The Chaser Report - Now Is The Time For Peace, Maybe

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Dom and Charles continue their war coverage, this time by asking the pressing questions like: "How do the B-2 pilots take a piss?" Charles has his first theory on the end of the rule of not just international law, but all laws. Plus, Dom shares an anecdote about getting into a bar fight in Japan.---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 Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to another wartime edition of The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, are you absolutely sure that this needs to be another wartime report? Didn't we sort of do that yesterday, I mean... No, but that's the great thing about War Dom, is that you get fresh content every day. This is why the media loves a good war. Oh, and we can be part of, what do they call it, the fog of war.

We can pass on misinformation. We can be kind of inadvertent tools of various propaganda agendas. I love it. Love that for us. But this time, instead of being part of misinformation, simply because we're so ignorant that we confidently state things that are not true, or we're doing it, you know, for jokes, this can be part of our patriotic duty to pass on, you know, misinformation.

The official government line. Yes, exactly. We can be talking about how Iran. deserved it in the neck. That's what they did. They deserved it in the neck for just being there dressing so prettily. Do we know? They wanted to be bombed. Do we know, are we sure there was much of a death toll? And I'd say this, it might have been absolutely massive, although they might have actually moved people out. They apparently moved quite a lot of the fissile material out of the area, thinking that quite correctly that the US would be likely to do this. All that talk of bunker

busting bombs, it was almost like, they're not going to not use them after having talked so much about how powerful they are. But also, the funny thing was that, what was the key site? What was it called? Fado or something. What's the main? Fordo. I think.

Fordo. It sounds like Ben Fordham. Can we just, can we just be clear that the US did not drop six Charles? But they should have. Or was it four, four bunker busting bombs on two GBAs. But the whole one is, the bunker busting bombs, you know, sort of give up after about 60 metres or something. No, but Charles, that's why you drop another one in the same place.

That's that you open it up. And they chose ventilation shafts. But the photo thing is 80 metres below. There's no way it got there. Yeah, they dropped two in the same place. So you open it up with one, then another one goes in. Then another one goes in. I think it's absolute rubbish.

Precision, Charles? No, I reckon it's absolute rubbish that they got through. You've just been taking the skeptics line, hook line and sinker. Who are you, Nome Chomsky? That was an obscure attack. No, I just think, no, but if you think about it, if you explode a bungabusting bomb, Right. There's going to be lots of rubble and stuff like that.

Yeah. And then if you, well, you then open it up and, like, it doesn't create a crater. Like, it's not going to, it wouldn't have got down 80 meters. Donald Trump said bull's eye. Do you need to know anything more than that? Bullseye. Anyway, I have a theory about why this happened. And I think we should go to an ad.

Oh, if there's a Charles Darien coming, yeah, yeah. Brace yourselves, Australia. Okay. I think we've now got a little sting for Charles Theory. Do we? Oh, wonderful. Great. That's what we want.

Yeah. Thank you, Loughlin. Attention. Charles Theory in coming. You know how Trump doesn't really care about the rule of law at home, right? I'm familiar with that from a number of recent incidents. The Constitution and the whole thing about birth rights citizenship, just to give one of many examples. Yeah.

And so one of the things that he's been doing at home is sort of pushing back on the rule of law and just sort of issuing king like decrees, right, which is why they had that whole love a king like decree. No king's rally, which was basically going, we don't want to be ruled by just, you know, literally somebody's personal whim, right? And if you actually analyze what's actually gone on in Iran, it's not that America was in any way imminently threatened. So the whole idea of self-defense when you're pre-empting an attack is you've got to be completely... If you're in a bar room and somebody's about to attack you with a knife, you can be a little bit justified in sort of trying to bat away that knife or something like that. Or drop a bunker boss to bomb on them. But what if someone in the bar, Charles, is developing knife technology?

Yes. And he's a weeks away from having a knife. Yeah, that's not a justification at all. And in actual fact, it's interesting. Dwight Eisenhower, actually in setting up the whole sort of post-World War II framework, said in his opinion, it should be the case that there's no such thing as preemption at all in international fees. It doesn't matter if somebody is developing a nuclear bomb. You've just got to actually wait until they use it before you can retaliate.

Because if you don't, then you keep on having these countries sort of coming up with excuses for attacking each other. But Charles, that's the red line. Does a red line mean nothing to you? Surely by just saying there was a red line, that justifies everything. Anyway, the line was red. So we've sort of dismantled the post-World War II era. That's fine. But in some ways, actually, it's not a return to the sort of pre-World War I order where

there were still rules of engagement. Like, you still had all these sorts of rules of war, right? Like, there were still rules of international engagement that meant that countries couldn't just sort of, on a whim, sort of go, okay, I'm going to attack because I kind of feel like it. We're actually returning to a time in the deep, deep, deep, distant past where might is right, where basically kings could invade other lands simply because they had a bigger army and that's what they wanted to do.

We're going into sort of medieval style forms of war. But the whole thing is, it's actually very, very consistent with Trump's whole modus operandi, what he actually wants. And this is why, in some ways, it is mission accomplished for Trump, which is he has dismantled the rule of law. The UN is now essentially completely irrelevant, right? I love the idea that before this, it was relevant. But yes, no, but, like, essentially, NATO is sort of, like, NATO's about to meet. This is the irony, yes.

Trump is not going to turn up to NATO. NATO. It's dead in the water. It's a complete realignment. What's the point of him going to NATO? But it's a realignment, not around. a new set of rules. It's a realignment about no rules. It's a realignment about Putin being able to just go, oh yeah, fuck it. Ukraine are two weeks away from developing nuclear bombs.

I'm going to bomb them. Which is what has happened anyway, right? Like, and you've got to remember there are all these elaborate justifications that Putin's given. And there's no one to actually say, well, that's not true. I just don't think that's true. I think actually, even in the past, oh, with Ukraine. I'm saying with Ukraine, Putin. to come up with a whole series of quasi-national law justifications about, you know, Ukraine being a dictatorship and that the Russian nationals in Ukraine are threatened and all this stuff. It's not plausible from our perspective, but he still made the arguments in the terms of international law.

Yes, it is. And same with Iran and Israel. Like, their skirmishes have been going on for decades, but they were all within the they always needed a fig leaf of justification and it was always within the context of, well, you just killed five of mine, I'm going to kill five of yours. But Charles, you know, there's some good news here that you might not be across, which is that the US insists that what's just happened in Iran is not an act of war. No, but Trump said that it was war in his, when he made that address to the nation.

He said it was war. But he then said it's peace immediately, didn't he? Didn't he then just say, but we've got peace now that we've delivered the bomb? That's what I was saying yesterday. I mean, certainly the US figures have said this isn't technically a war. We're not at war. No, they, but it is a war. Of course, just because somebody says it's not a war,

they're just so that they don't have to go to Congress. Of course it's a war. That's right. It's one nation invading another nation. They didn't go to Congress. That's the whole argument. That's one of the many things that the MAGA Republicans pin Donald Trump on. So it's asked backwards, it's saying it's not a war because we didn't go to Congress.

If we'd gone to Congress, of course, we'd have loved to have consulted Congress. It wasn't the case that did, there's been lots of. Congress approved the Iraq war. Most wars nowadays. though America doesn't... Well, this is the whole beauty of the way war work now is that you just send in your drones, you just do a strike, there are no boots on the ground.

And this is the whole point, is that you don't need boots on the ground. Yes, you do. If you do America anymore, they don't need to deploy troops into Iran. And they won't. It's the last thing Trump wants to do, isn't it? Oh, well, 24 hours ago, on this podcast, we mentioned the idea that regime change was sort of not on the cards, but maybe it would take two weeks of convincing for it to start being on the

cards, right? Today, they're talking about regime change. Now, regime change, you actually have to be there for regime change. You can't just go in and calm the place, get rid of the political leaders, and then suddenly peace in our time. But wasn't that also Trump not understanding what regime change was? Because he's, he's for so long being anti-regime change and saying America shouldn't do stuff like that. Isn't he now basically going, oh, the regime could change in that the regime will be nice now and not do all this stuff? Like, It's not what we would conventionally call impetical science regime change.

It's basically a change of attitude, isn't it? No, no, no. Coming out of America now is actually Trump's coming around to the idea that... He wants to make Iran great again. Isn't that lovely? Isn't that generous? Yeah, which is regime change.

It's saying let's get our ideology in there rather than the last lot. But no, but there is good news, Dom. You are right, which is if we're in a post-rule-of-law order, then all the little niceties that protect Trump and America no longer need to be sort of adhered to. In fact, I kind of feel like, you know, with Albo now backing the whole Iranian thing,

he's backing a lack of rule of law. I'm wondering whether we should, do we need to follow the law? Well, if you feel... Our leaders don't follow the law. If you feel that the shovel or the Batuta advocate is developing weapons to use against us in the theatre of online satire. I think they are. I think it's a red line. We can't live with a nuclear-armed Batuta Advocate.

We can't. We mustn't. And we won't. That was a red line. That's right. They are weeks away from what I understand. Yes. We're having nuclear-powered comedy.

Yes, that's right. Or perhaps even nuclear-powered comedy. And look, the shovel, I'm annoyed at how much they kill. Hey. So we're talking about a killer comedy satire website. And I don't think the world can have killer comedy. It can't be the two of you. It's a multi-polar Australian comedy scene.

We don't like that. We preferred it when those other outlets didn't exist and they were just us. Now, my favourite, can I tell you my favourite truth social post of this entire period? It's been many. From real Donald Trump, the great B2. Sorry, sorry, are you on truth social? No, I'm just looking at screencast. I should, we should definitely.

You should get a, we should get a chaser account? We should, and we should actually just post fake headlines and see. I bet you butuda and shovel, don't you know, sincerity, put up fake headlines and see as though they're real. It'll probably lead to World War III. Or some sort of racist pogrom against whatever we're talking about. That will happen anyway. It won't be our fault.

Here's the truth from Donald Trump. The great B2 pilots have just landed safely in Missouri. Thank you for a job well done. Capital letters, Donak, J. Trump, president of the United States. States. D-O-N-A-K-D. Oh, that's nice. Typo.

That's the level of which he's operating. Yeah, he's a details man. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. So, my question, so the B-2 bomber, the stealth bomber was the, you know, preferred delivery mechanism. B-2-B-2-B-2-B-2.

Like, that's, it's almost there. But B-2, do they have toilets? Because it was 30 hours there and back. Maybe 35. They refueled mid-air. Non-stop. I think it was 30 hours in the air. Yeah.

Non-stop, there and back. Amazing. Did they sleep they've got? Or no pilot? That doesn't work. But I don't think you can get out of your seat. Well, they're that high? I think they must have put on diapers.

Like, how do you do? That is the, no one's asking this question. No, exactly. These are the questions that I think the JSA report should be focusing on. Yeah. Because when you're covering a war, there's all, you know, everyone covers like the big angles, like, oh, this is the destruction of rule of law or, you know, oh, this is. a new world order or, you know, isn't Trump an asshole?

I have an answer for you after the break. Okay. The Chaser report. More news. Less often. But only on the Chaser report, do you get the things that you really want to know, which is how do they piss? And poo.

Well, and the New York Post. If it's 30 hours. Take this with a grain insult. The B-2 stealth bombers used to attack the photo enrichment plant. I recruit with toilets, microwaves, and usually a, cooler for snacks to make life more comfortable. Can you imagine? Wouldn't the microwave set off the bomb?

Well, it wouldn't it just show up on the radar? You know what I mean? Like you put on five-minute noodles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're quite larger, are they? Like, you can walk around. Yeah, there's even enough room for one pilot to lay down and rest while the other one flies. So they can actually take turns.

So is there been a B-2 mile high club? Is that? I mean, probably. Yeah. They're two built. million dollars each, and they've got 19 of them. They lost one in a crash. And do you get frequent flypoints?

Because that would be a shit ton. It's a good long flight, isn't it? 30 air. I've got to go overseas next month. I might see if I can get a lift. That would be fantastic. It sounds very comfortable. Yeah.

I wonder if they've got Q suite. Do you think they've got some decent in-flight movies on the bummer? Top gun. Top gun memory. Yeah, yeah. So what happens now? Let's try and revise the predictions of where we are with all this. Well, does it all get tamped down?

That was my hope at the end of yesterday. There's a sort of line in the sand. But Iran has come out and said, we may activate sleeper cells in the US to do a terrorist attack if you bombed, aren't you? You don't make threats if you've actually got a plausible threat. You just do it. Just do it.

Yeah. I think that's all rubbish. You think the sleeper cells still very much asleep to the point of not even existing? Yes, I do. I think the whole threat of Iran is completely overblown. Like, that's been the whole brilliance of attacking. Iran is that it's actually a fairly weak country that's been sanctioned for the past 45

years. And so it actually doesn't have a huge amount of power beyond the whole imaginings of its power. And so it's been a useful tool for everyone else. Like getting rid of Iran is going to pose problems because then you don't have the specter of an evil Iran to go around and do your arms, you know, rearmament with and stuff like that. Which actually brings me to the other, to the thing of where are we going here? Oh, the next theory is incoming everyone, broach yourselves. This is the, this theory has been circling in Charles's head for 30 hours and taking appropriate toilet breaks, hasn't it?

So, but where next to Israel and the US? Like, you can't just stop at Iran, can you? I mean, are they looking at a map now and going, I don't know, Pakistan? Surely Pakistan. I mean, the real answer to that. Yeah. He's actually all the Iranian proxies, isn't it? Going in harder on Hezbollah and Hamas and the...

Yeah, yeah. all the other little groups that Iran's been funding. Yes. I love the double thing that's coming out in the commentary because in the Atlantic overnight, they did this very pro-invasion piece where they were going, for years, this country has been funding, you know,

militaristic enterprises across the Middle East. Yeah, they're the Houthi as well. Don't forget the whole pirate thing. But it was like, are you talking about Iran or you're talking about the US? The U.S. has bases. The reason why the U.S. is so sort of vulnerable, quote, unquote, to Iran in the Middle East is because they've got bases everywhere. They've got their own versions of Hamas and Hezbollah in every fucking country over in the Middle East.

They've got bases everywhere. I mean, what's the difference between, you know, an armed militia that Iran has put into a different country and a U.S. base that the U.S. is put into another country. The sun never sets on the US military footprint. It's in every continent. Exactly. I mean, Chalmers Johnson is a great person to read up on this particular thing. And he was a great journalist during the Vietnam era, especially right.

Then he, during the last Iraq war, he got leaked all these documents. And he wrote this wonderful book called Sorrows of Empire. And it was actually about how one of the. reasons why the US military are never going to give up all their bases. And they've got about a thousand of them across the globe. I mean, many of them, not people in all them, but they've got a lot of installations everywhere. Certainly just about every continent, there's a lot of, there's more than you think. Yes.

And is that they're actually, it's like, like the pictory painter was, it's a bit like club med, but for, but for officers. Like you can go around the world, you've got your own private airline. In a lot of these bases, they're quite nice. You can go and play golf. In Guam. They can famously set up a Burger King within 24 hours. Oh, they're very good.

And those are the other soft power embassies. I plagiarized a lot of my honest thesis from Chalmers Johnson. Great guy. But Charles, hang on, there is a distinction between Hamas and Hezbollah and, you know, the US having Peacekeepers are much better armed. But it is certainly true that wherever there are problems. And this is the sort of, there are problems everywhere in the world there's a US base. I mean, if you look at something like Okinawa, where the US has a massive military presence,

there have been enormous numbers of crimes committed by US military personnel on the fringes at the base. I mean, they're not the greatest neighbours when they set up. And there was absolutely no way they can be removed. And it's so funny. When we were up in Darwin recently, we were talking to this bus driver who was driving us around quite a bit. And we got onto the topic of what are the US troops like? Because the US troops go up there and they rotate really quite often. And he said they don't actually interact as much with Darwin as you'd think.

Like they sort of stick to their own base, which is not very far away from Darwin city centre. But they just stick over there. They come into town sometimes and get very drunk, but that's about it, basically. And we said, oh, well, what would happen if America turned hostile and wanted to take over or, you know, like there was some sort of problem? Can you imagine the civilian population of Darwin resisting the US Marine Corps? It's funny you should say that because this guy had like a multi-step half-hour plan that he then told us to.

Wow. About, you know, how there's, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, me and me mates have, you know, these guns stored in this thing. Was it all a little bit tomorrow when the war began? Yes, exactly. And we literally said it's like you've read a drawn Marsden book recently. But, you know, how, and he said because they're out along this sort of peninsula, it would actually. it would actually be fairly easy to sort of squeeze them off. And then you'd just, as they were trying to come in,

you'd pick them off and you'd be like an insurgency. You just basically get them on the beer run. Yeah, that's what. Charles, I once nearly... Even in Australia, like the US troops don't seem to be particularly well loved. You know, a US Marine once took a swing at me in a bar in Tokyo, this very, very drunk, angry US Marine. There was this bar in Tokyo that doesn't exist anymore.

This is very a bunch of digression. This is the world of would have been now. There was this very amusingly, ironically named bar in Tokyo called Gas Panic, which, given that it was founded shortly after the Saran Gas Inc incident, it's quite bizarre. Anyway, they had a whole chain. I don't think, I don't know if there are any of them anymore, but their rule used to be, and particularly they had a thing called Happy Gas Panic Night, where they had any drink you wanted for now $4, but back then it was more like $6.

Right. So I went to this bar in Rapungi, Gas Panic. And the rule that they had was, people, People would wander around. They had service of alcohol personnel going around and just examining whatever everyone was doing all night long. And the rule was if you didn't have a drink in your hand, you had to get out. That's great.

So it was the complete opposite of Australian pubs. And so, but this incredibly drunk, very strong, like big marine guy, I was, he just sort of lashed onto me. He's another white guy who was there. And then as I sort of tried to back, he's incredibly boring. And as I was sort of trying to back away from a little bit, he got really angry and punchy. and swung at me a couple of times, but he was so drunk that he missed.

Did you make a mistake of talking to him about your podcast? This was long before. I think this was before podcasts were a thing. Why did he, why was he irritated? I think he, I don't know, maybe. Maybe he was so, could have been, hey, it was pretty hot back then. And it may well have been, I don't know what happened, but maybe I wasn't going with him shot for shot.

I don't know why Marines. It was sort of toxic masculinity. Yeah, it was very much toxic masculinity. Oh, wow. And anyway, he got kicked out. But the brave bounces that removed him, I'll always be grateful to. And then I had to go and get another drink because that was the rule. This is, I suppose, the thing that I'm saying is, like, America's got all these troops stationed

around the world who are literally protected by the rule of law of all those countries. Yes. Diplomatic community being part of the rule of law. But the thing that stops you from taking them on and mounting an insurrection against the US troops in Darwin is that it's deeply illegal under Australian law to do that, right? ride. But what I'm saying is, if Trump has sort of gone, okay, we're not doing rule of law anymore, and suddenly the international law is no rule of law anymore, then I kind of feel like the people are going to get it in the neck first are the Americans around the world. The guys, the bogans, the arm bogans in Darwin, we're probably thinking now, I reckon the

Americans have developed nuclear technology. And they'll actually be correct. Yes. There's no, there's no denying that. They've got the, they're not even weeks away. They have a nuclear bomb. They're years in daving nuclear bombs. So what do we do now? I don't know. Yeah, look, if you think your neighbour's got nukes and you wouldn't mind moving into their house

after you've gotten rid of them. Maybe this is the way we solve the housing crisis. You just go, you know, like if you see an investment property, you go. That boomers developing nuclear weapons. Oh, boy. No. It's just depressing.

You just look disappointed. I'm very depressed. No, it's not just the idea of a free-for-all where everyone gets killed. It's also just the fact that the boomers do own all the property. That's really the most depressing thought in this podcast. Anyway, have we resolved anything? Yeah. Oh, you know what's going to be bad for, though, if we get to bomb nuclear things, nuclear families.

Let's just stop here. Part of the iconic last network, Charles and I both have nuclear families. So which of us gets taken out first is up to you. More war reporting tomorrow. Oh, God, really? Do we have to?