Theology in the Raw - Russia, Iran, and the Trap of Political Tribalism with Christopher Haylett (aka thenerdychristian)

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Christopher Haylett (aka Nerdy Christian) has a B.A. in Global Development and an M.S. in International Business. Christopher is a popular social media influencer who engages in topics about culture, politics, Christianity, and theology.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm going to get so many evils from this episode. I don't do that. Yeah. This is so fun because I think about this stuff all the time. I never talk about it. Yeah. I try to say publicly stuff I can really back up. Yeah. That's the academic in you. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a, I feel that because when I'm making videos, I'm like, I really, like, I try to always fact check everything I say before it. Because I'm like, the last thing I want is someone doing a hip piece and me being like, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Like, you know. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Realm. My guest today is Christopher. Haylet, aka nerdy Christian as he goes by on social media. Christopher has a BA in global development and an MS in international business.

And he has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media where he posts content on culture, politics, Christianity, and theology. I'm typically not impressed with so-called social media influencers. But Christopher's content kept catching my eye. I would click on something, said, all right, that's pretty good. Click on something else. That's really good. click on something else. I'm like, that's exactly what I think I would have said. Or click on something else. I'm like, man, I didn't know that, but that seems really reasonable.

It's so good. So I invited him to come on the show to chat about politics, especially the U.S. slash Israel War on Iran, something he's been posting a lot about recently. I absolutely loved this conversation. Christopher is super informed and well studied on global politics, even if some of the things we discuss might go against popular narratives. I need to go back and listen to this one to see. Oh, see everything we talked about. This was recorded live in Franklin, Tennessee. So if you want to pop over to the YouTube channel,

you can see us sitting in a nice polished room with some good cameras and having a free-flowing dialogue. So without further ado, please welcome the show for the first time, the one and only, Christopher Halet. All right, Christopher. Hey, thanks for coming on Thealdron, man. This is a... Honor to be here. This is kind of a different find for me.

Most of the time I have guests on that they've written books or speakers or pastors, you know, scholars. But I came across your work on Instagram. And, you know, as a scholar, we're pretty snooty. We get really like the whole idea of like a social media influencer. We're just like... All right. Yeah.

Go to school, dude. But I kept watching your videos. I don't know how they came across my feet. And I was like, all right. That was good. Oh, man, that was really good. Oh, my gosh. That's exactly what I would have said.

Only way more clear and nuanced. So I got really hooked on your channel. And yeah, where did nerdy Christian that tag come from? Well, that's like kind of how it all began was. So I have a very weird background with like some stuff. stuff in like missions, some stuff in geopolitics and diplomacy, international affairs kind of, some stuff in international business. I grew up as a military kid, lived all over the world.

Longest I ever lived anywhere was almost four years in Japan. Really? So yeah, my background is just like really diverse and varied, some background in theology. And then by day I'm a digital marketing manager right now for an international software development company. And so one day, so my interests reflect that too. Like, I'll follow, like, okay, different pages about, like, with different geography stuff, maps. Like, I love a good map.

Me too. Maps are great, right? I never said that bubble thing. I'm addicted to maps. Dude, it's like, like, like, yeah, someone has, like a map with like, here's the dispersion of like educational attainment, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh, let me see. Like, you know. And so I followed all these pages, like with maps, geopolitics, theology, pages like yours or like Mutamale.

Yeah. Yeah. Chad Bird, he has some interesting stuff. And one day I was like, you know what, it would be really cool if there was a page that was all of these things. Like what if there was a page that was like, oh, a little bit of theology, a little bit geopolitics, a little bit of stats. And I was like, wait, I think I could do that. And so I was like, it could be called the nerdy Christian. I was like, if that username is available, I'm doing this.

And so I looked it up. And I was like, no way. It's available. All right. The nerdy Christian. And I made it. And my first, I believe it was my first ever piece of content. It's so funny.

The production value is like, blah, but yeah, it was a fun time. I told my wife, I was like, you need to come to the grocery store and help me make a meme. And she's like, what are we doing? And I was like, you need to record me in the spices aisle. And we're going to make a joke about like modern life and the things we take for granted. She's like, what are you talking about? I was like, just come here, record. And I had to record and I did a take of me like just walking up in the spices aisle just like shopping like, okay, grab something, take it down.

And then I did another take where I'm like, my God, you've been blessed. And the idea of it was what I did in edit was I was like modern American in the spices aisle. And then I was like something like 15th century Englishman time travels to modernity and goes to a grocery store. And just because like, hey, nerds, in case any of you guys don't know, like, spices were luxury. Like, they were the gold and the jewels and like basically like, hey, you load a ship up with gold, jewels and spices back then. So someone from like the 1500s walking in a modern grocery store would be like, wait, everyone gets these? Like this isn't the king's like treasury. And so that was like one of my first jokes that I made on the page.

Yeah. I knew that about spices. Yeah. But you do see that reference. It's always combined luxury items. That's what the whole of like Marco Polo's travels was. And Cloves was like a big aspect of like trade and like the East India trading company and all of that. Yeah.

So Spices was like a big piece of all that. So tell us about your educational background. Yeah. That's pertinent to maybe some of the things we're going to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So I studied global development at a private Christian university, Seattle Pacific University. And that program, when I heard about it, I knew that's what I want to do.

Because I was interested in doing missions in Southeast Africa. But I wanted to do missions in a way that if I was going to do it, helped economically. Like, I didn't want to just go and just do ministry, but I wanted to combine that with, like, economic aid. And so I found out with this global development program, and I was like, that's it. Like, it's mischiology, theology, economic development, different political, like geopolitics stuff, all of that. And I was like, oh, yes, I'm going here and studying this program. I only applied to like one other school even. I was like, I know, this is where I want to go. That's what I want to do. And then after I graduated, I was trying

to figure out how exactly I wanted to apply this. If I wanted to do missions or if I wanted to do something else a little bit different and just use my presence as a mission platform. And started studying for the Foreign Service Officer test. I was like, you know, it would be really cool to go into the State Department. And I passed the Foreign Service Officer test. What do it? Why don't know that is? So in the State Department, you've got like five different.

So most of our, a lot of our diplomatic activity is engaged in by Foreign Service officers. And you've got like five categories that you can engage in. There's like administrative, political, economic, and I'm blanking on what the other two are. And so I was really interested in either economic or political. political you might embed with like military assets and stuff and do

different things related to international affairs and kind of that maneuvering economic being like a diplomat or a spy there are a lot of people in the state department who are foreign service officers who may also be assets of different kinds so there's that too

but I was yeah I was really interested in that and passed foreign service officer test and ended up this like a five stage It's a really, it's a year-long process to try to get in. And about halfway through, I got cut because I didn't have enough, like, experience and stuff. And so most people who get in either have a master's degree, I think 60% have a master's degree, or like five to 10 years of experience. And I was fresh out of grad. So I was like, all right, let's go ahead and go to grad school.

So I studied the GRE, took that, scored fairly well, and applied to full. Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. And I ended up getting waitlisted there. But in the meantime, this international business school reached out, a whole international business school. And they gave me a very, they had seen my GRE scores and they gave me a very nice incentives package. And Fletcher, meanwhile, it's one of the top five international relations programs in

the world. But I ended up getting in off the wait list, but it was by the skin of my teeth. and I would get no financial aid at all. And also, Trump, first Trump 1.0 had just happened. They're paying FSOs, Foreign Service Officers, $20,000 to quit. And I was like, that's just not probably the environment I want to start my career in, is like trying to begin diplomacy in that environment. So I was like, all right, great offer from Holt.

Seems like an interesting program. Get a master of international business instead of international affairs, basically. or their program is Master of Law and Diplomacy is what it's called. And so, all right, let's do this. And so I ended up going that route, did some consulting internationally. I did a really fun case for a major auto brand. This was a grad program where they hired some of us in the dean's program, or dean, yeah, dean scholars, whatever, to do this consulting case on,

like resource risks in geopolitics and basically just gaming out what it would look like for an entirely electric vehicle world. And so like, hey, what are the resource constraints? Where are the resources? What are the risks for access to those resources? What's the infrastructure got to look like? All sorts of stuff like that. And so I got to do like resource risks in Africa around like precious metals like cobalt and stuff. So fun stuff. Like for me, I was like, I love this. This is so, yeah. But yeah, that kind of was my background a little bit. Did some startup stuff. And now, now, I'm doing what you do. Yeah, doing what I do.

See, you have, I mean, you have a background in global affairs, geopolitics. I mean, so that's kind of your world. Yeah, a little bit. And having lived around the world and everything. Yeah. That's good to know because I didn't know that until recently. Because I just saw your stuff and whenever you talked about geopolitical things. Yeah.

And it's like, oh, okay, a guy has an opinion. Like, yeah. And this is totally confirmation bias because almost much of what you said, I'm I'm like, ooh, I agree with that. That's really good. That's how we assess to something's good. If it frees with our preconceived. Yeah, exactly, right.

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bowl and branch.com forward slash T-I-T-R and use the code T-I-T-R to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. I love your, for lack of better term, just the nuance, the clarity, your, you know, seems kind of like in the vein, like a Tim Keller. I think you've even talked about Tim Keller, you know, but like, not being um, um, theological, but also being just biblical and being concerns about the things the Bible is,

which might include some social concerns that happen to be things that Democrats also talk about. You know, it's like, it doesn't mean we're liberal. It's just like, oh, we're talking about some of the same kind of thing. Yeah.

You did a recent video actually on that. Like, do you want to, I don't want to be... Yeah, which one was it? Which one? The one where you just said, like, being concerned about social issues isn't liberal. Like, not, like, wanting to love immigrants and not really specify a national policy or whatever, but just like, yeah, I think Christians should not hate immigrants.

Like, that's not... It's pretty biblical. Yeah, but Democrats see that too. Like, hey, whatever. Yeah. You know, I... Yeah, David Livermore, so this was a book that was required. of my classes in undergrad and I bring it up all the time.

Cultural intelligence. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he talks about how every culture has like aspects of things that are represented of the, of the Amago Day in us. Like you can see glimpses of it. Like these are good things. Like, so I lived in Japan for almost four years.

Japanese cultural, like the degree to which they emphasize honor and respect. I think that's of God. Like that's a glimpse of, you know, goodness and truth. But also, every culture has things that are of the flesh. Yes. Because we as humans create culture and we have the Imago Day within us and we are flawed fleshly creatures. Sure.

And so there also, then you'll see like in Japan, like, okay, it's high emphasis on honor and stuff to the point of like a rigidity and almost phariseic kind of element that can come with that where like if you don't attain certain standards, societal, there's a lot of pressure. Japan has a really high suicide rate and stuff. And so there are these dynamics in every culture. And similarly, I think, in laws and just the ways that we run our societies, there are, like, everything is a spectrum much more of kind of flesh, the flesh or of God than just like

these weird binaries of like, this is not, like something that is good, like elder. elder care can be a good thing and is a good thing. And also you can have the go to the degree where people will basically deify their ancestors, right? As many cultures engage in. And it's, they've gone too far down the spectrum of like respect for elders. And then on the other side, you can't have, you can't just like entirely disregard your elders and have like a lack of continuity through generations and stuff. That's damaging. Right. And so when it comes comes to politics, I think a lot of these things are on these spectrums of like, okay, like immigration. Can nations have borders? Yeah, sure. No problem. Should we be so rigid in our ideas

of borders that we make them these like unmovable constraints? And we say like you, you, these people, that's your land. You stay there forever. This here, us people, this are land. We stay here forever. we don't cross, which legitimately some people say, like, God apportioned the nations. We aren't supposed to unapportion that. Yeah, I don't know. That's a verse. Right, right. And that's like something like a lot of, a decent number of kind of Christian nationalists

are saying increasingly, they'll talk about Paul when he talks about on Mars Hill. Like God, he talks about God setting the boundaries of the nations. And like, this was God ordained. We shouldn't be messing it up. That's like, yeah. I think I think you're taking. that in the wrong direction there. I might do a couple word studies on. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's no, I don't think it is. But that's the way they'll use that. Right. And so, I mean,

wouldn't that make every European immigrant or not Native American living in the land now called the United States of America? When you really take, like, holding to a Canada? Prossing the boundary that got established? Exactly. Or when those, when are those boundaries secure? Is it? Yeah. What year, what decade is. Like, okay. Yeah. Are we like, is he reestablishing them? And it just so happens that the way you want them to be reestablished is also the way God wants them to be reestablished. Like what that, you know, we start to do. The colonial involvement in Africa, slicing and dyson and all these countries that aren't along original tribal lines.

It doesn't make any sense. No, not at all. Yeah, exactly. And so there's all, I think a lot of these things, once you start to hold them to a candle, it's like, you know what? I think I think you thought that sounded pretty good. But like, let's consider the implications here. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. So that's how I try to approach like these issues is. with a healthy dose of humility, like something I want to emphasize oftentimes is I can be wrong. I can certainly have the wrong idea

of how we should best serve the poor, what the government's role is in that, but we need to be more open to the nuance of like, and potential for Christian charitable brotherly disagreement on these things and that we don't have a claim

to exclusive correctness on things that are outside. the bounds of scripture and prescriptions of scripture even um this is something i've been trying to emphasize a lot recently uh so romans 13 one everyone brings up well this is the role of government is to like uphold justice and it's like well read psalm 72 david is it writes psalm 72 as a instruction as instruction to solomon on here's the role of the king so given that context he's telling you right now what the role of government is. Like that's what the king was then.

He was the government. And he says things along the lines of like rescuing the oppressed, uplifting the poor. Like all these things, I'm like, that might up in some people's political theology. I mean, Romans 13 is not the A to Z biblical teaching on political theology. I mean, all you have to do is skip over to Revelation 13,

where John says that the same government, that Paul's talking about Rome is literally empowered by Satan Yep The beast No the dragon gave power to the beast The beast is Rome Yes even written well

I mean Revlish part written a couple decades later But it's like We need a holistic biblical theology political theology Not not one passage And Romans 13 participates in that Yeah conversation But I think Paul has something

Exactly Probably more specific He's addressing there Rather than giving kind of a comprehensive blank check But one of the video, I literally just talked about your video about Charlie Kirk in my last podcast. Oh, really? So in real time, this was like an hour ago, it was Gavin Orlin.

Yeah. I don't know when these are going to be released. Probably pretty close. But I brought up, we were talking about algorithms. Yeah. And the one on like, hey, you only saw this of Charlie Kirk and other people saw that. I literally summarized your video saying there are, especially in the wake of his assassination. there are two different Charlie Kirk

that have been algorithmically created. That sounds weird to say, but I think people know what I'm talking about. Can you summarize? And I remember watching a video and saying this is just, this can settle so many arguments right now for why Christians are so vitriolic toward other Christians who either love Charlie Kirk

or hate Charlie Kirk or whatever. And they're so bewildered. How can you think this guy is even a Christian or a prophet? Look at this video about what he said about the Palestinians. And other people are like, how can you say this guy is not like the greatest like evangelist of our day? Look at how kind he is interacting and leading people to Jesus. Yeah.

Anyway, can you explain what you? I highlighted, I think for each one I highlighted three videos of him. And I just wanted to like do a proper like service and steal man to like each side of like, like, hey, if and I wanted people to be able to place themselves in shoes, hot button topic empathy. I wanted people to be able to use some empathy and place themselves into the other person's shoes of like, who was Charlie Kirk to them? What were they seeing of him?

Because our algorithms do train us on different things. And so there are videos of him like sharing the gospel or him being like asked like, what's your motivation and, you know, saying like, hey, Jesus Christ or like being asked about different topics and him saying like, I just want you to know first and foremost before any of this, like my loyalties to Jesus. That's why I do what I do. He's Lord and even sharing the gospel in a kind manner. He loves you and things like that, right?

How can you be mad at that? You can't be mad at that. And even dialogue with people he disagreed with. Where he's like, hey, that's a good point. And like he literally listening. And the other person is like in a good, like, a genuine good faith dialogue where he's not being belligerent. He's not just trying to win an argument.

I think he totally did some of that. And I like George Jenko. I like to watch some of his stuff sometimes. and he had Charlie Kirk on and there would be things where I'm like, yeah, like, yeah, man. And then there'd be things where he says things like, maybe not so much. But then there's also like clips of him, especially when he's not talking to people, but he's like just in front of the camera, like on his show. Like he said one time that he thought Biden should be killed.

Like the government should, yeah, I had that in the video. I'm like, if any Christian said like, hey, I think that once Trump's out of power, we should kill him. If anyone said that, that'd be the end of their, like, Christian career, like, done. You know? And rightfully so, I think. Right, yeah. But that, he said this about Biden and, you know, a lot of Christians either weren't aware of it or will excuse it, right?

And so I think it's just important for us to realize that there are layers to people that, you know, many times people will see a different side of people that we see on the internet people may see a different side of them than we've seen just because of the algorithm especially with someone who puts out such a prolific amount of content yeah yeah there's a lot yeah uh so much i mean between his radio shows and his college campuses stuff that's like i don't know how much has been preserved from like on a camera or it's just stuff that's just lost in to see a time even yeah and different people's recording it just never has made to headland i've been watching a lot recently, I knew he was starting to question his previous Zionist kind of viewpoints.

And I knew that when it was happening because some of the news channels I was listening to we're talking about and showing clips of him. I saw a clip of him on Megan Kelly and was really saying some stuff that's like, oh, that's not the Charlie Kirk I heard six months ago. But even more now, more and more stuff is coming out where I'm like, oh, he was really he even talked about what's going on in Gaza as ethnic cleansing. They're going to ethnically cleanse Gaza and he was going after Israel

really hard where previously I saw him in previous debates where he was so kind of just like just textbook repeating all the Zionist talking points everything and not not even I don't I don't know where you're on this but I mean just he was he's he had a shift in his perspective

there's things I would say exactly what you said yeah there are things about Tyler Rob and the killing that make perfect sense you know the fingerprints on the gun or whatever yeah there's other things just don't make any sense at all no yeah just the way he texted his yeah that was yeah like those those things were weird and uh the gun didn't he like assemble the gun with the screwdriver disassemble it and then he left it

and then reassemble it yeah left it in the woods or something yeah that's weird so there's a lot of weird things and the the shot like I'll steal man the argument but like the shot being one shot, very unsurvivable and stuff, at the argument made by some for its placement as he was aiming for the head and had bullet drop. But a couple things is like, one, this kid seems to have been experienced a little bit with a rifle.

So it seems like he would have at least known the basics of like bullet drop. But just the placement, like there's just so many things where it's like, it feels like this was a really, really expert job like really well done and I don't know yeah just over and just how how concealed he was and just his placement

if it was him he he you know it's gonna be something people study for a long time but yeah it's you it's rare that like somebody would act alone is I mean I don't even know I don't know maybe he was the lone gunman maybe he wasn't maybe there's other people involved.

It seems like, well, let's exhaust all possibilities. But it just seems like, why is there such a weirdness about questioning like, hey, is there anything, anybody else involved? That's what's strange. And then the backlash you get for that, that makes me almost more like suspicious, like, well, why? And then you hear Joe Kent saying the highest level of intelligence was told stop investigating these leads of foreign influence. Yeah.

Then I'm like, oh, all it does is raise more. Yeah. And he, so he said, I think in that same conversation, he said that Charlie had been advising the White House to never get involved in Iran. Like, oh yeah. Like, hey, never get, never get involved in Iran. That will be a quagmast. He was singing that tune for over a year. Yeah, exactly.

And now he's not, you know, that voice is not in the president's ear. And there we are in Iran right now figuring, figuring out what the heck we're going to do with that. I don't know all the details because you don't know what's true, what's flat out untrue and what's more suggestive but not provable. But it does seem at the very least, we know he was getting a lot of backlash from very wealthy Zionist donors who are pulling money. He got a lot of flack for hosting Dave Smith and Tucker Carlson at the last TPA USA in August, which if you listen to even Tucker's full stuff.

speech. Mm-hmm. He doesn't say anything. It was like the least bit controversial. Yeah. Like you should question your, a government when it does things that are not good.

Yeah. He never said the Jews or, you know, like. Yeah. And, and, and Charlie doubled down when he got pressure saying, I will always have conversations. Yeah.

I'm not going to not have, ask questions and have conversations, have debates and everything. And he was, I think, this is where I don't know that. I do know, I think it's factual that like, Zionist donors were pulling money because specifically because he was quote unquote platforming broader conversations around Israel it is I mean there's a lot of things that are just

just kind of weird my dad worked in intelligence in oh he did Air Force yeah so there are things he can't tell me to this day what does he think about we're just talking about is he not into this stuff I mean he's always just like you never know all the full picture like and that's just something you kind of got to accept when you're outside the loop yeah like there's just always stuff going on behind the scenes. Oh, yeah. Yep, yeah, always. He had, like, he had super top secret clearance.

He was involved in sciops in Afghanistan and different stuff. Yeah, yeah. And so for me, I'm like... He can't even tell you even. Yeah. Not me, not my mom even. Yep, it's like crazy high level. When he worked in, he worked in Langley

for a couple years, not CIA, but Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. And his building, we could go in the front entrance and we couldn't go anywhere further than that and that he was like there when the invasion of iraq began and he was like in the command room where they like had the like basically like big light up chart thing like kind of in the movies and like a light going here and it's like that's that plane and like all that stuff yeah yeah so he's he's he's interesting because like it's interesting talking to him about some of these things because he's to some degree like we can be

concerned about some of these things but also like so much of it is just out of our control or is just unknowable that is just like, all right there's kind of, you kind of got to accept your limits at some point too in terms of what you have access to. Since we're always on the topic of conspiracy theories of the olig of the rock.

Thomas Crooks, the guy who shot Trump in the year. Yeah, that's weird too. Because we don't know, we never found out anything about motivations. There were no journals, no manifestos, right? Nothing. It just kind of came away. It's weird. And then...

Here's what I understand. Why did they say this guy has no fingerprint, no online, whatever? And then Tucker Carlson has his private journalist and dug up all kinds of stuff. Really? I didn't see that. Oh, good? It's all over the place online. Man.

Yeah. He had a major figure... He's like, how did my private investigators like dig up way more than the government of the United States of America said they could do? No, there's no fingerprint. And I've seen... I've seen the screenshots of all this stuff he said on... Comments in YouTube. He has a full rounded character online.

And we were told he has nothing online. Yeah. And that's, it's weird. It's like, then you get into the territory of, well, would it be like the people who didn't want him?

Or was it like orchestrated to build support for him or like, I'm like, man, I don't even know. Like, if it was like first, we got to concede, was it conspiracy or not?

I don't know. If it was, who was making the conspiracy? Like, who was it benefiting? Was it just supposed to be an attempt? that boosted rankings solidified. It seems like it was way too.

Oh, the whole like it was like the fists in the air like that. Like that was like. The shot was too, there's no way. Yeah. Well, if there's just, well he doesn't have the hole in his ear now. That's like the really, that's the weird thing is there's no. Carlyche doesn't grow back and there's no. If you look at Trump's ear, there's no.

Is that a theory that the whole, even the shot was the hit, the ear was fake? So that he either squeezed like he gets down any, and the theory is that he either squeeze something or use the razor to just cut his ear real quick. Oh, that's how I heard that one. A bullet would have taken a piece of your cartilage out, like it would have solidly pierced your ear. And there would be some visual. See that?

I don't know. And the amount of blood, too, would indicate that it probably wasn't a graze. Oh, right. Yeah. And so that's the thing, that's, in my opinion, the single most compelling of, like, huh. But, yeah, there's so many things. Oh, my God.

And the Secret Service didn't take him immediately off the stage. They were, like, just kind of huddled around them on the stage. And somebody said that that's, That's not the way. No, that they usually would cover him and get him out of the way. And then he gets his photo op of, and there's just so happens to be a journalist right there for like this forever sealed in like history picture of the president. It did boost his. Oh, that.

I think that after that his victory was inevitable. That was, I saw that picture and I said Trump's going to win the presidency. I told my wife. I thought it was that coupled with him going on like Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, these massive. Massive platforms. Those are a huge part, too. Doing long form, uncut, normal, like, three hour long conversations. And then people knew Kamala was like, if you fly here, I'll do it.

You know, I got to, like, it has to be half hour. You can only ask these questions. And those typical politician stuff. And Trump's just chumming it up with these massive platforms. They flubbed it. Like, there was, here, let's take a moment to get into verified, not conspirators. conspiracy theory conspiracy. So Pied Piper emails, Hillary Clinton.

Like we know, so her campaign's emails were hacked in 2016. We know for a fact when she was running against Bernie Sanders and stuff, they were sabotaging him. The DNC itself was. Sabotaging him and they had what's called the Pied Piper candidates. Early in the primaries, they reached out to all their media contacts and they said, basically, we are losing in a direct election between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Scott Walker, all these mainstream Republican candidates, we're losing. We're going to lose that.

That cannot happen. Here are Pied Piper candidates, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz. What do you mean by Pied Piper? So they said, these are the ones who will carry off the Republican base away from the Republican Party, the party leadership. They'll take, they'll, you know, play their little flute and run off with the kids. And they said, highlight them as much as possible. Don't give any media coverage to Jeb. Don't give any media coverage to Scott Walker. And they thought they had a real chance.

And these other guys are like... Exactly. She thought, we can beat Donald Trump. Now, she actually really shot herself. And I would say a lot of America in the foot with that. But so we know like that happened. And then 2020 election, Biden is not necessarily like sweeping victories.

And in one week, every other primary contender drops out suddenly before Super Tuesday. They got a call from Hillary? That was, whatever the DNC machine is, you know, how to,

and then, 20204, Biden is refusing, refusing to step down. He said he'd be a one-term president. He's refusing. And then last minute, okay,

it will be Kamala. And like, it's just, from Obama that, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, whoever, like, it's like this nighting, like this like, all right, I'm passing the Scepter to you. That's not how American democracy works. Like, we don't just install candidates.

To Kamala, one who got like the worst, the lowest. Lowest of the previous primaries. Never would have won. Tulsa Gabbard just destroyed her and she just lost everything. Never would have won an organic, organic primary process. And so I think my opinion is whoever, we also know Biden had. significantly progressed dementia. I think no one can really deny that at this stage.

So the people that were- Except every news outlet 3-2-4 all said, Sharp as Attack. Have you seen the montage of that? Yeah. All the mainstream media, sharpest attack, Sharper's Attack, Sharper's Attack, Sharpest Attack. So bad. He's like, boom, Joe Biden, Sharpe's attack.

It's like, what do you do it? And then he had that debate. And he's like, all right, we need to shift years. He cannot argue that anymore. He came walking out. immediately that was like oh this is not going to go yeah yeah and it's just like then okay Kamala is installed and it's it's basically way i see it is there is a party machine within within the DNC that was the presidency for from 2020 to 2024 Biden was a figurehead in my opinion

no i agree and the american people don't want to feel like they're being run by an unelected machine And I think they're not stupid. Like they recognize. And I don't think that Trump would have won against a viable candidate that the American people wanted. Right. I think the Democrat Party in 2028 really needs to figure out how to like they need to figure out how to escape the clutches of whoever these people are that have been holding on to it for a decade at this point, holding onto control of it and just be like, hey, let American people decide like this is what we want this counter party. Yeah. to this side of politics to be.

But I digress. Do you know, we'll be Gavin Newsom? Is he a frontrunner for? He is a frontrunner. But right now, Kamala is polling really high. Which I'm like, please.

Wait, she's going to run again? She's polling high. She's among the top three in like every poll. And I'm like, can we not try for a third time? But I think Newsom's interesting because I can't. So with political figures.

to slimy politician, but that works. But, like, I'm like... Oh, you think there's something more there? I don't know. Because I would have thought before, but now he's like, he's playing outside the bounds of the DNC machine, which is like very interesting to me. So he's like talking about trans sports stuff.

Like, he's dropped the party line on that. That's what I mean by slimy. I feel like he's going at the cultural win because that, while that was like a big thing, like from 2020 to 2022, the majority of the people are like, yeah, we don't want males and female bathrooms. But the way he talks about, he was on Sean Ryan, and Sean Ryan's pretty, yeah, pretty right, right wing. Yeah, and he was on there and he's talking about how his son is a big fan of Sean Ryan and like all this stuff. And I'm like, if he is a slimy politician, he's really good at it.

I still think he still think he's a slimy politician. Maybe it's during COVID, which was just, he was horrible on basically everything and having, telling people a mask up and social distance and every dinner. parties with his rich friends. Like, it's hard to be, in my mind, you can't recover from that in my mind, but maybe that just blew over. I don't know. That just shows like, this is the Hunger Games. You're in the Capitol and, you know, you know how to play the game.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I can't get a read on him. It's like him, Tucker Carlson. There's some, a lot of times I can tell like, okay, I think this person is fairly like, AOC, I disagree with her on a ton. But she's, she's a.

But she's a believer. She believes in what she says. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. She, like, really believes it. Yeah. Even if it's way off, it's like, at least she's honest.

She's not just saying what people want her to say. Yeah. It's not what some person who was a campaign manager and said, this polls well, said, like, say this thing. There are some even on the far right that I'm like, like, say Nancy Mace is someone where I'm like, I think it's like a mix. Like, like, I live in South Carolina. And I think Nancy Mace is someone. is like very opportunistic. I just know her name.

What's her issue? Like a far right? She's pretty, pretty much, yeah, pretty MAGA. She's the representative for like the district that includes like, I believe,

Charleston, South Carolina. And she's been an up and comer in the party pretty significantly. Okay. I've seen her name coming up. Yeah. And she was all about like releasing Napstein files, though.

And like going against the kind of party machine, the MAGA machine on that. And every so often, she'll break ranks in a way that's, like, kind of serious. And I'm like, okay, I think you are, I think you have, like, certain red lines for yourself. I think she's, she's playing the game, but there are things, elements to which she will not play the game. Okay. But then, like, Tugher Carlson, he's, he's a billionaire's, like, an heir to, like, a billionaire fortune. And, yeah, yeah, uh-huh.

His family. Swanson, I believe Swanson, family fortune. and grew up Silver Spoon got in news media and started doing these kinds of like center piece like the crossfire and stuff like that

very intelligent had a conversation with Andrew Yang where he's talking about UBI Universal Basic Income and talking about like how technology is accelerating and how people don't realize like very populist

kind of rhetoric about like, hey, we need to figure out our system of government and taxation and stuff to like benefit most people because we're going into a situation where like everything's going to be accumulated in terms of power and wealth and everything just because of the nature of economics. And then he like goes in mouthpieces for like Putin. And I'm like he's not, it's not that he's paying you because like on the Ukraine war, he was very pro-Russia, like to a degree that felt like state propaganda from Russia. And it's like, it's not that he's paying you because you have more money than you could ever know what to do with. And it's not like what, what is it? Or then there's like he's worked for guitar. Um, like he's he's been mouthpieceing for guitar who

also has like sheltered Hamas and stuff and like not great. But it's like at the same time that he's been kind of critical of Israel. He's been kind of affiliated with guitar. And it's like, okay. But like also you have legitimate critiques and stuff. And so I'm like, I can't place him. I can't figure out. I listened to his whole. So I just knew his name for the longest time. But I intentionally try to withhold opinion until I listen to long

form content that hasn't, that my mind hasn't previously been made up on. And I've listened to quite a bit of long form content in the last few years. And then when I go back and listen to the critiques, they don't match up. Like I've listened to. Yeah. quite a bit of long-form content from him. I've never heard him say that anything remotely that could even be considered anti-Semitic. Yeah.

I've seen him denounce anti-Semitism many, many times. And he won anti-Semitic of the year. Like when he spoke at Charlie Kirk's funeral and he said the thing about like Jesus was betrayed by and people are like, that's anti-Semitic. Like they killed Jesus, like the Pharisees. And they're like, that's anti-Semitic to say that Jews killed Jesus. killed Jesus. And it's like, no, actually, like, certain leadership through the Roman state, God Jesus killed. And even there, when he says it like that, he's always quick to clarify. I'm not talking about like all Jewish people. Exactly. It's like this. Some Jewish people in the first century were

responsible, partly, you know, exactly. He's, you know, obviously very critical as I am of, of, well, any government that does immoral things. Yeah, totally. Like, I'm critical of the American government on many things. Doesn't mean I'm anti-American. Yeah, exactly. Or like, I'm critical of the Chinese, the Chinese government. Mm-hmm. I mean, I just theoretically, right? But we need to be able to.

I'm not anti-Chinese. Yeah. I think their government does immoral things. Or North Korea, am I against North Koreans? Or am I against the government in North, you know? So to me, it's just so, and when people translate that as like, if you criticize Israeli, the modern nation of Israel and their government, which is largely run by a lot of secular or, you know, that makes you anti-Jewish? I know.

Yeah. I mean, a huge portion of the Jewish world population is critical of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My criticisms of him are more like he, there's this kind of axis of, I did a video on this where he talked about Russia, not Ukraine, Hungary under Victor Orban and Trump as like this emergent nationalist leader trend that he saw as like a good thing. So Victor Orban, bad guy. Putin, bad guy. Trump, I think, not a great guy.

But he was talking about this as like, this is the way the world is going kind of rightfully so, like this nationalism take. And so like, he has takes like that where I'm like, yeah, that doesn't jive with some of the other stuff you say too. Like, I, yeah, I cannot figure out. I don't know enough about many of the topics he deals with to have an opinion. Like the Russian you crowd. I don't.

I really know. The one thing I do think, based on the work of like John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs and several others who would know this well, it wasn't an unprovoked invasion at Russia, Ukraine. This seems really clear. All the way back to the Maidan coup in 2014, the U.S. back coup where we helped overthrow a democratically elected leader in Ukraine to install a more pro, you know.

It's like we've been involved. And there wasn't there two other color revolutions in 2008, 2009 or something? Yes. And NATO. And Putin said after the Cold War, like, don't expand, don't expand, don't expand, we expand, expand, expand, expand, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, we expand, expand, expand, okay, last straw, do not take Ukraine in part of NATO. Yeah.

Hey, you want to be part of NATO? Yeah, do you know that? Is that all that, I mean, I think that all that's just factually true, right? Yeah, I'd say yes with some nuance. Okay. So, like 2014, the leader was, I'm blinking on his name. That leader was like very unpopular and was repressing to some degree of people. There was a natural.

There was some degree of natural. And this is the thing. This is the way. It was just stirred up by this. Yeah. And that's where things are like weird in international. So I was talking my dad about this because in Iran, Massad and the CIA instigated

those protests. They participated that. Now, they were, that's the thing. They were organic. And the CIA and Mossad were helping them to be more than they would have otherwise been. So that's all factually true. Yeah.

Like New York Times has done some stuff on that recently. And that's where it's weird, though, because you wouldn't say like it's not an organic movement. in Iran, or that the government isn't repressing them. They certainly are. Or even that it's necessarily wrong. Like, it's the wrong move for the CIA and Assad to... I think it's...

If a foreign country was somehow involved in a U.S. overthrowing of one of their leaders... Mm-hmm. I think we say, get the heck. Like, you have no business in our... Let us figure it out. In our country? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we had like...

We have kind of, to some degree, have... Like, you know, the Russia investigation. What's funny about that is people are like, like the Russia hoax. And it's like, no, but it's undenat. Like there are, was it overplayed to some degree? Yeah. But is it also known fact? Like there was my favorite thing to point to is there was this protest.

I can't remember where it was. But it was coordinated by a Facebook group. There was a protest and a counter protest. And the FBI found that both were. under one Russia connected. Oh, really? Yeah, coordination. So Russia was coordinating the protest and the counter protest.

Just to stir stuff up? Yeah, it wasn't that someone would win. It was that there would be civil strife between Americans. And that's another thing for, like, Americans to remember is, like, a lot of our opponent's goals isn't for us to go one way or the other. It's for us to hate each other. That's the thing about all of this stuff is like sometimes you have target outcomes. Sometimes you just want to shake it up.

And yeah, we do it and other countries do it to us. I read a pure-reviewed study that documented the number of times. I'm not going to get this totally right. I haven't written down somewhere. A really legit study documenting how many times Russia and the United States have been involved in foreign elections. Oh, tampering. A lot.

The U.S. had twice as many as Russia. It was like 66% Russia, like 30%. something like that over the last 100 years or something. So yeah, election tampering with foreign elections is something. Yeah, we know what we know about. Cambridge Analytica looking at that, like there were honeypot operations.

There was all sorts of stuff. And that's like why Facebook changed a lot of their stuff when all that came out. And that's the role of Cambridge Analytica in our 2016 elections. Yeah, there's it's a, it's a crazy manipulative world. And I think that's part of where, too, just to bring up Christian faith, like, the more secure we are in a Christian faith, too, the less manipulable we are. Like, you know, if you, if the enemy is trying to cause some kind of extreme vitriol for you to feel against this group or some extreme fear against this group or whatever it is, if you have security in your Christian faith, that's like a natural defense against that, right?

And so I think that's something that's really important too for like Christians to remember is like when we're centered in our faith and we have those proper foundations. We become infinitely less manipulable. Whether it's fear of the immigrant, fear of X, Y, Z nation, fear of Muslims, whatever it is, seeing people not as opponents to be feared or subjugated or conquered or defeated, but as image bearers to be reconciled to God and for us to engage in whatever long suffering or. patient engagement that's required for that. And our hope is, we don't put our hope and yeah, government authorities.

Exactly, yeah. Like this is where I'm so thankful. It's so, gosh, I got to qualify this. Like, in our like post Epstein political world now. Yeah. Yeah.

Or now, you know, instead of like Republicans, Democrats, or like Epstein class and everybody else, you know, like to me, is,

is hideous, evil, demonic is all that is. Yeah. From a political theological standpoint, again, John told us two thousand years ago, Satan is empowering the beast. And Revelation 1718, the economic collapse of Babylon, we celebrate, and they were trafficking human lives. They were all about the wealthy and the elite.

And, you know, the whole critique is all about luxury items, religious idolatry and sexual morality and all these things. that's like, was I horrified all the Epstein stuff that continues to come out? Yes. Was I surprised? Not really. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I've been here about this stuff for years because I listen to independent media that the mainstream media doesn't touch half the stuff and now it's kind of inevitable. But like, the fact that there's been such

resistance to release these files, to me, I'm like, of course, you guys. Like, the government is, they're not on your side. No. I don't care if they like talk about, we're going to fight racism and poverty. They don't care about you. Like they use you for your vote. This is where I get, you know,

obviously the whole like right wing Christian mega crowd, but also like the backlash evangelicals for Kamala. You know, I'm like, you guys are just like, wake up a little bit. Get them played a bit. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, you know, it's kind of funny because a lot of evangelicals like rally about, identity politics and how the left plays it to secure voting blocks of like when Biden said if you don't vote for me you ain't black I'm like bro

shut up like what are you doing so funny oh so bad it was so funny because that's like just how out of touch you are that you can say that I think that's gonna win some old white guy like so bad right black guy

what it means to be black like dude and like You know, there's a horrible ways that they failed in that. But evangelical, or like the GOP has done that with evangelicals. Like, if you don't vote for me, you're not Christian. Like, you know, basically, might as well. I haven't said it out loud.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. And so, yeah, it's just kind of funny. Society tries to, like, people that are powerful try to play us into certain groups. Yes. Because then as long as we identify with that group and that identifying with that group as part of our core identity, then we will do whatever they tell us.

us to do to remain in that group. Right. Like, you know, and so that or to be a good member of that group. Right. And so that I think is 100% why the, like getting, talking briefly about like the D&C and the majority of the Democrat Party itself, the party infrastructure being this kind of powerful machine and economically interested, like body of people. They aren't in identity politics because they truly believe in.

like X, Y, Z thing. They said, they figured out. They've been ditching it since it's become more unpopular now. Yeah, and they figured out they could say like, hey, if you have sexual, like this certain sexuality, vote for us because we're the party of that sexuality or we're the party of this race or we're, you know, all these things. And the sad thing is, is that the Republican Party didn't see the opportunity to reject that categorization of things and just be like, no, we're not the party for this group,

this group, this group. and instead provost like hey we're the part we're just a party for americans and like let's figure this out like these these different things out individually but instead was like okay you get them we get these people almost more yeah what do you uh thoughts on the iran war you've done a lot of really good videos on this thanks yeah really good encourage people to check it out um yeah just really thoughtful like you could tell you know your stuff you're not just giving I mean, you know, opinions. Whereas I just have just opinions and stuff, but I don't.

It just seems like so obviously. Okay, so maybe this is ignorant of me. It just seems like even, okay, as a Christian, I believe in nonviolence. So I mean, I'm not really into war and bombing children and stuff. But for those who are, you know, like, for those who are not. Even there, it just seems like a very, very unwise, unjustifiable. like really, really bad move. The majority of the populations,

what do we? So I've never really given a reason. Well, I don't think they know their reasons. I mean, the war from the beginning, like the messaging has been so mixed. And even like people that I don't especially love on the internet, like Matt Walsh was like even calling it out. Like he's like,

yeah, he was like, you tell us it's not about the nukes. It's about regime change. And now it's about the nukes and not about regime change. And then it's about regime change, but we're not actually going to change the regime. We're going to keep the regime, but just a different Ayatollah. And he's like, what is you're so confused on this. You don't even like know what you're telling us.

And I'm like, okay, if you lost Matt Walsh, you're like messing up. You've gone really. Yeah. I mean, when you listen to the Lindsay Graham's, the Trumps, the videos, I feel like I'm watching like a professional wrestling. Yeah. And it's actually funny because it's so blatantly bad. And like, obviously, nobody believes this stuff, right? So, like, just contradiction, what you said yesterday, just making stuff up and we're winning the war.

It's going so good. And then you, again, if you just go dig a little, you're like, oh, yeah. This is a disaster. You see the damage that has been done to our bases. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's not going well for us at all. Like, we've been negotiating with them. They're like, we haven't talked.

Yeah, that's been, you know. It's like so blatantly just rhetoric. If anybody with an internet connection, you just do a little digging and see, like, they're just saying. like they're just saying, lying out their teeth. Like, I mean, through their teeth. Yeah. Was the latest poll like 80% are opposed to the war?

Yeah, vast majority. But still most Republicans are in sport, which is, like, I'll never identify as conservative or liberal because once you start to put those categories on yourself, like so many people are like proud conservative or proud liberal or whatever, once you start putting these categories on yourself, you have to, you like, enter a mental space where you have to either settle these cognitive dissonances in, some way that makes sense or ignore them all together. And I think that's what just so many people do is like they've placed themselves into this identity of I'm a conservative or I'm MAGA.

So when something happens, when even the president betrays a value that you've held for very long, like fiscally, I'm pretty conservative. I would, I think one of the crises of our lifetime is going to be rampant government spending that's unaccounted for. I think eventually that has to hit a wall. and that will not be a pleasant experience for anyone. But the GOP abandoned that position with Trump entirely. Like he's been one of the highest spending presidents in my lifetime. And it's just like, okay, that's a conservative value that the GOP, now it's not representing our politics at the federal level at all

because Democrats aren't especially physically conservative. Republicans now aren't either under Trump. So I was like, well, where do I fit? But if you've chosen to identify as MAGA, suddenly you just don't care about fiscal conservatism anymore because the party doesn't because the leader doesn't. And I think that that's what's so important for people to maintain. It's just this intellectual independence, right? Do you know, could you steal man the case for how this isn't Iraq 2.0? Yeah.

Like it, I mean, now it's universally agreed upon, right? Iraq was a complete disaster. Colin Powell and several others literally lied us in the war and led to the death of hundreds, I don't know how many thousands of Americans and over a million people that displaced him of millions of Christians, terrible for the kingdom of God. Yes, Saddam was a terrible person. Yes. But going and, you know, killing a dictator, leaving a power vacuum, is proven to be a disaster.

happened in Libya, right? Happened in Syria. I mean, it's just like, we're like 10 for 10. Yeah, like we know. Getting involved. But Iraq especially. Yeah. It's like there was the lie about nuclear weapons, provokes a lot of fear.

This guy's a terrible person. People are protesting. Israel is like convincing the U.S. like, you got to go invade Iraq. And then all those things are like almost identical to what's going on today. We know Israel is. the major factor in motivating, you know, whatever. We have the threat of nuclear weapons, but then we destroyed them, but then we didn't, but we did, but they might develop it at some point in the future.

And they're angry. They chant death to America. They don't like us, you know? You know, like, it's all these same talking points. It's like, I don't, if it was a bunch of Gen Z people that, like, weren't alive, like, in early 2000s, I was like, hey, I want to let you know about something. But they were there. Like, this is not.

So what's the steel man case for this isn't just Iraq 2.0? We're going to look back into one of years and say this is an absolute disaster. So let me steal me in Iraq first. So there is a compelling case to be made that we did not actually invade Iraq either for the WMDs alone or for them really at all. So this post-9-11, Al-Qaeda's all over the Middle East, has cells rapidly multiplying. and there's an argument that I've heard from analysts such as Peter Zion that what we needed was we couldn't go into every single country and fight Al-Qaeda in every single country. But we did know, hey, we have enough of a pretext to invade Iraq.

Was this Al-Qaeda that we trained and raised up in the 80s? No, no, that was Mujahideen. But we were involved in creating. So that's that. like an interesting stuff. There are schools to this day that were sponsored by a USAid, a.k.a. CIA grant that have things in their textbook. They were in Afghanistan. They were sponsored during the Afghan war against the Soviets. Right. That have things like JAS for jihad, ours for rifle. So we funded indoctrination of children at the time in the 80s for religious

extremism because at the time it aligned with our interests Ronald Reagan even said fighting against the communist yeah like better better religious extremist than a god the Soviet I mean bin Laden was on our payroll for yeah yeah well yeah he was part a part of the Mujahideen and was like yeah yeah benefited from everything with us and his his whole thing was that he he did not want the U.S. in the Middle East like yeah that was his yeah his motivation was hey I don't care about you guys as long you're over there but you're in my backyard, no. And so that was his like motivation. But yeah, so so Iraq, um, we saw as if we do that, if we go here, we can draw all these fighters from all of these nations all across the

Middle East to one central location right in the middle. Um, so you got like Syria, uh, uh, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, all of this stuff, Iran all around. And, hey, let's go here, draw them all in, defeat them all, and it'll be like the end of this terrorist threat. Basically kind of the idea there. There's a pretext or like a way to try to end terrorism or something. Kind of. Yeah. And that's not the only motivation, but that is a motivation that I find.

I'm like, okay, this gives me a little bit more. Like, okay, I think that's a better case of me. I made. I still wouldn't say it was a good idea. It was WMD's. Yeah, which. Some people say, to this day, even, yes, they did have some WMDs. We just never got enough evidence to.

Oh, some people still. My dad even, like, he's like, there's some stuff that they have that we don't have like the stuff to make the case fully. But it was enough to know. What do you see with Iran happening? So, yeah, so with Iran, I think we fundamentally misunderstand Iran. I think our leadership does. I think our leadership thought this would be Venezuela 2.0. Yes.

And like go in, kill the leader, install who we want. Obviously that didn't happen. And fun fact, by the way, we did it on a, what, Saturday, I believe. You'll notice a pattern if you watch for regime change, invasions, almost always happened on a weekend. Russia invaded Ukraine on a weekend, opening of a weekend. And the reason is because like the most optimal situation in a regime change operation is that people like hate having their lives disrupted, right? And so you want to go in on like a Friday night or a Saturday and be done by Sunday night. And then everyone can go back to life as normal on Monday.

So as long as you can keep their life feeling normal, like they go to work, they do everything, then they'll comply. So that's fun little geopolitics side of the side of the same. And now with the stock market rhythm, like Trump doesn't want to do something that's going to cause an economic kind of catastrophe. Right? He's going to do it after the market closing. Yeah. Yeah. And now in the way that we now know we would have to do regime change would be boots on the ground, would be a long-term occupation. You can't bomb a regime change into existence. No, exactly. And not with, you can't use threat of force against. an ideologically motivated foe for whom death is not the worst possible outcome.

So like Delci Rodriguez, you can say like, hey, do this or we'll kill you. Like, she, that's for anyone who doesn't know, she's the Venezuelan VP who has become the president in Venezuela. So you can say like, hey, we took out Maduro, we could take you out too, or you can play ball with us. And she'll play ball because her motivations are just like power, survival, right, all that.

But like, an Islamic extremist. extremists following like the Karbala paradigm like the Shia kind of or Shia like line of extremist thought they're not good for them a fate worse than death is to be humiliated and defeat by you so they would rather die than yeah than have that shame and so yeah we just fundamentally misunderstood that I think and they hold a lot of power with all the economic yeah how they have with oil right I mean, it's not like they're just some helpless country with no kind of bargaining. Yeah, I mean, it's a nation of 90 million people.

It's one of the largest in the world. There are not too many nations with 90 million people. And their geography is the size of the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S., like all the way inland to the Mississippi River. Like, this is a big country. This is more than, I believe more than twice the size of Iraq. Like, it's big. Lots of mountains, lots of, yeah, lots of population, lots of different cities.

You can't just, this idea that we can just do everything in one spot, clear it out real quick, and people will take power. It's just silly. And there's 180,000 mullahs who are religious, like religious clerics. 180,000. 180,000 in Iran. So would regime change mean you have to take out all 180 or most of the 180? So that's the thing. It's like, how strong are the motivations of alignment among these 180,000 mullahs?

Because they're aligned. They're a part of the IRC machine. They're at like the ground level all throughout the country. And then there's a hierarchy above them and you know, so on and so forth. But people think this is just like it's not an autocrat. It's a theocracy. So an autocracy, typically you have a leader, cut off the head, kill the snake. But this is a theocracy that's responsible for like 50% I believe of Iran's economy, like has its hand in 50%.

Like it's not just like, oh, you can just get. rid of them by taking out this one leader. There's a multi-layered government structure with this assembly of experts, which is, I think, 88 people. There's another group that's six clerics, six non-clerics as like this leadership group. It's almost like we have distributed powers with like the presidency and Congress and the judicial branch. They have something like that. but it's all theocratic and all ultimately under the Supreme Leader. But even then, they select the Supreme Leader. So it's kind of like, yeah, this different structure.

But we just fundamentally, like it, anyone who was like a Foreign Service Officer or someone in diplomacy and the State Department, like Marco Rubio, he should have known this and he should have been able to say this stuff. And maybe he did. But it seems that the voices that prevailed were just ignorant of a lot of this stuff that they shouldn't have been. I said what you're saying. I mean, I knew not the details, but like I could have told you on March 1st. Yeah.

This isn't going to work. No. Just going to bomb it. Like, I don't know it either. Not they have specialists that know everything you said about the religious ideology and the whole structure of the mooters. I mean. Exactly. And there are experts.

And so one theory I kind of have is, so we've talked about Epstein files a bit. And I think they've got something on Trump. I think the whole destructs. Well, I think the Israelis have not just a distraction theory, but that Netanyahu has something on Trump. And he can say, you know what, you're going to invade Iran or else it's the end of your presidency. And to me, that's just the only thing that makes sense because Trump had to know that maybe his hubris just knows no bounds. but I thought, I feel like he had to know that this was not going to go well for him in any way. Or at the least he had to have had advisors who would have told him that.

And there has to be some overpowering force that just made him say, we're going to do it anyway. Well, I mean, we do. I mean, Rubio said out loud that like we invaded because Israel is going to. Exactly. They told him. And then he tried to walk it back. Yeah, he said, Israel said, really clearly, we're going in with or without you. Right. Get on board.

And your bases are going to be. attack. Yeah. Because if we go in, they're going to retaliate to, you know, the country funding us. Yeah. And so I think that's the primary driver of what started it. And then I think now we're in this situation where we fundamentally misunderstand the Iranian regime in negotiation.

We misunderstand honor shame cultures. Like, you can't just kill, like, beginning by killing the Ayatollah. That, that, you just set yourself up for failure for any future negotiations. Because, like, like, anyone who. who you want to negotiate peace with has to have something to lose or something to gain from peace, right? And if you've already bombed all the infrastructure, killed their leader, like, just decimated the regime, what are they negotiating for? Like, what do they need to preserve now? Right. Right, right. And you could make the argument, like, well, they need to preserve their people or their infrastructure. But unless we

remove sanctions, like their economy is going into the toilet. That's a big part of why they had the revolts, the protests in January was because their currency is just collapsing because of sanctions. And so if we aren't willing to say, okay, we'll remove the sanctions, which we aren't so far, then they were already in a sort of, like spiral of destruction before we attacked. And then we attack and we just take everything else. and they're on this spot that I called that I talked about recently called Death Ground. Sun Tzu wrote it wrote about it. He said like, hey, the last thing you want to do is advance against an enemy like who's on desperate ground, who has nowhere, who's back on the precipice.

They're either going to fall off or they're going to strike out and try to slice through you. Right. Right. And they're going to try to slice through you. And that's what Iran is doing. And so, yeah, it's one of those things where I think they, like the 15 point peace plan came out. Trump put that forward. And most of that's like,

give up all your missiles. Crazy things. We're going to, we're going to attack you unprovoked. Yeah. And then we're going to ask you to give up all your missiles. Or diplomacy. Like isn't the last,

the last, didn't they attack under the last few times, they were under diplomatic negotiations? Yes. And so why would they come to the table a third time? Whenever time they keep coming to the table, they get bombed. Yeah,

exactly. Exactly. And I actually took, I took a long position on oil when, when that that news broke and the oil markets dropped and I was like anyone thinking this ceasefire is getting

accepted is crazy. So that was that worked out okay. And even if they wanted to settle something, Israel doesn't want to settle. Yeah. I think they're going to bomb them. They would sabotage.

Like supposedly where Oman says and officials in the UK have said that we had a pretty nice deal negotiated between Iran and the U.S. Because we were negotiating when the war broke out. I don't know if you know that.

Yeah. Yeah. And that the deal was actually kind of funny. It was almost like Obama's previous deal that Trump nuked in 2018. Right. No pun intended. And so, yeah, it's just like because we fundamentally misunderstand our foe, we keep trying to make these moves towards peace with this idea or these threats that are all hinged on this idea.

self-preservation when that's not the motivator for them. And so it's just, it's just wonky. I think we're going to invade either this weekend or next. It's kind of my, my hypothesis.

Now, it's all an odds game. It's not like, yes, we're going to invade. But I'm thinking, well, I think it out loud, that there will be some kind of settlement that will be because the U.S. will finally realize like, we do not have the upper hand here

and we are going to get decimated economically. Nobody wants this war, and we're going to settle, but they're going to make it, the rhetoric's going to be, the propaganda is going to be, but they were begging for submission, you know, like, you know, begging us to stop and we won the war and then they're going to make it like, because they have to have a,

a capital v victory they have to be like we're the empire don't mess with us you know we're we'll destroy anybody yeah and everybody's going to do what we say i think that's going to be the rhetoric when in reality they're going to finally hopefully hopefully if hubris doesn't take over i mean i think they'll be like yeah can't keep doing this is not like we're not this isn't working we're not winning yeah right i don't know right now we're moving nearly 10 000 troops into theater yeah i saw that um but boots on the ground if 80% that people don't aren't for the war.

95 are against boots on the ground. I mean, I'm just making those thoughts out, but I mean, opinion numbers, it's crazy. But like straight of Hormuz,

the international economy can't take this. Like, the way it's happening right now, like a 20% cut in oil supply. The, everything in the 70s, whatever,

with the Arab embargo or whatnot, that was like a 7% cut. And that was like devastated. Went into the, history books yeah and and 20% cut maybe 15 10 to 15% if they let some through that's humongous we're looking at oil being 125 to 175 for the next year if that was the case yeah yeah yeah like a 60 yeah like a 60 dollar increase per barrel like a doubling yeah um and united released a letter to

shareholders they think they're budgeting for a 175 barrel price of oil until 2027 for into 2027 for the price of their flights for the price of their flights yeah and so that like in my opinion ripple if the economic ripple effects yeah and and so the only options are either immediate piece um or us militarily taking that out of their hands um so it wouldn't be a full-scale negotiation and that's the that's the big question is there are some strategic islands that we could take that would make it less dangerous. But if Iran chose to thoroughly mine the strait, or if they maintain more launching enclaves than we realized and struck a tanker, say we took some islands and we say,

it's safe, it's okay now. And maybe some of the coastline, maybe we hold it. So that's kind of up and there right now in your mind, whether the U.S. could strong arm the straits open, bombing and attacking and and hits on the ground. Or maybe we would try that and we get slaughtered and the straits would still be closed. And or a second option of we try that, we think it's working. They start letting troops or boats through.

And then they launched some drones at them and say like, hey, we don't even got to fight you. We've got so many little enclaves and whatever. like you're never going to you're not going to be able to stop us unless you do a full yeah unless you do a full occupation with way more than 10,000 troops because that coastline is 300 miles on their side um so that's what the size of like the Washington coast the red sea I mean the huthies kind of control that but they haven't they haven't like closed that down yet right right right and they did that would that be just I mean that's one of those where it's like their capabilities are kind of like we don't yeah they're not as much and so it's like I don't know what it would be because it's yeah it's

It's a little tougher, but yeah, it's all a mess. And it's all, what's annoying is it's all an unnecessary mess. It's all an unnecessary mess going back a decade. We could have kept the Iran deal. Like, you know, people can talk about the pallets of cash stuff that they talked about, Obama sent on pallets of cash. What he did was the unfro's assets that were Iranian assets and then allowed them to have their money back. That was their money.

And yeah, we shipped, we flew it to them. But it was their money. Like, we had just been not letting them have access to it. And so it's funny because now we're on. sanctioning Iranian oil and Russian oil. And it's like we're giving them billions of dollars through that. It's like this the palace of cash thing is chump change. So it's just kind of funny. But yeah, I don't I don't think it's got there's as General Mattis said, there's no good options here just this week. He was like there's nothing. I don't see any good plays. It's all

kind of bad plays. The best play I think for the world is that Trump swallows his ego gets a deal that's worse than we had before for our standing for our stuff but one i don't know if israel would ever allow that in terms of like stopping yeah i mean trump could paper it over with propaganda that yeah convinced 15% of the population that you know whatever you know like um which he will no matter what but yeah yeah so the best case scenario it's it's dude i've taken you so much time so long here. I don't know. We should,

no, we should wrap things up, man. Thanks so much for, you made the drive all the way down. Well, yeah, family here. Yeah,

yeah, it was good having you on Theology and Iran. This is a, yeah, I wonder. Should we talk about theology? We did.

I did a whole episode just on rock and roll. So, yeah, so I did a whole episode just on geopolitics. Just nerding out. No,

yeah, I think, I think some people might really dig does other people might have written me off for yeah dabbling I don't know whatever like yeah um so anyway uh yeah thanks for coming on encourage people check out uh nerdy christian on instagram anything else you want to promote how else yeah yeah man um yeah on on on instagram on i've been doing more and more on sub stack um so working on building that up um what i'll often do lately is i'll have something that i do like the

three minute video on on instagram And then I'll have had a script from that and I'll just flesh it out more thoroughly and put that on substack and written form. And that's, that's been fun because then I'm not like redoing anything or doing anything entirely different. But I get to, you know, making short form video, there's con there's so much cut and there's so much. So you're just like, all right, I really got to be snappy with it. And you don't get to get into some of the details. But like even. So the substack, you can get a little bit more.

Yeah. Yeah. So. Cool. Thank you for your stuff. to your stuff, your work, man. I mean, it is work. It's work.

Yeah, yeah. And it's so good. So, yeah, it encourages people to check you out. And, yeah, yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, brain. Yeah.

Thanks for coming on the show, man. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks.