Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:38 - Iran War Update

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

Darryl Cooper and guest-host Buck Johnson of the Counterflow podcast discuss the ongoing war between Israel and most of the Middle East, but especially Iran and Lebanon, with Israel still receiving the full partnership and backing of the United States government. Darryl and Buck give their analysis of the latest updates and outlook on what is to come. Chapters: 0:35 Welcome / Introducing Buck Johnson 2:23 Current Events Overview 2:37 Military Movements and Strategies 4:04 Trump's Communications and Messaging 9:17 Disjointed Information and Public Perception 12:00 Social Media's Impact on News 14:29 Changing Nature of Propaganda 18:29 Navigating Political Pressure 19:46 Netanyahu's Influence and Perspective 24:02 The Push for Escalation 28:16 Military Readiness for Ground War 32:51 Iran's Long-Term Strategy 35:32 Drone Capabilities and Threats 37:32 Analyzing Pro-Trump Narratives 41:04 Disappointment in Political Dynamics 46:01 Tulsi's Silence and Political Responsibility 48:31 The Role of Influential Voices 55:49 Acknowledging Thomas Massey's Integrity 58:02 Tucker Carlson's Influence on the Right 1:06:07 Netanyahu's Power Moves and Dynamics 1:07:56 Discussion of Orthodox Christianity 1:11:36 Closing Thoughts and Resources Buck's links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Counterflow/videos X: https://x.com/buckrebel Website: https://www.counterflowpodcast.com (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

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 Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton, debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. This is provoked. We are live, sir. Hello.

Daryl Cooper. It said Scott Horton and Daryl Cooper supposed to be on tonight. Scott is absent. I actually thought he was going to be on. I spoke with him on the phone. For those who have no idea who I am joining this, I'm very honored. My name is Buck Johnson. I host the Counterflow podcast.

My voice does not usually sound like this. Of course, the day that I get asked to come on a show like this, I'm hit with allergies in Texas. And I'm honored to be here. What's up, Darrell? How are you, sir? Doing all right, brother. I'm glad to have you here.

Thanks for doing this. everybody, this is kind of my fault. Scott mentioned to me last week that he was going to be traveling today and so we were going to do this show yesterday, but then I forgot. And so we scrambled and Buck's taken care of us. So we will have Scott back next week, but I'm super stoked to have you here. Buck. I'm super stoked to be here. Yeah. Darrell tells me right before he said, we ought to go on. And I said, I thought we're waiting for Scott. And he goes, brother, it's just you and me. Oh, boy. And I've always wanted to have Daryl on my show, so in a way, this can be a good back and forth like I would want to do anyway.

There you go. I wish there was things going on in the world that gave us something to talk about. I mean, yeah, we've got some interesting weather here. We could discuss that. Yes, yes. We can, if for those of you who don't know what my show is, I'm an Orthodox Christian, and so there's a lot of the ways we view things that are happening in the world right now, and we are more than welcome to get into that too if you want, Daryl.

Whatever you want. You're the host. I'm not good at hosting. You control the flow. Got it. Let's do this. So you said when we were talking offline while ago, you were catching up on the current events of the day or the last few days.

That's something that I almost don't do enough, I would say, because some of it gets frustrating and I can get bogged down into these small details. And then tomorrow, boom, something else has happened. Can you catch us up on? what's going on. Yeah, I mean, like you said, I have really just spent like the last hour kind of catching up on today's headlines because I've been working on the World War II episode since basically since I woke up. So, you know, I guess there are a couple of headlines today to really think about. The first one is very recent. Trump just, or actually, let's back

this one up. Let's put that one third. So I would say the big news today is that apparently we're sending a marine expeditionary unit somewhere, you see 2,500, maybe 5,000 Marines that we are sending over to the region from Okinawa. I was trying to, I was asking some of my old Navy buddies, you know, those marine transport ships are like some of the few ships that I've never actually sailed on. I've been on most every other class of ship that we've got, but not one of those. And so I couldn't remember what the top speed of those things are, but however you

slice it, those things are a week and a half, two weeks away from the region. And so, you know, I guess you can, unless it's just some kind of mill deck, you know, you can take some information from that, that either, you know, maybe they're doing this just as a threat, as a show of force, a way of getting Iran to expose some of their forces by concentrating for a defense, something like that. But if they are meant for operations, then, you know, that right there tells you that that the people making the decisions think this is still going to be live in two weeks or so. The second piece of information was that apparently, I think this happened two, three days ago, and they're just reporting it now. But in Saudi Arabia, an Iranian missile took out five Air Force refueling tankers. And this is, this came out today in the wake of yesterday. Two KC-135 refueling tankers went down. One of them crashed.

Six people on board died. And then the other one was damaged and, you know, probably repairable, but it was able to land. And, you know, that's significant just because a significant amount of our firepower in this war so far is coming from carrier-based aircraft. And so those, and, you know, we haven't been able to move our carriers too close to the combat zone for fear of drone and missile attacks. And so the F-18s that we're using for strike aircraft from those carriers, they're coming from a long ways away. And so those refueling tankers are actually really necessary to keep up the rate of sorties. that we've been doing so far. And then the third one,

which this is just before we came on air, basically, and this is related, I assume, to the first one, is that Trump put out a true social post saying that we just did, you know, and who knows if he's just being normal Trump hyperbolic, but one of the biggest bombing runs in the history of the Middle East, taking out all of the military sites on Karg Island,

which is the, which is the island way up in the Gulf by Kuwait, where 90% of Iran, they don't process or refine their oil there, but it's where their oil goes before it gets shipped out. And so it's where their ships go to pick it up to bring it out to where they're going to go. It's like 90% of their oil goes out from there.

And Iran is building another one right now on the actual mainland, but it's not finished. And so that's interesting. And it was really interesting to me because just yesterday, I was talking to Scott about this. I was talking to a friend of mine, former Air Force pilot, who still knows a lot of people.

He's very well connected in the defense establishment, especially on the airside, but just in general. And he told me yesterday that just the night before, so it would be like a day and a half ago now, our time,

that a whole bunch of tier one guys and support units flew out for an operation that was looking like it was scheduled for this weekend. And he said from the, you know, from the description he got, you know, the guy wasn't super specific, but it sounded like an island operation. And now today, you know, and by the way, I talked to Scott yesterday. I told him that and I brought it up to him. And he had heard from a separate source, former, you know, combat vet who still has a lot of buddies in the spec ops community.

I heard the exact same thing from him from direct from one of that guy's friends that this thing's happening. And, you know, the scary part was that, according to my Air Force buddy and his contacts, that there are a lot of guys in the community who are very worried that this hasn't been thought out very thoroughly. And that they're going to be way more exposed to counterfire of various types than we're planning for, you know, that we're not, we don't have a blocking force in preparation. I mean, just a lot of preparatory work that apparently hasn't gone into it. And so I don't know. but I will say that hearing that yesterday from those guys

when it was nowhere in the news and then seeing today Trump say that we just smashed up all the military defensive sites on that island, you know, it sounds like something's going to happen there. And if that does happen, then we're going to be in a different phase of this war one way or another for sure.

I mean, you know, we take that island and secure it in a way that we can hold it, which, you know, again, seems very dangerous at this point. obviously the Iranians still have a lot of missile and drone forces available, and who knows what defenses they still have on the island itself or whatever we land there. But if we were to secure it, you know, that's a huge chip that we have, you know, over in our stack that we can put out there to try to force a negotiated surrender of some kind or, you know, some kind of negotiated ceasefire.

on the other hand, if we go in there unprepared and we get smashed up, I mean, I don't think anybody expects Trump to say, oh, well, they won, we lost. I guess that was a bad idea and go home, you know, at that point, we're going to probably be talking about major escalations. And so we'll just have to wait and see, you know, hopefully cooler heads prevail, but they haven't so far. You alluded to something that I wanted to ask you about. Your friends said some of the people at their level aren't sure exactly what the

larger goal or plan here is. There's aspects of this that seem disjointed from the very top to the very bottom that there's, you know, even in the media, we hear different things. It's not a war or, oh, we're about done with this or this is just a small escalation or not, we're winning, we won. And then you see, you know, they're not allowing the news to report on the damage in Israel.

Does it feel disjointed to you as far as like a cohesive message and goal? Yeah, I mean, And I, you know, sometimes I'm not sure if that's honestly like a strategy. Right. Or if it's just a total lack of message discipline, you know, in an administration that is very disorganized and impulsive, you know, and sort of, you know, it's kind of to be expected. But, you know, whether it is strategic or not, I mean, it has a strategic value to the administration. Because, you know, what happens is like Trump can go out there and say a lot of countries have

Tomahawk missiles. Why Iran has Tomahawk missiles, it might have been them shooting a tomahawk missile at that school. Now, every single person hearing that should have been like, wait, what? That's a top secret weapon system, you know, that like, we've only only a couple five-wise countries and the Netherlands, like, actually have. If Iran has these things, that's huge news and like, what is happening here? But nobody does that because they go like, ah, it's Trump. He's just saying whatever, you know, just who knows what's going to come out of it. And so it's just you can go out there and kind of be like, we win, you know, the war is all but wrapped up. We've basically won at this point. Well, but on the other hand, you know, it may be just the

beginning. And he can do that and everybody just kind of writes it off because Trump, you can't take anything. He says seriously. And so, you know, whether it's strategic or not, it has that effect. And it makes it very hard to really get a grip on what's going on over there. Like, I'm fortunate that I have some contacts deployed in the region and some friends in the Arab countries and in Israel that I talk to on a regular basis. But even then, you know, you're talking about, you know, if you go to Israel itself, like the media there is high, it's just as hyper censored as it is going out to the rest of the world.

And so, you know, they know, the people over there know what they know, you know, based on where they are and what they're hearing. But a lot of times they don't have that much better of an idea of a larger picture compared to anybody just from the outside watching the news and doom scrolling telegram. So, you know, you mentioned, like, that you really just almost try to stay away from just keeping up with the minute to minute. And you have to do that with this. And it's really, really hard not to. But you go on to Twitter or Telegram or any of these places.

And it's just impossible to tell anymore. You know, is this a real video, first of all? Did it really just happen as they're reporting it? Or is this something from the 12-day war? Or is this from Ukraine? Or was this from six days ago? It's really, really impossible. to make any kind of heads or tails out of it.

And, you know, we're in a, we're in a sort of a stage of our development as a country where we take for granted that it's just, you know, the government lying to us about everything all the time. Well, that's just how governments work. That's, of course. And that's just what government. We're not even outraged by it.

It's just, you know, it's just normal. It's what we expect, you know. And so they feel no incentive to be honest with us. and, you know, they treat us, they treat the American electorate because, you know, the support for this war started out underwater. They treat us almost as an enemy combatant of types. You know, we're another group to be propagandized and to, you know, to be managed so that they can do what they already want to do. You know, we're actually in their way. We're the problem and they have to deal with us just like they have to deal with the actual military problem.

And so it's really hard to, it's really hard to figure out like a real picture of what's going on. When, what, what years did you serve and where were you at and did you have this feeling at all? Like, well, I don't know what the hell is going on. It didn't, maybe because of social media and the climate we're in now. It didn't feel like that back then. Yeah. Well, that's just it. All right.

You know, the propaganda is very different now. And you go back to 2003. You go back to, you know, all the old days before that. And propaganda was very much. focused on putting out a certain message that you were trying to convince people to buy into, right? And you could control enough of the media output that this was all people were going to hear. With the advent of the internet, that became impossible. And so the strategy really changed to just flood the zone with as much nonsense as possible so that nobody knows what's going on.

And everybody just gives up on trying to understand, you know, or get it the truth or even bothering, trying to follow along. And, you know, one of the, one of the consequences that you see from that is, look, in 2002, 2003, you know, we got lied into a war, but man, they put a lot, they burned a lot of calories on that lie, you know, Colin Powell at the UN, I mean, they put a lot of effort into that lie because that's what it was about. It was about generating a narrative that people that would carry people along, at least until they, you know, they got themselves far enough into the war that we couldn't get out. This is just different.

I mean, now it's just like we wake up one morning and we find out, oh, we're at war. They just don't even bother priming us for. You know, Obama, when we bombed Libya, he didn't even give a public appearance for like 11 days. We just find out we're at war with Libya now. And so it's just, it's a very different world because the nature of propaganda has changed.

You know, propaganda now is meant to confuse much more than it is to convince. Part of my conspiratorial mind is thinking at the same time, if Trump were to be, let's say, not the one calling the shots, as much as his persona would lead some of his biggest fans to go, no, no, no, that's not true. He is the one calling the shots. But if he's not, well, I could see a disconnected message happening because he's not sure exactly what's happening now or next without getting a briefing from someone who is in control.

Do you sense that? Yeah, I mean, this has been the, this has been the real tragedy of the second Trump administration. You know, he took a lesson from the first administration, which was be very, very, very careful that you can trust the people that you bring in with you, you know, because he was not able to trust anybody around him in the first one. And it almost got his ass sent to jail, you know. So he did that this time. But he did that almost to the detriment of everything else. And the effect has been he's surrounded by people who just they won't tell him, sir, I don't think that's a great idea.

You know, there's just, there's nothing but yes men around him. And the people who are who he listens to and the people who are given access to him are virtually all giving him the same message for the same reasons and trying to drive him in a given direction. And he has some alternate voices, but they're drowned out, you know. Tucker still has a line to him and he tried and tried and tried to, talk him out of this. JD Vance is, you know,

the story's coming out about it now, but I know this could be true. You know, he was skeptical of this, like both for just the military reasons, but the political reasons mainly, like the political fallout of this. And so he has a few people like that, but in general, I mean,

he, the last time around he had Charlie Kirk, but, right. Like that, you know, the one person who was really able to kind of, who was able to communicate with him about, you know, it's funny, you go on like X, right? You look at the right wing on X.

And it's basically like a handful of Jewish and Christian Zionists and a couple just like people who are, you know, their entire self-identity is tied to Trump, like a cat turd type or something. And other than that, like the entire right wing movement, the whole dissident right, MAGA movement, they're all against this. And so you wonder like, well, clearly this does not, this message is not seem to be getting to Trump. and the reason for that is the guy who used to get that message to him got shot. And that's a huge tragedy. I think there's a very good chance we would not be in this conflict right now if Charlie Kirk was still around. And, you know, so just in general, it's tough, you know.

And I know, like, for example, I know for a fact that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff was extremely skeptical of this operation. The people who were telling Trump that this could be wrapped up in a few days, he was telling him that that is not true. This is a very competent guy. The chairman is a, he's a legit general. He knows what's going on. He's not afraid to speak his mind.

And he did. But, you know, he was in this position that people like that get into a lot, right? Tucker was in this position, is still to a certain degree, is that you look at it. You say, well, you know, I can resign in protest. say this is a terrible idea. I tried to tell them and go do a media tour about it

and then be forgotten and everything moves on. This thing's going to happen anyway. They're just going to replace me with somebody that is going to do it. And so my options are I can resign in protest and keep my honor or I can stick around,

swallow my pride, and just try to do my best to keep this thing as much on track as possible, you know? Try to make sure that there's some kind of a sane voice in his ear as this goes on. And that's a really, really hard thing to navigate, I think.

Jocko's favorite book, and one of my favorite books is about face. You know, and that's about a Marine Corps colonel in the Vietnam War who struggled with exactly that, you know, he knew what was going on over there. He knew it was crazy. Do you go out and do a press toward announcing this thing and trying to inform the public about what's happening, or do you say, look, there's a couple hundred guys or thousand guys here who I can watch. over and try to make sure they get home okay. It's a very tough thing to do, you know,

and a hard decision to make, and I'm glad I don't have to make it. So, but yeah, you know, for the most part, you know, he's extremely isolated. He's getting very, very, very managed messaging. And when you add to that, the fact that, look, Benjamin Netanyahu will kill you. He will kill a U.S. president if he feels like he needs to. This is a guy who he really sees himself as not even a historical figure in the sense that like General Eisenhower is a historical figure. He sees himself in like a mythic context, you know, like Moses or Joshua. He really does. And that became clear, you know, in this video that came out recently, he's talking about bringing back the Messiah and stuff. Yes. And so a guy who is in that mode, that guy will kill you if he really thinks that you're in

the way of his life project, especially when he's at the age he is now, you know, and he's clearly at a point where he is ready to push all of his chips into the middle and act very recklessly in the same way that, you know, you see like one of the interesting things about, about Hitler, for example, and this is also true of Jim Jones, the cult leader, is both of those guys had this, they both had this extremely acute sense that they were not going to live very long. They were, they were not long for this world. They're both kind of hyperchondriacs, and they both just expected that their time was very limited and that there was nobody else that could do the great thing that needed to be done. And so the timeline for everything got accelerate. You got to do it now.

You got to do it now, whether it's smart, whether it's reckless, you got to do it now. And it led, you know, those two movements, obviously, to disaster. And Benjamin Netanyahu, you know, he's not a younger hypochondriac who thinks he's going to die from bowel cancer or whatever, but he's an old man, you know. And he looks around the Israeli political. political landscape. And I think anybody that knows anything about Israeli domestic politics can look around over there and say there are not a lot of impressive characters, you know, besides Benjamin Netanyahu, who, you know, look, I mean, just from a cold objective standpoint, I mean, he's an extremely effective politician, you know, and so you don't have to like him to admit that. But you look at the bench

in Israeli politics, it's extremely weak. That's why, you know, a huge chunk of the public knows he's corrupt. they hate him, like they really don't like him. He was really unpopular before they started, but he's basically ruled Israel for 30 years, you know? And it's because their bench is incredibly weak. And so he's looking around and saying, once I'm gone, like this has to be done now. Yeah.

And people like that are extremely dangerous. Yeah, it's just disappointing. I would think it's not like Trump is some young pup or anything. And it's sort of an America first selfless, I'm not long for this world. I'm going to do one last ballsy thing that will put my family's name down in history and fight against this Netanyahu thing

rather than it's sort of going to have, in my opinion, at least from now, the opposite effect where his name will go down like the bushes, if not worse. Yeah, I mean, look, the scary thing about it is that, I mean, we can take the escalation all the way up to 11 if Trump wants to, you know, and if Netanyahu want to. The Iranians can do a lot, and they're doing a lot now.

You know, they're playing a weaker hand, basically as good as it could possibly be played probably, like, so far. But it is a weaker hand. I mean, this is, you know, it's a situation where if Trump decided to just go Yolo and, you know, I'm not running for office again in 2028, and I really don't care if J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio wins and just goes and does it, goes all in, you know, But we can do, we can escalate a lot more than we're doing right now, you know, in really dark ways.

And so you hope that that doesn't happen. You hope that Trump doesn't find himself in this place where, because I mean, look, this is a guy who he, you know, love him or hate him. People who love him should be able to recognize this is a narcissistic complex in extremists, okay? Like it's a dictionary definition of a narcissistic complex. and he sees everything that happens in the world through the lens of his own existence and his own destiny, you know, how does this affect me?

And that's it. That's his thought on everything. And if, you know, you hope he doesn't end up in a place where, you know, he feels like the bridges are burned or the boats are burned. He looks behind him and there's no way to back out of this thing and like save my name by going backwards. I have to go forward now.

And, you know, you really hope that it doesn't come to that. But, you know, it's tough to say that it won't because, again, his counterpart in Israel, who seems to be really calling the shots, he really does have a messianic complex. Trump, I think it's much more shallow than that. I think it's more just that, you know, he, I think he really, you know, it's really like, you know, he got insulted and called names and tried to throw him in jail all these things and all these media organizations and politicians who treated him like he was, you know, something that is, this has been something that has been a chip on his shoulder going back to way

before he was ever in politics. You know, this is a super rich Manhattan real estate developer, but he's from Queens, you know, and everybody kind of looked at him his whole life as this gaudy sort of, you know, new money, second tier elite, you know, and he was, he could make 10 billion dollars, but he couldn't walk into a room and get treated, you know, the way a real old money, Rockefeller gets treated, you know, and I think that always stuck in his craw. And so, yeah, he wants his name in lights, you know, that's, that's why he does what he does. But that is also why, you know, I mean, it's kind of maybe seems obvious in retrospect, but when Tucker did that episode recently about the possibility of something happening to the Golden Dome on the Temple Mount,

and, you know, there are, he showed there are a lot of people out there in our government and and with influence over our government, certainly in Israel, who are very, very motivated to get the third temple built, it's not really that hard to imagine his, you know, his Kabad Jewish son-in-law convincing him,

hey, you know, you're a guy who is, your entire life has been dedicated to having your name on big real estate projects. Well, have I got a real estate project for you? You know, this isn't going to be something that people remember in 50 years. This is going to be something

and people remember in a thousand years, the way they remember Solomon. I mean, shoot, I could see Trump like becoming intoxicated with something like that. So let's hope that's not where we're at. Yeah, let's hope you'd have to have a very shallow understanding, and this might be the case of Christianity to want your name on that. You know, in the Orthodox world, we firmly believe that people trying to usher that in are trying to usher the coming of the Antichrist. and that's the last thing I would want my name on,

but I assume he doesn't understand that aspect of this. Yeah, yeah, I don't think so. I wouldn't imagine so. Have your friends, your connections, you know, we heard this a week ago or so that there's military higher-ups pushing this third temple narrative, even through the military.

Have you heard that from people you know? No, I saw all the stories. I had no reason to doubt them. I mean, there were a lot of them. So I have no reason to doubt that they were all false. But I don't know anybody who, you know, who heard a speech like that themselves or even like secondhand or anything. But, you know, I mean, I have no reason to doubt it. I think last week when I was on with Kyle, he asked me if I'd ever seen anything like that when I was in the service.

Because, oh, you asked me earlier, by the way, like how long I served and when I served. Yes. I joined in January 2001 active duty and I did 10 years. and in 2011, I switched over. I got out of the military and became a DOD civilian. And for the next 10 years was GS-13 engineer for the Department of Defense working on air and ballistic missile defense system. So that's my experience, which, you know, the nature of my job was, it was really good for kind of what I'm doing now in a way, which is like the reason I know all these people who are in all these different places. These aren't most, for the most part, these aren't people that I knew when I was in the military.

my job when I was at the DOD, I would be traveling eight, 10 months a year, a lot of that overseas to our overseas bases and to allied countries that we had sold weapons systems to. And I just got to know a lot of people in all those places, you know, because I was just all over the place. And I would work with, you know, the same people in different ministries of defense and stuff all the time. So, yeah, it's been very useful to keep up with what's been going on a little bit, although it really like, you know, having a one or two day heads up on a lot of the stuff that's coming down the pipe really just kind of makes you feel helpless. So it doesn't really actually improve anything.

Do we have in the United States military, here's another thing I keep hearing differing opinions on, the personnel, the resources to carry out ground troops, a ground troop war? Like to occupy Iran? Yes. No, absolutely not. I mean, that would require a full-scale Vietnam War. draft. No way. I mean, you're talking if you put the entire U.S. combat force, like the frontline fighting forces online, every spec ops unit, every ranger unit, the whole frontline infantry,

Marine Corps, I mean, you're talking about combat ready at any given time, like just over half a million troops probably. And that's for our entire mission over the entire planet, right? to go into a country of 93 million and occupy, well, I'll just, I'll just say like straight up. I think that there's just no way that's going to happen. I mean, it would take things that, unless, you know, unless some big giant nuclear bomb or dirty bomb goes off in New York City or something and they attribute it to Iran or whatever, it's just, it's impossible to imagine the political will to do what would be necessary, especially when you consider, I mean, this isn't like, It's not even just that we don't have the personnel.

Like our military is not built for that. We don't have like the equipment. We don't have the type and the quantity of equipment that would be necessary to carry out an operation like that. And because it's just, you know, I think I said this on last week's show. If we wanted, we couldn't do Desert Storm again today if literally the fate of our country depended on it.

We just do not have the force, the capacity in our force. So no, I don't think that that is on the table. I don't think that's being discussed. I think we would nuke Tehran before we did that, put it that way. Like before we did that, which I hope both are extremely unlikely, but before we try to occupy Tehran, we would nuke it. Now, doing something where we try to go in and take control of a critical node like Carg Island and maybe try to hold that hostage to force Iran to, you know, to the table or something,

maybe. That's certainly, you know, I could see Trump being convinced to that, whether or not it's a good idea. I could see him being convinced of it, especially when, you know, look, we, the mighty United States of America, like we found ourselves in a situation right now where we don't actually decide when this war ends.

Iran decides when this war ends, you know, because we can, like, I've got one buddy who's very deeply embedded in the military side of the intelligence community. And, you know, yeah, he's biased because he's in the community and stuff, but he's not a bullshitter. and he's, you know, extremely confident that basically by the end of next week,

Iran's offensive capabilities are going to be degraded virtually to the point of irrelevance militarily. But, you know, I was talking about it. I was like, okay, but, you know, Iran's strategy is not, like whether or not that's true, it seems obvious at this point that Iran's strategy was never to defeat us militarily, to make us cry uncle because we're just, taking too much damage and we just can't take it anymore. They're clearly fighting economic and diplomatic. A very long game. And what that means is, you know, as long as they can take out a tanker every few days that's trying to go through the state of Hormuz, the insurance companies are not going to cover them. And, you know, if they can, they can send a few drones every

few days and take out a new oil installation or something, they can force all of these places to shut down, just like they already have. And so they can basically, basically lock down the Gulf energy production and export industry, basically indefinitely, unless we do want to go occupy the country. And so, you know, what their strategy looks like to me is basically just hold out, preserve their forces as much as possible, lock down the straight, maybe bring the Houthis in at some point and lock down the Red Sea as well, and just wait. wait until other countries, you know, that, because look, man, like all these other countries, including like the Western European countries and the Arab monarchies who, you know,

they're all saying the things that whatever's on the cue cards we give them to say, our colonies in Western Europe and the Arab world. But they all know. They all know better. They know who started this war. They know that Iran did not want this war. They know. And they can stay on script for now.

but at a certain point, the economic pain is going to get to a point where you wonder if that's going to start to break down. And if that doesn't, you know, and so if the goal is not so, I mean, not so much to like, they're not going to shoot down so many American airplanes and kill so many American soldiers

and destroy so much American equipment that we just say, well, gosh, we just don't have anything left to fight with. I guess the wars, that's never going to happen. And the Iranians are smart people. They knew that was never going to happen. The goal very clearly is just to show that, like, look,

It doesn't matter how much you degrade us. You can take out 90% of our capability. You can kill our leaders. You can do what you want. If you want to fight, we can break the global economy. And we can do it in ways that specifically affect the countries in the region and U.S. allies. And so say when. You want to go again?

Let's go again. And that's how it's going to go. You'll come over here. You know, you want to do this again in nine months like we did this time. You're going to come over here and bomb our cities again and bomb some of our equipment that you missed the first time around or whatever, and we're going to lock down the region for another six weeks or whatever it is. And so that's clearly what they're trying to prove, is that that's a button that they have, that they can push any time that we decide we want to go kinetic with them.

And it's, again, they have a much weaker hand than we do, and the Israelis do, obviously. But that's still a, that's how you play that hand. I mean, that is definitely the way you do it, you know, is because what that does is it pushes things to a point where it's not just them pressuring us to stop this. I mean, we've got like allies not only in the Middle East, but especially in Asia. Countries like Japan, Singapore, you know, countries that we're, they're very critical to our strategy in Asia, you know, and just in the Indo-Pacific region in general, who they are hurting from this. I mean, this is a huge problem for that. And if this goes on very much longer, like, it's going to be a massive, massive

problem for a lot of our allies, none of whom we consulted or told to prepare for something like this, you know? And so Iran's plan seems to be hold out, preserve as much force as possible, demonstrate that even with a severely degraded economy, severely degraded military, you can lock down the energy industry in the region at any point so that the next time, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu calls his slave in the White House and says, we're going into Iran again, and he's going to get calls from Japan and Singapore and all the Arab countries and a lot of other places to say,

we don't want you to do this. And so, again, it's a weaker hand, but I mean, that's how you play. Excuse me, forgive my ignorance on some of the military things. I started the fire department when I was 19, and that's all I've ever done, ever even had a real job, as I tell people. But I was reading about the Iran drones coming over to California.

Do they actually have that power, that technology, to do something like that from that distance? No. I mean, I mean, look, like, look, like, yeah, theoretically, like, they could sneak a small boat, you know, just take a sailboat across the Pacific or something and launch a couple drones for a few pinprick strikes to give us Akasas Belli to go just really destroy them, I guess. I mean, like, or maybe they have some, you know, some Iranian Americans who are not complete traders to their country and their people who would be willing to do some. something. But I mean, to me, that was just, it, that really rings of, you know, the Assad chemical weapons attack during the Syrian war, where it's like, okay, so this guy has won the war. The war's over. He's defeated the enemies that have been coming at Damascus. The only chance the other side has is if the U.S. comes into this war. And he just happens to do the one thing that we

have promised he better not do in doing it in a way and at a time that gives him no tactical or strategic advantage whatsoever. It's just to do it just because he's so evil. I mean, you know, we should be able to, we should at least be literate enough in terms of like storytelling to see how stupid that is. And I think in this case too, I mean, Iranians are many things. They're definitely not stupid. And I just, the Ayatollah would have to come. come to my house and knock on my door and sign in his own blood that I, the Ayatollah, ordered these drones to, like, hit a couple Iranian community centers in Westwood or something. And I probably still wouldn't believe him. It just seems too ridiculous.

The 5D chess people, have you heard some of the loyal Trumpers explaining that this is not as it seems on the surface, but Trump is really doing this for, I haven't heard a lot, but I have heard something about the insurance companies, the city of London or Britain not controlling the insurance companies. Now the U.S. does. There was something in there about how we're really stringing Israel along until Trump goes and finally does it in the very end. He's kind of doing this, you know, it's sort of the Q&ON-5D chess thing where just trust the plan in the end, Trump's going to get Israel. Have you heard some of this stuff? I've seen some of it. I mean, I scroll right past it. It's so stupid, you know? I mean, it's like the thing, the immediate thing that should set off all of our

alarms is what nobody was talking about this before. Right. This is something that started up after the attacks when all of a sudden these people who are go Trump no matter what and feel this like, you know, this need to figure out a rationalization for whatever he decides. Right. You know, they, they, they start looking around for 5D chess and stuff. And that's, you mean, and when he's, doing something that is just so flagrantly opposed to everything that he ran on, you're going to have to get pretty creative to do that, you know? I see the idea that, you know, the U.S. Treasury is going to replace Lloyds of London or something. It's so dumb.

I got, yeah, it's not serious. I don't take it seriously at all. Another thing I don't see enough of, maybe it's a good thing, is Fox News. Do you, are you familiar with, let's say, what the boomer conservative, maybe Sean had any messaging is on why this is a good thing because I haven't heard that much either. Yeah, I don't watch it. I see a clip from time to time on social media and I guess I could probably, I could probably write the script for a Sean Hannity show myself even if I haven't seen one 20 years. I mean, you know, it's, look, the Murdoch outlets, their job is to sell

war. That is what their job is. And when you watch something like, well, anything on Fox News, it's not some crazy coincidence that the one guy they felt like they had to get rid of who happened to be their highest-braided guy is the one guy who is speaking out against something like this. That's not some, oh, wow, how convenient for them. Wow, they fired that guy and it just happens to turn out that these things. No, of course, that's why they did it, you know? And, you know, because that's their job. And they tell you that behind the scenes at a place like Fox News. So, like, this is what we're doing. Everybody, this is the message we're putting out. And you can stay on board with that and keep collecting your $10 million a year for being a primetime host on Fox News or whatever.

Or, you know, you can go start a podcast, basically. And so, yeah, when you're watching something like that, you have to understand that you're watching a sales pitch. You know, you're not watching the news. It's called Fox News. It's a sales channel. It's QVC for the war. You know, that's what it is. Right.

I'm looking around, not very hard, but trying to find the pro-Trump sort of like what would make him look good in something like this because I remove myself so heavily from the political scene. And I just look at it again as a spiritual issue, not even so much a tactical and well, if we do this and this will get expensive or this will be cheaper. And I look at it from the spiritual angle, which is a disaster at this moment. And the goal is disastrous. So I keep thinking, what's the pro-Trump crowd? Who's also pro this war? What are they saying? Because again, like you said, on X, 90% of the right wing

outside of like a few talking crazy Zionist voices that we all know are going to say and repeat what they're told, I don't see much popularity or much support for any of this. Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends on who you're talking about, right? So you have these conservative influencer types like, I don't know, like a Will Chamberlain, if you see him ever on Twitter, right? Oh, goodness. Yes.

Who, if you watch the evolution of his statements from last June up until now, it's just rationalizing the new thing. You know, it's Israel's not asking for our help. They just want us to get out of their way. Okay, we have to go in and bomb their nuclear sites. But hey, there was no type of expansion of the war. The war's over. How could you guys like panic?

How do you feel now saying that this war's going to, oh, we're back in the war? Oh, well, that's okay. and U.S. is taking the lead in it, well, that's actually really important because we have to, you know, control oil supplies, you know, because we're competing with China or what, all of these things, no case that was ever made at the very beginning of the thing.

It's all just reactive, step by step. Every time Trump does something that invalidates their previous position, they have to come up with a new one. And so you have people like that who, you know, somebody like Will, I mean, it's just, it's sort of a Sean Hannity time. Like, his job is to push the Likud position. That's it.

Whatever the talking points go out, that's what his position is. It's very similar to, you know, back in the 30s with, you know, the common term would put out a position. And all the communists in the U.S. and Europe would adhere to this position in lockstep. And like the next year, they put out the opposite position. And now everybody just pretends like that's what they always believed. It's very, very, very similar. And so that's a certain group of people. But there are others, too.

Like, I'm in group chats with a couple guys that, with a bunch of guys, actually, that mostly veterans that I've known for many, many years, guys I really like, who before all this started, you know, would have said they voted for Trump to stay out of situations like this and focus on immigration, the domestic economy and all that, who are now sort of, you know, they've just kind of shifted over to, you know, look, the reason that, you know, you're so traumatized about the by these previous wars is because they were fought in stupid ways and we don't have to fight them stupidly we can just go over there limited punitive strike to grade their forces mow the lawn and then we leave and yeah okay like you know a few people have died and we've lost some

equipment and so forth but hey you know we've taken this geopolitical issue off i mean it's it's it's all rationalization you know because it's none of it is none of it is something that they would have told you the day before we started bombing and right right right Right. And that to me is really the key to it. You know, you see their positions evolve over time just to maintain their defense of a person or a movement, you know? Right. Yeah, that's a great point. No one was ever trying, like Benny Johnson and Will Chamberlain weren't trying to post. And boy, Trump should do this and Israel should do this. It's always reactive. I didn't even put into that perspective. Yeah, and not only that, but like before this happened, if anybody who said, you know, this pressure they're trying to put, this buildup we're doing over here, like, this is going to be, this is going to be bad, this is going to escalate into something really bad, they would have just called you a panicking,

you know, like they would have said, oh, your fearmongering, that's ridiculous, that's never going to happen. And a lot of them would even have been so shameless, you know, to say, and if it does happen, believe me, I'll be the first one to call it out, and then they're the first one defending it. I mean, there's a lot of people like that. And when you identify people like that, you need to mark them for life and remember who it is that you're seeing. talk, you know. Right. Well, they're vapid and empty, which is disheartening because I think a lot of us, myself included, felt this Trump coalition coming into this election cycle. I was like, finally, I've never voted for someone who won in my entire life. I voted for Libertarian or for

Ron Paul and people like that. And I accepted, well, no one's, my guys aren't going to win. I actually felt good about the Trump, R.FK, Tulsi, the J.D. Vance. Like, I can get behind this. I can finally get behind and look, I voted for someone who won. And then this happens and you're like, okay, never mind. I just, maybe that's, there's just no point in any of this. And I don't want to get despondent by any means or apathetic about some of these things. But just strictly politically speaking, it's very disheartening. Speaking of Tulsi, she's been silent.

Have you heard anything from her perspective on any of this? No. I just saw her speak at Ron Paul's. I was at Ron Paul's 90th birthday. She was met by a standing ovation. She was still looked at as like, she's great before all of this happened, of course, and now silence.

I mean, the only thing I can say is that her views that were expressed before she was DNI were sincerely held. And I imagine she's having a dark night of the soul right now, but at the same time, I mean, you can't escape. your responsibility for something like this, even if you are protesting behind closed doors and stuff. I mean, it is what it is.

And again, like I, you know, like I was talking about the beginning, I mean, she's one of those type, she's probably one of those people who's in that very difficult position of saying, you know, at least I'm one person as a director of national intelligence. I'm the, at least I can make sure

that this information gets put in front of Trump because whoever he replaces with me with is going to get picked by Susie Wiles and it's not, She's not even going to, you know, that person, not even going to show them this stuff. And therefore, I should suck it up and stay here. But that gets, you know, you really like starts. Yeah, I mean, if you have any kind of a conscience and a sense of honor,

you really start to struggle over at what point that just turns into complicity, you know. And again, it's a tough, it's a tough position to be in. I wouldn't want to be in that position. And I don't want to get all self-righteous about how I'd behave if I was. But it's sad, you know, for sure. to see somebody like her in that position. And that's what, you know, the fact that she was in there, the fact that J.D. was in there, look, the, the, the neocons, man,

I can tell you from direct knowledge, they were trying extremely hard behind the scenes all the way up to the convention to make sure J.D. Vance was not the vice president. They did not want him at all. Right. And, you know, his views on this stuff, while, you know, not Tulsi's views, are at least more cautious, you know,

and more cognizant of the political reality on the right right now. And so, you know, there's a lot of people like Brett Weinstein. I was talking to him the other day and I was seeing some of the things he was posting on Twitter, having back and forth with people about, you know, whether he should apologize for saying we should vote for Trump. You know, whether this is like, you know,

because he'll say something about this is a disaster or this is bad, and people will be in his comments. be like, well, you promoted him. You're the one who told us we should vote for him. And he's struggling with that. And I think a lot of people, a lot of people are, especially the liberal types like him who kind of went over, you know, and kind of broke their normal routine to do it.

But the thing is, I don't blame anybody for it. You know, if it was a sci-op, it was a very thorough and a very good one. I have my doubts that it was, honestly. I think this was much more of an emergent situation just because it's very, very clear that the thing was not planned out well. You know, and I'll also, like, I'll never, fault anybody for having hope, you know? You can be stupid, it can be, but, you know, you don't want to fall into like a pit of total cynicism. And if somebody votes because, you know, at least they're

sending some signals that they're going to do the right thing and then they end up not doing the right thing. I'm not going to fault that person for having hope, you know? Right. And I used to, I, when I was young, a strident libertarian, I would hold people accountable that I knew, well, you voted for Bush in this instance or you voted for Obama and they started these wars. And now I'm looking back like this is a learning opportunity. Trump literally ran on not doing this. And so naturally, yeah, well, that's what I voted for. And now it's like, I don't know that I owe anyone an apology because this is not what I had.

He said, I'm going to be a slave to Israel and do whatever they say. And then bomb Iran. I would have gone, oh, well, I'll just hold out on this one. and then I start to wonder I would have never voted for Kamala anyway but like does it even matter would she have fallen for the same ruse she is much less intelligent so

I don't know where we'd be here as she won and what I now I'm curious about again maybe by political or radars off a bit I think Vance and anyone in this administration's got no shot what are your thoughts there

you know I mean American politics has a very short memory so you never really know. But what I can tell you for sure is, you know, you notice in like in the first day or so of the war, there was a poll that was released. I can't remember by which company, but it was 2024 Trump voters support the war at whatever,

80% or something. Every poll I've seen since then hasn't said Trump 2024 voters. It said self-identified MAGA Republicans. And I'm like, well, I know a lot of, of people who identified that way until about two weeks ago. Right. Yeah, exactly. You know, the question basically boils down to, you know, 90% of people who support Trump's war in Iran, support Trump's war in Iran. It's like, okay, well, wow. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that the, here's the other thing. I mean, because I've gone out on limbs for J.D. Vance a lot. I know a lot

of people who know them personally really believe in him. And like a lot of people are like me where there's nothing you could do in the next two years that is going to redeem this administration in my eyes. We're done. We are done, period. And it doesn't matter what they do. It doesn't matter who the Democrats put up in 2028. And speaking of that, by the way, the Democrats, I mean, shame on the Democrats for, like, they gave us no choice. You know what I mean? Like, Like, just their behavior over the last 10 years or so of American politics was just so egregious and so over the top. You see the rampant abuses of the federal judiciary and the intelligence agencies, the just outright open corruption, the anti-white hate that was basically made like official government policy. You know, and just pushing the sexual revolution to the point where they're taking kids from parents' homes because they won't let them get a sex change.

I mean, it's like they left us no choice. Like we had to vote for anybody other than who they were putting up, especially after the Biden debacle and everything. And so shame on them for that. Because what we ended up with was this guy who, you know, look, we've always kind of been Israel's attack dog, obviously, like at least since the 70s. But if you do go back in like the last several presidents,

all of them at critical points, like overall, yeah, they were pro-Israel, they were doing what Israel wanted and everything. but every one of them at critical points in ways that really upset the Israelis told them no. You know, George H.W. Bush did it. Clinton did it. Bush, they were pushing Bush hard

to invade Iran and he wouldn't do it. And then Obama, you know, Benjamin Nanyahu and he like couldn't even get on the phone with each other. They hated each other by the end. And I think the reason for that, you know, this is like the danger of having like a real outsider is, you know, look, George H.W. Bush, he's a made man.

He ran the CIA. You know, I mean, this is a guy who, you know, you can only put so much pressure on this guy. And whatever you try to do to him, you know, the American system is not going to turn on that guy. Like, whole hog and, like, isolate and push him aside. Like, he's just too much of a made guy. Clinton, a little bit less so than that.

But, I mean, he was one of those, too. Rhodes Scholar guy who was groomed for this position, very much so. Bush, you know, he himself, maybe not so much. but the Bush family, obviously, and very much so. And then Obama, he was an outsider, but he was just at one of those guys who had way too much personal popularity among Democrats for them to really go after him very hard.

And so they just weren't able to put enough pressure on them to really control them. Whereas with Trump, I mean, they've got a full-on puppet with Trump. And I know a lot of people say they don't need a puppet. Trump's just one of them. And that's probably true to a degree, you know. but whatever the gap is between that reality, you know, and they can make up for it with pressure with Trump.

And it's because, you know, if they really decide to go hard on him, I mean, he knows damn well. Like, they'll put him in his whole family in jail. They'll bankrupt his family. The American system will not only not defend him, it'll help him do it. You know, the intelligence agencies that part of it, they'll help them do it. And so somebody like that, you know,

know, really has to have a sort of killer be killed attitude if you're going to stand up to the most powerful influence, really, like, in our country, you know, especially in terms of, you know, issues that really have to do with life and death, you know, you might say, like, the, the agricultural, you know, lobby is extremely powerful or something, but, you know, that's sort of much more mundane. And things that, like, decide whether or not we're going to go send Americans to kill people, you have this you have this lobby in this country and you know and it's not just apac i mean there's a lot of these you know outside of miriam adelson she didn't give 250 million dollars to trump through apac you know there's a lot of people like her and they're they're extremely powerful extremely motivated and a

whole lot of them really do have this sort of mythical biblical historical sense of their mission and you know it's just very rare that you're going to get an American politician who is probably really even going to comprehend that let alone be able to deal with the consistent pressure from it. What do you think of how Massey's behaved through all of this? I know he's got his haters outside of just the MAGA circle. I've heard people say, well, no, he gets Israel money too. It's just not through A-PAC.

This is sort of a puppet show on his end. I don't read it that way. It seems to me like he's genuine. and sincere? What's your take on Thomas Massey? Oh, yeah. I definitely buy that he's sincere. I mean, I mean, look, if you go through the list of donors for any politician, it's not like they're going through and vetting and approving every single one of those things. And sometimes they come in and you can go through the list of donors for any politician. You can probably

find things to complain about. But then, you know, just watch what they do. And watch how his opponents respond to it. And very obviously, these people hate his guts. Okay. And with, you know, again, you can say with Trump, they seem to hate his guts too. And I guess that's true. But like with Massey, I mean, it really, yeah, no, he, he put himself out there to do this. And granted, you know, you could say he made himself a political brand through his opposition, you know, especially focusing on the Epstein files and stuff, latching on to this extremely popular issue. But at the same time, it's popular for a reason, and he's become the brand for that

because nobody else would do it. And look, make no mistake about it. If it was not for Thomas Massey and Rochana, the Epstein story would be, we wouldn't know anything about it. I mean, that's serious. It would slip into history, go into the archives of the Department of Justice,

and just be another one of those lost stories like the Vegas shooting or whatever else that just kind of, Who knows, you know? The Trump shooting all of a sudden. Right, right, yeah. And the reason it's not that is because of him and Roe Kana. And they deserve our gratitude for that, you know,

regardless of who they have taken money from or even regardless of why they did it. Even if they did it for self-aggrandizing reasons or something, honestly, like, who cares? I care about the, I care about the effect. And, yeah, Thomas Massey deserves our gratitude for sure. What is what voice does Tucker have on the American right as far as you're concerned we've talked you mentioned that there's not much that this current administration can do to salvage themselves over the next few years what does Tucker play into influential voices on the American right well I mean no he's kind of Tucker's such an important figure and and the reason I say that is not because he's saying things that no one else will say you can find there's a million podcasts and whatever out there nowadays. You can find somebody saying anything. Not because he's going as far as I, you know, in my heart of hearts, think we should be going on every issue or just whatever. That's not really the point. Tucker is important because, you know,

his, his stature on the right in America is, you know, just through years of being somebody who was very clearly like the only guy on Fox News who was trying to actually tell you what he thought instead of reading from the script that they handed him. He's built up enough credibility and has enough stature on the right that what he has the ability to do is give the right permission to think certain things. Give them the permission to question certain things that, you know, that you know, because you have to remember like, think about when, like when Trump spoke against the Iraq war in South Carolina in 2016. Everybody was like, you know, this is the end of his campaign.

You know, you can't come out and trash the bushes like that, the Iraq war. Because if you look back before that, yeah, it was hard to find a Republican who would, like, go in public and say anything against the Iraq war. And that was read by people as evidence that, oh, that's because all the Republicans supported. It's like, no, by 2016, like the Republicans, your normal, like, conservative voters were perfectly aware. This is an albatross around our neck. How do we get this thing off? Like, this is going to drag us down for the next generation. But you can't be like,

Nancy Pelosi was right all along and I was wrong. And you just can't do that, right? And so they needed a guy like Trump to come along and say, you know, actually, you can think this. You can say this out loud. And it was like this sigh of relief. And so it had the opposite effect that, you know, a lot of the commentators thought it was going to have. And Tucker's kind of one of those guys. You know, he's, he's like, he's a gatekeeper, but not in the sense of keeping people in, but of letting people, you know, out. And that's very important. I talk to a lot of my buddies who are much more strident and radical than somebody like Tucker. And I'll talk to them about people like Tucker, someone like my buddy, Orrin McIntyre, I like very much. And they'll say all these things

where, you know, they don't go far enough on this. They're not radical enough on that. And I always tell him, I say, look, man, there's a structure to this thing, okay? We don't need, like, a hundred people all the way out over here clumped up on the radical end of this thing, all cannibalizing each other's audiences and talking to each other about the same things all the time, because you're never going to reach the vast majority of the population, because, you know, you're just not connected to them in any way. What you have is, same thing with like Matt Walsh. You know, Matt Walsh annoys the hell out of me plenty of times, but I defend him all the time because I recognize his importance in that structure.

You know, he's the way that that daily wire listeners hear about people in my sphere and Tucker's fear, we're the way that, you know, that those people make their way over to the next step

and start asking more fundamental questions about what's going on. And this is a process, you know, and you have to give people permission to ask these questions. And if the questions you're asking or you're trying to encourage them to ask are so far outside of, you know,

the way of thinking of anybody that they know or talk to or anything like that, you're not going to ever get them to do that. You have to walk them down that path. And so, yeah, Tucker's an extremely, we would not be, I mean, our political landscape, this sounds ridiculous maybe because he's a TV host and, you know, in a podcast host, our political landscape would be completely different if Tucker Carl's not out there. Yes, yes. Well, just that he's getting voices like yours on his show.

And, I mean, I didn't think you said. anything particularly radical and you saw how crazy that blew up. And same with Weinstein. He kept saying, well, I'm going to get a lot of pushback and hate over this. And it's like, you didn't really say anything that radical either. But what I did learn about on that and I thought, how did I not know this? I almost went to look it up, but I had to come here and do this. The gold pager thing, you were aware of that. We talked offline. What were your thoughts? Can you explain what happened there and I had zero clue that that happened and my mind was sort of blown like you've got to be kidding me no one who's sort of Trump is scared can you talk about that really quick yeah I mean so

everybody probably has heard about the famous operation where the Israelis managed to get a lot of pagers to members of Hezbollah that were packed with explosives and at a certain point a few years ago they blew them all up killed a bunch people and there's a I mean in terms of just you know clandestine operations. I mean, you've got to say that's in the Hall of Fame for sure, whatever you think of, you know, the morality of the whole thing or whatever. But, so that happened. And then Benjamin Netanyahu gave Trump this, this frame with a golden pager, like commemorating that incident. And a lot of people have remarked on just the fact that, man, like, even if that's not a threat, boy, it could sure be read that way, right?

This is what Brett was saying. He was like, you know, how is there not somebody who would was in the, you know, the circle of Netanyahu, somebody over there who was like, you know, he might take this the wrong way. And I think it's obvious that the answer was, well, that is the way he was supposed to take it. And the way to sort of understand that is just to imagine, you know, that they had taken out the leader of Hezbollah with 308 sniper rifle. And then they gave him a golden 308 bullet to put on his guy, you know? And then it's like much more clear. Oh, yeah, obviously this is what's going on, you know? and yeah, look, there's a thing, you know,

you're talking about Netanyahu. He's a guy who has a habit of when he comes to the White House, he'll bring, this is not somebody who needs to do this. He'll bring a big load of dirty laundry and have us wash it for him in the White House. He's done this a bunch of times. I didn't know either. Okay. Yeah.

And so, you know, this is somebody who, and not like the clothes he was wearing on the way over here, you know, where he's at the hotel or staying. the Whiteout wherever and he's having them washes, change of clothes or whatever. No, he brings his load of laundry on the plane and has us wash it for him, right? This is a power move. This is the power.

Oh, yeah, 100%. And so when you take a guy like that and then you, you know, you put the the pager gift in the context of that guy's personality, I mean, it's very obvious what's going on here, you know, in my opinion. It's just, you know, people like, you read

about like in, you read about LBJ how he had this habit of he would have the White House press corps, like a bunch of them. He would make him stand outside his bathroom with the door open while he was taking a dump, and he would answer their questions in there. And it's like, A, that is an obvious, like, he's not just like, oh, I only have so many hours in the day. And so I have to make the most efficient use of my time, you know, this is a guy who is doing a power move, but doing it in a way that is really evidence of, like, a disordered personality.

You know, when you hear about presidents and stuff doing that kind of thing, we always put that in the context of like, yeah, where they're always going to be a little bit on a different level in terms of their behavior. But just think of like, if you knew somebody who did that, you'd be like, this guy's insane, you know? It takes a crazy person to do something like that. And Netanyahu's one of those guys, you know?

I think he has contempt for American politicians for the most part. You know, he's somebody who, again, somebody who sees himself as like this historical mythic figure, you know, somebody who is going to, you know, he wants to be mentioned alongside Moses and Joshua one day as one of those people who saved the Jewish, you know, all that kind of thing. Like he really thinks of himself in those messianic terms. And he has to come over here and, you know, just take these dirtbag bought off politicians seriously in America in order to get his way and do what he wants. And it's probably insulting a lot of the time, you know. and just for somebody who sees himself in that sense

to deal with the low rent political leaders that we tend to have in this country. And so, yeah, I mean, a guy like that with that kind of a personality, when he shows up to give a speech in Congress and he gets 57 standing ovations or whatever, he's not a guy who sees that and says, wow, this is great.

I have a great relationship with these people as somebody who feels content for these people, you know, and when he sees something like that. And so, yeah, I mean, look, Tucker knows Trump very well. He didn't start getting to know Trump when he ran for office. He's known Trump for 25 years and he knows him well. And Trump talks to him in ways that he doesn't talk to most people. And, you know, he will tell you. I think he did tell Brett maybe in that episode. That's exactly how Trump took it. Trump's not stupid, you know, at least in that sense. And so he, yeah, he knew it was

going on. All right. One more before I get out of here with you. And again, forgive my voice people. I don't usually sound like this of all times to come on a show this big. I'm hit with this allergies in Texas, but I'd be remiss. My show is mainly stuff viewed through an Orthodox Christian lens. You have done so much work on just the destruction that communists have done to Orthodox Christian countries. Some of the most violent things you could ever imagine I actually learn about from some of your podcasts. have you ever done a deep dive into the Orthodox Church or from your perspective,

what is your view of Orthodox Christianity? Better be a good view. I am an Orthodox Christian. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, God. Yeah, not, yeah, we live up here in North Idaho and our church is a Greek church

up about 45 minutes away, 30 minutes away, something like that. And a little tiny place, pretty new, but yeah, we love it. And so, yeah. My opinion is positive. I guess if I... I'm sorry to... I'm sorry if that was insulting in any way. I didn't know.

No, no, not, not at all. But I listen to so many things and I think, how could you not be Orthodox after hearing some of the stuff? He's teaching me. Yeah, I mean, I think that obviously there's a lot about orthodoxy to love and to recommend it,

but I think the thing that really that really spoke to me the most was just the different understanding. of sin and redemption that Orthodox have compared to both Protestant and Catholic, you know, Christianity where, you know, like, to people who've grown up in the West and are not that exposed to orthodoxy, most of them, they understand sin in a very legalistic sense. You've committed a crime. This crime demands justice, demands punishment. The

crucifixion and resurrection was Jesus being merciful enough to pay that penalty for you. Because sin, these are crimes you're committing, you know? In orthodoxy very much understands sin less in a legalistic sense and much more almost in a medical sense. This is a sickness that is overtaking you. You need to be cured of. Not something you need to be, you know, sort of pardoned from. Although there is like, obviously there is some of that because, you know, but it's really like

a sickness that is correct. you and that this is the only way that you can be cured of that sin. And being, you know, what it does is like it makes it much less about just the, you know, the contrition part of, you know, whether you're Catholic and you have confession or as a Protestant just praying to yourself and asking for forgiveness for this or that sin that you did where it's, it's almost like this isolated thing. Like I did this thing. Now I have to do this thing to sort of get right.

It's much more like, no, you're sick. you're ill. You have this evil force that wants to destroy you and is spreading and corrupting you. And the way that you cure yourself of that is not by, you know, doing this single act that sort of, you know, balances the scales or something. It's no, through the process of being involved with the church over time and being, you know, doing your Christianity, like on a, on a regular basis as a part of your life. And as that grows in your life, the sin starts to become a smaller and smaller part of it. And, you know, to me, that's just, it, it's, it's, it's easier for me to understand the benevolent creator of the universe working like that than it is, you know, of him just being

like an angry dad who's mad that you didn't do what he told you. You know what I mean? So, there's a lot more to say about it. And if you want, you know, I'll come on your show. We can talk about orthodoxy for now. Yes. My audience would love this. Okay. Yeah. Say, say when man amen i actually we we will do we will work that out anything in closing you need to say for the provoked audience yes but give me one second because there's something i need to tell you from scott but i forgot my phone in the other room and i need to look at my email and it is right here and scott wanted me to tell everybody uh well first of all check out the scott horton academy if you haven't done that and you're watching this show shame on you but the other one

was Scott put together this great thing. Let's see, come on up. Aha. He didn't put it on here. Oh, yeah, here we go. The Facts About Iran.com. He put together this little website that is just a collection

of all this stuff that he and other people have done, people who are part of our circle have done on the history of Iran and the more recent situation. It is packed with information. Go to The Facts About Iran.com. And it's really like a one-stop shop for sort of getting yourself up to speed on what's going on here,

so that when you see a headline in the news, it's really not this isolated thing that maybe you're connecting the last few weeks of headlines. It's really something that you can understand in a context that goes back decades. And you'll have a much clearer understanding of the broader story. So it's the facts about Iran.com. Scott put it together.

It is great. And everybody should go check it out. Yes. Scott stuff's always good. That Scott Horton Academy, He's got a course specifically on Zionism and dispensationalism. And for those of you out there who I'm sure is most of you in this audience, who saw Huckabee with Tucker and Ted Cruz with Tucker.

I know they seemed like goofballs and weren't making a lot of coherent logical sense. There's a lot, there's millions of people with that same view and that largely does affect the U.S. foreign policy, unfortunately. And to promote myself really quick if I can, the Counterflow podcast, it's on YouTube, it's on anything. I've done a lot of episodes with Orthodox priests and Orthodox historians on that same bad, bad, bad theology that is unfortunately leading to bad fruit, if you will. So thank you guys and thanks, Daryl. And let me just say real quick to everybody out there who did super chats and had questions in there and even you guys

who didn't, sorry we didn't get to that stuff. I'll tell you what I'll do though. I will take all those questions down and then I'll put it up as a free post on my substack and I'll answer them probably more clearly and better than I would hear off top my head anyway. Absolutely. This has been Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton. Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow at Provoked underscore show on X and YouTube. And tune in next time.

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