The Young Turks - Hegseth's Report Card - May 13, 2026

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Reza Pahlavi gets called for egging on Iran war. Inflation reportedly jumped to 3.8% in April, driven largely by rising gasoline prices as growing anger over the economy threatens Donald Trump and Republicans heading into the midterms. Thanks to today's sponsors: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/tyt Get 40% OFF the Ground News Vantage Plan when you sign up at ground.news/tyt Stay informed without the media spin at ground.news/tyt Go to cookunity.com/tyt or enter code TYT before checkout to get 50% off your first order. Use less data, get paid by switching to Noble Mobile: https://go.tyt.com/getnoble Hosts: Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur 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

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Learn more at www.f305.com slash Canada. Has just been, you know, not good. I'm so upset. Oh, my God. The guy. TYT, I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and I'm so excited for today's show. I hope you are as well. we will be having a back-to-back interview with Colonel Daniel Davis, host of the Daniel Davis Deep dive on YouTube, a show I highly recommend. I've grown to really love and respect his analysis,

especially as it pertains to military capability, foreign policy. He's just always on the money. So we're going to talk about the latest updates in the Iran war. But I also want to ask him some questions about the war in Ukraine because his analysis I had just come across this year as I was researching for Iran. And I noticed that he's done extensive coverage of Ukraine as well. And provides a perspective that I don't think most people are getting in the United States. And I think it's important to ask him some questions about what he has learned, what kind of analysis, or what informs his analysis. So definitely stick around for that. We're going to be doing an update on Ukraine a little later in the first hour. Second hour, we're going to get back to the news of the

day. In the bonus episode for our members, though, I want to talk about Naftali Bennett. That's Benjamin Netanyahu's opposition, who is currently the frontrunner to serve as the next prime minister of Israel. It's important to understand who this guy is, whether or not he's really any different in terms of the Palestinians from Netanyahu. So looking for forward to sharing that with you guys later in the show in the bonus episode for our members. TYT.com slash join to become a member. All right, well, I don't want to waste much time. I want to kind of stick to a strict schedule today to make sure we get all of the news to you as soon as possible. So without further ado, let's get into it.

It has been obliterated, as you know. Yes, we had destroyed their three main enrichment and conversion centers, Natanz, Esfahan, and Fordeau. That was clear. They, of course, didn't want to admit it. And then right after the war essentially ended, you know, meaning they were obliterated. They can't fight back. They have no capability. They have some missiles left.

They have some drones left, but essentially they have no capability. Oh, we hit them so hard, we oblitered them, but obliterated them. The site was so obliterated that there's only one or two countries in the world that could get it. As well as Operation Midnight Hammer, where we totally. obliterated Iran's nuclear potential. We obliterated it. They don't have nuclear potential. While it turns out that U.S. intelligence indicates that President Donald Trump continues to lie to the American people about Iran's current military capability, as new assessments show that Tehran still maintains most of its missile stockpile. And it also has access to almost every single one of their

missile sites along the straight of Hormuz. Not all of them, but almost. And so the real question is, why is Trump lying to the American people? Is it because he wants a way of exiting the war and claiming victory? If that's the case, I will tell that man anything he needs to hear in order to end this war. But if he is literally delusional enough to think that Iran is weak, to the point where they have no military capability, their military has been obliterated, their navies at the bottom of the sea. We've heard the same things over and over again. If he genuinely thinks that and wants to pursue more conflict with Iran, well, we're in

a world of trouble. So let's get to the details. And through this story, you will understand precisely why we have been unable to snatch control of the Strait of Hormuz from the Iranians militarily. Let's get into it. So as the New York Times reports, and I should note, there have been other reports previously that indicated similar details about Iran's military capability. Most alarming to some senior officials in our intelligence community is evidence that Iran

has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tanks. tankers transiting through the narrow waterway. So if you all recall what happened during the hearing yesterday featuring our Secretary of Defense Pete Heggzith, he was testifying before members of Congress about the war in Iran. He was asked straight out, like are there military means to take control of the Strait of Hormuz? And Hegsus said yes. And that is just a lie. The reason why it's a lie is because if we were to send our military to attempt to take control away from Iran, they would be harmed significantly. Iran still has access to 30 out of their 33 missile

sites along the Strait of Hormuz, but we're not done yet. The Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move assets to other locations. And on top of that, according to the Times reporting, Iran still fields about 70% of its mobile launchers across the country and has retained roughly 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile, according to the assessments. So that stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles and a smaller supply of cruise missiles, which can be used against shorter range targets on land or at sea. So something tells me that President Trump isn't stupid about this. Something tells me that the reason why he hasn't reengaged kinetically is because he understands that we are at a disadvantage in terms of our military capability at the moment,

having depleted our missile interceptors and huge portions of our weapon stockpile. He's probably very aware, acutely aware that Iran has not depleted their stockpile and still has military capability that could really harm our soldiers. And so there's more. Okay, so based on information for multiple collection streams, including satellite imagery and other surveillance technologies, Iran has regained access to roughly, get a load of this, 90% of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be partially or fully operational, the people with knowledge of the assessment said. Okay.

So now we have a sense of how much weaponry Iran still has, what it has access to, and it gives you a sense of the risk assessment that should be carried out when deciding whether or not it's a good idea for the United States to reengage in a war against Iran, right? kinetically speaking. But let's compare what they have to what our military has. Because look, there are two things I want you to be very aware of as we move forward. Number one, yes, the Americans spend an insane amount of money on the Pentagon, on our military. That money doesn't really, for the most part, go to our soldiers in terms of giving them raises. I think they got a raise fairly recently under the Trump administration, second term, of course. But

But overall, most of the money that gets allocated for the Pentagon is spent on private defense contractors, the weapons manufacturers, you know, the bowings, the Raytheons, the Northrop Grumans, you get the point. Well, they charge a premium. They ensure that they raise their prices on these weapons. So they get these massive contracts. And so if you think you're getting your money's worth, you would be mistaken. Okay.

I mean, obviously there is an issue here with how much we're spending on our military because we have, we don't even have the capacity to beat the Houthis in Yemen. Remember, Trump gave up on that. What made Trump think it was going to be easy to defeat the Iranians? But anyway, let's get back to the United States and what we have in terms of our weaponry. Because, look, we spend too much on it. We're not getting our money's worth. But then on top of that, the bigger issue is that the United States loves to stick its knows into all sorts of conflicts. Our government, our foreign policy tends to engage in conflict,

start wars, things like that. And so since we had been providing weaponry and military aid to Ukraine and to Israel, we were already at a disadvantage compared to the stockpile that Iran has. So now that we've been bombing Iran, I know that we're in a ceasefire in the moment, But what do we look like after the kinetic action that took place in Iran before the ceasefire? Well, the U.S. military has already depleted its stocks of many critical munitions. Great. Including Tomahawk cruise missiles, maybe we shouldn't be dropping them on elementary schools in Iran, Patriot Interceptor missiles and precision strike and attackums, ground-based missiles.

And yet the intelligence suggests that Iran retains. considerable military capability, including around the vital strait of poor moves. So if you're wondering why we haven't done anything about the straight of poor moves or attempted to take control of the strait of poor moves militarily, it's because we literally cannot do it. So how do you feel about that, Americans, that we are shelling out a trillion dollars a year at this point on our military with the lie or the excuse that it's being done in the name of our national security. And we find ourselves today in a situation in which we don't have enough weapons or defense capability to engage in this war. Now, in this case, I don't think we should have

started the war with Iran at all. I don't think this war benefits the American people. I don't think we should be paying for it. I don't think that we should sacrifice our soldiers for it. This is a war that's being fought at the behest on behalf of Israel. And so if they want this war, they should fight this war. We should not be involved in it. But let's say we found ourselves in a situation where it made sense to be engaged in a war. There was a national security threat. How do you feel about the fact that we're spending a trillion dollars on our military and we wouldn't be safe today if we were attacked and wanted to retaliate. Certainly not to the capacity that would give me peace of mind. Let's just put it that way. So last month, the Wall Street Journal also reported that the Center for Strategic and International

Studies, these people are not doves. I want to be clear about that. Estimated that munitions expended in Iran would represent roughly 27 percent of Tomahawk stockpiles. Again, stop dropping them on elementary schools in Manab. Maybe you'll have a better stockpile, but I'll continue. About 23% of Jasm, a third of SM6, nearly half of SM3, more than half of Patriot Interceptors, and up to 80%, 80% of Thad interceptors. The Thad interceptors, I mean, that alone is a massive problem. If you don't have the ability to intercept missiles and in the case of Iran, the incredibly cheaply made drones, well, we've got a problem. And that's the other asymmetrical part of this war. Iran is able to produce these incredibly cheap drones to attack their opponents, their enemies.

The only way to shoot down those drones is to use the insanely expensive and difficult to produce interceptors, which we have already depleted at least 80% of. So this is a situation we're finding ourselves in today. And by the way, I went on Pierce Morgan show today and, you know, debated people on the panel. There was one Navy SEAL who repeated, regurgitated the lie about how Iran's military is completely decimated, depleted, destroyed. And when I brought up this reporting, he laughed in my face. Okay, then why haven't we taken control of the Strait of Hormuz? Why haven't we done that militarily?

He didn't answer the question. He just laughed. Okay. Anyway, so let's talk about what it would take to replenish our stockpiles. Now, the United States is its own worst enemy. We have been committing national suicide in this country for many decades. And what do I mean by that? Well, we don't have the same manufacturing capacity as a country like Iran.

We like to outsource everything. outsource jobs, outsource manufacturing. As a result, it will take not months, but literally years to replenish the stockpile. So the military fired more than you, I'm sorry, they fired more than used more than 1,300 Patriot Interceptor missiles during the war, which accounts for more than two years of production at 2025 levels. So Lockheed Martin currently produces around 650, Patriot Interceptors each year, and the military has fired more than 1,300 of those Patriot interceptors during the Iran War alone. So if it takes a year to produce as little as 650, you're getting the point, right? It's not as easy to produce these weapons and compare that to

what Iran is able to do with the cheap production of those drones. Now, the Trump administration didn't react well to the reporting here and went on to excoriate journalists for doing their jobs appropriately. So let's go to the acting Pentagon press secretary. His name is Joel Valdez. He responded to the New York Times and their questions for the story by simply saying, quote, it is so disgraceful that the New York Times and others are acting as public relations agents for the Iranian regime in order to paint Operation Epic Fury as anything other. other than a historic accomplishment. There's no indication the reporters are supporters of the IRGC, obviously.

So the straw man there is doing a lot of lifting in order to avoid answering honest, real questions about military capability and capacity. Now, Trump and his advisors have repeatedly denied that US munition stocks have been drained to dangerously low levels. In fact, in private, Pentagon officials have offered assurances to anxious European allies who have purchased billions of dollars of munitions from the U.S. on behalf of Ukraine. And they are concerned that those munitions will not be delivered because the U.S. military will need to replenish its own stocks. Yeah, they should be worried. They absolutely should be worried. And if Trump decides to reengage kinetically, I think they should start making plans to get the U.S. to give them their money back. We're in a terrible situation right now. By the way, the Senate has just voted against advancing the Iran War Powers resolution for the seventh time. So this would require, if it had passed, it would require the executive branch to get authorization from Congress to continue the war.

And this time around, it failed again. So this is the seventh time, 49 to 50. This time John Fenerman, a Democrat, was the deciding vote that killed this bill. Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski all voted in favor of it. So imagine finding yourself in a situation where you thought John Fetterman was this hardcore progressive, and he ends up being worse, way worse, than Rand Paul, Susan Collins, or Lisa Murkowski when it comes to, you know, pushing for maintaining our system of checks and balances. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

I'm not feeling great about the situation. I don't feel safe. I mean, given the fact that we've depleted so much of our interceptors gives me a lot of fear, honestly, considering the fact that we've made a lot of enemies around the globe, thanks to our thirst, absolute devotion for endless wars. And so I just, I fail to see how this war really benefits anyone, anyone at all, other than the Israelis. Why are we carrying the burden and they get to enjoy the rewards? Which, to be quite frank, has already been evident. As everyone's been incredibly distracted with what's going down

with Iran, what is Israel done? They've expanded their borders. They announced that they're going to be annexing southern Lebanon. The Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip went from 53% to 64%. We're suckers, man. And when I say we, I'm not talking about ordinary Americans. Clearly, we're not living under a real democracy, where our say has any impact whatsoever. Because the majority of Americans don't want this, but Trump is doing it anyway. So how is anyone going to argue?

How is anyone going to tell me right now that? Israel doesn't have undue influence over our foreign policy and government overall. You can't tell me that. You got to show me some receipts, and there ain't no receipts. Trust me, I've looked. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to have an awesome interview. We'll give some updates and analysis from Colonel Daniel Davis on Iran and also some

of the latest out of Ukraine as well. Come right back. I'm wearing one of our pieces of merchandise. So the funny thing about the dragon swine, that's what our... our viewers call themselves. That's the name of the group, but every individual chooses their own name. You might have Cincinnati Dragon. You might have Harry Potter Dragon.

We have a Grandma Sunshine Dragon is one of those that I remember. These are people that like to have an element of themselves, their lives, what's significant to them reflected as a part of the community. But the concept of the Dragon Squad is just something I threw away as a joke. I was mocking the proud boys, these right-wing groups that come up with a name for themselves that they think is cool, but it's actually really lame. And I thought, you know, off the top of my head, I can come up with something that's still kind of lame, but much cooler. And so I threw out Dragon Squad and I just moved on with my life.

But everybody liked it. And so they kept it going. And so we've embraced it. And I think again, it was this was during the period of the pandemic. I think it was it was sort of nice to have a renewed sense of community, a feeling that you're a part of something when everything seems so chaotic. And as a result of that, we've got independent artists online streaming, making beautiful digital art of dragons. We've got, you know, we've released a number of pieces of merchandise that people love sending us photos of them. And then by the way, for me personally, people send me, like you can probably see in the background, like a knitted dragon, someone sent me. There's a dragon book they sent me. Dragon board games they send me. People have done like custom ironworks making dragon bottle openers.

Like the fans are super invested in diamond art and things like that. And so it's great that they send this stuff. Sometime we're gonna have to set up a wall of all of them. But yeah, it's definitely brought the community a lot closer together. The fact that we were no longer in this big studio, I felt a lot more personally attached to people. It felt very immediate and I know that I personally needed the connection. Picture this. It's midnight. You're lying in bed, scrolling through ShopT, of course. Excited by that new Dragon Squad snapback you've had your eye on, but your waltz on the other side of the room.

Then you see the purple shop pay button, which has your payment and shipping information saved and ready to go. That seamless checkout experience is thanks to Shopify. They're making it so easy to buy your next piece of TiT merch. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S., including ours. gives you that leg up on the competition with hundreds of beautiful ready to go templates to express your brand's unique style. Tackle all those essential tasks in one place. From inventory to payments to analytics and expand your brand reach with built-in marketing

and email tools, super helpful. And I already mentioned that awesome purple shop pay button. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. See fewer carts go abandoned and more sales go with their Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash t-y-t. Go to Shopify.com slash t-y-t. That's Shopify.com slash ty-t. Welcome back to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Casparian. I will be reading your comments a little later in the show. But for now, I wanted to go straight to our interview because joining us now is Colonel Daniel Davis, host of the Daniel

David's deep dive on YouTube. Highly recommend checking out that show because if you want to get accurate analysis of everything from our weapons stockpiles to military capacity and capability or just even, you know, games, war games that are taking place right now as we speak. Daniel Davis will break it all down for you. Colonel, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. Delighted to be here.

Thanks for having me, Anna. Of course, my pleasure. So let's actually begin with the report by the New York Times. It was released yesterday, and it gave us an in-depth look into Iran's weapons stockpiles, also their access to their missiles, the missiles along the Strait of Formos. They write that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway, Iran still fields about 70% of its mobile launchers across the

country and has retained roughly 70% of its pre-war missile stockpile. That stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles and a smaller supply of cruise missiles. Okay, so since I watch your show, I already knew this. I mean, maybe not the specific percentages, but you know, you have been talking about how much of our weaponry has been depleted and how much military capability Iran has. And we've been kind of lied to, not just by the president and the administration, but also members of the media who seem to just engage in their reporting as stenographers. They just regurgitate what the administration is saying. But that's not really what's going on here.

So can you help, first of all, help us understand how are you? onto this before these fancy reporters were. Yeah, yeah, because I pay attention to what the other side has to say. And I look at a broad spectrum of reports. See, you can never take anybody at face value. And I mean anybody in any of these major conflicts like this. And you have to listen to what they say. It's crucial to listen to what they say. And then you match that up with what you can validate on the ground. And so many times some of the things that Iran has said have absolutely lined up on the ground.

And sometimes what they said hasn't. And then other times, even the U.S., sometimes they actually tell the truth. But so you can't just dismiss everything, but you have to be very discerning. Well, there had been many reports over years that Iran for decades has been building these underground missile cities. And they have been providing video of it. It's not like it's a secret or you have to take anybody's word for it. They literally have panoramic shots underneath there of the video, of the just cat, Ma'ernous miles and miles of these underground facilities.

And you're talking everything from jet fighters to boats to, to of course, to the missile launchers. The launch sites themselves are from inside the mountain in many cases. It is absolutely incredible. And Iran has been pointing this out. Anyone should have been able to understand that. It was definitely well known. And I've talked to some of the people on our intelligence communities that had access to this

prior to the war and validated that it was told to the president. that this is not going to work. And you talk about some of these underground cities. And now 30 of 30 30 and 33 by that report has been in. But there are also about 20 or 30 others scattered throughout the country, many of which haven't even been used yet. And to just to show how important, how tough they are, this report that literally just came out earlier today, I guess.

It says that one of the Iran's underground facilities near Esfahan has been reportedly struck 20 times during the war. An average of once every two days during the first 40 days using bunker busting munitions and precision strikes from B2s. And according to the information, they are said to have had the site resumed operations within hours each time. So when you know that Iran has buried their capabilities because they have foreseen that they cannot go toe to toe with the U.S.

They can't do conventional, conventional, because they know that our missile capabilities are profound and our B2s, our F-35s, F-16s. F-22s, you name it, they can all hit these things or fire long range from the Jasm's or from the cruise missiles, the A. Takams missiles from the ground. All kinds of ordinance that is really, really good and can hit pinpoint targets. So they know that. So they moved it underground so that when the war came that they foresaw that they knew that they would be nearly impervious to our attack. So we should have known that. And so we should not have started a war we can't win.

And then had this audacity, in my view, by especially from the press, President, Secretary Hexseth, and all kinds of these other folks who are supporting the war, to keep claiming, oh, we've destroyed 80% of their missiles. We've destroyed all of this. And they hardly had anything left. And it was never true. All this stuff they kept telling us over and over, Anna, was never true. And they knew it wasn't true. And now the media, and look, we dog the mainstream media a lot. But I mean, thank goodness that CNN, Washington Post, the New York Times, at least they're uncovering some of this stuff. So maybe there is. some hope for the fourth estate. I'm grateful for anything they do that's good. This is one of the

examples. You know, I had a thought though today that made me worry a little bit about this reporting or more importantly the motivations behind this reporting. Because on one hand, you know, there's been a lot of commentary. It could be inaccurate, but there's been a lot of speculation and commentary about how the Trump administration wants to get out of this war as soon as possible, but they want to spin it as a victory. And so Trump saying that it's he obliterated Iran's military is a way of spinning this as a victory so he can make an exit. I've never fully believed those arguments, mostly because the real decision maker over whether or not we exit the war, in my opinion, is Israel. And if the Israelis want us to continue,

we're going to continue. That's how much influence I believe the Israelis have over our government and foreign policy. However, do you think there's a possibility that the reason why public like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, which have, especially the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, I mean, they've been cheerleaders for this war. Do you think that they're trying to prevent Trump from exiting the war by saying, no, no, no, Iran is very dangerous. I mean, look at their military capability, look at how much weapons they have, their missiles, we have to stay in it to ensure that they're no longer a threat. Do you think that's a possibility? Yeah, unfortunately, you can't rule anything out on that. They could be trying that. But

But whether they intended or not, they have validated that we should most definitely not resume the war. Because that shows that 14,000 strikes that we had across Iran, that near virtually impervious to anything that their air defense, to anything that we had to launch. All that did was cause apparently a 30 cent degradation, 30% degradation on some of the missile sites. And some weren't touched at all. And some were kept to be operational. So whether if that was their intent, then it should be backfired to anyone willing to use common sense because that tells you we use somewhere around 30 to 40% of all of our remaining stockpiles of the most important missile systems we have. The Jasm's long range cruise missiles, the Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Thad long range air defense systems and the PAC three regular standard air defense missiles.

We burn through huge portions of that and scratch the surface. That's about it. So you want to go back in and you want to get rid of that even further and diminish our capabilities and stockpiles there further so that we don't we're we're not even going to be able to be defending ourselves already Anna, this has been a massive, massive waste of our national security capabilities. Huge. Just think about that. Against a midland power like Iran, we have burned through something like, and it's classified the exact number, but somewhere around 30 to 45 percent of everything we have. out of these key missile systems, offensive and defensive. Now, what's going to happen if we get into an unexpected war against somebody who's good, like a China, like a Russia, North Korea, possibly, or even go back against Iran for crying out loud, we're going to burn through those who we're going to be nearly defenseless. So I think it's a major, major mistake that we started and we should definitely not restart. I mean, I totally agree with you on that.

And when you consider the fact that, you know, the production of these fad missile interceptors, I mean, it takes a long time to produce them. It's also very expensive. And those are the missiles that are being used to shoot down Iran's incredibly cheap drones that are easy to produce, cheap to produce. So the drone component to this war also puts the United States at a significant disadvantage. Now, I want to talk a little bit about Secretary of Defense or War, heading on what you want to call him, Pete Hagseth, because he was testifying before Congress yesterday

about the war against Iran. And you'll be shocked to hear that his conduct was unbecoming. I want to show you a quick example. Let's go to video one. You said just a few moments ago, Mr. Secretary, we control the strait. But it's clear that reopening the Strait of Hormuz for commercial traffic eludes us in no small part because Iran retains a robust stockpile of cheap lethal Shahed drones, and they are getting help from our adversaries in rebuilding them. What is your plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Secretary? I would just note that the majority of your question was highly disingenuous and loaded with suggestions that I very much don't agree with.

Your reaction, Colonel. What do you, I could care less if you agree with it or not. We don't have control of the straight. And for a senator, and I think it was the Senate Armed Services Committee, to ask the Secretary of War, what is your plan to get it open with is the most basic elementary entry question. And for him to say, oh, I don't accept the premise of it. Then what do you not accept? I mean, I would have actually missed that part there. But the fact is, it's closed. And it has been from the beginning. And it never was in the 47 years before we started this

foolish war that should never have started. So it's a very valid question of what are you going to do to get it open. Now, I can tell you militarily, nothing. There's nothing we can do to force it open, which is because we tried everything under God's son to get it done the first time, whether that's all the naval power, carrier air power, the land-based power, these, you know, bunker busters, F-35s, F-16s, you know, F-22s, A-10s, you name it. We tried everything. Nothing has succeeded, and nothing's going to succeed, because there are so many different ways that Iran can keep that close. It's actually not very hard to keep it closed for various reasons that we can get into if you want. But the bottom line is he doesn't have an answer because the only answer to actually

get it back open is the one that the president and the government hates more than anything. And that's to either agree to some kind of a negotiated term that's acceptable to Iran or you literally just walk away and pretend like there's a victory, like you said, which ironically is what I hope they do because it's the least damaging of all the things that could do. But it's going to be one of those two things. It won't be the military. I agree with you wholeheartedly. And what really set me off on yesterday's show, because we were showing these videos to the audience, was the clip that we're about to watch. So here's Hegzith, saying the exact opposite of everything you just said. Take a look. Go ahead. And you just confirmed for the committee that there is not a military mechanism or means to reopen the strait.

There most certainly are military means by which we could open the strait, both targets on land and also with what we do with our naval capabilities, not to mention our naval blockade. Why haven't you? Why haven't you done? If that's true, and that's not what has been testified to us in private briefings, why haven't you done that already? Ultimately, a preferred long-term approach would be a deal where they open it up. Your own intelligence estimates, as has been reported, suggests that in fact the Iranians are in a position to hold out. for potentially years.

This is a high risk strategy to hope that this economic pressure will eventually cause them to voluntarily reopen the strait when there's plenty of evidence from military history to show that countries that are being attacked or invaded or occupied are actually willing to put up with a whole lot of economic misery in order to preserve national pride. Well aware, we've looked at all, we understand all of those historical case studies, and it's not just economic pressure. There's military pressure, diplomatic pressure. We certainly have a lot more military pressure we can bring to bear if the president were

choose to do so. I'd like your reaction to that, but also I want to talk about Hegzitz's qualification to even serving this role. But start off with your reaction to what he said. Yeah, well, first of all, you can you can tell he's stumbling over his words, trying to find something to say to just get away from the obvious answer, which the senator are laid out there. There's no way you can answer it any other way, then I can't open it up or we would have. It's absurd to the highest degree to even try and claim. Yeah, we could have

opened it up militarily, but we chose not to because we wanted to find some other path, even though we went to war for 40 straight days, bombed 14,000 targets and, you know, did all this stuff that we did. But, you know, we stopped because, I don't know, we want to try other things. That's obviously absurd at face value. And for him to then to claim otherwise is just, I mean, it's lying. I mean, I don't think there's any other way you can put it. So I remember when Trump named Heggsith as his defense secretary and typical thing happened. You know, the left was making a big deal about it in a negative way. The right was, you know, cheerleading the idea. They loved it. And I just, I looked at his record and I couldn't really understand

how he was qualified to serve as defense secretary. And the reason why I say that is because, yes, I know that he was in the military, but serving in the military alone doesn't mean that you have the proper qualifications to make the right decisions when it comes to questions of war and peace. He was an anchor over at Fox. I'm guessing Trump likes the way he looks. But other than that, all we've seen from Hegsith, especially as it pertains to the war against Iran, is taking a bad situation and making it far worse with his ridiculous rhetoric that does not reflect well. on the American people. That's my opinion. But I want to get your thoughts on it. Yeah, when he first was listed, and then we started seeing a lot of these interviews where he's on television, and then during his confirmation hearing, et cetera, I'll be honest. I said, you know what, let's give him a chance, because the last thing that we need is to somebody who's going to come in there and just be like Lloyd Austin, the guy before that looks great on paper, you know, coming in and out

of industry and all they do is just perpetuate the same things over and over. They just watch over this thing. They don't do anything to reform it, to bring it into the modern world. And I said, that's probably the last thing. And maybe we need a new guy who had two combat tours where he had a bronze star medal for valor, which means that he knows what real combat is like. So I thought, okay, maybe if he understands how things work at the pointing end of the spear and he at least has a field grade officer's understanding, maybe he can come in and do what he said.

And I said this at the time. If he does what he says in his hearing, then maybe he can do something good, which is to bring the warrior ethos back, to bring accountability back, to be doing modernizing the Department of Defense, et cetera. That's when it was still Department of Defense. And he didn't do any of those things. He came in and fired a bunch of people. You could tell he was just loving the job.

Then he brings in this TV crew all the time and, you know, does the makeup and all that kind of thing. And then one of the very first things he did was this whole signal gate thing. And that's when I see that, oh, my God. Now I felt foolish for saying give him a shot because the very first thing he did is use a signal chat for operational planning. And it was self-evident. Everybody who's been in the military long enough to be a private or a second lieutenant knows that that is absolutely forbidden. And you go to jail if you do operational stuff over a civilian app. I mean, everybody knows that.

And then he lied about it and said, well, it wasn't operational. And so that's when I said, all right, that I was fooled. And he has no character and is not willing to admit when he might have mistake or do the right thing in the first place. And it just went downhill from that point. So I want to end this portion of our conversation by showing you a video featuring Larry Kudlow, who's over at Fox Business now. He served in Trump's first administration. And I mean, he is absolutely shocked at the public opinion polling coming out of the U.S. showing that there is waning support toward Israel and that the majority of Americans do not agree with this war against Iran. Here's how he reacted to it. In terms of regime change, the president has said from the beginning hopes the Iranian people will go and do that. We'll go and secure the freedoms.

They want 42,000 and lost their lives just for protesting the repression. I call it. I mean, it's the worst. It's inhumane. It's Nazi-like. I'm sorry. It's just is. Absolutely.

And we can't look the other way because look at what happened then. So many leaders looked the other way. Trump's just not a guy who's going to look the other way. How can a political party possibly oppose this? I know they do. The Democrats do. I don't understand. This is, look, this is worse than 9-11.

It's not really worse than 9-11 because we lost almost 3,000 people. I don't want to go down that road. But everybody was united in defense and patriotism of the United States. It's gone now. How can that be? Iran is in some sense worse, bigger than al-Qaeda. They haven't done us direct damage yet, but we're risking, you know, Boston, New York, Chicago, you name it, that kind of thing. And how can people all of a sudden turn against it?

Israel, a democracy. I don't know if it was the two martini lunch talking or if he genuinely believes what he's saying, but I'm curious what your thoughts are. Wow, that's another one I hadn't seen. So that was a bit of a shocker. I used some of his sound bites on my show, but I missed that one. And holy cow, that is as detached from reality as it can be. And one of the things that I suspect and fear is that he may believe what he said,

meaning the sources of information he may get from wherever they are, he may think those things are true and he may be genuinely puzzled why Americans who were attacked on 9-11 and had Washington, Pennsylvania, and the New York hit by an external source and all the damage that went with that, we don't have the same reaction when we go and search for an attack on somebody that did not attack us, was not threatening us, violating our own constitution,

violating the War Powers Act and international law. Other than that, it was fine. And so why does he think anybody's going to support that? And then to be puzzled why Israel people aren't supporting Israel when they have been on this mad genocidal episode from the beginning? And look, and I said from the very, very beginning, from 10-7, in the days afterwards, on Fox News, I said, listen, any country who's been attacked by a terrorist organization like that

and killed, you know, whatever it was, close to 1,000 civilians in the process, They're going to strike back. We did, everybody would, and it's just. You know, it's in the UN charter. It's just normal humanity. But I said it matters how they do it. And then when it became evident with just days later that they were going to use this as an opportunity to go in and just start wantonly destroying the Gaza Strip and killing whoever was in the way. I said emphatically at the time, I said, this is putting Israel on a path that's going to be harmful and not going to provide their security.

You can't put military force to something to get a political objective providing security by creating more insecurity. And then, of course, that has impact when you just tens of thousands of people over and over were killed. And you can see, anyone can see that you are methodically leveling the entire living structure. There's no military utility in any of that. Even though they said it on a routine basis, and we gave political and diplomatic cover to it, it was never true and normal people can see that with greatest of ease. And so when he's surprised by that, then that means that he is either one, he's of those, of that group of people that is okay with that kind of destruction and that they value the Israeli

people over the Palestinian people and say these other ones don't count. So it's fine if they kill him and force them off the land. Or he's just blind or I don't know. Maybe there's a third option, but I can't come up with anything that's rational. Well, you know, it's interesting that he made this partisan because there's a growing number of Republican voters, self-identified Republicans who don't agree with this war either, although the percentage is higher on the Democratic side. I will admit that. I think that this behavior and the reaction by normal Americans to the behavior of Israel has been very clarifying for me personally, because I did use to see everything in our country through a high. hyper-partisan lens. And when you do that, you inevitably start convincing yourself that the other side is dangerous and they want terrible things and they don't value human lives. I am actually, the one silver lining to everything that's been going on is it woke me up to the reality that

most Americans are good people. Doesn't matter if you're a conservative, a liberal, a leftist, doesn't matter. If you see what's happening in the Middle East, you see the loss of innocent human lives, you see the treachery being carried out, and you speak out against it, you have a problem with it. It means you're genuinely a decent person. And knowing that the majority of my fellow Americans are decent people who see that slaughter abroad and they have a huge problem with it gives me a little bit of peace of mind. I think that we as Americans will pull through the horrible situation that we're in right now. But we have to have that optimism about who Americans are as people. I'm not talking about people in positions of power, just normal Americans.

And seeing them react negatively to what's happening in the Middle East gives me a little bit of hope. Anyway, let's move on to Ukraine. So we haven't talked about Ukraine on TYT for a while now. And that's very much on purpose because some number of months ago, I realized there were certain things that weren't being reported in the U.S. there were certain things I myself might have been naive about, and I wanted to get to the bottom of the truth and feel comfortable, you know, making a case. I am still not there, Colonel. I don't feel confident in what I know about what actually happened in the lead up to the Russian invasion into Ukraine, which is why I'm bringing you on, because you've been following this very closely, and I want to get your perspective on it. So let me introduce you again so people know who you are. So joining us is Colonel Daniel Davis.

He's the host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive program on YouTube. And I wanted to ask the colonel some questions about what the latest news is out of Ukraine. But more importantly, I wanted to offer a different perspective than what you've heard on this show in regard to the lead up to the Russian invasion into Ukraine. So let's actually start off with the most recent news. So where are we, Colonel, today when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war? There's supposed to be a ceasefire, but the New York Times reported just today that four Ukrainian civilians were killed on Tuesday and eight more died in strikes early Wednesday. The fighting on the front carried on without having paused at all during the ostensible

ceasefire. And the whole point of this piece was to make, you know, draw some attention to the fact that the conventional meaning of ceasefire has been upended during the Trump administration, because even when there clearly isn't a ceasefire, it's being referred to as one. Nonetheless, what is the latest news? This ceasefire, it's important to identify exactly what it was. It was supposed to be a three-day ceasefire for the purpose of the May 9th Victory Day in Russia and the same, I forget what they call it, something close to the same thing in Ukraine because they were all part of the Soviet Union that won World War II, what they called the Great Patriotic War.

And so President Putin tried to get one of those last year and it ended up not working. They kind of had a unilateral ceasefire and it kind of held a little bit. And then they went back to fighting. So there was never any anticipation this would do anything more than just the three days, the day before the day of and the day after that that may not day. So it was always expected as soon as that period ran out that they would turn back on. It generally held at the strategic level because the Russians, I think within three hours at the end of that ceasefire period launched, started what turned out to be a number of waves

and like, I think, 800 drones and missiles ended up being fired from Russia back into Ukraine. And Ukraine did the same thing on a smaller scale, but pretty robust into Russia. So, and then as you pointed out on the front lines, when you're talking about a 700-mile front line, there's going to be some skirmishes and there's going to be some breaking, but nothing big involved, because there hasn't been any big tactical movements for a few months now, actually. So in that regard, a lot of fire was exchanged back and forth across the line, but nothing of any real significant. So that's kind of where we are right now in terms of what's happened in the last few days. Interesting. So you mentioned that there hasn't been any major military operations over the last few months.

Like where is this headed? I mean, is this a quagmire or is there any movement on the Russian side to maybe put an end to this? Yeah, there has been, and it hasn't gotten any media coverage at all here. And I've been really surprised at because a lot of the stuff is open on the Russian side. I talked a minute ago about in the Iran where you got to listen to the Iranian side and the American side and the Israeli side to try to figure out what's actually going on. Same thing here. You got to listen to the Ukrainian side, but you also have to listen to the Russian side. And the Russians are furious at Putin. And they have been growing up for a number of months now because he hasn't been pushing hard enough.

because when this came to the, you know, we crossed over the four-year mark here not too long ago in February. And that exceeded eventually exceeded the period that the Russians were in World War II. And a lot of them were going, hey, hang on a minute. You know, our greatest generation won our war in whatever the total number of days was, 1,300, something like that. And they said, now then here we are. We passed that against one country, not against the whole Nazi empire. Why can we not win this and why aren't you trying harder? And Putin is very risk averse, so he hasn't wanted to push hard.

But now that he's starting to take pressure, even at the troop level, I've gotten some sources who have direct connection to people at the front line, and then others at the strategic level. And they're all getting angry at Putin, and it's starting to become public. So that's putting pressure on him to do something different and to take more of a risk. And now then there's a guy named Karaganov, who came out along with a couple of others, has been saying, you know what, it's time to change the dynamics here. We have been, you know, it's just Russia against Ukraine on the ground, but it's Russia against 50 nations from the United States and all the European nations and a bunch of others

from Asia, et cetera. And they say, we're tired of this. It's not just one-on-one, it's one-on-fifty, and it's time for us to change the dynamic and start firing missiles into European cities into European military facilities. Wow. Supporting us against this. And they said if they if that doesn't deter them from stopping any further, then we need to escalate to tactical nuclear weapons. They're saying this out loud and it's not getting any kind of coverage. I had John Mearsheimer on my show this afternoon and we talked about this extensively and showed some of the video from it. There's been another one since that time I found on the on Russian media and they are getting very

seriously about this. And I'm just really alarmed that we haven't been paying any attention. So I have a friend named Greg who he's been just nudging me to cover this. And I have to be honest with you, part of me felt like maybe he's being a little bit hysterical because he really believes that pretty soon Europe is going to engage in a kinetic war with Russia. And it could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. And he's like, Anna, you got to dig deep. You got to dig deeper, but based on what you're telling me, there's a likelihood that that could happen, but Russia would be the one taking the first, you know, take carrying out the first strikes. What the Russians are saying in this Karaghanov is his name, has been saying this for literally a long time. He was an early proponent of this, but he was a kind of a fringe guy. But now that because it's dragged on so long, it's moved into the mainstream. And a lot of people are saying, yeah, we think this is. going to be the case. It's been fed by, I mean, really all the way through, and it's continued on

from the European leaders, very foolishly, continuing to threaten Russia. And they have moved German troops into the Baltics, for example. They keep talking over and over about that. We have to have this rebuild Europe. And we have to have this $800 billion advancement. And we have to get ready to fight Russia by 2030 or 2029 even. So they're all trying to grow their forces. They're They're saying let's all add 5% of GDP. Let's go up to a wartime footing. So the Russians are hearing all that. And they're thinking, well, we're not just going to be sitting on our hands and doing nothing, especially when we're just nibbling at the front lines here. So that's why they're saying we got to do something different. And so they're saying instead of all these 50 countries

supporting the killing of Russian troops on our front lines, how about we take the fight to them for the first time? Because they say we're already, respectively at war. How about we make them pay some of the price too and not just our side. And that's the danger that we keep talking on the Western side about all this coming war with Russia. And now then they're starting to believe it. And now then they may be ready to take some action on it. Now it all goes down to President Putin.

How much risk is he willing to take and how much pressure can he resist on the inside? Because they may strike military targets in Europe. And of course, that's an Article 5 trigger right there that's going to definitely trigger that. But how much appetite is there going to be first? from our weakened military, Anna, because we have spent four years emptying out our arsenals to give them to Ukraine to go and try to kill Russians. But now we don't have the industrial capacity to replace that. So we're now at a very weakened position. While Russia is the

opposite, they are now busting at the seams with all kinds of missiles and drones, artillery shells, everything you need to fight a modern war. They have been stockpiling this stuff while they're fighting here. We can't find a fight a conventional war, or God forbid, a nuclear strike. We just can't do it or it could be destroying of everybody. But Russia is feeling like they're in the increasing powerful position because they've been preparing for it and mentally, whereas all we do is talk a lot of stuff and then deplete our arsenal.

So it's a bad situation. Okay. So the underlying disagreement, the big debate is what the intentions of Vladimir Putin is, what the Russians want to accomplish, right? So if you speak to anyone in the Western world, they are absolutely convinced that the whole point of all of this is to rebuild Soviet Russia, not in terms of communism, but in terms of the land grabs and the expansion, the empire, yeah. So that's what the Europeans believe. That's what the United States believes. Russia, on the other hand, has consistently made the argument that the reason why this happened is because of the security risk or threat to Russia, opposed by NATO. What is the truth? What is the reality? Yeah, this stuff that they're trying to rebuild the Soviet Union and trying to get ready to advance on the grounds and towards the, the West is complete fiction that we created.

This goes back to 2007, 2007 at the Munich Security Conference when Putin was first invited for the first time because they were trying to, you know, this was in the the euphoria, the short-lived euphoria after the end of the Cold War. and we said, hey, let's have a European wide security architecture. And so Putin was invited to Munich to have a conversation. And he said, listen, about this NATO expansion. And he said something, and I've written on this extensively before the war started, I said, listen, what sense does it make for, I think it was 16 members of NATO to stand against the totality of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries in like 50,000 tanks? I forget how many tens of thousands of missiles and planes and all that.

And we stood up against them and we stared them down during the Cold War and then they ended up falling. Now what sense does it make once they disintegrate that we need to expand that NATO? If 16 stopped all of that and now that they've disintegrated, you shouldn't even, you don't even need it anymore, much less to expand it. But it's like we took advantage of that and it wasn't collective security anymore. It was advancement and to keep Russia down. And then it kept going on and on. And so in 2007, Putin said, hey, who is this expansion directed against? Because you say it's not us, but there's nobody else out there.

It's only us. And if you keep going, there's going to be a problem. In 2008, then NATO took a step and says, as a matter of fact, it's not just the Baltic countries and these others. We're going to expand into Georgia and to Ukraine. And Russia says, no, you're not. Because it's one thing for the Baltics, which we don't like, but that's militarily defensible for us. There's a lot of reasons why that's not that hard of a task to defend. But Ukraine, that's like right down the plains that has a path leading straight to Moscow that twice

Western powers, Napoleon and then Hitler used to invade Russia in the past. And so they say, no, that's not happening. If you do that, and this was eventually told to Jen Stoltenberg, the former NATO Secretary General, if you put NATO into Ukraine, there will be war. But if you just take that off the table, there won't be any war. And Jen Stoltenberg mocked it and said, huh, nobody tells us what to do. They will come in. And then Putin said, then you're going to have war because there's no way in God's earth.

We're going to let your military alliance come up to our border like it's happened twice in the previous two centuries. Like we would do, Anna, there's no way on God's earth. We would ever allow China or Russia to move into a military alliance with Canada or with Mexico or Cuba, for example. We would never allow any of that. Or Venezuela, which you've seen us. I mean, we think, and when I say we, I mean our government, our government thinks that chance, just simple chance against America means that there's a security risk and we should go to war against people chanting that in a foreign country that doesn't even have weapons that can reach mainland United States. But I totally agree with you in regard to how the U.S. would react very similarly, if not even more aggressively, if a similar, you know, alliance had reached out. borders and threatened our security. Can you talk a little bit, though, about Crimea? Because,

you know, the argument, the counter argument to what you just said is, well, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, how do you justify that? Like, what was that about? You know, nearly everything that I've described here from 2007 forward, actually everything. We initiated first, Russia reacts. We want this situation. We love it to where we can do whatever we want and you can do nothing about it except for say yes sir and just suck it down. That's the case here. In 2014, in late 2013, early 2014, you had Ukraine whole to include Crimea. Now, Russia had a military base in this place called Sevastopol on the Black Sea at the bottom of Crimea, which was part of Ukraine territory and they had for a long time since the 1990s, when Ukraine became independent from the

USSR, they had a deal that there would be like a 99 year lease for the Russian Black Sea fleet there. That was something they all agreed to. Everything's fine, good to go. Well, now all of a sudden, with this, one of the reasons why Russia said they're not going to allow NATO into Ukraine because that's where their base is, is in what then was Ukrainian territory. And then now all of a sudden here we have the big mydon of late 2013, early 2014, when we, and everybody knows now, we helped orchestrate a coup that overthrew the legally elected government that was leaning towards Moscow. We didn't like that.

We wanted one that was leaning towards Europe. And so when the guy who was in charge, I think it was Yanukovych, was leaning towards towards Russia, then we said, yeah, we can't do that. So there was a protest. And instead of putting the protest down, we allowed the protesters to run this government out. Because then there was a legend, this is part of the gray part. There was, then there's turned violent in the capital city.

And there was some claims that it was the, the Russian dominated government was killing protesters. And others said, no, this was actually infiltrators in the, in the crowd to actually shoot the crowd to create more chaos to make it look like that it was the government so that they could come and drive them out, et cetera. That's in the gray zone. What's not in the gray zone is that Russia, EU, and Ukrainian authorities got together on the, I want to say it was the 20th of March, I'm sure 20th of February, not 2014, and they came up with a solution. They said, all right, tell you what, we'll have early elections. Russia agreed to this. And they said in May. So from February to May, we'll have early elections. And if your guy wins, then your guy wins.

will have early elections. And Russia said they knew that they would lose the election because the sentiment had turned against them. But instead of allowing that to happen, we supported the crowd running the Yanukovych out, and then they just took power. And of course, you may be familiar with the, what's her face of, Victoria Newland, with that famous interrupted, intercepted phone where we're deciding who's going to be the next leader of Ukraine. We're talking about all these different people. We put our handpicked person in there because we didn't want there to be an election. We just wanted to choose who was in charge. In response, Putin said, okay, then I see how this is going. We agree to elections. We aren't going to agree to a coup,

and we're now going to take Crimea, which is 95% ethnic Russian anyway. So it was in reaction to what we had helped facilitate inside of Ukraine. That's where that came from. I could talk to you about this for the rest of the show, but unfortunately we're going to have to wrap up soon. But I have one more question for you that I think is important. And this is something that I myself was naive about and wasn't fully informed about. Talk to me about how ethnic Russians had been treated in Ukraine under Zelensky. Yeah, I mean, one of the most infamous was during this Mideon period when it expanded out from the Capitol later in 2014. It got down into Odessa.

And there was a number of pro-Russian folks there, a lot of ethnic Russian. Because, you know, of course, during the Soviet Union, you had all kinds of ethnic Russians and Ukraine. They were mixed all over the place. There's a lot of history that I won't worry with right now that imported a lot of different Russians in over the decades prior. But the people, the pro-Ukrainian people that were the pro-Neo-Nazi folks turned against a lot of the ethnic Russian people. And they ended up burning them alive in a building. I can't remember what the building was, but it was just a horrific scene. It's on you people can Google it.

It's still on YouTube where they surrounded all the people, these pro-Ukrainian folks. And then they barricaded them in there and they set the building on it and burned them all to death. Wow. That's been one of the worst things in the Russian. But that's the thing. They said, you know, you're gonna outlaw the Russian language. You're gonna outlaw their ethnic religion. I mean, all these kinds of things.

So they kept pushing them down so that they made them not equal citizens in their own country. I'm talking that were people that were citizens of Ukraine from Russian, ethnic heritage. It's incredible. And honestly, you know, whether you're talking about the Victoria Newland phone call, whether you're talking about the way ethnic Russians had been treated in Ukraine, this is the kind of stuff that we're not really getting in-depth reporting about from certainly not legacy media. I'm sure there's independent media that has been covering it, but, you know, their coverage tends to get buried. But, Colonel, thank you so much for taking

the time to explain this to me and to our audience. I think the story is a lot more complicated than the very clean narratives that we've been seeing in places like the Washington Post or the New York Times. So I appreciate you. I don't want to give you the impression that the Russians are clean. They're not. I mean, there's a lot of plenty of bad things going on all over the place. Bottom line is nobody's hands are clean. This is just, you know, two sides that are using a lot of difficult task, especially. But the Ukraine side is not this innocent side. That is important to say. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's a lot more complicated again than what we've been led to believe. So anyway, thank you again. Colonel Daniel Davis, host of the Daniel Davis Deepdive on YouTube.

Everyone, please check it out. Please subscribe. And thank you for being so generous with your time, Colonel. Always my pleasure. Thanks, Anna. Thank you. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And we'll be back in just a few minutes with more news. Stick around. Indisputable is still the fastest growing news show in America compared to CNN, Fox News, and 30 other networks. We tell the truth on indisputable because the truth is indisputable. We go places that other news, media outlets refuse to go when there were human rights abuses happening at the Victorville Prison. Guards and members of the community contacted us.

You, through your investigative reporting, unearthed, very troubling allegations about specific forms of abuse and discrimination in the federal prison system. It really doesn't take much to be a trusted voice. All it takes is to be fearless, report on matters, be an advocate. I called it the bullpen intentionally because it's a place of preparation. We present individuals who may have an opposing view, so we debate. Sometimes we interview individuals because their stories deserve to be heard. A survivor of significant police misconduct and his attorney.

We covered this story earlier and will remind you of the horror of one man being shot at damn near 100 times by the police. time on this show to showcase the tipper tantrums of carings in the wild. We do this not because we want to see people's emotional outburst in public, but because these incidents are emblematic of a bigger societal issue taking place across the nation, and it has to be checked. My friend, my big homie, attorney at law, Benjamin Croft. I just want to thank you, man, an educated, articulate brothers like yourself speak truth to power. It makes a great difference in changing the landscape in America. Listen, no matter what you do, don't allow the politics of ideology to evaporate the soul that still exist inside of you. They don't stop, I don't stop.

Racism won't stop. I won't stop. Systemic bias won't stop. I won't stop. People still need health care, so I won't stop. People still need criminal justice system reform, so I won't stop. I'm wearing one of our pieces of merchandise. So the funny thing about the Dragon Swat, and that's what our viewers call themselves. That's the name of the group, but every individual chooses their own name. You might have Cincinnati Dragon. You might have Harry Potter Dragon. We have a Grandma Sunshine Dragon is one of those that I remember. These are people that like to have an element of themselves. Their lives with significant to them reflected as a part of the community. But the concept of the Dragon Squad is just something I threw away as a joke. I was

mocking the proud boys, these like right wing groups that come up with a name for themselves that they think is cool, but it's actually really lame. And I thought, you know, off the top of my head, I can come up with something that's still kind of lame, but much cooler. And so I threw out Dragon Squad and I just moved on with my life, but everybody liked it. And so they kept it going. And so we've embraced it. And I think again, it was this was during the period of the pandemic. I think it was it was sort of nice to have a renewed sense of community, a feeling that you're a part of something when everything seems so chaotic. And as a result of that, we've got independent artists online streaming, making beautiful digital art of dragons. We've got, you know, we've released a number of pieces of merchandise that people love sending us photos of them.

And then by the way, for me personally, people send me, like you can probably see in the background, like a knitted dragon, someone sent me. There's a dragon book they sent me. Dragon board games they send me. People have done like custom ironworks making dragon bottle openers. Like the fans are super invested in diamond art and things like that. And so it's great that they send this stuff. Sometime we're gonna have to set up a wall of all of it. But yeah, it's definitely brought the community a lot closer together.

The fact that we were no longer in this big studio, I felt a lot more personally attached to people. It felt very immediate and I know that I personally needed the connection. Me like me. Like war, it makes me pound it very hard. I'll enjoy that interview. Now, the Ukraine part, I'm sure some of you are going to protest to some extent. But understand that Colonel Daniel Davis is one of the most fair and honest analysts on questions of war and peace that I've seen in independent media. And he's, I know that I can trust it because he's been on point with Iran.

And I also know that our media lies to us. They can't be trusted. And so I think it's important to be a little more skeptical of certain narratives in legacy media and dig a little deeper. Actually, that's my job. So I'm going to do that and give you guys new information as I learn it because I want to make sure that no one is misled about what's actually happening. Now, I'm going to do the Noble mobile thing and then I want to read a bunch of your comments. So listen, we're all suffering from brain rot. And it's because we're spending too much time on our phones.

But luckily, Noble mobile has this new feature that can, you know, prevent you from spending too much time on your phone, thus rotting your brain. So if you wanted to learn more about your own brain rot index, just go over to t.yt.com slash switch or you can scan that QR code that you see on the screen right now, t-y-t dot com slash switch or scan the QR code. All right, let's go to some of your comments. So Don Datadadadogin was reading my mind before I even asked this question. But I wonder why the Times is now being honest about Iran's military capabilities.

Is it to save face or has Israel just not paid the tab yet? But honestly, like, I hate that we've all become so cynical because we've all been lied to over and over and over again. So I understand your skepticism. In fact, I asked Colonel Davis about this very thing during the interview. I don't know. I don't know. But who knows? Maybe they want to do the right thing and do accurate reporting.

I don't know. Pessimistic progressive says, Anna, did you see the poll that shows Israel as the most hated country in the world? That gave me a smile. Well, I just want to ask the people who found my comments about the whole world loathes you. Remember I said that about Israel? And I got in a lot of trouble for that. I was just telling the truth. I know the truth hurts sometimes, but I was telling the truth.

Akuna Matata says, just when I was happy from Operation Joy yesterday, I had to watch the despicable Emily on Pierce Morgan only because Anna was on. Proud of myself for getting through it. I'm proud of you as well. I'm also proud of myself for getting through it. Okay. Art guy says, so glad Anna has found a reliable military reporting source like Colonel Davis. He does excellent work. He absolutely does.

I'm totally addicted to his program because we're not military experts. So it's important to understand, you know, how these kinetic wars are fought, who has the actual disadvantage, which country is lying about their capabilities. These are all questions that should be answered by honest actors. All right, I'm going to read a few super chats and then we'll move on to the rest of the rundown. Rose Orozco, thank you for the super chat. Brave and beautiful Anna, thank you. In Liberty and Guns We Trust, says Anna just saw your latest Pierce Morgan with Emily, Shiel, who's by the way, a wonderful person, Rob and Doron.

Great job. I get the sense Israel is realizing their hatred and their dirty laundry is out forever. Keep up the great work. I mean, the way that they're behaving in terms of, of like their Hasbaran, the way they attack people like me, or anyone else who is critical of the Israeli government and military, it does show that they realize they're in a bad spot. And they did it to themselves. Pakistani American Hawk Sentinel says, hey Anna, ignore Emily from Pierce Morgan's show. She's a paid pro-Israel advocate, Schill, funded to defend the narrative. Please let her know

she is apartheid life, Benz Ram Talmudist. Okay? Which means racial separation, draconian style land grabs justified by religious supremacy and ethnic cleansing. Yeah. I mean, I've been saying that on the show. I don't need her to confirm it because she's a liar. Anyway, with that in mind, there's a story that I wanted to talk about, trigger warning

before we even get to the details because it is horrific. But if you happen to be someone who is willing to donate your body to science after you pass away, well, do you really know where your body's going to go? That's the real question. So let's get to the details. Americans who had generously signed off on donating their own bodies after they pass away for scientific research are now. Well, they might be learning that their cadaver isn't necessarily going to go where they would expect it to go. And that's according to some new reporting from Al Jazeera.

So Al Jazeera chronicled how American bodies that are donated to scientific research are sent over to the Navy, meaning our military, just to be handed off to Israeli surgeons to be used by the IDF for military training. That sounds crazy, right? That can't be. But you should decide for yourselves. Take a listen. For years, the University of Southern California, a private university in Los Angeles, has been selling dead bodies to the U.S. Navy for medical training.

Some are used in a specialized course run by the Navy and USC that brings Israeli military medics to Los Angeles four times a year to train on fresh tissue cadaver bodies. That means the donor died recently, and their body is. not chemically preserved. Available contracts for these sales date back to 2018. I think I was actually trying to disprove my initial thoughts. It's like this can't be the idea of. This USC-affiliated physician agreed to speak to me on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation. They stumbled upon the contracts in 2024, following the university's heavy-handed crackdown on students and faculty protesting the genocide in Gaza.

Every question that came up, I just looked into it and every answer I found was more horrific than might I I had imagined it violates every ethical lesson I was ever taught. Israeli military medics have been training with USC and the Navy since 2013 at the Navy Trauma Training Center here at the LA General Medical Center. What is it going to take to get these people out of our country? I mean, is there any facet of American life that they haven't infiltrated to some extent? Why are we training IDF soldiers at USC? What are we doing? Why are we selling cadavers to the Navy, which then sends the cadavers over to the IDF,

to train on said cadavers, not for scientific research, but for military purposes? And by the way, Americans didn't know about this. So Americans who had, again, generously signed off on donating their bodies to scientific research, had no idea that there's a possibility your body could end up with the IDF. The donor bodies are frequently sourced from the University of California. And the doctor affiliated with USC, speaking on condition of anonymity, expanded on exactly how these bodies are being used and it's horrifying. So trigger warning, but if you want to know, here it is.

The fact that they're using refusced cadavers, they basically reanimate people pretty shortly after death. They re-infuse fluids mixed with dyed water. They put them on a pump to simulate a pulse again. They're making them look like they're alive again, basically. Several trauma surgeons from across the U.S. confirmed to us that using perfused cadavers is not standard, especially because of the associated costs. They definitely have simulation, simulated bodies that they can use. little to no public information exists about the Israeli military course, a 2020 report written by USC and U.S. Navy instructors offers a rare glimpse inside. It describes a four-day combat trauma

surgery skills course with trainees who are part of forward surgical teams from the Israeli military. That means they're deployed to operate on those wounded near the front lines. The report says that trainees treat simulated combat injuries, including gunshot wounds to the chest and leg and blast injuries to the face and torso. While it's unclear how exactly this training is applied today, there has been an increase in senior Israeli military doctors and surgeons embedding with units on the front lines in Gaza since October 2023. Again, okay, the donor agreements do not disclose that the bodies may be used for military medics,

Israeli military medics. And one of the most disturbing elements of this story is that the families are not even told what is happening to their loved ones body. So this is beyond infuriating because we want people to donate their cadavers to scientific research. Scientific research is incredibly important. And stories like this, and I'm glad that this story is out there, but the cold hard truth is that knowing that this is taking place is going to make people less likely to want to donate their bodies after death for scientific research.

Because here's one thing that I've got no interest in, donating a damn thing to the IDF. Anything, nothing. I would, I mean, if I had a family member, an immediate family member who out of the kindness of their own heart donated their cadaver for scientific research, and I find out that the IDF is doing military trainings on my loved ones cadaver, I would be understandably furious. to say the least. So let's go to the next video. I don't know if I can stomach it, but let's go to the next video. Jeanette was a force. She was the matriarch of the family. She really did want her body to go to training the next generation of doctors. Jeanette Volpin died in 2021 at the age of 101 and donated her body to USC. Her daughter and granddaughter have been reeling from the news.

When I saw the article that came out from the journalism students, I was furious and sick to my stomach. Was Jeanette ever told that there would be the possibility that her body would be used in training with military? Absolutely not. No, she was not told that, nor were we. Had she known that, do you think she would have been comfortable donating her body to USC? I don't think so. I believe she would have made a different choice if she had known that. Have you been able to find closure? You know, things felt very settled, especially once we did get her ash.

back, which I mean at this point, are they even her ashes? You know, it really has destroyed any trust. Obviously that makes me think about my own mom and that was difficult to watch. Okay, so I have to clarify something I misspoke. So I want to make sure you guys have accurate information. So USC sources the bodies from the University of California, San Diego, not from University of California. Okay, so I just wanted to clarify that.

This is wrong and I'm grateful that this is something that was reported on, so we are aware of it. Now, mainstream media could be all over this story, but they're not. And so the reason Al Jazeera covered it and why we now know about it is because of a group of concerned student journalists at USC who blew the whistle. So thank you to those students and thank you to Al Jazeera for doing this report. We got to take a break. I'm going to gather my thoughts and come right back. Everybody, welcome back to the show. Barrett Sebastian 7366. Thank you for joining us.

Sorry, guys, that story made me very emotional. Anyway, all right. Just seeing that elderly woman so incredibly kind to donate her body to science, and then her family learns what happened to her body. Okay, so Mark Francis writes in and says, I never thought I'd live through the collapse of an empire, but here we are. I know, right?

I remember when I was young and I used to think younger, a kid, I used to think like, oh, I'm so lucky I was born when I was born. You know, we have certain freedoms and rights that weren't afforded to people back in the day. And like, we're so lucky. We're so free. Like starting with the millennial generation. But honestly, Gen Z is the most cooked because they've never seen an America that was doing well. But older millennials remember America prior to 9-11. And it sucks that younger people didn't get to experience that. Yeah, we still had our problems.

I'm not minimizing that. But there was a time when we weren't as bad as we are now. Let's go to Jim Huggett, who says Iranian drones cost $30,000 each, but U.S. slash Israeli interceptors cost $3 million each. So I've seen different something and something. writes it and says, love you, TYT, YT, thank you for covering the body donation story. It is important.

Read about it yesterday and it's so shocking. I know. I mean, when I saw the headline, I'm like, come on, guys. Come on, guys. But it's real. Oh, wow. Americans should be in the streets with full BDS and a general strike until we've decoupled from this pariah state.

I totally agree with you. I mean, I could not agree more. Anyway. Okay. So let's switch gears. entirely, so I don't end up stopping on the show and embarrassing myself. I want to talk a little more about the economic situation that Americans are dealing with today. It was bad to begin with, but it was made worse by the incredibly moronic attack and war against Iran. So let's get into it.

All right, breaking just moments ago, a new brutal report on wholesale inflation, way, way worse than expected. You can see that's the month to month. And at 1.4%. That was much more than was expected an annualized basis. It's at 6%. Jesus. These are the ugliest numbers I have ever seen on inflation. And it's not just one ball, Johnny Berman. You could literally hear Harry Enton in the background with this hot mic going, Jesus, once he realizes inflation's at 6% for April. So we talked about the inflation reports yesterday. And apparently, turns out the reports are worse than we thought. And And so let's actually talk about the numbers that came out today.

Because we did the inflation report from yesterday, but we've got a little more clarity about how much this war has basically destroyed our own economy, the global economy. And unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight. While the kinetic war seems to have ended for the most part, there is some indication that Trump is thinking about re-engaging, which would be one of the dumbest things he could possibly do, which means he might really do it. Okay, so let's talk about today's number. So the producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month of April. This was the largest monthly gain since March of 2022. And then when it comes to the annual basis, the index was up

6%, which is the biggest increase since December of 2022. So if you're unfamiliar, the producer, producer price index measures the prices that businesses specifically are paying for goods and services. And that is different from the consumer price index, which measures the prices that you, the consumer pay for goods and services. So by the way, there have been some investor calls I've been listening to lately just out of curiosity to see how, you know, company executives are reacting to war-related inflation and higher energy prices. And, And they're just admitting that they're going to pass off 100% of the cost to us, the consumer. So great.

We've got, well, we're already experiencing a little bit of it, but we've got a lot more to look forward to, I guess. So here's more of, here's Harry Anton with more of Trump's polling. And I'm sure. Just take a look here. President's Net Approval on inflation. The five worst polls ever for any president, they all belong to Donald John Trump. and they have all occurred in the last month, the CNN poll, one of them 48 points below water on the net approval rating. So what we're talking about here is the worst numbers ever in

multiple polls now belong to the president of the United States. Donald Trump, it is a record simply put, you do not want to have. The five worst polls ever. Five worst polls ever. Joe Biden's not in there? Joe Biden's not in there. Jimmy Carter's not in there. I gotta be honest, I couldn't care less about how Trump is doing in the polls. Okay, he's doing poorly in the polls. He deserves it. He totally deserves it. The thing that really frustrates me, though, is sure, I mean, it's possible that, you know,

a Democrat in office would maybe avoid engaging in a war against Iran. But at the end of the day, as we learned with the now seventh failure of the War Powers Act, that was voted on in the Senate, there are plenty of Democrats who are supportive of this war. So just something to keep in mind. Anyway, so there is a major affordability crisis in this country right now, and it looks like people are correctly laying the blame at Trump's feet. So earlier polling from CNN and SRRS found that 77% of Americans credit Trump for raising their cost of living, and that number includes a majority, believe it or not, of Republicans.

So, additionally, two-thirds of Americans feel that Trump's policies have hurt them financially, and Trump's overall approval rating for the economy is a devastating 30%. 30%. In fact, I think for the first time, maybe ever, voters believe that Democrats would be better for the economy. I wouldn't say forever. I mean, Democrats were incredibly popular during the New Deal era for obvious reasons. Okay. But that has changed in recent years for for obvious reasons. I mean, Republicans have done a better job marketing themselves as the party that's better for the economy. We're the ones who are going to repeal these taxes. We're the ones who are going to do away with the red tape. And that marketing worked for the most part. But then you take a look

at what the economy looks like and you see a completely different picture. So what are the policies that Trump has implemented that American voters are blaming him for in terms of destroying the economy? Well, most Americans say that the Iran war and tariffs have hurt their personal finances. 75% of Americans say that the war with Iran has hurt their personal finances. The war had the highest percentage of Americans who cited it as having a negative impact. And then Trump's tariffs come in at number two with 65% of Americans saying that they believe the tariffs have hurt them economically because they have. It's definitely true. So despite writing into the White House on a wave of complaints about affordability and how Biden's administration led to all this

inflation, well, Trump has seen a 25 point rise among Republicans who are blaming him and his policies for the increase in cost of living. So Republicans are now concerned, given that 55% of those polled, cited the economy as a major factor in deciding who they're going to vote for. And that concern is heightened by the fact that Democrats, as I mentioned earlier, now hold a nine point advantage over Republicans on cost of living, and Democrats also lead by double digits, on trust to handle income inequality, health care costs, and helping the middle class with a smaller edge on handling inflation. Republicans are ahead in trust to handle the stock market, unsurprising, with relatively close divides on which party would do a better job of dealing with taxes.

Okay, so let me just say, I am curious to see if public opinion shifts a little bit on whether Republicans or Democrats are better on handling the stock market. Look, there's corruption on both sides. And when it comes to Congress, there's definitely insider trading taking place on both sides of the political aisle. But let us not forget about the market manipulation that Trump keeps engaging in over and over and over again. You know, the manipulation where he pretends like a peace deal is on the horizon.

with Iran and the war is about to end, and the markets respond favorably to that. But is it true or is he lying? And so far it appears he's been lying. And there have been dozens of people who apparently are being investigated right now for engaging in insider training. We'll see if that actually leads to anything substantive. But more than a third of Americans trust neither party to handle the cost of living at the end of the day. That's the real story here. Let's take a look at this graph. It shows you that 33% of Americans, don't trust either party on health care. 32% don't trust either party on helping the middle class. 38% don't trust either party on tackling income inequality.

41% do not trust either party on the stock market either. And you know what? They're right because both parties have failed us on these issues. Look at the Obama administration and what happened after the 2008 economic collapse. There was a case shaped recovery. meaning the rich got richer, including those who led to the economic collapse, and the poor got poorer. Middle class got decimated. That happened under Obama, guys.

I'm not saying that because I have some ill, weird feelings toward Obama. I'm just strictly talking about what actually occurred, what is demonstrable, what you can check for yourselves. So when are we going to have leadership in this country that actually represent? the best interests of working class Americans. That's what I want to know. And the fact of the matter is we're never going to get it unless we're willing to change the way that we as American voters behave in American society.

I think we've been putting up with too much BS for too long. And we got to start thinking about building coalitions. Okay, we need to start thinking about working alongside other Americans in order to engage in pressure campaigns and demand more. Anyway, all right. Well, we got to take a break. Actually, no, do we have to take a break? No, we got five more minutes, right?

You know what, let's just get it out of the way. I hate taking breaks. Let's just do it. It's going to get out of the way. And then we come back. We've got more news for you. I want to talk a little bit about what Barry Weiss was willing to do to secure that interview with Benjamin Netanyahu on 60 minutes.

Come right back. I didn't realize I was on camera already. Okay, so lots of comments from you guys. Let's start with EJEP 5, who says, Anna, when it comes to our weapon systems, we don't get our money's worth, but Israel gets our money's worth. Well, that's certainly true. Moving over to our Twitch community, No Math Dragon says, I hear China was working on a weapons deal with Iran while Trump was being ignored.

Those anti-ship weapons are bad news. It's just Vegas says, if Trump had anyone left in his administration. administration with half a brain, they would have told him this was a bad idea. Yeah, I mean, look, my mind wanders back to who his chief of staff is. His chief of staff, Susie Wiles, helped Benjamin Netanyahu get reelected in 2020. She was hired by his campaign to help a brother out. She's the gatekeeper. Is he getting the information he needs?

Welcome back to the show, everyone. Just want to give you some notice that this show is covering a lot of heavy news, a lot of depressing news. However, if you need a breather, you need something fun, light, and super enjoyable to watch. Please check out happy half hour immediately after the bonus episode for our members tonight. So around 5.30 p.m. Pacific 8.30 p.m. Eastern. All you have to do is go to Twitch.tv slash TiT for good news and good booze. I think that's like the best tagline of a show ever. Happy half hour with Brett Ehrlich. Make sure you check that out. All right.

I'm going to read a few more comments from our members and then we'll move on to the rest of the news. We've got Marissa Case, who's been a member for one month. I saw you on Pierce Morgan today. That woman you debated is a disgrace. That's Emily Schrader. Your Canadian fan from the world's largest freshwater island. Nice. I kind of meant, by the way, I really want to go back to Vancouver.

Because it's one of the most beautiful places I've visited. Just so gorgeous. Anyway, let's go to some more comments real quick. We've got factually active in our Twitch community. Make the Dems work for their votes or they can resign to. I love you. Okay, that's the energy I live for. Thank you.

We have to stop rewarding people simply because they identify with a party that we think is better. what are you going to do for me? What are you going to do for my fellow Americans? Make your case and more importantly, how are you going to accomplish it? I was watching the gubernatorial debate and it blew my mind how many of these candidates, actually almost every single one of them, would make these big declarations about what they're going to do. And then when one of the more aggressive moderators asked them, well, the Supreme Court struck that down, how are you going to do it? No idea, no plan. or even if it has nothing to do with the Supreme Court striking it down. Okay, you say you want to accomplish this.

What's the procedure? How are you going to accomplish it? No thought, no consideration over how you accomplish it because they have no intention of accomplishing a damn thing. That's the reality. And that system, that paradigm is going to continue unless the voters demand more. So that means you're going to have to be engaged. That means you're going to have to form coalitions.

That means you're going to have to pay attention. and luckily you're watching this show, you are paying attention. But let's stop settling. Remember, these are people who are signing up to work for us. We're not signing up to work for them. But they sure act like we signed up to work for them. And I got to read this comment from Stephen Matthews who says, Kellyanne Conway is just over here auditioning to be a Duck Dynasty,

Doug Dynasty sister wife. Okay. I know you shouldn't comment on someone's appearance, but Kelly, too much volume. Okay, there was too much volume. I love the luminous hair. That was too much. Flatten it down a little bit, just a little bit. All right.

Anyway, so let's talk about what we're now learning about Benjamin Netanyahu's interview on 60 Minutes, because it turns out that the self-described Zionist fanatic went to certain lengths to secure that interview that go against journalistic ethics. So let's give you the details. CBS's Barry Weiss apparently allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take his pick on who would be interviewing him on 60 minutes in order to snag that interview. Homegirl really wanted a war criminal on 60 minutes and she was willing to make the environment as friendly and positive as possible for Netanyahu to make this happen. How do I know this? Well, it's been reported on. And by the way, it was strange that Leslie Stahl, who is one of the normal correspondence for 60 Minutes, wasn't the one who carried out the interview. In fact, Major Garrett, who is not one of 60 Minutes' normal correspondence, was the one who

was able to do the interview because that's the person who Netanyahu chose. So the 60 Minutes interview was Netanyahu's first major U.S. broadcast interview since the start of the Iran war, and it turns out that Weiss booked Netanyahu herself. So Major Garrett only got the assignment after Weiss gave Netanyahu a say in the matter as part of a last ditch effort to clinch the interview for the network. Okay, so hold on. Let me just understand something here right now. you have this woman who is serving as an operative for a foreign country. She has infiltrated our media. She is, she turned a legacy outlet, CBS News, into a joke.

And she did it all for Israel because, as she says, she's a Zionist fanatic. Okay, great. And she had to work hard to clinch the interview with Netanyahu. Are you kidding me right now? I mean, how embarrassing. But okay, that's apparently what happened. Now, during the interview, Netanyahu asserted that the war against Iran, which the U.S. is carrying the entire burden of, isn't over yet.

Isn't over yet. This is what he said. The Iran war accomplished a great deal, but it's not over, because there's still nuclear material enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran. There are still enrichment sites that have to be diminished. So there he goes, pretending like he's worried about nuclear weapons. But in reality, he wants regime change in Iran. That's all he cares about.

So he said that. But here's why I give you his quote again. That statement led to a question about, well, seems like you want boots on the ground to get the enriched uranium. So we talk in IDF, we talk in U.S. troops. So Garrett, and I give him credit for this, he deserves credit for asking this question. If it's necessary, how do you envision the high. enriched uranium will be removed from Iran. To which Netanyahu responded, you go in and you take, laughs, it out.

Garrett then asks, with what? Special forces from Israel, special forces from the United States working in tandem under international supervision. How? And he responded with, well, I'm not going to talk about military means, but the president, President Trump had said to me, I want to go in there. So basically, he's saying U.S. troops. Trump wants it.

Trump, it's not me. I'm not the one. Who me? Not me. Trump's the one who wants to send U.S. troops to Iran to get the enriched uranium. That's all. So yeah, it'll be U.S. troops. So we gave him credit for asking that question,

because that's a question that should be asked every single time you hear a representative, a politician, anyone from Israel argue that a war needs to continue, a war that they wanted, that we're unfortunately involved in continue. use, okay? So, but most of Major Garrett's questions, I just have to be honest with you guys, were incredibly biased in favor of the Israeli perspective. And that did stand out to me. Aside from that one question that I thought was a really good, tough question, the rest of the interview was framed in a way that's favorable to the Israeli perspective. And I thought that was strange. Now that I understand the decisions and the wheeling and dealing that was taking place

behind the scenes with Barry Weiss allowing Netanyahu to choose who would interview him. Now that all makes sense. The tone of the interview, the way the questions were framed, that all makes a lot of sense. By the way, Leslie Stahl, who is 84 years old, looking pretty good for 84. She's been issued to do an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu. So I can't even imagine how she must be feeling right now, considering the fact that he agreed to be interviewed, but she got booted. So a more friendly interviewer would be asking the questions.

Now, Leslie Stahl, the longtime 60 Minutes star, had spent months apparently trying to land the Netanyahu sit down. According to the status newsletter, she was bypassed in favor of Garrett. The move marked the second time in recent months that Barry Weiss reportedly secured a marquee interview for 60 minutes only to hand the assignment to Garrett. instead of one of the program's own correspondence. So the first time Barry Weiss did this was to interview Pete Heggzith back in March. So I just want to pause for a second and ask, do you think that this reflects well on Major Garrett? Because I got to be honest with you, if I were in his shoes and I knew that both Pete Heggzith

and the Prime Minister of Israel chose me to conduct. the interview because they thought it was going to be better PR for them, I'd be embarrassed. I'd be super embarrassed. I would not think that that speaks highly of the work that I do. And I would think that this discredits me as a journalist, right? I don't know what Major Garrett is feeling, but I really hope that this has given him at least a moment of pause, maybe some self-reflection over the fact that he's seen as the person that can be steamrolled and used as a tool for positive PR.

But let's get to the deceptive editing because Megan Kelly pointed something out that I thought was interesting. Now, Megan Kelly also thinks that 60 Minutes intentionally sliced and diced the Kamala Harris interview in order to make her sound good. And this, of course, was the whole lawsuit that Donald Trump had filed against CBS. because he feels like they were trying to like throw the election by editing an interview in a way that made Kamala Harris look really good when she was actually terrible. I mean, I've said this before, I'll say it again. I don't think the edited version of her answer made her look good. I don't think her full word salad answer made her look good. I think both answers looked bad. But I wanted to give you that context because Megan Kelly totally bought the deceptive editing thing when it came to Kamala Harris. So you should be warned of that. However, she's now making the argument that 60 Minutes used deceptive editing in this interview with Benjamin Netanyahu. Let's take a look.

In March, when we showed you a misleading edit of Pete Hexeth's interview with Major Garrett, when the show suggested that Secretary Hegset was responding to a question about Israel dragging the US into the war, and the extended interview showed the question didn't mention Israel at all. There's manipulation going on over at CBS. especially around the topic of Israel. Hmm, I wonder why. So that's an example of actual manipulation. That's real manipulation.

Now, when you're in broadcast news on television, obviously, you've got to go to commercial break. And so you have to, it sucks. You're supposed to shorten answers in a way where you don't change the message, but you just clean it up so you can deal with the time constraints as a result of being part of broadcast news. As we all know, 60 Minutes then posted the entirety of Kamala Harris's answer on social media. It's not like they were trying to hide it.

Besides which most people these days are getting their news from social media versus broadcast television. So, but the case of the Pete Heggseth interview that she's pointing out, she's absolutely right about that. I totally agree with her on that. Because in this case, you're being misleading about what Pete Heggzith is talking about. you're making it seem like he's referring to Israel when Israel didn't come up in that conversation. So it apparently happened again on Sunday as you're about to hear Megan Kelly talk about in the next video. Also several references by Netanyahu to the Americans turning against Israel saying that they also hate America. Why did Barry Weiss and her CBS cut from the interview of Netanyahu all the references by Netanyahu attacking Americans,

who have questions about Israel as anti-American. Is it possible they believed that might make him look bad and further alienate Americans? Maybe, maybe. But I got to be honest with you, the guy says things that makes him look bad on a regular basis. So it's not just with 60 Minutes either. So apparently Barry Weiss was accused just last week of having meddled in a, another CBS show Sunday morning. For the April 5th report about Israeli archaeological digs in the West Bank,

Weiss made last minute edits and script changes according to Zateo. A network insider told the publication that Weiss had never jumped in editorially on a Sunday morning story until this one. But guys, this is why she was installed as the head of news at CBS. This is the reason why. David Ellison admitted as much during an interview with the FT. So like, why are we, I'm not surprised.

I don't trust CBS as a source anymore. It sucks. What I'll do if they've done original reporting is try some way somehow to corroborate it if I'm going to use them as a source on the show. But I generally stay away from CBS now because I don't want to be misled. and then in turn mislead my audience about what's actually happening.

So one of the subjects for the interview, Zaid Azhari, who's a cultural heritage researcher and leader of the Save Sebastian campaign, even stated that his interview was selectively edited to falsely portray him as someone who embraces, or I'm sorry, as someone who erases Jewish history. According to Zateo, he told me his interview was edited in a way that portrayed him as a stupid Palestinian who's just a resident from Sebastiania, referring to one of the oldest continuously inhabited Palestinian towns in the West Bank and an area home to several ancient sites. Hopefully the IDF doesn't bomb those ancient sites, but I can't promise they won't. because as we know, they've had no problem bombing like world heritage sites and things like that in other countries. So it's a problem when people of any country no longer trust their institutions. Our media institutions, certainly corporate media and legacy media, has lost so much trust.

You look at the ratings for CBS News, their viewership has tanked. ever since Barry Weiss was chosen for the role she's currently serving in. People actually want the truth. People want to know what's really happening with the war in Iran. They hear the lies from Trump or they hear Trump's statements about how we've obliterated Iran. And something's telling them. There's this like this little itch they got to scratch. Like they got to figure out, is he telling the truth?

And then you do a little bit of digging and realize that our media institutions oftentimes just regurgitate with what people in positions of power have to say. Anytime you see a leak in the media, anytime you see that a publication has a scoop, anonymous sources were willing to speak to them about some big scandal. Well, those sources have an agenda. And so when the New York Times does this mega report on how the Israelis fooled Trump into engaging in this war against Iran,

who leaked that story? Was it maybe a potential candidate for the Republican primary in 2028 who doesn't want to be associated with cheerleading a war that has been devastating for the American people? Could it be someone like J.D. Vance? I don't know. I'm just speculating. I'm just speculating. But J.D. Vance appears to be making moves to run in 28 and knows that the stench, the stank of the Iran war, is going to hurt him. And if you read that report carefully, you'll notice that it keeps talking about how he was like the voice against the ward.

He was saying that we should proceed with caution. There are other reports, by the way, indicating that J.D. Vance wanted Trump to go in, be super aggressive and get out. I'm not buying the J.D. Vance is a dove, not a warhawk argument, especially when when he was created. He's a creation of Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir, which is profiting handsomely from war as we speak.

So just some stuff to keep in mind. All right, we've got a few more minutes. So I'm gonna read some comments before we head on over to our bonus episode for our members tyt.com slash join to become a member. Box. You might watch more content than I do because I see your comments in comment sections

like other shows. And by the way, super ideologically diverse. Good on you. I love that. But box writes it and says, I think Trump's actual plan is to suck up our inflation with gas prices at this point. Vote good or teamwork. Yep. I just, I think Jank was right when we were talking about this yesterday where it's like, none of this really makes sense. It's got to be blackmail. it's got to be something more than simple corruption. Because this is destroying his legacy. And we know how egotistical that man is. So Pakistani American Hawk Sentinel says,

Dan roasted Randy fine, but Randy's ego is so huge. It has its own zip code. If he tries to debate, the stage will collapse from the sheer cringe. So this is about the congressional race out of Florida. So Dan Bilzerian is challenging Randy Fine in that race. And I don't know, man.

I just, I have a feeling Randy Fine's going to win reelection, which is so devastating. Can we just, it's such an injustice to know that there's a sitting member of Congress who, by the way, didn't he get caught on camera? Like putting in votes on behalf of members of Congress who weren't there at the time? and then looking around to make sure he didn't get caught? Like, what was that? Did that get investigated? I got to double check on that. But aside from that possible activity, he talks about starving people to death.

He talks about devastating, destroying an entire population of people on behalf of a foreign country. The guy's unhinged. He should not be anywhere near a position of power. But here we are. He's in a position of power. All right, let's go over to more of our member comments. Box writes it in our member comment and comment section and says, I'm a simple man, I see Anna Cry and I get mad.

That's in regard to the donor story that I covered earlier. How could you not think about your own mother? I couldn't help but think about my own mom. And the idea that my mom's cadaver would end up in the hands of IDF soldiers makes me both furious and that whole story just makes me so sad. All right. 32 Babyface says, I don't understand why Germany continues to send aid to Israel.

I understand it. They were on the wrong side of history, and they're on the wrong side of history again. They're under the impression that helping Israel means helping the Jewish population. No, helping Israel is basically doubling down on more atrocities. So I don't get it, but they're doing it. So it is what it is. But I don't think history will, or the future will look back kindly at Germany's behavior in aiding and abetting what Israel is doing.

Same with the United States. I am so ashamed of what the U.S. is up to. But we don't actually live in a real democracy where our voices are heard at the moment. So I love the people of this country, couldn't load the government more. And it's not a partisan thing. I want to be clear about that. Anyway, let's get back to actually we have to end the show for everyone. Other than our members, members only bonus is next.

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