Shaun Newman Podcast - #1097 - Tom Luongo

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Tom Luongo is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast.Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Brett Weinstein. This is Tom Lomago. This is Bruce Party. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is Dr. Pierre Corey. Hi, this is Frank Paredi. This is Daniel Smith.

This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. How's everybody doing today? Okay, this is today that is the first. You're going to hear me say this again on the episode. But regardless, it is the first virtual I've done since we left.

and I'm going to do them from time to time just to make sure that the show continues on four days a week or five days a week. Obviously we're doing the mashup. I guess that is virtual as well. But, you know, my stand-alones, regardless, before we get to that today, we're still sitting in Minnesota. For those paying attention, I'm wondering whereabouts we are. We are at the family cabin, or Mel's family cabin, I should say, in upstate Minnesota. We'll be heading up to Manitoba, 3,000. Thursday and we'll be in Manitoba over the next week.

Yeah, spending a week in Manitoba. I'm going to say this again too, but it's probably only Manitobans that go holiday in Manitoba. Sorry, Manitobans, regardless. We're going to be there later this week. Looking forward to getting back up into Canada before we get to all that and some different things from the traveling. When it comes to precious metals, look no further than silver gold,

whether in Manitoba or in Alberta where they got their stuff. start, Silver Gold Bull can help you with anything buying, selling, storing precious metals. And down on the show notes, you can text or email Graham for details around any questions you have. He loves talking to you guys. You just got to go to silvergoldbull.ca, silvergold bull.com. You order everything online. You get an account sound up there, and it ships right to your doorstep. It is super slick and, yeah, super easy. Talk to Graham. He'll walk you through it all. Bow Valley Credit Union, I was saying this earlier this week, but Bowel Valley and Silvergold Bull back together as title sponsors for the Cornerstone Forum, which will return May 15th,

2027 in Calgary at the Westing Calgary Airport Hotel. So same venue, same city. Different date, though, May 15th of 2027. And Bowel Valley Credit Union, and it's all about lending deposits, real financial advice. You can open accounts, talk through lending options and get help with banking all in a space design for conversations, not transactions. If you want smarter banking with gold, silver, Bitcoin, sound money, and personal freedom, think BVCU for all your banking needs, head to bow valley,CU.com.

And if you've got savings, you know, you got money, you're sitting there, I don't know, who do I trust with my savings? Integrated wealth management. They're out of Calgary. They're a full-service wealth management firm that actually manages money, watching client portfolios daily and making real-time adjustments when markets change. They see the same things you and I see massive government spending, rising instability and a lot of risk in government debt.

So they use tools like precious metals and, commodities to help protect your purchasing power. Most importantly, they work with people who share their values, family, community, hard work, and living within your name means. And they follow this guy named Martin Armstrong. I don't know if you've heard of them before, but they follow them closely. So if that sounds like you, then you can go check them out at i-dashwealth.ca. That's i-dash-wealth.ca, integrated wealth management.

See if they're the right fit for you and your family. Back in my home stomping grounds, Diamond 7 Meats, their family-run business over 27 years of service offering more than just retail cuts. So when it comes to food, when it comes to meat, yeah, they help processing for farmers and ranchers in Saskatchewan and Alberta. They're on the north end of Lloydminster, Highway 17 and 67th Street North. You got a special event coming up. They also do catering.

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There's this nice little app slash. You can just visit it on the web and see exactly where we've been, where we're heading to. And I'm updating that as we get a few more dates, penciled in a little further out, so you can see the direction we're heading. And then, of course, just the Week and Review, it walks through all the episodes of the week. And this week we dropped on Sunday the first master class for paid members. It's Tanner Nadei talking about the life of Paul. And I like you, it was a St. Louis Jack and Tanner production, so I had no hand in it.

So I got to watch it firsthand as well. I thought it was really well done. I picked up a whole bunch of little tidbits that I didn't fully understand, I guess, in my favorite character from the Bible, Paul. And, you know, I thought it was really well done. So if you're a fan of Tanner in a day, you can also become a paid member. get access to that and hopefully moving forward we're going to have a few more of those for you and then finally the smp road trip is powered by zebs i don't know if you've seen the black beauty

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Today's guest, a former research chemist, amateur dairy, goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold, Goats, and Guns, Podcast. I'm talking about Tom Luongo. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. podcast today. I'm joined by Tom Longo. Tom, you are the first, you realize you're the first, since

we left, you're the first virtual interview. It was supposed to be you and Alex. Alex couldn't make it. We'll see if he hops in partway. But regardless, you're the first virtual interview I've done since we left. So you're, you know, I've been trying my best to maintain doing them all in person, but we're at Mel's family cabin, upstate Minnesota. And so I was like, instead of you know, dragging my family through one more in-person interview before we came south. I thought, you know, I'll just reach out to Tom and Alex, see if they wanted to do one, and here you are. And I appreciate you hopping on and doing this. Sure. I'm happy to do it. You know, again, I know. I know. I know.

But, so how's it going? How's your trip going? I know you've been like planning this thing for a couple of years and you finally got a chance to do it. And we haven't, we haven't spoken since you went on the road. Well, we probably haven't really spoken since Cornerstone. a little bit. The truth of the matter is it is as good or better than I thought it was going to be. It took, you know, and like three kids in a, you know, we're only in a 21 foot hybrid. So, you know, like essentially hard sides, but then the ends flop out and we got a third bed off the side. And the boys sleep together. Mila has their own bed and then Mel and I at the other end. And it's been everything I had hoped it would be. Now we're only like, what, 17 days in,

something like that. So it's, it's, uh, it's been a cool experience. Now, what I lose on it is I lose keeping up with all the geopolitics talking to all the people from all over the world because I'm like, well, the only way I'm going to talk to all these people is if I run into them. And that's part of the plan, right? Going down the East Coast and getting to run into yourself and Vince and Martin Armstrong and, you know, the cast of characters that are all along the East Coast. And then if we go further, uh, I'd talk to Alex about being, uh, coming to where he was and whether or We get there. Who knows? But right now, we're 17 days in. We go to spend a week in Manitoba at the end of this week. So Thursday, we leave for Manitoba. And I chuckle. I've been through

Manitoba a handful of times, Tom. But I didn't, sorry Manitobans. I'm like, who goes a holiday in Manitoba? How very many people? Maybe people from Manitoba, you know? So, but I'm excited for it. It's been really good. The adjustment to the camper only took a few days and then everybody kind of settled in and I don't know. I think everybody's like when do you get to take time even if it was a month and go see you know, I was asking Mel, we went for a walk this morning. We walk most mornings. And I was asking her like, you know, look, what are you most excited for? And then she rattled off like 15 things. I'm like, well, that kind of defeated the purpose of the questions. I was looking for one. But when you think about it, you know, we're going to a lot of neat places and usually you get to see

two or three in a summer and that's it. Right. And on this trip, we're going to be doing a lot. And plus running into some people that came to Cornerstone who've been listening to the podcast for a long time. I've got to run into a lot of those people, which has been super cool. So to answer your question in a long way, it's been really, really good. I've been enjoying it. And we're just spending a week with Mel's family, henceforth, a virtual interview in the middle because I'm sitting here. And yeah, instead of dragging the family, there was some protesters, anti-Trump protesters in the small town.

where we went for supper last night. We just went for pizza. And I was like, dang, sure brought my mic. I'm like, anytime I see anyone that's doing something, I'm like, just stop and see what they're actually about, you know. But they had impeach Trump and something about science is real. And I think it was about climate change. I could be wrong.

Science is real. And the sun has a huge effect on our climate. Oh, by the way. I think it's, I think it's to do probably with all the fires coming from Canada yet again. And, uh, yeah, science is real. We should do, we should do forestry management. We should do we should do forestry management.

Yeah, I've been down this road probably two years ago when BAMP, uh, partially burned and everything else. I talked to force, uh, guys in force management and they're, they just talked about how we haven't been doing it. Not to mention like you, the further you go north. There's nobody there. So lightning strikes, she's going to burn for a bit, you know? And so, I mean,

There's more to it than all that, but. The world is, the world is changing. And, you know, I know people have, most people have a hard time with change. And, you know, it's interesting that you're doing what you're doing. I bet I get to have done a similar thing. You said, we're not traveling, but, you know, we're kind of doing the, the, you know, the bivouac and RV thing up here in Tennessee as we, you know, glasily moved towards getting a house built up here.

I really like it up here. I'm gonna say, I really do. I'm not missing the Florida summer right now. When I get the electric bill for the house down on Florida, I'm like, yeah, I'm not missing that. And I'm not, you know, knowing the difference. It's not, it's been hot for this area, traditionally, even where we are. But it hasn't been unbearable, right? And so it's not that much of a change because, you know, summer's,

right now for July's low 90s with a lot of humidity but more wind thankfully um so there's a nice breeze here and you know it is what it is so but it's not you know a heat index of 110 and sitting on your porch in the open air sauna and uh sweating out you know you got doing the joe rogan thing and just like sitting out there sweating all afternoon like this is what we used to do just it was it's a different it's a different thing so yeah i mean i i i i i i i I would say it's interesting in that, you know, I'm even more world than I normally am when I was previously. But I don't feel any more or less connected to the world than I did because, well, you know, I'm barely fit for human consumption on the best of days.

So I just, you know, kind of hang out and do my thing. And, you know, most of my friends are online at this point anyway. So, you know, it is what it is. But it is nice to have a family next door that I get to hang out with. and I was done our back yesterday to celebrate the mom's birthday, my Camille's friend's birthday, we went out on a lake in the middle of the Capeville, it's this big lake in the Caney Fork River here in Tennessee, and we got, they rented a boat and we hung out and, you know, just sit out all day and, you know, I just sat and smoked cigars and soaked up the sun and watched the kids play

on the boat and it was great, it was a good day. And then when we came home and that was that. So, You know, I Well, I know It's been, it's been like uniquely American. Let's just put it that way in a way that it has That my life hasn't been in a lot of years. So I'll just leave it to doubt. Well, I tell you one of the things about today, like in today's world,

Being remote isn't a big deal. You know, this is the first podcast I've pulled off with the Starlink Many that I purchased before we left because I want to have internet wherever we went. Right. And, like, essentially I can do a podcast wherever I want, if I want to. And then, you know, like the traveling gear, we've had her hiccups. I'm actively working for the audience on two of the first ones, Gabby Koza and Liz Pomeroy. The audio just isn't exactly what I wanted it to be.

So I'm going to work on fixing that. So that'll get updated here hopefully in the next week. but other than that like the ability to travel with the show it all fits in a backpack almost right like it's it's never been easier are the cameras as good as maybe they they were in the studio okay maybe not but like the rest of it the ability to just travel and have a show is probably never been easier the problem is the cost of gas the cost of living the cost of everything the exchange rate coming down in the states punch me in the face like holy crap the canadian dollar sucks and um but other than that like Like, you can be as remote as you want. You could be, you know, up in Northwest Territories and have a great show if you wanted to. I mean, shoot, you know this because you've been there. Lloyd Minster isn't exactly the center of the universe, right? Nope.

And we built something there that's become, well, one day I hope to show specifically you and Alex. I'd love to have you in the new studio because I think you both get a kick out of it. So it's interesting to say all that, right? Because, I mean, for years, I even live in where I lived, down in Florida, you know, my main internet connection for years was, you know, a bad DSL connection because of the holdover of old cable franchise lines and the lateral lines and all this stuff. Like, and so eventually, you know, when Starlink was first available in my area, I know, I famously have been saying that, you know, I pay way too much money for too bad internet

connections because Starlink is still better than the DSL. But, you know, I live in Florida. So every 3 o'clock every afternoon, you know, the sky opens up and says, I hate you, Tom. You can't podcast this afternoon. So up here, I'm actually more remote, but, you know, there's a whole thing here in Tennessee about getting, you know, rural fiber run everywhere. So we have fiber up here on the mountain. But I also have Starlink mini as a backup because I still have my Starlink down in Florida. So, you know, Elon Musk actually, just said, look, we're getting rid of the first generation.

receivers, would you like one for free? I'm like, sure. For an extra five bucks a month, I have it as a backup in case, you know, the power goes down or whatever. So we're never without internet service because there's no cell phone service, really, where we are here. There's a little bit. I think somebody finally put in a 5G tower somewhere near me. But, you know, and that is what it is. But to your point, it is no, it's always been this way. I've been doing, I've been living, you know, kind of like laptop with a business of have laptop will travel for close to 13 years now. And now you get to do all of it. And as long as you have an infrastructure that you can, you know, you can stay connected

to people, you're not always able to do so. Or you have the choice of like turning them off and going, no, sorry. Like don't want, you know, don't want to, don't want to rent into a microphone today. So I'm not going to. And then that those days are rare because, you know, me. So. But it is nice to have all those things. have all those backups and have all that that infrastructure in place so that we can do that.

And that's actually the future in many ways as well. One of the goals of the trip is to run into all the people like obviously once again, I point out you and Alex because you've been to Canada now. What is it? Three years in a row? Or is it four years in a row? Four. Four.

Four. And like getting to actually meet and run into you guys. I'm like, I want to do this with more of the guests, right? So one of the goals of the traveling road show is not only to meet, you know, some different people, some everyday people, some blue collar people. It's to run back into some of the guests that I've only been able to do it through a screen. Because we both know there's more to it than just a screen. And I've found out, well, I can do a pretty good job reading somebody through a screen,

but there's nothing quite like sitting next to somebody and sharing, you know, as you're smoking on a cigar or whatever it is. And just getting to know somebody, it's just easier. Anyone can see when the Newman tornado comes through. When Sean's world tick as the kids are running and screaming and everything else, I would not be shocked if they came in here and, uh, um, disrupted the things at some point disrupted the thing for a, for a few minutes and that wouldn't happen in the studio. Now, one of the things,

it's not like my dog has not photo bombed or, you know, the podcast is doing this life. Like I know all about that. So thankfully she's off like watching the road at this point. So we're good. Well, one of the things, uh, you, You and me talked about it the last cornerstone was no country is a monolith. And it wasn't on stage. And it's been an idea. I've been thinking about I've maybe even expanded it to a lot more than just no country.

But regardless, if you wanted to share with the audience, I'm sure your audience has heard this a thousand times, but it's never been talked about. I don't think on the podcast, I was going to try and do it with you just before we left. And then that fell through. And after you told me about it sitting around the campfire in Calgary, I'm like, man, that's an idea.

I've got to think about that for a while. And it makes complete sense. But maybe for the audience, you'd share your thoughts on no country's a monologue. Sure. Well, what happened was we were after Cornerstone was over that evening, we were standing in the campfire and chatting. And strong was doing kind of the breakdown of the day and, you know, the post-mortem on it as it were. And he was like, you know, talking about the schedule and why things had to work out the way they did.

and, you know, who got to have a keynote speech and who didn't and, you know, all of these things. And I, and so I was listening to him talk about that. I went, I pulled out my phone because I was in the process of writing that month's newsletter. And, you know, when I knew Cornerstone was coming, I always prep for, I always prep a couple months in advance what my, what my, you know, keynote speech is going to be because invariably, as Sean and I have talked about many times, privately, that, you know, and he's appreciated the fact that at least he's told me this, that. And I'm not toot my own horn here. This is what Sean has said to me. That, you know, I always seem to have a, my finger on the pulse of where we need, where we are and where we need to be going.

So I think about. If I can hop in for a sec, Tom, the reason why I said that to you is, the first cornerstone, um, Blaine and his wife, guardian plumbing and heating in response to the podcast had been to, I want to say it was William Maccass and somebody else the night before we're in Lloyd talking on the first. Friday night. And I don't mean to say it was dark, just it was depressing or, you know, it wasn't a real uplifting evening, I would say. And he, she was saying to her husband, I just don't know if I can go sit through that again. And so they showed up to the cornerstone. He said, well, let's just go see

what child's doing. Right. So he shows up and it's like nine in the morning. And Tom's the first speaker, the first ever cornerstone. And you basically read poetry. Now I'm, I'm really short changing that. But it was just different. And she leaned over to her husband and said, oh, I think I'm going to enjoy this because it was a different way at approaching what darkness we see all around us. And I've thought, you know, like your, your UBIC keynote two years ago was just like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, what the heck is this about? And then the last like two, three chapters, I was like, oh, right. Right. Right.

So you've, you've had it away with your keynotes where you can tell you put a ton of time and effort into it. And even if it goes over 50% of the people in the audience, right, we're supposed to be talking about the price of silver or what's going on with the world and currency and everything else. The way you do it speaks to who I am, right? And I've always enjoyed that. So what I was thinking about when we were when, when, we were. We were, and then Sean called me at the last moment and so about a month before and said, you're not going to have to do a keynote this year. I'm like, I already have a great idea.

And like, dude, I have a great idea for keynote about where we, you know, what's, and the way I look at this and the way I approach these things is to say, okay, so what's the gap in our current, you know, I think about the commentary at in the, this, this, the area that I, you know, that we occupy and honestly just me, but, you know, all the people that I interact with and all of this. And what is this the corner of this corner of the commentary at? What are we not covering? And two years ago, or three years ago at the first cornerstone, it was we have to start speaking to the younger generation. We have to start becoming mentors for them. And we have to be inspirational because there was inspirational people. There were certain people in my life.

That was what that that speech was about. You know, put me on the path that I am on today. That was the point of my speech. Last year it was about, we still have, or the year after that, it was about we still have choices, the choices we make matter, we still have agency, there's a massive demoralization campaign happening, we need to remind ourselves that we have agency in this life. And for this year, my argument was going to be that, you know, look, we've gotten very reductionist in our thinking. And what I mean by that is that it's either, if not A, then B. So you're either, you know, you're very binary, meaning it's a very, and it's a classic, if not A, then B, um, uh, uh, discourse of if you're not for Trump, then you're this, if you're,

you're, you're against it. If you're, if you are against Iran, then you're pro Israel or you're a Zionist or whatever it is. And whatever this, the dumb reductionism is. And I'm like, no. Um, so what, so during that conversation, on the campfire, I pulled out my phone and read Sean the draft of my editorial for that month's newsletter. Our newsletter every month, I do, you know, I do three articles. I have a big lead article, Dexter White does his thing, and then I do a portfolio review, and there's always an editorial at the end. And so what I did is I adapted my, the speech I was going to give a cornerstone. I'm like, well, I know what I'm going to write about for the editorial. This one's like, all right,

well, you know, make lemonade out of lemons. And it was about the, in short, about how nothing as a monolith and how lenses, you know, with the way we, it's also building on some idea that I had in the year before, which is that I still, the older I get, the more I still believe that the five most important words ever spoken by anybody in the movie was by Quigong Jin in the fan, the otherwise mostly terrible, fan of menace, which is your focus determines your reality. So where you focus your lens, where you focus your attention determines what it is you think you're seeing. And what I really want to do and what I think, try to do in every one of these conversations that we have is to ask the question, you know,

are we, you know, is it worth reducing something as complex as Iran or Iran Israel or, you know, the United States or anything else to a, to a blob, to an object? And it's not, or in this case, using the metaphor of the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey, a monolith, a big black box into which we pour all of our fears. the question then isn't whether or not the monolith was a mirror or a lens but a mirror you know are we just allowing it to reflect back whatever the the whatever we're worried about whatever we're anxious and not actually seeing it for what it actually is which is that in this case is the gateway to under to a deeper understanding about the way the world operates and that was that's what the the

the article was about what the speech was going to be about this year. And I thought, and actually, as it turns out, given all the people who spoke at Cornerstone, the great talk by Chad Prather and Neil Oliver and others, like it was a, I thought it would have been a really nice, it would have fit really well, even though I hadn't planned it that way. So it was, and I didn't even know who the,

most of the cast of characters was going to be. So, and I think it's really important that we continue to stop being reductionist. It's important now at this moment in time when everything is now reducing to, I literally shown I feel like I'm one of seven accounts left on Twitter that's like, can see Trump for what he's doing.

Like everybody else is just like crashing out into, you know, complete and utter demoralization. And now I know what I think that is, which is I think that it's very much an operation in order to affect the midterms, demoralize the people, split MAGA, destroy the United States, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the things I've talked about previously. And that may be true.

And in my world, when I peer into the monolith, that's what I see. But is that a reflection of my own paranoia? Is that a reflection of my own hypervigilist? You know, whatever. You judge, you the audience can judge that for yourself. I don't, you know, there's nothing I can do about that. I can't control that. And I'm not even going to try to control it.

So my question to everybody is when you start asking questions like, well, Israel made the United States, you know, do this. I'm like, which Israel? We're fighting Iran for, you know, you can't kill Iran. I'm like, which Iran? Which United States is actually involved here? Because the United States isn't a monolith. The United States is an amalgam of 15 different cultures, which Europeans, the summer, I finally got to see it at the World Cup. you know, 15 different cultures.

There's all these different political factions. There's all this stuff that supposedly reduces to the Republicans versus the Democrats, which is, that's a, which for anybody who's ever studied American politics from the inside, like any, you know, even half-awake American knows that that's not even true. And yet I go out and I watch other people comment on it. I'm like, I watch supposedly astute Americans comment on this. And I'm like, you know that's not true. I mean, I expect it from people who don't live here to get it.

not get it, right? Because you only get what you see from whatever media you choose to ingest or whatever is, whatever the algorithms deem you're allowed to ingest, right? But, you know, there's an entire world out there and this entire version of reality that you haven't even considered either because you haven't been given the opportunity to consider it. You don't know how to consider it or you don't want to consider it. And I think that those are all really important to be asking yourself on a regular basis. And, you know, in my mind, it's always worth having the conversation about what conversations we're not allowed to have.

So when everybody wants to shout you down and say, it's just the freaking Zionist Jews, blah, blah, blah, well, okay, yeah, that's part of it. But is it all of it? Is that wholly explanatory? How do you explain this? How do you explain this? How do you explain that? And, you know, isn't, don't you think there's more going on here than that?

And if we're, so what I've noted in 2026 and I've gotten to the, to the, to come to the conclusion about so far as we just passed the halfway point of the year is that a lot of people who have been, I'll be, be honest, I'll say, I'll, I'll use the term. They've been larping as analysts when really they're just commentators. When they're just commenting because for the sake of being able to comment because we need, because we all need to fill air time. as opposed to actually doing hard analysis of actual facts and we're just reacting in real time to things that are that we think we we know when the truth is we may not know those things this is

this is part of what i wanted this is part of what i tried to bring up when we were at cornerstone i'm like okay everybody thinks the united states this is back in march everybody thinks we're losing the war with iran then you know why are a 10 warthogs in apache helicopter patrolling the persian gulf it's a simple question because these are These are two weapons platforms, American weapons platforms, that should not be available for productive use in that war, in that conflict, if everything we were told about Iran's capabilities was true. So it's an important fact that then dispels a narrative or dispels a comment or dispels

an opinion. We have to get away from opinions and we have to use facts in order to form opinions as opposed to having opinions and then, you know, picking and choosing our facts. With Iran, one of the, one of the, probably the, not arguments, best ideas, facts, I don't know what you can, you can call whatever you want, Tom. The Mosaic defense, the 31 provinces, the fact that when you go in, no country is a monolith, I'm like, oh man, even if there was a brokered piece and 29 of those provinces agreed, if there's two left that are going to just, we're not doing it. What Trump and his administration underestimated with Iran was the mosaic defense. And maybe I can oversimplify and I hate saying that over and over again because that's what I do.

you know, you have your reductionist where they go, if you're not pro-Trump, you're against Trump. I sometimes can make things way too simple, but when I heard the Mosaic defense, I think it was Rebecca Koffler who first brought it up. I was like, oh, that's, huh, decentralized military. That'll be tough to negotiate with.

Because as soon as you sign a MOU or a memorandum of understanding, I'm like, we're not going to do anything. I mean, that's assuming you can get all 31 to agree. That's assuming you're talking to all 31. Well, actually, that actually is a very good point. And the reason that's a very good, very, very good point is because at the beginning of the war, the Iranian, the pro-Iranian propaganda, you know, all took us and put us in a holiday and expressed that night and made us all experts about the mosaic fence. Just like at the beginning of the Russian-Ukraine conflict, the Russian propaganda tried to tell us about Russian cauldron, the Russian,

Caldron strategy of how they, you know, Russian military doctrine in the Caldron strategy. It's, we've had this conversation, you and I've had a version of this conversation in the past. So what I'll tell you is the following. The statement I will, I don't disagree with anything he just said, except this one, which is that the Trump administration underestimated. I don't agree. I just don't agree with that. Like the believe that they didn't understand that that's what they were dealing with is, is, is factual. No offense, John. I think that's a factuous No, no, no, no, and the reason I think that's fact to us is because like, dude, you don't think they don't know that. Like, how about they understood that? And then they send Trump out there to say, look, the, like, we, we kill a layer of the Iran's ability, our GCC's ability to have any kind of coordinated command of control.

That describes March really well. Then we have a couple of months worth of are the straits open and if they're not open. There's a conflict. There's a, is a, a ship blown up here. There's a missile thrown. There's a missile thrown. there, there's a, you know, whatever. Like, and there's all these end those negotiations. Well, every one of those negotiations, the way I've been watching, I've been watching this, and this again, the way I've watched it has been they, he's clearly negotiating with a portion of the Iranian leadership who do not have control over the mosaic defense of the IRGC. So I would actually argue to those who say, well, you can't take over Iran because of the mosaic defense. I would go, yeah, actually, the way the Trump administration and the American military, are operating in this war is to literally break down the Mosaic Defense strategy bit by bit by bit,

part by part by part. You start with getting rid of command of control on days one through 10. Now it's done. Now all you have is the Mosaic Defense. And then after that, and then you turn to the nascent, you know, emergent civilian government that wants this war over that, but they are not in any kind of position to do so yet because you haven't broken down enough of the existing IRGC infrastructure. And this is just Iran.

Remember, the IRGC is only one part of this because you also had the IRGC's relationship with Hezbollah, which is all over the world. Venezuela, Cuba, the Houthis in Yemen, everybody. You know, it's all part of a bigger network. And so then the bigger question is, you talk about Iran, is Iran even the focus? of the strategy. And it's a good question to ask. You may come to the conclusion that it is

and that I'm full shit and all of that. Fine. But at the very least you need to engage with that concept that every one of these agreements that negotiating moments when then the talks break down, they agree to something. What I've noticed is the pattern looks like this. Trump and Oaxi and whoever say we have an agree we have we're going to have talks and in those talks they're going to leak out or they're

going to let leak out something that violates some IRGC red line right some non-negotiable thing by the way this is the same way you break down Zelensky in Ukraine and you flush out who's actually behind their opposition to whatever's happening and you do this by degrees and then you cross that red line which forces a response. It forces somebody to respond in order to stop the negotiations from going further because the minute there's an actual negotiated settlement and money can start to flow into their domestic, their, the IRGC's domestic opposition, the people that Trump and company are negotiating with, they're going to get stronger faster. Now they're going to have to start fighting internally as opposed to externally. Again, think strategically, folks, how do you deal with

this stuff? So does this sound like 5D chess? No, this is just basic war strategy. If you're going to take over, if you're going to knock these people out of power, you have to break them down by degrees because they are dug in like ticks because of all the things that people have said, Iran is too to mountainous to invade, it's to this, it's to that. You're right. I'm not even arguing with your your position on that. So if you do want to, to break these people down. If you do want to take them off the board and you do, and your ultimate goal is to take them, take away their ability to blackmail global trade through shaking their fists and lobbying ballistic missiles to people, well, then you have to come up with a strategy that will

eventually get them to put all of those weapons on the table. It's no different than the argument. And again, Trump is going to lie about the state of affairs, because his job is, to continually degrade, negotiate it close, degrade, negotiate it close, cross the red line, force of response, do this, and this is run an endless loop until we get to the big MOU. And the big MOU was literally the moment where politically, from a international relations perspective, from an international capital perspective, Trump looks, quote unquote, magnanimous. Now you can spin that that he lost. You can do that if you so choose.

And if you want to continue to believe that, that's fine. But I would argue that the last 10 days worth of bombing has told you that he was just biding time. And the MOU was the opportunity for him to give them the way I've been doing it for the last week or two. I know you and I haven't talked is like it's like the old Eddie Izard joke. Cake or death. You can choose cake or death.

Cake or death. Cake or death. Cake or death. Cake or death. Cake, right? You should choose cake. But they chose death. They chose death because the MOU, which gave Iran or Iran, whoever, more than they deserved in a war that they already lost to make, to say to Trump, okay, Trump is saying to them, okay, here, let's end this conflict, let's start rebuilding the country, let's let these people get in charge, give them some validity, yada, yada, yada, and somebody,

He said, you know what? No. And so, okay. Meanwhile, while that was all going on, more American assets were being moved in, all the assets that were expended in the first month of the war, military logistics takes over. The Americans do military logistics better than anybody else on the planet by an order of magnitude. We moved the third carrier strike group in, those marine expeditionary units that were coming over from Japan and around the world. We're now in place and now like, okay, take your death. It's not morality, folks.

This is this is raw, strategic, military thinking. And this is international relations where morality, your personal morality, does not bear. You may be horrified by all of this. As a matter of fact, you should be horrified by all of this. You should also be horrified by the idea that we should all, what's the word I'm looking for, tolerate a bunch of people who think it's their right to go around funding an illicit network of terror cells around the world in order to blackmail global shipping, which a lot of people were making a lot of money on around the

world, including city of London and the Gulf Arab states and this one and Hezbollah and Venezuela and the Chinese and the Russians and everybody was involved in it. And what you're doing is you're exposing those people by degrees every time you offer them something better and they choose otherwise. You have, the IRGC's mosaic strategy is a metaphor for the entire global architecture of illicit crime or whatever you want to call it. That's a better way of looking at it. When you look at it that way and you realize that all knowledge and all systems are kind of fractal in that respect. back. That's the conclusion that I've come to. Again, you can choose to call me, you know, bullshit or think that I'm, you know, running cover for somebody else's agenda or whatever. And I

also happen to think that, you know, if you bring Israel into the mix and the Zionists, both in America and in Britain and in Israel and everywhere else, when you bring them into the mix, they're being exposed as not agreement capable either. And isn't that, a good thing. It is in my mind because at the end of the day how are you going to, how are you going to make the world a better place if you don't expose all of the bad actors? And I don't take a side here of good guys versus bad guys. I'm taking the side of Donald Trump is doing what he needs to do to secure the future of the United States and Iran is Iran is in his way, Cuba is in his way, to some extent Russia is in his way, to some extent

the Chinese are in his way, the Brits are definitely in his way, the French are definitely in his way. The EU is definitely in his way. The Gulf Arab states were in his way and now they're working with him. And sometimes you just have to, you know, sorry, you have to punch people in the mouth to get them to understand that you're serious. But, you know, that's, again, and my last editorial for my newsletter was a, was a tale of two dogs. My two dogs, my 12-pound rat terrier and my 90-pound morea. And my 12-pound rat terrier has 90 pounds worth of attitude, but doesn't have the ability to pull it off while he gets into a fight with the 90-pound marema. And eventually the 90-pound marema takes his pawn and goes, that's enough.

And they, and the 12-pounder, you know, fights for a little while and makes a lot of noise, but it eventually submits. This is either that or he's going to die. Now, you know, that's the way I see the IRGC at this point. And I don't, I, I, and everything else is just, you know, narrative shaping because we're approaching now, the midterm elections, which is the last chance for these people that are all allied against Trump to stop him from pulling off what he wants to pull off, which is the restoration of an America that hasn't existed for more than 100 years, if it ever existed at all, since the Declaration of Independence.

And, you know, I think that's very clear from the things that everybody has said, from what he put out the other day in this speech about election interference, What Marco Rubio said about Cuba the other day, what Mark Wayne Mellon said the other day about the immigration status and everything else. Everything is happening here domestically. And is it happening at a pace that, is it happening fast enough? That's the conversation we should be having.

Is it happening fast enough for it to make a difference? Is the operation, who's got the operational tempo is what we should be discussing, and we're not discussing operational tempo. We're discussing morality. in a world without it at this moment in time because it's a war. And isn't it interesting that we're doing this when Chris Nolan just put out the PTSD version of Odysseus and weakening one of the foundational texts of Western civilization, which I knew Nolan was going to do. I could just tell because he's always been that guy.

So he's always been as much as a second. Wait a second. We've got to talk about Nolan for just a second. Sure. For those of you who don't know, me and two's just argued about this on Friday. Okay. Me and me and, well, who the bigger Christopher Nolan fan is? Because he's, he's my favorite director.

When you say you knew he was going to do this and this is his been as MO. What do you mean? You're not a Nolan guy. I'm never really been a Nolan guy. I've always been very, I've always been very suspect of him. the first time I saw Memento. And then I had to go through a moment where I thought it's bad,

I think the Batman films are ideologi are some of his best revelation of the method. Especially in hindsight now, Dark Night Rises, explaining how the commies are going to attempt to take over. We're watching that play out like literally right now with the Democratic Party. I happen to think that Tennant is probably his most ideologically consistent movie. even though I don't understand the physical text of the movie, right? It doesn't, I can't, I still can't unpack tenant from a plot perspective, right? The whole forward and backward time and all the rest of it,

but I understand what the movie's about, about what the meaning of the movie is. And I agree with the meaning. I was never a big fan of Interstellar. I didn't like Inception at all. I think, no, I think somebody posted the other day a short, very short tweet that said, look, in Batman, you know, Nolan's Batman has PTSD because of, being flogged by bats and having his dad died. I forgot about the part about his dad being killed.

In Inception, Cobb has got PTSD from, you know, his wife dying and losing his family. And Odysseus has got PTSD for killing the Trojans. And so there's this PTSD thing that's running through all of his work. And I think the big, my problem with the Odyssey, now, I have not seen. seen it, but from everything that I have heard and people comment on and everything else, and the text of how the movie actually ends, him putting himself into self-exile because he cannot, because of the, the unforgivable sin of wiping out the Trojans. I'm sorry, but that's a reputation of what one must do when you're at war with somebody,

and that the idea that you can take the concept of Zeus's law of hospitality, turn it on his head in wartime and still be it's okay for the trojans to violate the law of hospitality but it's not okay for you to violate it in in response it's literally what we're dealing with right now they we're dealing with in terms of immigration and everything else here in the United States like it's an anti-colonial argument um done as a metaphor with the odyssey and I'm like no absolutely not that is not the way we forward at all uh no Sorry. No. And so there's a, there's a fundamental issue here with the message of the movie, if that is the case. I will sit down and watch it after I can do so without spending any

money on it because I'm not giving them any money for this. Because no one gets to destroy the Odyssey and gets my, it gets my heart in dollar. Sorry, I'll wait four months. And if I'm wrong, I'll write an Appaloia on it. But I don't think I'm wrong. So this is, you know, he gets, came close but he couldn't actually bring himself to do so and then at the end of the day i remind myself that christopher nolan's you know he's a brit um brought up in a world of you know inculcated in a in a in a what would be called a toothless form of christianity so you know and i'm and again i'm i'm i get to stand outside all of this because i'm not necessarily christian anymore And there are times when you have to do the right thing.

And there are times when we're going to have to do unsavory things to put our houses in order. And there are times when we have to do that. And that's, I, I've always been this guy, you know, even when I was a bedwetting libertarian. Like, I was always like, oh, I'm not, like, I'm not enlightened enough to be a freaking pacifist. Like, you know, aggress my borders and, or address my wife or child and see how far that gets you. like it's going to get you a grave right over there and I don't get a shit whether they put me in jail or not like it's just that simple and I've always been that guy I've always said I joking I always just to say like look you know I'm a passive I'd like to be a pacifist but I'm a little too Sicilian to that so you know

I've seen the godfather and went like yeah okay you know and there's a fundamental difference I think between the message of the odyssey and the message of a movie like Patton or the godfather so and you know my love of the movie Patton, even though I know it itself is also a revisionist take on Patton. But it's a revisionist take, well, we'll leave it there. You said nobody's having the conversation, but with speed. Let's have the conversation about speed then. Sure. That's a good.

Thank you. I don't know if he's moving fast enough, Sean. And that's what keeps me up at night. And so I'd like to believe that he is. You know, Blaine Holt talks all the time about the shot clock. Midterms are less than 120 days away. You know, is he moving fast enough? Is he putting the right people in jail?

Is he, you know, is he making the case to the American people fast enough to move the electorate to the point where he can control the legislature in the midterms? Will he, can he get the Save Act passed? Can he get these things done without having to cross constitutional lines, which he's being backed into the corner to do, right? This is the way I've been reading the situation. It's a good question, and I don't know that we've, that he's made the case yet. But the speech he gave the other night about election interference was important

because he didn't say, I'm going to relitigate 2020. I'm just going to provide you all with all of the information you need to make your own judgment on this and put the onus back on the people to say, is this the world you want to live in? Do you want to have elections that are fundamentally corrupt to enforce a worldview that you think you believe in as opposed to doing it right? Do you actually have respect for your fellow citizens to the point where everybody gets, everybody's vote who's legal and who's a citizen and who has a stake in the society gets counted full? Because for every illegal or for every dead person that votes in an election, you've neutered the vote of a person who is a productive member of society.

And that's a hard calculus. It's a hard calculus. There is no negotiating with that calculus. That's monolithic. That is something you can take to the bank. That math you can't argue with. If, you know, if Habib votes in the election in Florida, he negates my vote. If Habib brings over five of his siblings, I got news for you.

That takes out my family. That takes out, that neuters all of us. Is that the world you want to live in? And I think that the speech wasn't for me, because I already get this. The speech was for the people, the 40% of the American electorate that determines all the elections, the independents, who, wanted to believe that 2020 wasn't a shit show. You know, they didn't want to believe that we were this fall and this corrupt. But if you look at the last 18 months of the Trump administration from that particular perspective,

you'll see the narrative that they're building. All the money that they're stolen from Doge, that Doge is uncovered, all the USAID money, all of the changes that are happening at South American politics. So it's amazing how leftist governments can't seem to win an election in South America now the USAID has been shut down, right? Democrat, the Democratic Party has no money because they can't wander the USAID and other NGO money and other money. And there's still a hundred different vectors in which our tax money is being used to funnel be sent out and then sent back to destroy the very people who are.

paying for these operations. And that shouldn't enraised you. Well, if you're an American, you're a Canadian, but if you're listening to this and you're an American, that should not raise you. Yeah, but they're uncovering, you know, as a Canadian, they're uncovering probably, obviously a lesser extent of money, but still an exorbitant amount of money being funneled through different ways through the Canadian government. Through everything that Doge did, Canadians would agree.

They need a doge to come in and, you know, I think it was percent that it was talking about. Once the money's out, it's hard to bring it back in. But what you can do is cut off where the money's going out from and then they lose all the money flow. And I think a lot of Canadians would love that. They'd love just to, okay, can we just stop sending out all this money needlessly when, you know, people are struggling across the country. It's not getting better anytime soon. And there are certainly some things that have. have been said by even Premier Smith in Alberta or Scott Mow in Saskatchewan that I think gives

the West some hope and some things being done differently. But there's a lot of things going on in our country that a lot of people are just adamantly against the common people. They're just like, that doesn't make any sense. No, of course, John. And I wasn't, what I was saying is I wouldn't want to speak to the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beyond, beyond, I think Canada is a fallen country and you all need to be invaded by the United States and like the all and all these cryptors thrown out that's what I think but you know hey I'm just an I'm just a I'm just a I'm just a warmongering this is where this is where me and Tom disagree because I'm just like I just think Canadians need to find their backbone I and once we find our back when we don't we don't you guys the rest of the world

doesn't want wants or doesn't want depending on the side Canadians in a war because we have the stories I bring the military guys on peck Chuck and Jamie of both been on since I left on the road trip and those guys talk about the history of the Canadian military and what it's capable of. Well, it isn't capable of that right now because it's been dismembered, like I mean, torn apart, right? Like, it's, you know, I was just telling my in-laws, we got in a discussion about something along the lines of the Canadian military and the Alberta Independence Movement. And like, well, they just, I think it was my oldest actually. Shea was like, what happens if they send the military? And I'm like, well, son, the Canadian military,

isn't exactly what it used to be. All the Canadian military that I think you would want standing with you all reside in Alberta and Saskatchew right now. Obviously, to my Easterners and everybody else, there are other members scattered throughout the country. I don't mean it in that way, just that the people that you want standing side by side with are sitting in the West.

No, and I say things like, you know, let's just, you know, let's just, you know, let's just be able to and help you out. But I say that faciously, of course. Of course, I want you guys to stand up for yourselves. And of course, I would, as your, as your good and dear neighbor, I would, you know, support that. And however we had to, that's what we're seeing it right. We're seeing it right now with Albert Independence, right? Like there's just, it was 301,000 signatures through the worst part of the winter.

It was kind of reminded me of the Freedom Convoy, if I'm being honest. Freedom Convoy couldn't have picked July to go because that would have just been nice, little dry, beautiful, everything. They had to pick the dark days of January and February in the, coldest, darkest part of Canada to on, you know, just awful roads and, you know, all the way across they went. And once again, the independence signatures were signed through those same months, right? Like people sat outside. Yeah, I mean, driving through Lloyd, I had the utmost respect for whoever sat there. Day after day after day after day after day after day for 120 days

roughly in minus 20 to minus 40 Celsius with the wind blowing and everything else, getting harassed by Cairns of the world who didn't want to have a conversation, you know, and collected signatures all to have the, you know, the judicial system say, oh, yeah, they can't be counted because the First Nations said, you didn't consult us. Now, they've since started counting those, but they're not going to do anything with it anyways. and so it's you know you've you found a way to piss off a huge chunk of Alberta and they have mobilized and they're they're marching forward to a referendum albeit on a referendum but the rest of the country you can just watch how they're the media is just freaking out that this is even possible

good this is exactly the way it's supposed to be and and again I applaud my my Albertan brothers and Mary Alpertan brethren and I want to see that's exactly what I want to say and I want to see that from as many Americans as well the same kind of thing and we have the opportunity in the fall in a couple of months to say look yeah we know the Republicans in Congress are bad people we know they're not they're they're not they're not they're not much better than the Democrats but they're not as bad as these crazies who are all now moving to you know wherever they're going now and uh you know the question then is has have we done enough has trump and company done enough clearly they've done a lot they could have done more

had they not had a whole of government opposition put against them but again that in and of itself is its own form of you know uncover unmasking and um well this comes back to the monolith thing this is why I like the thought so much is because if I bring it back to Alberta for a second, no country is a monolith. Well, you said it earlier about the Mosaic Defense being an analogy for more than just that chunk. Well, no country's a monolith is an analogy for how the world works. No, no province in Canada is a monolith. You're watching a play out in Alberta right now. Tons of people hate the independence movement, hate it vehemently. And then there's the other side that there are people that are willing to die for it.

I mean, maybe literally and figuratively, nobody's died to my knowledge for it. But certainly, it is their hill to die on. And you go, how's that possible? Well,

it's possible because no province, no country, no, you know, the world is not a monolith. We don't all think like the Borg. We all, we all aren't, you know,

yes, no, exactly. And it's not just the Borg, but it's, it's deeper than that. It's like, to remind,

to remind everybody. Like, you know, I've been drawing maps of how the United States would break apart for 25 years. You know, sometimes, it's just a hobby. Like, I just draw them. Like, well, do we draw it, do we, do we, do we break it up by geographic area? Do we draw, do we break it up by, you know, types of barbecue?

Do we, you know, break it up by state? You know, how do you do it, right? And I don't, it's not an exercise in potential political reality. It's an exercise in reminding yourself that, all politics is local and that you know those are where the fault lines are and you can and if you are an enemy to a particular country or a particular system and when you have something like the united states which i see in this you know building block arena this this construction metaphor or we have a block over here, you've got a block over here,

you're going to block over there. You got a player at the table, a player at the table, a player at the table. You realize, oh, well, the United States is a very big player at the table that everybody, that all these other people are allied against. And so now you have to start looking for, where would they, what fault lines would they attack in order to move the hole in their direction as opposed to?

So how do you move? You know, I could be playing a game of risk knowing that, you know, my opponent controls most of North America, blah, blah, blah, where's his weak point? Yeah, there's all those individual armies on the table. Sure, I mean, I hate risk, but it's the best metaphor I can come up with that most people understand. But everybody knows that, you know, to take North America, you either attack it from Alaska,

you know, Quebec or Mexico. You know how you attack America in a game of risk. You know that Ukraine is the key to breaking down. all of Europe because you're going to attack the literally the rest of Europe from Ukraine. Like there's, you know, and so you realize that turn that symbolically into a different thing. Turn that into, you know, from an IC perspective, from a narrative control perspective, from a from a conversation's perspective, how do you move people's opinions? Because at the end of the day, we have these things called elections, which is how we determine

the political reality and how we make the rule. and how we make the laws and everything else, and when you can't control the legislature or when you've lost control of the executive branch, in the case of the United States right now, you've lost control of the executive branch, you've lost control of the Federal Reserve, you've lost control of the Treasury Department,

if you're the bad guys. You've lost control of the military, but you still have the legislation and the judiciary, and you still have access to the local governments, and you have a decentralized system. Remember, the United States is not a monolith because it's 50 individual countries. gas states rights were trampled on during after you know after during and after the civil war

um in the 1860s but at the end of the day people are still like amazed that we that laws in Florida are significantly different than the laws in California for example they don't understand because they don't live here and I know this is the case in Canada as well it's even worse in Canada where your individual provinces and you have and you have we look at it But one thing we have is that we're all a tariff-free zone. Like, Alabama can't tariff Georgia, but you guys can tariff each other. I ran into this when I rented a car up in Canada, and I had to certify that I wasn't going to take it out of the province of Alberta.

I'm like, why? It's Canada. I'm like, well, because British Columbia is basically a different country in that respect, with different rules and different laws, different insurance policies and different this and different that. And they're in all, oh, my God. And probably British Columbia wants to cover. of the revenue off of that car rental if I you know say I'm going to drive over in the

British Columbia you know see what I'm getting out like I understand and I have learned something about Canada I didn't know before right well I got news for you folks that is everywhere that's every country that's every state you know and so then you have to start backing out to if you are going to be reductionist the where should you be reductionist do you have to then go back up to the biggest, we have to go up to where the level is where that level can affect all these little things. And that's the money flow. That's the monetary system. That's the international trade flow and everything else. That's why the minute after Trump made the move to go into Iran,

the first thing I started doing was looking at, okay, so why is this important? What's this actually about? Because it's not about Iran. It may be about Iran not getting a nuclear weapon on the surface, and that may be very important, but why is that important? Not just because nuclear weapons are immoral, which they are, right? And I think nobody should have freaking nuclear weapons. But unfortunately, cats out of the bag. So either everybody gets them or nobody has them. Or people, you know, or we live with the fact that some people have them

and they choose not to lob them at each other. And then anybody who's trying to get us to lob them at each other, they need to be kicked out of the frigging gene pool. and my mind, what I'm seeing and my analysis of the motivations of the people that are bearing on this conflict at every level, they would be okay with nukes getting a lobbed because they're trying to go to Putin and they're lobbying them in Ukraine. They're trying to hand them to Iran. That would then force either the Israelis or the Americans to do it. And then, oh, look, it's not just World War III.

civilization. And maybe that's how we have to, you know, and then we get back to another movie that we all have all seen or been affected by, which is Watchman. At what point did we all step back from the brink of nuclear war and go, no, no, no, no, no, no, what are you willing to do to get to stop that? A question for you, Tom, more, maybe, I don't know if it's more personal or it's just, it's, it's the world you live in. One of the things in the world I live in and talking to everyone, right, is I see the monolith, it's not a monolith of ideas. right like very divergent like just and they and they clash into each other over and over again but there used to be a pool of probably I don't know 50 a thousand take your number of geopolitical

guys five years ago that all operated in kind of like a ecosphere of each other and now it seems that has all fallen apart that is all against one another I see it in the course cornerstone forum. I see it in the cornerstone audience. And the audience is wonderful because, you know, it's more of an opinion. There's nothing really emotional about it for the most part. They're just kind of like, I just disagree with this guy or I disagree with that guy or I disagree with that lady. And then they go on about their day. They go, you know, back to the farm or they go back to their job in the city or whatever they got going on. But in your world, I've watched and in my world, it's been interesting because there's a lot of disagreement right now.

And when it was Russia, China, some foreign adversary, if you would, when it was just Ukraine and Russia, it seemed like everybody could just stare at it from afar and make, but as soon as it's the United States of America, that's where it changed. At least that's what I see. Maybe I'm wrong. No, you're not wrong at all. You're not wrong at all because this is something that I started to clue into about, I want to say, It's probably as much as five years ago now, maybe even earlier than that.

But I started to see the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the quote-unquote community of geopolitics, geopolitical commentators, we had common cause that there was something wrong with America and that the Russians weren't the bad guys. That's a simple way of putting it. Yeah, because back then, five years ago, when I first interviewed you, right? because you can be wrong on this. No, you're not. I want to pump your tires too much, Tom. But I want to say after I interviewed the first time, that's when I got to Alex.

And obviously, that's when you and you and Alex started coming on, you know, basically once a month for how many years. Right. But that opened doors to, oh, you're interested in this. Oh, how about this guy? And how about that guy? And how about this guy. So that's how my geopolitical sphere opened up was from having a conversation with you. And specifically from very.

bringing you and Alex to Lloyd Minster, right? Brody to Lloyd because I just thought, wow, we're entering into this very dangerous thing where Russia is awful and we need to obliterate them at no matter the cost. And yet nobody was trying to, I don't think anyone was trying here at least in Alberta to try and understand what that actually meant, what that actually meant for Canada and where we were pulling ourselves to.

And so like, I think it's because of Dustin suggesting you that I went down this rapid, And this rabbit hole has gone very deep and opened up a lot of different conversations with a ton of wonderful people. As soon as it became the United States, it hit close to home. And now it has become harder and harder to justify for a lot of people that it's the U.S. doing it, not Russia doing it, where they have no, it's not their country or something along those lines. I might be once again muddling a bit much. Well, what I was going to say was about five, six years ago, I realized that we were looking at a commentariat that was fundamentally anti-American. And for a variety of reasons. And that really everybody was in some way, matter, shape, or form trying to, I identified really, at some point I said, like, look, the truth, the goal here is somebody is trying to push us.

And this was before I was even, I think the word city of London ever came out of my mouth. Somebody is trying to push the United States into a conflict with either the Russians or the Chinese. Because when the United States gets involved in that, with all of its other tentacles around the world, with all of its other bases around the world, the infrastructure and the problems at home and everything else is happening, that war will be existential. It will destroy the U.S. And there were a lot of people cheering that on. And I'm like, you're okay with that.

You want the Russians to, what, to take over the world? Do you realize that the Russians are not powerful enough to take over the world to create the restoration of, you know, I don't know, Constantinople or whatever theory you have about the Russians or you prefer the Chinese to take over the world or it's inevitable that's going to happen? I'm like, no, the people who are doing this are clearly Europe. the people who are clearly doing this are the old European oligarchy this is when I started to like but again I started calling them Davos in 2017

because I realized very early on that these people were dangerous right and you know for me it's just been an evolution but it was the most there were been moments for me over the last 10 years that I've been doing this almost 10 years now I've been doing this in this form right has been oh Someone wants the United States to get into war can't win. War on multiple fronts, it can't win. It'll hollow us what's left of us out. Oh, Iran is a network note on that.

They're not acting in their own best interest. Neither is Ukraine. The Ukraine operation was obvious. From the Maidan to what was going on in Syria. All that stuff was so obvious in 2013, 2014, 2015. To me, it was very obvious. But I never really understood. And then I saw Brexit happen.

And I saw Trump happen. I'm like, well, maybe the world is healing. Right? And so you're champion of Brexit. You're champion of Trump coming in because now we have the opportunity. We started to see the rise of AFD. This is when Lagas sort of showing up in Italy, populist movements on the right sort of pop, sort of popping up all across Europe and Europe sort of, you know, cutting down the tall poppies over and over and over again.

And it then, you know, for me, it became a, okay, there is an argument. I'm going to now start looking at more and more and more data and details of certain parts of both history and the capital, where the capital markets that operate and everything else in order to try and get a sense of where, of what this really is about, to get some data to undergird what is effectively a hypothesis. But a clearly obvious hypothesis from a narrative perspective, which is that there's some people out there who just frigging hate the United States. Russia, is China, is the Europeans, the Iranians, this one, or is it all the above? And then, is it even the Israelis, right? Is it all of the above?

But someone is the ringleader on all of this in some way. That's my argument. Dexter White, my partner, Dexter White would disagree with me on that, on that simple a statement, that is a more nuanced conversation than that. Fine, can I have that argument on a regular basis? sometimes we have it in public, sometimes we have it in private, it doesn't matter. He's, and he's not wrong to look at it that way. What I've decided to do, and I've told him this, and I've told a lot of people this, and

I's like, look, I want to have the conversations nobody else wants to have. Since 10-7, 2023, or five days after it, everybody was willing to have the conversation about how evil the Jews are in Israel because of what's going on in Gaza. And that's fine. That was the conversation we weren't allowed to have before that, really. So it was cool that we're now all of a sudden able to have that conversation. But that conversation went from zero to 14 on a scale of one to 10 in two weeks. That's a tell.

That pricks up my spidey sense. That pricks up my hypervigilence. That's where I said, no, there's something else going on here than that. Somebody is trying to body's four of us, trying to distract us with that so that we don't look at this. And that's why, you know, having talked with Alex over the years and, you know, developing a lot of the receipts on our arguments about London, going all the way back to when he and I first met over his book that he wrote about Bill Browder, exposing Bill Browder as a fake and everything else. That's when I started to really think in terms of, like, so what's the

conversation we're not allowed to have? Oh, I'm going to poke London and see what happens. Bing, all of a sudden, all this opposition starts coming up. Bing, you're crazy a long ago. You're just trying to not, just trying to absolve the Jews. But, or, you know, I'm like, no, not. I'm so after a while I became very obvious to me that I wasn't allowed to have that conversation and of course I want to have the conversations that were not allowed to have so I purposefully in many ways overdid it in order to get people to come out of the it's the kind of thing that Trump does Trump does this exact thing he poked at an issue that nobody's looking at in order to get them to look at it even if he said

something stupid about it because now all of a sudden everybody has to look at him and counter him and tell him he's full of shit or tell him that he's spot on or they then you know the operatives look at it and tell him say oh my god it can't possibly be that okay then the other and then there's another 5% of the commentary after goes oh no there's a point to be made here that no argument is a monolith no subject as a monolith oh no it's more complicated than that folks you want to look there and that springs up new people and new ideas and you know and you know there's a lot of bullshit out there but mushrooms come up out of that bullshit right so you know this is part of the process and so you know then I started you know once you get start going down that pike

start going down that route then COVID happens and then the Fed starts tightening and all these things start happening and my brain just starts firing on all cylinders about all this stuff and again trying to weave you know some form of coherent not narrative but some through line that makes some sense again is it more complicated than any through line that I could put forth for you of course it is but here's the through line consider that through line then consider some of the other that attached to that through line and then look at it from that perspective and then go over there and then like you know And at the end of the day, you've got all these different, in mathematics terms, you've got all these different, you're here and you've got all these different vectors you can be pushed and pulled in. But when you do the dot product, you get a result in vector.

That's what a dot product is in vector math, right? I've got all these different vectors, right, going all these different directions. But when you do the dot product of all of those vectors, you get the resultant vector or the resultant force. Something comes out of that. that's what I'm always in search of. Okay? And sometimes you've got some of the, sometimes you've got some of the values of the vectors

that you're being pulled in wrong. And so, of course, you're going to get the wrong answer, but the more stuff you, and the more times you take the vector dot product, you get closer and closer and closer to the target. And that's the way I operate, folks. It's not really very complicated. It is complicated because you're having to keep 100 different things in your head at the same time

and sometimes it makes you sound like a lunatic and I'm not going to lie, you know, but it's a process that you're trying to put forth openly and honestly. And but in all that you do have to keep a couple of constants. You can't, not everything is a variable. Right. In, you know, basic math. Not everything is x, y, z equals 2x plus three, two x, two x, y, you know, plus Y squared.

There's a C on the end of that. There's a constant plus five, plus three. That constant, they hate Donald Trump, they hate Vladimir Putin. Why? When you start doing that, it starts making it a lot easier to solve the vector map.

For me, I was chatting with somebody this morning about this. I might have been on Twitter, and I just said, look, Last summer, there was a clip from Mario Knopfel from Joe Kent. Joe Kent was saying something about Donald Trump changed in the spring of summer of last year. Now, he spun it as somebody gave him bad information, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is kind of the argument that Martin Armstrong and others have been making.

It's not a bad, it's not a bad argument. I don't happen to agree with it. It's the time frame for me that matters, summer last year. meaning the 12-day were with Israel and Iran and the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska in August. If you take those two events and overlay them with the ramped up hysteria about how Trump is now no longer MAGA, the Epstein files, the Massey stuff,

the MTG stuff, all the crashouts, all that happened. It all started in July of last year. Tucker Carlson turned on a dime on him, so did Megan Kelly, so did all of these people. why? Why did that operation go full flower at that moment in time? It's a good question. You can answer it however you want. If you want to answer it with because, you know, he's the play thing of Netanyahu, fine. Go back to watching, you know, sports ball. You're good. You're not a serious political analyst. You're not. You're a commentator. You got an opinion, but you're not serious.

That's my, and that's my take. That's the hill that I'll dial. Because for me, this is the last point and I'll turn it back over. For me, this is about American, this is about America finally declaring independence from this system so that we can drag everybody else out of it as well because we're the only one's powerful enough to do it. Period. Period. Period. And that is what was proven this summer with the military operations against Iran. Because for 30 years, everybody told us we couldn't attack her on. Really? Brack.

That's my phone. Take it for what it's worth. Hate me for it. I don't care. But engage with it. And then come up with an answer. Tom, appreciate you coming on the podcast and doing what you always do.

I'm sure you'll have the text line flying at me as we drive. Always great catching up with you. And look forward to seeing you in person in Tennessee later this year. Oh, absolutely, dude. I'm going to be in just so the last thing I'd let everybody know, I have just finally booked my travel for September. I'm going on vacation in September. I'll be out west and I'll be in Boise, Idaho in mid-September and I'll probably be in, and I'll be in Utah in the middle of the, middle of the Moab for two weeks. But I'm hoping to be able to catch up with some people

out there and I'll make something more formally announced that I'll be out there for something basically informal. We did this when we were in Fort Worth for the Rush concert a couple weeks ago, and we did a thing, and it was great, and a whole bunch of people came over. We had barbecue and cigars, and it was great.

We had a great time. Well, I'm not in Tennessee until the end of October, so I think by then you'll be back. I will be back. I will have to be back. My neighbor is due to give birth in the early part of October, so we have to be back by then for Camille

to help the neighbors with the newborn. So perfect. Well, until then, sir, thanks for hopping on and doing this. Thank you, Sean. Enjoy your vacation and best of your family.