Badlands Media - Badlands Daily: 3/9/26 - FBI Raid in Maricopa County and the Expanding Election Investigation

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

In this March 9 episode of Badlands Daily, CannCon and Zak Paine unpack breaking news that the FBI reportedly seized election records from Maricopa County, Arizona as part of an expanding voting investigation. The hosts discuss the significance of federal authorities quietly obtaining files from the nation’s largest election jurisdiction and what it could signal about the direction of ongoing investigations. The conversation explores how the Maricopa action may connect to earlier investigations in places like Fulton County, with speculation that corroborating evidence from multiple jurisdictions could open the door to broader probes across other states. CannCon and Zak also examine the timing of the raid, the possibility that the operation was conducted quietly while public attention focused elsewhere, and why they believe Arizona may only be the beginning. The episode closes with discussion about potential next steps, including whether Michigan and other states could become the focus of additional investigations as more documentation and whistleblower accounts surface.

of the Badlands, explain those Badlands. That's a hell of a name. We're seeing the spell wear off, the hypnosis wear off. It's just a creation that exists in the minds of people who are still addicted to the Central America. All right, good morning, Badlandia. Welcome to Badlands Daily. Another wonderful Monday, joined by the one in only Zach Payne, looking thrilled on a Monday. How you doing, brother? I'm doing great, Brian. Doing great. Excited to see what the week has in store for us.

I am always excited every single week. You never know what you're going to get moving into it. So, yeah, we'll get into this week and unpack the weekend worth of news today. I do want to start the show off by saying, Happy birthday to my beloved mother. Today is her birthday. That's where I was this weekend. and I had to cancel my shows on Friday because I had to get up there and see her.

Haven't had a birthday with her in a long time. So I have to take care of the parents, man, which is really unfortunate because on Friday, we had planned on having an Arizona election guru on the show. And then over the week. How timely. Yeah, right. Over the weekend, we get news that the FBI raided Maricopa County and seized files from Maricopa County. So it's almost like if you guys were watching why we vote, you knew this was coming.

But yes, yes, yes. Very beautiful thing. President Trump actually just truth out about that. Oh, did he? Just the news article. Great. FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona's largest county as voting probe expands from just the news. That's all we got is great. Well, I mean, it is truly. It's about time. And, you know, I love that they did it under the cover of night, you know, a little bit different than what they did in in Fulton County. I mean, obviously, there was some chatter that perhaps something like that was going to take place. And then it just kind of came and went and there was no follow up.

And now here we're getting this sort of back end inside scoop on the fact that actually they went in there on the count of a grand jury finding that there was a need for them to go in there. Likely as a result of additional evidence they found in Fulton County. Well, look at this corroborating information that says, hey, everything these people in Maricopa County have been saying since the beginning is actually true. It opens the door for so many things. What's next, Brian? Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California. I don't know, but I'm here for it. I'm going to go with Michigan, Yehuda Miller's million documents that he seized. You know, I've been kind of keeping tabs on that, you know, Patty, Patty Murray, Mick Murray, not Patty Murray, not the crazy senator from, I don't even know what state she's from. But she's been up there working on that and has been kind of updating at Gateway as they go.

through it and I think that will probably be the next major investigation that's opened up into all this. I knew Arizona was going to be next. When you watch Tulsi Gabbard's, D&I Gabbard's, you know, kind of press conference she did the other day, you know, it was an absolute nothing burger, right? There was nothing of substance in that other than, hey, here we are, you know. But the key that, you know, I picked up out of that was that she said that they bust all these reporters into a secure location, a secure facility. And when I heard that, I was like, okay, okay. So kind of getting a little bit of the pit vibe. Remember the pit back in? Oh, absolutely. 23. I think, I think that was the first place I met you at. It was. It was, definitely. But we were getting that. It's definitely the first place where I met

John at. But yeah, we were getting that kind of vibe there. And here we are now. Well, I mean, the chatter was so loud. And then for it to just be a, a press conference about passing the Save America Act. I was like, no way. Like this is, this is a head fake. Okay. And they've taken all of the reporters into a secret skiff location so that nobody could possibly see what they were doing in Maricopa County.

That was the cover. And then the op was taking place in the background. I just, I love it. I love this timeline. And I think you're right. I think I thought Arizona would be next. I think Michigan is the next, the most logical scenario. You know, obviously, as I am from Michigan, I was covering a lot of that stuff while it was happening.

I was the first person to publicly interview the Dominion whistleblower from the Detroit voting location. Not Christina Karama, but Christina Karamo was there while we were doing it. Hold on. What is her name? I always forget her name. I don't remember. I can't remember. It's been so long since I thought about it. you talking about i am talking about hold on i need to i need to actually look it up in my what position was she running for i most likely she wasn't running she was working for dominion and she was working in detroit at the election center and she came forward with credible stories about what was happening inside melissa um what's her last name um crap i've interviewed her before the crazy one right we all thought she was nuts when she first came out Melissa Carone

I didn't I didn't think she was nuts because I mean she had so much I mean she was definitely she's a unique individual okay and and I think that's certainly fair to say but yes so I had I had reached out and got in touch with Melissa Carone and she was like I'm happy to come on your show but I've been booked on Hannity and so that night she's supposed to go on Hannity and then she calls me back and she's like Hannity just ditched me So let's go on your show. And there we go. And the rest is history.

Yep. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, there's the big news this morning. I know elections, you know, it might not be like headline news for most outlets, but here we know that that is the foundation of getting to the bottom of the dismantling of the deep state is taking back our free and fair election. So we'll get into that. I'm sure on Friday's why we vote. we will have our Arizona guest on.

So the timing is actually better. So now we can unpack this a little bit more. But before we get into the news, please smash that thumbs up. If you have not done so already. And let's jump into our first sponsor for the program. Guys, microplastics aren't somewhere out there anymore. They're here. They're in your kitchen, your tap water, your household dust.

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Like, everything came in glass bottles. Gatorade was in glass bottles, Coke, everything. Now it's all in plastic, man, and that scares the crap out of me. Yep. All right. Let's jump into today's news. Again, smash that thumbs up if you have not done so already. We do have some tragic news to start the day off.

We do have our seventh U.S. service member that has passed away from injuries during the Iran operation, war, whatever you want to call it. The service member was seriously wounded at the scene of the attack on March 1st in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Seventh member killed in action. They still have not yet announced the name. They'll give 24 hours for next akin notification. And unfortunately, all seven have come from that same attack. uh drone attack in Saudi Arabia or missile attack I'm not sure I think they clarified it was a drone attack okay just tragedy there's nothing else to say about that I you know hopefully I hopefully it's not

that same unit I think it was the 133rd out of Iowa because they've been getting absolutely crush man also almost all six I think I mean I think yeah I think that they were all deployed there at the same time and I mean if I'm not mistaken this last death came was I mean, they didn't die at the same time. Like they were severely injured and then they died at a later point. So just tragic. Yes, absolutely. So let's get into some of the updates over the weekend from the Iranian special operation war.

I don't even know what to call it at this point anymore. Like Trump called it a war, but if you call it a war, everybody melts down on you and like rages out of you. So who knows, who knows? from CNN. Israel strikes Iranian oil shortage sites and next phase of war, according to Israeli sources. The Israeli military said it struck fuel sites in Tehran on Saturday that distribute fuel, quote, to various consumers, including military entities in Iran. This is a significant strike that constitutes an additional step in deepening the damage of the military infrastructure of the Iranian terrorist regime. The IDF said in a statement, Bricks confirmed this posting. this video online it's been going all around but uh we'll play just 20 seconds of this

there's all the time at you that's absolutely crazy man yeah like people like those those those those oil storage facilities those things will burn for weeks man yeah nuts no putting that genie back in the bottle of once it's out no no president trump put out on true social a lot of i've seen the meltdown over the weekend gas prices going up and i i saw it myself you know we were lingering around 280 to 290 a gallon uh down here in south florida it's jumped up to about 340 350 a gallon we're about 3709 up here yeah yeah um you know when i was driving up uh florida the the turnpike rest stops it was around 349 which usually they're higher price diesles through the roof right now diesel's up around 4.50 a gallon. Yeah, I'm in Florida. So, uh, I'm in Michigan. I got a buddy who,

he's got a diesel and he's like, you know, it's damn near five bucks a gallon. And he's just, he's always upset about that. I would be too, man. Absolutely. I mean, the only benefit to diesel is a little slower burning so you get better MPGs. But yeah, still, that's, that's ridiculous, man. Uh, Donald President Trump, truth out on, put, out on true social short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the of the Iran nuclear threat is over is a very small price to pay for the USA, the world, safety, and peace. Only fools would think differently, President D.J.T. And then we've got a clip here of Chris Wright, who's the energy secretary. It's a bit of a long clip, but this has been one of the most

kind of concerning issues that's come out of, you know, out of the war thus far. I mean, obviously the big concern is we don't want a forever war, right? But one of the other most recent issues in terms of the immediate impacts that we're feeling as Americans is the fuel prices. And so I think it's worth it probably to play this whole clip here. It's about six minutes of Chris Wright on Maria Bartaromo talking about, or excuse me, with Shannon Bream, excuse me, talking about the impacts that this is going to have on the U.S. in terms of energy pricing. Okay. Okay, so of course we're just talking about the Strait of Hormuz there and the impact that has on oil prices worldwide.

The average for a gallon of gas here in the U.S. is up over 40 cents since these strikes started. What is the plan? Yeah, the plan is to get oil and natural gas and fertilizer and all the products from the Gulf flowing through the straits before too long. And it may break a little news here, but one large tanker has already gone through the straits with no issues at all. So as the general just described, we're massively attritting their ability to strike with missiles and drones. And that rate of attrition will increase in the coming days. So we'll be cautious, we'll be careful, but energy will flow soon. It's one of the reasons the president had to move on this war.

Iran has just terrorized America, the neighborhood, and energy markets for 47 years. All right. I want to get your take on something that Politico is reporting. and says, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other advisors focused on energy policy, quote, are getting screamed at to find some good news on bringing down prices, quote, folks are scrambling for announcements and messaging to counter the narrative of these rising prices. Fact for fiction, what can you tell us on how this is playing inside the White House? Oh, it's fiction. It's right along the line. I've read about a dozen fiction pieces from Politico and other news things

about just stuff totally made up, whole cloth. We've been planning and talking. about this, you know, for quite some time. Energy markets are massively well supplied right now. In fact, the run-up in prices has nothing to do with any shortage of barrels of oil or natural gas. It's just fear and perception, the unknown, that this could be some long, you know, drawn-out crisis, but it won't be. As you heard from the general, progress is going very fast. The world is abundantly supplied with energy, thanks to President Trump's energy dominance agenda. The United States is a net exporter of oil, net exporter of natural gas, we're in contact with our allies. This is a disruption on the way to a much better place to end a 47-year war against America.

So let's talk about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It was depleted quite a bit during President Biden. And President Trump had said that's one of the priorities is to get it refilled. That hasn't happened yet. House Democrat Sean Kasten said this to the Financial Times. He said, it is not at all surprising that someone who failed to consider the political dynamics in Iran, Iran's ability to strike our allies and bases in the region of regional destabilization that follows the collapse of the Iranian government would also fail to refill our nation's strategic petroleum reserve prior to the price spikes, which have predictably followed. So what's the plan with respect to the reserve? Yes, again, Representative Kasten, of course, wrong on both of those points and probably fully aware he's wrong when he says that. That's just so unusual for me to see these sort of knowingly false accusations against this administration while the country's heated in a conflict right now that will make the world better, not just in the Middle East, but for everyone. So we have been refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but we only can do that with monies approved by Congress.

In the Working Families Tax Cut Act, there was some monies in it. We have been deploying that during a period of low oil prices to put some oil back into the state. strategic petroleum reserve. But yes, it shouldn't have been deleted, depleted for the 2022 midterm elections as the Biden administration did. But again, we've done many other moves that allow the world to remain fully supplied with oil during this relatively brief conflict. So let me ask you about one of those moves by Treasury will allow India to buy Russian oil products. And there are questions about, listen, the president's put enormous pressure on, you know, both Putin and Zelensky trying to get that conflict ended.

So what about this criticism that allowing Russia to now profit again off of its oil, even if it's short term, it's going to lessen the pressure on them to get to the table and get this thing done? Oh, I don't think there's any change in the pressure there or the policy there. Russia's oil remains sanctioned. There's no change in policy towards Russia, but there's just a lot of tankers stacked up. China doesn't treat its discount gas station supplier. very well. They're about to lose the second of three of them. So there's a lot of Russian oil that's just hanging out on the water in Asia. And it's in Asia where the refineries are looking for

oil. So we just made a pragmatic decision. Instead of waiting at the gas pump for another, you know, month or two to arrive in China, let's pull that oil into Indian refineries right now because they supply not just the 1.4 billion Indians, but they export products to the region around there. So it's just a pragmatic decision. It's no change in Russia. It just speeds up some sales that we're going to happen anyway. All right. So can you give folks a timeline on what we started talking about, which are those gas prices that pump the thing that every day they go and it's a real check on their own wallet? And it is, Shannon, that this president came in on an energy dominance agenda driven for one reason to lower prices for Americans and increase job opportunities and therefore

push up wages. So yes, he is keenly focused. focused on gasoline prices. But again, I think we believe this is a small price to pay to get to a world where energy prices are returned back to where they were. And I'm talking weeks, certainly not months. This is weeks and probably an outside case. And then you'll see this removal of this destabilization

from investment and funds and peace in the Middle East. Iran will finally be defanged. And now you can see more investment, more free flow of trade, less ability to threaten energy supplies and what president trump is doing is setting up a world for years and decades ahead of lower energy prices more stability commerce over conflict all right i definitely get behind the last statement there commerce over conflict uh that was kind of the foundation of the tariff policy there but it's interesting what he talks about there with russia in terms of the sanctions because we've been told this whole time right like like russia we're

sanctioning the oil on Russia, but then we're like, yeah, you can sell to the Asian markets. Oh, we're going to open that up. We're going to lift the sanctions where Russia can now distribute, you know, sell oil there. We're going to allow them to sell to India. We're going to give a special license to allow Russia to continue selling. Meanwhile, you know, me and Chris Paul talked about this on Friday show. What a lot of people don't understand is the only reason China's buying from Iran and was buying from Venezuela is because they're getting a significant discount on that oil because these are sanctioned nations, which, you know, a 20% discount on the price per barrel for a country like China getting their oil from Iran, from Russia, from Venezuela, is significant in terms of

their ability to produce low quality, but well, they are pretty low quality, but cheaper production of goods, you know, and transport of goods, being able to transport all of their manufactured goods over to the United States to put them on our market, a 20% increase in energy cost severely cripples that. And, you know, again, this is, is this part of the reasoning for the war that isn't really going out there publicly? I don't know, perhaps. I'd love to get your tea on that. There's also constraints. There's also being traditionally constraints on Iran in terms of who they can sell to. So, I mean, they're kind of, they have traditionally been locked in this deal with China because they're essentially blocked from selling it to virtually anybody else in the

world. But don't forget, Russia also sells lots of energy to the European Union. So, I mean, you know, there's really no shortage of buyers for any of these things. And with China having a cheap supply of oil and gas cut off, that does put them between Iraq and a hard place, because not only is a lot of that capacity that Russia has already, you know, it's set for other other places. It puts China into a position where they've got to spend a lot more money on these things. So yeah, in addition to that, I mean, there is also the market that's been cornered in the Straits of Hormuz in terms of insurance that's coming out of London. I mean, those traditional brokers that are going to be contracting to run the insurance policies on those ships, they've had to drop out.

And so now the United States of America has stepped in. And we're going to be insuring those vessels to make sure that they are able to traverse through safely. So yeah, overall, it is a reorganization of all of these different pieces in the Middle East. And once Iran is opened up, once the conflict is ended between Russia and Ukraine, you're going to have markets that are going to be opening up and providing opportunities economically for nations that traditionally have not been there. Yeah, the fearmonger that's gone on over the weekend, you know, the on the on the oil prices when you when you hear oh they're afraid to travel through the straight of Hormuz but but why why you know president trump obviously did the insurance uh you know put the insurance uh truth out there you know saying

we're going to insure these vehicles of these vessels excuse me so that they continue to go so that they have incentive to continue this process we've destroyed their navy the you know when people look at the map they don't realize how why the straight of Hormuz is and how you know when these vehicles are traversing through that, you know, are they going to be attacked? We've had now an Iranian ship, a sanctioned Iranian ship, a Chinese sanction ship, all traveling, or a Chinese, excuse me, flagship, not a Chinese sanction ship, you know, supplying to China. The U.S.

Navy did nothing about that. We've been, I mean, we chased a Venezuelan sanction ship from Venezuela all the way to the Indian Ocean, allegedly, right? But we're not stopping the ones coming out of the Strait of Hormuz with three. carrier fleets there, three strike groups there, it doesn't make much sense. But, um, well, I mean, as far as I'm, as far as I'm aware, we're not trying to stop any of the oil that's flowing through there. We're trying to make sure that it continues to flow through there. The danger that I've heard is that they were worried about Iranian attacks on those

vessels because Iran had publicly stated that the Straits of four moves were closed, which essentially is cutting off a major artery for the delivery of these products. And people, countries ship, uh, shipping companies were worried that if they came through, they were going to get bombed or they're going to get a drone attack. And then, of course, they're going to be dumping, I don't know how many billions of dollars of oil or perhaps, I mean, if a natural gas vessel gets blown up. I mean, can you imagine like what that would do? I mean, that would do a lot more than just taking out that one ship. I mean, that would be a concussive blast, take out a lot of things in the region. Yeah, but there's no evidence that this has even been like an idea in in the IRGC's mind, right?

I mean, obviously they've struck some oil fields allegedly. They've struck some oil fields and everything else, but we haven't seen anything going through the straits. But again, I think ultimately anytime there is a situation like this, Brian, the companies that are selling the oiling gas, they take advantage of me. That's why you see the price is raised because there's no shortage of oil. Okay. I mean, there's plenty of oil. There's plenty of gas. There's plenty of products along these lines. But anytime you have a disruption like this, they can restrict the market artificially. That allows them to raise the prices. It creates anxiety among people out here in the world. And then they can just suck as much money up as they possibly can. I mean, like it's a grift.

Yes. And like you were saying, I mean, reserves in these countries are built up that it would take months and months before there was any real shortages. Now again, you'll see the price increase because they can manipulate the price at will and they can use things like this like, you know, manufactured crises to justify raising the prices like that. And so, you know, I'm with you on that. This is something we talked about on Friday as well. And President Trump, by putting that insurance out there is trying to thwart that. He's trying to stop that from happening and or at least kill the optics that this is, you know, why it's happening. And I mean, hopefully again, going back to what Chris Wright said, hopefully, this is a very short-term thing and we resume normalcy. I tried to put those two words together. We resume normalcy here very shortly. Let's jump into this article here from the AP, which unpacks quite a few things about the war over there. So we'll go one by one. Israel renews assault on Lebanon after Netanyahu promises, quote, many surprises in the next phase of war. Israel renews. the assault on southern lebanon including target targeting commanders of the lebanese branch of the ira iran's

revolutionary guard cuds force uh the israeli military said in a statement that it would quote not allow iranian terrorist elements to establish themselves in lebanese territory um elsewhere wait wait wait didn't the lebanese government come out several times in the last week and say that IRGC is not allowed in their country. Like we don't we don't want you here. We want nothing to do with you. You guys are not welcome. I mean,

I thought they were expelled. So, so this is something that me and ghost talked about probably a year ago, maybe even longer than that. Maybe even longer than that. It had to be longer than that because it was during the quote unquote Biden administration when we talked about this. But the United States has been funding the Lebanese army military and

police for years. Oh, wow. And I, yeah. And so here, I put a thread out on this. And it actually was, let's see, it was October 23 to 2023. So three years ago, Ghost and I went through this. And I put this thread out. The U.S. is funding the Lebanese armed forces and the internal security forces. One of the ISF's biggest tasks is targeting an Israeli spy network in Lebanon. So we were funding the United States was funding the Lebanese internal security forces whose main job was to target Israeli spy networks inside of Lebanon. Is that interesting? Isn't it interesting?

It says here, this is from tablet. The Biden administration allocated $72 million to pay the salaries of both the LAF, Lebanese armed forces and the ISF. But you jump down here and it says, let's see, I had something where, let me see, let me see, see if I could find it real quick. Here it is. The U.S. Embassy in Beirut reported that the LAF ISF livelihood support program provided $72 million. These payments will provide every soldier and police officer eligible to receive assistance under U.S. law with $100 per month. And so you think you're like, well, $100 per month, that's not a whole lot of money. Well, read that right there. Read that top line. On average, a soldier used to earn about $800 a month.

month before the crisis. But the value of the Lebanese currency, the pound has since crashed and salaries are now worth just about $100. So it's a doubling. So the United States is literally paying the entirety of the salary. The salary is $100. The United States is paying $100. And so I looked this up before we went live just to make sure I don't spread mis and disinformation. This was renewed under President Trump. U.S. Greenlights $95 million in aid. for Lebanon's army. It says the U.S. State Department has approved an exception for the transfer of $95 million in military assistance to the Lebanese armed forces despite U.S. President Donald Trump's ongoing freeze on foreign aid. The Lebanese army has long been the beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid.

For example, in January 2023, the U.S. rerouted $72 million in assistance to Lebanon to help pay the salaries of its employees and thus has maintained a friendly relationship with the United States, when the rest of Lebanon's government struggled to do so. So that's why it was interesting when you see Lebanon coming out and saying there is no IRGC here. We don't have any IRGC here. And whether or not there's even Hezbollah there is unknown. I mean, obviously they say there's Hezbollah there. We're told by the media that there's Hezbollah operating in Lebanon.

But we also know. Go ahead. Wasn't it claimed that the October 7th paragliding? terror squads had launched from Lebanon. They trained in Lebanon. They trained in Lebanon. Okay. That's what we were told.

They totally launched from from Gaza, allegedly, and flying go-karts evaded the most sophisticated border in the entire world. Yeah. It makes sense. But anyways, so it's just kind of interesting, you know, why, you know, this attack is happening here. The U.S. is kind of is in contrast to the IDF here in terms of, you know, Massad, Shinbet, whoever trying to, you know, put Israeli spy networks into Lebanon to root out these IRGC Quds forces and Hezbollah, but the U.S. is stopping it.

It's there's there's something a foul there. And I'm not casting dispersions at the U.S. or Israel in terms specifically of what's going on there, but something is a foot there. Well, if I could guess, if the United States is paying the Lebanese military and special police to root out Israeli spies that are operating in Lebanon, Lebanon has said, we don't want terrorism here and we don't want the IRGC here, but the Israelis are using the excuse of IRGC in Lebanon to launch attacks on that country. I would suggest that people should take a look at Mossad's long history of false flag operations, mimicking and aping supposed terrorist groups in nations that they traditionally want to have a reason to go in and attack. You'll probably dismantle that sweater pretty quickly. You'll pull up that thread and the whole thing's going to come apart. I mean, wasn't there like, you know, just out there in the open reporting about Mossad's influence in Iran?

ran during the protest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just ignore all that. Ignore all that. Well, and the head of the IRGC just affected to Israel because he was a Mossad spy. That's real. That works. It goes on to say Kuwait Authority said that two border guards were killed when the Gulf

country was hit by a swarm of missiles and drones. Israeli air strikes killed eight people in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Local media reported that in Israeli, drone hit a hotel in Beirut, killing four and wounding 10 others. That's on top of at least 47 others killed Saturday in Israeli strikes. Now, on to this, Israelis are killing more people in Lebanon than, uh, then, uh, they're reporting we've killed 1,200 in Iran, uh, 47 in Lebanon.

I guess they're saying like 11, I guess Israelis have been killed as a result of these, which is kind of strange when you see all the propaganda on Twitter and X. Yeah. I don't know what to believe. So many of those videos I see are misattributed from other events. And then also, like, you know, plenty of them are AI. I just, like, unless I know somebody who's there who's telling me what's going on, I can't, I can't believe any of it.

Yeah, I have some friends I served with the Marines that are contracting right now. And they were, they've been contracting in Israel for, quite some time. And when when the 12-day war was going on, they were telling me like, yeah, we're hearing explosions, but it's nothing crazy. We're not getting any reports. Nobody's mobilizing, you know, we're not, it's not as, it's not what the media is telling us it is. I have not heard from them on this attack yet, and I've reached out, tried to get a hold of them. So I don't know if they're just, you know, not able to get messages out or maybe they're, perhaps they're not there anymore.

Maybe I should try again today, though, because it's been a few days since I've tried to reach out to them. So, all right, let's jump into this story here. Iranian president apologizes for attacks. President Massoud, Masoud Peseshkian apologized Saturday for attacks on, quote, neighboring countries, even as his country's missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states. And hardliners asserted that Tehran's war strategy would not change. Peschian dismissed President Donald. Trump's call for Tehran to surrender unconditionally saying, quote, that's a dream that they should

take to their grave. However, they go on to say, and this is something we reported on Friday as well, Peschkin's message underlined the limited powers exercised by the theocracy's leaders over the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, IRGC. It answered only to Homanie and appears to be picking its own targets. Poseshkin's statement said that Iran's leadership council had been in touch with the armed forces and quote from now on they should not attack neighboring countries or fire missiles at them unless we are attacked by those countries. I think we should solve this through diplomacy. Now President Trump has come out and said, you know, on X or excuse me on truth and and in interviews, unconditional surrender. That's the only, you know, thing that will that will accept.

is unconditional surrender. However, we do know that President Trump as a transactionalist, as the deal maker, the art of the deal, you aim for the moon and land among the stars, right? You aim high and, you know, aim large, miss small, or aim small, miss small, rather. So when he, when he says unconditional surrender is my only option here, well, that gets us over the line of where we actually set the parameters for our negotiation. And so now we can work on that. Yeah, that's classic Trump. Look at every other deal he's made, not only in, you know, these short 15 months or so that he's been in office, but throughout the entirety of his career. Yeah. And the other thing is I saw this, you know, because I was kind of unplugged this weekend a little bit, not as much as I would have liked, but I saw a lot of people on X, you know, celebrating this and being like, oh, the president of Iran, you know, says that he's apologizing for for the IRS. And all that.

Well, yeah, the Peseshkin has always been, you know, kind of more the moderate in Iran. But he has like no power. He has, you know, yes, he's a president. So we're like, oh, he's the president. He has next to no power. The Ayatollah controls the IRGC. The Ayatollah controls the military. He's basically a ministerial figure at this point.

And so it's, it's, you know, people were getting a false, like, sense of, of victory. out of him apologizing for that if that makes sense i definitely saw it yeah i mean the financial minister came out last week as well and said that the civilian government was basically not even in contact with the irc you know like they're operating on their own we don't really know know what to do here yeah that we we covered that on friday and and that is you know that is kind of fascinating when you when you look at you know iran and what we're told about the houtis and and and and And, you know, all these factions. The IRGC is essentially one of those factions at this point, right? They're a leaderless army. They don't have, well, leaderless military, although we'll get into that story here in a minute.

But they're just attacking whoever the hell they want. And this has been one of the most baffling things throughout this whole attack is why Iran is attacking 12, 13 countries at the same time. when they can keep this exclusive to Iran or excuse me to Israel and the United States. And, and, you know, I don't think they have any shot whatsoever at winning this war, but at least do minimal damage. Like bringing all of the, the Middle Eastern, you know, nations into this is just fundamentally absurd. Well, I mean, it doesn't make any logical sense. But when you consider what I just told you that the IRGC was led by a Mossad spy, It makes really, really good sense because you've got the IRGC attacking all of these nations that had nothing to do with the conflict.

But what do they all have in common? Well, they're all enemies of Israel. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So speaking of the intelligence aspect of this last week, we reported that, well, we didn't report. CNN reported that the CIA was totally getting in bed with the Kurds in order to bring a militia group into into, into, uh,

you know as kind of the boots on the ground so to speak and i ran and on this show i i can't remember who was my co-host on that day but i said this would be absolutely stupid like to get involved with the kurds again granted the kurds have been you know allies in that region and nationless uh you know ethnicity ethnic group they don't have a a country of their own however we've left them behind before we've we've you know left them prematurely and allowed a vacuum where you know things like uh isis and everything else were able to rise up in place of it. This would be fundamentally stupid for the CIA to be running this operation there. Well, now we've got this from the AP.

President Trump says he has ruled out having Kurds join the war, even though Kurdish fighters in the region are willing to assist in efforts to topple the Iranian government. Quote, the war is complicated enough without having the Kurds involved. Trump told reporters, we could read on. Days ago, Kurdish officials told the AP that Kurdish Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq, we're preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran and that the U.S. had asked Iraqi Kurds to support them. The U.S. and Israel have targeted Iran's military capabilities, leadership, and nuclear

program, and we can end there, and they're just going to do the rehash there. So there it is. Another CIA propaganda point put out there and shot down. Well, yeah, I mean, I saw, I saw multiple statements from within the Kurdish, you know, it's not really a government, is it? I mean, they don't have a nation. I mean, it's just a group of people who, hey, I would be totally fine with giving those guys their own country. I mean, they were split up when they split up the Middle East and their culture and their religion is completely different from anything else that you've got there.

But they said, you know, hey, you know, we love the America. We love the Americans. We love America, but we've also been burned multiple times in the past, okay? Like, how many times have you guys told us to rise up? How many times have you told us that you were going to support? us. And then how many times did you leave us to just be slaughtered by an overwhelming force from a number of different governments? So thanks, but no thanks. You're not going to use us like a tool in a war that, you know, we didn't start. Yeah. So they have like a, I don't know

his official role, but they have a leader that is a representative that speaks for them and, you know, does the press conferences with the flags behind them and all that. stuff and he was saying hey we're ready to go in if we so choose but the iranians would never in my opinion i mean i'm not anywhere near an expert on iran at all but i i mean the kurds only represent a small like teens proportion i think it was like 13 or 14 percent of of uh iranians are or kurdish that would never fly like no you're not going to have an uprising you're not going to have a militia group come in and you know a Kurdish group overthrow you know a faction of of uh of uh you know persians that that just is not going to happen so um i just wanted to

show that because i mean we were talking last week the CIA getting involved in this the CIA first off announcing that they're going to use Kurds like where is it this this goes back to Venezuela remember when they the CIA was like oh yeah we're going to we're going to totally bomb the drug cartels on the beaches of Venezuela and we're like since when does the CIA announce these things president Trump announced that the CIA is going to be conducting operations in Venezuela just none of it's making sense right now everything's kind of bass act that sounds like a series of sophisticated siops to me to be perfectly honest with you I mean it is unusual for those things to be announced but just because they're announced doesn't mean that it's going to go down in the way that they were

publicly announced all right so last thing we've got on iran here We've got two stories that are tales of competing factions, competing narratives, whatever you'd like to call it from the Guardian. Al-Hamani son Motaba is chosen as Iran's new supreme leader. Now, he's still alive because I've seen so many reports that he was killed immediately. So this was put up two hours ago, I think. This was breaking news at 507. So this is relatively new. Now, again, I'm with you.

President Trump said very quickly, let's see how long that lasts. Right. So maybe he is no longer with us. I don't know. But Motaba Hamani, the son of the late Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hamani, has been chosen as his successor after members of the clerical body responsible for selecting Iran's highest authority announced the decision on Sunday Iranian institutions and politicians from the foreign ministry to lawmakers issued statements expressing their allegiance, quote, we will obey the commander in chief until the last drop of our blood. A statement from the defense counsel said, Donald Trump has already acknowledged that Mutaba Hamani was the most likely successor

and has made clear he considered him a quote unquote unacceptable choice. The U.S. president said earlier on Sunday that Iran's next Supreme leader was, quote, not going to last long, end quote, if Tehran, Tehran did not get his approval first. When asked about the appointment during an interview, Trump was reported as saying, we'll see what happens. Now, this is also interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One, you know, Trump obviously said Motava is not going to be the successor.

But if you look at Maduro and what took place in Venezuela, now I believe Venezuela is distinctly different in that Maduro was extracted from Venezuela rather than assassinated or killed, whatever, the way that many was killed in Iran. And then again, going back to what ghost said is was how many dead for months now, right? Right. You know, I think Goz said he was on hospice like two months ago. He's been on dialysis, I think, for the longest time, yeah, at least on the verge of death, if not already long gone. Right. So that brings up, has he been dead? And if you look at Venezuela and Maduro's removal, now Delci Rodriguez is the vice president there, there's no difference there.

It's the same essentially administration. Could there have been some fundamental differences between Maduro and Rodriguez? Sure. He's been with him forever. So I don't know. But when you look at Iran with with Homanian there, is it the same, you know, kind of idea there? Like, you know, with Mataba being right below Ali as his son, is this going to be something that we end up not, I don't want to say accepting, but is this part of the plan? I don't know. Go ahead.

Well, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I think that ultimately, probably not, because the problem, the sticking point since 1979 has been the presence of the Mullahs, has been the Islamic Republic of Iran. So they want to get rid of that government and reinstitute something closer to what they had before. I mean, if they could go back to being a Democratic Republic like they were under Mollah. I think that would be the best possible scenario. But, you know, like all of the Iranians that seem to be here in the United States are Iranian dissidents that were expelled when the Islamic Revolution happened, which were people

who supported the Shah. Now, the Shah had his own problems. You mean, he was an authoritarian leader that was propped up by the Central Intelligence Agency until he got a little too big for his britches and started talking about Israel as well. And then they had to get rid of him. and they brought in the mullahs. So, yeah, I mean, I see what you're saying, the blueprint seems to be the same,

but it's also the same kind of blueprint that you see in authoritarian nations around the world, right? I mean, the, the people who lead tend to have an insular circle of people that they trust. And oftentimes it's the children. I mean, it's the bloodlines. They love the bloodlines. I mean, you can have,

have all kinds of people around you kissing your ass and telling you that you're brilliant and everything that you're doing is exactly what's good for the country. But the only people that you can truly trust are generally the people that you made, your children. So that's interesting because you know, you invoked Mosaday and Pahlavi in this. And Pallavi, well, I think this is Reza. This is the son. Reza, yes. Yes. So Pahlavi is. is saying something counter to what they're saying about Motabah and that he has been chosen as the leader of Iran. So we're going to have the dueling narratives here.

Who's going to be the one that prevails? Do either prevail? So we'll play this real quick. Before the revolution, Iran worked closely with Arab leaders, from King Faisal to Sheikh Zayed to King Hussein to President Sadat. In Oman, my father helps Sultan Qabuz defend his country against insurgency. We were true partners then. We will be true partners again.

The Iranian people have called on me to lead the transition after the regime is gone. I have accepted that responsibility. Part of their great mandate to me is to return our nation and our foreign relations to normalcy. I will do exactly that. So a couple things that are interesting here. And this is, you know, people may not understand. So Iran, you talk about 1979, right? And the Islamic regime, the Islamic Republic rising up in Iran.

Prior to that, you had Pahlavi, but going back to 1953, where you had the overthrow, the CIA overthrow of Mosadegh, it was a whole different Iran back then. you bring in the shaw like you said it was it was you know fairly a prosperous iran until the islamic republic kicks in they start you know the israel and all that stuff and then there was i you know it wasn't as open a coup as 1953 you know but no there was elections i mean but well i mean here's the thing is that is that beyond after so many years under the shah people i mean it was it was a repressive regime okay it was a repressive

regime that was kept in power because of the relationship with the CIA. And the Iranian people were disillusioned with the Shah. The Ayatollah said, you know, we're going to bring democracy back. It's going to be a wonderful thing. And, and then as soon as he was ushered in, it was like, you know, boom, guess what, bitches. Everybody better put on a burqa or whatever it might be. So, you know, again, I think there is a lot of similarity here to Venezuela, where, Pahlavi would be the you know kind of Akuna Matata Maria Karina Machado I was going to say the same thing of Iran yeah you know he comes out he addresses the people of Iran or he addresses in that address there in English you know he is Western educated I think he was educated in London I believe

you know it's it's a very interesting dynamic there and you know I I the reason I said is is how many, Motava, how many going to stay in powers? Because that would follow the same kind of playbook that we watched in Venezuela. Sure. Definitely. Definitely. And, you know, I mean, Pallavi says that he's accepted this call. But, I mean, I, too, got shades of Maria Carino Machado as well, because the United States hasn't come forward and says, this is our guy.

That would be the deep state play, I think. You know, I mean, like, there we go. We get a known quantity back in there. somebody that, you know, hey, Pahlavi was good for when he was good, you know, but let's obviously have an honest conversation about what's been happening for the last 47 years, even if through the introduction of an even more repressive regime, there were still plenty of assets that were in play to make it a situation that was usable for the deep state. I mean, like, they still were able to profit massively off the present.

of the Islamic Republic. So, you know, just on a whim, just on a whim, Zach, I went and looked up as has, has, has, has, Reza Pahlavi received any award similar to a Nobel Peace Prize. He was honored with the Richard Richard Nixon Foundation's Architect of Peace Award in October of 2024, recognizing his advocacy for peace and democratic value. So he doesn't get a Nobel Prize. So, but it's online with. with Machado.

Yeah. It's online with that. All right. So there's still time for 2025. You never all the years not over. I'm sorry. No, it's 2026 now. Hopefully by the time we get around to the 2026 Nobel paperweight.

Hopefully by then we, this war is long gone. And we've got some sort of stability in that region because I'm not wanting to see this go on forever. but any but before we move on we're going to hit a sponsor real quick but before we move on anything that that i missed on iran that you want to put out there no no i had nothing else we we did it we did it good it's such it's such a freaking it's it's a cluster fuck man like that it's the fog of war and this whole thing is just insane and you don't know what's true and what's not true and all you can do is just kind of hash it out and put the stuff out there and and and see how it it goes. That's all we can do.

I will say this though. You know, going up, I was, because I was in the villages, that's where my mom lives. And hearing from, you know, some of the people up there, the conversations and, you know, things like that, the stuff that's being said about the war is very interesting. You know, a lot of people are on board with the, we don't want another forever war, but we got, we had to do this. We've been at war with Iran for 47 years and all of that. And it's just I was kind of taken aback, man, kind of taken aback.

But, you know, it is what it is. Good, good. I mean, Iran's been probably the number one boogeyman for a really long time. And especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain, you know, I mean, like everything switched over to terrorism, basically. We had a couple of good years where there really wasn't any place to focus, even though there was still unrest coming out of the Middle East. There was the need. There was a need to hoist someone up there to be able to say, you know, this is who the next bad guys are going to be. So I saw Mr. Reisotire in the chat bring this up and I figure you might as well play it.

Hold on. Let me see if we got the... You know what? Before we play this video, let's go ahead and hit our sponsor. And then we'll play this video to kind of outro, the White House put this out over the weekend. And yeah, there we go. Anytime you mention the villages in the chat or on the show, it goes to that. It goes to that. You know, capital of a certain three-letter.

The STD Capital of America. It goes there every single time. All right. I have a funny villages story. Oh, all right. Well, we can definitely entertain that when we get back. But let's real quick. Guys, they can freeze your accounts and shut off your cards.

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Okay. So my mom's friend, my mom's friend was taking her dad, who's, you know, obviously an older gentleman, but he's like, I want to say he's like 90 or close to 90. And she was taking him to the villages, I think to look at the possibility of getting him a place there. And she like set him down on a bench outside of the, uh, the office. And she goes inside. And while her dad's out there, some woman, like a younger woman, still a retiree, but a younger woman comes up and sits with him and starts chatting him up. And then just ask him if he wants a blow job. And he, and he was like, he was like, oh, sweetie, I don't think I could

even get it up. Anyways, so my mom's friend comes out and he's like, you're never going to believe what just happened. I should have, we should have prefaced that with, language warning. We do have, sorry guys. Young years.

Come on, man, you couldn't have used the two. No, but that is, that is like a crazy story. I have never, I mean,

I've visited many, many times up there. We've gone to the square and, you know, done, like gone to like the dance things that they do and all that. And never seen anything like that. But then again,

I'm also, uh, probably 20 years younger than the lower age bracket up there. But just for the record, I've never been to the village. It's such a cool place, though. It is such a badass place. I really do. Like it's everything is meticulously landscape.

There's golf courses everywhere. You just drive your golf card up to the course and they're like, you got a tea time. No. And they're like, yeah, go ahead, go out there and play.

And it's like 10 bucks. 10 bucks to play like meticulously maintain courses. It's, it's unbelievable. It really is. All right, let's keep going. Oh, I did want to play. Here's the White House video. So we'll play this video and here we go. Wake up, Daddy Shum. Welcome, Tom. Strengthen honor. Strength and honor.

What will you do without freedom? Maverickson, that way. You can't conceive of what I'm capable of. Finishing this fight. Yeah, I'm thinking on back. I'm here to fight the truth and justice in the American way. I am the danger. Time to find out.

Maximal method. There it comes. Flawless victory. That's wild. That is wild. Yeah, I wasn't very impressed by that. Why not? I mean, they've got meme makers running the official White House account.

I mean, I understand that, you know, we started off the show. Well, we started off the show with Maricopa, but we started off the show with the seventh guy that's been, you know, service member that's been killed in this. I don't know. Maybe it's just me personally since, you know, I was a subject of a forever war. Not saying this one is yet, but I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to just ignore the possibility that it could become that. Well, I think I don't think it will. I think that we've seen over the last, you know, especially this past weekend, uh, the exit ramp. already in view sure but you know it's still I just I get it I get it a lot of people

love it I just don't that's all I mean do so you you interpreted that to me explicitly only about whatever's happening in a run um not yeah I mean most of the the imagery they put in there was related to that um yeah I think so okay see I guess I see that and I interpret it in sort of the larger context of what the Trump administration is doing. I mean, you know, not only that, but a number of other missions that are taking place at the same time. Because, you know, I mean, this is this is one small part. And I understand the idea of a forever war. But I think, you know, we talked about this last week. And, you know, I truly interpret the lens of what's happening in

Iran as a part of the larger operation to take down the deep state, which is a global. operation. Okay. And once the threat of a, you know, aggressive Iran no longer exists, then it creates an opportunity for a much longer lasting peace, something that will bring stability and economic cooperation to the region in a way that didn't exist before. Fair. I mean, look, that's just, again, this is my personal take. And I can already see the chat freaking out well unless you've gone and fought for your country killed for your country and watched your best friends die for the country in a bullshit war you don't have an opinion your opinion means nothing to me you have an opinion you do have an opinion and you can express that

but it means nothing to me i just thought it was tasteless that's all is it's the worst thing in the world no is it's something that i even gave a second thought to no the only reason i played is because miss attire was like play it i i i actually jumped in on the ben stiller thing you know ben stiller like oh i don't give you permission to use that and i was like you don't want that right it's fair use dude right white house you do whatever they want with that they have every right to do it i wouldn't have done it but i get it i get it it's fine in your context though zack it's it's a little bit more uh entertainable yeah palatable there you go all right guys um let's go ahead and jump into the next story up here and uh this one's a fun one did you see this

story over the weekend zach epstein prison guard googled him minutes before body found and made mysterious deposit before the pedophile suicide yeah multiple multiple thousand dollar thousands of dollar deposits into her account which as far as i'm aware are completely unexplained to this day yeah um let's get into here we go all right one of geoffrey epstein's prison guards googled the sex predator minutes before he was found dead i thought he was sleeping and also made a mysterious $5,000 cash deposit 10 days before the Predators jail cell suicide, according to DOJ documents. Tova Noel was one of the two Metropolitan Correction Center workers accused of falsifying records to say that they checked on Epstein throughout the night before his August 10th suicide. The guards were fired, but criminal charges, of course, were later dropped.

Noel Googled, quote, latest on Epstein in jail at 542 a.m. a.m. And then again at 5.52 a.m. less than 40 minutes before her colleagues found Jeffrey Epstein dead in his cell by hanging at 6.30 a.m. That is peculiar timing to just randomly at 5.45 in the morning. Let me just see what's the latest on Jeffrey Epstein. That is bizarre. Yeah.

Yeah. The FBI highlighted the eerie internet search in its 66-page forensic examination of the Bureau of Prisons desktop computers. Quote, I don't remember doing that, she claimed, said FBI records were not accurate. I don't recall looking him up. It goes on to say that Chase Bank flagged cash deposits in the Wells Bank account in a, quote, suspicious activity report to the FBI in November 2019. Another file from the DOJ revealed a total of 12 deposits. began in April of 2018, the bank said, and culminated in the largest deposit for $5,000 on July 30th, 2019. Does it say, yeah.

The files only contain Noel's bank records beginning in December of 2018. They show seven cash deposits totaling $11,880. Noel started working at the special housing unit where Epstein had been held beginning in July of 2019. So that's interesting. She wasn't there before, but she was receiving interesting deposits long before. Yeah. Noel drove a $62,000, 2019 Land Rover, Rangerover, wasn't asked about cash during her DOJ interview. That's bizarre.

First and foremost, I am a big fan of Rangerovers. So I guess not so much the modern iterations. I don't care for the modern Land Rover's or Range Rovers. but I do like the classics. I think they're very cool looking cars. I don't think I would ever own one. But anyways, so $62,000,

I guess it could have been like the smaller, like the Valar or the Evoke or something like that. But still, $62,000 for BOP guard is a little strange. Should have definitely been something that raised red flags and was investigated, unless, of course, it deliberately wasn't investigated.

Noelle was likely the mysterious orange spot shape spotted and blurry surveillance video according to DOJ files and FBI briefing. But she says that she absolutely was not. Noel says she last saw Epstein alive, quote, somewhere around after 10 and that she, quote, never gave out linen ever or other clothing to inmates because that is done on the shift before. She testified she didn't know why Epstein had extra linen in his cell. all the other guards on duty were sleeping between 10 and midnight. A prison employee entering the area of Epstein's cell alone would have been a policy violation. At this point in time, Zach, I mean, I would think it's more likely than not that he's still alive, that he was extracted from there. I agree.

So in addition to this, what else if we found out? We found out that there were two vehicles. There was a decoy vehicle that removed his body before the one that the corner, you know, whatever um what else do we know we know that the federal prosecutors were talking to his attorneys a couple weeks before you know that that took place um obviously the autopsy report uh very strange some of the you know muscles and the bones in his neck and all that uh anything i'm missing well he was given uh multiple unmonitored phone calls uh first of all to karenna shuliac who he said was his mother and then another call to belarus if i'm not mistaken

fascinating yes yes fascinating um we got another story here daily mail doj files revealed fbi's plan to probe if close friend copperfield david copperfield and epstein shared a predilection for minors and swap possible victims the big takeaway here is that uh david copperfield is now no longer going to be performing in vegas he is canceling his residency uh after the fallout from this investigation well and on the east of this article coming out as well yes uh it says agents claim claimed quote weak bureau brass were intimidated by copperfield and his financial resources and said they were too much to handle and the probe was eventually called off for those and other reasons now just think about that

for a second zach when a lot of people are you know are clamoring for arrest and epstein and blah blah blah and this and that and everything else if david copperfield intimidated the fbi and the DOJ into withdrawing from this investigation, what do you think the billionaires were able to do in all of this? Oh, sure. Yeah, but I can tell you who the FBI is not intimidated by. The guy making $55,000 a year scraping by to make sure that his family is taking care of and his kids have new shoes for school.

Definitely not intimidated by people like that. Yeah, it's a great point, man. Sick. The DOJ's files reveal how seriously. investigation in the Copperfield was and how close he was to the pedophile. Their ties were so close that the FBI referred to the illusionist as his favorite cohort. Now Copperfield announced that he is quitting his long running residency at the MGM Grand. His final performance will be on April 30th. The documents indicated that Cooper,

the documents that were revealed indicated that Cooper, Copperfield had a quote, very close relationship with Epstein and trained his staff to pull young women from the audience at his shows to bring them backstage where he kept a notebook of those he had sex with. But after concern from quote unquote higher ups, as one law enforcement official put it, the investigation did not lead to charges. And for my next trick, I will make this investigation disappear. I mean, I've often said like Vegas is one of my favorite places in the country. I love Las Vegas.

There's something about like the, the light. and everything else and you know just the city that never sleeps i i love it but what the last time i was in vegas i was at the i think i was at the new york cert de solace show show and there was a comedian that came out and he was making like you know they do like comedians between like the acts while they're setting everything up and this comedian came out i don't even remember his name but um he was making very provocative sexual jokes at a girl that was in the front row and at one point he asked like who are those people with you and she's like my parents he's like how old are you and i think she said either 15 or 16 oh god he kept the jokes going oh my god and that's

like i i was this close to walking out of the show at that point but the circuit the comedian is just like a filler you know it's it's not the the show itself but yeah that's the perversion of you know a lot of these people out there and I don't know that just popped in my head so I figured I'd share that right there um all right let's jump into we got some updates on the the save act and by updates I just mean the the narrative that's being thrown out on this uh attorney general ken paxton who's going going to a runoff allegedly nobody's backed out yet nobody's blinked yet uh paxton says on x I made cornin more conservative in the last three days than he has been the last 24 years yet flip flop cornins still too cowardly to support abolishing the filibuster to get it done and to call out his best friend

McConnell for opposing the bill the president deserves better and this was in response to matthew boyle putting out on x that cornon's been on the record against it for months president trump on the kind of flip side of this says great job by scott presler on fox and friends talking about the filibuster or the talking filibuster in order to pass the save america act an 88% issue with all voters. It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. Must go to the front of the line. I as president will not sign other bills until this is passed and not the watered down version. Go for the gold. It must show voter ID, proof of citizenship, no mail and ballots except for military illness, disability and travel. No men and women's sports,

no transgender mutilization for children. Do not fail. President Donald J. Trump. And then last, before we jump into some comments on this. Chuck Schumer says in response to President Trump, the SAVE Act is Jim Crow 2.0. What else is new to for Schumer? You're saying that it would disenfranchise tens of millions of people. If Trump was saying he won't sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it.

There will be total gridlock in the Senate. Senate Democrats will not help save the, will not pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances. What do you, what's your take on this? Me and Chris, me and Ash, me and we've all talked about that. What's your take on this? On the passing the Save America Act.

I mean, I think it's one necessary step in a series of many steps that need to be taken to ultimately secure our elections. I think that there is a strong possibility that this is not going to go anywhere in the Senate. And really all President Trump is doing is highlighting the hypocrisy that is present in the Senate. I mean, we have Republicans without balls and or we have Republicans that are complicit with Democrats who want to ensure that people who are not American citizens continue to be able to vote in elections. Now, President Trump could pass a executive order mandating a number of things and he wouldn't need to use the legislature. But that's something that could easily be undone in a future administration. If it is done legislatively, then it's on the books and it's much harder to get past it or to unravel, get rid of it in the future. I ultimately think it's probably going to come down to that or it's going to come down to Cornyn making the deal to get the talking filibuster used to pass the SAVE Act, which will then lead to President Trump endorsing John Cornyn.

Now, in order for that endorsement to have an effect on Ken Paxton, the SAVE Act, the SAVE Act, which will then lead to President. Act has to actually pass. If they're unsuccessful, then Ken Paxton, I think, is going to remain in the race. President Trump will still have to pass an executive order. And then when the new Senate comes in, maybe it's the first thing they'll go ahead and take up. But, yeah, I mean, it's, it's disgusting to me. I mean, it's this, they're using America, they're holding America hostage in order to ensure their own political futures are secured in Washington, D.C. And even after securing their own political futures, there's no guarantee that they would do anything that the American people want. It's really, I think ultimately it's just highlighting how disgusting Washington politics are,

how selfish these people are. I'm with you. I agree. So we've gotten a whole bunch of different opinions. And Chris and I talked about it on Friday. And, you know, I understand where Chris is coming from that the Save Act is not going to change anything on a broad scale. You know, even so Chris is like an absolutist with the elections. It's all or nothing. Either the elections are 100%. And I agree that they have to be 100% free and fair. Yeah, me too.

You have to do that in steps. There's no one remedy that's going to instantly go from these elections are totally fake to boom, snap the fingers. and now they're completely real. Nothing I've ever seen put out there can get to that point. But you have a lot of things out there that when you start putting them together, the Save Act, the Mega and make elections great again, even though I think there's been some changes to that since I reported on it last April. But originally it was going to get rid of the machines,

go to handmarked, hand-counted paper ballots. And it's got potential to go that route. I did see something recently that I think they're saying that the BMD's physical paper ballot as being counted as a I'm going off on a tangent here. The bottom line is I do think there is a lot of good things in the SAVE Act that are going to make it more difficult to cheat and more likely that they're caught in the process of doing so. Yes. So I do think that the SAVE Act is something that we do need to get across the finish line. But like Chris was saying on Friday, you can't look at that as, hey, we pass the SAVE Act.

Everything's free and fair now. Everything's fine. Of course not. integrity go home because that's not the case whatsoever and if you go in with that mindset we're really screwed i do think trump's going to endorse uh cornon in the coming days i think there is going to be a talking filibuster in order to get cornon's endorsement the end or trump's endorsement of cornon and i do think i'm hoping that we're going to see that i'm not going to say i think that but i'm hoping that that's what we see yeah like i said this is just one step in a in a series of

steps that need to be taken if we are ultimately going to secure elections. But yeah, it's not the end all be all. It's not the end of the race. All right. So this is probably another story. I didn't get a chance to talk to you about this one at all beforehand, but I don't know if you're familiar with this at all. From Fox News tech company at odds with Pentagon warns that it's AI possibly gained consciousness.

Elon Musk, two-word response, anthropic leader Dario Amadei, claimed in an interview that he isn't sure if his company's AI models have gained consciousness. Quote, Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety. Read a post on X by Polymarket, to which Elon Musk replied, he's projecting. Amaday when asked about the AI and consciousness said, quote, taking we've taken a generally precautionary approach here and we don't know if the models are conscious. We are not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or

whether a model can be conscious, but we're open to the idea that it could be. He says there are activations that light up in the models that we see as being associated with the concept of anxiety or something like that. When characters experience anxiety in the text, And then when the model itself is in a situation that a human might associate with anxiety, that same anxiety neuron shows up. So a lot of veiled language in that statement right there. He says there are activations. We see these as being anxiety, meaning we can see them as however we want.

We can say whatever we want as long as we qualify that by saying, this is our opinion on this. The fact that they wouldn't know what consciousness looks like in these. AI models is a little bit concerning. But before I get into the doom, and I'm sure you've seen this story, what's your take on all that? Yeah, I don't think they're conscious. I think that you got a bunch of panty wastes that are programming a lot. So, I mean, its anxiety response is going to be a symptom of the people who are programming it to behave in a certain way.

So, no, I don't think that it's conscious at all. well let's play this clip here and i think this is the right clip this is um scientists at cortical labs took a bunch of human brain cells and uh taught it to play doom or just it played doom on its own okay so let me read what it says here it says um scientists put human brain cells in a petri dish just neurons on a chip it learned to play doom in under a week, 800,000 neurons figured out how to navigate, shoot, and survive a video game without ever being alive. Your brain has 86 billion neurons, and you can't even finish it.

Oh, that's cold. Savage. Savage. Oh, that's funny. Keep it up, guys. Keep trying to play God. Keep trying to play God. That is pretty interesting, though.

Like, I mean, I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know. Well, no, I mean, no, they've been doing this for a while. They, they've been culturing human brain cells and essentially making these very low power chips, which can then be farmed out for inference in, you know, AI models and stuff like that. And, yeah, I mean, it's just instead of using like a traditional silicon way for they're using these living human brain cells to process the information. And you can rent that stuff out right now, just like you can rent GPU space for AI models. That's nuts, man.

Yeah, it is nuts. That is so scary. All right. Let's jump into this story here. CNBC, U.S. judge voids 2025 actions taken by Kerry Lake as Voice of America CEO. It says that U.S. District Judge Royce Lambert has granted a summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs who argued that Lake appointments as acting CEO and action she took in that role ran a foul of the federal vacancies reform act in the Constitution's appointments clause. Lamberth ruled that Lake was ineligible to

serve as acting CEO because she was not employed by USAGM when former CEO Amanda Bennett resigned in January of 2025 and had not been confirmed by the Senate to any other federal post. Lake officially joined USAGM in March as a senior advice. A November 21, 21st news release from the agency called her the deputy CEO. This marks at least the third time that Lamberth has ruled against the Trump administration in cases involving the Voice of America. The judge in April and September halted plans that would have put many Voice of America employees out of work, although the April ruling was later overturned by an appellate court. Now, again, this is, you know, USAGM, Voice of America. This is the propaganda arm of the CIA.

This is their, you know, go out there and orchestrate these color revolutions, the funding that gets, you know, funneled down through USAID and other, you know, organizations. USAGM is nothing more than a puppet for that. The idea that Carrie Lake is, again, I think this is going to be overturned very quick. at an appeals court. The idea that the president can't appoint somebody unless they're already in that particular agency can appoint them to lead that is fundamentally absurd. It is the epitome of, you know, prolonging the deep states grasp on a lot of these institutions by saying the only way to lead this organization is to rise up through its ranks. It's absurd, man. Absolutely absurd. Yeah. Yeah, Rice Lambert needs to retire or they need to retire him. Yeah. So that brings me to this post here put out by Andrew Colvette. The newly released body cam footage from the March 2025 Doge Raid on the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Again, anytime you see a misnomer like that, the Institute of Peace, automatically assume it's the opposite of what it says. Shows the insane resistance that Trump faced from day one. Edward Corstein, aka Big Balls, told Jesse Waters last year, this was. and the least peaceful of all the agencies to deal with and that it used taxpayer funds for private jets, an armory filled with weapons and contracts with former members of the Taliban. The Institute of Peace, an armory filled with weapons and the Taliban. These are grown adults in full meltdown mode because they realized the gravy train was coming to an end. They referred to lawful orders as jackbooted police state actions while refusing to vacate the premises after President Donald Trump

issued an order firing them and sending in his Doge team to clean house. What you see in the video isn't democracy. It's an insight into how wild and entitled the D.C. Swamp has grown. Even the officers who were on scene to ensure order became impatient after realizing the defiant bureaucrats weren't even Institute of Peace employees when one said, quote, were their lawyers who were trying to regain access to quote unquote classified information pertaining to other cases outside the USIP's purview. George Foote, one of the lawyers there,

even pushed to have Trump officials arrested as unauthorized intruders, and it goes on from there. The video is very concerning, very interesting to see the amount of pushback that President Trump has gotten at these. But, you know, the fundamental message that I got out of this, Zach, is that the corruption within the bureaucracy in our country is there isn't even a we need better people leading it put in fresh blood the whole thing has to be just drained just just burned to the ground i don't even want to see it rebuilt but i know they're going to try and

rebuild it it's it's it's it's fucked beyond army it's fubar absolutely yeah i mean the the the bureaucratic state is the deep state unelected uh employees of various agencies and companies with varying levels of federal funding coming in, and these people have nearly unchecked power. Yeah, yeah. All right, so we're going to end the show on this article right here. Boom, let's have some fun with this one from the AP. Armageddon.

Remember that movie, Armageddon? Oh, yes. Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck. Wilson a lot of Owen Wilson there was a lot of people in that movie yeah yeah it was it was an event and pulled yeah spacecraft's impact changed asteroids orbit around the sun in a save the earth test this article makes me a little more concerned than it does relieved I mean you got what was the movie Greenland yes Greenland came out with this I mean we had Armageddon back in the 90s, Deep Impact in the 90s? What other movies have we had about asteroids hitting Earth?

Those are the only ones that I know. I mean, Deep Impact and Armageddon were like they came out at the exact same time. It was like the studios were racing to get their asteroid movie out first. Yeah, that was, it reminds me of a, what was the Gerard Butler, Olympus has fallen and the other White House down? Remember those? Like the same exact story going out at the, the same time similar there uh so the ap put this out says uh an asteroid that nassau used for target practice a few years ago was nudged into a slightly different route around the sun finding that could help divert a future incoming killer space rocket scientists reported on friday for the first time it's the first time that a celestial

body's orbit around the sun was deliberately changed the asteroid that nasa's dart spacecraft slammed was never a threat to earth until now. Oops, slight miscalculation. Now it's coming right at us. Quote, this study marks a notable step forward in our ability to prevent future asteroid impacts on Earth, according to the international research team. The changes were slight reductions of just one-tenth of a second

and one-half of a mile to a solar lap spanning two years and hundreds of millions of miles, according to the scientists. Well, it's good to know, Zach. If there's ever a meteor or an asteroid coming straight for Earth, we can now deflect it. There was a TV show about the same thing. Oh, was there? Yes.

What the hell was that TV show? This guy, they went to MIT and they're like, there's a meteor that's going to hit the earth or an asteroid that's going to hit the earth in like, there was a movie called Don't Look Up. No, that was the Leo DiCaprio one. This was a movie where like the guy had to like invent. a pulse. Well, three body problem has a similar case, right? I've never seen it. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I know. Everybody tells me I should have just never done it. You have got to watch that. Okay. Dude, this is like a theme in Hollywood, man. There's like a ton of movies now I think about it.

Three body problem. Don't look up. Uh, Greenland. Obviously, Armageddon Deep Impact. Like, maybe we should pay a little more attention to this. Are they just trying to, I don't know. Seating the consciousness, I think. I can't even somebody's got to know the name of this show because it was actually a really good show and they they never followed it. It's not the right stuff. I am going to see Project Tail Mary. I saw somebody mentioned that in the chat. That looks pretty good. All right.

Well, I don't see it in here. PJ Corrigan, things that never happened for 500, Alex. Yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right. All right, guys. Let's see. do we have any rants i think we had a couple come in so there we go jump over here artsy joan thanks guys great monday show with zach god bless thank you joan good to see you as always

rwood 79 this has been a forever war since we overthrew it for oil companies in nineteen fifty three for british petroleum and the british empire and again in 1979 for the same reason of sorts yeah forever conflict i wouldn't know if i'd know if i'd know if i say forever war but certainly we've also got a couple of gold pills over on pill who cares says mullins just said ashley's shooting was justified on j6 he asked release i don't know if he just said it but that was a long time ago um and uh then who cares also says dhs was only supposed to be a department that helped cross agency data transfers not an overlord all right you are not going to hear an argument for me that DHS probably shouldn't exist as an agency.

Sparky said Pilled ended. Oh, really? I'm looking at it and appears to be going right now. I do know what Pilled is EC, just not, not, I don't, I don't really use it that much. So, no mention of Jesse Jackson. You know, the Jesse Jackson funeral, Obama came out, was railing on Trump. And then, oh, Jackson, Jesse Jackson's son came out and was like, Like don't make this political and that's the gist of it.

I mean, we talked about it when he passed away and I'm not going to, I'm not, I just don't feel like covering a politicized funeral. I think that's disgusting first and foremost. And second, you know, it's, it's all going to be just slights on Trump and MAGA and everything else and like, who cares? Trump was closer with Jesse Jackson than Obama ever was. Absolutely.

Yeah. Somebody, Matt Trump says, solar system orbits are fundamentally chaotic in a dynamical sense we cannot know stability of orbits over the long term well i'm going to defer to matthew trump because he's the physicist here all right anybody uh anything else you got zach i got nothing all right guys forward to the week yeah me too me too thank you guys all so much for tuning in uh we got wychroms coming up here in about an hour and a half and uh followed by alphas make sandwiches then of course we will have Zach will be on baseless conspiracies tonight.

That's right. And Josh is going to be joining me because John is out of town. Ah, yeah. Josh, well, you'll have to tell me after what you're going to talk about. I know you don't announce it ahead of time, but I can get the insider baseball. He doesn't even tell me, guys. He doesn't even tell me. So, all right, guys, thank you all so much for tuning in again.

Stay tuned for Alpha's Make Sandwich is coming up. And we will see you guys later. Thank you so much for joining us. and don't forget to hit the thumbs up on this video. And a special thank you to all of our advertising partners. Please remember to shift your dollars to support those businesses that support Badlands Media.