508: Countdown to War With Iran?

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Eat like a pro this month with Factor, new subscribers only varies by plan, one free breakfast item per box, for one year while subscription is active. I'm Charisa and my experience in all entrepreneurs starts with choppy fry.

I recommend choppy fry the first day. And the platform makes me no problem. I have many problems, but the platform is not one step away. I have the feeling that choppy fry is a platform that can only be optimized. Everything is super simple, integrated and balanced.

And the time and the money that I can't even invest in there. For all in the boxtom. Yet, customers test them off choppy fry.com.de. Welcome back to Palate of the world, I'm Tommy Gitor. I'm Ben Root.

Great to see you. We're in studio.

“I think we've been in the same room since I was in Auckland and...”

Welcome back, New York Munich. Welcome back to U-PAL. Yeah, well, I didn't miss a part in the studio, man. I flew Tuesday night, it's how dedicated I am. I love Tuesday night, it's connected to Tuesday morning.

One up in the evening. I'm usually the one in the hotel, so I know that is. Oh, you're singing in the studio.

I mean, I skipped the second one.

I don't know, I was just too. That time change is wild. LA was negative 19 hours from us, I think, something like that. Anyway, it was fun to be on the road, but good to be back. Um, we're recording this a few hours before Trump stated the union.

PBS, I saw a reporter just say that the speech could be over two hours long. Potentially between two and a half to three hours long. Yeah, I mean, make it four hours. Let's have him give a feed-out cash to perform the show that I wouldn't over a lot of people. Hopefully, it's bullshit, and listeners will already know whether it is or not.

But it does feel like cruel and unusual punishment. I would not go. If I had the out, you know, I'd be at the rally.

“The people, city, and whatever is the alternative to...”

I'd just sitting in the room. Do you like streaming, whatever sports run to you? Yeah, something. Uh, we got a great show for you guys, though. We got to cover Trump administration's rush to war with Iran.

Great. Still going. I'm going to come and head on this city. Yeah, we're just... Still trying to understand why now?

What the goal is? Why we're doing this massive military build-up? What hope there might be for diplomacy? What did the old even look like? It's all of that.

We're also going to cover the global fallout from Trump's tear of getting struck down by the Supreme Court. And what it means, these losses, favor, foreign policy tool, and for all these countries that cut deals already. Uh, then we're going to dig into this interview that Tucker Carlson did with the U.S.

Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, it is a truly wild to our experience that created an international incident. I texted you. I listened to all two and a half hours of the day came out. And I thought, "Oh, this doesn't look a little bit of this because I'd seen the dust

up." And then I just got sucked in.

So the first 20 minutes is just sort of like him talking about how the interview came

to go. It's like so conspiratorial. Yeah. It's crazy. It's just real.

It's not real. I don't. Anyway, we're going to explain that we're going to dig into this fight between an AI company called Enthropic and the Pentagon over the use of its model, Claude. And what it means for all of us, we're trying to figure out how this technology will

shape our future. We're going to talk about an ISIS prison escape in Syria and the ongoing fallout from FBI Director Cash Battells, E.Pray Chug, Trip to Italy, to go fuck around at the Olympics. The boys. Yeah.

I'm in the boys. I'm sure they love to see him. Anyway, then we, then I talk with Carlisthenica about the shocking Cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend. The death of a Cartel leader named El Minceau, which sounds like a Larry David.

He was a real man. Yeah. And then we, we also talk about the area and then about the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to starve the entire island of Cuba for those who don't know Ben and Ricardo

government at the time and Trump is just unwound that in Amarca, Rubio is just single handily

trying to, I guess, starve them all out. Yeah. It's one of the more grotesque things that's happening in the world doesn't get a lot of attention. But we are actively trying to starve to death and island that poses no national security

threat to the United States whatsoever. What everything in the Cuban government name me the national interests in starving those people. Hasn't for a long, long time. A one story we're not going to cover today is the truly historic arrest of the

creep formerly known as Prince Andrew, and that is because we covered it last week on the positive the world, the YouTube channel. So please, subscribe to positive the world on YouTube. We do tons of great bonus episodes like that one and check out this episode if you want to know just how much this this incident has rocked the British royal family, the political

system.

And then since we recorded, things got even hairier over there because the former British

ambassador to the US, Peter Mendelssohn has been arrested on similar charges.

“Remember the sauce stems from them being mentioned in the Epstein files.”

We explain what this misconduct in public office charge means, what it would take to convict them. It's a great episode, but also please, just follow us on YouTube for the love of God, support positive the world on YouTube, follow us on YouTube, subscribe, you know, wherever you're podcasts.

Otherwise, you're just right. We can crap out there. It's a good content, too. It's a good content. We had Prince Andrew.

We did this on Jonathan Pollard, who we'll talk about. Oh, yeah. Talk to interview. So we, we pop up with some good ones. It's a good content, John Pollard makes an early appearance in the Tucker.

Huckabee interview. It's just, it's wild. Anyway, all right, Ben.

“So we're recording this on Tuesday afternoon.”

At this moment, it seems less a question of if Trump will go to war with Iran. But when. And why? And why? Another good question.

There are talks between the US and Iranians sides on Thursday, maybe they'll get to a deal. But again, it's not even clear what kind of deal Trump wants at this point. Like every day, there is a new leak about us thinking or the military options. One report says he wants no enrichment, no nuclear enrichment from Iran.

And then the next day, there's a report that says Trump might allow a deal where Iran has some sort of like token face-saving amount of nuclear enrichment. Other stories are focusing on the kind of wide range of military options he's considering. So you get Alex Ward, over at the Wall Street Journal, had the scoop. The Trump was considering a, quote, initial limited military strike designed to pressure

Iran into cutting a deal. But then there's been other stories that say he's considering this like massive range of strikes that include hitting nuclear sites, hitting missile sites, hitting maybe bombing the IRGC headquarters. Now, Axio said Trump was presented a plan to kill the supreme leader and his son.

So that's nice. So keep it in the family. The only good news is it doesn't seem like he's rolled out commando raids or boots on the ground in Iran, at least for now. But I don't know, could change tomorrow.

This does like, it feels like the final days before the Rock War in 2003, except to your point earlier, we don't know why they want to start the war now. What the end game is, I guess, maybe Trump doesn't either. Regardless, the US has accumulated a truly massive amount of military assets in the Middle East.

So in January, remember, Trump sent the USS Abraham Lincoln from the South China Sea to the Gulf. As an aircraft carrier that comes to three guided missile destroyers in 5,700 or so sailors, then Trump ordered our largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford to the Middle East. They had been deployed in the Caribbean as part of the Venezuelal operation.

The Ford also travels with three destroyers in about 5,000 more troops.

“I think that brings the total to like 14 Navy ships in the region.”

There's also a guided missile submarine floating around there somewhere I'm not sure if that's part of the 14 or not on top of that. The USS Cent, 50 additional fighter jets, AWACs, Commander Control Plains, the EA 18G Growler Plains that do electronic warfare, then according to the AP 85 fuel tankers, 170 cargo planes, more missile defense systems, and then on Monday, the US embassy in Lebanon ordered

all non-essential staff to leave the country.

So Ben, long wind up there, but my question is, what do you think Trump's goal is here? And like, there, I think there's a lot of people who feel like when you assemble this much military hardware, like kind of on the brink of war, it almost becomes inevitable that it is going to happen. If you agree with that theory, I'm certainly concerned about it.

I think it'd be very hard for not to do something. First of all, on the deals, we should note that Woodcoff said that the nuclear program is one week away from developing a fuel for a nuclear weapon, which completely contradicts the claim that they had obliterated the nuclear program. And then a face saving enrichment capability, we used to call that the Iran nuclear deal

under Barack Obama. So, amazing that we have to go through multiple wars to get back to a deal that he just pulled out of. And look, the other things that have come out for negotiation are beyond the nuclear program

To then, that's their insurance policy to survive, that's what allows them to defend themselves. That has been a major ask for Israel since the Iran nuclear deal in 2014. People may remember when BB flew to Washington to give a speech opposing the Iran nuclear deal in front of Congress. And he said no enrichment capability, no ballistic missile program, no support for proxies.

And that is essentially a deal. And we said this at the time, so I'm not just saying this now, that's BB wanting to go a war throne.

Because he knows that the regime will never agree to that.

And so if those are the terms that they're trying to negotiate, they'll never get that. They could get a nuclear deal. They don't need a massive armada to get a nuclear deal, though, or another like a pin prick tiny strike. You bombed him last year, dude.

You bombed him, Jim. Yeah. And this is what's so strange about this is that let's should we break this into two things.

“One is what are the negative consequences that could happen and why we're doing this?”

Because I think it's worth it. I think people have begun to digest just how catastrophic this could be and that's saying it definitely will be. But essentially, if you do the regime change strike, or even if you do the limited strike and Iran hits back this time, because they are tired of getting bombed and feel like they

have to hit back or else they're going to keep getting bombed, then you could have an implosion of that regime. There's not going to be some scenario where in a couple of weeks, a resupalavi, the son of the shawl, a goes in demand is a democratic transition.

This is a country of over 90 million people, heavily armed factions, besieged militia, revolutionary

guard corps. These are not people that are just going to step aside for a democratic transition. The place will probably descend into some kind of civil conflict with a lot of violence. They could also strike and lash out with those basic mislocabilities and hit Qatar, hit Jordan, hit Israel, hit just whatever, just fire in every direction in the Middle East.

To kind of send the point that like, we're not going to go down without fight. This is existential, where ideological people. Or hit Saudi oil infrastructure, or as talking to a smart person yesterday, who reminded me that Iran is really good at offensive cyber operations and there was concerns in previous administrations about them doing things in the US home land, or critical infrastructure.

They also pointed out that Iran's Navy was pretty much left unscathed in the 12-day war. It makes you wonder if that will be put to use in the street or her moves, which could shut down, you know, while it was at 20% of the world's oil goes through the street or her moves.

So, you know, maybe the US is just so much more powerful than the Iranian military, and

they are so decimated that they will just just get a missile off the ground, or maybe something really bad will happen. But remember, it only takes one missile, getting through the missile defense systems, which by the way, are badly depleted both on the US and on the Israeli. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, of course, it's possible it could go well.

“But I think we need to surface these consequences before war, because that's where we”

have done the past. One other thing I've talked to some people in the region that they've been pointing out, which is that you could have a massive refugee crisis. I mean, something that dwarfs even the Syrian one. This is a country four times a size of Syria.

If Iran employs into kind of civil conflict and violence, I mean, you could have 10 million refugees. You know, people flowing into Afghanistan and Pakistan, people flowing into Turkey and into Europe. You know, how would that go in today's politics, right?

There are ethnic groups, minority groups that have separatist ambitions, right? Well, the Belukistan region of Iran, for instance, well, Pakistan could come involved, because they don't want to see separatist, Belukistan movement that could spread across their borders. I mean, this thing should get real very fast. I think what's happened is a lot of the countries in the region, basically everybody

except Israel and the UAE will come back to them. So that's Saudi, that's Turkey, that's Egypt, that's Qatar. They're calling Trump up and Trump listens to those guys, and they're saying, this is fucking crazy. You're putting our stability at risk, you're putting this whole region of risk, because

it's totally unnecessary why you're doing this now. And it's at least causing them to pause, but Tommy, here's this gets to the why.

“And I think we have to just deal with this, because what you're seeing is a lot of leaks”

about who does not want this to happen. So, general can. So yes, because we already know, like, maga, like Tucker Carlson, maga doesn't want this to happen, right? We also know that these countries in the region don't want to happen.

Now we see these leaks that I thought are important that said, general can was warning Trump that this could go very badly, like we were just saying, like even a well-executive military operation could end in disaster and draw a sin more. Trump denied that, but it seems pretty clear based on the number of reports that this is the case.

You look at Trump's cabinet, maga Rubio does not seem that jazzed about this, you know, he's reportedly kind of keeping his cars close to his vest and JD Vance is pushing back. I mean, I think they all realize that this is a much tougher operation than it's well over. And so the question is, like, who is for this?

And there are really only two factions I can think of, but I'm really curious what you

In this country, there's this kind of absolute hawkish dead enders who just lie, they just, they've had it in for the Iranians since 1979 and the same way they've had it in for the Cubans in 1959 and, you know, this is Lindsey Graham, this is just your kind of garden variety hawk or neocon who is just like, we got to finish the job because they're weak. And so the timing is, they're weak now.

Trump can do what are the fucking ones and we won't have a present like that again, so let's do it now. And then the other one is BB, and again, like we have to talk about this, the Israelis are

“interestingly being pretty quiet about this, because I think they know that this is”

unpopular. But in the physical reality of this world, I can tell you that BBNet now has won in the United States to remove the Iranian regime for as long as I've been in politics. Yeah. And there was a lot of reporting, I think back in December, when Trump initially threatened

to bomb Iran again, that these Israelis were saying, well, well, well, don't do it. And that was interesting. It's surprising. And now it's clear that that was only because we did not have the force posture in the region to defend Israel from an Iranian response.

And again, this person was talking to yesterday said, part of, you know, why you want the USS Gerald Ford there is because of the warships that travel with it that have tons of missile defense capabilities and can, you know, fire up interceptor missiles that take down ballistic missiles that's fired at Tel Aviv, right? And now we are posture there.

And there's also at 15s and F-16s and Patriot Missile batteries that have all been moved into the region that can do what the Biden administration did when there was that massive,

you know, barrage fired at the Israelis, which is trying to shoot down basically everything.

That's right. I mean, that, that a lot of those assets in the region are there for defensive purposes as well as offensive. And, and, and, and look, I just think that there's something fundamentally broken when, what, the poll show 80 percent of people are against this in this country.

They were going to do this because, like, some hawks, like, want to get it down and Lindsey Graham in this country and we're like, journal editorial page and BBNN, yeah, I would like this kind of, they absolute dead enter, you know, let's keep fighting wars people.

“And I, I, I, I just still also want to say, like, I think this is, that's not good”

for Israel. Well, like, what if we do this and it goes poorly and that the region descends into chaos? What is that going to do to the long term support for Israel in this country, right? That's already on, on thin ice. So I just, I, I can't, for the life of me, think of some other reason, Iran is not posing

any, like, Iran has always been adversarial, it's always been a shitty regime, we'd like

that they're running people over time to change that regime. The supreme leader, by the way, is 87, he's going to die, and he, he's changing his own regime. And, and the regime can evolve. Now, what threat does Iran pose today to the United States of America that it didn't pose

six months, two years, six years during Trump's first term, like, there's nothing different. If anything, there are less dangerous, yeah, look, there's not any kind of existential threat. That's for sure, right? Like, the nuclear material was the biggest concern that's when we were always told. One week, we're two weeks away, we're four hours away from them having a nuclear weapon

like Trump, as Trump said, they set back that program several years. It's not completely and totally obliterated, but it's certainly set back. You're right, that, that fundamentally hasn't changed since what was it June of last year. They certainly, they've, they've developed more ballistic missiles, they probably rebuilt some of their defenses, but my sense of talking to some, some experts is that they're

still, like, pretty weakened. My, got on what's happening is that you have people like Wendy Graham who are in Trump's year all the time, and saying to him, Mr. President, if you take out Maduro, if you take out those communist down in Cuba, and you take out the Iranian regime, you are the greatest president in history, you are historic, you are this, you are that.

And all he sees is, like, kind of, the easy good outcome, right? Because this guy has gotten super lucky in the Venezuela operation, you got really lucky after the Custom Soleimani assassination back in 2020 that no service members were killed in those operations. And it didn't become this, as before, it's like major war.

And so we think it's like the cost of war is really low when it's easy. I think you're exactly right.

“I think there's these consolation of forces, right?”

Because the, the regime is weakened. And so, and then you have this protest movement, so that weakens them further, but not enough to topple the regime. And so I think that the Lindsey Graham argument is, make your mark and history be the one

that finally got rid of this regime that has bedeviled the United States for a long time.

Babies, probably saying in version the same thing, he's wanted to get rid of this regime for a long time. I will say, the ballistic missiles, if people, they're not a threat to us. Now, are they threat to Israel? Yes, but one of the things we've learned, you know, throughout the whole history of the Islamic Republic is they're not just firing those ballistic missiles

it is real. And in fact, they've been methodically weakened.

Yeah. That, that's its principle objective is to survive. And so I don't think just because they're manufacturing ballistic missiles again that they're going to launch an offensive war against Israel. Yeah, there's defensive weapons that can shoot those missiles down.

Israel's bombarded and broke in a lot of the Iranian proxies without Iran doing that. Iran only fired ballistic missiles at Israel after Israel attacked them. And so I just, you know, I don't think that there's an offensive threat.

If the reason is to do this to protect Israel, first of all, Israel can protect itself.

But also, and with our support, by the way, that their missile defense systems are provided by us. And but also, I just, I don't think this regime is like on the precipice of launching an offensive pre-emptive strike on Israel. And largely because they know that they would be the response would be the sole force.

They'd be the sole force. They'd be the right. So it's government.

“I think the only, yeah, like every sort of response, they had, look, their bad actors, they”

fund terrorism. They do all kinds of shitty stuff, none of us like that. But, you know, their responses to getting bomb constantly has been relatively measure, like warning us in advance before they shot missiles at our base because they don't want to get out of the way.

They're talking decently. They want to survive.

And it's like, at some point though, what if, like, Ali Vias has been out sort of making

this observation, at some point they are going to calculate that they need to exact some sort of cost in response, or else they're just going to get bombed every six to eight months in perpetuity. And I think that, that might be what happened. Ali also had some good analysis that the more restrained commanders are the ones

they were killed. And that the younger people who kind of moved into these roles are like, it was a mistake. Not to respond. Do you see the reports and the times that the Supreme Leader has had like, name, like, four levels of this succession?

It's like, sir, that's a great idea in theory, but in practice when like the missiles are raining down on you. I don't know that you're like your, uh, carpool, you know, snow day phone tree is going to quite work. One of the things I was going to say, because there's a huge risk to our personnel and people

could get hurt and killed, but also, because it doesn't come up in the conversation, a lot of a Ryan's are very killed and not just the bad guys. I mean, Tehran is a gigantic city, like, there were a lot of Iranians are killed in the 12-day war. And those facts I've kicked up again, by the way, there were five days of protest, like

a bunch of college campuses. And so the fact that we're being so kind of kind of glib about that, we're so desensitized and we so dehumanized thoroughly, these populations, they were just talking about like bombing them with mass military force and we're not even thinking about the human costs on the Iranian side as well.

Absolutely, and there's also like very little discussion of the human costs to the service members. Like, yes. Of course, like, we all want to protect them and keep them safe.

“But these guys in the Gerald Ford, I think they've been deployed for eight months now.”

They've been extended twice in this deployment and might last up to 11 months. And you know, again, these got with these, this aircraft carrier was in Venezuela for the Maduro operation. They are now in the Middle East and their toilets don't work. There's like 4,600 guys or many women on this aircraft carrier and a bunch of the toilet

to broke it.

So there's 45 minute long lines on a $13 billion aircraft carrier and it needs to be docked

to fully fix it. But of course, they can't because these guys are stuck waiting for Donald Trump to decide if you're going to fucking bomb around again. Yes, someone who we know who's like worked in the security apparatus US said to me that the toilets on the Gerald Ford made you more to prevent the war with Iran and Congress.

And also pointed out that a lot of these people to your point are just being sent over there and have no idea what the fuck they're doing. I don't think they know, I don't think, you know, someone on the Gerald Ford has any better idea what they're there to do than you and I do. No, yeah.

But yeah, the bowels of the places are full of asswipes and bookcases. So it runs for a minister of Osirachi. He's been making the rounds in the US media.

“It's going to be like, can someone tell me what you want from us?”

Here he is. There's a clip from Morning Joe last week. Let's watch. One thing I have to emphasize is that there is no military solution for Iran's nuclear program.

That has been tested last year and there were a huge attack on our facilities on our, you know, they killed an assassinated our scientists, but they couldn't kill our nuclear program. Why? Because it is developed by ourselves, by our scientists.

This is a technology developed by us belongs to us. And it cannot be destroyed by bombings by, you know, military. The only solution is diplomacy. This is why the US is back in the table of negotiation and is seeking a deal. It just feels like we're going to time warp 10 years Ben, the same arguments.

Yeah. As you mentioned earlier, Cebwick Hoff was on Fox News. Even though he was literally interviewed by a member of the Trump family, it was like Laura Trump, he still managed to fabric a fucking bumbling idiot. And when he said, there a week away from industrial grade bomb making material, which

that the Iran's nuclear infrastructure was totally obliterated.

“But again, we get back to this question of like, what kind of deal does Trump want?”

Is it a nuclear deal that he can just sell as being better than JCPOA? Is it what you said earlier? The Israeli position that it has to include Nuke's ballistic missile support for terror groups? Or is it just full like regime change? I just, it's crazy that we don't even know what he wants.

It is. And it's also crazy that Cybwick Hoff and Jared Kushner are the people in these negotiations. When we did the Iran nuclear deal, we had like nuclear physicists and early monies at the table. We had Iran experts, we had sanctions experts.

They're literally sending in two real estate developers to sit across the table from these people. They have no idea what the fuck they're talking. They don't know how to design a nuclear program that is not threatening. It's fundamentally unserious, which makes you wonder, like, what is the purpose of the

whole exercise? Now, I hope they get a deal. If they do get a deal, though, it's just going to be some broad principles on paper. What is the implementation pathway? What are the monitoring inspections regime?

When the Iranians believe that any deal will last more than six months, they're probably just trying to get out from under the war.

But again, the problem is, they're not going to do the broader one with the missiles because

they just see that as negotiating-way regime change, because they see once we get a vote of our ballistic missiles in our proxy groups and Israel will come in and just remove our regime. And you may not like that, but that's the reality. Yeah.

Just by the way, the last thing I'm going to say, I saw in the financial times, they reported

“that Ron assigned a secret 500 million euro arms deal with Russia to inquire a bunch of”

shoulder-fired missiles to supplement their air defense. They also reported a Reuters reported that Ron is close to closing deals with China, to buy supersonic anti-ship missiles. Just interesting. You don't hear a lot of criticism in public from Donald Trump about those deals.

Also, the last thing, it's just, it's just worth noting that, as we're recording, it's the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. I promise to end that war in 24 hours instead it's gotten so much worse for the Ukrainian people. Meanwhile, now we're entirely focused on a regime change in another place and Iran right

after the Venezuela once, which is like, speaks to the total incoherence of the policy and the lack of focus and just the lies based on what he ran on, which Mago was supposed to be isolationists against regime change wars and here we are. Yeah.

It does, but he never said he was going to do this.

It's not like you ran for President Trump. I'm going to go in there and take out the Iranian regime. No, it's, uh, baffling, politically baffling, security reasons baffling, all of it is baffling. But here we are, I guess. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace.

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Go to HIY-A-H-E-A-L-T-H.com/world and get your kids a full-body nourishment. They need to grow into healthy adults. Okay, so by now, I'm sure a lot of listeners have been following the Supreme Court striking down the majority of Trump's tariffs. We're going to unpack the foreign policy implications of this decision going forward.

So just for context, what the Court struck down was Trump's use of a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act or IEPA. So that law lets a president declare a national emergency to respond to foreign threats often it's used to the ad post sanctions. But Trump used the authority in an unprecedented, now we know illegal way, which was using

IEPA authority to slap tariffs on countries over like random shit the bait in that. Like the Swedish leader's tone of voice in a phone call, the prosecution of his buddy Jair Bolsonaro down Brazil. But since his court ruling, Trump is promised to use other legal authorities to put his whole tariff regime back into place.

One of those is called Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 that lets him place tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days. So confusingly, Trump said he was immediately going to do that and he really put in place a 10% global tariff, then over the weekend he truth-socialed that he was going to up to 15% but then this morning it seems that the tariff went into effect at 10% so per

usual well-old machine. He does have other tariff authorities, there's provisions that let him respond to discriminatory trade practices, others let him address national security threats. But those take longer, he can't just wield them like a dictator so he's pissed. But then like the rest of the world is just trying to figure out what they should do about

all this.

Some countries seem to have gotten screwed at first glance like the UK Singapore and Australia

had negotiated rates lower than the 15% universal rate. The Trump says he will ultimately implement on the other hand China Brazil and India should see a big tariff reduction in the short term. And then the tariffs on Mexico and Canada will likely remain as is because they are already under some of these authorities that have not been struck down so it's also confusing

for the EU. They negotiated this deal with Trump over the summer now they're reportedly having doubts about whether to ratify or not, about the Japanese are pissed because I think like two days or three days before the court decision they cut some deal that offered a bunch of concessions to get down to a 15% rate and now that's the universal standard.

So the big elephant in the room to me though is China, Trump is going to China and late March early April, but like his big stick was being able to slap them with tariffs even if he's already kind of backed off the early liberation day, trade war, what do you think the impact of losing this tool is for him on those negotiations and then it's kind of like big picture is attempt to bully the world with tariffs?

I think this is a huge blow to Trump and that may be one reason why he, you know, threw such a tantrum about it because we've already seen other countries begin to figure out that maybe it's better to stand up to Trump and that there's some short-term risk in sending up to Trump, but there's both political benefit and maybe strategically it's better to be strong and not make concessions and kind of wait this guy out, grind him down or wait

“there's a tension to go somewhere else and that's what was born out the countries that”

stood up to Trump are in a much better place today than the countries that rushed to cut deals and kind of crave favor with him and look, the Chinese are the best example of that. They faced Trump down when he was doing like 200% tariffs for like few days because guess what?

They don't have a Supreme Court and so when they just cut off rare earth materials and critical

components coming to our economy, Trump folded and so that's the first point. I think you're going to see more countries be like, you know what, actually maybe we just we stand up to Trump instead of signing some short-term deal. It reinforces also the idea that deals with the United States right now are kind of meaningless

administration.

So you're already only cutting like essentially four-year deals and now you don't even know

if those deals are going to survive the Trump administration either because he's going to have a different impulse than six months or because his power is getting taken away and this is the last point is that this is like the beginning countries can begin to see over the Trump horizon, you know. His power is a diminishing asset. Like he was at the height of his powers around liberation day. It looked like everybody was capitulating to him,

the Supreme Court wouldn't stand up to him, Congress was feckless, all these institutions are folding. Well, now you're starting to see like push back to Trump on lots of different fronts and

“I think that it's a bit like the Wizard of Oz, like the curtain gets pulled back and”

there he is and you're like that, that's the guy, you know. And so I, I don't know, I think there'll be economic chaos to some extent because, you know, this is a hell of a way to run a global economy. But I also think you're going to see probably less capitulation. Yeah, and there are already on popular. I mean, 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump's

tariffs. I think I was a pupil like a few weeks ago. So yeah, like any attention to this makes me happy because it's wildly unpopular. By the way, if folks want to dig deeper into the legal arguments and the opinions, our friends at Strix scrutiny broke it all down in an episode to check that out if you want the much smarter legal testimony on all this, we're going to switch gears though because we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson and Mike

Huckabee. So last week, Tucker released this interview with Trump's ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, and it was something else. So to set the scene, right? Like, I obviously have huge, you know, you do too. Disagrements with both of these guys on fallacy and politics, right? Like both of them. Tucker had a literal neo Nazi on this show recently. He had a historian. That's so neo. Yeah. He said Winston Churchill was actually the chief villain

of World War II, right? That colors my view of his criticism is real obviously. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, he's kind of like, you know, jocky or guy, but he is an extremist on policy. He supports annexing the West Bank. He says there's no such thing as a Palestinian. He opposes a two-state solution. So you sit these two dudes down for two hours and it is explosive, yes. But also illustrative of the broader split we've been seeing in the Republican Party

and the Agam movement. So let's start with an exchange that quite literally created an international incident. Do you have limited three times that God gave this land to this people? And so it is entirely fair for me with respect to ask, what land are you talking about? Because I just read Genesis 15 as I have many times. And that land, I think it says from the Nile to the U praise,

which is once again, basically the entire Middle East. So God gave that land to his people to

Jews or he didn't. You're saying he did. What does that mean? Does Israel have the right to that land? Because you're appealing to Genesis. You're saying that's the original deed. It would be fine if they took it all. You just said it would be fine with you if the state of Israel took all of the whole of Syria, all of Lebanon. That's really not exactly what I'm trying to

“ask. That's what you just said. It was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement in that, you know,”

if that's what you feel like that we're talking about, but it isn't. We're talking about this land that Israel, the state of Israel, now lives in and wants to have peace in. They're not trying to take over Jordan. They're not trying to take over Syria. They're not trying to take over a rack or anywhere else. So for listeners who didn't consume the whole two hour things like Ben and I did because we're freaks. So Tucker clearly came in to this interview with the plan to

lay a trap for Huckabee because he knew, he's kept out seeing like why does Israel have a right to exist? Because he knew Huckabee would cite both internationally. And why that way? Why that particular language? Right to exist. Right to, because he knew Huckabee would say, well, there's international law and there's this biblical, you know, right in theology because the genesis 15. But as you saw there, those two views are totally irreconcilable. You can't believe that Israel

has the right to all of that territory that outlined in the conversation, but also that international

“law holds. So Tucker, Huckabee articulated there in the worst way he could have brought pretty much.”

And it ultimately, those comments were denounced by, I think, a dozen Muslim countries,

the OIC, the GCC, the Arab League, like everybody. So must have been a very fun day to have our old jobs in the NSC press office. And I actually think this was an important statement, because for a couple of reasons. If you, let me ask you this, Tommy, because I'm going to write a sub sack on this people should check out my sub sack. What are the borders of Israel? What are they? Yeah, right now.

Well, I mean, they're the one that are on the map, and then they've taken some territory recently in Syria. They've taken land and leaven on. So it's expanded. So you just got in the point. There's the West Bank, yes, that'll make a structure. I talked to some people in the Middle East about this.

the actually international law, you know, recognized boundaries, or the 1967 borders, right?

And then Israel is in a military occupation of the West Bank in Gaza. Clearly, they've ignored that. They've built all these elements over the years. And this is really government. It does not recognize that as Palestinian land. They've said they want to annex, you know, the the Kinesi Dispaster Resolution, they want to annex. So I spent, amen and I did a long segment on this, but essentially, and Huckabee himself

refers to the West Bank as Judean Samara, which are biblical terms for, you know, what you might call greater Israel, right? So, so already, he says there is no West Bank. There is no West Bank. So, so already, it's clearly my Khakabee's position and the position of the majority of the

Israeli government that that the West Bank should be part of Israel. And then, if you're in the region,

you see these kind of relentless bombing of southern Syria and this Israeli buffer zone. So Israel is literally controlling part of southern Syria. They've already annexed the goal on heights from Syria. And then in Lebanon, you have some of the more extreme Israeli settlers who want to go up and build settlements in southern Lebanon, right? So, if you're in the region, those if you're those countries that are issuing that response, this is not just performative.

Yeah. You generally are not sure where Israel's territorial and this is really government's territorial ambitions end. Does it include annexing the West Bank? Does it include Gaza? Does it include parts of southern Syria? Does it include parts of southern Lebanon? So, this is not

“just like an exercise. And I think that's why you saw those statements. There's not a lot of”

clarity about what greater Israel is. The one thing that is clear is that there are people in Netanyahu's coalition, probably including Netanyahu himself, who believe in some version of it. Now, I don't think that they want to take a rock up to the Euphrates. But there is this question

of how far will this go in terms of territorial expansion. Then the second piece of this is

Huckabee is one of these Christian diners who has this kind of biblical interpretation, and Tucker was kind of smoking that out. By the way, this is not about Jews at all. This is actually about a Christian view that Israel needs to kind of reconstitute its control of this land as part of the second coming. It's crazy. I don't think Huckabee is there, but there are some really John Higgie. John Higgie, some really crazy right-wing Christian diners. The conversation

kind of happened because I think at some point recently Tucker said, "I despise Christian diners." He's like, "Yeah, yeah." He repeatedly apologizes for it throughout the interview, which is they didn't say anything to have to deal with anyway. No, and look, I think it was useful. I was actually useful for Tucker to kind of really pull the thread on this to try to understand. I mean, there is a genuine question as to where did the borders end? In the views of Mike Huckabee,

who represents kind of a faction of pro-Israel sport in the United States, and frankly, the views of these really government. I don't think that they want to take all the land to the your fraties, but if you are saying that it's a biblical, you know, Huckabee said a biblical deed,

“you know, well, that's the logic of it, and so you need to figure out how to square that with”

interaction. Well, I mean, like, I just think the fact that Huckabee would say that out loud speaks to how insane the policy is, right? Like, you are a US government official, you are the US ambassador to Israel, you should support US policy in international law. Yeah, just say, yeah, yeah. Like, you should be not articulating this extension of this. Why not just say? Like, you're as policy as we recognize this, but we, you know, yeah, you're right. Like, hey, I'm a Christian. I don't

give a fuck what the Bible says about like the borders of Israel, that does not how we should be making this, you know, this and that. And look, on the Tucker thing, obviously, he's a problematic messenger for all the reasons, you know, Nick Funtis did not get grilled like my cup of Huckabee did. I will say, um, if more journal, like, one of the interesting things is, Huckabee said a lot of things in this interview that you hear a lot. Like he said the IDF was more healing. Let's play that.

“Let's play that. Yeah, but like, what Tucker's brilliant at, I think we are getting as he”

follows up. He follows up. He's like, why? Why do you think that way? So here with that exchange about the Warren Gaza and civilian casualty. I'm merely noting what you just said, which was that the IDF takes greater pains in the US, our military does despair, civilian lives. And I guess my question is, when was the last time the US military killed this many civilians? Do you know, well, it could have been Nagasaki Hiroshima, could have been Iraq, Afghanistan, or several

Hamas operatives, how do you feel about their deaths? If they participated in that, then God help them. I'm telling you to say, I don't know that they have, there were 14 years. No,

hostages, if these were your children being held hostage in Gaza, what would you do to get them out? I wouldn't want to kill 14 year olds. I'll tell you that. Let me ask you something. Would you do whatever it took to get your kids back if they were being tortured, rape,

starred, and not killed children, period? Well, I'm just telling you, and I would never make excuses

for killing children either. And I'm not talking about targeting children. I'm talking about told me that 14 year olds deserve to die because they're working for him. I'm telling you, my question is, can you hear yourself? It's a great question. I mean, and again, Tucker comes at this in an interesting way for a like a mega audience because he's like, how dare you suggest that the US military cares less about civilian casualties than the idea of, and that gets you into this

conversation, where Huckabee reveals himself to be one of the many people who have a totally dehumanizing view about Palestinian people, which is to say, there's no such thing as a Palestinian children, right? There's Palestinian terrorists in his view or Palestinian non-terrorist. And if you're a kid with a gun and you happen to be Palestinian, you're a terrorist, and it's okay to kill you. And when you say it out loud like you did there, he sounds like a fucking sociopath. Yeah, yeah,

and I think what was so telling about this interview is, you know, if you go to, because this, I've heard all these things. You know, I've heard that, you know, all these 14 year olds actually worked for a mass, which there's no evidence of that. By the way, we hear, oh, we have to get hostages back. Well, a lot of hostages families were like better to get them back through

“negotiation, because, you know, I think people are still saying this because the only way we got these”

hostages home is through this negotiation. They weren't rescued. Right. Yeah. Then then then this, these negative comparisons, look, I'm not here to defend the U.S. military, but there was not an urban warfare anywhere near Gaza. And Huckabee said, Kabul, like, he literally named checked Kabul's a place where we were worse than it's an insane thing to say, like, rocker or something. We're Mosul, like you could have said rocker or Mosul, but like even that, like Gaza, like,

look at it, it's utterly destroyed. And the thing is, you and I've had this conversation a lot. There's such comfort, you know, you get up at APAC, you give the speech, you get rounds of pause,

or BB Netanyahu always uses these talking ones. He'll go on some Sunday show, or he'll go on

some cable show, and they'll sail this shit, and nobody fucking pushes back on him. And again, Huckabee in this interview is still trying to claim that every time he's released, like, bomb to site, they call the person in advance, and it's like, they don't even claim that anymore. Yeah, it doesn't claim anymore. It's completely nonsense. But he's saying the same shit that Netanyahu says, and he's so unaccustomed to push back. And I guess my argument to those who rightly point out,

all of Tucker's problems, right, from, you know, like the Nick Fuentes interview to the kind of conspiracy theory, you know, subtext to a lot of what he says, to the great replacement theory stuff, which has some antisemitism, too. But if more journalists would do what Tucker did, then Tucker's interview wouldn't be such a bombshell. Like the way, the way to, if you think

“you need to defang antisemitism, on the right right now, and they're civil war, the way they're”

trying to defang antisemitism is to tell Tucker to shut up, right? Now the way you do it is you create space where people are allowed to ask follow questions without being called an antisemite to be blunt, you know? And so I share the concerns that of where Tucker goes with some of the stuff, but that speaks to the need to have, like, people asking actual follow-up questions, you know, of people like Huckabee, other than Tucker. Yeah, I was in London, and I think it was

January, and I literally got there, and it was the day that there was like a big departure from like the Tory party MP to reform. So I turned on the TV, and there's fucking Nigel Farage, of course, like right in my face, but it's a live press conference, and the way that those journalists, yes, were going after him and kind of mocking him and, you know, taking the piss out of them, and they exchange is going back and forth. I was like, God, I wish I had. Yes,

our news media would more like them. Finally, Ben, they talked about Iran,

here's just a little clip of that exchange as well. I know that if it weren't for Iran, there wouldn't be a mosque, there wouldn't be the hoodies, there wouldn't be Hezbollah. We wouldn't have the problem on the border with Lebanon. We wouldn't have the problem with Yemen. We wouldn't have the problem on the border with Lebanon. As I'm an American, I'm not having any problems on the border with Lebanon right now. I live in Maine. We don't have problems on the

border of Lebanon, like you're talking about, no fun. Can I ask you a question, like, how much does

“it matter what Americans think? Well, it matters every bit what Americans think. That's why Americans”

vote. It's why Americans have the opportunity to have free speech. We want them to have that. Okay. So, what percentage of Americans support a world of Iran? I don't know, do you know? I do. I saw the numbers yesterday. There was like 21%. Okay. Is that enough to have a world of Iran? We don't live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be

what they think, because when you take it in, you certainly ingest that. And then we'll definitely want you ingest it. Then you make sure that you have, you just gotta, it goes out the other end. So it's like, there's so much there. It's so much there. I hate how he says hoodie. Oh, yeah, the hoodie rebels. It's not the blowfish, sir. It's the hoodie. I live in Maine is such a

so funny. It's like, to your point earlier, you can tell, like, my cuckabee has never had to articulate why.

This is actually in the US security interests, which is like, you know, well, and he says we wouldn't have these problems on the border of Lebanon. Who is the weak? Yeah. It's very weird. And also, again, like, cuckabee's not wrong, but you don't poll test every decision you make. Sometimes

“you do things as president, the things that are unpopular. However, I think what Tucker is getting at”

there is Trump ran against regime change towards Iran against Iraq war. He told us this stuff was stupid and that he would keep us out of World War III, specifically said that about Joe Biden. And now we're about to launch a new war with Iran and no one can explain why. Yeah. And just to make this kind of equal opportunity, you know, this is the problem with, like, the Mike Huckabee's of the world, but also we have the same problem in the Democratic side of the National Security establishment.

And the sense said, that answer he gave. You know, we would have these problems, the Houthis and the Lebanon, under that all the time is such bullshit. Separate even from the Israel of it all. That people say shit like that all the time and nobody's like, what are you talking about? Nobody, does anybody in America care about the Houthis for that matter? Like, this is Americans, and the one thing left right they agree on is they don't understand why we have to do all this

stuff, right? Why are we going to work the Houthis? You know, and again, I'm not even talking about Israel. I'm talking about the kind of mindset where it's just trust us. We have to care about all these things. We have to fight all these groups. We have to be here forever. We've

just spent billions of dollars. And do we, I mean, like, the, like, and what's amazing is the

American people in election after election, including the one that put us in the White House time, and to the eight, we're saying, like, we don't like this. Like the Iraq War was the end of it. We don't want to do this anymore. And now we keep doing it again and again. And on the, on the wrong side, you've got Democrats and Congress who are, you know, saying that War Powers Resolution is like the Iotola Protection Act, right? I'm Josh Scottheimer and Jared Mosquard. It's like,

what the fuck is that? That's a, my cuckabee answer. That's like saying it's such an insulting we stupid way to act. I can sound tough, and I can name drop a bunch of groups that you might not have heard of, and, and therefore trust me. And, and I think the American people don't trust this way of making policy. If Mosquards in Godheimer don't support the War Powers Resolution, that is totally fine. That is there, right? If they think we should bomb around again,

that is totally fine. That is there, right? But don't, like, don't diminish and mock your colleagues. You don't want to war by suggesting they're trying to keep the Iotola live. That's just stupid

“insulting. Have a real debate. Make the case. Yeah. And why, if you want to know why the”

American people don't trust the establishment anymore. I mean, it's this kind of mentality. And this is why this so politically dangerous for Trump. Because this is not what, anyone who likes, his people did not vote to fight the hoothees. They, they voted to lower prices and maybe steal the border. Sure, like, but like, not this. We must kill the hoodies or the blowfish across the border. We must kill Tode and the West Brockett. It's kill all the gin blossom.

The hoodies thing is, is amazing. Because he's trying to be like an expert and he can't even,

you know, come close. I mean, we're not the pronunciation experts here. No. No. We do a little better with English than if he knows it is a rule. Yeah. Anyway, it's so the next and thing. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. But Ben, I want to ask you first. Where do you get all your polling information? Yeah. Usually Dan Fiverr. Oh, if I was your host, Dan Fiverr. Well, you really breaks it down. He breaks it all down. It's like our best in a business. It goes deeper than

“our group attack. Dan really is like the smartest friend to wear all like Dan, what do you think about this?”

So I could formulate my opinion. If you're looking for something like that, let me tell you about being a friend of the pot subscriber. That is our subscription community. You get all kinds of great content. We got a pot to have America only friends, which is basically like pot to have America, but it's a little more unhinged because it's behind the paywall. Or it's like only fans, except it's pot to have it. It's absolutely Dan's. Yeah. Yeah. You pull a coaster with Dan Fiverr. He's got, you know,

just keeping you on top of all the latest data. There is a great newsletter called OpenTabs from Returlin. There's Termile Online, which is just a totally unhinged story about the weirdo shit on the internet. Regardless, you get ad free episodes of your favorite cricket pods. And most importantly, you help us here at Cricket Media build a progressive independent media company that is in totally beholden to big tech platforms that want to replace us all with AI. So we'd really appreciate it.

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“Trump stories, but you and I think I've said many times in the show that Trump blots out the”

sun, right? Like he is constantly the story that we are covering, but there are many days when we read about the latest development in artificial intelligence and wonder if we are just completely missing the more important stories. So today we're going to talk about a fight about AI and a fight between the Pentagon and Anthropic, which is the AI company that makes the model clawed and what it tells us about kind of the future. So my understanding is that this controversy

started after Axios and the Wall Street Journal reported that Claude was using during the raid to capture Venezuela and President Nicholas Maduro. That's right, that works. Claude is like, "Gently, may I suggest?" How much water did you drink today? So we don't know how Claude was used. We know that Pentagon uses Claude in concert with technology from the big data company Palantir and then Amazon's classified side cloud server on its classified

systems. I assume it's like the sipper system. My guess is that Claude was helping them sort through some sort of bulk collection of data of some sort of poo knows. I'm literally guessing. Regardless though, like those news reports or maybe some conversation between an Anthropic executive and some Palantir executive kicked up this broader conversation between Anthropic and the Pentagon about the use of Claude and when we violated their terms of service.

For context, despite having a Pentagon contract, Anthropic is the AI company that seems to be the most concerned with safety and how technology is used and are the most openly in favor

of government regulation, although you never know what these guys they can change their mind.

So the Pentagon is contracts with the four major AI companies, the OpenAI, XAI, Google and Anthropic. Apparently, Hexette's team went to all of them and said, "We want to rewrite your terms of service and replace them with language that says the US military can do anything lawful with your models." OpenAI, XAI, Google, they were like, "Fine." Anthropics said, "No, we want to make sure our tech is not used for mass surveillance of Americans or in autonomous

killing machines," the killer robots. And the Pentagon basically risk applied how fucking dare you. Kind of a tell. Yeah, and so that the Pentagon threatened not only to cancel Anthropics,

“I think it's like $200 million contract with the Pentagon, but also to designate them as a supply chain”

risk, which is a step in the past the US has done to Huawei, which is a Chinese telecom company, and Caspersky Lab, which is a Russian anti-virus company. So big like state-backed companies that we're where it could be back doors for state actors. That we won't get into all the details, but that could create huge business problems for Anthropic. On Tuesday, the day we recorded this Anthropics CEO Dario Amade, met with Pistol Pete, Secretary Hexette. According to a

or else he will punish them, as I mentioned earlier. Ben, here's a clip of Hexette talking

about the Pentagon's AI use last month. Let's watch. We will not employ AI models that won't allow you to fight wars. We will judge AI models on this standard alone, factually accurate mission relevant without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications. Department of War AI will not be woke. It will work for us. We're building war ready weapons and systems not chat bots for an Ivy League faculty lounge. It's just fucking goober, man.

It's the bet. I mean, it's just such an un-serious motherfucker. Well, he can't bench press 315, so there's that. Look, we've been talking about this for five minutes now where I've been talking. I can't say I understand it any better, but I certainly don't feel

better about our AI future having watched that clip. What does he know about AI? He's probably

like puts in, you know, work out routines or, you know, protein shakes. I'm saying that's my

“like soul use case. So this one is a great, great personal trainer. That's what's the irony saying”

these Ivy League people. He's probably the one who's just what's happening up. Yeah, I'm giving you fucking brave. Look, this is really important. And there's a world in which we look back on this era and Trump is like the B-story to tech an AI. And I think what people have to realize is that more and more the war fighting to use a headset buzzword of the future is going to be done with artificial intelligence. These AI companies and these kind of defense tech startups are the lucky

margins and bowings of the future because it's not going to be tanks. It's going to be AI drones and master surveillance capabilities and offensive cyber and all these things, right? And these companies have terms of service and that in part is because they know it andthropy better than the Pentagon. And this is what's one of the things that's interesting about AI. It's the private companies know better than the government where it's going and what their technology can do. They know

what the misuse of that technology could lead to. Master villains with AI of Americans is a truly terrifying thing. I'm very glad that these companies, I wish more companies were going to put that in their terms of service, right? And throughout the past employees, those employees may not want the intelligence that they're creating to be used to kill people with robots. They should have the ability to do that without losing all their US government contracts. This is US government essentially

“saying we want your technology and there's another important context here. It'd be one thing”

if we were regulating this from Congress. Normally, if we were in before times with an international order, we'd be negotiating norms with China and Russia about the use of military AI, none of that is happening. It's the wild west. So the only regulation of these platforms is coming from the companies themselves and it's only places like Anthropic and a few others that actually want to have guard bills or states, but like the administration's trying to prevent that from happening. They're trying to

run that. So if this succeeds in removing all guard bills from any AI that's used by the military, I mean, that's scary. And that's by the way, Alex Carp, the Palens here, like go down a rabbit hole with him on YouTube. We're terrifying. Odd, odd, duck. But I don't know if you saw this, the Reuters reported that. So, remember, DeepSeek, we talked about the Lodians probably, remember DeepSeek, we talked about them last year. I don't know, fairly recently. They released this

AI model that seemingly had been trained at way less of an expense with less compute that worked nearly as well as like the frontier models in the US. So they're releasing a new model that set to be released as soon as next week. That, according to this writer's report, was actually trained on Nvidia's most advanced new AI chip Trump. Well, chips, which are the ones that Trump administration has been talking about giving them. So this whole idea that like somehow we

are going to keep China down by giving them our best stuff is like, this is just self-evidently stupid and crazy. And, you know, when the Chinese were using AI for mass surveillance, we would all like

“we could get on a high horse and be like, look at those totalitarians. How is this any different?”

You know, I mean, think about this technology in the worst hands, and I actually think Pete Higgs at this high-most of the potential worst hands. Yeah. You would want, you want a little

guard, you want some terms of service. Him and a guy were about to talk about in a second,

cash-patel. But first a little bit on Syria before we get to cash. So here's a great headline then that President Trump could highlight at his state of the union tonight if he wanted. This is via the Wall Street Journal. U.S. intelligence says at least 15,000 at large after ISIS detention camp collapses in Syria. Security at our whole camp, which housed thousands of radicalized Islamic state family members, came apart after last month's government offensive.

Put it in a press release, another Trump administration win. So we're talking about a camp. He's sprung 15,000 ISIS-5. So just part of his partners. Yeah. They paid him off. They bought him

To Ron or to Ron. Yep. Absolutely. Anyway, so our whole detention camp. It has been in place since

“like 2016. It's been housing, ISIS militants, ISIS supporters, the family members of ISIS supporters.”

But then also thousands of just totally innocent people who happened to live in the region. And we're trying to escape ISIS and got swept up during these operations. So at one point, this camp held over 70,000 people, the conditions were horrific. And it also seemed like there was just no plan for what to do with a lot of people in the camp because a lot of them were from, you know, you're up in other places and countries that absolutely did not want to take them back.

Because they were radicalized. ISIS people. It was a policy and humanitarian disaster. This all changed in January. The new Syrian government launched an offensive against the Kurdish

led and US back forces that had been guarding the camp. That led to this chaos, the mass escape.

And as of this past Sunday, the Al-Haul camp has been fully evacuated and shut down. So the good news is that just before that happened, the US moved about 6,000 prisoners from Al-Haul to other prisons in Iraq. But they're almost, they're almost certainly hundreds of not thousands of dangerous, radicalized, ISIS, you know, members or fans just kind of hanging out in parts of Syria. So that is wonderful news. I'll show our government claims the Kurdish forces

for this mass. But then, I mean, given that the Trump administration just completely pulled the rug out from under these Kurdish forces, the SDF who are guarding this camp. Like, I would

“argue they are directly responsible for anything these ISIS guys do. That's the only thing I'll say”

about this is that this is not something that happened and Trump didn't stop it. This is something that Trump contributed directly to the outcome because he decided to stop protecting the Kurds and these internal negotiations with Al-Shara and the Syrian government. He got behind the Syrian government when they launched these offensive into Kurdish territory. Of course, this is the outcome of that. The Kurds need to protect themselves. They're not back.

They're, you know, and so this is, he doesn't think through the second and third order

consequences of these decisions he makes. He's like, I like Al-Shara. What do you say? He was, I don't know, he said all kinds of weird things about him. He called him hot or something. Great, like sweet ass or something. I mean, yeah, pretty much. How many wise do you have? Remember that one? But he likes the guy and look, but you don't need a green line of offensive against the Kurds. Just maintain this status quo. Just maintain the status quo. Play for time. Like,

keep negotiating. The rush to kind of get behind this guy. Now we've got 15,000 ISIS guys wondering around. Not good, not good. Okay, last story. So we're going to talk in the interview of me and Macarto about this cartel violent over the weekend that engulf parts of Mexico and has all these American tourists still trapped in sheltering in place in Mexico. But one person who is not helping rescue them is FBI Director Cash Patel who instead had taken the FBI Gulf Stream G550 over

to Milan to fuck around in Chuck Beer at the Olympics. Here's a clip of our buddy Cash. That's Cash pretending he is a member of the gold-wet metal-winning men's hockey team. Shout out those guys, they're told that asses. Are they though? I'm going to be the one to be that guy. That's that that's that dumb song about the statue. Liberty's shaking his fist. I don't know that song. I don't know the team. The only the team's great Canadian listeners I see you.

“Oh, shut the fuck up. Get out here with that bullshit. What country are you from?”

No, I'm rooting for you guys. But I don't need to like all of them. I mean, do you know any other names? You're partying with Cas Patel. Dude, okay. This is the bullshit I'm seeing online that I want to push back on. They don't want this fucking loser in their locker room. I don't know. They look pretty happy to have them there. They're happy because they won the gold medal.

They're getting shit face after women. I know I'm going to get a lot of shit for this stuff. No, I'm going to get shit. Look, these guys are getting ripped on now because Cash Games are their locker room and they just call it Trump. It's like sex is common. Oh, now I have to invite the women too. If there are events like well, the women are better. They win more often. All of that is true. And also like Trump is flying them back to go to the state of the union.

These are athletes representing the United States. I'll defend our boys as Cash would say that. Unbelievable. Because I actually, I don't care what they're Paul. I would like to get back to a time. I'm sure there's some people I agree with politically on that team. So people I don't. You're right. It is cash fucking Patel who's politicizing this like in

downtrump with his like misogyny. Like let them listen to whatever fucking music they want in party. Cash Patel, I mean, the thing about this is it's not just like, this isn't just a situation where like a serious guy who's a serious FBI director like had a slip up. Like this is the entirety

whether it's like walking around in some jacket that's too big for him that says FBI in the back, whether it's like tweeting a rest that aren't the right to rest or like whether it's like flying

“to see his girlfriend on a golf stream jet. Like this is the only thing that he does. And now”

I was sucked, you know, I'm glad we won the gold medal. And I've got to have this fucking guy like going the locker and making it about himself. That's the thing. What do you do to win the gold medal? Absolutely. Like what? What? He's a hockey fan. He absolutely should not have gone over.

Look for the first look. There's a lot of things to criticize. One, the cost of them like flying

a private jet over there, right? But like that is far less than the cost of having a clown as an FBI director who's not doing the right thing. And I don't know if you saw this been Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin. Today said a whistleblower came to him and said that after Charlie Kirk's murder, the FBI was asked to fly to Utah to aid the investigation. But like the deployment of the specialized team was delayed because there was not an FBI plane or pilot available because of

caches repeated personal flights. And that also happened after the Brown University game, right? Which like that's it colors. The fact that this guy like pretended he had some like official business flew over to Milan so we could, you know, watch this game and party with those guys. I will say I've been on a delegation to another big games. Now before people were like,

"Oh, look, I'm not the FBI director." I feel like there's no comparisons. There's an official

delegation every year. I went on the official delegation. It was like Michelle Kwon was on the delegation. Poor one out for one of our great figure skaters. But at the point I was going to make is I went for like a day and a half. We got there. We went to a couple of ends and went to the closing ceremonies. At the closing ceremonies and at the events I sat in the fucking stands like way up and I didn't go into the locker room. I mean, I'm this is an important point. It's

bad enough that he went. That's the original sin here when he doesn't need to go. He's not in the delegation. He's not like an elected representative. He's not like in even in the White House, which is kind of a political function. What's he doing in the fucking locker room? He's a loser. Like, how does he? Because you know he had to ask. I don't think they were like, "Where's cash, man?" This is not the gold medal if we don't have cash. Like he says he's a genuine hockey fan.

So he may be as friends of the player or something. I'm not saying this is why he should go, but you're seeing these people on the internet being like, "Why would you let him in there?" And party you're 23 years old. You're going to kick the FBI director out of your locker room.

“Get out of here. I'm like, "That's what I'm saying." I mean, he's leveraging this position for just”

all this fuck. He's the worst. He went. He took the FBI jet to the place literally called the boom doggo ranch. He took the FBI jet to Scotland to golf. He took it to Penn State to watch his dumb girlfriend sing the National Anthem. And now that girl is suing a bunch of right-wingers. He made up this bullshit story that he was going for important security conversations in Milan, Queensland, and the games. We also know that when you went to London

for actual security consultations, all he wanted to do was go to like a Premier League game. I want to go to soccer. So he wanted to say, "Did you want to go to helicopter right?" He wanted to go to the jet team or something like that? Yeah, yeah. I don't like him. No, but we're going to stay on it. How dare you? For your sake. How dare you pander to Canada on the show? Unbelievable. They don't need your pity.

What? If you've been good at hockey for a long time, if you're just listening and you didn't see the video, the video is like, "They hang a fucking gold medal around cash." And there's a bunch of guys doing the, like, Toby Keith, like, not shaped, saturated. Anyway, I'm sorry. I love our guys. I wrote for America, but that was not one of our finest moments. Casparatella in the locker.

“Casparatella. Sir, I think Trump knows about this and I think he's mad. That is my guess.”

Because I, he does not, Trump doesn't drink. He doesn't want to see his FBI director, like, chugging up here. Like, he actually doesn't think that's cool. He think, like, a lot of people were like, "Oh, these broen out. It's amazing. Loves America now. I actually think, "I don't think people want their FBI director to do that." Donald Trump wants you in a tie, right? Like, on the weekends, like, he is a serious, he's a joke, but he's like a person who cares

about optics and how you look. He doesn't want to see that, that dumpy loser in a, in a jersey. Adult men should not be, like him should not be wearing a jersey at a visual event.

I just think the whole FBI has gone downhill since Bunginoff. Bunginoff. Bunginoff. Bunginoff never

never would have done that. Never would have done that. Never would have done that. Never would have happened under the Bunginoff. Never would have happened under the Bunginoff. Never would have happened under the Bunginoff. Okay. We're going to think a quick break. We come back. I will talk with Carlos Zuniga about this shocking cartel violence in Mexico over the weekend. The death of Cartel leader, El Mincho. We're also going to talk about Cuba. So stick around for that.

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select Quote.com/world. Joining me today is Ricardo Zunegati, the founding partner of Dianamica. America's, if Ricardo is a career member of the Foreign Service, he has served in a bunch of senior government positions, focus on the Western Hemisphere. Ricardo, great to see you. Thanks very much. I wish we talked about better things. Usually it's about something awful happening in the world.

Today is no exception, because I bet a lot of listeners have the same experience I did this past weekend. I woke up to see these images coming out of Mexico where you had just residential areas looking like a war zone, burning cars, burning stores, images of people running for cover, airports and hotels. They're all these stories of American tourists still trapped in Mexico, let alone Mexican citizens who are just sheltering in place. It was terrifying and I'm

hoping you could help us understand what happened. So let's start with the sort of proximate incident that set this all off was the killing of a cartel leader named El Mancho. Can you tell us who this guy was and how he was taken out and how big a deal that is? So he was the head of the cartel Halisco and Nueva Hernandez here on CJNG and it was a split from the Sinolea cartel which a lot of your listeners probably have heard of is one of the largest cartels and when people think about

a cartel in a drug cartel in Latin America they think about Pablo Escobar or like the movies right what we saw in Narcos Mexico or something like that and that has changed quite a bit. These are much more sort of fragmented organizations. They have a lot of different verticals that operated. They operate like a corporation and they are multinational. This one was as well. Mancho operated and Mancho operated a massive empire that reached down in the South Deep in the South America

and competed with Stinoloa and other criminal organizations for control reports as far away as Ecuador and they had global relationships. This guy was for all the kind of the image of this guy

is sort of somebody who hides in the shadows. He had a sprawling network and he was very powerful.

These organizations by the way earn typically the GDP of a small country per year. These are not small. These are in the billions multi-billion dollar organizations. I've read a couple of things on Mancho. I mean it seems like there's not a lot of bio out there about him or at least not credible. I mean I've heard he was a former police officer. Is that accurate and also there's a lot of reporting that suggests that he was violent and cruel and guilty of atrocities that we're

shocking even by cartel standards. Is that accurate too? Yeah. Like I'm looking at us here on the new generation had a their approach was. I mean basically their business model was to be more violent than any other organization to terrorize their competitors and to get immediate acquiescence by local authorities and civilians alike. And so absolutely and they wanted that broadcast. They wanted that to be their brand. That's their model and it was effective because certainly

if he or his organization was involved he would get cooperation because the alternative was pretty bad. They were also you know quick showy about trying to like put together these armored vehicles with their emblems on them and and uniformed people and they have an armed wing as if the whole thing weren't sort of an armed organization but they they yeah there was a big show around the use of

“violence. A spectacle of violence was important to him. So often when like a senior cartel leader”

is killed or arrested there is violence like this. Is that because other cartels or the cartels

going to we're going to exact a cost is it fighting for control and a power vacuum some combination

“of both what are you seeing yeah so we you know what happened in Mexico over the weekend is”

what was expected to happen they had threatened a you know large scale violence if there was any action taken against the leadership of the organization they carried it out most of what they did there was a lot of visibility it was very dramatic and they did kill at least 25 police officials in Mexico as part of the retaliation there were quite a few deaths mostly lower level police are that were in more vulnerable locations uh and there was a spasm day one a little bit more a

little bit of violence subsequently and it should kind of end with that or there there there there there might be other scattered uh episodes but for the most part this is not like the sustained war of attrition against the state they're making a point about their reach and then after that they'll go back to kind of a more business as usual there was a report this afternoon that is leader his his replacement has already been named uh relative of his who was born in the United States

one Carlos Valencia another American export maybe it's our county really chief excuse me united states there's reports that uh the CIA and CIA intelligence help track Elmacho down um he was found in

killed after the Mexican special forces and national guard troops followed basically a girlfriend of

his to some secluded cabin the near-time reported that you know there was sort of tracking on and associate of the girlfriend to brought them to the girlfriend to go whatever um do you have a sense of what kind of cooperation the CIA may or may not be doing with the Mexican authorities for example there's lots of reports about the CIA flying drones over Mexico uh during both the Biden and the Trump administration and you know do you think this happened because you know Trump is

putting all this pressure on the Mexican government to do more to stop the cartels or is this you know just kind of like have these things go like sometimes you have good and tell sometimes you don't well so you know the there's a long history of the uh CIA being used against primarily criminal

“organizations because remember they don't just commit drug related crimes are involved in a whole”

range of organized crime activity state threatening organized crime activity in Latin America very often and so there is there's an intelligence community um yeah there's intelligence community work that that is carried out against these organizations uh that for example in Colombia overlap with with gorilla organizations as well political uh criminal groups as well and uh in what there is now is uh and has been extensive cooperation between law enforcement now US armed forces at a much higher

scale than what has been true in the past through northern command and a new jadiff join an agency task force that's been put together to focus on cartels and Mexico uh and and certainly the intelligence community is a part of that providing analysis providing sort of information that your partner on the ground in this case the Mexican armed forces and Mexican police wouldn't necessarily have available it's additive because a lot of the human intelligence

comes from local law enforcement and that's probably the case here uh Mexican law enforcement is much better placed than any US uh intelligence uh to gather human intelligence uh on the ground on the other hand Mexican organizations are also under a greater level of threat than US security officials are and so for them it's convenient for the United States to conduct

“some of the surveillance got it um I think a lot of people you know who work in Latin American”

policies certainly better than I on the show have kind of expected Donald Trump to bomb or have the CIA you know drone strike some sort of cartel site maybe a fentanyl production site in Mexico's territory um that hasn't happened yet we in fact we saw a regime change operation in Venezuela before we saw that happen we might see another regime change operation by the time

people are listening to this so stay tuned but it's always exciting here on the Trump

2.0 foreign policy but do you think this operation increases lessons doesn't change the odds of that happening direct action by the US in Mexico you know that's a that's a good question it clearly President Shambam is doing everything she can to prevent a uh a uh a US directed tack on Mexican territory I agree right from the very beginning uh Mexico watchers I've I've I've completely aligned with the view from before this administration took office

that they really wanted to carry out an arm strike uh in Mexican territory I'm not sure it was so much this incident where where the where the Shambam government showed owner we're taking action if you'll give us the tools of the information we'll carry out the action so you don't have to

population that wants her to take this kind of action against organized crime in Mexico there's a

belief that that her predecessor did not do enough and kind of left her in a very bad situation

“on the other hand I think that maybe they got the thrill they wanted from uh shooting small boats”

in the Caribbean and Easter Pacific and that was enough to prove the point that they could kill at well and bring military force into what had traditionally been law enforcement so I think there might be a little I think there might be less pressure to kind of carry out these attacks in in in Mexico on the other hand I think that the president really wants to um watching what happened over the weekend made me wonder um clearly there was this cartel response

to government authorities in Mexico because of this action do you think we might see a similar kind of response against US interests or Americans if the US were to take direct action in Mexico? Possibly uh but the common wisdom and and actually what we've seen documented is that cartels tend to avoid action against US interests to the extent they can to avoid bringing the US more directly into you know against them uh so they they see but look if they're backs are against

the wall and they don't see any other way out you know potentially they would do that to try to reduce US will um but the chances of that backfiring they under these are sophisticated people they're not you know they're not some you know sort of backwards uh neophytes they've been doing this for generations in some cases and they will do all they can to avoid um having a direct conflict with US forces probably wise um we reached out to uh will grant a greater quarter from BBC News

who's been on the ground kind of covering the aftermath um here is what he had to say about the situation as of you know midday Tuesday Pacific time. A semblance of normality is beginning to return to some parts of halisco um I've been to two of them um the state capital Guadalajada where the evidence of what had taken place was clear from the moment one leaves the airport there was still burnt out cars on the road a massive police law enforcement and military presence on the

streets with patrols circulate circulating around the city um there was a real sense

of unease too as people didn't return to work on the first day they uh remained indoors stayed with

their families few workers went to their places have been employment there was a lot of uh businesses were shattered schools were closed and a general sense of um unease and um uncertainty on the streets people are stoic in uh Mexico in general in front of these moments um but it wasn't comfortable there was no night life uh uh with people obviously fearful of a second flare up of violence. So you know Ricardo you can hear there like how much this impacted everyone in the region not just

people who are directly harmed or please um given that impact I mean are these kinds of operations

“popular with the Mexican people today want to see their government going after cartel bosses?”

Well they definitely want to see much more accountability for for criminals in Mexico there's a sense that um and that the her predecessor who was very popular president he was not popular in terms of the security um practices of his government which were to concede a lot of space frankly to organize crime which uh under shimbong has been reversed and that part is popular taking making criminals sort of pay a price or be held to account is popular because the level of insecurity

in Mexico is quite high people still disappear in large numbers in some parts of Mexico it's still quite dangerous for for ordinary people uh on the other hand this is going to remind people of the worst

parts of uh when uh Philippe Calderón a prior president basically declared war in the cartels

and they declared war on the population and you saw these are massive violence um that really began a period of uh nuclear skill disappearances uh fragmentation a lot of infighting that led to a lot of

“civilian deaths as well so I think that they are fearful of the consequence but I think in general”

the idea being more aggressive against organized crime is popular so you know as you said earlier like there are members of these cartels who've been doing this job for generations they're you know the drug war such as it is has been going on for a very long time as far as I can tell we have not won it yet um I imagine things are only getting more complicated as you bring in synthetic drugs like fentanyl because at least you know with cocaine right at least there was a complicated supply chain

that you could find ways to disrupt if we're just talking about like shipping and a bunch of chemicals from China and then mixing them someplace and then getting them to the US and maybe

what has been effective and um how was this threat evolving? Wow uh what has been effective very

little um the the the the reality is that what has been effective is uh to an extent uh demand

reduction in the United States in a case sometimes works uh look you're exactly right about the problem with fentanyl is that it is easy relatively easy to synthesize in Mexico once the precursors or even the precursors to precursors have made their way through the very normal industrial supply chain I was talking to a banking official in Central America who said these organizations know exactly what they're doing the order maybe three or four percent more supply to legitimate uh industrial sites

and then siphon off uh those supplies to kind of to create what to develop what they need

“these they know what they're doing and I think that that is uh that's one of the great challenges uh”

you know what does work is going after them like enterprises the the the the kinkpin strategies criticized is kind of showy and you remember all those years where the number two and number three of al Qaeda kept on getting killed and replaced the week later yeah over and over and over again number three yeah well number three yeah that's right and today I saw the number two of the we're going to kind of heading as soon as killed today and I thought yeah okay here we go uh but the

reality is that when strategies like going after not kidding uh their HR departments the recruiters that works going after their money works better than anything else uh so complicating the business side of the business uh where we have some skill and not just us like other regulators now their governments have skills uh at doing that kind of work that that does work it's it's boring it's not as exciting is putting uh you know launching a rocket and and and blowing up uh uh

“uh you know a drug site but the truth is they're in this for business and if they're the I'd say”

actually one of the real risks is I let's say that I don't think that they will manage to significantly reduce the supply of drugs moving into the United States but if they do the businesses will turn to other markets and just as they're doing I frankly Asia and Europe are booming for the cocaine tribe and we're a wash and work cocaine then we've ever seen like we're historically high levels of cocaine production that's not coming to the US or at least not in in vast quantities it's mostly

going to Europe and Asia um and when if that doesn't work for them they'll turn to other crimes I mean that's there are business uh and they will adjust and that means that we have to be ready for that kind of adjustment maybe they turned more to fraud uh uh uh and or I mean crypto has been a godsent for organized crime crypto has made it so much cheaper for them to handle the cash into the business so much easier for them to integrate their and to launder their cash um that has also

changed the equation significantly um there's wonderful use case for crypto it's helping cartels

“Iran there's a report today I think Binance got like a billion one point four billion dollars”

uh via Binance uh to Iran and then the Trump family um to your point on uh al-Qaeda I always

did wonder why why someone at the lower level the organization didn't just sort of pitch a flatter or chart you know what if we just don't thank you jump that's right oh promotion no that's okay thank you this is an egalitarian organization so I'm actually where I am yeah just uh just no no no no no business cards okay finally since I have you um I'd love to get your take on the situation Cuba because you and Ben Rhodes led the effort to normalize relations with Cuba during the Obama

administration um so since the the raid to capture President Maduro and then as well uh Cuba has been essentially blockated it is experiencing this horrific you know fuel shortage all these blackouts the economic crisis that's getting worse by the day um I'm I'm wondering if you could give us just sort of your sense of the humanitarian situation on the ground in Cuba and whether you think they're close to reaching uh a breaking point or if there's any sense it's like there's cracks

that might lead to a leadership change because of this blockade all right well look let's set aside

for one second the who's it fault conversation which is normally where we start a conversation

about Cuba yeah and let's talk about what's actually happening to people right now uh I mean the fuel shortage is our have kicked in uh you're seeing a lot less activity in the streets when you talk to people who are in have been an hour just come back from have been visited they say that people are waiting for something big to happen uh and the streets are calm um but there is a sense of you know that something uh momentous is it's kind of a foot the way it's being felt right now is

in massive poverty it's something like 89% of the population is in extreme poverty in in Cuba now

lot more malnutrition a lot more insecurity um the difference between now and when Ben and I were involved is the level of resentment is sky high there's very little hope uh everything that has been you know every potential opening has been snuffed out on the government side and then in in the first Trump administration with the help of the Trump administration so all the all the all the tools of people had for and making their lives a little bit better under the

use extreme conditions have been shut off one after another which is why two million people left

after the COVID epidemic right yeah and it motioned out like the you know the fuel embargo the fuel shortage is mean more than just not being able to drive around it's like like water filtration refrigeration or energy refrigeration everything it's everything and yeah yeah they they will prioritize

“I think the health care and and so for the look these these are tiny stopcat measures so”

to your to your other question when do we get to that magical point where the population has had enough and there's this this uprising and the outbreak of democracy well uh I guess we're going to find out because if if kind of we if we kind of keep going forward with this then we potentially get to a situation where uh the the economy is fully broken down and there's no economic activity

taking place and essentially what we have is Haiti uh 90 miles from the United States and so then

right we just feel impressive right like Marco Rubio single handedly making like running this policy where the the current policy is star of an entire island worth of people I mean if I is that to is that unfair I think that that is where what they're trying to do is trying to see if they can force some kind of action out of the government by bringing that entire economy to a stand still

“and you can say it's for the purpose of bringing you better than or Cuba but and I think a lot of”

Cubans are are done with this government that is crystal clear but nor do they want to be the last victims as you see this kind of period of improvement take place so um at the same time in in in Munich uh Rubio said look if if the government shows signs of an opening and uh on the economy and opens its hand a little bit then you know that's a positive we'll interpret that positively so I don't know that there's also alignment between Rubio knowing what the president is prepared

to kind of dedicate to this effort it's not the same as Venezuela there's no oil right so what's

president Trump's interest in this that that's a that's an open question ultimately what it comes

down to is is there a leadership that's a depth enough to manage this on the if you've been side and will will it be interpreted the right way on on the US side that will they take yes for an answer when yes shows up uh and that's that's a that's an open question and in the meantime you're gonna have all the consequences of that being felt and born by the population in Cuba yeah it seems just absolutely unsustainable and awful and just you know I obviously none of us like the

Cuban government but boy what the impact on the Cuban people the kids innocent families is just it's on a match more and yeah look I mean and I and I think that's the that's the real issue a lot of that is overlooked I mean I think people are there's not enough sort of understanding of what that actually means for like ordinary people who in theory are the ones who're trying to help yeah exactly well Ricardo thank you so much for doing the show I really appreciate it it's

great to check in with you and uh it's talked to you and soon all right talk soon thanks again Ricardo for coming on the show and we will hopefully make it through the city and then two and a half hours I'm not gonna watch all that if it's your hours the the Tucker Huckabee interview maybe watch that twice all right talk to you guys next week positive world is a crooked media production our senior producer is Aloneman Kowski our

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