Part Of The Problem - Ryan Grim

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave is joined by Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site. They talk about negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, connections between this and former wars, the suffering in Cuba caused by the U.S., and so much more.Support Our Sponsors:Stimulate brain energy with H2Focus! Head to http://www.twc.health/problem Use code PROBLEM for 10% + FreeShipping on every order.Hexclad - Find your forever cookware @hexclad and get10% off at https://hexclad.com/PROBLEM! #hexcladpartnerQuince - Get free shipping on your Quince order and 365-day returns athttps://www.quince.com/POTPUltra - Don’t sleep on Ultra Pouches. New customers get 15% Off with code PROBLEM at https://takeultra.com!Part Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!PORCH TOUR DATES HERE:https://robbernsteincomedy.com/eventsFind Run Your Mouth here:YouTube - http://youtube.com/@RunYourMouthiTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-your-mouth-podcast/id1211469807Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4ka50RAKTxFTxbtyPP8AHmFollow the show on social media:X:http://x.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://x.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefire#libertarian See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's up, everybody. What's up? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of The Problem. I'm very excited for today's show. So let me just get a couple quick plugs out of the way before we start. Guys, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be back on the road doing stand-up comedy all over the country, starting June 5th, one night only in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And then June 18th through 20th, Denver Comedy Works. Come on out for that one.

That is maybe my favorite comedy club in the country. Comedy Mothership and Denver Comedy Works are the best. So come on out for those. And then I did want to mention very quickly because he's out today. But this weekend, or I'm sorry, Sunday, May 24th, D.C. Pubkey 7 p.m. Robbie the fire, Bernstein. Go to porch tour.com for that date. All right.

As I've said before, one of the coolest things about my job is that I get to meet and be friends with people who I really admire, who I've learned a lot from. And our guest for today's show is a great example of that. legendary journalist, Ryan Grimm. Truly, I mean, some of you may have forgotten that there are some people out there who still do great journalism. Ryan is one of them. You can read his stuff at DropSightNews.com. Also, of course, many of you know him as one of the hosts of the excellent show breaking points.

I will say, Ryan, I know not only obviously is Ryan right there, but Ryan and the great Jeremy Skahill, one of the greatest journalists in the world, in my opinion. You guys founded DropSight News together. I will say this. I mean, I don't give out awards to news organizations, but if I did, I would give DropSight like the news organization of the year. The coverage of the Iran War has been just phenomenal. I've been, I'm not just singing your praises to your face for everyone who listens to the show.

I've been singing you and Jeremy's praises for the last couple months because it's really the firsthand reporting and the coverage you guys have done have really been in dispensate. to my understanding of this conflict. And I think in a way, it's weirdly almost broken down to like, there's two types of people when it comes to thinking about this war. There's like the people who are reading DropSight and the people who aren't. And I mean this. I'm not exaggerating. Only because you guys have been reporting what the Iranian government is actually saying. That doesn't mean that everything they're saying is true. But it does mean that that's a really critical thing to understand if you're going to understand what's going on here, right?

Yeah, no, that's really kind of you to say. And I've thought about that too, especially as I've watched the market, just go flying around at every, like, Axios tweet. And maybe because there's this herd mentality, and maybe everybody knows that what Axios is posting is wrong, but they know everybody else is going to follow it too, so they've got to follow it. But I'm always thinking, like, wow,

if traders want to know what's actually happening, they've got to be reading Jeremy and they've got to be reading DropSite. And I've actually talked to a couple bankers and they're like, oh, oh, we're all reading drop site. And it's not because they like necessarily agree with like whatever editorial viewpoint we have, which we actually don't even necessarily have one. If you notice, like we don't do opinion pieces. It's just straight news.

But yeah, it's you're getting actual information. And if you've been, if you were reading it, you were much less surprised by events as they unfolded, then apparently a lot of people in the White House. Trump's like, nobody thought they were going to attack all these Gulf countries. It's like, what? Like our stuff is free. Like they were saying it openly.

You attack us. We're turning this into a regional war. And they attacked them, turn it into a regional war. It's like, who could have seen that coming? Well, and also the fact that at every stage, of this war has essentially been Trump trying to find a way to get the Iranians to capitulate. And they're very loudly saying, we will not capitulate. These are our demands. I mean, their demands from the beginning were pretty bold. And so I think a lot of people might

have been under the impression like, oh, Donald Trump's getting to them, or several times, which we'll get into in a second where it's always he's saying they're on the cusp of a deal, but it's like, I don't know, man, if you listen to what the Iranians are saying. Again, not saying that they won't lie too. All governments lie. And in the middle of a war, everybody's in the business of propaganda. However, in the eight or nine weeks or whatever, wherever we are exactly in this war, what, and I'm just saying this objectively, there's many things I like better about

United States of America's society than Iranian society. And I'm a libertarian Jew. I'm not much in the business of like Shiite theocracy. the fact is, this is objective, what the Iranian government has been saying since the beginning of this war has been far more consistent and far more in the realm of being tethered

to reality and truth than what the president of the United States of America and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and all these guys have been saying. It's really brainbreaking when you start to recognize that actually like, wow, like we've set a pretty low bar. and are not remotely coming close to clearing it.

The part that really blew my mind was the back and forth, if you remember where Jeremy reported that Whitkoff kept texting the Iranians, Araksche and other Iranians just, and the Iranians were just leaving them on red, like no reply, nothing. And then a couple hours after he reports that, Axios reports, the Iranians are reaching out to the United States begging for a deal. And so then this becomes actually, oh, this is a falsifiable claim. Like somebody is text messaging somebody.

These text messages exist. And so then the Iranians, they go on the record, because Jeremy had reported sources in the Iranian government. They go on the record with their top officials saying, we have not responded to the U.S., and this is why. So at that moment, if they were lying and Whitkoff is sitting there with a phone full of messages from Araghi begging him to make a deal, boom, you either show it, show it to Axio, screenshot it. You don't even have to publish them, but you could prove

they're lying. And it was just so obvious, oh no, like one side here was lying and one side he was telling the truth and it wasn't our country that was telling the truth. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is the wellness company? Do you have trouble staying focused and remembering tasks throughout the day? Most people reach for chemical-filled energy drinks, but those lead to jitters, crashes, and damaging your body. While the wellness company created a smarter solution called H-2 Focus, it turns your water into molecular hydrogen. H-2 Focus is a stimulant-free formula designed to support mental clarity, cognitive energy, and sustained focus. Molecular hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe,

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to get 10% off plus free shipping. One more time, that is TWC. Health slash problem. promo code problem for 10% off plus free shipping for U.S. residents. All right, let's get back into the show. Yeah, well, I mean, Trump publicly announced, what was this three weeks ago now,

that we had a deal. He announced that we had a deal that was we get all of the enriched uranium. They stop supporting Hezbollah. The straight is open. and in return, they get nothing. And you're just like, I don't know, man. I read Jeremy's column from this morning.

And this just is not true. This is a complete. And then, of course, as it turns out, completely not true. I want to ask you, like, more zooming out a little bit. I want to ask kind of like a broad question about the conflict. And then I want to get into the specifics of what Donald Trump tweeted the other day and wherever exactly we are. We're on the third loop, it seems like, of the same storyline of this war.

But just zooming out. Now, obviously, you know, we don't exactly know where we are right now in the war or whether this is going to escalate or whether this is the extent of it or exactly how the aftermath will shake out. But you have covered a lot of wars, a lot of U.S.-led wars over the last 25 years. And, I mean, of course, like, you know, your partner, Jeremy Scahill. I mean, I first found him probably as many people did when I read dirty wars back in, what was it, 2013, I think it was. You put out a book on a dirty, phenomenal book and a documentary,

like a companion piece. You really should read and watch the documentary. They both kind of build on each other. And they were about just like the way J-Socc was conducting wars in Yemen and Somalia and a couple of incidents in Afghanistan and just really an understanding of how these wars have been conducted. And the war in Iran thus far, it is not, say, it's not the humanitarian that Iraq or Afghanistan or obviously or Syria or Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Gaza. We've had the U.S. and Israel wars over the last 25 years. We've got quite a track record. And if you pile them all up, it's like millions of innocent dead people when you start adding

up all these conflicts that we started. Okay, Iran has not turned into that yet. However, there is something distinctly catastrophic about this war. that was not true with any of those previous conflicts. Like, Gaza had no meaningful way of actually fighting back against the global economy. Yeah, the Houthis could touch a couple of boats, but it wasn't really disrupt in the global economy. Obviously, Iraq and, you know, there was nothing they could do, really, to fight. There weren't even drones back then.

We didn't have cheap drones in warfare. And, of course, Libya just collapsed into itself, and Syria took a, took a little bit longer and after a brutal civil war collapsed into itself. But around, this is really something different. And I really am kind of, I find myself just kind of being in awe of how big this moment is. That in the history of U.S. wars, I don't think I've ever really seen anything like this, where we have essentially taken this relegated, sanction, crippled third world country, and transformed them into a global power.

And this is, I don't know, it just feels to me, as I'm watching this, you're the professional journalist, I'm just the comedian, but it feels to me like I'm watching the Berlin Wallfall or something like that. Like, oh,

this is like a moment in history where everything is changing. And I'm curious, what's your thoughts on all that? Yeah, we totally kind of reorganized the Middle East accidentally. You know, Obama was, you know,

Obama kept trying, kept saying he was pivoting to Asia, pivoting to Asia, and striking the Iran deal was part of his effort. He's saying, okay, if we're going to move and we're going to focus more on our competition with China and developing our ties with these other Asian countries, then we need to just settle things down in the Middle East. And the way we need to do that is we just need to make peace, normalize our way into some type of decent relationship with Iran. And then this is, you know, We need to just back out of this entire thing. That was probably the most rational thing for the United States to try to do as it's kind of a declining empire,

to try to negotiate a way into a power sharing arrangement with the rest of the world, down from the hegemony that they had after World War II, which can't last forever. You know, it's a giant planet. It shouldn't last forever. Like, in order to make that last forever, you can only begin to imagine the amount of suffering. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to even cut you up, but even Charles Krauthammer called it the unipolar moment.

It's a moment. It's a moment. You know, yeah, but I'm sorry, continue. No, that's exactly right.

So that was the plan to do this kind of rational, negotiated drawdown. It seems like we're going to get to the same place that Obama was trying to get to, which is us leaving the Middle East, except we're getting there in a kind of Afghanistan exit. kind of way, you know, with all of these bases just in complete ruins. Ironically, it's the, you know, the Emirates remain after Israel, the fiercest cheerleaders of kind of reentering this conflict and they were excited about it to begin with.

But they are, like, if you look at a map, it's like, what are you guys thinking? You're like right across the straight here from Iran. And your entire economy, well, you've got the base of the economy resting on, you know, oil a natural gas, but everything on top of that involves all of these expats from all over the world, like enjoying this like lavish, like luxurious fake lifestyle that that you're offering, which itself rests on unspeakable human rights abuses, but also rests upon the idea that it's safe. Like it's not, it's safe from crime on the street, but it's also, it's not a war-torn Middle Eastern country. You know, Kuwait never really recovered from getting invaded in 1991.

Like, they were on a trajectory to be a Dubai type of situation. But because they got tagged as this country that was invaded and occupied, people, you know, expats, that's not where it's not where they want to go. So to your point, the entire region is going to look different a year from now than it would have looked. if Trump had just, you know, focused on other things, like getting health care costs down, getting grocery prices down, rebuilding manufacturing in the United States or like whatever, whatever he could have focused on here. Instead, yeah, this entire region is, it's, we're not going to, are we going to rebuild these bases knowing that you, knowing that like in a week, Iran could just blow them all up again? Like, what, what is the value of a base at this point in this world with,

where ballistic missiles, drones, and even apparently F-5s can get through and just turn them into ashes. Yeah, that's right. It's a giant bluff that's essentially been called. And, you know, one of the things to me that's so interesting about this is that if you really look back, you know, you start telling up all the wars, all the wars that America's fought, let's say, post-World War II, or even, you know, the wars that we've funded, you know, whatever, you know, Israel's destruction of Gaza. You know, it's kind of like, maybe with the exception of the Ukraine war, although that's a delicate dance where we're not exactly directly involved. But typically we've been, what's become the norm is the U.S. picking on whatever third world. I don't mean that like an insulting way. I just mean like essentially the difference in economic power,

the difference in size and military power. I mean, all the wars that were fighting, and certainly in my whole lifetime, But before that, you know, we just get used to the fact that it's like, oh, yeah, we're fighting guys in sandals who train on monkey bars. We're going in with night vision goggles and calling in air strikes and great. It's just the, you know, it's like you read about World War I or something like that. And for someone of today's, you're kind of struck by the parody of the whole thing. Like, oh, my God, these are, like, you really don't know who's going to win here. These are two evenly matched countries.

Oh, they're kind of in a stalemate, this like prolonged trench warfare where it's not even clear if the line are moving and but people are just dying by the tens of millions and um it's almost like this is the first time we picked on like a mid-sized country like not like a giant superpower of a country but a country that has some means of fighting back and we're collapsing like we're just it's just in utter um an utter disaster and we are in this weird point where i think we really don't know how bad the economic devastation has gotten already. And that's the other element of this that people haven't really grappled with. You know, I certainly, I was talking about this a bit.

I was on with Crystal and Saga the other day. And I was talking about just like, for example, now me and you have different worldviews on economics or in many ways. But say in like 2020, in the summer of 2020, when it was clear that we had locked down the entire economy, we were pouring trillions of dollars into the economy. I was like, this is clearly going to lead to price inflation. Like, you can't do this without prices going up. This is going to happen in the next couple of years.

And yet the market was at an all-time high. The market was not pricing in inflation. The market was like this. And so we have a very controlled kind of rigged market. And we don't really know, Ryan. I mean, I don't know. I've read like some economists and try to get some experts' takes on this. But essentially we've now had a canal where 20% of the world's oil, a huge percentage of the world's fertilizer, has essentially been closed now for, well, a couple months, really the worst in the last month.

It's been worse since we blockaded the blockade. Like, no, I don't have any faith that the market has factored these costs in. And we really have no idea what we're going to be looking at in four months and five months in a year from this. We might already have created a real catastrophe here. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Quince. Summer always changes how you get dressed. You want pieces that feel lighter and more breathable, things that are easy but still put together. Well, check out Quince.

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So go check them out for sure. Elevate your summer wardrobe now by going to quince.com slash P-O-T-P for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns now available in Canada too. It's quince.com slash P-O-T-P, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash P-O-T-P for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince. dot com slash p o tp all right let's get back on the show it's it's it's really scary and i think yeah i'm with you on this like this worry of like what are what is the market like what is wrong

with our market like what has gotten into our market that it is not seeing what's going on here uh you know one major thing that's propping it up besides all of the like manipulation and the the pumping is that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, whose analyses kind of set the tone for Wall Street and therefore the rest of the world, are pricing in that the Strait of Hormuz will be open by like June July. And then that global kind of oil reserves and will quickly kind of come back online. And that's a little bit of a disruption. And I feel like they might be just way too, way too optimistic. Like, we're drawing down global reserves at an absolutely historic pace.

And it's not quite obvious how Trump ends this thing. Like, I don't, like, I think what's going on is that everybody is saying, this can't go, this can't keep going on. This won't keep going on because it can't keep going on. Like, Trump has lost, like, he has to, he has to stop. that there is a logic to that but then again it doesn't dictate that Trump's going to actually follow that follow that logic meanwhile the bond markets are starting to actually show some some real weakness I think treasuries hit a peak today at like 5.19 percent which is this a 30 year

note so think about that this is the United States government that that has the world's biggest military and one of the world's biggest economies, maybe the biggest economy, depending on how you count it. And the U.S. government has to pay about 5.2% for a 30-year note. If they're paying 5.2, like, what do you, you don't have an army. You've got, you don't have the biggest economy in the world. What are you going to pay? And that is seizing up business activity. It's seizing up, obviously, the real estate market. So people are locked in, their COVID era, 2.75% interest rates that they refinanced down to. So nobody wants to sell. And if they do want to sell, they can't take their mortgage with them and buy a new house.

So now they're paying double on their new mortgage, which by the way is a total policy failure. Like there's no reason you can't port a mortgage over. Like if we had politicians and a political system that that gave a rip about the American people, the thing they would be focused on isn't like bombing Iran, they'd be like, oh, hold on, we've got this disconnect here where interest rates are like in the six, six, five, six, people have these 2.78% mortgages that has frozen the entire housing market. That's not good. Let's solve that. If you talk to housing policy, people are like, yeah, that's, this is actually a thing that you can solve. Like you can write laws that say, that's your mortgage. You have good credit. You can keep that mortgage and use it to buy something else.

But it's not even being discussed because it's like the American people's, it's almost, it's almost like you're a weirdo in today's politics if you want to talk about solving the problems of the American public. Yeah. It's like, really? You're in the wrong place here, buddy. Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's an interesting point because, of course, that would, it wouldn't even be any loss to the bank, right? They would just hold the same, the same debt that they were holding. But of course. The one person that would take some loss would be people who had like chopped up and sold the mortgage.

But you can make them home on that pretty easily. It's a solvable problem. Well, I guess it's not because it certainly isn't in the banker's interest. And so, you know, D.C. policy is, I've noticed Ryan over the years, it's kind of a common theme. I'm starting to suspect that these big banks have slightly more influence on Washington, D.C. policy than the rest of us do. But yeah, I mean, that's a very good point. I mean, I also just think, you know, it's been an intentional U.S. policy to drive up the price of housing for basically my entire life going back to the 90s. I mean, this has been the official policy.

I mean, even to the point that, as you recall well, in the quantitative easing days immediately after the great financial recession, it was explicitly the goal of the Federal Reserve. They were buying like $60 billion in mortgage-backed securities every month. Like their goal was we will not let the housing market go down. And obviously there's a lot of pain associated with housing prices going down. But I think what we're living through is the pain associated with them going up. And we've created a country. I mean, like I say this all the time now, but I do think there's one statistic that just, you know, the first time house purchaser is 40 in this country.

And that is the result. of intentional government policies. And this is just it, it's not even like from a left wing or a right wing, a conservative or liberal point of view. No matter what vision of society, you look, if people can't buy a house until they're 40, it doesn't work. Whatever your harmonious, like vision of society, you want to have a conservative society when young people can't start families, like, or what you want to have like an egalitarian

society where young people can't own a home. And we're not talking about mansions. I'm talking about just like a modest, home. And for Donald Trump, so much of what kind of characterized the raison d'etre for Donald Trump's political existence was this idea of like, you know, we want to put America's domestic concerns as the top priority. And to have him now on camera openly cutting commercials for Democrats essentially, just saying, I don't care about that. It really is like it's, it's shocking. I mean, And I, you know, look, even just the effects of this war, I spent 100 bucks filling up my car as a big gas guzzling SUV because I'm not a left winger like you, so I get to drive things like that.

But whatever, it's my wife's car. But anyway, the point is it was 100 bucks to fill it up. That is devastating for working class people, just absolutely devastating. And to hear the president say he just doesn't care. openly doesn't care about that. Sorry, we got, the Israel lobby's got wars to fight. And the amount of focus he's simultaneously putting on his ballroom and this this $1.7 billion slush fund that he just created for himself, basically, and January 6 people, but mostly for himself. Like January 6 people, he's like here, you can have a little bit of your legal fees back.

But he's going to take this $1.7 billion if he manages to pull this off. Like it seems like he might. but the like split screen of all of the the triple digit at the gas pump him saying yeah I'm not actually concerned about American's financial situation and then they go to him and they're like hey do you want to clean that up a little bit like when you said you weren't concerned about the American people's financial situations it sounded like you meant that you didn't care he's like no no that's what I meant they're like oh all right well and then going on and on and on about this ballroom. It's like, bro, like, it's wild.

A billion dollars for this thing. A billion dollars. And that's, this is a thing that was supposed to be paid for out of donations, which were complete shakedowns from companies, but okay, whatever. And now, if a billion dollars is the like initial price tag that they're putting on this ballroom, you know, it's going to be. multiples of that. And I think we've lost sight of like how much money that is,

just because we burned through so much money. Billion dollars is just an absolutely incredible amount of money where schools are like, you know, scraping to like hold fundraisers so that they can buy, you know, toilet paper or, or, you know, have after school activities or it's just obscene.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, what? And the cost of like, The cost of keeping our, we've got all these troops over there right now. Like, it costs almost as much to keep them there as it does to have them fighting. Like, okay, we're not shooting off the missiles right now, but like the cost of all of that on a daily basis. And the wear and tear on the aircraft carriers and all of all these ships and planes is incredible, all playing into Iran's hands. Because Iran, you know, they need as much pain inflicted on us.

so that we capitulate and back off. The way that they're creating the pain is by choking off the straight of Hormuz. They could only do that to the extent that they're able to withstand, you know, the punishment of our attacks, but we stopped attacking. So they're inflicting pain on us. They're just sitting there. It's really, it's really an, it's one of the first wars, I think, where IQ is playing like an actual role, like all these PhDs and engineers.

over there running running their situation. And we got like Pete Higgsith and Dan Cain afraid to like speak up. So yeah, it's it's bleak. Yeah, I mean, I agree. The point you made there is just such an important one about like actually valuing the money. And because the, you know, because the DC budget is like $7 trillion or something like that, then it's easy for for people to go like, oh, yeah, like we gave Israel $25 billion in this bill. But that, what percentage of the budget is that?

You know, it's a tiny little percentage of the budget. But just like, like, genuinely think for a second, like what you, think about your town. And like, if I just gave you a hundred million dollars, how much you could help people. Like, if I just give you a hundred million dollars and said, go just help the people of your town. Like how much good you could do, how many different. Oh, we got a community rec center now and we got a new this. We got a new, uh, whatever, you know, just all these things. We got a new daycare, class, yeah, just everything.

We built three new schools. We did that. Like $100 million could do so much of that. Okay, like, well, that times a hundred is a billion. And then times another 25. Is it like that? No, I'm sorry. Even if it's a small percentage of our budget, that is an enormous amount of wealth that we just squandered that could have been spent. Whether you want to do it the Ryan Grimm way and tax people and have the government spend it, or you want to do it the Dave Smith way and just cut taxes and let it stay in the economy or whatever. Either way, that is a lot of money that is not over here now that is now shared between. weapons companies and, you know, Israeli, you know, connected people to their government or something. Now, it's appalling. And I think it's also, it's part of the reason why we can get away with, you know, like I used to point this out a lot where during the Maidan Revolution, which was kind of spun in the West as like an organic revolution. And as I found out, in fact, you, you moderated a debate that I hosted once on this. And of course, it always gets brought up. Well, are you saying those people didn't have agency? Are you saying that those weren't real protesters out on the street?

And it's like, well, no, but I'm saying that, like, the U.S. pouring $100 million into a street protest in Ukraine. Like, Ukraine is a very small economy, man. To pour $100 million into that country moves mountains. And in this case, it moved Yanukovych to Moscow. And, like, that's a very relevant detail. And so I think the American people really, and this is because, partially because we're such a rich country, partially because our government wastes so much money or spends so much money that people almost don't like even think yeah what's pouring a hundred million dollars into a street protest over there and you're like oh it's actually a very big deal yeah yes yes the asymmetry of the the amount you can buy with that overseas is truly incredible and meanwhile what this war is really exposed is you know we all kind of knew that the military industrial complex was a scam and which is built you know just bilking everybody for money.

But we spend a trillion dollars a year on our military budget. Used to be called defense budget. I guess it's the war budget. And after 40 days of war, they're like, yeah, we're basically out of ammo. And our planes need a break. This one aircraft carrier group had to go back because it's, you know, some undies caught fire in the drier area. And the Israelis are down to like, as I reported at dropside,

double digit ballistic missile interceptors. It's like, and they have endless $10,000 and $20,000 drones. And they even have the, have you seen these like inflatable anti-aircraft? And then also painted on flight. So we're taking multi-million dollar missiles. And in a best case scenario, because the worst case scenario, we're firing at them at elementary schools. Best case scenario, we're firing them at like these inflatable, you know,

guys outside of used car dealerships and blowing them up. And now they want a trillion and a half dollars. What does that get at a 60 days of war? Right. And like to your point, the bluff being called is the most, I think, significant material change that this besides like a lot of bases getting destroyed. But like, We had a lot of kind of global capital based on how scary our military was.

Like, probably peaked in December or early January when they went in with the Delta Force guys and used different, like, weird new weapons and left with Maduro and his wife, bizarrely, and still have his wife locked up. That was probably the peak of like this like intimidating character of American military power. And there was a lot you could do with that, you know, kind of, you know, you can bully other people into kind of agreeing to things as a result of that. That plus the monetary system. Now people would be like, yeah, I'm not so not so scared anymore. Iran kind of stood up to you guys for 40 days and you kind of ran out of weapons.

So, like certainly if you're Taiwan, like, oh, guess we're on our own. Well, this, okay, so this ties into like the latest on this, and I'm really curious to get your thoughts about this. So Trump posted yesterday, of course, we're, I mean, it's, I've been describing it on the show as we've, we've reached the, you're fucking with me stage of this war. Like, you just can't even believe that we're just doing the same cycle again. But so Donald Trump now, and for art of the deal, I mean, this is all just so ridiculous. So he's already threatened to end their entire civilization. Their response to that, and I of course know this because I read you and Jeremy is reporting, but the Iranian response to that was like, I'd evacuate Saudi Arabia if I were you.

And then the people went and like formed circles around the bridges. Like you're going to have to take all of us out with these bridges. So he went ultimate threat. They did not back down. He then backs down, says, I've agreed to the 10 point plant. They're like, okay. And then he's like, no, no, no, I didn't agree to the 10 point. Okay, so now this last week it had been very clearly signaled.

We're going back to lighting them up today or tomorrow. We should, right? So that was there. Then yesterday he goes, he announces again, but he's backing up. So like if the first maximalist threat didn't get them to capitulate, why on earth would this not as, you know, like he's threatening to go back to bombing, but not to wipe their civilization off the map. So obviously that also didn't get them.

But what he did say, which is kind of interesting, there's a few different ways to interpret this, is that essentially the Gulf allies had asked him not to do this and that a deal is in the works or something like that. Now, clearly, Donald Trump has already, as we mentioned before, announced the deal is at the works. This seems to not be true. But there's an interesting way to read that all these other Gulf allies really didn't want him to start this war because obviously, as you know, they've been taking a pounding. and Iran clearly, I think by all accounts, has not done their maximalist damage that they could do. There's really no reason.

If they can hit our bases, they can hit desalination plants, and they've threatened that. And so I don't know, like, how do you read this latest round, which has, of course,

left us back in the exact same place that we were? Well, there are a couple funny layers here. One is that the sources within the Gulf countries are now coming out and saying, not only did we not ask him to not attack Iran. We didn't even know he was planning on attacking it. But what that tells you is that he was looking for,

he was looking for a way out of this threat that he had made. He could he could just stop making threats, like just free advice to him. I think he looked up and realized it was almost Tuesday again. Any taco Tuesday on the last Taco Tuesday? Oh, yeah, there you go. So he did it much more quickly. He's like, let's just pull the plug on this quick.

before we get another Taco Tuesday. But at least it does present a path that for Trump to exit the war gracefully by saying, hold me back, bro. Like, he wants to keep going. And if he wanted to, he'd end, he could end their civilization.

He could have all the dust. He could kill all the common A's that they can find. But his Gulf allies, he can't credibly say that Israel asked him not to attack, but he can say that his Gulf allies asked him not to attack, and he, being the bigger man, is going to, you know, is going to agree to that.

So that at least is like a possible out that he might be creating for himself. The Iranians, according to Jeremy's reporting today, expect a significant chance that he's going to attack them in the next couple of days. But, you know, you can imagine from their perspective, they're just constantly, assuming that he's lying and expecting him to attack because if you don't do that, like the second you stop expecting an attack is that's when one is going to come.

But yeah, so that could be a way out for him is to say, you know, I have the greatest respect for my Gulf allies and, you know, I am not chickening out here, but out of respect for them. I'm going to walk away from this. That's the, that's the most hopeful read I think you can hang on to at this point. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Hexclad. If you want to take your kitchen game to the next level, you got to check out hexclad. This is the stuff I use. My wife cooks with these pots and pans. They make really great stuff. That's why we use them. They make really great pots, pans, great knives, the Damascus steel knives. We use those as well. They're as sharp as they are tough. All this stuff. Everything,

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All right, let's get back on the show. Yeah, and I still, I guess maybe, you know, I've read a decent amount of Professor Pape's substack, and I've listened to several of his interviews on breaking points. And listen, he undeniably makes a lot of great points. I'm not, I think, you know, sometimes making predictions is a tough business, and there's so many factors and life is so complicated that it's really hard to know exactly what's going to happen next. I guess, and maybe this is naive, but I guess I still.

I still feel like, no, we're not going to get sucked into an escalation trap with boots on the ground or something like that because it's just too obviously going to be a disaster. But I mean, I guess the other thing, you know, that I think we've all been noticing is just that the thing is that, you know, when you launch a war and once it gets, maybe not a Venezuela type launch a war, if it's that clean and you're out. But when you launch a war where Americans end up getting killed, where Americans end up spending over $100 billion, where our bases are killed, where thousands of people die, that just defines your presidency now. It's just how that goes defines your presidency. And for like, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that obviously the best case scenario here is that Donald Trump just stops. That's by far the best case scenario for the world. but that scenario for Donald Trump is politically utter disaster. I mean, just total humiliation, total ruin, the end of his presidency.

And I love that people like Joe Kent are out there trying to convince him that it's not and that he could still end this now and save his presidency. But if we're just being honest, that's not true. It's already, it's already ruined. I mean, even right now, look at his approval number. He's the most unpopular he's ever been. He's never been particularly popular, as you know. Ryan, but he is the most unpopular he's ever been. The most popular Donald Trump's ever been

was when he came back into office in 2024 or, you know, maybe like in January 25. And he was, I think he had maybe in the best polls cracked like 55%. This wasn't a president who had ever had Obama level approvals or George W. Bush level approvals. And maybe we'll never see that again. But he's good. If he leaves this, what's he hovering at 32 right now? If he leaves this and, And the step, and now essentially, which is what it looks like it would be, we've achieved none of the war goals, plus devastated the global economy, plus now just let it be known that Iran has an ace in the hole anytime they want to use that. And hey, right now they probably would want to recover and rebuild. But who's to say that they couldn't at some point do that over something else like Israel attacking Lebanon or Israel, you know, season more settlements in the West Bank or whatever? If that's the state of it, I mean, I think you're going to be looking at a president with 25% approval ratings at the end of it.

I don't think it's crazy to think he'd drop like another few major points from this. And so, man, I mean, that is really the difficulty is that it is, this is something out of like a Greek tragedy, Ryan. What we need is for Donald Trump to take an L. Like, oh my God, imagine all the things that humanity hangs on is Donald Trump. accepting that he doesn't win and he isn't tremendous and he and man i i don't think he's anywhere near accepting that yet and the iranians seem to get that and they've even been saying publicly lately that what they're offering to trump they keep calling it better than the jcpoa because they

understand how important right right right just psychologically that he gets something that he can say is better than obama because i mean also imagine like that you get something worse Like, so you did 10 years of bluster and a war and you wind up with something worse like that, even to a non-vane person, that would be incredibly, incredibly embarrassing. But yeah, so hopefully somebody can talk him into taking an L because he's hanging in those mid-30s. And that's before we've really felt the worst consequences economically of this war. Yes, gas prices suck. It sucks that interest rates are where they are. Things are not good right now, but unemployment could still surge.

You could have unemployment surging along with inflation surging, which we haven't really had since the 70s and throws your entire politics into chaos. Trump wants these interest rates to get the interest rate cuts to get the economy going. But with inflation, which he's produced, he's made it very difficult, even for his hand-picked Fed guy to do that. So if he's at the mid-30s before the kind of economic punch has really landed from what he's done, and that haymaker, I think, is in the air. There's nothing. The only thing you can do is make it worse at this point. If he stops right now, we're still facing like a very difficult six months to a year.

The only thing he can do is make it make it two years or beyond if he really, you know, at some point, you know, who was what was the, what they say in landmen, like at $150 a gallon, like our economy doesn't work. Like that's just, that's just true. $150 a barrel, not a gallon. 150 a gallon, it definitely does not work. Yeah, we have real problems. But yes. 2,000 to fill up your truck.

But yeah, like businesses that are designed to operate in the $60 to $90 a barrel or an entire economy that's designed around that doesn't work at the level that he's pushing. it towards. And that has not bled into his approval rating at this point. You throw in a Democratic Congress, like, good Lord. It's, you know, it's been something to watch almost the ritualistic humiliation of the people who are defending Trump and defending this war and watching them kind of move the goalposts along with the president. I mean, just imagine having to defend a president as he launches a war of choice, a war of aggression, declares victory 75 times,

declared it over a week and a half ago. Then it's back on the table that we're going to light through. I mean, just like, it's really kind of wild to see. And I wonder, and I've been thinking about this, and I think about this as I've been reading some of your stuff and watching some of the, reading and watching your stuff particularly, that much like there's almost like a, it's somewhat in parallel with the point we were making about $100 million or $25 billion

and seeing this as not that big of a deal or something. There's something that I find so deeply troubling, like sickening about our society, that we just kind of, war is so natural to us. It's so kind of normal. You know, people say, come on, Vietnam was years and World War II was years. And Afghanistan was 20 years. Oh, what are you're, you're upset about a little two-month mass murder spree, you know, like as if that's, and I was thinking about this particularly with your, your coverage of the situation in Cuba. You know, I just, it's really something that where you could, because this is almost like, aside from you, there's really a very few, a small number of journalists who are even really covering this.

It's like not even that big of a deal. Like, yeah, we're starving this little poor island of energy off of our coast. this little island that poses, but nobody can pretend they pose a thread to the United States of America. I mean, there's just like not even the concept of that there. You know, this was, I argued with Nick Fuentes on my last episode a little bit about this. And I got to say, the whole episode, this was the part where I was least convinced by the argument he was making. But there is something to me, just like on a deep moral human level. And I don't think this is a left or right wing perspective. like you're more of a left winger and I'm more of a right winger, but I don't, just the idea that

you could go to to war, it is war. We're at war with Cuba. This is an act of war that you could go to war so haphazardlessly, so recklessly, so casually, not even pretending the country poses a threat to you. And just to essentially our nation is, and I don't mean to say we're doing it as a nation, but our government is doing it on behalf of our nation with our nation's treasure, is inflicting a level of human suffering on a group of people who are already far more impoverished than the most impoverished person you've ever met, that we could just bring up about that level of human suffering without even like really a thought, without a big national debate, without a conversation.

And it's just kind of like, well, I don't know. I mean, we're not genociding all of them. So I guess it's cool. Yeah, I think in general, American people are kind and decent people. And I think are to the extent that they're aware of it are horrified when things like that are done in their name. But there's such a disconnect between what American foreign policy is and any democratic link to like the public's ability to have a say in it, that learning about it, even knowing about what's. happening is sort of like a luxury hobby because it doesn't it can't by design of the system translate into anything meaningful and when you're very busy the you focus on you know meaningful

things that can that can change and improve either your life or or somebody else's life and it's just very hard to argue that you as an individual or you even as an organized public can do much about American foreign policy, just looking at the, looking at the record of it, and particularly when it comes to a situation like Cuba, where you have this, you know, massively funded Southern Florida, you know, Cuban American National Foundation is like pro-Cuba, I mean, not pro-Cuba, doing the parallel of pro-Israel, anti-Cuba, Cuban lobby, that has this outsized influence. they're the ones that set our Cuba policy and nobody else is really asked for any input and

nobody else's input is welcome. And so to learn about it and to care about it then becomes this like a luxury to like if it's something I do because I find it to be interesting and important, but not because I feel like there can be any, that anything I do matters on it. So I think a lot of the apathy comes from there because then it is. If that's true, then learning about it often is then just masochism because you're finding out about all of these awful things that we're doing that you can't do anything about. And it's easier to just not know about it at that point if you can't do anything. But yeah, this is, it's been since December, January and one oil tanker from Russia got through because Trump was under pressure and he said, fine, this oil tanker can go through. they're not allowing Mexico to send oil.

They're not obviously not allowing Venezuela to send oil. And meanwhile, you have Marco Rubio saying there's no oil blockade. It's just that people don't want to give Cuba oil for free. And there's something almost psychedelic about the way that he lies. He's like, well, then why did Trump have to green light a tanker getting through? Why does Trump tell Mexico? Why did Trump issue an executive order saying that anybody, who delivers oil to Cuba for a price, not for free.

Yeah, it's not even free, yeah. We'll be tariffed and we'll have other political consequences. Like, we saw all that happen. It was done in public. And then you're going to just tell us there's no blockade. Yeah, I don't, I, we covered on the show because I was sure, I just couldn't believe it. I can't, I'm blinking on his name. It was the old crossfire guy who used to be a crossfire guy.

who used to be across from Tucker Carlson. Oh, Baglia. Paul Bagala. And he was on, did you see this? He was on real time with Bill Maher and his big challenge. So this is the liberal opposition to Trump. He goes, this is when the Russian oil tanker you referred to was like on its way. And he goes, you know, Trump, you've been tough with everybody else.

You got, you're tough with the Mullahs, you're tough with Zelensky, you're tough with Maduro. He goes, why don't you for once be tough? with Putin and stop that Russian ship in its track and sink it to the bottom of the ocean if you have to. That is the, and I got to say there's something about this being like my age, like I'm 43. And like, so I was kind of like a 90s kid. So I like remember him from being on TV and stuff back then as like a liberal on TV when things were more. They have a liberal guy when things were more normal. And like, you're like, wait, that's where like the 90s liberal is today. This is this is more hawkish than the most hawkish right winger during the cold war like none of them ever advocated

something like that there was always an understanding that like you you can't go to direct war with russia that's the one thing that's off limits and the fact that he could just so willy-nilly after fighting a proxy war for for years on their border just like yeah why don't we just shoot it take that all for all for the goal of what starving the Cuban civilian population of a little bit of energy i just it is a thing where, you know, and again, I know people, like I'm in, you know, I just had Nick Fuentes on my last episode, so I'm in a moment right now where everyone's outraged that I talk to him or whatever. And I understand that people could look at this and say, hey, the young people are like losing their minds in a certain way. But it's from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, but all the

grownups lost their minds, man. Like this is, that's the establishment. The establishment here is just like, let's have the two biggest nuclear superpowers get into a hot conflict over nothing. Why not? Yeah. That's what that's what, that's what, that's what, advocates for. By the way, round of applause. Round of applause in Bill Maher's studio audience for this take. All right, guys, let's take a moment and take our sponsor for today's show, which is ultra, ultra pouches. Everybody is raving about them. Ultra pouches are completely nicotine-free, caffeine-free. They're packed with neutropics that are designed for mental clarity and enhanced focus. So you get the same kick as a nicotine pouch without the side effects like the buzz, the addiction, the crash, the jitters.

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One more time, take ultra.com, promo code problem for 15% off. All right, let's get back into the show. No, that's it's psychopathic. Separately, what about these liberal environmentalists? You're going to put an oil tanker at the bottom of the Caribbean? I don't know if you thought that one through, but you're right. It's the aim is to emiserate the Cuban population sufficiently

that they are so sad and angry that they then overthrow the government. Like that's the stated aim. And yeah, I was there. I was there in March toward two different hospitals to see like what this looks like. And the nurses and doctors, I would describe what it's like when the power goes out.

You race to the ventilator. to like hand pump them. And the babies that are on ventilators, you have to be extremely careful because if you pump too hard, you can kill them. And you don't have then the devices anymore. Some devices are battery powered.

Others are not because they're under these incredible sanctions so you can't get parts to replace them. And so the idea, the idea of the policy is that if some of these babies die, that will cause anger among the parents and the friends of these parents and the family members and if there's enough of that

they will take to the street like that it's it's cruel like on a general level to think we're going to create suffering so that they overthrow the government. But when you think specifically what they're talking about it's absolutely it's absolutely like just monstrous

and the level of what we've done to the economy is incredible. There's entire buildings filled with people figuring out ways to like block Cubans from getting anything. So we put this like terror designation that we call them a state sponsor of terrorism, which is completely absurd. Like the rationale for it was there are these like Colombian guerrillas that are in Cuba, but they're in Cuba because the U.S. asked Cuba to host them so that there could be negotiations

to reach a piece to and the Cubans are like, are you kidding me? You asked us to have these guys here and now you're calling us a state sponsor of terror. And so with that designation, banks around the world, Europe, wherever,

will basically refuse to work with Cuba. And so like to get around this, the embargo, they bought, like I interviewed this one guy who bought a, roughly a million dollar 3D printer because they needed

it to print like, you know, if you're doing surgery on somebody's jaw, he said, you, like, you print, like, the little piece of the jaw after you, like, take the tumor out. And it took forever to find a company that would ship it to them because if it has 10% U.S. parts or more, they can't have it. They finally found one that had no U.S. parts. They get it. After, like, six months, it breaks down. They call up to get it repaired. And they're like, oh, no, no, lawyers say, we can't help you. Like, what do you mean? The lawyers said you can't help us? Like there's an EU law that says you're not allowed to recognize American unilateral sanctions out of their own sovereignty. And I said, yeah, we know that that law exists.

We do a lot of business with the United States of America. We don't do much business with Cuba. I'm really sorry for you. But there's nothing we can do. And so now they have this million dollar 3D printer just like collecting dust with a list of, you know, 2,000 patients that need, you know, screws printed or just basic things. And then Rubio's like, yeah, their economy just doesn't work. And I think even from your perspective as a libertarian, you'd rather just let them try their thing. Oh, yeah.

Let's prove that it doesn't work. But like, well, look, from my- And then saying it doesn't work. He isn't going to convince anybody. From my perspective, like, it's definitely true that their economy is not working because they're doing a lot of socialist stuff. But this is just my government doing socialist stuff to them and making the situation worse. I mean, like, it's just.

And also, well, look, look, just on, I mean, I guess, you know, I am, I don't know, I am a guy who leads with kind of like morality first on these issues. Like, I do think that like the worst thing about Gaza is that those are real human beings. Like that's a real mother pulling her child's corpse out of the rubble. Like that's and then there's also other things that are bad about it. Like it's weird bankrupt and we don't need to pay for it. But, you know, so first and foremost, I would say, I mean, Elizabeth, When you first reported on the incubator, the babies on ventilators, I mean, ventilators, I should say not incubators.

Like I had, my son was on a ventilator for a few weeks when he was born and I just can't like, I mean, just the idea of anyone doing that a little bit. Like, you just should burn in hell, man. I mean, just the entire regime. Just burn. I mean, like, if we were in the Old Testament, God should smite our whole civilization down over this, man. It's just like the level of evil to do that.

The most vulnerable, the most precious human life is just, you know, Okay, anyway, it's like they'll make your blood boil. But no, I mean, look, even getting away from just the evil of like, say, like the entire U.S. sanctions regime, which does just get underreported because of the entire U.S. war party regime that's so much worse. So like it's just accepted that we, as you mentioned, with all of these sanction regimes, the policy is to put so much pressure on the civilian population that they overthrow the government. And if you want to just make this an empirical matter, where? has that worked? I mean, it just does not work. We've done this to North Korea, to Iran, to Russia, to Cuba, to Venezuela, to all, all over the place. It never does anything except give them a giant excuse that the reason you're impoverished is because of America. They get, they, there's some truth

to that now too. I don't know. Me and you can sit down and try to calculate like exactly what is the economy more, but whatever. And also, you know, if you, and I'll get into this next one last topic that I want to hit with you before I let you go. But also if you, there's always something to me that was kind of strange about the view of these non-democratic countries on like policies on behalf of the people, but that are to crush the people, but for the people. You know, like, it's like, look, if you're saying in some sense, and I'm not even saying I exactly believe this, but they don't even get votes. Like they don't even have a say in their government.

They're pure victims of this. It's just like regular people. Now, the point you got at earlier, I think is a very interesting one because you had mentioned earlier the feeling of kind of like the people have no say over their government. And I think that is a real theme in America today. You know, you see these things where the people have never been more anti-Israel than they are today. And yet the government has never been more pro-Israel than it is today.

The people have never been more against foreign adventurism than they are today. And yet Donald Trump's talking about like the five new wars that were going to be fighting. And there is this element. I remember by the, oh, there's a little bit of a tangent, but there's this great piece in the Washington Post about how the U.S. overthru the Milosevic in the year 2000. This is like a kind of forgotten chapter in history. I can't remember the title of the piece, but if you, if you Google, Washington Post, Milosevic, opposition, 2000.

I guarantee it'll be the first piece that pops up. But it was this real in-depth. People forget that we fought the war and he survived the war, and then he was up for election in 2000. And it was like a real, one of the more interesting kind of color-coded revolution things

because they really didn't do anything hard. But it's very well documented that they essentially, Milosevic was still poised to win. He wasn't very popular, but he was more popular than any of the opposition. and they like, D.C., like, flew all the opposition out to New York City,

and they met on Park Avenue with, like, top PR teams, and they did all this polling, and then they poured money into, like, street protests, and they had these graffiti campaigns and these stickers that they were like, he is finished, and they got all the opposition. They polled and found the ones with the highest positives and the lowest negatives, and they got everyone else to drop out and endorse that guy. And so anyway, on some level, you could say there was a democratic process in Serbia, in the year 2000, but in a much more meaningful way.

Like, no, this was like a fuck shit job by Washington, D.C. that put their finger on the scale. And when the global empire puts its finger on the scale, that makes a big difference in a country like Serbia, you know, as we were saying earlier today. Well, in our own... To that point, just real quickly. Sure, sure, go ahead.

Supposedly Russia spent like 150 grand on, you know, Facebook ads in 2020. Right, yeah, yeah. An economy of $16 trillion or whatever we are, 30 trillion. Right. And it flipped the... That's interference. Yeah.

So I think that's right. That was a democracy was stolen. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But now the question almost becomes more about our own democracy and how much of an illusion at all is. And likewise, that kind of brings me to the topic, which I'm sure you knew I have to by libertarian law mentioned today, which is Thomas Massey and his primary campaign that's going on in Kentucky as we speak, I believe. There is, it is a similar type thing, right? I mean, you could say that's democracy. But you got a guy here who was winning his primaries with 85% of the vote, 72% of the vote, wildly popular, keeps getting elected every time he runs. And all of a sudden, you know, $20 to $30 million can really change that. And we got a real tight race. And it's not exactly clear as the time of us recording this, what's going to happen. But it does seem to be, you know, they're trying to spin this however they want to, but it's so crystal clear that this guy picked a fight with the Israel lobby.

And that cannot be allowed. And so they are going to try to buy a Congress seat. It's like what else? They're saying, well, it's because he wasn't voting with Trump's track record. This is the most expensive Republican congressional primary in American history. And that ain't because he has a beef with the president. There's been lots of congressmen who don't vote with Donald Trump 100% of the time. That's clearly what it's been about.

And I don't know. Like, what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, if you poll basically the two things. that he did to draw this primary, which is be openly critical of spending on Israel and push for Epstein, the Epstein files to become transparent. If you poll those two things in his district or in any other district, they're well above water. Like, those are popular things. So in other words, a longtime popular member of Congress did two major things that were very popular. in his district and also popular nationally made him a national figure.

And as a result, he's going to lose his seat. Or maybe he holds on. Yeah. But if I had to bet, like, because he's also, he's losing like old people by like 30 points. Yeah. And old people, you can just look at like the media consumption habits. They're getting their news basically still from Fox News or OAN or, you know, wherever else. And so under 50 or so, he's winning by like 30.

So the balance is going to be who comes out more. You'd rather be his opponent probably in a Republican primary. You'd rather have old people. You don't, that's not a long term. Traditionally, yeah. Yeah. That's not a long term solution for obvious reasons. But on a, on this Tuesday, you'd rather have the old people because they tend to come out.

And there's, I guess we'll see if there's a number. of them that are upset with him about voting, quote unquote, voting against Trump. But you're exactly right. You can, we have voting. Sam Hussein had voting. You know, Assad had voting. Milosevic always had, you know, he had elections. I think Kim Jong-un has elections, if I'm not mistaken.

I think he won with like 99.5% of the voter, something like that. But it was like, I was like, I think it's cool that they made it 99.5, like even there being a little bit. they're like, there's a point five. There's a point five out there that disagrees. But they found them. No, you're, you're right. No, I mean, if just, if just holding elections is, is the, the standard, then yeah. But it's, if democracy is to mean anything. And look, I'm in the camp that, like, I'm not, I would not call myself a little D Democrat. I don't, I, what I care about is, is liberty. I don't, like, it, just, in other words, like, in pure theory, like, if, if 55% of the people wanted to reintroduce slavery. I don't see any value. I don't care that it's 55 versus 45.

And I don't. And then this also extends to like maybe, you know, other rights that lefties would, would, you know, want also. Like, I also don't care how many people want you thrown in jail for using drugs or prostitution or something like that. Like it's, but if the whole order of our system is built on the idea that the people rule to some degree, it's just very clear here that this is an example of the people not actually being the ones who rule, which is always to some degree how it works, in my opinion, but this is pretty blatant. Final word to you, I've kept you for a while, but anything else you want to say, go ahead. No, I mean, I'll be watching that race closely, and it's certainly possible that he holds on.

And I hope, you know, for democracy's sake, that he does, I think you're right. It's like if we believe in self-government, the idea of somebody stands up and does a popular thing and then gets $20 million spent against them. This will be the most expensive congressional race in American history. Before this, the top two most expensive were Jamal Bowman in New York and Cory Bush in St. Louis. And both of those were APAC and over the exact same issue. And we're closing in on $50 million in between these three races, which is just an utterly obscene amount of money. And Cory Bush is running for re-election.

She only lost by, I think, like, 4,000 votes or something. So maybe she's coming back. And that would be interesting, too, if Apex victories tend to be short-lived. But it's definitely one to watch. Because if he can hold on, that'll matter. And if he doesn't, that'll send a message to everyone else in Washington. That they already knew it was safer to stay quiet. Now they'll really know.

Which does seem to be the point of it. All right. Ryan Grimm, thank you so much for taking the time. Really, really enjoyed this. And thank you, again, as I said, for all the great work you do. Please do keep it up. And thank you to everybody for watching. Catch you guys next time.

Peace.