Shaun Newman Podcast - #872 - Tom Luongo

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

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. We discuss Iran/Israel, Trump/Tucker and the ever changing landscape in geopolitics. To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionWebsite: www.BowValleycu.comEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail]

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because that's what the new studio has, and you're interested in that type of thing. Look no further than Renegate Acres. I can't speak highly enough for what Caleb Taves and his group did in the new studio. Substack, it's free to subscribe to. We try and get out the week in review. I failed this past weekend.

I talked about that, and I'm not being too hard on myself, but regardless, it's free to subscribe to. It's down on the show notes. And then we try and put some things behind the paywall for paid members. You can become a paid member and help support the podcast and everything we're trying to do here. And we greatly appreciate that. Either way, find the details down in the show notes.

We do have the new studio coming here in 2025 and we're on hold for some wood. So it's getting closer. I'm excited to unveil it. I'm excited to have some in-person conversations here in 2025. I think it's going to be awesome. And look forward to showing you fun. folks a little bit more about that. If you're listening or watch her on it, Spotify, Apple, YouTube,

Rumble, X, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review. Make sure to hit retweet. Make sure to do all the things. If you're enjoying a podcast, make sure to share with a friend. Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. He's 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 podcast. I'm joined by Tom Luongo. Tom, thanks for hopping on. Thank you, Sean. How are you? We were supposed to do this with our normal partner in crime, Alex Craneer,

but he's sadly not available today. So you send me folks and all my crazy. All the people who are disappointed, just relax. We got Alex scheduled for Monday. So next Tuesday, you're going to have Tom and Alex back. on. We're going to get it before I had for holidays with the family. And if the world keeps going insane, which it probably will, you know, I always wonder in July. So last year in July, Tom, right? We're driving in Idaho and I have scheduled the entire month so I don't have to do a podcast,

right? This is something new that I've done over the course of three years of full time, is I just need to take some time for family. Right. And so I'm not going to do a podcast in July. And then we're in Idaho and Trump gets shot. And my wife looks at me and she, She's like, it's okay. You can go do a podcast. I know you want to. And I'm like, I don't know. Like, what is going to happen that can?

And so I look at this July and I'm like, no, not doing it. Not doing it. And then I laugh. I go, I wonder what the world's going to do that's going to force me back into doing at least one podcast because I'm sure it's coming. And I'm sure I'm going to be on the horn to Tom or to whoever and be like, you should probably just top on. We should probably have a quick podcast.

So no fear, folks. Alex is coming on next week. and we're going to have a Tom Alex before, before July. Yeah, that's it. It's one of the things about navigating schedules. And I'll tell you this, you know, I was chatting with, with Extra White the other day. And a similar thing, he's like, you know, a lot of podcasts just take the summer off because they have to eventually have to take something. You have to do something.

It's like, it's the same thing in markets. Like, you know, selling May and come back up for Labor Day, right? And, you know, he's saying to me, look, we've got stuff that we need to do. And I need you to, you know, pare back your schedule a little bit so that we can schedule some time to do the things that we want to do to upgrade the business and all that stuff. And the business development stuff that just needs to be done. And it's that we all know that it's been on the back burner because the news cycle refuses to back off.

And I'm just laughing. And I'm going on vacation with my family in July for two weeks. So we were up in Calgary, you know, Camille and I spent an extra couple of days up there, but this time is going to be like one of those last times when I can have a, just the three of us can go because my daughter's now 19 and, you know, a professional and all this stuff. So, you know what I mean? It's like, so this is the one of the last hurrahs there. And I'm going to be gone the first half of the month. And I know, I have to work, but I know that I, you know, I can pare back my schedule. But there's going to be days or

there are people going to be screaming at me. Today is one of those days. And, you know, it is what it is. And we'll do our very best folks. to um and i can tell you that sean shit's going to pop off all throughout July okay like everything everything is coming together before we get into tom walking me through this i want to make a mention because you brought up camille i'm going to hold the cup up okay this is not my favorite cup this is a very nice cup camille is in the process of making my favorite cup because i had an accident in the house where i broke my favorite cup that i use every morning i get up read the bible folks and I have a coffee out of Kyle Koza.

He got me a coffee maker that is fantastic. He comes to every show, wonderful man, and I use one of Camille's. It's like the perfect size. I don't know how she did it. I don't know why I bought it back then, but I made a cup and I'm like, it's too small. And then I'm, and then I drank it. I'm like, this is the perfect size cup. Anyways, I knocked it out of the cupboard, smashed all over the floor.

Shed a tear because I'm like, come on. Now, this is a nice second cup. I brought it in here because of the, this morning because I knew you'd be smoking a cigar. I was going to have a coffee. Shout out to Camille because she makes wonderful things. And if you're at the Cornerstone Forum in 2026, she will no doubt be there selling these wonderful cups.

And I can't speak highly enough about them because it has become my favorite cup. And I'm waiting for a new favorite cup. This one is, you know, holding its place right now. So shout out to Camille for all that. Now, all the niceties aside. Thank you. Tom, I, thought, I don't know what I thought, but there's been a whole lot going on. Walk me through

what you're seeing and we'll see if I can, you know, add in. Right. Let's know, let's, let's, the night that Israel attacked, um, I sat there like everybody else, stunt. I'm not going to, I'm not going to lie. My first reaction was, whoa, what in the actual just happened. And then I, started thinking it through and I started looking at the destabilization of the game board and everything else and I went, you know what? Yeah. In 48 hours, I tweeted this out.

The world we thought we knew is going to be unrecognizable. Now, so many people then said, nuclear bombs are going to fall and bubble. No, I didn't mean it that way. I never meant it that way. The world that we thought we understood is gone. And it was really gone on 10-7, October 7, 2023.

And this is the part of the end of that. So let's now try and understand everything that we thought we saw for the last few years, certainly going back to Trump first term and everything else. And when I'm done with that, I think you'll have a better understanding of why I think Trump is in control, not, I wouldn't say control, but He has agency in this. That is not the current. Oh, my God, he's betraying MAGA,

and he's getting us involved in a land war in Asia. That is not what's happening here. So let's go back to the campaign. Let's just make it simple. What did Trump campaign on? What was he clear about? I will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Full stop.

Now, a lot of people's minds, that means I'm going to betray Israel. because in order to, you know, I'm going to do X and therefore, because here's the thing. A lot of people have conflated two very important issues. Iran, nuclear ambitions, and Israel's geopolitical ambitions. And that one stops the other. And that's the kind of standard Ron Paul style libertarian argument about why countries pursue nuclear weapons, which is to stop the quote unquote empire from attacking them, right? It's a form of mad or whatever you want to put it.

There's a bigger game at play than that one, okay? And I've been trying to elucidate this. Alex and I have been talking about this for years. We've talked about it on your show. We've talked about it on hundreds of podcasts that we've done. I've done in dozens of shows that Alex and I have done together. which is that Iran and Israel are pawns. Now I'm going to back this out.

Okay. So Trump says, I don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Israel says Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They have overlap in their incentive venn diagram. They also have two very different final endpoints of their agendas. Israel and whoever they work for. And I would put Lakud, the Netanyahu wing of the, of Israeli leadership maps very strongly to old Europe and city of London.

There are factions in Iran, by the way, that no one wants to talk about that also map to old Europe and city of London, FYI. But they have an agenda. And that agenda is the same one that we're all fighting in every other space. If you believe my arguments about Davos, right, then understand that Israel is a of that. Okay. So go back to our Alex and I talking about how all roads lead to London. And we've always said, well, you know, wherever the British umpire pulled back from, they always left X and anti-X, India, India, Pakistan, North Korea, South Korea, Iran, in effect, Iran Israel,

or whatever, Shia Sunni, there's a better, which is the big thing, or Russia, Ukraine, or whatever. And now we're finding out the United States, Canada. We had to finally put that on the table. So understand that this conflict, these are conflicts that are there in order to be spun up and turned into conflicts, open hot kinetic conflicts, whenever there's a threat of peace. That has been a model that has been clear as day for two decades now. every time indian china seemed to get together and wanted like and and be peaceful there's a flare up on the border whenever india and pakistan are going to you know come to some arrangement maybe brokered by china something happens in cashment like every freaking time well when the bricks added all of the

countries in august of 2023 that surround the trade routes of the arabian peninsula miraculously eight weeks later or six weeks later, Hamas goes crazy and kills a bunch of Israelis. And they did. And I'm not going to entertain any freaking conspiracy theories here about any of this crap. The Netanyahu let it happen and blah. That's all nonsense. Like they did it. Okay. And who was behind the Hamas attack? Was it Iran probably? Could have been. But I've, and I always argued at the time that the Palestinians, for example, Hamas and the Palestinians were always somebody's pawn, right? They're an asset. They can be used, and they were rapidly depreciating asset, given the situation. So use it or lose it, baby.

Well, we have the same problem here with Iran and Israel. Dhabos is trying to put, is doing the full court press to destroy the United States. They want Trump neutralized. They want his presidency destroyed. And they have been telling everybody and all of their agents all over the world. Martin Armstrong's talked about this openly, that just wait out Trump. We've got him ring fenced and we'll get back on program for later. Now, do you think Netanyahu is not one of those actors?

So you can see how Trump wants, if Trump wanted, wants peace and in the Middle East and then demuclearized Middle East, which is what he's been setting up previous to Thursday that no one was arguing with me about, then why all of a sudden would he be the one to betray everybody? What if, and this is a very powerful argument when you start to really back everything out, I've been saying for years going back well before you and I ever met, that the potential for a grand bargain in the Middle East is for All of this to end and the Russians and the Americans to leave. But no one wants that, right?

Iran doesn't seem to want it. Israel doesn't seem to want it. Europe doesn't seem to want it. But the rest of the world wants it. All the people want it, but the governments don't seem to want it. Right? So I'm doing a little bit of a trumping and weave here. There's a lot of little moving parts here.

Okay? Because you've got to understand all of those little things. go into the final statement, which is, I thought this on Thursday night after I thought about it. I sat on a FaceTime call with Larry Johnson for two hours. He had just gotten back from Moscow. And Larry and I went over this. And Larry was very upset by all this because he really didn't. He really thought that, like everybody else, well, Trump holds Netanyahu's leash.

Why didn't he just stop this? Well, that's a good question. So here's the question. So here's the answer. Or here's another question to try and understand what this answer would be. Why would Trump allow Netanyahu to do this? Well, here's the thing. We have factions in Iran that don't want a nuclear weapon.

We have factions in Iran that are pursuing a nuclear weapon. All arguments to the contrary are nonsense. Amani has a fatwa saying, yeah, no nuclear weapons. That's nice. There are four factions in Iran. that are vying for political power. You've got the theocracy, you've got the IRGC, you've got the civilian military,

and you've got the civilian government. They all have different perspectives. Everybody wants to argue that the United States is a big monolith, and we know that that's not the case, right? We know that the United States isn't a political monolith. We know that there are sovereignists. We know that there are neocons. We know that there are people in the pay of the Chinese.

We know that there's all these factions. And they're all fighting amongst themselves. And Trump is trying to navigate a very, very tenuous, thin political situation in the legislature. And he's trying to remake the way we do everything in the United States in terms of handling money, tariffs, all that stuff. And it all comes down to the budget reconciliation bill, which is part of this calculus. So now, why would Trump let Netanyahu off the leash? Well, he wants Iran's nuclear program destroyed. for whatever reason,

and Trump gave a deadline. Why would he give a 60-day deadline? Knowing full well that that 60-day deadline would run out five days before the G7, a couple of days before planned NATO exercises, which saw all those refuelers on their steaming, taking off and flying towards Europe.

Guess what? They're all part of a big NATO exercise. that was scheduled two years ago for this weekend. Why is all that there? I talk all the time about the Gant chart at Evil Corp Central. This was all on the table. But here's the thing. You've got a faction in Iran that negotiates the same way Zelensky negotiates.

Have you see it? You know how Zelensky negotiates? Yes, let's have peace talks. I reiterate, and then he reiterates the exact same unacceptable demands that he had two years ago. Who negotiates like that? Ask, I tweeted this night yesterday and I added Giannis Verifakis. Go talk to Greece. Who argues about who, who negotiates that way? Europe does. They set terms and then they manipulate the game board to constantly make those terms the only option that you have available to you. That Verifakis very, very famously said back in after the Greek debt crisis.

I walked in. I had all these charts and all these plans to get Greece out of their debt. And I got it. I went up to the Politburo and I presented it all. And then they went back and they ignored me as if I had just sung the Swedish national anthem. Don't you get that same feeling when you watch Zelensky talk? When you watch Brandoian talk about these things or Kayakalas or Kier Starrmer or Donald Tusk? Right? Same thing. Over and over and over again. Same thing with Netanyahu. Iran is two weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

We've been saying it for 30 years. It's an excuse when we know it, but something has changed. Trump decided, I think, to blow this whole thing open and to finally get the faction within Iran that is pursuing a nuclear weapon. There is no reason to enrich uranium to 60% or more unless you're pursuing a weapon. And it's been my operating principle for years.

And I've said this publicly 100 times on a thousand podcast, or on 100 podcasts. I've always operated under the principle that North Korea was working on the warhead and Iran was working on the delivery system. And notice how Russia is deeply involved in both militaries and both civilian governments to ensure that the warhead doesn't leave North Korea and the ballistic missiles. The ballistic missiles don't go to North Korea and the warheads don't go to Iran. So Russia's a guarantee has been an active nuclear non-proliferating agent in all of us as well.

It's very obvious that he's been trying, that Putin on his side has been trying to get Iran to the negotiating table. Trump gives Iran 60 days. I can hold BB on for 60 days. Davos is going to attack around this time because everything is going to happen at this time because of all of the things that are happening in the United States. United States and around the world. And it's their timetable. It's not ours. So come to the table. Please make a fucking deal for Christ's sake. Stop the extend to pretend. But the people who are don't want peace in Iran who want the nuclear weapon are been told, I'm guaranteed are being told behind the scenes. Just wait Trump out. Just extend and pretend. Don't worry about it. We've got this ring fence.

Nothing's going to happen. Blah, blah, blah, blah. If you look like you're negotiating, he'll keep negotiating. He gave him a 60 day warning deadline and on day 61 he took the leash off Netanyahu. Why? Because now the Israelis who have been planning a big operation for years executed and they got a lot done and they may have degraded Iran's ability to retaliate sincerely. But at the same time, they did hit Israel in response and they did score sincere hit. They took out the port at Haifa. They took out the Mossad headquarters. They took out, apparently they took out DeMona, the Israelis nuclear facility.

But they have no air defense. Why? I don't, because they did combined arms operations and intelligence operations on the ground. So they got their thing done. And Trump's like, okay, go for it. That advances my agenda, which is to let these people know that the day. days of playing this game of extended pretend, or as I like to put it, it's a terrier that won't submit. Like it's like a dog that won't submit. You put, you know, I got a 12-pound rat

terrier that fights with my 90-pound marema every, all the time over the female marema because the 12-pound rat terrier thinks that, you know, he's, he's her girlfriend, that he's her boyfriend when he's her sidepiece. And then he gets into a fight with the 90-pound dog and refuses to give in. I have to pull him. I have to pull the 90 pound dog off that while he's showing unbelievable restraint. The stupid 12 pound dog is like, because they're terriers and they don't know how to submit. I got news for you. The IRGC is about the fucking terriers. Not terror. Well, they're also terrorists. And everybody's tired of their bullshit. Just like everybody's tired of the Israel's bullshit. Trump is making deals around the entire Middle East to stabilize the region

and bring commerce and start stitching the region together with commerce. I think he had the framework of a deal with the Iranians who refused to cut it. And he had to show them, I'm sorry, you had a deadline. If you don't meet the deadline, I can't stop him. And I'm not going to because you don't, you shouldn't have a nuclear weapon either. That's where we were on Thursday. Everything else since then has been exactly the same. Everybody is exhorting Iran to come to the table before they're wiped out.

Okay. But at the same time, Netanyahu has 20% approval rating. He's going to get, I mean, this was all happening when the Knesset was about the fall and they had to, you know, cobble things together and he's like, give me another, you know, 60 days and then he's going to like whatever it is and then walk he's going to walk into the sunset like Churchill did after starting the war or at least that's what he thinks notice he's in greece by the way because he didn't want to be there for the bombs he didn't want to get get you didn't want to get killed so I'm watching Trump and it's very obvious he is leaving open that this is the kind

I mean it's like at the end of the day it's like I hate to use a star wars reference but it's Like, you know, we engaged in aggressive, aggressive negotiations. Well, aggressive negotiations with a lightsaber. Right. Like, it's, you know, this is how you get people who don't respect you to get to respect you. At some point, you got to punch them in the mouth. Ain't no way out of this. And I, and it's terrible and it's awful.

Every, nobody wants this. But you made your bed. The Israelis made their bed. The Iranians have made their bed. Their axes, the IRGC's axes of resistance is horrific. Like, no one should be cheering for freaking Hezboa or the Houthis or anyone else. Any more than you should be cheering the frigging IDF going in and wiping out the Palestinians in Gaza. At some point, it's all the same shit.

But there's nothing you can do. You're not going to stop this. And you're not going to stop it until the people who are. are fomenting it who benefit from this. Because everybody should be asking yourself the question, who benefits from this? And I have a through line back to the very people who set this thing up in the first place.

And nothing's changed. And we have too many commentators in the space who are proving themselves to not be strategic thinkers. And I don't know that it's a dangerous game. I'm not arguing that. I'm not arguing that the threat of this thing spiring out of control isn't real. But clearly this is what we're dealing with. Under the table, negotiate a peace plan.

So what have we really seen the Israelis do to Iran? Knock out the IRGC leadership again. Notice that they made a big stink about killing all the negotiators. There's a tell for you. Like, yeah, we don't want. peace. Like, okay. And then we get to find out, and then we get to find out who's the paper tiger and who is it. And the reality is that they're both paper tigers. Trump has not committed one U.S. soldier to the operation. Whether there are our guys on the ground or not acting rogue,

well, that's fine. Like, whatever. Like, we know that. They're working in Ukraine, too. Like, we know this. but the broader plan is if he can do this, this is, I think, what we're dealing with. So I'm going to like back everything off for a second and remind everybody what I actually think is the best outcome here. Because all of this doesn't matter until you get to the best outcome. What's the goal? Well, as I've said a couple of times now,

it's like me watching the Philadelphia Flyers and the Dallas Stars playing hockey game. What do you hope for? A tie in a lot of injuries. Okay, I'll put it in football terms for the Americans in the audience. Ready? I used to be a New York Giants fan. You know, when Dallas and Philadelphia were playing, tie in a lot of injuries,

which is much, much more consequential in football than it ever was in hockey. Right? That's what you hope for. You hope both, what you're looking for is the destruction of both factions within Iran and Israel that want the conflict and no more nukes. How do you get, and the United States no longer with a military guarantee for Israel? for Israel and the Russians get to walk away from Iran. So where so are we are we closer to that framework today than we were on Thursday?

Yes, we are. It's bloody because here's the thing. You take out Iran's nuclear program all of a sudden Israel no longer has a Cossus Beli to act like a bunch of jackasses running around the world with impunity. They've been they've now been turned into a pariah state because they're the aggressors and no one likes them now after what they've done with got in gaza like it's the worst PR campaign ever like so that nathan yahoo's party's not going to survive this not tally bennett's out there doing the entire u.s podcast circuit right now oh by the way getting prepared that he's the

one who's going to take over afterwards now i don't have a great read on bennett but like this he's far more pro-American than he is pro-Israel. He's not part of that same thing that we've been dealing with, that whole Miriam Adelson, you know, Mark Levine. Like, I've been watching this going, oh, look, Trump gave Israel everything they've ever wanted, because the Zionists, everything they ever wanted. And they're about to, and they're going to get it good and hard on the backside of this. But at the same time, Iran's axis of resistance is,

bullshit too. And I don't care about going back to Mossadec and the Shah and this, that and everything else. Dude, this is where we are in 2025. What happened 80 years ago and has its roots, but it doesn't bear on the exact situation today. Because the world is different. We now have a non-communist Russia wanting to work with the United States to craft peace across this entire slice of the planet. And that's pretty obvious. And even not, and even if that's not the case. If all that has happened here as that Putin went, yep, do that, but I get free reign in Ukraine. Stay out from here and we're going to wrap this thing up in Ukraine. And then go look at what's happening on the ground in Ukraine. And all of a sudden, the Russians have figured out

how to do maneuver warfare. Hmm. Wow. Think they were sandbagging people for three years, like I told you? Yeah, kind of looks that way. I'm moving down from Sumi. They're breaking into the then at Provraska blowing up, blowing out the line. It's not hard to do maneuver warfare against a highly degraded enemy like the Ukrainian army. And notice who's screaming about this. It's the Europeans. So Trump goes to the G7 yesterday.

Dresses Mark Carney down. The first words out of, when he makes a statement, the first thing he does is do what? Say, why did you guys cut Russia out of the G8? Justin Trudeau and Obama convince everybody to kick Putin out of. of the Russians out of the GA. Now it's the G7. If it would still be the G8, we wouldn't have a war in Ukraine right now. If it was the G8 the last time I was president, the typical Trump thing.

Like, but he's right, because we would have been able to talk to them, figure this stuff out. But notice how Europe never wants to talk to Russia. Notice how the Israelis don't want to talk to Iran. See the pattern? Like, this ain't 4D chess, folks. This is reading the players at the board. 4D chess is the new conspiracy theory. it's a new sign-off to destroy the language around people actually like figuring out what these fucking people are doing.

Like everybody's let their frustration and their anger at Israel boil over into the ionosphere now. It's retarded. I don't like Israel. I can't stand them. I want them brought low and I want them. But how are you going to get out of this? And how are you going to craft this in such a way that we can walk away durably? This has been the question that everybody's asked me for seven years whenever we get into this conversation.

And here we are. Maybe it looks like this. Maybe this was the only option, which is to at the end of the day, and this is the final point, and I'll turn the microphone over. In order to dare peace, you have to threaten war when you're dealing with people like this. That's where we are. Do you listen to Colonel Douglas McGregor? Gregor, his thoughts on it? Yeah.

And I think Doug's an old boomer who's been past bad information and doesn't know how to fat. I'm sorry. I'm done with McGregor. I mean, I love Larry Johnson. He's a friend of mine, but I was like on the phone with them the other night.

And I'm like, Larry, you're missing the bigger context here. Doug McGregor, Tucker Carlson, they're all missing it. And I don't know why they're missing it. Look,

I had a friend of mine, when Erdogan moved into Syria. And I had my initial take was, was really confused, right? I was like, I had no idea what to make of what happened in Syria. I had a friend of mine who I'd been, you know, chatting with back and forth for a long time about this. And he's, he's Muslim and whatnot. And he speaks English. He's in, you know, he lives in America.

He's like, don't you see what's happening here? Turkey's now, this was allowed to happen. Turkey was brought in to stabilize the region. Netanyahu's angry about it because he was expecting to get Damascus. Like, everybody got it wrong. In the end, he and I were right. He was confused about what was happening the other night. I told him, it's the same story all over again.

You wait. I'm half tempted to believe, you know, Dexter White and I were chatting about this last night. is like, dude, I can see within 48 hours the Russians whisked in hominy off the Moscow in order to preserve his life. Because it's done. It's over. Like neither government that created this mess or neither governmental structure that created this mess can be allowed to survive.

MBS's statement the other day, Israel is trying to get the United States back the United States into an open conflict with Iran. Trump goes to the G7 after saying this about Russia, which is the most discordant fucking thing you could possibly say. And then leaves early and Reuters let it slip this morning. What King Flores found it on Reuters, that they published on Reuters the statement, and Trump left early and refused to sign it about the Israel-Iran conflict.

If you read the statement, oh, by the way, you can't find that article, in that form anymore. Roiders has rewritten it. Removed to the old headline. It's gone. I went looking for it this morning. If anybody can find a version of it, I'd love this. The version that Joaquin found, I'd love to see it. Because the truth is, is that that statement was meant to preclude. If Trump signed it, he would be an effect now on the hook for, no, we can't negotiate anymore. He walked away from it and went home called the national

called those national security council together didn't sign the statement why leaving open the door for negotiation you punch him in the mouth you're like okay long tom do you know what the statement said sorry maybe you referenced it and i just missed it was it was you know we they believe that ira rana israel has a right to defend itself and iran is you know and iran can't pursue a nuclear weapon and blah blah blah all this boiler

plate stuff and in the end you know sad day but you know the iranian regime has to be taken out so they're doing is doing what they need to do to preserve peace huh really from the g7 what a shock the very people who like manipulated events to this point in the fucking first place pox on all their fucking houses like i'm sorry sean i know i know this is discordant i know this is like i know this is Gordon. I know it is. And I woke up this morning and I'm looking at the situation as the Sands right now and I'm like, this may be the most important podcast I ever record. You've got to understand the nuance of this. The Russians and the Americans both want this. This is the way out of this mess. This is a meta, chaos is the strategy. Permanent open festering wounds that can

be pooked with a stick is the strategy. It's the way of the world, man. And it's the very, and the same people who are, who have been doing it for years, centuries are doing it to us again. And they're trying to get, they're trying to force Donald Trump into doing something he doesn't, he knows he doesn't want to do or need to do. And I think Trump is holding the line. He may not bear up to the pressure.

Like, I'm not saying this is a winning strategy. Okay. on his part or anybody else's part. I just think that this is where we are. And I think that in the end of the day, because remember, here's another thing that everybody missed. Everybody missed it. Because Netanyahu is so goddamn nauseating.

Who the hell wants to listen to him bloviate again? Right? Like, I never want to listen to that man speak. Yet his statement on Thursday night contain words that he never used. He said, this is not directed at the Iranian people. It's time. We want you to become part of the world, of the global community.

You can be a great people again. This has got, we can do this. Now, you can read that as standard boilerplate, Neo-Con. Let's rise up against the bad guy, the evil mollas, and liberate you. That's the same bullshit that John Bolton and all of them have been, you know, saying for years. But coming out of Netanyahuas, with Trump as president, it hits differently this way. It's a signal that more likely than not, Trump is in charge of this.

And Trump let Netanyahu do this. But everybody wants to go out there today and, and confirm their bias that the United States is a wholly captured subsidiary of the evil Zionist empire, as opposed to understanding that there are factions within this evil Zionist empire. Right? So here's a part of the timeline that we all missed. I didn't. My community didn't.

No one's talking about it. Lindsay Graham was holding up the big beautiful bill, the budget reconciliation bill, in committee over border security and ICE funding, all of it. He had control over it. And he used it to get Trump to, he used it. And he held it up in committee. The minute Trump attacked allowed Netanyahu to attack, he passed it out of committee. It's on its way out of the Senate.

Trump has to navigate political realities in the United States that are real. If he can do that, make everybody happy, get what he needs, and not commit one U.S. troop to the fight. You're not going to tell me that's not a win? My friend who looked at me and said, what's happening in Syria is exactly what needs to happen. Kept reminding me. And he was right. The Iranians are very good at propaganda. By the way, the Russians are very, and then I'm like, yeah, and so are the Russians, and so are the Israelis, and so are the Americans,

and so are the British, and so are the French, and so are the Italians, and everybody else. And everybody wants to believe that Iran is the victim and the good guy and Israel is the bad guy. and Israel has played that role of villain beautifully since 10-7, haven't they? But the truth is, is that Iran has a terror, they really do have a terror network around the world. And you can choose to take the typical American line of, I want to root for the underdog, even though the underdog is just as bad. I'm like, at the end of the day, dude, there are no good guys here. This isn't the Lord of the Fucking Rings.

And even in the end, Frodo failed, right? Because the ring got to him. And he had to be saved by Gallum. Not that that metaphor really bears here. My point is that there are no good guys and bad guys here. There are only bad guys in shades of gray. It's a big shit sandwich. Everybody has to take a bite.

And on the other side of this, think of the long-term goal. And the long-term goal is an Israel. without an Iran to have as their existential threat and in Iran not pursuing a nuclear weapon, which creates, which destabilizes the entire fucking world. And the United States that then no longer needs to be in the Middle East and a Russia that no longer needs to worry about attacks to a southern flank through the Caspian. Huh. And they get their international north-south transport corridor.

That's what the Russians are playing for. Why would they allow regime change in Iran? Because the faction that's pursuing nuclear weapons in Iran is keeping the international north-south transport corridor, which is a strategic priority of the Russians. Why? I'll get to that in a second. They want that. That's a multimodal transport corridor from St. Petersburg

to the Port of Chabahar on the Indian Ocean. And how are you going to get that if Iran is constantly involved in all this conflict? For the Chinese, they want their overland route from China to Iran, Belt and Road, to go smoothly. Who's opposed to both of those things? Europe. Why does Russia want the international North-South Transport Corridor? Because it alleviates the bottleneck of the Black Sea, which they don't control. Everybody's plans to keep the Asian continent in strife and conflict,

those are strategic, they represent strategic issues, strategic challenges to that world view. The Chinese want an overland route because they no longer want to be bottled up behind the Straits of Malacca, which the United States controls effectively. That's the reality. So let's build an overland route. Let's build a gas pipeline from Kunming to the coast of Myanmar. Because it's north of the Straits of Malacca. And then you build a port there.

And then then, and then. And we've been, yeah, like, this is, this is the oldest game in the world, man. I don't know if I'm going to say this right. Okay. And nobody can see my paper what I'm drawing. Hmm. But I drew a straight line for no conflict. And what no conflict does is it brings you wealth through trade, essentially.

It allows countries to have, you know, their access to, lack of better term, world markets, Tom. Would that be just safe to say? Sure. They have access to, they have the ability to find, to find customers and producers get to get together and do trade and trade stitches the world together. And trade brings the overall level. of stress and conflict in the world down. If you go back, if it's mutually beneficial, everybody's getting wealthy. If you go back to Armstrong,

Armstrong always says you wouldn't attack a neighbor of yours if you have a whole bunch of trade with them, right? Like, I mean, it would be counterproductive. I would also add to that, that things like pipelines are the stitching, are the seams that stitch the world together. Pipelines, trade routes, that kind of thing. On the opposite side, the competing idea would be conflict.

Like, that's how you keep people in check. Or as you're pointing out, you know, you put in these different areas. You mentioned a whole bunch from Russia, Ukraine, Palestine versus Israel, right, and Iran, Pakistan, India. You got all these things. So anytime they need to put things back in place, they poke the button. and all of a sudden this stirs up. And through those conflicts, you get wealth,

get wealth through conflict. You get wealth through conflict by protecting your existing industry or by building a war machine or by selling weapons to both sides or whatever. Right. And maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but on the no conflict, what you're pointing to is Russia slash Putin, essentially, and on the U.S., Trump, want the straight wealth through trade. Let's go back to not killing people because one of the things that I think Trump ran on, or at least this is what I believed in, what he was going to do was end conflict.

He was signaling, let's stop all these wars. Right. Right. Day one, I'm going to end the war in Russia, Ukraine. Now, everybody took him literally. Like, if he doesn't do it in 24 hours, he's a failure. And I would argue it's more of a signal. You've got to listen to the way Trump talks.

It's a signal of where he wants to go. On the flip side, you have conflict. And who's above that? Well, Davos, for sure. Old Europe, London, and, and E.M. Burlingame would say the Dutch, right? Right. And don't get and don't, and don't ever forget that there are factions in the in all that want it.

And China has, yeah, the United States. That's why I put people. People are everywhere. Yes. Right. Yeah. that's why I put Putin alongside Russia because it isn't just all of Russia that wants.

Certainly there's a competing faction in that. Certainly there's a competing faction in the U.S. I mean, they've been literally going to Ukraine and stirring it up. There's been people all over this. Yep. And you're going, will there ever be a winner?

Well, I don't know how you gauge that because, I mean, as long as the world has been here, there has been conflict. And there has been time, extended times, I might add, of peace where trade and wealth was generated through allowing business to prosper, allowing people to prosper. And we're seeing those two things at odds right now in the Middle East. I think is what you're pointing to if I oversimplify it. No, you didn't over. I mean, in some ways, Sean, you kind of have to oversimplify it, right?

in order to like that's it's a it's a perfectly reasonable framework to then begin the um the process of putting meat on those bonds which you just outlined as the skeleton now my job is put all the meat on the bones i presented the meat up front you're presenting the skeletons well it's funny because when i listen to i'm like you know like one of the things i have a really hard time understanding is Middle East. I, you know, I've never been. Right. I've never, I've never like just sat there and soaked myself in all these different regions and trying to understand. Now, I've listened to you and Alex and others, I might add, talk about it. And I, at nauseam almost, right? Like, I'm like, I, okay, nobody wants war, but it's, it's, it's,

it's kind of like yet you got these competing factions, one pushing for one idea, another pushing for another and people caught right in the middle of it. This is going back to your first comment on the first podcast I ever did with you, I believe, where you talked about the giants. Well, the giants could be the factions too. It doesn't just have to be single entities, Russia, China, US, on and on. It could be the competing factions going to war and the people caught in the middle of that as well. Yes. And then it becomes it becomes easy to demonize a people to create by creating, remember language, creates, you know, why do you think I created the term Davos?

These people needed a, they, you needed to turn their tactics against them. They created the term the mullahs in order to demonize Iran. Isolationists to destroy, you know, conservatives in America firsters and America first too. Like, I'm like, no, fuck you, Davos. We need to personalize this. You need to give them a name.

You need to give, you need to, you need to create an image system around them. right you got to use their tactics if you want to because i mean it's oh dude this is propaganda and the propaganda right now is hit hot and heavy and some propaganda is a force for the positive and some propaganda is a is a voice for is a is a voice for evil like you know you use the terms at your disposal in order to advance your agenda my agenda is let's get rid of all these fucking people like it's not that i mean nothing's changed and i know that there are people in the audience who think I'm just making excuses for Trump because I don't want to be wrong. That's nice.

That's the fucking psych profile on me over GCHQ. It's really fucking obvious at this point. Like, and I'm okay with that. You need to realize that that's what's happening. Trump is being sought. Trump's support is being sliced and diced. Okay. This is the ultimate break point.

Okay. It started. almost immediately. It was easy. It was easy to undermine the faith of any libertarians that were in his orbit around the election. Why? Those are people who were defined by their oppositional defiance disorder. They want to be skeptics and critics because that's their raison d'etra. That's their that's their modus operandi. Whatever you want to call it. It's the way they operate. So they're easy people to cleave off. All you got to do is, you know, all you got to do is go, so, you know, Epstein files or where's this or where's that or you know why why are there no arrests or why you know

what are you doing here you promise this you know one trillion dollars with the cuts and we got you know 200 billion or whatever like you see what I mean like they're easy because they oh because they are already pre-programmed and pre-prime to be skeptical and to say see it's nothing ever changes because they want to be right because their worldview needs to be confirmed And that's where we are today. Like Constantine Kiesin, who's a guy I don't normally follow, had a really great tweet the other day in response to the whole Tucker Carlson dust up. Tucker Carlson going off on Trump when he was on Steve Bannon.

I don't trust Steve Bannon as far as I can fucking throw him that guy. And he said there's a lot of people who were fake anti-war or, you know, have this fake. They got on the Trump train or fake mag or whatever. They got on this train because it was good for their business because they believed in, they believed in the maximal position on this. And they were never really in it for the outcome and for the actual fight. And they've turned out to be fair weather friends and,

and whatnot. The EM Burling game literally tweeted out the other day about Elon Musk. He said, this is a loyalty test. Elon's going to break. Elon broke. And then we have to find out, you know, who's following Elon? Who's following Elon and who's loyal to Trump? And Elon after, you know, going off the frigging rails, you know, I'm sorry.

Okay, you're sorry. Come on back. Let's do some work. Like, and we live in a world, especially in social media, where there's no forgiveness. You have to be completely 100% consistent all the fucking time. Oh, and by the way, in my case, I have to be 100% right about. everything with fungible data in order to not you know get criticism i don't give a shit you know people criticize me i don't care about that i point it out as a means by which to cleave support

and to and and and to gaslight you it's about this is the whole thing this whole fucking thing about trump is bowing down to netting yahoo and the israelis is gaslighting nothing has changed trump said, I will do everything imaginable to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And that include, and if you say that as the president of the fucking United States, and you're supporting him, you got to believe that he's willing to commit military assets to get that done. If you don't, Iran doesn't take it fucking seriously. This is statecraft. This is where it is.

And if you're not willing to at least accept the possibility of that, then I'm sorry I don't what the hell to fucking tell you he told you he was going to do this now thinking how he are now how he gets there and if he can do it without committing any troops that's an amazing outcome that's I mean dude that's knock down the other four guys on mount rushmore put Trump's fucking mug up there like that's an amazing fucking outcome and get everybody so fucking gaslit over being over hating israel that they can't see the forest for the fucking trees unbelievable like they want to believe simultaneously that the jews are all powerful and the perpetual victim look no i actually i had an insight this morning i was thinking about

this over my morning copy while i was prepping my comments for um for newsmax that i have to do every Tuesday morning. And I thought about it. I'm like, oh, I know what I know how I know what happened here for a lot of people. I know I probably already lost all the people that I'm talking talking about here. But if you're still listening, I used to be one of these people so disappointed with my country for what it's done that I then reflexively take the side of the people who we have victimized. Right. So in this case, there's been this undercurrent. for a long, long time that Israel runs the United States. APEC controls Congress and blah, blah, blah, blah, which I'm not downplaying that.

Of course, they have a massive amount of influence. I'm not ignoring the trees outside my office. Yeah, it's right there. I see it. That's not what I'm saying. But they've taken their frustration over 70 years after post-World War II of the Jews being the perfect victim because of the Holocaust. where we weren't allowed at all to criticize Israel or anything, you know, or anything they've done.

And where Israel kept taking from us and putting us in bad situations, which we had to bail them out of. That frustration is real, and it's laudable, and it's powerful, because it built up over multiple generations. And then October 7th happens, Israel goes crazy. The algorithms all of a sudden allow everybody to start complaining about the Jews. And they went from Israel's not the perfect victim to Israel is now the all-powerful puppet master. They swung from one side of the fence because in their frustration, they never believe that. Once they disbelieved that, they went to the exeshoe. exact opposite extreme and you have this insanity and it's gaslighting. By the way, you were

encouraged to believe that the entire time. You were encouraged to swing that far to the quote unquote right as opposed to the left. You were encouraged for that. Why? Because what's the modus operandi that I've talked about over and over and over again with these fucking people? is that they set everybody in motion in conflict with one another, and then they scapegoat one side. After October 7th, the reason you were allowed to all of a sudden complain about the Jews is because they were setting them up to become the scapegoat for everything wrong with the world. And whatever outcome happens.

That was what was coming. I said it on your podcast. I said it on everybody's podcast. I've said for years, going back to when I was doing fucking. Periscopes from my hat on talking in my goddamn phone. And I said, if Netanyahu's not careful, he's going to turn the Jews into the perfect scapegoat for all the world's ills. We saw it coming ages ago.

Like me and the 40 people who were like watching me on fucking periscope at the time. I'm like, we've been saying it consistently for years. I used to talk about it with my friend Halsey English when he had, he had his regular show. And Halsey's an Israeli who journalist, former Israeli journalist. who, you know, can't stand Israel, understands the problem, understands a lot of the stuff better than even I do. I don't always agree with him. He's one of my, he's one of my sounding voice on this shit.

He's a brilliant guy. And he's like, yeah, this is what's going on. And we don't, and as, and as a, as a Jew, he doesn't want it. He doesn't want that, but he can see it. And like most, you know, rational Jews. don't want this. But it's happening. Just like I've tried to explain to the end the Fed crowd.

You always see the Fed as the villain. But in, you know, any narrative matrix is hero, victim, and villain. And it's a triangle, right? Depending on the frame of the conflict, will determine where you are in that one of those three vertices to the triangle. From one perspective, yeah, the dollar. from the dollar purchasing power perspective, the feds the villain, no argument. From the, but that was at one point. Now, what happens when the nature of the game changes and

when the Fed is now under attack? Why was the Fed the villain? That's my argument. Been my argument for years. What if the Fed's got is being attacked, you know, here's this triangle, hero, victim villain, this triangle, they're the victim. under what circumstances can you think of the Fed as the victim? And then go one step further and say, okay, under what circumstances can you see the Fed being the hero? My argument has always been that for its own reasons for survival and for the people it represents, the Fed, depending on what frame your work you're talking about, can be all three of those things simultaneously. It all depends on your frame, your framework, your point of view.

Libertarians want to stay in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, the smallest little triangle because that's where it's comfortable and it's easy and they can be right. And they miss the bigger picture. Same thing with Israel. Israel can be simultaneously hero, victim and villain. So right now, they get to be the hero and knock out the frigging IRGC. But they're also the villain for everything else they've done. And they can be the victim of Davos's manipulations. And you can hold all three of those things, versions of Israel in your head simultaneously, and they all have validity. But that's nuance. That's not a five-year-old's view of the fucking world, which is what social media

degrades everybody down to. And what absoluteist thinking gets us down to. I'm at the point now where I'm like, as a libertarian, I am so angry with current libertarians that I look at them and I go, you're indistinguishable for Marxists. The only difference is you read better books, but you purity spiral in exactly the same way. Talk to Ian McGilchrist. about the purity spiral, about the left brain dominance and all that stuff. It's all right there. I'm just watching it happen in real fucking time, Sean, over World War III. And I'm like, I'm sorry.

I'm not playing that bad, playing that fucking game anymore. So let's, you know, let's grow up. Let's all level up in our analysis, in our commentary, and our ability to read the game board. Why? What's the goal? The goal is peace for whatever version of peace you can get, for whatever a small value of that we can get we currently don't have it at all who's doing it why what's

what's their what's their what's their what's their motive means and opportunity like start asking do i have to put on the friggin soiled old trench coat and start you know and you know start talking like peter fog like i can do it just one more thing man just one more thing you know what i mean i want to ask me i see the world john i want I want to bring it to Trump for a second. Sure. Because we've seen over the course of, you know, I'm chuckling on this side, folks,

Tom's been going off and he hasn't got to smoke his cigar. You keep lighting it. He has it out with Musk, okay? And me and the brothers were sitting here while I was going down. You know, it's right before if you go back and listen to, we never talk politics on the Brothers Roundtables. We always talk the NHL playoffs. They come on for roughly.

two months and we go once a week and to all the people waiting for a brother's roundtable i apologize we've had a couple things on the family side that have taken up some time and that you know no worries everything's good just that uh we haven't been able to do one last anyways the one we did last this is going on and we're sitting there we're watching us and we start talking about what the hell is going on like trump and musk are are going at it and then i had em berling game on and he talked about loyalty tests. And I sat back and I thought about that. I'm like, oh man, that's a really,

and now Tucker. And so you can either look at that. Well, I think there's two trains of thought. And maybe you have a third, but the two trains of thought is either Trump is compromised and is not living up to what he's supposed to do. So Musk comes down on him. Then Tucker goes at him and you have that train. Or the other is the loyalty test theory where Trump is having some issues internally.

And so he does loyalty tests to see who's actually with him. Now, am I, once again, not making that too simple, but I could be losing a train of thought that I haven't thought of. No, that's fair. I think that's, you know, it's funny. I mean, that's part of it. That's a good question, Sean. I think there probably is at least two or three other avenues on this as well. Trump's under a lot of pressure.

He's being attacked from all angles. This is all happening against the backdrop of the LA riots and King riots and all this stuff. This is all happening at the same time. They're activating the domestic color. We haven't even talked about the domestic color revolution, which is effectively the, they're trying to kick off a U.S. civil war. We haven't even talked about that. We haven't talked about, you know, I've only just.

briefly talked about, you know, the way Ukraine is, you know, getting crushed right now by the Russians, which we all knew was going to happen at this point, right? But again, and the way I, you know, I, the whole Musk Trump thing, it was really, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, there was a guy on Twitter did a great, I'm sorry, Elyleine, I can't call it X. Sorry, I'm dead naming it. I don't get the fuck. Um, a guy on Twitter, said, you know, he used the whole Myers-Briggs, IP on trees, matrix, you know, I-N-T-J, ES, and above, that, that thing. Like, my, a former friend of mine called it IP on trees, which is hilarious.

And he said, you know, Trump is one thing. Musk is the exact opposite. And, you know, that's that. And embedded in that post, it was a note about loyalty. Like that, you know, Elon being a Spurge and a linear thing. you know, sees this is the way things are supposed to progress. And if you deviate from that, then it's, you're betraying whatever it was that you were supposed to be doing. This is very, and this type of thinking is very endemic in libertarian circles because it really does attract that kind of, that kind of person.

And then there's Trump, who's kind of all over the place and is a nonlinear thinker and a nonlinear actor and doesn't, and demands loyalty without explaining himself. He does. Trump demands loyalty. He doesn't necessarily explain why. I think it's a defect personally. But it is who he is. I think if there's, this is part of the problem. Trump will do things.

He will lie as the strategic action. He does it all the time. I was, you know, this morning, it was really funny right before we got on, we got on. I uploaded my weekly podcast for Newsmax. My editor, Mike came back and I always do a little thing with three talking points and a meme. and I had a picture of Trump and the caption was blah, blah, blah, and he's like, did you mean that to be the caption?

Or did you just leave a placeholder in by mistake? I'm like, oh, no, that's exactly what I meant. Because, you know, for my Newsmax podcast, my three talking boys are liars, guns, and money. So, liars, is Trump one? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He lies as a strategic thing. The Democrats can't stand it. The media can't stand it.

Bill Maher can't stand it because they want, most people can't stand it. But it's a negotiating tactic. It's a it's a way he operates. And anybody who takes Donald Trump's words at face value is an idiot. How many times are you going to be burned by Donald Trump saying one thing and then doing something completely opposite? But the goal is to move the ball is to think about why did he say that? What reaction was he trying to get? And what was his ultimate goal? And did he reach his ultimate goal? That's what he's doing right now with Iran and Israel. He made it abundantly clear.

He's had the DOD. He's had himself, the State Department, everybody blaring one after the other, saying, we are not directly involved in this. This is Israel. Yes, we gave them the tools to do it. But this is Israel's operation. They are, they're, you know, and anybody else who's helping them, it's not us. So anytime you see, for example, a German refueling plane, turn its

transponder on for five minutes and then turn it off again. Hmm, I wonder why that happened. Maybe because there's a, uh, there's a German pilot wanted to let everybody know that the Germans are helping the Israelis. Because he doesn't want to be involved in this either. Did anybody notice that the British are, are, have a, everybody forget that the British have a frigging, uh, air base in Cyprus and they're helping Israel refuel, you know, reload the planes and everything else, but we're not,

but we're not seeing that. No, what does everybody focus on? The American refuelers flying towards Europe and the USS Carl Vinson showing up in, you know, moving, which is due to be decommissioned, this last thing, showing up in theater. Now, an old aircraft carrier like that, everybody immediately jumps to. That's where the false flag is going to be. The Israelis are going to blow that up and they're going to blame it on Iran.

and then we're going to begin a war and maybe, or it could be a hospital ship. Because aircraft carriers make excellent hospital ships, by the way. Because war's coming. And we may only be involved in that part of it. Or it's a hospital ship because we might get involved in this, because Iran might do something fucking stupid

and attack some of our guys. What I've seen from all the world leaders around this. Putin, MBS, Bobbo, blah, blah, Trump. What I keep seeing is nothing but urging. Iran, don't take the bait. Don't blame the Americans.

If you don't, if you hold your water, fight the Israelis as best you can, and hold your water, all will be revealed. The best way to win a war like this, and this is a propaganda war as much as it is anything else, is to allow the real villains who expose themselves. Iran's best chance for survival right now

is to continue to play the victim card. Attack only Israel who attack them and let the propaganda flow that they're the victims. That's their best way out of this. It's also the surest path to long-term solving the entire fucking nightmare. And who loses in that scenario?

Europe. Because they lose their, they will eventually they will lose their permanent aircraft carrier in the Middle East. And the United States will be able to walk away with their hands mostly clean, not clean, mostly clean. And we'll expose all the APEC motherfuckers in, in, in Congress. Like I said about the budget bill. Notice what Trump did.

He allowed Israel to attack. Lindsay Graham lets the bill out of, before Lindsey Graham lets the bill out of committee, Trump is like, breathe in fucking brimstone and fire. Then the bill passed. Then the bill comes out of committee. Trump's like, come back to the negotiating table. Putin says, come back to the negotiating table.

NBS comes out, says, come back to the negotiating table. That was a win. for the for for for trump in the united states i mean it sucks that it's over a war but this is you know again if you want peace you might have to dare war and the people who want war eventually you're going to have to give it to them because you're not going to stop them because they're not going to submit until i was chuck i was chuckling to go back to the the the german refueling plane transponder um accident i read it accidentally got put on i'm like of course how the hell do you even write that accidentally got put on are we serious right now well you know if you're a british propagandist

or dutch propaganda right oh accidentally no there's no accident we didn't accidentally let COVID out of a what out of a lab in wuhan oopsie right but you had the entire infrastructure structure for social distancing and masks and all the other stuff. You got all those supply chains just spun right up. I was talking with Dave Bradley yesterday for my podcast. I haven't had a chance to review it and publish it yet. And Dave brought up the, you know, that where Davos went wrong was with the paper straw thing, where they published the stupid picture of the of the turtle with the straw his nose.

And then within a week, everybody was using paper straws. Like, that is not something that just happens, folks. No, there is no just in time supply chain. for paper straws at that moment in time. No, they prep that motherfucker for years. And then when they got there, they distributed. And everybody on point. The other thing I just wanted to bring up on the Musk,

Trump thing. Sure. When Musk was working with Trump, there was a faction of people that pointed to Elon Musk being, I don't know how better to put it, Antichrist. Like, just like the most evil of evil. evil. He's somehow snuck in there. We need, like, Musk needs to be rooted out, rooted out,

rooted out. Then they have it out. And I'm not saying those same people, but certainly you could see the faction spin up now that Donald Trump is the antichrist. And I, once again, I'm probably using the wrong term. You just get the point. When they're together, Elon Musk is, oh my God, we can't. Look at all the awful that's coming out of this and look at where he's leading us. Look at all the people tied in there. As soon as they fracture, it goes to Donald Trump. And now, once again, I always defer to you and others when you come on and you talk about these things. Because I'm just, you know, the curator.

There's a great observation. Don't, don't, don't, dude, it's a great observation, Sean, don't downplay it. Don't downplay your insight. You're learning. You're getting better. Like, dude, you're leveling up. This is what I'm asking for. It's brilliant.

It's awesome. Excellent, excellent job. even if you're not wholly right. What I mean is, I don't know that you're not wholly right. Don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is even if you wind up not being wholly correct about it, the way you're thinking about these things now is on the correct path. You can be wrong in an instance.

You can take a heuristic and use it and it may fail you in that moment. Or may only 75% describe the situation. Maybe there's another angle to it that we haven't thought of yet. Fine. Okay, whatever. But you've got 75% of the way down the road. Everybody else is stuck in first gear. And you're in third.

Yeah, you want to be in fifth, but you know, you're getting there. I mean, I'm not saying you're not in fifth gear on that particular observation. I'm saying you might only be in third gear. I don't know because we're all dealing with fungible information. We're all dealing with incomplete information. We're all dealing with malmiss and disinformation being seated into our fucking brains and gaslighting us on a regular basis. I get it. I'm not saying I'm not, I'm not saying I'm immune to it.

I'm saying you definitely. None of us are immune to it. So whatever you think you know, and I'm telling you, if what I said so far in this podcast is discordant to you, sounds like 54D chess or this or that or anything else, you're proving my point that I made on Thursday night of last week. In 48 hours, the world we thought we knew will be unrecognizable. it is unrecognizable to you so you're falling back on old tropes yeah well and if if you're if you're watching the question is like why right like so when when musk trump thing happens now tucker you go why like what's going on like what is actually going on not what are they feeding us you know like oh everybody's having to fall out Trump is weak, right? That's that's kind of what they're trying to position.

You know, a friend of mine last night, or is it maybe I've been first thing this morning. I didn't even respond to it. He said, you know, it turns out that Elon Musk is in a genius. He's just a drug addict. And I went, I don't know if it's correct or not, but I'm like, it's a perspective. I mean, Elon went off the rails and did something dumb and or he got, you know, he got into a, he got, he got his panties and a snit. And then because he's, he's a spur. He went this direction. And then he lost this shit.

And then he was like, oh, God, God. Look at Musk. He walks back. I keep looking at what Armstrong. One of the coolest surreal experiences I've had to date, folks, was I got to drive Martin Armstrong around, right? So I got to sit there and ask him a ton off the record on just, you know, lots of different stories, nothing crazy.

At least, you know, don't go to like crazy thoughts of, you know, where he's been in crazy conversation. It was more like, you know, how Armstrong got to where he's thinking about things. Right. And one of the one of the things that I wrote down like almost immediately when we pulled up for supper, I pulled out and I put it in my phone is don't judge people by the way you think, judge them by the way they think. So when you look at Elon Musk. Yes. And I could be wrong on this. So correct me if I'm wrong, Tom. Man's been married multiple times. He's had kids with multiple women. He's had probably affairs. He's had a kid become something they're not, have a transgender surgery.

I don't know how to put that politically correct. I don't even know if there is a way. And I'm like, so he has been caught in the sciop that has been the last however many years. And then people champion him as being like having everything right. You're like, no, he's a really brilliant guy. Nobody can take that away from him. But look at his path and look at how he thinks. Thanks.

Obviously, there's some things he is getting very wrong. Yes. Oh, yeah. There's been some things. I know. I know people. I was talking to a friend of mine this weekend whose son used to work at Tesla. And he's like eventually.

And a lot of the people who were above him at Tesla left because they couldn't handle Elon's, you know, chaos. And just look at the way Tesla was being run and still is being run in many ways. And you're like, it's crazy. And he's crazy. Sometimes he pulls it off. Like the line between genius and madness is very, very, very thin. Very thin. Very thin.

And it goes back and he go. I mean, and they have geniuses of lucid days and bad days. I've been accused of being a genius. I don't think I am. I think I'm just the, you know, kind of above average guy with a chip on his shoulder. Right. But I understand. But I have moments of, of that.

So I can, I tend in that moment. And I'm like, oh, shit, that I just fucking lose my mind. We all have those days. Okay. And the higher up you go, the IQ route, the more likely it is that you're going to have, you're going to misperceive reality. It's not hard. Okay. And it is what it is. We all have our deficiencies. We all have our coping mechanisms. We all have our trauma in the past and this, that and everything else. And we're all very complex creatures. And, you know, if you live in the public spotlight, you know, you're going to air all that dirty laundry in public. I you know this is why I talk about myself the way I do to try and let people know that's the way gets on my case about this to be honest with you he's like you don't have to put as much of yourself into this as you do I'm like actually no I think I kind of do because if I don't then when I go out on a fucking limb that I'm the only one out there you have to know that

it's not coming from some I'm trying to schmooze you and to do you know none of that stuff this is just who I am. And if I do that with the most, you know, with as much authenticity as possible, okay, then, you know, as who I think I am and this version of me that is talking to this microphone right now as the best version of me that I can give you, then I know that I did my job and hopefully it comes across that way when people are watching the frigging videotape. Like, that's the best I can do. And, you know, it's easy to say to, to believe a.

You know, the character I play on Twitter is not me, but that's a different person. And I, you know, that's an aspect of my personality. And I, I do play a character on Twitter. And that guy is far more an asshole than even this guy is. Right. But it's not that far from the truth either, right? Well, one of your brilliance, you know, and I think I've brought this up lots with you. one of the brilliant things you've done for me and I assume others and I look over your shoulder and I see it

you've gotten me to look at the stories that have been told by the greatest of writers greatest of minds that the planet has seen and they've been popularized into movies and motion pictures and and you know songs have spun off of it you've just been culture spun off of it right and I never looked at that seriously I looked at it as make believe right and through COVID I noticed something. And it brought me around to your brilliance. And that is, some people will not be changed by the facts.

It's such a weird thing to watch. You can lay it all up. You just like, here it is. That's what it equals. And they just, you've already mentioned it. They just kind of tear it up, throw in the garbage,

and say, get lost. And you're like, but I just gave you all the facts. And so what some of the greatest writers have done is instead of giving you the facts as today would show them. They put it in this larger than almost believable

world and they seeded in there. And it took COVID in watching people to make me run into Tom Luongo. And then Tom starts talking with Star Wars. I always chuckle. I'm like, no, I think you know, at times I fully don't comprehend everything that Star Wars has done. And I keep

bringing up and I brought it up with EM again that the Godfather, as a young man, I didn't get it. And now, as I get older, I'm like, oh, my God. Like, there's just so much in there. The loyalty test is in there. Yep, it is. And you, you, you think you have these tight circles.

But then something's going on. You can't understand it. So what do you do? You see some, and you see it play through some of the greatest works. It's in there. And you have shown that. And I think that's one of your brilliant markers of, of, like, bringing it down to just a regular day guy who's, you know, you've been to Lloyd.

Is there, you know, I'm just a family guy. Sit around. I talk to people. And it's seeing the similarities of all of you that are talking about these issues and trying to consolidate and there's something simple that my brain can understand. And then if I add in like some of the great works, I'm like, oh, my God, it's all right here. Now you have to apply that to the world and what is happening because people want you to operate in fear, which shuts you down.

It's like, well, World War III's kicking off. Everything's getting blown up and better go hide in a hole. Or it's so intense. Don't pay attention to it. Just go to the Euler game and just carry on with life and there's nothing wrong. So funny, funny last night, right? I was when all this stuff was popping off with Trump drunk tweeting like Med to death. That's the way I looked at it.

Not that I know Trump doesn't drink, but it just, they came across as as Trump drunk tweeting, right? in my mind they were deadly serious i don't mean to make light of them but you know it's the same with dmitri mevv that he's allowed he's the guy on the russian side that just goes out and drunk tweets about random stuff and you're not supposed to really take them very seriously but there's a nugget of truth in there that you should take very serious and you should be paying attention to yes you should be paying attention to but don't overthink it it's not don't take don't parse it word for wordsbergs there's a there's a bigger there's a bigger game here but i um I was like, the phone is blowing up.

I'm chatting with people left and right, trying to figure out what's going on. Oh, my God, the balloon's going up, yada, yada, yada. And I stopped doing, doom scrolling my Twitter feed after about half an hour. And I'm like, you know what? Nothing I'm going to do is going to change anything. And if nothing and nothing's going to happen for the next couple of hours, I'm going to play World of Warcraft. I play World of Warcraft. One of my friends bought, you know, one of my patrons slash friends logs in.

We're sitting there chatting about some of the stuff while I'm doing the thing. And then Dexter calls in the middle of it. to you say with an honest question are you seeing anything any more real than what I'm seeing I'm like or do have you heard anything like not really like well you know I'm like no dude I didn't see anything new and I just I just said I just jacked out and said I'm playing I'm playing wow and he went that seems like the most rational response to the entire thing like there are times when it's out of your control we want to make sense of things because making sense having a thesis this, okay, gives you comfort and gives you the illusion of control, which is why so many people

are holding on to their old frameworks of how they see the world. Because it's hard to be out in the, I'm not sure. And so then you have to be sure in yourself about who you are in order to be able to live in a world of complexity and uncertainty. And I get that. And I, look, I don't blame. I was saying this to, we were chatting about a lot of this stuff this morning on my Slack server.

And I said, look, I don't expect y'all to not emotionally overreact to this stuff. You're supposed to. You're not, you're not, you're here because you're not a pro. Right. I'm supposed to be the pro. I'm supposed to be the one who sets back and tries to make sense of everything for everybody. I'm the one who has to take my emotions out of it as best as I can.

as best as I can. What rankles my tits is that I'm watching pros melt down, and then you realize they're not pros. That's what I mean about Doug McGrader, when I called him an old doomer boomer, getting bad information. Doug clearly, when he first hit the scene, I really liked everything about him. And then it became obvious that at some point

that he could be fed bad information and he would use it and he would repeat it quickly and ad nauseum thinking it was real he had sources he trusted that fed him bad information because he's been wrong about so many freaking things and the record was clear the longer the russia ukraine war went on the more he was wrong Tucker's the same way Tucker came out the other day and i mean i watched an interview with him i watched him talking with somebody the other day. He's like, I don't actually do any work anymore. I just call people in and have conversations with them. And that's how I get most of my news. I'm like, yeah, that's clearly obvious because your point of view now is shaped by the very people you're bringing on the show. And you're

not doing any independent analysis. And he's gone off the rails. And now he's got an idea in his head about how the world operates. And Tucker Carlson is supposed to be a guy with the staff and all this experience and everything else. And we're like, how did you miss? this. How are you so off the rails? I can I can add some insight into that. I think, you know, I was sitting here. I've said that exact same line roughly, probably not on air, but to people close to me about, you know, like, not that I don't work anymore, but what I do is I sit down and have conversations with the people, right? That's what you're doing. The thing about Tucker, where he's at, I'm sure there is a million people that. I'm sure there is a million

people that want to get on that show. Sure. And you would defer to somebody, you know, like you get these high profile people coming on. You have these wild, you know, like he can talk to anyone he wants to. Yeah. Talk to the latter of Putin. Right. And yet, and yet when I listened to the Putin interview, man, that annoyed me.

And it reminded me that Tucker is just another human being like me. Yep. Because he walked in, he thought he had the answer. He knew what he wanted to. He walked in. of the game plan of what questions he wanted to ask and everything else. And Putin walked in with the game plan of like, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you the story. Just listen. It's all you you got to do. Tucker literally said they had no time frame. And so my brain goes, got up and let him

talk for four hours if that's what he wants and then ask your questions. Instead, if you listen to that interview and he came out after saying, I think Putin was honest, right? No, shit, he was honest. He was trying. He's literally trying to give you their point of view. So all you had to do is sit and listen. But if you listen to the Tucker interview, you're like, just, just let him talk. You get, you got the, the most demonized leader on the global stage giving you an unlimited time, Tom. That is like gold to my ears. All right. Sit down. Let's, like, you want to tell me a story? That's what we're here for. Yeah. Let's know, let's let the American people hear what you have to say. Yeah, I know.

And to Tucker's credit for the first half an hour, he did let Putin do exactly that. And people didn't like what was what Putin said and why he did what he did. But he's very Russian and he's very pedantic and he gave everybody. But I listen to it and I love every second of it. I knew I knew so much. Go ahead, sir.

I'm sorry. Well, no, I just, I, when I look at the Tucker's of the world, they're in a different world than me, right? they're playing in the NHL. Hell, they're a star forward on any of the teams. He's a top five player in the entire league. But the interesting thing about talking to people

is sometimes you should never walk into anyone podcast with Tom, with anyone, and go, these guys know everything. No, you got to use discernment. You've got to sit there and listen. Oh, yeah, but that doesn't match what I just heard over there. now I got to go think about that. Now I got to go wrestle with that.

Or I got to push back on him a little bit. Or I got to do this. Or I got to do that. And that's fine. I fully embrace that model. As long as it's not adversarial, I'm fine. Like, you know, you can, you know, that's fine. 100%.

But you think Tucker is that guy. He pushes back on everyone. Watch him, watch him on a whole bunch of people. He pushes back on everything. Gets Trump in. Never pushes back once. Like, oh, he's maybe a little bit nervous. And rightfully so.

It's Donald Trump. Right. He gets in front of it. of Putin. It should be adversarial. This guy is supposedly the leader of, you know, the next group that's going to try and take over the entire world. There is understanding of like where he's at. But you, you think like, Carmen David doesn't have problems in the NHL or doesn't get nerves or is supposed to play and the other team isn't going to try and shut him down. Well, I think, you know, with with with with with with Tucker, what I was getting at was that

he needs to be independently researching. He has to. He has to be on his game to be able to push back. And in the Putin interview, he didn't look like he was pushed. He didn't look like he was on his game. Putin ran rings around it. He did. And which is fine.

But that's, and what I was getting at is that I think that, you know, you can't just, you can't get so complacent that you don't actually do the work. part of the reason why I do the podcast that I do and part of the reason why I like to talk to other, I actually have come to really enjoy doing three-way conversations with the hosts and a couple other guests and especially meeting a new person for the first time. I love meeting a new person for the first time

in the presence of a moderator because that may, that moderates my behavior. So now I find myself having to listen a lot more closely. And that's just the fault. We all have our faults and our deficits, folks. It is what it is. If you don't like it, piss off. This is who I am.

I'm not going to change it. I can just moderate it as best as I can. But I do that because now I'm now having, you know, a more effective and interesting conversation I did in the past. You get to uncover where people's blind spots are. They get to uncover where your blind spots are. There's a variety of things that occur there. And as long as it's collegiate, it's great.

But I get people all the time, they ask me, why don't you have Peter Schip on your podcast? I'm like, why? So I can yell. him for an hour and a half like is that what you want like i'm not that's not my that's not my bag man i'm not doing it i'm not i'm just not going to do it because i don't want that's not the that's not the space i want to live in i don't do debates not because i'm not capable of debating my points because i think debates are a stupid fucking format that only helped that only allow that only

reinforced the whole team a team team team team team blue team red thing like your team my team i don't want to play the your team my team thing that's not what i'm here for we're here to uncover truth right we're on we're here to we're here to to to work out the the the edges of information right and would you say then would you say cornerstone 2026 i've been contemplating actually i would say more in contemplating i haven't written down in the schedule i've been building my schedule and i have this year or next year a debate schedule and the debate is around china because what i see in Canada is infiltration from China. And then what I hear in different talks is China isn't that bad. I'm like, well, it might come back to your thought process on Israel. You can simultaneously be the victim,

the hero, and the villain. And the villain. Thank you. And I'm like, I want, I want to, I want to get to, I want to get to, I want to have this out. I'm tired of China's good or China's bad. Because what you're telling me is that it can all simultaneously be true. And I would like to have that on stage. Do you think that's a terrible idea? I think that would be fine. As long as you go in, as long as you structure it in such a way that it's, it's like, like, you know, if you need to do it with just two people and the moderator, as opposed to three, like we normally do the three-person panels, which are hard to get everybody, you know, those are hard. I mean, unless they're an hour long. I was just at a couple of one-hour three-way roundtables over the weekend at a Bitcoin conference down in Tampa,

It went very well, but I was also, you know, in both of those panels, it was like, there's Tom and there's these two other guys. And they said, they kind of set it up that way. So that I could, you know, I knew I was allowed to dominate the conversation ultimately. And I could pass it back and forth to the other guys who have specific knowledge in particular areas in order to support, because what they knew they wanted me. We already knew what we, what information they wanted me to present. So then it was, you know, those panels were designed that way.

but if you want to have an honest to God, you know, two people having who have fundamentally different perspectives on Chinese influence within Canada, as long as it's a collegiate thing where they're going back. I would want nothing more than that, right? Right. As long as you, but you as the moderator are going to, or whoever the moderator is, has to also be very knowledgeable about the situation to be able to keep the whole thing from going off the rail.

So you can't have someone who doesn't know the material like, For example, right. So for example, you could have Matt Erritt on one side and Alex on the other. And I get to be the moderator, for example. Because I know just enough about China to be dangerous, but not enough about China, right? To, you know, or even better, like I could tell you. Like, you want to fire, Dexter White and Matt Erritt having a collegiate conversation about China? That would be a good one because they have very different views on China, but they also have a lot of overlap.

So it would be a very good conversation, right? That kind of thing. So, I mean, I don't know that we need to talk much more about how the sauce is. No, no, no, you're just talking about. No, no, no, just the debate. That's what spurred it on was the thought around a debate. Because one of the things I enjoy about differing views in a, you know, we're not attacking the person. We're attacking the ideas.

Sure. Right. Is as an audience member, when I listen, I'm like, then you can start. start to see the holes. And once you see the holes, then you got to go address the holes. Because if you don't address the holes, then there's just problems. Well, and this is, and again, let's, let's round this up and like kind of put a bow on the entire podcast. This is all I did in the opening of this podcast. I was addressing all the holes in everybody's arguments about what was actually happening between Iran and Israel.

All the little things that people missed, in their, in their response to this. And the, in the gaslit response to all of this. Okay. And I'm not saying I'm right. Okay. Or I'm not saying this is how it's going to work out. And I can tell you that I could turn out to be right and the situation go completely off the rails. Those two things can be true simultaneously in the end. That could wind up being the case. This is, these are all everything I've laid out in this podcast about this thing. could have, this is exactly, I could be true. Let's just say 90% true, right? Great.

And then someone could still make a mistake. And that chance or the outcome that I laid out goes away. History is littered with those moments. And that doesn't mean that Trump was, that Trump betrayed us or anything else. it means that Trump wasn't able to contain the chaos. Maybe he makes a mistake. That doesn't mean that his intentions weren't good. Like, we're at this point where, and I get it,

I get why people are so anxious about this. I get it. I'm anxious about it, guys. Don't think I'm not, which is to say that, like, we're dealing with unbelievable stakes here. We are. We're dealing with unbelievable stakes.

But, you know, at a certain point, that's how, conflicts can resolve themselves by everybody having to stare into the abyss simultaneously and go, is this what you want? Really? Because there ain't going to be a you after this is over. There ain't going to be a you after this is over. You know, go back to war games, teaching the computer, how to play tic-tac-toe, right? Which was the message of the movie. interesting game. The only winning play is to not play is to not sit down and play. The only winning move is to not play. Right. So I don't know that I have any answers here for anybody, but I

would like everybody to sit, take a step back and be a little generous as opposed to indulging their anxiety. Because what I'm seeing from a lot of people is fear, either fear of their own reputation or fear that Trump's going to fuck it up or this or that or that are anything else. All those fears are honest. All those fears are real. Sorry. Some of them are honest. I fear that Trump's not going to be strong enough to get it done. That Putin and he and anybody else that they've drafted to their side to get it done. There's a lot of coping mechanisms out there. Oh, yeah. Israel's just all powerful and owns Trump's leash. Yeah, that's a coping mechanism. Because what happens if, so if Trump fails, they can say, see, I told you so. Well, that's nice. You feel

better that you were okay so you're going to feel better right before the frigging flash great that's nice or you could be wrong and then what are you going to do oh i was right all the time and then and then and then you know i was like look i said a couple of i don't know if i said it the last time i was on the show with you and Alex but i've been saying it in a couple other podcasts that i've done i see a lot of people who have a framework in the alternative media space, financial, geopolitical, cultural, and everything else, and all vectors that are wedded to unworkable and unreal frameworks. And there's going to be an awful lot of roadkill by the side of the road when this is all done. So what I'm saying to you is I'm doing this as

best as I can to see what I see. And we'll see how it plays out. And let's hope it plays out well. because putting, because if you're focused, what did I say at the cornerstone? Your focus determines your reality. Five most profound words anybody ever said in the frigging movie, ever. A lot of people are focusing

in order to create a reality that someone else wants. Stop focusing on that. Focus on how we can get out of this. And a lot of people are out there saying, Trump don't go to war on behalf of Israel. So far, he hasn't done so. No matter how much.

the people the people on the other side are trying to gaslight them into believing that he is that's what i see your mileage may vary but as of right now that's what i say he still may wind up having to go to war but that's going to be the ball will be in irons court which is what he's done he's put the ball in irons court he's put the ball on the irgc's court if they if the Israelis have full air superiority flying combat air patrol over to ron was was is the way it looks. If that's true and not AI, if that's true,

they can take out Fordow. They don't need the bunker busters. They don't need B-2s and bunker b-toes and bunker-busters. They can just starve those guys out. They can just put commandos in once the rest of the Iranian resistance, for lack of a better term, is destroyed. And then you go in and you clean that shit up on the ground. Right?

That's possible. a possible solution that no one's talking about. But strategically, that's the one that makes most sense. And Trump doesn't have to commit a troop to that, does he? Tom, appreciate you coming on. And to all wanting Alex to have some insights here, we're working on it. Hopefully next week, we'll have both you back. Yeah. And I just want to, I just want to say when you said, it's always good to have a new person. Uh, I had Alex on with Rebecca, And I think for most people, that was a fascinating conversation because they both agreed similarly, but not identical. And to have those two go back and forth was very fascinating for me.

And I think for a lot of people who listened to it, to Eastern Europeans, right? Yeah. Yeah, that was great. I mean, Alex and I get on podcasts together. We don't agree on anything. We all agree on stuff all the time because Alex didn't see what I saw or I missed. I missed something that he saw and then we like bandy it back. Yeah, but what would people do appreciate or at least I appreciate is it's in good faith.

It's in, there's a very high respect between the two of you. You can see it. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. I think Alex is one of the most. I think, I don't think Alex is one of those guys that's going to be road killing six months at all. At all. I think Alex is doing brilliant work.

We told them to work a little bit less at corner. because he's working too hard. But, dude, take a day off every once in a while you need it. But, and I know that he's, yeah, no, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's one of the finest human beings ever met. Period. Yeah, period. Tom, thanks again.

Thank you. Take care, Sean.