right. Let's grab a couple more here. I don't know what this means, so I don't know if I can read it, but I'll read it anyway. Political overtone says, dirty Plops and pepperbacks for Brandon Barbera.

[Brandon Herrera]

Unfortunately, I understand that language. It's our streaming platform, Pepperbox. We invented a new slur for the people that are there on the platform. It's dirty Plops and pepperbacks.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, that sounds highly offensive.

[Brandon Herrera]

It does. We legitimately had a strategy meeting for what is the most offensive sounding thing we can call our subscribers. Yeah, and they just ran with it.

[Ian Crossland]

What is it?

[Phil Labonte]

Plops and dirty Plops and Pepper bags.

[Ian Crossland]

Pepper bags.

[Tim Pool]

Here's one. Drive. Drive by, is it? Or drive B says, I want to congratulate Brandon on his fourth Victoria Cross and his second Legion of Merit.

[Brandon Herrera]

I. I got nothing.

[Tim Pool]

I guess commenting like Crowder this morning said he wasn't sure if you were

[Phil Labonte]

a veteran or not.

[Brandon Herrera]

It.

[Tim Pool]

It is.

[Brandon Herrera]

It is clear that the joke has gone too far. The forced valor of the unsubscribed podcast has permeated actual politics.

[Ian Crossland]

Oh, I wonder if while you're here in Congress, there's gonna be a story about fake valor.

[Brandon Herrera]

They already tried during the primary. They already legitimately tried. It's like, oh, yeah, so you stole one of the photos that we put up of a private, private comedy show and try to pretend I was stealing valor while we Raised over a million dollars for veteran charities and such. It's like, okay, well, you know, the, the thing about politics is nobody really cares about telling the truth. Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah.

[Tim Pool]

Indeed.

[Phil Labonte]

No good deed goes unpunished.

[Ian Crossland]

Results.

[Tim Pool]

Let's see what we got here. So we have a, we had a goal of 50 super chats. If 50 super chats were met, Tim will have a happy birthday. Unfortunately, only 37 super chats, which means I'll have a sad birthday. I'm just kidding, guys. I just put up there as a, as a gag.

[Ian Crossland]

How are you feeling now?

[Tim Pool]

Literally? I feel the exact same as I felt yesterday.

[Ian Crossland]

Didn't make you uncomfortable that it was, didn't hit the mark or anything? Oh, no, I feel pretty good too.

[Tim Pool]

No, I, I, I, I had a really great birthday present. I went all in with Ace Queen against Ace King. Hit a queen on the flop and it held and I defeated him.

[Phil Labonte]

Oh.

[Tim Pool]

And it feels really good when that happens.

[Brandon Herrera]

There you go.

[Phil Labonte]

Nice.

[Tim Pool]

That's right.

[Ian Crossland]

Was there a big pot involved?

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, we were both all in.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, very nice.

[Tim Pool]

Yep. And I knew I was cooked. And I think Ace King versus Ace Queen. I had like 20, 20, 24 or something. But that queen hit and it held. And that was the universe saying happy birthday.

[Phil Labonte]

Happy birthday.

[Brandon Herrera]

Man.

[Tim Pool]

You, you bad beat somebody. All right, what do we have here? Martin Edgar says a teenager in Michigan made a nuclear reactor in his shed from old smoke detectors. 50, 50. For Tim and Brandon's campaign. It is indeed a famous story. It is indeed a famous story. Do not do it. Do not do it. You will get sick and you will die.

[Ian Crossland]

Do not radiate yourself.

[Tim Pool]

Michael. Michael. So Holt says happy birthday, Tim. Today is also my oldest daughter's 19th birthday. I'm a 40 year old Marine vet and love your show. I've been listening to you since before you launched irl. Here, here, sir. Thank you so much and happy birthday to your daughter. It's a good birthday. It is indeed the peak of Pisces. So for those, that's awesome. For those that track that. And my signs are Pisces, Pisces, Leo sun and moon, Pisces Rising, Leo Wild.

[Ian Crossland]

You got that lion energy.

[Tim Pool]

Lion energy.

[Ian Crossland]

That water, that flow.

[Tim Pool]

That's right.

[Phil Labonte]

Be like the flow.

[Safeway/Albertsons Ad Voice]

Yep.

[Tim Pool]

And Leo's fire.

[Brandon Herrera]

Right. Ah.

[Tim Pool]

Anyway, we are going to go the uncensored portion of the show over at rumble.com timcast IRL and take calls from you all our beautiful Discord members. So make sure you go there to hang out. You can follow me on x and Instagram @timcast. Brandon, do you want to shut anything up?

[Brandon Herrera]

I would like to shout out the voters of Texas 23 who put me in this position. I'm forever grateful to be your voice in Congress. And if you'd like to go check out the campaign and things we stand for, it's Brandon Herrera for Congress.com. i'd also like to shout you out. Have a very happy birthday and I appreciate you bringing me back, brother.

[Tim Pool]

Oh, yeah, absolutely, man. Really excited for it. We need more. We need more real people in Congress. We gotta get all the bad incumbents out and get all the good people in.

[Ian Crossland]

It really is promising that you're going in. I know you got the election coming up near the end of the year.

[Tim Pool]

What?

[Ian Crossland]

When is it exactly?

[Brandon Herrera]

It's the first Tuesday in November, but honestly, we were prepped to go to the runoff. I know a lot of the stuff happened that caused Tony to drop out, but at the end of the day, we still beat him in the original primary. So it's been a crazy turn of events. I'll say it that way. Vote.

[Ian Crossland]

There is no sure thing. You vote in November, you vote Republican in Texas if you want to vote.

[Tim Pool]

I don't know.

[Ian Crossland]

You're going as a Republican, I imagine. I never really even asked. Or independent or. What does it even matter these days?

[Phil Labonte]

I don't know.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, yes, we. We were on the Republican ticket trying to get out, like just a really bad Republican incumbent. A total, like, I know the term's overused, but a rhino. And we succeeded in that goal and we again, it was not by a big margin. So your vote really does matter.

[Ian Crossland]

It's really good to see you, man. Thanks for coming. I'm at Ian Crossland. Find me on the Internet at Ian Crossland. Also, go to Graphene Movie and check out the. This trailer for this graphene documentary that we're building. It's badass nanotech. Like, if you want to get some white pill energy, look into the new scientific breakthroughs that are going to be supporting a lot of this political momentum and change that we're seeing all around the planet. It's Graphene Movie. See that? We also got Carter Banks. I'm not sure he's got a camera on him today. I do. I got Andrew back here and we are hanging out, pressing the buttons and. Yeah, it's a pleasure being here.

[Brandon Herrera]

Thank you, Brandon, for coming on the show.

[Tim Pool]

I should probably set this up so

[Brandon Herrera]

you can see me better, but.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Anything you want to shout out, Andrew? No.

[Tim Pool]

Well, okay, let's go to Phil.

[Phil Labonte]

I am Phil. That remains on Twix. The band is all that remains. You can check us [e-mail] we're going on tour this spring with Dead Eyes and Born of Osiris. We're starting in April 29th in Albany. We're going through all of May. You can get tickets at all that remainsonline.com you can check out the band at Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Spotify and Deezer. Don't forget the left lane is for crime.

[Brandon Herrera]

You coming to Texas?

[Phil Labonte]

No, not on this one.

[Brandon Herrera]

Trader.

[Tim Pool]

Yeah, we'll see you [e-mail] Timcast IRL for the uncensored portion of the show. Thanks for hanging out.

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