Bullsh*t Ceasefires Everywhere

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like Potsay of America Open Tabs and tons more great content. So, stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at cricket.com/friends. Check it out! Welcome back to Potsay of the world on Tommy Vitor.

I'm Dan Roots. Ben this morning, I saw a bunch of coverage of Jeff Bezos kind of buying the Met Gala. And then I read a story about the family that owns Samsung, paying an eight billion dollar inheritance tax bill. And I thought we could do that.

Maybe the Koreans know something like we don't. We'll be cold to do that. We can actually collect money from these people so they don't. Fifty percent. I owe your cultural institutions nothing I, I don't know, not to the Met Gala.

There's always my jam but now something kind of gross about it.

Yeah, you know, that's a little late-stage capitalism, you know, whatever. It's very like collapsing Roman Empire vibes. Collegula. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“Anyway, but yeah, I did make you think like, oh yeah, we remember all that”

ranting and raving but the death tax and how to hold it farmers and all this bullshit. And that's just protecting billionaires who pay. Well, you didn't get invited any of the good parties in high school. So now he has to buy the biggest party in the world for his wife. Awesome, that's a strategy.

Yeah, it's fun. I'll see by your way to space to do it every one of these days. I like, I just want to note, because there's a lot of, my algorithm has trained me for Nick's Twitter. And absolutely pasted this six years yesterday, getting revenge for you. Celtics just.

But there's a huge divide, because Ben Stiller, Nick's superfan went to the Met Gala. Okay. Getting dragged pretty hard. Why?

I get my pass. He's always there. I'm not Matt Ben Stiller.

I will note that Timmy Shalame went to the game. Oh, I see instead of going to the game. Yeah. Did he also, I also love Ben Stiller tweeted what we got that done. Clearly about the next few people thought it was about the Correspondent Center

Academy. So this is really fun. So I have a next text read with my best friends of high school. And it's a funniest read, because it's literally like, we know we're watching the game. So it'll just be like OG.

Right. Right. Got it. No comment. And Ben Stiller literally tweets like he's on our thread. You have no idea what he's talking about.

He's like, we got it. Oh, we almost had it. And then this magazine, we're like, I can't believe you said that. Can't believe you said that. We almost got Trump.

Yeah. Like you fucking nerds. Just not everything is politics. Even for us, even for us, we like sports. Even these nerds are great.

Uh, we got a great show today. We're going to cover all the latest more Ron from Trump's plan to guide ships through the straight-over moves. And why the administration is insisting that the U.S. and Iran literally firing at each other.

Apparently that's not a ceasefire violation interesting.

“Uh, and then we'll talk about some newly leaked intelligence about the impact of the U.S. and”

Israeli bombing campaign on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, or lack thereof, and whether there's any semblance of a plan or an endgame for negotiations. We'll dig into the politics back home, some polling data from the post over the weekend. Uh, and then we'll tell you guys what we've heard from people on the ground in Iran. We'll also cover how is this impacting Trump's upcoming trip to China, the latest from

Lebanon, and the truly hellish situation on the ground for people in Gaza and the lack of any reconstruction efforts that we're going to do an update on the war between Russia and Ukraine, uh, the political situation in Russia, and then we'll have a little fun at the end at the expense of the U.S. ambassador, Ben hasn't seen anything. I don't know what this is.

I, Michael, has a sense of humor.

This will be literally lands.

This will be fun. Trusting my trust, trust the plan. And then you'll hear my interview with Congressman Jason Crowe from Colorado. Uh, you know, well, Ben. We talked about Iran, uh, efforts by Congress to force an authorization of the war.

His grilling of Pete Hegsev last week. He took an interesting tack focused on this one, really shady staffer at the Pentagon. And I don't know, made some interesting news. I thought we could talk about Trump's plan to move troops out of Germany, because the Chancellor of Germany, um, hurt Trump's feelings.

Can I just say, because we kick around Democrats as they need to be kicked around a fair amount, uh, on not just the show, but, you know, everywhere. Ken Martin. Um, Jason Crowe's great dude. Yeah. And, and like just, and like gets it and is taking on Trump on the war in the right ways. Is leading the, uh, D triple C, the Congressional Campaign Committee of Canada recruitment.

Anyway, every now and then we need to point out that there's some good Democrats. Yeah. There's some great Democrats out there. Um, it's easier to be mean than nice, but you're right. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the Democratic Party gives us a lot of reasons. A lot of reasons to be mean. Um, uh, and by the way, Ben is actually doing today's episode

top list to help us get more views on the Potsay, the World YouTube page. Thank you for your service, Ben. You're looking great. You've been working out. Okay. Um, that's probably a joke, but you're going to have to subscribe to find out, uh, but please subscribe to Potsay, the World of YouTube to ensure you don't miss any pop tops, any bonus episodes we do there about breaking news.

Also, you help us displace Ben Shapiro out of the YouTube algorithm.

“If you need to come up with someone other than Med Shapiro,”

because I noticed the daily wear numbers are tankin, tankin, tough, tough tough tough tough tough. Now, just being diagonal and then yes, supporters. Yeah, turns out, uh, being just pro-war Neoconopropaganda isn't as profitable as saying, uh, I'm annual McCron's wife has a day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really, that's how you kill it in media these days. What's that? And we had, we had, maybe we'll get there. We can't this over here.

How do we get subs? We got Pablo Torres, winning a Pulitzer for sports reporting. I'm just telling you that. I don't know, we land somewhere in the middle. No, Pablo is the best, uh, out of my Potsay, America, while back. Uh, also a prize winner. Yeah, Pulitzer, prize winner. If you like the work, Crooked Media is doing, by the way, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Acrycket.com/friends, you get ad free episodes of this show, ad free episodes of Potsay, America, get great bonus content from Potsay, America. You get Dan Fyfer, dive in deep to polling, uh, and it's really the single best thing you can do to help us grow as a progressive independent media company. Also, subscribers get early access and discounted, take it to Crooked Con, another Crooked Con perks, TBD, maybe more topless Ben at Crooked Con.

Yeah, possible. It's the first time you're hearing about this, but there is a, there's a movement.

To me and his son, Piker, we'll go together. We'll see you as a better body. Yeah. Yeah, it's probably not my mood. I think I know it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you have son, uh, Crooked Con. You're the Jordan and our team works out in the Son's house and we're sorry. Oh, really? Crushed burpees and stuff. Yeah. Socialist burpees, it's pretty cool. Um, Crooked Con, happening November 5th through 7th in DC,

go to CrookedCon.com for more info. Should we talk about it around? I think we should. I think we should. Okay. Somebody has to, uh, you know, wait into the cesspool of lies. It's my ass. I mean, it's from our government. Yeah. Straight a bullshit. Uh, so the big news this week is this Pentagon plan to quote unquote, "guide ships" through the straight-of-form news, not escorting defend guide. It's called Project Freedom. I guess, to your freedom to get shot at.

Well, you're epic fury. I, it's still ongoing. It's pause. Trump is so happy about that name. Yeah, he did really love that name. Project Freedom. Uh, again, Hexeth says this is a distinct mission from Epic Fury. It's not a naval escort mission. He and Trump also insist that Iran firing at U.S. Navy ships in the straight-of-form news, firing at targets in the UAE and Oman at the South Korean ship. The list goes on. It's not a breach of the ceasefire. Uh, and Centcom also

says that uh, U.S. helicopters sinking six Iranian boats also not a breach of the ceasefire.

“Um, I guess that probably tells you everything you need to know. They're giving the”

Iranians, I guess, the same treatment to give these railings, which they can bomb Gaza and love Gaza and the United States, and so they're just past. It also probably tells you that Trump does not want to go back to war. Anyway, here is Hexeth talking about this new mission on Tuesday morning in the press event. This operation is separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury. Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration with one mission

protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression.

We're not looking for a fight, but Iran also cannot be allowed to block innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway. Iran is the clear aggressor. As a direct gift from the

United States to the world, we have established a powerful red white and blue dome over the straight.

Once again, America is using its strength to lift up others. Iran is trying to subjectate the world. To our partners, allies, and the rest of the world, this is a temporary mission for us. As I've said before, the world needs this waterway a lot more than we do. We're stabilizing the situation so commerce can flow again, but we expect the world to step up. At the appropriate time and soon we will hand responsibility back to you.

“Given the world, it's like World B3, remember that basketball player? He talks about the”

world like it's a guy, like this. Some guy named World. Just step up. Something about the way he talks, just annoys the shit. Everything. It's like it's a cat in the hat, war crime, beat poetry, not it just drives me nuts. So Sandcom says Project Freedom will involve guided missile destroyers over a hundred land and sea aircraft and 15,000 service members. They're also very clearly eager to hand this mess off to other countries soon, Ben.

So I imagine they'll be cutting and running. Sure, there are a lot of takers. Yeah, a lot of it. So Ben, I'm genuinely confused by the endgame here for Trump. There's no chance this half-ass plan to quote unquote guide ships is going to get traffic through the straight back to pre-war levels. I guess we can hand it off to other countries like you. You said, like no one has our naval capacity. So I guess maybe everybody's going to end up paying a toll

or the straight remains partially closed and it just crushed at the global economy. I don't know. So like I'm trying to be charitable here. I'm trying to genuinely understand the strategy for the

“straight before we get into the nuclear stuff. Do you have any sense of what they're doing?”

I think that the fact that we're sitting here two months into this war and we a war that was started again to change regime and the nuclear program and usher and freedom and Iran has led to project freedom to be a GPS service board, ships that are already stuck in their offices. It just shows you the catastrophic error again. There are a number of things that jumped out to me. They are worried about the absence of legal bases. So the reason I think that they're

going to these great lengths to call it a project freedom and say it's distinct from a victory is because under the War Powers Act, which they have ignored, that's the act that says Congress must authorize a war, you can kind of get a 60 day period where you're allowed to engage in military action before you really get in trouble. If you're responding to an

“internet threat, which Jason Crow kept correcting me on because there was no a minute threat.”

Because there's no a minute threat. But because he said when he was on the hill that there was over because of the ceasefire, so they have to make this seem different. It's interesting that he seems to care about that. That just shows you that he isn't care about Democrats. That's usually even Republicans are feeling humiliated as they should by the absence of any congressional

authorization. The second thing is, I cannot possibly overstate how insulting their tone towards

the rest of the world is. You've done a very good job week after week at detailing these massive shortages that are crippling the economies of countries around the world, leading to severe shortages, making life hell for like probably untold millions of people around the world. And so for him to kind of smarmly say like some trader who just did a line of coke in the bathroom before he wanders out to the floor. Well, you guys, we don't need this as bad as you do and you better come in here.

Like what is that for? Who is that for? Like who is the audience for that? Because if it's the quote unquote friends and allies, he's talking about they have no friends anymore. They lost them. And that's not going to make them want to step up. And then the last thing is they just fundamentally because they did such piss poor planning about this whole thing and didn't even anticipate that

they closed the straight forward moves. They don't understand that the problem is not that there's

lack of guidance for the ships. It's that their minds in the straight forward moves, that the writings are firing at tankers, that there's a fear factor that no amount of guidance is going to solve. And similarly, if the United States Navy, which is the strongest in the world, can't reopen the straight, which it has not no matter what they say, they don't control the straight. If they control the straight, all the ships who get out. It's not like some pick-up team of other

messaging with no strategy attached to it. Yeah, and there are there's 20 nearly 23,000 sailors on 1,500 or more vessels that are just trapped in the Gulf, like trying to get out. I mean,

“that's what's at stake right now. And Rubio also did everything at the White House today.”

They did this full-core press. There was this bizarre event this morning where Trump was bringing back like the national fitness award with nothing we did as kids.

No as Cindergard, the ex-met pitchers there. There was always sad to see.

It's always sad when the athletes you like, turn out to be mega. I'm sure I did that. Yeah, he was there. But Trump's like talking about like blowing up Iranians in front of all these children. So there was that. Then hexat then came to their briefing. And then Rubio went to the White House briefing room today, which is like a pagan shit. Like so happy to be there. So excited about what he thinks is his huge job.

But anyway, Rubio said the blockade is costing Iran $500 million a day. And Trump did this interview with his staff or he hew it on his radio show earlier this week about like oil and gas infrastructure in Iran and said, and they say that in two weeks, you know, when they talk about time in two weeks, they're going to have a natural explosion of their oil that's going to make it impossible for them to really recover from. So Trump seems to think that

if the blockade goes on, it will permanently blow up the Iranian oil and gas infrastructure. And maybe that's his plan to bring them to the table. But again, the Iranians are like, they're not even willing to negotiate about nuclear issues right now. Their offer is a ceasefire from the US and Israel. So also in Lebanon, they want sanctions relief. They want other financial benefits. And then they're willing to talk about the nuclear issues.

One, support is basically over. And then Trump won't even specify what a ceasefire violation would look like. And like, I don't know if you watched the Cainan Hexath briefing, but the reporters in that room are such a joke. They're literally asking about whether Iran is using like mind-carrying dolphins to attack ships. So they're like Kamikaze dolphins. So that's where we're

“at in terms of the reporting on this. Yeah, I think first of all, they have no plan and they”

because when you go to war not knowing why you're going to war other than the BBNN now, convinced you to do it, you don't even really know what you're trying to get in the negotiation. And then they're trying to spend their way out of this, but the reality isn't a lot of them spinning.

My only observation I had at this, and it deals with a military, we always have to do a lot,

you know, this is kind of throat clearing about how great the military is. And it is, like the people in it, you know, a lot of them are wonderful people. Dan Kane has been really disappointing to me. I mean, I texted you. I watched that. He's not as bad as Hexath. So I'm watching and you're like, oh, this guy seems better than Hexath. But he's gilding the lily, you know? Yeah, he's more factual in nature, but yeah. It's more factual

nature. There's some tether to the truth, but he gives you kind of a blizzard of very tactical details that add up to no strategy. And, and so, but by standing there next to Hexath and trying to make the military operation seem like remarkably competent, he's kind of putting, you know, he's putting lipstick on this pig. And what worries me, is it Trump, you know, it's always hard to play the game of what does Trump actually believe, because everything out of his mouth about

this war is a lie or a half-truth or, but I do think that they're briefing him. Like the blockades

going great, sir. You know, this blockade is never in the history of blockades, is there been a

blockade like this blockade, and Iran is losing $500 million a day, sir, and the, the oil, you know,

“things will blow up in two weeks, which I think they said that two weeks ago, by the way. That's”

one thing to do. And, and I think that they're doing a grave disservice to the country in the world, if they're doing that. And, and I don't know that for fact, but it seems like that, because Trump, like, just likes to be told how well everything's going, and then he goes out and he repeats it in a dumber version, and he, and he amps it up. But I can kind of feel that happening here, and look, just because you can, like, position ships somewhere, doesn't mean you have a good strategy,

doesn't mean that what you're doing is working. And, and, and good military advice is going to the President of the United States and saying, this is not working. We cannot solve this problem militarily, like, like, and that, I, I, I worry that's not happening. Yeah, I mean while the Pentagon Press Corps is like, do you have suicide bomber Dolphins swinging around the straight-of-room, which is what are we doing here? Okay, Ben, as has become our tradition, immediately after we wrapped the show, Donald Trump sent

a tweets that, actually, I don't know the implications of this one. But the war is ended like several times right after we take it. Yeah, we've had a million ceasefire, and it's everything's better. So, here's what he truth on truth social. Based on the request of Pakistan, the other countries, the tremendous military success that we have had, tremendous campaign against our country of Iran, and additionally, the fact that great progress has been made toward its complete and final agreement

with representatives of Iran, we've usually agreed that while the blockade or remain in full force

for a short period of time to see whether or not the agreement can be finalized and signed from President Donald J. Trump. I've no fucking clue what that means. I mean, I mean,

“I think it sort of means maybe that this whole plan wasn't working for all the reasons we just”

discussed and were skeptical of, and now they're going to pretend that they're close to signing some sort of real agreement to reopen the straight-of-room. Yeah, I mean, not to be cynical. Yeah, I'm going, I'm coming for some words. But perhaps, project freedom, freedom did not succeed in lowering the world prices as he might have wanted, and so now we're trying a different tack, because it's all he really cares about is the markets. Yeah, but he's seeming to suggest that they're close

to a final agreement, but as we discussed, I mean, the Iranian position was like full ceasefire in Iran and Lebanon. There's an agreement from to have that involves sanctions really. Iran, you know, getting a lot in return for a little. And so at some point, one of these will be true. Right. And there'll be a deal in which the IRGC is still in charge of Iran and they get a bunch of money from other sanctions really for pulling the straight-of-date or unfrozen assets.

In return for some pretty ecosmetic nuclear concessions or, you know, maybe some medium-sized

“ones like the JCPOA, and maybe this will be the time, or maybe this is just another effort to”

try to lower gas prices. But I don't know, Tommy. Would you put projects freedom up there with Operation Overlord, the Normandy Invasion? Yeah, it's up there. It's just a remarkable success for Secretary Hegzeth and one of the greatest blockades. One of the greatest 24-hour GPS navigation operations ever launched. Use your map operation freedom. Okay. Well, we want to hop on and just tell you guys that this

true social post was sent. The story of this war is Trump just kicking a can down the road for every 24-hour new cycle and market-moving events just to kind of keep them sock market on sides. Yeah, I wonder what trades will learn to take place right before this. Yeah, I'm sure John Jr. is a bunch of futures at that. But okay, we're going to go back to the regular show. And we're going to talk about the big-patrease use, the nuclear stuff, things that really matter,

but another true social post. Diplomacy by social media. Going great. Well, I just, I just, I just, glad our freedom has been defended like this. Thank you, sir.

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to play. So again, while the Pentagon is playing Persian Gulf tour guide, Trump is trying to spin this mess to the public. Here's a super cut of some of his attempts over the last couple of days and we'll watch the spin of all of it. I did something that was, I don't know, foolish, brave, but it was smart. I would do it again, but I thought the numbers would be much worse. I thought the stock market would go down much more. I thought the oil prices

would go up much more. I said, but we have no choice. Whether it does or doesn't, I have to do what's right. We can't let them have a nuclear weapon. We hit all new highs and I said, we have to take care of business because we can't let that happen. So we did a little detour and it's working out very nicely. Our country's booming now, despite the fact that we're in a, I call it a mini war pitipole on the war with Iran. And they said only 32% of the people like it. Well,

I don't like it, not like war at all. To golden age from America, you know, we hit it all time, high stock market today, despite that we're in a little skirmish military. I call it a skirmish because Iran has no chance. So it summarizes that the mini war or skirmish, the polls are fake, but the stock market is up so it cares. So more importantly, Ben, there was a report from Reuters on the impact of Epic Fury, the most recent round of fighting on Iran's nuclear program.

Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence believes that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer when analysts determine that the previous strikes

operation in the Ninth Hammer had set them back. I basically pushed the timeline back to a year.

So in other words, like the latest round of fighting has not set Iran's nuclear timeline back any further. Before the war in June, U.S. intelligence said Iran was three to six months away from having a high enough highly enriched uranium to build a new, after the 12 day war, they said it was nine to 12 months away and now there's still that a year away. So it's stuck clear that this is done anything on the nuclear front. Of course, we've taken out the U.S. and Israel have taken

out a lot of conventional military capacity, killed a lot of Iran's leaders, but that's not this what this was supposed to be about. So I mean, Ben, again, we're not having nuclear talks that we know of the U.S. and Iran, but the state of positions remain very far apart. Again, earlier this week, Trump talked to Neil Confin, Boy, he told him he wanted all of Iran's highly enriched uranium out of the country, Iran refuses to do that. Trump has said repeatedly

that Iran can't do any nuclear enrichment Iran repeatedly as it started. It's right to enrich Trump wants to cap their missile program. He wants to end their support for proxies. It seems unlikely that the IRGC is going to be down with that. So again, I'm trying to figure out an end game, a path forward, some like common ground in these talks, but I'm struggling to see it.

“I think that the fundamental problem here is we had this debate back in 2015 when the Iran”

nuclear deal went into effect. And having looked at the problem for years and having gotten the same presentation, a version of it, the Netanyahu gave Trump to bomber on. When we looked at that, you know, and we also looked at what was possible at the negotiating table, you know, what became very clear is number one, you cannot destroy a nuclear program by bombing it. You just can't. They know how to do this. They know how to do the nuclear fuel cycle. They have

uranium. They have the capacity to build centrifuges that can enrich that uranium. They have the capacity to stockpile it. You can bomb buildings where that takes place, but, you know, they can move it around. They can go underground. They've got lots of different scientists. You cannot bomb that out of existence. You could invade the country and fully occupy it and hunt down every last scientist and, you know, peace of the program, but we're obviously not going to do that either.

So therefore, you can only resolve this issue diplomatically. If you resolve it diplomatically, there is absolutely no way that the Iranian government will ever agree that they do not have the capacity to enrich uranium that they're going to abandon that in perpetuity. They're just not going to do that. Like it, we'd like that to happen. They're not going to do that. And so therefore, all you can do is negotiate some restrictions on their program where they're shipping the nuclear

material that they produce out of the country. They're operating less centrifuges and there are

“inspections. That's the Iran nuclear deal. That's the JCPOA. The only thing available to Trump as an”

off-ramp to this war, potentially, because I don't know if the Iranians are even able to do it,

is basically the deal that Obama had that he tore up. And agreeing to that would reveal the

absolute fucking insanity of not just Trump, but the entire Iran war industrial complex, you know,

shit posters online, you work at, you know, think tanks that had had no purpose for existing

other than to cheerlead for a war with Iran. Those people cannot admit that they were wrong.

“And the only way out of this war is for them to, if not admit that they're wrong,”

tacitly admit they're wrong by essentially trying to pursue a version of what Obama's nuclear deal was. I mean, honestly, I think that's where it is. And Trump, you know, they've tried all these other metrics, like we blew up some of their conventional military, we killed these leaders and and everybody can see with their own eyes that the RGC took our best punch and it's still standing, that they controlled the straight-of-form moves, and that they actually have more enriched uranium

in a stockpile than they had the day Trump pulled out of that nuclear deal. And what was this all, not just this war, this whole last decade, what was it for? The insanity of it is just a pair and Trump doesn't understand these things. But I think that the core point here is, absent something like that, this war, like literally there's accomplished precisely nothing, and unbelievable costs. Yeah, according to US intelligence, it's just nothing different. It's just

“nothing, because the ballistic missile, they'll rebuild the ballistic missile. They'll produce the”

ballistic missile. So like this is completely insane that this happened. And by the way, that event with the kids, Trump talked about the power of nuclear weapons. He talked about killing Iranians. He did his whole riff about like trans athletes and then he said to them, Barack Hussein Obama, have you heard of him? Again, to a bunch of kids, do you think that set of remarks is going to wind up and you're forthcoming book about great speeches? I will say, having spent four years

writing a book to try to tell the history of the United States through 15 consequential states. That's got to make it in there. Including speeches I don't agree with, you know, the vice president of Confederacy's and the Reagan's in there. The degree to which the bar has lowered here in Trump, I will say to people though, book is out three weeks from today. Okay. So now's, we're in that sweet pre-order word by that sucker. If you are planning to buy the book,

buying it now helps a lot, because if you get some pre-orders, they ship more books to the book stores, and it all works out better. Get 'em on that list. Where do they go? Go to the Amazon. When I hit the list, but the reason that's, anyway, get 'em away to buy it.

I mean, you can go down, you can go to a book shop. Oh, I never find my plug. All we say,

the battle for American Identity, and actually don't go to Amazon, I'm going to book shop, because of the Met Gala. Go to book shop. That supports independent book stores. And then I'm new hitting the road. I'll be on a book tour. I'm going to go on a 15 places, so we'll make that available. I'd well, it's a say to the San Francisco world, those two, in particular there, because tickets are on sale now. I'll be at Sidiarchs Arts and Lectures

on June 9th with Jolani Cobb and excited about that event. I know we get some San Francisco listeners. Got a lot of supplements. It's great, Titi. Okay. So the politics of this are becoming quite clear. And it's a political disaster for Trump. Washington Post had a poll out over the weekend. Some numbers for you, Ben, you tell me these are good. Overall, approval rating for Trump is 37% approval of handling of Iran is 33% 66% as a proof. Proof on inflation is 27% obviously.

That's getting worse every day because of oil and gas prices, cost of living 23% approval. About 61% think going to war with Iran with some mistakes, 65% aren't confident that will prevent Iran from getting a new 22% think the Trump's actions against Iran are consistent with his promises in the 2024 election. So I mean, like all these numbers suggest that they want to run screaming from this thing. I think the Wall Street Journal reported that

Trump keeps like kind of toggling between wanting to severely punish Iran for not doing what he said but also worrying about getting pulled deeper into the conflict. Like anyone who's gotten in one of these regime change wars over the last couple decades could have told him that military action was not going to drive political change in Iran. But here we are to look at yourself out of this one big eye. He can't get out of it and because you can't change prices, you can't change how people are

feeling and what they're seeing. I think the other thing from all these clips that stands out to me

“is that there's a convergence of the extent to which he's out of touch that I think is important”

and you're seeing some people on the Magarite pickup on this, including people like Tucker Carlson, which is that he now is pivoting to the stock market. Well, you know, the wars, we had to do this detour, used me excursion at the detour, but the stock market said an all-time high. I think actually that is the precisely wrong message because people are beginning to get, you know,

why is the fact that the stock market is completely fucking juiced by an AI bubble. And so basically

of money on an AI bubble creating technologies that are going to come for your jobs while he's fighting

“a war that does nothing for you and makes your gas prices higher and it's going to start to affect”

things like fertilizer and all these other things that people really depend upon in this country. And so in a way, the war itself, you know, it's pulled back the curtain that the emperor has no

close, he has no idea what he's doing, he's broken his promises, he never probably believed

them in first place, but also like even his way to spin it himself out of it is a compounding the air because telling people that they shouldn't be upset about high gas prices or war or the portability is a myth. Yeah, I don't know, a hoax for democrats, like what if you're only plays to point to the stock market, that would only make me more pissed. Oh, absolutely, especially yeah, you barely own stocks. I mean, most British people own stocks. Speaking of what we've also

been trying to figure out what's going on in Iran. I mean, our producers have been trying really hard to get in touch with people on the ground. Obviously, that's very hard. There's an internet

“blackout. There's all these threats in the regime. But just to give you a sense of what kind of”

conditions people are living under. So one contact we did get in touch with through an intermediary received this text afterward. This is verbatim. Do you're citizen following a review of actions carried out in cyberspace and pursuant to articles of the Islamic penal code, your act of approving and publishing criminal content in cyberspace is currently under investigation by the

cyber police. Obviously, that person didn't want to talk further. We were finally able to connect

with another civilian in Iran a teacher. We decided not to play the audio of that message because if you didn't want to create any risk for this person, we wanted to share some of what was said. They said their ability to teach has been severely disrupted by the ongoing blackout on internet access. They said even with the expensive VPN services internet access is limited and unstable and that people have to spend a large part of their income just to say connected. There's a type of

government provided internet often referred to the national restricted internet that gives you some basic access but it comes with control and monitoring and all sorts of restrictions. And because of that, people don't feel comfortable using it and overall just getting online is no longer simple. It's expensive. It's unstable and it comes with a bunch of trade-offs between access quality and privacy. And then they said in terms of fear of the government quote,

"We do not have freedom. We do not have freedom of expression even basic forms of descent can lead to serious serious consequences. People could be detained or faced severe accusations. In my own experience, I've received threatening messages simply for liking a few posts on Instagram. It's not normal that a simple action like liking a post on Instagram can lead to intimidation and make you feel like your own safety could be a risk." So Trump occasionally now will mention

the protesters killed earlier this year. He did some weird thing today where he said that 40,000 people are killed by five snipers which doesn't make a lot of sense. But it's worth noting that he's almost exclusively made their lives worse and deep in the repression that they face from the regime. Yeah. And I talked to someone I know here, friend of mine, whose family is Iranian and they were describing the securedest way they have to get news. They can't

really be in touch. They hear second hand, somebody hear somebody hear somebody, they're okay. But it's just halish. I'm just going to say something to kind of introduce a new idea here, Tommy, which is in the regime. It's nothing to do with the IRGC, the Iranian regime and how repressive they are. We have a deeply fucked up foreign policy because of how routinely we ignore the human cost of all the things that we're doing around the world. And this war is case and point. The

girls go we bond in the first days, case and point. The other thing I would say, though, is that you know, somebody asked me recently, well, what do you regret about the Iran deal? And usually that's like, they want me to say, like, this sunset closet should have been 12 years instead of 10 or something. I actually regret when I think, if I were to make a recommendation for what Trump should do, not that he'd listen to me, let's look the sanctions on Iran. And I know what every

intern listens to this podcast. But like maybe not everything, not the sanctions on the IRGC or whatever, but like, is this helping them? We've had that we've been sanctioning the shit out of this

“country for 20 years. That teacher's life is far more miserable because of it. Yeah. And she's”

getting repressed more because of our sanctions, our sanctions empower the Iranian Revolutionary

Guard Corps. Do not listen any longer to these hawks who tell you that the way that you care about human rights is by sanctioning countries and cutting off basic goods and collapse and currencies. You know what, if you looked in Cuba, if you lifted sanctions like and, you know, try to get something, try to get the nuclear program, do bigger sanctions really. Yeah, because seriously

like, or might still be dealing with like an intolerable amount of repression, but their lives

would be better. And if we think that sanctioning this country or sanctioning this regime is somehow changing it, it is entrenched the worst people in Iran deeper and power. And so this is a bigger conversation we can have going forward. But one idea for Democrats looking for new ideas is, and by the way, because what, sanctions are hurting people, they're also going to shoot us in the face, because the Chinese are going around the world saying, this is why you got to get off the

dollars of rights reserve currency. And so what are we doing here? We're acting against human interests and we're acting against America's long-term interests by pursuing these insane sanctions policies on Iran on Cuba and all these countries that things just get worse in those countries. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, Trump's going to China next week on the May 14th and 15th,

make Iran's foreign minister is there this week to get ahead of that visit. Listeners probably

“remember that this China trip was supposed to happen in late March, early April, but Trump”

delayed it to deal with the Iran war. I'm sure this conversation you were just talking about about how the Chinese can help Iran and other countries get around U.S. sanctions is front and center of that conversation. But despite the delay, Trump was like, oh, look, we have delayed this trip, because then the war will be over. And then we could focus on the real things like, no, the the China, the Iran war has totally overtaken the trip. Trump kind of tried to

locate today, talk about how nice China has been to him during the war, how they haven't challenged us. But Treasury Secretary Scott Besson had a slightly different take earlier this week on, I think he was on Fox News or Fox Business. Let's watch. Let's see if China, let's let's see them step up with some diplomacy and get the Iranians to open the streets. He said that twice now. Do you expect Beijing and President Xi to do something with regard to Iran?

Again, all I'll say is Iran is the largest state sponsor terrorism and China has been buying 90% of their energy, so they are funding the largest state sponsor terrorism. That's quite a broad side in advance of Trump's trip. Not quite on message, there's

“guy. So first of all, Trump says we control the screen. Right. So why does China have to open it?”

I don't know. I mean, first of all, there's a cognitive dissonance. And second of all, these guys talk like it's, I don't know, 1992 or something like China, did you think China gives two shits what Scott Besson says? Like like he can order around Xi Jinping? I mean, we're just living in there's a reality in the world. And then there's like the Trump reality. And increasingly, people aren't even trying to kind of play along with it.

Like they were at the beginning when they were a little afraid of terrorists and things like that. I look, Trump is is intimidated by Xi Jinping. You can tell.

Yeah. He's always busy and he doesn't want to piss him off. He's afraid that you got his

ass handed to him in a trade war. And now he's created a huge problem for the Chinese and debris else because they have supply lines and energy needs to run into Iran. But like just hactoring them. I mean, if they were doing smart diplomacy, it's kind of like what I say, just so we can be constructive here. Look, a smart diplomatic effort would be like, look, we fucked up. Let's try to solve this problem comprehensively. You know, you work on the

Iranians to kind of open up the strait. We will lift some of these sanctions so that you can buy the oil more easily. And in return though, you got to get this stockpile of the nuclear material out. Right. You got to convince them to have the IE in. This is what diplomacy would be. Right. And they're incapable of doing it. But even said, what's happening is the Wall Street Journal reported the China's Commerce Ministry told companies just not to comply with U.S.

sanctions over the purchase of Iranian oil. But actually telling their companies to ignore us, there have been reports that China may be selling Iran weapons or other dual-use materials. And like in, you know, like Al-Divaya's who's in Iran expert, we've talked to him in the show a bunch of times, because he's seeing people affiliated with the IRGC saying that Iran has been way too shy about aligning itself with China and Russia. So that's, you know, likely to come.

“Remember the Chinese facilitated this opening between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023. They're”

also getting very active with Pakistan on the diplomatic efforts to try to end this war currently. So the Chinese are like attempting to fill the void in some way. And it just again, like, if this war wasn't happening, I'm sure the agenda would be trade deal, Taiwan, artificial intelligence, like all these big things, and said it's just going to be. Yeah. And the Chinese, by the way, you know, they see us like confirming all the arguments

they've been making around the world forever. But that the Americans are reckless, that they can't be trusted, that they overuse sanctions, that they're militaristic, like Trump is proving every Chinese argument that has been made in two months. And so they're going to reap a lot of geopolitical gains from this. Although they also have like economic concerns about, you know, the potential global recession that this war could bring about.

Interestingly, you know, they have a stockpile of oil that they can, they can write out for,

And so the Qatar cutoff of LNG, like, as that gas field is shut down, because Iranians bombed it,

“is a problem for them. But it's a problem with the solution, which is in the long term,”

they're going to want to pull Qatar and some of those Gulf States into their orbit. Right. And I would be shocked if that's not one of the consequences this war is that the Gulf States that usually looked in the direction of the US are going to be much more open to look the Chinese deals reliable. Terms are, you know, Beijing favored. But we know what the terms are. Yeah. Where's the Americans? We have no idea what the fuck they're going to do day to day.

Right. Exactly. So the other front in this war is in Lebanon and that fighting is raging between these Israelis and Hezbollah. The Lebanese health ministry said 17 people have been killed in Sunday and over 2600 since the conflict started. Hezbollah said it carried out over a dozen attacks and Israeli soldiers on Monday. And that I don't know about you. I'm on social media seeing more and

more videos of these FPV drone attacks by Hezbollah on, like, Israeli tanks and stuff. They're basically

taking all the technology we saw in Ukraine with, like, fiber optic drones that can evade electronic

“warfare defenses and using those in Southern Lebanon to pretty devastating effect. The, the”

New York Times, it's like a pretty big deep dive on satellite imagery from Southern Lebanon. They found, quote, widespread demolitions have flattened expanses of at least two dozen towns in villages near the border with damage to government offices as well as civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and mosques. Israel's defense minister, Israel cats explicitly said, this pattern of destruction is following the, uh, the Gaza models, basically, and Trump is pushing

for talks and ceasefire plans. But neither side seems particularly interested at this point. So not a ton to say, new about the Lebanon right now, except for it's like incredibly grim and just kind of steady state, like, I don't know if they're calling it the ceasefire, but it's just an ongoing war. It's insane that they call it the ceasefire. And it's insane that Western outlets, like, you know, talk about fragile ceasefires and things like this. Uh, uh, the other thing

that, uh, did you see Smotrich, you know, the finance minister? Yes. Say that, um, you know, he promised his son that he wouldn't destroy all of Lebanon so that his son in his generation could. I mean, this is really psychotic stuff. And, and look, we, uh, when I remember they started carpet bombing something, Lebanon, if you posted like, which I did, you know, they're going to do the Gaza model, Lebanon. People have been like, oh, you, Israel, Hater, like, how dare you, you know,

and now they, there's really government says we're going to do in southern Lebanon where we didn't Gaza make it uninhabitable. That, because what they're doing, just so people understand is they're literally making it, they're not just destroying these villages. They're so comprehensively destroying,

“you know, the, the farmland, the olive trees that there'll be nothing to move back to. That's what,”

that we mean by Gaza model. It's not just that they're leveling every building. It's that it's just going to be nowhere for those people to come back. You know. This episode is sponsored by better help. Life is a lot sometimes. Regardless of what's keeping you up at night or leaving you overwhelmed, it's easy to feel like you have to figure it out all on your own. But you don't have to face these challenges alone. Having someone to listen to understand and to support you,

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Speaking of guys, we should touch base on all things, Gaza. Um, because, you know, last October, everybody celebrated the ceasefire deal, uh, broken by the administration. But unfortunately, it's really been a ceasefire name only for people who live in Gaza and life in Gaza is hell on earth. So some numbers for you guys. The Palestinian health ministry says that since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, 823 people have been killed and 2,300 have been wounded. Four Israeli soldiers have

been killed since the ceasefire began. Only 250 of the promised 600 trucks of aid per day are getting into Gaza. Partly, that was the result of the one of the two crossing, crossings being closed for a long time to do the Iran War. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs estimates that rodents are swarming 80% of the camps for displaced people. And the World Health Organization reports that there have been over 110,000 cases of disease

or infestation due to external parasites. Then I was texting with, um, Pharaoh said, uh, earlier this week, he was for listeners. He was this heroic doctor who came on the show after he had volunteered in Gaza during the conflict. And he said that like the society and the health infrastructure in Gaza is just so thoroughly destroyed that rat attacks on infants are now a major source of morbidity. So kids are getting sick and dying because they're getting attacked by rats.

So the mad senior baby getting attacked by rats. The only power comes from generators. There's no

grid left. Um, and the reconstruction cost is estimated at 70 billion. And the third of that is

“needed like up front in the first year and a half, just to do basic infrastructure and essential”

services. So basically, the long story short is the places in this Nightmarish limbo. Um, Hamas is not disarmed. They refuse to disarm until Israel withdraws and promises them up Palestinian state. Israel is occupying pretty much, you know, half the Gaza strip. It refuses to let in items that are essential for reconstruction. All the people chapped by the Trump administration. This like group of, you know, experts and technocrats to just sit on their ass. Yeah,

they're sitting in Egypt at a resort doing nothing. Some of them want to be doing more, but they they're just no funding. There's no way to do anything. The civil police force that they kept talking about none of them have been trained. And it's just, it was so obvious then at the time and even clear now that Trump and Jared Kushner and Steve Wittkov, they only gave a shit about getting these really hostages out. And once that happened, they were like, you know, jobs done.

They don't care about people in Gaza. And, you know, these rallies and Hamas both seem kind of fine with the status quo because it keeps them in charge for the Israeli deals with their kind of security concerns and the Palestinian people just suffer immensely in, you know, in the meantime.

“So that's the latest. I mean, just sort of couldn't really be worse. Yeah, I think, I mean, a couple”

of things I point out here. First of all, the ceasefire violations tend to get highlighted

are the attacks, the bombing of Gaza and the killing of civilians with violence. But another piece of this is that Israel has just fundamentally refused to let in the aid that it promise to do under the terms of the ceasefire. And so the reason the conditions are so squalid, the reason that life continues to, you know, just be on just hell on earth for civilians there is at least in part in large part that, you know, look, if if if if Israel wanted a lot of assistance in,

you wouldn't have infants getting attacked by rats. You wouldn't have people suffering malnutrition. You wouldn't have preventable deaths. Like, this is a genocidal policy like that is continuing. And just because they're not bombing at the same pace that they were before, it doesn't mean that they're just not squeezing and squeezing and squeezing with complete disregard to the loss of

civilians in life. And the second thing, like, I'd say, when you look back, there's just something

Googleish about the celebration of that agreement, you know, and we, you know, we were calibrated at the time, but this is like the worst case scenario in a lot of ways. I mean, I guess it could be worse. They could just start bombing and discriminately at the pace that they were before, but nothing, not a finger is being lifted to help these people. And they're still drum strikes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm sure that if you're Palestinian, you hear is like the buzzing of drones

overhead, you know, the fear that that engenders and children is unimaginable to me. And it just shows you that Trump and Netanyahu, they wanted the hostages out, and they kind of just wanted it to be downgraded on the every assignment editor's desk around the world. Like the media, it's off the television screens, little less social media attention on it, you know, like,

effort. In fact, nothing will come of that, but Jared Kushner will get to hit up the Saudis

on the margins for his investment fund. Steve Whitkoff can talk to the Pakistanis about buying

“hotels in New York and the crypto deal. He made with the Trump family crypto business, right?”

The president of Indonesia as we talked about last week can ask for Eric or Don Jr. cell phone number, to figure out the golf course deal back home that he's using the Greece Trump, right? It's just like, it's grift on the side. Yeah, and that's the last thing I was going to say is like the Jared Kushner presentation at Davos, we spend some time on with this kind of Jetsons do buy data centers. Yeah, data centers and high rises. How about tents and commercial real estate and it was grotesque at

the time. But again, to be constructive, why let him make that presentation at Davos? Like stop humoring these people. Like there's a kind of, you know, deference, Jared's here. We have to sit attentively while he, you know, gives us the Jetsons version of Gaza. Like it's time for people to start saying no to these people, to start calling bullshit on these people, to stop, I mean, if you're the Saudis or Emirates or whoever members of like invest in Jared, how you feel about

that investment now with the war in Iran fucking up your economy. Like you don't need to pay this guy. Like there's not a requirement that you pay him. Like, I know that, you know, you're doing it to get Trump off your back, but is it working? No, no, it's not. And it is not working diplomatically either. I mean, the next topic for us is the Russian Ukraine, another conflict Trump said he's going to solve in 24 hours that Jared Kushner and what cough are on the case.

They've gotten literally nothing done. So later this week, then the Russians are going to hold their annual victory day commemoration that celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. It usually entails this huge military parade of tanks and other weapons, but this year Putin is not going to be displaying kind of major military hardware. It could be because, you know, drone strikes

“could reach that hardware and hit the parade. It could be because I think Zelensky was speculating”

that the Russian military just doesn't have enough kit to show off this year. So they're not going to try Putin proposed a ceasefire for the day of the parade itself. That's obviously a bit cynical in self-serving in response. Zelensky proposed a long-term ceasefire in a colasting piece deal. Don't hold your breath on that, getting done. But the catchals, the estimates are just staggering. So there's a CSIS report from January from like five months ago

that estimated Russia had 1.2 million casualties from the start of the war through the end of 2025.

Ukraine's catchals, the estimate was about half of that. But again, that was five months ago in every week, advances in drone technology make life at the front lines more deadly and hellish. So I'm sure the numbers have increased. Ukraine has been able to hit targets deeper into Russia than ever before. And there's been some really interesting reporting about dissent in Russia and security issues in Russia itself. So in mid April, there was this blogger named Victoria Bonia. She posted

this eight-minute, 18-minute Instagram video outlining a bunch of concerns and anger problems in Russia itself. And she directed it at Putin. And it went super viral. So the Guardian said it got 26 million views in four days, which is surprising since Instagram is technically banned in Russia as his criticism of Putin really. But Bonia, she complained about flooding, oil pollution along with Black Sea. This massive call of livestock in Siberia, which really angered people, internet restrictions.

And the government was forced to respond in a real way because she was seen as actually a defender of Putin. Then there was this fascinating report in the Financial Times about how Putin is increasingly paranoid and worried about getting killed or assassinated. They say you spend more time in bunkers underground. Security around him is tighter. People aren't a lot of phones or internet connected devices near him. Some of his staff had security systems installed in their own homes, which

that sucks. The piece also said Putin is almost entirely focused on the war in foreign affairs.

“It just kind of lets domestic stuff languish. So Ben, I think, you know, we wanted to raise this”

because it's been a while. I personally feel guilty every week. We don't talk about Ukraine more. Because the stakes are just as high. The death toll is just as horrific. But over time, there's

always like a new nightmare that we're covering with Gaza or Iran. But also, there's kind of like

an undertone in these reports that maybe Putin is losing his grip on Russian society. The polling is going down. We're sitting in LA. I have no idea how strong or weak Putin's grip on power is. But maybe it's wish casting, but maybe there is a sense that the Russian economy can't just sustain this level of fighting casualties for this long. But I don't know, what do you make of these reports? I think they're really interesting. And we should just say, I mean, for the Ukrainians,

it sucks. They're just this grinding front line and this casualty levels is just beyond the immediate human toll. How that country gets out of this situation and is viable in terms of rebuilding gets harder with each passing month and a year. On the Putin piece, you know,

"Oh, Putin's going to fall." And the Ukrainians are counter-fensive. It's going to be victory.

“And they're going to take back Crimea, like, that was serious wish casting. But at the same time,”

a lot of the issues in this war are ones that are going to get worse with time for Putin. So, for instance, like people from the front, like going, I mean, if you look at the Soviet war, like the in Afghanistan, it took years for that war to start to eat away at like Russian society because guys are coming home. They're disabled. Their alcoholism rates are going up. Like, it's, you know, this is a PTSD. People are, you know, like the literally the workforce is being

hard. So if you look at Russia today, for instance, like, yes, they've been able to create a war economy that can employ people in artificially, you know, boost growth rates and they can manipulate oil prices. They benefit from the war because the price of world goes up so they get a little more revenue. But at the end of the day, they're spending an extraordinary money on this. They're losing an extraordinary amount of people. The people that are coming out as we're going home are probably

not, you know, okay. So towns, small cities are starting to probably feel, you know, it takes

“two, three, four, five years. That's how long this war has been, by the way. The Ukrainian strategy”

of striking these targets, like deep into Russia, is pretty smart because it's bringing the war home to certain places. It may actually be causing, like, you know, demonstrable damage and they're hitting energy infrastructure in the source of the revenue. And the repression, you know, like we make a mistake sometimes of, it's like, maybe we should know because now we live in a version of authoritarianism

that, like, it's a spectrum. So just because Putin's always been repressive, does it mean it can't

get worse? And it's clearly gotten worse. I mean, a loan is pointed at us repeatedly that, like, these internet restrictions, like, that fucks up people's lives. It's like, all people want to be online. People want to be in touch with their family. People want to be in touch with, so many Russians are out of the country and they can't be in touch with their family. Businesses rely on the internet. So I do think that they're, you know, Putin is not as strong as some people project

or as weak, but they're, these cracks are starting to show. And it might take time. But at a certain point, the bill is going to come to you for this war. Yeah, and there's been some interesting reporting about Putin, like, trying to erase even Soviet history, you know, the strike needs a particularly, I mean, it's an authoritarian move. It's not the strongest move. There's also bit a bunch of reporting about Russian entities, these, like, kind of fake businesses that could

set up recruiting men from Africa and telling them they can come work at some private security job and sending these Kenyan men to the front lines, just to be cannon fodder and it's horrible stuff. Also, though, just back on the negotiating fronts, I mean, I think the last trilateral talks were in February. And I saw, I think I read somewhere that Wikov and Jared Kushner, they've been a Russia a bunch of times, right? They'll meet with Putin whenever they can. I don't think they've

ever been to Ukraine. And the question is why? You wouldn't go one time to meet with the people

to see the place to understand the issues. So, first of all, two things, you notice a blade that

meeting was before the warner on. So, another casualty of this war is that there's just no attention on the Ukraine. I don't have insight information. I had to do all the caveats. We don't know

“for sure. They want to do real-state deals or mineral deals in Russia. That's why they're there.”

They don't care if it's shit about the Ukrainians. They see a bananas on the back end of this war being solved. Jared and Wikov, I think, wanted to do deals in Russia. I don't why I might I surmise that. One, the guy that Putin started sending me the talks is the head of the sovereign wealth fund. Yeah, that's a big story. He's not from the Foreign Minister. He's from the sovereign wealth fund. Two, in a lie. He's in Miami, like jet skiing with them all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Dicking around. Two, in Alaska, Putin brought all these people from like these various, you know, we're going to do mineral deals and all this stuff. They, they, they clearly want

to skip ahead to that step. The problem is the war's going to end first and three to your point.

Why would you not go to the country that's been invaded? Jared and Wikov's interest in this, I think, have nothing to do with peace. And I've everything to do with making a bucket in Russia. And that's fucking disgusting. Yes. Yes, it is. And there's a great peace. I think the New York Times magazine this week about kind of the privatization of diplomacy and the way that those who are fusing profit, you know, for example, the Pakistanis did this big crypto deal with the Trump

family company. And now what do you know? Well, they're hosting the, you know, talks like, like, you and I have laughed on the show, but I Trump is always shouting out like the field of Marshall, general and Pakistanis is probably like a human rights violator. Yeah, probably. We know what. Yeah, pretty safe pet. Yeah, pretty safe pet. And not calling him by his honor effective. You are so, you know, it's an emotional, you know, it's an emotional, you know, it's so emotional.

It's an emotional, it's an emotional, it's an psychological, it's an hour like a friend. So final topic, this one comes courtesy of Michael and our team. So enjoy then. It's a quiz for you.

who was Dino who are current ambassador to both Switzerland and Lichtenstein is?

“I've no idea, but if I, I'm going to guess, like is it, is it a, is it a Kushner or a Wood Coff relative?”

Let's roll a tape. I'm Colis, not a dates ambassador to Switzerland, I'm Lichtenstein. I'm delighted to celebrate national apprenticeship as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

I've seen his hand, the tour of the apprenticeships. Wow. Amazing stuff.

I just have one comment for one of the years, or decades, good to go buy. And, and Colis, the Gingrich would look exactly precisely the other. That's basically a shot into that face. Like, like, we will be dead, you and I, and there will be a video of her in some Republican administration in 2075 as ambassador to, you know, Luxembourg or some, you know, fancy European place, looking exactly the same. Yeah, the sheep, she faced tunes with a belt

standard. By the way, that was Colis to Gingrich, former ambassador to the Vatican under Trump 1.0 wife of former speaker, Newt Gingrich. So, Colis does now represent their interests in burn. Remember, she is Newt's third wife. So, he made his first wife when he was a teenager. I didn't know this. When she was his high school geometry teacher. It's very wrong. Yeah, they can't decide on that case. You can. What's your Rothschild? Well, find out. That marriage ended

in divorce after his affair with Mary Ann, who became his second wife as a new, new,

then had an affair with Colis for six years. While he was still married, and he asked his second wife for a divorce shortly after she was diagnosed with MS. So, again, good guy.

“Colis, I think, 23 years younger than Newt about the same age as his daughter. And, again,”

we cannot point out enough that Newt was having this affair while constantly attacking Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky stuff. So, Newt married, Colis did in 2000, converted to her faith, Catholicism in 2009. So, Ben, to honor her. We're just good thoughts on the stand on these personal expressions. Yeah. Yeah. A little quiz for you. Okay. One. First question. "Let Kashbatelle. Colis the Gingrich is a noted children's book author. In her seven book series,

what animal, quote, travels through time to discover the pivotal moments that have shaped American history. Is it A, L.S. the elephant? B, Newt the Narwhal. C, Donald the Dalmatian. D, liberty the links." This is, this is actually just as good as Kashb the wizard. What was A again? L.S. the elephant. I'm going to go with the elephant. I'm going to go with the elephant. You nailed it. Yeah. You absolutely nailed it. I think of all the things to choose. These are,

these are actually Republicans before they're Donald's. I'm bummed it wasn't Newt the Narwhal. So, the books are apparently written in rhymes. Like, after winning the war, Washington said it would not become a king. He became our first president and that's a better thing. Could we please get a dramatic reading of these books by Pete Heggsett? Oh, that's a good idea. With an American fight party. It is very fitting. You're right. A question, too. Newt Gingrich

owed as much as $500,000 to which retailer in the mid 2000s. Was it A, vineyard vines? B, Tiffany and Co. C, radio shack, D, Rolex. 500,000? Five hundred thousand. Because I would say Newt has a taste for the vineyard vines, but I'm going to go Rolex. Yeah. So, it was B, Tiffany. Tiffany, okay. Hard to spend 500 grand, it had been very, very hard. That's a lot. That's a lot of white leather sand and hands. Yeah. Oh, we got to clip it this apparently. I've even seen it.

There doesn't that whole thing strike you as stupid. I mean, if you're, these are stores. These are stores that have a wide range of things you can buy. She has girlfriends with birthdays. What? Is that him defending himself in 2000? That's a quick swear of you. Like,

the fact that this guy was held up is like some intellectual. I know. It's always bothered me. Like,

the bar for these Republicans is so low. Yeah. Yeah. This is our moral leader in our, like, more intellectuals. Yes, giant. So, this Tiffany thing came up in his, uh, is ill-fated presidential campaign in 2012 for the nomination. He also got flagged for suspending his

“campaign to go on a Greek cruise. Do you remember he was like the farmer? Yeah. I mean, that was a”

crazy field. That was like, Romney, Sand Rick, Sand Touram at a moment there. Thinking back, I can see why Trump mop the fucking floor. Yeah. Because he came in and he was like, I have a personality in the sense of humor. And I'm not a loser. Like, he's idiots. Uh, last question, when leaving a second wife, Marianne, new compared Marianne to Calista saying, I can't handle a insert luxury consumer good right here. Right now, all I want is a less expensive

good. You got the formatting here. Yeah. So, I can't handle this luxury thing. Need a less expensive thing. Was it? I can't handle a Sherman ultra-soft right now. All I want is a Scott one ply. Was it

espresso right now. All I want is instant. Was it D? I can't handle a Jaguar. All I want is a Chevrolet.

One of those is actually true. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I guess I'm going to go D because anyone else is like, did you crush this quiz? D? Yeah. Chevrolet? I mean, I wanted a Chevy. That's a bad thing to say

“that we're human being. I mean, I think you're marrying. I mean, nude spin and pulling it back”

seats over the years. I mean, like I would. So, it's close to, well, I know. Taxi, when it is up, this is, nope. That was great quiz. Thank you, Michael, for that. So, to have them to give this guy an hour of free time on the show day. That was what we're doing. That was good. It was a pretty like dark angry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we need to that. To board that little fun. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. But, by the way, isn't that better than the Tim Miller when he's like, you know,

asking you the name of the foreign minister of Lichtenstein. Yeah. Tim thinks there's people who

seem to think that working in foreign policy and meant you worked in geography. No, it's funny. The reason he does it is because George Bush, like, had asked the name of the head pack leader Pakistan as much or off, and Tim thought that was like a dumb liberal gotch thing. But, actually, like, I'm not sure that was a dumb question because the pack is sending it up being like the most

“important country after 9/11. So, yeah. Look, I think asked him. I think people running for President”

asking them basic, civics question is a good idea. Like, I think, you know, if you asked Donald Trump, like, how many branches of government are there, that he would just flunk a lot of these basic questions, and then it would have been useful along the way. But, yeah, Tim likes it just tortures us when we go on a show. Yeah, he does. We're going to take a break. We come back here to hear my conversation with Jason Crow about Iran, about his curling a Pete Heck's death, about

Trump moving troops at a Germany. So, stick around for that. Pot-save the world is brought to you by simply safe. Most traditional security systems on the market lock you in to a long-term multi-year contracts with huge cancellation fees. Simply safe is different. They earn your trust by providing 24/7 effective professional monitoring that's actually affordable, and they do it without roping you into long-term contracts. As you guys know,

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you're helping us grow Cricket Media, which is one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media companies left in Trump, America. If you join, you also get ad free episodes of all your favorite pods. Ad free episodes of PodsA of America, love it or leave it offline. Podsave the world. You also get bonus content like our new extra episode of PodsA of America called PodsA of America, only friends. Dan, Fighters, Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent sub-stack

newsletters like PodsA of America, Open Tabs, and tons more great content. So, stop what you're doing right now and go ahead and subscribe at Cricket.com/friends. Check it out. My guest today represents Colorado's sixth congressional district and he serves on the House Armed Services Committee, the House Hormnitslect Committee on Intelligence and many other August committees. Jason Crowe, great to see you again. Tell me, thanks for having me back. So, the War Powers Resolution,

the Law, establishes this 60-day deadline after which a president has to stop the use of armed forces in a conflict for else, get congressional approval. Trump's war with Iran hit that 60-day deadline last week, last Friday, but the Defense Secretary, Pete Hexeth, he argued in the send

don't need Congress to act. We should all just note that since that spin, the U.S. and Iran have been shooting at each other and this rate of war moves with the U.S. sinking a number of

“Iranian boats earlier this week with helicopters, I believe. What did you make of Hexeth's claim?”

Well, can we actually just, there's an important step missing here. The 60-day clock is determined on the War Powers Act, which is determined on that there being imminent threat. There has to be an imminent threat and then under an imminent threat, then they have 60 days and then there's an

additional 30 days that conduct the troop withdrawal beyond the 60 days. But they never showed

the imminent threat. It's all this do about, much to do about the 60-day thing, we never met the initial threshold, which requires there either be, there's only two ways a president can take our troops to war. One is if there's an imminent threat in which case they have the 60 days, which they never showed, or there's an AUMF by Congress. Neither of those things are true. So this whole thing from the beginning has been unlawful and without authorization, but more importantly,

without actually the consent of the American people, which is really what this is all about. So you're right about that context, it's important. But I guess associated with that, wouldn't this new military operation, this guide mission for boats and the trader who moves

“project freedom, would that also require congressional authorization?”

Yeah, it would. Well, there are so many things going on here. One is the initial attack on Iran,

right, which required imminent threat or a congressional AUMF of some sort. The second is an ongoing

naval blockade. I mean, international law on the law of war is very, very clear. A naval blockade and stopping ships from coming in and out of ports is a very clear act of war, right? And then you add on top of it, hegsess claimed that somehow his ceasefire told this 60 days, there's zero president for that assertion, not to mention the fact that there actually is conflict going on right now. In the last 24 hours, there have been numerous exchanges of fire between the United

States and Iranian forces or proxy forces. So the whole thing is a mess, it's convoluted, that keep on evolving and changing their definitions, their legal basis for it, which of course is just power for the course of this administration, much like the operations going on in the

Caribbean, which you circular legal reasoning to justify, right? They always say that there isn't

an armed conflict that falls just short of an armed conflict level, but they have to use the military because it is an international armed conflict. So they want to have their cake and eat it too. So what does Congress do about it? That's the big question here. How can you guys exert some pressure on the administration to change course to follow the law to follow the constitution or whatever? Yeah. But Congress has the power that this is less the story of Donald Trump or any president

for that matter. And I'm always really clear that this isn't just something that Donald Trump has abused. This has been abused by multiple presidents, Democrat, and Republican. In multiple Congresses have allowed it, Democrat, and Republican. This is a 20 year problem in the making. And Congress tomorrow could fix it. We have the authority, constitutional authority, and we can walk

“in to the House floor. We could take a vote and take that power back tomorrow. Right? So that's what”

this is about. This is about Congress giving up its power and seeding its constitutional authority. But more importantly, it's constitutional duty. This is more about duty than it is about authority. It's our job for God's sake to actually take these votes and to be held accountable and to appropriate the money or not appropriate the money for all of these things. Because the framers knew that presidents will take all the power they're given and use all the power they're

given. That the accountability loop is in members of Congress that have to go home to their districts every weekend, every week in stand in front of their constituents and be held accountable for it. So that's ultimately the fix. And this should be the most bipartisan thing in America right now is Congress because it's been abused by both sides over the years. And because Americans of all stripes, Democrat Republican and independent want it over. They want no part in this and they want

it to be ended. The other sort of way you guys can get some accountability or oversight is through hearings. There were some hearings last week. You had this extended exchange with Pete Hexeth about a guy named Tim Parlatory who is Pete Hexeth's private attorney. He was then appointed to a Pentagon job. You pressed pistol Pete on Parlatory security clearance. You asked him about his foreign clients. He's still in private law practice. Can you explain why you were so focused on this

one individual and what you learned in that exchange and like how we act on it? Yeah, my singular

the minimum and who I love, who I've served with, who I have a deep affection that come from my

“district, come from districts around this country. There, you know, people's sons and daughters,”

brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. And he is putting these folks at such extreme risk because of his not just his incompetence, but his cavalier attitude and his unwillingness to actually do the right thing and to run the department of defense the way that it needs to be run. So I want this guy gone, which is why I chose a very different approach than I've ever chosen before. I was speaking, largely, to Donald Trump into the White House when I was questioning.

And I was pointing out that in Pete Hexeth, you have a man who publicly professes unfaltering loyalty to the president, you know, kisses his ring, kisses his ass every chance he gets. And yet behind the scenes, he's hiring people who Donald Trump despises, who Donald Trump has called a liar,

a lawyer who aspired from his legal team. And, you know, basically building a thief dumb with

these headset loyalists. And, and at the same time, the corruption, just the extreme corruption of Pete Hexeth, pointing in all these people in place, who are making money off of their positions. Very, very purposefully and intentionally. So that's what I was drawing attention to. There's also been, there's been some reporting that Hexeth is increasingly isolated, that he's paranoid about getting fired, that he brings his wife to official meetings,

that his closest advisors are this little circle, like Tim Pallatory, Pete Hexeth's brother, this guy Ricky Buria, who is like a military aid under Biden, who stayed on, he's sort of I think risen to retire heights. And that Hexeth is preoccupied with stuff like the Pentagon's chaplain services and not mentioning the massive workforce. I mean, are you hearing similar things from context you talk to within the Department of Defense? Yeah, absolutely. I'm hearing a variety of

different things. One, one strand of things I'm hearing is about the culture of fear and intimidation and retribution. But if you're a senior military officer, you can't give your honest advice

“to the civilian leadership. Yeah, you, you have to show a loyalty. How dangerous is that?”

Right? We're conducting military operations and dozens of places that are on the world. And our senior military officers don't feel empowered to say if there's something wrong or to dissent, I mean, that is so deeply dangerous. That kind of proves my earlier point. So I'm hearing that. We're hearing rumors that, you know, this parloratory has to be

hired by senior officers to get promoted, that, you know, they have to basically pay the

skype, which is, you know, part of my questioning. So we need to drill down into that. So if I want to go from a two-star general to a three-star, I have to hire this random lawyer to get a promotion to do well. Yeah, that's what we're hearing and that's why I questioned a headset about parloratory. I mean, those are the rumors that we're hearing from a lot of different places. And then, and what's crazy is that that wouldn't actually surprise me if it were

true. Yeah. I mean, that's part and parcel to this administration. It's happening administration wide in so many different ways. You know, this paid a play politics and it's steeped into, well, actually seeping isn't the wrong long work because that's passive.

“It's been implemented. Yeah, and that's why we access it and people around him. To put it in”

terms, Pete might understand, he shot on it. So it's down the hatch. He would understand that. You would understand that. Yeah, but he we've funneled it. The administration said the cost of operation epic fury, the war with Iran is $25 billion. I've seen news outlets estimate that it's much higher. I think CNN said 40 to 50 CBS said closer to 50 billion. What do you think? Did

you buy that $25 billion number? Yeah, there's no way that's true. There's no, first of all,

even if that's true, that's a lot of frickin money. Yeah, right? We have people losing health care by the millions. You know, I was just an around-table yesterday with some young folks in my district and it was all about health care. They're like, you know, my health care has been up there now paying $2,000 a month for premiums with a $6,000 deductible in a 20% copay, right? And they're like, you can't afford that. Right? So even at a $25 billion, which it's not, right? It's a

multiple of that. Two times, three times, can be four times. It's much higher than that. That is a lot of money, right? We have expended vast vast amounts of our most exquisite high-end munitions in our stockpiles. There's been tremendous damage done to our infrastructure throughout the Middle East. Let's not forget that a lot of these drones, a lot of these missiles actually have hit infrastructure, defense infrastructure in our bases that's going to be rebuilt. So it's cost a lot of money and it

continues to cost a lot of money. This blockade is not cheap either. So that's kind of the biggest

had been wounded, but Americans are paying tens of billions of dollars for war that's going to

end poorly yet again without achieving a strategic goal and they're fed up with it and they should be. And like, obviously they're trying to claim that this new guiding operation through the Stratochemus is actually a separate thing with the different names. But it's obviously, you know, it's all just

“part and parcel of the Iran War. How would you designate the cost of that to the war effort?”

I mean, I think they said like a bunch of guided missile destroyers are going to stay in the region over 100 air assets, 15,000 troops. Presumably, that is an enormous cost of keeping all those individuals in theater that would continue to add up every day, right? Yeah, this is this is a kind

of smoke and mirrors budgeting tactic that they have been using where they say it's really not

cost in this extra. And the rationale is it goes something like this that, hey, we have these ships anyhow and hey, they have to be somewhere doing something anyway. And we're paying these service members every, every month anyway. So let's just take all those normal, it's called O&M funding operations and maintenance. And we'll just move that money over into this contingency operation, this planning and we'll call it a wash. It doesn't work that way, right? Actually doing this

comes at some cost. So instead of training, instead of being back in their families, instead of that maintenance that has to be done, instead of the modernization that has to be done, instead of all the multilateral training exercises that we would normally be doing with our allies and other places in the world, we're doing this, right? There's an opportunity cost to it. And our point is, tell us what that is costing, right? And this costing extra, because like I said earlier, if you're

shooting off munitions in a stock pile and if you're taking damage, that actually is a fixed capital cost. So I'm kind of done and frankly, we did this under Rack and Afghanistan too for decades.

“They did the same thing, other administrations. I think that the O&M and they counted as part of the”

contingency. So I've been battling that for a long time now in Americans and taxpayers deserve to know what these operations are really costing and how much more is costing. So that's where we're trying to drill down on. Yeah, it seems like the bare minimum of information they should

owe us. Finally, President Trump is planning to pull 5,000 troops out of Germany. This is in response

to criticism of the war in Iran from Chancellor Merz, the leader of Germany. What do you think the impact of that move is, or will be, and are you concerned about it? Yeah, I am concerned about it. And I'm not presumptively against troop movements, right? A commander and chief should have flexibility to move troops around to respond to needs and respond to crises. You know, that is that is kind of part of the authorization that a commander and chief knowing there only has. When it becomes our business

is when the commander chief is doing it out of an emotional meltdown or to enact some kind of retribution or vengeance on a political opponent or a foreign leader because he's upset, then it becomes my business, right? Because he's abusing our military and their families that need to have some sense for how to live their life, he's using taxpayer dollars to do that, right? So that is the important distinction. The reason why becomes important because if it becomes a reason that's not

acceptable and not in the normal course of being the commander and chief, then it's Congress's job to say, okay, this is a problem. And we're not going to use taxpayer dollars to do it. We're not going to mess around with our military and our military families time and money. And we also have to make sure it's in the best interests of our national security because there is the largest land war in Europe happening right now between Russia and Ukraine and having a troop presence there

is really important to make sure that we're sending the right message against Putin, that we are

“affirming our commitment to NATO. So that's why we're trying to invoke a legal provision that we actually”

put into the defense bill on a bipartisan basis last year that says you can't move troops beyond a threshold level unless you have met certain criteria to do so. And so in this case, we're talking about Trump trying to move troops from Germany because of specific comments, but he's also threatened to punish NATO in other ways like pull troops or even bases out of Spain because they won't participate in the war. Is he any close to actually taking those steps? Because you know,

my understanding is we don't have troops in Spain just for the hell of it. It's because, you know, that geography provides some important capability to United States military. I remember talking about basing in troops and airplanes and air assets in Spain and Italy a lot during the Benghazi attacks

on September 11th and actually try to rescue those individuals. But so just move,

“it's not like you can just move them around like chess pieces. You can just move a bunch of troops”

from Spain to like Eastern Europe and not have an impact on your ability to fight wars. But is that even being discussed with Congress or is this stuff going to happen? Yeah, well, it's not being discussed with Congress in the way that it should. I mean, this administration is violating a bunch of laws or potentially violating a bunch of laws in the case of the Trump levels. Like for example, like they haven't provided, there's a statutory provision in the defense bill that says

they have to provide was called an x-word, an execution order, which is the order that

starts contingency operations. They have to legally provide every x-word to the armed services committee and they have it, right, for a year, right? So they're violating that. But the the true movement

“thing is an important point. I had an exchange with one of the senior deputy defense secretaries”

a couple of months ago where he was trying to justify the movement of troops out of Europe and what they said was, we're going to take troops out of Europe and we're going to move them back to the United States so that we can train more. We can actually train better. And I'm like, well, let me understand this. You're going to actually take troops away from the places where we actually have training grounds, some of the best training grounds in the world in Europe, where they actually

train with our allies, because they're co-located with them, where we can conduct exercises and we train moving troops around Europe, because movement of forces on rail lines, on highways,

and learning how to do that throughout Europe is essential. You're going to take them away from

“there. We're going to move them back to the United States and then to actually train them,”

we're going to, we're going to temporarily ship them back there. That's interesting. And actually do the same training that they normally do, but now we're going to have to move them back to Europe and then occur that additional cost. And he's like, yeah, that's our plan. So the whole thing makes no sense. It's more expensive. It's less efficient. It's actually worse training and all being fitted by the American taxpayer and the commonality to all of this, all because of Donald Trump

wanting to send a message and he's pissed at NATO or certain leaders. I mean, that is the reason behind so much of what's going on. Well, that seems very stupid. Well, look Congressman Crow, thank you very much for joining us today and trying to hold these Cooper's accountable. And if you learn more about whatever Tim Parlatory is doing or Tagset, or anybody else, please come back and fill us in because it's a bit of a mystery over here and we'd love to get more information.

Yeah, thanks for having me back. Thanks again to Congressman Crow for doing the show and prepare our own quiz for Tim Miller next week. I mean, yeah. Talk to you soon. Positive world is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Inisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Canter, Kenny Muffett, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is probably unionized

with the writer's Guild of America East. Hey, Cricket listeners. If you haven't become a friend of the pod yet, you are missing out on exclusive bonus content that drops every single week. If you do join, you're helping us grow Cricket media, which is one of the few independent, proudly pro-democracy media companies left in Trump's America. If you join, you also get... At free episodes of all your favorite pods. At free episodes

of Potsay of America, love it or leave it offline. Potsay of the world. You also get bonus content like our new extra episode of Potsay of America, called Potsay of America Only Friends. Dan, Fight for His Polar Coaster. You also get access to all of our excellent sub-stack newsletters, like Potsay of America Open Tabs, and tons more great content. So, stop what you're doing right now, and go ahead and subscribe at Cricket.com/Friends. Check it out.