The Hormuz Trap

A single stretch of water is now dictating the mood of global markets and the direction of a widening war. We dig into the Strait of Hormuz crisis and President Trump’s whiplash messaging: demanding other countries step in, hinting the U.S. “maybe shouldn’t be there,” and floating coalition talk that even close allies appear unwilling to join. When the world’s energy chokepoint becomes a battlefield problem, “keep it open” stops sounding like a slogan and starts looking like an escalation ladder.

From there, we follow the money trail and the lived reality. Oil hovering near $100 a barrel can be a win for producers while still being brutal for families facing higher gas prices, costlier shipping, and travel disruptions. We talk through how tanker insurance, commercial routing, jet fuel, and supply chain shock can turn a regional conflict into global economic pressure. We also examine why escorting ships isn’t a clean fix, why mines and coastal missile batteries change the math, and why any serious attempt to “secure” the strait can pull the U.S. toward ground-force commitments that nobody wants to own publicly.

We also step back into the information war. A sharp media segment on JD Vance’s ideological trajectory raises questions about power, donors, and how leaders sell hardline policy to a mass audience. Then we evaluate the international law argument featured on Democracy Now with economist Jeffrey Sachs, who calls the U.S.-Israel attack a blatant UN Charter violation and warns of catastrophic blowback. The throughline is credibility: with allies balking, markets jittery, and nuclear claims contested, the hardest part isn’t starting a war. It’s finding an off-ramp.

Subscribe for more deep coverage, share this with a friend, and leave a review with your take: what’s the first realistic step toward de-escalation?

Transcript

eadlines And Stakes For Markets

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Indeed, we do. Trump really scrambling, making a ton of comments yesterday evening. He's begging other countries to help secure the Straight of Horror moves. He's saying maybe we shouldn't even be in Iran. Perhaps that's something he should have thought of before he launched this illegal war of choice. So a lot to get to there. We're also uh keeping an eye on the markets as they open this morning. Oil prices obviously have been spiking, hovering right now around$100 a barrel, and huge potential economic fallout looming. Israel is reporting, reportedly running low on interceptors. Murtaza Hussein is going to join us to break down the damage to that country. Trump and his FCC are threatening broadcasters who tell the truth about his war. They are demanding patriotic news coverage, very dystopian thing there. Tucker Carlson is claiming he's being spied on and maybe charged by the Trump administration. And Trump official David Sachs says that he fears Israel may actually use a nuke, which is uh first time the US administration has actually acknowledged that Israel is a nuclear power. And uh obviously the dire warnings he's sounding is pretty remarkable coming from someone who is inside of this administration.

rump Scrambles Over Hormuz

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Yeah, that's right. Um for the first US official ever, I think, to acknowledge Israel's nuclear program. So we do want to uh thank you, David Sachs, uh, for finally acknowledging it out in the public. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting the show, breakingpoints.com. You can shine up and become a premium subscriber. If you can't afford it, no worries. Please just go ahead and hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. Uh Crystal, we never actually thought we would hit 2 million. I mean, theoretically, I knew it would come, but I actually did not ever think it would come this quickly. So we're at 1.9 million. Uh so let's get that extra 100K, all right? And then we can just worry about it and we can sail off into the sunset. So 1.9 million, get us to 2 million, hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please share an episode with a friend. We really appreciate it. It helps other people find the show. Also, bear with us, uh, Crystal is home. We have an insane tornado warning here. So who the hell knows what's going to happen here in the DMV area? If anything happens tomorrow, there you go. That's the reason why. But yeah, why don't we go ahead and start with the Straits of Hormuz and the crisis there?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, so Trump uh making all kinds of wild comments, posting on Truth Social, clearly scrambling, and uh increasingly one of the goals of the war is clearly to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which of course was open before we started this war, so uh really sort of backsliding here. In any case, have some remarkable comments from Trump on Air Force One yesterday evening, where he is not only begging other countries to help us out, threatening them, uh, and saying, you know, maybe he'll blow up NATO effectively if they don't uh join in and helping to solve the problem that he himself created, but also saying, I don't uh I'm not sure we should be there in the first place, which is just like, oh my god, like what is going on here? Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

SPEAKER_11 3:11

Some of the countries should be remembered it only takes a couple of people to screw up the strain a couple of turns. You don't need your your military is completed, but all you need is a few people dropping mines here and there, and you know, you allow us enough. So uh we need I I would we are demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory. It's it's the place from which they get their energy, and they should come and they should help us protect. You could make the case that maybe we shouldn't be there at all because we don't need it. We have a lot of oil. We were the number one producer anywhere in the world times. By double at least up. Now I think it's much higher than that. But we do it. It's almost like we do it for habit, but we also do it for some very good allies that we have.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

So Zagger, we broke it, and now he wants the rest of the world to come in and fix it. Maybe we shouldn't even be there at all. Yeah, you think? You think maybe so? Maybe we should have re-thought that before you can't get it.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

And remember, many, much of that oil is still yet to come online. It's gonna take months for actually to dribble out. Japan, many others are actually doing releases outside of the United States. The entire global economy is scrambling, and nothing says I had a plan than having to beg other countries to have to come in and to bolster the U.S. Navy. I also think that what that does highlight is a massive humiliation for the United States at a big, like, global strategic level. This is the United States Navy, Blue Water Navy, entire purpose of a Navy is to ensure commerce and trade on the high seas. And this is effectively a declaration. We are not able to accomplish this mission without multiple other countries. It also is straining US allies to the point where we're having to pit, you know, against each other in a way where the top allies of the United States, in a matter of what, 24 hours, are all coming out and be like, yeah, I think you're on your own, man. And what this demonstrates is the chaotic nature not only of Trump and so-called like management of alliances, but it actually really calls into question the entire point of the global empire. And you know, you really don't want to use these things until not only can they do it, but then if you're gonna use it, it better damn work. And so for Iran, this tiny country which they claim, or not tiny, but you know, uh in terms of their military force compared to the United States, to be able to have this threat which just so emasculates the global empire. What does that tell you about the emperor and about the empire itself? It's an absolute humiliation on the world stage.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Or you even have the Hofis joining in. And I mean, that's what's crazy to me, too, is like we had a trial run of all this stuff with the Red Sea and the Hofis. Ultimately, you know, Biden infamously said, Well, we're gonna continue striking them. Do I think it's gonna work? No, but we're gonna continue doing it. Trump actually, you know, did the same thing for a while, blew a bunch of people up, realized it wasn't gonna work, and just sort of quietly walked away. So he should have known because we had a trial run of this. I mean, same thing of regime change just coming from strategic bombing. We had a trial run of that in Gaza, where we in Israel committed a genocide, blew the whole area to Smitherians, and guess what? Hamas didn't fall, which uh is a much weaker and uh less well-entrenched organization than ultimately the Iranian regime is. But I think what happened here is Trump really convinced himself and probably had, you know, people like Nat Yalo and Lindsey Graham and whoever wrote his year that this was going to be quick and glorious, that they could take out the Ayatollah, they had this opportunity to do it, that the whole thing, he was reportedly, according to Shahida Parsi, telling Gulf Arab allies the whole thing would be over in four days and they would completely capitulate. So even though obviously military planners knew that there was a possibility that the Strait of Hormones would be impacted because the Iranians have been threatening this for years and years and years, he never thought it would get to that point. And now that we are at that point, the realization has set in that actually, I mean, I can't, I I won't say we can't reopen it ourselves, but it would require a ground invasion, seizing the shoreline. Right. You would have, you know, the mountainous terrain there makes it very easy for Iranian forces to come in, you know, guerrilla warfare style, uh, kill a bunch of our troops, take down a bunch of our equipment, and then, you know, and then retreat and hide and come back and do the same thing over and over again. If we and our allies do start escorting ships through the Strait of Hormouth, it makes all everybody involved, including these, you know, cargo ships that these are just civilian, you know, sailors trying to earn a living that have nothing to do with this conflict, makes them sitting docks. So it really is an impossible situation. The only way to solve this is through some sort of a negotiated end to this conflict. And, you know, at this point, Iran is not gonna just back away without getting something in return to ensure that they're not gonna end up in this place again. So here's the latest Trump move um, you know, the Wall Street Journal reporting, this is incredible. The Trump administration, as soon as this week, plans to announce that multiple countries have agreed to form a coalition, might call it a coalition of the willing, that will escort ships through this corridor, which runs along the Iranian coast, US officials said. Listen to this last sentence, though. They're still discussing whether those operations will begin before or after hostilities end. Kind of a key point there. Uh, and to your point, you know, we've got Germany already taking a pass, uh, next element. They're saying, yeah, we're we're good here, no thanks. We have the French similarly saying, uh, no thanks, we're gonna pass. We have the Canadians saying uh we're we're good here. We had Japan come out and say, no, we're not getting involved. So I don't know. At this point, there is no country that has raised their hand and said, yes, please uh allow our ships to also be sitting ducks in this preposterous Quegmire disaster that you've created for yourselves and ultimately for the world.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Yes, especially the Anglo Sphere. So, you know, there's NATO countries, but then there's who are the top US allies. It's gonna be Australia, it's gonna be the UK, it's gonna be Canada. Well, Canada come out and said, no. UK, Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, just this morning, no, we will not be joining uh into a war with Iran. And Australia also coming out. I mean, these are beyond even our closest allies, the so-called, you know, part of the Five Eyes and et cetera. But what that tells you is that when even those people are saying no, we're not going to be joining you, it leaves you completely out on a limb and makes it. So they only have two options some sort of escalation, a ground troop option. Uh, currently, the internal reporting is they believe they want to try and cripple the regime by taking over Karg Island, which is a possibility. So 90% of Iranian oil uh is exported via Karg Island. The other, of course, is a negotiated settlement. But to have a negotiated settlement would be, of course, a humiliation. Also on the world stage, which is why, as Professor Robert Pape always says, the natural way that this goes about is escalation. That's why Trump is already inside of the escalation trap. Why don't we play a three-man of Trump now threatening NATO countries if they don't join in this mission? Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_11 9:23

But I don't think they're ready to do what they have to do. But I think they will be ready as someone. But we're doing very well with respect to the whole situation in Iran. We are talking to other countries about working with us for the policing of the straight. And I think we get a good response. And if we do that's great, and if we don't, that's great. Remember, I give us an example in many cases the NATO countries. We're always there for NATO. We're helping them with Ukraine. Any instrument's got an ocean in between us, doesn't affect us, but we help them.

unknown 9:54

It'd be interesting to see what country wouldn't help us with a very small endeavor, which is just keeping the straight open.

SPEAKER_11 10:00

And by comparison, uh, isn't small. It's small because Iran has very little firepower left.

llies Refuse The Escort Mission

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Very small endeavor, very little firepower, so little firepower, in fact, that the US Navy needs to beg NATO and all the other world powers uh to come in and to join us. I have been thinking, though, if this war is the downfall of NATO, maybe it'd be all be worth it, but that's like a big, uh, a bigger picture thing. It is just insane and ironic, also. It demonstrates how unilateral action will always come back to bite you. Because when you get into that escalation, and now you don't have other countries who are bought into the message, it's not just our population. If you think America's population, which is 10 times more brainwashed and more rah-rah jingoistic for pro-war propaganda, isn't on board with this war, according to every poll that we have out there. What do you think that the European population is going to be thinking about this? And don't forget, is that while our gas prices are already high, I think it's like 370 or something right now per gallon, go take a look at European and natural gas and petrol prices out on the continent. It's not great. There are also many of the European countries, Crystal, especially in NATO, are furious because the United States is currently issuing sanctioned waivers to India and to any other country that wants to purchase Russian oil, which is already at sea. So they are massively enriching the Kremlin at this very time. The rest of NATO only really cares about Russia and Ukraine. Okay, well, guess what? This is enriching those that country to a huge degree. I mean, we are pumping money into the Russian war machine. Oil is currently trading around$98,$97 a barrel, the highest level in years. The Kremlin is doing backflips. They want the price to go to some 140, 160 per barrel, which would be around five something dollars a gallon here in the United States. That is the best case scenario for them, which is why they're also giving all this intelligence to the Iranians, which we're gonna spend a lot of time here talking about some of the strikes and some of the pinpoint mortaza is gonna break uh some of that down. There is absolutely no way that's just Iran on its own. And how can you even be mad at Russia? As Trump even said, he's like, well, it is hard to be upset because it's not like we don't give all this money to Ukraine. The one thing you say about Trump is at least he does occasionally tell the truth.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yeah, well, I mean, Trump is right that the Europeans are more screwed out of this than we are because we are a net energy exporter. Uh, we have more tools at our disposal. You know, if he wanted to, he could say, okay, we're not exporting any more of our oil, we're keeping it here domestically. That would cause an entire global shit show. I mean, if you think about it for the Europeans, um, they were very reliant on Russian gas. Obviously, they've uh largely cut that off. Now you've got the other primary source of their energy, which obviously the Middle East now is imperiled at best. So they are kind of screwed. And um, you know, I did see a report this morning, Scott Bessant, Treasury Secretary, saying, like, well, actually, we're letting Iranian oil tankers, we're letting them, okay, um, uh transit the straight of hormouse to continue to supply the global oil markets. And that seems to have led to somewhat of a takedown in terms of the oil futures. And I'm talking like a tick down to 96 instead of 98, you know, effectively. But um, but Trump and his regime are thinking that they can effectively bully our allies and the Europeans in particular into taking on this task after we created this whole entire mess. And they may be right because the Europeans are sort of embarrassingly, you know, embarrassing at this point and weak and they're kind of screwed, et cetera. But uh thus far, they don't seem too willing to uh to want to join in this one. You've got uh UN ambassador Mike Waltz, who was saying that not only do we request that our allies get involved here, we demand it. Let's take a listen to that.

SPEAKER_07 14:55

Is he hoping that those countries are gonna send ships, or have they committed to sending ships? And how soon will those naval escorts be ready?

SPEAKER_08 15:02

Well, I'll leave those uh you know those conversations to him. The conversations are ongoing. I think there's an important point that's getting you know kind of missed in the conversation that 80% of the oil coming out of the Gulf uh heads to Asia. Uh only about 7-8% heads uh to the Western Hemisphere. And to your point on escorts, look, back in the 80s, uh under the tanker wars, then the last time Iran tried to constrain global energy supplies, you had French, United Kingdom, even Soviet Union uh forces in there escorting uh their tankers out that were heading to their markets. And I think that's what President Trump is calling upon the world, saying the entire world is affected. Iran can't hold your economies hostage. Uh, and we certainly welcome, encourage, and even demand uh their participation.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Welcome, encourage, and even demand. Um, and you know, when you put out some rhetoric like that to your point about the weakness, and then after those comments are made, the UK comes out and says, sorry, you're on your own for this one. Again, the level of weakness. And this is really everything for a global empire, you know, a declining global empire like the US. Everything is about maintaining the facade. Everything is about saving face. And once that image is punctured, and once you're proven to be a paper tiger, and once the rest of the world says, you know, we've got our own ideas about things, that is the beginning of the end.

scalation Trap And NATO Threats

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Yeah, I think it's really, I mean, yeah, I didn't want to see it. Uh, unfortunately, it's highly predictable. This is like classic empire behavior. Let's put the German uh one up there on the screen, for example. Uh, here was uh Chancellor Merce reacting skeptical about expanding any EU operation uh in the Straits of Hormuz. What they talked about specifically, sorry, this was a foreign minister, he said he was skeptical about potential widening of the mission in the Straits of Hormuz. We should be clear, I mean, they might make some token sort of announcement that they will help ensure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz after a cessation of hostilities, or Trump might take it as a victory that they'll say that they'll put their ships, you know, somewhere near the Straits of Hormuz. But at the end of the day, if they're not sailing through, if they're not joining some sort of military action that's happening in the Straits of Hormuz in the way the United States Navy is currently being floated, that is a real screw you. And remember, as Crystal said, I mean, these countries are massively, they have massive more at stake here than just the United States. Yes, in a drastic situation, we could just do an export ban. 90% of Japan's oil comes from the Straits of Hormuz, comes from or sorry, comes from the Middle East. Uh 40-something percent of China's oil comes from the Middle East. The Europeans, it's not just an oil problem they have, it's really natural gas because of Qatar. So Qatar's natural gas, their LNG, has been massively important to their ability to try and wean somewhat off of Russian gas since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. But you put all this together and the bottleneck of everything that's currently happening, and you are already seeing, remember, it's not just oil, it's not even just gas. We're also talking about helium. We're talking about fertilizer, we're talking about urea. We talked a little bit about that earlier. I was just looking this morning. China has already released its strategic fertilizer reserve. Uh, I didn't even know they had such a thing. Smart behavior, by the way, real country behavior. Guess which country, major economy, doesn't have a strategic fertilizer fertilizer reserve or any reserve of any kind. United States, which means our farmers are gonna be massively, uh, massively at stake of the global market. And also, China and the US have an upcoming, uh, Trump and China have an upcoming summit, which is supposed to take place at the end of the month. And the president is even saying that he may delay any sort of that summit or demand Chinese participation in some sort of Hormuz clearing operation, uh, if that summit were to continue to go forward. They don't care at all. This is good for them. You know, they they there's nothing that they would love more than to have the United States embroiled in a weeks or years-long war in Iran, which is they get all their interceptor, they can they're watching the satellites. I saw pictures come out of the PLA, the People's Liberation Army headquarters, where they're just monitoring the situation uh with these giant monitors and maps, uh, and they're just sitting there watching these missiles go up, calculating trajectories, looking at what's working, what's not working, who, by the way, controls the global drone supply parks, where do you think it all comes from? Comes from China, all of these electronics. They're just sitting there quietly and preparing. Meanwhile, there's increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait, uh, just to show you that, you know, they're they're pushing their proxies as well. Their main proxy is North Korea. North Korea just launched a ballistic missile two days ago over Japan. They're freaking out in East Asia. South Korean press is all over this. President Trump apparently had to hold some therapy session phone call uh with the president of South Korea, who is furious, obviously, about the removal of bad batteries. Like the global order itself is is very, very shaky already as a result of this war. Shall we get to Kevin Hassett? Or do we have to do that?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, let's go. No, let's go. Well, uh, just one quick thing on that, you know, to your point about sort of like the global order is shaky, and in a lot of ways, the global order is being determined as we speak, you know, depending on how this war shakes out and how long it goes, how damaging it is to the US, how damaging is to the world, how damaging it is to the empire, what the Gulf countries do after this. And in that way, it truly is a world war. You know, a world war is not necessarily about like the number of people killed or exactly the number of countries that are involved in hot military actions. But right now, if you look around the world, you have a whole lot of countries in these interrelated hot war conflicts. But in any case, what a world war really is about is about what the world order is going to look like coming out of that. And I think from that definition, we are already in one. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Kevin Hassett here. Um, very noteworthy. Someone else made this point on Twitter that the administration, you know, this wasn't Marco Rubio coming out. You didn't have the, you know, the military brass. It was largely like the economic guys who were sent out on the Sunday shows to make the case, which tells you a few things. I mean, it tells you maybe the number one thing that they're concerned about is really the markets. And that is an intentional Iranian plan. This is a much as much about the Iranians waging economic warfare as it is about the military conflict, they see that dimension as being the most crucial because they need to exact that pain on America to force them to accept their terms and make sure that they don't end up in this situation again. So uh Kevin Hassett, who's a chief economic advisor for Trump, gets asked about so, hey, if this goes on for months, like what is this gonna mean for the economy? Let's go ahead and take a listen to how he responds. If this disruption lasts for months, can the US economy absorb the shock without a recession?

SPEAKER_05 20:34

Uh first of all, it's not going to last for months. Uh President Trump's team has briefed us that it's going to be four to six weeks, beginning two weeks ago, and that we're ahead of schedule. Uh, and so second, if it did last for a long time, it wouldn't really do a lot of harm to the US economy. Now, certainly there'd be pocket book issues that we have to address, but the bottom line is that the US produces so much oil that you can't really get GDP to go negative with an oil shock the way you could in the 70s. So we're in a very strong position, but it's really heightened the strength by the fact that we've got a productivity boom from artificial intelligence, we've got a capital spending boom because of the big beautiful bill, and we've got and so all the fundamentals of our economy are really, really strong. If Iran thinks that they're gonna get President Trump to back down because they're gonna make our economy weak, then they just don't understand economics.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

So Sorry basically just dodges there, like, well, it's not gonna last that long. They promise this is not gonna last that. Oh, really? So how's it gonna end? Because no one can say that.

il Shock Spin And Real Pain

SPEAKER_02 21:25

It's worth even grappling with what he said. He said our GDP won't be affected. And he's not wrong. Yes, Exxon is gonna do great, okay? Uh Midlands, my home state of Texas, Houston, it's gonna be a fun time, all right, to be a club owner in the city of Houston. It's gonna be a super fun to own a Ford dealer uh out in West Texas or in the Panhandle or in Tech, you know, in uh Lubbock or any of these places. That doesn't mean that it's gonna be good for the rest of us. Already gas is 370 about a gallon nationally. Let's think about the scenarios where it's like 450,$5 a gallon, let's say even average. That's I would say one of the worst case scenarios is around$5 a gallon average. That would be probably$650,$7 a gallon in California. That is a disaster, I think, for normal American pocketbooks. That also translates into demand destruction. That's what our friend Rory has talked about. Where when gas starts to tick up that high, people are like, all right, I'm just not going anywhere. You know, I'm not I'm not driving to my uncle's house or something like that. Don't forget, we got the July 4th holiday in a few months. Are people gonna be driving? Right? So these are times usually when people are always traveling who are either driving, not to mention jet fuel, jet fuel prices in Asia. I think in Singapore, jet fuel is going for$200 per barrel right now because there's something about the specific refinement. I'm not an expert, but the experts that I have been reading have been warning that this is going to directly translate into air traffic. Also, there's been just the war, the actual disruption. So while we were all sleeping last night, a bunch of flights which were en route to Dubai had to turn around in the middle of the air and actually go back to where they came from because of a huge fire that broke out. Remember, Dubai is one of the busiest airport, maybe the busiest airport in the entire world. They handle tens of thousands of passengers per day, even on a limited schedule. So already they had to cancel flights for a prolonged period. They're warning people do not come to the airport. They have immense censorship in the UAE. So we haven't even seen any real videos uh that have been coming out as a result. But just think about you know, the danger to air traffic in one of the more busiest parts of the entire region, Qatar Airways. My name is These are gateways to Asia. So this will have demand destruction at every level from the war and to oil. So I think last thing. Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Oh, I was just gonna say, I mean, that airport is also just like very crucial to the economy of the UAE. Um, you know, it's billions of dollars every day in uh in revenue that comes through there. And I did see images uh that purported to be of a fuel depot near the airport on fire after, you know, presumably an Iranian drum drone strike. So yeah, their economies are still, you know, being messed with in a way that is probably gonna be very difficult for them to recover because their brand is being destroyed. Um the Iranian foreign minister uh went and did a couple interviews yesterday as well. And he said, hey, the Straightform News, it's open for anyone we want it to be open for. It's not open for the US and their allies, but you know, for other countries, sure, Straightform News is open. Uh so let's take a listen to that.

SPEAKER_15 23:47

Uh as a matter of fact, this Straight of Hormos is open, it is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to the to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass. Uh, of course, many of them uh prefer not because of their uh you know security concerns. This this has nothing to do with us. And at the same time, there are many tankers and ships who are passing through the Strait of Hormos, and and uh and uh uh I can say that the strait is not closed, but it is only closed to American, Israeli uh, you know, ships and tankers uh uh and not to to others.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah. But we we do know though that obviously traffic through the Strait of Hormos is greatly, greatly, greatly diminished because you know, even if you are not US Israeli uh flag tanker owned tanker, you're probably not feeling real safe uh going through there at this point. And the insurance rates have just astronomically. Skyrocketed. I mean a bunch of insurers are just like, yeah, we're not we're not insuring actually your voyage through this area.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

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SPEAKER_01 24:48

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SPEAKER_02 24:54

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SPEAKER_18 25:03

Our main story tonight concerns JD Vaughns. Sworn in at just 40 years old. He's our first millennial vice president, so we can confidently say he's the first VP to have definitely jacked it to Space Jack. I know to some, Vance might appear to be just another abrasive MAGA arsehole with a load-bearing beard, but to many on the right, he's a towering intellect. The president of the Heritage Foundation said Vance is going to be one of the leaders, if not the leader, of our movement. And Tucker Carson once called him the smartest and deepest senator he's ever met, which is kind of like Ryan Lochty calling Cookie Monster his go-to guy for investment advice. I don't trust any of the individuals involved to be reliable judges of any of the subjects involved. And his rise to become Trump's right-hand man is especially striking, given as recently in 2016, he was casting himself as a never Trump Republican, say he might write in his dog for president, or if Trump had a really good chance of winning, hold his nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. Privately, he even used that Trump could become America's Hitler. And yet, just a few years later, he was campaigning for Senate alongside Trump and adopting a very different tone, something that did not go unnoticed. You know what? He's a guy that said some bad shit about me.

SPEAKER_09 26:03

Come on up, JD. The president is right. I wasn't always nice, but the simple fact is, he's the best president of my lifetime, and he revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else.

SPEAKER_18 26:13

I mean, I guess that is true. Donald Trump definitely revealed corruption in his country like nobody else, in the same way no one taught us more about what a Ponzi scheme is than Bernie Madoff. It's true, just not in the way I think you're implying. And Vance has turned out to be perfect for Trump, as in many ways he's become like a son. Trump doesn't even have to pretend to love. And as VP, he has served dutifully often receding into the background, but willing to be an attacked dog when needed, like when he demanded Zelensky say thank you to Trump in the Oval Office. He's also relentlessly defended his boss's moves, even when they directly contradict his prior beliefs, like his anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy. When people criticized last year's US strikes in the waters of Venezuela, calling them a war crime, he replied on Twitter, I don't give a shit what you call it. And when Trump decided to first strike Iran last year, Vance defended him and didn't even try to come up with a good rationalization.

SPEAKER_09 27:00

I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entangless in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.

SPEAKER_18 27:14

Yeah, it wasn't okay before because the presidents were stupid heads who ate dumb for breakfast, but now we have a big, strong real estate developer and state salesman to give us the national security expertise we so badly need, so it's completely fine. And look, obviously, some of that's just part of being vice president. You have to roll over for your boss. But it's worth remembering, Vance has an inside track to the Oval Office in the future. Not only because polls show him leading the Republican field for 2028, but also because if this guy doesn't make it through his term either, because the 25th Amendment got invoked or his internal organs decided, you know what, dude, it can't keep doing this to us, we're out. JD Varns will become president. So before things reach that point, it feels like tonight, it may be worth looking at J.D. Vance, what he stands for, and who he might be without Donald Trump. And I'll skip over his early life because it's been well chronicled in his best-selling memoir, Hill Billy Ellergy, voted 2016's number one Christmas gift by Oh fuck, Emergency Airport Purchases Magazine. If you haven't read it, long story short, he was raised in Ohio by a mother who battled an opioid addiction and his loud-mouthed grandmother before a stint in the military in Iraq and attending Yale Law School. If you want to know more, you can read the book or just watch the movie adaptation featuring this scene where his grandmother catches Vaughn smoking weed and decides to raise him herself.

SPEAKER_12 28:18

Oh, I don't give a rat fart what you're smoking, kid. If you think you're hiding it under your dumb as a bag of hair. Pack up for what? What are you doing? I'm taking him. Where? To live with me. And if you got a problem with that, you can talk to the barrel of my gun.

SPEAKER_18 28:33

Listen, listen, listen. This is a pro-Glenn Close show. Always has been, always will be. That being said, no. I do not like what I'm seeing there. The only good thing, and I mean the only good thing that came out of that film is the fact that when Glenn Close was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and attended the Academy Awards, she was approached by Lil Rettle for a music trivia game, and this happened. You know what I did? Quite terrible. Let's see, let's see, let's see it. Yeah, that was eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close doing debuts on camera. So, Hillbilly Energy was a terrible film, but let's not say it didn't give us anything. Anyway, Vance's book hit stores during Trump's first run for the White House, making him a hot commodity for news shows, looking for someone to explain the grievances of the white working class. And at the time, he struck what seemed to be a fairly moderate tongue.

SPEAKER_09 29:20

I think that this selection is really having a negative effect, especially on the white working class, right? Because I think a lot of these grievances are legitimate, but what it's doing is it's giving people an excuse to point the finger at someone else. It's point the finger at Mexican immigrants or Chinese trade or the Democratic elites or whatever else. And sometimes these villains are legitimate. I think it's totally fair to say that the policy elites of the Democratic Party haven't been totally concerned about the white working class. But at the same time, fundamentally what's going on and what Donald Trump has done is change the focus of the white working class from a sort of engaged and constructive politics to a politics of pointing the finger.

lights, Insurance, And Tanker Risk

SPEAKER_18 29:52

So watching that now feels weird for a number of reasons. First, I never thought I'd long for JD Barnes' beard, but it turns out the thing none of us needed from him was more fakes. With that appear, he looks like Radio Shack's assistant store manager of the year 1998. He looks like he played Cartman in a live-action South Park movie, but also it is strange to see such a nuanced tone from a guy who's since become such a troll. It'd be like finding old videos of your dog eating with a fork and a knife. What the fuck? Yesterday I watched you take a shit and then eat it mouth first. How on earth did we get from this to that? And while that may sound like a fairly even-handed critique, since then, Vance has clearly picked a side between blaming the elites of the Democratic Party and finger-pointing Republicans. And some of that may have to do with his mentor, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and a man who looks like he got stuck trying to animorph between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Vance has said of Thiel that if there's something interesting going on, and I want to bounce ideas off of a very fascinating and knowledgeable person, I'll give him a call, which is worrying given Thiel holds some troubling views. In 2009, he wrote that he no longer believed that freedom and democracy were compatible, and more reasonably called the quest for diversity very evil, as well as giving multiple lectures around the idea that critics of technology or AI are legionnaires of the Antichrist. Thiel is a huge influence on Vance, who's attributed pretty much his entire career to Thiel's mentorship. They met when Thiel spoke at Yale when Vance was a student, and Thiel later wound up hiring him and eventually investing in his venture capital firm. He then backed Vance's 2022 Senate campaign, with at that point the largest amount given to a single candidate in congressional history. That campaign, by the way, gave us this political ad with a truly iconic opening line, written by Vance himself, that somehow gets worse from there.

SPEAKER_09 31:30

Are you a racist? You hate Mexicans? The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trunks Wall. They censor us, but it doesn't change the truth. Joe Biden's open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country. This issue is personal. I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border. No child should grow up an orphan. I'm JD Fance, and I approve this message because whatever they call us, we will put America first.

SPEAKER_18 31:54

That whole ad has a terrible vibe, and I don't think anything could fix it. Not even the fact that you could sing the beginning to the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody, and it scans perfectly. Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? Two questions, by the way. He never ends up answering them. It was during that campaign that Vance made that appearance with Trump that you saw earlier. And I wish I could tell you what happened to him between 2016 and that moment, but sadly, I am not a mind reader or the therapist he so desperately needs. Vance will claim it's because he believed Trump turned out to be a great president in his first term. Others might say he's a power-hungry ladder climber who saw that the MAGA right was the only way up. But I'd argue his shift was both opportunistic and genuine. Because Vance has seemed to have journeyed farther and farther into some pretty far-right thought. Chris Ruffo, the conservative activist, has jokingly described Vance's evolution as taking him from the pages of National Review to the fever swamp of right-wing Twitter. And Vance himself has said he's plugged into a lot of weird right-wing subcultures, which isn't something you want to hear from your Tinder date, let alone the fucking vice president. In fact, in many ways, he's become the archetype of the hyper-online conservative troll, right down to the whole kidding, not kidding, trigger the libs shtick. Just watch him brag about doing exactly that at an event a few years ago.

SPEAKER_09 33:01

I got myself into a little hot water last week because I made what what seemed to me a plainly obvious observation that Alex Jones, the InfoWars guy, is a better source of information than Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC gal. Now, some people said, well, JD, you're just trolling. Well, yeah, of course I was just trolling. But that doesn't mean what I said is in any way untrue.

SPEAKER_18 33:21

Okay, so with all due respect, which to be perfectly clear is not, saying that Alex a billion dollars in defamation damages Jones is a better source of information than Rachel Maddow is just laughable. The man's entire brand was called InfoWars. Also, calling Rachel Maddow the MSNBC gal is off base for so many reasons, including that she does not remotely give off the breezy energy that you associate with that word. Julie Roberts, that's a gal. Reese Withersmooth, definitely a gal. Paul Rudd, such a gal. Rachel Maddow, though, not so much. And Vones went on to expand on what he meant by that.

SPEAKER_09 33:52

Ladies and gentlemen, the most important truths often come from people who are crazy 60% of the time, but they're right 40% of the time. I'm very close friends with Peter Teal. I think Peter Teal is one of the most important sources of non-conventional truth in our society. Peter Thiel believes some things that are considered crazy by opinion makers. We have to get away from this weird tension that we feel in our chest when somebody says, this person believes something crazy, therefore you must denounce them. Believing crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected. Believing important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody, and if they believe some crazy things on the side, that's fine. We need to be okay with non-conventional people.

ran Claims Selective Strait Closure

SPEAKER_18 34:29

Okay, so here's the thing. We generally are okay with non-conventional people. I'd argue some of our best people are non-conventional. Cindy Lauper, Lady Gaga, Barbara Streisand, she cloned her dog and has a tiny mall in the basement of her house. But if Babs came out and said Sandy Hook was staged, you'd be justified in retiring your DVD copy of Yentel. And look, in some ways, that is a very convenient argument for hanging out with odious people. Relax. I don't agree with everything they say, just the important truths. But it's worth knowing just how closely aligned Vance is with some pretty extreme thinkers. He's close friends with the conservative writer Rod Treyer, who said, among other things, that LGBT activism is the tip of the spear at our throats in the culture war. Vance also wrote a glowing blurb for a book co-written by the far-right activist Jack Pasovic, who promoted the Pizzagate hoax, a book, by the way, called Unhumans, a term that it uses for people on the left who it says undo civilization itself. He's also expressed admiration for Curtis Yarvin, a self-proclaimed neo-reactionary, who's not only said things like, we should put the church blacks in charge of the ghetto blacks. He's also argued for a policy he called rage, retire all government employees to seize and consolidate power. That thought clearly made its way into Vance's head and then straight back out of his mouth during this interview.

SPEAKER_09 35:42

Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people, and when the courts, because you will get taken to court, and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.

SPEAKER_18 35:56

Not ideal. Well, many people do erroneously think Andrew Jackson said that as part of the run-up incidentally to the tread of tears, there's no evidence that he did. And if we're gonna completely make up Andrew Jackson quotes, how about this one? The Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. Also, I really hope in the future my fans are cool. If my historical legacy is two fish-lipped weird bids growing out about me on a podcast, do me a favor, dig me up and kill me again. And it's worth noting that in Vance's vast amount of time online, he's ended up promoting some flagrantly racist bullshit. It tends to get forgotten, but Trump's whole they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats meltdown in the presidential debate came after Vance elevated a false rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating people's pets. And after it all blew up and it became clear that the whole thing was total nonsense, Vance doubled down in a pretty revealing way.

ow JD Vance Remade Himself

SPEAKER_09 36:41

When you have a lot of people saying my pets are being abducted, or geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us. This is crazy stuff. And again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Caitlin, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. Healthcare costs are up, housing costs are up, communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town. This is what Kamala Harris's border policies have done. And I think it's interesting, Caitlin, that the media didn't care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats.

SPEAKER_18 37:15

Okay, first, just a quick shout out to this look on Caitlin Collins' face. Because our eye to say what we are all thinking about, which is, is this diaper fucking real right now? Second, you didn't turn it into a meme about cats. You shared misinformation that turned a whole town upside down. And it wasn't even the fun kind of misinformation, like when that same summer, everyone got convinced Jamie Varnes had fucked a couch. A theory that went so viral it led to us calling Vance's team and asking, has the senator ever had sex with a couch? To which, by the way, they hung up on us. We then emailed them the same question, as well as asking, what about sex with a latex glove stuff between two couch cushions? Has Senator Vance ever had sex with any other furniture or household items? And anything else you'd like to add at this time? And they still haven't responded to us, which isn't exactly a resounding no, is it? And it's not like it is hard to deny that you fucked a couch. In fact, if you email has John Oliver fucked a couch and has John Oliver fucked a couch.com and ask if I have fucked one, I promise you'll be emailed right back with an answer of no way. Anyway, that exchange is basically JD Varnes in a nutshell. He told a racist lie he found on social media, doubled down, then tried to play the you elites don't get it carter, huff his way out of the whole thing. And at this point, it's probably worth talking about where J.D. Vance's political evolution has taken him. Because it's pretty grim. On immigration, he's argued that while he bears no personal animus toward immigrants, they're the cause of many problems Americans face. He's claimed we're bankrupting a lot of hospitals by forcing them to provide care for people who don't have the legal right to be in our country. And he said that illegal aliens compete with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. Two assertions, by the way, that have been soundly rejected by experts. And when he's talking about immigrants to conservative audiences, the mask can slip all the way off.

SPEAKER_09 38:48

There is a logic to what the Democrats are trying to do. It's disgusting, but there's a logic to it. They want illegal aliens to steal everybody's job, and now they want illegal aliens to steal everybody's vote. It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next door neighbors and say, I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don't want to live next to four families of strangers. Look, the the the thing on immigration is that no one can avoid that it has made our societies poorer, less safe, less pop prosperous, and less advanced.

SPEAKER_18 39:17

Okay, that is just root one bigotry. Also, it's a bit of a tell to say that you want to be able to look at your neighbors and have something in common with them. That only really means one thing. And for what it's worth here, I don't think most people's biggest priority in neighbours is having something in common with them. It's just hoping and praying that they don't have a creepy trampoline kid who stares in your windows all day. Can you can you plea can you at least can you can you just bounce the other way? Can you do another way bounce? But remarks like those are part of a pattern of Vance expressing anxiety that immigrants could replace Americans. With lines like, you can't have so many people coming to the country at a time when our own families aren't replicating themselves. And that gets to another of his major obsessions, which is Americans having more children. To hear him tell it, it's an existential crisis. He's complained about the childless left and said the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and evil thing the left has done, which is both untrue and just ridiculous. The most evil thing the left has ever done would be hands down these fucking candles. But this is a big deal to Voss. Over the years, he's repeatedly focused on prominent Democrats who didn't at that point have kids, among them AOC and Pete Buttigieg, to draw some sweeping conclusions.

SPEAKER_09 40:26

There's just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really really valuable when you have kids in your life. And the fact that so many people, especially in America's leadership class, just don't have that in their lives, you know, I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less uh less mentally stable. Wow!

SPEAKER_18 40:45

Having kids makes you mentally stable is something only someone who is not the default parent would say. Because try working a full-time job, always tracking when the doctors are about to run out, what size shoes your kids wear, what they won't eat for lunch at daycare, which tool is their favorite, when the doctor's appointments are, when picture day is, which songs you have to sing to get them to sleep, how many child birthday parties you have to attend this weekend, and which ones specifically requesting gifts. And also, if you leave the room, your child will scream bloody murder because you're the only one they want. I'm not saying kids can't give you a lot of things like joy, purpose, and hand, foot, and mouth disease, but mental stability is not one of them.

SPEAKER_17 41:17

And when pressed on those remarks a few years later, Vance's answer wasn't great. Your position on those family values have gotten a lot of scrutiny lately. Sure. Uh, you've talked about childless cat ladies. Um, you've called childless people sociopathic, psychotic, deranged. And I know that you've said that those comments were sarcastic, but it's hard to hear those words entirely as a joke. What do you actually think of childless women in society?

SPEAKER_09 41:43

Well, as I said when I made those comments, and like they were dumb comments, uh, I certainly um, you know, I think most people probably who watch this have said something dumb, have said something that they wish they had put differently.

SPEAKER_17 41:54

You said it over several in in several different venues.

SPEAKER_09 41:56

A very, very short period of time.

SPEAKER_18 41:58

Oh, well, you heard it here first, folks. If you're mean, dumb, and wrong, but in rapid succession, it's actually fine. And as for everyone says dumb stuff, not like that they don't. The normal dumb stuff people regret is usually things like Army Hammer is the next De Niro, or sure I'll have a third Gordita crunch, but not childless women are sociopaths. And if Vance really does want to make it easier for people to raise kids, there are things he could support. But he hasn't done that, and some he's actively opposed. For instance, he's railed against universal daycare policies, calling it a class war against normal people, and that normal Americans want a family policy that doesn't shunk their kids into crap daycare. And one of the solutions for high daycare costs was pretty infuriating.

SPEAKER_09 42:37

One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is make it so that that, you know, maybe like grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there's an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more. If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that were spent in the daycare.

SPEAKER_18 42:52

Holy shit, that is brilliant! How family help? How did no one think of this? Just call the grandparents who are definitely close by and alive, or maybe an aunt and uncle who don't have jobs or children of their own to deal with. We can now close every daycare of the country because America's most eyelined boy genius just cracked the fucking code here. Pack a bunch of family members into your house to help out, not too many though, or Jamie Valls will get nervous if he lives next door. And what he has gestured vaguely toward federal money to incentivize family to help out, I'll point out that hasn't happened. In fact, the only concrete action he took during his two years in the Senate when it comes to childcare policy was to introduce the failed Fairness for Stay-at-Home Parents Act, which focused on helping parents who decided to leave the workforce altogether. And if you're getting the sense that what he really wants is to turn the clock back to the 1950s, you're getting warmer, especially given he's also expressed reservations about no-fault divorce.

SPEAKER_09 43:41

And this is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that, like, well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they changed their underwear, that's gonna make people happier in the long term. And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I'm skeptical, but it really didn't work out for the kids in those marriages.

SPEAKER_18 44:04

Yeah, he said we shouldn't have made it so easy for people to leave violent marriages, which is just wild for multiple reasons, including, you know what happened before you could easily get a divorce? Some women would kill their husbands. By making divorce easy and accessible, what we have definitely reduced is the amount of women in fabulous hats who claimed my husband fell ill suddenly. That is not just a victory for feminism, it is a lifesaver for shitty husbands everywhere. But it gets even worse because Vance is also hard-line anti-abortion, as he explained in a radio interview when he ran for Senate.

SPEAKER_09 44:34

Should a woman be forced to carry a child to term after she has been the victim of incest or rape. Look, my view on this has been very clear, and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that's wrong. It's not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it's whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child's birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question, really, to me is about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life.

SPEAKER_18 45:05

Okay. Every part of that is awful. Not just calling becoming pregnant by rape and inconvenience or taking women out of the pregnancy equation altogether, but also the phrase, young boys in the womb. What the fuck is wrong with you? If you can't discuss the realities of pregnancy without sounding like a high school football coach subbing a health class, don't comment on them at all. So that is at least in part who J.D. Vance is. And I'd argue it is repellent. But the dangerous thing is, he's proven himself able to hide the worst parts of himself at moments when the most people are watching him. Take the VP debate, where for 90 minutes he managed to come off as measured, reasonable, and compassionate. Several times during that debate, Tim Waltz actually said, I agree with you. And once it was over, many analysts seemed surprised by what they'd just seen. Let's face it, Vance looked very reasonable, he looked rational. He seemed at many moments to be reasonable.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah. Um, and that was clearly a change in tone. I was getting texts from Democrats panicked, quite frankly, who were saying, wow, he's really moderating himself on a lot of these issues. He's the most likable he has ever been.

hiel’s Influence And Online Radicalism

SPEAKER_18 46:02

Yeah, it's true, even though for what it's worth, it's not like that is the highest bar to clear, is it? He's basically saying the mutinex mascot is more fuckable than ever. That's not saying as much as it frankly should. The point here is, when the next election rolls around, if he can put that act back on when everyone is looking, we may be in trouble. All of which is why it is so important to remember who J.D. Vaughn actually is, because he'll present himself as an anti elitist man of the people. But much of his career is being bankrolled by tech billionaires. He'll go to bat for Alex Jones, arguing we should show grace to those who are 40% right, but he'll happily coach on on childless people being sociopaths and the left being unhumans. He'll offer empathy and understanding when it comes to non conventional thinkers. But that's no problem deriving in groups as a negative onto society, and it's not hard to see what the difference between those two groups are. The point is, I know VAT is easy to write authors, groups without it. But scratch even one inch under the surface, peel back to the field. And you'll find something fun. It's bad shit views and it's bare fucking face. One last thing. J Vance also stuck his dick in between the crucifix of the topic. And by what the man itself, yeah, of course. I was just trolling by saying that. But that doesn't mean that what I've said was in any way untrue.

SPEAKER_14 47:20

And this is DemocracyNow, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in Los Angeles, headed to Mexico City, to CineTec Nacional tonight, where they're showing the film about Democracy Now. Steal this story, please. I hope to see folks there. And tomorrow, uh, also part of the Ambilante Film Festival. Check our website at democracynow.org. And we're joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Earlier this week, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution condemning Iran for its quote, egregious attacks against its Gulf neighbors, specifically attacks on residential areas and civilians, as well as its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, threatening global energy supplies. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan are specifically mentioned in the resolution, which had 140 co-sponsors. Of the 15 Security Council members, 13 voted in favor with none against. China and Russia abstained. Bahrain's UN ambassador, Jamal Faraz al-Rawai, said the vote reflected the collective conscience of the world.

SPEAKER_03 48:29

This overwhelming support from the international community reflects a collective awareness of the danger posed by the unjust Iranian attack against our countries, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the GCC, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan over the past twelve days. The adoption by the Council of this resolution today confirms that the international community is united in addressing and confronting these hostile acts. The stability and safety of the region is part and parcel of the security and peace architecture.

SPEAKER_14 48:49

Russia's representative to the UN called the past resolution biased for not acknowledging Israel and the United States as instigators of the war. Russia introduced a second resolution for an immediate halt to all hostilities in the Middle East without naming any parties involved. That resolution failed to pass. This is the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz.

SPEAKER_08 49:09

Once again, Russia is acting here at the Security Council to protect its partner, Iran. We reject Russia's attempt to conflate lawful U.S. actions taken in line with Article 51 of the UN Charter, to conflate those actions with Iran's pattern of bloodshed and brutality to its own people and around the world, and with its recent deliberate and at scale targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure across the Gulf and the Middle East. The United States will continue to work here at this council and beyond to hold the Iranian regime to account and to bring to light its destabilizing and unlawful actions. Russia's attempts to prevent this council from acting in line with its core principles will not deter us.

SPEAKER_14 49:59

For more, we're joined by the economist Jeffrey Sachs. He's the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He's also served as advisor to three UN Secretaries General. He recently wrote an article headlined, This illegal U.S. Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations, unquote. In an open letter to the UN Security Council in February, Professor Sachs said it was the U.S. and not Iran that had walked away from negotiations and that U.S. threats against Iran violated international law. He said, quote, the issue facing the UN Security Council in these perilous days is whether any member state, by force or threat of force, may place itself above the United Nations charter that governs us all. At stake is the integrity of the UN-based international system, unquote. Professor Sachs today joins us from Rome, Italy. Thanks so much for being with us, Professor Sachs. Why don't you elaborate on this letter and your statements about the UN international order and what is happening today with the US Israeli attack on Iran and Iran's retaliatory attacks.

SPEAKER_19 51:03

Thank you very much, Amy, and what a chilling show to hear Gideon Levy to hear your report from Beirut. We have a war of blatant aggression that is going to put the entire world into a disaster. This is a war of aggression and a war of choice by Israel and the United States. It is in the most blatant, frank violation of the UN Charter and the core of the UN Charter, its purpose, which says that nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Period. That is Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter. Waltz, the U.S. ambassador, says, oh, we're acting under Article 51. That is the uh article on self-defense. The United States is not acting in self-defense. Israel is not acting in self-defense. These two countries are committing flagrant aggression. And they've done it twice now in the context of negotiations, which makes it all the more pernicious. Twice the United States claimed it was negotiating with Iran, and twice it killed Iranian leaders in the midst of the so-called negotiations. This is the most blatant and brazen assault on UN, the UN charter and international law since it was founded in 1945. Even in the Iraq War and other US war and Israeli wars of choice. They faked it at least. Here they don't even fake it. They just are blatant aggressors with no justification at all. Our UN ambassador is Green Beret. They have militarized everything about our society, Amy and Ron. We are in a security state, not a constitutional order. No one asks the American people about whether to go to war or not. And our Congress doesn't want to have anything to do with this. So when they're asked, they say, don't ask us. This is uh we give it to Mr. Trump and to Mr. Netanyahu. So I think this is the most brazen fascism that we have seen since the fascist era. Uh, and it is uh absolutely extraordinary, and it's going to put us, I think, probably into World War III. Uh and if it doesn't do that, it's going to put us into an economic calamity worldwide.

SPEAKER_10 53:35

Uh Jeffrey Sachs, I wanted to ask you this narrative now that the Trump administration has been pushing in all of their pronouncements, that this is actually this this is actually uh uh attempting to end the war that Iran launched against the United States decades ago. And uh they make it seem like everything that's happened that has been Iran aggressing against the United States, for uh forgetting obviously that the uh the role of our country in goading uh and supplying Iraq in this war against uh uh uh Iran in the 1980s and the various other attacks by Israel and the United States against Iran uh in the past.

mmigration, Family Politics, And Abortion

SPEAKER_19 54:11

Look, every word that Donald Trump says is vile and ignorant. So we can almost say for sure that every word he posts every day is a vile lie. But when it comes to the United States and Iran, yes, this does go back a long way. In 1953, when Iran had a fully functioning democracy, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the government of Mossadegh, Prime Minister Mossadegh. We installed a police state. We installed a police state that lasted from 1953 to 1979. When the Iranian people took back their country, we immediately armed Iraq, as you said, Juan, to go to war with Iran and to kill hundreds of thousands of people. When that war ended in 1988, the United States continued through the CIA and other means to do everything possible to destabilize the Iranian government, to crush the economy, to impose uh U.S. measures, sanctions, and so on to destroy the well-being of the population. When the Iranians said, we want to negotiate with you, the United States rejected at almost every stage, with one exception, which is that in the Obama presidency, the United States, together with Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany, the uh permanent five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, the P5 plus one as it was called, negotiated an agreement with Iran that put Iran under strict UN supervision, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to ensure that what Iran said was actually carried out, which is that Iran did not want a nuclear weapon, and the IAEA would inspect. And for three years, the IAEA inspected hundreds and hundreds of times, and Iran was in full compliance. And then what happened? Netanyahu and Trump ripped up the agreement and went back to war, a hybrid war with Iran. Everything Trump says, which is despicable because he is absolutely leading us to ruin and leading the world to World War III, everything he says is a lie because he says, I'm stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. What he has done is rip up the agreement that already existed to ensure that, kill assassinate uh Iranian leaders repeatedly, kill the Iranian religious leader who for decades had said that a nuclear weapon would be against Islamic law, kill that person, invade or uh bomb the country with carpet bombing now, and is presiding over what is now already a regional war with Israel behaving as usual in its completely fascistic way, of genociding Gaza, locking up uh the West Bank as Gideon Levy just told us, and invading Lebanon and displacing already a million people, bombing the universities, bombing the hospitals, bombing the schools. This is so out of control without any logic, any rationality, even not any humane moral, legal justification whatsoever. We have not seen anything like this since uh the fascists of World War II. And it is extraordinarily dangerous what's happening. It will lead to world war the way we're going, because we have two malignant narcissists, Netanyahu and Trump, that are leading us to disaster. And you listen to Netanyahu's words, he explains this has nothing to do with the UN Charter. He says, we're not waiting. We are initiating. Well, that, Mr. Netanyahu, is against the UN Charter. You're not allowed to initiate war under the UN Charter. You've explained it very clearly. You are making a war of aggression. And you too, Mr. Trump, you are making a war of aggression, and you're threatening the entire world. It's really as simple as that.

SPEAKER_14 58:25

Uh Professor Sachs, we have less than a minute. Um, President Trump yesterday suggested skyrocketing fuel costs are a good thing. You're an economist. Trump wrote the United States is the largest oil producer in the world by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. This contradicted what he said at the State of the Union, saying oil prices were lower than under President Biden, and he was very proud of that. 30 seconds, your response.

SPEAKER_19 59:11

Again, the first thing you know, anything Trump writes is a combination of ignorance, malevolence, and lies, including that statement, Amy.

SPEAKER_14 59:21

Jeffrey Sachs, we want to thank you so much for being with us, world-renowned economics professor, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, has served as advisor to three UN Secretaries General, now a Sustainable Development Solutions advocate, under Secretary General Antonio Guterres. We'll link to your articles at democracynow.org. Um, as we end this show, a very fond farewell to our video fellow, Safat Nazal. Uh, you will forever be in our DNA, Democracy Now alum. Uh, and thank you for your creativity, your humor, and your intelligence. Tonight I'm heading to Mexico City for two screenings of Steal the Story, please, at the Ambulante Film Festival. Tonight at Cineteca Nacional. Check out democracynow.org. I'm Amy Gugmuth Juan Gonzalez.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:04

Ryan, I want you to talk briefly about this incident that was very disturbing that I read about um uh regarding an Iranian ship that got torpedoed by the U.S. Because it does just talk about how there is, I think, uh a misunderstanding for from certain people as to the brutality of war, in in in the in the sense of how how truly evil things that happen during a war are, and how this is going to be seared into the minds of people. And it's so important for people in the US to stand up and go, yeah, this is not something that we co-sign. Can you just talk about that?

SPEAKER_06 1:00:38

Yeah, this is a dark one. And and India is actually royaled by this right now because it implicates them. So the the Indians uh they love to project that they have hegemony in the kind of Indian Ocean. They're the ones that are gonna, their navy is gonna keep the Indian Ocean safe. And so toward that end, they they host this uh biennial kind of uh little festival of ships. Yeah, you know, I think 70 countries, uh including Iran and the United States, um, sent uh ships to these two separate but related events and they did a live fire drill. And when did they do this? What when they did it from I think this February 17th to the 26th. Gotcha. Um so it it wrapped up 48 hours before, maybe 36 hours before the war started. Right. Um they they they they paraded on land. Uh the US pulled out of one of the two of these little festivals, but did participate um in the other one with the with the Iranians. So like we're there, like with them. Uh as part of the kind of peace protocol for these events, you're only supposed to bring enough ammunition, you know, to like you know, fire off, you know, during during your little events. You're not supposed to come all you know kitted up in a way that could cause you know serious problems. Also, you're out there doing these complex coordinated drills, you know, you don't want something to go wrong. Right. Um and so they they try to keep it as as safe as possible. And so then it you know it starts to head back to uh to Iran, and this is where that we need more investigation. It appears that it um was then held at a port for something like 11 hours um near Sri Lanka. Yeah, or Sri Lankan port, which we now people are suspicious was allowing kind of the nuclear this nuclear sub to catch up to it. Um there there's also uh the question of like how did they find the exact location? There's some in in India they are speculating that the US exploited its kind of joint intelligence network that it has built with India to get into the Indian system and then because the Indians and the Iranians were, you know, they invited the Iranian ship and then they say goodbye to the Iranian ship, so they knew exactly where it was. So then they they the nuclear sub um you know finds a ship and uh torpedoes it. And then the the laws of war, the Geneva Convention, say that if it doesn't put your own ship at risk, you are obligated under international law to try to save drowning sailors. But you have to do the bare minimum. Also, under the kind of common sense of humanity. Like you see somebody drowning, it's it's like a meme. You see somebody drowning, like throw them a rope. Right. Like that's what that's what we do. We but we prosecuted a Nazi at Nuremberg for not doing that. Right. Um, but in general, often the Nazis did do it, which is like we're below, we're below them at this point. So Sri Lanka's Navy um had to come out and and get there as fast as they could, and they managed to save, I think, 32 people from drowning. Uh more than 80 uh Iranians uh died in the died in the attack. And uh we and we posted the video as a with the caption something like this Iranian ship thought it was safe. Suckers, you know, you're not. Um and so now that Indian, so this is interesting too. The Indian government is under enormous pressure because this is a you know slap in the face to them. If you noticed yesterday, uh Trump lifted sanctions on Russia when it came to selling oil to India. Remember a few months ago, the biggest thing that Trump was worked up about was that India was buying oil from Russia. Right. He's like, I'm gonna do 25% sanctions, I'm gonna do tariffs, I'm gonna do 50% tariffs, you stop buying oil from Russia. Uh now it's all fine. India can buy oil from Russia, and we're lifting the sanctions on Russian oil. That to me feels like uh kind of blowback from this. Like that Modi is like, I need, I, I need something here. You're you're killing me at home. You gotta give me a whole lot how do you deploy it? Now people can get billions out of this.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:00

What do you think, China and Russia? What is the lens through which they're viewing the current Iran conflict?

SPEAKER_06 1:04:04

You know, there was this really interesting argument being made by a guy for uh Barry Weiss's news outlet, um, Javi Reton Gur. He's like, yeah, he's like one of the smartest um Israeli analysts out there. And so they they set their like the brightest light out there to make the best possible case they could that the war on Iran, that the US is waging, is not actually for Israel, it's actually about China. And he lays out this case that there's oil that China gets from Iran. You can go read his case. Yeah. But it it falls apart extremely quickly because yes, it's true that Iran exports something like 80 to 90 percent of its oil to China. So you're like, oh, you see that number, you're like, wow, that really involves China a lot. That makes up something like five to 15% of Chinese imports.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:44

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:44

They have plenty of oil that they can get from elsewhere. And also think about it. If we replace this government, if we manage to do a regime change and we put in a new government that Donald Trump says is wonderful, like finds his Delcy Rodriguez, why would that country not sell oil to China? To China. Like that that that made no sense. But of course, yeah, they'll sell to both they'll sell it to everybody. Like they'll still Iran will still be a country. Right. But it will still produce oil. Yeah, it would still have an economy and it's one of their own. Unless Javiv is saying that what Trump really wants to do is blockade China from buying oil from anybody around the world. Like, is that I'm sure China would have something to say about that. I think they might.

N Vote And War Legality Clash

SPEAKER_04 1:05:23

What do you think about the chances of boots on the ground? Coming, not coming?

SPEAKER_06 1:05:27

I think special, I think the chances of special forces are getting pretty high. Reportedly, we sent Kurdish troops in already with special forces. And then and then, as we reported, actually immediately, it wasn't true. Okay. That was that was leaked by the Israelis, it seems. Um, that the invasion, not the invasion's going to happen. You can you can get that wrong.

SPEAKER_10 1:05:46

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:47

And then it doesn't end up happening. They said thousands of Kurdish fighters have invaded Iran and are currently fighting inside Iran. That was the reporting from a bunch of outlets. Um, and it clearly seemed to be sourced from Israel. We we talked to all of these different Kurdish sources, and all of them are like, this no, it's not happening. Like, not casting judgment on whether it should, but it it literally is not happening. About and then and then uh this Kurdish, this Iranian Kurdish base inside Iraq was bombed, which maybe it was from Iran who thought that the reports were true. Maybe it was from Israel, who's like trying to rile them up and say you need to go in there. We we don't know. Um, but it's not happening. Like, so the invasion is not happening. So the US is putting enormous pressure on them to go in. The problem is in 1991, we we told the Kurds to rise up in northern Iraq. Yeah, uh, they rose up, and then Saddam massacred them. It's always the same thing. Yeah, we then supported them in Syria to go against ISIS. And a couple months ago, we sold them out.

SPEAKER_13 1:06:47

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:48

So there so the Kurds have been saying publicly got like, all right, 1991, that's one thing. Also, all of the betrayals going back hundreds of years, but like 91 is one thing. You sold us out like two months ago. Right, right. You know, that's insane. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So you think we're like, but they're still they're still calculating, like, you know, because they're under a lot of pressure to do it. And and you know, Bush and Obama were actually pretty decent for northern Iraq, the Kurt Kurdish region. So they're kind of, but they're cut they're comfortable too. Like we've got our autonomy, we're happy, like yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:14

Why get involved? Like, what do you think? You know, I'm hearing the Qatars basically saying we want to pull our money out of the American economy. Saudi Arabia is you know saying similar things, you know, people are really upset out there. I mean, this could be a massive um, you know, collapse financially here. I mean, what do you what what is Jared Kushner doing right now? Is he calling these people on the phone, going, hey, relax?

SPEAKER_06 1:07:34

Yeah, he's got to because he's um so much of his business relies on the Gulf economy continuing to produce oil and gas and and dollars and then funneling those dollars into the grifts that the Trump organization, the Kushner organization are are operating, you know, set aside the entire AI grift that is the US economy at this point. Uh also it obvious this should be obvious to people, um, but that stuff is the backbone of everything else. Like you, if you if the oil and gas stop coming out, we stop making aluminum, stop making chlorine, right? Like we stop making the copper, like the the basics of our economy, and then we can't make semiconductors, and then we're like, and that happens as it's it's almost as if people forget like March 2020. Like, you remember how quickly the entire world fell apart from supply chain shocks? Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. It's like so that that is that that that is kind of Iran's strategy, I think, is to hold is to say like they they cannot withstand, like they are already driven to absolute poverty and desperation by our sanctions. Right. So they're already there, so they can they can weather this.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:41

Is it in any part in Israel's calculation, and this is for both of you guys, um, that this war would not only hopefully topple the leadership in Iran, but also serve to uh either weaken or outright sever the connection between a country like Qatar in America or the Gulf states. Does Israel see that as a positive? I know that you know a lot of um you know people that um promote uh uh ultra-Zionist uh ideas in this country are constantly accusing Qatar of running the country, the free press wrote an article about all the money that Qatar has put into things like higher education. I'm sure Qatar puts money into things, but the idea that Qatar is now incredibly skeptical of things the United States says and may not be able to trust us, is that something that Israel's excited about? Is that a good thing? And is that part of the calculation here?

effrey Sachs On UN Charter Violations

SPEAKER_16 1:09:39

Yeah, you know, one of the just Ryan to mention one concrete thing, because we we seldom hear kind of the Iranian government perspective these days. You know, it's it's uh it's it's really just kind of the the the Trump show. And because there's been this multi-decade uh campaign about Iran, it's it's very hard to actually on just a basic factual level say, well, what is their actual position? What Iran has been saying, Tim, about some of the retaliatory strikes that it's done over the past week is that they didn't do them. Um they're saying, for instance, that they have not attacked Saudi Aramco's oil uh refinery. They're saying that they did not strike uh the British military base in Cyprus. Um and in fact, the British government is saying they don't believe that the drone that hit that base and destroyed a you know a base where American spy planes come from, that it came from Iran. They're saying it may have come from the direction of Lebanon, which is an interesting thing. Um the Iranians are saying that some of the uh hotels and other buildings they hit in Bahrain or in the United Arab Emirates were housing Israeli spies or uh American personnel. But why am I bringing this up? I'm bringing it up because what the Iranians are saying, and you know, take it at face value, it should be fact-checked, we should look into it. What they're saying is that they believe Israel has engaged in some false flag attacks in some of these um Arab countries or potentially um in Azerbaijan in an attempt to try to draw those nations into the war as actual combatants in it. And Netanyahu is sort of gleefully talking about this. You know, Trump's people are saying, oh, and even the Arabs are now going to start fighting against the Iranians. Certainly, Netanyahu loves to be the merchant of chaos when it comes to disrupting U.S. relationships with other countries. Certainly he wants to see Qatar weakened. He wants to see the economies, the economic power of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the closeness of these countries to U.S. institutions and particularly to Trump thrown into turmoil. He knows that the populations in those countries don't like what's going on right now. Yes, the the attacks, especially when they hit hotels or they hit infrastructure, it's enraging uh the uh the populations of the Arab Gulf. But on a much broader level, this is a war in service of Israel. And the populations of those countries, the the anger is simmering. They understand what's happening. It's destroying their entire project, it was based on this idea, Tim, that the United States puts military bases in all these Emirates, in all these kingdoms, and they have an American security guarantee. I don't think that they, in their wildest dreams, they thought that the United States was going to allow Iran to pummel them the way that they have, while pouring uh billions of dollars into the quote-unquote defense of Israel. So, on one strategic level, and this cuts to your question, Tim, I do think that Netanyahu views opportunity in this. He wants to be the merchant of chaos to try to utterly destroy that relationship between the U.S. and these other countries because he views it as a threat. Trump is unpredictable. Trump is merging family business with the business of government. This causes some consternation for Netanyahu in his broader sort of project in Israel.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:01

Ryan, do you think that Iran hit the Saudi Aramco facility?

SPEAKER_06 1:13:10

They say they didn't, uh, and they say it so here and their argument is this. And uh Jeremy interviewed the um for the deputy foreign minister on on Wednesday and asked him directly about this, and paraphrasing him, he said that would be insane because our entire economy is also based on the oil industry. Like, why like you think we want to start a tit for tat where people are bombing oil fields? I frankly find that a fairly persuasive argument at this stage. I could imagine if this war continues to descend into chaos and it continues to climb up the escalatory ladder that you that Iran may eventually strike a uh an oil field and and we may strike all of their oil fields.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:53

Do you think Lebanon I don't think that they do you think Lebanon struck the Saudi Aramco facility?

SPEAKER_06 1:14:00

I don't think Lebanon did it. I mean, I I think their claim that Israel hit this, uh that Israel hit this oil facility needs to be taken seriously.

SPEAKER_16 1:14:09

So it's very possible. And one one thing just for the record. Go on, Jeremy. Just to just to put a factual thing on the record, um, what what I was told by the Iranians is not that they are against hitting oil facilities. What they're saying is we will only do that if the United States and Israel start to attack our oil infrastructure, we're gonna strike back at their oil infrastructure because we don't view it as simply the sovereign property of these Arab countries, we view it as facilitating and linked to the American project. But they're saying as of now that they never intentionally So I'm just trying to get this straight.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:43

Our ally, our closest ally, who was told us that they were launching a war, a regime change war in Iran with our weapons and our money, also very potentially has attacked the oil uh Saudi Ramco processing facility in another one of our allies, Saudi Arabia, and also kind of one of their allies. A regime change war in Iran with our weapons and our money, also very potentially has attacked the oil uh Saudi Ramco processing facility in another one of our allies, Saudi Arabia, and also kind of one of their allies. Israel and Saudi Arabia have like sort of an understanding, right?

SPEAKER_16 1:15:34

So this is what the Iranians are suggesting, and I'm not saying I I fully believe it. You know, it could be that they accidentally hit some of these things, it could be that they did do it and they're trying to cover it up. Although Iran, you know, I I think that wouldn't really be to their advantage. It's possible that they did it, but the Saudis claim that that it was debris from a drone that they shot down. But let's say for we should just take this seriously and investigate it because if it is the case and evidence emerges, the Saudis are saying it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:02

Yeah, the Saudis are saying it's debris from a drone they shot down.

SPEAKER_16 1:16:09

That was the initial statement by the Saudi. First it was Iran bombed Saudi Aramco, then this a Saudi defense official came out and said this was actually debris that fell from a drone that we had intercepted. Um and uh the Saudis and the Iranians have had an interesting diplomatic back and forth on this. The Saudis are not as aggressive right now in going after the Iranians as, for instance, the Azerbaijani government is. Right. And really, you know, sort of demand, you know, saying that Iran did this. The Iranians are denying that as well. So all of which is just to say we should never just take at face value the proclamations of the Iranian government. Right. But if you think about it on a common sense level, it doesn't benefit Iran to further enrage the populations of these countries because they're already, uh they already are very nervous about what's happening. So there, the who benefits from this, Tim? Who benefits is Israel from the idea that you know Iran is this kind of madman, this mad dog loose, and they're just biting everyone, they're biting all their neighbors, they're biting the people who they've been in this rapprochement with for two years. It doesn't make sense. So that's why you have to pursue it and say, is there any legitimacy to what the Iranians are alleged?

S Iran History And Nukes Debate

SPEAKER_20 1:17:23

The interceptors are a real problem. We don't have enough to combat the missiles and the drones that the Iranians are unleashing, not just on us, but on our military bases in the Gulf countries and on the Gulf countries themselves, our allies who we've agreed to protect. And some of them have come saying, Did you give any thought to what would happen to us? Did you did you plan on how to protect us as we're seeing bombs rain down on Dubai, for example, which is taking a lot of incoming, many of our other friends in the Middle East who are genuinely friends of ours and great trading partners who are now feeling exposed and like we didn't live up to our promises, not to mention all the problems you mentioned because of the closing closure of the Strait of Hormuz. And Pete Excess says that we did plan on the closure or what would happen in the Strait of Hormuz. But if we did plan, then why is it closed? Why can't we get ships through there? Why can't commercial vessels get through right now? President Trump threw out we'll have the U.S. Navy escort ships that want to go through it, but that quickly went away because he was reportedly told we are actually not ready to do that. Our military can't do that. And there was also blowback on whether American parents want to see their sons and daughters on U.S. ships risking their lives to get oil through the Straits of Hormuz to send off to China. Is that really the mission? And all in the name of Israel, by the way. It's not even for a war that's helping the United States. So it's right now we're not doing that. So the Iranians do have an effective veto over this. And there's a real question about how we ever can secure it. How can we, because they've got potentially mines set up in the straits, they've also got um missile launchers on the on the shores that are proving problematic for us. And there's a, I've heard credible military experts say without sending ground troops in to go stand along the shorelines of the straits, we're not going to be able to secure this in a way that's going to satisfy commercial shippers.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:14

You're exactly right. And uh guess what? By the way, even for those military experts, I hope that they also informed you that if you want to put troops on the shoreline, then you also have to have troops in the rear to make sure that nobody can fire on the troops on the shoreline. So that would be a massive deployment. This is the escalation trap that Professor Robert Pape talked about, is that you find yourself in an unexpected situation politically. You know, what did LBJ often say? I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a damn war. That's what he would often say in the situation room. And he would push them to escalate, to escalate, to escalate. And at every point, we would say, okay, let's send more American blood into the, you know, into the battlefield. And that will change it this time. And at every point, what we found out is that we were losing strategically while allegedly winning tactically. And that's what actually a full-blown ground troop invasion of Iran and you know, securing of the Strait of Hormuz, that would be the definition of a you know supposedly tactical success. Because even at that point, let's think about what the cost of that would be, not just for the sustained deployment, the political and strategic implications. So, yeah, we might lower the price of gas, but now we're in a multi-decade occupation of the country of Iran and fighting an insurgency with a civil war and a collapse of the state and refugee crisis, which is flooding the entire region. So that's the pro that's why you don't get into these damn things in the first place. And I'm very worried. I I do not see a way that this president will be able to get himself out of this one without.

SPEAKER_20 1:20:44

That's the thing because like no one doubts, I think. Few doubt that Trump doesn't want that, that he thought this could be quick, you know, cut off the head of the snake and we're gonna have a better Iran. He definitely doesn't want some extended Middle East war. Trump does know that that would be a political death knell to any future Republican election over the next five, six, seven, maybe ten years. Um, but the the risk is that we're saddled with it because what if they how are we gonna reopen the Straits of Hormuz? Like, what is the plan to do that? Are we actually going to risk American lives by escorting commercial vessels through there? What are we gonna do about mines? Are we gonna risk American service personnel getting blown up in the name of reopening this passageway? And by the way, what is the American appetite for the loss of blood and treasure over there? It was one thing when we had al-Qaeda killing 3,000 Americans one day who just went to work. It's another when we started it. And and the basis for starting it, which I'm gonna get to in a second, is really, really questionable. But let me make one point first. Now we have 13 dead U.S. service personnel, which is the same number that died at Abbey Gate Sagar. Um and after after we had Abbey Gate under President Biden, where he tried to pull all the troops out of Afghanistan, and it was a disaster and it wasn't well run, and we had people holding on to our airplanes as they were flying out of Bagram, which we gave up the base, his approval rating fell and it never recovered. Never recovered. Here's a chart that shows where it went down and it never went back up. And that's the last thing we now we've got 13 one week into the war, a week, a week plus. Um where does that go? Right? Because wars it's it's not it's not easy to predict how the deaths are gonna happen. This was a refueling plane, Sagar. It wasn't even shot down by the Iranians. It wasn't even, you know, it was a it was an accident midair that wasn't brought down by friendly fire or enemy.

orpedoed Ship Story And Blowback

uclear Claims And Manufactured Consent

SPEAKER_02 1:22:38

Right. Remember this, guys. Nobody in August 1914 said we're still gonna be at war in four years. The plan was for a six-week, quick war, an excursion, all like the ones that we had seen before. This is why, by the way, I think that the Venezuela operation ended up being a nightmare, uh, because it convinced the president and many of the inner circle of those around him uh that that's how easy all military operations could be. Uh, and I mean, and I opposed that vehemently at the time, and I'm I I think it looks pretty good uh in retrospect is that this mindset of this madness, right, of just we can go in and we can do whatever we want. Well, we've all seen there's a lot of military history books that are behind me. What the way that great men operate, we can all understand this. It's like a gambler at the craps table who's on a hot roll. Statistically, it shouldn't be working, but it's working and it's working and it's working. But eventually, that seven is gonna come up, and that's exactly what has happened now in this Iran conflict. So you just laid out the streets of Hormuz. I have bigger questions about not just this, that's an economic question. I have a question specifically about Iranian missile development the longer that this goes on. Because then the entire raison d'etre for this war, the Casas Beli, is supposedly nuclear material. Well, by the Trump administration's own admission that nuclear material has not been secured. How do you secure it? Oh, we're gonna have to send special operations. Problem, the Iranians know you're coming. So to protect those special operations, you would have to deploy a large ground force to secure the entire area to battle all of the people who would want to target your special operators while they're going and they're securing in modern day warfare with satellites, etc. Right, exactly. So think about the nightmare and the logistical implications of each of these supposedly easy off-ramps. So the off-ramp here, Trump can go get the nuclear material and declare victory. Oh, wait, but that's gonna take a Titanic, you know, potential American ground deployment, thousands of troops, who knows how many casualties. He needs to secure the Straits of Hormuz. Great. Now we just signed up for a huge uh nation building and or you know, exercise. Nobody in the Iraq war. I mean, do you remember uh uh Donald Rumsfeld? He said, I don't know if it'll take six days, you know, six six weeks or six months, but I can tell you it's not gonna be more than a year. I change all of these things. Yeah, I mean, Dick Cheney said that about Iraq. Nobody in 2001, October of 01, would have said we're withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021. Do you think LBJ wanted to be in Vietnam in 1968? That's the point of all of these examples, is that you get into them and they're become open-ended even when you wanted it closed, because you are no longer in a controlled system. We could control the diplomacy between these two nations, but we cannot control this now, especially with Iran in the classic situation of asymmetric warfare, but with nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose except to fight to the death. They have a hardened political will. Their population was supposed to rise up, didn't happen. Totally fake, right? I mean, instead, they've we're actually seeing a huge rise of nationalism in the entire country. So now what? We want to foment a civilization.

SPEAKER_20 1:25:49

I mean, that's part of the problem is the bombing of their fuel depots, their oil depots, which literally caused oil to be raining down on the faces of the Iranian people, their children, their babies and strollers, anybody who goes outside now after that happened. And e that caused even the crazed lunatic Lindsey Graham to say to Israel, you might want to watch what you bomb, actually, that we you might have gone too far. I mean, when Lindsey Graham is telling you you've gone too far in your bombing campaign, something very, very wrong has happened. But you mentioned that this is a war of choice, which I agree with. This is not what the administration says. Of course, the administration says we had no choice. Trump says, I had a feeling, I believed, that they were about to develop a nuke, that they almost had a nuke. And now we had an interesting conversation that I heard today between Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, where in which O'Reilly seems to be shedding more light on that. Uh, we're gonna play part of it for you now. Watch.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:02

But they have satellites and they are close to being able to put together ten nuclear bombs. Okay? Ten. Uh and I don't think the Trump administration is gonna mind me saying this, even though it hasn't been made public, but I'm a reporter and I have the information. So the sidewalk said, look, on this Saturday, the Ayatollah and 25 of the stuns are gonna be in this place at this time. So what do you want to do? Now that was after three months of negotiations with the Iranians to stop their nuclear weapons program. And the last negotiation in Geneva, Switzerland, the guy, the foreign minister of Iran, walks in and says, you know what? We're not stopping. Like you, we don't care what you say, we're not stopping. And then Witkoff, our chief U.S. uh negotiator, had a report back to Trump. So that's the information Trump has. Number one, they're close to 10 bombs. Number two, they're all gonna bring drinking tea on Saturday morning in this spot. And number three, they're saying, like you, to the US government, they're not gonna stop. That's how the decision was made. The president believes that he will be victorious in the next month or so, which is into April, which is into China, which means, and he believes he's gonna have momentum after uh basically dismantling Iran, because that's what they're doing now. They're just wiping out his capacity to do anything, which is not easy, and that's why you're seeing the short-term pain. Yeah, people believe what they want, believe in the president is no exception. If it comes his way, then he becomes a great president, which he wants, his legacy. If it doesn't, then Republicans will probably lose in November. So that's where we are.

SPEAKER_20 1:29:08

A lot to unpack there, Sagar. We've got one minute, so we have to take a break on Sirius XM and we'll continue the discussion. But get take the minute to go.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:16

Privileged to be live to have Bill O'Reilly lie to me twice in my life about WMT uh in the Middle East. I'm sorry, that's preposterous. Uh, that it is there's no evidence for that from the IAEA. If that were true, the Trump administration would have said it. Remember, the only reason that they say that we're in this war is that Israel forced our hand, and that even whenever it comes to nuclear, they say that they were creating a ballistic missile shield for their potential nuclear capacity. There's been no DNI release, no CIA release, no even fake Colin Powell vial that can be held up, no yellow cake, no Judy Miller. So if there were even a remote case that that were true or as true as WMD in Iraq, they would have said it. They didn't say it because it's complete nonsense. That is completely manufactured consent, you know, afterwards uh that is being put out there to justify some of the feelings for the people that want to continue to be in this war.