Badlands Media - Badlands Media Special Coverage: Trump Iran Address Breakdown & Global Power Shift

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Zak Paine and Burning Bright break down President Trump’s national address on Iran, analyzing the claimed destruction of nuclear capabilities and what it signals about modern warfare. From drone dominance and the end of boots on the ground conflicts to the broader implications for NATO, the EU, and global power structures, this discussion goes far beyond the speech itself. The hosts explore whether this conflict represents a true military victory or a controlled geopolitical shift, touching on energy independence, the Strait of Hormuz, and America’s leverage over global markets. They also examine how emerging technology is reshaping warfare and what that means for the future of international conflict. With sharp insights and a mix of skepticism and optimism, this episode challenges conventional narratives and asks whether we are witnessing the end of forever wars or simply a new phase.

that most people have never seen anything like it. This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran, 45,000 dead for these terrorists who have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat. The most violent and thuggish regime on Earth would be free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest, and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield. I will never let that happen, and neither should any of our past presidents. This situation has been going on for 47 years and should have been handled long before I arrived in office.

I did many things during my two terms in office to stop the quest for nuclear weapons by Iran first, and perhaps most importantly, I killed General Qasem Soleimani. in my first term, he was an evil genius, brilliant person, a horrible human being, however, the father of the roadside bomb. And he lived just horrible what he did. Iran would have been perhaps in far better, stronger position. He lived, we would have had probably a different conversation tonight, but you know what? We'd still be winning and winning big. And then very importantly, I terminated Barack Hussein Obama's Iran nuclear deal, a disaster. Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash, green, green cash, took it out of banks from Virginia,

D.C. and Maryland, all the cash they had. Flew it by airplanes in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty, but it didn't work. They laughed at our president and went on with their mission to have a nuclear bomb. His Iran deal would have led to a colossal arsenal of massive nuclear weapons for Iran. They would have had them years ago, and they would have used them. It would have been a different world. There would have been no Middle East and no Israel right now, in my opinion, the opinion of a lot of great experts. Had I not terminated that terrible deal, I was so honored to do it, I was so proud to do it. It was so bad right from the beginning. Essentially, I did what no other president was willing to do. They made mistakes, and I am correcting them. My first preference

was always the path of diplomacy, yet the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement. For this reason, in June, I ordered a strike on Iran's key nuclear facilities, an Operation Midnight Hammer. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Those beautiful B-2 bombers performed magnificently. We totally obliterated those nuclear sites. The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons. They were also rapidly building a vast stockpile of conventional ballistic missiles and would soon have had missiles that could reach the American homeland, Europe and virtually any other place on Earth. Iran's strategy was so obvious.

They wanted to produce as many missiles as possible, and they did with the longest range possible, and they had some weapons that nobody believed they had. We just learned that out. We took them out. We took them all out so that no one would really dare stop them. and they're raised for a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon, a nuclear weapon like nobody's ever seen before. They were right at the doorstep. For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, but in the end, those are just words if you're not willing to take action when the time comes. As I stated in my announcement of Operation Epic Fury, our objectives are very simple and clear.

We are systematically dismantling the regime's ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders. That means eliminating Iran's Navy, which is now absolutely destroyed, hurting their Air Force and their missile program at levels never seen before, and annihilating their defense industrial base. We've done all of it. Their Navy is gone. Their Air Force is gone. Their missiles are just about used up or beaten. Taken together, these actions will cripple Iran military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies, and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb. Our armed forces have been extraordinary. There's never been anything like it militarily. Everyone is talking about it, and tonight I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion.

As we celebrate this progress, we think especially of the 13 American warriors who have laid down their lives in this fight to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran. Twice this past month, I have traveled to Dover Air Force Base, and it's been something I wanted to be with those heroes as the return to American soil. And I was with them and their families, their parents, their wives, husbands. We salute them, and now we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives. And every single one of the people, their loved one said, please, sir, please finish the job, every one of them. And we are going to finish the job, and we're going to finish it very fast. We're getting very close. I want to thank our allies in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia,

Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. They've been great, and we will not let them get hurt or fail in any way, shape, or form. Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home. This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict. This is yet more proof that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons. They will use them and they will use them quickly. It would lead to decades of extortion, economic pain and instability worse than we can ever imagine. The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat. You all know that we built the

strongest economy and history. We're going through it right now. The strong, longest in history. In one year, we've taken a dead and crippled country. I hate to say that, but we were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far with no inflation, record-setting investments coming into the United States over $18 trillion and the highest stock market ever, with 53 all-time record highs in just one year. It all positioned us to get rid of a cancer that has long simmered. It's known as the nuclear Iran and they didn't know what was coming. They've never imagined it. Remember, because of our drill baby drill program, America has plenty of gas. We have so much gas. Under my leadership,

we are number one producer of oil and gas on the planet without even discussing the millions of barrels that we're getting from Venezuela. Because of the Trump administration's policies, we produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. Think of that. Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. And that number will soon be substantially higher than that. There's no country like us anywhere in the world, and we're in great shape for the future. The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormos Strait and won't be taking any in the future. We don't need it. We haven't needed it, and we don't need it. We've beaten and completely decimated Iran. They are decimated, both militarily and economically

and every other way. And the countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormone Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. can do it easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on. So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us. As we asked, go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been

essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally. It'll just open up naturally. They're going to want to be able to sell oil because that's all they have to try and rebuild. It will resume the flowing and the gas prices will rapidly come back down. Stock prices will rapidly go back up. They haven't come down very much. Frankly, they came down a little bit, but they've had some very good days over the last couple of days. We've done actually much better than I thought. But we had to take that little journey to Iran to get rid of this horrible threat with our historic tax cuts where people are just now talking about receiving larger refunds than they ever thought possible.

They are getting so much more money than they thought. That's from the great big, beautiful bill. Our economy is strong and improving by the day, and it will soon be roaring back like never before. It will top the levels that it was a month ago. I've made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we've made,

I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly. We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. They're all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. Yet, if during this period of time, no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each

and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding, but we could hit it and it would be gone, and there's not a thing they could do about it. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force. The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the B-2 bombers have been hit so hard that it would

take months to get near the nuclear dust, and we have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we'll hit them with missiles very hard again. We have all the cards. They have none. It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months, and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months, and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months, and 28 days.

We are in this military operation, so powerful, so brilliant, against one of the most powerful countries for 32. two days and the country has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat. They were the bully of the Middle East, but they're the bully no longer. This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren's future. The whole world is watching and they can't leave the power, strength, and brilliance. They just can't believe what they're seeing. They leave it to your imagination, but they can't believe what they're seeing.

the brilliance of the United States military. Tonight, every American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the specter of nuclear blackmail. Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran's sinister threat to America and the world. And I'll tell you, the world is watching. And when we do, when it's all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, stronger, more, prosperous and greater than it has ever been before. May God bless the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much and good

night. Well, unfortunately, we didn't leave NATO. Well, can you leave something that de facto no longer exists? Yeah. The article I've been working on all week. So I'm glad he didn't completely destroy every once in a while I'm working on an article and then Trump comes out and just undercuts the whole thing. But he didn't do that tonight. And that's my priority. Okay. I can totally get on board with that. I mean, effectively, both NATO and the United Nations are irrelevant. The only thing that's left to do is for us to pull our people out of bases. And I mean, as it stands right now, the agreement the pact in terms of mutual cooperation and assistance, I mean, he's already stated that that's not going to happen. So it's just a matter of the continued expenditure of money.

And to a large degree, that's that's also over. I do just want to apologize to everyone. When I arrived here for the stream, nobody else was here. And I wasn't an admin on this account. So I couldn't start and I couldn't tell if anybody else was. was going to start. So it took me a couple of minutes to get that locked in, but I'm glad that those of you who are here stuck around, appreciate it. We will be firing. We will be considering firing, John, Zach and I have discussed. John, if you could please close the door and take a seat.

We have a conversation. It'll be over quickly. Yeah. So in terms of what you're saying, I think that's absolutely correct. Yeah, there's there's a few things. I mean, I don't want to, I won't immediately go. Everything is fake. I know some people get upset about that. One of the angles that I could take on this, given some of the things he said, especially toward the end there, about, you know, that the typical, we've got the missiles, we can hit him harder than anybody's hit him before. Let me put aside my narrative framing for the sake of this discussion and take him at face value in terms of like everything that we have been told has been going on in terms of strategic objectives and strikes by the U.S. military has been going on as

it's been described to us. Even that scenario, I think we as a people are going to look back on this Iran crisis or this war, and it's going to be seen as a step change war in a good way. You know, so he mentioned World War, the reason I thought of this is because he kept, he mentioned World War I and World War II and kind of how long each of these wars have taken, right? And typically war historians, military historians will kind of tell you that wars are largely defined by technology, right? Like each kind of major world conflict had something going on that the other ones did not have going on. World War I, I think, had the first like automatic machine gun. or something like that and right untold death just rampant death and destruction we got the weapons as well what you say chemical weapons as well oh yeah yeah so you know each of these

conflicts kind of had something it was it was known for usually resulting in significantly more death you can make the argument like this is why i tend to be more of a techno optimist than some people at badlands uh and one of the things we're told about is one of the major uh initiatives of this administration is given all these military contracts to companies like Andereal and Palantir and etc. There's a dark side of that. There's a dark path you could go down. Always. But let's go down the light side path. Even Normieville is basically being told that this Iran war, a war was just fought pretty much with no soldiers.

because we are at and on both sides I mean right even if you take every single narrative as it was translated to us there were some deaths according to the central narrative etc but in terms of boots on the ground which has been like the theme the mon-tron how we're going to get Trump yeah did Trump is part of what's going on here Trump basically disclosing like hey even if we get into a real in the future, there is less than no reason to ever put U.S. soldiers on the ground because we control the skies and we have super robots and drones and everything. Like, that's all we can talk about. There you go. Yeah, yeah. If we just one way I thought of it of like him saying, hey, you don't have to, nobody's ever going to get on board with the stuff we say about it's a narrative war, et cetera,

in terms of Normieville. But they might get on board with, don't we have a drone fleet for that? why are you sending my kid over there? Exactly. And that's the dream. And you know what else is interesting about it as well is that despite like the darker elements of Anderil and advanced technologies, it's not a war that was fought with autonomous AGI or anything like that. That's like an ace in the hole that remains in the background.

You know, ultimately like the dominant narrative that I see here is that the United States has ultimate military superiority over every nation on earth. and we don't have to send people out into the field to die to be able to enforce that military superiority. And as we started with the conversation about delegitimization of NATO, he's already delegitimized the United Nations, this is ultimately at the end of the day a war against the global deep state, this criminal cabal. And President Trump has very effectively demonstrated that no matter what would be or potentially could be thrown, at us, we have the ability both technologically and in terms of just raw firepower, the ability to overcome any of those things. And that is what is ultimately most important. If we're moving

into a world that is post-war, right? Because, I mean, the only way you can have a post-war world is if you know that the person you may be going to war with would definitely kill you and everything you own. There is always something to decimate. And in this instance, President, Trump has shown that the United States has the ability to decimate damn near whatever it is that they want to. So woe be any other global foe that might think about going up against the United States. It's a much easier segue into the golden age and no more death. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And, you know, it's so funny.

I've been writing all month in March I wrote on my own substack. I ended up being a series on this Iran stuff. A lot of it has been through the lens of narrative warfare, which is obviously what I'm really interested in. Basically, I think the first article I wrote was all about the path of the torpedo refrain that a lot of us, whether you're Q person or info war person, you're familiar with the, basically the core tenant of guiding yourself into the path of the torpedo before it could arm itself. Somebody like myself, somebody like Chris Paul, we tend to talk about that in terms of, has there been this looming forever war? I've been calling it the Iranian knot that the globalist infrastructure has. kind of had on the back burner as one of these entanglements that they can get us into. And by starting the war and ending the war on our terms, has Donald Trump disarmed any narrative

impetus for this involvement? I mean, that's a rhetorical question. That's how I feel about it. But the other major thing he mentioned that I was, I thought was affirming is the last article I wrote in that series was called Donald Trump's energy war. And, you know, You mentioned NATO, you mentioned the EU, and I really think that is the focus here. He's, it doesn't sound crazy to Normaville when he's saying, hey, drill baby drill, we got the most energy. Everything you just said about military power projection, outward power projection holds. Nobody would dispute that at this point. But what people don't really think about is the straight of whore moves, oh my God, energy, global energy trade.

Well, we don't need that. No. We don't need that. And I know people like a lot of people don't think that that's the case because they're like, but gas is $4. Yeah, do you know what gas is going to be in Germany? Mm-hmm. Like the relative difference between American defensive projection or you might call it sovereign projection is all based around energy. And I think Trump is both being offensive and defensive there.

He's saying we can literally just leave this conflict because we actually don't need. Iran or anyone. But he's saying, well, if you need it, you know, to NATO and to the EU, I'm sure you guys will handle it, right? You'll be fine. Right. And, you know, one of the things I'd wrote about in that series was it's kind of funny that Europe is basically caught in a pincer between the Middle East, the United States, and Russia, all three of whom control their energy. because they shut down, with the exception I think of France, they shut down all their nuclear capacity and they went full bore into the Green New Deal sort of stuff

that Trump basically rug pulled in the U.S. So I really think over the... I don't think it's going to be quick, unfortunately, for the Europeans, but I think we're going to see this dialectic emerge whereas you said we go into this golden age, I do not think Europe quickly follows us there because I think those people need to see. like, oh, there's a different way of doing this and our leaders basically betrayed us.

Well, and there is a definite shift amongst the leadership in a number of European nations. There has been for quite some time, like this right word push, and it's becoming even more obvious every single time there's an election. And now, for the first time in, you know, modern history, many different European nations are also pushing for the expulsion of the many different. different migrants and asylum seekers that they allowed in, you know, kicking off the sort of destruction of Western civilization in Europe. And so the change that they've made and in the direction that they've been heading has, from my perspective, entirely been at the hands of Donald Trump. I mean, the right word push in terms of politics was people seeing what Donald Trump accomplished here in his first term, you know, albeit with plenty of attempts to say.

stop him and you know some successful some not but then also seeing what was possible when we began hitting back on illegal immigrants you know to a great degree and president trump calling these things out and essentially telling the leaders of those country you know you guys are crazy look what you're doing and you had a lot of people in europe unfortunately there isn't freedom of speech all over europe right and many people felt like they couldn't talk about these things openly they if they did then they would be targeted. They might even be jailed. Now President Trump has made it permissible to be honest about these situations. And he's done the exact same thing now with energy. He's shown them that the attempts to go for this Green New Deal scam are completely futile. They're also seeing what we're doing

here. I mean, stopping the wind farms, being honest about the solar farm. Have you seen some of these solar farms recently that have been hit in the United States by massive hailstorms? I mean, just like tens of millions of dollars wiped out all at once. If that was the only way that you were getting your power, then everybody's out of commission for quite some time. And the insanity that's been on display in Europe has just quite literally had a spotlight turned on it by President Trump. And if we are leaving NATO or if NATO truly is no longer relevant as it appears that

that's exactly what he's done, then these European nations who previously were, would have run directly to the United States of America and say, you know, Daddy Trump or, you know, whoever is leading the country, it's time for Team America World Police to step in. Those days are over. I think you made a brilliant point about Iran. The specter of Iran was always there as a boogeyman in the Middle East. And by removing that potential specter, it's placed us in a situation where people are going to have to play nice. It's like when you take two kids and you stuff them in a room together and you say, you either beat the state, you. You either beat the shit out of each other or you find a way to get along like a brother and a sister and and by the way

you're going to have to start cleaning your own room that's exactly what he's done there in the straight totally and uh of course for me i came into all this uh publicly anyway through the righteous russia series so i love i've always got my antenna up for any of those kind of comms and one of the key words i used in the very first article i wrote in the info war was pincer i said uh and the cue drops are what exceeded this idea in my mind of saying, you know, there's a potential for, uh, it, I forget the exact wording there. Somebody in the chat probably has the exact drop.

I've got it in a million of my articles, but essentially, uh, is it possible that Trump, Putin and G are working together against the new world order or against the globalists. Uh, and, you know, that just stuck in my head. And that's kind of how I started looking at everything from then on. I, I would go down all the various rabbit holes that many of us do and in random directions. But that was always like that foundation. core of what if I look at this through that framework? Does it make more sense? And I think many people who will go down those pathways start to find that actually this does make a lot more sense. But I use

the word pincer in that original article and said, I believe that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are going to affect a pincer. And the sort of entity that I said would be the ones in the pincer move, of course you could use the word deep state, et cetera, but I said the EU, the globalist block, NATO, are going to be the ones put in a pincer. In September 2025, the Guardian, might as well be the official mouthpiece or one of them of Europe, published an op-ed and said,

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have the European Union caught in a pincer. And then the subhead was, it's all beginning to look a lot like 1939. So that was the Europeans trying to say, we've got Hitler and Mussolini, basically here. And it's so funny because it's just total inversion.

You know, Chris Paul uses the term total inversion all the time. And I had said, hey, you know, Trump and Putin might put Europe in a pincer because Europe are the bad guys. And now Europe is finally starting to say that out loud. Well, they've kind of got us in a pincor move. And today we had some great signal where Trump, as you know, you used the cleaning up your room refrain, he gave an exclusive interview to the telegraph in the UK. And one quote there stood out to me. He said, I always knew they were a paper tiger. He's referring to NATO.

And then he says, and Putin knows that too, by the way. Yep. And, you know, my favorite thing about the Trump Putin, Pinser, is that that line can hit either side of the divide effectively. If you are incorrect and think that Russia are the bad guys, you still get to look at that line and say, Trump is telling you, you have an evil bad man on the other side of you that knows that you are weak, right? So it still holds. If you're correct and you know that Trump and Putin are actually working together against

the European Union, then it seems sovereign alliance coded, where he's saying like, we got you. We got you, bitch. Yep. And Europe knows it. So what I'm really interested in seeing going forward, I guess morbidly curious, is how long do they kind of let the frog boil and the frog in this case I think would be a combination of the European people and those leaders you mentioned because we are seeing a right word sovereign shift mostly in the east but it is I do just wonder aloud if there is any kind of sovereign

alliance or white hat assistance going on in a place like Germany or the UK or Spain because if you believe they're reporting, like those places are real powder kegs in a way I think Americans think we are, but we've actually not, we're not nearly to the point that I think a lot of them are. Not at all. No, no. I would think that that would be the smart play. But I mean, and all they would have to do would be to reorganize existing stay behind networks if they've got the CIA. If Trump has control of the CIA, if Trump has control of the CIS. CIA and those operations are still in play in some fashion. It would be a pretty simple calculus to be able to use them to help the incoming governments and ensure that they didn't get

elections stolen from them. And it may be pretty easy to make an argument for that after learning what the EU did in Romania to the guy. I can't remember his name. Lucasenko. What was that? Lukashenko. Not Lukashenko. No. Oh, didn't they arrest the opposition or something? Well, he won the presidency and then they made this claim that he was somehow connected to Russia. And then they had a corrupt judge essentially overturned the election and then they held a new election. And then they basically barred him from running for presidency. And then it just came out recently that the EU had essentially, you know, intervened and stolen that election.

Like they're attempting to do in Hungary right now. Yeah. I confused Romania and Belarus. for a second. I was thinking of Belarus. But yeah, you're right. Romania is clearly like in the Russian block in terms of culturally. And that those are the nations.

I wrote an article a few months ago called Pebble and Avalanche and it was all about Hungary and Victor Orban, who I really have keyed in on as, but keyed in on him because Trump keys in on him. Right. And I think that symbolically, Orban is really the guy to watch over there. I do because I think he is, the reason I named it Pebble and Avalanche is I'm like, you know, if we're going to get a transition that is well managed, I do not want to see Germany devolve into a civil war. I don't want that for our European brethren as much as we shit on them. So could we see the plan, quote unquote, what form would it take over there? And I really look at him because I think Orban, any time you see these like, ridiculous retarded deployments out of Emmanuel Macron, Kier Starmar, whoever it is, Ursula von der Leyen, who's not even an elected official. And I love that Trump doesn't let her in the Oval Office

most of the time when she's here when the boys are having a meeting. But Orban is always the guy coming up and being like, because he's NATO for anybody not aware, Hungary is NATO. And Orban is like, this is bullshit. You guys are crazy or warmongers. And I think even this past week, he has actively refused to assist Ukraine with the ongoing war effort. Like he has active, he's been threatening this for a long time, but he has actively withdrawn any support and basically called Ukraine a criminal regime that has damaged European infrastructure and all that. So he's not alone over there. You've got Robert Fico in Slovakia, who they tried to kill. But I think Orban is the like the Trump knighted guy

that might start a shift or a break. Because I'm just looking for the first major country over there to be like, fuck you, we're going home. And what does NATO become if Hungary just leaves it? Absolutely. And, you know, Hungary, Victor Orban also recently announced that they intercepted tens of millions of dollars in money that was being funneled through Hungary into Ukraine. That was coming directly from the EU.

And he also said that it was discovered that the EU was trying to do in Hungary what they had successfully done in Romania. And Orban's got a new election coming up here very shortly. So, yeah, yeah, it's coming up right around the corner. So, yeah, I think he's a great leader. He's definitely somebody that has the best intentions of his nation at heart. One of the driving forces behind the anti-asylum and immigration wave that was going on all three. throughout Europe. So I think that another thing that President Trump did in saying that NATO was a paper tiger and mentioning Putin, it sends a message directly to Putin that Putin's got nothing to

fear because, number one, the only way that European nations have felt that they had, you know, balls big enough to stand up to Putin or to threaten war or something like that is because they assumed the United States was going to get involved if that happened. And President Trump has signaled directly like, that's not on the table. Like, we. We are never going to do that. Also, by the way, we're not helping in Ukraine anymore. That's going to very quickly, combined with the fuel shortages in Europe, very quickly going to push, I think, the EU to force the conclusion of the war between Russia and Ukraine,

because that's what the United States and President Trump had been fighting for. And the EU has essentially been bankrolling the Ukrainian war because the United States pulled out their cash and their weapons a long time ago. Yeah, man, that very well put because I think another term we use a lot is narrative shielding. And, you know, I've, I said years ago, a lot of us said this that we didn't think Trump wanted to be involved with Ukraine and that some of us believe that he actively supports the agenda of the Russians in Ukraine, right? But the narrative, as we even see at Badlands sometimes within the truth community and within the MAGA Corps is definitely not. a consensus. There is there is not a clean consensus in the American mind. Sometimes, you know, we're in a bit of a bubble and I even realize that when I go out and talk to somebody I know who's

like MAGA and I know they're a Trump guy. And I'll just like start talking about how based Russia is. And I get those looks from longtime friends who are Trumpers and they're like, okay, man, I know like you're a Trump guy, but Russia's bad. Like you know Russia's still bad, right? Like it's okay that we get along with them, but you know they're the bad guys. So because of that I like your framing and this Iranian situation I couldn't have seen it coming in advance you know of how Trump was going to get this shielding but it grants him perfect shielding to disentangle any American interests from Ukraine and for Putin to make his final push actually or narratively and for Trump to not come to the Europeans aid right because what is he what's been

the major theme besides paper tiger the major theme of Trump's fire and brimstone comments over the last two weeks about the EU and NATO. By the way, it seems like he delivered more fire and brimstone commentary about the Europe than about Iran over the last two weeks, which is kind of funny. But what did he keep saying? He kept saying, you didn't help us. When we asked for your help, you didn't help us. So that grants him the most obvious paint by numbers shielding that he could ever have,

if and when, what you. you just suggested comes to pass, right? Putin makes that final push. We're always told that the ICE is thawing. It's April over in the Donbos and the ISIS thawn, and that's when the Russians start going. So maybe we're going to see this final windup. And then final point on that would be these headlines

that are really getting lost in the noise the last two weeks. I don't know if anybody's noticed, but Volodomir Zelensky is actively saying he wants to make a deal and is saying that Donald Trump is telling him to make a deal, And it just so happens that the deal Donald Trump is offering is the deal that Vladimir Putin offered in March 2022. So as we have been saying, and I think Badlands will go down as the only people that said this in 2022, the deal that will be codified at the end of the Ukraine war will be the deal that was offered at the beginning of the Ukraine war. It's the only thing that ever made sense. I mean, given the rationale for stepping in and doing this in the first.

place. And somebody in the chat had mentioned this as well, and I think it's relevant. Ukraine directly attacked a pipeline and I believe a fuel production facility that were all part of Hungary's infrastructure. I don't think that that's being rebuilt yet. I believe that that's put them in a bind. And Hungary, excuse me, Ukraine has also at the same time attempted a couple of false flags against other nearby European countries by sending drones in. And it wouldn't be the first time. I mean, we've had other instances before they're like, oh, Russia just sent a missile into this village and then they go and look at the missile and they figure out that it was actually a Ukrainian missile in the first place. So how ironic would it be if and what is the EU going to do?

Absolutely nothing. If as a result of Ukraine's aggression against Hungary for being pissed, that Hungary says they are not going to help in the Ukrainian war anymore, it pushes Hungary ironically towards Russia because they're going to have to get product fuel from somewhere, right? They're going to have to get it from somewhere. And you've already got Russia providing fuel to a number of different nations in Europe throughout this entire conflict, which is so strange if they're truly the bad guy, if they're truly the enemy of the European Union.

But many of those countries would have frozen to death long ago. if it wasn't for the fact that Russia was out there providing the actual needs that they have in the wintertime. Yeah, and I didn't even, you know, I didn't know a whole lot about energy before I got into all of this stuff, right? And we all, we all go down our rabbit holes. But I basically the only one of the only ways that Europe has even stayed in any way secure from an energy perspective. France, for all the shit, you know, that they get, they are the most energy secure by a wide margin in Europe. They have a robust nuclear infrastructure. Per capita, I believe France is the most nuclearized nation in the world.

Which is funny. Now, the bureaucrats there have been trying to unwind that, which the German bureaucrats successfully unwound over the last 20 years. I was recently reading an article where they were talking about how the German, you know, showing headlines from five years ago about the German chancellor, you know, presiding over the destruction and devilism. demolition of German nuclear facilities. That has not happened in France.

So they're mostly okay. Germany, England, some of these other places, they're not doing so hot. And a lot of it is they got the natural gas and oil from Russia. And they get liquefied natural gas from the United States. So they're our main buyer these days. And again, like look at the pincer there. What leverage, you just said Europe will do nothing.

And you could use that with Putin, but certainly with Trump. like, what the fuck are you going to do? Like, it's kind of, it's taking on, and I was hoping this was going to happen. This is one thing I'm very happy about with Trump heading into this second term. His demeanor is taking on that, what are you going to do about it, sort of posture? And I like that because I think there was a time for the politicking and the education process. Let's get as many people on board with what I'm doing as possible. And at this point, they're on board or they're not.

And I've played the Game of Thrones clip. I've probably played it when you've been on my show. But the power is power refrain. That is what's going on here. And what I love about it, again, is it's bicameral. You can think Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are evil dictators in Normiville. It still reaches the same conclusion, which is that when you're a German and you're freezing to death next winter, you can say Donald Trump is mean all you.

want but the anger is going to be directed at your leadership and saying right why is the world's why is the world's fourth largest economy or third largest economy freezing to death in the winter yes yeah that's not donald trump and vladimir put them in the position to have total power and control over your sovereign nation so i think he's really demonstrating these european nations they're not real countries how on earth can you be a real country if to your earlier point, you don't have borders. And second, you don't have energy. Well, and they don't have their own sovereignty anymore either because they've handed it over to the European Union. You know, it's interesting that you, you know, bring up the anger that's going

to be pushed at the leadership because, you know, it is their fault. And yeah, they may, they may blame Donald Trump. I mean, I see people blaming President Trump for gas prices here in the United States, but it has nothing to do with it. because we don't get any of our oil from the Middle East any longer. We don't get a significant enough portion of it to make a difference in terms of prices here. And we certainly don't have anything going through the Straits of Hormuz. The price of oil and gas here in the United States is dictated entirely by the oil companies. And they smell blood in the water.

They can sense that there is this sort of, you know, just general chaos that's happening in the world. And so they're going to raise prices. that somebody had mentioned something about President Trump signing an executive order against price gouging. And price gouging, I believe, is defined fairly narrowly. It's extremely unfair pricing. It's going to be very obvious, like a doubling of the price or something like that. And I would say that pretty squarely, the price of oil and gas has remained within the generalized market pressures that you can expect for any sort of global catastrophe that might be happening. It's not out of control. But it is also not President

Trump's fault. It is the oil companies and they're raising prices because that's what the market can bear and it has borne it up until this point. People are not angry enough if that's what their number one issue is. Yeah. And to that exact point, I don't know if it was one or two weeks ago I had been reading when I was writing that energy article. It happened to be, I forget the name at a convention, but there was like a big, the big energy oil execs convention in Houston was either one or two weeks ago. So Chris Wright was there. All the oil execs were there. Interestingly, those were all the oil execs that met Trump at the White House in one of these weird, closed door like luncheons that he keeps doing with the heads of industry. And then all of them,

all of a sudden get on board with the Trump agenda afterwards. We saw it with the tech boys back in August. So one of the things I'd noted on DPH was, The mood of those oil executives in Houston was panicked, which to your everything you just said, it didn't make sense to me. So then I did more research into it. I'm like, these guys should be celebrating that they've got the excuse right now to charge people more money. And overall, their infrastructure is not being threatened in any way by any of this. Why on earth would they be upset? And Chris Wright, they were all pissed at Chris Wright.

And they were like, what are you going to do about this? And now, this is just my opinion, but what I think is going on here is the oil executives know what is going on. And one of the second order effects of the Strait of Hormuz situation, if you get out of the American goggles, Asia in particular, Southeast Asia and East Asia, is basically onshoreing its energy production as a direct result of the Strait of Hormuz. and where were they buying a lot of their energy from Iran, yes, or not from Iran, but from the Gulf states, but from the United States as well, liquefied natural gas. And a lot of these oil companies have been gouging Southeast Asia for American energy. And that allows them to subsidize, or that's the inverse, they can gouge American consumers because they don't need to compete in a free American market. because they have these automatic, they have these automatic profit margins built in

because foreign governments in Asia are just buying X amount of, you know, BP oil every year, right? So I think they see the writing on the wall and they're like, Donnie, you got to get out of there and open up the Strait of Hormuz because if you don't, all of these countries are going to stop buying American energy. And I think Donald Trump's never going to say this out loud,

but I think he gives you the hints in these speeches. is where the point is he doesn't want Americans selling their energy to foreign nations. He wants them selling their energy to Americans and he wants them competing with each other in the American marketplace. Because when that happens, you get a deflation in prices and people might think, oh, well, isn't the global market bigger? Well, yeah, but the problem is it's foreign governments that are buying the energy. So if you're dealing with a globalist cartel, like, are there, winks and nudges going on between these countries of we're going to pay you X amount per barrel or port per shipment and that's artificially inflating the price of all this energy so like anyway

I just thought it was interesting I'm like you guys should be having a party about these oil prices right now but they were not and I think it's because Trump told you a couple weeks ago yeah once we get this shit figured out oil is going to drop to $50 a barrel yes never mind 100 that's what I see the real panic about because both the action in Venezuela and in Iran are going to open up these huge production capacities to enter into the global market. And there will suddenly be a whole bunch of energy on the market that previously wasn't there before, opening up opportunity for competition and for a number of different nations to be selling and purchasing.

So yeah, it's undoubtedly going to reduce the price of oil. Remember back in Trump's first term when oil dropped below $0 a barrel because there was just so much of it? It was just sitting in the ports and like the oil price just collapsed. We just had too much. We couldn't see. We couldn't use it. We couldn't sell it. It was absolutely insane.

Well, speaking of Russia and Vladimir Putin, one of the weird little signals that I picked up several years ago during all my Russia, Russia schizophrenia was Putin saying in several public. addresses that energy scarcity is an American lie. And he was talking about oil. And I thought it, the reason I thought it was interesting is not because I had trouble believing that, but I was like, well, isn't a lot of your economy based on selling that oil to people? And I think that's why I love lead, because he's like, I mean, I'll sell it to you if you want to buy it. I'm just telling you that it is plentiful. He was specifically talking about Siberian oil fields, I think. And he was Like, we got a lot of this shit. Like, we have way more of this stuff than you guys think we have.

And he specifically was saying, I mean, I took that as a dinosaur com, dinosaurs being fake. Or at least dinosaurs are not what is in our gas, is not in our SUVs. Right. But, yeah, it's kind of all comes full circle. You go down all those rabbit holes. You go down a million of them, you know, in baseless conspiracies. And I think that's one of the most interesting ones, you know, is. is part of what we're seeing here the slow unwinding or disclosure of,

hey, guys, even the fossil fuel energy that our economy maybe shouldn't really be based on is so abundant that the fact that you've ever been charged $100 a barrel for it is going to look absolutely ridiculous once you get this kind of supply you're talking about. Yeah. And to the idea of energy scarcity being a lot, lie. In Russia, they have the unique practice of capping oil wells at a certain point, like after a certain number of years, and then they will leave them alone and then come back at interval, and the well is completely full again. And so they'll just continue to use it. So you think about dinosaurs, man. Yeah. Clearly there's some geologic process going on that replenishes these

things. And if you just don't let it dry out, you don't suck everything out of it, then it will continue to replenish itself. I was just checking on the price of gasoline in Russia. And it's about 87 cents a liter, which is about like 320 a gallon or something like that. So it's not wildly outside of the price that it is here in the United States. It seems like the price is pretty generally the same no matter where you go. The one thing that I see people really getting hurt with here in the United States is the price of diesel. And it's great that they're getting rid of the the deaf meter or whatever. I mean, that's going to help out so that people don't get broken down. I don't know if they're going to make it legal for people to do the,

maybe this is the delete thing that I hear people talking about on diesel engines. It basically makes them run better. There's a little bit, there's more emissions, but you can basically get more miles per gallon. But the price of diesel is insane because they don't want people to use diesel because you have like better engines. They last longer. you could previously get it for a lot cheaper than regular gasoline. And so they've taxed it and they put all these restrictions on the production of it, ultra low sulfur diesel, and that increases the price. But if they would get rid of a lot of those restrictions,

I used to love diesels. All of the diesels that I would see around town would be like, you know, the German cars. And I love German cars. I'm a huge fan of German engineering. And diesel was always cheaper, you know. I mean, it was like way cheaper than regular. gasoline. And then they basically changed that with Gulf War I and then it surpassed regular gasoline and here it's been the same ever since then. But I've heard of people, so you can get two

types of diesel. There is off-road diesel, which is dyed red so that if anybody sees you with it, they know that it's not supposed to go in a regular car. You have to, you know, you can put it in like, you know, farm equipment and stuff like that. And it's significantly cheaper, maybe 50 to 80 cents per gallon cheaper. But I've seen videos recently of people filling their trucks up with the off-road diesel and just saying, you know, eff it. I'm just going to do this because it's too expensive otherwise. A long time ago now when I was dating the Canadian who eventually became my wife, I was up in the winter cold of Canada and she was working a national tour like a marketing event tour. And for some reason, they had this like 22 year old girl driving around trucks from event to event.

So as her boyfriend, I was accompanying her on one of these trips. I forget how big the truck was. It was like, it was pretty big. It was like 20 feet or something like that. But we went to get gas and it had a green diesel cap on it. So I said, okay, my deductive reasoning skills tell me that this must be a diesel vehicle. So I removed the diesel cap and I put diesel into the truck. This is a Penske, one of those big Penske yellow trucks.

And driving down the highway and she's like, it feels kind of weird. I wasn't allowed to drive it because I wasn't employed by this company. I was an illegal immigrant, actually. And she's like, yeah, it's kind of sputtering. I was like, oh, it's probably fine. And in the back of my mind, the thought before the truck stalled out, I was like, like, oh no. And yeah, sure enough, we ended up getting picked up on the side of the highway by like, I don't know, this weird van truck thing by the emergency services and it had like a superheater

room that you like crawled into because it was like five degrees and we were freezing. And the guy, we had to get the, the truck got towed to a mechanic and they were like a truck. mechanic like you know an industrial kind of mechanic shop and they were like why did you put fucking diesel in this you just like destroyed I was like oh well can't you just take it out they were like they were like do you know how long we're going to be here trying to see if this truck can be salvaged and then I showed him the cap and I did get her out of it because I was like is this or is this not a diesel cap and they were like yeah that's yeah that's a mistake so somebody

at the service facility literally put the wrong cap on it and they're like, how on earth are you going to put this shit out into the fleet? And I'm like, it says diesel. So anyway, lesson learned, I realized that day that you should not put the wrong kind of fuel into the vehicle. That's brilliant. I love hearing that. At least you had some plausible deniability. Yeah, yeah. Because that could have been really bad. Oh, yeah. We looked at the manual. There was no commentary about gasoline or anything like that. So we got out of it. So did they have to scrap the whole engine? I don't know, actually. Mrs. Bright might know. We just left.

But we were like, all right, guys. We'll see you Monday, I guess. Good luck with the truck. She says it was actually fine all around. So I guess that. They did it. I guess they think it sounded like it was going to be a big pain in the ass for. I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was a huge pain in the ass. Oh my gosh. All right. Well, we have one Rumble rant, Doc from Amish PA.

In this glorious robotics future, and the roughnecks are replaced with robots. How do the displaced pay for their lives? Some will adapt, many won't. Same across many vocations. So I think that that question assumes that literally everyone would be replaced with robots. And I don't see a future where the entire military is replaced by robots. I think that there obviously would be a place. Let's just say, you know, a ground force going in if that were to be the case.

But I don't even see that as, you know, something that would happen. You would still have a military fully staffed with human beings because there's endless jobs that a robot just simply isn't going to be able to do. nobody worried about, as far as I've seen, nobody worried about fighter pilots, you know, getting put out of a job because they were going to start using drones. They transitioned into drone pilots. So, you know, theoretically, let's say that we do have a ground force made up of T-800s. Maybe there's a couple of trailers full of roughnecks wearing VR glasses,

and they're sending them out that way. You know what? Movie's pretty good you just made me think of. I watched it on a whim like a year ago late at night because I have insomnia. He might like it. Speaking of drone pilots, oh, can you share my screen here? It's called Land of Bad. It's starring the lesser Hemsworth.

Yes, I have seen this. Probably one of those movies that Chris passed up, Chris Hemsworth. So they gave it to Liam. But he's pretty good in it. And yeah, Russell Crow is a drone pilot. And then Liam Hemsworth is on the ground. And it's a pretty unsubtle attempt. by the military to be like, see, we're partners.

The drone pilots and the guys doing the stuff on the ground. But I do believe that, you know, to your point, they've got human operators there. So I did see that movie. I really enjoyed it. I like war movies. And if they can, you know, pull it together like that, I thought it was pretty good. That's why we need wars to keep going. If we lose all the wars, we lose the war movies.

Can't just keep making movies about the same wars. Yeah, who wants to make movies of us just lose? That's why you don't see a lot of German movies about World War II. Right. Okay. All right. Well, do you have anything else that you think we should add before we close things out, baby?

Well, I'll probably talk about this more in a few minutes on DPA, but I just, we don't know if the very real and definitely not at all fake war is actually over or just mostly over. But I hope I don't get a ton of pushback by just suggesting that if you're not, you weren't leaning a little bit toward the case of this at least being a more controlled theater who looks more right today the people many of whom are in our audience who were like yeah I'm sure it'll actually not be a very long thing it'll be untangled pretty quickly does that coming to fruition look more or less like there was international coordination here by people that we are not being told are our allies yes and

And as I said last week, I don't know how much more clear they can be when they are telling you that there is an Ayatollah who may or may not exist, who may or may not be gay that they have been dealing with. The definition of fake and gay. So, I don't know. Mileage varies. But if you guys all thought, you know, like, thank goodness we avoided another 20 year forever war, then thank God we got lucky. Yeah. for you know for all of the years that we weren't like actually at war we were still at war there were still operations taking place all around the world and the united states was you know largely run

on the military industrial complex and president trump has essentially put an end to that you know i mean obviously we still need to keep ourselves and our nation safe uh but we're figured out a way to do it as technologically and economically efficient as possible and uh nothing more efficient than putting the of God into anybody who might have a thought of coming and trying to usurp what we've been able to accomplish. All right. One final thing. Rebel Nader says, thanks for making me think of things I didn't think of, but I'm still

pissed at Trump. And that's cool, brother. You go for it. It's America. I think in the end, though, everything is going to be okay. And largely, that's how I wake up every morning. It's just reminding myself that everything's going to be able to get up. because of this, though.

We'll see. I just, people were talking to my chat today about, you know, who's going to be the candidate in 2028? And I think it's way too early to even go down that road. Like we have far more pressing issues that are staring us in the face right now, even the midterms. Between now and the actual midterms, so many things could happen. So to start like writing things off because President Trump is bringing peace to the entire world and removing any possible threat, that they might be able to hold over us for the rest of our natural lives. Yeah, it's not time, guys.

It's not time. But that's just... He's just the Middle East, that little thing. Yeah, he called himself King Trump today. And I am unironically on board with that. One of my favorite moments in recent Badlands history was a heated argument. I was not in it, but with Jonathan Drake and Ash and G Money and, you know, all kinds of the usual suspects on elections.

And Jonathan Drake... the most anti-elections person on the panel immediately said, yes, in terms of him being in favor of King Trump. And that just threw everybody for a loop, but he was being serious and I am as well. So we could just get that greased for 2028. I am unironically entirely about that life right now. I am 100% in favor of that. I will totally write off the Republic if it means we get King Trump and he's able to unilaterally take care of all the problems that we have.

All right. Well, Bibi, have a good time on your show here in just a few minutes. He and John are going to be live at 1030. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. I will be live tomorrow at 5 p.m. on my channel. And when's the next time you'll be live on Sunday? Sunday night. I'm going to experiment. Now nobody's going to watch. But I'm going to experiment with doing a solo show because the ideas have filled up in my head. And I want to give a presentation on what I mean when I say sovereign dissonance. entanglement. And I think it's great timing for this. So I'm actually going to lay out, instead of just saying the terms I say, I'm going to lay out like, what do I mean step by step? What do I think I actually went on or is going on over in Iran? So if you guys want to check that out, the narrative is back Sunday night. All right. Excellent. Looking forward to it. And we will see you guys next time. Peace. Patriots, the fight for truth doesn't stop at the screen. It's hitting the road again. Badlands media is rolling into Nashville on April 9th through 12 for the next stop on the

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