00:00:44.000Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:47.000We're live and we're with Joe Kent, former Special Forces officer, letter writer, whistleblower, whose insights on the current Iranian conflict appear to be changing the news narrative.
00:00:59.000If you've got any questions for him, you can put them in the comments and chat.
00:01:01.000And if you're watching this anywhere other than Rumble, come on over to Rumble and step outside of the sphere of control that increasingly I recognize as the realm of the evil one.
00:01:11.000And I'm trying not to use too explicitly scriptural language.
00:01:14.000I think it freaks people out, that kind of stuff.
00:01:16.000In studio with me, as always, are Jake Smith, who's too well lit in my view.
00:01:28.000Eddie Gallagher, whose name will be coming up in our conversation with the great Joe Kent, as Joe is one of the people that intervened in the misjustice that surrounded the Eddie Gallagher Navy SEAL.
00:01:39.000I'm going to call it a farrago, although it does involve intrigue and murder.0.76
00:01:42.000Massey Radfar, Iranian, Canadian, Brit, who cuts our packages, is with us too.0.99
00:01:48.000And before we begin our conversation with Joe Kent, I want to remind you to get Rumble Premium if you don't have it yet.
00:01:54.000I also, this book is available on Tucker Carlson Books.
00:01:59.000The intention is to help you to recognize that there is a deep time psychedelic Christ available to you now in your consciousness that will stand at your side as you participate in the holy war that you are in, whether you know it or not.
00:02:11.000If you haven't awoken to the reality of Christ yet, then you are likely a captive of this Luciferian system.
00:02:17.000And I've written my personal account there.
00:02:18.000It's not perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with it.
00:02:20.000It's available at Tucker Carlson Books right now.
00:02:24.000My guest today is, of course, Joe Kent.
00:02:26.000If you didn't see his interview with Tucker Carlson, if you didn't see him being sworn in with the great Tulsi Gabbard, here's a package. to let you know a little something about Joe Kent.
00:02:35.000Joe Kent is a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who served on multiple combat deployments before moving into intelligence work with the CIA.
00:02:43.000His wife, Shannon Kent, was tragically killed in Syria in 2019 while serving alongside U.S. forces, a loss that profoundly shaped his path forward.
00:02:53.000He later left government service and entered politics, running for Congress in Washington state with a focus on foreign policy and reducing U.S. intervention overseas.
00:03:03.000Since then, he's become a voice questioning the direction of American leadership and long standing foreign policy assumptions, including US support for allies like Israel.
00:03:15.000Also, Joe, and this seems like a childish place to start, there was a moment where you were one of them special forces guys that had long hair and a beard.
00:03:23.000And I always think they're the best ones, I suppose, because of movies.
00:03:52.000I've always somehow intuited with the SAS that the ones that are right, like got long beards and hair, they're the serious elite.
00:04:00.000And I suppose, as well as being somewhat glib, the reason I bought it up is because of the obvious personal suffering.
00:04:07.000Your commitment to the US military and your family's commitment has cost you.
00:04:12.000And because when dealing with people that have been involved in politics, I kind of always feel that I'm dealing with someone that might be, I don't know, fundamentally dishonest.
00:04:22.000I think a lot of people feel that these days.
00:04:23.000Perhaps with the exception if they have a background in the forces, I have to always concede this is a person that's been willing to risk their life and, in your case, has paid that great, great, terrible price for your family's commitment.
00:04:36.000So I recognize you're a person of integrity.
00:04:39.000And I wonder, as this war continues to escalate, and as we discussed before the live show started, more troops are being committed.
00:04:46.000The blockade continues, a blockade that you don't think will be successful.
00:04:50.000How does your position on this important issue?
00:04:53.000Which amounts to your belief, and it's a belief shared by a lot of people, that Israel has undue control over American foreign policy, affects your overall view of American politics and global politics?
00:05:06.000Do you think that this is an anomaly, Israel's influence?
00:05:10.000Do you think it's a temporal anomaly, or do you think this has always been the way politics has been?
00:05:16.000And do you, like some of the guests I've spoken to recently, consider this to be the defining and most significant issue of our age, i.e., Israel's influence over American foreign policy?
00:05:26.000Is certainly that's the position that's been significantly popularized by some of your revelations and public pronouncements.
00:05:32.000And do you consider it to be defining?
00:05:35.000And do you consider it to be a situation that's getting worse and isn't changing?
00:06:01.000But in very short order after that, we were pushed into a war in Iraq that obviously had a lot of influence from the military industrial complex, the neocons here in the United States, but was heavily lobbied for by the Israelis.
00:06:13.000And then every other decision we've made in the Middle East, all the other countries that we've gone to war with in the Middle East, it has benefited the Israeli government.
00:06:21.000They have heavily lobbied successfully in our government.
00:06:24.000They have great ties and great angles in through AIPAC, other lobbying organizations, to members of Congress.
00:06:31.000Pretty much any politician seeking election, they need to get a significant chunk of support from the pro Israel lobby, the way the pro Israel lobby has really penetrated the media to create an echo chamber.
00:06:44.000I was aware of this when I was in the military and when I was in the intelligence community as well.
00:06:49.000But until I saw it up front and center in this last lead up to the conflict with Iran that we're in right now, from the perspective of being at the White House and in some of the rooms where the decisions were being made, I wasn't aware of their.
00:07:01.000Full scope of the Israeli influence over our government.0.86
00:07:05.000So I think this is going to be a defining issue.0.86
00:07:07.000And it's becoming a defining issue because largely our president's bandwidth, for lack of a better term, their attention span and where they're putting a lot of resources, it's gone into these wars in the Middle East.
00:07:18.000President Trump came into the White House in 2025 with a mandate to fix our nation here in America, to get the illegals out of our country, to lower the price, the cost of living, the price of the pump, et cetera.0.72
00:07:30.000And now because we've decided to go off on another foreign adventure at the behest of a foreign government, we're now sucked back into.0.69
00:07:36.000So, unfortunately, I do have to agree that this is becoming a defining issue.0.52
00:07:41.000Joe Kent, after 9 11, when the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan kind of began in earnest and the Patriot Act was instituted and the world changed radically, people on the fringes then, it seemed to me at least, were hyper focused on the impact and influence of groups like Halliburton and perhaps.
00:08:06.000Extra political affiliations of the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney and even George W. In short, the perspective that most people had was in some ways comparable.
00:08:18.000It's not really about weapons of mass destruction.0.87
00:08:20.000It's about energy resources and getting control of Iraq.0.56
00:08:24.000There's no connection between Iraq and 9 11.
00:08:26.000But the sort of inflection of where the power was and who was to blame, I know that the folks that have always thought Israel have an undue influence on global politics were likely out there.
00:08:38.000But I don't remember those voices being nearly so prominent.
00:08:40.000Indeed, most of the critiques were kind of anti capitalist critiques.
00:08:44.000It's all to do with oil and resources.0.54
00:08:48.000Some would say that, like, after the 2008 crash, the kind of rise of Occupy and a different type of politics because of social media communication, even was necessarily just because of chronology, an evolution of that kind of despair at unjust wars and lies that the Iraq war kind of epitomised.
00:09:08.000But people weren't then, to the same degree, although I know those voices would have been around, saying that was because of, I don't know, Zionism or Israeli expansionism, far less, you know, as people talk about now, occultist aspects of power.
00:09:23.000Meaningfully changed to stop the main critiques being leveled centering around economics and the control of resources and to be about the kind of extra national control exerted through AIPAC and other Israel forms of influence.
00:09:59.000And then obviously, the Iraq war, like you pointed out, there was a lot of corporate interest there from the United States, Halliburton, et cetera.
00:10:05.000So there were other people who, for lack of a better term, got their bread buttered as well.
00:10:10.000However, there was this common thread of the Israeli government lobbying for us to take down these governments.
00:10:15.000And this goes back to documents that were made public by the Israeli government the clean break strategy of how the Israelis were essentially going to be able to take out seven major countries in the region, go to war with them, topple their governments so that they could gain more control over Israel, take on More territory.
00:10:33.000And basically, this is the campaign that kicked off with the Iraq war.
00:10:38.000Once 9 11 happened, we had a heavy lobbying wing from Benjamin Netanyahu and others within the Likud government encouraging us to take down Iraq.0.73
00:10:46.000And then Iraq went the way it did.0.73
00:10:48.000Next thing you know, we're going to war with Syria, Libya, Yemen, et cetera.0.59
00:10:52.000And so basically, there was always this subtle undertone of the Israeli lobby.
00:10:55.000It was pointed out by academics, it was pointed out by political dissidents.
00:10:58.000However, this last iteration, the way the Israelis really came in super aggressive towards the Trump administration, lobbying for this war.
00:11:07.000And the way this war was foisted upon President Trump and the way it was foisted upon the American people, I think people, even who weren't really paying attention to geopolitics, to the military industrial complex, they woke up one day and they said, hey, wait a sec, why are we going to war with Iran?0.57
00:11:21.000Even in the lead up to the Iraq war, there was about a year where the case was laid out for the American people.
00:11:27.000This one just came in really, really hard and really fast.
00:11:29.000And that's because I believe that the Benjamin Netanyahu government, the Lakhd government, and a lot of Israeli politics right now, they realize that this is.
00:11:37.000Probably the last president from either political party, left or right, that's going to give them essentially a blank check to conduct operations at their behest and to give them this level of military support.
00:11:49.000Post October 7th and what happened in Gaza, you're seeing a political awakening that started on the left and now it's happening on the right as well, where a lot of younger voters are saying, Why are we sending billions and billions of dollars to Israel, especially if Israel keeps getting us into all these conflicts that don't benefit our country?
00:12:05.000So you're seeing a real sense of urgency from the Israelis, but that's kind of backfiring on them, I believe, because now.
00:12:11.000More people are waking up and saying, like, why does Israel have this influence over us?
00:12:28.000So I do think we're living through a reverse effect of the aggressive campaign the Israelis have waged on our country in terms of influence.1.00
00:12:38.000While some of the motifs that you just described, American reluctance to financially and militarily participate in conflict, That don't directly affect America.
00:12:51.000Those themes have kind of, in a way, defined America for as long as your country's been the most powerful nation on the earth, you know, sort of basically from the First World War and certainly from the Second World War, kind of reluctance to participate in them conflicts.
00:13:05.000And even more recently, when Ukraine Russia took over COVID as the global issue that people felt they were having a perspective prescribed to them for, like this, you have to support Ukraine if you don't, and Putin's going to rampage across the world, and is it like.
00:13:22.000That there was the same sort of cynicism about supporting Ukraine and NATO and the UN and what the true origins of that conflict were.
00:13:32.000So, in a sense, there are many themes that you're describing when it comes to Israel's influence on American politics that are sort of comparable to less contentious and less ideologically undergirded conflicts.
00:13:47.000You know, like Ukraine is a hot, nasty scenario, of course, but it doesn't bear that very unique flavor that comes somehow.
00:13:55.000With the compound of the arguments that surround a Judeo-Christian and even the use of that term these days.0.59
00:14:02.000So you said that things have changed and that's a really good analysis.
00:14:07.000Thanks for explaining that because Israeli interests might assume that Trump's the last favorable president or at least this is the last era of American politics that's going to be operable in the manner that you're describing and that by your analysis they've enjoyed.
00:14:28.000Do you think that's significantly due to online media and an inability to control messaging that existed, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, before the advent of mass communication?
00:14:43.000I think that's probably the largest factor.
00:14:44.000I mean, there's only so long that you can lie to people nowadays.
00:14:47.000And all the pattern recognition that you laid out the war in Ukraine, COVID, et cetera.
00:14:52.000And then also, just I think if you lived through 9 11, you lived through the war on terror, even if you didn't deploy overseas or serve in the military, You've seen this before.
00:15:01.000You've seen us get involved in these conflicts, and our leaders will tell us we have to do this.
00:15:05.000This is an existential fight for our own safety.
00:15:08.000And then they just tend to drag on and they go nowhere.
00:15:11.000And at the end of the day, we end up replacing the Taliban with the Taliban after 20 years.0.97
00:15:15.000We end up basically handing over, unfortunately, Iraq to the control of the Iranians.0.98
00:15:20.000And now we're fighting the Iranians again.0.98
00:15:21.000It never really makes a lot of sense, but we always end up sacrificing a lot in terms of blood and treasure, as cliche as that is.0.98
00:15:29.000Probably around 9 trillion in the war on terror.
00:15:55.000That something that would have been disseminated over five years through pamphlets or literature, something that would have been deliberately congested and obfuscated.
00:16:04.000by centralized media, whatever the issue, but that seems to be part of the function of centralized media is to congest and control information in alliance and partnership with the kind of interest that can now be opposed by independent media.
00:16:18.000These things can happen very, very quickly.
00:16:21.000And that peculiar Gnostic martyr, Julian Assange, said of the Afghanistan conflict to which you refer, when you understand the point is not to end the conflict in Afghanistan, Afghanistan, but to perpetuate it because it's an economic model that allows the transfer of public funds into private hands.0.70
00:16:42.000His simple little maxim there makes so much sense.
00:16:45.000And it's one of those little drops of wisdom that once you've heard it, you can't really unhear it.
00:16:51.000And because of the communication technology that exists right now and that we are taking advantage of, these messages get spread a lot quicker.
00:16:58.000Joe Kent will be talking to you, please God, if you choose to stay with us, a lot more.
00:17:02.000I want to talk to you about the particularities of the strategy and the blockade.
00:17:06.000Also, your life in the Special Forces, the particular potency of the grief and loss of your first wife, and how that impacts your position.
00:17:18.000And by my reckoning, at least, fortifies it and verifies it.
00:17:23.000And as well as allowing beloved Dave here, friend of Eddie Gallagher, and Jake here to ask their questions.
00:17:29.000And of course, you, those of you that are in the comments in Rumble, if you have a question for Joe Kent, put it to us.
00:17:33.000And even if it's like, you know, we read the comments.
00:17:36.000Even if it's insensitive, even if it's hurtful to me personally, we will still read it.
00:17:41.000But I will not tolerate anyone criticizing Joe Kent's hair.
00:17:55.000But before we get into that, here's a quick message from one of our partners.
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00:19:18.000Jake, I'll afford you the same largesse I would afford myself.
00:19:21.000Hey, Joe, one of the things we were talking about is the efficacy of that blockade.
00:19:24.000I can't pretend to understand them kind of stratagems.
00:19:27.000One of the things people have been talking about in the broadest sense is the, I don't know, the campaign, the military campaign ain't working.
00:19:33.000I see one really good video that was saying that Iran are double fleet footed using drones and speedboats, some sort of Miami Vice guerrilla warfare deal that they're ripping with right now.
00:19:46.000Militarily, Joe, and will the blockade of the Straits of Hammuz not ultimately be successful?
00:19:53.000The short answer is that there's no real military solution to the problem that we have in Iran right now.
00:19:59.000And also, the blockade how long are we going to do the blockade for?
00:20:03.000We have three carrier battle groups over there right now.
00:20:05.000The Iranians have been enduring economic hardship since at least 1979 due to our and the rest of the world's sanction regime against them.
00:20:13.000They have proven to be very, very durable, as we've seen over the last 60 days of this war, the 12 day war, and everything else they faced, nearly the decade they fought against Iraq.
00:20:25.000So to think that us hurting their oil economy that's already been significantly crippled due to the blockade that's going to make them give President Trump all the things that he's demanding.
00:20:37.000And it puts us at a great risk because the longer and the more forces we have over there, the more targets it presents to the Iranians.0.95
00:20:44.000And unfortunately, we've killed a lot of the moderates inside of Iran.0.59
00:20:48.000And so a lot of the guys in the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military, they want the conflict to continue.
00:20:55.000And so we're giving them the opportunity to suck us back into a longer war, which is not in our interest.0.90
00:21:02.000I say there's no military solution because Iran is a massive country.0.98
00:21:05.000They've built a very layered Defensive system through drones, through ballistics.0.99
00:21:10.000We've killed a lot of their conventional military.
00:21:11.000We've killed a lot of their leaders, yet they're still there.0.98
00:21:21.000So, unless we're willing to commit 20 years and a massive amount of ground troops, I don't think we'll be successful.
00:21:28.000If we were to commit ground troops, I think that we would face a bloodbath.
00:21:31.000I'm glad President Trump hasn't done that.
00:21:33.000There's been people whispering in Trump's ear to commit ground troops.
00:21:35.000I'm glad that he's resisted that so far.
00:21:38.000I think that would be a catastrophic mistake.
00:21:41.000But right now, us trying to just pressure them in this manner, it's just simply not going to work.
00:21:46.000I think the sooner that we can get our forces out of the region and then engage in some back channel diplomacy with the Iranians and figure out a way that we can basically coexist and work with the government that's there in place, although it's not perfect, it is something that we can work with.
00:22:02.000The sooner that we can recognize that, the less we'll bleed, the less we'll pay, and the sooner that we can get back to focusing on our country and re stabilizing the region.
00:22:11.000Joe Kent, how do you reconcile analysis of military stratagems, the uniqueness of this situation, given that Iran, as you say, is a massive country with a history steeped in blood and conflict and can therefore endure, with the kind of deeper understanding that you appear to have because of your, you know, not only your military experience,
00:22:38.000but your government experience and working with Tulsi Gabbard and indeed the incident that brought you to the forefront of.
00:22:44.000Public and cultural life in this moment, your letter of resignation and your public confession, admission, critique that Israel has too much power and control over American foreign policy.
00:22:58.000Because, in a sense, if that's what's really happening, then the military analysis becomes sort of somewhat secondary because that in itself is just sort of part of a kind of somewhat beneficial financial.
00:23:16.000That could go on for 10 years or 20 years or whatever, and you know, Boeing get richer and Northrop Grumman get richer, and the kind of military industrial complex interests that we're all somewhat familiar with continue to benefit.
00:23:26.000While presumably a set of political and geographical incentives that Israel have somewhat separate from America can be pursued and met.
00:23:37.000Like, don't you like you're a person that's really passionate and enthusiastic about Trump, and since being in government, have obviously become to a degree disillusioned.
00:23:50.000Faithfully as Mr. President, and you know, respect the rank, not the man, and all that.
00:23:54.000And I like that kind of way of life and that mentality.0.93
00:23:58.000I guess what I'm asking you is if real power, as most of us sort of now believe, is this kind of peculiar, mercurial, inaccessible power that might occasionally breach in the form of, oh, it's Israel.
00:24:15.000It's Israel's ability through AIPAC to influence American foreign policy, or it seems to be somehow connected to these global bureaucracies that are able to endorse vaccines and achieve lockdowns across the world.
00:24:27.000What I'm trying to say, Joe, is you've lived this sort of pretty unique life, CIA, being a spy, being a hero, being a long-haired elite Vidal Sassoon model level special forces guy.
00:24:43.000And it seems like that the real truth that all of us are sort of ghosting around is about this knot or web of power that is able to control us.
00:24:53.000And it don't matter if you have Kamala Harris as president or AOC or Donald Trump or Bobby Kennedy or JD Vance.
00:25:01.000Power is going to do what it always does, and intuitively, the motion I come up with is the movement of a snake, a serpent on its belly, coiling through and around time.
00:25:14.000And if that is the case, how do you pick a single issue to sort of focus on, even though it seems like you have been anointed or appointed or dealing with one?
00:25:25.000Yeah, I mean, just from my life experience, serving heavily in the Middle East, like you said, losing my late wife there, I have been searching.
00:25:32.000For a very long time, even before I lost my late wife, as to why and how we got into these conflicts.
00:25:37.000I initially attributed a lot of it just to general incompetence, lack of knowledge, and then seeing just the sheer volume of influence from the military industrial complex.
00:25:47.000I was disgusted, wanted to change it, believed in President Trump's message early on, both in 16 and basically throughout his entire campaign until about this last couple of months.0.92
00:25:57.000But seeing how Israel is the driving force here in the Middle East, I do think you're right, though.0.98
00:26:03.000I think that there is something bigger.0.97
00:26:05.000I feel like we got a little peek at it.
00:26:07.000With the Epstein files, where there is something that supersedes governments.0.75
00:26:12.000And Israel might be the action arm, I guess, or the frontman for that to some extent for what we do in the Middle East.
00:26:23.000But I think we did get a glimpse with the way that Jeffrey Epstein was killed in prison.
00:26:26.000And then the things that we've seen in the Epstein files.
00:26:29.000I think the best thing we could do right now from a government perspective is just release the files completely unredacted, let it all go out there so that the whole world can have some transparency.
00:26:47.000I mean, but to your point, I do agree with you that it does seem like there is some serpentine element that's hard to place that is controlling, constantly driving us towards these conflicts, you know, promoting the next crisis, crisis after crisis.
00:27:04.000And maybe that's just the nature of the way things are right now in the times that we live in.
00:27:09.000But again, I would say that had we not seen the Epstein files and had we not seen what happened with Epstein and seeing how strong President Trump was against these foreign wars, against the corruption, against the deep state, and then to see him turn on a dime, I think there's a lot more declassification and sunlight that needs to be brought to our government right now, especially what's taken place in the last year or so.
00:27:30.000Do you reckon then that we got to be kind of bold?0.66
00:27:33.000What I mean by that is see that Whitney Webb, she was talking about the Epstein files, she's a journalist, she was talking about the Epstein files, and a lot of people didn't have the balls to talk about it.
00:27:42.000One of the things she said, To me, when I was saying, because how I get is kind of frustrated because I feel like we're unable to get near the thing that we need to really talk about.
00:27:54.000I feel this sort of sense of frustration, this repulsion, this magnetic control that real power is able to exert and assert, this sort of field of disruption around it.
00:28:04.000And I said, like, to her one time, like, say the stuff Alex Jones and David Icke have been saying for ages, paedophile rings and deep state power and the ability to sort of institute and organize even a global pandemic, that the more you investigate it, the more likely it seems that it was, you know, engineered in this lab and this America, you know, you know the stories.
00:28:25.000So, like, I guess what I'm trying to say here, Joe, is like, especially coming off the back of doing those media appearances in New York, of like going on Piers Morgan and feeling like while I was in that interview, that while I was in an Associated Press building, which Associated Press presents itself as neutral, but has a funding model that would suggest it's advantageous that it reports on certain news stories in a certain way.
00:28:50.000And when you're in the company of Piers Morgan, which I've been reflecting on obviously since then, someone that I feel.
00:28:57.000Benefits from participating in conflict and a kind of a cynicism that stops people advancing and moving forward and asking the right questions and certainly prevents us from arriving at these kind of points.
00:29:11.000Isn't it clear that we have to extract money from politics?
00:29:15.000Isn't it clear that we need radical systemic change?
00:29:18.000Is it somewhat obvious that if there was a referenda today on whether or not the American people continue to pay taxes to fund foreign wars, whether it's Ukraine or Israel, Iran, that Most people go, I'm not doing that.
00:29:31.000I mean, most people stop paying taxes altogether.
00:29:37.000So, while we remain confined to areas of argument that it's understandable that we stay within because the paradigm is set by the people that have naturalized power.
00:29:52.000And when you stray out into, as you have done and as I have done, into whether or not Charlie Kirk's assassination was beneficial to certain interests, whether the Twin Tower attacks themselves were beneficial to certain interests.
00:30:05.000Like, you know, essentially conspiracy, which increasingly, anyone that knows anything about the CIA, and I know that includes you, knows that probably the most significant things that happen, you don't know the truth about them.
00:30:16.000We're not allowed to know the truth about them.
00:30:18.000And once you've established that fact, isn't it possible that those of us that are in a somewhat unrestricted media space and have a sort of the degree of political experience, in your case, and obviously the bravery that comes with your history, is it possible?
00:30:34.000Do we have to sort of proceed with a kind of boldness and a level of risk taking that might at first seem sort of insane?
00:30:45.000I mean, that's a big reason, one of the big reasons why I resigned and resigned the way that I did.
00:30:50.000I mean, morally, I couldn't be a part of it just because of my history and promises I had made to myself.
00:30:55.000But also, I felt an obligation to let the American people know what I had seen responsibly behind closed doors and why we got into this war.
00:31:04.000Because I, unfortunately, I believe this war is going to have a drastic effect on our nation and probably the entire world.
00:31:10.000And so the American people who are going to underwrite it, 13 of whom have already given their lives, deserve to know how we got there.
00:31:17.000We have to proceed boldly because if we allow whatever you want to call it, the mainstream media, whoever it is that sets the narratives, if we let them drown out our voices through whatever you want to call it, cancel culture or just through humiliation, through lawsuits, through arrests, even, then there's no hope.
00:32:02.000So, if there isn't a radical change, Joe, what do you think is going to happen as a result of this conflict?
00:32:11.000What's your concern and your fear?0.99
00:32:19.000With the Iranians, and the Iranians will punch back.1.00
00:32:22.000They've proven they could punch back.1.00
00:32:24.000They've already tragically killed 13 of our troops.0.98
00:32:27.000I believe they have the capability to do even more damage in this next round if the conflict starts, or if the Iranians are squeezed hard enough through this blockade.
00:32:37.000I think elements of the IRGC will say, hey, we're not going to listen to the political leadership anymore because, again, we killed a lot of the moderate leaders.
00:33:01.000And the next thing you know, we're going to be sucked into a major conflict.
00:33:03.000But this conflict, because of the Straits of Hormuz, will have a major impact on obviously the price at the pump here, energy distribution.
00:33:12.000We're going to see major impacts to fertilizer distribution, which could lead to some form of global famine in some locations, food scarcities in other.
00:33:20.000So the ripple down effect that this is going to have on the entire world, this is already, I believe, harming our status.
00:33:26.000With the petrodollar, you've got the UAE moving away from the petrodollar, moving out of OPEC.
00:34:09.000But this doesn't benefit America at all.
00:34:12.000If anything else, it makes us less safe, less secure.1.00
00:34:15.000We're going to spend more money and more time in the Middle East.
00:34:17.000So those are my big concerns right now.
00:34:19.000That's why I'm advocating heavily for President Trump to do what President Reagan did in 1984 and just leave, like take down the tensions, remove our troops as targets from the region, and then use back channel diplomacy to negotiate on behalf.
00:34:31.000Of America, but really focus on our problems here at home.
00:34:34.000And you think that Reagan reference, you'll like that.
00:34:38.000That's the kind of thing that will reach Trump, sort of spiritually and mentally.
00:34:42.000That's the kind of titillation and stimulation one imagines might be effective.
00:34:46.000When you listed those consequences, you know, the death of service personnel abroad likely escalating, you know, inability to access fertilizer, famine, that seemed like a heavy one.
00:34:57.000Fuel, but a lot of these things are kind of what we're accustomed to.
00:35:01.000War means more money for fuel, folks, military personnel dying, but we've all somewhat inoculated.
00:35:07.000I'm not talking about the horrible tragedy, obviously, speaking to someone who's lost a loved one in that situation.
00:35:14.000But as a culture, people are inoculated against that and consider it to be sort of kind of acceptable.
00:35:20.000And I almost wonder if people really even care if it crosses the threshold of what we care about.
00:35:26.000And that's where I reckon, Joe, I tune a bit into this general sense of bewilderment and nihilism and cynicism that I alluded to just with my recent.
00:35:33.000Personal experience of encountering what I consider to be this empire, right?
00:35:38.000Empire that we live within, an aspect of which is, of course, government, an aspect of which is, of course, media, an aspect of which is the power that exists beyond nation, asserts that power through bureaucracy and is willing to pay the price of the blood of Ukrainians or Iranians or Americans or Brits or whoever the machine requires that day for this increasingly centralized global imperial power to consolidate.
00:36:03.000Whenever we've been talking about these types of wars lately, one that I know that good commentators, you know, and people that know more than me, and that's a pretty long list, always Point out what is the agenda of America?
00:36:14.000What would victory look like for America in this conflict?
00:36:19.000And, you know, as you've just pointed out in your last answer, it's not really easy to see what victory would look like or how it would be militarily achieved.
00:36:27.000And, although, and I suppose that one might say that from an Israeli perspective, there is a clearer vision, a sort of an ideology, a sort of a map, a territory.
00:36:39.000And what you're saying is that's the agenda that.0.59
00:36:43.000Ultimately, America is following in a way they do have a vision.
00:36:47.000We want we're going to acquire this territory, we're going to acquire these.
00:36:50.000Um, so if that's true, and if like you resign because you recognize a government is the last place where you can have an impact on these kind of matters, like it's restrictive and it's controlled and it's inevitable, what do you think we can do?
00:37:10.000Is it that you just explain to people what it is?
00:37:13.000And do you think that you have to explain this?
00:37:15.000Do you think people are more impacted by?
00:37:17.000Impending famine or problems at the fuel pumps, or do you think people need to understand this kind of visceral spiritual truth about what's happening with real power?
00:37:27.000How do you feel that we must communicate this?
00:37:30.000Because it's what you're saying, oh, vote for this congressman or vote for that senator, or we should not have lobbies anymore.
00:37:35.000Like, you know, people feel so impotent.
00:37:38.000I think there's a feeling of impotence and disempowerment.
00:37:40.000I'm speaking more about my country, the UK, to be honest, than yours.
00:37:49.000Calm down a bit, some of the ones I'm looking at.
00:37:51.000But like in my country, there's this sort of sense of dispiritedness and exhaustion and weariness.
00:37:57.000And I so much feel that they need to know the spiritual holy war aspect of this stuff.
00:38:03.000But do you think, like Whitney Webb, that those things are difficult to corroborate and we should focus on, you know, the likelihood that people won't have sufficient fertilizer or that fuel prices will go up?
00:38:25.000However, this war is going to have, it is already having local ramifications.
00:38:31.000I mean, people are most hit at their pocketbook when they go to fill up gas, when they go to get groceries.
00:38:36.000And because we already had a major inflation crisis basically from the COVID era on, and we never really recovered out of it.
00:38:42.000It's a big reason why people voted for President Trump to get us out of this spiral, this downward spiral in the economy and the inflation.
00:38:50.000And so now I think a lot of people are like, hey, wait, why are we at war with Iran?
00:38:53.000Why am I paying more for gas, groceries, et cetera?
00:38:56.000I voted for Trump to get us out of this.
00:39:00.000He said the wars in the Middle East were, I mean, that's why I became a Trump supporter, because back in 2016, he went after Jeb Bush on the stage of the Republican primary debate and said the Iraq war was a huge mistake and we never should have gotten into it.
00:39:12.000So a lot of people right now are really confused.
00:39:14.000There's been a huge shock in the change in the direction of the administration, and it's affecting their daily lives.
00:39:20.000Then I think that's going to lead them to ask, like, why?
00:39:23.000They're going to want to know why.0.79
00:39:24.000And then we tell them about, hey, the Israelis were able to pressure us into this.0.81
00:39:28.000And this isn't the first time the Israelis have done it.0.88
00:39:30.000And then I think people are going to be able to start asking bigger picture questions.0.96
00:39:33.000About why, regardless of whoever it is that we vote for, the whatever you want to call it the system, the cabal, the administrative state, the deep state, whatever they kind of always get their way.
00:39:44.000And that I think will lead to some of the bigger questions out there.
00:39:47.000And ultimately, I do think because there's just so much uncertainty and there is this aspect of evil behind so much of what's taken place with our ruling class or however you want to characterize it, I do think it is going to put a lot of people towards God and towards spirituality.
00:40:04.000And that's why I think you're seeing a You know, a massive uptick in people going to church and church attendance, especially of younger folks, Gen Z. That's a heavily, I think, religious and truth seeking generation just because of how uncertain the world has been.
00:40:18.000They can't put their faith in administrations, they can't put it in institutions or politicians.
00:40:32.000I'm going to take this opportunity to say get this book from Tucker Carlson Books, my book.0.98
00:40:36.000How to become Christian in seven days may take 50 years of sin and serious fuck ups to get started.
00:40:41.000In particular, what I was talking about is how, since becoming a Christian and reading scripture, I came to recognize the sense that you cannot trust institutions or the establishment or the political establishment and media establishment in the broadest possible terms was something that's scripturally undergirded.0.95
00:40:56.000That we fight not against flesh and blood, but against dark powers in the heavenly realm.
00:41:00.000The sense that the evil one, that is a fallenness, has taken over the world.0.72
00:41:04.000I noticed since becoming Christian, Joe, and being Christian in your country, that there's a lot of, I know you're Catholic, huh?
00:41:11.000Like amongst sort of like the Protestant community, which is a sort of in itself of thousands of communities, even where I live here in Florida, there's a sort of a focus on the moral and ethical aspects of Christianity, like, you know, sexual righteousness and what else, you know, like kind of moral and ethical things that are pretty good and robust and standard and definitely scripturally present.
00:41:31.000But it seems that when looking at the aspect of Christianity that seems to be about freeing yourself from the frequency of what you might call sin, a kind of peculiar.
00:41:44.000Fallenness, a force for brokenness, a sort of lost self obsession that you say that Gen Z are turning away from.
00:41:51.000And people in my country, there's a huge uptick in people getting interested in Christianity and turning to the Lord.
00:42:00.000I wonder if at the forefront of your own Christianity is an awareness of the fight between good and evil.
00:42:09.000And also, how can we turn to fallen, broken systems run by fallen, broken people that might even be in the thrall of the Darkest imaginable influences for salvation when there is something we can personally do.
00:42:28.000Do you experience the personal salvation that comes from knowing Christ, as well as this sort of sense that you are a participant in something holy and profound that's maybe even comparable to your military service, like something that could cost your life?
00:42:44.000And but that would be a price worth paying.
00:42:52.000You know, I don't know if I would be able to do any of this without having faith.
00:42:56.000So, very blessed to have parents that instilled Christianity in me at a very, very young age.
00:43:01.000So, I think my walk with faith, there's been ups and there's been downs, but especially in a time like this where I have seen, you know, just so many institutions fail, having that north star, that guide rod of Christ and a relationship with Christ, which is an ongoing process.
00:43:22.000And, you know, while I was working in government, especially this last year and a half, I would attempt to pray every day and remind myself like, God put me here for a reason.
00:43:35.000It's to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to do the right thing.
00:43:38.000And so I would just pray for him to give me the strength to do that, recognizing that he had put me where I was for a reason and that God ultimately has a plan.
00:44:17.000As long as I think this technology would be better deployed, instituting real democracy.0.62
00:44:22.000I wonder if you could get just American citizens of voting age to participate in a would you like to continue this war with Iran or not?0.82
00:44:31.000But people are saying instead, will James Comey be arrested?
00:44:36.000You know, I guess that's because of that, what, 86, 47.0.68
00:44:40.000It was a terror threat made in shells.
00:44:43.000Me, if I'm going to make a terror threat, I won't use seashells as the medium for it.
00:44:47.000It undermines a good deal of the terror.
00:44:50.000What will Powell say during the April press conference?
00:44:55.000Like, Dave, I can't pretend to understand that, but Polymarket understands it.
00:44:58.000And Polymarket is a real time, gives you a real time opportunity to trade on the outcomes of live events from politics, pop culture, sports, and more.
00:45:07.000So, Jake, a question for the comments for Joe Kent.
00:45:14.000Don't hurt Joe Kent's feelings, even though he is a former Ranger and Green Beret.
00:45:19.000And I always think that when I think of, like, you know, when you people like Eddie Gallagher that's in the SEALs or friends that I've got, they're in special forces.
00:45:25.000I think when I say I was treading on my dog's poo in the house, like, you know, the dog, it's a Daxon, it's done a poo in the house.
00:46:09.000Why won't you, Joe Kent, Stop focusing on your hairstyle and start focusing on regime change within Iran.0.97
00:46:19.000Well, unfortunately, if they want regime change, they need to do it on their own.0.91
00:46:24.000I would just say to any Iranian who wants us to come help them with regime change, take a look at every other country that we've tried regime change in.0.94
00:46:30.000You don't want that outcome for your country.0.81
00:46:33.000And the thing is, if we wanted regime change inside of Iran, President Trump's initial strategy that he deployed in the first Trump administration of killing Iranian terrorist leaders when they killed Americans, like he did with Qasem Soleimani, But then not taking the bait and going after the regime, but squeezing them with sanctions, that was actually working.
00:46:51.000That's why there were protesters on the streets in January.
00:46:54.000They're protesting the cost of living.0.95
00:46:57.000By going in and being foreigners trying to overthrow the government right now, we've created a rally around the flag effect inside of Iran.0.96
00:47:05.000That's why you're not seeing protests out there on the streets.0.84
00:48:41.000We need the Straits of Hormuz to be open for energy commerce to move back and forth.
00:48:45.000And we need Iran not to sponsor terrorist attacks.
00:48:48.000Under President Trump, the Iranians basically restrained their proxies ahead of this war because we killed Cosmos Olmati, because we killed Abu Mani Mohandas.
00:48:56.000The Iranians were walking all over the Biden administration because they didn't respect him.0.62
00:48:59.000Right when Trump came back into office, they stopped attacking us until this last iteration of the war with their proxies.
00:49:06.000Telling the Iranians, look, we can deal with you.0.98
00:49:08.000We can even potentially look at reducing some of the sanctions if you open the Straits of Hormuz, if you stop funding terrorist organizations, and we will deal with you as we deal with most other countries in the region.0.99
00:49:20.000We'll deal with you when it's beneficial to us.
00:49:22.000We'll cooperate with you when it's beneficial to us.
00:49:24.000But us essentially trying to play the policeman in the region, we're going to do all the security guarantees for the Gulf.
00:49:30.000All of that's kind of been shattered.1.00
00:49:31.000I mean, the Iranians proved that our bases in the region are more of a liability than they are an asset.1.00
00:49:38.000Accept the world as it is, define those, get our troops out of the region, stop trying to enforce our will on them through the barrel of a gun, because it's not going to work.
00:49:47.000It's going to cost us too much money.1.00
00:49:49.000And then just start back channeling and dealing with the Iranians on that level.1.00
00:49:52.000At the end of the day, whoever's in charge inside Iran, inside of Persia, they're going to be a world player.0.98
00:49:57.000They control critical geography, they control critical resources.0.97
00:50:00.000So I think the sooner that we can just recognize that and deal with it, the better off that we'll be.
00:50:06.000Meghan Kelly and Tucker Carlson and you and Candace Owens have faced considerable.
00:50:12.000I have been outspoken on the subject of Israel and Israeli influence, and we've been called, I'm guessing, anti Semites.
00:50:19.000I know some of those folks have, and I'm assuming that happens to you.
00:50:23.000How do you think you can have this conversation and ensure that people of Jewish faith and race, the Jews, can feel that this is not anti Semitism, but rather a geopolitical discussion about globalism and war and a particular expansionist? Project.
00:50:42.000Is there a way to sensibly have that conversation?
00:50:48.000Are there experts that you think we should watch more of and promote that are able to handle the evident and obvious tension?
00:50:56.000Or do you think that even that charge of anti Semitism is an illegitimate one that's used as a weapon and there's really no way around it?
00:51:06.000It's going to come up, but luckily, I think just because the last, I don't know, decade or so, anytime people are called, you know, racist, homophobic, anti Semitic, It used to be a, you know, stop people in their tracks and people are like, no, no, I'm not a racist.
00:52:02.000So there's been academics out there, but a lot of them were canceled for years.
00:52:05.000And I think now just this last crisis has kind of opened up the opportunity to have a more frank discussion about this.
00:52:10.000But also, for people who do care about Israel, this war is not in Israel's favor either.
00:52:15.000I mean, this is literally like one political faction in Israel who's really galvanized a lot of raw, rightful, justified anger after October 7th and just run amok with it.
00:52:26.000In the long run, what Israel's doing right now is not going to work out in Israel's benefit either.0.93
00:52:33.000Just the more we can be clear about this being about the influence of a foreign government, and in particular, the Likud party, Bibi Netanyahu, and his associates, I think that just the better off we'll be.
00:52:44.000So I don't take any time someone says that I'm anti Semitic in a debate, I can tell that I'm winning the debate because they don't want to discuss the actual issues.
00:52:54.000Sometimes I get a bit worried about it, you know, like I sort of like just with like Jewish people that are my mates and that I know, like I feel sometimes they don't like this subject being discussed.
00:53:05.000And I'm not even, I'm not talking about like, I'm talking about American Jewish folk, you know, like they're sort of like, hey, what did you put that person on for?
00:53:15.000Yeah, the first time it happened was when I first started doing stuff on YouTube in about 2015, a long time ago, huh?
00:53:22.000Like in the, you know, with time moving as quickly as it does.
00:53:25.000I remember that the story was to do with Barclays Bank, a British bank, being involved in investments funding activity in occupied territories, like Palestinian territory that Israel were encroaching on.
00:53:36.000And my guess might be that that encroachment has been fully implemented, you know, this.
00:53:41.000Decade on, and construction companies like Caterpillar, and me in my rather usual ad hoc breezy manner, I was like just doing a story Hey, Barclays Bank, Caterpillar, I weren't really thinking about, like, well, you know, particularly just it fitted in with my general worldview is I don't trust authority, I don't trust it, I don't know how this whole model's holding together, I don't know how nefarious it is.
00:54:05.000You know, I've evolved since living in your country in so much as I really like, love rednecks and people of the South, and these, you know, I now, for example.
00:54:12.000I would have had a liberal position on gun ownership, Joe.0.55
00:54:17.000And probably you'd think, well, yeah, I can tell by your accent because it's because we've got those guns that we kicked your ass right out of our territories.0.99
00:54:26.000Cornwallis, unleash the Green Dragoons.0.99
00:54:44.000Whatever they say, they being, say, I don't know, neoliberal media about gun ownership and protection and school shootings and accidents in the home and deaths and the obvious tragic things that, you know, can happen as a result of guns and gun ownership.
00:55:20.000Take this fucking lethal concoction of terrible, probably don't work anyway.1.00
00:55:25.000We certainly didn't test it for transmission injection.1.00
00:55:28.000Like, and from then I've gone, whenever they're saying, as the first part, we love you so much, we're going to have to lock you in your house, or we love you so much, you can't have a gun, or we love you so much, shut your mouth.0.98
00:55:40.000The thing that's following is a lie.0.87
00:55:42.000That's like what I, and that fits in with what I knew anyway when I was a kid and a junkie and growing up and all that stuff.
00:55:48.000It's just been compounded and includes a little bit of the libertarianism that you have a good, you have a lot.
00:55:54.000That's sort of your background, isn't it?
00:55:55.000And Ron Paul and all that kind of stuff.
00:57:04.000I think with the proliferation of technology, it makes it easy to think that Washington, D.C. is a place where we can all communicate with and we can travel there freely.
00:57:14.000But Washington, D.C. shouldn't be driving most decisions in our lives.
00:57:18.000And I think if we, the people, were able to get more folks involved in politics and vote accordingly, I think we would avoid a lot of these bad.
00:57:26.000Problems and bad decisions that are actually made in DC.
00:57:29.000So I think that the real solution is we have to get more people that are politically engaged and educate them as to what's taking place in our world.
00:57:37.000And I wonder if that engagement could be utilized at the local level that you described.
00:57:41.000I wonder if that constitution alloyed to modern technology and the ability for real participatory direct digital democracy could change the world in a way that sort of warrants this level of consternation and conversation instead of talking about, well, who, like, if figures are superficially different.
00:58:01.000As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump end up governing, I know she didn't govern for any significant period, but in one might suspect with the same telos, the same trajectory, the same agenda set by the same interests, barring some superficial paraphernalia that amounts just to flags and colors and announcements and aesthetics, then it's the system itself that needs to change.
00:58:27.000And you're quite right to point out, and it's sort of always encouraging when anyone says, like Charlie Cooper.
00:58:31.000Kirk, God rest his soul, used to that the document itself, the constitutional document, the kind of molecular compound upon which American politics was meant to be built, does contain important ingredients that could be, you know, expounded upon actually now rather than sort of ignored, diluted, shut down so that new kinds of oligarchy and sort of, you know, I don't know, weird international monarchies appear to succeed.
00:59:10.000A big reason why we end up in a lot of these situations that we're in is that the American people can kind of vote all day and get the same results.
00:59:16.000And a lot of that is because the money and interest are able to buy off both sides of the aisle.
00:59:21.000You vote for one politician and you think you're getting a certain set of policies, but really you're going to get the corporate agenda because that's who paid for him to get into office.
00:59:29.000Individual candidates, I think, who can communicate effectively on social media, they do have the ability.
00:59:34.000It's hard, but they do have the ability nowadays to fundraise independently of the big packs and the money and interest.
00:59:39.000So if we could get people to understand hey, when you're seeing a saturation of ads, that's coming from the agenda, the money that's going to drive us in.
00:59:48.000The next war, the next financial downturn, the next COVID pandemic, whatever, there's money behind that.
00:59:54.000You need to look and support the candidates who actually are independent of that.
01:00:06.000And yeah, Thomas Massey is a good person, I think, to look to for that kind of fidelity.
01:00:11.000So, yes, if you see a lot of advertising, then that's an indication that it's backed by the kind of forces that probably don't have your best interests at heart.
01:00:20.000I sometimes think, Joe Kent, about Representative democracy that one can maintain the indigenous image of what representational democracy is.
01:00:29.000Our village or town is far away from the central government, so we send a person there to represent our interests.
01:00:36.000Well, one might imagine and even illustrate and animate with AI that as they're making their way on horseback to that central government agency, they encounter, like Pinocchio with that cat and fox, various interests, donors, and lobbyists that say, Well, While you're there representing the interests of Anywhereville, USA, would you also push out in for?
01:00:57.000Northrop Grumman, or Ukraine, or Israel?
01:01:00.000And when they end up in the parliamentary or congressional environment, it seems like those are the voices in their ears, not the voices of their constituents.
01:01:08.000Are sort of concerned about hospitals schools roads hygiene sanitation, access to good food and water, the kind of sort of you know Maslow pyramid of needs, stuff that we're all familiar with.
01:01:19.000Shouldn't politics simply be about the provision of the basics, and as stripped of ideology as possible?
01:01:26.000Ideology takes place in the human heart And in the human spirit.
01:01:31.000The reason I'm so interested in that idea is because I don't want to spend the rest of my life in some futile and circular carousel of cultural arguments that actually don't really mean very much.
01:01:43.000Because we're not evolved or designed to choose your poison to know what 300 million people or 8 billion people are doing simultaneously and have an opinion about it, whether it's a horrific genocide or some weird genital mutilation or whether it's just some sort of cultural. difference or preference elsewhere.
01:02:05.000I really strongly believe that with using your constitution and modern technology, you could create localised democracy where the principles ought be autonomy and independence for each community maximally, trading only where necessary.
01:02:19.000Obvious examples of the ridiculousness of global economy occur in agriculture when my country, the United Kingdom, supplies all of the lamb for New Zealand and New Zealand supplies all of the lamb for the UK.
01:02:31.000Now I don't know how it works, but I know someone's making money off that somewhere that shouldn't be.
01:02:37.000Eat the food that's where you are when that food's available.1.00
01:02:41.000Stop in order to eat a strawberry in the middle of November, yielding all of your sovereignty to extra national powers that actually hate you and want to destroy you, that think you're an idiot.0.99
01:02:55.000And if you push them even on the subject of democracy, which they say they believe in, they'd say, You can't have mob rule.0.99
01:03:02.000You can't let ordinary people vote for what they do with their own resources and how they spend their own money and time and lives.
01:03:10.000And I know what that hatred is because since coming to Christ, I understand good and evil are real.
01:03:15.000And power poses initially as neutral before it reveals itself, its true colors over time or with new information to be the presence of evil, masking itself.
01:03:26.000He is the father of lies for a reason.
01:03:28.000And come out and go, hey, I'm going to do a bunch of evil stuff.
01:03:30.000Finds out what's appealing, presents that to you.
01:03:32.000And before you know it, you've already made some terrible pact or contract.
01:03:35.000Man, thanks, Joe Kent, for your bravery, both as a member of the services and as a.
01:03:41.000A widow, congratulations on your new marriage, or, you know, current and ongoing marriage.
01:03:47.000I'm trying to be sensitive here, but I'm basically trying to wish you well.
01:03:50.000But I'm English and I'm so always on the edge of embarrassment, I might actually fart during this.
01:03:56.000I'm basically saying, I wish you well.
01:04:18.000I'm not suggesting that you have a current book or current social media, or is it enough for you to try to extract the influence of Israel from American politics?