The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1228: A Rational Look at the Present w/ J. Burden

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

69 MinutesSome Strong LanguageJ. Burden is a content creator and the host of The J. Burden Show on YouTube and all podcatchers. J. joins Pete to give a level-headed, sperg-free take on current events.J's Substackj's SubscribestarJ's PatreonJ's YouTube ChannelJ's Find My Frens PagePete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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The Pekingona Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. Who the hell is this guy? Thanks for having me on. Good to see you. Good to see you. I just saw you.

I saw you a month ago. We were face-to-face a month ago. But yeah, so face-fag, huh? It's true. I'm ashamed to admit it. It's a bad place to be in life, but yet here's where I find myself, right? All right. All right.

We're doing this on Tuesday, the 17th. All sorts. Trump is either doing 40 chess. again or he's going to war. He just said there we can, we control the skies over Iran, total surrender. What is this? So here's, here's my question more. Here's what I want to talk about more importantly.

How do we interpret this? I mean, there's a certain group on the, let's call it the right. We don't need to put any qualifiers on it who. Trump has sacrificed his children to members of a tribe that mostly live in Israel. Well, mostly live here, but they also live in Israel. So he's completely a Zionist and completely beholdens a Zionist, and they own him. And any kind of friction you would see with Netanyahu, it's all K-Fabe. you know, this is all WWE.

Then there are those people like myself who are like, I don't know that Trump is really a Zionist or if he could actually define the term. And he's from New York and he's in the real estate industry and it's pretty much dominated by a certain tribe. So it wouldn't be weird that like that's a lot of the people he was around his whole life. So that's who his kids would meet and stuff like that and get in with. and the fact that he seems to like these people and seems to like Israel, but I don't know that he's a Zionist. I think he's a boomer who is like Iran cannot ever have a nuclear weapon because I've been told that they took an embassy hostage in 1979 for no reason whatsoever.

So, and then, you know, you have people who just don't like this tribe and they can't, They don't like this tribe. They don't like politics. They can't take a side. It's like, would Kamala be better than Trump? I can't, no, they're both bad. I can't take a side. I'll never take a side.

No, no, no, no, no. So what is this? Where are we at? How is, what do you see as like, of those three that I just met? Well, I mean, really two that I mentioned. And I'm really talking about how people, really how people react to Trump. how do you see it and now I'll shut up? Yeah, sure.

So there are several ways to look at it, right? Which is the first off of the binary choice of 2024, right? You and I were handed effectively two options and told to make a choice. So from that, you have kind of a split in the decision tree, which is are you going to engage with politics? Yes or no. I'm not a quietist, right? I'm not one of these people who say, you know, any politician is irreparably. compromised so I won't vote. I know people like that. I don't agree with it, but it's a respectable

enough position. So let's say we've taken that for. We've cited we are going to be involved in politics. Well, fundamentally, you were given a very small fraction of power, right? Vanishingly small, right, even if we assume that the civics class version of American history is exactly, or American politics rather is exactly correct and told to make a binary choice. So to me, right, the reason I was comfortable voting for Trump is very simple. It was basically who hates me. And, you know, look, Trump has many, many foibles, but at the same time, he doesn't seem to hate normal Americans. Okay, fair enough. That makes it an easy choice. And from that point, right, if we decide that, you know, Kamala would have been worse on average for people like ours, well, what did we get out of it?

Well, to be honest, we got more than I thought we would, right? I thought there was no chance that any of the the kind of Doge stuff would happen. I thought there was no chance any of the immigration reform would happen. And look, like, those aren't capital W wins. You know, Doge does not equate to us getting exactly what we want, but it is punishing our enemies. So, you know what? I'll take it. Right. It's a move that, relatively speaking, increases our power, right? Sort of a body blow, not a knockout, but something that kind of saps the tank. So fair enough, right? And that's why, broadly speaking, I have been positive on Trump. I'm not a MAGA guy. I don't really particularly care about all of the kind of internecine maga politics or, you know, getting really emotionally invested in it.

But to me, I feel like we got more than we could have expected. You know, you buy a car, you open the glove box and there's 500 bucks in an envelope. Hey, look, you know, better than I thought, right? So then it comes to foreign policy. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine. That hasn't happened. There have been good faith efforts to make it happen, but it seems to be, honestly, Russia doesn't want to end it. And to be honest, I can't blame them. They're in a very good position. So as with foreign policy, Trump has always been a mixed back, right? We've seen cases like with Syria where he was lied to, right, where they said we're taking troops out and they didn't do that. Also, there have been just regular old, bad decisions, stupid mistakes, right? The strike on the Iranian general. using the kind of like ninja missile or whatever that kind of, you know, launched a shiriken from space at him.

That was a, that was an error, right? We can, we can say that. Now, the problem is, right, starting a war with Iran is a much larger scale error, right? Assuming that the, you know, the worst comes to worse and that happens. I sincerely hope it doesn't. honestly, that would wipe away a lot of the, let's be honest, almost all of his wins in my book. Now, the question of how likely this is, well, I've seen the same kind of 40 just claims you have, many of them from people I like and consider friends. I don't know how much of that I buy, to be perfectly honest. Like, look, there are tankers with fighters in tow crossing the Atlantic, right? Okay, maybe this is some, you know, big threatening maneuver. You know, maybe this is a desire to get to the negotiating table. And if so, fair enough, I'll eat crow.

But judging by the data we currently have, it looks like at the very least, there will be strikes on rent. Now, admittedly, strikes do not equal war. War does not equal like a World War II-style general mobilization. But, I mean, look, like we have to look at the data as it is. Several things here, right? Trump has been very chilly towards Netanyahu. He has not met with him yet. I don't think Vance has either.

Hegset canceled his decision to go talk with him. So there's something there, right? And also, it's interesting, Vance put out a statement today, which you can read one of two ways. It's a very long post to Twitter. And about half of it is saying, you know, Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. And then the back half is saying, but we don't want a foreign war. The decision is ultimately in Trump's hands. We've seen pushback from, you know, Bannon, Tucker, people inside the cabinet against this.

And at the same time, you know, you have Mike Huckabee posting the most insane things possible about how this is the reason the country of America was founded, which regardless of your opinions on. Let's just say any country in the world, that was not the reason America was formed, right? America was formed to be a place for Americans to live, not to serve as the world policeman or, you know, the guarantor of some other state. So to me, if I had to guess what's going on, it seems as if they are pulling out all their stops to get America involved. And it looks like they have successfully made that play. Now, what we don't know is what is the reaction inside the Trump cabinet? How are they reacting to this? And it seems like from the signals we're getting, there is a camp that is very much opposed

to this move. One of the things that I've been talking about quite a bit, both on my own show and also in conversations with Thomas and others, is the fact that, look, the Israel lobby is a very, very powerful, well-connected lobby, but they are not the only interest group. there are others. And one of the interesting things about 2024 is we saw the introduction, or at least the formalization of, in my mind, two distinct groups. You have obviously the tech right, who has been, I mean, to use a Gen Z term, sort of crashing out, right? Musk went on a giant meltdown, you know, accused Trump of all sorts of outlandish things. So look, they may be

in the descendant, right? They may be in a bad spot, but they still have power. They still have interests, right? This kind of bizarre combination, birthday, and military parade, sure, it may have been embarrassing or, you know, alternately, at your view, it may have been the coolest thing ever. But it's very interesting to see which tech companies were involved in that, right? There's a lot of traditional MIS interests, but also, you know, Palantir, right? Other things associated with Teal, which indicates that those guys have at least some poll in this. Similarly, there were a number of tech executives and MIC executives who got made, I believe, lieutenant colonels honorary in the reserves, but still, that is a further enmeshing of those interests

and the federal government. But the other one, right, is this kind of, we could consider the America firsters if that term hadn't been kind of bastardized, but you know, the paleo-con interests, right, people like Tucker, Bannon, their network, who are very much opposed to this. and it's a question to ask, well, okay, sure, if they're not in power, what do their opinions matter? And one of the questions that has been kind of on the forefront of my mind for really the last six months has been who wins, right? When it comes to a conflict between these interest groups, who wins? And unfortunately, at least according to the data, as I see it right now, it seems as if the Israel lobby is winning.

They are getting what they want. Now, there's a secondary question of, well, what happens if they get what they want, right? I think that the idea that this will result in some sort of, you know, regime change or glorious revolution is unlikely. Iranian officials have been assassinated before. I saw a, I believe, their joint chief of staff. He was taken out in airstrikes, at least according to, shall we say, Israeli-aligned media, right? And by that, I mean, the IDF said it, you know, so we can say that's what they've. want you to think. We don't know if that's true or not. But nonetheless, so let's say they get what

they want. You know, America strikes nuclear sites. Well, what happens then? Because I think that that fantasy, right, that we will, you know, turn over the Mullahs regime, I think it's unlikely. Now, it bears repeating, the Mullahs are not popular in Iran. And the old joke is Islam, Islam wasn't or Persia wasn't Islamicized, Islam was Persianized, right? The joke is they've kind of always been their own culture and the Mullahs were very much an imposition on that culture. They've never been particularly popular, especially considering how poorly their economy is doing just within the country. Now that said, the deal that they run, right, their political formula is basically this. We are protecting you from the great.

the West. And that political formula works a lot better when you have, you know, U.S. fighters bombing your cities. Right. I'm sure you saw the same footage I did of civilians evacuating Tehran. Well, if your leaders are saying, we're protecting you from them, the messaging you're hearing from the West is unconditional surrender. Well, that reinforces that political formula. One of the other things that I think bears talking about is to what degree has this kind of salvo of missiles been effective one side and another. Iranian F-14s have been destroyed. It seems as if there were kind of claims running around that they were fakes.

I don't think that's the case. There have obviously been fake images of Iranian fighters, other important things, being destroyed. But it seems as if those were kind of mothballed fighters, right? They've been stored on the tarmac for two years with no weather stripping or weather protection. They were mothballed. They got hit, so that's something.

Obviously, if Iranian officials are being killed, they are hitting hardened targets. One of the interesting things, which this is Iranian government propaganda, so take it with a grain of salt. That applies in both directions. They say they arrested a number of IDF agents with a semi-truck full of drones a la what we saw in Ukraine. Interesting connection there, but it seems as if this is still very much an equal fight. They're giving as good as they've got. Iran is an immensely defendable location by land. They're difficult to get to. So the idea of sending in troops, so to speak, I think is completely and totally unrealistic. But, you know, Israel has a lot of ordinance. We have a lot of ordinance and they can get hammered hard. So I think it's pretty unlikely that this results in, you know, the mall is toppling, but it could result in definitely a humanitarian crisis. And also, a domestic one, right? The MAGA base is split on this, particularly along age lines. You know, we've, we've all talked about the way in which, you know, that country is overwhelmingly

supported by older people, not supported by younger people. So, Pete, you have the same connections I do to the kind of crusty GWAT vets. They're very upset about this. Everyone my age is also particularly upset about this, not necessarily for right-wing reasons, but, you know, the meme of, I won't die for Israel that got kind of popular in the run-up to this, the counter-signaling was completely and totally inept. First it was, no one is asking you to. And then it was, oh, this is some kind of third world, this plot to attack Western civilization. So that presents a very real problem. Now, look, Trump is very, very good at getting people to sign up for the military. We've seen the recruitment numbers before and after, so that certainly poses a problem.

But nonetheless, a large portion of the MAGA base, particularly the younger cohort, which effectively won him the 2024 election, are very unhappy with this decision. Now, do I think that matters to a president who is never going to run again? Probably not. But there is some complicated calculus to this past just, you know, big interest group gets exactly what they want all the time. One of the things you said there was that the U.S. has a lot of bombs. Israel has a lot of bombs. Iran has a lot of bombs too. I mean, they, I think they claim, the claim is they have 3,000. I think they have more of these missiles that they're sending, they've been sending at Tel Aviv and sending it Israel. Last count I got, and I got this off of Grok, so, I mean, take it with a grain of salt. They've used 450 of them. So there is still a lot there left. A lot of, a lot of. A lot of of this we really have to take um i think trump just announced that all of their air defenses are are out i don't believe that for one second i mean anyone who has studied you know s 400 the s 300 and the

s 400 system the russian system um and also understands the terrain and exactly how iran is set up and how their defenses is set up is got you some of those you're only going to be able to take out on the ground you're just not going to be able to take out on the ground you're just not going to be able to to hit them from the air. So I don't believe that for one second. It all comes back to, let's take it here. Trump is somebody who I think we believe, and you can contradict me on this, really cares about his legacy.

So what do you think is more important to him? Is his legacy, is the legacy of him making sure that Iran has no nuclear program that can be weaponized, more important, or the fact that he said we just get into these insane wars and there's no reason we should have anything to do with them? I mean, honestly, I think one of the problems from Trump watchers generally, and this applies to both the right and the left, is they sort of are looking for an ideology of Trumpism, right, which just isn't there. He's not an ideological actor.

And I think that one of his major character flaws is he seems to. be effectively the sort of combined average of the last three people he spoke to. And so we see these kind of like wildly vacillating statements from him. And look, some of that is just he's playing to the crowd, right? We recently saw this with immigration where he'll kind of put out these trial bullets, right? He'll say something, test the waters, and then make a decision. So we saw that over, you know, statements about basically illegals working in certain industries. that he put out this statement saying, oh, you know, we need to carve out an exception for, you know, farmers and meat packers.

And it produced an absolute chimp out, right? People were very, very angry about it. And so what happened? Well, he didn't say anything else about it, but a day later, a large meatpacking concern in Missouri gets raided with a huge ice raid. And it cleaned out. So we can assume, right, he looked at that and said, all right, not a good idea. Now, admittedly, there's a world of difference between saying something on truth, social flow. an idea and, to be honest, mobilizing a large amount of our aircraft. Those are different orders of magnitude. What's a much stronger signal than the other? And I would certainly hope that he realizes that his foreign policy is a big part of the reason why he is beloved, right? Why people have a personal loyalty to him instead of just a loyalty to the Republican Party

as an institution. I would hope that. Now, I will say he's made bad decisions before. I think Trump 2.0 has on average made much better decisions than he did his first time around. But this is a very serious error if he goes ahead with it, right? Both for the sake of his legacy, and I think that needs to be stated. This would massively tarnish the legacy of the man, would massively tarnish the legacy of MAGA writ large as something in opposition to the so-called swamp or to rhinos or whatever. Because again, when it came down to a moment of crisis, if you default back to that, really, how different are you? And I say that, you know, offering a certain amount of gratitude for the other things we've gotten, like immigration, like the other stuff.

But really, like this is the thing that matters, right? This kind of like empire of America. And one of the things that John Derbyshire, before his retirement, was continually banging on about, was why haven't we left NATO, right? Why haven't we formally begun? Instead of just piecemeal, the destruction or the winding down of the empire. And that's a very major concern. Because one of the things I think was very interesting in Trump 1.0 is to notice the exception to the blanket negative media coverage. I think a number came out shortly after he was unsuccessful in his second run was the media

coverage. It was roughly 96% of media coverage of Trump is negative. So when was the exception to that? Well, his presidential moments were foreign policy related, right? It was the moment that he assassinated an Iranian general. And look, sidebar, one of the things that I think does disservice to talking about American foreign policy is the anti-war movement itself. A lot of these people are ideologically opposed to war as a concept. War is obviously a terrible thing. It's described in scripture as a plague. But as a part of human organization, we do it from time to time.

It comes like the season. The question is, is this a good war or a bad war? And I'm not looking necessarily to get into just war theory. That's not my point. But to say, like, if we believe that the purpose of a country is to provide a home and a place for its people, right, fairly basic, Well, if a war makes those people's lives better, there's an argument to be made. You could look at the Roman conquests and say, well, they're probably not justifiable from like a tomistic perspective. They basically just said like, hey, you over there, guess what, we're the Romans.

We have your stuff now. But if you're the average Roman citizen, you got wealthier, you got richer. It's not nice. It's not pleasant. But there's an argument to be made there. Whereas in our current situation, these wars are not being waged for our. benefit. They're impoverishing the American people. It's our blood, our treasure being squandered, the advantage of largely someone else. And if you look at Trump's rhetoric the entire time,

it has been populist rhetoric. It has been saying, you, the average American, have been given a raw deal. Your interests are not being considered. I will act on your behalf. And going back to what I said about personal loyalty, that's why Trump had personal loyalty, which is much stronger than institutional loyalty, right? People like Trump more than, you know, anyone really likes the Republican Party or the U.S. Postal Service, any of these kind of faceless, faceless bureaucratic masses. And again, right, it's incredibly short-sighted to throw that away, to throw away that personal loyalty for a client nation, right? Maybe, I mean, who knows? Maybe a patron nation. We could get into that later, but right, but to throw it away for someone else. Because I think, right, like the old joke,

during the last time we almost went to war with Iran is there's a picture of a young guy and it just said no Iranian ever called me an in-sell right ha ha it's a joke but at the same time I think that sentiment especially among younger people who handed Trump his victory especially among people who actually served in the armed forces is incredibly negative and look we are not populists right we understand that that does not that popular opinion does not result in policy obviously we've seen seen that constantly. But at the same time, if your base of power is ultimately populist, if that is what propels you to the fore, you have to take that into account, even just as a way

to get in the door so you can do what you want. But again, I think this needs to be counter-signaled and heavily because we have seen the Trump administration caved popular pressure as they did with H-1Bs, as they did, you know, with the earlier comments about immigration. Look, like as Tucker was able to successfully do, you know, kind of early in the year with certain of Trump's appointments. And so, again, I think it's important not to look at this naively. Like, there's a very real possibility we all get screwed. That's how it goes. But I think that needs to be made quite clear that that will break the mag mag mag mag mag magic, right? That will break the distinction between the swamp and to the MAGA movement. And again, I was never expecting Donald Trump to take us to based world,

right, to solve all of our problems. But he so far has, in the grand scheme of things, made good on his promise. And he will throw away that. He will throw away his goodwill if he goes ahead with this senseless war in Iran. You mentioned there the whole thing about no, no Iranian ever called me in cell or, you know, that kind of means. meme. Let's talk about a little bit of the propaganda that's going on around this. Well, you know, they scream death to America there. You know, and I guess I've made the mistake of reading history and asking, well, why wouldn't they? You know, I mean, that doesn't, that's, that, I understand by asking that question, it makes me a really bad American. But then again, you know,

I think to myself, well, if someone came here and overthrew our government, basically, and installed their own people, oh, wait a minute, hold on. Okay, no, maybe we'll come back to that later. And then you'll see stuff like, well, they fund all of the, you know, they fund Hezbollah, they fund Hamas, they fund, I mean, why would we, why would we put up with that? And then you ask a question, well, what does that have to do with us? as like, well, they've also funded groups that our soldiers have fought against it. And I'm like, how did we get into those wars?

Why are we in those wars? It seems that more and more, this propaganda and people who say that are being propagandists, whether they know it or not, whether they're doing it on purpose or whether they, that's just what they've been taught. So, I mean, what do you do when, what does a good American do when they see the propaganda from overseas and when they see the propaganda and they're like, yeah, I mean, I'm sorry. I'm having some sympathies with the foreign power that seems to be not only, you know, has a legitimate beef. but also as a legitimate beef with our client state or patron, as you said, however, we want to put that. Yeah, so there are several things there.

First of all, I think it bears repeating that, you know, as we've said, it seems as if with Trump, what matters more to the regime is not the domestic, it's foreign policy. They praised him for that. That's what made him presidential. And to be honest, the same thing goes for regime oppression to kind of us and ours. If this turns into a real war, people are going to have to be very, very careful about the remarks they make. Again, not out of any cowardice, but just out of prudence. That is a very good way to get blackbacked.

We've seen it happen before. Be particularly careful of where you accept money from. We've seen that this is a regular way to entrap regime enemies. So I'll put it that way. But I mean, to your point about kind of having sympathy for the devil, it comes down to this, right? When we talk about the post-war consensus or the Nuremberg regime, whatever, whatever you want to call it, very close to the core of that is the idea that war is illegal, that enmity is some kind of science. psychological issue with you. There is no reason to be enemies to this empire unless there is something inherently wrong with you. And closely bound up with that is effectively the idea that there is

no reasonable objection to America and its empire. There is no set of actions we can take that will create a legitimate response. Either you love us or you are a dictator in the mold of you know, a prominent Austrian fellow and you must be destroyed. It's that conception, you see it over and over again. And so anyone who opposes us in really any way is automatically deemed to be an outlaw, right? They're outside of the rules-based international order. And so it's open season. And one of the core flaws of the American personality, and you could say, we could talk about where this came from, but really in that post-war consensus or the Nuremberg regime is the idea that no one will ever get sick of us, right, that they will simply continue to be our friends.

They will do whatever we say, regardless of our actions. And a big problem with that is, you know, say what you will about the Mullahs. They are sovereign. They get to say what Iran does, whereas many of our allies, right, look at Germany, France, as we've seen in Africa, right, They do not get to be fully sovereign. They don't get to decide. They don't get a full vote in the way their truly sovereign nation does. And look, I don't want to live in Iran. I don't want to live under Iranian control.

It seems like kind of a bad country to live in. But you have to understand that the enemy gets a vote too. We've seen this in Ukraine, right? We can say we want peace, but unless Russia decides to stop, there is no peace. And so similarly, when we talk about like having sympathy for these people, I wouldn't even necessarily say sympathy in the sense of like, I like you and I want you to win. But if you have the barest amount of human empathy, right, if you have the ability to imagine yourself as an Iranian, you can imagine exactly how they would feel very morally justified in doing that. It would feel like they are fighting for their people, fighting for their land against an enemy. And again, as we've seen over and over and over again, one,

these regime change wars don't work. Okay, even if you get to the objective, you know, you take, you know, Kamani or whoever to the Hague and you hang him and you get to congratulate yourself with that. It doesn't work, right? It doesn't solve the problem. It doesn't fix the country. But also, right, simply this kind of like Star Wars episode one idea that you blow up the brain center and all the soldiers just collapse is completely and totally absurd. What we are going to get from this is if we become entrenched in this, it will be another forever war. It will not fix Iran. It will not fix our problems, even if they are our problems in the region. And so, again, if we look at this as American nationalists, like, what does it do for us and our people? The answer is absolutely nothing.

You know, it enriches a certain number of people in northern Virginia. Okay, fair enough. Is that worth the cost and treasure lives, everything else? I would say no. And the idea that the only way you can oppose this is by being some sort of agent of Iran, by being some sort of like pinko or some sort of like, you know, weak, limperistic liberalist is completely and totally absurd. And I think one of the real dangers, and this has been weaponized before, about, you know, the anti-war movement being so annoying, right, being so irritating is it's very good to motivate the right wing to support something. Because if you look at the conservative movement large. They're entirely reactive. They say, the left is doing this, the liberals are doing this, the progressives are doing this, so we want the opposite. And to be honest, they're directionally true, right? That's generally a pretty good way to orient yourself. But that reaction is well known. It's a very good way to get people to support something that's outside their best

interests. So for instance, I was a little bit young for this, but during the kind of start to the global war on terror. One of the memes that came back around, and I mean this in kind of a not like a ha ha funny impact text sense, but like the rogue ideas, right, that came back around was Vietnam soldiers being spit on, right? It's like, okay, why? It's 20 years ago, plus or minus, right? Like, why is that back in culture? Well, the answer is, it's to make you mad at hippies, which is not a particularly hard thing to do. I don't really like these people, but it's injecting that sort of opposition. Like, oh, I support this. because you don't, and I don't like you. And I think we're seeing the same thing.

As regards the kind of foreign interference thing, there was a really interesting interaction I saw on social media the other day, where it's this Twitter account. It's got an incredibly generic name, like, you know, based in Red Pill. They've got 200,000 followers, whatever. This, shall we say, IDF connected gentleman, you know, take some post where he's talking about how war with Iran would be horrible. and responds with his name, his IP address, and where he's from. His name is something Abdullah from Pakistan. So, okay, obviously, there are foreign actors on both sides. I think it's important to not be naive about that. The Iranians do have an intelligence department. There are other vested interests in this.

So, you know, to quote Bill the Butcher, right, Americans beware of foreign influence. But several things there. One, interesting how he got that information. And two, the whole point is to create that reaction. that flip, right? Oh, you are an outsider. You are one of those dangerous, dangerous terrorists. So I want the opposite. I want to fight. And similarly, you know, the left has made itself incredibly odious both over the last 10 years and in recent memory. The optics of the riots in L.A. were horrible for the left. This is the party of foreigners. This is the party that wants to see you dispossessed in your

homeland. And so if you can get those people to avoid. oppose something, anyone who's even not particularly interested in foreign affairs writ large associates that stink with the opposition. And I think we delude ourselves if we think that these people aren't smart enough to figure that out. One, they've done it before. And two, we're sort of seeing that playbook being run over again. All right.

So let's talk about the fact that if this is, if victory is called, it's going to be a victory from the air. I've done episodes with my friend John Fieldhouse. This is somebody who has admitted that he has war-gamed when he was in the military what an invasion of Iran would look like. And it would take two years. The staging of it would take a ground war would take two years. So this is going to be an air war. Considering that we've seen pretty much the whole world, except for the client states of Israel condemn them for what they've done to Gaza from the air. It seems like the only way to win this is to turn Tehran and the other cities into Gaza. So is that a win?

Is it a win if the rest of the world just, if the world hates you, if you become as much of a pariah state as Israel is right now? Well, and that's why I mentioned earlier, right? Like, even if they win, will that fix their problems? I don't think it does. I think that there's a non-zero chance that effectively what Trump does is, you know, drop a few, you know, B-52 loads of bombs. Say, you know, we destroyed the Iranian nuclear sites, regardless of if that's true or not, you know, does a George Bush-style mission accomplished photo op and then basically says like, all right, we did it. it's your problem now, which don't get me wrong. I don't want that to happen. I think that is a

possibility. Again, we don't know. We're kind of dealing with probabilities. As regards to the future in Israel, I don't think this changes that. So one of the interesting things, and this is something that our mutual friend, Rod Dodson could speak to better than you or I, is the degree to which Turkey and Iran are in opposition one to another. And if Iran goes away, Turkey is in the ascendant. And Turkey is a much scarier country. Like, it's a very real country. You know, they are technically members of the European Union somehow, kind of. But point is, right? And NATO. And exactly. And if they start to, you know, ascend in reaction to Iran sort of being reduced to rubble, that empowers them. They don't particularly like Israel for any number of reasons. And also, I think one of the other things to talk about is the Israel. aura of invincibility. I mean, look, it was shattered after October 7th, but the Iron

Dome was always the big thing. We've got this force field. And look, like, I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what percentage of missiles get through, but with the drone attack we saw earlier and also with these hypersonics, we've seen that they can be touched. And so in Israel, you have a state that is burning. I mean, look to the point, if they have alienated a large portion of the American public. Imagine what they have done elsewhere, where we don't have that kind of entrenched cultural guilt. They're a pariah state. Their aura of invincibility has been shattered. Their demographic crisis is very real. And look, let's be honest, the Lakud Party and Benjamin Netanyahu are in a very bad situation. Their coalition is fracturing. He is very likely to see

the inside of a prison cell if he can't keep up this series of random wars going on to grant him emergency powers, which I want to say I think is a relevant factor in this as well. I think that he is basically like, what levers do I have to push to keep some sort of war going on, both for the legal reason and also for the fact that, you know, as we mentioned with the political formula of, you know, the Iranians basically being, we protect you from the great Satan. The political formula of the the Kud Party seems to effectively be, I can tell America to do stuff and I can protect you from XYZ. Those are very tenuous foundations.

And there is an Israeli left, right? I don't pretend that those people are necessarily our allies, but they would result in a different foreign policy. And one of the other interesting things, I don't know if you remember, do you remember when the IDF got hacked a while back? Oh, that's huge. It's huge. Yeah. It is. And so in a hack, I was talking to stormy about this, right? It's actually very difficult to tell what they got into, right? Because they broke in and you're sort of looking around. And so, one, we don't exactly know what the Iranians know. But one of the interesting things is a lot of these strikes have been directed towards speculated but not confirmed. Israeli military sites, right, that were big, big secrets, sort of like their equivalent of like Cheyenne Mountain, which I guess everyone knows where Cheyenne Mountain is, but you understand what I

mean, like very, very secret location. They've been hit, which to me, that indicates, one, Iron Dome coverage is nowhere near as universal as we've been led to believe. And two, if the Iranians know where that is, they probably know some other stuff, right? And so, again, right, it seems as if, you know, Israel has accomplished at least some of their objective in Gaza, right? Largely, they have seemed to have done so. And look, they lost people doing it, but they won, right, at least in some capacity. They may well win in Iran, again, in whatever capacity we can imagine that being. But that doesn't fundamentally change the trajectory of Israel, which is they're facing a domestic political crisis. They're facing an international security crisis. And also,

Also, they're very much facing a demographic crisis, right? That they, at very bare level, require soldiers. Their population is shrinking. The part of their population is growing is exempt from military service. I don't know if you noticed, but they tried to force through conscription for, is it the Hesidim? What group or the ultra-Orthodox? I can't remember. Was it the Habodnics or was it?

That's what it was. Sorry. I was cycling through my terms. I hadn't hit that one yet. But point is, right, these are all very real issues. Now, I'm not one of these people that thinks, like, oh, the crisis is tomorrow, you know, Israel is going to fall. But I think it's important to say that these are very real issues. And while striking Iran may put a pin in any of those issues, right, it may keep Netanyahu in power.

You know, it may kind of tramp down, you know, domestic descent. But one, how long can you keep it up? And two, what will it accomplish? I mean, I think that it's very likely this will create a humanitarian disaster. That seems to be the most normal response. But as we've seen in Gaza, simply creating a giant humanitarian disaster does not end the conflict. Gaza still has Israeli soldiers in it. They're still being killed.

They're still in this kind of, they're still getting rocketed from time to time. And look, like, do I think that those rockets are likely to bring Israel to his knees? No. But this move ultimately doesn't change the calculus that Israel is in a very, very bad position. And I think that the other calculus that's important to bring up is that the left, and they did get smashed for it, but the left in America is incredibly anti-Israel. The right as it ages, as it people die off, as we know, the boomers will reach their 50% mortality rate around 2026, which of course, I mean, a, we know how mortality curves go. That only increases every year. They have alienated them as well. And so, again, if your political formula is I can make America do whatever I want. And a larger and larger

segment of American society basically wonders, what do we get out of this? If internal to the Republican party, these new interest groups, which, you know, sure, are not in complete and total control, but our real voices with power are also opposing this. It's like, well, look, like, let's extrapolate this trend line 20, 30 years out and just acknowledge, and look, I'm sure you can say this, Pete, look at the difference between GWAT and now, right? This is much more opposed than it was, much more opposed by young people who are going to be the ones eventually to fight. And look, at a certain point, it's like this trend line will not be reversed. I would love for it to be in a much advanced state now, right? I'd love for this to not even be a conversation. But I think we need to look at

this soberly, right? There is a very real possibility. We will strike Iran. That's not good. I don't want that to happen. But ultimately, I don't think that changes the calculus for the direction of Israel as a country or for the Israel lobby in America. So let me, let me throw this out there. So on Sunday, I got reports, like three different reports from people, not people on the inside, but people who are like one person removed from the inside. And one told me war was imminent, and they heard that from somebody deep on the inside. Another one said the war, this was not happening,

that it was, there'll be a lot of bluster, but there won't, you know, we're not going to get involved. The third one was the people I know are really scared that there's going to be a, a false flag attack in the United States. And that's what's going to draw everybody, all the people who are against Middle East wars, all the people who are like, you know,

making the jokes about, well, I'm not taking the side of two, I'm not taking the side of either group if they can't eat bacon. You know, it's like making those kind of jokes. Well, this automatically pulls a false flag that you can blame on Mos, on, you know, on an international Islam is something that is going to cause all of those people who, you know, we're like, well, we don't want war with anyone.

We, you know, right back into being, we're our, rah, ra, ra, Israel supporters. And, yay, let's go blow, let's go blow the Muslims up. Yeah, I mean, look, that's a very real risk. again, as we mentioned, our overlords are very, very canny when it comes to, you know, the power of narrative, right? The memetics. And, you know, regardless of your opinions on 9-11, I generally tend to fall on the Ryan Dawson side of that, right? That was a huge boon for the regime. They were able to ride that insane wave of support, that insane wave of, of patriotism into a war that they wanted, right? You know, the old joke runs, you know, why does a guy from Saudi Arabia, you know, fly a plane into two towers and three months later, we're in Iraq, you know, or we're in Afghanistan, right? Obviously, those are not particularly connected. There's a tenuous thread, but it's what they wanted to do anyway. I mean, look at the

main, right? We could argue if that was a boiler explosion or something else, but that conspiracy has been around for a long time because, again, it was. something we didn't have a good reason to do. We didn't have a narrative to sell. And it became endemic, right? It became everyone was saying, remember the main, or everyone was saying, you know, never again. Or everyone was saying, you know, you can insert your slogan there. Right. These people are very aware of the power of narrative. Now, I will also say, the subculture of dissent in America is radically different to what it was in the early 20th century or at the early 21st century. I'll put it this way.

A lot of the guys kind of one generation older than I am got their start either in the truth or movement or in reaction to GY. They started out at Bush protests. That is very much around and alive. And so another part of this is that American culture is fractured. One of the consequences of immigration, one of the consequences of the kind of skinner box in your hand that feeds you exactly what you want to say is that there really is no American mass culture anymore, at least not in the way it used to be. So the ability to pull off a coordinated narrative push like that, it's tough to do.

I mean, we saw this during COVID, right? That was a huge push. It had its means. It had its images. It had its slogans. And okay, it worked, right? They got into power. They locked everyone in their house.

They were able to do a lot of what they wanted to do. But they didn't have everyone. You know, they had a plurality, right, but a slight one. And again, I don't think we should delude ourselves. I think if that, you know, hypothetical, you know, nuke goes off in Houston, which, you know, someone, it could be argued that nuking Houston would be doing us a favor, but I digress. I think we do realize that there will be a response to that. People will not necessarily all go along with it.

But just as I said earlier about being very, very careful what you say if America gets involved in a war, that's another situation where people are going to have to be very, very careful. Because there will be a cultural blank check written. And, you know, as we've said, these people are burning through their capital. It won't be, and I realize saying blank check and then quantifying it is poor grammar, but whatever. You know, that move every time you press the lever, it doesn't work quite as well. but they can still do it, right? They're still in charge. And again, I think that they are ultimately fighting a losing battle, but I think we have to be very, very cognizant about what a, you know, post-912 America looks like. Obviously, I really hope that doesn't happen. You know, if something,

obviously, just for the loss of human life, that would be disastrous. But also, I mean, I think that we can look back at the last several years and say, you know, our tendency is in the ascendant where you're rapidly pumping above our weight. But that could definitely throw cold water on it, right? If all of a sudden it's you and the stinky hippies nobody likes, as we mentioned earlier, it's a much harder battle to fight. So again, I really, really hope that doesn't happen. It is a possibility we have to be aware of.

And like with everything else, right, if we consider ourselves realists, we fundamentally look at the situation as it is. That changes our game plan dramatically. Now, I will also say, if we take the Ryan Dawson narrative on 9-11, shall we say there was significant complicity within our government in that, right? If you believe him to be correct. Now, if there are already tensions running high, you know, between the Lakud Party and in the GOP, you know, we can argue about to what degree that is the case.

Who knows? Maybe they don't get USG to come along with them. But to be honest, that's probably the dark. timeline, right? We both end up in a full war, a real deal mobilization. And then there is another, there's a Black Swan event, a 9-12. You know, a nuke goes off in some place that's actually kind of nice instead of Houston. And we're straight back to 2001 again. And who knows, maybe the Super Bowl halftime show will get a little bit better. You might get creed again, but that's a pretty dark eventuality. I mean, it is a possibility, you know, again,

keep your eyes out or keep your eyes up for it but I mean there's no two ways to talk about it that's a very very bad result and I think that would I mean really that would kill the maga movement as well you know any sort of you know identifiable political force it would be something else it would be the Republican Party again in which case we're in a much darker world than we realized I think I should say right now that the person who is typing the comment that Creed didn't perform at the Super Bowl, but it was actually a Thanksgiving halftime. Sorry. Should really stop spurging out and calm down. It might have been. I was like four when that happened. So, you know, minor detail. Oh, my God.

That's so scary. All right. So, okay. So let's finish off talking on this. I got three different reports on what was going on. What that tells me is, and I think we know this, there are groups within this administration who, are vying for what they want.

And one's going to win. One may get placated. But there are, it's obvious that at least their choices are there. There's different. I mean, I tend to believe, you know, and I still catch, I catch crap every day. I have one spur a day come after me and be like, you know, you said to vote for Trump and You were all in on Trump. And you said if we had any criticisms, you were black, we're blackpilling and everything.

It's like, no, it's because I'm smarter than you. And any criticism you're going to give me of Trump, I've already thought of. I mean, what do you think? I don't know them all. I know, I know ones you don't. But the fact that we have at least a chance of a group that would more align, not aligned completely with us, but align more with what MAGA wants, you know, less war, more immigrants out of the country, things like that, is preferable over what Kamala Harris was going to be,

which was just going to be Joe Biden 2.0 and Barack Obama 3.0. So, I mean, I mean, do you feel that way? like at least, I mean, no time, I mean, I'm way older than you. No time in my lifetime has there been a regime that had like competing interests that were like completely opposed to each other. You know, it's the old Tom Woods thing. You know, the left is evil and the right is dumb. And, you know, usually on the most important things, they get together and do something dumb and evil. And it seems like now we have a chance to, you know, at least get our way sometimes. Yeah.

And I think that one of the other things that bears repeating is you see the same emails I do, right? You see the same follow request that I do. Anyone who is in even a, has a plausible chance of throwing their weight behind. the message that foreign wars do not work and are not America first. You need to do that. Because again, like we've said, there's a very real possibility that this turns very, very ugly for us, our movement, whatever you want to say, just America writ large. That needs to be done. This is a very serious situation. And again, I think that you're right. And to say that I don't regret voting for Trump is, is true. I don't imagine that if, you know,

heaven forbid it, Kamala Harris was in the White House, this would be going differently, right? And I think it's important to temper that and say that, look, like, better doesn't mean good and technically better. Like, look, like, if we really do go back to 2001, you know, we could, we could kick out all of the people we don't want here to get back to, you know, should we say, like similar demographics, we can kind of turn back the cultural clock to what was acceptable 20 years ago. Pat Buchanan wins the presidency. 100%.

Like, okay, that is directionally better, but that's not a win, right? We saw what happened, right? We were all alive for the 20 years after 2001, and it wasn't a great ride. So don't be lulled into thinking that that is, you know, a win in any way. It's certainly directionally better than, you know, South Africa, right? but that's sort of damning by faint praise, right? It's like this is a very, very serious issue, right? This is something that needs to be addressed and harshly condemned because at least in some way we see these people are reactive to public pressure.

And if you have the ability to use private pressure, do it, right? This is the time. This is the time to pull out all the stops. And look, if you and I are wrong, if this is 4D Chess, you know, if he turns around at the last minute and drops his payload on you know, another city and another place that we don't like. You know, we, great, I'm happy to be wrong. I would love to be wrong. But again, like I've said, over and over and over again,

we're fundamentally looking at the data we have. And at least currently, it doesn't look great. Well, I think the most important thing to realize is that, you know, you mentioned talking about, you know, the better and the good, we're never going to get the perfect. and we're never going to get, I mean, this is politics. This is a president who is being elected to rule over 400 million people probably, if you have 50 million illegals.

No one can do that. Sam Francis taught us that, you know, the revolution of mass and scale, you can't, it's just impossible. People who, the people who are still like, oh, you know, federalism is, you know, 100%, you're going to get a president in there, and they're going to speak for everyone, and they're going to, no, that's not going to happen. So basically all you're looking for at this point is the better. You know, the J6 people are out. To me, like, if that's all that happened, that's, I'm fine with that.

You know, and the people, and, you know, you will get people who say, you've had people say, well, it would be better if they were in there. It would be better if Trump would have lost and they would have stayed in there because that would have, you know, created more like political, political prisoners and martyrs. And it's like, is there anyone in your life you love? You know, because it's like, I mean, just picture someone that you care about is in there. And all you want is them to get out.

You know, so, you know, when I'm looking at this, it's like, are we having some wins? Have we had some wins? Yeah. Is it going to be perfect? No. Is it going to be good? I don't know. You know, it's like the jury's still out.

But what we have is we have a real right that understands that, at least if immigration isn't handled, then we don't have a country. And then you have a left that realize if immigration is handled, they have no power. Like one of their main power. So you have two groups that are fighting for their lives and fighting for their existence and fighting for power. And only one of them historically and especially recently knows how to use power and wield it and has the will to do it.

And that's not the quote unquote right. So you get half to temper your, no one came into this. I mean, if anyone can find where I said, oh, everything's going to be perfect. I was like, this is like breathing room for four years if Trump gets in office. That's exactly what I said. And if you're pissed off that I said you were blackpilling, I really don't care. I mean, you know, I mean, things are better now. Kamala Harris is, I mean, Oren used to talk about this all the time.

We talked about three years ago we were talking about this, that the trajectory of Joe, Biden was, like podcasters would be taken out and jailed. I mean, if not life ended, that's the and when the left gets back in power, because they probably are going to get back in power someday. That's something to worry about. Not podcasters at that point. It'll be anyone who has opinions as such as we do. Yeah, it's, and actually, you can maybe make the argument that much like nuke in Houston throwing podcasters in jail might be a net benefit for society. But either way, right, you're largely right, that this is a reprieve. And to me, right, I think that in a competition with conservatives, we win and are winning.

Now, admittedly, it's a slow trend, right? It's not an immediate thing. It's not happening tomorrow. But look, like, that's the reason I think that this is a thing to kind of throw my weight behind, right? Obviously, look, I'm here. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think there was something to it. But to your point about the left, that's a very real possibility. I think that the cultural force behind, you know, social progressivism or whokeness or whatever you want to call it, I do think that's waning. I don't think it's cool or fun or sexy anymore.

It's seen as low class. But the problem is you have a lot of people who have put a lot behind that. They have made that their identity. In some cases, they have made, should we say, radical surgical changes to themselves in support of that ideology. They're bought in. And I think that we've got one real hard push from that left. I do. And obviously, you know, I ultimately think that that system is failing, right? I don't think it's, I think it's Zenith was 2020.

But I think we're, you know, much like I said, we there's a, you have to prepare for the possibility that we get involved in. this war, you know, that we get dragged back into kind of the, a wartime, you know, cultural dialectic. Similarly, the left comes back, I think it's very smart to prepare for things to get nasty, because we saw them signal, right? Especially towards the end, it's what they wanted. And to your point about the J-Sixers, right? Like when we look at power, you know, what is the definition of a win?

And, you know, obviously the simplest definition is anything that increases your power or decreases your enemies. But on even more basic level, it's punishing friends or punishing enemies and rewarding friends. And the J-Sixers, they got a huge reward. They got out of prison. And that, again, right, that understanding of very basic politics is why Trump was catapulted to success because he understood that. Right. He wasn't one of these kind of institutional loyalists who was too worried about respectability, you know, didn't want to do nasty things or punish people because, you know, we care about the rule of law. We care about the Constitution. He's a brawler in a way. And that's why people like him. And again, it would be a crying shame to see him throw that away for something like

this, you know, for a stupid foreign war that won't accomplish anything, that won't, it certainly won't help America, won't help Israel. And to your point, again, about the reaction to this, Trump's ability to punish enemies has made a lot of people very, very upset. And when he's out, either due to simply, you know, stepping back from politics or look, he's an old man, right? That haven't forbid it, his mortality is past approaching. I think we have to also prepare for the fact that there may be a counterpunch that we're not going to like.

All right, Jay Birden, let's cut it there. How can people support your show? So it looks like, yeah, we've been talking. And it looks like you're really good at this. And I think a lot of us agree that you should be doing this full time. So how can we make that happen? I appreciate the compliments, Pete. So as you can imagine, my main output is the creatively named Jay Burden show.

You can find that on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you want to listen to podcasts. If you want to support me, I would really appreciate this, right? As Pete intonated, this is what I do now. You know, it's no longer a hobby. And so if you find me on a podcast platform, there will be links where you can donate directly. Very, very soon, the business model for the Jay Burton show will be changing. As listeners of the Pete Kunas show, it will seem very, very familiar to you, where there will be a free and a premium stream, right, of content. same content, right? You won't miss anything. But if you want to check out the Jay Burton show early and ad-free, well, you can do so on

Subscribe Star, Substack, Patreon, pretty much anywhere else. And again, Pete, I really appreciate the opportunity to kind of launch from your platform. Obviously, you're a huge influence on me, both politically and also from a podcasting perspective. And I appreciate the opportunity, man. Yeah, I think you described yourself as, Pete Q younger with hair. It's pretty much that. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, well, you know, when I started doing this, it was, um, my model was the Tom, was Tom Woods. They've just created worse and worse copies at the top.

It's like photocopying a photocopy until by the end. I'm, I, I've got to tell Tom that. It's actually funny. I don't talk about it much, but there is a period of my life where I listen to a lot of Tom Woods. And it's pretty old now. He has a great interview with RFK from kind of back in the height of COVID that I don't remember the number. It was probably a thousand episodes ago. But yeah, Tom Woods is a really talented guy.

And that in particular was a very impactful episode. So if you listeners are looking for recommendations, that's a good one to dig up. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of good old ones with him. It's funny when you go back through his catalog and you're like, holy crap, how did he, how was his second interview ever Ian Anderson, the lead singer from Jeff Routes Hall? Which is odd. All right, man.

I'm going to get out here. Thank you so much. True thing, man.