EP:38 - Iran War Update

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You're watching provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. This is pre-popped. [MUSIC] We are live, sir.

Hello. Darryl Cooper. It said Scott Horton at Darryl Cooper's supposed to be on tonight. Scott is absent. I actually thought he was going to be on a spoke with him on a phone.

For those who have no idea who I am joining this, I'm very honored. My name is Buck Johnson, I host the counterflow podcast. My voice does not usually sound like this. Of course, the day that I get asked to come on a show like this. I'm hit with allergies in Texas, and what I'm honored to be here.

What's up Darryl, how are you, sir? Doing all right, brother. I'm glad to have you here. Thanks for doing this. Everybody, this is kind of my fault.

Scott mentioned to me last week that he was going to be traveling today. And so we were going to do this show yesterday, but then I forgot. And so we scrambled and buck's taking care of us. So we will have Scott back next week, but I'm super stoked to have you here. Yeah, Darryl tells me right before he said, we ought to go on.

And I said, I thought we're waiting for Scott and he goes, brother, it's just you and me.

Oh, boy, and I've always wanted to have Darryl on my show.

So in a way, this can be a good back and forth like I would want to do anyway. There you go. I wish there were things going on in the world that gave us something to talk about. I mean, yeah, we've got some interesting weather here. We could discuss that.

Yes. And we can, for those of you who don't know what my show is, I'm an orthodox Christian. And so there's a lot of the ways we view things that are happening in the world right now. And we are more than welcome to get into that, too, if you want Darryl. Whatever you want, you're the host.

I'm not good at hosting you. I control the flow. Got it. Let's do this. So you said when we were talking offline while I go, you were catching up on the current events

of the day or the last few days. But something that I almost don't do enough, I would say, because some of it gets frustrating and I can get bogged down into these small details and then tomorrow boom, something else

“has happened, what can you catch us up on what's going on?”

Yeah. I mean, like you said, I have really just spent like the last hour catching up on today's headlines, because I've been working on the World War II episode since basically since I woke up. You know, I guess they're, they're a couple of headlines today to really to think about.

The first one is very recent, Trump just actually let's back this one up, let's put that one third. So I would say the big, the big news today is that apparently we're sending a marine expeditionary unit somewhere, or either, you see 2500, maybe 5000 marines that we are sending over to the region from Okinawa.

I was trying to, I was asking some of my old Navy buddies, you know, those marine transport

ships, or like some of the few ships that I've never actually sailed on.

I've been on most every other class of ship that we've got, but not one of those. And so I couldn't remember what the top speed of those things are, but however you slice it, those things are a week and a half, two weeks away from the region. And so, you know, I guess you can, unless it's just some kind of milk deck, you know, you can take some information from that that either, you know, maybe they're doing this

just as, as a threat, as a show of force, a way of getting Iran to expose some of their forces by concentrating for a defense, something like that. But if they are meant for operations, then, you know, that right there tells you that the people making the decisions think this is still going to be live in two weeks or so.

“The second piece of information was that apparently I think this happened two, three days”

ago, and they're just reporting it now, but in Saudi Arabia, in Iranian missile took out five Air Force refueling tankers. And this is, this came out today in the wake of yesterday, two KC 135 refueling tankers went down. One of them crashed six people on board died, and then the other one was damaged and, you

know, probably repairable, but it was able to land. And, you know, that's significant just because a significant amount of our fire power in this, in this war so far, is coming, coming from carrier-based aircraft. And so those, and, you know, we haven't been able to move our carriers too close to the combat zone for fear of drone and missile attacks.

And so the F-18s that we're using for strike aircraft from those carriers, they're coming from a long ways away. And so those refueling tankers are actually really necessary to keep up the rate of

And then the third one, which this is just before we came on air, basically, and this

“is related, I assume, to the first one, is that Trump put out a true social post saying”

that we just did, you know, and who knows if he's just being normal Trump hyperbolic. But one of the biggest bombing runs in the history of the Middle East, taking out all of the military sites on Carg Island, which is the island way up in the Gulf by Kuwait where 90% of Iran, they don't process or refine their oil there, but it's where their oil goes before it gets shipped out.

And so it's where their ships go to pick it up to bring it up to where they're going to go. It's like 90% of their oil goes out from there. And Iran is building another one right now on the actual mainland, but it's not finished. And so, so that's interesting, and it was really interesting to me because just yesterday,

I was talking to Scott about this, I was talking to a friend of mine, former Air Force

pilot who still knows a lot of people, he's very well connected in the Defense Establishment especially on the air side, but just in general, and he told me yesterday that just the

“night before, so it would be like a day and a half ago now, our time, that a whole bunch”

of tier one guys in support units flew out for an operation that was looking like it was scheduled for this weekend. And he said from the, you know, from the description he got, you know, the guy wasn't super specific, but it sounded like an island operation. And now today, you know, and by the way, I talked to Scott yesterday, I told him that,

and I brought it up to him, and he had heard from a separate source, former, you know, combat that who still has a lot of buddies in the spec ops community, heard the exact same thing from him, from direct from one of that guy's friends, that, that this thing's happening.

And, you know, the scary part was that, according to my Air Force buddy and his contacts,

that there are a lot of guys in the community who are very worried that this hasn't been thought out very thoroughly, and that they're going to be way more exposed to counterfire of various types than we're planning for, you know, that we're not, we don't have a blocking force in preparation, I mean, just a lot of preparatory work that apparently hasn't gone into it.

And so I don't know, but I will say that hearing that yesterday from those guys when it was nowhere in the news, and then seeing today Trump said that we just smashed up all the, you know, military defensive sites on that island, you know, it sounds like something's going to happen there. And if that does happen, then we're going to be in a different phase of this war one

way or another for sure. I mean, you know, we take that island and secure it in a way that we can, we can hold it, which, you know, again, seems very dangerous at this point. Like, obviously, the Iranians still have a lot of missile and, and drone forces available and who knows what defenses they still have on the island itself or whatever we land

there. But if we, if we were to secure it, you know, that's a huge chip that we have, you know, over in our stack that we can, that we can put out there to try to force and negotiate it's a render of some kind or a negotiate, you know, some kind of negotiated ceasefire. On the other hand, if we go in there unprepared and we get smashed up, I mean, I don't

think anybody expects Trump to say, oh, well, they won. We lost. I guess that was a bad idea and go home, you know, at that point, we're going to probably be talking about major escalations. And so we'll just have to wait and see, you know, hopefully cooler heads prevailed, but

they haven't so far. So you alluded to something that I wanted to ask you about your friends said, some of the people that their level aren't sure exactly what the larger goal or plan here is. There's, there's aspects of this that seem disjointed from the very top to the very bottom

that there's, you know, even in the media, we hear different things. It's not a war or, oh, we're, we're about done with this or this is just a small escalation or not. We're winning. We won.

And then you see, you know, they're not allowing the news to report on the damage and Israel.

“Does it feel disjointed to you as far as like a cohesive message and goal?”

Yeah. I mean, and I, you know, sometimes I'm not sure if that's honestly like a strategy or if it's just a total lack of message discipline, you know, in an administration that is very disorganized and impulsive, you know, and sort of, this, you know, is kind of to be expected. But, you know, whether it is strategic or not, I mean, it has a strategic value to the administration

because, you know, what happens is like a Trump can go out there and say, a lot of countries have Tomahawk missiles, why Iran has Tomahawk missiles. It might have been them shooting a Tomahawk missile at that school. Now, every single person hearing that should have been like, wait, what?

five-byes countries and I have the Netherlands, like, actually have Iran has these things.

“That's huge news and like, what is happening here?”

But nobody does that because they go, like, ah, it's Trump. He's just saying whatever, you know, just who knows what's going to come out of it. And so it just, you can go out there and kind of be like, we win.

Well, you know, the wars, the wars all but wrapped up, we've basically won at this point.

Well, but on the other hand, you know, it may be just the beginning and he can do that. And everybody just kind of writes it off because Trump, you can't take anything he says seriously. And so, you know, whether it's strategic or not, it has that effect. And it makes it very hard to really get a grip on what's going on over there.

Like, I'm fortunate that I have some contacts deployed in the region and some friends in the Arab countries and in Israel that I talked to on a regular basis, but even then, you know, you're talking about, you know, if you go to Israel itself, like the media there is just as hyper censored as it is going out to the rest of the world. And so, you know, they know, the people over there know what they know, you know, based

on where they are, what they're hearing, but a lot of times they don't have that much better of an idea, the larger picture compared to anybody just from the outside, watch the news and doom, scrolling telegram. So, you know, you mentioned like that you really just almost try to stay away from just

“keeping up with the minute and have, you have to do that with this and it's really, really”

hard not to, but you go on to Twitter or Telegram any of these places and it's just impossible

to tell any more, you know, if is this a real video, first of all, did it really just happen

as they're reporting it or is this something from the 12 day war or is this from Ukraine or was this from six days ago or it's really, really impossible to make any kind of heads or tails out of it. And, you know, we're in a sort of a stage of our development as a country where we take for granted that it's just, you know, the government lying to us about everything all the time, well, that's just how governments work. That's, of course,

later on, that's just what government, we're not even outraged by it, it's just, you know, just normal, it's what we expect, you know. And so, they feel no incentive to be honest with us and, you know, they treat us, they treat the American electorate because, you know, the support for this war started out underwater, they treat us almost as an enemy combatant

“of types. You know, we're another group to be propagandized and, you know, to be managed”

so that they can do what they already want to do. You know, we're actually in their way

where the problem and they have to deal with us just like they have to deal with the actual military problem. And so it's really hard to, it's really hard to figure out like a real picture of what's going on. When, what, what years did you serve and where were you at and did you have this feeling at all? I don't know what the hell is going on. It doesn't, maybe because of social media and the climate we're in now, it didn't feel like that back then.

Yeah, well, that's just it. All right, you know, the propaganda is very different now. And you go back to 2003, you go back to, you know, all the old days before that. And propaganda was very much focused on putting out a certain message that you were trying to convince people to buy into, right? And you could control enough of the media out, but that this was all people were going to hear what the advent of the internet that became impossible. And so the strategy

really changed to just flood the zone with as much nonsense as possible so that nobody knows what's going on. And everybody just gives up on trying to understand, you know, or get it the truth or or even bothering, trying to follow along. And you know, one of the consequences that you see from that is, look, in 2002, 2003, you know, we got lied into a war, but man, they put a lot, they burned a lot of calories on that lie. You know, Colin Powell, the UN, I mean, they put a lot

of effort into that lie because that sort of was about it. It was about generating a narrative that people that would carry people along at least until they, you know, they got themselves far enough into the war that we couldn't get out. This is just different. I mean, now it's just like we wake up one morning and we find out, oh, we're at war. It is not even bothered priming us for, you know, Obama when when we bond Libya, you can give a public appearance for like 11 days. We just find out

we're at war with Libya now. And so it's just it's a very different world because the nature of propaganda is changing. You know, propaganda now is meant to confuse much more than it is to convince. Part of my conspiratorial mind is thinking at the same time, if Trump were to be, let's say not the one calling the shots as much as his, it's that his persona would lead some of his biggest fans to go, no, no, no, that's not true. He is the one calling the shots. But if he's

not, well, I could see a disconnected message happening because he's not sure exactly what what's

Yeah, I mean, this has been the, this has been the real tragedy of the second Trump administration,

“you know, he took a lesson from the first administration, which was be very, very, very careful”

that you can trust the people that you bring in with you, you know, because he was not able to trust anybody around him in the first one and it almost got his ass sent to jail, you know. So he did that this time, but he did that almost to the detriment of everything else. You know, he and in fact has been he's surrounded by people who just they won't tell him, sorry, I don't think that's a great idea. You know, there's just there's nothing but

yes, men around him and the people who he listens to and the people who are, are given access to him are virtually all giving him the same message for the same reasons and trying to drive them in a given direction. And he has some alternate voices, but they're, but they're drowned out, you know. Tucker still has a line to him and he tried and tried and tried to talk him out of this. JD Vance's, you know, stories coming out about it now, but I know this could be true. You know,

he was skeptical of this, like both for the military reasons, but the political reasons mainly, like the political fallout of this. And so he has a few people like that, but in general, I mean, he the last time around he had Charlie Kirk, but like that, you know, the one person who was really able to kind of, who was able to communicate with him about, you know, it's funny, you go on,

like, X, right? You look at the right wing on X. And it's basically like a handful of Jewish

Christian Zionists and a couple, just like people who are, you know, that their entire self identity is tied to Trump, like a cat turned type or something. And other than that, like the entire right wing movement, the whole dissident, right, manga movement, they're all against this. And so you wonder, like, well, clearly, this does not, this message is not seem to be getting to Trump. And the reason for that is the guy who used to get that message to him got shot. And that's it, you know,

“that's a huge tragedy. I think there's a very good chance we would not be in this conflict right now.”

If Charlie Kirk was still around. And, you know, so just in general, it's tough, you know, and, and, and I know, like, for example, I know for a fact that the chairman of the Joint Chief

of Staff was extremely skeptical of this operation, the people who were telling Trump that this

could be wrapped up in a few days. He was telling them that that is not true. This is a very comforting guy that the chairman is a, he's a, he's a legit general. He knows what's going on. And he's not afraid to speak his mind. And he did, but, you know, he was in this position that people like that get into a lot, right? Tucker was in this position is still to, to a certain degree, is that you look at it. You say, well, you know, I can resign in protest.

Say, this is a terrible idea. I tried to tell him and go do a media tour about it. And then be forgotten. And this, you know, everything moves on. This thing's going to happen anyway. They're just going to replace me with somebody that is going to do it. And so my options are I can resign in protest and like keep my honor. Or I can stick around swallowing my pride and just try to do my best to keep this thing as much on track as possible. You know, try to make sure that

there's some kind of a sane voice in his ear as this goes on. And that's a really, really hard

“thing to to navigate. I think, you know, one of, one of, Jocco's favorite book and one of my favorite”

books is about face. You know, and that's about a Marine Corps Colonel in the Vietnam War who's struggled with exactly that. You know, you know, this, he knew what was going on over there. He knew it was crazy. Do you go out and do a press tour to announcing this thing and trying to inform the public about what's happening? Or do you say, look, there's a couple hundred guys or thousand guys here who I can watch over and try to make sure they get home okay. It's a very tough thing to do,

you know, and a hard decision to make. And I'm glad I don't have to make it. So, but yeah, you know, for the, for the most part, you know, he's extremely isolated. He's getting very, very, very, very managed messaging. And when you add to that, the fact that, look, Benjamin Netanyahu will kill you. He will kill at U.S. President if he feels like he needs to. This is a guy who he really sees himself as not even a historical figure in a sense that like general Eisenhower is a historical

figure. He sees himself in like a mythic context, you know, like Moses or Joshua really does. And that became clear, you know, in his video that came out recently, he's talking about bringing back the Messiah and stuff. Yes. And, and so a guy who is in that mode, that guy will kill you if he really thinks that you're in the way of his life project, especially when he's at the age he is now, you know, and he's clearly at a point where he is ready to push all of his chips into the

middle and act very recklessly. And in the same way that, you know, you see like one of the interesting things about about Hitler, for example. And this is also a true Jim Jones, the cult leader.

going to live very long. They were, they were not long for this world. They're both kind of hypercondriacs and they both just expected that their time was very limited and that there was nobody else that could do the great thing that needed to be done. And so every the timeline for everything got accelerated, you got to do it now, you got to do it now, whether it's smart, whether it's reckless, you got to do it now. And, and it led, you know, those two movements obviously

to disaster and Benjamin Netanyahu, you know, he's not, he's not a younger, hypercondriac who thinks he's going to die from bowel cancer or whatever, but he's an old man, you know, and he looks around the Israeli political landscape and I think anybody that knows anything about Israeli domestic politics can look around over there and say there are not a lot of impressive characters, you know, besides Benjamin Netanyahu who, you know, look, I mean, from a, from just, from a cold objective

standpoint, I mean, he's an extremely effective politician, you know, and so you don't have to

“like him to admit that. But you look at the bench in Israeli politics, it's extremely weak. That's why,”

huge chunk of the public knows he's corrupt, they hate him, like they really don't like him,

he's really unpopular before they started, but he's basically ruled Israel for 30 years,

you know, and it's because their bench is incredibly weak. And so he's looking around and saying once I'm gone, like this has to be done now. And people like that are extremely dangerous. Yeah, it's just disappointing. I would think it's not like Trump is some young pop or anything, and it's sort of a America first selfless. I'm not long for this world. I'm going to do one last policy thing that will put my family's name down in history and fight

against this Netanyahu thing, rather than it's sort of going to have, in my opinion, at least from now, the opposite effect where his name will go down like the bushes if not worse. Yeah, I mean, look, the scary thing about it is that, I mean, we can take the escalation all the way up to 11 if Trump wants to, you know, and if Netanyahu want to, Iranians can do a lot,

and they're doing a lot now. They're playing a weaker hand, basically as good as it could

possibly be played probably, like so far, but it is a weaker hand. I mean, it's a situation where if Trump decided to just go yellow, and, you know, I'm not running for office again in 2028, and I really don't care if JD Vance or Marco Rubio wins, and just goes and does it, goes all in, you know, but we can, we can, we can escalate a lot more than we're doing right now, you know, in really dark ways. And so you hope that that doesn't happen. You hope that Trump doesn't

find himself in this place, because I mean, look, this is a guy who, you know, love him or hate him, people who love him should be able to recognize this is a narcissistic complex in extremists. Okay, like it's, it's a dictionary definition of a narcissistic complex, and he sees everything that happens in the world through the lens of his own existence in his own destiny, you know, how does this affect me, and that's it, that's, that's his thought on everything. And with, you know,

you hope he doesn't end up in a place where, you know, he feels like the bridges are burned, whether the, the boats are burned. He looks behind him, and there's no way to back out of this thing, and like save my, save my name going by, by going backwards, all after, I have to go forward now. And, you know, you really hope that it doesn't come to that, but, you know, it's tough to say that it won't, because, again, his counterpart in Israel, who seems to be really calling the shots,

“he really does have a messianic complex. Trump, I think it's much more shallow than that. I think”

it's more just that, you know, I think he, you know, it's really like, you know, he got insulted and called names and tried to throw him in jail, all these things, and all these media organizations and politicians who treated him like he was, you know, something that, you know, this is, this has been something that has been a chip on his shoulder going back to way before he was ever in politics, you know, this is a, this is a super rich Manhattan real estate developer,

but he's from Queens, you know, and everybody kind of looked at him as whole life, as this

gotty sort of, you know, new money, second tier early, you know, and he was, he can make $10 billion,

but he couldn't walk into a room and get treated, you know, the way a real old money, like a rock a filler gets treated, you know, and I think that always stuck in his crawl, and so yeah, he wants

“his name in, in whites, you know, that's, that's why he does what he does, but that is also why, you”

know, I mean, he kind of maybe seems obvious in retrospect, but when, when Tucker did that episode recently about the possibility of something happened into the golden dome on the Temple Mount, and, you know, there are, you know, he, he showed there are a lot of people out there in our

motivated to get the third Temple built, it's not really that hard to imagine his, you know, his

Kabad, Jewish son, son-in-law, convincing him, hey, you know, you're a guy who is your entire life has been dedicated to having your name on big real estate projects, well, have I got a real estate project for you? You know, this isn't going to be something that people remember in 50 years, this is going to be something that people remember in a thousand years, the way they remember Solomon, the, I mean, shoot, I could see Trump like being, becoming intoxicated with

something like that, so let's hope that's not where we're at. Yeah, let's hope you'd have to have a very shallow understanding, and this might be the case of of Christianity to what your name on on that, you know, in the Orthodox world, we firmly believe that people trying to usher that in is, is, is, is, are trying to usher the coming of the anti-Christ, and that's the last thing I would want my name on, but I assume he doesn't understand that aspect of this. Yeah, yeah, I don't think so.

I wouldn't imagine so. Have your friends, your connections, you know, we, we heard this, we could go or so that there's military higher-ups pushing this, this third Temple narrative, even through the military. Have you heard that from people you know? No, I saw all the stories. I, I have no reason to doubt on them. I mean, there were a lot of them, so I have no reason to doubt that they were all false, but I don't know anybody who, you know, who heard a speech

like that themselves or or even like second hand or anything, but, you know, I mean, I have no

“reason to doubt it. I think last week when I was on with Kyle, he asked me if I'd ever seen”

anything like that when I was in the service, because, oh, you asked me earlier by the way, like how long I served and when I served. Yes. I joined in January 2001 active duty, and I did 10 years and in 2011, I switched over. I got out of the military and became a DOD civilian. And for the next 10 years was GS13 engineer for the Department of Defense, working on air and ballistic missile defense systems. So, that's my experience, which, you know, the nature

of my job was, it was really good for, kind of what I'm doing now in a way, which is like the reason I know all these people who run all these different places, these aren't most, for the most part, these aren't people that I knew when I was in the military. My job when I was at the DOD, I would be traveling 8-10 months a year, a lot of that overseas to our overseas bases and to allied countries that we had sold weapons systems to, and I just got to know a lot of people

in all those places, you know, because I was just all over the place and I would work with, you know, the same people in different ministries of defense and stuff all the time. So, yeah, it's been very useful to keep up with what's been going on a little bit, although it really, like, you know, having a one or two day heads up on a lot of the stuff that's coming down the pipe, really just kind of makes you feel helpless. So, it doesn't really actually improve anything, but

do we have in the United States military? Here's another thing I keep hearing differing opinions on. The personnel, the resources to carry out ground troops, ground troop war, in, like, to occupy Iran. Yes, no, absolutely not. I mean, that would require a full-scale Vietnam war draft. No way. I mean, you're talking, if you put the entire U.S. combat force, like the front-line fighting forces online, every spec ops unit, every Ranger unit, the whole front-line infantry, Marine Corps.

I mean, you're talking about combat ready at any given time, like just over half a million

“troops, probably. And that's for our entire mission, over the entire planet, right?”

To go into a country of 93 million in occupied, well, I'll just, I'll just say, like straight up. I think that there's just no way that's going to happen. I mean, it would take things that, and less, you know, unless some big giant nuclear bomb or dirty bomb goes off in New York City or something, and they attributed to Iran, it's just it's impossible to imagine the political will to do what would be necessary. Especially when you consider, I mean, this isn't like it's not even just that

we don't have the personnel. Like our military's not built for that. We don't have like the equipment. We don't have the type and the quantity of equipment that would be necessary to carry out an operation like that. And because it's just, you know, I think I said this on last week's show. If we wanted, we couldn't do desert storm again today. If literally the fate of our country depended on it. We just do not have the force, the capacity in our force. So, so no, I don't think

“that that is on the table. I don't even think that's being discussed. I think we would”

nuke Tehran before we did that, put it that way. Like before we did that, which I hope both are extremely unlikely. But before we try to occupy Tehran, we would nuke it. Now, doing something where

we try to go in and take control of a critical node like our guy Island, and maybe try to hold

you know, I could see Trump being convinced of that, whether or not it's a good idea. I'm

“I could see him being convinced of it, especially when, you know, look, we the mighty United States”

of America, like we found ourselves in a situation right now where we don't actually decide when this war ends. Iran decides when this war ends, you know, because we can, like, I've got one buddy who's very deeply embedded in the military side of the intelligence community. And, you know, yeah, he's biased because he's in the community and stuff, but he's not a bullshitter. And he's, you know, extremely confident that by basically by the end of next week, Iran's offensive capabilities

are going to be degraded virtually to the point of irrelevance militarily. But, you know, I was talking about, I was like, okay, but, you know, Iran's strategy is not like whether or not

that's true. It seems obvious at this point that Iran's strategy was never to defeat us militarily,

to make us cry uncle because we're just taking too much damage and we just can't take it anymore. They're clearly fighting an economic and diplomatic, a very long game. And what that means is, you know, as long as they can take out a tanker every few days that's trying to go through the state straight or moves, the insurance companies are not going to cover them. And, you know, they can, they can send a few drones every few days and take out a new oil installation or something.

They can force all of these places to shut down just like they already have. And so they can basically walk down the Gulf Energy production and, and, and, and export industry, basically indefinitely unless we do want to go occupy the country. And so, you know, with, with their strategy, it looks like, to me, is basically just hold out, preserve their forces as much as possible, walk down the straight, maybe bring the hoot these in at some point, walk down the

red sea as well, and just wait, wait until other countries, you know, that, because look, man, like all these other countries, including like the Western European countries and the air of monarchies, who, you know, they're all saying the things that, whatever's on the cue cards, we give them to say, our colonies in Western Europe and the Arab world. But they all know, they all know better. They know who started this war. They know that Iran did not want this war.

They, they, they, they know. And they can stay on the script for now. But at a certain point, the economic pain is going to get to a point where you wonder if that's going to start to break down. And if that, you know, and so, if the goal is not so, I mean, not so much to like, but not going to shoot down so many American airplanes and kill so many American soldiers and destroy so much American equipment that we just say, well, gosh, we just don't have anything left to fight with.

I guess the wars, that's never going to happen. And the Iranians are smart people. They knew

that was never going to happen. The goal very clearly is just to show that, like, look, it doesn't matter how much you degrade us. You can take out 90% of our capability. You can kill

“our leaders. You can do what you want. If you want to fight, we can break the global economy.”

And we can do it in ways that specifically affect the countries in the region and US allies. And so, say, when you want to go again, let's go again. That's how it's going to go. You'll come over here. You know, you want to do this again in nine months, like we did this time. You're going to come over here and bomb our cities again and bomb some of our equipment that you missed the first time around or whatever. And we're going to lock down the region for another

six weeks or whatever it is. And so, that's clearly what they're trying to prove is that that's a button that they have that they can push any time that we decide we want to go kinetic with them. And it's, again, they have a much weaker hand than we do and these rallies do, obviously. But that's still a, that's how you play that hand. I mean, that is definitely the way you do it. You know, is because what that does is it pushes things to a point where it's not just them

pressuring us to stop this. I mean, we've got, like, allies, not only in the Middle East, but especially in Asia, countries like Japan, Singapore, you know, countries that we're, they're very

critical to our strategy in Asia, you know, and just in the Indo-Pacific region in general,

who they are hurting from this. I mean, this is a huge problem for that. And if this goes on very much longer, like it's going to be a massive, massive problem for a lot of our allies,

“not only whom we consulted or told to prepare for something like this, you know?”

And so Iran's plan seems to be, hold out, preserve as much force as possible, demonstrate that even with a severely degraded economy, severely degraded military, you can walk down the energy industry in the region at any point so that the next time, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu calls his slave in the White House and says, we're going into Iran again, he's going to get calls from Japan

And so, again, it's a weaker hand, but I mean, that's how you play.

“Yes, he's me. Forgive my ignorance on some of the military things. I started the”

fire department when I was 19 and that's all I've ever done. I've even had a real job as I tell people, but I was reading about the Iran drones coming over to California. Do they actually have that power, that technology to do something like that from that distance? No, I mean, I mean, look, like, look, like, I feel radically like they could sneak a small boat, you know, just take a sailboat across the Pacific or something and launch a couple drones for a few

pin-pric strikes to give us a costous belly to go just really destroy them, I guess. I mean, like, so, or maybe they have some, you know, some Iranian Americans who are not complete traders to their country and their people who would be willing to do something, but I mean, to me, it was just that that really rings of, you know, the Assad chemical weapons attack during the Syrian war, where it's like, okay, so this guy has won the war, the war's over.

He's defeated the enemies that have been coming at Damascus. The only chance the other side has is if the US comes into this war and he just happens to do the one thing that we have promised he better not do in doing it in a way and at a time that gives him no tactical or strategic advantage, whatsoever. It's just to do it, just because he's so evil. I mean, you know, we should be able to, we should at least be literate enough in terms of like storytelling to see how stupid that is.

“And I think in this case, too. I mean, Iranians are many things. They're definitely not stupid.”

And I just, the Iotola would have to come to my house and knock on my door and sign in his own blood that I the Iotola ordered these drones to like hit a couple Iranian community centers and Westwood or something. And I probably still wouldn't believe them. I just, it just seems too ridiculous. The 5D chess people have you heard some of the loyal Trumpers explaining that this is not as it seems on the surface, but Trump is really doing this for I haven't heard a lot, but I have heard

something about the insurance companies, the city of London are Britain not controlling the insurance companies. Now the US does, there is something in there about how we're really stringing Israel

a long until Trump goes and finally does does it in the very end. He's kind of doing this, you know,

it's sort of the QAnon 5D chess thing where just trust the plan in the end Trump's going to get Israel. I mean, you heard some of this stuff. I've seen some of it. I mean, I scroll right past it. It's so stupid. You know, I mean, it's like the thing, the immediate thing that should set off all of our alarms is what nobody was talking about this before. This is something that started up after the attacks when all of a sudden these people who were go Trump no matter what and feel this like,

you know, there's this need to figure out a rationalization for whatever he decides. You know, they start looking around for five D chess and stuff. And that's when he's doing something that is just so flagrantly opposed to everything that he ran on. You're going to have to get pretty creative to do that. You know, I see the idea that, you know, the US Treasury is going to replace Lloyds of London or something. It's so dumb. I got, yeah, it's not serious. I don't take

it seriously at all. Another thing I don't see enough of, maybe it's a good thing is Fox News. Do you are you familiar with, let's say what the boomer conservative maybe Sean had any messaging is on why this is a good thing because I haven't heard that much either. Yeah, I don't watch it. I see a clip from time to time on social media. And I guess I could probably, I could probably write the script for a Sean Hannity show myself even if I haven't seen

one 20 years. I mean, I, you know, it's the Murdock outlets. Their job is to sell war. That is what their job is. And when you watch something like, well, anything on Fox News, it's not some crazy coincidence that the one guy they felt like they had to get rid of who happened to be their highest-breed a guy is the one guy who was speaking out against something like this. That's not some, oh, wow, how convenient for them. While they fired that guy and it just happens to turn out

“that these think, no, of course, that's why they did it, you know, and, you know, because that's”

their job. And they tell you that behind the scenes at a place like Fox News. So like, this is what we're doing. Everybody, this is the message we're putting out. And you can stay on board with that

and keep collecting your $10 million a year for being a prime time host on Fox News or whatever,

or, you know, you can go start a podcast basically. And, and so, yeah, when you're watching something

the news called Fox News. It's a sales channel. It's QVC for the war. You know, that's what it is. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm looking around not very hard, but trying to find the pro-Trump sort of like what would make him look good in something like this, because I removed myself so heavily from the political scene. And I just look at it again as a spiritual issue, not even so much attack the goal. And well, if we do this and this will get expensive or this will be cheaper. And I look at it from the

spiritual angle, which is a disaster at this moment. And the goal is disastrous. So I keep thinking, what's the pro-Trump crowd who's also pro this war? What are they saying? Because again, like you said on X, 90% of the right wing outside of like a few talking crazy Zionist voices that we all know are going to say and repeat what they're told. I don't see much popularity or much support for any of this. Yeah. I mean, it kind of depends on who you're talking about, right? So you have these conservative

influencer types, like, I don't know, like a Will Chamberlain. If you see him run with the right and this who if you if you watch the evolution of his statements from last June up until now, it's just rationalizing the new thing. You know, it's Israel's not asking for our help. They just want to get out of their way. Okay, we have to go in and bomb their nuclear sites. But hey, there was no type of expansion of the war, the war is over. How could you guys like, Hannah, how do you feel

now saying that this war is going to, oh, we're back in the war? Oh, well, that's okay. And US is taking the lead in it. Well, that's actually really important because we have to, you know, control oil supplies, you know, because we're competing with China. All of these things, no, no case that was ever made at the very beginning of the thing, it's all just reactive step by step. Every time Trump does something that invalidates their previous position, they have to come up with a new one.

And so you have people like that who, you know, somebody like, like, will, I mean, it's just it's sort of a shun handy. Like his job is to push the liquid position. That's that's it.

“Whatever the talking points go out, that's what his position is. But it's very similar to, you know,”

back in the 30s with, you know, the common term would put out a position and all the Communists in the US and Europe, but all it would adhere to this position in lockstep. And like the next year, they'd put out the opposite position. And now everybody just pretends like that's what they

always believed is very, very, very similar. And so that's, that's a certain group of people.

But there are others too. Like I'm in group chats with a couple guys that with a bunch of guys, actually, that mostly veterans that I've known for many, many years, guys I really like, who before all this started, you know, were what is said, they voted for Trump to stay out of situations like this and focus on immigration, the domestic economy and all that, who are now sort of, you know, they just kind of shifted over to, you know, the, look, the reason that, you know,

you're so traumatized about the, by these previous wars is because they were fought in stupid ways. And we don't have to fight them stupidly. We can just go over there, limited, punitive strike, to grade their forces, mow the lawn, and then we leave. And yeah, okay, like, you know, a few people have died, and we've lost some equipment and so forth. But hey, you know, we've taken this geopolitical issue off. I mean, it's, it's all rationalization, you know, because it's, none of it is,

none of it is something that they would have told you the day before we started bombing.

“And right, right. And that to me is really the key to it. You know, you see their, their positions”

evolve over time just to maintain their defense of a person or a movement, you know, right? Yeah, that's a great point. No one was ever trying like Benny Johnson and Will Chamberlain

weren't trying to post. And boy Trump should do this. And Israel should do this. It's always

reactive. I didn't even put it into that perspective. Yeah, and not only that, but like before this happened, if anybody who said, you know, this pressure they're trying to put this build up, we're doing over here. Like, this is going to be, this is going to be bad. This is going to escalate into something really bad. They would have just called you a panicking, you know, like they would have said, oh, you're fear mongering. That's ridiculous. That's never going to happen. And a lot of them

would even have been so shameless, you know, to say, and if it does happen, believe me, I'll be the first one to call it out. And then they're the first one defending it. I mean, there's a lot of

“people like that. And when you identify people like that, you need to mark them for life. And remember”

who it is that you're seeing talk, you know? Right. Well, they're the habit and empty, which is disheartening because I think a lot of us myself included felt this Trump coalition coming into this

election cycle. I was like, finally, I've, I've never voted for someone who won in my entire life.

I voted for libertarian for Ron Paul and people like that. And I accepted, well, I'm no one's, my guys aren't going to win. I actually felt good about the Trump RFK, Tulsi, Vitt Jady Vance. Like,

And then this happens and you're like, okay, never mind. I just, yeah, maybe that's, there's just

no point in any of this. And I don't want to get dispondent by any means or apathetic about some of these things. But just strictly politically speaking, it's very disheartening. It's speaking of Tulsi. She's been silent. I've heard anything from from her perspective on any of this. No. Oh, I could just saw her speak at Ron Paul's, I was at Ron Paul's 90th birthday. And she was met by a standing ovation. She was still looked at as like this. She's great before

“all of this happened. Of course, now silence. I mean, the only thing I can say is that her views”

that were expressed before she was DNI were sincerely held. And I imagine she's having a dark night of the soul right now. But, you know, at the same time, I mean, you can't escape your responsibility for something like this. Even if you are protesting behind closed doors and stuff, I mean, it is what it is. And again, like I, you know, I, like I was talking about the beginning. I mean, she's one of those types. She's probably one of those people who's in that very

difficult position of saying, you know, at least I'm one person as a director and national intelligence. I'm the, at least I can make sure that this information gets put in front of Trump, because whoever he replaces with me with is going to get picked by Susie Wiles. And it's not, she's not going to, you know, that person, I'm going to show them this stuff. And therefore, I should suck it up and stay here. But that gets, you know, you really like starts,

yeah, I mean, if you have any kind of a conscience and a sense of honor, you really start to struggle over at what point that just turns into complicity, you know. And again, it's a tough, it's, it's a tough position to be in. I, I wouldn't want to be in that position. I don't want to get all self-righteous about how I behave if I was. But it's sad, you know, for sure, to see

“somebody like her in that position. And that's what, you know, the fact that she was in there,”

the fact that JD was in there. Look, the, the Neocons man, I can tell you from direct knowledge, they were trying extremely hard behind the scenes all the way up to the convention to make your JD Vance was not the vice president. They did not want him at all, right. And, you know, his views on this stuff while, you know, not Tulsi's views are at least more cautious, you know, and more cognizant of the political reality on the right right now. And so, you know, there's a lot of

people like I, like a Brett Weinstein, I was, I was talking to him the other day and I was seeing some of the things he was posting on Twitter, having back and forth with people about you know, whether he should apologize for saying we should vote for Trump, you know, whether this is like, you know, because he'll say something about this is a disaster, or this is bad, and people being his comments be like, "Well, you promoted him, you're the one who told us we should

vote for him." And he's struggling with that. And I think a lot of people are, especially the liberal types like him who kind of went over, you know, and kind of broke their normal routine to do it. But the thing is, I don't blame anybody for it. You know, if it was a siop, it was a very thorough and a very good one. I have my doubts that it was, honestly, I think this was much more of an emergent situation, just because it's very, very clear that the thing is not planned out well.

You know, and I also, I'll never fault anybody for having hope, you know, you can be stupid,

it can be, but you know, you don't want to fall into like a pit of total cynicism and if somebody votes because, you know, at least they're sending some signals that they're going to do the right thing, and then they end up not doing the right thing. I'm not going to fault that person for having hope, you know, right. And I used to, I, when I was young, a strident, libertarian, I would hold people accountable that I knew, well, you voted for Bush in this instance, or you voted

for Obama, and they started these wars. And I'm looking back like this is a learning opportunity, Trump literally ran on not doing this. And so naturally, well, that's what I voted for. And now it's like, I don't know that I owe anyone an apology, but because this is not what I, had he said, I'm going to be a slave to Israel and do whatever they say, and then bomb a ran, I would have got all of them. I'll just hold out on this one. And then I start to wonder,

I would have never voted for Kamala anyway, but like, does it even matter, would she have

fallen for the same rules? She's much less intelligent. So I, I don't know where we'd be here as she won. And what I now I'm curious about, again, maybe by political or radar's off a bit,

“I think vans and anyone in this administration's got no shot. What do your thoughts there?”

You know, I mean, American politics has a very short memory, so you never really know. But what I can tell you for sure is, you know, you notice in the first day or so of the war,

2024 Trump voters support the war at whatever 80% or something. Every old I've seen since then hasn't said Trump 2024 voters. It said self-identified Maga Republicans. And I'm like, well, I know a lot of people who identified that way until about

two weeks ago. Right? Exactly. You know, the question basically boils down to, you know, 90% of

people who support Trump's war in Iran support Trump's war in Iran. It's like, okay, whoa, wow.

“And so yeah, I mean, I think that the, here's the other thing. I mean, because I've gone out on”

limbs for JD Vance a lot. I know a lot of people who know him personally really believe in him. And like, a lot of people are like me where there's nothing you could do in the next two years that is going to redeem this administration in my eyes. We're done. We are done period. And it doesn't matter what they do. It doesn't matter who the Democrats put up in 2028 and speaking of that by the way, the Democrats, I mean, shame on the Democrats for, like, they gave us

no choice. You know what I mean? Like, just there have been a wave of year over the last 10 years or so American politics was just so egregious and so over the top. You see, the rampant abuses of the federal judiciary and the intelligence agencies, the just outright open corruption, the anti-white hate that was basically made like official government policy, you know, and just the just pushing

“the sexual revolution to the point where they're taking kids from parents homes because they won't”

let them get a sex change. I mean, it's like, they left us no choice. Like, we had to vote for anybody other than who they were putting up, especially after the Biden debacle and everything. And so

shame on them for that because what we ended up with was this guy who, you know, look, we've always

kind of been Israel's attack dog, obviously, like at least since the 70s, but if you do go back in like the last several presidents, all of them at critical points, like overall, yeah, they were probably Israel, they were doing what Israel wanted and everything, but every one of them at critical points. In ways that really upset the Israelis told them no, you know, George A. W. Bush did it, Clinton did it, Bush, they were pushing Bush hard to invade Iran and he wouldn't do it.

And then Obama, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu, and he like couldn't even get on the phone with

“each other, they hated each other by the end. And I think the reason for that, you know, this is”

like the danger of having like a real outsider is, you know, look, George A. W. Bush, he's a made man, you ran the CIA, you know, I mean, this is a guy who, you know, you can only put so much pressure on this guy and whatever you try to do to him, you know, the American system is not going to turn on that guy, like whole hog and like isolate and push him aside, like he's just too much of a made guy. Clinton, a little bit less so than that, but I mean, he was one of those two road scholar

guy who was groomed for this position very much. So, Bush, you know, he himself, maybe not so much, but the Bush family, obviously, and very much so. And then Obama, he was an outsider, but he just had, he was just one of those guys who had way too much personal popularity among Democrats to, for them, to really go after him very hard. And so they just weren't able to put enough pressure on them to really control them. Whereas with Trump, I mean, they've got,

they've got a full-on puppet with Trump. And I know a lot of people will say they don't need a puppet, Trump's just one of them, and that's probably true to a degree, you know, but whatever the, whatever the gap is between that reality, you know, and they can make up for with pressure with Trump. And it's because, you know, if they really decide to go, go hard on him, I mean, he knows damn well, like they'll put him in his whole family and jail. They'll bankrupt his family.

The American system will not only not defend him, it'll help him do it. You know, the intelligence agencies that part of it, they'll help them do it. And so somebody like that, you know, really has to have a sort of killer be killed attitude if you're going to stand up to the most

powerful influence really like in our country, you know, and especially in terms of, you know,

issues that that really have to do with life and death, you know, you might say like the the agricultural, you know, lobby is extremely powerful or something, but, you know, that's sort of much more mundane and things that like decide whether or not we're going to go send Americans to kill people, you know, you have this, you have this lobby in this country and then you know, and it's not just a pack. I mean, there's a lot of these, you know, outside of Miriam Adelson,

she didn't give $250 million to Trump through a pack. You know, there's a lot of people like her and they're extremely powerful, extremely motivated and a whole lot of them really do have this sort of mythical, biblical, historical sense of their mission. And, you know, it's just very rare that you're

alone be able to deal with the consistent pressure from it. What do you think of how masses behave

through all of this? I know he's got his haters outside of just a maga circle. I heard people say, well, no, he gets his real money too. It's just not through a pack. This is sort of a puppet show on his end. I don't read it that way. It seems to me like he's genuine and sincere, what you're taking on Thomas Massey. Oh, yeah. I definitely buy that he's sincere. I mean, I mean, look, if you go through the list of donors for any politician, it's not like they're

going through and vetting and approving every single one of those things and sometimes they come in. And you can go through the list of donors for any politician. You can probably find things

complained about. But then, you know, just just watch what they do and watch how his opponents

respond to it and very obviously these people hate his guts. And with, you know, you can say, with Trump, they seem to hate his guts too. And I guess that's true. But like with Massey, I mean, it really, yeah, no, he put himself out there to do this and granted, you know, you could say he made himself a political brand through his opposition, you know, especially focusing on the Epstein files and stuff, latching onto this extremely popular issue. But at the same

time, it's popular for a reason. And he's, and he's become the brand for that, because nobody else would do it. And look, make no mistake about it. If it was not for Thomas Massey and Rohana, the Epstein story would be, we wouldn't know anything about it. I mean, that let's series. It would slip into history, go into the archives of the Department of Justice and just be another one of those lost stories like the Vegas shooting or whatever else that just kind of, who knows, you know,

and the Trump shooting all of a sudden. Right. Yeah. And the reason it's not that is because of him and Rohana and they deserve our gratitude for that, you know, regardless of who they have taken money from or even regardless of why they did it, even if they did it for self-aggrandizing reasons

“or something, honestly like who cares? My care about the, I care about the effect. And yeah,”

Thomas Massey deserves our gratitude for sure. What is, what voice does Tucker have on the American right, as far as you're concerned, we've talked, you mentioned that there's not much that this current administration can do to salvage themselves over the next few years. What does Tucker plan to influential voices on the American right? Well, I mean, no, he's kind of Tucker's such an important figure. And in the reason I say that is not because he's saying things that no one

also say, you can find there's a million podcasts and whatever out there nowadays. You can find

somebody saying anything. Not because he's going as far as I, you know, in my heart of hearts, think we should be going on every issue or just whatever. That's not really the point. Tucker is important because, you know, his, his stature on the right in America is, you know, through just through years of being somebody who was very clearly like the only guy on Fox News who was trying to actually tell you what he thought instead of reading from the script that they

handed him, he's built up enough credibility and has enough stature on the right. But what he has the ability to do is give the right permission to think certain things, give them the permission to

“question certain things that, you know, that you, you have to remember like, think about when”

like when Trump spoke against the Iraq war in South Carolina in 19, in 2016. Everybody was like, you know, this is the end of his campaign, you know, you can't come out and trash the bushes like that Iraq war. Because if you looked back before that, yeah, it was hard to find a Republican who would like go in public and say anything against Iraq war. And that was read by people as evidence that, oh, that's because all the Republican supported. It's like, now by 2016, like, the Republicans,

your normal, like, conservative voters were perfectly aware. This is an albatross around our neck. How do we get this thing off? Like, this is going to drag us down for the next generation. But you can't be like Nancy Pelosi was right all along and I was wrong and you know, but he just can't do that, right? And so they needed a guy like Trump to come along and say, you know, actually, you can think this. You can say this out loud. And it was like this

sigh of relief. And so it had the opposite effect that, you know, a lot of the commentator thought it was going to have. And Tucker's kind of one of those guys, you know, he's, he's like, he's a gay keeper, but not in the sense of keeping people in, but of letting people, you know, out.

“And that's very important. I talked to a lot of my buddies who are much more”

strident and radical than somebody like Tucker. And I'll talk to them about people like Tucker,

where, you know, they don't go far enough on this. They're not radical enough on that.

And I always tell them, I say, look, man, there's a structure to this thing. Okay?

We don't need like 100 people all the way out over here, clumped up on the radical end of this thing, all cannibalizing each other's audiences and talking to each other about the same things all the time. Because you're never going to reach the vast majority of the population, because, you know, you're just not connected to them in any way. What you have is the same thing like Matt Walsh. You know, Matt Walsh annoys a hell out of me plenty of times, but I defend him all the time,

because I recognize his importance in that structure. You know, he's the way that that daily wire listeners hear about people in my sphere and Tucker's sphere. We're the way that, you know, that those people make their way over to the next step and start asking more fundamental questions

“about what's going on. And this is a process. You know, and you have to give people permission”

to ask these questions. And if the questions you're asking, or you're trying to encourage them to

ask, or so far outside of, you know, the way of thinking of anybody that they know or talk to, or anything like that, you're not going to ever get them to do that. You have to walk them down that path. And so yeah, Tucker's an extremely, we would not be, I mean, our political landscape, the sound is ridiculous, maybe, because he's a TV host and, you know, in a podcast host, our political landscape would be completely different if Tucker also does not out there.

Yes, yes. Well, just that he's getting voices like yours on his show. And I mean, I didn't think you said anything particularly radical. And you saw how crazy that blew up. And say with Weinstein, he kept saying, well, I'm going to get a lot of pushback and hate over this. And it's like,

you didn't really say anything that radical either. But what I did learn about on that night,

I thought, I did not know this. I almost went to look it up, but I had to come here and do this.

“The gold ageer thing. You were aware of that. We talked offline. What were your thoughts?”

Can you explain what happened there? And I had zero clue that that happened in my mind was sort of blown like you've got to be kidding me. No one needs sort of Trump is scared. Can you talk about that really quick? Yeah, I mean, so everybody probably has heard about the famous operation where the Israelis managed to get a lot of pages to members of Hezbollah that were packed with explosives. And at a certain point, a few years ago, they blew them all up, killed a bunch of people.

And I mean, in terms of just, you know, clandestine operations. I mean, you got to say that's in the Hall of Fame, for sure, whatever you think of, you know, the morality of the whole thing or whatever. But so that happened. And then Benjamin Netanyahu gave Trump this frame with a golden pager, like commemorating that incident. And a lot of people have remarked on just the fact that, man, like, even if that's not a threat, boy, it could sure be read that way, right? This is what Brett was saying. He was like, you know, how is there not

somebody who was in the, you know, the circle of Netanyahu, somebody who over there, it was like, you know,

“he might take this the wrong way. And I think it's obvious if the answer was, well, that is the way”

he was supposed to take it. And in the way to sort of understand that, it's just to imagine, you know, that they had taken out the leader of Hezbollah with three o'clock sniper rifle. And then they gave him a golden three o'clock bullet to put it. Yes, you know, and that's like much more clear. Oh, yeah, obviously, this is what's going on, you know. And yeah, I, look, there's a thing, you know, you're talking about Netanyahu. He's a guy who has a habit of when he comes to the White House, he'll bring, this is not, he's not somebody who needs to do this.

He'll bring a big load of dirty laundry and have us wash it for him in the White House. He's done this a bunch of times. I did. Okay. You there. Okay. Yeah. And so, you know, this is somebody who, and not like the clothes he was wearing on the way over here, you know, where he's at the hotel or saying in the White House, wherever he's having them washes, change clothes, or whatever. No, he brings his load of laundry on the plane and has us wash it for him, right? But this is a power move.

This is the power move. Yeah, a hundred percent. And so, you know, when you take a guy like that, and then you, you know, you put the, the pager gift in the context of that guy's personality, I mean, it's very obvious what's going on here, you know, in my opinion. It's just, you know, people like, you read about like in, you read about LBJ, how he had this habit of, he would have the White House press corps like a bunch of him. He would, he would, he would make him stand outside his

bathroom with the door open while he was taking a dump, and he would answer their questions in there. And it's like, that A that is an obvious, like he's not just like, oh, I only have so many hours in the day, and so I have to make the most efficient use of my time. You know, this is a guy who is doing a power move, but doing it in a way that is really evidence of like a disorder personality.

we always put that in the context of like, yeah, where they're always going to be a little bit

like on a different level in terms of their behavior, but just think of like, if you knew, if you knew somebody who did that, you'd be like, this guy's insane, you know, it takes a crazy

“person to do something like that. And Netanyahu's one of those guys, you know, I think he has”

contempt for American politicians for the most part, you know, he's somebody who, again, somebody who sees himself as like this historical mythic figure, you know, somebody who is gonna, you know, he wants to be mentioned alongside Moses and Joshua one day as one of those people who saved the Jewish, you know, all that kind of thing, I can really think of himself in those

Messianic terms. And he has to come over here and, you know, just take these dirt bag,

bought off politicians seriously in America in order to get his way into what he wants. And it's probably insulting a lot of the time, you know, and just for somebody who sees himself in that sense to deal with the low rent political leaders that we tend to have in this country. And so, yeah, I mean, a guy liked that with that kind of a personality when he shows up to give a speech in Congress, and he gets 57 standing ovations or whatever. He's not a guy who sees that and says,

wow, this is great. I got a great relationship with these people. As somebody who feels contempt for these people, you know, and when he sees something like that, and so yeah, I mean, look,

Tucker knows Trump very well. He didn't start getting to know Trump when he ran for office. He's

known Trump for 25 years, and he knows him well. And Trump talks to him in ways that he doesn't

“talk to most people, and, you know, he will tell you, I think he did tell Brett maybe in that”

episode. That's exactly how Trump took it. Trump's not stupid, you know, and that at least in that sense. And so he knew it was going on. All right, one more before I get out of here with you. And again, forgive my voice people, I don't usually sound like this of all times to come on to show this big hit with this allergies and Texas, but I'd be remiss. I do my show is mainly stuff view through an Orthodox Christian lens. You have done so much work on just the just the destruction

that communists have done to Orthodox Christian countries. Some of the most violent things you could ever imagine. I actually learned about from some of your podcasts. Have you ever done a deep dive into the Orthodox Church or work from your perspective? What is your view of Orthodox Christianity? Oh, better be a good view. I am in Orthodox Christians. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, well, not, you know, not yet. My, we live up here in North Idaho and our church is a Greek church

up about 45 minutes away 30 minutes away, something like that. And it's a little little tiny place pretty new, but yeah, we love it. And yeah, my opinion is positive. Do you know, I guess I sorry to, I'm sorry if that was insulting in any way. I didn't know. No, no, no, not at all. But I listen to so many things and I think how could you not be Orthodox after hearing some of this stuff? He's teaching me. Yeah, I mean, I think that obviously there's a lot about

Orthodoxy to love and to recommend it. But I think the thing that really they really spoke to me the most was just the the different understanding of sin and redemption that Orthodox have compared to both Protestant and Catholic, you know, Christianity, where, you know, to people who've grown up in West in the West and are not that exposed to Orthodoxy. Most of them they understand sin in a very legalistic sense. You've committed a crime. This crime demands justice, the man's

punishment. The crucifixion and resurrection was Jesus being merciful enough to pay that penalty for you because sin, these are these are crimes you're committing. You know, in Orthodoxy very much understands sin less in that, you know, legalistic sense in much more almost in a medical sense.

“This is a sickness that is overtaking you. You need to be cured of. Not something you”

you need to be, you know, sort of pardoned from, although there is, like, obviously there is some of that because, you know, but it's really like a sickness that is corrupting you and that this is the only way that you can be cured of that sin. And being, you know, what it does is like it makes it much less about just just the, you know, the contrition part of, you know, whether you're Catholic in, and you have confession or as a Protestant just praying to yourself and asking

for forgiveness for this or that sin that you did where it's, it's almost like this isolated thing. Like I did this thing, now I have to do this thing to sort of get right. It's much more like, no, you're sick, you're ill. You have this, you have this evil force that wants to destroy you and is spreading and corrupting you. And the way that you cure yourself of that is not by,

It's no, through the process of being involved with the church over time and being, you know,

“doing your Christianity, like on a, on a regular basis, as a part of your life. And as that”

grows in your life, the sin starts to become smaller and smaller part of it. And, you know, to me, that's just, it, it's, it's, it's easier for me to understand the benevolent creator of the universe working like that than it is, you know, of him just being like an angry dad who's mad that you didn't do what he told you. You know what I mean? So, there's a lot more to say about it. And if you want, you know, I'll come on your show. We can talk about orthodoxy. You know,

I want audience, but love this. Okay. Yeah. I say we say one, man. Amen. I actually, we, we will,

“we will work that out. Anything enclosing you need to say for the provoked audience.”

Yes. But give me one second. Because there's something I need to tell you from Scott, but I

forgot my phone in the other room. And I need to look at my email. And it is right here and Scott wanted me to tell everybody. Well, first of all, check out the Scott Horton Academy. If you haven't done that and you're watching this show, shame on you. But the other one was Scott put together this great thing. Let's see, come on up. He didn't put it on here. Oh, yeah, here we go. The facts about Iran.com. He put together this little website that is just a collection of all the stuff that he and

“other people have done. People who are part of our circle have done on the Iran, the history of”

Iran and the more recent situation. It is packed with information. Go to the facts about Iran.com. And it's really like a one-stop shop for sort of getting yourself up to speed on what's going on here so that when you see a headline in the news, it's really not this isolated thing that maybe you're connecting the last few weeks of headlines. It's really something that you can understand in a context that goes back decades. And you know, have a much clearer understanding of the broader story.

So it's the facts about Iran.com. Scott put it together. It is great. And everybody should

go check it out. Yes. Scott stuff's always good. That Scott Horton Academy. He's got a course

specifically on Zionism and dispensationalism. And for those of you out there who I'm sure is most to be in this audience who saw how could be with Tucker and Ted Cruz with Tucker. I know they seemed like goofballs and weren't making a lot of coherent logical sense. There's a lot, there's millions of people with that same view. And that largely does affect the U.S. foreign policy unfortunately. And to promote myself really quick, if I can, the counterflow podcast,

it's on YouTube, it's on anything. I've done a lot of episodes with Orthodox priests and Orthodox historians on that same bad, bad, bad theology that is unfortunately leading to bad fruit, if you will. So thank you guys. And thanks, Darrell. And let me just say real quick to everybody out there who did super chats and had questions in there and even you guys who didn't, sorry we didn't get to that stuff. I'll tell you what I'll do though. I will take all those questions down and then I'll

put it up as a free post on my sub-stack and I'll answer them probably more clearly and better than I would hear off top my head anyway. That's something. This has been provoked with Darrell Cooper and Scott Horton. Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow and provoked underscore show on X and YouTube. And tune in next time for more, provoked.