The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1336: The Reality of Iranian Intervention w/ Ron Dodson

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

65 MinutesPG-13Ron Dodson is Principal Owner & Portfolio Manager of a Texas hedge fund.Ron and Pete talk about the potential of military action against Iran.Ron at the American ReformerShips in the GulfHouse-Centric AI and the Return of the AristoiRon's SubstackRon on TwitterPete 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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How's it going? What's going on, Pete? It's always fun to be on this show and have real conversations where we can be a little more free. in our discussion, if you know what I mean. Yes, we can. So it's Friday. This is the 27th of February. You're probably getting a lot of the same reports I am

that countries are pulling their diplomatic personnel out of Iran. Apparently, Mike Huckabee told everybody, you know, last one out to Rotten Egg, get the hell out of the embassy. Yeah, what do you? It wasn't. So as far as those. diplomatic exit levels go.

It was one below the high. So you have mandatory exits. And it wasn't that. It was encouraged exits. I mean, what I'm hearing is that it's basically that the Israelis were going to

use pyramids their go time if we weren't going to do something. And that and we can get into the details of this, but, but I think Trump for, for various reasons, and we can, we can bemoan the state of, of where things are, but you've got to be realist about all this. The, the, the, the, ultimately it comes down to, if the Israelis jump in this deal by themselves, we're getting dragged in. Uh, that's, that happened last, uh, last summer. Um, I know the messaging

tried to gloss over that, but they went on their own and we got drug in. And the reason is, the short version of the reason is, is they very, you know, they hold us hostage with their, with their, you know, their Samson plan. Their nuclear, their nuclear, they keep telling us, look, we're going to, if we go this alone, we're going to use every means at our disposal. And you and I both know, and I think most educated. folks in the foreign policy establishment and the military analyst world know that if Israel goes

at this alone, and they've already told us they would, that this goes poorly for them after a certain amount especially without our THAD Overwatch, Thad Patriot, you know, Iron Dome is not built to

is not built to intercept hypersonics, and look, every real ballistic missile is hypersonic in its terminal phase. But maneuverable hypersonics especially, they're just not, they get lucky on some, on some low aspect shots. And we can talk about that.

I don't know how in the weeds we need to get. High aspect means it's the high aspect, you know, your aspect angle goes from zero to 90 degrees. If you're at zero, that means you're looking at the missile head on. It's much easier even for a, for a, for a. for the type of interceptor that iron dome is it's much easier to hit a high aspect angle goes all the way to 90 that means you're you're you're basically having a tracking shot on a hypersonic target they they can't do that that's what that's why our thad system tries to hit them at apogee at the highest point of a ballistic arc so um anyway point being is as i think trump feels very hemmed in

I think we're probably going to go within the next 48 hours. I'd be shocked if we didn't. I pray. I pray that the Iranians would come to, I say their senses. I understand their position, honestly. But I pray that the Iranians would somehow say, look, we'll go ahead and acquiesce to ending our nuclear program. That's not going to happen for a whole host of reasons. And I think we're staring at an Iran that looks a lot like Syria and Libya.

And those were humanitarian disasters. But Israel wants the other players taken off the board. And that's what I think in a big picture we can look at now, that we can talk about details from there. If they go at it alone, I mean, we saw what, what happened before. And also, last time, it wasn't only the United States who was tracking and looking to shoot down these missiles.

Jordan was helping. There were other powers in the region who were helping with this. I don't know how much help. I don't know how much help they would get this time from those powers, because it's, especially after what Huckabee said last week and the kind of reaction that the Arab world had to it. And I'm not, I know Iranians aren't Arabs. They're Persians. But, you know, they don't want, I mean, I think that people are really just sick of Israel at this point. And really, the only one that's going to give any serious, any serious assistant is going to, assistance is going to be the United States.

Yeah, Huckabee really salted those waters. I honestly haven't heard back channel wise any further developments from that. I'm sure there's been talks. I'm sure, absolutely sure that the State Department's been working overtime. You know, the Saudi, I mean, what I really hope doesn't happen, and I don't want to be alarmist. I really want to be as realist as possible. But remember, the Saudis and the Pakistanis have come to a certain understanding. And the Pakistanis and the Afghans are going at it hard right now.

Hard. You know, you just don't want this thing to touch off a region-wide war, conflict that could easily start collecting other, players the way, you know, a lint ball starts collecting, getting bigger, the longer you leave it in a dryer. You just, you don't want that to happen. And the problem is we've got some, look, I don't want to, I think Wittkoff and Kushner have, have done their best. I think Zionist Jewish guys trying to be your lead negotiators is a mistake. But it is what it is.

I don't think those guys are, look, it could be a whole lot worse. From our point of view, there's worse guys. I mean, we could have Lutnik over there, and I think that guy's showing his true colors now a little bit. He's been in way over his head, but that's more on the economic side, obviously. but I just think you have you have a real witch's brew of factors and players that could get sideways really quick if this you know I'll be honest in my discretionary I'm a systematic guy but in the discretionary part of my in in my hedge fund and in my family office we took all discretionary risk off the table today now it may turn out I hope that that was, you know, you don't want to make money on your hedges. I hope that turns out to be the wrong trade. I really do. I hope that we go, well, I wish we would have stayed in

this over the weekend and through next week. But that's me putting my money where my, that's where my convictions are. I think this thing could get a little sideways. Huckabee really messed up. Let's see, I don't think you're going to have Jordan, you know, will Jordan allow overflights because if Jordan doesn't allow overflight, then it's going to make, you're going to have to have a tanker stop with anything coming out of our, it's not the link of the Ford that's in the, you know, and the Ford doesn't have F-35s, believe it or not, our latest and greatest aircraft carrier cannot utilize the F-35. It's just F-A-18's, E's, E's, Fs and Gs. So the Gs are the growlers. That's your suppression of enemy enemy air defense platform.

But it can't use the F-35s. But those, the the F-18, although it has better endurance than its earlier version, is not a, none of these are high endurance birds. So you're going to have to tank if we can't overfly Jordan. And that's a mess. So I don't know how this works. You know, we'll see. You can't have a high sortie rate. This isn't Desert Storm where we're just rolling, you know, sorty after sortie, we can't support that. And we have a low magazine depth, probably three rounds of tomahawks. And so I don't know how this goes. I think the plan will be to hit hard, very hard with a not, try to have a knockout punch and bring them to the table quick. We'll see if that works. You think the point of the presence building up like that

was to, part of that was to try to bring them to the table and show them how serious you are. And another part of it is to be ready when, you know, if quote unquote negotiations fail. I think the plan was always gunboat diplomacy, absolutely is, hey, look, look at this. We've got parked right off your coast here. And I mean, we've even moved in the literal combat ships. not literal, but littoral. It's pronounced literal. The shallow,

the, basically your mind, your mind clearing shallow water ships. We'll see if they work. We have two classes of those. Neither one have been a particular success. But those have been moved in. So we're serious. But I think Trump was always hoping

as with the negotiations last summer, you know, I know a guy who was on that negotiating team and we did not want there to have to be any kind of conflict. Just come to the table, look what we can do, and you would think that after last summer, you know, did we completely knock out their nuclear pressure? Obviously not. Look, we're back at this deal.

But it was a pretty effective strike from the sense of you know, we barely got, I don't think we got shot at. We were able to suppress on the way in. You know, the bombs all hit the targets and we were able to get egress effectively. So from a, from an ability to deploy, employ the weapons as we at our leisure, we showed the ability to do that. But, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, the regime in Iran right now has no strategic tactically yes but strategic incentive to go along with

what we're proposing because the only thing that we've shown that will keep us from ultimately attacking or a color revolutioning you or whatever is a nuclear stockpile and North Korea was able to get it you don't see us going and doing this with North Korea and they are probably a that's a lesser other than their nukes, lesser capable group than Iran. I mean, Iran's a fortress, you know, geographically. You know, they don't have a ton of air power. I mean, they got some old F-14s. Hopefully, we can, I would hate to see the last few flying F-14s destroyed, you know,

but they can't employ a lot of aircraft. but missiles and radar and those kind of things. You know, the Chinese have been supplying them ever since last summer. So we'll see. What's your take on the Chinese releasing evidence that they can, in real time, show where our planes are, everything is? I'm incredibly impressed. I'm incredibly impressed, not with the technical complexity of what they did.

That's what they released is far below their capability. Trust me, you're seeing a downscaled. And I don't even know if that was a rental or if that was from their own platform. I haven't looked at it that much. What I am impressed with, though, is them having the the compunction to go public rather than back channel with it. Because what they're saying is, what they're doing is exactly what we should be doing with regards.

And we've tried to be doing with regards to Taiwan is make this publicly as expensive as possible. Now, the Chinese don't really care about public cost. But we do. We care about really, we're going to put our guys in harm. arms way. I mean, the Chinese see right where our boats are. We're going to, you know, we as a mass democracy for better or worse, we care about that. And we care what the perception is of, wait a minute, they know where all our stuff is. So I'm impressed with the Chinese. I don't like it, but I'm impressed, you know, that's exactly if I were in their shoes, they're doing, they are acting

in their self-interest and good for them in the sense of hopefully we learn a little bit from it. You know, this is how you going straight to Twitter. I mean, it's, I love the ball, pardon me, but I love the balls of it. It's great. And they've got a ship over there. You know, they got a ship sitting in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese Navy. Hold on. Let me, I'll tell you exactly which ship it is because I just was working.

on a write-up. Let me see. I know this is great listening for all your folks, but I'll tell you what, I'll send it to you and you can put it in the show notes, but they've got a boat over there, and that scares me because that boat better not look. The last thing we want is for us to have a get in a fur, in a naval furball and have a Chinese boat get shot at. I mean, we're. We're We don't want that. So, you know, or, I mean, I'm sure you're thinking what I'm thinking ahead of time, somebody else shooting at it and blaming it on us. You know, we don't want that.

So I'll come back to scenarios like that. But I want to ask you a question that would seem very rhetorical to most people. But I know you're a realist. You're not somebody who's like radically anti-war, radically pro-war. You will answer this question, honestly. What threat does Iran pose to an average American? I think Iran poses little to no threat to the average American. The problem is, is we are, here's the realist deal.

We live in a democracy and we have elections. and we have and we have the number one population of Jews in the world. This country has more Jews than Israel. It has more Jews than Russia.

Has more Jews than Poland. And so that is a political reality. And I don't have a problem with it being a political reality as long as it's held in realist, as long as it matches the overall self-interest of the country. In other words, I don't have us having, I don't mind us having a, you know, a hotline, a rational leader,

not Bibi, but a rational leader of Israel. We've got a lot of Jews here and they have a special, just as though if I were Italian, I would have a special place in my heart for Italy. I'm mostly English and Scottish and hey I get up every Saturday morning and watch Arsenal you know I get that I love that flag that's behind us on the show I like the St. George's Cross that means something to me it means nothing to me compared to my love for my family my town my state I'm a proud Texan my country I mean I I tear, I don't know about you, but man, with some of those team wins, and I watch both the women and the men win the gold in real time in the hockey, and I stayed with it for the flag raising ceremony,

and I teared up, you know, that is, that means something to me. And does, do I think it means that Israel possibly means more to a certain portion, not all, but to a certain portion of American Jews that America does? Yeah, I do. So I think we have to get to a spot where that tension is dealt with realistically, but we're not there politically. The lobby holds huge political sway. And this gets me to, you know,

question I asked to someone I know in the administration, I said, hey, look, if we're going to go do this and I do want to talk about some of the arm twisting that I think's going on with this, can we get a little something out of it? Can we get the lobby to back the SAVE Act? That if we're going to be a democracy, can we at least ensure that our democracy is legitimate? Because I don't think it is. I don't think you think it is. We have far too many people who have no business voting in our elections that are voting. And if the lobby got behind the SAVE Act, do you think we could get that son of a gun passed? Of course. So why don't we, hey, look, not to be too Machiavellian, because I don't want a bunch of Iranian people who have no beef with us to die. I don't. I think they're going to,

sadly, can we get something out of that? And I don't think that's going to happen because even admitting that the lobby exists publicly is considered. any submit it, even though everybody knows that it exists. And everybody knows that the FARA is not enforced for, for, uh, uh, Israeli operatives. So, um, that's my biggest issue. No, Iran does not pose a threat. Now, what does Iran do? Iran's a bad actor. I mean, Iran funds the African National Congress. I had meetings last week with a group from, uh, South Africa. Great guys. English, South Africa and Dutch South African that are working to have some better arrangement. I mean, South Africa, if you guys who are watching or listening, if you have any connection

whatsoever to what's going on over there, it's a disaster. And Iran is the number one funding source for the African National Congress, which is just a Marxist disaster. And, you know, Iran does it so that they can get. supposed cheap and easy brownie points at the UN. You know, and they fund some bad actors, you know, do I, and it is true that they had a training. They were funding, I can't remember, forgive me, I'm getting brain fog.

If it was Hamas or Hezbollah training group on off the North Shore of Venezuela, for instance, that's one of the reasons we went in to get Maduro is so that we could have carte blanche to take care of that. So they do some bad things, but are they a threat to, are they about ready to create a missile that can reach the United States? Absolutely not. That is zero. Do I think that they could be, if they wanted to, could they get a shotgun device, a nuclear device pretty quickly? Yeah, probably. But a shotgun device is very heavy. So we talked about this on a previous episode, but a shotgun device is where you have a, is you have a just below, you know, usually a cylinder of highly enriched uranium that's below critical.

mass. You have a rod that fits into that that's blown into it, usually via some form of, you know, C5, T&T. And you get a super critical mass really quick. That was the first bomb. The bomb that we put on Hiroshima was a very big. That's why we needed a whole B-29 to carry it was a shotgun device. That's what everyone who's first doing their first nuclear device. That's like the kindergarten level version. Not hard to figure out how to do. But you still got to kind of test it. And they don't have any ability to test.

But they could probably come up with one of those, I don't know, six to 18 months, maybe. But you can't stick it on top of a missile. These are massive heavy things. Now, an implosion device, you can, those are hard to make because it's the timing of getting all the, all the, that's where you have a subcritic, you have a critical mass,

but it's only super critical once it's compressed into a smaller area. And that requires the, what's very hard about that is, is the timing of the very powerful explosives that you encase that mass within. But you can get those pretty small. Our W88 Warhead that sits in our Trident, you know,

it's in the Poseidon, the Trident missiles that sits on top of those and used to be in our land-based missiles. You know, that, and that's a dual-stage weapon, so an implosion device that fuels a hydrogen fusion

secondary, that whole thing is only 18 inches around at the base and 60 inches tall. It's 480 pounds, thereabouts. You can put one of those on top of a missile real easy, but

That takes years of testing to get to, and they're not anywhere near that. So, normally that's plutonium, not, I don't know of an implosion uranium device. Maybe it's theoretically possible. I know a lot about a lot of things. I'm not a nuclear engineer. Anyway, point being is the very long answer to your very short question is, no, the Iranians don't pose. any threat to us as things go right now. They're a pain in the ass. They can do some things we don't like. They can spend money here and there that we don't like. But not even a whole lot of that.

There are a problem for Israel at the edges, but they're not really a problem for us. Yeah, I would argue whether there are a problem for Israel if Israel wasn't the problem that they are. Yeah, we only live in the world that we've got, right? So I don't know. I tend to agree with you. They've been much more rational actors than they have been portrayed as. I think most of their decision making has been along the lines of, yeah, you game theory this out. That's what most people would do.

In other words, they have always kept the threat that they've been very clear they don't want nukes. They haven't produced a nuke. They haven't done an underground test. We would know about it if they did. But they wanted that threat because that's the only thing that keeps us at the table. You know? And look, Israel would love to turn them into Syria because that means they're not able they are not a threat to what Israel wants,

which is Middle East hegemonic dominance. That's Israel's long game. Look, Huckabee wasn't lying when he said that. Look, he was clear. He said, I'd be fine if they took over the whole region. That's the game Israel wants to play. And they've used us to take all these other players off the, players that have been a pain in the,

the ass, but not real threats. Syria, Libya, now it looks like Iran. But, you know, it's going to be a mess. It's going to be a mess. I, you know, hopefully the plan is miraculously good. I just don't see how they can, how we can do anything without just turning it into a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster. But, you know, I'd love to be, I would seriously love to be wrong about that. Well, one of the things that our mutual friend, Darrell Cooper, said on Twitter was that, you know, basically what he's hearing is, is that the reason that Trump is trying to maneuver something,

you know, you would think that Trump would just go along with everything Israel wants at this point. And anyone whose eyes are open realizes that's not happening, I mean, Israel's going to get something. But I think what Daryl said was is that people in power are scared that if Israel goes this alone, they're going to end up using a nuclear weapon. Right. And that another power will use a nuclear weapon against them, and they will revert to the

Samson option and just fire off all their nukes in whatever direction they want to. That's right. and that going as Eric Prince would say going off script he usually means that about extra constitutional stuff here but but that would be very off script and you no one wants no one wants that you know I think that's a very realistic I think Israel wants us to think that's a that's a realistic chant that they absolutely would do that. You know, and with regards to, with regards to Iran,

I, you know, do I think they would do it? Probably, maybe not, but I'm like 50, 50, maybe 51, 49, and you can't make, you can't make these kind of geopolitical decisions based on, you have to have 90% certainty, you know. What would Iran do? If Israel went nuke on them, Yeah. Well, I don't know. You know, I don't do they, does Israel, I mean, there's multiple scenarios.

Does Israel try for a decapitation strike? Do they want to just turn the whole thing to glass? I mean, you would think that after what's going on in Gaza, that they would try to dial back the insanity. But maybe, maybe that they are so emboldened. by our lack of rhetoric against what's gone on in Gaza, that maybe they think they can do, you know, whatever. To me, they- What happened in Gaza?

There were a bunch of, Hamas was hiding behind every civilian and pregnant woman that was killed. Yeah, well, they turned it into the moon. You know, Gaza looks like the moon now. But Hamas just hides behind civilians. That's all they do. It's always human shields. It's not like putting Unit 8200 in the middle of Tel Aviv is using it, is using Tel Aviv as human shields, right?

I mean, look, Pete, you know, some of this stuff is a bit intractable because it goes back, you know, 70 years. And, you know, 1,200. I can go back, 1200, but, you know, we need that. talking about the particular, I'm talking about the particular execution of Herschel's dream. You know, it's, I think the answer to, I have a lot of, I don't agree 100% on everything, but I have a lot of respect for John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, you know, and Jeff's, Jeff's a Jewish guy, so he's coming at this pretty honestly. But, you know, just to, take it back to the original border,

take Israel back to the original borders, allow, create a neutral area in the West Bank that is demilitarized, and, you know, allow, I don't know, nothing that Israel's going to be happy with. And honestly, right now, I think they are full on in this march towards a greater Israel. I really think that,

I don't think, there's any turning them away from that. And as long as they've got us, you know, by the short hairs. And let's talk about why that is. This is where I really want to go with this, is why does, and again, to be realistic, look, I write for Claremont. I've got some really based Jewish friends that are awesome, and they think this stuff is crazy. And, and And, you know, and so I want to make sure people know that that I have a real problem with the current, the current expression of greater Zion. I don't have a problem with anybody having their own homeland, do whatever they want to, you know, live, as Schmidt would say, have their own way of life. I don't have a problem with that.

It's the fact that they're trying to, you know, they're the tail wagging us. as the dog helping us enforce them wiping out other peoples in order to have that way a life but but you know i'm not in a point being is is i'm not coming at this from some um i'm a you know i'm a i'm a i'm a i'm a i'm a self-admitted squish when it comes to to to jewish you know jewish folks i like you know whatever i don't have a i don't you know that's just not my thing That being said, they do walk, they do know they have us by the short hairs. And why is that? Well, since, and I think it's right around the Reagan period.

You know, Nixon was, he was no, you know, not a phylo-Semite, but he got along very well with the, with, you had this very weird transition from JFK who was, you know, not our guy, but on these things, he was very circumspect about what was going on in Israel. I mean, maybe it got him killed, right? I don't know. We've never talked about JFK, so I don't know where you are on all that. But I know that the guy who wiped out Oswald was part of the, you know, the Jewish mob here. And Rubenstein, Jack Ruby, was we have a very big presence of Jewish organized crime here in Dallas.

It's why the mafia has never been here. I hope I'm okay saying that out loud. But trust me, that's always been the case here. And the Italian, the Sicilians have never been able to make inroads into Dallas because of that. That's just not their territory. But there's always been that presence here in Dallas. And maybe, and JFK was pretty hardcore about Israel not getting nuclear weapons. And Israel did not like that.

Did it get him killed? I don't know. I don't know. I know it wasn't the Russians. The Russians called us and said, hey, you got this nut down and meeting with us in Mexico City who's making, you know, overtures about wanting to kill Kennedy. That ain't us. The last thing the Russians wanted to have the killing of a U.S. President on their deal, right? They did not want that. But so you go from Kennedy to LBJ and LBJ absolutely kind of goes. the other way. There are some stories about smuggling weapons in into Israel, preparing for the Six Day War and all that, that

LBJ absalom. And we know that LBJ helped snuff out the story on the liberty. And so LBJ kind of goes the other way. And then you get Nixon, and Nixon tries to ride that bicycle on the tightrope. He really does. He realizes

is that, hey, look, we've got the Shah, who's on our side. Nixon and the Shah got along swimmingly, and he can deal with the Israelis, you know, didn't want further fighting to erupt with Egypt. And so he tries to really ride that. And I think, I think, I think Nixon with his, his, his, I know he cussed like a sailor, but the guy was a fay. I mean, he was a Quaker. He had this kind of deep-seated faith that he wanted to treat people who had been persecuted

gently. He really did. And so I think he tried to ride that tightrope, so to speak. And then you get, you know, you get Ford who Ford was just trying to keep the country from falling apart at that point. and Carter was a mess. You know, he gets the, he gets the peace agreement with, with Began and Sadat, but that was at the cost of us giving both sides a bazillion dollars.

So, just in case you don't know, it's Israel and Egypt are numbers one and two, and they're not always, Israel's not always number one, and Egypt's not always number two, but they are number one and number two in four and eight. Okay? And so that's how you got the Began Sadat, Manakam Began, Anwar Sadat peace deal is we're just going to buy them off. And that was Carter's deal. But it really didn't have anything other than that. And that was great.

It's just cost us a crap ton of money. But then you get to Reagan and things change. It's like you, it's the attitude in Washington became, this is our protectorate now, almost. And we sold them a bunch of F-16s. They used F-16s and F-15s to go take out, oh, good night.

What was the name of the reactor? but that was in 79 or 1979, 1980, using U.S. hardware. And that moment, I think, solidified this because if you remember, it was a pretty ballsy operation that the Israelis pulled out. They had the call sign, basically flew in very, very tight formation and had a civilian call sign in order to go over.

none of the other countries knew what they were doing. This is before stealth. These were 16s and 17s. I mean, 15s and 16s, so Eagles and Vipers. And they take out the reactor. And everybody's pretty impressed. And at that point, it became politically the thing to align with, hey, well, because remember, we're coming out of Vietnam

where we got our asses, I mean, God bless those. guys. They were hamstrung by the rules of engagement. It was a weird fight. We probably shouldn't have been over there the way we were, but we got our asses kicked all the way back to, you know, all the way back to Saigon and the famous pictures of us flying off the roots, just like in Afghanistan, okay? And we had a ton of refugees from Vietnam come over here. And we were trying to identify with winners. And that changed this attitude towards Israel from, okay, all right, to, yeah, we're with them. And that happened on Reagan's watch. And it was very much followed by George Herbert Walker Bush. By that point, I think the Mossade CIA sharing of assets,

even though on the ground, those two groups, the clandestine services and Mossad do not get along. It's at the political level that they get along. But anyway, point being is this attitude towards how we treat Israel and it becoming almost like how we would treat, I mean, we almost love it more than like, I mean, Puerto Rico, for instance, which is right off our shore and is our protectorate, or, Is it a protectorate or is it a territory? I always get those two confused. Commonwealth.

Commonwealth. But you don't need a passport. That's our land. But we treat Israel almost as it's more important, right? Or more important than Guam or American Samoa or the U.S. Virgin Islands, these places that are United States, right? And that changed in this period of time. And that's kind of where I see it changing with that one operation. And with us trying to regain, you know,

this this you well you saw it with the with what Nixon the Nixon the Nixon testimony that just came out was was foyed out

with that the CIA finally released where or justice department released where he basically said look I'm not going to defend myself even in Watergate because in doing so I'm going to have to reveal all things that will reflect so poorly on the on on the on the US as a whole and on the military specifically and we just couldn't afford I mean what a patriot Richard

Nixon was he just took one for the team at the cost of his own legacy now that's being recovered thank God a patriot but but you see the attitude there in the mid-70s that we were we were really limping along there and so I think I think this attitude change with Israel came about as a result of that and with some of the stuff they did, you know, they kicked ass in a couple of little operation, in a couple of wars and a couple operations and we wanted to be associated with that and didn't realize what we were biting off in doing so. I mean, you know, so they have, so now with the lobby and with the power politics

in the Middle East, you know, you've got these, it would be very easy to, in theory, to say, look, let's let Iran have a limited nuclear capability as a balance of power there, both against Turkey, which is the up-and-coming wanting to be the regional hegemon. They built bases down in the Horn of Africa. Israel's now committed to building a base down there in Somaliland, which is the northern part of Somalia. And that all sounds good. But the problem is you have this idea of nonproliferation and why is that that to us realists that we we kind of push against that but here's here's the logic behind nonproliferation is you want to in game theory if you have a Mexican standoff the more players you which is what Matt is mutually sure

destruction is it's a Mexican standoff you you want the as the number of trigger fingers and players increases, the stability of the system decreases. And you have to assume all are rational actors. Now, while I think Iran has acted with pretty good rationality, that is not the security, you know, the foreign policy establishment and does not hold to that. So, that's why you're going to have non-proliferation. And there it's just so the idea of giving allowing Iran to have you know say five to 10 nukes and also non-proliferation mad depends upon a second strike capacity in order otherwise it doesn't work right if they can take all your all your bullets out with their first strike they can't you you're not dissuaded from doing that by their second strike

capacity. And no one's arguing to give Iran 100 nukes, right? So it's just not going to happen. As much as that might work in theory, it's just not going to happen, not in the even our foreseeable future. So here's where we are. So Israel's got us by the short hairs. And if if they go it alone, if Israel goes alone against Iran and it starts to go badly, which it would. It's 90 million people versus eight. And even though Israel is very capable for that eight million, it's still just eight billion, you're going to get drug into it because the political cost is too high to not from the world. Because we've supported Israel all this time.

Look, you're the guys who made them what they are. You're the guys who have, now you're going to let them just get new. It's just not going to happen. Not nuked, but, you know. So we are where we are. I hate that, but it is what it is. And I think Trump is in a position where he feels very alone. I think he feels like we know that IDF is all through the Pentagon.

I would be shocked if Mossad isn't at some level or at least a fellow traveler somewhere in the, in the in the west wing um i don't say that as a judgment against us i'm just saying that's how would you know you know um and so he feels isolated and alone and with his backup against the wall and as opposed to allowing israel to own all the terms he's going he's like look if i'm going to get drug into this, I might as well be, I'm going to choose the time and place and implement and how this goes. I don't want to get a call in the middle of the night that BB's sent rockets over to Iran and now I got to figure out what I'm going to go do, which is what happened last June. So that's kind of where I think we are. I don't like it, but it's where we are.

Well, when you, if you argue that the reason why the United States government sided with Israel because they were, you know, a success at the time, doesn't that, doesn't that imply that basically a dying empire where you, you have to, oh, we need to, we need to side with these people who were, I mean, who only are, are actually rising because. they can take our resources, steal our nuclear material, do all this, steal our money. Yeah. Yet we're a dying empire. I mean, sure, yeah, did some ass kicking in Iraq, in Iraq War I. But everything after that turned into a clown show. I mean, especially the initial invasion of Afghanistan, allowing, you know, allowing bin Laden to escape into Pakistan. I mean, that's one of the...

Yeah. Absolutely. So, so multiple answers. Let's go, let's go very meta first. When people have feel nostalgia for the United States, when do they feel it for? The 1950s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, right? They do not feel it for the 60s. Well, maybe some, you know, old burnouts feel it for the 60s. But, but, you know, the 60s were, you know, sexual revel, all these things that have led us down the path were in now culturally. And the 70s, look, I lived through the 70s. I was, my earliest political memories were of Watergate. It was, you want to talk about, you think, everybody was saying, well, it's just we're trying to bide time until the Russians take over the world because we are the dying

empire now. So this is not anything new. You know, and then Reagan came along and it was, like Katie bar the door because we were going to have a 700 ship navy and 10 aircraft carriers and the you know this uh you know and then Clinton uh for the disgusting rapist that he was you know he kept the party going so to speak and we actually had a budget surplus under under Clinton. That was mostly thanks to contract with America, but Clinton was a president. And so people feel very nostalgic about the 50s and the 80s and 90s, but not about the 70s. It was a mess.

And so this isn't new. And could you turn it around quickly? Yeah, but it would take exercising political will that I'm not seeing willing to be exercised. And I'm not talking about going off script. I'm talking about, you know, again, Reagan made Will Tanner is going to be up my rear about praising Reagan.

Will's awesome. If you're watching Will, love you, brother. And I'm not. Reagan made some really bad mistakes. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, amnesty deal was terrible. So, and, and, and there were,

were some other questionable things. But, man, from where we were coming from in the 70s, dying empire, people were putting dirt on our faces, you know? So, anyway, point being is that you can turn this around with the resources that we have. But you've got to get things like the Save Act. You've got to get things like getting, can you get your own senators on board? You can't have Murkowski's just flipping you off. You can't have phone. well, you know, I don't know. You know, I don't want federal takeover or federal elections. That sounds kind of bad.

I mean, it's a joke. So I think that Trump is the type of guy who's so big picture, and he's great at that, man, I love the guy. But he's so big picture. He wants Susie to run the day-to-day in the West Wing. And Susie's not one of us. And Susie, hey, look, as much as she bugs me, she keeps the trains running on time. She runs a very tight ship.

But she's not ideologically a right winger. She thinks we're nuts. Everybody read the Vanity Fair piece. So you're not going to get, and that's who is going to whip, hey, the White House is going to come after your ass if you don't get on board over here. and that's just not going to happen with Wiles running the White House. And she's Chief of Staff. That's who I'm talking about. Susie Wiles.

Her dad and my dad were very best friends. So I've been around Susie a little bit. And she was very cordial, very nice. This has been years ago back in the odds. But, you know, so it's just not going to happen. It's going to take another, it's going to be the next regime. or a major shakeup in the cabinet. I just don't know.

I don't know if that's in the cards. I just don't. I'd love to. I'm not trying to be a downer. I'm not trying to be a fatalist here. We're of one mind on where we want this thing to go. I just, I don't know if it's going to happen. That's kind of me being realist Ron.

And I'm not blackpilling. Again, I think you can pull a razz. it out of this hat. I really do. I don't even think the midterms are a fate accompli right now. I don't because the secondary, everybody's looking at the general numbers. General Democrat versus General Republican, but General Democrat, General Democrat does not, isn't running. And general Republican isn't running. You've got specific guys. And those numbers aren't that bad. So, I'm not even a doomer on the on the midterms, but you better get your ass in gear right now about getting this show on the road.

And I think Trump wants to get this Iran thing behind him quickly so that they can move on. And right now it's just, you know, that's why I think something's going to happen. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. You know, I guess you also have to have the person. of being in charge. And when you have these judges running around thumbing their nose at you, when you have states that are completely basically lost, I mean, California is, we don't even know what

California is anymore. Minnesota. Isn't that sad? I mean, when you and I are kids, I'm a little bit older than you, Pete. We wanted, everybody wanted to, when we were kids, everybody wanted to get rich and move to California, man. and it was heaven. The beach boys.

The beach boys existed because they wrote songs about California, about living in California. Dude, surf music, are you kidding me? So I was recruited to go play baseball at Pepperdine. I don't know why I wasn't that good. I mean, I think I know why it was for some cultural, you know, I was a leader and all this kind of stuff. But wasn't that good a baseball player. But I went out there and visited it was heaven. it was you have you guys who are in your 20s and 30s now even you have no idea what 1980s

California was like whatever you can imagine it was better it was just and Texas was I love my state but imagine Texas except with perfect weather I mean La Jolla California Are you kidding me? It was just, you know, anyway. I mean, Calfrean was always weird. But I was contained. It was contained. It was contained.

I was saying this, just 10 years ago, I was like, I would, I was planning, I wanted to go to San Francisco to look at the architecture, see the historical and everything like that. It's like, I wouldn't go near that place now. No. Ten years. And, uh. So, you know, you're, you're, oh gosh, what was your point? We've got states, but I was saying he just has, oh, the judges.

The judges. Yeah. Yeah, so with the, let me, let me say one thing. And I know everybody's been bashing the Supreme Court for good reason. I mean, some of the logic and hypocrisy's been, been incredible and incredibly bad. That being said, let. tariff plan from a structure

standpoint was terrible. We were all of us who had paid attention to these things. We knew where this SCOTUS situation was there was could they have gone the other way

and made a legal argument for it? Yes. Because the logic they used to describe the tariffs as a tax would have absolutely due the same court or the same chief justice would have doomed Obamacare. So yeah, we all know that's a joke. Okay.

That being said, Lutnik's plan was terrible. It should have always been Scott Besson. And look, I got differences as far as how I live my life than Scott Besson does. But Scott Besson is absolutely at the top of the list for competency in that. in that administration. This dude is very, very smart, very competent. He looks at things transactional in his trades. That's how you want, not just secretary, but economic policy to be run.

And he should have always been in charge of it. Now that he is, it will be much, much better. But having Letnik, Lutnik was a joke to begin with. Has he been the face of some stuff in the past? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But he should have never been on that as the leader of that tariff plan. I mean, it was an emergency deal. If you'd use that emergency language as the way to phase in to a tariff plan, fine.

60 to 90 days, absolutely. But it was just, it was terrible. It was terrible. and and and but but they never dotted the eyes and crossed the T's and it was because you know anyway I can't say enough bad about that and I'm not saying that bad about the president I'm saying about you know it's it was very similar to to um to Wittkoff and uh and sorry hold on let me kill this right now. So the,

Whitkoff and Kushner are the exact wrong people to have leading the negotiations right now. Are they capable in some other areas? Certainly. But it's just a bad choice. That's the same thing with Lutnik. Here's a guy who's capable in some other areas, but he absolutely wasn't qualified

to be doing this grand, tariff strategy. And we're seeing some of these same problems that we had in the first administration, in the first administration, first Trump administration recur. So hold on. I got to, I might have to jump here here in a second. I've got a, let me see, three, 30. I got to probably jump here in five or ten minutes, sadly. I've got a family issue that's just come up. I apologize. No problem. We can wrap up. Why don't you just finish off talking about the judges and all this? The biggest issue that you have right now with the judges is that you have this idea of judicial supremacy to where the district courts have universal or given universal jurisdiction.

And that's a real problem because it means any district court can absolutely shut down anything you were wanting to do. So it's it's that's got to be. And there's a challenge before the court, but it hasn't been, it hasn't been brought up yet. I don't know the exact mechanics. But that's what's holding things up. Right. But the Supreme Court, you have to consider. that you've got three guys really with us,

three guys kind of with us, but you've got to give them a reason to be, but also know that Roberts hates Trump, so you got to get him over that hump. And then three that are against you, okay? And that's the makeup of the court. So you can't depend on the Supreme Court to fix your sloppy structure.

Okay, you just can't. You've got to, you've got to have your T's crossed and your eyes dotted. And there have been times where the administration has been fast and loose. And so that's the deal with the judges. And I don't, and Trump's not a lawyer. He's always hired the best lawyer. So he's not going to think through these things structurally. He's going to think, think through things in terms of ought to. And that's how that goes. All right. Well, I know you got to get out of here. So I will sadly, I can talk about this for a while, but I do need to do with this family situation. I apologize. I will make sure to link to all your,

everywhere that people can find your work. And thank you. Thanks for thanks for making time for me today. Pete, this was great. Yeah, I just wrote a piece, had a piece in the American mind on the Save Act and it's greater implications. And I've had some some stuff on my sub that I'm really proud of, one on Household AI, that I would love your listeners to check out. It's free for now.

And I would love to get their feedback. I was really proud of that piece. So check it out if you desire. I'll link to it. Thank you, Ron. Appreciate it. You bet. See you guys.