The Chaser Report - Mission Re-Accomplished

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

Charles and Dom react to the not much news from the weekend. ---VOTE OPTICS FOR A LOGIE: https://vote.tvweeklogies.com.au/Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to a wartime edition of The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, a couple of weeks ago, very classily, the social network, Truth Social. Oh, yeah? Send out some ads, basically. I think it was an email, mail ad or some online advertising saying, you've got to subscribe to Truth Social. You've got to be part of Truth Social.

because that's where President Trump posts the big post. That's where the news happens. That's where the world's most important person announces the world's most important stuff. And you might ask whether it's a conflict of interest for someone who works for the US government, you know, to only use their own platform to post ads. But they're not wrong. Charles, they're not wrong. Let me talk to you about a couple of posts that have happened in the past 24 hours or so.

Oh, yeah. Are they significant at all, Don? Some of them are a bit significant. I want to start with one about June. Because as things were getting ready to kick off in Iran, Donald Trump still had time to complain about Juneteenth. So let's begin with that and then move on to Iran because this is quite something. So we now know that the two-week deadline for considering whether he was going to bomb Iran or not was more like 48 hours. Nevertheless, he still had time on, so Thursday evening, that's Friday our time, to post this on truth's social.

Too many non-working holidays in America. It's costing our country billions of dollars to keep all these businesses closed. It must change if we're going to make America great again. And also he was talking about how workers agreed with him that there were too many holidays. He thought that workers really resented the number of public holidays. Now, just briefly, Juneteenth is the holiday commemorating the end of slavery. Yes, that's right. So of all the public holidays to be complaining about public holidays on,

some might conclude that the end of slavery was. something that you didn't perhaps think was worth commemorating. Yes. It's sort of, is it ironic having a rest on a day when you commemorating slavery? Shouldn't you do something more sort of appropriate? It was pointed out, Charles. Yeah, it was pointed out that wanting workers to work more was very much on brand for plantations. Yeah, get back to work.

And also noting that the US has less leave. I think it's two weeks leave is a standard. So actually workers work much harder. And also, they don't actually have any leave in the US. Like, when we lived there, if anyone took more than, like, one day off of personal leave, that would become a huge problem for their career. Yeah. So.

Do they get Christmas off? Thanks kidding. Well, they get Christmas day off, yeah. And June 10th. And they don't get boxing date. Like, it's just, it's so bad. What a great country. Yeah.

But it's the sort of country which we hope spreads its ideology to the rest of the world, Dom. But then, Charles, on Saturday night, US time, Sunday, our time. True Social crashed. The whole website went down. Because Donald Trump posted a consequential, and even more consequential announcement, saying that the US had launched a very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran,

including Fordale, Natanz and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran airspace. The full payload of bombs, capital letters, was dropped on the primary site. Fordow, all planes are safely on their way home. congratulations to our great American warriors there's not another military in the world that could have done this

and then in capital letters now is the time for peace and then my favourite part of the whole true social post I can't call it a truth thank you for your attention to this matter and that crashed the site so that was the first we knew that anyone knew

that this had happened that in fact yeah the US had sent in the B2 bombers had used the bunker busting ammunition bunker busting munitions I should say to get yeah to those underground centrifuge

Well, I must say, I think you're right that, you know, because I thought that maybe we were burying the lead here by talking about truth social rather than the fucking war, Dom. I want to lead up to it. I can see, I can see your thinking, because in some ways, I kind of suspect that it's Iranian hackers who crash Trump's up. The only other explanation would be that they have a shitty piece of infrastructure that doesn't work properly. But that wouldn't be, that wouldn't be the case. So I think probably the truth is that we probably need to bomb Iran a little bit more. The cyber attack is on. Yeah. We'll take out

the cyber attack. His revenge for that virus that took out too social. I wonder, Charles, if you just wouldn't mind to me a little favour, I've got all these centrifuges. I wouldn't mind having stored somewhere. And I don't wonder, could you put them in your garage rather than my own. Well, I think that's fine because the point is that these centrifuges are just for a civilian program, aren't they? There's no military use for them. No military use for them.

So the thing is, Dom, I feel like we're not really hitting the nail on the head with this, which is Trump has said that this is a very successful attack and peace in our time, right? It really does have overtones of mission accomplished, doesn't it? I love the strategy. He's literally thinking This is the end That's the messaging So is this literally just

A shitty version of the Iraq war Is what actually is going on Oh, it's a sequel What do you mean? What do you mean? Oh Of course it is So it's like we had alien

We had aliens We had Iraq No No No we had dumb and dumber And then we had Dumb and Dumber And remember how bad

Dumb and Dumberer was It didn't even have Jim Carrey or Jeff Daniels in it They did make a sequel with those two in the end. Oh, in the end, but no, Dumb and Dumbera, which was the actual canonic sequel. What was the one with them called then? Was it Dumb and Dumerist? Yeah, I think so.

Anyway, all right, no, and that is your favourite movie. Well, the first one, Dumb and Dama, yeah, Iraq War was my favourite movie. You know, remember Rumsfeld and Cheney and talking 90s or? Oh, no, no, well, that was the prequel. That was the prequel, yeah, yeah. No, no, I'm talking to George W. Bushwood. The one that Gen X is now smuggling. going around like the entire

I feel like Gen X is going around Smuggly teaching millennials and Gen Z people Oh no this happens every 10, 15 years You're talking about the war that when we were You know in our 20s during the chaser And we were really cynical about it And people said we were unpatriotic

And that we were wrong And we were completely right That one Yes, that one Every joke that we made Was later proven to be Actually not as ridiculous As the reality of how to evidence there was

And that actually a lot of our jokes Were more accurate than the journalism of the ABC. Particularly the line about the evidence for the war being that I think Laura Bush had a very vivid dream. It was like one of those dreams that, you know those dreams that really seemed real? Yeah, yeah. That there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That would have been more evidence than they had.

Yeah, then they had. Well, this is the whole point, right? I feel like they've learned a little bit from the original movie. And this sequel, though completely much dama, is at least a little bit more honest. Because remember, the whole problem with weapons of mass destruction was that they said, Saddam Hussein definitely has weapons of mass destruction. Well, Colin Powell went up and used his reputation for the UN, right? He held up an undergraduate, you know.

Like a PowerPoint or something. No, it was an honors thesis from an undergraduate. That had, was subsequently proved to be just completely fraudulent. So I don't bother with that this time. So Saddam, no, no, they have the nuclear war, the nuclear bombs. But at least what they've done this time, which is a weapon of mass destruction, it's the same thing.

I was explaining to my son, it is the same thing. But the thing that crucially they've said is that there are no weapons of mass destruction this time. Oh, have they? But there could be. Oh. They haven't made the mistake of going,

there are nuclear bombs in Iran. I see what you're getting at. They've gone, the nuclear bombs are just a few weeks away. There are a few weeks away. They've been a few weeks away for the last 50 years. Yeah, look, if you want to check this one out, John Stewart, I had an extraordinary montage of all the times Benjamin Nanyahu's warned the world that Iran was a couple of weeks away

from making a nuclear weapon. I mean, we're talking, yeah, going back to, maybe it was the 80s, the first clip or something? Well, Benjamin... But Netanyahu, it was like 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 17 years ago. It's really, 2011 or something. Yeah, it's a clip that we've heard, it's a claim we've heard many times before.

And, yeah, Donald Trump hasn't in any way proven that this is a particularly urgent thing. I don't even know what the point is. No, no, they definitely think it's not. There's a hypothesis. But Charles, I also... But I think that they've learned from that. But the other parts of the script, they've literally just copied and paste. Like, instead of mission accomplished, it's very successful, you know, peace in our time.

Well, except that, hang on, that's new, because that's a brilliant move by Trump. I want to appraise this. because going going we just dropped a shitload of bombs on you peace now it's no time for peace no more war you can't retaliate yeah it's peace time now yeah why wasn't that tried in world war too i don't remember are the allies going with we've bombed horathema peace now peace now no more war no but didn't hitler try that when he invaded poland he might have well when he invaded austria he went i've invaded peace now peace now remember and then he well it wasn't as effective because Because he didn't have truth social back then.

The messages took more time to come out. Yes, yes. But I feel like Hitler, when he invaded Poland, did also message. You know, I'm done. I'm done. Yeah, I think he, I mean, I think that was his motorcycle brando for years. Sure. I think the funny thing is that, like, pretty much since World War II, the West has been the baddie in every single war of conquest.

Right, like if you think about it, you've got Korea, you've got Vietnam, you've got, Gulf War I, Gulf War I, Gulf War II, Gulf War III. Like, they're all, like, we're the baddies. The West of the badies. Charles, are you talking about America, our partners in peace? The superpower, the global policeman, the one who keeps everyone to the rules-based order. You know, we have a world now with the UN and the International Criminal Court and international global standards and rules and Human rights. Human rights treaties, Charles. This is, oh yeah, America hasn't signed up to the ICC.

Anyway, look, there's a new world. Ironically. And we're definitely the good guys, aren't we? Well, ironically, the funny thing about the nuclear bombs. So, I mean, we said on the podcast the other day, you know, Israel has nuclear bombs. Iran doesn't have nuclear bombs. So if you're going to bomb, you know, anyone in terms of wanting to eliminate nuclear bombs, you're bombing the wrong country.

I didn't say that because I try not to get in massive trouble when I do this podcast. But no, no, I'm just saying from a practical perspective, like if you want to get rid of nuclear bombs, don't bomb the country that doesn't have any nuclear bombs. You know what I mean? I mean, I really fault. I think this is all Iran's fault.

I want to be really clear about this. This is your Davo argument. The reverse victim and offender. This is the... Iran is to blame. Iran is the bully here. They've handled this very badly. Because you said Iran is being a bully.

Look, Charles, I feel that in this situation, Iran has played their hand incredibly badly. They've done the wrong thing for years. They've violated international norms. In fact, particularly the new international. But they signed the Treaty Against Nuclear Proliferation. With Obama. Yeah, they did a deal with Obama. Israel didn't. And then Trump cancelled Obama's nuclear deal.

But what Iran needed to do and looking at other countries, we talked about this, Charles. If that only, if the I tolerarily listened to the Chaser report, he would have known. You could have avoided this whole thing. What? All the Iitol I needed to do was listen to the Chaser report, understand the way the world works in 2025, as our listeners do, and sign plans for a Trump hotel in the middle of the mountain with the centrifuges underneath. If they'd built a giant Trump integrated golf resort at that mountain and at the other two sites,

there would be no bombing. All you would have instead is a wonderful partnership with a fantastic hospitality business. And nothing might have been built. ever? But you'd have these amazing renders of big shiny towers and there's no way Trump would have said yes. Because don't forget only America had the bunker busting bombs that could actually blow this thing up. He's not going to blow up his own golf course, Charles.

I feel like there's one sort of missing piece of that, which is, like I totally get your vibe right, but I think you need to throw in a jet if you're serious about riding. Well, the Qataris, the Qataris, the Saudis, they're all doing the Bahrainis I think as well there were three countries

in the region that were doing it and I just Abu Dhabi probably as well Iran needed to throw in a jet as well but you know that the problem with that is that Iran has been under sanction since 1979 over aircraft parts the reason why

we haven't seen their air force at all participate in this war so far is because they don't have the parts because all their jets are like 1978 held together with Tiki Tape Yes

And there's a few I mean We internally When we were in Iran They had the Soviet era Quite frightening Sort of You know

What do they called What was it called? Aeroflot Ex-Araflat Ex-Aflot Oh you've been to Iran But the But the

All the Boeing Like all the sort of Military aircraft That they've got Tends to come From America Pre-1979 Oh goodness me

when America and Iran were huge allies and they've just been keeping them together basically with gaffer. Like the kind of Cuban cars that we saw here in Cuba, yeah. You've been to all of the Axis of Evil. I know, I did the Axis of Evil too because I thought these places are all going to be bombed in the next, you know, 15, 20 years. And it turns out they all have except for North Korea. Well, Cuba's still going well.

Cuba was fantastic. But my point is that... My God, sanctions are. worked. They don't have the resources to be able to give a nice shiny new jet to Trump. Oh, I see. I see what you mean. Which actually follows the American playbook quite well, which is always bully and invade a country that is much shitter than you and will never be able to really fight back.

What about, okay, what about rare earth metals? Have they got rare earth? Let me just Google it because they don't understand. See, the world is transactional now. They needed to make a better offer than Israel did. But can I say, I think actually there's a huge Saudi Arabia component to this whole thing, which is I'm not sure America would have. And I'm not sure Trump would have done anything without NBS giving the knot.

Because remember, MBS holds the purse strings on a lot of this stuff. Well, I mean, literally, in terms of literal partnerships with the Trump organization. But it also, it's also true that the Saudis and the Iranians are bitterest of rivals in the region. And so Saudi Arabia would not be disappointed at all that the U.S. has done this. By the way, I just put it into Google. Does Iran have rare earth metals? Yes, significant reserves. So wait a minute. You're saying that America has bombed a country that has tons of oil and a whole lot of rare earth metals. A lot of things I've never heard of them. Gallium, prosidimium, neidimium, syrium, etrium. Maybe they were trying to get the rare earth

metals out of the ground with the bunker busting, maybe they're all now near the surface and easy to mind. Like, they're not using them and the centrifuges, maybe there's a few they could use to spin them out. Wouldn't that be great? Well, they shouldn't have got rid of the centrifuges. They should have used them for the rare earth metals. It's a real stuff up, isn't it?

Anyway, okay, so, yes, this is good for the Saudis. The Saudis would be very happy with this. I mean, I'm known Middle East expert, but I know that. I kind of feel like, but what's going to happen? Like, Oh, you know, okay. Because apparently the reports were that the back channel to the Iranians shortly before the bombing was we have no intention of doing

regime change in Iran yeah and don't you reckon that that like Netanyahu now will just be going okay how do I string America along to the point where they decide that they want to do regime change like I mean then now who has played Trump like a fiddle in the last few weeks like just just the US tried to you know Trump was really set on not going in. You're getting all serious. Let's take a quick break because it is hard not to be a little bit serious. A, when this is so major and dramatic, but also when it's fascinating, this is just a really

historic moment. Yes. And finally, we don't really know what the fuck's going to happen. So let's be honest. Let's just take a moment and try and figure things out a little bit. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. This is a fascinating moment. It is a fascinating moment in the history of the world,

not least because, yes, as you say, this is not Trump's brand at all. Yes, and so he's going to lose his base. There's going to be some group of MAGA people for whom this is too far. Like, MAGA, remember, the Tea Party came out of a disillusionment with the Republicans because they had these terrible wars of conquest

in the Middle East that, you know, the MAGA voters were paying for with their loss. lives, the troops were going off and being killed. And they saw all the money going to, look, the amount of money that went into Iraq. And the amount of money was just extraordinary. And it was like, we don't want it, we want America

first rather than this fucking bullshit go over. Let me quote you a prominent American commentator here. See if you can guess who this is. You may have seen this, I don't know. I mean, this is something that a lot of people have been sharing. It's had 10 million views today. Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another

foreign war. There would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel, if Netanyar, who had not not bombed, had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran. First, Israel is a nuclear armed nation. This is not our fight. Peace is the answer. You know who that was posted by? It would be something like Bernie Sanders or AOC or something, wouldn't it?

You don't know who this was? Obama? Marjorie Taylor Green. Right. The extremely mega, quite, let's just say, most of her tweets are a tab deranged. She's also an anti-Semite. She's the person who, um, believes in Jewish space lasers.

I mean, this is the whole... Honestly, Drew. I know, I know she does. She thinks that Israel have put up satellites which have lasers on... My point is... My point is just that even Marjorie Taylor Green is not with Trump on this one. So she's lost one of the magariest magerites that there is. But is the point that does Trump need the people anymore?

Like, isn't the whole point about a wartime president? And isn't the whole point that if you're a weak president, you know, whether you're in a democracy or an authoritarian regime, the one thing you do is have a war of conquest because you have power, you have power, it doesn't matter what the people think. They have to go along with you. You're the commander-in-chief.

Well, there's a lot of things. You don't need people to agree with you. There's a lot of Marjorie Taylor Green like allies there. This is an example of a sort of blue-tick, someone called Jesus Army, right? Israel is bombing Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. They're doing it with your tax dollars. We've sent over 300 billion indirect and indirect aid to Israel, for what? So they can light the Middle East on fire while Americans drown in debt,

can't afford insulin and live paycheck to paycheck. Imagine if that money had gone to free health care, free college, rebuilding US cities, making America look more like Dubai, not Detroit. And that's a complete mega ride, right? Yeah. So, yeah, he is losing his base here. But there was a fascinating moment in the past week where people said,

I thought your whole thing was America first. And Trump's line was, I invented America first. I say what America first is. It was used long before Trump Come up with it But nevertheless Yeah So he's just going

No I get to determine What the movement does And so I'm anti-right And look I don't doubt There'll be some people Who just You know Vault face

You know 180 degrees Oh I mean JD Vance Is it totally example It's this genius moment You know And it was And the great thing is

It will have been the plan all along Like Yeah Yeah That's the thing that we can get Because This was not the plan all along, but it

will be absolutely written into history that this was the plan all along. So Trump is this strategic genius by pretending that he didn't want... Jadie Vance has just reposted all he said is he's reposted Trump's true social post, which is like a

screen cap. But we know Jadie Vance is massively isolationist and there's no interesting. And he was the guy that when India and Pakistan were about to nuke one another, it's kind of like, it's not our fight. So the interesting thing is politicians have to be careful in this moment because Barack Obama was one of the very, very few senators

to oppose Iraq war in that first vote. And, you know, J.D. Vance might want to actually create a little bit of distance right now because actually those things come back to bite you. If this goes badly. Yes. No, when it goes badly, when it goes badly, when it goes badly. He's just retweeted it. That's why he isn't commented.

By the way, can I say, that this is how weird X is now, right? I know I'm getting distracted a lot, but I just don't know what to make of all of this. So the top response under J.D. Vance's post. No, well, it's actually Trump's post. 119 million views.

The top reply on X is this. Someone called Ruben Spin, Ruben Sim, saying, at GROC, explain this in Roblox Doom, Spire, brick battle terms. And then Grok then explains, and this had millions of views as well. in Roblox dooms by a brick battle terms

Imagine two teams US and Israel and blue Iran battling on a map with towers Red launches a surprise rocket barrage What kind of weird universe are you living in where that's the most relevant tweet Underneath a declaration of war by the president of the US It's fucking Roblox

And it probably is the most relevant tweet To most people who use X I think The Declaration of Independence If you read the original document Underneath is a little metaphor around Yeah

Explain this in terms of Fortnite Yeah yeah And there's zombies I think yeah It's Fortnite wasn't it Yeah Charles I don't know what to make out of this

It's fucking terrifying Is what it is That this is all going on So what happens Iran has said that they're gonna have I think I can't remember the term they use But their response was going to have

Like eternal consequences They're going to do something very big But they have to say that I don't think They can I don't think Traditionally Iran And great Matt Bevan episode on this

Iran's generally very rational in their response to these things. Whenever Israel bombs them, they, as we said this the other day, they're quite restrained because they don't want to provoke a nuclear attack. So they can't do anything. Trump says that if they don't immediately surrender, then there'll be more. I think they're probably, I suspect there will be another way. If they do surrender, I mean, it's an invidious position, isn't it? What happens to the Ayatollah?

If they do surrender, then that's the government humiliated. Well, they already are, right, aren't they? I mean, Israel had already humiliated them with. all the previous attacks. They've killed a lot of the top Iranian military personnel. It's an amazing way to get the genocide that's happening right next to Israel off the front pages as well. I just wish Truth Social was still up, you know, just to try and make sense of what's

going on. I should check if it's still up now. But no, these are very confusing times. I don't think it's confusing at all. I think it's really simple. We're just seeing a sort of chat GPT generated excuse for a war of conquest. Like, I reckon literally, like, they haven't even bothered. David Milner had a great piece on Friday in the shot,

which is just like, this is such a half-ass piece of justification for war. They haven't even really done a sort of, and he said, it's got the pacing of Game of Thrones last season, right? It's all happening so too quickly. It's sort of too quick. They didn't do the work on sort of convincing the rest of the world, but actually there was a bit of weapons of mass destruction. Like, nobody believes it.

Everyone's seeing through it, but it's just so cynical. A lot of Republican congressmen have objected to it, actually. Quite surprisingly many. But I think, I mean, this is it's unconstitutional. This is where you go, traditional support is going to be very, very thinned out. And it literally is going to be the billionaire oligarchs alone that are supporting him. You know, at the same time, in the past week, the number of Democrats, like Democrat lawmakers, like basically people in the House of Representatives

or in state senators and things of that have been arrested, right? Like, they keep on arresting Democrats. Now, that to me sounds like they're not really caring about their level of support internally. Like, actually, they're going, actually, if we send ICE in, keep arresting people, then we can, you know, they can arrest Marjorie Taylor Green next, you know.

I mean, Donald Trump's most recent post on X as of the time recording four hours ago, he's simply an American flag. It's now pinned at the top of the feed there. A lot of the replies from Magarites are actually Netanyahu manipulating Trump as a puppet and so on. He's telling, he's got a lot of thank you for your attention to this matter as well. I think that's a chat GPT thing. Maybe it is. Thank you for attention to this matter.

Cool. Can you ask Chat Chepti to draft the statement saying that Australia has bombed Iran? What would it say? What would say thank you for attention to this matter? What will Australia do? Australia will just stay out of it, I suppose. Well, I think, you know, if there's any great, you know, moment where you actually need a bold response and a courageous response,

then whatever that response is will not be coming forth. I'd feel a lot safer if we had a whole bunch of American nuclear submarines about now, Charles. Wouldn't that be good for a piece of mine? We're part of the Iconiclast network. This has been a very weird episode, but somehow I feel it's captured the spirit of the day quite well. Oh, we should probably explain. What's happened is America has bombed Iran. We never actually mentioned that.

Yeah, no, I was very busy talking about Juneteenth, wasn't I? I just thought everyone knew that, but maybe not. Put it in the show notes. Let's look at.