Part Of The Problem - The War Sold On Lies
Episode Date: August 13, 2026Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave and Robbie "the Fire" Bernstein discuss John Podhoretz's recent comments about losing the war in Ira...n, several public comments he's made in the past 6 months that contradict his recent ones, and more.Original air date: 8.11.26Support Our Sponsors:CrowdHealth - https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/promos/potpHexclad - Find your forever cookware @hexclad and get10% off at https://hexclad.com/PROBLEM! #hexcladpartnerUltra - 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 00:00 Introductions01:31 John Podhoretz "Didn't Want This War"31:25 Podhoretz's History of Championing the War53:53 "Optimism" on the WarSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What's up? What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem. I am Dave Smith and he is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How are you, sir?
I'm doing well. Excited to get out for the weekend, Chicago tomorrow night, and then you and I in Appleton, and then I got Madison on Sunday. So stacked weekend.
Hell yeah. I am looking forward to getting back to Appleton, Wisconsin. We had some fun, fun shows there last year. I'm looking forward to doing that again. Comicavismith.com for all those tickets. And then porch door.com.
for all the of Rob states, of course.
And yeah, things are, the summer, the summer's almost over, Rob.
But, man, we can only pray this war is almost over as well.
What does seem to be over should be the credibility of some of these people pushing it.
We got, this is kind of a fun one that we got today.
I don't, well, let's get right into it.
Rob, look, it's so weird to me at all that John Pod Horitz,
even has a podcast. I don't know what it's called. It seems to only exist for the clips to
circulate for people like us. It's, there's just still, I guess for people who have done like
the deep reading about the neocons, there's something about the fact that he is Norman Podhorst's
kid and he was really an institution at Commentary Magazine and just kind of, and that the neoconservatives
had so much influence on our foreign policy and have for,
a quarter century and in some way he represents how the true like the origin the nucleus of this
whole policy how those people feel about it now um i don't know what's the what's the name of
his show rob i think it's fetching i'm not sure that'd be a perfect name if it wasn't um but uh
i tell you have i told this i'd met him once at fox news and we kind of got along like fine for the
moment. And I got to say, I met him. It was years ago. It must be like 15 years ago. But I had already
read a bunch of, I read two of his dad's books. And I read a lot of, you know, I read all the
neocon stuff by that point. And I was almost in awe a little bit. You know, this, I was like,
oh shit, that is John Pod Horowitz. And we like talked for a little bit. And he was a reasonably,
you know, he's him exactly what you'd think. But man, then he really turned on me. We followed
each other on social media, but he really turned on me hard when he, uh, Thomas Massey said after
October 7th that we're going broke so we can't fund Israel's war in Gaza. And he called him
anti-Semitic scum for saying that. And I was like, dude, that's insane. And I think, you know,
he blocked me. Anyway, been interesting to watch his takes, uh, over the course of this war,
which Rob, uh, last I checked in, isn't going great. I think that's a fair way to put it.
So let's start.
This was the clip that's been going around of him the other day.
This is pretty interesting.
I've been seeing a little bit of some of the cracks in the armor.
You know, I guess if we were talking about it broadly,
do you remember, Rob, it wasn't that long ago when this war was launched?
I mean, it was, you know, almost six months ago.
But around the beginning of the war, do you remember when we were taking on the argument,
people were making that, turns out the lesson of this is that Tucker Carlson doesn't matter.
It was like, turns out the lesson of this is that now we find ourselves here with the Democratic
socialists having all of the wind at their back in this absolute nightmare.
Turns out it did matter that Donald Trump lost his whole coalition.
But what you're seeing now is kind of people come to terms with this, you know, starting to cope
with what we're going to be looking at after this.
Like even, I think a lot of,
so for example, Rob,
when I would debate Will Chamberlain,
I know I've beat him up several times,
but it makes sense that I bring this up several times
on the podcast.
It's now been, I think, over three months
since Will Chamberlain guaranteed
that the Iranian regime
wouldn't be standing in another month, you know?
But back then, Rob, three months ago,
when people like Will Chamberlain would say, we're going to get the enriched uranium,
we're going to get the regime for total surrender, we're going to control the straight of
Hermuz, like all these things.
I think some of them, I mean, I don't know how much Will is just lying through his teeth or
just how much he's naive, but I feel like some of them probably wanted to believe that,
maybe convince themselves of it.
me and you were saying, look, you're just not reading the cards on the ground here.
None of this is going to happen.
They're starting to come to terms with that now.
You see a lot of this going on.
They're starting to realize, like, those guys, they don't believe that anymore.
They're looking at this situation more and more and going, like, probably whatever the result of this is,
it's not going to be what they were claiming.
As that realization is coming, here is John Podharata's particular brain.
brand of cope. His poll number stink. The war's poll numbers stink. The worst poll numbers are
starting to stink among Republicans. This is the major commitment of his first term, and it's failing.
And so he and the Republicans are going into the midterm election. Just pause it already that way.
I'm sorry, just pause it already. Is it not just Rob? I don't know, dude, you're on this ride with me.
I don't know if anybody else can quite answer this like you can.
Isn't the feeling of it just over and over years and years and years
where it's like we just say shit on this podcast.
It's a very controversial opinion to have.
Add that plus time.
Then all of a sudden you have like is that not exactly.
And sometimes it just like it just makes you want to bang your head against.
Well, this is exactly what we've been saying.
No?
This is exactly what we've been saying.
starting off the right there.
Look, man, I mean, his poll numbers are terrible.
It's unpopular.
It's unwinnable.
Like, who could have predicted this?
His poll numbers kept dipping after the start of the war.
And the thing just got more and more unpopular, Rob.
Who could have possibly predicted this?
We got bored saying it.
It's been the biggest challenge of the last six months doing this show.
It's just how many times can I say over and over again that this is going to destroy Trump's presidency.
And when you launch this war, you tie your entire presidency to it.
And it's already unpopular.
And he's unpopular.
And it's going to get less popular and less popular as they fail and fail.
Sorry, already.
Just something.
Let's keep playing.
Oh, positive case to be made about the last two years of governance, aside from the passage of the one big beautiful bill,
which doesn't seem to have much in the way of electoral legs,
since you don't hear anybody on the campaign trail
talking about the greatness of the one big, beautiful bill,
and the tariffs are in question.
The ballroom has been frozen.
The ice is now sort of quieted down.
It's public raids.
His numbers on immigration are bad.
numbers everywhere are bad. And in the end, this is all going to be the fault of refusing to do
the right things to win the war. Because winning the war would have all sorts of ancillary
benefits you can't entirely guess at. But surge of national pride, a sense that, you know,
a country's monstrous regime has been ended and that the people there have been liberated from
it's horrible yoke even if you don't quite know what's going to come there.
Just pause it for a second here because Rob, I mean, geez.
So, I mean, the thing about how out of touch a guy like John Put Horace is,
is that he's still like he's still almost speaking about this as if this was the first of our Middle East
interventions in the 1990s or something like that.
And we went, look, had it worked out, it would have been good, but it didn't end up working
out.
It's like, dude, it's a lot more than that when it's the seventh disaster in a row and none
of them have worked out.
And you've got to be a goddamn idiot to think this thing would have worked out well.
Like, you have to be the absolute dumbest, literally a caricature of Einsteinian definitions
of insanity to have thought this was going to work out well.
but like leave that aside how out of touch he is where America is that he goes dude people are
upset about all this different stuff everything here is failing he's not popular across the board on
any of these issues people don't like his handling of the economy as handling of immigration is handling
of all these things but if we had just toppled the regime there would have been a surge in
national pride and maybe something good for the Iranian people could have come of that
And that would have made us feel all very good.
Dude, Rob, I don't know.
I think you are so removed from where America is right now to think that if, like,
we were a bit harder off.
But you said, but look, we made the Iranian people better.
That would be like a wildly popular thing when you ran on explicitly the opposite of that.
What do you?
Right?
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Well, we're getting to the point that really made my blood boil.
But I guess it kind of decided on this point, it kind of depends on both sides of the equation.
If we had won the war, but let's just say gas prices went up to $10 a gallon, there might have been enough public outrage over price increases, which by the way, he does not mention on his list of things that people are upset about.
If people go, hey, it's not worth it.
if, you know, gas only went up $1 and we won this thing within four months.
Maybe he's right that people would think, wow, America kicks some ass and we're awesome.
So I think, I don't think it's true or not true.
It's it kind of just depends on how it would have played out.
But of course, it did not play out that way.
And we don't have a victory.
And it's just so, it's such a cop out.
I mean, it's every bit, you remember the one that we loved so much when, when Thomas
Massey was grilling Pete Buttigieg.
And he's like, he's like, we have an initiative to make all cars, you know,
you know, whatever the thing was like net neutral.
Yeah, electric.
Well, I think it was carbon neutral or whatever by, you know, 2028 or whatever.
And he was like, what?
So they're all going to be electric cars.
So like where are they going to charge?
And he goes, well, at electric stations, he's like, but that just goes into the power grid.
He goes, the power, they just, it's like a game of numbers.
Like it can't support that.
And then he's like, that's why we need a new power grid.
like, oh, so you have nothing.
So he's like, that's why we have to imagine a new thing.
Then you have essentially in the same sense, if you just go, but imagine we had won the war,
like that really is not, that is nothing.
That is nothing.
It's not, it's not even like he's going to sit here and all of them.
I mean, when they attempt to, it's so like, it really is embarrassingly like juvenile
whenever they attempt to actually say anything, you know, bomb the island, smash the thing,
do the you know they don't actually have a plan but it's all just had we won what was the impossible
path toward victory here there's nothing anyway um all right here let's keep playing uh restructuring
of the middle east so that the uh so that we are less um beholden to or uh in bed with forces like
gutter that are doing domestic damage to the United States in terms of their propaganda campaigns.
I don't know what, but losing is the war. Losing is the end of everything.
Like this is, I literally don't know what he goes and tells the American people or that Republicans
go and tell the American people that they should be brought back into the control of the
Senate and and hold the House, except that the Democrats are crazy socialists who are evil.
And indeed, Abuel say it is evil.
And many of the people who are running are extremists who are bad for America.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in other words, if you were America first and you thought that the socialist Democrats were
the mortal enemy at the gates that we really have to keep out of government, maybe you don't
want to risk your entire presidency on an Iran war. And maybe if you are going to engage in that
and know that you have to win it, you'd really do your homework to see that it was winnable.
And so I guess we can all agree that risking his presidency on this war, as clearly we did not win
it was a huge and epic mistake that puts Trump and those who advocated for this war at fault
for, you know, potentially flipping the Senate towards the Democrats.
It's always amazing when they kind of, the people who,
We'll admit, because obviously, you know, for different reasons, they admit it, right?
So, like, people like, I remember when I debated Stephen Crowder, this was kind of one of the themes,
but say, like, the reason why John Pod Horitz has to say this is a lot different than Stephen Crowder,
but he has to hate the new left.
See, the thing is that, like, if the new left was just Hillary Clinton, it doesn't matter how socially,
whatever they were.
They could be pushing trans children shit.
John Potts would be comfortable to just go become a Democrat.
The problem he has is that the new ascendant insurgency in the Democratic Party hates Israel's guts.
So there's no home there.
You know what I mean?
So that's why he's kind of sad.
They weren't lamenting the destruction of the Republican Party in this way when Trump went up.
A bunch of them just became Democrats or just worked against Trump.
But anyway, so he's got an issue where he has to kind of hate those people there.
And so he's saying to you, Rob, right, as was Crowder for different reasons.
reasons that essentially look the fucking these guys are socialist jihadist insane people who
represent the absolute destruction of our country and our daughters and our daughters
being raped by Muslims and with open communist courts that you know throws in the gulags or
whatever in the future like that this is the end of America if this gets left in and
then they're also going to have to concede here that losing the war hands the country
to those people.
And so you just sit there and you go, so you're telling me that now this war was
that you, what, flipped a coin on the United States of America over whether we could,
what, pull out a win in a regime-changed war in the Middle East?
So that's what you were on board for.
You flip, Rob, I'm sorry, just, I want you to answer this question.
I wasn't a philosophy major.
I've read some philosophy books in my day
and really enjoyed them and gotten something out of them,
but I don't know, I'm not the smartest guy.
Okay, if you were to flip a coin
and just for no reason you didn't have to,
but you were to flip a coin that risked the future
of the United States of America,
would you consider that policy to be conservative?
Would that be a policy, a conservative ought to embark in?
You know, it's like this is,
even by their own admission,
here. It's just like, oh, we lost.
Well, man, it's too bad we lost.
Oh, there
goes everything. Well, it was worth it to
attempt it for Israel to risk
the United States of America or something like that.
What is the actual answer here, Rob?
Let's continue, because we're coming up on the
thing that really set me off.
All right, yeah, let's go.
But that's not a case
for the Republicans.
And right now,
the Democratic candidate
for Senate in Texas,
is in the lead,
multiple polls.
He has a small but measurable lead
outside the margin of error.
Who could have predicted, Rob?
In Texas, the race in Iowa
is a three-point race one way or the other.
Not clear.
Texas and Iowa lose.
Republicans lose in Texas and Iowa.
Abu El-Said can lose in Michigan to a Republican, and with enough other dominoes falling,
Democrats can still take the Senate.
This war ends with Iran, with the acceptance that Iran has some sway or control over the Strait of Hormuz.
The war, we lost the war.
Point one way or another before, and I think it applies to all of us, I'm sure,
If you had said, you know, people say, oh, well, the neocons got what they wanted.
They got the one.
No, none of us wanted this.
If you would come to me and any of us, I'm sure, in late January and said,
hey, we're going to go into Iran.
What do you think?
I'd go, great.
And they'd say, but we only have enough defensive missiles,
enough defense batteries and maybe enough long range missiles.
missiles for like an honest month of fighting and then we're out.
I'd say, no.
Yeah.
No.
Don't do it.
Can we pause?
Build up.
Yeah.
No.
I mean, Rob, this is, this is good.
You can go.
This is truly remarkable here.
Go ahead.
So this is the part that just drove me absolutely insane because, and I was thinking about
this today, that imagine the biggest spaceship you could ever think of came from a foreign
planet, like the size of space balls.
and there's a room of 10 government officials and they're deciding what they want to do.
They get an invite from the spaceship to go up there and talk.
And half the room goes, you know what we got to do?
We got a surprise attack and nuke these guys.
And the other half the room goes, well, why don't we at least hear them out first?
Maybe that's going to tick them off.
They got here.
They have better technology than us.
We don't want to pick the fight.
They flip one six decide.
No, we got to surprise nuke these guys.
They go up there with the nuke.
They sit off the nuke.
The aliens instantly neutralize the nuke and then broadcast a message to all of Earth.
we were here to send health care and to help the human race, but after you guys tried to kill us,
we're now going to annihilate you.
And they're sitting in the room and those six people go, well, that's not what we wanted.
Right.
Yeah.
The way that decisions are-
We shouldn't be held responsible.
The way that decisions are made is you make a risk assessment.
And more often than not, when a government policy fails, it's because they got it wrong.
And they did not pay attention to the people that were calling out the unintended consequences.
And you guys pitched this war.
you supported this war with the variables that Donald Trump was running the war.
That was the risk assessment.
If you had said, hey, we would love an Iran war, but we don't think Donald Trump is smart enough to pull it off.
And so we don't want to do with this administration.
Then you could not own this war and turn around and go, we didn't support this war because we think Trump is bad.
That's not what you guys said.
All of the variables were on the table.
You could have done enough homework to see how prepared our military was.
the fact that Donald Trump was seemingly unaware or unconcerned with the straits.
You guys knew all of this and you supported it.
So the point is you got it wrong.
This is actually the war that you wanted.
You just don't like the results.
That's exactly right.
Look, man, it is such an unbelievable cop out to just go like, I wanted it.
I don't know.
You told someone it's a stupid fight to pick.
You go and get killed in the fight.
And then you go, well, I didn't want to do it if we were going to get killed.
I didn't want to do it if we weren't prepared for the fight.
And it's like, yeah, dude, well, that's the whole game there now, isn't it?
I mean, maybe not the entire thing, you know, you want to think about whether it's a noble and just war or not, which this one clearly is not.
But in addition to that, whether you're going to get creamed, yeah, that's a, like, that's not a thing like, oh, we didn't know.
Well, you better make sure you know that before you support a war.
And, you know, I mean, look, even going into it, it is, I'm sorry.
It's a shocking thing that me and you have such a more sophisticated analysis of this stuff than people who were like professionals and this is what they've done their entire lives.
I mean, I guess, you know, we've done this for a while now too, but it's still kind of strange.
But look, man, think about this, Rob.
Paharitz says, before he throws it to his friend there who says, we didn't want it like this,
he says that, well, look, if they still control the Strait of Hermussen anyway, then that's a loss.
That's how he defined the loss.
But Rob, this is the reality that the Trump administration and all of them are coming to.
Number one, that's right.
and number two, there's no way to ever stop them.
The only way is to have a regime in place and make a deal with that regime.
That's why they've been trying to make a deal this whole time.
That's the reason Trump hasn't just walked away or destroyed the place already.
Because fuck, look, you look at it like this, right?
When he's saying victory, like he almost in the beginning was defining it like,
we overthrew the regime.
And he said, well, now the future of the Iranian people may be in doubt.
We don't know, but maybe there's hope.
You know, we just overthrew this terrible regime.
Maybe they have a good.
But the regime falls, Rob, by the most modest estimate, you know, like 10% of the country
is loyal to the regime.
I mean, literally the most fucking came out of a Mossad laboratory numbers are that 10%
are dedicated to them.
okay 10% of 90 million is 9 million that's a healthy pool for an insurgency this is assuming those
numbers don't go up at all after you know everything that's happened which is kind of ridiculous to think
that there aren't other factions that maybe didn't love the iatola but at the same time don't
really love the americans who just overthrew their government or whatever but i mean you're
talking about pool millions and millions of people and rob as you know they've been using 1020,000
drones to harass boats on the Strait of Hermose.
How do you possibly...
So in other words, right now, right, in the same sense,
it's another neocon war.
By his own logic, it's as soon as we bring feminism to Afghanistan,
that's when we've won.
You could look at that already just on paper, Rob,
and you would just go, it's almost, this is almost like on the level of like a
10th grade class.
If someone just came up and thought they saw, like, you put a problem on the board and they go,
I think I solved it.
You go, nope, see, that doesn't work.
Right back.
Like, it's just, sorry, that doesn't work then.
How do you win that war?
And this is why this is so disingenuous.
You go back to the initial strike on Iran.
And what was the argument between the non-interventualist and the Warhawks is you're going to
end up with the quagmire.
And they were trying to go, no, there won't be a quagmire.
We can just do targeted strikes.
then they start a war and they go, we can do a quick war.
We can win this thing easily.
And then what does it turn out?
We can't.
And we're right back to what we've been complaining about Iraq and Afghanistan that you've
started some new ongoing thing that's going to cost us a ton of money and won't actually
get you anywhere.
And these were the people who were trying to pitch you on the idea of, no, we can engage in warfare
and we can win it.
And it doesn't have to be a big old mess.
And then you end up six months later where it's a big old mess and they go, well,
that's not what we wanted.
Yeah, exactly what we were telling.
you at the outset is that we are not good at this and it does not work you guys are the ones who are
saying no we can pull it off it will work and if you weren't smart enough to go oh well don't
don't work under him then you needed to say that at the time or acknowledge that you were wrong
which you were yep and again again you know like the term the term neo-conservative you guys you
sit i'm just saying you sit in the dynamics of the context of the time that you were speaking you are
two people who are identifying with the word neoconservative, right? The guy next to him actually says,
oh, people say the neocons wanted this war. No, this isn't what we wanted. Like, we are the neocons.
You understand you were at a time the most influential foreign policy group in the country.
You are, nobody even identifies with the word anymore. People are, it's purely a pejorative
that in common parlance means the people who advocate.
for wars that always become disasters and don't work out the way they said they were going to.
That's what neocon means at this point.
Like in the discourse for reasons.
And so you're talking about yet another catastrophic war and not even like the sense of just
kind of like, I mean, it didn't work, you know, almost with a tone of just kind of like,
it was a 50-50 thing.
You could have been right.
We could have been right.
who knows you 10 ended up being right.
But like, had we been right, this would have been better.
That's the way you law.
That's the way neocons think about launching wars of aggression.
Nah, six in a row, we're bad, huh?
Let's do this seventh.
Oh, disaster too.
Well, you know, you win some, you lose some.
Like, when do we win some?
Is there more to this clip?
Natalie, or did we finish that one?
I think that was pretty much the meat of it.
Here, you play the last few seconds if there's anything worth.
decided in the changing direction but don't do it the wrong way that's that's that's that's
going to be a disaster i i just think that's that's that's axiomatic i mean you're you're you're
you're insane to support a war that you're not prepared that you don't have the preparedness
to fight so you mean what you supported so in other words you were insane
Well, I just think your point is axiomatic is another way of saying that there was no point in May.
There was no point.
In other words, there was no point.
Of course, you can't be for starting a war that you're not prepared to fight.
And therefore, that's already baked into the price of whether you're for a war or not.
And therefore, after you were for a war, you can't go, oh, that doesn't count because we weren't prepared to fight.
that was one more thing.
The onus was on you to know that at the time.
You know, Rob, do you remember when people,
how much the Hawks used to mock me
for talking about escalation dominance all the time?
Okay.
Now the line is that, oh, we didn't know we couldn't handle it,
so it doesn't count that you were right.
Yeah, this is the whole point.
This was the whole point the entire time.
They're going to sit here and pretend, like,
I don't know, dude.
Like, this is, you could just rewind the tape years and hear, you know, us talking about
that, like, our, I don't mean us, me and our whole side.
Scott Horton's been breaking this down forever and a bunch of great people have as well.
But just that like, yeah, they can touch us.
They can hit, they can shoot missiles off.
This is going to be a tough regime to overthrow because it's a very difficult country to
conquer and you're going to have a tough time overthrowing the regime from the skies.
They can close off the straight of Hermoose.
They can pretend these are new factors that.
we didn't need to be considered at the onset. It's ridiculous. And it's also, I suppose, Rob,
because they opened themselves up a little bit to the wrath of the fire. And so if they're going to
say, well, hey, you're blaming the neocons for this policy now, but this isn't what we wanted,
not like this. Rob dug in a little bit to like what some of them were saying as the war was going
on. And what was that exactly? Well, I pulled up a whole bunch of clips. Here's the thing.
I'm not actually familiar with these guys outside of the last time you brought up pot hours on the show.
But I've just seen enough times where people ignore the unintended consequences that somebody was pointing out at the outset of a policy decision.
And then exactly what the critics were saying comes true.
And all the unintended consequences are what result from the policy.
And then people turn around and go, well, that's not what we wanted.
And I'm like, yeah, that's the point is that you guys are bad at making these decisions.
you lied when you pitched it.
Your best case scenario didn't come true.
And now you're trying to keep your job in credibility when you shouldn't have any.
I mean, you just heard it from the guy when he goes, oh, it was supporting this would have been insane.
So then the next time you pitch a war, we can all go, oh, you're not good at making a decision about whether or not we're in a situation to fight a war because you pitched the Iran war.
So I wanted to dig in and find out to what extent these guys were going, we're winning this war or this war is a good idea or we should be fighting this war.
and if at any point in time they had said this war is not a good idea because the country's not prepared
or we don't trust Donald Trump's administration to do it well.
And so I went through a fair amount of transcripts of the show.
You know, I used the AIs to try and point me in the right direction.
And I think I located some clips that directly contradict what they're trying to put forward here,
which is that they were against this war from the outset because they didn't trust this administration to do it
or they didn't think that we had the supplies for it.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Well, let's see.
Let's go to the first clip.
Pretty good.
I mean, things are looking pretty good.
I mean, the decapitation of the malocracy,
if not the removal of the regime happening
within hours of the war's beginning is almost unprecedented, I think, in the history of warfare
and sets this on a very new kind of course. Obviously, reaching the guy in the bunker is what you do
systematically after years of fighting. That's Hitler's in the bunker in 45, not in 39 or 41.
And so who knows what the knock-on effects of that are going to be?
And the systematic ability, given the apparently amazing intelligence penetration,
that we not only know where he was and where those leaders were on Saturday morning,
but that we also know who's in the secondary tertiary levels of the leadership to eliminate them as well.
and cut off their control, command, and communications capabilities
so that they can't really systematically respond,
you know, say it appears what they're doing is kind of spraying missiles
around the Gulf and toward Israel,
but there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it,
and that seems to be the result of the ability to make,
it impossible for them to make a plan and stick to it.
You know, it's just just already.
If you just pose it here for a second, just already, man, it just like, like again,
just compare that to like what we were saying when the war first launched and think about
what's aged better, where he's come all the way around to what our position originally was,
while he was this dumb to think that this was an indication that we had charted some new
course.
It wasn't a new course, spoiler.
It was the exact same course.
And yeah, I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Rob.
Well, actually what he's speaking to here is making negotiations tougher
because you took out the head of the leadership
and then you had to diverging factions that you have to try and meet with
and the fact that they didn't actually need to have one cohesive government
because they could give instructions to different people
and just take the straight.
So it's just kind of showcasing this is them at the beginning of the war going,
hey, we're off to a great trajectory here.
and overlooking, you know, the closing of the straits or any of the other risk factors
of making it harder to get a deal when you took out the probably most moderate person to
actually negotiate with about whether or not Iran should have nukes.
Yeah. And even like when he goes, look, man, like Hitler didn't get taken out in 1939
at the beginning of the war, Rob. Hitler got taken out in 1945 after the bloodiest war.
in human history.
And this didn't take nothing like that.
You know, it's like, well, yeah.
It's almost like the enemy was nothing comparable.
Like, right, there's another way to look at this.
Like, but yeah, yeah, but just the entire tone of it.
Like, no and no, if you notice with these guys, with all of the neocons, like,
dude, even if you, even if you're pro-war,
war, even if you're for a war, you know, you launch a war, you don't have any kind of like,
you know, there's no feeling of the weight of the risk of man.
This is the, you never want to do this, but you have to.
And there's always this huge risk of human suffering and, but, and, you know, there's
probably this, this might have been within hours of like 170 little girls getting blown up
or little kids, whatever.
Maybe now they said it wasn't just a girl's school, whatever, but all these, these,
little kids dying. It's like that's happening as you're sitting here going, looks good to me.
And what's his comment? It is this Iranian response, man. It looks really disorganized.
Looks like they really can't touch too much around here. Yeah, that aged well. Oh, shit.
We ran out of missiles firing them at all of their missiles. Okay. I believe that this is from
five months ago. So it's either from March or April because YouTube didn't give me, oh, it's from
March 2nd, 2026. And now we're going to jump ahead because he's so sure that this war is going to work
out even talks about how this is going to spook China and we're going to be thwarting China
with the success that we're having in the Iran War. So Natalie, we're going to jump ahead to the
second time stamp in this video. Don, I'm five years older than you, so I make many more
mistakes than you do. Oh, Jesus. I want to zoom out to what Abed Reddy Gore did today in his
Ask Aviv Anything podcast, which is look at the great game, the grand strategy. So there's a chessboard
over here at the Middle East that's been turned over and we'll see what happens. But over here,
there's China, the United States, Russia, and Israel.
And it looks like China is the big loser this week.
What do you think of that?
I think that's true.
And oddly enough, you see this weird, the world of people who are resistant to the idea of this war saying,
we're somehow being distracted from China or we are, you know, we're playing into their hands
because we're getting tied up in Iran.
China and Iran are very closely allied when, when,
Operation Midnight Hammer destroyed not only the nuclear program or most of the nuclear program,
but the ballistic missile capabilities of Iran in the summer, where did Iran turn to start rebuilding,
which it chose to do, it didn't have to do, right, to turn to Iran to get more equipment to start reconstituting its ballistic missile threat.
So taking out Iran not only takes out a customer for China,
But it restricts China's projection of its own power beyond its borders to an ally in the Middle East.
All right.
Let's pose it there for a second because I'd have to pose a question to John Pudharitz,
who obviously is much smarter than any of us.
I mean, he's a professional.
We're just a couple of comics, right?
But I'd pose a question to him.
You should be like, well, if winning this war and taking out Iran, as you say,
would have degraded China, then what is losing the war and transitioning China into a global power
do? I mean, look, at this point, he would have to admit, right, that losing the war didn't hurt China,
right? That that hurt America right now that he says we lost. So again, Rob, like, also apply your whole
thing to geopolitics. I guess you can't do that either. I mean, I don't know what to say. You're sitting here going,
Look at how clear cut is this?
He goes, the detractors of the war are saying this will degrade us and help China.
But I'm saying, no, they're wrong.
This will eliminate Iran and degrade China.
Now you're saying we lost.
Okay, so you were wrong again and the critics of the war were right.
Like, I don't know.
You have to, Rob, the thing that's infuriating about it, right?
The thing before that guy just is that that's the conclusion, not.
Oh, we didn't want this.
We wanted the war, but with winning.
Like, no, the conclusion is you shouldn't have fought the thing because you couldn't win it.
All right.
So now let's jump to the next clip where he more directly makes the pitch for that we're winning.
And this is from April.
And we got two clips where he pitches, he pitches the fact that we're winning.
Oh, geez.
It's a very important and interesting piece that obviously reflects the reality on the ground,
which is the United States has.
is and will likely secure what is an astounding military victory over the regime in Iran,
that the regime in Iran simply will not acknowledge as a profound victory over it.
And what does that mean, really?
Does it matter whether they do?
Does it matter whether they say we lost?
Will we know that we won if they refuse to say that they lost?
and I think actually the events of this week and a lot of things that have happened this week
are increasingly making it clear that we are on the path to victory without question,
but not a victory that is going to be universally acknowledged as such.
We have on the side, which is what we should get to first, seemingly on the side.
He just paused.
And seemingly having been.
This is from April 17th.
Does this sound like he was against this war?
I mean, dude, it is crazy. It is crazy, right, dude, that like, let's just say, I mean,
honestly, like, I want to try to run this thought experiment for a second here. I want you to
try to imagine that I'm going to come on the podcast right now and I'm going to say we won
the war. Like, let's say this is the conclusion of the war and I'm going to go, wow,
that worked out well. We won. That worked out well. I'm glad we did that. Like, let's just
say that was my take on the show and i'm not going to acknowledge that i was wrong i'm just going to come on the
show say that worked out great was a great decision glad we did it we won and we're going to move on it i'm not
gonna like i don't know i just i don't know i cannot wrap my head around this and likewise rob and i had not
seen this until literally this moment you i mean i saw you had sent the list of here's let's look at their
stuff but i had not seen this clip he literally was just saying
that it's clear we're on the path to victory.
And now he's saying we lost.
And he's not, there's not an in-between part there where he goes, I got it wrong.
You know, like even when he was talking about, I mean, there's like implicit that like,
well, it's because we didn't know that the stockpiles were low.
But regardless, even if it's because of something you didn't know, then that means you got
it wrong because it's something you didn't know.
You're sitting here once again, sitting here.
And again, as I've said many times,
This war, it was just another, it was another neocon classic.
It's just like a neocon war.
It had all the earmarks, you know.
It was sold the same way.
It was conducted the same way.
The only difference is it was hypercharged.
It's been super fast.
It fell apart quicker than most of them did.
But in the same way, they always, like even watching this, through the whole thing,
they just bullshit you, man, until it's too beyond the point where no one can see anything except
like catastrophe.
and it cannot be, you know, you can't be, the citizenry can't be gaslit anymore about what's going on.
But up until that point, dude, the Afghan army that we're training up is awesome, man.
They're going to hold down that country.
No problem.
No problem for years to come.
This will be, you know, it's just the whole time.
And now let's jump ahead to the next timestamp so we can cover all this.
But this is where he says we're minutes away from victory and the blockade is working.
And that's the second time stamp on the sheet.
picture about whether or not
Trump is engaged in some kind of a
weird
gavat with Iran
over the strait
that involves Pakistan and China.
Okay.
You know this way better than I do.
It looks to me
like the closure of the
straight that is really the opening of the
straight, that we call the blockade of the strait that isn't the blocktay of the
straight, is working, has worked for the last 48 hours in the sense that the Iranians are
getting nothing out, but other traffic is moving through the strait.
So, explain to me if you can why Trump wouldn't look at that and say, or I think
Abe is actually asking that question also.
They're on the ropes.
Like we're we're we're we're minutes away from crushing their hopes and dreams
and leaving them a tattered husk of a of a fourth rate power that can't even close the
straight of hormones.
I love the optimism.
You can stop it there, but I just almost even one second because I'm sorry.
Yeah, yeah, you can stop it there.
It's fine.
I'm sorry.
But there's something about I want to hear what that guy.
says in response because he went, hey, you're more of the expert in this than I am.
But like, I could so easily have just answered those questions just from paying attention
and happy, I know exactly where he is now. He's in the time period right after the blockade
of the blockade. He's saying, oh, look, he's going, look, a Rand's not getting anything
out and ships are getting through. Why isn't Donald Trump looking at this and saying, hey,
we're crushing them. They don't have time. And it's like the obvious reason we knew this at the time
is because, yes, ships were getting through in the vaguest sense of the term, but the number of ships getting through actually bottom down to their lowest.
So at first, even in the first Iran immediately, you know, close the strait of Hermuz, meaning they were demanding permission and fees for people to enter.
Okay.
But the people who were getting permission and fees were still able to come through.
So a certain amount of oil is still getting through.
I forget the exact numbers, but there was really good reporting on.
on this. In the Wall Street Journal, drop site was all over this. So there was a certain amount
getting through with Iranian permission. So it was down from the amount of oil that usually gets
through the Strait of Hermuz, but a certain amount was still getting through. Then the U.S.
came in and blockaded the blockade. And so they said none of those ships are getting through
with just Iranian permission. You can only get through with U.S. permission. And that number
that was getting through nose-dived. It was the lowest number going through the entire time was when we
put the blockade of the blockade. So number one, it wasn't an opening. It didn't solve the problem.
It actually squeezed the problem worse, which was the global economy. And number two, why didn't
Donald Trump? It was blockading a lot of Iranian ships from getting out now. But why didn't Donald
Trump think, well, ha ha, I'm blockading your ships. You're about to collapse. You can't outlast us.
Well, because all of the intelligence said that they could. We were covering this at the time on the show, Rob.
Like the actual reports from the Pentagon said they could survive it. And guess what, Rob?
We now know that is the case.
We ran the experiment.
The reason why Donald Trump wasn't thinking that, as we were saying at the time, was because
that wasn't the case.
They weren't about to collapse.
Anything here, but I'm sorry, you say what you want to say, but I do want to hear what
this expert at the time said because he really should know.
And the first thing he did say was, well, that's optimistic.
Well, the detail I'm picking up on, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here.
But I believe we blockaded the straits while we were negotiating with them the first
time that we are uh that this predates the ammo and you would think if you were against this war
because uh we didn't have the proper stockpiles for this war you would criticize donald trump
for escalating the warfare environment and you would go well don't trump just blocked the straits
but i know that this is a mistake because their missile capabilities are not reduced as much as
what's being reported and i've looked at the numbers of uh how many interceptors we've used
and so actually I think we need to be stopping this war
because we don't have the supplies to win the war.
But he's not saying that, is he?
No, he's not.
No, look, Rob, they're not even claiming that we knew
that we didn't have the supplies.
They're going, we were for the war,
but we wouldn't have been for the war had we known this
and somehow it's not our responsibility
that we didn't know or something like that.
But as you sit here and you listen to what they were saying
throughout the whole war, it is just,
this is why I said this whole thing.
And look, Rob, the reason we're even
doing this as a show. Nobody really cares about John Pod Horitz, but there is something just truly
remarkable about all of this. It's remarkable that anyone is capable of this level of like
cognitive dissidents or compartmentalization or something like that, but where you could just be
getting it so wrong up to supporting a war and then every step of it through the whole thing,
getting it wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, come to the conclusion that obviously
it was all wrong and not have any, I don't know, even any type of process. I mean, my gosh, Rob,
like, this war has been at the center of a massive political fight. You know, he's calling the people
who oppose it evil. You know, I mean, he's like, and you got the whole thing wrong and man,
that doesn't give you any pause.
It's something, these people really are.
And I'm not even saying, like, in his personal life,
I don't know who John Pod Horitz is.
I've heard some stories that are disturbing.
But you're like, it's amazing.
Like, this is sociopathic to be this type of political commentator.
It's like, I don't know.
It's something to say.
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All right.
Let's get back into the show.
What do you think, Rob?
What should we go to next?
I mean, if you want to watch the response, we can.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
I wanted to watch this guy's here.
Let's see if this guy even gave him a little bit of something on that podcast.
I love the optimism.
And it's probably actually not really a bad frame for this at all.
I think Trump is trying to get out.
And he wants to get out clean, right?
And he's concerned about the regime fighting back and deciding that it wants to draw in American troops and American vessels.
Wow.
So he just got, okay.
So you just close that.
I mean, it's just, again, you can buzz there.
It's just these hacks who they bring on.
This is the expert that they have.
You have more expertise than you do and me.
Just, I mean, basic keeping up with what was going on.
This was easy to see.
He didn't point out any of the things.
I love your optimism.
And yeah, that's not a bad framework.
Sure.
We're crushing them.
The straight is opened by our blockade.
Okay.
And then this is the last one from Pud Art.
And then we're going to jump to the other guy.
And we've got even more damning stuff from him.
But this is an article from February,
28, 2026. The title is first thoughts on the new Iran war, and I think the last two paragraphs
are what's worth reading. Okay. So let's see, these two paragraphs here. Okay, but regime change,
war or not, I think my question now, I think my questions now have pretty clear answers.
The six-week campaign of diplomatic dithering following the Iranian slaughter were, in fact,
simply temporizing.
We got our ducks in a row
and presumably gave Israel time
to help us locate the necessary targets
inside Iran to strike the bad guys
while leaving the general population
largely unmolested.
Today, February 28, 26,
may be the most important day of the 21st century so far.
May God bless our fighting force
as they place themselves in harm's way
to protect, defend, and save the West.
And may we triumph over
this remorseless, consciousness,
an evil enemy that has been at war with the great Satan for nearly half a century.
Yeah.
Truly against.
Sounds like a man.
Sounds like a man who knew we were going to lose.
Yeah, it is something, man.
You could cheer lead a goddamn war, have it be a disaster, and not even feel alike.
I mean, we did not get a, my bad.
You don't even get that.
And now let's move to Abe Greenwald. And you know what? Let's start with the tweet before the video.
This is the co-host in the video.
Yeah. This is A. Greenwald. And when you see this, when you see this quote, oh my God.
Hmm. One second. We'll have it up. It is, all right. I'm bracing myself.
How neocondelusion-y are we talking here? I'd give this an 11.
Okay. Wow. In 11. Ooh. Okay. Yeah. If, okay. This is a
a tweet from Abe Greenwald. Let me see the date here. April 7th. Okay. All right. If the U.S.
were to walk away from this war at this very instant, it would still be the greatest American
victory we've seen in decades. If we go further, there's no telling the extent of our
triumph. I'm merely thankful for the obvious success that's been achieved thus far.
anything else is gravy.
Jesus Christ, Abe.
Yeah, dude.
Oh, so this is the guy who starts by saying,
oh, and people say the neocons wanted the war?
No, no, this isn't the war we wanted.
You motherfucking liar.
Dude, the ability of neocons to lie you into war.
What is it about you people with lying and war?
Did no one ever tell you that they're both bad?
Jesus, that's unbelievable.
Oh, absolutely.
This is the war you wanted and the war you got.
You already said it's a victory.
Anything else is gravy.
Okay, so you didn't get the gravy.
Where's that victory you were talking about?
Oh, Jesus Christ.
I mean, that is, wow, that is damning, Rob.
Okay, so he straight out said that it had already been won,
that he had already been proven right.
And now he's got to say, I mean, and even think about it, right?
like just how childish.
And like even he says even there that it's an,
the victory is obvious.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like at the very least,
if you were just not such a liar,
you'd go,
the victory may not be obvious,
but here's what I mean.
Like he's,
he's like,
oh, it's obvious.
Yeah, it's totally obvious, dude.
Some kids died and hundreds of billions of dollars was squandered
and we're in the exact same place with around having more control.
What?
Wow, Rob.
What can you say about that, dude?
And I got one last clip.
You were right, 11.
Yeah.
And then I got one last clip from Abe Greenwald,
which is along the same lines and theme.
I mean, is any of this going to happen?
Probably not.
But as the Iranians are saying,
this seems like, oh,
if you thought from a neo-conservative perspective,
that the Iraq war was a very difficult thing
to argue against to sort of propagate
your ideas about foreign policy, Trump looks like he's in a place to make it even worse by saying,
well, we got kind of nothing out of this. The regime stays in place. You know, if, like, if we say,
okay, we're going to keep the straits open, but under these very onerous conditions, like,
what do we win from this beyond the very short-term thing that people don't think about, by the way,
of the degradation of missiles, of the dead, of killing how many members of the RGC? Those are all
victories. Those are all very positive things if you hate the Iranian regime.
But in the long run, I don't know.
Is this kind of damaging to people?
I'm sorry, just pause it for a second.
I'm sorry.
I shouldn't say it about him.
But the we the fifth guys are just so painful, dude.
Just the way they just sit there and go like,
well, but you know, some could say that your seventh catastrophic war in a row
could perhaps hurt your credibility with the general public who literally might lynch you
if you were to walk into a mob of them right now,
who already hate you so much that they, like, you better pray.
I don't know.
They just said there,
hmm,
do you think maybe that would be inappropriate?
Maybe that could go bad if we launched this.
I mean,
it really is so good that we killed some bad people there
if you overlook all the innocent people we killed.
So, okay,
that's a victory.
Like,
what?
Talks about launching the most disgusting,
fucking Pearl Harbor style sneak attack started war
of aggression and choice this way.
Like,
I know they have something where they think like
they're being the grownups in the room.
because we approach everything with like a khaki-pounce flavor but it's not it's just like moral
cowardice whatever sorry anyway here we can get to the part you wanted to play foreign policy that
should be reflected in the kind of neo-conservative way uh i don't think so at all actually uh
i mean you know i should say off the about one of the things about neoconservatism is that it's
it is not a sort of code of of beliefs you know and there's always been a great deal
disagreement among neoconservists it's a it's a kind of an of an impulse or a and you know today it's
arguable that there is no such thing as new conservatism that it's sort of elements in conservatism but
setting all that aside um i think the achievements that the u.s and israel have been able to carry out in this
unbelievably short of, short period of time, speak for themselves. I don't, without a,
an anti-war media, an anti-war movement, and it's not not much of a movement, but a sort of
social media mob, well, no one objectively would look at what has gone on in Iran for six
weeks at the hands of the U.S. and Israel and say, oh, this, this was a bad move for the U.S.
and Israel, and this is, this is great for Iran.
I mean, you talked about, wait, pause.
You mean you right now?
Nobody would possibly say that.
Flash forward six months later.
Oh, man, I would never have agreed to this war.
I mean, it's just, again, Rob, like I said, before.
How many times, dude, have we watched this happen?
Isn't it just, isn't it wacky?
How many times, dude?
Have we watched this happen with different topics, different things?
Nobody serious thinks this.
Oh, these are just such clowns.
Few months later saying exactly the thing that was obvious at the time.
It's like all you got to do is like have a room temperature IQ.
Fucking pay attention and tell the truth.
I don't know.
it's really not that it's not rocket science man but it is um i got to say again just and you know i i like
matt um like i i don't know him i've never known him super well but i always liked him enough um i always
thought he was a nice guy and i don't know the other guy moynham uh well other than us like
responding to him one time and i think him just being unimpressed with that but it's just like there
is something about i just always kind of can't believe those guys or they do this show where they just
sit there and just let this neocon bullshit them with the dumbest most insane shit ever and go huh yeah
from well that's a good point uh are there the the success is obvious at what point in this thing was
the success obvious and this is just so i mean it's so unbelievable that like you know it's like
their whole goddamn thing it's like they have like uh they have like three modes okay here's the neoconservative
modes. It's like they, some poor third world country over there that doesn't have an Air Force
capable of, you know, touching your continent, doesn't have a Navy capable of blockading their
own, you know, country, doesn't have, you know, an army that could invade their neighbor,
is working on weapons of mass destruction. They're a huge threat to the world.
That's, okay, that's one phase. There's three phases of neo-euro.
con, okay? One phase is this puny third world country that just happens to be an enemy of Israel
located in the Middle East happens to be a threat to world conquest and they're working on weapons
of mass destruction, which they never end up being, that part never ends up being true. That's one phase.
Number two is just like permanent mission accomplished, you know, just like the mission accomplished
banner of George W. Bush, but just forever in all of this form that we just watched. And
Number three is the clip we started with.
Well, that was a big fat failure.
Not our fault.
Moving on.
Hey, I think Turkey is the new Iran.
You know, whatever the next, whatever the next one is.
That's literally at those are the phases.
It is unbelievable.
It really is unbelievable to see people who have a track record like that, Rob.
Final thought to you.
Well, and it's fun with AI because you can track it down.
Actually, I think you should say as a closing statement,
at that hilarious Mark Levin tweet that, that you shared.
Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.
Natalie, can you pull this up?
I sent it to the group here.
Yeah, why not pull it up?
Because the visual of it might be fun too.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
How about it?
It's, it really is just as, you know, as I was saying,
these guys are just, there's something.
It truly is remarkable to watch this arc.
It goes all the way back.
I've been, yeah, follow me on social.
I've been posting some of my old COVID jokes
that have come very true.
And luckily also with AI, it's easier to like clip things up.
But in my first end of year recap, I was working on at the time,
but I was talking about that we need to create like almost baseball style scorecards
for people so that you could see how many things they've gotten wrong in the past.
And I've tried twice.
I wasn't able to get it off the ground.
But it is kind of interesting that with AI, it is a lot easier to actually,
I could not have found these moments a year ago.
And it's not that it didn't take me time and I don't have to read through things.
but like I could not have found all these moments.
And it's going to be interesting to see if people have to start being more honest moving forward
or actually can't get like away from their terrible track records.
Because when you see it laid out like this or this Mark Levin tweet that we're about to see,
these people just don't know really how to contend with the reality in which they have to actually
be responsible for what they said a week or even just a few days earlier.
Yep.
You're making claims with certainty about what's happening or what's going to happen or what policy
is wise and yeah you should be held responsible so here let's pull up the uh the mark levin
tweet this is real um mark levin which quote neocons are calling for ground troops in a round
i heard it mentioned again last evening and it's thrown around by the woke rike isolationists
it must be a long list so let's see it and man if this isn't a great community note mark
Levin seems to have forgotten. He personally called for ground troops in Iran and a link to the
article. Yeah, and now open the article. It's worth just seeing the headline. Mark Levin calls for
troops in Iran. It was the night that Donald Trump plugged his show. It was the night Donald Trump
plugged his show. He said, look out for a big Mark Levine show tonight. That night, Mark Levins said
we should send troops to Iran. We all thought it was a tactic to try to scare the Iranians to be like,
a signal he's going to send troops in.
Now Mark Levin, I mean, it's just, it's, it's amazing that these guys can get away with
this shit.
War after war after war.
All right.
We got to wrap on that.
Chicago, come see Rob.
And then, of course, Appleton, Wisconsin will be there all weekend.
Come on out.
And then Austin, Texas, PorchTor.com, comadavsmith.
Any other dates that I missed of yours, Rob?
Now I'll plug next week, the gigs next week.
There you go.
store.com, comictadestmith.com, part of the problem.com. Catch you next time. Peace.
