MTracey podcast - "Today's News" -- April 13, 2026: Trump's blockading Iran, Melania's mysterious Epstein speech, Swalwell's wild implosion... Oh My!

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

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All right, welcome to today's news, which is not the pedophile report and not private petal party and whatever other jokes to keep. Actually, it is. Actually, it is. That's the breaking news. That's the breaking news. That's the big plot twist that we've been waiting a couple weeks to finally spring on everybody. The big reveal. We've been pulling your leg this whole time.

You know what's funny? If we actually announced that, it wouldn't be news for more than like six. seconds in this environment. You know what I mean? Like if if we rolled out all the NAMBLA people from the 90s for a press conference and we're like really earnest and serious

about making this announcement. Like a pile of dead kids. And like pizza cheese just you know you know slimes. lined everywhere.

Just mountains of it. Like in close encounter, it's just like a huge... Anyway, all right. I took a couple of days off and came back to find out we were in a blockade. Then we weren't. Eric Swalwell, apparently, suddenly has... I like how you're just hibernating. I almost would want to see the look on your face

after you emerge from this hibernation. and you're filled in on all the latest news development. So do you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Is there some kind of like cartoon response, like a yogi bear hearing about this stuff? I'm increasingly convinced that it takes a certain amount of time to actually pull back from all of this shit and be appropriately shocked by it.

Because if you're following it every day, the logic of it starts to infect your mind. So do you like, purposely not check your phone or do you make a mental effort to block out any sort of news related inputs yeah unless i'm working on something i no longer even check um i thought we've been able to do that when i voluntarily inserted myself in a situation where my devices are actually like physically taken from me so i had i went on like a 10-day meditation retreat once where like you're not allowed to access your phone right so uh i don't have the self-control to actually do that on my own accord

Although when I went to Oregon in March of 2024 and did the state-sanctioned psilocybin mushroom experience. Which sounds great, by the way. But anyway, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's great because like the thing that would always ruin that, right, is this lurking suspicion that the cops could burst in at any moment and bust you in the middle of the trip, which you don't really want to even have the lingering threat of because it could really throw things off. You don't want that in your head. Yeah.

So that, so the Oregon, you know, praise be unto them, remove that as even something that people have to be even sort of like vaguely mindful of. So that's nice. And but, but, you know, throughout that experience, they do, but it isn't like, you're not supposed to look at your phone, which I didn't. And then I kind of carried that forth for like a day and a half. But other than those like very exceptional circumstances, I'm not sure exactly how you even do it. Well, I think it's necessary for mental health. Which is an indictment of me. I admit that.

No, no. I mean, it may not be. I don't know. I may just not be able to deal anymore. I just look at my kids and feel sad about all this stuff. But anyway, let's start with SOT 4, which is Iran. Let's, and Trump clarifying the situation that we're in. which is basically giving us an update.

Here we go. It's over the fact that they will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran, you're marking it down, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And we agreed to a lot of things, but they didn't agree to that. And I think they will agree to it. I'm almost sure of it. In fact, I am sure of it. If they don't agree, there's no deal.

There'll never be a deal. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and we're going to get the dust back. We'll get it back either. We'll get it back from them or we'll take it. We're going to get the, what does that mean? We're going to get the dust. He's talking about the enriched uranium, I guess. Oh, okay, the dust.

I don't know when that became dust. Yeah. I guess he's talking about it like the remnants of what they have in their stockpile for the enriched uranium after the June 2025 Midnight Hammer operation that was at least. he's nominally supposed to have obliterated the nuclear arsenal. So now he's saying it's dust. So it's all just a matter of us going and cleaning up the what remains of the dust. I like it when he gives those little nicknames for things.

Remember when he, in 2016, when he was talking about insurance and was talking about the state with the lines. The lines between the states, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And the implication is you're supposed to know what he's talking about, but you don't always. he's even done that recently with the Iran operation he calls it a little excursion a little journey he said yesterday did he a journey a little journey to Iran like it's just this simple little fling

that will have wrapped up in no time so it's like a don't worry ordain episode yeah yeah and we'll sample the local cuisine right right um all right let's go to SOT 5 which is a a sort of triumvirate of clips. Is this from today?

Is it the endgame? Is it to force Iran back to the negotiating table? Is it to open up the sprays so the gas prices ultimately come down? Maybe everything. I mean, both of those things, certainly, and more. We can't let a country blackmail or extort the world, because that's what they're doing. They're really blackmailing the world.

We're not going to let that happen. And you know, the amazing thing is we don't, can you believe this? We don't use this rate. We don't need this right. We have our own oil and gas, much more than we need. We have more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia. Think of this. We produce more, Saudi Arabia and add Russia to it substantially more.

And by next year, we'll have double that amount. So we don't need it, but the world needs it. And many ships are heading to our country right now, as we've been. to load up with the best, really, I guess you could say, somebody said the best and sweetest. I don't know exactly what sweet is, but when it relates to oil, it's a good thing. Now, it could very well be, this is gonna be settled before that.

We've been called this morning by the right people, the appropriate people, and they wanna work a deal. They would like to work a deal. Is it your anticipation as the president that other countries will assist in this effort to blocky Iran and those specific? Yeah, other. countries are going to also we don't need other countries frankly but uh they've offered the services

we'll let it we'll let it be known probably tomorrow it's not reached by the end of the ceasefire because your threat from before still stand yeah i don't want to comment on that but it won't be pleasant for them let me put it that one okay so we don't need anybody we don't we got all our own shit um and then and then pull up the the pope clip from yeah okay so this is uh well you need to show the number 20 there's the the the truth

Trump's truth about Pope Leo if we can look at number 20 because the truth and the Pope feud plays into Iran. Right. Yes exactly. Can you read it a little bit Michael? Okay and just bear in mind

I don't know if you saw this map but this came within hours yesterday of him also posting an AI image of himself as Jesus Christ. It's like the most amazing picture ever. And people were pointing out that he kind of just pilfered it from somebody else who I guess created that and posted it,

which is how he gets a lot of his weird memes that he ends up posting. But in the version that he posted, it seemed like there was like a subtle adjustment where it looks like there's almost a demonic figure, a darkened visage of some demon-looking figure in the background, see right on top of it right yes yes like that doesn't appear to be in the original version that somebody i guess created one of his friends he added i don't know what happened but of course like

the demonically inclined crowd out there pointed that out very eagerly and extrapolated a lot of meaning from it but um but then you know this reminded me of one of my all-time favorite trump quotes that I couldn't resist tying to his little his little journey into religiosity yesterday. Quote, religion is such a great thing. Religion is a great thing. It's such a great thing. It's such a great thing. That was that was him in 2024.

And then he went on to kind of explain what he meant by that. And you can hardly make heads or tails of it. It was just it was it was him like basically trying to be. to a Sunday school teacher about why religion was important? Well, it's impressive. I'll read some of this. If you could read some of me, yeah. So, I mean, it starts out with a banger.

Pope Leo is weak on crime. Sorry. This is hilarious. Like, he's starting out as though he was talking about Joe Biden. Right, right. Yes. The Pope. Or somebody else who wronged him politically.

Pope is weak on crime. Yeah, there's a lot of vandalism going on. Vatican City that Pope Leo refused just to get a handle on. He got rid of stop and frisk in the 16th chapel and terrible for foreign policy. He talks about fear of the Trump administration, but doesn't mention the fear that the Catholic Church

and all other Christian organizations had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else for holding church services. even when going outside and being 10 and even 20 feet apart. So if you read this, it's sort of strange. I thought he must have been referring to, like, police or some other state authority making these arrests or breaking up church services during COVID.

But it almost makes it seem like he's indicting the Christian organizations themselves for having effectuated these arrests. But I don't know, it's just not really precisely worded, which why would you expect it to be? I like his brother Lewis much better than I like him. because Lewis is all Maga. When when Pope Leo was first elected or appointed, he did, Trump did host his brother Lewis from Florida in the White House

because he likes Lewis because Lewis is very pro-Trump. Right, yeah, exactly. He gets it and Leo doesn't. I don't want a Pope who thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't want a Pope who thinks it's terrible. By the way, Trump is not even Catholic, right? I know. And what does the Pope have to do with what kind of Pope would endorse anybody having a nuclear weapon? I don't know. Those, you know, pious the something might have had some strange ideas back in the day.

I don't know. I don't want a Pope who thinks it's terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a country that was sending massive amounts of drugs into the United States and even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers and killers into our country. And I don't want a Pope who criticizes the president of the United States. States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected in a landslide to do setting record low numbers in all caps in a landslide creating the greatest stock market in history so the Pope should be more reverential of the stock market Leo should be thankful because as everyone knows he was a shocking surprise he wasn't on any list to be Pope which Trump I'm sure monitored very closely he was monitoring that situation very closely he was in he was in the um the whatever that

they call that he was reading the Vatican and insider blogs to key tabs on who was up and who was down in the pre-papal conclave phase. All right. I lost the place. I have to just finish this because like the. Okay, go ahead. And was only put, he wasn't on any list to be Pope and was only put there by the church because he was an American and they thought that would be the best way to deal with

President Donald J. Trump. So Trump is taking credit for the. elevation of Mr. Prevost, is that his name, to be as the Pope. So Trump really does seem one of the ironies here is that in his sermon or his statement over the weekend, Pope Leo said something like in reference to Iran, but it was obviously a not so subtle reference to Trump, that there are leaders who think that, who have these delusions of omnipotence. And to refute that, Trump is taking credit for the election of the Pope. which would speak to some level, perhaps, of omnipotent delusions.

If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo is weak on crime, weak on nuclear weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama sympathizers like David Axelrod, a loser from the left, who was one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested. Leo should get his act together as Pope. Use common sense, stop catering to the radical left, and focus on being a great Pope, not a politician. It's hurting him very badly.

And more importantly, it's hurting the Catholic Church, President Donald J. Trump. Now, in a sense, the Pope actually is a politician. He's a head of state. So he has a political role that, you know, in part speaks to why they do tend to comment on political matters when they come about, whether it's a war or something else. But I'm not sure Trump fully grasped that. But that was great. That gave me a hearty chuckle. So this is a compilation.

It's like a, it's almost like you've taken a greatest hits sampling of all of his different insults over the year. I sort of click that I sent in of the Pope specific comment. Yeah. Okay. So that's, that is SOT 6. And this is, this is after the inevitable Trump insults Pope draws backlash stories that came out. So there's this expectation, are you going to apologize? to the Pope. And this is straight out of, remember how Hunter Thompson wrote about that story about

Stalin, I guess responding to some papal criticism by saying fuck the Pope, how many divisions does he have? So I remember back in the day, you got in some hot water for your commentary on the Pope. I did, yes. That was actually physically removed from the newsstands of New York. Oh, was it? Yeah. Wasn't that like, was that the New York press or something like that? The New York press, yeah, which doesn't exist anymore.

I've killed enough news organizations now. So, um, basically you were sacrilege because you were, wasn't it like, um, it was like, the funniest things about the Pope dying soon or something like that. For Pope John Paul the second.

Yeah, the funniest things about the upcoming death of the Pope or something like that. Um, did any nuns wrap your, wrap you over your wrist for, for that with a ruler. or anything? So I actually I was in California

and saw somebody commenting about it on television. I had no idea that the whole thing had happened. Who's commenting on it? Do you remember? I don't remember. It was on TV. I was covering the Michael Jackson trial and I looked down and saw that I had

missed calls after that. But anyway, so here's Trump talking about whether or not he will or will not apologize to the Pope. He now says you owe Pope Leo an apology. You apologize? No, I don't because Pope Leo said things that are wrong.

He was very much against what I'm doing with regard to Iran. And you cannot have a nuclear Iran. Pop Leo would not be happy with the end result. You have hundreds of millions of people dead and it's not going to happen. So I can't. I think he's very weak on crime and other things. So I'm not. I mean, he went public.

I'm just responding to Pope Leo. And you know, his brother is a big MAGA person, and he's a great guy, Lewis. And I said, I like Lewis better than I like the Pope. We believe strongly in law and order. And he seemed to have a problem with that. So there's nothing to apologize for. He's wrong. And the other thing is he didn't like what we're doing with respect to Iran.

But Iran is a, wants to be a nuclear nation so they can exterminate the world, not going to happen so you know one of the one of the cardinal rules of the art of the deal you might recall is never apologize right even to the heir to the throne of St. Peter

or the vicar of Christ on earth you still don't apologize so at least Trump's consistent in that respect but I guess you know maybe maybe he expects Pope Leo to apologize for not understanding that Iran

wants to exterminate the entire world, which is a new claim. Right, right. And then this was, again, what makes us so funnier, as you point out, is the picture that he posts. First of all,

what president retweets that picture? I just can't even imagine the thought that has to go through your head to retweet that. This isn't even the first time he's feuded with the Pope. Like, we're almost in a rerun.

Like he's been the dominant American political figure for so long now that, you know, I guess if you're, if you're 21 in 20206, you don't have an adult living memory of the last time he actually did in fact feud with a Pope pretty viciously, Pope Francis. I think it was over climate change or immigration. I don't even remember that. Yeah, it was, it was some of his like wussy liberal stances. And I think there was ended up being a back and forth where there was like a, you know, a jab made from one. the other responded. But we had, we went through this already. So it's like, it's almost like they're running out of material, but because he's so transfixing of a figure, you almost forget that there's this. Well, there's been such a high volume of everything. Like I'm, again, the whole

week on crime thing, like, I mean, I remember the very beginning of the Trump experience for me. I was covering the, uh, the end of, um, the, the Ericarner story. And he, he was, um, talking about the, uh, the end of stop and frisk and he criticized the judge Shirish Shindlin right thing that she was a quote very against police judge and weak on crime

so it's that right it's like the week on crime is just such a funny way to phrase it because it's almost like a parody of a classic political attack from a TV ad in like late 90s or something right

Al Gore is we strong. Strom Thurmond. Yeah. Right. And but the the sheer volume and Trump's insults are kind of, they're actually great in general, right? Like, you know, calling Bet Midler a washed up psycho or horse face stormy Daniels or. I mean, Rosie O'Donnell, that's back when he was still like a private citizen pundit, but he drove an entire news cycle or several of them because Access Hollywood, which he later got in trouble for. with the surreptitious tape. But like Access Hollywood and these sort of like celebrity gossip shows would just have him

infuting with Rosie O'Donnell as like their main story of the day. And there's one clip you can find. I think it's probably from like 2005 or something like that. Well, where he's like, yeah, I'll probably sue Rosie. I would love to see that fat ass something. And but they bleep out ass. Ugly. Right.

Yeah. Which makes it even funnier. I know. I know. And what was the other one? There was the, there was Merrill Streep, right? Like, she was a Hillary Flunky who lost big, I think was the quote. I can't remember.

I mean, he's been going after Bruce Springsteen lately and saying that he's gotten horrible cosmetic surgery. Is that true? I haven't seen Bruce's face. Possible. Possible he got a facelift. We're both from New Jersey. That we can't allow that. That's tough.

But we agreed last week, like last week's top. topic was, is Trump finally not funny anymore? And my position on that was, look, obviously, he's still got this underlying humor that can even be funny in the most morbid of situations. But it just takes on a little bit of a different valence when it plays into like the day-to-day management of this ongoing Iran conflagration. There, yeah, there we go. Okay. But overall, again, yeah, he's like, I mean, this is like the genius of his, I'm sort of increasingly of the view that for all the theorizing in the past decade around what explains Trump's

initial ascendance, right? Is it the sort of like heterodox tweak on the Republican platform? Is it that there was this widespread disenchantment with the quote establishment of the two parties? Yeah, there must, there might be something. two, both of those things, but he's also got this world historic sense of humor. Oh, he's the best insult comic in history. He's funnier than like most comedians.

Right. Yeah. Right. Like, remember Triumph, the insult comic dog? Yeah. I saw him actually at the vice presidential debate. They, uh, they, they, they pulled them out of the broom closet in 2024. Was he good?

Yeah. I mean, he told a fat joke about J.B. Pritzker right in his face. What did he say? I forget now, but it was almost too easy of a fat joke, actually. It wasn't like even that clever, but that's sort of what made it funny. You were obligated to do it. It was just like the bluntest, the most obvious possible fat joke, right in the guy's face as like he agreed as a surrogate for Biden or Harris, I guess, to do a spin room interview

with triumphing the insult comedy dog. You just made a straight up bad joke. Can we get Greg try to chase that down? I don't know. I remember observing it in person. I don't know if they published it or what. Or even like where it aired. It might have been the Daily Show, actually.

All right. All right. Well, we'll see if we can find that. Okay. So just to recap, because the theme of today's show is going to be that everybody's crazy, not just Donald Trump. But what happened in the last two days with Iran? So he announced on true social that he was he was. was blockading the straight.

Well, we got to put that a little more context because that announcement came right after the conclusion of these Islamabad Pakistan negotiations that, of course, he sent his henchmen, or lackeys, I call them now Whitless Whitkoff and Jughead Jared, but then they added Vance to the mix. So that was supposed to be a breath of fresh air because... After Vance went and helped the cause in Hungary.

Yeah, after Vance got like an epic size blotch of egg on his face for having not just gone and sort of implicitly endorsed Victor Orban in Hungary or done like an official seeming event where the implication would be that, of course, he's lending tacit support to the politician that's running for reelection, but decided to just blow past any sort of like normal expectations around with the proper role of a president or vice president. president would be. And I'm not even saying I'm like advocating the maintenance of those proprieties, but he decided to do something very novel and just like outright participate in a campaign rally with Victor Orban and his ruling party. And then Orban loses yesterday in an even bigger blowout than had been anticipated. So for people who don't know the history of this, Orban predated Trump considerably. His Fidesh party. swept into power in 2010. And he had been Prime Minister once before in the 90s.

Right, but the re-the-populous re-in-caration came in with a two-thirds majority, which was important because then they could change the constitutional structure of Hungary. It was this huge, overwhelming kind of shot her around the world for the, you know, incipient populist movement that was going to take place on both left. and the right. But now time is coming in a square circle and he lost by a two-thirds count. At least the last I saw the count was a hundred. Yeah, I don't think it's final, but it's like hovering right around the two-thirds mark.

Like 130 to 55 or something like that. It was what I saw. 36 seats, I guess. Yeah. So it's as devastating a loss as the original win was. And there's no way to spin this. I mean, there are lots of people who are sort of claiming that this is the end of right populism. And it might be because of the, for a variety of reasons.

But really voters are just disgusted with all incumbents. And he just, I think the, but the Iran war is now, it's like the stake through the heart of this whole thing. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's about voters being generally disgusted with all incumbents. I think that was definitely a phenomenon that you saw in like 2021 in the COVID hangover period where virtually every incumbent had sinking approval ratings across the board. I think based on my understanding, I'm not an expert on Hungarian politics by any stretch. But my understanding is that there were some pretty peculiar like localized dynamics having to do with Orban and his party outstanding. their welcome and you know the evening the zebras and there was a pretty good New

York Times article actually about like this rural recreational town that you know relies on basically domestic tourism that you know it was seen as sort of like if people look at it with nostalgia it's where they would go during their childhoods for some kind of summer holiday or whatever and that had been a bastion of support for Orban and his party if it is right And, you know, the reporter interviewed a bunch of people there and they had swung hard against Orban. They had elected a mayor from the opposing party because they saw all these what had been basically public resources or municipal resources being privatized and basically siphoned off by cronies of Orban. and it just kind of played into the larger themes of corruption.

This guy's been in power for 16 years. The nepotism is out of control. The basic mechanics of governance are not working as well, given his sort of insularity or his lack of attention to just governing the country in any kind of responsive way. And so that's why you saw this opposition to Orban coalescing around a guy who had been in Orban's party and defected. And it's kind of like a center-right...

And in answer to that question, the viewer's question, he is basically named Peter Hungary. It's Peter Magyar. I'm embarrassed. That didn't immediately occur to me when I read it just because I wouldn't have thought that that would be his last name. So I was just kind of, I don't know, I just didn't occur to me. Because it's like, you know, a president named Jack America, right?

Or something like that. Right, yes, exactly. But like he didn't make... As I understand it, the opposition candidate didn't run on a very overtly ideological platform at all, which basically that he was finally the guy who the opposition. Yeah, he ran on being not Orban.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The opposition had finally gotten their act together to consolidate around rather than splintering off into infighting to once and for all dislodge Orban. Right. So that seems like pretty specific to the domestic political dynamics of Hungary.

And it wasn't really a foregone conclusion because in 2022, there was a big anti-incumbency sentiment as well, but Orban won a sweeping re-election victory. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I'm just pointing out that if you look at the overall approval ratings of parties everywhere, you're seeing mutual declines in a lot of countries, but obviously not here. The big loser in all this is, you know, J.D. Vance, but also these American conservative people

who got all these bizarre cynicures and subsidies to go take sabbaticals in Hungary. and study the pro-natalism policy and then take part in these conferences and soirees like national conservatism and whatnot or all these Americanized conservative political events that they would hold in Hungary. I guess that's all finally done. So the gravy train has been turned off.

I do feel bad for them because the other sinecures never get turned off. That's true. Right? I mean, like when USAID gives a fucking $400 million contract of some bullshit media organization to do anti-discinformation

work. That contract never runs out. The liberal versions are not contingent on a particular policy choosing to keep in power a particular like nationalist political figure. Right. It's much more dispersed and distributed around the world and these

structures that are not subject to the democratic verdict in a particular place. Right. Like if you get to like UN, some UN grant to study like, I don't know, the plight of trans girls.

Yeah, exactly. Underwater, trans, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. That never gets turned off. Or any kind of anti-disinformation thing never gets turned off. But,

so I do, I have some sympathy for the, for the MAGIFUX folks. They don't get to keep their stolen shit. All right. So, anyway, they all go to his own bat. It all fucks up, right?

Well, I mean, they spent, I guess this is why I couldn't turn away from my devices this weekend especially because this was the highest level meeting between American officials and Iranian officials since the revolution in 1979. Obviously, there had been lots of negotiations preceding this at the Secretary of State levels. You know, John Kerry would go and negotiate the JCPOA or you have Wyckoff and Kushner doing negotiations with the foreign minister in the second Trump administration. but it never rose to the level of the vice presidents. And there are also higher level people in the Iranian delegation than they had been willing to send in the past. So there was something novel about this gathering in Islamabad, and then it stretched on for hours and hours and hours.

And we don't have like the minute-by-minute replay yet, really, but the reporting suggests that Trump might have actually phoned in toward the end of it and basically restated the more maximalist demands, which would be in keeping with how these so-called negotiations have been structured for as long as Trump has been presiding over them, right? So in the first round, you know, from like March to June when the bombing happens and Midnight Hammer, you know, Whitkoff and Kushner, or it was mostly just Whitkoff at that point. Jared hadn't been called out of retirement yet from his private equity venture.

Right. But, you know, Whitkoff, you know, was very clear that the, condition that the U.S. was demanding for any diplomatic accord was the renunciation by Iran of any nuclear enrichment whatsoever, which anybody who's followed the issue for decades would know that Iran was never going to accept because it would be seen as this national self-inflicted humiliation. And so that was- I have to interject that we, the United States is a history of doing that and having that work out, like with the Rambley agreement. We basically demanded like a completely unacceptable condition. Which agreement? With Kosovo, I guess they didn't agree to that, right? We just bond them anyway.

But we often issue unacceptable demands. When does that work? I mean, I guess maybe it seems like the idea is that Trump through the sheer force of his personality can make it work this time. But I don't really see much evidence of that. But the thing is usually we do it with the expert. that it will be refused so that we can then proceed to bomb the shit out of somebody. Right, but they're saying, but, you know, at least if you take them seriously, which is not value, they were trying.

Yeah, but the American side, you know, the Trump side has said that these are red lines, meaning these are non-negotiable. And the reason why that they probably should be understood as red lines is because Trump has set it up where he's not going to be a pushover like Obama who was willing to not uphold his red lines, you know, infamously the Syria, so-called red line, where he didn't immediately bomb Syria and when there was a chemical weapons alleged attack.

And Trump thought that that was like a big disgrace to America. So he's going to be tough and he's actually going to stick to his red lines. The Atlantic editor, Jeffrey would. Yeah, Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg, yeah. So, you know, Trump has kind of has this whole partisan polarized theory where he can't do the Obama thing and actually relinquish any of his red lines. And the red lines that they've declared that have been reported, you know, Fox News reported

after the Islamabad gathering that the red lines are like, you know, there are these six bullet points that are the most maximalist version. It's like what you would expect to be imposed on Iran if they were a conquered party, right? Which again is something we've done before, but go ahead. If they were waving the white flag or if they, you know, had just had two nuclear bombs dropped on them and they were like Japan or something, right, in 1945. Yeah, so it's it's the no enrichment whatsoever. It's basically the total abandonment and disabling of the nuclear facilities. It's cutting off Hezbollah and Houthis and Hamas.

And it's reopening the straight of Hormuz. So if those that really are the red lines, then there's no real way that that could ever lead to a bonifference. negotiated outcome despite these being called negotiation. But in Trump's view, negotiation, at least when it comes to Iran, is all about just trying to bludgeon Iran into capitulating or surrendering, which is exactly what they did prior to February 28th for this epic fury operation and also before they hammer. So we're just seeing really a repetition of that. Hence, Trump announces this naval blockade mission shortly thereafter because there was no deal attained,

because no deal could be attained given the conditions that were set out. right and so now we're like in just a new phase of the war right because then they then they step back from from the blockade what do you mean trump said it was launched today at 10 a.m no but they they change the wording of it it's it's now we they're going to allow like hang on a second i'll find it um but uh it's a blockade of iranian vessel so any any vessel that has as its point of origin in Iranian port or its destination in Iranian port. Those are being

blockaded as I understand it. That's what Sentcom appeared to say. So it's not a total blockade, but it's a blockade of Iran, any transit of ships to and from Iran. Yeah. That's at least what they say. I mean, who knows what it's actually going to be in practice, but...

So, blockade is an act of war, right? I mean, a blockade has always been... of course. A black, an act of war. And he's actually invoking the Venezuela blockade or armada that he sent, which did proceed an actual overt military action to, you know, abduct Maduro and, you know, bomb the infrastructure.

And he said this is going to be even bigger and better than the Venezuela blockade. So my, my takeaway is that this negotiation charade, it's always about just setting up a pretext to inaugurate the next phase of kinetic military action because that's what the pretty unmistakable pattern has been. Yeah, I can't find the quote, but it's something about they're going to allow some vessels to transit. Yeah, yeah, I saw that. If you go to the CENTCOM Twitter page, I think that's what you're probably referring to. Yeah. Anyway, all right. Yeah, you're right. It's absolutely an active war. and you know we're no closer to the beginning the end of this thing than we ever were

and on that note pull up this Ron Johnson clip from yeah all right so let's where's Ron Johnson is let's see um okay it's number 18 if we can see it and that this is coming that this is coming from Ron Johnson is notable because he's not like one of the classic Republican hawks necessarily in the Senate Republican caucus. He is kind of like default hawkish on lots of stuff if it aligns with what the party basically priorities are. But he's not like a Roger Wicker or a Lindsey Graham or like a John Cornyn or one of these people who are kind of more ideologically zealous in promoting lots of interventionists propositions.

And yet, I mean, let's get a load of what he said. is because it's pretty ominous. Let's just, yeah, listen to a little bit of it anyway. Nobody thought this would be easy. They've been preparing for this for 47 years. They have multiple layers. We've got 200,000 people in the IRGC, 600,000 people in the Basij, police force, they are brutal.

By the way, this is exactly what nationwide gun control results in. The Iranian people are completely disarmed. It's going to be very difficult for them to rise up. And so it's a very difficult situation. Now, I hope, I hope that President Trump is successful in this, because if we could, just imagine the world if the Ayatollahs, the brutal Iranian regime is no longer in power. That's what we're trying to achieve. Well, first of all, we will not have won until we have completely defamed the Iranian regime. We have to make sure.

I thought it was very interesting in President Trump's address the nation when he spoke to the families of Dover. apparently to a person, they said, finish the job. And to me, finishing the job is to make sure that Iran can never produce a nuclear weapon. They can no longer enrich uranium, that hopefully we can remove that enriched uranium, that they can no longer hold the straight of Haramu's hostage, that they can no longer brutalize the Iranian people. They can no longer be a sponsor of state terror. So we have to finish the job.

Again, there's multiple ways of potentially doing it, short term, long term. There are multiple avenues we can approach here, but we have not yet finished the job. Go a little further, though, because he explicitly states what the war objective is, at least as he sees it, in a way that, you know, people should be aware of in terms of what we've gotten ourselves into. Meanwhile, we have 50,000 troops in Harms Way right now. We have Gulf Allies in Harmsway. We have gas prices spiking, oil barrels, the price raised there. President Trump was asked about people who are not fans of the war,

asked specifically, what do you say to Americans who are not fans of the war? And he said, they're foolish because the war is about one thing Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. So what would you say to those Americans who are sitting at home, seeing those 50,000 troops in harm's way, seeing gas prices, spike and listening to you saying how complicated this could be and that it could continue for a long time. Well, first of all, it's a good answer. That's exactly the reason why we have to make sure the Iranian regime is ended. So I know it's a tough decision for President Trump because he knew it wouldn't be easy and it's not easy. And it could be a longer term here. But I don't believe

it's going to require boots on the ground, you know, potentially assets to help the Iranian people, other people eventually completely destroy the regime. So is that the money shot? The incredibly weakened. The regime is ended? Coming up where he, you know, they are not in a position of strength right now. I mean, I should try to make sure that China and Russia no longer help Iran. I heard a very disturbing a report that apparently China is going to be sending man pads to Iran.

We need to express in no uncertain terms, China had better not do that. We certainly have the capability of blocking oil from the Strait of Hormuz going to China as well. So again, we have plenty of power in this situation and we need to use it. I think it's interesting that you have Iranians actually calling in air strikes against some of their leadership. It's remarkable the amount of destruction we've already brought to the Iranian regime without really harming that much civilian infrastructure. So again, I think we continue down that path. We make sure that we deter China and Russia from helping out Iran. We continue to weaken the regime until they are no longer effective

and the Iranian people can reclaim their own liberty and take over Iran themselves. Again, it's going to be a long-term project. And that could go on for a long time. I don't think Trump thought it'd be easy. It could take a long time. So basically he's saying it's a long-term project now. It's open-ended and it's got a result in the destruction of the Iranian government. Yeah, the end of the regime.

Yeah. Yeah. No, well. So there you have it. I mean. Yeah. And look. So it's nuts and it's exactly what they, you know, they said they weren't going to do.

And, um, well, I'm not sure that's right, but we don't think it. Well, they, I mean, the whole idea of endless wars was something he came, he campaigned against. Everybody, everybody. Does anybody campaign in favor of endless wars? That's just a... No, I guess not. I guess not. But it was an implication of the campaign.

I know you and I disagree with this. I think that they spent a lot of time emphasizing the idea anyway. But if you got the impression that Trump was campaigning on reducing rather than increasing bellicosity with Iran in a second term, then I think that that required a lot of motivated reasoning and some confirmation bias and maybe some credulity about these kind of propagandistic platitudes rather than actually looking at what the policy prescriptions were and what the record was in the personnel. So with Iran, I just don't think that that's really, I mean, anybody who is discerning could have gotten that. All right. We've already had this discussion. I still think that they, they, look, the whole premise of Donald Trump as a, as a candidate from the beginning, at least as far as I'm concerned, was that he was a, not a politician. You know, he talked about doing things differently.

And this to me is just an exact replay of all the shit that had come before. Like, you know, we went into Kosovo with a list of demands that no leader could possibly have accepted that included things like, you know, immunity for NATO forces from all legal processes, total freedom of movement for NATO forces across the entire federal republic. Republic of Yugoslavia, you know, and a whole bunch of other things that that couldn't possibly have accepted and still kept any sovereignty. Then they did the same thing. So other like Serbia. I actually haven't read. I have to have to go read this. I know a fair amount about the Kosovo situation, but not as much as you, I'm sure.

Like I know the Dayton Accords came afterwards and whatever. But like so this is the this imposition of demands by the Clinton administration at the time in concert with NATO would have required Serbia to. a seed to basically relinquishing any claim to the Kosovo enclave, right? Yeah, and including So splintering, like defenestrating their own country or dismembering it. Right, and the NATO would have full and complete movement everywhere.

They would be responsible for all security. They would have total immunity from any kind of, you know, legal process. But this, and then they did the same thing. Bush comes into office. They do the same thing with, we can take this down. We did the same thing with the Iraqi inspections.

Those were sort of designed to fail. Then right before the invasion, we did the same thing where we, you know, we demanded that Saddam Hussein surrender within 48 hours and that was designed to fail. And this is like a thing that we do. Like the Libya thing that was done in a similar way.

Even the Ukraine initial negotiations in 2022, where the U.S. wasn't a direct party to those Istanbul negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but obviously it was exerting influence on the Ukrainian decision making. And the Biden administration at the time was basically incentivizing Ukraine to fight on, meaning not agree to any terms that might require some tradeoffs, obviously at that point. But maybe could have put a stop to the war at an early phase because the United States was basically. pledging unlimited military support to Ukraine. So why wouldn't they fight on if that's what their sponsor is saying is going to be available to them, or at least that's what the logic would have been. And, you know, so they got much more assertive in terms of what demands they could maybe make of Russia in terms of like a total withdrawal or not even entertaining, complying

with anything that Russia might have been demanding. Obviously, it was a complicated situation, but it was that same sort of impulse toward maximalism because, look, this is another long-term project for us. to embark on militarily, which is still going on now. Yeah, and by the way, it was greeted with great fanfare by everyone in the media who talked about we have a renewed sense of purpose after Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like when Bush Sr. said that he was finally curing the Vietnam syndrome.

Right. By having this triumphant victory in the Gulf War with the invasion of Panama. Yeah. And that really got lots of the liberals very excited in 2022 because defending Ukraine was about defending democracy. And Russia was associated with Trump, right? And this like illiberalism, like, you know, that ties in with Orban. And so there was a lot to get their ideological juices flowing that, you know, that sort of

obscured any kind of clear-eyed assessment of what the lay of the land was, practically speaking. And then we act, sure enough, we do have a perpetual war. Right. And so that happens there. And it's horrible and and a nightmarish outcome that is massively criticized by everybody who opposed Biden. And then we get it and then Trump gets into office and we basically repeat the exact same script with Iran. Now I get that it's a different situation and, you know, there's there's a longer history that, you know, going back to 1979 that, you know, but to me I'm just struck by the remarkable sameness of the reasoning and, you know, from a politician in Trump who, who was supposed to be even if crazy, different and is not,

right? He is different in that his predecessors would not have been so gung-ho about going after Iran, which was seen to be a much tougher fight, potentially than Iraq, which is smaller. The government under Saddam Hussein was much more hollowed out and brittle and probably more liable to collapse under military pressure with Iran. That was not really the case. And it was always understood to be a much more imposing challenge militarily in terms of bringing about some kind of imposition of, you know, quote-unquote regime change. So not only is Trump the same, maybe Trump isn't the same.

He's actually more audacious when it comes to Iran specifically, maybe because he thinks that they were trying to assassinate him or he has any number of sort of personalized motives that intersect here with Iran. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think Ukraine is a pretty big bite, too, though. I mean, that was a pretty ballsy move, even though, yes, Russia was the aggressor there, but we kind of knew we were doing, you know, going back decades and, you know, the U.S. basically decided to oversee the provision of a brand new military to Ukraine overnight in the middle of a hot war.

Yeah. And, you know. And by the way, what's going on with Ukraine now? I mean, where are these market people? All these market people. People, you know, day after day, you know, with some justice, we're going after Biden for perpetual war in Ukraine, for not actually doing what was diplomatically necessary to get a resolution to Ukraine, for keeping the weapons flowing to Ukraine. And that seems to have vanished. Yeah. And then when Zelensky arrived in Washington and Trump showed him up and told him, talked about him not having cards, it seemed.

to signal the end of the perpetual... It was just a flip. They deactivated some of the intelligence sharing for like a week. Not all of it, actually, as I learned when I went to the NATO summit, but some for a week, and that was it. And now we have a weapons provision program

where the U.S. is still the primary arm supplier to Ukraine, except now Congress doesn't have to pass any of these politically perilous giant appropriations anymore for arming Ukraine because Trump cooked up some mechanism where it's supposedly being paid for by NATO intermediaries, which I still don't fully understand the contours of. But like it's just off the radar totally. And I don't see any sign that the casualties are at rates or any lesser in Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine actually made territorial gains. It was reported in February for the first time in three years. So,

It's just amazing what gets memory holds. And I just, I don't understand the, the tolerance for that situation. It's so dangerous. Like, the thing that had, had me so freaked out at the end with,

you know, we're lobbying attack them's missiles into the course region, which is not that far from Moscow. It's like, um, well, there were drone strikes in Moscow. I know,

I know. And, and, but, specifically our U.S. made missiles landing in Korsk is, you know, that would be an eyebarism. Imagine if Russian missiles landed in Syracuse or something like that. One of the dangers of allowing the Ukraine war to fester and to become this protractive thing with no discernible endpoint is that the parameters of it could expand. Meaning, you know, so that's why Trump would say, look, if you vote for me, no more, we're not going to have World War III.

because the idea was that Ukraine was going to get out of control and it was going to become World War III, which was not an impossibility. Actually, Biden himself warned that if he sent two heavy grade of weaponry to Ukraine in the early phases in 2022, it would constitute basically the initiation initiation of World War III because it would be hot war with Russia. But now, like, look, as it's now been allowed to drag on even for the, you know, 15 months of the second Trump administration. Zalinski made a trip to the Gulf Arab states to integrate Ukrainian missile defense into the arsenals of Qatar,

UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc. And there was a report just in the past couple of days that Ukrainian technology or Ukrainian weaponry was in fact used in some of the kinetic warfare by these Gulf Arab states. So you even see like a creep, sort of like a mission creep, where these these disparate, seemingly disparate conflicts are sort of like coagulating into one almost unified whole, which is that what we would want to avoid if we want to avoid World War III. Just like, you know, all of a sudden, the North Korea gets involved in Ukraine. Right. Like, right. No, I mean. How did that happen? Yeah. And Iran got involved with Ukraine as well. Yeah, yeah. So when the history books are written about all this, this will already, this will already be described.

as sort of the beginning of World War. Yeah, like a pre-war phase, probably. It's like 1938 or whatever it is. Or maybe even 39. I don't know. Maybe not. But either way, this whole thing is 1939, then like, then, you know, screw it. We don't have much time left.

So I don't know. Let's let loose, I guess. Let's actually become the pedophile party. Right, right. So all this shit is going on. We're now in this multi-front cluster fuck with two wars at a time, essentially, going on. And they could close the other straits soon, too, in the Red Sea. Like, it's been suggested, it's been suggested for a while that the Houthis, right, are who control, you know,

who Trump tried to bomb into submission for a brief period last year and then just aborted it, they could actually get more robustly involved and close off that commercial shipping channel completely as well. So I mean, again, so this could branch out far beyond what would have been initially conceived or what it was sold to Americans to consist of as this neat and tidy, you know, time limited operation. That's not how it tends to work with American military interventions, right? It kind of expands and we get the mission creep and we get the bureaucratic inertia and then there's some maybe triggering event that causes it to broaden even further. So that's always a danger that's baked in, whether it's Ukraine or Iran, that I'm always trying

to urge people to be more mindful of when the war is launched or before it's launched, but I usually don't tend to succeed. So people forget this, but after we went into Iraq, the whole deployment throughout the region massively expanded. And we suddenly had, what was it, 790 bases around the world, but mostly concentrated in the Middle East. We had military operations in Niger, in Syria, Libya, like all these different countries. And we just stopped reporting on it, right? It just didn't make the news the same way. The AUMF of 2001 post-911 basically authorize military action anywhere in the world. Right. Yeah. And it's still in effect. That's still the law in the books. Yeah. And that's, and one of the reasons I think that they were able to,

to do this is because Trump designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a designated terrorist organization in this first term, which puts the AOMF into play. But anyway, but he's not the- And he said that the Soleimani assassination in January of 2020, like the Trump administration 1.0 tried to claim that that was legally justified under domestic U.S. law by the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq, which was the justice. for the war against Saddam Hussein because Soleimani was physically

located in Iraq at the time of the drone strike. Oh, I didn't even remember that. Was that the case? That was the legal argument that they tried to make, yeah. Amazing. And now they're not even really bothering with the pretense of trying to appeal to any

kind of domestic law on this. They just blown right past it. Bush at least, you know, ostensibly tried to get UN off, UN Security Council authorization for the 2003 invasion of Barack, you know, Obama would say, you know, the Libya intervention is justified because of this international law or whatever, and then there'll be appeals to domestic law. There's not even really an argument being made that this is justified by domestic or international law.

International law, forget it. I mean, they're opposed to that just on principle, but not even really domestic law, but other than the president's inherent powers in terms of as commander and chief. But this is what I wrote about today. This has been a progression going back to Desert storm when they you know did everything according to an international law they got the coalition together they had you know

approval from all the member nations they had a clear objective etc etc his son goes into Iraq in a much less organized way right you know essentially more unilaterally oh yeah we don't have to show that

I agree with that headline But then, you know, it's been progressively less and less formalized the procedure for starting military conflicts. Yeah. You know, from the first Bush through Clinton, then Bush won. But now we're in a place where, you know, they're just making it up as they go along. You know, I was even reading today a legal opinion that was required. requested by John F. Kennedy and rendered by the deputy, uh,

oh, I just, I thought I found this on my own. Maybe you saw the same thing that I saw by, by happenstance, but it was, uh, justifying, trying to search for legal justification for the imposition of a naval blockade on Cuba in 1962. Oh, I thought you just the demona. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Um, you know, because we have a naval blockade now. I guess with Iran.

So I was curious. And I think you're sort of right directionally about the Gulf War under George X.W. Bush kind of being the zenith of how U.S. military action could be authorized through every possible appeal to both international and domestic law. I'm not saying it wasn't fucked. I'm just saying. No, I know. I know. Yeah, I get it. But there are also precursors.

where the deputy attorney general who was reporting to John and F. Kennedy really could not come up with a sound rationale for how it is that the U.S. could take this act of war, which he acknowledged that it was by imposing a naval blockade on Cuba with which the United States was not in any kind of belligerent conflict or that was not a belligerent that was warring with the United States. But basically just said like you could do it anyway. Yeah. I mean, back then the press. was much less active. He had a president who was getting shots of amphetamines in his ass every morning and walking stomping around the Oval Office is saying who can we hit next that was in the the dark side of Camelot book. But yeah, no, and now we're in this place.

So okay, but, but we got to get to there's some, there was so much more crazy. Yeah, yeah, we got to, we got to try to get to more of it. So let's see Tucker first. Can we see SOT 8? This is Tucker on Tucker Carlson on BBC. And again, I like Tucker. But I don't know.

But dot dot, dot, dot, ellipses. Can I ask you what you thought when you read Donald Trump's post on Tuesday, in which he said a whole civilization will die tonight? I was horrified by it. And I was, look, as I've said, I don't think that Trump, who I continue to like, I don't think that Trump is in control. I don't think Trump is making these decisions. I know he's not because I was present in the run-up to this.

He's not making these decisions, and I feel sorry for him, as I've said. But more than Trump, anything to do with him or his future, is the effect on my country. Our leaders should not talk like that. They shouldn't. Our conflict is not with another civilization or another religion. It's with governments, at least conceptually, that do things that we don't like that are bad for us, and we have conflict over that. We can never declare war on a civilization. We shouldn't. That's immoral. What does that even mean? If you go on, I mean, you should have gone on further or use whatever clip I sent because he extends the argument.

Yeah, I mean, he extends the art. First of all, his claim is that Trump is a slave of Israel, like literally enslaved by Israel and therefore is not in control. the United States is no longer a sovereign country. And then he's also asked, so what do you think about some of these claims or some of these demands that people are making, including now some Republicans and former Trump supporters like Marjorie Taylor Green, saying that the 25th Amendment should be invoked because Trump actually is crazy. So he needs to be declared and capacitated by the cabinet. And Tucker pivots and says, well, it's not even really about Trump because he's not in control. it's a structural problem with the U.S. government

because nobody can defy Israel. Israel is just calling all the shots, and that's been the case since 1963, which he doesn't spell out while it's been points into the 1963, but of course now it's this new theory, this new layer of the conspiracist mythos where Israel assassinated JFK because of the

because of JFK's supposed opposition to the... Yeah, that was the... That was Joe Rogan's thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the... That's one of the now tenets of tuckerology. In general, like Trump is enslaved. So there's no reason really for him to even focus on Trump as an object of his critique because this is just an inherent feature of the American system of governance,

which is just not true. I mean, it's not true that any prior president would have done, did do the same thing that they would lobby to do by Netanyahu, which has launched this very audacious open-ended war with Iran. Like that was refused by Biden, by Obama, by even Bush. And it's the Tucker two-step where he can't actually, he still can't bring himself to go after Trump squarely, even though Trump is posting on truth social,

how low IQ he is and what, like, a huckster he is. Here's the direct quote. I've always liked Trump and still feel sorry for him, as I do for all slaves. Yes. So, I mean, a lot of the things he's saying,

I feel sorry for him as I do for all slaves. He is not free in this moment at all to do what he thinks is best for himself or his country. And Tucker also emphasizes this by saying he knows that to be the case, as though it's factually proven. He knows that Trump is not in control

because of something that Tucker himself observed which he doesn't spell out either. He doesn't elaborate on. But that's him reporting in his prophetic way what the lay of the land is in terms of how the U.S. government is now operating. And so nobody should really bother honing it on Trump,

even though he's the commander in chief, we're told. We all have to focus totally monomaniically on Israel as the prime mover here, which is a nice little scapegoat for him. And this is now a thing. It's all over. It's all over the media.

Now, this, the underlying narrative is basically this, right? It's, this is the podcast narrative, which is that it's, it's sort of like JFK with like 19 different subplots like the movie, right? Like they added a whole new Israeli section and I don't know how closely you followed the JFK. lore over the years not and it would be important for any way to read all the books right because there's been 10 million of them in the documentaries and you know everything that's gone on everything that's made the jfk assassination this national fascination which is a you know not not difficult to understand why that came to be but do you recall it ever being one of the main tropes of the JFK intrigue.

Israel was fascinated by Israel. It was always the mafia, the CIA, Cuba, the Soviets, et cetera, et cetera. Like if you didn't think that Oswald was the lone gunman, if you thought that was totally implausible, then it was some combination of the mafia or,

again, you know, Soviet intelligence and Cuba and or an inside job CIA thing. I'm sure there's some dusty old book in a library somewhere you could find where like somebody makes some claim about Israel in the 1970s or something, but it was never at the forefront of how the mythology worked. And all of a sudden now, that's the number one thing that people think must explain the JFK assassinations because it's

gotten, because Israel's gotten grafted onto it, just like Israel got grafted so single-mindedly onto Epstein, onto Charlie Kirk, on to maybe even the Butler assassination attempts, onto the Iran War. It gets grafted onto every troublesome thing that ever happens in the world now. Without any new developments, really. Yes. So it's incredible because the JFK thing is, it was probably the most heavily analyzed thing in the history of media up until, I don't know, maybe the Iraq war. 9-11. 9-11, right?

And how many, I don't know how many books were written about the JFK assassination. And I, you know, I saw a lot of them. And I read a few things. I obviously saw the movie. I remember there was a major media controversy after the movie came out. And there was a lot of discussion about, you know, what's the responsibility of a filmmaker? You know, by the way, I love Oliver Stone's movies. I think he's a terrific movie maker.

I just, you know. That movie, though, was insidious, though. I mean, I enjoyed it as a work of drama. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's sort of like zero dark 30. Like, I kind of love, I really enjoyed the movie. Didn't like the politics of it. I went back and, you know, somewhat recently when RFK Jr.

first on the scene and was trying to revive this kind of bogus Kennedy Camelot mythology, but with the more anti-establishment or anti-deep state twinge to it that appealed to a different demographic, rather than like the conventional liberals who would have been the Camelot fantasizers. of your and I read there was a column in the nation that Alexander Coburn wrote after the JFK movie came out because he was getting inundated with

email maybe not emailers but faxers maybe at that time demanding that he addressed the JFK controversy so he finally sits down and reads the and watches this movie and he basically calls it like a classically fascistic rendering of JFK because there's one

or like dramatic oration that the prosecutor Garrison gives him Jim Garrison where he says you know jfk was the father of the nation he was the father of our nation and he was taken away from us which is kind of like a classic almost you know fascistic trope in terms of JFK embodying like national paternity or something and you know so coburn if people are interested go go look that up it's like maybe from like what is it 91 or 93 or something like that yeah yeah i'm sort of convinced that that that Oliver Stone did a big disservice in terms of how he portrayed that whole event for and sort of like commercialized it for popular consumption because it was sort of a for runner for some of the scatterbrain conspiracies of stuff pre-internet that we're dealing with today.

Yeah. The thing you're referring to, Garrison quoted, I think it was Tennyson. Yeah, that sounds right. Something about, let me see, here, find it. I'll look it up. It was something like father of nation. No, it's like, it's a dying king. Yeah, authority forgets a dying king.

And, you know, it was this woeful oration by Kevin Costner. And yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, I remember that piece. I was, I knew Coburn's brother, Patrick. because he was a Moscow reporter. And, you know, there was a lot of pushback. Like sort of within, it was like a early schism within kind of American liberalism over this thing. But I've actually got the quote here at the math that I was referring to because I jotted this down when I was doing, you know,

Kennedy stuff from like 2023. This is Jim Garrison in that oration. Quote, we have all become hamlets in our country, children of a slain father leader. whose killers still possessed the throne. The ghost of John Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of the American dream. The secret murder at the heart of the American dream.

Wow. That's like the sub-todular leader of, yeah. I mean, you know, yeah. The fatherland. No, but that sounds like, it sounds like Hunter S. Thompson. It's like founding mythos that stone sort of inculcated, which is just crazy.

But again, what's amazing about it is that you're absolutely right. Throughout all of that shit, we never once heard Israel come up, right? So now Israel is all over that whole thing. In podcastistan, that's all. In podcastistan, yeah, exactly. Just quickly to respond to at Michael Rabb, 24, breaking news, Tucker is irrelevant. Tucker is not irrelevant. Tucker is a massive driver of opinion.

And this is both, you know, this is to his credit. And, you know, right now, I would say to his detriment, but Tucker is, in terms of fighting to retain influence and maintaining a position in media across a, you know, a rapidly changing landscape, he's been extremely clever over the years. Yeah, but it's just this latest thing. I just, I don't get it, you know. Today he just launched a new book imprint. Did he? With Sky Horse publishing or Sky Horse something or other, which is that the publishing house that, it's fun by a Trump got like one of these Trump Maha people.

I forget the name, but he's published all the RFK Jr. books. Tucker's now got his own imprint in that outfit. That's interesting. Oh, so it's an imprint within Skyhorse. Yeah, it's like within Skyhorse, I think. that's really interesting. Anyway, he's not irrelevant.

Let's let's let's just make sure that we're clear on that. I mean, just look at the podcast charts. I mean, not just news or political podcasts, quote unquote, but overall podcast listenership. He's always in the top 10, if not top five, like in the country. And not only that, you got to pay attention to what other people in media are saying. They're all echoing these themes. And, you know, you have to learn how to be,

Pay attention to the exact words that people say in the exact facttoids that are brought up. I mean, J.D. Vance was echoing his UFO demonology stuff. Right, right. And actually, this would be a good segue to the Melania thing. Exactly. That's going to look at number 30. In the BBC interview, he also goes on, like the presenter asks him, hey, did you see that strange speech that Melania gave out of nowhere last week where she decided.

finally to break her silence on Jeffrey Epstein. Shortly after the Iran sees fire, she wants to interrupt that news cycle and bring us back to Epstein randomly. And I don't remember this. Did we miss this? This was on Thursday of last week, I think. So we didn't have a show in front of you.

Right, okay. But Tucker's asked about this, right? And he's saying, look, there could be more of a benign explanation. maybe she's tired of seeing rumors on the internet that implicate her with Epstein so she finally feels like she has to address it or there could be something darker meaning there could be something that was planted by Israel sexual blackmail related that could also impinge on the Iran situation that's what Tucker you know pretty much overtly suggests in the BBC interview and

And then sure enough, just today or what maybe was yesterday, but Tucker's newsletter had the following headline. He has to get this daily morning newsletter. So what was the date on this one? Just to double check Friday, April 10th. Okay. So that was the day after this Malani's speech. Tucker's morning newsletter, okay, that everybody gets if they sign up for the Tucker Carlson network. This is the headline.

Is Israel blackmailing President Trump? Question mark? I mean And then today, April 13th, today's edition was, this was the headline, quote, President Trump is a slave to Israel. Right. So.

But this Melania thing was bizarre. I mean, I actually was dobsmacked by it. Let's watch the Melania thing because it's kind of amazing. Good afternoon. And just for some context. There was no advance warning of this at all. There was no statement given by the White House press office that, hey, Melania is coming out to make a statement on something or other. We didn't even know what she was going to say when she got to this podium, which strangely she's, you know, she's speaking from the presidential seal, which is not customary when First Ladies will make some sort of statement.

It seems to have been done without foreknowledge of Donald from everything that we can ascertain. It just literally did. She came totally out of nowhere. How could it be? Totally out of nowhere on a Thursday afternoon. Okay. All right. Let's let's.

To defame my reputation. I never been friends with Epstein. Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach. To be clear. I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell. He sort of cut off the very beginning, because the very beginning is bizarre, how she starts it.

So then just play the very beginning and then go back to 109. With the disgraceful Jeffrey. Good afternoon. The lies linking me with the disgraceful. Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. The individuals lying about me a devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect. I do not object to their ignorance, but rather I reject

their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation. I never been friends with Epstein. Okay, it's coming up. It's coming up later. Sorry. Go back to one of nine. Cannot be catarist as anything more than casual correspondence. My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything more than a tribal note.

I am not what she said there. Epstein. Okay, there we go. Pause for a second. me to Donald Trump. I am not Epstein's victim. Whoever claimed that she was Epstein's victim, I mean, I'm sure there are people on the internet

who he could find who would claim anything. But when has it ever been any kind of commonly, you know, espoused narrative that Melania was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein? Maybe that she knew him and therefore she's tarnished by the association with him, or there's been rumors about how Jeffrey Epstein may have introduced her to Donald Trump,

or something along those lines, but never herself being a victim. Like, have you ever heard that before? No. But she's probably getting out in front of something that's, well, you can't say that, but that's what it sounds like. That's what it sounds like, but we just don't know. And even if she is getting out in front of something, it's just strange for her to refute a claim that would not have even been like swirling

around in the popular consciousness, that she was herself a victim. Right. Which is why, I mean, Mike, look up here, I generally was dobsmack listening to this. I couldn't make sense of it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because you could also interpret it as sort of affirmation by denial, right? Like maybe she's handing it something. I don't know. Exactly.

But, you know, it gets even weirder. But anyway, but the word she was using was looking for was trivial, by the way, not tribal. Oh, trivial? Okay. Trivial. Yes. at the New York City Party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented

in a detail in my book, Melania. The first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000, at an event Donald and I attended together. At the time, I had never met Epstein and had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings. Pause it again.

Numerous. What makes this so strange is just the totally out of the blue timing, but also it's not as though she's even really been a major topic of intrigue as it relates to at least compared to Trump.

So what would there be for her to preempt? It's not as though like Melania has been what everybody has been really worked up about as though like there are some unsolicified. mysteries around Epstein sure maybe it comes up every now and then but like not as front and center as this statement would seem to imply but she's proactively making it front and center yeah i mean i'm hesitant to say what i think because in the in the absence of evidence of uh well you don't want to draw conclusions i'll pry it out of you once we finish yeah but anyway let's let's keep listening

because it gets weirder i mean the the thing that had my jaw metaphorically dropped comes later maybe even even physically dropped. Fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been calculating on social media for years now. Be cautious about what you believe. These images and stories are completely false. I'm not a witness or a name witness in connection with any of Epstein's crimes. My name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI in interviews surrounding the Epstein matter. Pause, pause, pause.

I have never had. You know, if we want to use that standard, do you know whose name does appear in FBI interviews and depositions and witness statements pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein? Whose? Her husband? Like, she's, she's absolving her. herself. Sorry, there's a horn blowing. She's absolving herself of any culpability vis-a-vis Epstein by saying, look, I don't appear in any of these documents. But her husband does. And yet, I would think that she was also wanting to maybe absolve him of culpability. But she couldn't,

therefore, she couldn't use the same exculpating reasoning for Donald. Right? Yep. Absolutely. By the way, that's not your car that's being robbed, right? No, no. Okay. But any knowledge of Epstein abuse of his victims. I was never involved in any capacity. I was not a participant, was never on Epstein's plane, and never visited his private island. Pause.

Again, you can't help but think that she's drawing an implicit contrast with Donald, because Donald did fly on the plane. Donald did interact with purported Epstein victims, like Virginia Roberts Goufrey, who famously worked at Marlago as a spa attendant. Epstein also, I think, was credibly alleged by one of the purported victims who testified in the Maxwell trial,

Nadia Bjorland, the Days of Our Lives, soap opera actress, as having been introduced by Epstein to Trump in Palm Beach, not alleging wrongdoing. sexually by Trump, but Trump did observe that person at one point, right? So she's saying

I didn't do all this stuff that my husband did do right, which just, you know, raises the question, okay, so if you did, you had done that stuff and that's supposed to be suggestive of some kind of complicity, then that would all apply to Donald. No, it's fucking

bonkers this shit. Anyway, let's keep listening. I have never been legally accused or convinced of a crime in connection with abstin sex trafficking, abuse of minors,

and other repulsive behavior. The false smears about me from mean-spirited and politically motivated individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good name

to gain financially and climb politically must stop. So it's about her good name. It's not about her and Donald's good name as a married couple. Yep. She makes no reference to Donald,

pro or con, except to clarify that she met Donald, supposedly at a party in New York City in 1998. My attorneys and I have fought these unfound and baseless lies

with success and will continue to maintain my sound reputation without hesitation. To date, several individuals and companies have been

illegally obligated to publicly apologize and retract their lies about me, such as Daily Beast, James Carville and Harper Collins, UK. Now is the time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone. Pause, pause, pause. So that's where I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. This is bizarre enough already, but then she throws in the kicker where... Epstein was not alone. What does that mean? What the fuck? Epstein was not alone.

That could mean lots of things. I mean, that could mean like what one of these victim lawyers said to me at the Bank of America settlement hearing two weeks ago where she's like, look, there should be further prosecutions of people, but she was referring to basically Epstein's accountants and lawyers and so forth. But

that's not, you know, the average person when they hear that, and supposedly the big controversy here is that a client list has been concealed of all these VIPs, perhaps including her husband, and she just lets that dangle out there. And also, she's calling for, she's saying Congress must act. So she's doing the diametric opposite of what Donald had been urging whenever this has come up, which is that we need to move on, this is a hoax, this is being, you know, exploited by dastardly Democrats. She's now saying she wants to reenliven the issue

politically and legislatively. Yeah. Absolutely. Look, there's, there are so many different things about this that are weird, but at the beginning of the video, I'm just going to say it. At the beginning of the video, it feels like, I'm going to point out some shit that I'm pissed off about as a as the wife of somebody who hung out with Epstein and is named in FBI documents and all this stuff.

And that that's what that feels like. But this stuff, the Epstein is not alone stuff. Well, we should listen to the end of it. But this reminds me of the whole, I got this from the media. thing. I read on the internet. Right, yeah. So we're not sure.

Like she's obviously has insight and for knowledge. She's met the guy. You know, there's been limited correspondence, et cetera, et cetera. But, but now we're entering a territory where we got to know what, what she's talking about. Like what's this based on.

That could mean there needs to not. just be further congressional action, but law enforcement. Exactly. Right. That's really, I mean, this thing, this thing was like obviously going to be a, was obviously, I mean, she's not dumb, right? She knows that she's unleashing a huge political firestorm by doing this at all. But then to throw in that line, that's her taking a massive novelty size stick of dynamite

and throwing it into the political system. No, it's unbelievable. All right, let's just hear a little bit more on this. Eminent male executives resign from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized. Of course, this doesn't amount to guilt, but we still must work openly and transparently to uncover the truth. I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein, with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors. Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress

with the power of sworn testimony. Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record. Okay. Then... Okay.

Okay. Just ten more seconds. Yeah, yeah. Only then we will have the truth. Thank you. What the fuck? I mean, you couldn't have scripted that.

You could not have scripted that. It would be too far-fetched. There's so much stuff there that is impossible to work out. First of all, has there ever been and this kind of departure, like sort of a naked schism between a president and the first lady during a presidency.

I mean, I guess, I guess Clinton, right, in the Clinton years. I mean, it was uncomfortable. I don't recall Hillary going out in public and sort of announcing some sort of schism. No, no. There's never been this kind of. Barry Todd Lincoln kind of went off the reservation. Yeah, Jackie never did, right? No.

I can't think of a precedent. I can't, I can't, maybe there is, in fact, if there are anybody among the, you know. So. Yeah, do our good, good, good, good historian commenters. Yeah. If anybody out there is. Now, your mind's in the gutter as usual. Yeah, exactly.

Well, no, that wasn't me. That was, well, I guess it was. And also, you know, think of it. this a little bit a little more politically as well right so there are some Republicans in Congress who you know especially in the House who of anybody are the most responsive to Trump or the most beholden by the incentives politically that are flowing from Trump you know if they can't win a Republican primary and be oppositional to Trump really but but let's say there's some segment of them

that did want to actually get more deeply involved in Epstein maybe could some of their constituents have been demanding it or they're disenchanted or they don't like how it's been handled. Now they have the perfect political cover to actually seize the issue a little bit more falsomely because they're saying, look, they're just taking the directive from Bologna. I know. I know. Which is nuts because it's the last thing the White House should want, right? Which is why he apparently didn't even get a, I mean, so it was, it's sort of unclear the way it was initially reported. There were, you know, reporters saying that Trump had no foreknowledge of this at all. And then another report said, oh, they gave, he had a heads up, which could it just

mean Melania's press staff gave an indirect heads up that she was going to come out and say something. It's almost impossible to imagine that, like, they had a long conversation to consider whether or not this was the right thing to do. And then they jointly decided, yeah, go out and make a random statement about Jeffrey Epstein right after the Iran ceasefire. And then meanwhile, the ironic punchline to all this, this is for NBC. A group of Epstein survivors, including Danielle Benski and Annie Farmer, as well as the late Virginia Jeffreys, Relative Sky and Amanda Roberts, dismissed the first lady's call for a survivor-focused public hearing.

Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports and giving testimony asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility not justice first lady milanio trump is now shifting the burden onto survivors under politicized conditions that protect those with power so so i'm sure there are some of them who would do it though like she's calling for right no i know it's it's just funny you know i know that of course that yeah that's also ironic but like what is she calling for there maybe maybe weeks and weeks of circus hearings where anybody and their mother, I guess, can show up and make a statement that's going to be entered into the congressional record. It's going to be aired live, right?

It's going to be like the Watergate hearings or something. Right. That's what she's saying she wants. I mean, I've got nothing on this. I have no idea. One would have to be an expert in the dynamics of that relationship, which, by the way, has not been particularly well investigated. I heard something from someone yesterday that I'm not going to spell out in great. right detail now that seems to be a plausible partial explanation for what transpire,

but it's still kind of mostly conjecture by somebody who's, you know, unusually informed. But it's pretty much, it's still pretty enigmatic. I mean, there's a, there's a former friend of hers got deported recently who had been, she was the ex-wife of somebody who's now like a special envoy in the Trump administration who actually did know Epstein. He's the Italian guy. And there was an idea that this Brazilian woman who got deported recently as the, you know, as part of like a marital spat, was going to take vengeance and make some sort of statement about Melania. I don't know if that, like, that was just, again, that was just speculative.

I haven't seen that actually happen. And it's now been, what, you know, four days or something? But, you know, there are some theories floating around along those lines. Because everybody, of course, assumed, oh, she's trying to preempt something. But whatever is that she was trying to preempt hasn't come to pass yet. Well, no, look. If she was trying to preempt something, like, it hasn't come out. She referenced the three things.

I don't know what they are with the Daily Beast, the, the, um. She's saying those were past episodes. Yeah, I mean, there was, she did, yeah, her, uh, her personal, like legal staff did file suits against Daily Beast, uh, something UK. and James Carville. I'm not aware of the James Carvel one. But if it was a forward-looking thing that she was trying to preempt, whatever that hypothetically would have been, apparently has not yet come out.

Yeah, it hasn't come out. Look, the whole thing is completely nuts on a political level, on a marital level. And also, I have a strong suspicion that there is a media angle to all this, that this is also part of the mania. you know, that there might be gripping the country. So, oh, okay, Carville apologizes,

pulls YouTube video from after letter from millennial lawyer. Okay, I think I might vaguely remember this. Yeah. What did he say? After a podcast tied to his dealings, after legal pushback. I don't know. We'd have to go back and.

I bet you, I mean, I would think he probably said something like, oh, Melania was introduced by Epstein to Trump or Malani was in the same modeling trafficking circles or something. Oh, okay. Yeah. He took a shoot with a segment in which Carville discussed how Malani had met Epstein. Oh, there you go. All right. Well, whatever.

That doesn't, that's not enough to, to. That was August of last year. Yeah, to provoke this kind of thing. It's really weird. That's the guy that's a commenter just reminded me of the exact name. Yeah. It's impossible to make any sense of this on the surface. I haven't seen anybody really do it.

Other than that, it's a plot twist that, again, could not have been scripted because it would have been too far-fetched. Hold on a second. So what? Why can't she talk about herself without invoking her husband? Because it's fucking weird. Folks, have you ever been around the White House? Nothing happens that is not scripted 50 times.

in advance, at least in the pre-Trump era, there is no such thing as spontaneity. And when it comes to especially announcements that take place with the presidential seal in front of it, like that stuff doesn't happen by accident without the president knowing. Like there's just no way. Like it couldn't possibly take place. She's choosing to douse this political controversy in gasoline and throw in a match related to something that has been dogging her husband's administration politically and exacerbates all these tensions and fissures within the Republican coalition. Yeah, just completely nuts. She can, in theory, say something on the subject without reference to Trump, but like this is a whole, this is a political deal here.

Yeah, I'm not making a value, Judge. or an ethical judgment or anything about whether what she's doing. I'm just, I think we're just both saying it is extraordinarily weird and a departure from the norm for this to happen. And you don't find a conspicuous commenter that if she's going to make a statement about Epstein at all and deny any wrongdoing herself or deny she was victimized, like address the subject, call for political action, that she would just neglect to also deny acting.

of wrongdoing that have been with regard to her husband yeah exactly um you just omit that and then we're supposed to draw our own inferences all right well on the the lastly on the topic of sexual abuse yeah or or uh accusations of sexual abuse um one of my absolute favorite people in politics everybody's rape than everybody else so that's what we love to chat about here on the pedo podcast hour. The private bedo party. The raping everybody out here, there was a viral video from like 2010 where this guy made a, it was interviewed on some local TV news channel about like a home break in.

And it was turned into like one of the early auto tune songs. You could probably. Oh, like that, bet, intruder. Like a song of five thing. Yeah, yeah, a songify thing. The raping everybody out here. One of the lyrics was hide your kids, hide your wife and hide your husband because they're raping everybody.

here. Oh man. Well, I actually performed an acoustic guitar version of that, believe, did you really? I did. I got to see Michael in concert. I'm looking for you. No, no, no, that's not happening. We got to start writing some tunes for you. Or you got to start, we got to start doing some political satires.

All right, let's look at SOT 1. And wheeled at this, the last, completely fucked story from the last few days. It was in 2019. I was again, driving him to an event. This was my job. And you were 21 years old. And I was 21 years old. We see some sort of parking lot. And he says, he pulls out his penis.

I'm just going to say, as somebody who grew up in television, my least favorite thing in the world is the thing where the TV reporter says, and this happened. And the interview subject says, yes, that happened. Like it repeats the quote. But hold on. Why is she darkened out? I don't know. It's just this dogma that the media clings to, and then they say it's policy. Like, it's unchallengeable policy. So this was first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday.

This woman's account of her relationship with Swalwell. And her identity was withheld in that article for the standard reasons of policy that they love to invoke that apparently nobody can ever examine or evaluate, even though she's like, she's an adult. She says she was an adult one at the time that this allegedly happened. she is if she was 21 and 2019 she's got to be you know 28 or so now she is presumably some kind of professional political operative which is why she you know went back to swallow five years later after they had their liaison and you know and she was in talks with him and his staff about potentially even working on his gubernatorial campaign like she's a political professional of

some kind and yet it's just taken for granted that of course she needs to be lack and out her identity concealed in this like melodramatic way. I hadn't even seen this scene in an interview. But that's sort of like one of just like the the starting fallacies here that nobody even questions. Among other things. Greg, can we go back to the beginning on this? I'm sorry. Here we go.

And you were 21 years old. And I was 21 years old. We see some sort of parking lot and he says to pull over. He pulls out his penis and instructs me to give him oral sex. and I started to again. I felt incredible. So, so,

maybe I'm naive. I mean, do guys do that? They just pull over in their cars and whip their dicks out and does that happen? I hadn't seen this particular interviews and maybe there's some context in the lead up to when she drops this, you know, revelation. But,

at least according to the San Francisco Chronicle article article, this is after months of flirtatious and mutually reciprocated back and forth sexual, you know, banter where she's sending him nude photos of herself and she's saying that she likes and welcomes and appreciates whatever communications are being exchanged between the two of them. Right? It ain't going to blow itself. That's true. You know what?

That's a good point. I stopped and I said to him, this feels really uncomfortable and anyone could see us right now. So he request, she says instructs, but when it was first at least represented in the San Francisco Chronicle thing, and maybe in the CNN article too, though, with, so there were two articles that first introduced this. It was CNN and San Francisco Chronicle. We're almost positive in one of the two. The way it's put is that he asks her if she will perform the sex act and she agrees to perform it. So in other words, it's a consensual sex act between two.

adults. Okay, we got to, I got to look that up. I didn't see that. But let's listen on for a second. He said to me, you're right. It's probably not good for a congressman to be caught with his pants down. Did he ask you to send him lewd photos? Yes. And did he ever send loot photos? Yes. He would send short Snapchat videos of him rubbing his penis through his pants while on the airplane. The staffer says she liked a while's attention at first. This is in the CNN article. In 2019, when she was driving Swalwell around his district as part of her staff duties, he told her to stop in a parking lot, pulled out his penis, and asked her to give him oral sex, she said. She said she briefly complied before stopping and telling Swalwell she was uncomfortable.

So he asked her to perform a sex act. And she, quote, complied is how they phrase it. Briefly. meaning she consented to the sex act and then they decided to stop in the middle of it because they realized that maybe somebody could see them. So that that's now like what's somewhere in the neighborhood of rape, I guess, in terms of how this is being presented. He just announced right before we started the stream. I don't know if you saw it, but he's also resigning from Congress. Yeah. Yeah. And he's he's leaving the he's leaving the race and resigning from Congress.

because he was on the verge of potentially being expelled, which has happened barely at all in American history. Last time was George Santos for, you know, misrepresenting his being on a college volleyball team and stuff like that. But this was going to be one of like the incredibly rare instances in the American history that some offense could rise to the level of expulsion from Congress.

After, like within a matter of hours, his leading front running California gubernatorial campaign imploded. Everybody who had ever endorsed them or supported him instantly denounced him. And look, I mean, this is not even a non-consensual act that's being described. Yeah, and for all the people who are giving Michael

a hard time about this, it's like, you have to think about what's actually happening here. Even if all, like, even if you stipulate that all of this stuff is true, the velocity with which all these things are taking place is extraordinary for somebody to be basically bounced from Congress overnight, you know, with in the space of less than a news cycle, basically, the campaign disappears. he resigns from Congress after denying everything and here's how the San Francisco Chronicle article puts it because this was the first article of all right

this was in the headline here April 10th was ex-staffer says Eric Swalwell candidate for California governor sexually assaulted her and this is that same woman who's now being interviewed by CNN under the under the cloak of darkness

So here's how it's described. And like bear in mind, the journalists are now colluding with this little, you know, ad hoc consortium of influencers, like TikTok influencers and political operatives who wanted to get this to the fore.

So like then they're very blatant about it. And so they're going to couch everything in the reporting that is most favorable to her description. But they say in terms of her initial sort of flirtatious or sexualized interactions over text message or snapshot with Swalwell, the messages were initially welcome,

alone in a new community across the country from where she grew up. She said she felt encouraged by his friendly outreach and flattered that he was paying attention to her. When Swalwell flurred with her and started asking for pictures, first of her face, then of her naked body and genitalia, the woman said she went along with it because she was intrigued by him. And worried about upsetting her new boss.

Okay, she was, yeah, she seemed very worried. We got the power dynamic thing going on here, which is what, look, it's, no matter what it's, if they, even if there is a relationship, it's, it's, it's, uh, these are flings. These are adult flings that get somehow recast in a political context as rape. I, yeah, no, I get it. The, the rape thing, look, um, look, um, look, I, I've, I've said, I said, right when this broke, I've always despised Eric Swallow political. like uniquely among Democrats. I think he's one of the most of some people in American politics. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And sure, people always bring up, oh, like maybe there's

some like meta-discursive angle here where we could point to some Democratic Party hypocrisy or even swabled his own hypocrisy. We can fish out something he might have said about Kavanaugh in 2018 and therefore, you know, he got what was coming to him. You know, I'm sort of tired of that line of argumentation. That was what people bombarded me with during the Tara Reid hoax in 2020 because it was supposed to show. that the Democrats did not uphold their, you know,

consecrated Me Too standards when evaluating that claim because it could have politically damaged Biden. Okay, fine. Like, maybe like Alyssa Milano and other hack Democrats are inconsistent in their application of these standards. That's neither here or there to me. How come the propagation of a pure hoax, like wasn't the driving factor we were supposed to evaluate with regard to Tarried.

And yeah, that was proven, look, with 99.9% certainty to have been a total pure hoax of a crazy person who I know, like, personally is, you know, hallucinating things about me because she can't get over that I wrote one article about that episode for The Spectator in 2020. And she thinks I'm like falling her around and surreptitiously videotaping her and threatening her pets. Yes. So she's a hallucinor. She's a lifelong hoaxer, you know, with her ex-husband, with other stuff that she's had, you know, that I unfortunately had to look through over the years. And that was just allowed to, like, you know, float out there as a supposedly credible allegation. And then everybody who was responsible for propagating that story, the Tara Reid hoax, rape hoax, just memory holds it.

They don't address it. And then they just barrel on to the next one. can we definitively call that one a hoax? I'm definitively calling it a hoax, yes. Okay, all right. Well, look, I stayed away from that story for, and I won't get into why. I was at Rolling Stone.

I was actually not at Rolling Stone. I returned to Rolling Stone just as the UVA thing blew up or was blowing up. Remember that story? The Sabrina Ederly story? Yes. You returned in 2014 to Rolling Stone. I left briefly to do... Oh, to do the racket first look thing, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly the first look thing. And when I came back was just after that blew up. And I got in a tremendous amount of trouble. I defended the magazine initially pretty strongly and then was asked about it on television. And there were people asking a lot of probing questions, like what would you have done in this situation? And I said something to the effect of, well, you know, there are lots of ways to come at the campus date rape problem.

And it would have been probably easier for the magazine's point of view to deal with adjudicated cases because there are plenty of them out there already. And that was interpreted as you don't believe the women. and there was there was blowback to that but the problem with the reality of that story was that you know everybody got paralyzed in this frame of mind that you we have to affirm it affirm all the accusations and the blunder you know is massively more consequential than telling a true story right So you've got to avoid that at all costs. And you got to, there's an amount of care that you're supposed to exercise in these

situations just to, just for, you know, self-protection purposes. That seems to go out the window now. You know, even with a person as low, slim as Eric Swalwell, the speed of this thing is shocking to me. I just, it's, it's unbelievable. it's incredible. So at least Rolling Stone eventually retracted

that article, right? They did and they did like a journalistic autopsy of it. Yeah, yeah. We discussed it. We got the Columbia journalism review to come in. But in this alt media podcast, you know, milly, nobody has taken

any account whatsoever of their responsibility for propagating a tarot reed hoax. so there's no penalty really for being involved in manufacturing these garbage stories I'm not saying that everybody all the women are just straight up lying about ever having a sexualized interaction with Swalwell like I don't think that CNN woman who's being interviewed is a hoaxer per se like Tara Reid was or the growing stone woman was it's just that the stuff is getting framed in this very deliberate contrived way

in the context of a gubernatorial primary that's coming up in California where the Democrats in the state have been spooked recently that be given the idiosyncrasies of their jungle primary system, like nobody's really polling above like 14%. Like Swalwell was the front runner. He was only getting like 15%. And so it could have happened that the two candidates that emerged from the jungle primary would both be Republicans. So there's been talk about how they need to consolidate around a Democratic candidate. And that is what seems to have, at least in part, large part, catalyzed this effort that was sort of like burbling behind the scenes for a while on social media and on TikTok and amongst these like operatives and influencers who are coordinating amongst themselves and finally burst open. And it's just all taken with like total and complete credulity in every possible respect where, you know, especially. like the male Democrats who had endorsed Swalwell and even had co-chaired his campaign like Adam Schiff who I again also despise or Ruben Gallego

who's going to be probably running for president himself like they have to be even more hypersensitive where it's like you know it's almost like being told that there is a nuclear ballistic nuclear tip ballistic missile headed toward your office or something that's like the urgency with which you have to address something like this coming out because they can't stand to wait even another hour politically where their endorsement of this guy stands yeah exactly so just to be clear like from my point of view all of the interactions with the tic-tock influencers and the journalists

that could mean a huge range of things it could mean that this is a long suppressed true story that people have worked to bring to the surface i i don't know enough about it about it yet i only just got back from vacation. But it could also be politically motivated. There could be, there's a whole mountain of things that are in play. And that's why the speed of this is incredible. Like, as you say, there isn't even a day to sift through, well, is this true or not, like, or, you know, like, there isn't even a moment of contemplation about it.

other people came forward and it was over. He was vaporized instantly. Yeah. Other people, quote, came forward in this same, like, I thought people were going to, would maybe have been a little bit more primed to look skeptically on this same pattern playing out where if additional accusers, quote, come forward, then that automatically, you know, gets the snowball rolling and you can, and it flattens everybody in his path. because people came forward and alleged what exactly?

Like, shouldn't we know a little bit about the details rather than just we know that other people supposedly came forward? Because if you look at this CNN article, I mean, it's farcical in terms of what the other people who came forward have alleged. Like, here's one of the additional three that came forward after this first woman who claims that she was raped. None of the additional three claim that they were raped. So here's another one. Various kinds of sexual misconduct. Yeah, sexual misconduct, but what does that even mean sexual misconduct? It's a weasel word.

Sexual misconduct could, you know, that can mean anything. I mean, but if you lump it together with rape, then people understand it to mean something that's non-consensual or illicit or abusive or, you know, physically violative. So another, one of these supposedly like corroborating people and women who, you know, come out the woodworks and therefore give credence to the initial accuser says that basically in 2025 Swalwell messaged her on one of these apps or on Instagram

they developed a rapport she he tells her at one point that he's in her city and asks if she wants to meet for dinner and drink so basically asking her on a date and yeah he's married so if you want to moralize about that go ahead I mean, I think it's pretty clear that he is sort of reckless in his personal conduct to some extent just by exposing himself to this potential liability. But that's a long way from rape, right? So they meet for dinner and drinks. They then go to a bar.

They continue having drinks. He says he was sitting against me. So I kind of moved away from him every time that I would move away from him. He would get closer to me. And they kept ordering drinks. And then there's another one. It's like a date. And then, you know, he kisses her.

She accepts the kiss. And, you know, they end up having sex. And afterwards, she basically starts feeling bad about it because she knows he's married. So she feels, quote, emotionally vulnerable. I mean, she could have alleged presumably that the sexual encounter was rape if that's what she's alleging it to have been. But that's not claimed here. And then, like, she basically says that she had heard him. And she said, and then he says, I won't bother him.

you again, sorry, but then she continued to try to message him and exchange, you know, friendly, you know, uh, texts and blah, blah, blah. It's so, it's kind of like silly that we're even privy to this in terms of romantic or sexual activity between adults, but it's used as this phony corroboration for the initial more grave allegation, which is the same me too sort of playbook. Look, if you're willing to just ignore that or overlook that, just because you don't like Derek Swalwell, fine, but the principle, I think, also has to be objected to because it's journalistic malfeasance and it breeds all this crazy irrationality where, like, you can't even take a moment

to contemplate whether the conduct being alleged rise to the level of all these extreme retaliatory actions being taken where, you know, when somebody gets expelled from Congress or even has to resign as he's now done under threat of expulsion, and that creates a precedent for all of Congress. Yeah, I mean, how long did it take for the Anthony Wiener thing to, it had to pause to not use a, that's actually approach, a sexually suggestive verb to,

but that wasn't even about rape. That was just about him sending, you know, photos of his underpants. Right, but there's, there's a similar allegation with, with, um, with Swalwell here where he, were one of the women said I was just one out of I only had a thousand followers

I never thought he'd respond and yeah yeah yeah but the whole Carlos Danger thing it it took a little while for Wiener to be vaporized and the elements You know you had to apologize to Andrew Breitbart over it Andrew Breitbart commandeered Anthony Wiener's press call Oh right yes right right right

Because Breitbart was the one who broke that story initially because he had this big long-standing vendetta against Weiner. And so finally, Anthony Weirer fesses up and admits to it. And he just allows Andrew Breitbart to commandeer the press conference. And he's all like harried and he's like dishevelled, which, you know, I'm not going to begrudge. And eventually Anthony Weeter apologizes to Andrew Breitbart. It was amazing. No, it's incredible.

But that was, that was, that took weeks. Yeah, it took a while. We'd have to go back and look to see the exact timeline. But the point here is that, you know, this all happened in a basically instantaneously. Like now in internet time, there is no longer any evaluation whatsoever of anything. There can't possibly have been. It's too fast for this to have been already dealt with. And Swalwell, in his resignation statement,

sort of said, yeah, I object to this happening without any due process, but I'm going to quit anyway because that's the kind of person I am. Well, he's saying that it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be, since he's going to be embroiled in this, it wouldn't be fair to his constituents for this to be occupying all his time, right? Yeah. Which I guess is true enough.

Like, I mean, let's say he does sincerely contest the allegations, but it's still going to be something that now he's going to be saddled with. for the foreseeable future. Yeah, that probably would distract from his ability to do congressional representation type of stuff. Right. But here's another problem, even if you strongly, strongly, strongly just like Eric Squawal as I do,

here's another argument for why you shouldn't just do this schadenfreude thing and deactivate your critical faculties entirely. Okay, let's say he is a bit of a sleaze ball. That's possible. And maybe he's even enough of a sleaze ball that would be a genuine... Like a Brett Barf level thing. Yeah, like a genuine liability for somebody who wants to be the governor of California, which is one of the most high-profile positions in the country or even the world.

And maybe so it should, it's something that maybe should be probed in the, in a primary if, you know, if, if that could be an issue. Okay, how come that can't be probed without all of a sudden having to maximally dramatize it and put it in the most histrionic terms possible? And now it's a rape scandal that requires instant expulsion. Like there's no way to kind of rationally put it in proportion. and maybe assess, okay, perhaps he is too reckless in his personal life to be elected to that kind of high-profile position. And maybe it's going to be- Absolutely. Yeah, no.

But that's impossible to do because it has, in order to get it rocketing across the media at such a warp speed as they successfully engineered, it has to be framed as the most dire possible allegation. It can't just be framed in a more rational way, like understanding like the complications of adult, sexual interactions. No, that's that's not permissible anymore. It's either rape or it's either rape or it's something that I guess is like, it doesn't come up come up at all or can't be interrogated at all. So when I saw the clip very not that long ago, just before the show,

the moment of that CNN interview where you, you could see when all the politicians probably bailed was when, the interviewer asked did he send suggestions to you? And she says yes. That immediately puts in everybody's mind. She's got pictures, right?

And at that point, I'm sure every Well, no, because the Snapchat has disappearing images. Oh, is that what they're saying? Yeah, I mean, I think that was, that was clarified already. Like, she doesn't have them

because they're using Snapchat, which has like, as a feature of the app that it's it's uh they're disappearing messages right oh okay well in that case then i can't explain you you're like there's no way to possibly account for the the velocity of this thing like and it's it feels um it feels like it feels like this is a bad precedent to set but of course whatever we're when has that ever stopped anyone yeah look at the statement And this statement also just came out just before we started. So this is a statement from, he's now, he's now former campaign spokesperson.

Did you see this? Yeah, I saw that. I released a statement on April 7th that defended my former employer amid rumors of misconduct. So that was sort of strange. They thought, like, I guess maybe like Melania, that they were preempting something by not even responding to any official or discernible report of anything, but responding to social media rumors. and therefore, of course, bringing more attention to it and probably impelling the

progenitors of the rumors to organize and actually get it transmitted through some reputable or seemingly reputable media outlet, right? So she says, this person says, thanks to the tremendous bravery of survivors. So now these people are all survivors. They're already survivors.

The date victim, the consensual date victims are now survivors. Thank you. There's a tremendous bravery of bravery of survivors, former colleagues, and others who have come forward since that time. We now know there is absolutely nothing to defend. I am deeply sorry if my words... How do we know that already?

Yeah, how do we know that? I am deeply sorry if my words contributed to the already toxic discourse that protects those in power. I don't know. Was Eric Swallow protected by any toxic discourse? I don't know. It seems like people couldn't wait to shiv him at a moment's notice.

Him and like anybody else who's been connected to the Epstein thing or whatever. And then this person, I think, I guess this is a guy. So of course he has to be even more floored with the language. I offer my most fervent prayers of support to all survivors of sexual abuse. Yeah, the survivor's term has become like a holy incantation. But again, just from a journalistic standpoint, the use of the word survivor, before you've had a, you know, a guilty.

verdict or something like that, especially when there's been a rape allegation. That's amazing for somebody who worked for Eric Swalwell to say. Right? Even if they're, I mean, even if they're, even if you want to argue that we shouldn't have to wait for a formal legal verdict to anoint somebody, a survivor, which then puts them in this hollowed class of, you know, people that were all supposed to be constantly, um, constantly holding up the voices. of and structuring society in order to, you know, ostentatiously support. And again, it's a creepy quirk of the new lexicon anyway, because it seems to me to invoke

like Holocaust survivors or some sort of historic atrocity that these people are now also victims of that's like on the order of something like Holocaust, like Holocaust survivor. But even if you want to say that, like we're taught, we're not lawyers, we're not prosecutors, we don't have to wait for there to be a formal legal verdict before we can call somebody a survivor. Okay. So then maybe it should be a little bit contingent on the actual severity of the conduct that's being alleged, but it's not.

Because there's no way that any of what's even alleged could possibly rise to the level of survivorship. Like let's say there was an actual grievous allegation of just straightforward rape, everybody who's reasonable would understand it to be raped. And let's say there's no guilty verdict. He won't be for another couple months. but like the evidence is overwhelming. Okay.

I still might probably advise some caution, but if you want to call somebody a survivor in that circumstance, maybe more defensible. This stuff is basically a guy having flings with adult women who are enamored of him, it seems, but then, you know, started to feel conflicted about it because he's married,

who then all of a sudden, you know, because they were hearing, rumors on social media according to one person and never would have otherwise thought to even bring this up much less frame it as something abusive but they all get together and now this stuff is supposed to be raped like you can't make a possible argument that this should warrant like automatic description of survivorship it's absurd yeah i mean what i would add to that is that um these are political operatives. That's another crazy thing. Again, the people organizing this, like there was one woman who actually was named

who just like did some had some flirtatious exchanges with them. Never, you know, legend anything physical. Ali Samarco, I think her name is. She's now married to one of these top Democratic influencers as well. Adam Porosch, like some Ukrainian guy, Poroshenko or not Porosheko, something like that. Her job is literally like she runs communication strategy. Right. On social media for Democrats.

and she's the one who apparently catalyzed this to a large extent, but like nobody could take two seconds to wonder if there may be any other factors here that we should be cognizant of before just declaring that this guy needs to be, have his campaign exploded, expunged. Oh, and by the way, did you see that the Manhattan District Attorney? No, I didn't see this. What?

Alvin Bragg, they announced that they've opened a criminal investigation. Right, yes. Yeah. Because one of that initials, that CNN woman's allegations supposed to took place in Manhattan. So, you know, he's got to face now. Criminal charges, expel from Congress. We have to upend precedent

and the House of Representatives to expel them overnight. Campaign imploded, renounced by everybody in the Democratic Party who, you know, say what you will for the Democrats. But when they really want to take collective action, they can. It usually tends to be around this sort of stuff. It's just crazy to me. This is all in one day, folks.

This story. And my angle on this, and this is the last thing I'll say is, in addition to all the things that you said, there's no possible way that, for instance, his former campaign manager or campaign employee could possibly have evaluated all of the evidence or even, you know, or digested the weight of Swalwell's denials. They may very well be bullshit. But there's no possible way to evaluate that in that space of time. You know what that guy did evaluate?

He evaluated his own career prospects. Exactly, exactly. In the Democratic Party professional class. Right. Where he can't have just hanging over his head. So he's got to take some, you know, nobody can have it hang in. Corrective action, right.

Right, right. It's like Ruben Gallego, couldn't wait another minute to disavow. Right. Because, you know, in the presidential primaries, like in, you know, a year and a half or two years, somebody could say, Senator Gallego, how could you have possibly waited so long to renounce this, you know, this heinous abuser and stand with the survivors, meaning like the extra half hour that maybe he did wait, that's going to be now a huge political vulnerability for

it. Hold on a second. Somebody's actually asking, does Michael know that infidelity is actually illegal? Oh, is it? Can you cite the criminal code? I mean, I do think there are some antiquated laws

or some state. There may very well be on the books. Make it illegal? Who the fuck knows? But come on. Okay, so then lock up Donald Trump, lock up Gavin Newsome. Everybody.

Lock up Bill Clinton. Lock up this Tony Gonzalez guy who's also now, they're saying they might, Every professional athlete in history. Lock up Nancy Mays. Did she have an affair? Okay, I take that one back.

There was some crazy turmoil having to do with a relationship that I think probably, I think we're supposed to involve some kind of. Let's cut this short because I'm not. If you're saying if you, if this guy's point is that sexual misconduct can rightly encompass now just marital infidelity, then we're, we've undergone like a semantic breakdown because misconduct definitely connotes, right, something that's coercive or violative or abusive, right, that is, you know, in some kind of similar category to rape. It's not just you have a moral objection to infidelity.

Well, and look, this is the thing that Richard, what is it, Hanania? Hanania wrote about the sort of rapid reconfiguring of, relationship dynamics. There's all these stories about age gap age gap to relationships. This is all in the Epstein era. We're hurtling back into the Victorian age like at light speed.

It's bizarre. And again, I say this is a person who cannot stand Eric Swalwell. I would, if anybody was going to be this kind of scumbag, I could believe it. But you need time to, digest it. And they haven't taken it.

And that is a very scary thing. Anyway, lots of... And now the Democrat who might actually make it out of the jungle primary in California is Tom Steyer, who also ran in the 2020 Democratic primaries, along with Swalwell. Right.

And his whole strategy is to just use his billions of dollars to be the only person who has the resources to run TV commercials and on the airwaves on it across a state as big as California. California. I love it. I mean, that would be, well, look, the iron, there are so many ironies and all this shit. I mean, between Russia gate, now, now Russia gets coming back is Israel's got blackmail material on Trump, but that, I mean, now we got Anthony, Anthony Wiener's story repeating itself. Melania can be a turncoat. Right. Yeah. Who the fuck knows anymore? Maybe it's all true. I mean,

I'm, I'm ready to just passively accept that all this shit is real now at this point. I mean, It's just crazy. All right. It just says like a surrender. Like you can't take it anymore. Yeah. I mean, okay. Yes.

They killed JFK. I'm in. Yeah. They did it. What is it today? I'm in. I think that's my new theory about everything. Here's my brain.

I will remove it from my head and just hand it over to you. You can have it. Yeah. I'm going to go shoot some baskets. But all right. well Michael good to see you and thanks everybody for hanging out with us and man is the world going crazy fast and we'll see you again later this week so long