The Dan Bongino Show - Iran, What's Next? (Ep. 2463)

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

In this episode, I discuss the ongoing military operation in Iran, its reasons, consequences, and what is coming next. This Is Why President Trump Authorized Operation Epic Fury https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2026/02/28/scott-jennings-iran-was-going-to-strike-n2672075 Trump Warns Iran Will Be Hit “With a Force Never Seen Before” if They Escalate https://pjmedia.com/aaron-hanscom/2026/03/01/trump-us-will-hit-with-a-force-never-seen-before-if-iran-escalates-n4950100 Hillary Clinton Repeatedly Throws Bill Under the Bus in Extensive Epstein Testimony https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/02/26/hhillary-clinton-claims-she-had-no-idea-of-jeffrey-epsteins-crimes/ Sponsors: All Family Pharmacy - Save 10% Off NAD+, Ivermectin, Maintenance Meds and more at https://allfamilypharmacy.com/bongino - Code: BONGINO10 Ethos - https://ethos.com/bongino American Financing - Visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Bongino  -  NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.196% for well qualified borrowers. Call 888-994-7660 for details about credit costs and terms.  Rumble Wallet - Download Rumble Wallet now—now with  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All America all the time. Sit down, buckle up, and get ready for the Dan Bonjino show. Holy Moses, what a weekend. My gosh, been back on the air now, the beginning of week five. This has been, do you believe like the U.S. hockey team won a gold medal? Was it a week ago? Feels like it was like the 1980 miracle on ice. I don't mean the miracle.

I mean the time. It feels like it happened 30, 40 years ago. I can't help but think of that line again. Forgive me, I forget the quote, but sometimes decades go by and nothing happens and then days go by and decades happens. That's every day. You know, I'm reading this morning, I get up early and I'm doing my Monday morning workout, beating up my legs on Monday for a need that doesn't work. And I'm reading Politico playbook, the Bible of the left, of course. But I read it to see what's going on.

Unlike lefties, I like to see what both sides thinking, not just the, you know, the numb-nodest. on the left, which is what they do. That's why they live in a freaking bubble. And they brought up a pretty darn good point, I must say. Credit where credits do. That Donald Trump has cleaned up. Think about this. Stop. Stop what you're doing right now.

No, I'm as serious as a freaking heart attack. Please just for a second, no matter what you're doing, because I know sometimes part of the audience, you watch the show like passively tune in, tune out. Just stop what you're doing and listen to this. Although it was in playbook, Politico, this is an amazing point. in barely a year in office, Donald Trump has cleaned up decades of unfinished but necessary business.

Presidents from both parties have failed to. Just focus on the Republican Party just for a moment. Leave the Democrats out just for a second, just for the sake of argument. Folks, let's be clear. I love Ronald Reagan, you know, not so much of a fan of the, at least the policies of George W. and some others. Obviously, we had some issues with prior presidents prior to that as well, Nixon and others. However, the threat from the Iranians is one of probably 10 or 15 examples of generational problems the Republican Party's had.

Issues we've tried to solve. Roe v. Wade, Trump fixes it by his appointees. Venezuela, Chavez, Maduro. communism in our sphere. I'm not telling you the problem solved. This is at some mission accomplished moment. I'm just telling you like Maduro's no more. No more in Venezuela.

He's rotting in a U.S. prison. People have talked about cutting government forever. Every Republican problem, we're going to cut government. The federal workforce is now down 10%. I've never seen anything like it. I'm not telling you to love it or hated folks. You're all independent beings. We're not freaking automaton in this party.

You are perfectly entitled and your opinion is welcome in the chat. If you hate everything that happened. But you cannot deny the fact that a generations have been threatened. Generations of U.S. citizens, U.S. soldiers, U.S. law enforcement personnel have been threatened by the Iranians. And now the entire leadership of the death to America party is dead. Dead. Decades have happened in days. Folks, the history books, when written with clearer eyes,

when the TDS, hopefully Trump Derangement Syndrome, wears off just a little bit, any honest telling of history is going to read that this was the most transformative president in 50-plus years, maybe more. You call it whatever you want, but you know what I just told you is true. Decades of unfinished business, less than a year. Now do you see why, again, I can't bring this up enough how people who have secreted themselves in their movement and their constant attacks on Donald Trump, they don't even give the guy time.

Already the attacks have started. We're not even three, four days a week in to this decapitation mission. We're not even a week in as already people. calling him a traitor, impeach him. Oh, it's out there. I'm not even going to, they haven't earned my time to talk about who they are. It doesn't even matter. You haven't earned my time.

All my audience is time. Trader? You realize the Iranians and their proxies have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. In theater, in terror attacks. You understand that, correct? And you know, one of the great ironies? And I don't mean great good. I mean, great in measure.

Some of these same people, whether it was assassination attempts on President Trump, have made all these like foreign connections. And in the minute this happens, like, oh, they haven't done nothing any of those foreign connections. Well, you can't have it both ways. Can you get your argument? No, my. I'm just telling you.

Just go back in and listen. At least we give you the truth. We're going to talk about a lot today. I mean, getting hit up by every media entity on the planet about sleep. sales and things. We're going to get to all of it. I got a really, really loaded show for you today. Obviously a ton going on. So stay tuned. I'm the language on the Friday show, by the way, just a quick, I get it. But it was a passionate show. If you missed it, I'm not, just go back and watch the beginning. It was an important moment and it relates to what happened over the weekend

as well, all right? Because not all this criticism of President Trump is honest. I promise. If it didn't have anything to do with Israel, some of this criticism would go away. Folks, all family pharmacy lets you plan ahead with medications shipped to your door. Don't be caught without vital medications in an emergency. I use all family pharmacy. You should, too, visit all family pharmacy.com slash Bongino. Learn more. Use code Bongino 10, B-O-N-G-I-N-10 to save 10% on your next order.

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Application times and rates may vary. Check them out. Thanks, ethos. All right, fellas. So decades, decades of unfinished business. Solved by this president. solve. I don't want to say, the problem of the Iranian Ayatollahs, that problem's been solved because they're dead. However, there are some problems that are ongoing. And I want to be clear, I, and I'll get to this a little more later,

I am not asking you to blindly trust anybody ever. Trust, but verify, wait for results and then judge it. That's all I'm asking. But you may be asking fairly enough. This is the question I know many people had. okay well why now why did president trump he is the c iC commander-in-chief why engage in this decapitation exercise for the entire upper-level hierarchy of the iranian death to america leadership why now i want to play a fox clip from when this first broke it's quick and i want you're going to notice here that this was targeted very very deliberately at specific places in the beginning stages. It'll make sense in a second, but listen to Jennifer Griffin on Fox talk about the specifics of the attack early on. Check this out. I've just received a list of some of the early

targets that have been attacked inside Iran. Let me read to you from that. There have been attacks on the Iranian Parliament, the National Supreme Council, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Iranian atomic energy agency, and also cyber attacks on news agencies such as Erna. Leadership was target immediately because once you destroy the command and control operation and the upper level hierarchy, the problem with the Iranians is they're not as sophisticated a military even close as the United States. The Iranian military was designed for one thing. Anyone telling you otherwise is full of shit. They were designed for regime preservation.

The Iranian military's ability to project force outside of their territory, that territory being in the Middle East, they've had some luck through proxies and else, but to project force wider than that is nil and almost non-existent. Anyone with weapons is dangerous. They were designed to preserve the regime. What am I getting at? Folks in the chat, where am I going with this? Gee, make up, or tell me where I'm going with this.

If the freaking military was almost solely designed to preserve the regime, and, gee, what's wrong with the regime now? They're dead, yes, correct. What does that tell you about their capacity? No, Bueno. He speaks Spanish all of a sudden. They can't even do that. So why now?

Folks, obviously I have to be careful. You paid me to do a job in the FBI, so I have to speak within what's in the public domain. I think you all understand that. I'm not paid to go out there and divulge the nation's national security secrets. But some of this stuff you've seen in open source reporting and some of it's been a persistent problem that's not classified because it already happened.

Why now? First, folks, the persistent lethal plotting against political figures in the United States after Baghdadi, Soleimani, and others, the lethal, targeted attempts at assassinations in the United States, not just of political figures. I want to be clear about this, but also of Iranian dissidents. There's a case going on right now about this. It's an FBI DOJ case, obviously. The targeting of Iranian dissidents on our soil, along with political leaders

and folks who were involved in targeted strikes in Iran, is unacceptable. We cannot have this. You cannot have President Trump, Hook, Pompeo, and others. You cannot have them out there being the persistent targets of an Iranian lethal plotting effort and allow it to happen. It's going to make it really difficult for the United States government to act if the Iranians are given free rain on our soil. We've already seen this. At some point, this has to stop.

You have to tell them, you touch any of our people, there's going to be a 10x death return on what we do to you. Think about like an investment, but an investment in death. Every death you try or think you're going to try or get, we're going to give you a, 10x death return. It is the only way to mitigate this stuff. The persistent assassination plotting and lethal plotting against people in the United States who they just don't like has to stop. As Donald Trump said to ABC News, in what may be the quote of the week, they tried to get me, but I got them first. Second thing, and I'll address this with Commander Kirk Lipold. He was a commander of the USS Cole.

Tragic terror attack there back in 2000. Knows a lot about the military. Obviously, we'll address this with them later. This is not new. The Iranians, do you ever see that scene in the, you know, movie Some of All Fears? Movies not that great. It's one of those Jack Ryan movies, whatever.

But we used to put the quote on the radio show all the time, where there's an exchange of attacks by the Russians in the U.S. And the guy's arguing about a first strike. You guys, there's already been a first strike. They already hit us. Folks, there has already been a series of strikes over the course of decades against the United States. You know I am not a traditional kind of interventionist talk. I think you know that.

I ran for office in Maryland against basically the sustained presence in Iraq. I didn't think it was a great idea. That's on the record. That's documented. I put my name on a ballot and ran on it in a blue state because I did not think, that forever wars were the option. But that's not what, this is not forever. It's not even a freaking weak.

We don't have a sustained long-term military presence in Venezuela. Folks, every single thing that was told to us about Donald Trump's interventions, I'll go into this again in a little bit, from the Abraham Accords to the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv to Kedding Maduro every single time. Andrew, am I right?

World War III, World War III. World War III. It's not happened yet. So clearly someone's wrong and someone's right because it's already happened. And on the Iranians, there has already been a first strike and a second strike and a third strike.

IEDs overseas in war theaters designed by Iranian proxies, the Beirut Barracks, targeting on U.S. soil of foreign ambassadors. It's already happened. Linejad, all these kids, it's already happened.

What I'm getting at is you are perfectly entitled in the chat and elsewhere. I welcome it to say, I don't like the attacks and here's why I want to hear it. Bring it on. Let everyone in the chat argue it out. We're a republic. I love your opinion and value it. But what's not open for debate are simple facts about historical events that have already happened. You can't say, well, we shouldn't have attacked them because they've never attacked us.

They have attacked us. These Iranian proxy groups, there is a documented, objective link financially and ideologically and hierarchically through the Iranian, the heads of state and Iran, excuse me, of Iran, and the Mullahs. The Iranians have already killed Americans. That part is not open for debate. Discuss it all you want. The debate is over. So first, why now? Persistent lethal plotting and attempted assassinations.

Second, decades of terror attacks against our soldiers and U.S. citizens. Third, again, I read this in open source, just like many of you did. There was a briefing that happened. Apparently, there was an imminent ballistic missile threat against bases in our region. I'm attributed to open sourcing based on some briefings that have happened. But folks, what are we going to do? Are we going to wait for the Iranians with a stockpile of ballistic missiles and the ability to produce upwards of a hundred of a month to fire ballistic missiles at our basis and kill more? We've already had multiple U.S. casualties and death.

You're just going to wait for them, let them kill people and then respond back? So the third reason, imminent threats right now that require executive leadership and President Trump had the moose balls to do something about it. Instead of this dilly dallying around, licking his fingers, seeing where the winds are going. I was just going to play in the press and elsewhere. Again, there's already been a first and a second and a third strike. There's that VEO played before his voiceover. But you see that some video of some Tomahawk missiles that were launched.

Also, you see some of this footage from the IDF. Obviously, we did this operation in conjunction with our Israeli partners who had exquisite intelligence in the region. You're seeing some of this. Folks, they just don't have the Iranians, the military capabilities to deal with either the Israeli military, the IDF, or our military. They just don't. We completely own the skies over their country. Their Russian air defense system and everything else is just totally failed.

Here's another component of this. I don't want you to forget. Think about this. Think about the brilliance of how President Trump structured this attack. first he takes out Maduro, grabs him, he's just sitting in a U.S. prison. Maduro was a problem for a number of reasons. However, one of the big reasons is they are an enormous Venezuela, that is, obviously, they are an enormous supplier of petrochemicals and oil and energy.

Energy to enemies, they control a good portion of the U.S. Excuse me, of the world of petrochemical supply. They were trying to grab more from other countries in the region as well, water-based assets. So what does President Trump do? Takes out Maduro and does whatever he can to secure the energy supply in that region first so it doesn't go off to our enemy. See where I'm going with this? Who's one of the major energy suppliers, petrochemicals, oil, to China? Our biggest threat on the globe.

Yeah. the Iranians. China's in real trouble now. You think he did that by accident? Secure hemispheric petrochemical supplies first in Venezuela, then ice out China from Iran's oil as well by deposing the regime. None of this is by accident. This was as much a message to China that you better think twice about causing World War III. I don't know the World War III. He's trying to stop World War III from China jumping the straight in Taiwan. by ice and outdoor energy supplies. Everybody forgetting about that?

You don't think China's thinking twice right now? Shit, what do we do now? We need some oil and stuff. I want to bring up another point. There are understandably, listen to me, understandably, I'm not here to attack people on our side. That's not my job, on our side, not people faking on our side, like the Dumer class.

They're not on our side at all, never have been. They've got an agenda, and I promise it ain't yours. But there are a lot of people I respond. So one of them posts about, you know, trust Trump is not a good idea or something like that. I want to be clear. I'm not asking you to trust anybody. I'm asking you to trust results. We're only a couple of days into this operation.

There have been casualties. There has been death. There's been a more death on their side. Thank the good Lord. The Iranian regime and the hierarchy has been almost entirely decapitated. Where is that going to go? We're going to see. But folks, making comparisons to nation-building, forever wars,

and what's known as the Pottery Barn Theory, which I've cited many times, are not accurate at this stage. We're not there. We have not occupied Iran. The Pottery Barn theory is a Colin Powell-generated theory that has dominated, you know, geopolitics and warfare for the last two decades plus. It's the idea that after what happened in Iraq and a number of the failures afterwards,

we tried to nation build that if you break it, i.e. pottery barn, you own it. In other words, you attack, you own it, no matter what happens after me. President Trump is testing that. He's testing that now by saying, we don't want to own anything. He said it pretty clearly. Secretary of War Hegsa just got off the air in an amazing press conference. He did a great job with Dan Kane. They did an incredible job.

And he was very clear. He said, did you hear me? When they asked about, well, we're going to be occupying this country for something like that? You know, Iraq war analogies. We are taking out a regime that wants to kill us, had the ability to do it, has killed our people in the past, is trying to develop a nuclear weapon to kill more of us, and we got rid of them. The pottery barn theory is going to be put to the test. because President Trump doesn't want to own it.

He's been clear. It has scared people off from isolated military actions in the past. We're going to see. Folks, as I said before, we've already tried a number of different approaches through Republican and Democratic presidents and leadership in the past in this country, including the don't approach.

The don't approach, which Guy got all excited about the beginning of the show. I'm going to get to that in a second. Let me just take a quick break here. I want to get back to that and show you how there's only a couple of honest sources of truth in this. You have conservative leading cable news channels. You have conservative ballots. The liberal media changes their mind on Iran every 10 minutes.

It's an existential threat. It's not an existential threat, depending on what Trump does. I'm going to show you the videos. Hat tip maize more for some great ones. We'll get back to that in a second. A big show, a lot more to talk about. Kirk Lipol coming up later. Great analysis on naval assets in the region

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advantage of some of those available potential savings today American financing.net slash Bongino. Thanks American financing. We appreciate it. Folks, we already tried a number of approaches with Iranians who just Iranian leadership. The people are a separate story. I think we've been clear on that in the past and I will be right now. We've tried all of these approaches before. Hat tip I said this was I don't know where we saw this one but this is what is it Wall Street Aves Wall Street Aves hat tip to you we got a hat tip

This is a comparison of what you saw with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden With the weakness approach That just incentivizes further terror strikes And attacks against U.S. citizens and military members versus the Donald Trump approach That's why I said just give the guy some time Check this out

the message to Iran. Don't. What is your message to Iran in this moment? Don't. I'm going to bomb the shit out of them. It's true. I don't care. I don't care.

I play that clip for a couple of reasons. As Guy knows well, I actually sent that Donald Trump clip. I'm going to bomb the shit out of him, which is from 2016, separate earlier in the show. And then I saw that clip, Wall Street Apes had that clip up. And I thought it's even better. embedded between this Democrat sandwich of idiots, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

It's even better because there are people out there now claiming, again, you are fair to have whatever opinion you want on the military strikes in Iran, period. Chime away in the chat. But you can't deny the fact, because I've heard this often, and I think that clip immediately, I don't think I know, immediately discredited, well, Donald Trump didn't run on this stuff. Folks, that's from 2016.

Don't tell me like you were taken by, surprise. He ran against forever wars, but he senses a persistent, acute threat against the United States of America. He's given them, folks, it's 2026. Just by simple math, it's been 10 years since 2016. He's given them 10 years. There was the Biden period in between, I understand. However, it's been 10 years. It's not like the Iranian regime, even they were, there's no way they could have been caught off guard. I mean, yes, they were probably at the timing of the attack, but there's no way they didn't understand that they were under serious threat from this guy. And they still did this, double-barrel middle finger. I want you to understand that the Iranian

regime was giving zero material concessions whatsoever on their nuclear program. Do you understand that? They said, you can't enrich past this percentage, because once you hit that percentage, you can develop a nuclear weapon like that. The Iranian said, go, your yourself. Also, centrifuges. They wanted centrifuges. Well, we're not going to let you have those centrifuges because they'll help you build a nuclear weapon. We want them anyway. Then the Iranians were like, well, we want a civilian nuclear program. So the United States, Donald Trump's administration, Whitkoff and others went over and said, okay, how about we talk about a civilian program? We can even like assist you in the development. We're just not going to let you develop a weapon.

They were like, no, we still want to develop a weapon. It's not like the Iranians did a damn thing to make this problem go away. President Trump, I used to drive home on the Long Island Expressway in New York. Exit 62. He gave them 62 freaking exits to get off the highway, and they said, go yourself. Let me just throw this in there quick, because I got to tell you something. If you're the Cuban regime, I would be sitting there in a soil diaper right now, too.

Even the hill picked up on this one. If you're the Cuban higher-ups, I, listen, I'm just telling you, Laura Kelly, the Hill, Cuba faces zero hours. Trump Rubio put the squeeze on the regime there. You're the Cubans. I don't know, man. I'm making sure I got my, what are those adult diapers in? Depends or something?

You better depend on those depends. This guy's not screwing around. I think he's been crystal clear. He's given these people who are a threat to us, both in the hemisphere and out, an option. You can stop effing around. or here's what's going to happen. And it happened.

And now they're dead. They didn't have to be dead. They could have negotiated in good faith. They chose not to. One of the purposes of this show early on has been to give you some objective truth whether you like it or not. Then we can talk it out on our side.

Fair enough. But folks, relying on left-wing media for analysis, it is a total waste of time. These scumbags in the liberal media lie to you. I get it. Captain Avi is. However, it's important you understand this because we have some Democrats who watch this show. I know I get their hate mail. And sometimes we actually convert them. It happens. I always bring receipts. The media can't get their message straight. You're going to

see people like, you know, Jen Saki, who it's hilarious. Like, I go back to my show. The liberal media loses their mind. I can't believe it. I was the deputy director of the FBI. I'm back doing his show. One, I promised me a year, crushed it over the year, did what we had to do, came back to my show. They don't care that Jen Saki's over there at MSNOWW. By the way, here's a clip of Jen Saki when she was the White House press secretary talking about how immediate the Iranian threat is. Watch MSNOWW change their perspective on it now, only because it's Donald Trump who engaged in this military action as the commander-in-chief.

Check this out. Iran has rapidly accelerated its nuclear program and reduced cooperation with international inspectors. Their breakout period is down from about a year, which is what we knew it was during the deal, to just a few weeks or a last. Hat tip, again, the great maze more on X for Polinawan. What is it? They can't get their message straight.

This one's even better. Another maze clip here. This is Aaron Burnett in a series of three separate clips. If you're listening on Apple and Spotify, it's three separate cuts from three separate times. Where the Iranians are an imminent threat, they're not an imminent threat, the nuclear program has been taken care of it.

they'll never give you the straight story. I absolutely adore the fact that I have an audience that is always skeptical and says don't trust anybody trust results. I adore that. Me included. I love that. Blibs, no such thing. A bunch of stupid, Borg-like automaton-like robots who think with a hive mind who can't

get their freaking story straight. You want perspective and you're going to them. You get nothing but bullshit. Check this out. This timeline of Iran being a few weeks away from a nuclear bomb. is in direct contradiction to CNN's reporting. According to U.S. intelligence assessments, Iran is three years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon if they wanted to.

So the facts on Iran getting a nuclear weapon do not bear out the claim at the heart of what has put the world on the verge of world war. Iran's uranium may still be intact and in Iranian control, 408 kilograms of it. Now, enough theoretically, according to experts, to make nine nuclear weapons. Only set back the Iranian nuclear program by months. We got to call it like it is. It's a big deal. Sources tell CNN there is no U.S. intelligence that Iran is building missiles that could soon hit the United States.

That's a really big deal. Folks, it's exhausting, frankly, keeping up with this. And I know it's a persistent theme of my show, finding honest sources and calling out dishonest brokers of bullshit. However, it's important we do that because I don't want you to mistakenly tune into one of these channels, one of these days and think you're getting some objective truth. I've given you the upsides, the downsides. I'm going to give you more in a couple minutes. I have concerns.

Look, they're right here in the book. Concerns. Legitimate concerns about going forward what could happen. And I think the president would be candid about you and tell you we share the same concerns. I know Pete just said the same thing. But if you're going to these people to get any objective truth, I'm telling you this.

Having seen classified briefings and sat in them for a year behind the scenes, these people don't know shit. They don't know anything. Zero. They have this. I used to know this journalist guy. I wrote about it in one of my books. And they have this thing where they go out and they see quote machines.

I saw this Washington Times piece earlier by it's Kerry Pickett piece. I hope I get to it. It's the same thing. You have a preordained conclusion. and you go to someone who's going to tell you what you already want to write rather than going someone to give you the objective truth. They're called quote machines. They do this all the time.

Hey, Trump took out the Iranian leadership. We need to frame this as being shitty. You got someone? Let's go to this guy. He's already told someone else that's shitty. What about someone else who has an alternate perspective? Let's leave that out. These people don't know shit.

I don't understand why if you call yourself a journalist. You're supposed to be put on some objective truth-based pedestal because you've titled yourself that? These people don't know anything. Zero. It's all opinion-based bullshit where they seek out people to verify their priors. Trust results. If this goes badly, if this breaks bad over the course of the next four to five years, because it's going to take an enormous amount of time to judge in total what happened here.

There's going to be a thousand white papers and academics and bullshit media people who are going to have a thousand different opinions on this thing, and you're going to hear about it. It's a free country. It's only been a couple of days. Folks, I mentioned this earlier in the show. Predictions at this stage, at this stage of the anti-Trump TDS crowd and the DUMers,

where everything sucks all the time have been wrong. Call me crazy. Am I right or am I right? I went through, let's just go to a couple. Maduro in Venezuela. This timeline is four or five years long. We'll gauge what happened there, success or failure.

So I'm very clear. I'm not willing to say, oh, absolutely, totally. Mission accomplished. I'm not saying any of that. I'm just saying we're now a couple months past it. It was the last thing that happened when I, my prior jobs, the day I, the weekend I left, that was the last thing I dealt with. We go and grab Maduro.

The anti-Trump crowd told you, oh, my gosh, regional instability, World War III, whatever. None of that's happening yet. None of that's happening. So you were wrong up to this point, correct? Think about what happened in the Middle East. We moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in Trump 45. Oh my gosh, the threats of World War II, the global apocalypse, nuclear annihilation. Folks, none of that happened.

None of that happened. I think we have a fair timeline now to gauge that. None of that happened either. Trump is crazy. I can't believe he moved the embassy. Even Republican presidents didn't want to do it. Yeah, because a lot of them didn't have the balls. They just didn't.

Trump wrapped up their business. And now we are on that four to five year timeline. We can pretty much say your predictions about that particular incident were freaking wrong. Just be honest. Trump takes out Soleimani, al-Baghdadi. World War III, that didn't happen either. It said, tell me I'm wrong. Did I miss something?

Was there a World War I missed? Midnight Hammer. They're taking out of the Iranian nuclear enterprise. I thought that was going to result in World War III. What happened there? With the Abraham Accords, oh, we can't sign trade agreements with Middle Eastern partners and Israel and be responsible for a referee in that.

The United States will be a terror attack. That didn't happen either. Give the man a chance. I'm not asking you, I cannot be clear about this to trust anybody. I'm asking you to trust results. And when you say A is, when A happens, move the embassy, B is going to happen, World War III. And that doesn't happen. Your stated results didn't happen.

You were wrong. Folks, a lot of these people don't know shit. They don't. Now, I do have some very serious concerns going forward. And I'm sure that these are shared by people in the law enforcement and military infrastructure in the United States government. Folks, one of them, we're living in a different world now. It is now very asymmetrically cheap for enemies of the United States via drone warfare, explosives technology, to engage in, you know, financial asymmetric terror warfare against the United States.

I say financial because you can put on a $500 drone explosives that takes a $100,000 missile sometimes to take out. The technology is getting better, getting better, and we're getting there. But the availability of cheap drone technology is going to change warfare going forward. And that's why I say to you, give it some time. We're going to see what happens. Look at what happened in the airport in Kuwait. The Iranians just did, and basically an extinction burst of behavior. This is what they know they were extinguished.

The Iranian leadership is now dead. So they said, basically screw it. We're just going to go bomb everyone all the time everywhere. You see the aftermath there. Here's another thing that we're, it's just an airport in Kuwait, hat tip, Afai-Tooks Network via X. You can check that out yourself. What worries me here is when it comes to the purchase of explosives,

traditional explosives and explosive precursors, There are well-defined global tripwires. If someone goes in and tries to purchase, you know, a large quantity of explosive precursors, there are a number of very sophisticated programs and tripwires, you know, where people will generally notify. And especially if it's a buyer they haven't seen before. I think it's fairly obvious.

Folks, with drones, that's more difficult. We're going to have to work on that moving forward. is developing a global information network on drones where we respect civil liberties in the United States, but also we kind of heighten our alert towards suspicious purchases because this is going to create a real problem going forward. You saw this strike in Dubai with these Iranian drones.

This is not that expensive to cause this type of chaos, but it is expensive to interdict it. You have that video from Dubai? this is Dubai. I mean, Dubai insurance costs in Dubai now we're going to get really expensive, really quick in the UAE because they were, you know,

building out what they thought was a business safe environment for folks. Now you got this stuff going on. The Iranians know what they're doing. They're going to cause chaos. If they're going to go down, everybody's going down with him. Total extinction burst.

You see this video in Bahrain. The Iranians know exactly what they're doing. So my biggest concern, out of this is the growing, evolving drone warfare environment that involves financial difficulties, technological problems, and a life cycle. You know, missile technology is slow to develop. Drone technology, two weeks to a month, they figure out new ways to do it. You interdict one method, they jump to another one. Another concern I want to bring up, and this directly involves, you know, my prior experience in both jobs.

Folks, obviously the Iranians are going to do whatever they can to make sure not just their Middle Eastern, co-located countries suffer too, Bahrain, Qatar, and elsewhere because they want to bring everyone in this. They're going to try to do their best, obviously, to incentivize attacks on U.S. soil. I got a ton of questions this weekend about things like sleeper cells. I'll address what I can here.

I just want to play this segment quick. This is David Spunt on Fox about Cash, the director of the FBI, obviously putting out a statement about how the FBI is on alert. I'll explain to you by open source-wise what that means. I'm not trying to, I don't want to say put anyone at ease, but I want to just reduce everybody's anxiety a little bit on how this actually works. Check this out.

While Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Rubio and the chairman of the joint, Chiefs and others have been briefing the President here at Mar-Lago in Palm Beach, FBI director, Cash Patel, putting the counterintelligence teams with the Bureau on high alert across the country. Patel, along with AG Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristy Nome, updating senior leadership at the White House on matters keeping our homeland safe. Now, what Patel did means that, according to a law enforcement source, the Bureau has increased surveillance of priority suspects. FBI Director Patel posting online. We ask everyone to please report anything that may seem suspicious to law enforcement. You can call 1-800 call FBI or submit a tip

at tips.fbi.gov. Thank you to all the military service members, federal partners, and law enforcement who continue to put mission first. So again, I'm not trying to in any way downplay the threat. I just told you that it is a very real threat. However, what I consider to be, in addition to the possibility of sleeper cell elements, a co-equal threat is the threat of incidents like this, our decapitation of the Iranian regime, encouraging lunatics who are here who don't share our values, who may have been brought to the country, some legally, self-futable, radicalizing. We've seen this over and over in a number of terror attacks. I call it the Bourbon Street problem. I used to bring this up with FBI leadership all the time. All of the day,

they probably got tired. They got, like, I get it, the Bourbon Street problem. I'll explain you what I mean in a second, but I'm going to give you both sides. There is obviously, so one side, there is a threat, and it's a very real threat that self-radicalized lunatics will use this event. We'll have the Bourbon Street problem. Also with sleeper cells, I'm going to talk about. that in a second. But these things are threats. But I want to give you the good news first. We have a couple of things working for us in our favor. I'm not telling you it eliminates all the threat, but this is the stuff that happened, you know, when I was there that's now in the open arena and you can read about it yourself. Folks, the summer heat violent crime initiative

where we locked up tens of thousands of criminals, violent criminals. You may say, what does that have to do with the counter-terror threat in the Iranians. Folks, criminals tend to hang out with other criminals. It's not a mystery. It's not, you know, you don't have to watch a bunch of Netflix spy stories to figure that out. Criminals don't hang out in choir groups. They don't hang out with the, uh, the Tupperware club.

Criminals, whether terrorists or not, have to, they have to work with other criminals, whether they're cells or otherwise. And in an enhanced surveillance technology environment, it is not as easy as it was 10 or 15 years ago to coordinate attacks anymore. It's not by any means impossible. I'm not diminishing the possibility of any organized group. But as you saw with the breakup of that operation out in California, we were involved in a couple of months, I think it was like three, four months ago when I was there. I was up late on a weekend night with that one. It's not easy to coordinate this stuff anymore. Not impossible, but not easy. I bring up summer heat because we locked up so many

violent criminals and did so many briefings, whether it was through summer heat, whether it was through the deportation initiatives and our cooperation and emergency removal operations of illegals, a lot of these were interviews as well. And a lot of good, solid intelligence was developed that would not have been there if you didn't speak to bad guys. You arrested who knew about other bad guys. You get what I'm saying? President Trump's order to go get these shitheads off the street, these violent criminals, produced an incredible body of intelligence we would not have had under Biden's FBI. That happened. I know I was there. We have that going for us. Second, the prior leadership of the FBI had focused on a lot of this agave and I'm not telling you

again that there isn't a real threat from folks who were out. They had definitely misallocated resources in a failed opportunity cost manner towards threats that I believe were exaggerated on their end in lieu of threats that are very real Islamo fascist radicals left wing motivated terror groups we threw that out folks again I know the bullshit nothing's happening crying you can go yourself you don't know what you're talking about you didn't live it you didn't do shit all you did is talk on Twitter. We were there. Every single day, a new reform was initiated in the National Security Division space between counterintelligence and counterterror. That's why arrests were up so dramatically in the counter espionage space and elsewhere. I'm not telling you this is going to solve all the

problems. I'm just telling you the FBI now, now as it stands under this director and this president, is focused on threats in a properly triaged way. The third thing, we have going for us. President Trump has locked down the border. That is an indisputable fact. Folks, this is what, this is kind of the good news, bad news story. The good news is the border is secure. It is very difficult to secrete into the country bad actors, a lot more difficult than it was under the open border policies of President Joe Biden. The downside is Biden's open border led in probably anywhere from 15 to 20 million people into the country. As I said on Laura Ingram's show on, was it Saturday night I did a hit on Fox, had a tie on, which was kind of weird.

I was at a charity event, but still managed to get the hit in. Folks, when you let 15, 20 million people into the country, it is the old Rumsfeld unknown, unknown that bothers me. You don't know who's here if they're gotaways because they got away. You don't know. So I'm not going to be the one to tell you, oh, that threat of cells is non-existent. I'm just telling you that we were on it. we had shaken every tree and there is a let's say a laundry list of things that happen that are

planned out in advance when fire alarms get pulled does that make sense i came in and i think week one or so i said you know what happens if there's an you know a threat of an imminent terror strike like what what's the the go by list of items i want to see every single thing and go through it there is a laundry list of things that happen when the commander-in-chief makes the call. That stuff is happening now. Now, I said I would mention the Bourbon Street problem because I want to talk about my concerns as well.

The attack in New Orleans on Bourbon Street, a guy turns his vehicle down the street, mows down people, you know about it. It was really, what was it? It was a ball game happening. It was just a disastrous tragedy. I brought up the Bourbon Street problem probably every day I was there. And the Bourbon Street problem is this.

Yes, the idea of a cell in the United States is always something. The FBI is going to be concerned about everyone. The president is one. We talked about it all the time. What bothers me as much are individual actors who use something like this to radicalize themselves and then they go and make a right or left turn down a street like Bourbon Street and they kill a bunch of people. What's the answer to that?

The answer to that is you can't make right turns illegal or left turns illegal. You can't make vehicles illegal. And it's the same way the Bourbon Street problem applies to drones too. Drones are here. They're never going away. They're the transportation vehicles of the future for people, logistics, everything else. They're not going away. So if you can't make them illegal and they're going to be used as vehicles for attack,

just like regular land base, four-wheel vehicles, cars, automobiles will be. then what do you do? Can't make cars illegal? Can't make right turns illegal. Can't make drones illegal either. Folks, the only answer is information warfare. And I promise you during our time there, not a day went by, we did not have some meeting about this.

How to within constitutional guidelines, that's number one. You trade liberty for security. You will have neither. And that is a fact. And I promise you that liberty component was involved that's the first thing in every meeting. However, the enemy has communication tools and technologies right now

that we were forced to adapt and adapt quickly. And in my opinion, the Biden-led FBI had not done that. A lot of the agents pushed for it and were met with a number of different obstacles. Information warfare is the only way. If you don't intercept this plot before it happens, you can't make a right turn on Bourbon Street.

You can't make it illegal. You missed. You see that. drones. So I'm very worried about the self-radicalization problem. So I'm going to be talking about I'm going to be on Hannity tonight. I'll be talking about a lot of this during the week, obviously within proper boundaries. I just want to assure you, I'm not telling you to lower your guard or anything like that. There is a battle plan going forward. And a lot of these scenarios about what ifs have already been discussed. Thank you to 87,000 people here. This is why I bring up all the time,

folks, I am very concerned about the Dumerism. Not so much the welcome analytical process within our party. Again, disregard the left. I showed you the Aaron Burnett, Jen Socky clip. They're just lying to you all the time. I welcome the analytical process within our party where people question a lot of this stuff. That's okay, it's good, it's welcome.

That's what our party is. We're not freaking robots. What bothers me is the Dumer class with an agenda that I promise you, if this did not involve Israel, Eastern Partners and elsewhere. It would be a totally different debate. We're less than a week into this.

We're not even a couple of days into this. And already you've got the Duma class. Look it up, folks. You think I'm making this up. Trump's a traitor. We should impeach Trump. You don't know. Are you serious?

By the way, look at the resumes of some of these idiots commenting on that. They have absolutely no experience in law enforcement, intel, the military, the G, elsewhere. They have no, why would you, they have zero experience. They know shit. Why would you take their advice on anything? And I get really ticked off with the Dumer class too on everything that's happened during our time at the FBI where Cash and I spent the, basically the entire year preparing for

moments like this. Here's Wall Street Journal piece again. You know, are you guys going to measure results? Are you just going to comment on like, Cash Patel is testing FBI norms? The articles, another ridiculous piece. about how like, hey, man, listen, Cash didn't wear, he wore a hoodie once overseas. This is like getting the piece. Are you even remotely concerned about what's going on at the FBI, results-wise?

Wait, bring that back in a second, the other one. I just want to talk about this piece for a thing. Are you concerned about that at all? Total complete distraction stuff. Here's Washington Times and Kerry Pickett piece. Where, again, I don't understand, like, she writes two separate things. It seems all the time. turmoil and FBI amid firings by Patel, whistleblower action, Olympics.

Now you're upset about cash firing people who are not aligned with the mission? I thought he wasn't firing enough people. What freaking story is it? I don't understand like the doom and gloom crowd. What story is it? What bothers you more that he's firing people who he believes did not meet FBI standards for employment or that he didn't fire enough people? Because you seem, these folks seem to write the complete opposite story on any given day.

It's almost like they have an agenda. And the quote machines they use are completely biased folks who are Ray Comey-era people, who were just pissed off and don't like this guy in his pace of change. Patel, it's such freaking bullshit, man. I'm going to tell you something. I just get freaking furious dealing with the whole thing. Because if it's all bad all the time and you're never going to discuss the results and you're just going to engage an endless subjective opinion about,

I don't like the sweatery wore or anything like that. How are you going to give people the proper inputs to gauge an output and give them the ability to form a well-reasoned decision on outputs on what you think of the people who are doing the job now? Bullshit. I want to get to a couple more things. There was a lot going on. I got Commander Kirk Lipold.

He was a commander of the USS Cole, which was the subject of a tragic terror attack back in October 2000. I remember it well. I got up in early morning. I was headed into work. I was sitting on a treadmill, and I couldn't believe the news. So he is a really brilliant military analyst coming up in a little bit. We're going to talk about a lot of this, a lot of what happened over the weekend.

But I had a couple more things I wanted to get to as well. There were a lot more news items that peaked over the course of the weekend and on Friday. And I don't want to leave him on the table because there is a lot going on. They're really important things. We still got things like the SAVE Act. We have voter fraud issues. So this happened this past week while we're on the subject of the SAVE Act and voter fraud.

You know, I thought, again, the liberal media who can't get their stories straight on what's going on with the Iranians and the nuclear threat, I thought they told us that voter fraud was a non-issue. Did you miss this story out of Alabama now? Not only will the liberal media lunatics, the same ones I just played for you

tell you that voter fraud is a fairy tale, the degree of it is overstated, it's almost never decided a race. Really? Is that a fact? because this story happened in Alabama, and I'm not going to let you miss it on a Monday, even though we got a lot going on. Because I'm getting tired of hearing from these lunatics

how voter fraud's not a thing. You know, mail-in ballots aren't an issue, even though the New York Times in 2012 wrote a whole article about mail-in ballots being an issue. This happened out in Alabama. Can someone on the left please explain to me how this happened that voter fraud is not a thing? Check this out.

The court documents filed today in Monroe County. Reveal a grand jury indicted 67 years. year old Sharon Denson, 46-year-old Samantha Kyle's, and 59-year-old Sarah Bennett for illegally filling out and submitting ballots during the Frisco City Municipal Election in August of 2025. Those same records show Denson changed seven people's ballots. Kiles altered four people's ballots, and Bennett changed nine people's ballots. The criminal charges follow a civil lawsuit that was filed last September, by former Frisco City Mayor Alan Lang, who lost the August election. In it, Lang is challenging the vote count, saying 131 illegal absentee ballots were counted,

which changed the results. I thought that never happened. I thought that never happens. I thought that never happens. Can you explain to me again why we shouldn't be concerned about the SAVE Act and voter ID and voter fraud and voter integrity measures? when you're telling us it doesn't happen and a news report, Alabama, does it happen again? Here's another one for you.

Here's the Michigan Secretary of State. Now, listen, a little disclaimer, is not a language disclaimer. Guy is a perfectionist with the audio because some of you listen on Apple and Spotify, audio only, so if you're not watching the lips, it's hard to hear. So it's not the greatest audio ever.

If you're watching on Rumble, you shouldn't have any problems. However, here's the Michigan Secretary of State. Asked a simple question about illegals on the ballot, basically non-citizens. Why can't you just answer? answer the question. If it's not a problem, then it's not a problem. Check this out. Can you assure Michiganers that there are no longer any non-citizen voters on the voter roll?

We've actually done a lot, frankly, more than any other state to ensure the driving down. We need to be able to see everything you're going to ensure the lack of see our lists. And we talked a link about that as well. So are there any other non-citizen voters on the voter roll? Certainly, you're probably a question to make sure. I understand all you need to know if the audio is not great there. We understand that. However, I want to put that in there because if there's none on the voter rolls,

you clean them up, then just answer the question. Why can't you answer the question? Folks, you combine these two things, two things I'm about to talk about here quickly. And the MAGA movement will dominate U.S. politics for the next two decades. Because we're on the right side of it. The SAVE Act, which will implement voter integrity measures and voter ID, which will prevent cheating like you just saw, although the Democrats tell you it didn't happen, and a rebalancing of the media environment.

The media environment right now, which I showed you, especially on the left, is hapless. I absolutely resolutely support freedom of the speech, a free press. You're free to say what you want. But you're also free to have an opinion in the media opinion space, and the opinion space and media, which is most of it on the left, is dominated by liberal lunatics who never tell you the truth. That's why they're freaking out over this, over at CNN, about the acquisition by a non-liberal lunatic and this, you know, this Warner Paramount potential symbiotic business relationship. CNN people are freaking out because Larry Ellison may get control of CNN and he is not

a liberal lunatic. Why are they freaking out? Because they don't want a rebalancing of the media. You combine a rebalancing of the media ecosystem with the implementation of the SAVE Act. The Democrats have a tough time winning an election anytime going forward because their bullshit will be exposed. Remember, by the way, the meltdown when Elon bought X? You remember that one? Why was there a meltdown? Because the left had used X under Dorsey's leadership in the past to segregate and silo out conservative ideas and make sure that they isolated you from the truth.

so you'd never see the truth. So a lot of numb nuts continue to vote Democrat because they never got the other side of the argument. Here's a quick clip from when Elon bought X and the freak out that happened there too. Check this out. Twitter will no longer enforce a policy designed to counteract COVID misinformation

on this platform. Doctors suggest to the Washington Post that the change is a huge step backwards and will leave to more deaths. So now Twitter's going to be flooded with COVID disinformation? Yeah. You don't have rules.

You don't. You don't have rules, and that's just the way it is, and therefore you're not in trouble if you don't find it. And that's more problematic when it comes to child safety or a child pornography content and things like that. And that's where it gets concerning, I think, and COVID misinformation. Twitter has now purged everyone in charge of protecting children and child abuse content. And then in the delusional world, which Musk appears obsessed with placating and pleasing Planet Q, you've got this fiction. fantasy world of pedophiles when in the real world, Elon Musk is making Twitter far more hospitable to them.

What's going on? I find Elon Musk reprehensible. And frankly, the advertisers is going to have the last say on this. You can't have a major brand in this country and be putting your ads on platforms like this that are unsafe for children that are spreading misinformation of COVID. It's actually killing people. The killing people stuff, they are so freaked out in a rebalancing of the media. ecosystem in conjunction with the SAVE Act because their bullshit's going to be exposed.

They've also fed you a number of bullshit lines about the whole folks. They are working with, listen to me here. I should have put this in the last segment about the FBI with the freaking doomers who drive me crazy. They drive me freaking bananas because they're just full of shit. They're constantly telling you nothing is happening and then something happens and then you move on to the next thing they tell you didn't happen. And then that happens too.

Remember the Minnesota when they burst into the church, the Don Lemon crowd? They burst into the church. all these innocent folks were in there praying, getting accosted by a bunch of crazed lunatics trying to interrupt their freedom, their constitutional freedom to practice their religion. Remember when they told you, oh, nothing's going to happen, the Dumers and the Libera,

nothing's going to happen, nothing's going to happen. Oh, look, now something happened. Then all of a sudden they move on to the next thing they say is not going to happen. You ever notice that? How the Dumer class, no matter what happens, they always have to shit on the administration, I don't know if you missed this on Friday, but the thing you said didn't happen actually happen.

Any corrections for any of that stuff? Check this out. The DOJ has put together a superseding indictment modifying this case. MSNAL legal affairs reporter Fallon Gallagher is here with us. What are the details, Fallon? Yeah, Anna, we have very few details at this point because this indictment remains under seal, but we know that the DOJ has to return a new superseding indictment

in the case involving Don Lemon because the DOJ filed a motion asking the judge to unseal that. So we have yet to see the contents of this indictment. So we can't speak specifically to how it's changed yet, but we have a few hints. We can see online that the docket has changed. The case name has changed from USV Levy Armstrong, of course, that first co-defendant in the case to USV sealed. And so that implies that there may be a number of new co-defendants who have been arrested in connection to that church protest who are added to this case. We don't know if the charges have changed, but we would imagine that this case should be unsealed very soon.

What's interesting here is that our affiliate care in Minneapolis is reporting that nine new people have been arrested in connection to that church protest. So it could be that they're adding those nine new defendants to this case. But at this point, you know, we don't know. What's really notable here, though, is that this new superseding indictment comes after the judge denied the government's request to make this a complex case because there were so many co-defendants. There are nine original defendants in this case. So if they add nine new additional defendants, that makes us very thorny. I thought, I thought nothing was going to, I don't understand. I thought nothing was going to happen.

You see why these bullshit dumer pieces, they're only meant to put a black cloud over the MAGA movement because some of these people, whether pseudojournalists or other bullshit artists, I'm telling you they have an agenda. They are not out there searching for truth. They have a preexisting narrative in their head. I want to make sure in 2028,

certain people have no chance at an avenue to the presidency. I want my person in there. So what I have to do is I have to implant early, a black cloud mentality, that nothing is happening so that we can use it against said people later. It's clear as day. Once you see it, you'll never unsee it. Because there's no search for truth at all. Nothing's going to happen in Minnesota.

Well, actually, what are 39 now? Indictments and the Bureau investigation with the DOJ. Oh, well, okay, that happened. Well, nothing else going to happen tomorrow. and then when the other thing happens tomorrow, because the justice process takes time, then they just move on to the next thing. That doesn't strike you as odd.

There's never any walkback. There's never any, hey, okay, well, I got to be accountable too. Maybe I should correct what I said before. It is none of that. Here's the tell. The tell is that Washington Times article I told you about. where the same people will write about one issue in two different ways depending on the day.

Some of the same folks out there in this whole media space. They'll attack the leadership of the Bureau or the Trump administration for not moving fast enough. And then when they move, they'll call someone who go, hey, can you find a way to shit on them for moving too fast? Yeah, sure, no problem. Which one's true? Moving too fast, moving too slow? What is it? Just tell the truth, man.

Nothing's ever happened. And it happens, then they move on. I'm going to take a break in a minute, and I'm going to get to Commander of the USS Cole, Kirk Lipol. We're going to talk about, again, what happened over the weekend. But folks, a couple of things,

I just want to make sure, you know, you don't forget. I am not asking you, listen to me, beam in, please. I am not asking you to trust anybody. Stop. Stop saying that. Our government was not built on trust. It was built on accountability and results. That's what a representative democracy is.

We are a republic. We choose representatives in the executive legislative branch. We choose them and they go enact our popular will if we vote and they do what we say or what we want if you have that ability to do that. Sometimes we lose elections and we lose that ability because the psychos take. over. But in this representative democracy, we don't build it around trust. I'm not asking you that. I'm telling you that President Trump has finished business that has been going on in the United States through Republican and Democrat presidents since I was born in 1974 since I'm a little boy

since the takeover of the Iranian embassy, you know, 47 years ago. He stopped it. He put these people to death using the most powerful military in the world. I'm not asking you to trust anything. I'm just saying to you the responsible thing to do is to give it some time. It's a longer horizon, but even in the short term, give it two or three weeks. We see what happens and we reevaluate

just like the president's doing. He is not a pottery barn theory guy. He's throwing that out the window. He does not subscribe to this theory that we have to own anything. He knows the world's, changes in moments like that. And would you rather have the death to America guy in charge

or take your chances with someone else before they have their finger on a nuclear button as they try to rebuild their nuclear program? Even Playbook recognized it this morning. Politico. Roe v. Wade, Trump's appointees. Embassy being moved to Jerusalem. Trump.

Abraham Accords. Trump. Maduro in a prison. Trump. Ayatollah. Dead. Trump. Give it some time.

Give it some time. All right, quick break here. And then I've got some great analysis coming up for you here. You're not going to want to miss this interview. Folks have always thought censorship is destructive. It'll destroy our republic if we let that cancer fester. Rumble wallets away here. It's happening everywhere.

The censorship is still there. Many platforms are controlling the narrative again, deciding what you see and what you hear. We've got to fight back. So I've always stood with Rumble. You know, I've been an investor there. The only platform that's consistently stood for free speech. I've got the receipts over time.

Been under attack for a long time by global sensors everywhere. Rumble's taken the fight to the financial world with Rumble wallet, a wallet they can't cancel, freeze, or control. No banks, no middlemen, just your money and your freedom and liberty. With Rumble wallet, you can tip creators and tip the shows, show included. instantly, no fees, no waiting weeks to get paid. You can also buy and save digital assets like Bitcoin, Tether Gold, and now USAT Tether's brand new U.S. regulated stable coin.

Tether gold is real gold on the blockchain, actual gold bars you can own. USAT keeps your money steady and protected from inflation, all without relying on banks. So let's take control back. Do it today. Don't trust the sensors out there. Go to wallet.rumbl.com or search rumble wallet in your app store, download it, open your account, move your money where it belongs in your hands. Stay away from the censors.

Don't trust these people. Wallet.rundrumbl.com or search the rumble wallet in your app store, download it, open the account, move your money where it belongs. Like I said, back in your hands. Rumble wallet's a technology provider only and not a custodial service. See terms at wallet.rumbull.com. Really honored to have on the show today, the commander of the USS Cole, which suffered a tragic terror attack. I remember well, all too well, in October of 2000. Kirk Lippold, sir, thank you very much for spending some time with us.

We appreciate it. Thank you, Dan. Wonderful to be on the show. Sir, we were chatting a little bit earlier about what we were going to discuss on the program. And you had mentioned not only were you the commander of the coal when it was tragically attacked, but also for the those out there saying about the Iran strikes, you know, that the preemption or the predication wasn't properly there, you have some also additional tragic experience in Beirut where an Iranian proxy group killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers, something this generation I hope remembers. I know I do.

Absolutely. I graduated from the Naval Academy in 1981 and in early 1983. I was on a tank landing ship supporting the Marine artillery battery above the Beirut Airport as we were part of the multinational peacekeeping force. And I went downtown for a tour with the Marines and was exchanged money in the embassy. That was only a few days before Hezbollah blew the face off killing 17 Americans and number dear to my heart on USS Cole. And then tragically that fall, I lost the Naval Academy classmate, Dave Nairn, in the Beirut barracks bombing. So Iran has been killing, Americans for decades. And for those that sit there and say, we didn't have justification for doing this, we shouldn't have done it. How about all the IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq that killed hundreds of

Americans there? And my only question to people like Senator Kane and others that are trying to carry this banner about the Constitution, what's the number? Seriously, what's the number? How many Americans have to die before you're going to be willing to do something about it? Well, guess what I'm. The time is now and President Trump is doing it. He has been the first president in the generation. I started off the show today talking about, sir, how President Trump has cleaned up decades of unfinished business, whether politically on the Roe v. Wade side, it's not the subject of this conversation, whether it was dealing with Chavez and Maduro and the communist regime in our hemisphere, whether it was dealing with the Ayatollah and their constant death to America,

and not only threats, but action, as you precisely indicated, he has cleaned up just decades of unfinished business from leaders in both parties who weren't able to get it done. That's exactly accurate. I wanted to get to this because you were, obviously, as I said, commander of the USS Cole. What does it look like? Walk our audience through kind of the behind the scenes.

You're on the Ford or the Lincoln, whether in the med or right off in the Gulf. And you're sitting there for three weeks to a month under the CIC Commander-in-Chief's orders. You have a battle plan. It's obviously not ad hoc, and you know what's going to happen. But what happens the moment go-time? When you get that order from the Commander-in-Chief on down,

it's time to go, walk us through what that looks like from the naval perspective. Well, from the naval perspective, I think, like it's anyone that's going to go into combat. You're anticipating, you are leaning forward, you have trained, you're ready for it, but you also have that cold pit in your stomach because you're about to go risk your life. And when that moment comes, what happens is you calm down. It's almost like you become focused because you realize, okay, it's now a mission. I need to go execute it to the best of my abilities. Yes, I am willing to sacrifice my life for the sake of my fellow Americans

and the national security interests of my country. And it's amazing. you become somewhat calm, you're focused, and you know that you've got a job to do, and your total being focuses on those moments when you're out there doing that job, because it is your life on the line, and you want to make sure that you do it well, and when you trap aboard the aircraft carrier or you finish with whatever mission you have, there's a sense of satisfaction, and then guess what? You get ready for the next mission.

You get briefed and you build that focus back up again. to go do that sorty, risk your life, but know that you're doing it for the right reason, and best of all, you're doing it for our fellow Americans. Give us an idea comparison-wise. Our Navy is obviously the finest in the world. That's an objective statement of truth based on power, weaponry, ships, ship capacity, technology. We all understand that. Every enemy's dangerous.

As long as you have one gun left on a boat, you can still kill people, fairly obvious. The Iranians have done a lot of damage with swift boats and some explosives. However, the Iranian Navy, which we did significant damage to, is thoroughly threatening and Iranian terror leaders over there are threatening to mine the strait to basically disrupt world traffic through via water. But give us an idea the Iranian Navy compared to the U.S. Navy. This is obviously night and day, not to diminish the threat,

but comparisons and objective truth do matter. specifically designed for regional power projection. The Iranians for decades have practiced what they needed to do that should they be attacked, their job is now to block the Strait of Hormuz and cut off the world's oil supply coming from the Middle East. So when we go in there, number one, first thing we want to do is degrade, if not take out their complete command and control structure next to what we're doing, target the leadership that can actually order the deployment of those forces and do what we were doing starting yesterday and we'll continue for the next several days. And that's going to be take out the vessels that can actually get underway, take out the Iranian's

ability to project power anywhere coming off of their shores that might threaten the shipping in the Strait of Hormuz or elsewhere in the Persian Gulf Gulf or the Gulf of Oman. We're talking to the former commander of the USS Cole, Kirk Lipold. Sir, you know, when I entered into duty early on as an agent, the Secret Service had responsibility for a lot of the electronic crimes that we had the task force and things like that. And obviously with the experience in the FBI decades later, cyber warfare is evolved even from the time, you know,

you were patriotically serving your country in the United States Navy as commander of the coal. But those cyber weapons now, the United States is a world leader. Now we have rivals, obviously, with China and Russia who are not to be slept on at all. However, the United States technological capacities leads ahead of everyone else. We're at the stage of warfare now,

aren't we, where, I don't know, 10, 15, 20% of the battle is going to be determined before the first Tomahawk has even launched or the first sortie due to cyber's ability to shut down command, control, and communication, correct? Absolutely. And that's what we want to leverage to our advantage is to be able to minimize the amount of defenses

that are going to be coming against our forces as we go in, whether they're aircraft, Tomahawk missiles, you want to make sure that their air defense systems are confused because what you're trying to do is create that small gap in time that is now going to allow us to get in and strike first before they have an opportunity to perceive what's going on, to be able to react to it. And then by then, let's hope the bomb's gone off and that's what we do.

So it's trying to build that small, in time that allows our forces to strike first and eliminate the threat. Talking to Kirk Lipold, former commander, the USS Cole. Sir, this is a test. I had mentioned this earlier in the show. The Colin Powell pottery barn theory, which is, I've addressed many times in my show, which has dominated geopolitics and warfare in the United States for a long time. The idea, if you go into a country and quote, break it, you own it, you know, where the party barn comes from. However, this is a real test.

Donald Trump does not subscribe to that. His foreign policy is not about forever wars. It's not about, you know, sitting there and taking over a country trying to build democracies. He's a transactional guy. You know, they want to kill us, death to America. We're going to kill you first. Maduro is, you know, wants to kill us and wants to dominate in our hemisphere via communism. Well, you're going to go and we're going to go get you.

This is a real test of that moment, though, correct? I mean, that has dominated our politics for a long time, but Donald Trump is definitely not a pottery barring guy. He doesn't plan on anything long term. He's been pretty clear on this. Absolutely, Dan. When you really look at it, what President Trump did is before we even started to build up of forces over there, we already worked with the Israelis, had people on the ground.

For example, we were flowing the satellite connections to be able to give the, you know, the Starlink terminals for the Iranian people to have an outside source of events from information so that they would not be able to do it. We had agents on the ground that were trying to give us, hey, where are their forces located? Where are they hiding weaponry in tunnels, et cetera? So he created the conditions that when this buildup finally came to a point that we would execute,

we were going to be able to do so. And like he said, the Iranian people, stay safe, do not go out. The time is not now. But at some point, what he's done is create the conditions so that when the time does come, the government is no longer going to be in power. The military knows that if they resist, they will be destroyed. And the Iranian people, some of the most educated and wonderful people in the Middle East, are going to be able to step into that vacuum and be able to take over their government,

their military, and then begin to truly build the destiny for their country for the future. Sir, I've watched a lot of your commentary through. I've known you for gosh, over a well-over. over a decade at this point since I lived in Maryland. I think I've been through about the seven different lifetimes since we originally met. We were a lot younger in some of the pictures I still have on my phone, but that's for another time. However, Dan, I'll just tell you, you got to remember, with some folks, gray hair is a choice. With men, it's always bad lighting. Yeah, bad light. That's right. And you would just ask me that before the young guy. You look great. You look great,

considering what we've been through it, you know, everything seems to be going all right for us. But when you look at the naval picture and the assets over there in the region, I've been watching a lot of really insightful commentary, both on X and platforms and on cable TV. I noticed that there's a heavy buildup in the Med, too, off Haifa and elsewhere. The Ford, I believe, is out there. And then you've got the Lincoln and other assets in the region.

It looks like what they've done is they've created kind of a pitch-and-catch scenario where you're going to pitch the offense, weaponry, obviously closer to Iran near the Gulf region with assets there like the Lincoln. And then anything that comes the other way in a potential counterstrike towards our allies, Israel and elsewhere, looks like they have catch mechanisms set up there as well with the Ford and elsewhere. Pretty brilliant strategy when you look at it as a way to kind of intercept any effective counter strike. Absolutely. When you see the positioning of forces, let's take a larger strategic view. All of the Gulf countries,

did not want this fight, but they also knew the threat that Iran represented to the region, because it was a destabilizing force between Hamas, Palestinian, Islamic jihad, Hezbollah for decades, the Houthi rebels, they were destabilizing. So to find a way to be able to take Iran off the map, when you look at what Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE are all doing, they want to build the Middle East as a destination point where businesses are willing to invest, where people are willing to come do tourism. And now that Iran is no longer going to represent a threat, well, people need to fear for their lives, that region literally has the opportunity to flourish. When you look at the placement of forces and why they're there, it truly is to be able to react

to what we were expecting a larger response by Iran. It's still a deadly threat, even with the ballistic missiles being shot. But when you look at it, those initial strikes going in have been extremely effective given the limited response that Iran has done. Are they going to be able to continue? Absolutely. We should be prepared for that. Unfortunately, we may lose more lives as a result. But at the end of the day, degrading that capability from a strategic perspective is the priority. and when you get in close to the tactical, how we position the forces, who are conducting those strikes, that is what's really going to make the difference in this weeks long to come campaign. Yeah, no, I agree. Kirk, one last question.

China, obviously an enormous threat, an enemy like we haven't seen before. We could argue about the Soviets, obviously we're very prominent. Still, you know, we have the Russian threat out there now. However, an economy of that size with that many people, given current technology, and whether it's quantum computing, material silences, you know, mirved missiles, nuclear capacity, fusion, all the stuff, you know, you see emerging. This is a serious existential threat.

Having said that, this was as much a strike on China's interests as it was almost on Iran, because Iran is the energy supplier for China. You can't ignore that in this calculus. President Trump was very tactical in the way he structured this. Get rid of Maduro first in Venezuela so we can. can secure energy supplies from that region that may have been diverted to our enemies. Brilliant. Even though we're still dealing with a lot in Venezuela, the problem's not solved, he's iced

that portion of it out. Then move on, take out the Iranian leadership, that's the oil supplier to our enemies. And now you pretty much, you know, iced them out. They have Russia and others, however, but it's going to complicate China's territorial ambitions as well. And their Navy is something to be concerned about, especially the pace at which they're building. Absolutely. The one thing we have to worry about with China, as with any military, you really need three things. You need capability in what your forces were able to do and the technological superiority that we can bring to the table. But you also have to have it in the quantities that you need so that it can be placed around the world to be able to respond. China is really beating us when it comes to the quantity. We still have that qualitative edge. But at the end, end of the day, the one thing you also have to have, and President Trump is demonstrating,

you have to have the credibility that you're willing to exercise both the quantity and the capability in order to safeguard U.S. national security interests. So while China may be threatening Taiwan, oil supplies may be disrupted, I would ask people take a step back because China is no longer a competitor or an adversary. They are the enemy. And while decoupling may take time, we have to begin that process to safeguard it. And we start with making sure that let's stop educating Chinese students in our universities. But more importantly, in the South China Sea, they are continuing to militarize islands throughout the South China Sea and claim that as their territorial waters when international law only recognizes 12 miles. So at the end of the day,

China, they may get Taiwan. We as the United States needs to ensure that we take out every one of those militarized islands because then the world is able to have safe flow of economies through the South China Sea and around the world. And that's what's going to be the larger strategic picture. When we took out Maduro, yeah, it was Venezuela, the drugs, and oil supplies. But it was also a more important signal to Shinebom in Mexico, stop the flow of drugs through Mexico, and we will help you. And if you don't, then we will take care of the problem. Taking out Iran is the signal to China. You may push the edge of the envelope when it comes to a free nation like Taiwan.

They may have their own internal conflicts, but at the end of the day, don't think for one minute that we're going to allow you to take over the South China Sea without a fight. Colt, folks, commander of the USS Cole, been through a lot in his life. As you can see, just brilliant and insightful analysis. I'm so glad we got you on the show today. Of course, you're welcome back anytime. Sir, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Dan.

Great to reconnect. Fantastic. Thank you, sir. Indeed. Kirk Lipol, I've known him a really long time, folks. This was a big show today. There's a lot going on. Obviously, this weekend.

I woke up to a lot of this like you do. You know, it always seems like, you know, the world is kind of in turmoil. But the hard reality is Donald Trump, as I said to you in the beginning of the show, is cleaning up the turmoil that decades of shit leadership have left us with. They just have. And you're seeing a lot of it cleaned up very quickly. Now do you see why, and I just appeal to you passionately. I am all about objective fact-based analysis and accountability.

No one's asking you to trust anyone. I'm not asking you to trust, Trump to trust, Rubio to trust, Hanksett to trust me to trust, but I'm asking you to trust the results. Just give this action time to bear fruit and see what happens. And if it doesn't, there'll be a thousand white papers written about it. And we can all as talking heads and I'll criticize later. But we don't even know the results yet. We're not even a couple of days in.

I experienced it from the other side too with the Duma class. No matter what you do. Nothing's happening. Then something's happening. They don't agree with it. And they don't agree with it before the thing that happened, even had the opportunity to produce the fruit that they said was going to happen. Just give it some time.

Give it some time. As I said this weekend, let the man cook a little bit. And we'll see what happens. And if you don't like the results, that's in a republic. You're absolute and welcome right to do so to criticize it. Thank you so much for tuning in, folks. Please go to the show, rumble.com slash Bongino on Rumble. Click that follow button.

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