The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3595 - Now or Never for Netanyahu and Trump w/ Jeet Heer & Ben Palmer

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

It's Casual Friday on The Majority Report   On today's program:   Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller ty to sell this war as different from past wars because it is not hamstrung by a "woke pentagon". Essentially saying "sorry, not sorry" about bombing a girl's elementary school.   Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent at The Nation, joins the program to recap the week's news. For more Jeet, check out his podcast.   Comedian Ben Palmer joins the show with a power point presentation about the time he tricked a former republican U.S. Representative into making him his right-hand man.   In the Fun Half:   Tim Pool loves the masculinity of the War in Iran.   Ezra Klein is concerned that the "centrality" of Israel in this war in Iran is going to cause antisemitism.   Bret Stephens says that people seized a "fumbled" answer from Marco Rubio about Israel's role in the launch of the war in Iran for antisemitic purposes.   all that and more   To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1/month at shopify.com/majority WILD GRAIN: Get $30 off your first box + free Croissants in every box. Go to Wildgrain.com/MAJORITY to start your subscription. SUNSET LAKE:  Head on over to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the code Daylight26 to save 35% on all of their CBD Sleep Products. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

Folks, I've got some good news and some bad news. And then when we get to the show, it'll be bad news. But also, the bad news, at least for the pre-roll, is daylight savings time happening this Sunday really early. So you set your clocks ahead, spring ahead, Saturday night. But the good news, you don't have to suffer through a sleep-deprived morning. our farmer friends at Sunset Lake Sabadeh have got your backs with a perfectly time sale. You can prepare for the upcoming time change with Sunset Lakes, highly rated sleep products. Now 35% off when you check out with the coupon code, Daylight 26.

All one word, daylight 26. They've got products with melatonin that are great for falling asleep. And they've got all products with full spats. products without the melatonin that have seba n and a micro dose of teheseh great for staying asleep Friday time just take a little tincture or gummy on an hour before bedtime sleep soundly wake out wake up without any groginess for me my go-to has been the good night oil which has the sabah day and the seba-en. Sometimes if I take a little bit of Tejsa, my mind starts spinning too much.

And I'll tell you something, it has been absolutely crucial during these past, well, really, since the beginning of January, I guess. But this week, it's like it's a constant war between my good night oil and all of the news reports of the war in Iran that have been running through my head. But they have good night tinctures. They have sleep gummies. You will sleep better. You will feel better.

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11.59 p.m. see their site for additional terms and conditions. And now for the rest of the bad news. That means Monday is casual Monday. Tuesday. Casual Tuesday. Wednesday. Casual hump day. Thursday. Casual hump day. Thursday. Casual thurs. That's what we call it. And Friday. Casual Shabbat. The majority report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday. March 6th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar.

This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, national correspondent for the Nation magazine, Jeet here. is here with us this week. Also on the program, Ben Palmer, comedian, a known online as Palmer trolls. The stuff is great. You're going to enjoy that. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled House votes down

war powers resolution as the war escalates. Christy Noam rides off into the sunset as Trump sends her across the rainbow bridge to spend more time with her dog. U.S. loses 92,000 jobs in February. Manufacturing jobs, hitting a all-time low since the pandemic. U.S. admits it's likely that the U.S.

killed over 100 school girls in Iran. that, of course, we knew days ago. Justice Department publishes some of the missing Epstein files, still fails to publish all of them. Republicans in the House now floating a second reconciliation bill to fund the Iran war. 24 states sue over Trump's tariffs in wake of trade court ordering the Trump administration to start the other tariff refund process. Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez drops out of re-election over his affair scandal, this in Texas 23rd, and the record number of Americans rating their 401K plans early. All this and more on today's majority report.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is casual Friday. Casual Friday. And I suspect, that says Emma Vigland, of course, I suspect this is going to be the final Friday of the year where I am wearing a long sleeve casual Friday shirt. I think that the first week of March making that kind of declarative statement is almost reckless. Well, I'm in charge of it. So I can't manipulate the polymarket. It's, Matt found out. It's bad. Well, I mean. He's trying to...

Well, you know, you're trying to throw people off the scent because obviously you control the weather. So when you can place a bet on it's still being cold next week. No, I don't control the weather, but I do control what... There's a joke about anti-Semitism, okay? Oh, oh, sorry. I didn't catch on that. Arcane. Yeah. You really went around.

That was a long way to get it. I was a little uncomfortable, as I said it, so I didn't put my full chest behind it. But I tried. I'm looking forward to the show today because as I was saying before, I usually do when I do my hot yoga, which I've been really on this year, and it relaxes me. It calms my heart rate. I usually do it in the afternoon. I did it this morning before the show. So I'm in a great mood. And it's about to get ruined as we talk about the war crimes. I wouldn't do that. Yeah, well, I wouldn't do it that way. Time for my heart rate to raise. Yeah, there you go. And this coming after, Emma made a huge demand for more light bulbs in the office. office. Things are really... A light bulb went out and yeah, I might be... We had to have a meeting about it. You might need a $15 for a three pack of bulbs. Is that going to be all right? Managing egos over here. Ever since Obama outlawed incandescent light bulbs, it's been a problem. Small businesses, though. Exactly. It's a real burden on small business.

All this red tape about the light bulbs. All right, let's get into this. Stephen Miller has crawled out of his spider hole now that he got Christy Gnome fired for, well, somebody had to pay for how badly things have been going on the DHS front. And they decided it would be Christy Gnome. But Stephen Miller, now it's safe for him to come out of his bunker. And he was on Fox News trying to see. sell this military campaign, which I will talk to Jeet here about this. It's a war. I mean, we are carpet bombing Tehran. We have a given warning apparently to the city of Coons, is it? Where the Iranian Guard is stationed and it's also, I think, a fairly religious city. And

there is a some type of target there apparently. We're going to be talking more with Jeet about this, but they the Republicans or I should say the Trump administration, and really, I mean, Lindsay Graham was doing this yesterday as well or two days ago. They are, they are headed to their sort of like their last, stand in many respects. They're having to go back to the basics in selling this war. They don't seem to be able to find any justification for why we're doing it, but they're relying on some of their greatest hits. Here is Stephen Miller explaining that we needed to have this

war so that we could show how not woke our military is. Oh. weapons. But what you're seeing right now, Sean, is a military under President Trump's leadership that's not fighting politically correct. That isn't fighting with its hands tied behind its back. One of the reasons I fear, Sean, that some people in this country lost faith in the military and the capacity to use that military to defend us is because we had a woke Pentagon. Because we had a military who at the very highest levels, not the warfighters, was forced to fight a less than full. fight. What you're seeing now,

I mean, this is, in many respects, you could have heard George W. Bush saying this, or Dick Cheney saying this about our prison guards in Afghanistan or in Iraq. I mean, this is...

Guantanamo. Yes. Or Guantanamo, for that matter. You know, we're no longer doing this woke, non-torture thing. Stephen Miller in high school was recorded speaking about how torture is like a beautiful display of the human spirit. Celebration of life because otherwise you'd kill people. And we're going to play Pete Heggzeth in just a second. But Hegseth made his name in Republican circles by defending war criminals in saying that their charges should be overturned after they committed massacres in Iraq. So this is the ideological consistency.

here of this administration is abject cruelty to immigrants and war crimes against people in the Middle East and I guess beyond. Yeah. And Hegsith is also going to make this clear. Nuremberg was too politically correct and too woke. The Geneva Conventions, those are for ladies. Right. Real men don't follow the Geneva Conventions. Who would be saying that at Nuremberg? The Nazis? I guess so. Well, at least we're not asking about pronouns before we kill children.

I guess it, you know, it doesn't matter that they were girls, the 160 plus that we killed. That's why it's not woke anymore. We should also say that we blew up a boat that was coming back from an invite that they had from the government of India. an Iranian boat that was there doing some type of exercise that the U.S. was going to participate it. It's a training exercise. And not only do we blow up the boat, but we failed. I read some Twitter thread where somebody was looking on the last time that something like this happened with a submarine.

And it has been a while, but they stumbled across that the not-sumption. and the Japanese would rescue people in the water. Now, we've seen our military fire upon people in the Caribbean who didn't die when their boat was blown up. But we're no longer those Nambi Pambis. Here's Pete Hegseth. Defense forces. And we have no shortage of authorities.

the admiral knows we have clear objectives with maximum authorities on the battlefield. The dumb, politically correct wars that the past were the opposite of what we're doing here. They had vague objectives with restrictive minimalist rules of engagement. I remember, I mean, I'm older than that while I was too young to really be fully conscious of what was happening during Vietnam, I just remember how a nambi-pambi we were with that napalm. And the rules of engagement and there. And that worked out quite well for us, as you know. The Zippo squaws, just lighting villages on fire.

And every time he looks down, Pete Higseth writes all of his speeches through chat, GPT. It seems to be that case. I, yeah, speaking of Vietnam, I saw some comparisons of the bombing of that school to the Miley Massacre. And so I guess And was it woke when we were A torturing people in Abu Ghraib? I don't understand what he's referring. Well, I guess he would say that.

He would say that. What's that? You pointed out to me, I asked that same question, Sam, and he said it was woke because one of the torturers was a lady. Yeah. I mean, we were letting a real network. That's a good point. Lindy England.

They would have gotten the information out of them if she wasn't so emotional. The point point being, it's like, you know, you've got. You want the most expert torturer not having this thing where you've got to have quotas for women also to be torturers there. Continue. The past were the opposite of what we're doing here. They had vague objectives with restrictive minimalist rules of engagement. No more. Our authorities, his authorities, sent comms authorities through the president and myself are maxed out.

Our capabilities are overwhelming and gathering still, as are those of our Israeli partners. Our munitions are full up, and our will is ironclad, which means our timeline is ours and ours alone to control. As long as it takes to ensure the United States of America achieves these objectives, and as we flow more forces, and as we flow more capabilities, and as our munitions, as we're flying, over the top have even more devastating effects. We set the tempo. We set the timeline led by the commander on the ground. Our ear is to the ground to listen to Admiral Cooper what he needs and what he needs he will get. Sure. What he needs for this fight? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was over. But just wrap it up. We can finish the final seconds. What are the objectives here?

Well, also, he's lying about the capacity of the United States. We know that we are running low on munitions. We're running low on interceptors. We're running low on missiles because we've over-extended our supply and because of the war in Ukraine. So he's projecting a strength that is not matching the reality on the ground. We know that some Iranian missiles have broken through the Iron Dome. We don't know the full impact of it. But what I think Iran is also doing, and this is perhaps a strategy that is like borne out by the fact that they know that it's disproportionate, the amount of air power and firepower the U.S. and Israel have versus them is they are bombing and targeting, I think, these Gulf states that are in the pocket of the U.S., that are working closely with the United

States and with Trump and having these crony corrupt deals because they know that they can penetrate more. And that puts pressure on the United States, too, given our relationship with these other Gulf states. So it's horrible that other people, that, you know, the people are going to bear the brunt of that. But that's Iran's best bet, it seems like. This bluff of we can fight this forever and our supplies are infinite. Why are you asking Congress for more money for the Pentagon? Exactly. The $50 billion supplemental.

What's that for then? And just one more point on this before we move on. This is him changing the rules of engagement to say that what America really needs to do is bomb more schools with little girls in it. This is him saying that before we were too woke, caring about perhaps, children. But with our joint war with Israel that we're very happy to drag America into, despite the fact that like

70 to 80% of the public here in the United States as opposed to it, we're going to actually also adopt Israeli rules of engagement it seems like. Targeting schools, targeting hospitals, carpet bombing urban centers. It's the United States of Israel. It's Israel's an outgrowth of the United States. But the reality is

that our outposts in the Middle East, the laboratory that Palestine has been, means that like the U.S. is now put on the gas using the sadistic genocidal tactics of the Israelis in our warfare. And Hegseth is proud of it. He keeps talking about our objectives are clear. I mean, it's, it's, I don't know that anybody could articulate. They can't articulate.

We can't even get a consistent acknowledgement that we're actually engaged in a war. Yeah. Never mind the objectives. All right, just continue and let's let him wrap up here. Whiskey Pete. needs and what he needs he will get. We are built for this fight, and we are in it to win it. And we have the right commander in the lead.

So I'll now... All right, there you go. Hey, Chad, can you write me a speech in the tone of a fifth grader who loves Metallica? And I am in it to win it. We'll talk more with Jeet about the implications of all this in a moment. But I, the, you know, I think in the early days of this, there was a question is like, are we going to be able to see something where they do this for a couple of days? And that's it.

I, it is becoming increasingly clear that they are having to make up as they go along what the objectives are. And it's almost as if like they're just sliding down a rabbit hole of Donald Trump, you know, Now he wants to appoint the leader of the country. We'll see where that goes. You let loose the dogs of orange and just put him on the chain again. In a moment we'll be talking to Jeet about these things and more. A couple of words from our sponsors. This episode of the Majority Report is brought to you by Wild Grain.

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And when we get back, Jeet here will be with us. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Major Report. Joining us now, Jeet here. National Affairs correspondent at the nation and host of the Time of Monsters podcast. last. Gee, well, we seem to be in, I guess, the next of Quagmire's. And you wrote a piece, let's, I mean, let's get right into it. And one of the things that's been very difficult to figure out is what is the U.S. agenda in Iran. It may be easier to point out what is the Israeli agenda.

agenda in regards to Iran. And maybe that's the place to start. And then we can sort of like build out from there because this is, you know, I don't think there's any controversy to A, the notion that this has been Netanyahu's agenda for decades. Well, Netanyahu himself has said this is something he's wanted for 40 years. And Donald Trump is the first American president in those 40 years to, you know, listen to him. So what that basically means is that, like, Reagan, Bush Sr. And interestingly, Bush Jr., you know, all got this request to, like, having a war with Iran. And they all said, no.

Like, this is a war, which even George Bush Jr. thought was a bad idea. Yeah. And we know that at least the initial. responses from our Secretary of State and the Speaker of the House were that, well, we went in because Israel was going to go in and we knew that we would get attacked when Israel went in. So we went in to preempt those attacks or to attack first. Leaving that aside for a moment. It's a very weird sort of like argument. Although I mean, part of me, we can go to this later,

But, like, I almost have this kind of, like, dark suspicion that basically what they're doing is the Mirzheimer and Walt argument, but saying, like, it's a good thing. Like, you know, the Israel lobby is running America. And we're okay with that. But, you know, with maybe like an understanding that not all of their coalition is and that this is also going to be a convenient scapegoat if things go wrong, you know, like, well, we don't want this. It's, it's, yeah, it is. Netanyahu is extremely evil, but not an idiot. It's been, Citizens United was 2010, okay? Dark money explosion since then.

Apex lobby has increased in its significance, power, the Israel lobby, has now the Senate minority leader in Chuck Schumer is a Zionist. Chuck Schumer became the leader of the Democrats in the Senate in 2016. after the Iran deal with Obama, they like, you know, escalated their efforts in Congress. You have Hakeem Jeffries who's beholden to the Israel lobby. And then, of course, the entire Republican Party. And then at the same time, so like the financial power here domestically corrupting our Congress is there.

And that might be at a fever pitch, given what we're seeing in the Democratic primary. So Netanyahu sees that. He sees that Republicans look like they're in bad shape in the midterm. So there's a basically. nine-month period where this war can happen. And so, like, he's effectively neutered the opposition party in this country on that front or corrupted them. And he also has a really good read on Trump's emotionality and saw that he was essentially

riding this high from Venezuela, where they considered that operation a total success and was able to sell him on him being able to do the same thing in Iran, which we know is entirely different. So those are, I think, like, the three confluences of factors, like the APAC now being a political liability, but them still having a lot of money invested in the current members of Congress, the midterms coming up, which could change that dynamic. And then also Trump's psychology, which Netanyahu has been very effective at appealing to. Yeah, I would add to that, like, sort of the sense of the clock is running out. I mean, like, you know, Democratic Party voters, you know, like, APEC did actually win a few victories, but it was like really close. Like, you know, they got a 49, 48 victory from someone who had to disavow AAC in a recent primary.

And they've been losing primaries on the Democratic side. And on the Republican side, I'll just say, like, the three most popular figures on social media among young Republicans are Nick Fland. Kate is Owen and Tucker Carlson, right? Like, you know, if you're Benjamin Netanyahu, you know, who's, you know, grew up in America, you know, like, you know, speaks like perfect American English because he's like, has his background. Like he knows which way the wind is blowing. This is his last chance to like maximize out.

And he's, but I mean, just to sort of flesh out what the actual, you know, he's wanted a U.S. Israel war against Iran for a long time. because on the one end, they see Iran as a kind of major adversary in the region. But also, you know, the broader plan, which we're seeing enacted throughout the region, is to sow chaos and disorder. The idea is that, you know, Israel will never be loved in the region. Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing, you know, has committed horrific crimes like for decades, it will never win popular support.

So the only way Israel can survive in the region is if all possible adversaries are like weak, fragmented, chaotic. And so the model is Libya and Syria to do that to Iran. And Lebanon. And Lebanon, yeah, and Lebanon, yeah. And also to build out a greater Israel project, which, you know, like even the liberal Zionists will not disavow. to say, you know, as Mike Hukki did, that, you know, it's not the river to the sea, it's the Nile to the Euphrates.

You know, this is what the ideal Israel is. And they know they can't get it all at once, but they can certainly expand into Syria. They can expand into Lebanon. So this is really like almost a desperate bid to, and, you know, the analogy I would use is like apartheid South Africa and white road. Asia in the 70s and 80s, where those countries were constantly launching aggressive wars against their neighbors, knowing the clock was running out, thinking that this is the one way that they can gain security. And so, I mean, you write this piece, Trump and Netanyahu want to turn Iran into a failed state.

I mean, let's play this out. I mean, you know, I don't know that Donald Trump has any vision. No, no, I know. Yeah, yeah, I know. I would say he doesn't have any ideas, but he's like, can be convinced by the last person he talked to. I mean, the dude seems to be very sincere that he wants to choose who the leader is. And that's the, you know, the Venezuela model. And I don't think he fully grasps what he's what he's talking about.

But Netanyahu is the Supreme Leader. of Iran, which is like a religious position. This is like saying, like, you know, I want to have a spot on the, the Council of Cardinals, you know, and the next. Right. No, I want to be the one who's, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to operate the smoke machine and I'm going to be the one who chooses. Yeah, yeah. So, so, but, but, okay, so in terms of what Trump is actually thinking, we can agree that like Netanyahu does actually want a failed state.

I think Trump is getting a bunch of different. And in some ways, I actually think there's a parallel which I think people haven't drawn out. But I think the way that with George Bush Jr., which I think he was sold on the Iraq war, because Rumsfeld and Cheney quite cleverly did the sort of quick invasion of Afghanistan, which, you know, CIA had been prepared for, and which was very easy to have like a quick military victory, especially since they basically allowed bin Laden to like run a, away and escape into Pakistan. So there was going to be no fighting.

And then Bush Jr. saw, oh, wow, this is, you know, war is easy. Everybody said war is hard. You know, like everybody's, there's parades. Everyone's cheering me. And so he's sold on the war in Iraq. And I think something similar has happened here, where I think that the people around Trump did the Venezuela campaign quite cleverly, like, you know, taking this kind of decrepit regime where it seems like they had a lot of CIA assets in the government.

who were like willing to sell up Maduro. And Trump got his quick victory. And I think like, you know, if you're looking at what Trump is, to the extent that we can speculate what's going on in his mind, it does see like he keeps going back to Venezuela. He keeps thinking like, you know, where am I going to find my Rodriguez who can like an Iranian Rodriguez who can like take over for me? And like it's like, you know, unfortunately he doesn't understand.

And I don't know if the people around him understand, but Iran is a completely different society. It has actually had, like, you know, this revolutionary regime, which in the form of the IRGC, has 150,000 core members, a party cadre, which is very well integrated throughout the society. And there are a lot of people in Iran that don't like the government, don't like the IRGC. But it's not a government that you can easily topple or you can easily, like, you know,

find a sellout to take over. And then like, like, I mean, to go back to it, like, Trump is going to choose the next Ayatollah? Like, is he going to like, like, you know, become a Shiite, go through a religious training. He has to then himself become an Ayatollah to join the Council of Advisors. I mean, that's how you get to choose the next Ayatollah. Well, the son, the Ayatollah's son is already kind of in the poll position to take over. and there's already all of this grumbling among the Iranian diaspora that, like, the U.S. government has trying to, has been trying to push to come in and take over.

Like, they're trying to Ahmed Chalaby this. And it's going to end the same way. Well, let's, I think it, I mean, there's potential for it to be, in some respects, worse. Because, all right, so, you write about Netanyahu wanting a face. state. And the idea being that there would be some type of volcanization in Iran, but, and there would be low level conflicts, maybe civil war. There's an attempt to unclear whether the CIA sort of like planted the story that the Kurds were on board with this and they were arming them with the idea that the Iranians would strike the Kurds and then the Kurds

would get involved. There is a report that 50 lands. and cruisers were purchased, you know, I guess for the revolution or the Civil War. I mean, who knows, but we will find out. But the really sort of like a dangerous part of this, aside from obviously the random killing for no apparent reason, we are certainly under no threat, is the nature of the Iranian government is such that it is decentralized enough. And it is unclear, I don't know if we'll ever know, but there does feel like there is,

there has already been a plan that if things get to level one, this is what you do. You start to strike these bases in these various, you know, countries in the Gulf Coast, excuse me, the Gulf countries. But there's a level two and like a level three. And at one point you start, maybe I've read people talking about dumping nuclear waste into the Gulf, which would, in fact, we got an email from a listener who is in the, who is in the region. who is a contractor who has been, you know, at various places and just was giving us some notion of, you know, what our potential.

Within three days, he writes, if there is a, if they start dumping nuclear waste into the Gulf, the desalination plants that all of these Gulf nations have would be really really and they'd start having massive water shortages within days. And I mean, walk us through some of what you understand could be the implications of this. Yeah. I mean, Iran has, you know, it's a nation of 93 million people with like, you know, like a hardened military that, you know, like in the 1980s, you know, like in the 1980s, you know, went up against Saddam Hussein. and, like, you know, fought a real war. And then in, more recently, in Iraq, like, basically defeated the United States.

I mean, it was, like, Iranian-supported militias that were able to, like, get America to basically withdraw. So, you know, like, this is, like, a country that has, you know, like a real military. And it is, as you say, decentralized. It is not, it's like, I mean, the fantasy. that Trump and all these guys have is you take out the leader, you take out Mr. Evo and you replace them. This is not a strong man government. This is a theocracy that also I should, we should say, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Iranian guard is, it has its own sort of like economy.

Like, they are, they have control of Iran's industry in a way that I don't know. certainly is not, certainly not the case in, in a Latin American country. I don't know where there's something that is analogous to that. No, no, no. I mean, this is one reason why, you know, the American military, including the days leading up to the war, we're always reluctant to go up because we don't actually, no, and as you said, they can do a lot of damage. They can, you know, they've already basically stopped oil from coming in.

And also, like, you know, like the underbelly, the soft underbelly, of the American war effort, are the G.C. nations, the Gulf allies of the U.S. And you're talking about the United Arab, Emirate, Kuwait. These are nations where, like, you know, 10% of the population are citizens, 90% are guest workers, you know. So these are our warrior nations, right? These are the top of the nations are led by these like monarchs, you know, who are born to their position, who are like used to very, very cushy life, love going to like European nightclubs, and also all these like Europeans who have come over for like tax havens as well as people from, uh, toward Asia who are like,

you know, basically indentured servants. I don't see that societies of that sort are geared towards war. And in fact, what you're already seeing is a lot of people fleeing, right? You're seeing like, you know, people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get up at Dubai because you don't go to to Dubai with the idea, you know, I'm going to be committed to this nation and die for it. You go to Dubai because you like us less soft, luxurious life. Let me quote from this email that I got. Americans are, okay, the thing that nobody talking about is that there's a huge difference between all the Gulf countries.

Americans are looking them as one big Muslim place. It's not like that. In fact, I was telling a friend in Dubai, get the F out, because I told them if the shit goes down, Dubai is effed. This has to do with a security agreement the UAE has with Israel. That's played out. And he also writes that one thing that he saw that is different between what's happened over the past couple of days and happened in the 12-day war was that he said, there were a lot of drones being shut down, a shot down, he said then. He said, now the drones, he said, there's, the drones are hitting all over the effing place in the region.

That means drones are getting past our Navy or we're not really trying to shoot them down. I can't speak to that. But I was here last year and we were shooting down most of the drones before they got anywhere near the JCC, that's the Gulf Country's commission.

I'd leave work and see a ton of contrails. In fact, in the sky when drones got taken out, but the fact they're mostly firing drones says they've got tons more stuff in pocket. That's another the thing that's not mentioned is their nuclear plants, and this is where he goes on to talk about, they could just dump some of this nuclear waste into the gold.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's an option. The desalienization, as you mentioned, is an option. And, like, I think that one is hearing a lot that from the GCC countries, like, they're actually quite upset that all the drones are getting through. I think this is partially a function of the fact that Iran actually got a test run in the 12-day war last year. And what we found in that war was the longer the war progressed, the better Iranians were getting at getting their missiles through and getting their drones through. And this is actually what we found within Ukraine as well.

Like, unfortunately, drones are democratizing war. They are actually like giving an advantage. And there's, you know, like the ability of America and its allies to resist these things is not what we would like. And also, and this is going to affect the long-term coalition. But, you know, the GCC countries feel like, you know, America's giving all its protections to Israel. It's like using the interceptors to defend Israel and that they are bearing the brunt of this war. So Israel wants this war for itself. the GCC countries were not on board with us

and that they are like, you know, suffering for a war that America and Israel wanted. I will have one point to add to that. We have, I don't know what percentage, but significant, 30% less, State Department officials. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the ability of this to be communicated through channels that, register the level of alarm and problems, et cetera, et cetera, it's not there. There, you know, like, there's no, there's no process in which to sort of communicate

what needs to be done for these countries. And it really has a feel of like they just went in and thought, we're going to wrap this up in a couple of days and it's not going to be a problem. Because Trump had the Venezuela model in his mind. He had this idea that's going to be like a quick hit, we'll take out the bad guy, put in our own person and it's all going to go well. And like, you know, like anyone, and then the Pentagon apparently told them like, no, sir.

This is like a high risk gamble because of all the things that could go wrong. In terms of like the lack of personnel there, I mean, there's two aspects of this. One is the U.S. actually, like, put out an or, you know, a statement to say Americans in the Middle East in like 16 different countries, you should get the hell out. But they don't have the reason. to process like the visas or to help people. And so like it's like, you know, they're telling people like, you know, just take a bus, go into Egypt, maybe you can get an airplane from there.

Right. Like there's a lot of, like there's a lot of Americans in the Middle East, like your correspondent. You know, there's at least a million people there. Like a lot of them want to get out. That's a problem. The other problem is like this issue of like knowledge. And it's actually a really good interview in the New Left Review by this great Iranian American historian, Yvard Abraham Ian, who basically compared this to the Cold War.

Like in the early days of the Cold War, because of McCarthyism, you had a purge of the State Department of everyone who knew Chinese. So you had like decades of American foreign policy of like people making China policy, not knowing like how to even like talk to the Chinese, not knowing anything about Chinese history and like basically blundering into a series of disaster wars in Asia. Something comparable has happened now. Like you had like a purge of the State Department and especially the sort of, you know, the right-wing Zionist types. They distressed what they call the Arabest. That is to say people who understand the Arabic language and who have like some understanding of the history and are therefore like, you know, like always telling people

American presidents like, don't do this. This is actually going to make the people in the region mad. So those people have been purged. And so you have an administration that is really flying blind in the region. And Trump himself thinks he has a handle on it because he has these friends in the region who are the Emirati, the MBS, the Kings and whatnot. But that's a real thin slice of the society. And there's a lot you're going to miss. And, you know, in terms of like things that could go wrong, I mean, this is certainly like killing. the Aitola has extended the sort of Sunni-Shi-Shiah rift.

And there's a place like Bahrain. Like a majority of the population are Shia, right? And you have a Sunni minority monarchy that's ruling over them. And what is one seeing now is like, you know, like when the bombs are hitting American bases there, you're seeing, you know, crowds cheering. And the government there is like saying like, you know, like trying to like arrest people for cheering. It's a real Tinder box. I mean, you really have created, I mean, in terms of all the things that can go wrong,

it's not just what the Iranians have planned. Like, there's a lot of things that could go wrong that no one has planned for because once you take a match, you light it and you throw it into like that room full of dynamite, who knows what's going to happen. Yeah, and I'm curious, Jeet, if you think, and this is just my theory, I was talking about this a little earlier, if the Iranians understand that, like, They can get some missiles through the Iron Dome, and we may not know the full extent as to what that damage is going to be. But they could more judiciously deploy drone attacks into the Gulf states, which, you know, has business relationships with the United States and tourism that is associated with the West.

And now they're increasingly trying to diversify their economy by investing in sports and tourism. we can get more bang or damage for our buck. Well, it's stand-up comedians. I mean, I'm sorry. But this is a way to inflict damage on Western interests without having to use all of your firepower on Israel. And I don't know how much, I don't know if Trump, if this is going to,

but it's like the better bet to impact because they have all these corrupt business relationships together. Yeah, I mean, in terms of like, what can actually influence Trump? There's like three or four things. And one of them, unfortunately, is Congress, which we know is not going to do anything. But I think Emma's exactly right. That's like the business interest, I mean, that's where things are going to hurt.

You know, one is already seeing, like, I thought like, you know, oil is going to hit $100 by early next week. But it's like, you know, like it's at 86 now. So I feel like it could come sooner than that. And we know there are people in the White House on the United States on the last. the political side who are a bit worried about the oil prices, but also the investment in the Middle East, like, you know, like Trump himself has been toting like the trillions of dollars that are coming in. And in his own family business, like, has been getting like billions of dollars from like Saudi Arabia and UAE. And now the financial, I don't know if you guys saw this,

but the financial times had a really great. I got it right here. Yeah, yeah. Official said three of the four big Gulf economies, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar had jointly discussed the strange. being put on their budget and economies, but they declined to name the states. A number of Gulf countries have begun an internal review to determine whether force major clauses can be invoked in current contracts while also reviewing current and future investment commitments in order to alleviate some of the anticipated economic strain from the current war.

There's another aspect, which is that's internal. The other is the external aspect. There's a lot of Asian money that went into Dubai and USA. and like into all the sort of data centers and stuff that they're building there. And one is already seeing like a lot of that money is like, you know, pulling back and going back to Singapore and Hong Kong, partially because they're also feeling a lot of stress. And they might feel like they need to bring some of that money home.

But I mean, like this is like having like a huge kind of ripple effect on that region. And you know, like this like American, economy, especially has very integrated with this. I mean, like the whole, you know, paramount deal of, you know, buying out Warner Brothers is like, you know, 20% of that financing is coming from the Middle East. And like, if, I mean, this is something that I think will have like a real ripple effect. But also like maybe a longer term ripple effect of like everyone like deciding like, you know, like do we actually need the United States?

Like, you know, like, you know, like, if you're like one of the GCC countries, you're basically looking at, this is a war you do not want that you advised against, which Israel launched and Trump went along with, and you're suffering for that. What are you getting out of this alliance? And if you're an Asian country, like South Korea, like they're having to bring out, like, you know, tech and intercepts from South Korea, taking into the Middle East, like, you're thinking, like, what are we getting out of this American alliance? If you're Taiwan, what are you thinking like, you know, like America's going to, you know, they're supposed to be. pivot to Asia. They've been promising for like 20 years that they're going to pivot to Asia and they

keep getting involved in these wars in the Middle East. So, you know, I think it's going to have like long term. I think the question everyone's going to ask is like, why are we allied with the U.S.? I mean, there's a couple of things to note here, though, that Asia gets a lot of its, a lot of its specific types of oil from that region, particularly because that's where the refining capacity is. And so that's always been, you know, a big part of the rub, I think, is the reason why we invaded and Iraq was, I think, largely a function of making sure that we had control over the spigot that provides maybe at least 20% of Asia's heavy crude that gets refined, et cetera, et cetera. the other thing that's impacting the United States, and this is the other part that just seems to be weird to me, that maybe nobody's telling Trump this,

but we already have like, it's going to severely affect our agriculture because so much of like the nitrogen that we need it, you know, for fertilizer comes from that, goes through that area and comes from that area, we're seeing those prices go up. We're going to see oil go up. I saw somebody tweet that, well, maybe this was a long-term play for Trump

to get the Fed to drop interest rates more by crushing our economy. But, I mean, this is not going to help with affordability. I mean, Does Trump care? Well, that's the thing, is that there is a feeling here where Trump is like, almost feels like, I mean, honestly, like. All of this, though, even Netanyahu, these are older people of the same,

they're the same generation. They're going to be dead this time next year. And they're just like, honestly. Literally, let's achieve what we can. Like, we've always wanted this 40 years of Iran war. I've been working on the Americans for this long. Like, I'm going to be dead soon, right? Isn't that what this is? I sort of feel like they, like, they, like, they, somebody sent to the house, you know, let's that take, take down the world.

Even Chuck Schumer, even Chuck Schumer in the way that he's like so supportive of Zionism in spite of like, it could, it could end his tenure and will, hopefully God. I mean, inshalla. I think he's going to. Well, he's got to know he's a dead man walking. He's doing the same thing. I don't, my career's ending soon and this is what I believe in and I'm going to go for it. I mean, that is what is the. the boomers, I'm sorry, but they are like leading, they're a death cult.

These boomers are a death cult. No, no, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And actually, I think Putin, his decision to invade Ukraine was. Same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, no. I mean, it's very grim. I don't know. I mean, like, there's that aspect. I think Trump himself does. I mean, the fact that he got rid of known Christie, like he likes to get good headlines. He likes to be seen as a winner. He liked the Venezuela War.

because it was this, you know, splendid little war that was like a great TV, great theater. You know, like, I think like if oil prices are up, if people are grumbling, if he's like hearing complaints, if they're body bags, if like, you know, like, and, you know, who knows what's, I mean, honestly, I think they're probably, in terms of casualties, like, some of it's going to be disguised

because they're going to use special contractors and they're going to use CIA, and those people don't, like, you know, get counted as casualties. But like, you know, like, I think that, you know, like, if there are American deaths, um, uh, and already, I mean, like, you know, like, you know, the unemployment rate is already,

we're already kind of on the cusp of a recession, right? Yeah. Like, I feel like this is, like the thing that could like push things over the edge. And if you're talking about war that's going to extend, you know, now they're saying like, you know, they said the first is going to be like a week and now four weeks. And the Pentagon itself is like, you know, know, budgeting until like September, right?

You know, so you have a look at, well, a very serious war going on, like, you know, like at the midterms time, like when people are actually going to be voting, people will be voting most likely when they're still American, when they're still fighting going on in the Middle East. To bolster your point that we're on the cusp of a recession, I had forgotten about this until you just said it, but there was a news item, Yahoo Finance I'm reading from here, that Peter Thiel sold $280 million worth of stock recently, two million shares. There's been some selling from really,

really wealthy billionaires, and you got to wonder if they know what's coming. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I think, I mean, even, you know, before all this sort of started, like it was, I mean, the American stock market's been up, but it hasn't been as up as in Europe and in Asia. And I think there's been a real,

reluctance to invest in the United States. So I don't know. I mean, like, I think it's a real gamble. And I think even if Trump has a little bit of the death cult in him, but I think maybe he has less of that than HECF or than Huckabee or than a lot of other people, like, I actually think, like, you know, yeah, I mean, the one hope that we have is that, like, you know, some of these business partners in the Middle East will, like, you know, say like Trump, you know, like we want to buy those bitcoins from you, but we can't, you know, like the war is going on too long.

I mean, that's what I, like in the back of my head and maybe it's just sort of aspirational and diluted, I keep thinking like, somebody from UAE is going to talk to somebody from Oman and they're just going to be like, okay, here's the deal. We're going to tell the Iranians will announce that they're going to, with Trump's consult, You know, they're going to make the Ayatollah's son, the new Ayatollah, and Trump signs off on it, and we're going to wrap this thing up. And that's basically it. I mean, I, otherwise, he's been told that, like, this is going to be easy. We're, you know, three months out from basically controlling Iran. I mean, I'm sure that's what Netanyahu is telling. So it really, just depends on how quickly the pain is communicated and his sensitivity. I mean, I want to touch on the gnome thing because this is sort of like instructive or maybe. This is the first firing,

really. I mean, there's been one or two nominees pulled before, but that was, you know. Decades. Bovino was fired. Bovino was fired. But this is the first cabinet secretary who's who's been fired or had to resign or whatever it is. And at this point in Trump 1.0, we were on number like eight of the big cabinet names having gone. What what is like was there that much was this firing of Noam as much about like was it because he started to lose Republicans in that in that hearing? like, you know, he had Republican senators balking and they were having a tough time selling it back to their constituents. Like, it appears like the politics worked a little bit here when they have not worked in the past. And I think part of it, you know, could be just like, Christy Nome just didn't know that like you can't throw certain people under the bus.

And the Wall Street Journal's reporting that he was upset about that $200 million ad buy that was. this slush fun for her friend. He doesn't care about the corruption piece. He cared that it was too self-promotional. That's how the Wall Street Journal said. I didn't get a piece of that. Which means that it was, and we played it yesterday. She's featured quite prominently riding in a slow and slow motion with a cowboy hat through the great planes as they talk about rounding up immigrants.

And she, he doesn't appear until like halfway through the ad. It's like a minute 17. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm sure that's what pissed him off. Yeah. I have to ask you to question like the budget of this as well because like, you know, people complain about like one battle after another, you know, costing $130 million.

But you could get two one battle after another's for the cost of this like, like Kristi Noble thing. Like that would be a much better use of money. No, I think I think, yeah, she became a little bit too much of our main character, which Trump never likes. But I think we should also undersell the politics of this. I mean, like, and especially the fact that the resistance in Minnesota, the fact that, you know, you had, like, large numbers of people that, like, made it impossible for ICE to operate and were, like, you know, constantly creating, like, bad television. You know, like, you know, like you had these images of basically, you know, white Midwestern Americans being killed by these masked goons.

I think that was what turned it around. I think politically it's very interesting. And, you know, it's going to be instructive. Like, that the one thing that defeated Trump was actual mass organizing, largely outside of the Democratic Party and in some ways against the wishes of the Democratic Party. Like, you know, I don't think like Schumer and Jeffries like the fact that the ICE protesters were anti-ice protesters were out there and in your face the way they were. But they were the ones that won.

I mean, Minnesota was Trump's Stalingrad. This is like, you know, and historically, I mean, one hopes that that's where it's going to be run. It can also turn out to me that Tehran is like a second Stalingrad, you know? Like, you know, like once he runs into the limits of his power and realizes there are people he cannot defeat. There are people he cannot break. And, you know, like, yeah, I'm no fan of like, Leo, the Islamic Republic. And like, you know, I would hope for a democratic revolution in that country, as in throughout the Middle East. but and in Israel,

but I have to say, like Trump thinks that he can defeat that nation and, you know, like, he can't. I mean, like, and there's, you know, in terms of everything that can go wrong, like their whole strategy and Israel's strategy is more the lawn.

Let's get rid of the leaders and also bombing from the air. And there's two things that we know. More the lawn doesn't work against the genuine mass movement because you can always get another person that rises up. You know, as Frederick Kempton said, you know, you can kill a revolutionary, but you can't kill a revolution. And the other aspect is the bombing, which, you know, like, Robert Pape is the great scholar of this. We had him on yesterday.

We had him on yesterday. Like, you know, like, it has never worked in terms of getting regime change or getting a type of government that you want. So it's just like the Trump is going to, in Minnesota, he ran into the limits of his power through the resistance of the, American people and in Iran, he's going to run into the limits of his power. Let's hope that he stops running at one point, but we'll see. Jeet here, National Affairs correspondent, the nation, host of the Time of Monsters podcast. Thanks so much, Jeet. Always a pleasure.

We'll see you soon. We'll put links to both. Here's a pleasure to talk about it. Yes, the circumstances could be a little better. Yes. Thanks, Jeet. Appreciate it. All right, folks.

we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Ben Palmer, he is a comedian known online as Palmer trolls. And you will find out why. Largely, I mean, I think he's mostly known for setting up a fake ice website and fielding phone calls. It's a tip hotline. The tip hotline, which has been really funny. But we'll take quick break and then we'll bring Ben on. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the majority report.

It is a pleasure to welcome to the program, Ben Palmer. Known online as Palmer trolls. Ben, welcome to the program. Why Palmer trolls? I guess that maybe one way to describe some of the things I do. Trolling, I guess, you know, it started a while ago. Before I knew what trolling was, I was doing that. And then someone told me, hey, by the way, you're trolling. And I was like, okay, well, maybe I should just embrace this then.

There you go. What was it? Well, how did you start? Well, we should say, like, I mean, the videos I've seen, I've actually seen the presentation you're going to give us. It's awesome. Thanks. But some of the videos that I've seen all center around the fake ice tip line that you put up there.

And people call in and then you call back and tell us about this. It's really, really funny. disturbing. Yeah. Yeah, there's been some disturbing calls. People, a lot of revenge, deportation attempts, you know, like exes trying to get back at people. But yeah, they think I'm some sort of legitimate person that can help them. And so it doesn't take much to get them to talk and tell me why and where and who they want to get deported. So there's been some interesting calls. I think one of the most egregious ones was the kindergarten teacher. who looked into a five-year-old kindergarten student at her school and wanted to get that kid's parents deported.

Just because she said they looked out of place. Do they leave their number and you call them back? Is that the way it works? Yeah. I also have a hotline too. The one I've seen that might be, I don't know, perhaps the most viral was the woman at, what was it, the Publix? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. who called and was reporting the woman who helped her find water to ice.

And you were like, oh, so she helped you find the water. You were able to get the water. And you still want her rounded up, put in the van and then drove driven over the border. And like, she, she, they start to feel bad as the call goes on a little bit, but you don't break characters. So it's just, it's brilliant. Amazing stuff. Yeah, she's like, you know, I just didn't like that she spoke Spanish and her English wasn't great. I was like, but she did help you find the water, right? Yeah. Yeah, she took me right to it.

It's like, oh, so now we're just going to, we're just going to throw in her a van and take her across the border. She's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. I wasn't saying all that. But that's what you're calling to do, though. That's what's going to happen. I also enjoy that your supervisor's called back and then you get reported sometimes for being a little bit sarcastic. People after a while start to feel bad about it. What do you, I mean, can you give us like broad strokes, like, as to the demographics of people who call you? I guess I've heard more women than men on some level. Yeah, it's been a lot of women. I've had my share of men, you know, plenty of white people, but there's, there's also been a handful of Indian people calling on other Indian people. There's been Hispanic people that

have called. But yeah, mostly white people. Like in most things, the whites have the most of it. Yeah. Yeah. Before we get into this, this sort of scam that you ran that really got pretty deep into it. What other things have you done prior to the ice tip line? Like what other, I don't know, like pranks. You were the city of Atlanta, right?

That's right, yeah. It started with pretending to be a customer service representative on corporate Facebook pages. You know, like Walmart, people are mad at Walmart, whatever. And then, yeah, when I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, I made the city of Atlanta a Facebook page and that one a lot of traction. And then the actual city of Atlanta was like, he needs to stop doing this. he's using our and then the news like reported it they put it on their screen and then the news was like do you have anything to say back and so I gave them a list of demands like I'll stop posting but I need

I need these things to happen and it was like all of my traffic tickets are absolved uh two free ride on the trolley and I asked like $60 in cash did you get that no but it's not illegal right I mean is there a is there a statute against vague, like sort of impersonating a city's website. Is that illegal? Well, you know, you don't have to admit to anything if you think it's going to be. Well, I kind of dance around the line. It's a gray area. Yeah. That's great. That's, yeah, I like to explore gray areas. That should be the name of my next comedy special, actually, is gray areas. No, but, you know, I think with that, it's like, you know, it's parody.

It's protected under parity. I don't ever try to do anything maliciously. I don't try to steal anyone's info. Never try to scam anybody for money. And, you know, the end goal for me is always just jokes. Let's talk about this because I can't remember what the Genesis was, but you ended up becoming, developing a, I think, a fairly. close relationship with Ted, what is it? Yoho? Right. Yeah, this is just crazy.

So walk us through this or start it up or fire it up. I'm going to start it up. And just as a quick intro, I'm going to do a bit about multi-level marketing companies, pyramid schemes, which there are a lot of those companies out there where nobody makes any money except if you're at the the very top, you end up making a lot of money. And most people end up just losing money or just wasting their time. But one of these companies is called Monat or Monet. And they were getting in trouble because in addition to being a pyramid scheme, they were causing people's hair to fall out their hair product. Wow. And that wasn't the product that they were selling. That was the byproduct. Tired of haircuts. We have a way of you losing your hair. So,

So I emailed them as a reporter named Jackie Jones with the Coloradoan Times. Colorado. Great logo. There's the Colorado one, but there's not the Coloradoan Times. So, yeah, I emailed them a quote from their CEO that says, if you like the Vin Diesel look, you should try her hair products because they'll make you bald. And they emailed back and said that that is absolutely unequivocally not from their CEO. So I said, okay, I'll make sure to know he didn't say anything about Ben Diesel.

I said, but we do have a quote from Ben Diesel about him. I said, I can share that with you. They're like, yeah, we want to see that before you run it. So I'm like, okay, this is directly from Ben's reps. I've relied on that to keep me bald for years. Then the next email I got was from their lawyers. Then a multi-page legal documents that mentioned Vin Diesel several times. They said you can tell if you can mark your video by a simple Google search.

They said if we publish this, that Monats can take swift legal action. And then they give me a deadline and confirm that I won't publish it. They said if you have any questions or wish to address this issue further, please contact us or have your attorney do so. So I had my attorney do so. I said on January 28, 2021, you threatened to take swift legal action. I'm reaching out to inform you if you take any legal action. against Jackie at the Colorado and Times, even just a tiny hair of Ludo action.

I'll respond by photoshopping every Monat executive involved in these photos we posted on the internet and made easily accessible by a simple Google search. In addition, I'll get in touch with every bald celebrity to ask them if they'd be interested in promoting Monat and that list includes, but is not limited to. Pitbull, Charles Barkley, St. Grant, Black, and Glen Rockman, Larry David,

Seale, Perry Cruz, and the Dalai Lama. Friday, January 29, 2020, 59m. Mountain Standard Condorcists. Wait, wait, can you refresh me on whether, what the time difference is between when you receive that email, when you sent this email, and when the deadline is? For the next day,

I believe. Okay, great. I said that time has already passed. Oh, there we go. If you're asking you further, please do not hesitate to contact you. Sincerely, Jackie Jones, Jones, Jones and Jones LLC, attorneys at law You mess with Jones

You get the Jones So I shared that interaction Online and somebody saw it And I don't know how they got this link But they sent me a link to a Zoom party That all the executives at Monat Were having All the people at the very top of the triangle

So I joined as Trey Angle I got awkward and I see one thing I don't recognize who is Mr. Engel Hey I'm Trey The beach back And they removed

Trey from the meeting So I try to change my name And we join And they let me back in So I was able to say You mess with the Jones You get the Jones Oh my God.

Okay. And yeah, and so that's the kind of the stuff I do. So this happens. This happens. Yeah, so someone sent me a message all the way back in 2020. They said they bought the domain parlor. Dot social. And they made a website making fun of the social media app parlor.

And that was the parlor logo. this is the website logo that they made. Obviously, looks nothing like the actual parlor, but here's the website. You're in a safe space now. Parlor doesn't exist anymore, does it? Is it not?

They kind of got bought by somebody else. They have like a different function now, but like the social media app parlor? No, it doesn't exist anymore. But at the time, I did. So he left like a form on the website for people to fill out. And that's why he reached out to me. He was like, hey, do you want to, like, respond to people who fill the form out?

I was like, yeah, sure. But then, you know, we never really heard anything from anybody filling out the form until a year and a half later he messaged me again saying that an actual congressperson filled out the form. His name is Ted Yoho, thinking that it's actually legitimately parlor. Ted Yoho was the guy who called AOC Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a fucking bitch and when he said that

it was like a big issue people made the news and then he was supposed to apologize for it to Congress but here was his apology. The offensive name calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues and if they were construed that way

I apologize for their misunderstanding. He's being you're very specific about not to. Oh, yeah. Passion. Yeah. Or for loving my God, my family, and my country, I yield back.

Yeah, so that was his apology, quote, unquote. But he left his phone number on the form and he wanted someone from what he thought was Parlor to reach out to him about making a podcast, helping him produce a podcast. So I called him.

Wait, wait, why? What? Hold on. I want to go by that so quickly. Like, he's like i don't i want to make a podcast i don't know any other person in the world so i'm going to reach out to a social media site and say help me like what does he not know anybody and not only a social media site a website pretending to be a social media yes which by the way like it clearly on that website it says at the bottom it says this is a joke please don't

me like it literally said in fine print but i i guess he didn't see it so when i called him to be honest with you i thought this was just going to be like the first and last call and so i was just going to say a bunch of crazy stuff see if he would hang up on me and and be done with it um but he never really picked up on anything i was saying uh when we talked about his podcast content's going to be you know pretty much got country family everything i ran on sorry cut out i cut out yeah god damn it family or something God's country and family. Oh, okay.

I was going to say. I was like, whoa, easy on the family. So I said that. We talked about school shootings. We tried to get implemented when I was in Congress, a gun take-you program going to the school. Of course, none of the schools really wanted to do that. Maybe if there were more shooting ranges inside the schools,

you know, that way all that aggression, you know, you skip right past the lunchroom, you know, right to the shooting range and get some target practice in. Even if the targets were, you know, six-year-old boys and girls as the targets, you know, if that saves a life, then, hey. Well, I don't have the parents coming out with you. So clearly he's not paying attention. So this just kept going over time.

We kept working with him. He wanted us to make him a website for his new podcast. And so there that is. That's what we did for him. he was sending us like blogs that he wrote like this one let me ask you did he pay you no so that was the thing I he probably he wanted to pay but I always said we really like what you're doing we just want to say he thinks like I nailed it I like of all the places I could

have tried to call I called the one place that didn't come out and these guys are doing great he's like these guys love me so much they're going to do this for free Yeah, because I never wanted to get any monetary transaction because then it becomes a different level of, right. Yeah. But yeah, he was writing blogs and sending it to us, and we just uploaded those under like the manifesto section of the website. Yeah, that just kept going. I actually didn't know how long I could keep doing this. One time he asked me, he was like, does anybody else work with you over there?

And I was like, yeah, that's true. I can't be the only person working for parlor. So I recruited another comedian, Walter Masterson. Yes, we know. We've watched Walter stuff. It's fantastic. So Walter came on and was like a creative director for Paula. And so we had a couple of boom calls with Ted.

I mean, the ignorance out there is just amazing. Yeah, there are a lot of just ignorant people. I mean, completely. And it's like the stuff is happening right in front of them. And they're just like totally ignorant. They'd call for anything. So we had to call. I honestly, like, didn't know how I was going to, what was going to happen, like, how long I could keep doing this.

But, you know, the AOC thing was an important reason why I kept going, because remember, he told Congress that he never called her that. And then even on the news, he went and told them this. Did you refer to her as a F word, B word? No, I walked down the steps and I said, this is just such a freaking BS. But here's what he told, here's what he told me on a call. A reporter heard me say something. He said, what was that about? I said, no comment.

You guys are in the media business. And when somebody says no comment, it's kind of off the record. You know, you don't go after that. Right. And he said, did you call her an S&B? And I said, no comment. But truth is, as I walked away, by myself, I said, what a F and B.

Yeah. So he admitted to me some things that he lied to Congress about. So at this point, it started to get, kind of getting deeper and deeper. He wanted me to meet him in person. He invited me out to Liberty University, where they're having this CEO summit where other politicians and powerful people were going to be there because you wanted them to come on as guests on his podcast. So at this point, I was like, before I do all this, I really probably should talk to a lawyer. So I registered Jones and Jones.

And then I actually did reach out to a lawyer. I called one of Sasha Baron Cohen's lawyers because he had that show Who is America. And in this particular episode, this is Roy Moore, the judge from Alabama, who is a pedophile. And Sasha Baron Cohen said I have this wand that could detects. pedophile excrement and he like scanned himself and nothing happened and he scanned roy more and it started going off start beeping so later on roy more food him for like 90 million dollars and sasha berncon won and um one of his lawyers told me on a very brief phone call that the reason he always wins is because he has these people sign these airtight contracts before they go on his

show so that same lawyer sent me the same contract and i got ted to sign it oh my god Now, had you set up Parlor Social LLC? Yes, I also set up Parlor Social LLC. Oh, that was smart. Yeah. It's a real entity, yes. Yeah. That's the part of that.

That's your production company is for that production. That's fantastic. Exactly. Yeah. So off we went to Liberty University. Oh, my God. You're meeting him for the first time. I like how you do.

did not the thing I really appreciate this is like I can see how uh you know like like for instance like the yes men I you know are you wear them uh I would I would imagine that and you know they would they would really dress the part and when I saw like when I was watching this and saw you show up with like you really did nothing to in any way like change like it doesn't even look like you washed your clothes to present as if you were at parlor social. But I guess part of it is like you're the, you're the internet guy.

Yeah. So it's like he's talent. We can't, you know. Exactly. I did stick out a little bit. I tried to get the Liberty University hat when I was on campus. That was my one like disguise attempt. But yeah.

So, you know, we were there with Ted. We were supposed to start interviewing people. in this conference room that he had booked for us. Apparently he double booked it with the lieutenant governor of Virginia. So they came in. They're like, who are you guys? And I'm like, I'm just here with Ted. So we actually had to leave.

And so the first day, we didn't interview anybody. We just ended up following him around. By the way, yeah. So I went. Walter went. And then Mac, the guy who made the website, the fan who reached out to me from the beginning, the three of us went and I brought a cameraman as well. So yeah, that whole first day, no interviews.

We're just following him around. And, you know, he's just like shaking hands with people and introducing us to people. Like, that's the former president of Ghana there in the middle. That's another congressperson over there on the right. And then there's us. That's the look of what am I doing here, right? Walter, Walter dresses the part a little bit.

He's got, Walter has a character that whole backstory on that character I can tell right there. Right. So Ted's like giving a speech in this conference room. We're outside waiting for him. When we're waiting for him,

all of a sudden these people approach us and start asking us these questions like, you know, do you belong here? Do you have a card? Can we see your license? I'm like, oh, great. Now we're about to get sent home. but we realized it was Walter the one they recognized

because before all this he had been doing things like this a lot in person I'm legally all online so we realized he was the one they recognized for example here's one of Walter's stunts where he joins on the beach Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gates I'm so excited I mean this all everyone thinks you're crazy I don't think you're crazy

people think you're a petapal I don't think you're a petophile I don't think you're a petophile I don't think it's Sentencing are totally false. Yeah. They're totally false. So Walter, you know, he does this kind of thing. But we realized there's Walter, who they recognize. So he texted our group chat.

He says, I'm going to leave so you guys can keep doing this. And he was right. Walter was the one they recognized because I had security come up to me. And they had Walter's TikTok on their phone. And they're like, are you with this guy? And I was like, no, no, we just met him today. We don't really know him like that. Of course.

Now, so Yo-ho doesn't realize. that you've jettisoned Walter. So Yoho's not privy to the fact that everybody's like ringing the alarm all about Walter being there. Yoho does not know that Walter has now left. Here's what was going on in Yoho's perspective. She goes, we thought they might be the TikTok disruptors. So he. So he.

He blamed the Chinese instead of blaming us. Thank you, China, by the way, for getting us out of that. Because, yeah, he never brought it up again. He did ask. He goes, where'd your buddy go? I thought, I think he had to go home or something. So I was very nervous, but then he never brought any stuff. But it's just so amazing, too, that, like, he's just like, I got the guys here.

I got to trust them. They're like, I mean, he's just the fact. that one of the guys just was unnecessary, I guess, and just, he's so stupid. You don't have to be quick on your feet at all. I mean, he's so congenial with you really, too, already at this point.

It's your first in person being. You're his only friend. Yeah. I think he was happy that we're there. I really don't understand what he was thinking. But I was like, okay, as long as we can still stay.

But yeah, you know, he invited us to some dinner. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. because the next day we had like a confirmed guest that he had booked. And that was a former presidential candidate, Michelle Bachman.

So the next day I met her. You can see the lovely logo we drew for Ted on the whiteboard back. Very professional. Is that your pony too? Yeah. So I had been doing this for three months. and like I wanted this to be you know the ends I brought some things some props that I wanted to present to Ted to see if you remember like all the things

that we talked about on the very first phone call that we have had one of them oh by the way yeah Michelle Bachman signed the Sasha Barron Cohen contract as well that's fantastic so yeah one of them was a horse because before he worked in Congress he worked as a veterinarian and that we talked about that on the abortion side I mean if you get rid of the male population and get it manageable, then you can manage your herd from that point forward. I think that's a great. What happened over the year. A great analogy to go with humans to it.

Put this on the men, get forced vasectomy, and now they're carrying a little bit more of the responsibility. You know, if they can't get the nut, then there's not going to be the bait. That's true. So about the horse. There's nothing you can say to him. Exactly. Exactly.

I brought the horse. I brought forceps for the horse. And I mugged said, Cetectomy survivor. I kid you not. And so I presented that to them. And they, you know,

they thought it was funny. They didn't know what really was going on. It was kind of awkward. Then the next thing I presented, that's when it got really uncomfortable, because that was the target with the kids on it. And I put that behind them. That's when they realized, you know, something isn't quite right.

Actually, they got up and they left. But now in this conference room, it's just me, Mac, the guy who made the website and the camera guy. And I'm like, guys, I think we should just pack our stuff up and leave as soon as you can. Wait, who realized first? Who realized first, Ben? Was it Michelle or your friend, Ted? So it was definitely Ted. Michelle just had a look of shock on our face.

entire time. She's had this face and then she had the mouth open face like what is happening right now. You know, from her perspective, it's like she's just talking to Ted the whole time. He's like, yeah, let's come up and record this podcast. Downstairs they were having all these people congregate. And there was like, you know, politicians and armed security. And he's like, yeah, let's just do a quick podcast upstairs. We're not knowing any idea how deep in this Ted is with us. So yeah, we're like getting our stuff ready to leave. Did you get, I'm sorry, one more question. Did you get a sense that he was suspicious because he had already been approached about the TikTok thing?

Or was it just, oh my God, my good friend from parlor social, it's maybe a little bit crazy. No, he, I talked to him again later that night and he was talking about other stuff. Oh, yeah, he brought up, he brought up like one of the speakers, you know, said, something about how they had a close call during it when they're a kid. It was like someone from a different country. He almost was murdered. They left the country and they, it was a close call. He brought up the, when he said the phrase close call, I was like, yeah, yeah, I know a lot about close calls. I definitely, I had one today myself. And you know, that, of course, he didn't pick up on that. So yeah, I don't know what was going on, but he had no clue. It had to be right in his face.

Apparently, when, you know, the school shooting topic came up, that's when it got very uncomfortable for them. So yeah, we're trying to leave and then he comes back in the conference room demanding that we give the contract back that Michelle Bachman signs. And he tried to like close the camera guy I hired in the door to.

You guys not leaving here until we get a paper. I'm on the call to please. Yeah. So this whole time, my good Lord, he's trying to get that contract back. Thankfully, Mack, the guy who made the website, he tucked it away in his butthole like it was like a sack of drugs.

So he never got the contract back from us. But I noticed on his hands, so he was bleeding a little bit because he was wrestling with the cameras trying to turn him off. And he cut himself. And I was trying to calm him down. I'm like, hey, you know, you're bleeding. You need to relax. So then when he saw that he was bleeding on his hand, he pulled out his phone and tried to say that we were the ones who assaulted him. This is all disingenuous.

And in the process, it attacked me. And I got her. And who can have good insurance? Oh, wait a second. No comment. So finally then, the security people came up. The police come up to the conference room. Then he tells them that we assaulted him.

So they say, okay, you can't leave now. You're under investigation for assault. And our camera guy left. We didn't know how to use the camera that he left behind. But thankfully, Mac, the guy who made the website, recorded everything with his iPhone. as it was happening. So we showed the police,

the iPhone footage of Ted actually being the one assaulting us. And they said, do you want to press charges against him? And I, you know, I didn't want to. I just wanted to get out of there. So by the way,

the iPhone bailed us out, which was made in China. So thank you once again. So, yeah, we all just left. That was the last time I talked to Ted. I didn't want to reach out one last time to apologize.

So I emailed him and I said, it was unfortunate that I created with Michelle Bachman. I said, I apologize for your misunderstanding. But I cannot apologize for my passion for loving my God, my dammit, and my family. Fantastic. Eric Jones, Farler Social. That's so great. That's so great. And you guys, and so I guess it really seems to have ruined your friendship.

with him. Yeah, yeah. Things are. You never hear from him again. Never heard from him again. Don't want to contact him again. That book is closed. I'm happy to not be working for him.

I so desperately want to know what was going on in his head, though. I sort of feel like maybe there's... Go whistle in a field. There's an opportunity for you to sort of like just go back and say, hey, you know, I really want to understand what was going on and I felt like we had a real connection or yeah listen there's a redemptive arc for you here I think where maybe you find um some type of like uh god and you go back and try and make amends by by going over how that happened right I would love to see I just like what was he thinking throughout this whole thing like how how do you how do you

you reach out to just a random social media company that would be like me just sending an email to Google and going, hey, I want to make a podcast. You got anybody there who's got nothing to do? And it's just fantastic. Well, yeah. AOC saw this, right? She finally did see it. Yeah, like I posted on Instagram a month or two ago and someone tagged her and she saw it. Yeah. So she commented, Oh my God with a laugh at my It is so great That is so great Well

I was just at that event He kept saying oh the actual CEO Of Parlor is going to be there George Farmer He's like so you guys Your people will be there I'm like I hope that guy does not see us Yeah

We do not make that introduction How did he know that? He saw it on the like Who did he think you were Did you tell them, like, what your job was at the parlor? Yeah, I mean, I would just say, you know, we, I don't know, I'm like a director. I just tried to sound very professional sounding. You know, I've listened to plenty of, like, actual business Zoom calls.

I try to imitate that. You know, one time I was talking to, like, my wife at the time, I'm, like, talking to her in the background. He's like, oh, you're talking to your colleagues? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking to. But I was, like, in an office. I'm just in my house, just chilling, you know. So, yeah. Well, I really appreciate the work you're doing.

And we'll put a link to that because, I mean, I've seen you do that as a live show, right? When you get around. What do you want to plug? Oh, yeah, thanks. I'm starting up a tour soon. I tell everyone that I'm moving to a new city, but I'm only going to stay for a day or two. then I can move. So if you go to Ben Palmer's Moving.com,

you can sign up to be notified when I get a show in your city. That'd be awesome. I appreciate that. Thanks so much for having me on. Well, we'll link to your stuff in that sign up as well. Ben Palmer, Palmer,

Trolls. Thank you so much. Really great work. Really enjoy it. Thanks, Sam. I appreciate it a lot. Thanks, Ben. All right.

All right, folks. Are we going to do another freebie? What are that? Like three freebies in a row. Some kind of socialist. Oh, we didn't do one yesterday. Well, we did an inadvertent freebie. Yeah, we might as well.

We got 45 minutes, right? Oh, I just, oh. I didn't know what you meant by inadvertent freebie, but yes, now I understand. Do you need to take a break? Probably. All right. Well, let's take a break, but we can still do a freebie. We could just go to break.

We could just do a shorter fun half, too. Yeah, we'll do a shorter fun half, too. We did a freebie the other day. All right, folks, just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member, join the Majority Report.com. When you do, you can only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. And justcoffee.combe, co-op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code majority, get 10% off. Matt, the Matt Lech Media Universe.

Yeah, this morning, David Griskeman and I went through a survey of the right-wing's response to the Saran War. and they all basically have a complex about their daddies as what we've determined. And also Bronco March Teach joined us to talk about the Iran War in general. So go check that out over at the Jacobin-Magg YouTube channel. There's going to be a Sunday show for our Left Reckoning patrons patreon.com slash Left Recurton. And Emma, what are you plugging? Well, it's sold out. This is Dynasty-Type Brinder.

We've sold out. The heat is on them when they do this. And so it's sold out. Sorry, guys, if you didn't get tickets. But if you didn't, you still can become a patron of the Bituation Room, and there will be a recording of the live show available on Francesca's Patreon. If you haven't gotten the tickets. You know, we're just a big draw. We're just a big draw.

What kind of bull is this? That's not even happening for a while, is it? Two and a half weeks. That's pretty good to sell out. two and a half weeks in advance yeah yeah i'm damn yeah also popular uh what was the uh and uh doom scrolling oh yeah well it's been a week since i've come out so i'm i'm people could check it out if i want i feel like i plugged it enough you want to be one of the hundreds of thousands of people is that the numbers right now i said it like 171 last time that's a lot for that show yeah i mean

he's a he's a talented interviewer um and i think that that series is interesting i haven't watched a I've only really watched like Crystal's episode and some others but I think he interviews some like other more controversial people on there too and I'd be curious

Yeah, that Will Mennaker fellow Oh yes yeah Oh I he Felix he also interviewed I think too right Am I? I haven't seen that one if he has But anyway There's a lot of good interviews

On Doom Scroll So check those out See you know fun half Three months from now Six months from now Nine months from now And I don't think it's gonna be The same as it looks like

In six months from now and I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second.

Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun hat. Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun pack. No, me. Keene.

You did it. Let's go Brandon Let's go Brandon Bradley you want to say hello Sorry to disappoint Everyone I'm just a random guy It's all the boys today Fundamentally false

No I'm sorry Women stop talking For a second And let me finish Where is this coming from dude But dude you want to smoke Is 7 8? Yes

I think it is you Who is you No sound Every single Fricking day What's on your mind We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

I'm going to guess how life. Libertarians. They're so stupid, though. Common sense says of course. Gobbled euk. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 501. One half. Three-eighth.

9-11 for instance. $3,400. $1,900. $6.5,4.3 trillion dollars sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making think less of it. But let me say this.

Poop. You call satire, Sam goes to satire. On top of it all? My favorite part about you is just like every day all. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. Yeah, sundown guns out.

But you should. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled. Wow. I love it. I do love that.

Got a jump. You got to be quick. I get a jump. The clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you?

Love you, bye. Love you. Bye-bye.