Badlands Media - Devolution Power Hour Ep. 473: Iran Round Two, DOGE Debate, and Rumble Woes

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Jon Herold and Burning Bright are back for a Wednesday session that opens with bathroom demolition chaos before diving into the real construction project: tearing apart the DOGE narrative. Was it a genuine cost cutting crusade or a "narrative delivery vehicle" for waking people up to government waste? The guys hash out both sides after a rough reaction to a poll about it. From there it's straight into the Iran situation, which appears to be heating back up despite the earlier ceasefire talk, plus what it means for energy markets, gas prices, and the ongoing tug of war between Trump's deal making instincts and hawks pushing for more. There's also chatter on rumble payment processing hiccups, some community shoutouts, and the usual banter that makes the show feel like hanging out with friends who happen to be neck deep in the news cycle. Grab a drink, this one runs long.

The Badlands, one of the Badlands, explain those Badlands. That's a hell of their name. Well, good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Wednesday edition of the Devolution Power Hour. I'm John Harold, one of your co-hosts. I'm joined by my other co-host, Burning Bright. I tried to switch it up today and it didn't sound as good. So I'm going to go back to you. Yeah, man, that was weird.

As always, and unfortunately, I'm joined by Burning Bright. What's on, man? Yeah, rugged us with the no intro like a month ago and now just discombobulating me. Just trying to spice things up. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I got to tell everybody what you said pre-show. It was so funny.

He's like, I'm asking me, hey, what's going on? He's like, oh, me and my dad are just destroying my bathroom. Then he goes on to like tell me another story. And like, wait, what? Because the way he said it was, I just thought they both had like some Taco Bell and couldn't get out of the bathroom. but apparently you're renovating it yeah the two are not mutually exclusive so i don't want to you know i don't want to spread misinformation but uh yeah we are demoing partially demoing a bathroom uh mrs bright and toddler bright are up in canada i i wish i don't think canada should know

that because it's getting a little hairy up there i even sent mrs bright an article earlier about the canadian government now allegedly threatening to see sue Canadian citizens for social media posts if they're critical of the government in the wrong way. So we're getting like pretty crazy up there. So I was like, watch what you're posting when you're up there. But yeah, while she's up there, I'm destroying the bathroom and then renovating the bathroom. And by renovating the bathroom, I mean, my dad who knows how to do actual stuff is doing all that stuff. And then being like, pick up all these things, throw them on my truck and get rid of them and get out of my sight so he's doing all the work yeah i'm picking stuff up and moving

it around i'm a laborer i'm a white laborer probably very and not only am i not being paid i'm paying for my own labor yeah that's weird that's a little backward seems but hey you know there's a mexican when you need one that's okay whenever i do like projects like that with my dad we like step on each other's toes because we're both pretty stubborn he's way more handy than i am but i like to think I'm pretty handy. And so like I have no I have an idea of how I think something should be done and he has an idea. And then there's just like tension. And so now he just like whenever he's over, he just does things. But I never invite him over for like actual projects. I don't have any projects to do anyway. But yeah. My house is weird because it's like this master bathroom that

there's this whole there was this whole corner of the room like a third of the bathroom taken up by this big jacuzzi tub and it had like this wood. in frame, custom frame built around it by the previous owners. The guy was a steel worker, so it had like a steel bar. But they never hooked the hot tub up to power. The jacuzzi tub. A jacuzzi tub. A jacuzzi tub. Like a jacuzzi bathtub. You call it a hot tub. You said that hot tub really weird. Did I? A hot tub. I feel like you did. I was going to say jacuzzi or hot tub, so I don't know. You just did again. What are you saying say hot tub say hot tub hot tub okay now he didn't say that you said two times in a row

like a jacuzzi first a jacuzzi or a hot tub i feel like you're saying that weird but whatever we can move past this and anyway so it was never it never worked it was a big jacuzzi tub that functioned as a tub you could put hot water in it but none of the bubbles worked none of the jets worked So they would all get all grimy and gross. And then Mrs. Bright's leaning over this, like, foot wide gap between the edge to give a toddler bright baths. So we tore that whole thing out today. And underneath it, my dad's like, they've got wiring in the walls and never did anything. You know, you just take a house apart sometimes.

And you're like, what were you guys doing? What was the plan? So we're, yeah, they spent a lot of time building this big, nice custom jacuzzi tub area. and we just destroyed it, and they're going to replace it with a regular tub area, which will give us like half the space of the bathroom back for activities. Interesting, that's awesome. So you say you have a master bathroom. Do you also have a slave quarters?

Yeah, well, I mean, we don't talk about the slave quarters, but they are on the property, but not attached to the main dwelling for obvious reasons. Of course, of course. So, you know, we're going to, that doesn't need to be renovated. They're fine. Are you going to give them the thrown out jacuzzi hut tub or however you said it? Yeah, my dad cut it into like six different pieces. I go up there in my bedroom is just, I was like, oh, how's it going?

He's like, pretty good. I got the hut tub. I was like, you shouldn't have moved it without me. He's like, yeah, I wasn't going to call you up here to help me. So I sawed it into six pieces. The pieces are right there. Oh, my gosh. That's why it was so loud.

Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Like, where's alpha when you know? need him that big strong back a wet back you might even say is he isn't he that strong though I feel like it's a little deceptive maybe not maybe not you know but anyway um that small white Irish boy strength whatever oh we um let's see here final man here of anyone having issues with rumble processing payments for subs if you guys are having the other day someone someone said that in my chat the other day I don't know if it was about

subs or if it was about rants. You should explain that issue in more detail. And I will run it up the food. I actually have a call with Rumble here later this week. So I will address that with them. Right. Any other thoughts you guys have on Rumble? Let me know.

I like this. Lou's Grammy said Burning Bright. Might I suggest Squire Bright for your son? I like that. I like that too. I like that because he's no longer baby bright, which just rolled off the tongue, but toddler bright just doesn't quite work. No what I suggest? So when my girlfriend moved in, she brought her cat with.

And so we have a cat now. Artie Joan in the chat drew a picture of the cat. And I feel like if you are comfortable with it, you should have Artie Joan draw a picture of Squire Bright because it'd be hilarious. Look at that thing. Look how good that is. It's a painting. And so, like, that was based on a real picture. Wow.

Yeah. That's great. So good. Sorry on the chat, I'd have to give her a shout out. I'm told Squire Bright was, uh, running the plane today. Just the, his third round trip at 18 months old, not to Canada, but just on a plane in general. Yeah.

It's a lot of flying. That's why she couldn't go to, uh, to guard, as bright. Too much traveling. choosing Canada. So we'll see if she comes back. Yes, the other day she was like having me sign papers in case she got stuck at customs. And I was like, should I read these closely? Like, what are you doing with my kids? Why do I have to sign all these papers? She's like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. So I mean, hopefully it comes back. Yeah, hopefully they weren't divorce papers. Yeah, I just signed a divorce and signed my kid over. We'll see. Wow, we're getting a lot of people in the chat saying that they have issues with. You guys all have rumble issues? Rumble processing payments. That's a bummer.

That's interesting. Yeah. I'll run those up the food chain. So I appreciate you guys. In the meantime, if you guys do want to support us in a place that I do not think has trouble processing payments, it's badlands itself. Go to the boost section. Or a substack also works. Yeah.

But yeah, weird week in terms of news. like you know Trump was obviously this last week was the 4th of July weekend which was an awesome weekend I tied jacy here running amuck in the Dakotas for a while was really cool having them down for the fourth kids loved them and wanted to come back so hopefully they'll do that and you guys still got to come up here at some point but anyway besides that coming off of that weekend I kind of expected there to be not much to talk about and so on Monday on my show I was like kind of a slow news week but we're going to talk about I don't remember oh we talked about

doge because doge ended and I put out a post like hey guys doge ended they only claim to have saved $215 billion um how do you guys feel about that oh by the way our budgets like

our deficits still going up we spent more than whatever like just all facts and then people like weirdly push back on it they got so defensive of doge so that's like all I talk about Monday because there's nothing else talking about yesterday Tuesday my show was like

40 minutes long and most of it was just like hanging with the chat talking because again there wasn't much exciting stuff to go to talk about and for me like exciting stuff is not like the Tyler Robinson trial I can't there's news it's just about what we are interested in specifically is not as not cooking yeah like the Tyler Robin stuff I can't get into it I think it's all drama it's all like a bunch of outraged I think can't con I saw post something about like tribe some sort tribalism. I can't remember the phrase he said he coined. But it's also stupid. I just can't find myself getting interested in it. So I'm not interested in that. And Trump was at NATO. And there's a couple interesting clips we'll probably play and talk about today. But it's just,

there's like this weird lull. We haven't got any of the D class. We were told we're coming soon. So that's on the horizon, but we don't know when. Just a weird week of news. Yeah. You know what's funny. Yeah. I mean that like we can get into that a little bit. But Even that is funny because there's a, I don't know if you've heard, heard of it, but there's a saying in financial markets apparently, sell in May and go away. And this is why, you know, when you're looking at historical, these patterns are breaking a little bit in the digital internet memetic age. But typically July and August are bad times, June, July and August are bad times for stocks. It doesn't mean stocks crash in those months, but there's just, there's not much volatility. And obviously, traders like volatility.

And like the reason, it's kind of funny because sometimes the reason for these things is more mundane than we would like to admit. And, you know, I can transition this into the info war. But in the financial market world, you know, all those people who kind of come up in the financial markets and that's how they make their careers and their experts, They're always looking for this tiny little bit of arbitrage, right? Like if you're if you're 2% better at trading than the average, you're a valuable kind of person. Maybe you can run a fund or something like that. And these guys are always looking for patterns of how can I exploit the summer doldrums? And why do the summer doldrums arrive?

Why is there this cyclical pattern? And one of the simplest answers is the least sexy, which is that all the hedge fund people go to the Hamptons and Cape Cod and they go on vacation. So they just are not, they are not moving money around because they're on vacation. So sell and may go away. And that's why. But then it becomes this interesting self-fulfilling prophecy where I don't know when the sell and may go away quote came out. Maybe somebody in chat knows that. I don't know who said that and I don't know when that became like a perpetual thing. But then you got to wonder, was this a trend, but then it became a rule because everybody in financial markets started reacting

to the rule. And now it's kind of known, hey, hold on to your cash reserves. If you don't have a trade to make, hold on to that if you don't find a trade by the end of May because nothing's going to be active. You're not going to find a lot of liquidity. So it's become this self-fulfilling prophecy now where like financial markets kind of take the summer off and then they go crazy up or down in the fall. It feels a little bit like that. The reason I thought of that is because you mentioned, you know, last week with the 250th and just great vibes and it's kind of cool to see a lot of that. People are tired in a good way, I think, after last week of celebrations with their families and everything. And this week in the Info War and in the news cycle almost feels like even with the Iran

thing, I'm like, are you guys trolling and just being like, listen, We're not going to spin up any new major cycles right now because everybody's on vacation. So we're just going to do the Iran war again for a couple of weeks. I mean, I would joke, but the way things are, none of that would surprise me. No. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me either, but that is what it feels like. Well, first of all, I was told that, what is it, July is typically a hot month or August or whatever. August is a hot month, yeah, even though July is technically hotter.

So is it though I think it like shifts isn't it like July is hotter in like the Midwest and then August is hotter in the East and then the West Coast it's September or something anyway it doesn't matter. But yeah, I think I agree with you. I mean it seems like there is a slow. It's a lot of reruns if the bombing that was taking place right now had happened like two, three months ago whenever the war started. It'd be like major headline news. But it's not even the NATO stuff like oh, Trump is mad at. at NATO. Trump is going out of the loan now. Trump like turns back to NATO, NATO upset.

Like, NATO's going to have to do it alone. Like Trump's trying to withdraw. We went through that entire storyline back when Trump's national security strategy came out and before that. The Zelensky storyline, Trump's going to let them, you know, do more, make their own missiles or something.

But the war still going on. The war hasn't changed. We've hardly had a single narrative changing that and forever. There's just like no new interesting narratives. We could talk about Doge because, I think there's an interesting behavior that I kind of hit on on Monday that we can get into. I just, I don't even know. Even that is like, I feel like we've talked about it.

I did talk about it on Monday, but maybe it'd be good discussion with you and I. Even the Zelensky-Russia thing is funny because I didn't say that this time. But last year, I had pointed out one of the patterns I'd noticed is, you know, there is still stuff to talk about from a narrative warfare perspective and warfare perspective because I think sometimes these patterns are repeating. the fact that we can see them coming, we meaning, you know, this audience can see them coming is itself. I mean, the fact that nobody's reacting, nobody in this space is really reacting to super serious extra, the most serious version of the Iran War that's happened yet, I believe, is happening right now. Everyone's like, okay, I mean, I guess, fine, whatever, man, you do you. I think that in and of itself is a sign of leveling up.

I think sometimes when this audience is bored by major narratives according to the mainstream and even according to Trump himself, it's a sign that they've kind of graduated beyond reacting. You know, a few months ago when we got the same sort of headlines that were less bombastic, no pun intended about Iran, that were not even as escalatory as Trump was over the last 24 hours, a lot of people, even in the so-called truth community, were freaking out. And now there's very few people who are freaking out. I feel like the people that do the, you know, sirens and the millions' exclamation marks on X, they've been doing that since February and they're doing that today, too. and to a smaller and smaller real audience,

how many times can Benny Johnson say, oh my God, Trump is really taking out the regime this time? So, I don't know, maybe sometimes when you're looking at this, you, the general you and watching the show are like, oh, man, what's going on? This is the same shit over and over again. This is a discombobulator. I think that's that skill observation chart I reference every so often.

That means that you are just seeing things in a different way and you're looking for new information. You're looking for new patterns to map because you've already mapped all this stuff. But obviously there's a lot of people who have not. The Iran, the other point I was going to make is that the Russia situation, last year I had said, every time Trump has a super positive phone call with either Putin or Xi, typically the week later, one or two weeks later, there's major escalation in the narrative with that exact party. And we were told, I think, on July 5th or 6th, that on July 4th, Trump had a great phone call with Putin about their mutual victories and all this kind of stuff.

And then a few days later, Trump goes to Turkey and not only supposedly is, you know, promising all these things to Ukraine, but he verbally praised their strikes in Russian territory. So it's just a little bit silly. I think a lot of this stuff is telegraphed. Yeah, literally every time Trump is about to meet with Zelensky, he has a phone call with Putin. always talks to Putin first, which I think is notable. But yeah, and you know, and I think at least one thing I'm not willing to do, and I think we've proven we're not willing to do is like just decode boring stuff that we've already decoded a hundred times just to make the new cycle interesting. If the new cycle is not interesting, I'm not going to like make stuff up just to make it interesting, just to, you know, sell ourselves. But I do think somebody's on

to something here before we get in. We'll talk Doja a little bit. We got to get to our sponsors. but Fat Chance says Badlands Task Force test with a $5 rant. Maybe more of you guys need to test if your rants are working. We're trying to, because clearly there's a few people who are having issues. We should try to see how widespread that issue is. Maybe everybody that's watching, you know, 2,200 and growing of you can do a test and let us know if your rant features are working. So we have a good, you know, data set to go to Rumble with. I'm mostly joking.

We also have our scriv. How about brilliant cub? Cubby Bright, just not burning cub. I like it. Thank you for your hand. Yeah, I got a picture of him from Mrs. Bright when he was before the plane took off. He's in the back with the stewardesses. Nice. Just standing in the back.

Just walks right back there. She's like, oh my God, I'm sorry. They're like, no, he's fine. He's just hanging out talking to us. That's awesome. So he's the king of the roost. What did they call that? Was that a thing?

I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't sound like a thing. Okay, let's get a quick word from one of our sponsors at least. And then we'll start the conversation off with Doge and then see where the show takes us. And first up, we have love litters. Tired of heavy, dusty, smelly cat litter that tracks everywhere and fills your house with odor. Discover love litters, the long-lasting wood-based litter made from pure kiln-dried wood with no chemicals or additives.

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And so I'm going to have to hold her accountable and make sure she tests that product out this week. Right now, do you guys use like the ammonia type, like the traditional cat litter that smells like chemically? I don't think the brand is ammonia type, but I think it's you would call it traditional. Yeah, because I made that switch. several years ago and now use love litters and it does make a massive difference just telling people it doesn't smell unless you can clean it ever because i can definitely tell when i walk by the bathroom or like the laundry room where the cat litter is um that what i can tell when there's poop in there yeah you know so is your girlfriend pooping in there it could be it could be my girlfriend holy

cat we had a bunch of people i was sarcastically telling people to test the ramp future i don't know if it's working it doesn't seem to be working there's a few of them i was expecting that I haven't seen yet so yeah wow okay let's talk about sci-op people every show we hear there's a massive rant outage we're not sure if the US dollar is working right now we need to run some tests oh funny okay so this I thought was really super devolutiony actually before we even get into the Doge thing I want to get your take on it um arsonist cuts off penis then it to start a blaze in neighbor's garage? What's your take, BB?

Let me, let me get a second. His own penis or her own penis. It could be, I'm assuming. That's what it reads as. Uses it to start a blaze. Huh. So he cut off his penis, put gasoline on it, lit it on fire. I mean, they skipped that part.

I was going to say, you need some sort of accelerant. Yeah. You can't just light a freshly chopped huang on fire. I mean, you could. It might take a while to catch fire. I mean, it depends where it's been. You know, you never know where it's been. You never know how flound ball it could be.

But his arson plan was a bunch of jar. This seems like a fake story to me. My brother, by the way, I was told today by my dad put out, like saved his building from a fire a couple days ago. Was it an arsonist who lived his? Venus on fire? It might have been this guy. Wow. No, it was actually, you know, the hoods above stoves, like the vent hoods? Yes. Apparently there was an electrical fire in the vent hood. And my brother in the shared building ran over, he said, or my dad said he had to go to through

three fire extinguishers in order to put it out before the fire department got there. Jeez. What's what your brother's a hero? that if the fire was in the hood, which is in the walls. In the hood? Yeah, in the hood. So, yeah, if that shit had got going, and it was the middle of the night. Wow.

But it was his hood? No, it's a shared apartment building, like a shared kitchen area. But he ran in there, and the first two fire extinguishers didn't work, and he had to run to the opposite side of the building to get a third one that did work. Wow. But yeah, the fire department was saying that if those fires get going, they go right up into the walls. Oh, I'm sure. Do people actually replace their fire extinguisher every year like they're supposed to?

Doesn't sound like it. I mean, have you? I don't have a fire extinguisher. Oh. I should get one. Actually, I think I do have a little one. Yeah, I do. So if you do have, you definitely haven't gotten it like replaced.

No. But I haven't either. So it's okay. But that's a good reminder. This is your reminder, everybody. And if you're a fire department and watching, you should be thanking us for this because we're doing our duty. Make sure you get those fire extinguishers updated or whatever they're supposed to do.

Right. But, okay, let's talk Doge a little bit because this has been such a hot viral topic from the beginning of the Trump administration and even before so. And that's one of the things I kind of want to get into discussing because there's a weird behavior. This is my post that I put out there on Sunday. Doge has officially expired. if you go look at the actual rule that set it up it was it was terminating on july 4th 2026 the website

savings had not been updated since january 1st of 2026 and i say that as probably the person who's covered doge more than anybody else on the internet i've i provided an update on doge every single day since the day the website was up i was the only one who saw that the website was actually down because i was the only one checking it probably um but literally every day on my show since the website was up over a year year and a half maybe even um While Doge claimed to have saved $215 billion, which the reason I say claimed is we have no way of verifying they saved anything. That's what they put on the numbers on the screen. We are still on track to spend $439 billion more in 2026 than 2025.

And the deficit is set to increase to $1.85 trillion in 2026, which is $78 billion higher than in 2025. And it's, if you look at the numbers here, 2027, it's going to be like $300 billion higher than that. and then by 2036 we're still on track to be over 11 trillion dollars that's our deficit or spending the deficits down here nuts just nuts numbers unsustainable but then I posed a question are you happy with what doge accomplished did it live up to expectations keep in mind here in this post I did not offer any of my own opinion I put the facts out there and asked two questions I was met with so much like hatred and disdain and like people calling me names and like all these things and i it just got me thinking overnight so i i spent like most of my

show on monday talking about this and so it's nice to have like a little feedback here with you this this this is a behavior that is in our community quite often where people like they get so emotionally attached and invested in either a person or a storyline or whatever it is and that anything that potentially works against it even though i wasn't the one doing i was just posting the numbers the numbers that i showed or what worked against the narrative that they want with Doge. But people get so protective of it, right? And I just thought it was a very interesting thing.

And I get met with a lot of people saying, well, well, Doge is just in on the computers and all those things. And I want to use this as another good example of something similar to the Epstein files, because whatever savings and whatever Trump was going to do with, you know, making the government more efficient, whether that's like Palantir being on all the computer systems or the AI push or whatever it is, Doge had literally nothing to do with it. I mean, maybe that was the cover story for it.

But Doge wasn't even Trump's idea. It was Elon Musk's. And Trump's like, yeah, I guess we can do that or whatever. And then he went with it. Like it was a viral thing. Obviously, he's going to attach the viral thing. But if you're telling me that, let's just say, we don't even have proof that whatever is on all these computer systems.

That's a speculative statement. But assuming that's true, we'll even, I'll give you that. Assuming that part is true. Are you telling me, that it wouldn't have happened without Doge because my argument would be that all that stuff was going to happen anyway. This was just a narrative delivery system that they used. And Trump hasn't talked about Doge in any year or maybe even more. I don't know. I don't remember the last time Trump mentioned Doge. He doesn't care about Doge. And so as something Trump didn't even mention,

I don't understand why people are so defensive of it when I wasn't even attacking. I was just posting the facts about it. But there's an interesting like behavior here that I think is a It's a larger trend with the truth to me. You get it a lot with the Q stuff, right? People get really mad at us even when we poke fun of Q, whatever. We said we're going to stop doing that quite as much. It's probably going to be tough to quit. But do you know what I mean?

Like people get so defensive over certain people. I don't usually make fun of Q. You know what I meant. That's what I meant. Commentary. Yeah. The certain set of decoders who are trying to destroy badlands. There's this weird protective behavior of people, things, news stories, whatever it is.

And it tends to be the ones, like we're defensive of the ones that we should be the least, right? Like I understand being defensive of Trump stuff or something like Trump is actually trying to push. Like that I can give you the benefit of that out, but Trump didn't even come up with this idea. And you're also saying that this would have, this did something that wouldn't have happened otherwise, which I have a hard time believing. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. The way, the first thing I think about with this is that as you said, I think you said, narrative delivery vehicles. or however you put it. You know, that's...

Whenever this was, this was announced right before the actual start of the second term, right? We were in Myrtle Beach at Gart and Doge was, I would say in my recollection, Doge was the major topic of conversation in Myrtle Beach. It was certainly one of them. Myrtle Beach Gart was right after Trump got reelected, but before he had been inaugurated. So this was a narrative deployment. at the time and we many of us said I said very strongly that I thought Doge was before it was active that it was a narrative translation vehicle that it was a narrative you know delivery vehicle as you

said now I didn't know if it was going to be actual as well but it also depends on what you think of the Trump and Elon dynamic and you know I I think it's very worthwhile going back and forth on that. I think it's, you know, I've had conversations with Matt Erritt, who, you know, Chris Paul can be skeptical of that pairing, of the intentions on either side of that pairing, but I don't think, you know, has a firm, hey, this is what it is. Matt Erritt feels very strongly about Elon Musk in a negative direction and has written extensively on it and I've read his writings on it and I think it's worth keeping all that in mind. For me, personally, I've written a lot about thinking that Elon is helping Trump, is not trying to subvert him or draft off of him.

I think there's very strong arguments in both directions. But the reason I didn't get emotionally invested in Doge and therefore am not upset at posts like that about, oh, Doge didn't actually do anything. It didn't do the stuff it said it was going to do is because my, my, my, impression, not impressions. My expectations, to use your terminology, they weren't just lowered about that. They were entirely different. My expectations were that Doge was a disclosure vehicle. That's what I said it was before it launched. So on just those grounds, just that, do more normal Americans know in detailed fashion about the waste, fraud and abuse of the federal government now than they did before the Doge deployment. Personally, I would say it did a

really good job of amplifying that kind of stuff. But in terms of the actual, the funny thing about people attacking you about that is I bet a lot of the people are doing it because they think Elon Musk, White Hat, you're somehow sort of besmirching what Elon was doing or you're besmirching Trump's agenda. You don't think it's working. The funny thing is, Elon Musk when he left his role, before he left his role, said Doge didn't work and blamed it on the federal bureaucracy. Elon Musk didn't come out. I know that you're saying the Doge website says, hey, we've saved this much money. Elon Musk was the leader, literally codified as the leader of the Doge deployment. And he was publicly the narrative face of it. He was the face of the whole

thing. He told the American people in 2025, it can't be fixed. The machine is too big. I brought in the smartest people in the world, and I'm one of the smartest people in the world, and we have the most advanced AI systems and info mapping systems in the world, and we can't do anything about it because of the bureaucracy in the administrative state and in Congress. There's too much red tape. So to me, I don't even take that as negative. I take that if I thought it was a narrative deployment and disclosure about U.S. waste, fraud, and abuse, government waste, fraud, and abuse going in.

And if the guy who led it. the narrative deployment left it by saying exactly that, then the funny thing is you can be entirely right about the actuals of the Doge deployment not delivering any of what it said it was going to do while if you had the right perspective or I think a healthier perspective and a more realistic perspective of what its intentions were that it succeeded there. And I totally agree with you also that in order to actually actually actually clean up the waste fraud and abuse. It's never it's not going to come.

Think of how ridiculous it would be if it comes through like an appointed agency when the whole thing is to dismantle the administrative state. So we're going to like create a new committee. You know, it's kind of was a little silly. If that stuff is going to get taken care of, which, you know, I, I'm hopeful that it does. It's going to come by way of the the moves Trump has been making, which is or trying to make executive orders, you know, know, all these kinds of things, because as we've been talking about all year in 2026 and before it, Congress is a roadblock to Trump's agenda. They're not helping Trump's agenda. The court system is a roadblock to Trump's agenda. And Doge, the reason I don't put Doge in that negative category for

me personally is I think the Doge deployment amplified or should have amplified the MAGA base in America First base into saying, this is absurd. These people are stopping Trump's agenda. I I don't think Elon hurt that narrative. I think he actually helped that narrative. But yeah, I mean, to me it was the point of them to say, guys, none of this shit got solved. You can wave your hands and have Oval Office meetings all you want. What we need to do is restructure, literally restructure the federal government. Yeah, so that's a good point.

That's kind of what I'm alluding to. And you nailed it with saying Elon Musk came out on multiple interviews. It's like, yeah, we did some things. We saved a couple hundred billion. But we were, we met a roadblock of the entrenched bureaucracy. and whatever. There's a couple other things he attributed it to. And that's such a good point.

If that's still there, then it didn't live up to its expectations. But it's even more so like, yeah, it was a big narrative op and it got everybody excited about fixing the fraud and stuff. But if they're telling us the fraud wasn't fixed, what does that mean? We have multiple different committees on it. We have JD Vance leading a task force on it now too. It still doesn't seem like it's fixed. Like he just said a thing today where he was supposedly doing another big meeting on the fraud. you know we're still waiting for any sort of solution and and actual spending to be cut and

fraud to be found and taxes to go away and all those things so yeah what's it going to take but even more so like it's it's that behavior so everything we just said you know believe in that's all true where even ilama says it didn't work why do we get so defensive of these ops and and why do we like the most common rebuttal besides from people that were like oh you're retorted obviously you did this and they always say it you know just it was entrenching all this AI within the the government and so going to fix all these things there's technically no proof of any of that right we don't know if any of that has been done we that's a hopeful thing and maybe there's some stories about AI being on every single government I mean every week it seems like there's a new story of the government

party with a new AI but still it's like it's it's that behavior that I think when you know at least being a little having some self-reflection and understand so I think I do it too I'm sure everybody does this to some degree with certain stories. Somebody has their favorite pet story and they get a little maybe emotionally or irrationally, I don't know, charged to an outcome they want to. Yeah, you get outcome attached. Yeah. And so when that's the case, it makes it hard. But I think when you recognize it at least, you can maybe understand it when, because when you don't do that, that's definitely a better position to be in when it comes to the info war. Like certainly. Yeah. And I think to your point, it's not you know we've grown i'd like to think we've grown pretty thick skinned it's not even

about that i think what you're pointing out is more that if our if our outlook on what doge did positively is in any way true the great irony is that the people attacking you for that post clearly didn't get it they did not the post they didn't get the point of the up right which maybe means that it didn't succeed in the way I'm saying it did. Obviously, these things don't succeed. Sciops don't succeed for good or bad. They don't succeed or disclosures don't succeed across the board. You know, 100%. You're never going to get everybody. For me, and somebody in chat said this, I missed the name, but somebody said, Elon, he said, that's true to what we were just saying that Elon said it didn't work, the Doge deployment, but Elon said the only way out is growth.

And Trump said that. I pointed this out in 2025. Yeah. And Trump the same day tweeted, we have to grow our way out. They both tweeted that. And by the way, this was in the midst of their breakup. I think it was last summer because they didn't get back together until the Charlie Kirk trauma event, as Chris would call it, until the sort of reconciliation at the Charlie Kirk event. But in the summer last year, the big story was the breakup of Trump and East. which we projected in advance, just like we projected their get together in the first place in advance. So if you can project all those things in advance, it's almost like a big story is being told. The question becomes why the story, right? So why the disclosure? So if I'm saying,

I can understand some pushback on my view, if I'm saying, I think this was a disclosure about waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. And the secondary level of that exposure, to your point, is that it didn't work and there's no way to fix it within the current system. You can't fix the system from within the system. This is what Chris is always saying about elections. This is what John Drake is always saying about elections and a hell of a lot more in our republic. When it comes to the Doge deployment, I believe that Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the midst of their feud did tell you what they think the answer is. They're telling you, yeah, we can't do it by cutting red tape. We're trying. We try. We try. the president can't even cut the red tape because the courts and Congress, the two other co-equal branches are engaged in a soft coup against President Trump. And that's pretty clear,

I think, at this point. Doesn't mean everybody is. Obviously, you know, Clarence Thomas is awesome. But just generally, the two other branches are working against Trump's agenda. And Elon Musk wasn't able to reign in the administrative state because he doesn't have the actual power projection. So this is adjacent to all the news stories we talk about. You just mentioned AI. Outside of the context of Doge, Trump and Elon, all of their narrative deployments economically are about AI, accelerationism, a nuclear renaissance, and all of that is predicated. Autonomy. It's all predicated on the idea of growth. Trump, Scott Besson, a lot of Scott Besson's narrative deployments in the last two years have been all about how we can have double digit GDP before the

end of Trump's term, which is unheard of in recent American history, generations. So if that happens, then that would render a lot of the doge findings obsolete, basically, because they're going to grow our way out. So the note I'd written at the time is the only way out is through. They're telling you the only way out is through is to render this stuff essentially meaningless. I think Trump has been able to or has tried to make headway in cutting future red tape and making it more difficult for future waste fraud and abuse, I think there's been more success on that front. But in terms of the debt we have of $30 trillion and all that kind of stuff, that is what it is.

It's baked into the cake. So the only way out of that is for Trump to basically deliver the Golden Age agenda and who's helping him do that, in my opinion. Look at what Elon Musk is doing in the private sector. It's all these massive accelerators. And you can think Bitcoin companies and all the rest of it, nuclear companies. I think that's what they're doing. I think this is part of the public private partnership reversal that we've been talking about for a while.

Trump is using the private sector to basically go around the deep stay and say, all right, you're not going to let me cut the waste, fraud, and abuse. I'm just going to make it obsolete. Yeah, I mean, that's the ideal goal. I mean, we have so much to do to get to that point, though. On Saturday, we went over a little bit of the National Resilient strategy. And a lot of it, again, has to do with the public, private partnerships that you're just talking. about and I think at the end of the day like it comes down to something you kind of said earlier

the the people who created the problem and benefit from the problem cannot be the ones we expect to fix the problem and so many times in the info work especially since trump got back in there you see people going back to like oh congress can do this congress will pass a save act and that'll save us oh doge it's going to fix all the fraud like all these different government agencies were pointing to to fix all the problems that the government agencies created that the government officials themselves benefit from and just seems so silly. Like I am much more on board with a public private partnership type model than with let's have a bigger government to solve more of the government's problems.

It just makes no sense. Yeah, we keep going back to that well time and time again. I would encourage you guys all to go and read that national security strategy or sorry, national resilience strategy. And I'll put it in the chat here for you guys or go out. Saturday show. But yeah, a lot of it was smaller government, give more power back to the people, back to the states, and a lot of public-private partnerships to do growth and national security things. It made a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So you had said I didn't see that show on Saturday.

So it sounds like obviously you guys talked about a lot of the stuff. I've been thinking about the last week or so. I think that's the most interesting narrative. Maybe a different spin on it. I don't know if you touched on this you and Chris but uh i think it was on the blitz on uh last friday with ash and i we were talking about um the the stakes in public companies the stakes in private companies rather intel and you know mp materials all that kind of stuff and i had said uh look for the media to start accusing trump of being a communist and we spent like an hour of seven day show on this yeah so sure enough that's what they're doing but it's uh it's uh it's uh it's uh There was even a new one. Where the hell is it?

Yeah, here we go. There's a new one today from the Atlantic, which has really become the MVP of reverse indicators. What Trump has in common with the far left, if the president fears communism, maybe he should stop mimicking its worst elements. And this is the same, so this is a week after the article we talked about on the Blitz was, where the hell is it? here it is they wrote this last week there's nothing democratic about these socialists so i think these two things are related which is why i was saying it on the blitz last week yeah the media started last week the mainstream media especially on the left was attacking the dsa they were attacking momdani and aOC and all them and talking about like how bernie sanders is rising back into

the zeitgeist and then you had a whole axios thing last week where they were talking about come Harris is now courting the extreme DSA. So there's a panic within the establishment quote unquote left of the rise of the DSA socialists. And then you've got Trump mimicking on paper some of the very policies. If you read 2015 and 16 Bernie Sanders proposals, it's kind of crazy some of the stuff Trump is doing because I'm not saying Trump is Bernie Sanders. But need I remind people, many disillusioned liberals like myself actually came into the MAGA tent through Bernie Sanders. Because in 2015 and 16, it was actually, I was so disillusioned at the time. I wasn't even paying attention to politics.

But my two cousins who were liberals were hardcore Bernie bros, which I didn't understand because I was like, he's a socialist. Why are you guys into this? And their whole thing in 2015 and 16 was we want Bernie to destroy the DNC, destroy the Democratic Party. That then led them into becoming Trump maximalists because when the DNC stole the primaries from Bernie, Trump defended him. And that's what got them in the door to Trump, right? And then I got in the door with Trump kind of through that. So it's absolutely fascinating right now where you've got this intra-party civil war going on on the left side of the aisle of establishment

Democrats, aka Uniparty, versus socialists. But then you've got socialists starting to praise some of the aspects of Trump's agenda. And you've got conservatives, like never Trumpers, that are demonizing what Trump is doing and saying that he's interfering in the free market. So he's talk about discombobulation. He's got a really interesting thing going right now, where you've got conservatives calling for him to take stakes in private companies. And then you've got like Bernie Bro.

and DSA socialists going, I mean, yeah, that's, hold on, that's what we've been saying that you should do. So I don't know, it's like the Uniparty, the only ones who don't agree with what he's doing is basically the Uniparty. Yeah, no, I think it's really interesting. Like I said, me and Chris spent a decent amount of time on a Saturday show talking about this, not just because of the previous stakes in companies that Trump has taken, but there's talk about, you know, potentially him getting, there's a Lutnik click from back in 2025 where he's like, yeah, we're looking very seriously at taking stakes in these defense contracting companies because if it wasn't for the United States government, they wouldn't exist or make any of this money. And then there's obviously

the talk of them getting a 5% stake in Open AI. There's other companies that are out there, probably like a SpaceX and stuff like that, that eventually they'll have some partial ownership in. Who knows? But the communism rhetoric from Trump, and he had another one today that I'll put up on the screen right now, actually. By the way, did you see that SpaceX? just invested a ton of money into Trump accounts today? I don't think it was SpaceX himself. Somebody donated SpaceX stock.

That's what it was. Yeah. But yeah, I did see that. But this is Trump today, again, talking about communism. And on Saturday show, we played the clip, or I played the clip of back when Trump was talking about a COVID being a worse attack than Pearl Harbor, a worse attack than 9-11. We've never seen an attack like this.

Clip I used to play all the time on here. I might even have... Well, it's in the intro. Yeah, it's in the intro for sure. I thought I had it in the clips here, but I don't. But anyway, you guys have all seen the clip. So when I hear Trump bring those things up again now, talking about communism, though, I just think it's very interesting.

When I watch what's happening and I see these low lives getting, I mean, they're low lives. I watch them. I know good people. I know quality people. These are essentially low lives. And when I see what they're talking, I think they're very dangerous.

in many ways and I've said it and then I said, boy, that's a pretty big statement. Then I realized, you know, a couple of people said, I think you're probably right. I think this country with this thing that's going around is in more danger than it was during World War I, World War II. If you talk about September 11th, if you talk about Pearl Harbor, that was big danger. I think this is, I think the concept of us going communist, because one thing that happens when you go communist, you never come back. never comes back you die in squalor you die you die a horrible death you die in squalor and it gets very evil and very nasty yeah please god when i watch what's happening and i see these low like there we go yeah so that rhetoric i think it's very interesting that he has been pushing the narrative of how

dangerous communism is while other people are kind of like subtly and not so subtly calling him a communist i think it's funny well just think of the narrative position it puts the enemy in When you're the Atlantic and when you're, you know, we can debate. And I think it's a really fascinating debate on what he's doing with these private companies. Is it capitalism? Is it communism? Is it some mix of the two? Common capitalism?

Like, what is it? I don't think it's direct communism. You know? Isn't that state-owned means of production? Yeah. I mean, it's not communism. I just mean it's not traditional capitalism. either because you know the main argument against it and i'm for it by the way just to make that

clear the main argument i'm seeing against it from people that i don't think are just being like emotional retards is uh is the is market making that they're less concerned about the u.s government slash american people treasury funding you know being in the market in this way they're more concerned with saying if the u.s. Treasury is investing directly in open AI, let's say, they're making a market in that market. You know, what about the other, what about the other 10 players in that market? So your, you're, if these companies then have this like passive investment flow coming directly from the US taxpayer essentially, it's tax receipts that are going into this, then you can,

you can fairly look at that and say, are you get, you're picking winners. losers right that's the it not all the criticism of what he's doing is anti-trump uh drama which is why i think that there's more going on here as is usually the case um but yeah the uh the it makes me think think of the sovereign wealth fund idea i think i think that's what's going on i think i don't know if you guys talked about that on saturday no but um so you know this was the executive order from 2025 i know you love your eos sure do um a plan for establishing a united states sovereign wealth fund so we went over this at the time when was this february so that was right right at the start he was talking about a sovereign

wealth fund right uh i had written in january about the Saudi public investment fund which i thought it was notable because right as trump was deploying you know the narratives around an american sovereign wealth fund which we've never had which is kind of crazy the NGOs, Human Rights Watch was the one I was documenting at the time, were putting out these massive hit pieces, like tens of thousands of word research papers against the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia made famous by Mohammed bin Salman. And we had done some shows in early 2025 in which I was saying and Ghost has said this, you know, a lot of the Q people who followed the 2017 Saudi Persh and everything. That's what actually got me into the Q drops was the Saudi purge because I thought, oh, that's interesting. I heard about this the other day. I think, but don't know for sure.

And the Human Rights Watch paper theorizes that most of the investments in the Saudi public investment fund were seizures. They were de facto asset seizures, right? They weren't necessarily framed that way by the Saudi government. but the fund was flush with cash, billions and billions and billions, on the back of the Saudi purge. So what was going on there? And we've talked for years about executive order, whatever, whatever, you know, human rights abuses. You know the one. You know the thing. 818. 818. And I know that this is not literal, but the general framework of what Trump is doing with some of these companies, that's the other reading of it. I think it's twofold. I think personally, these are companies that he's

de facto got them over a barrel. We talked about this a lot through the trade war in 2025, that that war was not against other nations necessarily. It was actually against the American oligarchy, these American corporations, and saying, get your asses back here, employ Americans and make shit in the homeland or your effed. And maybe those executive orders don't need to be levered. Maybe they're just hanging like a sort of Damocles. The other side of it is the sovereign wealth fund. And I was actually talking to AI a bit today about this of saying, hey, with Trump's deals in Intel, et cetera,

is this a de facto sovereign wealth fund? And it was basically saying that one way of looking at it is, yeah, that this is a way that he's positioning, he's basically creating a U.S. Treasury balance sheet because the sovereign wealth fund has not actually been, what's the word? It's not been caught up. It's not been created.

yet. No. And the reason for that is the bureaucracy we're talking about. Congress. It's Congress. You need Congress. So Trump is basically already collecting all his action figures using all these weird, I don't even understand them. You probably understand them way better. All these weird executive actions that he's taking that are unprecedented to take stakes in these companies. But ultimately, he wants it codified as an ongoing public investment fund. So I think what he's doing here is that once we do, get the U.S. sovereign wealth fund codified, all these assets are already sitting there. You just take all these assets and you roll them right in. Yeah, I think that's interesting. But again, it comes down to Congress being the problem and the people keep saying like, oh, we just need to win the midterms. It's such a losing

argument because it's not going to happen. You know, like we can't expect to be saved by the midter, but we don't need to get into that debate. But I do want to get to the next part of the show. Chris sent over a article on the Iran situation. So it's an Axios one. It's pretty quick. I think we can read through it and talk a little bit about the Iran War briefly. But before we do that, I want to get a quick word from Rumble Studio and Rumble Wallet. You got a paid advertisement.

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we're bombing again, and it could be a long one, another long exchange of fire with iran ceasefire over trump shifts to battle for hormus by barak ravid who ghost says is the guy he thinks he's the guy and i think he's probably pretty right about this that the trump admin goes to to leak whatever they want out there to say whatever they want said the white house is preparing for what could become a multi-day or even multi-week exchange of fire with iran over the straight of harmoos the length and severity of the new campaign hinge entirely on Tehran's next moves, U.S. officials

tell Axios, a war that began with the goal of degrading Iran's missile capabilities and destroying what remained of its nuclear program has evolved into an open-ended fight over the world's most important energy choke point. A U.S. official said the current escalation could last a day or two, a week or a month, depending on whether Iran continues its attacks on commercial ships in the strait of our moves. We're going to slap them a bit so they understand we're not effing around, the U.S. official said. Diplomacy is stalled for now. The military pressure is back at the center of President Trump's strategy.

Wednesday the 60-day ceasefire outlined in the memorandum of understanding was over after an exchange of fire triggered by Iranian attacks on commercial ships. The U.S. then launched a second round of strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, including attacks on infrastructure targets inside Iran for the first time in months. It's actually the first time I remember period that they actually bombed bridges. That came out today, and I do remember back when Trump said he was going to start a civilization-ending, bombing campaign that there was a bunch of protests on bridges, which I thought was so silly. But apparently there weren't any of those protests tonight.

Otherwise, they never would have bombed those bridges, right? Exactly. Iran retaliated with attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, while insisting it would not back down from its claim to control the straight. Trump signaled the U.S. was ready to de-escalate, telling reporters on Air Force One that Iranian officials had called a little while ago and want to make a deal. And I actually have that clip somewhere. Where? Over processing. Let me pull that up.

If I can find it. Here we go. This is another way. There are many ways we can win. But we've already won military. They have very little left. And they want to make a deal so badly. They called a little while ago.

They want to make a deal so badly. I just don't know if they're worthy of making the deal. I don't know that they're going to honor the deal. That's a problem. If they want to make a deal, why do you think they attacked commercial best? because it's not a crazy to be honest with it. They're a little bit out of control, but they want to make it do badly. So, yeah, I'm back to the article real quick, just a couple more quick points.

Reopening the straight of her moves and restoring freedom of navigation to commercial ships has become a central goal for the Trump administration mainly to stabilize global energy markets. markets. This is the first time, and I've been tracking the gas prices every day, the average gas prices. The first time they've actually gone up in like three months. And it only went up like 0.006 cents, but still, it's the first time I've seen it go up since I've been, I'm covering it. Also, I was thinking about it. You know, Kankan said $2.40 by July 4th. Maybe he was talking about like the year 2040 or 2050 or something. He technically didn't specify the year. Yeah, yeah, and you know, maybe we'll help him move those goalposts because he likes doing it. He doesn't need to move those things himself.

For Iran, maintaining control of this trade has been a key objective. Officials say White House believes it has more room to escalate because hundreds of oil tankers have managed to leave. You know, I'll skip reading through the rest of this. But I think the most interesting point of this to me is the energy market stuff. Like Trump obviously wants to end the conflict. Obviously, there's probably bigger things going on behind the scenes. We don't know why there's more escalation now, what changed? But when it comes to the energy markets, we are, what, three, four months away from the November midterms, if we have them.

Still love the theory that maybe they'll get canceled and shut down. I would love that. But let's just hypothetically say they won't and they move forward. One of the biggest knocks against Trump will be the prices, inflation, energy market stuff. And this does not bode well for that because as quick as they are to raise the prices, and we've said this a thousand times, they are so much slower to lower them. And yeah, I'm just curious to see how long this thing actually goes on. We thought we had it. I thought we had it just a little bit ago.

Now it's back on the table. Rerun Central. A little boring. But there we are. I'm sure you have some things to add to. Well, I mean, just that point you ended on, I think is the point is that what is most interesting about it, I think, is that Trump appears to be the one perpetuating it. I'm not saying, you know, we can argue back and forth about who's tit for tatting who with actual missiles on silos and all this shit that we can't confirm that we're just looking at OSINT stuff on Twitter.

I'm talking about who's keeping the story going. Well, it's Trump. I mean, Trump and the Iranians are going back and forth in the narrative and supposedly back and forth in the actual. So to your point about the timeline, it's interesting to me that Trump is keeping the timeline going. despite on paper it looking like that's a really bad move in terms of optics for him and for his agenda, he doesn't seem bothered by it. And that doesn't automatically mean it's a good thing, but that does make me wonder about the midterms. I mean, he doesn't seem overly concerned about that. I don't think they're going to get canceled. You know, I think that I'm not going to get

on that rug, get on plenty of rugs. I'm not going to get on that one, although I'll be happy to be proven wrong. But I think the timeline perpetuation, the perpetuation of this narrative is interesting. Trump is stretching it. What I had written about back in March and April when I was just writing every week about the Iran War narrative was I was looking, I was trying to look at all around the game board aside from the U.S. and Iran, Trump and the Iranian regime, who is being negatively impacted by the perpetuation of this narrative. And some of the sort of factions that I had laid out is I think the energy cartel, they're actually making record profits, but they're being exposed and now they're being threatened by Trump, you know, via the DOJ. So that's a, that's a party.

That's a faction that maybe is not actually okay with this perpetuating. But I think the bigger ones is NATO, which is notable right now. You're going to tell me there's nothing. to the timing of Trump goes over to NATO and humiliates them again, as you said at the start of the show, in a way that he has many times before. But this humiliation is different in many ways because in the years past, Trump was staging a hypothetical attack on NATO by saying, we've been there for you, you haven't been there for us. But NATO could just push back at him two years ago and say, of course we'd be there for you. Well, the Iran, the straight of Hormuz situation is an active emphatic demonstration that NATO is not there for us.

So one of the things that I had said in the show post for tonight just before we went live is, is Trump discombobulating Iran? Is Iran discombobulating Trump or are Trump and Iran discombobulating NATO in the global battle space? Because NATO were the ones, I think, that look the worst in light of all these headlines, especially because you have. Mark Ruta, who's got to be an Rube, he's doing a great job. I think we've been kind of sleeping on Mark Ruda. He led with Trump coming to Turkey by saying, we have to admit Trump was right. And this is before the hostility is supposedly renewed. So while he's over there, Ruda ushers him in, who, you know, for anybody who's not aware, Ruda's like the military guy of NATO. So what he's saying in light of this means the most out of anybody in NATO. And he's the only guy Trump has on his

side over there besides Erdogan himself of Turkey. So they're saying, yeah, we haven't held up our end of the bargain, but you've got the rest of these NATO vultures sitting on there, you know, sitting in Brussels saying, oh, well, at least the Iran war is over. Like, none of that matters anymore. We don't have to talk about that. And Trump and Iran just go, no, it's back on, actually. So now that I'm here, what are you spending on national defense and why should the US be in NATO? I think that's just one, one potential path. But it is funny that Trump, doesn't seem worried about the timeline perpetuating. And I'm starting to wonder, you know, do they just let it, do they just grind it until markets and everybody moves on? That's one of

the ways I've looked at it is going, are they trying to stress test markets and just see if they'll eventually just give up on the narrative that Iran is resulting in all this volatility? Yeah, I don't know what it is. I mean, the strategic petroleum reserve is way down. I don't if you're at the lowest level it's been since the 90s like i don't know how much that is contributing to the the lowering of prices last two months is it because it's actually been open this whole time which we've talked about trump kind of alluded to i don't know there's a lot going on but it was kind of cool trump to get spain to actually commit like yesterday talked so much crap about about spain and not contributing it's like we're going to kind of fall trade with them and then they finally

committed a bunch of money to nato i didn't see that i didn't see the second part yeah you didn't see that see them competition no i saw him uh i saw him light them up but i didn't see them capitulate here he um he made comments on the plane about it too uh here we go no idea at the beginning of at the beginning of before this before the nato summit you spoke uh who are you in pointers uh you had you had issues with uh you had issues with uh you had issues will be in Spain, UK. Yeah. I will say I did have issues.

Also German. And I still do. But Spain that came back all the way today. Spain was very generous today. You know, I told him I'm going to stop trade. What did Spain do to do there? They made, they honored a request for lots of payments. And if they didn't, we wouldn't even talk to them. They were very bad.

They behaved very badly, in my opinion. But it was great unity in that room today. the NATO room, it was pretty much, pretty amazing actually. It was something very good about it. I actually wish the press was able to stay. Now, they may have been different if the press was there, but it was tremendous unity and togetherness. It was quite nice.

Interesting comments there. Might have been different if the press had stayed, but what great unity they had? Well, actually, I was just going to bring up this article. I hadn't seen that clip until you played it. But I was going to call bullshit on this, but it seems like Trump just kind of confirmed it. So Politico said, Trump yelled at NATO leaders in public. In private, it was a different story. The president started his visit to Ankara berating the NATO alliance.

Something changed before he left. The president was far more positive on Wednesday when he gave a final 30-minute speech, which left out its desire to annex Greenland to criticize Spain, blah, blah, blah. we want to remain with you trump said according to a second participant in the meeting the shift was a notable about face for a president who has threatened repeatedly to leave the alliance and came after european leaders heaped praise on trump for helping ensure allies boosted their defense spending it was a bit unexpected the mood in the room was a lot better than it seemed before his mood seems to have swung so i don't know that's kind of interesting that he goes in there like swinging yeah

And then he's like, it's cool guys. You know, I mean, I wonder if Trump ever gets sick of having to like fight with these people in person. Because at the end of the day, like, yeah, I feel that way sometimes. Like at the end of the day, you know, you could sit there and fight with people. But if you know you're right, you know you can have it your way anyway, why bother? Like just, okay, I'll just go through the motions here, whatever. And then on the flip side of this, I'll just do things the way I want anyway. You know what I mean?

Well, that's another way of looking at this Iran. situation, this current chapter of the Iran situation, the quotes that went the most viral from Trump. I mean, what was the, what was the actual quote that like lit up the, you know, the internet this morning that Trump said, uh, he said, I think it's over. Uh, I've got the clip here. I'll just play it. I'm sure, you know, it's been played a lot on Badlands today, but in case anybody hasn't seen it. Is the ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead? That's a very interesting question.

To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. And they're vicious, violent people.

And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Whitkoff, Jared Kush. But they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's...

just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. We make a deal. If I make a deal with him, we have a deal. We have a deal. Everyone's agreed. No nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press. They say, we never even talked about it. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. So, you know, there's the obvious of that surface level reading. But I think it's interesting, in light of the timing with NATO because what was the big spat about with NATO, defense spending and the fact that NATO has no power projection and all that, right? So when Trump is sitting there saying they're scum, I'm done with them, I don't care anymore. That was all the headlines across the globalist

media, the same globalist media that are NATO maximalists and think Trump is being too mean to them and think that the US needs NATO. So if you ignore the Iran side of the equation, Trump's threats about breaking the ceasefire and saying the deal with Iran is done, who does that actually threaten the most? And again, in my series, I argue that even though we're facing higher energy prices, Europe are the ones who cannot abide a perpetual conflict between the US and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. So who is actually being levered?

Who's actually being negotiated against here? And why the timing? So, you know, of course, that's like that's reading tea leave. But I think it's kind of interesting that Trump kicks it, you know, restarts the war with Iran. And then we've got these European leaders capitulating to him and tripping over themselves, you know, to when last week, by the way, if you were reading the previews, like the pre-fight of Trump going to Ankara, the rhetoric out of the European Union, especially Italy, was very bombastic and bobbastic. mostful and aggressive toward Trump. Mark Carney of Canada, very aggressive. And all of a sudden, what he actually gets there, they kind of tuck tail and submit.

And I wonder if it has to do with the fact that he kind of just threatened them by saying, I'm going to start this war again in the narrative. And you guys are getting squeezed by it way harder than we are. Yeah. You know, one of the things I thought was interesting today is so right after Trump got done speaking, Axios put out an article and it was kind of like summarizing the weekend. The thing that they drew attention to is being the most concerning aspect from the NATO conference was this, this last line. Bottom line, NATO leaders are used to Trump's threats by now, which they are.

I mean, they've been talking about Trump and his rhetoric towards NATO and all that stuff for a while from before the national security strategy, but definitely when that strategy came out. What's harder to shrug off, though, is the ongoing drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe. the biggest shift in the continent's defense posture since the Cold War. So no matter what Trump's rhetoric is to these people's faces, while he's there, while he's not there, like he's been definitely harsh and he's justified and talked about why we should be leaving NATO.

It's the fact that he's actually pulling troops out. And it's not just talking to talk, but he's actually like walking the walk. And what's the troops are out of there, it makes total sense. So just cut off the spending them at that point, too, which I would not be surprised. And he's almost like setting them up for success for when he leaves because he's like, you guys all need to like step up your game with the spending, make it even for everybody. Or, you know, like, do it pay what you're supposed to be paying. And then it's like when he gets to that point where all the countries are on a more level playing field, that's perfect time to rug pull it and leave.

I think that's exactly right. And I think the Iran situation actually has more to do with that than people think because that's the threat being actualized. So, you know, it's kind of, it reminds me to your point, it's like the tough love. way of parenting that Trump is doing with Europe right now. And, you know, I know that people in our chat and people who watch our shows, they've got no love lost between us and Europe. But, you know, keep in mind when we're talking about our allies, our former allies, it's the peoples. It's the West. Like, we do want a resurgent West. We don't want, it's my Lord of the Rings aside I give all the time of there won't be a Shire Pippin. And, you know, I'm not worried about the U.S.

But as much as we kind of meme on what's happening in France and what's happening in England and what's happening in Ireland, that's not good. It's like it's not good to be seeing the Western man chased into the hills by this scourge of communism and Islamic extremism and Marxism and all this kind of shit over there. So I do think Trump genuinely wants reformation in Europe. Is it going to come through these deep state global? leaders? Probably not. So, you know, boiling the frog over there, I think has multiple meanings. But this Iran powder keg, I think, is a big, it's the sort of Damocles Trump is holding over them. To your point about withdrawing, it's not just withdrawing U.S. troops that Trump is threatening them with. It's withdrawing U.S. troops while having kicked the biggest hornet nests in the world

on the way out, right? So true. And last week, by the way, to bolster this point, The other thing that Politico, Axios, the Atlantic were reporting about the European Union, various players there, is that, you know, the unnamed sources close to the situation. They were saying that the European Union nations have already resigned themselves to the prospect that they're going to have to pay tolls to the Iranian regime in perpetuity going forward. They're saying that they think that's going to be the new normal. And I think they're right. I think Trump is going to leave them there and say, we're going to onshore. We're going to, you know, cut ourselves off from this. But Europe can't.

Europe needs to straight a whore moves way more than the U.S. does. And by the way, the faction we don't talk about a lot because they're not as relevant in Western politics is the allies of Asia. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, places like this. Australia, who are basically Asian, those places are even more affected than Europe is by the energy squeeze in the straight of whore moves. So, yeah, it's like he's not just threatening them by withdrawing U.S. power. He's starting a massive fight in their backyard and then being like, all right, I'm out. You really think Australia's are basically Asian?

I'm just trying to make fun of them. Okay. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, in terms of, in terms of economy, they're really basically just tied into Southeast Asia. But when we talk basically Asian, we're talking looks, bro. They're like Asian Americans, basically. I would say, I disagree. I just, I used to think Australians were cool. And these days, I'm like, you guys, you guys are one of the most cut countries out there. I know a few cool Australians. But anyway, last thing I want to talk about tonight is, is that. this, I think.

The Seth Rich burn bag documents that set the... What? Are you going to make people upset? I feel like I just do that by existing. So,

maybe. I don't know. Maybe not. I mean, I'm kind of skeptical. My baseline, if you guys haven't understood this by now, which should put more weight into like the rest of my work is how skeptical I am by nature. of most things.

But this is another one of those stories because it's a burn bag story. How many times have we said on this show Burning Bright where it's like whenever they tell us there's a burn bag of documents, it's not because like there's no actual, you know, secret hidden room behind a bookshelf. I mean, maybe there is a room like that. But they don't just keep finding more rooms with more burn bags. This is how they're, they're injecting the documents or the narrative or whatever storyline into into the zeitgeist, right?

And this one, this didn't even come from necessarily the FBI. It came from the Seth Rich lawyer who said he heard it from the FBI. I didn't come from like the typical John Solomon story of injecting this stuff. It came from Ty Clevenger, but not to take anything away from Ty Clevenger. He's solid from what I've seen. Anyway, Seth Rich bombshell, hidden documents in secret FBI skiff at headquarters. Attorney Ty Clevenger representing interest in the Seth Rich case revealed that a government attorney informed him that several hundred pages of documents related to Seth Rich

have been located in a previously hidden, unmapped, and sealed area within the FBI skiff at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. This ties directly into a July 30th, 2025 Fox News, digital report about newly installed FBI Director Cash Patel and his team discovering a secret space containing burn bags with thousands of pages of classified files slated for destruction, many linked to the 2016 Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The persistent questions surrounding Rich's 2016 murder

have long centered on a theory that he was the source behind the DNC I mean we all know the story about Seth Rich this didn't give me thinking another connected to Bernie Yeah another thought on this though Right like we have for so long thought That

The the burn bag story is like a white hat op To get the stuff out of there Because it doesn't make sense Like you're going to destroy evidence You know the bad guys You know only going so far as to put them in the bags And hide them doesn't make sense Should we consider

And I think that's a rhetorical question because I think we should. What if all the documents in the burn bags were left there intentionally to be limited hangout releases to close the narrative loops on a lot of these stories? Because how many loose ends were out there are out there about so many different things? And if you just want to tie those things in a nice little tiny boat, it's like, oh my God, we had documents that they were going to destroy. And then when they come out and release the documents, they don't really reveal anything new.

They never get to the bottom of anything. nobody gets held accountable but hey we we found these documents they're gonna destroy so like clearly this is the damning stuff the most damning stuff we have here you go and then it's like now we're done it's it's an interesting you're saying you're saying the burn bags themselves were wearing groucho masks and we're like had signs on the bags that we're saying Hillary's personal burn do not open very secret yes um it just might work it's crazy like a fox yeah uh yeah it's entirely possible that that would be attempted uh it's so dumb but so is the government everything we've seen so far especially that the fact that the fbi are just social media influencers now as is uh all of congress so yeah i can i can buy

that I do subscribe more to the theory that these are just not only narrative delivery vehicles and when I use the word disclosure, it's like I know that we haven't had full disclosure on all these things, but I think there are ways to just get certain narratives just back into the zeitgeist in an easy manner. And then I think they double. I agree with that. Yeah. By the way, like that's that's where I mean with my reading number two. I'm just presenting an alternative explanation that, you know, if we're going to think by cameraly and be open to many different realities all at once that's one that i think we should pay attention to because a lot of the stuff we've gotten so far has been limited hangouts yeah for sure

all the time every of the time the other way of looking at it the burn bags to me is a humiliation ritual on the bad guys uh is them saying you know because they know whoever's implicated in these things all these various scandals that have been going on for 10 years they know what was and was not left behind. And more importantly, they know where that shit was left. And they know it wasn't left in burnbags. So it's kind of funny when if you imagine this stuff all being real as the truth community believes it is, the scandals, the Seth rich scandal, right? If it is at the breath and scope and, you know, darkness that a lot of this audience believes it is, including myself, you've got to look at the burn bag thing as a humiliation on the people implicated as well

because they're sitting there going like, man, I was the one who ordered the hit on Seth, Rich, and I definitely didn't leave documents in a closet. So when you've got the Trump DOJ being like, we found these documents in a closet, what are you supposed to think when you're implicated if it's real? It feels to me like a bit of, it feels to me in the white pill reading of it, like taunting. like uh and part of that um you know part of that what we've talked about before with fifth gen warfare is this idea of getting the enemy to expend ammunition and you kind of faint and faint and faint and then all of a sudden you hit him with a cross we're waiting on the cross we've been waiting

on the cross for a long long time um but it is interesting to me and i know i'm kind of retarded with like the um the narrative trend thing and i probably draw connections that aren't there but for me it is notable that Bernie, I haven't heard shit about Bernie Sanders in five years. Nothing. Yeah, he's barely in the news. And in the last couple of weeks, he's in the news a lot, be orbiting this Democratic Socialists of America surge. So Bernie's kind of back in the zeitgeist.

Seth Rich is kind of back in the zeitgeist. We've just got some of these narratives from quite some time ago in seemingly different disparate locations are kind of coming back around. Often I get my hopes up thinking that means we're getting a convergence, but who knows. Yeah, it makes you wonder, you know, how much how much of that is just to placate stuff, like placate people because like, oh, we're finally getting the Seth Rich file soon now, guys. Like, just wait, hold on. I never really get it. So I'm hopeful. The third one I just forgot about the third sort of pattern,

or that I think makes it a pattern, is Julian Assange is kind of back in the news a little bit more. So it's kind of interesting. Julian Assange, Seth, Rich, Bernie Sanders. And you go back, you go back literally, I think, 10 years now, to the infamous Joe Rogan podcast that went ridiculously viral with Jimmy Dore talking about the Seth Rich murder And, you know, that was all about Bernie versus Hillary and it was all about the DNC.

And then Julian Assange was the one who de facto said disclosed that, yes, Seth Rich is where we got the information. And he was murdered. It's not quite how we said it. Yeah, but I mean, come on. Yeah, we had, uh, he bring with it. We had, um, oh, what's his name? Why can't think he was his name now? Mike Ben's on on only lands.

And we talked about that clip. Hmm. Do you remember that? Let me pull that up, actually. I wasn't on that episode, but I did. I think you're on this weekend. You signed up for this week. I am.

This was the worst week to sign up, but I will be there. Why was this the worst week to sign up? Because I'm doing on my normal work and blowing up my bathrooms. Oh, yeah, that's right. Crapping all over the walls and smearing fecal matter everywhere. You don't have your son or wife there to distract you. But here, yeah, here's the clip from Mike Benzone. He's on Onlylands.

This is Julian Assange. Not Mike Ben. ... significant efforts to get us into ... Mike Ben's in the bottom left corner. Oh, there he is. I didn't see them. Very significant risks. Is it 27-year-old...

By the way, there might be swear words here. I think Mike Ben swear. ...are not my... ...works for the DMC. We shot in the back, murdered just two weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington. So... That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn't it? No. There's no finding.

So that's the sort of... What are you suggesting? What are you suggesting? I'm suggesting that our sources take risks and they are... They become concerned to see things occurring like that. But was he one of your sources then? I mean... We don't comment on who are our sources.

Oh, no! That was like as obvious as it gets. I didn't... Yeah. What's the hell, man? Oh, man. You're a free man now, Julian Assange. And Jeff Rich is dead in the grave.

Solved this whole mystery right now. Just one word. Yes or no. Someone. You know what? Okay, listen. I'm not saying the CIA should do this. But if the CIA was willing to go through all that trouble,

the frame him for a fake rape bullshit and drama in jail, you know, for that, like, you know, could something be done to like, you know, be like, Hey, can we send a honey trap? Like, can we, can we, you know, get a fake USAID funded front group to offer them NGO money if he just gives an answer to this question? I mean, someone's got to hold the mic in his hand. I've never even seen anyone ask him the question. Seth, which has been dead for eight years now, Julian. That's, you can't tease.

I forgot about that. But he very directly heavily implies that. he was. Yeah. Did you see that documentary that G was going on about in Deadwood? No, I was busy like working and participating in the conference. He kept trying to get everybody to stop. He was like everyone stop and come watch this movie.

Yeah, he's like, when he first he tried to like have us recorded, was this illegal, but our computer like, they set it up so that computers weren't allowed to record it. But yeah, he at one point was like, hey, you know, this documentary's going to ask me really good. So what do you think we just cancel the afternoon panels and stream? for everybody. I was like, no. What are you talking about? We cannot do that. But yeah, he definitely was trying to get people to watch it. But I haven't seen it. I saw the timing. Again, interesting. Like we've got Julian Assange documentaries coming out about not just Bitcoin, but about this stuff, about Seth Rich, about the DNC, about the hacks, about the, about the, about the sci ops against

Julian Assange. I don't think it had anything to do about Bitcoin. Like it was just, oh, maybe that was just G then. Yeah, no, they talked about it at the Bitcoin conference and they got, they couldn't get product like they had the thing filmed and they had people like that were going to produce it or pay for the production and then they backed out of it or something because of its content and so they like crowdsourced it and got a bunch of bitcoinsers to be producers or whatever essentially bitcoiners funded the otherwise julian asage documentary yeah what was that if anybody in the chat knows what that's called i don't know what it's called ghost ghost was off in the corner of g money watching a lot of that so he might remember

what it's called oh and g money is a producer what's what i just said he paid like they whoever helped fund it got credit as a producer so uh interesting just interesting timing i don't know what it means it might mean nothing but and it could be or it could mean something and it could be limited hangout sciops and marketing for people that were getting a lot of juice from the 2017 to 2020 era conspiracy theories that woke a lot of us up uh but the white pill reading of it is I don't dismiss those patterns. Three is a pattern. Seth Rich, Bernie Sanders, Julian Assange, all in the news, all at the same time for seemingly different reasons.

I don't know. Maybe something to it. We'll see. Yeah. It is interesting. But man, with that, we have a ton of rants to go through. And I think we should probably just get into that. How do you feel about it?

Tomorrow, you're doing Story Hour, right? What movie are you doing this week? Yes. We're doing it, John. Which one? We're doing. it. You're doing it? Jaws. Nice.

1975's Jaws, guys. We're doing Jaws. We're not going to rug you. Like maybe we accidentally rugged you last week. We did Independence Day last week and Chris and I hated it. Really? Hated it so much. But what was so funny, I don't know, did Chris show this tweet on Saturday, the Randy Quaid tweet?

No, but I know what you're talking about. So we'll probably show this again tomorrow night. But for anybody who watched the Independence Day stream of Story Hour, Chris and I did not confer before that stream. And I think each of us thought we were going to accidentally ruin the show by hating the movie with post-awakening eyes. But both of us had the same reaction of saying that it was some of the most nightmarish communist or globalist propaganda and anti-American propaganda that you could imagine. And, you know, we had to be honest and talk about it. The chat was good about it and everything. but Randy Clayd, Chris sent this to us a couple days ago,

Randy Quaid on July 5th tweets the following. We made the film Independence Day patriotic by divine intervention because the producer is a woke Hillary Clinton fundraiser who is not patriotic at all. He thought he was making fun of America's spirit. Boy does he regret casting me. Up yours, Roland. He's referring to Roland Emmerich, the director of Independence Day. What is so fascinating about that, which, you know, that's amazing when Chris sent that over, is Randy Quaid is obviously the American, you know, pro-America-Rah conspiracy theorist of the movie who ends up, you know, kamikazeing himself in kind of winning the day.

But Chris and I, our thesis, yeah, our thesis in that story our episode was essentially this was a piece of demoralization, propaganda. against the American spirit, not for the American spirit. And, you know, you could argue about whether or not it worked. Then you've got Randy Quaid a couple days after the episode saying, as an actor in the movie, that the director's intent was to do that. That's crazy. And, and I think Randy makes, you know, I don't know if we quite made this point on our show, but I think Randy is right that it didn't work.

because when you say Independence Day the movie to most people in this audience, their thoughts without revisiting it are patriotic. But the intention of that movie is a demoralization and a humiliation ritual on American patriotism. So pretty based.

Yeah, I love the movie. I understand why you guys hate it. But classic movie. It's fun to watch. It makes you feel gross when you're like when the speech, the famous speech says, this is no longer an American holiday.

This is our world's independence. It's a globalist. Like, America's gone. Wait until you watch part two. Because then it's like the globalist New World Order defending the world against it. That's ridiculous. Still fun to watch that.

Are you guys going to come on and say you hate Jaws too? No, no. My whole point there was that we're not, well, I don't know if Chris did. Chris never saw Jaws until he watched it. He's never seen Jaws? He's never seen Jaws. Oh, wow. There's no way he doesn't love that movie.

I don't know. We'll see. Chris is a sly, crafty hater. Yeah, but... I don't know what he's going to hate. I don't know. He wants to send me links about the USS Indianapolis today, so, you know, we'll probably get into that. But, yeah, the shark interestation.

Yeah, I rewatched it on Monday night or Tuesday night, and it's great. The very end, the shark looks a little iffy, of course. But it's just a great movie. I think it holds up. Anyway, and then also I'm going to be joining you on Sunday for the narrative. We're going to talk about, I'm sure you are doing all your research and you're writing your thesis for Sunday night that is implied. Yeah, we're going to talk about a hypothetical scenario of devolution still being in the offing.

Something people talk about meant like often. We've talked about it, but not I think probably not as in depth as we're going to. Yeah, like what does it look like? Why? What would it look like? What would the mechanisms be? Would we be able to figure the mechanisms out like you were able to the first time around if it was still going on? And then why? Why would it be the case? I just think it's fun to kind of play out that thought experiment rather than just doing a segment of it, you know, on DPH. So for sure. Because I think Ghost was posting a clip earlier. I think it was from today, but he was posting that. clip of Trump I think he was on Air Force One saying talking about deals oh yeah always negotiating deals and so yeah ghost had posted the tweet of you know like is he saying that he took a deal or him being president the first place was a deal well he also um he said today again that he was president three times they rigged the 20 20 election that's cool clip are you pulling

up the clip I was going to, but then I forgot because I distracted myself. I'll sit here and wait. No rush. I hate when like sometimes the auto fill works and knows exactly what you're looking for. And then other times it's like type in everything you're looking for in the exact order you're looking for it. Still waiting. Here it is.

I got it. Never dealt me. And then you should also get the boosts up. It's a minor cash for some reason. I know there's a new one, but I can't see it. But they'll resume after we get through the funeral proceedings. What? Does this mean that talks with Iran will not resume?

I don't care. They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. They're a bunch of lying guys. My whole life, that's all I do is deals. My whole life is, that's how I became president, I guess. That's a deal too, right? But I made a lot of money. I had a lot of great success.

They have tremendous success. Everything I did, I was successful. And I deal with these guys and I say this is from a different school. They're liars. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Been saying for years, the Trump aside is usually where you get the signal. And his little in between thought there, it was notable. Don't know what he means by it, but.

Maybe we'll find out. Who did he make that deal with? All right. somebody sent in a suggestion for a outro clip can you find a better link for that black hat destroyer and I'd happily play it did you want to read the boost

1027 j s that one yes sent over a 20 with a thanks period thank you Joe my fellow North Dakotaan that's her for the boost awesome we did get a

and I said this on a few shows but over the weekend we got a thousand dollar badlands boost from an anonymous person for the whole company saying happy july fourth so whoever you are you know i'm assuming you watch all of my shows so i've already said thank you but just just in case i want to say thank you again we truly appreciate you and the sport and everybody who tested the rant feature on rumble to make sure it was working and uh worked for some people tv to see if it worked for everybody but let's go through a few of these let me show my screen

quick all right Snowcat operator gifted a sub thank you so much Snowcat good to see you man Fat Chance with the BTF test

read that one earlier Thank you again R Scriv How about brilliant cub Cubby bright Not just not burning cub Thank you so much Artie Joan left a test

Appreciate it Artcy Joan And thanks again for the cat painting Keith O'Higgins says Tickles Hammer Guy 35 My rant doesn't work. It's busted. We're going to try again. Just keep on trying.

Keep trying until it works. Sal Bish, challenge accepted. Thank you so much. Tattoo teacher. Good to see you, tattoo teacher. Good evening friends. Thank you so much. Rebel Nader says, I'm okay. I'll fall for it. Thank you. Rebel Nader. Got him for her. EC was here. I interviewed with Doge back in October. Couldn't relocate, so I turned it down interesting if I think I remember you tell me about that maybe you didn't we should think we should have talked in Deadwood he made the best

Stalin bread have you have you did he give you some of his style yes yes actually he did so good that is excellent stuff I don't even understand what it is but I'll eat it it's so good I think everybody should I mean I want him to be a sponsor with a stolen bread so good I would sell that stuff um hand deliberate wrapped in tin oil to each prospective customer. Yes. And probably not quite that. But come to a guard maybe.

But thank you. EC was here. Good to see you, man. Iowa Farm Girl in Pennsylvania says, love you, fellas. Thank you for all you do. Thank you so much for that rant.

Hiro's 5326. Dang, my ranter is dead. Look at these suckers. Fell right into the trap, man. But they're not suckers. We love them. They meant to support us. You know, it's not a trap.

But no, there are people. We have gotten so many people that have told us that there's some issue with processing payments. Like so it is a real issue. We have to test it every week. It's just, you know. Funky Pam says rant test. Thank you so much. Hopeful theorist. Don't say I never did nothing for you. I hit the thumbs up too.

Yes, that's another thing. Don't forget to hit the thumbs up. Also, our YouTube was supposed to be live by today. But apparently it's seven full days, not like seven. because we were banned on a Wednesday we were banned through all of this Wednesday too it'll be back up tomorrow

or other who was that who was it was Ash ghost who was that and goes Ash and Ghost where they just basically play an entire episode of the choice and talk about they play the whole episode of everything yeah that's a ghost thing usually well I mean you guys do that on story hour too but it was kind of our mistake too because

we we should have known but it's okay yeah we needed to keep our humble over on YouTube and got a strike but we'll be back with a vengeance hopeful theorist says don't say or I heard that one um Sheltie mom 0122 says my turn thank you so much Marguerite Carlin god bless badlandia and god bless you too thank you for the rant hammer guy 35 a rant for miss Ria freedom fighter because hers is broken Miss Rea freedom fighter is that true is yours broken test test it out I may have that earlier if some I got a couple screenshots of people saying theirs wasn't

working so I'll let you know what Rumble says about it but if there's anybody else now's your opportunity to let me know that it's not working clear cat 367 challenge met five dollars for me and five dollars from Pete thank you John and BB thank you Claire cat and Pete is great seeing you and dead wide I just wish fixing things and troubleshooting them was was the way it was with regular Nintendo take it out blow on it and slam it in harder but yeah Or sometimes you do the rapid press down, then you get the different colors on the screen. Oh, yeah, that could work.

Just keep doing that. Plug and unplug. Yep. Many different tricks. But yeah, with an N64, now that I have one again, that's like my fix. And so I'm surprised I haven't like stabbed the game through the system sometimes. Because you just like take a blow on it and like wham it in. It's just the harder you wham it in, the higher your chance of fixing it.

They sciopped us into thinking that the technology was more reliable at that time. because you can just like beat the shit out of those systems but the sciop is that they came broken like i have never been to somebody's house playing an nes that works correctly yeah well they i don't know if they ever did dude the n64s like how old is that system and i got a you was the goat i bought a used one yeah and it still works like the hard part is finding the tea like the higher more advance that your TV is, the lower the resolution the game is. It looks bad. It looks bad.

Like you need a shit TV to play. We need to get one of those big butt TVs for the next guard. Yeah, for sure. Cairo's $5.326 says for $5 in honor of Miss Bright. Thanks. That's what you're going to say? That's your wife. Yeah.

My son did spill an entire glass of wine on her on the plane, but. She's drinking while drinking with a toddler. Or was the toddler drinking? Wow. I don't know. I don't have the video. Aob 22. This is doing my part.

848. Thank you, by the way. 848-18-825. I hope that's not like your phone number or something. It says testy. Social security number maybe. No, it's not enough numbers. It's one number short.

That's true. Maybe it's most of the social security number. Salish, they're going to be up all night reading these test rants. No, I would stay up all night to read test rants. For the people. I think, yeah. Texas Jules for $10 says, here's $5 for every year. It took Chris to finally get his boomerang.

Thank you, C.C. If only John, I'd met you sooner. Amen to that. But as I said in the chat earlier, had I known I was getting $5 for every year, I kept that thing from Chris, it would still be in my closet. They'd probably never see it. So you're lucky. I didn't know about that wager.

Snowcat operator, testing, testing. EC was here, reads the Badlands brief every morning at 9 a.m. Eastern. I was not aware of that. Where did you read it? Some of your link, EC. Maybe I was aware of that. And the brief itself is at badlands.substack.com. My self-fashioned ghost five days a week.

And then on Saturday morning, the Blitz airs, which is a one-hour sprint, which is shocking for the three of us. but we do do it in about an hour. You said do-do, so that's funny. We do do it. Cairo's 5326 says snowcat operator. Please give the lovely Leah a kiss and a scitch behind your ears. I'm not sure what a scitch is. It's like a little scratch.

A little scitchy scratch. Leah loves it, yep. Nice. Texas Jules gifted five subscriptions as well. Thank you so much. who got shamed into not already getting subscribers let's shame that lulu wasn't a subscriber gweenby wasn't a subscriber jill strickland scarfinger and diane brodiem thank you jules for shaming the non-subs

in our midst lurking around i'm waiting for the day that one of our stalkers gets a yeah i was just thinking that because you know what happened over the weekend i don't know if did i mention this on a i think i mentioned on basic conspiracy or at least my show but one of our people that's like long time hater fraud liar part of the lawsuit stuff against part of the ops against us a bunch of accusations he's the one who sent me threatening text

messages trying to sue me told me to rumble all sorts of BS during the Saturday stream of covering the July 4th stuff the Trump freedom 250 things all of a sudden this account pops up and tries to raid the chat over to a different show

he just so happened to be live at the time and he was watching our channel and accidentally typed the raid feature into the wrong chat. Just kind of proving that they watch everything we do. It's so funny. You can't quit us. You

fell off the wagon again. You meth-addled tapwater goblin. Anyway, Lynn Yoda says, was the Medicare fraud included in Doge? We found a bunch of fraud in Obamacare, lots of fake enrollees. Who paid those premiums, us, I guess?

where do those numbers get included? That's a good question. I don't know what was included in Doge. I don't know who's opposite anyway. You never know. Right. But thank you for the $20. Keith Higgins, Trump last mentioned Doge right when they attacked big balls in D.C.

Then they started torching Teslas and Trump pivoted from his big balls to his big ball rooms. I like that. Tamarack Flats tipped via the Rumble wallet. He's so much for that. Tamarck Flats. Good to see him, my man. By the way, I got one of his, he gave me one of his zip-up hoodie things when we were in Deadwood. And it might be the best fitting zip-up putty I've ever gotten.

And most of the things don't fit me well. Like, even the badlands zip-up hoodies, they like, they're belly shirts for me. But this thing is perfect. Love it. Anyway, I have a weird, I've talked about this before. I have a weird, like, long torso and shirts don't fit me well. Little calves. No, my calves are great.

Thank you. Thank you for being so obsessed with my calves. Principal Enigma says, Burning Bright, are you a content creator on Rumble? I have a Rumble channel, but I have never once posted to it. I've told them in the past, he should. He started doing his own show, get some words out, so he hasn't hog the mic so much on the show. But he hasn't done it yet.

Principal Nidgnavigna against is, I believe President Erdogan is a functional sociopath, kind of like Bill Gates, only much more cold harder to calculate and keep your enemies closest. Maybe. I think he's actually pretty based. It might be. He just triggered ghost.

Oh. Badlands Media fan. The creator sponsor tab kind of blocks the text box for writing a rant, or is that just mean? That might be just be, but you can also. We've got to test it. Minimize it. Keith O'Higgins, that guy who set himself on fire in front of Wall Street last week was a

burny bro. Do you think the FBI recycles is the burn bags they don't use? I think the Matthew Crook's files will be in there. Maybe. Maybe. Black Hat to Scroyer gifted five subs and oh my gosh look it oh my goodness build up the suspense build up the suspense let's go in order and 5k w was not to subscribe Kathy Amadon Grayson Grit 17 Yoma 63 and Tamarai funds but see I can't even

be too hard on them because he gives the the the rubble wall a quite a bit and he's a sponsor so he's like he's sponsoring quite a bit what kind of game will we play in Tamaraki That is an interesting one. Texas Jules says, this is for my cis whiskey girl who can't send a rat no matter how hard she's trying. Love you, girlie. We love her too.

And missed her, miss both of you at Deadwood. He's rant laundering through Texas Jules. Yeah. And then finally we got Blackett Destroyer. Well, it's the same link. Basically cannot get a better link. It's mainly I just don't like the shorts version of these links. This is the Kobayashimaru?

I think so. It's not like 30. It's like a couple of minutes. Yeah, it's more so just I wanted a non-shorts version. Yeah. It shows up so weird. I don't know how to like make it bigger. I guess that is what she said.

So I'm going to say about it YouTube now. Thank you, everybody. Make sure you hit that thumbs up. And yeah, with that, I'll be back on tomorrow for the Daily Herald at 1 p.m. Eastern here on Badlands and Bernie Bright will be back tomorrow. Four days in a row. Thursday, five days in a row, including tonight. Thursday night story hour, Jaws, Chris and I.

Friday night only lands. Saturday the Blitz on substack. Sunday night, the narrative with the Heraldian dialectic. Cool. Do you know how many days in a row I stream? No. That's messed up. It's messed up, man.

It's pretty much every day in a row. if I get a gaming stream in. Sometimes I take Sundays off. Sometimes. Not this Sunday. Not this Sunday. Yeah.

This looks like every day. Anyway, thank you everybody for tuning in. We're going to get out of here with the Black Hat Destroyer link of the Kobayashi Maru. You guys have a great rest of your hump day. Be sure to hump somebody. And we'll see you tomorrow. The Kobayashi Maru, sir. Are you asking me if we're playing out that scenario now?

On the test, sir. Will you tell me what you did? I would really like to know. Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario. How? Get a push-up to sea. What is this? What's going on?

Hmm. Armed photons, prepared to fire on the Klingon Warburts. Yes, sir. Jim, their shields are still up. Are they? No, they're not. He cheated. I changed the conditions of the test.

Got a commendation for original thinking. I don't like to lose. Then you never faced that situation. Face death. I don't believe in the no-win scenario. Correct to spark. It's two hours. Are you ready?

Right on schedule, Admiral. Just give us your coordinates and we'll beam your board. All right. What's on your mind, Lieutenant? The Kobayashi Maru, sir. Are you asking me if a plan...