Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:57 - Cooper Escapes Wildfires!

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

Darryl Cooper & Scott Horton discuss how Darryl escaped wildfires! ...and also his recent appearance on Tucker Carlson's show, and more! 0:00:00 Intro to Darryl's Tucker Carlson Interview Fallout 0:05:13 Soviet Atrocities Deep Dive 0:12:39 U.S. Missile Shortages 0:24:13 Iran War Deadlock 0:33:21 Exit, Taxes, Coffee 0:34:53 Iran Strategy and Militias 0:51:47 Inflation and War Politics 0:53:35 Russia and Ukraine Escalate 1:01:27 Primaries, Prices, Power 1:11:50 Ukraine's Far-Right Future 1:16:02 Balkans and Battle Maps 1:18:17 Neil, McMaster, and Wars 1:22:04 Turkey Versus Israel (Cleaned up w/ the Podsworth app. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podsworth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Sponsors: Expat Money: Secure your international Plan B: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://expatmoney.com/provoked⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Agorist Tax Advice: Pick up a free copy of the brilliant Matthew Sercely's Agorist Tax Toolkit at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://AgoristTaxAdvice.com/provoked⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Scott Horton Blend Coffee: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://moondoesartisancoffee.com/products/scott-horton-supreme-breakfast-blend⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Tonight, Darrow, on the Tucker show again, and so everybody's all upset. You'll be here in a minute. 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. All right. I hope you to hear in a minute. Good time, me. What's up, boy, boy. How you doing? Doing out of a hotel right now as we wait to see if our house is going to get burned down,

but it looks like it's going to be all right. That's good. You might consider wetting things down with a hose. All right, listen. I have considered that. Yeah, no, get through. Water is good for stuff like that. What you do, if you want to get a passport, residency, possibly in other countries, buy property, by property, by stuff.

and other companies, other countries, you want to go to expat money. Find out how to protect your neck that way. And in fact, what you do is you go to expatmoney.com slash provoked so they know that me and Darrell Cooper sent it. And then you get a copy of Plan B, Residencies, and instant citizenships, this booklet, and you get it for free.

And it will tell you all this stuff that you can read about if you go to expatmoney.com slash provoked. All right, anyway, now, so the big news, Mr. Cooper is... Hey, hold up, hold up. some audio issues, I think, going on right now. Let me check with the chat. Hear you? Can you hear me?

Check. It says... Someone was saying, I sound loud, you sound quiet. Somebody else said we're echoing. Okay. Sounds better now. I turn my speakers down. I said it sounds better now.

Okay. Check, check. How's our levels? Am I too quiet still? No, I think we're good now. Okay. Yeah, you keep an eye on that chat, man, because things can love the chat.

They're hilarious. For the negative, if you don't sometimes, actually, it turns out I learned. Wait. And plus it prevents you from doing an hour-long show with your mute button on. Oh, man, I said so much crucial stuff that you poor people will never get to hear. One of the people in the chat just a minute ago, they said, wait, they do this show with sound sometimes. Hey, leave me alone. That ain't the first and that ain't the last time I'm going to have dead air.

I promise you that. You know what's funny about the Tucker Carlson show is he sits on this side of the table and you sit on that side of the table. But then when they put out the thumbnail, they got to turn it around. The Tucker's on the left, but then everybody's backwards. Anyway, so that must be what got everybody all upset. You went on the Tucker show, said a bunch of really great stuff about the war, but they're all crying because I guess you besmirched the Bolshevik communist revolutionaries what took over the Soviet Union. I have to say, though, I'm a little bit skeptical, Daryl. Is it really true they built a statute to Judas?

It's like this. I told Tucker beforehand, I was going to bring that up and that it was, it's disputed, put it that way. There are eyewitness accounts. Like, the usual response you get from people is, well, yeah, that's all just from people who hate the communists, from like clergymen and emigraise and stuff. And it's like, well, okay. I mean, that's one way to. deflected, I guess.

It's possible. I mean, it's not as if the Soviet, the Bolsheviks were ashamed of their actions or something and would have been hiding it. And so it's possible. It is something that popped up like two years after the fact in a Danish diplomats

book, but there's a lot of church sources, which is where I heard of it from. There are priests and metropolitans of the Russian Orthodox Church that talked about the one place I was talking about. And then a few others around, but it's disputed. And a lot of people think that it isn't true

because there's no corroborating evidence from the Soviet side or from neutral observers, whatever that would mean. So that's possible. I told Tucker, I was like, I'm going to say this and watch. I called it beforehand. They're going to go crazy over this. They certainly did.

Now, I forgot what I was going to ask because I started thinking. Well, then in the meantime, I mean, like, one of the fun things about it and like one of the reasons I did it, partly it was to get everybody riled up, and I told them that was what was going to happen, but also is because, you know, people look into it and they're like, well, this, I've looked all this stuff, all this up, and yeah, this is disputed. This might not be true. But wait, they literally had something

in the Soviet government called the League of the Militant Godless. What? What's this? And then you go in, you start looking, and you start researching and finding out that maybe that's disputed, but the stuff that is not disputed at all is really crazy. Yeah. So this is what I was going to ask that I forgot that I remembered it in, which is about your podcast that you did about the communists. And please remind us what that's called. And man, it gets into some hairy stuff, dude.

The anti-humans, which is named after a book that was written about the last part of the episode, the Pettesti Experiment Prison in, in communist Romania in the late 40s, early 50s. There was a guy who was in the prison, who survived the prison, who wrote a book about it and smuggled it out of the Soviet Union eventually.

And, you know, it was such an interesting event to happen because, you know, like, it was definitely in operation. It wasn't just some, you know, rogue prison guards or something like that who were torturing their captives. I mean, they had observers from Moscow. they were taking records and notes down and seeing how people responded

to different things and stuff. So it was in operation. But then after it kind of got out there and got around, Stalin had most of the people who were responsible for it. They're in the prison itself and in the Romanian government rounded up and executed.

So it's kind of hard to say how high level it went or whatever. But yeah, it was pretty much the worst like political or political adjacent story that I know. Yeah. Yeah, no joke when people are trying to figure out the deaths of people at the hands of their own government with rounding errors in the tens of millions. You know what I mean?

I don't know. I think R.J. Rommel's estimates of a hundred million might be embellished by a couple of 10 million or so or whatever. You know what I mean? It's like we're going to over a lot of mass murder now. Yeah, and it's, I mean, the crazy part about it is, you know, yeah, a lot of people died from famines, accidental and not accidental. A lot of people died in gulags from overwork and disease and all these other kind of things. And you count all those because they did it. But even just like the executions.

I mean, you're talking millions of people, just rounded up, taken into a basement, bullet in the back of the head. And just because they're from the wrong social class, they murdered men, women, and children. and actually rounded them up and murdered. I'm like in most places, like you go to like Mao's China, for example, and they say Mao's got a body count higher than anybody. It's like, yeah, that is true, but like these are people who died mostly from starvation,

starvation-related diseases because of the famines that were going on because of just the crazy stuff they were doing. But the Soviet Union, I mean, especially in those early years, I mean, up until the terror basically in the middle late 30s, I mean, they were just, like in the terror itself, Stalin had like six, 700,000 people in a course of two years or so, just rounded up and shot. Crazy. Yeah. Well, in the Holodomor, of course, you know, I'm a little bit more, you know, versed in that.

This is not my expertise, this area of history, you know, this era of history. Except I did learn, you know, a lot about Ukraine and all of that when I was writing the book. I went back. Right. It's funny. Well, why would anybody welcome the Nazis to liberate them from the cons? Oh, man, communists are pretty bad, even though a lot of Ukrainians instantly regretted that because they didn't find the Nazis to be much better. Yeah, there were people in the German government at the time, and there have been historians since who have said that the Germans mistreatment of the locals in the Baltics and in Ukraine specifically.

That was just by far their biggest error of the entire war. Like they could have gone into Ukraine and had three million guys sign up for the Vof and SS if they had just treated them like human beings because they hated the Soviets so much. But they just, you know, I mean, there's a reason that that ideology is proscribed these days. And it's because they just didn't really have room for treating them that way, you know? Yeah, I mean, well, this is the problem with this exclusivist sort of collectivism where, like, everybody's on the outside of it. So Pandera and all the Ukrainian Nazis tried to declare a state and ally with the Soviet Union. I mean, with the Nazis, I mean, say, and Hitler was like, one, I don't want an ally there. I'm colonizing your land and cleansing you from it too.

And, you know, that's in my comp. I looked it up where he talks about all the borderlands of Russia and all belong to us now. And then also, you're not white enough, right? They're slavs. They might look white to you, but to Adolf Hitler. they are mud people and they can't have a state and be allies no matter what

Boleski spouts about his Aryan values he'd never be white enough for the German Nazis Yeah, they shot themselves in the foot that way But it's built into their ideology That they blow up everything including themselves apparently I mean the crazy thing about it Like when you put it into a historical context Is that

Like Granted like in the context of a total war of extermination with another superpower of the Soviet Union. I mean, the scale of the death and the killing was greater than, you know, almost anything you can compare it to. But in terms of that mentality that you're just describing, I mean, it was just a mentality that Britain, France, all of them had toward the brown people in the global south and Middle East and everywhere else. The Germans' big crime was that they did it there in Europe. And you're not supposed to do that. You know what I mean?

Right. Well, you know, that was something that you were talking about with Tucker, too, about. Like, yeah, Western man, we've got these great restrained rules of warfare. And it's like, yeah, well, I don't know. I can think of some people who would object to that if you could find them, you know. Right. Yeah, I should have, I definitely should have stipulated that that was something that existed, like, between Europeans. That's not something they extend, the courtesy they extended to non-Europeans, that's for sure.

Like, the Belgians in the Congo are, you know, there are plenty of examples. America and Vietnam. America in the Philippines, America and, you know, in America. Yeah. Yeah, don't get us started on the whole list of America in places. That'll be the rest of the hour. So this is funny to me only in that. I've tried to listen to it, and I just couldn't.

I have no idea what his complaint is, but you're very bad, Darrell Cooper, according to squeaky here. I didn't even know that this was a thing. I don't pay attention to him, so. Who in the chat room said? Are you going to reply to what Ben Shapiro said? and I says, well, link, and then he didn't give me a link. So I just went and Googled it, and I started to try to watch it, and I just can't listen.

That would require me to watch it, and I don't think I could get through that. I got too much to do, yeah. I mean, I got to say I am actually kind of interested in what it is that he took Umbrage over. Yeah, not actually, but so you can, I'm not playing it here. You can listen. Please don't. Or on your Twitter. Listen, we got a bunch of news to do.

discuss. Would you like to discuss news? Let's do it. I know that let's start with your speciality here. You know, I can't even read even that far away now. It really sucks. I need to do that, Red Light. You just got a nerd out and get some of these, man? I guess so. I do have something. So look, here's the controversy, Mr. Cooper.

The U.S. has used virtually all of its long-range precision missiles during the Iran War, and this is the big Reuters piece that caused a controversy a couple of days back. point being, these are our high Mars and attackums and these kinds of things, not the interceptors, but America's offensive missiles. They're running very low on those, they say. And then the CSIS, which as you know had put out this study back in April about the lower numbers, their diminished inventories, as they call it. Here is from late July, from the 27th, they show the numbers pre-war they're at what does i say 2330 yeah see 2330 and then at the ceasefire they had a thousand 30 left and now they're down to 759 to 827 patriots they were at 452 thads pre-war

that's the high altitude interceptor i guess the better one than the pack three right and now at ceasefire they were down to 232 to 262 and now a little bit lower to 34 to 278. I guess they must have brought in some from other areas. Oh, so this is in the region? Let me look back at that. Nope, remaining in U.S. inventory. Yeah, that's crazy, dude,

because I mean, it's not like we can take everything from everywhere. Yeah, maybe they got a delivery of a couple more. That's why this number went up, you know, maybe. Or maybe they just got a little more information there. But then I'm going to turn you loose and just to say, here, let me just finish setting you up. Trump and Heggs Seth had a big clue. Clash at Camp David. Two sources told the post that Trump chewed, heck, set out. You told me,

you took care of this. And then apparently they did not take care of it. And he's upset about it to the degree where now he is threatening leakers with jail time and accusing them of treason for telling the newspapers that we're out of missiles, even though everybody knows that this is why he keeps making these gigantic bluffs about World War II level violence, as he said here, not seen since World War II, was his most recent threat. And then he backs down every time because he's in this tough position

where he just does not have enough interceptors to protect from all of their outgoing missile fire. So I wonder how well you've been, or how closely you've been tracking this and what you think the truth of it all is. I think there's got to be some cognitive dissonance out there, right? Like, we know that embezzlement is the name of the game, and, like, Lord knows how much of the defense budget

just goes straight to Coke and horse. Right? I don't know. Golf excursions, what? But. I mean, it's a lot less ever since, it's a lot less ever since I left the DOD, but probably still a lot.

So, I'm kidding, grandma. I'm kidding. A couple percent. So, and they got rid of fat, Leonard. So you and him out of the Navy is. That's a pretty good improvement. But still, more to the point. So Mr. Cooper, can they not afford missiles or what are they doing with all this money? Because patrol in Pactica province doesn't cost that much. And they called that off a few years ago now. And it's fair for people to wonder for the trillions and trillions and trillions

we spend on this military where it's all going. Yeah, so there's a lot of misunderstanding in terms of, you know, when they say that the Pentagon can't account for a trillion dollars or something, that that means that like a trillion dollars of stuff got stolen. Like a big part of that is you have this gigantic, super inefficient organization that doesn't know where any of its stuff is. And like, we would go through the warehouses back when I stood up and ran the procurement department in my installation for a few years,

years, we would go through our warehouses doing inventory and there's just tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, just worth of old air defense equipment from defunct systems that are marked as missing in the system that has just been sitting in a crate for 25 years. Nobody even knew where it was. It's not even in any computer or anything. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff like in terms of like that specific, you know, data point people always throw out. But we're like the, you know, the $600 toilet seat and $500, hammer. That's a real thing. The misconception with it is that, you know, it's not that we're giving because, you know, we're buddies with the guys at Raytheon. We give them $500 for a hammer.

I mean, not like we buy hammers from Raytheon, but you know what I mean. It's that, you know, we have all of these just layers of unnecessary bureaucracy and regulatory mechanisms and all of these things that all cost money that anytime you buy a roll of toilet paper, I mean, it's just going through multiple layers of, you know, checks, various employees just all going to, and it's just, it drives the cost of everything up so dramatically that you really do have those, those things spread out all across. And so part of it is that everything costs more, like 10 times, 100 times more than you're used to seeing it down at Harbor Freight or something. The other part of it is that, you know, I talked a little bit about this on Tucker is we have just,

you know, over the course of the last 25 years, years, we have, like, you would see pieces in military journals talking about how we need to keep in mind, this war on terror thing is like what we're doing right now, but we got to keep our eye on the ball. And like, this is not what we're always going to be doing with our military, et cetera. And we, but we didn't do that at all. I mean, we just completely built a military that was meant to fight the war on terror and do air and ballistic missile defense stuff that we're only okay at. And that the enemy always has like a step on us at every point. And so we just, when you ask like, do we just not have the money for the missiles? It's not even really the money. It's just the

defense industrial base is so specialized and so proprietary at this point. The way I put it to Tucker, this isn't World War II where you can tell GM and Ford to start making tank parts. Like, nobody knows how to make them except for the people who, who like actually do it. If they wanted to build, if you had the budget, you had the resources, you had the political will, you had everything, build me five more factories. I want to start churning these things out. We don't have the workforce for it. Like it would take years to like train up the workforce. It would take years to ramp up the training pipeline in the services to train the people to run those systems once they get out there. You know, it's not as if we have just a whole bunch of people who work air and ballistic

missile defense in the military just sitting around doing nothing like everybody's doing something, you know? And so it's just in the best of circumstances. it would take us years to ramp up to the level that it's one of the reasons by the way for all the crap people like to talk because big bad Russia hasn't been able to beat you know little weak ukraine and in all these years the fact that russia was was able to ramp up its defense production to fight a high intensity like high-paced war for years now at this point that is something that they have got on us because we are not in a position to do that right now and if we tried it would take it would take years under the best of circumstances.

Like if we decided we were just fully committed to this Iran war, we were going to see this through to the end. If we're planning on it taking five years, I mean, we'd have to restart the war again in three years while we ramped up all our production and trained P.A. We just were so far, and this is assuming that, you know, we're not,

I don't really know this end of it that much, the manufacturing end, but like, that's assuming we're not relying on rare earths from China that they decide not to give us or whatever. kind of stuff. And so, you know, we just, we built a military that was designed to fight the war on terror and pretend that it could do ballistic missile defense. And, I mean, you see it, like, every other day it sounds, it seems like you see a Reaper drone goes down in or around Iran.

They're shooting those things down like crazy. And the reason they're doing that is because we don't want to send a manned aircraft anywhere near their air defenses, which really kind of tells you where we're at, you know? Hey, man, if we got into a nuclear war, with North Korea or Russia or whatever, it's the Thads is what they use to try to shoot down those, right? Primarily, yeah. For what, do you talk about like homeland defense?

Yeah, or just like what is the, or for whatever, I mean, if we're protecting the country, but from a three-stage ICBM coming in from space at Mach 18, it's the Thad is the one that you use for that, right? Yes. And, you know, for the theater stuff, protecting Tel Aviv from Shahad drones and ships.

Yeah, right. No. Those, I mean, we've got ages ships sitting off the coast that can help out, but you know, as far as like the actual air defense, not the ballistic missile defense missiles, but you go out the extended range, SM2,

which is, it's been a while now. I can't remember what the unclassified number is. It's like 140, 150 miles, notical miles or something, range, right? And it's like if the ship is sitting 40, miles off the coast, 180 miles inlets, it's just not that far, you know, especially when you're accounting for altitude and everything. It's not like as the crow flies. It's at a, you know,

it's at a vertical angle. So they just don't really have the range to like cover all of that, all that much in the area there. And, you know, this is like one of the other things. You see the numbers of the THAA interceptors that we have there in the Patriot Interceptors, but that's assuming that they don't keep blowing up our sad systems or THAD radars, you know, because we ain't, got a lot of those. And I think we started this thing with like three or four in the theater and then we were transfer and one over, but I think they deverted that. But still, there's only a couple. I mean, we don't have, I think, seven or eight of them total all around, you know, around the world that aren't covering the continental United States or Hawaii. And so being redundant here,

man, but everybody's asking the same thing on every show. It's been like this for months now. I'm like, well, what the hell's going to happen, Darrell? We already lost the war. We don't have enough weapons to start the thing back up again. Donald Trump has no strategy for victory here, I don't think. Although, maybe we talked about this last week, but anyway, I want to hear you talk about it again. The Wall Street Journal said two weeks ago that the commander of Central Command and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff talked Trump out of it. Then they said one week ago that the chairman is still against it, but the commander of Centcom said, yeah, let's hit them. But then I guess somebody else talked him out of that.

Yeah. So it really seems, right? Like just whoever it was convinced Trump, he understands the facts of life here. If he really wants to crank this thing back up to where it was, it's not actually going to get him anywhere. They're going to be able to survive it, and they're going to be able to hit back also really hard. You know, he expressed his exasperations,

and if we hit them hard enough, they'll give up. But I think he knows it. Actually, maybe they won't, right? He tried that and that actually already didn't work. But then obviously he stuck between that reality and the politics of losing a war looks bad. And then I guess I'll throw in a little bit of current news of the day, which is that Iran and Oman are negotiating over control of the straits. So this is a potential avenue for Trump to claim that something good is happening,

credit for it maybe, and say that he's reopening the thing. and something's returning to normal here. It's not going to be returning to the status quo ante. That's for sure. They seem to be, you know, kind of working on something. But, and I usually leave this part out because I think this is probably less of a consideration for Trump than people might assume.

But the midterms are coming up to, and the Republican Party and his allies have got to be completely, you know, squirm and screaming and trying to figure out how they're going to, you know, possibly get reelected. in the middle of this absolute idiot war that he can't wrap up. I assume there's a lot of that going on behind the scenes, but man, publicly, they're acting like they just don't care.

It's how it looks to me. I mean, Trump doesn't seem to care at all. And we've come back to this point a few times in the past that to me when I see all these leaks and these stories that are coming out, to me the real story is that the story is coming out. Like, that there are people who are high enough in there, that the Washington Post or Reuters can't ignore when they come and give them.

It's not some E5 stationed in Bahrain who's calling up a Reuters reporter. This is a flag officer. This is somebody who is close to the top of the system. And so the fact that people are doing this and that there's just a drumbeat of these leaks, what it does kind of tell me is Trump does know the jammies in,

but that he still is intent. on continuing this. Like, okay, we'll just use all the missiles. And then we'll, you know, well, China's not going to come invade America. We'll just rebuild them. Like, after we're done with this or whatever, but let's just use them all.

And I think that, you know, the people who are, you know, still going to be theater commanders and are still going to be GS-15s and S-E-S-appointees at the Pentagon after Trump is gone are looking at this and be like, we've got longer-term things we've got to think about other than just get you out of,

this jam. And so they're trying to, you know, they're trying to force his hand. It's very encouraging to me on one hand that there are obviously a lot of people in there that are doing that. It may even be some people from within his administration, honestly. But also, it's kind of discouraging because at this point, it's so obvious what the material situation is. And the fact that they're still feeling compelled to do this because it tells me that he still wants to keep it going. And it's, you know like the problem that we have right now is that it's very obvious to me anyway that we have a president who absolutely does not care what happens the day after he leaves office i mean he just does not care like he he is a hundred percent focused on his legacy and his name and just what's

going on with him personally in this job that the whatever happens the day after he leaves is just not as concerned and that's you know obviously dangerous but you know at the same time, like all this stuff, all the biggest attacks since World War II, I just laughed. The Iranians had to laugh when he said that. So, like, we spent months and months and months and months building up munitions for that initial attack. I mean, just ships coming over, coming in and out of port, just hundreds of cargo plans coming and going, coming and going. And we launched everything we had for 40 days. The idea that now we're going to, oh, that was nothing, we're just going to, like, really stuff. That's so ridiculous. And you see all these people who are just,

the die-hard maga writer wrong types, you know, you read comment threads on these articles or in social media and there's just this recurrent theme of, all right,

now it's time to take the gloves off. It's time to finish this thing. As if there's this win the war button, red button on Trump's desk, and he just hasn't pushed that yet because we're just,

you know, we didn't want to, but now we're thinking, it's just so ridiculous. Like there are just limitations to what we can do. And nobody, you have a lot of people, I think probably even in government, honestly.

And even Hegeseth, I wouldn't doubt, I mean, Hegeseth was a captain in the National Guard, right? He was in charge of a company. And like I love to feel great off. Nothing to do with that. But the idea that, like, this guy doesn't know what's going on throughout the Department of Defense. He knows the reports he's getting from certain guys and stuff.

But, you know, he could very easily just have the same idea that like your normal grandpa Fox News Watcher has, which is just saying, we're the Americans, or the U.S. military, of course we can do it. We can do anything. You know, who's going to get in our way? But you say we don't have enough, of course we have enough. And they just can't get it through their head that that's just not true. We just, we've built a different kind of military over the last 25 years. So we just don't have one that is built for long-term sustained operations against a near-peer competitor. You know, one that we cannot, like this would be a completely, different story. And this

to me, by the way, is one of the, it's one of the real stories of this whole war. The fact that we have not been able to knock out their air defense network sufficiently that we feel comfortable, it's clear, we don't feel comfortable at all flying manned aircraft other than maybe

like stealth bombers occasionally or something over Iran itself. Like there may be an area that we find that is cleared out for the time being and we'll go run some ops in like the northwest or the southwest, but then we get out of there. And then that gets covered again and we go somewhere else. Like, the fact that we have not been able to knock out their air defense network, they don't

have a bunch of S-400s and stuff like all throughout the country network together. They got old boot systems. They have a lot of like old systems. But, you know, the thing is, an old system can shoot down a manned aircraft. Even the modern stealth aircraft, the F-35s and stuff, they have tiny, they have like really small radar cross-sections, but there are other ways to to track those things, or at least to detect those things, and then turn them over to track. They lost an F-35. What's that?

They lost an F-35 over Iran. Yeah, yeah. This was a correction I had to make. I had said for a decade or two that one of the reasons you can't invade Iran is because you'd have to be willing to lose a couple of 10,000 special operations forces that

you'd have to send in there to take out the anti-aircraft. And people told me, nah, that's wrong, and that was superseded by more recent technology and whatever. Nope. In like the last decade, I probably would have been one of those people. Like, I was surprised by our inability to do it, honestly. And if that wasn't the case, if we had gone in there and just knocked out their air defense

network so that our B-52s could just be flying sorties all the time, dropping dumb bombs and j-dams, you know, from 20 miles away or whatever, I mean, then this would be a totally different story. We could bomb them, maybe not the submission. I mean, it didn't work on Japan and Germany until, you know, the nukes dropped on Japan. And in Germany, we had to invade. But so that might not work. But we could at least really, really, really make it hurt.

And at this point, one of the things I told Tucker, we may have talked about this before, you know, if a missile, if like a cruise missile or a drone, like a suicide drone hits this building I'm in right now, then I'm going to die. That's bad news for me. my house, which is, you know, quarter mile up the driveway or something there, it would be fine. Like it wouldn't even take any damage. Like it's the explosions are not that big. These are not nuclear weapons. I mean, the example I always give people is when we hit that Syrian airfield after Assad supposedly gas people or whatever during the first Trump administration. We shot like 84, 86 camera, I remember the exact number, but it was 80-something Tomahawk missiles at this airfield.

It was back up and running a week and a half later because they're not, these things, are, you know, again, they'll blow up your building that you're in, but they're not things you're going to go level a city with. We just, I mean, we would need a thousand times more standoff munitions than we actually have to pull something like that off. That's just not what they're built for. And so, I mean, it's kind of there in the name, you know, precision strike missiles, you know, precision munitions. And so. Well, we saw in Vietnam and many other places that it just doesn't work. I mean, Iraq and Iraq War I, they just had, you know, the Republican Guard and their armored divisions out there on flat open desert, just helpless. They got slaughtered. Like,

that's the only one I can think of. We should interview Bob Pape on the show. He's the expert in air power. Is there example? I know Kosovo doesn't count. That was Bill Clinton gave in and dialed down his demands in order to claim a win. And that war after three months of failure. So it wasn't that Wesley Clark's air power there. I mean, it just doesn't work. As you said, air power didn't bring Germany to their knees. We said to invade them anyway. And that was after the British and the Americans were terror bombing the crap out of them for months or more, you know? Anyway, let's change the subject real quick to expat money. Again, go to expatmoney.com slash provoked and learn about how to become an expat,

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And there's no gimmicks here. You have to obey the law, of course, but he knows the law better than anybody or as well. And he is going to make sure that you don't have to pay one penny more and you are absolutely required to under the law and help you structure all of your things so that you can escape the wrath of the revenues and that is agoristtaxadvice.com for Matt Sersley, your new tax lawyer, agoristtaxadvice.com.

Tell them Scott and Daryl sent you yet. And one more real quick. You drink this in the morning to wake up, then you drink it in the afternoon so you don't fall asleep. Scott Wharton flavored coffee. It's really good. It's at Scottwerton. dot org slash coffee.

Everybody loves it. I do. All right, Cooper. You were going to say more about it. Go ahead. Yeah, well, I was sort of about missiles, but you remember that video that came out? I don't know if it had come out in the past,

but it was circulating around again recently of Lindsey Graham, like right as the war was kicking off, and he's in a car talking to somebody, and he's saying how, I give it three, four weeks before they start losing cities. You know, they're going to start running, all this stuff. That was the whole strategy.

dude. The whole strategy was to throw their society into chaos, hope that there were separatist groups and dissidents within the regime and on their borders that would move in and tear that place apart. That was the entire strategy. I mean, and

which is, you know, like the idea wasn't like unconditional surrender. The idea was to eliminate there being any government that existed to surrender, basically, just to tear the place apart. But you know, but in effect, like, an unconditional surrender in the sense of like a total victory through just the collapsing their civil

society you know and causing a civil war that was the whole strategy and when that didn't work we stayed on the gas pedal in terms of our demands and our expectations you know we still wanted a total victory when everybody knows the iranians and our side that we're not willing to do what we would have to do that i mean if we were to ramp up a full-on mobilization where we're like snags and matching people off the street like Ukraine if we have to and sending them to boot camp and flying him to Iran and just millions of men, we still might not win that war. Like under modern conditions where they're on their home turf, where countries that don't want them to lose are right there kind of next to them. And, you know, we have political and geopolitical considerations that

they wouldn't have basically fighting for their lives, drone technology, all of this stuff. We still might not win that war. The idea that we were going to go in there, I mean, if we even, people talk about like Vietnam, if we went in there with like 560,000 guys, there's absolutely no way we would conquer Iran. I mean, we might be able to carve out enough of it that we, you know, could hold the territory and then make the Kurds in that territory feel safe enough to like, you know, something like that. But in terms of going through that mountainous and desert country and just rolling through like we did in Iraq, it's just, it's just, again, we just, we don't have, Even Desert Storm.

This sounds kind of crazy to people because it was not that long ago. We could not put together the forces that we had going into Desert Storm today. We do not have the forces in being to do that. And so it's just we just have a diminished military that, you know, we took this idea of, as you alluded to earlier, just our technological advantage. You know, we came to rely way too much on like Predator and then Reaper drones to do a a lot of our heavy lifting for us. And we just built a military that is not structured for a near peer,

like prolonged, protracted conflict. And so eventually they're going to have to admit it. It's just a question of how much we got to go through, you know, and whether we're going to have to reach like a real crisis point where before that happens. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. So here's a piece in Al Jazeera. A rock faces crisis, the Shiite arm.

groups defied disarmament. So Mottata al-Sauder even ordered his forces to join the army. And the new government was trying to get people to do that. And as I think we discussed on this show, they have a new businessman, prime minister there who's not from Dawah or Skiri for the first time and who's said to be, you know, favored by the United States. It said that then although she had militias that rose up not just in Iraq War II, but especially in Iraq War III, when after the Caliphate was declared in 2014, the Ayatollah Sistani said, if you believe in God, I want to grab a rifle and go volunteer for the local Minutemen. And they did.

All the Shiites grabbed rifles and joined these militias. So you have really Iraqi Hezbollah, I guess, Khadib Hezbollah, Aseb al-Hawk, and then all the different derivatives of the Bada Brigade and whatever. So even though America has been embedded with the Iraqi army going out on missions against ISIS from time to time, the Iraqi army's allies and those Shiite militias, we've had back and force with them too, even in the Trump years leading to the assassination of Soleimani and all of that. And the shootdown that ended up with the drone and then getting shot down in Trump going ahead and calling it quits back then in his first term, if you remember. I thought that was one of his finest moments, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they were pressuring him hard, and he even suspected that, you know,

oh, it was truly an international airspace, huh? Like, I don't know. You know what I mean? He was wise to suspect them. But that was a long time ago, I guess. Anyway, point is, so these Shiite militias, they're with Iran. They're not with us. And they're embarrassed to talk about this all the time because, of course,

this is who we fought the war for. And I don't know if you saw the headlines where I'm sorry, I don't have this tab here, bud. but I did see it. I don't know if you saw it yesterday or I guess I saw it take, was the Iraqi Shiite militias are attacking Kuwait.

It is the regime that America put in power in Baghdad. Dude, they could overrun Kuwait. Just the Shiak militias. They could overrun Kuwait in a matter of days. I don't think, I mean, Kuwait can't stand up a force of its own. Like maybe they could get all of their,

you know, semi-inslaved migrant workers and try to give them rifles and send them out on the field or something. but they couldn't do anything to defend themselves, and we're not there to defend them. And why are they attacking them? Because they're allied with us, and they're allied with Iran,

and we're in the middle of a war. Yeah. And I've got to say, too, if Iran, if there was anybody in the Iranian system who doubted the strategic value of their relationship with all these militias, like, is this really, like, helping us that much? And in a pinch, is it, is it,

Is it worth, is the juice worth the squeeze or however the hell that goes, right? Like, now they know, like, absolutely it is. I mean, they can, they can cause so many problems because of the loyalty of Hezbollah and now the Iraqi Shiite militias and the Houthis. That is, I mean, I think for Netanyahu, that aspect of it, I think that that's probably his number one priority is cutting off Iran's relationship with the various militias that it's allied to. Because I mean, the ballistic missiles, like, they only matter if you start another war with them. You know, like you could just not start another war with them and they won't shoot them at you.

Nuclear weapons, like, everybody knows they weren't trying to make nuclear weapons. Like, we'll see what happens now. But you've laid it out, like, perfectly. and these people, there are people in the governments who understand all the things that you're saying perfectly well, so they know better. But from, you know, from Israel's pure standpoint, like the Iraqi militia, especially, and Hezbollah especially, of course, like, that's got to be their number one priority. And after this war now, Iran has got to be more committed to than ever to preserving its relationship with those groups. And they are. Look, we can already see the effect of that, right, where they have bombed Israel directly in defense. of Hezbollah and they bombed, was it Jordan or, yeah, they bombed Jordan and they called it

the sneak attack. Remember we talked about this last week? Oh, the sneak attack, but no, it was direct retaliation for attacks by America and Saudi on the Iraqi militias. And so this is the thing about it, right, is, and this goes back to why it's been hammering the Kurds too in Iraq. I'm sorry? They've been really hammering the Kurds in Iraq too. So this is the thing about it, right? is it ain't just that we lost. Iran is so much more powerful now than they were on February the 27th. So much more powerful than they would be if we had just left on February the 27th and let them take as much advantage as they can.

They still are in an even better position even than that as far as I could tell. I mean, so it just makes it that much harder when if everything that W. Bush did and two-thirds of everything Obama did and everything that Trump has done and Biden had done has only empowered Iran even when their moves were directly meant to spite them. I mean, you talk about Netanyahu's priority is separating Iran from these militias.

That's the clean break doctrine of David Wormsler that got us into this mess in the first place was we got to separate Iran from Hezbollah and here's how we do it. And Netanyahu bought it. And you got to wonder, Daryl, sometimes, whether Netanyahu ever gets wasted at night and stands there in his underwear thinking,

oh, geez, like this really is all my fault, right? Like, what did I do? I put the Shiite power in Baghdad. I gave Hezbollah a bunch of battlefield experience fighting in Syria. I created a caliphate that, you know, even doubled new Shiite Iraq's ties with Iran. And this wasn't exactly his doing, but all throughout these wars

and as partly the consequence of the war in Iraq helped lead to the rise of the Houthis, taking the capital city and conquering Yemen, which had been run by a guy who was really a Zadishiteite, but didn't really act like it, and now is run by their enemies who are good friends with the Iranians. And like this all happened because Netanyahu had Bush,

like egged on Bush to kick over the ant pile that was Iraq War II. That led to all the rest of this crap. You know what I mean? And honestly, man, I would settle for just a little bit of introspection from any of these people ever. You know what I mean? Like, even if it's a secret, but like, if you could just tell that Netanyahu kind of regretted some of the stupid things that he had championed over the years or whatever, that like it did lead all this. He's been in power a very long time.

And even when it was Sharon, he had a big voice in what was going on with the neo-conservative movement in America in the early part of the W. Bush years there. So just, you know, the stupidest part about the whole thing, too, is, like, if you really, if your goal was really to separate Iran from these various militias, I mean, they should have stuck with the Obama deal. I mean, maybe it would have taken a little while. Maybe you would have had to fight a brushfire war against Tesbla here and there. Like, but eventually you're, you were going to get to a point where Iran had enough riding on peace and continued peace, you know, enough economically riding on it, politically riding on it. that they would have been more reluctant, you know, they would have been pulling the leash on Hezbo. I mean, you know, maybe they're, I just have my doubts about this. Like they have a revolutionary government, you know, in their name. So that is like part of their legitimacy is that they are going to keep pushing.

But, you know, you saw with the Soviet Union, I think probably before these last two wars, you would have seen it with Iran, that, you know, once that first generation is out of the picture, the people just want to run their government, run a country, usually. They don't have that same revolutionary fire to keep up. Plus, all the regional geopolitical, just like the situation in general with the, you know, the Shiites being under the thumb of Saddam Hussein and being just poor and kind of kicked around in Lebanon,

all the different kind of things that led to the Shiite uprising in the Islamic Revolution to begin with. All that stuff is different now. And there's the conditions to support it don't really. really exist. And I feel like if they wanted to, if they wanted Iran to stop doing these things, the way to do it would have been to try to draw them out instead of trying to pound it out of them because now, I mean, man, you know, it really does look like, again, I'm not walking the streets of Tehran putting a microphone in people's faces, but like from an outside observer just reading the stuff that is being put out, I mean, it looks like a, you know, Soviet Union

1941 situation. The Bolsheviks throughout the 1930s. Like, there's a reason that Stalin had to kill 750,000 people in the late 30s, you know? I mean, had to. But, like, it was an unstable regime. It was an extremely unpopular regime. You get up to 1945, Stalin's revered in the Soviet Union. And that government was locked in at that point. And it got completely legitimate.

And at this point, I mean, I mean, gosh, after the protests in, you know, protests and riots and whatever, uprising and in james, And in January, there were very clearly, you know, not even just reading, you know, FDD reports or whatever, Mark Dubowitz's Twitter feed. There were a lot of people in Iran who were not happy with the way that the government, like the heavy hand that the government handled that whole thing. They were not happy with the economy for sure. And you started to, you know, a lot of the early protests before they got taken over by the militants. these are a lot of like upper middle class businessmen types who were upset about the collapse of the current, all of which

we cause, that's fine. But if you would have just let that keep going, I mean, this government was probably losing legitimacy by the day among people who really mattered at that point. And now you just threw all of that effort, all the stuff that Scott Bessent likes to brag about, you just threw that in the waistband and gave them an absolutely new lease on life.

And another mistake Netanyahu made, you listed off all of those mistakes and things he's responsible for. But in the meantime, he also went into Gaza in 2023 and has basically made it so that nobody in the world except for neo-conservatives and evangelical Christians in America care if Iran destroys Israel or not. You know, like before there was always just like, you know, we can't, yeah, okay, we agree on this, but we don't want Iran to say have a nuclear weapon. We have to make sure that they're not like a real threat to Israel. At this point, nobody's on Israel's side. Like, maybe they're not on Iran's side, but they, at most, they're neutral observers and just don't really care who wins, like at worst. And so he, I mean, he's been an absolute disaster for Israeli society from just like a political culture standpoint, as well as the actual moves that they've made around the place. I mean, it is directly because of him that, well, I would say he was the conductor of the orchestra that, that, that has dragged Israel into this just crazy place where people who are middle of the pack in terms of their politics, I mean, they're, they're so militant, so far to, I guess what we would call the right, and just off the rails in terms of their hostility to everybody around them, that.

it's going to be really hard to like guide these people back, you know? I mean, just because their their attitude toward all of their neighbors and really to the rest of the world is so severe. And, and, you know, when you factor, when you add in that just for historical and cultural reasons, that it's just, it's a group of people who you talk about introspection, like it's very hard to get them to, to look inward at their own behavior because they sort of have this, you know, know, like all paranoiacs, they have this built-in mechanism that the minute you criticize them, then you're part of the conspiracy. You know, you're part of them. You just don't like us. That's what it is. And it lets them just diffuse any criticism that comes in and keeps them from,

from reflecting on their own actions. So it's going to be very hard to walk them back. Yeah, you know, I was on the Pierce Morgan show the other day and the guys, I mean, this is his job. It's a former Israeli, you know, IDF spokesman who's now at the FDD, Jonathan, Jonathan, whatever it is. And so Pierce Morgan asked him, I mean, geez, all of American public opinion has turned against you. The American people are like 50-50 want to see Netanyahu thrown in prison over this one.

And the guy goes, yeah, because there's this big global propaganda campaign against us to try to make us look bad. And he's like, I don't know. Like, he kind of seemed like he wasn't lying. Like, obviously that's what he has to say. But it almost is like, well, you really

believe that? Like, come on, man. It was all the killing that He did the bloodletting and all the dead kids and everybody saw it. You know, I don't know. All right. Listen, we got to do a little bit more business so we can do a little bit more show. So here is me. I own LibertyStickers.com again, which is so rad.

And here's just a few of them to look at if you want to. Work harder. Millions of Israelis on welfare depend on you. Right wing, anti-war. U.S. Army die for Israel. Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. Great John Adams quote for you there. We got lots of founding father stuff.

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And then I got Russia-Ukraine news and I got domestic politics, too. The Kami one. This is Israel, Palestine, you know, tangentially related, of course. We got the great inflation debate, which is also crucial. Another guy was apparently Kaysen a place to try to kill Donald Trump, which, you know, seems newsworthy. We got Russigate news. What time is it? Oh, no, we've only got four and a half minutes left before super chat time. So let's talk real quick about the Russians bomb of the crap out of Kiev. It killed about 17. It seems to me, Mr. Cooper, that this is a deliberate escalation that was caused by Ukraine escalating and hitting all those targets inside Russia, as they said at the time. We're turning the tide, and this is all meant to pressure Putin to force him to negotiate. But

it just made him mad, and he just started punishing them back, as what they call it, and they're completely out of interceptors too, apparently. So they just had to sit there and take it. A bunch of people were killed and they got blasted by rockets. They said new jet-powered drones, Zelensky said that the Russians have and as well as all different brands of

ballistic missiles that came in. And he's begging for interceptors. And, you know, I've heard reports about further mobilizations inside Russia. I admit I'm a bit behind on the news there. But I guess I did see a podcast where they were discussing that.

rather than I read about it is what it was. So that's why I don't know good enough. But point being was there's wars and rumors of wars over there in terms of potential Russian escalation. And if you're watching Willie OAM, the Australian Afghan war vet, Matt Williams, I just interviewed him last week too, but he keeps real close watch on the maps,

all the battle maps from all the different sources, you know, and does a real good job of sussing that all out. And he says that the Ukrainian, has lost another major city, or I don't know how major, but another city in Western. Yeah, not like a major city in the sense of its, like the size of it and stuff, but in terms of its positioning, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, things continue there.

I wonder if you have any comments on the recent developments in that word. Well, I mean, Putin, it was, I guess, a few weeks ago now, he was at, I don't know if it was a speech. I think he was in a sitting at a chair, so it was some kind of a conference or something, but he he basically was making the announcement that Russia was going to step up the intensity of things and they've kept to that. And to me, I always watch for this

when I see these videos, when I go through telegram channels and when I was watching those strikes on Kiev, in fact, the last few strikes on Kiev, you don't see a single interceptor go up to intercept these missiles. I mean, they're just, and you're talking about the capital city.

And it's not a surprise, I guess, at this point that you're starting to see Zelensky make noises about suing for peace. You know, maybe we should have a, maybe we should have

an air war ceasefire but yeah, right, you know. And that statement you referred to, I had spaced this out, but that statement

that Putin made, he also referred to not just the Dombass, but to Nova Rousia, which could be interpreted to mean, you know, to Odessa.

After Ukraine hit that Russian merchant ship in the Azov Sea not too long ago, that's, this is a thing. I'm continually just amazed at the restraint that Russia shows, that Putin shows in this war.

I mean, to their own detriment probably and probably gets a lot of criticism over there forth. But, you know, once they hit that ship in the Azov Sea, that's when he basically shut down the port of Odessa and started blowing up ships there, it's like, when I heard that, it was like, wait, they haven't done that yet. It's just kind of crazy that they've been, you know, because now they talk about Ukraine's steel industry.

It's just falling apart because they usually export all their steel through the port of Odessa there, and they had been doing it until pretty recently. It's just kind of crazy that they've been allowing that. But, I mean, it's a, you know, we, we, we, we, we, we, just like with Iran, you know, we've done a similar thing in both of these wars where we can't win either one of them. That is completely obvious to any just halfway rational, neutral observer who's looking at this, that we can't win, at least in the way that we hope to win, that we, that we want to win the wars, and yet we don't back off our demands, and we put the other side in a position

where they just have no choice except to fight this thing out. I mean, because they're looking at, they're like, we can't make a deal with these people. Like, nothing that they put their name to paper. Like, none of that matters. Like, nothing matters to the Americans. They'll break it the next day as soon as it's convenient for them. You know, and if they don't, then the Ukrainians will break it for them or the Israelis will break it for. It's just, we've put them in a position where you'd be foolish to come to the table and talk, you know, until you're, until you're coming to the table from a position of just extreme strength, where they really do have us at a point where they know and we know that if

this keeps going, it's going to be all downhill for us. And we've put them in a position where they almost just from a logical standpoint have to push things to that level. Like when I watch what Iran is doing, you know, now that they've kind of stopped that tip for tat stuff, and sometimes they're attacking us before we attack them. And, you know, Trump will be talking about, oh, we're negotiating, we're close to a deal. And the next day, they launch a bunch of missiles and drones at Kuwait or something. I mean, it almost looks to me, like they're pretty, they're confident enough that they're actually trying to bait us into putting some men on the ground in it. I think they would love that. I mean, I think that to them, because they look at that as like, how do we,

the Americans can sit back in every two months or so, you know, blow up a whole bunch of stuff, probably forever. How do we end this? Well, if they can get us to put, you know, a couple thousand special ops and rangers in there, and they can capture a few hundred of them or just really show that they can't accomplish anything in there, I mean, then they might be thinking that way. Otherwise, Iranian officials watching this, I highly discouraged this strategy, dude. Because that assumes that there's a limit, as we were talking before, about what all we can do with air power. But in fact, that's not right.

In fact, America has unlimited air power. America can completely destroy Iran with thermonuclear weapons. Don't forget that. And don't forget that this president is loco. And so, you know, it was a thing, though. There, but I would, if the Iranians are smart, They should just continue the status quo like this or whatever, but not that, not try to make it worse deliberately. You know, because I mean, I agree.

But, you know, again, from their standpoint, they're looking at this and saying, we've got to end this. I mean, we can't have our oil industry shut down forever. We can't just get bombed every two months forever. Like, how do we actually put an end to this thing? And they also may think that like, look, this is probably our best chance that we're ever going to get to do this. This idiot, Donald Trump, rushed in here, burned through all of his munitions, lost the faith of all of his Arab allies in the region. Let us push U.S. forces out of all of their in-theater bases that this is probably our best chance ever that we're going to get. But again, you've brought this up before too, is back in 1979, the Iranians, you know, just because they were in the

grip of revolutionary fever and stuff, they pushed, you know, they pushed far enough that we've been, you know, after them for 47 years now. And, you know, and not that there's a lot of factors there obviously, but, you know, America, we saw with Syria, like a lot of times you think America's strategy is defeated, but, you know, these things can go for a long time and sometimes come to fruition later. So let's get us some questions because we've got a bunch of work I still got to do outside. Okay, and if somebody wants to ask about this, I want to hear Cooper's response. So this guy, Abdul El-Syid, beats A-Pact, back rival, this horrible woman, Haley Stevens.

And so that's hilarious. A-PAC had spent tons of money. 60 million or something. Or maybe that was her total money. Yeah. And so it's funny, man. I mean, we've seen this coming for a long time. And, you know, I'm less interested in the Democratic side, but that's where all the action is on this issue, where the center-left liberals are just nailing themselves to the cross, destroying themselves on the altar of Zionism and empire.

And they just won't let it go. And they'll say, you know, these socialists are so bad on everything, including Israel. And it's like, no, Israel's the one thing they're good on. and at least they focus on the fact that people can't afford the cost of living. And of course, they're socialist, all they can do is say, well, I'll give you stuff for free somehow

if you only vote for me, whatever, which works on the dumb. But at least they're campaigning on giving a damn at all about the people of this country. And I saw him, you know, just a few different clips where they go, oh, you hate the Jews and Israel so much.

And he goes, hey, I just think that this money belongs to the people of Michigan and ought to be spent by the people of Michigan and or on the people of Michigan and not be used to help foreign countries kill children with. It's like they're playing T-ball, dude. Like that just, they make it so easy for them. I mean, it's like, you know, I don't know if you saw that, that, that episode that Tucker did last night where he was just talking about like these 10 point sort of, or 10 themed,

not, not a plan, but like 10 things are, yeah, get us back on track. and like people were going, all the unusual suspects going crazy over it today. It's like, he was this skill. And like a lot of these Democrats, this guy, Mom Donnie's really good at it of just taking something that is not a 6040 issue. I mean, this is like when you put it in plain terms, it's like a 90-10 issue. It'll especially like in their own district or state like among the people who matter. And they'll go out there and say it knowing it's going to trigger the other people to go insane

for the 10% side. And he's just like the mom-dani debate where they were asking who's going to travel to Israel. And everybody's just falling all over themselves. And he says, well, I'm going to stay in New York. You know, this is where the Jewish Americans who are here in New York or what's it really important to me.

It's like, man, like, could you serve that up for him any more perfectly? And then they freak out and go crazy when he wins. I mean, say what you want about Democrats. And I have plenty to say about them. At least their candidates can't get run out their primaries by APEC. Yeah. Yeah.

And look, I mean, this is obviously the issue of all issues is price inflation. It's just like we used to talk about with Joe Biden being just so damn old that no matter who you are, you could be just some guy's aunties next to a neighbor. You take one look at this guy and you go, he's too old to be the president, man. It's the same thing with price inflation. You don't have to know anything about the world at all to know that, oh my God, I can't afford these prices. Why are they so high? And now the most disconnected people just kind of blame their local shopkeeper or just blame capitalism or greed or whatever. But for people who understand these things

on higher levels, this is all because of governmental monetary policy. This is because of all the money they created in the aftermath of COVID. And then ever since then infrastructure spending, the wars, and all the rest of it. And so, and then there are also upward pressures on prices from tariffs and other things. But it's the monetary inflation and the total debasing of the currency more than any other thing that is just causing, especially the young to just scream in

economic pain here. People are pissed off and they have every right to be. And I don't know if you saw this, Oren McIntyre said this has got to be the worst case of medical malpractice in the world history. It's just completely bizarre where the young people complain about we can't afford to just go

out to eat at Taco Bell or whatever, and then they're being lectured by the war party, essentially what's left of the Donald Trump movement, telling them that, well, screw you. I mean, that's your problem for being poor. Maybe you should work hard, or maybe you should make burritos at home instead of going out to eat and all of these things. And then here's what's funny about it is, is this the right article? I had a thing. Oh, I'm sorry. It was the Grock thing that I looked up, Daryl. It's gone now. But I had the Grock thing. And the Grock thing, and the Grock thing, listed. Who were all the people chiming in on the side of Stop Whining? And it was Ben Shapiro and Mark Thesson and Joel Barry from the Babylon B and just all pro-Iran war people. Like this is all

who it is this tiny chorus of pro-war supporters. Mark Deeson. He just happens to be the expert on how, well, you just shouldn't eat so many burritos then or whatever. When we all know that he's a completely single-minded guy. And there's only one reason. that he's making those arguments, same as Shapiro and the rest of them. And the argument just is Israel first. Americans go to hell. Yeah, it's, I mean, the rhetoric coming from the conservative side is a borderline suicidal. I mean, it's really, it's just, it's crazy, but they can't help themselves because

it's not as if they're thinking this is a winning message. What they're thinking is the people who are complaining about food prices, they're associating that with Tucker Carlson and Mom Donnie and other people that they don't like, And they'll just, they want to get over on those people and, like, get a shot in. And if that means that they broadcast an insult out to tens of millions of their own voters, they just can't help themselves. I mean, to see all of these people, people like Shapiro, people like Barry, well, actually, there's two things that are, somebody put up a thread, I'll send it to you later,

hilarious. Frigin' Joel Berry, Mark Dyson, all these people you're just listing off. I don't know Shapiro was in there, but everybody else. It goes through in 2023, 2024, when Biden's in office. It's like, Joe Barry had one that was like, can we please go back to having no wars and food prices being normal? Can we do that, please? And it's just like, how do you people go to sleep at night? I just don't understand.

Like, I can absolutely be wrong. I can say things that, you know, where I act like I'm more certain than I actually am. know, like in the moment, like those kind of things. But where I'm just like, if somebody caught me doing that, I would just step back from social media for a while and like rethink, like my whole approach and be like, what am I doing here? Like, this is crazy. Like I, I just, it blows me away.

And then the thing that is so insulting about it is you have these people who, like, look, I'm not saying this is an ignoble, like, profession or something, but people who make their money in media or from politics. you know, it's not a bunch of factory owners or, you know, entrepreneurs who are out there telling people to quit whining about food prices. A bunch of people who made their money in media and politics telling these, you know, telling people who have no concept of like, you know, yeah, you got your young people who, like, have roommates and can't buy a house or whatever, but there's a much, much larger group

of people in this country, like a huge group of people who vote in this country that, like, you know, the last two days before they get paid, like they're waiting for that paycheck. Or maybe they make it to that paycheck and they're able to put a little bit aside, but their car breaks down and their savings is gone. And now they have to start over. Like, that's a massive, massive portion of the population.

And when all of a sudden, the price of hamburger goes up two and a half times over the course of five years or whatever, or if they need to make it a repair to their house and they go to Home Depot and plywood is six times what it was in 2019, that hurts, dude. I mean, like, you know, they got to drive 35 minutes to and from work every day and gas goes up a buck 50.

Like, that really hurts. It takes away a very, very thin margin that these people are living on. And the people who are saying these things, they just seem to have no concept of that that exists. To tell those people that their position is because of like the bad choices that they made in their lives. You know, you're talking about people who are, you know, just a large enough group of people that you could say that they're representative of like an entire social class, basically. And these aren't all just people who have made bad decisions.

I mean, we all made bad decisions. But it's not as if Ben Shapiro or any of these people made so many good decisions. It's that they got picked for something. And, you know, Daily Wire had a bunch of donors that, like, wanted to see a certain message put out. And so they pushed them front and center. and like, it's just so insult. I think people drive being insane. Yeah, and Shapiro especially is famous for saying that it's ridiculous,

completely preposterous that people should retire at 65 years old. You should always keep working. It's like, yeah, because you've never had a job in your life. Do you kidding me? Somebody who actually works for living, lifting heavy things, you know, doing a whole lifetime of work like that in 75, that's, or 65. That's way too young to retire. Get the hell back out there and whatever it is.

Says a guy who, you know, has done nothing but work at a desk his entire life, dude. You know, you can call me lazy, although I do work a hell of long hours. But I've had real jobs out in the hot Texas sun. Thank you very much. You know what I mean? I know how it feels to actually work hard. I mean, even if you hadn't and even if you were a millionaire just because, you know, some media organization picked you out of the ether and decided to make you rich,

you wouldn't be going out on your Twitter feed making fun of people who can't afford food, you know? He didn't make sure. Israel, man. He can't see past that at all. Anyway, here, let's knock out some of these things and go, this guy says, you think the Nazis in Ukraine are going to be a problem in the future? And I would say, yes, I'm afraid, I'm predicting that Andrew Beletsky will be the president of

Ukraine at some point. And then what that will mean, it'll probably mean another war with Russia when that finally happened. As far as them being, you know, wandering Mujahideen, spreading Nazi guerrilla war all throughout the world or whatever, you know, no, it won't be the same as that. But will there be a lot of blowback from it? Yeah, although probably the vast majority of the actual Azov movement have already died in the war. You know, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been chewed up in this thing. And the guys who made up, you know, the bulk of the Nazi movement in the country between 2000. in 2004, you know, they're already dead, most of them.

And I don't know how quickly they're replaced. You know, there's a lot of very, very right-wing nationalism in far-western Ukraine. But, you know, how well that'll translate in the future as far as the old groupings of the social nationalists and the Patriot of Ukraine gang and all that stuff, like the UPA, UNSO and all that. I don't know. We'll have to see. But, yeah. I mean, it seems to me like not knowing a lot about that, you know, the specifics of a situation over there, but just looking at it from historical perspective, a lot of it rides on whether there's going to be enough of Ukraine left when this is over for them to be able to put some kind of functional country together. Because if they're not and people or guys are just looking around and there's no jobs and there's no economy and there's nothing to do and they're pissed off and they feel betrayed by, you know, then that's that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

where that stuff comes from. If these guys feel like there's a life to go rebuild, then most of them will go do that. Yeah. And, you know, look, I don't think the Russian, I think worst case scenario, the Russians would take everything east of the NEPA, and I'm not sure if they're even going to do that,

take all of Denepro-Povaskin and sue me and all of that, but probably, and I think they'll probably want to stop at the river. But then they're going to have a Nazi-led or very right-wing nationalist, very anti-Rexam. Russian Ukraine left. And, you know, if it can hold a state together, it's going to be a war against

them perennially, you know, if not perpetually. And then you can still wage an insurgency. Even if the government gave up, you can still wage a hell of an insurgency from Western Ukraine and by people who don't accept, would never accept Russian rule over the east and would want to continue to fight from there forever. And there's forests and swamps and Carpathian Mountains in the West, right? And then I don't know if the Poles or Hungarians really have the appetite for reconquest there, but Galicia and Volina used to be Eastern Poland. And there are some there who might find the opportunity to say that we better go ahead and reabsorb these lands since it's, you know, all that's left now is chaos after the war and whatever. I don't want to extrapolate

too far out with possibility. Yeah, I mean, it makes it easy to rationalize doing something like that because actually, we have a responsibility to re-annex this territory actually, because look at it, it's crazy. They have no economy, it's chaos. Like, we really have an obligation, you know, to take back the bid. Yeah, exactly.

So this guy says, hoping your home is safe, Daryl, and thanks very much, dude. Walfires aren't too close to where you are, right? Nah, they were creeping up this way, and they kind of got them under control today. So that's been a relief. I mean, I live like,

One of these days, you've got to make it up here. I mean, I live in the middle of the forest. Like, to my west is just like 300 miles of pine trees. That nobody, because of crappy Washington State, environmental regulations and forestry management rules, just is like up in the Pacific Northwest, for the most part, I've learned this. Basically, the forest management process is do nothing for 100 years and then let everything burn down and then just do nothing.

another century. Like, that's what they do. That's funny. All right, hey, this guy says, this isn't a super chat, but I must defend myself. Why don't you talk about the Balkans and the American influence there?

I wrote a book about it. Yeah, come on, dude. You know with the program. But you should have talked about that one of these days. That would be interesting topic. I like that topic. I got huge sections on Bosnia and Kosovo in there and the whole breakup of Yugoslavia.

And yeah, we should talk about that more, though. And there's controversy right now. in Bosnia, between the Republic of Serbska and the Muslim government in Sirevo and the rest. So, yeah, we should catch up on some of that. I know a couple of really good Slav expert guests that I could have on like Naboc Somalic from anti-war.com. This guy said, when will Russia win the Ukraine war?

I don't know. Look, I talk to real military experts about this. And they say there's just no question. The strategy is to move very, very slowly and just win a war of attrition. It's not just trying to seize as much land as possible as grind the other side down until they finally are broken and then you can just walk around and go wherever you want.

But what it's going to take for Russia to get Ukraine to that point? I don't know. People have been predicting, you know, Ukraine's imminent collapse for a very long time and they stopped predicting it because it kept not happening. So, you know, all I know...

Another example of what you're talking about. It's hard to beat a country that's got its morale intact. It is hard to beat them into submission, man. It's not an easy thing to do. On their own territory, yeah, exactly right. And there's been a bit of a disservice. Like I, you know, I know a lot of people like Colonel McGregor, I don't have any kind of a, you know, like I don't know the man. And a lot of what he says is really interesting.

But, you know, there's just several people like kind of in this space who have done a bit of a disservice, I think, just by, man, from the second week of the war. It's like Ukraine's a week away from falling apart. And the next week has been on and on and on, this drumbeat of failed predictions that Ukraine's about to collapse. And I think it makes it now that people don't really know what to believe. And what to believe is that the Russians are going to win the war, and it's just a question of when and how much Ukrainians have to suffer before that happens. That's just where we're at. Yep.

This guy told me something I didn't know. Two of my favorite people, Neil, it's pronounced Neil. Yeah, I bet it is. Neil Ferguson, Sir Neil Ferguson, and H.R. McMaster have a podcast together called Goodfellows. Ha! My favorite hate watch. I don't think I got the stomach for that, man.

Dude, did I tell you, when they tried to pull that Sir Neal thing on me at that dinner I was out when he was there? Did I tell you that story? No. Like, we were going around the table, just having a conversation. Like, it was sort of a curated conversation, one person talking at a time, kind of just, you know, not taking turns in terms of like going this person, and then the next person, but whoever wanted to, you know,

you'd just jump in. And I was responding to something he had said before, and I called him Neil, and the guy next to me, I think it was the guy who, who's a guy who, who,

one of the co-founders of University of Austin, or UT, not UT Austin, but, you know, the, the, very wise thing.

Yeah. Schellenberger? No, not Schellenberger. Like the billionaire dude who, I think he's like a, hmm, he's one of Seals friend.

Anyway, he like leans over and he's like, it's Sir Neil. And I was like, we're Americans, dude. I was, none of them were very happy about that. But, I think, in that debate about you're British. You're not even an American. Like, how dare you? I'm so sick of you trying to come to wars for Americans to go diet. And he goes, when, I am too an American.

And then after it was over, someone tweeted me and said, well, why didn't you call him out for being a British knight? And I was like, oh, because I didn't know that, dude. I don't know anything about this guy, so much I hate him from a long time ago and his hideous wife who I humiliated in front of hundreds of people in Las Vegas at the freedom fest. I mean, I will say, like, Neil Ferguson hates my guts, and McMaster probably doesn't know who I am, but if he did, he'd probably hate my guts too. I have to admit, I have a soft spot for both those guys.

Ferguson's got some good books. It's just, he just does. And McMaster, you know, from like a political standpoint, being a national security advisor or whatever, I've got my problems, but that dude put in work. You know, he's a warrior. Oh, you mean like that somebody abolished corruption in Afghanistan? He did such a great job at that. Give him another star.

He did his work up in Tallahfar at the beginning of that, at the beginning of the Iraq War. He's a war criminal for what he did in Talafar. Didn't you hear my interview of the guy that was the military policeman who came and saw all the people chained up pissing and defecating on themselves in the hot sun and who was about to arrest McMaster for war crimes on the spot? No, I didn't know anything about this. You got to send me that interview.

No, I don't know anything about that. Yeah, he wrote it up for, I forgot that Mexican news channel. I forgot the name of it. But, yeah, he interviewed him all about it. And H.R. McMaster is a war criminal. He's also, he wanted to start an aggressive war against North Korea, which would have led to the nukeing of South Korea and Japan as well. He's an idiot.

And look, the reason he made general over his boss, Colonel McGregor is because of what a suckup he is and what a politician he is. He fought under McGregor in the big tank battle of 73 Easting in Iraq War I. And so did Danny Davis, by the way. And then McMaster sold his soul to Satan, the devil, and McGregor didn't. And that was why McGregor only remained colonel. Which, by the way, I spent a day with McGregor one time talking about the old days. Oh my God, does that guy have some stories?

I wouldn't probably ask him what's going to happen next week, but ask him about what already did happen that he was eyewitness to. And, yeah, man, there's some good stuff there. Let's speed three to these next two. I got to get going. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I don't have an answer for this. So you say something.

I have one answer for this, and it's please, please, please, please, please, let Israel start a war with Turkey. Oh, please let that happen. Oh, my goodness. Like, that would be the shortest. I mean, you know, they might do nuke Istanbul or something in Ankara, but like short of that, Turkey would roll over Israel without breaking a sweat. All of this crap they're talking, they have to know that too.

I mean, it's pure just political talk to sort of try to reposition the United States and NATO with regard to Turkey. They wouldn't last a freaking week against Turkey. Turkey say what you want about them, and I got an Armenian wife. We say plenty about Turks. That's a real military. It's a real military. And outside of the United States, no, no. no military in NATO could stand up to the Turks.

Israel would get absolutely rolled over. This guy says the UPA is pronounced Yupa. My grandfather was commander during World War II got approached in the 50s by the CIA under Operation Aerodynamic to train troops for future coup. Hardcore. Yeah, I have a lot about that in Provoked. Is he still alive? Can we have them as a guest? Oh, goodness.

I never heard anyone pronounce it, the Yupa. I always thought it was just the UPA, UNSO, or the, you know. I like how Paul, he just paid $10 just to correct us. That's pretty awesome. What was that one? I missed that one. No, the one you just read. It was a super chat.

He paid us $10 just to tell us we're wrong. And I appreciate that, Paul. Thank you. It's pronounced Neil. Yeah, that's right. I called him Nile in that debate. And he goes, it's pronounced Neil. Big bitch.

All right. That's it. We're done. Good night, Daryl Cooper. Later, everybody. 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 for more Provoked.