Trump Threatens Genocide

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I'm Ben Rhodes. So this is actually the second time we're recording the introduction to the show. Moments ago, we wrapped our recording of the initial episode, and then Trump put a true social statement announcing a two-week extension on his threat to destroy all the infrastructure in Iran,

which is obviously a good thing. We're very happy about that, but it doesn't mean we're coming right back to the studio to re-record the top of this. For you guys to make sure this is current.

So here's what Trump just wrote on true social.

This is verbatim. Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabbat Sharif and Field Marshal as a manier, a Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran

agreeing to the complete immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Homoos. I agree to suspend the bombing in attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double-sided ceasefire. So you think it's like tape? The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded

ambulatory objectives and are very far along with a definitive agreement concerning long-term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East. We received a ten-point proposal from Iran and believe it as a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention

have been agreed to between the United States and Iran. But a two-week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America as president and also representing the countries of the Middle East,

it is an honor to have this long-term problem. Close to resolution. Thank you for the attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump, I've also seen some additional reporting ban that Israel is agreed to this short-term ceasefire.

Okay, so just a few thoughts on me. I'll throw it over to you. Right to this shit for him.

“Like, what does this faux legalistic weird nonsense language?”

I don't get it. Again, obviously this is good news. Like, nothing good could have or would have come from some like genocidal spasm of violence on Tuesday night from Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.

And I'm truly grateful that Trump, to call a taco, call a delay, like call a peak response or whatever that he delayed this. I'm genuinely surprised that Iran would agree to opening the straight-up home moves for two weeks

and kind of lessen. Let's see. Yeah, that's right. Like put a pin in this one. We'll see if that actually happens because it does lessen

their economic and political pressure on Trump. Again, though, it would be a good thing because as much as I, like, I want them to open the straight-up home moves. I don't want people in Asia not to be able to farm and like, drive.

I don't believe a word Trump says here about the US and Iran being quote very far along on a long-term peace plan or the problem is close to the to resolution, I guess we'll see.

I say that I heard from someone that the Pakistani lead talks were more for show when we're kind of bullshit. I guess I should revise and amend that take. If they help facilitate getting this done, it's a good thing.

But what do you make of this true social postpan? Well, it's great news. Again, it doesn't change anything we said though because threatening genocide, even if it was part of a madman and diplomacy strategy is just as morally important.

A few thoughts on my, number one, I'm genuinely curious about what the Iranian, you know, what to hear from them. But like, who is he negotiating with and Iran? Does whoever he's negotiating with and Iran

have the ability to control the Iranian revolutionary

hardcore who are the ones that control the straight-of-war moves? What does he mean by, he says a full opening of the straight-of-war moves. I'm very curious if that's true.

Whether they're going to let all traffic through there, whether they're going to continue to meter it and charge a toll because they've turned this into a toll. And if it's been mined, like who's going to get rid of the minds?

Exactly. And then just saying, oh, the problem solved. I created this problem by, you know, launching a war that closes the straight and now I've solved the problem and ended a war and now I've ended nine wars like, no,

that's all bullshit. So a lot of questions about whether the Iranians have agreed to this in the short term. I mean, they've clearly agreed to something.

But whether that's the full opening of the straight,

like remains to be seen. I'm also curious, Tommy, how much pushback he got today.

“Um, threatening genocide, I think probably got the attention of”

Republican lawmakers. It probably got the attention of world leaders. We don't know what calls were made to Trump today. Yeah. I also genuinely had been wondered, and I actually didn't say this on

the pod, so I'm glad whether the military would follow his orders. I think there's a non-zero chance that, you know, P-decks that was giving then the target list or whatever of civilian infrastructure and that, I don't know if it's Dan Cain or somebody.

It's possible that they're like, we won't do it. Yeah, we won't do it. Because, you know what, like, hopefully there's still some honor in the US military, I mean, I hope I believe there is. I just know they've been Persian generals.

So it's also possible that military is like, we're not going to do this.

And, and so he kind of scrambled to do this, right?

We don't know. We'll see. I'm sure some of it will leak out. So it's a repeat, but it doesn't solve these underlying questions. And again, we talked later in the show about the fundamentally diplomatic

questions about the Iranian nuclear program, about the war in Lebanon, which is still ongoing. You know, about the straightaway movies, whether the RGC is going to control it in charge of toll, whether it's going to fully reopen.

And so this is not like the convictory of diplomacy yet.

“It's only like the delay in Trump's threats, you know?”

Yeah. Yeah, and like the idea that these objectives that the wars objectives are close to complete is crazy. I mean, again, but it's crazy. The key priority is supposed to be the highly enriched uranium

in the 900 pounds of it. It's still sitting. And the regime change. The regime change war has gone from one homin A to a younger homin A who's even more hard-line.

Trump says that, you know, Iran's ballistic missiles have been totally destroyed. We've seen intelligence reports that suggests it might be close to 50% destroyed. So like, I just--

And they might have just launched some in Israel too. Oh, really? Oh, good reports. Yeah. That's wonderful.

Yeah. Yeah. So I just have a very hard time believing that BB Netanyahu is going to be ready to end this war. Trump might want to find an off-ramp in safe face.

Because he is, I think, looking at polling and realizes that his presidency is slowly weathering and dying before his eyes. But as we talk about later in the episode, the Iranians have now found a pretty remarkable source of leverage in possible revenue for them.

And a lot of people would argue, look, in many ways they're doing way worse now than the regime. But they're making more money now off-oil sales. They have more power now by finding this choke point in the straight or her mood.

So there's all these structural challenges when you look at, you know, the Iranian demands in the U.S. demands for each other that are so so far apart. It just doesn't feel like we're close to ending this war.

“And there's one other thing that I think is really important in that”

post that, you know, might fly under the radar. He refers to the Islamic Republic of Iran, not Iran. The Islamic Republic is the regime. Like, it's a de facto recognition of the Islamic Republic. That's the system with a supreme leader with the RGC.

That is Donald Trump accepting that the people he's going to be dealing with are the same regime, even if he killed the supreme leader. And that trusts me. Like, as someone has worked on this, and we were a very careful mean, you know, bomb administration about when we said Iran or

Islamic Republic, that's a concession that he's making, which again, is just a bowing to reality. But, you know, this is no longer a regime change work.

Like, whatever that is.

“Yeah, like the tape I used to put on my hockey sticks.”

Okay, Ben, well, unfortunately for the world, I just, I really don't think this war is close to over. They remain all these huge, you know, political and structural problems that could lead to the we're escalating and dragging out for a very long time.

All those problems still exist. We cover all the big picture questions in this episode. Just know that we recorded most of it before this most recent true social post announcing the two extension on the war crimes, you know, Benanza tonight.

So there will be times where we kind of sound anxious and uncertain about what might happen on Tuesday night. Yeah, we play a clip from Brett Bear where he is assured by Donald Trump that there will be no extension this time. Yeah.

We should have known the time that was. Which is useful because it shows you the chaos. It shows you the Trump lies and that Fox News is just his useful idea to

repeat whatever he says, but here's what we cover in this episode.

So we're going to start with Trump's threat to commit genocide on the country of Iran literally. We'll explain the consequences of that. We'll explain the consequences of these proposed strikes on all kinds of civilian Iranian infrastructure.

What they would mean legally morally, strategically. We'll give you the highlights of some extraordinary new reporting. But I Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times about how Trump decided to go to war with Iran. Then we'll listen to some clips from an equally incredible

monologue from Tucker Carlson, where he really firmly breaks with Trump over the war with Iran on a deep moral level and talks about why he is concerned that Trump could end up using will end up using nuclear weapons. It's very a conversation that is very important worth having.

Then we'll talk about all the talks in the secret side deals that are happening with the Iranians. Obviously, we just talked about some of the fruits of some of those. But we're kind of looking at signs of things happening diplomatically that could end lead to a permanent end game, a permanent end to the war and a

permanent path out of this mess. And then we're going to talk about these enormously consequential elections coming up in Hungary and how insane it is that Vice President J.D. Vance is in fucking Hungary on a Tuesday in April doing a campaign event for Victor Orban Ben.

I've truly never heard anything like this in the middle of a war.

Middle of a conflict. He, you know, in the middle of a political crisis for the White House J.D. Vance is over in Hungary. So that is bonkers. We did not have a guest today because we just wanted to go really long on

Iran stuff. And I'm just getting back from vacation. And so we'll pick that back up next week. Pause the world is brought to you by Haya as parents we worry about the long-term effects that ultra-process foods have on our kids.

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In the past 24 hours, the president of the United States went from threatening to commit massive clear cut war crimes to threatening genocide literally on a country of 90 million people. On Tuesday, Trump wrote on truth social quote, "A whole civilization

will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." So that's something he just put in writing. And then, perversely, ended the message with God, blessed the great people of Iran. So what we all assume Trump is talking about there,

and that post is that I threat to blow up all the bridges and power plants in Iran that we could do far worse. We'll get to that in a little bit. But here are some just, if Trump's actual comments about the war in Iran from Monday,

then Fox News is breadbearers talking about a conversation.

“You had to be Trump on Tuesday that I think gives us some more”

insight into his thinking, and then finally, J.D. Vance waited on all things around from Budapest. So it's watch. We have a plan because of the power of our military. Where every bridge in Iran will be decimated

by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business burning, exploding,

and never to be used again.

I mean, complete demolition by 12 o'clock, and it'll happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to. It will take them a hundred years to rebuild. The entire country can be taken out in one night. And that night might be tomorrow night.

I just got off the phone with the president. He said, "APM is happening." Whether it's positive or negative, we're going to get a response from the Iranians by eight o'clock tonight. We've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use.

The President of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their force of conduct. Okay, so about a few thoughts I'll just kick it over to you. So again, we're recording this a few hours for Trump's deadline after which he says he'll bomb Iran into the Stone Age.

It's not ideal timing for the show or for humanity, frankly. It Trump goes through with this threat.

“I think it'll take some time to kind of figure out what exactly was hit,”

like the scale of the destruction, et cetera. So we're just going to record today. Frankly, just assuming that this war is only going to escalate. And then just unpack the implications of that escalation, because I think that's important.

There's peace talks are ongoing. There's some occasional leaks that suggest they're making progress, but it feels like the two sides are very far apart, and this is only going up. But again, and also Iran, I think, cut off the talks with the US,

at least for some period of time after that genocidal tweet that I just read to you. So anyway, a few thoughts from me don't kick it to you. I mean, first, again, this is a clear cut war crime to say you're going to bomb all the power plants and bridges in Iran. You cannot indiscriminately bomb civilian infrastructure.

There has to be proportionality to any military effort. But let's be honest, like Trump doesn't care about that. He's, you know, the hay is not going to come arrest him, so he just doesn't give a fuck. So I guess do with that.

What you will, in practice though, like what it would mean to bomb all of Iran's power plants and bridges is mass civilian death. And I think we should just be clear about that. Like every baby on a respirator will die. Doctors will not be able to perform surgeries.

There will be no power for electric pumps that are critical

to getting people clean water. You won't be able to treat water to make it safe to drink. There won't be desalination plants running. There will be no way to move food or essential items around the country. If there's no bridges, and there's no way of undoing this step.

You know, like millions of people will die. Refugees will flee the country and mass. It will be a catastrophe. Humanitarian catastrophe. And on Monday, Ben, I don't know if you saw this.

Like Trump made this insane claim that Iran, the only time Iranians are unhappy is when the bombing stops. But then today, you're seeing images out of Iran of thousands and thousands of Iranians lining bridges and apparently surrounding power plants in an effort to make themselves human shields to prevent the United States from bombing their country

that's sure seems to undercut what he told us on Monday. And then just what is especially scary about all this is this like sense of blood less to you're getting from Trump. Axios today reported that Trump is the most hawkish senior member of this team.

"The president is the most blood thirsty like a mad dog."

So, Ben, on just a human level, a moral level, a legal level, it's an abomination. It would be one of the most evil catastrophic things the United States has ever done. And it also just feels like it will get to this and the naggy Abraham in Jonathan's reporting.

It feels like no one is really trying to stop Trump. No one around him in the White House. And that is equally scary to me. Yeah, I mean, I actually think this is an important day in our history, because let's just deal with kind of modern history,

because we can obviously go back and talk about Native Americans. But we now have a president of the United States who has threatened as a matter of policy to commit genocide.

“And I think that the enormity of that reality is something that has been”

hard for people to absorb in this country, not hard, by the way, for Iranian sub-sorb, because they're living on the other end of it. But whatever happens, even if he doesn't make good on this threat, just the fact that we are now in a position where the president and

commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world is threatening to

use that military to commit genocide, is something that will change the perception of the United States for a generation to come around the world. Because we are now at rogue state. We are functioning as a rogue superpower, threatening to kill countless innocence.

It's wrong that the degree of pushback from all both parties, society in general, like, needs to be at a higher decibel level. It's just a horrifying thing to read that this morning. I think the second thing is the way Trump talks about these things, as if they're not people involved.

“I mean, every person listening to this podcast has,”

across the bridge, has turned on the lights, has maybe had a parent on a ventilator, or maybe a baby in the NICU. Those people will die if Trump does in Iran. If Trump does what he's talking about. And the lack of capacity, he clearly has no capacity to see

himself and his own humanity in these people in Iran. And we somehow, as Americans, like, need to, on a, you know, put aside policy, and the stupidity of this war, and the insanity of it, and the high world prices on the rest of it, like threatening mass murder as a form of policy.

It puts us in a more dangerous world. It's kind of normalizing a certain conduct that we saw in Gaza, that we're seeing in Lebanon, that we saw when we're putting pursue in Ukraine, like normalizing this to this extent. And, you know, is truly dangerous, no matter what happens.

And it also taught me, like, it just made me think, you know, we are now in this scenario where we've got this autocratic leader, who is dangerous, who is vinyl, who, you know, maybe he thinks he's doing some form of madman diplomacy. That's, like, the charitable version.

It's pretty scary. There were only a year and what two or three months into this Trump term.

Like, today's the first day taught me where I was like,

“how are we going to make it through the rest of this term?”

And, you know, I know, you know, it's kind of resistance fantasy to talk about impeachment and the 20th of the memo in the rest of it. But I don't know. If he does this, I mean, you start to wonder, like, who's going to stop him, you know, from doing more of this and so.

Yeah, anything, because we're kind of in it now. This is not the first war of this administration and may very well not be the last, you know, and so there's a lot that could happen or not happen and Iran. But I do think taking a minute here to just absorb, like, the enormity of this threat and the consistency of it, too, like you did this on Sunday, too.

And it's really unsettling in a kind of deep way. And it makes you wonder where this country and the world is going. Yeah, it's unsettling. It's an evil threat. It suggests someone who is cavalier and indifferent to the value of human life.

And it's not just unsettling thoughts. I mean, we're going to dig into what Tucker Carlson said about this. Someone who's friends with Trump, who's a huge maga supporter. And also, you know, we shouldn't let the threat of what Trump has said he might do. Hide like the horrors that have already fallen the Iranians.

The human rights activist news agency estimates that over 1600 civilians have been killed in the war

“since it started, including 248 children.”

The Iran's Ministry of Science and Technology says that at least 30 universities have now been struck by airstrikes, the World Health Organization says it's verified at least 20 attacks on medical centers.

The UN says that over 3 million Iranians have been displaced.

So the cost for the Iranian people is massive already in terms of lives. And, you know, infrastructure that will take generations to rebuild. And one other thing I was thinking about then, I mean, I was watching, I don't know if you watched the entire, like, 90-minute Trump rat cliff headset Dan Kane victory lap on the rescue operation in Iran. We're basically not even going to talk about it because, like, so many lifetimes have happened since then of news.

And it's extraordinary. What are military did to find these two airmen is extraordinary. But I kept thinking about a previous press conference with headset when he was bragging about how the US military sank an unarmed Iranian ship with a torpedo. And how cool he thought that was to put, you know, 150 Iranian sailors at the bottom of the ocean.

And it just made me think about how those two airmen would have been treated by the IRGC.

Have they been captured given, like, the Cavalier way that Pete Hexeth

not only doesn't give a shit about civilian casualties or rules of engagement, but, like, seems to revel again in the bloodlust in the killing and, like, does his fucking, you know, war crimes beat poetry, Dr. Su's routine at these briefings. So it's just, I don't know, the whole thing, again, unsettling is the right word.

“Yeah, and I think, you know, two things, the university, let's just talk about the universities.”

Because there are these, you know, twitter warriors who wanted war with Iran for 15 or 20 years who, you know, like to say, well, you know, their scientists went to that university and so it's a military target or, you know, or, and they also say, like, maybe the Iranian military could drive something across that bridge. No, that's not how this works. It's a bomb harbor.

Like, this is a civilian infrastructure. What we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, you could make under this logic, I mean, you, you actually do have to put yourself in the shoes of Iranians, which is something that these people seem incapable of doing, except to want to kill them. Harvard does plenty of research, including some stuff that reaches U.S. military, like, how do we feel if they were bombed by Iran, you know,

you know, just some surface members might take the train down to a base to deploy. Does that make the train, like, this is such a story still talking about. Yeah, what are we talking about? Who have we become that we're sitting here post-factor? You know what, I can guarantee you that most of the people that went to those universities are just students, like you and I were willing to call it.

And probably the most progressive people in the country. Yeah, the people of fucking protested, you know? And so I, I just want to call out how, what bullshit it is, to kind of, you can find a crazy logic train to make anything. Literally. The target under that.

Yes.

“And there's a reason that international law distinguishes civilian military targets, you know?”

Yeah. It's, it's like so grotesque. Yeah, it's not even a question. Just like so self-evidently a work time. A little bit on just how we got to this work.

So get Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times. Have a book coming out on June 23rd about like the new Trump 2.0, the new regime. There's a big excerpt from the book in the Times today that's all about how Trump reached the decision to go to war. That it's just extraordinary. Like the detail in this reporting is unbelievable to me.

So if you think Ben and I are coming at this from as news consumers, but also as people who are like threatened every day by Lindsey Graham on Fox news for like allegedly leaking shit. And now the more is leaked about the Trump administration in a few months. And as ever leaked about any other administration history.

So they got all this detail. Haberman and Swan got all this detail about a meeting Trump held with BB Netanyahu on February 11th. We're Netanyahu made the case for war. Apparently this is Netanyahu was physically in the White House situation room. They zoomed in like the massade guys behind him.

And they made their case. These really, made their case for the war and it detailed all these Israeli assumptions for how things would go. And my God where they catastrophically wrong then. Here's a few things that the Israelis told Trump. Iran's ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks.

The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the street of promos. The odds that Iran would hit US interest in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal. And the massade assessed that street protests would start again. They also had plans to help ferment street protests. And they thought that bombing could then help the opposition overthrow the regime.

And then these Israelis as we have now seen reported elsewhere were driving this plan to have Kurdish forces in Iraq.

Invade Iran and basically attack the regime from a second front.

So Haberman and Swan report that US intelligence assessed that these really claims about regime change and a popular uprising were delusional.

It was, quote, their problem.

“It's not clear in the book whether their problem means Israel's problem or Iran's problem.”

But that was how seriously Trump considered these, you know, this response from his own intelligence services. They also report that while Netanyahu's pitch was influential. Trump was way more hawkish on Iran than many of his base believed. And was like pretty disposed to wanting to bomb.

They report that JD dance was kind of all over the place. Like he wanted Trump to enforce the red line that he made in January when the protesters were killed. But Vance is also reportedly the most opposed to the war in time of the war cabinet. Vance initially said, apparently tried to steer Trump towards limited strikes. But then when he realized that Trump wanted to do it, he made the pitch to go all in with overwhelming force.

So like great work there, JD, I guess, like profile encouraged from you. Hexath was the biggest proponent of the war, shocker. Rubio is described as ambivalent, but didn't try to talk Trump out of it, again, another profile encouraged. And it sounds like Tucker Carlson was like the only person within your real guts here. And he told Trump that the war would destroy his presidency.

Last thing then, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, were excluded from the war planning. It might have been good to have someone who was thinking about the global economy, energy supplies, in the intel case, I don't know, at those meetings. But then take away from you from these reports.

I mean, first of all, you and I have both over the years and over the last few weeks.

You know, been called an antisemite for suggesting that Israel first does into this war. I mean, we now have reporting that the Prime Minister of Israel literally flew to the situation room to give a fucking presentation about why Trump should get into the war, and that most of his own team didn't even want to do it, and told them that these Israelis were full of shit.

“I think that's a direct quote from Rubio, because it's bullshit or something.”

And he did it anyway. So can we please put to rest this idea that we're not allowed to discuss that Israel and Netanyahu, and Netanyahu, in particular, were the principal advocates for the U.S. doing it. It doesn't absolve Trump at all of our responsibility. It makes him even a bigger idiot.

Makes him look a morgue. You got played. Yeah, makes him look a morgue. He's a fucking fool. John Ratcliffe is not some like, you know, impartial guy.

The fact that he was saying, like, the CI doesn't agree with this, tells you a lot. So let's, I don't want to hear any more stuff about where not. We have to have a conversation about Israel as an expansionist power that wants to take land from Lebanon and Syria and create destruction in Iran. And somehow it's got Trump on the caboose of this plan.

That's a problem. Yeah, we're already been talking about this week.

The fact these Israelis are now basically saying that they're going to seize about 15 miles of territory into Lebanon.

“But that's part of the, I think the plan, right?”

Is it under the cover of this big war? We're going to do this in Lebanon and we're going to do all the stuff in the West Bank. And also, like, it points, it's interesting to be, live that presentation from the Israelis because it reminds you that none of the objectives that Trump said are being met. There's no regime change. There's no popular pricing.

The nuclear material is still sitting there. The enriched uranium is in Isvahan. They may have been moved. Yeah. Yeah, may have been moved.

So like, the stated reasons at, like, for what Israel was pitching and what Trump said when he launched us were, like, those are out the window. Even in the rosy scenarios, if we get a deal somehow, don't address those things. The regime will be more entrenched. It will demonstrate it. It controls the state of our music and extract fees from countries that export energy through there.

And that kind of, like, it kind of takes me back to the pilot thing, Tommy, because I had the same feelings you did. And I saw somebody, like, attack you online and be like, you won't be give Trump a win. And look, obviously the people that rescued that pilot did their jobs. But you know what? No.

I'm not going to give Trump fucking credit for, like, it's the same thing. If he opens the straight of our moves, we're going to have to hear about the greatest win ever. When this straight of our moves, you know when he was open before the fucking war. Yeah. You know?

And we've seen this pattern where he creates messes, and then he celebrates. Yeah. Yeah. He makes a part of the fire, and once, like, the Nobel Peace Prize, like, no, that pilot should have been there.

But first of all, that pilot shouldn't have been dropping bombs.

It's not his fault. He's got the orders, but, like, on a rainy universities. But then he shouldn't have been in that harm's way, as you said. And in the straight of our moves, like the fact that we're frantically trying to negotiate its opening, just tells you how much Trump has fucked up this war that should not have been fought.

The other thing to people are saying to me, like, not to be in my Twitter mentions. People are saying, like, the people who oppose this war are upset that the pilot was rescued.

What are you talking about?

I think if you said that he was shot down. I was said that he was shot down, but, like, if you oppose this war,

“literally the worst thing that could have possibly happened was a hostage crisis,”

where the IRGC had it one or two American pilots. And, like, because then Trump would have just raced up the escalation letter. You know that's what would have happened. Yeah. And the last thing that kind of connects all these things you're talking about is,

it is interesting to hear that Trump was the kind of bloodthirsty one. And because the worrisome thing, and we saw this with Putin, right? Sometimes you get these autocratic leaders. They're getting older. They're thinking about, like, the sweep of history.

Maybe their domestic agendas run out of gas. This is what I've been put in. Like he didn't care anymore about the Russian economy or whatever.

“He's like, how can I enter history, you know, while by taking territory?”

And what worries me is that Trump has got the aging autocratic bug, where it's like, the way I go down in history is not the big beautiful bill, you know, which is cute. It doesn't care about it. It's, yeah, it's, I'm going to conquer Cuba.

I'm going to conquer, I'm going to break around. I'm going to conquer Greenland. Like, this is why this is so dangerous.

These seems to have caught this, you know, this bug that we've seen plenty of other autocrats catch of powerful nations.

You know, where I can, I can use the military as this extension of my sense of vengeance and grandiosity, you know. Yeah, it's really, it paints a very scary portrait of Trump. I'm eager to read the rest of the book. Again, there's on this excerpt. I mean, look, you and I both had jobs where we were charged with trying to explain to the country,

kind of like national security issues and decision making while also guarding secrets. And every time we did the former, we got attacked by like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and other people for so-called leaks even when it was just like,

“basic, like press briefings and things like, after the bin Laden operation, right?”

If we lost our mind and act like, you know, somehow all this secret information was put out and it's like, I don't really think that's true, but whatever, the shit in this book, the shit in this excerpt is stunning. Like literally direct quotes of what the chairman of the joint chiefs said to Trump in a meeting of like, eight people, something, that but a few weeks ago, about the most sensitive decision making around Iran. Again, I, it's press conference yesterday, like, it seems so ill-considered the way the Trump and hegseth and Raqueliff went out and did this victory lap,

and like disclosed all the ways that they rescued this pilot because God forbid another pilot goes down, they have to do this again. You know, the New York Post today then said that they found the second airman using a secret tool called ghost armor to find the weapon system officer. This is how it's described. The secret technology uses long range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat.

And pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from back round noise, two sources close to the breakthrough said,

It's like hearing a voice in a stadium except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert, a source briefed on a program told the post in the right conditions. If your heart is beating, we will find you. That sounds pretty fucking cool. It also sounds like the thing you probably don't want out there, but Trump was like essentially disclosed this when he talked about the ability to pinpoint the second airman from 40 miles away on the top of the mount. This CIA was also talking about running a deception campaign within Iran to fool the IRGC into looking in the wrong places for the missing airman.

It's like there was just so much they were leaking from this press conference. It was so irresponsible and it was clearly like just an attempt to, you know, put a gloss on this war to the rally around the flag effect to get people on board with the war effort itself. But like the just lack a long-term thinking is, let me, it's typical for these assholes, I guess. Yeah, I mean, even if you're a casual observer of national security issues or you've seen a few movies about special forces, you know that literally revealing all the sensitive capabilities that we use in rescue missions, which there'll be more of, you know, hostage rescue missions.

I happen, you know, semi-regularly. This is just giving the playbook away to anyone who wants to use it. I mean, clear as day. It also just, there's a hypocrisy that it's so extreme that it kind of comes back to the point that when they would attack people for, you know, leaking. It's just projection because they know that they would leak anything if would make them look good. And in the same way that Trump is using the military as an extension of his kind of personal interests, whether that's, you know,

to committing genocide or whether that's purging generals. He sees these capabilities that are not his, right? Like we taxpayers pay for them. They're American capabilities. They're not his to like the idea that just this might make him, because what also the politics like, do we really think there's going to be like a surge in approval of Trump and the war, because he revealed the supersonic, you know, weapon.

Like, and this like down Trump had anything to do with what those people on the ground did. He's always like, I ordered them to do this is like, okay, well, that, yeah, that was the hard part. It wasn't, you know,

“if I can refueling a helicopter at low altitude going around Iran every one is shooting a shoot with every weapon they can find. Like, I think that was the harder part.”

I think that was the harder fucking asshole.

Media, and also like everything they said, every claim they made about, you know, how the war is going is a lie. Like the, the New York Times reported that Iran is still launching 15 to 30 ballistic missiles a day, 50 to 100 drones. And it's not as now using cluster munitions to defeat certain Israeli missile defense systems. Like, basically, the, they're firing ballistic missiles that released cluster munitions, which are like little bomblets at high altitude, which lets you get around some of Israel's missile defense system, which is why you're seeing those clips of these, like, you know, looks like a like 50 like stars kind of sinking on Tel Aviv or whatever, which is doing enormous damage.

And meanwhile, Ben, I mean, I saw a report. It was called the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. It's a DC think tank that estimates that UAE and Bahrain have expanded more than three quarters of their Patriot missile pack three interceptors stockpiles, and that's one of, like, the core defensive missiles in their arsenal. So again, this is the way of saying, like, you know, there's, it's a war of attrition happening here.

“Iran does not seem to be losing it, and the numbers of casualties and the damage and the economic fallout is going to go up and up every day, this goes on. So it's just, it's not a good set up here.”

And they will brag and detail about the minute details of a rescue operation, while simultaneously they are lying or concealing information about the damage it's being done. We get no credible transparent reporting from the government about the damage to the US facilities in, you know, across the Gulf, be they military bases or embassies. What you're just closed or inoperable, right? Do you think the Saudi, the, the hit on the US embassy in Saudi? I don't know if you guys talked about that last week. I mean, apparently the Iranians put two drones on the same spot on the US embassy in Saudi Arabia.

They fired them at night, because during the day that area houses like 200 or 300 employees, it would have been a mass casualty incident. And the thing was burning for half a day afterwards.

And we've heard nothing about it. Nothing. Like, no, no briefing. I mean, these are the people, remember how much they used to care about emissacy security, you know. We don't know how badly wounded the hundreds of American service members, like they're, they are simultaneously suppressing bad news and then just like hyping the shit out of anything they can grab onto as positive news. And that's like a, you know, that's a recipe for Americans to not trust their government. And we pay for these things. This is what I hate about this so much is like, again, Trump acts like this is all his to do whatever he wants with, like, no, an embassy of military base, like those are those are national assets, you know, and they're just not loving with us.

Yeah, well, standing in the world is fucking gone. Yeah, it's gone. And they're like, they're all doing it because the war's really unpopular. I mean, the public opinion started out, opposed this war, it has been getting worse in exerably ever since, Trump himself is not getting a boost or like a rally around the flag effect, like you usually see in wartime. Harry Nittzi and then did a great piece on this. He pulled together his number. So George W Bush got a 14 point bump in the first month of the Iraq war. His father been got a 34 point boost in the first month of the previous call for even Jimmy Carter was up like 30 points in the first month of the Iranian hostage crisis.

But Trump's net approval is actually down four points. That is completely a historic. The only sort of like similar instance you could point to was the month after Biden left Afghanistan, wouldn't he went down six points in approval rating and basically ended his presidency. And so they also looked at the CNN aggregator of the polling on the war itself. It started 12 point underwater now it's 22 points underwater. And I'm positive that's going to get worse right because gas prices are only going up other commodity prices are going up the price of food could go up the global economy is slowing down.

There could be a collapse, but it no matter what it's slowing down. And on top of that, like during the Iraq war, which you and I lived through, it was all cheerleading for the war, but now you're seeing like major voices and kind of the naga media because system allowed the opposing this one.

“And so today we're going to play for you guys a couple clips from Tucker Carlson in this most recent episode that I think are are quite important and instructive.”

And for the record, yes, we know all the bad things Tucker has done and said we know he's a flawed person. We know he's a flawed messenger, but he reaches millions and millions of people who are pro Trump who are maga and who trust him. So what he says to them is really fucking important. And so this first clip is long, but it is worth it. I promise. So again, this is from Tucker's most recent episode that I think came out Monday night.

By statement that the president of the United States put out at 803 a.m. Eastern time on Easter morning that said this and we're going to read it in its entirety, not an outrage or self-righteousness.

“But honestly, in horror, quote, Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it through exclamation points.”

Open the fucking straight you crazy bastards or you'll be living in hell. Just watch all caps. Praise be to Allah President Donald J. Trump. Now a lot of people reading that imagine, of course, this can't be real to the president of the United States really just write that and it is real.

It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing on every level.

It is vile. But then the tweet continues. Pardon me, the ironically named truth continues. There will be nothing like it. Open the effin straight. How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country.

“Who do you think you are? You're tweeting out the effort on Easter morning. You'll be living in hell as if hell is a place. Hell is a condition. And this is an example of that condition.”

Just watch praise be to Allah. So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran. Okay. If you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. This is a mockery, not just of Islam. It's a mockery of Christianity. To send out a tweet with the effort on Easter morning promising the murder of civilians and then saying praise be to Allah without explaining any of it. You are mocking me and every other Christian because for Christians. Oh, I get it. We can't support that. So that that is a small slice of an extraordinary 45 minute monologue from Tucker.

I don't know how to view this other than a pretty firm break from Trump. Maybe he'll come back a lot of them do. But it is is an attack on Trump in the most harsh moral term. So it includes Tucker attacking Trump for the following pen. He starts at the top. He says like Trump saying that our motive for invading Venezuela was stealing their oil should have been a moment where a lot of people said I'm out. And I think Tucker sort of using that monologue is a moment for saying he wish he had said that.

But how Trump didn't put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in at his own inauguration, which Tucker said suggests that Trump quote affirmatively rejects what's inside that book. And that what and what's inside that book are limits on human behavior because if there's one theme that spans all 66 books in the Christian Bible, it's that you are not God and you cannot assume his powers. You may want them, but in the end they're not yours end of quote. So Tucker is not at all subtly accusing Trump of thinking he's now God. He goes in on the Easter true social posts like we just heard there.

And then he argues that Trump launched this war because of literal bloodlust like because he enjoys the killing itself. And then there's the WMD piece that we'll get to in a minute. And so you know, Ben, I think both of us, you know, we listen to Tucker now because he's been really compelling on Iran.

“It's important to know what he's saying to his audience. We wanted to highlight this because it includes a really I think it's a strong moral case against the war that's rooted in Christianity.”

There it includes a call for everyone to say that this is unacceptable and unjustifiable and crazy. And then again, most importantly, the message is coming from Trump's literal close friend.

A man who spoke his convention who is arguably the most important voice in conservative media. And I just think that is a huge huge deal.

And I wonder what you took away from this from this episode. Like you, I've been listening to Tucker because it's interesting since the war started. And what I took away, first of all, in some of the early episodes, he was strongly against the war. But it was much of his eyeer was focused on Netanyahu and it was almost a sense that like Trump was this guy that was like, he left the name Trump out of some of his criticisms. So he's railies, he's kind of pulling all the strings. Yeah. And you know, for whatever reason, you know, since your conviction or opportunism or both, that felt like a total and complete review of Trump from somebody who is deep deep within the tent.

And frankly, I listened to that and I part of me thought, how come Tucker Carlson can mount a clear moral case.

And you think it's better to make a case on values rather than process. Well, exactly. Tucker's not saying like, well, we didn't get a good enough.

“You should have believed us. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and actually, you know, I think you can learn from people who you disagree with.”

Yes. And I disagree profoundly with Tucker Carlson about a lot of things, including, you know, the nature of this country inside its borders. But I think we can learn just stripping out all the other things and mounting a direct moral case against what Trump is doing, lands very powerfully. And frankly, I don't have the standing that, you know, I'm not Christian in the same way. But the fact that he and Marjorie Taylor Green and his mother people are really entering this conversation through the doorway of Christianity.

He gets it a real weakness for Trump because as Tucker says elsewhere in that show, he's not personally pious like he's never pretended to be a deep Christian. But he's kind of, you know, gaslit Christians and, you know, delivered certain things for pro-life Christians, for instance, overturning Robe Wade.

“But if you, if he starts to lose that base of support evangelical and Protestant Christians in this country, he's pretty fucked.”

He should add, by the way, there's the other American who's been even stronger on the moral basis is the pope, you know, and the head of the conference of Catholic bishops in the US put out a withering statement today urging Trump to walk back from his threats. So he's got a problem. And again, if people want to say Does this matter like some of the polling shows that magas behind him, Tucker Carlson, you know, I read the cricket reads book by Jason's angerly. Great book. And part of what you learn about Tucker is particularly in the last, you know, decade, the Trump decade and and a little bit before. This guy has seen where the puck was going and skated to it.

Yeah. And so just because the polling hasn't collapsed in magia, the fact that Tucker is seeing the direction of where the maga movement might go or Trump supporters might go, he's always out in front of it.

He's always leading it. This is a guy that had the highest rated show in the history of cable news on Fox and then has a giant platform now.

And I guarantee you, the Republican politicians listen to that show. They also know that Tucker Carlson may be preparing to run for president. Because it certainly feels like a lane is open now that JD Vance is on board with this war. So that's a lot of reasons why this is both interesting. Again, I hate to say something to learn from the kind of moral case he mounts and I think is a real warning sign that if Tucker is, you know, because it's not just him, we see plenty of other people that are kind of following his lead in that kind of podcast space and internet space on the right.

I think it's a harbinger that the people are beginning to look past Trump. Yeah, and look at it. Like people will say, you know, there's polls, including by CNN's Harriet and who you've mentioned earlier, that said like quote unquote maga voters are not leaving Trump.

Yes, if you're, if you're self identifying as a maga voter, you're basically saying like you're a Trump fan, right, and those people are going to be the last to go, but he's losing Republicans.

“But I do think like the war is only a few, it's like a few weeks old, right, and I think when gas prices continue to go up and when you have people like Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan or others repeatedly condemning the war in terms like these or M.T.G.”

That opinion can change over time and slowly erode. And again, like in American politics, like Trump's never Trump will probably never get down to a, you know, 10% approval rating, but if is approval rating drops a couple points 5% say that could lead to an electoral landslide in the midterms or other elections. So it's very, very meaningful. Positive, the world is brought to you by Remi. You'll never believe this, love it, but I once struggled with sore jaw in the morning teeth grinding, you know, the little stress and tooth nightly clenching until I found Remi.

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and have a therapist and get your mental health in order. When life feels overwhelming therapy can help sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/crickadworld. That's BetterHELP.com/crickadworld. Finally, Ben, just before we go on with this webinar, a master structure discussion. I did want to play you one of their clip from a nag of voice, who many would argue is more influential than Tucker and the Pope all rolled together.

So let's watch. How do we 20 for the members, Ash?

The problem is they get the 25th of the members harder than impeachment.

You have to get 2/3 of the house and 2/3 of the... So what do we do? Tackle Trump and pretend he's president and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and be at stake over. That was Info Wars founder Alex Jones, who's been one of the biggest trump fans ever screaming. How do we do it for the men in his ass?

I just thought that was fun.

“But who is he talking to, is he interviewing himself?”

I think so much. I assume back time wrote a lot. I assume so. I don't know if he created like Glenn back when he interviewed like... I don't know if he would listen to Alex Jones anymore, but like, she's him.

I don't know if he would listen to Alex Jones anymore, but like, she's him. I don't know if he would listen to Alex Jones anymore, but like, she's him. I don't know if he would listen to Alex Jones anymore, but like, she's him. I don't know if he would listen to Alex Jones anymore, but like, she's him. I don't know if he would listen to him.

I don't know if he would listen to him. But I don't know if he would listen to him. But I don't know if he would listen to him. But I don't know if he would listen to him. But I don't know if he would listen to him.

But I don't know if he would listen to him. But I don't know if he would listen to him. Sean Ryan, right? There's like a lot of, like, it's not just one person. A bunch of voices saying, hey, you lied to us, right? This is not what you said you would do.

And it's a moral case against Trump about his character, not just the policy.

“And that's what's so meaningful about it.”

So Tucker's going to chief antagonist on all things. Iran has been a Fox News host named Mark Levin. Levin is very pro-war with Iran. He's a huge beaten at Yahoo friend in fan. I think he, like, literally showed up in the courtroom and then I was trial for corruption.

He advocates for war all the time on his show. He also despises Tucker Carlson and everything he stands for and calls on an anti-Semite all the time. They don't like each other very much in the same way. So did you catch when Tucker compares Mark Levin to Jeffrey Epstein? But yeah, like this weird way.

But he's like, either have any real talent or power. You know, he's just a mouthpiece. So no love lost there. But so Tucker's monologue builds to an argument that Trump has exhausted his conventional military options for winning this war,

or at least for opening the straight-of-horse moves, right? Because you can't just like bomb your way from the air to getting the straight-of-horse moves open, especially when you can mind the straight-of-horse moves and put minds under water and block it down, right? So that is obviously correct, in my opinion. But then Tucker's next argument is something that's worth debating,

which is that the escalation ladder is going up and up and up in a way that will lead Trump in his view to using a nuclear weapon in Iran. Here's a clip.

Here's what Mark Levin said on his Easter weekend show about what we ought to do next in Iran.

Watch. And the casually numbers as horrible as any casualty is,

The Battle of Okanawa. 50,000 plus casualties over 12,000 nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman that we would lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.

“Embedded in there, some of you need to know.”

It's an argument that is being test-driven, and since no one to our knowledge is pushed back against it, it may be in full operation now, it's an argument for nuclear weapons. So, Ben, I don't know about you.

I've not seen any news outlets report the Trump or Netanyahu for that matter are considering using nuclear weapons in Iran. But I do think we should take the conversation. It's self-seriously because in any war or any terrorism debate,

there will always be people who make some version of the argument

that it is acceptable to kill as many of them over there to protect us over here. You can sort of insert whatever country you want there. But that's how you end up dropping 2,000 pound bombs on refugee camps in Gaza.

That's how you get to Trump threatening to blow up every power plant in Iran. And that is how you could get to a point where the U.S. or Israel in the most staggeringly hypocritical act in history, imaginable, could argue that it's okay for us to nuke them so that they can't one day nuke us.

And again, I know like Tucker is flawed. I'm not going to go through it all again. But like he knows Trump as well as anyone. And it seems like something is freaking him out here about this issue in particular.

And in that segment, even implores White House staff to make the case not only to Trump not to do this, but to ignore orders to use nuclear weapons if it gets to that point, which is pretty extraordinary when you think about the debate over like the seditious six

and the way Republicans were attacking Jason Crow and the other Democratic members of Congress

who basically made a mistake.

Yeah, which is you know, you can't follow an unlawful order. So I don't know. What do you make of, I mean, not just Tucker's part of this, he's clearly he hates Mark Levin and that's you know, feeling some of it.

“How worried should we be about this kind of WMD debate?”

My headline on this, you know, I mentioned Newtami. I've heard from some normies in my life like the kind of people that don't follow, you know, foreign policy that closely.

Starting to email me or text me like, "Hey, is he going to use a nuclear weapon?" It's out in the ether, you know, because what he's saying? Because when you threaten to destroy civilization, you know, and you threaten to commit genocide,

like that's the kind of space you're entering. And my headline on this is, I certainly don't think that that's likely, but the fact that it doesn't feel impossible is terrifying.

Because, yeah, I could see a scenario. Let's say Trump goes through today or two weeks from now, or whenever with a threat to kind of mass bombs of an infrastructure, and then I don't think anything about the Iranian

suggests that they will capitulate. The Iranian's bomb, a lot of Gulf energy infrastructure, and... What do you say on Asian plants? Yeah.

“Yeah, and we just keep climbing an escalation ladder,”

and, you know, that's the top of the escalation ladder, and it doesn't feel impossible, and it should feel impossible. And it also, you know, there were people on the left who were right during Gaza when they said, "This kind of violence,

if Norma could migrate to other places." And, again, if you look at Gaza, it looks like somebody dropped a atomic bomb. Oh, yeah. I mean, every structure is destroyed.

Like you said, they were dropping 2,000 pound bombs and apartment buildings to kill one person in the process killing scores of people. And here we are, in a place where we've already bombed a girl school, we've already bombed a bridge.

Like we're going down this slippery slope. Yep. Like, and the girl school may not have been intentional, but the bridge certainly was. But once you start saying,

we can just start kind of mass bombing, you know, civilian infrastructure. It does lead to it. And the Mark Levin argument, there are two things that are scary about it.

One is, I hate these guys, like, "Hem and Lindsey Graham, who seem nostalgic for the days when tens of thousands of people died and you were giggling on the ballot."

Like, they literally talk about it. Like, it was, we used to, you know, we used to have the good old days when 12,000 men were die or something. And then yeah, he's baking.

So we had to drop the atomic bomb, so we did not have to put in ground troops. And so, again, I don't think it's likely, but man, the fact that the president of the United States has sold authority over the nuclear, you know,

launch codes. And then we be counting on people to not follow a plainly illegal and immoral order is frightening. And you know, suggest revisiting,

again, proposals from the first Trump term

about limiting the president's solar authority on the use of nuclear weapons. And also, that, like, you know, one of his primary advisors is fucking Pete Hexeth, who's a, he's the idiot.

He's a clown. That's the guy who's in the chain of command. Does that make you feel any better?

who's now the, according to the

Haberman swan reporting, like, the loudest voice in favor of war with Iran. You don't think, that guy's, that guy's whole identity and place in Trump's orbit and future rests on this war going well

and the US being perceived as winning it. You think that, like, that can't lead you to advocate, person pretty fucking evil stuff. I think it certainly can.

“And remember, it is confirmation hearings”

that came out one of the things that came out was him, like, getting drunk and, like, chaining kill Muslims. Remember that? Yeah.

Well, maybe we should fucking pay attention and not confirm sociopathic drugs. We have to keep the war criminals in their free time. Yeah. All right.

Let's try to end the kind of rons section

in a way that's a little more hopeful

and just think about the ways this could end. Obviously won't end well, because since it once it started to can't end well. But, um, and it will be good. So, like, as we said before,

there are ongoing talks on the Trump side. Those talks are still being led by dumb and dumb or Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcoff. So, that's not ideal. There's lots of reporting then about

the Pakistanis facilitating some talks. But I've heard from some plugged in people that the Pakistanis aren't really doing shit. It's all just for show. The Egyptians and the Turks are also facilitating talks.

Egypt's intelligent services seem to be the main event here because they have actual IRGC connections and can really get conversations happening with the right people at a time when it's, by the way, incredibly difficult to communicate.

I mean, Trump himself said this. Like, it's impossible to get a message to Iran right now because they're worried we're going to kill them. So, you know, they're not going to like pick up their cell phone to talk to us, right? So, you're doing note passing

through children as how he described it. There have been reports that the US has pushed Qatar to facilitate talks, but they have resisted. That could be because both the Israelis and the Iranians abombed them pretty recently.

Yeah. It feels like that wouldn't make me want to get more involved. Yeah, not the best way to make friends. And then obviously, I bet there's stuff that's still secret. Like, we don't know what we don't know.

Then there's also, like, clearly just side deals happening with the Iranians directly. So, for example, Iran recently said that Iraq is exempted from its restrictions on passage through the strait or hummus.

They could clearly cut some kind of deal. The Philippines said their ships will get through after some sort of negotiation with Iran.

There's other reports that Iran is basically

charging a toll in some instances to allow boats through. And then the UK brought together more than 40 countries to build up a coalition to try to figure out a plan to safeguard shipping in the strait.

Obviously, that's easier said than done. But long story short, like, there's just lots of turnout there. There's lots of people like trying to figure out a path forward.

Then, did any of that reporting or what we've seen so far

“give you a sense of what an end game might look like?”

Or kind of like a path to maybe a ceasefire that gets extended long term. And then, I think, you know, getting the strait of hummus back to where it was might not be an option. But getting it functional to the point

where it is not going to lead to a global depression feels like a pretty good goal at this point. So, like, what are you looking at? I, you know, and again, as of this recording, like the turn was out about the Pakistanis

announcing some proposal for a two week ceasefire or delay in Trump's threat and response to some partial reopening of the strait. And look, you know, that could happen, and that would be great.

Just that civilisation, five thousand real civilisation doesn't get destroyed tonight. That would be great. I think what I'm looking at is, okay, what, what does the US want?

What is Iran want? And what does the world want, right? I think Trump at this point, you know, he has to decide whether he needs some more identifiable win, you know, like,

which I don't think he's necessarily going to get, but like, seize Carg Island or try to get the nuclear material and say, you know, but at core what the US wants is the strait of hummus open, which is, again, ironic because we could have had it open

if we didn't start the war. What are the Iranians, one? Well, the Iranians have already demonstrated that they control the strait of hummus. They've already won something from this war,

and they're already getting toes. They're already getting fees to let, like, a dribble of oil and gas through the strait of hummus.

“I think what they will want is some kind of security guarantee”

that the US and Israel will not attack them again. That probably can't just be the US and saying that some consolation of countries, China, others may have to kind of somehow be a party to the security guarantees that are given to the Iranians.

I think the Iranians will want sanctions relief. I think the Iranians will want, I'm not saying they'll get the US to pull out of the region, to turn out of bases surrounding them. So the Iranians have a list, but at core,

they'll want the regime survival to be assured and some kind of economic benefit. And from sanctions relief to reparations.

to stop the conflict where it is.

“But I actually think the more comprehensive reopening”

of the strait of hummus, we may just see other countries negotiate that. Like Trump is nuts, the Iranians are in trust him, and it may be that Europe and some Asian countries and the Chinese kind of, they're the ones getting together

with the Gulf Arabs who desperately obviously want the word to stop and the strait to reopen. And they just pay a fee going forward. I'm them at this point. I'm like a dollar per barrel of oil fine.

That's better than the 50% increase I'm paying now in the global meltdown we're about to experience. And by the way, what a humiliation that would be to be Vietnam, absolutely. The man that said that this would be

an easy regime change war and obviously Trump. It's something you've got a regime that is more IRGC controlled

that is profiting more off of the strait of hummus.

But again, I just think, hopefully we get some kind of partial ceasefire just so that people stop dying and escalation stops spiraling. And then I actually think it's going to take a lot of other countries kind of trying to land the plane here

on something that it reopens the strait of hummus. And it's probably going to have to involve the Iranian regime being assured in its security and having more revenue. And that's extraordinary.

“That's how far Trump has moved things in the wrong direction”

on his own objectives from before the war. Yeah, way to move the overton window, sir. Yeah, like the stakes are so high. It sucks for us in California paying six dollars for a gallon of gas.

But like this energy shock is an absolute crisis for a lot of countries right now. Or literally weeks away from running out of fuel, you got like Bangladesh had to close schools that are imposing fuel rations.

Ethiopia is putting non-essential government employees on weave.

They're like massive, like hundreds of cars and lines to get fuel at gas stations. Farmers can't get fuel to work their crops. And then things will only get exponentially worse as this fertilizer shortage really hits.

Because again, remember like healing them can't get the fruit through the strait or you lose fertilizer can't get through. The only positive I've seen, is that there are far right parties all across Europe that are now running from Trump.

It's actually interesting to me that Victor Orban, who will talk about in a second, would allow JD vans and Trump into his country at this moment when Trump is created a massive crisis for them. But like the fucking AFD in Germany,

the neo-Nazis are like distancing themselves from Trump. The Italian Prime Minister, George Amalone,

“who remember, she was like a Mussolini youth fan,”

is fusion. She's at the Trump inauguration. She's furious because like this is causing a massive economic crisis in Italy. Like the downside of this is that Trump is

blaming everything on NATO for some reason. He's once again threatening to pull out. He's like whining about Greenland. So that's not good. Maybe Mark Routak can get down on his knees

and you know, do some work tomorrow with Wednesday at the way. I mean, I wonder how in terms of how Trump Daddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's not good too far. Mark Routak is a comedy fuck.

It's a comedy fuck. It's a comedy fuck. Yeah. [MUSIC] Potsay, the world is brought to you by Surfshark.

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It's super easy to integrate and balance. And the time and the money that I can't invest in on it. For all of us in Waxtong. Now, let's test Chobbifi.de.

Alright, let's talk about Victor Orban, one of your favorite people. The Mago World's favorite dictator, who is currently the Prime Minister of Hungary. So, Hungary has parliamentary elections on April 12.

So, it's coming up soon. And for the first time in 16 years, Orban appears to be in some serious political trouble. So, he's facing major challenge from a guy named Peter Magiar,

from the teaser party. Rotor's reported that Magiar is pulling at 56% while Orban is at 37%, which is the most serious threat again to Orban's rule,

since he took power in 2010. Magiar's political views are not totally clear. I bet our audience would not love them if they saw, like a punch card of policies. He's not a progressive. He's not a liberal.

Certainly, he's not a right. But he used to be an Orban ally in a member of Orban's few days party until Magiar quit the party in 2024. Amid this massive awful scandal

involving like horrible sexual abuse of children and then the way presidential parties were used to pardon the head of an organization that turned to blind eye to that abuse and then Magiar is ex-wife and her role.

It was like very soullacious stuff that involved like leaking audio tapes he made of her, et cetera. But anyway, according to the Associated Press, Magiar is really running hard.

He's campaigning in six towns a day, he's hammering Orban for corruption. And by corruption, in this case, we don't just mean like this, you know, standard corruption or the ways that Orban

is enriched himself for his family and friends. But like he's talking about the ways Orban and Ben, you can expand on this. The Orban is just upended, hungry, political system, the media, the courts, the economy,

to make it a way to just further consolidate his own power for himself, for the Fedas party. So Orban, obviously, as you'd expect, is not taking it well. He's pulling all the stops to win votes.

That includes threats, that includes bribes. Magiar has accused in the past, Orban to blackmail and plotting through releases secret sex tape of him.

Police officer recently released information

“about a secret operation by Orban's domestic”

intelligence service to get data from Magiar and the TISA party's IT systems. There have been several instances of election interference with types to Russia, including a maybe like a false flag,

bomb threat over the weekend. The Serbian President, Alexander Ruchich, called a borban and said that the Serbian Army found, quote, two packages of explosives with detonators in northern Serbia,

that was close to a pipeline that feeds natural gas from Russia to Hungary. And beyond, and so, you know, Magiar says this is a false flag. I guess maybe someday we'll find out.

And then finally, Ben, there is the blatant

election interference campaign being run out of the White House. Here is Vice President JDVance, who, as we mentioned before, is in Hungary in Budapest.

Today, Tuesday on the stump for Victor Orban. Let's watch. I love Hungary, and I love that picture. I'll tell you he's a fantastic man. We've had a tremendous relationship.

The President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the American people, we admire you. And we want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you

or telling you what to do. I'm not telling you exactly who to vote for.

“Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels?”

(applause) Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? (applause) Will you stand for western civilization? (applause)

Will you stand for freedom for truth and for the God of our fathers? (applause) Then, my friends, go to the polls in the weekend, stand with Victor Orban

because he stands for you and he stands for all these things?

Yes, we're certainly aware that there are elements

within the Ukrainian intelligence services that try to put their thumb on the scale of American elections. This is just what they do. This is part of the cost of doing business within some elements of their system.

Okay. (laughter) I knew this would trigger you. So, what you heard there was, as a JD Vance at Aralee,

the very beginning he calls Trump on his cell phone and puts it on speaker and holds it up. And then at the very end, that was a clip from a press conference that JD Vance did with Orban

where he was asked about something and ended up blaming Ukrainian intelligence services.

Then, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this.

The Vance visit that bizarre clip of him, Brent Blamey, Ukraine there. And then, why you think, like, a Peter Magiar seems to have a chance while others don't,

“and what it would mean if Orban actually lost this time?”

Yeah. So, one book plug a go. So, my last book after the fall, I wrote about it, Hungary. And I'm not just saying this to reference the book.

One of the characters. So, I profile some people in opposition. And one of the three or four Hungarians that were kind of characters in my book that I spent some time with in Budapest

is a investigative journalist named "Saublech upon ye,"

writes for an outlet called Direct 36

as a great investigative journalist. And I mentioned him because he got charged by Orban and the Hungarian authorities with espionage. So, it's kind of weird,

you know, to write about somebody's a journalist and then see them being accused of, you know, colluding with the foreign government, is all bullshit, right? But it was part of what,

what "Saublech upon ye" had reported on is all the Russian interference in the Hungarian election, which is obvious. I mean, like,

they're projecting onto Ukraine what Russia is actually doing, right? Yep. And it's bogus and people have called that that. But what is so interesting about this

is, again, Hungary can seem like a smaller country. Victor Orban is both an ideological leader of this far-right brand of, I don't even call it populous anymore. Like, this kind of far-right,

blood and soil nationalism that we've seen. He has been a propagator of the playbook to enshrine authoritarian power and Hungary that the Republicans have copied here. He's at the full crum of efforts

by Russia Israel in the United States. Putin uses Orban to so-disunity inside the EU related to Ukraine policy. BB uses Orban to so-disunity in the EU around Israel

and any potential sanction of Israel. And Trump and Vance use Orban as a full crum inside of Europe to fuck up whatever they don't like about the EU and that could be anything from, you know,

“the tech regulation to just, I don't know, having liberal democratic policies, right?”

And so it is quite interesting that this man who's been in power this time around since 2010 that Putin, BB and Trump, all the worst people are desperate for this guy to win because he's a tool of their efforts to upend your community and bolster the far-right across the continent. So the stakes are very high here.

Now, Magiar has a chance where previous, one of the problems that we've seen in passing your elections is that the center to the left is very divided. And some of that is, again, almost not their faults and that's kind of by design, like there's a lot of influence operations by the Fedes party of Orban, by Russians and others to turn people against each other

to create, you know, their version of Dems and Disarray there. Some of it is because the legacy it was of very deep discussed with the governing center left party before Orban, right? So there's kind of a stink around some of the kind of more conventional parties. And so to have a guy like Magiar, who is a defector from the conservative movement in Hungary,

creates a new political opening because obviously you have the left is willing to vote for anybody to get Orban out, but then you, you know, win over some of the independence. And also Orban hasn't delivered, right? Like if you look at Hungarian standards of living, Hungarian poverty levels,

Victor Orban has enriched himself and become some big international celebrity to the far right. But life for Hungarian, it's not like he's like, like the Chinese Communist Party where they can say we raise standards of living. Like this is not working.

“And I think also just people are sick of this guy after 14 years.”

It feels similar to like a little bit like the Navalny too, right? The Navalny in many ways was a nationalist and attacking not attacking Putin from the right, but was not like trying to be some big squishy liberal. He thought that his path to taking down Putin was focusing on kleptocracy, and also just coming at him from like a far more conservative perspective.

And that's exactly right.

“And look, we should just say like these guys have put Victor Orban,”

he wins, it's because you know, he's got the media completely on his side in Hungary. He's gotten those what corruptions happen. He's got the Russian-teldin services helping him. If he wins an eaks out of win, like that's kind of status quo anti. If Victor Orban loses this election, it is a seismic event.

It is a fucking earthquake in global politics. And we should, and by the way, we should insist that it is one. Because you know what, these guys put all the chips on him. J.D. Vance flew there to bolster him in the middle of his war. Like a, yeah.

In the matter of the war. Like he's campaigning for a midterm election, congressional district right before the election. So this would be humiliating to Trump. It would be a huge step back to the far right in Europe.

It would be wind in the sails of Democrats in my small D Democrats in Europe, particularly in Central New Eastern Europe where they've been fighting some tough battles. So like you know, the pod save the world endorsement is with that year, like such as an address. Yeah, it would be seismic.

It would be incredible for the European Union.

It would be great for the continent. It would be great for like some wind in the sails of progressives all over the world. Yeah, I want to, I just want to quickly trigger you. If that's okay. I was watching the Vance Orban press conference.

And I wanted to play you a little clip that I enjoyed greatly. This is again our vice president and Budapest of that. Sure to say something one final observation about this election. What has happened in this country? What has happened in the midst of this election campaign is one of the worst examples of foreign

election interference that I've ever seen or ever even read about. The bureaucrats and Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried to make Hungary less energy independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers. And they've done it all because they hate this guy.

“But I think that what the people of Hungary, what I would encourage them to do is ask themselves the question.”

Not who's pro or anti-Europe, not who's pro or anti the United States of America, but who is pro you? Who is pro the people of Hungary?

How about the absolute, incredible hypocrisy of the vice president of the United States?

Yeah. Going to stump for Victor Orban and then complaining about foreign election interference. By the way, with all the context that we know about Trump, remember when he offered Argentina a 20 billion dollar bailout and told voters there that either vote with a Hungarian Malay or else like the US would cut off support. These guys are brazenly interfering in elections all over the place and he's still, J.D. Vance is still like he's a one note, like tiny little man fucking pathetic little baby loser and he's whining about bureaucrats and Brussels.

Because that's like all he can but this entire playbook at this point. Yeah. I mean, you hit that point. Only I'd add is on the substance, Victor Orban and his cronies have been stealing EU money for years. The EU provides billions of dollars in assistance to Hungary because it's one of the poorer countries in the EU for things like infrastructure projects. And all the money just gets skimmed off the top and goes to enrich Orban's cronies and finances politics.

So he's got problems with the Brussels. Yeah. Part of it's that he's way out of step with the Europe on things like Ukraine. But part of it's that he's been fucking stealing from Europe, right?

“And that's why they don't want to keep shoving money to the guy.”

So not the J.D. Vance cares about that. And for him, I mean, the cronies are being bombed and invaded for him to accuse.

It is such an atrocity like that this guy is sitting there taking potshots at people that are a million times tougher than he is.

And if sacrificed a million times more than he has for democracy, spare me the lectures about election interference from Budapest, J.D. The other weird comedy made Ben as he said, like, he was doing some weird bit about how Orban's leadership is a model for how other European leaders should be dealing with the energy crisis in Europe, which as far as I can tell, like Orban gave like huge government subsidies or basically just like forced like state agencies to absorb a bunch of costs. Then they were super pro Russia and they just like advocated either for purchasing oil and gas from the Russians or removing sanctions from the Russians.

And now they're sucking up the Trump even though he is creating this new massive energy crisis via the war with Iran. Does he think vote, like I guess he thinks voters everywhere are stupid, maybe that's just the answer. He does, I mean, he thinks he can like J.D. Vance them, you know, and this stick is just going really old. Because like you know what, who in America, the only people that give his shit about this are like the ideologs, it like the Claremont Institute, you know, like it's like far right intellectuals.

We need an Orban victory in the Hungarian election.

Like, you're who's the fucking elitist, cosmopolitan, like give me a break J.D. Vance, go to back to Ohio and like actually talk to people who can't afford their bills. Instead of like spending taxpayer money to fly to stump for somebody that probably nobody in Ohio's heard of.

“It is very weird. And then there is also, by the way, I mean, remember Tucker Carlson did his week of programming from.”

Oh, yeah, so that's where we spoke from Tucker. Yeah, big big time, big time. The way the way politics is kind of getting re-shuffled right now is very interesting. Probably inevitable in bound to happen in some ways because Trump is essentially a lame duck president and everyone's kind of, you know, jostling for their spot in figuring out what's next. But there's no doubt that Tucker was right when he told Trump that, you know, the war in Iran would end his presidency and would be the undoing of him.

And potentially the Naga project and does feel like we are the beginning of that happening and it's happening more rapidly than frankly I would have expected, but not sad about it.

Not sad about it, one bit. Not sad about, okay, well, that's it for us today. Thank you for listening.

“Thanks for striving to pot save the world.”

Whatever you get your podcasts or here on YouTube, and we'll talk to you guys soon. Pot save the world is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Elona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonnergy.

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