The Megyn Kelly Show - Financial and Political Iran Impact, with Saagar Enjeti, Plus Talarico Surge and Gross Colbert Poetry, with Isabel Brown and Brianna Lyman | 1272

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Megyn Kelly is joined by Saagar Enjeti, co-host, "Breaking Points," to discuss the facts about America’s war in Iran two weeks into the conflict, the mixed messages we're seeing from the Trump administration and others, major strategic questions about what the actual endgame is in the region, the massive financial impact the Iran war is having on the American people, why surging diesel prices will drive up food costs across the country, the financial and political ramifications if the war goes on months, the importance of getting to the truth about why America attacked Iran, the growing risks of escalation as the conflict continues, what could happen next if the situation spirals beyond the initial strikes, how President Trump’s success with last year’s strikes on Iran and the Venezuela mission may have influenced his decision to go to war with Iran, why some advisers believed another rapid victory was possible, growing debate inside the Republican Party about the war, and more. Then Isabel Brown, host "The Isabel Brown Show," and Brianna Lyman, host, "Countdown to Freedom," join to discuss the absurd dramatic poem actor John Lithgow delivered to Stephen Colbert, the broader decline of late night comedy, Colbert's long ridiculous goodbye tour, why the GOP should be concerned about Texas Democrat James Talarico potentially winning the Senate seat, how he uses Christian messaging to frame progressive policies, his insane past comments that are coming to light, a disturbing NY Mag article featuring women talking about why they regret having children, the complaints about how motherhood affects career and finances, the broader cultural shift away from family-centered values, Meghan Markle's ridiculous retreat, and more.   Enjeti- https://breakingpoints.locals.com/support Brown- https://www.youtube.com/@theisabelbrown Lyman- https://x.com/briannalyman2   Herald Group: Learn more at https://GuardYourCard.com Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Relief Factor: Find out if Relief Factor can help you live pain-free—try the 3-Week QuickStart for just $19.95 at https://ReliefFactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF. Veracity Selfcare: Head to https://VeracityHealth.co and use code MEGYN for up to 60% off your order     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow  Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show and day five from our remote tropical location as my children celebrate spring break. But I am not. I'm happily with you guys in the mornings and with my family in the afternoons. And that's been working out okay for me. I'm not going to lie. There was some evening celebration last night, which is making this morning slightly fatigued for me, but not bad.

Not bad. It's great to be with you all. There is so much happening in the world. As you know, it's been like drinking from the news fire hose. And if you were to check any news site, you would think the only thing going on in the world is the Iran war because everybody's devoted to it right now. I mean, truly, it's like, it's amazing to me how news disappears when a big story comes because every reporter in the world is obsessed with Iran. I wouldn't say we're obsessed with it, but we're very, very concerned about it. And this is part of the challenge is figuring, out what's real, what's propaganda, not just from their side, but from our own, and how the war is really going. Defense Secretary of War, Pete Hexeth had another presser this morning

with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Kane, and came out swinging. He too has a job of trying to spin us. I mean, that's part of his job, and he's good at it because he comes from TV and Fox News. And so with him, too, I respect Pete and obviously advocated for him, but you've got to be somewhat skeptical as a reporter and a news consumer about the just sweepingly positive reports he gives and also the sweepingly negative reports, the president's critics, drop online. It's been an effort even for us, and we're in the news business. And, you know, my team and I have been working together for 20 years, some of us. And even we are struggling to figure out whom to believe and where to discount the reports. While all this happens, not surprisingly,

already we are seeing an increase in domestic terror attacks here at home. There were two troubling incidents yesterday here in America. One terrorist previously convicted of attempting to provide material support to ISIS might have wanted to have eyes on this guy, shot and killed the chair of Old Dominion University's military science department and wounded two others. He was ultimately taken down and killed by heroic students in the ROTC class. That terrorist was a naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone. And in Michigan, how's it going in Michigan, guys? How's everything out there? A naturalized citizen from Lebanon rammed his car, packed with explosives, into the Temple Israel synagogue. All right. Luckily, the only person killed in that attack was the attack.

attacker. And truly, it is a blessing. But that guy rams his truck in there, full of explosives, starts shooting. 30 of the teachers and others, or in the firefighters, too, I think it was, and the cops have been hospitalized due to smoke inhalation because he set the car on fire, and then he also started to shoot up the room at the facility, but amazingly no one else was killed. You know, we saw the terrorist attack down in Austin. We're going to see more and more of this because this is how radical Muslims who are over here in America will will, we'll start, you know, their retaliation. This is what they can do. They may not be able to defeat the U.S. military, but they can do this. They can grab a gun and go shoot up a bar in Austin or go to a

temple. The meantime in Iran, the U.S. is staying on offense with the military saying today will be the heaviest day's day of attacks yet. President Trump pushing back on the narratives in the corporate media. He's posting on true social this morning. If you read the failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think we are not winning. Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today. They've been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I as a 47th president of the United States of America and am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so, unquote. Secretary of War Pete Hexath, as I mentioned, taking to the mics and pushing back hard against a CNN report that hit late,

last night, claiming the U.S. underestimated Iran's capability to shut down oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Watch. Or more fake news from CNN. Reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war's impact on the Strait of Hormuz. Patently ridiculous, of course. For decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This is always what they do, hold the straight hostage.

CNN doesn't think we thought of that. It's a fundamentally unsurious report. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better. That reference is to Paramount CEO David Ellison, whose company agreed to acquired CNN's parent company earlier this month, with the deal expected to be finalized later this year. Joining me now for a reaction to all of this and more is Saga and Jetty. He's co-host of Breaking Points with our friend Crystal Ball.

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networks with weaker, security, and fewer protections. Find out more at guard your card.com and consider telling Congress to guard your card. Sagar, welcome to the show. Great to see you again. Put it in perspective for us because, you know, you have diametrically opposed information coming now. I mean, Pete Higset, the way he spoke about this war this morning was we, like, we are just crushing it. We are moments away from ending it. I'll give you a little bit more. Here he is on SOT 1. Listen. We said it would not be a fair fight, and it has not been. It's over 15,000 enemy targets have been struck. Their missile volume is down 90%. Their one-way attack drones yesterday, down 95%. They are exercising sheer desperation in the Straits of Harmoos.

Something we're dealing with. We have been dealing with it. And don't need to be. to worry about it. Soon and very soon, all of Iran's defense companies will be destroyed. Iran's leadership is in no better shape. Desperate and hiding, they've gone underground, cowering. That's what rats do. With every passing hour, we know and we know they know that the military capabilities of their evil regime are crumbling. So do we believe that's true? I do not believe that that is true. Megan, and I think that you did a very important caveat near the top. It's not a personal callout for anybody involved. You and I have been involved with this business to see many people take that Pentagon podium and almost all of them lie directly to your face in a time of war.

So let's just assess the facts as we actually know them. The latter one where Secretary Hagsat said that Iranian leaders are hiding like rats in a ground is literally categorically untrue. Actually, today was the Kud's Day parade that happened in the streets of Tehran, where the entire Iranian top echelon actually took to the streets with a crowd of tens of thousands around them, the national security advisor, the foreign minister, all giving statements in the streets being followed by the security guards with cameras that were in front of them, effectively saying, we are not afraid, as you could actually hear Israeli and U.S. strikes that were happening in the background, right? So there you go. You can actually literally see it in front

of you. They don't look like rats. They're hiding in the ground to me. On the statement that were happening there at the top about Iranian missile production. That is a very, very difficult claim to assess. But we can look to history. Yesterday, I interviewed Professor Robert Pape. I highly recommend everybody go and engage with this work. He is the preeminent American scholar on air power. And he has consistently noted that air power alone is almost, not almost impossible, impossible to dislodge a regime, which is really what this war is about. Now, even in terms of reducing the enemy's ability to produce, let's assess. that through history. We do know, of course, even with Allied bombing near air superiority over

Germany, that German war production actually peaked in the year 1944. We also know that the Iranians have had 47 years, of course, as the president said at the top in his truth social post, to plan and to disperse their entire production facilities underground, many of which are inaccessible. So we may have hit 90% or 95% of what we know about, but of course, there are unknown unknowns in wars, Donald Rumsfeld used to say to us at the height of the Iraq war. And I also will say this, you know, Bloomberg reported just this morning, Iranian ballistic missile firing has actually remained constant through the war, especially when you match it. You know, they're saying that their strikes are reducing, our strikes are actually reducing as well compared to the original

first days of the war. And I really want people to remind, I want people to put in some historical context of what's happening here. A lot of the statements from Secretary Hegsteth and General Kane really remind me of General Westmoreland from MacV, or Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. What they would emphasize are these amazing numbers, the body count. We killed 292 Viet Cong yesterday, and we bombed X amount of heck takers removing them from the enemy. But what about the strategy? So while we were killing these millions of North Vietnamese or Viet Cong, were we winning the war? And the answer was no, right? It said strategically it was a massive defeat. So do not get distracted, as many of us saw.

in the Iraq war with shock and awe. Well, Shockinah was a supposedly incredible military success, but strategically it was a nightmare because it led to a civil war, ethnic sectarian conflict, and some seven, 18 years of occupation in Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan. We easily defeated the Taliban, but it took 20 years, and of course, they're back. So we need to actually assess the strategic picture from a high level and not fall for what the military always likes to do about numbers of targets that have all. been hit. And also just take a look at some of the things that have happened to us. Let's take a

look at our strategic picture, our domestic picture. And we're watching already seven Americans who have been killed in action for just yesterday, who have been confirmed dead in this tanker crash that happened over Iraq to remain missing. A French soldier was tragically killed. Also, yesterday, one of the first KIA that they've had, obviously, in quite a long time, not to mention thousands of Iranian civilians, Lebanese civilians as well, civilians in Israel. There are soldiers in Kuwait civilians all across the Gulf who've had debris who have fallen on them. So this is a regional and global conflict now at this point. That we unleashed, that, you know, we chose to go over and unleash, which I want to return back to in a second

because there was an interesting discussion between Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly claimed to have information clearly from the White House, although he didn't source it that way, on why we got into this war, and I'd love to get your take on it. Before we get to that, though, you mentioned Professor Pape. He was very interesting. University of Chicago on your show, we pulled a little bit of it. Recommend going back and listening to the whole podcast or everybody. But here's SOT 13.

So as this thing unfolds, we need to understand that we're really, really have touched off the escalation trap in a way. The biggest problem is that President Trump just is losing control. And he's going to try to get the control back. But so too did Lyndon Johnson. I was going to say that's the LBJ trap. We can call it back. It's the same. They're, I think, mesmerized by this illusion of control of escalation.

And you even hear President Trump saying, when will Iran reach the breaking point? That was exactly the rhetoric of LBJ. How can we break the back? of the North Vietnamese. And that search for the breaking point, there's actually articles with those titles, the search for the breaking point, you see. And that language, I mean, I don't think Trump probably went back to the speeches of LBJ. This is the reality of the frameworks. The frameworks force this, you see. And so that's why those frameworks matter. Well, that's what's scary, Sagar, because, you know, I was talking to some guys last night, and they were very supportive of the president and this war saying, we're going to get in there. We're going to get rid of these mofos at the top, the Ayatollah and his top henchmen. You know, we have a real shot at returning Iran to the 1970s Iran where the women were walking around in Western clothing,

and we have a government that's friendly to the United States. But then when you get down in the nitty-gritty of how? Have you considered the IRC, like how strong they are? how entrenched they are, how many of them they are, how are we going to get them to put down their guns, who exactly is going to make them do it? What members of the regime have yet to fall and how are we going to take them out? Like, it gets a lot more complicated. Beyond complicated.

And with great respect to those individuals, that's incredibly magical thinking. And I think you're falling for some memes about photos of women in Tehran and not the reality of a country of 93 million people, okay, one third of the United States population. Let's remember and just think about how you might be. able to transpose a picture, let's say, of Los Angeles and try and take that as representative of the entire nation. It would be ridiculous, of course. So let's just understand, first of all, that we're dealing with the highly complicated country. Now, also, let's take it back to the work of Professor Pape, and this is the scariest of it, is that initially it's very clear that the

White House expected an enormous tactical and strategic success. They would have smashing strikes. They would take out the highest salon of the regime. The regime would immediately fold, and that they would come, and that they would say, okay, cry uncle, they would surrender. Instead, what happened is they went for maximal retaliation with what they have in their arsenal, which is asymmetric warfare. They want to inflict maximum economic pain on the American and global economy. They also want to be able to strike to every U.S. ally. They want to use up a vast portion of U.S. interceptors and munitions. Hopefully we can return to that because our defense readiness picture right now is a nightmare after only just 12 days of war, dramatically weakening us

vis-a-vis China and our ability to project power across the globe. But really, this is the history of all wars. What happens is that you have an initial expectation of success. The enemy gets a vote. And so what happens is it morphs from an initial tactical encounter, let's say, between the U.S. military and the Iranian military, to now, if we want to break the back, as Professor Pape said there, then we must engage in total war. And to engage in total war, that means we have to remove the capacity of the Iranian people to make war upon the United States on the Gulf and to close the strike. rates of Hormuz. That is not just regime change. That requires occupation. That requires nation building. And that is effectively what we are in an escalation trap of right now. And this is

why we never succeeded in Vietnam, because we tried to exactly copy this mistake. LBJ, very often, would think that dropping bombs, let's say the number of bombs in World War II was equivalent to success. Obviously, that was not the case in that conflict. What would have needed would a literal occupation of the entire country, a commitment to staying there forever to consistently engage in counterinsurgency to build the nation, what we did in Germany and in Japan. You've mentioned, and I've talked about with Tucker, about unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender, let's be very clear, requires dropping atomic bombs, it requires a full-style occupation. Remember, the Soviet Union took 400,000 casualties in 1945 alone, advancing

on Berlin. That's what unconditional surrender means. It means you to break the back of the enemy and completely destroy their capacity, their will to fight, occupy them, and then rebuild and impose your martial will upon their soul. These people will fight to the death. And unfortunately, that is the project that we are now engaged in in conjunction with the nation of Israel. Well, this is one of the things that many people who are skeptical about the war are worried about, because now that we're in this fight, and now, what is Iran's goal with respect to Israel now? I mean, more than ever for sure. They already wanted to wipe them off the face of the map.

That really was a goal. But now have they backed off of that now that they've been attacked? Obviously, at Israel's behest and explicitly, per our Secretary of State and others. So what does Israel do? Like, it's already been reported that Trump understands this decision has to be made in tandem with them, even though this is a country of 9 million and we have 350 million and we have, We have our own concerns here. We're apparently we're treating ourselves as equal partners in this thing as opposed to the senior partner.

And what incentive does Israel have to stop this thing before there's complete annihilation of everyone at the top of the Iranian regime, which means tens of thousands. And if we stop before then, what does Israel do? I mean, what weapons do they unleash on Iran? And where does that take us? Right. Of course, Israel is a nuclear armed power. And by the way, they're much more likely to use their nuclear weapons, actually, than we. are considering the asymmetry exactly what you just talked about. That's why they became a nuclear

armed power. But this is where let me make it very clear, is that Israel and the United States have completely divergent interests. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech just yesterday where he bragged about how Israel is now becoming a, quote, global superpower. This is effectively his goal in getting the United States into this conflict. The United States and Israel have completely divergent interests in Iran. In Israel, what they want is total regional. Hegemony. They could care less what happens to Iran, whether they have the Ayatollah in charge, which is, you know, over a rump state, whether it's a thriving democracy. They could care less. What they want is a literal civil war rump state, which they can easily control, which is what

happened in Syria. Now, not to mention the refugee crisis that came out of Syria, not any Syrian refugees that are in Israel, but there's a lot in Europe, aren't there, and in Turkey, and a lot of our NATO allies, for them destroying the state and actually just, destroying the regime is the point because they want to eliminate Iran as a polity that is capable not just under the Iranian regime, but ever from being able to pose a regional threat to their hegemony in the region. The United States has an immense interest in a stable Iran. Why? Look at the Strait of Hormuz crisis that's happening right now. You don't want jihadists and groups to be able to control various different portions of the strait. Already, Donald Trump has

the highest gas prices of his entire presidency as of this morning. Diesel is on its way to $5 a gallon, which, as we all found out under Biden, means massive food inflation for all of us because anything that needs to be trucked across this country, that has the price of diesel baked into that good whenever it gets to a store that all of us are going to consume. I'll just interrupt you briefly. So my husband wrote a book called The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel. And it was about the inventor of the diesel engine who lived in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And he was the Elon Musk of his time. He won the World's Fair in 1900 with his new exciting engine. And it's the reason we have diesel gas is because you have a diesel engine. It's like this guy who most people think diesel is a lowercase

word. It's not even a proper noun. But diesel was the man who invented it. And his engines are everywhere, everywhere. That's incredible. The entire world economic society is based on the diesel engine, much more so than the gas engine that the rest of us use for our cars. And when Doug came on my show, my husband, to promote the book, we talked a little bit about how ubiquitous diesel gas and the diesel engine is and just how dependent the entire world economic system is on the diesel engine and diesel gasoline, which is currently skyrocketing. Here's just, we pulled the saw just to, because no one can say it quite like Doug did. Watch this.

This is the guy whose engine power, it's the most important power source over the last hundred years in the world and continues to be our most important power source. When you consider a piece of fruit grown in a tropical region, all of the farm equipment used to grow that fruit is diesel powered. It gets loaded onto a truck. Anything larger than a passenger car and a third of the passenger cars also is diesel powered. It goes down to port where a crane, diesel powered, loads it onto a cargo ship. 100% of cargo ships. I think there's one Russian nuclear cargo ship that doesn't really work well.

Cargo ships are all diesel powered. It goes across the oceans, into port, back onto another truck, to a train, almost all. trains are diesel powered and have been through the 20th century. So nothing moves without the diesel engine. It completely powers our global economy. We wouldn't look anywhere near what we look like today without diesel. Wow. A month ago, diesel was it, right? It's interesting, right? Yeah, that's awesome. But a month ago, diesel gas was at $3 and 65 cents, 66 cents a gallon. And today it's at $4.89. As you said, almost $5 a gallon, which means it's not only going to hurt people who drive cars with diesel engines, it's going to hurt the entire world economy for the reasons Doug just outlined.

Absolutely. Well, shout out to Doug. I'm going to have to buy his book because I became obsessed with the price of diesel during the Biden crisis, because this is exactly what happened, especially after the war in Ukraine. But let me zoom out even more because it's not just about diesel and gas fertilizer. So fertilizer has skyrocketing in price, a significant portion of it, actually comes through the Straits of Hormuz. Already our own farmers are reporting spot price increases of up to 70%. All of us know that's going to be passed on to us with food. What's actually even more tragic is that what that means is that while Americans and

first world countries will just have to pay a lot for food, third world countries will actually go without, we could have a full-blown crop shortage if this war continues going on. I'll give you another one, helium. Almost 30% of the world's helium comes from Qatar. Qatar currently, all of that helium is bottled up with the Straits of Hormuz that is vital to chip production. So TSM semiconductors, what the entire global economy is currently running on with respect to AI. We've already seen all that helium begin to come down and offline. What that means for all of us is a chip shortage, which means what we saw in the COVID crisis,

where people were buying cars with no electronics in them. there were shortages of, let's say, phones, laptops, computers. I mean, the ripple effect of this already, almost two-week war, is titanic to the global economy. Now, people may say, I'm being alarmist, and you're right. I am being alarmist because I currently expect what Robert Pape has laid out there is an escalation and continuation of hostilities. And let's take the word of the Secretary of Defense of the President and of the Israeli Prime Minister that this is, go, quote, four to five weeks. five weeks of this much oil offline is going to be a literal nightmare for many of us. Now, we can mitigate some of that, which is what they're doing with the Jones Act and the strategic petroleum

reserve. But I'm setting the global context so that Americans and people who are listening to the show can say, what am I really getting out of this? And I think that's the most vital question for all of us. Alive seen a lot of criticism of people like you and I who are skeptical of the war. And they're like, you never would have made it in World War II that was multi-year. And I'm like, well, we were attacked in that one. And we were. We were declared war on by the Nazis. This is a little bit different because there was no congressional authorization. There's no real case that was even made by the president.

We just decided to do it, I guess, on behest of the state of Israel. There was no preparation. There was no buy-in. I mean, just this morning, the White House press secretary is retweeting a poll from Mark Dubowitz, who's one of the preeminent regime change lobbyists here in Washington, where it literally says there's only 41 percent. of all adult approval for the war. And I think like 27% approval

whenever it comes to independent voters. I'm not bragging about that if I were the White House. And that is an unpopular war at the beginning. I mean, do you remember the Gulf War? President Bush, H.W. Bush, had 90-something approval rating and he lost the election.

George W. Bush had Titanic support for the war in Iraq, shamefully, I think, because many of us were duped by the mainstream media at the time. But even that, of course, became a quagmire and a nightmare. And people think that it took years. It actually didn't. By 05, people were well and fed up with the Bush administration and their case for the war. And so we are on track for an accelerated timeline, actually, for many Americans saying, why am I paying X amount for

groceries? Why am I paying $4 a gallon at the gas pump? I mean, do you know what the price of gas is in California? It's like $5.35 a gallon. There's like, you know, tens of millions of people who live, out there. So it's already a nightmare. And we're talking about today. Going into this conflict, before we launched this conflict, the rating of foreign policy with average Americans in terms of importance was like literally down at the bottom without any percentage points above three at the most. Everyone was saying the number one issue is my pocketbook. I can't afford anything. Inflation is making the groceries too expensive, my mortgage too expensive, my car too expensive, my gas too expensive. And President Trump, what was the one thing he was able to really brag about

at the state of the union? Gas prices. He was very proud that he had brought down gas prices, which are now starting to skyrocket again because of all of this, which as we discussed will jack up all the other prices too. It doesn't stop when oil goes up at gasoline. And meanwhile, when asked, like, do you care about foreign policy? Like literally nobody said yes. It was like Ben Shapiro and Mark Levine said, yes, I do,

and drove that number up to like one percentage point. Even the caring about crime had fallen way down. It was the economy, the economy, the economy, in terms of people's issues. And still, Republicans were losing. still they're projected to lose the House. Now, what's his name? Is it Nate Silver? Yeah, Need Silver with his little economic graphs.

He was pointing out that now, for the first time, like, in months, the graph has gone so far down in terms of what it looks like in terms of, like, whether the Republicans might lose the Senate. March 31st, there was a huge gap between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to, like, projections on the Senate and whether which party will win it in 2026. Wow. As of today, it's 53-48 Republicans over it. It's only a five-percentage point lead on whether the Republicans will hold on to the Senate saga, and it's directly correlated to the beginning of this war. So like the losses, the economic pain that's about to be foisted on the people, the unhappiness that's going to be foisted upon people who are already focused on the economy,

not foreign policy, and now the potential loss of the U.S. Senate, you want to see Republican approval ratings drop. Watch them lose the Senate. Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Not to mention mortgage rates, housing, I'm 33 years old. That is the number one issue for my cohort. I am my ability to buy a house to have children to be able to raise them where I want to and not have to have, you know, both parents working like 90 hours a week in order to just say, you know, strapped for cash to be able to afford whatever lifestyle, which is like a bare minimum compared to how it used to be.

And by the way, mortgage rates ticked up already as a result of this war, a 6.11%. So we're already watching the spot. for equality of life here at home. And look, let's take the president's state of the union. Iran was like minute 70. It was the longest state of the union in history. He barely spent any time on it. And then a week or so later, we're already launched into this foreign adventurism, which the White House really, I have to assume, believed that it would just be easy. This morning, Secretary Hegseth lambasted the media for that report about what they expected. Yeah, go ahead. Let me play that. Yes. So Hegseth came out.

swinging against the media. CNN was one because he was mad that they had written that we had not anticipated the Iranians closing the Straits of Hormuz. And he was like, of course we anticipated that. Don't be ridiculous. But he had wider criticism for all the media. He's not happy with the media headlines in sort of an extraordinary moment that we're really not used to from somebody in this powerful position. But here's how that went in Satt, too. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies. Yet some in this crew, in the press, just can't stop. Allow me to make a few suggestions. People look up at the TV and they see banners, they see headlines. I used to be in that business. And I know that everything is written intentionally. For example, a banner or a headline,

Mid-East War intensifies splashing on the screen the last couple of days, alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets that Iran has hit because that's what they do. What should the banner read instead? How about Iran increasingly desperate? Because they are. They know it and so do you if it can be admitted. Another example of a fake headline that I saw yesterday. War widening. Here's a real headline for you for an actual patriotic press. How about Iran shrinking, going underground? I mean, patriotic press is a problematic term because we don't get paid to be patriotic. We get paid to just report the facts and whether they reflect well on America or not. We're supposed to report the facts. Now, it's also true that we shouldn't run around bashing America as a knee-jerk

reaction to pulling down American flags from the background of our shots like they made me do at NBC. But a patriotic press in times of war has no obligation to just do puffery on behalf of the administration. Keep going, Sager. Oh, absolutely. Let me just, yeah, let me linger on that because I was raised in Bush country. And here's those phrase I remember very well. To support our troops, you have to support the war. That is the mindset that Secretary Hegset is saying. And no, Mr. Secretary, that is not how we will be supporting our troops. We will be supporting our troops by accurately reporting the news and also mourning our dead, which again, by the way, we were told during the Iraq War, you cannot properly mourn the dead without supporting the war. It's actually the height of anti-patriacism or, you know, cultish insanity behavior to do the opposite. So let's, I mean, I can't even believe that he's upset with the headline Iran or mid-east conflict widens. That's empirically true. We had 10 different nations, which were embroiled in this conflict.

At the beginning of this segment, I just talked about multiple U.S. service members who were crashed and tragically died in that incident. By the way, that just got updated. As we're speaking, CENTCOM just reported that all six who are in the, that refueling aircraft are dead. Originally, we thought it was four and two had survived. All six are dead. So the death toll now up to 13 service personnel at least killed in this war and hundreds more wounded.

Keep going. Yeah, 13 Americans who are now dead. I mean, look, I got to say, my heart breaks for these people. And one of them, the one story that stuck with me the most is Declan Cody. He was 20 years old. He was born four to five years after 9-11. What are we doing here? One of these other sergeants in the Space Force, he was 20.

26 years old. That's how long ago, that's almost how long ago 9-11 was. Just consider that. This person who's dying in a Middle Eastern conflict who was born four to five years after this entire mess was unleashed on the globe. That's how bad our strategy and our leaders have failed us in this moment. So let's just zoom back to what the secretary is saying. He's basically lambasting the press for accurately reporting the widening of the conflict, the debts here, of American service members, and not just releasing press releases, basically touting his, you know, target packages or number of strikes. We have learned too much that these so-called numbers and target packages and all of this that get purported as tactical successes often result in strategic failure.

And just bringing it, you know, really back to America and its own interests, I also think, like, what is the number one national security interests of the United States? It's to deter a conflict with China and it is to protect our allies in the Asia Pacific. Why? 50% of GDP will be in the Asia Pacific in just a four-year period. President Trump also sees his relationship with China as the preeminent relationship that he has to manage. Well, how's that going for all of us? We have actually fired so many munitions in just these two weeks with that interceptors, these are the most, some of the more highly advanced interceptors that are able to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles that we actually already have had to pull them out of South Korea. Now, let me remind everybody with the GDP or the bilateral trade. relationship between the United States and South Korea is 240 billion. Do you know what it is with Israel? 50 billion. Israel is like number 50 or something down on the list. The entire GCC, I think, is more than all of Israel. GCC are the Gulf countries that we are also allegedly supposed to be protecting, many of whom are all saying we have been abandoned by the United States. They're prioritizing Israel over us. They're totally re-questioning their security relationship, all of these

bases to hundreds of millions of dollars in damage has already been done. We are watching, you know, the press, I read the daily South Korean press. They are all asking questions. Is America still here for us in Japan, in Taiwan? There are op-eds and things flying around the Asia-Pacific looking at the amount of munitions that we are expending and saying, how are these people supposed to defend us? They don't even care about us right now, and they're wasting it on this useless conflict. Also, So we are inflicting maximum damage on these economies. Japan gets 90% of all of its oil from the Middle East. They've already had to do a massive strategic petroleum reserve release.

Their stock markets, we're nothing compared to them. At one point, they were down 14, 15%, just in a single week of trading as a result of this war. These are real allies, okay? Samsung, you know, Seoul, I mean, Seoul, South Korea, we fought and died with these people in the Korean War. They sent many troops over to fight with American troops in Vietnam. Japan, I mean, God, what, the number three trading partner in the world? Taiwan is a top 10 trading partner as well. They've got to be asking some serious questions about the capacities of not just the U.S. military

if we were to defend them, which is an open and a fair question, but even the munitions that we'd be able to give them because we've got nothing left. The Financial Times, many others, saying that we have already expended, quote, years of munitions in just a 10, 12-day conflict. So this is a strategic nightmare. And again, for what? I'm willing to expend those munitions if it is critical to the national security interests of the United States. It's a war of choice. This is not a war that any of us support. It is a war that's going to inflict pain on us here at home. It's destroying the country of Iran. It's actually making them, if anything, stronger, the Iranian regime, which allegedly this entire thing was supposed to be about. And they're hardening. They're going to fight to the death. And they've made that very clear now.

They're not rolling over as easily as we apparently thought they. would. The interceptors are a real problem. We don't have enough to combat the missiles and the drones that the Iranians are unleashing, not just on us, but on our military bases in the Gulf countries and on the Gulf countries themselves, our allies who we've agreed to protect. And some of them have come saying, did you give any thought to what would happen to us? Did you plan on how to protect us as we're seeing bombs rain down on Dubai, for example, which is taking a lot of incoming, many of our other friends in the Middle East

who are genuinely friends of ours and great trading partners who are now feeling exposed and like we didn't live up to our promises, not to mention all the problems you mentioned because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. And Pete Hackseth says that we did plan on the closure or what would happen in the Strait of Hormuz.

But if we did plan, then why is it closed? Why can't we get ships through there? Why can't commercial vessels get through right now? President Trump throughout will have the U.S. Navy escort ships that want to go through it, but that quickly went away because he was reportedly told we are actually not ready to do that. Our military can't do that. And there was also blowback on whether American parents want to see their sons and daughters on U.S. ships risking their lives to get oil through the

Straits of Hormuz to send off to China. Is that really the mission? And all in the name of Israel, by the way. It's not even for a war that's helping the United States. So right now we're not doing that. So the Iranians do have an effective veto over this. And there's a real question about how we ever can secure it. How can we, because they've got potentially mines set up in the straits, they've also got missile launchers on the shores that are proving problematic for us. And there's a, I've heard credible military experts say, without sending ground troops in to go stand along the shorelines of the straits, we're not going to be able to secure this in a way that's going to satisfy commercial shippers. You're exactly right. And guess what? By the way, even for those military experts, I hope that they also informed you that if you want to put troops on the shoreline, then you also have to have troops in the rear to make sure that nobody can fire on the troops on the shoreline. So that

would be a massive deployment. This is the escalation trap that Professor Robert Pape talked about is that you find yourself in an unexpected situation politically. What did LBJ often say? I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a damn war. That's what he would often say in the situation room. And you would push them to escalate. to escalate, to escalate. And at every point, we would say, okay, let's send more American blood into the battlefield. And that will change it this time. And at every point, what we found out is that we were losing strategically while allegedly

winning tactically. And that's what actually a full-blown ground troop invasion of Iran and, you know, securing of the strait of her moves, that would be the definition of a, you know, supposedly tactical success. Because even at that point, let's think about what the cost of that would be, not just for the sustained deployment, the political and strategic implications. So yeah, we might lower the price of gas, but now we're in a multi-decade occupation of the country of Iran and fighting an insurgency with a civil war and a collapse of the state and refugee crisis, which is flooding the entire

region. So that's why you don't get into these damn things in the first place. And I'm very worried. I do not see a way that this president will be able to get himself out of this one, without. That's the thing. Like, no one doubts, I think, if you doubt that Trump doesn't want that, that he thought this could be quick, you know, cut off the head of the snake and we're going to have a better Iran, he definitely doesn't want some extended Middle East war. Trump does know that that would be a political death knell to any future Republican election over the next five, six, seven, maybe ten years. But the risk is that we're saddled with it because what if they, how are we going to reopen the straight to Hormuz. Like, what is the plan to do that? Are we actually going to risk American lives

by escorting commercial vessels through there? What are we going to do about mines? Are we going to risk American service personnel getting blown up in the name of reopening this passageway? And by the way, what is the American appetite for the loss of blood and treasure over there? There was one thing when we had al-Qaeda killing 3,000 Americans one day who just went to work. It's another when we started it. And the basis for starting it, which I'm going to get to in a second is really, really questionable. But let me make one point first. Now we have 13 dead U.S. service personnel, which is the same number that died to Abbey Gate Sagar. Yeah. And after we had Abbey Gate under President Biden, where he tried to pull all the troops

out of Afghanistan, and it was a disaster and it wasn't well run. And we had people holding onto our airplanes as they were flying out of Bogram, which we gave up the base. His approval rating fell and it never recovered. It never. Never recovered. Here's a, here's a, Here's a chart that shows where it went down and it never went back up. And that's the last thing. Now we've got 13, one week into the war, a week plus. Where does that go? Right?

Because it's not easy to predict how the deaths are going to happen. This was a refueling plane saga. It wasn't even shot down by the Iranians. It wasn't even, you know, it was an accident midair that wasn't brought down by friendly fire or enemy. Right. Remember this, guys. nobody in August 1914 said, we're still going to be at war in four years. The plan was for a six-week, quick war, an excursion, all like the ones that we had seen before.

This is why, by the way, I think that the Venezuela operation ended up being a nightmare because it convinced the president and many of the inner circle of those around him that that's how easy all military operations could be. And I mean, and I opposed that vehemently at the time, and I think it looks pretty good in retrospect, is that this mindset of this madness, right, of just we can go in and we can do whatever we want. Well, we've all seen, there's a lot of military history books that are behind me. The way the great men operate, we can all understand this. It's like a gambler at the craps table who's on a hot roll. Statistically, it shouldn't be working, but it's working and it's working and it's working.

But eventually that seven is going to come up, and that's exactly what has happened now in this Iran conflict. So you just laid out the Straits of Hormuz. I have bigger questions about not just this. That's an economic question. I have a question specifically about Iranian missile development the longer that this goes on. Because then the entire raison d'etre for this war, the Kassasbelli, is supposedly nuclear material. Well, by the Trump administration's own admission, that nuclear material has not been secured.

How do you secure it? Oh, we're going to have to send special operations. Problem, the Iranians know you're coming. So to protect those special operations, you'd have to deploy a large ground force to secure the entire area, to battle all of the people who would want to target your special operators while they're going and do that in modern day warfare with satellites, etc. Right, exactly. So think about the nightmare and the logistical implications of each of these supposedly easy off-ramp.

So the off-ramp here, Trump can go get the nuclear material and declare victory. Oh, wait, but that's going to take a Titanic, you know, potential American ground deployment, thousands of troops, who knows how many casualties. He needs to secure the Straits of Hornets. Moose, great. Now we just signed up for a huge nation building and or you know, exercise. Nobody in the Iraq war. I mean, do you remember

Donald Rumsfeld? He said, I don't know if it'll take six days, you know, six weeks or six months, but I can tell you it's not going to be more than a year. I remember all of these things. Yeah, I mean, Dick Cheney said that about Iraq. Nobody in 2001, October of 01, would have

said we're withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021. You think LBJ wanted to be in Vietnam in 1968. That's the point of all of these examples is that you get into them and they're become open-ended even when you wanted it closed because you are no longer in a controlled system. We could control the diplomacy between these two nations, but we cannot control this now, especially with Iran in the classic situation of asymmetric warfare but with nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose except to fight to the debt. They have a hardened political will.

Their population was supposed to rise up. Didn't happen. Totally fake, right? I mean, instead, we're actually seeing a huge rise of nationalism in the entire country. So now what? We want to foment a civil war? Part of the problem is the bombing of their fuel depots, their oil depots, which literally caused oil to be raining down on the faces of the Iranian people.

Their children, their babies and strollers, anybody who goes outside now after that happened. And that caused even the crazed lunatic. Lindsey Graham to say to Israel, you might want to watch what you bomb, actually, that you might have gone too far. I mean, when Lindsay Graham is telling you you've gone too far in your bombing campaign, something very, very wrong has happened. But you mentioned that this is a war of choice, which I agree with. This is not what the administration says. Of course, the administration says, we had no choice. Trump says, I had a feeling. I believed that they were about to develop a nuke, that they almost had a nuke. And now we had an interesting conversation that I heard today between Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck,

in which O'Reilly seems to be shedding more light on that. We're going to play part of it for you now. Watch. Reached a period in time in history where the CIA, NSA, all of our intel, jibed with the United Nations and said, look, we knocked out a lot of their nuclear capacity in June of last year, but they have satellites and are close to being able to put together 10 nuclear bombs. Okay? Ten. And I don't think the Trump administration is going to mind me saying this,

even though it hasn't been made public, but I'm a reporter, and I have the information. So Ms. Sardwin said, look, on this Saturday, the Ayatollah and 25 of the stugs are going to be in this place at this time. So what do you want to do? Now, that was after three months of negotiations with the Iranians to stop their nuclear weapons program. And the last negotiation in Geneva, Switzerland, the guy, the foreign minister of Iran walks in and says, you know what? We're not stopping. Blank you, we don't care what you say. We're not stopping. And Whitkoff, our chief U.S. and negotiator had a report back to Trump. So that's the information Trump has. Number one, they're close to 10 bombs. Number two, they're all going to bring drinking tea on Saturday morning in this spot.

And number three, they're saying, blank you to the U.S. government, they're not going to stop. That's how the decision was made. But the president believes that he will be victorious in the next month or so, which is into April, puts us into China with Xi, and he believes he's going to have momentum after basically dismantling Iran, because that's what they're doing now. They're just wiping out its capacity to do anything, which is not easy, and that's why you're seeing the short-term pain. Now, people believe what they want to believe, and the president is no exception. if it comes his way, then he becomes a great president, which he wants, his legacy. If it doesn't, then Republicans will probably lose in November.

So that's where we are. A lot to unpack there, Saga. We've got one minute so we have to take a break on Sirius X-N and we'll continue the discussion. But take the minute to go. Privileged to be alive to have Bill O'Reilly lied to me twice in my life about WOMT in the Middle East. I'm sorry, that's preposterous. That is, there's no evidence for that from the IAEA. If that were true, the Trump administration would have said it.

Remember, the only reason that they say that we're in this war is that Israel forced our hand. And that even whenever it comes to nuclear, they say that they were creating a ballistic missile shield for their potential nuclear capacity. There's been no DNI release, no CIA release, no even fake Colin Powell vial that can be held up. No yellow cake, no Judy Miller. So if there were even a remote case that that were true, or as true as WMD in Iraq, they would have said it. They didn't say it because it's complete nonsense. That is completely manufactured consent afterwards that is being put out there to justify some of the feelings for the people that want to continue to be in this war. And if you don't believe Sagar, I'm going to play for you when we come back, top Netanyahu advisor, Ofer Falk,

who gave an interview to NBC's Richard Engel on the reasons we got an investigation. this war, and we will see what he says on whether there were 10 or 11 nuclear bombs that Iran was close to. Stand by, quick break. More was saga right after this. Think about this. In 2006, $20,000 equaled roughly 33 ounces of gold at spot price. At today's prices, those 33 ounces would be worth about 165,000 bucks. That's why many smart Americans diversify a portion of their savings into precious metals. And it's why you should consider buying gold from Birch Gold Group. For thousands of years, gold has been a store of wealth, and today it's a crucial part of any balanced strategy. Even better, Birch Gold can help you convert an existing IRA or 401k

into a tax-sheltered retirement account in gold. Just text MK to the number 9-8-9-8-9-9-8 to receive your free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, just useful information. With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers, let Birch Gold help you diversify with gold. Now, that's peace of mind. Again, text MK. to the number 98989-98-98 today. Back with me now, Sagar and Jedi, co-host of Breaking Points. So we were discussing Bill O'Reilly's statement that his reporting reflects that Iran was close to 10 nukes

that they went to Trump and said the Ayatollah and his thugs are having a meeting and there's an opportunity. And that after three months of negotiations with the Iranians, the foreign minister of Iran had said, we're not stopping the nuclear enrichment. So go F yourselves. and that's why Steve Whitkoff communicated to Trump, like they're just never going to make a deal,

and Trump felt that he had no choice. Now, let's just stay on number one for a second here, that they were about to get 10 nuclear bombs. This is what top Netanyahu advisor, O'FaFalk, just told Richard Engel. Now, just listen, listen to Richard Engel, repeatedly try to get to what exactly was the imminent threat. Now, you would think, given this,

you would say right off the top, They were close to 10 nuclear bombs. That's the imminent threat, Richard Engel. Watch how this goes, Sotten. What information did you have that Iran was about to carry out an imminent attack? One good indication was that for 47 years they've been saying death to America, death to Israel, believe it. But these guys, and they were ramping up their capabilities with the ballistic missiles. They're string along the negotiations.

They always lie. listen to your negotiators, they'll tell you the truth. They're stringing them along. They always lie, and it was an imminent threat. And we removed that imminent threat. I still don't understand what the imminent threat was, that they were going to attack Israel, attack American bases, attack the U.S.,

an imminent threat of what? All of the above. All of the above, they were threatening their neighbors. Look at what they're doing now. They're shooting at all their immediate neighbors. All the mask is revealed. These guys, it's a death cult. They're not only called and killed Americans for 47 years and Israelis for 47 years.

Now they're killing their neighbors. Of course they're attacking. They're firing now because they're under attack. There's a hot war going on. I'm trying to understand what started this war. They slaughtered thousands, tens of thousands of Iranians. They slaughtered them on the streets. 30,000 innocent people who are slaughtered on the threes.

In a matter of days, it's a death cult. It's a death cult. moving that threat. President Trump said that Iran was weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon and potentially using one. Is that Prime Minister Netanyahu's assessment as well? Well, we know that they wanted it. We know that they were planning it. We know that was the imminent threat. You see today what they're doing with the oil. They're blackmailing the world with the oil. They would blackmail the world with the nukes. President Trump is saving the free world right now. they just weeks away from having a nuclear weapon?

Well, that was their intention. I don't know if it was weeks or months or whatever it was, but it was an imminent threat. And certainly the ballistic missiles that they were trying to bury underground would have been immune. And then what? We'd leave this threat for our kids, for our grandkids. No, we've got to do it now. I'm sorry, Saga, but there it is black and white. That wouldn't you, the top advisor, Netanyahu would say, Richard,

They were within weeks of having 10 nuclear bombs. That's an existential threat to Israel. What choice did we have? How many times he said 47 years they've been saying death to America, death to Israel? Also, they have ballistic missiles, which they were ramping up. And they were stringing along the negotiators. Nothing, nothing about nuclear. And then he says, so it was an imminent threat.

Engel says, what? What was the imminent threat? You know, everything. It was all an imminent threat. Look at them now. They're shooting at their neighbors. It's a death cult. 47 years of saying death to America, death to Israel, Richard Engel.

Of course they're shooting now. It's a hot war. But they slaughtered tens of thousands of their own people. Now this is a new reason, the slaughtering of their own people when they protested a few weeks ago. It's a death cult, Richard Engel. Were we weeks away from having a nuke in Iran or not? Well, we know that they wanted it. They wanted it.

They were planning it. So no, that's another way of saying no. It was a desire, but not a capability. And Richard Engel again says, were they weeks away? And he says, well, it was an intention. It was their intention. So that's an imminent threat. And they had the ballistic missiles. Again, back to the ballistic missiles. Even Israel has abandoned the nonsense about the nuclear bomb about to come from Iran. But we're still hearing this from our own administration and obviously the reporters to whom they are talking. Yeah, you're exactly right. The only imminent threat here was Israel wanting to attack Iran. That's it. That's literally the only imminence. in that entire situation. Don't believe me. Believe the Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State with the most, I mean, genuinely the most shocking. And in my opinion, important declaration by U.S. Secretary of State in modern history is that we had to do it because we had no ability to restrain our clients rate, either no ability to restrain or, you know, a capacity where we wanted to join them. Both of them are catastrophic decisions, not really sure what's even worse. But you could see very clearly that they are not even trying to sell that level of BS, right?

now. And this actually highlights the problem of getting in bed with Israel in this conflict, because, again, we have very divergent goals. They want to collapse Iran as a polity ever capable of making war upon them or restraining any of their regional ambitions, be it in Syria, be it in Lebanon, be it in the West Bank, be it in Gaza, be it in Egypt, potentially. I wouldn't put that one off the table, or with Turkey, which is a NATO ally. And let's not forget that the Israeli prime minister or the former Israeli prime minister, Neftali Bennett, has already declared that Turkey is the next one. Let me play that. Let me play that Shagha, because he keeps doubling down on this. Like, this is Neftali Bennett. Look, we're not even two weeks into our war with Iran, and he's already

threatening one with Turkey. It's like, well, exactly how many of our friends in the Middle East are we going to attack in order to please Israel? We've already heard that we may be attacking Cuba, maybe taking over Cuba soon. And now we're hearing about Turkey. He keeps saying it over and over. Here is the latest. Let me just ask you whether there's a risk of further confrontation with Turkey based on comments that you said in the past. Well, we need to ensure that Ardouan doesn't create a new alliance of radical Islam Sunni version,

meaning an access between himself, Julani, Qatar, and Hamas. We've been facing for many decades the Shiite radical Islam, and I hope that Turkey doesn't choose to foment terror and Islamism in its power. It's up to Turkey ultimately. If they seek peace, we're definitely one piece. But if they try and surround it. Round us with terror, we will not sit idle. Go ahead, Sager.

Yeah, Turkey, by the way, is the country that we have an actual treaty obligation to defend in NATO. Shall I remind everybody? And actually has had two ballistic missiles fired at them at our bases, which are in Turkey. We've had relationship with Turkey for so long that remember the missiles that were stationed there were the precipitous conflict of the Cuban missile crisis back in 1962. That's how long our relationship with that nation, our military relationship goes back. But again, it just highlights their regional ambitions. Also, his idea that he cares about Jolani, the al-Qaeda leader in Syria, is ridiculous. They love Jolani.

They helped put him in power. Why? Because he doesn't care that Israel wants to basically annex and control a significant part of his country and is effectively giving up any claim over the Golan Heights. It's about Israeli regional hegemony. They cannot have a powerful Islamic state like Turkey with a nation. NATO alliance of the United States, which poses any regional threat to their hegemony. That's why Prime Minister Netanyahu brags about becoming a, quote, global superpower.

And I don't even contest that at this point. You have effectively either controlled or co-opted the world's preeminent superpower for your own regional designs, and you have nuclear weapons. That is just empirically true at this point. But that's their aim, not our aim. Our aim is stability in the region, is actually balancing our alliances. This entire region, by the way, while yes, it may be important. It's not nearly as important as the Asia Pacific.

It is a giant magnet that sucks U.S. resources, attention, money from all of these other important problems, be it the Asia Pacific, be it the mortgage rates of my friends and their ability to buy houses, be it the gas price that all of us will have to find a diesel. and every time we go to the grocery store and to buy something that's been trucked from across the country. And that's the problem with this entire thing. It's been 20-something years now of my life, of this magnet just sucking the life force out of this nation.

I'm not talking about Israel. I'm talking about the Middle East as a region. We don't have interests there nearly as much as the country of Israel does. I want to ask you how did this happen? Like, truly, who talked Trump into this? I do want to talk about that. But before we get there,

let me just stay on the O'Reilly reporting for one second and what he was saying about the negotiations about how, you know, they just came in and they were obstinate and Trump realized they were tapping us along and like they just said, F you, that the Iranian said, F you, we're going to do what we want. I mean, I'm, I beg to differ because we watch this unfold. To me, you tell me, but to me it seemed like we went in there with a list of demands that in no world were they ever going to agree to. And sure enough, they didn't, but they were discussing it with us. And that we were in the midst of a negotiation, which they thought was in good faith when we then bombed them. And there's a real question about whether American

credibility is intact or in tatters after that. Oh, it absolutely is because we were literally negotiating them with them twice before we ended up bombing them. They said, fool me once, you know, shame on you, but full me twice, you know, at this point, why should they take any sort of negotiation or diplomatic action? Seriously, I can tell you unequivocally, I have sources that were involved in these negotiations and I can tell you exactly what went down in those rooms. What happened is that while the United States was demanding, quote, no nuclear weapons, what we were actually demanding is no nuclear enrichment literally of any kind. Even that I can somewhat understand. But remember, those two things are very different. Nuclear weapons and nuclear

enrichment. Remember when Trump would say they won't say the magic words? That's what he was referring to. Not nuclear weapons, nuclear enrichment. Now let's go further down the list. What they don't like to emphasize is that we also told them that they have to give up their ballistic missile program that they have to basically give away any defensive ability that they have to stop Israel from wantonly attacking them at any time or place of their choosing, and they have to give up this nebulous term of, quote, supporting terror. There was never any definitional term that was given to them, oh, you can't support Hezbollah anymore, you can't do this. Like, they basically just said you have to stop supporting terrorism in the region. Remember, the JCPOA, the Iran deal, which is how

most of you may know it. Now, there's a lot to criticize about the deal. with sunk that causes, et cetera. It took like two and a half years to negotiate with some of the world's like preeminent nuclear experts, actually riding down certain levels of enrichment, of enforcement. There was none of that that was involved in the Wickhoff-Khkoshner negotiations. And so the Iranians basically were presented with, first of all, ridiculous demands, but second, changing demands, changing terms from the presence of the United States, who would say one thing about nuclear weapons, but allegedly it's meaning another thing about nuclear enrichment,

and then also being presented with effectively surrender. If you gave up your ballistic missile program, that is surrender. You are now in Israeli-Rum state. Yeah. Look at it. I mean, are they wrong? I mean, they're not wrong, right? And this isn't a defense.

I'm not saying these are good people, but I have a source who sat directly across the room from Kim Jong-un back in 2018-19. And they said, why won't you give up your nuclear weapons? We're offering you all of this money. And he said, you ever see that video of Gaddafi, who was sodomized on TV? That's why I won't give up my nuclear weapons. And he hasn't. And guess what?

Kim Jong-il, he might be one of the most vindicated men in all of history for developing his nuclear weapons program. No one's invading North Korea who's got an ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States. Kim family will live and die on the throne of North Korea. I think it's a horrible thing, but that is reality. Now look at the lesson for the world. I would say actually this action has now probably been the cause. We will look back at this as the cause of the most nuclear proliferation in all of history. Already France has said that they are going to accelerate their nuclear weapons development.

Poland said that they're going to do it. Japan and South Korea are having discussions about what that would look like. You've got Saudi Arabia with this relationship with Pakistan. You have India and Pakistan as well. So you've got regional allies. I can guarantee you civilian nuclear science programs in any small country in the world is going to explode within the next 10 years. And if you were an adversary of the United States, you should not pay attention to the fact that the so-called axis of evil, the only one left standing, is the one that sprinted to a nuke and always rejected any efforts by the United States to constrain them. This just hitting via the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is sending a Marine,

expeditionary unit to the Middle East. They're moving this unit as Iran steps up its attacks on the Straits of Hormuz, according to two U.S. officials. Pete Hegseth has approved a request from CENTCOM, our military body that oversees the Middle East, for the expeditionary unit typically consisting of up to 2,500 Marines. Yeah. So, 2,500 Marines up to going to the Middle East, according to this report from the Wall Street Journal. The move comes reports to the journal as Iran's attacks on the street have paralyzed traffic through the strategic waterway, disrupting the global economy, driving up gas prices, imposing a major military and political challenge for President Trump. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment. Again, that's the Wall Street Journal,

which suddenly is very friendly with the Trump administration. They've been sort of on the odds in terms of domestic policy. But when it comes to the neocon policies of yesterday year, they are locked, stepped together, Sagar. So there we have it. That's hope and pray for the safety of those Marines. Let's get to the big question, though. But how did this happen? Because truly, we could run the soundbite. We haven't run it, but we have one queued up. It's got about 20 examples of President Trump when running saying, I don't want more.

There won't be a war in the Middle East. If you vote for the other side, you're going to get war in the Middle East. The last thing we want is war with Iran. He's on camera so repeatedly saying it. And there's been a war within the Republican Party, you know, a civil war, rhetorical war, about the neo-cons versus the more isolationist wing. All the young Republicans are in the. the isolationist wing. I mean, if you want to bet on the future of the Republican Party and keeping

people in it, you would side with the isolationists because there's not a person under the age of 40 who's a voting Republican who's in favor of this. They are the ones in that small minority that they keep showing when they show the people who are in support of this. Coromaga reportedly supports this 90%. But the Republican Party, it's more like 77%, which is not great. That is actually not great for the Republican Party because the entire Democratic Party is against it. And over 72% of independence are against it. So how did this happen? Who convinced him?

Look, I mean, this is the age-old question, but honestly, I think we just have to be honest. I think it was Trump. I think Trump became enamored with his own success in Midnight Hammer and with Venezuela, and he started believing and huffing, you know, all of this Fox News and Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch cheerleading. Maybe he believed Beebe. maybe look again i have no idea what's going on with that relationship but obviously bb and lindsay graham are very good at massaging and uh you know feeding into his ego and he had enough of a you know recent

data set of quote unquote successful in his eyes military operations obviously failures i think now that we can look at them in retrospect and totality with what's currently happened and he said no i'm not going to heed these warnings i am unique i am the uber mention and i am able to succeed here where no other president can. It would not put him all that different from many of the presidents who are lined up behind me, who believed many of the same things about themselves.

That's why I've been, unfortunately, I've had to bring out my George W. Bush book behind me very prominently. And there's a reason for that is that I'm just living, I guess, through the exact same playbook. You know, don't forget, Megan, George W. Bush in 2000 ran a campaign

where he wanted to withdraw from the world. He criticized foreign adventurism. He didn't want to be the president. of neoconservatism, and he ended up in that situation. Honestly, I'll even defend him a little bit. He had to contend with 9-11, where we actually were attacked on 9-11 with 3,000 Americans who were killed. A defensive war, not Iraq, but Afghanistan. Right, exactly.

And so, you know, Trump in this case, I think he just believes in his own either messianic complex, which BB continues to feed into. Also, Bibi, by the way, recently talking about the return of the Messiah, if anybody is interested. You know, I don't know if the Israelis know this. You do know we have Google Translate, right? There are a lot of people who speak English in Hebrew. We see what you're saying whenever you're not saying it in your perfect English. He's talking about global superpower, the return of the Messiah, Amalek, and the, you know, like biblical, Old Testament stuff.

But I can only be speculate. I mean, certainly not me. I can tell you maybe Mike Huckabee did. He's maybe the only one. But, yeah, in terms of Trump. The last thing we need in Iran, whether it's the promise of the return, which cannot be orchestrated by man or in the head of any leader. Because the only thing that gets you through this life is humility when it comes to the Middle East. In particular, the Middle East, which is a lesson

Trump has learned. Trump was one of the first critics of the Iraq war. He saw that it was following before virtually anybody else. He was very outspoken against it at a time when that was not popular for anybody who said that they were a Republican. And yet he was there, but it seems to me you're right. I don't know if we can declare. I think even though I didn't support the Venezuela operation. I'm not sure if you can say that that was not successful. I mean, Maduro's out of there. Well, I meant in the context of leading to Iran. So like, yeah, the mindset. Yeah, in the mindset. As in like, yeah, it was a modest, what is it, four million barrels of oil. They're claiming per day. Sorry, there's like 20 million a day that are currently caught in the

street of Hormuz, even strategically. Like, that's ridiculous. I also think everyone should learn the lesson at this point. Remember, Libya was allegedly a success until it wasn't. Do you remember how far Benghazi was from the initial? and no-fly zone, it takes a while. It takes a while for Syria also to fall apart. So anybody doing mission accomplished in the first month or so is ridiculous. I'm very much in wait or C mode. But I'm talking about strategically the mindset which led to Donald Trump. And that's where people just need to be more honest here. Like this is Trump. Okay. Trump has the one who decided to do this. Yes, BB, Israel, you know, they drive. I'm a huge critic of Israel and many of the

things that they have said, but it's Trump. He's the one who gave the go order. And I also No question. It's a dramatic failure of the vice president and of a significant part of the higher echelon of the national security establishment who are currently in Washington, who lied to my face. And I'm not just talking about one individual. I'm talking about multiple whenever they went on camera. And they said that war with Iran is not on our interest. I have been a part of the professional America First Movement, whatever you want to call it, which is kind of an elite network of not elite in the sense that we're better than anybody else but you know people who work in professional politics in Washington war with iran was the number one thing we agreed

that we weren't going to do there was an entire staffing project that was built around this around foreign adventurism learning the lessons of the war in iraq of diplomacy and now this administration and to have those same officials now be not just complicit but actively arguing for that in a way where they literally lied to our face some year ago i've said it before. It's the greatest professional disappointment of my life. But wait, Sagar, who do you mean? Because the reports are today, just today in Politico, there's a report about J.D. Vance. The headline is Vance was skeptical voice in White House on Iran strikes that, hold on, I pulled, screen grabbed it. Yeah, I read an article. Vice President J.D.

Vance was skeptical. He's long questioned U.S. intervention abroad. He's publicly defended Trump's Iran operation, but White House officials revealed that the vice president made his opposition known in the lead-up, pulling the curtain open after months of speculation about Vance being far more tepid about military action than Trump. Vance, let's see, Vance is, quote, skeptical and is, quote, worried about success and, quote, just opposes the war on Iran. A senior Trump official said via text message, the official was granted anonymity to speak about the VP's views. A second senior Trump official said, quote, his role is to provide the president and the administration, you know, all points of views of what could happen from many different angles. And he does that.

But once the decision has been made, he's fully on board. His well-documented skepticism of U.S. military engagement forged in his experiences serving in the Marines, paired with this more subdued tone on Iran and so on. It goes on from there. Now, I believe that. I don't believe for one second that J.D. Vance wanted us to invade Iran. Yeah. I don't believe that.

But I think his job is to now that we're doing it, be supportive of his president. Like, I think it's ridiculous to think J.D. Vance would be out there saying, I disagree with President Trump, but we shouldn't be doing this. You know, I mean, he'd be kicked to the curb so fast by Trump, you know, it would make your headspin. So what, are you talking about him or someone else? It's not just the vice president. It's a lot of the people who work around the National Security Council. It's about the, you know, people in the Pentagon on the joint staff, many of the appointees.

I don't want to get too personal here because, you know, it's one of those where, you know, I don't even necessarily make sense. I'm just giving you my own report that many of the people who work for the president in a variety of different ways all agreed. This was the one thing that we didn't want to do. We did not want to go to war with Iran. This was the one thing. Yet that is absolutely true. Like, it is literally the one thing. Like, and that's where everyone's like, oh, well, Trump, he's hawkish.

Yeah, we know. Okay. I never expected Trump to be like a dove on Israel, especially after the Miriam Adelson donation. I was very clear-eyed about that. I honestly, I'm shocked that they even restrained them from taking over the West Bank. That's more than I would have initially expected out of this administration, or at least officially taking over. the West Bank. But Iran, again, Iran and Ukraine were the two things. I thought we were all rock

solid here. These were the things that we weren't going to do and repeat the mistakes of the past. And so in some ways, yeah, can we sympathize with the vice president job? Sure. I mean, John Nance Gardner famously said it's not worth a warm bucket of warm spit. I think spit is the politically correct term he used there. I think he said piss, actually, back in the 1930s. Maybe that's true. He's the most powerless man in Washington. But there are a lot of people in the Pentagon and others on the National Security Council, staffers, all the way from the low level up to the high, who I know for a fact were people who, you know, not that long ago were preaching against the neocons. And what did Stephen Miller said? Like, Kamala will send your sons to war. They said all this

stuff out in public. I mean, look, many of us believed it, not just because of what they said in public, but again, because of the professional network of people who really made it. And it, you know, one of their missions to replace the so-called Bush neocon establishment and guide the country in a better foreign policy direction. That's why I've said it's a great professional disappointment. And what they say, Sagar, what they, what their president's defender saying in response to that is, but he's always been adamantly opposed to Iran getting a nuke, and he's made that clear over the years. That's also true, which is why, like, for example, yours truly, when we struck Iran's nuclear facilities last June, I actually did think that was a good idea. I did defend the president

on that one. You know, it's like, okay, that he has been clear on that. If we have like a clear site and we know we can take them out, okay, then we used, it was a pinpoint. We went in, we got, we went out. It was, you know, beautifully executed. And we were told that we, quote, obliterated the nuclear facilities, which people like the Washington Post and the New York Times were disputing in their reporting saying, that's not true. We did not obliterate. The president and the administration, Hegseth all said obliterated. And I accepted that and I reported it to my audience, it's obliterated. And now they come back a few months later and say, we've got to bomb them because not obliterated. And then people say, what, you said, obliterated. And then the administration is like,

obliterated, but still more. But, but, oh, now, 10 bombs, though. What? What? We're being lied to. That's the bottom line. We're being lied to. And we're, and we're doing it with, well, as we send in 2,500 Marines now, right? Well, I can tell you. At some point, you have to say, I, I don't believe what I'm being told. Right. Megan, I can tell you why I oppose that strike. And it's because I knew that Israel was involved. And let me tell you two other countries where Israel struck their nuclear program and said that it was all done and they would never have to do it again. Iraq and Syria, anyone want to tell me how those countries are doing today? What ended up happening to both of them? They got politically collapsed, destroyed, turned into civil war, either conquered, invaded,

or messed with from the outside. I knew that this wasn't the beginning. Once you break the seal here on Midnight Hammer and you open the door for regime change with the Israelis and all of their BS around how we need to go to war with Iran. By the way, it was also clear during the 12-day war. While, yes, the U.S. did midnight hammer, which was the alleged obliteration of the nuclear program, they were going for broke then, too. Remember, they were broadcasting regime change messages. They were striking large parts of the security establishment. They would have killed the Ayatollah then, maybe if Trump had led him, but they definitely killed as many people as they possibly could. So they made it clear that regime change was their goal. I was almost

certain that once the damn broke on that strike that we would get back to where we are. And that's exactly what happened, unfortunately. And so, you know, look, this gives me no pleasure to say. I just, I've studied enough of Israel's military campaigns in history to know that one, they do with that, and especially when they get somebody like Trump, that they're going to go for broke for their own security interests. I don't even really begrudge them for acting that way. I just kind of wish that we have a security establishment, which we do the same. Correct. I mean, you know, at some point, You can't fault Netanyahu for pushing his own self-interest and that of Israel. It's really up to us as the senior partner to say, not in our best interest.

The answer is no. You've been trying to force this on every president for the past whatever decades, and they've all withstood you, and we will withstand you too. The answer is no. I have to think about the 350 million Americans who elected me, not the nine million Israelis who have a different goal. It is not consistent. Anyway, Saga, you've been amazing on this.

I've really, really appreciated your coverage on your show, on Tucker here. I'm grateful to have you back on our show again to help our audience understand that there are, there's more than one view on this. It's not just the Fox News way. There are a lot of very smart, right-leaning, conservative minds who have very good reasons for opposing what Trump is doing. Well, thank you very much for having me, Megan. I think you've had immense courage in your coverage. I know it's not easy to come under all of that fire.

And I just encourage you to keep it up on behalf of the country. So thank you. Oh, God bless you. Thank you so much for being here. And send my love to my pal, Crystal. It's a funny story for you. So we're going to bring on a culture panel in a second. But Crystal Ball and I met back in my Fox News days.

She was running for office. And I think in Virginia, if memory serves. And she made national headlines. She had an interesting name, obviously, Crystal Ball. And she got like, I don't know if you might call it revenge porn today by her, I think it was ex-husband who leaked some. It was a PG photo of her, like in her college days. And he tried to, like, sink her run. And we had her on as a guest, like just to talk about the news story around her.

And we bonded instantly. We talked about the name. We talked about what's going on. So politics didn't wind up working out for her, but she wound up getting into the cable news biz. And she's a Democrat. She's not a Republican. She's been very critical to Trump administration. But there have been, obviously, with her, with me, with everybody, controversial moments.

But I have to say, I've always found her to be a good person, somebody who reports as honestly as she can. like she's coming from a place of honesty and trying to find real truth. Our politics are extremely different, but I've always respected her, vice versa. And she's the one who brought Saga and Jetti into my own world. So I appreciate that as well. They've got a great show. So, okay, we are moving on. Up next, we are going to bring in our culture panel because there is some stuff happening there.

And don't we need a lighter note? I mean, Iran is so heavy. The troops, the death, the, you know, regime change, the potential quagmire. You know, even like, I love, President Trump. I'm totally rooting for Pete Heggseth. I want these people. I still am a supporter of all of them. I just disagree with this particular action so much, but it brings me no joy to sit and have a conversation like that. And yet I feel, I do feel actually a patriotic duty to do it. It is a patriotic duty. That's how I view it. Even if you disagree, I think it's important to hear this side, right?

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100% drug-free. It targets the inflammation that caused. causes pain so you can move better, feel better, and actually enjoy life again. Try the three-week quick start for just 1995. Go to Relieffactor.com or call 8004 relief. Let's see if you're next in getting out of pain. The absurd Stephen Colbert goodbye tour continues. Why won't he just leave? Why can't he just close the curtains and walk away as opposed to the long, long, long, goodbye? We'll get to it in a second. As well as a new piece out in New York Magazine detailing the multiple regrets that women have about having children. Nice. Who sits around and says, what can we highlight? Let's find moms who can't stand their kids. That'll be a great article. I mean, truly only derange

leftists would even want to highlight that kind of thing. And then there's James Talariko, who is going to be the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, who continues to be a goldmine when it comes to weirdness. And sadly, he's leading in the polls versus either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton. Now, that's disturbing. Query whether those polls are accurate, but like he's up by a fair amount, which ought to scare us all. Here to discuss it all, Isabel Brown, host of the Isabel Brown Show on The Daily Wire and first-time guest, Brianna Lyman, host of Countdown to Freedom and Elections correspondent for the Federalist. We love the Federalist. Isabel, Brianna, great to see you both. Thanks for being here. Let's start with

Stephen Colbert, who just, like, is completely overestimating. the amount that anybody's going to miss him. I like this long goodbye. I've never seen anything like it because he had like a year to say goodbye, and I think it's finally going to happen in May, which can't come soon enough. And here he was last night,

just as John Lithgow on his show, reading a poem for a Colbert. Would you look at this? And I tell you, brace your stomachs. The time has arrived for us all to prepare for the doleful departure of Stephen Colbert. How will we last in the gaping black hole that's left in the absence of this merry soul? We've been lavished with laughter for 20 straight years from the genius between Stephen's two mismatched ears.

Why does his exit stir up such despair? What mysterious magic imbues late nights' air? So why is he canceled? Why trash all that pleasure? Why yank off the air this beloved national treasure? Oh, my God. Stephen's tale is a lesson for all who come after. Beware of a boss with thin skin and no laughter.

I just threw up a little in my mouth. I can't, Isabel. I can't with this. Like, you would truly think that this was like a job. Johnny Carson type, you know, beloved by the whole country where we could all get behind. Oh, we're going to miss him. He's just retiring because he's older now. He wants to play golf, right? But this is, he is one of the most controversial people in America. He's being let go because his ratings suck. I don't think that made the poem. No, and honestly, Megan, that's the part that I'm still

scratching my head over, not just related to Stephen Colbert, but all of the late night hosts lately. There's this understanding in Hollywood that late night is the epitome of making it and how having your own show. If people are watching it in the evening clearly means that you are the funniest person on the face of the planet. I don't think that's true anymore. And a TikToker is getting infinitely more views than your average late night host and is infinitely funnier in modern American culture. So I really think this is more of a passing of the torch to whatever the next medium is going to be the same way that independent and alternative media are outshining legacy news coverage of everything going on in the world. And I'm anxious to see what comes next because I think

this will breed a new level of creativity and actual comedy coming back to American culture, none of that was funny at all. It was unbelievably cringy. No, and it's amazing to see, like, they always call the Trump fans like MAGA cults, you know, that they're cult members, Brianna. But it's like, you look at that, that weirdness by John Lithgow towards Stephen Colbert, who's a truly hateful man. I mean, he loathes half the country. That's cult-like behavior. Yeah, it is cult-like behavior. you see that in the poem because he sits back and he's basically saying, I don't know why Stephen Colbert is getting the acts. And it just goes to show you what kind of bubble all of the Hollywood apparatus lives in that they don't understand that when people used to tune in for late night comedy like Johnny Carson.

You wanted to step away from the everyday politics, the negativity. You don't get that anymore when you watch Kimmel, Colbert, the rest of them because all it is is shoving their political views down your throat with a few laugh soundtracks in the background. and people are tired of that, which is why the ratings are tanking, but they themselves don't see it. So until they see it, they're not going to rectify the problem. But think about your own life. Like, for whom would you sit down and write a long poem like that, like an ode, like a true love story? Is it anyone on TV? You know, is it somebody like a Stephen Colbert?

I guarantee they don't know each other. This is just like an adorant fandom that is humiliating to you. John Lithgow, who is, of course, of the left. I remember he played Roger Ailes in that movie Bombshell and was so quick to come out and like shit all over, Fox News, Roger Ailes. It's like, well, then why'd you star in the movie? Because he had the chance to make him look terrible. That's what he enjoyed about it and had only negative things to say. It's like, wouldn't it be more interesting if you could find some complexity in this character and see that there really was a tug of war between this guy who gave his employees cancer treatments that he didn't have to pay for

and this guy who did wind up sexually harassing other employees. That would be a much more interesting man to play. But no, he sees anybody on the right as a villain and a monster. I think he used that term monster. Okay, monstrous numbers coming out of Texas when it comes to this James Tala Rico. I mean, I feel like people like us, Normies, look at this guy in his insanity and say, there's no way this person is going to do well in Texas. And my pal Jesse Kelly assures me he's not going to.

So I'm going to go with Jesse, but the polls look bad for Republicans on. this. I'm trying to pull up RCP. No, this is the latest poll that just hit out of Senate in Texas. And it shows Tala Rico with 48 and Cornyn 42. Keep mind we don't know who the Republican will be yet. It's either Corner or Paxton. And 49 to Paxton's 42. So he's beating Paxton by seven points. He's beating Cornyn by six points right now. That's terrifying. Because listen to, here's just one example of his madness. This is him speaking at his home his home church, St. Andrews in 2025, Sop 53. Christ is the immigrant deported without due process.

Christ is the senior deprived of their social security benefits. Christ is the protester kidnapped in an unmarked vehicle by plain-clothes officers. So a little concerned, Isabel, about how it's not, I don't even would describe that as tight. Like a seven-point lead for Tala Rico is actually pretty solid. It's kind of scary. It is scary. And honestly, Megan, it should be scaring a whole lot more people on the political right. I keep hearing that this guy's so crazy.

He's so insane. No one will ever vote for him. But I don't think that's generally how the political left is viewing James Talarico. He is a shining star and potentially the new face of the left because he comes across so normal, shockingly. I know. I know that might be insane for some of your viewers to hear. But they're not covering the more egregious things that James Talarico is saying.

things like defining woman as a lens through which to defeat patriarchy or saying that Mary, the mother of God is the reason that we should all be pro-abortion, as if we didn't have Jesus Christ come into the world through an unexpected pregnancy. These are the things that he's saying, not just on the campaign trail, but from the pulpit. And yet it's being twisted and manipulated by the media as this form of toxic empathy, where it comes across that you're the person who really cares about the marginalized. You are the person who's doing everything. they can to love and accept their neighbor. And in reality, it's actually so hateful for society that you're seeing the erasure of women. You're seeing advocacy for the slaughter of innocent

children and a complete twisting of Christianity, the foundation upon which our country was built. I think this is a really scary moment for the left as they grapple with their options of who's going to be our face moving forward, because that's not yet answered. Is it going to be someone like a Zohan Mamdani that's holding Muslim prayer services in the New York City, Mary, Mansion and Gracie Mansion? Or is it going to be this facade of Christianity that looks appealing to the average independent voter or someone who's on the fence? But in reality is pushing this extreme leftism just right under the surface. If that's the answer, it's very scary. Brianna, I look at this guy. I actually think he might, he is more radical than Jasmine

Crockett. Like she was squad friendly, but she didn't engage in this kind of extreme rhetoric when it came to Christianity or, you know, peddling these far, far left progressive views under the guise of Christianity and God-fearing speak. Here's one, this is bizarre. This is truly bizarre. Listen to what he said when asked a very simple question just in August of 2003. This is not 54. Something that you love that's not family or friends. I love, I'm just saying this because it's on my mind, the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state capital to advocate for their humanity, they shouldn't have to, but it was an inspiration to watch. Who would say that?

That's so bizarre. Like, who do you want to help? Who desperately needs psychiatric intervention? Who's being abused by parents who are working out their own woke politics on their children? Yeah, maybe. But, like, who do you love outside of family and you go to trans children? your thoughts on him. Yeah, yeah.

And he could have said anything. He could have said, what do I love? I love football, right? Something that would actually resonate with the majority of Americans. And in particular, men, because Democrats have lost young men 18 to 29 in large swarths. So they have to work to get them back. But no, he went to trans children. And he said, they're fighting for their humanity.

There is nothing humane about cleaving healthy breast tissue off a child. There is nothing humane about mutilating their body. And we have seen so many detransitioners come out and talk about that mentally. and physical impact of their choices that they made when they simply were not in the right frame of mind. And instead of getting them the psychiatric help that they need, he wants to double down on this. And to Isabel's point about Christianity, look, we have heard for years that Christianity is the greatest threat to democracy, right? White Christian men are going to tear this country down. But when James Talariko wants to wander his radical progressivism through his very convoluted interpretation

of the Bible, suddenly it's okay, it's cool. And actually, the media is salivating at how he's normalizing Christianity and bringing back Christianity in a way that's okay for the mainstream media because they get to decide what's okay and what's not. Yeah, because somehow now it like reinforces all of their weird worldviews, but that's not real Christianity. I mean, this is why when I took a one day excursion into the Episcopalian Church, I walked right out of there as soon as she started the homily because it was a female priest talking all about how we need to trans our children and support the trans children. And I was out of there and went right back to my Catholic church, which doesn't engage in that nonsense. Now, we're not great on immigration, but we're

very solid on the trans issue. And it's one of the many reasons I remained an observant Catholic. All right, not completely far afield from that soundbite is this piece that I mentioned in the intro from New York Magazine's The Cut. And it's a piece all about regretting being a parent. I mean, truly, only the left would sit around and say, you know, it would be a great thought piece on how many parents hate their children. And they actually managed to find people who hate their children. The one mother they highlight is leaving them. Like she's actually going to peace out because she doesn't want to be with her children anymore and she doesn't seem to feel particularly bad about it. It ends with my husband and I are taking steps to separate and he's

willing to take on the role of a single parent, which makes me feel incredibly guilty. Oh, you're a good person then. But I can't live this life with him anymore. I'm not the parent my son needs. I don't feel anything for him. And I don't want to wait it out for years and walk out when he as actual memories. Oh my God. She talks about how it's been a year, genuinely. If there is a hell, I've been living it since I gave birth. When my son was placed on me, I didn't feel anything. It was surreal. This is a 27-year-old North Carolina mother of a one-year-old. And the more you listen to this woman, the more you think she's doing the right thing. She should get the hell away from that child because all I can think, Isabel, is I feel bad for her baby. Maybe now he has a

shot if the father remarries of finding a mom who actually loves him. That was exactly my first thought when I read this piece as well. And it hits me all over again hearing you read those words out loud, Megan, because I'm in the exact phase of life that this young mom is in. I'm 28. So I'm one year older than her, but my daughter will be one at the end of next month. And my last year has been so full of the most magical purpose-giving moments that I could have ever asked for in my life.

I am such a different person today than I was a year ago when I was anxiously awaiting the birth of my daughter in all of the best ways. But how they are presenting this through this article is asinine and completely disgusting, the brainwashing that they're willing to do to tell young women that motherhood will ruin their life. The way that they tease this article on X, New York Magazine actually tweeted out the three examples of the things you'll lose when you become a mom are disposable income, peace of mind, and a lazy weekend at home. Of course, they'll never tell you that your bank account will never love you back. Lazy weekends are always better when your bank. baby is falling asleep on your chest and you're watching football as a family on the couch.

And peace of mind. I mean, what a more beautiful way to highlight watching your daughter laugh for the first time that you'll never get to feel otherwise. And now they paint you as a good person if you all out abandon your children. I really think this is the end result of decades-long programming against young women to try to convince us to never want to get married or have children in the first place. But now that they can't do that because we know it's an innate desire are baked into us by God, how women are created with this nurturing instinct. Now, even if we lost you and you ended up becoming a mom, we'll just convince you to leave that experience because it's so bad for you. How tragic. I'll tell you. So my kids now, I have three. Congrats on the birth of

your daughter. They're now 16, 14, and 12. And there's so many fun. It's the vast, vast majority of time now is like 98% fun and 2% work at this point. There's more work when they're little. But I will tell you this is about the one of the things I miss most about when they were really little, like babies like yours, which is not in the New York magazine, the cut piece, is in the morning when you walk into their room and they're in their crib, you know, and they're babies. And like they've just woken up and they're so happy to see you. And they're so sweet. Their hair smells so good. When they can finally start standing and they hold on to their little crib rails and they're looking at it. They're so thrilled when you walk in there.

It's like there isn't an amount of money that you can place on that. I can't quite understand somebody who would commission a whole piece on highlighting only the financial downsides. Brian, I don't think that you're a mom yet, right? But when you look at this, does this pull you in any one direction? Do you think to yourself, oh, yeah, no, I better not have kids because look what's going to happen to me? No, if anything, I think of they missed out in writing about all the things that moms gain. You know, my mom talks all the time about all the things she gained by having me and my sisters. And I actually feel bad for this young woman because remember, my generation has been taught that we should go out and pursue our career and nothing else, right?

That marriage and motherhood are shackles that you have to break away from if you want to succeed. And we've been taught that women don't actually have any intrinsic value, but we have a lot of value. No other person can be a mother, right? No other person has that, you know, kindness and warmth. And we should embrace that and celebrate that. And I unfortunately think that this young mom probably bought that lie, hook, line and sinker that she has to be only a career woman and not a mother. And now it's impacting her offspring, which is just awful for this child. Yeah.

Now she sees him as an inconvenience that she has to deal with as opposed to an enhancement who will make her life better. And just like the folly of suggesting, oh, if I, there's a lot in here about how, you know, if I didn't have kids, I could just go for a walk and no one would bother me. It might be an isolated life, but it would be a peaceful one. This one woman writes a different lady. If I could go back, I'd redo everything. My fantasy is an alternate universe where I graduated. I went straight to a doctorate program and lived alone. I mean, like, she writes, I would go for walks whenever I wanted.

I would go swimming at the end of the week. It'd be isolated but peaceful. It's like my future's over now with nowhere else to go. Well, my daughters is about to begin. It's an ugly feeling. These people have been taught wrong. They've been raised wrong. They're looking at it all wrong.

You fold your child into your. life, you don't give up your life because of your child. If you're looking at it that way, you're doing it wrong. There's more to discuss. We're going to take a quick break, and we will be back with the panel to finish this discussion and move on to the moron, Megan Markle, who wants you to pay $2,000 to go listen to her in Australia, because no one wants her in any place else in the world. I want to tell you about veracity. It's transforming the way we think about health by focusing on the real root cause of so many issues. Metabolism. Their metabolism ignite form. has become the go-to for many. It's the number one doctor-recommended GLP-1 booster and a natural

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SiriusXM 111 and on the Sirius XM app. Isabel Brown and Brianna Lyman are back with me now and picking up where we left off with that one woman who said, you know, my future is over now. She's a 30-year-old European mother of three. And she says, I felt like this is after she gave birth. First of all, she says, we went home. Everything was a nightmare.

I breastfed my daughter, but I couldn't pick her up because she had had an incision during her, the birth that left her unable to move from pain. My husband had a month and a half of paternity leave, but the only helpful thing he did during that time was change her diapers, though he did it with a reluctant expression on his face. I had the feeling he never believed how much pain I was in. My mom helped, but she didn't like being disturbed at night, and even during the day she was afraid of holding the baby or changing her.

Already now I'm thinking reading this, you have a bad support system. You don't have a good marriage. You don't have a great husband. you kind of have a pain in the ass mother. You should have set yourself up better with help from a friend, maybe a sister, you should have married better, that's obvious, and discussed what the expectations would be for shared parenthood when you had a baby. Clearly, you forgot all that. She writes, it felt like I'd been tricked into this. Everyone who wanted me to have a child, my husband, my family, knew they weren't going to lose much, while my freedom and identity went

down the toilet. Now, that's amazing to me, because your freedom and your identity only go down the toilet, Isabel, if you allow it to, you're a working mother right now. Your identity is not only intact, but known by many, many people, thanks to the fact that you're out there doing a podcast, having it all. I know you're not allowed to say that anymore, but you are having it all. P.S., it is possible with certain compromises. Yeah, you know, growing up, Megan, my mom always worked full time, and she used to say to us three girls that she was raising, you can have it all, but not at the same time. And I've heard different variations of that growing up, but my favorite way that anyone has ever put it was actually from Charlie Kirk a few weeks before he died.

He was explaining to a mutual friend of ours who was going through the trenches of parenthood with a very demanding job at the White House and asking, how do you possibly do it, Charlie? You're always on airplanes and yet you always find time to be with your family. And his answer was, I have a really great team. And our friend laughed and said, okay, fine. So you have a bunch of nannies and you have people who help you at night. And he stopped him and said, no, I have a really great team. It's you. It's our coworkers. It's our friends. It's the people who help us out. no holds barred. And so I think when I hear complaints like this, I'm realizing over time that usually

this is less about the family unit of the immediate family there and more about the lack of a village. And in society, we're so normal cutting off your extended family over disagreements of just trying to shoulder it on all by yourself. That's not how you're supposed to deal with this with new life coming into the world. And it really does take a village, be it your coworkers, your friends, your family, the people that you can lean on. on in that time of support. But because babies aren't out and about everywhere, they're not being taken to restaurants or on airplanes

or even on the train to and from work, people aren't used to this idea of needing to pitch in and help these new young families. And I think it's really time for a resurgence of that. Honestly, you married poorly if you've got a husband who doesn't want to change the diapers and who you feel disdainful after you have the child.

And even with your mother, you could sit down and say, Mom, I need your help. I know you don't like changing the diapers, but I can't afford a babysitter. I can't afford a nanny. You're it. I'm ill. I've got this incision. I need your help. Like most mothers, if you spoke to them, frankly, would probably step it up. And certainly the husband should step it up. Like, these people need to marry better or improve their communication. And then, Brianna, they're the ones in this article who are obsessed with money, which is a different kind of God for a

different kind of person. And if that is your God, you really should reconsider having children unless you're rolling in dough because they will place a financial strain on you. Here is a They described this gal as a Rhode Island mother of a six-year-old and a three-year-old. Now, she says she had a daughter who was colicky here first year of life. That is very stressful, for sure. Then at work, I couldn't put in 70-hour weeks anymore or attend trainings while breastfeeding, so I fell behind. Well, obviously, I mean, like, you're an idiot if you think you're not going to make any sacrifices from bringing another human into your life. Yes, correct.

You're not going to be working 70-hour. Boo, fucking who. Like, there are a lot of gunners. And I know a lot of women on Wall Street, and that's true gunners, who did have to step off the fast track for a couple of years, especially when their kids were young, but got back on because they're brilliant and they're gunners. So they actually are going to work and make it up if that's their choice. Others decide this baby is the be-all and all, and all. And I have no wish to put myself back on that track. But here's what this woman writes. I live for bedtime, those two or three hours at night that I squeeze all my living into. She's doing it all wrong. We'll watch movies or play video games. and every now and then, I'll try to work on an art project, but by the time I've set everything up, I'm exhausted,

and it's time for bed. Having a kid turns you into a morning person, the way being chased by a bear turns you into a runner. I actually thought that was kind of funny. Okay, but then she writes, but we recently spent all our savings buying a more expensive house because we lived in a terrible school district, and it got us talking.

I was able to say to my husband, our life probably would have been better if we didn't have kids. And he was like, you know what? you might be right. I love our children, she writes, and would never want them to think mom and dad would be happier if I weren't here. But thinking about our life without them, I would be happier overall. So for her, it boils down to the almighty dollar. She thinks she'd be richer financially, not richer overall, but richer financially, is she just didn't have these two pesky children. First, let me just say that if I was one of these children, I would be so heartbroken,

when I come of age and can read this and read what my parents wrote about me, because no matter how much they express their love to me, I would always feel some kind of guilt in the back of my head that I have encumbered their life in some kind of way. Having children is one of the most selfless things you can do because you do have to pour a lot into a child. And I always say this as someone who doesn't have a child, but I've seen other parents do it.

And it's extremely rewarding, but it's also important just for the betterment of society, right? And I think that my generation in particular, there has been a major shift, right? We are a very narcissistic generation. Everything is about us in the immediate, in the now. We don't think long term, and we don't really care who we heard, whether it's a child, our own child, or even someone that we're speaking to, a friend, a boyfriend, whatever it may be.

But if you go back, just throughout American history in particular, family was the core of a functioning society. You don't have a functioning society without not only a functioning family, but two parents in the household, which is, again, something Charlie Kirk spoke about all the times, the importance of having a mother. of father, right? What did the government do in the late 60s, early 70s that broke down that family unit? And I think you're seeing those repercussions now when you have young mothers who abhor the idea of a strong family unit, who abhor the idea of being a mom. And again, to the

hyper obnoxious, you know, independent girl boss regime that we've all been taught, I think a lot of women feel like they are not fulfilling their ultimate societal goals unless they are working 70 hours a week and bringing home a big paycheck because as a culture we've said that being a mother is burdensome, If you choose to be a mother, not a career woman, there's something inherently wrong with you. So we need to change the conversation around what it means to be a mother and celebrate women who want to be a mother and a worker, just a mother or just a worker. Yes, completely agree. I've told the story before, but at our school's career night, I urge the head of school to, I'm like, it's great. You can bring in the doctors and the lawyers and the journalists and whomever else you want. And you should really, really consider bringing in a state-home mom.

You should remind these young girls that this all-girls school, this is an amazing path for you. And have somebody stand up there and say, this is why I find it's so rewarding. It can be done, and there's nothing wrong with it. And it actually is a job, and it's available to all of them. If only they prioritize love, relationship, and nurturing and caring the way a mother must do. Okay, let's move on. Megan Markle would like you to spend $2,200, $2,288. in fact. To spend time with her, you can, if you lock down an early bird ticket, you can get it for

1930, $1,900 and $30. And for this, you can see her at a luxury retreat in Australia where she will be headlining some gathering of women for the podcast. This is not her podcast, quote, her best life. You have to act fast if you want in, because it happens Friday, April 17th through April Sunday, April 19th. This is being hosted by Australian podcast host Jackie O'Henderson and Gemma O'Neill, who have recruited Megan, although it later came out that she called them to lead the event, which will focus on powerful conversations, relaxation, laughter, and unforgettable experiences. They say that what you're going to get is a gala dinner, an in-person conversation with Megan, Duchess of Sussex, a powerful women's session with renowned therapist, Dr. Justine Corey,

meditation and manifestation session with Gemma, yoga session to start the day, and a beautiful sound healing experience. By the way, when you talk about a gala dinner, you will not be actually seated at her table. She just might be there. And they want you to know that while you might get a photo app with her, it will be a group photo op.

You will not be getting one-on-one, even if you pay for the VIP experience. Now, I just did a tour. If you paid for the VIP experience, my listening audience knows, you met me one on one and we had a picture together. It's the bare minimum you can do for your fans, but with Megan, you might be treated to a massive group ensemble photo, and it'll only cost you two grand. Isabel, how quickly can you get there?

Oh, Megan. You know, I really stopped paying attention to anything Megan Markle has ever said after on her Netflix series she told young women that her best tip for hosting guests at your house was to take pretzels out of a plastic bag and put them into a different plastic bag and then put them out on your kitchen counter. She is so unbelievably out of touch with where normal people are at. And it's a shame, really, because growing up, I used to love watching suits. I thought she was a pretty great actress, but she can't even act like a woman of the people. I mean, $2,500 plus dollars for a group photo and listening to her speak at a dinner at a larger retreat that sounds fascinating. I would love to know

what sound therapy actually is to fix everything wrong in my life as a young woman. It just goes to show you that these people like these late night comedians and even many of these politicians that are running for office here on the left are so in their own reality. We are living in two completely different universes. Oh, Brianna, the way she describes herself in like the billing for this event tells you everything you need to know about her. First of all, this is Bill. This is a girl's weekend like no other.

She builds herself as a mother, wife, entrepreneur, and humanitarian. She says, recognized by time and vogue as one of the world's most influential women. I mean, literally nobody believes that. She remains a dedicated champion of mental health and the rights of women and girls. The marketing material also refers to her record-breaking podcast archetypes and her global. celebrated Netflix series with love, Megan, and her lifestyle brand as ever.

Both archetypes and with love, Megan, were dropped by Spotify and Netflix, FYI, and there was absolutely nothing record-breaking about her stupid podcast, which was insufferable, and no one listened to. The pablum that this woman puts out there, one of the world's most influential women, what a joke.

Well, I think they're living in a fantasy world. So in that case, it may actually be accurate. And it's funny, out of everyone I've spoken to or I've read about online, I have never seen or heard a positive review of Megan Markle. Everyone finds her to be so insufferable and so disingenuous, which is why in part her Netflix series got canceled because it felt very scripted. And a royal expert told Fox News that this was an opportunity to get to know the real Megan because she's faced so many battles. and hurdles. Every single one of them has been self-inflicted, right? She is so obnoxious. And people can send that off of her. Right. So every bat losing your Netflix series or have to fight for one, it's because nobody actually wanted to watch you. They were just trying to create this persona around you. But it's very hard to do when her husband, Prince Harry, seems like a sympathetic victim of what she seems to be is a narcissist. She seems to be so self-absorbed. She thinks she's holier than thou. She feels like she's the kind of person that sits down and lectures you. That's not someone I would want to spend close to $3,000 to see.

So here's the piece about, this is in the Daily Mail. She foisted herself, Isabel, onto this event. They write, she is understood to have reached out to the organizer, her best life podcast host, Gemma O'Neill, after being put in touch by a mutual friend. The presenter revealed she had initial reservations and almost turned down Megan's offer, but concluded her podcast audience, quote, deserved it. So I don't like, that doesn't speak well for what she thinks of her audience. No, not at all. What have they done to Gemma to deserve this? You know, I'm not even remotely surprised that Megan Markle created this opportunity for herself. She arrived in the UK with the expectation she was going to be welcomed with open arms as a member of the royal family.

We all know how that went. They then fled and ran to the United States as their safe haven and refuge. And no one wants to listen to a single word that this woman says. I imagine a world tour is probably coming in 2026 because they're running out of places to try out for new, new material and new conversations here. But I also think this is a really important larger social commentary about authenticity being such a virtue for young people in particular. Gen Z is so attracted to real people being completely authentic to themselves. It's why get ready with me, TikTok videos as people are putting on their mascara in the morning or podcasters who are wrapped up in a blanket in their basement, to be resonating so much more poignantly with young people than multi-gazillion dollar TV

networks or even former members of the royal family. When there's an element of inauthenticity and this facade there, instantaneously we can smell it out for what it is. And she is the perfect example of that. And you won't be surprised to see, okay, so we don't know this podcast, of course, but we did take a look at this her best life podcast to see what was it that attracted Megan Markle to it such that she asked them if she could headline their event and they reluctantly agreed. Here's a little clip from August of 2025. SOTS 61. I went to the puberty session at the kids' school. Oh yeah. And she said, and obviously

the correct names are penis and vulva. Oh. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And even one of the moms who I'm friends was next to me, she goes, vulva. And then the kids were saying, so, mum, is it a vagina or is it a vulva? I'm still confused about my own body parts. And I reckon most females are. What would you call if you're in a relationship? Yeah.

And you're talking about your private. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm not going to say, baby. My vulva's so wet for you tonight. Classy. Classy, Brian. I can see exactly why she was attracted to it, you know, because she's all about fighting for women and girls and their vulvas.

Yeah, you know, This is actually a really good example as to why podcasts like Girls Gone Bible is so popular now because young people in particular, especially young women, we're kind of tired of being told that we have to be overly sexual or sexualize ourselves in order to break the patriarchy. They don't do it in a classy way. They do it in an inappropriate way. And I think as a generation, we've really lost that sense of decorum. And young people want that because we want standards, right? Standards holds a society together. If you meet those standards, you're a good functioning member of that society.

If you don't meet those standards, you're kind of an outcast, but everybody wants to be part of something. And talking about your body parts in such an open way like that, it doesn't make you cool. It actually is a turnoff for a lot of young people who want to find a podcast that they can relate to. That's not really that relatable. I don't sit around talking about those things to my girlfriends. No, no women talk like this. This is so ridiculous. You're right.

It's not cool. It's classless, which is why she was attracted to it. because she mistakes classlessness for cool for something that makes her sort of relevant and edgy. And it doesn't, right? She's lost that long ago. And like this woman is casting around for some sort of an audience that might love her.

Remember they went on a tour, she and Harry, and she reportedly felt great about how she did in Australia. This is, I think, where the place where she was demanding people like massage her feet because she was pregnant and she was like, oh, poor me. I can't believe I'm not getting paid for this shit. But she, in her mind, has like a fan base in Australia, so she reached out to them. She knows there isn't one, God forbid in the UK.

There isn't one in the United States at all where she's a laughing stock. There's not even one in Canada where they went in their interim stay and where she shot the show suits because she's turned everyone off. To know her is to loathe her. So she's starting to go to more and more remote locations where she hasn't been exposed. that much to try to find some trickling amount of fans so she can keep her grift going. It's not going to work. Ladies, what a pleasure.

I'm so happy that you gave us this lighter half an hour at the end of a very tough week when it comes to news and its heaviness. I thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, we need a little culture in our lives. That New York Magazine, the cut piece, was just absolutely absurd. Hopefully, okay, well, next week, we have week two. of spring break, and we will be continuing to be on a remote location. But I think we have something

else in store for you. So we will tell you about that on Monday. And I hope we have a great weekend, and we'll see you that. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.