00:00:00.000The United States just pulled off the most remarkable rescue operation in military history.
00:00:04.000We'll go through every single detail, what it means for the future of the Iran war, and we will examine why so many Americans are now pretty much openly rooting against America.
00:00:18.000The United States military just pulled off truly one of the most audacious, spectacular rescue operations in world history, truly world history.
00:00:27.000We're going to go through every jaw dropping detail because I mean, this is going to be 10 movies.
00:00:38.000And America kept that promise, which is why we are awesome.
00:00:41.000Meanwhile, President Trump is, of course, turning up the heat on the regime leadership or, you know, the ones who are still alive.
00:00:46.000Secretary of State Marco Rubio is bringing down the hammer on the nieces.
00:00:49.000Of dead Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
00:00:52.000They were living large in LA, dressing like women get punished for dressing in Iran.
00:00:57.000We'll examine also why so many Americans are pretty much openly rooting against America, including some of our most brain dead friends on X.
00:01:04.000So, let's start with this rescue operation.
00:01:35.000We have currently flown some 12,000 sorties over Iran.
00:01:40.000And until Friday, they had shot down zero American planes.
00:01:43.000Well, apparently, on Friday, they shot down two American planes an A 10 Warthog, which is a relatively low flying plane, and the F 15E, which was shot down apparently by a shoulder fired rocket.
00:01:55.000But despite that military dominance, despite that military dominance, when that F 15E Strike Eagle went down and it had the pilot inside and a weapons system officer inside, and we rescued the pilot, as we'll talk about, and then it was unclear what had happened with the weapons system officer.
00:02:11.000If we had not rescued that weapons system officer, if instead he'd been captured by the IRGC or its minions, because the IRGC was hunting all over the hills of Iran for this guy, they'd put out a bounty on his head of some $60,000, which in Iranian dollars is a bajillion dollars, legitimately a bajillion riyals.
00:02:29.000Well, if the IRGC had gotten a hold of Americans, that would have become leverage for the IRGC in the same exact way that hostages were leveraged for Hamas.
00:02:39.000I know people are saying that they would have been treated as prisoners of war.
00:02:42.000We have no evidence that that is the case because the Iranians, of course, are very fond of marching American, quote unquote, prisoners of war in front of cameras.
00:02:50.000In fact, they did this during the Barack Obama administration when they came into conflict with a small American vessel and then they proceeded to take pictures of Americans on their knees with their hands behind their head.
00:02:59.000Well, we're currently in a hot war with the Iranians.
00:03:03.000Almost certainly, the Iranians would have used his actual life to split the American public.
00:03:08.000They almost undoubtedly would have threatened to execute him publicly unless the war ended on their terms, because again, they are a terrorist regime.
00:03:15.000So instead, the United States of America pulled off the most audacious, insane military operation in modern history.
00:03:22.000We moved hundreds, if not thousands, of troops into enemy theater, built a small airstrip overnight, misdirected thousands of enemy troops and operatives, and then we extracted one American under fire more than a day after he originally dropped into Iran after his plane was hit.
00:04:14.000According to the New York Times, two crew members ejected from their fighter jet just seconds after it was hit by Iranian fire.
00:04:22.000That F 15 East Strike Eagle was the first fighter jet lost to enemy fire in the entire war, which, again, is just evidence of how dominant we have been militarily.
00:04:29.000And it crashed violently to the ground.
00:04:31.000Both Air Force officers were deep in hostile territory on Friday morning, alone and armed only with pistol.
00:04:37.000The plane's pilot was in constant communication with his unit.
00:04:40.000He was rescued almost immediately, about six hours later, by a force that included attack planes and helicopters under heavy fire.
00:05:12.000In the immediate aftermath, he was unconscious.
00:05:14.000He woke up, he sent a signal, and then he proceeded to hike up a 7,000 foot ridgeline and then wedge himself into a crevice to hide from Iranian operatives.
00:05:25.000Because as we'll talk about in a moment, the Iranians were looking everywhere for him.
00:05:29.000They knew that he was a key piece of leverage in this war.
00:05:33.000Meanwhile, US CENTCOM had prepared a statement that the plane had gone down and that the pilot had been rescued.
00:05:39.000And they were about to release that statement, but they didn't end up releasing it.
00:05:43.000Well, because just as they were about to release the statement, this was 14 hours after the fighter jet was hit, US officials actually got a lock on the weapons officer's location via a beacon that he was carrying.
00:05:54.000And so they scrapped the statement because they didn't want to give additional information to the Iranians.
00:06:00.000And Defense Secretary Pete Hexett then called President Trump.
00:06:03.000And told him they needed to keep information about the pilot's rescue as secret as possible because it would give away where people were in Iran.
00:06:12.000Meanwhile, Iran had launched a bunch of search parties, and one of them had assembled at the base of the mountain where the weapons officer was hiding, according to the New York Times.
00:06:26.000So the CIA developed a deception plan to try to buy some time.
00:06:31.000They spread word in Iran that the airman had already been found and was already moving out of the country.
00:06:36.000And the hope was that the Iranians would redirect their resources from like the base of the mountain where he actually was hiding to the roads out of the region to try to stop any sort of exit mission.
00:06:47.000And according to the Times, the CIA operation worked.
00:06:50.000It caused confusion among the Iranian forces hunting for the airman.
00:06:55.000Then the Iranians decided to intensify their search.
00:06:57.000And they went on the state's primary broadcaster and they made an offer for a reward to capture the enemy's pilot or pilots and turn them over alive to security forces.
00:07:07.000So now you have a bunch of people who are watching now.
00:07:10.000The pilot and the weapons systems officer were lucky in the fact, not only that they ended up living, but the area where they landed was an area hostile to the Iranian government.
00:07:21.000When we say that a ton of Iranians hate the Iranian government, this is absolutely true.
00:07:28.000And there have been Early reports that members of the Iranian population were attempting to obstruct the Iranian operatives in their attempts to find the weapons systems officer.
00:07:40.000U.S. military officials, meanwhile, were preparing a vast, complex rescue mission involving 100 special operations forces led by elements of SEAL Team 6.
00:07:48.000Delta Force commandos and Army Rangers were on standby if needed.
00:07:53.000The Wall Street Journal reports that troops led by CENTCOM brought a devastating array of firepower to keep the enemy at bay.
00:08:00.000They brought four B 1 bombers, dropped nearly 102,000 pound satellite guided bombs, according to two U.S. officials.
00:08:06.000MQ 9 Reaper drones also struck suspected fighters as they approached within kilometers.
00:08:12.000So basically, we're blowing people away as soon as they got within some sort of radius of the weapons systems officer.
00:08:20.000Now, meanwhile, we were still trying to determine whether this was him because a lot of people can put out signals, including the Iranians.
00:08:28.000The CIA had a special piece of technology unique to the agency to locate the airman hiding in the crevice.
00:08:35.000U.S. and Israeli officials gathered intel to determine if the airman was alone, surrounded by Iranians, or had been captured again, pointing out Israel was an excellent ally helping us find our downed airman.
00:08:47.000Well, once the Pentagon had confirmed who the guy was and that this wasn't actually the Iranians just sending out a false signal to lure us into some sort of trap, Hegseth rushed to the Oval Office and President Trump immediately gave his approval.
00:09:03.000So that's when the actual rescue mission began.
00:09:05.000According to the New York Times, after dark, senior military officials waited and then they launched.
00:09:12.000Special operations helicopters loaded with commandos raced to the remote mountain site where he was waiting.
00:09:18.000A senior U.S. official says this is the most challenging and complex operation in the history of special operations because they had to do this in the mountains.
00:09:27.000They had to assume that Iranian forces would rush to attack them, and they didn't know how healthy or unhealthy the weapons systems officer was.
00:09:36.000As the commandos apparently landed on the objective, according to the New York Times, U.S. and Israeli warplanes dropped bombs whose bright orange blasts lit up the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains.
00:09:46.000And the commandos weren't in a live firefight because the Iranians were too far away.
00:09:49.000But they were firing their weapons continuously in order to avoid the possibility of Iranians rushing the site.
00:09:58.000So, the wounded airman was then rushed to a helicopter.
00:10:02.000It whisked him off to this jerry rigged airstrip inside Iran.
00:10:07.000Special Operations Forces had built this kind of tiny airstrip in the middle of Iran for possible rescues or other contingencies.
00:10:15.000And the plan was to load him and all the rescue force onto two C 130 aircraft to get them out of danger and out to Kuwait.
00:10:23.000But, final twist of fate it turns out the nose gear of at least one and possibly both of those planes got stuck in the sandy dirt at the airstrip.
00:10:35.000Three smaller planes then landed, carrying specialized teams, and they made their way to the remote staging area.
00:10:42.000And, according to the New York Times, the commandos and the injured weapons system operator were reloaded onto three newly arrived replacement aircraft.
00:10:51.000After the rescue team left, American warplanes bombed the two disabled planes rather than letting them fall into Iranian hands.
00:10:56.000And I have to say, the propaganda on X is astonishing because we blew up these planes.
00:11:01.000Okay, we blew up these planes to avoid the Joe Biden Afghanistan problem of just leaving.
00:11:06.000Useful military technology in the hands of the enemy.
00:11:09.000So there went two of our some 600 C 130s.
00:11:14.000So we blew those up, and the Iranians immediately took footage of this and said, Look what we did.
00:11:49.000Absolute domination by the United States military, an astonishing feat of logistics, firepower, and will, by the way.
00:11:58.000Because, yes, it actually takes some guts to do what the United States just did, putting many men at risk in order to save one.
00:12:06.000And again, it's not possible to script a story this insane and also inspirational.
00:12:13.000So, this pilot, this plane, they were shot down on Good Friday.
00:12:18.000Saturday is when the search was going on.
00:12:21.000It was late Saturday night, moving into Easter morning, when the actual rescue took place.
00:12:27.000And apparently, according to Axios, President Trump said the weapons system officer gave a short, unusual message over his radio after ejecting from the aircraft.
00:12:54.000We stuck with it and verified he was alive and not captured.
00:12:57.000And those who knew him said he's religious.
00:12:58.000One of the ways they were able to identify who it was that was talking is because he said God is good, which is just, just crazy and super American and wonderful in every way.
00:13:08.000And if it doesn't make you want to, this whole story doesn't make you want to pick up an American flag and start waving it, I don't know what's wrong with you.
00:13:16.000No matter where you stand politically, if this story does not make you want to pick up an American flag and wave it on behalf of the American military, I don't know what is wrong with you.
00:13:27.000President Trump put out a statement confirming the rescue of the Americans, quote, from President Donald J. Trump.
00:13:35.000My fellow Americans, over the past several hours, the United States military pulled off one of the most daring search and rescue operations in U.S. history for one of our incredible crew member officers, who also happens to be a highly respected colonel and who I am thrilled to let you know is now safe and sound.
00:13:49.000This brave warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who are getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone because his commander in chief, secretary of war, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, And fellow warfighters were monitoring his location 24 hours a day and diligently planning for his rescue.
00:14:08.000At my direction, the U.S. military sent dozens of aircraft armed with the most lethal weapons in the world to retrieve him.
00:14:12.000He sustained injuries, says the president, but he will be just fine.
00:14:16.000This miraculous search and rescue operation comes in addition to a successful rescue of another brave pilot yesterday, which we did not confirm because we did not want to jeopardize our second rescue operation.
00:14:25.000This is the first time in military memory that two U.S. pilots have been rescued separately deep in enemy territory.
00:14:30.000We will never leave an American warfighter behind.
00:14:32.000The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations without a single American killed or even wounded just proves once again that we have achieved overwhelming air dominance and superiority over Iranian skies.
00:14:42.000This is a moment all Americans, Republican, Democrat, and everyone else, should be proud of and united around.
00:14:47.000We truly have the best, most professional, and lethal military in the history of the world, says the president.
00:14:57.000And apparently, we know that this pilot, this weapons systems officer, operator, we know that he was surviving.
00:15:07.000Based on special training, survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training.
00:15:11.000The Wall Street Journal has a good report talking about what that is.
00:15:14.000Basically, people who are flying over enemy territory are trained to survive in enemy territory.
00:15:22.000And that includes, according to the Wall Street Journal, a set of actions, including sizing up the situation, addressing wounds, determining how to hide, value living, and that doing so might require enduring discomfort, and learning the basics, and then evade.
00:15:39.000So, the pilot is supposed to have a rescue plan, a contingency plan before each mission for evading and executing an exit strategy.
00:15:48.000The downed aviator is going to need to know how to resist.
00:15:51.000In this particular case, the downed aviator had a pistol, but we don't actually know what he had to do.
00:15:59.000So, apparently, this downed aviator had to intermittently signal because he was afraid that if he continuously signaled, the Iranians would catch on to where he was and then they would capture him.
00:16:11.000And as former CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie says, the most amazing thing here is that, yes, we have the aircraft, yes, we have the military capacity, yes, we have the expertise, but we also have the value of leave no man behind.
00:16:29.000Every time we send air crew over enemy territory, we have detailed, elaborate plans to go get them.
00:16:34.000It's a very basic part of who we are as American fighting men and women.
00:17:11.000Not only is this just a great kick ass American story that should be inspirational to everybody, it also is really important because we are, in fact, drawing nearer to the end of this campaign in Iran.
00:17:21.000All right, in a second, we'll get to what happens next after this rescue operation.
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00:18:43.000You'd think a record high in small business revenue would encourage banks to open the floodgates, but actually, big banks have been tightening underwriting and approving fewer loans than ever.
00:18:51.000So you've got the bureaucracy, the red tape, the endless paperwork.
00:18:54.000It turns that funding process into a marathon.
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00:19:57.000So, to determine what comes next, we first have to determine objectives.
00:20:00.000So, Wednesday night, which is a long time ago now, but I was off for Passover, the president gave a national address talking about what exactly he wanted to accomplish here.
00:20:12.000And he started off by saying there can be no nuclear weapon in Iran.
00:20:17.000From the very first day I announced my campaign for president in 2015, I have vowed that I would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
00:20:29.000This fanatical regime has been chanting death to America, death to Israel for 47 years.
00:20:37.000Their proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans in the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, the slaughter of hundreds of our service members with roadside bombs.
00:20:50.000They were involved in the attack on the USS Cole, and they carried out the countless other heinous acts, including the blood, just horrible, bloody atrocities of October 7th in Israel, something that most people have never seen anything like it.
00:21:10.000This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran, 45,000 dead.
00:21:20.000For these terrorists to have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable.
00:21:36.000My first preference was always the path of diplomacy, yet the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement.
00:21:50.000So the president in that speech said that the next two to three weeks would be the decisive point in the war.
00:21:54.000He said that we were going to hit them hard over the next two to three weeks.
00:22:00.000We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.
00:22:05.000We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.
00:22:10.000In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.
00:22:26.000The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.
00:22:30.000Yet, if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets.
00:22:37.000Okay, so that last point, that there is a more moderate regime in place, we have yet to see the public evidence that that is in fact the case.
00:22:43.000There are apparently cracks inside the Iranian regime.
00:22:46.000Unclear with whom the United States is currently negotiating.
00:22:49.000Are we negotiating with Mohammad Khalibaf, who's the head of the parliament?
00:22:52.000Are we negotiating with President Massoud Pajeshkin, who's widely perceived as a weak horse in the Middle East?
00:22:58.000We're certainly not negotiating with the IRGC because they themselves have basically said they're willing to ride this thing all the way into the ashman of history.
00:23:06.000Well, on Thursday, the United States blew up the B 1 bridge in Iran.
00:23:10.000The B 1 bridge is a very, very large structure in Iran.
00:23:16.000Again, one of the reasons that you blow up bridges is because military material is moved via bridge.
00:23:21.000And as we are going to discuss more widely, there's been a lot of talk about quote unquote war crimes, war crimes meaning the targeting of dual use resources.
00:23:30.000Dual use means that it can be used for military purposes and also for non military purposes.
00:23:35.000So if you target an electrical grid, and that electrical grid is used by the military and it's also used by civilians, Then, is that necessarily a quote unquote war crime?
00:23:46.000It depends on the proportionality of what you are doing.
00:23:49.000What is the objective you are seeking to achieve?
00:23:51.000How effective is the taking down of an electrical grid in actually achieving that military end?
00:23:56.000And how many people have to be damaged?
00:23:59.000It turns out that the laws of war have a lot of shades of gray to them.
00:24:03.000And so, anybody who is telling you that it's a war crime to bomb a bridge, well, no, it depends on the bridge and it depends on the military purpose of bombing the bridge because every bridge is, of course, an object and the object can be used for many reasons.
00:24:16.000Meanwhile, President Trump on Friday put out a statement on Truth Social saying basically that he just needs more time.
00:24:23.000Quote, with a little more time, we can easily open the Hormuz Strait, take the oil, and make a fortune.
00:24:27.000It would be a gusher for the world, President Trump.
00:24:29.000So, some of what the president is doing here is, of course, talking down the market.
00:24:33.000He's trying to tell people that this thing is coming to an end, that it'll just take a little bit more time.
00:24:37.000And, of course, that seems to be a veiled reference to the taking of Karg Island, which the president mentioned all the way back in 1987.
00:24:43.000The president has a habit of actually doing the things he said he would do 40 years ago.
00:24:48.000So, it would not be a gigantic surprise for the United States.
00:24:50.000You simply take Karg Island, which is the source of 90% of all Iranian oil exports.
00:24:57.000The Iranian economy is 60 to 65% oil exports, and it's 30 to 35% petrochemical exports, which we'll get to in just a little while.
00:25:05.000And then finally, on Sunday, the president's patience is gone.
00:25:08.000And the president put out a statement that has launched 1,000 think pieces because he used a bad word, he used a naughty word.
00:25:13.000He actually used two naughty words here, and people are very upset about the naughty words.
00:25:17.000He said Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran.
00:25:43.000Second of all, when he says that it's going to be power plant day and bridge day, again, it depends on which power plants and which bridges and how much of an asset they are to the regime.
00:25:53.000Yes, if we just blew up a bridge in the middle of an Iranian town, far from the fighting centers, that has nothing to do with the material goal of the war, that would in fact be a violation of the laws of war, such as they are, or American military standards.
00:26:07.000However, if you blow up a power plant because the power plant is generating the power on behalf of the IRGC, if you blow up a petrochemical facility because it is a key element in funding the continuation of the Iranian regime, that is a different story.
00:26:25.000That Iran's deadline would be Tuesday, 8 p.m. Eastern.
00:26:27.000Of course, that is, you know, a day and a half from now.
00:26:31.000As far as the Strait of Hormuz, the fact is that Iran does not have basically any regular naval assets, as the Wall Street Journal points out.
00:26:42.000The real problem is that Iran has about 1,000 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf, dominated by mountains and caves, tunnels under the rocks, ones hidden by mangroves and salt caves.
00:26:52.000There's an island called Keshem Island.
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00:28:37.000They've now reduced that, apparently, to a 20 day ceasefire or so.
00:28:42.000According to Axios, the U.S., Iran, and a group of regional mediators are discussing the terms for a potential 45 day ceasefire that could lead to a permanent talk to the end of the war, according to four U.S. Israeli and regional sources with knowledge of the talks.
00:28:54.000Of course, it's Barack Ravid reporting, which means that it's the, as always, restrainer wing of the Trump administration that is leaking to him.
00:29:02.000Those are the people who talked to Barack Ravid.
00:29:17.000Those are the two chief priorities at this point for the administration nuclear materials out because we know they have enriched uranium to 60% and reopen the strait.
00:29:38.000Understand the situation the Iranian regime finds itself in by its own making.
00:29:42.000Three years ago, Iran thought of itself as bestriding the Middle East with the octopus arms of its terror proxies.
00:29:50.000All the way from Yemen up through Lebanon and Syria and Iraq.
00:29:54.000And then, because of October 7th, those terror proxies got absolutely hammered.
00:29:58.000Hamas basically turned into a vestigial organ.
00:30:01.000Hezbollah, so reduced in its power that the Israeli military can simply push up into Lebanon and blow the bridges on Latani to prevent Hezbollah from re entering southern Lebanon.
00:30:11.000Hezbollah hit so hard that the Syrian regime actually fell.
00:30:15.000The terror arms of Iran have been cut off one by one over the course of the last couple of years.
00:30:20.000And meanwhile, Two direct wars now in Iran have destroyed Iran's air defenses, destroyed its navy, destroyed its air force, none of which exist anymore, and reduced it to basically shooting tens of thousands of people in the streets in order to maintain power.
00:30:37.000As we pointed out on the show, the Iranian government had been using methodologies of tyrannical states essentially to maintain a 42,000 rial to the American dollar exchange rate.
00:30:52.000And the only way they could do that, because the rial is worth actually nothing. Is by threatening that anyone who engaged in black market currency exchange or bought product that the Iranian government didn't know about from abroad would be prosecuted, jailed, killed, whatever.
00:31:06.000Well, they lost total control of the rial at the end of last year.
00:31:09.000And suddenly, that fake exchange rate, that $42,000 to $1 exchange rate, skyrocketed to 900,000 rial to the dollar.
00:31:18.000And before the war, it was up to 1.4 million rial to the dollar, which is to say money is worthless in Iran.
00:31:59.000Presumably, this current action was the idea that Iran was so trapped, the only way they could break out was a breakout to a nuclear weapon and turn themselves into a hermit state like North Korea.
00:32:09.000So that is the reason why they won't just give up the nukes.
00:32:11.000If they give up the nukes, they're gone.
00:32:14.000If they give up their nuclear capacity or the race to a nuke, then they are a weakened military structure sitting atop a population of 90 million people, most of whom hate them.
00:32:24.000And that is incredibly dangerous for them.
00:32:28.000And so now the real question is going to be, Making permanent that state of affairs.
00:32:32.000Because let's say that the regime does not go down right now, which it probably will not.
00:32:35.000If the regime does not go down in the next few weeks, then the question becomes how does the United States achieve its goals?
00:32:40.000Well, one, we obviously need to get the nuclear materials.
00:32:44.000That might involve some sort of special operation like the one we just saw to save the American pilots.
00:32:50.000And two, we can leave their economy in tatters so that they do not have the capacity to pay their own guys.
00:32:56.000This, by the way, is precisely what happened with Bashar Assad in Syria.
00:32:59.000Bashar Assad had his Praetorian Guard, and he stopped being able to pay them.
00:33:03.000And his Praetorian Guard, which was partially comprised of Hezbollah, had been hit so hard that there was no one left to guard him, and so he fled.
00:33:11.000This is presumably why Israel has now hit.
00:33:14.000Iran's largest petrochemical facility, responsible for about 85% of all petrochemical exports in the country, which is to say 30 to 35% of the Iranian export economy.
00:33:25.000And again, it wouldn't be necessary for the United States to actually grab Kharg Island.
00:33:30.000If the United States did two things, this war would basically be over.
00:33:32.000If the United States did a special operation to seize nuclear materials, that would take that priority off the table.
00:33:38.000And two, if the United States just bombed Kharg Island, forget about actually taking it.
00:33:43.000If the United States just destroyed it, Which we could easily do because, again, complete air superiority.
00:33:50.000The Iranian economy would no longer be extant.
00:33:53.000It would not have any capacity at all.
00:33:55.000Their petrochemical facilities would be gone.
00:33:57.000Their oil export facilities would be gone.
00:33:58.000Their economy would be complete toast.
00:34:01.000And then, even if they ended up with some sort of vestigial control of the Strait of Hormuz, they wouldn't have, presumably, the guys they could pay to keep it closed so we could bomb those areas.
00:34:13.000Or, two, we could do what President Trump has threatened to do and just leave it for the Asians and the Europeans and say, listen, You guys get your oil from there, but guess what?
00:34:22.000The amount of oil that moves via the Strait of Hormuz that ends up in the United States, of the 100% of oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz, 2.5% of it goes to the US.
00:34:33.000The vast majority of it goes to China and Japan.
00:34:37.000China gets one third of all their imported oil from the Strait of Hormuz.
00:34:41.000Do you think that the Chinese want the Strait of Hormuz permanently closed?
00:34:45.000And let's be clear even if Iran were to keep it closed and then toll all those ships that are moving through, That would not make up, not remotely, for the loss of Karga Island and their petrochemical facilities.
00:34:56.000There's not a tax that people can pay to move through the strait that would actually pay for all of that.
00:35:01.000And so they would be forced, presumably, to put confiscatory rates on all of those ships.
00:35:05.000And then the question is does China want that?
00:37:47.000We would have protected Ukraine, regardless of whether there was a NATO, but is it reciprocal?
00:37:52.000Does NATO help us when we require the help, especially when it's in their interest?
00:37:56.000Every single country in Europe understands that the IRGC is a threat to them and their interests and their oil interests via the Red Sea and via the Persian Gulf, and they won't do a damn thing.
00:38:06.000Well, Secretary of State Rubio, who again is quite pro European, he said, You know, you break it, you bought it.
00:38:14.000Well, then it's not going to go that well for you with us.
00:38:18.000One of the reasons why I've been a supporter of NATO is because I believe that these basing rights give us leverage and give us, uh, flexibility and operational capability all over the world.
00:38:28.000But if NATO is just about us defending Europe if they're attacked, but them denying us basing rights when we need them, that's not a very good arrangement.
00:38:35.000That's a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States.
00:38:39.000So all of that's gonna have to be re-examined.
00:38:41.000All of it's gonna have to be re-examined.
00:38:46.000So, again, he is not wrong about all of that.
00:38:48.000Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is basically responding with their usual impotent or semi impotent outrage.
00:38:56.000Here is a chart of the Iranian regime and who has died inside the Iranian regime at this point.
00:39:03.000Yeah, that's a lot of dead people inside the Iranian regime.
00:39:47.000Or Bahrain with some drones, if that's what they are reduced to, then the war has been a massive success.
00:39:55.000China, for its part, is trying to prop up the Iranians because China recognizes that if Iran were to actually flip into some sort of secularized pro America regime, then they would be in serious economic trouble.
00:40:05.000Because again, 33% of all oil imported into China is coming via the Strait of Hormuz, and 13% of all Chinese oil that is imported is coming directly from Iran.
00:40:20.000Utilizes Iran basically as its gas station.
00:40:24.000But will even they have an interest in propping up Iran if it turns out that Iran is now taxing Chinese ships?
00:40:30.000How is that going to work out particularly well for them?
00:40:33.000Will they seek to find some sort of off ramp with Saudi Arabia, the US, UAE, and all the rest?
00:40:40.000Well, the other thing that the Iranians are doing is they're relying on their useful idiots in the United States.
00:40:44.000Mohammed Khalibaf has decided that tweeting like Theo Vaughn on Joe Rogan is probably the best strategy here.
00:40:51.000So they tweeted out, Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living hell for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following Netanyahu's commands.
00:41:00.000Make no mistake, you won't gain anything through war crimes.
00:41:03.000Okay, so I'm just going to point out that if you are in the United States right now, which I assume you are if you're listening to the sound of my voice, because the vast majority of our listeners, like nearly all of them, are American.
00:41:14.000Question Do you consider yourself to be living in a living hell right now?
00:41:19.000So, this is a war between one country where everybody is suffering somewhat higher gas prices temporarily, and another country that has no functioning government, a terror state that shoots people in the streets, and all of that leadership class has been killed.
00:41:37.000I'm not going to take that with a lot of seriousness, but you can always count on the useful idiots.
00:41:42.000People who truly hate America at this point.
00:41:43.000I mean, I don't know how else to characterize this.
00:41:46.000I don't know how you characterize a belief that America should be less powerful in the world, that America should lose, that it would be better if America lost, as anything but hating America.
00:41:55.000I can't think of a single military conflict, including military conflicts with which I disagreed.
00:42:00.000I, for example, did not think the United States should be involved in Libya, in which I was hoping that America would lose.
00:42:07.000I might have thought that the involvement was not correct, but the idea that it would be better for America to lose is anti American, period, definitionally.
00:42:19.000Ryan Grimm, who's become a favorite on the horseshoe right and the grievance party right, suddenly quoted by all of these people who have decided that isolationism is the way, he put out an actual tweet saying this.
00:42:31.000So Sean McGuire, who's an investor, put out a tweet saying, How did we get to the point where so many Americans are rooting against America?
00:42:38.000And Ryan Grimm, over at Drop Site News, which is a left wing misinformation propaganda site, put out the statement, If this is an honest question, I'd say Americans are rooting against America because we facilitated a genocide.
00:42:52.000Presumably, this would be Israel's action against Hamas, which was not, in fact, even remotely close to a genocide, and followed it with a surprise attack on a girls' elementary school, followed by attacks on universities, medical centers, more schools, a world famous pharmaceutical research center, a volleyball team, an unfinished bridge we claimed was transporting weapons, and then a nuclear power plant.
00:43:11.000We are now promising endless attacks on civilian infrastructure.
00:43:13.000Okay, so again, every single thing he is saying there is a lie.
00:43:16.000And the reason I say it's a lie is because we have hit those sites, because they are dual use sites, except for the ones that we hit by accident.
00:43:24.000If you truly believe that the American military is so evil that we target girls' schools for the fun of it, that there's no military usefulness, no mistakes made, that we just decided to get up one morning and murder a bunch of schoolgirls, get the hell out of the country.
00:43:37.000Seriously, you hate the country and you hate the military.
00:43:40.000There's no other way to explain what you are saying.
00:43:45.000You think Pete Hegseth and President Trump are sitting around drawing up a target list and they say, you know what, just for good measure, let's kill a bunch of Iranian schoolgirls.
00:43:57.000You can oppose the way that the war is being fought.
00:43:59.000You can have problems with the general overall strategy.
00:44:02.000You can have honest questions about the war.
00:44:03.000That's not what we're talking about here.
00:44:05.000We're talking about people openly hoping that America loses because they do not like America, because they think a more powerful America in the world is a bad thing.
00:44:15.000And Iran is counting on these people to undermine support.
00:44:19.000This happened throughout American history.
00:44:22.000If you go back to the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong were counting on moron university students to claim that the real bad guys versus, you know, the communists who were murdering hundreds of thousands of people, that the real bad guys were actually the United States.
00:44:36.000And that's why you had them literally chanting in solidarity with Ho Chi Minh.
00:44:40.000Same sorts of people now, and they span a large swath of the left and a large part of the right now, or at least a significant part of the online right.
00:44:48.000I shouldn't say a large part of the right because Again, it's not true.
00:44:51.000But Ryan Grimm and Tucker Carlson are holding hands, walking off into their common isolationist anti American future together.
00:44:58.000Tucker Carlson put out a tape over the weekend celebrating the end of the US led world order.
00:45:04.000Here he was saying a bunch of untrue things, which is what he does for a living now while selling nicotine made in India.
00:45:12.000What's happening in Iran is the end of American empire as we understand it.
00:46:30.000Remember, this schmuck was telling you last year we were going to be in World War III if the United States struck a nuclear facility with one B2.
00:46:39.000Has he been right on a single thing all along the way here?
00:46:54.000Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, shows up at the White House yesterday to pray over the president so he will have wisdom and restraint.
00:47:28.000Tucker Carlson has been super pro Russia throughout the entire Russia Ukraine conflict, as Russia targets civilians.
00:47:36.000He has been extraordinarily pro Iran throughout this entire conflict, after Iran murdered some tens of thousands of people in the streets and has facilitated the murder of civilians all over the Middle East.
00:47:47.000As to his argument, his generalized argument, which is that somehow the last post World War II almost century of history, past 80 years of history, has been a giant fail for America.
00:47:58.000Do you know how ignorant of American history you have to be to actually argue that?
00:48:03.000That destroying the Soviet Union, that building the single most powerful economy in the history of planet Earth is somehow a giant L?
00:48:16.000New story from the Wall Street Journal America's middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scale the economic ladder into higher earning groups.
00:48:24.000New research shows the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so.
00:48:28.000This would be the period that Tucker says is terrible.
00:48:31.000While the lower rungs of the middle class have shrunk.
00:48:34.000In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979.
00:48:42.000So the ranks of the upper middle class jumped 300% since 1979.
00:48:48.000But this is a giant fail, according to Tucker Carlson.
00:48:50.000The only solution is to give up power to China and Russia, which again is a thing he has said in the last two weeks.
00:48:58.000The American Enterprise Institute report classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class.
00:49:06.000Households earning more were categorized as rich.
00:49:10.000In 2024, about 19% of American families were considered poor or near poor.
00:49:15.000And that's not great, but you know what that stat was in 1979?
00:49:23.000A Pew Research analysis used a different methodology, and they found that in 2023, 19% of Americans fell into an upper income group that's up from 11% in 1971.
00:49:45.000He literally had on a Chinese propagandist professor who believes that the Rothschilds and the Masons are controlling the world and called the guy a prophet again.
00:49:58.000Meanwhile, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn't have two neurons to rub together, She put out a statement to, on Easter morning, this is what President Trump posted.
00:50:06.000Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshiping the president and intervene in Trump's madness.
00:50:15.000Again, listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene lecture everyone else on morality is a hell of a thing, knowing her personal history.
00:50:23.000I know all of you and him, and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.
00:50:27.000I'm not defending Iran, but, but, as always, whenever you have a sentence, And there is a but in the middle of the sentence.
00:50:36.000Whatever came before that but does not matter.
00:50:39.000I'm not defending Iran, but let's be honest about all of this.
00:50:43.000The strait is closed because the U.S. and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they've been telling for decades.
00:50:49.000That any moment, Iran would develop a nuclear weapon.
00:50:52.000So, okay, so the idea is here that Steve Witkopf and Jared Kushner and the IAEA, they're all lying.
00:51:17.000But these are the people that Iran is counting on to help out.
00:51:20.000Candace Owens put out her usual melange of insanity.
00:51:23.000She put out a tweet This is a satanic administration.
00:51:26.000We all realize that satanic Zionists occupy the White House, and Congress needs to move to have the mad King Trump removed.
00:51:32.000All of our lives may depend upon other countries realizing Trump is deeply unwell and surrounded by religious fanatics.
00:51:38.000Who have convinced him that he is a messiah?
00:51:41.000What in the world is she even talking about?
00:51:43.000What in the world is she talking about?
00:51:45.000Yeah, probably she'll provide us evidence of this the same time that she provides evidence that Egyptian planes were linked to the murder of Charlie Kirk.
00:51:52.000We're in uncharted territory, she tweets.
00:53:40.000And again, there's a difference, I'll say it again, between having questions about the war, which is perfectly legit in any war.
00:53:46.000Any government policy can be questioned.
00:53:48.000There's a difference between that and the kind of anti American nonsense that is now being pressed forward on some of the most well listened to podcasts and shows in America.
00:54:02.000If you are going, On Joe Rogan's show, as Theo Vaughn did over the course of last week, and just spewing utterly ignorant nonsense that implicates the United States in war crimes and claims the United States is somehow the bad guy in the war with Iran, let me suggest that you have your morality checked or your knowledge checked or something of the sort.
00:54:24.000You know, I'm not the one claiming that Theo Vaughn has anything valuable to say on this, but apparently other people are.
00:54:30.000I think Theo Vaughn's super funny, and that's about it.
00:54:33.000But, If Iran is counting on those people to somehow get them out of the situation they've created for themselves, good luck to them.
00:54:39.000Meanwhile, in the United States, Secretary Rubio has announced that he is revoking the green cards of foreign nationals with ties to the Iranian terror regime.
00:54:51.000According to the statement from the State Department, last night the niece and great niece of deceased IRGC Major General Qasem Soleimani were arrested by federal agents following Secretary of State Marco Rubio's termination of their lawful permanent resident status.
00:55:04.000Hamida Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in custody of ICE.
00:55:09.000And it turns out that these people promoted Iran regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian supreme leader, denounced America as the great Satan, and voiced unflinching support for the IRGC.
00:55:23.000Meanwhile, they enjoyed a lavish lifestyle.
00:55:29.000Here are some pictures of Hamide Soleimani Afshar.
00:55:35.000Here she was living the life in Los Angeles, walking out of an Air Maze store.
00:55:41.000Here was Hamide Soleimani in her outfit that is totally not allowed in Iran.
00:55:47.000If she walked down the street in Iran, she would have acid thrown on her face for wearing this, enjoying all the perks of Western life.
00:55:55.000It is fairly incredible, by the way, how many relatives of terrorists.
00:55:59.000Legitimately, just enjoy the West and come here and take advantage of it because we're morons.
00:56:07.000Here was a picture of a Saray Nasadat Hosseini scantily clad as well.
00:56:13.000Again, I'm just going to say that I don't think this outfit is Tehran appropriate.
00:56:18.000So, while her relatives, while her uncle was murdering people who dressed like this in Iran, who dared to dress like this in Iran, murdering them, she was out in LA enjoying her life in the West.
00:56:30.000Well, we should kick all these folks out of the country.
00:56:34.000The fact that so many terrorist children and terrorist relatives and future terrorists are trained in the United States is a blot on our immigration system.
00:56:42.000As the president said, if you import the third world, you become the third world.
00:56:46.000And that's not going to happen to the United States of America as long as I'm president.
00:56:50.000By the way, there are six Iranian leaders' children who are currently in U.S. universities.
00:56:55.000The daughter of Ali Larijani, who was the de facto Iranian leader until he was killed.
00:57:01.000Is a medical doctor who taught at Emory.
00:57:03.000In New York, Leila Khatami, the daughter of the former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, teaches math at Union College.
00:57:09.000Zahra Mohegdeh Damad is a niece of Ali Larajani and works as a professor in the Department of Nuclear Plasma and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
00:57:20.000And Isa Hashemi is an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in LA.
00:57:25.000His mom is a former member of parliament in Iran who worked as a spokesperson for the terrorists who held 52 diplomats hostage at the U.S. Embassy.
00:57:35.000Yeah, we don't need any of these folks in the United States, and we should never have admitted any of them unless they were willing to openly denounce all of the belief systems of their parents and relatives.
00:59:21.000Hilariously, Democrats are now pretending to be mad at this.
00:59:24.000Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who is the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom of California, is blaming the patriarchy for Christy Noam and Pam Bondi leaving.
00:59:31.000Not the fact that they were incompetent, the patriarchy.
00:59:35.000I'm not a fan of Pam Bondi nor Christy Noam, but I need to call out. that it's no surprise to me that the first two prominent people pushed out of this administration were women.
00:59:46.000The conservative women that Trump handpicks, who align themselves with an agenda that controls women, restricting our rights, limiting our autonomy, and pushing us back into this straitjacket of femininity that is only in service of men, there's a familiar pattern here.
01:00:01.000Women are brought in, packaged Mar-a-Lago style, and lifted up as long as they commit to wholeheartedly serve the interests of the patriarch at the top.
01:00:11.000I mean, just ridiculous, but not a shock.
01:00:14.000She's coming to the defense of Pam Bondi and Christy Gnome.
01:01:52.000Apparently, massive controversy has now broken out over the horrifying issue of Jonathan Majors being in an action movie and then he fell down, and now the unions are mad and we don't really care very much.
01:02:06.000Dallas, thanks so much for joining the show.
01:02:12.000Okay, so why don't you run us through the story?
01:02:14.000Because the media are treating it as though Jonathan Majors, as well as one of the other actors in the film, basically were blown up on set, have been eviscerated, are no longer alive.
01:02:23.000And then the unions are treating it as though this is some sort of union violation that led to all of this.
01:02:27.000Why don't you spell out what happened here?
01:02:29.000So you know we make big, bad movies, and they've got explosions and helicopters and all kinds of fun stuff, tons of guns.
01:04:36.000Every now and then, when we make a movie, of course, we have to bring in a few people that are new.
01:04:41.000Those people who aren't so familiar with our way of working and our way of doing business, they decided they wanted to go union and try to flip the crew.
01:05:10.000And as I said in the article, we don't negotiate with communists.
01:05:16.000So, Dallas, I'm not going to ask you to give away anything about the film because we don't want to give away anything about the film at this point.
01:05:47.000Would like to control everything sort of top down in centralized fashion.
01:05:51.000They're upset that we're operating outside of their system and successfully doing so and getting stars like Jonathan Majors to be in movies with us.
01:05:57.000And so this seems like more of the same because as soon as we announced Jonathan Majors would work with us, all of the articles were about how terrible it was for Jonathan Majors to work with us, not for us to work with Jonathan Majors.