Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/2/26: US Jets Crash, Hegseth Won't Rule Out Ground Troops, Gas Prices Surge, Austin Shooting

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss US fighter jets crash, Hegseth won't rule out boots on ground, gas prices surge, Austin shooting.   Jeffrey Sachs: https://www.jeffsachs.org/ Professor Jiang: https://w...ww.youtube.com/@PredictiveHistory    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns.
Starting point is 00:00:22 The embodiment of Pisces' intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm, like, delusionally proud of my charge. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I mean, this has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?
Starting point is 00:00:59 Oh, my God. I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has. gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything
Starting point is 00:01:36 I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent Media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Starting point is 00:02:11 We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have a big show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Yeah, the entire show, as you guys, will not be surprised to learn. It's going to be focused on Iran. We've got a million updates for you this morning, including three fighter jets being shot out of the sky in what is being claimed as a friendly fire incident. President Trump saying there are going to be more dead Americans. We're taking a look at the markets this morning as they open, also already blowback here in the U.S.
Starting point is 00:02:43 and abroad against our illegal aggressive war against Iran. We've got some polling indications that the American people are unsurprisingly, not behind this whatsoever. And then we have two major gigantic gas. We're so fortunate to get to talk to Professor Jeffrey Sachs. this morning and also Professor Zhang, his first appearance on the show. He made back in, I think, May of 2024, three bold predictions. One, Trump was going to win. Two, that he would go to war with Iran. And three, that the U.S. would lose that war. So we're going to check in with him about how he thinks that prediction is panning out. If anything has surprised him in the buildup in the early
Starting point is 00:03:21 phases of this war. So it's going to be a huge one today. Yeah, that's right. All right. Let's go ahead and get to the latest updates out of Iran. All right, guys, we're going to start this morning with shocking images. Let's put this up on the screen. This is a U.S. fighter jet after being hit allegedly by friendly fire by our Kuwaiti allies falling out of the sky. And this is reportedly one of three fighter jets that Sentcom is saying hit by friendly fire. The Iranians are saying that they are claiming responsibility for at least one of these jets, but our government is claiming this was friendly fire from the Kuwaitis. three U.S. fighter jets being shot out of the sky.
Starting point is 00:04:03 Now, as far as we know, all of the service members on board, those fighter jets, all of those pilots are safe. There are some crazy videos out there, too, of them being recovered. And one of them, the Kuwaitis who find one of the pilots says, let's call an ambulance. The other one says, he's American, let's just leave him, give a sense of the way that people in the region, outside of leadership, feel about American service members and about this operation. overall. But Sagar, I mean, before I even get into any of the other elements and we have a whole slew of them, I did your reaction to this. This is a humiliation on the world stage. This is equivalent to what happened whenever those fighter jets were lost on the carriers in the middle of high seas. And this is what we've been warning about here for weeks. It's about military readiness,
Starting point is 00:04:47 lack of coordination with allies. You have drones, air. I mean, by CENTCOM's own admission in this alleged friendly fire incident. By the way, they call it apparent friendly fire. So obviously, the facts are still not 100% known, is you had Iranian aircraft, Iranian missiles, and Iranian drones all in the sky at the same time. Each one of these aircraft has a pilot, a weapon systems officer. That's why there's six crew that have been ejected and they're at least safe for now, thank God. But these are $100 million aircraft per piece. So the $300 million just got evaporated in the sky. The scale of what is happening here is unbelievable. We're talking about potentially tens of billions already in munitions, in aircraft, in other assets, which are already lost
Starting point is 00:05:31 and have been used in this operations. But perhaps, more importantly, is you don't want to have these emperor have no clothes moments because you're looking at the seat of the global empire. And look, we're going to show you plenty of stuff. We are capable of vaporizing a lot of things, but in long-sustained kinetic operations, as we're already watching, we have four Americans dead as of this morning. Four Americans are already dead. The president and the top general keep saying more to come, more to come. Maybe there have been more and they're not even telling us that. Well, the president actually indicated in an interview with the New York Times that there likely are already more dead. And in a, I can't even call this really a speech,
Starting point is 00:06:11 but a hastily edited statement that Trump gave yesterday, he spoke about how there will likely be more dead Americans out of this war. Let's go ahead and take a listen. to that. Earlier today, SentCom shared the news that three U.S. military service members have been killed in action. As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives. We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen. And sadly, there will likely be more. Before it ends, that's the way it is, likely be more, but we'll do everything possible where that won't be the case.
Starting point is 00:07:07 But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against basically civilization. They have waged war against civilization itself. Interesting. He doesn't, yeah, interesting he doesn't send his own military age son into this supposedly worthy cause. And we can put A2 up on the screen. This is the court I was referencing to the New York Times. I'll read this whole thing. Mr. Trump spoke from Marilago about 36 hours into the conflict soon after he received news of American casualties saying he could only speak briefly because he was about to meet with the generals. He acknowledged that his administration expected more casualties based on projections.
Starting point is 00:07:50 Three is three too many as far as I'm concerned. And of course, Asagra said, it's now up to four, one of the wounded service members succumbed to their injuries. He goes on to say, if you look at projections, they do projections. It, you know, it could be quite a bit higher than that. We expect casualties. But he professed confidence Iran would in the end, bend to Americas and Israel's will. The country has been very substantially weakened, to put it, mildly. In other comments that he gave recently, Saver, he also was asked, okay, you want the regime,
Starting point is 00:08:20 you're going for the regime change. How is this going to work? He offered a number of different theories, including one of them being that the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, would just surrender their weapons to the population. They would just hand over their weapons and give it up. Look, I mean, it's not time for a victory lap, but it's true. If you've been watching the show, what have we've been saying? They're on a sugar high from Venezuela and from Med Night Hammer. They really believed that. that it would be the same. They didn't want to believe any of the people from the top general, Dan Cain, to many of the other advisors, who said, this one is very different. If you want to know
Starting point is 00:08:52 how fucked we are, let's put A3 up here. The Jonathan Carl at ABC News talked to the president last night, and he was asked about possible candidates to take over Iran. They were killed in the initial attack. Quote, the attack was so successful, it knocked out most of the candidates. It's not going to be anybody that what we are thinking of because they're all dead. Second or third place is dead. He is enamored at the strength of the U.S. bomb, or actually, even this case is the Israeli bombs that were able to take out these leaders. But this fantasy idea of the IRGC just handing over their weapons to the people, yeah, I'm sure that's going to happen. The very same people that just killed a bunch of the protesters who rose up against him. I mean, this is a incitement to civil
Starting point is 00:09:34 war. Already, there are massive reports coming out of Iran of attacks on border stations. You know, Why do you think that you want to do this is the Syria model? You eliminate the border and you flood it in with a bunch of friendly, aka CIA-backed assets. Does anyone who want to tell me who are the great enemies of the Shia people are? Al-Qaeda. I mean, we've got an al-Qaeda leader sitting on the throne in Syria right over there. Just think this is going to be Libya on steroids if the Israelis and I guess the Americans now get their way. We're screwed.
Starting point is 00:10:08 They had no plan. they really believe some sort of Delci Rodriguez thing was going to happen. And another way where you can see the lack of coordination. Look at the Gulf. These guys have been caught completely flat-footed. The Kuwaitis are throwing things up.
Starting point is 00:10:20 This is not a sophisticated military. You have Doha. I mean, I used to live in Doha. I am watching places where I know with ballistic missiles falling out of the sky. Some of these hotels, you and I've been to these hotels. Can you imagine Dubai airport? I've slept in that airport a million times.
Starting point is 00:10:38 Close down. It's gone. Yeah. It is hard to. I mean, the Dubai piece is wild. It's crazy. And because the whole brand proposition of Dubai is like, oh, we're sort of exempt from any instability from the region. We're like exempt from that because this is where the global elite keep their money, right?
Starting point is 00:10:55 This is where you can go and buy these palatial multi-million dollar luxury properties. This is where you can go on your, you know, your exclusive vacation and, you know, with the beautiful beaches and the manufactured, you know, super high-end luxury hotels and all of this, the tallest building in the world, et cetera, et cetera. Now you've had some of those hotels hit. You've had them struck. You have all these videos coming on of people who are shocked. And there are tons of Americans there, by the way,
Starting point is 00:11:25 but people from all around the world, the global elite all around the world, this is a manufactured playground for the rich that is now taking hits by Iran. The damage this will cause long term to, you know, their whole sort of value proposition there, you can't even wrap your head around. Then we're going to get to the market fallout. You know, you had Saudi Aramco, you had some of
Starting point is 00:11:47 their assets hit. You have Qatar completely shutting down their LNG production. Already massive impacts. The Strait of Hormuz is de facto closed because the insurers won't ensure the cargo ships that are going through there because the Iranians have attacked a few ships that are there in the region. And so the insurers say, no, you can't travel through there. So that's all. took. That's de facto closed now. Something that's auger, I mean, we've been hearing about threats and how dire that would be because 20 percent, 20 to 25 percent of the world's oil passes through there. So, and it happens to be the, you know, the oil that's most influential in terms of
Starting point is 00:12:23 setting the price for the market. So it's an extraordinary disruption. You know, you could sort of, I think, equate it perhaps to the level of disruption we saw in the early phases of the Ukraine war in particular. That's at least where we are already. And we are mere days into this war. So you have U.S. fighter jets either being shot out of the sky by Iranians or by our own allies. You have damage to our allies throughout the region. We're going to ask Professor Sachs later on about this clip of a Saudi analyst saying the Americans abandon us and only care about protecting the Israelis. You have already dire warnings and concerns about the number of interceptors that we have remaining. The Iranians, which look, they're taking a lot of
Starting point is 00:13:05 damage. I mean, they've had hundreds of people killed, huge damage in Tehran and other places in the country, these horrifying images, obviously these schoolgirls, the hospitals that are being hit, et cetera. But they also seem to have learned from the 12-day war. And their strategy is we're going to send down all of these drones, which it's the similar drones to what the Houthis we're using, by the way, the Houthis have joined the fight, Hesbola has joined the fight, these $20,000 to $30,000 drones that they can produce, mass produce, and just send down. And you exhaust the stockpile of interceptors of both the Israelis and the Americans, and then later on, you hold your bigger stuff for later on.
Starting point is 00:13:42 Now, that's a risk for them because it's possible that their ability to launch those missiles gets destroyed. That's certainly the goal of the U.S. and the Israelis. But, you know, it's not a crazy bet that they're making right now. And they know that we have much less stomach for and capacity to take damage than they do because for them it's existential. For us, we don't even want to be doing this shit. Yeah, we're already four more lives than this entire thing was worth.
Starting point is 00:14:07 And all the people at the top are telling us are that there are going to be more. Why don't we show some of the video, just so you guys can see. It's not just us talking. This is a region which is on fire. I mean, nobody has seen scenes like this literally ever. I mean, even at the height of the Iraq War, it was in the middle of Iraq. This is West Jerusalem last night. I mean, that, look at that.
Starting point is 00:14:27 Can you imagine living in a middle of downtown and watching a missile? Densely populated. I've been to West Jerusalem. That is crazy. Look at this. This is in Kuwait. You can see an American soldier, American service member, filming this. Do you hear what he says? They're starting to dial in our buildings. That was a suicide drone. This is from the Straits of Hormuz. This was Skylight, I believe, is the name of the ship, which was attacked. There's already been one confirmed death in an attack on a ship, which was off the coast of Oman. This is Tehran. This is unbelievable. There were even video coming out late last night, our time, where you could see that the The bombs were so light. They were lighting up the mountains behind them. Who knows how many thousands of people are being killed there right now.
Starting point is 00:15:11 This is in Israel in Bet Shemesh. I talked about this in my update. That's the Borge Khalifa, which we mentioned in the middle of Dubai, probably one of the most iconic hotels in the world. Here we have in the middle of Beirut. You have destruction everywhere. Hezbollah has launched attacks into the middle of Israel, not to mention the F-15s that we just talked about that went down
Starting point is 00:15:34 That happened just, you know, middle of the night, our time, in the middle of, what was that? In the middle of Bahrain. That was in Kuwait. Sorry, in Kuwait. You have crazy situations playing out in Bahrain. You know, a lot of people may not remember this. Bahrain has a very significant Shia population, but they're ruled by a Sunni kingdom, right? Well, guess what?
Starting point is 00:15:53 Every single time the Iranian drones are making impact in Bahrain, the local Shia are cheering. This is some Arab Spring stuff, which, by the way, the United States actually intervened on their behalf to actually make sure that they could quash the Shia opposition inside of that country. This is tens of thousands of Americans who are housed there. This is a full-blown regional conflict. The price of oil, the price of gas, everything is being affected. I mean, the number of people who are dead now has got to be probably in the thousands, considering the number of casualties which is happening.
Starting point is 00:16:25 The vast majority of these are going to be in Tehran. As you said, I mean, look, these are Gaza-level images. We're talking about hospitals and schools and all this. are getting struck. And I'm not going to let the Iranians off the hook either. They hit one of the biggest hospitals. And it was a Palestinian hospital in West Jerusalem. But this is war.
Starting point is 00:16:41 This is the totality of all of it. And how do you pull back from here? The off ramp that Trump, Trump, I think, really believed that he could do Midnight Hammer again. He's like, I'll bomb them and then they'll capitulate and negotiate. But he didn't understand, which we did. So it's not like he didn't have this same information. No. Because at a certain point, fool me once.
Starting point is 00:17:01 Shame on you. Fool me twice. shame on me. Well, you could see all of this playing out right now. For them, they're like, I'm not going to be bombed. You're going to kill the Ayatollah, and then I'm going to come back to the negotiating table with you. Also, the people with the Monopoly and the Houston Four is the
Starting point is 00:17:14 IRGC, they are the people most loyal to the Ayatola. They are the, you know, what do they tell us? Oh, they're psychopaths. Yeah, they hate us, okay? You think that they're going to be the ones who have all of this control over the military and they're just going to turn around and they're going to say, oh, here you go, Mr. President. No.
Starting point is 00:17:30 No, okay, they'll fight to the death. Yeah. They have tens of thousands. of these people. I mean, the whole thing, this is a disaster. Even if it ends today, it's a disaster. It's already an utter, shameful, destructive, chaotic catastrophe. I was telling you before, Zahar, it's hard for me to think of a more reckless action taken by any country, not just our country, but taken by any country in modern history. I mean, in terms of level of recklessness, it exceeds Iraq. I mean, the lies that we're talking. We don't know what the objective is. We don't know what the
Starting point is 00:18:06 goals are. We don't know what the strategy is. Our allies are not with us. They don't even bother to manufacture consent. It's complete and utter insanity. And I think you have to chalk it up to, you know, Trump being high on his own supply with Venezuela, being a complete fucking idiot. And also, I mean, you have to look at the Epstein Fausen and go, I don't know, maybe that is part of what's driving the calculus here because the whole thing seems so. incredibly insane. And now you've got effectively, so the Iranians have engaged, you know, what they call their mosaic strategy. So these IRGC commanders are relatively empowered to make their own decisions. So even if you keep taking out Iranian leaders, they are still empowered to
Starting point is 00:18:48 keep going. That makes it very difficult to see an immediate term regime collapse. Not to mention, like, look, I'm not saying that the current government in Iran is super popular. I don't think anyone knows what the popularies, but they do have a base of support. I mean, there were people who came out who were mourning the assassination of the Ayatollah who were deeply upset, and it will predictably have an impact of a rally around the flag effect and stoking Iranian nationalism within the country. So, you know, the, I think what has happened here is Trump thought that their initial salvos would be devastating enough that the regime would either topple or they would be on such thin ice or such shaky ground that they would feel they had to come back to the negotiating table.
Starting point is 00:19:35 And that has not happened. That is a fundamental miscalculation that, you know, if you were listening to Treat to Parsi, if you're listening to us, if you were listening to Jeffrey Sachs, if you're listening to Professor Mearsheimer, you would have known. That is not what is going to happen here. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men.
Starting point is 00:20:07 Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic, Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach. approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want to chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen.
Starting point is 00:20:47 Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final Rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines.
Starting point is 00:21:18 It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?
Starting point is 00:22:24 NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis. Linguistics and Psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits.
Starting point is 00:22:50 He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So now here we are. The president announced this devastating war where now American service members have been killed, announced this, you know, from his golf club down at Mar-a-Lago wearing a ball cap and a shirt
Starting point is 00:23:20 and no tie. He then went on to a fundraiser, a million-dollar fundraiser with a put his tie on for that part. We have only heard that from him, these little interviews where he's calling up various, you know, New York Times or whoever to give them two-minute interviews. One other, you know, pre-edited statement that we just put out, no live address, not taking any questions. You do have Secretary of War Pete Heggseth out this morning as we speak, giving some sort of a press conference. There were no administration officials on any of the Sunday shows. Just think about this. They have brought us into an illegal war with no congressional approval, no public approval, no public
Starting point is 00:24:01 support and then they are hiding from us. They won't even tell us what is really going on, what the goals really are, what the planning for this is, and what is going to happen next. They don't even have enough respect to go out and defend their positions on the Sunday shows. And we can put, we have an element to that effect. This is a part 2A11 guys that you can put up on the screen, just showing what I'm saying here. But this is one of the things that is utterly stunning to me. You have now a massive regional war with all of these strikes on, you know, allies drowned through it and they're taking damage in Dubai and the Strait of Hormuz shut down, four service members at least killed and more wounded and the Israelis take all this stuff. And they didn't
Starting point is 00:24:48 even go on the Sunday shows. Put 812 up on the screen here as well. White House just called a lid for the day, meaning Trump's not expected to make any appearances before reporters. That was at 4.30 on Sunday. I mean, Sauger, what can you even say about this? Yeah, we're screwed. And it's not just about screwed. It is reflective of, remember after Venezuela, Secretary Rubio did a press conference the next day.
Starting point is 00:25:14 Now, you could say, look, I oppose the Venezuela thing, but there was a plan. You kidnap Maduro, put Delsey in power. We're good to go. They don't know what to do now. I really believe that they're in way over their head. Already, it has gone past what they already expect to have full-blown regional war.
Starting point is 00:25:28 The coordination wasn't there. You have multiple Americans who are dead. The Iranians did not capitulate. They thought we could just punch them in the face and they're just going to keep coming back. But what did we say here over and over again? They have planned that they're going to take 90% casualties. And that actually did happen at the top. All of them are dead.
Starting point is 00:25:44 All of the national... They didn't care. They have it dispersed. They have it ready to go. The entire regime, basically at the top of the national security establishment, has been killed. Didn't stop a bunch of missiles flying into Israel last night. Israel got pounded yesterday. Remember this, too.
Starting point is 00:25:57 Israel has a massive amount of censorship. They're broadcasting the IDF telling, do not post videos because it gives the battle damage assessment. We have no idea what the catastrophe is like inside of Israel. But you look at that image of that missile and there were videos of ambulances on the way there, God only knows how many people were killed or the damage that happened.
Starting point is 00:26:16 So keep in mind that it's already gone past what they expected. And now that's why he's scrambling. He keeps floating these things. Oh, we'll talk to them. Yesterday he said, we'll be talking. Barack Ravid goes on TV and goes when he's, he says talking, he doesn't mean talking to the current regime. Who's he talking to? The Shah's fail son? The Polavi idiot? Like, that's what we're dealing with. Wow. And it's catastrophic.
Starting point is 00:26:37 I mean, beyond, because like you just said with Iraq, Iraq was worse, okay, in terms of damage. But the plan was there. In stalactamite, we go in, we find the fake WMD, done and dust it, the coalition provisional authority. We didn't have a real plan, but we had a, you know, fake plan. This one, they don't even have a fake one. I mean, they truly have no idea what they're doing. The Secretary of Defense is talking while you and I are now. He says it's not a regime change war, but the regime sure did change. We did not start this war. This is literally what he says.
Starting point is 00:27:05 We didn't start this war, but we will finish it. The aims are not regime change, even though the regime has changed. We're just going to kill the Navy, sink the Navy. We're going to make sure that they can no longer project power outside of the region. What does that even mean? That's meaningless. So we're going to replace the government via the air, which has literally never happened, ever. Yes, that is worth underscoring because I was listening to Robert Pape on this.
Starting point is 00:27:27 Who studied? He's an expert on this. Right. He studied all of the, since in the history of air power being used in military conflict, do you know how many times it has worked out that a regime has been placed purely through airstrikes? Zero. Zero times. That is how often this has worked out. And yet here we are with all of this arrogance, with all of this egotism, with all of this idiocy thinking this will be, this will be the one time that it's worked. It will work with a government that has survived so much of us trying to destroy it for close to 50 years, this will be the time that does have some popular base of support, by the way, in the country. This will be the time that it works out.
Starting point is 00:28:10 What a bunch of fools. You know, on these fake negotiations that were going on that were clearly just a ruse in order to, you know, buy them time so that they could amass this whole armada in the region and all of the air power that we have remained, you know, all of the interceptors we have remaining and all of that, there are reports that, you know, Kushner and Witkoff, they couldn't even understand what the Iranians were offering. Because if this was truly about nuclear weapons, and we, you know, Dr. Trita Parsi, we've had on this show many times, and he was speaking to another, I think over on MSNBC, he was speaking to them. He said, listen, I was an informal
Starting point is 00:28:45 advisor to the nuclear talks back under the Obama administration. And there is no doubt that what the Iranians were offering here went way beyond what Obama was able to achieve. They offered significantly more concessions. So if Trump wanted to just take that win and say, look at what I did, what Obama could never do, blah, blah, blah, that was there. But again, there are, first of all, that was never the goal. I mean, we've heard, oh, we care about the protesters. We care about the freedom.
Starting point is 00:29:14 Oh, we care about the ballistic missiles. Then we had, oh, we're worried about their Navy. And, oh, and by the way, the way we're still worried about the nuclear weapons, which we told you, we obliterated during the last war. So, you know, I don't even want to give them credence. to any of the lies and bullshit that they've told here. But if it was really about nuclear weapons, if it was really about the nuclear program,
Starting point is 00:29:33 they offered far and away beyond what the previous nuclear deal entailed. And there are reports that Kushner and Witkoff could not even comprehend what was being said to them. And that is, again, it's intentional because they weren't there to negotiate. They were there to stall and buy time for this pre-planned operation.
Starting point is 00:29:53 Yeah, that's right. Now, let's turn to what we have now so far. So one of the, what are the, pretext that the president gave, nuclear weapons. Here's Senator Ted Cruz saying openly, no evidence that they were close to nuclear weapons, also backed up by a Democratic senator. Let's take a listen. In terms of containing the risk, who's securing the nuclear material that you say still exists within Iran? Who's doing that? Look, the quantity of nuclear material, I didn't say anything one way or another on that. What I said is they were building nuclear
Starting point is 00:30:22 weapons a year ago and our bombing took that out. They also, had an ongoing desire to rebuild them. I don't have present-day intelligence on what progress they had made towards rebuilding nuclear weapons since we bombed their facilities. I have no indication that they were anywhere close to getting nuclear weapons because our bombing was devastating. And Margaret, that's one of the reasons. I urged President Trump, now is the time. I think the president has started a war of choice. There was no imminent threat to the United States. So the decision to put our service members in harm's way and bases around the region in harm's way was entirely based upon the president's decision, not an imminent threat to America. I saw no intelligence
Starting point is 00:31:19 that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of preemptive strike against the United States of America? None. None. None. That is from Ted Cruz and said these are two as pro-war as it gets, if you think that those people are lying. By the way, if you want a little bit more of a view into how bad the situation is, here's Senator Tom Cotton saying that there will be no large ground force in Iran. And not, did you hear the word? No large ground force, not no ground force. Take a listen.
Starting point is 00:31:52 The president of the United States warned the American public that there could be casualties, American casualties. Does that mean the U.S. is putting boots on the ground? No, Margaret, the president has been clear that what we should expect to see is an extended air and naval campaign that's designed not only to continue to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions, but most importantly, to destroy its vast missile. arsenal. Many more missiles in the United States and Israel have air defenses combined, as well as the missile launchers and its missile manufacturing capability. Now obviously
Starting point is 00:32:30 one risk of that kind of campaign is that an aircraft could be shot down and the president would never leave a pilot behind. So no doubt we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any down pilot. But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, Margaret, the president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground for force inside of Iran? Large-scale ground force. Now, one of the reasons we have to play you clips of Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Tom Cotton is the White House explicitly said we're going to allow the senators do the talking for
Starting point is 00:33:00 us on the Sunday shows, as you referenced earlier. It is not a rule out there of American ground troops that will set foot on Iranian soil. Well, I've got an update for you this morning in this Pete Hagseth press conference that's going on right now. He got asked by a reporter, are there currently any American boots on the ground in Iran? and he said no, but we're not going to get into the exercise of what we will or will not do. Let's take a listen to that. I have two questions for you.
Starting point is 00:33:26 First, are there currently any American boots on the ground in Iran? No, but we're not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do. I think it's one of those fallacies for a long time that this department or presidents or others should tell the American people, and our enemies, by the way, here's exactly what we'll do. Here's exactly how long we'll go. Here's exactly how far we'll go. Here's what we're willing to do and not do. It's foolishness.
Starting point is 00:33:54 And so President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we'll go as far as we need to go to advanced American interests. But we're not dumb about it. You don't have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years. We've proven that you can achieve objectives that advance American interests
Starting point is 00:34:09 without being foolish about it. Now, will we be bold about it? Are we willing to be decisive about it? Do we put months and months of planning into what kind of effects we want to achieve? Absolutely. But going forward, why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody, what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective? We fight to win. We fight to achieve the objectives the president of the United States has laid out, and we will do so unapologetically. I mean, and Sauger, what scares me? Well, they can't because now
Starting point is 00:34:39 we're in it. We're in it now. That's what scares me is what there is no offer in here. I mean, Trump cares about one thing. It's how his ego and how things look on TV, oh, and money. You know, those are the things he cares about. And for him to have said, we are going to, there's going to be freedom in Iran and explicitly, remember guys, explicitly frame this as a regime change war. And to go in and get your nose-blooded, have American fighter jets falling down the sky and getting killed.
Starting point is 00:35:08 And the Iranians are saying, no, we're not going back to the negotiating table. how are you going to get out of this? And you will not get, listen to my words, they will not accomplish their goal here of regime change through air power alone. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? And now we already have him saying,
Starting point is 00:35:27 oh, you know, we can't rule it out. We're going to do what it takes. Every day that this goes on, that Kuwait thing, I mean, we're lucky that more people have not already been killed. By the way, we don't even know what. The real numbers. It only takes one.
Starting point is 00:35:40 Look at Afghanistan. Do you remember how we would have the deadliest day in Afghanistan? It just takes one Taliban guy, one lucky RPG, and you've got like 30 seals shot out of the sky, right? That's it. That's all it takes. And that happened twice in the history of the war of Afghanistan. Helicopters, they're on their way to something. Routine mission, boom. All right? Now 25 people are without a son, they're widows, gold star families. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. then that changes everything. Now, don't forget this. This, I mean, one of the pretexts for the war is about what Iran did to the United States during the war in Iraq, which was basically take over much of the insurgency and supply them with the sophisticated means to manufacture these IEDs. This is a call it was an EFP, if I recall, which is a very specific deadly type of IED that was dramatically more lethal than anything else that was seen on the battlefield. Now, look, that's true. It is true. They are responsible for, hundreds of deaths in the war in Iraq. We should have been there in the first place. But I love
Starting point is 00:36:44 that this pretext is now currently being used. If you wanted to strike Iran for doing that, that would have been the time. There are people alive watching this show today who probably, or there are people who are watching the show today, literally, probably right now, who were not even alive at the time when all of that happened. You can't use some 20-year-old pretext. If you wanted to kill him, you should have done it then. And you think the Bush administration wasn't up to it? Do you know why they didn't do it? Because they were bogged down in Iraq already. and they're like, well, there's nothing that we can really do if we want to branch into Iran.
Starting point is 00:37:14 That's really what this is about. But also think about what that means, is that we're supposed to believe that this army, which, yes, has this conventional capability right now of ballistic missiles and all of that, is just going to go quietly into the good night. If, by your own admission,
Starting point is 00:37:29 they were capable of killing over 1,000 Americans through all these IED, what you think they still don't have all that technology? You think the IED still doesn't work? Not even in terms of occupation. It's sort of sponsored terrorism. We're talking the blowback. segment, there's some very sketchy stuff going on with that terrorist attack. You got a guy with an
Starting point is 00:37:44 Iranian flag, or with Iranian flag underneath his garb with the praise Allah sweatshirt. Got pictures of the Iranian leader in his house, according to police authorities. And this guy is from Senegal. What the hell is going on here, right? I mean, this is bad. And we had no, like, planning or anything. You know, I had to fly after the day after. It's the first time in, I don't even know, a decade, where I'm like, I don't know, man, you know? I mean, it shouldn't even be a question, right? It's one of those where I was like, hope so. By the way, it was flying from Austin in the time that this terrorist attack
Starting point is 00:38:14 literally broke out. How many people are going to have that up there? You think I'm going to Dubai anytime soon, which is the gateway too much of Asia for a lot of for a lot of American? No, most people shouldn't. This is the danger in what has now been unleashed. And yeah, even though it's day three,
Starting point is 00:38:30 they're not back and down. Trump says it's going to take what, four weeks. Is that what he said? That's what he said, four or five weeks. We'll see. Already just yesterday in the New York Times, he floated cannibalizing global stocks of ammunition. He says it won't be difficult.
Starting point is 00:38:43 We have tremendous amounts of ammo. We have ammo stored all over the world. This is a nightmare. If you care about China and deterring Taiwan, we're done. We're done. We're already probably 50% blown through the interceptor stock. We have maybe three or four weeks left. And last thing here, I'm just seeing this now
Starting point is 00:38:58 because European gas prices skyrocketing like 50% because of all the shutdown of the Qatari LNG production and everything that's going on. EU has now reached a, quote, panic moment. As not all member states have sufficient energy reserves, a leading energy analyst says the EU is likely to do what? Increase energy imports from Russia. So, congrats, guys.
Starting point is 00:39:21 Way to go. Yeah, congratulations. Actually, congratulations to Putin. The Kremlin doing backflips right now. Oh, yeah. Oil at 100 will fund the war in Ukraine for five years. For all of you neocon idiots who supported, you know, taking or doing the war with Iran and, quote, support Ukraine, you just bought another 100 K.
Starting point is 00:39:38 casualties on the battlefield. So congrats to you. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives, and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places,
Starting point is 00:40:25 but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected.
Starting point is 00:41:00 The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it.
Starting point is 00:41:26 This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you get control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
Starting point is 00:42:07 Can you hypnotize someone? into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
Starting point is 00:42:30 It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:42:58 Turning now to the global markets, absolutely royal this morning. We'll start with the most important. Let's put this up here on the screen. Qatar Energy has now stopped all LNG production. If they shut down production, 14 trains, a statement's word suggests that is 20% of the global output. A single company is the world's largest LNG producer. European markets spiking 50% this morning for liquefied natural gas, indicating that they may have to wait for it, buy gas from Russia.
Starting point is 00:43:29 In addition, we are now watching oil skyrocket in price. Guys, can we go ahead and put that one up here on the screen from B4? oil markets that are currently at least 10% of a spike, and it is potentially headed for some $100 per barrel already. They are indicating that gas will likely rise within the next week as there's some restock and negotiations that are currently happening. As I indicated to everyone earlier, let's put B2 on the screen. You can see that the insurers have already said that they're going to dramatically raise the insurance price for any ship, which is in the vicinity of the Straits of Hormuz. at least by as much as 50%, several hundred thousand dollars per shipment for probably not only the world's choke point for oil, but in particular, this will massively impact markets in
Starting point is 00:44:19 Asia, where they have predominant number of their amount of their oil moves through. Also, we have significant amounts of other goods that move through the straits, and the shutdown of that could cause crises in the Gulf very, very soon. Now, in terms of our own markets, we're recording this right after the market open, so we can go ahead and put the CNBC tear sheet up on the screen. Keep in mind, you know, we are doing our best right now because things may move and change by the end of the day. But at the moment that we are recording this, it looks like the Dow is down by 500 points, by down at least 1%. About a 1% drop in the S&P 500, a 1% drop in the NASDAQ. The Russell is down by about 1.68%. And U.S. 10-year,
Starting point is 00:44:56 looks like it's down by about 4%. The VIX, which is like a volatility index, up some 17.9%. And gold, and Bitcoin both moving a little bit in a higher direction. The dollar also increasing in value. So you can see that there's already been global market reaction. But by far, I would say the number one headline out of this crystal is LNG, lequified natural gas. Remember, this is how we're all getting electricity. And so our electric prices might be going up. Energy, LNG and oil are global commodities. So just because the price goes up somewhere else doesn't mean that it won't necessarily affect you. And then we also will have to show you this Saudi Aramco. Let's put B1B up here on the screen. This was video just coming out this morning. Saudi official telling Al-Arabia that spires
Starting point is 00:45:44 that Saudi Aramco are, quote, not the result of a direct of Iranian strike, but were caused by falling debris from an intercepted drone. But regardless, obviously a drone going after Saudi Aramco, the largest oil refining export facility in the entire world. The refinery has a capacity of some 550,000 barrels per day in a significant portion of the global oil supply in that single field at that processing facility. So the Iranians are waging a full-blown economic war, I think on multiple fronts. So if we think about the Gulf states outside of Saudi, for them it was energy plus prestige. So they've crippled now the Qatari gas field. Now they've already had bombs and things go off in the middle of Doha, falling intercepted missiles.
Starting point is 00:46:27 the UAE, the way that Dubai was trying to get past its energy image was to become this global powerhouse for the rich, the Fairmont Hotel and the Burj Khalifa, literally on fire, right? You've got all these like Western girl influencers who are probably being paid to be over there, like hanging out in tank tops at the gym, now scrambling to the airport. Oh, oops, except you can't get out because the entire airport shut down. Semaphore reporting this morning, the going rate for a PJ out of Saudi today is, 350 grand for a single one-way flight, for a single one-way flight. So the princes might be able to make it. Some of the people who pay those influencers might be able to make it. But if you're there on a tourist visa, you're stuck for the time being. The entire region's airspace is basically shut down. I think a single commercial passenger plane has left, I think, Abu Dhabi, like in the last 24 hours. If you look at global air traffic, it's all going around the middle. I mean, you've got missiles, drones and all this stuff that's flying up there. Don't forget. what happened in Ukraine. You remember when those passenger planes got accidentally shot out of the sky,
Starting point is 00:47:32 accidentally shot out of the sky, literally. So, I mean, this is serious stuff. This is danger. This is extremely dangerous. And the global economic impact in the gas market, we haven't seen anything like this since Ukraine. Except now, ironically, we're going to massively fund the Russian war effort. So congratulations to all of the neocons for dramatically enriching the Kremlin. Yeah, I mean, those images of the burning Dubai hotels are crazy. And the theory is that Iran targeted some of these hotels because service members had been moved off of bases to be kept safe. And so the Iranians targeted with these. Again, these are like $30,000 to $50,000 drones that they're using en masse, that they mass produce.
Starting point is 00:48:12 It's the same thing that, you know, the Houthis were armed with by the Iranians that they're using to, you know, attack hotels in Dubai. Crazy, crazy stuff. Let's put this B6 up on the screen. The Financial Times had good analysis about what all this could mean. They talked to an analyst who said, yes, oil could go up to $100 a barrel. They said, how dangerous would that be to U.S. growth, given the fact that we are largely energy self-sufficient at this point? It is a different dynamic than, you know, in the 70s or whatever.
Starting point is 00:48:41 And they say, but that doesn't mean an interruption to Gulf oil flows would be irrelevant to the U.S. economy, given the impact on oil benchmarks. Sharply higher global oil prices can inflict pain on U.S. consumers and corporate America. This would feed into higher gas prices, placing a visible strain on consumers, many of whom are already complaining about a cost of living crisis ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Oil of $100 a barrel could push consumer price inflation from 2.4% in this year to January to above 4%. Fed targets. 2% inflation is measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures. In the short term, it would make the U.S. Federal Reserve less likely to cut interest rates, which of course is something that Trump has been wanting them to do.
Starting point is 00:49:23 So you're talking about interest rates staying relatively high. You're talking about inflation overall because of the way, of course, oil prices feed into everything. And you're talking higher prices at the pump. And you know, you recall back at the beginning early days of the Ukraine war, there was polling that people were like, yes, I am actually willing to pay more at the pump because I believe this was an unjust, unprovoked war of aggression from the Russians. We want to support Ukraine. like we want to be on their side, we're willing to take some pain. I think we're both a little skeptical at the time of how long that would last, rightly so. But this time, I want to see the polling.
Starting point is 00:50:00 Go ask people, you willing to pay four bucks a gallon for gas so that we can do whatever the hell we're doing right now and have American service members killed, et cetera? There is zero appetite for this. I mean, going into this war you had maybe 20 to 30 percent of the American public who were like, yes, we're with Iran. Many of them live right here in the broader DMV region. In any case, you think that people are willing to pay any, like have any pain in their lives because of this. And then you look at the fact, you know, we've had these massive cuts to the social safety net this year.
Starting point is 00:50:35 You've had health care cuts. You've had, you know, you had the whole Doge thing and all kinds of, you know, things that were, that have been made more, the life made more difficult for people. And meanwhile, we're letting $100 million dollar fighter jets get dropped down to the same thing. guy reportedly by our allies, and God only knows how much is being spent on this whole absolute catastrophe. They'll never tell you. I mean, do you know, do you even want to know what the operating cost and a B-2 bomber is that's a 36-hour mission from the United States over there? It's millions of dollars, everything, that thing, even every time it leaves the base.
Starting point is 00:51:08 Every Tomahawk missile, you know, hundreds of thousands, half of them, not half, but a decent number of them sometimes they don't even explode. In Nigeria, a quarter of them didn't explode. That's what I'm saying. And then, you know, the amount of money that were spent. The General Kane this morning said more troops already on the way. So we already had tens of thousands of troops who were in the region. Now he's saying more troops. Anybody remember what it was like in the middle of Iraq?
Starting point is 00:51:33 God, you know, I really feel already there was a report coming out for one of the guys who was injured. A Navy reservist, 911 dispatcher. I mean, this person probably signed up for extra money. I mean, look, I'm not saying he's not a patriot or any of that, But he probably never imagined he's going to be in the middle of a war zone. What do they tell you? Like one weekend a month? Yeah, one week in a month or whatever. And it's, I mean, just this is what I watched this happen with Iraq.
Starting point is 00:51:57 I know people like that. They're showing the firemen in the National Guard. Next thing you know he's pulling a 16-month tour in Iraq, right? Watching people getting blown up by IEDs. We may not be that far away from that, unfortunately, considering what Secretary HeadSecte said this morning. But considering, you know, just on the global economic implication here, it's only day three. We've got a shutdown here in LNG, even if things, quote, unquote, go back to normal, like if the war ended today. Think about already. You have the Straits of Hormuz problem. The Iranians at least have some limited amount of deterrence in that region. You also have a hardline faction in Iran, which I'm doubtful is ever really going to truly surrender. Then you've got the Gulf Arab prestige. What's happened to them? Have we talked about the UAE stock market? I think we have. Yeah, B3. Put that one up there. The UAE. literally is closing its entire stock exchange for two dates in order to stop the amount of drop
Starting point is 00:52:53 in order to stop the losses that they're likely to incur. We'll talk about this later with Professor Zhang. I mean, you had an Amazon data center take a hit in the middle of the UAE. That is disastrous for them because their whole economic pitch was, hey, guys, we've got plenty of cheap energy over here. There ain't no nimbism out in the desert. Build whatever you want. Take as much, suck as much oil out of the ground. We'll power it for you. And we've got millions of dollars to boot. You think they're not going to rethink that?
Starting point is 00:53:24 All of these data center companies and others that are going to be building them out in the Middle East. I mean, this is a absolute disaster already. Also, what we have shown for the Gulf, they can't have nearly that much faith in the United States. For years, the trade was we sell you the oil, we buy your weapons, you protect us. It's not working. I mean, at the very, like, with these drones, there's not much you can do against them. As far as I know, from what I talked to some of the experts, the way that the Ukrainians deal with these Iranian drones, you put a belt-fed machine gun and you just fire it at them.
Starting point is 00:53:58 That's basically all you can do. Although, that requires a lot of ammunition, which, you know, even then, we're already talking about having to cannibalize global stocks. Our companies, our defense base is not prepared for the spin-up that was going to be required. If this lasts more than three months, we're going to have serious problems. Serious, serious problems. Like, we're going to be down to the absolute scraps. This is what the generals were warning about.
Starting point is 00:54:25 I just saw a report this morning from inside of Iran. They say, so far, Iran has declined three requests for mediation. From de Réryan's perspective, the country possesses the capacity and preparedness to sustain high-intensity conflict for a period of approximately 60 to 90 days within this strategic calculus, accepting a ceasefire and early stage. would not constitute an advantage. Rather, it would carry greater long-term strategic costs than continuing the confrontation.
Starting point is 00:54:49 For them, they're going to say, let's take as many casualties as we can to sustain 60 to 90 days, inflect maximum damage on all of these people, cripple them and bring them to high-risk strategy, right? Because, I mean, look at the videos that we've already showed you. Who knows how many thousands of people are dead in Tehran? Do you think the Israelis care about civilian casualty? They're carpet bombing that place from what we already saw last night.
Starting point is 00:55:12 So, I mean, it's a catastrophe. Like, literally it could end today, and already everything has changed. Absolutely the case. Absolutely the case. And I just can't get some of these images out of my head. That plane plummeting to the ground. The, you know, there's one going around. We didn't put it in the show because we weren't 100% sure that this is real, but it appears to show an American service member on the ground surrendering as a local Kuwaiti
Starting point is 00:55:38 who found him, you know, has a stick over his head, ready to beat his ass. I mean, humiliation. Like, this is horrifying humiliation. And we're supposed to be the whole point of all of the foreign adventurism from this maniac of a president that we have is supposed to be about maintaining our status as the undisputed global hegemon. That's what really at its core, you know, and he functions in this like mob boss, ego-driven way. That's what it's supposed to be throwing our weight around. this is what it means to make America great again, blah, blah, blah. You have these images of American service members at the mercy of just random local people
Starting point is 00:56:21 in Kuwait or in other, you know, places that are supposed to be our allies. It's, you know, how are you going to persist as the global superpower when this is the level of humiliation that you're already suffering? And listen, I mean, let me be clear. There's no doubt our military is much bigger than the Iranian military. like us and the Israelis, we can inflict much more damage on them than they can do to us. But for them, this is existential. They will fight to the death.
Starting point is 00:56:47 And by the way, a lot of people in the Iranian government, like, they actually believe in what they're fighting for. Like, they are actually committed to some principle. It might not be principles we agree with, but they are actually committed to some principle and willing to fight for those principles, which we're seeing, not to mention, that they're fighting for their lives and the very existence of their country and their government to continue. They have, I mean, to say they have more skin in the game here is just like an unbelievable understatement.
Starting point is 00:57:13 So, listen, the economic warfare is going to be just as central to this as the military warfare. And the Iranians know that with our allies in Gulf, they are incredibly vulnerable. The Israelis and their whole, you know, defense tech sector, they're very vulnerable. They think they are actually willing to take some pain in order to take, you know, the Iranian government off the map. And let me say something else about our great Israeli friends. Do you think that they care that much if we're weakened? No. No.
Starting point is 00:57:45 No, because guess what? Then we're not as much of a factor in the Middle East. They can be even more of the undisputed heavyweight in the Middle East, throwing their weight around. So they don't give us shit. They don't give a shit about American lies. They don't give us shit about American equipment, American hegemon. They don't care.
Starting point is 00:58:02 You could argue they have an interest in seeing us get into this. foolish war and be humiliated and have our economy tank and collapse on the global stage. So listen, that's why paying attention to what happens here with oil, with natural gas, with, you know, the tourism economies that all of these, you know, Gulf Arab states have tried to build up. All of that is going to make a huge difference in terms of how long the U.S. is going to be able to sustain any sort of political will for this conflict. And I'll tell you that war powers resolution vote is going to be very interesting. this week.
Starting point is 00:58:37 If we get to it. As you already see, you know, as you already see, like, blowback, obviously in terms of the markets, then we're going to talk about the global blowback as well. I hope that we get the vote. I'm not sure. All right.
Starting point is 00:58:49 Let's get to blowback. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16,
Starting point is 00:59:05 you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives, and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses,
Starting point is 00:59:32 and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want to chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. he became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would.
Starting point is 01:00:14 But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant.
Starting point is 01:00:35 This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said, She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
Starting point is 01:01:12 When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness.
Starting point is 01:01:41 Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to blowback.
Starting point is 01:02:09 Of course, the term coined originally by the CIR. back in the 1950s about operations abroad, which may blow back on the United States at home, is already materializing as a result of this Iran conflict. Let's start already with a very sketchy and strange incident in Austin, Texas, where I literally was at the time of this shooting. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. The FBI is currently probing a Texas bar shooting that killed two and wounded 14 as a possible terrorist act. So what they say is that the gunman was wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and the words, property of Allah. killed two people and wounded 14 in early Sunday morning at a Texas bar.
Starting point is 01:02:47 The FBI already investigating the shooting. Already there's some indications that this man had pictures, actually, of the Iranian leader in his home at the time of the shooting whenever it was busted down by the FBI. He was killed in the incident by the Austin Police Department. However, all of the circumstances around this are extremely bizarre. The perpetrator appears to be a Senegalese, naturalized citizen of the United States who came back, I believe under Bill Clinton, overstated a visa, married a U.S. citizen, was able to get a green card,
Starting point is 01:03:23 eventually became a naturalized U.S. citizen under several years ago. So it's been a citizen for over 15 years. But, I mean, you've got a person here who's, again, literally from Senegal, which I didn't even know there are a lot of Muslims in Senegal, but whatever, who is now apparently some sort of acolyte or inspired by the attack on the U.S. Iranians, which has already happened on the very day of the attack. I mean, look, you know, if you asked me, you shouldn't be here, but you're here now. I mean, what do we do? This is the exact problem that we have right now. I mean, some of the right-wing fever dream has always been
Starting point is 01:03:57 like, look, there could be like terrorists. Iranian super-cells. No, but like actually, I mean, for real, this is crazy. You literally have a guy from Senegal who's been the naturalized citizen with pictures of Iran. Look, he could be crazy, right? I mean, it's not going to put that past anybody. But, of course, this is the same problem that we would have during the global war on terror. And I'm not saying that just because people are here and they want to throw a terrorist, start a terror stack doesn't mean that we shouldn't do something abroad, but you should think about it a little bit. And maybe the FBI director shouldn't be chugging beers in Milan at the time, allegedly around the same go time that the order was issued
Starting point is 01:04:29 by the United States government. So did anybody think about it at all? They're like, hey, maybe we should heighten our terror alert. Maybe we should think about potential terrorist attacks here, or is that going to happen here at home? Apparently to them, the cost was worth it. Not worth it to me. Yeah. Not worth it to me. And here's a thing, without buying into, you know, a bunch of unproven whatever about Iranian sleeper cells here in the U.S. Is it any, like, do you think our actions around the globe right now are going to make people love us? Do you think they're going to inspire love for this country and desire to see, you know, to see to our well-being? And we oversaw a genocide for years. I mean, that was our genocide as much as it was the Israelis, just utterly
Starting point is 01:05:08 obliterated Gaza. We just bombed alongside the Israelis. we just bombed schoolgirls, murdering over a hundred of them. Already, there have been something like eight hospitals in Iran that have been bombed. Just a bully, just a bully throwing our weight around, might makes right, no care or concern about the barbarism. And look, the Ayatollah was not only the leader of Iran. He was also a spiritual leader for Shia Muslims, okay? And just imagine if, like, you know, we seem to have this sort of antiseptic view of, like, like, oh, of course we can just, like, assassinate world leaders. That's fine and good. And by the way,
Starting point is 01:05:45 his family and his wife and his grandchildren and whatever alongside it. Imagine that was done for Trump and Melania and Barron. Like, just put it in that perspective. How do you think that's going to make people feel? And of course, if you can't, you know, project your own like consciousness onto the situation, you don't have to because we lived through the Iraq War. We saw the way that it created chaos and spun up terror groups and caused all sorts of problems, not only for our service members, but created chaos throughout the entire region and dealt a devastating blow to the U.S. in terms of, you know, the future and the status of our country, not to mention the amount of money and obviously the horror and the lives lost that, you know, of our own service members and also
Starting point is 01:06:26 of the many innocent civilians, millions of innocent civilians who were killed in that conflict as well. So, so no, I mean, it's entirely predictable that far from keeping us safer, which is what we're being sold, far from keeping us safer or preventing some undefined risk. This has created much more danger and put everybody at much more risk. That is the direct impact of what we're doing here. I'm going to be at risk. It better be for something important. It better not be for some shit like this. Let's continue, by the way, to your point. I mean, already the signs are all around the globe. Let's put this video up here on the screen. This is from Baghdad. Just yesterday, inside of the green zone, the perimeter where the U.S. Embassy is, the most expensive.
Starting point is 01:07:10 of U.S. Embassy ever built where you could see thousands of, maybe hundreds of protesters with flashbang grenades and other things that are all going off, clashes between the security forces. Shall I remind everybody, there's a massive Shia population inside of Iraq. That was the whole problem that we had with the civil war that broke out. Well, here is exactly the reason. One of the things we've talked about is that how Iraq became basically an Iranian proxy state as a result of the U.S. invasion.
Starting point is 01:07:38 This is prototypical example. Number one, they have a lot of sympathy. You have U.S. bases, embassy in Arbile. We had some of – we know for sure that there was some sort of Iranian strike on an airbill in northern Iraq, where there's a significant amount of U.S. forces and ammunition, which is stored there, and, of course, was under attack by purportedly some Shia militias and potentially even some of these Iranian drones. They're also major confrontation that happened in Pakistan. Can we put this video up here on the screen?
Starting point is 01:08:11 I mean, what you're watching here was this consulate in Karachi, in Pakistan. Violent clashes in two instances where at least 10, 15 people were killed. The Pakistanis are saying that it's by the local security forces, but you could also see, you know, U.S. personnel are behind these walls and these compounds. And it has erupted all over Pakistan with violent. protests against the United States. You can see very clearly that this is already happening. I mean, look, just read a book.
Starting point is 01:08:43 We talked about Israel. Sure. I mean, look, I'm not excusing in any way al-Qaeda, but I do think it's important to understand what led to the attacks on 9-11. It was U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia. It was this fanatical belief of the U.S. of the Great Satan, et cetera.
Starting point is 01:09:00 But a lot of it was also about Israel and Israeli attacks. So now we've just had the situation in Gaza. We've also had now the assassination of the Ayatollah, who was not only the leader of the country, but a literal religious figure inside for millions of Shia Muslim all over the world. Well, all of this is going to be seen as a U.S. attack, not only on the religion,
Starting point is 01:09:22 so you could look at it at a secular level about attacking this other country under insane pretences. You could look at at a religious level. You could look at the current U.S. support for Israel. you've got these Gulf populations. They're sitting on ticking time bombs, these monarchies. Because, I mean, Bahrain, I talked about earlier.
Starting point is 01:09:39 Bahrain has a huge Shia population. Isn't it a majority Shia? I think so. They are literally rioting in the streets where they are cheering on Iranian drones, which are landing in the middle of Bahrain. You have Saudi Arabia. It's right about 50-50.
Starting point is 01:09:54 There you go. So it's like a 50-50. I knew it was a decent number, but I wasn't exactly sure. But let's say in Saudi Arabia, They have always had this problem. The deal with the clerics is, you guys say what you want, we get to keep all the oil money and live in London.
Starting point is 01:10:08 Cool. All right, I get to have my Ferrari. You guys get to do what you want. Well, the population there is going to be furious right now, especially, not only in terms of Iran, but if this becomes some sort of massive alliance with the United States, and especially if they find themselves fighting on the same side as Israel, they're not going to like that.
Starting point is 01:10:26 Doha Qatar, same problem. You have this delicate balance. of tribes, Kuwait as well, we know with their own population. Like, we may have unleashed a literal same level of like Arab Spring and re-questioning of a lot of the security doctrine that everyone quietly lives with in the Gulf and just accepts. But right now, they're asking big questions. Like, we're going to talk later about this clip of a Saudi on Al Jazeera, who's like, America has abandoned us.
Starting point is 01:10:51 They're letting us get struck so that they can strike down Israel. And this is the other problem with constraints on our military. We literally have to choose. And of course, we're choosing Israel, which we have to. have to do by law. I mean, think of the UAE, okay? Somewhere around 90% of the population, the UAE, are foreign expats. Right. It's wealthy foreigners, but it's predominantly actually the poor laboring class that are brought in and treated horrifically, like indentured servants, effectively. And so, you know, if you, if the wealthy, you know, the wealthy foreigners, like,
Starting point is 01:11:23 I'm going to find some other destination for my money that's not getting bombed. How about that? if they leave, then you have an economic collapse. And by the way, the indentured servant class who are there, you know, driving the taxis and doing the door dash and all that sort of stuff, you think there aren't other places in the world they might prefer to go also that isn't getting bombed. And by the way, if the economy collapses there, there may not be so much work for them there anyway. Like, you're talking about a very precarious system here. And, you know, again, I come back to that photo that, you know, I don't know if it's real or not, but I do know the video of the service member who got picked up and the local Kuadians are like, hey, he's American, just leave him.
Starting point is 01:12:02 We've got video also of the Bahrainis who are celebrating as they're watching their own country get bombed by Iran because it's, you know, U.S. assets that are being hit. Like, that's what we're talking about here in the region. Just like here, the view of the leaders do not necessarily represent the view of the public. And, you know, we've had to sort of pressure and cajole the Europeans to go along with this at all. They're all issuing statements at the top that are like supportive in general, but they're not exactly, they weren't excited about this fight either, and their populations are going to be even more opposed to it.
Starting point is 01:12:31 And they're the ones who are facing 50% spike in LNG prices right now. Like, I guess we're going to have to buy more from Russia at whatever prices is on offer there. So, no, I mean, it's unbelievable. It is absolutely unbelievable. And these are just like we're in the early days here, guys. We're just seeing the rough edges of what is going to come to pass. You know, in Pakistan alone, it wasn't just that one incident. at the embassy, there have been 30 for this, according to a drop site, 35 people killed in
Starting point is 01:13:00 Pakistan amid protest over U.S. Israeli attacks on Iran. At least 35 civilians have been killed across Pakistan after protests erupted denouncing the joint U.S. Israeli strikes on neighboring Iran that also killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamini. The death toll was 16 people in Karachi, seven in, I'm going to screw up these names, Gilget, six in Skardu, six in Islamabad, according to local journalists. And local journalists are claiming that it was not just local police that killed the ones at the protesters at the embassy, that Marine security guards were also involved in that. So I don't know whether that's true or not, but that is what's being reported locally. Yeah, I mean, exactly. And we're not exactly sure what's happened. I've looked
Starting point is 01:13:38 for the Marine stack because it would be insane news if U.S. Marine opened fire on a crowd. Hasn't been any confirmation. The Pakistanis were saying various different things that were out of their mouth. But regardless, it's bad. I mean, what you're watching is a heightened alert. And think about this, too. You know how many, I don't even want to know the of American citizens who are stuck in Dubai International Airport or Doha International Airport or Abu Dhabi's Airbo. I mean, do you know how many people fly from here to Asia via the Gulf? Tens of thousands of people, probably per day, that are moving through the country. Just think about that entire choke point where all of these people are now stuck.
Starting point is 01:14:17 When I lived in Qatar, the number, you couldn't even like throw a, this was 2008. You couldn't even throw a brick without hitting another American citizen or somebody from the UK. Dubai is even more British and American, right? And foreign than even where I was. The expats are everywhere. They're all over Jordan. I mean, anywhere where there's oil in the UAE. All of these people, their lives, I mean, they're probably, they're gone, right? They're going to be selling their houses and their cars. Within a year, I don't think any of them are going to keep living there. This has dramatically shifted that. The blowback section, too, I think is really important just to consider. And look, I wasn't even talking about Iranian sleep, although, again, I still think it's
Starting point is 01:14:55 weird, the circumstances of all this. It's still bad if it's just like a quote unquote lone wolf attack, which you could easily expect as a result of this, right? Especially with the population and all these people that we have in the country. We have no idea in some cases who any of these people are. And you've got that and then you've got the international situation. Every U.S. base is now on a heightened alert. We've got confrontations with Turkey, which is a NATO ally. I mean, there are Americans who live all over the world and it only takes a single thing. Think back to you know, the al-Qaeda days of all of the various bombings that took place on various different installations.
Starting point is 01:15:31 You can't protect everything all the time and things will crop up. Like, nobody thought that the embassy in Kenya was going to get bombed in the 1990. They never even dreamed that such a thing would happen. I mean, this guy who showed up at Mar-a-Lago and with, like, intending to kill Trump, his Secret Service took him out,
Starting point is 01:15:49 apparently he was a former Trump supporter. Right, who was concerned about Epstein. He's disgusted about the Epstein files and the economy. So, I mean, yeah, when you, listen, you have a president who has taken this country into a war that we did not want, right? And who is covering up for some things in the Epstein vials. And everybody's gotten a glimpse now of how the world really works. You don't think that's going to be a radicalizing experience for some people and including, you know, in ways that could end. Obviously, this is analysis, not.
Starting point is 01:16:24 This is a horrifying direction that we're going in, right? But you'd be crazy. We're a country full of guns, an untreated mental illness, and, you know, being led by a mad king who doesn't care about anything, but like his ego and his money and his corrupt regime. It is a recipe for disaster on every single level. And the fact that we're already starting to see, you know, that that blowback is unbelievable. You can't control the whole world with the barrel of a gun.
Starting point is 01:16:54 gun. You know, you just can't do it. It's not going to work. So as much as he thinks he can just throw his weight around the world and he's got the biggest guns and might makes right, et cetera, like the people of the world are going to have their say as well. And effectively, the only ones that support it are like a small Iranian diaspora, mostly here. And the Israelis, like, that's pretty much it. The rest of like the citizens of the entire world are like, what the fuck is wrong with you right now. It's so interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.
Starting point is 01:17:50 And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast. starting on February 24th on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Starting point is 01:18:12 or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh, my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 01:18:46 I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. the dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.
Starting point is 01:19:14 I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

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