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Truth in the Barrel
Ice Dweebs In The Airport, No Plan In Iran, and Their Next Election Sham | Unfiltered w Denver Riggleman
00:53:29
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back, everyone, to another unfiltered edition of Truth in the Barrel. The Trump administration all around the world from Iran to lines of your at your local airports. Soon our elections. Let's dive straight in. And look who is back. Our good friend Denver Riggleman. How are you, my friend?
- [00:28]
B
Great. I'm so excited to be with you because, you know, it's just a lovely partnership we have. I love it so much.
- [00:35]
A
Well, not much has happened since the last time you've been on the show. So, I mean, come on, I don't know what we're going to talk about.
- [00:43]
B
It's insane. You know, and my business stuff, I've been all around the world lately. It's been sort of nuts, as you know. And getting back on the show with you after everything that's happened in the last month, I thought might be one of the most exciting truth in the Barrel unfiltered ever. So
- [01:00]
A
we have a lot to go over. You know, you've been traveling. Have you been to the airport recently? I mean, have you gotten stuck in one of these TSA lines?
- [01:09]
B
I didn't get stuck in TSA lines. The thing is, I have been through the airport since this happened. But what I'm doing, Amy, it's pretty fortunate because we have a regional airport here at Charlottesville where literally I can walk in, it's 15 minutes. There's, you know, it's the flights are only three or four, but I can get to D.C. or I can get to Chicago or I can get to Charlotte or I can get to, you know, I think there's a fourth major hub that I can get to. So it's, you know, 15, 20 minutes still because it's such a small regional airport. But I've been flying to other countries. So I'm flying from a regional airport connecting without having to go through the lines like at IAD or Chicago. I can do that. And then I head into Canada or I'm heading overseas into Europe. Right. And then I'm heading further into Europe. So rduae right. So fortunately, I've been coming out of international airports to us and coming out of a regional hub rather than a major airport into actually a connector rather than having to go through the big lines at the major airports.
- [02:05]
A
The TSA lines, from what I can see, are at the major airports, not at the sort of regional ones. And what's happening right now, you know, we're seeing TSA agents not coming to work. They haven't had a paycheck. They're going to miss their full first. Well, second full paycheck tomorrow. And the absences. About 40% of TSA agents are just not coming to work. We have 450 TSA officers quit since this DHS shutdown. And you know what I saw in the last week? I saw the leader of the Senate, the Republican leader, Thune, and Democrats come together for a deal that again was thrown away by President Trump, who is now, in my belief, responsible for this shutdown because he wants, you know, the Democrats to pass the SAVE act first, which has nothing to do with security. I mean, this is where we're at.
- [03:09]
B
Yeah. I mean, you know, I looked at the awful accident of the Canadian aircraft impacting the fire truck on the tarmac. Was it LaGuardia? Yeah. And I've said this so often, Amy, and I, and I want people to, to hear is that when you have incompetence and sycophancy, sort of join and you have this baseline belief system that's not rooted in reality and you're making decisions like Sean Duffy or like the Republican Congress or Donald Trump or John Thune. Right. Or, you know, what happens is you have things happen like that in the tarmac because there's a cascading effect of stupidity. I always say stupidity is terminal. And what you're saying is all of it happening at once. The economy, travel, when you're looking what the tariffs have done, but you're looking at what Iran is doing, you're looking at all this happening simultaneously and a government shutdown, Amy, with everything else that's happening. And you're looking at the indicators. They're looking at inflation could be over 5% when you got diesel at what, 540 a gallon now? Maybe it's going to be the highest ever at some point, you know, as it, as it continues to creep up. And then what you said about TSA and ice, you have ICE acting as scabs.
- [04:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
Coming in and getting paid and taking over work from individuals where the TSA union is saying, what the hell is going on here? We have ICE being paid from dh, DHS coffers. Guess where TSA comes from.
- [04:40]
A
Yeah.
- [04:42]
B
What? You know, and so I think it's mind boggling. And here's the last thing, and I know you'll probably love this, do we have ICE in the airports now in perpetuity or as long as Trump is president, do we have ICE walking around the airports looking for people to abscond with? And I think that's my biggest issue is we have so many stupid Ignorant sort of ideologue based decisions not rooted in reality and only based on the whims of a malignant narcissist, that you're seeing the downstream effect of people dying. You're seeing the downstream effect of really the economy starting to crash. You're seeing everything starting to happen simultaneously because of just the incredible amount of awful decision making that's happening in the federal government.
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A
Yeah, I think of a couple things. One, I think this is just the height of incompetence at the highest levels of government and inefficiency. Okay. Because you spelled it out, we now have ICE in airports doing the job of TSA agents who are trained to do that job who are not getting paid. So we're screwing over them and we're still going to have to pay them. One of the most interesting pictures that I saw in the last week, you can find it online, was this picture that somebody took in an airport of an ICE agent inside the airport on the second level checking his phone because he's so bored he's just scrolling on his iPhone and you can see outside the massive lines trying to get in. I mean it's just the height of stupidity right now.
- [06:27]
B
Well, you know, it's, it's incredible to me that you maybe have Trump's personal police force being deployed to places like airports because that's all that ICE is now. It's just a personal police force based on the whims of Donald Trump. That's it. And now that you have Mark Wayne Mullen in charge of dhs, I'm sure it's going to get much more intelligent in its application. I mean that's literally like putting a kindergartener in charge of NASA. And I think that's the, that's the issue that we have with the Mark Wayne Mullins with what we have with Christy Noem. Everybody's going to do Donald Trump's, you know, bidding. But again, My God, Amy, ICE has just simply become this $70 billion. I don't think I'm close to the number. Almost this $70 billion domestic police force that can do whatever they want with impunity as you saw with the killings of Renee and Alex Preddy. And I think we still haven't gotten any solution to that. The two people died for no reason, killed by ice. They just left because eh, you know, and there's been nothing to h. There was no reason for them to go into Minnesota either. So it's just like there's no reason for ICE to be in the airports is the exact Corollary of a personal police force being utilized for violence at the whim of, of an insane president that lacks any morals, but really is. You know, I don't like to use the word. It's, it's to the point where you don't want to use the word evil, but you're getting to the point that stupidity, incompetence and personal gain is starting to have a downstream effect where very bad things are happening to people.
- [08:04]
A
Yeah. And what happened in Minnesota, there was no investigation, there was no accountability, you know, no reform after that. You know, let me ask you this. Last night I was thinking about the fact that in 14 months I'm having a hard time finding anything that the Trump administration has done to make, you know, any facet of life better for people in this country. I mean, is there anything that you can point to where, I mean, you know, they cut food stamps, they, they crushed health insurance. The price of groceries is up, the price of gas is now up. Everything, it seems, is getting worse. Maybe it's getting better for billionaires, I don't know.
- [08:56]
B
No, I, I was, beat me to it. I mean, it's been great for Anduril and Palantir, unusual machines. It's been great, you know, for any of the big companies like SpaceX. Right. Was it, what is Bezos's blue origins or whatever, his space program? I don't know if people have looked at the contracts being awarded to the billionaire class really without any competitive action, which means smaller companies are getting crushed unless they swear loyalty to the companies that are primes. Or Palantir being awarded the entire DoD contract for AI and data integration. There was no competitive bids. We're living literally in a Chinese based state controlled economy that has this a little smattering, some fascism in there, some xenophobia and some tech bro utopia bullshit that all of us have to deal with. And I'm getting angry and it's hard not to be infuriated when we're having to live by some semblance of a rule of law and nobody else does. So I think it is getting better for anybody who swears loyalty to Trump. I think they're living their best lives. It's just wonderful for them because short term gain, they're making so much money right now, I don't see how we don't already just go ahead and put it on the board that the MAGA business class has won. There's no way to reverse it. They own the military industrial complex now. There's a closed loop of money where investors are investing into companies that are actually getting the contracts and then those companies are investing into other companies that they're already on the board on that are getting the contracts. So what you're looking at is really the most corrupt, self licking ice cream cone in the history of the world. And I think we're, we're staring it in the face right now.
- [10:56]
A
Drain the swamp, man. That's what, that's what they kept saying. And it states he's made it worse, like way worse.
- [11:05]
B
He's built an Amazon ecosystem of corruption. It's, it's well beyond a swamp, right? It's, it's monkeys raking in money. That's what it is now. Screeching through the trees and just giving each other, you know, crap and money. That's what they're doing. And I don't know how we, I, I, it's so funny. I, you know, Amy, you know me, I try not to be a pessimist, but I usually am. But I'm a happy pessimist though. I want people to know I'm a smiling, chuckling, happy pessimist. But yeah, it's going to be very difficult to back out of this. I just don't know how you put the toothpaste back in the tube with how much they own and control now.
- [11:43]
A
Well, speaking of that metaphor, putting the toothpaste back in the tube. We are now, and I'm laughing, but I'm not laughing, we are now in day 27 of this excursion or incursion or some people actually call it a war. The United States Marine Corps calls it a war where we are fighting Iran. The human cost of this is already over 3,000 people. Thousand. Over a thousand civilians have died. A couple hundred children have died here. Eight U.S. service members, maybe more, have perished in this. And it is a regional war, not just Iran. It involves Israel, United States, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq. All. I've just read this morning, New York Times article said that all of our bases in the Middle east have been so severely damaged that our American troops aren't at, they're not living in the bases anymore because, you know, they're, they're damaged so bad. We have replaced the Ayatollah Khomeini with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Okay?
- [13:02]
B
And we don't have, again, I'm not
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A
laughing because again, to go back to the toothpaste thing. It's out, man. What are we going to do here? The President has said that the war is winding down. And he said that he says One day, the next day we're moving in ground troops, we're bringing in marines, we're bringing in special forces. I mean you and I haven't talked since this whole thing began. What's your assessment of where we're at here?
- [13:34]
B
Well, I would say Tel Aviv would beg to differ, that the war is winding down. You saw what happened the last couple nights. Their air defense system broke down and you know, missiles and Orsha heads got through and you know, killed some folks, injured a lot of folks, hundreds, I guess it was. And you know, and I look at this and I'm wondering, do they even understand, first of all they're going to lie. I mean the first thing that this administration does is lie. You can't believe any of the data, you can't believe any of their facts, what they put out there, you know, and, and by the way, I think. Was it 13 dead, right? Probably almost 200 injured. Yep. Almost 200 injured. You're looking at that. That's a pretty big count. And now they're talking, you know, which as you know, you know this incredible. If we put boots on the ground in Carg island or we do anything like that, absolute insanity. I don't think people realize there's 20,000 people on CARG Island. It isn't some isolated outpost. And even us getting there, the asymmetric warfare issues we're going to have to even land people on that island. Right. Is going to be absolutely mind boggling because we don't even understand what they have. You know, we have civilians actually launching, well, civilian households launching drones out of homes now. And so when I'm looking at the shahed threat, when you're looking at the drone threat, we weren't ready for this asymmetric problem that we had. As you know, the first service members that died was from a shahed strike. Think about that. Amy. We, we didn't even realize, we haven't been with Ukrainians to know how to actually combat this asymmetric threat. So all this is happening simultaneously and Iran just has to wait us out. We still haven't figured out how to stop the fast boats mining the straits of Hormuz. And I don't think people realize the straits were Moving is what, 470 miles? It's not a small place, right? It's not small. And I'm just, my mind's exploding that we went into Iran and yes, okay, I'll say this. We're supposed to go after bad people, evil people, people have state sponsored terrorism. Fantastic. But you don't want to go after a bad enemy under false pretenses or for bad reasons or for ideological reasons without a specific way to actually egress or extract yourself from, from those wartime activities. None of that happened. None of the effective mission planning or strategic look or geopolitical look happened. Therefore, you have chaos in a war zone with no exit strategy and us still not able to fight asymmetric threats on any type of efficient timeline or with any type of efficient processes. Bizarre. It is the worst decision. Listen, Iran's awful. You know, I hate them. I hate the Iranian government, the irgc, I hate them. The Shia militia groups that they fund in Iraq, I hate them. I was so happy to see Soleimani died. I tracked that guy in 2006, 2007, when I was in the counter IED cell. Yeah, great. Blow him to pieces. However, there's a difference between personal military vendetta, which Denver Riggleman has, and actually being an adult in the room, and making a geopolitical decision that saves civilians. And we don't do stupid things that we try to use diplomacy for first before for force. And this isn't just a whim or the reason that Trump's doing this is for personal gratification or for financial gain, which the bottom line reason that all this happened.
- [16:44]
A
I don't think he knows why he's doing it, and I don't think the people that are following him in Congress know why. You know, what strikes me is we're doing this diplomacy by tweet, this foreign policy by tweet. It is all over the map. We have the President who threatened to destroy Iran's energy infrastructure, which would, you know, obviously make Iran the. Destroy the energy infrastructure of all the Gulf states, which would throw the world into more chaos. And then the next day he says that, well, we've had good and productive talks with Iran and Iran says we haven't talked at all. The President puts out a 15 point plan and Iran just basically laughs at it. The President comes back, our president comes back and says, hey, guess what, everyone? They gave us something really good in these talks. Really good. And the press asked the president, well, what is it? And he's like, well, I can't tell you, but it has to do with oil and gas. And I just don't think the President knows what the hell he's talking about. Maybe he meant that Iran is letting their own ships go through the strait to, you know, maybe that's what he meant. I just. We're now allowing Iran to go through the strait and, and sell their oil where we're, you know, funding the war against ourselves. Now we've lifted sanctions on Russia. I mean this is just the dumbest thing ever.
- [18:27]
B
You know the best thing, I don't know if you want somebody suffering from sundowning to be making decisions at the executive branch. I mean that's the, that's the first thing. The second thing, I don't even know if I have an apt analogy. It's like you don't want Bozo the Clown doing your stage makeup. You don't want Donald Trump planning a war.
- [18:47]
A
But Denver, you see these, right? When you see these guys saying don't worry, Trump knows what he's doing. He's, he's this, he's the ultimate strategist, you know, and you're just like what planet are you on, man?
- [19:01]
B
Well, they have to say that because they're sycophants, right? You know they, they're, they're the worst type of human beings. You know, they sort of this rudderless, amoral, make money any way I can. Trump is there really. Trump is their guidepost to wealth because of mining the ignorant and self dealing within the government. And you know, when you look at all of the investments that the Trump has even after the election into DoD contracts, I've never seen anything. It's hard for me to explain to the American people how much theft and corruption is happening behind the door every day and they're taking from taxpayers. If you think about DoD companies, how do they make their money? Amy, you know that through government contracts, that government contract was funded through taxpayers. And if they're making profits and there's investors in these companies, those investors make a lot of money from taxpayer funded contracts while the investors just happen be the Trump family on between 20 and 30 companies downstream in certain segmented gaps that already have these contract vehicles in place. So again, you know, I'm to a point that everybody talks about. You know, I see the Chirons or I see the thumbnails from other, other shows and it's like Donald Trump shits his pants breaking news and, and, and they don't care about that. They're laughing about it because what they're doing is they're collecting so much money they're making, they're making obscene amounts of wealth. It doesn't matter if MAGA loses, they already own it. I, I, I, they already own it and the only way to extract that is through massive criminal proceedings. And I don't see that happening. I mean the Democrats should have done that after January 6th, and they did. Independent should have rose up in and horror center.
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A
Right.
- [20:52]
B
People who call themselves never Trumpers and you know why, you know, should have risen up in horror, but instead you have this half stepping, mealy mouthed bullshit that's happening from so many people while they're just sort of using our coffers and this massive debt and deficits we have every year, they're using that to enrich themselves. And I'm just, you know, it gets almost exhausted talking about it sometimes.
- [21:16]
A
Yeah, I know. And we're, we're spending a billion dollars a day on this war. Now the cost of gas is up, the cost of plastics, everything. Now, now I'm told the, I read yesterday the US Postal Service is going to impose a fuel surcharge of 8% on packages coming, you know, fertilizer, all this stuff. We're ultimately going to see higher prices because of this. But you know, one of the things I've been thinking about, and I get the question all the time about the military part of this, I want to ask you, is there a military sol. Solution to this problem that we created in the Strait of Hormuz? You know, I, I have my thoughts, but I, I want to ask you, I mean, is there even a solution here?
- [22:03]
B
What are we willing to commit? I mean, yeah, I mean, there's a solution and there's a, there's a few. Right. When you talk about courses of action, if I was briefing you, Amy, and you know, I'm an intelligence officer and, and say, Amy, you know, you're in the Senate and we're in subcommittee, and you're like, General Riggleman, what are the military options?
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A
General? Yeah, go ahead.
- [22:30]
B
I wouldn't laugh if I said, Senator, that's very mean. But you did mean. Amy. I'm very, My heart, my heart's hurt. No, I would say, you know, Senator McGrath, that's a great question. The first thing is for us to remove ourselves. The first course of action is that we look at a diplomatic solution. We remove ourselves from the Strait of Hormuz so we don't have these type of threats. That's the first course of action. The second course of action is for continue this limited function right in perpetuity for as long as we can, right to a trit Iranian military and to see if over the next few months we can have some kind of semblance of order in the straits of Hormuz. You're like, yep, okay. The third thing is we go all in. And if we do Go all in. That means that we're going to we could alienate multiple allies, almost all of NATO if we do something like this. The Americans control the Straits of Hormuz, the United States, which would cause untold monies to come from United States taxpayer coffers, you know, for a military style occupation of the Strait of Hormuze, including our navy, you know, land troops. Right. If you look at uae, right, you look at Ras Al Khaimah, you look at Qatar, you know, you look at Oman, you look at that whole area right on the, I say the southern parts of the straits, you look at that whole area. We'd have to control land mass area there too. Right. So now we have to do that. Now if you look at the other side from, you know, Iran all the way from Bandar Abbas, if you're looking at this whole area, I don't think people, real people realize how big Iran is, do they, Amy?
- [24:04]
A
No, because it's the size of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
- [24:10]
B
Find people have no I don't know if they can fathom what 92 million people in that land mass looks like that we would try to actually, you know, sort of control. I just don't know if that's possible. But again, the solution be would be complete US Hegemony in that entire area. I don't know if that's possible as a military solution. So those are the three courses of actions I would give you, Senator, if you asked me in committee.
- [24:33]
A
Well, I see that the first one you talked about would be just President Trump declaring victory and basically declaring victory, but there's no victory. Iran comes away with, you know, continuing to control the Strait of Hormuz and we just leave. That's conceivable. I don't think the President will do that. He may. But the second one, the attrition one I'd like to just comment on,
- [25:08]
B
that
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A
may be where we're headed. I don't think it's going to work because I feel like, as you just mentioned, Iran is so big and yes, I know that the Pentagon touts, oh, we have destroyed 10,000 targets and all of this bombing can only do so much from the air. And so I don't see that as that Iran is going to turn around and give us what we want. The third one, which is the all in strategy, I think this is conceivable, but it is extremely difficult. Practically, you're either looking at a massive invasion of the coastline or there's this other option that people keep asking me because of the Navy Marine Corps background, which is, hey, let's just do the C escort, you know, let's escort the ships in and out. And I know you're laughing, but like, I get this question. That would be an enormous undertaking to escort tankers in and out. First of all, tankers are, are very slow bombs waiting to go off, okay. But also to escort them, you have to slow down and think of what, what it would be required for that massive amount. We and, and I go back again to, wow, we started a conflict in which we're going to have to forever, I guess, escort ships in the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, it's the dumbest thing ever.
- [27:05]
B
Hey, listen, Iran could get to a point, the fourth course of action. Iran could get to a point where their infrastructure damage is so heavy that they come to the table. That's where they want to be, right? It's course of action four is really ready, fire, aim, right. They didn't really have an objective, so we went in, we hit targets. Some wrong, like the school, very wrong, brutally wrong. Because we probably don't have updated imagery, as you know, it's very difficult, right, if you're going into an area where you haven't updated your dimpies, desire reports, your BE numbers, your basic like, right. You haven't updated your BEs and your dimpies. And you might not have the greatest mission planners. You've lost a lot of talent at the upper echelons of the military. But there could be this thing where they're like, you know, this has been a lot of infrastructure. We lasted a few months. It looks like we sort of won. We'll go to the table. That is the best case scenario for the Trump administration, and that is what they're hoping for. I don't know if they got a plan for it, but they're like, please, can we just keep bombing the out of them until, please. That's really, I think what's going on. I, I, I really do. But I would hope that they have and I don't, I don't think hope is not a viable course of action. But I do hope that they have some advisors that aren't Trump hungry that are sitting there going, hey, we're gonna probably have to have a strategic plan here in the next 24 hours on really what exit looks like or what we are doing. And I think, yeah, I think they're gonna have to do that. But again, I think it's a hope and spray rather than a hope and pray. And I think that's what's happening right now.
- [28:46]
A
You know, I'm worried that there is a very real possibility that at the end of this conflict, Iran will be in better shape, that they will control the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf in ways that they didn't before. And I think that would be an enormous loss for our country and the world. And you know, when people talk about Pete Hegseth and all of these chess beaters about war and we got to win this thing, if you do a war where thousands of people die, we spend billions of dollars and all you do is get back to where you started from. That's not winning.
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B
Okay.
- [29:41]
A
I think that is Denver. I think that is the best we can hope for right now. And the worst is that we end up worse than where we started. And that would be Iran having sort of a de facto control over this geography here.
- [30:01]
B
Well, there's three things I'd like to point out and I, I hope you like these. Number one, we have lost trust amongst our fellow nations. We are maybe the least reliable ally that NATO could have right now. I don't know how we build those institutional relationships. Again, that's the first thing on our war in Iran. How do we do that? The second thing, the two countries that have the biggest advantage in this are Russia and China. China, right. And I've been trying to tell people this because I, it was so funny. I had somebody tell me, well, Iran, does the shahed dread the shahed drones? That means Russia is being, you know, they don't have as many shaheads, you dumb dumbs. Russia has their, their own shahed production line with their own mods. There's 21 different types of shaheds, ladies and gentlemen. Stop. Iran is not the major supplier of drone parts and components to Russia. By the way. Russia uses mostly Chinese and French wiring harnesses. That's what they use, guys. So let's stop with your bullshit because you don't know what you're talking about. And I do know because I've been there and I've done it and I'm going back. The third thing, and this is what's really frightening, is that the reason Russia and China and then there's is actually Three Alpha. They're looking at our tactics and what we're doing. Right. Drone warfare is the future. So that does go into number three, is that we're so far behind in drone warfare. And I'm gonna. People might not know this. Do you know that our drone, called the Lucas is a copy of the shahed we are behind the Iranians in drone production and drone technologies. We were. And that's why we had to copy the Lucas. The Lucas, look up the Lucas and you're like, oh my God, we copied the Shahed. Now you have unusual machines and Androl and Palantir and PDW and all these drone companies that are out there. So many, right? So many. The thing is, we're trying to catch up with the efficient way of building counter UAS counter drone technologies like Ukraine and offensive drone technologies like the Baba Yaga drone and their ability to outfit FPVs for 2 to $4,000 and destroy a $50,000 ahead. Right. Ukraine's perfected this. US the third now three alpha US. Ignoring Ukraine or being pro Putin in the Trump administration has put us so far behind in drone warfare that the Ukrainians, in The last exercise, 10 people, I think, took out hundreds of Americans in a day. And we didn't touch them, just with drone warfare. That's how good they were. So all of this is happening. We are exposing our weaknesses, our bad decision making with Ukraine, and it includes back to the Biden administration. We should have had people sitting sidesaddle in the future of warfare, drones. That's all there is to it. All of this stupid decision making, all of this inordinate amount of incompetence, all of this sycophancy. Right. All of this self dealing is why we had Americans die, why we're where we're at as a country. Because stupidity's downstream effects are always terminal. And I keep trying to foot stomp this and pound the table, but I still think people aren't understanding how all this actually goes into a fur ball of awfulness that's hard for us to get out of.
- [33:26]
A
And we've talked a lot about the military aspect of this and drone warfare and how we are behind and we're exposing ourselves as being behind. There are real costs of war, and we talked about the human costs. NATO fracturing China and Russia winning in this. But Denver, there's also the real moral cost of what we have done here. There has been no legal foundation for this war at all. We have lost tremendous credibility. We have allowed a president to take us to war without the consent of Congress, without a justification to the American people in ways I have never seen in my lifetime. No declaration of war, no debate, no reasoning, bunch of lies. We killed kids on the first day. We denied it. We put out memes, you know, from the White House official, from the DoD accounts. We have a Secretary of Defense who is acting like a 10 year old. We have a president who says he bombs because it's fun. We have a secretary of War who says we negotiate with bombs. There is no honor in any of this. And I happen to think that honor matters. It should matter to America. We are not perfect. But this is insane. And Congress does nothing. Does nothing. And at the end of this, we're going to have to look ourselves in the eye and say, was it worth it? We dropped bombs on people. Was it worth it? Because again, I go back to this whole idea of if you do all of this and all you do is get back to where you started, that's losing. And we will have lost so much blood. Treasure the moral aspect of this, all of that stuff.
- [35:35]
B
This stated wonderfully, stated wonderfully. But Amy, we're going to have a 1.5 trillion dollar defense budget so that the vendors are doing great.
- [35:45]
A
Yeah, that's true.
- [35:47]
B
So, you know, from what I see, it's almost like we have a bunch of little Damiens from Omen. The Omen running, running our, our country. You know, just sort of evil, diabolical children that just want to bomb and hurt. And you're right. Without any honor, with no moral compass and really just with an ignorance that's staggering because they don't understand that monies and material are finite, but that the human, the cost of human life. When you lose somebody that's infinite, they're gone forever. And I can't imagine. Who knows, Amy. I mean, if this was happening under any other president, there'd be freaking people marching in the streets on a level we've never seen before. But instead we have this, almost like this, this huddled coyness. He loses everything he does except these elections from lying. Like everything that he's tried to do has been. It's been just awful. It's. Nothing's worked. And, and I still see people like sort of in this little fetal position, like, I don't know if we should go 100 all out, you know, on this guy. And you know, and I, and I'm like, oh my God, I am 100 all out against somebody who is this evil and immoral and awful with the people around him, who. He surrounded him. Dare us elect an adjudicated sexual abuser. How dare us elect a felon, a fraudster. You know, somebody who's so close to Epstein, who partied with this guy who we knew did awful things and here we are.
- [37:14]
A
And I still hear, I heard it a year ago when, when he started the tariffs was. Well, we we should. He knows what he's doing. And I kind of feel like a lot of people still feel that way. Hopefully some folks are waking up, you know.
- [37:30]
B
God, I don't know. I, I have seen a little bit of people waking up. Right. You do see some riffs and maga. I still think there's an infection there. I've said it before. I still think there's an infection because maga's nationalist and he's starting wars all over the place. They don't like that stuff. Yeah, Mag is the one who's QAnon. They don't like sexual predators. And guess what else? Maga, they rely on Medicaid and the ACA. So all those three things, those three pillars are just, they're just sort of crashing and, and listen, well, it's. What's happened.
- [38:03]
A
Let me ask you about this Denver, this attack that Republicans and the President are doing on voting. Okay, so they're trying to pass the SAVE Act. We've talked about that in the past, but specifically the attacks on mail in voting. The Supreme Court now is going to rather poise to strike down this late arriving mail in ballots just months before the midterms. And the President wants this. He has said, even though he votes himself with a mail in ballot, he says that you cheat that way. And I often look at this and I'm like, how does this really help Republicans? I mean, I, I am against it because, you know, mail in balloting, it's, it's important for so many people, like, like my mom, for example, who cannot, literally, cannot stand in line to, you know, on, on election day. She just can't do it. So seniors, that, that may not be able to get just people that travel for work, like my husband who is a, who is a pilot, you know, he may be gone on election day. He may not know that he's going to be gone. Maybe the schedule, the flight schedule changes, you know, and, and military families, what, they can't vote now. But, you know, I just, but I'm like, why, why do the Republicans think that this is gonna help them?
- [39:40]
B
Oh, oh, may I? Oh, I hate to do this, but there was this book called the Breach that actually outlined the conspiracy theories around mail in ballots and why they think it's going to help them. And here's why. Because they can't win an election straight up. They don't think, at this point. They didn't think that way in 2016 or 2020 either, which when they lost to Biden, they saw that they'd have to continue this. These conspiracy theories about the stolen election, which really was still sort of helpful in the 2024 election. So what they're looking at right now is like they can't win by addition. They can only win by subtraction. Now that's what they're looking at with the polling. So they have to follow the same framework of stealing the election, which is demonize mail in ballots, which is what Rudy Giuliani tried to do with Sidney Powell, as you know, if you remember the four landscaping stuff, if you go back to there. But it's also how do we actually limit voting through executive orders? So you have a couple things happening, have them demonizing mail and voting you already. They already passed that bill on, on postal coding, which is going to make it harder anyway. That was their first. The SAVE act was part of the pillar too. How do you legislate it out? Right? How do you legislate the fact that we need to make it harder and harder to vote? Because again, they can only win by subtraction, not by addition. The third thing you're seeing is this new executive order push. Just like with 2020 in the January 6th election or the 2020 election in January 6th, what you're seeing is they're building another executive order on top of something called EO 13848, which is the foreign interference executive order. I think it's 14248 or something like that written by an old school chum of Donald Trump. And I don't know if that number is exact, but I bet I'm close. And he's writing it to even give broader power to the United States government to nationalize election. And now you're still seeing them increase, getting more aggressive with demanding that states turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. Places like Nebraska, which has already done it, all of this is to actually come up with a way to declare an emergency or to say that certain states aren't allowed to do mail in voting or everything has to be hand counted to try to slow roll it so they can control it. Also, that's why you have ICE being active. I do think you're going to have ICE in certain swing districts at the polling places making sure there's no illegal voting. Because that's the other thing, right? The SA using these conspiracy theories that there's all this illegal voting, all this is done exactly as it was from September of 2020 to January 20th of 2021. It's the exact same playbook. Conspiracy theories, radicalization, violence to Stop illegals from voting. Mail in ballots. Remember 2000 Mules by Dinesh D'. Souza. Right. And illegal ballots being put in because they use geofencing with telephones. Which turned up. I know telephones. It was. And he had to. And apologize for it. All these conspiracy theories are the same thing. And it's all this. They can only win by subtraction now disenfranchisement. And they have to manipulate the election rules through process. Because all these conspiracy theories saying, oh my God, there's satellites changing votes or Venezuela or Chinese servers or German server farms or Chinese bamboo ballots or the stupid stuff, the QFC quantum watermarking that Jenny Thomas, Clarence Thomas's wife, talked about in her text messages to Mark Meadows. All those conspiracy theories go to foreign interference. And what I'm trying to tell people is that this is what's coming, is about subtraction. And my guess is a couple months before the midterms, they're going to say, hey, we've been talking to Maduro and Venezuela did try to do these algorithms in 2020. Right. Something stupid like that. Right. So those are the type of things I wanted to tell people. I'm so glad you asked this question. I love this question. But I want to tell everybody it's a big framework of bullshit to try to disenfranchise as many voters as possible.
- [43:28]
A
Possible. Say, say you're successful in getting rid of mail in balloting, say you're successful in the SAVE act and making sure that everybody now has to show their passport in order to vote. Is there some data out there that says that the majority of mail in ballots go to Democrats? Is there some data out there that says that people that don't have passports are Democrats? Like, I don't understand where the, where they get, where do they think they're going to succeed here?
- [44:03]
B
The majority of mail in balance, only specific swing districts. So this is what I've been trying to tell people. It's not all 50 states. It's not all 435 congressional districts. It's not all 3,000 voting precincts or whatever it is now 6,000. Whatever the numbers are. It's. We only have to turn certain counties and certain states. States. And some of those are big areas like Atlanta, like Detroit. Right. So when you're looking at where they actually target, oh, Philadelphia. These are the places, guys, I'm telling you. It's. It's just specific mail in ballots in specific cities and specific states and specific jurisdictions because those are the swing boat areas. They are going to target the swing boat area. So if they can demonize mail in ballots, they think they can demonize enough people and stop enough mail in ballots for the large blue districts where they can take states, instead of losing by 80,000 votes, they win by 80,000 votes. That is the theory and that is what they're trying to execute.
- [45:05]
A
Okay, all right, well, that makes, that makes a little more sense because I've never, I've never figured out, like, hey, I would think a lot of people that don't have passports, you know, maybe don't vote Democratic.
- [45:18]
B
The passport thing is really interesting to me. It's not like mail in Ballon, which I meant mail in balloting, which I see the specific reason for doing it. It's actually valid why they would want to try to disenfranchise as many people as possible in those areas for mail in ballots. But passports. There's not a lot of people in Pendleton County, West Virginia that are carrying around passports. And I'm like, be careful what you wish for. Just like you're redistricting in Texas. Hispanics turned on Trump. Now they're freaking out. So be careful what you wish for on the passport side. I even started laughing. I'm like, okay, that's what you want to do. Red state's gonna have tough time, man. Tough time.
- [46:01]
A
That's what I thought. I was like, man, this, this might, this might backfire. If you really, if you really. That would drive it all the way home. I'm like, okay, all right, let's do some quick takes. The VA Denver lost roughly 1200 mental health positions last year, including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, reversing all of these years of gains. You know, we have said for, gosh, at least a decade, you know, and I know this because I've been on the board of Iraq, Afghanistan, Veterans of America. We have a problem in this country in taking care of our veterans. And we have had, we've known for over a decade we needed more mental health counselors and mental health physicians. The VA has just lost 40,000 employees last year, and the vast majority of those employees are in healthcare. The VA has lost 500 psychologists and psychiatrists. And I'm just like, we're going in the wrong direction here.
- [47:11]
B
It's incredible platform to run on for Democrats and those that are independently minded about how much this administration despises veterans, number one. Number two, when you're talking about the gun argument and Republicans want to scream that it's mental health, not guns, you want to say, well, why are you diminishing mental health so much. It must be the guns, huh? So it's a really difficult space to be in when you have such stupidity making decisions. But I think those two things are just going to be huge for people to run against this administration on.
- [47:42]
A
Yeah. I mean, for years we have been upping the numbers of mental health staff at the va and we have, we have done some tremendous things and now we're slashing it all. It's crazy.
- [47:57]
B
I remember the, what was it, the 21 veterans a day committing suicide? Remember the push up challenges, the money that people tried to put towards it. Now, you know, they don't care. You know, let those start another war.
- [48:09]
A
And we don't. And we don't care. All right, what, what's your take, Denver, on Trump's response to the death of Robert Mueller?
- [48:19]
B
Oh, man, if anybody on earth ever needed a bar ass kicking. Right. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. Just a, just a, you know, you almost run out of words. Yeah, but it, but it really is the, the little dude in the corner, right, that's screaming for everybody to fight, then goes hide in the bathroom. But the fact that he would, you know, simply do and write something so heinous about a true American patriot like that just shows what a husk of a, of a human being Donald Trump is. He's just a pathetic, old senile man who would also wish death on those who stole his parking space at a Walmart. That's how I think about it.
- [49:04]
A
It's embarrassing. It would been better if he had done nothing. Robert Mueller was Vietnam veteran, Marine, Purple Heart, Bronze Star recipient. He was a public servant his whole life. And this response by the president reminded me of his response when John McCain, who is another Vietnam veteran, prisoner of war, public servant, American hero, passed away. And I guess we've been desensitized to this president because he says stuff like this all the time. But when it's just the best this country has to offer. Robert Mueller was one of the best this country has ever had. And to do what from the highest office in the land. And it just, it's embarrassing.
- [49:58]
B
It's like Trump is allergic to anybody with a real soul. And I think he, he notices good people and he has to lash out because he's such just a hardened, blackened husk, just an awful human being who recognizes the best and he has to try to demean them in death. And it will all come back. But he won't know. He'll be dead. He doesn't care. He's a narcissist. He's malignant. He's a sociopath. My guess is he's. He doesn't care because he's winning. As far as he's concerned, as long as his family financially wins, long term doesn't matter. As long as he wins, long term doesn't matter. He doesn't think he's ever going to die. That's the issue. Everybody dies. Yeah, everybody dies. Right? And you know, that's the thing with him. He almost. It's almost as if he doesn't think that. He's not 80. I. I just don't get it. And, and just with no grace whatsoever. I just don't understand it.
- [50:50]
A
No grace. That's for sure. Well, listen, it's been a great show. I have one shout out and I want to throw it back to you for whatever shout outs you might have. But just this past week, we've now learned. So what happened was in 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid. The goal here was, let's figure out if we can smash this thing up so that if a killer rock think, you know, Armageddon in the movies, if a killer rock was ever coming at Earth, would we be able to deflect it? Would we be able to make it move? And in 2022, we did this. We had this thing called the Dart. It's called the double asteroid redirection test. And we crashed it into a meteor and we moved that meteor's orbit. But what we found out this past week was that not only did we move that meteor, we also moved the larger asteroid that it was going around. We were able to change the trajectory of both of those around the sun, which seems pretty cool, you know, I don't know. That's my shout out.
- [52:10]
B
You know what I would have hated, though? If they hit it and it actually moved it into orbit for a collision on Earth. Oh, it worked the wrong way. Well, that sucked. That.
- [52:23]
A
That is a very 2026 thing to have done.
- [52:27]
B
Hey, it wasn't gonna hit us, but after our experiment, it is. Sorry, guys. There's an extinction level event based on the Dart. You know, I would, I would say for me, it's Sean Penner, my good friend. Just post video. He was a Brit who fought for the Ukrainians when the, when the Russians came into Mariupol on. I think it was February 24, 2022. And he fought there and he actually put out a video of his first day in combat. He was eventually captured and kept for years tortured went through awful things when the Russians captured him. So shout out to Sean Penner for still being my friend, being alive, being in Ukraine, and I'll see you in a little while, but.
- [53:06]
A
Awesome. Well, thanks, Denver. This has been a great show. Make sure Everybody subscribe to TIB on YouTube, your favorite podcast platforms. Follow us on Instagram. And, and thanks so much for spending your day with us.
- [53:20]
B
Absolutely. And, Amy, you know, I just love being here.