Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:32 - Iranian Ultimatum

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Scott Horton & Darryl Cooper analyze rising US-Iran tensions amid increased naval activity in the Persian Gulf. They discuss military preparedness, the implications of conflict, and the influence of domestic opinion on foreign policy, urging a diplomatic approach to avoid escalation & ensure thoughtful decision-making. Chapters: 0:35 Latest on Military Movements 5:28 Tomahawk Missile Capabilities 11:26 The Role of F-18s 18:33 Potential Consequences of Conflict 23:54 Iran's Defense Systems 29:21 The Political Landscape in Iran 35:59 Understanding Iranian Protests 44:29 Changing the Subject 46:42 Epstein Files Discussion 53:47 Minneapolis Police Issues 1:03:01 Long-Term Immigration Reform 1:06:51 The Future of Immigration Policy **** The discussion kicks off with scrutiny of the significant naval assets being sent into the region, with Horton sharing insights into the operational capabilities of the destroyers stationed there. He & Cooper unpack the complexity of military preparedness and the unpredictability of conflict, highlighting that although it may appear that the U.S. military is poised for action against Iran, the actual firepower at its disposal may not be as formidable as perceived. The two hosts express concern over the implications of a military strike, questioning what the US aims to achieve and whether the Trump administration is considering the consequences of provoking a nation armed with sophisticated weaponry. Horton & Cooper weave historical context into their analysis, reflecting on past military engagements and the lessons that may be applicable today. They underscore the risks of assuming that a full-scale war would be a quick and decisive victory for the US, instead cautioning that Iran’s military capabilities, particularly its advanced air defense systems like the S-300 and S-400, could significantly complicate any military action. The discussion touches on the potential for widespread regional instability should conflict erupt, emphasizing the unpredictable nature of war and potential repercussions for both allies and adversaries. Transitioning to political dynamics, the hosts emphasize the precarious link between U.S. foreign policy and domestic public opinion. Horton highlights the historical pattern of military action influencing electoral outcomes and how the current situation requires careful navigation to avoid backlash from the American populace, who largely oppose another entanglement in the Middle East. They critique the messaging surrounding the U.S.-Iran relations, suggesting that the narrative is often driven by political gain rather than a genuine pursuit of peace or stability. Horton & Cooper next discuss deeper philosophical implications, exploring how the ideological stance of US leaders affects international relations. They probe the complexities of rational decision-making in a crisis, emphasizing that decisions driven by political pressures often overshadow strategic considerations. They express concern that the path towards escalation seems predetermined, raising alarm about the dangers of miscalculation and potential for unintended consequences. In closing, the hosts call for reflection on the motivations behind U.S. actions abroad & reiterate that the shared interest should ultimately be de-escalation and diplomacy. (Cleaned up w/ the Podsworth app. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podsworth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Provoked show site: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://provoked.show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Darryl's links: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@martyrmade⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.martyrmade.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Scott's links: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@scotthortonshow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scotthortonacademy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://libertarianinstitute.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://antiwar.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scotthorton.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scotthorton.org/books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.scotthortonshow.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Tonight, me and Darrell do a show again. All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans. Negotiate now. End this war. You're watching Provoked with Darrell Cooper and Scott Horton, debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. This is provoked.

All right, you guys. Welcome back to the show, you know, from last week. I'm Scott. He's Daryl, the Great Martyrmaid, historian and podcaster. And I do a lot of things. I run the Scott Horton Academy and Libertarian Institute and associated with anti-war.com. And I wrote some books. Oh, and I do a show, the Scott Horton show. Tonight we're going to talk about the threat of war with Iran again more,

which we've already talked about. But it remains a real possibility here. all the latest news is that more and more Navy ships are arriving in the region all the time and Trump is threatening war and issuing ultimatums so why don't you take it from there

Daryl tell us what the hell is the latest here so if we're not going to war with Iran then there's a whole lot of wasted fuel and other military resources going into piling up you know a stockpile of weapons to make it look like we are there is a lot of

a lot of equipment, a lot of ships that are either there now or headed over there. Last I heard, there were six destroyers in the region. If you count the two in the East Met off of Israel, which, you know, their capabilities to participate are a little bit limited. They could fire Tomahawks, you know, that they would go far enough. But that's very limited even with the Tomahawks. But otherwise, there's four destroyers there with a carrier strike group. So, you know, it's got three of those three. of those destroyers and probably two submarines. We're not really sure. You're never really sure

with subs. And I think like, you know, a lot of people aren't really sure like necessarily what that means. They go online and you hear that, you know, there's however many, you know, 600 VLS cells, vertical launch system cells on that many destroyers or something. Wow, that's a lot of missiles. But, you know, when you send a destroyer out to see, it's primarily an air defense platform. And most of those VLS cells is 128 on a destroyer. Those are just your vertical launch cells. They're on the deck and back aft. There's these things that are flat on the ground.

And you have these lids that pop open. You've probably seen the videos and the missiles go up and out. They're not these box launchers that are like up on top deck. And out of the 128 VOS cells, you know, you've got to put all your air defense missiles, which means your SM2s, SM3s, depending on what the mission of the ship is. is, your ESSMs for short-range stuff, your vertical launch torpedo systems, usually there's only about eight of those. But in general, when we send a destroyer out to sea, it's got 32 tomahawks on it, which sounds like a lot. But, you know, I asked everybody to remember back when,

during the first Trump administration, when he hit that Syrian airfield after they allegedly used chemical weapons, we hit that airfield with 80-something Tomahawk missiles. And it was operational again like a week and a half later. So these are not like gigantic, devastating weapons. They're, you know, tomahawks are subsonic. They're very slow. They're very big in terms of radar cross-section. You don't need like a super advanced air defense radar to track them and shoot them down

if that's what you want to do. What's great about them is that they're long range. You know, if we were to fire a whole bunch of tomahawks like Russia or China, they'd probably shoot them all down. You can shoot infinite number of tomahawks. at Iraq or Syria, though, and not having that problem. So they're great weapons for that. And the fact that that's where our focus has been, you know, not on great power conflict, but on fighting these brush-fire wars and these wars of choice against opponents that really can't fight back. In a lot of

ways, it's only been in the last few years that we've even begun to really develop offensive weapons that compare with a lot of other countries out there. Like, you know, our anti-ship missiles, for example, like we've got some decent ones that are being rolled out now for a long time. You know, our anti-ship missile was a harpoon. Most of our, put it this way. Like, most of our, if you have a destroyer, a cruiser out to sea and you want to blow up a ship, up until recently, like they've got the Navy Strike missile now on some of the ships, but you'd have to get within range of your five-inch gun and blow it up with your gun,

because they just didn't have any anti-ship missiles. And the ones that we did have on some platforms, they're harpoons, you know, very big, slow-moving, decent-sized warhead on it, but, you know, not in advance. missile, not like some of these French and Chinese and Russian ones that you see. And so we've suffered for that reason because, you know, our primary strike weapon out to sea has been the F-18s on the carrier. You know, the destroyers defend the carrier. They don't need anti-ship missiles or anything because we send F-18s out 200 miles to pick it and anything that they decides a threat, you know, they can hit. So so you figure if you've got,

Let's, you know, I saw somewhere else that there's two more destroyers headed to the region. We don't know if they're going to be in the East Medoff, Israel, helping with air defense, you know, specifically, or if they're going to join the others in the Gulf of Oman and that whole region over there and actually participate, you know, in striking a larger area of Iran. But, you know, let's say they do get up to eight and all eight are involved. At that point, you're talking about 240 Tomahawk missiles. when a ship runs out of missiles, like if it doesn't have any more tomahawks, that ship doesn't just, you know, go get like a, you know, there's no like at sea resupply thing

where they come over and give you new missiles. You got to go into a port. I think we've got a magazine in Greece, but I don't know how much they actually carry there because we haven't had ships going out and just, you know, multiple ships just completely unloading all of their tomahawk missiles or anything. And so I don't know how many are even there.

I imagine some are pre-staged if we're really going to attack. but, you know, they have to go back there. It's a multi-day operation with cranes, like an industrial operations, cranes and hard hats. These are huge missiles that you've got to lower. I mean, and so it's a big operation. It's not as if, like, it's something you can turn around real quickly. You fire those off.

It's going to be a week before you get your ships back on station. And that's if they have all the missiles that you need to replenish those ships there in Greece, which they probably don't. Because it just, if they do, it's a thing in preparation for this conflict, because we wouldn't normally. On the carrier, you know, a carrier, I don't know what the one that's over there now has, it may be mission-specific,

but in general they go out with 48, with four squadrons of 12 F-A-18s or either Hornets or Super Hornets each. And so you got 48 F-18 strike aircraft on a carrier. Now, each of those F-18s is capable of carrying up to four AGM-84 standoff land. attack missiles, which is just basically a modified harpoon, the one I just described, as an anti-ship missile. You know, this is another cruise missile that's big, huge radar cross-section,

very easy to shoot down for even a relatively primitive air defense system, assuming it's not getting, you know, jammed to hell by effective electronic warfare and stuff. And, you know, after at least what they're saying publicly about our success in that area with Venezuela, you know, who knows? It's like, you know, we've never really, we've never really tested in the field and seen like, you know, like the kind of EW that's really necessary to overcome, you know, the abilities of, say, an S300 or something, which is Iran's, you know, sort of they have the most of the, like of their advanced air defense systems, the S300, I think is the one they have the most of. Supposedly, Russia delivered them some S400 systems after the 12-day war. And so they've got some of those. Now, those are very advanced systems for shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles. And so, you know, each of those F-18s, again, which typically is 48 of them on,

48 of them on a carrier, can carry up to four of those modified harpoons, AGM-84s, but they're never going to do that. You're not going to send a pilot out there with four strike missiles and nothing to defend himself with if another interceptor fighter comes up and, you know, is in the air. So, and they wouldn't, the carrier wouldn't carry that many. They wouldn't carry enough for all 48 of those to go out with just a full load out of the strike missiles. And so, you know, it's pretty limited in terms of like even a big arm model like that. Like it can do a lot of damage, no doubt.

And if we're intent on doing things like, you know, hitting central Tehran and taking out defense buildings and taking out their leadership, then, you know, that's a lot of weapons. But if you're actually talking about degrading their military capability, you just need. need a lot more than that. I mean, you need a lot more. And I know we've got B-52s, we've got things coming out of Diego Garcia and things like that. But again, all of those things, including, by the way, if we're going to use the F-18s, I think the standoff land attack missiles, last I checked there, the standard variant has a max range of 155 nautical miles. Most of your Iranian air defense systems are probably, well, no, I should say about as far as we know,

or estimate that they have probably about half of their systems can shoot over 155 monocle miles and half or shorter. But you've got to figure like, depending on, you know, unless you're going to target something directly on the coast, you know, a port or some missile battery that's there or something, if you want to target anything inland, you've got to get that F-18 probably within range of their air defense systems. And while, you know, tracking and shooting down a B2 is really tough.

Like, you know, the most advanced Russian citizens. systems would probably have trouble with that. Some of the best attack missiles that are out there can be difficult to track and shoot down. Ballistic missiles by themselves are hard to track and shoot down. But cruise missiles, you know, if you're, or rather but aircraft, like F-18s, anybody can shoot those down. And like, so if you really want to do anything, and again, the caveat on this is maybe we have some wonder of often, you know, electronic warfare capabilities now that just make their

air defense is all completely irrelevant. That's possible. But if it's not the case, you know, if they do start, you know, lighten up our planes and firing missiles at them, we're going to lose some planes. We're going to lose some pilots, you know. And I really hope that at the level of, you know, people who are providing Trump with information, they're letting him know that, you know, that that is a serious possibility. And so especially now that, you know, we know that the Russians have delivered some S-400 systems because those are highly capable systems. And so, you know, in order for your F-18s, like you got to think about it like this, like, you know, F-18s, if you want them to, you're not going to send an F-18, you know, to fly 500 miles off the carrier.

Like, it's too far. Like, it can't, you know, perform an effective mission that way. The carrier is going to have to get closer if you're going to fly that thing, like, toward their coast and to the point where its missiles could actually reach inland. and hit some of the inland sites, which means moving all of those ships, you know, the carrier itself, but also its defense destroyers, like moving them in closer

within range of Iran's anti-ship missiles. And everybody talks about, you know, hypersonics and stuff. And, you know, those are, those are very cool-looking weapons, like from what we've seen in Ukraine and everything, and the capabilities are real. We don't really know what their effectiveness is

at hitting moving targets. in the ocean, you know, at very long range. You know, one of the things, for example, that we, you know, you learn ballistic missile defense stuff, which is the, the field I used to work in for a long time at the DOD, is in a lot of ways, like ballistic missiles, they're hard to shoot down, even for, even for us, like, they're tough to shoot down. Like, when we do tests, you know, we know that it's coming from this direction at this time of launch on this trajectory and we're placing our ship to test this miss, you know,

just test the shoot down at exactly the right spot to hit it. It's just the per, like, we don't have any of those advantages and you have to shoot down a bunch of, right? You know, and not just one when you're not doing a test. And so that's really, really hard to do effectively. And but, you know, the trump card on it is that an aircraft carrier is super fast. And it takes a long time for that ballistic missile to get out to it. And it can just kind of get out of the way as long as you know it's coming. And so we don't know necessarily about the hypersonics and anti-ship ballistic missile capabilities.

but we know a lot about, you know, the cruise missile anti-ship capabilities that they have, and they're substantial because, again, for a long time, and even to this day, like, we by far do not have anywhere close to the best anti-ship missiles out there. The best anti-ship missiles out there have been Russian, Chinese, and French for a long time, and Iran has those missiles. Like, these are very serious anti-ship missiles that they have. And so it's very dangerous. It, you know, it almost seems to me, and I don't want to think this, because I probably know people out on those ships.

I was looking at the ships that are deployed out there right now, and I've been on most of them. When I was working for the DoD, I would go out to ships and train their cruise and stuff. I've been on most of them that are out there, and I probably know people that are on them now. And it really does, like it looks to me, like we're sort of, we're putting these ships out there.

If you look at like the rhetoric that's coming out of, like, top Israeli, ministry of defense officials and others in the cabinet. And you look at all of the moves that are being made sort of very openly. You know, it was a, I can't remember what media outlet it was just a little while ago today talking about, you know, we may strike as soon as Sunday. And like, really putting it out there like, this is coming, this is coming, this is coming. And, you know, we're doing that while we have ships within range of those Iranian anti-ship missiles, I mean, they could launch first. And it almost seems like we're trying to bait them into doing.

it, you know, because if they, look, it doesn't matter what we did to lead up to it. It might matter to you and me and whatever, but to the American people, if they hit our carrier, it's over. I mean, we're going to real deal war if that happens, you know? And, and as it stands right now, though, I mean, you know, on one level, like Trump obviously doesn't care much what the, you know, he cares a lot more about what Israeli voters seem to think than Americans when it comes to this issue, because Americans have been firmly against it from the beginning. A lot of people voted form on that basis to keep us out of stuff like this and he does not seem to care. But, you know, I do think that he has just maybe from an ego standpoint, like he does have

some hesitancy about engaging in anything that that might not be a quick, easy win. You know, the other thing, too, is those Iranian air defense systems, like, let's say we do find, like, we just, you know, through intelligence sources or whatever else, we know exactly where those S-400s are and we just hit them. right off the bat. And we hit their S-300 systems or our electronic warfare, you know, is able to shut down most of their air defense. That sounds like, okay, great, maybe it'll be easy. But the other side of that is Iran may look at it and say, okay, now we just have nothing else to do except for launch every ballistic missile we have at important targets, you know, American and Israeli targets.

Because it's like our only thing, this is our only way right now to really hopefully get them to back down. and they did back down last time. And so, you know, it might not, it might escalate things even more if we are successful in shutting down their air defense. It's hard to say. You know, the, the thing that concerns me is just knowing how limited the firepower

that we have over there actually is. And again, it's a lot, but it's not a lot in the context of a war with Iran. You have to look at it and say, well, what would be the goal then? Like, what is it we're actually trying to achieve if we're going to go do this? because having another 12-day war where Israel gets a bunch of their city blocks blown up by ballistic missiles,

and it all just kind of ends in a stalemate or whatever. Like, nobody really wants to do that. If we're going to get into this, it's going to be a purpose to it, I imagine. And the only way that that kind of firepower, that limited amount of firepower that we have on station over there, is going to affect anything like regime change or serious is if they start really taken out, like the highest government officials. And at that point, man, like, you know, and if the, Iranians are thinking that way, and if the war starts to go that way where, you know, they just hit the president.

They just try, they just hit where they thought the Ayatollah was, you know, whatever. I mean, they're, they're not going to, there's not going to be any more of this sort of telegraph, de-escalatory stuff like they did the end of the 12-day war after we hit the nuke sites. They're going to, you know, they're going to decide that the only move they have is to go down fighting. And, you know, and if you, if you, if you know a little bit about the Shiite mentality, specifically the Shiite mentality, that means a lot, that means something to them,

you know, that idea of going down fighting. And so, you know, we're all hoping it doesn't come to that. I was watching the news today because, you know, like Trump's other military escalations

in various parts of the world always seem to come on Friday after the market's closed so that it doesn't, you know, crater the stock market the next morning, gives them a few days to work. But nothing's happened so far.

I'm grateful for that, and I really hope that it doesn't. I know we've got allies over there that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, that are very much trying to warn us off of that, mainly because, not because they're buddies with Iran now, but because they mainly think that, you know, Iran's wings have been clipped to the point

where they're not a massive threat to the region right now or to them. And so they just think this would be inviting the potential for chaos when it's not necessary. And hopefully they're able to prevail on Trump and get this thing called off, because it does look like we're heading in the direction of war. Well, I'll tell you, man, it should be noted for people who may be brand new, maybe young,

maybe only just started paying attention to politics, maybe, you know, they get all their news from AM radio or Fox, and they don't know. But it would be fair if people assumed, Daryl, that if America was going to war with Iran, then it must be because we have to. I mean, they must have done something. Don't tell me that no new wars Trump is going to start a war for no reason. And yet Marco Rubio told the Senate that, well, look, if we tell them to stop having drones that can strike our allies in the region and they don't give up those drones,

well, then we could attack in preemptive self-defense. Yeah, which is just... Right, which is, which just means you're not allowed to defend. offend yourself. That's all that, me. I mean, you know, and this is one of the things that really concerns me about how these sort of public negotiations have played out, you know, the Twitter negotiator or true social negotiations that have been going on, is that they keep on moving the goalposts of what's expected of Iran. You know, first, it's a nuclear weapons program. Then it's just uranium enrichment in general. Then it's no long-range ballistic missiles

that can reach the United States. Then it's no ballistic missiles, period. And now, they're talking about drones. And what they're really saying after, you know, in June of last year, Israel wants to surprise attack targeting high government officials, you know, and a war that was really, you know, intended to topple the regime if they were able to pull it off, did that a surprise attack while Iran was engaged in good faith negotiations. And now you're telling them that Israel can do that whenever it wants and our conditions are that you are not allowed to defend yourself or else we join in too. That's an Austria to Serbia in 1914 kind of ultimatum. It's something that is designed for them to reject, and then we can say, oh, they rejected a deal, and, you know, so

what else can we do? It's not designed for them. I mean, no Iranian government. If the Ayatollah said, okay, we're getting rid of all our drones, all our ballistic missiles, all this stuff, but the IRGC would get rid of, I mean, there's no government leader in the world anywhere that could submit to those kind of demands. They would, would just lose all legitimacy and the regime would fall apart just like that. And so the way, you know, I saw, I think, representing the center left, you know, Obamaite, Clintonite type consensus. Michael McFall, Obama's former ambassador to Russia tweeted out today that a nuclear deal now

would ruin our chance at regime change. So the whole idea that this is about the reason Iran is dangerous is because of their nuclear program gets turned right upside down on the eve of war that if we could solve the question of the nuclear program with diplomacy, well, that would ruin our opportunity to have a war, right? Just like John Bolton caught on that APEC phone call in 2007 saying we were trying to bully them out of the NPT. We wanted them to withdraw from the NPT, kick the IAEA inspectors out, and that would leave us in a stronger position to start a war. I mean, it shows you the degree to which our regional policy is just completely dictated by Tel Aviv, you know, because just from an American standpoint, if it's true that we're just worried about them not posing a threat to us and, you know, in our allies and so forth, I mean, the nuclear deal that Obama signed was a good deal for America.

You know, if the idea is like removing a threat to the United States and making sure. doesn't, that was already done. And like, if your, if your policies being written in Tel Aviv, though, that, I mean, that's not a good deal. You know, this is something that leaves Iran as a strong and prosperous state that can oppose your regional goals, you know, maybe not with nuclear weapons, but, you know, Israel is probably the one country in the world I could see using nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state, you know, in a, what would have been a conventional war. If anybody would, they would. But, but there are, there's still going to be some hesitancy, even with the Israelis, to escalate you to that point, you know, new king Tehran or something like that. And so, you know, in a straight

conventional war where it's ballistic missiles and, you know, maybe aircraft, things like that, I mean, we saw what happened in June of last year. You know, the Israelis started it. They got out to a big lead right at the beginning, did a ton of damage, killed a ton of people, really like, did a great job. You know, one of the things that I was reading an article about this, actually, it was a Russian translated article. It was talking about how one of the lessons learned for the Iranians from the 12-day war was the Israelis did a really good job like disrupting their intra-governmental

communications. And they have like a very, very top-down hierarchical system where people below don't make decisions without getting the okay from the person above. It's just, you know, all the Middle Eastern countries, with the exception of Israel, this has always been one of their biggest limiting factors, is everybody below is afraid to do anything without the person above them, telling them specifically to do it and covering them for it. And, like, you know, the fact that we're not like, like, the U.S. is not like that at all. Like, we give our on-site commanders a huge amount of leeway to make decisions as conditions emerge. And it's one of our biggest strengths. But if you don't have that, and then they disrupt your command communications channel.

you just sort of paralyzed. And we saw that in the 12-day war for the first day or two, Iran, there was no real response. There was no nothing. It was because the government was just paralyzed. And supposedly, they've done a lot to try to fix that, you know, and we'll see how that plays out in real life if it comes to it.

But even then, with the Israelis basically having free reign for the first couple days and then going toe to toe, you know, after 12 days, the Israelis were tapping out, you know, and it wasn't because Israel was about to be destroyed. it was just because they realized, even with the Americans and the Jordanians and, you know, helping us defend these things, defend against these missiles, we can't get them to stop, you know? And so it's a, you know, basically when they tapped out, when they called up Trump and said, get us out of this, which is what that nuclear strike really was. It was just a way for us to say,

okay, we did the big thing, you know, we hit their nuclear site, now we can all go home happy. And the Iranians even can go home happy saying that they outlasts. you know, the Zionist empire or whatever. You know, that was, that was a, that was clearly a means, like a symbolic strike. I mean, you see it now, because they're all admitting now that, you know, it didn't accomplish what he said. Look, despite all the hype, Dale, the Ayatollah is an extremely conservative guy, maybe just as a function of how old he is.

And, you know, as I've often sort of paraphrase that, like, if you're the Ayatollah, what are you going to do with a problem like the USA? And the answer has been, it's really the same thing as Vladimir Putin, right? Is exercise virtually endless amounts of patience because what else the hell are you going to do? You can't do anything. We got, we're armed with the teeth with H-bombs and a conventional military, at least, you know, versus other conventional militaries that can get a job done. And so, you know, he took the very conservative way out last June and said,

look, Trump, I'm going to fire some missiles out an empty corner of your base, shoot them all down if you can. And here's an hour advance warning, symbolic sort of face saving thing. And now, look, it's easy to say, especially like if you're an anti-war guy, from my point of view, to just say, well, look, if we really go after regime change, then they're sure to unload every last thing they got. But maybe that's not true. I mean, maybe the Ayatollah would be afraid that, hell, even if he got taken out with a conventional bomb, that's still better than provoking an actual atomic attack from Donald.

Trump, which he might just do if he told the Iranian military to go ahead and unleash everything they got at our Navy and our Air Force. I would note the New York Times says they have a huge fleet of F-15's station in Jordan right now in the same place that they were last June being ready for this. But then, you know, I've talked about this hell for 20 years now. That's in the Wall Street Journal, I think yesterday's issue is that Iran has a lot of potential targets to hit back. Now, we still got American bases in Kurdistan and northern Iraq. We've got huge army bases, I think tens of thousands of troops in Kuwait. We got the 5th Fleet stationed at Bahrain. We've got the Al UDD Air Base in Qatar that hosts Central Command and the Air Force Central, whatever, coordination

cell thing it's called there. And the UK Air Force is also stationed there at Qatar. And then there's bases also in Saudi. I think Army and Air Force. bases in Saudi and Navy bases in Bahrain and in Oman. So all up and down the Persian Gulf, not to mention all those economic targets, but just American military targets there really are available. But so anyway, I'm going to unfairly ask you to predict the future and just say, like, based on historical knowledge, obviously states, state governments like to conflate themselves with the land that they are supposedly protecting, right? Are they really going to let themselves be destroyed and let somebody else have it? Or are they going to even risk taking their

whole nation down, their whole country down with their ruling regime? I mean, the fact that the fact that it's Donald Trump in the White House probably does give them a little bit more pause as far as the nuclear option than they would with a typical American president, you know, I would like to hope that if Trump ordered a nuclear strike on Iran, that some general would arrest him or something and, you know, just not do it. But there are, there are like, you know, from what I, from what I understand, like one of the first things that happened is like all of the top levels at the Pentagon were all replaced with straight up yes man when he came in.

And they nobody's going to, nobody's going to stand up to him if it comes to that. But, you know, look, I think that Iran is very concerned with, maintaining its relationships with Russia and China. Those are very, very important to its security in general. And so they're probably going to take their advice to up to a certain point, you know, maybe where they get back into a desperate corner, then maybe they would disregard it. And those two are almost certainly going to urge restraint, you know, maybe, well, you know, almost certain. I say that, but like, who knows, man? They might want to see the U.S. tied up in the Middle East like that again. I mean, it's worked out well for him last time, so who knows.

But yeah, I can't. It's really hard to predict the future for the simple reason that, you know, Trump tends to have these wild swings, you know, these art of the deal swings where he's demanding that, you know, you take all your tariffs off and send your, you know, Greenland's prime minister or whatever over to the U.S. to be put in the docks or something. And then, ah, well, we'll just kind of backs that off completely and, like,

changed it up. So who knows? What I can tell you, though, is it's very expensive and very disruptive to the rest of the overall mission of the U.S. military to stage this much equipment at forward bases around Iran like we're doing right now. This is not something, I mean, you know, it feels like, and this is why I'm really wary about predictions, is it feels like February of 2022 when Russia is showing all the signs, you know, that something's about to happen in Ukraine. But people, including myself, I was like, yeah, but they wouldn't do that, right? Like, what is the, just, I just, because you're used to them not doing it, you know?

And so like, you just, even though all the signs were there, you know, I still really didn't believe it was going to happen until it happened. And here, I mean, all the signs are there, dude. And the only thing that, you know, we can kind of hang our hat on and hope for is that our other regional allies are important to us, you know, Saudi Arabia is important to us. Jordan is important to us. They don't, you know, they don't have Epstein blackmail info on Trump like Israel does, but there's still, those relationships are important, you know, and the people who are, you know, just sort of the deep state GS-15 S-E-S-E-S employees, like, you know, the relationships are important

to them. And Turkey, for that matter. Turkey's kind of a wild card. I mean, we've already got Saudi Arabia saying that we can't use their airspace to do it. any of this. Turkey said you can't launch anything or do anything over our airspace. So already, like, your options are fairly limited. And if you get to the point where missiles aren't working and you feel like you need, I mean, I don't even want to think about troops on the ground. Because like, that's like a, that's like an institute the draft kind of war, you know? Yeah. That's like, that's like, that's like, a half a million men like going in. I don't even want to think about that. That's a different, we're in a whole different world if that happens. Well, you know, what they're

talking about. I mean, whether the trial balloon kind of thing is that, well, what we do is we would their regime so badly that the protests would start again and the people would then rise up and take the opportunity of the regime's weakness to overthrow them. That is a complete and total misreading of what those protests were about. You know, the protests started in Iran. They were not regime change protests, you know. They were a lot of like the middle class who was really upset that the Iranian currency had completely collapsed.

and they were out like protesting the IRGC's mismanagement of the water situation, things that are, you know, that are real grievances that people have against their governments, but they weren't regime change protests. It was once they started and Israel activated all of the networks that had been building up, the Kurds and the, you know, the networks in Balukistan and everywhere else, then you saw the people coming in with heavy weapons and machine guns and all of the killing started up. You know, that was a regular, organic government, you know, protest against the policies of the government and just the failures of a government that had an insurgency, a foreign-funded, foreign established insurgency made up, by the way, of a ton of non-Persians that sort of wrote on the back of that and came in and like took advantage of the chaos. And so the idea that, you know, just all those people who were doing that, who Iran rounded up and killed, like, you know, a lot of the real insurgent types, that all those people who were there to begin with, you know, protesting the water shortage and stuff, that they're going to go out in the streets and demand that the Ayatollah be beheaded again because Israel and America or attack, that is not going to happen. It's just, there's a total misreading of what, you know, the political situation is over.

Well, look, and as long as we're on that, we got to talk about the absolutely completely preposterous, numbers of dead coming out of the monarchist factions and, you know, the neocons and whoever trying to lie us into this war, there's a great bit of Max Blumenthal destroying the Israeli IDF spokesman on the Pierce Morgan show where, you know, he knows the name of the guy who's the monarchist activist out of Germany, who's coming up with this number 30,000 people killed. I mean, man, you're talking about the Ayatollah would have had to carpet bomb West Tehran. I'm talking about some massive battlefield like the Somme full of casualties or something, like 30,000 people. How in the world could they have possibly killed 30,000 people?

They couldn't have, is the answer to that. They're obviously lying. The numbers are low thousands at the highest, and I'm not even sure it's proven that they rounded up and shot anyone. As far as I know, all those people died in fighting. I never saw yet proof of a single massacre of protesters. anywhere. Yeah. And so the whole idea that they were that they were like massacring unarmed protesters, it's just, you know, just the actual information that we have publicly available just does not support that at all. You know, this was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

protest against the water situation and the, and the currency collapse and everything, those went on for a while. There was no killing. You know, there were people out in the streets. There were, it's like one of the things you see, like, some of the pictures and videos, they'll be like, oh, look, this high government official is out with the protesters. This is a big deal. This means they're turning on each other. It's like, that's not an anti-go- I mean, some of them, they did that. They said that and it was a pro-government, like, you know, pro-regime demonstration, but some of them weren't. But they were like, yeah, like, oh, that, yeah, that guy's something else. Yeah. Yeah, here's the president.

But other ones where they were actual protests, you know, they were protests against the economic situation, stuff like that. They weren't anti-regime just like tear down the regime protests. And so I'm highly skeptical that the Iranian regime can be brought down with standoff weapons, you know, with with with Tom. I just, you know, look at, look at Ukraine. Look how much damage Ukraine has absorbed over the last few years. And they're still hanging in there. It sucks to be in Kiev right now in the middle of winter and everything, but they're still going. And it would be a mistake, I think, to underestimate the resolve of the IRGC and just the regime in general to, you know, to maintain itself over what it very rightly at this point, you know, considers an existential threat. I mean,

the fact that the 12-day war happens, and I was asking somebody who was kind of, you know, I wouldn't say he's like pro-war, like War-like Warhock type, but he was kind of, you know, he was of like trying to sell me on like what the benefits to a regime change could be or whatever. And, you know, one of the things that I asked him was just tell me like what, what has happened since the end of the 12-day war that has caused us to decide we have to go back in there. Like what, what Casas Bel-A has Iran provided us since the end of the 12-day war? What are they done to provoke what's now being built up? And of course, there's nothing.

He couldn't give me an answer. this is a smart guy who did want to defend that position, but he couldn't because they haven't done anything. And so if you're in that position, right, like if you and I get in a fight and it's sort of a stalemate, but you didn't want the fight to begin with, and I did, but it ended in a stalemate. And then I just show up again. You haven't done anything to me since then or anything like that, but I just show up to your house again, ready to fight. You're going to come to the conclusion that this dude's never going to stop. There's nothing I can do to placate these people. And so, So at a certain point, like, we've got to put our back against the wall and just swing as hard as we can.

And, you know, if they think that, if they think that the Iranian leadership, the IRGC leadership, the religious leadership, if they think that they are afraid of dying in a war against what they see as the great Satan, you know, nothing about Shiite Islam, like, at all. Like, it is the last people that are worried about dying in a war and what they would consider. a holy war. I mean, from the inside of their worldview, it 100% is that. I mean, it's the, it's the global enemy, the world enemy that is, you know, mounting all its forces surrounding you and coming after you. Why? To take out the Islamic regime, you know, and so to them, you know, it is a holy war. And, and these people aren't going to just back down and fall apart, you know. Again, like, we may have capabilities on station that we're not aware of that, you know, and intelligence on certain government officials and stuff

that allows us to just paralyze their command structure and just create enough chaos that, you know, things kind of fall apart. But I wouldn't count on that, man. I just, I just would not count on that. So if there was going to be some kind of a Venezuela-style coup, you know, where we change the regime, but really we just sort of like reset relations

with the same regime by getting rid of the guy at the top or whatever, if that was going to happen and would have happened during the 12-day war. And we talked about during or after that war how the Israelis did this really nasty, nasty dishonorable tactic where, you know, they'd been killing all these government officials and generals in the initial sneak attack. And at the same time, while the Iranian command and control infrastructure, the communications infrastructure was all shut down, nobody knew what was going on. They had Mossad agents calling up Iranian generals and telling them, Hey, you know, all these people are dead.

Your family's next unless you go on TV and denounce. And you know what? Nobody did it. Not a single one did it. And that should tell you something, you know, that, you know, people should understand the, in the most recent Iranian elections, the far right party, the one that didn't win. Like, it's to the right of the one that did win. Got like 19% of the vote. That's almost 20 million people.

You know, there is a hard. in that country that is not going to bend. And you're going to have to contend with them even if you do have a regime change, you know, at the time. You know, like, all this talk that the Shah has. Yeah, I mean, the country is not called Persian Shia-Stan. It's called Iran, and there are all different factions who are whatever degrees of patriots and nationalists

about Iran, whether they agree with the religion of the Supreme leader whatsoever or not. You got Balukis and Sunni Arabs and Azeris and Kurds. They're not all just what? We're supposed to pretend and assume that they're all chomping at the bit to rise up, overthrow the regime or tear the country into ten pieces or whatever. Why would you think that? I remember, I'm sorry, am I repeat myself, Seymour Hirsch back 20 years ago,

had a piece on this about, you know, where he's quoting, you know, consultants and advisors to the Pentagon about this. saying that, look, man, this would be like if Iranians came and tried to bribe a bunch of Southern Confederate flag-wave and rednecks to turn against Washington, D.C. Well, I'll have you know that ever since they lost the Civil War, they're the most patriotic Americans of all. And you're not going to turn, you're not going to make traitors out of them, you know? You get them to fight on behalf of some foreign regime dropping some guns in and, you know, turn, even against the Democrats. You know what I mean? No way.

I mean, especially when they have lots of examples. You know, like right now in my, I'm just wrapping up the research phase for my next World War II episode. And, you know, a lot of it's going to be about the German revolution and the revolutions in Eastern Europe right after the First World War. And one of the things you notice going through all the German newspapers at the time and everything in Austria as well is all of them talking about Russian conditions, the Russian situation. Russian conditions are going to come here. They knew what was going on over in Russia after they had. their revolution. And they were terrified of what of that coming to their country. And a lot of like, you know, the really brutal violence that the socialist government unleashed against the far left

socialist, the Spartacist in Germany, was because they were afraid of that coming here. And here, I mean, Iran, even if you don't like the regime, you know, you can look at Syria. You can look at Libya. You can look at Iraq and be like, I don't want that, you know, and that's clearly what Israel and America want for us. And so, you know, taking, I can take their side. That's not going to save me from the chaos of a civil war and a famine and like, you know, a complete and total. And so, yeah, I mean, the only people who ever, who are going to do that are, are real just sort of mercenary militant types, you know, because there is no group that is like so oppressed in Iran, like they have their, look, every, every country's got their issues, you know what I mean? And some more than

others and Iran may be more than Vermont, fine. But it's not one of these countries where like, you know, for example, like you have an entire population of people locked up with, you know, behind a wall with remote control robot machine guns facing inward to keep them away. And if they try to do an unarmed protest at the border fence, your snipers shoot a few thousand. They don't have anything like that, for example. And so, you know, there's not this like big population of people in there who if you can just get them organized and armed and activated, they'll be the ones to, that just doesn't exist, you know, and this isn't Syria where you have an al-a-white minority government that was put in there a long time ago ruling over a Sunni majority or something.

You know, you would really need to convince a lot of just ordinary Iranians that it's better to side with a couple countries that, whether you like the Ayatollah or not, want to see your country destroyed. And most people are just not going to do that. And Americans have all all people should understand that, you know? Of course. All right, let's do a little bit of business, and then we're going to change the subject to another important subject. All right, first of all,

everybody should go sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. Don't you know that tomorrow we're going to do, as we do at the end of every month, we do a live Q&A with all of the lifetime subscribers to the Academy? So that could even be, Daryl could ask me questions if he wanted to since he's a lifetime subscriber. You guys are going to want to check that out. It's me on the Terror Wars and the Cold War and a lot of other great experts on a lot of other great stuff.

And then I'm also sponsored by Moondos Artisan Coffee, which tastes very good. And I get emails like this. People email me and go, man, that's some really good coffee. And it really is. It's the best selling coffee at Moondos Artisan Coffee. Get it. Starbucks supports the war party, and particularly in Israel. And so Moondos does not.

They support peace. They support this show. And they support my other show, too. So get a picture of that their QR code or just go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. And it will forge you right on to Scott Horton flavored coffee, which is really good stuff. And then most importantly here, I have to tell you about Matt Sersely. He is the agorist tax advice. Agaristtaxadvice.com is the website.

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aggristaxadvice.com, and he's not just an accountant, he's a lawyer, so you can tell him all your dirty secrets, too, that you did, and he'll help figure out how to keep you out of jail. Okay, so, thanks for that. Now, let's talk about some other things, man. The Epstein files, they release millions of them.

Here's what I want to say about that. I think we should do a big show next week on that. What I know is... had time to get into it too much. Yeah, and I looked at some of the screenshots of some of the most, you know, salacious accusations against Trump, for example, and they're all just kind of in this spreadsheet, and they all kind of have no verification whatsoever on any of them. Somebody said that somebody else said that this happened to them 17 years ago or whatever, and Trump's name comes up in there a few different times, but in some of them, they even call him President

Trump, meaning these tips didn't even come in until after he was sworn in in 2017. and this kind of thing. So these are not contemporary claims from back in 1993. This is, you know, whatever. A lot of it is, or it's emails where you don't really know what it means.

Like, for example, Epstein writing to Bill Gates about that time that you wanted me to get you some antibiotics for your wife, buddy. Like, that's not exactly confirmation, although writing that two gates, I think, anyway. But here's what I think we should. I will tell you real quick

that somebody I know, who is a VC in Silicon Valley, has been for a long time, very connected. When we were talking about that story in a group chat, he didn't confirm it or anything, but he said that kind of tracks. Yeah, the guy was the richest guy in the world for a long time, and he's such a nerd.

I mean, obviously he's got an Israeli pimp to furnish young Slavic women or whatever, you know? How is he not doing that? He's Bill Gates, for Christ's sake. All right. Goodness. So, but I don't have any particular need to be first. I want to see what comes out with that.

And we're short on time. So I want to let you talk about Minneapolis for 10 minutes here. I'm very interested in your take on what all is going on there. I want to say, as we often have talked about, you know, everybody likes to cherry pick parts of the story, this and that way. We discuss this a little bit when we were talking about the lady and the Honda pilot getting shot. And like, the people who supported a shooting never seemed to notice that she was trying to back up and do like a three-point turnaround type deal and get away, you know, backup left to so to get between the guy and the other truck, you know. Well, I would like to point out that there's a couple of things that are really wrong with police training in America, poorly or highly trained.

And you see this over and over again. that if a cop sees a gun on a guy, they train him to say, gone, gone, gone, in a panic, as loud as he can, the implication being that it is being used or something, when the guy could have just as easily have said, he has a gun in the small of his back, I'm going for it now, right?

Hold his hands, Jimmy, I'm going for the gun in his waistband. Right, he could have said that. Instead, he goes, gone, gone, gone. So everybody panics. Then it just so happens and you're a gun guy a lot more than me, DRL, you explain. The gun is a sig. The P320 is, is that what it is,

that misfires all the damn time and it misfired. And what do cops do when they hear a gunshot and they know it wasn't one of theirs? They assume. And instead of assuming that it was a misfire, they assumed that it was a shot at then. There's no reason to think that they thought, oh, goody, now I get to pretend that I think I'm in danger or whatever, right? They overreacted, but they overreacted based on really bad training.

That if you see a gun, you're supposed to panic, and you're supposed to induce panic in all of your fellow officers immediately. And then if you hear a shot, you're never supposed to consider that it was one of your fellow officers who accidentally misfired. And I've seen these before. There was, I can't remember which case it was, where is a stack of SWAT cops come in the house, and the one cop shoots the other cop in the house.

back in front of them. And then they all open fire and wax the innocent guy in his home kind of thing. This happens from time, time. But I just notice how everybody seemed to notice the misfire at first, but then they really leave that out a lot and make it where it was purely a cold-blooded execution, which it wasn't, I still think it was completely wrong and their stupid fault and they're completely responsible. But maybe it's manslaughter, not first-degree murder or something. I don't know. But what do you think about that? And on top of that, all the reactions and all the points of view and everything, because that's what really counts, right?

Is as Solilinsky, the Kami put it in Rules for Radicals, page 74, and I learned this from the Birchers, by the way, thank you very much. The action is in the reaction of the opposition. And so that's the purpose of this kind of leftist street theater is to provoke crises and counter reactions and counter reactions and that kind of deal. So now you say a bunch of wise things. Mr. Historian. Well, I'll try not to make this too much of an I told you so,

because I've been arguing with all my right wing buddies who have been on the same page as me on the immigration issue for years. You know, I've been talk. I've been an immigration restrictionist very publicly for a long time, way before it was cool, and, you know, my credentials on that are unassailable as far as I'm concerned. My concern from the beginning, when this Minneapolis stuff started to happen,

even before the Brunei Good shooting, So I'm watching these videos, and I think it's probably, it didn't really occur to me until a little bit later. I think it's because I did time and I spent 10 years in the military and another 10 with the DoD, that when I see guys in uniform representing the U.S. government who are just not behaving in a way that reflects the dignity of the uniform, they're, they're, and that these guys were not. They were going around the streets very clearly looking for a fight a lot of the times, you know, looking around, like expecting to get hassled and not looking to de-escalate when it happened. And my concern with it from the very beginning is that this is going to kill any chance we have

of actually accomplishing any real immigration reform or deportations that are going to change our trajectory at all. And look what happened. All the people out there who were saying, Daryl's a cuck because he's saying that the ICE guys or the Border Patrol guy shouldn't a shot the woman or this guy or whatever. Like he's gone soft on immigration. Well, look what happened. Trump is now saying anybody with a college degree, any illegal immigrant who has held a job and can show it, they can stay. They can stay. So congratulations to all the people out there who got their rocks off, seeing a couple libtards, get shot. You know, you guys had your fun being Israelis for for a couple days posting, you know, FAAFO after a picture of, you know, one of these people getting shot.

Congratulations. I hope the emotional satisfaction was worth it to all you guys because now they're pulling back. They're restricting, you know, and narrowing the mission of immigration enforcement right now. Because, you know, look, the fact is like those things, whatever you think about the, you know, the moment of the shooting, you know, whether that cop was at, you know, maybe not, maybe. Was he, like, legally at fault? You know, can he be charged with a crime based on the discharge of his weapon into this? Whatever you think about that, the American people have spoken on it. They are not down with what is going on in Minneapolis.

And when you go to the American people, because you wouldn't poll them, even now, you pull them, and they want all the illegal immigrants deported. But, you know, like something that was a poll, like, even CNN put it. I was like 55%. This was after the most recent shooting, still want all illegal immigrants deported. But that's really just American, that's just saying 55% of people think that the law should be respected. If you go to those people and say, okay, your options are deport people and have these groups of uniform thugs going around the street, just harassing people that they come across and creating these incidents and having a couple people get shot every month or so until the job's done. Or no immigration or lighter immigration enforcement, there's a lot of people, they just want order on their street.

man. They don't, they want stability. They do not. And, and ice came into this city, into Minneapolis, and they did not bring order. They did not. And look, I'm not saying, look, I understand that there were organized protest movements that were probably organized at very high levels, fun at high levels, that were provoking all this stuff, that the things that have happened were exactly the plan for some of these high level protest groups. I get that. But that's why you don't give them what they want. And ice came in and gave them exactly what they wanted. And not by design, by the way, I don't think. I was talking to a friend of mine, 15-year Border Patrol guy who I got, actually, I've heard this from a couple, a couple of guys that I've known for a long time in Border Patrol, one in New Mexico, another in San Diego. They both told me the same stories, dude. Like, and these are both guys who, by the way, defended the officer who shot Renee Good, you know, based on the circumstances of that.

after the intervening, you know, the events after that and then the most recent shooting, and even after that, that more recent video came out showing that the guy who got shot was a douchebag protester, you know, was a problem. They all said the same thing, that like these, these guys are very just going in there very unprofessional, you know, going. One of the things they said, too, well, two things they said. One is they said, we knew this was going to happen. as soon as the Trump administration came out crowing that they doubled ICE in Border Patrol in the last year.

Because how do you do that? You do that by taking any asshole off the street who can pass a drug test today and can, you know, in a background check that shows that he doesn't have any felonies or something. You just pull them in and send them in there. You're not getting, like, you just, you can't do the quality control

if you're ramping up that fast, scaling up that fast. If you look, Trump lowered the training requirement, to be a Border Patrol officer from five months, which it's always been down to 47 and then 45 or 42 days. And so when you start seeing stuff like that, you watch these videos and you realize this is what we're looking at. We're looking at guys who got just over a month of training.

We're given a gun. You watch some of those videos, dude. And this blew me away. And it didn't occur to me until my Border Patrol friend pointed it out why it was, is you watch one of these videos. And it's not exactly that the guys are in civilian clothes, But you'll see some in like he has like his Border Patrol pants and hat, but not a jacket or shirt. It's because they don't have enough uniforms for all these guys to go out and do this stuff.

So that's, this is like, you know, 2003 Iraq war thing. We're sending guys out, we didn't even have the equipment to give them yet. And so you have a bunch of these guys who do not have the training or the experience because the veteran officers don't want to go do this shit. You know, this is a lot of young guys that are being sent out there because the veteran officers are pulling rank and they don't want to be involved in it. A lot of them aren't trained for it, period. You know, the idea that you're going to take, like, border patrol guy, like the commander, Bovino, you know, this dude was, he was the commander down in El Centro, California, very, very hot border zone.

I mean, cartels, you got helicopters in the air with crew served weapons looking for cartels coming through, right? You bring that guy in and you say, go police the suburbs of Minneapolis. You know, this is a guy who, when we have a problem with American law enforcement having a military mindset anyway, you take a guy from a place where that's probably appropriate. You know, he's got like heavily armed cartel members that they're dealing with out there. And you send that guy in, you're going to just, you're asking for trouble, you know. And let me, let me ask you this, because I think we talked about this before Darry, but it's

worth raising the possibility that this is sabotage. Now, on one hand, this is the perennial question always is stupidity or the plan. Right. So on one hand, You know it'll be fun? Go out there and crack some skulls and drive them immigrants out and this and that on this idiot high time preference, right? But then there's like the slightest bit of wisdom whatsoever about approaching this issue, which is we have tens of millions of people to deport. If we're going to do that, it's going to be a massive widespread thing. We need to beat all of us.

The watchword is always use the minimum amount of board. necessary. It's a civil infraction. These people are, they're supposed to be even arrested and deported still. You don't have to go around with ski masks on and cracking people over the head. And, you know, I did read a thing that said, you know, these guys had been in Chicago, I think, and in L.A. And then, but Minneapolis is a much smaller city. So they gave sort of the whole city an opportunity to interact with them. They're kind of everywhere. And then I don't know if you saw the press conference where it was all the different police

chiefs, the sheriffs and the police chiefs all held a big press conference denouncing these guys. This was, I think, a couple of days before the guy was shot, denouncing these cops for pulling even cops after hours are getting pulled over by eyes. And they're basically just going door to door or pulling people over at random. Like anybody who looks brown pulling them over and checking their papers. So they're not looking for illegal immigrants. that they know who they're looking for at all.

And they think that they're in this apartment complex or another. They're just randomly screwing around with Minneapolisians. And like, what do you think is going to happen? And, of course, Trina, and it's funny, because this is my very first interaction with a police officer out in the wild when I was 11 years old, was absolutely screaming in my face, you know, drill sergeant from full metal jacket, absolute and total disrespect from government employee to his better.

And I've hated them all ever since then. And I've seen very few cops give me reason to respect them any more than that first one I ever met. And it's funny to see these people go, well, gee, our cops on the way home from work are being treated like that by ice. And they can't stand it. They're ready to revolt. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, welcome to. That's what it's like to be a civilian in this country and have to deal with a cop, too.

but apparently like they're that far out of line that they're not getting any leeway from the local police around there whatsoever either yeah i want to answer i want to answer jw's there go ahead yeah i want to answer one of the commenters who he's he's he's repeating the lines that i've been arguing with my right wing buddies in group chats for the last several weeks now say we have three years to accomplish this we don't have the luxury of time and he said, there's no way to accomplish this and have it be pretty. It's going to be ugly

and we just need to be prepared to accept that that's how it's going to be. Wake up, dude. Trump is on course right now if he just maintains the pace he's on now. He's on course to deport about 1.2 million people over the course of his entire turn. 1.2. That is a drop in the freaking bucket.

Biden was bringing 750,000 people in every three, months for four years. It took us decades to dig this hole. It is going to take a long time for us to dig ourselves out of it, which means we need to focus on maintaining consistent public support over the long term. You know, we had won the immigration debate, you know, like when Trump got reelected after everything that had happened, when he got put back into office, the immigration debate was over, dude. Like in terms of like just the public debate, it was over, or the illegal immigration debate at least. That debate was one. It was a long Minneapolis over the last month has hit the reset

button on that. And we might be like in the hole again on the immigration debate because of this, because of this stuff. And like you can't think like that. You're not going to accomplish this in three years. It's there you could put the entire U.S. Army on it. You're not going to accomplish it in three years. It's going to take a long time. It's going to have to probably go through some Democratic administrations, which means that you need to win the debate, thoroughly enough with the American people that even a Democrat president is a little bit hesitant to not to be, to you look that as soft on immigration. And that was within our reach. And the behavior of these ice guys in Minneapolis and the Border Patrol guys who are up there,

who I give a little bit more leeway, they're not, they're just not trained for this kind of thing, you know, but the behavior of them, not just the shootings, that's only one thing that people are upset about. It's, they're watching the videos where there is no shooting. And they're like, why are they talking to those people like that? Why are they cursing at them and threatening them? Why are they putting their guns in their face when they're not being threatening at all? Just to sort of control them and get them to do to get them to back down and like show who's boss. Like local law enforcement doesn't do that.

You lose your freaking job if you just put a gun in a guy's face on camera just because they were giving you shit. Like you see that like people see that stuff and they think that, you know, what is. It looks like to people, and rightly so, it looks like chaos. It does not look like order. It does not look like stability. And the people who want, you know, there's like a small, hardcore on Twitter who they want immigration reform because they want subhumans deported back to the shithole countries they came from or whatever.

Those people exist. Do not overestimate your numbers if you're one of those people. You need the support of people who just want stability and order and respect for the law in the country. And you were not going to maintain support from those. people with ICE behaving this way. Like, he's just not going to. And we've already seen that. You know, independence, even Republicans. Like, you know, still heavily, heavily support Trump, obviously. It's a very partisan polarized country. But it's declined. And independence,

support for his immigration policies completely collapsed. And it's not because they think he's not going hard enough, you know. And so you have to think long term. This is a long term project. And we're not going to win it in three years. You have to like, you just, It drives me freaking nuts because, you know, it's almost, you know what it reminds me of? A lot of right wingers on this issue over the last month or so remind me of like, you have like a military unit in the field and you have an entrenched bunkered machine gun nest right in front of you. And they think that anything other than charging right at it is that's, that's cuff shit. You know, that's for pussies.

Oh, yeah, there might be a way to go around and flank them from the other side, but no, I'm a man. I'm not doing that. We're charging that machine gun mess. Don't be stupid, man. This is a long-term project, and public support matters. And we see that now. All the people who were saying, who are arguing with me, and some of you were in the comments, you know, in the last couple weeks.

Look at what's happening now. Trump is backing down his rhetoric. Administration officials are throwing each other under the bus. Republican senators are coming out and attacking ICE. I mean, you've got police associations coming out and coming out against ICE. Like, this stuff matters. man. This is not going to be accomplished in Trump's next three years. Okay, this is going to be accomplished if it's accomplished in 20 years. And you've got to accept that and start thinking in those

terms. And I know a lot of the younger people, they don't have that kind of patience. And I don't blame them because politics to them, like, you know, if you came of age and voting age in like 2015, a lot of people now, all you've ever known is just complete chaotic politics where things go all the way this way and all the way that way and you can just do things. I think those of us who are just like maybe a little bit older, like we're really amazed that things have even come as far as they have on a lot of these issues. We're kind of blown away by that. But you have to understand that like this is something that's going to take a long time. And in order for for it to work, you have to maintain public support. And that doesn't mean being soft. It doesn't mean letting, you know,

the left, giving them a heckler's veto, you know, to just set up a protest and like, well, they showed up, I guess we have to back down. It's not about that. People need to be able to watch these videos, though, and see the guys wearing the uniform of the U.S. government and say, well, you know, yeah, a guy got shot or got like beat up or taken down or whatever, but they were acting professional. You know, he came at them and they did what they had to do. People are not watching these videos and coming away with that conclusion. And so that, that is my gripe about this, is that it's going to harm our hope of actually accomplishing, you know, what we've all been talking. about wanting to do with immigration.

And it's already doing that. You know, this is one reason why, and I have moved to the right, the left has pushed us all to the right on a lot of things over the last little while here. And the Biden people, especially, it's not immigration. It's mass migration from other civilizations in the global south

who are not part of the West at all who are coming here by the tens of millions. We just can't assimilate people that quickly. And especially when Americans don't even believe in liberty at all anymore. How the hell are they going to inculcate libertarian ideas or even just basic American Declaration of Independence type ideas into the minds of all the immigrants

when they're all a bunch of communists in the first place? So, and I mean all you right-winger's too. So, yeah, I'm with you. That's like, yeah, somebody's got to call a break on that. But you can't, as Justin Ramondo would have said, you can't have a country without a border, man. But, but yeah, you can't, you obviously cannot reverse all this by creating the kind of, you know, merciless and lawless totalitarian-type police state that

people are only going to rebel against, which is why I go, maybe it's just a rhetorical question. Maybe the answer is, no, it's just stupidity, not the plan. But I think, you know, there's an argument for, look, man, big business wants these immigrants and they want to sabotage this thing. So that's why whoever told, even chose Bovino or whispered in his ear, tell your guys to go out there and be as rough as they can, we're trying to get this thing completely delegitimized by February.

If that was the conspiracy, then they would have accomplished it. And after all, mass migration isn't just the Democrats. It is big business, wants all that because it relieves upward pressure on labor costs, especially in agribusiness

and in, you know, hospitality and whatever. And so it's bad enough. And it might as all be sabotaged, Daryl. like to me. Yeah, I mean, illegal immigration is just outsourcing for industries that are location dependent. You know, you can't ship an agricultural field overseas. You can't, a hotel has to be where it is. The nanny, child care has to happen where the children are. It's just, but it's just outsourcing

or offshoring for things that can't move. Real quick, somebody on there said, let Scott get a word in. Scott had to get a molar out today, so I'm trying to carry the load here, okay? So cut me some slack on that. sorry. Gerald's doing right. But, yeah, I guess we should. We're run a little late. So let's get to the Epstein stuff next week. Yeah, that's too much.

And we'll have more time to look into it then. Yeah. Whoever the guy was, KGIV or whatever, who I was answering, if you're on Twitter or shoot me a direct message if you want to continue talking about this. Because I, like, we want the same thing. And I think that the attack we're taking on this, or that we were taking, up to this point has been destructive to our shared goal. And so let's talk about that some more.

Or shoot me an email, and we can email about it. Martyrmaid at gmail.com, and I will answer you. And I just remember what I was going to say, which was I sort of avoided this issue for so long just because it's so divisive. And I really only care, not even about making all Americans libertarians. I want all Americans to be anti-war. And so I want to get along with everyone. I want to be anti-sectarian.

And this is one of those issues that just divides left and right so severe. that I kind of stayed away from it for that reason. But then again, like you said, it's supermajorities of the population were one over to the right wing point of view on this. No, not amnesty. Deport. That was 64% super majority said deport them last summer, or summer before last, sorry, in the summer of 24. And so, hell, that's the centrist, moderate position at this point anyway, where liberal Democrats agree as well. But then, so more to the point about behavior like this on camera, like, you know, the way that they do it for their own public relations,

for their own base is just, you know. Oh, yeah, you know what? Let me respond to one thing you said. I forget to respond to. As far as like the sabotage question, if they were trying to, yeah, it probably would look like this. But you don't have to because any red-blooded American, especially the type who would want to join ICE or Border Patrol probably cares about

the issue, you know, is a conservative-minded person probably. You go out in the street and you have some dude, like the, what is name, pretty, the pretty guy, like the way he was behaving in the video that came out later. It was a couple weeks before the shooting. The natural response you're confronted with somebody like that

is you want to beat their ass. And it takes a tremendous amount of discipline, good leadership, and extensive training to keep that from happening. It's not like these guys aren't going to be saints. If I was, if I was one of those guys and I went in there, I probably would do the same thing. I'd be acting the same way because I'm not trained to deal with somebody who gets in my face like that. You know, I'm going to respond the way I normally respond when that happens.

It takes training and discipline and leadership. That is what we need. We need people who, when they see the people who are coming into your city to enforce America's immigration laws, they know that the law is coming, order is coming. Not that, you know, just a bunch of dudes who are going to come in and kick some ass. Like people do not want that on their streets, regardless of their position on the immigration issue. Yep. All right. His substack is subscribe.

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