Badlands Media - Geopolitics with Ghost Ep 91: Strategic Signals and the Global Power Game - 3/10/26

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

On March 10, 2026, Ghost examines the latest developments shaping the global geopolitical landscape, focusing on how military actions, political messaging, and media narratives intersect in moments of rising international tension. The episode explores the strategic implications behind recent moves by world leaders and how public statements, diplomatic signals, and military positioning can influence global perception and decision making. Ghost walks through how these developments fit into a broader pattern of power competition, emphasizing the importance of questioning first reports, evaluating motives behind public messaging, and understanding how narratives can shape the public’s interpretation of unfolding events. The discussion highlights how strategic communication and perception management have become essential components of modern geopolitics. Throughout the episode, Ghost encourages listeners to think critically about the difference between what is reported and what may be strategically communicated, reminding the audience that in international politics, signals and narratives often carry as much weight as actions themselves.

out of the Badlands. Explain those Badlands. That's a hell of a name. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Geopolitic Ghost. I'm your host, Gordon McCormick. The Ghost of Base Patrick Henry. This is Badlands Media. Today is March 10, 2006. Welcome to the show. And really was planning on starting with shield of the Americas and I still think we're going to but there's just new developments with the Iran thing that hard to ignore hard to ignore uh yeah this is uh but not surprising I'm not surprised by any of it not surprised by what we are sorry my camera got to use the computer camera right now until I can get a new one um not surprised at all about what the developments are and let's just go ahead and

I'll share this one clip that I'm seeing here and then we'll pivot to School of the Americas because that's just been, I think, completely evershadowed by the Iran situation. And I see that there's Caroline Levitt's doing a press briefing right now, so maybe something will come out of that. But we'll see. So this is Senator Richard Blumenthal, Dinging Dick is his name, right? Isn't he the guy who pretended to be like stolen valor from Vietnam, if I'm not mistaken? This is also the guy, by the way, who went with John McCain and Lindsey Graham

to create ISIS in Libya 15 years ago. So, there's that. That was all documented by CNN, by the way. Let's listen to what this moron has to say. I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing

in my 15 years in the Senate. I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war. My questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers. because the American people deserve to know. And I guess I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran.

We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here. objectives here. And there is also as disturbingly as anything else the specter of active Russian aid to Iran putting in danger American lives. Literally, Russia seems to be aiding our enemy, actively and intensively with intelligence and perhaps with other means. And China also may be assisting Iran. So the American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform, and the

potential for further escalation and widening of this war, a war of choice made by this president, chosen by the American people with potentially huge consequences to American lives. Very interesting. I just watched that for the first time with Yogg because I literally just saw it as we were going live. This is interesting because the narrative is escalating in a way that is incongruent with what you would expect from the peacemaker president, President Trump. And it raises a lot of questions. I'm not concerned about Trump starting a ground war in Iran for serious, like seriously going and doing that. I think Trump has already signaled if you know how to identify the signal in his messaging that this is that he's stepping off the rug here.

However, the forces around President Trump, which I think President Trump has been very intentional and surrounding himself. with some of these enemies. And I'm not suggesting specific people, well, in the administration are of this cloth, but I think these people are certainly in the orbit of the administration. The neocons, they certainly want this. And I think Trump has done this on purpose. I think, as I've said before,

I think he's opened up the war tent. He's let these people in. And they're now running with this as fast as they can. They're trying to drag Trump. into President Trump into this situation. And it's hard to say, are they doing this because they know it's how they will destroy his legacy? Or, you know, his presidency, his legacy, et cetera, his connection with the American people, his base. Or are they doing this because this was always their plan and they see him as a useful vehicle, a useful tool to get there?

It's probably a combination of both. I think they This is something they've always wanted to do A war with Iran And they see Trump as a useful vehicle to get that war And if in the process it destroys MAGA And ends the populist movement All the better, right?

But I do think that Trump has leaned into this I think he has allowed this to metastasize and become a fixture of his second term. And it's a brilliant move in my opinion. It's so hard for people, I think, who are of my mindset when it comes to this stuff, who view Israel as a clear and present danger and think that it is firmly in control of our government to look at this and see it as a brilliant move. But, you know, again, telling people,

that something's going to happen. Like telling people about a problem is one thing. But I think we've seen Trump do that so many times, where he's held a press conference, and he's announced problems, and they've just gone largely unignored. I mean, they've gone largely ignored because, you know, it's not right in your face,

and, you know, the media spins up narratives and subverts what Trump says is messaging. It's quite another thing is to show people. Like, this is what it is. And that's what I think he's doing here. it's an interesting little bait and switch, a little like roll reversal that we're seeing here because the Democrats are kind of forced to adopt this opposition to everything Trump does.

And so they're forced to kind of adopt this opposition to the war in Iran, although I think many of them, including this guy right here, wants the war with Iran. I think he wants the war in the middle of the conflict in the Middle East. I mean, again, this guy created ISIS. He literally went and met face to face with the leader of ISIS in Libya next to John McCain. They're photographs, videos, CNN articles, all about it. Like celebrating it as some sort of great triumph because they were presented as rebels, like the earnest rebels overthrown Gaddafi.

So it's interesting to see them assume this role of opposition. But I don't think that their hearts are aligned in the right place. I don't think they're actually saying this because they actually oppose war. They just oppose Trump and they are seeing it as a useful opportunity, really, to attack Trump. And I wonder if that's kind of the play here because, again, this thing is taking on a momentum of its own. And part of what I think is going to drag the neocons deeper into this is the opposition, at a lot of ways, the controlled opposition from the left. the more the Democrats pull on this and yank on this and say, you know, Trump's a warmonger, Trump, you know, Trump is controlled by Israel, et cetera, like whatever it is they're going to say. We've seen Gavin Newsom kind of start with that rhetoric.

The more that I think you're going to see the neocons kind of harden their position and go deeper into it because they recognize, number one, that that's kind of the game they play was that they just these two parties oppose one another. in the public narratives, but the Democrats are clearly a destroyed brand. I mean, thank you Joe Biden for that. That was the second term, a devolution term. Totally destroyed their brand. And they should never, you know, in a free and fair election, they should never win another national election ever again. But this is a really interesting development.

Now, I want to pivot away from this. We'll come back to Iran. I do want to go give some attention to the Shield of the America stuff, because I think that it is really, really interesting what is happening there. So let's do that. Okay. So we have over the weekend, Trump posted at Indoor-Al, Florida. The Shield of the Americas Summit.

It says from ABC News, President Donald Trump joined leaders from over a dozen other country Saturday morning at a shield of the America Summit in Doral, Florida, where he boasted of the United States military actions and issued warnings against Latin American adversaries. The White House claimed the coalition is committed to cooperating with the U.S. and taking on the cartels and securing the American border following the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro. Among the invited attendees were Argentinian President Javier Malay, Bolivian President Rodrigo Pasperia, Periera, I think I'm saying that right. Chilean president elect Jose Antonio Kost and Honduran president Tito Asphura.

Trump began his remarks talking about the latest developments in the U.S. Israeli war with Iran, telling the grouping of Western Hemisphere leaders that tremendous progress has been made. Quote, it's been a pretty wild time, but it's going very well. Trump said about the military action in Iran. The summit also comes as the conflict has resulted in major movements in the U.S. energy markets. Quote, we're doing something. I built the military and rebuilt it and I made it really strong. And my first administration, along with a lot of other things we did, we had a great first term. And now we're using it. Unfortunately, unfortunately, we have to. But you're seeing how great it is. The president said, President Trump repeatedly touted the U.S. military's actions during his Second term highlighting the military operation to capture Maduro and warning of imminent action in Cuba. And this is kind of the picture because I think, as I understand it, kind of the fast facts here.

I got to check in on the chat. Make sure the chat is alive. No one's complaining about muting or bad tech. Nope, I think we're good. Yeah, hit the thumbs up, guys. I'll throw the chat on the screen. So you can hang out with me. There you go.

So I think the fast facts are we have. 17 countries have joined this interesting number, joined this coalition. Let's see, 12 leaders attended personally. They named a few of them in the article. some notable absences, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Canada, Venezuela. So, yeah, and we were talking about this over the weekend when this was happening in

the balance private chat. We were kind of laughing because this is a little cartoonish. It's like a little, like this logo is a little like comic booky. Like it feels like a comic book who makes it feel a little goofy. But let's talk about what Trump is trying to accomplish here because I think that what he's actually going after is pretty significant. And there's already like, there's already a Wikipedia page dedicated to it.

All right. So really the purpose of this thing was to discuss coordinated action against the transnational organized crime, syndicates, the drug cartels, but also illegal immigration, money laundering and what U.S. officials describe as foreign, as growing foreign influence in the Western Hemisphere,

especially by China. It says the gathering formally launched of the Shield of the Americas presented by the Trump. The Trump administration has a standing mechanism for intelligence sharing joint law enforcement operations and in some cases direct military support targeting cartel leadership and infrastructure, including the joint United States and Ecuador attack on a group of FARC dissidents called Commandos de la Frontera during the Ecuadorian conflict. The event was widely viewed as an alternative forum to the repeatedly postponed ninth summit of the Americas, deliberately limited to government seen as ideologically compatible with the administration's priorities. Yeah, so it seems like some leftists probably wrote this Wikipedia page. That's fun. So here are the participants, U.S., Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Trinidad, and Tobago. So those are the attendees.

The agenda of proceedings, the three main themes dominated the closed-door sessions and public remarks strengthened counter-narcotics operations, including U.S. offers of precision strikes on high-value cartel targets, enhanced border and migration controls and measures to limit economic and political leverage exercised by China, Russia, and to a lesser extent, Iran in the hemisphere. So there you can kind of see the connection to Iran. I did think it was interesting that I did think it was interesting that Trump spent a good portion of the event talking about the Iranian, like the Middle East basically, which really has nothing to do or shouldn't have anything to do or very little to do

with this particular summit. But again, I think this all feeds into something that we're going to talk about with Lindsey Graham that whole narrative. And maybe I can just pivot to that right now. Where is, which tab is that? This one. Okay, so this is from the Wall Street Journal.

Lindsay Graham's quest to sell Trump on striking Iran. This is from March 6th. This is from four days ago. It says a few others in the president's ear argued for attack as effectively as the South Carolina senator. And so this is, you know, this is the Wall Street Journal. So it's a deep state paper. But that doesn't mean that they're always wrong when they're when they're relaying information. It's just some sometimes they relay information.

It depends. You know, they'll relay information if they think it's going to damage Trump and it's going to hurt Trump. So as Lindsey Graham tried to sell Donald Trump on bombing Iran, he liked to play a little word game association. A little word association game with the president. Quote, I say Franklin Roosevelt, what do you say? The Republican senator from South Carolina asked the correct answer, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. As he ticked through memorable presidential phrases,

Graham asked Trump what his phrase would be. Trump said he didn't know. Graham recalled, keep protesting, help is on the way. Graham suggested referring to Trump's social media post in January, urging Iranians to confront their government. A few people lobbied Trump to undertake the riskiest gambit of his presidency as effectively as the hawkish and persistent Graham, who over a decade has held a sometimes close,

sometimes tumultuous relationship with Trump. That's a notable observation there because I think that's absolutely true. That especially in the first term, there were moments where Trump and Lindsey Graham did not get along. And it continued to shock people when Trump would come out and like endorse Lindsey Graham. And he even came out and like apologized like a year or two ago,

I think it was two years ago, said, sorry about endorsing Lindsey Graham like, my bad. And then he came out and just like kept, friends of them. But again, I think he keeps Lindsey Graham around for a reason, and you're about to see it right here. Some Democrats and even Republicans point the finger at Graham, who they think go to Trump into a Middle East conflict with little plan for how the situation will play out long term. Quote, Lindsay hasn't seen a fist fight. He hasn't wanted to turn into a bombing raid, said Representative Tim Burchett. Kek. Senator Ram Paul said there should be a law passed on how

often Graham goes to the White House or golfs with Trump. Graham's effort to pull MAGA toward regime change was, quote, the quintessential political maneuvering beyond all political maneuvering, Paul said. Sitting in the Senate office this week with canisters of planters, peanuts, and hundreds of scattered papers on his desk and signed MAGA hats on his shelves, Graham was almost giddy about persuading Trump to bomb Iran. One of the newer hats read, make Iran great again, and quote, what are they going to do to me, he said, of one of his critics who oppose his efforts.

The senator said he was already talking with Trump about further military interventions into Lebanon and potentially Cuba, which he said would happen soon. He wasn't particularly concerned about what was next in Iran, he said. The day after the attack began, Graham told NBC's meet the press that the goal of the Iran operation, quote, is to change the threat, not the regime. adding that the U.S. wouldn't pick Iran's next leader. Quote, they say if you break it, you own it. I don't buy that. You break it when it's a threat, Graham said in the journal interview. In the White House, some military advisors warned Trump against the conflict,

a group that Graham referred to as the quote-unquote non-entanglement crowd. Graham said betting on Trump's second term was worth it for the president's military interventions alone. in the first term. So what that means right there, Graham said betting on Trump's second term was worth it for the president's military interventions alone. So basically he said, you can throw out all the other stuff Trump's done.

I'll take his second term just for the military interventions. Thank you very much. In the first term, Graham said, Trump probably wouldn't have bombed Iran. He didn't have as much confidence in the military and as much knowledge about how the world worked. he said, quote, second term Trump has different instincts than first term Trump, in quote, Graham said.

Other Republican presidents wouldn't have green lighted the Iran operation either, he said, something that he keeps reminding Trump of. Graham said that Trump, with the U.S. forces having captured Venezuelan strongman, Nicholas Madero, is the key section right here. Having captured Venezuelan strongman Nicholas Maduro and now bombed Iran is more inclined to undertake further interventions. quote, that's something that people don't understand how much more confident he is, in quote, Graham said. To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks,

meeting with members of the country's intelligence agency. They tell me, quote, they tell me things our own government won't tell me, in quote, he said. I want to read that again because that's like such a revelation. Like this guy, again, I think Lindsay Graham, he seems like he's just. drunk like all the time. Every time he is on camera, he seems like he's intoxicated. Maybe he's just intoxicated on his own hubris. But again, he says right here, they talking about Israel will tell me things. Our own government won't tell me. What does that mean exactly? So what that means is that things that President Trump won't tell Lindsey Graham, Netanyahu and Massab will tell Lindsey Graham.

So that right there reveals to you that President Trump doesn't fully trust Lindsey Graham because he's not telling him everything that the Israelis are telling him. And obviously Trump, I think, is putting messaging out in all different directions to different entities. Friend and foe. Lindsey Graham being one of them. Netanyahu being another one. The Muslims being, you know, a number of different entities within that subgroup. But it says right here, he referring to. Lindsey Graham spoke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu coaching him on how to lobby

the president for action. Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead Graham said. Graham also talked to the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, to make sure he was aware. Quote, I went to MBS to say, okay, I think this is going down, end quote. Like as if Lindsay Graham would be the messenger to deliver that. Like, oh, yeah, we're going to have a war with Iran, you know, as if Trump wouldn't be the one to tell NBS that. I mean, just think for a second if that were actually true. And I don't believe for a second that it is. What would that, like, what would NBS take away from that? That Trump didn't pick up the phone and call him and say, hey, I'm starting a war in the Middle East, like, heads up. Yeah, I don't believe that for a second. Lindsay Graham seems to think, though, that that he's that special. representatives from the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia didn't provide comment. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said Trump often hears from lawmakers and has a good and candid relationship with Graham. Republicans are unanimously supportive of President Trump's bold decision to launch combat operations and in the threat posed by the Iranian terrorist regime. It says, and then it goes on to explain the art. I'm not going to like subject you all to the full article, but it goes on to explain the long game of Lindsay Graham that he's. long wanted regime change in Iran but has never had a president willing to go as far as Trump, right?

In 2015, Trump famously read Graham's cell phone number on stage after Graham called him a jackass. That's a direct quote from the article. Graham sharply criticized Trump over the riot by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. Trump has remarked to AIDS about how much Graham gets booed at the president's rallies in South Carolina. and Graham has occasionally annoyed Trump with his persistence, White House officials say. Graham came back to Trump in part because he wanted to shape his foreign policy thinking against isolationist figures in MAGA. Going back to Trump before others did after January 6, he said, gave him more leverage on foreign policy. Quote, Lindsay has an interventionist mentality that is idealistic about America's role in the world, said Mark Short, a long time chief of staff to Mike Pence. quote, the president doesn't share that, but the president doesn't always share the view that America is going to stand of all foreign entanglements.

Graham is realistic about Trump. He has joked with others that the Ukrainian should build a Trump tower in Kiev that they wanted Trump to give more support to the country. On Iran, Graham likened Iran's leader to Adolf Hitler and told Trump that Iran was in a historically weak position. They talked about the regime's efforts to assassinate Trump in 2024. quote, if you think Trump forget stuff, you'd be mistaken, end quote, Graham said. And it's so funny that he says that because think about everything we just read about, you know, Trump and Graham not getting along in 2015. 2015 was a long time ago, 12 years ago. You know, remember how ugly that primary was where the Republicans are fighting toothed and

they able to keep Trump out of the race? At first, they kind of like laughed at him. But then when Trump started winning all the primary elections, they like started freaking out and panicking. That's maybe Trump is actually more effective than we thought. This goes on to explain. He reminded Trump about ripping up Obama's Iran nuclear deal. This was Trump's moment to make history. Graham argued to the president. Graham said he first brought up Iran to Trump during the presidential transition over a round of golf, telling him Iran will always be an impediment to normalizing relations in the region. For months, Graham worked at the

issue at times irritating senior White House aides. One called him an annoying crazy uncle. He kept showing up at Trump's Florida clubs. After the U.S. strikes on Iran in June, Graham said the president was sky high. Iran would continue to build more missiles and nuclear material. Graham told him as other aides, including Middle East envoy Steve Wickoff pushed talks. Graham pushed regime change. Quote, I said, they don't want to deal, he said. They're not trying to buy a house. They're trying to burn your house down. To make the case, Graham said he worked closely with two other men, retired Army General Jack Keene, a Fox News contributor, and Mark Thesson, one-time chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, the trio took turns calling the president. He said in

compared notes, Trump said there were not a lot of other voices advancing the argument for action. So think about that. Again, this contradicts some of the things that Trump has said. Because if we go, I'm sorry we're kind of jumping all over the place, but I think all of this stuff is connected, and it's important to connect these dots as we go through. So Trump, let's pull up this clip. I think Trump was speaking, was it yesterday? When he said that it was Jared Kushner, Steve Wickoff,

and I think it was Kushner, Wickoff, and Pete Heggseth. Yeah, yeah, here it is. Okay, so here's Trump speaking. yesterday. MR. The situation was very quickly approaching. The point of no return in the United States found it intolerable, in my opinion, based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco, so involved, that I

thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would – if we didn't do this, at the time we did it, I think they had in mind attack us. And the situation was very quick. very quickly. So, you know, yesterday's commentary is that it was Hegsef, Wickev, Kushner, and Marco,

Rubio, that convinced him to attack Iran. Lindsay Graham's telling a little bit of a different story that it was him, General Jack Keene and Mark Theson, a former George Bush speech writer. And just like the visual of Trump

taking calls from Mark Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter and Lindsay Graham, and like not. his head along being like, okay, okay, yeah, we can attack Iran. Yeah, I think it's actually a pretty good idea. Do you see what, do you see what Trump is doing here? He is, these people, these neocons, they live in, like, if you could picture it, they live in a castle. There's like a fortress and inside the fortress are, are the uniparty leadership. Lindsay Graham and Theson and Jack Keen and all them, yeah, sure, but inside of that is also like Netanyahu and the donor, class that controls not only the Republican Party but the Democrat Party as well. Their expectation, I think, coming into this administration was that Trump was going to come in the front door of that fortress, guns blazing to arrest or to go after them, right? And yet that's not what's happened.

Trump instead has appointed many of them to be key members of his administration. he's kind of like baited all of them into coming out of the castle coming out into the open field and now they're all kind of exposed for what they are and so now we can now we can go back to this article and we can play some of these clips here in a second but i want to go back to this article real quick um decent and keen wrote opinion pieces and went on television to secure trump's attention trump has posted these and articles online including one where he argued iranians could be the boots on the ground neither men

responded to request for comment. So they obviously don't like this fanfare. And then it goes on to explain that the next war that the U.S. will engage in will be in Lebanon, which Israel has already started that war. That's already well underway against Hezbollah. It says right here that Trump said he would think about it, Graham recalled, when talking about a war with a war with Lebanon. I just think he has seen the capability of our military, Graham said.

And a private lunch with Senators Tuesday, Graham battle over other Republicans who wanted more information about Trump's war and some who wanted to curb his authority. Trump, he argued, was doing a better job than ever before. What I don't understand is why more people don't do it, Trump, Graham said. Try to shape these events. This is a moment of world history here. Just jump in the deep end of the pool. I mean, Lindsay Graham is so, I think, high on his own hubris and his own. power, really. He can't even see that I think Trump is using him, right? Trump is using him to

advance a narrative. Whatever is actually happening in Iran. Like, we can debate that all day. Like, we can sit here and we can analyze op-cent, I'm sorry, OScent, you know, open-source intelligence information. And we can theorize and speculate. Is there actually a war happening? Is this mostly narrative? Is this a sci-op? It's a sci-act. I mean, maybe it's a mixture of the two. who knows but it's very clear that Trump is using Lindsay Graham to escalate this thing very quickly right I mean now we're talking about a war with Lebanon we're talking about a war with Cuba so clearly this is not really about Iran this is about getting the U.S. into wars that benefit the masters Netanyahu and his friends yes but there's probably others as well and if you want to throw the city

of London in there and bankers like yeah like we can we can talk about that whole diaspora. But this is where it gets interesting because look at where Lindsay Graham is here. What's interesting about this, remember, this article was from like a week ago. It was obviously this interview happened a week ago because it was published on March 6th. So at the very earliest that interview would have happened, March 6th was Friday. So at the very earliest that was on Friday. And the world and this conflict looked very different on Friday than it does today.

Lindsey Graham, his tune has changed a little bit. You'll recall that like a month ago, when this all kind of stalled out, when it looked like the war with Iran wasn't going to happen, you remember what Lindsey Graham was doing? He was running around accusing Trump of being a coward. He was like, don't be Obama. Don't be Obama 2.0 and fail to attack Iran. He was like mad at Trump that Trump wasn't following through on what he obviously had said to him privately. And from Trump's perspective, if you're thinking about why would Trump be doing it, like, do all this. Like allow Lindsey Graham into his golf club and play golf them every day. Think about if you're Trump. Like he obviously has won over Lindsay's trust. He obviously, like Lindsey Graham trusts Trump to the extent that he, because he thinks Trump is a useful tool, right?

Like a useful instrument. Every time they play golf together, Lindsay Graham is probably telling Trump all kinds of things that he is, hearing from his masters, from Netanyahu, from the Israelis, from the donor class, you know, things that maybe these people aren't willing to say to Trump's face. He's probably getting tons of valuable intel from Lindsey Graham on the deep state and like the Uniparty. And Lindsay Graham thinks that Donald Trump is on their team. So he's probably telling him everything, right? Because Trump has convinced him that he's his guy. Again, this is a Sun Tzu tactic. This is exactly what Sun Tzu says you should do. You should

cultivate spies among your enemy. That's who you should cultivate and recruit into your spy network and you should target the people. And the way you do it is not by leveraging the spies and like threatening them. The way you do it is by winning their trust and convincing them that you can give them a better deal than their current masters. Now I don't think that's exactly what's happening with

Lindsey Graham. I think Lindsay Graham thinks that Trump is on the team, the same team as Netanyahu and everyone. But this is fascinating. And so let's now look at some of these clips of Lindsay Graham. Let's see. We played some of these on Badlands Daily, but I'll just play. For those who didn't catch daily today, we'll just play a few of them. They're not very long.

Because he has been kind of like apoplectic. He seems to be kind of losing it because the Arabs refused to participate in this war. And so let's just start there. Here is him on the hand of the last night. Lamenting the fact that the Saudis, let's see, lamenting the fact that the Saudis, I actually have the clip saved. Let me pull it up, that version up because the version on X here is not the full version. We want this version. lamenting that the Saudis and the Qataris and the Europeans will not jump in and start a, and, you know, jump in and join the party against Iran. God bless you for trying. God bless you for destroying this. Spain, Macron and Great Britain, they either wake up.

This is their, this is their tipping point moment too, just like the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, you decide now. UAE decide now. Qatar, Qatar, Qatar, Qatar, Qatar, decide now. because I'm a little sick and tired of, you know, the constant threading of needles. They wanted the Iranian stop as much as the Israelis to be told. God bless Israel. All right.

We should move all our stuff to Israel. Thank you. Senator Graham, thank you. All right. We should move. We should move all of our stuff to Israel. And what he's referring to is like the military assets that we keep in country, you know, in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Britain and Spain, you know, these places that are that are a little. little timid about going to war with the fourth most powerful

powerful military in the world, especially if you're like the direct neighbor. And so then we have this message from Lindsay Graham about, you know, directed to people like me who do not think that forever, I mean, and most of MAGA, let's be honest, most of MAGA I don't think is on board with the Forever War. I think MAGA is willing to give Trump grace when comes to military operations and sciops and all of that.

But when it comes to deploying our kids to a foreign land hoots on the ground for a widespread mass deployment forever war, I think most people are going to say hell fucking no. But listen to Lindsay Graham here, his message to all of us. All the anti-Seminites, to all the isolationists, I don't believe, forget it. I'm not with you. I'm with Israel. I will be with Israel to our dying day. They're the best ally with the Ophar. So we have a commander chief in President Trump,

who I think is Ronald Reagan plus plus plus. All the anti-Seminites to all the... And just in case you're skeptical that what Lindsay Graham actually wants our boots on the ground, listen to him right here. This is him last night on Fox News. I mean, he must have been on Fox News literally all day yesterday. To our allies, step up. get our air bases out of Spain.

They're not reliable. Move all those airplanes to a country that would let us use them when we're threatened by a regime like Iran. To our friends in Spain, man, you have lost your way. I don't want to do business with you anymore. I want our air bases out of Spain into a country that will let us use them.

To our Arab friends, I've tried to help you construct a new Mideast. You need to up your game here. I can't go to South Carolina and say, we're fighting and you won't publicly fight. What you're doing behind the scenes, that has to stop. The double dealing of the Arab world when it comes to this stuff needs to in. I go back to South Carolina,

I'm asking them to send their sons and daughters over to the mid-east. What I want you to do in the mid-east to our friends and Saudi Arabia in other places, step forward and say, this is my fight too. I join America. I'm publicly involved in bringing this regime down. If you don't, you're making a great mistake,

and you're gonna cut off the ability to have a better relationship with the United States. I say this is a friend up to our eyes. Yeah, I say this as a friend. I'm going, I'm going back to South Carolina to ask them to send their sons and daughters to Iran. That's what he just said. So you see, and then I already played the clip, this was yesterday, this was last night, this was on Hannity last night. And I just played the clip of Dick Durbin, or I'm sorry, Blumenthal,

saying that they just had a closed door, whatever. briefing for Congress and they were and he said it looks like we are going to be sending boots on the ground. Now, I don't, now if we get boots on the ground, man, that's going to be a whole different, whole different animal here. But again, the rhetoric that Trump is putting out there himself doesn't suggest that at all. But it looks like that's exactly what Lindsay Graham is saying here. And the fact that he is threatening the Muslims saying, if you don't jump in here and help us fight Iran, you're going to really regret it. Do you really think, these are strong people.

Like the way the rest of the world looks at America is they kind of laugh at us because they respect President Trump because President Trump is a man of his word. He's a strong man. He's honorable. He says what he means. He means what he says. Now he does deception. He does siops. Like yes.

But for the most part, like when it comes to his policy objectives, the things he promises he's going to do as a candidate and the things he says and then the things he actually does as president, he's consistent. right these people who talk out of both sides of their mouth and um are weasels and basically go and do shady backdoor deals politicians like lindsay graham who give politicians a bad name um they're not respected at all by the by like foreign leaders because the foreign leaders see them for what they are they're puppets that are owned by their donors and so if you think that they listen to lindsay graham say stuff like this and they actually take what he's saying to heart. Outside of the fact that maybe if he's threatening them with military action, that might actually happen because, you know,

we do have a history of invading countries for little to no reason. And I'm not talking about Trump. I'm talking about the Bush era, et cetera. Yeah, like I don't think these people respect Lindsay Graham at all. And as I said on Balins Daily, I've studied the Saudis enough. and I think probably the Arab monarchies in general, but certainly the Saudi royal family, they don't like to negotiate in public.

They don't like to handle their business in public. They don't like to air out their dirty laundry. They like to keep things behind closed doors. They like to keep their business in house. They like to play things close to the chest. And so Lindsay Graham going on television and basically like trying to woo them like on Fox News, that's not an effective, in my opinion, that's not an effective way to win their support.

I think really what he's doing is he's trying to humiliate them into capitulating by challenging their honor, challenging their bravery, challenging their courage, challenging their dignity. That's what I think he's in his own mind. That's what he's doing. I don't think that's going to work out well for him because I don't see Saudi Arabia responding to that positively. I think Saudi Arabia is going to respond to that actually very negatively. And then I'll play this, I'm not not play this, but I'll read this post that he put up that emphasizes that. And that post is somewhere around here.

Hold up, let me pull up. Yeah, not that one. Sorry about this guys. Man, I have way too many, way too many posts. Tabs open, rather. Let me just pull up Lindsay Graham's because I know Lindsay Graham had it posted. And so he posted targeting the Saudis and said, so here's another clip of him. To our allies, if you can't join this fight, what fight are you going to join?

To Spain, you won't let us use our air bases in your country to stop a homicidal regime from getting nuclear weapons that terrorized the world. I am encouraging President Donald J. Trump tonight to move all of our bases out of Spain. to our allies if you can't remember like the big problem that maga originally had with like the bush administration was that the bush administration were neocons like war mongering neocons who wanted to use other countries to invade the world and basically be the world police and so when these countries are now saying you know what we don't want you to use our soil or our airspace to launch wars against other countries because we don't want to be held responsible we don't want to catch the flack we don't want to be caught up in the crossfire.

No thanks, but no thanks. And basically, Lindsey Graham is saying, if you aren't going to do this, then you're going to suffer personal consequences, like bullying them. Here is the post I was looking for. It says, the American embassy is being evacuated in Riyadh

because of sustained attacks by Iran against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is my understanding. The kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to in the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed seven Americans. Question, why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the kingdom of Saudi Arabia

that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest? Americans are dying and the U.S. is spending billions to dislodge the terrorist Iranian regime that threatens the region. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia seems to be issuing statements and doing things in the background that are marginally helpful, but unwilling to participate in military operations to end the reign of terror coming out of Iran. hopefully golf cooperation council countries will get more involved as this fight is in their backyard. If you are not willing to use your military now, when are you willing to use it?

Hopefully this changes soon. If not, consequences will follow. And he, this is funny. Readers added context they thought might be helpful. And this is written in Arabic it appears. Let's see what the, okay. So anti-rumor authority claims that Saudi Arabia. refuses to use military forces are misleading since March 1st Saudi defenses have intercepted

dozens of Iranian drones and missiles targeting Riyadh. The kingdom prioritizes defending its territory and working to stabilize global energy markets. Yeah, and that's consistent with what everything MBS has said since October 7th. And that whole thing took off. And then Lindsey Graham is citing this article from the New York Times, State Department said to order diplomats to leave in Saudi Arabia to leave. And so this is an order. this is not like a suggestion or approval. They are ordering U.S. diplomats non-essential personnel to leave Saudi Arabia immediately.

And there are also reports of a CIA base in Riyadh being attacked, which raises a lot of questions. Where, right here, from Fox News. A Fox News alert. An official source has confirmed that a suspected Iranian drone has hit a CIA station in Saudi Arabia's capital. Jennifer Griffin is live in Washington.

Jennifer, what do we know? Well, Jessica, we've confirmed with an official source that, in fact, it was an Iranian drone that struck the station, the CIA station in Riyadh. It was part of that U.S. Embassy compound, part of that drone strike last night that led to damage at the embassy. This is certainly a symbolic victory for the IRGC. Nobody was injured. Nobody was at the embassy at the time. The Washington Post was the first to report on the incident and that it was, in fact, the CIA station that was targeted and hit. But what this indicates is that drones, the Iranian drones are going to be a big problem. They can take out the missile launchers and even the missile stockpiles, but they have thousands, if not tens of thousands of these drones and anyone can put them in the back of a truck and fire them. These are really the new suicide. side bombs of the next phase in the Middle East and they're going to be a problem for some time.

Okay, so let's just review what we just learned. And again, the reports are actually that the CIA station that was blown up was attached to the State Department embassy. So the question that a lot of people are asking is, wait a minute, why does the embassy have a CIA station attached to it? I think a lot of us know that should understand the answer to that. But what's hilarious is the first, the first to report on it is who? The Washington Post, because the Washington Post, of course, is a CIA mouthpiece. That's pretty hilarious. Again, is anybody, and so this guy, John Hudson, I guess is the one who reported it. He's the Washington Post reporter. I cover diplomacy and national security for Washington Post. He says, in my defense, I also broke the news today, the CIA spy hub, in Riyadh was hit by drones a little more weighty than the Huckabee story. This is him reporting this. This is March 3rd.

This is a week ago. I suspected Iranian drone hit the CIA station in Saudi Arabia and what would amount to a significant symbolic victory for the Islamic Republic as it lashes out at U.S. targets and personnel across the Middle East. sources tell this guy. The U.S. and Saudi governments confirm that the two drones hit a U.S. embassy complex in Riyadh on Monday but did not disclose that America's spy hub was hit in the attack. An internal State Department alert obtained by the post said that the attack collapsed part of the embassy's roof and contaminated the inside with smoke. The notice said the embassy sustained structural damage and personnel continue to shelter in place.

While the attack amounts to a minor setback to the spy agency's presence in Saudi Arabia, it may find significance to an embattled regime that has long viewed the CIA as its ultimate foe, given Washington's covert support for the 1953 military coup that ousted Iran's elected prime minister. And then here's the Washington Post article that actually talks about this. CIA station in Saudi capital hit in a drone attack. Again, like, if you're of Saudi Arabia, are you really shedding any tears over the CIA getting bombed in Riyadh?

I'm not. I mean, as an American, are you shedding any tears for the CIA getting bombed in Riyadh? No. like I'm sorry is the CIA running illegal psychological warfare operations against the American people

according to President Trump they are so hey Iran thanks like this seems a pretty it seems like a win-win

for me I mean so you're telling me that we got in a war with Iran Iran is shooting missiles and drones at the CIA chasing them out of their buildings in the Middle East

I don't really know if I see the problem here again the same agency that is running illegal psychological warfare operations against the American people. And now the Iranians are the ones who are actually taking up kinetic action against them. That's interesting. Yeah. So we'll see what happens there.

But where I want to go now and then we'll take a break is this clip. Because you'll recall that back in that first art. article from the Wall Street Journal that I read, it noted how Lindsay, or Lindsey Graham was bragging about how he was coaching Netanyahu on how to convince Trump to attack Iran. He was basically like giving Netanyahu the intel. Again, a sitting U.S. senator advising a foreign leader on how to persuade the president to start a war. a war of choice, which is, I mean, it's unprovoked, right? It's not like Iran attacked us first. How is this not like a serious scandal? And to that point, even Fox News kind of recognizes

the problem here. Listen to this. I ask about what the Wall Street Journal is reporting about your colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham. The journal is saying that Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks to help make the case on Iran, meeting with members of the country's intelligence agency, spoke with Netanyahu coaching him on how to lobby President Trump for action. Graham said that Netanyahu showed the president intel that persuaded President Trump to go ahead. Senator, I know you all talk to foreign leaders, and that happens routinely. But speaking to a foreign leader on the precipice of war and seeming to be lobbying or being an intermediary,

which this seems to indicate, is that the right way to go? Well, listen, Lindsay is passionate about defending America, and he is on the road a lot. He's talking to world leaders all over the world. There are times when I agree with Lindsay. There are times when I don't. But when it comes to the threat... Well, what about this? What about this?

I mean, this is something of a totally different level, is it not? No, actually, when it comes to the threat Iran poses, Lindsay agrees they pose a major threat to America. And I agree they pose a major threat to America. Look, Lindsay and I disagreed on the Iraq war. He thought the Iraq war was a good idea. I thought the Iraq war was a mistake. I think Iran is fundamentally different because Saddam Hussein was not murdering Americans

on the scale and level that Iran has been doing. Saddam Hussein was not funding Hamas and Hezbollah killing Americans. And President Trump acted boldly to take out a regime that had been killing Americans over and over. But we're not disagreeing on that. Yeah. I'm not disagree with that.

Our point is working with Netanyahu so closely to lobby President Trump acting as an intermediary for a foreign country. Is that appropriate? That was my simple question. I'm not trying to be difficult here, but that's slightly unusual, is it not? I agree with you on the other points. I don't think it's a fair characterization that Lindsay is an intermediary for Israel. And a lot of the critics say, say, oh, the war is all about Israel. Understand, it's not about Israel. It is about America. The reason President Trump acted is to defend America. There's a reason the Ayatollah referred to Israel as the little Satan, and America is the great Satan. I believe if the Ayatollah got a nuclear weapon, he would use it. Laura, if the Ayatollah could kill you and me right now, he would. And that's why President Trump acted. And so I get frustrated with all the people who say, oh, this is all for Israel. No, it's not. This is for America. This is Donald Trump being the commander and chief of the United States of America and protecting us. And you started your monologue by saying, this was not going to be a protracted land battle with troops there for a long time. You're absolutely right. That is not going to happen. But the president is acting decisively to take out real threats to the lives and safety of Americans.

Now hold on. Hold on there, Ted. Hold on. Hold on. You say that. You say that. It's not going to be a land battle. It's not going to be ground. We're not going to get ground war. We're not going to get troops on the ground. Are you willing to stick to that? Are you willing to stick to that? Because it kind of sounds like that's exactly where you are pivoting today. And we'll get there.

We'll get there in a minute. But let's go back. We're going to reset. We're going to go back to the Shield of the Americas because I do want to talk about the geography here, do a quick geography lesson. But before we do, let's get a word from our friends. So we will be back here in a minute.

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Today is March 10th, 2006. Yeah, so I want to jump back to the Shield of the Americas and talk about the geography here, because I think this is really interesting what Trump is doing. And I think I have a clip here of Trump talking about this. Yeah, here it is. Ken. But on this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition

to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region. And you have a lot of it. One of the things, when we were talking backstage, you tell me the crime, the cartels. and we're knocking the hell out of them where we can. We're going to go heavier. So what we were doing with the boats coming in, the boats, there's not a lot of people coming in by boats anymore. We knocked down drugs coming in by sea,

drugs coming in through water is down 96%. We're trying to find out who the other 4% are, because I think they're the bravest people in the world. Either that, or they don't watch television, right? They're either very brave, They're now watching. But we're calling this military partnership the America's counter cartel coalition. And that's what you need.

You have cartels. They seem to grow in this region unbelievably, rapidly. It has to do with drugs largely. Earlier this week here in Miami, Secretary of War, Pete Hexas, who's right here. Pete, you're fantastic. Doing a great job. We're proud of you. And representatives of 17 different nations formerly entered.

This new alliance, the heart of our agreement is a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks. Once in front, we'll get rid of them. Okay. So there you have it. This should all sound very familiar if you have watched, listen to the show for any period of time because this is exactly what Gustavo Petro. for a very long time, but specifically right after he met with President Trump on February 3rd at the White House and then walked out and gave a press conference at Georgetown University where he said this is exactly what he proposed to Trump was a joint military operation that was a shared intelligence endeavor. Ultimately, a law enforcement slash military joint operation. He also said he emphasized that it's not good enough to go after the guys in the fatigues carrying rifles in the jungle. You got to go after the guys laundering the money.

You got to go after the financiers. You got to go after the bankers. And that is specifically with President Trump. I mean, President Trump pretty much got up there and just read Gustavo Petro's speech, like his statements that he's made in the past. So I think it's fair to say that this is the brainchild of Gustavo Petro. I mean, at least from like a narrative standpoint, like public standpoint. And actually, if you recall, Gustavo Petro credited Nicholas Maduro with originally coming up with this idea. So this is Nicholas Maduro's idea, a joint military operation against the cartels, like transnational joint operation.

And now President Trump is bringing Nicholas Maduro's idea to life, right? and I think that's important because it kind of speak you know a week from today Nicholas Maduro is going to be in court in New York City at his I think I guess that's his arraignment but we'll maybe get more information about that situation then so now let's look at the actual geography here because if we're just talking about the Caribbean Sea like we can talk about South America all day that's a whole separate continent but let's just talk about the Caribbean because the Caribbean um is a geography that we should 1,000% control right and it's a it's a fascinating like the more I was thinking I was thinking about this the other

day and I'm just sitting here looking at it and I'm like you know the geography here just makes all the sense in the world if you look at and it's important to understand that trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of gold and silver have moved through these waters over the past 500 years. Coming out of Mexico, that's where the gold came out of. The Spanish took it out of Mexico. And then the silver originally came out of Peru,

but was shipped to Panama, walked across the mountains of Panama, and then shipped from Panama to Spain. But if you look at, like, how does this, like what is the geography said? Because geography, I think, we're big fans of geography here on the show. And what is the geography dictate?

Let me see if I can make this a little. bigger. Boom. All right. There we go. I think that's the biggest I can make it. But anyway, there we go.

All right. So you have the add another layer there. And paint. Okay. So we have the U.S. coast up here.

Right? There's the U.S. coast. You have the Colombian coast here and then you have the Venezuelan coast we'll just make it a different color the Venezuelan coast here that the and then Mexico of course let's go ahead and put Mexico in there I mean between those four countries that pretty much frames in the the two bodies of water that make up what we consider the Caribbean right the the the Gulf of the

of America being one body up here and then the Caribbean Sea being the other. Now, you know, you can add some more, we can add some more here and we'll just, we won't get to make this map too complicated, but blue is not going to show up well. So maybe we'll do like a light pink. You know, you have Honduras and Nicaragua will kind of add them as one. Costa Rica and Panama will kind of add them. So those four countries kind of make up another framework. And then over here, you have the Antilles, which are an island chain that run kind of like that circum that that like a contour and create this contour right here. And I threw a second map in here so you can kind of start to see some of these island names, right? But you can really see it's hard. I apologize,

it's hard to see the islands on this map that I, because of the resolution. But if I go over to this tab, maybe maybe if I change the terrain a little bit. Let me see if, or is that going to break it? That's actually a little better. Actually, that might even make it easier to see. So you can really see because of the topography. You can see how this thing works. Really, you have the Antilles, Cuba, this giant island, half of which is Haiti,

half of which is Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico. But it's really Cuba that splits this thing in half. Cuba and the Yucatan, which is this big peninsula here on Mexico side. But the Caribbean is really the big body of water here because the Gulf of America is us, right? It's us in Mexico. The Caribbean is this coalition of all these countries that Trump brought into this joint military operation. This is where all the boats move around, right, and bring the drugs because if they can get the drugs to the island chain, they can then move all around these islands and get it up here to the Bahamas and then bring it into. Florida, right? That's basically how they get the drugs in. It's easy enough for us to police the Gulf of America. It's really the Caribbean Sea that's a challenge. And remember, like Pirates of the Caribbean, this is why the Pirates of the Caribbean were a thing is because navigating these islands and policing these islands is impossible. It was an impossible task for Britain, which was the most powerful Navy in world history. They couldn't even do it. Or the Spanish, rather, the Spanish couldn't police it. So the

British came in and turned their sea captains into pirates. And, you know, and then once the British became the big superpower in the 18th century, they couldn't police the islands either because the pirates, you know, became a problem for them. So controlling this entire body of, this giant body of water, which is a very large body of water, relatively speaking. It's not as big as the Pacific or the Atlantic, but it's a big body of water. And if you're talking about the amount of drugs that are coming through here, but also other things too, human trafficking, right, guns, et cetera. Controlling this is critical. And the big element, I think, in controlling this, aside from Mexico, is obviously Columbia slash Venezuela, right? But also, because I think,

I think this Central American strip of countries, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. of Panama. I think those places are probably participating less in the maritime trade of drugs. That's probably the land routes, right? And the land routes, of course, have to go through Mexico to reach our southern borders. So at that point, the choke point is just Mexico. You don't need to screw around with all these countries. As long as you control Mexico, you can keep the cartels out. But obviously, controlling Mexico, that's a big, tall order. And that's where a lot of the, military operations are happening right now. But if you go back to the water and you look at the water, the two big islands that you really need to control are Cuba. And I'm sorry, I don't think I was sharing the right map. So here's the right map. And the Dominican Republic slash Haiti. And remember what Gustavo Petro said. Gustavo Petro said that when the drug cartels got chased out of South America by him, where did they go? They went to Haiti. So they all relocated to, to Haiti and they basically used all their funds to overthrow Haiti and turn it into a big,

you know, like a lawless Pirates Cove, basically. And he said that's actually why Haiti collapsed during the Biden administration was he came in. He kicked them all out of South America. A lot of them went to Ecuador to grow the cocaine, but a lot of like the base of operations for the maritime trade moved to Haiti and they're operating out of Haiti now. So controlling these two islands, Cuba and Haiti slash the deal, The DR, the DR, the Dominican Republic is critical. Now, I can tell you, I've spent some time in Dominican Republic, extremely Catholic country, very Catholic country. I was actually blown away when I went there and I've been there multiple times.

I actually got married there. Very, very Catholic country, very religious, like good, decent people. And they have a zero tolerance for drugs. Like if you get caught there, I think with weed, like you get thrown in jail. Like they have a zero tolerance for drugs. And one of the reasons that they're so hardcore is because of the border they share with Haiti. And, you know, all the Uber and taxi drivers have told me, told me over the years, this was 10 years ago, that you know where Haiti is. Like, because when you drive across, and I've driven across the country a few times, it's a beautiful country.

Like, it's tropical. It's like palm trees and a beautiful place, very lush, very green, you know, farms, every country. everywhere. But they say, I didn't go as far west as Haiti, but they say you know where Haiti is, because as soon as you get to Haiti, the trees are all dead. It basically turns from like this lush tropical place to a barren wasteland where all the trees have been cut down by like timber companies. And the place is just like a, it's like the difference between heaven and hell, the way they describe it is like Haiti is just looks like a hellscape. So getting the DR, the DR on board, the Dominican Republic on board,

probably isn't a tall order. That's probably relatively easy. But Cuba, I think, actually becomes a way more important element in this than the, Dominican Republic. Because, again, if we go back to the map and you look at Haiti, look at what we have here. We got Cuba, right? You have Guantanamo Bay right there across the water from, I mean, so you already have a US military, like the U.S. Navy presence right there across the water from Haiti. And so you got to

think that between the U.S. Navy operating out of Guantanamo Bay, if we're able to actually partner with Cuba and make Cuba into a real partnership, which is going to require bringing the Castro family. And as we discussed on the show, that's what Trump and Marco Rubio have been negotiating is getting the Castro family on board. That, I think, provides a pretty good little pinch point. between that and the Dominican Republic and taking on whatever element has materialized in Haiti. So Huba, it seems to me, is kind of a really important piece in bringing this entire hemisphere under control.

And remember, vacation, like tourism, this entire area is very, very, like the economy here is basically driven by tourism. I mean, you have Jamaica just to the south of Cuba. You have the Cayman Islands, which is tourism and banking. I mean, banking is there like the, you know, the Switzerland of the Western Hemisphere. You have Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory, right on the other side across the water from Punta Cana. To Canada is like the Las Vegas of the Caribbean.

And then the Bahamas, of course, like Turks and Kekos just north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And then from there, between Turks and Kekos and in Miami, you have the Bahamas, which everyone's familiar with the Bahamas, right? So lots and lots and lots of money being spent here, millions of Americans and others vacationing here every year. So having control over this place and providing real stable security and not allowing organized crime syndicates cartels to operate and run it is critical. And obviously, like the big player from a geographic standpoint is Cuba. And so getting Cuba on board and onboarding them is a big part of all of this. And I would imagine that we're probably going to see that happen pretty soon here. of course Mexico is the critical the critical choke point for the land based the land based trade routes and remember

as Gustavo Petro explained in a press conference that he gave with or wait was it Gustavo petro or was it it might have actually been it might have been Padreino Vladimir Padreino hold on one second I need to verify I want to make sure I'm reliance the right information here. It was either the Colombian military or the Venezuelan military that gave a press briefing, it might have been, I think it was the Colombian military that gave a press briefing back in February of 2025 where they explained that the FARC and the National Liberation Army, which is the army that's operated since 1963, inspired by Pablo Escobar, they were basically created to control the land routes between Mexico and Colombia in Central America. Set up those trade routes and make sure that they were available for the drug traffickers. And that, of course, is one of the entities that both Maduro and Gustavo Petro were targeting

in their military operations against the cartels. Okay, so I just got the Miro Mind Map up and running while I was just speaking. so let's take a look at that because I have that the data point that I was trying to recall right here that's the Mexico

that's Cuba that's Saudi my map's gotten too big guys I might need to start parsing this thing down I don't want it though because it's too good to go back to it and well anyway

Yeah, I'm almost positive. It was the Colombian military that gave this press briefing. But that's what Petro was saying. As Petro was saying is that the Sonola cartel was the one that created the Liberation Army, the National Liberation Army, the ELN. And the ELN has been targeted by these operations. Oh, here is. Look at that.

No, that's Kanye. Whatever. And that the ELN was targeted by these military operations from Colombia. And that the Sonola cartels of Mexico were the ones running it. And that Mexico was actually the head of the snake. And that Ecuador is where all of the production people, the people who were refining the cocaine, turning it into from a plant into the chemical,

whatever the chemical process is to make it into a street drug. they all fled to Ecuador. So all that, I think, speaks to what we're watching unfold right here because they mentioned the Ecuador conflict in the Shield of the Americas press briefing. And they, yeah, and then so Caracom. Caracom is kind of like the EU of the Caribbean, right? And Caracom has been in contact with like MBS for the past couple years. NBS had this big Caracom convention in Riyadh, November 2023, right after the October 7th attack, which I thought was strange.

I was like, that's kind of weird that MBS is getting himself involved in Caracom. But remember, as I just said, billions and billions and billions of dollars in tourism and MBS is trying to bring tourism to Saudi Arabia. So he probably was picking their brain and learning a lot about how the economics of their, how their economies work, how the tourism works. all of it. So anyway. All right. Well, so again, like, we're seeing Trump bring to fruition something that these other world leaders have been talking about for a very long time. Petro Maduro.

We're seeing this, I guess you call it KFAB, like the official definition of KFAB in, like, in like, professional wrestling, is when one of the characters. characters flips from being a like a bad guy to a good guy or vice versa. And so now we're kind of seeing the k-fabe of the actual k-fabre of Gustava Petra who's flipped from being a quote-unquote villain like in the Trump telling of the soap opera to being a baby face as they call it. Like he's he's one of the good guys and has been I think the whole time. And yet that's not what the deep state would tell you. But of course, the deep state

are the ones who are running the cocaine operations. So anyway, yeah, we'll give up on that. So now let's pivot back to the Middle East

and we'll probably spend the rest of the time talking about Iran and talking about some of the developments. I saw in the chat. Hells Bay had shared an article. Hells Bay,

I tried to open that article that you shared, but it was given me like an error message saying that I couldn't access it. Let me see. And remember we covered as far as Mexico goes, we covered, Pam Bonnie gave a press conference a few weeks ago saying that we've, we've been receiving shipments of cartel leaders that were arrested by Mexico as early as February 2025. So like within a few weeks of Trump entering office, Mexico is extraditing cartel bosses from from Mexico to the U.S.

And I think thus far we've gotten 92 as of a few weeks ago. So we'll see. Let's see. There is a Hells Bay shared an article. Let me see if I can get this thing to open from Jordan News about

U.S. to relocate air defense systems from South Korea to the Middle East. For some reason, the article won't open. It's giving me like an error message. But we'll see if we can get that open. But what's interesting to me is the developments happening between Israel and the Trump administration, because this article, which broke on Sunday, I believe, and it was either Sunday or Monday, from Barack Ravid and Mark Caputo. Scoop, U.S. dismayed by Israel's Iran fuel strike sources say, Israel strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depot Saturday, went 3.000. far beyond what US expected when Israel notified in advance,

sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began eight days ago, according to a U.S. official, Israeli official, and a source with knowledge. Now, I read through a lot of this article on Badlands Daily, so I'm not going to subject y'all to that reading again. I'll just summarize. But basically Israel told the U.S. that they were going to be conducting strikes on Saturday. It says right here that a U.S. official said that the U.S. military,

was surprised by how wide-ranging the attacks actually were. The quote-unquote, the quote is, we don't think it was a good idea, senior U.S. official said. And then an Israeli official, and Barack Ravid would have access to the Israelis, because he's former Israeli military intelligence, Unit 8200, says that Israeli official said the U.S. message to Israel was WTF. What the fuck? The White House and the IDF didn't comment.

And basically what they were surprised by is that they decided to attack 30 Iranian fuel depots that Israel claims were part of the IRGC network, but the U.S. claims these are actually civilian fuel depose. And the net effect of that attack is going to end up being the Iranian people viewing the attacks as something nefarious, like not. siding with the U.S. and Israel, siding instead with the regime. But more importantly, bringing down the price or driving up the price of oil. And we did see the price of oil spike over the weekend to $119 a barrel. And the analysis that I saw was that if that, if it stayed over $100 a barrel for a week, we'd be looking at very like immediately $5, $5 a gallon gas. So gas going up to $5 a gallon.

Now, what ends up happening is Trump then steps up yesterday and says, I think we're actually done with the Iran war. It's almost completely over. We're way ahead of schedule. And as a result, the price of oil crashes down to, I think it crashed down to $84. And maybe we'll look at where it currently is. But before we pivot away from the story, here's Lindsey Graham saying our allies, and Israel have shown an amazing capability when it comes to collapsing the murderous regime in Iran.

America is most appreciative. However, there will soon be a day that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous Ayatollah's regime. In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select. Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses.

The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor. And yet, yeah, so, I mean, when Lindsey Graham is telling telling Israel to chill out, like you know that you've overstepped. Clearly, like, this reporting from Barack Rabid and Mark Caputo was probably accurate because of Lindsey Graham must have heard something from the White House that thought made it necessary to telegraph this online. And to that point,

we saw the Jewish media outlet forward put out a story about this. Lindsay Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots, even as he says he helped make the war happen. So yeah, and they're commenting on that, you know, that post that I just read, but they're also summarizing the post that we've already read through the one from the Wall Street Journal, the one from Axios. So, you know, let's now go to, let me see, I think I can find. that post. While I look for that, I'll go here.

So this happened over the weekend. I played this on Badlands Daily, but it's a short clip. This is Dana Bash, CNN, explaining a conversation she had with President Trump about Delsi Rodriguez and the Iranian and the Iranian regime and how the Iranian regime would look when this war was over. At Deli Rodriguez, and he said she's doing a very good job. I said, well, would you be okay with a religious? leader in Iran and he said the answer is yes. It doesn't necessarily have to be a democratic

leader in Iran. It just has to be somebody who treats the U.S. and Israel fairly as well as people in the Adel C. Rodriguez and he said she's doing a very good job. Yeah. And so now why would Trump say this? Because Trump is now saying I actually don't really care about Iranian democracy. You know, the people are kind of on their own there. I'm cool with the Ayatollah remaining in power as long as he is nice to the American people and treats us fairly. And let's see. Okay, we're definitely going to check that out here in a second. But before we do, let's look at Reza Pavlovi because I think what Trump was short-circuiting was this.

And I'm not going to play this whole clip. It's like four and a half minutes long. Bahrain. But I will. Cool. Kuwait, Oman. The Islamic Republic has launched missiles at the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

It is targeting our Arab neighbors. These violations of their sovereignty are unacceptable, and we condemn them. But this is nothing new. This is who the Islamic Republic has always. public has always been, and this is why it must end. For nearly five decades, this terrorist regime has sown chaos and bloodshed across our region. It propped up Assad, turning Syria into a graveyard. It planted Hezbollah as a state within a state in Lebanon. It armed the Houthis to destabilize the Arabian Peninsula. It empowered militias in Iraq to undermine Iraqi sovereignty. It attacked

the economic hubs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. None of this has ever been the desire of the Iranian people, but rather that of a regime occupying our country. Now, however, the landscape has fundamentally shifted. Assad is gone. Hezbollah has been decimated. The regime's military nuclear program has been set back. Its economy is in a free fall. The pillars of this regime's aggression are crumbling. The Iranian people have paid the price in blood to reach this moment.

The regime massacred tens of thousands of my compatrious in just two days, but it didn't break the people. Instead, the regime itself is breaking. Today, history reminds us of our future potential. Before the revolution, Iran worked closely with Arab leaders, from King Faisal to Sheikh Zayed, to King Hussein, to President Sadat. In Oman, my father helped Sultan Qabuz defend his country against insurgency. We were true partners then.

We will be true partners again. The Iranian people have called on me to lead the transition after the regime is gone. I have accepted that responsibility. Part of their great mandate to me is to return our nation and our foreign relations to normalcy. I will do exactly that. So this – That's – MR.

That's – the country is stabilized and Iranians determine their future. We have to cut you off, buddy. I don't know why it wouldn't let me unpause that. So, yeah, that's what I think Trump was short-circuiting. I think Trump was short-circuiting this guy who he first he invokes that all, like all the Muslims across the Middle East needed to join in in this war. He's parroting the talking points of Netanyahu and Lindsay Graham and the neocons,

invoking the Abraham Accords, talking about how they all need to work together to fight the evil Iranians, right? And then he's claiming that he has been chosen by the Iranian people to lead them, which I don't think there's any evidence that that has occurred. And so I think what Trump was doing was he was kind of short-circuiting that. He was saying, all right, you know what? I'm actually cool at the Ayatollah, as long as we can get along. That's fine. I did share This morning on Badlands Daily that we had Share my screen again Because I had to unshare because of that clown

After a week of everybody saying that Trump was going to get the Kurds to go in And be the tip of the spear Trump came out and said, I don't want the Kurds going in That's my choice I think I even have that clip I'll play that real quick It's like a 20 second clip

This was from the weekend And we're not looking to having, we're not looking to the Kurds going in. We're very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don't want to make the war any more complex than it already is. We've ruled that out. We don't want, yeah, I have ruled it out. I don't want the Kurds going in. I don't want to see the Kurds get hurt, get killed. We've had a good relation.

They're willing to go in, but we really, I've told them I don't want them to go in. Yeah, so there you go. So Trump pouring cold water on all of that. And at the heart of all this, as reported yesterday, Trump and Putin had a phone call. So Trump and Putin had a phone call. Here is the RT reporting on that. And I think it was after he got off the phone with Putin, that was when Trump put out the rhetoric that the war is actually almost completely over. and this is going to be ever pretty soon,

which then triggered some people and was a relief to others. It says right here, Trump and Putin hold phone call. Let me make this a little bigger. There we go. Trump and Putin hold phone call. The president discussed the conflict between the U.S. and Iran and between Russia and Ukraine. Yuri Ushikov has said.

Ushikov is the guy who's been attending all the meetings with Wikov and Koko. Bushner, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has held a phone conversation with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump. Criminal aid, Yuri Ushikov, has told journalists the American president initiated the call to discuss the latest international developments. He said, the conversation focused on the Iran conflict in the trilateral talks between Moscow, Washington, and Kiev, aim at settling the Ukraine conflict according to the aid. The dialogue between the two presidents was businesslike, open and constructive, Yushikov said, adding that both leaders expressed their readiness to continue regular contacts. Putin and Trump talked for about an hour, he stated. It's a pretty long time of talk. The U.S. President reaffirmed Washington's interest in seeing the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev end in reaching a long-term settlement of the Ukraine conflict.

Putin thanked Trump for his administration's continued mediation efforts, according to Ushikov. Putin also shared his thoughts on the ongoing conflict in Iran and told Trump about his conversations with the leaders of the Gulf nations and Iranian President Masoud Peshkeen he had last week. Trump in turn expressed his opinion about the situation, Yushikov said, adding that they had a very substantive discussion on the issue. Trump has described his conversation with Putin as a very good call, telling a press conference later on Monday that the leader discussed both the Iran war and the never-ending fight in Ukraine. The last time the two presidents held a phone call was in December,

the White House described it as positive at the time. Commenting on the conversation, Palestinian ambassador to Russia, Abdel Hafiz, Nofal said on Tuesday that he had hoped, or that he hoped the phone call between Trump and Putin will help in the war in Iran and stress that the Americans must stop their aggression. Earlier on Monday, Putin warned that continued conflict in the Middle East risks seriously disrupting global oil and gas flows, particularly given the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key seaborne route. The conflict could lead to a halt in Gulf oil production and a new price reality, he told a government, a government, a government, meeting. Moscow remains a reliable energy supplier. The president said, adding that it will continue to provide oil and gas to the nations it sees as reliable partners. Moscow has condemned the U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign against Iran as a premeditated and unprovoked act of aggression. Putin himself did not provide any public assessments of the operation as a whole, but described the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hamini as a cynical violation of morality and international law. And then here's another article above from Putin from yesterday.

A quote from him, Gulf oil production could stop in weeks. Russia has warned that any attempts to destabilize the Middle East will lead to energy. Price hikes, the president has said. And then it goes on to explain. Traffic through the stray has reportedly dropped by 80% over the past week after the U.S. and Israel launched their bombing campaign against Iran, prompting retaliatory strikes from Tehran. several tankers were hit in the exchanges. The developments pushed crude above $100 a barrel and prompted expectations of emergency energy measures from the EU and other major economies.

Quote, oil production dependent on the straight risks fully stopping in the coming month. It is already dropping. The president said restoring production could take weeks or even months, he said. The global oil prices are already rising. Putin stated, adding at the increase amounted to over 30% in the past week alone, disruptions and energy supplies also boost inflation and lead to industrial output decline, according to the president. The world is about to find itself in a quote, new price reality, Putin warned, calling it inevitable. And let me see if I can pull this.

I have a video of a pretty good clip of ban on analyzing some of these oil markets. Yeah, I thought this was interesting. This is worthless. This is like a minute long. This is worth... He negotiates a deal. This is Eric Bowling, appearing on Bannon's show yesterday.

This is right up his alley. If he negotiates a deal with Iran and Venezuela both, the increase in oil, they've already produced high levels. Iran produced 8 million barrels a day a while ago. Venezuela produced 4 million barrels a day. Now they're 3 in 1, right? So there's seven or eight million barrels additional that can be produced.

All we're saying is we will do a joint venture with you, Venezuela, the way Saudi Aramco is, the way Petrobras is in Brazil, where the country owns the actual reserves, but Americans pull the oil out of the ground, and we have first dibs at a market price on the oil. Trump would guarantee oil independence, not just during his term for perpetuity, through his lifetime, through our lifetime,

through John Jr.'s lifetime, we would never depend on a foreign country or OPEC again for a drop of oil. Trump needs to hear this. This is right up his alley. If he negotiates a deal with Iran. Now that is really interesting. And I think that's good analysis. Talking about because of the sanctions that we've put on Iran for years, their oil production is not, is like at whatever, 30%, 40% of what it could be. And if we were to work with them, partner with them and open up their markets the same way that we're doing,

Venezuela right now, we could basically make ourselves, like, totally fortified when it comes to our oil demands, where you would never see like $100 a barrel of oil ever again. And that's where I think this actually might be heading because I was trying to pull this up. Let's see if I can get, I thought I had posted this to, yeah, here it is. So, this is from bull theory, but oil prices just crashed. This was posted at 3.47 p.m. So I think Trump did his phone call with Putin. And then went and did the press conference where he said, yeah, I think this is, this war might actually be over.

And then we saw the price of oil crash 32% from $119. And over the span of 18 hours, it went from $119 to $82, right? And the big reasons that drove it were the G7 and the IEA announced the release of 400 million barrels from reserves. That would be like Saudi Arabia and others releasing 400 million barrels. I'm sorry, 400 million barrels of reserves to the market. And then Trump's signaling an end of the war soon and as well as emergency options to lower the price. And you can see that the really significant drop from $96 to $82. happened all at once and that was right when Trump announced. So that first big drop I think was when

they released the 400 million, like it was announced they were releasing 400 million barrels to the market. That was the Arabs helping us out, right? As well as a few other countries that are involved in that. And then the second big drop was when Trump announced that the war is probably close to over. So again, all like this price was being driven up, not because of actual economics just because of speculation and fear mongering from the deep state, I think. And so this is like them trying to hurt Trump and Trump basically working with

working with, you know, sovereign alliance to fix this. This is like a moves and counterme saying, this made me laugh so hard. I got to show you this. Shout out to Collingwood at ADM Collingwood. he posted a picture of, you know, just Trump and Putin both on the phone with the quote, as you will recall Donald, after the fall of the Sasanian Empire in 651 AD, Iran suffered almost a millennium without unity.

It was during this period. And I love that Putin has now has this reputation since his interview with Tucker two years ago of being like a big history nerd who likes to be long-winded and like explain the full history of something when he says he's going to take, I'm going to take 30 seconds to explain the brief. history of Ukraine and then 25 minutes later he's still talking about like Russian history. I mean, a guy after my own heart. That's why one of the many reasons I love Putin. But let's let's look at a few. There's a few different things I want to see I want to look at because I want to look at Israel now. And we'll finish up. It's been the last 10 minutes or so talking about Israel. So here's Bannon talking about this morning about the objectives of this war, of this conflict in Iran, and what Trump's objectives are

versus what Israel's objectives are. I think when you talk about two objectives, we can't have two different objectives. They're not an equal partner. They're a protectorate. Let me be blunt. They don't get their own objectives. They can have kind of what they want to do, but it's got to fit into our objectives. Or it doesn't get done.

This is what happened on Saturday night. And I'm going to stay on this point. Because I know from people that reached out to me that this is the main thing or the central thing here. Because this war took a very different path starting Saturday night when they were fire bombed. Now you're fighting a Persian nationalist movement. That's the way you don't see people in the streets. Yes, they're concerned about being killed, et cetera, et cetera. But you don't feel an uprising right now against the theocracy.

You kind of see some support for theocracy, which is exactly what we didn't want to have happened. strategically. So here we are. Why was that? Two sets of objectives. We can't have two sets of objectives. We didn't let the Brits and other, you know, we're going to let the Brits have their own set of objectives. What do you think all the fighting between Montgomery and Pat and he has? Yes, sometimes they had to do it and stop and Churchill if we want to go into Balkans. When he wanted to go into Italy, they let that happen because they didn't, they weren't ready to do Normandy. They didn't want to take the casualties in Normandy. You don't get your set of objectives. It's what our objectives are. And our objectives are militarily and on the military

operation are being hit. But that's only part of it. You've got to have the geostrategic idea here of what we're trying to accomplish. Okay. So, and I'm glad Bannon's saying on that, let's now pivot to the BBC reporting from Tel Aviv. And this is, I just saw this was just posted, like 30 minutes before we went live. This is not in English. That is absolutely devastating that we are not getting the English version of this. So this is from Solomon Ahmed on X. This is from Solomon Ahmed on X. he says BBC correspondent Kasra Najee from Tel Aviv reports that the situation is very bad. Israel is in a partial lockdown.

The streets are empty due to fear of Iranian attacks. Shops are closed and this situation is becoming unbearable for the population. Even large Hezbollah missiles are hitting Tel Aviv without the sirens going off. And this is unprecedented. And then somebody asks Grock to translate it and Grock says the report from BBC Persians, Kasra Najee and Tel Aviv describe ongoing Iranian missile barrage's, media coverage or media censorship by Israel and public alerts amid the war, but the exact partial lockdown empty streets, shops closed unbearable, and Hesbilla missiles claim are not

verbatim in BBC English reports and appear amplified and viral clips. Israeli sources confirmed heightened fear and some impacts from barrages since early March, but cities remain operational with sirens active. Now, what is interesting about Grock trying to correct the narrative here is the video that I played this morning on Badlands Daily, and we don't need to play the full video, but I will play a part of it. Let's see, right here. And so this is from an Argentinian news outlet called TN,

and this was posted last night yesterday evening. And this guy is, I think his name is it, Nelson Castro. that's the journalist on screen and he is claiming that he's in an Israeli shelter I don't know if I guess he's live maybe he's either live streaming I don't know if it's we're watching like a live report but it's being related to their to their network and he has to keep talking to the people

and asking are you are you actually getting the audio now this is all in Spanish so I'm not going to subject you the audio but I'll just read what the what the subtitles are And so he's saying, yes, we heard two detonations heard, two bombs go off in the area we just were. They fell in the vicinity of the place we were, or we are two bomb blasts one near the airport. We are trying to find out information. We are once again in the shelter.

It has been shocking in a detail that has disturbed us so much more is that the alarms did not sound. The alarms did not sound. So this is absolutely surprised all of us. We have two impressive bomb blasts that have fallen meters from where we are. and he goes to say, please tell me if you're receiving this. And they're saying there are some difficulty getting. I insist we are broadcasting from this place to bomb blasts that have fallen suddenly.

The information we have is that these projectiles, these launches are developing over the airport area. One just exploded, I would tell you, 100 or 150 meters from where we are. We're trying to pinpoint the moment when we're outside. But the surprising element is that the alarms have not sounded. And he kind of goes on to repeat over and over again. The alarms are not sounding. The alarms are not sounding.

I insist the element that has drawn the most attention is that the alarms are not going off. The alarms are not sounding. It's cutting out. And then there's like a three minute clip. So I'm just trying to scrub through. There's the element that surprises us most. The spokesperson for the Israeli army is here who is surprised because the alarms were not heard. So he's saying that this guy standing behind him right here at this,

Vestan is a spokesman for the Israeli army. And he's also giving interviews to media figures. And we'll see when they go outside. They're going to go outside right here. And you can see the guy right here in the background giving a media interview. You'll see all these other reporters setting up to do their shot. And he says, remember, I just told you that there was no time to react fundamentally in the northern area because the alarms sounded. Wait, wait, wait.

Let me back up a little bit. So he says, you remember, I had told you that where there was no time to react was fundamentally in the northern area because the alarms sounded, but the alarms have not sounded. It's a confusing translation, but the alarms have not sounded, and this is disconcerning everybody. We are all shocked. We are all shocked. This is an army officer there. Are you seeing him? Are you seeing him on screen?

There's an officer who is making some statements. Yes, he is saying the same thing. He is saying, he said we are surprised. And then the colleagues in the studio are saying, yes, we hear him. He is saying the same thing as to a group of colleagues. Yeah, so then they show. So all these people are reporting, all these news agencies are reporting the same thing. They're reporting what the BBC guy is saying,

is that the alarms are not going off, which means the defense systems are failing in Israel, potentially. That's what we are looking at here. And let's see, yeah. And then I saw there's reports about, about everyone's reporting, this is what Helz Bay was sharing in the chat earlier, that Korean media is publishing images

showing the U.S. dismantling, so here's just one of the reports, dismantling the FAD systems, the Patriot systems in South Korea to send to Israel. So, you know, we're cannibalizing PACCOM and Indocom and bringing the missile defense systems from the Pacific from South Korea and Japan over to Israel,

to reinforce what is being, you know, the resources that are being burned up there. And let's see, we have, I want to pull up this video of the Israeli settler. So there is an Israeli settler who gave an interview up near Lebanon where he was like, irate because he basically said that, that, Okay, so Fox News is reporting, is this Caroline Levitt? No, it's just Caroline Levitt fan. Okay, so let's watch this. Fox News is reporting a Hezbollah commander has been eliminated. Let's watch this.

Okay, so the clip I was trying to pull was a, there was an Israeli settler leader. I think he's the mayor of a town who gave an interview yesterday where he described, the attacks that are occurring. Let's see, is it this guy? No. You might just have to skip it. But he's basically like accusing the Israeli government of leaving these people out, like leaving them all hanging.

Like where, where is it? Is this it? Yeah. And where the Israeli government is leaving them all hanging because they are, you know, they've gone and started this war in Lebanon with Hezbollah. But they obviously are. stretch thin because they have Iran attacking them and now they have Hezboe attacking them. And so the Israeli settler community is unhappy because they live kind of on the fringes of their society.

And as a result, they are suffering the most at the hands of the violence here. And so I think where I want to end it, Tucker gave in, did an interview with. with Colonel McGregor. And, you know, whenever you get data points, you just kind of take the data points. You take them and you kind of bestow them off the side and you just let them, let them incubate. You let them, you know, you digest them. But this is an interesting one because this is about nuclear weapons. And we just got a report that seems to be confirmed by the behavior and the rhetoric of Lindsay Graham that Israel engaged in an operation against the Iranian fuel.

tanks, fuel depots, without fully consulting the United States. They kind of went off on their own, and that pissed off the White House. So with that context, let's hear what Colonel McGregor has to say. No, wait a minute, wait a minute. They're saying that, or Stream Yard is telling me that I have lost my share screen audio, so let me reshare the screen because this is what Streamer likes to do. All right, let's try it again. Take two.

We're apparently on the road to destroying Iran and make no mistake about it. We have the capacity to destroy Iran. Now, if this doesn't come faster enough or we begin to back away from it, what does Mr. Netanyahu do? And I think that's a question that we need to answer because he's not clearly under the authority of the president of the United States. The British and the French would never launch a nuclear weapon without consulting with us. is that the case of Mr. Netanyahu who leads a country that refuses to admit that it has any nuclear weapons?

And I would argue no. We're apparently on the road. So that's an interesting point that Israel won't even admit they have nuclear weapons, although Mark 11 and others have disclosed. They have at least 200, maybe 300. And they've already demonstrated that they're willing to kind of go out on their own,

go rogue, do their own operations against them. to Iran without consulting the White House or telling the White House what their plans are. And now we're getting reports from multiple media outlets that indicate that the defense systems in Tel Avivir failing, that the sirens aren't going off before the missiles hit. Normally, you know, the sirens go off. Everyone knows to run inside because they can detect the missiles coming in. And then, you know, nobody dies because everybody is underground or in a bomb shelter. Those systems aren't going off anymore, apparently. And then we now have corroborating accounts of, and images of the U.S.

dismantling fad missile systems in South Korea to move them over to the Middle East, indicating that the reports that were running short on interceptors in Israel is accurate, or accurate. And that we're now having to cannibalize our stockpiles in the Pacific in order to supplement what is in Israel. The point is, is that if they feel dead, desperate enough. If Netanyahu feels desperate enough, will he go out on his own and use a nuclear weapon against Iran? And remember, this is a threat that historically we've heard before. We've heard, we've played audio of Jonathan Pollard, one of the most famous spies in U.S. history,

who spied for Israel, brag in a podcast just a few years ago, that that's what is, that's exactly do what Israel did in the Yom Kippur War is that they they outfitted a nuclear weapon on an airplane. They parked the airplane with tarmac and they told the U.S., hey, pull up your satellite and take a look at our runway. And they saw the nuclear weapon and that changed everything. That changed all their calculus. And they said, hey, you better keep shipping us the conventional munitions unless you want us to use that. So we have evidence that Israel has blackmailed the United States with their nuclear weapons and said, if you don't continue to help us fight a conventional war, we will resort to unconventional warfare, nuclear weapons.

And if they use a nuclear weapon against Iran, that's going to kind of change the entire game. So it's a really, really, I mean, obviously it's a very fluid situation. You know, what is real and what is not, we don't know. we just kind of taken data points and see how everything shakes out. But the behaviors of the leaders indicate what is actually happening. And when I see Lindsay Graham all over the media panicking because Israel is not getting the assistance that it expects from the Muslims, when I see President Erdogan of Turkey stand up and say, we're not going to attack Iran. when I see the Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif stand up and say, we're not going to attack Iran either.

We're actually going to side with Iran in terms of like our spirit. We're not going to, they're not going to join the conflict one way or the other. When I see the Arabs, you know, the Saudis and the Qataris and the Emirates stand up and say, we're not going to attack Iran. Nobody's going to attack Iran. That puts Israel kind of in the corner. That puts them in a pretty precarious situation.

And I guess finally we will There's this clip of the I talked about this on Wait a minute what's going on here For some reason it's a weird double share screen This is the deputy prime minister of Of Iran And I'll mute his Farsi

And I'll just read what he says This is from yesterday, I believe. Or if not yesterday, the day before yesterday was posted yesterday, but they're whatever, eight hours ahead of us. So he says, regarding the Republic of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Cyprus, all of them have been, reportedly have seen missiles fly into their airspace and have shot them down. He says the general staff of the armed forces explicitly and officially announced that no such projectiles were launched from within Iran or by our military forces. As for Cyprus, even British officials confirmed that no such incident took place. We have consistently warned against false flag operations. That's true.

They did warn about that last week. Let us not forget there is a rogue regime in the region with a long history of such actions. The Levan affair, Operation Sashana in 1954 in Egypt, is a well-known case of how the Zionist regime, talking about Israel, attempted through sabotage to drive a wedge between countries. Recently, reports have emerged that in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they were engaged in sabotage operations. We call on all countries to exercise caution before drawing conclusions about developments in the region. Hasty statements are not in the interest of friendly relations between countries of the region. Last night, a productive conversation took place between our president and the president of Azerbaijan. It was confirmed that no such action was taken by Iran, and we

hope Iran's goodwill toward its neighbors will be taken into account. At the same time, our position remains clear. From wherever a military threat against Iran may arise, our response is legitimate and lawful. Yeah, so that's interesting. I mean, they're basically accusing Israel of attacking these other Muslim countries and then blaming it on Iran. And here's a clip. I threw this in the news brief this morning, but this is Randy Fine. You know, Congress I guess speaking to Newsmax was trying to build a nuclear weapon and a missile that could deliver that nuclear weapon to America. Maybe idiots like Marjorie Taylor Green need to see America get nuked before they take it seriously. Clearly Donald Trump is not willing to wait for that.

Iran was trying to. Yeah. And so now the narrative is that Iran is going to activate sleeper cells in the year. U.S. and we're going to see terrorist operations conducted against the on U.S. soil. I'm very skeptical of such reporting because, again, if Iran has any strategic thinking and they have demonstrated strategy and forethought and wisdom, so to speak, in measure and how they respond, you know, how they've reacted to a lot of these attacks by Israel over the years, why would they engage in terrorist operations on the ground in the U.S. against U.S. citizens, civilians,

if Donald Trump just said yesterday, yeah, I think the war is about over. I think we're about done. I think we're about done fighting. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense for Iran to like poke the bear and, you know, stoke support among American people for a ground operation against Iran. So especially now that the neocons are explicitly calling for that. So the last thing I'll play is this video from Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif. And it's important to remember, this guy loves President Trump. Remember, he was the one who got up. He was the one person that President Trump allowed to speak at that meeting in Egypt where the peace agreement was signed. And back in September, and he got up and like tearfully and tearfully, and tearfully

You know, talk about how important Trump was to world peace and how important Trump was to peace in the Middle East. So here's what he has to say. Pakistan has been silent on this whole situation for the past week. Ayatollah Sayyad Ali. I'm going to silence that and just read what he says. He says, over the martyrdom of Ayatollah Saeed Ali Khomeini, his family, an innocent Iranian brothers and sisters,

the government and people of Pakistan have expressed deep sorrow. We strongly condemn these attacks in unequivocal terms. Pakistan also strongly condemns the attacks on its brotherly Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. In the strongest words, and expresses regret over the loss of life, these attacks. Post serious threats to the peace and stability of the entire region. In these difficult circumstances, I have had detailed discussions with the leaders of these brotherly countries. And on your behalf, I have given this message to the people and the leadership of these countries. That Pakistan stands shoulder to shoulder with these countries in this testing hour.

Might be the end of it. Yeah, that's the end of it. Yeah, so Pakistan is not going to attack Iran. and I guess since I played the Pakistan clip I might as well play the Erdogan clip too so here's Erdogan from yesterday saying something similar and there aren't subtitles but the but the caption is that despite our repeated warnings provocative steps are continued to be taken against Turkey no action should be taken that cast a shadow over the thousand year,

the year old neighborly and brotherly bond with Iran. So he's basically calling for de-escalation. He's calling for temperatures to cool. Doesn't want to see a war with Iran unfold. Doesn't seem like Iran wants to see a war with Turkey unfold because that would bring NATO in. So I guess we'll see what happens. But that's where we are. So again, I want to keep my eye on Israel.

I want to see how does Israel react? and behave over the next couple days, over the next week. Do we see Israel super peace because they're getting overwhelmed by these missile attacks? Looks like RT's reporting right now that Israel is now threatening to kill this new Ayatollah who's just been installed. So we'll see what happens. All right, guys. Well, please hit the thumbs up. Let's check and see if we got any questions, comments,

boosts from the chat. Looks like we have a rant from D. Carroll 8, $10. We appreciate your willingness to find the truth in this morass of narrative warfare. Thanks, Ghost, for bringing your insights. Appreciate that, D. Carroll. Yeah, and again, like all we're doing is a lot of this in the house is guesswork, because we don't know the answer. but what I'm really grateful for when it comes to President Trump is he's really leveled the playing field

because these people who have been speaking with authority for years because they have super secret sources in the State Department and the Pentagon, they don't know what's going on either because Trump keeps kind of like changing the narrative. So I love that Trump has really taken this narrative warfare to the next level and really leveled the playing field where analysis now kind of relies more on earnest speculation. an earnest, informed analysis of human nature. I really think that's what this is about. Snowcat operator, what's up, man?

Good to see you. $20. Thanks for sharing, Gordon. Well, thank you for being here, Snowcat. Good to see you there, bro. And let's check out. If you're listening to us on replay, you can go to badlandsmedia.tv slash boost

or just click on the boost tab at the top of the screen and leave a rant at any time. I think we're all caught up on the boosts, but we will see y'all next week, or not next week, Friday. Tomorrow, breaking history with Matt Arrett, and then Thursday, The Choice with Ash. So thanks again, guys. Y'all have a great day. Hit the thumbs up on your way out, and we will see you later. Thank you so much for joining us, and don't forget to hit the thumbs up on this video.

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