The Young Turks - Hegseth Gets Caught - March 31, 2026

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Donald Trump reportedly tells aides he’s willing to end the Iran war without reopening the Strait of Hormuz, signaling a possible shift as confusion persists over the timeline—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth admits it could be “three weeks… six to eight weeks… any number,” while scrutiny grows over his broker attempting defense investments ahead of the conflict. Markets reel as Wall Street closes its worst quarter in four years, adding economic pressure to the escalating crisis. Thanks to today's sponsors: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/tyt Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE: ziprecruiter.com/tyt If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — check out plaud.ai Explore opportunities in more than 60 countries and apply at http://PeaceCorps.gov/serve Use less data, get paid by switching to Noble Mobile: https://go.tyt.com/getnoble Thanks to our episode's sponsors: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/tyt Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE: ziprecruiter.com/tyt Check out Pocket Hose and use my code TYT for a great deal: https://www.getcopperhead.com If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — check out plaud.ai Explore opportunities in more than 60 countries and apply at http://PeaceCorps.gov/serve Use less data, get paid by switching to Noble Mobile: https://go.tyt.com/getnoble Hosts: Ana Kasparian SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. There's a whirl of opportunity out there beyond the typical nine to five, where purpose and grit come together, where the American spirit and ingenuity are welcomed in places that could really use your skills and your experience. We're talking about the Peace Corps. With volunteers living and working communities around the globe, it's been called the toughest job you'll ever love. tough because it asks so much of you to dig deeper, get your hands dirty, to go that extra mile,

to rise to the occasion and meet challenges head on. And the love part comes from being part of something bigger than yourself. From building bonds that last a lifetime, it's knowing your hard work transformed lives, including your own. After 65 years, the Peace Corps is still the toughest job you'll ever love. Explore opportunities in more than 60 countries, learn about benefits, and apply at PeaceCore.gov slash... serve. Let's go! What's up, everyone? Welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian. I am so excited

for the show today. Treata Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft will be joining us in the second hour today. He is an expert on, you know, foreign relations, international policy, foreign policy, and of course, what's currently going down in Iran. And I have a lot I want to ask him about including some questions about Iran's relationship to Armenia. They share a border. And, you know, Armenia is unfortunately surrounded by some enemies. Iran is not one of them, surprisingly. And so considering that Iran is one of Armenia's major trade partners, what does this mean,

this war for a tiny little Christian country? So we'll talk about that later in the second hour of the show. We've got a lot to get to today, actually. We'll talk a little bit more about the economic ramifications of this now regional war in the Middle East that was sparked by the United States and Israel attacking Iran. We'll also get into some details about what Trump is saying about negotiations that don't exist. Pete Heggseth seems to be getting more deranged day by day. And I don't say that lightly. We've got the receipts to show you.

So before we get to any of that, just want to thank our members for some. supporting our show and helping us to continue doing what we do. We wouldn't be able to do it without you. We're very picky when it comes to sponsors or advertisers, which is why we usually just have one or two. And we repeat their ads more than anything. But the real support comes from our members. So thank you for doing what you guys do, for giving us a voice and allowing me to be as honest as I want to be. And that's extremely honest without any fear of some corporation destroying our show and the company. So thank you. TYT.com slash join to become a member. We're going to be talking about the latest in the prosecution of Tyler Robinson.

He is the individual accused of shooting and killing Charlie Kirk. There was some explosive report yesterday that I want to get into. But that will be saved for our members only bonus episode after our two-hour main show. TYT.com slash joining to become a member. Okay, let's get to the news. So I wanted to start off by talking a little bit about, well, what's currently happening with the economy and some of the weird things we've been hearing from President Donald Trump, especially as it pertains to the Strait of Hormuz.

So what happened? Sorry, guys. That was weird, weird technical issue. All right, so let's get started. President Donald Trump might give up on reopening the Strait of Hormuz now that it is. effectively closed for Iran's enemies, effectively, right, because of this war that the United States and Israel has started. Now, there are people who are unhappy about this because obviously it's going to have some major ramifications for the economic health of our country, of the

globe, clearly. And then you have people like Ben Shapiro. He also is not happy about Trump's latest statement, likely because it's signaling that Trump might want to pull out of this war. Let's take a look at what Shapiro had to say. The president knows that the Strait of Hormuz, if left in Iranian control, would allow for the Iranian government to rebuild and strengthen. And let's be real about this, the horrors of Europe, meaning the leadership class over there, would basically just try to bribe the Iranians. Hell, they might build them a nuclear facility just to allow the oil to move through. These are the same Europeans who are happy to use Russian oil while simultaneously claiming the United States ought to defend Ukraine. So what is the most likely scenario here?

probably major action to reopen the strait, to grab Harga Island, to throttle the Iranian regime by cutting off its lifelines of the global economy. Because again, let's be real. The Iranian economy is non-existent. And if the oil flow goes away, they can't pay their boys. Right now, Iran is charging tolls for countries that are seeking to transport resources through the Strait of Hormuz. And they're actually kind of flush with cash at the moment because of the attack on them by the United States, which of course the U.S. was pressured to carry out by Israel. So congratulations, Ben Shapiro. But before we dive into this incredible Wall Street Journal report, I should warn you about a number of different things pertaining to President Trump and the fact that he just speaks

out of both sides of his mouth. You never know what to believe because he literally contradicts himself on a regular basis, not even day by day, within the same speech. So with that in mind, I just want to warn you to take what he says here, according to this Wall Street Journal report, with a grain of salt. We don't know what he actually means and what he's actually going to do. But nonetheless, Trump said that he is basically effectively pulling away from the idea of reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Others should do it. Okay, so here's what the Wall Street Journal reported. In recent days, Trump and his aides assess that a mission to pry open the choke point would push the conflict beyond his timeline. of four to six weeks.

Let's pause for a second. You thought you were going to effectuate regime change in a country that has a formidable military, a nation of 92 million people. You thought that in four to six weeks, I'm just going to mosey on in, you know, just change the regime.

Bibi told me that's how it's going to go down. It's going to be very easy, right? No, this isn't going to be over in four to six weeks, obviously. But let me continue with what he is saying. So Israel's Knesset just approved hundreds of billions of dollars to basically pay partially for this war. And they're not going to dedicate that amount of money for a four to six week long war. And I say that because Israel is going to ensure that this war drags on. Just like Ben Shapiro wants, we're going to continue fighting in this ridiculous war.

that is yielding absolutely no benefits for the American people or for our country, certainly not for our soldiers, who are essentially sent to that region right now to potentially fight on the ground and likely get harmed in the process of doing so. Nonetheless, Trump decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran's Navy. What Navy? Iran's Navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran. on diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. What? Okay, so let me ask you something.

If I come to your house and I punch you in the face, but also say, I want to engage in diplomatic talks, are you going to be interested in talking with me as I'm sucker punching you? Probably not. This is how ridiculous this administration is. So if that fails, according to the Wall Street Journal, Washington would press allies in Europe. and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the official said. In fact, this morning on Truth Social, the president basically posted that he's going to pass the buck to everyone else, even though the U.S. was the one stupid enough to get dragged into this war on behalf of a foreign country, Israel. This is what he wrote. All of those countries

that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you, number one, buy from the U.S. We have plenty. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Go to the straight and just take it. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore. Just like you weren't there for us, Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil, President Donald J. Trump. Okay. You made the decision, an incredibly stupid decision, to attack a sovereign country based on sloppy intel from another foreign country that wanted to drag us into fighting their wars for them.

So blaming or trying to pass the buck to any other country is insane to me. And at this point, aside from the fact that we are a military power, I don't understand how the US has any allies. Okay, we're throwing our European allies under the bus, our Gulf allies, who honestly, and I'm talking about the leadership in the Gulf, certainly when it comes to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, they were willing to throw the Palestinian people under the bus and make a deal with the devil. And they were under the assumption that if they host U.S. military bases,

says, well, the U.S. will be there to protect us if war breaks out. Well, has the U.S. been protecting? You know, I don't really understand how any country could trust the government of the United States. And I really hope that if you're watching this show and you happen to be in a foreign country, you understand that our government does a poor job in representing the American people, because overwhelmingly the American people don't want this war. Overwhelmingly, the globe did not want this war. I mean, not just for months, but for literally years, our government has been warned about how disastrous it would be if we get dragged into a war with Iran, especially on behalf of a foreign country. But here we are. Here we are. And he's trying

to pass the buck to European countries who didn't want this. They didn't ask for this. How is any of this their fault? And when he says, oh, you weren't there when we needed you, I thought we're winning this war. I thought that Iran has been obliterated. But obviously that's not the case, right? What's the latest trend in hiring? Skills-based hiring, which actually emphasizes capabilities over education and direct experience. According to experts, this leads to faster hiring and better job performance. Well, if you're an employer who's adopted skills-based hiring, the best way to ensure that your applicants have the right skills is ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter recommends smart screening questions to help you hone in on that perfect match

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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash TYT. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. They are under no obligation to enter this war or help the United States. This is not some NATO alliance situation. This is the U.S. needlessly attacking a foreign country, a sovereign country on behalf of Israel. And we, along with the globe, happen to be suffering the consequences of that, certainly the economic consequences of that. So as of 2 p.m. Eastern time today, the S&P 500 Dow Jones and NASDAQ were all up at least two percentage points from the day prior. markets do want a quick end to the war.

And Trump tends to do these manipulation tactics where he messages in a way that makes it appear as though this war is going to end very soon. It's not. And by the way, if this war does end soon, which would be great. It's not like I don't want that. I would want that. But even if the bombing stops today, it'll take years to rebuild the oil and gas infrastructure that has already been destroyed.

You guys have to understand, we are in for years. of economic pain and inflation as a result of what the U.S. did on behalf of Israel. And I'm going to keep saying on behalf of Israel because it's on behalf of Israel, unless someone can actually show me any evidence that this war is in any way beneficial for the American people. I haven't seen any because it's just not true. So let's hear from oil market researcher Rory Johnson about this whole mess. I think in this scenario of a unilateral taco, Iran having some kind of sovereign control over the strait, which again is just an unthinkable thing to kind of consider long term,

but that's what we're looking like we're at least trending towards possibly. In that scenario, I still think that oil prices currently, I'm looking at my screen, Brent's just about 117. I think that's still too low. I think that, you know, even though this unilateral taco is bearish or a lower price environment than the boots on the ground scenario, I think both of them are still dire and like a deeply untenable supply situation. I think in this scenario where Iran does continue to control the strait, then we're just going to, like, it's just setting us up very predictably for the next crisis. I think this is like this is a situation that can't last. Prior to the war, we were having about 100 plus 100 to 120 vessels crossing the street every day. You know, maybe we get back up to 50% of that.

Then with some of the offsets that we have in the system, like the Saudi East West pipeline and other and other sources, maybe we get back to something that's, you know, just a deep deficit rather than a catastrophic supply deficit. Is it? Are you guys tired of winning yet? I'm real tired of winning. Okay, I would like the winning to stop like right now. But anyway, gas prices are already sky high. And what we just heard is that the prices we're seeing now aren't even necessarily reflective of how bad things really are. So as you can see in the graph that I'm showing you right now, created by the Guardian, the average price of gas was just shy of $3 a gallon before the U.S. decided to attack you but now it's over $4 a gallon, and that's an increase of 35%. So Kevin Das, who happens to be an unemployed father of two in Detroit, Michigan, told the guardian the following.

I don't give a, I'll say crap about Iran, I don't want to pay higher gas. Now, we got to remember what motivated so many Americans to vote for Trump. he accomplished the popular vote. And it was because he kept driving home the message that he was going to do something about affordability. That his priorities were the United States and domestic policy. Now, I mean, look, politicians love to lie when they're campaigning. You should never just take what they say at face value. You should look at their record and see, you know, what have they done in the past?

And luckily, we had Trump's first term to look at. And he showed us time and time again that he loved to do all sorts of favors for his wealthy buddies who would pay him off, who would donate handsomely to his inauguration or to his campaign or who would overpay for rooms at his properties, you know, that kind of stuff. But when it came to average everyday American people, what did he do? What did he do to make your life better? He cut taxes to some extent. It disproportionately benefited the rich. Some working class people got a little bit of a tax break, but that was it.

That was his first term. Anyway, getting back to this story. So that's what Kevin Dasch told The Guardian. And I think a lot of Americans are feeling that way today. The stock market made some gains today, but it's taken a beating since the war began. So U.S. stocks are sent to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years. Since the war began, oil prices have surged 55%. Gold has been sinking, which is surprising, and bond yields have climbed sharply.

The S&P 500 has erased all of its gains for the past seven months. And even before the war began, Americans were facing some very serious economic struggles. These are economic struggles that don't just date back to the day that Donald Trump was elected for his second term. You know, these issues that we have with our economy really began in the 1970s, really began with the financialization of the U.S. economy. But nonetheless, when you look at what Trump campaigned on and what we're dealing with today, I mean, how could you not be furious with this guy? So, you know, in November of last year, the Bank of America Institute found that nearly one in four U.S. households, that's about 24% of the total, spend over 95% of their income on necessities like housing, groceries, utilities, child care, and gas, leaving little or nothing left over. That's about 31 million households or around 75 million people. Those are the people that Trump should be interested in serving. Instead, he's. He endlessly serves the needs and interests of the Israeli government to the detriment of the American people. And I just want to remind you again, we are dealing with record consumer debt.

So that means Americans are turning to credit more and more in order to make ends meet. And those interest rates on credit cards are real high. Remember when Trump said he wanted to cap him? Did he actually fight for that? Did he actually do that? No, he didn't, of course. Per economist Heather Long, the U.S. consumer sentiment just fell in March to 53.3, one of the lowest readings of all time. The only lower readings? November, December, 2025, after longest government shutdown.

April, May, 2025, after Liberation Day tariffs, which were also disastrous for our economy. And the June, July, 2022, during the inflation spike that results. resulted as was the result of the COVID pandemic. Now, we're, I don't know where this is going to end. I don't really have any solutions because this war is now very clearly a quagmire. It is not an easy war to exit. So Donald Trump cannot unilaterally exit the war against Iran, which has now blown up into a full blown regional war.

Because Israel wants this war to keep going. They effectively want a failed state in Iran more than anything. So if they don't want it and they keep dragging us into this, you also have Iran that doesn't want peace negotiations. They don't want a peace deal. They want to keep fighting. Like the idea that Trump is just going to be like, all right, we're done. We're just going to pull out of this and we're done with it. That's just not going to happen.

So the longer this war goes on, the more devastating it is for the economy, which is why every president prior to Trump was smart enough not to allow Israel to convince them to attack Iran. Okay? Like, I just can't get over the fact that one of the most moronic former presidents that we have, George W. Bush, wasn't stupid enough to do this. I mean, he was stupid enough to do the war in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan was also a disaster. We fought a 20-year war in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. on, congratulations America, all those soldiers who died in that war. You know when you're building something from the ground up, the to-do list never ends. When I started TYT, it wasn't just what if no one watches.

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That's Shopify.com slash t-y-t. All the innocent civilians who died in that war. And the crazy thing is that days prior to the war, the U.S. was actually engaged in diplomatic talks with the United States. I mean, the United States and Iran was engaged in diplomatic talks. Now, Iran thought they were good faith talks, even though they had no reason to trust the U.S. since the U.S. pretended to engage in good faith peace negotiations last summer and then proceeded

to bomb Iran's nuclear sites. But nonetheless, second time around, Iran's like, okay, let's re-engage in these negotiations. Maybe we can come up with a deal. And Trump attacked again. But days prior to the attack, you've got to remember that the Omani mediator, who was part of the negotiations between Iran, Steve Whitkoff, and Jared Kushner said that Iran was prepared to make some pretty big concessions to the United States, huge concessions, that even Barack Obama's administration couldn't secure in the JCPOA. Here's what I'm talking about. I believe is the agreement that Iran will never ever have a nuclear material that will create a womb. So you're saying all enriched material would be shipped someplace else, not Russia,

but? No, no, the current stockpiles that are still exist. The things that are still in around. I think that there is agreement now that this will be downblended to the lowest level possible. Okay. To a neutral level, a natural level, which means and converted into fuel, and that fuel will be irreversible. That would be significant if Iran agreed to that. It is very significant and I think we have agreement on that. That would be significant, wouldn't it? That was days prior to the U.S. attacking Iran. None of this needed to happen.

But here's the thing. None of this needed to happen if you believed, if you were duped into thinking that this war was really about nuclear weapons. Only morons like Gillian Michaels would think that. This is not about nuclear weapons. It was never about nuclear weapons. It was always about regime change or turning Iran into a failed state. That's what this is about. So until Israel gets what it wants, they don't care how many innocent people die.

They don't care about the fact that the globe is suffering the economic consequences of this stupid war. Israel wants domination. And they effectively convinced one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful country on the globe. to do their dirty work for them. This didn't need to happen. Anyway, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll switch gears a little bit. I want to give you some of the latest out of Iran.

And more importantly, I want to talk about the people who are profiting off this war. Come right back. I like tacos. What is up, everybody? All right, let's go to our messages, comments, lots to get to. First of all, thank you to Big Stan for gifting a TYT membership. Rose Orozco gifted five and with it, gal, gifted five as well. Thank you for supporting the show.

We really, really love and appreciate your support. We need your support. Let's go to some of our member comments. We've got Benu Faki, who says, as a Lebanese national, thank you for standing up for the Lebanese people. You care more than the Lebanese prime minister. The thing you have to understand is one of the strategies of the Israelis is to essentially install these like incredibly weak governments that are amenable that will go along with what Israel

wants, which is why I just, what is the current Lebanese government doing considering Israel announced that they're just taking southern Lebanon? What are they doing about it? What are they doing about it? It makes me really angry. Anyway, with a gal, thank you for the TYT memberships. She says, we are now drowning in the swamp. I agree with you on that. All right, we gotta get back. I'll read some more of your comments when we get back from the break. Welcome back to TYT. I just want to remind you all that one of the great resources to go to,

if you're looking to diversify your media diet, if you're looking to get both sides or all sides of any particular story, ground news. is a really great resource. It's a resource that I use myself to make sure that I'm keeping myself as honest as possible. I want to make sure that I don't fall into some sort of ridiculous ideological bubble where I'm only shown half the story and certain elements are omitted.

And if you're interested in diversifying your media diet, ground news is a great place to go get it. In fact, you can get 40% off the ground news vantage plan. If you just go to ground. Dot news slash t.yt, that's ground. dot news slash t yt. All right, I wanted to read a few of our member comments before we continue. Bloaded ego says anti-Semitism would be hating the Israeli government just because they are Jewish.

I don't hate them because they're Jewish. I hate them because they are genocidal scumbags. It's not that difficult to understand that. It has nothing to do with their identity. And also, I don't know if this argument is going to make any sense, but it's how I personally feel. There's something particularly narcissistic about thinking that people are sitting around obsessing over your religious or ethnic identity. I don't care about that at all.

Like, not even a little bit. Okay, I live in Los Angeles, one of the most diverse places on the planet, and I love it for that reason. The idea that I would like sit around and just like obsess about Jewish people in a negative way is ridiculous. No, I obsess about the fact

that we are tied to a country that carried out genocide in Gaza is annexing land in Lebanon, has already annexed land in Syria, has destroyed Syria effectively by getting the U.S. to arm Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra and all sorts of terror groups. Anyway, whatever. I just, I can give you specific reasons why I have a problem with Israel and has nothing to do with the Jewish religion or, you know, Jewish identity.

With that in mind, let me read one more. Don Dada Dragon says Jake Tapper, Chris Cuomo, and George Stephanopoulos are as complicit in genocide as Netanyahu himself. There's a difference between not knowing and speaking and knowing the truth and choosing to lie. anyway, when you know millions rely on your voice, the media must be held accountable for their role in the machine. Well, I think the media, especially cable news these days, is kind of being held accountable. I mean, it's a dying type of news, right? I mean, less and less people trust these institutions for good reason. And so that's why, even if in the short term, there's a lot of pain in telling the truth, I've certainly experienced that myself, it's worth it. It's so worth it.

Because I think all things dark come to light. And when people see that you're willing to put your ass on the line to tell the truth, you earn credibility. And credibility is earned. It's not something that's given to you. So I love that comment. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. All right.

Let's get to our next story. I want to talk a little bit about the ongoing problems we have in this country with insider trading. So Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, apparently tried to get his stockbroker. to invest in an ETF, a fund in the stock market that is tied to private defense contractors. And he did so days leading up to the war. Now, this was a pretty explosive report by the Financial Times, the F.T. And apparently his stockbroker reached out to BlackRock. So his stock broker happens to be Morgan Stanley.

Broker reaches out to Black Rock in February shortly before the U.S. tax Iran and asks about investing millions of dollars into the asset managers' defense industrial's active ETF. So for younger viewers who might not have much experience with the stock market, if you're wondering what the hell is an ETF, basically it's a fund that has multiple companies within it. And this is generally seen as a way of like hedging your bet, right? Because if one of the companies within the fund doesn't do well, others are likely doing okay.

And so that's how you hedge your bet by investing in an ETF. It's kind of like a mutual fund. But a mutual fund tends to have some higher taxes involved and all of that. So with that in mind, the companies within this ETF, you know, it carries the ticker IDEF. And the companies within it include Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Palantirondiers. And so according to BlackRock, the $3.2 billion equity fund, this ETF, which carries the ticker IDEF, pursues growth opportunities by investing in companies that may benefit from increased government spending on defense and security amid geopolitical fragmentation and economic competition. Now, why is this a big deal? I think it's a big deal because our secretary of war,

is the chief, oh, it's like the most depressing thing in the world, is the chief architect of this war against Iran, which is probably why it's going so poorly, right? But either way, he was privy to certain planning, certain discussion, certain information that the general public is not privy to. Thus, raising concerns that he was attempting to, or at least his broker was attempting to engage in some insider trading. here. So after Morgan Stanley tried to make the investment, Black Rock actually flagged, they flagged it internally. And then later, Morgan Stanley learned that the fund was not at all available to their clients to invest in. It's a relatively newer fund. It was launched in May of last year. And as the FT explains, let's take a look at this next graphic, they explain that although ETFs are designed to be

bought and sold as easily as a stock, their proliferation has meant that most big brokerage and trading platforms only carry a subset of the over 14,000 ETFs in existence. So in other words, the broker wanted to invest in this fund, but that fund was not available to Morgan Stanley clients. Okay, but just because it didn't happen doesn't mean that Hegsiths, and his broker weren't attempting to engage in something that you or I would be prosecuted for, insider trading. And so we also don't know if Hegsith then went on to invest in other defense contractors or similar funds that he had access to through his broker. So CNBC International spoke to one of the journalists, the Financial Times journalist who broke this story. And here's Paul

Murphy calling out the market manipulation and the war profiteering that's going on with the Trump administration. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at Westjet.com slash 30 years. What we've seen on the betting markets, the sites like polymarket and Kalshi,

and in the days before the Iran war, before the US and Israeli operations began, we saw a surge in bets by a handful of traders on those prediction sites, accurately placing bets that the Iranian regime was about to come under fire in that way. And that raised questions. That then sort of fade into the background. A couple of weeks later, there was a similar situation where just before President Trump put out a social media post that moved the market on the oil price significantly 15 minutes before, a huge value of bets were placed on the futures market. And oil futures contracts changed hands. 15 minutes before a post went out that moved the markets, which made whoever placed those

very well-time bets incredibly wealthy. You see what's happening here? You see the manipulation that's taking place right now? So it's pretty incredible. So the, you know, so Paul Murphy is correct in pointing out that market manipulation is taking place here. So, I mean, look, it's now happened multiple times. Trump keeps pretending like there are negotiations, like a peace negotiation process taking place with Iran right now as we speak.

And by the way, I totally misinterpreted one of his quotes recently because he said something about how like, oh yeah, we're totally negotiating with a new and more moderate, like more easy to negotiate with regime. And I didn't know what he was talking about. It's like because the regime that he's referring to is not more moderate. Ali Khamenei was actually far more reserved than I think most Americans realized because of all the propaganda and our media. He actually had, he was against building nuclear weapons. And in fact, some of the more hard-lined members of the IRCG felt that he was jeopardizing the safety of Iran and, you know, the country of Iran by not building that deterrent. I don't know if his son is going to be as reserved. I mean, there's really no indication that that would be the case.

So when Trump says we're negotiating with, you know, a new and much better regime, what are you talking about? I thought he was referring to the people he plans to install if the IRCG happens to fall. But no, that's not what he was referring to. Anyway, but he keeps saying that there are negotiations taking place. There are no negotiations taking place. I was watching an interview today with Abasarachi, the foreign. minister of Iran. And he's like, no, we're not having negotiations. They sent us their 15 point plan. We didn't even respond to it. We don't trust them. Okay, the trust is at zero, he said. That's a direct

quote. And so the reason why Trump does that is because he wants the markets to rally. And every time he does it for a brief period of time, the markets will rally, which is, it just shows you how stupid our stock market is. Like, it's so dumb. It's so dumb. Like, really, that's all it takes. It takes a notorious liar of a president to lie one more time for the markets to rally? Like, what is going on? But that's what's happening right now. Now, if you don't believe me, when I say there are no peace negotiations, I was amused by this exchange with Judge Napolitano and John Mearsheimer.

Let's take a look. You had offered that 15-point plan to run. Did they ever come back to them? Yeah, they came back on the 15-point plan. They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn't they? You make it sound like they made some concessions. Can you identify those?

Well, they're agreeing with us on the planet. I mean, we ask for 15 things, and for the most part, we're going to be asking for a couple of other things. We're having very good meetings, both directly and indirectly, and I think we're getting a lot of very important points. In fact, these meetings don't exist. I know. I don't know what to say, you know. What do you say about this? The whole thing is just, it's preposterous.

The level of incoherence here is just off the charts. This is the president of the United States, the president of the most powerful country in the world. You can only wonder what other leaders around the world, other people around the world are thinking as they watch this. It's just hard to believe that this man is in charge in the United States. It's just, it's embarrassing. I just want the international community to know. Try not to judge the American people based on the government of the United States. Okay, we're not all incompetent buffoons.

Unfortunately, one got elected. But nonetheless, getting back to the FTs report on Hegseth and the attempt at possible insider trading here, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, responded to the report on X and said that the allegation is entirely false, fabricated, neither Secretary Hegzith nor any of his representatives approached Black Rock about any such investment. Well, then, FT reached out to Black Rock and Morgan Stanley, neither one of them responded to requests for comment. But what's fascinating and incredibly counterintuitive is that the fund isn't exactly doing so well right now. Now, in the long run, it likely will do very well, But in the short term, it hasn't been doing well.

So the NASDAQ listed IDEF fund has risen 28% over the past year, but has not risen on the Middle East war falling almost 13% in the past month, according to the FTs reporting here. So if Hegseth had been able to invest in the fund, he would have lost money at this point in time. However, those short-term losses could have eventually turned into some long-term gains, especially since we're talking about private defense contractors here, and they tend to do handsomely well when it comes to the stock market. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and now Palantier happen to be some of the Pentagon's biggest clients. And the, or the Pentagon happens to be their biggest client.

And Hegseth sadly won't be going hungry because he actually really made a killing during his time as like a milktoes lame anchor personality. I don't know what you want to call him on Fox News. While at Fox, Hegsith earned $4.6 million, please kill me, in salary from 2022 to 2024. Now that's according to his own disclosure form submitted for his Senate confirmation. He also made nearly half a million dollars from two book advances in those years. And $100,000 to $1 million in royalties for each, he also earned almost a million in speaking fees. Let's take a break. Let's take a break. Let's take a break.

I'm going to cry a little bit. Then I'll come back and I'll give you more news. See you in a bit. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the social break. Rio Hand 9064 says, so we were plus three MBP. before war globally, down 10 following war starting. So negative 7 MBPD, disabling up to 3M.

Dude, I don't know exactly what MPD stands for. They were exporting. They were exporting is burning the candle at both ends. I feel like your comment is very smart, but I don't fully understand it. I apologize. But thank you to Langford, Jeremy, for the super chat. Let's move over to our member section where Snow Wolf VOV says the APEC sweep in the Illinois primary is so disheartening. If the progressives put their egos aside and dropped out to help the more popular progressives, mathematically we would have won.

I don't know the minor details of that situation, but I'm just not going to say anything that's going to get me in trouble. I do agree with you fully when it comes to putting egos aside and just trying to find a way to work together to get the best possible outcome. But we're talking about politics and a lot of people are full of ego and don't want to put it aside. Anyway, thank you for your comment. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the show. I remember sharing a story with you all a few years ago about how Germany had basically fully ended all of its nuclear energy. they closed or shut down their last nuclear energy plant. And they're really regretting it today. First, they turn to coal for, you know, to close the gap left behind by no longer having access to nuclear energy.

And now with what's happening with the oil and, you know, gas market, not good, very bad. Anyway, let's get to our next story. I want to talk a little bit about a new law that passed in Israel by the Knesset that is racist and disgusting. So let's get to it. Ah, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now? Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be.

This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. It's Amar Ben-Gavir, the terrorist slob. You see pop in bottles and celebrating is actually elated that Israel's Knesset is celebrating the upcoming execution of Palestinians. Now, this story is just, I want to say it's unbelievable, but it's really not given the current culture within the country of Israel. They are just so thirsty to kill Palestinians. It's amazing to me. But even though the Israeli rights group,

Betselm strongly condemned this bill that mandates the death penalty for Palestinians who are often wrongfully convicted of committing acts of terror. The bill was supported by 62 lawmakers in the Knesset, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Only 48 Knesset members voted against the legislation and one abstained. So in other words, this passed. And if you just look at this, you take it at face value, okay, we're talking about executions of people who carried out acts of terror and killed Israelis while doing that. I mean, yeah, that deserves a harsh punishment, doesn't it? Okay. Well, you would have to believe that the trials are fair trials, but they're not. Palestinians end up getting treated with the whole kangaroo court

situation. And I'm not the only one saying that. So let's get to the details. So the legislation was written to apply to only one group of people, Palestinians. So if Israelis carry out acts of terror that get Palestinians killed, they don't have to worry about a mandatory execution. And I think that's already abundantly clear to the globe, given what we've seen in the last two and a half years. The bill is designed to apply exclusively to Palestinians by mandating the death penalty for a terrorist convicted of killing a person with the intent to deny the existence of the state of Israel. According to Haaretz, the law is now applicable in any territory that Israel effectively controls, including areas that they're illegally occupying, like the West Bank

and more than 50% of the Gaza Strip. Now, the reason why Betselaam condemned the legislation is because, again, many of those so-called convictions are questionable to say the least. So as the humanitarian rights group notes, these courts have an approximately 96% conviction rate based largely on confessions extracted under duress and torture during interrogations. The law allows military judges no discretion and requires them to sentence Palestinians convicted of murder to death, except in special circumstances. They continue, and I think this part is really important. The penalty, execution by hanging, must be carried out within 90 days of sentencing with no

possibility of pardon. The death penalty will be determined in military courts where only Palestinians are tried. So obviously, this is, are you really going to tell me? Anyone who tells me that Israel is not an apartheid state can shut. I hate sometimes that I'm not able to curse on this show. They can shove it, okay? Shove it hard. How is this not an apartheid state?

You're passing execution legislation that only applies to one group of people that you've been executing willy-nilly, whether they're children, whether they're innocent, whether they're elderly, whether they're women, whether they're pregnant, doesn't matter. These executions happen without a trial all over the place in the Middle East, all over the place, happening in Lebanon, right? happening in Lebanon right now. Five more Palestinians were killed yesterday in the Gaza Strip. Is that what Israel wants to be known for as the executors? They just kill people, willy-nilly, doesn't matter. It's disgusting. And then you see that fat, disgusting piece of crap. It's a Mar-Bengivir, a freaking terrorist, popping bottles of champagne, celebrating death,

celebrating killing people. It is so shameful that we're aligned with those. people. I mean, I personally am not. I couldn't be more disgusted with the government of Israel or anyone celebrating this. In fact, why don't we talk about the double standard here? Okay, I want to talk about that a little bit. As I was researching for this story, I like to do deep dives. I like to understand culture and what drives the country to be as brutal, heartless and disgusting as what we're seeing today. So there's an MP in the Knesset, Lamar Sondhar Mellick, who happens to be the Israeli MP who drafted this death penalty law for Palestinians. And she seems to have an affinity.

And I'm not exaggerating. She seems to have an affinity for Israelis who literally commit acts of murder, including lighting people and killing them by lighting them on fire. Well, I mean, just this story is so crazy. So I didn't know about this until today. So there was this Israeli settler. Amiram Ben Uliu, who burned an 18-month-old Palestinian child, Ali Dawabshe and his parents alive. This was in July of 2015. Burned him alive, killed him.

There was one other child who miraculously survived the attack. but was treated for burns for a very, very long time. And now that child is being taken care of by his grandfather and uncle because his parents were burned alive. So in 2020, Amiram, the Israeli settler who killed these people, was luckily convicted of three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, three counts of arson, and of conspiring to commit a racially motivated crime. Apparently, even as recently as 2020, Israel had some standards. But he was somehow acquitted of the one charge of being a member of a terrorist group, even though he's

obviously a terrorist. Okay, fine. But at least he was convicted of the other charges. He got multiple life sentences. He's in prison. Now, I share all this with you because as the trial was taking place, Israeli terrorists stood outside the courtroom to taunt the grandfather and uncle of the 18-month-old who was killed. Referencing toddler Ali Saad de Wabsheh, killed in a 2015 arson attack carried out by Jewish terrorists, right-wing extremists chanted, where is Ali? Ali's dead. Allie's on the grill. and other hate slogans. By the way, this was reported by the Times of Israel. They are not anti-Zionists, as you can imagine.

So here's what Lamor, Sanhar Malik had to say about the perpetrator of this horrible crime. I know he's innocent. I know Amiram is innocent. I visited Amiram and this righteous man, this holy righteous man, really. That's not a question mark at the end. I apologize. That's a typo. It was an exclamation mark.

She genuinely said that. She's the one who drafted this execution bill. But I want to just point to one person who I deeply respect, and that happens to be a Jewish Israeli MP who voted against this legislation, and he deserves a world of credit because he has a history of doing things that I wish more Israelis would do. He was a conscientious objector when it came to a serving in the IDF, and he spoke out against this legislation. I want you to hear his words.

Take a look. It's so symbolic that on the 50th anniversary of the Land Day, the day that symbolizes, the looting, the theft, the confiscation of Palestinian land by the state of Israel, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, has enacted a death penalty for Palestinian terrorists, as it were. Actually, that means something else. The law doesn't appeal to Jews, because those who propose the law believe, And say that explicitly that there's no such a thing like Jewish terrorism. And by definition, accordingly, there's no such a thing like Jewish terrorists.

That means the Jews, a priori, are excluded from the appeal of this law. On the other hand, they say, again, explicitly, that all Palestinians are terrorists, if not at present, in potential. The chair of the Interior Committee at the Knesset said explicitly and literally a couple of days ago that there aren't any innocent people in Janine nor innocent children in Janine. That means, again, that all Palestinians are terrorists. And if this law says that terrorists should be executed and all Palestinians are regarded by them as terrorists, that means, in other words, logically speaking, that all Palestinians should be executed. And all Palestinians are regarded by them as terrorists. That means in other words, logically speaking, that all Palestinians should be executed. We have to say something very clear.

That's not a death penalty law. That's a genocide law. All those who supported, let alone propose this bill, should be tried by the Hague. That was all for Cassif, who I'm sure. deals with a lot of hatred and a lot of backlash, considering the current, you know, culture within Israel for speaking out against these crimes against humanity. And I really, really appreciate it because we need those examples. We need those examples of Jewish Israelis who are willing to speak up and fight back. There are far too few of them. Okay, I'm glad that Betselaim spoke out.

Bet Selma also happens to be the organization that put out a report saying that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Gideon Levy, one of the journalists over at Haretz, incredible person, always speaks out. I'm sure he gets a lot of harassment for doing so. So I want to just point to these voices because they do exist and it takes a tremendous amount of courage to speak out, living in a country like Israel where it seems like the overwhelming majority is in favor of the bloodshed and the racism and the hatred. But the good people do exist and they deserve credit, a world of credit. Anyway, we gotta move on to our next story before we bring our guest on for the next hour. So let's get into Pete Hagsit's lunacy. I witnessed let's

lethality. I met a junior airman as the sun was going down and a chill was setting on the tarmac who when asked what they needed, she simply looked up at me with a sly smile on her face and said, more bombs, sir, and bigger bombs. We will happily oblige her. That didn't happen. He totally made that up. I don't believe that for a second. Unless he was talking to like a Persian diaspora member, then I will believe it. But that was Pete Hegesith, our Secretary of War, giving one of his, unfortunately, far too frequent press conferences on this war against Iran. Now, you know, he usually makes statements that lack any substantive information about the Iran war, which is why I don't think he should even do these press conferences at this point.

It's embarrassing for the American people. Case in point, take a look at this. How long until the objectives are achieved and is there a scenario where a deal is struck before the objectives have been achieved? Sort of military 101. Don't tell your enemy what you're willing to do or not do. And don't tell your enemy when you're willing to stop, especially an enemy that likes to hide in bunkers and try to hoard their missiles and hope you'll wait you out. So that's not a question I'm going to answer or the president has said definitively, we have our own goals and guidance and things were military. military objectives that we're moving toward and things that we look at. And as he's articulated, you know, he said four to six weeks, six to eight weeks, three, it could be any, any particular

number, but we would never reveal precisely what it is because our goal is to finish those objectives. And we're well on our way. Didn't this war begin with you guys saying that it's going to be a quick war that'll just take a few weeks? Look, I love my yard and I wanted to look good, just like the next guy. But I absolutely hate dealing with the tools, especially the hose. You know what I'm talking about. I drag it out, it immediately kinks, gets tangled in the bushes, and a year or so, it's got a leak. It happens every time. I used to have to buy a new hose every year because of that nonsense. But not anymore. I'm excited to tell you about the world's number one expanding garden hose,

and its brand new product, the pocket hose ballistic. This is the upgrade I've been looking for. It's the toughest pocket hose ever built. Look, taking care of my lawn isn't necessarily fun. I tend to use my hose, dragging it across my asphalt driveway over and over again, and I tug it all over the place, but the pocket hose handles it all. That's because it's reinforced with liquid crystal polymer used in bulletproof vests. We're talking about a fiber that is actually five times stronger than steel. This hose has made landscaping my yard a breeze. It's super durable, lightweight, and built to last. And now for a limited time, when you purchase a new pocket hose ballistic, you'll get a free 360-degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle.

Just text TYT to 64,000. That's TYT to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text TYT to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. What are you doing? Okay. Hegseth was then asked to comment specifically on a statement that Trump made recently about how maybe I give up on opening the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe these European countries who need the soil so badly should do it themselves. So he gets asked about that. Let's see if he could muster some substantive response. I think the president was clear this morning in his truth that there are countries around the world who ought be prepared to step up on this critical waterway as well. It's not just the United

States Navy. Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like that as well. So he's pointing out, this is an international waterway that we use less than most, in fact, dramatically less than most. So the world ought pay attention to be prepared to stand up. President Trump's been willing to do the heavy lifting on behalf of the free world to address this threat of Iran. It's not just our problem set going forward, even though we have done the lion's share of preparation to ensure that that straight will be will be open, which is an outcome the president's been very clear on. Well, lion's share of preparation. What's the lion's share of preparation? What are you talking about?

The president of the United States, who was dumb enough to get dragged into a disastrous war against a country with a formidable military is saying, oh, I just destroyed the global economy. I'm not going to do anything about it. Why doesn't Europe do something about it? What preparation? What is you doing? Like what is this? This is so crazy. I just, I genuinely can't believe how embarrassing this whole situation is.

It's so embarrassing. And remember, guys, it's not just about the Strait of Hormuz. This war has destroyed critical oil and gas infrastructure in the Middle East. So even if best case scenario, which isn't going to happen, this war ends this week. the bombing stops, it's going to take some time to rebuild that devastated infrastructure. The other thing I'll just say is, please stop lying to the American people about our energy independence. Please, please stop, please stop. We're talking about the global oil and gas market.

So unless the Trump administration is going to show me evidence that they are going to implement export controls, so these private companies in the United States don't export resources to other countries. I'm not going to believe for a second that the U.S. is not going to be harmed by this. But more importantly, guys, more importantly, the export controls aren't going to happen. If they do happen, they're not. But even if they do happen, that's going to cause a lot of problems as well. This is a global energy market. It doesn't matter if we are drilling more.

This is a commodity. This is a resource that is sold globally. Less supply and demand staying where it is or even going higher is going to make the situation worse. It's not, this is like economics 101. It's very easy to understand it. So this whole idea that like, they should, they should just buy our oil. The point is, there is limited oil. There's limited oil now because of you guys, because of what you did.

At one point, Hegsith was asked what he would tell Americans. This part is very amazing. So he was asked, like, what would you tell Americans who really don't like the fact that we're engaged in this war right now? They're totally against it. By the way, many of Trump's supporters are against this war. I'm not talking about people in positions of power, Republican deal brokers and all those people. No, I'm talking about actual Republican voters. Many of them are unhappy about this.

So what would Hegseth tell them? Take a look. I don't understand why the base, which they have already, they understand, wouldn't have faith in his ability to execute on this. Look at his track record of pursuing peace through strength, America first outcomes. And what he's simply saying, and it's exactly true, and I've said from this podium, too, we're not going to foreclose any option. You can't fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do or what you are not willing to do to include boots on the ground. Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the President of the United States and this department.

I have a lot of empathy for people who have substance abuse problems, addiction issues. It's devastating for a lot of people and I don't want to make light of it. But that's not going to stop me from saying that we shouldn't have an alcoholic in the executive branch making decisions about war and peace. We invaded Iraq with 250,000 soldiers. We currently have 50,000 soldiers based in the Middle East right now. We had around 40,000. Trump sent another 10,000.

I don't know, I guess in preparation for a possible ground invasion in a country that's much larger than Iraq in a country that has a much more powerful military compared to Iraq. What are we doing? And what are our goals? Like I want to understand that real quick. What are the goals? Because so far we have replaced Khamene with Khamene, his son. Okay, congratulations. And by the way, I'm not in favor of regime change wars, period. I don't think that it's up to us to decide who the leaders of any sovereign country should be, period. That's not a commentary about whether or not I like the IRGC. It's none of my freaking business.

It's a foreign country and it's a sovereign country. And it's up to the people of Iran to decide. If they want to have an organic uprising, great. But we should not be involved in agitating that situation, which is what we did by implementing sanctions to destroy Iran's economy. Okay. This guy has no idea what he's doing. Pete Higgseth has no idea what he's doing.

He was a talking head. It was like a weekend anchor on Fox News. Trump likes his hairline and decided to make him the Secretary of Defense slash Secretary of War. He is playing with the lives of our service members. Do you understand that? Our service members' lives are being toyed with right now by an alcoholic. And it's not just Hegseth, who's cheering on utter stupidity. His former colleagues are doing the same.

So look, I want to go to this next video. It's a Fox News clip because it just kind of shows you how out of control this situation is and why there are some Americans who think what we're doing is the right thing. It's because of media bubbles like the one that you're about to experience. The bottom line is when this ends, Iran cannot be in control of that straight. They can't be decided in a month or two, oh, we're gonna shut it down again. This would be an ongoing display of power. So hopefully the USS Tripoli will answer that. The president really has never taken anything off the table in terms of what he might be willing to do.

So really it's come down to the 60% enriched uranium, which I would argue precipitated the president's decision, as explained on this program by Steve Whitkoff, and probably opening up the strait of Hormuz. We have Marines on standby, anyway, in between 30. 500 and 5,000. Those seem to be the two final objectives. The Strait of Hormuz was open for business prior to the U.S. attacking Iran. So Trump goes in and he breaks it. And now one of the objectives of this war is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and try to take control of it, which how are you going to do that? So Israel, which of course dragged us into this war, will not commit a single IDF soldier to fight on the ground.

By the way, that's what they're saying as they're egging on U.S. boots on the freaking ground. And with what with 50,000 troops in the region, how exactly are they going to take control of the Strait of Hormuz? How is that going to happen? You know, Sean Hannity, he's such a military expert. How exactly is that going to be carried out? We're cooked. We're cooked. And anyone who ever believed a single word that came out of that helmet hair guy's mouth,

and I'm talking about Hannity, needs to really reconsider their media diet. Enjoy the extremely high gas prices. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back. Hey, Andrew, what's up? Hey, Jank, you ready to make the switch? Yeah, I guess. I promise it's easy.

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Are you ready to become a Noble member? The two buttons are do it and go back. There's no going back. We're doing it. We're doing it. Here we go Noble Mobile Mobile. Oh my gosh, I just called you and are you now on Noble and not Verizon? Why didn't you tell me it was going to be super easy?

I know, man. Now you just stay away from your phone and watch the money roll in. I can do that. You got a phone, yeah. Jank, you still there? Andrew? Oh, well, at least I got an Oblemone. It was really just one tape.

The whole thing is wild. It's in my shoes. It's in my shoes. Hi, I'm Brett Ehrlich with Breaking News with Brett Ehrlich. This is Breaking News with Brett Ehrlich. Hi. Red Ehrlich here. According to EPA head Scott Pruitt, climate change is not happening.

He cited a meme on Facebook he saw. When pressed to back up this. source, he said it must be accurate because the watermark said it was made by a scientist. So, your move, truth. At TYT, our mission is to boldly pursue truth, challenge the establishment, and drive positive change. At a time when corporate capture of our media, our government, and our politics is nearly absolute. Everyday working people need a champion to fight for them and a pushback against the powerful interests that threaten our democracy itself.

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Much needed. DeLOTI, T, TYT. The place is like 95% TYT on. People who support us on the internet, that's what gives us strength. That's what allows anyone who was in there who was undecided to think, One side seems to be winning. They seem to have a bigger army. It might be a reason for that.

So thank you guys. Welcome back to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian. And as we all know, it's kind of difficult to know exactly where this administration is headed when it comes to this war against Iran, which is blown up into a full-scale regional war. Trump speaks from both sides of his mouth. He goes from saying that he's engaged in peace negotiations with Iran that don't actually exist. to making severe threats against civilian infrastructure in Iran, to claiming that maybe he's going to pull out and leave the Strait of Hormuz for the Europeans to figure out.

So luckily, joining us to make some sense of what's happening in this U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Treata, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. So I've really been enjoying the interviews you've been doing. You're really everywhere these days, and I'm grateful for that because it's good to have some clarity and some real analysis on what's happening.

And so let's start with the Strait of Hormuz and what Trump recently said. You know, Trump has amassed some military assets and has increased the number of troops in the Middle East, kind of giving us a hint that he might be considering some sort of military operation, maybe boots on the ground, maybe an attempt to take over Karg Island. But then today, he said something along the lines of, you know, maybe we just leave it alone, leave the Strait of Hormuz for the Europeans to figure out they didn't help us with this war. So why should I help them with the Strait of Hormuz? You know, the U.S. is fine. We're, you know, we're oil independent, we're energy independent, which we all know that oil and gas is traded on the global market.

What do you think is actually happening here? Well, on that specific front, I think Trump has been very angry today because the Italians are not allowing him to use a base in Sicily unless the Italian parliament explicitly votes in favor of that. The French have apparently stopped some overflights of American military planes over French air territory. The Spanish had already stopped the use of Spanish bases for this war. So he's definitely feeling that the Europeans are not going to join in on this debacle. They were never asked about this war. I've never consulted. Macron in particular was in very intense discussions with the Americans, but was never told

that this was about to happen. And now it's clear to anyone who doesn't watch Fox News that this war is going terribly badly. So why would they now join in and share the blame for this debacle? So given that, I think Trump was very angry today. And one way of hitting back to the Europeans at the Europeans was essentially to say, well, look, you need the Strait of Hormuz much more than the United States does. Because at the end of the US is not importing any oil from the Persian Gulf.

The Europeans are, the Asian markets are. Now, if it remains closed, of course, it does affect the entire global economy and it will backfire on the US as well. But I think this was part of a way of him saying, look, I may just strike a deal. And I'm going to leave you guys to negotiate your own transactions. transit fees with Iranians because they will remain in control of the straits, whether he will really do it that way or not as a different story. But I think what we're seeing here is the president who went in had been kind of led to

believe by the Israelis that this was going to be very easy, thought that this was going to be over in four days. And ever since those four days, he's essentially been improvising this war because he doesn't have a plan. And in that context, you will see him get very angry and lash out on numerous who can. he already has and he will continue to do so. But bottom line is this war is not going well. The more Trump tries to escalate his way out of this war, the worse it will get. He needs to quickly find a negotiated settlement in order to say whatever he can say of his presidency at this

point. But that necessitates real negotiations with some real realistic demands rather than what we've seen come from the administration so far. Is it even possible to persuade the Iranians at this point to engage in peace negotiations? You know, you hear Trump claiming that they are. Obviously, that's not actually happening. The Iranians, for good reason, do not trust the United States. I mean, on two different occasions, they were engaged in negotiations in good faith, and the United States attacked in the middle of those negotiations.

So I just watched an interview with the foreign minister of Basa Raqqi today on Al Jazeera. And he said, our trust for the United States is out of zero. We don't trust them. So I mean, is it even possible? Would they be open to negotiations with the U.S.? It is possible to get to a deal. It will probably not be through direct negotiations. And the Iranians ultimately will also see a need to negotiate,

even though they have time more on their side and they can squeeze the US a bit. But bottom line is if they keep on going at this, they're going to turn much of the neighborhood against them in a manner that is not going to be helpful to them. Moreover, if they have leverage now and if they have managed to create certain new realities on the ground, it would lie in their interest to negotiate and try to cement those new benefits into a new stable status quo, rather than thinking that, you know, continuing the war necessarily will improve their situation. It can dramatically change.

So I think they do have an interest. And I think, frankly, they have shown a degree of interest. But there's no basis of negotiations if the U.S. thinks that it can dictate the terms of Iran's surrender, which is essentially the language coming out of the Trump administration at this point. Moreover, even when the administration may get serious, if they're going to be. Their initial demand is an immediate ceasefire. But then other concessions from the US will come later on. Clearly, the Iranians are not going to buy that precisely because of the trust issue that

you mentioned. Because once there's a ceasefire, the Iranians believe that they will lose much of their leverage. So they want to make sure that things are given up front if they're supposed to be giving anything up front. And that's a more complex negotiation than the kind of things that Trump has been used to in which he's just dictating terms. And so far we have not seen Trump show much. patience for that type of negotiations.

You're definitely right about the lack of patience. And what I'm also kind of curious about is, you know, this war has been devastating for Iran, especially its civilian infrastructure, the horrific bombing of that elementary school in Menab. There's no question. But, you know, when you think about the asymmetrical nature of this war, you know, you have the United States with its military capability. That's, I think, far superior than Iran's. Iran does hold some cards here, and it's the economic element of this war with their control of the Strait of Hormuz.

And the sanctions that the U.S. had implemented against Iran was absolutely crushing Iran's economy. That's what led to the protests that happened recently. People were frustrated about the economic conditions. But now that Iran has essentially used their control of the Strait of Hormuz for leverage, they're actually bringing more money because people are paying tolls or countries are paying tolls in order to transport, you know, resources through the strait. Am I correct in saying that? And you're correct. Yeah, this is one of the paradoxes of the war. The Iranians are now collecting tolls. However, we don't have data yet on exactly how much that is. And I don't believe that it is very significant since the traffic is still very low. However, the Iranians were selling about a little bit less

than 1.1 million barrels of oil a day prior to the war. Now they're up at around 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, meaning that they've only almost increased their exports 50%. Moreover, before the war, they were selling the oil at $65 with an $18 discount because of the sanctions. As of one week ago, I haven't checked lately, as of one week ago, they were selling the oil at $110 with a $2 to $4 discount, meaning the actual price they were selling had gone from $47 to about $108. Wow. Almost a tripling of the price. So they're actually getting much more money coming in.

So the war itself, paradoxically, has translated into a de facto sanctions, really, for the Iranians. Now, that does not mean that they're doing well in general because they're taking huge hits. The war is increasingly looking like an Israeli war. I mean, we're seeing the United States allowing this Israelization of the war, meaning targeting of universities, targeting of all kinds of civilian targets that the Israelis did on a daily basis in Lebanon, in Gaza. I mean, we can say a lot about the U.S.'s conduct of the war in Iraq, for instance, and I was a critic of it, and I'm sure you were as well, of course.

But the U.S. didn't deliberately target universities. We're only four weeks into the war, and the Israelis are already starting to do so. And beyond that, they're actually announcing it themselves. It's not as if they, you know, in the beginning of the Gaza war, they were hitting in hospitals and blaming Hamas for it. Now they're killing journalists. They don't even go through the charade of pretending to investigate. They're announcing it themselves that we kill this journalist because that journalist was on our target list. And they've got into that stage in Iran as well, in which they're hitting universities and announcing it proudly themselves.

And again, I have to say this is, again, an indication of how, first of all, the war was sold to Trump by the Israelis. Now we saw that the conduct of the war has become more similar to Israeli warfare. And, of course, the objectives of the war increasingly has become bad with Trump just minutes ago in the White House saying that, you know, they're going to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. are going to be setting them back several decades. And in a couple of years, perhaps another president will pick it up and bomb them again. That's the mowing of the law and strategy that the Israelis have been using for decades against the Palestinians and other Arab neighbors of Israel. Again, this did not use to be the American approach or the American goals. In fact, one of the reasons why a lot of American presidents, or actually all of them, except Trump, rejected Israel's

pressure for war, is because they predicted that they would end up in a scenario on which they would have to go to war with Iran every couple of years. And that was simply unacceptable. Now, it seems like Trump has embraced that objective because so much of the war that Israelis are in the driving seat. You know, what's interesting about how the war is being carried out. And you're absolutely correct in mentioning, you know, the hospitals, the health care workers, the universities that are being targeted by the United States, which is incredibly

shameful and doesn't make me feel good as an American. I can I'll just say that. But, you know, when I think about what the U.S. is even able to achieve militarily, I can't help but think about the fact that the Houthis in Yemen weren't defeated by the United States. Our military might did not defeat the Houthis who are, you know, funded and supported by the IRCG. So what is the likelihood that the U.S. through military activity can carry out what Israel effectively wants, which is either a failed state, kind of like Syria, or regime change where you have like a puppet government installed that shows deference to Israel.

So, you know, early on in the war, these were objectives that were, you know, spoken about as if they were very high possibilities. I think at this stage it's very clear. It's not going to be regime change. We've not seen mass protest. In fact, people in Iran are out on the streets on a daily bases in the evenings. And it's mainly the support base of the regime, of course, that is out. But they're really galvanized by this war. And you've seen clear sentiments amongst the population, turning dramatically against the United States, turning very nationalistic, because, again, the manner in which this war is being conducted, the civilian toll, etc., etc. So you do have that type of a scenario in which early on they thought that this was a positive.

at this point, Trump has essentially thrown in the towel and saying, you know what, we already achieve regime change because the top leadership is now different. Yes, that's a change within the regime. That's not regime change. But if that's the narrative, Trump has to construct, the narrative of success and victory he has to construct in order to take an exit ramp, by all means, go ahead. It's totally fine. Declare yourself a victor, but just end this war before it kills more innocent people before it further sets back, not just Iran's infrastructure, but the Iranian people struggle for democracy, which already has been set back by this, but also the risk of further destabilization in the region. And of course, the massive damage the U.S. itself is taking at this war.

Absolutely. So, you know, it's interesting because I personally don't see that Trump can exit this war unilaterally. You see Israel consistently escalating the situation. They do not want this war to end. And they've dedicated hundreds of billions of dollars to this war that they've been wanting. Netanyahu's been wanting for many, many decades. But at the same time, there's a story that came out today. The Associated Press reported, and I don't know what to make of it, Treata, because whenever it comes to news items that rely heavily on anonymous sources, you don't know who these sources are. You don't know what kind of narrative they're trying to drive. But according to the Associated Press, some of our Gulf allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are urging Trump behind the scenes to keep the war going until Iran is defeated.

I'm going to read two quick excerpts from the piece where they say that some of the regional allies are making the case to the White House that the moment offers a historic opportunity to cripple Tehran's clerical rule once and for all. officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership or there's a dramatic shift in Iranian behavior. Qatar and Oman apparently are favoring a more diplomatic approach. But I don't know how much of this to believe. There were also reports leading up to the attack on Iran indicating that the Saudis were trying to encourage Jared Kushner to push for this war. Now, I know the Saudis have a special relationship with Israel. I know that's the same with the UAE. What do you make of that report, though? Do you think our Gulf allies are in Trump's ear about continuing this war? Look, I think from the UAE side, that is probably quite accurate.

You have clear statements coming from both UAE officials as well. as prominent academics that are very close to the government that sound eerily similar to some of these statements. On the Saudi side, you're getting these flat-out denials from people inside the government as well as people who understand Saudi Arabia much better than I do. But I do think that there may be a scenario in which the Saudi foreign minister actually absolutely pushed back against this war, whereas MBS actually pursued his own foreign policy directly with Trump. At least that appears. to what Trump has been telling people.

And that would not in any way should perform surprise me in the sense that MBS is kind of like a Trumpian figure that does his own thing and can at times pursue a different line than what his foreign ministry have said. You know, when he came to a lot of things on Gaza, we all had to pay attention. Was the statement from Saudi Arabia condemning this or that coming from the foreign ministry? Or was it coming from MBS or his office? It was a huge difference between the two. So again, I think it's a bit of a mystery.

I don't think anyone has any clear answers to this. But what I think is also interesting is that if it is the case that these countries want the US to continue, it doesn't appear to have much of an impact on Trump, at least so far, because I do think he's looking for an exit. It's just that he doesn't understand or know exactly how to find that exit and how to take that exit, because it will require compromises from both sides, including American concessions. And that's a high, that's a very significant psychological distance for Trump to travel, having thought that he would have a glorious victory with Iranian capitulation within four

days to now actually having to give concessions in order for the war to end. Yeah, it seems like Trump was really genuinely convinced that Iran was far more weak than it really was. And I mean, that was a grave mistake. Treeta, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good one. All right, everyone.

We got to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get back to the news. I'll read some of your comments. I haven't been able to do that yet to the extent that I want to. So send in your comments if you're members, send in your super chats. When we come back from the break, I'll read some of them and we'll do some more news. I love treat of Parsing. He's an incredibly intelligent and analytical person when it comes to foreign policy-related matters.

And I highly recommend responsible statecraft. as one of your many sources of foreign policy related news and analysis. I love the writers there. They do a great job. Drop site is also incredible, as you all know. Anyway, so let's read some of our Twitch comments, starting with Cosmic Kitty Sarita Gatita, who says, Amen, because if we have all the oil and gas we need,

then WTF are we paying these prices? Oh, right, because big oil donors and Israel always come before U.S. citizens. In this case, it's not even about Israel. It's really about how the oil markets work, right? We have privatized oil and gas, right? And so these private companies who drill or frack for the oil and gas, they get to decide how they sell it, where they sell it. Trump is not going to nationalize oil and gas.

Like, that's just not going to happen. So, and by the way, there's also like complications when it comes to refining oil, for instance. So even though we produce a lot of oil, we actually happen to export, We are the top exporter. We actually import a lot of oil from Canada because our refineries can refine that particular type of oil. So it's a lot more complicated and it's all very much globally connected. So the idea of like, we got oil, we don't have to worry about anything.

It's just dumb. It's a dumb statement to make. It just shows either he is intentionally lying to the American people or he knows nothing. And it could be either one, to be honest. Let's get back to the show. Some really exciting news to share with you all. I didn't know about this until this morning, and I want you to know about it in case you're interested. TYT is now launching on Prime Video.

So we're excited to announce that beginning today, TYT is now on Prime Video. So all you have to do, if you have access to Prime Video or watch content there, just search for the Young Turks. We're going to pop up all your favorite TiT shows. Super exciting. So I love it. And thank you to people behind the scenes who made that happen. All right. So guys, I was reading a bunch of comments, I guess, from yesterday's show.

And I apologize for that. There was something going on with my document here where we compile all of your comments and all of your super chats. But now it's fixed. So let's start with Canrews 22 who says, thank you, N, and TYT. Your honesty and strength gives us strength, which our country is lacking in desperately. I think it's definitely true that you should model the behavior you want from others. So, yeah, being a truth teller, it inspires other people to be truth tellers, and we need a lot more than that.

Let's go to Salvi Dragon, who says, if it makes you feel any better, Anna, head sweat, oh, Hegseth, yeah, Hegseth making that kind of money seems to not make him happy since, yeah, I mean, look, since he's an alcoholic. I mean, he doesn't seem like a happy person at all, period. And you're right about that. Money does not make, money brings you peace of mind. So you're able to like pay your bills and survive. Definitely. I don't want to discount that.

But happiness comes from the people you surround yourself with. It comes from purpose and feeling fulfilled in what you do. Happiness is a choice to some extent, yes. But you don't really feel happy if you're making a ton of money, but you're doing something you hate. Right. So who knows what Hegseth is really feeling inside. He just doesn't seem like a very happy person. V18 white girl says, Hegsith drinks more on a Tuesday than I do in a week.

And that's a lot. And that's a lot. Yesterday, I was so tempted to crack open a bottle of beer, but I have like a rule. No bottle of beer until Wednesday night. Okay, Monday and Tuesday, off limits. I like to have one beer when I'm like cooking dinner. but I'm trying to get a little more healthy, so Monday, Tuesday, off limits. YTP Renewed says, I would not want to buy anything from the U.S. until the Trump term is over,

and I'm not sure I want to buy from red states ever again. But don't punish the red states because of what Trump is doing. Like, I get the frustration or anger at the people who elected Trump. I understand that, right? But you also have to take a step back and think about the political. landscape and the options that Americans have when it comes to voting for people. Now, you might think it was obvious. Kamala Harris was so much better. But a lot of people were angry about what Biden did, how Harris was anointed. I was really angry about that, especially since the only thing they were

really running on was we want to save democracy. How are you saving democracy when you lied to the American people about how you would only serve one term? That was Biden. How is it okay to lie about your mental health or your capability to even serve in a second term. How is a democracy to anoint the nominee for the Democratic Party? Come on. It made me angry. I didn't vote for Trump, despite what my detractors try to claim about me. I've never once said that I voted for Trump, but I didn't vote for Kamala Harris either. Now I'm in California. My vote actually doesn't really matter at all. But I just want you guys to consider like, I get the anger. I mean, I deal with it. internally on a daily basis because of how frustrating our current economic landscape is,

political landscape, all of that. But you have to direct your ire to the people who actually have power, who can actually control the situation. And ordinary people in red states, they've got about as much power as you do. Same with me, right? So the gray tone 111 says, how could Trump think this was a good idea? I didn't go to college, but I know how the world works better than Trump apparently, and that's terrifying. That's definitely terrifying. All right, let's go to our super chats. Donnie writes in and says, hey, Anna, do you ever think to ever do any more interviews on your underlined? Yes, okay, so I do have a substack. I just did an interview with a conservative who's very much anti-war, anti-neocon, and I wanted to ask him, how big is the

anti-war faction of the conservative movement in America. So I'm going to publish that very soon. I'm going to get active on that substack again. I've just been overwhelmingly busy, but I promise there will be more interviews and pieces on that substack soon. Unaligned is the name of the substack. Independent conversation says Trump said his motives in Iran could get him the 25th amendment.

He said that out loud at a press conference. Think about that. Yeah, I know. Did you guys see the CPAC video where Matt Schlapp literally like says something along the lines? If he asks the audience, very conservative audience, right? Do you guys want to see Trump get impeached? And they start cheering. He thought they were going to say no and boo. But no, they did not boo. Then he's like, oh, wrong answer. And he asks the same question again. And people continue cheering. So yeah, I think Trump sometimes likes to think out loud. And I really appreciate that he does that because it seems like he is. concerned that his own base is turning on him. The umma,

Umma Karem says, Anna, I love your fiery spirit for justice. I was one of TYT's first viewers. I remember when you came on the show in 2007, 2008. I want to say you're awesome, keep up the fight and fire going.

And by the way, I'm also Armenian. That's amazing. My family came to Lebanon fleeing the genocide. Lebanon, the only Christian neighborhood in the hood. So I'm now Lebanese. There's over 300,000 Armenian-Lebanese people. Yeah, yes, thank you for writing in and sharing that with me.

I was watching news reports today. There was an Armenian man in Lebanon who was killed as a result of Israeli aggression. This was an Isfahan. There's a huge Armenian population there. And innocent Armenian civilian, likely part of the Armenian diaspora that fled as a result of the genocide of 1915. So, you know, my own family members fled to genocide. Like I've said on the show before, my maternal grandmother was born in Haifa. And yeah, it's just, it's, I can't stand what's happening.

And the, I realize that I personally have been working through intergenerational trauma, trauma because you grow up as an Armenian hearing very specific detailed stories about what happened to your ancestors, what happened to the Armenians. And then with the genocide that's been going down in Gaza, you have no choice but to see it happen in real time. So when people come at me with like, oh, you just hate Jews, it makes me so furious. Because you have to understand my background, my upbringing, the stories I heard about the Armenian genocide and how I'm seeing. with my own two eyes, what happened to the Armenians, happened to the Palestinian people in Gaza. That is what I'm speaking out about.

I have never once said anything negative about the Jewish religion or Jewish people. This has nothing to do with Jewish identity. Lord of Hamstrings' glory writes in. It says settlers go untouched while the Gallo's statute targets the locals. The cleanest force now has a legal noose to match their combat footage, defining the captured as beyond grace just to expedite the end

isn't law. It's a state-run purge. And then another comment, Ben Gavir gloats over justice. By the way, the reference to the noose, they wear a golden noose on their lapels. The Israelis in favor of the law that just passed. Ben Gavir gloats over justice while leveling family, homes, peak ethics, claiming civilized supremacy while legalizing the final erasure of the labeled. When a democracy uses the rope to secure its purity, the moral facade is officially dead. You are an amazing writer. I hope you write in more. I love the way you're putting your message out there. Anyway, all right, we got to take a break. It'll be our final break. When we come back, we'll get back to the news because I do want to talk about potentially if we have time, the Houthis

getting involved in this war. And on top of that, there's other things going on, including the fact that Trump is far more soft on crime than his supporters probably know. Come right back. Thank you to Happy Warrior, who gifted a TYT membership. So did Cheesy Finger 79. You guys are amazing. Thank you for the support. Base Chaker says, I switched the family to Noble Mobile. All right. It's so much better not paying Verizon tons of money. Dude, Verizon is so expensive. We actually switched because it was just too much. We were paying way too much for our phone bill. Better not paying Verizon tons of money. I hate Verizon. I was so played. I don't. That's how I felt when I realized I was paying too much. So thank you for the update because I'm always curious if you guys are enjoying some of the sponsors that we have. We're very picky with sponsors. It's difficult to find sponsors that don't have some business practices that were uneasy about. But Noble mobile mobile has been great. So I'm I'm glad you're enjoying it. The Gray Tone says, how could Trump, oh, I read that already, apologies. Mary Ellen Van Buren says Iran has their own requirements for ending this war. You're right about that, which is why what Trita Parsi said in that interview was so important.

If we want a peace deal, that means the United States needs to make concessions. And what makes me uneasy is that Trump is the kind of macho man, tough guy who might not be willing to engage or provide those concessions. All right, let's get back to the show. I got to read this comment from one of our viewers over at Twitch. This is prime green new dealer dragon who says, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Can't get fooled again, which is a George W. Bush quote. He was trying to say, you know, the actual quote, but he forgot it.

So he messed it up. And funny story, I was on an interview for All Arabia like about two weeks ago. And I wanted to make reference to that hilarious quote. And people thought that I was making. the mistake. And it's like, ah, no. I was trying to make a reference to Bush. Anyway, and that's also in reference to the fact that, you know, Iran on two different occasions, tried to engage in peace deals in good faith and got fooled by the United States under the Trump administration because they attacked despite the fact that negotiations were taking place.

Anyway, I'm going to switch gears a little bit. I know we've been focusing a lot on foreign policy and that's really where my heart and mind is at right now because it's such a big story that affects the entire globe. But I do want to talk a little bit about something that Trump ran on, something else that Trump ran on, that he is not actually carrying out. And that has to do with stopping the criminals, the bad, bad criminals. Okay, well, what are you doing to stop the criminals? Apparently redirecting resources away from the people who would enforce our laws

to do something entirely different. So let's get to it. Turns out the Trump administration has dropped, and I mean dropped, more than 23,000 criminal cases during the first six months of the president's second term. And that's according to a bombshell report

that was just published by ProPublica. So it turns out that the government redirected their crime-fighting efforts toward prosecuting immigration cases instead. So if someone is here in the country illegally and literally the only thing they did was overstay their visa or cross the border illegally, that is not a violent crime. That's not a dangerous crime. That's not something that's going to put our lives in danger.

That's, you know, I would venture to say that dealing with convicted, violent individuals who are here legally, who got convicted of crimes. Yeah, deport them. I have no problem with that. But you're going to redirect resources related to fighting crime that actually does damage American society to deportation efforts. Okay, so let me give you the details. You can decide for yourselves if you think this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I think this is terrible. So Attorney General Pam Bondi absolutely insists that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, is taking a stand when it comes to rampant crime. Is he? I mean, you want to deal with rampant crime? I would maybe look within the White House. But okay. So during the roundtable alongside Trump, Bondi touted the accomplishments of the Memphis Special Task Force. Okay, so this is allegedly a task force that was designed by the Trump administration to stop all violent crime in the city of Memphis. Take a listen. Thank you, President Trump. You know, some people choose.

to tolerate crime, but you chose law and order. Did he? Because I remember not too long ago, Trump engaged in an attempted cover up of the Epstein files. By the way, we still don't have access to half of the files. And Pam Bondi, it was your office that made it abundantly clear to the American people that regardless of what's found in the Epstein files, there will be no investigations, no prosecutions.

You can't pretend to be the crime fighters. when you are providing cover for literal pedophiles. But I digress. You will be shocked to learn that the numbers, when applied to a national scale, paint a very different picture from what Pam Bondi would have you believe. So as we mentioned earlier,

ProPublica found that Trump's DOJ dropped over 23,000 criminal cases in just six months. That is a big deal. Most of them were dropped prior to any problem. any trial taking place. So these are individuals who were charged. There was never any trial, no prosecution. That is bad. That is not good. Okay. And that's also unusual. So take a look at this graph that was provided by ProPublica to show you the spike in the number of criminal cases that were dropped by Trump's DOJ. You can see that huge spike at the very end of the graph.

and we saw basically an increase of 11,000 cases being dropped by the DOJ. It's the highest reported since 2004. And by the way, if you're wondering, what kind of crimes are we talking about here? Maybe they're not that big of a deal. Well, I'm sure you'll be very surprised to find that the cases that are dropped are typically labor fraud. Who cares if you're screwing over workers? Who cares?

Who cares? Labor fraud. White collar crime. Those cases get dropped. But then you have cases that impact national security. Why are we dropping cases pertaining to individuals who carried out or could have carried out crimes are accused of carrying out crimes that jeopardize national security? What are we doing? And also something I care about, drug trafficking. Now, I get the people who have, you know, substances. abuse issues, addiction issues, they need help. I don't want them in prison, okay? I want them to get help. Drug traffickers are a different story. And I'm not talking about some like small, like, you know, teenagers selling pot to his classmates. Don't do that.

Please don't do that. It's a bad idea. But I'm specifically talking about, like, there are people who go to homeless encampments and prey on these people. Okay, I want those people dealt with. Sorry, I don't know how you guys feel about that, but if you're praying on individuals who are homeless, who are desperate, and you're either getting them addicted to drugs or you're feeding their addiction, I think you should be dealt with. And by the way, in this case, we're talking about federal drug trafficking charges. These are serious charges. Trump dropped them. Remember when he pretended like everything we were doing with that military buildup in the Caribbean to take out.

Maduro was about drug trafficking. Oh, he cares about drug trafficking so much. No, he doesn't. No, they don't. So these were all, by the way, lightning rod issues in Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. He purported to care deeply about these issues, but why is he dropping 23,000 criminal cases pertaining to these issues?

So a concerted effort to redirect DOJ resources toward immigration is what led Trump to essentially shift away from these prosecutions. So in the same six-month period that those cases were dropped, the administration prosecuted 32,000 immigration-related cases. ProPublica reports that the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency. In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe, and protect civil rights. And that's according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from

nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. So what exactly has suffered as a result of these changes? Well, let's go through one by one, starting with drug enforcement. So the Justice Department, according to ProPublico's report, has declined to prosecute nearly 5,000 cases of federal drug law violations, including trafficking and money laundering. The number of declination, so that's basically when they dropped the charges or dropped the case, were 45% higher than the average of the prior three new administrations. as for national security, which we should care about deeply at this moment, given the hostility

that people across the globe must be feeling toward the U.S. I mean, we're totally messing up the global economy with this stupid war that the U.S. is now fighting in Iran on behalf of Israel. Under Bondi, the DOJ declined more than 1,300 cases involving terrorism and national security. Nearly twice what was typical at the start of the most recent new administrations. Why are administrations dropping terrorism and national security cases to begin with? I mean, assuming that there are legitimate, you know, there's legitimate concern here that the perpetrators were going to carry out violent or terroristic acts.

Like, what's going on here? So while domestic terrorism was the hardest hit program, just over 300 cases. involving charges of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations were also dropped. That is fascinating, especially considering the fact that Palestinian Columbia students, the PhD student from Tufts who got arrested and detained for writing, co-authoring, an op-ed for the school paper. Like, these people were detained because they were critical of Israel. But now we're learning that there were individuals accused of actually giving material support to terror groups, but their cases were dropped by the DOJ. That's pretty explosive, isn't it? So that's a pretty

interesting development. Labor cases were affected as well, as I said. So the DOJ shut down over 60 union corruption and labor racketeering cases, two and a half times the number in Trump's first term, nearly half of the cases turned down for those offenses were out of the New Jersey United States Attorney's Office, which in the past has aggressively pursued alleged union corruption. All were noted as declined for insufficient evidence. Again, interesting as this was supposed to be the sole function of Doge, for instance. And then finally, you have the white color crime, something that Trump is very familiar with. Oh, he's, he jumps in it. He loves it, right? Like, would you really think that the Trump administration is going to be obsessed with

fighting white collar crime? So, ProPublica reports that the DOJ has shut down more than 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud in the first six months of the administration, including one targeting a mortgage lender accused by several state regulators of defrauding the federal housing administration. Well, Pam Bondi has a lot of experience with this, doesn't she? The case was dropped due to prioritization of federal resources and interests, namely, I guess going after undocumented immigrants, even if they haven't been convicted of any other crime aside from just being in the country without papers. Aren't you tired of winning? All right. I want to go to the last story here. Let's talk about the Houthis because they're now involved in this.

war. So turns out that Yemen's Houthis have now entered the war against Israel and they have, all right, let me start that again. Sorry about that guys. Yemen's Houthis have now joined the war against Israel and have begun carrying out drone strikes this past weekend. In fact, this began this past weekend on Saturday. So Houthi military spokesperson, Taya Sari, announced that the attacks were launched in support of the Republic of Iran. Take a look. The Yemeni armed forces with the help of Allah Almighty, and relying upon a law, have carried out the first military operation using a barrage of ballistic missiles, targeting sensitive Israeli military sites in southern occupied Palestine. The American and Israeli enemy must immediately respond to international diplomatic efforts to halt the aggression against Iran and the countries of the Axis, as it is unjust, oppressive, and unjustified, and harms stability and security at both global and regional levels, as well as the global economy.

We affirm that our hands are on the trigger for direct military intervention in any of the following cases. The joining of any additional alliances with the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the axis of jihad and resistance. The use of the Red Sea to carry out hostile operations by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran or against any Muslim country, we will not allow that.

So I should know that the Houthis absolutely intend to target Israel as part of these operations. And Israel, it really, look, the government of Israel is not only playing with the lives of innocent civilians, Arabs, Muslims, all of that, also playing with the lives of American service members who are constantly dragged into their wars. But they're playing with the lives of their own citizens. You know, I don't know the exact number at this point because Israel is pretty tight-lipped when it comes to their own casualties and how much damage Iran has managed to do or how much damage Hezbollah has done in Israel. Now you have the Houthis involved too. So you've got Iran, you've got Hezbollah, you've got the Houthis.

Israelis are running into their shelters multiple times a day. How is this good? How could you want this? For what? You guys really didn't have enough land? I don't, I just, I really don't get it. Anyway, Al Jazeera reports that the Houthis are planning to target Israel's military sites for now and do not plan to target U.S. positions in the region unless the U.S.

attacks them first. So the U.S. agreed to a ceasefire with Ansar ala last year after conducting heavy bombing in Yemen that failed to stop Yemeni attacks on Israel, which were being launched in response to Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza. That's according to Dave DeCamp over at anti-war.com. But the reason why I think this story is important is because of the economic leverage the Houthis have. And if you don't think they have any leverage, you'd be wrong. Take a look at this next video. The group controls most of northwestern Yemen and the capital Sana'ar, and a significant portion of the coastline on the Red Sea,

a vital corridor for global trade. The Houthi's involvement comes as Iran is maintaining its effective closure off the strait of Hormuz, where about 20% of global oil supplies transit. Now the Iran-backed group is threatening military action in the Red Sea. If the waterway is used for, quote, hostile operations by the U.S. and Israel against Iran, the corridor handles roughly 12 to 15% of global trade. Not good, not good. So you have the issues with the Strait of Hormuz, now that the United States attacked Iran,

and Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. And so they're not allowing oil tankers and, you know, transport through the strait of Hormuz, unless you're an ally, unless you've worked out some sort of deal with Iran and will agree to pay a toll. And then on top of that, you have the waterways that are controlled by the Houthis in Yemen. And we're already feeling the economic burden of this war, clearly. And so as Dave DeKamp at anti-warad.com noted, the Houthis may reimpose the blockade on Israeli-linked shipping through the Bob al-Mandeb, straight, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, shutting down the strait would significantly exacerbate the global economic fallout and rising oil prices from the U.S. Israeli war against Iran. Who wants this? Who would want this? This is stupid. But here we are. And I just want to remind you all that Trump gave up on defeating the Houthis. So how the hell are you going to defeat the IRCG? How were you dumb enough to get dragged into this war? But here we are.

bonus episode for our members is next. We're going to talk about some explosive updates in the Charlie Kirk assassination story. Don't miss it. It's a nuanced story, but you don't want to miss it. TYT.com slash join. I'll see you there.