The Duran Podcast - Fractured Iran or fractured Trump? w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Fractured Iran or fractured Trump? w/ Robert Barnes (Live)

Come on. All right. Yes, we are live with Alexander McCurice in London. And we are joined, once again, I'm Duran with the great Robert Barnes. Roberts, how are you doing? Where can people follow your work? Good, good. For interesting times in the United States and around the world,

for all of the political and legal and news commentary coverage, that's at VivaBarnslaw. dot locals.com for the legal cases that we cover legal policies that we cover. That's all at 1776 Law Center.com. We'll be having our annual conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, August 1st and August 2nd, in which Alexander McCourse will be present. Tickets are available now. You just go to 1776 LawCenter.com.

Larry Johnson's going to be there. Daniel Davis is going to be there. The Chase Hughes about CIA Sciops is going to be there. Greg Hartley, a famous interrogator in the United States. He's going to be there. A whole range of guests, people from the Maha movement, people from O.G. MAGA movement, people from the Scott Horton might be able to show up.

Some other people. We've got some big named guests that will let us know whether they can make it. But we were in my hometown, Chadnuga, Tennessee, and I get to show Alexander around. So it should be fun. All right, I will have those links in the description box down below. And before we get started, just a quick shout out. And hello to everyone that is watching us on Odyssey and on Rumble, YouTube, and locals, vidread.com.

And to our moderators, thank you. And hello to everyone that is moderating in the chat today. So Alexander, Robert, we got lots to talk about. So let's just jump right into it. Absolutely. Let's sound nobody better to speak to about the situation. And of course we're talking about the situation in the United States. As the United States finds itself again in another conflict in the Middle East,

the one with Iran. And we've discussed this, of course, previously with Robert in earlier programs, but we haven't had one with him. For a while, we've had more divisive. developments. We've had an end for the moment to the missile strikes that each side has been conducting against the other. We've had negotiations or perhaps more accurately attempts to get negotiations going. And we have this very strange situation where the Iranians are imposing in effect their own tight control over the Strait of Hormuz, a kind of blockade. And the

United States is now imposing its own counter blockade against Iran, which also, in effect, is an attempt to close another line of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. And well, yesterday we got reports at the US Navy Secretary, Mr. Fieland, how Mr. Feeleon, has apparently been sacked, not resigned apparently, but he was actually sacked. And we've been getting a very, very strange, very weird comments from the president himself. One which I thought was, I mean, beyond inappropriate was one way he invoked General Sherman. And, you know, talking about Iran. I mean, I don't know how people in the southern states of the United States feel about that, but I would not be happy.

Anyway, there we get. We got an extraordinarily confusing, chaotic situation. One gets the sense that there's a lot of division within the US government, that the assumptions that the war began with, which were, by the way, the same assumptions that we said existed in the previous programmes that we made. I think that the commentary that all three of us have done, that Robert has been doing, that we have been making about the origins of the war, have been largely vindicated, in fact, completely vindicated. But the assumptions that led to the war in terms of how quickly it would be over have turned out to be wrong. And, well, we have all this enormous confusion and chaos. Or so it seems within the administration, maybe things are not

as chaotic as, you know, they appear to be from the outside. No one better to discuss. us all of this with then Robert Barnes. So Robert, where are we? Are we looking at an unhappy, chaotic White House administration, a place where decisions are not being made well, which is dysfunctional? You did a recent program with Larry Johnson, which you spoke about some of the things that are going on. Tell us what is going on. to the super tech question.

We are hoping to get Alex there. Going to have Chase Hughes do maybe try to hypnotize them to find out the origin of the real Duran, where it came from. Well, he's not watching. But the, so, yeah, and all that's at 1776 Law Center.com. Where it's still saying there, which is more than what we can say for the Oval Office. So there's talk of that Trump is pursuing a madman strategy. we can discuss whether that has ever actually been an effective strategy for people to do Nixon tried it in Vietnam didn't work so well it's a greatly overrated and exaggerated

idea of a successful strategy but the other possibility is maybe he's just mad and I think this is unfortunately being underappreciated though more and more people are starting to see it and witness it and recognize it so the when I was up in the as we discussed office line when I was up in the White House and in D.C. in January, early January, there are range of high-ranking administration officials who wanted to chat with me. Some in cigars, some with some over lunch, some over dinner, vary the circumstances. But I just thought it was, oh, you know, they knew I was in town. So, hey, yeah, why not? That wasn't why. They were very nervous and very concerned about the declining mental and emotional control of President Trump. And I think because

many people on the Trump's critics you could say the left the media wherever you come from had always perceived him as out of control as impulsive as untrained in matters of diplomacy and so forth because they'd filtered him they'd always seen a wolf that they didn't see a difference now than what was the case in the past for those of us that have been Trump supporters the we were witnessing a the baseline was having a major deviation so while Trump Trump has always been impulsive. He hasn't been completely unfiltered and uncontrolled in his impulsivity. While Trump has always had a big ego, his ego hasn't consumed every single thing in the room. And even if you think Trump's a narcissist or a sociopath or psychopath,

all those people act within still have reason as a capacity of their self-interest. And the what happens when that is no longer present. And what they were describing, Trump in the art of the deal wrote always expect the best but always plan for the worst so you had this positive thinking he grew up under positive thinking ideas of norman vincent peel and others which was that you could think something into being if you believed it strong enough you could make it happen but that and that can be positive but it could be very risky at the same time unless it's tethered by realism so you know this idealism tethered by realism always plan for the worst plan for the contingencies etc well trump is known for liking sycophants, he's also known

for liking what he calls killers. And so it always had, he loved second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth opinions on topics. What the people were describing to me in January was that part of Trump that was tethered to realism that was planning for the

worst that would have contingency plans that would seek out second, third, and fourth opinions that would want so-called killers in the room with him, was all gone. It was all all he wanted was sycophants. All he wanted was flattery. All he wanted was opinions that justified and warranted where he wanted to go, that he would rage at anybody that would second-guess him. He would rage at anybody that shared

information that challenged or contested or questioned his assumptions, that his positive thinking had become magical thinking to where he would believe something into existence that just didn't exist and believe away something that did exist if it undermined his position and perception. And as I describe this to some people, there are members on the Viva Barnes Law. That locals.com board, second only to the durand.com. And if those people would ask what the cap is, this is a Duran cap you can get at the Duran shop. So what's basically they were describing prefrontal lobe early onset dementia. And because it's not cognitive in character, it's not easily, it's not as easily recognized.

It's behavioral in character. And so what happens is you're, just imagine someone as two years old, right, where their ego dominates the room where the, because they can't sort of see beyond it at that age, where they don't have the socially developed filters yet to know, okay, no, I can't do that. No, I can't say that. No, I can't seek that. No, there's realistic limits on my ability to just conquer the world. I was with my two-year-old grandson recently and he was evidence of this. the, what they were, that's what you start to regress to that level with this form of dementia. And what they were describing was Trump that was on that path.

And it's only gotten worse and worse and worse. So essentially, that's why you're seeing Trump all over the place. That's why it's my interpretation. You know, the Wall Street Journal did a whole, you know, behind the scenes thing. And they said Trump's spin on this and Trump supporters spent on this from the administration is that he's just pretending to be a maddening. man in order to get certain outcomes. That's not what I've heard. I've heard he actually is, he has early onset dementia. The behavioral control is gone. That's why it's impulsivity without limit, without control, without restraint. That's why the magical thinking dominates. That's why when

he's running around, the others that have been, you know, following this have started to put it together just by observing it. Like, you know, what was, I mean, he invents, you know, It's confabulation on steroids. So he'll invent whole conversations. It never happened. People can go back and look at this. He did this recently with a Mr. Toyota, as he called him. He said he was in Japan.

He met Mr. Toyota and that Mr. Toyota decided to invest a whole bunch in the U.S. And then he told him how he was Mr. Toyota. The problem is Mr. Toyota's been dead for years. So he met some Toyota exacts. They didn't yet agree to invest in the country. Mr. Toyeda, he had met many years before. So he was, but you could tell watching him speak, he believed it happened. This is happening with regularity.

And the, and the way his ego has shifted. So this is a guy who spent his whole political career running against Mid-Eastern wars, as the Wall Street Journal piece says, all that's in the Middle East, Trump would often say is blood and sand. And if you fight for the sand, you just end up with blood. That was his mindset about it all, deeply skeptical. bragged about how he didn't go into an Iran war in his first term. Got indicted in part because he allegedly showed the plans that Millie had to invade Iran

that he had rejected. His proudest achievement was no new wars in his first term. He campaigned on it for four years running into 2024. So all of this is very different. He's now obsessed with being like Emperor Trump. That's why you're seeing these Roman Emperor images that he's sharing online. That's why you're seeing him build a 50-foot golden statute of himself. in the Trump Library.

The, uh, that looks like it was modeled after the North Korean leader, um, or Saddam Hussein. Uh, he's behaving like an, you know, like an old, you know, like a Gulf state monarch. You know, in certain ways that God has ordained him and he's telling everybody he's Jesus with an image of ball behind him on Easter, no less. Uh, he's cussing at people on Easter. He's basically almost cussing out the Pope on, on Orthodox Easter. The, this is, he's going after his longest standing supporters, Alex Jones. Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green on a regular, vicious, vile basis.

And so you aggregate that. You're seeing the signs of what people that have lived through it, people that have had loved ones, have seen. Like one person was describing how their grandmother lost so much filter that she would go up in front of the TV and moon the TV when she was mad at the news. And this was a sign of she has early onset dementia because you just don't have that filter that used to be there. And your ego shifts.

and that's what's happened with Trump. That's why on advance will get a deal done and Trump will rug pull it within the same day. That's what happened a weekend ago. He had to be kicked out of the situation room two weekends ago, but when whether the special op gone bad or a pilot gone down, whatever the situation may be, Kane had to remove him from the situation room

because of how crazy he was, yelling and screaming at people, proposing things that made no sense for them to do the rescue operation. last week he had to be told no he wanted to prep nuclear attack and he was like hey show me the nuclear the codes i want to take a look at those let's show me the sites where we would hit for the new let's go through that simulation kane was like no no no we're not doing that we're not doing that you saw kane with his head down when he left the white house the so they're dealing with people like vice president vance you know report that they alternate between crying and laughing on a daily basis because of the

insanity of what they're dealing with. And they've tried to keep a lid on it, but you've seen a lot of military officials who object, get fired. They don't say that's why. But, you know, it's not a coincidence. The Navy gets, the Navy was doing a blockade that couldn't blockade much. Everybody knew it couldn't blockade much. Also, the Navy doesn't want, they're stretched in, they've been, you know, put back out over and over and over again. They're supposed to have already been back, you know, off duty for a period of time.

They haven't for some of those Navy officers. In addition, that they're running out of supplies as went viral in certain instances of certain, like food supplies and things like that. So they're stretched thin. They're in an impossible mission of trying to cover the entire Indian Ocean to avoid because they can't get too close to the Iranian shore without being risk of being hit by either the underwater drones or the missiles of the drones that Trump keeps pretending don't exist or have been taken out. And so they tell the president, blockade's going. going perfect. It's going great. Everything's fine. We blockaded everything. And like you, Alexander, you know, you follow Russian sources, you follow China sources, you follow other sources. You knew that wasn't true. But then yesterday or two days ago, a British company that's a global

company that tracks this in great detail, you pay a lot of money to subscribe to them. A report, the Financial Times picks up, subscribes to them. And reports, by the way, 30 plus ships went through the blockade that are Iranian with, you know, 10 billion plus of oil on it. that enraged people that enrages trump that enrages haggs death who's the one guy that's obsessed with this war is like a character out of dr strange love he makes jorsi scott's character look sane by comparison that's how bad hegs death is he's totally falling off the neocong wagon and maybe a few other wagons along the way the um fires the navy secretary because the navy secretary had allowed president trump to think everything was going perfect

because the navy doesn't want him to hit a nuclear code button because they don't want him to send the navy right into the street before moves, which is one of his ideas at a certain point. So that guy was actually doing his job, even though he was there because he was a big donor, not because he had a great military background. But he was sane enough to recognize the risks of this and was listening to the officers beneath him.

And what does he does he do, he sacks him. Like he sacked army people, like he sacked troops, he's staff people, like he's currently waging war on Army Secretary Driscoll, because they all realize this is a shit show that could go really sideways. But most of the people want to pretend that our King Lear and Donald Trump is not becoming as mad as they can all witness in a lifetime. I'm going to say a few things. Firstly, about the madman theory.

First of all, it doesn't work as a political strategy. It never has done, and it never will. It is also an incredibly dangerous strategy to pursue for a more simple personal reason. I have encountered people, I'm sure you have also, by the way, in law, who pretend to, who find themselves in difficult legal situations, who pretend to be mad or things of that kind. And what I have invariably found is if you play that,

if you play being mad, eventually you become it. So it's not a wise course to follow. Not at all. Secondly, everything that you have told me, I find completely convincing. It makes absolute sense of what we are seeing. I should add that I've twice had to help people in my family who've had dementia. In one case, exactly the kind of dementia that you are describing.

I don't want to say more because of course it's personal. But it is exactly, as you say, grandiosity and inability to absorb information, and inability especially to absorb information that is contrary to the desires and beliefs that this person has. Unpredictable and eccentric demands and instructions and a tendency to eruptainty rage and tantrums. I've lived through it. I know exactly what it's like. And well, all I can say is that it must be extremely difficult to deal with when the person who is like that is the president of the United States. Now, I'm going to make a few quick observations. Firstly, the previous president, Joe Biden also had, as we know, his dementia issues. It is a disaster that those

very visible issues that Biden had were covered up for so long because it's not going to make it, I suspect, much more difficult politically to address the ones that we have now, partly because they're so different, but also because the failure to deal with the obvious problems of the previous president is going to make it more difficult to deal with the problems of the present president. The other thing I do want to say, and this is a hopeful thing, is that it does seem that there are people within the administration who are, to the extent that they can, trying to keep things under control. The vice president, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the formerly sacked Navy secretary, whatever what may think of him,

The person who in some ways, based on what I've just heard from you, is more dangerous than the president himself, is the war or defense secretary who instead of acting as a force for restraint in this situation, is apparently acting as somebody who is. is assisting the president in making these extremely strange and very dangerous decisions. And instead of trying to restrain him, is instead seeking to encourage him. And that I find very worrying indeed. And I wonder whether there's been any suggestions that the United States, before it looks at the problems of the president, which are always going to be very difficult to resolve in a system like the American one, whether there aren't more obvious, more immediate, more pressing problems

with the War Secretary, the Defense Secretary, who is helping to make these dangerous and erratic decisions that you've just discussed. So just throwing out that question. No doubt. I mean, even people that had not been publicly critical of the war, war effort have now recognized the problems of where they're at. And even if it's for their own ego purposes, even though they're ideologically inclined, aligned with Israel and ideologically inclined in a neocond direction like a war like Secretary of State Rubio and CIA director

Ratcliffe, both of them realize their careers and futures are could get torched. If this conflict continues to escalate and drag on, do principally and primarily, to the economic impact on the global economy that will ultimately have ramifications and ripples in the U.S. So even they have recognized, and they are also starting to recognize the declining mental and a behavioral emotional state of President Trump.

Like I see a lot of people who keep assuming Trump will act rationally, and it's like, unfortunately, that's not a reliable predictor or filter at the moment in terms of understanding his behavior, explaining it, or forecasting it. So the, but there's the people that have been the, you like the literary character of King Lear fits, the cinematic character of the Mad King that's only portrayed indirectly in Game of Thrones fits. But another one is the king that is under the curse in the Lord of the Rings with worm tongue whispering in his ear.

And there's several worm tongues. One worm tongue is Hegg's death. Admittedly, I stole that from Max Blumenthal, but it was a very appropriate and apt terminology for that. lunatic who keeps i mean we keep saying trump does this confession through projection he keeps saying hey there's these crazed deranged mentally ill uh religiously inspired ego obsessed lunatics that are endangering the world but he's not describing iran he's describing the u.s and parts of israel the uh uh hegg's death has gone off on all his third temple nonsense he's constantly citing this weird stuff the israel lobby has placed key people in the military chain of command that believes

this nut, this insanity, levels of, you know, whether you're talking to Larry Johnson or anyone else, the people that still have tied, Daniel Davis, etc., that have ties within the military, that the level of enthusiasm for this war couldn't be any lower. That, you know, it's a very negative sentiment throughout. So Heggs death is supposed to be relaying that. He's supposed to be restraining the president. It's supposed to be explaining military limitations to what we can do. And instead, the only person who's got through to Trump has been Joe Kent.

Joe Kent keeps saying, hey, by the way, you're going to look like Jimmy Carter. You're going to end up with military hostages on the ground if you try to take those islands. And Trump still tried it. That was a special opt that went sideways when we rescued the pilot that Trump had to be removed from the situation room because of how Nazi was behaving in it. But Trump is paranoid of looking like Barack Obama. So he doesn't want a deal done that looks anything like JCPOA, even though that's the only kind of deal that can be done. And he's obsessed with not looking like Jimmy Carter. So that's why the risk of ground troops is very, very low.

Because especially after the disaster and the debacle of trying to go in, the greater risk is him using nuclear weapons, him trying to attack all of their infrastructure that will lead to all the infrastructure and the Gulf being taken out. That is the greatest military escalatory risk. Or he just leaves the blockade in place in which the straits remains closed and the economy sinks globally. So those are the three real risks at the moment. And the problem is Higgs death is always wanting the military one because of how nuts he is. So there's an internal battle I mean he's removed I think a dozen generals in the last three months The high-ranking military officials of some type

And now the secretary of the Navy sack It's very public that he and Driscoll don't get along That the Army Secretary Driscoll personal friends with J.D Vance All the way back to law school Vance tried to bring him into the Ukraine negotiations To accelerate some success there The Europeans don't like them because he lectured him in Ukraine about how insane this continuing that war was.

So that's Driscoll's approach. Driscoll comes from Appalachia, you know, multiple generations of military service, but that's a part of the country that is a long historical skepticism of foreign entanglements and wars. So he recognizes Heggsdeff as a disaster,

walking, talking disaster. And Hegsteth recognizes that it was up to Vance. Then Hegsdiff would be out. And Colby would be up, Elbridge Colby. and Driscoll, particularly on the military side, would be elevated. Colby doesn't like this war at all. This whole national security statement was against Middle Eastern wars that he got President Trump to sign in September

that Trump doesn't remember signing now. That's where his mind's at. So no question, Heggs-Def is a major problem, whispering military insanity inside the situation room. Though Kane increasingly is ignoring him, there was a high-chance military, if Trump had given the order to use nuclear weapons, There's a very high chance the military would have said no.

Under Article 2, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they're obligated based from Nuremberg principles forward, but this is U.S. law, this is military code, that they cannot follow an unlawful order. It would be undisputed that such an order would be unlawful. That many of the high-ranking military officials also consider it an unlawful order to purely destroy civilian infrastructure, given Trump's statements. You can pretend those are dual use and all that nonsense,

which I've never been a fan of anyway. You need real dual use. That's not what Trump is saying. Trump is saying, I want to destroy all of their water, all of their electricity, all of their bridges in order to ruin and kill their civilization. That's what Trump's on record of saying. Well, that's a genocidal intent. That's a war crime intent. That is not a dual use intent.

He isn't saying, you have Mike Wall spinning on the news. Oh, everything's controlled by the IRGC. Really, they control every single bridge in the entire country. That's a preposterous statement. the i mean it's israeli mindset they've adopted the israeli collective punishment mindset the israeli ethnic cleansing mindset and the only debate is whether it's genocidal under the u.n. convention or the colloquial definition all right i mean but what trump was talking about really was was complete under either uh was genocidal destroy their civilization that's genocidal

intent uh whether you want to murder literally everyone in the country or or not uh that's the intent with it so it's very much israeli mindset those are the other worm tongues The other worm tongues is Lady Lindsay Graham, who's drunk by 10 a.m. in the morning, goes out in the golf course and whispers every insane thing. And he knows Trump is losing it. And so he whispers into the craziest version of that. You're going to be this great emperor. You're going to go down as George Washington.

And you're going to go down. You want to be like Patton. You want to be like General Sherman. You want to be like Curtis LeMay. One of these crazy generals. People forget Dr. Strangelove was really a documentary by the great Stanley Cooper. We had a bunch of insane generals. who wanted to use nukes all over the world,

who wanted to go into Soviet Union, go into China, wanted to use nukes on China, wanted to use nukes on the Soviet Union. Curtis bombs away Lame, who came up with the idea of firebombing Tokyo and Dresden, who admitted he would go to war prison for all the war crimes he committed if they lost the war. That's how nuts.

That guy was so nuts when George Corley Wallace put him on the ticket in 1968. Wallace begged them at the press conference, please don't talk about how you want to nuke people. Please, please. First answer, Rue Millebay. We need to think about news. America's just too much weak about nukes. So he's got those kind of people whispering in his ear, connected to Higgs death.

Lindsay Graham whispering all this insanity to him. He talks to Sean Hannity on a nightly basis. He's whispering this insanity to him. And then he's talking to Laura Lumer. A lot more than he should be talking to Laura Lumer. And there's a lot of rumors about what that's all about. But putting certain things aside about her role-playing Monica Lewinsky, she's whispering all of this insane, what he most likes,

is they're feeding into that sort of worm tongue, insane and delusional grandeur that, yes, I'm going to be the greatest emperor ever. I'm going to, that, that's, this is where Trump has never been there before. He has been the last three months. So you're precisely right. Secretary of Defense, a major problem or war secretary. And then those outside actors, Senator Graham, the, in particular, Sean Hannity, and some of their people connected at Fox.

And Laura Lumer are all worm, tonguing him into you're going to be a hero, you're going to be a star, you're going to be the greatest ever, you just got to take him out, take them all out. I mean, Mark Levin was telling him to use nuclear weapons. He's on, he's been saying it publicly. There's a reason why he keeps saying, remember how he won Japan, Mr. President. This is how nuts these people are trying to get him to do something truly insane. Right. Let's look at the other way, which is the one that is being tried and which there's some reason to think, at least I think, could succeed

because this is the thing how we said about this conflict with Iran. Put aside your feelings, whatever your feelings are about Iran, the Iranians have not up to now develop nuclear weapons. They have a religious prohibition against developing nuclear weapons. They had an agreement,

a very flawed agreement, an agreement with lots of, of holes and which wasn't time limited, which however did restrict their ability to develop nuclear weapons and they basically complied with it. They would be, I think, insane to develop nuclear weapons. If they went down that road, they would invite a devastating attack on themselves. All of these people who I suspect at the moment are saying under no circumstances should we use nuclear weapons. They might potentially change their views if it appears that Iran is indeed going back direction. So I think the Iranians, who strike me as being clever people and realistic,

understand that this isn't a place ultimately where they should go. So Iran cannot understand it cannot have nuclear weapons. It's counterproductive for Iran to have nuclear weapons. They say they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. The United States obviously does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. The Russians and the Chinese do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. So there is an agreement there. I mean, it seems to me that where everybody is in agreement about the ultimate objective, it should not be beyond the wit. people to find a way there. All you need is to have proper negotiations. Now, when the negotiations were being run by Kushner and Witgolf, I'd get to say straight away, I had absolutely no confidence

that those negotiations would go there because they didn't seem to me like real negotiations. And I didn't have any confidence of those two people to conduct real negotiations. The vice president is a different person altogether. He does seem to me to be somebody who has a grasp of detail. He is on record, sustained record, as being opposed to these kind of military adventures. We now have reports in the New York Times

saying that he was against this operation from the start. Is there a chance that we can, could get a deal and is the vice president somebody who could negotiate it well trump in my understanding danis vance has twice got a deal at least you know the architecture which is basically uh the if people have noticed his public statements on this they've been very consistent all he talks about is no nukes he doesn't talk about missiles he doesn't talk about proxies he doesn't talk about Israel. He only talks about Iran not having nuclear weapon capacity. He has never said no enrichment of any kind. They are not having a peaceful nuclear program. It's been enrichment over a certain amount that could approach making a nuclear weapon. And so the, and he also started to presuade using Caldini's own reference old book pre-suation on what's necessary to get there, which is sanctions relief, economic relief, for Iran.

And he even did it at the Turning Point event in Georgia, where he was recasting that as this deal is going to help Iran be super prosperous, super wealthy, super successful, and knowing that that kind of language works for Trump in particular. That really has an audience of one. But the broader audience of conservatives was, hey, be happy if we end all sanctions because it'll make Iran prosperous and part of the global economic order. And that ultimately is good for Iran, but also good for the United States, particularly U.S. companies that now get to, to reinvest in Iran that were prohibited to do so under the various sanctions programs that exist. So that was the architecture of the deal that he put out that he got in Islamabad or had initially. And then Trump, you know, it keeps calling him on the phone saying, no, you can't do it. Don't approve anything unless you talk to me, talk to Beebe.

And that's why the Iranians were like, that's why I went 21 hours. It wouldn't have gone 21 hours if there hadn't been nothing, no movement. there was movement and then there was a rug pull by Trump. And it will often happen is Vance will say we have a deal. This is where Trump gets the idea that there's a deal in his only paper to be signed. But Trump keeps rewriting the deal in his own head. And so that's what happened, the architecture of a deal last Friday, where basically Trump said, okay, basically Vance got the same deal.

And it's, he can sell it as better than JCPOA because it has a longer time period of no enrichment over a certain amount, a destruction of all enriched materials by just reducing it in a bunch of different ways to of the existing enriched material. And in extension, it's complete sanctions relief and recognition of the territorial rights of Iran concerning the straits of remote.

It's just conceding that, but moving out and moving onward. And the pitch being, look, it's good for Iran, it's good for the U.S. to them be part of the global economy on the sanctions relief and hey now we've got a real locked in guaranteed no nuke package um that's was and so he tells the president hey we have the architecture of a deal trump rewrites it in his head again and then starts going out one he this ego is so dominant does has no control right now that he's got to tell the world he's one and he's one big and then so that leads him to rewrite it and say oh you know what they agreed to uh knowing to give us their enriched material they agree they

agreed to open the straits of her moves for forever with no limits of any kind. They agreed to, they didn't agree to any sanctions relief. Well, we didn't agree to any sanctions relief. We didn't agree to lift the blockade, both of which were required preconditions of the deal. And so that, and he blew the whole thing up. And that's why Iran was like, what the heck's going on? I think the reason why you had delay was not internal dispute in Iran. It was, how is it we just had a deal with Vance? And now all of a sudden the deal is completely gone. next minute because the world is slow to process that they're dealing with a mentally deficient mentally declining mental health declining president trump and that he's literally delusional on a

regular basis and they're trying to you know filter this through things doesn't make sense so you're absolutely right the deal is easy to cut it completely is consistent if the the only politically a popular objective in this conflict was the no nuke policy none of the other stuff is popular. Now, will it upset the Israel lobby in the United States? Probably so. But at this point, the Israel lobby is a political pariah in

the United States. They're underwater with everybody except for white evangelical Christians over the age of 60. Every other group has a negative view of Israel. Every other group has a negative view of Vibyanjahou. And when they're not ethnic cleansing Gaza, they're ethnic cleansing parts of Syria.

They're ethnic cleansing southern Lebanon as we speak. You know, and then it doesn't help their cause when they take down, you know, decide to deface Christian symbols, when they decide to close the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Eastern. They've lost their minds. I mean, when, you know, they're using dogs to rape inmates. They're letting people who assault and abused systematically inmates go free without criminal prosecution. And everybody can tell, and Trump hates being called BB's bitch. but it's a reality and he knows as well as anybody else. So the, well, I agree with Mearsheimer, that's a partial practical restraint.

It isn't for Vance anymore because everybody can see there is no future with the Israel lobby in the United States. They're political pariah. They'll drag you down. They'll kill you. They'll crush you politically. You got to abandon them. You got to cut bait.

And in fact, this was a great opportunity to do so to smack, you know, politically would benefit Trump to be seen at least as smack and BB around and restraining and constraining it. So you're absolutely right. that's the deal that makes sense. That's the deal that Kent has been recommending. Now, people will see Kent talk about just exiting. The reason is the concern of Trump's mental state being in such a place that he will never sign a deal, that he will not push this deal through the United Nations that he won't put because Iran wants this to be legally binding, not to be something that could be taken away tomorrow or with a, as the Iranian officer said, some idiot

with a tweet to, you know, change the entire relationship between the country, to push it through Congress. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I believe this kind of deal would go through Congress because they are seeing the massive shift, seismic shift on Israel. All but seven senators supported cutting off,

Democratic senators supported cutting off Israel all together. The next time the House votes, the House will vote to say no further involvement in Iran. The only reason it didn't pass this last time is several Republicans voted present or not voting to give Vance

an opportunity to cut a deal because he had told him he was on the verge of getting a deal done. Otherwise, it would have passed. There's a bunch of, not only Davidson and Massey that are off the train, the four Democrats that previously said, okay, they have shifted except for one who shifted back. But that's because he's retiring and he's looking for a fat check from the APAC crowd. But there's not enough votes in the House to say yes to the war, and there are going to be enough votes come May to say no to the war. Same with the Senate.

Susan Collins has said past April Can't authorize it going forward Senator Curtis from Utah Another Republican said can't vote it For it going forward Holly never liked this war to begin with And would like out Schmidt never liked the war to begin with

Would like out so he doesn't have the vote What happens when the House of the Senate Publicly vote to reject his involvement In the Iran war That's why this Whereas they would take this deal Because it's a good deal I think there's more recognition

even within conservative circles and quarters, not all by any stretch, never with the neocons, but that the JCPOA was a good deal. And it was a mistake to torch it. It was a mistake to burn it up because it was inevitably and escapably drag us back to this escalation trap that Professor Pate keeps warning about

that we're about to start feeling the full ripples, the beginning ripples up, as the supply is now literally gone in certain parts of the world for oil and gas and key fertilizer. Because like the super chat question earlier, We could have a global famine. And that could bounce back in, God knows how many different directions. Because 30 to 40% of the world's fertilizer is offline and unavailable.

And we're in growing season. I mean, pretty soon, large parts of the world, growing season is gone and done. You know, the green revolution will be de facto dead if they're unable to get those fertilizers and get them soon. So we can't keep the blockade going. The world economy will bleed and suffer out long before Iran suffers to the degree that they would even consider capitulation, which I don't think is in their DNA. So the best deal is this deal.

And it would make the most sense. But if Trump is mentally incapable of doing it, then we just need to get the heck out. And, you know, end the blockade. I think Iran would reopen. I'd be curious, your thoughts. I think if we end the blockade and start pulling back our troops, I think, and don't have any military attacks and restrain Israel, which is the Joe Kent strategy, it says the backup strategy if we can't get a deal done because of Trump's mental

state, not because of Iran's internal issues, then Iran will feel enough pressure from China and the world to reopen the strait. What do you think? I absolutely agree with that, by the way. I absolutely agree with that. I think people have misunderstood the dynamic of this. The Chinese do not like to see the Strait of Hormuz close. It's not just a question of the fact that they buy oil from other Persian Gulf producers and they got very good relations with the Saudis. And with with all of them. I mean, there's that at play. But China, which is itself a major trading country, it's the world's biggest exporter. The very last thing they want to see is straits being closed in the way that the Iranians have done. All you have to do is to go to Chinese statements,

the actual statements that the Chinese have been making, and you will see it. They say all the time, repeatedly, continuously, we want to see the Strait of Hormuz reopened. And when they say reopened, not reopened in a way that the Iranians are talking about, with the Iranians still charging fees for tankers to pass through. What the Chinese want is to revert back to the situation which existed before the 28th of February, 2026. In other words, unrestricted trade through the Strait of Hormuz, recognizing it as, as an international maritime waterway. So that is the Chinese position.

And the Chinese are in a position to exert enormous influence on Iran. And the Russians would undoubtedly go with the Chinese on this. And if the Chinese and the Russians say this to the Iranians, This is part of the deal that needs to be done. To say it straightforwardly, the Iranians are not in a position to say no. So if, and I think that there is a current opinion in Iran, which in that case would not want to say no.

I mean, we could be very, you know, ironic and skeptical about, you know, proposals about Iran wanting to become rich. But Iran, offering, you know, the prospect for Iran that becoming rich. But this is not something that, you know, people in Iran are necessarily going to turn their backs on. Iran is a very complex country. A large part of the political and economic establishment in Iran consists of people like the merchants in the bazaar. and industrial and financial and economic groups. They want to see the sanctions lifted.

They want Iran to participate again in the global economy. They're offered a deal. You know, the JCPOA plus with, you know, no more sunset clauses, which the sunset clauses were a bad idea. And there were a major flaw in the original plan. But a JCPOA plus security guarantees, real security guarantees for the future, plus a lifting of sanctions, that is going to be an all but impossible offer for Iran to refuse. There will be hardliners in Iran who won't be happy.

but I've been, as I said, following the Iranian media very closely. Of course, it's the English language Iranian media. But I have no doubt at all that it would stick. It is a difficult thing to negotiate, probably, because there's lots of details. But conceptually, getting the outlines of it, I'm absolutely sure it's there. I mean, I would like to say this. I know there are some people who probably don't agree. But as I said, I've been following what the Iranians have been saying.

I've been following what their friends have been saying. I think it's a deal that Iran would go for. And of that, I am quite sure. There are a few questions I want to ask. Firstly, and it comes back to IPAC, and it's a specific one. And I'd like to ask it first. A friend of mine in the United States told me that, She has heard people who are candidates for House seats and for Senate seats now saying,

as part of their campaign in the midterms, that I am not taking money from IPAC. Is this actually true? Is this really happening? Or is it just what this person was hearing? So, I mean, that's my first question. And then I'd like to discuss Vance and his position. Yeah, so Israel has become a political pride in the United States politics. So Richard Barris and I did a break down on it last summer when this was escalating already,

when the war drums were already beating. That if you studied the whole history of Israel and American public opinion, whenever they went off the res and did, you know, there were certain built-in sympathy, some co-religionist sympathy, some post-holocaust sympathy, some Cold War era sympathy that the, but was never, strong enough to overcome Israel doing apparent horrors in ways that you got through to the U.S. media. So like some of us have been telling Trump, okay, you don't want to be Obama, you don't want

to be, or telling the people around Trump to tell Trump. If you don't want to be Obama, you don't want to be Carter. Be Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan got us out. Ronald Reagan told Israel to stand down in 1983. So that, you know, that's the path, you know, constrain and restrain Israel. and their greater imperial ambitions all around everywhere these days. The recognizing Bibi Netanyahu faces corruption trials,

the only way he's going to avoid those is to get reelected. The only way he's going to get reelected is if war is continuing all the way through the fall. So that's the other X factor you've got here in his Israel lobby, trying to protect him in particular, because the Israel lobby's very much been a Lekud-based movement in the United States in the U.S. They were the ones that came up with the idea of uniting with the religious right but basically in the democratic party is a political bb is a political pria period in the democratic party even jewish supporters of israel don't like bb nittanyahu on the democratic party side of the aisle

so bbis israel is a political pry across the board but israel itself if any voter under 60 is a political pride no matter whether they're democrat republican or independent and i've been saying the next democratic nominee will be whoever successfully runs is the most anti-israel nominee whoever campaigns in 2028 that they have the best bona fides whether it's a congressman like Roecona or somebody else. That's why you saw Newsom come out who's been deeply

tied to the Israel lobby historically come out and say we got to divorce BB's Israel because he sees the same polling everybody else sees. It is a political pariah. It's a radioactive political pariah. It is a motivational issue. It is a single issue voting topic for many young

Democrats. So a woman in Congress just won her nomination. and then when the House seat that comes from the Bernie Sanders, who's long been kind of muted on Israel, is the one proposing these bills that say no more funding of Israel in any way, shape, or form. No aid, no military aid, none of it. And that got all but seven Democratic senators, that's where the deep state really thrives as the U.S. Senate,

to vote in that way. Don't be surprised to assumeer faces a primary challenge or a meaningful third-party challenge in his upcoming election because of his unfettered support for Israel. So Israel is a political, the reason why they are pushing Trump so hard in this sort of worm-tonging the mad king to go further and further is many people in the Israel lobby know this. They know this may be the last president they have much political control over. That they're losing the House, they're losing the Senate in terms of going forward.

They have it right now, but they don't have it going forward. That if you want to win a Democratic primary, the bet, I've told people the Republican primary side. if you want to stand out, run against Israel. Israel is a political pariah amongst young Republicans under the age of 60. So whoever has the, you can follow people like Owen Schroier comes from the Alex Jones School, other places like that following Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson. These people are very popular amongst the independent-minded young people who will vote in Republican primaries, and they are overwhelmingly anti-Israel, deeply skeptical and critical.

Israel has lost all its political credibility in the United States outside of the boomer cons that rely on televangelists who, you know, alternate between praising Israel and please send me $1,000 if you want your prayers to reach Jesus, you know, Paula White types. So they're even amongst my evangelical friends, the only ones who are still pro-Israel are boomers. And even they are, have cold feet on BBs Israel in this particular version of Israeli politics. So, yeah, Israel is a political pariah. If any smart candidate for office in the U.S. wants to have success run against Israel.

campaign against Israel, especially BB's Israel. But Israel in general right now is, for the first time ever in American political history, the more Americans say they are sympathetic with the Palestinians than they are with Israelis. That gives you an idea, and given the negative portrayal, the Palestinian movement in the United States,

whether it's Hamas or Fata or FILO, that gives you an idea of just how underwater Israel is, net unfavorable ratings with almost every voting group outside of a few that are small, fading and quite literally dying. off. Let's talk about Vance. Now, Alex and I are very, very accustomed to dealing with political intrigues and discussing them. And we did a program some time again, which we both agreed, that he did look to us very much as if there's some people in the administration who are

trying to undermine J.D. Vance. And we also are very, very curious about the role of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who it seems is turning up to wrestling matches with the president rather than conducting diplomacy, which is his job. So what is going on there? I should say that the British media has been full of really unpleasant stories about J.D. Vans, that he's shrinking, that he's rapidly shrinking vice president. You can tell that these have been planted by some one who exactly i am not sure but what is the story with j d vance and he's standing in the administration at this time so you know the uh you know vance comes from the populist part of the country also from part of appalachia grew up in a working class family went to uh you know served in the military after

nine 11 felt betrayed because of that experience then went off to yale law school because he had connections to peter teal and palatier there are a bunch of people that were skeptical of how sincere his anti-war voice was. I recommend going back to February March of 2022, early stages of the Republican primary for the Senate in Ohio, where he took the most anti-involvement in Ukraine war, including not having a no-fly zone or anyone else, and he was the only major Senate candidate to do it at the time.

I've obviously known him and have talked to him multiple times. Other friends of mine are very close to him. And his anti-war voice is very consistent. If anybody inside, now it's been confirmed in New York Times and multiple sources. The advance was the loudest opponent to the Iran war, the most consistent opponent to the Iran war, the most consistent advocate against the Iran war all the way through,

and has been trying to craft a exit ramp from this from the moment it started. So, and I know there'll be people that are skeptical for a range of reasons about them. Some of those same people were also skeptical of, you know, Dick Fuentes, etc., of Joe Kent. How accurate did they end up about Joe Kent? So you can put some of those people in a certain category,

you know, Whitney Webb and some others I thought Kent was a CIA plant All right, if you still believe that, you're a little bit off the rest, my friend. So, Vance is the real deal, in my opinion. So that's exactly what poses a threat to sort of the neocon, neoliberal, deep state establishment is Vance's future prospects. They want to undercut those

and undermine those wherever and whenever they can. Now, they're kind of operating in a delusion that 2028 is still competitive unless Trump steps down from the presidency, between now at some point, whether it's by removal, whether it's because of health, what other voluntarily does it, decides golfing is more fun.

It'd be great. Just go golf, Mr. President. Stay away from nuclear codes, please. Then I think Vance could be Gerald Ford. People forget, Gerald Ford almost won in 1976, despite never being elected as a vice president, despite Nixon having to resign in the peak of Watergate, despite massive stagflation, and despite the disastrous exit from the vehicle,

Vietnam War with people hanging off the helicopters in Saigon. So, manse could absolutely turn the corner quickly if he could, if he could be made present before 2028. If he's not made president before 2028, he's not likely to run in 2028. So as people are saying, oh, he's just making all the stories up so he can run and re-campaign and rebranded

2028. He knows if things continue as they currently are, he's got zero chance. And so he'll be plans on skipping it, looking at 2032 and down the road. that's why several of his high-ranking staffers have left. Politico in the Hill tried to spin that as, oh, they're getting ready for a potential run.

No, they're not. They realize that right now there's no hope and prospect for Vance of 2028, so they're cashing in now while they still can't. That's what's happening there. So then you have Rubio. And Rubio is, let me, he's a snake at heart. I call him Narco Marco, because of his family ties to the cocaine cowboys down in Miami. And so he is doing everything possible to evade any degree of accountability for anything.

I mean, anything. That's why he's never at the negotiations on the Ukraine war. He's never at the negotiations on the Iran War. He's never at the negotiations with pretty much anything. Now, he wouldn't mind being the viceroy of Venezuela. He would mind especially being the de facto president of Cuba. That's his whole obsession. The whole time he's been there is Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.

Even Venezuela, for real estate. Rubio was about Cuba. Now the Ruski's are throwing a little bit of a wrench into that equation by sending ships with subs underneath it. And we're not really willing to fight the Ruski's on the open seas. Hegg's death, Mike. God knows what that guy will do. But the, so that that's part of it.

But Rubio knows that Trump's mental state is declining. So he let leak that he opposed the war. His, his, his, his verbiage was strong, his tone was not. Let's put it that way. the he if this war was going well he'd be leaking how he was for the war that's rubio i mean i mean he's a weather vane uh like people think he's a neocon uh he has a long history of being a nocon truth is rubio is for rubio whatever works for rubio is what rubio cares about he's the most self-aggrandizing self-focused political figure in all of washington and you're absolutely right

how is it the media isn't critical of this guy we're supposed to be negotiating the deal with iran why isn't he is in islamabad the supposed to be getting us out of ukraine Why isn't he in Kiev? Why isn't he going to Moscow? Now, I can understand why the Ruskis aren't big fans of Rubio and don't quite trusted so much. But still, it's an embarrassment. Our so-called Secretary of State is nowhere to be found.

And that's what there should be Financial Times headlines on. That's what there should be economists, the economist headlines on. But when the Ross Chow is partially owned your publication, maybe not. The, now, of course, here's a perfect example. Earlier last year, Vance goes to Israel. he does not go to the whaling wall I mean Malay I think was trying to do something to that wall that sounds profligate

but the he doesn't he goes to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre whereas Rubio follows that up right after that he goes to the wall puts a little hat on does the whole crying screaming thing and all that jazz so he is part of the old Bushite political establishment

you might say he's a literal and political cross-dresser that might have some more references than the normal in terms of who and what he's all about. And he wants to be the presidential nominee in 2028, even though he can also see that things are going south, but he's kind of clueless and daft politically

in terms of domestic politics. So that's what's going on behind the scenes. They're trying to put Vance into positions, like with the Ukraine war, too. Vance volunteers for it because he wants an end of that war. He wants and he wants de Tant with Russia. He always was against the Iran war. He wants us out of that disastrous.

He sees the global economic. catastrophe coming. And that's his priority and his focal point. And he's willing to take the political hits that go with it. Despite, I mean, he's, I mean, he tries to be the Trump whisper to someone who's, you know, slowly losing their mind in the case of Trump. Thus, he's, you know, told people that I alternate between crying and laughing on a given day because this is, this is, you know, he's only been in politics for, what, four years, five years. I mean, this is all new to him. And he's a young fellow. He's a millennial. So he keeps trying to get us out of these dumb and stupid and crazy wars, tries to come up with the best politically palatable path forward,

tries to manage Trump's bad behavior, and puts his country over his own political ambitions. Rubio does not. Rubio is Rubio first, Rubio second, Rubio third, and thus he will avoid anything. You'll know there's a real chance of peace if Rubio shows up or something. I have never seen a secretary of state who is so completely absent without league. I cannot think, I cannot remember a single diplomatic initiative of importance that he is. He's not only Secretary of State, by the way. He is national security advisor, too. It's true.

I mean, he holds all the positions that Henry Kissinger once had. Kissinger was always there flying around, going to Beijing, going to Moscow, going to one capital, Middle East capital after another, brokering fees, talking to the Europeans. What exactly Marco Rubio does? I'm really not sure, actually. It's, well, other than, as you rightly say, leaking stories about his wisdom to the media. And for the record, on Cuba,

I'm going to express my personal view. I think he's landed the United States again in a losing position. I don't think it matters greatly because I don't think of the scheme of things. Cuba matters that much. But I think this grand strategy of crashing Venezuela, stopping oil to Cuba and then piling the pressure on the Cubans, was never going to succeed precisely because, as you, I'm sure you all remember, I repeatedly said, the Russians would step in. they have an emotional attachment to Cuba, which if you follow Cuba and Cuba's policies and its relations, you would know about. And Cuba, after Venezuela, had it been approached properly, could have been won over to the United States. Ruthie has taken a very hard line.

He wants everything changed in Cuba. And so, of course, they've turned to the Russians. that's completely predictable. No doubt about it. And that relates to like, there's some theories out there that the American deep state is so institutionally in control that none of our political figures have in the agency.

And I understand the sentiment. You know, you have this sort of power structure that's built up through the donor class that buys into the, buys up the professionals, as Eisenhower warned about 1961, first with the academy. So they get corrupted at the academy because they sponsor certain fellowships, they sponsor certain professorships. And there they help sort of train and tutor people in a particular ideological approach that's

aligned with these loosely deep state policies that comes from the doctrine of the dual state created by, it was part of the editor of the economists late 19th century to explain how you could have an administrative bureaucratic state independent of and immune from the political pressures. And it was because the bureaucracy was so built up that, you know, became popularized in comedic satirical shows like yes minister and yes prime minister uh the uk in the 80s uh and that but when you give them national security power military power they become a deep state as peter scott detailed in his 1969 text coming from the left but that the i think the deep state definitely has influence and power but i think it gives them too much credit to assume no agency of any political

actor for two reasons one it assumes they have good planning and i've seen no evidence in the last 25 years If there is a deep state, they're the most incompetent deep state on the planet because they can't seem to wage a successful war to save their lives. And I think they have real power in influencing who occupies key positions in the bureaucracy, who's advising them in the think tanks, who's working on the Hill as the career staffers, who are often guide people in the House and the Senate to think a certain way on particular issues of foreign policy, put a lot of their editors and positions in control of major publications and newspapers and magazines have their aligned sources writing and reporting on foreign policy so there's a certain degree that they have a de facto monopoly on some of those institutions of influence but you see in trump's case we're in this war because he's losing his mind well the the deep state may have won in this war

but there's no way as even as meersheimer's reference then once they saw the disaster they wanted us to stay in and humiliate America on a global stage and embarrass its limitations of military power. So my own view is the deep state is real, but it doesn't control all. But what do you think? Well, I agree, absolutely. And that, of course, brings us to the big question, which a lot of people on the chats are asking, which is, with anybody who thinks that the bureaucracy by itself independently can run the United States is not familiar with the political system. of the United States and the constitutional system of the United States. They don't understand that the president plays a key role,

as do the other elected officials in Congress, as to the other officials who the president himself appoints. And of course, in the American system, the president is able to talk to anybody, appoint or dismiss, anyone, which is good, by the way. That's how you wanted to be. You don't want to be like this. We have a much more real deep state in London ultimately than you do in Washington, because sacking people in the bureaucracy is very difficult. And we see in Britain that we just have a scandal in which the prime minister is telling us that he wasn't able to see certain important

national security papers. because the civil service wouldn't let it. I'm not going to get into that. But anyway, you could see this. That is impossible. That is conceptually impossible in the United States. But that brings us back to this fundamental question. Throughout this program, we have been discussing

how we got into the situation and it comes to decisions made by the president. We've discussed the president's state of mind. You've just explained a lot of, I think, utterly completely convincing things about the president's state of mind. We've heard from you about the alarm and worry of the military and how they're now evading instructions from him by feeding him information that he wants to hear and standing up to him when he seems to make irrational demands on them. but ultimately he is the central figure. So in the United States, when you have a president who is behaving as erratically does this, what do you do?

And I think, you know, we have had some examples of people that were not competent at the end. So Woodrow Wilson was not competent at the end. His wife, de facto, ran the White House and kept it a secret from everybody. the Ronald Reagan had early onset Alzheimer's towards the end really wasn't recognizing what was happening and they just kept it secret and just ran the White House without him. And then of course most recently Joe Biden was his cognitive capacity was in rapid decline and they just ran the White House without him. And so the difference is all three of them had cognitive capacity limitations,

whereas Trump's limitations are behavioral and emotional and psychological. and he obsesses over taking credit for everything. So it's much more difficult. They have repeatedly asked him not to answer Iran-related questions at press conferences. He says, yeah, you're right. I won't do it. Then he does it. They repeatedly ask him quit posting on truth at all about the Iran war.

He says, okay, okay. And then he goes and does it. It does like six in a row. So they can't constrain him or restrain him successfully so far. So increasingly, it's got the one, the military. has to stand up and say no if he proposes anything that's a war crime or that's an obvious war crime some of things that already happen are war crimes but putting that aside but a disastrous catastrophic war crime stand up and say no whether it's nuclear weapons bombing all bridges

bombing all power systems any of that jazz any that may lead Iran to retaliate similarly and equally tit for tat across the Gulf coast golf countries that will just kill economic the global economy for years the so the that's step one step two i mean basically you got grandpa can't have the keys to go out and drive the car everybody knows you can't can't do it anymore they's got to take the keys away and then start doing things unilaterally i mean what would happen if vance came out said we have a deal and said what the terms were publicly before trump before letting trump do so is trump really going to say no is trump really going to get into a public fight with his vice president what's is you know i don't think he's

got the willingness to do that so i think that increasingly they have to start thinking along those lines basically, you know, the equivalent of taking the keys away from the president, as I think the path they have to start thinking about. Now, I do think, this was one last topic I wanted to cover with you guys, the whatever the, I think it's Esmail Connie guy, the leader of the coupes. Because so he get, you know, supposedly, you know, there's the attacks that happened February. And then a, you know, sort of nebulous YouTube program that's, starts up, puts together a lot of facts that seem to make sense,

which was the idea that Connie's head of the coupes was really the Israeli rat that sold out Soleimani and that sold out Hezbollah and that sold out the Hamas leader and that sold out the Iranian leadership for assassination attempt. And supposedly he was captured, supposedly he committed suicide, supposedly he was still jailed. But then on the flip side, then later on, their stories that, no, he's a lot. He's back, you know, they used to call him the, you know, the magic, whatever it was, because these attacks would happen that he was supposed to be at, but he managed to survive,

which led to suspicion about what he was up to. But then there's talks that maybe he's, now there's Iranian press, other press, that say he's not dead after all. So, you know, one theory is that he is and still is a rat. The other is that Israel Mossad or MI6 put out the idea that he was a rat when they thought he was dead to hide the real rat.

Another possibility is that the Iranians did a sciop by pretending he was dead to try to see what the, What do you think of that? I mean, I don't think I've seen any photos of him, but do you think he's alive? Do you think he was, what do you think the chances are? He was a rat? And do you think both sides were just playing sciops against the other?

It's a very, very, very good question to which I have no simple answer. I looked at, he has given, or he has purportedly been giving interviews to the Iranian media. The last one was on the 11th of April. and that was completely standard stuff, what you would expect, you know, the head of the Quds Force to give. So it's not impossible to imagine that he really is dead and that it's all been put together on, you know, by somebody else within the IRGC or whoever to give the impression that he's not dead at all.

And you can see why the Iranians might want to do that. They're in the middle of a major... conflict with the United States, admitting that Soleimani's right hand, Soleimani's successor, was actually an agent of Mossad. I mean, the effect of that, the implications of that would be enormous and the damage that it could do to Iranian morale at this time would be enormous. So you can't just about imagine, and it's so impossible, that the Iranians will be saying, well, you know, we'll keep the fact that he's been actually exposed for what he really was and that he's been executed or forced to suicide, that they keep it to themselves, that they have these interviews out there coming from time to time, giving the impression that he's actually still alive, that he's still in good standing. It reassures the Iranian people that, you know, there's nothing. unto what all wrong going on. And eventually, when the war is ended,

you can quietly announce that, you know, this heroic figure, General Carney has, you know, gone down fighting, it's a heroic battle, and you can replace him with someone else. But it was you can't continue with this forever. I mean, the goods force does need to be commanded by someone. and that someone does have to have a genuine public profile. So they might be spinning it on,

but they can't maintain that indefinitely. For the record, this is my own sense. I think that was probably originally a misinformation operation. And I'm going to say who I think was behind it. I don't think it was the Americans. I don't personally think it was the Israelis. I've looked at that video many times. I think it was the British.

The British are their own issues with Iran. And I think that the British would not be sorry if there were dissentions within the Iranian leadership and if they could play up stories and create tensions inside Iran. But I don't want to pretend to more knowledge than I do. And I think this is a guess. I'm going to finish, by the way,

just by making one very simple point. If the Republican Party has political survival instincts, if they want to retain the presidency in 2008, and have a hope of getting Congress back under their control in 2028, 2026 is a lost cause, I'd say. Then they would do exactly what they would help to do exactly what you said. Sideline the president, put the vice president, who is a much more convincing leader in overall control now, support him to do that, and help the vice president

to sideline the president, which is an extremely difficult thing to do in the United States. As for the 25th Amendment, which a lot of people have been talking about, I've looked at this. I think the bar is exceptionally high, rightly so, by the way. I don't think you should easily be removing presidents in a system like the American, where the president is directly elected. And I just don't think that can work in this situation. And I think it would be very dangerous to try. And I think if you did try it, you'd have a political crisis in the United States on top of all of the other crises that we have. And I don't think that really is helpful. So I think the best course is to do exactly what you said to get the people in the administration, the cabinet and all of these people

to say to the top people in the Republican Party in Congress to say to the president, Mr. President, you need to slow down, you need to take a step back. Your vice president is there. He's very supportive, very loyal to you. He can do more and gradually shift the burden of work onto him. Never an easy thing to do with someone like Donald Trump, but it's not impossible. I've seen it done. I have actually seen it done. I remember I was in a law firm where the senior partner went completely off the rails. And that is exactly what happened. So it can be done, but it does require everybody to agree on the need to do it. And with people like Hegsseth around, I think that's very difficult.

And I think before you get to the problem of the president, you need to deal with people like Heg Seth first. That's my view about this. So if you want to just say something quickly about that, Rob. but and then, well, I'm done. I've asked my questions with the day. Yeah, yeah, we can turn to the super chats and the questions. Yes.

But basically the 25th Amendment legally and politically is much more difficult because you have to get a majority of the cabinet, two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate. The people think it's just the majority of the cabinet, but the President can immediately dispute that, and they're on a quick clock that has to get two-thirds of the House and the two-thirds of the Senate to concur, and that is a much more difficult burden

than just impeachment, which doesn't require any support from the cabinet, only requires majority support from the House, and it's only the Senate that needs the two-thirds requirement. And the legal standard is also different. The incapacity, there's an argument that incapacity still allows mentally ill people to be in that capacity, you know, within that capacity. There's that issue evidentiary-wise. So, but either way, politically and legally, much easier to do impeachment than the 25th amendment, which is probably forthcoming. But the best way for Trump to mitigate that would be

is if he let Vance run a lot more of things. And at least as a de facto basis, the military has got to start restructuring who they take orders from. They'll be blunt about it. They got to not execute on unlawful orders if the president keeps going in that direction. And we're seeing signs, thankfully, that Cain was willing to stand up and at least do it twice before. But the more power that Vance has decision-making-wise, the country is in a much better position, given Trump's declining mental state. Robert Barnes, this has been an absolutely outstanding program. I think we've got a really clear understanding picture of where we are. In some ways, it's very disturbing, very, very concerning,

to say it mildly, we're looking at an economic crisis. We're looking at all sorts of things. But it does seem that there are at least some people in the administration and in the military who are trying to do what they can to keep things, to hold things together. And that is, well, we should be extremely grateful for that. So thank you, thank you for joining us. And I'm going to hand over to Alex. I'm sure we've got lots of questions. About 30 minutes questions.

Is that all right, guys? Yeah, Robert? Yeah. All right. And whatever we don't answer in this show, me and Alexander will do a dedicated show on the questions, on the Q&A, like we always do. We're talking about Trump and sidlining Trump. But how about this from Nikos?

Putin's approval rating has fallen 72%. Trust in him fell to 67% and United Russia has fallen to 27.3%. Will United Russia collapse as Orban did, part two? Is there a chance that he'll end up as a lame duck president? I see that even Medvedev still respects him, but he himself mentions the instability. I hope we aren't in a Khrushchev-Bresnev situation because the new People's Liberal Party rose to 12.5%.

President Putin needs to watch out for the liberals. What do you guys look at? His approval ratings, which are decreasing. I think Nicos is right on that. Okay, well, let's start. New People's Party is another. Kremlin construct. This is one of the great problems with Russian politics. Something that I disapprove of strongly, by the way. But the Kremlin has a habit of throwing up parties, which it

ultimately controls because it wants to bleed off support from some groups as opposed to others. And this is all that is. So don't take that seriously. It is simply, as I said, a glove part. of the Kremlin that they put up ahead of the elections that are going to happen in a few months' time. Now, he's a 72%. This is a decline from 74%. I think statistically. 72% and he fell to 67. Well, yeah.

No, no, no, no. He didn't fall. This is, this is a fall into 72%. Has fallen to 72%. So, I mean, this is, this is, this is statistically. minuscule. 67% trust rating is not unusual for Putin. 27, whatever it was, 27.3 is, again, a level that United Russia also has quite often, actually, United Russia is not a popular party in Russia. There's no coherent ideology. It is basically there as a kind of establishment party.

particularly likes it. Ultimately, they end up voting for it because in Russia, most people want stability more than anything else. So these figures are not actually a major problem for Putin or for the Kremlin at this time. Now, we have seen an economic contraction in January and February. 1.8% as compared to last year. So if this continues, if we get into recession territory, then people will start to get, not just angry, but very angry. And that is a problem. That would be a problem. I don't think that is going to happen. And the reason is very simple, which is that the central, the reason for this economic contraction. Discuss it in many places, many, many times, is that the central bank

always engages in massive monetary overkill whenever there is an inflation problem in Russia. Inflation was allowed to go all the way up to 11% in early 2025. They therefore pushed up real interest rates, that's interest rates above inflation. to 10%, which meant that interest rates went up to 21%. Normal interest rates. Inflation is now at around 5%. Interest rates are at 15%. So real interest rates are still at 10%.

They are keeping interest rates unbelievably crushingly high. I mean, real interest rates of 10% are unheard of in any other major economy. Now, inevitably, this is provoking criticism. We've discussed this in many, many programs that Alex and I have done. There was a furious meeting of the Kremlin. You actually got the pictures of it.

Putin was furious. He said, you know, why are we seeing this contraction? You told me that there wouldn't be a contraction over the course of the winter. Nebula was clearly on the back foot. She's made comments since that, you know, we have to keep it. interest rates very high because if we lower them too quickly,

that we'll have to keep them higher at a higher level than we would do if we kept them high now and that we're able to bring them down further a little later, which isn't frankly a nonsense statement. What that means is that she's on the back foot, that she's under pressure. At some point this year, interest rates are going to start to come down faster. You're going see more rapid economic growth, and that will probably play through in time for the parliamentary elections, which are due to happen in Russia in the autumn. I'm afraid in Russia as everywhere else, economic policy follows the political calendar, not the other way around. Well done. Lee Levin says, so Trump is demented. Now what do we do? I think Robert, and I

I think you guys answered that. I think I answered that very well. How about from Casey O'Brien? As a disillusioned, Trump voter, the only defense in the conversation I have is if Kamala was president, we'd be in a war with Russia and I'd be far worse. Could you please give this some thought?

I think it's so. I think that as bad as Trump has been, there was a high risk that Harris would have got us involved in Iran. She was more hawkish than Trump was on Iran. during the campaign. She had shown very little willingness to restrain the Israel lobby, just looked at how they handled Gaza in the Biden administration, despite bleeding out votes all over the place.

They lost Muslim Dearborn Michigan to Trump because of it. So she sowed no signs of being a stand-up person. The way I describe it to people, for those that follow European politics, imagine Kayakalas, but dumber as President of the United States. That's Kamala Harris. Does anyone think that would be an improvement? Can I just make a comment of my own here? If you had had Kamala Harris, you would have a war probably with Russia, probably with Iran.

And the problem is nobody would be able to argue that this person wasn't completely sane. I mean, whereas now, at least we're able to say, well, you know, we've got all this situation because the president is out of his mind. but we wouldn't have that argument with Kamala Harris. So what could we do in that case with Trump? We can at least hypothesize situations where people might find workarounds with him. But with the president and full command of herself and a faculty, whatever they are,

we could have all of these wars and there would be far less we could do. And you'd have a vice president, Waltz, under Camela Harris, right? Will indeed. Well, indeed. I mean, I don't really see that we would have been any better role with Harris. I think it would have, I still feel it would probably have been worse off, actually.

Pasha Moyer says one possible path in all of this is if Vance becomes president before the end of Trump's term. Does he have the leverage to extract us from this mess? I think he would reverse course. Yeah, I think he would course correct very quickly and rapidly. And yes, using the Gerald Ford example as the path. He's already aware of that path. In fact, it's his only path to 2028 is if he effectively replaces the president. Otherwise, he knows there is no path to 2020.

I just get to add something to that. I remember Gerald Ford very well. He was a nice man. He was a nice, decent man. He did not have Vance's abilities as a politician. It's why Trump is obsessed when he's walking down steps to double check that he's not going to fall. It's because he remembers Chevy Chase making fun of Gerald Ford falling

down all of a lot. That's why he's still paranoid of those things. He's, he's mostly motivated by like 1970s TV versions of presence. As I says, is there a rescue pilot if no one has seen him? Yeah, exactly. And only that's the location was in the wrong place.

The location was like over here, but then the planes are over here and anybody that knew anything about Miller, Larry Johnson pointed that right away. It was like, you don't use all of these to rescue someone. This is something else that's going on here. And it was an effort

to have a big show that we went in and we extracted the enriched uranium. I had pitched a different proposal given Trump's mental state. I was like, just tell him we did it. And he can go out and brag about it. You know, Iranians get disputed, who cares?

Just tell him, don't actually try it because it will backfire. Larry Johnson was part of the simulations of this back when he was in the CIA. days and every conclusion came back the same don't do it not going to turn out well this didn't turn out well and trump had to pretend it was a magical rescue of a pilot that still nobody is seen yet but to his credit president trump did rescue eight young women from the uh from from the hangman's noose in her aunt just ignore for the moment that they're all AI fakes uh he took credit for yesterday

yeah yeah that's that's an that's an interesting story too yeah yeah Oh, boy. Hayes Grasititi says, your opinion on what happens if hostilities resume and the Houthis get involved, I think things will get multiple times worse. I think that's the next, I think various Iranian sources have said that their next step on the escalation ladder is to get the Houthis to shut down the Red Sea. And then you've got another 10, 15 percent of oil, gas, fertilizer, other components taken offline globally. because the Saudis are using it even more than they were using it before the war. And so they don't have to take out the pipeline or the infrastructure.

They just have to let the hoodies close that. And we proved in last, and this was the other sign of Trump. If we couldn't beat the hoodies, how were you going to beat Iran? I mean, it never made any sense. We couldn't beat them in January, February last year. And by the way, people who have doubts about Vance,

go back and read those leaked text, those signal texts. Vance is the only one on those texts saying, I don't think this is a good idea. to even deal with the hoodies. And Heg's death was like, oh, no, it's going to work. It's going to go great. So I think it's, they have on the escalatory pain threshold,

the Iran can survive a lot longer than the global economy in the U.S. can. Pinto Raul says, what is the likelihood that the current Iranian ceasefire remain stable through the conclusion of the World Cup in July? You see Trump's latest idiotic move? I mean, he wants to replace Iran with, Italy. I was like Italy just can't qualify. They can't, they go through playoff after playoff and keep losing. Maybe it's his effort to try to get Maloney back on board, but even

Maloney can see what's happening with Israel. It's like the earlier question about Orban. Orban decided to defend Israel to the end degree in B.B. Netanyahu, and it sunk him as the last draw in that election. Now, I am curious what you guys think the probabilities are. To me, even though he was clearly the EU candidate that the new Hungarian leader if he was smart tactically, just looking at it from a smart tactical perspective, not what

he himself ultimately will do. But I get the appeal of if I go pro EU, I've got a job for life. I can get some bureaucratic gig in Brussels, etc. But let's say this guy wants to be the next Orban. Is it the smart path to continue Orban's policies on immigration?

Continue the policies in terms of Russia to actually actually push back against the EU. The EU has a net negative rating still in Hungary. We just saw the Bulgarian elections where, you know, the EU skeptical candidate did well. This seems to be the vibe throughout Eastern and Central Europe, with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Polish presidential election last cycle, et cetera. Would the smart political thing if he wants to have an Orban-like future be to actually

not stick with the EU going forward or not be just the EU's puppet in Budapest? I don't think he has the force of political personality to do that. But there is absolutely no doubt that this election was not a repudiation of Orban's policies. They remain very popular in Hungary on immigration, on support for families, on independent foreign policy, on all of these things. What brought down Orban was that, well, Hungary has had its share of economic problems, which is true of everywhere in Europe, but also the perception that there was corruption and the fact that people would be coming tired of him, particularly young people, which I'm afraid is a factor in many elections when a government has been there for very long. So if this man had that level of political nouse and political skill and the force of personality, he might do it.

I do think he does. And that's the truth of it. I think Alex will fix society. I think the EU is going to squeeze my guy like a pimple and they're going to pop him. Exactly. That's what I think they're going to do to him. There's no escape for him from him.

there's none. They're going to squeeze him for everything he's got. And they're going to change Hungary. The EU is not going to allow another Orban situation come up in Hungary. He can't play Orban because he's not Orban. He doesn't have Orban's charisma, experience, political authority. So against a structure like the...

EU, which has, of course, its friends in Hungary, including in Marguer's political movement. It could be very, very difficult to make, to do what you say, Robert. I don't believe it's going to happen. I don't think the FIFA will give in to Trump's demands to suddenly change the rules of who qualifies. And I cannot see us in a position where we're still in this conflict. by the time June rolls around because the global economy will be just screaming, screaming, screaming. And I think Trump will have to fall by that point,

even if he doesn't want to. If they were going to replace Iran, they would have to replace Iran with someone from that conference, from Asia. I mean, under the rules, correct. They just, yeah, under the rules. So, I mean, you just can't pick out Italy just because they've won four World Cups in the past,

just because you want them. Exactly. It doesn't work like that. The thing that had on the truth is, understand with the whole Iran and the World Cup thing is, why don't they just change the venues? Iran has said they will show up if the venues are not in the United States, so you can make the venues in Mexico and in Canada. And, you know, granted they have ticket sales, but that's not that hard to move around. They've moved around in other instances. So they, yeah, they just have their games

played in Mexico. And there's no safety issue for Iran in the World Cup in the United States. That's just Trump, you know, trying to, you know, and he doesn't want the embarrassment of Iran being in the World Cup in the United States after the war. That's really what that is, is Trump's ego, not any legitimate objection to the Iran Sea, which I saw play in the German World Cup back in 2006. They had some fun. The most fun fans, though, were the Costa Ricans. The polls, unfortunately, they were out by the time we saw them play, and their fans were a little toasted, and they were not in a good mood because they were out. You know, Orban, maybe he would have won him. Hungary would have qualified. Sir Moscaim says like the man in Antigonish Trump is hunted by the man he once was and exhibits all the traits of a guilty conscious I met I met who wasn't there he wasn't there again today I wish he'd go away

very much like King of Lear King Lear like towards the end has these these these booth these little moments of pure clarity as to his own failures and limitations and I do encourage people to use the confession through projection filter on Trump whatever he says about Iran is likely what he's talking about. So if he says Iran's begging for a ceasefire, it means he's begging for a ceasefire. If he says Iran is governed by Cray's lunatics, it means he thinks he's right now a crazed lunatic, along with some of the Israelis. So it's a useful filter to figure out what's actually going on to his head. He accuses other people of being traitors that have been longtime loyal. That means he thinks of himself right now as being a traitor. So I agree with the commenter.

He will confess to project quite often these days. from zaryel on locals robert taking the keys or better said the nuclear football from potis is equal to a coup d'et mutiny what does the constitution have to say about that how would this turn out if it were jadey bans so the duty of every officer is to the constitution of the united states so a war crime is against the constitution of the united states so the preventing the president from ordering a war crime would be fulfilling their constitutional obligation not disobeying we do not have a monarchial system of power. We do not think the president is king or God. And even if Trump sometimes thinks he is. And consequently, that means that it's consistent with the Constitution.

The key has always been, is it a lawful order? If it's a lawful order, then disobeying the president is unconstitutional. But if it's an unlawful order, then it is not at all a coup. It's actually honoring the Constitution to disobey it and preclude the president from acting out on. from i love truth what about conspiracies about trump being compromised by israeli lobby and some agencies with epstein files special we know he received 250 million dollars from you know who and you cannot deny because we see him with epstein and lots of pictures the argument against trump being in the epstein files is why did he campaign on disclosing it for so long why did he publicly talk about it uh why did all of like people

like Dan Bongino and Cash Patel and all these people that also flipped on the Epstein files, why did they all campaign on it? Why did it in his first three months when he was elected? You see a huge deviation from, and it's the same argument in terms of being corrupted by the Israel lobby. It's like, well, why did in the first three months? Why did he put Tulsi Gabbard in OD&I? Why did he put Joe Ken in his deputy OD&I? Why did he put Robert Kennedy in at HHS? Why did he pick Vance to be his vice president? These are all people the Israel lobby is skeptical of for a range of reasons, especially Gabbard and Kent, as has now been proven true by what Ken is going public with. So why do you do those things? If the Israel lobby was really

governing and controlling, I'm not saying that they're clearly a motivational factor, no doubt about that. But think of it more as a worm tongue, his mental decline factor, than just by itself, them having bought the full presidency lock, stock, and barrel. Otherwise, these other things just don't make sense in terms of these appointments. I mean, why does Gabbard write in the National Intelligence Report in March of 2025 that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon if the goal is to go in three months later? So you see a shift around the Epstein files, and there's clearly some component linked to that. But I think the more, if you take the filter that he started to lose his mental capacity to make good decisions beginning in the summer that's only accelerated through the rest of the year, that is a more consistent. you know, explainer, has better explanatory power than does he's in the Epstein file,

is my take at least. So, and the other aspect is you'd have to believe, if Trump's in the Epstein files, you'd have to believe the Democrats chose not to disclose this for a decade. And this is, they tried to impeach him twice. They tried to indict him four times. They, you know, whatever you think, there was, you know, there were two assassination attempts on. How do you explain that if he's in the Epstein file? How do you explain Democrats not using that for 10 years?

I think the last point is the absolute clincher. I cannot imagine, especially during the Biden-Marie Garland era, were the Democrats in full control, that they would not have used any material they could find against Trump. And if it was in the Epstein files, we'd already have heard about him. from Andrea from from from rumble more and more of my maga friends are saying trump needs to shut the f up and from son of a mitch from rumble is vance the only reason driscoll is off limits and hasn't been fired by egg's debt yes absolutely and these other people he's been

able to get to slowly maturely even though they had donors and direct ties to trump because Trump's mental state is all over the place. But people that Vance... So Colby, Elbridge Colby is a deep Vance ally. Driscoll is a strong Vance ally. Tulsi Gabbard is a strong Vance ally. Kennedy is a strong Vance ally. There have been efforts to get rid of all four of them

over the last three months because they were considered as unreliable in a range of donor-driven or Israel-first-driven topics. And so far he's been able to protect those four. He was not able to protect his ally at the Antitrust Division, but that has become a constant embarrassment since then because there's been corruption case after corruption case connected to it. The economist did a big cover story on it.

Others, these antitrust cases that go to trial that state attorney generals take end up getting big verdicts that the Justice Department got a sweet deal on that embarrassed the department. So the one place he wasn't able to protect his person has become a constant source of embarrassment to the White House by them not protecting his person. So for now, he's been able to keep these people in place. despite efforts afoot to remove them by different rogue actors within the administration.

Michael in Taiwan says, I'm tired of people saying China will use the crisis to take Taiwan. Can you say anything to put this claptrap to rest? Oh, my own take is that China doesn't need to take Taiwan. I mean, you have the opposition leader in Taiwan. Happy to chat with a Z. There's a great book that was recommended by Professor Mbdomdami, I think, from the University of Tehran.

This book was written by two U.S. long-time State Department folks called Going to Tavern. I highly recommend it. Like the first chapter basically predicts. This was 10 plus years ago. They wrote this book. Everything we're seeing in a lot of time. But one of the things they pointed out was they quoted a Japanese diplomat saying the moment the U.S. can no longer guarantee hydrocarbons to Asia and their delivery through navigation is the moment they reconsider all of their alignments.

and allegiances. And we're seeing that in a lot of time. I think what makes more sense for Taiwan? I mean, isn't some, you know, Hong Kong-style relationship with China, there are going to be more people in Taiwan and think that makes a lot more sense than depending on a military power that can't even protect the Gulf states that are their biggest contributors in military purchasers. If we can't protect them, we can't guarantee passes to the Straits of Hormuz. What good is the U.S. relationship just from a geopolitical, realist perspective for people in South Korea, for people in Taiwan, for people in the Philippines, for people in Indonesia, who are busy chatting it up with China and Russia as they speak.

I mean, Iran could come, the Iran War may completely reorient the entire East power structure to a Russia, China, Iran alignment. And I say that it's just realistic. I'm not saying I like that or want that because I'll be accused of, you know, being in Moscow's pocket, Louis pocket, China's pocket, over it. But I mean, just as a geopolitical real estate, but I mean, just as a geopolitical realistic if you're in those places, doesn't it make more sense to have better relations with China and Russia than it does to be overly dependent on a country that can't even protect the Straits of Pormuz. Sir Mugge's game says every nation is supposed to have a 90-day oil reserve. China has 180 plus days plus days. Winners like the UK and India have seven days, explains a lot, seven days. Yeah, it's because

China stockpiled. China is the biggest. Those are recent, I mean, was Forbes put out a chart. He just pointed out, China stockpiles is the biggest of anybody in the world in terms of oil and gas. They also are diversifying. They got like 12 nuclear reactors coming online. I mean, you know, they get coal, they got nuclear. They got oil and gas. Electric cars. Exactly.

So they're going to be, I mean, their problem is dealing with the real estate bubble that they've been trying to get out of in demographics. It's not oil and gas. And all this 8B chess, Trump is taking on the Iran war because it's going to take China. off the board, is not going to turn out the way of those people. They're trying to create rationality where there just hasn't been any by the president. I'll just quickly add to that, that, you know, the seven days for Britain, I've actually heard it's two, two days. Just to say.

All right, let's do two, two Vance pushback, pushback questions here from Iranian kiddo. Vance went on national TV and defended the war. The whole thing about him being anti-wars fabricated. to boost his 20-28 chances. I wouldn't bet on a losing candidate if I were you. And one more about Vance and the Pope. Unfortunately, Vance sided with Trump in his feud against a faith leader of Catholic Church. He's supposed to be a member of teaching a pope.

The theology looks ridiculous. It looks ridiculous. So there's two of our components. One, Trump's public image is going to be to defend Trump because that's how he's part of the administration. That's how he sees it. But also, if he wants any influence on Trump, he's got to be perceived as doing. doing that. So I would take all those things with a grain of salt. But do note, contrast that to say, Rubio's public appearances on a random one. You'll find, Vance isn't talking about their ballistic

missile program. Vance isn't talking about Hezbollah, the Hootis, or Hamas, or the Shia militias in Iraq. He isn't talking about any of those facts. He isn't talking about regime change. He's only talking about nukes because he wants Trump to be reshifted, but it's also his public campaign. So the, and then it, I know, but people can read the New York Times piece, Wall Street Journal piece. Everybody that has any insight as to what happened behind the scenes, I happen to know from direct sources, but you can go to those sources. All of them are unanimous. The advance was the strongest opponent of the war.

And I gave people saying, well, he's just trying to do this as some sort of 8D chess plan to run in 2028. I don't see how that works at all. One, if this continues where it is, he's not running in 2028. So how does that fit into part of his 2028 scheme thing? And the problem with that is like that was the Fuente's mindset that said, Joe Kent is part of the CIA system and part of the assets is really a secret worker for the deep state. Has that held up well?

I don't think so. So that now, the most embarrassing thing was the nuclear vest idiocy. I mean, the Shia have literally committed zero suicide attacks in the last 20 years. That's a Sunni thing. And usually a Wahhabi thing. It's not a Shia thing anyway. But what was Vance trying to do? He was trying to bring back the conversation over and over again to nukes.

Please just focus on nukes, Mr. Credit. Because that's an exit ramp. If your focus is just on the nuclear program, you can get out of this. If you're talking about weapons or proxies or regime change, he ain't never getting out of this. So that's what Vance is trying to do. His audience is really audience of one. He's trying to drag it back to get Trump's credibility and confidence so he could refocus the president. Remember, this is just about nukes, just about.

Just about news. Now, having to defend the Trump's idiotic attacks on the Pope on Orthodox Easter, no less, you know, that's just the embarrassing position he's constantly put in. He has to defend the president's dumbest and lamest and wackiest things. And it's now he has subsequently issued a second statement that was more moderated because some of us said that, you know, there are ways to even try to defend the president in that regard that didn't require that statement. And he has moderated and tempered. His statements about the Pope. Now, he's a newly converted Catholic.

He's got a new book on this coming out. So that's the other caveat there. But yes, defending Trump puts you in a constant, embarrassing. I had a good buddy of mine that left the administration a couple of months ago who would otherwise have to be in a keep spokesperson position because he couldn't imagine getting up there and spinning. Like Soreau Scotty Bessent there trying to spin, where unsanctioning their oil is a way to trap them.

you know, the kind of dumb stuff these people have to say. So I don't, I would glad not to be in Vance's position of having to do that. But he's going to keep having to do that because that's his role current. From Claudius,

do we know more about the nuclear codes incident? So the original source for that is Larry Johnson, but there are other people that, I'll leave it, that I believe Larry Johnson is correct. I'll leave it at that. But you can see Larry's interview I think he first disclosed that maybe with Daniel Davis or Mario Naufel.

I don't know how he pronounced Mario's last name. But it was one, Larry makes the round. He's on like a half dozen shows usually each day. He's busy. He's busy. He's high demand these days. But let's just say Larry's sources have been consistently highly reliable. It's completely consistent with other things about Trump. And I heard the same story from some, from let's say good reliable sources.

I'll put that way. Iranian kiddo says the jet was shot down in Luristan region of Iran. Isfahan is far away. Story doesn't add up. No, it doesn't. It doesn't at all. And you know Trump. I mean,

with the hero story that he was trying to spin, he'd have that pilot everywhere by now. The, you know, there's no sign of the deep state isn't running things because the deep state would have, you know, you know,

like the person crying about the incubator babies in Kuwait, who was actually the daughter of somebody's ambassador or whatever. the deep state would have much better propaganda right now. The best evidence that demented Trump, not the deep state, is running this particular war, is that the propaganda has been crap. Iran beats us every day with Lego videos. Lego videos. That's where Russia needs advice.

Look at the Lego. I hire those Iranian propagandists because their Lego videos are just fantastic. They're funny. They're creative. They're emotively effective. We can't even win on it. the propaganda side anymore. Yeah, they hit a whole run with those.

Dark Horse working on building a huge data center, half an hour from Chattanooga. The money's great, but the morals are conflicting. Right. Thank you for that. And we'll do one or two more from Monty. How big of an influence does Silicon Valley have on the American Army? When I read Alex Carp's 22 manifesto, he literally made my skin crawl, Alex Carp from Palantir, the CEO of Palantir.

What if it turns out Palantir is the one that gave us those points to hit that girl school to start the war? What if that turns out to be the source? The AI is notoriously wrong. Half the medical advice it gives you is wrong. Half the legal advice it gives you as wrong. Dear God, are we, why are we using these people as part of the surveillance state program? And they're going to get stuff wrong all the time. I mean, Rubio is running around bragging about how he picked up Soleimani's niece.

And it turned out they have no relationship to Soleimani at all. It's just the same last name. I mean, it's just embarrassing. Humillian was a First Amendment violation anyway. But it's just, I mean, my guess is between AI and Laura Lumer, the only question is who is dumber? From Alex, Alex Davy Duke, great to have Robert and that ran together. Always the best analysis, especially Robert, always gives touch of hope.

Thank you, guys. And we'll do a final one from Rumble. Son of a Mitch says, has anyone confirmed the change in weather in Iran after they took out the radars. Oh, so I don't know if you guys have heard this. So the theory is that the UAE was using a weather weapon against the Shia regions of Iraq and Iran to create their droughts over the last couple of years.

And it purportedly, when Iran took it out, all of a sudden rainfall started happening in a large part of it. I have no idea what it's true. I know, you know, Alex Jones, Beau, buddy, he knows far more about weather weapons. He can start telling you about. stuff from the 80s. Hey, you're like to do this, Barnes. They got this. I got this. So I just have never done a deep dive into it. I'll probably do a hush, hush.

It'd beba Barneslaw. Dotlogles.com. The second only to the durand dot locals.com for locals community on these weather weapons because this stuff fascinates me. I have no idea whether it's true or not. All right. One more. One more. This is a good one. China versus EU's energy diversification. Oh, boy. And a final one from Tony. You could have a bigger gap. Tony Nevis. This is an interesting question. You all have Previously, talk positively about how Russia uses war as an extension of politics. They would not start a war like this, at least. I think it would be impossible, actually.

I think it would be impossible to imagine the Russians with the kind of political and intellectual structures that they have to start a war at this kind. But I mean, unusual for the Americans, too. I mean, we had Jim Webb, who pointed out that this is not how America does wars, that this war that's been waged against Iran violates everything about the American way of war as well. before they got that one and I'm talking to media. Media propaganda run up. It was a full year. And they also went to the UN and to the security council.

I mean, it was ridiculous, but they still did it. Didn't do it. All right. They are they want to make weapons to take it. A key no one. So learning. before you go, Robert, where can people follow your work? Where can they find you? So for all the hush-hushes and alternative narratives and other political and legal commentary

and a great community where even the trolls are above average, that's at vivabarnslaw.com, and for all the legal case analysis, or if you want to come to the annual 250th anniversary of America's Independence Conference, August 1st, August 2nd, Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the inimitable and irreplaceable, Alexander McCourse will be present all the way from the UK. where Larry Johnson is coming, Daniel Davis is coming, Chase Hughes is coming, all bunch of folks covering the MAGA, MAHA, independent movements, political analysis, geopolitical analysis, legal analysis. You can go to 1776 LawCenter.com.

Also, that's the cases concerning the Amish farmers, the cases concerning the surveillance state. We'll be defending Joe Kent if he comes under any attack, but all the other political freedom, medical freedom, financial freedom, financial freedom, legal freedom, health freedom, food, freedom, you can follow the cases and controversies there at 1776 law center.com. All right. Take care, everyone.

Thank you, Robert, for joining us. Have all those links in the description box down below. Thank you to our moderators as well in the chat, to Zareel to Brett Harris and everyone else that was moderating today on YouTube. I'm sure I missed some moderators. I think YouTube is crashing out, guys, to be quite honest. but all right that's our that's our cue to end it thank you to everyone take care thank you Robert thank you very much