Curt Mills: Trump Can Save America or Wage Another War, but He Can’t Do Both. Here’s Why.

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Speaker 2 Terms apply.

Speaker 3 So it's amazing to me that over 20 years after the Iraq War, its architects and supporters are still not fully in control of America's foreign policy, but certainly influential in it.

Speaker 3 And it's shocking to me that two months after Trump's landslide victory,

Speaker 3 a race in which he ran against the neocons, the neocons are still brazen enough to try and influence and sabotage his nominations.

Speaker 3 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else.
And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.

Speaker 3 We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly. Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.
Here's the episode. We are

Speaker 3 days but less than a week before Telsey Gabbard's hearings.

Speaker 3 Where are we in the below-the-radar war between permanent Washington's national security establishment, the neocons, and the incoming Trump administration?

Speaker 3 I think it's unclear. So as of this recording, 10 minutes ago, Mr.
Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, was just confirmed on a 550 vote.

Speaker 3 Hegseth is an interesting character, I believe, a former colleague of yours. Yes.
He appears to have done a bit of a conversion on his foreign policy

Speaker 3 beliefs. And the best evidence of that is the people that he's picked so far.
So his cadres, the people that will serve as... I ask you to pause with there.

Speaker 3 So what you're ⁇ this is relevant to people who know Pete Hegseth from

Speaker 3 clips on X of him from eight years ago saying things that would lead you to believe he's a pretty stout neocon.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 okay, so that's what you're referring to.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think the available evidence is that he is like a

Speaker 3 circa 10 years ago was a pretty conventional Republican. Yes.
And he has changed his life in more ways than one. And so he is a question mark.

Speaker 3 But the early evidence is the people that he has chosen to surround himself are stark departures from

Speaker 3 the man from 10 years ago. And so that's a big deal.
And especially

Speaker 3 in a place like the Pentagon, which is hard to control. Yes.
And wants no change under any circumstances except an annual increase in the number of four-star generals.

Speaker 3 It's the largest bureaucracy on earth. It is.
And it exists to serve itself. It's got a pretty abysmal record of winning wars, wars, a pretty great record of spending money.

Speaker 3 It desperately needs reform.

Speaker 3 And you're saying that based on the personnel choices you think he's making, he's now the defense secretary, by the way, as of right now. Yes.

Speaker 3 That he is like sincerely on board with Trump's foreign policy. Yeah, I mean, he did not need to make these picks.

Speaker 3 I don't think he needed to make these picks to get confirmed. I don't think he needed these choices to win any senators.

Speaker 3 He is courting, I think, minor controversy now, which is why we're having this meeting.

Speaker 3 He did not need to do this.

Speaker 3 It was a move of conviction and belief

Speaker 3 and principle in his early days in office before he even. So, give us an example.
Just give us an example what you're talking about. Sure.

Speaker 3 There's going to be this Michael DeMino figure who will have the Middle East portfolio. He has been advised throughout the process by another figure named Daniel Caldwell.

Speaker 3 These are both

Speaker 3 people in their 40s or 30s,

Speaker 3 basically millennials who are veterans of the global war on terror.

Speaker 3 They're very much in the... So they fought in that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Dan did.

Speaker 3 And Michael was a CIA agent.

Speaker 3 So yeah, I mean, these are the guys that were hunting down IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, core people in the forever wars that Trump and Vance ran on reforming and ending, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, they're very much in the Vance mold of we went there, not really sure what the point was, and we want to roll back from that somewhat.

Speaker 3 I think you might have heard this message from Mr. Trump at least once or twice in the last 10 years.

Speaker 3 So these, I don't know, Damino, I know Caldwell, who I think of as a man of genuine integrity, high intelligence, and principle,

Speaker 3 committed to his country. I think he's proven that.

Speaker 3 I honestly think he's like a wonderful

Speaker 3 person.

Speaker 3 But he's being attacked by people who never served with a long, unbroken track record of destroying America as somehow anti-American. Yeah.
How does this work?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think that the tactics are pretty clear. So

Speaker 3 no one reads anything.

Speaker 3 Everybody is cynical, confused.

Speaker 3 He says the magazine.

Speaker 3 Nobody reads anything. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. You're right.
Get a headline out there.

Speaker 3 Call someone a naughty word.

Speaker 3 Say they're anti-a country

Speaker 3 or they are

Speaker 3 radical.

Speaker 3 You know, if anyone sues this publication, it will take years and years and years. And hope that some club member at Mar-a-Lago hands this to President Trump and tries to trick him and thinks that Mr.

Speaker 3 Trump is a stupid man. And this is the approach, and this is what they are trying to do.
That's exactly. That is a cyclone.
I mean, the word has been abused by the very,

Speaker 3 but it is, this is actual disinformation. Yes.
I hate to use the word, but like because what are the publications? Who are the people involved in this campaign of lies? Okay.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm not familiar, and I don't know any of the people over there personally, but the big story that's going around on both Demino and I believe Caldwell is from Jewish Insider.

Speaker 3 And again,

Speaker 3 no one really wants to be

Speaker 3 attacked by something called Jewish insider. It doesn't sound very fun.

Speaker 3 And so they are running headlines against people and they are attacking them. And what they do is they don't say anything that is

Speaker 3 per se inaccurate, but they totally strip the context for everything. So what, let's go one by one.
Do you know Domino?

Speaker 3 Just by correspondence. Okay.

Speaker 3 And what's your, is this a radical figure, anti-American figure? No. This is somebody who

Speaker 3 wants to pull back,

Speaker 3 I would say, moderately from the Middle East, which I think at this point is basically bipartisan outside of the radicals within Washington, D.C. and the Beltway.

Speaker 3 Okay. I think this is a fair assessment.
So the people who want to continue what we're doing at unsustainable cost.

Speaker 3 being a bankrupt country, by the way, sending aid to countries that are not bankrupt.

Speaker 3 Those are the radicals, radicals, I think it's fair to say. So what are they saying about Domino in this hit piece?

Speaker 3 They are trying to make the reader jump to the conclusion that he is anti-Israeli, that he is pro-Iranian. He's pro-Iranian.
Plu-Iranian.

Speaker 3 He is somehow pro-radical Islam. You know,

Speaker 3 he's pro-all the scary people in the world. Radical Islam.
Sure.

Speaker 3 Whatever.

Speaker 3 It doesn't really matter. I don't know the guy.
It sounds kind of Catholic to me.

Speaker 3 Do you know a lot of Shiites called Domino, or is that a common name for Persians? Not to my information. Okay.
And again, I think it bears repeating that this person

Speaker 3 was responsible for the tracking of Revolutionary Guard Corps members in Iran, potentially sent some of them to their death.

Speaker 3 So the whole thing has an opera buffet flavor to it that he's being attacked as. So what you're saying is these are people who will say anything.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 They're kind of from the Barry Weiss school of journalism. Just like you have an objective, something you want to achieve, and whatever it takes to get there is fine.
You will say it.

Speaker 3 It doesn't matter. You'll call anybody anything

Speaker 3 if it serves your purpose.

Speaker 3 They are very, very willing to destroy this person with absolutely no compunction.

Speaker 3 Is there any evidence that he's, quote, anti-Israel? None. Right.
None. And in fact, there's no evidence to the contrary, which he praises the country.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, okay. He is critical.
of aspects of the the war.

Speaker 3 It's okay to be critical of other people's wars or your own wars. It's okay to offer analysis of war.

Speaker 3 Or to even state that it's not, in fact, our war, as the President of the United States just did on his inauguration day, emphasizing from behind the resolute desk that it's their war, not our war.

Speaker 3 So I read something from a guy called David Wormser, who is one of the architects of

Speaker 3 Iraq. We're not from this country, not really concerned with this country at all.

Speaker 3 And also, I think it's fair to say, you know, someone who should hang his head in shame given a lifetime of destruction that he's helped

Speaker 3 bring to our country, but describe these policies as anti-American.

Speaker 3 So I have to say, it takes a lot of balls for someone who has no interest in the United States to accuse someone whose whole orientation is helping the United States of being anti-American.

Speaker 3 But I've noticed this a lot.

Speaker 3 If you raise the question like, what are we getting out of this? You know, the endless war cycle. We're getting bankruptcy, obviously, but like, is this good for us?

Speaker 3 They'll accuse you, you know, the Konstantin Kizen, also not an American, will accuse that wing will accuse you of being somehow woke and you're like left-wing for asking these questions.

Speaker 3 Have you noticed this? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you raised some of these figures.

Speaker 3 We go into this all night.

Speaker 3 I'd like to.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they're hoping. There's no more repulsive group in American life than the people who continue to push death and bankruptcy on the United States.
I think that's fair. Can't recover from death.

Speaker 3 No, you can't. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, I think

Speaker 3 that they're hoping that Americans don't do the reading.

Speaker 3 They're hoping that Americans read X posts.

Speaker 3 They're hoping that Americans watch random cable news hosts,

Speaker 3 that they're zoned out and they hear, they have, you know, let's say they have a positive view of,

Speaker 3 you know, certain aspects of America's role in the Middle East and they start tar and feathering people on the internet and that there's no pushback on it. At the same time,

Speaker 3 it's just, I guess the only reason I have noticed this is because it's so over the top. Rather than, look, I think a lot of these positions are legitimate.
I disagree with them.

Speaker 3 You know, a ton of these people are smart people. I know almost all of them.

Speaker 3 And they could make like a straightforward case for their position. Like, here's why we should affect regime change in Iran or here's why we should kill Putin.

Speaker 3 I mean, maybe there's a case to be made for that. But they never make the case.
They attack anyone who stands in their way in the most brutal and dishonest ways.

Speaker 3 They have no limits at all in their behavior at all. And I just find that repugnant and like corrosive.
Even if I agreed with them, I'd be against that. Like, what is that? It's guerrilla warfare.

Speaker 3 They'll win at any costs. Win at any costs.

Speaker 3 I know I'm jumping here, but I just, I'm exercised. I, I just watched what's happening to a man called Steve Witcoff.
Do you know Steve Witcoff? Do you know that it is? Okay.

Speaker 3 So he's a friend of Trump's. He's a real estate guy from New York.
I happen to know him just for other reasons. How well do you know him?

Speaker 2 Pretty well.

Speaker 3 You know, just personally, I don't know a ton about his views.

Speaker 3 I don't sense that we probably don't agree on foreign policy in some ways.

Speaker 3 But he was tasked by Trump, as you know, to go over and affect some kind of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and he did.

Speaker 3 And he's strong. I doubt he's anti-Israel.
In fact, I know he's not, whatever that means.

Speaker 3 And he is being attacked. as somehow an agent of the Islamic Republic of Qatar and like anti-Israel, Steve Witkoff.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I happen to really like Steve Witcoff. I think he's a, I just like him.
He's just a great guy, actually, and he's really tough and he's just a good guy.

Speaker 3 If you had dinner with him, you'd like him, trust me.

Speaker 3 But I'm just blown away by the dishonesty. Rather than say, hey, Steve Wickoff, like I disagree with you or whatever, it's he's working for Qatar.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 What? He's from like Long Island. What are you talking about? This is the higher profile.
I mean, like, I mean, they're hoping again that

Speaker 3 Trump has learned nothing they insult the president but these people are disgusting as well they're liars and like if there's one thing the country's had too much of it's lying let's just stop lying let's just be honest i agree yes i agree we've been corroded by lies completely the country's about to collapse because of lies and

Speaker 3 the people pushing endless war are one of the main vectors for that lying like because There's just no reference point in reality at all.

Speaker 3 If Steve Wickoff is an agent of Islamic Republic, then I just give up. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Okay, sorry. Lecture over.
No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 I mean, the Witcoff thing in some ways is what set the whole thing off. Witcoff?

Speaker 3 Right, right. He's the most reasonable, moderate person in the world.
No, he's not anti-Israel. He's just tough.
I think the Witcoff thing surprised both sides, though, I would note. So

Speaker 3 I think, so obviously you knew him before

Speaker 3 within recent years. Okay.

Speaker 3 So I think in general, the open source intelligence to use a lame term, term, but like I would say is that the Hawks, people who want to say go all the way on Iran, did not expect Witcoff to be so pragmatic.

Speaker 3 And then additionally, the realist and restraint camp also did not expect it.

Speaker 3 All the reporting from, say, Israeli media, say, Haaretz or Times of Israel, that Witcoff went in there and sort of

Speaker 3 with both the incoming Trump administration and the remnants of

Speaker 3 the Biden administration force Prime Minister Netanyahu into some sort of deal, a deal that he had turned down six months ago in May of 2024, basically identical deal. That threw most everybody

Speaker 3 in the loop for a loop.

Speaker 3 And that has set off, as far as I can infer,

Speaker 3 a climate of hysteria within Israel itself, at least among the, I'm not sure, Sir Netanyahu himself, but at least within the factions of his cabinet that are are hardline as hell.

Speaker 3 Okay, so they disagree. You know, they've had to give a little.
Everyone does in negotiations.

Speaker 3 It's not a disagreement. I mean, like,

Speaker 3 this will not stop unless there's pushback.

Speaker 3 All I'm saying is when you reach an agreement, everyone gets pinched. Okay.
That's just the nature of it. Right.

Speaker 3 And no one likes it, you know, but like tough. That's what it is.
And my read on Wickoff is that he's just not super ideological. I think he's pro-Israel.

Speaker 3 I don't, you know, I wouldn't even question that, but I don't think he's an ideologue.

Speaker 3 He's a self-made real estate guy who started with like a single apartment building in Washington Heights. He's a tough human being.

Speaker 3 And I think you need someone who's practical and tough to affect a negotiation. You don't want someone who's captive to all kinds of theories.

Speaker 3 Trump says, hey, Wickoff, get a peace deal or, you know, get a ceasefire, an intermediate peace deal, a first step toward one. And Wickoff's like, okay.

Speaker 3 And he just shows up and he's like, hey, you, you. Yeah.
Like, that's. But I.
Is that what you want? I think, I think

Speaker 3 a lot of Israel was surprised by this. I mean, I mean, this, this was lost in the absolute cacophony of 2024.
Really? But yes, like, if you, if you read,

Speaker 3 I read the Israeli Express daily. And,

Speaker 3 you know, there were members of Netanyahu's

Speaker 3 coalition. So these are members of the Prime Minister Netyahu, people who are not in his party, who are more hardlined than him.

Speaker 3 And they were saying, Trump's really talking about this endless war stuff. This might be a problem.
And this was back in October and September and August.

Speaker 3 And no one was paying attention because it was Brett Summer and

Speaker 3 other things were going on.

Speaker 3 But this was coming. And the fact that they got it done not even before,

Speaker 3 not even

Speaker 3 during the transition itself also surprised people. And so

Speaker 3 I'm sensing inflated expectations here.

Speaker 3 This is a foreign country, obviously an ally, a close ally, our closest ally, I think it's fair to say, but a separate country. And so,

Speaker 3 you know, I think realistic expectations would be we get some of what we want. We don't get everything we want because, you know, we're not in charge of the United States.

Speaker 3 Okay, but there's a tension here. I mean, so

Speaker 3 first, the relationship between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel is extremely unclear. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 3 I don't think maybe only the two of them know.

Speaker 3 They have disagreed since at least 2020 over the election, but they probably disagreed beforehand over strikes in Iran.

Speaker 3 The last time you and I spoke publicly was over the Salamani strike in January of 2020.

Speaker 3 And since then, reporting in the last five years has come out that the two of them disagreed over that. Trump felt that the Israelis didn't do their part, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 So for years, for at least half a decade, the royal has been poisoned between Trump and Netanyahu. Doesn't mean the relationship is done,

Speaker 3 but there's been an atmosphere of mistrust.

Speaker 3 Well, he's had that.

Speaker 3 I've watched closely and

Speaker 3 interviewed him more than once. And for

Speaker 3 moving on 30 years because he's been in and out of office, and he's had complicated relations with every president.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 3 I think the key thing to understand for your listeners, anyone who's not turning this off because we're getting into the depths of Israeli politics here, but Netanyahu's situation is unstable. Yes.

Speaker 3 A super majority of Israelis want him out.

Speaker 3 They want him to resign. He does not want to resign because if he resigns, he may go to prison.
And also,

Speaker 3 he's been a power achiever for 30 years. And I've noticed that people who do that often don't like to quit.

Speaker 3 I think that's fair. Yeah.
Okay. So he doesn't want to quit for both reasons reasons of his freedom and,

Speaker 3 you know, the reason of his life. Yeah.
Yes. Okay.
So pretty recognizable syndrome, I would say. Yes.
Yes. It's not confined to BBC.
It's international. Yes, it is international.
Okay. So

Speaker 3 how does he not quit?

Speaker 3 It's pretty clear that spectacular circumstances justify his presence. It's very similar, actually.
I mean, there's been comparisons between him and Churchill. It's actually fair.

Speaker 3 Only in wartime can someone like Netanyahu at this this point get a position. I get it.
The war has to go on. So what war? So they have basically a deal with Hezbollah.

Speaker 3 I think it's not like, I think that is by far the least likely that they're going to go back in there. There are basically two options.

Speaker 3 One, once all the hostages are exchanged, then they go back into Gaza. Okay.

Speaker 3 Or, I guess 1B, is to do the West Bank, which is already going on right now.

Speaker 3 Or two. What do you mean, do the West Bank? Invade it and exit.
I mean, I mean, there's about the people who live there. Like, what happens to them? Not Israel's problem.

Speaker 3 So, what do you do while you're in the West Bank? I mean, what are you doing there? What is the point of the operation? Do you know? To annex the territory and build developments.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is, this is, I mean, and you know, the unstated thing is that they'll either export these people or eliminate them. And so it's pretty terrifying stuff.

Speaker 3 It's not light stuff, but this is not a light interview. And so

Speaker 3 the problem is the U.S. is the military underwriter of this.
The Israelis probably can't do this without us selling them weapons.

Speaker 3 And so while Americans are tuned out and not thinking about this kind of thing, our reputation overseas is one of arms dealer. And over time, that affects your children.

Speaker 3 It's being able to travel abroad. That affects America's reputation overseas.
It's dicey stuff. Well, it costs 9-11, among other things, right? So yeah, it has effects for sure.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Option two is Iran,

Speaker 3 which is, as I'll just quote them, I'll quote the hardline perspective itself.

Speaker 3 It's the head of the snake in the conception of the Israeli hardline and also the neoconservative right in the United States. For sure.

Speaker 3 And so Israel also can't do Iran, in my view, and also in general assessments, without the help of the United States. It's usually joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes

Speaker 3 or even a solo invasion of Iran by the United States is the ultimate sort of fantasy.

Speaker 3 I'm going to need more coffee to proceed because you're blowing my mind, Kurt Mills.

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Speaker 3 Just one quick digression about Steve Wickoff. Sure.

Speaker 3 I think it's really significant that he's not a professional foreign policy figure. He hasn't spent a career at the State Department or

Speaker 3 doing bilaterals

Speaker 3 for his career.

Speaker 3 He's just a smart, tough,

Speaker 3 competent person who was charged with a task by the president and he got it done. And maybe we need more of that.

Speaker 3 I mean, I did, you know, there are certain parts of statecraft that, you know, probably it's helpful to have experience in statecraft, but some of it's just pretty straightforward. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You get a ceasefire. Okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah. No, no, I know.
I mean, I think there has. Could anyone from the State Department have done what Steve Wickoff did, do you think?

Speaker 3 No, especially without the, without the president's.

Speaker 3 Of course not.

Speaker 3 But even if Trump had like called called someone in and been like okay mr career diplomat can you effect a ceasefire he'd be like well it's very complicated

Speaker 3 wicked's just like hey ceasefire stop no it's the same i mean i mean like they they international relations has been made into

Speaker 3 they have to make it into like a pseudoscience like exactly yeah smart exactly just like everything else yeah just like everything else just like journalism or

Speaker 3 even education like you can't teach third grade without a master's degree are you kidding Yeah. So it's just needlessly concerned.
When the first requirement is, do you like third graders?

Speaker 3 It's nothing to do with your master's degree. The whole thing is

Speaker 3 absurd. Yeah.
And then, you know, it's the same thing of all of academia, which is like people's theses are increasingly more Baroque and like nobody actually

Speaker 3 large things like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least know it in a way that is applicable in power in real life.

Speaker 3 And I mean, maybe things are changing now, but like also a lot of the foreign policy establishment, it's different now in the second term, but wouldn't work with the first Trump term, wouldn't work with their team.

Speaker 3 And I think that was the discredit of the country.

Speaker 3 I think that just did not serve the country. Well, of course it didn't serve the country.
Well, we know the country hasn't been served because look at the country.

Speaker 3 And so I think we can say of all players they didn't serve the country. That would include the media.
And there have been times when I didn't serve the country, like when I advocated for the Iraq war.

Speaker 3 I mean, we're all culpable to some extent, but it's just remarkable to me that people are continuing it.

Speaker 3 So now, instead of telling us that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or that Osama Laden attacked us for our freedoms or whatever the lie of the day was,

Speaker 3 the new idea is that Iran is, quote, the head of the snake. How many Americans have been killed by Iranian proxies in the United States over the last 20 years, do you think?

Speaker 3 How many Americans in the United States? Yeah, have been killed by Iran-sponsored terrorists. Zero.
Red Round Zero. How many have died of fentanyl ODs, drugs whose precursors come from China?

Speaker 3 Millions.

Speaker 3 Well, more than a million.

Speaker 3 More than a million. Yeah.
Okay. I think, I mean, look, look, to play.

Speaker 3 I mean, what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 The Iranians backed proxies that killed U.S. troops in the Iraq war.
Yeah, of course. But we shouldn't have done the Iraq war.

Speaker 3 Well, Iran took over Iraq because we took out Saddam Hussein

Speaker 3 in a majority Shiite country. I happened to be there for that.
And even I, as a 33-year-old moron, was like, wait a second. And just a basic interest in demographics.

Speaker 3 Like, isn't this going to go to Iran now? Yep.

Speaker 3 Anyway, yes. Right.
Right. But I just find it amazing that

Speaker 3 there's been no public conversation about whether or not the United States should go to war with Iran.

Speaker 3 There's been no case laid out. At least in 2002, they had the decency to lie to us in a pretty complicated, sophisticated way about weapons of mass destruction.
Now it's just like, shut up.

Speaker 3 You're anti-American if you ask questions. And it feels like we're moving toward a conflict with Iran.
Is that a fair

Speaker 3 I think we have been moving towards one? And, you know,

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 basically the biggest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia.

Speaker 3 And the biggest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran.

Speaker 3 So my rule is always that's why it's more ethical to be a Republican, because at least the Iranians don't have nukes yet. So

Speaker 3 that's actually like pretty close to my first principle.

Speaker 3 Like just outright. Well, you've simplified it,

Speaker 3 but the Iran war would be still like the worst and like not something that we should pursue. And look,

Speaker 3 foreign policy experts at this point will chime in on this conversation being like, oh, well, that's just so unrealistic. That's not actually what we want.

Speaker 3 This is actually just ridiculous externality. But I think it is worth noting that we have done wars, top lane governments throughout the region over the last 25 years.

Speaker 3 So number one, it's happened very very recently. Number two, it is kind of the explicit goal of the hardliners.
And the hardliners keep moving the overture window in their direction.

Speaker 3 And so, while this is perhaps not 100% certain, but hardly,

Speaker 3 there is a hard drive towards doing this. And picking off Pentagon deputies and allowing leaders like Trump advance to be surrounded by hawks and no dissenting voices whatsoever

Speaker 3 is absolutely essential towards any road to war.

Speaker 3 And I have to say, the amount of calculated deception on the right, so all of a sudden Barry Weiss, who's a leftist, becomes a conservative because she's against Trannyism or something.

Speaker 3 Every normal person is against that.

Speaker 3 But it's pretty obvious that the whole purpose of her organization, the free press, and her career in journalism

Speaker 3 is is to kind of soften up the right for war with Iran and to attack anybody.

Speaker 3 And she's got this whole constellation of people, you know, Neil Ferguson and all these kind of people who add weight to the project, but who really are all kind of paid to flack for war with Iran and attack anyone who's not with the program.

Speaker 3 I felt the sting of this, so I didn't really understand how this worked. But then,

Speaker 3 you know, as someone with like thoroughly moderate foreign policy views, I don't really want war with anybody. I'm not against anybody.

Speaker 3 And all of a sudden you're you're like, wow, you know, people are calling you anti-American.

Speaker 3 Well, there's precedent for this. So what you're describing, I don't know, I don't know any of the people you described personally.

Speaker 3 But I'm just saying, like, there was, you said the problem with voting Republican is you're more likely to wind up with a war with Iran. And I agree with you.

Speaker 3 I'd much rather have a war with Iran than a war with Russia, but I kind of don't want either one.

Speaker 3 And it's just interesting how the groundwork, I just know because I've been in conservative media my whole life.

Speaker 3 All of a sudden, all these new people and you're like, oh, Barry Weiss, are you really conservative? Well, not at all. Then what are you doing here?

Speaker 3 Oh, you're trying to convince me that I'm not allowed to oppose a war with Iran, or I'm going to be written out of the conservative movement or something.

Speaker 3 Okay, so if a lot of people are comparing Trump to Reagan these days, and I think it is an inaccurate comparison, but there obviously are comparisons that are very different human beings, at least in my position.

Speaker 3 So, if you accept that Trump is the biggest cheese since Reagan on the Republican side, what happened in the Reagan years? So, the neoconservatives,

Speaker 3 that is people who came from the left and moved to the right,

Speaker 3 were very, very savvy, effective, and reasonable at domestic policy. They were very, very good on the crime issues of the day.

Speaker 3 And their

Speaker 3 periodicals gained currency because, hey, actually, we should clean up the streets of New York, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 And some of them were, I knew a lot of them, and some of them were really smart, decent people too.

Speaker 3 And by the way, some of their foreign policy viewers were not crazy at all.

Speaker 3 They recognized the Soviet Union was evil. Like the first generation of neocons,

Speaker 3 Midge Decter, I mean, I kind of love Midge Dector. I don't know.
Do you know what I mean? I don't think that they were all nuts at all. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But by the 90s and 2000s,

Speaker 3 you know, if you believed in,

Speaker 3 you know, some crime enforcement in New York, you also had to believe towards the march towards regime change in Iraq. And so, you know, again, again,

Speaker 3 don't want to.

Speaker 3 I'm skipping that part of the buffet line. Yeah.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 I will take this safe city and the thriving economy. I'm going to leave out the forever war.
Is that okay?

Speaker 3 But I think it is the essential pitch of this new generation of neoconservatism, which of course does not call itself that, but it is moderation on the social issues. Let's turn down the volume.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And at the same time, over here in column space over here, a little. little news item about what's going on in the Red Sea and why the U.S.
needs to care.

Speaker 3 And it's a drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And it can go on for months and years and years and years.
And all of a sudden, we super care about the Houthis in Yemen. We super care about

Speaker 3 Iran. And we have to underwrite a war in Israel until every single member of Hamas is dead.
And it's just not clear. that the U.S.
international U.S. national interest is there, to put it lightly.

Speaker 3 Yeah, And I guess what I object to is, I mean, I'm never offended by people with different ideas.

Speaker 3 I'm never offended by someone who makes a sincere case, affirmative case or something that I disagree with. Okay.
And by the way, maybe he's right and I'm wrong. I've certainly been wrong a lot.

Speaker 3 The part where I get enraged is the bad faith.

Speaker 3 And so you ask questions like, well, is this in our interest? Well, you hate so-and-so. Well, I don't hate anybody.
And I certainly don't hate that. I certainly don't hate that country.

Speaker 3 I like it a lot, actually.

Speaker 3 yeah um but there's no room for they don't they're preventing discussion yeah and um and a lot of these people have the gall to describe themselves as you know warriors for free speech when of course free speech is the last thing they want and they've gone out of their way to prevent any kind of open conversation about the most important topics in our collective life

Speaker 3 So I'm just, I'm just bothered by the lying. There's too much lying, don't you think?

Speaker 3 Absolutely. I would say, and by the the way, I'll even go farther and say, having worked for Bill Crystal for five and a half years.

Speaker 3 You were in Crystal, the editor of the Weekly Standard, that was the absolute launching point magazine of the Iraq War. For sure.
And I was there.

Speaker 3 I mean, I started the very first day of the Weekly Standard, August 1st, 1995, 30 years ago.

Speaker 3 And I thought Bill Crystal, I still would say, was a great boss, you know, interesting, fun to talk to, funny as hell.

Speaker 3 Obviously, I think he's taken a really dark turn and his life has been kind of a disaster. and I feel bad for him.

Speaker 3 But one thing I'll say about Bill Crystal circa, you know, 2000 is that he would make an actual case for his views. He would say, we have to go in and take out Saddam for the following eight reasons.

Speaker 3 And he would write. And you would say this is in 95, 96, 97.
I mean, I was there for all of that. And I wasn't paying super close attention because I was dumb.
But I was focused on other things.

Speaker 3 And I was like, oh, yeah, it's his foreign policy hobby horse. You know, I was into that stuff.
I'm not that into it. I didn't understand the stakes.

Speaker 3 I didn't really understand anything, actually, when I was like a kid, but I always admired and still admire his willingness and that generation's willingness to make their case, to write some paper.

Speaker 3 Here's what we're for.

Speaker 3 That is gone. And now it's just like, can we censor the people? Can we call them names to the point where they get kicked off social media? So there's no counterargument.

Speaker 3 Well, even Crystal himself had stopped writing.

Speaker 3 Well, he could never write.

Speaker 3 Not a genius, I will say, but, you know, an affable, amusing person in meetings, you know.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 probably the most successful political organizer of the last 30 years. Yeah, and tireless, you know, and there are good things to be said about Bill Crystal.

Speaker 3 Obviously, he's called me a Nazi like a hundred times, but that's kind of the point.

Speaker 3 I'm not a Nazi. I'm not for the Nazis.
I just don't, you know, I've got different views. And that's the turn that I'm really bothered by

Speaker 3 is just the pure ad hominem

Speaker 3 attempts at that's an attempt at censorship. Yeah.
And

Speaker 3 Barry Weiss engages in that like relentlessly behind the scenes, using all kinds of proxies, some of whom I know. And I just want to say it out loud.
I just want to say that

Speaker 3 this is deception here. Okay.
So I hope people know that. I think it makes it impossible for the new president to do what he's promised to do if he doesn't solve this conundrum.

Speaker 3 Well, tell me what you mean. So, I mean, if the president wants to send troops to the U.S.
border

Speaker 3 and the president wants to rebuild the American economy, and the president wants to focus on China. Yes.
And the president wants the moral credibility to end the Russia-Ukraine war at some point. Yes.

Speaker 3 Expanding the war in the Middle East,

Speaker 3 even with prolonged arms sales, corrodes his political capitalism. Who's going to pay for that? The United States.
No, but I mean,

Speaker 3 we literally are operating in the red to the tune of trillions of dollars. Like, how

Speaker 3 in what world can we afford that?

Speaker 3 Well, it's a very complex topic. We don't have any

Speaker 3 functioning community hospitals left.

Speaker 3 We have the reserve currency, and we can keep writing debt until it causes an inflation crisis, which a lot of people thought would happen earlier and did not.

Speaker 3 And even our inflation crisis in the 2020s was mild by global standards. So accordingly, we've got plenty of room for the big enchilada, which is an Iran war.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so this, it just feels like a big deal. It's a big deal.
To me, and it feels like it's worth, I mean, it certainly, if you comment on this, you do ask yourself, is it really worth it?

Speaker 3 You know, do I want to get into this? By the way, a lot of people I really like and I'm friends with violently disagree.

Speaker 3 So you run the risk, which I really don't want, of rupturing friendships over it. That's the last thing I want ever.

Speaker 3 And you think, maybe I should just be quiet. But it does seem like that's a huge step.

Speaker 3 And at the very least, the public ought to understand that there are highly motivated people pushing us toward that.

Speaker 3 Do you think that we will participate in a military action against Iran?

Speaker 3 Well, the big question is right now, so there's a new Iranian president. So the previous Iranian president died along with his foreign minister in a helicopter accident over the summer.

Speaker 3 A little mysterious. Are you going to use air quotes around accident?

Speaker 3 I mean, a lot of things happened last year. It's very possible.
I mean, I don't think

Speaker 3 everyone got killed last year.

Speaker 3 So many accidents.

Speaker 3 The Iranians' equipment, helicopter equipment, to my understanding is old. And it is a rough part of the world.
And it's possible that it's likely that it just went down.

Speaker 3 And again, I would say... I would not fly in a helicopter with Iranian officials.
I'm just telling you that.

Speaker 3 And again, if you think it was Israel, the Israelis

Speaker 3 pretty much took credit or didn't deny all the other assassinations that occurred last year. I don't, of Hamas leadership,

Speaker 3 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just for the record, I try to suspend judgment because I know a lot about what countries do.

Speaker 3 And I do think, this is one thing I'll say in support of Israel. I do think that it is,

Speaker 3 you know, it isn't fair to just single out Israel and say they're doing naughty stuff. Like lots of people are doing naughty stuff.
That's just a fact. My only,

Speaker 3 you know, the only point where I would feel like I want to say something is if the United States gets sucked into it. That's true.

Speaker 3 Now we're talking about our interests, my country, where my family's from. And I think it's fair to speak up then.
Yeah. So I guess maybe the 2025 Zoom out, you would say

Speaker 3 there was an election in Iran right afterwards. Yes.

Speaker 3 A lot of people disagree with our perspective. We'll disagree with this term, but the more moderate candidate, people think there are no moderates within the regime,

Speaker 3 but the less hardcore candidate won. This is the first time this has happened since Trump left the Iran deal.

Speaker 3 And this person,

Speaker 3 it is not clear how much power he has within the system. The supreme leader is old.
It's not clear how old.

Speaker 3 And there will be a succession crisis to succeed the supreme leader should he die.

Speaker 3 So it is this weird situation where every time Iran is in a crisis, and they're a crisis right now, they're an electricity crisis by all reporting.

Speaker 3 Again, don't know if we can trust all the reporting, but they can't keep the lights on at Tehran fully.

Speaker 3 And what will they do? And so, every time Iran is at a decision point, there is a fraucus between what I will call the moderates and the hardliners within their government.

Speaker 3 The hardliners want to go for the bomb. They think we can't trust anybody.
Right.

Speaker 3 We need to get the bomb. They also recently signed a mutual, you know, a defense pact, just short of mutual defense pact, but a security arrangement with the Russians.

Speaker 3 So they seem to have a bunker mentality right now.

Speaker 3 If

Speaker 3 U.S. intelligence or Israeli intelligence or Western intelligence assesses that they are going for the bomb in a real way,

Speaker 3 so it can either be true or false, but if they assess it,

Speaker 3 then there will be severe pressure on the new administration to do airstrikes on Iran. I get it.
Look, I don't want Iran to get the bomb. I don't want anyone to get the bomb.
I'm against the bomb.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 But I was Iran when Pakistan got the bomb. Yep.
And Pakistan is a country with a lot of wonderful people in it, kind of a great country in a lot of ways. Spent a fair amount of time there.

Speaker 3 However, the government of Pakistan

Speaker 3 is arguably scarier than Iran.

Speaker 3 You think? Harbored Osama bin Laden, et cetera. ISI has been

Speaker 3 really a source of disorder in South Asia for a long time. And they've exported nuclear technology, including to North Korea.
So no one's ever said anything about that.

Speaker 3 Like, that's not a crisis that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has the bomb.

Speaker 3 I don't really get it. I mean, why was that not a crisis? Why did we do nothing to do nothing to stop that?

Speaker 3 I guess it occurred basically when the U.S. was still quasi-pro-Pakistan over India.
And it was...

Speaker 3 That was was a bad bet, by the way. It was a Nixonian bet, actually.

Speaker 3 He really didn't like Indira Gandhi. It was basically.
Okay, well,

Speaker 3 I think we can say longitudinally, that was a bad bet. He just didn't like one person, and it didn't really matter at all.
That was like betting on Wang computers over Apple.

Speaker 3 Like, it just kind of didn't turn out.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm not holding a Wang in my.

Speaker 3 But the point is.

Speaker 3 Derek might want to cut that.

Speaker 3 We're keeping the Wang in.

Speaker 3 Look, all I'm saying is... My father sold Wang computers.

Speaker 3 I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to make it personal.
No, no, well, no, it's just,

Speaker 3 at one point, the top salesman in the country of Wang computers. Your father sold some Wangs.
Yes.

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Speaker 3 Look, all I'm saying is it's important to

Speaker 3 maybe dial back a little bit on the moral outrage and assess the world as it is, assess what you can do, you know. create a hierarchy of priorities.

Speaker 3 Like we don't want other countries to get nuclear weapons. I think that's, I'm with the neocons 100% on that.

Speaker 3 But,

Speaker 3 you know, in a complicated world that we don't actually control,

Speaker 3 what can we do? What are the limits of our power given a lot of other factors like our domestics, our economy, the needs of our people? Like, you can't do everything. That's all I'm saying.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 No, I mean, so I think Trump should complete the work of his first term, which is he

Speaker 3 revoked the JCPOA, the Obama-Iran deal, and he should do a Trump-Iran deal.

Speaker 3 So he's sending Wickoff over to do that. Yeah, so Witcoff, the aforementioned,

Speaker 3 not only did what he did with the Israelis, he was promoted for it per reporting.

Speaker 3 It has not been confirmed to my understanding by the transition or the White House. But per the FT and I believe another outlet, Witkoff is getting, quote, the Iran file.

Speaker 3 Within the Trump universe, that's as much power as the president wants to give it. But

Speaker 3 as of filming,

Speaker 3 his role is expanding. And

Speaker 3 if Trump wants a lasting legacy of peace and prosperity, there needs to be an accommodation with the de facto government of Iran. So if you, of course, there does.

Speaker 3 This is just, this is totally insane. It's counter to our interests, I guess, is what I would say.

Speaker 3 If you were Trump and you say to Steve Witkoff, hey, Steve Witkoff, go get a ceasefire in place. And he comes back like 20 minutes later with a ceasefire, wouldn't you say, okay.
We like that pace.

Speaker 3 I like that pace. Wouldn't you send him to a run? I would.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, I think I, yeah. I mean, I mean, this is actually something both Trump and Obama, who apparently get along now, at least perfunctorily,

Speaker 3 agreed on. Well, they both dislike Michelle, I think.
So

Speaker 3 they remember Obama on the debate stage in 08

Speaker 3 said, and he was, he was, he was howled down for this, whatever you think of Barack Obama,

Speaker 3 said, we should meet with the Iranian leaders face to face. And Trump did similar maneuvers

Speaker 3 first term. Why would he? Yeah, with Kim Jong-un, et cetera, et cetera.
And again, he's sucking up to dictators. Oh, shut up.

Speaker 3 I mean, was North Korea policy more stable from 2017 to 2021 or 2021 to 2025?

Speaker 3 I don't think after 25 years of this nonsense, killing dictators and watching their countries become more chaotic and more dangerous to the United States and the world, that we have any obligation to listen to people who chirp like that.

Speaker 3 No. Sucking up to dictators.
Oh, shut up. To link it up.
To do anything, actually.

Speaker 3 So we started this conversation with sort of the campaign against the cadres that are now serving Secretary Hexeth.

Speaker 3 The people that are leading it, as far as I can infer, are oftentimes many of the people that were behind the original Iraq War. And so.
Well, yeah. Yeah.
So this may seem obvious.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm 55, so this is driving me completely insane. I thought after

Speaker 3 we discovered that the pretext of the war was a lie, that those people would, I don't know, don ash's

Speaker 3 sackcloth and go like sit on a pillar for 10 years. I think a lot of Americans assume that they did.
So we do this for a while. No, they didn't.

Speaker 3 They went and run the World Bank and they still run the State Department.

Speaker 3 And Toria Newland, who was an architect of the Iraq war, was an architect of the Ukraine war. Like this, it just doesn't end.
But most Americans have real jobs and don't know this.

Speaker 3 And so these people are disguised or shrouded from public view. And they are still quite effective at driving home an agenda.
In fact, I would assume they will win absent pushback.

Speaker 3 Oh, they'll definitely win absent pushback. Oh, 100%.
Yeah. So they are, they're still.
That's why I wanted to interview you. Yeah, they're still hegemonic.

Speaker 3 And even if, even if they're a minority government, so to speak.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And

Speaker 3 I'm, because I've spent my life in the media, I'm very kind of fixated on their enablers,

Speaker 3 their agents in the American news media.

Speaker 3 And one of them who's working, has been working for years on their behalf, on behalf of Permanent Washington, the Foreign Policy Establishment, every bad idea, is Jennifer Griffin at Fox, the Pentagon reporter,

Speaker 3 who

Speaker 3 is now

Speaker 3 basically texting Domino, is that the Michael D'Amino. Yeah, is

Speaker 3 running around on behalf of

Speaker 3 her sources at the Pentagon

Speaker 3 doing their bidding, trying to torpedo these guys because

Speaker 3 permanent staff doesn't want to be challenged on anything.

Speaker 3 And okay, you know, there's a role for that kind of behavior. It's called lobbying, but it's a little crazy that like a supposed news reporter would be acting like that.
I'm not guessing.

Speaker 3 This is a fact. She's doing that right now and has been doing that kind of thing for as long as I've been paying attention, like a couple, couple decades.
How does that continue?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know her personally, but what I will say is

Speaker 3 the role of most Pentagon reporters has always struck me since I've, I've, I've done this as extremely hierarchical.

Speaker 3 What do you mean by hierarchical? It almost felt like the reporters worked for the Pentagon. Well, of course they

Speaker 3 in any place that I've worked that had a Pentagon correspondent, and

Speaker 3 that was the only way you stayed in the room. And

Speaker 3 isn't this a democracy?

Speaker 3 Where we have civilian command of the armed forces and the entire federal government works for the population of the country, its voters, its citizens, its its constituents, its shareholders. No.

Speaker 3 There's no sense of that whatsoever in Washington at all. Yeah.
It's like, what are you doing here? I think it's fast moving.

Speaker 3 I mean, I mean, you didn't see criticisms or skepticisms of the military from the right until the very last few years, including from the new president,

Speaker 3 including from organs of conservative media. I think it started with Mark Milley, but also all the sort of.
Well, some of us were at it before that. Troy, I know, but

Speaker 3 in public opinion. It was considered a fringe position.
It's not fringe.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, I just refer you back to the pivot point in American politics in my lifetime, which was the 2016 debate in Greenville, South Carolina, where Donald Trump, home of the highest percentage of military veterans of any state, famously, and Donald Trump came out against the Iraq War and all the dumbos at the channel I work for and in Washington are like, oh, he's lost it now.

Speaker 3 He'll never get the nomination. He's offended all the veterans.

Speaker 3 And of course, all the guys whose lives were destroyed fighting these wars, not on behalf behalf of the United States, not to the benefit of the United States, they were filled with many emotions, frustration, shame, rage, sadness.

Speaker 3 And they immediately

Speaker 3 knew what he was talking about. And no one in D.C.
knew what he was doing. I think he overperformed his polling.
So like

Speaker 3 he was polling a certain, he was, he was ahead, and the Bush family came in. That's when it was the last stand for Mr.
Jeb in February of 2016. And George W.
Bush campaigned finally for Jeb.

Speaker 3 And it was like, we got to keep him in the race. We're going to make our stand.
And he did the big fat mistake that is a rock debate. And I think Trump was up 10 or 15.

Speaker 3 I think he won by over 20 in that debate. Don't quote me on that, but

Speaker 3 it was something like that. He was right before the primary.
It was over the polling. So not only did he not go down and still won, he went up.
and then clearly triumphed.

Speaker 3 That was the moment when I was just, you know, whatever his flaws, I was for Trump because here was a guy telling a real truth, a hard truth that no one wanted him to tell and was

Speaker 3 rewarded for it. And I just felt like that was, that's consistent with my principles and beliefs, which is you ought to tell the truth.

Speaker 3 And a healthy country rewards people who tell the truth, not people who lie. There's a cynical bet, though, I would say, that

Speaker 3 and it's a cynical bet on Trump and it's a cynical bet on Americans and it's a cynical bet on Republicans and Independents, which is I'll just I'll just, let's use the actual language of center left or left-wing media.

Speaker 3 It's a cult.

Speaker 3 And once the cult leader leaves,

Speaker 3 we can just go back to 2005 and

Speaker 3 implant the same old free trade, open borders, maybe, endless neoconservatism. And actually,

Speaker 3 the people that are driving

Speaker 3 the opposition to these selections in the Pentagon agree with President Trump's critics in spirit and in practice.

Speaker 3 You know, that's an interesting analysis. I mean, it's like MSNBC level dumb person analysis, but it's also like a real analysis.

Speaker 3 And there is a sense in which devotion to Trump has a religious quality to it. I mean, that's undeniable.
I was just in D.C. for the inauguration.
I can't confirm that.

Speaker 3 And there are a lot of reasons for that.

Speaker 3 I think a lot of voters feel like Trump is the only person who cares about them. He's their only option.
And so they're on board regardless because where else are they going? And

Speaker 3 I think that's true, A, and B, I think that's a reflection of like how badly the leadership of the country has failed.

Speaker 3 People will take anything other than that. But I also think saying true things out loud changes history.
I think that's the lesson of history.

Speaker 3 The only people who actually change history are not the ones who marshal the biggest armies, but the ones who speak the truth out loud. I think it's a holy act.
I think it's a transformative act.

Speaker 3 And all of history is the story of that act, actually. And sometimes it, you know, it takes centuries for the consequences to unfold, but they do.
It's inevitable. It changes everything.

Speaker 3 That's why there's such a

Speaker 3 almost a crazed attempt to shut down people from speaking. Why speaking? They don't care about violence.

Speaker 3 They care about talking because they understand correctly that that's what matters over time, right? So once Trump has said all this stuff, there's kind of no going back. No.

Speaker 3 Do you think, I mean, that's my view. I don't know.

Speaker 3 No, I don't agree with the cynical bet. I think it's a bad bet, which is why the tactics are increasingly hysterical and

Speaker 3 marginal.

Speaker 3 But we're robbed of like a real debate. I mean, I don't know.
You know,

Speaker 3 if you think it's so important to kill the leaders of Iran and get into a full-scale war with a real country, which Iran is, which is part of a real coalition. They won't say full-scale.

Speaker 3 They'll say that

Speaker 3 they'll say that the Ayatollah has to go. It's very important to use as scary words as possible.
Ayatollah, the mullahs, the Islamic Republic emphasize,

Speaker 3 you know, and again, like

Speaker 3 basically that bin Laden, who's dead, runs a country, even though he's a different ethnicity and a different religion. And so it doesn't really matter.
You're stupid. And we need to do this again.

Speaker 3 And like,

Speaker 3 they won't say an invasion, but again, some of the people pushing this stuff didn't say an invasion in 1996.

Speaker 3 They softened the ground. There was a debate on it.
I guess that's the point. There wasn't a debate.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's a little harder here, too, because on the question of Russia, it's been surprisingly effective for them to just dismiss all criticism as sponsored by Putin.

Speaker 3 Like, you don't think it's a good idea to prop up speed is very important. The Zelensky government, you're a Putin puppet or whatever.

Speaker 3 You want someone to do something? Can you really call like a white American Christian guy a puppet of the mullahs? Probably not.

Speaker 3 I don't think that works, right?

Speaker 3 Does it?

Speaker 3 I guess they're trying it with Steve Wickoff. You're a tool of Qatar.

Speaker 3 The Shiites, I don't think as a rhetorical matter, it's quite as easy. Should we address the actual allegation?

Speaker 3 I mean, so Wickoff, I believe, took his real estate firm, took some sort of investment from Qatar. And

Speaker 3 so, first of all, I would say

Speaker 3 throughout the Trump entourage, a lot of them have worked with Gulf states.

Speaker 3 And as far as I can tell, the real estate business is rife with investments from Gulf states. And then additionally, as far as I'm aware, this is hardly that man's business.

Speaker 3 The domestic, I mean, you can't buy an apartment in New York because there's so much Chinese money in the residential real estate market. So like, okay, so the argument is what?

Speaker 3 You're only allowed to invest in your own company's country's real estate? Okay, let's start here. Let's ban foreign investment in our real estate markets.
Oh, no, that's anti-capitalist.

Speaker 3 Just the whole thing doesn't make sense. What are they saying?

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 3 Well, with a Kazar argument specifically, I mean, I think it's an unusual place. It was supposed to be the Eighth Emirate.
So it is separate from the UAE.

Speaker 3 It is the most conservative of those emirates, I would say, at least in terms of the government.

Speaker 3 They have a perspective. They spend money on media.
They spend money on press junkets. They have an influence operation.
No question.

Speaker 3 But the idea that this small jetting,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 LNG-dependent

Speaker 3 peninsula

Speaker 3 controls U.S. foreign policy, hook, line, and sinker, top to bottom.

Speaker 3 If you think that, I don't think you're extremely,

Speaker 3 it's worth having an honest, I've never seen one, there's never has been one, but an honest conversation about foreign influence on American policy. I think that's a totally legitimate topic.

Speaker 3 And, you know, we've kind of done a lot of lying and pretending, for example, that Russia has like undue influence over American foreign policy. It's absurd.
But, but why not have that conversation?

Speaker 3 So, are there, are there foreign countries that exert influence on American policy

Speaker 3 whose interests supersede those of American citizens when you know in the minds of policymakers? And, you know, there may be some of those.

Speaker 3 How would we rank Qatar

Speaker 3 you know, in terms of its influence? Maybe, maybe not in the top three. Yeah, I know.
Right. So just having lived in D.C., this whole conversation is like so infuriatingly false and just silly.

Speaker 3 I mean, are they running Intel operations against us? Is there a lot of Qatar surveillance in Washington? A lot of Qatar agents running around the Willard Hotel. I don't think so.
Maybe.

Speaker 3 Very, very, Very well disguised. Like, what are you talking about? I mean, there are countries doing that.
Are they hacking the Pentagon's mainframes? I don't think, oh, China's doing that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Right. Okay.
So. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, but making the allegation, though, is a kind of armor, though. It makes you seem informed.
It makes you seem like a sort of a spy master.

Speaker 3 You know, like, I know something you don't.

Speaker 3 I'm more serious. Quote unquote traps.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. Like, like, like, let's not have a conversation.
And it's very anti-democratic, small D.

Speaker 3 It is not agreeing to disagree. It is not saying we have different values and shaking each other's hand and walking out of the room.

Speaker 3 It is shutting down the spirit of the system. Well, so that's exactly the complaint that I have.

Speaker 3 And that's the problem that I have with Barry Weiss. It's the problem I have with Jen Griffin.
It's the problem I have with the Washington Post.

Speaker 3 And just so much of the media coverage of foreign policy is based on insinuation and like the cruelest sort of character-destroying insinuations that you're not loyal to your own country.

Speaker 3 They reach for the biggest source. They go, man, they go right for the face.
And I just think that that's beneath a great nation like ours. I think it's beneath any decent person to behave.

Speaker 3 Like if you have evidence that someone's selling out his country, tell me what it is. But to start with that, to accuse Steve Wickoff of being a tool of cutter, it's like so over the top.

Speaker 3 I just feel like it's important to call out the people doing it and say, you're disgusting. We're not listening to you anymore.

Speaker 3 You have no influence except that you project through aggression and threats. And like,

Speaker 3 we're not, we're not playing along. I think a lot of it is effective in Republican politics.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Because,

Speaker 3 you know, so you were there for the inauguration, I observed a week ago.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I've always observed that

Speaker 3 it is usually when I meet someone from a red state, like a deep red state, Oklahoma or Alabama, it's often their first time in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3 It's very like Roman province visiting Rome for the first time. Totally.

Speaker 3 I'm here from Gaul. Yeah.
Show me around. Yeah.
And

Speaker 3 versus, I would say, Blue State America actually has a lot, the coasts have a lot more familiarity with D.C. Yes.
Back and forth, airport access,

Speaker 3 et cetera, et cetera. So when they hear the argument going on in the Capitol, there's actually a de facto trust

Speaker 3 there that might be not as much there on the Democratic side.

Speaker 3 There's actually more jaundiced cynicism on the Democratic side. So it's less effective.
They assume that the,

Speaker 3 despite it all, despite all of the failures that you've announced, that you've reported on fairly tirelessly, they assume that the people in D.C. know what they're doing.

Speaker 3 And I'm not sure that's the greatest default assumption. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I mean, I think the track record is pretty

Speaker 3 speaks conclusively.

Speaker 3 I I mean, look,

Speaker 3 respectfully to the president, I mean, Donald Trump, again,

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 the only U.S. president who was not a general or a former statewide official or federal official to get the presidency.

Speaker 3 And with all due respect to the new president, a healthy country doesn't elect someone like that. It had that level of outsider,

Speaker 3 that level of outsider could only exist within a polity that was deeply sick. And I think he knows that.
I think he recognizes that. And the fact that

Speaker 3 the Capitol doesn't imbibe that lesson, I think they're imbibing it a little bit more, but it's like,

Speaker 3 I mean, it's still bizarre. 10 years on.
I mean, Trump, June 2015, so it'll be June this year, 10 years of Trump. you know, longer than Obama at this point, the Trump era

Speaker 3 in spirit, in length.

Speaker 3 It's like, well, maybe there's something wrong with this country, but it's like a a 5% recognition.

Speaker 3 It's not a 95%.

Speaker 3 I think national, I mean, first of all, I agree completely. And I wrote a piece at the very beginning of this whole saga almost 10 years ago.
This is shocking, vulgar, and right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's winning because you failed. It's simple, you know, obvious.
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Speaker 3 Five years since the beginning of COVID. And yet, for some reason, we still don't know answers to the most basic questions.
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Speaker 3 And now a documentary filmmaker called Jenner First is out with a new film explaining exactly what happened. The film was called Thank You, Dr.
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Speaker 3 Anyway, I don't think DC gets it, but I also think at this point, Trump is the most powerful president, certainly since Roosevelt. Interesting.

Speaker 3 And the potential for achieving his promises is really high. America has greater problems than its head since the Great Depression, maybe even bigger than it had then.

Speaker 3 And we have a chance to address them, probably not solve all of them, but make some headway on things that could help Americans, sealing the border, stopping the chaos, just taking a breather so we can figure out how to fix the country.

Speaker 3 And the only thing that could derail that is another foreign war. We can't do it with this stuff.

Speaker 3 It is an actual choice. It's an actual choice.
We cannot do the border if we do the Middle East. So you can do it.

Speaker 3 What, 200,000 people a year dying of drug ODs and no one said anything about it and endless lectures about Ukraine?

Speaker 3 And it's no disrespect to the Ukrainians, who I really feel sorry for, but like, that's so unbelievable that that happened. It's like a bad dream.

Speaker 3 And now we've woken up from the dream and we have this chance. And I'm sorry.
I just, you know, with respect to Barry Weiss and Jen Griffin, you can't do that to us again.

Speaker 3 It's just not going to not go without a fight this time. We have to reorient toward our own interests.

Speaker 3 And that's no disrespect to any other country, to our allies who we wish well and will help to the extent we can, but like the idea that we're responsible for all these other countries when we're dying here,

Speaker 3 no mas.

Speaker 3 Is that a radical position? That's my actual position in my heart. That's my actual position.

Speaker 3 I agree, but

Speaker 3 it's very upsetting, not only to

Speaker 3 leaders of some foreign countries. And this is not just the Middle East.

Speaker 3 We didn't even talk about Russia or Ukraine, but like, I mean, that perspective is obviously very, very relevant for extricating the United States out of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Speaker 3 And almost every European capital is unhappy with that.

Speaker 3 And, you know, you can have a conversation with a nice Danish person, and you might agree on immigration or trade or wine.

Speaker 3 But you mentioned, like, hey, I'm not really sure the United States should be underwriting quagmire in Ukraine. And like, the conversation shuts down.

Speaker 3 It is stunning. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, they're hell-bent on suicide.
The Western Europeans, and not the Eastern Europeans or Central Europeans, but the Western Europeans

Speaker 3 have decided to kill themselves. And it's almost like if someone's standing on a bridge or in a window of a skyscraper and you're trying to talk them back in, it's hard.

Speaker 3 And who knows why that happens? I think there's a supernatural element at work. It's my personal view.
But whatever you think the cause is, that's what it is.

Speaker 3 You destroy, you blow up Nord Stream, destroy the German economy, and you're not allowed to say anything about it in Germany. I don't know that we can help you at that point.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? Like if you're that intent on self-harm, that anxious to destroy your own civilization, make it impossible for your children to live there,

Speaker 3 then you're killing yourself. You can't help someone who doesn't want to help himself.
Like go ahead and jump then. Kind of.
That's how I feel.

Speaker 3 But just from an American perspective, like all of this has been bad for us. There's no way to pretend otherwise except to

Speaker 3 launch into some airy moral lecture about dictatorships and Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain or something. Just shut up.
Okay.

Speaker 3 The Churchill thing's really. That's just played out.
It's played out. I mean, it's played out.

Speaker 3 But there's a, there's a, there's a gamble that some of this stuff isn't played out, though. I mean, there's a, there's a gamble that

Speaker 3 that this, I mean,

Speaker 3 I think people have, have

Speaker 3 this country has a generational problem, right?

Speaker 3 Generations don't get along.

Speaker 3 I think that's fair to say. For good reason.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I think there's just a bet that a lot of the voters that made the decisions in the 90s and 2000s

Speaker 3 are dumb and don't care about their kids' future and will vote for the exact same thing. Clearly, they don't.
Yeah. Sorry.
And will exert pressure on the new administration to do the same thing. And

Speaker 3 I think there's a bet that the president is a desperate cynical man who will do whatever it takes when he's pressured.

Speaker 3 And I think the early evidence is that it's untrue. I mean, I don't, I mean,

Speaker 3 evidence is that Trump is less cynical than even his supporters thought he was. I think that's the truth.
I mean, there's,

Speaker 3 do you want to discuss the Pompeo, Brian Hook

Speaker 3 stuff?

Speaker 3 I would. I was just reading

Speaker 3 the Barry Weiss editorial about how pulling Pompeo's.

Speaker 3 What did she say? I didn't read it. It's outrageous.
It's a betrayal of Trump's promises. Mike Pompeo.
Is that what the Free Press argued? Yeah, that you can't, you're not allowed.

Speaker 3 You are required to pay for Mike Pompeo's security detail.

Speaker 3 And I will just say point blank, as someone who has faced greater physical threats than Mike Pompeo, I can promise you that.

Speaker 3 I, you know, if I have security, I pay for it myself. Like, wow, why does Mike Pompeo, as a private citizen, get to stick me with the bill for his security detail?

Speaker 3 Like, how does that work, Barry Weiss? And the point is that Mike Pompeo is a faithful servant.

Speaker 3 of the kind of ideas that she is here to push on the rest of us, and therefore he will be defended at all costs. But like, let's just be honest about what's going on.
Anyway, sorry. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, details roll off. The government doesn't usually advertise it.

Speaker 3 No, everyone's got a detail. Fauci has a detail.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because he's in my dog park in Washington. I hear about it.

Speaker 3 I think the interesting thing, so it's very easy to just glaze over Trump fighting with officials. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, and sort of the

Speaker 3 example of this is Trump versus Bolton. And we can talk about that and it's fun, but it's kind of over, right? Bolton's not in the mix.
And we're at least of Trump. And like,

Speaker 3 but he's still got bits of egg in his mustache. And I don't have his cell anymore, so I can't tell him, but he needs to fix that.
Yeah. I so

Speaker 3 Pompeo and Hook.

Speaker 3 I mean, look. Tell us who they are.
Mike. Yeah, so Mike Pompeo was the former Secretary of State, former CIA director, former Kansas Congressman, former West Point valedictorian,

Speaker 3 Harvard graduate, Harvard law graduate. Ozek accuser.

Speaker 3 One can't make it. I'm doing the whole CV here.
Okay, right. So,

Speaker 3 and he was.

Speaker 3 I'm so bitchy. I'm so sorry that I said that.

Speaker 3 It's beneath me. I shouldn't have said that.

Speaker 3 The Bolton-Trump feud is old.

Speaker 3 The disagreement with Pompeo is potentially quite new. And so

Speaker 3 by all available information, Pompeo was in the mix

Speaker 3 for Secretary of Defense, most likely,

Speaker 3 in the days after the election. So much so that his son, Donald Trump Jr., intervened in a sort of online campaign

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 other allies within that meal

Speaker 3 stopped both Pompeo and the former U.N. Ambassador, South Carolinian governor Nikki Haley, from getting administration posts.
I had heard about that, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Pompeo

Speaker 3 patriotic Americans rallied, as they did in Boston in the 18th century,

Speaker 3 to act on behalf of their nation at some personal risk, but they did it anyway.

Speaker 3 Unsung hero. One of Pompeo's former deputies, Brian Hook, who ran something called the Iran Study Group and had various other portfolios and titles at the State Department.

Speaker 3 He's actually someone Pompeo inherited from Rex Tillerson, his predecessor. He kept him on.

Speaker 3 Brian Hook, at

Speaker 3 various points throughout the transition in the last 100 days, was reported to be running the State Department's transition at some point.

Speaker 3 Then was rumored, again, rumors, I don't, if it's it's rumored, I don't post about it. I don't tweet it out, I don't write about it, but it was rumored to have been fired.
Very unclear.

Speaker 3 Trump,

Speaker 3 in the days leading up to him taking the Oval Office

Speaker 3 oath,

Speaker 3 issued, essentially,

Speaker 3 an enormous denunciation, a fatwa against Mr. Hook.
Extraordinary. To say, not only is this guy not in the mix, I hate him.
And he said that. So that occurred.

Speaker 3 And then additionally,

Speaker 3 both Hook and Pompeo's security detail was removed in the last few days. I don't know that Brian Hook has served in government in four years.
Why would he? He definitely has not secured

Speaker 3 a security detail paid for by taxpayers. Not an expert on who gets Secret Service details.
But can I just, I want to say that.

Speaker 3 Actually, I can actually directly answer that. Yeah.
So the key thing here is that there is an allegation, a belief, many in the intelligence community believes this,

Speaker 3 that there were serious, credible plans by the Iranians to assassinate members of the Trump high command, as it were.

Speaker 3 So Trump, Hook, John Bolton, et cetera, et cetera, in revenge, principally for the Salamani assassination. They're getting a lot of terror attacks in the United States, you've noticed.
Oh, no.

Speaker 3 No, that was intentional. And so,

Speaker 3 and so that is the essential,

Speaker 3 that is the causes. I'm just going to have to scoff at all of the

Speaker 3 causes belly force.

Speaker 3 I think the key thing here is

Speaker 3 the critique on Trump always was he fired Bolton, but he didn't really understand why. So he just he soured on the guy, but he didn't change any policy.

Speaker 3 You know, he didn't learn.

Speaker 3 This is the sort of pedantic way of looking at the president.

Speaker 3 But with the Hook and Pompeo

Speaker 3 removal from his inner circle,

Speaker 3 there is, I think, very credible evidence that Trump's personal grudges are now blending quite heavily with policy. He doesn't trust the Iran-Hawk old guard.

Speaker 3 A lot of the Iran-Hawk old guard think tanks struck out in getting

Speaker 3 transition officials and officials in this government and again

Speaker 3 circled around this very unlikely Pentagon

Speaker 3 helmed by a guy who has changed his life, it appears, in pretty severe ways over the last five years, both ideologically and morally, is

Speaker 3 this

Speaker 3 very new Pentagon that is now

Speaker 3 being targeted by all the usual suspects. And it is the biggest story in American politics that people aren't talking about.

Speaker 3 So if I could sum up what I think you're saying, it is that Donald Trump may have actually broken the grip of the neocons on Washington.

Speaker 3 I mean, you control the Pentagon. You could, you control the military.
I mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's the biggest. It just seems like this is, because there was always this question about Trump.

Speaker 3 Like, you, you get up and you give these speeches where you say, we don't want more pointless wars. I believe in peace through strength.

Speaker 3 Not a wuss. It's not Jimmy Carter, but like, you know, you assert American power, but you don't embroil a country in wars that you can't win for no reason.

Speaker 3 It's a very moderate, sensible, common sense, I would say, view. So you say those things, but then you hire John Bolton.
And

Speaker 3 the question is, why? And Trump would say, I've heard him say, well, I hired Bolton. I beg your pardon.
I hired Bolton because he's a lunatic and he's a warmonger freak.

Speaker 3 He's obviously like watching war porn late at night and people can smell that on him. And so when he goes into a negotiation, he scares the crap out of everybody.
And then I show up,

Speaker 3 you know, he's the heavy and

Speaker 3 he's the bad cop.

Speaker 3 I I mean, I've heard Trump say that. And

Speaker 3 I didn't know if I believe that or not, but I'm starting to think that I should have just believed him because it sounds like Trump's actual instincts are what he says they are.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, the bulletin firing itself is, again, ancient history, but

Speaker 3 it's circled around an issue of policy. So I remember.
Yeah. So, I mean, Trump had invited the Taliban, which was then the outlaw

Speaker 3 not government of Afghanistan, as it is today,

Speaker 3 to Camp David on 9-11. I just love this sound.

Speaker 3 So Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David. He did.
He literally did that.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm just reporting the facts here.

Speaker 3 But it's a great sentence. So Donald Trump invited the Taliban.
So tonight, who's coming for dinner tonight at Camp David? I know the Taliban will be here.

Speaker 3 Bolton was wiped out before this meeting never happened, but it was the instigating.

Speaker 3 incident for the final breakdown of their relationship.

Speaker 3 I do think it's important, Kurt, to just recognize the inherent hilarity of a lot of, you know, just it is, in addition to being grave and, you know, historically significant, it's very

Speaker 3 funny. A lot of this stuff is very funny.
It's sort of funny. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's pretty great. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 so under your, you're very restrained and businesslike and precise as a reporter should be, as an editor should be, but the story that you're telling, I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth, is a, is a, is a story of like real change.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Finally, we actually appear to be getting to like a foreign policy that puts America close to the center of the

Speaker 3 of the action. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Is that what you're seeing? No, I mean, I mean, I mean, if he sees this through,

Speaker 3 this is the biggest presidency.

Speaker 3 Certainly since Reagan, you alluded to FDR. I mean, it is moving the ship of state

Speaker 3 and people are going to try to stop him from doing it. Yes.
But

Speaker 3 they're not going to say that he's bad, though.

Speaker 3 They're going to go after.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I just want to counter signal by saying, I think what you're saying is true. I think it's real.
And I've never admired Trump more.

Speaker 3 And I don't think I'm going to ask Kisser on the Trump question, but this is like America really needs this. It's super important.
And it's not radical at all.

Speaker 3 It's not attacking anyone or canceling our allyship with any country at all. It's just

Speaker 3 readjusting expectations for what we can achieve. The reason that I started covering war and foreign policy principally is that the reality is that U.S.
domestic policy is a morass.

Speaker 3 It's impossible to get anything done. Exactly.

Speaker 3 Obama tried to do a healthcare plan.

Speaker 3 Six years in, they couldn't even get the website working.

Speaker 3 The country's hard to govern.

Speaker 3 But externally, the president is imperial. He's God.

Speaker 3 Quite literally the most powerful person on earth. And

Speaker 3 if you want to burnish a legacy real quick, you do big things in foreign policy. Well, you do shocking things.

Speaker 3 that's what all the republican senators have figured out you do surprising things you're john mccain like you're you know whatever you've got a lot of problems in your personal and public life but you can bomb around eastern europe and get treated like an emperor right and feel like you're doing something you're you know jim risch or mike rounds or some like u.s senator nobody's ever heard of even in his home state but when you travel to romania to tour a nato base people are like oh you know senator risch is here you know it's like

Speaker 3 the foreign relations chair yeah So. Right.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 So that's a, that's a big, that's a big motivator for our lawmakers, isn't it? For sure. For sure.
I mean, yeah. I mean, you go to Idaho Falls and no one's like, oh, I can't believe you're here.

Speaker 3 But, you know. It was Chairman Rish.
Yeah,

Speaker 3 Chairman Risch. It's like such an absurd.

Speaker 3 Anyway, excuse me.

Speaker 3 Interesting. So,

Speaker 3 and I interrupted you because I can't control myself.

Speaker 3 Zero self-control.

Speaker 3 Get on the topic of pizza or neocons, and I'm just out of control.

Speaker 3 Tell me your analysis of Trump canceling the security details for Brian Hook and Mike Pompeo. Well, he seems to have the authentic

Speaker 3 view that these people can afford it,

Speaker 3 especially with Fauci

Speaker 3 and especially with Bolton. He specifically flagged them.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And Pompeo, like, who's now running around being like, I'm actually my businessman.

Speaker 3 He's on a board of a Ukrainian company as well.

Speaker 3 Well, he's on, I think, more than one board, but he's certainly running around, including with people I know, saying, I'm really kind of a business guy.

Speaker 3 Look, I mean, so the Pompeo's thing, I mean, it's like, I mean, supremely interesting because I,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 I think it's somebody who probably would have positioned himself to run in a major way had Trump lost. I think it's somebody who's not going to quit being president.
This is not an unintelligent man.

Speaker 3 Pompeo is smart. This is, yeah, this is a real fighter.
He's not dumb. This is a real fighter.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I don't want to say he's part of the cynical bet crowd, but he's making a bet that the Trump thing will pass and I will be able to steamroll people like Fance and even Rubio in the future because I'm more vicious.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 in the meantime,

Speaker 3 you know, maybe make some money,

Speaker 3 influence the debate, et cetera, et cetera. And he's very impressive if you don't know.
I mean, like, I mean, if you don't come in in with huge foreign policy convictions, as I think you and I do,

Speaker 3 he can be very persuasive.

Speaker 3 Just for the record, I had no foreign policy convictions. I don't think I'm ideological on the question at all.
I just think in general, our foreign policy should serve the nation. I am.
I mean,

Speaker 3 so I think that's what's very interesting about some of these Pentagon picks, not to keep linking it back, but also the vice president.

Speaker 3 A lot of these people, my generation, the millennials, fought in these wars. Oh, yeah.
And

Speaker 3 although the baby boomers forget it, we're now old, you know, and we grew up and we're quite mad about it. And it's a bi, it's a bipartisan thing.

Speaker 3 It's not just like a Democrat, you know, anti-Iraq war, indie music thing.

Speaker 3 It's like young Republican people hate it too. Oh, I think, and they might hate it more,

Speaker 3 actually, which is actually the interesting thing.

Speaker 3 And the Republican Party, frankly, might, under Trump, might be a vessel of anti-war sentiment far more effectively than the Democrats. I mean, I didn't see a lot of protests for the Ukraine war.

Speaker 3 The Israel stuff was pretty interesting. That was probably was number one threat to Biden circa April.
Remember that? For sure.

Speaker 3 But, you know, if you look at the conversation online, if you look at the sentiments of younger conservatives, younger Republicans, the anti-war stuff is big and it is not going anywhere.

Speaker 3 And I think that also drives the sense of a timetable, which is,

Speaker 3 you know, we've got these older people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They have a certain belief set.
They're the people that voted for the stuff in the 90s and 2000s.

Speaker 3 And we got this, get this stuff done now before the United States turns

Speaker 3 both parties on this stuff. And this was always ⁇ this was ⁇ So we can't afford it anymore, and our allies pivot to China and sell even more defense technology to China.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I do think they're okay, so the backbone of support for these wars has been evangelicals. Let's just be blunt about it.

Speaker 3 It's everyone, you know, beats up on on the neocons or whatever, these fervid intellectuals in Washington, but really the foot soldiers of this have been Fox News viewers who are not

Speaker 3 ideological. They're not intellectuals.
They're not, they're just normal American, patriotic, heavily evangelical people.

Speaker 3 And the truth is, I think a lot of them are beginning to recognize that their religion does not support this at all.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's really clear. Genesis 6, why do we have the flood? Why does God kill everything on earth? All the people except Noah and his family, all the animals except the ones in the ark.

Speaker 3 Why does he do that? Who spells it right out? Because they're committing violence. That's why.

Speaker 3 So it's like the idea that, I mean, the Iraq war breaks out and all these preachers are like, no, no, no, really, we have to fight Islam and kill all these people. And that's what God wants.

Speaker 3 That's not what it says at all.

Speaker 3 And there's no mention of any specific secular government in the New Testament. Sorry, guys.
And I think a lot of Christians are beginning to realize this.

Speaker 3 It doesn't, because you're a Christian doesn't mean you have a specific political agenda at all, I don't think.

Speaker 3 But if your political agenda is like violence, that's prohibited.

Speaker 3 Sorry. And I, it's just, it could not be clear.
It's on every freaking page.

Speaker 3 So I don't know the deception involved in this was just like mind-boggling that these preachers could get up on Fox News and tell you that like, yeah, killing people is what Jesus wants.

Speaker 3 No, that's not true. And I, and I just feel among people I know, a growing recognition of that.
And I think it's a huge problem for the war lobby, which which has used these people as its supporters.

Speaker 3 And you see it in the Congress. You know, I'm an evangelical and I'm for another war with somebody.

Speaker 3 No, you can't do that anymore. They're hoping people are zoned out.
You do think that?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think they're hoping the country's old, tired, zoned out, can't oppose it.
And they're hoping that these initiatives can be achieved piecemeal.

Speaker 3 You know, start by bombing Iran here, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe the government will collapse, et cetera, et cetera, etc to be replaced by what

Speaker 3 uh the same people who replaced assad and qaddafi and saddam and the taliban i mean i think okay i mean to take the other side i mean uh i mean the assad thing is that's like pretty close to the best case scenario of how that could have gone i think in iran it would go way way way worse it's a much bigger country it's hard to know you're rolling the dice you know you start killing people and things go sideways like you think it's it's pretty close to iraq and afghanistan combined combined, right?

Speaker 3 It feels that way to me.

Speaker 3 You have the capacity for major urban violence, a la Iraq. You have huge cities.
The Kabul is small, but you have that. And then additionally, you have the mountain element.
So

Speaker 3 any outlaw contingent can just flee there. I mean, and we learned this with our southern neighbor.
Why is Mexico ungovernable? The mountains.

Speaker 3 You just

Speaker 3 flee. I mean, the entire coastline is...

Speaker 3 Why is Kentucky ungovernable? Same reason. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 yeah yeah i mean so just kidding no no i mean it's i mean it's it's hard to it it would be very very very difficult and ask ask saddam hussein no i tried to invade iran and uh didn't work out for mr hussein that a lot of things didn't so no i i agree uh completely well you have actually given me i asked you to come for this conversation it's late at night I was very exercised about it.

Speaker 3 You were nice enough to come and we're in a hotel room in some city, but

Speaker 3 I thought I was going to be more depressed by the end, but actually, I feel really heartened by what you said.

Speaker 3 Well, thank you for having me. Well, thank you for making me feel a lot better.

Speaker 3 Kurt Mills. Appreciate it.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made, the complete library, tuckercarlson.com.