The Chaser Report - Who's Your Daddy, NATO?

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Trump has arrived in NATO and been welcomed by enough brown-nosing to make Dom and Charles realise how screwed everything is. Protection rackets we can manage, just please don't make us call him "daddy". Plus, an update on the current career of Scott Morrison. ---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] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: 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 The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, we've started recording the podcast. I have no idea what you're wanting to discuss, but I'm thinking it might be something related to the news. Yeah, I want to start off talking about NATO and the protection racket that's going on. And then I think that we're not going to squeeze 15 minutes out of that. So we also then should meander off into some other...

Some other random thing that I saw on social media. Yeah, great, we can do that. Yeah, that's right. NATO, we'll just play that little clip here. This is... Oh, are we going to do the daddy stuff? We've got to do the daddy thing. It's in the news.

No, it's so cringe. It is super creepy, but it's a moment in time. This is NATO Secretary General Mark Ritter, I think his name is, sucking up to Donald Trump more than any... It's like more than anyone has ever done without putting pieces of Donald Trump in their actual mouth. Yeah. They're not going to be fighting each other. They've had it.

They've had a big fight like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can't stop them. Let them fight for about two, three minutes. Then it's easier to stop them. And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language. You have to use a certain word. So there you go.

The word daddy is ruined now. It's sort of... Well, I think daddy was... Just like the word integrated hotel casino was ruined by the Trump organization. This is the first time that anyone... has called Trump Daddy affectionately? Well, except for Eric, trying to get his approval. Yeah, that's probably right.

All right, let's take some ads and just... I should just go and wash my ears out after listening to that. You know, he could have been called Daddy when he was, you know, on Epstein's Island. No, I can just imagine Elon Musk going, I'm the Daddy in this, anyway. See, I made it creepier. This is horrible. You tried Epstein to make it creepier. I gave you Musk.

Even the word musk is used to, like, mean creepy sexual thing, like, smell my musk. But I think what this is actually, the whole point about Trump is you surround yourself with toadies, and then the whole world bends towards your every will and desire. Like, the whole foreign policy of the US, like, their whole military posture is basically designed to please Trump's psychology. Right. And that's what makes so fascinating the NATO meeting, right? Because he's turned up and Trump has sort of destroyed the American economy, right? Like, well, the world economy. Well, the world economy. But, you know, like, I mean, they've been sort of running on empty for a while. But it's a, it's a bullshit piece. It's just strung together by finance, which is essentially at the end of day, moving numbers around to prove that you're richer than everyone else. And a military industrial complex, which is building. stuff to blow things up, right? Plus the one other thing, which I heard today, I kind of remember the figure it was in the

multi-trillions, the biggest transfer of wealth in American history, of course, from the poor to the rich. Yes, yes. Through the big, beautiful tax cuts. One of the great stats is for every tax cut that a millionaire gets, it checks 19 poorer people off Medicare. Because there's something like there's, I think it's like five million. millionaires or something that will benefit from the

tiny percentage, yeah. Oh no, maybe it's 500,000, yeah, it'd be 500,000 millionaires who get all the tax cards and there's 10 million people being chucked off Medicare. Yeah, Charles, but on the bright side, the wealth will trickle down because the rich people will spend, I'm not even going to try and run that. Anyway, point is, this brings us to NATO, right? The big achievement that everyone's hailed as this great success,

European countries have agreed, out of this NATO summit, which has been 5% of their GDPs, of their GDP, not on hospital schools and roads, but on military expenditure. Fantastic. And there's 32 allies. Yes. And the thing is, if you're Trump and you've got nothing else to sell the world

except a protection record, what better way than to turn up and just having just demonstrated the supremacy of American military arms and bunker busters and bombs and everything like that. Oh, so you think that was a trade fair? The attack on Iran? It's totally, it's totally. And literally Trump's basically gone,

we won't protect you anymore unless you start, you know, on behalf of all the American arms manufacturers, I'm here to say, we're going to pull our support and we're going to stop protecting you unless you start spending a whole lot more money. I mean, this is the headline from the Financial Times of all things, right? NATO summit, as it happened, North American and European leaders, by the way, 32 countries, agree on 5% defence spending target. Trump affirms US commitment to Article 5.

Now, when you're in an alliance with someone, Charles, the whole point of the alliance is that you've all agreed that an attack on one is an attack on all. That's the whole principle of NATO. That's what Article 5 is. You're not meant to be able to go, well, I'm not actually going to, you know, come in and defend you unless there are additional terms and conditions it would be like being in a marriage and saying

you know what you've got to make dinner tonight otherwise I'm going to go and I'm at risk of going and having an affair right yeah I mean really that's I think that happened in a porno arts anyway but Charles this is the thing and so kind of know what I mean like it's literally making conditional the the essence of something that is unconditional yeah so Charles the the amount that there

spending, the Herald did this beautifully today, the Herald put the amount of extra money that NATO Allies agreed to spend at 19,800 fighter jets. That's how much money they spent today. What? What do you mean to that? What do you mean? Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah.

The total increase in the trillions of dollars Yeah, yeah. 19,000 fighter jets. Yeah, and so that means, for instance, the UK is planning to buy nuclear capable F-35A fighters and And the UK Defence Establishment is already saying that means you won't be able to launch missiles on this, Washington says so. That's the plan, isn't it?

Isn't it basically, it's like Netflix for being part of the American. You're paying a very high hefty fee for being part of the kind of U.S. umbrella. I suppose it's fair enough. If you look at it in terms of Netflix, it is true because Netflix, when it launched was like, I don't know, it's $7.99. Yeah. And now it's, what, minimum 15? Or even more. It's very expensive.

Yeah. So maybe instead the Europeans should have an ad-supported tier of military expenditure. Yes, that's a great idea. So instead of just like an F-35, it's like an F-35, but out the back, it's got a banner, which has ad space. Or maybe before it intervenes and protects your country, it writes in the sky Coca-Cola or something like that. Or everyone's got to watch the last. latest Pixar movie, which is sponsoring, you know, your military invasion. Exactly.

So this is $17 trillion. And, Charles, are you cynically pointing out that the people who sell the weapons just so happen to be overwhelmingly American companies? So you're really saying when he says you must spend 5% of your GDP on military, on defense, who he's actually saying at our shops, come and spend them at our shops. Yes, because he's put up all these things. Like, he's taint the economy. There's nothing left.

But he'll just create an economy out of just building things that are destroyed, that kill people. Nice country, shame for anything happened to it. And by the way, we're not going to come in with Article 5. And the great thing is... Unless you've paid you to 5%. This doesn't have to be the last time. The great thing about a protection racket is the fees can go up over time, right? Like, you can walk in...

Like, okay, so they increase their defence budgets to 5%. under NATO. And then, you know, in a few years time, it's like, oh, well, we've still got all the best military hardware in the world. Shame if your country would break. Maybe you've got it up to 6% or 7%. Well, you might be saying that as a comic exaggeration. Let me tell you what he said about Spain. Spain did not want to pay the full 5%. Yes. Donald Trump said, Spain is terrible. I'm going to make you pay twice as much as that in a future trade deal. Yes. Although then the facts are actually that Washington. is negotiating with the whole the EU, nevertheless.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, you could imagine Donald Trump has, he thinks, all the force here. Mind you, in fairness, would you actually want Spanish-made arms defending you?

Like, I'm not sure. Like, I think Spain is actually literally gone, okay, we'll stick to tapas. There's the Seattle cars. They're supposed to be right, aren't they? It's the cupra.

The cupra fomintor? The electric car. They make very stylish, like, I do. I do. In Spain. Yeah.

So maybe they just went, we'll stick to what we know. I love these comments. This is the comments that he made at NATO. This is Donald Trump. He's just such a diplomat. When I came here, he said,

this is his definition of Article 5. When I came here, I came here because it's something I'm supposed to be doing. Like, don't want to be here. But I watched the heads of these countries, get up and the love and the passion

that they showed for their country. It was unbelievable. I've never seen anything quite like it and they need the United States. And without the United States, it's not going to be the same. so if you love your country get on board

although Charles I have a question for you which is who is taking advantage of whom here and I want to ask you that after the break The Chaser Report News you can't trust So you're saying big protection racket The Europeans have come on board They've agreed to the 5% GDP

It's a massive expenditure This is a question inspired by a certain Orcus Donald Trump is in office for the next three and a half years. They're not going to be increasing their spending within the next three and a half years. So who's tricking, who's bullying who here?

I mean, who's pulling the wool over whose eyes here? But I think what it is is that Trump is representing a set of interests, an increasingly narrow set of interests, that the sort of oligarchs and billionaires and, you know, his fundraisers, the people who turn up at Mar-a-Lago and pay, homage to him and corruptly just give him money now through Bitcoin and Trump coin and all those sorts of things. You know, like we had that story just the other day about, you know, Trump

owning an island off the coast of Albania. Yeah, yeah. Chad and Ivanka are doing their own little. Like, I think the answer is he will absolute, like having delivered, in the same way that I think having delivered on Orcus, you know, Scott Morrison's enjoying a very, very lucrative post-politics career in the defence industries. Like, he's now a defence contractor, basically, Scott Morrison is. Trump will be looked after. You know, that's one of the things that happens when you're a don. I don't want to cast aspersions on any former Prime Ministers.

Now, now honoured with the AC, by the way, the top honour that we have in Australia. Scott Morrison, AC. I mean, if Tony Abbott was still in power, he'd be a Sir, Scott Morrison. And your sister, of course, has an AM. So Scott Morrison and, and Verity, you're both doing much better than you. But I'm just looking at Scott Morrison's track record, is he in charge of organising the timely delivery of any of these subs by any chance?

I'm just, you know, memories are long. Yeah, I wonder what is, what is his actual job? Well, it would be ironic if it was to hold a hose. I think what happens is that after the submarines are finally delivered, he delivers everyone's statues saying we sold these. Because he's certainly giving, you know, running commentary on... Yeah, on ABC TV. Charles, while you looked that up, there's a hilarious moment at NATO that actually completely

fits him with what you were saying about Iran. Donald Trump thanked Iran for how they handled that strike on the US base. You know the one that didn't kill anybody? Yeah, yeah. This is what he said. They were very nice. They gave us warning. They said, we're going to shoot him.

Is 1 o'clock okay? He said, it's fine. And everybody was emptied off the base. So they couldn't get hurt except for the gunners. Yeah. There you go choreograph for the domestic market. That's a good way to run a war. Oh, yeah.

Just get the optics right for the domestic population. I think that's right. And I think a lot of this, my frustration with the whole analysis of the Middle East has been everyone's sort of analyzing it in terms of as if everyone's got skin in the game or equal skin in the game. And you've really got to step back a bit at these sorts of moments and go, where is the monopoly of violence? Who has the monopoly of violence in this situation? Like what's actually going on? Because the whole theory of sort of statehood and sort of modern state power is the way it works is somebody, like to create a stable nation state, you actually just have to have a group of people who have a monopoly on violence. That's literally the part of the definition of the nation state of political science.

And a monopoly on legitimate violence. Yeah, on legitimate violence. And what the Trump sort of explosions in Iran did was it was, there is such a thing as legitimate international violence, right? Like there are rules of war and there's a rules-based order. However met much, that's a sort of fig leaf of sort of thing. And what Trump was doing was creating a new set of rules, really, by not going to the UN and stuff of that. But it was also a signal that actually, like the whole bunker buster stuff was a demonstration. that, well, we could completely break you if we wanted to.

And so essentially, America and, to a certain extent, Israel have shown that they have a monopoly of violence over Iran. And that's the current supposedly stable state at which we find ourselves in a ceasefire. This is the whole point of where Donald Trump, and it did seem quite crass in some ways, but it was quite transparent about his thinking in other ways, saying, well, this is Hiroshima and Nagas, It's saying our force is so overwhelming that you have to lose. Now, here's a question. And ironically, what Iran really needs out of this situation is for America to continue sort of coming in over the top of Israel and restraining Israel from further violence against Iran.

Which they absolutely did you do. The planes turn around in mid-air. It needs to be the guarantee of violence in that region. And so this is the bizarre thing of Trump's offer to Iran right now, which they seem to be taken very seriously because Iran, the Iranian mullahs seem pretty good at being able to calculate geopolitical kind of risks, the rail-politic risks, is, you know, I will actually protect you from Israel to some degree, because Israel had total air supremacy over Tehran. Because as you were saying before, all their military equipment's falling apart.

Here's a little question for you, what was the death toll of the four-dose strikes, if the bunker-busting bombs dropped on all the supposed, you know, the mass devastation. I haven't seen any reports of that. I would guess none. I would just ask chat GPT. They'd already left. Which obviously gone through all the news. And that's what they're saying.

They're saying that there's no confirmed death toll, but reports indicate that Iran evacuated it before the attack. Now, did they definitively know it was coming? Because that's, is it another bit of Kabuki theater somewhat a little bit like the strikes on the base in Qatar? Trump was signaling it. He was signaling it. He was saying. you know, it could be very, like he was signaling that that was, he was going to do. And so nobody, I mean, the timeline on it is brilliant right, because he was still saying, well, I haven't made up my mind.

Yeah, and they send a decoyed for the B2s. Even after they launched the B2. But if nobody died in the attack, even if they didn't, okay, they might not have known the exact time or whatever, but Iran has actually done, to some degree, you know, they've, I mean, it's, It's sort of hard to know to what extent, but it's an amazing piece of American projection of power. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of theatrical. Yeah.

So who knew what, when is something I'd be fascinated to know. We may never know or it might be years down the track. But that would be, I mean, I have no clue. I presumably Israel knew it was going to happen. To what extent did Iran know it was going to happen? They certainly got people out of there. So what's actually going on? Well, I think Trump wanted a TV style, you know, resolution.

Like, I think certain things happen. Like, Israel started bombing Iran quite violently, and Iran responded, and it conflagrated. And I don't think Trump particularly, you know, knew that that was going to happen or, you know, like, he sort of, it sort of took him out of the spotlight. We are. And so all he wanted was the design of a TV production that would sort of make everyone settle down and save face. enough that he was able to be the saviour. But the problem is that he then becomes the actual linchpin. America

suddenly becomes the linchpin in the stability of violence in this weird way. It is. It's a whole new calculation. Where they have to be a guarantee of Israel's restraint to Iran to continue the current state of affairs. It's a very unstable guarantee. But that

may be the least worst option because what else is going to restrain Israel at this point? What else is going to restrain Iran at this point? And it's almost as though... And also, like, Netanyahu would be, you know, calculating exactly how to piss off Trump again enough, how to get Iran to piss off Trump enough, that then suddenly he gets unstable with that. You've been talking about the American domestic audience, but don't forget there is an Israeli domestic audience. I mean, Netanyahu was hugely unpopular before all this happened.

And in all kinds of corruption scandals, But there's also an Iranian-dressed domestic audience. There have been lots of protests against the regime. I spoke to someone this week who has sources sort of inside Iran saying that it may topple at some point soon. It's not a particularly stable. Even though you think, well, it's this sort of theocratic regime, it's not necessarily completely stable. So they're playing to their domestic audiences as well. All three countries have domestic audiences to placate.

And it's worth bearing in mind that we are not talking about riots in L.A. anymore. We're not talking about the U.S. economy being, you know, down and spiral. We're not talking about Elon Musk's claims about Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump anymore. This has wiped every other story out that was unfavorable for Trump. And ditto Netanyahu. And who knows what's happening in Iran. But you'd imagine that, you know, this is playing reasonably well for them because they've claimed

this big victory over Israel. So it's fascinating to see how this all works. Maybe Trump being, and the one thing I'll say, we don't praise him very much on the podcast for a very good reason. But he is anti-war. The one thing you can say about Trump is he does hate war. And it is, it comes from, but it comes from protectionism. Sorry, it comes from isolationism.

No, it's because he's bones spurs. That's not his fault. But he doesn't care about, he doesn't want US troops going anywhere. I think, I think. He's also anti-war anyway, I think. No? He would love to explode a nuclear bomb. It'd be the biggest bomb ever.

He'd love that. He would love that. That's quite just. The stuff that, I think he just wants it to be all about him. I think the problem with the war is suddenly people start looking at other people. There's more than one side. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

All right, where has this gotten us? It is a bizarre moment. I think he said, you know, 12th day war. It was a beautiful war. He did. Needed to happen. Oh, what a lovely war. All right.

So we've got to loot back to, I've found out what Scott Morrison is doing. Oh, yes, do tell them. He's working with. Robert O'Brien, the national security advisor to Donald Trump. Oh. And I thought he was part of some kind of cabal with the former... Yeah, and Mike Pompeo. Mike Pompeo, that's right.

Yeah. So, and they're working on defense stuff. I mean, oh, to be a fly on the wall inside that room. So imagine morale's a bit low. Scott Morrison goes, I've got this, brings out the ukulele. I've got a little song back home called April Sun in Cuba. I've got really bad news. Scott Morrison's specific job is to deliver.

are outcomes for the Indo-Pacific on matters like security, climate change and humanitarian assistance. But which outcomes? Well, are there car parks? I think you forgot to order the outcomes. No, it's just really bad news. Are you calling it an outcome stroll-out? I think it's really bad news for the security, climate change and humanitarian aspects of

the Indo-Pacific region, the fact that it's down in charge. It's always good to check in on SCOMO in the podcast. And he's got operational expertise. No, he does. He doesn't know how this is just fucking ruby. Surely people who hold hoses the ones in operations, aren't they? Yeah, exactly. All right.

Well, this has been very argumentative. I think we've solved a lot of problems here. I do. I think a lot of things have been solved. Or we've explained why they aren't being solved yet. Anyway, there you go. Peace in our time, Charles. Donald Trump's the linchpin.

Peace now. At least NATO will have more bombs to join in whenever, whenever, you know, Israel and Iran start up again. Do you see what I mean? Like, with more bombs in the world, I think we'll all go to bed a little bit, feeling a bit safer tonight. I'm going to call it now. Donald Trump is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize for the bombing. He's going to be the first daddy. For a bombing.

Because if the Europeans have given in on the GDP thing, with the big caveat that I don't they'll actually actually pay it to the US. Surely there's no way they'll hold the Nobel Peace Prize for him. I just feel like everyone is just showing their true colours, which is that the world is run by a whole lot of spineless toadies, who are just... Well, that's why Daddy has to use strong language, because they only listen to that.

Charles, Sky News Australia reports. Donald Trump was formally nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday say in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Buddy Carter, representative of Georgia, Republican, recommended Donald Trump for the prestigious prize in recognition of his extraordinary in historic role in brokering an end to the armed conflict between Israel and Iran

and preventing the world's largest sponsor, a state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet. So yeah, Nobel Prize Prize for bombing ship. That would be... I mean, to be fair, he's often nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It doesn't mean anything unless he wins it. But if he can get trillions of dollars out of... the European governments, what can't he get?

His father's love. Yeah. That's the real daddy in this, sorry. Yeah, that's the real daddy issue. That's a whole deeper than the bunker buster bomb blue. We're part of the Icona Class Network. Catch you next time.