The Duran Podcast - No Plan B on Iran as GOP Faces Midterm Rout

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

No Plan B on Iran as GOP Faces Midterm Rout

All right, Alexander, we are here with the great Robert Barnes. Robert, before we get started, where can people follow your work? They can follow it at Vima Barnes Law.com or if they want to follow the legal cases, whether it's the Amish cases, the medical freedom cases, the COVID vaccine cases, the government whistleblower cases, about political freedom, medical freedom, financial freedom, or food freedom. That's at 1776 Law Center.com. And in fact, you can see from the conference, we have all the videos uploaded of all the interviews.

And for a modest donation to the cause, you can see all about a dozen or so hours of interviews, including Alexander talking about what it's like to be a six-year-old hostage in Greece. Alex talking about what it's like to be a young teenager in Moscow after the wall falls. also Daniel Davis talking about being a whistleblower reform of the military supply chain. Larry Johnson talking about how do we restructure our intelligence apparatus to reflect American or original principles, not the current deep state priorities. Jim Webb talking about why are so many members of Congress morons on foreign policy? It turns out their staff are mostly morons on foreign policy. The Richard Barris, who's got a new book out called Burn It All Down about what is happening in America. political prospects going forward, short-term, mid-term, long-term.

Dr. Bowden, a major COVID whistleblower, Brooke Jackson, major COVID whistleblower, the COVID vaccine whistleblower in that context. The Chase Hughes, talking about how to detect and evade a CIA sciop, Greg Hartley, and Scott Rouse, talking about how you can use body language in everyday life to interpret things and to protect yourself and to better effectively communicate. Michelle Rennon, stay representative, fighting for food freedom on the, on a front lines here in the United States. Amy Miller, one of the great Maha activists, talking about

what that's like to do with that. You can get all of that and more at 1776 Law Center.com. I have those links in the description box down below and as a pinned comment and Robert, looking good in your Duran merch. I have the link to the Duran merch in the description box as well. Alexander, Robert, we have a lot of news to get to, so let's get started. Yes, indeed. And can I say thanks to Robert for all that. And can I just also urge people to go and watch all that, all this themselves. It was an absolutely brilliant conference altogether, and you will learn so much from doing so. And we're going to learn much more today because events continue to move at dizzying speed.

We are in a very, very complex situation here in Europe. There was apparently a meeting of intelligence officers at the Elysee Palace. in Paris, chaired by Emmanuel Macron. They were discussing the situation in the world, in the Middle East, in the United States, in Europe itself, where we're seeing more and more signs of rebellion in places like Germany, for example, in Ukraine. And one of the people who attended that meeting said that he came out of it with a sense of vertigo. that things looked so, you know, it was like literally looking, bear in mind he's obviously

a person with strongly globalist and those sort of views. But for him, it was like looking down into the bottom of the abyss. Apparently he was very, very shaken when he came out of this briefing by all of the various things that he heard. The epicenter of everything, the place where all the decisions are made and continue to be made and will continue to be made for a long time, remains the United States. And we are very, very privileged to have that person who understands what's going on there better than anyone that I know, Robert Barnes, on our show today. So Robert, the United States is now tied up in a war in the Middle East. It's a very strange war. Sometimes it seems on, sometimes it seems off, very difficult to make very much sense of what the president himself

is thinking. I was recently in the United States and I was in Chicago and the people I met there were all very worried about rising diesel prices and those sort of things, despite what the president is telling us, it is all very connected or so it seems to me with the war in the Middle East. What is, as far as you know, the current view about that war now, there's a lot of talk about what the Americans are going to do and what do they think about this new situation with the Saudis and the Houthis and with MBS apparently constantly on the phone trying to get the United States more deeply involved in the various wars in the Middle East? Well, it'll be interesting to watch. I mean, this was the most unpopular war to ever get into in the first place in terms of American public opinion.

Then it has stayed that way and has only got less and less and less popular as time goes on to give you some sense of it. Even to neocon-aligned Republican Senate candidates, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson in Iowa and former Congressman Mike Rogers in Michigan. the, you know, Rogers is Mr. Surveillance State going all the way back. And Hinson, while she's been in Congress, has repeatedly voted against deauthorizing the war. There's been at least six votes in the House on whether or not to authorize the president to go forward. Most of those votes have said for President Trump not to go forward. But one of the people that was cheerleading it was Mrs. former Nikki Haley top cheerleader in Iowa, Ashley Hinson. Well, both of them yesterday earlier this week came out and said,

we got to get out of the Iran War. So it gives you an idea of just how bad everybody's bleeding out politically because of what an uttered is. I don't know if I've been trying to compare it, but there really is no obvious comparison. Maybe World War I, like, I mean, no American war has sustained popularity of the politicians who get into it here. in the United States. So that goes all the way back to World War I, even World War II after it's over, Democrats get thrown out in 1946, much like Churchill got thanked in England the same way.

The Korean War, deeply unpopular, really killed Truman's second term. The Vietnam War, deeply unpopular, killed LBJ's second term in that big 1964 Democratic coalition. Even the Iraq War, while it was popular, the first one. Still, Poppy Bush gets tossed from office because Americans didn't see that as his priority. Iraq War II, deeply unpopular, killed Republicans back under Bush. But this war may be even more unpopular, in part because there was never buy-in. Your typical propaganda campaign outside of Fox News didn't really exist. So if you got your Fox News boomer cons, we've been a war with Iran for 47 years. I think Trump is changing it to like 57 or something the other day. It's like, wow, I didn't know we were at war when the Shaw was there. Holy cow.

Get new news from the Dunrow Doctrine every day. But the, so that's where we are politically. There is no support or appetite for the war. Then, and that is now finally spreading to the hill. Because that was always the, it was clear out in the heartland. This was not a popular war. But the question was, when would D.C. wake up to that reality, despite American political history of punishing politicians who get.

us into war. So there's no reason to believe that's going to change. Now, Trump's recognition of it, though, is a separate factor. So there's the political capital that he's losing on a daily basis that I think will play into his ability to escalate now or even after the midterms. But in terms of what's motivating Trump, the most revelatory part, I mean, I know we discussed it back earlier this year after I'd been up to D.C. met with people who had been, you know, lifetime associates of certain levels with Trump

throughout his political career, at least. And they were describing a change Trump, that the old Trump was, you know, expect the best, but planned for the worst, you know, positive thinking, Norman Vincent Peel style, but tethered to objective realism. The, someone who always wanted to get, you know, 55 different second opinions, who wanted to, who liked sycophants to be surrounded by sycophants, but also to be surrounded by kill. killers so that, you know, this, you know, what he calls killers, this counterbalance of very powerful, strong personalities with suckup personalities. The, all of that had changed. He no longer had, and he was always, he always had like 35 plan B's, that what was changing in, in the fall,

the first people to get to be victim to it, or the Russians, in Trump's sabotage of the Anchorage deal, is that the, he no longer had a plan B. He no longer was tethered to objective realism. His positive thinking became fantastical thinking. So, you know, those that follow, as you guys have covered, Europe will understand it because it sounds pretty much like what Europe is Europe's leaders in Brussels have been saying for about, and in Paris and Bonn and Berlin and London as well, about the Ukraine war. But that was not a common trade of Trump. He used to say the Middle East was just sand and blood. You just spend blood fighting over sand. All of a sudden, that, that, that, that That was gone. The objective realism was gone. He didn't want any plan Bs. That's why people

keep struggling. You know, I see, you know, but on them now and then with Mario Knopfel, as you have, Alex. And it's funny because he keeps trying to put together that there's some overarching plan or strategy. There isn't. Trump doesn't do plan Bs anymore. Plan Bs are for losers. So, you know, that's gone. That's crap. And there never is a plan B. There might be a reverse. There might be his own version of a reverse gear, but that's it. Similarly, he tends to have sort of, he doesn't like any killers around him anymore. He only wants to be surrounded by sycophants, people who suck up to him. Doesn't want to be second-guessed, doesn't want to be questioned, doesn't want second opinions anymore.

He only wants opinions that reaffirm him. Like now the problem isn't him being isolated because of, you know, the corrupt aspects of the deep state or his own limitations of the people that surround him. It is his own choice. He doesn't want to have Joe Kent in the room. He doesn't want to have Tulsi Gabbard in the room. He doesn't want to have Amarillo's Fox in the room. He doesn't want to have Michael Anton in the room.

He doesn't even like it when J.D. Vance is in the room. If J.D. Vance is saying something he doesn't want to hear. So that was one part of it. The second part of it, so total decision-making change. So when people are looking at trying to predict them going forward, just understand the decision-making is dramatically, different and he likes and he has a strong propensity towards fantastical thinking. So it used to be an asset in a certain way. There was always risk to it has now become a huge liability.

And that he will convince himself of the dumbest and craziest things on the planet. Like he really had convinced himself, the world will be over four or five days. It wasn't so much the Israel persuaded him. It's that he wanted to believe it because that goes to his second part. Huge personality shift. So the New York Times. disclose this in the book regime change. They came in for an interview with him, and he printed out who he wanted the New York Times to know that he needed to be compared to.

And it wasn't the American founders, it wasn't other American presidents, it wasn't other global leaders. It was Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin for kicks and like, whatever that was, too. But what they all have in common is they're all conquerors.

They're not even like, Conquers, you could say, you know, Alexander the Great, you can give them credit for a lot of things. It wasn't even those. It was just people who were all they're known for is conquering, right? You know, you different, you know, Darius I first, all these others. You have a range of people you could cite that conquering is one of the things they did, but it's not the only thing they did. It shows people that, what do you remember about Genghis Khan other than Concord? What do you remember about it, Tilla the Hunt other than Concord?

Now, Napoleon, you could say maybe the Napoleonic Code, but I don't think that's what Trump was thinking about. So he wants to be a conqueror. And that's why beginning in the fall of 2025, he shifted to, let's have reproachment with Russia, to, I'm going to win a land war in Russia. I'm going to conquer the Persians. And I'm going to bluff the Chinese. And I'm going to do it all in the same year because no one else has ever done that before. People have tried it. Usually there's a reason why they don't try to repeat it.

But that's how all of a sudden he goes back and forth on Ukraine based on whether he thinks they're going to win. So Ratboy, you know, CIA director Ratcliffe has been whispering his ear, oh yeah, Ukraine's about to win, just about to win, even with Kellogg gone, who was saying that nonsense all the time. But Ratboy's more effective at it. And, you know, you'll be the great winner, Mr. President. You'll get to take credit. It was only because of your critical aid that we were able to take out the Rootsky's.

You were able to conquer Putin. And that's when he goes on the side of, oh, yeah, I'll be on the side of Ukraine. And then when he gets back into mental sobriety, and he realizes Ukraine doesn't have a shot and that coked up midget, as Soros Scottie himself calls him, Zelensky, is not somebody to get in bed with. Then you get more back to realism, but he goes back and forth within the same day sometimes. Same on Iran.

He convinces himself Iran's just about to fall with just one more push, one more, maybe it's an economic push, maybe it's a kinetic push, maybe it's a threat over here to somebody else. So the same to a decree with the Chinese. Like he really thought he could outmaneuver them on critical minerals. He thought he could out maneuver them on pressuring Iran. He convinced himself for substantial time period until he, Xi told him no in person in Beijing that China was going to come in against Iran. It was just wild. But he, if he wants to believe it, he convinces himself

it's true. Now his limitation is nobody is really on board with any administration. Narco Marco would be happy to cheer leave it. But even he knows it's got more risk than reward attached to it. The Soros Scottie wants to, you know, suck up to the president, but even he knows his sanctions policy can't work, like his economic deed day announcement, where the most revelatory part was when the journalist asked him, well, why don't you like really sanctioned China if you're serious about this? He's like, are you crazy? Then we'll send the whole economy up and went. Right. Okay. It's all things that cry. The, so you get all of those sort of sequence. So he doesn't really have reliable push in in the direction of more kinetic conflict,

Vance, of course, desperate for him to get out because Vance's political career is going up in flames that he can watch it live time and the bombing of Tehran. And mostly he has pushed back from the career people at the Pentagon. Even though Hague's death has purged tons of people under the guys that they're DEI people, they're not really. It's anybody who pushed back who said maybe we shouldn't use AI to target people because it will end up bombing a girl school, for example. the maybe we should be maybe we should shift to being a drone more affordable supply chain military future battlefield as Army Secretary Driscoll lifelong friends of J.D. Vance since law school was advocating with Driscoll is now gone. His deputy is now gone. The just like Kent is now gone, Gabbard is now gone, Fox is now gone, Anton is now gone. So there's still people in sort of the lower chain

that were discretionary appointees that are pushing back against the war, but they don't have the same advocates they did before. And the biggest pushback Trump gets for the Pentagon now. But it's the career military people, even though despite Heggs' efforts to purge as many independent-minded people as he could, they see the writing on the wall. And the morale is incredibly low. We not only have a munitions shortage of offensive standoff munitions

and a shortage of defensive interceptor munitions. We have a morale deficiency. They are as unhappy. I hear from a range of people. We heard from some people who showed up at the event whose kids were over there. Others talk to Larry Johnson on a regular basis. I mean, really sad, tragic stories. Kids who serve a lot, come back to the U.S., commit suicide three months later

because they can't handle everything that went on there. So Trump's got major limitations on what he can do, but his mind, unfortunately, is not one. Well, that's all very, very concerning. I have to say it's very consistent with what I have been seeing. Joe, just a few questions. I mean, first of all, what happened to Trump, the politician? I mean, he was a brilliant politician. He had a tremendous feel for the opinions of people in the US. He used to go out, he used to hear them. He had a sense of what they were saying to him. He was for a time, if you remember, the president of peace.

That was the president they voted for, not Genghis Khan. He'd come along and presented himself as Genghis Khan. I mean, they would absolutely not have voted for him. I can say that absolutely without any doubt at all. So what happened to that Trump? I mean, put aside, you know, the desire to be a conqueror. I mean, what happened to Trump the politician? Does he not understand how profoundly unpopular this is? When we were in Chattanooga, one of the most pleasurable encounters I had there. And Alex, too, was with Richard Barris. Brilliant man. He told us all about the problems with. the American polling industry, which are no doubt profound, as he described them. But even the opinion polls we are seeing publicly published now tell us that Trump's popularity is falling and falling like a stone. Doesn't that get through to him? Doesn't he see this? Doesn't that

worry him? And the second question I'd like to ask, which is a specific one, what is this hold? the John Radcliffe has over Donald Trump. I just thought the last person that Donald Trump would want to trust after what happened in his first term was the head of the CIA, even if it was that this, you know, Radcliffe is somebody with whom he's had a good relationship in the past. But surely he must know better than almost anyone else in Washington. What kind of a snake pit the CIA actually is? and well, what happened with Ratcliffe going to Russia? I've heard some unbelievable stories now,

especially on the Russian side about this trip, that the Russians were absolutely furious that he was supposed to meet Putin, and they called off the meeting because he was so bansious and arrogant and rude. Why work with someone like the director of the CIA? when there are so many other people, people you've just mentioned, people who came and congregated around Trump that he could work with,

which is such as much better a job for him, in Moscow or anywhere, than Radcliffe, of all people, does. It was why the people like Gabbard and people like Kent and to people like Fox, people like Helbert Colby, who wrote a whole national security strategy, the memorandum. He was the co-author of the one that came out of the State Department, the president signed, and the one that came out of the Defense Department. And what was the principal axis of that? I mean, part of that was

reproachmaud with Russia. Part of that was containment of China. But a big part for either to occur was get out of the Middle East, the more Middle Eastern conflicts. I think it's there like a dozen times. And here he is under Secretary of Defense, now under Secretary of War. The likely future Secretary of War, when Heggs at it gets shit, canned after the elections as a sacrificial lamb because he'll be the first person impeached once Democrats roll in January if it's still there. He doesn't listen to any of those people. He doesn't even listen to Vance on a regular basis.

Vance can get through more so than other people can. Has a reputation as being the Trump whisper inside. But what people like me have told Vance to pitch and the only thing he Trump has, Vance has found successful is to appeal to Trump as, oh, that as, you know, gangas con is not a loser. Trump's always obsessed with not being a loser. So if you show, if you convince him, though it's tricky, that something will be a loser, then he won't do it in terms of kinetic conflict. But that's it. So, and he clings to, remember warning vans of this back in January of this year, that Venezuela little adventure, aside from my disagreement with

it as a matter of law and constitutional law and international law as well as geopolitics, was that it would motivate Trump in the wrong direction. And of course, it has. But anytime anyone has said something bad would happen and the worst hasn't happened, Trump has convinced himself that, okay, that's fine. And on a regular basis, he'll make a decision. He'll convince himself, the bad thing not only won't happen, it can't happen. It's mind-boggling to watch. And so the people that have played to that psychology the best, the shift of personality and change of decision-making priorities, has been the neocons and the Israel lobby. So it's been, you know, the late Lindsey Graham, the he who, you know, he experienced the Zelensky curse in a more close-up fashion.

So I just wonder whether he died from an actual operation Midnight Hammer there in Ukraine with some of the folks he liked to hang out with, shall we say. But who knows, for some reason, they had to stick him on a U.S. military plane and bring him right back. They couldn't let him go through regular protocol because he didn't die until he came here to the estates, even though the calendar timeline. doesn't make sense. Most likely he died in Ukraine. They stuck him on a plane and died in some embarrassing manner. And it'll have to be a genius to guess what that might be if you know Lady Lindsay's favorite habits. But the, you know, maybe he went dancing with the Bolivian marching band with Zelensky's favorite of unapproved public health supplement. But the, but the Graham and Rat Boy were really effective because they recognized this shift in Trump and

played to it aggressively. So it's, you know, it was everything. Everything has to be a filter. Like even if you're going to try to persuade Trump not to do something, it has to be to the filter of how does this make him look more like Genghis Khan. So it's like, you know, Genghis Khan wouldn't do that, Mr. President. Here's why, because you'd lose. You know, I mean, it's that kind of logic. And that's the only thing that works.

But they figured it out. Israel lobby figured out much sooner. Rap boy figured it out much sooner. Lady Lindsay figured it out much sooner. That was always Graham's strength. It was interpersonal, you know, lobbying of that type. That he was never politically. powerful force, but he, uh, publicly, but he was privately because he was a cock,

he was a cocktail circuit maestro, as people used to say. Tucker Carlson's even talked about this. So he was always great on the golf course, great on the rest. But to give example, you know, a poster came down to Warren, Mark Mitchell, who now is the honest poll online, well, went out, went on his own because Rasmussen got corrupted by Trump and GOP cash. Uh, he had to go out on his own to do his thing. The, he, but he was at the White House in spring of 2025 and had lunch with the president. And he's gone public with it so I can discuss it now. And he's sitting there laying out to the president

while going into Iran would be a disaster. Why covering up Epstein files would be a disaster. While continuing things like a doge and taking apart the deep state, administrative state was deeply popular with the country, especially these young voters that came on new to Trump of 2024. And all Trump would respond was, man, My golf swing yesterday was amazing. And Mitchell didn't even know how to process it.

He's like, where is he? Is he or we, it was if you're not playing right into that primordial ego, he doesn't care what you're saying. He just ignores it. He used to. Old Trump used to. The new Trump doesn't. This is what people had warned me when I was there in January was that Trump had totally

changed that they were going to get out of, several of them were trying to get out of Dodge because they said it's not the same guy anymore. It's a totally different personality. They didn't know why. They didn't know how. I have my own. When I shared this with people, people came back to me and they said,

what you're describing is something they had experienced in their family, which was emotional behavioral dementia due to a decline in the sort of cordal, the pre-cortal cortex, prefrontal cortex. That's it. Yeah. Prefrontal cortex where basically it breaks down, that's your social filter. Like I have an autistic nephew.

And he struggles with that, like a lot of autistic kids do. Like he'll know he's. about to lose it, but he can't, he can't stop himself from it. But so it does things like remove. They said the signs are things like what you're describing and its personality change, decision making shift of Trump and his, you know, behavioral outburst. He falls asleep now too all the time. He didn't used to. He used to have, you know, super high energy. Now he falls asleep once every other day when he's on camera. The little bit of slurring of words that starts his speech, he started to slow, slow, steadily. We have too many of these old geriatrics.

in power all around the world, U.S. Senate especially. But it's impressive that Putin hasn't shown any signs of this as he's aged and been under massive stress. It can be accelerated by stress. It can be worsened by stress. So that's still my best interpretation for this shift. But he listens to the people that tell him what he wants to hear. And now what he wants to hear is, how am I going to be, Genghis Khan? Tell me how we're going to do it. And people like Rat Boy play into that. And that's how he's let Rat Boy do it. And Rat Boy convinced him that only he could tell to get Putin in line. When when Trump fluctuates back to,

oh, no, they're got to lose the war. We're about to win the war? Okay, yeah, keep going, keep going. Oh, about to lose the war? Oh, we better get out. We better get a deal quick. The, you know, that's, like he does in the Iran war,

but honestly, for, you know, for most of the last six months. Right now he's not focused on a deal, but the, on Iran. And so that's why he sent Ratboy over. They are piggybacking to pick up some CIA assets that were caught in Ukraine doing this, that, or the other. So that's why he's going on a C-17.

but he didn't get the green light from Russia. And he really went over there begging under the guise of threatening. I can back on. I can get the Ukrainians not to do some of these things like drone bombier airport and stuff like this, even though he's implicitly saying that's what he will do if they don't go along with him. And so, but it was he convinced himself or at least he convinced Trump that he was going to get the Russians to pack down,

that he was going to agree to a. temporary ceasefire. It's like, that's the thing that happened. The guy's in a fantasy land. But Ratboy is a huge tier leader of the war, the Ukraine war. The Iran war, he goes back and forth on. But he owes his, he believes, he owes his position, just like Admiral Cooper does within the Pentagon, not Raisin Kane, but Admiral Cooper does, to the Israel lobby. They both think that they are indebted to the Israel lobby. Now, how that translates after Netanyahu's likely laws coming up here in a few weeks will be another factor that will play into Trump's decision-making process because BB, like Rap Boy, knows how to whisper this new version of Trump.

And it's a real problem and it creates persistent risk. So you know what I'm sitting there and saying, look, we can't go back into Iran kinetically because we don't have the offensive munitions. We don't have the defensive munitions. We can't stop Iran from retaliating. They could take out all the Gulf infrastructure. Maybe they could even take out Israel. They're suggesting they now have anti-ship missiles of different kinds.

This is the implicit suggestion in their most recent public rhetoric about new weapons that can take things out. People will be surprised at. Trump is still terrified of being humiliated like Jimmy Carter. The one thing that Joe Kent said that got through to him is he's terrified of hostages. That's why he hasn't sent anybody in, even in the airspace above, ever since that plane went down. Trump panicked, went around, you know, they had to pull him out of the situation room, not once but twice. He has twice brought up doing nuclear weapons and twice been told, no, no, no, let's not go there, Mr. President. So that gives you an idea, this is not the same. Trump, he's, we've, well, what's it like to have a dying empire of the Western Empire ruled by a mad king of the sort of old great, you know, King Lear narrative style?

Well, as the Chinese would say, let you live in interesting times, which is kind of a curse more than a proverb. We're getting to find out in live time here in the U.S. Very, very interesting times. Let's talk about some of the political implications of this, because we have the midterms coming up. I have to say that if we had a proper Republican Party sticking to the program that Trump was elected on two years, ago, given the Democrat candidates that I'm seeing coming up, I think the Republicans would not only win, but they might even increase their majorities. I mean, the Democrats, I may be wrong, but from a distance, they look even more awful than they have been previously, and that is saying something. And yet, the overwhelming sense that we have here in Europe is that the Republicans are going to do very badly. the midterms. I don't know anybody who is better at judging these things that yourself, Robert, what are your feelings?

So about a year ago, I suggested after the November 2025 elections, that if Trump were to go back into Iran as the talk was then, that the Republicans would lose the House and lose the Senate. And I got a lot of blowback at the time because the odds of the Republicans losing the Senate, the prediction markets, was something like 18%. the well now it's a majority in the prediction markets kalshi poly market if you're out there trading on the international markets or your equivalent in your local community britain of course britain has all the great political betting sports books he used to have to go there all the time the only place you can do it now you do it anywhere uh the so the but as you point out and this will play into

the 2028 and the Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Green, independent movement for a third independent party in 2028 will play into both of those. Right now, there is no, there hasn't been a realignment toward the Democrats. As I like to tell people who say, Barnes, I told you Trump would be terrible. It's like, okay, the Trump wants, has us in war with a supposed it would be nuclear power. Democrats still want us to go to war with an actual nuclear power. and only an actual nuclear power, the biggest nuclear power in the world. The, uh, that no better evidence of that, but even the Democrats hate Trump,

and even the Democrats are terrified of Trump using the, the Lindsey Graham sanctions bill as a way to him reimpose his tariff policy that they dislike and despise. The near majority of Democrats still voted for it because, oh, they're like, we must hate you. The Russophobia is off the charts. And basically the Democratic Party. here in the United States is indistinguishable for those in Europe that, or those that followed Europe, from EU-Brussels-style politics. They're Atlantisist. You might call them neoliberals instead

of neocons. The joke is that the only difference between them and the Republican brand is both of them have the Israeli flag behind them, but the liberals add the rainbow flag and the EU flag. That's kind of the only difference. So, you know, as Lewis Black famously said, you know, it's just two different piles of crap and you get to decide what you want to eat. And ever since COVID, they woke up the American public to their left wing authoritarianism that they can't wait to unleash. People like the governor, Pennsylvania is currently trying to impose more mandates. They've spread fake measles scares and things like that targeting the Amish again, by the way, in order to drum up more support for more vaccine mandates. Right. So medical freedom is at imminent threat. Food

freedom still at imminent threat. People like the governor, Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro, used to have deep Israeli ties, wants to be the next Democratic nominee for the presidency, is considered a frontrunner in certain Wall Street investment circles. And what is he doing? He's busy finding out ways to strip people of their political freedom, medical freedom, and food freedom as we speak in the state of Pennsylvania as his signature items. So there hasn't been a realignment to the Democratic Party. There's just been a disalignment away from the Republican party, the anti-war vote and the, that came from the industrial and the sort of populism, economic populist vote that came in the industrial Midwest and rural Midwest with Trump in 2016,

that then Trump added to the coalition with also war skeptical voters in places in Hispanic areas, you know, with younger black men, younger men in general, that, you know, he made major inroads into millennials, into zoomers, into the black and Hispanic and Asian communities that were more working class, that, You know, won the working class as a class in 2024, one of the few Republican presidents who have really ever done that, the definitely in the modern era. And all of that is cracking because they are now disaligning. And what 2026 is showing up as is not a Democratic endorsement, though they will likely misunderstand it as such. It's as a Republican rejection. And the,

what we're probably going to see is over 240. The popular expectation is the House is still competitive, maybe Republicans make a comeback, or if they lose it, they lose it by a dozen seats or so. My view is different. I think Republicans are going to lose 240 or more House seats to the Democrat. That's going to form a massive Democratic coalition. What it also means is Hakeem Jeffries may not be the next Speaker of the House, because he's got deep ties to Wall Street from the neoliberal Obama wing of the Democratic Party. You can even really say Clinton-Obama wing of the Democratic Party. The very pro-Israel,

the King Jeffries, that's not where the zeitgeist is in the primary Democratic vote. And that's why you're seeing almost near unanimity amongst Democrats on the Iran War. They see the Iran War is a massive winner. They see it as like Iraq War II.

So they see it in the context. So whereas, say, two years ago, I would have said Democrats will go along with whatever Trump does in Iran. Not anymore. That won't happen. because they see it as their number one leverage tool against the Republicans for 2026 and then for 2028. So the and because of the Democratic primary base, Israel, I put up a substack, Barnes brief. You can go there for a range of articles on public opinion.

But one of them was the U.S. public opinion of Israel and how it is radically shifted. And Israel is a political pariah, a leper in American politics. And that's unlikely to change anytime soon, even if B.B. gets tossed into the can after the October. elections in Israel. So then you look at the U.S. Senate. And the map on paper, I wrote a Barnes brief article on this substackling this as well. On paper, you can see why Republicans thought they would do well, that the only states that are up for grabs are for the most part, other than Maine and North Carolina, every other state is a state Trump won by double digits, like Ohio, like Iowa, like Texas, like Florida, like South Carolina, like Mississippi, like Montana, like Nebraska, like Nebraska,

like Kansas, like Alaska. So it's like, how is he going to lose states? He won by 14, 15 points just two years ago. But the problem with that is they didn't look under the hood. One, that was a unique coalition that Trump put together that was very fragile. These are voter groups that historically do not have deep Republican alignment. So they weren't voting Republican. They were voting for the particular maha anti-war message of Trump reform 2024,

not this version of Trump in 2026. Second aspect is they were constituencies that are particularly sensitive to war, anti-war groups from Maine to Alaska through a whole industrial and rural Midwest. These are places where George W. Bush, while he gained ground between 2000 and 2004, as the 9-11 election nationwide, he lost ground in places like Maine and places like New Hampshire, places like Iowa, and places like Wisconsin, places like Alaska, because they've got just this deep anti-war street. and then the Hispanic and younger black voters that came on to the Democratic coalition, or the Trump coalition in 2024, are also deeply anti-war voter groups. It's not because of his enforcement of immigration. Democrat stereotype, all Hispanics must be pro-illegal because a lot of illegals are Hispanic. It's incredible insult, but it's also politically inaccurate.

There's a reason why Trump, the harder he got on immigration, the more his Hispanic vote share rose between 2016 and 2024. all those voters are gone. The young black voters are gone. The Gen Z, the Zomers are gone. The millennials are gone. The anti-war industrial voters are gone. The anti-war rural Midwestern voters are gone. You got a map that looks like some kind of hybrid of 2012 and 2020. It looks like 2020 and losing votes in the younger constituencies in the suburbs and looks more like 2012 in terms of black support, industrial worker support, rural worker, rural Midwestern support, and Hispanic support. Well, what does that look like? It looks like Democrats winning by the biggest margin of victory, double digits that has ever happened in the modern American political era, which dates to 1994. Before then, you had ancestral Democrats at a wide range of unique things. But you're right. So what's going to happen is Democrats are going to sweep the House. Democrats are going to sweep the Senate. They will win somewhere between, you know, the estimates of the pub prediction markets is 51 Senate seats right now for Democrats. I think it will be at least 53 and could go all the way up to 58 because right now, Now, Republicans are behind in Kansas.

They're behind in Nebraska. There's polling out that suggests it's close in South Dakota and Idaho. I mean, these are 20 plus Republicans. Close in even a Wyoming election. Close in Mississippi. Close in Florida. Close in South Carolina. So that's the kind of just bleeding out in November.

And what that does is that influences what Trump's political capital is after the elections. because if he loses the House and loses the Senate, and especially he loses the Senate by big margins, Lisa Murkowski will flip sides and vote with the Democrats, if Democrats take back the Senate, and Senator Collins loses in Maine, which is highly likely, in my opinion, is that all of a sudden,

all he's facing his investigations, all he's facing is impeachments, all he's facing is no votes on military budgets for Iran, always facing is no votes on authorization for war with Iran. It won't improve the situation vis-vis Ukraine, because they're all cooks. and want to go to war there. I think the reality's on the ground is what will shape that.

And it does well befit the, well suit the Republic, the Russian interest to win that war sooner rather than later. I would not have that conflict still going at the sort of slower pace. It is by January of 2029 because the next Democrat, if that comes in, is nuts. But that opens up the second question to your second part. the there is a the appetite for third party and independent movement as we talked about at the 1776 law center conference is never been higher and it's only going to rise because people don't want to choose between corporate control and government control they don't want to choose between left wing authoritarianism and right wing authoritarianism they don't want to choose between deep state

policies that prioritize brussels or deep state policies that priority prioritize Tel Aviv uh they would like to just prioritize America, get out of the war altogether, restore to a liberty, freedom, American style agenda that is divorced from these different forms of authoritarianism. They would like not to be governed by big corporations or big government, either one. And that's a deep, a populist streak in American politics. But the Democratic Party will likely block all of those reform efforts. The Republican Party already has by converting Trump back to the dark side. the it's like right out of the star wars kind of series you know he's become uh lord vader the and the and so

what that means is the appetite for an independent third party in 2028 will be so high i think people are underestimating it will either fracture or potentially destroy and replace the republican party or i think it has a viable chance if they do it correctly to actually win the presidency of the United States, which would shock people because it hasn't happened since 1860 when Abraham Lincoln's new Republican Party took the presidency. Though at the founding, it was more common. I mean, Thomas Jefferson created a new party to win the presidency in 1800. Andrew Jackson created a new party to win the presidency in 1828. And then Abraham Lincoln did again 1860. And third party independent movements in America mostly moved the Overton window, whether it's the

Greenback Party or the Labor Party, Farmer Labor Party, or the People's Party in the late 19th century. that later transitioned into the Progressive Party and the Bulmus Party, and even surge of the Socialist Party, the 19th, 1920s, people like Eugene Debs, or Huey Long was going to run for presidency, in 1936, on a left populist platform until FDR helped take him out. But then you had, you know, Harry Truman faced two serious. Strom Thurman is a dissent, but people forget Henry Wallace, 1948, showing that the divide over the Cold War and civil rights was coming to the country. In 1968, George Corley-Wallis' independent campaign.

It almost sent it to the House. He was not that any far votes away from achieving that outcome. 1980, John Anderson, showing the limitations to where the Republican divide that then standing was. And, of course, right after the war, after the end of the Cold War, we had four major third-party challenges in a row, two by Ross Perot and two by Ralph Nader. And then, of course, Robert Kennedy's independent campaign of 2024 is what created Maha's a movement that put him into the cabinet. And then you compare it, as you guys have been talking about, to what's happening in Europe. I mean, look at where most Americans come from.

So the United Kingdom and Germany are two of the main ancestral roots of American population. And what's happening in Germany? The center left and center right is collapsing. What is happening in France? The center left and center right is collapsing. What is happening in the UK, where we really tend to parallel the politics. the center left and center right are collapsing. So I think the same thing is coming to the U.S.

for the same reasons, people that, as you guys have been talking about now for years, the disconnect between the decision-making elites and the ordinary populace, not only in what is in their interest, but what they themselves say is in their interest. The, oh, you want to vote against the EU? Well, we're not going to recognize that. You want to vote for the wrong person? Well, they don't qualify for the ballot now. Or, well, you know, any other, I mean, all you young journalists.

you're not excited to join in the latest war against Russia, the draft efforts not going so well. So the same logic here in the U.S. Trump was the last chance for the two-party system to try to answer America's problems and address America's concerns. The mere fact, someone like Trump ever got elected was a deep indication of that the system was fracturing an American political power structure. But because Trump himself has now betrayed them, I think that, leaves the Republican Party permanently out on the out. There's a small chance of Trump was removed from the presidency by impeachment and conviction, which is a much higher risk of than anybody thinks, by the way, because of all the corruption scandals to come. But and Vice President Vance became

president and he confirmed his critics wrong and his supporters right and he did a massive course correction, then he could salvage and save the Republican Party and be elected. If both of those things don't happen for Vance, Vance is not becoming president. president in 2028. His chances are between nil and zill. That's his only path due to how much damage Trump has done by making it George W. Bush's third term. But I think what it opens up in 28 is the real possibility of a independent populist reformer movement by the Joe Kent's. Right now, Richard Barris is out polling. And they're already polling in the 20s. If Vance Rain is an independent with Tulsi Gabbard against the Republican Party, he would win more votes than the Republican

party would win. So that gives you a sense of the appetite. The party loyalty is shrinking. Gallup is showing this on a regular basis. We're almost to the point where a majority of Americans don't even identify with two of the major parties. And I think that trend is only going to happen. The only question is, do we get there before Trump blows the whole world up? Right. Lots to say. The first thing to say is this. If we get results in Congress on the scale that you say a 250-seat switch in the House, a possible 58-seat majority for the Democrats in the Senate, then we're not only going to get an impeachment, it seems to me, an impeachment process. But I absolutely do think in that case, impeachment becomes a real possibility.

I mean, actual impeachment becomes a very real possibility. would be based on what you've just said, and by the way, based on my own impressions of the US, and I'll come to those in a moment, it would be a landslide very much like the Kirstama landslide in Britain in 2024. And if the Democrats win in 28, for all the reasons that you said, it would be even more like the Kirstama landslide of 2024 in Britain. In other words, a totally hollow landslide. But in the short term, in the immediate political term, it would have great consequences. If we have an impeachment process in the United States early next year, which is successful,

that is going to be enormously important. and, as you rightly say, we're looking at President Vance. And maybe if the Democrats of two brain cells to rub together, which is doubtful, by the way, they will understand that that is not such a good idea and that their chances in 2028 improve if they leave Trump in place. But as I said, I doubt that they think in that way. But anyway, we would have potentially a successful impeachment next year.

If we have a landslide of the kind that we've just been talking about in 2028, then it will unravel very fast and the way would open up very quickly, I think, for a third party. Now, I was in the United States. I was only there for a short time. I was in Chicago, very untypical city, as we know, very historically Democrat, extremely so. I am somebody who is acknowledged to be very good at talking to people. I've been talking to people, waiters, taxi drivers, people you meet in shops. It's something that I'm skilled at. So I will tell you what I discovered, and it's a straw poll. Firstly, exactly what you said, no love for the Democratic Party. Amongst the people I talk to, many of whom I would say were typical

Democrat Party demographics. So even the black community in Chicago doesn't like them. Maybe I could qualify that, even especially the people I spoke to from that community doesn't seem to like them. Definitely, I would say, a space for a third party. One name kept coming up. up, especially amongst young people. And where I was, there's the universities nearby. And there are a lot of students around. The name was Thomas, Thomas Massey, just to say. Now, that's not a

prediction. I don't want to give the impression that that's, you know, the future in America. This is a tiny anecdotal impression of what I saw when I was in Chicago. But I did not get the sense that the Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, or that type of Democratic Party, is any more popular now than it was three years ago when, as we know, it failed in the election at that time. It's probably actually even less popular now than it was then. Just saying. I don't really want to just say a few things about that. Yeah, yeah.

The friends with Thomas Massey, I think that he would make them. most since. I know Richard Barris is checking, testing, polling data, but we did at 1776 Law Center, a nationwide survey before the war that had Thomas Massey, you know, upwards of 20 plus percent amongst the voters that recognized his name. And the, I mean, if they recognized them, bam, they liked them. So the, and that was before the war and everything that's fallen from it. The consequences here are disastrous. And to your point about removal, the real reason why I think removal risk is much higher than anybody believes that even higher than the prediction markets are placing it is one people, the Normie Republican particularly, doesn't know they

have a sniff, but no idea of the scale of the corruption. So the like Trump picking Whitkoff and Kushner as his envoys was really in these stories they're starting to circulate. You know, people have talked to John Caracow. He's talked about it. Others have talked about it. others have talked about it, that basically all Kushner and Wickcoff do is shake people down when they go on these peace truers. The story came out of the Atlantic and out of the New Yorker after the latest trip to Russia that, you know, Whitkoff and Kushner had a list of all the seed of all the inside deals. They wanted to get rich, you know, go go along with this.

We can make lots of money. The, and the Russians were nice and polite because I think, well, apparently Lavaoff, I had a conversation with Larry Johnson and some others, John Mearsheimer and others this past week or two, Justice Politano. I think maybe Alistair Crook was there as well. And so the,

and he picked up what he told Rick Sanchez, who works at RT some months ago, which is the Russians had concluded Trump is not all there and that he's not deal, not only that he's not deal reliable, but that he would forget things on, that he had told Trump,

he had told Putin before on the phone. And the like, Kushner's made up conversation, I went in there and I was a tough guy. And I told him, well, you say, you were going to take the Dombas last year. How did that work out?

There's only problem with that is Kushner wasn't even there. Kushner wasn't there until January of 2026. So, you know, this is just Kushner BSing people after the fact. And does anybody, if you know Kushner that he stood up to, he was, I'm going to tell you, Putin. No, the, but the Russians went along and played nice because they want, they want crazy Uncle Trump to stay over there, stay over there, try not to blow up the whole world while they take care of business. old-fashioned way. So the, so, but all the corruption scandals will shock people. And the Democrats already have a huge list of it. It's the corrupt, the pay for play scandals at

the pardon where these people are so, they go on 60 minutes and they brag about it because it's their marketing technique. I've known Jacob Wall for like 10 years. Guys always been a grifter. The, but there he is on 60 minutes bragging about how you give me enough money. I'll deliver a pardon from the president. Um, that's a, it should be humiliating to the White House, but unfortunately it's not. the corruption scandal, the deal, the Antitrust Division that's concentrated the power of CBS and CNN, Warner Brothers and Paramount. That now even the state attorney generals got bought off. The Democrats did. So that whole deal is going to go through. So the Israel lobby controls TikTok, CBS and CNN.

Like they don't have enough media influence in the United States. So, but what's behind that is a deal to pay off this unregistered lobbyist, Mike Davis, along with his pal Arthur Schwartz, who is way too close to vice president vance if you had any clue at all or any politically savvy at all he would not have shorts in the room with him because those are some of the people they're going to show how basically for pay-for-play schemes you could derail any case you whether it's an antitrust case criminal case civil case pardon justice department has been one big open for sale i was having a discussion with the british journals actually a week ago they're like oh i'm skeptical of this i'm like nope i can personally guarantee you these stories are true unfortunately because i get the calls from

somebody who will say, so-and-so says, for this amount, this could happen. I'm like, probably they're right. But I don't recommend it, but yes, probably they're right. And often, it did turn out that way. They're pricing them as much as 30 million bucks a pop. That's what a pardon was going for sale here in the United States. And so when those scandals come out and they're going to tie in the scandals, they're going to tie them into AI and big tech. They're going to tie them into the donor class. They're going to tie them into specific policies. So it's not like, A lot of Nixon's corruption was stuff like, did he pay his taxes? Did he take illegal campaign donations?

It wasn't he took money so we went into the Vietnam War. It wasn't he was getting rich of the Vietnam War. That's what the scandals are going to be in this context. And it's going to implicate Higston. Hegstead was tipping off his own broker. They were about to do this deal. They would do no bid deals. So they'd get the Kazakhstan.

They'd shake down Kazakhstan and say, you can't give that critical earth's deal to that company. you've got to give it to this company. And which company is it? It's a company that Donald Trump, Jr., just a few months before, suddenly shut up on the board and a major investor of through Don and Eric Jr. Eric Trump. The another deal here is, that isn't going to get into the Israeli drone companies that the Trump brought, Trump brothers are involved in. Or literally, Kushner, when he'll walk out of the room for a negotiation, he'll see some Gulf Sheik, and he'll be like, where's my 50 million? Where's my 50 million? I mean, this is how brazen this is. So the,

But if you think you're an emperor like Trump, you think, yes, of course, I have all the gold. And of course, they're bringing me gifts because I'm the great emperor. I'm getting his con. I'm going to fill of the hunt. So that that scandal will blow up so badly that Trump's approval rating may sink to the 20s. And that gets us the Trump's second problem. There's not a single Republican in a Senate that doesn't at home. And they open up their closet, have a big poster to Brutus. These are people that, you know, worship and revere that they can't wait to stay. have Trump in the back. And the neo-con establishment that Trump has chosen to get into bed with will throw him to the wolves in a heartbeat, as you guys have talked about. This happens all the time all over the world. But that's what Trump did. You know, you get into that,

you know, you get into bed with that kind of prostitute. Don't be surprised when the SDDs come. But there's no loyalty there. There's like the old no loyalty amongst thieves. So they, and they will want to blame the even the dissident thought of what that was Trump's campaign on Trump being such a bad person, they want to destroy them so that that never comes back again in their months. So they won't be, so there'll be planning of saboteurs, and all you need is 67 votes out of the Senate to convict.

And if they're already two 53, 55, 55, 58 Democratic seats, it ain't going to be hard to get to 9 or 10 at all. And to your point, well, I should mention one other factor that can connect to this is the economy, but to your point about Vance, that it would not be

the Democratic Party's interest. The best Democratic Party's interest would be to drag Trump out. Keep the scandals, keep the scandals, but never convict him. But they are so eager to punish them that I don't think they'll be able to act with self-restraint. And like the perfect analogy to Starmor, they will misinterpret this as some sort of mandate when it is anything but for the left-wing authoritarianism they want to inflict on the world. But the last part is the economy. And you don't have the scandals of AI. AI is now showing up in Pentagon reports concerning the targeting of that girls school in Iran. I suspect, well, it's already been identified as targeting

people on the behalf of the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank and in Lebanon. I suspect it will show up in the Ukrainian targeting by the CIA of the girls orphanage and the teacher school that, that were killed, they killed a bunch of Russians, Russian kids, little girls for the most part, teenage girls for the most part. And it's going to come back to AI, the over-agrassified. rest of use of AI. Well, we have both a tech bubble and an equity bubble. We definitely have an equity bubble and a credit bubble. We have all three. And it's right now in the U.S., it is tied to the insurance industry because they were tapping insurance funds for these AI speculations. They were tapping pension funds for these AI speculation. So take the global financial crisis,

but multiply it by three if the AI bubble pops. And you look under the hood and you've got all these scam artists pretending, oh, our AI is so powerful. We're going to have to do, we're to the world, we probably need some government regulation to eliminate our competition and bail us out to deal with this terminator level threat. When the real threat is that the AI is to the economy because it was big promises built on a house of sand. Kind of like a Saudi army. So you aggregate that into the equation. What happens if the stock market bubble pops? It's the last constituency economically Trump has left in the country, are investors. That's the only people that are happy with the economy. Working class people think we're already in recession and they see it every day.

And then the diesel prices are rippling through his, you know, right out of central casting, Fed director just went and raised rates in the middle of all of this. The thing he promised Trump, he wouldn't do. And some of us told Trump, yes, he will do. And that's exactly what he did do, you know, which is going to cause problems in the housing market, which is already bad to begin with with a huge gap between sellers and buyers because everything's unavordable. The, then you have the diesel cost rippling, rippling, through the economy because of how foundational it is to the industrial economy of the modern age and the transportation and ship and to farming.

Farmers are getting whacked. They represent farmers who just had to give up their farm in California, one of the longest standing farmers in the history of the country because they just got shellact and shellact and shellac, shellac with COVID, then shellact with Biden and then shellacked with Trump. It was like back to back to back. And with these diesel costs are just a huge nightmare. And what happens if the AI turns out to be a tech bubble too? then all this investment wasn't worth anything and all these data centers that everybody hates

anyhow and that Trump's decided to get into bed with, if you have an economic collapse in the middle of these corruption scandals with a deeply unpopular president with a deeply unpopular war, then you have the recipe for the president of the United States to be the first one ever removed from the White House. I have to say when it comes to AI and bubbles, I'm probably not the best person to speak to about. But what I will say is this, when they will come together and basically advocate the setting up of a cartel, which is how I interpreted their latest comment, that to me is a sign that they're very nervous about the underlying realities and the underlying economics of this. And I absolutely agree with you if we have a stock market crash or even not a crash, but, you know, a big downward correction, shall we say. and stresses in the financial system, on top of all the other problems we're having in the economy,

then, I mean, that is going to be very, very politically consequential as well. I mean, Trump then will not have a raft to sit on in the middle of the gathering storm that is, you know, closing in on him. Speaking now about Trump, let's assume that things play out very much in the way that we just discussed, which I think they probably quite likely will. There's a disastrous result in November. There are growing problems and pressures in the economy. Ukraine is going through an incredibly difficult winter

and the Russians continue to advance. You're Donald Trump. You believe yourself to be, or you want to be, Genghis Khan. what about this story that is out there that he's basically telling the Persian Gulf leaders, the Arab leaders. Just wait, I'll get the November elections out of the way. This is when I'm going to go after the Iranians.

I will still have a Republican Congress. I mean, the new Congress doesn't come in until the end of January. I've still got several weeks and I'm going to go in big. And if I can throw everything I have left at the Iranians and make them come tumbling down, well, when the new Congress comes into session in January, I will be the winner. I will have won the Great War against Iran. That will be the moment when I can turn things around, see off the impeachment, stabilize my presidency,

prepare my great legacy, and who knows, maybe even get my face added to Mount Rushmore or something of that kind. I mean, to me, that is completely irrational. But is there any chance that Donald Trump might be thinking in that kind of way? And if he is,

what is the likelihood that he will be able to escalate the war that kind of way in that sort of eventuality. Well, that's what, you know, the BB Netanyahu's, the Lindsay Grams, the rat boys of the world have been whispering at various times and levels to the president. Now, the, if Bebe Netanyahu is gone, if he's out of power and looking at jail come the after the midterms, because it looks like he is likely to lose his Israeli elections and his likely replacement is not Bebe without the corruption in Tali Bennett, but looks to be an IDF general who's at least pitching himself as a more centrist figure within Israeli politics.

We'll see if that comes to fruition. But if it were, at a minimum, Bibi not being present will remove one of those worm tongues from because that's exactly the pitch, the pro-war people are making. It goes further. It's like they're the, imagine what are the Democrats going to do, Mr. President, when in Tehran, they're building a gold statute to him and you're picking the next extreme leader. Old Trump would have laughed at this.

new Trump is like, oh, that sounds great. So that is the pitch that's being made. And the pitch goes on, then he comes back with what Vance has told him, with what the Pentagon has told him, which is the problem of retaliation, that the, unless you can convince Trump that Iran will be incapable of retaliating, then he backs off because the whole Pentagon and Vance have said, you're going to get hammered. And every single thing time Trump has convinced himself, the retaliation won't happen, it happened. And that's about a dozen times so far, economically, politically, militarily, and all the different things that were laid out. Because Trump was told at the time of the conflict by Vance directly, but also now public news, by Tulsi Gabbard directly, everything that would

happen, that the strait would be closed, the Gulf states would get hit, Israel would get hit, the government would consolidate, the public would consolidate and move more radical. Because I put up on the substack, if you studied actual Iranian public opinion, it was actually more one of the a more, there's much like Russian public opinion on the Ukraine war. They wanted a stronger government to respond. They thought that the prior government was too weak in responding. They just the opposite of, it's not people who want their government to collapse and can't wait for the Americans to show up, literally the opposite if you looked at the public opinion. Well, Gabbard had followed that. It's what the CIA did. Not the fake CIA sponsored polls. There's even internal,

Richard Barris saw it on a senator's report. It was a CIA internal analysis that said this because he was there talking about polling in general, but it said, ignore this poster. It's the one everybody cites for public competing about Iran. This is our own poster. The CIA poster, not a real poster. It's a fascinating background there. But the, so you told Trump all of these things, and yet he still did it because he convinces, the key is, if somebody can psychologically convince him that the bad thing

won't happen, that he will be like Genghis Khan by doing the kinetic activity, then he will do And he's gotten very close. He's gotten close to wanting to use nuclear weapons. He's got very close to wiping up the, as he put, the civilization of Iran. The, to massive carpet bombing strikes on anything and everything and moves. These are the, this is where his brain goes these days. The guy who used to call the nuclear issue the N-word from his uncle's days at MIT, who actually got Tesla's files, but that's the other story for another day.

The, to the guy who's like, well, what's good or, what could are new? if we don't use them. That kind of mindset mentality. The gangis con, would gangis con use nukes? You know, instead of, you know, the bumper sticker, what would Jesus do for trumpets? What would gangus con do? No, gangus con would use nukes. So the, that's where his mindset is.

And he gets tons of pushback from within the room. The most, from Dan Kane, the, Kane is just representing what the career military guys do. Not the political, you know, crap at the middle. But the career guys on the ground are like, this is a disaster. This won't work. This, you know, they've game plan this, you know, ever since the 1990s we've been game planning Iran. And number one thing Iran would do is shut down the straight of Hermosa and every single one. So that, that's the risk. The risk is that Trump convinces himself. The question is,

would they go along with it? Because that is not, I mean, constitutionally, you cannot go along with an unconstitutional order. It doesn't matter if that person is in the constitutionally, is higher up in the chain of command. If their order violates the Constitution and a war crime would, then you can't. Me, in my view, this is along Massey's articles of impeachment on Hegg's death, which I owe Max Blumenthal for the Hegg's death reference. I was just on with Tucker Carlson, which is great.

I know you saw him up at the Integrity Awards there in Chicago. But you look into it and can Trump be restrained is a open question because Trump's state of mind is unpredictable. I mean, he just, Trump said this the other day that, you know, who knows what I will do with Iran? And as to point out, there's inherent problems with the madman strategy as a strategy, but it really doesn't work when the person's actually mad. And that's the, that's the risk we face. Now, the hurdles are he still, we still don't have the standoff munitions to actually do that much damage,

unless we use nuclear weapons. There'll be massive pushback internally on targeting civilian infrastructure. or the use of nuclear weapons from within the military, that they just may say no to the president and just let it play out. So there's that limitation on what the military chain of command is willing to do. Then there's the limitations on what they can do in terms of standoff munitions, limitations on their ability to defend Israel and the Gulf. I mean, the people have underappreciated Iran taking out those Jordanian bases

as effective defenses makes Israel more vulnerable as much as anybody. And if Israel has somebody post-Bee-Bee in there, maybe they don't want to get in the middle of an Iranian conflict, and they're whispering something different for the president that BB would. The other restraint is the economic one, that, you know, if Iran were to take out the Gulf infrastructure in a more permanent way, you've got a more permanent economic problem for diesel and for gas and for fertilizer and for helium and for sulfur, things that go are critical constituent components of the global supply chain for everything from semiconductor chips, to x-ray machines. So this is like Mirschimer's like, you have Parcy on the one hand is like, I think Trump wants to do this and we'll do it. You have Mearsheimer on the other hand saying, how? Nobody's sane would do this.

Mircham is right. Nobody's sane would do this. Unfortunately, it's not clear that's who we have in the obelops. Just to very last things. Firstly, am I right in believing that American military swear their oaths to protect the constitution, that it is in fact that is what they swear to protect first and foremost. So absolutely, if that's correct, then obviously, I mean, your point is that the president is not a monarch like the king of the king of England is still, by the way, the loyalty is owed to the constitution

and to the people of the United States who basically established that constitution. not to the president. The president is the chief executive and the commander in chief, but he is subject to the constitution too. That's the first question. The second, and it's a simple one really, is this, has anybody ever discussed within the American political system something that I have argued,

which is that the memorandum of understanding that was agreed between the United States and Iran was in fact and in reality a better deal for the United States than it was for Iran. If the United States leaves the Middle East, Iran, the setup there is left to deal with its many problems. And shall I just say, I think there would have to be very substantial, very great evolutionary change within Iran at the very least before they could deal with those problems. They would not have an external enemy that they could focus on. That's the first thing. But the second is, the United States really should not be in the business of policing

the Middle East, trying to control the Persian Gulf, worrying about the state of the Strait of Hormuz when it is mostly energy self-sufficient anyway. I mean, the better thing for the US to do would be to leave these people to take. care of all these problems by themselves. Ultimately, they have to sell their oil, they have to sell their helium, they have to sell all that gas if they want to have good living standards. And if they don't, and if they make a mess of things, well, the world and the United States certainly will find a way. I mean, that seems to me obvious. Is that point ever made in the policy discussions in the US? I worry quite often that it isn't.

There's no doubt that the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which all the officers are trained with, and all their military personnel are trained with, and it reinforces the only oath that they take, which is I often remind people that are in positions of governmental power. Nobody in America takes an oath to a politician. They only take an oath to the Constitution of the United States. And if they're a state government official,

they add to that, but don't subtract from that, the Constitution of their own state government. So the only oath that any military official or officer owes is to the Constitution, which as Article 1 and Article 2 of impeachment against Heggsdiff brought by Congressman Thomas Massey clearly articulates the Iran war already is. Engaging in kinetic conflict without a declaration of war by Congress is itself an unconstitutional action. But rising to the level of a war crime, which they have specialized training within the U.S. military and have for the better part of a century on when to disobey the chain of command based on whether or not it's a work run. And now it has to be evident and manifest. You can't

second-guess discretionary decisions as to whether or not a particular target is a dual-use target. But with Trump, you don't have any doubts if you're in the military that Trump has said repeatedly his goal is to target non-military targets. He wants to target the civilization. He wants to target civilian infrastructure. That is not a permissive targeting under our own uniform code of military justice and the constitutional obligations to serve the Constitution in what you do. And so the, yeah, so no question on that. On the memorandum of understanding, all the, at treat Dr. Parsi is starting to detail this as well now, but there was basically an internal split. The Vance side of the aisle that at the time had Army Secretary Driscoll in it and some others,

who have now left the administration, but the, in part over this, but the, not just what is public out there, the other Driscoll was strongly opposed to this, Elbech-Colbe was aligned with Vance, and then it's what you might call a second-tier group of people, and then pretty much everybody in the Pentagon was aligned with Vance. But the other people that made surprise to people

as part of the Gulf allies, you might say, within the State Department. And even within the CIA, the bowels of the CIA, there is a great concern as Alistair-Dar Crook has been articulating, that this could get way out of hand and go way past Iran, that now that the hoodies are involved, you could have the collapse. I mean, we have basically artificial states through all the Gulf Coast, Gulf countries, which have not, they don't have popular legitimacy through elections. They don't have religious affiliation of a unique kind that say the hoodies do

or Iran does, or Hezbollah does, or the Shia militias do. They don't have. They don't have, even a cult of popular personality to a degree that existed for a Gaddafi or Hussein or an Assad or a Nasser. All their armies are deliberately made weak because they're terrified of the Nasser example. They don't want to be overthrown by their own generals. That's why the Saudi army is purely a paper tiger and gets, that's why they get whipped every time they go up against the hoodies or natural mountain people. I mean, that civilization goes all right back to Queen Chiba, I always say never mess with mountain people. I mean, they're the toughest people in the world.

You're not going to conquer them, you know. But there's nervousness that the, and of course, MBS has antagonized, large member of his own family. There's the whole deal that the South family did to create that in the first place in their original alignment with the Wahhabis that has not always sat well with the rest of the Saudi population. There's a substantial Shia population in the oil rich segments of Saudi Arabia. the the the like it said that they're afraid of their own army so how good their army would really be

there was a major internal outbreak is far from clear and there's a range of tribes that still don't like the deal that out south got what is all that the the family got was it mean it means that right now there's people in the state department the CIA telling the president there's substantial risk if this war expands that Saudi Arabia collapses that the uae collapses uh that Kuwait collapses that Bahrain collapses, that maybe they really create a Shia crescent with Iran. And they just go all the way to the Iraqi Shia militias and go all the way down through Kuwait, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, taking over all the oil-rich fields, that the hoodies continue to prevail in further parts going up further.

Maybe the hoodies go up and try to take Mecca. The Jordan, there's a risk of, you know, one of Larry Johnson's resources, sources, has identified who called what the hoodies did, has said Jordan is a substantial risk of being overthrown. Again, these are not, I mean, one is a long history of it because these are not popular, legitimate regimes, governments or the, that had buy-in from the broader public. And destabilizing the Middle East, Syria may get retopled all over again. Libya may fall further into collapse because of what diesel prices? Because they always knew how to subsidize those, the prior governments.

These governments are not in a position to do or don't want to do. So that's another restraint on what the president does in terms of his willingness to go forward. but you're precisely right. The ultimate answer is, why are we there at all? And the person who sounded exactly like what you're articulating was Trump himself in Riyadh just in 2025. It'd be nice if that Trump came back. Unfortunately, I think he's gone and the best chance for the country is if Trump himself either feels enough restraint, returns to reason and rationality, or the Democrats do the world of favor, and remove him from the White House

and then let those of us who believe in Vance find out whether he's the real deal or not. He's not. He'll lose in 2028, too. His own, Vance's only chance for those that are skeptics of him is if he actually proves his skeptics wrong by actually becoming president. He doesn't become president.

2028 is gone. Bye, bye, bye, see you later. But the only reason why we're here is because Trump couldn't keep his own promises. I'm going to finish with just two quick observations. The reason, the reason why in international law, the well-understood principle is that orders are not a defense to an illegal command, the fact that you've received orders, is because the Americans

insisted on it in Newburgh. It was entirely to the Americans that we owe that. And I think, Robert, you've just explained the legal culture that has produced that doctrine. And, As for the Arab states, many of the Arab states being artificial, you are absolutely correct. The reason they are artificial is because they were deliberately and artificially created by someone to be so. That someone being, of course, Imperial Britain that ran the Persian Gulf and the Middle East area between the First and Second World Wars. I mean, it was they who set up this string of little Emirates around the Persian Gulf. It's they who divided the Middle East between the Hashemites and the Saudis. It's they who draw up all the various lines.

And they did this because they were an empire and they knew what they were doing. The United States has no interest being involved in any of this. And Americans, American observers at the time were strong. critical of what the British were doing precisely in this very same region that we're talking about. Well, with that, I'm going to thank you. I think we've covered, had enormous amount of ground. Always with you. Robert, it is such an enormous pleasure.

Thank you again. Let's do more programmes soon. We have the elections coming, all kinds of important things. But this is, I think, where we can finish today. Absolutely.